☂ Forecast ☁
30◄
32►
Forecast is my clever pal Shya Scanlon's weekly serialized book. It has been dealt out in chapters to places all over the web. Click above for the previous & next Chapter. I'm happy to now share with you Chapter
31▼
Since The Brightening began, each of Zara's trips downtown was different than the last. The streets were being cleaned, the vegetation was being trimmed back like pubic hair before a first date, and the street lights, burning with newly harvested Buzz, began running day and night. Though confronted by it daily, Zara had monitored the development with detachment. But as the city gained momentum and more people took part, the change became more radical, and impossible to dismiss. The numbers increased, and the workers, everywhere forcing their bodies against the waning traces of nature, were joined by increasingly large and complicated machinery, their machetes and shovels replaced by lawnmowers and tractors. In the beginning, this machinery had to be directly adjacent to a stationary ETM or the ETM had to be on a trailer, but the entire operation was becoming more mobile every day, and the limit to what could be powered by emotion was every day extended.
Zara fought the weather west down toward the bay and into the city, passing by men manning large vehicles that hadn't been used in two decades. The trucks were rusty and loud. Teams of people ripped up the road in huge chunks to cut back roots that were pushing up the asphalt like veins on the back of a hand. A vehicle with a long arm holding a man at the end gurgled noisily next to a row of tall trees, and branches fell into the street as the man used a loud mechanical saw to untangle old power lines. The long arm swayed in the wind, but the vehicle stood unmoved. Zara walked past all this without masking her interest. She craned her neck to see down into the street. She stared at the men, whose focus she found a little thrilling. The rain came down, and across, and covered their coveralls in a darker version of the Seattle blue and green they'd been just minutes before. She could almost see these men thinking without words, simply picturing how things had to look and slowly pushing the soil to resemble their vision. They wrestled with it, and the weather fought with them playfully like laughter from the tickled earth. They prodded and poked, windblown, wet. Zara scanned the faces of the workers with more than a little interest in who'd be seeing her strip, and as though sensing her thoughts, a few men standing close to an enormous crane watched her walk by and whistled.
“Hey baby, don't get too wet!” One called.
“Not unless it's because of me,” another said, and they erupted into laughter. Zara smiled and shook her head. The men were soaked, tired, and at ease. They looked back down into their hole. It began to hail.
Zara soon came to an overpass that crossed I-5, a long strip of street that had been a no-man's land as long as she could remember. The wide street sank below the surface of the earth in some parts and in others rose above it on stilts - either way it offered few opportunities to exit, and because of this, was only traveled by day or by dare. It had always been one of her favorite spots in the city.
Now, however, it shone up at her, wet with rain, and clean, wiped clear of all that had made it seem dangerous. She stood against the guard rail with her fingers through the metal mesh fence, embarrassed for the naked pavement. There was something discourteous about cutting away the natural growth that had worked so hard to cover up the ugly grey scar. It was absurd, and looking down on the spectacle exacerbated her frustration at the task before her, something that increasingly seemed to be more confessional than informational. Was she asking Asseem permission to strip? Did his opinion matter at all? Her stupid mother's words crept into her thoughts, uninvited, and began to do some damage. Yes, they'd spent countless hours deconstructing social norms, local attitudes, and what was left of “polite society.” Yes, they'd ridiculed their parents, upset racial and gender-based stereotypes both in theory and in practice, and had generally done their best, in the short time they'd known each other, to support one another's attempts to completely sever ties, moral and otherwise, from the social codes they'd inherited. Yes. But hadn't Asseem, on a couple of occasions, been a little reluctant to completely abandon the tyrannical and obsessive conclusions his father had drawn about the contemporary culture? True, Zara didn't necessarily approve of certain trends that had been emerging since Emotional Transfer had been introduced - the highway below her a prime example - but her misgivings were rooted in an anarchic defiance of bureaucracy, not in a judgmental, fascist rejection of people's self-empowerment through technology. When that empowerment was organized, there was a fine line, but still…
The wind swirled around her and the rain found ways inside her shell. Zara noticed that her knuckles where white, and relaxed her grip on the fence. She glanced toward downtown, ever brighter, and, for a moment, felt her disdain for its new direction soften. She considered the tall glass buildings, their panels being slowly replaced by crews just happy to be working, to be building, to be recovering their city and their lives, and just as she was about to turn around and head home, she heard her name called by a familiar voice.
“Zara,” the voice called again, muffled by the wind and rain.
Across the street, ascending from the depths of the city, a tall, stooped figure was waving, a long thin arm jutting up from a featureless stripe of dark brown coat, drenched. Zara knew she knew the voice, but she couldn't place it, and she strained to make out the face inside the hood. The man drew closer, walking awkwardly against the weather, and when just out of arm's reach he reached up and pulled back the soggy hood to reveal a wet mass of tangled, ratty, but still intensely orange hair. It was Handpepper.
Not put-off so much as surprised, Zara stood for a moment speechless. The wind, just then, was blowing the rain sideways against them, and they leaned up the hill a bit to counter it. Handpepper held up a palm to guard his face, which still wore a pained expression in response to the storm.
“We've missed you in class!” he said loudly. He tried to smile.
“What are you doing?” Zara countered. She hoped she stressed the words correctly to indicate an innocent request for information, but she feared it may have come off rudely, as though she were drawing his whole life into question, there, on the overpass.
There was a slightly too long pause. Handpepper, Zara noticed, seemed to be twitching.
“I just saw Asseem!” Handpepper shouted. He seemed desperate.
Zara opened her mouth to respond but the wind suddenly shifted to the north, causing Handpepper to lean forward, and Zara, who, despite standing on a curb, was still significantly shorter than her former teacher, to lean back. The result was that Handpepper was practically on top of her. This seemed to make him more uncomfortable than it made Zara, and he folded his arms behind his back. Zara looked up at him and smiled.
“You should come see me dance,” she suddenly said. With the wind coming from behind her, it carried her words easily, and she could speak at a normal volume.
He glanced toward downtown.
“What do you mean?”
“This Thursday,” Zara said. “At Knuckle's new place.” She assumed that'd be enough information. “The Dirty Doghouse?”
Handpepper's eyes widened. “Oh, well, I…” he stammered, before shrugging, and looked at his watch. Then the wind changed again, and the two swirled around with it, until it had entirely reversed, leaving Zara on top, looking down, if a little up and out, at this unbearably awkward man.
“It's at eight,” she said. “You can bring your wife, if you want.”
This brought a pained expression to Handpepper's face that reminded Zara of the one he wore in class. She flashed on what he might be wearing under his clothes, and felt vaguely ashamed at her suggestion. Outside the classroom, she realized, this poor man beneath her was robbed entirely of what little power he had between the school bells. Reminding him of his wife under these conditions was tantamount to kicking him while he was down. And however much she rejected his masochistic powerlessness for herself, Zara could not rid herself of a sympathetic impulse to spare him any undue humiliation. All this traveled through her head as she gazed down at Handpepper's pathetic expression, and while trying to decide whether or not to correct her invitation in some way that might seem more empowering, the wind gave one final burst, against which they leaned, farther down now, Zara imposingly positioned over Handpepper's practically supine body, and then gave out altogether, leaving them to topple into the street.
Zara bounced back up quickly - her agile body brushing itself off reflexively, and without any fuss. By contrast, Handpepper was, a full minute later, still on the ground, frozen in a slightly frightened state. He'd managed to cross his arms between them as they fell, and his little bony fists twitched in the wet mess of his old, ugly coat.
“Sorry!” he finally called out, a little too loudly.
Zara stood over him and extended a hand, careful to move slowly so he didn't interpret her behavior as aggression.
“C'mon,” she said. “I'm walking your way.”
She hadn't actually made the decision until she said it, but at that moment something small but significant changed within her. She wasn't going to tell Asseem about her agreement with Knuckle, she wasn't going to invite him to see her dance. If he found out about it and came, great, more power to him. Besides, she'd heard the rumor circulating about how he was abusing the emotional transfer process in some way. There wasn't a name for it yet, but it was strange and made her nervous.
Handpepper reluctantly let himself be helped up by this student he'd always admired, secretly, and he brushed himself off while she watched. Of course he was going to see Zara strip. He'd heard about Knuckle's new venture, and as it was the only openly kinky thing going in town, he'd already decided to become a regular. The opportunity to see a student stripped bare of the petulant little disguises they wore only cemented his decision into determination. That it was, of all his students, Zara, was almost too much to fathom at the moment. He decided not to think about how his wife would handle the information.
Zara, likewise, decided not to belabor the point. The rain, following the wind's lead, slacked, and patches of sun began to break through the low-lying clouds, and the two squinted, and started silently trudging up away from the city toward Capitol Hill. They passed the workers Zara had only just passed in the opposite direction, and Zara wondered what comments they'd have for her in the presence of Handpepper--a “father-daughter” theme might embarrass him beyond any further interaction--but they were too intent on their tasks to notice her this time. They didn't pause, but peered down hole being dug in the street, and exchanged faces expressing the persistent strangeness of having loud, mechanical objects in their midst.
“It's very exciting,” Handpepper said, flinching at the machines' abrupt movement, “but I must say I'm still not used to it.”
“I'm not sure I want to be,” Zara said.
Handpepper was far more at ease now that there was no more imminent physical contact. He quickly took on the playful, gaming attitude he used in class to spur discussion--the same attitude that usually inspired only ridicule, but which he nonetheless continued to stand by, as though certain his class would come around.
“Oh come on,” he chided. “You sound like Asseem.”
“Fuck off,” Zara said. It was a reflex response, and she probably would have chosen her words more carefully given a second chance, but she stood her ground. They walked for a few steps in silence.
“You're no longer my student,” Handpepper finally said. “Out here, you can speak to me however you'd like to speak.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said. This wasn't going well, but she couldn't give in now.
“I just thought you had more class.”
Zara decided to cut her losses. Handpepper was right, of course - her opinion about Emotional Transfer, though never very high to begin with, was undoubtedly affected by Asseem's categorical demonization of the technology. He was also right about her treatment of him. It hadn't been more than five minutes since she'd taken pity on his relationship with his wife, and now she was defending a statement she should have simply apologized for. Zara turned coldly toward the disapproving man, hoping her eyes would betray her.
“Hey, I've gotta go,” she said. She began to back away from him, maintaining eye contact. “If you come Thursday, I guess I'll see you.”
Handpepper watched her walk off, puzzled. I doubt he perceived her regret at having behaved the way she did. I'm not sure anyone would have. He was sorry to see her go despite how he'd been treated, and he cursed himself for having condescended to her.
“I'll be there,” Handpepper called out after her, as she turned the corner at the end of the block.
32►
Forecast is my clever pal Shya Scanlon's weekly serialized book. It has been dealt out in chapters to places all over the web. Click above for the previous & next Chapter. I'm happy to now share with you Chapter
31▼
Since The Brightening began, each of Zara's trips downtown was different than the last. The streets were being cleaned, the vegetation was being trimmed back like pubic hair before a first date, and the street lights, burning with newly harvested Buzz, began running day and night. Though confronted by it daily, Zara had monitored the development with detachment. But as the city gained momentum and more people took part, the change became more radical, and impossible to dismiss. The numbers increased, and the workers, everywhere forcing their bodies against the waning traces of nature, were joined by increasingly large and complicated machinery, their machetes and shovels replaced by lawnmowers and tractors. In the beginning, this machinery had to be directly adjacent to a stationary ETM or the ETM had to be on a trailer, but the entire operation was becoming more mobile every day, and the limit to what could be powered by emotion was every day extended.
Zara fought the weather west down toward the bay and into the city, passing by men manning large vehicles that hadn't been used in two decades. The trucks were rusty and loud. Teams of people ripped up the road in huge chunks to cut back roots that were pushing up the asphalt like veins on the back of a hand. A vehicle with a long arm holding a man at the end gurgled noisily next to a row of tall trees, and branches fell into the street as the man used a loud mechanical saw to untangle old power lines. The long arm swayed in the wind, but the vehicle stood unmoved. Zara walked past all this without masking her interest. She craned her neck to see down into the street. She stared at the men, whose focus she found a little thrilling. The rain came down, and across, and covered their coveralls in a darker version of the Seattle blue and green they'd been just minutes before. She could almost see these men thinking without words, simply picturing how things had to look and slowly pushing the soil to resemble their vision. They wrestled with it, and the weather fought with them playfully like laughter from the tickled earth. They prodded and poked, windblown, wet. Zara scanned the faces of the workers with more than a little interest in who'd be seeing her strip, and as though sensing her thoughts, a few men standing close to an enormous crane watched her walk by and whistled.
“Hey baby, don't get too wet!” One called.
“Not unless it's because of me,” another said, and they erupted into laughter. Zara smiled and shook her head. The men were soaked, tired, and at ease. They looked back down into their hole. It began to hail.
Zara soon came to an overpass that crossed I-5, a long strip of street that had been a no-man's land as long as she could remember. The wide street sank below the surface of the earth in some parts and in others rose above it on stilts - either way it offered few opportunities to exit, and because of this, was only traveled by day or by dare. It had always been one of her favorite spots in the city.
Now, however, it shone up at her, wet with rain, and clean, wiped clear of all that had made it seem dangerous. She stood against the guard rail with her fingers through the metal mesh fence, embarrassed for the naked pavement. There was something discourteous about cutting away the natural growth that had worked so hard to cover up the ugly grey scar. It was absurd, and looking down on the spectacle exacerbated her frustration at the task before her, something that increasingly seemed to be more confessional than informational. Was she asking Asseem permission to strip? Did his opinion matter at all? Her stupid mother's words crept into her thoughts, uninvited, and began to do some damage. Yes, they'd spent countless hours deconstructing social norms, local attitudes, and what was left of “polite society.” Yes, they'd ridiculed their parents, upset racial and gender-based stereotypes both in theory and in practice, and had generally done their best, in the short time they'd known each other, to support one another's attempts to completely sever ties, moral and otherwise, from the social codes they'd inherited. Yes. But hadn't Asseem, on a couple of occasions, been a little reluctant to completely abandon the tyrannical and obsessive conclusions his father had drawn about the contemporary culture? True, Zara didn't necessarily approve of certain trends that had been emerging since Emotional Transfer had been introduced - the highway below her a prime example - but her misgivings were rooted in an anarchic defiance of bureaucracy, not in a judgmental, fascist rejection of people's self-empowerment through technology. When that empowerment was organized, there was a fine line, but still…
The wind swirled around her and the rain found ways inside her shell. Zara noticed that her knuckles where white, and relaxed her grip on the fence. She glanced toward downtown, ever brighter, and, for a moment, felt her disdain for its new direction soften. She considered the tall glass buildings, their panels being slowly replaced by crews just happy to be working, to be building, to be recovering their city and their lives, and just as she was about to turn around and head home, she heard her name called by a familiar voice.
“Zara,” the voice called again, muffled by the wind and rain.
Across the street, ascending from the depths of the city, a tall, stooped figure was waving, a long thin arm jutting up from a featureless stripe of dark brown coat, drenched. Zara knew she knew the voice, but she couldn't place it, and she strained to make out the face inside the hood. The man drew closer, walking awkwardly against the weather, and when just out of arm's reach he reached up and pulled back the soggy hood to reveal a wet mass of tangled, ratty, but still intensely orange hair. It was Handpepper.
Not put-off so much as surprised, Zara stood for a moment speechless. The wind, just then, was blowing the rain sideways against them, and they leaned up the hill a bit to counter it. Handpepper held up a palm to guard his face, which still wore a pained expression in response to the storm.
“We've missed you in class!” he said loudly. He tried to smile.
“What are you doing?” Zara countered. She hoped she stressed the words correctly to indicate an innocent request for information, but she feared it may have come off rudely, as though she were drawing his whole life into question, there, on the overpass.
There was a slightly too long pause. Handpepper, Zara noticed, seemed to be twitching.
“I just saw Asseem!” Handpepper shouted. He seemed desperate.
Zara opened her mouth to respond but the wind suddenly shifted to the north, causing Handpepper to lean forward, and Zara, who, despite standing on a curb, was still significantly shorter than her former teacher, to lean back. The result was that Handpepper was practically on top of her. This seemed to make him more uncomfortable than it made Zara, and he folded his arms behind his back. Zara looked up at him and smiled.
“You should come see me dance,” she suddenly said. With the wind coming from behind her, it carried her words easily, and she could speak at a normal volume.
He glanced toward downtown.
“What do you mean?”
“This Thursday,” Zara said. “At Knuckle's new place.” She assumed that'd be enough information. “The Dirty Doghouse?”
Handpepper's eyes widened. “Oh, well, I…” he stammered, before shrugging, and looked at his watch. Then the wind changed again, and the two swirled around with it, until it had entirely reversed, leaving Zara on top, looking down, if a little up and out, at this unbearably awkward man.
“It's at eight,” she said. “You can bring your wife, if you want.”
This brought a pained expression to Handpepper's face that reminded Zara of the one he wore in class. She flashed on what he might be wearing under his clothes, and felt vaguely ashamed at her suggestion. Outside the classroom, she realized, this poor man beneath her was robbed entirely of what little power he had between the school bells. Reminding him of his wife under these conditions was tantamount to kicking him while he was down. And however much she rejected his masochistic powerlessness for herself, Zara could not rid herself of a sympathetic impulse to spare him any undue humiliation. All this traveled through her head as she gazed down at Handpepper's pathetic expression, and while trying to decide whether or not to correct her invitation in some way that might seem more empowering, the wind gave one final burst, against which they leaned, farther down now, Zara imposingly positioned over Handpepper's practically supine body, and then gave out altogether, leaving them to topple into the street.
Zara bounced back up quickly - her agile body brushing itself off reflexively, and without any fuss. By contrast, Handpepper was, a full minute later, still on the ground, frozen in a slightly frightened state. He'd managed to cross his arms between them as they fell, and his little bony fists twitched in the wet mess of his old, ugly coat.
“Sorry!” he finally called out, a little too loudly.
Zara stood over him and extended a hand, careful to move slowly so he didn't interpret her behavior as aggression.
“C'mon,” she said. “I'm walking your way.”
She hadn't actually made the decision until she said it, but at that moment something small but significant changed within her. She wasn't going to tell Asseem about her agreement with Knuckle, she wasn't going to invite him to see her dance. If he found out about it and came, great, more power to him. Besides, she'd heard the rumor circulating about how he was abusing the emotional transfer process in some way. There wasn't a name for it yet, but it was strange and made her nervous.
Handpepper reluctantly let himself be helped up by this student he'd always admired, secretly, and he brushed himself off while she watched. Of course he was going to see Zara strip. He'd heard about Knuckle's new venture, and as it was the only openly kinky thing going in town, he'd already decided to become a regular. The opportunity to see a student stripped bare of the petulant little disguises they wore only cemented his decision into determination. That it was, of all his students, Zara, was almost too much to fathom at the moment. He decided not to think about how his wife would handle the information.
Zara, likewise, decided not to belabor the point. The rain, following the wind's lead, slacked, and patches of sun began to break through the low-lying clouds, and the two squinted, and started silently trudging up away from the city toward Capitol Hill. They passed the workers Zara had only just passed in the opposite direction, and Zara wondered what comments they'd have for her in the presence of Handpepper--a “father-daughter” theme might embarrass him beyond any further interaction--but they were too intent on their tasks to notice her this time. They didn't pause, but peered down hole being dug in the street, and exchanged faces expressing the persistent strangeness of having loud, mechanical objects in their midst.
“It's very exciting,” Handpepper said, flinching at the machines' abrupt movement, “but I must say I'm still not used to it.”
“I'm not sure I want to be,” Zara said.
Handpepper was far more at ease now that there was no more imminent physical contact. He quickly took on the playful, gaming attitude he used in class to spur discussion--the same attitude that usually inspired only ridicule, but which he nonetheless continued to stand by, as though certain his class would come around.
“Oh come on,” he chided. “You sound like Asseem.”
“Fuck off,” Zara said. It was a reflex response, and she probably would have chosen her words more carefully given a second chance, but she stood her ground. They walked for a few steps in silence.
“You're no longer my student,” Handpepper finally said. “Out here, you can speak to me however you'd like to speak.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said. This wasn't going well, but she couldn't give in now.
“I just thought you had more class.”
Zara decided to cut her losses. Handpepper was right, of course - her opinion about Emotional Transfer, though never very high to begin with, was undoubtedly affected by Asseem's categorical demonization of the technology. He was also right about her treatment of him. It hadn't been more than five minutes since she'd taken pity on his relationship with his wife, and now she was defending a statement she should have simply apologized for. Zara turned coldly toward the disapproving man, hoping her eyes would betray her.
“Hey, I've gotta go,” she said. She began to back away from him, maintaining eye contact. “If you come Thursday, I guess I'll see you.”
Handpepper watched her walk off, puzzled. I doubt he perceived her regret at having behaved the way she did. I'm not sure anyone would have. He was sorry to see her go despite how he'd been treated, and he cursed himself for having condescended to her.
“I'll be there,” Handpepper called out after her, as she turned the corner at the end of the block.