Exopunk's Not Dead

(First published in A Punk Rock Future)

Downtown vibrates with sub-low frequency, churning Jack’s guts alongside the anxiety he knows will only quiet with booze. The frame of his exoskeleton buzzes as he stomps closer to the source of the sound—metal humming to the kick drum thump coming up through cracked asphalt. Red paint flakes like dandruff; underneath the paint, steel rusts.

Jack’s is a basic demolition exo: limbs attached to a sturdy hydraulic frame lacking any armor plating. He floats within the exoskeleton’s torso, dangling on a battered harness with haptic converters aligned to his musculature. It’s airy inside the machine, its canopy open to the elements. A breeze from the bay rolls over Jack’s bare arms, carrying the salty smell of rotting seaweed.

Jack checks the flyer one last time, worried he might turn up at the wrong place—as though that distant clamour could be anything other than a punk show. The flyer’s proper old-school, photocopied onto thin sheets of yellow paper:

EXOPUNK (WRECKING) BALL

OLD CITY HALL

DOORS OPEN 8PM

The city council was voted out a year ago, but even a democratically-elected governmental algorithm needs time to implement changes. At first, police had patrolled the grounds, protecting it while the city tried to find a buyer, but once enough of the walls had been torn open for the copper piping, they pulled out. The official demolition starts Monday, but after tonight’s gig, with all the exopunks from the highlands dropping in, half the job will be done.

Jack rounds the corner and joins a procession of skels thudding up the street. Seeing his people, the knot of tension in his guts unravels. Even in his nine-foot-tall exo, the goliath city hall building looms threateningly: graffiti spots the stone façade like bruises, masonry already crumbling as decay sets in.

* * *

A broad wall of noise slams against Jack’s chest as he stomps into the old building. The air is hot and humid, thick with competing scents of sour sweat and spilled beer.

The band on stage is lit up bright, high above the thrashing, glinting mosh, and plaster dust rains from the cracked ceilings with every heavy beat. Exos fill the pit: classic twelve-foot clankers slamming among sleeker SOTA rigs while armoured bouncers look on. The pit is already three feet below the rest of the floor, marble tiling and cement foundations churned up as the opening acts hype the crowd.

Jack points his exo at the bar jutting from a hole bashed into the walls; behind the bartenders, empty office cubicles are filled with trash and drug detritus. He gets in line and forces his exo onto the balls of its steel feet so he can see over the heads in front of him.

“Nice ride.”

At the voice, Jack pivots inside his skel. The guy has a thick, black beard around an easy smile. A thick mat of hair crosses his broad chest, visible through tears in his replica cosmonaut suit. He hangs inside his exo’s frame, looking almost weightless—very ‘stranded in space.’

When the guy starts to grin, Jack realises how long he’s been staring without saying anything. His cheeks burn. A rat king of nerves tangles in his stomach, but it’s a good nervous, a ‘cute guy is talking to me’ nervous.

“Thanks,” he says, finally. “It’s a hand-me-down; was my older brother’s.”

“Makes sense; you don’t see too many guys our age in one of the classics.”

Jack laughs, just a single throaty ‘Ha.’ He knows his beat-up Ward-D2 isn’t really a classic, but he can see a pick-up line for what it is and still want to be picked up, can’t he?

The next song starts, and decibels soar like courier drones. Jack pushes his exo toward the bar as the line moves.

“Did he go into engineering?” the punk-onaut shouts.

“What?” Jack says, leaning forward in his harness. The chat-link light inside his exoframe blinks, and Jack hits the switch.

“Your brother,” the other guy says, his voice tinny through Jack’s audio system: “did he go into engineering or something?”

“Yeah, something,” Jack says; he doesn’t say that ‘something’ was prison. “My name’s Jack.”

“I’m Ramón, and no, I hate The Ramones.”

Jack chuckles, then sees he’s almost at the front of the line. “What are you drinking?”

“Cider.”

Jack gets flustered at the bar and orders two ciders, though it’s normally too sweet for his tastes. He takes one of the canisters and hands it to Ramón, then slots the other into his exo’s rehydration unit as the band on stage finishes their set.

“Thanks,” Ramón says. “I’ll get the next round.”

Jack drinks from the tube strapped inside the head module and the cider slides down his throat, thick, saccharine, and cold.

“Wanna go up the front?” Ramón asks.

“Hey, ho, let’s go,” Jack says, and beams at his own joke. Ramón rolls his eyes but smiles.

Exopunks drop into the cratered pit, their eyes eagerly following members of the next band as they walk out on stage; Mucus Mary and the Moist Mothers spray painted on a bedsheet hanging on the rear wall.

The guitarist and bass player wear their instruments inside their suits, and the singer has the microphone mounted to her exo’s head. The drummer’s exoskeleton clunks and thuds as it interfaces with the drum machine—twelve limbs flexing and stretching as she gets a feel for the gear. She counts in and the band erupts in a vicious car crash. The pit surges, sending dirt and cement chunks into the air where, Jack swears, they hover for a full second, held in place by the singer’s banshee screech.

“I love this band,” Ramón yells.

Jack thrashes to the sound and his shinbones shudder every time his exofeet jackhammer the ground. As the stage lights sweep over the crowd, the fog of cement dust around him and Ramón glows.

Ramón drops into the pit and, before Jack can think twice, he’s done the same. Jack slams the head of his exo into the wall of the pit and Ramón joins him while Mucus Mary wails and squeals. Jack screams and euphoria seeps into his veins, as warm as the cider is cold.

He gulps a mouthful of air and dust as he wraps his lips around the rehydration tube. The dust gently scratches his throat as he swallows. Dust lines his nostrils too—if he gets a spot on the official demolition crew come Monday, he’ll be wearing respiratory gear, but right now, he doesn’t care. His lungs could rot inside his chest and it would be worth it to be here tonight, drowning in noise, surrounded by the only thing that ever made sense to him. Study hard, they said; yeah, thanks for the debt. Get a job, they said; fuck you, there aren’t any.

Jack dances harder, his suit’s haptics fighting him as it struggles to keep up. The only truth Jack ever found was in punk rock: music that’s dirty, fast, and over so soon, just like life.

The band starts another song and Jack stops dancing to take a drink. Ramón’s chest hair glints with sweat and Jack imagines slipping his hands inside the cosmonaut suit so the hairs curl around his fingers. But Ramón doesn’t catch Jack’s overt gaze; his attention is elsewhere, watching three skinheads in archaic getups using their massive exos to tower over some kids in shiny-chromed rigs.

Jack’s chest rattles—not from the noise, but the fight-or-flight thump of his heart. Ramón takes a step forward and Jack’s mind is made up for him as he and Ramón push through the crowd.

“You fucking better not be here Monday,” one of the skinheads says, thumping one kid’s rig with a clenched exofist. “Those demolition jobs are for us. You want work, go back to Iraqistan.”

“Hey,” Ramón yells.

The three boneheads turn, identical triplets with their shaved heads and faces: babies that got big but never grew up.

Jack’s fear gives way to anger as he glances past the skinheads and sees the young punks cowering. They look like honour roll kids who miraculously discovered good tunes in the banal suburban sprawl. But that’s the exopunk ethos: anyone is free to work if they’ve got a rig, and anyone is free to wreck if they’ve got that fucking fire in their belly.

The music lulls and the lead bonehead yells new slurs at Jack and Ramón. Far up front on the stage, Mucus Mary points into the crowd as her band breaks into a new song: a frenetic stampede of noise. A chorus joins in as Mucus Mary screams, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!” It was a classic before Jack was born, and it’s the one song every decent punk band knows, even if they never want a reason to play it.

Jack freezes as Ramón steps forward and grips the lead skinhead’s rig in both exohands. The bonehead tries to break Ramón’s grip, but he locks his exo’s hands in place, unhooks his harness, and throws himself forward. Ramón grabs the collar of the bonehead’s bomber jacket and buries a fist into the fucker’s nose. Blood pours into his mouth, hanging slack.

Jack stomps close, barring the other Nazis as they try to get at Ramón. His hydraulics shriek with the effort of holding them back, a sharp screech that pierces his ears as more punks push in towards the scuffle.

Plaster dust underfoot glows purple—security moves through the crowd riding black security rigs, all sharp angles and blacklight LEDs. Ramón disconnects his exo and Jack pushes him back before standing with an impromptu line of exopunks, blocking Ramón from the bouncer’s view.

Jack points and yells, “Get these Nazi fucks out of here,” shifting his exo to stay between Ramón and the bouncers. Jack can’t see the bouncer’s face inside the armour, but the exo bobs in acknowledgement, and he hijacks the three boneheads’ suits and leads them out of the pit.

Jack turns to Ramón, gingerly poking his knuckles with his left hand. “You okay?”

“I heard something crack, just hope it was his nose and not my knuckle.” Ramón shivers and Jack feels it too: the drop of adrenaline leaving his body.

Jack unclips his harness and climbs out to stand on the frame of Ramón’s rig. He slips inside Ramón’s exoskeleton and buries his fingers in Ramón’s coarse beard. “Want me to get some ice for your hand?”

Ramón lets out a deep breath, then looks up from his bloody hand, his eyes a deep brown, speckled with orange. “It’ll be fine,” he says.

Jack leans in, sour-sweet breaths coalescing in the moment before their lips meet, Ramón’s tongue wet and hot against Jack’s.

Jack smiles. “You really gave that guy a Blitzkrieg—”

Ramón cuts him off with another kiss, a longer one that only stops when they get jostled, the crowd slowly gaining momentum after stalling for the fight.

“Make another Ramones joke,” Ramón says, “and that might be the last time I kiss you.”

Jack kisses Ramón again while his heart beats double-time. His mouth tastes sickly sweet with dead apples and probable regret, but he doesn’t care. This man might break his heart, but it would be worth it to be here tonight.

“What’s the matter with your exo; we need technical support?” A bouncer stands beside Jack’s abandoned exoskeleton.

“No, it’s fine,” Jack yells.

When the bouncer sees Jack inside Ramón’s exo, he shakes his head and smiles. “Don’t leave it empty on the dance floor, alright fellas; it ain’t safe.”

Jack almost laughs at ‘dance floor’, but he nods and climbs back into his exo as the bouncer walks off chuckling.

They get lost in the music again; moving with the crowd like every exo in the joint is linked. Sweat soaks through Jack’s clothes as they yell and stomp in a circle of exopunks; he grins whenever his eyes catch Ramón’s.

When Mucus Mary is done, she and the Moist Mothers leave stage to a mushroom-cloud of cheers from the pit. Ramón leads Jack to the edge and they jump out of the crater. Jack pauses to take in the sweat-slicked revellers panting for breath and the exos knocking together with the clank of punk love; the bliss that follows an epic mosh.

Standing close enough to Ramón so that they can lean out of their exos and touch, Jack asks, “Are we gonna get another drink?”

“I only really came for Mary,” Ramón says, “so I was gonna go home.”

Jack frowns, and Ramón laughs.

He pinches Jack’s chin and says quietly, “I was hoping you’d come with me.”