Stephen Turner

Z-Ball was alive and well, thank you very much. He sprayed the paint evenly across the surface, paying careful attention to the lines of detail required. First came the colour, then the black highlight lines to outline the character.

Z-Ball was a quirky round little character, like a cross between something from a kid’s cartoon and a Nintendo game. Michael Zola was its creator, and right now he wondered how long the blood rushing to his head would take to completely disorientate him.

Zoom out, and Mike Zola was hanging upside down, over the edge of the Darling Harbour freeway overpass, in the shadows, painting Z-Ball on the most public place he’d ever tried.

Before lowering himself, he scouted the area thoroughly, noting any security patrols, and noting the security camera views in the area. He was an accomplished climber, having spent years abseiling as a Scout, so he knew what he was doing and knew the harness was well attached to the railing and would hold him easily. He breathed in heavily, stowed the red paint can in his dangling side bag, then reached in for the black can to finish his work.
It was mostly for the rush really. Mike loved the exposure his work got, loved the notoriety of the Z-Ball, and loved the thrill of evading authorities. It was clean, attractive work, not like rubbish tags — the scribbles of amateurs. Z-Ball was art.

What Mike couldn’t see however, was a security camera perched in a park several hundred metres away. Even if he had noticed it, he would probably have dismissed the unit because of the distance. But this camera set was new, a digital unit that was permanently manned and contained several advanced zoom features, as well as infra red analysis. The Darling Harbour Authority had been concerned by a series of assaults in the park recently, but at the same time, they were happy to take whatever wrongdoing the camera presented to them. Mike was seen by the operator pretty damn quickly, and they called in a security patrol that was on its way.

Mike Zola had no idea of any of this of course. It was nearing four in the morning, and he was on his way to another finished project. He breathed in again, wiped his moderately long black hair from his eyes — he’d tied it up beforehand but it was already falling loose — and finished the last black lines Z-Ball needed. Mike was already thinking about how he’d update his website about this one later.

Suddenly he was bathed in a bright light. Mike turned around, squinting into a high-beam torch that he knew had to be in the hands of either a cop or a security guard. Time for the charm.

“Good evening officer,” Mike called. “Nice evening for a walk, isn’t it?”

“Are you getting down from there, or do we have to cut you down?” one of the guards called.

“That’s no way  to talk. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“You’ll be down right now,” the second guard called. Then he paused, and said: “Zed-Ball.”

Millie Kang knew her life was over. Her mother didn’t understand her anymore, and her father had never understood her. She sat alone in her bedroom, tears streaming down her face, her thoughts a mess, feeling like nothing mattered anymore.

“They can’t stop me from seeing her,” Millie said softly to herself. Thoughts of Amanda Mason filled her head again, and she wondered what had gone wrong.

They only kissed once, and she wasn’t even sure what it was, but Amanda’s parents, and her parents, had ruined everything. They’d been friends since the start of high school and had shared everything. When Millie started to feel differently about Amanda, she’d tried to hide it for a while, but after Amanda’s parents found it, it had all gone bad.

Millie’s parents were strict Catholics, a doctor and an engineer that emigrated from Singapore to Australia when Millie was only six months old. They’d pushed their only child her entire life to follow one of those paths as well, but Millie had lost interest there as well. The only thing Millie wanted professionally was in her hand.

She stroked her small Moleskine notebook softly, feeling the covers. It was nearly full now, with stories, poetry, occasional drawings. Writing was the only pursuit that made Millie feel good anymore, and it was all she wanted to do. Her father had laughed that ambition off, and her mother, while slightly more encouraging, had been dismissive about it as well. It made her feel angry, and she felt that build up more inside her.

Looking around her room, Millie saw the relics of childhood, barely changed in several years. Her parents didn’t let her see boys (not that she’d found one yet that interested her), didn’t let her go out much, and had always strictly controlled her activities. Suddenly, it didn’t even feel like her room anymore.

Millie stood with a purpose she hadn’t felt all day and allowed the rage to consume her. Her face felt hot as she ripped it all down. Pulled down wall hangings, dumped shelves on the floor, ripped up anything she grabbed. It meant nothing now.

“Got to get rid of it,” she mumbled softly, again to herself. Her parents weren’t home, and why she wasn’t locked in her room, she was used to them locking her inside the house. It hadn’t occurred to her before that it was draconian, bordering on abusive. It was just how things worked in her life.

She marched into the kitchen and picked up a book of matches from the top shelf. Without even thinking about the consequence, Millie went back to her room, piled the mess into a tight pile, then started striking up matches and lighting every single flammable thing she could see. A small fire took quickly, and she sat back on her bed and watched her old life burn. She sat on the bed and poured through her notebook again, wanting to escape into her mind.

What Millie didn’t think about at all was that she’d just set her house on fire. Later she’d sincerely wonder if that was her intention, but in the moment, it felt cleansing. But it had also blocked the door to her room, leaving the way out of the room blocked.

When Ryan Hathaway was six years old, he made a thousand dollars selling lemonade. First in front of his house, the old fashioned way, then at a local market. He sold the business at the end of the summer to a cousin twice his age. A thousand dollars. It was a lot for a kid.

Ryan never stopped selling things, always looking for the big profit. All through his teenage years his entrepreneurial spirit remained strong. Right now, it was thinking big, though not in the way anyone would socially approve of.

The DJs beats droned on, enveloping the private house party in a wall of sound, a combination of turntable scratches and live blips from a vintage Roland 808. Ryan bounced along to the beat as he led his latest customers up a long staircase into one of the unoccupied bedrooms. He carried a small duffle bag over his shoulder.

“This won’t be like anything you’ve tried before,” he started loudly, battling over the sound. Apparently Jimmy Cho’s father had installed a series of wireless speakers in the house that allowed a single music source to be played throughout, but this sort of volume was never in the design specs.

“Better be good,” one of his customers mumbled in reply.

“You’ll love it,” Ryan said. He quickly opened a bedroom door and stuck his head in, making sure there was no surprises. He reappeared with a quick “Follow me.”

Inside, Ryan found the wireless speaker volume and turned the DJ down to a manageable volume. He turned around and waited until the three customers had closed the bedroom door. Then he pulled down the backpack and pulled it open, dumping the contents on the bed.

Ryan looked at the two guys and one girl in front of him and wondered how he looked in response. Clean shaven and younger-looking than his 18 years, he knew that selling Ecstasy tablets was a rough business, but he couldn’t ignore the profits to be made. Ryan favoured small sales to active party-goers rather than any kind of big dealing, though he couldn’t deny he was dealing with large quantities anyway. His inside connections had probably helped there. Of course, he knew this was a game you couldn’t stay in forever, or you’d end up in jail. Or worse.

The girl and one of the guys couldn’t keep their hands off each other, their bodies intertwined like a pair of snakes. The other guy looked nervous but blank — mid 20s at least, dark messy hair and a least a week’s growth of a beard. But he’d been vouched for by Cho’s best mate, so as far as Ryan knew, the guy was clean.

“So we’ll get down to business,” he said quickly. “Ten dollars a pill, maximum of ten each for now. If you want more than that you really have to arrange it in advance.” He held up the pill bags to show each of them what he was carrying.

The couple agreed quickly and pulled out a handful of 20 dollar notes. Ryan got a little buzz whenever he saw money appear. He wondered if it had always been like that for him. Like a drug.

Charlie Cotter hated to lose. Even more than she hated being called Charlotte.

The protest scene had turned to utter pandemonium, and Charlie mostly loved that. Newberry Mining had been a worthy target for her rage: three years of copper mining in New Guinea and Indonesia had been an ecological nightmare, with polluted rivers and cyanide-filled landfill poisoning the planet for years to come. They paid fines sure, but with the 100 billion dollar market capitalisation, the paltry few millions didn’t seem to matter.
Of course Charlie didn’t know what if any effect her little action would have, but it felt good anyway.

“Newberry has poisoned the planet, all for its shareholder profit,” she screamed, taking particular delight in emphasising the word shareholder. “Another crime squarely at the feet of shareholders!”

Her small but vocal crowd  of around 20 fellow activists screamed and bellowed their agreement. In front of them, a row of a dozen uniformed police officers arrayed themselves in front of the company headquarters, silent and imposing.

Charlotte “Charlie” Cotter was a petite young woman, oddly intimidating in her own way, with short, dark hair that hung around her shoulders, thin arms and legs, and a spring in her step that erupted for every worthy cause. Some would have called her a professional protestor, but Charlie balked at such descriptions, especially since she wasn’t quite out of high school, and didn’t really need any profession. She planned for university of course next year, but saw it as a time to advance her activism more than anything else. Charlie yelled again, a slight gravelly roar in her voice that she always noticed after she’d been screaming for an hour.

“Newberry must be made to truly pay for crimes against mother earth!” Charlie said, slower this time. The crowd roared in agreement again. They were a motley bunch — for all of Charlie’s hand-me-down and op shop clothing, she was probably still the best dressed member of the group.

Youth Bytes 1.0: Join the revolution

“Five smart and talented teenagers are brought together by a software millionaire to start a new online youth news service. They have no choice in the matter – they might be smart, but they’re also in big trouble with the law in various ways.

But they discover what real trouble is about when an aboriginal girl brings them the case of a corrupt cop who might just have murdered her brother.

With no one else to turn to, and their own problems to deal with as well, each member of the team needs to step up and show what they’re made of: break the story, expose a corrupt cop, and stay alive while doing it.

The trail leads them to a dodgy employment agency, drug dealers and police killers, and an explosive finale that will put all their lives at risk.”