Black Mirror

Chapter 21 - Computer World

***ALEX***

The elevator opens onto a world of chaos.

There's an empty room, a lobby, serving as a buffer between us and the street, where scrivs, angels, and demons alike run screaming. I don't think I've ever really taken note of what's on the edge of Second 'Verse Bearville. I've noticed the center of town more, the cluster of concrete towers in which Fionna - and now Gabe, I believe - live and work. But now I'm seeing what looks like a shopping center, anchored by a Wal-Mart. (Of course they'd have a Wal-Mart here. Wal-Mart is a universal constant.) And instead of cars in the parking lot, there's mostly a frantic crowd of people carrying shit, fighting over shit, beating each other up with shit...

"I don't remember the town going this nucking futs last time," Gideon says.

"They cleaned the town out last time, remember?" I point out.

"Did they?" He chews his lip as he thinks about it. "I thought they told everyone to evacuate underground."

"And I thought Holly made everyone leave and report to some camp somewhere." I rack my brains, but honestly, I only know bits and pieces of what happened on this side of the Terminal back in June. "If he hadn't surrendered when he had..."

Kelly clears her throat. "Question - are we supposed to fly over these guys?"

I look around the room, but see no other ways out besides forward into the looting zone and backward into the elevator. From which point we could probably get off on another, higher floor, and maybe break through a window.

If we can find one.

Is there one? I don't think so, not when this wall was always meant to be super-secure. But then why do we have a window here on the ground floor?

I'm the first to go back to the elevator. When we're all inside, I select the second floor. There's no window there - just a bunch of loud machinery, like God's engine room. The third floor is really just a catwalk above the second, to service these machines. Same with the fourth. What do these machines even do, I wonder? Is their presence the reason why the wall is still up even after the fall of Preston Holly?

The fifth floor finally gets us somewhere with windows. It's nowhere near as chaotic as the street below, but there's a shit-ton of people in matte-black armored suits running around. Okay, so maybe that's why the wall's still up - they've gotta have people standing guard along its perimeter.

I look around at my friends. With the exception of Gideon, we're all wearing other colors, so we don't exactly stand a chance of blending in. That is, until we spot a very familiar face, only half-dressed in his own uniform, trying to get his jacket on.

He stops when he spots us. "Alex? Gideon? What the...what the hell are you doing here?"

Kelly and Ty join us angels as we run up to Paul Smythe. "We got a new friend?" Ty asks. "Cool."

"Not really a new friend so much as an old one." Bro-hugs for me and Gideon, intros for Kelly and Ty. Then Paul shrugs into his jacket, zipping it up. "Okay, guys, I'm supposed to be on the guns, but...you know what? I don't think turning our weapons to the outside is gonna do much good."

"Why, 'cause this attack came from within?" Kelly gestures at the nearest window.

"Hey, Smythe!" Another guy runs by, then slows his pace and turns around, still jogging backwards. "Your partner's waiting for you upstairs!"

"I'll be right there!" Paul tells the guy. But then he taps the Bluetooth earpiece he's wearing and says, "Freddie, wherever you are, find me on the fifth floor near the computer terminals. We got friends from Prime in town." I faintly hear what I'm sure is the sound of Freddie Krause telling him "10-4, on my way" or something to that effect. "Come on," Paul says, ushering us out of the crowd - we've got people constantly running around us, and being as visible as we are, we're really parting the shoal. "Nobody's gonna be at the computer terminals, so we're gonna be safe there."