Setup: Frank Wurzel lives on Neso, a colossus mentioned near the end of Wandering City Blues. You'll read his story, which takes place after WCB, as a biography written by another kaiju resident, with occasional clips from other in-universe documents. So here's the first bit of Frank's story. What do you think? Share with your friends, comment here or on whatever link brought you here, and don't forget to sign up for my Patreon page! $1 per month officiates your survival of the Fogpocalypse; $3 a month gets you the entire book delivered on a month-to-month basis while I'm writing it. Enjoy!
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Excerpt from Biohazard: An Unauthorized Biography of Francis Wurzel
By the year 98 P.A., Wurzel had settled into what
he imagined his life would be like for his remaining 20 to 30 years. Although he and Jessica never officially wed,
her children had accepted him as a funny kind of paternal role model – just shy
of being a stepfather. As the sun dipped
beneath ground level, he would sit with them on the floor of their small house,
any time he felt well enough, and play with them and their toys. Zoe and Jacob would invent new games for the
three of them to play, or he’d teach them old ones from his ancestors’
childhoods. Often, the tremors in his
hands prevented him from playing jacks or showing them card tricks, which
caused him to suddenly alter their plans to telling stories or playing
hide-and-go-seek. This he hid, blaming
his choice of activity on Neso’s uneasy gait; fortunately, the children were
not yet old enough to devise the truth behind his words.
Jessica earned her share of the income for the
family by fashioning and selling cloth diapers and onesies from discarded
clothes and linens she acquired around Neso.
Her steadfast focus and taut needlework were unmatched anywhere on the
colossus and earned her a reputation as a formidable seamstress – even a
fashionable one, since the slow pace of theriopolitan life bred an appreciation
for the minutest detail. Often during
the day, Jessica took Zoe and Jacob for leisurely strolls around the titan,
seeking fabrics to knit into practical and eye-pleasing textiles for the
infants of the city. The children had
made a sport of who could retrieve for their mother the highest quality of
materials in a day, and in the largest amount, for which she rewarded them with
glacé fruit from a nearby table at
market.
At night, after the children had been put to bed,
Frank and Jessica sat quietly on the living room couch. He rested his weary head on her breast, the
weight of his head pressing his ear to her heart. Its rhythmic pumping provided him comfort
from his day at work, and he would find himself entranced by its cadence, his
eyes growing heavy and closing at an impossibly slow rate. She ran her fingers through the thin hair
behind his temple, trying to feel each strand uniquely despite her calloused
fingertips. He prided himself on having
taken on the responsibilities of a husband and father without many of the
rewards, courting the widowed Jessica with a sense of benevolence accompanying
his affections. In turn, she had but
little affection for him beyond friendship, but something about them seemed to
work, and he was good with her children.
They made love in their bedroom, performing silently and in darkness,
owing as much to the expiration of their romance’s confident passion as to
their fear of waking the children. Over
the last several years, both their bodies had begun to sag and there were no
mysteries to discover in performing the sex act together. Even still, when Frank and Jessica were
physically intimate, they copulated desperately, their eyes closed and breaths
shallow in saudade, holding each other tightly, searching blindly for something
that they would never find.
The second century of life atop the great beasts
began with as much uncertainty as did the first. Mankind reveled in its celebration of 100
years above the poisonous fog that blanketed the Earth’s surface, but even as
the final bell rang over City Hall on Neso, its chime echoing off the high
walls of the city triumphantly, it blew an ill wind through some of the town’s
more politically-minded residents.
[A very spoiler-filled paragraph summarizing Wandering City Blues would be right here but I removed it from this blog for the sake of those of you who haven't read it. -JL.]
Two more years passed. International relations deteriorated at a
slow but unwavering pace. Neso’s
government hedged its bets, making excuses about fiscal calendars and
complicated import/export agreements with Sao to avoid cutting off relations
with the rogue titan without vocally denouncing it. In the spring of 102 P.A., in response to
Neso’s refusal to distance itself from Sao, the Alliance decreed that a
battalion of soldiers from multiple colossi, newly trained by an experienced
cadre of law enforcement, would be deployed to occupy Neso’s streets. On the surface, their reasoning was to
protect Neso from the danger and corruption of Sao’s influence, but it was said
in many a tavern around the world that the decision was made to punish Neso for
its disobedience.
Frank had never fully accepted the rationing of
his family’s crops by the Nesoan government some 25 years prior. The memories of his mother thinning their
dinners and his father’s futile attempts to store away some of his vegetables
remained a vivid and impressing influence on his societal and political
views. He needed but close his eyes to
recall the detestable thrips tabaci eating so many of the Wurzels’ neighbors’
onions and tomatoes and the subsequent food shortage of 77. Several adults had said that the McCullough
family likely brought the bugs back from their visit to Nereid since their
vegetables seemed to be hit the earliest and hardest. In young Frank’s mind, that was enough to
warrant an investigation that he was sure would lead to legal punishment, but this
lead turned up nothing in the eyes of Neso’s elected officials and the
agricultural rations had followed instead.
It birthed a paradigm in Frank about government overreach – a paradigm
that was nourished frequently since he regularly served as audience to the
tirades and inebriated ramblings of his father until death took him in 86. Following the infestation, the justice denied
the victims of the Moscow Tower Incident in 82 and Frank’s father’s influence on
him, it was with a sense of foreboding and disapproval that he received the
news of the occupying force that would soon fill their city.
The first of the allied troops boarded Neso on
August 18th, 102 P.A.. The storms
of autumn came conspicuously early that year, the troops’ arrival marking the
first of 10 straight days of rainfall. It
was murmured through Nesoan neighborhoods that it was a bad omen. As the soldiers’ boots marched uneasily
through the streets, fat drops of rain fell noisily on their covers, but it
wasn’t enough to deter the locals from staring at the company from retailers’
awnings and residential overhangs.
Ran
our first patrol today. The CO told us at
boot camp we wouldn’t be makin’ no friends here, but I don’t think nothing
could’ve prepared me for the reception we got.
We only been on Neso two days but if the spittin’ and whisperin’ is
anything to go by, these folks have had their fill of us. They hate us worse than the fog. I kept my eyes forward and hands to myself,
but for the first time, I’m truly glad to have my issued sidearm. Every sunrise brings me a day closer to
returning to you and the baby. You’re
always with me.
- A
letter from PFC James “Sandy” Sanders to his wife Susan,
dated 8/19/02
A half a dozen fights broke out between Neso
citizens and Allied soldiers in as many weeks upon their arrival. The most uneasy of these conflicts involved
the squaring off of a drunken group of local rain catchers against a small
patrol unit in November of 102. They met
on the narrow staircase drilled into the leftmost of the twin spinosaurus-like
fins that ran along Neso’s back. The
staircase was narrow enough that the rain catchers, heading down to deposit
their weekly records at the water treatment center after several rounds at a
tavern, effectively blocked the soldiers from beginning their patrol on the
upper deck of the city. Voices were
raised, the men began pushing one another for the right of way and a local
tumbled over the handrail on the staircase, following in a drop that would’ve
ended his life had he not broken his fall on and demolished a uniquely
high-built rooftop garden constructed along the outside of a lower flight of
the same stairs.
The unrest would likely have continued
indefinitely, but the combination of the rain catcher’s near-death experience
and the arrival of more Alliance troops soon thereafter sobered the residents
of Neso and a shaky truce was formed.
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