by Jake Packard
“Wrong, big fella. I’m in ‘our’ files. Like in ‘our’ shoot, like in what ‘our’ team recorded today, like in ‘our’ transmission. I guess the question that is being examined is why the footage you shot this morning, while in and around all kinds of hell breaking loose, all the great action you love like cops beating on kids, bullets hitting bodies, you know, the stuff you call the news. There is no indication of any of that in what you shot.”
Both watched as a still frame of the confusion in the crowd at the parking lot that morning flickered on the monitor and displayed on the screen. A radiant white light streamed out from a partially opened prison door in the background. Then the picture disappeared into its electronic file and the computer continued its number-crunching gyrations.
“Wait a minute. What was that?” Branford looked at Herbie with a startled glimmer. “That wasn’t what I shot.”
“I know, even though it should have been. I’m applying a little program I figured out in the past before the blast. It’s a basic animation logarithm. Something they used to do for movies fifty years ago when they wanted to animate an object in a computer-generated universe. Granted this is much more difficult and time consuming, because it is trying to recreate a three-dimensional environment with interactivity from much less data.” Branford was now looking dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open but no insults able to be emitted. “These results might look somewhat low resolution, but they might show something very revealing.”
Again, Branford made no reply, so Herbie stayed on the attack. “Basically, by putting together two different points of view, one from the video recorded by my headbandcam, and the other from your dumb ass camera, including the important few seconds when you drifted off the podium, this animation engine is able to predict and recreate in 3D, the actual events that were going on in the riot, which you were supposed to be shooting, but obviously did not.”
They exchanged wary glances at each other. “So maybe now you can explain that to me. How did you miss all of that, Chief?”
“We were there to shoot Salem’s release.”
“We were there to shoot the news. The news means that there is no script or prefabrication of the actual events. We are professional reporters and are supposed to report what actually happens. Not what somebody who is paying you behind the scenes wants to see.”
“Slow down, what are you implying here, Herbie?”
Herbie pressed on. “I guess that’s not the kind of news General Pellet had in mind. And don’t look at me with those blank eyes. We are supposed to work with what is called professional ethics. How did you become so incredibly obvious and stupid today of all days? I wonder what Marty and Ira are going think if they find out about this breach of conduct.”
“Marty and Ira don’t run this show as much as you think they do.”
“Oh, really?” Herbie smirked. “This is getting more interesting by the minute. Well, how about Maria and Jerry? They may not be your bosses, but they are on your team. They already know how you left their asses out on a sling this morning. And you know what else I think? I think they already know who you really are, even if they haven’t really thought about it.”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me. The General gave me orders. You can’t mess with him.”
“You are really in this deep. All right for you, but I can’t leave my sense of morality and professionalism out of this like you have. For my own personal curiosity, I want to know what happened out there. There was something very unusual going on. I felt it. But no thanks to you, the only man with a real video camera for miles around, the empirical data is sketchy at best. However, maybe this little animation will help.”
As if on cue, the computer suddenly beeped, signaling completion of the animation. The screen reverted back to the desktop. It now displayed a small window with video controls. Herbie reached for the mouse. “Waddaya think dude, want to take a look now or, would you rather keep your head in the sand, your ass in the air, and those butt cheeks spread open wide for your boyfriend, General Rodney Pellet?”
“Go ahead, I got nothing to be afraid of. Who’s gonna believe all this shit anyway from a drunk like you?”
The interface was simple. Center screen was the virtual video, which was the computer-interpolated version of the event. Around it were smaller screens from the actual sources and the virtual sources the computer had to construct to create the final three-dimensional version. The genius lay with the interactivity. The operator could change the point of view of the virtual cameras, thereby getting a full forensic, three-dimensional perspective of a partially recorded event. The computer filled in the gaps. At least two real recorded points of view were the necessary input for the program to work, and Herbie hoped Branford’s absent-minded little dip off the podium gave him enough footage to work with.
He clicked the play button and the movie started. Herbie began the clip from Branford’s original point of view, but with the perspective zoomed in as if it was originating from on the podium itself. On the center screen the doors of the prison were opening, with the white light pouring out. Some strange-looking men emerged. There was one in particular, patch-eyed and scar-faced, who approached the officials. He seemed sincere in his interest to help them. He said something, but what it was would take many more hours to calculate. The computer would have to sift over and over again through the thousands of sounds that were recorded at the same time on the single track of audio, and then commit to the mammoth task of isolating what he said from the thousands of noise sources in the scene. Herbie made a mental note to remember to do a re-render overnight to include that audio separation.
The man shifted his good eye down towards the crowd in the parking lot. Herbie hit a key and the point of view of the clip switched to a virtual camera matching what the patch-eyed man on the podium saw. A white woman in a black overcoat with long braided gray hair stared towards the back of the parking lot. She stood there absorbed, motionless, not looking or even caring about the action back on the podium. The people all around her also faced away from the the charade going on at the front of the prison. They stood transfixed on something at the back end of the parking lot.
Herbie jumped on another button that gave him the virtual point of view of the gray-haired woman in the crowd. The computer showed the backs of the heads of a great mass of people frozen in their tracks, staring off in the distance, where a noticeable haze glistened with a distinct yellowish glow.
Confused, thinking maybe the computer made an error, Herbie hit another button and pulled the camera position far enough back to observe the entire scene in one lateral view.
In the rear of the parking lot, up by the ramp to the highway, an unexplainable cone shaped fog radiated an uncanny golden light. It gleamed as if on fire.
The computer froze up.
Both men stood agape, staring at the screen, speechless by the weight of thought in their conscious minds.
On instinct, needing to change the space, Herbie stepped back from the frozen image on the monitor and over to the room’s only window.
Reality check. He looked out from the editing suite at the ABCNN building on 62nd Street, only one block away from the no-man’s land that separated Shantypark from the rest of the city. Desperate for some fresh air, Herbie opened the window and stuck his head out into the winter’s first twilight, the chilly air on the back of his neck felt foreboding.
Branford, unwelcomed, followed him. He too poked his head out from the other side of the same open window, visibly perplexed, disturbed.
The two constant enemies watched each other with distrust from the edges of their periphery, the mist from their breath dissipating into the evening cold.
Herbie’s common sense tried hard to consider the day’s inexplicable events - Maria, the wormhole, the music, the fog, memories of Bullmoose, and the scene on the screen.
And now, as they stared off in the distance over the forbidden turf of Shantypark, a well-defined cone of yellowish fog ema
nated with a golden glow in the air.
“It’s just some low-level clouds out there, Herbie,” Branford said, almost whispering, almost hoping. “That’s what it is. There’s just a lot of mist on the ground, and some damn fool in Shantypark must have gotten hold of some black market pyrotechnic junk and just lit the shit up. Fireworks make everything look spooky.”
Herbie stared at the distinct golden glow. It shimmered not that far away in the early winter evening, as if made of flame. But it did not burn.
* * * * *
Reginald Square
The twilight just after sundown always brought a freakish holiday feel to Shantypark. Most people celebrated just being one more day alive. To the predators, the action and danger of nighttime made them tingle in anticipation.
At this time of early darkness, the night people started to creep in. The revelers, the beggars, the hookers of all kinds and their pimps, the drug buyers and the drug dealers, all made the rounds of the makeshift black market kiosks, mostly boards supported by empty milk cartons. They bought and sold batteries, cosmetics, disposable phones, and any other obtainable contraband smuggled in through the tunnels.
And of course, there was the ubiquitous sick and the almost dead, beginning the nightly challenge to see if they could make it through to the next morning.
Several months after the initial radiation killed off so many, leaving thousands of others sick and scores of thousands of others homeless, the wounded Federal Government gave the states the rights to create refugee camps on public land. Countless homeless, infected, and those already terminal with the new strains of AIDS, flocked to Central Park in Manhattan and dug in like a modern day Hooverville, putting up tents and shacks and calling it home.
During the first truce between the gangs and the city, Mayor Storm formed the New York City defense team, basically a ragged consortium of surviving city employees, police, firemen, and sanitation workers. Through the Mayor’s inspiration and leadership, they put up huge concrete and steel walls around Central Park. The barricades followed the old stonewalls that bordered the park for generations.
The walls stood as a nominal symbol of division and restraint between the remaining material society and the completely disenfranchised. But, the elaborate system of tunnels that had been burrowed under the city centuries before for the purposes of bringing water, power, and transportation became underground passageways where criminals and terrorists could easily travel to and from Shantypark with ease. From within these tunnels they staged brazen raids on the so-called legitimate society for which they had great contempt. This created a new kind of homegrown fear, which over time grew in size leading to the second great gang war.
The Alliance brought in the First Army under the leadership of General Pellet to quell the violence. He smart bombed certain key buildings near 59th street and then invaded Shantypark. He made short work of the resisting gangs. This led to the second truce, when an amendment to Code 7 made it a capital offense for Shantypark residents to be found outside the walls. The proliferation of biopod technology made it easy for the army to identify perpetrators. The laser powered blood tests revealed instant results about a person’s health and genetic condition. The death sentence followed for escapees from Shantypark, without appeal.
Now the tunnels became passageways for smuggling goods, drugs, and alcohol into Shantypark for sale on the black market. Squads of squirrel killers, the name everyone called the soldiers of Pellet’s First Army, patrolled the entrances to these tunnels. Most of them were on the take, and the others had a tacit understanding and looked the other way, helping create an underground economy that in its own corrupted way helped keep the peace.
The area just north of the mall, right by the old band shell became known as Reginald Square, named after Reginald Deforest, one of the original founding fathers of Shantypark, and an undisputed and self-anointed imperial gangster.
During the bombings, when those who wanted to survive had to find shelter underground, Reginald went on a violent murderous spree. Through brute force, a multitude of grisly assassinations of rival gang leaders, and other macabre terror tactics he learned growing up watching the western media and surfing through the Internet, he forced together a coalition of gangs. He established territories for each, thereby creating what is still the ethnic map of Shantypark. A very bad man to most, but in his own sick, violent, and egomaniacal way, he helped Shantypark find a way to coexist in its own unique cultural diversity. He became instrumental in the turnover of control of Shantypark from the Mayor to the Gang Council.
One morning a jealous girlfriend high on smizz killed him by ripping his testicles off with her teeth. He bled to death while unconscious after a binge of designer drugs and bootleg Jim Beam while she tried to tape them back on. Shantypark named this de facto meeting ground and makeshift bazaar near the band shell in his honor.
The loyalties within the coalition shifted from issue to issue, sometimes by popular will, sometimes by the wishes and vagaries of the individual gang leaders, but mostly along racial and ethnic lines. This made finding consensus in the Gang Council difficult, which in turn kept the tension level in Shantypark explosive. Each gang’s turf touched Reginald Square, and here their deals went down.
At this hour of night the gangs prepared for vigilance. They cruised through Reginald showing their strength, displaying automatic weapons, sizing up their share of the black market business going on, and making sure no one stepped too far out of line. They pulled up the collars on their winter coats, and readied themselves for another night amidst the outcasts, the lawless, and the soon to be dead.
But that night in Reginald Square, at the beginning of the longest night of the year, an indescribable motion sifted through the trees, making the leafless branches whistle in the wind. In the last fading snippets of sunlight, some Shantypark residents lifted their eyes to the sky, sensing something new and inscrutable settling in on the blowing breeze.
* * * * *
Maria’s Messages
The final gasps of the first winter sunset reflected off the hammerhead storm clouds swimming angrily in the sky. Maria closed the drapes on her bay window and stepped away from the privileged view twenty-two stories high up off the East Side streets.
Disconsolate, she refused to answer her phone, reply to texts or emails, or even look at any of the social media sites she starred on.
She just witnessed unapologetic, cold-blooded, and repressive modern-day riot control. Easy for Pellet to get away with, she knew, since society no longer had any official instrument in place for a legal review or even a reprimand. The infamous Python Corps, Pellet’s special rapid response division, brutalized New Yorkers once again, leaving a body count of one hundred and sixty-three.
Maria felt sick. Being the sole authorized newscaster on site today, her report played again and again all over the globe to over-the-top ratings. But after seeing the edited version she felt embarrassed to be a part of it. ABCNN only aired her opening, cutting when Salem did not appear. No indication of the pandemonium in the parking lot, no mention of the police brutality, and no reference to that golden fog.
As the prime recipients of the profits, Marty and Ira thought it great news. “What happened to their idealism? What happened to the esprit de corps amongst journalists in the heat of the hunt for a story?” Maria almost shouted out loud.
“And what was that with Herbie?” she whispered into the hanging mirror above her armoire housing her wine collection.
But now, home alone, she felt dysfunctional, weak, and at a loss at to what to do in her own advantaged living space.
She opened a bottle of red wine, poured a glass, and took a long swallow. Entwining her fingers around the bottom of her goblet, she danced the salsa across the floor as the character she played in that ancient soap opera in which used to perform at the beginning of her career. The young vixen who seduced corporate giants with her feminine wiles making their wives’ personal worlds intolerable. The ser
ies still played as reruns in most areas of Brazil between Sao Paulo and Rio, when they had electricity. She used to get a laugh when she saw them on the monitors in the origination center, in the early days before her rise to prime time, when she video-jocked for various markets in Latin America, in between the global disasters and the subsequent brownouts.
She sat down at her French Country desk. The one she bought on impulse, overpriced in a Sotheby’s low-radiation closeout. It had languished in the blast’s fringe area in a three story townhouse for a long time, until safe enough to take out and bargain off. The original owners now gone forever, relatives unable to be found. So many stories.
She stared at the icon on her computer screen, blinking red, warning her and enticing her at the same time. Phone messages, it said.
Torn between intellect and instinct, control and curiosity, she finally found herself unable to resist, so she finished the wine and placed the challis on the desk. She hit the recall button.
The first graphic page popped up indicating the time, place of call, and the face of the caller.
Jerry’s friendly face began to talk in the window. “I’m sorry to bother you at home, kid, but I do know your recognition codes. What can I say that I didn’t already say a million times at the office? I am truly sorry today turned out the way it did for you. However, on the brighter side, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t great news. Not only were the ratings on the live transmission a grand slam, but the reruns and follow-ups are being demanded at all-time highs. Your agent will like those numbers, so will your accountant, and so will Marty and Ira. Some say it was the most watched news clip of all time. Even more than Zapruder, or when Armstrong stepped onto the moon. The estimates are that everyone in the world saw your face within five hours of the original transmission.”
