**** Elysium 1986 ****

If it was true that the dream of beauty would be born out of the womb of ugliness, the three of them had probably arrived at the epicenter of a new vision of glory and splendor. The whole neighborhood was filled with the stench of sewers, car exhausts, and the leftovers of all sorts of roaming riffraff.
“There’s a big stink here. I can already feel my herpes tingling,” Abigail Lindsay grunted, scowling as she trudged ahead through the street that had certainly never seen sunlight due to the surrounding skyscrapers boring into the sky. Her facial features clearly indicated how disgusted the lanky woman with the short haircut and even features was.
“Thanks for the information,” Harry replied dryly, continuing to stoically scan each house front for the appropriate house number while pushing a large suitcase on wheels in front of him, which had long since seen its best days. On Harry’s back, whose real name was actually Harima Kenji, hung a katana ready to hand. It was the most valuable possession he had left since he had to leave Fukumata, the “Golden City” further south of Neo Tokyo, in a hurry due to a job that had gone wrong.
“Can make good cream for herpes. Need only a few simple ingredients, I’m sure I can find here in street,” grumbled the bald and muscular giant with the full beard, who had been carrying his own suitcase and Abigail’s at the same time for more than an hour without showing the slightest trace of fatigue. “Is cheaper than going to pharmacy,” he continued to further emphasize the advantages of his offer.
“And how are you going to do that?” Harry asked with a grin towards Yuri Sokolov, who was walking next to him. The Russian, who came from one of the Northern Cities far from here, had not been in Elysium for long. But his American was already impressively good. He must have already acquired a certain basic knowledge by other means. “Do you want to squeeze out some rats that run around the garbage cans here? There’d be plenty of those, at least, and they’re free.”
“The white ones with the black dots good for cream,” Yuri nodded seriously. “Much better than gray or brown ones.”
“Stop that crap right now, it’s disgusting,” Abigail hissed back, shuddering. Yuri just shrugged uncomprehendingly and continued to plod along behind her until Harry suddenly stopped.
“House number 133, we’re here!” He pointed to a rusty sign attached to a larger building. Abigail, who had just been trying to make out one of the signs across the street, now turned to face the house as well. It was one of the typical cheap tenements for the poorer class of people that proverbially kept the city running, while the profiteers of the system had made themselves comfortable in the fancier and more modern high-rises. Surprisingly, this building still seemed to be in comparatively good condition. They had passed far more run-down buildings in this neighborhood. In some places the plaster was crumbling from the walls, while in others the windows had been patched with carpet tape, but it could have been worse. At least the police were showing some presence here in Downtown, which in the long run would hopefully prevent a Molotov cocktail from flying into their living room at dinner someday. That made rent in this neighborhood more expensive than it would have been for example in the North Quarter, but Abigail had insisted on that luxury. The young woman rummaged in her left pants pocket and pulled out two wrinkled rubber gloves, which she put on somewhat awkwardly while the other two watched her patiently. They had at least worked out most of the odd little quirks of the group members in advance, before they had decided to embark on this endeavor. Moving in together without the slightest consultation when they had only known each other for a few days would certainly have ended in complete chaos. From the beginning, Abigail had made no secret of her obsession with cleanliness, which was already bordering on the pathological, and for Yuri and Harry this tic posed no problem. Living with someone who was permanently obsessed with cleanliness could possibly have more advantages than disadvantages. When Abigail finally began to wipe the doorknob of the front door with a small spray bottle full of disinfectant and a napkin taken from the diner they had been eating at earlier, the two men looked at each other quizzically for a moment.
“Don’t scrub too long, or paint will come off,” Yuri said after a while with a wink at Abigail as the first raindrops fell on his bald head. Abigail looked at him with a slightly caught look and immediately stopped what she was doing. Harry looked up at the red evening sky and saw dark clouds creeping overhead.
“At least we made it before dark,” he sighed with relief, fishing the key that the landlord had given them yesterday out of his coat pocket. Then he nodded to Abigail with a smile, unlocked the front door, and went ahead into the stairwell. Yes, it was true. They had signed the lease before they had even seen the apartment. That was nothing unusual here in this city, though. They knew their budget exactly and could roughly imagine what to expect in this price range. Whether they had to swat twenty or thirty cockroaches before they could sleep peacefully didn’t make much difference at this point.
“First floor?” Abigail asked, following Harry immediately. Apparently she did not care to stand unarmed on this street for even a moment longer than necessary at nightfall. Some distance away, a few untrusting figures were indeed already gathering, conversing in a slightly aggressive tone.
“First floor,” Harry nodded in confirmation, lifting his suitcase and making his way up the ancient creaking wooden staircase. Yuri followed them wordlessly, looking around scrutinizingly. You would have thought he was expecting an ambush, because he briefly put down one of the suitcases to adjust the pistol he had tucked in the back of his pants under his jacket. It smelled a bit musty, but otherwise the stairwell made a well-swept impression. When they arrived at the first door of the floor, they looked for a name tag, but couldn’t find one. As Harry was already moving the door key toward the lock to see if it would fit, the door opened a crack, as far as the security chain inside would allow. A face covered with pimples appeared in the gap. It belonged to a man about forty years old. His red hair stood in lanky tufts crisscrossed from his head and he looked at the three of them out of his thick and smudged glasses.
“Wh-wh-wh-what do you w-w-want h-h-here?” he asked, stuttering excitedly. Abigail strained past him to catch a glimpse of his apartment. Of course, she couldn’t make out much but judging by the flashing and blinking, there appeared to be a variety of technical equipment standing around.
“We’re new tenants, looking for our apartment,” Yuri explained tersely, shrugging his bulging pecs.
“Sh… sh… sho… shoo… shit,” the oddball appearing man replied, looking up at the tall Russian. “T-th-that means y-y-you don’t deliver my n-new CB radio? Well o-o-okay. T-the a-a-apartment next door has b-b-been f-f-f-free. Wh-what a-are y-y-you guys called?” The three hesitantly introduced themselves to him with their first names, so as not to give too much away. At least with this newfound information, they didn’t have to ring every doorbell, because from the looks of it, no one on this floor had put up a name tag.
“What’s your name?” asked Yuri with an expressionless face and a slightly interrogatory intonation in his voice.
“I-I-I’m Bobo. Yes, Bobo i-i-is my name, m-m-man,” the oddball squeezed out. It was clear that he was not used to talking to people face to face. Most likely he had not left his apartment for a very long time.
“Nice to meet you Bobo,” Harry replied in an emphatically friendly manner. “Maybe you could tell us where the associated basement compartment…” he began his question, when he was interrupted by his counterpart.
“No!” the latter shouted suddenly. “Bobo h-h-has a deja poo!” Then he slammed the door in their faces with a neat swing and they heard him laughing like mad in the apartment. The laughter was followed by a loud fart and then a scream.
“We’ll be good neighbors,” Yuri remarked dryly.
“Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it,” Harry said calmingly to Abigail, who had that rigid and disgusted expression on her face again. “Over here,” he spoke quietly, gently pushing the young woman in the direction of the nearest apartment door before she could say anything. Then he quickly unlocked it and the three entered their new home. The apartment was very small but at least furnished. The entrance area went directly into the living room. From there, one door led into the bathroom, one into the kitchen and one into the bedroom. The furniture and the floor were clearly worn out and the premises were poor, but even with that they seemed to be lucky. There were no bugs scurrying around and they would be able to deal with whatever residue the previous tenant had left behind. At least they had their own telephone with a dial and a connection to the teletext Internet, the jack of which looked functional. Abigail immediately set about searching the kitchen for cleaning materials and actually found what she was looking for.
“I’ll start in the bedroom right away. That’s the most important thing if we’re going to be hitting the hay later,” she declared, trudging out of the kitchen armed with a full bucket and a mop.
“We’ll help in a minute,” Yuri agreed, setting the suitcases down in the living room.
“No way!” retorted Abigail, slightly startled. “This has to be done thoroughly. Thoroughly…” she grumbled and disappeared into the bedroom. A minute later, the men heard her voice. “Uh… Guys… can you come here for a moment?”
Harry and Yuri entered the bedroom and looked questioningly at Abigail. She pointed to the floor where two double mattresses lay. There was no bed. Yuri bent down and examined one of the mattresses, pressing deeply with two fingers.
“Very good quality, very absorbent. Holds at least seven liters of sweat and urine without leaking,” he then declared with an expert nod. Abigail stared at him with wide eyes as her hands clenched around the scrub handle.
“You two share one and I’ll sleep on the other, that’s for sure,” she pressed out with a slight tremor in her voice to Harry, and then began to mop the floor without a second thought as the men slowly backed out of the room.

Categorized as: Novel 1 (EN) | Novel Chapter (EN)

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