Twentieth Century Boy
07 Feb 2021JB Threepwood
I'd been given a book recently. It was a first edition of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I was kind of sure that it couldn't possibly be a thousand year old original... the thing would be worth more than an Orbis station... but I was struggling to find anything that would give away it's real age if it wasn't.I'd only got into collecting counterfeit novels during my latter, smuggling days... but my love of old, pre-expansion stories started back when I was a kid.
*****
I was a baby when my dad died... I think it was from an overdose but my mom never talked about him. She was a junkie herself and I ended up having a rotating carousel of shit-heads that were knocking around with her.
None of those dead-beat scumbags wanted a little kid hanging around. They were interested in sex and drugs, not looking after some little brat. My mom was the same.
But there was one of her boyfriends who wasn't like the rest.
His name was Arthur. My mom had told me to call him Uncle Arthur... they were all "uncles" though.
Arthur was different. I don't think he did drugs and would often come and talk with me when my mom was strung out on Onion Head. I liked him and remember wanting him to find someone better than my mom... he was a nice bloke who didn't need to be wrapped up in her bullshit.
He was my first positive male role model even though, in reality, he was probably only with my mom for a couple of months.
I remember clearly the day he brought over a PEEB... a Pre-Expansion Entertainment Box. I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. All the well-off families had Gal-Net type Media devices... all the modern shows from around the bubble. PEEBs were little boxes full of freeware, 20th Century TV, movies and music with a little touchscreen monitor.
Rapa Bao's government had provided them as an educational device but poor families just used them as cheap entertainment.
After Arthur had gone the same way as the rest... that Peeb device kept me sane as the usual conveyor belt of arseholes continued.
I remember sitting in my room watching 20th century TV shows... listening to 20th century music... whilst my mom fought, or fucked, or just got fucked-up with new rat-bastards.
That's why I got into those counterfeit books... they were of the same time as that box that "Uncle Arthur" gave me. Something that took me away from all the horrid shit I had to put up with.
******
I looked at the book again. Slightly fixated. The reality was that, as hard a bastard as I tried to pretend I was, these old things were the place where I still went back to hide... I still had a Peeb attached to The Cuckoo's mainframe, to watch and listen to when I need something to take my mind off things. I gently put the book to one side, it's a place where I'd hide again in the future.