City of the Falling Sky (4 page)

“
Pretty cool, huh?” said
Tenk. “You just take whatever you want and you pay for it
later.”

They sat at a couple of stools and Tenk
reached over the table, snatching a plate from the conveyer belt
that was filled with pasta and meatballs. Seckry watched a few go
by until he spotted one with some fish and chips and a wedge of
lemon inside, which he whipped off and began eating.

“
How would anyone know if we
just decided not to pay for this?” Seckry asked. “We could just
walk out of here with a free meal.”

“
Believe me,” Tenk said,
after slurping a string of spaghetti. “People have tried. But
there’s some kind of scanning device in the ceiling, it clocks your
student ID number and tracks what items you’ve taken from the belt.
If you try to walk out without paying, this electromagnetic thing
stops you. It’s like walking into an invisible brick
wall.”

“
The conveyer belt is pretty
fast,” Seckry noted, as he watched more plates of food go
by.

“
Yeah they’ve been having
trouble with the speed settings recently, I think. It’s probably on
the blink. Or maybe it’s just never recovered from Callam Butchon’s
prank last year.”

“
What did he do?”

“
He got into the back
somehow and cranked the speed up to max. You can imagine the mess.
The teachers were frantic. They couldn’t tell if it was blood or
pasta sauce they were cleaning up.”

There was a short musical fanfare from the
other side of the canteen and the shouts of, “Yes! I won!”

Seckry glanced over and saw a young boy
jumping up and down in front of what seemed to be some kind of
crane arcade machine.

“
Oh no,” Tenk said. “He’s
gonna be so sorry.”

“
What do you mean? What is
that thing?” Seckry asked.

“
That’s Food Grabber,” Tenk
explained. “You catch the plastic balls inside and they’re full of
different items of food. But if you’re wise you’ll never touch that
thing.”

“
Really?” said Seckry. “It
looks like fun.”

“
Trust me. They all get
sucked into it. All the first years. Just be glad that you’ve got
me to ward you away from it.”

“
What’s so bad about
it?”

“
Well, to begin with, the
crane is rigged so that it never closes properly around the balls.
And when it does, which is like about ten percent of the time, you
pretty much always get a Nasty.”

“
A Nasty?”

“
Yep. They put these joke
ones in there called Nasties that look like ordinary food but
certainly don’t taste like ordinary food. There’s supposed to be a
random one here and there but I reckon more than half the balls in
there are Nasties.”

“
Have you ever had a
Nasty?”

“
Yep. Back in my first year
when I was just as gullible as the rest of them. It was a slice of
cheesecake. I was so pleased I had won something that I scoffed the
thing down without even stopping to smell the stench that was
coming from it. After spending three days worth of lunch money on
it, who would?”

“
What did it taste
like?”

“
Like beef
gravy.”

“
Oh,” Seckry said, his
stomach churning slightly.

“
I just think of myself as
lucky actually. At least I didn’t get a chili sandwich. Seen a few
of those come out of that thing. Poor first year kid had to be
taken to hospital after one of those.”

“
What? Are you
serious?”

“
Yep.”

The slowly chewing face of the triumphant
first year over the other side of the building had now transformed
from a gleeful smile into horrified realisation.

Tenk craned his head to see.

“
Ooh!” he said, cringing, as
though he was feeling the first year’s pain. “Looks like that was a
. . . horseradish muffin.”

When Seckry and Tenk had both finished their
meals they paid for them at a coin operated booth and returned to
the main building.

“
So what part of the city
did you move to?” Tenk asked as they were walking.

“
We got a flat here in the
east partition. It’s in a place called Kerik Square. You know
it?”

“
You’re kidding me? That’s
where I live,” said Tenk, exasperatedly.

“
Really? Which block are you
in?”

“
Block seventeen, third
floor. How about you?”

“
I think it’s block twenty
two.”

“
Man, we’ll have to catch
the monorail to school together tomorrow. We must have been on the
same one this morning but in different carriages.”

“
Actually, I saw you this
morning,” Seckry admitted. “You had your headphones on and you
seemed to be enjoying the music.”

“
Oh, yeah . . . I was
listening to Graveturner. You heard of them? They’re this doom
metal band that’s just burst onto the scene. One of the tracks on
their new album is a two hour long epic. It’s insane.”

“
Haven’t heard of them,”
Seckry said. “I mostly listen to a band called The Broken
Motion.”

“
The Broken Motion? You’ve
got good taste. The Broken Motion are awesome.”

Seckry smiled. The Broken Motion were his
favourite band of all time, and he’d never met anyone who’d even
heard of them, never mind liked them too.

Their next lesson was geography with a
gentle, old fashioned man named Mr Pegglewim who appeared to be in
his fifties from a distance, but was actually only in his early
thirties. It didn’t take long for Seckry to realise that he didn’t
have much control over the class and as soon as the first paper
aeroplane had been thrown into the air, it was just a downhill
spiral into complete chaos. By the end of the lesson, the poor man
had looked close to tears, with an ink stamp floating in his coffee
and a giant drawing of an anarchy symbol on his whiteboard which
someone had actually signed at the bottom.

Their last lesson of the day was inverse
mathematics with a professor named Cookrook, but Seckry just wanted
to go home. As much as he was enjoying Tenk’s company, he was
missing Marne like crazy. He just wanted to go back to his old
living room and chill out on his sofa watching the TV. He hated
maths enough in his old school. Now he was dreading it.

Their room was locked, so a small queue had
formed in the corridor. Seckry and Tenk were just in front of a
big, awkward looking boy with unfocussed eyes and a mouth that hung
slightly open from the weight of his chin. Another kid with a ton
of freckles and a chunk missing from his right ear seemed to be
harassing him.

“
Oi, Conker, what you
drooling at?”

There was no response.

“
Looking at my missus, is
it? Think you can have a piece? Got no chance mate.”

The large boy named Conker looked away.

“
Don’t roll your eyes at
me.”

“
I didn’t.” Conker’s voice
was guttural and heavy compared to the freckly faced fast
talker’s.

“
Yeah you did, I saw you.
Don’t think you can cheek me. Why’d they call you Conker
anyway?”

There was silence.

“
You deaf? I said why’d they
call you Conker?”

The boy huffed. Evidently, he had to put up
with this quite often.

“
Just leave him be,
Snibble,” said Tenk.

“
Shut it, Friction head. I
can do what I want.”

Seckry recognised this Snibble boy’s face
from Mrs Cutson’s class, but he had been silent during that along
with everyone else.

Snibble was trying to hold a girl but she was
pushing him away and slapping his arms, saying, “I ain’t your
missus, Snibble, you can carry on dreaming.”

“
Stupid cow,” Snibble said
vehemently, and pushed her back.

After a few moments, a teacher appeared with
a clipboard.

“
Mr Cookrook is very sorry
but he cannot make it today. You’re all free to leave, although I’d
advise you to use the time wisely and head to the resource centre
to do some work of your own accord.”

A couple of kids cheered, and everyone began
swarming out of the corridors. Seckry felt like cheering himself.
That was it. He had got through his first day.

When Seckry and Tenk reached the gates,
someone was waiting.

“
Tipps!” said Tenk. “What
you doing here? If Cutson sees you you’re doomed! Oh yeah, Tippian,
Seckry, Seckry, Tippian.”

“
Nice to meet you,” Seckry
said.

Tippian was a frail looking boy with heavily
magnified, round glasses, shorter than Seckry, and with hair so
fair it was almost white.

“
I had to show you this new
mechapack I got for Apocalyptia,” Tippian said to Tenk. “My dad
gave me ten notes. Check it out.” He pulled an avatar from his
backpack.

“
What did your dad give you
ten notes for? You didn’t tell him you needed it for a geography
trip again, did you?”

“
Nah, for helping him fix
his computer. He thought the thing was broken, but all I needed to
do was disable this dodgy driver he’d installed. Some third party
networking thing for his work that was just really badly
programmed. So, you a Friction player?” Tippian asked
Seckry.

“
He will be soon,” Tenk
answered. “I’m gonna train him up.” He turned to Seckry. “If you
need any advice on upgrades, Tippian’s your man. This freak has got
everything catalogued in his head, he’s like a walking Friction
encyclopaedia.”

“
He’s right. And if you need
any . . . you know . . .” Tippian winked, “Specially modified
items, just give me a call.”

Seckry looked at Tenk for an explanation, but
Tenk looked furious.

“
I haven’t even got him
playing yet and you’re trying to sell him illegal items.” He turned
to Seckry. “Don’t listen to him, it won’t do you any good buying
any of that homemade crap, it’s all banned in the official
tournaments and it’s really heavily regulated so no one can
cheat.”

“
No homemade crap,” Seckry
noted.

“
And anyway,” Tenk said to
Tippian. “Since when have you got time to be building black market
items? I thought you had a girlfriend now.”

“
Not anymore,” Tippian
replied. “She dumped me last night. I made the mistake of sending
her a real photo of me. She took one look at it and signed herself
off Messenger. Looks like she’s blocked my IP address as well so I
can never try to chat to her again.”

“
Ah, sorry man.” Tenk
slapped him on the shoulder. “So, you gonna go back to scanning in
those catalogue pics of male models?”

“
Yeah, maybe,” said Tippian,
looking dejected.

After showing off his new avatar equipment to
Tenk, Tippian decided to make his way back to his own district and
Seckry and Tenk caught the monorail home together.

“
I live in that block, just
over there,” Tenk pointed, as they reached the rusty old fountain
that was situated in the centre of their square. “And the arcade is
just there, right on our doorstep. I spend more time in the arcade
than I do at home. They’ve got two Friction pods for training.
They’re pretty old and battered now and one of the doors is hanging
loose but they do the job. Anyways, catch you tomorrow.”

The flat was empty when Seckry got in, but a
message had been left on the fridge for him.

There’s some food left over for you – low fat
vegetable pie. Mum bought some doughnuts but I chucked them away –
they’re full of chemically altered fat! If you want some dessert
there’s yoghurt in here and fruit in the bowl.

Leena x

She threw away doughnuts? Why was she always
doing that? Seckry would have loved a doughnut right now. His
sister was a health extremist, although she insisted she was
perfectly normal. She was always ripping food out of their hands
and telling them not to eat this because there were chemicals in it
or not to eat that because it was linked to some rare disease. All
Seckry really cared about was whether it tasted good or not.

He reheated his sister’s pie and put The
Broken Motion’s latest CD on, setting the player to repeat tracks 2
and 5, his favourites of the album. Hearing their music reminded
him of home and he found himself welling up. It was strange how
music could do that. It was the chorus of track 5 that did it, as
soon as it kicked in, vivid images of his bedroom back in Marne
flashed into his mind and smells and tastes attacked his senses;
his mum’s cooking, the carpets, the fabric conditioner, the sticky
tack on his walls.

It wasn’t long before his mum, Coralle, came
through the door, followed by Leena. Back in Marne, they had both
been working for the same printing company, and had both been
allowed to transfer to the city’s branch when they had moved.

“
Hello, my love,” his mum
said affectionately. “So, was it as bad as you
imagined?”

“
Hmm,” Seckry thought. “I’ll
get used to it.” He knew his mum had tried everything she could to
keep them in Marne, it wasn’t her fault they had to move, and he
didn’t want her to feel guilty.

Leena slapped her satchel onto the
settee.

“
You’ll never believe what I
just saw, Seck. A kid, about this high, he must’ve been about ten,
and he had a cigarette in his mouth!” She stared at him
incredulously.