Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (6 page)

“Suggested revised route would take approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, if conditions persist. However, several emergency response zones are currently active along that route. Revised route is not recommended.”

Mara turned to Ping and said, “What do you think? You want to sit here and inch across town all day, or should we risk the emergency zones, whatever those are?”

Ping craned forward and looked out the right side of the windshield—to the north—and said, “I don’t see any smoke rising from that direction. Frankly, if I was at the wheel, I’d take the exit—it looks safer than whatever is happening directly ahead.”

Mara lifted her chin and said to the ceiling, “Override the existing route. Take the Lloyd Center exit and whatever surface streets to go to the Fremont Bridge.”

“Revised route implemented,” the voice acknowledged.

After another five minutes of creeping forward, the van took the ramp which shot straight off the highway for less than half a block and ended at a Stop sign. They turned right on a two-lane road that ran alongside Holladay Park, which Mara knew was across the street from the mall just a block to the north. A dozen figures carrying armfuls of clothing and boxes ran through the trees, zigzagging to avoid picnic tables and benches, seemingly staying off the well-defined brick and concrete walkways. A flash of blue light and the squawk of a siren rang out from the north—a police cruiser inched into the park along one of the wider sidewalks and stopped. The front doors popped open, and two police officers dashed after the others.

Mara rolled down her window and watched the action in the park as their vehicle headed north. When it turned right again, she lost sight of the park. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a Macy’s sign and a long multilevel parking garage. They were circling to the west of the Lloyd Center Mall. They took a left and passed in front of a Sears department store—from which flooded dozens of people with armfuls of merchandise, pushing and shoving each other to get past the glass doors. Those who escaped the crowd ran into the parking lot, fanning out in every direction. Several people pushing carts carrying large appliance boxes rammed a path through the knot of people, hurtling into the parking lot, slamming into pedestrians and vehicles without pausing.

“What do you think is going on?” Mara asked, looking at Ping.

“Without knowing the specifics of the shopping conventions of the people in this realm, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that these people are looting the stores,” he said.

The van passed Marshalls, where more shoppers pushed their way out the door carrying more clothing. In that parking lot, two women were in a tug-of-war over a pink sweater.

“I figured out the looting part, the question is
why
are they looting?”

“Looting behavior generally results from a breakdown of social covenants associated with traumatic events. For example, during wars or catastrophes. People’s innate survival instincts kick in when they conclude their society can no longer guarantee the necessities of life—food, clothing or other material needs. They take what they need before it becomes unavailable.”

“You’re saying these people have been through something so traumatic that they feel they need to steal to survive?” Mara asked.

“That would be one plausible explanation. Of course we have to remember that, while these people appear quite similar to us, they are very different, and their motivations or what they consider traumatic might be very distinct from what we would expect.”

Having left the mall behind, the van came to a stop at an intersection next to the parking lot of a pub. The door of the establishment swung open, and a man staggered toward the curb and fell to his knees, where he vomited on the sidewalk just a few feet from the van.

Sam cringed and said, “I guess that answers the question about whether they eat—or rather, drink—considering the foaminess of what that man spewed on the sidewalk.”

A woman with a cigarette dangling from her lips stood in the doorway of the pub, yelling for the man to come back. He looked up from the sidewalk, waved and nodded.

The van turned left.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to meet your friend Cam, but I assumed that people who would commit themselves to living as synthetic beings would have found the means to improve on the design of humanity and do something about foibles such as avarice and gluttony,” Ping said.

“I’m no expert, but, based on our short time with Cam, I’m guessing something else is going on than design flaws or poor maintenance,” Mara said. “These people need more than a tune-up.”

She pointed to a bank as they passed. Two men sitting in a pickup truck had chained their bumper to the front of an ATM and were currently sending up a cloud of smoke from their spinning back tires. It didn’t look like they were having much luck carting off the money machine. Mara turned away as the van continued down the block.

After a couple miles, in which they did not see any more felons or shoplifters, the van stopped at an intersection, and cross-traffic proceeded in front of them. Mara leaned closer to the windshield, eyed the corner and said, “There are no traffic lights. The van just stopped on its own, right before traffic cut across our path. There is some kind of tower with a beacon on the corner.”

Ping leaned forward from the rear bench and said, “There’s a light flashing on the side of it. I think it’s a pedestrian crosswalk. If they don’t need traffic lights to know when to stop, why would they need pedestrian signals? Cam has demonstrated that he has the ability to receive signals, so why would anyone here need them?”

“For the kids. If they’re regular flesh-and-blood people, they wouldn’t be able to hear the signals,” Sam suggested.

Ping nodded. “That would make sense, I suppose.”

“Why do they have road signs at all? I mean, they should be able to receive geolocating information without having to stop and read the signs. Wouldn’t they?” Mara asked.

“Good question. Perhaps we’ll have the opportunity to ask someone before we return home,” Ping said.

Traffic stopped flowing in front of them, and the van made a right turn onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. It was packed with vehicles which moved at a slow but steady pace. The skies ahead appeared clear of smoke.

Mara leaned out the open window and looked toward downtown. Smoke streamed from the ground upward, darkening the clouds and putting a pall over everything behind them.

A little more than an hour later, the van drove along the span of Fremont Bridge. It was a large one, suspended well above the waters of the Willamette River. Yet the echoing of tires whipping across its superstructure screamed
bridge
, and, to Mara, anything that screamed
bridge
also screamed
water
. To keep her water phobia in check, she occupied herself by focusing on the road signs. Her tension drained as they approached the end of the bridge. The van had navigated itself into the right lane and followed Highway 30 until they were off the bridge and firmly on the ground in the middle of a bunch of brick and cinder-block warehouses, manufacturing buildings and gentrified lofts.

“Well, this looks like the part of town where you would want to keep something called a repository,” Mara said. “We should be getting there pretty soon.”

The van followed Highway 30 signs through the maze of industrial buildings, railroad cars and parked semitrucks for the next twenty minutes, only stopping occasionally to allow cross-traffic to pass when indicated by what Mara thought of as invisible traffic lights. After another five minutes, industrial buildings on the left side of the road gave way to steep hills covered with lush trees, while the right side remained flat and urbanized with squat boxy offices, gravelly parking lots and railroad tracks.

Sam exhaled loudly. “How much longer will this take? We’ll end up in the Pacific Ocean soon if we don’t turn or stop.”

The van slowed and turned left onto an unmarked road leading into the hills and trees. The rough road climbed for several hundred yards and then leveled out just before entering a dense grove of trees that blocked almost all sunlight. Muted lights illuminated the van inside, and its headlights cut through the darkness outside.

“It feels like we are in a tunnel,” Sam said.

Mara nodded ahead and said, “No,
that’s
going to feel like a tunnel.”

A concrete wall with a wide opening to accommodate the road loomed ahead. The van continued into the tunnel but decelerated to a crawl for fifty feet and came to a stop in front of a large corrugated aluminum door that blocked their path. The number 97210 was spray-painted in stenciled letters on the door. With a sudden rattle, the door lifted and disappeared into the curved ceiling of the tunnel.

“This reminds me of one of those underground military installations like NORAD or something,” Mara said. “Except there doesn’t appear to be any kind of security around.”

“No security that we can see, at any rate,” Ping said. “Perhaps Cam or someone at the hospital notified them that we were on our way. If they arranged for the transportation, it seems reasonable that they would have contacted whoever administers this facility.”

The rising door revealed a wire-framed compartment as wide as the road and deep enough to accommodate the van, above which was mounted a tight cluster of machinery—a collection of wheels, pulleys and cables. The front wall of the compartment slid to the right, revealing a steel-plated floor with noticeable tire tracks. The van inched forward until it was inside the compartment. The front wall slid closed behind them, blocking them in.

Mara pointed to the concrete walls through the wire mesh and said, “We’ve just entered an elevator shaft or a cargo lift of some kind.”

Something clattered against the undercarriage of the van, sending vibrations through their seats.

Sam locked stares with his sister. “That felt like something just attached itself to the bottom of the van.”

Mara raised an eyebrow. “Some kind of clamp to keep us from rolling around while the elevator is moving?”

The van’s engine cut off, and the interior lights went out.

They plunged into the ground. As Mara felt her body lift off her seat and press against the seat belt running across her torso, she tried to cry out but could not inhale enough air to make a sound. Bands of light, apparently built into the shaft through which they fell, whipped by so quickly they almost blurred together. Just when she thought she might pass out, the elevator felt as if it had slammed into a cushion of air, and the descent slowed. Mara heard Sam rustling about in the passenger seat.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked.

“My stomach feels like it is about to come out my throat,” Sam said.

As the elevator came to a stop, Ping said, “I’m fine, especially now that it appears we have arrived.”

Through the windshield of the van and the wire mesh sides of the elevator compartment, another corrugated aluminum door lifted, opening to an asphalt-covered platform sitting in the middle of a rock-lined cavern. Floodlights mounted high above filled the space with simulated daylight. After the side of the compartment slid out of the way, the van’s engine turned over, and the vehicle rolled forward, following a white dashed line on the ground that curved to the left. Soon Mara could see two rows of other vehicles, half of which were white vans identical to theirs. This was a parking lot. Their van slid into a spot at the end of a row and again turned off its engine.

“I suppose that means we have arrived,” Ping said. “Why don’t we step outside and see if we can get our bearings?” He reached for the handle of the side door and slid it open.

Through the wide opening, they saw two men in light blue smocks and white slacks jogging toward the van. Behind them, an older woman in a lab coat—her gray hair pulled into a bun that peeked over the top of her head—eyed a clipboard while she walked at a more leisurely pace. The two men headed directly to the rear doors of the van, opened it and slid out the gurney holding Cam’s body. Mara and Sam clambered past Ping, out the side door of the van, and ran alongside the van to the rear.

As the men turned to roll away the gurney, Mara said, “Excuse me, but what exactly will you do with him?”

The men looked past Mara to the woman who had just walked up. She said to them, waving in the direction from which they’d come, “That’s okay. You guys go ahead, and I’ll consult with the relatives.”

“Actually we’re not relatives,” Sam said. “We’re just friends of Cam’s.”

The woman turned to him, and her eyes narrowed. Taking a step toward Sam, she leaned forward and stared into his eyes intensely—like she was conducting an exam. Reaching up to grasp his chin with her thumb and index finger, she turned his head slightly to the left and gasped. “You’re biological! How can that be?”

She turned to Mara, gave her a quick once-over and said, “You too!”

Ping stepped from the van and approached the opened rear doors. The woman shifted her gaze to him and said, “And you! How have the three of you survived this long without transitioning?”

Ping gave her a blank stare, collected himself after a moment and said, “I’m sorry, are you inquiring as to why we don’t have artificial bodies?”

“That would be a good place to start,” she said.

“Well, that may take a little time and effort to explain, miss—”

“Dr. Canfield, Celeste Canfield,” she said. She held up a hand. “I’ll tell you what. I need to get started with your friend,”—she looked at her clipboard—“Cameron Lee, and I can’t simply let you leave in this condition. I’d be called up before the ethics board for neglect.”

She pointed toward the orderlies, pushing Cam’s gurney into two large industrial doors leading into a rock face two hundred feet from the parking lot, and said, “Hurry along. With all the other craziness going on, I can’t get bogged down on any single peculiarity.”

Ping fell in step next to her, while Mara and Sam followed behind. “So, Dr. Canfield, how did you recognize us as biological so readily? No one else has given us a second look, even a nurse at a hospital earlier today.”