The Price of Perfection

Heat rushed out into the dimly lit alley in a viscous haze as door number seven rose up slowly on its tall hydraulic lifters. The alley ran across the front of a three-story concrete building that took up over twenty city blocks, Goliath Inc held up to its name as much as the myth of the old stories. The dirty nameless passage ran into Grave Street in the east and Edsel to the west, providing a back passage into the parking garages that mirrored Goliath, convenient for the eight thousand souls that toiled away behind its heavy steel doors.

Franky was one such soul, stepping out of the furnace of a building with long wet streams of sweat running down his wiry body. He hired on four years earlier as soon as he was out of high school, a forced decision he had to make when his father passed, and his mother could only keep the lights on every other month. His mother Carol had urged him to get an education, make a better life for himself, what all the mothers did in the cramped apartments they were shoved into. Franky knew what would become of her if he left though, Grave Street was not as much a street anymore as it was a forty-foot by twenty-mile row of tents that housed the less fortunate.

“Four AM Franky” A loud voice boomed from the other side of the tall garage door that hundreds had now began to escape through.

“Ya I know, I’ll be here Jerr” He shouted back, a weak smirk tightening his lips under his sunken eyes and thin cheeks.

The wiry man turned and strode down the alley to the west, at least he could walk home he thought to himself as he passed by the doors leading into the parking garages. He looked down at his feet as he made his way up to Edsel, imagining the tens of thousands that had walked this path over the decades, imaging he was walking in his father’s footsteps. It helped on the harder days, knowing he was not alone, everyone was on hard times, but at least they were in it together.

An uneventful walk home was a blessing, the beggars and thieves having drained Edsel of all its charity and weak purse strings as of late. Franky’s father used to tell him stories of how they worked five days a week and got paid extra on weekends when he was a young man, when the core had first been constructed. Franky knew what a weekend was but had never experienced a true day off and by the time he had first stepped foot in Goliath there were no days off, there were two shifts, and the building never grew quiet.

“I’m home!” He shouted as he swung a sheet metal door upon and walked into the small two-bedroom apartment he resided in.

The smell of boiling potatoes and synthetic meat assaulted his senses as he kicked his heavy boots off and walked into a cozy living room. His mother hollered back to him from the kitchen to the left, although he could not tell what she had said and he doubted it was anything coherent anyway, she was just happy to have him back home as she stared at the food she was preparing with the precision of a surgeon saving a dying man. The screams came next, two of them, shrill and overflowing with excitement as two young girls came flying out of the kitchen like well guided missiles.

“FRANKY!” his youngest sister Faith screamed as she smashed into his tired legs, wrapping her thin arms around them like a boa constrictor.

“You’re early Frank!” The older sister, Daliah said in an excited tone.

“Well I did such a great job today they gave me early leave, and even another three days off” he said loudly so his mother would hear, the first time he had made that joke the girls had cried themselves to sleep and he couldn’t eat for two days, now he could hear the laughter from the kitchen.

Franky made his way to the kitchen with his sisters in toe, Faith was almost six and had never met their father while Daliah had been with him until that same age. More than once, he had caught them up late at night after their mother was fast asleep, drawing pictures of him. Deliah had a magic hand for art and a memory of her father that she refused to let go, her sister would snuggle up to her and watch the pencil strokes as she made the strong jaw and covered it in the stubble he had worn. Franky had sat with them on occasion on the harder days, watching the streaks make eye lashes and the careful pricks that formed his shaven head, the wide ears that he would put his hands behind to entertain them as he laughed and grinned.

“Where did you get these?” He questioned looking down into the pot with a smile.

“Angie, she wanted me to thankyou for fixing her coffee pot” Carol stated before looking to him with a smile, “I don’t know what we would do without you boy, they haven’t had real food in months.”

“Make sure they get enough, Jerr got me extra tickets for the week for going in early tomorrow” Franky replied in a hushed tone.

Carol nodded, her smile disappearing as she realized why he was home early, slag scrapping only happened when it absolutely had to be done. The core was a world wonder when it had been introduced to the public, free energy with minimal maintenance, a machine that would make life easier and cost less. That was all true for well over a century, when the fourth world war had been averted everyone cheered, when they had built four cities the size of Chicago on the moon, and another on Mars through its limitless power the world was ecstatic with the hope of a beautiful future.

One hundred and sixty years that had been the truth, Franky’s father being born on the hundred and fortieth year he had seen the last death throes of a dying machine before it had plunged them into twelve hour work days and poverty the world had not seen since the tales of the first great wars. The Core had become unstable after nearly two centuries, shedding of tons of carbon filled slag every day it stayed active since.

“Ill set a few bites off to the side for you, you can have them on your way to work tomorrow” Carol said in a soft, warm tone.

“You don’t have to” He protested. His mother gave him a hard look as he did.

“It’s nearly done. Girls get to the table if you don’t want to starve!” she shouted not realizing the two girls were standing at either side of Franky now.

They ate their meal quietly, hunkered around a small table that could barely fit all their plates on it. Fresh food had become such a delicacy that Franky felt a bit strange eating it, thinking of the tens of thousands outside the walls that fed on scraps, rats and brackish water at the very best while others disappeared into dark corners, never to be seen again, enough to feed the grave for a time.

When they had eaten and Franky had led his mother into her room to lay down, she said to him not to be a hero like his father. He lied, promising her he would not, promising her he would be home tomorrow, this happened every time he was picked for purge duty. A reasonable chance he would not see the sun set or the rise of it the day after, he went to his sisters to check on them.

“Franky… do you want to do a drawing?” Daliah questioned in a soft tone, a tight smirk across her face as she pulled faith tight to her and dumped a canister of pencils out on the small table alongside her bed.

“As long as you’re quiet” he responded in a quiet but cheerful tone, “Wake your mother again and well all be in trouble.

“I’ll be quiet” Faith mumbled, smirking like their sister.

Deiah began to draw as the three of them sat in a pile upon a small bed, her hands running along the cheap paper as she pulled a masterpiece out of the synthetic fibers it was made of. The lead of her instrument growing dull before she sharpened it, the broken off bits being used to make shadows and heavy lines, in another world she would have a life of this.

Franky watched as a face began to come into being, mesmerized by his sister’s talent the three of them wore smiles across their thin faces late into the night. When an hour had gone by, he noticed the lines were thinner than usual, the jaw not as round, pronounced as if his father had lost weight. She drew the hair in thick and long now, dark in color, this was not his father as he remembered him. The final touch was put on as Deliah traced out a scar on the drawing, glancing up at Franky several times as she did so, the scar he had acquired two years earlier when the core had thrown its wild energy about the plant, slaughtering hundreds and hitting him with a pipe from nearly half a mile away.

“I don’t have one of you Frank” Deiah said softly, looking back and forth between him and imagine she had just produced.

“It’s perfect” he said, faking a smile as he looked down as his own face, one that had once been his father’s, Frank Vania was dead now though.

“How long does it have?” She asked, putting a hand on Faiths.

“Long enough for you two” He lied again, knowing the core was degenerating at a rapid pace that might see them a few years, a decade at best.

Franky Vania walked into Goliath the next day at a quarter to four in the morning after a few hours of restless sleep. He looked up to the sky above him, the smog thinning out just enough on occasion that one could see the tall sleek buildings and bright lights that the core fed its power to. That flawless city was built upon their backs, through bone braking labor and the meager processed scraps they had come to survive on.

He was not angry with them, there was no use in that, they probably had no idea what kept their lights on and their automated systems humming. The population above was just more people with a different, although he could not imagine harder, set of struggles. Franky only wished his sisters would get there one day, a life away from this, a life where they would not have to live like him.

“How’s the morning, boy?” Jerr asked with as much enthusiasm as he could muster while he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Had a potato for breakfast” He responded proudly.

“Jesus hell, living like them nobles above us now I see” he said as they both laughed and began making their way down Goliaths throat.