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Tales from Carcass: Three Wheelers

I had a job pass, but the trains that ran to my job as a data processor didn’t recognize it and thus they refused my fare, and I didn’t know anyone at the station to bribe (you always had to know someone). So my options to getting to the office were limited. There were private cars, but they were unreliable, the one in my block that went to the side of county that would drive me and several other dozen others crammed into the back was cramped, slow, left early, etc. The driver was also on very many stimulants, his sunken eyes careening us through the winding roads and streets, because he had a four wheeler pass.

A four wheel pass is hard to get, refugees on a work pass were forbidden from getting one until their pay rate went above a certain amount for a few years. Our driver, by luck, had been born into Carcass and through a hereditary loophole was able to get a pass. Many of these drivers still can’t get work as a legitimate driver, because that required a separate private driver pass which required 3 generations to have been citizens. So a lot of them run “Cash Caravans” to ferry people around.

A condition of my Job Pass being renewed meant arriving to work on time every day, and a certain amount of late passes would flag my identity to be considered for deportation. I would be hauled in front of a court (after several weeks in a local prison, naturally) and my case would be brought in front of the local magistrate. In a best case, I would have been out of a job by then anyway due to my absence, which would also bar me from further employment as a data processor, and the only jobs I would qualify for would barely allow me to afford room and board, and if I didn’t have enough at the end of each month, well, it’s back to the magistrate.

Thus the week I found out our driver had been arrested and the rusty caravan he had been using had been seized (and probably destroyed) I was more than a little distraught. I had called ahead to work to explain my absence and the circumstances, but the comptroller still informed me I would be marked for absence, my first in 4 months, which would put my renewal in serious danger in the best circumstances.

I had not had a day off in those four months, and so after making the call from the single working public phone in the block, I retreated back to the rusting converted bus I was renting a bed share in and crumbled into bed, considering my options and hoping for some kind of miracle. I was overwhelmed and took a nap.

I woke up a half hour or so later, the rest of the bus’s inhabitants having gone to their jobs via bribed train passes or other methods, at the rear of the bus was a small makeshift dining area with a table, at which Roderick was sitting alone, smoking a blunt (illegal) and tuning his computer to restricted radio frequencies to get pirated games.

"You look like shit" He said “you want some of this” he said, offering his blunt.

“I can’t, drug tests” I sighed.

“Did you get fired?” he asked

“No, Benny got arrested last week and he was the only local ride to Dockside” I said “Work still haven’t given me a rail pass because they said they’ve been out for months, and I still don’t know anyone at the John Street station who I can, you know, bribe.”

“Ah, that really sucks” Roderick said

“I had no absences since I got here, and now I’m fucked” I added, sort of hoping for some kind of response. Everyone has a story like mine, so it’s hard to know if someone’s better or worse off than you.

“Can you drive?” Roderick asked

“Yeah” I replied

“You don’t need a driver certificate if you get a three wheeler” He said

“I don’t have money for a three wheeler” I sighed

“You don’t…need money” Roderick said, looking up from his computer. “I know some guys at the shop, they take trips down to the dump and you can typically find a frame, half an engine drive train, and like, just ride those. Cops don’t notice three wheelers because you don’t have to register them”

“What?” I asked “I don’t have time to build a fucking three wheeler”

“You don’t have to do much, like” Roderick said, before pausing to inhale his blunt for about a few more seconds, to finish his point. “A lot of them are old food carts that got tossed out when the Consumable Laws got passed, they’re worthless. Bikes are the same, after a lot of the 3rd Generation Citizens got access to all those, uhh, cars. Besides, I think you just need someone to talk to, and, like, I can tell you aren’t having a good day”

I wandered to the shop, a ramshackle garage overflowing with random wheels, frames, engines, and other parts. The walls were papered in old oil and gas company banners, racing sponsors, and other memorabilia. Both proprietors were also smoking a blunt between them when I appeared, and did not get up from their seats, merely nodding at my sudden appearance.

“Uhh, hello” I started.

“Hey” one of them said. “Roderick said you would be coming”

I felt a twinge of relief that Roderick called ahead, as I would not be some stranger appearing from the streets asking if they knew a mutual, which usually raises suspicion. I felt like between the three of them they were flowing between the rocks and barbs of Carcass’s complex administrative monster like water flows through a brook. They introduced themselves as Brisco and Merek.

Roderick had called in a favor, and the shop already had a rusty but usable food cart frame in the staging area.

“This is shit we just have, like, lying around” Brisco said, bolting a dusty rear swing-arm assembly to the cart while I fished out a seat from a huge pile of them, picking the worst one out of a sense of humbleness.

“Nah” Merek said “you don’t want that, you’ll feel every bump in the road” he said before taking one final inhalation of the remainder of his blunt, snuffing it out, and taking a comfortable looking seat out of the pile.

Within the span of two hours, the frame had gained a swing arm, three wheels, an engine with leftover performance parts, a steering wheel and rack, controls, and a front cowling. All parts from various piles that were lying around. After several minutes, they got the engine to fire up and instructed me on the start up procedure “Flip the gas on, then close the choke, then kick the starter over” Merek explained.

“If it doesn’t start it’s either an air problem, a fuel problem, or a spark problem” Merek continued “to check the spark unplug the spark plug and hold it against the frame, then crank the engine over to see if it sparks, and if it doesn’t it’s almost always a loose ground”. I heard these words and the day had been such an overwhelming series of disasters and events that they went straight through me, I nodded along anyway, anxious that this contraption was going to make it to Dockside tomorrow morning.

“Swing by next week, we have a meet” Brisco said

“I’ll try” I replied, tucking myself into the seat and driving off.

It wasn’t long before old habits came back. In the old country I had been able to drive the family truck through the rural route into town, and kept a stopwatch to see how fast I could push it. The reverse trike had much more maneuverability, I was low to the ground, and it felt like I was swimming with whales in traffic as I darted between busses, trucks. The walls of the city skyscrapers were like a canyon I was flying through, and for the first time in a long time I felt a sense of self determination. I found a stopwatch and was timing my route into work. I could fix breakdowns when they inevitably happened, and I used my spare wages for even better carburetors and engine parts on the bike’s engine, making it reach terrifying speeds.

The group that met in the garage went on night rides, and we all raced in a pack on the empty streets, and this was even more terrifying than the commute due to the darkness. But for the first time since coming to Carcass I felt like I had a sense of belonging again.