v1c2 (1/2)
Volume One: Eastwood Is All Stones
Chapter 2: Behind the one hundred boys in black
Wherever there are humans, there are certainly human settlements, or in another word, a city. The biggest city inside the Eastwood Grand District is the capital city of the Riverwest State. In the city, other than those easy-to-spot drunkards everywhere, the most active groups include busy black-market peddlers, dark criminals hidden in the shadows cautiously watching the police patrols, and … orphans.
Eastwood used to be the richest and most developed mine planet in the Federation. No matter how advanced a civilization is, people making a living from the mining industry always undertake more risks. Although the invention of Automatic Ore-Drilling CAT and Fully Computerized Coverage Control, to a great extent, improved the safety of mining operations, complex lithosphere movement deep inside the planet and those geological changes impossible to predict by computational models still took many miners’ lives over the past thousands and thousands of years. Children of such unfortunate miners became a unique species that always wandered about the many city streets in the Eastwood Grand District.
Some lost both parents, and some others lost their fathers but not their mothers. Different life experiences resulted in very dissimilar mentalities. The Federation Government covered their entire living and educational expenses, yet had no means to prevent these kids from playing hooky daily. Before reaching legal drinking age and under surveillance from implanted chips, they couldn’t drink their day away like the jobless miner uncles. Neither could they be engaged in black-market businesses. Although the Federation Government did administer food supplies, such a dark, piglet-like life simply could not exhaust the exuberant hormone productions inside their bodies. Therefore, violence, rebellion, territorial wars, and similar desperate acts all followed naturally.
The phrase “b.a.s.t.a.r.d orphans” in Deputy Chief Bao’s glum curse referred to this group. A group that gave constant headaches to the Governor’s Office and the police department.
There was still a long way to go before these young orphans would successfully evolve into sinister gangs, and simple imitation also limited the amount of demolition power they could possess, but their sensitive status, orphan, made the problems more difficult. As the Eastwood mine resources gradually drained out, most of these orphans became orphans because of that last mine accident ten years ago, and that mine accident brought great consequences to the Eastwood Grand District….
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“We want to watch Jian Shui-Er!”
“Jian Shui-Er!”
Police sirens resonated everywhere. After receiving commands from their angry Deputy Chief, the Riverwest State No. 2 Police Substation sent reinforcement as quickly as they could, and segregated the over one hundred orphans in the middle of the street.
The numerous police batons and riot s.h.i.+elds did not scare the Bell-Tower Street orphan boys in black. Shouting and chanting continued, except those slogan banners made of rugged tarps were no longer held straight. Maybe these kids were getting tired?
The funniest thing was that the youngest orphan boy seemed to have exhausted his strength from the shouting and simply repeated the name “Jian Shui-Er” again and again in a worn-out voice, as though these three characters had some magical power.
“Hey, take it seriously!”
The leader boy was annoyed. He shot a stare toward the young boy and then grabbed the little guy by the ear. He certainly felt some fear when police surrounded the Bell-Tower Street, but … since Xu Le had already said, “In the presence of reporters, that guy named Bao won’t dare to do anything”, for sure he wouldn’t dare do anything, would he? When did Xu Le ever judge anything wrong? As soon as he thought of that name, the leader boy straightened his back and puffed up his courage. Even the indignation on his face looked more sincere.
“We want to watch Channel 23!” he shouted out in an even louder voice toward the video camera lenses behind the police blockade line.
Over one hundred pet.i.tioning boys confronting the Federation Government in the street, just so they could watch TV … what an absurd scene that was!