The Life of Koru, Chapter 51
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Mulo woke up from the explosion in a cloud of ash. He was covered in ash and dirt to the point where you couldn't see his dark brown skin, tanned by the sun. He had no more allies around, no weapon, he was just a naked koru in the desert.
How did he lose his conscience? There was this explosion, a rocket had fallen close to him. In the chaos of the explosion, Mulo's senses were overwhelmed by the deafening roar and blinding light. The force of the blast knocked him unconscious, leaving him sprawled on the scorched earth, disoriented and vulnerable.
Somewhere in all this mess, he had dropped his machete! Captain Xaxa always insisted that a soldier should not drop his weapon, no matter what.
Crawling on all fours through the sand and ash, Mulo tried to find his machete, but it was nowhere to be found.
He saw shadows coming towards him. Desperate, he started covering himself with the sand, only his nose remained out so that he could breathe. The steps were coming closer and he heard some Caliphate soldiers speaking in an Arab dialect.
Mulo wished he were a landmine so when they stepped on him, he would explode. But they didn't step on him, they moved on and didn't notice Mulo at all.
Slowly, his memories started to come flooding back and he remembered killing Sleaze with his own hand. It was a realization so harrowing, so utterly devastating, that it felt like a dagger twisting in his heart. Sleaze was his comrade. How could he kill him?
He was crushed, confused, dejected. With no machete and no army, he couldn't conquer Oasis Bigguh anymore. He had to retreat.
And so he walked back towards Oasis Warrior's Rest, stumbling like a drunk man through the sand. He had a pain in his back and a wound on his butt. He applied some sand on his butt to stop the bleeding.
When night fell, he was so exhausted that he collapsed to the ground, despite his desire to press on. He awoke a few hours later, overcome by terrible hunger and thirst.
"Water... Water..." was the only word that surged in his mind.
The well with the impossible name, the well called Qamar Al-Khafa lied in front of him.
And close to the well, it was Her! Mulo couldn't believe what he saw. How could she be there?
"Missuh Evadne! Missuh Evadne!" Mulo yelled as he ran towards the mysterious lady.
She turned her head and inspected him carefully. Then she told him:
"I'se have looked for ye! Come with me! No! No! Ye should come with me now!
I'se have looked for ye! Come with me! No! No! Ye should come with me now!"
And she started pulling him back towards the territory controlled by the smallcocks, her clutch surprisingly firm and harsh.
Mulo didn't want to go back and he started struggling.
"Dafuq is wrong with ye, wumma?" he yelled.
He grabbed her veil and removed it immediately from her face. What he saw felt indescribable, and that's because he lacked the vocabulary dedicated to electronic circuitry.
"Evadne -- hacked system -- face exposed! Error 207! Koru ape detected!
Evadne -- hacked system -- face exposed! Error 207! Koru ape detected!"
"Fuckin' shit!" Mulo thought. "I'se have unleashed the power of this sorceress!"
In reality, Evadne was nothing but a robot created by the Black scientists to keep the koru soldiers under surveillance. She had been hacked by the Arabs just a few days before, so that she worked for them now.
But who could explain all these things to a savage like Mulo? For him, Evadne was a "fuckin' betrayer" and "bitches like her shouldn't be trusted!"
Before he could scold the "bitch" however, Evadne injected a needle into his cock, making him fall in a state of temporary paralysis. Then, she grabbed his thick ankles and started dragging him towards Oasis Bigguh.
Colombia -- the rogue province of the Black Empire, a lawless land controlled by cartels and mobsters. It was the place where a lot of drugs were produced: cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and other illicit substances harvested from endless plantations.
While analyzing the intricate connections within the Hukunta, Sir Ishmael discovered its strong ties with the mafia in Colombia.
The plantations in Colombia were hellish places, where most koru slaves wore chains and collars and where beaten mercilessly if they didn't fulfill their quota.
In the cannabis fields, they were tasked with planting, watering, and harvesting the plants, their hands rough and calloused from handling the sticky resin.
On coca plantations , the slaves picked the leaves by hand, their fingers stained green and brown from the potent alkaloids.
The poppy fields were no less demanding. Slaves made precise incisions in the poppy pods, collecting the sap that would later be refined into heroin.
All these precious drugs where transported by slaves on their backs, in carts, rafts or boats and loaded into ships. It was a ceaseless activity and the business required that the slaves always performed at maximum speed, sixteen hours every day.
There was no mercy for the koru in Colombia. The mafia bosses adopted the Hukunta philosophy of treating them as less than animals. Some of these slaves had their tongues cut off and were thus reduced to the status of mute beasts. Koru slaves were lynched for any perceived sign of defiance. For these reasons, the koru of Colombia were really shy and didn't even dare to look up from the ground and into the face of a Black Lord. Like beasts-of-burden, they only looked down.
Sir Ishmael was really shocked to see how these helpless apes were treated. They wore collars with prongs and spikes that prevented them from lying on the ground even for a second of rest. Some of them had to crawl on their hands and knees pulling weeds. Other slaves had to dig and hoe or spread fertilizer, and all of these activities were done under the lash.
The most awful thing however was the Meat Grinder, a scary machine where "lazy" koru were thrown in and turned into dog food. No slave wanted to be thrown into the Meat Grinder, so they worked their asses off, but inevitably some of them had a sore back or a knee injury that prevented them from giving their best.
"Get into the Grinder, boy!" a gangster overseer ordered.
"Nosuh!! Please!!" the desperate koru cried.
"Release that boy immediately! He's a good boy and only had a bad day!" Sir Ishmael said.
"Who the fuck are you?" the gangster asked.
"I am the Checkered Man! I am here to fight for the rights of the koru!"
"Pff! Checkered Man! The koru have no rights!" the gangster snarled.
"Your stupid machine has no rights!" Sir Ishmael said and with a sudden telekinetic blow, he sent the Meat Grinder hurtling across the plantation, its wooden frame splintering and its metal blades scattering like confetti.
The gangster was shocked. Sir Ishmael said:
"I destroyed your machine once! If you try to rebuild it, I will destroy it again!"