The Tides of Macon

The strings that outlined the former body peeked above a few inches of water on the side street. A woman peered from behind the crack of her doorway there on the bottom floor of an apartment entryway. The police detectives started using string to mark the location of any homicide victims because the rain and tides would quickly wash away any chalk they used to use to draw on the ground. Too often the beaches there in Macon, Georgia would give way to large tides that would flood the streets of the Southern town for several hours every day. There was no way chalk would keep.

Momma continued to stare through the door onto the dark flooded Macon street. She could see her dead son’s outline there in the street, the little sticks and string popping up from the water below. She saw the policemen coming up the street, so she kept the door open, waiting for them to arrive.

“Eve Mann? That is you, correct?”

“Evelyn, Sir, but please, just Momma. Everyone just calls me Momma.” She looked briefly at the men’s badges. Water dripped from the men’s sleeves and onto their outstretched badges. Momma just motioned for them to come in. She parted the door and led the large men inside. Once their coats were hung behind the door and the water stamped off their rain boots they sat down.

“You called the station, Ma’am? We were doing more investigation on the death of Michael. We’re very sorry.” He paused then continues, “They told us you wanted to give us some new information?” The detectives looked around the house. A cracked viewer screen sat in the corner. An empty cabinet behind the slightly ajar cabinet door was visible in the kitchen. Water stains notched the lower part of the walls where an occasional flood from the encroaching tides had crept in.

“Just before Michael was found out…side.” Momma choked very briefly, revisiting the pain of the whole ordeal. She apologized, then continued, “There were several guys out there. They were wearing all their gear, and the water was high. They were out in the middle of the street, so you can check all the surveillance video. But people were wading everywhere and a couple flatbottoms passed in the street. I know they all had their Puslators with them. So, who knows what may have exactly happened, but no doubt one thing led to another and then someone had to use their damn Pulsator. They always do.”

Her voice was steady but the tone shrill in it’s anger. “But afterwards I saw someone come back to the area, as if they were going back to the body. Some kid was walking up and down and across the street just looking at me when I was standing outside with Mike dead there.”

“A kid, Ma’am?” The shorter, older detective was doing all the questioning.

“Yeah, he was creeping around and just looking at me weird. I’m sure you’ll see it in the surveillance vids.”

“We’re looking now — there’s a lot of footage. Also, there were quite a few strikes that night. I’m sure you noticed the power cutting out a few times… But, Momma,” he put his hand on her shoulder. He did so easily since she was the same height as he was, trying to reassure her, “we’re going through all the other data points. We have everyone’s geo-coordinates, we know who was there, we think. We have the video. But since each Pulsator has a unique code for activation and also has a required geo-coordinate tracker, we feel we just need to find the device that did this.”

“All those boys, they were just out front. But it was like this kid was coming back for something. I couldn’t get a look at him because he was in waders with his synthhoodie all the way over his head.”

“Mrs. Mann, that’s not a terrific description but trust me, we’ll be getting to the video surveillance very shortly to see whatever we might also have there. We’re trying to check all geo-coordianted activity in the area first — phones, Pulsators, biotrackers, whatever they might have had for the devices we’re legally able to resource and track. We hope from there the video can confirm other information.”

“Well, I hope so, too. I hope so…”

“Still, thank you for calling us back. Again, we understand this is a very, very hard time for you. We’re going to continue to surveil the area for any other clues now that we have more daylight. But we’ll connect with you as we have anything further.”

A tear came to Mrs. Mann’s eye as she reopened the door for them. She closed the door before checking the shelf by the door. The drawer was closed. The keys were in order. Michael had an extra pack of synthetic tobacco he liked to smoke there on the table. She wondered if they had noticed it. But she took it and put it neatly in the drawer there. Beneath the table, his indoor slippers were paired together with all the other dry-climate/indoor footwear.

****

The downtown area was like any former tourist town. Back when the oceans had finally claimed Florida, Southern Georgia filled as the water crept inland over the peninsula and panhandle. This was many years ago, almost a century at this point, in fact. Now the town succumbed to the ills of many other once “boom” towns. Miami, the original tourist haven of the American Carribean, was evacuated these days — the buildings now buried by melted polar ice. The panhandle quickly disappeared as the oceans crept into Alabama and on towards the foothills of the Adirondacks. Birmingham was now one of the busiest cities in the world. The former industrial town was now a tourist paradise with newly tropical golf courses and ocean towns as near as Tuscaloosa. The airport hummed with people coming for vacation… to “fun in the sun.” Communities were changed dramatically by these quickly shifting demands.

The tides had crept in on Macon as they had many other towns caught literally in the rising tide of the world’s oceans. As the tides rose and the climate zones changed, the world’s supply chains were also quickly reconstituted. The largest effect of these changes was food supply. As the Sahara humidified, it nevertheless proved unable to support agriculture. South American jungles had long since been burned to the ground, first for agriculture, then for cities. The American plains would now flood regularly making crop planning and harvesting an absolutely unpredictable nightmare for the farmers in that region.

The Pacific Northwest had managed quite well, its rich soil reacted to more humid and warm conditions. The tundra of Russia also yielded many staples given its vast expanse and previously untilled ground. But these were exceptions amidst the catastrophes of late 21st century climate change. As the planet population increased, foot shortage was vastly more widespread. Inflation skyrocketed as land values diminished heavily in rural areas: uninhabitable and unworkable.. In the Southern United States, the best industry became tourism. This was the way out. Inflate any and all prices and local taxes as tourists came to vacation. Everybody likes a day at the beach, everybody; inelastic demand as economists might say. Everyone got everything they could before the rising tides swallowed new little cities whole. Eventually torrents of hurricanes would surge during a season, some season, and then the water would not recede. The town would remain barely inhabitable, but the tourism would quickly die after those floods would not recede. The captains of hospitality would take the money from their hotels or casinos and head higher up shore, literally “to dry land”.

Whenever this would happen, those without means to move would get stuck, a generation or two of families built on the town’s fleeting commercial success. As the money and jobs left town, cities would be left with the expected issues: underfunded schools, underfunded infrastructure maintenance, underfunded health care. Consequently, people wouldn’t finish school, as if there were jobs anyway after tides refused to ebb, and naturally any black market medicines would do. As with all back markets, particularly for meds and pills (anything that could bring cheap relief), crime and poverty would seize these communities. In towns like this, towns like Macon, Georgia in the late 2200s, murder would be rampant, and the victimes would almost appreciate the ensuing relief of death.

The deaths accelerated as the money left. The rampant drug use in the destitute town left the vulnerable more vulnerable. The problem wasn’t so much enforcement of illicit drug use. Rehabilitation programs were prevalent. If anyone was caught with anything illegal they were likely just sent to rehabilitation centers closer to Atlanta. But often the damage was done well before then. Zombied junkies could do far more damage among themselves than the police could. And so the deaths and murders escalated rapidly among drug users looking for a way out of the poor and depressing circumstances, just looking for the next “score” in the tiniest moments of relief.

Originally, the Macon police response was draconian, like the efforts from the 21st century. In the south those had persisted well into the next century. Private prisons made sure Macon’s police force dragged in as many suspects as possible. Local district attorneys would prosecute to the full extent they could. Judges would throw the book as far as they could at any suspects. But with the epidemic increasing, the chalk outlines were almost literally everywhere. They would rest in doorsteps or on street meridians. They were found on sidewalks but also elevators where drug dealing and drug use was easier; more covert. Between these outlines strewn about the city’s passageways, amidst the increasing tidewaters, police were forced to stop using chalk. The water would just wash away evidence of the precise location of a person’s death. Now they used the string outlines which sat above the tides. And they could be seen throughout Macon, like little tombstones where ever you might look, even staircases, parking lots, parks, front lawns, rooftops, and in this case, the middle of the street. Macon’s citizenry had certainly become desensitized to the death that was washing in with the tides.

****

Saturdays were very busy out on the streets where Momma lived. She watched the kids come and go through the late afternoon and through the big storm that washed through that evening. There was a thunderstorm and brief blackouts for a couple minutes here and there, no more than 3 or 4 though. The local electric company had been struggling to keep up infrastructure, and so little hits of lightning could put down the electricity for a couple minutes while the central grid was reset to provide backup. When the power went out like that, the kids became unpredictable — sometimes they scattered, sometimes they didn’t. They were the same junkies that she saw all the time and you never quite knew what they’d do. They were all friends of Mike’s though. She had seen their faces up close and aplenty. They had names that would wash over her like the water in the streets when Mike would tell her about them. Mike and those kids were in it together. The whole neighborhood suffered from the same epidemic, and the ones who survived couldn’t help but know each other somehow. She was deep in reflection, thinking about all of their time aboard this sinking ship of a city, “I don’t know, Momma, they just do it,” Michael said to his mother trying to explain why he needed the money. “They fix the Pulsator so that it don’t track, it don’t register. Ma, this is the only way I’m gonna be able to protect myself and keep myself safe… Look at it this way: They literally won’t even know it’s here.”

“It’s a lot of money. You been taking a lot these days. I’ve got my own meds I gotta keep around. I hardly eat cuz you been taking everything to get fixes and…”

“I know, I been a real pain in the ass.” His hands twitched as he talked. Momma could see he hadn’t had a fix in a while. She felt for him. She really did. “But Ma, you gotta understand that this is really a special situation. This keeps us both safe.”

She went for her money box she kept hidden. It had the cash in it for things that cards wouldn’t purchase, like a modified Pulsator that wouldn’t track or register — just kill. She came back out and pulled out the money and handed it to Mike. That was much earlier in the day; he had left much earlier on the day he’d died. Sometime in the misty morning light, he had taken that cash out to one of those same tweakers out in the street. She watched Mike hand over the cash and his Pulsator (“The only real protection you can have,” the kids would say). After that exchange, everyone dispersed in their own directions. She watched Mike head over to a market to get a new pack of synthetic tobacco that he was always smoking. That was probably better. It seemed to calm his nerves even for just short periods of time. She turned back into the house to listen to some music while she made some toast. She was eating a lot of toast and oatmeal these days. No butter or brown sugar, just toast and oatmeal most days.

The problem was that Michael could not break his cycle. He was always clever enough to not get arrested. He was somehow at the wrong place at the right time so that nothing ever stuck to him. Ultimately though, there was never enough to satisfy him. This was of course the disease of addiction and poverty. His belly was empty and his nerves were always wracked. The only surprise was how everything could just disappear. Meds, food… and oh, the money.

The money was never safe. That box she kept, she knew Michael knew about it. He tried desperately not to touch it, and that was their strange bargain. He could take from the house: food, stronger pain relief medications that were prescribed to his mother, the room he lived in for free. And he would ask for money as well. If she could, Momma would give him some on occasion. . But without her permission he tried desperately not to take it.

After looking at the window, watching Micahel hand over that money, she started to think about the box. In closing the box, she felt that the box was very light. That Michael, maybe even unknowingly, had taken money from the cash box in one of his stupors when Momma was gone. She knew this was not her child that would do this. This was a fiend that needed more and more. Or course, she knew this time would come. She had prayed that it would not. But suddenly, shortly after she sent him off to modify the Puslator, she came more clearly to the realization that his body was fully infected.

Maybe earlier, a few years ago, a few months ago, Michael would have been aware enough to say something about at least taking the money. But in a mostly dilapidated house with only bread and oats because Michael’s thieving from his own mother, he was taking the last she had. When she checked the box to find that he had taken a noticeable amount of money earlier, she felt more violated than she ever had — even in this neighborhood, town and catastrophe that had claimed her and her son’s lives, she had reached a breaking point.

Momma frequently reminisced on the younger days. They both worked. Michael was vibrant and joyous. He was her baby. Even as the waters began rising and the businesses were starting to notice the inevitable, Michael and his momma had managed fine. “You going to make it to school this afternoon?” she asked him one afternoon.

“I hope so. After I let you off, I have to run an errand or two and then head off to school. But yes, I’ll make it in time.” He smiled at her. His long face squirmed with a happy delight. He had always been a fidgety child. Even at school, where he was receiving special help, his teachers said it was hard to keep him focused. But Momma did everything she could to get him through. And after high school, one of the technical schools had him on a training program to be a Casino Tech. He would be able to help manage the gambling machines, their algorithms, and any other issues with which the casinos might need help.

She saddened when she remembered how happy he seemed then. She didn’t realize that it was in those days that his early use had begun. Before class he would sneak a few drinks with friends. He was hooked on smoking Finka, a strange combination of pleasure drug and pain killer. This was only the beginning. She would find small glass vials in the trash at home as he became less discreet. She knew what they were. She didn’t know the kind of drug, but she knew it was drugs. He moved from there to synthetic morphine.

****

The opioid epidemic from the early 21st century had become something different, but the need for painkillers was omnipresent. Humans throughout history have lusted for anything to kill the pain. As the tidal patterns changed and the world devolved into a hungrier place with fewer farms and crops, poppies and opioid production also suffered. If one couldn’t literally eat a crop, the crop often ceased to exist. In this vein, synthetic opioids, especially morphine, became quite fashionable — because it was also considered eco friendly. In fact, synthetic morphine seemed harmless enough in the early days that doctors were paid handsomely by the rich to administer the drug. The reason it seemed so harmless was, under doctor supervision, abuse was somehow curtailed. The price was also prohibitive because of the requirement to employ a doctor.

Unfortunately, this made a town like Macon especially susceptible to an overflow of a drug like this. Rich people flew in from all over to employ casino doctors who were required to be licensed and approved. The wealthy tourists would spend synthetic vacations in the sun, near the water. Virtual reality and sensory deprivation tanks allowed people a fully falsified reality in the safety of their hotel rooms and in the presence of a doctor. When the medical and virtual experience was over, guests would go to the pool or to the nearby shores and just casually rest in the sun. The alternating sensory realities became very popular. When Macon was at its tourtistic peak, one of its main attractions was travel packages for these intermingled “Morphine+Virtual Realities.”

Inevitably, these drugs leaked into the general population. A popular drug is never something that can be extinguished. Even after several centuries types alcohol and nicotine were both still widely in circulation. Despite their ill effects, people loved the experience of drinking and smoking. So the governments had little choice but to regulate it and hope to manage the public health in the face of any dangers to those taking it.

As the tides became a greater and greater threat to Macon and it’s tourism industry, the casinos did leave. Cash and jobs became scarce. These were certainly contributing factors to Michael’s fall. As he initially experimented in drugs and alcohol, the education he was receiving became less valuable. When he graduated and hoped to work quietly with the casinos as a Tech and start a nice life but the casino jobs vanished. Rather than any routine or success with work he might’ve had, Michael was forced, like many his age, to literally do nothing. He could go around town looking for work, but the technical degrees that he and other kids like him had worked for were gone. And there he was, broke, hungry, at home with his mother — both of them looking for opportunity.

Things only got worse. One night Momma came home and found Michael on the floor. He was seizing on the ground and had vomited in his mouth. He was face up and choking on his own vomit. She quickly cleared his mouth and grabbed the home respirator that was with the other basic first aid equipment. She’d previously worked as a pediatric nurse,so she knew the value in having one of these. She had seen many parents come in to the hospitals after drug use. These small portable devices could help people respirate in any form of consciousness. As Michael’s drug use increased over time, she brought a cheap one home just in case — for just this occasion.

While having to do this broke her heart, the episode seemed to have also broken Michael’s pride. He became more withdrawn and found more ways to numb his pain. Alcohol, synthetic morphine, synthetic tobacco, Finca, and on occasion he would take his mother’s high-dose painkillers that she had been prescribed for her back — chronic pain that she’d started getting after Michael was born but which stayed with her after that and into the present. The long nights and long shifts over the years continued to aggravated her back. She took the medicine as prescribed and as needed. As Michael’s drug addiction continued, when she wasn’t looking, Michael would sneak in for a fix and take whatever he needed to in that moment. It all became a disaster. The jobs were gone. The streets were flooded. The city was crumbling. And the kids were all addicted to drugs.

When her doctor laid her off about a year before, she wasn’t sure how she was going to go forward. Even with the meager US Basic Income she was receiving, it was a far cry from her salary at the pediatricians office. But as the wealthy families and their children fled, there was nothing to be done, no amount of supply will satisfy a total lack demand. After that there was nothing extra in the house, of anything, no luxury — not for Michael and not for Momma. Just quiet days passing time, trying to do with less and less.

*********

“Momma, he just had to remove the base plate here. Then the tracker chip is here. The DNA coder imprint is on the other side.” He turned over the Pulsator hastily. He was still breathing heavy with excitement. Remembering some of his own early tech training days on standard government regulation licenses implanted into the software. “Then DNA coder imprint registers a pulse after the victim is hit. And that kicks to the local geo-coordinate register in the area. A server, a traffic light, a street light, somebody’s wrist comm or even just their earpiece. That’s why we have to have this stuff removed. But since the government software requires a back-end shut-off of the code, you have to go to the black market to find a coder who will shut that off. They did the same thing with the gaming machines for the casinos we used to learn about.”

“I don’t care. You need help, Son. I just want you alive. But I don’t think anything will help … you took money from the cash box, dammit. I told you never to take money from the cash box.” She had been waiting for him to come back in hopes he might confess to taking all the money she found missing just a few hours ago. She needed him to just admit to anything.

As Michael continued, Momma looked around. First the cabinets caught her eye. A couple across the faded kitchen island. She knew there was nothing inside them. The rusted 3D food printer than they used for quite a few years just stood there — meaningless as an empty promise. She couldn’t afford to buy the more quality ingredients needed to run the food printer. She felt the hunger in her belly. The times she wouldn’t eat as she left Michael a few bucks for his own needs.

Then a glance over to the entertainment screen. They were so excited when she brought it home. A Christmas gift from her boss. That was only a couple Chistmases ago when times were still good. Even though things were already in pretty serious decline and the waters had risen and tourists were harder to find, things were still manageable for Momma working at the doctor’s office. In the worsening Macon condition, that screen kept them both entertained on many nights through their troubles. Then one night Michael came home stumbling from drinking and Frinca, knocking the screen to the floor as he fell on his face. The screen cracked but still worked. Now, though, every time she saw the crack, the frustration picked at her. Tonight, it enraged her. The empty, dingy moldy bottom floor of the apartment — she held so much contempt for it all.

“When some fool tries to move on me, I just take the Pulsator like this:…” Michael was still demonstrating the best way to use the weapon. She was exhausted by all of this. “Then you take it here between any point of contact with the skin and it immediately sends a fully charged pulse of nuclear electricity to the heart and the base of the brain, basically pulverizing both on impact. The charge connects through the spine which acts as a conduit and fries a guy. You just push that button right there when the safety is turned off like this.” He pressed a red button. Then he turned the Pulsator back over and showed her the blue button on the palm side of the handle. He handed over the weapon to his mother so should could look at it as if she were his partner in crime.

She looked back at him, his desperate skinny eyes looking back at her from dull apartment colors in the background. His hollowed face on top of his sinewy neck shaking like a broken jack in the box. At that moment the apartment went dark. The lightning darkened the neighborhood, and she felt the Pulsator in her hand. The emptiness of everything, from the apartment to her stomach to the burned-out lights of her sons addicted soul — the void of everything seized on her, and she pushed the weapon into Michael’s neck and put pressure on the blue button in her palm. He collapsed to the ground just as he said a victim would — internal nuclear combustion of the heart and base of the brain. Her anger overwhelmed all her maternal instincts. She grabbed the body in the darkness, still warm and limp before the rigor. Opening the door, she dragged his body quickly across the sidewalk and into the middle of the damp street. She left him there and slipped back into her house in the darkness, putting the Pulsator in the drawer of the table by the door. Just as she closed the drawer and locked the door, the lights came back on. The frantic episode had taken just a couple minutes. She had barely realized she’d done any of it.

She collapsed on the couch, mechanically turned on the cracked screen, and stared at the broken vision in front of her. She looked out the window, and a group of boys had gathered around the body. She saw one talking into his wrist comm. They all looked furtively around the neighborhood, scanning for anybody who might have just left a body in the middle of the dark. Momma let the slightly open curtain swing back across the window, falling between her face and the glass. Turning back to the flickering, cracked screen, she closed her eyes. She knew where she was. She didn’t know what she’d done. She could only sleep.

****

The police came back two days later and knocked on Momma’s door again. She cracked the door but did not let them in this time. “We just wanted to reconnect Mrs. Mann,” the shorter, older officer began. “We looked at all the tape in the area and we didn’t see anyone lurking around the neighborhood.”

“My eyes can be a little tricky sometimes,” she said back solemnly. “I don’t know. I guess that’s why I wanted the video checked.”

“Mrs. Mann, honestly, we have a lot of homicides in Macon. And we don’t often find too many of the killers. The Pulsators, we’re sure that’s what killed your son, a lot of them have been modified. So it’s a weapon our junkies like to use and nowadays they can be fixed to that they are untrackable.”

“Junkies.” The word settled on her inflamed heart. The nothingness in the officers voice, just like the moment she had actually killed her son.

“If one of them has modified one of the Pulsators, they are hard to find. Not to mention the power was off for several minutes before your son just appeared in the street. This happens frequently. Murders happen and then people put the body in a truck waiting for the electricity to go off. Then they dump the body when they know there is no surveillance. We’re tracking the automobiles that were in the area around the time the electricity went off.” A tear streamed down her cheek. “I’m sorry Mrs. Mann. If we can get a track on the weapon, we can find the killer. That could be tough, though. We’re going to check the neighborhood one more time for our report. We’re very sorry. We’re very, very sorry for your loss.”

The officer seemed sincere as he apologized. She shed another tear and motioned politely for them to leave. She could see that, for the time being, the street was dry. The police left the doorway. Momma looked at the table next to the door. Then she looked at at the string outline out in the street. Finally, she closed the door after the officers had left. She opened the drawer in the table. Inside lay a pack of Michael’s synthetic tobacco and his modified Pulsator, the one she had used to kill her son. A hunger pulled at her belly. She closed the drawer, feeling an awkward smile ease across the bottom of her face, and went to eat a piece of dry toast.