I never saw myself as the saviour of Gotham. I’m not even 20.
The rest of the orphans and I ran around the factory floor with the rats. There was usually around fifty of us in each generator warehouse. A few decades ago, a supervisor realized that there are also around fifty cards in a standard playing deck. Since none of us had names anyway, he used playing cards to identify us and classify us.
Ace of Clubs was a friend of mine. I was a Joker, the only one now. There were usually two but the other Joker was caught between the rollers last week and a new kid hadn’t been shipped yet.
The supervisor could tell the Jacks to wrap their scarves around their mouths and go up to the rafters. He could tell the fives and the eights that their break time would be in half an hour. He could tell the Queens to come and entertain the night shift in the break room. He’d set the Clubs and Diamonds to work the emergency mechanical jobs. He could call All The Blacks or All The Reds if he needed half the workforce to attack a problem.
I’d been raised as a ward of the state which meant I was part of the workforce a few days after my first steps. The coal engine chutes and duct tubes were too small for full-grown men and had to be cleaned by hand.
The city ran on steam, coal, and gas. A brave new world. Gotham took huge bites out of the surrounding countryside and burned it alive, painting the sky with vibrant colours in between shoots of black smoke. It was an oil-slick rainbow above the rooftops. The sunsets were spectacular. Life expectancy was around forty.
For the rich.
For us, it was more like twenty-two. The coal dust coated our lungs, making us wheeze like hyenas when we laughed. The poisons in the factory and lack of exposure made us pale, with the fever-red lips of consumptives. Our hair would go white from the bleach clouds and peroxide germ washes. We could use the chemical waste pools to dye our hair different colours in between shifts.
Mine was a vibrant green when it happened.
The attempted revolution of the Badman and his nighttime raids started early in 1822. Some thing about rights and democracy and justice. He was a total headache for the thieves and pickpockets trying to earn a living. He made the police look bad. All that would have merely added to the colour of the Gotham if he hadn’t gone after Big Industry.
He’d bomb places where child labour was being used. Which meant that he bombed every factory. He was righting wrong no one else could see. Bewilderment at his actions was starting to change to thought. There were factions of congress that were considering changing a few of the labour laws. There was talk of changes to the courts. There were rumblings of changes to pollutant levels.
The captains of industry were angry. They hired detectives and hunters but no one could find the Badman's lair. Bullets missed him. He was a ghost dressed in black.
One night, he broke into our factory. I was asleep in the rafters by myself above the lip of the coal chute. I must have looked like a bundle of rags. Either that or he just took me for dead and ignored me.
When I sat up and screamed, the Badman was startled and fell into the coal chute. I stepped on his fingers. He slipped away into the gears of the machine.
I was rewarded by the captains of industry. I was given an apartment and access to the finest tailors as long as I continued making the rounds for the pictures and talkies, telling the city that Industry cared and that everything was alright.
I kept my green hair and did nothing to hide my face. I celebrated the way I looked. I was a poster child for Jokers in every factory. It was the beginning of the Joker movement.
I live like a king now.
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