The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 5 - City

Five minutes was all it took. Apparently, unbeknownst to Boros, Clarissa had a bug out bag all but packed. She hadn’t elaborated on it when she removed it from the small inset cabinet in her bedroom suite and so he didn’t ask. In it was a small supply of water and a simple liquid recycler, the type given to the few homeless people still left in the city, a few dense bars of almost pure carbohydrates, tubes of a fungal protein paste, and several large pouches of a vitamin slurry. Add clothes a few other necessities, such as a pocket sized handgun with a handful of high-density plastic rounds that Boros also didn’t know she had and it was ready. One disaster bag for two.

When the two of them were done they surveyed their handiwork. Her apartment had been torn apart as if a tiny tornado had formed and wrought havoc there. Most of it was spent trying to locate the fifteen HDP bullets, and even then Clarissa had assured him that there was probably more. It just wasn't worth the extra minutes looking for more. They both knew that the kinds of conflict that came from desperation were won more often by showing off than by actually action.

“Do we need to hit your place?” Clarissa asked on their way out the front door.

“Not unless you want a whole lot of booze and dirty shit.” There was an edge to his voice that he didn’t expect.

“Then where are we gonna go?”

Clarissa knew what his silence meant. He didn’t give an answer because he didn’t have one. It was a quirk of his. One she didn’t like very much but had grown to accept.

-

The two of them made their way quietly through the, now mobile, pedestrians of the district. The light show in the sky was old news and they had lives to live. It was the same when the Aethernet went up. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t have the same insight into the falling Streams of light that Boros had. They had no idea what was happening.

In all likelihood, most of them would listen to the feeds and trust the experts to do what they do. Hell, most of them had jobs, and they were the experts doing the things that needed doing in whatever field was relevant to them. Almost all of them would be doing things that didn’t matter in the grand scheme. Mere small cogs in the grinding machines of commerce that ate people up and spat them out. Only they had the money for a few new trinkets on the way out.

It had been that way for countless centuries. The Aethernet only streamlined the process, and while most everyone needed an actual job to survive, the sleekness which the Aethernet leant to capitalism meant nobody would starve. At least before the end humanity had come that far.

The market stalls where everything was hocked from barely fresh produce to the tech trends from two seasons ago were loud and lively with the very sounds of the sleek and shiny capitalism. “Get this doo-dad, it was up to date two years ago, but I’ll let it go half free.” “These apples may have come all the way from Washington in a matter of hours, but they spent some times in cooled shelves of supermarkets before the loss-prevention teams sold them to me, ten cents per.” “The screen on the sleeve is gone, but its still a perfectly good shirt.”

The same things would be going on in all districts over the city, only taking different forms. Behind closed doors. Ordered off the net. Handled by a live-in and only seen when you ate, or dressed, or typed out an e-mail on a hyper-definition screen. It was a system that had worked for centuries, had stratified for millennia before that. And it worked. Had worked.

Now, and perhaps it was only the way the sound of amplified voices carried up to the elevated footpath, it seemed the sounds of selling were louder than the sounds of buying. Maybe people were scared and they just didn’t know it. Crisis had always lead to penny-pinching. Even when people didn’t know about it, it seemed.

-

Looking out at the skyline as it evolved from district to district, Boros wondered just how all that grime knew not to stick to buildings of a certain class. He was even curious as to where the darkening grime that coated the mega-buildings of the poorer districts had even come from. Perhaps it was pumped into the air by those of higher classes.

The skyline was much the same wherever you went in any city, really. Everything old and outdated uprooted and replaced by mega-buildings and complexes of unimaginable size connected by elevated pathways and roads like a spiderweb. The remains of ground-level streets below with their named streets and chipping paint were the only vestige of the old-world ways of city layouts. Most would run straight into walls, or be intruded upon in some other way.

Only the highest echelons of society had different views. Where crude and blocky buildings gave way to sleek and over-engineered towers, most occupied by a only a handful of people, existing only as garish displays of wealth and power. In these places the old ways of capitalism and the ever-present signs of money changing hands completely disappeared. Money was still spent, only it was more elegant and subtle. And it was more often yet another means of displaying power earned through the labour of those beneath them.

It was eerie watching the change as the two strode along in silence. Boros often thought it was odd that the same umbilical footpaths that connected the mega-blocks of all but the poorest districts would also connect these spires, palaces more than homes.