He was sitting in the swaddling, called bed, and wondering when the damned bourgeois would inspire him to high-tail it outside. Outside of his dismal wooden box room. Out into the cradle, the warm streets lit by the gas light bulbs emitting the dull stink that had evolved into the normal, the commonplace the... ‘just the way it is’ portion of life.

  It was those times that he would reflect. So often he could resist the agency of thought, real thought, particularly of his own personal history - yet those times forced the cat’s head to click and clatter down rail roads of long lost yesterdays and faraway - the always yet never, before - he didn’t welcome those thoughts.

  It’s cool he thought. Cat’s gotta get gone, the beat keeps beating, may as well beat along. So he shuts it down - no thinking, just doing. Cat’s got to earn, got to keep the dough rolling... he had something up his sleeve - trash really, pornography at best. Just the type of thing that bored bourgeois types would snake their eyes across in a moment of titillated rebellion. Crass nonsense, though they would buy it, not for its literary power or prowess but for the mere excitement of having contraband to boast about behind drawn curtains. A sort of cult of sick self-deprecating hypocrisy that was lost to their measly brain power hidden underneath powdered wigs.

  Grub Street, that’s where it’s at. That’s where the cats play. The street with the beat, where the sophisticates write lewd poems, limericks... ‘The Queen’s a Whore’ wrote one Grub Street Hack, ‘The Week of 17 Lovers’ another. A painting, quietly sifted through Lux’s high society, coming out at secret dinner parties in some dusty mansion, showing the queen with a horse’s head. This is the rebellion man, they are writing history. Their skittish, insect existence trundling through the underbelly of Lux like a furnace, burning away the old order - welcoming a new age! An age of... Never mind.

  Grub Street, never did anything. Grub Street, just a street of commerce, filled with shop fronts peddling the peddles of whatever is saleable at that time. Above the catcalls and the dog barks of the merchants, screaming the value of their dubious quality wares to no one in particular, that’s where the Hacks live. The Hacks, living in the vacant lofts of knackered buildings. What were otherwise vents for rogue fumes escaping from the underground furnace which heated the whole of the city called Lux.

  Lazy, failed artists, and nothing more. Sophisticates who couldn’t quite cut it in the ‘Ministry’, the ones who’s almost talent left them high and dry. Well, it’s cool man, the Ministry only let in the guys that tow the line, that sketch the same tune, man... they aren’t artists. They sit in decked out offices in Terwall station making sanctimonious offal just why? I guess to please the Queen.

  Legal art. The pre-approved. The stuff okayed by the state. The Ministry. No, that ain’t art man. The Hacks... they got it straight. They don’t need censoring, they live on the edge man. This is the underground, these are the cool cats - they got it down.

  Except they don’t do they?

  Sure, their pale satire isn’t precisely legal. Sordid scribbles outlining the scandals of the noble elite - debauched tales of an opulent and engorged Queen who kills with the wave of a hand. Yet, it don’t have any affect. You know, the proletariat can’t read that well. So what? Where do these Hacks sell their wares?

  Each Hack has a guy. You know a Ministry fellow. Someone who is willing to bend those rules for a little dough. Nothing too treasonous right? Nothing that will rock the boat. Nothing that is close to the actual truth. Just enough, small titbits to maintain the turgid pricks of the Elite. Just a squiggle for a buck.

  The Hack guys you know, they’ll slip an odd page into the printing press, the odd pamphlet. If anyone notices they get a penny. Nothing seen, nothing said. Then the Hack guys they’ve got another guy and that guy pops the bootleg in his boots and chucks them up to the Eerie where the nobles buy them, 5 pennies a piece, under the table cloth type stuff. It’s ironic, it’s tedious, it’s not art. But the cogs are oiled, people get paid and cat’s got to eat, got to earn baby. You know?

  Publications meant to smear the good names of the Nobility. Meant to tear down the social fabric that keeps those rich, sugared perverts loftily in control of the population. They are the same publications which keep those piggies entertained and their erections thoroughly erected. All the while the Hacks get to pretend that they are on the cutting edge of the revolution, that when their posterity look over their shoulders they’ll be catching glimpses of Grub Street’s tailcoats.

  Pithy.

  The Queen, the damned Queen Lyn Wyre, doesn’t do anything. She knows, sure as the Devil she knows. It’s not a secret. Hear it out on the streets, the beckoning finger offering a new life from the attics of Grub Street. But it doesn’t hurt her... These tales are just things, maybe true, maybe a butler overheard some affair or some other something. Doesn’t hurt because it’s become ordinary, expected, as long as the status quo isn’t compromised. The hypocrite elite eat this stuff up and then shit it out over the Everyman. but it doesn’t disrupt. Rather people believe they’ve got a voice, that these illicit thoughts are power or something. It is order, just another type of order. Not art.

  Sure, every now and then a Hack will strike too close to the mark. Discover some cuckolded duke got his wife thrown from World’s End or something. The bourgeois army will duck into Grub Street giving the Hacks plenty of time to vamoose before raiding the lofts. It’s a game. It’s part of the mill and it goes round and round and round and after it all the Queen is still on her throne and nothing has changed.

  It was one of those mornings. The call had come. Some flower girl said that the troopers were on their way. Last week a Hack had published a story about Jimmy B mistaking the queen for a common whore and well... Duke Jimmy B got sent to the Delve and this had upset some other plebeian Noble and so the Queen’s men were on their way down to ‘restore order’. So Grub Street was evacuating itself and our man was bleary eyed and trying not to think about his miserable existence - after all he had something, some new story that’ll make the Queen sorry! He was going to make a few bucks today and it’s cool! The Thinkling was about to open and drinking was the aim of the game. So time to go. Out of his swaddle and into Lux.

  Them lights stink but no one notices. Wonder if they do up in the Eerie.

  He was all right. He managed to shut down, forget the things he could never forget, just for a while. So long as his boots were slapping the cobblestones. The rhythm that’s what he needed BIP-DE-BAP-DE... Etc. The beat of his feet on the street. The street beat... It’s cool, he’s got it, just needed to meet his man. He passed the bourgeois soldiers on their way to Grub Street. Did one of them nod at him? Knowingly? Pathetic, he thought all too accurately. I’m a Hack man! You people don’t like the Hacks. We are a threat, public enemy number one!

  Blow it. People didn’t know. If they knew who he was they’d have something to say. They’d know why he spent his days drinking... They’d know that he weren’t no ordinary Hack. No! He had a reason, a purpose, he wanted the revolution, he wanted to throw himself up the cogs, upset the balance, screw the status quo. If people knew his name Joey RollaRama!

  ‘Joey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Joey? Joey RollaRama?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shhh... you shouldn’t say his name.’

  ... But no one did know. BimbleTown was a long way away and a long time before. The faraway, the never before. They didn’t know his face - just his name and the Queen had taken that privilege from him - so he drifted in the sea of anonymity. Alone. It’s cool man, one day, one day we’ll be there, we’ll overthrow the Queen and take up quarters in the Eerie.

  Joey was on the march. Skitter-bugging through streets, ignoring the sick and homeless waifs knocking about. It weren’t that he didn’t care but there was just too many. Can’t do it all, he told himself as he skipped into an empty Fly cart.

  A nod at the operator, a penny flying into his waiting bucket, and the Fly cart took off. Rising at a steady rate until, two houses high, Joey found himself in the spiderweb-like nexus of wires. All holding multiple Fly carts filled with all sorts of whoever. Not the Bourgeois of course, they used the train on the rare occasion they had to face the bulb stink of the Lower City. A rare smile bubbled on his lips as he watched a stressed Momma trying to secure her toddler from squeezing out of the restraints and falling back into the putrid streets of Lux.

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  All of everybody flying towards Terwall Station, the hub of the city. Joey had seen this from the Eerie some years before and from above, all the wires plugged into the innumerable terminals of Terwall Station, it looked like a giant wheel turned on its side.

  He glided along on his supposed ‘spoke’ for some 10 minutes. Trying to not to notice the scrambling mass of exhausted and malnourished humanity around him and plodding about on the streets below. Anyway his stop was coming up, the most unofficial of stops, he saw a familiar gargoyle perched above Jerry’s...1, 2, 3...

  He was practised, well timed. He opened the restraints and slid from his seat. BaDaBoom that was slick. Even if someone had noticed he was out of sight now. He landed in a faux corridor hidden between the apexes of two houses and stalked towards Mr Jangle’s - the back door, of course, I mean Hacks couldn’t just waltz into their man’s shop, they had to find the back entrance, the hidden way, the ‘didn’t see nothing’ door.

  God, hope he’s in he thought - the price of the maggoty black bread, that was a staple of necessity for him and most folks in the outer city, had doubled in price since his last pay day. He was getting hungry - cognitively - his body had long since given up sending the required signals. He felt nothing except the gruelling, tar pit of fatigue slowing his brain which was sometimes fatal for those that made meals from more academic pursuits.

  Almost there; his feet dancing the tempestuous dance of things well done and repeated ad nauseam - across the jagged skyline, hidden between things, loose roof tiles, rotten beams, it’s cool, he’s got it down.

  He reached the door, he knocked, he waited. Soon a nervous woman, skinny and pale, skittered to the door. A greenish eye, more dead than alive, perceived Joey through the peep-hole. The metal door opened, silently; suspiciously silently because you know, it pays to be cautious.

  ‘Mr Moon’ she said, nodding her oversized head towards Joey, because that’s his name now. Joey is dead.

  ‘Mrs Darling,’ replied Joey.

  Mrs Darling swivelled around and scurried off, cockroach like, presumptuously trusting that Joey would follow after shutting the door. He did do of course. He was well trained. He knew what was what.

  30 minutes later he was sat in Mr Jangle’s lobby... ‘the other’ lobby of course. Joey spent most of his life in the ‘other’. He kept his entire existence off of the books - just an obscure Mr Moon signing his nefarious publications. Mr Moon, faceless. A mid level Hack yet he had a good ‘Man’. Mr Jangle was very good and paid upfront for Joey’s fabricated dross, never a problem, never an issue. Joey didn’t ask no questions. Security was the name of the game. He knew not what Mr Jangle’s real name was, nor even what his shop front looked like from the regular entrance. The feeling was mutual. That’s how the Hacks survived, no one knew anything about any of the criminal activities or who they knew or how they knew them. They were only interested in themselves and how much money they could garner by themselves without any other intervention.

  ‘Ahem,’ spurted Mrs Darling behind her little desk. Joey looked up to a slight nod from the woman. He stood to his feet and into Mr Jangle’s office.

  Mr Jangle was a straight man, no corners nowhere. What you saw is what you got. Joey didn’t take too much to him. He was tall and thin lipped with a ineffectual wisp of a something on his domed head. His severe voice was irritatingly high pitched and ran to a bemused tune which seemed to be purposely off key with the surrounding moans and groans of the tricketytraps from the nearby MachineTown - the TinkerBelt. Clickety clack, clickety clack, how did he work in the perpetual thicket of industrious racket? Still, bugger it, the man was good and most importantly he was ‘his’ man.

  ‘Ah, Mr Moon,’ Jangle squeaked on Joey’s entrance, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘I gots a story Jangle. A good one, maybe. Time to run it, I think.’

  ‘Yes, yes, very good. Let’s have a look then.’

  Joey dug into his knapsack and pulled a wedge of vaguely square papers out.

  ‘Well ordered as usual I see,’ said Mr Jangle after a cursory glance, ‘still, they’ll print just fine. Mrs Wanda is a damn fine notary, wouldn’t think it, keen as a button she is.’

  It was polite, it was chitchat and it bored Joey to the Delve and back. He was interested in the dough, man, just show him the green and he’ll be off. He’s on a mission, he’s gotta get to the groove... something like that. Bread and moonshine really was his only remaining purpose. Mr Moonshine. Time to get paid and high tail it, being sober was eking out the things he’d rather not remember.

  ‘Time is hard Mr Moon,’ said Mr Jangle, startling Joey out of his daze.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Time, times are hard.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s the mill Jangle. Turn and turn, ain’t nothing but keeping on keeping on and all that.’

  ‘Yes, well put Mr Moon. Of course I shouldn’t normally make mention of such, yet it is a thing of money you see.’

  That was enough, that shook him, Joey weren’t going to continue disinterestedly, this conversation was rattling down tracks that Joey wasn’t too comfortable with. ‘Money Jangle?’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, indeed, see my funds aren’t exactly square right now.’

  ‘Out with it Jangle, can you pay me?’

  ‘Depends how you call it. It’s a matter of economy. The Queen you see, she has taken a keen interest in all our finances. Ever since the Jimmy B incident. The Ministry has been combing through our monies in and monies out. I don’t do anything like this on my books. It’s a separate thing, the ‘Other’ so to speak but it has become risky.’

  ‘Mr Jangle, will you or won’t you publish my story? Man it’s good! Its got intrigue and spunk, all the ingredients’

  ‘Come on, I know you’re good Mr Moon, I ain’t going to be chucking such an asset to the side. We just got to be clever, got to figure an agreement as will suit us all. Something that looks like it is on the books you see. Keeps the Ministry happy.’

  ‘Screw the Ministry.’

  ‘Well that ain’t going to buy nothing is it?’

  ‘What is your grand plan then?’

  ‘I would like to offer you a job Mr Moon. A proper job, a courier. Imports, exports, we got to keep the cogs turning. Very well paid, very easy. Not too much work. The Ministry know how much a good courier is worth. One that knows how to look after himself. They wouldn’t be unduly concerned if I were to pay a lot for one if you catch my drift?’

  ‘A courier? Come on, man.’

  ‘Just papers, order sheets, just a couple trips here and there and if, now and then, some less than legal prose gets left with the papers then fine. Great.’

  Joey was paused, gob smacked, a little annoyed. It was a tough gig, his time was his own, his life was a solitary one without too much in the way of inconvenience - having to travel to Mr Jangle’s being one of them. Now he had to tow the line, enter the system, become another number, another employee earning another wage. ‘And if I say no?’ he asked, mostly to himself.

  ‘Well, I’d be happy to have the literature for free.’

  It was a bleak prospect. Joey knew it, Mr Jangle was the only man he had. Hacks were lucky to get a Man like this one. Mr Jangle probably knows it too thought Joey, still ain’t no one going to buy me my drink and my bread. It was mainly that, Joey’s exhaustive need for drink, that led to him shaking Mr Jangle’s hand and becoming a trade courier under the employ of a respectable Ministry law firm called ‘Dombey’s’.

  Joey was at World’s End looking at the massive expanse of Lux spread before him.

  Lux was a magnificent city... The last bastion of humankind - a supposed haven in an inhospitable world. Cradled in a massive bubble under the surface of the earth. It was divided into two parts. The lower city, which again was divisible depending on how much money you owned and the upper city - the Eerie - a huge platform suspended over the city proper. Connected only by the towering spire of Terwall station. This is where the elite lived, the bourgeois, the nobles. All involved in petty squabbles as they jostled for position - family against family. Their loyalty to no-one save the evil Queen Lyn Wyre.

  The Lower City, Lux Proper, was set on a dais in the centre of the giant bubble. The edge of the city falling away into unfathomable depths. Out of the centre of the dais rose Terwall station. A massive tower which peeked over the rooftops of Lux and ascended all the way to the upper city - set 1000 meters above - all together, if one were to look at it from the Delve, it resembled an apple core set upon a plinth.

  The Delve is where he was heading. Sheaths of incomprehensible information regarding obscure legal matters tucked under his arm. He wasn’t looking forward to it. He knew it, knew it well. Another name, another face. Mr Moon hadn’t ever been there but Joey RollaRama... he had once called the Delve home.

  The Delve was a huge gouge carved into the side of the giant bubble. A sprawling town filled with slaves, most of whom hadn’t set foot in the City for decades. It was here, in the mines, that Lux was supplied for. Jewels, gold, silver all these things sent day by day to the Eerie. Men, women and children were forced to raise the axe day after day to fill one treasure room after another. The more lucky ones were able to live out their shit days waist deep in shit - they grew the food for the whole City. In underground grottos pumped daily with human excrement and the meagre cadavers who were blissfully expired after the cruellest of lives. The Delve conveniently hidden from everyone. A place that parents would use to encourage fear in their offspring.

  Still, fuckery be damned, he had a job to do and best of all there was a drink at the end. A drink, a drink, he’d do anything for a drink. Even if it meant going to the Delve. How was his stomach going to handle it? He already felt the gooey lava in his empty stomach turning. God, he had to face the Delve again.

  He pushed it to the side. No thinking, action is the aim of the game. ZippaDi Zoo, a wheel started spinning on the precarious frame in front of him. A fly cart was a arriving. He saw it approach from the gloomy nothingness of world’s end. It was surreal. He in an island of shit smelling light - the lackadaisical fizz emitting from the overhead lamp as it consumed ever more gas - nothing in front of him but the severest of drops into the unknown. Across the canyon he could just about see the slimy glow of the Delve. Just islands of somethings in an ocean of nothings.

  The fly cart squeaked to a stop, bumping against the edge of the platform. It’s apparatus still hanging vicariously over the side of the cliff.

  Someone got off and shuffled away. Out into the Outer City. There was no discourse. The unknown fellow didn’t even register Joey’s existence. Joey liked it that way.

  Joey popped into the Fly Cart. Another penny flying into the Operator’s bucket. Another slight nod and he was off. Propelled at an unpleasantly slow speed across the canyon and into the waiting arms of the delve. It was always disturbing. When one got to the middle of the gap. In-between things. Joey couldn’t see anything of his immediate surroundings - just a disconcerting feeling that he was hung above an impossible drop below him. He focused on the greasy lights of the Delve. Counting the distance, trying to quantify it, trying to judge it. He felt his body fizzle into nothingness. He needed the solidness of the ground, of rock. Come on, come on. Woo Joey’s going to lose himself one of these days.... ah man... Whoop, there we are.

  The fly cart stopped at the platform. Bumping against the real, the corporeal things. Joey was relieved. He leapt from the Fly cart and into the Delve.