The sad-eyed girl child waddled down the stairs of her grump coup in the gray half-light, between gray walls, under a gray ceiling, and over a once white floor, now black with ages of ungrumped grime. The grumps never did anything anymore, where, it was assumed, if you believed the sims, that they once had.
Just as she began to envision what a world would be like, if grumps had the energy and industry of brats, she was harshly brought back to reality by the greens, blues and pinks that radiated from the grump den, where her own grumps cashed out her food credits for sim time. She half hoped that the massage function on the recliners would fail, so that her grumps would blow up like festering diseased balloons as Richie Dorne’s grumps had, even after Richie called in an educator for a script.
She would make no such call.
She made her way like a top-heavy shadow through the halls, down the escape, out into the crumbledown alley and beyond, into the street and up to the sim center, which was just next door to the educational compact, where cruel destiny awaited them all, a destiny she did not, for a minute, expect to share.
She stepped in line behind Darin Meeks and “Scooter,” who was a total vacuum and wouldn’t let them call him anything else. Scooter was carrying his scooter, as usual, trying not to get fried or tagged for using manuals on a sim lot. The sim strobed a cool blue when Darin—one of the older brats—stepped up for his weekly download. Older brats were always freaked about their weeklies, even as the little brats, right out of nurture, would forever clamor for double downloads. As much as a vacuum as Scooter was, he did share one bond with her. They had never gone in for downloads, but had, alone among the Brats of Quad Seventy-eight, played the lottery together.
Neither the downloads or the lottery—if won—tied you to the sim centers. You cashed your lottery and lived your sims in your own head, or as a frontal projection, all the same. It was just something about brats like Scooter and her, those few strangees who preferred a manual life, that had them addicted to the lottery. Playing the lottery got you a chance at a sim pal like Bennie, or, by default, got you a view of Organa, Kiki Holland, Tiger Palmer or Brant and Lassie. Scooter always went for the Tiger Palmer downloads and she usually took a Brant and Lassie download, set it for projection on her frontal port, and curl up and watched with Bennie. However, recently, Brant and Lassie had been watching Organa, and so she and Bennie had also gotten hooked on the life of the anti-grump, the mommy of the whole entire world, and the sweetheart of the towering goons that policed the downs where the brats lived with their grumps. She had spied on goons stepping off against a wall and using it as a screen to watch expanded images of Organa.
One thing was for certain, she would never, ever hit the sim bin tab. That would break Bennie’s heart. And even after Bennie was gone, she didn’t think she’d ever hit it again. This just hurt too bad, losing a sim pal a little at a time. And she could never afford a fresh one, would always get a used sim pal like Bennie, that some kid who had been lucky enough to be adopted by a gen had grown tired of and put on the exchange list. She was just a brat with a dying sim pal whose grumps hogged her credits and left her on corporate assistance.
Darrin stepped up, after rubbing his sweaty palms together, meaning the tab was going to be all nasty. To this Bennie whined disapprovingly. He was a real stickler for hygiene, and just could not get over how dirty the older brats were. He had been reminded often, by her, that he was lucky to be the pal of a brat of sensible age.
Darrin waited expectantly. Then, instead of the Kiki Holland dance screen, which he had been viewing a lot recently, watching the grossly built woman wiggle her bubble butt and balloon boobs, in that stupid grass skirt, with her dumb blonde hair waving around like something that would eat you in a Halloween sim, there came up the dreaded face of the educator, the woman with the blonde buzz cut and the military facial features, laying down the code, “Darrin Meeks, welcome to your age of majority. Direct yourself to the educational compact to your right, and prepare for your citizenship download. Congratulations, you are now prepared to be a contributing member of Society and an indispensible asset to MotherCorp.
Darrin began to whimper and stem as Scooter blurted, “Fuck that! I’m never growing up. That’s why I’m a scooter boy. This shit will stunt my growth—Tiger Palmer said so—said I’m such a sweater that I’m retard for life!”
“Shut up, Scooter,” she hissed, “that’s not nice!”
Darrin was now crying out loud as Scooter, rejoined, “No shit it’s not nice! Fucking Darrin just got pushed down the grump chute for good. Before you know it he’ll be shitting in his recliner across the hall from Old Grump Greer while that rotten skank murders another grumpy and orders a replacement. Can you believe that shit, that those goons and eds have not figured out what a bitch she is yet? What’s she like a million years old with one tooth? I bet she gets Darrin for a grumpy—would that—”
“Shuush!” she hissed, as Darrin wailed and twisted in agony, too upset to even fall over and roll around on the ground. More brats were lining up behind them, and a kid too, some gen bitch’s upgraded brat! This would bring heat, if that kid had to wait.
Bennie was shivering in fright, and licking her cheek, as she hugged him, surprised that she was so strong to be able to hold him this long. Then Scooter’s eyes bugged out and he hissed, “Fuckin’ A! Goon at one o’clock!”
Everybody in line seemed to shiver as the towering armored goon walk down the line from the railhead, placed one gloved hand on Darrin’s sobbing shoulder, squeezed, picked the graduating brat up in that one hand, and carried him next door to the dreaded educational compact. As their former friend hung limply at an angle, like a rat in the jaws of an ally cog, they got back to their own concerns, not wanting to be prematurely selected for education for holding up the sim line.
