[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts. Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts. This will continue from from where yesterday (Homeless Mo) left off.]
When Mo woke up, the world was not as she had envisioned it in the dark. They were not on grass, but on a section of what used to be grass, but was now scraped to dirt. There were more trees and many more transients than she had thought were around her. The night had closed in her perceptions; made her think that what was visible in the twenty feet that she could see was all that there was. Now, at seven in the morning, the park stretched across three blocks from the old courthouse[1] to the still used capital building[2]. The mile-high sky stretched overhead, hatched by contrails and the park grounds bustled.
From on top of and underneath every bench, people rose and stretched. They stood up from leaning on trees, dropped out of branches and rolled out of bushes. Many had tents, both actual and make-shift, that added nylon blues and reds and greens to the landscape. As this community emerged, they scratched and patted themselves. They relieved themselves with little or no regard for their own or others' privacy, and less for sanitation. But mostly, they eyed their neighbors with suspicion and double checked all of their possessions.
Mo and her three acquaintances were scrutinized with particular care. They stood out. It was not that their clothes were too clean: after two to three days in the cage with the bucket, their clothes were far from fresh. The same went for their bodies which had not be bathed in at least that long. Their hair and make-up and general 'aura' should have fit right in. And it would have if they had more of it. As far as Mo could tell, they were the only four people wearing only one set of clothes. They did not have a shopping cart or overloaded backpack or double hand full of bags. It made Mo feel under dressed.
Melissa was the first to speak. "What we need are antennas. But I'm at a loss as to how to get them when we can't pay with them through the network. I assume that all of yours were taken as well?"
Mo nodded, but Arthur looked away. "You still have yours?" Mo asked.
"Yeah. My glasses," he said. "I raised bloody hell when they tried to take them away. I can't see three feet without them. I guess they figured that I couldn't fit them through the cage mesh like I'm told you did."
Mo gave him a hard stare. "Why didn't you say something last night?"
"What would it have mattered?" He took the glasses off and polished them with his shirt. "Anything that I could have done through my connection would only have led them to us faster. I've turned off anything I've got that transmits. I'm still not sure that's enough."
Mo grimaced. Arthur was right. Transmission triangulation went back to the Second World War and packet sniffing started not long after. She knew a few ways around it, but each required specific hardware tools that she kept in her local storage. Arthur probably did not and there was no way for her to send them to him without her antennas. Suddenly, she wished that they had invented a surgically implantable memory card port. There were very few times that it would be more useful than cloud storage or P2P sharing, but when she needed it, she really needed it[3].
"Fine," she said. "I guess you're right, but I still think it was important for the rest of us to know all of our available assets." Then Mo glanced around. "Hey," she said. "Where's Darren?" It seemed to her that, when she awoke, he had still been on the ground with his back to her. Now he was gone. Arthur and Melissa also glanced about for a few seconds before Melissa spotted him walking towards them from across the park.
As he approached, Darren held up a small plastic bag and grinned. "Look what I found," he said. Mo looked closely through the clear plastic and saw four small metal bars. They were Melissa and her ear bar antennas.
"Goddam," said Mo. "Where the hell did you find those?"
Darren handed her the bag while he explained. "One of the more long term residents here was sorting through his trash pickings. He was trying to decide whether or not to keep the bag as I walked by. I offered him my socks for it and that was it. I'll figured dry feet was less important than all of us getting on-line." He looked at Arthur, "Sorry, but I don't think your antennas are in there." Arthur looked at Darren and tapped his glasses. "Ahh," said Darren. "Of course."
"Where did you go, anyway?" asked Mo.
"I decided that I wanted a bit more privacy than seems to be the local standard for my morning ablutions. I found a shady tree and did my business. It seemed a shame. I'm just old enough to remember this park when it was still a nice park and not a shanty town. There were flowers in the beds and the walkways were swept clean. I suppose that this is a better use of the space, but there's not much aesthetic to it anymore."
Mo glanced at the scenery again and shook her head. She had never seen this or any park without a homeless town on it. The federal government had declared all spaces like this as open places for people in need after the bio-tech bubble burst in 2021. Many hospitals and other care facilities had shut down because they could no longer afford the malpractice insurance, the health-care professionals (who all had to pay off under grad and graduate schools) and the medications. Especially for those without insurance. It had made a bad situation on the streets with the existing transients, illegal immigrants and low-level criminals worse by adding a large group in serious medical need. Those closures had included many of the therapeutic schools. If Mo had not been able to talk her mother into taking her back, she might well have been one of them.
Mo shook her head and tried to refocus. She looked at the antenna bars in her hand and then from one to the other of the three people she found herself colluding with. "Okay," she said. "Before I put these back in and unleash my virus passenger on the world, we probably need a plan. Any ideas?"
[1] As the middle class retreated to virtual space and kept their meat bodies locked in rooms locked in houses locked in gated communities, government bureaucracy followed suit. Now all of the county clerks and court administrators handled everything from their breakfast nooks in the pajamas. Even in those rare instances where the infraction could not be plead out or dismissed, everything was handled through Grype, the secure government video conferencing service. More than a few churches and other communities followed suit to the point where a couple could meet in a singles chat room, have virtual sex in a porn simulator, get a county clerk to issue them a marriage license, have a wedding ceremony and then a divorce all without leaving the comfort of their respective abodes. This not only happened, but happened often. Sometimes all of it in a single day.
[2] Even though nothing in the state constitution kept the state house and senate from conducting their business on-line, by unstated tradition (fetish?), all votes were still held live in the state building chambers.
[3] 'Johnny Mnemonic' took off as well IRL as it did in the theaters back in 1995.
