Black Glass (20 page)

Milk has been sitting for an hour on this bench in the lee of an office tower, newspaper on lap and briefcase at his feet. His nondescript suit, standard model for a million civil servants and company drones, is the exact same grey as the footpath. He blends perfectly into the background.

The mood of the street is chilly and flat. Traffic lurches and brakes in its sulky way, obeying the lights. More commuters join the pedestrian flow, scurrying along with heads down and bags jammed under arms, faces set in the blankness of transit. They're already dreaming ahead: the scrape of key in lock, a familiar face in the kitchen, a pot boiling on the stove. Or an empty room, the sagging lap of a couch, an evening spent in front of the box with the lone red dot of the remote control. The people march at a steady pace, ignoring the man selling magazines, his singsong chant:
Biiiiig Isssh-yoooooo
; ignoring the blank-eyed woman moaning on a milk crate, filthy and barefoot, just another lost soul who's wandered into the wrong zone. Drizzle starts to fall in messy gusts. Umbrellas bloom open, leaves shine wet on artificial branches.

This is research, with fringe benefits. The price of the experiment is close to zero: Milk's time and expertise are the only real costs. Humankind gets something for nothing, he gets better at his art form, and meanwhile racks up a few more karma points. Not that he expects anything back, of course; altruism doesn't work that way.

Milk runs a fingertip down one seam of his briefcase, tinkers with the catch.
Remember to look up, folks
. Yesterday he'd shot a scatter of light nodes up onto the building's glass facade, invisible dots now awaiting his signal. His fingers twiddle with the briefcase, and the nodes blink on like stars, a constellation of amber light. The building's facade softens, losing its harsh edges. A few faces tilt upwards, and colour washes over skin.
Lights. Camera. Action.
The effect is so subtle you wouldn't think to question it: just one of those mysterious moments of beauty that well up in a city then fade out unexplained. The nodes, a cheap but reliable brand, will eventually be swept away by a window cleaner or succumb to gravity and grit.

Now he brings in another change, just below the threshold of consciousness — a barely audible retreat of static, like a radio station finding a clear space on the dial. A surround-sound ripple seems to pulse out from the air itself, a warm murmur with snatches of laughter and voices, greetings and farewells. The collective hum of humankind with all the shady notes removed.

Milk is a conductor now, the crowd flowing in harmony under his sure touch, the street losing its flat chill and taking on the quality of a pleasant dream. He brings in the next layer.

The scent is barely there, a half-note on the edge of awareness: a hint of wet grass and newsprint, a nostalgic blur of woodsmoke (too soft to raise alarm, he thinks — fires are banned within city limits). But as the aroma spreads into the street, he senses a point of discord. A young, dark-haired girl spins away from a shop window, turns her head warily this way and that, testing the air like an animal. Pain twists her pretty face, making her look almost plain. She hunches her shoulders and hurries away, bobbed hair swinging, a flicker of distress swallowed into the steady flow of the street. She looked like she was in the wrong part of town anyway, Milk tells himself, but that was clearly a reaction to a mood variable — scent, most likely.

He dials the burned-wood note down a notch. He'd forgotten about the bushfires for a moment there; these days woodsmoke held bad memories for a large percentage of the population. Tuning is poetry as much as science, always an uncertain art. People might share common traits, but their experiences can't be laid out on some tidy graph. The questions never stop: what emotion does a certain shade of lilac evoke? What texture most invites touch? How exactly, from base note to afterscent, does downtown Washington smell after rain?

And the answers will vary — not just due to the surface facts (time of day, temperature, pollution levels, all that), but at a deeper, more personal level. The first-time tourist, the lifelong resident, the lost child, the sick relative making one last visit home … they all smell a slightly different city. It might smell just like its postcard; it might smell like holidays, or boredom, or grief. Memory is the culprit, the moodie's number one confounding variable; there are so many versions of the past. He has to leave room for things to happen, mustn't let his perfectionist streak take over.
You can't control everything.
He glances at the sky. It's blackening by the minute.

An old man's grocery trolley snags on the kerb, celery waggling as he struggles to pull it free. Two Asian kids, probably students, stop to help. The old man is chattering, waving his hands in thanks, but they are already gone. The street vendor sells three magazines in rapid succession. Now the madwoman on the milk crate is gazing up at the lights; her face remains blank but her moans have stopped, and the crowd makes only a shallow detour for her. Then lights flash red–blue: two cops are pulling on latex gloves, pointing to the west, moving her along. She goes without fuss, retreating into the misty drizzle, her milk crate dangling at the end of one slack arm as the cops approach the
Big Issue
vendor. A cab pulls away, the driver laughing back at something his passenger has said. The footpath is a gentle tide of commuters. They give each other room and do not shove.

Almost a pity, thinks Milk, that no one is consciously witnessing this little research project. Working like this — unobserved, no pressure, no one keeping score or calculating the night's take — is almost relaxing. He's just an anonymous donor to the public good, an invisible benefactor watching his spell take hold. He doesn't need thanks or recognition (although a little recognition, just now and then … it wouldn't hurt). You can't manufacture empathy from scratch, he knows, but you can fan it back to life: it's like blowing on embers, increasing the sum total of wellbeing in the world, adding tenderness without expecting anything back. It feels good.

Milk catches himself:
You're getting sentimental
. He smiles, pulls his collar tight, watches the ebb of people heading home. The glowering sky begins to spit down specks of ice, a rattle of hail on the pavement. People exclaim, look up at the sky, at each other: nothing like a hailstorm to bring a sense of camaraderie. No more for him to do here; time to go.

Milk does not see Luella rise from a couch in the glassed-in foyer just behind him, navigate the revolving doors, and raise her umbrella over her face as she steps into the street.

[Operations Section, Civil Monitoring Division, SensCom Building, Civic Zone: Damon | district security monitor, zone 42]

‘Check out this kid, the one in the baseball cap.'

‘Wow, he's got some moves alright. They busking?'

‘Yeah, see the capture point on the ground. If we just zoom in …'

‘Capture point?'

‘The jumper, the hoodie or whatever they've got there to stop the coins rolling away … Five, six, bit over seven bucks. Pretty lame, they've been there an hour. Cops'll chase them off soon.'

‘What happens to all the footage?'

‘Stored in a big mainframe. Cops and Polbiz clients can order segments — date, time, location. When we get a request in our zone we just punch in the details and hit
release
.'

‘It's all archived?'

‘Only for two weeks. Then zap, it's gone.'

‘It all gets wiped? Permanently?'

‘Yep. Else where would they put it? You've got almost three thousand cameras going 24/7, every day of the year. Can't keep all that footage.'

‘I guess not. So the system just covers the city and immediate surrounds? Nothing out in the subzones?'

‘Nah, they got private security firms out there, 'specially the gated places. Hey, check this out. Nice.'

‘Where's that?'

‘Intersection down the south end of King Street. Probably headed for the casino. Cold night for a skirt that short.'

‘I think it's a dress.'

‘Okay, sweetheart, you just stand there for a bit. Nice build, hey?'

‘Uh yeah …'

‘And if you want a front view … we just switch cameras. Hey presto.'

‘Wow. That's pretty cool.'

‘No harm in looking. Ah bummer, she's a Monet.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Looks good from a distance, but a mess up close. Shame.'

‘Seems kind of quiet out there.'

‘Yeah, Tuesday nights are pretty boring, especially after one. Weekends are okay, you see some funny shit Saturday nights.'

‘Sorry to get formal, but exactly what do you do here, as the, ah — District Security Monitor?'

‘Stuff all, to be honest. But don't quote me on that. Hey, you're not quoting me on any of this are you?'

‘No, no, of course not — you're one of my expert contacts, a background info-source. We're on the same side. Nothing to worry about, totally anonymous.'

‘Good, good. Just checking.'

‘So what exactly do you — how does the whole monitoring system work?'

‘Well, we're all fully trained in incident detection and ranking. There's a range of
Notable Incidents
we keep an eye out for, all ranked at different levels, one through to twelve. Twelve being your full-scale terrorist attack, bombs detonated, all that.'

‘Right. So two would be …'

‘Two might be your run-of-the-mill snatch-and-grab — no bashing, just robbery. Or criminal damage, which is mostly graffiti. Three is the same thing in the Commerce Zone — bag snatch, vandalism. Gets a higher ranking there, more at stake.'

‘So you log all this?'

‘Nah. We got a quota. Weeknights on average each District Monitor has to log one incident per hour; weekends it's higher. Get a few ones and twos, it's not so hard.'

‘What's a one?'

‘Well, say if nothing else came up, technically those kids busking could be a one. Suspicious loitering, commercial trespass, unauthorised solicitation. But we don't go overboard, just creates backlog. Eight's my favourite: stolen cop car. Don't get many of those. Had a seven last week — crazy dude running round with a knife. Now that was a good show.'

‘That guy was yours? They got him, right?'

‘Yep, darted him, went down just like that, pop.'

‘What are these areas, these shaded bits on the map?'

‘That's what we call a blind spot, or a grey spot — meaning either no cameras, or not enough to get any decent coverage.'

‘Fair few of them. Why are they not monitored?'

‘Either nothing to see, or cameras kept getting shot out. Eight hundred bucks a pop, adds up after a while. Anyway they're mostly dero areas, street kids and that. Whole Quarter's a grey zone. Keeps all the trouble in one place, out of the city proper.'

‘This section here — you know this bit?'

‘Old Docks, blind spot. Shortcut through to the Quarter they reckon, some old tunnel.'

‘Yeah? And it's not monitored?'

‘Nah, it's all boarded up, everyone takes the main tunnel, the one with the walkway. Not worth watching I guess, it's all dead ground down there. Look at this guy, what a knob. Nobody's worn bum-bags since the '80s.'

‘Yeah. Wow. Not a good look.'

‘Got a great view of that crazy hailstorm the other day — bird's-eye view, streets all piled up with ice, looked like a blizzard.'

‘Yeah, that was insane. All the leaves torn off the trees, shops flooded, cars all dented … they reckon the insurance bill hit $14 million.'

‘Gotta love global warming, never a dull moment. Hey, Damon — it's Damon, right? Look, I'm dying for a smoke. Can you keep tabs while I duck out for a sec? The day chick cracks it if she smells smoke in here.'

‘Ah, sure. Great.'

‘Take my chair, you can see better. This is your zoom. And here's track, and pan … Have a play if you want.'

‘Thanks. Looks like fun.'

‘Yeah. Everyone says that at first, but the novelty wears off, believe me.'

[Notebook entry: Tally]

Missing persons cases well they can be tough. If you get your hopes up too high, stare at a photo for too long, you start to see stuff that's not really there — some face hanging round in the background, some shape that's maybe familiar. You start to think every shot is trying to tell you something like a code you got to crack, you got to concentrate on till your brain nearly explodes.

You got to keep your head on straight, don't get all carried away. Don't kid yourself.

Can't keep every shot, gotta cull the ones that are no use. But then you don't want to miss anything either, wipe a shot that might turn out to be a clue. It's nerve-wracking this stuff, really it could drive you nuts.

This shot, the old bridge — looks like Paris or some other fancy place with all the lights and buildings behind. Like a place a person stands when they're thinking something over or modelling a flash dress. Good backdrop, Grace'd say. Keep that one. Dunno why I took this next one though:
Pedestrians use other footpath
. They always pulling this place to bits and putting it back together again. No use, delete.