Art Bébé says, 'Fade in:'
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LASH IT! |
The wind has picked up strength, along with the pollutant fall. She has her left leg down on the eway, keeping the booted foot of the other leg to the off-side footrest, and forcing Miko’s bulk against her inner left thigh. Her data goggles indicate a category 3 pollutant storm on the way in from the North Atlantic.
Lash it! Why hadn’t she thought to look at the long term weather forecast for the night before leaving the tower. Storms could come off the North Atlantic with little warning. She knew this. But she also knew that satellite imaging always found them. There had been some warning at the pump station and she’d ignored this. Now it is too late. And here she is, Stuyvesant Park Tent Town, about to play shanty town tourist on a night when no sensible person in the wider city would ever dream of going out. She shifts her attention from the data goggles to the town proper.
It is already evident how severely the shanty is being impacted. She shifts to thermal imaging.
The town spreads either side of 2nd Avenue. It appears as a stepped, leafed forest in mutable, amoeba-like patterns of hot reds, bright yellows, and flaring whites, the colors all in a continuing shift and dance brought about by the wind, like so many varicolored swinging lanterns. Without really thinking further, she snaps multiple groups of stills for her private art gallery, and this completed, can’t resist the temptation of a quick study of each image despite the urgency of the situation she and Miko had come to find themselves in. She counts 36 images in total, and scans, making an analysis of their artistic value, then selects 12 of her favorites, labels a folder Stuyvesant Park tent town_firsts, and drops the images in. She then returns to her terrain surveillance.
The area is marked by a distinct smell. She runs an analysis and finds a dominance of sulfur and chloride compounds. She establishes that the eway is 200-meters above the swampy land that dominates much of the canal level. The toxic effluent is reaching this high. It isn’t a surprise. The vapor has been recorded as reaching as high as 355-meters above canal level, almost as high as the BAAL Tower, but here at tenter level, it looks to be ever present. It is hard to believe that anyone could think to make a home here. She engages her olfactory systems, selects from a range of perfumes a scented honey, and returns to the more immediate situation.
Four of the five member militia team have their assault rifles trained on her and Miko. The exception is the member at the point of the formation. The member is smaller in height, and lesser in bulk, their rifle held at ease, angling down across the chest. Perhaps this is meant to make it clear who is in charge. She checks beyond the boom gate. Parked level with the eway’s opposing lane, sits an elevator. She is forced to think things through.
She is to blame. She has allowed them to walk right into this. Another example of her spur of the moment self, how she will just throw herself into the fire without thinking through the consequences. Why hadn’t she been able to foresee that the tenter’s would just deem themselves fit to immediately haul them in on their approach to the town. The technology that they were employing already reason enough to give them an excuse. She needs advice. ‘What can you give me, Miko?’ she asks.
‘Nothing, Bébé.’
‘Ah huh … but we’re in a situation here. I need you on this, Miko!’
‘Bébé, let me put it to you this way. We’re in trouble, and you’ve been shooting pictures for your art gallery wall. And now you want my advice? Try this. A field’s been erected behind us. We can jump it, but not high enough. The field’s electromagnetic radiation extends well beyond its effective projection. Systems will be compromised. Please allow me to make that plain to you. I will be damaged. Read hurt. I suggest that you hear out the guard.’
She has been relayed the truth, as much as she hasn’t wanted to hear it. Lash it! Now what? She faces behind her, to review back along the eway, opening a fresh series of windows on her HUD. The first window reveals a three-meter high field shimmering twenty-two meters distant, stretching from eway guard rail to opposing guard rail; easy enough to see. The next series of windows track beyond this, up along 2nd Avenue where it crosses over 17th. Emergency signage and road blocks are being erected by a small team of people. The approaching traffic is already banked up. Some vehicles are turning back, receiving directions from another team of people waving glow-batons. And all this makes it very clear to her that Stuyvesant Park Tent Town is capable of running a very sophisticated and well-coordinated security operation. This has to allow for an autonomy very much at odds with the totalitarian rule under which the city found itself. She faces forward again. None of the militia group have altered their position. The expectation continued to be that she and Miko would simply capitulate to any arrest or interrogation.
She hears from Miko. ‘Bébé, say we can explain, that we’re sorry we -.’
‘Miko,’ she hurriedly interrupts, losing patience. ‘Leave it to me. I know what to do.’ And having made this claim, she is forced to remind herself if she indeed does. But she lets the thought go. She is getting fed up. As much as she wants to empathize with the tenter guards, having forced them out into such a bad night, hadn’t her intentions been innocent enough? She wants to tourist. She is just like everybody else. ‘Miko, I’m stepping over. Standby.’
‘Succeeding command, Bébé.’
‘Thank you, Miko. I’ll see you when I get back. I promise this won’t take long.’ What was that, she thinks, famous last words. But she is feeling confident. She dismounts, makes her way around Miko, allows her coat to fall open and grow to the length of her calves, and catching the wind, playing around her, begins to step off across the eway proper, sure to keep her steps slow and even. Let them wait, she thinks. Let them know who is in command. They will talk under her terms. But as she nears the guard detail, her approach seems to change little in the attitude of the team. And lash it, cloaking technology; she can’t get body scans over her HUD, wanting especially to sound out the lead guard, get a heartbeat, or the build of sweat upon the forehead. Three meters before the team, she comes to a stop, rests her feet apart, and hooking her arms to her hips, sweeping her coat behind, says over her external helmet comms, ‘What happened to improved public relations? Don’t I get an elevator ride!’
The four tenters with the aimed assault rifles each draw back the rifle slides.
‘There’s you answer, girl.’
She hasn’t wanted to assume the gender status of any of the guard militia. Compounding the problem, the general lumpiness of the military coolskins, given the breast, arm, and leg pockets, and the many tech compartments stitched into the Beck nanofiber, has made it hard to define any specific body type. But her joke has given away the team member on point. The man comes forward a step, saying, ‘The name’s commander So. Friends call me Mike. Sorry to say, we’re not there yet. Where we are is me telling you you’ve got some ideas. Five minutes tent side and every second roper would’ve had that machine of yours for its nuts and bolts. Guess you’re lucky we thought to intervene. What I’m saying is … ’ He comes forward a further step, casually lifting the slung assault rifle, and using the tip of the barrel to point over her shoulder, explains, ‘We’re taking you in for safe keeping, you … and that fancy machine of yours. If you’d care to look behind you.’
She doesn’t need to look. She has the information already. Miko is relaying the ascent of another elevator cage.
It comes to halt a short distance to the left of the first parked elevator. The door slides open. Stepping out, are four additional tenter militia in military coolskins. Three of these, between them, carry an isolation net, while the forth, massive and square-shaped, stands aside, directing. If she had been confident of handling the situation and winning a showdown with the tenter guard detail earlier, the isolation net has changed this. An isolation net has only one purpose; to neutralize all electrical activity that it is thrown over. She watches as the auxiliary militia unit steps towards Miko.
‘So how about it, girl?’ she hears from the commander.
She remains still, gazing out passed the guard leader.
The pollutant fall has kept up its steady increase. A brown-black treacle. She has never known the rain contamination to be high as it was looking. She takes a reading. 76-percent. A new record. Making things worse, the treacle is being driven hither and dither across the eway in an eddying wind that seems not to know which way to blow. She attempts a wider view of the tent town, but thick threads of the treacle, catching on her faceplate, and activating the plate cleaning enzymes, her normal view is like that of a constantly shifting Rorschach inkblot. Focusing back to the guard, they have somewhat relaxed their stance, though keeping the assault rifles trained on her. She understands that their military coolskins would be doing a good job of keeping the worst of the night’s inclement weather at bay, but it has to be really rotten simply being out here. The whole team has to be really hating her. In their eyes, she is post-tipping lucky, someone who has, through breeding and inherited wealth, or perhaps new wealth, been kept from the worst of the post-apocalypse. An uptown girl. And tonight she has been stupid enough to want to go tent town slummin’, just to see how the other half lives. She thinks of Miko, and can only radio, ‘Sorry, Miko,’ then somewhat theatrically, she raises both arms up in the air, and replies to the commander saying, ‘Ok, you’ve got me. Take me to your leader,’ and if she’d expected this to go down well, the evidence of how much they were happy to let her know about it this is immediate. Three of the militia team are waved forward by Mike So, they surrounding her, while the fourth keeps their assault rifle raised, a pair of handcuffs is produced from the coolskin thigh pocket by the guard to her right, they stepping directly to her rear, and very quickly her arms are drawn down from the air, dragged behind her, her hands cuffed, and she is shoved forward.
Art Bébé says, 'Fade out.'
Art Bébé™ ©
Art Bébé™ ©
