Chinatown

                                                               CHINATOWN

    

   Charlie pushed his way through the reeking crowd on the platform. His mind was blank in self-defense, self-preservation. He forced himself into the jammed bodies wedged into the opening doors of the car. His face smeared against the back of a man in front of him who refused to move. The warning bell rang. Charlie panted. He gasped. He suddenly lurched forward. He grabbed the man's belt and held on for his life. The closing doors nipped at his heels. No one got off at the next stop, or the next, or the next. Every servile on the train was heading for the airport. At each stop, serviles desperately forced their way in, pressing Charlie farther into the human sediment, wringing the air out of his lungs, twisting his arms in opposite directions and keeping his mind on survival, only survival. The doors slammed open at the airport station and blew everyone out of the car like a geyser. Charlie managed to keep his balance, tripping frantically through the crowds, weaving his way desperately forward. He would be at the front of the line for the servile airbus to San Francisco. He swore it.

     The phalanx of TSA scanning gates was empty. The agents were laughing and gesticulating in a corner almost out of site. Security had been hacked and they were delighted. The crowd flooded through the gates and pulsed toward the check in pens.  Charlie could see the San Francisco pen ahead of him was already half full. Sixty seconds later, he squeezed himself through the closing gate clutching his bag to his chest as his coat was torn by desperate serviles pleading and cursing behind him.

     The windowless airbus filled quickly. Charlie curled himself into a ball against a wall. A servile next to him offered him a couple of sendentary tablets as she swallowed one herself.  He thanked her and placed one under his tongue.

     The tablet was wearing off when the airbus touched down at SFO. The shuttle to the city was interminable. Fatigue, the lingering drug and the constant fight to keep his mind blank, to keep out the agony wore him into a stumbling robot walking the hills of San Francisco to Chinatown. He sat hunched in a chair in the room he had rented and stared at his phone. The unthinkable act of terror, the dreadful blow to the nation was all over the State News. The banker’s weeping family paraded across the screen, and the screen in every bar, restaurant, shop, automobile, square, street corner. 

     The plan Julianne and he had for disappearing depended on both of them getting away. Their divorce that they had fabricated after the death of their daughter would give Charlie a little time but a nation wide manhunt for her accomplice was on. They would find him, and they would find him very soon. He took refuge in the second tablet. When he came to, his phone blared proudly that in spite of a sophisticated identity scrub, the female terrorist had just been identified. Julianne’s face oscillated and quivered as it rotated on the screen.

     Charlie stepped out through the window on to the fire escape. He rested his hands on the railing and looked down into the filthy, steaming streets pulsing with serviles. The few technocrats among them strolled serenely along masked with virtual helmets that kept the sordid sounds, sights and smells of reality at bay. He looked up at the milky blue sky patchy with fog and tried to catch a glimpse of the whining drones, maybe his last glimpse on earth if they identified him. He shook his head and closed his eyes. Why didn’t he insist on cuffing the shit’s hands behind his back? Why hadn’t he just strangled the bastard? And now you're gone, Julianne, he thought. There’s no reason he should hang around. They’d get him any minute. He had cut ties with the resistance so there would be nothing Homeland Security could torture out of him but that wouldn’t stop them from trying if they took him alive. It was over. There was nothing more he could do. They’d killed his daughter and now he’d lost his wife. He opened his eyes, leaned his weight on the fire escape and looked down. It was time.

     “Daddy! Stop!”  His daughter threw her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into his back. “You can’t do this! You mustn’t do this!” She turned him to her and put her hands on his face. Her beautiful smile bloomed with innocence. Her blue eyes sparkled. “Why are you blaming yourself, Dad? Mom knew the risks. It could have been both of you. You’re still here to carry on the fight. And don’t even think about me. Don’t blame yourself. It’s OK. I’m OK. Mom’s OK. You have to take care of yourself. If you die, if you join us, you have to die fighting! What you and mom did was incredible! You have to take out more of the bastards! We can’t let the motherfuckers win! Don’t cry, Dad. Please stop crying, Daddy. Get out of San Francisco! Run! They’re coming for you!”

     And she was gone. Charlie crumpled into a heap and let it out. He shook with sobs. He felt a monstrous surge of hate and misery swell up inside of him and erupt. Gasping for air as the last whimpers escaped him, he slipped his fingers through the fire escape grate and clenched them into fists that held him on this earth. Slowly his fingers relaxed, his hunched shoulders jammed against his neck dropped. He finally pulled himself to his feet. He looked out over the city, let loose a long, unwinding sigh and said goodbye. He crawled back through the window, threw his bag over his shoulder and stepped out the door.

     His past life was finished. His present life was about to get much worse. There was only one thing to do and that was to follow the plan. There was no way either one of them could ever have gotten back on an airplane. They knew they'd be an easy target in a car. How many serviles drove cars? They would be spotted, hacked and introduced to a wall at seventy miles an hour. The subway would be watched but a city bus was open territory. No one takes the bus. No one important that is and there were so many buses crammed with so many serviles who constantly sabotaged the surveillance cameras. By the time Homeland Security realized they’d slipped through, they’d be on the train. The train had been Julianne’s idea. The train, or what was left of the system was off the radar. It was almost all shipping with a couple of servile cars tacked on to work the freight, sometimes a technocrat carriage for some rough and tumble fun. Charlie reached into his pocket and fingered the two technnocrat tickets to Seattle, paper tickets, the last means of transportation left that still used them.