Dangerverse Chronicles - Fireworks in the Dark (chapter 11)
This is chapter 11 of my Dangerverse Chronicles, which can also be read separately, as it tells the story of NewsAGoGo (written before the SING video and the album release, should anyone wish to point out canon irregularities).
The previous installments of this fanfic have been posted in this community. I've been posting more regularly before, but once I've watched my story grow to some forty chapters, I decided not to clog up the community with it.
Should you be interested in the rest of the story, it can be found at its own page.
Title: Dangerverse Chronicles
Author: transnoctem
Rating: PG-13
POV (this chapter): NewsAGoGo
Disclaimer: This is a fanfic. The world is owned by MCR. I take no credit.
Summary: A collection of stories from the Dangerverse, told over a period of time and from a variety of POVs. This section can be read independently, if this is the first chapter of this fic that you've come across.
Fireworks In The Dark (11)
November 5, 2017, 5:50 am
Battery City Tower
Codename NewsAGoGo
I watch the darkness before my eyes. I never bothered bringing any source of light to the small curtained-off corner of the radio room where my bed stands. After all, what benefit is a nightlight to a very nearly blind man?
I sit up and reach out to the right, for the same three things I take off every night and put on every morning, laid out in the exact same order as before, in the exact same place as before.
My blindfold. Unlike many blind people, I am not covering my eyes to avoid traumatizing others with the sight they may find disturbing, but to shut off what little vision I do have in order to work. In my experience, barely seeing can be worse than being completely blind. One is constantly tempted to keep trying to focus with the eyes that one knows will not see any better, instead of using other, more reliable senses.
My headset. Two earpieces and a microphone, connected in a wireless contraption delicate to the touch. The guarantee that I can use one sense on which I had learned to rely over the years.
The headset on my head, I pause for a brief moment before reaching for the third item. Every morning, I am unable to banish the fear that this time, it won't be there when I reach for it. Every night, I have to struggle with myself to take it off, reasoning that sleeping in it would not only mess with my unconscious brain, but might damage the item itself. Calming my beating heart, I reach out and let out a breath the next moment. It's still here. Or they, rather. My gloves.
Not even gloves as such, merely a system of wires and pieces of metal, six on each glove, one for each finger and each palm, and a wristband to keep them affixed. I put them on, carefully, as always, and touch my index finger to the bed next to where I sit. I am immediately rewarded with a quiet hiss of static in my ears, while the darkness in front of my eyes flickers. Working as usual, then.
I get to my feet and walk to the main part of the room, shifting the curtain aside without letting the metal of the gloves touch it. Four steps straight ahead from my bed two before the curtain, two after and I extend my right hand, touching a screen on the wall.
"Terminating hibernation mode. Activating all systems," a pleasant androgynous voice sounds in my head, as my sight is filled with a series of rapidly moving progress bars and fluidly changing diagrams. Five more steps, opening my arms just a little at the end of the fifth one, brushing the sides of the entrance to the central part, just to make sure my sense of direction hasn't failed me.
"Overnight logs. Standing orders. Set-time transmissions. Official stations. Intercepted signals. Personal messages," the voice informs me as I touch various parts of the circular screen around me, text and images flashing before my eyes. There is only one screen I am interested in at this time, however.
"Emergency status stand by," I am informed. That's all I needed to know. I have no backlog, so bar emergencies, I now have a few hours to myself. I do my job well. Always. Working for Better Living Industries has been my life for the past five years. This company gave me employment and sustenance, and while not even they could restore my sight, they gave me the closest thing to it anyone could have.
And now I am going to betray them.
Ten years ago, I lost most of my sight. The last thing I remember seeing clearly is a nuclear blast. I saw nothing at all for a while after that. Hearing was my only link to the world, so I listened all the time, intently, often to things not meant for my ears. For example, a conversation between two voices male and female. The male voice used many complicated words I didn't understand at the time, but his last sentence was very clear.
"Otherwise, the damage will become irreversible."
The female voice seemed to cry more than speak, and I heard more intonations than words questioning, pleading but the end of her speech was quite clear as well.
"We don't have the money."
Five years ago, I stood in front of the Better Living Industries Head of Personnel. A teenager, not even of legal age, in the thickest glasses Battery City could make. (They were only enough to stop me from walking into walls, but in the all-white BL/ind building, even they didn't help much.) Asking for a job with the biggest, most influential corporation in the country, and willing to present cracked codes of intracompany transmissions to demonstrate his skill.
I knew that for what I had done, I would either get a job or go to jail. I got the job. BL/ind leading the blind. It was amusing even then.
Four years ago, I moved to live in the Battery City Tower, in the central broadcasting room I was by then firmly occupying on a permanent basis. I asked to exchange a portion of my substantial salary for some basic housekeeping service. I wasn't sure how much was deducted from my pay for the two meals a day and weekly laundry that I had asked for, but judging from the state of the bank account I had no use for, not much.
Two years ago, I was lazily surfing frequencies late at night when I heard something one wouldn't normally pick up on any Battery City station. Music. Not a commercial jingle or a primitive elevator tune, but a love song, something I could vaguely remember hearing as a child. I tried to take note of the frequency to be able to tune in to it later, but found that the corner of my projected sight where such information would normally appear was flashing random sequences of numbers instead of displaying a frequency. It didn't matter, I decided. All stations had digital signatures registered in my system. I would check it once the song was over.
Once the song was over, the station was gone. Mystified, I spent the next twenty-four hours digging through every log of every station of Battery City and the surrounding area to find mention of the song, or any music, being broadcasted at three in the morning. There was nothing. The following night, I tried to repeat the sequence of actions that seemed to have gotten me the music before. To no result. And the next night. Nothing. I kept reception open to every possible unoccupied frequency and a few I wasn't sure about. For two more nights, they gave me nothing but static.
On the third night, I was dozing in my chair at the workstation I hadn't slept properly ever since the mysterious song when an unfamiliar male voice came from the headset.
"You're tuned to 109 In The Sky."
Suddenly wide awake, I ran my glove-clad fingers over the screens, looking for the frequency value. For a moment, I suspected a system malfunction, as the man seemed to be broadcasting at four different frequencies at the same time. Once I found that disabling any one of them caused the signal to be interrupted, I had to conclude that no malfunction was present. The mystery speaker was using a covert broadcasting method yet unknown to me. Which was nearly impossible in and of itself.
Sleep was forgotten for another thirty hours, which I used to triangulate the locations of the broadcasting points and exceed my authority by accessing surveillance droids to check the locations found. The only equipment present in the area at the time of the broadcasts were the droids themselves. It was a dead end. Or so I thought for a moment. Because the next one, I realized something that I would not have even allowed myself to consider in a less sleep-deprived state. The broadcaster was using BL/ind's own surveillance droids as moving transmitters.
A year ago, I requested a personal meeting with my superiors and presented them with transcripts of transmissions I had picked up from a pirate station run by codename Dr DeathDefying. They were suitably impressed at the fact that my logs were the most comprehensive collection for the past year, particularly because the man's broadcasts were, according to the BL/ind, virtually impossible to pick up inside of Battery City. Not deliberately, at least. Blocking his signal from interrupting the official stations was another persisting problem. Needless to say, they were more than happy when I volunteered to track the pirate broadcaster down. If anyone could do it, I could.
Two months later, I was summoned and informed that all of my leads amounted to nothing, yet the effort was appreciated. I was suitably disappointed in front of the management, and suitably smug when talking to Dr DeathDefying that night. Given the amount of resources wasted by the company following the false trails set up by me across several states, it would be some time before they would send out another search party. It gave the two of us plenty of time to work on our common project, which took us both half a year to complete and fine-tune. It took me a few more months to upgrade the level of security of thought adjustment screens to a veritably impenetrable level. Save for a hole known to me alone, accessible by me alone, left by me personally where no one would ever look for it.
I touch a screen at random. The clock immediately appearing in the upper left corner of my blind sight is showing five minutes past six. In under two hours, thought adjustment screens will light up all across Battery City, in streets, offices, vehicles and homes, telling citizens about how perfect their lives are, how happy they are to be alive, how important it is to take their medication and work hard. It will be a standard government broadcast just like every day before that. With only one difference.
This morning, the Direct Access component of the message will not tune into the childlike part of the mind responsible for hopes and dreams and unquestioning trust of every word heard. Instead, it will activate the strongest of inner skeptics, the biggest doubts, the deepest fears. Instead of the usual open wide-eyed belief, the words will be met with vehement denial and revulsion, the kind that only a combination of the most outrageous lies can summon from a human being.
All this will happen once I activate the system to broadcast as usual. The tampered message is already inside has been there for a while, in fact. I could not risk setting it up in a hurry, not a message that could cause irreparable damage to its recipients if programmed improperly. But there is no risk at all to keeping it in the system, as nothing but my voice can activate it to replace the original Direct Access.
An hour and forty-five minutes left now. I decide to use that time to do some routine work and contemplate matters of ethics. Better Living Industries has brought me nothing but good. If it weren't for this company, I would be begging in the streets or dead by now. But it wasn't just about the roof over my head, or the overflowing bank account, or even the closest thing to having eyes again that they have given me. It was about self-worth, appreciation and the knowledge that I have gone from a crippled child to the youngest person to ever run Battery City Tower.
Yet I am going to help the rebels bring them down regardless. Because because why?..
I press my palm to my face and watch the blackness in front of my eyes go haywire, as every time the glove sensors come in contact with organic matter. Watching the only fireworks I will ever see, I try to understand why I am about to do what I am. The rebels out there have nothing to lose. That is not the case for me. I have so much to lose. So much. Everything, in fact. What is it that I'm apparently willing to sacrifice it all for?
I guess my real reason for doing all this is the one thing that BL/ind has never given me, or anyone else. The truth.
The previous installments of this fanfic have been posted in this community. I've been posting more regularly before, but once I've watched my story grow to some forty chapters, I decided not to clog up the community with it.
Should you be interested in the rest of the story, it can be found at its own page.
Title: Dangerverse Chronicles
Author: transnoctem
Rating: PG-13
POV (this chapter): NewsAGoGo
Disclaimer: This is a fanfic. The world is owned by MCR. I take no credit.
Summary: A collection of stories from the Dangerverse, told over a period of time and from a variety of POVs. This section can be read independently, if this is the first chapter of this fic that you've come across.
Fireworks In The Dark (11)
November 5, 2017, 5:50 am
Battery City Tower
Codename NewsAGoGo
I watch the darkness before my eyes. I never bothered bringing any source of light to the small curtained-off corner of the radio room where my bed stands. After all, what benefit is a nightlight to a very nearly blind man?
I sit up and reach out to the right, for the same three things I take off every night and put on every morning, laid out in the exact same order as before, in the exact same place as before.
My blindfold. Unlike many blind people, I am not covering my eyes to avoid traumatizing others with the sight they may find disturbing, but to shut off what little vision I do have in order to work. In my experience, barely seeing can be worse than being completely blind. One is constantly tempted to keep trying to focus with the eyes that one knows will not see any better, instead of using other, more reliable senses.
My headset. Two earpieces and a microphone, connected in a wireless contraption delicate to the touch. The guarantee that I can use one sense on which I had learned to rely over the years.
The headset on my head, I pause for a brief moment before reaching for the third item. Every morning, I am unable to banish the fear that this time, it won't be there when I reach for it. Every night, I have to struggle with myself to take it off, reasoning that sleeping in it would not only mess with my unconscious brain, but might damage the item itself. Calming my beating heart, I reach out and let out a breath the next moment. It's still here. Or they, rather. My gloves.
Not even gloves as such, merely a system of wires and pieces of metal, six on each glove, one for each finger and each palm, and a wristband to keep them affixed. I put them on, carefully, as always, and touch my index finger to the bed next to where I sit. I am immediately rewarded with a quiet hiss of static in my ears, while the darkness in front of my eyes flickers. Working as usual, then.
I get to my feet and walk to the main part of the room, shifting the curtain aside without letting the metal of the gloves touch it. Four steps straight ahead from my bed two before the curtain, two after and I extend my right hand, touching a screen on the wall.
"Terminating hibernation mode. Activating all systems," a pleasant androgynous voice sounds in my head, as my sight is filled with a series of rapidly moving progress bars and fluidly changing diagrams. Five more steps, opening my arms just a little at the end of the fifth one, brushing the sides of the entrance to the central part, just to make sure my sense of direction hasn't failed me.
"Overnight logs. Standing orders. Set-time transmissions. Official stations. Intercepted signals. Personal messages," the voice informs me as I touch various parts of the circular screen around me, text and images flashing before my eyes. There is only one screen I am interested in at this time, however.
"Emergency status stand by," I am informed. That's all I needed to know. I have no backlog, so bar emergencies, I now have a few hours to myself. I do my job well. Always. Working for Better Living Industries has been my life for the past five years. This company gave me employment and sustenance, and while not even they could restore my sight, they gave me the closest thing to it anyone could have.
And now I am going to betray them.
Ten years ago, I lost most of my sight. The last thing I remember seeing clearly is a nuclear blast. I saw nothing at all for a while after that. Hearing was my only link to the world, so I listened all the time, intently, often to things not meant for my ears. For example, a conversation between two voices male and female. The male voice used many complicated words I didn't understand at the time, but his last sentence was very clear.
"Otherwise, the damage will become irreversible."
The female voice seemed to cry more than speak, and I heard more intonations than words questioning, pleading but the end of her speech was quite clear as well.
"We don't have the money."
Five years ago, I stood in front of the Better Living Industries Head of Personnel. A teenager, not even of legal age, in the thickest glasses Battery City could make. (They were only enough to stop me from walking into walls, but in the all-white BL/ind building, even they didn't help much.) Asking for a job with the biggest, most influential corporation in the country, and willing to present cracked codes of intracompany transmissions to demonstrate his skill.
I knew that for what I had done, I would either get a job or go to jail. I got the job. BL/ind leading the blind. It was amusing even then.
Four years ago, I moved to live in the Battery City Tower, in the central broadcasting room I was by then firmly occupying on a permanent basis. I asked to exchange a portion of my substantial salary for some basic housekeeping service. I wasn't sure how much was deducted from my pay for the two meals a day and weekly laundry that I had asked for, but judging from the state of the bank account I had no use for, not much.
Two years ago, I was lazily surfing frequencies late at night when I heard something one wouldn't normally pick up on any Battery City station. Music. Not a commercial jingle or a primitive elevator tune, but a love song, something I could vaguely remember hearing as a child. I tried to take note of the frequency to be able to tune in to it later, but found that the corner of my projected sight where such information would normally appear was flashing random sequences of numbers instead of displaying a frequency. It didn't matter, I decided. All stations had digital signatures registered in my system. I would check it once the song was over.
Once the song was over, the station was gone. Mystified, I spent the next twenty-four hours digging through every log of every station of Battery City and the surrounding area to find mention of the song, or any music, being broadcasted at three in the morning. There was nothing. The following night, I tried to repeat the sequence of actions that seemed to have gotten me the music before. To no result. And the next night. Nothing. I kept reception open to every possible unoccupied frequency and a few I wasn't sure about. For two more nights, they gave me nothing but static.
On the third night, I was dozing in my chair at the workstation I hadn't slept properly ever since the mysterious song when an unfamiliar male voice came from the headset.
"You're tuned to 109 In The Sky."
Suddenly wide awake, I ran my glove-clad fingers over the screens, looking for the frequency value. For a moment, I suspected a system malfunction, as the man seemed to be broadcasting at four different frequencies at the same time. Once I found that disabling any one of them caused the signal to be interrupted, I had to conclude that no malfunction was present. The mystery speaker was using a covert broadcasting method yet unknown to me. Which was nearly impossible in and of itself.
Sleep was forgotten for another thirty hours, which I used to triangulate the locations of the broadcasting points and exceed my authority by accessing surveillance droids to check the locations found. The only equipment present in the area at the time of the broadcasts were the droids themselves. It was a dead end. Or so I thought for a moment. Because the next one, I realized something that I would not have even allowed myself to consider in a less sleep-deprived state. The broadcaster was using BL/ind's own surveillance droids as moving transmitters.
A year ago, I requested a personal meeting with my superiors and presented them with transcripts of transmissions I had picked up from a pirate station run by codename Dr DeathDefying. They were suitably impressed at the fact that my logs were the most comprehensive collection for the past year, particularly because the man's broadcasts were, according to the BL/ind, virtually impossible to pick up inside of Battery City. Not deliberately, at least. Blocking his signal from interrupting the official stations was another persisting problem. Needless to say, they were more than happy when I volunteered to track the pirate broadcaster down. If anyone could do it, I could.
Two months later, I was summoned and informed that all of my leads amounted to nothing, yet the effort was appreciated. I was suitably disappointed in front of the management, and suitably smug when talking to Dr DeathDefying that night. Given the amount of resources wasted by the company following the false trails set up by me across several states, it would be some time before they would send out another search party. It gave the two of us plenty of time to work on our common project, which took us both half a year to complete and fine-tune. It took me a few more months to upgrade the level of security of thought adjustment screens to a veritably impenetrable level. Save for a hole known to me alone, accessible by me alone, left by me personally where no one would ever look for it.
I touch a screen at random. The clock immediately appearing in the upper left corner of my blind sight is showing five minutes past six. In under two hours, thought adjustment screens will light up all across Battery City, in streets, offices, vehicles and homes, telling citizens about how perfect their lives are, how happy they are to be alive, how important it is to take their medication and work hard. It will be a standard government broadcast just like every day before that. With only one difference.
This morning, the Direct Access component of the message will not tune into the childlike part of the mind responsible for hopes and dreams and unquestioning trust of every word heard. Instead, it will activate the strongest of inner skeptics, the biggest doubts, the deepest fears. Instead of the usual open wide-eyed belief, the words will be met with vehement denial and revulsion, the kind that only a combination of the most outrageous lies can summon from a human being.
All this will happen once I activate the system to broadcast as usual. The tampered message is already inside has been there for a while, in fact. I could not risk setting it up in a hurry, not a message that could cause irreparable damage to its recipients if programmed improperly. But there is no risk at all to keeping it in the system, as nothing but my voice can activate it to replace the original Direct Access.
An hour and forty-five minutes left now. I decide to use that time to do some routine work and contemplate matters of ethics. Better Living Industries has brought me nothing but good. If it weren't for this company, I would be begging in the streets or dead by now. But it wasn't just about the roof over my head, or the overflowing bank account, or even the closest thing to having eyes again that they have given me. It was about self-worth, appreciation and the knowledge that I have gone from a crippled child to the youngest person to ever run Battery City Tower.
Yet I am going to help the rebels bring them down regardless. Because because why?..
I press my palm to my face and watch the blackness in front of my eyes go haywire, as every time the glove sensors come in contact with organic matter. Watching the only fireworks I will ever see, I try to understand why I am about to do what I am. The rebels out there have nothing to lose. That is not the case for me. I have so much to lose. So much. Everything, in fact. What is it that I'm apparently willing to sacrifice it all for?
I guess my real reason for doing all this is the one thing that BL/ind has never given me, or anyone else. The truth.