Life in Exile
Written and illustrated by Pauli Kohberger
Part 1: The Town of Refuse
The day after their arrival in Junk Town, the old man known as the Cursebreaker led both Bob Sparker and Percy King to the shoreline. On a hill near the beach was a small, dusty house, though again, like the houses in town, it was made of a combination of wood planks, concrete, sheet metal, and other debris. "This house has been abandoned for quite some time," the Cursebreaker declared. "I'm sure nobody will kick up a fuss if you move in."
Then, he led them to the beach itself. "Junk Town subsists on the waste that floats up here," he explained, motioning with his staff to some of the flotsam washing up on the shore. "Take a look."
Bob crouched down and wedged a tin sign board out of the sand. "Hey, this looks familiar," he said, turning it back and forth. "The Pine Room--wasn't that a bar in Electricopolis? I used to go there before it shut down."
"That's right," said the Cursebreaker, nodding. "And that's not all. Old television tubes, monitors, magazines, plastic bags and old clothes, all kinds of stuff turn up here. And it's all from your fair city in the valley."
Percy stroked his chin, thinking. "Fascinating. I knew some of the companies in town used the underground sea as a dumping ground, but I never realized the currents bore the refuse all the way out here..."
"There's a lot of things you folks don't realize," said the Cursebreaker, turning away from the water. "But there's time for that."
There was a moment of silence. Bob stood up and looked out over the water, shielding his eyes from the sun. It was a cloudy day, but still bright enough to sting his eyes, unfamiliar with the sunlight as they were.
"So...what should we do?" Bob asked. "Just kill time until we go back to town?"
"Oh, you're not going back," said the Cursebreaker matter-of-factly. Bob and Percy turned to stare at him. "Not until the clouds clear."
Not until the clouds clear.
What did he mean by that? Bob tossed and turned, thinking about it. Thankfully, the abandoned house by the shore did have a couple of beds in it, lumpen and worn though they were. It was, as the Cursebreaker had said, better than nothing, but only just.
"I mean, the city's power is shot," Percy explained. "So it probably will be quite some time before that subway's running again. But I don't understand what he meant about the clouds."
"The clouds have always been there, right?" Bob asked.
"As far as I know."
"As far as you know." Bob shot him a pointed look. "You sure you're not hiding anything?"
Percy rolled his eyes. "Come on now. We're stuck together, so we may as well trust each other, don't you think?"
"I have a better idea." Bob sat up, restless. "I'm going to get something to eat."
He walked into Junk Town along the road from the beach. Given his gawky, long-nosed appearance, and the fact that he was still wearing a dressy vest, pants, and shoes, the people of the town avoided him and whispered as he walked by. He tried his best to ignore it, and walked up to a food stall.
"Excuse me," he said politely. The smell of grilling fish and hot rice made his mouth water. "Um...do you take cash here?"
"Cash?" said the proprietor. "What do you mean by that?"
"Cash," repeated Bob. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and drew out a couple bills. "Or--I don't imagine you take cards."
The proprietor regarded him with a wary look. "That stuff's no good here," he said. "We don't take that kind of money."
"What do you take?"
"Junk Town tender. Coins, mostly. Barter sometimes, if you got something good to trade." He looked Bob Sparker up and down. "You got anything to trade?"
"Trade?" Bob blinked. He looked down at himself, patting himself down quizzically. "I don't think so."
The man shook his head. "Sorry. No can do. You come back with something good, I'll give you a bowl."
It was the same story everywhere he went--none of the businesses in town took any kind of tender aside from coins, medals, rings, mostly small metal objects that Bob had absolutely none of on hand. Occasionally he would see a customer trade for something larger, like canned food for fresh, or a parcel of cloth for a finished dress. Then he saw a familiar face with a large head of lettuce in his hands, haggling with a nearby shopkeep.
"Hey, it's you," said the farmer, turning away from the shopkeep. "Found yourself a place in town, did you?"
"For what that's worth," Bob complained. "I'm starving, I've got no money, and I can't get anyone to give me the time of day."
The farmer looked at him, then down at the lettuce. "Hmm. I wouldn't mind giving this to you, but I'd need something in return. You sure you don't have anything on you?"
Bob thought. He turned his pockets inside-out. "I've got...my house keys, my phone, my wallet..."
"Lemme see those." The farmer grabbed his house keys and turned them around, admiring them. "Yeah, these'll melt down okay."
Bob grimaced. Well, it's not like I was going home anytime soon, he thought.
The farmer handed him the lettuce. It was surprisingly heavy, and Bob struggled to hold it. "Well! Looks like you're getting the hang of things here in town," said the man, grinning. "Pleasure doing business with you."
Bob arrived back at the house with the lettuce. "Well, look at you," Percy chuckled. "Grew it yourself, did you?"
"I'll have you know I traded for it," said Bob proudly, setting it down on the table. "They don't take cash or cards here, so you gotta trade for everything. They do take coins, though...and keys."
"Interesting." Percy swung his legs off the bed. "We're not going to get much of a meal out of just a head of lettuce, though. You said they take coins?"
"Yeah. You have any?"
"I do." Percy took out a change purse from his pocket and upended it onto the table. A clattering of coins fell out--only about ten or twenty of them, but enough to make a nice little pile. "It's not much by Electricopolis standards, but it might get us a meal out here." He stroked his chin, thinking. "Maybe..."
"Maybe what?"
"I have an idea." He scooped the coins back into the purse, set it on the table, and grabbed the lettuce in both hands. "I'll be back soon."
"Hey! That's my lettuce!" Bob yelped, blocking the door. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Are you really that territorial over a vegetable?"
"Mr. King--Percy," Bob replied, exasperated. "I can't believe I have to explain this. You turned everyone in town against me and exiled me just because I didn't want to be under your thumb anymore. If we're gonna stick together--and unfortunately, it sure looks like we are--then you gotta tell me what you're thinking. Preferably it won't involve stealing my stuff."
Percy sighed, maddeningly condescendingly. "It's simple. We keep the coins for a rainy day, and we trade the lettuce up for something more substantial. If we play our cards right, we can get a full meal without dipping into the money at all."
Bob blinked. He considered this. "That's...that makes sense, actually."
"I should hope it does. I am a businessman, after all," Percy said proudly. He paused, thought, then added: "And if it doesn't work out, you can spend the money however you like."
"All right," Bob capitulated, unblocking the door. "Good luck, I guess."
Percy walked back in about half an hour later with some heavy plastic bags in his arms. "Whoa," Bob marveled, watching as he began to empty them onto the table. "What's all that?"
"First, our dinner." Percy set some plastic takeout containers of fish and rice onto the table, followed by some canned vegetables and tinned fish. "Food for later, though it isn't very much, and some utensils. I also found our friend the woodsman, who offered us some wood for the stove. We'll need it."
"Man." Bob sighed heavily. "We're really roughing it, huh?"
Percy nodded. "It's not the accommodations we deserve, but it is what we have. We may as well get used to them."
The accommodations you deserve are behind bars, Bob thought snidely, but held his tongue.
"Also..."
Percy cracked open one of the takeout containers. "I had the cook at the food stall cut up part of that lettuce when I traded it. Since it's the first thing we owned out here, I thought it would be nice to try it after all."
Bob opened his container and looked at his meal. The rice was nestled up to one side of the container, with the fish on another and the cooked, sauced lettuce in the other third. "Huh. It looks good."
Percy handed him a plastic fork, then took the other for himself. They began to eat.
It was delicious. It was absolutely delicious. It was almost more delicious than anything Bob had had in the city, and he'd sampled quite a few dishes, usually on Percy's dime. The fish was tastier than anything you could find from the fisheries in town, and the lettuce was fresh and crispy, not like the sorry, soggy mess that usually came on a burger.
"This...this is exceptional," Percy muttered. "This is quite a meal."
"It's good," Bob choked with emotion. "It...it's really good."
Part 2: You & I
The question of what to do still loomed over the two exiles. Percy was determined to save the coin he had, and Bob had nothing more to trade, save his phone, which he figured he should keep, though it had long since run out of power. So that meant finding a job.
Unfortunately, Bob was terrible at manual labor. The farmer from before (a fellow by the name of Gon) invited Bob to help out in the fields, but his back started hurting almost immediately, and he was so unused to the strain that it was easier for Gon to do the work himself. Still, he did acquire a small turnip for his troubles, but it mostly just added insult to injury.
Working at one of the food stalls in town was only a little less disastrous. Bob did fine when things were slow, but tended to freeze up under pressure, and more than once his shaking hands had tipped over a glass or gotten burned on the grill. It went better than the farmwork, and maybe with more practice Bob would have overcome his nerves, but he wasn't exactly feeling inspired to persist in his work.
As a last-ditch effort, he decided to play to his talents that had originally landed him a job at Top Tier in the first place: entertainment. He danced (decently), sang (not very well), and told stories of the city in the valley. It attracted children, who relished the chance to learn anything they could about the cursed city, but the adults turned them away and guided them past the mysterious man with the long nose.
Dejected, he found himself on the beach, poking at the sand with a stick. "This is harder than I thought," he sighed. "Man, if there were a television camera on me, things would be different."
The stick bumped into something under the sand. Bob paused, then began to shovel away the sand with his hands curiously. He pulled out something rectangular, made of plastic and metal: a pocket radio. "Oh, huh, a radio," he remarked, banging it in his hands to get the sand out. "I wonder if it works?"
It did not. "Ah, well. Oh hey, there's batteries in it, though," Bob observed, taking a few double A batteries out of the rear of the machine. "Maybe they're still good?"
He wandered along the beach, bending down to look at the machines and other junk washing up on the shore. After about twenty minutes, he had assembled a collection of geegaws and gadgets: the pocket radio, a hand-crank-powered flashlight (lucky!), a cracked set of binoculars, a kitchen scale, and more.
He brought them into the house, sat down at the table and began to tinker with them, with Percy watching from nearby. The batteries were usable, if not fully charged, and he slotted them into the kitchen scale. By some miracle, it turned on, the LCD screen displaying 0.0 grams. He could have jumped for joy.
"This'll be great!" he exclaimed, turning the scale back and forth.
"Clean it up a little bit and I bet we could get something good for it," Percy offered, impressed.
The sound of the Cursebreaker's voice made him jump. "I see you've done exactly what I hoped you would," the man laughed raucously, appearing from behind Bob. "Sorry, boys, I let myself in."
"What do you mean by that?" Percy asked. "You hoped we'd repair these?"
"Of course I did. They're from your town, after all. You two are in the best position to reclaim these. Clean them, make them usable. Take responsibility for them," the Cursebreaker intoned, gesturing with his staff to each item. "I could have just told you all this at the start, but I wanted you to learn it on your own."
"By the way," the old man added, "there's one more thing we have to do before these are fit for trade." He pulled out a small plastic bag full of paper bits shaped like the amulets he had hanging around his neck. "They have to be purified, you see."
Bob and Percy watched. The Cursebreaker sat down at the table, examined each item in turn, and made the upwards-arrow sign he'd used before to welcome Bob and Percy into the town. Afterwards, he took the small pieces of paper, licked the back of them, and stuck them onto the items, one apiece. "There," he said. "Now they're good to go."
"This 'curse'..." Percy ventured carefully. "Do you really believe there's such a thing? It seems preposterous to us, being from the city itself. Do you really have to go to such lengths to even use our trash?"
"Eh." The old man shrugged. "The folk around here are always superstitious. They barely trust me more than they trust you," he laughed. "But they live by rules, and the rules they live by make them happy. So why not play along?"
Percy traded the goods in town the day after, and came back with a much better haul than before. The kitchen scale netted them some more food and a few heavy blankets for their beds. The hand-cranked flashlight was especially lucrative: not only did he manage to trade it for a slightly worn woolen coat and shirt for himself, but he also managed to snag some clothes for Bob as well. The clothes off their backs had gotten dusty, dirty and--frankly--didn't smell so good, so it was time to learn how to do their own laundry for once.
The small shack was equipped with a water pump, and it wasn't too hard to barter for soap. A barrel that washed up on the beach made a passable washtub. It was a far cry from the luxuries of Top Tier HQ, but Bob tried his best not to complain. Percy, for some reason, didn't complain at all.
Actually, Bob found it interesting. Percy was in the best position to rant, rave and moan about his fall from grace, but he took everything in stride. Maybe he considered it what he deserved, or maybe he simply didn't want to appear petulant in front of his ex-employee. Whether it was washing clothes, bartering in town, or even learning how to cook food from a can, Percy just shut up and did the damn thing. It was honestly kind of impressive, though Bob would never admit it.
Gradually, and with the two of them working together, things settled into a sort of routine. Bob would wake up early in the morning, comb the beach for refuse before anyone else could take the good stuff, and return home to clean and repair them. Percy would take the items and barter them in town, then return with sundries that they used to improve their quality of life: food, wood for the stove, pots and pans to cook in, a sewing kit, even things like magazines and books.
"Magazines? Really?" Bob asked, flipping through them. "These are old style magazines and TV guides. Not exactly worthwhile reading material."
"It's not enough to simply survive," Percy explained. "You have to give your brain some kind of stimulation that isn't work. Enrichment for your enclosure, so to speak."
"Enrichment for my enclosure," Bob groaned. "You really have a way with words."
Percy shrugged. "It's just like running a business. You have to keep your workers happy if you want to earn their trust, and earning their trust is the only way they'll feel compelled to contribute to the best of their ability. It's the difference between 90% efficiency and 95%."
"Is that so," Bob yawned, reclining in bed. "Well, I'm not your worker anymore."
"That's right," Percy said. "You're more like a housewife now, don't you think?"
"That's not funny!" Bob yelped, turning bright red. "I am not your housewife!"
The first week or two of exile had been filled with novelty, but it was starting to wear off by now, and the boredom was driving Bob insane. He tossed and turned in his bed, tinkered on his gadgets throughout the night, and went for walks along the shore in the early morning, but nothing seemed to make his restlessness abate.
It wasn't long before he blew up at Percy again. "I can't stand this!" he shouted, throwing a broken something-or-other onto the table. "I can't do this anymore! I want to go back to town!"
"Stop complaining," Percy said, refusing to raise his voice. "You know very well we can't do that."
"We could do that if you hadn't run the damn place into the ground!" Bob yelled. "If you hadn't let the power run out--if you'd done something--"
"Done something? Done what?" Percy retorted. "Shift the entire city to an alternative source of energy all at once? It would have taken decades to do that. If I'd been president twenty years earlier, it still wouldn't have been enough time," he insisted. "The infrastructure wasn't built for anything else!"
Percy sat down at the table, rubbing at his temples. He was sweating. It was the first time Bob had seen him lose his cool since they'd taken up residence in the town. "You don't understand," he groaned. "You don't know what it's like to inherit a dying city."
Bob blinked, processing this. "Is that true?" he asked. "Electricopolis was already on the way out?"
Percy nodded.
"Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you do anything?"
"What could I have done?" the other man moaned. "Tell the entire town to pack up and leave? There was nothing for miles around--just dust and mountains. I couldn't simply turn them out to the wilderness." He buried his face in his hands. "I just...wanted everything to go smoothly. I wanted everyone to be happy...up to the very end."
Bob looked at him, then turned away. "That's not how it went, though."
"I know." Percy rubbed at his nose and eyes. "I must apologize for that. I...took your resignation far too personally."
"That's putting it lightly."
"Can you blame me?" Percy sighed. "We had such a good thing going, you know. Look at this," he said, motioning to the items they'd stockpiled. "Even hundreds of miles away from town, with nothing but the clothes on our backs, we've scraped together something for ourselves. You can't deny that we make a good team."
Bob sighed. "That's the problem," he mumbled. "We do make a good team."
Part 3: Stormy Weather
The days turned into weeks, then months. Bob wasn't sure how long he would have to spend out in the relative wilderness of Junk Town, but some time after he arrived, the air began to warm and turn towards summer.
The passing year brought drastic changes the likes of which he'd never seen before. The seasons in Electricopolis were all very samey, with only the feel of the air and the changes of television and coffee shops indicating the passage of time. Out here, the earth grew softer, the air grew warmer, and the grass began to green while flowers sprung up from the earth.
The changing seasons also brought a familiar crackle in the air that made the hair on the back of Bob Sparker's neck stand on end. When he felt it, he raced back to his and Percy's ramshackle house on the beach almost as fast as the rumor that spread through the town: A storm is coming.
He'd been putting away bits of metal and discarded gadgets for just this occasion. He latched them together and wrapped them with wire, a collection of antennae from long-discarded radios and automobiles until he had a long, flexible rod that swayed and twanged in the air.
"What's that for?" Percy asked, but Bob only looked at him, grinned, and raced out into the plains that surrounded Junk Town. In the distance, thunder sounded.
Percy looked after him, and then his face paled. He closed the book he was reading, jumped to his feet and ran out after him.
It was exactly what he had thought. Bob Sparker had grabbed his homemade lightning rod and was waving it back and forth in the fields, cackling. "Come on!" he shouted, his lightning rod going thwipp in the air as he whipped it back and forth. "Is that the best you've got?"
Percy cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled towards him. "Bob!" he called out. "Stop this foolishness and come back inside!"
"I'll be in in a second!" Bob said, still waving the thin, flexible lightning rod in the air. It bounced off a nearby tree. The clouds began to darken. "Just give me a minute!"
Realistically, there wasn't much Percy could do. If he got close to Bob, there was a good chance the lightning could strike him too, and it would do far more damage to him than it would Bob. While he was contemplating this--
CRACK
--a bolt of lightning flashed in the air. There was a thundering BOOM with it, and Percy nearly flew backwards. Bob's laughter paused, his breath catching in his throat--and then he cackled louder than before. "Now that's more like it!" he hollered, jumping to his feet. "Again! Again!"
"You idiot," Percy grumbled. "Didn't you learn your lesson last time?" He cautiously drew closer to the laughing man and reached out a hand to grasp his shoulder. Then he pulled back, hissing in pain. "Ouch!"
"Sorry, boss," Bob laughed, and the familiar high-pitched mania was back in his voice once more. "I'm a real live wire! Didn't you know that? Hee hee hee!"
"You're a menace, is what you are," Percy growled. He took off his coat, turned it around, and used it as insulation while he grabbed the squirming Bob Sparker in both hands. "You're coming with me!"
Bob was a nightmare. Percy barely got him across the threshold of their house before he began thrashing and banging his heels against the floor. "Stop that!" Percy snapped. "You're going to bring the house down if you do that!"
"I don't care!" Bob howled. "I wouldn't have to live here if it weren't for you! I hate this place!" he wailed, sparks flying. "I hate everything here! I hope it burns!"
Percy gritted his teeth. "It will burn, if you're not careful," he admonished. "This place is nothing but wood and scrap metal, you idiot!" He reached out and grabbed a coil of rope from off of the floor. "Stay still!"
"No! You're not tying me up! Not like that no-good Dr. Flask!" Bob protested. He smacked Percy's hand away, then heaved him backwards until they were rolling around on the floor. He straddled Percy's hips and grabbed at the older man's shoulders, banging him backwards against the floor. "I won't let you, you hear me?"
Percy could barely think. Out of desperation, he pulled an arm back, cocked his fist and rammed it straight into the side of Bob's face. Bob yelped, falling back, and Percy scrambled to sit up.
Bob was dazed, but he was bristling all over, as if the electricity within him was causing his skin and clothes to shudder. He sat up, then lunged at Percy, who quickly wrestled him around and wrapped his arms around him from the back.
Bob's head was craned backwards, his body stiff and arched, his eyes wild. His teeth were gritted and his jaw was set so tight that Percy was afraid he would bite his own tongue. "Calm down," he insisted, wrapping his arms around Bob tightly. "Calm down!"
I need to get him to discharge, Percy thought. There's no good way to do that...there's nothing to ground him here. Except...
Percy placed his free hand on the ground, then tilted the other and shoved the side of it, the meaty side, into Bob's mouth. The uncontrollable man immediately latched on to it, bringing his teeth down so hard Percy had to fight not to let out a yelp. Immediately he felt the waves of electricity rip through his body, tensing his forearm up. He couldn't have pulled his hand away even if he wanted to.
It felt relentless, but the entire ordeal likely only lasted for a couple seconds at most. As Percy's vision blurred, he slowly slumped against Bob, groaning, a horrible buzzing still vibrating in his ears. His hand hurt--it was clearly bleeding, but it also burned, as if it had been held too close to a fire. His muscles slowly relaxed, aching, one by one. It was as if he was feeling all the pain in his body in bits and pieces, too much to process all at once.
Bob sat up against him, panting and heaving. Slowly his tightened jaw dislodged, letting Percy's hand fall, and Bob let out a hiss of pain as he rubbed at his chin. "Percy?" he croaked, his voice hoarse. "Mr. King?"
Percy said nothing. He only sighed, exhausted, his weight pressing down on Bob's back. The other man turned around, extricating himself from Percy's grip and grabbing his shoulders. "Mr. King?" he said again. "What happened?"
Percy would have laughed if he could have. Instead, he closed his eyes.
Percy woke up some time later. He expected to see the white walls of a hospital, but instead, to his immeasurable disappointment, what he saw was nothing but a ceiling of wood and tin.
"Mr. King?" Bob Sparker leaned over him, craning forward. "Are...are you okay?"
Percy lifted his sore and aching hand. "I'm all right," he wheezed. He turned his hand back and forth, realizing it had been awkwardly bandaged with a cloth. "Did you do that?"
Bob nodded. "I know it isn't much. I'm--I'm sorry," he choked out. "I hurt you really bad, didn't I?"
"It's fine. I gave you quite the black eye, myself," he sighed. "I didn't have much of a choice."
"I didn't even notice." Bob gingerly touched the bruise around his eye. "Mr. King...Percy..."
"Yes?"
"Why'd you do that? I mean--let me shock you."
Percy thought. And after a moment, he responded: "It was the only way to make sure you'd be safe."
Bob collapsed on his chest. "You're just like her," he wailed. "Margaret did the same thing!"
Percy paused for a moment as Bob sniffled. Then, he raised a hand and put it on Bob's head, resting against his fine white hair. "Bob," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
"What? What do you mean?"
"I mean...about everything that's happened. The city. You. Me. Margaret..." He let out a long, slow sigh. "I really made a mess of things, didn't I? All because I was too afraid to do the hard thing. The right thing."
"I...I messed up too." Bob sat up, still trying to stifle his sobs. "I'm sorry. I kept saying I didn't want to hurt people anymore, but look what's happened again." His voice betrayed his frustration. "I never wanted to hurt you. Not like this."
A long silence fell between them.
"Bob," Percy said hesitantly. "I know it's not my place to ask this, but..."
"What is it?"
Percy placed his wounded hand on Bob's shoulder. "Let's not fight anymore."
Bob grasped it in his own hands, as gently as he could. "Okay," he whispered, nodding. "I'd like that."
...They didn't notice it, but far away, through the woods and over the dusty valley beyond, the clouds above Electricopolis had begun, quietly and gradually, to disappear.