![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Liberty Wall (Ch. 2)
Sep. 27th, 2011 04:47 amDave was one of those guys who would actually slap his knee while laughing.
It was that particular goofy noise that brought me back around from my daydream. By the time I came around, the noise had faded pretty quickly into the cabin's clean and utilitarian walls.
I asked him what was up and I admitted to him I was blissed out, kinda watching all of the new buildings and roads go by as I stared out the window of the train. Course, he was laughing at the fact that he called me on doing it, so that was pretty funny. His mood shifted a bit all of a sudden and I felt he wanted to talk about his sister and I. I didn't want to talk about it, it was weighing too much on my mind, and had been, for weeks.
He told me not to worry, that this big job was going to make her come around. "Oh I know her man, she's my sister." I knew her and I had a good idea I might've known her more than he did. Dave was always that sort of guy. He saw the good in everything that happened around him. He must've stole that from his sister. Definitely stole that from his parents. Outside of him, the whole family was pretty dour. Which I'm thinking might be the problem here. I don't think Sarah's parents are saying the nicest of things about me. Sarah has a lot of faith in me, but she's also realistic, and after a string of dead end warehouse jobs, she was getting a little tired of moving.
The baby though. If it wasn't for our daughter Susan, the fighting probably would've been a lot more intense. I definitely would've been drinking a hell of a lot more. No matter how angry we got, we just couldn't bring ourselves to be nasty around our kid.
At least we have her. The kid kept us together pretty well, for an 8 year old, strangely enough. Here's hoping the job will just make things a little more solid around the house. Susan at least deserved a classroom full of friends that didn't have to change every year.
Dave kept trying to talk to me, he kinda stammered a bit about something, got quiet for a bit, and I guess he eventually figure out to give up, which is good. I wasn't in the mood. I'd rather stare out into the world and focus more on the future than on the past.
The rest of the train ride was pretty awkward, but at least with the new engines, it was a short trip. Dave knew enough to let me have my space while we got sorted out and bunked up, but once we started swinging hammers on a regular basis, I was able to lighten up and start talking again. Course, once the hammers stopped, things got even uglier, and it almost happened overnight.
...
We had a pretty good buzz going right away. Lottery winners such as myself got these nice new uniforms. Standard SWAT style BDUs in weird slightly off blue that we got used to pretty quick. Lots of white ceramic plates, straps and buckles.
We thought it was going to be difficult keeping them tidy, but even the guys who ended up down on the ground for shifts noticed that everything was impregnated with something that made dirt kinda just slide off easy.
The armour plating was very light and slightly flexible, and with how the helmet seemed to almost lock down into the breast plates, they made us feel almost like futuristic versions of those guys from old England with the horses and the swords.
Even our firearms and batons were mostly white.
The stuff was high tech, definately. The guns had this thick plastic and enamel paint job that made them feel like they should've shot lasers, but instead they used this wierd off calibre round that I think they used like one of those French cops from the EU. We even got our hands on other crazy stuff, like these pocket smartcells with flexible screens we could mount to our wrists or helmets, and these killer neck cuffs that had a few lights and buttons on them that allowed us to talk to each other over long distances. The audio and mics were so good discussions between guys a few towers away sounded like they were standing in right next to you. Heavier than they should've been though, and the battery packs seemed a little too big. They also had a habit of binding into your torso harness and helmet if you scrinched your neck the right way.
After the first day guys were fixing to wear them around their shoulders, but any time a supervisor saw them do that, they got into some serious shit. Things got to the point where they were pretty draconian about the whole thing.
Since no one likes doing PT out in the desert, we all just kinda dealt with them and wore them like clockwork. That and the computer voice it used for incoming transmissions was very easy on the ears, and some guys got to flirting with it, not that it got anything more than a few laughs from our guys sitting near em.
All and all we felt like bad asses. Like we stepped right out of that Robocop remake from a year or so ago.
Things got... weird. And quick. We had all of this high tech stuff, but our ability to talk to our friends and families started getting less and less reliable. Cell phones had a bad time connecting, no matter where on the wall you where. SkypeNet got throttled more and more. It got to the point you could barely stay awake long enough for DiaPlus to load up your friend's timeline.
It got noticeably worse within days. Suddenly we were starting to get cut off from the rest of the world, and we weren't happy about it. HomeSec said it was due to a lot of the towers housing these "invasion" countermeasures. Word around the campfire was the shielding on them wasn't as up and up as they were supposed to be. You know how it is though, lowest bidder and all of that.
They also started getting stricter and stricter with us. Every few days there was a new rule or operations guideline. It was hard enough to keep track that many of us were losing our vacation time on a regular basis. Some of us were starting to go for days without hearing from our families, and weeks without seeing their faces, even when they were local. It was getting to us, being disconnected, and it was getting to us quick.
Everything just kept snowballing pretty quickly. Fights happened. People stopped working. Penalties got more and more severe. At first it was the usual "hey go do this shit job for a week now", but then it quickly turned into "pack your bags".
After a weekend of bunks emptying, people got the message. A lot of us felt the whole cut-off thing was only temporary, and eventually cooler heads prevailed and we could start agreeing that even if we couldn't check our e-mails every day, it was better than not having a job anymore.
I got worried around the time I started hearing rumours that outbursts were responded to with FoodCards suddenly just not working for a day or two. Even at HomeSec's worst though, they're not going to starve people.
Well, after the very last State of the Union address we had, the one that started The Panic, I really don't put anything past them anymore. Once a government hits murder, then nothing is off the table anymore.
