The Running Mill P.1
A Trump-Like Science Fiction Story
The Running Mill was initially published in Future Visions. This is a re-edited version.
Now that Trump and Elon Musk run ‘Merica, I thought it would be a perfect time to repost The Running Mill.
July 31st. Run.
Ricky was no longer grateful for the filtered air. Even when X-Up, his morning amphetamine drink, wore off, Ricky never slowed down; he just kept running, producing energy for the world.
The treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, and rowing machines are aligned in tight rows for ultimate efficiency. All the equipment was attached to batteries that Celta Corp later sold to various manufacturers worldwide. The harder the employees exercised, the more kilowatt-hours of energy they produced.
Compressed air like Norwegian Mountain Fresh and Canadian Crisp was pumped through the vents when workers collectively exceeded their monthly target of producing fifty thousand kilowatt-hours of energy. However, even the deliciously compressed air first sold to the Chinese elite and now to the American running mills couldn’t motivate Ricky to stay. But who else provided so many jobs? Solar, wind, and geothermal sure didn’t.
Ricky jumped into what he thought would be his last mandatory ice bath at the end of his shift. He said it was like a thousand illusory pin needles poking at his skin, but it healed his overused body. That day, he produced over eighty-kilowatt hours of energy, more than anyone else at the mill. Best of all, he wasn’t genetically modified.
The first-world youth had grown tired of a society filled with robotics, genetic modifications, virtual realities—you name it—they missed the outdoors, the air that was free. The youth needed an idol.
And I was going to give them just that.
When Ricky arrived at his small, decrepit apartment, his brother lay passed out on the couch, shirtless, heart beating against his ribcage. Ricky woke him with the smell of microwaved apple pie. Wherever there were electronics, I was watching.
“What’s the special occasion?”
“Leaving tonight, remember, Steve?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Take a bite of the damn apple pie.”
“I’m burnin’ less calories; I get less food. Way it is.”
“We’re not spendin’ another day here, aight.”
“I told you, I’m not cutting the damn tracker out of my arm.”
“The smuggler’s demands, Steve.”
“You know how deep that tracker is? We’ll get gangrene or some shit.”
“Eat the damn pie. We’re getting out of here.”
Ricky remembered every word of that conversation.
August 1st. Sell.
Together We Are Winners was the lie I saw or heard every morning. The new Rudas slogan was everywhere: the walls, the shirts, the shoes, the managers’ speeches, the bathroom stall walls—everyone at the Copenhagen headquarters loved it.
I worked in the communications department, where I was recently put in charge of finding influencers at the Cleveland, Ohio, Running Mill from Celta Corp (our parent company—not that anyone knew).
We got all the latest C-Web contact lenses, tatted finger C-r8s, and whatever else we needed to bring the internet to virtual reality. We could work anywhere and on any surface, yet I always had to come to work.
“Team Creativity” was the reason the managers gave us, but we didn’t have any creative input—that was left to the design team. Anyway, we got all the equipment for free—well, it seemed free until you read the privacy policy. But who the hell has time for that, right? Our job was to email partners and, mostly, to go through social media accounts looking for influencers. We were constantly stalking people, and the company ensured we were completely comfortable doing that. Our department had shared C-Display roundtables, modern upholstered chairs, showy lamps, an espresso machine—you know, the corporate life necessities.
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, we examined your life for you, and the number of followers determined how much your life was worth. Examine, analyze, predict, and use. Everything people posted to social media from their C-memory, I could later experience for myself. I could smell, taste, hear and feel everything they did. But I wanted more.
“Jet, get in my office,” shouted Christine from across the room.
With anyone else, she would have politically patted them on the shoulder and escorted them back to her office, but not with me. No siree. Good ol’ Jet needed to be humiliated in front of everyone.
“Hacking into home appliances, Jet. Really?” said Christine the second I stepped inside her office.
She fashioned her hair in a complicated bun with subtle pink streaks. As usual, she wore the most minimalist Rudas sports attire, but colour-coordinated and worn in such a way that she would look trendy no matter where she went.
“I had to. That guy, Ricky, he’s the only worker that runs fast enough to be an influencer. Plus, he’s not modified. And we need someone that isn’t modified to sell the natural counter-culture image,” I said.
“And you had to spy on him from home appliances to prove this to me?”
“Yes, the guy doesn’t have much of a social media presence.”
“It’s illegal.”
“Illegal-ish.”
“Yeah, well, maybe he felt spied on, and that’s why he just cut the damn tracker out of his arm.”
“I know.”
“Excuse me?”
I knew where he was heading. I knew he wanted to go where his brother could afford healthcare. I knew—I needed—him to come here.
I couldn’t go back to the USA. Three kids on the wage I made back home... they’d end up working part-time at a Running Mill.
August 2nd. Escape.
Ricky and Steve headed northeast, away from what was once the Golden State and towards Maine with not much more than a few nutrient bars and a flask of bourbon for Steve. When the tank was almost empty, Ricky stopped at the nearest gas station on the side of a desolate road. He sold his piece-of-shit car to the gas station clerk for three hundred bucks. He could have made three times that, but he didn’t have time to negotiate, and they needed to make sure the police couldn’t find them. Nobody was to leave the country illegally.
What Ricky didn’t know was that the second you cut your tracker out, the Sniffers (genetically modified police dogs) automatically came your way.
Ricky and Steve had been walking for an hour in Maine's humid East Coast air, and the sniffers were no longer far behind. One sniffer for Ricky, one for Steve, and one for who the hell knows—good luck if you can call it that.
I saw the brothers through the lenses I hacked. Steve was already leaning on his brother, suffering from the pain in his bad knee. The second they were in sight, the sniffers ran full speed towards them. Steve was the first to notice, and I could see that he was screaming, “Run.”
Ricky didn’t run. The idiot. He grabbed a stick, hopelessly fighting the sniffer that had latched onto Steve. The other two sniffers leaped and brought Ricky to the ground. The brothers lay there, frantically trying to scramble away from the dogs. Slowly, their frantic moves turned to sluggish, desperate swings. I was about to look away from my C-screen when a beat-up pickup truck ran the dogs over. Call it deus ex machina, if you will, but my marketing talents can’t orchestrate everything.
The brothers didn’t need to tell the man they were mill workers looking for a new life; the blood-soaked cloths wrapped around their arms said enough. The next few hours were silent; Ricky had no energy to speak. Ricky peered outside at the American wasteland, vast stretches of infertile lands that were once rich with produce. However desolate and ruined the land may have been, Ricky couldn’t help but realize that he would miss this great country he had always called home.
When Steve finally murmured unintelligible words, the man (who Ricky would later tell me was from Yemen) handed Steve a sweet, flaky pastry, probably Bint Al-Sahn. Steve slowly ate the pasty without saying a word.
“You will need to eat more if you are gonna survive the voyage.”
“What’s keeping you here?” Ricky asked.
The Yemeni man didn’t answer. He drove them for another few hours to Baldhead, Maine. When he dropped Ricky and Steve off, all he said was, “You won’t forget the smell.”
Ricky told me he easily found the corner store address to meet the traffickers. When I asked him how the voyage went, he couldn’t say a thing. Some tragedies can’t be voiced. Fortunately, my daughter told him about the art of poetry.
August 3rd to August 18th. Voyage.
We’re touching and sweating and crammed. Warm bodies at sea.
His musk, an overripe orange with garlic like father’s. He’s here with me.
Breath like sour apples, always cloaked in smoke. Was it like mom’s?
We’re hungry and touching and sweating and crammed. Warm bodies at sea.
His scrawny arm hides stories and wraps around my shoulder. He’s here with me.
Blistering bodies. Piss and shit on our legs. Too nauseated and frightened to care. Cold bodies at sea.
Ammonia wafts from his pores. Acid on his breath. His head lays on my shoulder. He’s here with me.
Cold bodies. They’re rotting and blue and tossed overboard. Forgotten at sea.
His tangy musk. His decayed smell. His fruity breath. His final breath.
Only remembered by me.
Thanks to me, that poem would receive over a hundred thousand likes and sad faces.
August 18th. Arrive.
I could have been working, relaxed, in Ruda’s new organic coffee bar where the milk was never dairy, and baristas always had dreadlocks or some culture-appropriated way of fashioning themselves—you know, the types of places you see on every block in every affluent city. But no, there I was, doing work on the shitter like I did every morning that week (to “time manage” and avoid distractions) when I received a text from my wife.
Courtney 6:30 am
This American Refugee apparently just outran a couple of police hounds. I just ran his tests at the hospital, and he’s not even modified. Think it’s Ricky?
Me 8:30 am
Was he part of a mill?
Courtney 8:32 am
We don’t know. Looks like he cut out his tracker. Cops heard that someone was smuggling over that new 3C-I drug ravers take, and they pulled over the wrong boat—prlly some setup. Anyway, this refugee’s in the boat, sees the cops and books it. Later on, they found him passed out and brought him here.
Me 8:35 am
Must be Ricky. I’ll head straight there.
Courtney 8:36 am
All the nurses here love him. He’s pretty sexy in an I’m broken and tough sort of way.
Courtney 8:36 am
*You still my sexy muffin man.
Me 8:37 am
Ha...Can you keep this on the DL? I need to get to him first.
Courtney 8:36 am
Sounds good.
Me 8:37 am
Love you.
Courtney 8:37 am
Love you too. Ps, are you texting on the toilet again?
Me 8:38 am
;)
When I got to the hospital, his mind had faded to an incoherent dust. He formed simple sentences interlaced with murmurs that rumbled from his stomach. At times, he would scream and beg for someone to come back. I thought he was just going mad from the pain—at the time, I didn’t know he was calling out for Steve.
When I asked the doctor what was wrong, he said, “Den veed bedst hvor Skoen trykker, som har den pas.” Directly translated, it means no one knows where the shoe pinches but he who wears it. Really, it means that nobody can fully understand another person's hardship or suffering. Whatever. As long as the doctor fully understood how to deal with malnutrition and severe sunstroke, Ricky would be okay, and so would my plan.
When Courtney and I brought Ricky home from the hospital for dinner, I could finally get to know him without hacking into his electronics, staring at him from his treadmill, and, well, you get the point. I could finally get to know him the old-fashioned way—I went straight to the liquor cabinet.
Ricky gulped down his gin-and-tonic and ravaged his food, the unchewed rye bread only making it down his gullet because he covered it in lard. Maybe I should have told him the mackerel still had bones, but I don’t think it would have made a difference. When Ricky first looked up from his plate, my children were already staring at him, and the food smeared across his face.
“You’re like a doggy,” said Ria, the oldest. “Maybe a Pit Bull or a Rottweiler.”
She was the only one of my children who didn’t seem intimidated by Ricky’s tatted arms and starved, hollowed face.
“That’s not the sort of thing you say to guests,” Courtney said. “Sorry, Ricky.”
“I meant the sort of Pit Bull with a nice puppy cross. Plus, I like all doggies,” Ria said.
“Me too,” said Eric and Julie in unison.
“Do you like doggies, mister?” Asked Ria.
“Sure... had a chocolate lab as a kid.” Ricky looked at me and said, “Do you have any whiskey?”
“No, sorry. Burns my throat.”
“I see. Well, could I have another one of these?”
“Of course.”
“Can puppies really be chocolate?” I heard Julie ask as I walked to the Kitchen.
“It’s the colour, dumbass,” said Ria.
I had to cover my mouth so nobody could hear me snickering in the Kitchen. Is it wrong to have a favourite child?
“Ria! Language. Don’t talk to your sister like that,” Courtney said, but I knew that she also wanted to laugh.
“I can’t help it that my sister has an IQ of a sea cucumber.”
“Cucumbers don’t grow in the sea, do they?” Julie said.
“Sea cucumber’s a marine animal,” Courtney said.
“Wow,” Ria said.
As I stood in the kitchen, I pictured how she likely shook her head in an overly dramatic way, pigtails swinging back and forth. Then I heard her say, “Do you have brothers and sisters, mister?”
“Where they’d go?” You can always count on children to ask questions you’re too afraid and conditioned to ask.
I entered the room and handed Ricky his drink.
“Were you the strongest one? Because I am,” Eric said.
“The brains, the bronze, and the bonehead,” said Ria.
“That’s enough, Ria,” I said.
“Sorry, Ricky... so you told me you lived close to Cleveland?” asked Courtney.
“Yup.”
“Originally from there?”
“Yeah, well, my Mom was from Grenada.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry, Mama?” Asked Julie.
“Because once the sea levels went up, all the small islands went bye-bye,” Ria said.
“Can you be any less sensitive, Ria?” Courtney asked.
“Are your feelings hurt, mister?”
Ricky just shook his head and glanced at Ria with a trace of a smirk.
“Why did they go bye-bye?” Asked Julie.
“They didn’t have the infrastructure to combat rising sea levels. Anyway, kids your age don’t need to know this sort of thing,” I said.
“I think we need to know all kinds of things. Like, why does my new friend have two mommies, but her one mommy doesn’t like to be called a mommy?” Ria asked.
“I think it’s time for you kids to go to bed,” Courtney suggested. “It’s getting late.”
“Yeah, I should hit the sack as well,” Ricky said, not making eye contact with anyone. One more drink, and maybe I would have heard his story sooner, but I knew all that I needed to know.
Later that night, I heard Ricky crying in the living room. I was about to check on him when I heard Ria’s tiny footsteps creeping down the stairs, her pace always slower and more controlled than her brother and sister. I walked out of my room to hear what she would say, but all she did was snuggle up next to Ricky and ask him to protect her from the monster under her bed. Ricky didn’t say a word; he just lay there next to Ria, the warmth of her frightened, small body healing him.
The second half comes out tomorrow.
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