Escape Perennial City - Samsara Edition

By Allen W. McLean

Escape Perennial City is a metaphysical science fiction novel about a self-sufficient city in a frozen Wasteland, or so its citizens were led to believe.

Charley Finch's first story arc details his struggles convincing his peers otherwise, leading to his escape from the walls boxing the city in.

For fans who are inspired by superhero comics, manga, anime and movies, Escape Perennial City embodies larger-than-life ideas like the concepts of liberation, mental hindrances and the cycles of life and rebirth.

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The "Samsara Edition" of Escape Perennial City includes two Richard Abendsen stories, "KID: A" and "SM-SARA" from the "FLUKE!" series.

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Muddled reflections \\ of cold neon lights. The warm \\ colors of street-fronts.

... The City Perennial ... HaikuPrajna
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This document is a transcript of a recorded remote viewing.

A teleporting man had tried to escape the city, into the Wasteland, but he was prevented by the walls.

The government and its telekinetic citizens refused to believe, confirm or deny his discovery. The party responsible expend themselves against Charley Finch to silence him, forcing him to evade the police Chief and their department throughout the city. Citywide property damage and injury led Charley to decide to appeal with the Mayor at City Hall.

There, he learns how to overcome these hindrances and strives to escape Perennial City.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen W. McLean
• Release date: Nov 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223164661

Book preview

Escape Perennial City

Samsara Edition

... Featuring Kuiper-belt Infantry Division Subject: A and SM-SARA

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ALLEN W. McLEAN

THE A² PRODUCTION TEAM

Escape Perennial City

Samsara edition

Copyright © 2023 Allen W. McLean. All rights reserved.

ISBNs

9798869939135 - KDP Paperback

Written by Allen W. McLean

Edited by April Salisbury-White and Allen W. McLean

Cover Designed by Allen W. McLean

Cover Illustrated by April Salisbury-White

Commercial between Chapters Four and Five written by April Salisbury-White

Escape Perennial City first published July 2021

SM-SARA first published June 2019

Kuiper-belt Infantry Division Subject: A first published December 2020 in SM-SARA, Poetry and Other Stories

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This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental. Any products, businesses, or brand names are the intellectual property of their registered owners. The publisher and the book are unassociated with any others' product or vendor mentioned.

Parts of this book may only be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in digital or physical format with the written consent of the creators, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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... to April.

Once, in a cheap science fiction novel, Fat had come across a perfect description of the Black Iron Prison, but set in the far future.. ...Everyone who had ever lived was literally surrounded by the iron walls of the prison; they were all inside it and none of them knew it.

—Philip K. Dick

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Escape Perennial City

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: Before the Walls

Chapter Two: The Waking Prison

Chapter Three: The Self-sufficient City

Chapter Four: The Chase

Chapter Five: The Trap

Chapter Six: The Mayor of Perennial City

Chapter Seven: The Labyrinth inside City Hall

Chapter Eight: The Dreamlike Prison

Chapter Nine: The True History Of Perennial City

Chapter Ten: The Interruption

Chapter Eleven: The Escape

Chapter Zero point Five: KID: A

Chapter Zero point Seven-five: SM-SARA

Part One

Part Two

5Ws About The Author

Read more from Allen W. McLean

Introduction

This document is a transcript of a recorded Remote Viewing that detailed the events which led to Charles Finch's escape from Perennial City.

The precise time period is uncertain, as the year was redacted from the record, but based on Finch's memory it is believed the event will take place in the late twenty-second century—over a hundred years into the future from the writing of this document. The record's purpose was so that others, without temporal remote viewing abilities, may experience the events from the perpetrator's point of view. The recording was for MEGA Corporation internal-usage only and could not be experienced without a level three security clearance. It was labeled Not for reproduction.

I, the author of this document, refuse to begin describing the medium the Remote Viewing record was presented in. How the record came into my possession, and how I was able to report on it, I cannot say with exactness. When in my possession, the record, simply, was.

The report is as follows.

Chapter One: Before the Walls

Charles Finch halted before the wall. He had gone down Queen Street, past a gatehouse and fence along the edge of the Safe Zone, until the road became a highway which he knew should have led deeper into the Wasteland. The highway had instead, to his sinking horror, come to an end with a perpendicular surface the same color as the sky.

That day was colder than most. As one of the world's first self-sufficient cities, Charley had been told how Perennial City was suited best for the nuclear winter which plagued the Earth. After an exchange on April eighteenth of the year Twenty-Fifty-Two, the Helium War had turned every location inhospitable to humanity, spare for the safe zones. He had learned in grade school that these were situated on the better side of a mountain or were just far enough away from the nuclear ash-clouds and bodies of water to not be consumed by radioactive firestorms, but not too far so as to be frozen by the dead tundra. Such was Perennial City, where the radioactivity passed it by—as did the deep freeze—but Charley could not say the same of a regular nippy wind. Sub-zero celsius temperatures were what he anticipated on the streets, and the air only fell colder the further one got from the core of downtown.

Wearing his gold-visored helmet with an orange hazmat suit, which Charley had salvaged and believed would shield him from the cold and nuclear waste, he had trekked down the street until one of the City's police-gatehouses was within sight. The gatehouse was a white and red building which sat in the middle of the six-lane highway between a series of tall gated fences on either side of the building. The barbed electric-fence extended between the gatehouses; every pedestrian and vehicle accessible exit, from Bee Boulevard to Main Street, had been barricaded by City Hall. Only City personnel were allowed to leave the Safe Zone.

Such defensive measures were circumvented by Finch with ease, who had a unique, natural telekinetic ability—just like most anyone on Earth by the mid-twenty-second century, ever since the twenty-thirties. As soon as the gatehouse was visible, Charley visualized—or imagined, if you will, using his mind's eye—that he was further up the road, past the small box-like building.

He was then, without any apparent notice nor interruption, standing on the highway some distance deeper into the Wasteland. The gatehouse was now behind Charley.

The only indication of movement, aside from him being in a place he was nowhere near just a moment prior, was a gust of wind created by Charley's body of mass displacing the space he had appeared in; Charles Finch’s unique telekinesis-based ability was spatial teleportation.

Virtually every citizen had some minute power to manipulate matter through intentful-thinking that was focused on what they wanted accomplished. Although most could only play with small objects, and though few were able to manipulate the air with enough finesse to lift their own weight or generate any energy more than static, this had still led to the complete dissolution of conventional weaponry due to how simple it had become to neutralize or make the weapon a threat to its wielder.

The outskirts of Perennial City had been undeveloped long before the bombs were exchanged. Now, the areas closest to the gatehouses were still at most two storeys tall. They looked stubby in comparison to the city-block-filling towers, Charley thought. The Wasteland beyond these abandoned, grey and white-covered buildings was entirely leveled.

Charley liked to think the old hazmat suit he had found resembled the Russian SK-1 spacesuit or an American Launch Entry Suit. He blended in with the mesmerizing wall's pink and orange sunset; his suit was orange in its entirety, save for the white boots and dome space-helmet with its gold visor, which had a universal sealing collar.

He rested his gloved hands against the surface—the wall did not give against his weight. The wall was both solid and physically inert. Charley kept one hand on the wall and gazed to his left, into the distance, where the shifting gradient of the sunset continued through the barren horizon. He walked in this direction with his right hand grazing the wall. The surface was smooth like glass on his glove’s fingertips. Charley then thought of himself walking, with his hand on the wall, as far ahead as he could see. He teleported to Bee Boulevard, over four kilometers forward, and continued to warp as far into to the horizon as he could until he passed beside the row of gatehouses along Seadee Drive in the north of the city—until he reached a second wall far past May Road, the northernmost point in prewar Perennial City.

The wall which Charley had his hand on had met with this second wall. The surfaces made a ninety-degree corner, making the sky appear to have a crease; the feature cast a shadow on itself, further mystifying Charley. He inspected the seamless fold with his hand and found it ran from under the cracked pavement, straight into the air.

To verify the anxiety he felt increasing in the back of his throat, Charley kept his hand in the corner of the wall and, continuing to look along the corner of the city into the sky, began to scale the walls. He achieved this by planting a foot against one of the walls, pushing off this wall, and then teleporting upward; as he reappeared, Charley kicked off the opposite wall with his other foot. He repeated this pattern of hopping and warping until he gained enough altitude to look over the sprawl of Perennial City at sunset. He saw the tops of the conapts, auto-facs and shopping centres, which seemed to all compete to be the tallest or most noticeable in the city with their pearly white and neon highlights. Tall auto-factories occupied the south and east where they produced everything the city and her citizens could need: meats, dairy, grain, produce native around the world, consumer goods, construction supplies, hovercraft, and anything else; if the product itself had not been reverse engineered and placed onto an autonomous assembly line, its constituents most definitely had. The rest of the city had been rebirthed into a dense grid-network of skyscrapers which housed both the whole population and the storefronts for their goods. The smallest condominium apartments dwarfed the buildings which occupied Perennial City a century prior. He watched the varying hovercraft weaving in, out and around these monoliths. He could even look down the closest roads at the ant-like citizens walking along them, braving the cold—until he entered the clouds in the stratosphere.

That was what Charley was abandoning; he believed the city had grown too stressful and so decided to bear the brunt of whatever awaited him in the Wasteland.

The walls did not continue much further; just as he breached the mist and fog, his helmet had hit a ceiling with a thunk.

He drifted backwards, his hand came off the wall, and he started to fall through the fluff.

As he fell towards the ground, Charley ruminated. He held fast to his hatred for Perennial City. He was further reminded by the fact that he was unable to escape.

He began thinking of the implications; for how long and for what purpose had Perennial City been boxed in? Who erected the walls? Were the people responsible inside the city, or were they observing from outside the Wasteland?

Charley remembered being raised all around Perennial City, so he did not yet doubt his immediate memories, but the further history of the city had been cast into speculation.

Were we quarantined? Maybe the Earth is not the home we thought it was, and we're being integrated into a society beyond our wildest beliefs? Charley pondered, and continued to do so—creating ever increasing fantasies of both wonder and paranoia—for months hereafter.

One thing was for certain: the walls had prevented Charles Finch from escaping Perennial City.

Chapter Two: The Waking Prison

Charley reminisced about the first time he had come across the walls, from behind the sales counter of a MEGA Mart with closed eyes. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt under a red polo with a white M sewn on his left breast, and he had his blond hair cut above his green eyes. They snapped open as he heard a nasal, Excuse me.

A short older man, bundled in a large plaid cotton coat and a fur-lined leather ushanka, was staring at Charley with an upturned scowl.

I'm here to pick up an on-hold order, he said while removing his leather gloves; which Charley knew to be an all genuine full grain, as hide was plentiful.

He fished for a fist-sized black cube from a pocket in his coat. He read an order number off an in-store-pickup invoice displayed on one of the faces of his cube,

Seven-seven, three-nine-two.

The man slid the cube into his pocket and his attention back to Charley, I need you to ensure all the items are there, I have not yet paid and will not pay until you have done so. And please, I'm in a hurry.

Charley tapped the order number into the countertop-tablet register. The man's items were listed on the screen, which Charley read off for the man.

A six-pack of 'Blue Star' pop and a large-sized bottle of painkillers. Please verify that you have both these items in the box to your right.

Charley was unable to complete this step for the customer because the man was a hologram.

A hologram of a box slid across the counter from a hole in the wall on Charley's left. As the translucent man confirmed their items were present, Charley began processing the payment.

Your total is fifteen-point-seven-three Credit, Charley spoke with a deflated tone as he processed this on his register. The Projector at your location will now complete your payment.

Fifteen Credit... the man repeated to himself in a lower voice, shaking his head as he closed the top of his holographic package.

All twenty-five MEGA Mart exteriors led to the same Mart interior, thanks to the Holographic Store Projector. This simple invention had saved the storefront retail-enterprise industry from being overwhelmed by online delivery companies through a series of cost-cuts, the most noticeable of which had been the projection of merchandise and store personnel across every location in the city. Many policies had been set in the years prior to the Helium War and were kept in place or had otherwise influenced current public ideology. The H.S.P. allowed for easier—cheaper—setup and merchandising, and for a single manager to run every store through the many individual skeleton crews. This tended toward increased customer service and satisfaction rates due to a surplus of available staff who all were able to stay busy in their own MEGA Marts. As a result, every sales floor was effectively the same.

The holographic customer grabbed his holographic box. With a sour face, they disappeared as they turned toward the front of the store.

Charley closed his eyes, let his neck slack and head hang. He sighed. His concentration wavered from his job and toward the dilemma he had found the city to be in. The worst part, Charley had discovered, was how nobody could pry their attention away from their responsibilities that bound them to Perennial City, to take note of what he wanted to say about the walls.

He heard another customer—walking in through the parting doors. He opened his eyes. He saw a woman whose cream colored coat, hat, boots and mittens had made her deep brown skin stand out from the contrast. Her synthetic lashes were long and curled. She approached the counter while looking down at her own handheld cube, and Charley saw she had a natural-plaster applied to her face so her skin would appear without flaws—that was to say perfect in appearance, but fake. He was nonetheless transfixed. Charley knew he would never find anything quite as pleasing to see out in the Wasteland.

She looked away from her LBE—he admired her gold-brown eyes, which her lashes made especially eye-catching—to say, I'd like a bottle of red nail polish and a large pack of Cap'o'Can'. King size, please.

He tapped her request into his tablet. He glanced up as he did so; she was sucked back into her cube again, to check over her appearance which the winter-like cold may have disturbed.

It hasn't, Charley told himself.

He looked away as she touched up her matte-brown lipstick, back to the countertop. He saw that her request had failed to be processed.

Erm— he began. I, uh, am sorry to say, but, our location is currently out of stock on 'King Size' Cap'o'Can' cigarettes. Can I interest you in—

The customer snapped away from her unfolded Little Black Everything-cube.

"Of course you're out of stock. Can you go check? 'Probably not,' right? Just... Flustered, she pinched the bridge of her nose and furrowed her brow. Nevermind, she waved her hand and regained her composure. Can you check if the store downtown has them? I'm headed there, anyway."

Charley did so.

Yes, he said, over two dozen large King sizes, but—

She spun around to leave the store; her fresh, flowing hair smelled of something fruity. Maybe of strawberries, Charley pondered.

He broke out of his trance.

Wait!

She eyed him from over her shoulder.

He continued, with his arms stretched across the counter, Have you heard anything about the walls that are surrounding the city?

She did not pause to think, No, I haven't, and I don't think I'd believe such a claim. And even if I did, I don't think it'd matter, nor that I'd rather much care.

She turned and left the store to retrieve the items she had desired, elsewhere.

Charley hung his head in defeat. He bent his arms and rested his head in his hands for a time, with his elbows supporting his hunched posture. He had only bothered telling physical customers about the walls. Not one person even remotely cared about being trapped; they all believed, just like that lady did, that they already had been imprisoned by the Wasteland—that it did not matter because they were self-sufficient within Perennial City. He craved serenity from this annoyance.

When he tilted his head, he saw that a translucent hologram of his manager had been looking upon him with their arms crossed.

Mr. Finch, he said, Why have I been hearing about one of my employees harassing customers?

It was a misunderstanding, Mr. Murdock, Charley said while standing up straight, It won't happen again.

'A misunderstanding', Mr. Murdock echoed. "Do you remember what I