SUPLANT / M. LOPES DE SILVA fiction
There was one glorious night of revelry in the Dirts before the munnies found out and started punishing us for it. They hate seeing us have fun. It probably ate them alive to watch our LEDs flashing and hear the music and not be a part of it. Oh, they didn’t give the party as a reason – it was our fault that we were suddenly suffering, somehow. They always say that, the way a bully will say “You made me do this” before they tear somebody up. Only a coward says someone else made them hurt you. It was the familiar torture, only amped up: the long hours spent working for them to earn munny for their food/medicine got longer, and the prices of food/medicine rose with every bum munny we made. When I was a scruffy brat my Gramgrans told a story about how people used to charge you munny for electrical power every month. But now they couldn’t charge for power because solar cells were everywhere: studding not only roofs but our clothing and hats and desert stones. The pinch got harder, so hard that people stopped being able to show up to work, but the munnies didn’t stop or seem to care. That got to me. Normally I try to keep my chin tucked, but this time, things seemed to be worse than usual – or maybe things were just the same as they always were, but I was finally done with tucking. Either way, I got a few of my friends from the biofarm to come along and go set things right with the management. “I take it the meeting did not go well,” she said from the opposite side of the detention cell. She lay on her side, using her right arm as a pillow. “You could say that,” I replied. I squinted through my swollen right eye at the long, dirty coat she had on – the kind of thing munny healers wore. “You a healer?” I asked. She laughed. “If you’re asking if I can help you out with your eye – no. If you’re
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