Tales of a Liberated Earth: Release Valve

Updated: Mar 19

The wages of poverty are death, Trevor Carmicheal didn't want to pay the tab. He clawed out of the Lower Caste and found an Upper Caste wife. His brother Tom stayed in poverty and found the Rough Riders. Now Trevor had to choose between his new life of prosperity and stopping his brother before the bill came due.

Credits and copyrights

By Derwin Lester II

Edited by Derwin Lester II

Cover Art by Matt Sweeny.

Chapter One

This would be the last time. I said that last week. Maybe I'll say it again next week. Who knows? I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the smell. His house had a radius to it. Walking up the three steps to the front door, I walked in and glanced at the stairs to my left. I did my best to ignore the smell that I hoped wouldn't stick to my clothes. At the top step was my brother, his gut hanging over his belt as he pointed the barrel of his rifle at me.

"Are you fucking serious right now?" I asked.

He chuckled with contempt, and said, "I didn't know it was you, you should have called ahead."

He took his finger off the trigger and pointed the barrel away from me.

"I come here every week at the same time! You know this!" I yelled at him, as the smell of dog urine started to overpower my stomach. I walked to the kitchen and into the back room. It was coated in dog shit. He was letting the dogs use his back room, instead of taking them outside. I wanted him to be better than this. Anything but this.

I walked out the back door and gasped into the fresh air. His chickens were squawking at the sight of a human. The door opened behind me, and his dogs ran into the chicken pen. The smallest dog liked to pick fights with the rooster. He was white with mud in his coat but seemed happy. The rooster less so. After a quick tussle, the white dog ran back into the house with a whimper. The rooster stood triumphant, although it left the humans alone. He had been hit with my brother's cane enough times to get the message.

"I wanted to run something by you." My brother said, as he filled a bucket full of chicken feed and walked into the coop, spreading it out to his flock. "I'm looking at a house to buy, but I'm having a little trouble with the down payment. I wanted to know if I could borrow about five thousand, and I'll pay you back at eight percent interest. That's better than any Imperial Bank on this planet."

I nodded; stone faced. "I'll think about it, Tom." Is all I said. I just got a decent job, but I didn't start till tomorrow. He was hitting me up already. I knew he’d never pay me back. Never mind the two times he went bankrupt; he could barely make rent.

"Well, let me know fast. Houses don't stay on the market very long these days." He told me, as if he was going to do something else with his life. I wanted him to get it together. I kept coming around, hoping he would. "You ready to go?" he asked, as the feed bucket was emptied. I nodded and walked around the side of his house to where my ground car was parked. I couldn't do another trip through the back room.

He got into the passenger side, and I buckled my seat belt. I looked over to him and noticed he hadn't. "Tom, you gotta buckle your seatbelt."

He rolled his eyes and complied. "Winston Carmicheal would be rolling in his grave."

"Our uncle the terrorist?" I asked, pulling out of his driveway and setting the auto pilot to the food pantry.

"Our uncle was a freedom fighter!" Tom said, boasting as the smell of his clothes percolated throughout my ground car.

"First of all, you not wearing a seatbelt does not make you a freedom fighter, it makes you die like an idiot. Secondly, you and I both served in the Human Soldiers of Earth, so I don't know why you find terrorists cool all of a sudden."

My brother's eyes lit up. Someone was engaging with him. That didn't happen much after mom died. "He died fighting for the cause!"

" The humans lost the war a hundred and twenty years ago, Tom."

We spent the rest of the ride in silence after that. My dad was from the Lower Caste, and they were often emotionally invested in weird revolutionary fantasies. It didn’t matter that the Rough Riders had been missing for twenty years. I turned on the radio. Crap. Jim Greene was on.

"Hello there, fellow travelers. Senator John Hook is letting one hundred thousand blue skinned refugees into North America, to take away jobs from you! Why, they won't work at all! All they'll do is take what little food you have off your table, and Hook will hold a gun to your head till the blue skins are full. Never mind the H.S.E. veterans that live on the street. Veterans that fought the Blue Skins for twenty years! Never mind the working man who lives paycheck to paycheck. Now the Blue Skins will be supported by your paycheck! But don't worry, fellow travelers. Rough Rider Six is in direct communication with me and has assured me that the next uprising is just around the corner!"

I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes. Jim Greene played to the crowd of people that screamed at Imperial Librarians for not carrying copies of the United States Constitution.

"Can you believe that idiot wants to allow more of those blue skinned refugees into human territory?" My brother asked me, as the world passed him by outside the passenger window. "We spent twenty years fighting them and he wants to bring them here."

I sighed and spoke. "We spent twenty years occupying a pre-industrial planet to mine it for FTL crystals. The only reason they pulled out was because there were no more FTL crystals. The least we could do is let their people start over here on Earth."

"Not if all they want is a fucking hand out!" My brother said, as we pulled into the free food pantry. I didn't bother to point out the irony. The line stretched outside the door. As we got closer, the smell off my brother's clothes melted into the stench of the free food line. Lines like these were common in my life. It was only in the last few years that I didn't need to beg for food. I hated begging. I hated him more for putting me in this position. But I wanted to love him. I wanted him to be the big brother he pretended to be when I was a kid. So, I protected his ego from pointing out the obvious. As the line continued, and we collected the free boxes of food, I realized I protected him because it allowed me to pretend. I hated myself for being such a coward. So, this would be the last time. I said that last week. Maybe I'll say it again next week. Who knows?

Chapter Two

I was born into the Lower Caste. A charity hospital that oligarchs used as tax write offs. Not that I was complaining. That’s the way the game was played. I learned to play the game myself after I got off active duty and went to University. I found a good wife and a government job with access to Imperial hospitals. Life in the Upper Caste wasn’t super complicated. Don’t spend more than you make. Take a bath. Show up to things on time. People made it harder than it had to be.

I got out of bed, mentally calculating my morning chores. The litter box on the second floor. Raising the blinds on the first. The dehumidifier in the basement. Watering the garden out back. Watch out for the poison ivy. Run the dishwasher. Make her lunch. Cook the potatoes for breakfast. She loved potatoes. An hour later, Marylin got out of bed to the smell of frying potatoes.

“There you are.” She said, smiling.

I stirred the potatoes in the crackling pan and said, “Here I am.”

Her arms slipped around my waist as she asked, “How did it go with your brother yesterday?”

I sighed. “About as well as last week.”

She squeezed me tighter and said, “You’re a good man.”

I scooped the potatoes from the skillet and onto her plate. “I hope so.”

She released me from her iron grip and took the plate of potatoes. “Isn't today your first day at the office?” She asked, shoveling potatoes into her face. Her bus would be here soon.

My multi-function device beeped. A notification from the Newsfeed. “Thirty-seven arrested at the Jim Greene rally for disorderly conduct in downtown Indianapolis.” I checked the names of the dead. My brother wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t on the list of the arrested, either. My heart skipped a beat. He was at large.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“The Greene rally was busted up...”

She held my hand and squeezed it. “Your brother made his choice. Now you make yours. What are you going to do?”

“Be on time for work.” I spoke. She squeezed my hand again and nodded. I couldn't save him. He didn't want to be saved. A half hour later, I was ten minutes early to the office, but my shoes didn't feel right. They were comfortable, of course. They were running shoes. But I was waiting in a room. I felt ashamed of my approved running shoes issued to me from the Human Soldiers of Earth last year. The only other pair of shoes I owned were old H.S.E. combat boots.

"Trevor Carmicheal?" Asked a man with nice shoes.