The beginning, of course, has a much smaller question, with some historians debating over a matter of minutes—the records of the first vibrations of the tectonic movements are placed at different spots around ten in the morning, for instance.
The end is a more fascinating article of discussion. Some say it is obvious—the earthquakes all stopped, the final aftershocks stopped, at about seven in the afternoon, some five hours after they began. Others say that the disaster was not fully completed until the whole of the Mississippi was redirected into the canyon that the earthquake developed through the path of the city. Others insist that the aftershocks that hit Oklahoma City and Dallas should be included, citing tectonic shifts and falling buildings that occurred days after the initial quake that ripped through Junktown.
It is possible to imagine that, at one point, there were millions and millions of hours of footage on this catastrophe. Let us not forget the human element (at least, the element of humans that are not focused on here). More than seventy percent of the population possessed some form of recording device, most of them holowrists. For a population of ten million, that is just at seven million people. If then, we have a disaster that is recorded anywhere from six to twenty-four hours long...well. You do the math.
It's rather amazing, when you think about it, the casualness of all this holographic technology which is lost to us now. From our records, it appears as though even the most divinely poor person was capable of possessing this technology, and more than that, some even made quick dollars by replicating it. There was such a surplus that some made their livings by creating content for these devices.
As a quick aside, that is rather why I think this book is important—we must know our past, and with the past's own manner of recording gone to us, we must make do with writing as so many of our ancestors did. For, as incredible as these holograms are for first-person accounts, they are not as good for an aggregate understanding of a disaster, or a barometer for the pressure the disaster exerted on society at the time.
The other reason that fiction enters the equation of these sorts of historical records is that it is simply a by-product of writing to embellish in an attempt to engage that most elusive of prey—the captivated reader.
For example, Ore’s transit when the earthquake first breaks out, engaged in a few pages hence, is an aggregate translation of many different scenes where she is seen. I saw her on a child’s holowrist, hopping across the roofs of several overturned cars. The next time she shows up is on a male survivor’s hololog—he was across the road from her, on top of a building, when she and the other impromptu members of the Earthquake Six try to get into the Tower. He tried to signal her with her holowrist. She does not appear to have seen him. Was I to write her intentionally ignoring him? Was I to write that his signal flashed, but she paid attention only to her current task of traveling from one roof to another? Or was it best, as I did, to ignore this piece of actual history altogether for the sanctity of economic language?
This is a story, after all, and of all items in creation that are divinely stricken with poverty, certainly a story ranks high on the list. From what else has there been so much taken away? What else is distributed so freely, taken as our own possession so eagerly, and reproduced so handily without any thought outside of making its number more while its value is less?
The truth, perhaps. It is not for me to say. All I do mean to say is that all of this data has been recorded and translated as close to the truth as I can make it.
The record is a creation. The disaster is a creation. The Tower, the mega-corps. It is all one on top of the other, each swelling for new relevance in its own rhythm.
* * * * *
Ore wanted to stay alive. More than she wanted to stay alive, she wanted Samson to be alive.
Almost as much as herself and Samson, she wanted Wallop to be alive. If the earthquake killed him, then she wouldn't be able to.
Everything was breaking. Out from the debris of her fight with the idiot boy, there was more debris waiting. The shanty-pueblos around Ore swayed and shifted, and she knew immediately it was a choice between being caught underneath them or shattered on top of them when they fell.
Ore climbed one upended car and then another, grabbing the loose, swaying struts of the railway over the streets and working to get on top. Her tech hand helped, whirring, clicking, ignoring the grease-and-grime lined pipes in finding a sure grip. Then she was on top of a small corner grocer, a water tower tipping down and pulling up swathes of the roof with it. The streets flooded with water—other falling water towers, perhaps, or maybe the Dam was busting already.
The abandoned tenement that Ore had planned to break into had a hatch from the top floor that led to the roof. It was one of the few buildings in a two-mile radius around The Tower that had unguarded access to the roof.
Guards or no guards didn't seem to matter anymore. The street where she had found Jonesboy selling drugs rolled upwards and sideways, like a whip, cracking through Junktown's only gym.
“Goddamn.”
Above her, the Tower was swaying, but standing tall. She could hear the song of its steel as it shifted and twisted, calling out through the din of the breaking streets.
To her right, a tall tower of wood and concrete collapsed into a neon-lathered casino. Sparks flew all over. She hopped from the top of one building to the next. In the streets, everyone was running, rioting. Enterprising souls on the rippling streets broke store windows, carrying off the bars and chains of barricades and stealing holowrists and screens.
A man swept up by a sudden flood of water from the sewer got knocked down by a car smashing him against a building. He tried to move, ribs most likely broken, watching the water approach.
There would be more water coming, from the Dam. No way would it last this. The skin of the earth rolling up like sleeves underneath the roads and buildings.
If anything might last through this quake, The Tower would. There had been acres of money poured into it from the Five Faces, and she had to think it could last.
Not so very long ago, someone bombed the bottom of the Tower to collapse it. The crater was still there on the south face of the building.
The bomb failed in its purpose, of course. It was set off by some gang trying to literally push over the Five Faces. After the offenders were rounded up, strung up, and hung up by their guts from out the twentieth floor—three dozen of them in all—the Faces invested in fortifying the Tower. It was built as earthquake proof, but they wanted it to withstand a nuclear war. Maybe it could. Petrov and his little loudspeaker messages constantly vaunted the safety of Tower living—not just against other gangs and thieves, but even against nature.
Ore shook herself from her frozen shock at the scene. She had to move. She had to keep following the plan:
- Get to higher ground.
- Follow the rooftops to Radio Place
- Bring down the antenna and get in The Tower
There were two equally good reasons to do it this way.
Without the plan, Wallop might die because of the quake. He might die because of old age. The only certainty of his death was carried in every action she took, and every action put her on a line, and that line ended with her hands wrapped tight around his horrible throat.
Without the plan, Ore might never see Samson again. She would never hold her brother. She would never tell him she was sorry.
If Ore was not dodging rubble, she might have felt bad because she did not know which was more important to her: killing Wallop or finding Samson.
She ran—hopping from the top of the leaning grocer to the next building. And then from there, scattering her legs out for support, she did the same thing again. She hopped under clotheslines, over walls, broken glass on top of the buildings digging into her tough pants and boots.
Two younger girls and their small brother tried to hop up on a building as Ore had done—using the railway struts as a way up. But something broke or twisted in the struts, a
nd the children fell hard to the debris below.
Ore looked away.
There was no telling who would live and who would die. Odds were that all her Haulers were dead already—they lived underground. That Ore was alive still was due to forces far, far beyond her comprehension or control. She would not waste them.
Ahead of her was the building she wanted—Radio Place. Unused in recent years except to amplify Petrov's signals as he broadcast his messages. A series of planks and plastic tubs formed a sort of walkway up to the top of the building, falling apart underneath her as she hopped from point to point.
On top already were two other people. People she knew, sort of. She felt surprise, distant and old, like remembering something you had to learn about yourself, like if you forgot that you ran better than you walked. The pretty girl, the one who had been with the jazzkid slock who attacked Ore. The other looked something like the dead man she had crawled over in that basement she crawled out of.
Lots of crawling, lots of running, lots of climbing. That was Ore’s day so far. Just the start, from the looks of things.
The man pushed against the antenna. Testing it. He already had Ore's idea. She didn't wonder why—the Tower was still standing, and everything else was falling. It seemed logical enough. The man turned at Ore's presence, brandishing his gun. She put her hands up..
“I want in there, too,” she said. “I can help.”
Shrugging, the man said, “Come on if you're coming, then. Stay out of the way.”
“I’m Ana,” said the pretty girl. “This is Victor.”
Victor grabbed Ana and pulled her behind him—putting himself between her and Ore. This was a man prepared. Hell of a set of body armor on his chest. The gun on his hip—the incredible tech of it, layered with chrome and black leather. A force gun. She had seen their like several times.
Up close now, Ore examined the antenna—the height of it. As she had hoped, it was definitely possible that it could just make the distance to the Tower. They were twelve floors up off from the ground. But, with the way the earth still rumbled and swayed with the shocks and aftershocks, the makeshift bridge might still be a few feet short.
At any rate, the antenna was their only shot.
“Ore.”
“Or what?” asked Ana.
“My name. I’m Ore.” She pointed at the antenna. “If you shoot a few holes in the foundation here, I can take care of the rest.”
Victor took a look at her tech hand for a moment, considering. Then he shrugged. “All right.”
The shots were quiet, denting the metal but not quite piercing it through. The support struts twisted up tinfoil-style under the barrage, whining from the weight.
Below them, the quake had quieted somewhat—and the people had started gathering and yelling. They flooded out from the Tower in droves, screaming, calling out names. Thousands of men and women clogging the narrow streets, some clobbering into the sides of buildings, running over each other trying to get away, trying to get out. But there was no out. There was the Dam—no doubt about to let the Mississippi burst through—and there was, far away, the Divide into the suburbs, which were probably all broken to hell too.
“What kind of gun is that?” Ana asked.
No one answered her.
She laughed nervously after a moment. “I guess it’s one sort of like any of the others, huh?”
People continued to stream out from The Tower. Already they were latecomers to the riot, paying no mind to running over the trapped or fallen bodies of those who had already tried to run through the shifting waves of the quake. At first, Ore thought maybe they would have it a little easier, with the earth not swelling and breaking on top of them. But then she saw how many of them there were—how tight the corridors were that had been created by the upraised earth and lines of cars, all the jutting pipes and ceaseless explosions from exposed gas lines.
Over the loudspeakers posted on the outside of The Tower, Ore heard the tell-tale grizzle and slant of Petrov’s voice.
“Do not run. All Tower residents should stay where they are. The area outside The Tower is dangerous and full of fire and water. Stay where you are.”
Belatedly, alarms began to sound, whining out through the air. Ore couldn’t tell if they emanated from the Tower or elsewhere. Through the cacophony of the alarms, there was the unmistakable growing rumble of terror. The volume of the rioters raised in intensity and fear. Fires broke out all around them. Ore was not surprised to hear gunshots and screams.
Victor finished with the force gun. The supports now twisted and bent. Ore approached, tech hand clanged open, sharp pincer-claws chunking forward on her middle and ring fingers. Grabbing the pillar of metal, she pulled upward.
For a moment, it seemed as though nothing would happen. Then the metal, groaning, snapped apart. Instantly, the tall antenna shifted downward, stuttering out a series of moans.
Ana was on the ledge, looking at the antenna. “Is it long enough?” she asked. “Will it...will it hit those people?”
She did not sound altogether concerned. Interested, more like.
Ore ignored her, going after the next support. Like the first, it resisted for a moment and then snapped under the pressure of her tech. Ore could snap bone or slice through a skull if she needed to, if she had enough time. The hand just needed a little time to warm up. When it wasn’t in frequent use, the joints stiffened.
Once, she went almost a week without powering the tech hand up fully, and it had needed more than ten minutes to close—which had put her in a tough spot when she tried to lunge and rip open the back of a cash truck that had been rolling through her block. For almost ten minutes, she rode on the back of the truck, her hand jammed inside its metal sheeting, waiting for enough of the steel to be torn so she could slide away to safety. A close call—she had almost rolled right into a hack outpost by the highway.
Victor and Ore pushed up hard against the antenna, both of them grunting. Ana stood with her hands on her hips.
“You're going to hit those people, I think. I just want you to know.”
Ore kept pushing. There was only one way forward.
The antenna resisted at first, groaning as it had before. And then it fell.
Slowly, it fell. Taking its time, pushing downward like a giant kneeling down. The crowd beneath it swelled outward, people trampling over one another to get out the way.
The antenna crashed into the Tower with enough force to break windows surrounding the tip—but still it seemed to have landed just like a love tap, like a sounding strike with a hammer on an anvil.
Below the antenna’s entry point, glass showered down on the crowd. Ore saw blood spray out far below. She had expected this—and still it was not as bad as she thought it might have been. Caught in an insane situation, all you could really hope for was to limit the insanity of your own actions.
“You hurt them,” said Ana, shaking her head. “I told you that you would hurt them.”
“We all hurt them, girl,” said Ore. “Or are you staying behind?”
Ana raised her eyebrows, looking down.
“Oh,” she said. “One had his hand cut off. I've never seen that before.”
Her voice was flat, empty. She kept looking, not turning away. A stronger stomach than Ore.
“Okay,” said Victor. “Let’s do it.”
He clapped Ana on the back and pushed her up into the antenna's broken structure. But, Ore grabbed him and then Ana, tossing them back down.
“What are you doing?” Victor asked.
“My plan. I go first.”
“It was my plan before you got here.”
“You ain't no goddamn Junktown native. It was my plan all night long. It's just got complicated, that's all. I go first.”
Ore stepped up onto the antenna, feeling it groan beneath her weight.
“She goes first.” He pointed to Ana. “The structure's not stable.”
Victor’s tone was one well dried-out, dehydrated fro
m years of expending itself on fools. Ore knew this tone, because hers was much the same.
“That looks dangerous,” Ana said. “I'm happy to go last.”
“Listen to your woman. I ain’t arguing anymore,” said Ore, taking another step up. “I’m telling. I go first.”
“I won’t argue either.” Victor put a hand on his pistol.
She was ready to kill him. If today was the day, then it was the day.
“Hey, hey!” Ana said, gripping Victor’s forearm. “We’re not exactly surplusing time, here. Like I said, I don't want to go first. Victor, you want me to go before you?”
“That is safer.”
“Then I'll go second. Okay? And Ore, you have your whole...hissy-metal-hand thing going on. You can probably bend the antenna at the other end and secure it some, all right?”
Victor took a breath and backed away.
“Fine, okay. Go ahead.”
A moment ago, Victor had looked as though he would shoot Ore dead. Ore knew this look and his tone—it was one she had used in the past many times. One she had been on the opposite end of in more fights than she could remember.
And then, at a gentle suggestion from Ana, it was gone.
Wasting no more time, Ore nodded and hoisted up onto the antenna, swinging across the metal support. She worked from the underside, not trusting herself not to slip. She did not look down, did not think about the destination or how far off it was. Below her, she could hear the rumble of the crowd—even heard a few marveling at how fast she was going, how high up she was.
“Wrong way, idiot!”
“Don’t go in there, it’s a madhouse!”
That sort of thing.
If she fell, she would be trampled instantly. All those people running out, trying to get away from the Dam—probably they wouldn’t make it.
Ore had seen enough of life to know that a disaster like this wasn’t just going to let anyone get away.
Finally, scrambling, she hit the other side with her hands. It was a bedroom of some kind. Papers flying about inside, chopped by the wind. Carefully, metal straining beneath her, she slid up into the window, broken glass pushing into the leather of her vest. Some scratched into her arms. Nothing deep.
Up The Tower Page 9