6
When Blake finally woke up the sun was most certainly not shining. The process of waking up took him an entire muddled hour. Blake stretched twenty-some times before realizing it was four in the afternoon and his brothers had already gone. The living quarters were empty and so were their beds. Blake stumbled down the dusty corridor, feeling as though very few of his brain cells were functioning. Halfway down the stairs he realized that he had not put on any jeans and he rushed back to his room. Finally, after two minutes, a pair of pants, and a cold face wash later, he found himself in the same position and pushed his way through the door and into what had been affectionately dubbed the family center.
Rip saw him first.
"Hello, my boy. It looks like you've got a severe case of the cobwebs on this fine gay rainy morning."
"What?"
"Exactly, young fellow, exactly my point." The old man pointed straight at Blake's face. "You're not awake," he accused joyously.
It could be said that Rip Kingston was the patriarch of the old library that Blake and his brothers had called home for the past four months since their visas had expired. He was the type of elderly person who long ago had decided never to relinquish his youthful spirit. Although Blake usually saw this as an admirable trait, at the moment he was still feeling rather groggy. Thankfully Alice came to rescue him.
"You leave him alone, Rip." Alice had poked her head out of the converted kitchen.
"Leave him alone? In my own home? I have to leave this little freeloader alone?"
Although few knew if he was technically the owner of the place, Rip often jokingly made reference to it being his. Yet, other times he would merely call the library a squat that he and his family presided over. Blake had never been sure on their reasons for doing so, but after getting to know them, it all just sort of made sense. They were an odd but very accepting bunch.
"Yes, dear." She said amiably and turned to Blake. "Your brothers left a few hours ago."
"Where have they gone?"
The old man gave him a delighted smile that Blake found very disarming.
"Oh, I don't know." His cheeks puffed up like he was a squirrel hiding a delectable acorn. "Down by the river, maybe. As the old proverb goes . . ."
Blake shook his head and laughed quietly.
"Wish you were with them?"
"No, no . . . too early for me. Not when I can smell whatever Alice is cooking."
Alice stuck her head out once again in a middle of a blizzard of white hair. Well then, don't just stand there, you fools! We're all sat down, get in here!"
Settled there they were, all around the small kitchen table with a mismatch of plastic, metal and wooden utensils in hand. Alice stood by the stove, which was powered by a hefty plastic hose that ran into a propane canister.
"Sit down! And I'll fry up!" Alice cackled like a witch in front of a bubbling cauldron. She threw about vegetables and meat of all kinds, relishing their sizzles.
Blake sat. Across from him sat Graham and Ruby, looking pale and exhausted.
"Mum's in her element as you can see," said Ruby. "You missed it. Only a minute ago she sent a carrot flying past Graham's head."
"Lies! Lies propagated by liars for the sake of lying!"
Graham made an incredulous noise.
"Well . . . half truths! Half truths spread by inaccuracies in the speech of good honest folk!
Graham turned his head to look at her pointedly.
"Pure bad luck! Nothing in it, Blake. Don't worry everyone's safe in my kitchen."
Alice turned back to her frying before being disturbed again.
"Ryan! You little . . . bring that back here or I'll have your ears in my wok!"
Graham and Ruby's four year old son had teetered into the room and grabbed a large wooden spoon from the table top, only to run off laughing maniacally at his grandmother's rage.
"I'm too tired to get him now. He had us up all night," sighed Ruby.
Graham waved a pallorous hand in acquiescence and started slowly from his seat before Rip winked at him and stepped out of the kitchen. The younger man slouched heavily back into his chairs.
Blake inquired as to the reason for the couple's weariness. Their eye lids were drooping.
Graham smiled dismissively.
"Oh, we're just feeling the effects of an early rising. We're not used to waking up at five in the morning.
"They've been to two protests today." Rip boasted proudly; he had returned with one thick arm carrying the upside down and struggling Ryan. "By the look of them, you'd think they'd been to six!"
"Hush, Rip!"
"Thanks, Dad. Your support is much appreciated."
"I didn't know there were any," Blake said. “Wish you’d woke me. I’d like to have seen them."
The couple laughed together. "Well, Blake, we certainly would have, but you didn't get back until after we left. Actually, we saw you on your way back home."
Graham lifted his head long enough to smile. He said, "We shouted and waved at you from across the street, but you just kept on walking like a zombie."
Ruby reached across the table to pinch his face violently. "What were you doing, buddy boy?"
"Don't know."
"You were in your own little world."
Blake squirmed uncomfortably in his seat; he looked at tiny Ryan, who was still battling to free himself from Rip's unyielding grasp. The boy yelped in a small way and kicked at his grandfather. Rip was completely unfazed. "Why don't you tell Blake about your day,” he suggested.
"We woke up in the god awful pitch black of early morning so we would have time to walk up to a courthouse in the city central. The defendant was an Englishman—actually an old friend of Dad’s from way back when, isn’t he? Apparently, he's one of the last people in the country still supporting the torrents. It's not like the government can put a stop to them; millions of them are still active. The government just wants to stamp out big-time domestic seeding. Many different industries—music, games, movies, software—don't like the idea behind the torrents. They're freedom of information, freedom to find art, to entertain yourself, without a price tag attached to them. You know, without having to be a consumer."
Alice laid a plate down in front of Blake first. She said, "Well, that isn't surprising. They want more money. Most corporate behavior isn't hard to predict. More money, more money, more money. Et cetera, et cetera and on until infinity. Sit down Ryan. It’s time to eat! Rip! Let him go!"
"Alright, squirt, you're lucky this time." Ryan, who now appeared completely exhausted, sat beside Blake.
Ruby continued. "Exactly, oligarchy at its finest. Anyway, the defendant was a big time seeder, plus he owned a few servers and he was put away for two years, on the basis of international copyright law." Graham sighed. "We were there, I guess, to lend our small piece of solidarity to him." After a moment, he added, "The government prosecutes them as if they were thieves. 'Piracy is stealing,' they say. But piracy isn't stealing. Stealing takes the original item. Piracy just makes a copy."
"It was all very depressing," said Ruby, staring at the steaming food.
"What was the second protest?"
"Oh, right. That was slightly more interesting. There was a worker strike downtown in front of one of the villas. The builders who worked on the tower were complaining about not receiving their full wages or bonuses. And they were joined by a small group of former homeowners whose houses were bought up in order to build the villa itself—apparently they hadn't been paid the full amount that was agreed upon. In any case, it was a great success. Would you believe we were only out there for an hour and a half before a fleet of vans drove up and started distributing checks to everyone for the full amounts owed?"
"Sounds great. I wish I'd seen it."
"It was a rare success."
Their conversation was interrupted upon the arrival of Jay and Billy. They entered the Kingston's with an invisible cloud atop their heads. Rip, as per his usual, greeted them first. The old man sniffed.
"What's that I smell on the breeze? It must be the second and third part of the three musketeers."
Billy grinned at him. "Hiya, Rip. How you been?"
Alice interjected again, "Sit down, boys! We've made food for everyone." She looked at their eyes. "You must be hungry."
Things in the library took much the same course as they had for the past four months. They ate and chatted. After lunch the Kingston family divided, Graham and Ruby retreated to their bedroom to recuperate while Ryan's grandparents were left to watch over him. Blake, Billy and Jay were in a medley of different sorts and spent much of the afternoon talking with Rip and Alice.
While Billy and Alice conversed on the other side of the room, Rip, Blake and Jay immersed themselves in a discussion of their own.
"We walked by your little handicraft earlier this morning on our walkabout. A worker was in the middle of painting over it. He had some trouble making the black disappear, but he did it in the end." Jay inclined his head in condolence.
"That's alright. Had to happen.”
"Censorship's a bitch. We smoked a cigarette on the bench in front of the store and in the space of five minutes we saw two people leave without buying a thing. Who knows? That could have been you."
Could have.”
Both brothers shrugged. Rip eyed them from within a fish bowl of bewilderment.
"What the hell are you two talking about?"
The brothers laughed and Rip spent the next several minutes goading information out of them. Once he'd grasped what they were talking about he gave Blake a look of pride.
"Stand tough m'boy. You can't change the world in a day—or even a decade! Take me for example. The world's gone against me at every turn. And I shouted and I shouted: no wait! That's wrong! or this is wrong! Do this! or do that! I shouted until I was deaf and dumb and too tired to give a damn."
"Thanks, Rip." Jay cut in. “Very inspiring.”
"Don't get down. Just get ready. It's the duty of the young to dash themselves on the rocks of social inequity. Better to die when you're young than grow up to realize the world revolves around money. Not that I think you’re going to die before your time. They can't fine you to death. Can they? Nevermind! What I'm trying to say is that it's better to leave the ideas you fight for intact before you can crush them in middle age."
We’re just lemmings?"
Could be, m’boy. At least you’re not suicide bombers or terrorists. England's in a sorry state because the people stopped caring. At least most did. The state of the country is the state of the youth, but not necessarily vice versa."
"So you should be asking us how we're feeling?"
"That's right. How do you feel?"
"Right now? Tired."
"Yeah, pretty tired."
"Maybe it's time you wake up, boys. Let's go for a walk. Take the afternoon off.”
Rip took the other two on a long meandering stroll through the city. His personality was such that, upon so much as finding a discarded fast food carton, he would launch into a colorful tirade about the crumbling he saw in the mortar of society. Blake and Jay walked slowly by his side while he railed against the moral decay of Postmodern individualism, the obvious corruption of politicians and the materialistic lethargy of the middle class.
The rain had stopped briefly and a small sliver of sunlight could be seen through the clouds. Perhaps this was why Blake found it difficult to be so vehement in his criticism of England. Of course, he was not English and that made it difficult to judge the change the country had undergone. The headlines in the papers did not seem to be all bad. Did that really mean society had gone to hell?
They passed a park gate and went inside before Rip led them off the footpath and onto the wet grass. As the conversation halted, Blake found his mind drifting as it usually did. He was thinking about the previous night. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice as three birds were chasing each other, cutting through the air right in front of him. Jay jumped back in surprise. Rip uttered a cry as the birds disappeared into the trees to his right. Blake kept walking.
Jay put a hand on his shoulder.
You going back out tonight?"
Blake just stared at him.
"Well?"
Rip grinned.
"Of course he is, just look at him. He looks like he wants to paint the whole town red. Wake up, boy!"
Blake nodded and kept walking.
They continued slowly through the park a bit more before reaching the opposite gate from the one they had entered. The gate was at the top a of small incline and upon gaining the high ground Blake took a brief survey of where they had covered when his eyes lit on a faraway sight. Near the opposite corner, sitting on a bench, were his younger brother and Alice. The two were a goodly distance away but he could just make out Alice's mad white hair. Blake tapped Jay's arm and pointed.
"Is that Bill? And . . . Alice?"
"I can't tell, it's too far for me to see."
Rip had turned around with them and peered at his wife and Billy.
"My wife's run off with a younger man! You see that. Who says older people can't embrace change?" He laughed, squinting. "What are they doing anyway?"
Jay answered, "I think they're listening to headphones. I heard Bill raving about it before they left."
Rip laughed uproariously, "You mean those stupid things I always see kids walking around with? Plugging their ears like wax?"
Jay frowned.
"Well they aren't as bad as all that."
"The elder just can't embrace change."
Rip turned around hiding a roguish expression, "You boys know nothing about change. You have to notice change before you can truly embrace it and you two barely notice the weather." He looked up.
"It's about to rain again. Let's get somewhere dry."
And then finally the sun went down. The whole group left for underground just in time to see the light of day wane. While Billy and Jay waved goodbye to the Kingstons at the exit to the underground, Blake watched in revelry as the dinginess of the streets faded into tomorrow and the street lamps winked on at once. The group had spent most the day roving around the inner section of the city and playing cat and mouse with the rain showers. They had visited several different parks, some of them packed full of people, some otherwise.
They had even managed to get close to the base of Villa 6, the newest and purportedly biggest of all the recently finished construction projects. The structure was immense and completely overshadowed even the tallest of the nearby skyscrapers. The group had walked around the outer grounds for nearly half an hour before their adventure came to an anticlimactic end when a security guard told them that they had to leave. Only residents were allowed past the gate unescorted. While he’d shown them back to the street, Rip asked how many people lived in Villa 4. The guard said he wasn’t quite sure, but he guessed somewhere upwards of 500,000 people. He noted conspiratorially, “What's more, it must be a damn good place because residents almost never left except to go to work.
But now the brothers decided to hit yet another park and they made their way down a succession of narrow streets. Jay stopped at a corner store to buy some tobacco. Blake and Billy waited outside and watched as a tall, very unenthused man with a long black beard slid Jay his change.
Thirty minutes later Jay and Billy were sprawled on a park bench with Blake gazing upwards into the dark cloudy night. The two on the bench were talking but Blake was having too much difficulty following the conversation.
He mused on his own. For some reason he was feeling, although not particularly cognizant, particularly contemplative and he ignored his brothers' conversation in favor of his own inner monologue. It is possible that there are times in your life when things start to feel confused and your mind is a bit muddled and there are times when you feel completely rational with all your senses in tune with what is actually happening around you but then you look back on them and they seem just as unreal as every other memory you have and there are times when you can't even fathom the smallest and easiest of things, like why on earth you’re sitting where you are when you are and there are times when lower purpose gives you a false sense of fortitude, when you know what you're doing but not exactly why you’re doing it and there are times when things happen completely from nothing like a shot from the quotidian blue.
A strange type of air crept into Blake's body and, while he lay there, he saw an unmistakable bright light that emerged from behind a tree. It shone with a brilliant phosphorescence. He knew he must be hallucinating. He stared, fascinated and dumbstruck, at the incredible spectacle before a figure emerged from within the radius of light. The figure, tall, thin, and pale, made up the form of an angel. She stared at his prone body with a regal amusement. Blake looked back to his brothers who were still speaking with each other on the bench and looked very much oblivious to the phenomenal presence. The angel smiled at his consternation and she raised her hand to him.
"Who are you?" Blake asked. His voice full of sincerity. The trees of the park appeared darker for the brilliance of the beautiful winged woman before him. She only smiled again.
"Who is who?"
There was a pause.
Jay kicked him on the shoulder and he looked around.
"You alright?"
He didn't say a word. The vision had dissolved into a suspicion of self-delusion. The trees around them were dark again. He leaned his head back onto his arms with tearful eyes and let himself drift away from his brothers' perplexed stares.
After sitting a while they eventually slouched back to the library where Blake grabbed his things, packed them carefully into his bag and bid his brothers a quick adieu. He resolved never to say another word to anyone about what he had seen in the park. Sometimes it just has that effect on you. But never before on me . . .
He let the familiar process unfold over the course of a few hours. He didn't think it wise to double back on the events of the past night and so he avoided the old roof top and area of the retail store. A new and even more ostentatious target had formed in his mind just hours before. Despite, or perhaps even because, of the troubles on the past night he was feeling confident. Perhaps, he thought he even had the blessing of an angel . . . The idea had been creeping sinisterly into Blake's mind since the morning. It was the type of idea that was so grandiose but tantalizingly possible that it could not be contained, no matter how illogical and dangerous it was. He would paint all over the houses of power and he would do it soon—while the people in the street were still there to see. Now all that remained was mustering the courage to do it.
Just as before, he decided not to take the tubes and braced himself for a long walk through town. The weather had maintained its drizzle throughout the latter part of the day and on into the night and Blake pulled hard the drawstrings of his hoody. Whenever possible he cut through parks and council areas. Although he had only a vague impression of where he was going, he pressed on. It was once he reached the sight of the Thames that he eagerly quickened his stride. The enormous walls built along the river were one of the many things about the city that Rip had explained to him. Built, he had said, to deal with the rising water level but worth every pound spent. He followed them at a distance for a half an hour until he reached Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
The time was nearly a quarter to midnight but still thousands of people were walking the streets, snapping photographs on phones and digital cameras and gazing around in wonder at the famous landmarks. Blake backed away and leaned against Westminster bridge's stone guard rail. He felt uncomfortable in crowds.
Quickly, before fear gets to the better of you.
He leapt up, squashing his internal discord, and walked down the bridge toward Parliament with a stencil in his right hand and a can of red paint in his left. As he started a few tourists pointed and cheered under their breaths, peering around to see if anyone had noticed the young tagger. Blake's mind was only focused on his task. He lit up the wall with fiery red words. Although he had never considered himself a poet, these words came by themselves:
Old fat cat stalks atop this wall,
Regarding everyone as dangerously ignorant,
Never giving odd rats a chance,
Living easily on their meat.
So malleable, manageable the cat asserts;
Eating garbage labelled cheese
Wondering why their stomachs hurt.
Nearly there. Nearly there. Only a word to go. In the space of two minutes he had started to perspire. Sweat dripped down his face in the spotlight of all the people's stares. Finished. Finally. As he tossed away the stencil he heard a few cheers from behind him.
He turned around and his heart sank. In front of him, five policemen had just finished jostling through the thick crowd of onlookers. They were staring angrily as they moved slowly towards him. Blake dropped his stencil and tried to rush past the smallest of the five police. The man, a scrawny effeminate looking character, was evidently not so feeble as he appeared and knocked Blake to the ground with a vicious tackle, and the other four lawmen helped to restrain him. Blake struggled raucously against them but only managed to coat one's jacket with a line of red paint before eventually having the spray can wrenched from his hand.
The police remained oddly silent for the duration of the struggle. Blake was handcuffed, led to a van, read his rights and pushed inside.
The tourists' cameras captured the entire event. Even as the doors of the van slammed shut, flashes of light pulsated through the night. The crowd had reacted with initial interest—Big Ben was one thing, but the sight of a real live dissident! A few snapped photos as memento's of the memorable event. Some even remembered to read what he had written. In any case, it was all lost on Blake himself, who cursed his own foolishness from the back of the the van as it made its way to the police station.