Nesson is a serial novel about living with technology and sprawl in the near future. Learn more or start from the beginning.
Justin tried not to think about the fact that he had spent his last few dollars on this room. He had actually spent his last dollar days ago, but was living off credit and overdraft tolerance. The hotel manager offered charitable discounts that just so happened to put the room at the exact credit left. Now his account was useless.
He was alone in a Neopolitan hotel somewhere in the western half of the country. It was past the Rockies, but nowhere near the ocean. He had this ground floor room with no view room for one night. The only distraction from his anxiety about what he was going to do after that night was the vigorous rattling coming from the adjacent utility room. What next? He had made it as far west as his money could take him. He had made some sort of mistake when purchasing his tickets, he thought he had passage for the whole route, but had only bought passage to the first layover. He knew something was wrong when he looked for the departure platform on his tickets and found them all already punched. Cursing he walked to the bank of kiosks at the station entrance and looked up his reservation. How had he messed this up? He bought only half the trip and now had no money for the rest of the way.
The porters were sympathetic but unwavering. No, he could not come on board without a ticket. No, there was no way to make an exception. If he was interested in employment he would have to go through the formal hiring process. So no, he could not exchange work for fare. The train pulled away quietly, taking hundreds of others to his destination. Not that he really knew what his destination was, but he was sure this place was not it.
Justin had read books about this kind of situation. These were old books written when electricity was still new and the only instant communication tool was the telephone. In these books, broke young men traveled across the country, sometimes around the world, on nothing. They borrowed, stole, walked, stowed away, bummed rides, did whatever they had to and kept moving. Though he enjoyed reading about such travels, he never imagined that he would be in a similar situation.
Justin had no frame of reference in these matters besides books and movies. It always looked so easy, stick out a thumb here, jump on a moving train there. Could he just go out and hitchhike like that? Not likely here, unless he wanted to ride on the back of a bicycle. Out on the interstates the self-driving cars would not even slow down for him. He could not exactly jump on a Neopolitan train, they were too fast and had nothing to grab from the outside. What else could he do, just start walking? He would surely drop dead from exhaustion before he reached to coast.
Then again, it worked out ok last time did it not? He left home and walked. He walked and walked what was, he now realized, not such a long distance. It was long enough to carry him to a new world though. Strange, he thought. A few miles made a world of difference.
He used to dream about being a character in a book or movie. Dream of having a life so eventful, or at least one where something happened. Now it began to dawn on him, all those characters he loved and envied, if you took out the scenes of the book, looked at their lives before and after the meat of the story, it would be dull. Perhaps as dull as his daily life. This, it now seemed, was his moment. Perhaps everyone had one. Anyway, he thought he had better stretch this one out, really live it before he finds his happy but dull ending.
***
Justin sat in a small cafe furnished in natural wood and brass. He was nursing a cup of coffee he bought about an hour ago as more of a ticket to sit than something to sate him. He bought the coffee with a coin he found sinking into a muddy footprint on the street. There was nothing familiar about the coin. The face on one side was that of a middle aged heavily bearded man and the other side was some kind of abstract lattice work. After Justin polished off the mud, unconsciously rubbing dirt into the hem of his shirt, the coin shone clear, bright, and silver. It was heavier than he imagined something that size would be. He did not know how much the coin was worth, but when he presented it at the cafe, the barista took it without comment and returned a handful of smaller coins.
Something about the barista’s movements while she worked the brewing equipment mesmerized Justin. Her arms were red-brown and slightly bulged under cap sleeves. Wisps of black hair fell out of the scarf tied around her head. His order was simple, yet the fluid motion of her hands as she retrieved a cup, filled it to the brim, and placed it before him without pausing or spilling a drop made Justin pleasantly nervous. The other patron’s more extravagant orders sent her into a blur of motion, yet as fast as she moved she never looked hurried.
To the right of the register, a bright flicker caught Justin’s eye and pulled his attention away from the girl behind the counter. A muted television played something that looked like a news report, but was narrated by a formally dressed man and woman behind a desk. It was strange having to watch this from across the room with several other eyes on the same screen. He could not change the program or turn off the screen; his options were to watch what was on or look somewhere else. This was like the experience he was looking for when he channel surfed, but now that he had truly lost control of the screen he felt uncomfortable.
He took a sip slowly, deliberately with both hands, letting his eyes focus on the top of the mug for just a moment, blurring the screen. When he shifted his focus back, he nearly dropped the cup in his lap. His sister’s face was staring back at him. Flanking her image were photos of three traveling mates who, according to the captions, were recently taken into custody by Japanese police and would be extradited soon to the US where they would face charges. The anchors did not mention the nature of these charges. The three men were captured, but Allison was still on the loose. Except, what was it they were calling her? Helen? She must have taken an alias. That could not be a good sign. Would an innocent person use a false name?
Police in Japan, in a show of good faith to the Americans, were investigating her possible location. It was always “the Americans” and “the Japanese.” The sense that American concerns were only of cursory importance to the Neopolitans, no more relevant than Japanese concerns, hit Justin again. The reporters transitioned to a story that had something to do with exports, but Justin was drawing into himself. Excited thoughts flew behind his eyes. Here was some hint about his sister, but how would he find her with so many others searching for her.
Japan… Japan! Here he was going broke trying to make it to the West Coast and she goes and puts an ocean between them. A lead on her whereabouts was nice, but Japan? How did she get there at all? Did she even speak Japanese? Japan was one of the countries most resistant to adopting English as the universal language. How was he going to make it to Japan anyway?
Justin stood, leaving his last third of a cup of coffee on the table, and walked out before the screen gave him any more impossible missions. Back on the overloaded sidewalks, Justin engaged the kind of privacy and anonymity only to be found in large crowds. Thinking a little too much and watching where he was going not enough, he ran straight into someone’s back. This caused Justin to stumble and stop, but whomever he hit was already gone, he never saw the person. Justin stepped aside out of the flow of foot traffic and put his back against a brick wall.
There was a palpable heat radiating from the crowd. Justin knew his own body temperature, but he had never experienced the aggregate effect of hundreds of bodies in the same space. Probably these people were used to it, but Justin felt at once constrained and comforted by the warmth. He was feeling overstimulated and needed to get out of the crowd.
The dense mass of humanity paraded before him, but a chance gap in the cross traffic revealed a sign over a door across the street. Neopolis 84021 Employment Office. Could it be so easy? Actually, the journey to the door was by no means easy. Feeling as if he was swimming upstream, Justin made a perpendicular path through the pedestrians, bikes, and busses. He could see through the glass door that there was not much to the office. Directly in the middle of a small, unadorned room was a young man sitting at a desk that was little more than a plank of wood on four stainless steel legs. He looking bored, but not in the way that welcomes a distraction. The young man looked as if he might attack the next person to interrupt his boredom. Justin entered slowly, not because he was afraid of the man behind the desk, but because it took time to understand every new type of building that was not residential.
A little bell above the door dinged and the young man looked up. He had bright eyes and shaggy brown hair. They looked at each other for several breaths before the young man called out as if he were in a larger room.
“Welcome! My name in Llyod and I’ll be your employment counselor. You are here for employment right?” He looked nervous, a little unpracticed.
“Yes, very much so,” Justin spoke as if to an authority figure rather than to someone just a few years past being a peer.
“Well, what do you want to do? What kind of work I mean.” Justin thought for a moment. What kind of work could he do? He had no skills or experience. He blurted out the only thing he could think, “It doesn’t matter too much, as long as it involves travel.”
***
“Have a good night officer.” Josh said as the agent signed out. This was a mess, Allison was all over the news and his staff was deeply connected to the commune and hacker communities. Fortunately, no one had made the connection between her and The Project. It was always best to send the unknowns into the field on these kinds of things. They were always happy to go undercover anyway. Everyone expected an undercover assignment to launch her career. Sometimes it worked, but it was a lottery.
His writers were nervous, but probably not for the right reasons. They were worried about criminal charges, guilt by association, et cetera. They did not know they needed to worry about political instability, if it were not for a few of his more critical contacts, his worries would be just as misplaced.
Part of him hoped to hear from Allison soon. Any information she had right now would be timely. On the other hand, the longer she stayed hidden, the more story she could gather. He did not have a way to reach out to her, he would just have to wait. He flipped through a summary feed. Overall, the country was not taking the story seriously. It was second page news, not even worthy of immersive reporting. There were actor weddings going on that were more important than Nesson. Maybe he could have someone write a meta-analysis, that could be interesting. Then again, would there be anything more ignored than an article asking why everyone was ignoring an important story?
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