by Steve Kleinedler
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/fullframe

Crunch Crunch Crunch…

The old man walked over debris. He owned little except for footwear salvaged from the overturned truck near the loading dock. Protecting the feet from objects that would easily pierce flimsy soles, steel toes for kicking down shit. He walked, except when he had to run. This was his life now.

His name was Bryan, but only those who would beat him, or worse, called him that. He wanted to forget the System’s imposed identification pattern, a mindless sequence beginning with PK4wv3HLINS (case sensitive), but to obliterate it from his consciousness would be to obliterate his consciousness.

Before the System, there had been the Accounting, the Reckoning, and something represented by the symbol for the numeral 0. Each had its own way of cataloging, classifying, identifying, and with each new regime, there was the purge of the old and the rewriting of the new. Everyone’s Identity, a palimpsest of ever-changing documentation, was mutable.

The old man reached the fire tower and started down to the sixth floor. The stair people respected him after he had kicked the teeth out of one of their own who tried to steal his shoes. The old woman he sometimes ate dinner with had told him about the artist on the sixth floor. He gave the old woman shoes, and she gave him beans salvaged from another overturned truck. Together, they held sway over the eighth floor, parceling out shoes and beans to those who could give something in return, like the hat he now wore.

A rat scurried by. The old man crushed its head with his foot, and left it there for the stair people to scavenge. They would be thankful.

Floor Six. The old man stepped from the stairwell. To his right there was a paneless window. He glimpsed out, past the blocks of ruin and across the river to the gleaming cityscape where those who had yielded to the System were waiting in line for coffee, or having opinions about the bread-and-circus national entertainments, or working, or not questioning their existence. Occasionally one would cross the bridge and slip into the ruins, like he had, twenty years ago during the Accounting.

The old man reached the artist’s door, which was open. “Hello, Bryan,” the artist said. “You’re right on time.”

The old man gave them a package. “Size ten, wide. Also, some beans, and a bit of coffee that we’ve gotten.”

The artist perked up. They weren’t expecting coffee. “Have a seat,” they said.

The artist’s equipment was laid out on a table. The artist took the old man’s hand (startling him, but he yielded to their touch) and pressed his fingers into a pad and then pressed his fingers one at a time onto a half-sheet of heavy paper with ten squares. In the paper’s corner, the artist printed “Bryan” elegantly.

“It’s with a y,” the old man reminded them.

“Got it.” The artist carried the paper to a wall safe, which was open, and placed it in a large filing cabinet, one of many filled with similar documentation.

“Place your hand on the table,” the artist said. The old man did.

The artist selected a tool and began tattooing five characters – B – r – y – a – n between two knuckles on the thumb of Bryan’s left hand.

When it was finished, Bryan whispered thank you as he left. The artist waved, breathed in the aroma of the ground coffee, and smiled.