The Way of the Shrub, Part 1

Allright, so here it begins.
This is my first post. Probably not a good idea to make it such a large one, but then this is the best idea I could think of to get a bunch of (hopefully) constructive criticism. I don't expect that too many strangers will be reading this, so in all probability, you know enough about me to not have to waste any time with that.

Basically, this is a story about the Iraq war, from a completely buggered perspective. Also, this is the first draft, so I'd appreciate any suggestions, corrections, or general rants that you might have. Cheers!

W

The Way of the Shrub

There once was a wise man named Shrub. We know that he was wise because it says so in the books. Look, it doesn’t matter which books it says so in, as long as it says so in some books, and besides, this is my story, and I’ll tell it any way I want to, all right? Thank you.
So, like I was saying, there once was a wise man named Shrub. This man lived in a time of bliss, where everyone had enough, and a few had plenty, and the world was happy and good. Then something bad happened, which people managed not to see coming, even though it approached with all the tact and subtlety of a bull in a china shop. Then again, people are good at not seeing what they don’t believe in, and precious few will believe that there actually is a bull in a china shop, despite the crashing, tinkling sounds and the frantic protests in an unidentifiable East Asian language. Anyway, something bad happened. Most people have considered this a bad move, and were this to be a Hollywood production, would have immediately fired off a snippy letter to the producer (or had one of their flunkies’ fire off a snippy letter to the producers’ flunky), and then adjourned to the pool for a meditative game of water polo, satisfied in the knowledge of a job well done. However, this is not a Hollywood production, and there are no pools – at least, none capable of hosting a game of water polo. This is a story of blood and greed and patriotism.

Well, one out of three ain’t bad.

High above the humdrum world, beyond the fleecy clouds drifting above the gently drowsing land, floated a construction of metal and plastic and paint. It looked like a can of baked beans which had a couple of wings slapped on in a hurry – which, admittedly is a bit of an insulting description for something as complex as a communications satellite, but there you have it. It also had, emblazoned in bold letters across both wings, the letters ‘U.S.P1’. It spun and twirled gently in the lack of breeze (for that matter, a lack of anything, which is the defining characteristic of space), and bright, two toned lights made intricate patterns along it’s length as they flashed on and off in the darkness of the void. Abruptly, the flashing lights halted their graceful pirouettes, and congregated toward the middle of the satellite. Less important lights were summoned, and sent on fact-finding missions to the wings. An observer, if one managed to ignore the lack of air, or for that matter, anything, would have noticed a frantic urgency to the patterns of light. They seemed to have a message to deliver, and that too, of some import. A tightly controlled, pulsing beam of light totally failed to make it’s presence felt as it lanced down toward one of the receiving stations dotted around the land far, far below. More lights twinkled along the satellites’ length as the beam of light confirmed that it had been received. Its job done, the satellite returned to its eternal contemplation of the land below.

At the receiving station, seated in front of a complex array of electronics, sat a pimply young man. It wasn’t as if the pimples were essential to the job description2, but had they been, this one would have gone straight to the head of the queue. These were pimples with character, ones that had survived every acne cure known to science, and even a few known to religion3. Aside from the pimples, the young man was unremarkable in all respects – so unremarkable, in fact, as to be practically invisible. A round face, surmounted with a bush of brown hair (besides the pimples), attached to a standard issue body, with the beginnings of a paunch, ending in a pair of knobbly legs (and the requisite number of feet) completed this paragon of adolescence.

Presently, the young man (whose name was Forte; his parents had thought it made him sound interestingly Foreign) squeezed a pimple, and sighed mournfully. “Yet another night wasted staring at a computer”, he thought. It wasn’t as if he’d asked for the job (actually, he had, but it’s rather difficult to get a good run of self pity going if you keep acknowledging your mistakes), but the money was good. What Forte really craved, as do all pimply young men, was some Excitement and Adventure. And a pretty woman (or two) to hang on to his every word wouldn’t be all that bad either. At the moment, the closest he’d managed was a short trip to a bar two nights ago, and the barmaid, the only woman present had barely paid him enough attention to register his uncertain request for “A pint of your finest, if you please.” He was sure beer wasn’t supposed to be that colour either, but then, he wasn’t about to complain, as the barmaid looked like she spent her spare time arm wrestling with bears. And winning. And the rest of the night hadn’t been much better – despite his high expectations of his Night On The Town, all that Forte had managed to get was a king sized hangover, and a faint recollection of being thrown out of the bar for excessive politeness. It was that kind of place. The rest of the night hadn’t been much better, but at least the beer in his apartment had looked like beer. Oh well. Back to the job.

The screen that Forte was looking at flashed constantly with changing numbers. So constantly, in fact, that had it been anyone other than Forte, all they would have registered was that every few minutes the computer went ‘ting’ in what seemed like a reassuring way, and a faint feeling that perhaps they were missing out on something. Not for Forte, though, these low standards of efficiency. He remembered everything. Well, almost everything, except for the few hours each day that he spent getting thoroughly drunk. He treasured his ignorance of those hours – it helped him separate the days from one another.

The screen became a bit more alive for a few seconds, if that was possible, the numbers flashing in a more urgent manner. And then stopped. Forte tapped a few keys, examining the screen with interest. The numbers resolutely refused to change. His pimples glowing with mounting excitement, Forte called up the last few sequences of numbers, and peered at them myopically. “Impossible. Definitely not possible”, he muttered. “Prices rising? Oil prices rising?”



. . . . . . . . . . .
A few thousand miles away, in the blazing heat of the Krabian Desert sat a pair of Krabians and a camel. Of the three, the camel was by far the most intelligent, and in the manner of all intelligent creatures everywhere, had wisely decided to keep this fact to itself. At present, it was busily engaged in being a sunshade for the pair of reclining nomads.

The land drowsed. A swarm of flies, in the truest tradition of flies everywhere, took this opportunity to hover pointlessly over the trio, occasionally making daringly close passes at the humans’ ears. Possibly, there is a reason for this, but until man has devised a reliable method of communicating with insects, and all conversational gambits with other insects have been exhausted, perhaps some utterly bored soul will find a reason for this.

One of the heavily turbaned figures turned to the other.

“Oy, Fazool.”
“Yur. That’s sergeant Fazool to you, boy, and don’t forget it.”
“No, sarge. Tell me…”
“Yur.”
“How d’you know? As in, when d’you finally figure that it’s time to say ‘dang it’, and stop living up here, and start living down here instead?”
“Yur…look, Aaloo, first of all, it’s fifty sodding degrees in the damn shade, not that a camel is much shade, but still. Secondly we’ve been through this, it’s never time to say ‘dang it’, unless, of course, you want to be the laughing stock of the entire Krabian Peninsula, not that that would make much of a difference to your social standing. Thirdly, stop trying to be a hero from one of those damned me-against-the-world types of movies; it’s just not you. You’re a camel effluent management expert, not a bloody…”

A chirruping sound emanating somewhere around the region of Fazool’s stomach cut off what had promised to be a promising soliloquy on Aaloo’s past achievements, present prospects, and future worth. With a grunt, Fazool reached into his capacious robes, and with some difficulty, extricated a two-way radio, untangling its antenna from his pajamas in the process.

“Yur”, he mumbled into it.
The radio squawked at length.
“They’ve done what? How many of them did you say there were?” he asked, his face a caricature of conflicting emotions. To the casual observer, it seemed like incredulity was leading the polls, with amusement and irritation running neck and neck in second place.
The camels’ ears flickered with interest; it’s face steadfastly maintaining the supercilious, cud-chewing expression that is the hallmark of camels everywhere.
The radio chattered at Fazool.
“Just three? And they’ve raised a what where?”
The radios’ squawking increased in its strident urgency.
“All right, all right, keep your loincloth on, we’re going.”
He returned the radio to the confines of his robes, and turned to the now interested Aaloo.
“Looks like it’s your lucky day, boy. Some daft bloody fools have taken an oil well hostage. And they’ve raised a flag on it. Sounds like someone’s going to get a one way ticket to paradise, and I’d rather it was you than me, know what I’m saying?”
“Err…sarge, how exactly do you take an oil well hostage?”
“Looks like we’re going to find out, wont we?”

Fazool turned to the camel, and prodded it with his foot. “Up, you fool, we’ve got work to do. Up, you filthy beast!”
With a reproachful look, the camel lurched to its feet. Correctly interpreting that the second part had been addressed to him, Aaloo rose to his feet also.

Fazool, Aaloo, and You Fool set off into the burning desert.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Back at the monitoring station, deep in the hinterlands of the United States of Phreedom, Forte was having a bad day. Or rather, a good day, since it involved something going wrong, always a sign of Excitement and Adventure, but bad, nonetheless, as he has a nagging feeling that somehow, it was all going to be blamed on him. He’d lived long enough to know how his life worked – in the grand circus that was life, people like Forte were usually the ones sweeping up afterward.
In all the seventeen years of his life, he’d never heard of something as ridiculous as what the computer was telling him. Prices rising, that was strange enough, but oil prices rising, that was a disaster in itself. Thousands upon thousands of vital facets of everyday life depended on electricity, which, in turn, depended on oil. How would his automatic page turner (essential, for the discerning bibliophile) work, if it weren’t for the cheap and plentiful supply of oil that had, until today, been taken as granted? The thought simply didn’t bear thinking about. He’d checked what his formidable memory had already told him against the data banks – nothing of this sort had ever happened. Oh, there were indicators of it, certainly, oil being an exhaustible natural resource, but somehow, that’d never really translated itself into a reality.
He leaned back in his chair, and tapped a pencil against his teeth thoughtfully. By now, a few other people must have noticed it, at least – his wasn’t the only terminal that monitored something as vital as international prices. If not, and the thought made him twitch, it was up to him to alert the supervisor. He twitched some more. A hand rose to prod at a few pimples, always a sign of some great internal dilemma. Abruptly, reaching a decision, he stood, causing his chair to sail backwards until it toppled over apologetically. Glaring at it in mute accusation, he hurried toward his supervisors office, pausing only briefly along the way to make sure his shirt was tucked in. Knocking on the door, he paused, waiting for the bellow of “Go away!” before he went in.

Fortes’ supervisor was a statuesque, heavily made up woman of the blonde persuasion. Having reached the age where women are no longer referred to as ‘young’, but rather as ‘well preserved’, she had dropped any pretensions to belonging to the weaker sex­­­­4, and was fully intent on making her way through the proverbial glass ceiling, the resulting splinters hopefully causing some nasty flesh wounds on the way down. She was a tyrant at the workplace, was Mrs. Berry (for that was her name), and more to the point - also Fortes’ mother.

She looked up, with a look reminiscent of an irritated bulldog. Forte, who until this point had been making his way across the layered Bokhara rugs in what he considered a manly stride, was brought up short by a stare with all the force of a well-thrown thermos. On catching sight of the now cringing Forte, Mrs. Berrys’ features quickly rearranged themselves into something more suitable for greeting one’s own flesh and blood.

“How’s my widdle baby today?” she cooed, “Come to show mama something important?”
“MA!” Forte protested. This was doing his standing at the office no good, for as each conscientious office goer knows, walls have ears5.
“Okay, okay. Spit it out, kiddo, I’m busy” said Mrs. Berry, reverting to type.
“Something just came in on the Sat-Link,” said Forte, “Something I’ve never seen before, and I don’t think anyone else has, either.”
“Hmm” said Mrs. Berry, losing interest. This was following standard pattern. At roughly two week intervals, Forte would burst into her office, huffing and stammering with excitement at some new discovery that would bring the fabric of society crashing down upon them. Conspiracy theories, in short, were Forte’s forté.
“Oil prices” said Forte, swelling visibly with importance “are rising!”