Foreignright 4.5.1
by Eric Cline
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by Eric Cline
Cover Design Copyright 2012 by Eric Cline
DISCOVER THESE OTHER GREAT SHORT STORY TITLES BY ERIC "CRUEL" CLINE AT SMASHWORDS.COM:
True Fear: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125383
Dr. Coe's Alien Show: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/124520
The Stuttering Man: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/123184
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Manny Druitt was the best FLAME thrower in the pyre station. When the siren sounded one morning during their ping-pong tournament, he was the first to drop his paddle. His FLAME thrower was the heaviest gear used by any of the crew, but he belted himself into it fast enough to shame the other pyrelighters.
Their sirens wailed all the way to their destination: a large apartment complex.
"Uh-oh, this is gonna be bad," young Parker said.
Captain Warren said, "Dispatch just confirmed. Burning files set off the alarm. Be ready. Don't take no chances."
The police were already standing there with the building manager when they arrived. Druitt was the first off of the truck. He pulled the gun of the FLAME thrower off of its cradle and led the others forward.
"How bad is it?" He didn't waste words on pleasantries. Emergency calls had nothing pleasant about them.
"There was an illegal party on the fifth floor," the manager said. "Tenants from the next three floors down attended. They were, well, you know. Doing the illegal stuff."
It's gone all the way up to the fifth floor, Druitt thought. Jesus God.
But the other men counted on him. He couldn't show any doubt about their ability to finish the job.
With the help of the police, they moved through all eight floors; they didn't stop at five.
A few back-breaking hours later, they had everything collected in the parking lot.
The mountain of vintage Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other electronic reading devices was piled higher than a grown man.
Parker, still young and naïve, said, "How could these people do this?" He shook his head in disgust.
"This used to be a respectable building," the manager whined. "But ever since they opened that university nearby, things haven't been the same. You know the kind of people those places attract . . ." He spread his hands in a gesture of helpless indignation.
Druitt nodded solemnly. "Step back, boys. I'm going in." He gripped his FLAME thrower.
Government IT specialists constantly patrolled the internet, deleting any book-length files they found. America's leaders believed that any thought longer than a Tweet, a soundbite, or at most a foul-mouthed, uninformed blog post, was dangerous to society, you betcha.
But if a stray copy of The Scarlet Letter or Slaugherhouse-Five did survive, these sleazy underground parties swapped them back and forth, on everything from screen phones disconnected from the web to the now-outlawed dedicated reading devices.
Druitt aimed the nozzle of the Focused Local Area Magnetic Emissions thrower at the pile. The gun's coiled electric cord hung over his shoulder, connected to the heavy battery pack on his back.
He deleted file after dangerous file. When he was done, all that was left was a pile of scrap metal mined in Australia, assembled in China from designs made in San Jose, California, and paid for with credit cards issued in South Dakota.
"Damned 'foreign right'!" he growled. These eggheads would probably never see the inside of a jail cell for their crimes; under the fig leaf of an international treaty on books -- Foreign Right 4.5.1 was the exact paragraph citation -- they could claim that the books were 'cultural artifacts' of a visit to a foreign country. All Manny could do was delete the files.
But just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, there came a dreadful cry.
"Paperbacks! Paperbacks!" A thrill of fear went through the crew. Only the oldest among them had ever had to deal with paper books. As a rookie pyrelighter, Druitt had once burned a boxed set of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy; but that was nothing like the horror he saw now.
Two of his fellow pyrelighters had dragged a case of paper books out of the building. The tenants who had held the illegal swapping party, many of whom were milling about watching the proceedings, all played dumb.
"We didn't know any of that was there," said their ringleader, a shifty-looking assistant professor wearing a tweed coat with leather elbow patches.
"He could be telling the truth, boss," said a young pyrelighter. "It was hidden in some old crawlspace."
Druitt shrugged. "Whatever the case, I gotta find a way to erase, uh, I mean, burn this filth." The two rookies dropped their burden in the parking lot and scuttled away, grateful the old man had taken ownership of the problem.
He frowned as he approached the box of (he hated even to think the word) paperbacks. It had been at least 15 years since any pyrelighter in America had carried an actual fire-shooting flame thrower. He didn't know if anyone had so much as a cigarette lighter among the crew.
Then he reached out and touched the moldy books. As he shuffled through them, his mood lightened:
The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins
Dazzle, by Judith Krantz
The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield
The Firm, by John Grisham
Along Came a Spider, by James Patterson
The Da Vince Code, by Dan Brown
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
"Oh, these are fine," he said. "No dangerous ideas here. Leave 'em."
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About the Author: Eric "Cruel" Cline is a native of Missouri. He has a Master's Degree in English. His work has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and on the Every Day Fiction site. He will reluctantly continue his day job until enough people buy his writing for him to devote all of his energies to it . . . and thanks for doing your part!
Connect with me at:
My web site: http://www.cruelcline.blogspot.com
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