ambient music rained from the heavens above/ part 2

ambient music rained from the heavens above/part 2

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


Sometimes I forget where I am but I never forget who I am. I had awoke in what looked to be Detroit. A future version of the city I had visited often as a boy. Only I was not a boy I was man of about fifty and I looked like a vagrant as I walked the eerie dark streets. I surveyed my dirty image in the broken windows of the crumbling department stores. It was no longer a glib teenager I saw but a scared looking old man. Sacred for good reason, I was in Detroit, the most dangerous city in America.

I had awaken from my unconscious fog again and I saw what my life had become clearly. I was a homeless vagrant, dirty and inconspicuous wandering about the most dangerous city in the world.

The vicious inner City gangs about paid me no mind as I stumbled about. I was humming to myself, sometimes singing aloud. I could see I was nearly invisible to others as they went about their dirty business of survival.

I was looking for something. It was near, in these narrow alleyways. Of course all the doors were locked, people here are inherently dangerous.

I had found it at last, the Catholic Church where I had stayed at night for the last two years. Of course all the doors were locked. I pounded tentatively on the thick oak door.

I was too early, come back in an hour said the smiling Brother.

I wandered about aimlessly. One of the drone police was following me overhead. A red laser light flickered across my face and back. I remembered the searing pain caused by the times I had been DNA scanned before. I remembered when I had been stunned and rinse fried by the overhead drones in the riots.

I put the backs of my hands over my eyes in the palms forward subservient position and began to loudly sing the " Sacrosanct" the anthem of the machine human interaction movement. The Police drone flashed me the green light; I was saved for now.

After the incident I was nauseous. I remembered the last twenty years of my life and how I had arrived at living in Detroit the most dangerous city on Earth and become a ward of the Drone police.

An hour was up, I hurried to the Catholic church for sanctuary. As I rushed through the streets even the most dangerous criminals avoided me. I had the mild burns of the red light from above still on my face.

Using the open palms of my hands I silently knocked on the oak door of the church. Brother Phillip helped me inside. Another night of preaching, cold soup and sermons awaited me.

Laying in the barracks late at night with the other vagrants I remembered when I was a small boy and worried about demons, spirits and devils late late at night in the Dark. As if on cue the green light of Drone police flickered across the stained glass windows of the church hall where we slept. Rocking slowly side to side out of habit I hummed the "Sacrosanct". Although I obviously was disturbing others no one objected tonight to my choice of music.
end part 2