Duster
by Sean Sakamoto"You got thrown out of school?" A gruff, male voice surprised her. Cindy spun around and faced a thin young man with yellow glasses, a shaved head and a bright blue leather jacket. They stood under a sign that said Student Attitude Adjustment Center.
"I did not, I'm jussst on probationnn." Cindy's duster accent turned her 's' into a hiss and her 'n' into a nasal whine.
"Me too, me too." Taro pulled the corners of his mouth down into a hipster smile. He looked at Cindy's cheap brown flax pants. "They catch you stealing or something?"
Cindy jerked her head up and glared.
"I'm not a thief!"
"Aww, come on. A duster like you? Everyone knows you're thieves." Taro rubbed the stubble on his chin and studied her.
Cindy thought about slapping him. She clamped her lips together, they whitened. She made fists but kept them lowered.
"You asphalts think you know it all!"
She marched toward the door. She waved her hand over the passplate, but the red light over the door failed to turn green. She waved her hand again. The red light didn't even flicker.
"The door won't open until we've been here for two hours. They want us to read the literature," Taro said. He pointed at a rack of dusty pamphlets. The folded brochures were bent forward from time. They bowed over the rack like a row of altar boys. She plucked one from the middle. Faded pink type said,
Adjusting to life on campus: Stick With The Winners!"
Cindy folded the pamphlet and stuffed it into her pocket.
"I'm sorry about the duster remark. I was just pulling your wires," Taro said.
Cindy nodded and kept looking at the pamphlets.
"It's just that I've been in there a dozen times and I've never seen a duster in trouble before. I've never seen a duster who was actually a student, to tell you the truth." She ignored him. She passed her hand over the passplate again; nothing happened.
"My name's Taro." He held out his hand. Cindy rolled her eyes and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a metal tool that unfolded to show a row of screwheads, pliers, and stiff wires with blackened tips.
"What's that?" Taro asked. Cindy opened the plierkit and began to unscrew the corner mounts of the passplate.
"It's a military plierkit, portable spot welder with pliers and screw blades on it. My father gave it to me."
"You are a duster," Taro said.
Cindy frowned. She yanked the passplate off the wall, leaving two frayed wires. She connected the wires from the sides of the passplate to two leads from of her plierkit and pushed a worn red button on the side. A small welding arc popped with a flash. A puff of acrid smoke floated upward. Then she re-attached the plate and waved her hand again. This time the green light went on.
"Nice," Taro said as they walked outside.
"Lack of social interest," Cindy said. She folded up the plierkit and stuffed it into her pocket.
"Lack of what?" Taro asked. He walked with a boyish amble.
"That's why I was in there. I spend too much time alone. They said I have to make friends."
Taro snorted.
"You have got to be shitting me," he laughed. Cindy frowned.
"It's not funny. I came here to work, not drink beer and drop wobbly," Cindy said. Taro laughed louder.
"Drop wobbleeee," he said, mocking her accent. Cindy scowled. Taro took a couple of steps and then looked at Cindy with a slanted grin until she caught up with him. "Each Fall, thousands of new students find themselves trapped in the sinister world of dropping wobbly." Taro said in the exaggerated tones of the newscaster on the University Channel. He burst out laughing. Cindy smiled against her will.
"Beware the hazards of dropping wobbly, good children!" Taro yelled to the students who sat in the study cubes that lined the walkway. A tone monitor beeped at his decibel infraction. A yellow sign read,
"Maximum volume in this area is 60 decibels. You are 20 decibels over the limit."
“You hear that? Maximum sixty!” Taro shouted at the sign. Heads turned their way.
"Forty over is my record," Taro said.
Cindy laughed. She wondered what her parents would think if they could see her walking with this yelling 'phalt. They passed rows of students, heads bent in study, while Taro made faces behind their backs. Cindy laughed again, and Taro followed her until they reached her dorm.
"Well, bye," she said.
"Hey, thanks for letting me out that building. I was just kidding about dusters being thieves."
"So you say," Cindy said.
She waved her hand in front of her dorm room and the door whooshed open.
"Wait," Taro said. She stopped and the door whooshed shut again.
"I'm the sense jockey at a club off campus. I'm working tonight, why don't you come out?"
"I don't know," Cindy said.
"It might get you off probation," Taro said. He turned his face into a mask of mock concern.
"I've never been to a sense event. Don't they drop wobbly at those?"
"I'll meet you here at 11," Taro said. Cindy waved her hand again and walked through the door.
"OK,” said Cindy, waving her hand to open the door. “I'll see you then.” The door closed.
Cindy wondered all the way back to her room why she had agreed to meet Taro. The next few hours crawled. Cindy was too worried to study. Instead, she paced in her room and read the dusty pamphlet.
Always stay on campus. Check your campus channel for sanctioned events. Enjoy events from these University Partners: GAP - In-store seminar on dressing for academic success. McDonald's - Meals That Make the Grade. Crown Royale - Student mixer: how to tell a great drink from a good drink.
"What if you're too broke to have any fun?" Cindy asked. She folded the pamphlet and stuffed it back into her pocket.
"Cindy, this is Todd," Taro introduced Cindy to a young man in cracked leather pants and a white plastic shirt.
"Nice to meet you," Cindy said.
"Uh, yeah," Todd said. He looked at Taro.
"Duster?" he asked.
"Why don't you ask her?" Taro asked. Todd nodded slowly.
"Let's go," Todd said. They walked toward the metro. Cindy looked at Todd. Todd smirked.
"Yes, I'm from an agri-planet." Cindy said. "I don't know why you urbs are so damn spiteful toward us. If you didn't have us growing all your food and organics your urb planets would die in a month."
"Is that what you tell yourselves?" Todd asked.
"We do a lot more than you urbs, stuck in your little boxes all day. You wouldn't survive a day on an agriplanet. We actually have to do things!"
"For example?" Todd asked.
"I can mano a fifty-thousand ton groomer, for starters," Cindy said. Then she blushed.
"And that's dusssster for what, exactly?" Todd asked.
"Operate equipment that's bigger than your dorm building."
"Sounds like a thrilling Friday night," Todd said.
"Bro, don't be a dick," Taro said.
"I'm a dick? Who brought the duster along?" Todd asked.
Cindy turned and walked away. She headed back toward her dorm. Taro ran up to her.
"Wait, he was just busting your chops, it's cool."
"It issss nnnnot cool," Cindy said. Her accent was stronger when she was angry.
"Right, he's a prick. Wait till we get to the club, he'll mellow," Taro said.
Cindy looked back at Todd. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest and stared at them.
"One more remark like that and I'm leaving," Cindy said.
They walked together to the metro. The car was empty except for them. They sat in silence. The ride was quiet; the carpeted floor dampened the whoosh of the wind. The slight vibration made Cindy sleepy. Her ears popped as the train went deep. It was an express. Her gaze went to the map above the door. A red light blinked at their next stop, Tuffle. It was the first stop past the green zone on the map, her first time off campus since she'd arrived.
"So, what's your major?" Taro asked.
"Political Science. I want to be an agribusiness lobbyist," she said.
"I thought all your agri-chicks spent all your time dreaming of being pilots," Taro said. Todd laughed.
"No, we don't. Not all of us, anyway. Just the dumb ones who will never get off their planet."
"Where are you from?" Taro asked.
"Not that you'd know where it is, but I grew up on A-5. It's a monocrop, tobacco."
"You grew up on a tobacco planet?" Todd asked. His eyebrows unfurled for the first time. He seemed interested.
"Yes." Cindy sat up straighter.
"Here we are," Taro said. Cindy glanced up at the map, they were out of the blue municipal zone as well, into the red industrial.
"I was advised that this is a bad area," she said.
"Students who venture into the red zone are risking their lives, to say nothing of their academic careers," Taro said, mimicking the voice in the orientation packet on the University Channel. Todd laughed. Cindy smiled nervously. They exited the station into the night.
The streets were wider than any on campus. The air reeked of oil and smoke. They walked quickly.
"What is your major?" she asked Taro.
"It was urban planning, but now I'm just there for the meal card," Taro said.
"What about you?" Cindy asked Todd.
Todd smirked.
"I was thrown out last year," he said. Cindy frowned.
"Don't look so nervous, it's not like I'm a rider or anything, I’m just not university material," he said.
"Are there riders out here?" Cindy asked.
"Don't mess with them and they won't mess with you," Taro said. Cindy felt her stomach sink. She looked up and down the dark street, lined with industrial concrete buildings. The walls radiated heat, even the pavement was warm. They were the only people out.
"Where are we?" Cindy asked.
"This is the refrigeration district. Home to night partiers and indigents."
"Why here?" Cindy looked down the street. The pavement was black with grime, some of the buildings were so old they were made of brick. An electrical buzz hummed from everywhere.
"These buildings keep the surrounding 100 square miles of city nice and cool," Taro said. "And the hum provides nice cover for our club. The heat discharged keeps the cops from seeing us on infrared flyovers." Cindy felt a drop of sweat run down the back of her neck. She realized it was the first time she'd perspired since she left A-5.
"And here we are," Todd said. He waved his hand in front of a grimy plate on a concrete wall. A recessed door screeched open, metal grating on metal.
Taro led them down a flight of metal stairs.
The club was dark. Wires hung in tangle from the ceiling. People in shiny plastic clothes that cost more than Cindy's four year meal ticket rolled around on the floor, or danced in the corners. Music pumped through the air. Everyone who saw Taro smiled and touched him. Taro climbed a ladder to an elevated platform. He sad in a chair, ringed with screens and keyboards, touchpads and joysticks.
Todd gathered a group of wires that hung from the ceiling in his right fist. He pulled a tube from his pocket.
"Let's get you hooked up, baby," he said. Cindy cringed.
"I don't know..."
"Look, I'm not sticking anything into you. The I&Ws; are over there."
He pointed at a crowd of skinny, mostly naked people just under the platform.
"I and W?"
"Implants and wireless," he said.
Cindy nodded, not really understanding what he meant. She realized she was the only person with hair. Everyone else was bald. some were naked, their entire bodies were shaved smooth and greased.
She tensed. The music got louder. Taro waved at them from his chair on the platform and bobbed his head to the beat.
"He's the greatest," Todd said. He squirted a glob of clear jelly from the tube and massaged it into Cindy's hair. She pulled her head back.
"Relax, it washes out!," he shouted over the music.
He attached several white disks to the wires and then stuck them into the jelly on Cindy's head. Two more went on her neck. Suddenly, she felt something.
A tingle washed over her skin, wrapping her in a net of sensation. Then it went deeper. She felt the music, she smelled the sound. Her mouth tasted sweet with each beat and sour off the beat. She fell back into a dingy foam chair.
"This goes out to my friend, Cindy, a sense virgin in the house." Taro's words shot down her spine and tingled her thighs. Everyone in the room gasped at once, and she realized they were all feeling the same thing. Taro sampled the sentence and replayed it.
"Virginnnnnn.”
Then the word took on a duster accent. The tingles rushed up and down her thighs, everyone's thighs, like fingers stroking backwards and forwards. She heard moans around her, and then realized the moans were hers. She tasted Taro's voice. They all did. It tasted hot and wet and sweet and salty.
Todd handed her a glass. She realized she was parched from the heat. She swallowed and barely tasted the fluid over Taro's sense jockeying. When the drink hit her stomach, Taro's senses rushed past her skin, tendrils of feeling stretched from her stomach to meet them. She swooned and rolled on the floor.
"Shit, I've just dropped wobbly," a distant voice in the back of her brain said. She sighed in time with everyone else. She felt a tongue in her mouth and opened her eyes. Todd had climbed on top of her. She pushed him off and slid herself backwards, away from him. The room swirled and the music pumped through her. She wiped Todd's spit off her mouth with the back of her hand.
He crawled toward her. Another tingle shot up her thighs and everyone in the room gasped with her. Todd closed his eyes and grinned. Cindy reached up and ripped the wires from her head. Suddenly, her skin felt dead. Her mouth was numb, and she realized for the first time that unless she was eating or drinking, she never tasted anything. She smelled the stench of sweat in the room.
Then the music stopped. Everyone sat up and looked around. Someone screamed.
"Riders!"
Four riders in black plastic suits waded into the crowd. They swung thick, black pipes with fins on the ends like antique bombs into the naked throng.
Blood splashed into the air. There were more screams.
Taro looked scared on his platform. He jumped into the crowd below. Everyone panicked. A man stepped on Cindy's hand and she shrieked in pain. She was weak from the wobbly and had trouble standing. Todd was gone. Cindy tried to hide under a foam chair, but her perception was way off. Rather than fit under the chair, she only shoved it across the floor.
A hand gripped her wrist and yanked her to her feet. It was Taro.
He pulled her through the crowd. More riders had entered.
There were loud bangs.
"I'm going to die!" Cindy shouted.
Taro led her through to a spiral staircase in the back corner. Her hand ached, and it was difficult for her to walk, but the wobbly was beginning to wear off. Taro helped her up. He wiped his hand in front of a door and they jumped out into the street.
There were riders everywhere. Taro crouched down behind a beat-up glider.
The steel frame was shaped like an inverted bathtub, only large enough for two riders.
"I thought you said they don't mess with you if you don't mess with them," Cindy said.
"Yeah, well, when you party in their neighborhood and don't pay them rent I guess they consider that a mess," Taro said.
Two riders kicked a limp body in the street while a third ground his heel onto motionless fingers.
The riders laughed over the moans of two partiers who lay nearby. One skinny kid still had the white disks stuck in his hair.
"This is very, very bad," Taro said.
"We can't just wait here to die," Cindy said.
"I know, I know," Taro said. He looked up and down the street. "Even if the riders don't catch us here, the cops will. I don't know what's worse," he said.
"Taro!" Todd said. Cindy and Taro both jumped. They looked up. Todd peered down at them from the glider parked in front of them. He cracked the door. Cindy climbed in and Taro followed her. The two-seater was cramped.
"What in the hell are you doing in here?" Taro asked.
"I don't know, man. I figured that while they're breaking heads, this will be the last place they look."
"Yes, you're right. This will be the last place they look. Then they'll pull us apart." There were more screams in the street behind them.
"Oh shit, they're finishing up," Todd said.
"Let's drive this thing out of here," Cindy said. Todd looked like he wanted to smack her.
"Drive?" he asked.
"Yeah, drive," she said.
"Nobody knows how to drive. You think riders give lessons?" Todd asked.
"They do on Duster planets. Move over," Cindy said. She pulled her plierkit out of her pocket and unscrewed the passplate near the steering wheel. She was queasy from the wobbly, but her fingers worked the wires. There was a pop and a tiny cloud of smoke. Taro smiled. The glider hummed and Cindy pulled back on the wheel. The glider rose a few feet off the ground and hovered.
"Stop!" A rider bellowed from behind them. Cindy pulled harder and the glider shot backward. The rider thudded against the back bumper. Cindy leaned on the wheel and they shot forward.
Two other riders ran for their gliders. Cindy yanked the wheel and they shot out of view. She zipped down a few streets until they saw the glow of a metro stop. Cindy dropped the glider closer to the pavement.
Cindy's ears popped as they expressed back to campus. They said nothing as they rode back. Cindy's skin cooled in the air-conditioned car. She realized she still held her plierkit in her right hand. She folded the kit and shoved it back into her pocket, where something brushed her fingers. She pulled out the wrinkled pamphlet and opened it to the back.
"Remember, with proper social interaction and authorized event participation, the student can learn as much outside the classroom and she learns within."
Cindy looked at Taro as they pulled into the campus station. He sat slumped in his seat and stared at his feet. He looked young. “I’ll be this is the first time you were glad to be on campus,” Cindy said. He looked up with a scowl. “Relax, I’m just pulling your wires.” Cindy smiled, and Taro laughed.
©Sean Sakamoto
Sean Sakamoto is a graduate of San Francisco State University's Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York and writes a column called "A New York Minute" for the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Weekly. He also attended a workshop for science fiction writers, Viable Paradise, where he learned more in a week than he learned in four years at University. This is not necessarily the fault of SF State.