"Holy shit! Get up Ethan, you've got to check this out!"
For a moment, Ethan thought that the voice belonged to Holly, but then it all came back to him and he had to fight to keep from crying. Holly was dead, killed in the massacre. Other than that, all he knew was that his head felt like it had something tunneling through it and that it was way too fucking bright. If anything, he wished the headache was worse, anything would have been better than thinking about her.
"What is it?" he asked, crawling out of the unfamiliar bed to find Linden, Holly's best friend, sitting on the couch. She was clicking through the newspapers on the screen that took up most of the wall. He panicked, wondering what he had done, but then realized that he was still fully clothed.
"Oh, you're up. Here," she said, and changed tabs on the screen. "Isn't that cool?" It was a picture of him. Holding a length of pipe above his head. Then he noticed the headline:
Mob attacks National Guard Barracks, 38 Dead
"Is that . . ."
"You don't remember? Shit. Holly always said that you couldn't hold your liquor, but . . . damn."
The mention of Holly's name hit her like it had hit him, he could see it in her face. He wanted to go over and give her a hug, or squeeze her hand, or something, anything. But he couldn't. So he looked at the screen, instead, and tried to pretend that her suffering didn't exist.
Whatever it was that was happening, he was a part of it now.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
22.4.08
Uprising
As Ethan watched the live feed of the protest, he wondered if the speculation on the internet had been right, if the 10 year anniversary of the war would actually be a turning point. Someone had mashed on a crowd count algorithm and it was currently hovering around 235,000. The feed was jerky, bouncing from angle to angle as the mod drones that the protesters had set to cover the event were shot down by their military counterparts, but that just served to accent just how huge the protest was.
It was several minutes before the chaos of the crowd resolved itself it into meaningful patterns. There were currents of people circulating through the area, forming eddies around the food stands and other vendors, condensing around the bathrooms and the stage. By the time he had figured out the patterns of the protesters, the feed had found a vantage that was stable, probably a camera mounted on a balcony or something. The wide overhead shot quickly became boring, and so Ethan began to surf through the other sources.
There were a couple camera phones inside the crowd, but their perspective was too limited to provide any meaning. There were a couple from documentary film crews, hoping to be part of whatever was supposed to happen on the tenth anniversary of the war. Eventually, he found a shot that looked like it was from someone who was on the front line of the protest, pushing against the line of olive drab National Guard soldiers.
The soldiers were interesting to look at. In front were the ones with the riot gear, plastic shields and batons, but behind them were soldiers in full combat gear, some with combat shotguns and others with M16s held at a 45 degree angle towards the ground. He knew that this image or one like it would make the front pages of a dozen news aggregators in the next few hours, with white-haired grandfathers and tattooed college students standing shoulder to shoulder and pushing against the wall of homogenous soldiers. Ethan was just beginning to study the soldiers' blank faces when he saw one of the ones in the back row reeling from a bottle that had ricocheted off his helmet before shattering.
In the next few moments, before the video source was cut off, Ethan watched in disbelief as the soldier drew his rifle up to his shoulder and took aim at someone offscreen. Ethan watched as the soldier squeezed the trigger and everything went to hell.
It was several minutes before the chaos of the crowd resolved itself it into meaningful patterns. There were currents of people circulating through the area, forming eddies around the food stands and other vendors, condensing around the bathrooms and the stage. By the time he had figured out the patterns of the protesters, the feed had found a vantage that was stable, probably a camera mounted on a balcony or something. The wide overhead shot quickly became boring, and so Ethan began to surf through the other sources.
There were a couple camera phones inside the crowd, but their perspective was too limited to provide any meaning. There were a couple from documentary film crews, hoping to be part of whatever was supposed to happen on the tenth anniversary of the war. Eventually, he found a shot that looked like it was from someone who was on the front line of the protest, pushing against the line of olive drab National Guard soldiers.
The soldiers were interesting to look at. In front were the ones with the riot gear, plastic shields and batons, but behind them were soldiers in full combat gear, some with combat shotguns and others with M16s held at a 45 degree angle towards the ground. He knew that this image or one like it would make the front pages of a dozen news aggregators in the next few hours, with white-haired grandfathers and tattooed college students standing shoulder to shoulder and pushing against the wall of homogenous soldiers. Ethan was just beginning to study the soldiers' blank faces when he saw one of the ones in the back row reeling from a bottle that had ricocheted off his helmet before shattering.
In the next few moments, before the video source was cut off, Ethan watched in disbelief as the soldier drew his rifle up to his shoulder and took aim at someone offscreen. Ethan watched as the soldier squeezed the trigger and everything went to hell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
