Malady tank to get into Equatorial Guinea, but not to get into the sky. He would have to be quick, and hope that his guess was right. Through the smog he rode, bursting through


the inky clouds, watching the meters in his function pod. Equatorial Guinea was six minutes away and the Malady weather supply was fading. He plugged himself in. The sky hoovered up the clouds and the sun melted onto the horizon. Now that both he and his father were indulging in weather consumption, there was little time in which to operate. Captain needed to find his father and switch him off. The pod touched down on its most beautiful


offshore island, Elobey Chico. Rich people with bronzed bodies, white smiles and muscular frameworks lay along the beach. His father would not be hard to spot. Regardless of the fact that he spent a disproportionate amount of time underneath the sun’s glare, Bronco’s habit was an addiction. His face was wrinkled, his body lacked tone and his smile didn’t quite add up. Captain ran down the beach, past the disap-


proving grunts of sunbathers, who resented even a mil- lisecond in the shade. He saw a solitary figure in the dis- tance lying prostrate in the sand. ‘Father’, he whispered to himself. Bronco lay naked, bar the switch to his weather


supply that he’d wrapped around his thigh. His eyes were half-open and he twitched as Captain stood over him, blocking out the light. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You should be at home


with your mother.’ said Bronco. ‘You know why I’m here. Repeatedly you prove


to be a slave to yourself, immersed in a dishonest, syb- aritic world that you have created for your own ends. Give me your switch. Mother is starving.’ ‘I am never going back there. How can you, a


specimen of such finesse, settle for existing in such me- diocrity, or worse? It is Hell to live in that house of four rooms and three people. I cannot bear it, I must seize life and all its offerings.’ ‘This is not life, this is a computer.’ said Cap-


tain. ‘It is the most beautiful computer alive,’ said


Bronco. ‘Back home the machines remind me of wounded animals and there is no wind. The world is still, abandoned. Here, I am stuffed with pleasure. It was my desire to bring you and mother here to expire together, but she would not relent on her intentions to stay put.’ ‘Your switch father.’ ‘I will not give you it. I have not eaten in six days.


Soon I will die underneath this sun. Come with me old boy. Leave her.’ Captain made for his father’s leg, but Bronco


reacted quickly and put his bony, withered hand over the switch. ‘I will overpower you father. I would not want to, despite your failings.’ said Captain. ‘Then we will both expire unhappy,’ said Bron-


co, ‘and I don’t want that.’ Captain leapt onto his father, and at the point of


contact lost his breath. His eyes were white and round, the colour seeped out of his face. Captain was frozen bar the unsettling noises that he was making, high pitched emittance akin to whale song. Bronco threw the sharpened rock that he had clutched in his hand into the sea. He had put it past Captain’s sternum, between the ribs. He sang to himself. ‘I’m an army boy, I will use my army toys, I listen out for any noise, when I lie upon these balmy shores.’ Captain’s breaths petered out into silence, and


the blood from his chest stained the sand brown. Bron- co continued to sing. ‘Shut up!’ cried a man further down the shore-


line. ‘We need to rest!’ Bronco obligingly quietened his song and, as


the sun continued to rain its rays on to his body he lay back, closed his eyes and smiled, waiting for the end. Angstrom Hoot.


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