The Fall of the City of Steel

The Mysterious Pills

After history class came science. By the time it began, I had managed to push Tony's waywardness to the back of my mind, where I always kept it. Once class ended and most of the other students had filed out of the classroom, the teacher addressed me and asked me what troubled me. This flattered me; I always paid attention in class and worked passionately, but I had not imagined that this made me that important to any of my teachers. It pained me to give him a halfhearted lie for an answer so as to keep Tony's secret.

Before I could return to the lot, pick up Jerry and get home, however, the city tapped my shoulder once more. A poster, hanging straightly on the wall alone, caught my attention.

In this poster's foreground, surrounded by identical men in engineer's garb, stood Soren Caster, the mayor of the City of Steel, gazing skyward with a look of ambition on his face. Captioning this poster were the boldly printed words, "Achievement through teamwork. Teamwork through conformity."

Whatever could be said of Mayor Caster, he was at least dashing. His thin, black hair swept as though blown by wind, revealing his kind-looking face. Coal-black leather gloves concealed his hands, and a politically fashionable dress shirt and a matching pair of pants clothed his lean form, accented by his trench coat, which billowed out behind him like a cape.

I should have been one of the engineers surrounding Caster: ready and eager to design and build whatever dream our city conjured up next. In most ways, I was. I performed outstandingly in school, I gave local law enforcement the respect and wide berth they deserved, and I intended to get a job in aircraft design and start a normal family when I came of age. And yet, I was not an ideal citizen. An ideal citizen- one of the engineers on the poster- would have turned in Tony long ago. Perhaps simply as a byproduct of Tony's magnetic personality, I could never betray him. Thus, I decided with a shameful sigh, I would do the next-best thing; I freshly resolved to disassociate myself from him.

While I walked back to elevator and while I waited for its trips down and up, I tried to rationalize this decision. I tried to convince myself that Tony was not good for me, and that, because all of his other friends were rebels like him, being with him had made me look disreputable by association. Eventually, however, my logic fell apart, forcing me to admit that, however necessary, abandoning Tony would not be pleasant.

At the vehicle lot, Jerry's enthusiastic voice came as a relief. Upon coming close enough to see the cloudiness on my face, Jerry, observant as ever, immediately asked me, "What's wrong, Damon?"

"Nothing," I lied at first, continuing to keep Tony's secret.

"Ghee whiz, Damon, was school that bad?" asked Jerry, largely decoding my duplicity.

"I suppose that's it," I answered, doing my best to segue smoothly into relative truthfulness. "It was history class, to be honest. We went over the war this time."

"The war?" Jerry repeated, mesmerized. "they haven't taught me anything about it yet."

"Good," I remarked, as I started up the linear hovercraft.

"Can you tell me about it?" Jerry asked.

Stopping, I turned and looked at Jerry, baffled and disturbed. "It... it'd be too much for you," I argued. "Some gruesome things happened there."

"Naw, tell me, Damon!" Jerry implored. "I can take it!"

As the two of us mounted the linear, I pondered his request, then, reluctantly, began a brief overview of the war as I understood it. Once I finished, I slowly descended into the unholy details. When he asked again for more description, I began to get the horrible feeling that Jerry took sadistic enjoyment in my retelling. Only when I hovered somewhere away from traffic and looked back at him was I proven wrong; the look on his face seemed to indicate that he saw this grim history lesson not as entertainment, but as a mental endurance test- a rite of maturity.