Civil (Random Chapters)

(The structure of this book is inspired by David Mitchell's own "Cloud Atlas".

After a lot of thought, I think I'm going to complete it.)

To ladybug162, deemnsout4ever, Gingerscorp and JadeDragon, for the strange sudden inspiration and your kind words

Prologue

Curiosity is the devil.
I remember coming home from school once when I was nine years old all upset because Miss Hughes told us that morning that Mika the class hamster had died. I don't know why the news rocked my little world I never even liked the thingy. I??ll never forget the perpetual stink of fur and shit wafting from its cage, and besides eat and sleep the dull creature didn't do anything particularly interesting. My mother was at the kitchen sink when I pushed through the beaded threshold more quietly than usual and placed my rucksack in its spot underneath the coat rack in the corner. I remember just standing there staring at her for more than was humanly comfortable and my mother never turning to look at me even though she could feel my little eyes boring into the back of her head.
—That you, Robbie— she??d said, and the question had sounded like an accusation.
—Yeah, mum.?? I replied, quietly.
—It's rude to stare, didn't I teach you that—
—Yeah.?? I said. —Sorry.??
I??d shrugged off my coat and had turned to hang it when my mother said —And how was school, young man—
—It was okay,?? I replied. I remember taking a seat at the kitchen table and staring at the chequered table cloth — a different one to the white cloth we??d eaten on the previous night.
—Learn anything interesting today—
—Not really,?? I said. —We're still on fractions and Mr Peterson didn't come in today so we didn't have P.E.??
—I see,??
There was a long moment when neither of us spoke and the only sound in the cluttered room was my mother??s pan handling. Then, she had cleared her throat in that curious way my mother did when she was about to give me a grave commentary on —the way things are?? but when she produced the words her voice came out funny. Her tone was softer, cautious — less militaristic than I??d come to associate with my mother as an only child — as though she were uncertain that the words she was uttering were even hers.
—You ... heard your father and me last night ... didn't you—

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She turned to look at me before I??d gathered my words together and I saw the blotchy red skin of her half-battered face, and the sleek white strip of plaster covering her nose. Her right eye was a swollen violet rose, a clenched purple fist.
—Your father and me, we love each other very much,?? she??d said, and the vigour in her voice had made me blink. —Don't you ever doubt that.??
And then suddenly, the moment was over and my mother had returned to her normally brisk self again.
—Now go change out your school clothes and come help me with dinner.??
I??d pushed my chair back and was heading out the kitchen when something in the laundry basket had caught my eye. A creased and crumpled ball of white, the table cloth from the day before sat atop the other dirty laundry of socks and old underwear.
Red with blood in one particular spot.
Finally, I??d found the courage to ask her what had preyed on my mind all day that day.
—Mum, what happens to people when they die—
—Curiosity is the devil, my child,?? she replied over her shoulder. —Run along now.??

Chapter 2

The Big Smoke

The day begins like it always does. I am startled awake by the alarm of my mobile - Mr Manson's rendition of —Sweet Dreams?? by the Eurythmics — strategically set as the phone's alarm tone to rouse me from my infuriatingly deep slumbers. The plucking guitar line at the start manages to infiltrate my subconscious, yet I remain immobile even as the God of Fuck begins to croon: —Sweet dreams are made of this...??
The song - an admittedly odd choice for a wake-up anthem - continues to play through, yet I continue to dream even when the drums and splashing cymbals come in, totally oblivious to the fact that I have places to be other than La-La Land. But then, exactly a minute and fifty-five seconds in, Mr Manson saves the day:
—...some of them want to use you...!??
—Gnnnh——
Thanks, Marilyn.
As always I am left fuming by the rude awakening, but it quickly sinks in that it is for my own good; better an angry drone than a hungry one. Still, I let the thoughts of murder swim inside my head for a second more before I shut off the alarm and grudgingly roll out of bed. I??ll be damned if I ever catch myself looking forward to work. Pausing briefly to grimace at myself in the bathroom mirror I take a long piss, before beginning another futile early-hour raid of the kitchen in search of something — anything — to

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eat.
The tiled floor of the kitchen is ice-cold underfoot. Shivering, I rub my shoulders. A quick glance at the Felix the Cat kitchen clock tells me that the time is 4.30 am. Stifling a yawn, I turn on the heating and waddle over to the fridge in answer to the rumbling protest of my stomach. I'm usually hungriest at this time of morning and the fuckery of it all is that it's exactly at this time that I begin to mentally kick myself for not stopping at Tesco the night before when I had the chance — and right on cue a stick of butter, the quarter of an orange and milk, rank and rotten, sit wretchedly in the otherwise empty fridge. A half-hearted rummage through the cabinets however produces an open box of Corn Flakes and I munch on the dregs as though it were popcorn. Though I??d rather be back in the warmth of my bed, the tranquillity at this time of morning is usually the highlight of the day. I've always fancied myself a nocturnal type, since I function best in solace. It's a chess game, this condition we call life. You only ever really see your available moves when you're outside the game.
The brief spell of happiness brought by my little cornflake victory quickly dissipates when the events of the looming day roll out before me like a dark alley. At the end of this figurative alley is always a dead end, with the words —Your life sucks ass, matey!?? inexplicably plastered onto the wall in red graffiti. Still, the idea that life has anything out of the ordinary in store for Robert Cole is a hope long abandoned by yours truly. I can't remember the last time I ever felt enthusiastic about life, about anything for that matter. Unless of course losing your job is anything to be thrilled about, in which case the feeling lasted right up until the electricity and heating got turned off by those plebs at npower.
Good times...
Even though I find it difficult to shut my mind off once awake I am still a little sleepy and so I lean against the fridge in this vaguely zombie-ish state, idly munching on stale cornflakes as the world slowly awakens. Eventually, I think of my mother, and wonder why that particular memory of her floated to the top of my mind, when all others are buried so deeply within me it's hard to say if they even exist anymore.

Tim Fountain is the first person I see when I swipe into work. Just my rotten luck, too.
It's a quarter past seven on a Monday morning and the last person I??d like to see in a pla

continued:

place I??d rather not be, at a time I'm at my lowest in self-confidence, is this hulking six foot bovine of a human being.
—Mornin??, Rob!??
—Tim!?? I force a smile. —Good weekend—
I've always wondered what makes people like Tim tick, what drives them, what makes them so ... manic. Although there are many others like him within the walls of Book Jungle, Tim is the only person I've encountered who actually seems to take what we do seriously. The earnestness that seeps from every pore in his body is too much to bear sometimes, and when I'm feeling really sorry for myself about the place I'm at in my life I actually catch myself buying into the Book Jungle hype that Tim so keenly sells.

The guy fucking loves it here!Truth be told, I should be thankful for people like Tim, people whose very existence on this earth seems to be to offer hope that the grass — truly — is greener, people who serve as a reminder of what freedom loving types like myself don't ever want to become, the wilfully blind, the Cheshire Cat types with the undercover sociopathic tendencies, the Happy Statics.
Tim has been with Book Jungle for eleven and a half years, for fuck??s sake! Still in the same place, doing the same job he was when he started, mind. Meanwhile, John the current floor manager — six months old in the company — is a twenty-four year old possible homosexual so spotty Puberty clearly had it in for him over the tentative status of his sexual preference. Granted the existence of an educational background of some sort is an obvious plus when climbing the employment ladder, the same way a can of rat poison may come in handy on a deserted island with no food or potable water, but if I were in Tim??s shoes something would definitely have to give after eleven years — after two years, for that matter.
—Yah, weekend was all right, can't complain. Couldn't wait to be back, though, I just don't know what to do with myself sometimes, you know, too much free time on me hands and such.??
—Yeah, I know the feeling.?? I lie.
And so begins this strange business of agreeing with everything Tim says. It's like voodoo, the effect this guy has on whoever he's talking to. I'm beginning to suspect it has a lot to do with how strongly he seems to feel about something as mundane as a dud weekend, despite the fact that everyone has those once in a while. Ah, that's what it is. It's his phony —We're all in this to

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—We're all in this together?? act, the one that makes you feel bad for not matching his enthusiasm about life as one of the cogs that keep the Book Jungle machine running. The guy is a Grade A wanker, if you ask me.
—Oh, do you, now? Don't seem to translate on to paper, though, Robbie, my boy. You averaged out to ten percent below target last week, according to the powers that be.??
—Did I, now—
What a pious little cunt you are, Tim.
Ah, yes, what I hate the most about my current job: Book Jungle is the leading internet supplier of all things literary and electronic. People pop over to the website, order a book, say the new Dan Brown one, and then that's where myself, Tim and the rest of the poor sods that work in this here warehouse come in. What we do is we pick things. Yeah, that's pretty much it, I'm afraid, doesn't get any more complicated than that. The item to pick and its location comes up on these hand scanners we collect at the start of the shift and we put them into these tubs we transport by trolley. You fill the tub, scan a new one and start over again. And on and on it goes for eight fucking hours. Sometimes you could be in the same location for the whole bloody day!
Now, it isn't the fact that I have to rush around through the labyrinth of book shelves like some lab rat for eight hours a day that has me convinced that inside I am slowly dying, nor is it the fact that while I'm scanning items of the literary, electronic and pornographic persuasion I actually cannot stop for a second to engage in chit chat with the people within the organisation — few they may be — who I actually can stand (although these are two very good reasons to just end it all with a handful of pills after eleven years of service and little progress, Timmy —ol chap), no, what I truly despise about my job is the fact that my every move can and is monitored by the people upstairs. No thanks to those bloody work scanners, either.

Continued:

—Yah, Rob. John told me. Not a good time to be slacking, either.??
—What d??you mean— I say, expertly feigning concern.
The bovine's voice drops to a conspirational whisper. —Well, it's early October, you see, which means Book Jungle is hiring...??
Though I don't quite share a lot of Tim??s philosophies on life and work and how the two supposedly should be meshed together, I acknowledge this one bit of information with a nod. My job safety is on the line, and like a fat guy on a unicycle teetering on the edge of oblivion, a rescue effort is needed bad. New blood spells unwelcome competition. Since I've only been here a couple of months, it means I'm replaceable.
I think back to that long jobless winter where I couldn't even afford some Lemsip for the cough that wouldn't go away, let alone a can of soup or the heating to warm it.
—Thanks, Tim,?? I say, genuinely grateful. —I??ll, er, keep that in mind.??
—No problems, mate.

Chapter 7 (Final Chapter)

The Morning Star

When the great fireball exploded into the earth??s atmosphere, the ink sky was filled with light so incandescent it spread across the infant world like an artificial dawn. And as the rapidly diminishing ball of flame plummeted farther and farther down towards the dark sea below, there came a scream so tortured and terrible that the sheer force of emotion behind it caused the slumbering creatures to stir. Then, with the last of the flames embers snuffed out, the world was engulfed by darkness once more, dragging along with it a silence so hollow it was as though the supernova had never transpired.
But there were signs of movement on the surface of the seas murky waters, and soon a small wave began rushing towards the shores some miles ahead, its steady progress a boiling mass of bubbles and fish. And as he soared through the wave in spirit, the Morning Star looked up to the heavens and mourned his once beautiful body and majestic wings, obliterated into nothingness by the heat of his descent into Earth. But the loss of flesh was but a small price to pay for what was gained, the Morning Star knew, for he had the whole of eternity and beyond to discover the infinite knowledge held by the cosmos and to understand for himself that which the others feared to even conceive let alone ask of Him.
Soon the sun rose into the sky, bringing with it the sixth morning of the world, and the Morning Star admired all that lived and breathed which He had spent the previous day creating. And as he drifted through the Earth in spirit, the Morning Star continued to ponder about that which had brought about his fall to Earth. He had seen it happen while in His presence — an explosion on a grand scale that promised a reality infinitely slower in realisation than He had intended — so wondrous had it been that it piqued something within him to no end until he was consumed by it and it led to his eventual damnation and — ultimately — his freedom.

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Gripped by wanderlust, the Morning Star journeyed on through the Earth, past lush rainforests and sparkling glaciers, down frothing waterfalls and over clear rivers, through dusty canyons and barren deserts, eventually happening on the most splendid of places he had seen thus far — a beautiful garden teeming with flora unmatched in pulchritude from one side to the other.
But when he entered he was taken by a sense of dread, for he overheard the voice of his former master, and so quietly the rogue spirit hid; and observed standing side by side with the one who once held dominion over him a creature unlike any of the others he had encountered on his travels, whose form the Morning Star had known, whose obedience — the Morning Star knew — could surely be tested and whose will was as strong as the choices available to him.
And the Morning Star was seized with a powerful new urge to share with this equal that which he had seen while in His presence and the hidden sides of those things that the Creator had brought into being. But the Morning Star knew that the creature would pay him no mind unless the spirit took a form familiar to him. And so the Morning Star chose an animal whose fearsome beauty would inspire both respect and caution in the new creation.
And then he waited

If you read through all the above, thank yo, god bless, you're a f**king STAR!

Oh and um, no feedback please - unless its negative, in which case go for it. I don't want my ego to jinx the renewed writing streak.

Oh and if you haven't read "Cloud Atlas". At first you'll be like what the f**k, but trust me you'll be in awe halfway through.