Season 01 - Episode 19

‘images barely blinking’

Ga needs a shave.

She is sat in the chair in which she spends her life. The only light is the patchwork glow of dozens of small screens clustered before her. Each is a slightly different shape with a slightly different frame. Their images are all in black and different tinges of white.

A couple of screens are wholly black but for a few tight nit lines of computer code. The rest show live images from all over The Levels. Behind the screens, a great tangled nest of wires stands testament to Ga's skill and endeavour.

Her eyes flick around the wall of images, barely blinking. Without looking, she reaches for a tall beaker. Her long, immaculately painted nails clatter against the plastic. As she drains it, she turns her head, maintaining line of sight to the screens.

The dregs of the heavily caffeinated liquid spill down her chin. Wiping them away, she feels the sandpaper texture of stubble and is surprised. She checks the time. It is almost a day since she sat down.

Grudgingly, Ga commits to take a break. In an hour. Maybe two. She replaces the beaker then clatters her incredible nails over a battered keyboard. Some of the scenes on the screens flicker and change.

She has hacked every GovCo camera in The Levels. She has even used homemade crawler drones to install a few of her own. Through these endeavours she sees all. Everyone. Everything.

Until recently, her main hobby was cultwatching. She knows them all, their hideouts, hangouts, money making rackets, their most sacred, secret rituals. Recently however, she has started watching the EnFo's too. There are more of them than ever now and they've started going places they've never ventured before.

Most people in The Levels are so boring. They know their place and stay there, never leaving their neighbourhoods. Ga flicks idly through hundreds of cameras, looking for anything new or unusual.

Eventually she sighs and leans back in her chair. Again her hands move without aid from her eyes. This time they retrieve a bottle of eyedrops and apply them with professional precision, leaving her eye make up perfect.

She blinks a few times then cracks her knuckles. The EnFo's will be changing shift soon. There are still a few of the black-masked officers she hasn't identified but she will have them today. She'll find their names and addresses and add them to her personal collection.

Suddenly, three of her screens flick to black. She frowns and clatters some keys. A few more screens go black as she does so. The remaining images show people appearing to panic. From dozens of floors above her to hundreds of floors below, cameras are dropping out and now people everywhere are sprinting in terror.

Ga sits forward, her fingers a blur. She suspects some kind of GovCo crackdown and is annoyed to have been taken by surprise. Some of her cameras are losing signal just like the GovCo ones however. There's nothing wrong with their relays either. It's as if the cameras themselves are disappearing.

Now she hears the sound.

It rumbles through the walls and floor, growing louder and more violent. Suddenly the whole room is shaking impossibly. Two of her screens fall from their mounting. Her beaker tumbles to the floor. After the longest few seconds of Ga's life, the sound and the shaking cease.

Every monitor shows violence and chaos.

Something terrible has happened.

©  a d a m   b y f i e l d , not to be reproduced in any form without written permission