UNNECESSARY JUSTICE: Ch. 2

. . .

It was raining hard in the Emerald City, and it was doing so on Stanley Hartwell.

The monochrome gray cityscape was bathed in a sheet of falling mist and little more, as the streets of Seattle were seldom busy at this time of night. Save for a few headlights seemingly lost in the mushroom clouds that bounced off the streets, Stanley walked alone.

He kept a consistent pace of wet eruptions as sturdy leather boots splashed a determined path towards his destination & sanctuary. Rain bounced off of everything in sight, the matte finish of the concrete giants that surrounded him barely glistening for a second before their stone underbelly came seeping through once more. He hurried past giant opaque windows, glistening star-charts of raindrops shifting sideways as fast as he could walk. Without breaking stride, he turned a corner at a wide four way junction and stood to attention. This cross in the arteries of the city saw one soggy cardboard box doing the work of three tumbleweeds.

Under the shelter of a well lit bus stop Stanley waited patiently for the obvious. Fat droplets of rain fell from his folded arms as they tried to hug his shivering body into submission, sodden clothes threatening to prolong the process. His shaking skin aside, Stanley was actually the epitome of a living statue in his cocoon of harsh sterile light. The street in front of him might have blushed had it the necessary prerequisites to do so, as his unwavering stare had been intimately scanning every square inch of visible pavement for 5 minutes. Without moving his head Stanley made a point to survey his surroundings with intricate recall, as was protocol in such situations per his own private regulations. You could take the boy out of the neuroses but you couldn't take the neurosis out of the boy.

Stanley Hartwell had been orphaned at the age of 18. It was hard to get any sympathy when you are an official adult in the eyes of the law & your frugal extended family, so he sought comfort from a studio apartment with 2 bunkbeds and 5 roommates. It was not the light beer, inner city celebrity lifestyle he had been sold as a child, but it was all he needed in life.

His parents had been the last of the Baby Boomers retaliative baby-atomic bomb; an almost over populated America was given a new wave of job hungry little bundles of joy, and they all had a thirst for technology. I.T. degrees were the most sought after of diploma’s in the mid-21st century, and they soon became the requirement for the vast majority of U.S. employment opportunities. His mother & father belonged to a nation of computer Nerds and internet Geeks who became the driving force of the technological revolution, with America leading the charge.

Mr. and Mrs. Hartwell were simple folk, as Stanley had seen them. They loved him. They fed him. They clothed him, at least until he was 14 and got that job running a fast food Drive-Thru from his bedroom. What few social skills he possessed he probably learned from them, though he often felt guilty for not remembering any of their conversational exchanges.

He knew they liked things the way they were. Before the cameras on every PC and admins in every chat room.

Stanleys eyes flitted left as soon as the bus came into peripheral view, following it like an old typewriter ribbon as the hulking people carrier stopped and started its way through the road lake. It came to a stop with a tumultuous tidal wave, opening its doors directly opposite Stanley. He took two bounding steps into the bus and swiped his Creditz Card through the drivers slot. He spared a quick once-over of the tinted plastic in front of him, then took off down the aisle.

The bus drivers bullet proof pod gave a muffled beep as the doors closed behind Stanley, signalling to the 400lb conductor that it was time to wake up from his nap and punch in the Stop/Go log-in key. This process was one of the few non-automated functions in the Emerald City’s fleet of public transportation services, and as he made his way to the middle of the bus Stanley could already hear the faint rolling thunder of the bus drivers snore through the almost-sound proof protective shell.

He sat in one of the many empty plastic cradles on his left. A few of the other uninviting safety seats were occupied by various night denizens. None of them seemed likely to pose a threat. The drain hole in the bottom of his aisle seat caught a rivet on his faded blue jeans as he slid over the hump towards the window. The rivet pulled tight and the jeans jerked him forward, face planting him into the welcoming arms of the wet, dark Saturday night that started to move by behind the glass.

The drenched streets of Seattle flew through Stanleys head as he studied his reflection in the bus window. He rubbed his forehead inches from the glass, tendrils of wet hair attempting to cover his right eye with tortured style. The stark glare from above the seats and along the walkway gave him full exposure to what had grown into a constant reminder of where he came from.

He had his mothers eyes. Bright, gray pools of listless anxiety. She worked for the city, or state, or something Government-y; he could barely remember her real first name and it had only been 4 years. She was the smiler (a trait he hadn’t picked up) and the cynic, a perfect partner for his stern but hopeful father. Stanley recognised his fathers brown hair and strong jawline, but nothing else. Both inside and out; his dad was a lean, tall man who said little whilst doing a lot. Stanley was a thin, slouched post-adolescent who said little whilst thinking a lot. Which he proceeded to do in the uncomfortable bus seat he was settling into. He laid his head back against the perforated cradle, eyes scanning everything.

The day they died, Stanley was looking for an apartment to rent. His first. They had been at a protest or a rally of some sort, for off towards the city center. His father was always chatting to and meeting people from the Web, mostly through work, and he assumed these were the people they had been with. The quiet parent spoke of his job in terse descriptions, so as far as Stanley was ever able to discern he was a librarian. A very important librarian, apparently, because some serious men tried to get in touch with Stanley not long after the funeral. Luckily his anti-social tendencies had given rise to a knack for shirking responsibilities. They never found enough of him to touch.

Whatever type of gathering had been intended that day turned into a riot, according to official police statements on the news. Hundreds of citizens began looting businesses and assaulting firemen and policemen alike. When rubber bullets couldn’t quell the angry mob, live fire had been permitted. They said someone from the crowd threw a badly made Molotov Cocktail. That it hit a streetlight and rained down on the crowd. On cars and generators and other flammable things.

Whatever type of gathering had been intended on that day burned in a series of deafening explosions, according to unofficial rumours. They said roughly the same thing to Stanley when the authorities informed him over the phone that his parents had perished. He had been travelling on the same bus route he was on now when he got the call, heading towards what would become his current home. He wasn’t given many details; they apparently didn’t need a positive I.D., and according to the records all the necessary bank transfers had been made -minus the handling fees & police labour taxes, of course- so if he could collect their things from storage within the month that’d be great, sorry for your loss goodbye.

The swimming bus churned up the puddles of blocked drains as it slowed to turn the corner and head down to the waterfront. This edge of the city ran alongside the Puget Sound, tendrils of the Pacific seeping in through giant cracks of land. Separating the towering urban stalagmites from a taste of the ocean was the Viaduct Gardens; an unstable elevated double decker highway-turned neglected public green belt. Years of traffic congestion beneath this concrete dog park had forced the once bustling waterfront promenade into an empty strip of abandoned docks and warehouses.

Stanley leaned forward and stared intently out the windows on the other side of the bus as it turned again, the waves of the Sound cresting to the left of the humming transporter. His stop was coming up soon and he needed to make sure there was a clear path to his so called apartment. Four years in this neighbourhood had taught him a lot about preventing negative confrontations with the less savoury characters of city life. A few armed muggings and a beat down or three had moulded Stanley into an effective criminal radar, one that avoided such people that might show up on his screen.

The bus continued its journey along the waterfront with the creaking viaduct as its only companion on the stretch of gently winding road. Stanley was scanning his side of the road now as they approached his destination. Six blocks ahead he could see a huddled gathering close to his apartment entrance. Possibly homeless, possibly lawless. He wasn’t going to take a chance.

As the bus drew closer he instinctively reached inside his puffy blue water-resistant jacket for his smart-phone. Almost immediately the top of his left forearm started vibrating, and with a barely perceptible roll of his eyes he pulled up his dripping sleeve to cancel the Bus Stop Request that flashed on his phone display. He could remember to beat the automated destination confirmation almost to the second, but the recent upgrade from detached to attached cell phones was still hard for Stanley to retain. The trend had caught on well over a year ago but he’d only just made the switch. His quiet stubbornness met its match against the propietary nature of his service provider, which had deemed wrist mounted “Uber-Phones” to be the new standard.

With his exit from the bus delayed momentarily, Stanley took a second to collect his thoughts and prepare Plan B.

Entrance to house: blocked. Conditions: damp and ill lit. Options: attempt frontal entry (strikethrough) attempt rear entry through alleys continue on bus route full circle

The thought of riding this electric tank halfway around the city did not appeal to him as much as risking the boring alleyways 4 blocks away from his front door. He pulled up his sleeve again and pulled up the city transit icon on his uber-phones display, teardrop rainbows forming where water had smeared off his jacket. He hit Next Stop and stood up, steadying himself with the bar overhead and the textured metal walkway beneath him as he swayed down the aisle to the front of the bus.

The bus had received his stop request and was obediently slowing down underneath the shadow of the viaduct, a few flickering streetlights illuminating the wall-less cavern for short bursts at a time. Stanley could hear the bus driver snort to attention as he swiped his Creditz Card on the way out of the bus, the low tone beep yelling at him to leave through the opened doors. The beep was also a reminder that his journey and destination had been recorded and filed away thanks to the multifaceted Creditz Cards that were used for almost every transaction imaginable.

Stanley stood motionless outside the bus doors after they had closed. Between the wind and the rain and the indefinite light sources, he had barely gotten a cursory glance at his surroundings. The Viaduct Gardens above shadowed everything within his limited sight, but above the ancient roadway loomed the weather puncturing buildings of the city's edge.Water poured from their windowsills and gutters peppering the street in vertical river rapids, scattered cars parked nearby bearing the brunt of the falling streams. The dark alleyways that carved into the metropolis echoed with the sounds of a city under siege. As a crescendo of overturned trash cans came to a stop, Stanley noticed the collection of night dwellers that had appeared from the alleys.

His radar had failed him. No doubt the typical Washington weather was disrupting his usually keen senses, and he pondered how one could have overlooked such skulking rain walkers. He knew they frequented the dark alleys of the city, but not usually this close to the water. Too many open areas, a marginally steady reel of witnesses rolling by on busses. His late night entourage must have chosen the sounds of the sea over the sky falling.

Plan C...

They formed a badly drawn semi circle in front of him as he collected his thoughts once more. Their bodies began to hunch as they shimmied closer in the cold rain. Plan C was rarely called for, and had never actually worked, but Stanley was more than willing to give it another shot. He quickly spread his feet shoulder width apart in a stance that was somewhere between fight and flight. It was closer to fright.

He yanked his left arm up with his fist pointed down, and aimed his wrist at each of his potential assailants one at a time from left to right, awkwardly switching between them with hesitant jerks. A frantic red dot appeared on the chest of every one he pointed at. He hastily brought his right hand down on his left bicep and leveled both arms.

“I’m not afraid to shoot!!”

His voice was high pitched and quavering, but the commanding tone stopped the half circle from advancing for a moment. Another bout of frantic dot waving zipped between them.

“It’s loaded! One more step and I’ll fry you where you stand!!” Now Stanley was just waving his arm back and forth between the individuals on either side of his peripheral vision.

The lowered figure in the middle of the group stood up straight at this last threat. A brief second passed as two people in the rain stared at each other. The evenings conditions hid any facial features, hiding any possible humanity that could have swayed anyones convictions. The two crooks either side of him took a step forward.

“Shit!!!”

Stanley slid his sleeve up yet again at the same time as he brought his left forearm in front of his face. In one deft move he uncovered his wrist phone and fingered a complicated pattern on the screen, pressing his eyebrows to his cheeks as hard as he could.

By their second step the street gang was blinded by the most dazzling, pure white light they could imagine. Shadows raced up the sides of walls and every single rain drop was seen for a split second as Stanleys phone trapped the semi circle in a box of brilliance. Eyes still closed he backed away from the bad scene, shadows stretching and pulling as he went.

Seconds later the light went out. The pink glow in front of his eyelids was gone. The phone battery was already dead; 4100 lumens of worth of energy would probably do that.

He opened his eyes and could make out the stumbling outlines of the probably disgruntled crowd assembled in front of him. Plan C may have been a bluff but it worked. Kind of. As they stood up rubbing eye sockets with knuckles, Stanley also stood up and mumbled quietly to no one in particular.

“Plan D it is, then.”

He broke into a sprint and headed into the alleyways behind his grasping attackers. They fumbled and fell as they turned around to give chase, their quarry already taking confusing turns through the alleys in a desperate bid for freedom. Hurried footsteps quickly melted into the myriad of echoes that came from these dark veins of a city as the nearby waves lapped against the warehouses that stood like sentry on the shore.

At least this time he'd blinded his opposition instead of himself. Plan C was getting better.

Plan D was simpler, though.

Stanley hurtled further away from home.

. . .