Shit, I’m not feeling well at all. I think it might be time to get out of the city. A little vacation. I’m heading home to make a few Vid calls. Vinnie has a small shore house somewhere in the Caribbean, he’s told me. If Manhattan is about to go all redline again, with another riot and police everywhere, it’ll be nice to ride it out somewhere far away.
Sunday, 2:35 p.m.: Total washout-no one is in. I thought Vinnie answered-the Vid screen jiggled and I thought I saw a flash of his apartment, but it might have been just a dropped connection, and he didn’t pick up when I retried. I even tried Father, which tells you how desperate I am, but the old bastard wasn’t picking up, either. Probably out in the fields whipping the Droids. I think Daddy wishes he still had people working for him instead of robots, just so he could go out there in those fucking boots and inspire them a little.
Well, looks like we’re dipping into the trust fund. I’m going to see if there aren’t a few cops willing to stick me on an SSF manifest heading somewhere better. Oh, but I look like hell. My neck is all black and blue and I’m red and shiny. My hair! Oh, my hair is a fright. Thousands of yen and it looks like a wig. I’m going to have to spend some time getting myself into shape, and then my new red coat and we’ll see if we can’t charm some lieutenant or captain into slipping me onto a police ride.
Sunday, 5:46 p.m.: Insane, fucking brutes. Just as I step outside, wearing flats for a change since apparently we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives walking everywhere, all the Vids go fritzy and there’s a goddamn lockdown. We’re all ordered into our homes. I’ve been through this bullshit plenty of times-every time those assholes set downtown on fire again, they lock the city down and order us into our homes and no one pays any attention.
Toddling on my sore feet, I made my way over to The Rock, where all the cops hang around looking tough. All I needed was a friendly young man with a gold badge and clearance to sign me onto a hover. I saw a likely-looking group-three men and a woman, one of them looking a little beat-up and weathered, but I’m used to my police looking worse for the wear-and hurried over. It had started that scum-yellow snow again, bad for the skin, and I guess I lost my footing and ended up stumbling into one of them, a nasty-looking giant with red hair. I went down on my ass, feeling dizzy, feverish, my chest seizing up into a painful fist. And then there was a team of those hover monkeys they toss out, the ones that never speak to you. I was dazed, and they just plucked me up, called me ma’am, and took me away.
No way-ma’am! I felt a hundred goddamn years old. By the time I got my lungs working again, I started coughing until I almost blacked out while they loaded me into a big, smelly hover that fucking ruined my new coat. By the time I had the strength to protest, they were all gone with a vague promise that an officer would be around to check our IDs and decide what to do with us. Half an hour later some fat asshole in a leather overcoat, hacking and wheezing like there was a smaller, much sicker man inside him, showed up and did brain scans on each of us, grunting your fate. He told us he could arrest us for violating an emergency instruction, but he’d just send us home and expect us to stay there. Fucking assholes.
Excellent. I feel like shit. Feels like someone put a razor blade in my chest. I’m taking e-tabs until I pass out.
Monday, 10:44 a.m.: So, I feel like someone’s cut me open, removed a few pounds of necessary materials, and closed me back up. I don’t dare look in the mirror. There was blood on my pillow when I woke up. I’d rather not see what I look like.
Shit, the city is quiet. I tried to go downstairs, but they finally got around to setting the building shell, and the elevators are locked. My own shell won’t boot now. It’s like living in an empty, hollow building. I can’t even get my own front door open. I don’t have any food in the apartment-who keeps food in the apartment? If this emergency goes on much longer, I won’t have to worry about coughing up my own lungs. I’ll be dead.
Think I have a few n-tabs here and there, some older than fucking I am-or parts of me, anyway.
Monday, 7:48 p.m.: Oh crap, I slept for a long time and feel worse than ever. Everything is so quiet. There’s plenty on the Vids, though you’d never know anything’s going on from it. Serials, those half-minute dramas everyone’s so nuts about these days, but no news. Well, news, but nothing local. They’re demonstrating in Tokyo again because they’re so terribly happy, and the police have caught some murderer who was very much wanted in Cardiff of all fucking places. But the fact that I can’t leave my own apartment? That I’m coughing up my own lungs? Nothing. Not a peep. I
Monday, 9:33 p.m.: You keep thinking the worst has come-there were shots outside. One minute everything is so quiet I can hear myself wheeze, the next it’s like a war outside. Just a burst, gone just as fast as it started, and then it was silent again. Then more shots. I’m frightened. I’ve turned off all the lights by hand and I’m just sitting here in the dark, and every time there are more shots outside I jump and want to scream.
Monday, 10:21 p.m.: Okay, I keep falling asleep. Or passing out. Shots keep waking me up. It’s so hot in here. I can’t breathe.
Tuesday, 6:09 a.m.: Unbelievable. There is a man ‹unintelligible› outside my window. He is ‹unintelligible› walking along the narrow ledge, slowly, picking his steps with great care as he is twenty-seven stories up and there is barely room for one foot at a time on the ledge. He doesn’t look good… oh, shit… I bet neither do I. His neck is just a huge open wound. I wonder how he got out there, and if I should try to get out there, too. But this seems like a lot of work. I’m so tired.
Tuesday, 9:15 a.m.: Right. I woke up unable to breathe ‹unintelligible› like there was a mass of soggy cotton jammed down my throat. I took some a-tabs, but I barely feel them. ‹unintelligible› I’m going to have to get out of here or I’m going to… die here. I don’t know what I have or what’s going around, but I know I need to leave this apartment.
‹unintelligible›
Damn. Getting out of the apartment’s no bother-just pull the manual lock override. Getting out of the building is another matter. ‹unintelligible› Emergency lockdown means the building shell won’t budge. I’m not even sure the elevators will run. I… don’t know
Tuesday, 10:55 a.m.: Excel-Oh, shit ‹unintelligible› I don’t even think I can walk. I tried to stand up and just fell over. And that was… an hour ago. There’s a big bloodstain on the rug where I was, too.
Ah, it’s fucking unbelievable. I’m going to die. That quack Killicks kept telling me they were doing wonders in Europe about death-pushing it off, making it more of an inconvenience, but where the fuck is he now?
‹unintelligible›
There’s finally something on the local Vid spectrum. Not much, just a grim-faced DPH asshole telling us to remain indoors and not panic. It’s a loop-he talks for five minutes and then starts again. Stay inside. All is well. DPH is scooping up the bodies as they fall from your ledges and keeping our city clean. Downtown is certainly not on fire again, and you are all not going to die. Ever. Fuck.