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	Verse 2
	Verse 2 While we zoomed away from the Mincer in relative safety, it turned out we still weren’t out of the red. Twenty seconds of riding nearly sent us hurtling straight into another Mincer as it rounded the corner, and we flew vertically up and over another the moment we escaped it. “What the hell are they all doing here?!” Nick yelled over his shoulder at me, rounding another crumbling corner at breakneck speed. “How should I know? Ask Seth! He’s the genius!” I growled back, hanging on tightly to him and the bike as its back end smashed through a pile of rocks. I heard Nick swear colourfully about the scratches his baby was going to have after this little expedition. When we finally cleared the outskirts of the Old Sector, the army of Mincers thinned out and we slowed down. I could finally hear Nicholas properly over the strain of the air reverberator, and he unwrapped a lolly and stuck it in his mouth like a smoker would a cigarette. I swallowed nervously as he did it all with both hands off the handlebars. “Nick, steer the damn bike.” I told him, heart finally slowing from its marathon race to a human beat. “All the stuff’s still there.” He mumbled dejectedly over his lolly. “The Mincers won’t notice it, they don’t go in the buildings anyway.” “No, but everyone going to the concert will die on the way there. We can’t go back there either, with that many Mincers about we’ll get turned into Consortium Kebabs. So the stuff’s basically lost.” He huffed and shrugged into his jacket. I noticed how cold it was getting too, what with the wind from riding the bike, my arms were covered in goose bumps and the frigid air whipped right through my thin shirt. “It might not be.” “Oh come on Amos, we can’t expect Seth to do everything.” Nick admonished me, turning to give me a look. I just slapped his shoulder and motioned for him to watch the road ahead. Man, I hate his driving. “Not everything,” I argued. “Just sort out a few Mincers. He did say he was working on something that’d help us deal with those.” I got no reply from Nick, and instead focussed on keeping his hair from slapping me in the face every five seconds for the rest of the journey. The outskirts of Olsen were just as run-down as the rest of it, only they had a few rivers thrown in on top of everything. Wooden bridges, sometimes nothing more than planks thrown together in zigzagged paths, were the only way across the main river that circled Olsen and then broke into tributaries. I knew at that point that it lead to the sea, but I had never been there. Nick steered the air bike across those planks so fast I thought I was going to hurl. He whooped and yelled as the ducks scattered squawking when we hammered the wood above their heads, I just held on damn hard until we reached the other side and raced alongside the churning water instead of above it. The path alerted me to the fact that we were going to visit genius Seth, despite Nick’s arguments. Nick and Seth had been friends since early childhood, and when he first came onto the scene I’d hated him with a passion. He was taking my brother away in my childish view, but we soon learnt that in a place like Olsen you need as many friends as you can get. After that initial hatred, we got over it and moved on. The guy’s not bad, just a little on the depressing side. But he does share my interest in nature, so I suppose we’ll always have some form of conversation to fall back on. Seth lived in an old mansion outside Olsen. The Consortium had ordered him and his mother to move out and into Silver City more times than I can count, but he just politely refused and they accepted that. Because he’s a genius. I’m not exaggerating, he really is some sort of wonder kid. He can walk into a room and tell you in five seconds how many ceiling tiles there are, what the dimensions would be and then draw it exactly as he’d seen it. He’s kind of creepy that way. The house loomed into view, not as bad as the ruins of the Old Sector but certainly not in mint condition. We sped towards it through sparse shrubbery, and as the front wall got closer, Nick turned sharply and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. He picked up a pebble and hurled at the highest window; a long standing tradition of communication, I’m told. A dark head of hair stuck itself out, followed by a creamy-pale face and sharp hazel eyes. “What do you want now, Nicholas?” His voice held a strange lilt, an accent that my schooling had defined as ‘ancient Russian’. Russia, like all countries, was now dissolved into either Silver City, Olsen or rubble, depending on its location. “What, can’t a friend visit without a reason?” Nick shouted back, hands on his hips cockily. “Sure, but you never come without a reason. I don’t know about these ‘friends’ you speak of.” Nicholas pulled a face at him and he rolled his eyes, slamming the sliding window shut. A few moments later the front door opened, and the whole of Seth was revealed. Walking briskly down the steps to us, he grinned genially. “So then,” He began. “What is the reason?” Nicholas and I exchanged glances. “We should talk about this inside.” He answered, flicking some fiery strands over one shoulder. Inside was cool compared to the heat of outer Olsen. The house lacked decoration; pictures were long gone and all the tables and carpets had been removed. In their places oily marks remained, but after frequent visits I knew that this was the unused part of the house, and thus didn’t require decoration. The main part was yet to come. No sound came from upstairs, telling us without words that Seth’s mother was out. Ignoring the upward staircase, we descended steps to the old cellar, which was even colder than the hallway, and crossed the threshold into Seth’s domain of gizmos and gadgets. Around the room there were wires and old pieces of technology, dismantled machines rigged up to the main line through customised adaptors. There was little no to light, in fact a grate letting in filtered sunlight was the only illumination. Corners filled with shadow were also piled high with junk. Everything and anything was hanging from hooks and railings on the ceiling, and lights blinked in different colours, reminding me of the Mincers’ camera eyes. Remembering the player I’d risked my life for, I opened my shoulder bag and pulled it out. “Here,” I spoke softly into the quiet room, as always feeling like I was interrupting some holy sanctuary . “I got this from the Old Sector this morning.” I handed it to Seth who had seated himself at a disorganised work table. He looked like a king on his mechanical throne. Admittedly one of junk, and with only two subjects, but a king none-the-less. He took it gently into skilled hands, and skimmed his fingers over the outer casing. “Where was it?” he asked. “In one of the houses there. I don’t think even the raiders have touched it yet…” “Amos! Damnit, it’s no wonder we nearly get turned into Mincer meat every time we go out; how many times do we have to tell you not to go too far into the Old Sector?” Nicholas scolded me, turning brightly flashing eyes on me. “What’s this about Mincers?” Seth asked, coolly. If it weren’t for my brother suddenly softening his voice, I wouldn’t have known that Seth was even slightly concerned. No-one could ever really tell what the genius was thinking, but Nick seemed to work on a different level with him. At times it was freaky, but in the months to follow it became more and more useful. “This kid came running screaming from the ruins, ordering me to start up the air bike. Of course I did, and right after he came into view several Mincers did too.” Nick ruffled my hair absently as he talked. I batted his hand away irritably. “They’re everywhere out there Seth, it’s like a hornet’s nest of robotics. There’s no way we can hold the concert with that much security on our backs.” Seth watched us for a moment, grinned, then changed it to a sly smile. “Of course there’s a way. You have me!” He placed the player on the desk, forgotten until another time, and walked over to a filing cabinet on the other side of the room. Pulling out the third drawer, he retrieved an oval-shaped…thing. It looked like a tin of beans, only with a lot of buttons and dooh-dahs sticking out of it. He shook it at us triumphantly like it was the holy grail. “And I have this.” He came back to the desk and slammed it down in front of us. We looked at it from every angle, considered our options and turned to Seth. “What the hell is it?” Nick asked finally, flicking it. Seth rolled his eyes, realising once again that we weren’t quite on his level. “It’s a device I created for dealing with our Mincer problem. Within a twenty mile radius of this thing, they’ll automatically go into sleep mode and turn off until reactivated. But they can’t be reactivated until they’re out of range, so unless the Consortium manage to find all of these babies –and believe me, I’ve made hundreds- Mincers are no threat. They won’t even know the Mincers are offline.” For a moment we sat in stunned silence, and then I cheered and Nick glomped Seth, getting a noogie for his efforts. “We can have hundreds of concerts now, no problem! I knew there was a reason I hung out with you.” Nick congratulated. I nodded along with him, and then got sidetracked by a ladybird on the side of the desk. “So the concert can go ahead, we just need to set these packs around the area.” “Wait, don’t they need power?” “No, they’re set to go. It’s all made up of magnets, and magnets don’t need power.” “Then how do they work?” I asked, ladybird happily resting on the tip of my finger. I tried to stroke its dotted back, but it shied away and trotted back down toward my hand. “Ah, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” Seth grinned and winked before grabbing my bag and holding it open, shoving the gadget inside. The ladybird flew away, startled. I frowned.“There’s a shipment today though Nick, we have to go oversee that first.” My brother looked up from a round disk player with headphones that he’d been poking and smiled broadly. “Payday.” He smirked. Half of the magnet packs safely –and heavily- in my bag, we left Nick’s bike on Seth’s drive and began the trek along the river. Shipments came in every month or so, with no real schedule or time scale. Nick was one of the main overseers of the shipments, and he would watch people unload illegal goods created by people who didn’t want to follow the diet laid out by the Consortium. No-one wants to eat the mush they pretend is edible every day. So my family would ship in illegal foods and sell them. For a poor-sod Olsen family, we weren’t that bad off, thanks to being part of a network of families that sold the goods all over Olsen, and in Silver City as well. That’s right reader mine, even the sparkling city has to follow the rules. And what oppressive rules they are too. Which is why we tried our best to break them. The loading bay for shipments in our south section of Olsen was another abandoned building. It was topped by a giant yellow ‘M’ and had faded pictures of food everywhere. The outside name declared the collapsed franchise ‘McDonald’s’. The food came in by air bike; one kid would ride in from wherever it all came from, and would dump the stuff in the store room. Another kid would bring a different box, and so on. The store room would be piled high by now. We’d get first pick of the new goods, to select the best for the concert that evening. Sweets, chocolate and pop, and then for those who liked it we had alcohol. Homemade and potent, perfect for bringing the night alive. Working our way to the abandoned McDonalds building, I noticed a distinct lack of Mincers. The magnet packs were doing their job, and I was believing that there was more and more of a possibility that the concert would be a success. When the huge yellow ‘M’ came into view, we ducked into the dying undergrowth and skirted our way around the back path. There was a back exit, a once-upon-a-time ‘drive thru’ was now an overgrown pathway, which we used to get inside. Chairs of red and tables of chrome, dead neon strips and flaking paintings of clowns on the walls made up our loading bay. And in a small cupboard probably made for any other purpose, we stored a pile of wonders. That’s illegal act number four, and yes, I am proud of it.
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