Chapter One: Tech-Runner
The semi desert-like plain which was previously only scattered with clumps of wild grass and random cacti began to thicken with vegetation. He saw creepers and flowering grass. And the vegetation came from a tall gigantic wall made of concrete standing not ten feet away from him and his cohort of two. The wind made the long coat he was wearing flap wildly. He kicked the dust with his boots, triumphant.
"Here we are, guys," the tall and lean young man said to his two accomplices, muscular and large young men of about his age. They were two heads taller than him and the girths of their chests were twice the size of his. But Flynnagan Rider was confident that whatever contained inside their red hair covered skulls were nothing compared to the genius of his mind. And their advantage in strength and size was nothing to challenge his aesthetic advantages. But none of his awesomeness mattered compared to this fact: He is the first and original tech-runner in both Corona and the City and his name will be mentioned by future tech-runners in the bleak history of the two kingdoms, desperate to repeat the kind of glory he had accomplished. He began tech running. No, he created tech-running.
And the process of accomplishing that glory had now made him standing in front of the wall that separated the utopian kingdom of Corona from the City while he was giving the Stabbington brothers a lesson in history.
"This is history in the making," Flynnagan said with his longish, ear-covering hair whipping his face in the madly blowing wind. "The boundary between Corona and the City will blur just by the simple act of us stealing LifeData from the Castle. Three hundred years of separation will end. Corona will have what we have, and the City will have what Corona doesn't want to give."
"Shut the history lesson, Rider," the younger Stabbington said, the dafter one with no patience for complicated concepts, cutting him off. How on earth could the bumbling red head know what he was trying to do when he didn't understand the history and origin of their task? Flynnagan prided himself in his power of memory and he hadn't had the chance to show it off. Even thievery, er, tech-running had its origin.
"This wall was built as a statement of conflict between our forefathers. One who abandoned the City sought harmony with nature and so barricaded his people behind the wall. Three hundred years passed and the ninth King rules Corona now."
"Yeah, yeah. And the one who stayed in the City worships fuel and light and speed. Just tell us how do we get pass this wall without being jumped by the Coronian guards, Rider," the elder Stabbington, the smarter one scoffed at him. Beggars can't be choosers, Flynnagan thought. He had an intellectual company, albeit not of the desired kind, in the elder Stabbington.
"Walls do not go on forever," Flynnagan said smugly.
"Then, why the hell did you bring us here? You could have straightaway taken us to the point where we can enter Corona!"
"I want you guys to have respect of my discoveries. To have some respect for the trials and errors I've made."
"C'mon Rider. We do this job, we'll have all the respect in the world."
Stabbington the Younger pulled his collar. Flynn went back to his hover mobile and Flynn kicked the engine to life. As much as the world has hoped and hadn't stop hoping, the scientists still hadn't found the ultimate and total alternative to fossil fuel. So their hover mobiles still run on fossil fuel. They modified it, made it more optimum in use but they still have to dig deeper and deeper with every passing year. The three men on ho-mobs sped off to the secret entry that will lead them to the centre of Corona. The Castle. The Coronians had another name for it. They called it The Palace of Equilibrium. But the phrase was too long for the Stabbingtons. So he would just call it as the Castle.
They reached the end of the wall. The wall ended with an enclosure of trees that jumped down to a cliff of deep ravine. It was peculiar how such greenery could exist in the sudden cut off of almost prairie-like dryness of the vast area that separated the City and Corona. It was as if the City was sucking up moisture and fertility from the land surrounding it, and Corona was fighting back from their side.
"How the hell are we going to get through the thick vines with our ho-mobs?" The younger Stabbington asked.
"Don't fret, guys. I've made a hole camouflaged with a curtain of this green thing. See?" Flynnagan said as he reached out his hand to part a hanging sheet of vines. Behind the curtain was a hole fit for a man and his vehicle.
"How many times have you been to Corona, eh, Rider?" The elder Stabbington asked.
"Trade secret. I ain't telling," he said. Truth is, he had been to this side of civilisation more than five times. The Stabbingtons were petty thieves in his eyes. They stole things from homes and offices. Even though there were elements of dishonesty in his trade but he was way above them. He's a tech runner. He sold technology, er, stolen technology from the City to the oppressed people of Corona. And they pay him in gold which was the one thing that both people of Corona and the City appreciate. And this time, by his own moral standard, he figured that Corona should give back to the City. Trading technology and he was their middleman, with a price.
Working to his manipulations, he had managed to make the Stabbingtons join him in the search and frisking away the fabled Coronian Data of Life or LifeData. According to tales spread over centuries, it contained the secret of equilibrium guarded by the Coronians that kept their little kingdom brimming with resources, great health, and sustainability that were guaranteed for centuries to come. While the City, in its overzealous race for progress had squeezed all its available resources from the surrounding lands and overseas, assuming that all can be bought with currency. But things were going absolutely wrong. Life expectation was declining despite the efficient albeit expensive medical care. People were dying more rapidly, in violent crimes and cellular diseases, slow poisoning and other unnatural or premature causes. Despite the technology to make labour easier and ways to make people look and seem younger, at the cellular level, people of the City were getting older and sicker faster.
There were enclaves of Corona-like settlements all over the world, where people who made the decision to live off the grid stayed. But even the most conscientious were curious. That's where he came in. Offering stolen goods containing amusements into the homes of the Coronians, for a price. And now, the City wanted something in return from the Coronians. The City wanted the secret to life and he would give it to any party that can offer him the highest price.
Soon, they made their journey across the greenery, across ravines and streams and over small hills. The Stabbingtons kept quite while they struggled to keep up with him.
"Told you guys to go easy on the cigarettes," Flynn said as he saw them wheezing and coughing. They had left their ho-mobs just half a mile away in a small cave made from a giant tree's roots and now they were on foot heading towards civilization in discivilization. They could not bring their hover mobiles with them in a place where people ride bicycles and had no powered machinery at all. They had to blend in with the locals. In the silence of the gathering dark, the purring sound of their ho-mobs would be pure give-away.
They arrived at a large body of water, a lake surrounded by tree-lined shore and in very faint lighting that could only be originating from beeswax candles and tree's sap in small homes and narrow streets. In the semi-darkness, they saw a city upon an island.
"Woah! Are we lost in time?" The younger Stabbington asked.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Flynnagan asked dreamily.
"This is an island in a nightmare."
"Guys, you're totally not feeling it. Look!" Flynn pointed to the tree-lined shore where thousands pinpoint of lights suspended in the air, floating and flashing in unison.
"Ghosts!" The elder Stabbingtons shrieked.
"You guys are hopeless," Flynnagan sighed as he walked on along the bridge, heading straight into the population.
"Come on, guys. The Secret of Life awaits."
The Palace of Equilibrium was a multi-tiered complex integrated with plant life. Its structure was made of chiselled stones from the rocky outcrop. Some extensions were made of wood. It was not exactly grandeur in terms of size but it was made over hundreds of years, by happy craftsmen who had lived to enjoy their handiwork bringing lasting pleasure to society. The castle was shared by people who work for the Supreme Scientists-Administrators, the King and Queen. But smaller homes had sprouted on the island, their architecture complying with the law of environmental-friendliness and energy efficiency. In short, no electricity, no digital entertainment, only shadow puppetry and reading by candlelight and sex, most importantly. Flynnagan was actually thinking about sex in such community where there was no distraction, no alternatives but pure unadultered sex of two people completely focused on the task, rolling in the dark and the deep. It could be awesome, he thought and that thought gave him hope.
"This is hell on earth," said the elder Stabbington. But Flynnagan was looking far away from the roof the mansion-sized Castle on top of the rocky outcrop, looking out to the whole of Corona. Suddenly, Flynnagan felt his chest becoming heavy. As strange and impossible as it seemed, if there was one place he could belong, he would want to belong here. Right here in Corona.
Picture me in a castle of my own. In this wholesome goodness! He thought. But he came back to the present moment to complete the task at hand.
"Yup, make it right here," Flynnagan ordered the Stabbingtons to remove the tiles on the roof. In his hands, he was holding a blueprint of sort of the Castle.
"What did you give away for that?" The younger Stabbington asked.
"A radio."
"Do they have transmission here?"
"They have a radio tower."
"What for?"
"Other than for radio transmission, I don't know," Flynnagan mused. He wouldn't say more to the Stabbingtons. He would be giving away too much. Too much of a place he had grew fond of. But he would find out more about the radio tower. After this thing.
A hole fit for a slim man materialised. Flynnagan attached a rappelling rope to his torso. He was getting into the room called the 'Princess' Shrine'.
"Lower me down, guys."
They lowered him down and he saw it at once. A tablet the size of two palms of the human hand put together sitting on a pedestal. There was no one around. No one was guarding the data. He took it, touched the white tablet with his bare hands and he lifted it. The moment it left the pedestal, a deafening siren screamed in the shrine. Flynnagan shoved the tablet into the satchel he had slung across his chest and held on tight to the rappelling rope.
"Dammit, guys! Quick quick quick quick quick!" He called to the Stabbingtons. They pulled him up as fast as they could.
"I thought no electricity, no technology, no alarm, man!" The elder Stabbington grunted.
"I don't know, guys! This is not the intel I gathered!" Flynnagan garbled in annoyance. He'd been had. He didn't know how it happened. Flynnagan made it out to the roof. He took off the rappelling rope and just left it on the roof before the three of them made a mad run from the roof, jumped onto another roof, shimmied down a pole, landed on solid ground and made a run out into the night. As soon as they reached the forest, Flynnagan operated his hover mobile remote and in seconds, his vehicle flew towards him. He jumped onto it and off the two common thieves and one tech-runner, Flynn would insist to be called that, went out of the border of Corona, back to the crumbling city of eternally luminescent night lights.
o-o-o-o
Back in Corona, unaccustomed to any intrusion, the guards were of course, unprepared. For the first time in three hundred years, which was basically the entire duration of Coronian history, someone had stolen from the Castle. But the Princess' Shrine was the last place any thief would want to steal from. Especially when the King and Queen were the Supreme Scientists-Administrators. They had everything on automatic surveillance. And at once, words were out, that Flynnagan Rider was now a wanted person. It missed Flynnagan's reasoning that the people buying the stolen technology he sold would still be loyal to their King and freely gave them intel to gain amnesty from the possession of contraband goods.
"Why would anyone take something that reminds us of our daughter?"The Queen asked her husband. She knew very well that he could not answer. Not the kind of answer that she wanted.
"I don't know," the King said, deep in thought, "but I've sent our guards to the City. They will find this Flynnagan Rider character and he will return to us what is ours."
"It's been too long, Markus. I'm starting to feel that all this is for nothing."
"I know, Ygraine. But we can't give up hope. And this little intrusion won't defeat us," the King said and kissed her, coldly, sterile-like on the top her head, indicating that he was worried and madly disturbed by the incident.
The King, Markus went to his laboratory. He faced it once again, like many times before in the duration close to eighteen years, the console made from blinking buttons and switches and screens. He pushed down a lever, and power surged through the machines. The King spoke into a tiny microphone attached to his jaw and ears.
"Transmission number 6188," he said and touched another button. A series of pictures ran across the screen. A baby girl was born, she had golden hair and she was in her mother's arms. The people of Corona celebrated. As new batch of fireflies grown from the nursery was released from the confines of the wall, giving a glimpse of almost extra-terrestrial beauty to the world, especially citizens of the City, whose eyes were so accustomed to brightness that they had never seen the stars, let alone fireflies. The fireflies escaped to the sky outside the wall for a few hours and they would return to their moisture-laden home around the lake.
The transmission ran for just ten seconds, and it would invade TV station transmissions all over the City. Just ten seconds of strange but brief transmission, daily. He transmitted the visuals at a random time of the day, to avoid the stations from blocking the signal or making commercials appear during the transmission. The randomness of the transmission made it less of an annoyance. He even assumed that most of the city dwellers had grown fond of the transmission.
"Come back to Corona, Princess, if you see this and remembers," he prayed.
"Please, find a way home."
Postscript: This is my first Tangled fic. I usually dig SF and anime/ manga. But this animated film rocked my sanity and I had to do an SF take of it. Please review. It will motivate me to write faster. Tell me if this kind of AU has potential.