‘No managed decline!
Accelerate collapse!
Build the guillotines!’
The large words were daubed in huge red letters on a grey brown slab of wet concrete wall beneath an iron and glass skyway running between two titanic anonymous complexes. They towered into the air, clawing towards the vast carpet of foundation plate half a kilometre overhead. The artificial non-sky supplanted the sun, leaving great coils of cable and enormous UV lights to drench the tier in semi-illumination and long stretches of dense shadow. The sun only filtered down through slits and gaps in the ceiling and never reached the ground before it was inevitably swallowed by the smog and heat vapour filtering up from the mass brawl of stacked construction below.
He passed through a grungy street between titanic slabs of rental pods with flaking rusted doorframes and translucent windows coated with jaundiced films of accumulated grease. A streak of oily stagnant water coagulated above the thick black grating of a clogged drain. He kept straight ahead at a crossroads where the pods continued in cyclopean rows into the distance on one side, and ended abruptly on the other in an abortive attempt at a cul-de-sac. He passed beneath a riveted bridge made of patched metal on patched metal, that sat beneath another bridge that sat beneath another bridge. A couple dozen feet above, an indistinct figure vomited over the railings of an escalator running down the vast wall of a building between two layers of balcony.
The docks smelled like oil and rotting fish. Polluted water sucked at the sheer concrete quay, the congealing grease swelling on the water, distending with the apathetic tide like the pulsing of a slug. A flickering vertical billboard with a ragged crack from the top left corner to the bottom right jutted from the pavement and promoted the new issue of the Spur Wheel Herald’s front-page feature in big brass-balled font: ‘What your first incinerator says about you’.
Along the quay, autonomous drones hauled crates between vast cranes swinging stacks of cargo containers the size of lorries between the shore and the decks of titanic cargo ships. Their jagged leviathan forms roamed the oceans like snapped metal shards and sank building-sized anchors off ports. Armies of airborne drones gurgled through the air ferrying goods back and forth, autonomous cargo barges and freight trucks carted them off into the depths of the city. A week or two would pass and then the air would be ripped apart by the rumbling of an earthshattering foghorn, the sound rolling over the port reducing the few remaining humans to quaking huddling specs with their palms clamped to their heads. Then the shadowed hulks would slowly depart, tearing the waves before them as they disappeared into the distance and were swallowed by the horizon. More than once, Caleb had stood on the rooftop of an abandoned husk and watched them depart, staring after their retreating forms as if watching a friend leave.
The knife-edged wind blew off the sea and sliced into him. He shivered and zipped up his jacket. A soft high gurgling caught his attention. He couldn’t find the source at first, but following the disquieting sound found him standing behind an industrial dumpster the size of a van, overflowing with aging refuse against the wall of a boarded-up building. A radiator-sized cleaning drone lay smashed in the shadowed nook where the dumpster met the wall. It whirred and churned, one tread spinning with industrious intent. The righting arm had been snapped, and what remained of it stuck from the splintered grime-streaked bodywork, waving up and down ineffectually, leaking a viscous translucent fluid. In its exposed innards, a mass of gears churned between multicolour coils of wire and gyrating pistons. Sensors blipped and blinked at the world around them, measuring the diminishing arc of their efficacy, logarithmically charting its inefficient performance. Somewhere a database would expand, auto-generating reports, citing evidence of redundancy, and forwarding to another system for analysis, review, and actioning. How long had it lay thrashing there?
A rat struggled between two shuddering gears. They bent their inexorable force upon its croaking bulk, its matted bloody fur tangled between their ridges and ruts, drowning-child scrabbling with shattered claws at the bland steel and the torpid air. Pulpy crimson oozed between animal and machine. The rat’s black eyes frantic, turning its head back to tear at the cogs and then at itself with splintered teeth. How long had it been struggling? How long would it go on struggling? It could not get free.
He approached it, reached out. It snarled and snapped at his hand, it sagged and panted at the effort. Breath wheezing through its smashed body. He raised his hands again, wondering if he could perhaps get around the mouth, but hesitated, considering the probability that it would rip into his forearms instead. He wondered if he could grab it overhead, at the scruff of the neck. With effort, it resumed scratching and thrashing, pink saliva running from its mouth. He realised even if he managed to get hold of it there was nothing he’d be able to do. The gears had embedded themselves into its pulped flesh and were slowly grinding their way through organs and bones as he watched. Even if he somehow managed to extricate the poor animal from the machine, it’d bleed to death in minutes.
He stepped back and cast about for a discarded pipe or a length of wood. Seeing neither of those things, he stooped and picked up a chunk of broken brick. He hefted it in his hand, turned and faced the thrashing rat. It eyed him, and seemed to sense what he was thinking. It snarled and thrashed harder, and its screaming got worse. He raised the brick and stepped forwards. At the apex, he hesitated and stopped. His angle was off. He shook himself, took a deep breath, and practiced visualising the brick hitting the rat in the head, tracing his arm in a slow arc to line it up right. He licked his lips and raised the brick again. He’d have to hit it hard. One good decisive swing. No problem, he could do that. He took another breath. Stepped back. Stepped forwards, raised the rock behind him. What if he missed? What if he just made it worse? Could he hit the poor bastard a second time? If he fucked it up could he finish what he’d started? He weighed the rock. He eyeballed the twitching rat. He licked his lips.
He dropped the rock and turned away. He swallowed, and clenched and unclenched his jaw. The rat screamed. The machine shuddered and gurgled. He retreated further along the waterfront.
The guy wearing a hi-vis, standing on the corner looking out over the water in a long stare, was heavy and balding. He was smoking a battered jaundiced cigarette. An oily painter’s brush moustache was tacked onto a slick off-coloured and pockmarked face. He looked at Caleb with a mixture of intense curiosity and loathing from tiny wet bulging eyes. He smelled like rotting carbohydrate slurry.
“What?” the greasy hi-vis said, lurching his unblinking gaze to Caleb, his head jutting forwards like the jagged prow of a cargo ship.
“I was wondering if you could help me?” Caleb said, coming to a halt a few paces from the man.
“Depends.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
Greasy hi-vis continued to stare wordlessly, mouth a slack lopsided droop.
“I’m looking to buy a boat.”
A look of profound curiosity warped the man’s features, an interest bordering on lechery. Caleb had to almost physically restrain himself from taking a step backwards. “That so?” bubbled greasy hi-vis.
He was thinking about walking away, but there was nobody else around, and he didn’t want to wander blindly forever, “Do you actually know anything?”
“Anything’s a lot.”
“Anything relevant,” Caleb sighed
“Perhaps,” greasy hi-vis replied, voice a sucking wheeze that carried on the wind and made Caleb’s skin crawl.
“‘Perhaps’ ain’t enough.”
The oily stranger shrugged. Blew smoke.
“Why should I gamble?”
“So many questions.”
“You create more than you answer.”
“Your decision.”
He sighed again. “What do you want?”
“Multiplicity.”
“Where am I supposed to find a multiplicity?”
The oily stranger shrugged again. “A spirit level’s worth.”
Caleb started to argue. Looked around. Along the ways, the gears of the drone continued to grind. The rat continued to thrash. The waterfront was an empty rusted scythe of self-sustaining industry. He nodded, turned away.
Words and Chaos 
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