My Fab Four: I, Ringo
Here's another one from Herding Ravens.
I, Ringo
copyright © 2012 by Christopher Conlon
I am now a very old man and few are left alive from those times, so I can it admit it freely at last: yes, it was I who set the trap, I who placed the bomb, I who caused him to flail and tumble and drop to his death.
I, Ringo.
Children cannot imagine what those nights were like! Videos do not even begin to suggest the reality of it. Flying high above the city in our jet-black skinthins, dancing in midair with only a fineline between us and disaster a thousand feet, ten thousand feet below. Such freedom! No, the young have nothing like it today in their world of rules and regulations and strictly enforced limits. There have been no nightflyers-real ones, not holovideo greenscreens-in two generations.
But once there were. Once! The legends are all true. Using our finelines we would soar from building to building, window to window, blacksuit against blacknight, tumbling and somersaulting, always just one leap ahead of the police and death. Gangs of us. There were the Skulking Panthers and the Green Goddesses and the Mighty Rocketeers and my own gang, the Fighting Flyers. And of course there was the greatest of them all, the Kool Kats.
No one knew it then-knew their greatness, that is. All we knew then was that they were the most popular gang among many popular, acclaimed gangs. We were all in competition, slyly disabling alarm systems as high up as the clouds, silently slicing through glass and stealthily invading the dark homes of the richest of the rich, those who lived up there in those clouds, leaving the rest to riot and rot and stink in the streets so far below they hardly had any knowledge of them at all. For all the rich knew or cared, there was no street, no ground. They lived in the sky, perfectly self-sufficient and safe.
Or so they thought.
Children today think they have an idea of the romance and adventure of it, but they have no concept. It was a Golden Age that we knew, even then, was a Golden Age. Diamonds! Pearls! Rare coins! All there for the taking for those with enough skill and courage to master the art of travel by fineline, shooting the lines out from your customized fingertips (customized at enormous expense, of course-you saved for years) to latch onto the building across the way and then swing out to it, nothing between you and the street thousands of feet below but empty air. We carried black belts with zippered openings, just right for the small but infinitely valuable items we took. And take them we did, quickly sailing back down the night, dropping gracefully through the sky until we found ourselves finally back on the streets, where we had clubs of our own, and drinks, and women-ah, the women! Outside might be riot and strife but inside our well-protected clubs we had everything we might ever have dreamed of needing, including safety.
There was only one problem for me-for me personally. My gang, the Fighting Flyers, was a good one. A very good one. But it was not the best. And everyone knew it. We got good scores, better than practically any other gang’s-but not the very biggest ones. Like every other gang in the city, we admired and envied the one gang that was always a bit ahead of us, the undisputed champions of the nighttime world.
The Kool Kats.
There were four of them, and even in regular street clothes they seemed part and parcel of one another-brothers, more than brothers. The pale, handsome features. The long-shockingly long-chestnut hair. And in their skinthins they seemed four parts of the same person, a miraculously beautiful and stylish person divided four ways, a quartet of grace and genius. They were, in our small world, the ultimate celebrities. The Fighting Flyers would be applauded and fawned over when we entered a club, but street people swooned when the Kool Kats arrived. They seemed to suck the oxygen out of a room. The Fighting Flyers was an excellent gang-we truly were. But no one remembers the Flying Fighters today, any more than they recall the Skulking Panthers or the Green Goddesses. They are all on the ash heap of history, just like all those obscenely rich people whose glittering towers came crashing down a generation later in the Great Cleansing.
No, in terms of the great gangs of that period all the history books remember now-as if they had patrolled the night single-handedly, with no one else with them in competition friendly or unfriendly-are the Kool Kats.
One night I decided that I would become a Kool Kat.
Understand: I had a fabulous gig with the Fighting Flyers. All the money I needed, all the celebrity. I was acclaimed as one of the greatest timesetters in the city-a “timesetter” being the one who set the pace for the rest as we sailed across the night skies toward our next job. A good timesetter was crucial-gangs had collapsed for the need of one, members colliding with one another in mid-air, careening crazily to their dooms below. That happened to two members of the Blue Danubes, a gang that had genuine potential-Fiery Thomas and Behemoth, may they rest in peace. Such a thing could happen at any moment without a first-rate timesetter.
When the timesetter arrived at the windowsill of that night’s mark, he became the lookout for the others. Timesetters never set foot inside the premises themselves-they watched and waited, watched and warned. I had saved my fellow Fighting Flyers more than once by sending the silent blinking signal to their beatboxes when I espied the familiar ominous shapes of the police floatcars approaching. We were never caught. Not once. And a good thing, too-it would have been loboes for all of us then, the remainder of our lives spent drooling in institutions. Oh, timesetters were vital, believe me. And we always got our full share of the haul upon returning to street level. No one would dream of cheating a good timesetter.
The Kool Kats had never been caught either, but unlike the Flying Fighters, they had had close calls. The word on the street was that their timekeeper, Sneaky Pete, was not all he might be. He was the handsomest in the gang, yes, and the most popular with girls-but some wondered about the long-term prospects of the Kool Kats with Sneaky Pete. Oh, he was good, no doubt. But he was not great.
I was great. And I knew it.
And I proved it to the world once I joined the Kool Kats.
Yes, I admit it. It was I who paid off the security guards, I who planted the explosive on the windowsill of the residence they were working that night. How did I know which it would be?
Why, Sneaky Pete told me. We were friends, you see.
And so when Sneaky Pete, timekeeper of the greatest gang in the city, swooped out of the sky onto the window ledge that night, all those years ago, it exploded.
It was not a large explosion. It was just enough to blow apart his fineline and send him tumbling into space, helplessly dropping from the clouds to the hard and unforgiving street. There was, I am told, little of him left after the impact.
Of course this left the other Kool Kats dangling, scrambling, rushing away in a panic as the police floatcars were in the sky almost instantly. They escaped, but it was a close thing.
No one saw any of the surviving Kool Kats for some days after that dramatic and tragic night, and everyone began to assume that their gang had broken up, was no more.
Then, as I knew they would, they came knocking at my door.
I was the best timekeeper in the city, you see. It was inevitable they would come to me. They stood on my doorstep, hats in hand, and asked if I would consider leaving the Fighting Flyers and joining the Kool Kats. Of course I made a show of hesitating, of weighing the pros and cons. And of course, in the end, I said yes.
And so we became the greatest of all the flying gangs of that long ago time, our celebrity and accomplishment reaching new heights once I became part of them. I fit in, too-I looked a bit like them, and it was not difficult to grow my chestnut hair long like theirs.
I have always assumed that they had no idea who had placed the explosive there, who led their original timekeeper to his doom. But the more I have learned about life over my own very long one, the more I wonder. Perhaps they did know.
Perhaps that is exactly why they invited me to join them.
Well, there is no one left to ask. Today I am the only remaining survivor. Sneaky Pete, meanwhile, is hardly even a footnote to history.
The world remembers the Kool Kats, and always will.
The Kool Kats: Wily John, Pretty Paul, Silent George.
And I, Ringo.
#
I, Ringo
copyright © 2012 by Christopher Conlon
I am now a very old man and few are left alive from those times, so I can it admit it freely at last: yes, it was I who set the trap, I who placed the bomb, I who caused him to flail and tumble and drop to his death.
I, Ringo.
Children cannot imagine what those nights were like! Videos do not even begin to suggest the reality of it. Flying high above the city in our jet-black skinthins, dancing in midair with only a fineline between us and disaster a thousand feet, ten thousand feet below. Such freedom! No, the young have nothing like it today in their world of rules and regulations and strictly enforced limits. There have been no nightflyers-real ones, not holovideo greenscreens-in two generations.
But once there were. Once! The legends are all true. Using our finelines we would soar from building to building, window to window, blacksuit against blacknight, tumbling and somersaulting, always just one leap ahead of the police and death. Gangs of us. There were the Skulking Panthers and the Green Goddesses and the Mighty Rocketeers and my own gang, the Fighting Flyers. And of course there was the greatest of them all, the Kool Kats.
No one knew it then-knew their greatness, that is. All we knew then was that they were the most popular gang among many popular, acclaimed gangs. We were all in competition, slyly disabling alarm systems as high up as the clouds, silently slicing through glass and stealthily invading the dark homes of the richest of the rich, those who lived up there in those clouds, leaving the rest to riot and rot and stink in the streets so far below they hardly had any knowledge of them at all. For all the rich knew or cared, there was no street, no ground. They lived in the sky, perfectly self-sufficient and safe.
Or so they thought.
Children today think they have an idea of the romance and adventure of it, but they have no concept. It was a Golden Age that we knew, even then, was a Golden Age. Diamonds! Pearls! Rare coins! All there for the taking for those with enough skill and courage to master the art of travel by fineline, shooting the lines out from your customized fingertips (customized at enormous expense, of course-you saved for years) to latch onto the building across the way and then swing out to it, nothing between you and the street thousands of feet below but empty air. We carried black belts with zippered openings, just right for the small but infinitely valuable items we took. And take them we did, quickly sailing back down the night, dropping gracefully through the sky until we found ourselves finally back on the streets, where we had clubs of our own, and drinks, and women-ah, the women! Outside might be riot and strife but inside our well-protected clubs we had everything we might ever have dreamed of needing, including safety.
There was only one problem for me-for me personally. My gang, the Fighting Flyers, was a good one. A very good one. But it was not the best. And everyone knew it. We got good scores, better than practically any other gang’s-but not the very biggest ones. Like every other gang in the city, we admired and envied the one gang that was always a bit ahead of us, the undisputed champions of the nighttime world.
The Kool Kats.
There were four of them, and even in regular street clothes they seemed part and parcel of one another-brothers, more than brothers. The pale, handsome features. The long-shockingly long-chestnut hair. And in their skinthins they seemed four parts of the same person, a miraculously beautiful and stylish person divided four ways, a quartet of grace and genius. They were, in our small world, the ultimate celebrities. The Fighting Flyers would be applauded and fawned over when we entered a club, but street people swooned when the Kool Kats arrived. They seemed to suck the oxygen out of a room. The Fighting Flyers was an excellent gang-we truly were. But no one remembers the Flying Fighters today, any more than they recall the Skulking Panthers or the Green Goddesses. They are all on the ash heap of history, just like all those obscenely rich people whose glittering towers came crashing down a generation later in the Great Cleansing.
No, in terms of the great gangs of that period all the history books remember now-as if they had patrolled the night single-handedly, with no one else with them in competition friendly or unfriendly-are the Kool Kats.
One night I decided that I would become a Kool Kat.
Understand: I had a fabulous gig with the Fighting Flyers. All the money I needed, all the celebrity. I was acclaimed as one of the greatest timesetters in the city-a “timesetter” being the one who set the pace for the rest as we sailed across the night skies toward our next job. A good timesetter was crucial-gangs had collapsed for the need of one, members colliding with one another in mid-air, careening crazily to their dooms below. That happened to two members of the Blue Danubes, a gang that had genuine potential-Fiery Thomas and Behemoth, may they rest in peace. Such a thing could happen at any moment without a first-rate timesetter.
When the timesetter arrived at the windowsill of that night’s mark, he became the lookout for the others. Timesetters never set foot inside the premises themselves-they watched and waited, watched and warned. I had saved my fellow Fighting Flyers more than once by sending the silent blinking signal to their beatboxes when I espied the familiar ominous shapes of the police floatcars approaching. We were never caught. Not once. And a good thing, too-it would have been loboes for all of us then, the remainder of our lives spent drooling in institutions. Oh, timesetters were vital, believe me. And we always got our full share of the haul upon returning to street level. No one would dream of cheating a good timesetter.
The Kool Kats had never been caught either, but unlike the Flying Fighters, they had had close calls. The word on the street was that their timekeeper, Sneaky Pete, was not all he might be. He was the handsomest in the gang, yes, and the most popular with girls-but some wondered about the long-term prospects of the Kool Kats with Sneaky Pete. Oh, he was good, no doubt. But he was not great.
I was great. And I knew it.
And I proved it to the world once I joined the Kool Kats.
Yes, I admit it. It was I who paid off the security guards, I who planted the explosive on the windowsill of the residence they were working that night. How did I know which it would be?
Why, Sneaky Pete told me. We were friends, you see.
And so when Sneaky Pete, timekeeper of the greatest gang in the city, swooped out of the sky onto the window ledge that night, all those years ago, it exploded.
It was not a large explosion. It was just enough to blow apart his fineline and send him tumbling into space, helplessly dropping from the clouds to the hard and unforgiving street. There was, I am told, little of him left after the impact.
Of course this left the other Kool Kats dangling, scrambling, rushing away in a panic as the police floatcars were in the sky almost instantly. They escaped, but it was a close thing.
No one saw any of the surviving Kool Kats for some days after that dramatic and tragic night, and everyone began to assume that their gang had broken up, was no more.
Then, as I knew they would, they came knocking at my door.
I was the best timekeeper in the city, you see. It was inevitable they would come to me. They stood on my doorstep, hats in hand, and asked if I would consider leaving the Fighting Flyers and joining the Kool Kats. Of course I made a show of hesitating, of weighing the pros and cons. And of course, in the end, I said yes.
And so we became the greatest of all the flying gangs of that long ago time, our celebrity and accomplishment reaching new heights once I became part of them. I fit in, too-I looked a bit like them, and it was not difficult to grow my chestnut hair long like theirs.
I have always assumed that they had no idea who had placed the explosive there, who led their original timekeeper to his doom. But the more I have learned about life over my own very long one, the more I wonder. Perhaps they did know.
Perhaps that is exactly why they invited me to join them.
Well, there is no one left to ask. Today I am the only remaining survivor. Sneaky Pete, meanwhile, is hardly even a footnote to history.
The world remembers the Kool Kats, and always will.
The Kool Kats: Wily John, Pretty Paul, Silent George.
And I, Ringo.
#