The Mercy Journals Read Online Free PDF

a.m. Velma looked up from the desk, bundled in two sweaters and a scarf, her dyed red hair done up stiff as a pine tree, her skin white and pouchy and covered in a flesh-toned powder that made the tiny hairs on her face unmistakable. She frowned. The changes in the world have left her irritable, and she probably won’t cheer up before she dies. She wants to blame somebody for encouraging her to believe that the old world was real in some absolute, permanent way. She’d been pacing herself for life in that reality and says she has no interest in making adjustments to this new one. She feels ripped off, like someone should pay, but has no idea who so she’s always on the lookout.
    I myself was done with the old world.
    Done.
    My old house had abutted the freeway, which was how Jennifer and I could afford to buy off the base. We could taste the exhaust. Every night sixteen lanes of drivers sat in their cars, waiting to get where they were going. Taillights and headlights, strings of them, extending out of sight—drivers impatient to get out of the city, drivers impatient to get in. Everyone knew, on some level, that it couldn’t go on. The sheer numbers of us precluded it. I was planning to move my family up to Mom’s cabin. I’d laid in a rifle, ammunition, seeds, canned food, water purification kits, loads of matches, a generator. The key would be knowing when to leave the city for good. The Green Planet Brigade started to bomb roads. In retrospect, I see that would have been the time to leave, but you never leave with the first big crisis, because you think it might be a one-off and there’s all the other noise on the bandwidth—the promise of quantum computing, of physicists harnessing the energy of the geospace vacuum, nuclear fission plants, etc., etc. Then the next crisis hits, and you’re already invested in riding it out. You’ve already adapted to the new pattern. Anyway, Jennifer and I were glad the Green Planet Brigade was doing what they were doing. We thought it might be the beginning of something good.
    When I was certain it was time to leave, I was on a bus headed south to the Mexican border, and Jennifer and the boys had moved back to the base. She had no way to reach the cabin by herself.
    A whisper of warning. No thinking about the past. I smacked myself in the head in the change room. Put my uniform on. Ruby’s presence had already, after only one night together, made a chink in my armour.
    Velma snapped her fingers in front of my face. Hey. Pretty boy. Here’s your scanner.
    Larry, who works in vehicle reclamation, came out of the can wearing his bright yellow jacket with reflector tape and our unit name, Transpo—Squad B. He looks like the bloodhound version of a human being—baggy flesh, enormous eyes, grey face. He doesn’t look well. Maybe heart disease, maybe cancer—the blood isn’t moving where it should, but you’d think he didn’t have a care in the world.
    Quincy. You’re looking kind of cheery. What happened, you get laid? Zipping up his fly.
    I couldn’t help grinning ear to ear.
    No way. Really?
    Just pulling one of your three legs, you over-privileged bastard, I said.
    Always with the gimp card.
    At least he’s got a card to play, Velma said.
    Well, Sunshine, Larry clapped his hands, we men have got work to do.
    Nail ‘em to the wall, boys.
    Don’t you love it when she calls us boys? I opened the door.
    Our shift starts early so we can catch overnighters and charge them double. It’s like hunting, but it’s only mice we’re after. My job is to walk past every vehicle parked within myterritory once an hour and scan the licence plates. The scanner relays data to city hall, which tracks each plate hourly and bills the user. These days the hourly fee for parking is equal to the average person’s hourly wage. If a citizen fails to pay parking fees, the vehicle is ticketed and impounded, and their driving privileges are revoked for a month. After four infractions, the