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kc9cra
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Location: evansville, Indiana
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 Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 4:04 am Post subject: New Chicago |
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Prologue
Brad and Angie's agent drove out of the suburbs toward downtown Chicago. "I want to show you some new listings that you might really like," she said.
"It looks like we're getting closer to work," commented Brad Childress.
The young couple had reached a point in their lives when they finally realized that they weren't starving college students anymore. They were a real married couple, and they had the funds to move away from the traffic jams and constant reminders of work. They were eager to move as far from the city as they could possibly go without being unable to drive to work. The most remote properties however, had been too far from the amenities that Brad and Angie had gotten used to.
Due to Brad's promotion to head of the it department of the internet provider where he worked, as well as Angie's steady position as head nurse of pediatrics at Cook County hospital, the couple had the funds to buy something nice, so they tried for the more pricy suburban homes that were closer to town but still out of the way enough that work could be left far behind.
Beth Sampson turned on to the bipass. Traffic wizzed by them, but at least it wasn't at a standstill. "I'm sure you'll like these," she promised, "it's a new developement, very conveniant."
All Brad and Angie could see were more and more office towers. Beth pulled in to a parking lot that upuntil that day had been surrounded by construction equipment even though it was small, and noone could see any large structure sticking up out of the middle of it all. They could see why. The building on the lot was small. It looked like a garage. There were two doors. One was like a regular garage door, the other was larger. It appeared to be used for large trucks. As they pulled in Beth said, "Technology is amazing. I didn't know such a thing existed until yesterday. Next Geneeration Homes is the company building this subdivision, and I have never heard of them, but they had a seminar for real estate agents this past weekend, and they put us all on a bus and took us to this place."
"It doesn't look like there's anything here," pondered Brad. Angie wasn't talking, but she was observing. She would speak when she had something to say.
"Just wait till you see it," remarked Beth.
She pulled a plastic card from her wallet. They entered the garage through the smaller door. As they aproached, a semi truck pulling an enclosed trailer with the words Industrial Supply painted on it had entered through the larger door, but when they entered, Brad and Angie couldn't see it next to them. Beth stopped at an electronic device standing on the cement floor of the structure. She swiped the card through the slot on the side of the small machine.
A red led glowed on the control pannel. Beth pointed at it and said, "When that turns green," it did, "Well, here we go.
Ahead of them was another garage door. It slid open, but the busy thoroughfair with the skyscrapers climbing out of sight in the mid morning sky wasn't there. Instead, another parking lot appeared. ON either side, trees and shrubbery grew pristeenly. They exited the garage and turned on to a two lane road with woods on either side. Before they passed the first driveway, Angie finally spoke, "Okay, I'm officially confused now."
Brad added, "Wel, Hudini, how'd you pull this one off?"
Beth explained, "Next Generation Homes has been working closely with a company called Quantum Horizon Technologies for years to build this unspoiled paradise. I plan to move here myself when it opens to the public."
"You mean it isn't yet?" asked Brad.
"Nope, just for special customers. The company wants to bring some suitable people into establish the neighborhood before it is presented to the world. This is the first community of it's kind."
Brad agreed, "Yeah, it's an outer suburb in the middle of the corporate district. Did we teleport or something?"
Beth laughed, "No, this is another dimention."
The couple laughed, but Beth was serious. "So this is for real?" asked Angie.
"Yes, from what I was told at the seminar, scientists have figured out that there are other worlds right here. They occupy the same space we're in now, but to actually go to these worlds, we have to change channels so to speak. Instead of moving to a different place, you simply switch to another world. Look up," she said.
They did. The sky was blue, not grey, not greyish blue, not blue with a nasty grey/brown haze, but blue with puffy white clouds in the distance. "Until now, this planet on this world, hasn't been inhabbited by humans, at least not the kind of humans that build skyscrapers and blast smog in to the atmosphere.
The realization of what was happening and where they were finally sank in. Amazed, Angie had a lot to say. "This is incredable! I can't believe this is so close to where I work!"
Brad had questions, lots of them. "So how much are houses going for out here?"
As they spoke, the car entered an area with some small buildings. "Well, I'll be honest," she said, "you get what you pay for, but prices are negotiable."
They stopped in the parking lot of a small, one story office building.
"So where are we now?" asked Angie.
Beth said, "This is the community office. There are two people working here who also live in the subdivision, or as we say, they live in town. After all, this isn't Chicago."
Brad hadn't thought about that, but that was true.
Beth continued, "The people who work here can help you with any problems you might have. Most of what you need can be taken care of by the two who work here, but if they have to, they can contact Next Generation Homes for a more complicated problem."
"How does the phone work?" asked Angie.
"Telephone signals, tv, radio, even internet signals are received and converted to this dimention, or from this dimention to the other one automaticly. I was told there might be a half second delay, but you can communicate with the other world in any way. The entire community has free wi/fi by the way. You will notice though that the weather in Chicago isn't the weather here. The climate is about the same, but if it's raining there, that's no guarantee that it's raining here. That's why, just up the road, there's an automated information center. It's a weather station and a radio station. Everything is computer generated, but the voice sounds remarkably human. The station broadcasts weather forecasts and other information like road maintenance schedules or even not for proffit announcements. There's only a few people living here so far, and most of them haven't moved in yet, but this place is expected to grow exponentially. Other access points are being planned throughout Chicago. This means, there will be more of them on this side as well. They will be strategicly planted throughout this area, so noone has to drive very far at all to go anywhere in Chicago. The idea has been brought up that some people will try to use this community as a way to get across town faster, but that problem should be managed by the id card." She showed them her's. "You use this to get in the door and to return to Chicago. Only residents or people otherwise needing to enter are given one of these. If you don't have it, you can't use the access point."
The dicision was easy to make. Nothing compared to this, so Brad and Angie decided that day to buy a house in the new community which had been named New Chicago. They planned on having children, but right now, the young couple was content to buy a small home near the buildings that were being called "downtown" by Beth Sampson and the workers at the office.
There was also a police station and a small fire department, but they had yet to be fully staffed. The Chicago police and fire departments had all been issued access cards, but the plan was for the community to be self-sustaining. Eventually, the police and fire departments would be fully functional, and the other departments would only be needed in the event of a serious emergency.
There was a small medical clinic that functioned as an Emergency room for minor medical problems. Serious trauma or life-threatening conditions that required a real hospital were dealt with by transporting the patient to Chicago in one of the two ambulances.
It only took a month or two to get everything finalized and put in to motion. On a saturday morning in mid October, Brad and Angie found themselves standing in front of their new home at 106 East Maple Street in New Chicago. Beth Sampson handed Brad the keys. "It's all yours," she said.
Their two vehicles were loaded down with belongings, and more waited inside. The movers had finished unloading before Brad and Angie arrived, because they chose to spend the night at a hotel so that they would simply have to arrive and unpack. They wanted to get everything in it's propper place by Thanksgiving. Angie was eager to host the family get together. This would be the first time that she and Brad had done that. Until now, the young professional couple didn't have a pet and hadn't shown any particular interest in having one, but now they were eager to adopt a dog.
Some of those moving to town decided to build their own homes on more rural lots further from town while others bought homes out there further from the quaint downtown of New Chicago with larger more wooded lots. Where Brad and Angie lived, the houses had already been constructed. They were closer together than the rural properties, but not at all crowded.
When the story broke, and the community opened to the public, it was big news. The population exploded. Some environmental groups were concerned that man kind had found what we had always thought didn't exist, another Earth, but we were well on our way to destroying it as well, but New Chicago was a green community. All of the homes used solar energy, and emitions standards were strict.
At first, Brad and Angie had no neighbors. Neither of the two had been all that social in their old neighborhood, but when people began pouring in to the small community, Angie became fast friends with Maridith Johnson, a single farmecutical sales rep with two daughters. She found herself volunteering for the decorating committee. As the town grew, a church went up, Brian and Nikki Hunter moved in down the block, and Angie began walking with them and their two greight danes in the evening. The Hunters were both fitness coaches in Chicago. Even Brad found a friend. Another it manager named Bill Cosgrove moved in next door opposite from Maridith. He was an it manager in Chicago, in New Chicago, he wasn't. The life that the residents lived in Chicago soon became like secondary lives. A person may be one thing in the city, but something entirely different in New Chicago. The CHildress family grew. They adopted Franky, a jack russell tarior puppy from a not for proffit organization in the city.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were big hits in New Chicago, but it was decided that publicly, it wouldn't be called Christmas. Winter holiday was used or simply the holidays. Secular Christmas decorations were applied to the downtown area by the committee, but anything christion in nature was reserved for the church and the private homes of New Chicago's residents. THis was done so as not to offend the nonreligious in the community.
Life settled in to a comfortable rhythm as spring aproached.
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:54 am Post subject: |
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I got heatreactions running down my back reading this,I loved the cosy start and the filtered start of the story... I could imagine the start, sometimes a place is more clear to people, with "less is more" Very interesting!  And welcome to the city, now I have to take care of my doggy, she's wining poor things bones are aching...  Take care. Will fave this.
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Tikanni Corazon
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Joined: 25 Oct 2009
Topics: 75
Posts: 1286
Location: Running through the plains of my mind, my wolf spirit at my side (but doing so in the UK!).
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:13 pm Post subject: |
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Hey kc9cra!
Once I actually got around to reading it, I could tell that this SG has great potential to become very interesting. But as soon as I saw the wall of text, I had to seperate it before I could begin reading. The sentences and paragraphs are just too jumbled together. It makes reading very difficult. I always go by the rule, '2 spaces between paragraphs, and 1 space between each new line of dialogue'. As it was, it made it very hard to work out who was speaking when and so forth. Just one look at such a layout will put some people off, so try and stick by this rule, and you'll have a ton of readers in no time. 
I've seperated the text myself, and quoted it below, so that you can see what I'm talking about (if you go look at my prologue on SparkleSteps, you will see that I got told about the exact same thing when I first joined, so don't feel bad about it. We're all here to learn. )
| Quote: | Prologue
Brad and Angie's agent drove out of the suburbs toward downtown Chicago.
"I want to show you some new listings that you might really like," she said.
"It looks like we're getting closer to work," commented Brad Childress.
The young couple had reached a point in their lives when they finally realized that they weren't starving college students anymore. They were a real married couple, and they had the funds to move away from the traffic jams and constant reminders of work. They were eager to move as far from the city as they could possibly go without being unable to drive to work. The most remote properties however, had been too far from the amenities that Brad and Angie had gotten used to.
Due to Brad's promotion to head of the it department of the internet provider where he worked, as well as Angie's steady position as head nurse of pediatrics at Cook County hospital, the couple had the funds to buy something nice, so they tried for the more pricy suburban homes that were closer to town but still out of the way enough that work could be left far behind.
Beth Sampson turned on to the bipass. Traffic wizzed by them, but at least it wasn't at a standstill.
"I'm sure you'll like these," she promised, "it's a new developement, very conveniant."
All Brad and Angie could see were more and more office towers. Beth pulled in to a parking lot that up until that day had been surrounded by construction equipment even though it was small, and no one could see any large structure sticking up out of the middle of it all. They could see why. The building on the lot was small. It looked like a garage. There were two doors. One was like a regular garage door, the other was larger. It appeared to be used for large trucks.
As they pulled in Beth said, "Technology is amazing. I didn't know such a thing existed until yesterday. Next Geneeration Homes is the company building this subdivision, and I have never heard of them, but they had a seminar for real estate agents this past weekend, and they put us all on a bus and took us to this place."
"It doesn't look like there's anything here," pondered Brad. Angie wasn't talking, but she was observing. She would speak when she had something to say.
"Just wait till you see it," remarked Beth.
She pulled a plastic card from her wallet. They entered the garage through the smaller door. As they aproached, a semi truck pulling an enclosed trailer with the words Industrial Supply painted on it had entered through the larger door, but when they entered, Brad and Angie couldn't see it next to them. Beth stopped at an electronic device standing on the cement floor of the structure. She swiped the card through the slot on the side of the small machine.
A red led glowed on the control pannel.
Beth pointed at it and said, "When that turns green," it did, "Well, here we go.
Ahead of them was another garage door. It slid open, but the busy thoroughfair with the skyscrapers climbing out of sight in the mid morning sky wasn't there. Instead, another parking lot appeared. ON either side, trees and shrubbery grew pristeenly. They exited the garage and turned on to a two lane road with woods on either side. Before they passed the first driveway, Angie finally spoke.
"Okay, I'm officially confused now."
Brad added, "Wel, Hudini, how'd you pull this one off?"
Beth explained, "Next Generation Homes has been working closely with a company called Quantum Horizon Technologies for years to build this unspoiled paradise. I plan to move here myself when it opens to the public."
"You mean it isn't yet?" asked Brad.
"Nope, just for special customers. The company wants to bring some suitable people into establish the neighborhood before it is presented to the world. This is the first community of it's kind."
Brad agreed.
"Yeah, it's an outer suburb in the middle of the corporate district. Did we teleport or something?"
Beth laughed.
"No, this is another dimention."
The couple laughed, but Beth was serious.
"So this is for real?" asked Angie.
"Yes, from what I was told at the seminar, scientists have figured out that there are other worlds right here. They occupy the same space we're in now, but to actually go to these worlds, we have to change channels so to speak. Instead of moving to a different place, you simply switch to another world. Look up," she said.
They did. The sky was blue, not grey, not greyish blue, not blue with a nasty grey/brown haze, but blue with puffy white clouds in the distance.
"Until now, this planet on this world, hasn't been inhabbited by humans, at least not the kind of humans that build skyscrapers and blast smog in to the atmosphere.
The realization of what was happening and where they were finally sank in. Amazed, Angie had a lot to say.
"This is incredable! I can't believe this is so close to where I work!"
Brad had questions, lots of them.
"So how much are houses going for out here?"
As they spoke, the car entered an area with some small buildings.
"Well, I'll be honest," she said, "you get what you pay for, but prices are negotiable."
They stopped in the parking lot of a small, one story office building.
"So where are we now?" asked Angie.
Beth said, "This is the community office. There are two people working here who also live in the subdivision, or as we say, they live in town. After all, this isn't Chicago."
Brad hadn't thought about that, but that was true. Beth continued.
"The people who work here can help you with any problems you might have. Most of what you need can be taken care of by the two who work here, but if they have to, they can contact Next Generation Homes for a more complicated problem."
"How does the phone work?" asked Angie.
"Telephone signals, tv, radio, even internet signals are received and converted to this dimention, or from this dimention to the other one automaticly. I was told there might be a half second delay, but you can communicate with the other world in any way. The entire community has free wi/fi by the way. You will notice though that the weather in Chicago isn't the weather here. The climate is about the same, but if it's raining there, that's no guarantee that it's raining here. That's why, just up the road, there's an automated information center. It's a weather station and a radio station. Everything is computer generated, but the voice sounds remarkably human. The station broadcasts weather forecasts and other information like road maintenance schedules or even not for proffit announcements. There's only a few people living here so far, and most of them haven't moved in yet, but this place is expected to grow exponentially. Other access points are being planned throughout Chicago. This means, there will be more of them on this side as well. They will be strategicly planted throughout this area, so no one has to drive very far at all to go anywhere in Chicago. The idea has been brought up that some people will try to use this community as a way to get across town faster, but that problem should be managed by the id card."
She showed them her's.
"You use this to get in the door and to return to Chicago. Only residents or people otherwise needing to enter are given one of these. If you don't have it, you can't use the access point."
The dicision was easy to make. Nothing compared to this, so Brad and Angie decided that day to buy a house in the new community which had been named New Chicago. They planned on having children, but right now, the young couple was content to buy a small home near the buildings that were being called "downtown" by Beth Sampson and the workers at the office.
There was also a police station and a small fire department, but they had yet to be fully staffed. The Chicago police and fire departments had all been issued access cards, but the plan was for the community to be self-sustaining. Eventually, the police and fire departments would be fully functional, and the other departments would only be needed in the event of a serious emergency.
There was a small medical clinic that functioned as an Emergency room for minor medical problems. Serious trauma or life-threatening conditions that required a real hospital were dealt with by transporting the patient to Chicago in one of the two ambulances.
It only took a month or two to get everything finalized and put in to motion. On a saturday morning in mid October, Brad and Angie found themselves standing in front of their new home at 106 East Maple Street in New Chicago. Beth Sampson handed Brad the keys.
"It's all yours," she said.
Their two vehicles were loaded down with belongings, and more waited inside. The movers had finished unloading before Brad and Angie arrived, because they chose to spend the night at a hotel so that they would simply have to arrive and unpack. They wanted to get everything in it's propper place by Thanksgiving. Angie was eager to host the family get together. This would be the first time that she and Brad had done that. Until now, the young professional couple didn't have a pet and hadn't shown any particular interest in having one, but now they were eager to adopt a dog.
Some of those moving to town decided to build their own homes on more rural lots further from town while others bought homes out there further from the quaint downtown of New Chicago with larger more wooded lots. Where Brad and Angie lived, the houses had already been constructed. They were closer together than the rural properties, but not at all crowded.
When the story broke, and the community opened to the public, it was big news. The population exploded. Some environmental groups were concerned that man kind had found what we had always thought didn't exist, another Earth, but we were well on our way to destroying it as well, but New Chicago was a green community. All of the homes used solar energy, and emitions standards were strict.
At first, Brad and Angie had no neighbors. Neither of the two had been all that social in their old neighborhood, but when people began pouring in to the small community, Angie became fast friends with Maridith Johnson, a single farmecutical sales rep with two daughters. She found herself volunteering for the decorating committee.
As the town grew, a church went up, Brian and Nikki Hunter moved in down the block, and Angie began walking with them and their two greight danes in the evening. The Hunters were both fitness coaches in Chicago. Even Brad found a friend. Another it manager named Bill Cosgrove moved in next door opposite from Maridith. He was an it manager in Chicago, in New Chicago, he wasn't.
The life that the residents lived in Chicago soon became like secondary lives. A person may be one thing in the city, but something entirely different in New Chicago. The CHildress family grew. They adopted Franky, a jack russell tarior puppy from a not for proffit organization in the city.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were big hits in New Chicago, but it was decided that publicly, it wouldn't be called Christmas. Winter holiday was used or simply the holidays. Secular Christmas decorations were applied to the downtown area by the committee, but anything christion in nature was reserved for the church and the private homes of New Chicago's residents. THis was done so as not to offend the nonreligious in the community.
Life settled in to a comfortable rhythm as spring aproached. |
I hope you can see what I'm getting at here, and that it helps you in the future. There are a couple of points, thoughout the seperation process that warrented the need to replace comma's with full-stops, so I did that too.
Okay, a few other things I noticed, as I was looking over it...
| Quote: | | "I want to show you some new listings that you might really like," she said. |
I wasn't entirely sure who was speaking here. One would assume from the previous sentence that it's Angie. But what is actually said, and the mention of Beth later on, makes one think that it's actually her. I think it needs a little clarification.
| Quote: | | Due to Brad's promotion to head of the it department of the internet provider where he worked, |
Capital letters for IT.
| Quote: | | Next Geneeration Homes is the company building this subdivision, |
Generation.
| Quote: | | "No, this is another dimention." |
Dimension
| Quote: | | The realization of what was happening and where they were finally sank in. |
Realisation
| Quote: | | "Telephone signals, tv, radio, even internet signals are received and converted to this dimention, or from this dimention to the other one [color-red]automaticly[/color]. |
Automatically
| Quote: | | They will be strategicly planted throughout this area, so no one has to drive very far at all to go anywhere in Chicago |
Strategically
| Quote: | The dicision was easy to make. Nothing compared to this, so Brad and Angie decided that day to buy a house in the new community which had been named New Chicago. They planned on having children, but right now, the young couple was content to buy a small home near the buildings that were being called "downtown" by Beth Sampson and the workers at the office.
|
A couple of things here. The first is to correct the spelling of 'decision', and the second, I think should be 'were' instead of 'was'. But I'll need someone else to confirm that.
| Quote: | | They wanted to get everything in it's propper place by Thanksgiving. |
Proper
| Quote: | | At first, Brad and Angie had no neighbors. Neither of the two had been all that social in their old neighborhood, but when people began pouring in to the small community, Angie became fast friends with Maridith Johnson, a single farmecutical sales rep with two daughters. She found herself volunteering for the decorating committee. |
'Neighbours', and 'Pharmaceutical'
| Quote: | | Angie began walking with them and their two greight danes in the evening. |
Great
| Quote: | | They adopted Franky, a jack russell tarior puppy from a not for proffit organization in the city. |
'Terrier', and 'Profit
There are also a couple of moments where the sentences begin with a 'He said' type thing, rather than ending the dialogue with it. I think it would be better to have this at the end, rather than the start. It just flows better.
I really hope you don't get disheartened by this. You really shouldn't. These are all minor mistakes and things that are easily changed. As a whole, the idea behind the story is intriguing, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where it goes. We all started on IF with writing habits that we needed to break out of, and, if you stick at it, and learn from the mistakes that are pointed out to you, you will become a far better writer for it. I know I've come on leaps and bounds since I started here, just shy of two years ago now. This is a great place to learn and grow as a writer, as everyone is so friendly and willing to help each other. So don't take this critique as a slight upon your abilities. This is just the technical side of it, but it is something that needs to be taken on board just the same, as readers are put off by huge blocks of text, and grammar mistakes.
You've done a fab job so far! Keep up the good work!
_________________
.... there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham....
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, 1887
 
 
  
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Andolyn
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Location: sitting barefoot in a tree in the beautiful land of Ardara, writing my tales...
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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i really...REALLY like this!! it's such a different and novel idea! i cant wait until you get into the story! i've been imagining all sorts of ways to bring in some action if that's the direction you're going...
New Chicago turns Utopian cult...natives to the dimension arent as thrilled with their new neighbors...the breech in the time and space streams causes the dimension to start crumbling...any number of options here! can't wait to see where you take it!
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:45 am Post subject: |
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| I didn't realize anyone had responded. For some reason the site didn't email me that someone had responded. I plan to put chapter one up soon, but thank you for the advice about the spacing. I tried, but I can tell I didn't do enough of it.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 9:37 am Post subject: chapter 1 |
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The first week of April across the midwest was warm and dry. People enjoyed the end of colder temperatures and spent time outdoors, but of course, all good things must come to an end. With warm air comes unstable air.
A cold front in the rockies finally came slamming down in to the warm wet midwest. When warm and wet meets cold and dry, boom! The day began the same on both worlds.Sadly, the Childresses didn't get a chance to enjoy it. They had to rush off to work. As Angie pulled away leaving one half hour after her husband, she waved to Brandy Lutz, a college freshman still living at home with her family up the road. She didn't have class today, but Angie noticed the gym bag in the passenger seat of the black Hundai suv as she passed.
She let Brandy go ahead of her at the access point. They drove through leaving the peaceful community.
After the commuters left, the streets of New Chicago were pretty well deserted. Just down the road from the office, David Brown sat on his front porch surfing the internet with his stereo playing. He had retired early after making his fortune in the .com boom and getting out before the bubble popped. He was in his early fifties and enjoying the weather. He pondered whether or not to take the hog out on to the outer roads today. It might be fun.
At the office, Taylor Manning and Grace Powers sat with nothing to do. Taylor had updated the radio station to read the new construction projects. The outer roads were being extended so that more land could be developed for homes. There was also an announcement about chipping domesticated animals so they could be returned in the event that they were lost. Grace was currently organizing her desk.
"Did you see the hawk this morning?" she asked.
"No," Taylor replied, "Was it the same one from yesterday?"
"I'm pretty sure it was, he went toward that same spot, and he had something in his mouth."
"Probably breakfast."
"Probably so,"
Without millions of people, the species that had become endangered in the first world flurrished in this universe. Grace was a nature lover, so this suited her just fine.
The two women were neighbors, coworkers, and now they were close friends. They lived in the two apartments behind the office. Taylor was fresh out of the La Grange community college with a degree in Office management. Grace was older and had no degree but experience to make up for it. Technicly Taylor was in charge, but the two treated one another as equals.
As bordum set in, Grace began playing solitare on one of the office's two computers while Taylor went through the newspaper clipping coupons.
Grace received them in the mail from a mailing list. She sometimes got some better deals from manufacturers.
The mail was delivered by New Chicago's own delivery driver. They would soon need two, but the driver worked for Next Generation Homes. He picked up the residents' mail from the poast office and delivered it. This eliminated the process of having to issue id cards to every new mail carrier who might be assigned to work the small suburb.
"I got some coupons yesterday, but it was mostly meat and vegetables," said Grace spotting the paper.
"That's okay," said Taylor. Grace was refering to packages of meat, not individually packaged chicken breasts or pork chops with instructions right on them. Taylor could cook, but not from scratch. She mostly bought processed food that was easier to make.
Grace was different however. She was already planting vegetables and liked to pick wild berries or nuts. She also made sassafrass tea when she took the notion. Before it was opened for the public New Chicago's plants were tested. Although it was another dimention, the wild berries were the same as the ones that humans were used to as was the rest of the wildlife. The two women spent time talking and surfing the internet all afternoon until children started coming home from school, and Jeff Otwell arrived with the mail.
He lived above the office, so the women knew him well. In Chicago, the pretty day gave way to clouds and gusty winds near five, and Jason Ford left work at Quantum Horizon just as the downpour started. Thunder boomed as he pulled in to his driveway in the western suburbs. He ran inside, but didn't avoid getting drenched.
"You lucky bastard," he joked to Derick Jones. Jason was looking at the New Chicago weather conditions online, sixty degrees and clear as the sun set with a gentle breeze out of the southwest.
Derick laughed through the phone, "What's the matter, forget to take your boat to work?"
"I just wish some days I had moved over there."
"Don't worry, one of these days, I'll be in your shoes."
"Probably true."
Derick was one of the scientists who developed the new community. He was also one of it's first residents. When the new world was found, and the realty company owned by Dr. Franklin, one of the lead scientists, had invested in it. The guys working the project immediately wanted to move right in, but it was decided that a few people should stay on the Chicago side to fix anything that might go wrong with the access point. It was the first one.
It was also the only machine that could link this world and that one.
In order to go to a certain plain, one had to mimmic the conditions that got them there to begin with. The machine was set up so that whatever was inside was in another dimention. When the physical door of the machine opened, the person inside could leave the machine in to the other dimention. It was a great idea, but they hadn't completely mimmicced the conditions of that machine. Jason had thought it would be unwise to use the machine for such a commercial use if it was the only one, but he and a few others had worked on foolproofing the system, and he was assured by the management that the team would have unlimited funding to put together another machine and at least one more after that. They were afterall, making a killing on the prime real estate over there.
Dr. Franklin, Dr. Mcmillon and Dr. Jesip had all met with the engineering team to discuss this. It was explained that a lot of money had already been put in to the project. The marketing staff of Next Generation homes had put together a report showing how home sales plummited during the Christmas season. The lead scientists also showed reports to the team involving Quantum Horizon's own finances. If more money didn't come in, the project wouldn't survive the Christmas season. Opening in the spring real estate boom would be impossible, so it had to be done before Christmas.
Now, the engineering team could monitor the access point from their home computers as wel as at work. An icon on their desktop would link them to the web interface for the device.
In the event that a problem took place, the icon would turn red, and an alarm would sound from the computer's speakers.
Jason and Derick had been friends since college. Now on this Friday night, Jason was shooting the bull with his friend as he placed an order online a pizza to go with his newest arrival from Netflix. His wife was out with her girl friends and probably wouldn't make it back until late.
Jason didn't get to watch his movie however. After he finished talking to Derick, he went to retrieve his pizza from the driver, and put it on the coffee table in his living room. Boom! the lights went out. "Dammit!" he yelled.
It took about fifteen minutes for the power to come back on. When it did, Jason rebooted his computer and went to the icon to see if the back-up power for the access point was on. The alarm wasn't going off, so that was a good sign, but when he looked, the icon was gone. That would only happen if the machine wasn't getting any power at all. What had happened?
To test it out, he first called Derick and heard a recording telling him that the number he was trying to reach was having trouble and to call back later.
In a panic, he jumped in his car, cellphone in hand. Driving through the rain, the huge drops pounding his car's roof, he called the members of the team.
"Dave, somethings' wrong!"
"I know," Dave said, "the machine's off."
"Is it off?"
"Yes, it's gone from my desktop."
"Mine too. I'm going out there to see if it will work for me."
"I'll come too."
"Call Tyler and see if he can reboot it some how. I just hope it's a problem with the power source."
"It has back-up power, right?"
"Yes, I don't know why it won't work at all."
Jason tried repeatedly to swipe his card, but he knew it was futile. The red led wasn't even on. Driving behind the structure, he used his key to enter the shed containing all of the complicated machinery that ran the access point. It was immediately obvious that something very wrong had happened. Upon opening the door, Jason could smell the unmistakable odor of burnt wiring. The inside was a mess. He decided it must've been lightning, but what about the back-up power supply.
He examined the burnt wires and melted components. Jason found the problem. The wiring going to the back-up batteries were also fried. He would have to try to fix them.
When the team assembled, they decided that it would be best to wait until the storm was over before doing any electrical work. They disconnected the machine from the power grid, because the utility company had already turned that back on causing sparks to fly from the control shed. The next morning, the team soldered, cut and spliced. Finally, they reconnected the machine to public power. Jason swiped his card and immediately knew that something was wrong. An alarm sounded on the machine, and the led remained red. He studied the lcd display on the unit. It normally said "Welcome to New Chicago or Welcome to CHicago depending on which dimention the machine was in. Now however it said "Error 309, no atmosphere.
When the machine was being tested, it was equipped with a sensor that kept the door from opening on a universe with no air of any kind that would cause earth's atmosphere to start streaming through the door and possibly sucking the controler through causing it to be left open.
"Mom, the internet's not working," the complaint came to Martha Lutz as she drank her morning coffee.
"Have you restarted the computer?"
Her daughter responded, "Yes."
"It's operator error," Seth, Brandy's twenty-year old brother joked from the living room.
"See if you can find the problem on the control pannel, I have to get to work," Martha called. She finished her coffee and bagles, and quickly took off for work. She immediately noticed that her favorite radio station wasn't coming in. She tried another, but it wasn't receivable either. Nothing was except for 96.7, the community's automated information system. Martha had been told that if the engineers needed to do maintenance on the access point, it might not be possible to communicate with Chicago for a while. That was probably the reason why the internet wasn't working.
When Martha arrived at the access point, she received another shock. A line of cars sat waiting. Chelsey Dempsy, a retired real estate agent from Martha's neighborhood was trying to swipe her card. Martha got out and aproached her.
"It keeps saying no atmosphere, whatever that means."
So what do we do now? The scientists and the town's folk. What should they do in light of this problem?
Last edited by kc9cra on Tue Oct 11, 2011 2:05 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Tikanni Corazon
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| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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Just letting you know that I have read the new chapter, and very much enjoyed it. I'll comment properly once it's been edited, but good job!
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.... there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham....
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, 1887
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Andolyn
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| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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and the problem surfaces!! i really am liking this! i can't wait to see where you're going to take it! to be honest though, i'm really not sure what i'd do at this point...IS there anything the people in New Chicago can do? the people Chicago side can certainly go to the drawing boards, so to speak, and figure out a solution to all this...but other than that...i've got nothin'!
way to keep the intrigue up!
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Thunderbird
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | "It keeps saying no atmosphere, whatever that means." |
It means the author is really good at saying something intensely ominous and making it seem fairly innocent - at first. Excellent job with that! You've in a fell swoop made me intensely curious to see more!
The start was a bit slow though... work a bit on the initial hook perhaps. Took me a few tries to get rolling into it and in part it was due to an early mistake I often made too which is to narrate too much in the beginning. Try to show rather than tell unless you really need to get through a lot of info. You do qualify for that approach here but could have gotten around with spending a bit more time on character development and giving us some individual dramas in their lives.
Anyhow, this one is a lot of fun!
From a DP perspective, I'm a little frustrated with the 'what do the townspeople do' approach rather than how to react from the perspective of a given character. And what can we do? I guess we go back to our homes, gather in discussion groups to talk about the problem and allow the engineers and scientists time and room to work this out. Support each other so they don't panic in other words.
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 CHAPTER 25: Near-Light Speed (NEW CHAPTER! (12/4/2011))
Zephyrrr! And...  
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 5:05 am Post subject: chapter 2 |
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Taylor and Grace had no time for small talk and Solitaire that morning. It was obvious that the access point had to be down, because the internet as well as all Chicago radio and tv stations were absent from the air. They prepared for the onslaut.
Taylor was worried about panic. Many of these people valued their jobs very much. This was also the first time the machine had been down except during the middle of the night on seldom occasions for maintenance.
The first person in the door was Angie Childress. "Something's wrong with the doorway," she said.
"Yes, I'm sorry about that. I don't know why it's down."
"Well, I need to get to work, and my phone won't call out. I don't know where my husband is."
This could be a bit more serious. "What happened?" asked Taylor concerned.
"I don't know," replied Angie, "he never came back last night. He worked late. The last thing I heard from him was that he was going out to get something to eat, and he'd be home late."
Taylor reassured Angie, "It should be up and running soon. Try it again later. If I get anything from the other side, I'll put it on the radio."
One thing she could do was to update the automated radio station. She first poasted a message at 6:30 that morning saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the access point is closed for maintenance. This will cause an outage in all services from the Chicago land area until the access point is re-opened. We apologize again for the problems this is bound to cause."
Jason and his team gathered at noon with his superiors from Quantum Horizon. He opened with, "I'm sorry to call all of you here, but we have an emergency. Last night, during a thunderstorm, the access point to New Chicago was disrupted, and we have been unable to re-establish it."
Dr. Franklin asked indignantly, "Why haven't you tried to turn the damn thing back on?"
"We did," explained Jason, "the machine is running, but will not transport to the dimention we established contact with in the beginning."
Dr. Mcmillon intervened calmly, "Have you tried to re-install the software that controls the machine?"
Bryan Perry decided to answer that one, "We first had to do extensive repairs to the unit it'sself because it apparently sustained a direct lightning hit. That's all we can think of that may have caused this. We had a lot of fried circuitry, but we found that the software is intact, because we have received an error message that says no atmosphere."
"No atmosphere!" interjected Dr. Franklin. The faces of the lead scientists went white. This was serious. Dr. Jessip spoke-up, "That's the only machine we have, the conditions must be exactly as they were!"
Dr. Mcmillon held up his hand, "If the access point has been repaired to the exact specifications that it was at before, there's no reason why it can't reconnect with the same universe and even the same location. We've disassembled this machine before to see if that could be done. What I would suggest is going over every detail of the repair. See if the wrong capasitor was used in the wrong place, something like that. It might be a simple fix."
"You have no way of knowing that!" barked Dr. Franklin.
"We need to stay calm," said Dr. Mcmillon raising his voice to be heard but not yelling. He continued in a level tone once Dr. Franklin had stopped speaking, "We also have no way of knowing that this is a total disaster. What do you think Al?"
Dr. Jessip spoke, "I think you're right Jim. I feel Joe's pain over there, but worry and panic get us nowhere. I also agree that we need these guys here to roll up there sleeves and get started on this re-evaluation. I'm sure they'll find what caused this. I know this problem could be more severe, but why not reserve our assumptions for when we have more indicators of that. Right now, I think it's very likely that Jim's right; it's just a mismatched capasitor."
After some logistical discussion, the meeting adjourned with a progress report scheduled via conference call the next day at the same time. They wanted the evaluation to take less than that amount of time, but if it couldn't be done by then, the lead scientists wanted a definit timeline for the completion of the problem the next day.
It was late that evening when they finally found it. Rick Foust said, "Well son of a bitch!"
"What is it?" asked Jason going over a wiring diagram and an enlarged digital photograph on dual monitors infront of him.
"It's like they said. I've got a 300 ohm capasitor where I should have a 150 ohm and the 150 is where that first one should be."
"Have you switched them out?"
"Not yet, but I found em."
"Thank God!" The whole team was relieved.
Rick Foust, Bryan Perry, and the two others Dale Hanigan and Roy Chambers, followed Jason outside. Excitedly, they watched as Rick removed the outer pannel of the unit making sure to first turn the power off.
"I've never done this with an audience, maybe we should do a payperview," he joked.
After replacing the parts, he closed up the machine like a surgeon stitching up a patient but with screws and a locking mechanism similar to the club. Jason pulled out his card and aproached the entry terminal. The whole team gathered inside the machine to watch.
this was illadvised. There were temporature, chemical, pressure, radiation, and other sensors on the machine, but it could still be dangerous. If that team was gone, the scientists wouldn't know until they tried the access point themselves.
When Jason swiped his card however, the door opened on a peaceful scene. Thick woods spread as far as the eye could see with wildlife everywhere. They walked in to a hot and humid environment.
"Rick pointed out, "It's a lot hotter here than it was before."
Bryan looked at his watch and added, "Yeah, and it's 9:56 at night." Daylight was clearly visible through the trees.
"That planet rotated at the same speed, and we adjusted the machine to put us right in the central timezone, and in a temporate part of the northern hemisphere, so that it would mimmic what the target market was used too," said Jason, "I remember, because it took forever to get the tiny details about the configuration worked out."
"I don't know what we're going to do," remarked Bryan, "This was the only access point. We were going to use this one to make the others."
Rick said, "It's probably just a matter of working out the configuration."
They went back to Chicago and locked the access point door, so that noone could get in and try to use it.
By noon, Derick Jones and Floyd Redmond, two of the engineers who had worked on the access point showed up at the office with grim expressions, but they told Taylor, "We looked at it. It doesn't look like we can do anything. We just have to wait for Jason and the team to fix it from the other side."
This was Derick speaking. Floyd remained silent which was normal for him. He was normally thinking instead of speaking. When he did, it would be knollegeable but short. Sometimes, it appeared he spoke in riddles, but if you asked him what he meant, with a sigh, he would explain himself.
Taylor asked, "So, what's wrong with it?"
Derick said honestly, "We don't know."
"It's not normal for it to be down during the day, do you think something really bad has happened?"
"No, of course not, they might just need to reboot the machine, and they don't want to bring it back on until they have whatever kinks there were in the system worked out."
"What does no atmosphere mean?"
He paused. Taylor knew he was lieing about the severity of the situation. He wasn't good at it. He finally said, "It's just one of the error messages that pops up sometimes. Jason and the team are probably seeing that in Chicago as well. I'm sure they can make something of it."
"Well, I have to tell them something." She indicated the people outside. Many had gone back to their homes with a few trying to use the machine but receiving the same message.
"Just tell them thanks for the patience and to keep holding on."
"Really, that's all you got?"
"I'm sorry, we can't talk to them over there, so we're as in the dark as the rest of you are."
The two departed, but as they exited, Floyd turned to the two women and said, "Tell them to pray." With that, he left.
Everything calmed down as the day dragged on, but as the afternoon gave way to evening, the people began to get restless again. Grace told Taylor to go on home while she stayed in the office to deal with a few phone calls. Residents could still call one another and the office, but they could not call anywhere in Chicago. Grace finally got tired and went home to bed, but not before leaving a message on the door of the office that read, "Gone to bed, please sleep also. It's possible this will all be over in the morning, plus it's good for you. Worry is not. After hanging the note, she turned off the lights, but didn't shut down the computer. She had never poasted a message to the radio station before, but now, she decided to. After thinking for a moment, she typed, "Being locked in this manmade Heaven is scary, because noone really knows when we will see our loved ones again, but worry and anxiety will help nothing. Please be calm and enjoy your time off work. Spend it with your families. We have no control over the situation. The bible says that worry won't add a minute to your life or a hair to your head. It is also written that a blade of grass doesn't fall in the wind without the lord seeing it. God is with you, all of you. Good night."
Jason was happy that the machine was working even if it wasn't taking him where he wanted to go. It meant that re-establishing contact with the residents was closer, but this meant it would probably take a long time. He wondered what they would find when the machine was finally repaired.
Jason decided that in order to start moving in the right direction, he needed to first findout where he was. If he was in the same dimention as New Chicago, it should be possible to receive images from the satellite that Quantum Horizon had launched when this new world was first discovered.
When the door opened on an earth-like environment, one of the first things to be brought through were a balloon filled with hydrogen, and a satellite. The balloon was used to lift the satellite in to orbit without the use of a large bulky rocket which wouldn't be big enough to fit through the door of the machine. The balloon was designed to break when the satellite was safely in orbit, and thrusters mounted to the unit it'sself would move it if necissary. The satellite had been primarily used for weather forecasting after the town had been established. Before that, the satellite had measured the size of the planet as well as photographing the surface.
The satellite was operated by a company called Radiodynamic Solutions. He tried to access the satellite through the company's web interface, but could not reach the control modual. He tried not to panic and called the toll free number listed for customer service.
When he dialed the number early the next day, he was met with an automated menu. He pressed one first for english, then zero to speak to an operator.
"To connect you to the representative best able to help you, please choose," Jason impatiently interrupted the system's recorded female voice by pressing zero again.
"Please hold while I connect you," said the machine.
After ten minutes of holding and being reassured multiple times that his call was important and would be answered in the order it was received, Jason was connected with David. "Yes, I seem to have a problem with my satellite," Jason began.
David replied, "I'm sorry to hear you're having technical problems today with your satellite. I'd be happy to try to see what's wrong."
Jason gave the man Quantum Horizon's information, and David said, "Okay, let me log in to your satellite's control modual and see what's wrong."
"No problem," said Jason.a moment passed as David could be heard typing on a keyboard, then he said, "I'm sorry sir, it seems I'm having some technical difficulties. I'd like to place you on a brief hold while I try to figure out the problem if that's okay."
"Okay," Jason responded, all ready knowing why David was having technical difficulties.
The signal was normally picked up by the access point and converted like all of the radio, tv, and telephone signals from New Chicago. Since the access point was down, the satellite would be unreachable. When David came back with the bad news that he still couldn't findout why the signal from the unit wasn't receivable, he made arrangements with Jason to call him when the problem was resolved.
Jason started the conference call early. It was ten o'clock a.m. when they were all connected.
Jason began, "Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we have been able to use the machine. We haven't however, been able to re-establish contact with New Chicago. I tried to connect with the satellite this morning, but was unable which tells me that we haven't connected to the same dimention as New Chicago."
"Is there anything that we can do at this point?" asked Dr. Mcmillon.
"I propose we try to reconfigure the machine like we did in the beginning to situate New Chicago in a market-familiar environment," Jason said.
"THat would be very time consuming," remarked Dr. Franklin.
Jason agreed, "That's true, but I'm afraid it's the only way."
After the call was complete, the three scientists met together with two people from Next Generation Homes. Thomas Keller was the chief operations officer, and Darius Camp was his assistant.
Dr. Franklin was associated with the company, so he began the meeting, "It appears there has been a serious problem with the access point. Acording to our engineers, it will need to be reconfigured wich might take upwards of two to three months. It's actually being projected that six months is a realistic ballpark."
This didn't sit well with the two men. Thomas said, "The news has reported that the access point has been down."
Dr. Franklin said, "Yes, we need to tell them what's happening. I wanted to discuss that with you and see if we could figure out exactly what to say."
Thomas replied, "We can have a pr company handle it, but what should we tell them?"
"We think it would be best not to release much about the specifics," Dr. Franklin advised.
"We've got to tell them something," said Thomas.
They finally decided on only disclosing the general facts that the access point would need to be reconfigured and that the residents would be trapped for an indefinit period of time.
Early in the morning, Grace made coffee and went over to Taylor's apartment. "You're not getting any radio stations yet are you?" she asked.
"Nope, just static," replied Taylor.
Grace said, "Ya know, I saw those guys yesterday, and they looked like they were hiding something."
"Oh, I know they were."
"What do you think it might be."
"I'm not sure, but I know he had a lot of trouble talking to me when I asked how serious it was and what that error meant."
"Did you ever find what that one meant in the computer?"
"No, I looked, but it doesn't show-up. There are codes for a defective card, a person being banned from access, routine maintenance, but none that say no atmosphere."
"That's strange."
"I know."
"Well, I know Derick lives out in the country at the end of Adventure Drive, I think one of us should go out there and see what he knows."
"I was thinking about that. I think I'll go just because I'm so curious. You're really good with calming people down, and you'll be needed when everybody gets up and still can't get through."
"That's fine, I'm not sure he'd listen to me anyway. I kind of think those guys look at me like I'm just some kind of secretary or something." She chuckled and picked up another piece of toast from the plate sitting between them.
When Taylor left to find the engineer, it didn't take her long. His car was parked outside the office. He stood waiting. It was Derick. Floyd wasn't with him.
"I need to talk to you," he said.
"Shoot," she replied.
"You were asking me yesterday what no atmosphere means."
"Yeah, I was just coming to ask you about that."
"Well, it isn't good. It means the machine tried to open, but it can't, because wherever it tries to take you has no air."
Taylor was confused, "No air?"
He explained, "Yes, it means that something's most likely gone wrong with the machine. I know that if you don't recreate the conditions exactly, you won't go to the same place."
"So what does that mean?" Taylor was flat out scared now.
"It means that the machine has to be reconfigured. I remember when we did that in the beginning. We first had to find a dimention or a planet within a dimention that had the possibility of life. We didn't know we would, but one day, we opened the door and it looked like home."
"So how long are we talkin?"
"Quite a while."
Exasperated with his ambiguity she cried out "Quite a while Derick!"
"We're thinking maybe a year or two."
She gaped at him, "A year or two?"
"I'm afraid so. We need to start getting used to the idea that we're going to be hear for a while without any of our luxuries like trips to Subway or cable tv."
"Yeah, or a police department, or a hospital, or a fire department, or an ambulance, or even nine one one."
"Well, plese stay calm. I know we can do it. There's a way to do anything once you think about it. Yes, it'll be an adjustment, but it's what we've been dealt. We can't change it, so we have to find some way just to deal with it."
It took her a while to accept it, but Derick was right. She went back to Grace's apartment. She was having another cup of coffee as she read her bible. The sun was just now rising, and the first cars would be aproaching the access point in maybe a half an hour to take their children to school. The women had time before they had to be ready.
"Well, I've got bad news Grace."
"What's wrong?" She could see the troubling expression on Taylor's face.
"I talked to Derick. He says the way that machine's messed up, the guys on the other side might be working on it for years."
"Years?"
"Yes, most likely, it'll be at least a year. He said we need to figure out how to survive here on our own for a while."
"Oh my gosh, well what is everybody going to think?"
"I don't know Grace, I just, I can't really imagine it, but he's right. We can't do anything about it, so we need to decide what we're going to do to sustain ourselves. We can't get groceries, we can't take care of an emergency."
Grace interrupted "Calm down Taylor, I've been around a long time, and I've never gotten through something by worriing and getting upset. We have to first decide how we want to tell everybody. Do you think we should get them all together and explain it."
"Honestly, I don't know what to do."
"I know, I'm kind of doing this for the first time too. I've never had to live without a store somewhere or something. It's going to take a lot of getting used to."
"I guess the best thing isn't to get everybody together, they might panic and trample each other. I think we should print something out and hand deliver it, or have Jeff deliver it to everybody in town. Then, we can get everybody together, so we can talk about what to do."
"I guess that's best, but I just wonder what's going to happen to my son Sean. I told you about him. He has that new baby, and him and his wife have never had kids before."
"I know," said Taylor watching as the older woman began to cry. Her own voice cracked as she said, "My mom's going to worry herself to death. The two cried together for a while before speaking again. "All we can do is trust the lord," said Grace.
"Yep, guess so," said Taylor.
Okay, so what's the first step? How should this meeting amoung the town's people go? We must find a way to keep everybody fed and handle emergencies for the most part, but what must be done first?
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Hak
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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DANG! This is really good. First, everyone should resort to cannibalism, just because that's what a lot of people will probably think of!
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Fear is only overanxiety over the future
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Thunderbird
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| Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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My God, Hak?!? Cannibalism? Right out the gate like that? Jeez... its like the South Park episode where they immediately react to being snowed in with cannibalism.
I think we're not quite ready for that, especially since we are surrounded by a verdant and lush world of untapped natural resources.
What must be done first? First, leaders will emerge. Those leaders will each have opposing views and people will naturally be drawn to back one or another. Thus, the next scenes would have less to do with what we think should happen, I think, and more to do with what the villagers have in mind.
On one end, some will favor stocking up on supplies, bringing them all to a central stock hold and establishing strong controls over those supplies and what's handed out as well as tracking them and keeping strict inventory. Then establishing roles for each individual to uphold for the good of the community.
Others will say they need not cow to a central authority at all and will do whatever the hell they want to and if someone thinks they can demand they surrender their own stocks of food and supplies, they can go to hell! This camp starts demanding that individual liberties be upheld in the highest regard.
Before long, there becomes a pretty vicious clash over which method will control the weaponry and the guns (seen as the long term instruments of survival thanks to their ability to ensure the continued capacity to hunt) become the object of great conflicts, which only makes the desire for control of the weapons all the more powerful.
On a storytelling note, again, the premise continues to hold up as an extremely strong and though compelling concept. I'm loving this thoroughly! But I beg you to work on telling the story through a 'scene at a time' concept. I often feel as if I'm getting lost as one scene, covered in the span of a few sentences, blends over into another and then we snap back to it later or continue to drift on through others. Work on the structure of the delivery, in otherwords. That's how I feel as I read through it anyhow.
That said, I'm tantalized to see more on this tale and would be sorely upset if it just stopped here for whatever reason. You've truly got me hooked!
_________________
CHAPTER 25: Near-Light Speed (NEW CHAPTER! (12/4/2011))
Zephyrrr! And...
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:57 am Post subject: previously on New Chicago |
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We met Brad and Angie, a young professional couple looking for their first suburban home. Their realter introduced them to New Chicago. A new, remote, and quiet suburb located right in the middle of bustling downtown Chicago. This seems impossible, but the couple are soon taught about the wonders of quantum technology and how they can drive in to a small garage in the middle of all the traffic and crowds of the city, swipe an id card, and instantly be transported to a lush unspoiled heaven.
The community thrives for a while, but tragedy strikes when the only link between this new suburb and the real world is struck by lightning. the creaters of this innovation look for a way to re-open the porthole between worlds, but they find that it may literally take years.
Meanwhile, the town's people realize that something is wrong when they fail to be transported to the world of sophisticated modern reality. One of the engineers who worked on the project, Derick, tells Taylor, a simple customer service representative working to calm the fears of the community, that it will likely take years for the access point to be re-established.
What will happen next? Findout in chapter 3, coming up soon. there is still time to have a say in what happens. Post a comment, and I will consider the the advice that others give me before I write the next installment. I plan to have it up some time this week. If I receive no input, I am aiming at a Friday posting date, but it may be Saturday depending on how long it takes me to write the chapter.
_________________
chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 6:41 am Post subject: It was a tie, so I get to pick the one I want |
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Canablism or political/governmental drama over guns and food. Hmmmm, decisions decisions.
That day was a bad day. Many people came to see about the status of the access point, and they were given the grim news. THis only lasted a while however, because Grace posted a message to the radio station.
It said, "I'm sorry, but the staff of New Chicago has bad news. the access point to the rest of our world has been severely damaged. It is likely to take an extended period of time for it to be re-opened. Please do not panic, we have electricity and an abundance of food growing and thriving all around us. We all have family over there, and honestly, not being able to see them is going to be very hard. The only advice that the office staff can give is to support one another. When someone you know and love is missing those on the other side, be there to comfort them. Self-isolation is not a cure. It in fact, makes the problem worse. Everyone needs time alone, but excessively locking one's self away needs to be addressed. This is hard on all of us, but we urge you, please don't let fear, sorrow, or anger govern your actions. Take a deep breath, and try to calm yourself.
A meeting will be held to decide how the community of New Chicago should proceed from this point tomorrow, April fifth, at the New Chicago Church of Christ, 24 East Plum, Street, right behind the office. The meeting will take place at 7:00 P.M. if you have an interest in the way New Chicago is managed, please come and share your thoughts.
Again, we are very sorry this has happened and will do whatever it takes to make the residents of New Chicago comfortable."
Taylor and Grace had decided that the best way to get the news out was half today and half a month from now. The message was given that the gateway would take a long time to fix. After the
shock has worn off, the estimation that it will simply take years will be made public. They decided that exact numbers shouldn't be given, because the community would simply wait for that time to elapse, and expect the doors to open; which they may not.
After the message went public on 96.7fm, there were many people asking how long, and what should we do? Many people were afraid, and Taylor could understand that. She did her best to comfort and reassure the residents.
The real trouble didn't come until the next day. "I found a kitty."
The excited voice of Kayla Straud broke the depressed monautony of the front office as she bounded in with her mom, Casey. "We wanted to see if it had a chip. I know it belongs to someone," explained the twenty something fashion writer with a seven month baby bump.
"Okay, can I see your kitty?" Taylor asked.
"Sure," said the four-year old as she let Taylor gently take the small grey cat from her arms.
As she did, Grace went to a closet behind the front desk and rummaged for a moment before pulling out a small device with an lcd display. She handed it to taylor, and the clerical worker scanned the cat's neck. The machine beeped, and Taylor typed some numbers in to the computer in front of her.
"Well, good news," she said as the results from the computer's own database appeared on the screen. "It looks like this is Timmy, and he belongs to the Lutz's. They live just up the road from you guys.
"But I wanted to keep him," protested Kayla.
"But Honey, you know Mrs. Lutz," her mother comforted.
"Yeah, she's my pre school teacher."
"Well, don't you think she misses Timmy?"
"I don't know, probably."
"So we should give him back, right? You don't want Mrs. Lutz to be sad do you."
"I guess not, but I can take care of him for her."
"Or you could go visit him some times. She lives just around the corner."
"Really?" the little girl's big blue eyes lit up.
"Of course," Casey said, "I'll take you over there some time.
Grace carried the cat outside without any further disagreement from the child. She drove her small sedan north toward Maple street and made a right.
Taylor thanked Casey for bringing in the cat, but a new concern crossed her mind. "Casey," she asked, "What about the baby?"
Casey responded, "I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's doctors here, and people have their babies at home all the time. I'm really just bumbed out, because there won't be an epidural."
Taylor left it at that. She didn't want to bring up adult subjects around Kayla's curious young ears, so she simply asked, "You nervous?"
"A little," Casey said.
They moved on to other topics. Minutes later, the phone rang. The only calls that could be made were within the community, but Taylor was always hopeful that the access point had been re-established. It was grace however, "Can you come to the house. I think something's wrong."
Grace sounded concerned, so Taylor asked, "What's wrong," as she went back to the page where the chip information had been for TImmy. The address was 216 East Maple Street.
Grace explained, "The house is locked, and it looks like everybody's asleep. I called from Joe and Tammy Frankenburger's house next door, and they won't even answer the phone. I went back over there, and they're all still in bed. I can see them through the windows."
"Okay, I'll come out there."
She turned to Casey and Kayla, "I'm sorry, but I have to lock up for a minute, so I can go help Grace with something."
"What's wrong?" asked Casey.
Taylor replied nonchalantly, "Oh, she just needs help getting in to the Lutz's house. They're apparently still in bed or something, and they're not answering the door."
"Well, that doesn't sound right. Normally, I see Brandy out jogging early," said Casey with more concern in her voice now.
"I'm sure it's nothing," said Taylor trying to get rid of them, "but I need to go out there, so I guess I'll see you at the meeting?"
"I wouldn't miss it," she said. The concerned expression didn't leave Casey's face, but she obediently turned and left with her daughter in tow.
Taylor drove to the small, one story home noticing that her gas gauge was at the one quarter mark. She wondered about gasoline. How would they get their cars to run? Maybe they wouldn't.
Taylor forgot about that problem as she pulled up and saw grace pacing out front still holding Timmy. "I really think something's wrong. I can't see in real well, but I see something all over Martha's face. I don't know if maybe she got sick in her sleep?" said Grace.
Now Taylor felt a sense of aprehention in the pit of her stomach. "We need to get in there," she said.
"I wonder how we'll do that?" wondered Grace.
Taylor knew exactly what to do. Most private home owners had the responsibility of handing out keys to those they trusted in case of an emergency, but in New Chicago, the office had a copy of a front door key to every home built. An agreement signed upon the sale of a home insured that any home-owner who changed their locks would provide a key within three months of the change, but now that wasn't necissary. Nobody's locks would be changed. She drove back to the office and went through them. She finally found the one for 216 East Maple and aproached the door. Before she left, Taylor remembered the 2way radio. Next Generation homes had issued them two base radios and ten or twelve walky talkies as well as ten mobile radios to be installed in vehicles. Until today, they had found cellphones to be just as useful as the radios and hadnt even turned them on. She switched on the base unit sitting on her desk with a light coat of dust covering it.
When she arrived at the Lutz's home, taylor quickly unlocked the door and went inside with Grace following close behind her. taylor went streight for the kids' bedrooms, but Grace went down the hall to the last door before it dead-ended in a bathroom.
"Oh my Gosh, there's a note!" she said.
Taylor made a quick course adjustment and headed for Grace. The piece of paper was taped to Martha's door.
It read, "Dear kids, I am so so sorry, but I just can't take it anymore. I can't care for you in this world. What if we're hear forever? Sooner or later, everything's going to break, and who's going to fix it?
You guys are both adults now. I'm sure you can take care of yourselves. Don't worry about Timmy. I let him out. Someone will find him, then they will come here if you haven't found me yet. I have to make sure that someone finds you in case something happens. If I gave you too many pills, you might get seriously ill. Please forgive me. I love you.
I never wanted to do this. I'm so so sorry.
Love,
Mom
"Oh my God!" said Taylor in a hoarse whisper. The women burst through the door as if they could save Martha, but it was futile. The empty pill bottle next to her bed said that it contained thirty capcils. She must've given a couple to both of her adult children, then taken the rest of the bottle herself. She may've simply drifted away, but at some point, her stomach tried to reject all of the pills that had been ingested, but Martha had been lying on her back. She hadn't died from an overdose, she had died of suffocation. "Oh no," cried Grace, her eyes filling with tears and spilling over, "Oh no."
The kids proved to be hard to awaken because of the medication in their systems, but when they foundout about Martha, they were both devistated.
One thing that Taylor and Grace had never thought about was needing to build a semetary so soon. Nor did they know how to handle a death. Should they try to embalm her? What about the kids?
Brandy was the first to ask to see her mother. THey decided to tell her that they wanted to clean her up a bit, but that alarmed the girl. "Oh my God, what happened?"
Taylor explained, "Nothing, she just threw-up, and it got on her."
The meeting was that night, but the two women were already stressed. They finally decided that Martha should be buried soon, so that afternoon, they, with the help of Jeff Otwell and Brother Fred MacElroy from the church had an inpromptu service for her. The men dug the grave while Grace and Taylor made lunch for the kids. Neither was hungry, but they both ate a little something before they all went outside. The short funeral ended just hours before the meeting was to start with Martha being placed in her grave with no coffin. Brandy put a teddy bear her mother had given her as a child, and Seth just said nothing and cried.
Finally, the meeting came. the small church sanctuary was crowded. Taylor began the meeting by saying, "Okay, let's get started. I want to do this in a civilized manner, so no yelling if you can help it. We're going to speak one at a time. There's a second microphone, you can all line up to speak, but only when I ask for comments. I have a list of topics that we will discuss, and afterward, you can bring up your own concerns.
Now first on the list, the access point. Most of this was on the radio, but just to update everybody, Derick is an engineer who worked on the original project. He says that any routine maintenance or minor problems would be solved by now, so the machine must've suffered a major problem which means that we really don't know when it might be working again. We really have to get used to the idea of living here full time for quite a while."
A murmer arose amung the crowd. Tammy Frankenburger stood and cried out. "How will we eat!"
"Quiet down," Taylor said, elevating her voice to be heard above the people. The noise died down, and she continued normally, "That's the next item up for discussion, and since it seems we're all still a little worried, let's cover that now, okay?
We can't go to stores anymore, so we have to find our food right here. There's all sorts of etible things growing all around here as well as animals. When it comes to pre packaged manufactured food, I think we should all just make that last until we can get something planted. This might take a while, so I guess we first need to hear from anyone who thinks they might be able to give us some advice about it. Are there any farmers here?"
After a moment, Amy Radcliff stood. When she reached the mic, she said, "I've been going to college studying organic foods. I wanted to open an organic store. I might be able to help."
"Okay, that's good, anybody else?" asked Taylor.
An older woman explained how she had gardened for years and could provide help.
Next topic was how to manage medical emergencies. The small community turned out to have seven doctors, two noes and throat specialists, an oncologist, an OBGYN, and three family practicianers. Next, the radio station was discussed. The first vote of the evening took place. After ideas were passed around, the suggestion of putting informative programming on the station as well as it's automated loop of poasted adviseries. The vote was eunanomus in favor of adding the programming.
Finally, the serious debate began. Taylor said, "Well, this part might be a bit tougher to decide. We need to think about how we want to manage New Chicago. Just some information first. Based on sales records and the forms you folks filled out, we've got 305 residents. In the beginning, uh, before the gateway stopped working, we simply asked that you follow all applicable laws. Now, there's no governing authority except for, I guess, little ole me and Grace up here, and we're unequipped by ourselves. If you guys want a good community to live in, we're going to have to work together here. We're going to need people to enforce whatever laws we think we need, and we need to decide how we want to do that. Do we punish people or just stop them from affecting the rest of us?
A line quickly formed at the microphone. Taylor was nervous. She hoped they didn;t get violent.
First, Angie Childress spoke. "Well, I guess I can speak for most of us. We need some rules. I know none of us want to follow them, but we all need some. I think we just need to keep them reasonable."
A young professional followed her. His name was Mike Snow. He said, "I think we have to be honest. What these ladies said is true. They can't control all of us, so we need some people to enforce some clear boundries that are based on social responsibility and rational thought. I honestly wouldn't mind heading up this group of enforcers, because I can see the need. We have to make sure we keep this community under control, because if we don't, we could see more people die than just poor Mrs. Lutz. I don't know if all you folks know this, but she killed herself today. We don't know if it could've been predicted, but in a responsible society, we try to stop things like this. We make them seek treatment even when they don't want to. What about sex and babies. There's the practical concerns of course, we can't have an explosion of babies we can't feed, but do we want to live like savages in third world countries? We have to keep certain people from having sex. We have to folks, and yes, that means doing some things that are very unpleasant. That means stopping our friends from doing things that they don't think are wrong, but if we do nothing, I'm telling you folks, human nature is barbaric. We'll see more people die. We won't be able to keep our children from seeing things that even adults can't wrap their minds around. What if the next suicidal person takes their whole family out? Do we even know how many guns are in this community. What if we have some yahoo that doesn't like living in a well-rounded society, and he decides to pull out his gun and run down here, and start shooting people. I could paint you a hundred gory pictures of what could happen. I'm not talking about those of you who are good law abiding citizens. You don't need to be incarsorated or strictly controled. You need to be protected from the potential threats amung us. I mean, if we learned nothing from the other world, we should'velearned this. Bad people don't ware a uniform."
Behind him, Patty Smith had been enduring his phillabuster with obvious distaine, but she patiently waited her turn before speaking. "It's scary to think of what Mike talked about," she said, "but it's an outrage to start just three days after the gate stopped working to turn this place in to a commune or something. Look folks, the human nature is sinful, but people have one thing that animals don't, self control. You use it, or you don't. This may be another world, but what goes around comes around, here and there. We don't need some strict dictatorship running the show. It's easy to think that's necissary when he agrees with you, but what if we sat down with Mr. Snow and had a long indepth conversation about the specifics of what he thinks shouldn't be allowed. You'll findout quickly that we all think different about what's right and wrong and about what we need here in New Chicago. Yes, rules are needed, but nothing like what Mike's proposing. I say we stick to a basic outline. Make the laws very simple. There does need to be a police force, but only to help us defend ourselves against one another when the time comes. We don't need anyone directing where our society should go. In situations like that, the unpopular are always punished for their differences, and if you want to turn this nice home we have here in to nazi Germany, it's up to you I guess. I'm just one woman."
New Chicago's own mailman, Jeff, stood at the mic next. Look, I don't like letting babies have babies and people starve and stuff like that, but she's right. Being so strict just gets a lot of good people punished for doing things we thought only bad people did. I'll tell you what happened to me. When I was younger, I drove a delivery truck. I lived in an apartment with a guy who liked to smoke pot. I didn't realize it, but I'd sit next to him and get what he called a contact buzz. Well, one day, I got in to a wreck. As soon as it happened, drug test."
He gestured with his hands snapping his fingers at this point, "Of course, the weed was in my system. I got fired, and they called the police. Noone pressed charges, but the police told me it was my fault for being around someone like that, and Fred was a nice guy. He'd give the shirt off his back for a stranger if it was asked of him. He just liked to smoke a little pot in the evening to relax. I'm just sayin, we need not pile on the bureaucracy, that just makes loopholes so the good guys get busted while the bad guys play the system."
Dr. Dave Canner was next. He was a family doctor with two daughters. He lived on the far north side of New Chicago.
He said, "Well, I guess I can agree with both of those guys. I sure don't like being bossed around or misunderstood like his friend was, but guys, stuff like that happens. It has to, because no matter how much we don't like it, Mike's right. I was involved with doctors without borders for a few years, and I've seen chaos. I was in south america where you didn't really know who was in charge, because the government would crack down on the militants, and a bunch of people would get killed, then the farmers and local people would get mad and join the rebels, or they wouldn't respect the authorities, so if something happened, people just handled it themselves. There were times the police were everywhere, then there were times they were nowhere to be found. I've seen a lot of different legal systems, and what I really think we need is a system ran by experts who know what is good for society and who can enforce good rules on the people. That way, even though there will be those who don't like them, the rules will be simply the right thing to do. I guess that's all I have to say on the subject."
Derick, the engineer, came next, "Well, we can really try to do both. I really think if everybody has a chance to have a say-so in what the rules are, they are more likely to obey them. That will help, because we all have our own individuality, and if we don't over enforce anything, that will make a big difference as well. I honestly think that Mike guy's a bit scary. I honestly think if we do this responsibly, we can make pretty much everybody happy. I think we need to just make sure everybody gets a chance to vote on our polacies, and keep our collective tempers in check, ya know?"
That pretty much summed it up. In the end, the decision was made to adopt a set of rules voted on by all citizens. These would be determined at a later date, but those who decided not to show-up forfeted their right to vote. Mike Snow was elected police chief by aclimation. The next day, he inlisted a few of the young adults from the small community to be his deputies.
the referendum took place two days later in the same place. Mike's guys collected and tabulated the ballits, and Taylor read off the decisions. The laws pretty much mimmicced those of any town. The easy stuff wasn't even voted on. Rape, murder, theft, assault, child molestation, etc. It was decided that the age of concent would be eighteen, but there was some discussion over the drinking age. It was finally decided that if a child was under the age of eighteen, they must only drink in the supervision of an adult. Public drunkenness, nakedness, loud noise or disturbing the peace, they were all made illegal as was vandalism and crimes of dishonesty such as fraud and extortion. Then, the moment came when they had to decide how to enforce the rules.
Taylor introduced the topic, "Well, this is probably going to be another hard one folks, now we have to decide what we want to do. If someone breaks these rules, do we punish them, or just stop them. I mean, do we try to make them better, or just keep them from causing whatever problem it is they're causing.
The first at the mic was Mike, "I think everybody here already knows my opinion, but I would like to add it to the record. We need to give my guys the most power and authority possible. If we don't, anyone who thinks they can get away with something will be able to use loopholes to keep us from apprehending them or from knowing what they're up to. Back in the states, we had a complicated system of amendments and warrants. Noone could really understand that system. Someone started it with really good intentions, but since then, people have butchered it. Really, what matters over there now is who handles your case. Some cops will listen when you yell about your constitutional rights, others won't, most won't, but some commanding officers are very good about helping their officers avoid having to deal with complaints from street hoods trying to use the constitution to get away with everything from DUI to murder.
We need a system that's simpler and easier for law biding people and police officers to work with. i think we need to simply give the police the power to enforce these rules in whatever way they, or I, see fit. We're good guys. These guys are all well-rounded kids, but they've grown-up enough for this. They won't act unfairly. Just think about it, thank you."
Patty didn't miss this one. She was right behind Mike, "No no, and no! THis man wants to tell you how to raise your kids, what to eat, when to eat, when to go to the crapper, we can't give him and his guys unlimited power to do whatever they want!"
"Excuse me, excuse me, can I interrupt for a moment?" It was Dr. Mark Swini. He was another family doctor. He said, "I'm Sorry Miss. Smith. I didn't mean to stop you, but I think I've seen this before. You have paranoia. Maybe you will be able to think more clearly after we get you on some medication. I'm sure I have something back at my house. Come-on,"
He gently took Patty's arm. She shoved him violently, "No, I won't be medicated in to going along with this! Folks, you may think you're law abiding citizens, but think about the last light you ran, or what you do in your private home when noone else's watching. You're not law abiding, you just follow the rules most of the time!"
Mike and two younger males aproached the microphone as Patty kept going, "FOlks, I know you're all good people, but you don't always follow the law, you just don't. I don't, and you don't. Just think about,"
"Okay, I think this has gone on long enough," said Mike calmly but with authority.
Feedback squealed through the speaker system as the two men took hold of Patty's arms and lead her away. She was taken out of the sanctuary.
Okay folks. How do we do this? The laws seem reasonable enough, but do we give this Mike guy the power to do whatever he wants? I'm sure I could pick a few options, and put up a pole, but that's boring. I like reading people's ideas. Maybe something will standout. I can just talley up the comments.
_________________
chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 11:09 am Post subject: |
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In the beginning, excited home-buyers from Chicago purchased homes in a rural paradice located in another world. It was accessible through a machine located right in downtown Chicago, so home wasn't far from work.
Tragedy struck however when the one gateway between that world and ours broke down. Now the fate of New CHicago must be decided at a town meeting in the sanctuary of the church.
Guys, you didn't say anything, so I've decided.
Maridith Johnson stood at the mic for a moment allowing the murmuring of the croud to settle down after Patty had been hauled away. She finally spoke, "I guess I can sympathize with her. I don't like being told what to do either, but we need to let the police do their jobs. You hear about it all the time, or at least you did back in Chicago anyway. People would get arrested for something, and the police would have to let them go simply for not reading that person their rights or something. There were a lot of people who got away with things because they knew the law and could exploit it, so I say we should let the police decide how to enforce the laws."
There were a few more descentors but none were as passionate as Patty. The vote was finally talleyed. There were 205 people present. They voted 160 to 45 in favor of allowing the police to do as they saw fit.
Afterward, a simpler motion was passed. It was decided that meetings would take place here every Wednesday night at 7:00 P.M.
Remarkably, life began to resemble some kind of routine. It soon became obvious how people fit in to the small community. Education normally took place at home. Many parents still wanted their children to learn something even if school wasn't available. The 2way radios in the office found a new use. Mike came and took them for the police force. "I was thinking Grace and I could use those for some of our daily operations too," said Taylor.
"Oh, we'll set up a channel for you," Mike reassured her.
At nine A.m. two days before the next meeting, Grace sat by her radio. It had already been on, but she hadn't been that interested in the weather report and the other systematicly repeated messages. At exactly nine however, the loop cut-off, and Gladdis Holms's voice could be heard saying. "Mornin folks."
Gladdis was the new agricultural consultant. Amy Radcliff still worked closely with her and was considered second in command.
Gladdis advised the community on growing their own food, but many residents also liked her sense of humour. Sometimes, she left the topic of gardening for a moment. Even those who disagreed with her opinions loved hearing them. Gladdis was entertaining.
Today was different however, Gladdis didn't mention Mike Snow. Although she liked to live in a community with a system of law and order like everybody else, she thought that Mike's power had gone to his head.
The truth was, Gladdis's humorous tone was gone. She simply gave advice without any real personality, or at least not much.
"Well folks, last week we talked about getting those seeds in the ground. You can go ahead and plant some vegetables, but be sure not to crowd them. Remember how I told you to get seeds out of your vegetables. This week, we need to get ready for May, because near the end of this month, you can go ahead and plant your beans and corn. Back home, folks would grow corn, and it would make quite a bit. We'd have enough to give away to people at the end of the season or to freeze.
This week. I'm gonna tell you how to make sugar. I've said since the beginning that one step toward having a normal life is to make the stuff we used to have. It seems impossible, but lots of that stuff we eat, I'm talkin sugar, peanut butter, even vanilla, have been around for a whole bunch of years, and a long time ago, people would make this stuff at home. How else do you think the folks who run the factories got the idea to make this stuff.
You can make sugar from beats, but remember, you'll need a lot of beats. I've done this, and a fifty pound bag of beats might make you a small bag of sugar, maybe five pounds if you're lucky. Also, it might not taste just like sugar. The trick is not to eat it when it's still a syrup." Gladdis finally chuckled, "Ya lost? Don't worry, I'll explain it to you."
Grace had never done this, so she listened intently. When the show was over however, Gladdis came to the office.
Grace welcomed her, "Are you feeling all right?" she asked.
"Well yeah," said Gladdis, "but I got a knock on my door by the cops this morning."
"Oh my gosh, what for?" asked Grace.
"I know. He says I'm runnin him down, and it's insighting people to turn on the government."
"Oh that's silly."
"I know it, but he said, he could get me off the radio if he wanted, even if it meant locking me up."
There was no jail in New Chicago, but a small, square building was built for detainment of prisoners until the local police got there. It was meant for emergencies and only contained four cells and a kitchen area. It was located on the street just behind the office and across from the church. Patty had been put here after her outburst at the meeting until she was picked up by her family and Dr. Swini.
Grace was concerned, "Well, what are you going to do?"
Gladdis shrugged, "Whatever he says I guess, even though I don't have any idea how. I just talk. I don't try to start trouble. It's just the truth."
Grace said, "Well, if you do get locked up, I'm sure the rest of us will pitch a fit at the next meeting, and you'll be out of there."
"I'd like to think so," said Gladdis, "but I'm really just thinking about bringing this up on the show. I want to say I haven't been myself because Mike Snow said he'd put me in jail. He'll be mad, but who cares?"
"Gladdis, then he'll arrest you for sure."
"No he won't. Everybody'll know about it then, and they'll get mad if he tries something like that."
"Well, I hope you know what you're doing."
Grace chatted with Gladdis until she decided she was hungry and went home for some lunch. Taylor came up and said, "I wonder what happened to Patty."
Grace replied, "Well, Dr. Swini's taking care of her, and her folks say he put her on some medicine that keeps her dopy, so she doesn't do anything she isn't supposed to."
"That sounds aweful!" cried taylor.
"It is," said Grace.
"Well, my gosh, I know that her ideas were a little out there, and I didn't agree with them, but the way they just drug her off like that."
"I know, she doesn't dare talk like that anymore. If she does, they tell Swini, and he says her dillusions are getting worse and ups her pills. I think they're too high already."
"Maybe we should bring it up at the next meeting."
"It wouldn't hurt."
The two women went to visit Patty. She lived with her son and his wife. Joe had two adult sons of his own and was in his late forties. Madeline was his second wife. She was in her upper twenties, and it was rumoured she never wanted to do housework, so Joe had to learn to do most of it. Patty was too medicated to do much of anything. Patty had moved in with them before New Chicago had been created after her home was foreclosed.
Madeline answered the door of their large brick home. It was located on the outskirts of New Chicago where the lots were bigger with more trees.
The women asked to see Patty. "Sure, come on in," Madeline said, "Joe's mowing the lawn, but he should be finished with it shortly." She did not offer her visiters a drink but gestured toward a floral print couch in the living room. "Have a seat and I'll go get her," Madeline said.
She wheeled Patty in in a wheelchair. "You need to stay awake," she said as Patty's head drooped. She spoke as if talking to a small child or someone who was mentally challenged. "These people are here to see you."
"What, oh hi," Patty's eyes locked on Grace and brightened with recognition.
"How you been doin Grace?" she asked. Her speech was sort of slurred, and she had what looked like egg on her face.
"Oh, I've been getting along all right. How bout the doctor, did he say anything else?"
Madeline had left the room for some reason.
Patty said, "Huh, oh, no, he didn't. He changed my medicine again."
"Well, I guess that would explain it," said Grace beginning to get disgusted.
Taylor chimed in, "What happened to your face?"
"Huh," responded the nearly incoherent woman in front of them. The two women could also see a stream of drule running down Patty's chin.
Taylor clarified, "You've got something on your face, it looks like food."
Patty replied, finally getting it, "Oh, Madeline feeds me," she said as if this was supposed to explain everything.
Madeline amurged holding a martini. "Sorry I didn't offer you guys one, but there's only so much jin and vermouth left, and we want to save it."
"Why does she have egg all over her face?" asked Taylor.
Madeline chuckled and blushed, "Oh, that was from a little accident at breakfast."
Grace spoke up, "Why do you have to feed her her breakfast?"
"Did she tell you that?" Patty's daughter-in-law looked surprised.
Grace said, "she said you did."
Madeline said, "Well, some mornings, Patty has trouble getting going. Her morning medicine has to take some time to get in to her system."
"What has Dr. Swini got her on?" she asked casually.
"He's got her on a pill to make her calm. He says he has a lot of that, so he's not worried about running out for a while. There's another pill to get her going in the morning. He says he's got less of that, so he's telling us not to use as much of it. We don't seem to need the sleeping drug he gave us, but it's here just in case, and hmm, let's see. He gave her a pill for her stomach too. He says some of the pills might be hard on her."
"She looks like she's half asleep," Grace remarked.
"Yes, I agree she does," Madeline said. "but there's only so much of the medicine she takes to stay awake. It worked fine until last week."
"What happened?" Grace asked.
"Well, last week, we had a little episode, didn't we Patty?"
Patty's head jerked up. She had knodded off and more drule was present on her chin. "Huh," she asked thickly.
"You had some trouble last week, didn't you?" Madeline asked again.
"Oh, yeah," said Patty.
Madeline explained, "We really have to keep the medicine in her. One morning, this was I think two days after we brought her home, I forgot to give her her pills in the morning, and she came down from them. She started yelling about us making her take the pills, and she said she wouldn't take them, and I had to tell her, if you don't take your pills, Dr. Swini's going to have to sedate you, and then he'll put the medicine in your arm. Do you remember that?"
Patty's head was drooping again. She jerked up again and said, "Yeah, yeah I do."
Grace doubted the woman was even paying attention. "Well, I think you're giving her too much," she said.
Madeline said, "Well, Dr. Swini says that it's safe to give her this much."
"Well yeah, but look at her," said Grace.
Yeah," said Madeline, "I think I'm going to ask if she can have more medicine in the morning to wake her up."
"Can she drink coffee?" asked Taylor.
"Oh no, Dr. Swini says that'll counter act the medicine he gives her to keep her calmed down. Plus, we don't drink coffee. Cafeen isn't good for you," said Joe's wife.
"Neither are high doses of drugs," commented Grace.
Madeline said, "Yeah well, this is the only way to help her. She's sick, and Dr. Swini says she might hurt herself if we just let her go. You heard what she said at the meeting. She's paranoid."
"Thinkin different isn't paranoia," said Grace starting to raise her voice. Patty's eyes opened wide and her head came up.
Madeline rebutted, "Well, it's definitly not healthy not to trust the people in charge, and that's what she was doing. She'd been doing this for a long time. Even back in Chicago, she'd talk about the government and how they were going to listen to our phone conversations. You should've seen how mad she got when she foundout that they were confiscating all of the guns in the city. We don't even own a gun! Really Grace, you don't know how she is. I really wasn't surprised at all when Dr. Swini said she was sick."
Grace shot back, "Well, doping her up so bad, she can't even talk or eat her own breakfast isn't right either. Hell, maybe she's right, you don't know. Someone's opinion isn't a sickness, what you're doing to her is!"
"I told her that," Patty said.
"I think you need to leave," said Madeline.
"Well, what about Joe, where is he."
"He's mowing the lawn," said Madeline becoming agitated, "and if you don't leave now, I'll go get him. He won't be happy to know that you're upsetting his mother like this."
"Oh shut-up Madeline, you get on my nerves," said Patty.
"See, you've upset her," said Madeline, "She's starting to sound like she's about to have another episode, and Dr. Swini can't give her anymore ativan, now get out!"
"I'd like to talk to Swini myself," said Grace, "This doesn't seem right.
Madeline yelled, "Well, how we care for our family is none of your business!"
She stormed off, and Patty said, "She says he's mowin the lawn, but he said yesterday that the mower was broke. He's probably tryin to fix it. Even if he did fix it, he's probably not done, that yard's big."
the two could hear Madeline in the other room saying, "Mike, I need Grace and Taylor out of my house." A pause, then, "Yes, it's them, they're here bothering Patty."
Another pause, "No, she's fine, but they're about to make her have another episode."
"Why don't we just go?" said Taylor.
"I need to get out of here," said Patty. "I don't like my medicine."
Grace finally spoke after a short pause, "Look Patty, I don't want to go, but I don't want any trouble from that Mike fellow either. I'll be back later for you though, okay?"
"No," pleeded Patty, "I'm serious! I know it sounds like I'm just tryin to get out of takin my pills, but"
"That's about enough!" bellowed Madeline bursting in from the kitchen, "Mike's coming with two officers to take both of you in, so you can stay or go, it's up to you!"
She began wheeling Patty toward her bedroom, "NO!" she cried.
"You have to go to your room for a while," said Madeline again talking to Patty like she was mentally challenged.
She turned her head as she pushed the wheelchair in to the hallway, "You see what you did! Now, she's having another episode! Thanks a lot!"
"Well, she's not retarded, so stop talking to her like she's stupid!" shouted Grace.
The women left and went back to the office. Later, they were met by Mike and two of his officers. They entered the office and said, "Morning ladies."
They echoed his greeting, and he continued, "Well, I talked to Mrs. Smith, and she says you two were over there harrassing her mother-in-law, is there any truth to that?"
"No," said Grace, "I was just worried about how they're taking care of her."
"Well, Patty Smith is very sick, you saw her little out burst at the meeting last week," explained Mike, "Now, me and the boys have talked it over, and we're not going to arrest you two. You've been good at leading the meetings, and most of New Chicago likes you. We're honestly afraid that there might be a riot of some kind if you were locked in that jail over there. We decided this should be good enough. You won't go back over there for any reason, okay?"
He paused waiting for agreement, but when he got none, he continued, "Now, I mean it. If you go over there harrassing Patty again, I will arrest you, and my boys here will just have to get a lesson in crowd control.
Grace said, "Okay Mike, but we think she's being given too much," "I talked to Dr. Swini about your concerns," interrupted Mike. He says, that much medication is needed."
He paused for a moment, "So I can expect no more problems out of you two?"
They didn't respond, so he considered himself understood and left.
Grace was angry, "What does he think he can do? We're his bosses."
Taylor replied, "Yeah, but we gave him authority to enforce the law, so he thinks he runs the joint."
"Well, he needs to stop, because I'm not the only one who doesn't deal with his attitude! They can't put everybody on pills!"
The meeting was on Wednesday. At noon of that day, Mike broadcasted his scheduled program on Radio New Chicago 96.7 fm. "Hello, this is Chief Mike Snow with some updates of the community of New Chicago. In order to keep things safe and orderly, I feel it's necissary that the people be advised on new things.
First, I want to talk about a situation I resolved Monday morning. ONe of our residents, I think all of you know her. Her name is Patty Smith. She suffers from paranoia and possibly schyzophrenia. She had an episode at our first two meetings here. Luckily, her family doctor's got her on some medicine that keeps her calm.
A couple ladies here in the community, Grace and Taylor from the office, thought she was being over-medicated, so they went over to Patty's home and confronted her family. These are all things a concerned friend or family member would do. However, Grace and Taylor over-stayed their welcome. Let me make this clear, if someone tells you to go, you go. If you're on their property, you have no right to stay there against that person's will.
That's not the only issue here though. I think most people can understand that. What I really wanted to talk to you folks about was issues involving medical treatment. The ultimate authority here is your doctor. We do have a few specialists who take priority when their specialty is called for, but most often, the family makes the medical decisions, or the patient themselves. If you disagree with your doctor or family's decisions regarding your health, you may refuse to follow the treatment plan within reason so long as you aren't endangering your safety and you are compitent. If another person's health decisions bother you, go say something. I'm not going to keep anyone from giving advice to a person they care about, but you don't go over there and start trouble like Grace and Taylor did. I know those two are great at running the meetings, and we thank them for it, but they don't make medical decisions, doctors do. The final authority on medical anything is a doctor."
"I don't remember ever saying that," said Grace more to herself than anyone else..
Mike continued, "Now, I also have to bring to everybody's attention that my boys and I have discovered a homemade distillery and some marijuana plants growing in the rural areas of Quantum County where there aren't any houses." Quantum county was what the area just beyond New Chicago was called. The residents didn't normally call it that. It was normally called the country or the woods, but maps and official documents had it listed as Quantum County as far out as the land had been documented for mapping. "I want to make it perfectly clear. Anything that makes you high is illegal in New Chicago. At some point we will make rules about alcohol, because it's relatively harmless, but we can't just have anyone and his brother making it. As far as the other stuff goes, you can forget it. We won't be having some hippy debate about how dangerous this drug is. Folks, smoking marijuana's bad, okay, it's bad. There's no health benefits, and it's not harmless, so forget about trying to change the rules so it's legal, because that won't happen.
We don't know who's making the drugs in the woods, but we'll findout, just don't you worry about that. Parents, make sure your children don't have liquor or marijuana. Some kids might think they know how to distill alcohol, but they can grow germs that could kill someone; not to mention what happens when a person gets drunk. I don't want an example here. Right now New Chicago is safe. It's removed from the chaos of the old world, and if you want it to stay that way, we can't have people walking around drunk or high, it'll be the beginning of serious accidents, date rape, child pregnancy, addiction, suicide, we don't need that folks.I'm going to bring this up at the meeting, and I wont you folks to think about it. The rules we've got work pretty well, but what if we need more, or what if some situation comes along that requires that I temporarily change the rules? I'm going to bring it up tonight, because even though we have meetings every week, in an emergency, I don't want to have to wait for a meeting to do what has to be done. If the rest of you don't like it, we can talk about it when the meeting comes, but I need the right to do what I think's necissary first. I don't mind changing it later if I find something out.
Folks, I also need to talk to you about buying and selling. I think one of the biggest shockers for us since the door stopped working is that our money doesn't work anymore. That seems to be a small problem though, because we have food and electricity and even running water from the plant on the north side of town."
The plant he was referring to was a water tower. It could collect rain, but mainly it contained water that had been recycled. The plant was automated and continued working after the access point had failed. It was necissary to collect some rain, because there was no sewer system for the toilet. The drainage system carried water from a person's sink or bathtub to the recycling plant, but sewage went to a septic system under the home or buried in the yard. Eventually, the level in the system went down far enough to need more water to be added.
Mike explained his point about buying and selling, "Folks, what I've seen is that people have started trading. Someone is growing some of that weatgrass, so they sell it to a person down the road who likes to take it as a dietary supplement. This person pays them with just enough cinnamon to make bread pudding because the one growing the weatgrass is out. Folks, this is fine. There's no danger that can come from good people trading their items, but we have to do something about this, because there's still a few guns in New Chicago, and personally, that makes me feel a bit unsafe. Me and my guys need to know that we're safe. We don't want anyone to make a really bad decision if they happen to be very upset when one of us show's up. If people trade whatever they want, especially since some of our residents are drinking now, that could lead to some problems. Someone who noone thought had a gun could get one. You could trade a gallon of gasoline for, oh I don't know, a pack of lightbulbs or something. You don't know what that neighbor's going to use that gasoline for. What if they use it to burn your house down? I think it's now necissary to start regulating what can be traded. From this moment forward, any trading must happen at the swap meet. We can organize that at the meeting tonight, but an officer of the law needs to officiate at these meets to make sure no underhanded commerse goes on. Plus, if you want to trade a service for anything, there's going to have to be a contract, so that everybody knows what the agreement is. An officer of the law must read and also sign these contracts for them to be valid. We can't have people going back on their promises, and we can't have anyone selling something they shouldn't sell.
That brings me to my last point, contraband. Folks, this is a nice, safe, quiet, good community, and to keep it that way, some things can't be allowed. First, prostitution, there will be no prostitution here. Next, if you want to perform any service, you need to make sure that you are qualified. At the swap meet, the officer reading the contract will decide if the person offering a service is qualified. Anyone who offers a service that turns out not to work will be held responsible for making sure that the problem is fixed.
Average residents of New Chicago may not own weapons, drugs, liquor except what they brought from Chicago, explosives, anything that may receive police frequencies, anything that may be used to make drugs or liquor, anything that might enable someone to evesdrop on the private conversations or covurtly watch anyone, tools they are not qualified to use, or any media that is obseen or detrimental to the community. Now, I'm not talking about your stack of playboys here, I mean child pornography or something like that. Also folks, there's ideas that we just don't need here. You remember back home we had adds that sold you things you may not've wanted before. Well, ideas can be sold too. If we have people selling the wrong ideas, people might buy them, and if people buy them, this community might be at risk. We live in a simple world with few problems, but if people start getting these wild opinions and spreading them around, it starts trouble. ONe man yelling about his opinion is annoying. One man yelling about his opinion with more and more people joining in is first a protest, then an unruly mob, and finally, it's a full blown riot. Just think of how far we would've fallen if we went from being so stable and good to being the kind of town where we have riots. I know there are some people who don't like me, but they need to keep their opinions to themselves. There will be no public criticism of the government here. That kind of talk is for the town meetings every week. Religion is fine at home, but there will be no procilitizing outside the home or public expression of religious belief. This might insight violence. You may turn in any contraband you have and not be punished for having it at the police station which is number fifteen north Maine Street which is just down from the office. You can drop something off as long as somebody's there to take it. My men and I will be coming around to take contraband. If you have anything that you aren't supposed to have, handing it over willingly will keep you out of trouble. I will be adding to the list of prohibited items as time goes by, because I'm sure there are some things which I forgot to put on there. Remember folks, the only way we can keep this community the safe and sound quiet haven it's always been is to cooperate. This is Mike Snow, chief of police, signing off."
Thank God," said Taylor. She had been going along with Mike Snow's plans because they seemed to make sense, but today, she was simply annoyed with him. He wouldn't shut-up, and was it really necissary to take so many things away from people?
She wasn't the only one. All across New Chicago, there were people who were upset. What should they do? Should they start a resistance movement, or is that too drastic? Should they calmly bring this up at the meeting or simply try to get away with breaking the rules? You decide.
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chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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Thunderbird
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| Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2011 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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One of a couple that have come up since my last reading disk was compiled... will have to add this to the next but I'd like to say I'm looking forward to it!
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CHAPTER 25: Near-Light Speed (NEW CHAPTER! (12/4/2011))
Zephyrrr! And...
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Thunderbird
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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Well... I would personally throw a fit. Not a little fit but a very big fit. If I were a member of that community I would gladly lay down my life and take as many as necessary to keep such a strong legal structure from emerging in this wonderful second chance community there. I would see New Chicago as being a rare opportunity to do things right and everything that has taken place so far would be the very example of 'wrong'. I would be in arms at the moment they mentioned such arms shouldn't be in our hands. I would've been in an uproar as soon as it was suggested that police be allowed to be a part of this new community at all. But then, I'm an anarchist like that.
So me... I'd be gathering a liberation force around me for a violent uprising against these self-appointed powers that be. And with what they've done with their 'power' so far, I'd think I'd have plenty of support. So I think that someone there would be the same way... they may just have been smart enough to be leading from the shadows, plotting, planning, and fomenting without allowing those 'in charge' to ever catch wind of how powerful the 'freedom' movement really was. Guns and other weapons would've been stockpiled in expectation that this kind of dictatorship would've emerged - just waiting for the assholes with this sort of imperialistic thinking to rise so we can eliminate them from the gene pool for good.
Now... they've quickly overstepped and its time to eliminate them.
That's how I would've played this scene anyhow. I would've secretly amassed as much power as possible but only so I could firmly keep others from having too much. Nobody has a right to make these determinations about what is ok and right and what is not.
GREAT reading material... it hits me on a hell of a lot of emotional levels. But do watch out for the multitudes of spelling errors and try to work on that in your writing... its the only thing that makes it a struggle to read at times.
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CHAPTER 25: Near-Light Speed (NEW CHAPTER! (12/4/2011))
Zephyrrr! And...
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 7:59 am Post subject: |
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Well, no input, so here we go with chapter 5.
The church was packed. When Taylor began the meeting, she said, "Well, I guess the main thing on everybody's mind is the radio broadcast from chief Snow earlier today. I admit, I personally think it would've been much better if the rest of us had been allowed to decide together on these new measures. Let's go ahead and open the floor up for those with opinions about the issue. Maybe we can come to some kind of agreement that might make this less stressful for everyone."
The line at the mic reached back in to the pews. Mike and two of his officers waited nearby.
The first one in line was Gary Craig. He was a maintenance worker living across the street from the office in New Chicago's only apartment complex. He said, "I know we need a safe town and stuff like that, but there's nothing wrong with guns. I've had em since I was twelve years old, and I never shot anybody. It's people that kill people, not guns. This cop came barging in my door earlier today and just took all of them. Then, they go through my house looking for more stuff they might want to take, and decide they want some of my food!"
Behind him was Bill Cosgrove, "I echo this young man's displeasure. I understand that every community must maintain a safe environment, but that has been an excuse for tyrany for ages. Hitler did it."
Mike moved in closer; motioning for his officers to fall in behind him. He stood patiently for a moment as the normally introverted man spoke, "I have dealt with the fact that some of the rules here are based on someone's idea of right and wrong, and that not everybody's going to like them, but now we're letting one man decide everything, and it isn't somebody's idea of right and wrong, it's not even his idea of it, it's whatever he wants!"
"That's about enough sir," warned Mike.
Bill looked nervous, but he continued, "Uh, in America, this man would have no right to do what he's doing! I thought we were all still americans, doorway or no doorway! How can we just!"
Mike rushed the man and pulled him away from the mic.
"Hey!" shouted somebody in the crowd. "This is bullshit!" shouted another. Several people moved to help Bill, but the two officers were ready. Seth Lutz and Alex Hyde moved in from the edge of the room to help. They were also deputies working for Mike Snow.
"Stop, leave him alone!" a woman who was obscured by people was saying to Mike. Another was trying to reason with him, "Come-on Chief Snow, everyone should have the right to talk, even if they don't say nice things. You should just get over it."
It was Brandy, Seth's sister. "Brandy stop," he called from his position still a few feet away.
The next person to speak was Gladdis Holms. She began to aproach the mic to say something when she was grabbed by an officer.
"Let go of me!" she shouted. An aerosol can could be heard being sprayed as the crowd behind Gladdis began coming together in to an angry mob. One of the officers jumped back holding his face as Seth and Alex moved in to help manage the crowd. There were only two more officers in the entire town, and they came to help as well. Everything became a blur of movement and angry words.
Mike broke away from the fray and grabbed the microphone. He caused a loud feedback squeal to be heard. The crowd ignored it. "You will sease and desist immediately!" he roared.
The crowd did nothing, "immediately! Right now!" he bellowed. He pulled a .38 pistol he had confiscated from Gary Craig that very afternoon and fired it at the ceiling. This had the opposite affect. Instead of being startled in to silent obediance, the crowd advanced on Mike. Two men grabbed him. He brought his gun down to fire and Brandy kicked it from his hand. The brawl continued.
Another voice could be heard above the boisterous mob, "Stop fighting now!" It was Alex Hyde. He was only eighteen years old, but he had been a football quarterback before the gateway had stopped working. Anyone who followed high school sports knew him, because he was good at what he did. When offered the chance to control others by being an officer of the law, he gladly accepted. He said again "Stop fighting! We will start shooting people!" Soon after, his remarks were followed by "OU, hey!" and a squeal of feedback as he was knocked down by the mob. Two shots were heard and another deputy went down amung the rioting citizens. The two deputies who had entered from the church's vestibule were now only one. Charles Johnson looked around for his partner, Kyle Heart, but he was nowhere to be found. He then saw him entering the sanctuary through the double dorrs on the opposite side of the room with a large gun in his hand. Chuck recognized it. They had confiscated it just that day from a guy who lived on the outskirts of town with a huge gun collection. It looked like one of the man's ak-47's.
The big gun had an affect on the crowd. They saw it and began to cooperate. Many of them calmed down. Mike fought his way out of the tangle of bodies and wiped blood from his mouth.
Zack Morton, a college student living with his mother stood with a gun in his quivering hands. It was Mike's .38. He pointed it at Deputy Heart and fired one futile shot. The bullet went somewhere behind the officer as automatic gunfire tore through the sanctuary of the small church with a humble steeple. The crowd ran.
Seth and Chuck were caught up in the bottleneck at the exit and knocked to the floor.
When the crowd was gone, only two remained. Zack Mortan lay in a bloody mess on the floor with another laying near him. She wasn't recognizable from a distance because of how many times she'd been shot in the face.
The next day, New Chicago awoke to the typical radio loop with a message added. "Political insightment has finally lead to violence. Two residents are dead and two deputies injured after a riot. All residents are ordered to observe an eight P.M. curfew until the risk of further political violence has subsided. This is affective immediately. If you see anything out of the ordinary, please call 911 immediately. This also includes anti government activity.
Taylor heard this as she got ready for the office the next day. She wasn't quite sure what to do today. There needed to be a new meeting scheduled, but how was this going to work? Everything was up in the air. She called Grace. "What are you up to?"
Grace answered, "I'm streightening up. For some reason, I couldn't sleep."
"I know what you mean," Taylor said, "I don't even know what's going to happen today."
"Well, that man's got to be stopped," Grace declared.
"I agree with you, but I'm not sure what we can do," Taylor pondered.
Grace explained, "Ever since Mike Snow started talking, there's been at least a few people who weren't happy with him. I talked to Gladdis yesterday, and he actually told her to stop talking about him on the radio or he'd take her off it."
"He shouldn't be able to do that. The only way to get in to the station's control system is to log in, and he doesn't have the password."
"He could've gone to the station it'sself. Remember it's got a computer inside the building there with a mic and the override switch."
"Yeah, I guess it's always possible he did it that way."
"I just hope he didn't get to everybody."
"Well, if what you're telling me and what you've said about Patty means anything, then hopefully there's a few people who can get away with breaking his rules, but how do we just let him keep doing this?"
"Well, somebody's got to've kept their guns, maybe it's simply a matter of shooting him, but I really don't want it to come to that."
"Me neither. I simply wish we could take away his power some how. I guess it's mostly such a problem, because there's a lot of people who support him. He says he's keeping all of us safe, and everybody wants that."
"Mmhmm, he's done what a lot of the old dictators in places like Italy and Germany did a long time ago. They promised to clean up the streets and lock up all the bad people, because they know everybody wants to feel safe."
"I just know he's going to twist this to look like it was all poor Bill Cosgrove's fault, or the people in line behind him. I saw it all happen. I was up there with you."
"I remember. It was Gladdis who he got ahold of, then she mased him."
"Was that it? I didn't see it. I just heard something, then he jumped back with his hands on his face. I don't know what that boy was thinking when he came in there with that big gun."
"Well, Mike had a gun too."
"Yeah, and I have know idea what for. Did he think he had missed some people, and they were coming to get him or something?"
"I don't know, but noone pulled out a gun before he did. I know that much."
"I really hope nobody died. I ran out with everybody else. I don't know whether everybody got out with me or not."
"Me neither, hey my coffee's about done. I'm going to carry that and my bagle over to the office. I might as well go ahead over there and set up. I'm sure we're going to have a line today."
"I'm not sure of that. I think everybody's scared."
Yesterday, the office had received a line of people disgruntled about their property being taken. Taylor wasn't at all surprised when Gary spoke of having food taken.
Grace arrived before Taylor. Breakfast hadn't even been started for the recent college grad, but two poptarts and a cup of instant coffee later, she was ready to throw on her office clothes and get to work. She realized it had actually been more than a week since she'd eaten poptarts.
Grace was met at the office by a small group of scared citizens who updated her on what went wrong as soon as they were all inside the office.
"Are you and Taylor okay?" Gladdis asked.
"Where is she?" asked Bill Cosgrove.
Grace explained, "She was getting ready when I came on over. Did everybody get out okay?"
"NO," said Bill, "they shot two people."
Grace gasped, "Zack Morton's mother called me at five this morning. Mike and the others brought him home to her about 4:30. He was full of holes. She said his face is a bloody mess. It's terrible," explained Megan Riley, who was Jackie Morton's best friend. The two had worked together as professors at the same college in their pre New Chicago lives.
"Oh no, who else was shot?" asked Grace in shock.
Megan said, "Jackie said they told her there was another person, but she didn't get that person's name."
Grace said sadly, "It's just so horible. He was only, what twenty one?"
"No," said Megan, "not yet. His birthday wasn't until October."
Taylor arrived, and they told her about Zack. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed, "What'd he do?"
"Absolutely nothing," said Megan, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.
The three stayed at the office as it opened. Taylor went through the motions of putting the sign up at seven o'clock, but by now everybody in town knew that any time someone was there, they could stop by.
At about seven thirty, Jeff Otwell joined the inpromptu party. "Taylor, they just killed two people. Both Zack Morton and that girl who's mother killed herself, Brandy Lutz, they're both dead, because that self-righteous asshole wants to throw his weight around," he said angrily upon entering.
"Oh my God, it was brandy?" cried Megan.
Jeff said, "Yes, I'm afraid so. Her brother's one of Mike's officers. Tim saw them this morning over at the Lutz lady's house. They were burieing Brandy."
"When did you talk to Tim?" asked Taylor.
Tim Floyd was another maintenance worker living across the street.
"The cb," answered Jeff, "Brother Fred says his church is a bloody mess."
"Oh, I bet that's just aweful. Just think of having to clean all that up," commented Grace.
Taylor was curious, "You guys talk on the cb?" she asked.
"Yeah, the cb and the radios you guys gave us," Jeff said.
Taylor answered, "That's really interesting, is there a lot of people who use it?"
Jeff replied, "Not many really."
Noone really wanted to go home where they would all be alone, so Grace went to make a pitcher of lemonade. She had just arrived back when Chief Snow interrupted the radio loop at nine o'clock.
The message on the station repeated to the point that most people ignored the small radio situated on the desk in the office until it stopped and was replaced by the sheriff's voice, "I'm going to give everybody the chance to call someone. I want everybody to make sure they're listening, because this is very important. I'll be back on in five minutes."
Five minutes was enough time for the weather forecast and an announcement of the radio show schedule. Wednesdays had Gladdis on at 9 with her informative program about gardening. Any given day, general announcements regarding any topic with no specific program that needed to be addressed due to public input or circumstances would be broadcast at two P.M. If any announcements were scheduled, a message would be placed in to the loop to remind residents to tune in. On Thursdays, Taylor took over at eleven to update those who didn't attend the meeting on what happened.
Finally, the loop broke again, and Mike began speaking, "Usually, Taylor comes on in a couple of hours, but I don't think that'll be necissary today, because it's imparitive for the safety of everybody in New Chicago that I address this problem now.
Last night, we tried to have a civilized democratic meeting, but it was interrupted by some terrorists who started a riot. I was there along with all of my officers. It took all of us to keep people from getting hurt, and sadly people did get hurt. Two young people died last night. Now, that didn't have to happen. Those kids had families. One of them's brother works for me, and he's devistated right now. We're all standing by him and will do anything for him, but in the mean time, we got problems here that we need to take care of before more people die.
Last night, a bunch of people came to that meeting upset over the regulations I made about contraband. Many of them had their own interests in mind. I think a lot of them thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted without any regard for the rights of others, and you just can't think that way for long in a civilized society. I think yesterday a lot of people got a reality check, and they didn't like it all that well. Many of the agitators from last night have been incarsorated in the small detention center at 100 North First Street right across from New Chicago Church of Christ. There are only four cells in that building, so it can only hold so many, but I have another place to detain people if the need arises. I really want to stop that from happening though.
Folks, what happened last night really started at the first meeting when I brought up the issue that we need a structured system of laws and a way to enforce them if we want to avoid chaos. Even then, some of these people were protesting my ideas. This is because they don't like rules, but everybody knows we need rules. Without them, hardly anyone would survive here, and honestly, I think many of those who did would be those who only thought of themselves and exploited others.
Back then, we didn't know these people were capable of causing a riot that ended up with two youngsters dead. I don't think anybody could've predicted that. Those folks just didn't agree with us. Like any civilized community we agreed to disagree and left them alone, but I started noticing problems here. You folks trusted me to keep you safe, and I take that very seriously. My officers and I were given a tip that some teenagers were drinking alcohol, so we investigated and found that there was a group of kids using one of the houses which hadn't been sold as a partyhouse. We found that one of them had researched how to distill alcohol online before the gateway closed off, so he was making liquor to serve at the party. I didn't think our little community was this connected to the rest of the crazy old world, but there was actually marijuana at that party as well. Somebody brought some over before the gate closed, and now there's plants growing over here somewhere. We busted the kid who was growing it, but who knows who else is doing that. They aren't telling me. This teenager, the one having the party, he was not only serving this liquor, he was selling it to other kids or trading it for other things.
This got me thinking about what could endanger our little town, and there's a lot of things the rules we made really didn't cover, so I added a list of contraband yesterday, so people couldn't hurt each other or themselves.
Well, the folks who we once thought were peaceful folks who just happened to disagree apparently weren't, because they started that big fight . This is the whole reason why I made laws against anti government activities.
Now that this has happened, I'm afraid I need to make some more changes around here. I posted the message about the curfew. My officers and I will be investigating what happened last night. We may need to make some more arrests. Starting today, there will be inspections of every resident's home. This is just to make sure everyone's following the rules. If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worrie about. I haven't set up a schedule, but we will be doing this from time to time until I think that all of these terrorists have been rounded up or at least have decided to cooperate with the rest of us. I encourage everybody to call us down at the police department if they know of anything going on, or even if you just suspect something is going on. We won't laugh at you. Every lead's worth following up on. It's all important to stop terrorism. If we want to keep last night from happening all over again, we need to all work together."
Mike closed out his message and signed off. The whole group sat in silence for a moment beforeJeff spoke up. "How about you turn on that radio over there, and maybe we can listen to Mike and the boys."
"It is on," said Taylor." The 2way radio was on the front desk off to the side where it would be accessible but not in the way of other business. She reached over and pressed the down arrow key.
Taylor and Grace had been given channel sixteen of the radio. It had twenty four. Most of the action however, was on the lower channels.
Grace went down to channel five, but when she pressed the arrow again, the radio looped around to channel 24. "That's odd," Taylor said.
"What is it," asked Grace.
"It skipped all of the channels that Mike uses," she answered back.
"He probably locked them out," said Jeff, "Has he been in here?"
Taylor replied, "Not without me and Grace around, but he has a key."
Jeff said, "I've got a radio in my truck. I noticed the same problem. The dumbass doesn't realize that I have the manual. My uncle was a ham operator, so I've always been in to radio stuff. I downloaded the manual before all this crap started. He locked out the first four channels and seventeen and eighteen. We have sixteen vhf channels and eight uhf, but the eight can be turned in to sixteen, because they're made for a repeater."
He went behind the counter and worked with the radio for a couple minutes.
He said, "There we go as a voice came from the radio's speaker. "Mike, I'm out of gas out here on rural development road," he paused, "six."
the transmission had some light static, but the reply was crisp and clear, "No problem, I'll be out there. I just have to get some from the tank."
The tank he was referring to was the tank meant to hold a large amount of fuel for the town's employees to gas up before they left the garage or after returning.
The chatter was pretty routine, and the group disbursed at about one as people came in to ask about church services and to findout the status of the meetings. "I honestly don't know," Taylor said to them.
The Main Street Apartments were practicly deserted. Seth had been isolating himself in his apartment, but suddenly, his power blinked out. "What the hell?"
He went out in to the hallway. The building contained twelve one bedroom apartments on the bottum level and twelve two bedrooms upstairs. Each end of the brick and concrete hall was open. A metal staircase ran up the front and rear of the building.
After his mom had died, Seth and Brandy had been given an apartment here. Taylor had told them that since there was no money, they could stay there for a while if they wanted, but really, the house was there's. They hadn't thought about going back, and now Seth wasn't sure if he'd ever go back there. There were two graves in the backyard. The house was just too quiet; too quiet and too empty.
The one bedroom was downstairs which Seth liked. He and Brandy each had their own beds, so it didn't seem weird for them to share a room, because they had the rest of the unit for privacy if they needed it. They had moved furnature from the house including the 32 inch plasma tv withthe the entertainment center. This would've been useless had it not been for the dvd player and the surround-sound system. They could play cd's and movies to pass the time.
Seth saw Gary Craig carrying out a bag of trash. He aproached him as he came back. "Hey Gary," he said.
"Yeah,"
"You don't know anything about electricity do you?"
"Not really,"
"Oh, well my power's out." Hang on,"
Gary entered his own apartment to see if the power was off there as well. The building ran on solar pannels atatched to the roof. Even before the doorway closed, there were no utility bills in New Chicago and no individual meters.
"It's not off in here," he called. He exited and asked, "You checked the circuit breakers?"
Seth answered, "I've heard of those, but I don't really know what they do or where to find them."
"No problem."
Gary followed Seth back to where he lived. Once inside, he went to the utility closet in the kitchen. "Here they are," he said revealing a metal box on the wall.
"I never noticed that," said Seth.
Gary opened the box.
Taylor and Grace were alone for the first time that day. Taylor was about to mention lunch when the scanner came to life.
"Alex,"
"Yeah,"
"Go out to 305 West Comfort Drive. Madeline called and says Patty's acting out again."
The two women listened intently as Mike and Alex conversed, "Okay, what's she doing?"
"She's out of her medicine and she's coming down from it. Madeline says there were four pills left. She's sure Patty flushed them because the bottle's empty."
"Okay, and the Johnsons' house is clear."
"Thanks, I'll come out to Patty's house to help you with that."
"Thanks."
"I wonder what's going on?" pondered Grace.
"I don't know," answered Taylor.
She considered calling, but decided against it. Joe would probably talk to her more than Madeline would, but either way, they'd know about the radio. Grace wasn't sure if anyone should know about that.
"These are your breakers," said Gary pointing out the switches. Because the apartments were brand new, the breakers were clearly labeled.
"Here's your problem right here,"he said flipping the one switch that was pointing the opposite direction. Instantly, the refrigerator motor kicked on.
"Thanks," said Seth.
"No problem," replied Gary good naturedly.
He looked across the room at Seth's computer sitting in the living room. "You play warcraft?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Seth.
"How close are you Mike, I'm here," the voice belonged to Alex Hyde.
Mike answered, "I'm almost there. I had to gas up before I left."
"I'll wait out here for you," he said.
Grace was worried, "I really hope she's all right," she said.
"We can really just wait and see," said Taylor.
"I have an idea," said Grace snatching up the phone. She called Destony Griggs.
Before the gate closed, Destony lived with her parents while attending Moody Bible Institute. Her parents had been at a dinner party when the storm hit. They hadn't returned to New Chicago. She lived across the street and one house down from the Smith house.
"Destony, it's Grace, from church?"
"Oh how are you?" asked the girl.
"Oh I'm fine, but I wondered, can you see Joe and Madeline's house from where you are?"
"I think so, don't they live next door to the house across the street?"
"Mmhmm,"
"Yeah, I can see it, there's too cop cars out front, what's going on?"
"Well, Destony Honey, I'm afraid I need you to keep a little secret, okay?"
"Well, I'm an honest girl Grace, but if noone asks, I won't tell, what's going on?"
Grace replied, "I've got a radio here that can pick-up the police, and they're over there because Patty's acting up again."
"Oh wow, I hope she's okay," said Destony with concern, "but aren't those radios illegal?"
Grace said, "Well yes, but that's the secret I want you to keep."
Destony sounded relieved when she said, "Oh, well I'm sure we can make an exception for someone like you Grace, you wouldn't hurt anybody. Really, the only people who shouldn't have them are the ones causing trouble. Do you know who died? I never made the meeting, but people are saying someone got shot. They said there was a big fight. I got tired and turned in early, so I figured I'd hear about the meeting this morning."
Grace explained, "Yes, I'm afraid Zack Morton died and Brandy Lutz, that girl who's mom died a week ago, she died too."
"Oh my gosh, that's horible!" said Destony, "I wonder why Patty's so upset. I know she wasn't there last night."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I went over there to spend some time with Joe and Madeline, and they've got her so drugged up, she can't keep her head up. I honestly think it's cruel. Is she really that sick?"
"No, she isn't," said Grace, "That's why I'm paying attention to what's going on over there, can you see anything?"
"Well, Mike and another guy were talking to Madeline, I don't know where Joe is, but all three of them went inside."
"Can you see the backyard?"
"No, the empty house across the street from me blocks it."
"Okay, well thanksa bunch, so does Fred still want to have church in that building?"
"I don't know, I'll have to call him, but I'll let ya know."
"Thanks Destony, you take care."
She hung-up. "Well, that might've been a mistake," she said to Taylor.
"Why?" she asked.
"Destony hangs around with those three over there. She probably won't say anything, because she doesn't like how they're treating her either, but it'll have me worried.
She was interrupted by the radio "Okay, all units, everybody, we need you on Comfort Drive around the Smith House. Patty is off her medication and has taken off."
Grace gasped, "She left?" she said incredulously.
The other officers replied back, all except for Seth Lutz.
Mike said, "Seth, I know we were going to give you today off, but we need the man power out here."
After a pause, he said, "Seth, you there?"
Again, Seth didn't respond.
Mike sighed, "He probably turned off his radio. Okay guys, I'm going to seventeen to call him on the repeater."
The repeater had a feature that allowed a radio user to connect to a phone line.
Seth and Gary played the XBox which was also hooked up to the tv in the living room. For the first time, he could take his mind off of his mom and Brandy, it was so wrong what happened to her.
Gary asked, "Hey, why did you start working for Mike?"
He answered, "I don't know. He just asked, and I thought it'd be cool."
"Is it?"
"No, he's kind of an asshole, not to mention my sister."
His eyes teared up, and Seth turned his attention to the game.
Gary pulled it back, "Damn dude, I heard, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, it's okay, I'll deal."
"I'm sure it's not easy."
"Nope,"
"Well, if you need anything, just call me or something, okay? I mean it."
"Thanks,"
"I don't like cops much, but you're just a guy like me, so if you're hurting, it's just as bad as when I'm hurting."
Seth paused the game and finally turned his gaze to Gary. His eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying, "I just can't get it out of my head. I always wanted to be the bad ass. I wanted to be the cool cop who caught somebody. I could've been that guy who shot my sister. You don't know how easy. I was fighting with everybody, or I might've been. I almost got shot too. I hit the floor as soon as I heard the ak going off but not before seeing the girl in front of me get it. The back of her head opened up and blood and brains went everywhere. I only foundout later, when the guys called me on the radio, that it was Brandy." Now he cried.
Gary sat for a while not knowing what to say. He scooted closer on the couch and put his hand on Seth's arm. "It's okay man, I'm not going anywhere."
Seth finally picked his head up and said, "I just don't know what I'm going to do."
Gary responded, "Not much you can do. Just keep goin. If you don't want to be by yourself, you can come over and hang out with me any time you want."
"Thanks man, uh, uh, what's your name again," Seth looked embarrassed.
"It's Gary, sorry I didn't tell you."
"No problem," said Seth.
He looked at Gary and asked, "You ever think there's something to those terrorists Mike talks about?"
Gary said, "I don't know. I don't think about it much."
Seth explained, "I got started with all that stuff, because he said I could be a cop. I don't know, I guess it made me feel bad ass or something."
"I guess it would do that," said Gary.
Seth continued, "Well, I don't think it's fair. He's getting weird. It's all bullshit."
Alex was going to Seth's apartment to check on him because he hadn't answered his phone. Taylor hadn't known about the phone feature on the radio until she went to channel seventeen guessing as to what Mike was talking about. She heard some tones like someone dialing a phone, then a dialtone. Then, she heard more dtmf tones and an unmistakable ringing. After Mike had hung-up, she moved back to channel one to hear what she had missed.
Jeff entered. "How's it been since I left?" he asked.
"Not bad," Taylor said. "We had some people come in for a while, but it died down maybe half an hour ago."
They made small talk for a while.
At Seth's apartment, the breaker tripped again, so the phone didn't ring, but the XBox was on a different circuit. Gary and Seth were talking politics. Seth was speaking, and Gary was listening quietly. He would answer occasionally in order to tell Seth he was still interested.
Seth said, "The cops back home always seemed to think they were big and tall. Really, a lot of them were assholes. You're not supposed to say that, but well, it's true. You're not going to tell Mike and the guys I'm talking against the government, are you? He's serious about that stuff."
"Hell no," said Gary, "You can say whatever you want around me."
"Oh thank God," said Seth, "I've always thought that way too. You can make stuff that people might do illegal, but don't put someone in jail for talking. Doing something maybe, but not talking. Eeven if it bothers someone, who's to say the world revolves around them."
Gary was doing some thinking. Ever since New Chicago had gotten started, the lower end workers had talked to each other. It had, and still wasn't very organized, it was just people who talked to each other. When all the knew rules came along, everybody had everybody's back. They hadn't really sat down and set up some kind of structure, but things had just kind of happened. When Mike started getting very strict, the workers had all just figured out ways not to get caught and told one another.
Gary now wondered whether or not to let Seth in. He didn't know if he could trust the New Chicago police officer. He wasn't sure whether he would keep his secrets or not. That was key. The lower end workers had gotten together, and by now, it was a pretty good little system. Everything had fallen together quite nicely, but one rat being allowed in could ruin the whole thing.
By now, most of the workers and even Quite a few home-owners had gotten fed up with Mike's Tyrany. They didn't mind keeping their secrets while living in town, but many of them had decided to set-up some kind of safe zone which was off the radar of the police. Many of the people who had moved to this area were at work now, but they wouldn't be coming home. It was simply a matter of preference. Some people didn't mind simply living their lives in secret. They just kept to themselves and didn't bring attention on themselves, but others wanted to live more out in the open, so they had moved to the safe zone.
Grace got up from the desk and walked toward the back of the office. There was a hallway back there with a back office, a closet, and a restroom. She excused herself, "I have to go to the little girls' room."
Jeff watched her leave and said, "Ya know, Taylor, this whole mess with Mike, I mean, I never really expected it, but us lower class people, you know, we talk to each other. When Mike started with his new laws and everything, we all knew each other, so we never really told anyone else, but we've been talking against him since the beginning."
"Gladdis does it anyway. She doesn't care who she's talking to," said Taylor.
"Yeah, she doesn't care what you or anybody else thinks. I've always liked that about her," said Jeff. "Well, after he started talking about people speaking against the government and how you can't sell things, well we just kind of laughed ya know, because we all knew we'd still do it. It's one of those things. Even back in Chicago, there were some things that were illegal, and we'd break the law every now and then, but it wasn't anything bad. I guess we just didn't think it was wrong to break the law. We thought it was wrong to do bad things that just might happen to be illegal, but we never let the police tell us what was right or wrong."
"I know all about that," said Taylor, "I grew up that way. I remember before I moved over here, my neighbor would have parties with his son. The son was seventeen, and so were his friends, but they'd have beer there. There wasn't anything stronger, but I went to one of those parties. It was actually pretty civil, and everybody was pretty responsible. I don't know how it works, but people who know each other seem to keep each other's secrets, at least from people they don't trust or who might do something they shouldn't do with it. There was this little old lady down the block. She called the police about anything and everything, so I never told her about this guy."
Jeff replied, "Well, I'm glad you think that way, because usually we just bring someone in. If we've been friends with them for a while, and we know we can trust them, we just assume they're cool, but now we can't really do that. Some people will turn us in."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," said Taylor.
Jeff continued, "Well, you're actually kind of hard to read. You seem to agree with all of us, but you still do kind of work with Mike Snow, and you cooperate with him. Do you really do anything illegal?"
"No, not that I can think of," she said, "Really, I guess I just don't really have any reason to."
"Well, what you did today when you let me modify the radio and listened to the police when you knew Mike didn't want you too. That's a good sign, but I guess what I want to say is, I want to leave it up to you. You can help us out or not. I know you won't betray us if we tell you something, but I don't want to bring you in to this to be a part of it if you don't want to."
Two dp's this time. Does Taylor join the movement. Even though Mike has taken control of the community, Taylor has always been kind of the one dealing with the people. She has managed their concerns, and Mike hasn't yet taken control of the meetings from her. She is the reassurance that there's at least some kind of democracy in New Chicago even if she has no power.
Then, there's Seth. Boh he and Taylor have a lot of inside knollege of New Chicago, so they'd prove valuable to the resistance, but can he be trusted not to be a little rat.
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chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:46 am Post subject: Previously on New Chicago |
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A new technology allowed humans to leave this universe and visit another where we found a carbon copy of Earth but with no people. This was prime realestate. Man kind was quick to capitolize on this fact. Soon a doorway was built to allow those who owned property in this new town, called New Chicago, to leave their fast paced downtown office environment and instantly be in a lush paradise full of natural beauty just minutes from work instead of the long commutes they were used to.
Tragedy struck however when the one doorway between worlds stopped working. The machine turned out to be damaged so severely, it would take years to fix, so now New Chicago is left on it's own to survive.
In order to keep the peace, a man was trusted to oversee all forms of law enforcement in this small community, but the power has gone to his head. Chief Mike Snow has made strict regulations on daily activities such as buying and selling. During a meeting in our last episode, members of the community tried to make their disagreements known to the community. After the police intervened to stop the "insightment", a riot broke out. One of the earliest aponents to Chief Snow who was confined to her home after an outburst, flushed the medicine given to her to keep her dossile and fled.
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chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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Masterweaver
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Taylor joins the rebellion, Seth gets left out, and then completely out of the blue a strange message broadcasts from all radios. This is another world. What else could be here....?
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 11:47 am Post subject: |
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The decision was clear, plunge right in. "I'd love to be a part of it," Taylor said. Jeff looked relieved.
"I'm glad, you're a nice lady."
"Well, thank you," she said as Grace came out of the little girls room.
Gary finally decided, he'd let him in, but not all the way. "Seth, you're not the only one with a problem with Mike Snow," he said.
Seth replied, "No kiddin, there were a lot of people at that meeting."
"Well, I guess because I've always been, not really a criminal, but I never thought it was wrong to break the law, ya know. It was wrong to do things that were bad, whether it was against the law or not really didn't make any difference."
"Yeah, okay I can see that."
"Well, I'm just closer to illegal stuff than you probably. Look, all the people who work here, like the maintenance guys and stuff, we've always talked about stuff that was illegal. Noone had to worry about the cops, because noone ratted anybody out."
"Yeah, I know how that is. I think anybody who's been to high school does."
"Yeah, probably. Well, we all talk to each other, but we don't talk to people who we can't trust, ya know?"
"Well yeah, if someone's going to narc on you, they shouldn't know nothing."
"Exactly, but I needed to see if I could talk about that stuff with you."
"Yeah man, don't worry about it."
"I'm glad."
There was a knock at the door. Alex entered and said, "Why aren't you answering your phone?"
Seth replied, "It didn't ring."
"Mike needs you, now! Patty's flushed her pills and she ran off!"
"Oh shit," said Seth as he got to his feet to find his uniform and equipment.
"The breaker tripped again," Gary was in the closet. He flipped the switch, and it tripped again instantly.
"Dammit," he said, "Seth, you might have a short or something in your wires. Do you have a cordless phone?"
"Yeah, I brought it from the house," said Seth heading for the door with Alex. The other officer rushed him, so he called as he left. "Don't worry about locking up. I'll be back later."
Grace, Taylor and Jeff sat listening to the police. Grace read her bible for a while before switching to spider solitaire.
The conversation kept them updated on what was happening, "Seth, do you have your radio on?"
"Yeah,"
"Good, I need you and Alex to go down deep woods trail. Alex, you take my personal vehicle, it's at comfort and Adams. I want you two to go down Deep Woods, because it's the last one before the developed properties stop. We're searching the woods between Comfort and Deep Woods, but we need you two to help with the perimeter and drive around to look for her. Seth, since you've got the police car, you sit at the corner of Deep Woods and Chesterfield, and Alex, you can drive around on the gravel lanes up there and the developement roads. Just see if you can find anything."
"No problem," it was Seth.
There was silence on the radio for a while, then "This is Chuck Johnson, I'm in the woods behind the house, and the footprints stop as soon as the mud stops. She scraped her shoes on a tree right here."
"Thanks Chuck," said Mike.
Seth Spoke up, "I see Gladdis Holms in her vehicle, she's coming south on jChesterfield toward my location, I'm going to ask her if she's seen anything."
"Okay," said Mike. Taylor wondered why they didn't use the old cb ten codes. She guessed they hadn't grown up with a truck driving uncle who let them play with his cb when he was in town. They may not even know about that stuff. In Chicago, Mike had been an upper level employee of a firm that designed solutions for law enforcement. It was mainly computer stuff, but also some radio communications issues. She guessed he must have been too far above the common folks to know he could shorten some of his transmissions if he'd use the old cb talk. Mike spoke up on the radio, "I'm going to put a bulletin on the radio station asking people to keep a lookout and for volunteers. Are you having any luck in the back roads?"
Alex answered, "No, these roads are all empty."
Seth came back to the radio, "She said she doesn't know anything. She was just coming back from a drive in the country."
"Where's she going now?" asked Mike.
Seth replied, "She's going to meet up with Brother Fred to ask about church. Her and a couple other ladies want to help manage the situation down there."
"Guys, we need to keep an eye on her, because I think she's not telling us everything," said Mike.
Alex chimed in, "We can't go over there, because we're all out here looking for Miss Smith."
Mike said, "I agree. I think we need more people looking out here. I'm working on a bulletin for the fm station."
"Okay well, come on back in," said Mike.
The message broke in to the loop of announcements with a tone like a weather warning coming through. Afterward, it was also injected in to the flow of repeated programming.
Gladdis walked in, "Well high Gladdis," said Taylor, surprised.
"Hello, did Jeff talk to you?" she replied.
"Yes, and I decided to be a part of it," Taylor said.
"Oh that's good," said Grace, "I am too, but I don't really do much.""Oh, don't listen to her, she keeps us all going," said Gladdis, "By the way, I got stopped trying to get Patty out of there."
"So you went and got her?" asked Taylor.
"Yes," said Gladdis, "I picked her up from the next block over, and I took her out to the country. Taylor, you probably don't really know about it, but those of us who don't want the government in our business have set up a place further out of town. We have Patty there."
"How's she doing?" asked Grace.
Gladdis replied, "She knew you'd be asking that, and she told me to tell you not to worry about her, she's fine. She is now that the drugs are wearing off."
"I'm glad," said Grace.
Grace inquired, "So what brings you by here?"
Gladdis explained, "Well, I knew Jeff wanted to talk to you, so I wanted to see what you said, and I just wanted to let you two know that we have Patty, so you don't need to worry."
"I'm glad you came and told us," Grace thanked her, "I knew you were doing something, but I didn't know when, and they said she flushed her pills down the commode and just took off. I wasn't sure, and I was a bit worried."
"She's doin good. She's totally over the worn down tired feeling, but the shakes haven't gone completely away, and she's wide awake now that she's getting them out of her system."
"Oh yeah, I'd bet, how much did he have her on?" asked Grace.
"Twenty miligrams a day," said Gladdis.
"See now, that's way too much," said Grace, "Have you talked to Fred yet?"
"No," said Gladdis, "He was out there with Patty, and I totally forgot about it when I dropped her off."
"Is he going to stay there until the side affects are over?" asked Grace.
Gladdis replied, "Yep, that's the plan. He says we'll still use the sanctuary. He'll just cancel church this Sunday, so some of us can get the place really cleaned up. He says there's going to need to be some painting, because a few of those bullets hit the brick walls and bounced off, and he says that scratched them up."
"Well, I'm sure that can wait. We can have church in a sanctuary with scratched paint," Grace disagreed.
"Yeah, but he wants to try to get it done anyway since we're going to shut it down on Sunday anyway, and that's if the work isn't done by then," explained Gladdis, "He says Natalie's over there now."
"Oh, that must be so aweful to have to clean all that up," commented Grace.
"Yeah, that carpet in the sanctuary is ruined. Fred just told Natalie to leave it, because him and a couple other guys are going to come in there tomorrow or the next day and just pull it up. He says we don't really need carpet anyway. He's going to take that door leading to the vestibule off too. It's full of holes," Gladdis remarked.
The Natalie they were referring to was Natalie Morris. She worked for the residents of New Chicago cleaning houses. She was working late on a home in the 1200 block of North Main Street when the Doorway had stopped working. She was one of the first to try to use it and to simply assume the outage was because of maintenance.
Later that day, Jeff stopped by the front office and asked to see Taylor's apartment. He was carrying a cb radio and an old scanner in his arms.
"Okay," he explained, "We're starting to run out of scanners, but Joe Creagon had this old crystal one you could use. When he moved in, he used his portable to find all the channels, and he went and made crystals for them, so we got lucky there. You just turn this thing on, and let it go. It's best to have an outside antenna, but Mike's going to outlaw cb's. He hasn't done it yet, but we don't want to bring his attention on us by putting up big towers, and really, none of us have them anyway. We just use speaker wire or something. You just hang it out your window, and most people won't see it."
He explained that most of the people in the informal resistance used channel 23, but they could use any of them. Twenty three was just like a common meeting channel. If they wanted to talk about something specific, they'd often move to another channel.
At one point, Taylor asked, "Do you think Mike has a cb?"
Jeff said, "Well, I thought he would, but him and his officers don't really talk like they've used a 2way radio before. I used to listen to the police in Chicago and back home in Barrington, and even if they were casual with each other, message received was always 10-4 or clear. It made talking go faster."
"I noticed that too," said Taylor happy someone else had noticed.
She asked Jeff, "So with this group of folks on the radio and stuff, what do we think about cops? What should they do?"
Jeff said, "They ought to protect us from killing, hurting or screwing each other, and that's it."
"You want them to keep us from screwing?" she asked.
"Well, screwing each other over," explained Jeff, but Taylor was laughing.
"I know, I'm messin with ya. That would start trouble if he told people they couldn't have sex."
"Oh, it's coming," said Jeff, "That first time he spoke to us, Mike said certain people shouldn't be having sex."
They talked for a while as outside, rain began to pour from the sky as the forecast had predicted. faint thunder could be heard as Taylor said, "It's raining really bad, you shouldn't have to go out there. Why don't you just stay for supper. I've got some cans of soup in there, and Netflix sent me a movie before the doorway quit working that I haven't even watched yet. It's a romantic comedy, but we can watch it if you want."
"That sounds a lot better than getting drenched and eating bologna by myself," he said.
Life became comfortable again. The search for Patty continued, but it became a part of daily life along with doing laundry and eating lunch. Gladdis graduated from simply being an agricultural consultant to being an advisor on all things old fashioned. Making soap was the topic of one of her shows. The next week, she discussed harvesting meat from an animal.
Mike made a point to post a message to the radio station that speculated that terrorists had captured Patty. He searched every home in New Chicago with his officers, but came up empty. Seth and Gary became fast friends. Joe Creagon knew about wiring, so he went in and finally found the short that was making Seth's breaker keep tripping.
"We're lucky we don't have to get a part," he said putting tools back in his belt, "We might have not had it. Then, what would we do?"
Taylor would monitor the police as she manned the main office. Grace popped in and out performing different small tasks and keeping busy.
They became concerned when the police would randomly leave town and drive the network of roads that were meant for future homes and for access to rural areas outside the New Chicago area. The two hadn't discussed where the hideout was, but Taylor knew that she'd know eventually. The reason why these expeditions took place were the real mystery.
One day, she asked Seth as he was walking by on the sidewalk in front of the office. "Hey Seth, can you come here for a minute?"
At the time, the police were driving around the furthest roads from New Chicago. First, there were roads planned for development. They eather had names or rural development road numbers. Further out however, was a network of gravel roads that were used in case the people of New Chicago needed to access the rural areas further out. This was mainly planned for search and rescue operations and outings such as picnics and camping trips, but it was discussed in formal meetings that the roads would eventually be developed and more would have to be made.
When Seth entered the office, Taylor said, "They're just roming the country roads, do you know what that's all about?"
Seth answered, "They're looking for people. Early on, we had a couple people disappear."
"Who?" asked Taylor.
Seth told her, "One of the engineers and some guy who had something to do with the federal government. He was really weird. We got a lot of our guns from his house, at least the big ones anyway."
Taylor gasped, "Which engineer?"
"It was Floyd Redmond, did you know him?" asked Seth.
"Well, he worked on the access point. I saw him after the doorway quit working. I remember, he told us to pray."
"Just to pray, nothing else. Yeah, that sounds like Floyd. He says a few words at a time, and he doesn't speak very often."
"What about the other guy?"
"Honestly, I think that guy was paranoid. His name was Peter VanSlouthen, and he worked in computers, but I think he did some consulting work for the feds, because we found papers in his house that said something about the CIA, and they looked pretty official. Alex said he even found a contract with details on it, but I haven't seen it."
"Well, what made them go looking for him today?"
"Oh, they're not looking for him today, they're looking for Floyd. He doesn't have any family, but the other engineer, Derick, he says he saw him out there somewhere, but he couldn't get close enough to talk to him before he took off."
"He ran?"
"Yep, sounds like it."
"Derick's a pretty nice guy. I wonder why Floyd would run from him."
"We've tossed around a few ideas on that. We're leaning toward a mental breakdown. Judging by his social behavior, Mike says he is either slightly autistic or he has Asperger's syndrome which means he has trouble with social interactions. Something traumatic like the doorway being broken for a long period of time could've made him go over the edge and just snap.""Well, I hope he's okay."
"Yeah me too. The other guy, nobody's seen for quite some time. We're really wondering if he got stuck on the other side."
"Oh,"
At noon, Chief Snow interrupted the radio broadcast. He did what had done previously. He told residence to call one another to listen to the broadcast.
Taylor felt aprehensive about what was coming up. If Chief Snow was speaking, that most likely meant more rules, and more people would be fighting with the police or wrongfully confined. She wondered if anyone had been released from the jail yet and where Mike would take anyone who couldn't fit. He said he had that worked out.
When Mike came back on, it was shorter than most broadcasts. He only covered one issue. "Folks, even though I am highly qualified to lead you, this is a democratic government. I would like to allow the public to discuss what we need to do. I do want to allow voting on larger issues. I have general law enforcement taken care of, but we do need to nail down our polacy about family regulations, so I know what rules to enforce. If it's something involving immediate safety of life or property, I can just do all that my self, but we need to discuss the other stuff. We also need to share information about all sorts of topics, so I believe these meetings are a good idea.
Now since the terrorists have bloodied up that nice church downtown, we can't have any for a while. Honestly, that's the largest venue in New Chicago, and aside from having our meetings outside, we have nowhere to gather together.
These meetings must be kept civil and under control. One of my men lost his sister in the last fiasco. We will not allow this to happen again. Taylor has been very helpful leading the previous meetings, but they were always a little chaotic. She's just one woman, and honestly, she doesn't intimidate many people. I have decided to preside over these meetings from now on.
There are some different rules that we need to observe here, so I'll go over those with you. First of all, speech against the government is okay. If we're discussing how to run this town, some people are going to disagree, and that's fine. Since most of my officers will be there, so we can stop anything that gets out of control.
That brings me to my next point. You must remain civil. We won't have these heated rants at the microphone. If what you have to say is relevant, you don't need to yell and scream.
Also, no filibusters. If I indicate to you that you are taking too long to make a point, you need to start wrapping it up. If you do not, you will be escorted from the mic.
It might take a minute for everybody to get in to the meetings, so please show up early, because noone will be admitted late without my express permission beforehand. Everyone who enters will have to be searched for weapons. In that riot that took place, one of the terrorists had a gun in his hand. He fired on one of my officers, and that's why we had to shoot at those people. My guy's life was in danger, so obviously, weapons are not allowed. If we find anything on you, you'll also go to jail for posession of contraband.
I have talked to Brother Fred, and he says it might be late next week before the church is ready to be used, so we're going to cancel next week's meeting.
If there is a pressing need for more than two officers to be on the street, we will either postpone or cancel a particular meeting.
It looks like our next meeting won't be until May third. Like I said, show up early, so we can search everyone. If we all have a little patience, everything will go fine."
Mike signed off. This was the only real change that took place that week. Sunday came, and the carpet hadn't been completely removed yet. Plus, the part where the blood had been had a stain where it had soaked through. Brother Fred had a can of paint. He and Gary painted over the spot. There was still a color difference, but it was from the paint, and it was only a shade lighter than the rest of the floor. They resituated the pews, and the problem was solved.
Beautiful spring weather continued, and many residents enjoyed watching the wildlife around town. Church was held outside in the park.
South of the main office, the park saw lots of activity, but New Chicago was small, so most of that activity on Sunday morning was the church service.
Monday morning, the weather began changing. The sky was overcast, and the air was sticky. It was also cooler out.
With the change in weather came a change in luck. Grace and Taylor were alone in the office when Chief Snow came in.
"I hope I didn't bother you when I took over the meetings," he said, "It seemed a little easy for them to get out of hand. I thought it might be safer if someone with a bit more control of the situation was in charge of them."
"Well, if you say it's safer, I can't argue with that," remarked Taylor.
"Well, I wanted to ask you something though," he implored, "Have you seen Joe Creagon?"
"No, can't say I have, why?" Taylor answered simply. It wasn't a lie, she hadn't seen Joe. He was out in the woods with a few of the others who were actively opposing Mike's authoritarian dictatorship.
"Well, he hasn't been home for days. His neighbors haven't seen him since saturday afternoon. Do you have any idea where he might've gone?"
"No," she lied.
"Well, if you catch wind of anything, could you tell me?" he asked.
"Sure, I'll call you as soon as I hear something important," Taylor assured him.
"Thank you Taylor. I do apreciate you working for us. The people here seem to trust you more. I almost left you in charge of the meetings. I'm still thinking of having you mc, and my guys and I will simply outline the rules I pointed out yesterday. I want you to help me Taylor, can you do that?"
"I can try."
"That's good. Because everybody trusts you so much, and they find you easy to talk to, act as an undercover for me if you could, okay? Just talk to people like you normally would, but collect information. I have a feeling that there's still a lot of disobediance around here."
"I don't think there's very much." This was a lie. The majority of New Chicago's residents conformed easily to Mike's leadership. The number of those defecting however, was growing. At first, the people who were comfortable breaking the law and avoiding the police were only the workers with maybe one or two home owners mixed in. Now, there was a large enough number of home owners involved that their houses were used for some activities instead of taking all of it out to the hideout.
Taylor wasn't quite sure what all went on with the group, but from what Grace told her, it was mainly day to day stuff involving gun owners keeping their weapons away from Mike.
Mike told Taylor, "Well, Joe's not the only one missing, there's a few others. They haven't been home for days, or some of them are at home for a while, then, they disappear. Where do they go? I can't find them. This is a small town. Does everybody go camping?"
"Well, there's no tv, so maybe they do. I know a lot of people I talk to like to watch the animals."
"Well, I just don't get why most people seem to be okay with following the rules, but there's a few people who, when I tell them to do something, they do it, and they are respectful to me, but it seems they don't really mean what they say, and they don't want to tell you much."
"I don't know sir." She knew, it was because he was a controling tyrant, but she held her tongue.
"Well, I think you can help me findout, so you just keep being your sweet kind little self, and I'll come back every now and then to ask you some questions, okay?"
"You can ask anything you like."
"Good, glad I can count on you."
Grace relayed this to Mike returned to the police station. The other guys were there. New Chicago was a pretty calm place, so everybody had decided to take a break. Noone really wanted to venture out in to the gloomy day. The weather radar showed a storm coming in from the west. It should be there in a short time.
Alex spoke up, "Have you seen Seth anywhere?"
"Can't say that I have," Mike remarked.
"We haven't either, he's run off again," Alex said suspiciously.
"Well, the last time, we only couldn't get ahold of him, because his breaker tripped. That's been fixed," advised Chuck.
"Exactly, so he has no excuse to just disappear on us now," said Alex.
"Well, nothing's going on, so why does it,"
Alex interrupted, "Shut-up Chuck, will you stop defending him all the time? I know you guys are friends, but damn!"
"We should see what he's doing," said Mike.
"Yeah, because he could be up to no good," said Alex.
"What makes you think he's up to something?" asked David Stark.
"Because, he hangs out with Gary, and we all know he's the big anti gun control, constitutional rights nutjob," said Alex.
"He was actually involved in the riot," added Mike.
At his apartment, Seth and Gary were playing Halo. "Did Joe tell you about the storm shelter?" asked Gary.
"No," said Seth.
"We have to build it, but there's already a foundation. It's at the house on rdr 20," said Gary.
"Oh, okay," said Seth. He knew where rdr20 was, and there were a few unfinished home projects on that road. Two in particular were just foundations. Seth didn't know where the hideout was either, but Gary assured him that people only really went there to hangout, and it wasn't really necissary as of yet, but if Mike pushed, the resistance would have to push back, so it could become really useful really fast. Either way, eventually, he would know.
There was a knock at the door. When Seth opened it, Mike, along with all of his officers entered the apartment at once. "What are you doin Seth?" asked Alex.
"Just playin Halo, what are you guys doing?" asked Seth.
"We had to see what you were doing, you weren't at the station," said Mike.
"Oh, is there something wrong? I thought my phone was working," said Seth.
"Oh yeah, something's wrong," said Alex, "You're,"
Mike interrupted, "Let me handle this Alex, calm down. Seth, everybody was at the station except you, and we got concerned as to why."
The officers looked around the apartment with two moving in to the bedroom. Seth recognized this. It was a search. "What are you doing?" he asked, "I haven't done anything."
"We just have to make sure it stays that way," said Alex.
Seth was relieved not to hear anything breaking as the men searched, but he felt a bit apprehensive about what they'd make of what they found.
"Hey, what's this," it wasDavid holding the mobile cb Gary had set up in Seth's room.
"Where's the battery?" asked Seth.
"I disconnected it, now what is it?" asked David.
"It's a cb radio. I'm in to that now," said Seth.
"Really Seth, and who do you talk to, the truckers on i80?" he asked.
"There's no law against cb's," said Gary.
"There's a law against conspiring against the government," said Mike.
"Woah, how the hell did you get from cb radios to terrorism?" asked Seth.
"It's what the terrorists use to talk to each other," said Alex.
"How the hell do you know that?" asked Chuck.
"Yeah, I mean, I understand looking through Seth's stuff and asking where he's been, I'm even a little suspicious of his friendship with Arny Artillery here, but the only reason why you think that is because you saw two new improvised cb antennas this week, and I already told you, they could've been there for a while, because they are hard to see unless you're looking for them," reasoned David.
Mike explained, "Seth, we wanted to see if you were up to no good. We all suspect you are, but we can't prove it. We don't even have enough evidence to satisfy all of us. I myself am not sure, so I'll tell you this. If you turn out to be a traitor, you and that Gary kid over there will both die. We don't play around here Seth. We won't allow you to comprimise the information we have kept private from the rest of town and especially the terrorists."
"Well, honestly Mike, I don't see what would make you think I have any problem with you. I hang out with a guy who lives in my building, so sue me," said Seth.
Mike replied, "He has been known to speak against the government."
"Honestly Mike, this government you talk about, it's out of control anyway. I'm really not sure I want to work for you anymore," said Seth.
"Well, that's it," said Alex pulling the pistol Mike had issued him.
"What are you doing!" yelled Gary.
"He's a traitor, he just said it," said Alex.
"No!" cried Gary leaping toward the two who were only three or four feet apart. The gun fired twice, and Gary fell to the floor. Seth lowered himself to the ground along with David and rolled Gary on to his back. He had jumped in front of the gun, and had been shot twice in the chest. His eyes were closed.
Alex crouched by him, "Gary, hey Gary!" he barked loudly.
He then asked, "Hey man, you hear me, come on, you hear me man. Wake up man, come-on, open your eyes. There you go, yeah, open em up."
Gary's eyes drifted open. He moaned and moved slightly Seth was crouched over him. His eyes gravitated to his friend
"Look Gary, look" said Alex, "Ya watchin? Ya watchin? Good, that's good Gary. In one swift motion, he pulled the pistol from his belt and fired in to Seth's forehead; blasting the back of his skull open. A wide ark of blood and brain matter splattered the room giving the wall a sadisticly evil pattern that looked like some sick idea of abstract art. The bullet it'sself went in to the drywall and stopped at the steel stud making a small hole.
Alex looked down at Gary with his friend in a heap next to him. "This ain't over," Gary managed to croak out.
"Huh," barked Alex putting his ear closer to Gary's face.
"I'll see you later," said Gary and closed his eyes. A gurgling sound came from Gary as blood leaked from his mouth.
"We've got to do something. With the unrest, we need to make this look like something else. I don't feel comfortable with everything as new as it is," said mike. Many of the town's people were loyal to Mike, but that loyalty was new. If they foundout about this, it might make many of them turn.
David and chuck were crying now. Mike knew it would be hard to manage his men after this, so he spoke loudly and with authority, "Get the closed truck from the city maintenance building, Chuck, you do that."
Chuck didn't move, "Now!" he barked and Chuck jumped. He moved slowly toward the door.
"The next to die will be the one who doesn't follow orders," Mike stated, pointing his gun at Chuck. He moved more quickly.
"When he gets here, you toss both of them in the back and make it quick," he gestured toward Alex and David with his gun.
Taylor was sitting at the counter when the phone rang, "Turn the cb on," Jeff instructed.
When she did, Joe's voice was saying, "I heard two, then one more. There was yelling. Mike told somebody to go get the maintenance truck, the pannel van."
"I see the truck, it's outside now," this was Jeff.
A female voice chimed in, "I'm outside now."
It was Natalie. Jeff instructed her, "Stay down, so they don't see you. Tell us what you see."
"Let me get up there. I think I can crouch down between the cars," she replied.
A moment of silence passed with Taylor wondering what was going on. She peered out the front window of the office and saw the very van they were referring to sitting in front of the apartments across the street.
"They're coming out. All of the cops are coming out and grouping around the last two. They're carrying something," Natalie's voice was hushed.
"Be careful," said Gladdis. Her transmission ended with a roger beep.
"I can't see around the cops, but their loading whatever it is in the pannel van," said Natalie.
Taylor saw the van take off half a second before Natalie reported it over the cb. Just out of curiosity, Taylor flipped through the channels on the 2way radio on the front desk. She stopped on channel five. Mike had set this channel aside for the doctor and those helping him. Both Dr. Dave Canner and Mark Swini were in charge of medical emergencies. Taylor recognized Dr. Canner's voice saying, "okay, channel four."
The conversation was supposed to be private, because channels one through four had been locked out of all of the radios not used by the police and apparently, the doctors.
She switched to channel four and relayed the information over the cb.
"Thanks Taylor, I'll tune them in," said Jeff.
On channel four, Mike spoke, "Dr. Canner, you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here, how is he?"
"Not good, he isn't responding to anything, and he's still gurgling. There's blood coming out of his mouth and nose."
"It sounds like he's definitly got internal bleeding."
"He's in apartment eight, down here on the bottum floor."
"I'm almost there."
There was nothing after that, but taylor saw the doctor's car pull in to the apartment building.
It was late in the evening at the hideout. Normally, the atmosphere was leasurely with a few political disidents playing cards or listening to the stereo, but now, it was packed with anxious citizens. They had been brought here by a cb radio call.
"Gary's dead!" cried Patty, "Seth is too! Mike and his boys killed both of them at Seth's apartment today! Mike says, they were lovers, and it was a murder/suicide, I say bullshit! From what we have, the police stormed over there yesterday, because Seth didn't show up at the station while there was nothing going on. They wondered why he wasn't hanging out in the cave with the other animals. He was a good kid. He had a good heart.
Joe Creagon says he heard one of the officers calling him a traitor through the ceiling, then two shots. Then, he heard another shot. Mike started yelling at everybody to go get the pannel van and keep people from knowing about this."
Gladdis sat on a folding chair amung the huddled mass of people, "Does anybody know what really happened?"
"No, but it isn't what we're being told," Patty started, "Folks, we've been content to simply live our lives without bothering those folks over there. If we can by living over there, fine. If we can't, fine too, but now, something's got to give! Something's just got to give! Do we go over there and do something?"
A corus of agreement came from the crowd in the room. "What do we do? Where do we start?" asked Patty.
The responses came all at once until Gladdis held up her hand, "Woah, one at a time," she said.
Well, there's the decision point. It's obvious we can't just let Mike do this. I mean, those were just young boys," said Natalie.
"Yeah, and he's just going to keep doing it. He does whatever he wants," said Jeff.
"Yeah, but we need to know what we're going to do about it," said Patty.
Brother fred stood and the room quieted. "I got a call from Dr. Canner earlier today. He told me a couple of boys had gotten in to a fight with a gun. It looked like one had shot the other, and then hsot himself. I was there to help burie Seth. It was horible. I never want to see anything like that. It looked too much like the things I saw in Vietnam. Before that though, he said he had been able to get the other boy, Gary, to wake up. He didn't have the technology to keep him alive, because he didn't have a way of performing surgery, but the boy was acting very upset. I went in there."
The pastor's eyes filled with tears, "Gary had blood coming out of his mouth, but Dr. Canner used a suction machine to get all of it out, so he could talk and he said, "They shot Seth. I took two for him, but Alex did it." I tried to keep him calm, and Dr. Canner said something about him not being fully hear with us, you know, but I wanted to pray with him, so I had Dr. Canner suction his lungs again, and I spoke to him for a minute. We made sure he was saved."
"We need to go down there!" interjected Anna Sparks.
She had been a live-in maid for the Smith's until after the doorway stopped working. Then, Madeline had gotten concerned, because they'd have to share their food and supplies, so she accused her of having an affair with her husband and thrown her out. Anna had been New Chicago's first homeless person, because noone gave her an apartment downtown. She had moved to the house that was now the hideout early on.
At the time, it was a finished house that simply needed siiding and solar pannels as well as some cosmetic work on the inside like paint and carpet. The wiring was all there. The pannels themselves hadn't been put on yet, so Derick had done it when the resistance movement had started using it.
"No," Brother Fred tried to say, but Anna interrupted, "We need to go kill that son of a bitch!"
"No," said Brother Fred trying to speak over the corus of agreement. "The lord said not to get revenge against anyone."
"Well, what are we supposed to do Fred? Gary didn't hurt anybody. Neither did Seth," said Tim Floyd.
"Well, whatever we're going to do, we need to figure out what we can do. Do we even have enough guns or bullets to do anything?" Jeff said.
"There's only six cops. We shouldn't need a whole lot of guns for that," said Natalie.
"Then, we're just killing more people!" cried Grace. She was respected amung the disidents, so they listened as she spoke, "That won't do any good. We need to do something, but not that."
"Well, what then?" asked Natalie.
"Well, for starters, let's see what we do have. Let's see what we could do if we had to. I think we might need to go down there and make some big changes, but we don't need to just go killing people. Brother Fred's right about that."
"If we aren't going after the ones who killed Seth and Gary, what are we doing?" asked Maggie Simpson. Gladdis had taken her in after her parents had gotten stuck on the other side. She was only seventeen but very intelligent. Gladdis had seen fit to bring her in to the discussions and make her a part of the resistance as if she were an adult as long as she thought it was right.
"Maybe that's what we should figure out first," said Fred. Now that he had the floor again, he said, "It might be necissary to take Mike's power from him. It might be a good idea to go take all of the guns from his office and redistribute them to their owners. It's really hard to say, but there are people down there who are being taken advantage of. I think we need to think about them here."
"I don't understand Fred. I thought you said not to get revenge," said Maggie.
He smiled, "We shouldn't get revenge on Mike, we should save those people from him."
Jeff added, "Plus, we can't really live like this for long. Sooner or later, it's going to come to a head, and we'll either have to fight him or be controled by him. I honestly think we need to neutralize him."
The group agreed to that, but the decision was made to count the guns and amunition and anything that might be necissary in a fight or seizure of control.
They came up with four 22 rifles, a 30 ot 6, three twelve gage shotguns, a twenty gage, and two fifty gage sawed off shotguns that had been taken in a trade from Peter Vanslouthen before he had disappeared.
The list also included a large pile of handguns, some 38's, some 9 milimeters, some 22's, a couple 44's and 45's, a 380 and two 357 magnums as well as a 25 calibor automatic pistol. There were twelve boxes of shells for the fifty gage shotguns, six boxes and a parshal for the 20's, and thirty boxes plus some random parshals mixed to make another box for the twelve gages. There were twenty five boxes of 22 calibor amunition, three boxes for the 30 ot 6, seventeen boxes of 38 calibor pistol ordinance, twelve 22, thirteen 44, eighteen 45, six 380, fifteen 357, and fifteen boxes for the 25 calibor fully automatic pistol.
They had thirty two people at the hideout, but twenty vehicles. Most of these were family suv's or sedans, but there were three regular cab pick-up trucks, and one crewcab truck. They had no fuel except what was in the tanks of each vehicle, and many of those present confessed that they were closing in on the e mark.
They had a huge pile of assorted tools including knives, hammers, wrenches, lighters, both cigarette and torch, one welding torch, three machetes, a harpoon gun with five harpoon arrows, and a bag of firecrackers.
They knew of an unfinished house near Peter Vanslouthen's home where he had hidden a collection of weapons, amunition, and all kinds of goodies that weren't allowed as soon as the order to surrender all of it had come down. Time had been on his side, because the officers had been busy in town searching those homes. Peter had lived outside of town maybe a half mile away from the hideout but through thick woods and across two other roads. Joe Creagon pointed out that he could make gasoline from liquor, but there wasn't more than a gallon or two left from a batch he had made before the doorway had closed indefinitly. He hadn't been discovered like the teenagers in town.
Okay, really there's two decisions to make. When we go in, what do we do? What's our goal?
Also, how do we do it? I think it will be interesting to see the strategies that are brought up. I will use the information I get to form a couple plans. Then, I will pole the game, so you guys can pick the one you like best. Noone posted until I was already starting to write this, so it didn't go exactly as that guy suggested. Sorry about that. I know you wanted to see Seth get left out of the resistance, but I had written him in before I saw that post. I'm sure you understand.
Just for everybody's information. This will come in handy when strategizing. The hideout is on one of the unfinished roads just northwest of New Chicago. They can aproach town using them until they reach the developed area with inhabbitants.
_________________
chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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Location: evansville, Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:00 am Post subject: previously on New Chicago |
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I will not start writing the new chapter yet. I made that mistake last time I posted a summary. Someone had something to say after I posted it, but I had already started writing, so this time, I will wait.
The remote exclusive Chicago suburb of New Chicago is located minutes from the bustling city center through a doorway that takes you in to another world. The doorway however, is broken, and a controling dictater has taken hold of the town's people.
In our last episode, the grassroots resistance movement gains two new assets. Taylor, the customer service representative who began the town meetings that started after the doorway stopped working and comforted New Chicago's residents as well as Seth Johnson, a police officer who recently lost his mother to suicide and his sister during a bloody riot that took place during one of the town meetings.
We also follow the daring escape of Patty Smith, New Chicago's first political disident, from her drug induced prison at her family's home.
The police become suspicious of Seth when he spends more time at home than at work, so they all pay a surprise visit where they find him playing XBox with an outspoken gun rights supporter. An argument insues, and both Seth and Gary, the resistance member, are shot dead.
A lie is broadcast to explain the tragedy, but the resistance is outraged. They will do something, but what's their goal? Do they punish Mike Snow or simply neutralize him?
Secondly, how do they do it? It's all up to you. There's still time to be heard.
_________________
chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:24 am Post subject: |
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New Chicago is not dead. It's been a while, so folks could catch up, and well, I've been lazy, but a new chapter is coming soon. Just bumping the story so it grabs the attention of anyone who might've not noticed it.
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chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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kc9cra
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| Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 9:00 am Post subject: |
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After gathering the supplies, the group noticed the bank of clouds moving in from the west. Gladdis pointed it out, "Look at that, should we do anything in this weather?"
After discussing it amung themselves, the group decided to see how bad it would be.
The weather radar was at the radio station's small building downtown. Fred volunteered to go and check it.
While he was gone, Natalie asked, "Well, what should we do when the weather's okay?"
Gladdis said, "I know everybody's mad, but I think the only people at fault here are them damn cops. Maybe we should track them down."
Derick advised, "I'm not sure that's a good idea, if we get one before the others, they can put some bs out on the radio station. Really, they already have. The people down there think anyone who says no to big Mikey is a terrorist."
"I saw the radar, there's a cell about three or four miles away, and two or three more off to the west about twenty or thirty miles," the voice was Fred's, over the radio.
"Come-on back in Fred, and try to beat it," Gladis answered.
Fred made it. The group agreed to hold off until the next day.
"I know stormy weather is a huge risk, but darkness helps us. Maybe we should do this tomorrow night," said Derick.
"I think that's a good idea," said Fred, "That will give the lord more time to show us what to do."
"So, what do we do now?" asked Anna.
"We just sit here and wait," said Gladdis.
"Some of you may want to get some sleep, it's twelve thirty. I'm too wired to sleep though, not from the drugs, but from the goings on. I think I'll stay up for a while," said Patty.
A few people took her advice, but some remained awake as the wind picked up and raindrops began hitting the roof of the house. Taylor and Gladdis sat in the living room with a deck of cards.
"When we lived at the apartment, I'd go out on the balcony during storms. I always liked watching them," said Patty.
"Where did you live?" asked Taylor.
"Tall Oaks," replied Patty.
"Those don't have covered balconies," said Anna as she walked through with a load of laundry. The home had connections for both a washer and a dryer, but none had been installed, so she was headed for the bathtub.
"No, they don't, but I put up a little canopy with an old store awning I used to use when me and Greg owned the hardware store. Madeline always said it looked tacky, so she'd take it down after, but I'd always put it back up when they said a big one was comin," explained Patty.
"Is anyone out there? We need help," said a voice. It was on the cb. The voice was of a young girl.
Gladdis was sitting closest to the radio, so she picked up the mic, and asked, "What's wrong?"
The others looked at her with concern. There was no telling who was on the other end, but the ladies all trusted Gladdis, so noone spoke up as the girl continued.
"We don't know where to go. My friend's pregnant, and her dad and my uncle are both talking about killing it."
Gladdis asked, "Well, who am I talkin to?"
"I'm Kayla Snow, but please don't tell my uncle. I just want to help my friend," said the voice.
"So I guess your uncle is Mike Snow?" asked Gladdis.
"Yeah, that's right," said Kayla.
"Well, how are you Kayla? It's Gladdis here. I saw you when I came to clean your uncle's house that one day."
"I'm fine, but I think I'm lost," she said as the others gave Gladdis disapproving stares.
She explained, "She lives with Mike. He's trying to train her to be in law enforcement, not like a cop, but like a tyrant like him."
"Well, don't bring her here," said Patty.
"I won't, but I want to see if we can help her without having to worry about it," Gladdis defended herself.
She picked up the mic and asked, "How far along is your friend?"
Kayla replied, "Just about three months. She thinks she's starting to show."
Gladdis implored, "Is she somebody I know?"
"Dr Swini's daughter Liz," answered Kayla, "Uncle Mike's been talking about family planning and how many people should be allowed to have kids and stuff like that. He was asking Liz's dad for advice, so she got scared."
"What are you doing out in this weather," asked Gladdis.
Kayla replied, "We didn't know it was coming until we had already left. Her dad mentioned that she had gained a little weight, and Liz got kinda worried about it, so we left tonight. We don't really know where to go, but ever since it started raining so hard, I can't see where anything is. We're out in the back roads, and now I'm lost."
Gladdis asked, "Can you remember what you passed before you got to where you are?"
Kayla's response came in clearly, "I know we went up Chesterfield all the way passed the streets with names. We turned on one of the development roads. I can't remember if it was 5 or 6, but we turned left down this road that turned out to be a dead end, but when we turned around, we drove in to a ditch."
"Are you stuck?" asked Gladdis.
"No, we got out, barely, but the road seems to dead end about a hundred yards away, and that's when we can see it."
Patty spoke up, "I know where that is, they used road 6 and turned in to this road that really isn't one. Some company bought land up there and wanted to make some high priced apartments, so there's a couple of short lanes that just dead end up there. You better tell her just to stay where she is until it lets up."
Gladdis agreed and keyed the mic, "Kayla, we need you and Liz to just stay where you are and wait for the weather to calm down a little bit. When the rain slacks off, you'll be able to see better. How'd you guys get a cb?"
"We're in one of the city trucks," said Kayla, the rain pounding hard on the windshield in the background, "We didn't know quite where we wanted to go, but Liz saw the clouds and thought we needed a vehicle. We thought it would at least give us a head start."
"Okay honey, just stay there. I'll be right here if you need anything," said Gladdis.
Now you have a decision to make. Bringing the girls to the hideout could pose a serious risk. I will most likely pole this time, but first I want to allow some time for ideas to be passed around.
_________________
chapter 7 of New Chicago is up. Check it out in Scifiville.
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