Dystopian Lullabies

By Sara Jamieson

A guard who barters people's lives for pie, a computer programmer who can't get away from a persistent program, and others all find a place in this collection of short stories featuring worlds that have gone wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Jamieson
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310108235

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Dystopian Lullabies

By Sara Jamieson

Copyright 2013 Sara Jamieson

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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World 7A: The Guard

Tagan leaned back slightly against the railing. The metal was cold, but it was still more comfortable than maintaining the upright posture of standing unsupported while he sipped at the contents of his cup. He didn’t stand up straight whenever he could get away with it. It might be some sort of latent rebellion from all those years during training when a lack of appropriate posture was a punishable offense (or it might just be that standing up straight took more effort than leaning up against something did, and he wasn’t really a fan of expending any effort that he could avoid expending). The mornings were still a little on the chilly side at this point in the year, but it wasn’t enough to motivate him to stop leaning.

Besides, the warmth from the cup that he was holding in his hands more than made up for it. There was steam rising into the air from the contents, but he sipped at it anyway. He didn’t mind the mild scalding that the drink gave his tongue. Hot beverages were still enough of a novelty (even after years of working at the bridge) that he couldn’t bring himself to care. Jaeli always spent an excessive (in his opinion) amount of time blowing on hers and letting it cool down before she started drinking. It was, he figured, the habit of someone who had grown up in a world where the concept of drinks that warmed you up inside was taken for granted.

He enjoyed these mornings where they met in the middle of the bridge (neither of them, strictly speaking, was supposed to go more than halfway across). Jaeli always brought cups and a container of the stuff that she said was called tea. It was always called tea even though it didn’t always taste the same. She said that different kinds had different flavors, but it had taken him some time after he first came to understand what that word flavor meant. Tea had stirred some childhood memories, so he had decided to assume that she wasn’t trying to kill him. (The rumors about the disappearance of the previous bridge guard hadn’t escaped his notice.)

He was glad that he had decided to give it a try. This morning’s tea was the kind he liked best; she said it was called sassafras. Jaeli didn’t like it much, but she brought it anyway because she knew that he liked it. She said it was too strong, and Tagan could only scoff at how spoiled she was. If she had grown up the way that he had, then she would understand that having access to something that actually had a taste was a privilege that should be appreciated. He never said that to her out of fear that she might make him drink the stuff she called peppermint on a more regular basis in retaliation (it, while still hot, wasn’t nearly as good).

He was getting spoiled as well. That was okay though; it was his intention to be spoiled. He wanted to enjoy all of the things that he never would have known existed if he hadn’t been stationed at the bridge. He intended to be good and spoiled for the rest of his life. He took another gulp from the cup that he cradled between his hands. He had tea, and it was hot. It was the best way to deal with a morning. If only he could enjoy it in peace, but he supposed that you couldn’t have everything.

The price of tea was conversation with Jaeli. He didn’t mind (too much). She was easy enough to deal with most of the time, and there was nothing in their arrangement that said that she had to bring him tea. She had a bit of a temper though, and she ranted something awful when anything set her off. Most days she seemed to understand that tea should be enjoyed with quiet, but today was not one of those days. It was the other kind of day. It was one of those days where something had been said that had her talking (and once she got started it was hard to get her to stop).

She was giving him that look again -- the one that stated clearly that she had no idea why he pretended to be an idiot when she already knew better. She didn’t get it; she likely never would. Habits were a difficult thing to break. That was why they were habits. They were ingrained. You didn’t think about them. They just were. He wasn’t going to (couldn’t really) break that particular habit when Tagan Keller was very comfortable with the fact that people often felt he suffered from a chronic case of idiocy.

It wasn’t as though any of them ever actually came out and said so (and it wasn’t as though he could actually ask if that was really what they were thinking), but he had come to recognize the slight shift in tone and demeanor that stole over new people after they had dealt with him for a short time. It was dismissiveness. He was being discounted. They were shuffling him to the place in their brain that was reserved for things of no importance. He was always pleased to see it even if he never let that pleasure show. It worked in his favor to be dismissed. He had a good thing going with his current placement, and he had no desire to do anything that might get him removed from his current duty roster.

He hadn’t known ahead of time that a bridge guard was where he would want to spend his days. He hadn’t angled for the placement. He had been rotated through in the natural order of things, and he had never been rotated back out. He had spent three years in the little cottage overlooking the river, and they were years that he fully intended to extend as long as he could. He had spent hours upon hours of the alone time that his position afforded calculating how best to make that happen. There was a reason that there was such a heavy turnover in those who were stationed at the bridges.

Lots couldn’t cope with the solitude. Tagan, enjoying the solitude himself, always found that difficult to understand. He had decided that it wasn’t the solitude itself that got to them -- it was the lack of someone to give them orders. They were conditioned for that from the time that they entered training. They were conditioned for that in a lot of ways before they ever entered training. Childhoods revolved around learning to obey. Was it any wonder that so many had trouble when they were requested to complete a task that required autonomy? They tried to breed autonomy out of everyone. Then, they became frustrated when they succeeded.

He wasn’t sure if they even realized that there was irony there. They didn’t exactly raise children who became adults who asked questions either. They might never notice that that was what had happened. Or,