Slumrat Rising

Chapter 2: Looking At The Stars

Dinner was never anything special because Truth didn’t know how to cook. What he did know was that if you cut up the veg and put them in a bowl and shoved the bowl inside the hot box (not to be confused with the actual cooking range, which only sometimes worked) in three minutes, you would have steamed vegetables. You did the same with the rice, but for five minutes, you let it sit covered for another twenty minutes, and then you had rice. Sometimes the rice was a watery, mushy sludge. Sometimes it was crunchy. In any case, it was food.

His go-to move was a big shake of Adlom seasoning from the big shaker of Adlom Seasoning™ you could buy for four wen at any corner store. It didn’t make things taste good, but at least they tasted like Adlom seasoning, which was an improvement.

The sibs sometimes complained, but since there wasn’t anything else to eat, they ate what they got. Mom and Dad only bought food when they were hungry and usually ate it themselves. They had slowly forgotten that feeding the kids was their responsibility, and when Truth reminded them, Mom slapped him into a trash bin and told him to go earn if he was hungry. On his knees, if necessary, and for an idiot like him, it probably was. Truth was thirteen at the time. Even then, he understood- his parents kept the kids around to pocket the welfare money they got for raising them.

He looked at his little siblings, old enough to understand what was going on, already too thin. He nodded at Mom and shoplifted dinner. He quickly found little ways to earn that didn’t make him want to kill himself or others.

Truth watched the hot box, waiting for the spell to buzz. “I think I killed someone today. That’s fucked up. And I don’t really care. That’s even more fucked up. I should care. It’s not like I don’t care about things. I should care about this.”

He really didn’t, though. And he didn’t have the time or energy to make himself care. Somehow, violence came easy to him. Studying was hard. Not wasting money on bullshit was hard. Making sure the sibs didn’t get in trouble was hard. Becoming a full Citizen of Harben City was damn hard.

Punching someone in the kidney so that they pissed blood for a week? Easy. Which was fucked up. It didn’t touch him emotionally. Hard to say if he got it from Mom or Dad. It’s not like he ever took a class on fighting or anything.

Truth’s dream was to be a talisman maintenance tech. The slum school offered classes for it, and he had perfect attendance. No college needed for the job, on the job training, and Starbrite was always hiring them. You could get municipal repair jobs working for Starbrite, which let you accumulate civic merits and eventually raise your status in the city. Plus, the money was good. Sixty grand for a trainee, Seventy when you finished your probation, class C (Lower) housing allowance, and health insurance from day one… he had the compensation and benefits package memorized.

The Sibs came trooping into the house. They probably passed Dad on the street. No bruises or injuries. The convoy system worked again!

“Alright! Good job at school today. Scrub up and get ready for dinner.”

“Okaaaaay.” The sibs chorused.

Harmony, the second oldest boy after Truth, was sixteen and showing it. All gangly elbows, wild hair, and a patchy, desperately unwise attempt at a mustache. Truth was wisely clean-shaven. Clean-ish shaven. He could go a few days without shaving, and why rush? Stubble looks manly. He hoped. Anyway, his brown hair was pretty neatly parted, and looked kind of like the handsome man in the advertisement, so Truth felt like he was winning there.

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Then there was Sophia, who had just had her fifteenth birthday and was also clearly feeling it. Puberty had hit her a little later than some of her classmates, and when it arrived, it hit like a ton of bricks. She had filled out nicely, Truth thought, and had a hard-eyed look that said he explained the facts of life to her sufficiently well.

Vigor was the baby of the family at thirteen and, in Truth’s opinion, the second most handsome after him. Which was a little rough, given that he didn’t rate himself as particularly good-looking. Maybe if Vigor grew up in Starbrite employee housing, he wouldn’t be stunted from malnourishment. Truth worried the most about Vigor. He was small and deceptively weak-looking, but Truth could see the venom in him.

One more month. One more month, and they could escape this bullshit. One month, and he would be Level 1, with his own real job, emancipated from his evil parents.

Dinner was wolfed down, every grain eaten, the dishes washed, dried put away, all in half an hour. The dishes were the one thing Truth managed to keep clean. Everything else was covered in empty bags or boxes, collected coupons that expired years before, piles of unsold goods from some old scam of Mom’s. Clearing space at the table to eat or work was a careful dance, shifting things enough to create space but not so much that they faced the hideous charge of “Touching my shit.” A crime punishable by beatings.

The sickly yellow light from the one overhead lamp fell directly on the table. It was time for the serious business of the night- studying.

The Starbrite Aptitude Test was the initial screening. Where you went after that was down to whatever specialization or job you wanted to test for and any points a family member could give your application. Plus, of course, your magical aptitude test, but pretty much any Level 1 could pass that.

The Medicis, Truth’s family, had never worked for Starbrite. Their family was generationally trash. But it would end with him, Truth swore. Starbrite was his dream. He would break the cycle. Because the alternative was joining up with a gang, hustling and killing for a thin gold chain and sportswear manufactured in batches of a hundred thousand by the people with honest jobs. Getting hooked on smack and booze, becoming a monster of violence until the slums killed him. Just like his Old Man.

The siblings got their heads down and studied around the little table in the middle of the apartment's main room. The older ones helped the younger ones; the younger ones did their best. Everybody got it. Education was the ticket out. And they wanted out.

“Hey, Truth?” Vigor asked without looking up from his textbook.

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you go be a prizefighter? It’s got to be easier than studying.”

“Oh yeah, way easier.” Truth nodded. “But how much do they make?”

“Fawkes versus Piccolo, five million wen purse!” Sophia piped up. She got worryingly excited watching the fights.

“Yeah, but that’s the top two guys. How much do they make fighting down in the Cage?”

This question was met with shrugs.

“I asked. Ten percent of the door. An extra hundred wen for the winner. That’s it. And if you think the door numbers might be crooked… they are. And the fights are fixed. So even if I was in a clean fight, I would be walking away with less than what a Maintenance Tech earns in a week with Starbrite, and I would have my head kicked in too.” Truth spoke calmly. He had looked into this years ago and periodically checked back in to see if anything had changed. It didn’t.

“Still, though. I bet you would get bigger and bigger fights in no time.” This was Vigor again.

“Rigged fights, remember? It wouldn’t be worth it to go gangster.” Harmony shook his head, sounding disappointed. He also liked watching the fights. “Well, unless you don’t get into Starbrite. Then it’s totally worth it.”

Study time was almost done when misfortune fell on the siblings- Mom came home dragging a big suitcase behind her.

“Hello, my sweeties! Muah! Muah!” She planted huge kisses on Vigor and Sophia. “Studying hard? Such good children. It really makes me feel like I have been raising you right.”

“Hi, Mom.” They chorused, and if they ignored her, she threw an unholy fit, maybe even broke things. It wasn’t worth it.

“I have such amazing news. Where is your father?”

“Down the casino. But tell us your amazing news.” Truth said. Keep it short and focused on her. That was half the trick for conversations with Mom.

“I really should wait. But this is so amazing! Oh, sweetie, this is it! This is what makes us rich!”

He knew it was coming, but the same sick feeling as always settled down into his stomach.

“Now, I one hundred percent believe in XextraTee. I think it is just an amazing product, and I really regret that so many people just can’t see the life-changing benefits it can bring them. But. As a serious businesswoman, sometimes you have to admit it’s not the right time for a product.”

The siblings just nodded numbly. Mom had spent every penny she could earn or borrow buying XextraTee products. One time, she sold the hot box and screamed for hours when Dad called her on it. He might not give a shit about her or them, but he would have his damn soup hot when he watched his shows.

“So. I am so. SO. EXCITED. To tell you that I am now the exclusive Product Ambassador for MegaShroom for Harben City Sales Development Zone 348. The number one leading provider of Cultivated Ganoderma, each capsule, suppository, and tea is carefully assayed by Master Alchemists to have One Hundred Percent PURE Level two-plus quality, spiritually dense Reishi as well as twenty-seven other bio-spiritually activated mega-micro nutrients!”

There it was. No, wait. Almost there.

“And because I have such amazing experience in the direct marketing environment with such a rich peer-to-peer sales history, I was able to make a deep connection with a… wait for it… DIAMOND level Product Ambassador. Mister Sewell is the man for the entire North West quadrant of Harben City. Can you even imagine? Well, I don’t mind telling you, you are old enough to know these things now, Sophie, that a bit of a wiggle and a bit of a giggle, and he was just PUTTY in my hands. PUTTY, and oh, did I play.”

Truth thought that, in her youth, his mom might have been of average attractiveness. Four kids, a drunk, violent bum of a husband, and life in the slums generally burned away whatever pretty she might have had. But the city paid way less subsidy to single moms than married couples, and the amount of subsidy was raised per kid. So here she was, in all her wretched glory. Anyone “charmed” by her attentions must be incredibly desperate or incredibly cruel. Given that Mom was also a Provisional Denizen, Subcategory: Criminal, Truth thought it was probably the latter.

Truth didn’t care either way. Which was fucked up. But he had too much going on to care about caring about it.

“I’m afraid that Mommy got an entire suitcase of the Deluxe MegaShroom line. At Diamond Ambassador prices. I am so bad, I know. I know!”

There it was. The Multi-Level-Marketing shoe, as ever, fell on their faces. The names and tiers changed, but the scam never did. And Mom dove at it Every. Single. Time. And she got completely burnt on it. Every. Single. Time. But it was like the lottery. You can’t win if you don’t play, and if you don’t play, you will never leave the screaming purgatory of your slumrat life.

Every positive connection they might have had, every relative that could have put in a good word somewhere, every neighbor that might have helped out when they were literally starving, all gone. Burned by Mom’s endless “hustle.” Nobody wanted to have anything to do with this entrepreneurial plague rat. Or her kids.

The study session broke up fast. They went back to their room to cultivate before bed, leaving mom to celebrate with a bottle of Fairy Blossom Dew. A schnapps, Truth believed, available everywhere for fifteen wen a bottle.

"I killed a man today for eleven wen and my shoes," thought Truth. "That’s fucked up."

The next morning, he watched the sibs convoy out to school. He saw a face he recognized, peering out of an alley. Truth launched himself out of the apartment, down the stairs, out the door of the apartment building, down the street, and towards the alley Sophia had stopped by. Smiling and maybe flirting? He didn’t break stride as he scooped up an empty beer bottle, holding it like a club.

“Help you, Thierrie?” He yelled. The pimps were finally coming for Sophia.