"Manhattan Story"

“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 70KB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

“Yeah, I think we can make it—there’s a ledge here!” Ahsanul called up to us. He had climbed down the ladder, to the tunnel which was now flooded with water.  I watched from the topside of the manhole as he slowly stepped onto the virtually invisible, from where I was looking, ledge.  “It’s small, but I can walk it! Maybe six inches wide.”

“It’ll have to do,” I said.

“Brother! Can we not just wade through the water?” Aniki called down.

“I don’t think so—that current looks pretty swift!” Oz hollered up.

“Shomik, what’s going on out there?” Mike spoke into her phone and was silent as Shomik replied. “WHAT?”

We all looked to her as she reacted. She looked to us and spoke. “Hurricane 538. It’s dumping rain.”

“That’s impossible,” Van said.  “Look up, goddamit!”

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 74KB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

“I guess we’re both staying,” Mike said, looking from Domo to Van. Van was pressed up against the outer wall, inside the kitchen, looking down the subway tunnel.  Mike pressed herself up against the wall perpendicular to the the tunnel. From there she could see the cubicles and anything or people inside getting torn to pieces.

“Jesus, Mary, Mother of God!  What’s doing that??” Mike said, without hesitation.  She slid forward and edged around the door frame.  She could see twenty or thirty labor robots—like Domo only bigger, more hydraulics and gears.  They were aiming their hands at whatever was moving and Mike could see the same little puffs we had seen on the video Jenny had shot at Core.  Whatever it was that they were firing, it was enough to cut anything in their path apart.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 74KB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

“I’ve got Smith and the robot, should I come by and pick you up?” Shomik Chandra asked Mike over the phone.  He paused as she replied.  Jenny couldn’t hear what she said, but Shomik closed the stream right after saying. “Very good.  See you soon.”

“She says she’s sorry she couldn’t be here in person, but that you’re in good hands.”  He accelerated the “CSVV” (Chandra Super Versatile Vehicle” into ‘traffic,’ only ‘traffic’ was water.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

Plasma rained down on Houston Street.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

Shortly after Phillips had left Jenny’s apartment, she decided to check the news. The rain was still pounding down and she could see things zoom by so she knew that Hurricane 535 was still going strong. Sometimes it was a street sign that had broken loose in the wind, but most of the time, it was just trash. Mayor Breit’s NYNB program did include hiring civil engineers to design street signs and other ‘non-building’ public structures (covered bus stops, Xnet kiosks, police boxes, standalone public restrooms). Even trashcans had lids that allowed garbage in, but wouldn’t let it out via a very simple mechanism.

As a result, anything flying through the air was our own fault, like the lawn chair that Jenny had seen on the iLine. At least people were smart enough to chain their bikes down.

She turned on the wall display to see if there was anything new on the storm. “Yes, we’re getting word of thunder so loud in parts of the city that it’s shaking things off of shelves.”

“Thunder? In a hurricane?” Jenny asked herself. She couldn’t remember hearing thunder in a hurricane before―just howling winds. I had only been through a few in my time in the city and I couldn’t remember hearing it either. But shaking things off of shelves―that did sound familiar―from my time in Los Angeles, however.

“In case you’re just joining the MIIS infostream, we’re now into a second hurricane. 536 made landfall about thirty minutes ago and we’re being told by the New York City Weather Authorities that a third tropical depression is forming in the Atlantic several miles east of Virginia. While that’s a good ways away from where 535 and 536 formed, they’re now telling us that it’s possible that it might pick up strength and get caught in the Atlantic Upstream. So, I, uh, hope you don’t get paid hourly because we’re in for at least another day of hurricane weather. NYW Authorities do remind us that while New York City is experiencing Category 5 and greater hurricanes, New Yorkers are discouraged from going outside and driving is prohibited. Limited bus and Infinity Line services are running, but for emergency purposes only until further notice.”

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

Two days earlier, Jenny had just returned to an apartment she was house-sitting in. A friend had asked her to look in on her cats, but said she was welcome to spend as much time as she wanted. So, she had been. She’d take a number of different methods—bus, iLine, taxi, around town and end up at her friend’s place.

When I called to tell her I would get a “slap on the wrist” for lying about Domo at the shelter, we’d been interrupted by MIIS, the Manhattaan Incident Information System. It’s the system that takes over the Xnet in case of some sort of city-wide emergency. It allows the New York Emergency Management Agency to control all information about a given emergency and force all communication lines to be available for emergency purposes only.

The NYEMA Act was one of many state laws passed thanks to the terrorist bombing of Roosevelt Island.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

“So, how ‘bout it Doc? Can I take these eye things off?” I asked Dr. Aibo.

“It’s only been two days since you were wounded. The three day estimate was a best case example, not a promise,” she explained. “I also don’t think you should go with the expedition to Bushville. You’ve gone through a lot in the past few days.”

“Days? I’ve been through a lot in the past few weeks.”

“Oh?”

“Saw a guy jump to his death, my wife left me, I nearly got blown apart when my apartment got shot up by a police gunship…” I hesitated, suddenly wondering if that gunship belonged to NYPD or PriNCE. “…only then did I spend an afternoon in a pile of corpses, nearly get incinerated and go mostly blind.”

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

After hearing Jess’s story, I decided not to press her for more details. I’d gotten very tired and just wanted to find a place to sleep. I’d been up for almost forty-eight hours and was having a hard time keeping everything straight in my head.

After two near-death experiences, one after the other I was flying on adrenaline and fear. But once I had some down time, I started to feel my energy leave me. I had Jess find a bag to put all the phones in and then Aniki found me a bed. At that point I’d lost track of what time it was entirely. I’d forgotten about the hurricane, I’d forgotten about Jenny, I’d forgotten about everything.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

Jess, it turns out, ‘lucked’ into her job in the Mayor’s office. She grew up out in Jersey and had an uncle who was a city planner. He worked with Breit a lot on the New York New Buildings initiative, which strengthened the overwhelming majority of buildings in the city so that they’d withstand a plane strike. That was her window in. She had graduated community college with what she agreed was an unimpressive, C-average.

“Hey, people had reached the White House with worse,” I told her as I listened to her tell me her story over those fifteen phones in the Hydesville rec-room.

Her uncle got her the gig and despite her generalized education was hired to help out on Breit’s first campaign. That’s right, all of Breit’s “volunteers” were well paid. But she did a reasonable job and, she says, she was pretty sure her immediate supervisors thought she was “easy on the eyes,” so when Breit won the first time, she was promoted to his staff. Over the following years she worked her way up until she was the top assistant for Breit.

“But don’t think I’m some sort of brilliant assistant or anything,” she said, “it’s not like I slept with him either.”

Indeed, to hear her tell it, she was quite a mediocre assistant—forgetting to let the mayor know about calls on hold or that calls came in at all, accidentally deleting emails and wiping one of the office’s cloud accounts of all data including expenses.

“I actually got a bonus for that mistake,” she admitted, smiling nervously. Apparently, the office was happy to have no record of expenditures for one month for some reason.

“The only way I ended up as head assistant was because I was the only one left. Everyone else had quit for other reasons or had been promoted to other positions. She found herself the last assistant standing.

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“Manhattan Story” is ©2009 thepete.com. NO reproduction is allowed without express written consent of ThePete. You can download a 50ishKB PDF to this chapter if you wish. You may also visit TheWikiPeteia to download other chapters of “Manhattan Story” or start at the beginning with Chapter 1.

“You’re only legally blind for now, Mr. Conant,” she said, pointing a penlight at me that I was reasonably sure should have looked brighter to me. Of course, what I had said just before that comment was: “I don’t care if I’m blind, I have to get a message to the guy who runs Bushville!”

It becoming depressingly clear to me why ‘villes were getting knocked off. These people lived isolated lives—even from each other. Isolation can breed misinformation.

“But Dr. Aibo, you’ve got to understand—the people of Bushville are in danger.”

“That may be, but Van Bush is very slow to listen to people other than himself. Just ask my husband, he grew up with him.”

Dr. Imoto Aibo, wife of Aniki Aibo, the man who saved me from the pit, was trying her best to treat my new case of legal, but not complete blindness. They told me they were both from Africa—he came over when he was three and she came over for school and never left when she met him. Yes, that’s right, they’re both African, but to me they both looked like those gray aliens. Dark eyes, gray skin.

“We look like what?” she asked.

“You know when people say they’ve been abducted by aliens and all describe the same kind of dark-eyed, gray-skinned alien? That’s what I see.”

She laughed an intelligent sounding, restrained laugh—short, soft bursts of her controlled voice. “Your retina has been burned but with the right treatment we can bring your sight back.”

“That’s great, just as soon as I get word to Van, I’ll—”

“Hey, brother Jim, what is it you want to tell Van? We can send a runner, it’s just a fifty blocks from here to Bushville.” I heard Aniki say behind me.

“I really think I need to deliver the message in person, or at least in my own voice.”

“Not a problem, not a problem. But we’ll have to mask your voice. They can’t know it’s from you because if word gets out that you’re alive then the guys who tried to kill you in that pit will probably try again and we can’t let that happen.”

“Well, he won’t believe it from anyone else,” I said.

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