Sol Survivor

In the year 2051, Texico’s immigration crisis was eliminated. There were no more immigrants trying to get in. There were no more racists trying to keep them out. This was accomplished by a satellite which turned the sun into a death-beam. The death-beam got rid of all the rotten eggs.

As a side effect, however, the heat in the Texico region became unlivable and drove everyone underground into the sewers. Oh well, the sewer people said, you can’t have it all. Thus was the sewer city of Aztlán born.

The Rat King of the Rat City district of the sewer city of Aztlán was in charge of tracking down all the rotten eggs who’d hidden from the sun’s wrath by hiding in the sewers. The Rat King was highly effective. Only one fugitive of the sun remained – public enemy numero uno, Mr. Roger Tobba.

Roger Tobba was tethered down and gagged in a shopping cart. He was in a landing room that the sewer tunnels of Rat City emptied into. The room contained a makeshift judge’s pedestal and a scrappy stage constructed of pallets. It was dark, because the sewers could not be lit for fear of the heat of the lights. It was also dark for theatrical effect.

Roger was flanked by the bailiffs of Rat City -- The Florida-Man and his two albino sewer-crocs, which The Florida-Man held by long leather leashes.

The citizens of Aztlán flooded in the makeshift courtroom to form a standing audience, and rats followed. Their squeaks were horrendous and grew to an intense volume. Some of the rats hopped into Roger’s cart and gnawed at his legs. Roger’s muffled screams reverberating in the tunnels were something out of a Giallo film.

The rats scattered off back into the tunnels. The Rat King materialized in the courtroom. The Rat King was all about theatrics -- he wore a tattered judge’s robe and wore a mask much like a plague doctor’s except rat-like instead of crow. He took his judge’s pedestal.

“Mr. Tobba,” the Rat King said. “You’ve been charged with crimes against humanity and the sun. How do you plead?”

The Rat King nodded for Roger’s gag to be removed, which the Florida Man did.

“This is kangaroo court!” Roger said.

“Not true, sir! The Austin Zoo is miles away! Animal cruelty, might I add. Though, I must agree that all the quote-unquote real judges do seem to have zapped away...” The Rat King stroked his chin.

“All I want is out of this godforsaken Messican hellhole!” said Roger Tobba.

“Poor choice of words, Mr. Tobba. It’s two hours to sun-up now.”

Two goddam hours? I was so close. So goddam close.

Mr. Tobba’s thoughts, of course, referred to his plan to escape the sewers by migrating north through an unfinished portion of the Texican border wall. A task that would take much more than two hours.

“But it’s a nice sentiment,” the Rat King said. “You’re saying you wish to escape your present circumstances? To be accepted in another nation in search of a better life?”

Roger nodded and began crying.

“What does that sound like folks? Now, the wonderful Sewer City of Aztlán’s Union of Under-Performed Latino Performers is here,” the Rat King said, “to remind those in our audience who don’t remember life before the sewers of… well, let’s just watch!”

The Rat King clapped and whooped and gestured flamboyantly at a group of actors - Latino men and women - who’d lined up on the pallet stage.

The actors carried a banner that read: THE SEWER CITY OF AZTLÁN’S UNION OF UNDER-PERFORMED LATINO PERFORMERS, LLC. Their slogan was: IF WE’D BEEN GIVEN A SHOT, WE’D HAVE MADE BILLIONS! BUT WE WEREN’T! SO, WE DIDN’T!

They put the banner away.

One of the actors stepped forward.

“These are the life and crimes of Roger Tobba. I, Tomás Tapatío, of the Sewer City of Aztlán’s Union of Under-Performed Latino Performers, LLC, shall play the role of Roger Tobba. If we’d been given a shot, we’d have made billions! But we weren’t! So, we didn’t!”

The other actors repeated the slogan.

The actors got into position. They held up a wall of pallets meant to evoke the window of a high-rise. A crudely painted sign read: GOVERNOR’S OFFICE.

The audience murmured. They were like groundlings.

Groundlings were peasants who couldn’t afford to sit at a play in Shakespeare times.

A female actor emerged in front of the set and made unnecessarily grand gestures. She was the narrator.

“Tejas was a wonderful place… At its best, it was where everyone agreed on the greatness of the taco. At its worst… it was Governor Roger Tobba.”

Tomás Tapatío emerged at the window.

“Look at it! All of those sweaty Messicans making our proud state…brown. As governor, I shall build a border wall and throw them out!”

Tomás dramatically exited the window.

“The ‘sweaty messicans’ speech was received with much applause from Tobba’s compatriots in his air-conditioned office,” the narrator said. “Soon after erecting a border wall - against the federal government’s wishes - Tobba seceded Tejas from the USA.”

Tomás emerged at the window again.

“Not only will we drive them out, but we shall take their land to prevent them from coming back! We do this to protect our native Texans!”

Tomás exited again with a flourish.

“This declaration earned even more raucous applause,” the narrator said. “Tobba initiated the second conquest of Mexico. Thus, Texico was born. The border wall was expanded to include the newly acquired land. Roger Tobba declared himself the President of Texico.”

A stage-hand emerged and changed the sign. It now read: PRESIDENT’S OFFICE.

Tomás emerged for his third and final act.

“We’ve won it all, fellas. Now it’s time to prune the bloodlines. With this piece of legislation, I ban all Messicans from breathing. I had my best ex-Kremlin scientist launch a satellite that can focus the sun’s rays on any Messican within our borders. Blow the beaners up! I just have to press this button and it’s bye-bye—”

Tomás froze.

“What Tobba said next was not family friendly,” said the narrator. “Essentially, what Roger Tobba said ‘bye-bye’ to, was the word river followed by the nastiest word ever birthed in America. The word can be rendered with the letter ‘N’, four asterisks, and a very hard ‘R’.”

“GASP!” the audience said.

“GASP!” the Rat King said, covering his mouth like the star of a bad novela.

Novela was Mexican for soap opera.

The narrator stepped up for dramatic effect.

“When Tobba pushed the button on his sun-magnifying-satellite, a miracle was performed by the hand of Totec himself,” said the narrator.

“Blessed be Totec,” said the crowd.

“Blessed be Totec,” agreed the narrator.

Totec was the Aztec sun god.

“The sun didn’t zap ‘Messicans’,” the narrator continued, “but zapped all the dirty people involved in creating it instead! Those who chanted things like build the wall and throw them out and jail them up. ZAP-ZAP-ZAP! Those who would bullet the sick, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free! ZAP-ZAP-ZAP! But Tobba, somehow, has managed to evade the zapping! BOO!”

Tomás shrugged. “I was hiding from poetic justice!”

The union emerged and took down the set. They held hands in front of the stage and bowed. The audience clapped for them, then booed at Roger Tobba. They threw bottles of green water at his head and began chants of “TOSS-HIM-OUT!”

The Florida Man clicked out a command and his crocs snapped at Roger angrily.

The Rat King knocked his gavel down hard, pleading for disorder in the kangaroo court.

The audience’s chants swelled accordingly and the crocs snapped up into Tobba’s cart, one even managing to bite off a chunk of ear.

“Mr. Tobba, this is not a court of law and we don’t care what you have to say for yourself. We’ve been stalling for sunrise! You have been found guilty of being a fugitive of the sun! You are hereby sentenced to deportation! ¿Qué dice el público?”

“Fuera!” the audience said. “TOSS-HIM-OUT!”

Cheers erupted from the sewer-crowd and the Florida Man commanded his crocs to heel and threw them a snack. Then, he heaved Tobba out of the cart and up the manhole in the courtroom. Florida-Man tossed Tobba up above-ground, where it was dawn.

“You got an hour to think about what you did, Tobba,” Florida-Man said. Then he jumped back in the manhole and clanked the cover back.

Roger choked. Above-ground, so close to sunrise, the air was heavy. It felt as if the air crawled into his lungs and died.

Roger forced himself on his feet. He stumbled forward, feeling the heat rise with the dawn. His nose bled like a broken faucet from the dryness. No matter, he had an hour to find the hole in the border wall.

Roger had difficulty telling where he was. The earth was dark with ash, the sky dusty, too. Mountains and hills of black char littered the Earth. Now and again, Roger would encounter the ashy outline of a body, the hair perfectly intact. For some reason, long hair would always survive the zap.

Despite a lack of landmarks, Roger was convinced he found the border wall. It seemed to melt and morph with his delirium. The sweat had practically blinded him, so he walked along the edge of the wall by feeling it with his hand. It scalded his palm.

The sun rose steady and Roger could feel it stalking him. He figured he had half an hour to escape. He hobbled along as fast as he could.

The sun began to pink the edge of the horizon. His skin browned and became leather. His nose continued to gush. There was no time left.

But, rejoice! This must be where the wall opens into freedom. He found it!

Wait. No. Roger was nowhere near the border wall. In his delirium, Roger hallucinated the border wall from what was, in actuality, a dried-up canal he’d stumbled into.

What an idiot, the people of Aztlán would later say.

Roger stumbled and collapsed to his knees on a pile of ashes. His hands shook-shook-shook on the hair left behind of the woman that once owned it. It felt oddly familiar. He felt a chill on his hand from somewhere in the ashes and he grabbed onto it – a locket. He felt the shape. A heart. He opened it. He wiped away the sweat from his eyes to see the picture inside. He saw himself on it. Roger and his daughters. It was his daughter’s ashes he kneeled on.

Were they?

No, she died the day of the satellite.

It was nobody in particular.

It was somebody mean.

It was the delirium of the sun.

The sun high up in the sky.

The ashes reassembled themselves.

The body awoke.

It grabbed Roger by the shoulders.

“My family! Why did you take them from me!” the body said.

With more fever came more bodies of ash to swarm Roger, yelling at him for deporting and hating and killing them. In reality, the yells were those of the sewer people of Aztlán, cheering on Roger’s demise from the safety of the sewers.

The sun rose as it always did and always had, and it brought hell.

A beam, like a white-hot spotlight, shot out of the sun onto Roger.

Roger’s skin peeled back like the paint on an old bench. His nose spat out blood.

It was a long moment of pain before his nerves burnt out. There was time enough between then to realize he was dying, and to dread what death would be. Roger’s eyes swelled to ping-pong balls, then POP-POPPED, fleshy little squibs.

Then, the sun moved on.

The sun’s work was done in Texico.

The sun’s work was only getting started elsewhere.