Alone Again Or

Alone Again Or
A Novel
By Michael Bassette
2006
Part 1: Sleeping
--
Syd sat in his one room apartment looking out his window onto the
street several stories below. He ate a peanut butter sandwich that stuck
to the roof of his mouth like paste and tried to dislodge it with the bitter
taste of foc. His normal midnight snack.
He thought about how he was in a poor area of Steeple City, and how
even though the people drove battery cars and only ran the room
disinfecting Spaires Machines if they had children, the people walking
in the street below were happier than him. The foc, an anti-depressant
and stimulant, only made his head pound so he set the mug down.
Down in the street along the sidewalk he saw a young couple holding
hands. They walked through the cool summer night together. The boy
wore a necklace with a pendant in the shape of a screw; a sign he was
of the Neo Freudian faith. The girl wore a circular medal. From the
height he couldn't tell what religion it was but he knew she wasn't a
Neo Freud. He hated Neo Freuds and felt his stomach churn with bile.
The foc, he thought, I need to cut back.
He knew that he was really avoiding thinking about a topic that was in
the back of his head. It had been there for weeks. He wanted to go to
the agency and adopt a wife. He blocked the usual pattern of thought:
finding someone the usual way hadn't worked for him since University,

he would think, and at twenty four he was sick of sleeping by himself
at night. And who would look down on him for it? Only his brother,
and he hated Dave.
In instinct he filled his mouth with the bitter liquid from the mug and
felt his eyes dry and his thoughts accelerate even more as the drug
passed through the membranes in his mouth before he swallowed it.
You're going to drink yourself into a spiraling thought depression, he
thought, you're going to be depressed for hours. Again. You need to
stop doing this to yourself.
To stop himself from drinking more he stood up and dumped the brown
liquid into the sink on the wall behind him. The apartment had a bed, a
sink, a desk which doubled as he dinner table, and a television.
Showers and toilets were communal. The rent was low, but he had
millions of dollars under his bed in boxes. He couldn't use a bank; The
Mayor's Police would ask where the money was coming from, ask how
an un-employed university kid living on the outskirts of the city, almost
on the city walls, had made that much money?
Three successive knocks pounded out on his door. His racing brain
pictured the mayor's police, in grey suits with handguns drawn. The
rational part of his brain reminded him that he wasn't under lockdown;
the alarm in his room had never sounded. The police couldn't be
outside.
His door had electrical problems. The current that powered the electro
magnets was shorted and the door itself actually carried some current
through the metal reinforcement strips. The electro magnets that could
hold the door shut under his command or under the command of The
Mayor's Police if they ever came for him. He heard a soft female voice
swearing and he knew she'd touched the metal part of the door when
she knocked and received a slight electric shock.
Syd opened the door and a pretty young girl stepped in. Her hair was
blonde and long, and her breasts stood high on her chest. The skin
along her face and upper neck was smooth like glass; she had the look

of someone raised with money. If her face had not been surgically
altered, Syd thought, he cheeks would probably be flushed red with the
panic of having to enter the outer arc of the city. A university girl,
probably.
Her skirt was short and Syd forced himself not to stare. The girl wore
the necklace of The Followers of Kenna, and Kenna's girls did not like
men staring at them.
Or men at all, Syd thought.
"I was on my way out," Syd said, "I don't have time for negotiations. I
have some good stuff, green and not too tasty, but it'll give you the
shakes like the hangover from a week long whiskey bender. Only much
more pleasant."
The girl touched the necklace which hung above her artificially raised
cleavage subconsciously, and stood with her legs slightly crossed.
She's trying to manipulate me, Syd thought; she's not new at this
exchange.
"Do I look like the kind of girl that would be happy with