Welcome to Doom City, an apocalyptic place where a world changing event has disrupted the normal way of life. As people pick up the pieces and patch together some form of order, everyone still has to make ends meet. The Inter City Riders help to courier information around the metropolis and Alex is just another grunt rider that is chasing a pay check. It’s now time to join her as she takes on a job that will lead her to an encounter somebody from her past…. enjoy.
CHAOS RADIO
Alex left the city from the west through the Iron gate. Her ICR(Inter City Rider) permit got her out with minimal questions asked. Sometimes they wanted to see her job docket, but they were easy enough to fudge. She made a hardline move westward. Furthering the distance. From there she would head north, then north east, but never on a straight trajectory. All these extra measures were factored into the price. ICR riders didn't have trackers on them. Most vehicles leaving the city would have registered GPS units in place. As couriers that dealt in sensitive material, they were not obligated to have one installed on their bikes. The powers that be probably knew the riders carried a few side hustles on the sly, but blind eyes were tactfully cast as they all had secrets to protect no matter from what political persuasion.
The last of the watchtowers was behind Alex. She could feel them observing her through their tele-lenses. Her rider number was clearly displayed on her helmet. They would run that through their system. It should come back clear. She braced anyways for a warning shot to zip by, but the only sound was the slight whispering of the air being carved up by her spokes. Other than that, there was nothing but the sweet sound of silence. Swampy was moving further away from the city with each broadcast, at first skimming the borderlands but now he was pushing way beyond the greenbelts. The rides were going from two hours, to three plus. This one looked like it would be an overnighter. Alex had scanned her maps and decided to change her bike setup for this run. The route was going to be a skull shaker. She put on some Terrabuster Tyres and dropped the pressure right down; these would still roll fast on the road yet maintain a grip for the gravel. Every bolt was tightened and random last-minute additions were tied down with webbing and cable ties. You didn't want to lose a bottle cage or perhaps risk something worse happening. These off-road routes were grinding, technical and there was always the chance of mechanicals. Not to mention bone fractures. Sectors ranged from road to farm tracks; from light gravel to dried up river beds filled with fist sized flint nodules.
The first objective was to make it to an ancient trackway, a 17km stretch of slabbed ancient cobbles, some broken down with time; grooves made from rain water. Others as smooth as marble. She wondered if they were in fact legendary cobbles or just some kind of geology she didn't understand. Something that by coincidence looked man made. The sun at this point was beating down so hard that the surface of the ancient road shimmered like a puddle, but the only thing that splashed up was the dirt between sequences of the hard stone. With her lips starting to dry out, she knew that hydration was about to be an issue. There were a few vans kitted out as mobile shops mainly selling water and bare necessities along the route. As she knew that resupply would be scarce she had marked them out on her route the night before. Alex downed the rest of her bidon and ear-marked the next mobile shop on the map for a re-up.
Two clicks further down the road, Alex pulled over to the side of the road to where a van with a water drop symbol painted on the back of it was parked. A led display above the symbol kept bleeping out in an insistent manner ' water available, water available,,,,85% filtered from agricultural run-offs....' A service hatch had been cut into the side of it. She bought three bidons worth of water. Chugging one down straight away, she put the remaining water into her bottles and slid them into their cages. She blasted past the last few mobile structures where a handful of people were hovering around for some kind of meat roll that was being served up. The smell smacked her senses, lips moistened by the sensation. She spat out the bitter sweet taste of that indulgence and kept on riding.
The large cobbled surface gradually reduced to a medium grained gravel. This marked the end point of an arduous segment and a transition to something altogether finer. Beyond some tall hedgerows she could just make out the sawtooth edges of a pine forest filling the horizon. A hard right later and she was into a clearing. Here she saw the sky filtering down from a cloudless blue into a resinous green before darkening into foreboding shades of black. The route was now a meadow of scrubland with only sandy channels to navigate. She tried to follow a clean line and not deviate lest she wipe out. Nearing the forest the sand mixed with tree roots and the ground started to harden. Soon the trees sheltered her from the blazing sun.
Alex remembered the last time she was here, when the winter still had a grip and not even the earliest of buds had sprung from the branches. Now the thin stemmed ferns reached upwards, nearly waist height and starting to unfurl. In the dappled light she could see foxgloves popping up in the sandy banks that edged the forest. Where life in the city seemed to be on the steady decline, here in the woods the opposite was happening. Travelling fast along the fire roads, she quick routed and made her way beyond where the loggers had reached. The trees stood uniform and at attention in the managed forest. The roads through here ran straight and in grids. Different types of pine grew depending on the section. Here small redwoods were crowded in by the blossoming rhododendrons appearing as blurry purple splatters as Alex cruised by.
There were illegal campsites setup in the proxy forest with temporary checkpoints; these were purely perfunctory and more just to let people know that they were there and to move along to another spot. When the loggers reached the camps, the squatters would just retreat further into their sylvan keep. No shots were fired as the squatters and the forestry commission lived in a balanced system where both wanted to protect the forest at all costs; one for money and the other for shelter. The same could not be said if any feds or militant factions made their way down to the woods at night. Maybe Swampy knew this and was using them as a barrier from the government forces that he alluded to, the ones that wanted to silence him permanently.
Using the grid like system of the managed woods she easily rerouted past checkpoints 1-4, but there was no way of getting through checkpoint five. The path she needed to access was located firmly within the campsite's perimeter. Ahead of her were tall angular forms disrupting her field of vision, shapes that looked oddly out of place from the constant repeat of trees. As she pedalled nearer, she could make out that they were rusty old cars that had been planted vertically and turned into watchtowers. The number five was daubed in black paint on the yellow hood of the first car. Inside these metal shells, low res optics mounted on post-war rifles were cradled in the arms of a volunteer militia looking out over the entry points into the campsite.
"Rider slow, your roll!" blared the watchman. Alex pulled to a gravel crunching stop. She was ready for this. A bright beam of light flashed her in the face. As she went to show him the note the beam followed her hand as she reached inside her jersey. Snatching the note from her hand he gave her the once over with his flashlight. He then brushed a scanner over her bike, checking for trackers, explosives, weapons perhaps. When she had accepted the gig, one of Swampy's minions had left Alex with a note to present to the sentry. She hadn't had a chance to look at it and hoped for the best. He took a brief look and waved her along. It seems she was expected.
As she rolled the through the campsite, dusk was settling in and the light from the sinking sun filtered hazy pink beams through the pine forest. There was a bustle amongst the forest dwellers; hunters returned from the deeper parts of the woods with rabbits swinging from their belts. Parents called out for their children to come back to the tent. Fires hissed and crackled, pots crammed full of foraged mushrooms and tubers started to simmer. Bucolic scenes of a simple life in the woods flittered for just an instance before her, then fluttered away as the gentle crunch of the gravel below reminded her that dreams are just a fools errand.
The pursuit of happiness in reality will be crushed under an ever rolling wheel of destruction constantly being dealt out by the authoritarian regime of Doom City. Something that Swampy has been waffling on about ad nauseam in his latest tirades that he broadcasts from the forest. These ideas were infiltrating Alex's' thoughts and turning her into a real downer.
As the tents petered out, the forest returned the main causeway to a narrow path that darkened with every pedal stroke. The canopy was closing in on Alex, so she switched on her single focus IR light, painting the trail in front with a harsh red beam. The path looked to be taken over by thistles and thorns, but just as it reached a finite point the computer indicated a slight left adjustment. Apparently this section wasn't created by a human, it looked to be an animal track replete with some droppings and hoof prints. Up ahead there was a waist height chicken wire fence, the area looked ringed of, like some kind of lo-fi perimeter. All of a sudden, a crackle came over her earpiece, it had picked up Swampy's channel. If you listened closely there was a constant pulse he played at low volume on this frequency; the nearer you were the faster the pulse. Alex guessed that she was at least three hundred yards out. On the computer unit this was marked as the end of the route. Looking through the fence, she could just make out what looked like the outline of an angular shaped structure. She decided to follow along the fence's perimeter. There must be an opening at some point she thought. Not long after, once she had pushed through a particularly frustrating set of thorny bushes, she noticed an end to the fence with a makeshift gate post suggesting an entrance. Beyond was a clearing and the front of a large canvas military tent.
Above the entrance a radio broadcast light was glowing green. Through a clear plastic window, she could see a figure motioning her in. Alex parked up her bike outside and passed through the tent flaps. This was not a recording studio as you'd know it. No sound proofing, no glass between the sound desk and the mic. In fact, there were no walls. It was a canvas army surplus tent in the woods. A mosquito net was the barrier. The sounds of the wildlife settling down at dusk will be all over this recording, Alex thought. She flopped down in one of the camping chairs that had been folded up in the corner of the room, pulling out one of her bidons, she took a slug of electrolyte infused water.Swampy was sat at a desk in the middle of the makeshift radio studio, surrounded by broadcasting equipment and crumpled up pieces of paper. Looking even more maniacal than she had remembered. His stare absorbed the light around him like a dying star. His eyes focused on nothing and everything at the same time. He flicked a switch and the light outside went red. There was no intro, not a good evening listeners or a jingle, just him delivering his sermon like a back country preacher spitting venom with a forked tongue, where love and hate merged and became one.
"The decrepit radio frequency was lost on charm, lost in translation. The point of having a signal is to be able to relay information of importance and with ease. Done so with efficiency and speed. This signal was of a more distorted variety. If you have ever heard of a game called Telephone, it was similar to that. What you sent down the line would no doubt become abstracted. You could call it chaos radio; random order that still seemed relevant to the information that you needed. An alternate version of what you wanted to hear. But then who wants to hear what they really want to hear? Why not follow this other channel? Why not follow this differing message? Your path is clear, the message you expect is there and you follow procedure, follow the expected outcome. But fuck it, this other plot point has come into place. Your dodgy HAM radio has told you an alternate truth, an alternate message."
"He's pushing the alternate truth thing again" Alex thought. Why did she help him out? This crazy kook. It certainly wasn't for the money....
"This alternative message was there for destabilisation. But what do we know of the balance of life? How do we judge a solid system state of being, where one action leads to a reaction? The stable thoughts that we would like to hear through that simple message over the radio static are not there, it has been hijacked, jammed and replaced with a different setup. Following the chaos theory or habit that this radio broadcasts, we could potentially pass on to a devolved state. A new way of being. Existing in this fractal-based continuum would establish a replicating system that would far surpass the cyclical process of life through basic procreation. This type of radio transmission is trying to accomplish the destruction of your life and put it back together again, albeit contorted."
"I'm sending out a warning to double check messages coming through on the HAM radio setups." His finger now sternly pointing at the mic, hammering home his message.
"Signals have been overpowered and corrupted. Check sources, double check the sender. I think they are trying to strangle our communications network. All I'm saying is, be careful what you are listening to. The old adage is, if it sounds to good, then it's definitely bad. Swamp Rat out." With that he flicked a switch, the bulb went back to green.
Passing through the netting, he unfolded another chair and crashed wearily into it opposite Alex. Planting a cigarette between his lips, he exhaled the words "So, Alex, you made it." He tossed the dat file over to her.
"Yes Swampy I've dragged my way through thorny bushes and everything else just so I can pass your mighty words on to the good people of Doom City."
"Well the good people of Doom City salute you." Swampy replied. Brushing off Alex's' salty comment in a similar fashion to the way you would wipe cigarette ash from your shirt; it happened, but is of no great concern.
"By the way, are you paying junkies to pass on job details now?" She said with a sarcastic lilt.
"He wasn't a junkie, just one of my operatives". Swampy's reply was devoid of any emotional retort.
"You have operatives? My god the snowball has really gathered speed." Alex was laying it on thick now.
"Yes the messages are spreading, people are ready to hear the truth" Swampy responded in a more animated manner this time, his radio voice turned back on.
"And, are the checkpoints filled with your people?"
"Some are sprinkled among them."
"You know the more people you trust, the more chance there is of being discovered." Alex meant this with real concern. Swampy had reached a cult level status and was losing some of his special forces battle readiness to his ego.
"I'll move on soon enough and speaking of moving along." Swampy got up a little stiffly and handed an envelope to Alex and said, "half now, half later when you drop the tape."
Alex pocketed the envelope in her rear jersey. There wasn't really anything more to get out of Swampy. Not that she was looking for something. It's just that after years of serving together in the LRRP's(long-range reconnaissance petrol), you'd expect just a glint of that former life and that camaraderie. Perhaps that's why she kept coming back.
"See yah Swampy." She said as she got out of her chair and exited the tent. Looking back as she pushed her bike down the trail, she could see his silhouette at the entrance to the tent. The glow from his cigarette illuminated his face for a brief moment before sinking back into the darkness. A man that had now entered the shadow world, far detached from the crumbling metropolis that they had both fought so hard for. The distance was growing between them and as Alex scrambled through the bushes, careful to duck under low hanging branches she thought hard about her existence that balanced precariously on the razors edge. Was she ok with the status quo or did she want disrupt it? Suddenly her GPS flared up, kicking her out of her introspective state. She had just hit the boundary of camp five. Travelling into Doom City before the morning rush was likely to raise suspicion, so she decided to find a secluded corner of the camp to grab some shut-eye before heading out in the AM.
She had just settled into her sleeping system when what sounded like rain started smashing into her bivy. In fact, it was a swarm of midges trying to infiltrate through the lining of the sack. Attracted to her breath, it was only a matter of time before they made their way in. If so, she would have to move location; perhaps find a place with a breeze to keep them from hovering. How long could she bare this for? Stay out the forest they said, lest the bugs will get you. Alex wasn't going to listen to anybody's advice. She lay there resilient, but checking her hands for the tiny interlopers every fifteen minutes. After three rounds of sentry duty, she remained bug free and drifted off into the night.
It was not quite dawn when Alex woke up. The forest was quiet, her night had been interjected with guttural cries from what she hoped had been woodland creatures. Things had gotten a little spicy since her last special ops ride and she was getting a bit spooked by night rides. The daylight dispersed those shapes and shadows that haunted her. They may have just been brambles and bushes but when you've been through some shit anything can set you off. She laid there in a state of awkward comfort; the sleeping bag made more homely by the knowledge that you have a survived another night on the road. It was that point in the waking hour when you didn't want to get out of your sack as the warmth that you'd accumulated overnight would be gone as soon as you unzipped. Alex rubbed her eyes and geared herself up for the day ahead. She followed her usual morning ritual on the road; a cup coffee, a bowl of oats, then saddle up and roll out.
As she cleared the forest, she could see that troopers had been here recently. There were MPV tracks imprinted into the slightly damp ground just before the road turned from farm tracks back tarmac. After scanning the surrounding area with her binoculars for any signs of them, she was satisfied that the coast was clear. Nearing Doom City she filtered into the morning traffic, lost amongst the tankers and the city transits. She made her way to the West Gate. Producing a government stamped travel pass got Alex through the control point. All that was left to do was to meet with one of Swampy's' cultists and hand them over the dat file. From there they would broadcast his message from a series of blockchain transmission devices set up over the city. Placed on trees, buildings and lamp-posts to provide a continuous broadcast. If one link was severed, it would just be replaced by another.
Alex waited down one of the many thousands of dingy alleyways that connect the city. The crunch of glass underfoot, in the distance amongst a shroud of steaming sewer vapour appears the cultist or be it junky skulking towards her. A swap of items, a dat file given an envelope received. Some cash and a hand written note, taking her somewhere unknown. Dangerous in a city where she knows nearly everywhere......