 |
| ANSVAR |
Hurrying, the wind makes it increasingly necessary for him to draw in the ends of his black wool cloak, and tug down on the hood. He begins to despair. The suspension bridge lies just a short distance ahead across the boardwalk, but the thick pollutant rain, mixing with the dense pall of gray biofuel smoke over the town, makes the bridge entry steps a blur. He’d received an urgent call from Paul within the Core Watch Compound (CWC). He is needed right away. Why did it have to be on a night of such weather?
He’d been out on his habitual nightly meet and greet. A familiar figure, always in his cloak, his long-loped striding gate, as if he just couldn’t cover the ground fast enough. These walks were becoming increasingly necessary. He felt he was loosing touch. The growing town. Its very protean nature. More and more a tent could be found on one night and not be there the next, either replaced by another tent entirely, or the outline of its footprint, already fading. Ten years ago, he’d innocently seeded the decking buttressed out from the Stuyvesant Park Tower, not really knowing what lay ahead. But when the town had begun to grow around him, everybody looking to him for leadership, he’d advocated for a fixed community with a shared vision. His idealism. Like so often, he’d had his reality check. Over time, with the almost exponential increase in the number of tents, and as he was seeing today, the transient nature of some, had come the breakdown in cohesion, too many differing people, with too many differing interests, resulting in too many political groups and factions.
So the need for him to go out among people, to press the flesh, to try and settle things with goodwill, to be everybody’s friend. It would often take him into parts of the town that even as recently as a month or two previously he would never have found the need to venture into. Such as tonight. At last he sees the bridge, and takes the steps, gripping the railing.
Despite its taunt rigging and guy ropes, the bridge is in a violent swing. He makes it across, not daring to look down. It is a 185-meter drop to the swamp below. The safety nets should catch him, but they had been known to fail. Net fatigue. It was a real thing. On the opposite side, at the guarded entry hut, he is waved through, expected, but also, almost certainly recognized.
The compound sits upon a large area of stilted, rectangular, suspension decking, isolated over the drop. At the far northern end of the decking, is the Core Watch Facility (CWF), a medium-sized, single entry stem, oval honeycomb frame smartskin bubble, glowing a soft brown. Other smartskin bubbles are scattered around the CWF, small to medium in size, either with a single or double entry stems. At the decking center, is a square, fenced area of entry steps that leads down to the watch cable car platform, connecting with the town’s greater, suspended rail network.. A two-meter high, rope-netting fence surrounds the compound, more as a safety measure than security. The drop is considered protection enough.
It is a bleak journey across the compound towards the Watch Facility. No-one is about. The town is already beginning to lock down. He reaches the watch entry stem, codes in the pass, and enters through the parting doors. Ten even strides take him to the entry proper. He shrugs out of cloak, shakes out its wet ends, and hangs it alongside the row of watch command service ponchos. The door opens, and he steps through.
It is immediately apparent by the frantic activity that here is a lesson to be learned on what to expect whenever they allowed themselves to become complacent. Given the night’s weather, the possibility of hostile intrusion had been considered low. He swallows, recognizing his own guilt. On periods during his walk, he had felt his own guard relax.
‘Ansvar!’
The security chief’s shout is practically accusatory, as if it is about time. Paul’s workstation occupies part of the east-facing, curved wall of the tent, directly beneath the beginning edge of the central window, and about one third of the way in from the entry stem. He looks over, feeling the chief’s glare as much as he had the words. ‘Glad you could make it,’ he hears further from Paul as he begins across, coming to a halt directly behind the broad back of the seated security chief. Paul turns his attention back to the airscreen before him. ‘I’m sorry.’ The chief suddenly sounds repentant for his contempt, continuing. ‘But I believe we have something serious.’ He flicks at a frame generated from a series of stills on the right of the airscreen, positions it at the screen center, and expands it by spreading his fingers. It shows a bike and its pilot, the pilot wearing a short black coat of a subtle-hued black, and they keeping low to the machine, hunkering behind the windshield. The machine itself is colored a blue-gray and red, and is sharply angular in form, looking like no other bike seen before. The chief sits back in the chair and rubs at his chin.
Ansvar takes in the room. The full compliment of six personal are on duty tonight. Their workstations, take up the bench space to the left and right of Paul, and the remaining curve of the al wall around the smartskin bubble. Everyone seems equally intent on what they are seeing before them. He directs his attention back to Paul, bending his tall, lithe frame over the rounded back of the chief, bringing himself closer to the airscreen. He needs a moment before questioning, ‘What about the helmet, Paul?’ He rests his right hand to the back of the chief’s chair, easing the weight off his booted feet, going on. ‘Let’s see if we can get a look at the pilot.’
Paul checks left and right along the work bench. He finds the laser pen to the right of the touch plate, lifts it, aims it at the rider’s head, flashing the red beam twice. The helmet comes into full profile. It is egg-shaped, and appears to be made of folding plate.
‘Closer again, Paul. Sorry,’ Ansvar bends further in towards the airscreen.
The chief flashes twice more with the pen, bringing the faceplate into view. It is an impenetrable black. He flashes again, and shaking his head. ‘Sorry, no good. File’s not up to it.’
The two stare at a pixilated, broken image.
Ansvar pushes back from the airscreen, bringing himself erect. He hangs his head. They had the best cameras that could be scavenged, or that tech could assemble, but it wasn’t good enough. He slumps further. He is reminded once more of the fact that this possible threat couldn’t have happened on a worse possible night.
‘Sorry to have to mention it,’ Paul interrupts his reverie. ‘But we might be facing a time critical situation.’
Ansvar shakes himself awake from his trance. He nods, saying, ‘Sorry, Paul … of course. What about the bike? Any idea on the make?’
‘None that we can tell.’ The chief restores the pixelated image back to its original size, moving it to the left, then shifts another frame into the vacated space, answering, ‘Completely unknown, we’ve already been looking.’
‘You mean you don’t know the model?’
‘I mean we can’t find out anything about it.’
The chief enlarges the selected frame. It shows a clear side view of the bike’s wide, upper structural frame, just where it lies beneath the tank. He then abruptly swings about in the chair, clearly frustrated, snapping, ‘Look, we’ve been over every inch of the machine where we’ve got a clear picture. It has to be a one off. Check for yourself.’ He rolls back down along the bench in his chair, pushing off with his legs, making way.
Ansvar remains where he stands. He is reluctant to look. He has no reason to doubt the chief. They’d been friends for too long. Paul had been the first to set up a tent beside his. They’d struck up a friendship on that night, and nothing had ever come between them where they had cause to doubt each other.
‘Ansvar! You know me!’ Paul says unnecessarily, rolling back to the screen in the chair. ‘That shot’s more than representative.’ He still has hold of the laser pen, and aims it at a specific area on the captured image, directly in the middle of the structural frame, beneath the tank, explaining, ‘That area should hold the manufacturing plate. It’s a state requirement. There’s nothing. And no evidence of the plate being removed. It looks like we’ve got not an unlicensed, but also an unregistered machine, and another point. A category 3’s on the horizon, everybody should be preparing to lockdown. The remaining traffic falls into the right probability factors, commerce finishing up for the day, people wanting to get home, this machine? What’s it doing out? Someone taking a joy ride? You ask yourself? Now look at that pilot. The helmet. The leg armor. Recognize any of it? I bet the bike and pilot are a unit. AI coupling. That’s state controlled technology.’
Ansvar studies the chief. Paul’s eyes are clearly pained, he wants either verification of the watch team’s findings that the machine can’t be identified, or he is desperately hoping the team’s wrong because of the unthinkable. They were facing a state organized security threat. He gives in, bending back over Paul’s shoulder towards the screen, almost bringing the tip of his nose to the projection interface, and feeling the screen’s tingling, static charge. Paul is right. Nothing. No manufacturing plate. No branding or serial numbers. Someone clearly wanted the machine unidentified. He keeps looking, just as the watch team would have done, in case there was something they might have missed, then abruptly pulls back and asks, ‘Can you give me live footage, Paul? Where’s the bike now?’
The chief touches open the live capture file. He hurriedly sifts through the logged footage, and opens the latest recording. The footage is from the 1st Avenue eway. The bike and rider can be seen making the turn onto the East 17th, the rider continuing to sit hunkered behind the windshield as if they and the bike are seamlessly melded. ‘They’re one turn from the 1st Avenue eway,’ he hears from Paul. ‘That settles it. They’re headed this way.’
‘Wash it!’ Ansvar pushes away from the screen and begins to stride down the workstation aisle. At the aisle end, hooking both hands to his hips, he shouts back towards Paul. ‘Who do we have commanding the checkpoint tonight, Paul?'
The chief makes a hurried check on the duty roster, waking his wristpad. His face lights with relief. ‘Mike So,' he shouts back.
Ansvar begins on his return up the aisle, nodding. ‘Good. Call the checkpoint and have Mike set up a road block. Then get onto Kimura. Have her organize a transport team. I want the bike and the rider. I’ll oversee the arrest from SOM HQ.’
Paul gets back onto his wristpad.
Art Bébé™ ©
No comments:
Post a Comment