The Pedestal (48 page)

I’ve been in an interrogation room for more than an hour now. Though he was gushing with glee when he tossed me in here, Inspector Filmore hasn’t returned to gloat. He’s left me instead to the wiles of an old digital clock bolted to the painted cinderblock wall. With little else to look at, my eyes are drawn to it; not merely by the novelty of it, but by the spell of its steadfast pace. The pixellated digits glow faintly, seconds pulsing slowly from double zero to fifty-nine over and over again.

This is how they break you, I realize. With the clock. It’s a psychological weapon, relentless and impossible to ignore.

There’s a small window across the room, and I stumble to it with relief, leaning against the sill to peer into the bowels of the city. This part of town is dirty, and the view isn’t at all flattering. I wonder how long before the buildings are completely obscured by blood plants. Weeks? Months?

The door startles me as it hinges open with an unoiled screech.

“Thought you’d save me a trip, huh?” says a smiling Rackley as he pushes into the room.

“Yeah, you know. Was in the neighborhood, and all.”

“Really? My good luck, I guess.”

I’m glad he’s in a good mood, but I’m already weary of this back-and-forth. “Yeah. So, here I am.”

“Indeed.” He looks at me as if seeing me in a new light—though I’m not sure if it’s a good one or not. Abruptly, he realizes my hands are cuffed behind me and curses under his breath. He unshackles me with a practiced hand and we sit.

“So, I got your package.”

“Good.”

“Our techs are going over the data right now. So far, everything you’ve told me checks out. Can’t imagine how, just yet, but your proximity statistics have clearly been altered.”

I nod. “So what happens now?”

“For the moment, we sit tight. I wish I could just send you on home, but until this is fully resolved, I’m afraid my colleagues feel you’re a bit of a flight risk. You know, given your ... uh,
history
.”

“Ah, I see.” My eyes flicker to the dreaded clock, and Rackley smiles knowingly.

“It shouldn’t be long, though. Filmore may be a world-class jerk, but he’s no idiot. Even he’s gotta wonder why a multimillionaire would get his hands this filthy over a measly hundred thousand credits.”

If I had been drinking something just then, I’d have shot it right through my nose. I try to keep my cool, but Rackley’s well trained at reading people, and I know I’m wasting energy. “How’d you find out?” I want to know.

He smiles modestly and holds out his palms, as if to say, I’m a detective—how else?

“It’s okay,” he assures me with a warm smile. “Your secret is safe with me. Everyone has a right to his privacy. Even rich people.”

My NanoPrint has been remarkably quiet in here. I’ve begun to wonder if the building is wired to absorb—or even jam—wireless communication. I’ve been alone in here for a good hour and forty-five minutes now, and I’m getting hungry. At seven thirty, Rackley returns.

“You’re free to go, Mr. Abby,” he announces. Though his words should fill me with joy, everything about his demeanor says that something is very wrong.

“Everything okay?” I ask. “Keith didn’t fly the coop before you could nab him, did he?”

“No, no. We got him, no problem.” He gives me a forced smile, and then adds, “Frankly, we’ve all got bigger problems at the moment.”

Something tells me I don’t need to ask for examples, and the look in Rackley’s eyes tells me I should know better than anyone what’s happening. “Sorry I can’t offer you a ride home,” he says with a tired frown. He hands me a plastic bag containing my belongings, and then he’s gone.

Along with my gaudy watch, I’m surprised to find Tim’s implant reader inside—I guess I more or less assumed it would be confiscated, considering it’s not strictly legal for an unconnected civilian like myself to have one in his possession. Obviously, I assumed wrong.

That Rackley’s an interesting guy.

Tim’s waiting in the lobby for me. When he sees me, he cries out in joy and crushes me with a hug. His enthusiasm fills me with joy, if only for a moment. On our way out, he says, “Guess you’ve probably figured out what’s going on, even if you haven’t officially heard the news, right?”

“What’s that?”

“Seriously? You haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“The nexus—it’s down.”

He might as well have told me the number four has been replaced by purple. “What does that mean,
down
?”

“As in, this entire city is at a complete standstill. Maybe the whole continent, for all we know.”

Looking around, I realize that he’s right; the streets are filled with stalled trams and helpless, wandering pedestrians. The sky is completely void of shuttles and air traffic. The sounds of industry have vanished. I try to access my implant and I’m able to without resistance, but it’s operating on cached data, and most of my add-ons are idling.

“Holy circuit scrap, man.”

“I know, right? What do you think caused it?” he asks. For once, I look at Tim like he’s the clueless one.

“C’mon, Tim. What do you think?” His smile falters, but it doesn’t entirely disappear.

“You don’t mean the plants, do you?”

I rotate in place slowly, scanning the panorama for new information. “There,” I say with foreboding. I point to a nearby railway bridge. “See it?” He doesn’t respond, but I know he sees the blood plant, just as I do. It’s radiating like a mass of giant sea stars from the underside of the overpass. My eyes hover there for several seconds and then continue on.

“And there,” I add, pointing down a side street to where a manhole cover has been dislodged and is perched atop a bloody mass of leaves in the middle of the road.

“And there.”

And everywhere.

It takes us two hours to walk home. Tim lives closer than me, so I drop him off along the way. Since the nexus has gone down, I’ve been knotted with worry over the state of my world. Why didn’t I take the time to ferret out Mitzy’s address? I have absolutely no way of reaching her. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d give anything for the nexus to be alive and kicking right now. Several times as I walk along, my implant reconnects with the nexus, but only for a second. It’s like the nexus has a million shorts in its circuitry. I can imagine laborers and nexus administrators frantically darting about the city, digging up and repairing buried lines compromised by the roots of blood plants, only for new problems to take their places elsewhere.

The next couple of days are quiet, but no less disconcerting. Since I can’t call Mitzy, I take to sitting on my patio where I can watch for her. I know this is ridiculous, but I don’t care. Mrs. Grace sits with me often, sniffling once in a while into a wad of tissue. If she’s intuited my role in this mess, she’s been gracious enough to overlook it. I’m glad she’s here with me.

Life is funny sometimes.

I’m barely thirty-one, a multimillionaire living in a middle-income condo, wearing the same clothes I wore before I hit it rich. The irony is that, while I’ve finally decided that the money is mine and can safely be enjoyed, we’re on the brink of a plague so devastating that my newfound wealth is rendered moot. I literally can’t spend a single credit with the nexus down, and there’s no reason to believe things will turn back around any time soon.

I can almost hear Arthur’s ghostly voice, as if he’s whispering in my ear:
There goes the pedestal, Wilson. Can you feel it crumbling?
I’d cry if I wasn’t already laughing so hard.

It’s been three days since the nexus went down. The sky has taken on a pale pink sheen. Everywhere I look, blood plants are entangled in the city’s bones. I awoke this morning to a resounding blast nearby. When I went outside and down to ground level, I found the sidewalk littered with seeds from a burst seedpod. Before I could return to my condo, a series of similar explosions concussed from my roof. Seeds showered me like sticky drizzle.

Frightened for my life, I stripped nude on my doorstep and left my clothes in a pile. I made a mad rush for my bathroom and pilfered my cabinets until I found a pair of electric clippers. I shaved my head and swept the clippings into the toilet. It occurred to me that I was flooding our sewers with blood plant seeds, but I figured better the sewers than my apartment.

I took a long shower, followed by a thorough swabbing of my ears. It was a stressful event from which I still haven’t quite recovered, even two hours later.

I’m sitting on my couch now, trying not to cry for what is happening to my city. When I wipe my eyes and stand to get a hold of myself, I see that two blood plants have taken root on my living room floor—one immediately inside the doorway, the other a few feet farther toward the bathroom. I carefully untwine them from the carpet fibers and flush them, like my hair.

I peek out my door, and just as I expect to see, my clothes are speckled with tiny plants. I scan around me and find that everywhere I look, blood plants are sending up leaves. I use my foot to shove the pile of clothes under the railing and onto the ground below. I hear Mrs. Grace shuffling about next door, and I knock lightly on her door.