ArchivedLogs:Edge Case
| Edge Case | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2015-12-15 << I (can be/am) the whole F line. >> (Part of the Flu Seasons TP.) |
| Location
New York, New York | |
Three young professionals return to their apartment in midtown from wherever they had waited out the disaster. They wear the same gray pall of weariness; weary, too, is their gratitude to be home again. As one they collapse onto the couch and stare at the blank flatscreen TV. In tandem, they think << Another >>, << One>>, and then, << Queens. >> Minder's words comes from every part of Hive's network, sometimes near and sometimes far. Two employees cleaning a looted neighborhood grocer's look up at the ceiling, beyond which lies the barricaded apartment whence no one has yet emerged. << There, >> one of them thinks as she returns to sweeping. << Tougher getting across town, now, >> in pieces from several subway commuters, though if any one of them had access to the whole message they would surely disagree. << Need more of a... >> The pause stretches out, and the word << ...system >> comes from Hive's own brain. Hive's answer comes dryly, a soft rattling echo that groans its way low and hungry across several miles of city -- too diffuse to be noticeable to most of its carriers though in aggregate, loud and clear. << Well. The subway's running again. >> << Could probably arrange an escort, >> comes in fragments from a gaggle of zombie patrol volunteers at a progress report meeting. << But I doubt there's enough of you riding any given subway line at any given time to occupy a whole car. >> There's a ripple of amusement that swells. Noticeably louder and more present in the city than it was even just moment before, Hive's presence ballooning outward in an expanding tide. << There could be. Whole car? >> The amusement, suddenly, is sharper, fiercer. << I (can be/am) the whole F line. >> About three hundred people all across the city draw a sudden breath at once as Hive's network grows abruptly. << There's always /that/, >> admits another dozen random minds, each contributing an infintesmal fragment of the thought in rapid succession. << You know this strengthens me. >> Their composite voice races through the vastness of Hive's minds like a colt loosed from the stable. All the while, they are methodically showing the newly awakened zombie in Queens how to unbarricade the door their living predecessor had so zealously kept shut, little though it helped them in the end. << But it comes at quite a cost to at least one of your lives. >> Their attention suddenly focuses on Hive's coffee, cold and forgotten for some time now. Hive's attention has shifted. The hot rich taste of coffee rolls over his senses -- a caramel latte swallowed in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, a bitter gas station cup hastily chugged by a beat cop in Queens, a fresh cup being brewed in a living room just down the street in the Lower East side, the smell filling his senses over and over and over. << It strengthens us, too. >> This comes after a delay. A beat of hesitation. A fiercer insistence rattling through his (rasping) (groaning) (hungry) mindvoices. << Most of your lives go on, >> the spread of minds thinking this is so vast and work together so seamlessly that the thought comes out sounding not unlike Hive's own overlapping susurrus. << But what of that one's? >> Still focused on Hive's unconsumed coffee even while they speak. << It's not worth less than anyone else's. >> Reaching out to touch the barely active mind housed in a hospitalized body in Albany is easier now than usual, but still a stretch. They manage it just barely, and the impression of the tenuous thread holding Minder to their comatose body comes to Hive clearly. << It would grieve your friends if your body ended up like mine. >> The zombie has managed to fumble through the final dead bolt and opens their door for the first time, their mind full of something not unlike amazement at the sudden new vista of the dark, narrow, mouldering staircase. << What of /that/ one's? >> Hive's rasping words come in echo of Minder's. The zombie's amazement is reflected back along the mental links, bounced back along the myriad threads till the entire network is filled, if only briefly, with a sense of wonder. << What is a life worth? Or ten? Or a thousand? >> There's an impression, now, of a warehouse across the city, a silent urgent conversation being carried on signed by decaying hands. << They have no price that can be named or haggled. >> These thoughts come from those out on the street below as the zombie descends with ponderous, uncertain steps toward the light at the bottom of the stairs. << You know that I am not helping for your sake. >> These words travel ahead now, scattered wide on the zombie's best projected path down into the subway, along the F line, and finally to the crowded sanctuary. << Nor am I saying that we ought to stop. I just want you to remember that other people can help, too. It needn't be all you. >> This final pronoun comes from several dozen different minds. About half of them mean it in the singular, and about half mean it plural, and one or two aren't completely sure if they actually want to say "you" at all. The zombie steps out onto the street, dead eyes dazzled by the watery winter daylight. << But we are all me. >> Where Minder's thoughts travel ahead, a chain of people follow. No single one travels very /far/; half a block here, one block there, down the subway steps here, a succession of escorts guiding the zombie along on its path before each one returns to their business. << Why are you helping? I don't think there's a lot of people getting in line to join the Zombie Liberation Front. >> << There are still a /few/ people in the world who are not you. >> This comes a touch bemused. << I might be an edge case. >> The train clatters, loud and bright, through the subterranean tunnels beneath the city. The living passengers ignore their undead fellow traveler as though they cannot see them at all. << The world only exists to me in the minds of others. >> The relative geographic center of Minder's voice wanders around the warehouse, now, waiting for the new arrival to complete the last and longest part of the journey through the largely abandoned hinterlands of Staten Island. << I'm not keen on snuffing out the candles I see by. >> << That's simplistic. >> Rather abrupt, but rather seamless, there's a /shift/ in Hive's perspective. His mental voice changes -- echoing, still, but less rasping, less rattling; it whispers through Minder's senses now as his presence vacates the dead minds in the warehouse, threading instead through a good chunk of the living population of Sunset Park in addition to the population currently riding the F line. It's a lazy sort of mental /swipe/, nabbing minds essentially at random in one rapid -- yoink. << Dead or alive, I can give you /plenty/ of flame. But them? >> Though now his thoughts are detached, watching the conversing of the dead from an exterior perspective rather than as one of them. << Edge case, for sure. >> | |
