Caged Life Volume I: Introductions

By Cody Buchanan

Originally a weekly online serial, Caged Life appears here for the first time in a collected edition.

Volume 1: Introductions, explores the city of Cahj and its inhabitants, as experienced by Gio Van. A former lab assistant living on the fringes of society, Gio deals with overzealous tabloid reporters, movie stars, and the genetically engineered workers called elves.

The elves are the basis of Cahj's wealth and power - a workforce created in a lab and sold the world over. Representing a new industrial revolution, the elves do the jobs no human would want. At the top of this science-fueled labour force are the High Elves, the genetic templates from which all elves are created. And it is into their games Gio finds himself drawn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cody Buchanan
• Release date: Mar 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310871214

Book preview

Introduction

By Cody Buchanan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously with all good intent. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, beliefs, events, creatures, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Cody Buchanan

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof, including characters, names, locations, ideas, and concepts, may not be reproduced or stored by any means or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

Cover photography © by Cody Buchanan, Craig St. Cemetery/Old Burying Ground, Perth, Ontario

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

My name’s Gio Van, and this is a look at my life, I guess.

- - -

Chapter One

Morning, honey, my wife said, pulling on a pair of clear plastic jeans. She was wearing a black thong underneath, but as my tired eyes slowly woke up, they were assaulted by a sudden bright glow, which was enough to drive me back under the covers. The glow was something built into the garment itself, something my wife did for a living, in fact. She worked in the fashion industry, on high-tech clothes.

When the glow faded, the thong was bright pink. Most clothes could do that, actually. Well, some. Having a good coat that could change colour wasn’t really practical, because it would compromise warmth and such, and for everyday wear it just really wasn’t worth it. So pretty much it was reserved for fancy wear, which, really, did not include thongs, so that trick was probably a one-time thing for that pair of underwear, something added so they could charge double for it.

Anyway. She was dressed the rest of the way with just a plain, fairly tight white shirt and a pair of soft black gloves.

I’ll see you tonight, she said, smiling. She blew me a kiss, and then left for work.

That was six years ago.

She took most of our savings, leaving me only enough for a single month’s rent. At least she wasn’t completely heartless. Without both our incomes, the tiny little apartment we’d lived in would’ve been impossible to afford. Four-by-five just a couple of hours out of downtown was pretty near luxury, but, I mean, it was four metres by five. And to think I used to be proud of having got that place. You could say she did me a favour by leaving. Snapped me out of my comfortable, dull little life.

But yeah, it would’ve been awesome if she had’ve left some more money. Or, you know, not left. Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s not like I miss her. Of course I did at first, but only the very first. After the month I could afford in the apartment was up, I forgot about missing her pretty quick.

It turned out that even though she’d taken all our savings, as well as the majority of what we owned. even the stupid little spindly house plant she’d given to me as a birthday present once, she’d missed my one prized possession, my ‘48 Tyndall.

So like I said, that was six years ago. Once my rent was up, I left my job, since my income alone would never be enough to keep a home anywhere near enough for a feasible commute, and headed for cheaper pastures.

I went to the mostly-uninhabited, sparsely built-up edge of the city, out past Elftown, the Wedge, and even the slums, to where I’d first found my car. I spent a couple of months there, working on the Tyndall as best I could without any real tools or a clue about cars, surviving by trading things I found in the abandoned buildings around the shack housing my car with people in the slums. Not a great life, but I did feel free. Liberated, I guess. I grew a beard. But I also felt hungry. And cold. I knew why that part of the city had been abandoned, after living there for a while. It bordered the desert, and storms blowing in could make life difficult. Big chunks of the desert contained highly acidic salts, and if the wind kicked that up, it made storms very nasty. Cahj normally had predictable weather. Storms usually blew themselves out over the mountains before they reached the city, but sometimes they would cross the big open expanse of desert to the west, and reach the city proper. So the western most extreme of the city had become either abandoned, or been run down into slums.

It was tough out there, and it got harder and harder to find things the people in the slums wanted badly enough to give away food for, so I gave up on my solitary existence, locked up my car, and went to live in the slums.

It was dirtier, and in some ways harder than living on the edge of the city, but there were more opportunities. I don’t know why I never got a real job, a respectable job, after my wife left. I guess it was just a shock. It hurt too much, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I just couldn’t take the idea of going back to something like the stupid little life we’d made. It was easy to say that I ditched my job because it would have been impossible to commute from wherever I would have wound up living, but that was just an excuse. I knew it was at the time, I just didn’t care. I didn’t want to face that life, I guess.

But so there I was, in the slums, with the Wedge, that little part of civilised city between the slums and Elftown, just a few kilometres of filthy, dilapidated housing away. Ultimately, I did a number of unsavoury things, most of all selling a few company formulas I remembered from my time as a clerk for one of the downtown firms, to make my way into the Wedge. I never sold anything serious, mind you. I was never important enough to see anything serious. Nothing having to do with the elves. I would have been a lot more wealthy, if that was the case. Probably be a lot more dead, too. But honestly, I don’t even know if that company ever had anything to do with them, anyway.

So I tried to barter a few company secrets no one thought I knew, and, yeah, I got a few beatings along the way, but I ended up with my pockets lined with enough money for a a modest place in the Wedge. I moved the Tyndall to my new home, and started my life over.

Chapter Two

I’m Ratch, this is Pydge, the taller of the two women at the bar said to me. Only I get to call her Pudge, she added with a wink, grabbing Pydge’s hip.

Screw off, Pydge said good-naturedly, slapping away Ratch’s hand.

Don’t really see a reason for that, I said.

Hey, Pydge said, a little defensively. Let’s see her call you that, and you try and not hit her.

Yeah, not what I meant, actually, Ratch smirked, maybe trying not to laugh. Pydge didn’t look happy. I meant I don’t see why she calls you that. You don’t look it, at all.

Oh, Pydge said. Um, Oh. She dropped her eyes, and might have actually blushed a little. Ratch lightly punched her in the arm, and then straddled a stool at the bar next to me.

I was in Soapy’s, a bar I sometimes went to just on the city-side of the Wedge from Elftown, and met these two after punching out a drunk low-born who was trying to feel up Pydge. Ratch had been on the other side of the bar, hitting on someone, but came running when the low-born hit the floor. Not like anyone minded, me punching out a low-born. But we were close enough to Elftown that nobody cheered, at least. Pydge had just looked at me without saying anything, but Ratch looked at the elf on the floor, up at Pydge, over at me, and then offered to buy me a drink.

Ratch was pretty tall, for a woman. Maybe just under two metres. Taller than me, anyway. She had dark hair cut haphazardly to about chin length and just sort of thrown about her head. That was on top of dark blue eyes, and a long, soft face. She didn’t come off as soft, though. She grinned a lot, and a lot of the people in the bar squirmed when she chose to grin at them.

Ratch clearly came off as kind of a punk to people, and even more clearly didn’t have to work at it at all. She was probably the kind that would make any party better, but only if it was a fun party to begin with. The snobby social bashes up in the Tower district would definitely not welcome Ratch’s kind of fun. Their loss. Possibly.

Pydge was different. Nice, grey eyes, and shoulder-length brown hair that was perpetually falling in front of her angular face. She was shorter than me, shockingly. And she was a lot different from Ratch, in personality. I’d known them all of ten minutes, but I got the distinct impression that, even though they didn’t look related, Ratch was Pydge’s big sister. Pydge was quiet, but that might have just been from getting groped by a low-born. What made me think she needed Ratch to look out for her was that she had been getting groped by a low-born in the first place.

We may have been only a few minutes outside of Elftown, but that was no excuse for putting up with