39 · Felony Falls Penitentiary
One of the wheels of his food cart spun with a mind of its own. It would rise from the uneven floor of the prison hallway and do a spastic dance. It would make contact once more, jittering the cart sideways. Then it would squeal out, jump back in the air, and do it all over again.
Walter watched the unbalanced wheel go through this routine. He kept his head bowed, the weight of his shoulders supported mostly by the other three wheels as he pushed the cart along. He followed the crazy wheel’s rise and plummet, its howling complaint, its inability to do what the other wheels did, and he wondered—as if the wheel had a mind of its own—why it bothered.
On top of the cart, tin cans sloshed water dangerously up their sides. Other cans of brown food pellets rattled as the unappetizing nuggets did their little dance, jiggling themselves deep into their brethren while other pellets jostled up to take their place. Walter scrutinized this interplay for a while, imagining each pellet like a pirate clan enjoying its brief stay up top before it was swallowed by the rest. He thought about how long that ordeal had persisted, probably as far back as his people had grown legs and crawled out of the muck.
Walter shook his head and sighed aloud. None of the metaphors were apt any longer. He had seen to that. Palan was in chaos. The loss of pretty much every ship in the system was nothing compared to the clan heads that had gone missing along with them. The pilot of their own ship had been right: None of them were heard from. They didn’t show up at Earth. They were just gone.
And now Junior Pirates were trying to be Senior Pirates. Outcasts were muscling back into old clans. And the coming of a second flood so soon after the last had been seen as an omen of sorts, a harbinger of more turbulent years ahead. Already, the meteorologists and armchair prognosticators were saying many more floods were on their way. What had been a slow year was now forecasted to be one of the most severe in centuries. They said it was a thousand year cycle, but Walter knew better. All it had been was a hack with the best of intentions. A program that had come with unintended consequences.
But unintended consequences were just a fact of life, Walter thought.
He let out another sigh and watched the kernels of food jostle, all of them going in circles.
The wheel of his cart set down and screamed, then rose back up, spinning idly and silently, if only for a moment.
Walter pushed his cart.
He had new prisoners to feed.
He figured he always would.
Part XXIII - The Bern Affair
“Nothing ends up where it began,
for it cannot survive its journey unchanged.”
~The Bern Seer~