FLICKER — NaNoWriMo 2016
NOVEMBER 3RD, 2016 — DAY 03
Starting to feel I’m finding the story now. Hope you are too.
CHAPTER 4
The queue to the connectome in the lobby of Neon Little Tokyo was long when Keiko and Ochoa stepped out onto the Highwalk. They were joined by their assistants, a man and woman who bore the shimmer of quanta down their taps. They kept input and output flowing so their bosses didn’t have to.
The sun sat low, played off the standing pools of water on the Highwalk. The four sidestepped the drops of water shed from awnings and umbrellas of the restaurants and market stalls. The glow of LED signage in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese that sought to court hungry Highwalkers settled in smoke kicked off open grills and steam rising from soba baths.
Ochoa watched a tuna carcass fed through a machine behind the counter of a sushi stand. Identical nigiri formed from a sliver of crimson meat atop a morsel of grey rice were spat out in threes onto a plate-a-second. The payment terminal chimed with every plate scooped up and devoured by a passing customer. The design of the handover was such that a customer couldn’t help but brush the terminal with their wrist or forearm upon reaching for a plate.
“Just watching them makes me feel sick,” Keiko whispered into Ochoa’s ear.
“They could do worse,” he replied, nodding to what looked like an unmanned popcorn stand of decades past. A clear chamber packed full of fluffy cream-coloured crisps flowed into paper cups at a brush of its payment terminal. A passing young American lifted his cup close enough for Keiko to recoil. Superheated air turns a cockroach inside out much like it does a corn kernel but the result will have unavoidably more legs.
Keiko, Ochoa, and their assistants entered under an argon sign, tubes bent to read ‘Carnitas’. One of the assistants had pushed a request to have their regular table, a booth under the glowing effigy of a pig, dressed with carbonated tea upon arrival. The assistants knew Keiko’s preference for pekoe and Ochoa’s for jasmine so the restaurant knew. And two glasses appeared with bubbles rising from their bases as Keiko and Ochoa sat down.
“Do you think Cheng’s really got the missing seventeen minutes of Sanshiro Sugata in his print?” Keiko asked after palleting the first crisp mouthful of pekoe.
“It’s certainly possible. The lengths that were taken to form that collection are anyone’s guess. So, yeah, he very well might have the completed film.”
“And you’re still confident our subscribers will want it?”
“This isn’t something I’d file in our catalog, if that’s what you’re asking. If he’s got it, and it’s a big ‘if’, we take over the Hollywood Bowl for a week, stop any — “ Ochoa looked over at their assistants in the adjacent booth with their glowing taps. Lowered his voice. “Stop any MTs getting in and sell seats like they would have done when the thing first came out.” Ochoa took a swig of his jasmine. “With how crazy a certain class of person in this town goes for that antique bullshit, sales of those seats will pull in as much as a week’s worth of subscriptions.”
“Would you packet it?”
“I think we just hold it, do the same thing every year or so to keep appetites wet. There should be a bunch of other stuff in the collection that will pull people to switch subscriptions to us once we get it in the catalog.” Ochoa made eyes at his assistant. She nodded her acknowledgement and an order for blue corn chips with real-milk queso blanco was placed. “Just so long as you’re comfortable taking on the collection to begin with.”
“I’ve spoken with legal. They’d be satisfied if its explicit that the source, in this case Cheng, bear the responsibility.” The snack landed on their table at the end of a waiter’s hand. “But you wouldn’t call it theft on his part. If Sanshiro’s in there, Kim would’ve had it stolen from Japan to begin with.”
“It’s less the legality of a single film I’m worried about.” Ochoa drowned a chip in the liquid cheese that today went for the median weekly wage. “Since reunification along the Peninsula, there are a bunch of loyalists without a nation who might not be particularly happy with us taking what they thinks is theirs, regardless of where it came from.”
“Call me naïve but I just can’t see a group of North Korean loyalists storming the gates of Little Tokyo, José.” Keiko said, dismissing the notion with a waved hand. The corn chip shattered in Ochoa’s mouth when he crunched down.
They ducked into separate private cells and were carried off in the stream. Ochoa has his virtutar read the news packet through plugs set in his ears as he did every evening. Whilst not the most efficient means of translation, he preferred its leisurely pace, especially at this time of day
Keiko always preferred the silence. Her virt knew to fill the cabin with a composite of frequencies negative to the whir of the cell’s motors, of the rumble of the road. Every evening her virt worked to reduce the sense impression of the cell to nil. When those passing unseen, unheard in cells just inches from her own blasted superpositioned images out of their shades to clear their media queues or yammered into plugs to children and colleagues or inhabitted virtual conference rooms or coffee houses through direct myelin tapping of the optic nerve, Keiko was accompanied only by her thoughts. When everyone else was likely filling the dead time of their commute, Keiko wanted it to stay dead.
The cells carried some to the public baths in Silverlake, or to the Los Angeles Supernex to ride the Hyperloop to Frisco or Tijuana back home, or right to their user’s front door before reentering the stream and pulling off to the next user or back to dispatch to recharge. They’d hug the outside lanes when empty, ready to slow when a user stepped up to the curb, navigating commercial and freight cells as they slipped deeper into the stream once occupied.
Keiko’s virt knew to pull the cell into the underground garage of her Beverly Park home. It would be silent here when she alighted. The cell crested the driveway on exit, routed its generators as it coasted down the spindly streets past homes that the Chinese tech elite had bought out from under cinema’s darlings of the century past, as enamoured by the view of the city as they were with each property’s previous owner.
The first thing to break the silence Keiko had enjoyed since leaving Little Tokyo was the laughing squeal of her daughter.
CHAPTER 5
Part of our galaxy landed in the middle of the night somewhere in the California desert. It was caught in the panels of the South-West Solar Array, each a sable tile painted with a constellation. You could walk a mile along any one of the array’s rows and go nowhere. So it was a good thing the kid wasn’t walking.
Two flecks tore down the lanes between the solar panels on a noise many thought had gone extinct. The flecks were headlights and the noise was that of the internal combustion engine. Motorcycles stripped dust from the desert and barrelled toward a flaming barrel set up ahead in a lane running perpendicular. The kid had ripped his shirt from his back and wrapped it around his face, sealed under his eyes by goggles that were being battered by sand. Because the kid was losing. The other bike had a few lengths of a lead and the kid was living in its cloud. But he could still make out the burning barrel.
The other bike got to it first, slowed to slip the rear wheel out to round the barrel. And it slipped a hair too far. Straightening, the other bike shot back down the kid’s lane. He got skinny to evade being skinned by his competition, cooled it to flick his rear end and make the hairpin. Gunned it on exit and the gap closed to a length. The kid wasn’t in the other’s cloud anymore.
A snarl from the engine as the kid chomped the clutch and snapped third. And the lead was half a length. Into fourth and they were level. The kid was sure he’d pull ahead out of fifth. Throttle wide open, clutch bit hard, needle smacked the end of the tac. And fifth. But the flat-shift cost him and he was back in the cloud when they crossed the line.
Eu split from the group of boilersuits as the bikes pulled up. She approached the kid as he killed his bike and the engine growled down.
“Too bad, Moon,” one of the group called out, the rest moving in to congratulate the victor.
“I got too cocky,” the kid panted as he whipped the shirt from his face and slapped it down over the tank.
“Relax, you look like you’ve got plenty more in you,” Eu comforted.
“I fucking had it, I had it…”
“That was close.” The other rider approached, doffed her helmet to reveal the tight curl of her hair pulled back into a lattice of fishtail braids. “I thought you had me.”
“I would have,” the kid said meeting her eyes. “If I didn’t try to charge you into fifth — “
“But you did, Moon. Don’t try to now say it wasn’t me that won but rather you that lost,” she interrupted. “You’ve got to accept it.”
“I know, Nedaara, I know,” Moon admitted as he picked at his shirt on the bike. Nedaara moved in.
“You shocked us all making it out here with that cell. The fact that you rode at all tonight is exactly why I know I can be hard on you. Because you can take it.” Nedaara turned to Eu. “How’d you feel about trying your — “ Nedaara looked down Eu’s exposed arms, the bubbling light from her taps stark in the dark. “ — hand at it now?” Nedaara held her helmet out for Eu.
“Let’s do it.” Eu came for the packet and there was no point leaving with it half full.
Logs:
16–1103 | GOAL:5001S: 16–1103_1025, 3381WE: 16–1103_1128, 3668W | 287WS: 16–1103_1136, 3668WE: 16–1103_1202, 3793W | 404WS: 16–1103_1225, 3793WE: 16–1103_1322, 4108W | 729WS: 16–1103_1330, 4108WE: 16–1103_1354, 4188W | 809WS: 16–1103_1652, 4188WE: 16–1103_1753, 4504W | 1125WS: 16–1103_2109, 4504WE: 16–1103_2221, 4818W | 1435WS: 16–1103_2232, 4818WE: 16–1103_2304, 5082W | 1699WTOTAL: 5.5H | 1699W
