Punks: Everymart, #1

By Blaze Ward

Trevor works the day shift. Coffee, egg rolls, hot dogs, and cans of cold drek.

And, occasionally, dangerous revolution, like when Neon Butterfly needs to break in and hack the store's control systems.

 

And then, it gets worse.

 

Three stories of Everymart, your corner bodega for needs.

 

And corporate espionage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224663026

Blaze Ward

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Book preview

Punks

PUNKS

EVERYMART

BOOK 1

BLAZE WARD

KNOTTED ROAD PRESS

CONTENTS

Author Notes: Trevor

Punks

Soundtrack

Madison Avenue

About the Author

Also by Blaze Ward

About Knotted Road Press

AUTHOR NOTES: TREVOR

Depending on which decade of Science Fiction you are reading or watching movies from, the future might be exciting and shiny, a post-apocalyptic hellscape, or painted dystopian gray. Authors are a reflection of their times, and SF writers are probably worse, because we’re forever looking at some idea or situation and asking ourselves What if…?

What if this one little tweak is extended out to infinity? What if that one person never came along? Or turned out to be someone else?

All future multiverse possibilities are exposed, and we like to dabble.

Trevor was no different.

I looked at a future where the banality of decay and dystopia was what we inherited. More and more, as the world warms up and societies start to come apart, I expect my grandkids to live in a worse situation than I had, which was worse than my grandparents had. (Hunter S. Thompson talks about a high-water mark in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I find, fifty years later, that he might have been a prophet.)

Thus was born Everymart.

I wanted to explore small stories. Small stakes, while still telling action-packed, thrill-a-minute capers. But not for all the marbles. Nothing world-shaping or earth shattering.

At least not as most people would see it.

The little things.

I had an utterly crappy day yesterday and wasn’t even sort of looking forward to dealing with the world today. Except that a friend sent me a random little high-five online to tell me how much she appreciated me and what I did to help other writers. And for being a great friend.

I’ve had a smile on my face all day. Her fault.

The little things.

Trevor didn’t have any good options after high school. Lots of kids face that. In the US, it is very much a class thing, though not everyone recognizes it as such. He had to go get a job and move out. Become an adult and live the meaningless structures in life that capitalism has inflicted upon us all. (At least until the Revolution comes. And I still figure it might.)

At the same time, he knows some folks to refuse to participate. Who make their own rules. Live in a way that the mundanes and squares are simply ill-equipped to understand at all.

Because those of us who are artists understand that thing. Some of us can hide it reasonably well. Others cannot.

We all make due.

Trevor. And friends. A caper team. (Technically, a shadowrun team, but most people won’t understand that reference, so I won’t generally use it. If you do, congrats on being as weird as me.)

Everymart is a bodega chain. As far as I know, none with that name actually exists, but I’m pretty sure you can recognize who I based it on pretty easily anyway.

The (dim, grungy, messed up) future of the American Dream.

Except that Night Butterfly has a plan. She’s going to change the world. Every time travel story you’ve ever read talks about how some tiny change in the past might change everything in the present.

For you, dear reader, that means that some little tweak today can absolutely change the future. Are you making tomorrow a better place?

Night Butterfly is. And needs some help. An entire team of experts, all contributing.

Epic tension. Tiny stakes. Intentional on my part.

Thus, the Everymart Tales. Punks, when a few artists decide that they are going to change the future by changing the present, one life at a time.

PUNKS

PUNKS

EVERYMART 01

It wasn’t entirely accidental that Trevor was studying the Everymart Operations Manual™ for everything you needed to know to run the bodega when Mr. Bankov walked in from the back of the store. He’d watched the owner approach the back door on security cameras pointed at the alley.

Ambient music filled the store. Not quite mellow jazz. Somewhere softer than corporate rock. Just background stuff you’d never remember five minutes after walking out.

Trevor really had needed to look something up in the book. That holiest of holies from corporate that covered every single damned thing possible in running a corporate corner market in a big city. Or any other podunk in North America.

Seriously, why was it so damned critical to have exact measurements of the space between the heater rolling afternoon hotdogs and the drink dispenser machine? With helpful images?

Stupid, but nobody had asked Trevor. It was enough that four hotdogs, two eggrolls, and six taquitos were warming on the little heating thing right now, and wouldn’t go bad before someone came in with a need. The smell got to everyone that walked through the door.

Except Trevor. After two years, he’d even gotten past that surge of wanting to vomit when that hot grease smell hit his nose. He would never actually eat one again, after a thorough, passive study of what they went through before they went into your mouth. And that was before he read the ingredients label on the big box they arrived in.

He smiled at Mr. Bankov as the man came up behind the counter, manual still open. Might as well get bonus points for being a good, little corporate drone, after all.

Ah, good, Mr. Bankov said in a heavily-accented Russian voice when he came to rest behind the counter. Always good to see a young man intent on bettering himself.

Bettering himself. Mr. Bankov’s favorite phrase.

The dude had been born in Russia, back before it fell apart and got invaded by the Chinese. Somehow, he had ended up in the United States, itself not at risk of physical invasion, but already dominated by most of those folks anyway.

What Trevor had never figured out was how the guy had been able to quickly buy a whole string of Everymart franchises and start his own little commercial empire. No banks would just hand you dough like that.

Trevor just figured that the dude had been a gangster or something over there and had stolen a bag of money from someone. He gave off that kind of skeavy feel, even in an expensive, silk suit.

Tall guy. Hard eyes. Heavy shoulders starting to slide down to his waist now, trapped there by his belt. Iron gray hair buzzed short like the soldiers that occasionally came through. This store wasn’t close to any of Southern California’s military bases, but Trevor had volunteered a few times to do shifts at one of the other stores when asked.

He always got a bonus he thought of as hazard pay for doing it, mostly because he could still run the place just fine when Mr. Bankov had fired half the staff. Or they’d all quit because he was being a jackass. Again.

Mr. Bankov was like that. Why he liked Trevor was a thing neither Trevor nor his friends had ever been able to figure out. The two of them were nothing alike. Trevor was short for a guy. Barely five foot six if he stood up straight. Slim in spite of that one attempt to put on muscle and weight with those nutritional supplements everybody swore by. Brown hair not long enough to get him crossways with corporate standards, but longer than Mr. Bankov really approved of. Not that the man could argue with the manual, laying right there on the counter like a bible or something.

What are you studying today, Trevor? Mr. Bankov asked as he came to rest next to Trevor.

They were alone in the place. Early afternoon, in that stretch after lunch when folks had gone back to the office but before they snuck out early to buy a sixpack of cheap beer on the way home. Dead. Outside was hot, but not yet that high summer where it was hotter than hell to the point you could probably fry eggs on the hood of a car.

That was coming.

At least the slurpee machine was working today. Occasionally, you had to conduct quality control.

As long as you used your own cup.

Trevor pointed to the page on the right of the big, four-inch, three-ring binder with the laminated pages, where it dealt with maintenance on the ice machine that would become everybody’s favorite destination in the neighborhood in another week or so.

Absolutely not the page on the left where it talked about the ambient sound systems that corporate provided, piped into every single store in the entire world at the same time. No, sir. That just happens to be the page next to it.

Honest.

Is the machine giving problems? Mr. Bankov asked quickly, nervousness in his tones.

No, sir, Trevor reassured him. But the weather will get hot soon, so I wanted to make sure I understood everything, in case it did. You know how much money we make in the summer from it.

Mr. Bankov nodded somberly. The Money Printer, he’d called that machine more than once, when summer got hot and heavy and everybody needed to refill their cooler. Especially folks living in tiny coffin-sized apartments that were too small to hold a refrigerator. Like Trevor.

Is good, the man said, beaming. "You watch these things far better than most. Keep this up and one of these days you’ll be managing a store, on your way to owning several. Bettering yourself."

Trevor faked a smile and even made it look enthusiastic. Even at its worst, this job beat the hell out of the army. Or the marines. After all, if