"Slick Grace"

Grace Pillow, meanwhile, was already doing something - while Zipper declared her grand quest from the comfort of home, Grace was sloshing around in the old sewers of Big Dig, up in northeast Eden. Dim blue lights led the way deeper into the murk, deeper into history, since these sewers had existed for a thousand years, with various cities culminating in Eden built atop of them, akin to the nine layers of ancient Troy.

The ghostly greenish-water, the crumbling walls, the rat-gnawed wiring - they had seen a millennium of construction. It began long ago, in 1991, when Governor Dukakis jumped out of his tank one last time to break ground on the BIG DIG, aka the world’s biggest buffet, ‘cuz you had meaty kickback roast pig for the politicians, falsified overtime soufflé for the cops, even yummy fraud for the contractors! It changed the face of Boston, this project to end all projects. But as the centuries went by, the city continued to grow, and everyone loves buffets. The 2100s had the Bigger Dig, and the 2200s had the Biggest Dig, the granddaddy of them all that connected Boston and New York City a la the Chunnel ‘cuz why not.

Yet the urban sprawl continued, necessitating (at least, that’s what the eaters say) the Big Dig 2, the Big Dig 3: Dig Harder, the Big Dig Returns, the Big Dig Rises. The projects consumed entire communities, with Rhode Island turned into a shopping mall, and Bridgeport, Connecticut destroyed in a freak(?) industrial accident, but nobody really minded that one at least.

X-Polymer, the predecessor to A-Polymer, covered the landscape with streets and parking lots, and soon housing was built into the highways themselves, the second floor of schools being the freeway, a never-ending maze of brutalist gray. Temporary roads built to divert traffic during “temporary” construction became permanent, resulting in further temporary roads being built when they themselves needed maintenance. “Boston” as a word fell outta fashion, ‘cuz there was nothing else up there ‘cept the Big Dig, on and on, the Big Dig Forever…

Big Dig was now a district in Eden, a concrete jungle of A-Polymer down to the foundations. Grace was within those foundations now, seeking out an underground band she had business with. To understand why, you’d have to go back three years, to the year 2996, when Grace was frustrated, restless, a college drop-out. Since nobody had to work, there was no reason to go to college unless you wanted to learn. Grace certainly did, but found that she didn’t like what college had to teach. The professors, the students - they just didn’t get it.

Grace, of course, was twenty-one at the time, and therefore knew everything. It was a lonely road, being a one-woman intelligentsia. It’s why she cut ties with everyone from high school, too. She liked Zipper, and they were gonna go to college together, but the day after graduating from Bronx-12 High, Zipper said, “There’s nothing I really wanna learn, dig?” and went off with her band that’s not a band and raved for six years straight. Too many people were like Zipper nowadays. Pleasant, yet empty-headed.

Grace roamed around for a while, became a flower child in Saint Francisco, joined the protests against the War on Nothing by only using bootleg Martian hot sauce instead of the sauce produced by the A-Polymerization of distant star systems; forty-seven had already been blinked out of existence by humanity, the harvested materials used to expand Eden, terra-form the Solar System, Alpha Centauri on the way. When the government agreed to limit harvested resources in hot sauce to 50%, all the protesting flower children rejoiced, all except Grace.

Why, let’s go a step further, she told them. Let’s blow up the hot sauce factories. Let’s stop turning the galaxy into plastic. We keep destroying these planets and covering up stars to feed the human desire for expansion, and if we keep this pace up, what’s gonna happen when we get to one that has life on it?

But the flower children were content, so Grace threw away her crown of daisies and cut ties with them all, continuing her journey down the lonely road. Her Martian hot sauce connection, Billy Sodenholzer - brother of the previously-mentioned Mary-Ann - kept selling her sauce, surplus A-Polymerization equipment, even a Fourth Space Age Raygun, when such weaponry was banned for civilian use. Billy was a deck officer aboard the Abrams A. Asskicker, a drone-transport space-sloop for Pioneer Defense Contractors, with a tendency for sticky fingers and a desire to make a quick profit.

In 2996, after her stint in Saint Francisco, Billy sold her on a night at Crash Landing, a dive bar up in Big Dig. He was sweet on the robo-bartender there, see. Crash Landing had a reputation for being a hub for Bohemian intellectuals. A modern-day Cafe Central in Vienna, where Hitler and Stalin once sat across from one another, while Trotsky grabbed coffee with Tito? W-Wait, maybe that shouldn't have been Grace's first comparison...a modern-day Bloomsbury in London, where Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West once walked the streets, trysts in secret gardens? Count Grace in.

Crash Landing was small, cramped, crowded, A-Polymer disguised as bricks for walls, purple lighting. On the front door there was a sign for tonight’s live entertainment-

THE POLYMERMEN:

JOE WEEZE

WALRUS JACKSON

“SLOW” DOGWADDLE

RANGO STARK

Live? That perked Grace’s interest. Compared to the perfection of robotic performances, human players were rare these days. 

Once inside, she and Billy grabbed Polar Beers from the counter, with Billy striking up a long conversation with the robo-bartender that would interest any university professor studying the ethics of love and alternative intelligence. The bartender was short, vibrant blue polyethylene hair, voice of an angel. Grace drifted from the counter, not jealous of her perfect factory-setting looks, nor the attention she got. Grace didn’t need anybody but herself.

She circled the bar, looking for fellow intellectuals. She found none, just the usual empty-headed inhabitants of the third millennium slouching towards Bethlehem.

What’s this, they told her. Blow hot sauce factories up? Why? We solved war, climate change, pollution, poverty, scarcity, so what if people tend to stay inside now or we’re spreading plastic around? Life is good, have a beer with us!

Grace ended up roving over to the band as they set up their instruments. All of the Polymermen looked around her age. They were tall, reedy-looking, with mops of black and brown hair.

“What kind of music you play?” Grace asked the closest musician. This one had black hair.

“Hullo. I’m Joe. Uh, you know, that ‘lectronic stuff on me guitar.”

Raised eyebrow. “What’s with that?”

“What’s with what, love?” said Joe, sounding gobsmacked.

“This fake English accent you’ve put on.”

“Ah,” said Walrus Jackson, sounding equally ridiculous, all nasally. “The English haven’t been cool for over a thousand years now. We figure they’re about due, so we want to get ahead of the curve.”

“Blimey,” added Slow Dogwaddle.

The neanderthal behind the drums said, “Shrimp on the barbie, mate.”

“Shut up Rango!” came the retort in unison.

“And what’s with that name?” Grace asked. “Polymermen. Everything’s polymer nowadays, you guys don’t gotta be.”

“We’re gonna be more popular than polymer,” Joe Weeze answered.

Rango clacked his drumsticks together. “Blokes, I think we oughta be the Poly-Mermen!”

“Shut up Rango!”

One more question, disappointment gnawing at the edges. “You guys play often?”

“Oh yeah,” said Slow. “We’re pretty big underground.”

“Literally,” added Walrus. “We got a crash-pad we bum around at down in the sewers. From Big Dig 3, me thinks.”

Grace, sipping her beer, nodded and slipped away into the dim purple light, watching the band finish their preparations. It didn’t take too long - Joe on guitar, Walrus on bass, Slow on keyboard, Rango on drums. She glanced out the window, onto the windswept A-Polymer street, its regular repaving every three weeks (every three weeks is necessary, says those at the thousand-year buffet) leaving it looking good as new. There were a couple of fellas in black leather jackets standing outside, white rook chess piece emblazoned on the back.

Joe Weeze tapped on his microphone.

“Uh, hullo everyone. Pip-pip cheerio and all.” Joe Weeze looked back at his bandmates, all of them ready, and then back at the crowd. “We’re the Polymermen, that’s us. Enjoy the show, blokes.”

Grace brought a hand to her chin, eyebrows arched.

Rango raised the drumsticks. “One, one, one-two-three-four!”