Sunlight Through Concrete Rain - Part 6 (still WIP)

35

“You know, we could just fuck off,” T offered as they walked through the muddy streets of Old Mumbai, U-Stench thick in their nostrils. Vel looked up, half-grinning. It was still raining, though now the rain was joined again by tiny globules of wet concrete. The sun shone through it all, its golden rays dancing through the unnatural spray.

“Sure, T,” Ravi said; half derisively, half joking.

“I mean it, Ravs. I know where Bento stashed his billions. Untraceable credit. Insane stuff – enough to buy a one-way, all expenses paid ticket to the Plains; or even Mars.”

“Getting cold feet already, T?” Vel asked.

For a few moments, there was no sound except for the thunder and rain echoing through the canyon-city.

“No,” T said finally, with a heavy sigh. “No, not at all. I’m always game for a fight, I just… I just realised that I’ve not known a day’s peace. Not since I was 8.”

“The Diwali your dad got the tickets, I know,” Ravi responded.

“I don’t want to talk about him. Or the tickets.” T’s voice was stone, jaw clenched.

“Right,” Ravi said, and they said nothing else for a long time.

“Here we are,” Vel broke the silence. They were standing opposite the old modern art museum. Once, long centuries ago, it would have stood as a proud warden of heritage and culture. Now, it was coated in a fine grey sludge; rainwater had mixed with a century of concrete rain.

The sludge slowly dripped off the façade, and the museum’s old brick seemed as red as blood and the marble shone like glass in the morning sun. A monolithic concrete megastructure had been built into the old museum, and up it climbed – up into the sky and beyond. Even in the golden sunlight, the tower – dotted by hundreds of lights – glowed grey. At its base, the museum gleaming red and gold seemed like an ember in a dead bonfire.

So this is what real marble looks like… Vel reached out a hand to touch it. He swiped away the sludge, wiped it off his hand on his raincoat, and laid a single finger on ancient marble. It was smooth; as smooth as steel. It was cold; as cold as ice. He was reminded, suddenly and immediately, of the walls in his building; the peeling plaster on concrete walls. That plain, unintended, imitation of marble. Vel wanted to weep, but he held his composure.

“Come on,” Ravi urged them on, and started off, unbothered by the spectacle.

“You spend too much time in your head sometimes, Vel,” T remarked with a shrug as he followed Ravi into the museum.

Rolling his eyes, Vel followed.

36

The museum was dark, and the displays had been empty for over a hundred years. They were guided by their three torch-beams, and finally, they appeared into the central atrium. Once, long ago, the atrium would have been rooved by a large dome… now that dome had been flattened and they were standing under a concrete superstructure instead.

“You know…” Rob’s/Ed’s voice crackled into the air through a dead PA system. “You know what I think about you people? Not you people as in you three specifically,” he was speaking in his usual sing-song British accent, which sent shivers down Vel’s spine.

“I think that, no matter how much humans squeal and scream to the contrary, I think that humans desire, beg for, need, and cannot survive without control.”

“Just… why are we here, Ed?” Ravi asked.

“I mean, everyone wants to be an individual… but even the individual can only be an individual in a society. Without it there is nothing. Individuality can’t exist in a vacuum…”

“You’re meandering and rambling, you tin can,” T mumbled under his breath. Rob’s/Ed’s laughter, his insidiously cheerful laughter, echoed through the dead museum.

“I hope you enjoyed your little rebellion, lads and lady. Can we get to work now?”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Vel asked, exasperated.

“Well, I’ll keep it short. We’re under SG’s tower. I know it doesn’t seem like it from here, but we are. After all, this isn’t the angle you lot are used to seeing it from.”

The words hung in the air. Vel’s shoulders dropped, as though weighed down by the news.

“What does that mean for us?” he ventured a question.

“Well, where do you think Cowboy’s core is located? At the tippy-top? No. Right here. A couple hundred feet above us; in the tower’s basement.”

“So, what?” T spoke up. “Are we going to dig? Cos let me tell you, you tin can, we can’t dig through two-hundred feet of concrete with hand-tools! And since the mercs you sent blew up my house, all we have are hand-tools!”

Ed/Rob chuckled. “There are abandoned lifts here. Long ago, back in our day, what the SG Tower uses as a basement now used to be its top floor. Below you, right now, is the old basement – with the old lifts and lift shafts. And you don’t have to dig down there, either, T. There are stairs.”

“So… so we just get into the lift shaft, climb up to the servers, and kill Cowboy?” Ravi asked.

“No. Not yet. Not yet. You need to prepare.”

“Yeah, of course we do,” Vel sighed. “So what now, o mighty AI? What the fuck do we do now, O Great Bucket o’ Bolts?”

“Patience,” the AI counselled. “We shall tear down this tower of Babel soon enough, and in so doing, we shall surpass the wrath of the Christian God himself. But before that…” the voice fizzled out.

Then, with a blinding flash, the museum’s lights came on. The world, in an instant, became brilliantly white and soft yellow as the old system was switched on.

“I need to get some things in order,” Rob/Ed spoke. “The museum’s old board room still works…” he said as if to himself. “The holoprojector is old… hmm… about a century out of date. I can make it work. Meet me in the board room in 20 minutes!” he announced, and the airwaves went silent.

The three of them stood in the atrium, under the would-be-domed-roof, and cast a sullen gaze at the empty museum. Empty display spaces were everywhere, the walls were grey and devoid of art, the whole place was covered in a fine layer of dust and not even lazy footprints tracked through it. No one had been here in… years.

Is this the fate the designers had intended? Vel wondered. Forgotten, empty of art, the air empty of love and passion… there nothing here now. Nothing save for stillness and darkness. It was as close as Vel had ever come to oblivion.

Suddenly, a song – old and forgotten – played over the PA. Vel had never heard the song before, at least not that he knew… but, he recognised it.

The singer was screaming into the mic, again and again,

“Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage…”