"Actually, it is, sort of," Phoebe said lightly. She gestured for Alphon to continue and braced herself as high against the rear of the pod as she could, while describing an ancient game that her mother had once showed her. It was a physics simulator that could be set for any number of environments. The one she'd enjoyed the most as a kid was a reverse-gravity setup, which was a lot like trying to build something underwater with some pieces that floated, and others that sank.
The water was up past Alphon's ankles when he cranked the door shut again and looked around. The pod was still canted at a slight angle, but was nearly level. "All right," he said. "We're there. In a way, we're sitting at the top of the mountain, just before the avalanche lets loose. This thing's still buoyant enough to rise if it weren't for the tube holding us down, and we're balanced on the edge. If we can get your end to slip a little further against the inside of the tube, we'll slide out and up to the surface."
"And how, exactly," Mayzee asked, now wholly entranced with Phoebe's vision of their situation as a real-life puzzle game, "do we do that?"
"Simple," Phoebe answered. "We jump. All three of us at once."
Alphon joined them at the rear of the pod, and together they bounced up and down in unison, until suddenly the pod shifted again, and the front became the highest point. The sound of the roof of the pod scraping against the edge of the tube moved further and further towards the rear, and then it stopped entirely as the pod floated free of the tube and began to wobble as it found its center of mass.
"See?" he said, elated. "I told you we could get out of there."
"There is one other minor problem," Phoebe reminded him. "How are we going to--?" Her question was cut short by a sudden movement, as the pod was clearly being lifted by something.
He grinned. "I think that's been taken care of."
A few minutes later, the pod was set down, the gull-wing doors started to lift and the water poured out. Before they had opened completely, Phoebe ducked out and looked around. The shadow of the giant construction claw looming over the pod reflected the foreboding in her gut. Like the avalanche that Alphon had alluded to, a chain of events had been set in motion that was beyond her control, and she was now in the center of them. It was work that her mother had begun, and that she was now firmly in the grasp of. And just as the pod had been lifted free of disaster by other hands than hers, so was her fear of following in her mother's footsteps lifted free of the cage that Alex had lured her into. She steeled herself to whatever lay ahead, and demanded that Mayzee be immediately taken to the nearest hospital. While that was being seen to, the crush of reporters, bloggers and citizen journalists closed in and started firing questions at her.
"Hold it, hold it," she laughed. "One at a time." She scanned the faces arrayed before her and pointed at a middle-aged woman wearing a head-mounted A/V kit and a New Orleans press ID, a woman whose intensity reminded her of her own mother's when she escaped her own captivity. "How about you first?" The other reporters acceded to Phoebe's choice, and held their own questions while she described the vidgame they'd emulated in order to free the pod.
Alphon, who had put his borrowed sunglasses back on, stood quietly beside Phoebe and listened to the exchange. When Phoebe finished describing how she felt while they were bouncing the pod to freedom, the reporter suddenly stopped mid-sentence and peered at him curiously. "I haven't asked for your names," she said cryptically, "and I think you know why."
He remained impassive, but said nothing.
"So let me ask you directly. Are you Alphon Quince?"
He removed his glasses and nodded. "First of all," he said, "I'm no terrorist. It's my job to analyze impending failures in the public infrastructure. That's what I was doing the day the Golden State Barrage collapsed. It wasn't blown up by terrorists; certainly not me, and not anyone else, either. It failed for one reason, and one reason alone: because the oceans have responded to what mankind has done to the planet. It failed because the resins holding it together were eaten by mutant bacteria, the same bacteria that weakened the supports holding up these HyperLink tubes, and which will destroy anything else they get on that's made with resin. That means virtually everything in the modern world. But it didn't have to be this way. Oakland didn't have to be drowned. Forty years ago, a biological counteragent was developed, a counteragent that was suppressed by the same corporate and banking interests that have profited from encouraging the pollution that has plunged this planet into a vicious cycle of warming which made it necessary to have built the Barrage in the first place."
When he stopped to catch his breath, the reporters pressed closer and peppered him with questions. While he was answering, his phone rang, so he handed it to Phoebe and continued to make his case.
She ducked back inside the pod and took the call. "That you, Ferd?"
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
