Vignette:Now Hear This
Now Hear This
- Huxleyville, South Pole, Luna
Hendrix Alexander
November 27th, 2062
t was a little chilly in Room 691. Not for a reason out of anyone's control mind you. The Huxleyville city council decided to crank up the environmental cooling on the residential blocks this "winter" to mimick the holiday feel back on Earth. Everyone's space heaters would be going, giving off a familiar heat profile and leaving smells of roasting (burning) dust wofting as the blocks woke up. Inefficient? Very, but this Christmas everyone was feeling nostalgic.
Hendrix clacked "6-0" seconds into the cream enamel keys on his microwave. He liked his milk—or the powder the block mart passed off as milk—warm for his breakfast cereal. Slumped over his counter, he craned his neck over to take stock of his space. The space heater glowed a deep red in the corner and his lamp was still sheathed by a red light filter to ease him into a day of nothing but cold, flickered fluorescent lighting. Hendrix swore he could see the individual cycles of his school's lights—all 120 flicks a second—for which he wore sunglasses indoors. No one believed him. His room was basically furnished, as was tradition for a college boy. Turquoise enamel-coated steel walls hung some posters of bands he maybe only listened to a few songs of. He had one rug so his tootsies wouldn't freeze immediately upon getting out of bed and a second-hand couch he got off of a sketchy uninet marketplace. He also had one luxury most Huxleyville Tech students did not have: a LUREK VPC-450 personal computer. The glow of its emerald phosphor, clack of its keys, and cracklish hum would persist well into the night. He was definitely a power user of the library's cassettes.
The tinny rattle of the microwave's bell clamored. Warm peanut buttery corn puffs, a fitting dessert-for-breakfast on the cheap.
Hendrix took his bowl over to the couch and began munching as he surveyed his agenda. Clicking through tabs on his handheld terminal—connected to his main computer by a cable—he groaned as a full day greeted him. Physics labs from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., a 30 minute lunch, followed by materials science lectures from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. It was the first day back from the Thanksgiving 4-day weekend, so this was the last week of major work before dead week, finals, and Christmas break. Congruent to Hendrix's late night cassette crawler lifestyle, he only woke up 40 minutes before his first class. It normally only took 15 minutes to get to school on the trolleyway, provided it was on time.
With the cereal dusted off, Hendrix swapped his sleep-grade gym shorts for jeans, slippers for Docs, bunged a stick of gum, and was "ready" for the day. He'd get a vending machine coffee outside of class so no use brushing his teeth yet, so his logic went. With a lever pull, his door slid open with a pneumatic hiss.
Hendrix was immersed in a dim copper glow, barely bright enough to glint off the edges of the floor paneling, shone in both directions ad infinitum. The ceiling of the corridor was lined with the best technology of 80 years ago, screen after screen simulating the outside world in an amber edging fed by exterior cameras—just vector lines, no fill. The automatic projection refresh attempting to make it seem like the walking viewer was actually looking out into the sky was in effect highly disorienting. Huxleyville was one of the launch sites for this tech alongside Chicago O'Hare International back on Earth, although instead of stimulating scenes of planes taking off from a belly-perspective the residents of Huxleyville only got the Ravern L1 Elevator's tether, the crater ridge where the tether terminated, occassional military flights on approach to Henson, and stars (far more visible than in reality). The city decided to project Santa's sleigh flying about for the Christmas season though; meager scraps of homely comfort in such a sterile place. A simple glass skylight might have been more economical and indeed common in the more aspirational neighborhoods, but the eminently subsidized residence halls of HX Buena Vista were—ironically—underground and 10 floors deep. The territorial government wanted a place to put the installation without too much public-private headache.
Each step left an echoey metallic clang against the chequerplate surface. For a notionally slip-resistant floor, it was one of the slipperiest Hendrix had ever walked on. Plus, the raised cuts in the plate were cheese graters on an exposed knee, so running was explicitly forbidden in the block. Overhead the ceiling screens continuously updated their drawings of the outside every 2 steps or so, trying to mimick the changing view of the landscape as angles changed. Hendrix kept his eyes on the ground to avoid the nausea.
The corridor went on for give or take 1000 yards, flanked by endless studio apartment modules. Traversing his repetitious residence was the longest part of his journey thanks to being assigned to the last trolley stop before school. Buena Vista had been Hendrix's home ever since he started college at Huxleyville Tech 3 years ago. He'd grown skinny over the years, muscles atrophied from living the Luna life at 25 effective pounds while dodging the government-mandated Resistive Training Program—called RESTRAP—designed to keep those health impacts at bay. Buena Vista as a primarily low-income and student neighborhood was so under-resourced that no one bothered to enforce the regimen though. Although, with Hendrix's mandatory health screening coming up in February, he feared he'd be ordered to attend with threats of deportation back to Earth after graduation, lest he strain Huxleyville's healthcare system with a voluntary case of osteopenia and kidney stones. He already managed to creak and click as he walked—not the typical soundboard of a 21-year-old.
Hendrix passed by an open door. Inside, about 40 schoolchildren were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, just in the middle of mumbling through "indivisible" without quite knowing what the word meant. It was the Buena Vista Block 600 Primary Class, 1 of 11 such classrooms for schoolchildren Kindergarten to grade 1 dispersed along the Buena Vista corridor. As just another room in the hall, there was a somewhat unsettling amount of public access to the classrooms. Things were a little more high trust in Huxleyville than back on Earth, Hendrix guessed—he'd never actually talked to his next door neighbors. It wouldn't be until 2nd grade that kids started going to the Buena Vista Elementary School, which was more separated primarily because of the need for specialist, interconnected rooms more so than security.
After about 11 minutes of walking, Hendrix came upon the Buena Vista trolley station. Electric trolleys, powered by Huxleyville's nuclear reactor, travelled along two tracks in a big loop linking the residential blocks to the college, the "downtown" (a couple of shops, the hospital, and government wing), and trains for onward travel to industrial sites and the border control point to other the cities of other nations. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, most of the humanities students had gotten Monday off, and the block's workers had to start their journey at least 2 hours earlier to catch the morning train to Shackleton, so the station was sparse of riders. Unlike the dim orange hall Hendrix had just exited, the station was bright, blue, and very fluorescent.
"How's it going boss?" The trolley station attendant greeted Hendrix. It was Willy, the only attendant that ever talked to Hendrix—whether Hendrix wanted to or not. He wore a silky red vest, black button up shirt, and a rifle green képi (some sort of tradition to do with the old city militia before it became part of the Army National Guard).
"It's going, Willy," Hendrix replied dryly.
"Late night?"
"Oh you know me," Hendrix smirked. "Always is."
"Next trolley should be 6 minutes. Relax and let me know if you need anything."
Hendrix took a seat on one of the perforated aluminum benches facing towards the tracks. While treated like one, the station wasn't exactly like a train station. The tracks were basically embedded into a concrete floor level with where people stood. Newer trolleys had these slick, glass-encased, cylindrical elevators on their ends for passengers in wheelchairs to compensate for the lack of platforms. The walls were lined with blueish, nearly glassy brushed aluminum panelling and a big white-on-black sign reading "Buena Vista". Being a relatively small neighborhood their station didn't have a ton of features, but some of the larger ones—like College Station—had roving informational robots and huge cathode ray tubes displaying where each trolley was along its route. To his left a large flip clock rested atop a poll, its block letters reading 08:23. He was running late.
After some anxious, foot-tapped waiting, Hendrix could make out the squeeling of the trolley's wheels as it rounded the last corner. As it poked out of the tunnel, it revealed itself as one of the older models—bought from the Australian Coonabarabran council back in 2042 as they were replacing their trams. It was one of the few non-chrome trolleys in Huxleyville, instead painted a deep burgundy with bronze fittings and a green roof.
As the low electric whir of the trolley motor pitched down for the approach, Hendrix picked himself up. He was in a bit of a sweat. Based on the experience of hundreds of trips, he'd almost certainly be exactly 6 minutes late. He just loved reading his cassettes and sleep too much to set off earlier, though.
Suddenly, the lights shuttered. Nothing but the faint inner glow of the trolley's interior light bulb.
A brief darkness was broken by redlights and a single of the fluorescent lights. The trolley doors closed, and it began driving back the way it came. The speakers overhead squelched and let out a single cycle of a buzzing siren before giving way to a thunderous barking voice.
"Now hear this, now hear this," he droned. "Huxleyville is at Alert Level 1. This is not a drill. Return to your residences. Trolleys in both directions are only running outward. Shelther in place and prepare to occupy your assigned shelthers. Your block civil defense leader will distribute further instructions."