Shadow Of The Past Trilogy ∞ THE DISPLACED

16 ∞ the mark

Day Four ∞ Monday afternoon

HE WALKED SLOWLY BACK TO THE SHOP, frowning. 

She needs me?  Was something wrong with Mickmi? Could he trust what the lady said? 

His gut feeling said he should. He wished he could leave for home right now, but he hadn't finished working on the brakes yet. And he couldn't leave before five. Not after missing a whole day's work last Friday.

Ray paused with the sanding machine over the fender of a Cutlass S and peeked out from behind the plastic sheet partition. "Hey Danny, what did she want?" he said through his mask.

But Danny shook his head at him and, ignoring the remarks the Myers brothers threw at him, went to the office to borrow the telephone.

"Sure. Go ahead," said Mr Myers.

It rang without answer. He hung up before hearing the answering machine. He felt like something was wrong at home. Did she even know how to answer a telephone? He hadn't even considered that. He dialed his number again. This time he waited for the answering machine to pick up. 

"Mickmi! Are you hearing me? If you're hearing me, please pick up the phone.... Mickmi?" He waited. "Mickmi? Pick up!"

He slowly replaced the receiver. Now he was really getting worried. "Sir... I—"

"You've got an emergency?" Mr Myers said, studying him.

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm really worried."

"Go home and take care of it, son. I'll have one of my boys finish up the Chrysler."

∞

No one paid any attention to the girl in the intricately tailored, azure blue jacket walking the streets of Albany. Lora started with a six block grid from her starting point at the Transportation Center, mentally mapping the areas she covered, occasionally pausing on a bench to observe the life occupying this laid-back city.

She felt like she'd landed in the middle of a living museum. It was reminiscent of a childhood visit to the 5D holographic display of "Life Before The Great Desolation" which contained nowhere near the amount of detail she was witnessing now. The flood of new impressions, odors, sounds and the heat was almost overwhelming, and she had to deliberately filter out what was not important and focus on learning as much as she could about the people that occupied this place.

The people. She had never seen so many shades of skin color in one place before in her life—they covered a rainbow of earth tones. More than half of them here were of a darker hue, brown-eyed with black hair in multitudes of styles including straight, curled, braided, compact, halo—all going about their routine lives. Nobody wore a sinnesband, and as far as she could tell, these people were not augmented with brain implants like she was. But she did pick up the weak electromagnetic field of a mechanical implant in the chest of an elderly woman in a lively discussion with two others.

A noisy group of teenagers hung out at a bus stop. Lora found their behavior annoying and their dispositions disturbing. She crossed the street and passed a furrowed man in old clothes near the street corner, a hat in his outstretched hand. He did not approach her, just as no one would as long as she projected her personal sphere as repelling space. 

Halfway down the block, she passed a restaurant. The tantalizing smells emerging through the doors made her mouth water, but she resisted the urge to follow it inside. Instead she followed a brown-skinned woman into a large supermarket and toured the aisles, noting the great variety of product packaging on the shelves, observing customers making their selections, watching a mother hugging her toddler. The sight caused a wave of homesickness to overcome her, and she had to turn away, take a deep breath and force the memories out of her mind.