A Very Red Vase

The upside to catching a lasgun beam in the stomach rather than a lead bullet, Sinclair thought, is there is no bullet you have to dig for before stitching yourself together in your office using a hot sewing needle, duct tape, and about five times your monthly ration of whisky.

Sweat pearled on Sinclair’s forehead as he poked the needle through his skin, grateful the gore was monochrome.

He’d been twelve when they’d used up all the colour. He still remembered red blood, green leaves, blue androids, and purple laser streaks. Most people nowadays remembered nothing but the black and white of that endless city stretching from coast to coast.

And the grey. Oh the grey. Who would have thought a world of black and white had so many different tones in between? Nothing was black nor white.

It was all just grey.

The buildings, the streets, the smoky sky. People’s dispositions.

Their smiles.

Their morals.

The smog blocked out the sun. Hedonism blocked out hopelessness.

Sinclair lit a cigarette, one of those that were 99% filter. Two wheezes and it was gone.

If I had known then, crooned a digital gramophone turned to the jazz setting. What I know now.

Another cigarette. Smoke rose to the ceiling, settling there like the smog-carpet outside.

When she opened the door he nearly poked the needle through his liver.

“Smog it, woman!” he yelled, dropping the cigarette out of his mouth. “Knock next time, alright?”

“Sorry.” Her voice was one of those eternal whispers. Never raised yet always heard. To her skin clutched a black dress. It stopped just above her knees. “Are you the one they call Slug?”

Sinclair stepped out his dropped cigarette. “It’s not a nice nickname.”

“But it’s yours?”

Sinclair looked up from his half-sewed wound, teeth gritted as he pulled the string through. “Sure.”

“I have a job for you.”

“I’m retired.”

“Since when?”

He wrapped the duct tape around his torso, bit it over with a snap. “Since two chrome-nuts decided to rearrange my innards with a beam of smoking light.“

She shifted her weight. On her feet were were the invisible force field stilettos from Vuitton-Prada. It looked like she was walking on her tippy toes with no assistance. “Are you hurt?”

“Umm, yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

“Do you need help?”

“Nope.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“No shit.”

“From your arm.”

“Oh.” The black drop clung to his elbow like a parasite, about to fall onto his white carpet. What an idiot he’d been not to get a black rug instead. “Sorry about this,” he said, dabbing his index in the blood then tapping it on his tongue. “Only surefire way to tell if its oil or blood in this world.”

The woman scrunched her nose.

“Oil. Fuck.”

“Is that bad?”

“For my convenience. Blood is something my body can produce on its own. Oil I’ll have to buy.”

“So that’s…?” she pointed to his arm.

“Mechanical? Yup. I’m half clanker at this point. I’ll let you guess which parts. Better than being a skinjob though.”

“My husband was a skinjob.”

Sinclair shrugged, put a round of duct tape on his metal arm to staunch the oil-flow. Grey on grey on grey.

“Just his arm,” the woman continued. “Printed from the shoulder down. He died last year.”

Sinclair locked eyes with her. “Okay.”

Silence once more returned to Sinclair’s office.

The sun burns, sang the gramophone along with a dirty sax. And the sea is full of salt.

“Why do they call you Slug?”

Sinclair lifted up his shirt to show her the mean scar visible above and below the duct tape. “They call me Slug ‘cause I caught two of ‘em. No exit wound, no doctor to extract them. They’re still in there, jiggling around like kidney stones. Maybe one day I’ll pass them. Maybe I won’t.”

“Why don’t you go to the hospital?”

Sinclair held out his forearm. “You see this ID-bar tattoo?”

She shook her head.

“Exactly. You ask the authorities I don’t exist.”

“Can’t you get an underground guy to do it?”

Sinclair chuckled. “An underground guy? Where are you from, the Balconies?”

Outside the acid rain poured down. It played a symphony on the windows. His office was small with folders and files on every surface. A grey plant drooped in the corner. The half drawn blinds cast zebra shadows on anything that moved.

“Matter of fact I am. My name is Alice. Alice Eastwood.”

Sinclair pulled his shirt back down. “Good for you.”

“I—”

“Listen, Miss Eastwood, you’ve caught me at a bad time.”

“When would be a good time?”

He lit a cigarette, took his two heaves, threw it into the empty whisky glass. “Ten years ago when I didn’t have a limp and still cared.”

Alice pouted. Her lips were a grey so dark they were almost black.

Her eyes were the same colour.

“Won’t you at least hear me out?”

Sinclair sighed. “Will you leave after?”

“Maybe. May I have a seat?”

“Whatever.”

She sat down on the chair opposite Sinclair. She folded her legs neatly.

On Sinclair’s desk stood a sign that had once listed him as G. Sinclair, private investigator. Now it listed him as covered in dust.

“There’s this vase,” Alice begun.

“There always is, isn’t there?”

“That vase means a lot… to everybody. I need it back.”

“I don’t care.”

“It was stolen from a PIAP transport shuttle.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll pay you two hundred thousand.”

Sinclair frowned. “Two hundred thousand? What’s so special about the vase?”

“It’s… red.”

“Red?”

“Yes. Very.”

“That’s not possible.”

She shrugged. “Well, it is.”

“What, you brought it down with you from Elysium?”

Her almost-black lips revealed white teeth as she smiled. “The ship up in the sky with the colours and the fresh air? No, sadly I’m afraid that exists nowhere but fairy tales. This vase is real.”

“A red vase.”

“A very red vase.”

“And you want me to find this vase, Miss Eastwood?”

Alice laughed. “Oh, I know exactly where it is. What I need is for you to go and get it.”

Sinclair picked up his glass, studied the cigarette bud in there. “So where is it?”

“The Scrap has it.”

Sinclair stared at her. “The Scrap has it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Alice shrugged. “Different people have different visions of utopia. Theirs doesn’t include our reintroducing colour.”

“That’s nice. Now smoke off.”

“But I need your help.”

“You’re not getting it.”

“It’s a red vase!”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to care!”

He rubbed his eyes. They seemed to creak. “How did you even find me, Miss Eastwood?”

“I spoke to a man named Harrison.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was a suicide mission. Then he said to find you.”

Sinclair rolled his eyes. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

“I’ll pay you handsomely.”

“If money was my biggest issue I’d make a living retiring war droids, but it isn’t so I’m not.”

“Harrison said to appeal to your sentimentality instead.”

Sinclair scoffed. “That might have worked a decade ago.”

“Think of what it would mean for the people!”

“People would commit the same crimes, only in technicolor. If you ask me the monochrome is good for us. Helps us forget this world isn’t what it should be.”

“You don’t sound anything like the man Harrison told me you were.”

“I haven't been that man for a long time, Miss Eastwood.”

“So you’ve giving up?”

“Something like that.”

She stood, straightened her dress.“Can I say something?”

“I’m sure you will.”

“You weren’t my first choice. Nor were you my tenth. Or my hundredth. But nobody dares risk it. Infiltrating a Scrapper lair, just for a red vase.”

“A very red vase,” Sinclair jested, but the image of it kept spinning and spinning in his mind.

A red vase meant flowers with green stalks and yellow petals.

It could even mean blue skies.

“Good day, Slug,” Alice said. “Good luck with your duct tape bandage.”

Hand on the knob, halfway through the door, he stopped her.

“Maybe if you got me a ticket to Elysium.”

She paused. “Elysium isn’t real.”

He stood, clutching his stomach. “That’s my offer.”

She squinted at him. “A ticket to Elysium is a euphemism. For… you know.”

He said nothing.

“Alright. I’ll get you your ticket to Elysium. If you get me my vase.”

“So,” he said as they got into the pulley elevator that would take him to a floor two hundred below the one they were on, and still five hundred above ground level. “You’re a member of PIAP?”

She nodded.

“A resistance group,” he mused. “How’s trying to stand against evil treating you?”

“You make it sound so black and white.”

He gestured around. “Can it be anything else?”

“It can be red.”

The elevator doors rumbled shut.

Downpour. Grey drops on grey cars flying around the towers and sky-piercers of the city. A thick layer of mist clung to the sides of the buildings. The smog formed a roof far up above.

“How did the Scrap get hold of the vase?” Sinclair asked.

“It seems one of our old comm units was used as the main brain emulator in a Scrapper. So they found us. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t clean. And they left nothing behind.”

Sinclair spat. “No waste, no debris.”

“No junk, no dregs,” Alice finished. “An eat-the-rich-feed-the-poor mindset taken to the extreme.”

“Which is why they’ve never worked well with anyone.”

“It says something about a government when even its insurgents have begun to war against each other.”

“Or perhaps,” Sinclair said, “it says something about the insurgents.”

She shrugged. “How do you and Harrison know each other?”

“We were partners,” he said, swerving through that rainy city, “back when I still had a badge.”

She looked at the burn mark behind his ear where his badge had once been tatted. “You got kicked off the force?”

“I left.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Well, you’re not the kind of guy to leave because you can’t stomach it. You weren’t involved in anything sketchy either, you’re far too good for that.”

“Far too good am I?”

“Yes.”

He lifted his shirt to check the bandage. A splotch of blood was beginning to show, black against grey. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re helping me.”

“With the promise of a ticket to Elysium.”

Rain pelted the roof, grey drops freckling a grey vehicle gliding through a grey city filled with grey people.

And somewhere was a red vase.

“So why did you leave?”

His hands tightened around the steering sticks. “It’s hard serving an institution you don’t believe in.”

“I get that.”

“No. I don’t think you do.“

She set her chin on her hand, her eyes out the window. “You stood up for your ideals. Became a freelancer, a fighter for justice, working for your pillars of belief. That’s beautiful.”

He grunted. “There’s a reason I’m quitting freelance as well.”

The windshield wipers worked back and forth. Thud. Thud. Thud.

The Scrapper lair was three floors of an office building. The 781st, 782nd, 783rd. The outside was covered in dark copper plating. The windows were bullet proof glass, reinforced with stainless steel that glinted in the wet headlights of passing cars. Sinclair parked his car on a neighbouring rooftop.

Stepping out into the rain, pulling up his collar, he could smell them.

Oil.

Singed metal.

Molten lead.

Scrappers were always busy making new recruits, scouring metal and prosthetics, layering it all with sheets of carbonfiber or arti-skin.

He could hear the hammers. The drills. The snapping sparks of wires, the electrical surges as bits of trash were brought to life in a rough semblance of the human form.

Scrappers were not clankers. They were not skinjobs, or half-breeds, or currents.

They were the left-overs.

“Wait here,” he told Alice. She stood in the pouring rain, hair drenched, dress clinging even tighter to her body.

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna get hurt.” He ran a hand through his wet hair. “But there’s the difference between me now and me ten years ago. I’m no longer afraid of the pain.”

He ripped the duct tape off his metal arm, dug two fingers into the wound and pulled.

They seemed alone as they stood atop that roof. Rain hammering down on them. The haze of the city diffusing all lights. The smog turning everything grey-grey-grey. The shape of his car. The shape of her. The shape of him.

Silhouettes.

Shadows.

Metal arm revealed, oil and blood spattered all over, he took off his shirt, showcasing his makeshift bandage, his scar. He took off his right shoe revealing a foot entirely of metal, not even covered by arti-skin.

He pulled his lasgun, put it against his human shoulder.

Alice watched wide-eyed as the shot echoed through the city. From afar it showed as a bit of white erupting in the rain, then fizzing out. It didn’t bleed—the laser charred the blood vessels closed.

Sinclair groaned, pressed his metal hand to the wound. “How do I look?”

Alice swallowed. “Like… like a Scrapper.”

“Perfect.”

His footsteps were asymmetrical as he walked across the rooftop.

Thunk-clack. Thunk-clack. Thunk-clack.

What Sinclair saw were the winding corridors of the lair. The workshops. The butcher slabs. The meeting rooms. Zombie-like Scrappers stumbled past him. No waste, no debris. No junk, no dregs. A beautiful concept turned monstrous by being drawn as black and white in a world of only grey.

They noticed him not for he looked exactly like them.

Wrecked. Sunken.

And oh so tired

When the first shot rang it was he that fired it. Alice heard it out in the rain. She likewise heard the second, third, and fourth shots.

She shivered.

More shots. Yells.

Screams.

A world with only the tiniest sliver of hope left.

And a red vase.

Sinclair emerged onto the rooftop with two more wounds than he’d entered with, and something wrapped in a blanket. Behind him emerged two Scrappers with makeshift rifles levelled at him.

He was halfway to his car when one of the Scrappers shot him in his mechanical foot. He fell hard. His body slammed onto the concrete, the package fell from his hands.

Out rolled the red vase.

Red, red, red.

It rolled, rolled, rolled.

All held their breath in the monochromatic city as the vase neared the edge.

All gasped when it fell over.

Like a bird kicked out of the nest too young, the vase tumbled through the air. It fell ten floors, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred.

“Quick!” Sinclair yelled. “Get in the car!”

He jumped in, shut the door with a slam! and sent the engine into a fitful cough as he forced it to start, rev, and accelerate before the first gear had even had the time to rub the sleep out of its eyes.

“I’m not strapped in!” Alice yelled, only half seated as Sinclair threw the car into a headfirst dive after the vase.

The car chased downward faster than the raindrops.

“Open your window!” Sinclair yelled above the noise. “Try and catch it!”

Wind whipped. The vase tumbled. Alice’s slender fingers stretched out, caressed the vase, touched, grabbed, slipped.

Through the haze Sinclair could now see the tarmac of ground level. He had but a few seconds to steer up before they became two black spots and a red fragment on the asphalt.

Five.

Four.

Rain pelted her bare arms.

Three.

Two.

Her fingers wrapped around the red vase.

One.

She got hold of it, yelled something the wind stole.

He pulled up and the car hovered less than a foot off the ground.

And from those wet fingers it slipped, fell, and shattered.

Crash, it went.

Then all was silent.

“No!” Sinclair screamed. He fell to his knees by the shards. “No, no, no!” He tried to pick them up, tried to put them together.

Useless.

“So you do care!” Alice said, standing next to him.

He got to his feet. He tried to light a cigarette in the rain. “Who cares if I cared? It’s doesn’t matter now.”

“Of course it matters! It always matters!” She picked up a piece of the vase. It was as red as could be. “A single one of these shards means that there is something other than grey. The sheer existence of what I am holding in my hand is a beacon. We’re bringing colour back and no one can stop us.”

“They will stop you. They always do.”

Alice smiled at him. “If I had told you yesterday we were making a red vase, you would have said the same thing. But here we are. You might have given up, but some of us never will. It’s not about bringing a government down, it’s not about bringing a person to power. It’s about making this world a better place and we’re doing that by bringing back colour. First a red vase. Then a green car. A blue house. A yellow light.”

Sinclair stood on the ground, many kilometres below the tips of the towers, hands in his pockets. “I used to believe in stuff like that. One day at a time to a better future.”

“What happened?”

“I worked one day too long and I saw it all crumble.”

“We’re building it back,” Alice said. “Trust me. You don’t have to help, but I beg one favour of you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Give us a chance before taking a ticket to Elysium. Let us at least try.”

“You’re not gonna give me one?”

“I never was. But I’ll give you the money.”

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Her lips tugged upward. She extended the tiny shard from the red vase. It seemed to almost shine in the grey city. “Keep it. As a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“You’re a smart man, Slug. You’ll figure it out.”