Dieselpunk ePulp Showcase (Anthology)

The World of Mañana: A Friend of Spirits

The World of Mañana:

A Friend of Spirits

By Jack Philpott

INTRODUCTION

Tropical islands, palm trees, flying boats…and the soft thump of a silenced pistol in the night. This is the World of Mañana, a place of lazy relaxation coupled with deadly intrigue, of patient, persistent progress into A Glorious Future, of sociopolitical and ethnic diversity emerging from the dying remains of the grand empires of old. Imagine, if you will, Bogart's Casablanca writ large, the naïve self-assuredness of the summer of 1914, the laissez-faire attitude of a cafe in Nice contrasted with the frightful panic of a deadly chase through the crowded city streets of Cairo, a gorgeous sunny seascape with a looming shadow just at the edge of your vision. Set in the present day in a world not our own, Mañana is a world of contrasts and amalgamations. Retrofuturistic Super Trains share the stage with “old fashioned” flying boats and airships. Baroque-tinged Great Power politics faces up against radical futurist ideologies, emerging global corporations, and the burgeoning nationalism of a thousand composite cultures our world never saw. Old decaying empires fight for continued hegemony and try their best to patch the growing cracks in their imperial façade, but the center cannot hold. It all gives a guy or dame a lot to think about while sipping that rum as the sun slips quietly beneath the tropical waters in a pool of warm crimson.

Combining the Noir-tinged optimism of the Jazz Age with the laid back world of Island Time, The World of Mañana is a new, relaxed, but sinister addition to the Retrofuturist culture. This is where Dieselpunks go on vacation to leave their troubles behind…only to find that their troubles have followed. Call it “Parrotpunk”, if you will.

A FRIEND OF SPIRITS

He bolts down the tangled alleyways through rubbish-strewn gaps. Illusions of a new-found family burn away in a crucible of trust betrayed. His feet, clad in thin, soft leather, connect silently with cobbles stained black by two centuries of smoke, spill, and refuse. A frightened stag might move thus through forest and briar, skirting old growth oaks.

Jacob dodges a stack of barrels and a pile of coiled rope. He runs for his life and freedom within the endless passageways of his home. Bells, whistles, and barking dogs pursue him far behind, their sounds clear to his veteran ears even over the industrial cacophony of the inner harbor. In the ancient past an ancestor of his might have thus fled from a rival tribe, calloused feet dancing among the living forest undergrowth as Jacob’s dance atop the lifeless cobbles of the cold city streets.

Jacob knows these streets from his short lifetime upon them. He knows them with an intimacy normally reserved for a lover. He knows each roadway or alleyway by the feel of the bricks and cobbles, by the smells from each window or drain. He searches for a place where they cannot find him, where their dogs will not smell him, and where he can fade once again into the tangled undergrowth of a city that has outgrown its modest name.

* * *

“Netoppewokeesi,” she had said, “A friend of the Spirits.” A preserver of the Old Ways, of the Powhite ways before Walter the First staked claim over the land. She’d chosen Jacob and his gang, she had said, because she “could feel the power of the Old Spirits within” them.

Jacob thought that instead, perhaps, she had been impressed by their half-shaved heads and spiking hair, their handmade tattoos, their street moccasins and makeshift tamahaaks. In his youthful cockiness he liked to think she had been attracted to him in particular, by his exuberant manliness born of the street, or by his rough-hewn handsomeness. Whatever drew this older but strikingly beautiful lady to them (and lady she surely was, for the naïve arrogance of aristocracy was obvious upon her), Jacob was thankful for it. Though he couldn’t exactly single out why.