FLICKER — NaNoWriMo 2016
NOVEMBER 2ND, 2016 — DAY 02
Super slow going again today. Logs below like yesterday.
NOTE: Medium and Ulysses are turning double indentation into a “code” block.
Enjoy!
Neon’s shades were in fact a whole lot nicer. Especially their Genius revision. The six-axis positioning system melted back into the arms of the shades, giving them better balance on the face. The varible density glass had an edge in dilution rate over both Bubbl’s View 1 and Tailr’s Twenty15 by more than half a second. Cheng realised he had gotten caught up in admiring them on the face of Keiko’s Chief of Content Acquisitions José Ochoa when a silence hung in the room. He couldn’t even remember who’d last spoken.
“Mr Yi?” Ochoa tried again.
“I think he’s a little shook up from the rain,” Keiko suggested. The drone of the Highwalk mixed with the hard patter against the boardroom windows. “Sorry to get you out in this today.”
“No trouble at all. I’ve become accustomed much more than most to in-person consultations. My clients don’t tend to be as connected as most.” Cheng punctated his sentence with a humble duck of the head.
“Just because Musk built the automobile, doesn’t mean he ought to get rid of his driver,” Keiko quipped.
“Indeed,” Cheng concluded with the gentlest smile he could manage.
“Sorry, Mr Yi, has anyone else been shown what you’ve brought to us?” Ochoa pressed.
“Only the same scan sample you’ve seen.”
“So they know nothing about the size or quality of the collection either.”
“We feel the sample is indicative of the collection’s quality — both in the condition of the prints and their rarity.”
“Yes but, with respect, we don’t know exactly what the collection contains,” Ochoa reasoned. “And by all means, that’s your prerogative in attracting a bid you believe is fair but…” He trails off with the shake of his head.
“You couldn’t share at least the titles you believe are the central drivers of price? For me? I mean, the sample we have, that’s from a screentest for 2001, if I recall correctly.”
“That’s correct.”
“But, come on now Cheng, a collection of this size, of this prestige… We know Supreme Leader Kim believed it his life’s work. José has briefed me extensively on what we might be paying for.”
“Which is why he isn’t saying,” Ochoa posited, picking up on the smile on Cheng’s face turning from gentle to smug. “He wants us all to scramble around and make offers based on our fantasies of what could be in the collection.” José slipped the shades off, placed them on the table. “I don’t much feel like buying your bluff, Yi.”
“There is one that I could share. Maybe.”
“I guess you think it’s fitting that a man selling motion pictures ought to have a taste for the drama of mystery,” Keiko teased. She leaned in. “So tell us, Mr Yi, what’s the big reveal?”
“Sanshiro.”
“…Sugata?” This had caught Ochoa’s attention.
“The very same. But with the missing 1,845 feet.” Cheng’s smugness wasn’t hollow after all.
“And it’s legit?” Ochoa asked with scepticism.
“We’re working to confirm it, but it appears to be. Yes.”
“Well send it on over!” Keiko implored, throwing her hands in the air. Cheng’s smile curled at the corner.
“Not likely. But I’ll let you see it. Under… appropriate restrictions.” Apparently nothing feels better than having your bluff called and setting a royal straight face up. But the pot wasn’t Cheng’s just yet. Keiko stood from the table.
“We’ll prepare an offer,” she said, extending a hand to shake. “But Cheng, I want to see that film.”
CHAPTER 3
The HUD layer in the corner of Eu’s vision told her that the cell hit 80 miles per hour just after they passed through Burbank. Her virt told her that none of the other jacks had made it this far. And the fact they’d outpaced Neon’s reclamation squad told her that either the zom or the kid were something else.
But Eu had pushed her virt to run the numbers. They’d been fliriting with the cut-off voltage since entering The Valley.
“Shit!” the kid cried out, slicing the cell stream as cleanly as the rainwater that it sat on. The cell’s glass was diluted, let Eu watch as cells parted on the slick road in front and circled round to guard their rear. Whatever the zom was kicking out, it made the other cells pay attention.
“This thing’s gonna die isn’t it.”
“Yeah, no shit, MT. The zom pushes harder than I thought. Fuck!” He would’ve punched the steering wheel if the cell had one. Then something above had his eye. “Huh. I guess they want their car back.” Through the diluted glass ceiling of the cell, Eu spotted the pilotted quadcopter chewing up the downpour above. A decal reading “NEON” licked its side. They might have heard the quadcopter’s low hum on approach if the cell ever stopped whining.
Eu could say she’d worked it out, but credit ought to go to her virt. This kind of packet would be hot to Neon, to anyone with money really. She had just been an observer, a documentarian. Passing this up was probably the bigger crime, right?
“You know where the tether is on these things?” the kid shouted over his shoulder. Eu blinked and she did.
“What about it?”
“We’re gonna need power if we want any hope of slipping — ,” but Eu lost the rest when her head starting ringing.
hostage?
no.
status?
didact.
plan?
packet.Eu felt that the pilot’s virt drop for just an instant. Just barely.
approved.
shadow.
copy.“MT, you get that?” Eu’s virt filled her in.
“You’ll have to cool the zom. It’s pushing the others too far away.” Eu pulled off her bomber jacket to the singlet beneath as the quadcopter overhead pulled pack, playing its part.
“You got it. I’ll pull them a little closer.” The kid fiddled with the controller and the other cells flowed tighter. Eu stood by the door. The myelin taps running the length of her arms — threads along which pink quanta were bubbling — concluded in the cerebellic implant at the base of her skull.
“Pop the door!” Eu called. A smack of the controller and the door popped.
The rush of the air almost peeled Eu out onto the freeway, under a passing cell. And the rain almost snuck between her hand and the handle inside the door. But she held fast.
“Skirts!” she demanded over the pelt of rain, whine of electric motor, and chop of copter blades. The skirts punched out along the cell’s side. Used for grannies and small children, they just might be enough.
Anchored to the handle, Eu stepped out onto the skirt. Taps flared, she inched toward the rear wheel kicking up water. Cells grazed her back as they slipped by. The kid must’ve already opened the hatch because there it was: the tip of the tether exposed above the wheel arch.
Eu yanked at it with her free hand, curled out a foot of the inch-thick cable over her knuckles. Knew she had eleven left. Call it ten. Probably wise to round down. Now came the fun part.
Faced toward the front of the cell, others whipped past close like subway cars. Squinted through the rain haze. Neon Neon Bubbl Neon Bubbl Tailr Tailr Neon the random string formed, each cell in front of her just long enough to read before falling back.
“Hey kid!” she called out only to be swallowed up by the noise. Quanta sprinted the length of her outstretched arms, virt monitored moisture under skin, calibrated grip. It pushed an entry request. The doors to every other cell popped a moment after they were in range. In other words, a moment after she needed them to.
“Kid!” Eu tried again. And the kid’s dumb dirty head got a much needed shower as he stuck it out the open door.
“You got it!” he gasped, seeing the tether wrapped around Eu’s hand.
“Call out when you see a Neon headed my way, I can’t see far enough ahead!” Eu lost sight of the kid and everything for a second.
help?
fuck off.“Bubbl!” the kid shouted over the rain. Bubbl cell whisked past.
“Tailr!” That one nearly clipped her.
“Neon!”
Eu launched herself forward as quanta flared through the taps. Virt blasted the request as Eu’s feet left the skirts. Tether spooled out as the cell’s door popped. And she sailed through it.
The kid saw her land and cooled the zom. Eu’s new cell fell into the kid’s slipstream. He watched her couple the tether to the other cell’s node. And the controller in his hand chirped something positive.
It turned out the zom was able to drain another cell through the tether in under five minutes. By then Eu’d called off the pilot and left the dying cell. Because she knew the pair would soon approach the rim of the exclusion zone, just shy of LA’s city limits.
Out here the stream started to dry up. Cells had room to breathe with less road to cover and less people to carry. They passed countless single-story houses in storyless suburbs — driveways converted into half-courts, courtyards, or shrines to a still-gleaming Nissan or Pontiac that’s now never driven. The last car to enter with a human behind the wheel carried the Governer just as it had in Frisco two years earlier.
She’d spoken of the city’s once historic highway system that triumphantly split the Santa Monica Mountains like an icebreaker, that choked and congested came to bathe Los Angeles in smog, that could be put to use. And so it was. There were those that didn’t mount their prized four-wheelers on the plinths in their front yards, or put them in the deep freeze in one of the car houses that lined the city’s border where they’d dream of a weekend away. They sold them interstate, scrapped them, or just introduced sledgehammer to windshield in a liberation-injected euphoria.
Getting into LA behind the wheel of an automobile in 2032 was impossible. Getting out was trivial by comparison.
Eu and the kid had just slipped out of the exclusion zone when the rain let up.
Logs:
16–1102 | GOAL: 3334WS: 16–1102_0744, 1692WE: 16_1102_0856, 2111W | 419WS: 16–1102_1300, 2111WE: 16–1102_1355, 2522W | 830WS: 16–1102_1403, 2522WE: 16–1102_1458, 2756W | 1064WS: 16–1102_1535, 2756WE: 16–1102_1708, 3223W | 1531WS: 16–1102_1720, 3223WE: 16–1102_1730, 3249W | 1557WS: 16–1102_2000, 3249WE: 16–1102_2043, 3381W | 1689WTOTAL: 4.5H | 1689W
