Art Bébé says, 'Fade in:'
LASH IT!
Down from the wall, Bébé strides hurriedly, returning along the outgoing route. Miko has reported no
hint of trouble. This adds to her good feeling, not that their lack of company
was unexpected, and she hurries on all the more, now angry with herself for not
thinking this far ahead, having promised herself a night’s adventure, it might
have helped if she knew exactly what. Always too impatient. That was her
problem. But almost immediately something comes to her, as it always seems to. Stuyvesant
Tent Town.
Manhattan’s
surviving structures hadn’t been able to house the number of dispossessed
post-tipping. As it almost always proved to be the case, desperation had bred
resourcefulness. The
solution for anyone seeking to operate outside of Citizen Profile Security
(CPS), and not surprisingly, known and unknown grayslates, had very inventively
come to be seen as the space between the towers, the occupation of air, without
doubt, a very novel form of squatting. Seeding was believed to have begun with
either a single tent strung upon decking buttressed
out from a tower, or decking stilted up from the swamp at canal level. Almost
overnight, one tent had become to become four, four tents sixteen, as so on. Exponential
growth. But also haphazard aggregations. Eventually whole arboreal shanty towns
had formed comprising of multi-colored tenting and sheeting, boardwalks, suspension
bridges and catwalks, each netted in the silver of guy ropes and safety nets. A
dozen or so tent towns now existed across the island. A phenomenon given the
control the government sort to exert over all aspects of citizen behavior. It
begged the question, how had this come to be? The shanty towns had begun as
outlaw communities, and remained as such, and they shouldn’t have been allowed
to flourish, and not just flourish, to come under the governance of overlords
that had taken it upon themselves to operate virtually autonomous from the
state. Perhaps to counter this, as an act of goodwill, certain towns had come
to allow access to non-tenters. An open-door policy of sorts. A brief security
check followed by an interview, the payment of a nominal fee, and then an entry
permit was granted. One such town, and one of the largest on the island, was
Stuyvesant Tent Town. Its founder had seemingly come out of nowhere, calling
himself Ansvar. She stops her review, concluding.
The town, and its
enigmatic founder, Ansvar, is already the stuff of legend. Tonight she will
play tent tourist. Her first ever excursion into the tent shanties. But of
course it will simply be reconnaissance to add to her growing understanding of
the post-Tipping. She transmits to Miko, saying, ‘Stuyvesant Tent town, Miko. Plot a
course.’
The GPS determined, they are back on the maintenance track, up and over the boom gate, and returned to the FDR express eway. A strung crosswind is blowing, and they are nearly shunted into the opposing lane.
‘Bébé,’ Miko transmits urgently, tacking hard into the wind. ‘May I suggest appropriate dress?’
Bébé’s coat blows wildly behind her. She has still not bothered to set it for either the ride or the night’s extremes but, she frowns, isn’t she crouched against the tank, and tucked immediately behind the windshield? ‘Miko, what’s the fuss?’ she exclaims.
‘Bébé, I’m sorry, things are only going to get worse. Perhaps you can consider your glamorous image at another time?’ Miko swerves, narrowly avoiding a light weight EV uncontrollably propelled into their path. Bébé’s coat kick’s violently out to the side. ‘Bébé,’ Miko continues, ‘At least think about skirting the coat. It’s current form is only good for exhibiting an exemplary display of bad aerodynamics.’
Bébé checks the left rearview mirror. The tail of her coat has taken on all the properties of a sail. She looks away from the mirror. ‘Miko,’ she transmits, ‘Sorry about that!’ She then signals to her coat, getting the smart nano bots (SNBs) to work. The coat begins to shorten, riding up her legs to hug her hips, closes over her chest, and finally comes to make airtight seals at the helmet collar and at her wrists. ‘Well Miko, at least I now get to show off my legs. No problem with aerodynamics I hope.
‘Just no hanging off the side taking turns with the knee out, Bébé. Under these conditions, speed and corner angling will just make you look ridiculous.’
‘Mmmm,’ she reflected sotto voce, but wash, she had been planning just that. And of course, Miko reads her. ‘Bébé, promise, ok!’
‘Ok, Miko, I promise. Let’s just keep going.’
‘Doing so, Bébé.’
The FDR express eway follows the island wall around in a long bend until meeting the East Houston turn off. They make the turn.
The wind here is stronger along with the pollutant fall. A greasy slime has come to coat the RoadCorp plastitar. But the tar’s bacteria are already at work, digesting the slime, and feeding the waste back into the surfacing. Miko reads the conditions across the eway, works on the tire pressures, deflating and inflating to spread the bike weight, and flooding sticky compounds into the tire’s rubber.
Bébé checks her systems for any changes to Miko’s programmed drive. None. The route remains the same.
They would continue along E Houston until turning down the East 2nd eway, follow East 2nd until reaching the 1st Avenue eway, and down this, they would continue until coming to East 17th, and down East 17th, they would finally reach 2nd Avenue where it intersected Stuyvesant Square tent town, cutting right through the middle of tenter shanty. On the CGI map, Miko has marked out the four tourist elevators. They were equally placed along the eway, and flagged in red, the entry checkpoint one-hundred meters down from the E 17th Avenue turn. So she leaves it to Miko. What can she be doing in the meantime? Her data goggles give an ETA of twenty-three minutes. More study? Why not? The fun of the ride was largely over. She gets back to her evolutionary studies. It is, after all, her primary area of interest. She starts to open folders.
‘Red alert, Bébé. The checkpoint is under heavy guard.’
‘Huh!’ Bébé looks away from her current page, in some shock.
They have made the turn onto 2nd Avenue. Where has all the time gone, she asks herself, quickly studying.
Five tenters in tactical helmets and the dappled brown and green of military coolskins stand in a shallow arrow before the checkpoint boom, assault rifles aimed.
‘Lash it!’ Bébé curses, sotto voce, continuing to say to herself. ‘Cloaking technology. Miko had been unable to detect the possibility of hostiles until too late.’ She clears her data goggles of all frames, engages her heads up display, switching it to military, and registers no further shock, as she answers Miko with a simple, ‘Acknowledged,’ they pulling to a stop by the guardrail to the right, 25.4 meters distant from the checkpoint.
Art Bébé says, 'Fade out.'
Art Bébé™ ©
Art Bébé™ ©
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