"Oh!.....my darling!........what have they done to you!?"
The subways....
The overways.....
The interways.......
no matter what the way ........
people always stared at each other with blank stares.....
listening to the latest music feeds.....
listening to the latest opinion feeds.....
listening.......
............listening................
.......................listening.................. .
to....anything to blot out the sounds of the millions, nay....trillions of
people........................who stared in the white glare of the..... ways......
but tonight.......they saw a different sight.....
a man wounded in hand
a man wounded in spirit........
a man who needed their help,
a man who needed some small sup of of the liquor of kindness.....
but....instead...they looked away......they listened...they ..listened
to blot out the sounds of MegaCityWest.... those...
who
inhabited the kilometers high walls of MegaCity West.....
blotted out a man...who had helped to save them....to instead.....to listen to the news/media/music...feeds from the people
who controlled......
MegaCityWest....
but.....tonight....lower,................
.......... lower, ............................
lower, into the steel bowls of the CITY.....
....on this night....
on THIS night...................
the halls of complex 245, implex 346, subsection 982, were.......
curiously quiet......there were no thronging multitudes....sweating....listening to the ochre of their feeds...
Instead....this night...
Bryce staggered down the halls of the implex.....where normally there would be thousands of desperate faces that would not register his existence....
nor he theirs......
and they were empty.
Bryce staggered down the fifth level of implex 346, 'where are the people.....' he asked himself....
Suddenly! As if from a great long hallway of steel that extended on forever.....
"Mr. Bryce! How are you man!?" hollered Almundo .... proprietor of what, to all of the denizens of level 300 was considered the best BODEGA on the level....
"Hey man.... are you ok?!?......."
Almundo of the Bodega tapped a console.
"Luis! Get down here now, I need to leave for a sec, I'm shutting down, but it's ok traffic has been light for the last coupla hours, get down here, I'm going!"
And he tapped a wall button and the pseudo-organic wall of the front of the BODEGA closed itself..just as he jumped into the empty hall....
"Hey man, you don't look so good..." He put his arm around Bryce....as Bryce staggered down the imterway....
The imterways of MegaCityWest had coalesced aeons ago around the original subways, BARTs and other miscellaneous attempts to move millions of people in an efficient manner. However, all of those attempts had failed miserably for one simple reason. The innovative impulse of people can only be stifled at the wrong end of the barrel of a weapon, and so all the planning by the best planners on the face of the NORTHAM continent had gone for naught....but.......the implex..... the imterways....and the BODEGAS had survived.....and thrived....
"Commmooonnn Mr. Bryce....you gotta help me out here.....what's your address, I don't know, jeeze Mr.Bryce you gotta help me some here....."
The bilious, greasy, orange-blue of the overheads and side lights of the tube kept closing in on Almondo....'I mean......where are we goin' man?!'....
Suddenly the identity tag on Bryces collar beeped green.... and said, in the bilious green of the impersonal botvoices of MegaCityWestTransport; "Welcome Home Bosun Bryce! You are merely three blocks from your complex! I am sure that your..."
Almondo slapped the tag with a rough hand...."Sorry Mr. Bryce....is your wife waiting?..... is there somebody there?"
"Hello sirs! I am medibot Rodolfo! The combined offices of USNAV and MEGACITYWEST GEn..."
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!!" screamed Luis.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere a medibot had been dispatched to care for Bryce....possibly the bot had arrived from within one of the thousands of year old inlets that littered the brown ceramic tiles of the lower reaches of the transport system of MegaCityWest.
"WHAT AREYOU DOIN....?
"Please excuse me Citizen; but I have been assigned to assuage the damage done to the hand of Bosun PO3 Taggar..."
"GET THE F@#$ AWAY YOU PIECE OF DURALUMIN TRASH THIS MAN NEEDS HIS FAMILY NOW AND YO...."
"I really must insist citizen that I am now authorized....Oh your name is Almondo 4582, BODEGA liscence 2942, yes, I quite realize that you must indeed care for Mr. Tag..."
"GET THE #$%^% OUT OF HERE YOU PIECE OF DURALIMIN @#$%!! GET AWAY!!!"
"PLEASE SIR!! I am sorry if I have offended in anyway! But Bosun Taggart has been designated a Priority ONE slash A medical emergency and my programming requires that..."
Luis calmly reached into his innervest pocket and removed a flashmob and threw it at the bot...it exploded in a volcano of energy and the bot fell to the floor....
"It's ok Mr. Bryce.... you need family now..." Almondo hefted Bryce again with his left arm and carfully tucked the obviously damaged left arm of Bryce in his right hand.....
'God his hand is hot! What has he done to himself....I mean he's in the Navy and all but really this is kinda...'
Suddenly as they reached the hatch/portal; the hatch/portal opened and Bryce's wife threw herself through it only to be stopped by the view of her husband Bryce, Almondo, and the obviously stricken hand which Bryce held to his breast, nestled in Almondo's hand.
"Oh!" she swallowed.
Almondo upshouldered Bryce...... Bryce stood to his legs....his rawhided hand and arm held to the rough ballistic of his blastvest... Almondo ......almost....reverently.....released Bryce's arm...
"Mrs Bryce...I don't know what happ...." stumbled Almondo...
'I mean.....Luis.....thank you....." Bryce strangled out..."Oh....sweetums.......don't worry it's just..."
curiously...
Bryce's legs would not support him....Almondo at first tried to hold him up, but looking first to the woman, and then to the face of Bryce...... he..then..stepped back.....
And so.....
Bryce fell forward.....into his wife's arms....and she cried!
"Oh!.....my darling!........what have they done to you!?"
******************************
woodsmoke