Strange Bedfellows in Hot Buildings

By Richard DeVall

In this dystopian, quirky tale of sex and survival, Nelson finds himself living in a 250 story building that's mostly abandoned. Along the way, he meets Guadalupe, and together they live off what's in the empty offices and apartments. Soon after their meeting, she forces him into helping her free sex slaves from a group of marauders. They fight invaders from the street and the floors above them. Eventually, they move out and have to fight to travel north. In the end, the weather begins to cool, and as it does, crops can be planted, and a kind of commune develops. The book has a happy for now ending.     

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard DeVall
• Release date: May 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201333485

Book preview

Chapter One

September 3rd, 2104

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Earth will conspire to maintain its existence, no matter what, however, something was off. It felt sick deep down in its molten belly. It shook and caused earthquakes. Then, it belched and spewed volcanic ash. Its cloudy eyes watered, and there were floods. A sneeze spawned hurricanes. It began to have a fever, and Ute-oh, the Earth started getting hot. 

Species that have survived for millions of years went missing. Humans were causing problems. The big blue ball is fragile and delicate, with smiling porpoise, and colorful butterflies. It must weigh the various options with great caution. Mankind is magical, creative, filled with emotions, and curiosity. However, they carry greed and fill their time with formal and informal reproduction activities, as well as excessive fornication. 

To reduce their numbers, it will cause undue pressure on innocent creatures. The outcome will replenish, revive, and create abundance. A new garden will rise from the ashes. And, much like a body fighting a virus, a plan was cooked, the fires were stoked, and the Earth began to heat in order to drive out the infection causing the stress.

Buckets of rain and jet engine winds followed long dry spells with tiny smatterings of tears that fell from the gloomy sky. The Earth smoldered in discontent, and then returned to rage. After these outbursts, with showy lightning, and noisy thunder, the air tantrums were followed by a gust of exhaustion. Dust storms settled and stilled. It seemed as if a regretful Earth was apologizing with a shy and reluctant calm.

People shouldn't fall for that trick. It's a smart way to lure the drenched, and battered out into the open, so the clouds can count the living, and conjure numbers derived from thin air. The big round planet always wins. It tries to hide its sordid history, and cover its murderous tracks. It patiently buries the evidence under mud and vegetation. It's a silent witness to the destruction delivered throughout history, over, and over, from the beginning of time, without pause, or hesitation; on primitive skull worshippers, island statue draggers, virgin tossing types, fresco sketching fig eaters, and facially disfigured plateau planters. Still, it manages to garner gobs of sympathy from its helpless victims.

The frog in the pan

People refer to the frog in the pan as an example of finding out something too late. Nelson Howard had never touched a frog, other than in an Amazon Jungle Tour, wearing Senso-gloves with a 3D image-enhancing helmet. But he knew the phrase, Like a frog in a pan. It's when the frog doesn't jump out of the pot while it slowly cooks.

Nelson had his doubts about whether the frog jumped or not. It sounded contrived. It had a religious stench. He caught the old wise tail whiff from the frog in the pan story. His bullshit detector, detected, and he reached suspect conclusions coupled with sneaky suspicions, and some not so sneaky.

Nelson was raised by drunken Victor. That nudged him early on into the wobbly path of skepticism. Victor lied about everything, except the things he didn’t lie about, and that played a pivotal role in Nelson’s outlook on all things requiring belief. True or false was an internal game that caused him to often say, in his disregard of all things remotely authoritative, Screw it, I don’t believe it ... Feel free to fill in the it part.

Things were slowly getting warm, then warmer, then the warmest, until people said stuff all the time while they drank cold water, and wiped their nervous faces. The wires, the air conditioning, and the entire electrical grid overheated. Cars and drones were useless. Their batteries died; old people struggled and gave up the ghost. Their bodies smelled. The authorities hid. Groups went at each other as they shouted out the names and dates of old documents snatched from quantum computers that broke encrypted messages between the big shots. 

The rich owned the companies that were making the Earth get angry. They kept drilling, scraping, clogging, trashing, dumping, smoking, and polluting. All in a mad effort to keep the masses consuming, drinking, eating, shitting, screwing, bitching, screaming, and frolicking in affordable splendor, while absorbing the spoils of the Earth, and pointing their chubby fingers at the powerful.

The islands were swamped, the coasts were toast, and one day, Nelson realized the city had come to a hazy, hot standstill. He looked out a window and watched a plastic store sign turn into a colorful stalactite. Oh, man, he said. That was his superior-conclusion, a result of his big brain. It coughed up very little inside the confines of his thick skull. He was, after all, a janitor for the PermaBrite Corporation. He tossed his small screen down once he realized he was the only one in the dark halls of the defunct corporation. I quit, he told the empty headquarters. 

Now, he was naked and sweating like crazy every time he stepped out of the tub. He was fixed on the idea that he had a choice; die, or head north. It had a ring to it, north. The only problem was the travel was dangerous, and could only be done at night. Traveling dangerously in the dark was not something he took lightly. Food was a scarce commodity. So rare, in fact, that he was hungry and would have eaten a horse, which he'd never seen, except in a Wild West Tour taken with his Senso-gloves, and his 3D image-enhancing helmet.

He was a man of the mop, which meant he supervised a smattering of robotic cleaning machines and made sure they functioned properly, which they didn't once the power died, and the heat got to them. By the time the equipment gave up, there was very little to clean anyway, because the occupants; scientists and designers, and so on, had long gone. After foraging in all the various kitchens, and collecting all the 3D food packages, it was time for him to move out.

Hunger is a great motivator, while starvation takes the fire right out of a person. Caught in between the two, with limited resources, especially ingenuity and intellect, our janitor waited until total darkness then began his trek north. Opening the door of his apartment was the first step. After he did that, he listened to an eerie silence in the still darkness. He was on the 132nd floor, and because the PermaBrite Corporation was on the 80th floor, he rarely left the building. His idea of adventure was a night of beer and porn. He avoided people because he didn't understand them, and their words punctured him. Porn with the Senso-gloves, and the 3D image-enhancing helmet, was as good as the real thing. So they said. 

Nelson suffered mentally. There were encounters with other humans that left him devastated. An early morning, Hello, Nelson, spoken by his supervisor, accompanied by a toothy grin, was ruminated on for hours. Slowly, Hello, Nelson, became a snarling, vindictive attack of such venom, and sneer, that Nelson counted the minutes until he was back in the safety, and security of his one-bedroom efficiency with a view of a nearby brick wall.

Who does he think he is? he'd ask himself. Judging me like that. Yet, he knew he was nuts, which helped him maintain just enough of an ordinary façade and the outward appearance of average as to keep his job, which included a bonus of credits deposited into his chip at the end of each year.

They know, he said when he counted the bonus. They know how hard I work at being normal, and they appreciate the effort.

He thought about bumping into another human in the hall, or the stairwell. It might be an awkward time, being its dark, and his lightstick may not make it through the night. But the alternative was so unpleasant, sitting and starving, wasting away into a painful heap of nothing, that it pushed him into doing something. So, out he went with a few belongings packed in his backpack, a stolen screwdriver, and some water. 

Nelson would bludgeon if it came to that. He hadn't bludgeoned anyone since sticking a chopstick into drunken Victor. It happened, and Victor stirred himself from whatever stupor level he was in and yelled at Nelson. You chop stuck me, you fucking freak!

You had it coming, you had it coming, Nelson told him.

Victor knew he had it coming, so when it came, he knew. In the end, Victor didn't live as long as the average human in a place like theirs. He was below average on several averages. When he died, and Nelson pressed the red button, they, meaning them, took one look at the emaciated body, the empty bottles of booze, the filth, the dirty kid, and they concluded Victor was below average. Way below average.

Nelson was orphaned to a social program where he never learned to be social. In fact, that program only served to reinforce his antisocial feelings and emotions. He was a big loner. The social programmers eventually funneled him into a building where he could both work and live. They tweaked him in good and congratulated themselves on another success story, which meant they crossed off one more nobody on their government screen.

The corporation was given a slight stipend for taking on Nelson because he was deemed below average. He wasn't a bad looking, below average man, and it never occurred to him that women may find him attractive. When they looked at him and smiled, he thought they were looking down on him, and their smile was a repugnant sign of sympathy. At those times, he would rally himself into a big neutral nod, which neither encouraged, nor dismissed, anyone. He thought he was brilliant.

One time, a woman of undetermined years, weight, and height, that's how average she was, took him aside and put the move on him. He stood rock still, locked into a paralysis of such stand stillness that she looked him over for signs of adroitness in case he was an android. If he was an android, he might have seized up because of an undetermined breakdown. That was happening a lot due to the excessive heat. She put her ear on his chest and heard his heart, which was beating out of its frozen cavity. He tried to imagine what he'd do with his Senso-gloves, which he didn't have, and a few beers, which would have helped to encourage some kind of courage, like at home, in his sexy tour exploits. 

Are you a robot?

His inner Victor, the father he once looked up to, until the man reduced himself from alcohol to a point where Nelson looked down on him, and that incidentally caused him to stand up to the guy, said, Yes, don't tell anyone. I'm an experiment.

So discombobulated was the woman, having just hit on a robot, that she turned a bright red, and scurried back into human resources. She buried herself in an ongoing, outstanding claim that was launched by a group of misfits who were always overlooked for promotions. When she met with them, she tried to put on a good face. A company face, but not too cute of a face, not to make them feel less than and cause foot shifting, eye wondering, and incoherent mumbles. She looked them over and understood why they were overlooked; because they were, in fact, below average on many levels.

Nelson, having never met his mother, wasn’t good with women. All he knew about his mom was hearsay from his father. His dad was a huge fan of his mother and mentioned why she was so great, then he’d stagger into a different opinion, and let slip all the things that weren’t so great about his dead wife. It left a deep impression on Nelson. He concluded that his mother was even more below average than his father. In all matters concerning his father, he was underneath the bar, below the mean, empty in his knowledge of most things, except for alcohol, which he knew a lot about in regards to cost, and consumption. 

Victor was a good father in the sense that he made sure the child lived. If the boy died, he'd get fewer credits from the government. The single father was collecting disability and also a few extra credits by claiming his son was below average. That conclusion came from a test, Victor doctored and forwarded to the physicians. So, nobody really knows how below average Nelson is, or, in fact, if he is below, or even above average, for that matter. We can only conclude that his behavior is not average. 

The dark stairwell had a robust, hot breeze that came from the chimney effect of air rising up the steps to a vent at the top of the 250 floors. The flue is made to open and close at the top, but there was no electricity; the backup system, a fuel cell scheme, burned up. The ambient temperature was around 124 Fahrenheit, or 51 degrees Celsius. The air zipping around him was moving at near-hurricane speed. 

Nelson struggled to inch his way down, and in so doing, he noticed if he slid on his belly, the wind was much less, and the air was a bit cooler. That's how he encountered his first corpse. After the initial shock, in near darkness, with a light stick of chemical design, he determined the shriveled body was male. He looked him over for anything of worth and soon established the stairwell corpse was worthless.

He missed his Senso-gloves and 3D image-enhancing helmet. It was his only pleasure. He had, over the years, been with every kind of woman on the planet. After making his Single Trollope Tour, he made it again, with the company of doubles only; a 12 credit an hour extravaganza that wore him out. He was entertaining the idea of a much-advertised Triple Trollope Tour and was setting aside a few extra credits a month when he realized people were leaving the building in droves.

Chapter Two

A week later, the electricity stopped. Nelson should have left with the others, but he didn't like the idea of moving in a refuge herd at night with people glancing at him, and maybe even asking questions. So, he ignored all the signs. And, another missed opportunity was to educate himself on where the fleeing people were fleeing to. He didn't know the routes; he had no evacuation plans. He was steeped in denial, which he didn’t realize until it was really late. His Janitor-for-the-PermaBrite-Corporation brain finally informed him he was in bad shape. He had a significant thought. I better do something.

The dead guy in the stairwell could have been him, would have been him, and still might be him, if he died in the staircase. This sent his weak body, and even more fragile mind, into a kind of calendar conundrum of thinking about how many hours he had left. At his present crawl-slide speed of 61 steps in 30 minutes, he came to a conclusion. The sun would rise with him crawling in the stairwell unless he did something different. He would need to break into someone's apartment on his way down and get into a tub before the sun rose.

In the wind tunnel of death, he crept along until it was 4:30 in the morning. He exited the stairwell onto the 35th floor. Desperate for tub time, and sleep, his first glance told him the 35th level was of mixed-use. He found himself in the elevator lobby looking at double glass doors on one side, and a long hallway with apartments on the other.

Realizing the doors were all locked, he set his backpack on the carpet outside one of the condo doors and got out his stolen screwdriver. He eventually pried the latch back and pushed the door inward. He searched the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator, the 3D food printer, and the storage bay for supplies. He was thrilled beyond belief to spot the edge of a dropped vacuumed sealed package of cake. If he planned it right and mixed it up just so, he could set it in a window sill and let it rise to become a delicious meal.

The building's windows were insulated with gas sandwiched in between the panes. The problem was they were industrial grade and controlled by a low voltage sensing design that activated a substance in the glass. The chemicals produced beautiful scenery when the outside pane was shut off from the sun. Without power, the windows magnified the effects of the bright sun, so window sills were used as ovens.

Nelson made his way into the bathroom. The odor stopped him in his tracks. He shined his dim green light into the tub and jumped back. She was naked, her hair floating on the scum. It was going to send out an unbelievable stench as soon as he disturbed the water. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his head, doing his best to cover his nose.

He flipped the toggle and watched as the drain backed up, then he reached in between white, wrinkled, decomposing, and swollen legs. Having secured a handful of the muck, he tossed it behind him and listened to it splat against a wall. The water began to drain again, and he turned on the shower.

His head was soaked, and the water from the shower made it hard for him to see in the limited green light. Weakness didn't help. Knowing he had a long, and needed rest gave a little boost to his body-flinging. Her legs pulled off at the hips. Nelson tossed everything against the wall behind him.

In his mind, as an escape, he began to sing a popular song he learned as a lonely child in the social program. We are someone who's essential don't you know - We love ourselves, and take that with us as we go - If someone below average ever tells us otherwise - We forgive them, and our smile is our disguise - We are someone who's essential don't you know...

The body parts, bones, and ligaments were all tossed into a pile by the toilet, and they smelled. Nelson took the towel from his face, gagged, and scrubbed the tub ring. The building had a water collection system on the roof. He filled the tub, stripped off his clothes, and put them in the sink. He climbed into the bathtub and closed his eyes. He was sound asleep in no time. 

The soft light of the day infiltrated the room and baked the cake. The smell of the cake got tangled up with the odor of death. That change pulled him from his sleep. He realized the cake would burn to a crisp if he didn't do something. Slowly, he extricated himself from the cool dark tub. With a towel in hand, he grabbed the hot pan with the cake and ran back to the tub.  

The bathroom was situated around a corner and protected from the sun. The cake was dropped on his clothes in the sink. He accidentally glanced at the mess on the floor. The hairless head, with sunken skin, and shriveled eyes, didn't really lift his mood. Eventually, he fell asleep, and when he woke, he could tell the sun was torturing a new crowd. He wanted to search the apartment for another source of light after he ate the cake. 

He chewed with delight and savor, taking small clumps, and using control and thought to not gulp it down. As the sun disappeared behind the buildings, the temperature dropped to a formulated rate of sweat equal to the amount of water he drank. And, because he had an abundance of water, he poured it on his head as he walked naked around the apartment. 

Once upon a time, his nakedness would encourage him to touch himself in a below-average way. He played with his weaner all the time until the abuse hurt. He thought about that now, the dangling, and the swinging of his naked male attachment twitched and pulled on his abuse trigger. He needed that relief, but he also wanted to concentrate while he still had a light source. He was stroking, trying to strike a compromise position of servicing himself while doing his due diligence in the scavenging biz.

Eventually, the monkey business took over, and he sat in a chair with his eyes closed. He was thumping, and breathing hard, covered in a slick sheen of sweat, emitting a slight moan from his cake breath when a bright light bathed him at the exact moment of his discharge. What the hell? he blinked standing, squirting, and twisting toward the offensive invasion of artificial light. 

You’re disgusting, a female voice behind the light said.

What I was doing was private.

You look pathetic. What are you, twelve?

Nelson was never sure about questions. He'd heard the word rhetorical, and he knew it to mean questions that people asked that they didn't want answered. What kind of crazy world did he live in anyway? It so confounded him, this business of people asking questions they didn't want to be answered, that it got him developing a set of answers that weren't answers. They were statements to counter the suspect question.

I’m old enough, he said in the general direction of the light.

I'd like to ask you what you're doing in my mother's apartment, but I'm afraid of the answer.

His eyes penetrated the light with a barrage of silence.

Have you seen my mother?

She’s in the bathroom.

Did you do something to her?

I removed her from the tub. I didn't know she was your mother. She's not in one piece. She broke up, and I piled her up along the wall.

The woman behind the light sighed and began to weep. It's taken me weeks to get here. It's a nightmare out there, and I wanted to save her. 

Nelson said, I'm going to get my clothes from the bathroom and put them on. 

The voice behind the light was weeping, and he lacked the skill to comfort anyone. He tried to avoid the illumination as he moved naked toward the bathroom. The spotlight followed his naked body. He stopped walking, and it stopped. Then, he stepped forward, and it followed him. Nelson felt like a stripper caught in the spotlight without the tease. For someone whimpering about her mother falling apart, she can hold a light very steady. That made him think she might be fake crying, and really sneering behind her snivel. 

From the light, in between the fake sobs, came a half question. You have a nice body; has anyone ever told you that?

You mean someone real? he asked.

There was a long sigh, followed by a simple statement. If you're one of those, you're probably unelectable. Unelectable was futuristic dystopian slang, referring to someone who plays with themselves, instead of others. It basically means they're probably not electable.

Nelson debated repeating his earlier reply, I'm old enough. Then, he thought better of that and decided to toss out a new one. He answered the fake light holder with an even more straightforward statement of his own. I am what I am.

So you are, said the steady light lady whose mother was nothing more than chemical ooze in the bathroom where his clothes and backpack were in the sink. He moved, and the lying light followed him into the doorway. He gathered his clothes from the sink and brought them  into the living room and dressed. It was a striptease in reverse.

"There’s another smell in this room other than my mother.

It’s probably the cake I baked.

When did you bake a cake? she asked.

Today, he replied.

Did you eat it all?

Yes, he said. With a light like yours, we could go through the other apartments and find food. Plus, there's probably more in the offices behind the glass doors. He stood silent, bathing in the light, wearing his shorts, shirt, and shoes. His backpack was at his feet. It had taken a lot for him to make his bold declaration. He realized not seeing the lady behind the light had helped, because there were aspects of talking to the bright light that felt as if he was inside his 3D image-enhancing helmet. 

I have to think. I was so focused on getting here that I hadn't planned beyond the destination. That's short-term, I know. But that's what happened. I can achieve things; I can hone in on the objective, but corporate has blatantly expressed their disappointment in my inability to see around corners. 'You're unable to conflate, you're so single-minded,' they flogged me with that shit, and you know how it is? They work on the theory we're supposed to turn into some kind of accidental savant. How, pray-tell? The light shot to the ceiling and returned immediately from its abrupt trip. By bumping my fucking head on their ceiling? They really push us into feeling nothing, except, she hesitated, "being abhorrently, and transparently, average.

I now need to see mother, just to make sure you didn't bludgeon her. So, stand back, and give me a little space. She shined the light in his eyes and then moved into the bathroom. I have the latest laser; a Bristol 72, it's hot, so don't do anything stupid, she said this over her shoulder, which was outlined by the forward shining light.

Nelson didn't keep up with gadgets because it seemed they were always changing. He couldn't stand propaganda because it was sneaky and made him want to buy things he hadn't planned on buying. The advertisements reached into his brain and tried to touch his credits. Like the Triple Trollop Tour; 16 credits! Are they crazy? But he was saving; he was saving every day.

He heard her talk to the sewage heap in the bathroom. Sorry I'm late, Mom. I'm so sorry I didn't rescue you. She turned from standing next to the toilet, hidden once again behind the bright light aimed at the unelectable masturbator.

Alright, she said. Let's get what we can from this place and find more food. 

****

As a general rule, which is one without rank, people need to be careful of strangers they just met. Both of them were thinking this exact thought in a coincidental mind-meld that happened more often to Nelson than to the voice behind the light whose name was Guadalupe.

Her name came from a grandmother that may, or may not have been, grand, but possibly great; she couldn't remember how far back the title went. If it went back a certain distance, it would mean she was a great-granddaughter. At some point, families did what they could to make themselves royal, even though it was in name only. Her name had a Mexican ring to it. Mexico was abandoned