Authors: Steven Savile
Elemental (2 page)
BY DAVID GERROLD
Â
David Gerrold started writing professionally in 1967. His first sale was the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode of
Star Trek
. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including
The Man Who Folded Himself
,
When HARLIE Was One
, and the four books in
The War Against the Chtorr
.
Star Trek
. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including
The Man Who Folded Himself
,
When HARLIE Was One
, and the four books in
The War Against the Chtorr
.
Gerrold has written episodes for more than a dozen different television series, including
Star Trek
,
Star Trek Animated
,
Twilight Zone
,
Land of the Lost
,
Babylon
5,
Sliders
,
Logan's Run,
and
Tales from the Darkside.
He has had columns in six different magazines and two Web sites, including
Starlog
,
Galileo
,
Profiles
,
PC-Techniques
,
Visual Developer
,
Yahoo
, and
GalaxyOnline
. In 1995, he won the Hugo and Nebula awards for “The Martian Child,” an autobiographical tale of his son's adoption.
Star Trek
,
Star Trek Animated
,
Twilight Zone
,
Land of the Lost
,
Babylon
5,
Sliders
,
Logan's Run,
and
Tales from the Darkside.
He has had columns in six different magazines and two Web sites, including
Starlog
,
Galileo
,
Profiles
,
PC-Techniques
,
Visual Developer
,
Yahoo
, and
GalaxyOnline
. In 1995, he won the Hugo and Nebula awards for “The Martian Child,” an autobiographical tale of his son's adoption.
David Gerrold lives with his son in Northridge, California. Learn more about Gerrold at his Web site:
www.gerrold.com
.
www.gerrold.com
.
Â
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It's that moment
when a liquid solidifies, when the temperature drops or the pressure rises and the substance finally stops flowing, it slows down, it turns to slushâto mud, it hardens, it finally becomes impenetrable ⦠.
when a liquid solidifies, when the temperature drops or the pressure rises and the substance finally stops flowing, it slows down, it turns to slushâto mud, it hardens, it finally becomes impenetrable ⦠.
For the first few hours after the Los Angeles freeway system crystallized, most people believed the problem was temporary and that traffic would eventually start flowing again. Even for the first few days, they believed they could eventually chip their way out of the concretized arteries.
The slush of Los Angeles traffic had been slower than sluggish for years, churning through looped spaghetti concrete channels in a lumpy stream of metal and plastic peristalsis, in a persistent state of uncertain
hesitation, punctuated only occasionally by forward-jerking movements and uneven painful surges, a textbook demonstration of socio-technical constipation and definitely no place for a stick shift.
hesitation, punctuated only occasionally by forward-jerking movements and uneven painful surges, a textbook demonstration of socio-technical constipation and definitely no place for a stick shift.
The city engineers had been aware of the potential for crystallization for nearly two decades, but no one had ever taken the warnings seriously, and eventually even they began to assume that their own projections of crystallization were situational artifacts occurring whenever the simulators reached the limits of their ability to process the rapid flows of data.
Unfortunately, only the data was flowing rapidly. One desperate afternoon, even that stopped. The air-conditioning broke down in the central monitoring station. The temperature rose uncomfortably. Fans didn't help. The computers began shutting down in self-defense. The screens went blank, or declared, “No signal.” Blind and deaf, the traffic engineers could neither monitor nor prescribe.
The rest was inevitable.
Outside, in the place where the facts didn't care about simulation, events took on a terrifying momentum of their own. It was Friday, early afternoon on a three-day holiday weekend. Temperatures in the basin had peaked at 106 degrees shortly after one p.m. Add to that a localized gas shortage acerbated by higher than usual oil prices, a high degree of situational stress about the staggering economy, a disturbing series of terrorist bombings in the mideast, and three days of overheated shock-jock nattering about a particularly scandalous high-profile murder trial, and crystallization was no longer a question of if or when, but
where
.
where
.
Surprisingly, it did not begin on the freeway. Not exactly. Although a freeway was involved. The first hardening in the traffic flow began in the San Fernando Valley where Burbank Blvd. intersected with Sepulveda. Always a sluggish intersection, today it revealed its true capacity for horror. An overweight, overstressed soccer mom with two screaming children in the backseat of her SUV and a cell phone pressed to her ear, her attention everywhere but on the road in front of her, abruptly became aware of a motorcyclist coming up out of the blind spot on her
right. Startled, she swerved left, forcing two teenagers in a dropped Honda Civic (don't ask) to brake suddenly. The empty tanker truck that shouldn't have been in the same lane behind them braked, swerved, and jackknifed sideways into a city bus, effectively blocking all three northbound lanes of Sepulveda and the middle two lanes of Burbank.
right. Startled, she swerved left, forcing two teenagers in a dropped Honda Civic (don't ask) to brake suddenly. The empty tanker truck that shouldn't have been in the same lane behind them braked, swerved, and jackknifed sideways into a city bus, effectively blocking all three northbound lanes of Sepulveda and the middle two lanes of Burbank.
Almost immediately traffic stopped on both boulevards, backing up on Burbank as far east as Van Nuys Blvd. and as far west as Woodley. Sepulveda froze all the way north to Sherman Way and as far south as Ventura Blvd. When the traffic at the intersection of Ventura and Sepulveda froze, the crystallization of the surface streets began to spread east and west on Ventura Blvd. as well. In the horror about to happen, there would be no alternative routes.
The 405 freeway stretches north across the San Fernando Valley; the heaviest used access ramps are at Burbank Blvd., just slightly east of the fatal intersection and up a slight incline. The northbound and southbound access ramps represent two additional intersections to interrupt Burbank's westward flowâit's a wasps' nest of lanes, contradictory traffic signals, and intermittent left-turn arrows. Even at three in the morning, it takes ninety seconds to negotiate this ganglionic nightmare in any direction. During crush hour, wise drivers bring a book or a magazine. Teenage boys change the radio station and readjust themselves in their jeans. Grown men pick their noses and think about business. Teenage girls turn their rearview mirrors and fix their makeup. Everyone else is on the phone, their attention two or ten or a thousand miles away. Watching the road is optional, something that only sissies and old ladies ever do.
On any ordinary afternoon, traffic feeding into the northbound Burbank offramp would start backing up by two p.m. By five, it would be backed up two miles south, all the way to the 405/101 interchange. This day, however, traffic was even more manic than usual. As soon as the critical intersection of Burbank and Sepulveda hardened, the crystallization of the 405 began spreading southward as fast as new cars arrived and joined the creeping boundaries of the linear parking lot.
Imagine the intersection of the 405 and the 101 as a cross. The entire northwest quadrant is the Sepulveda dam basin. For two miles west, there are only two surface avenues that go north through the basin to the neighborhoods beyond, Haskell and Balboa. For two miles north, there is only one westward accessâBurbank. But there are over a million residents northwest of the intersection and their
only
access from the south or east is through this interchangeâor through the intersections of Ventura and Sepulveda, or Burbank and Sepulveda. As quickly as Sepulveda clogged, all of the intersections and all of the surrounding surface avenues began to solidify as well. Within forty minutes, an area ten miles square had crystallized.
only
access from the south or east is through this interchangeâor through the intersections of Ventura and Sepulveda, or Burbank and Sepulveda. As quickly as Sepulveda clogged, all of the intersections and all of the surrounding surface avenues began to solidify as well. Within forty minutes, an area ten miles square had crystallized.
The 405 and the 101 freeways only exacerbated the situation, feeding more cars into this black hole of traffic from all four compass points. With no place to go, the traffic ground to a halt both north and south on the 405 and very quickly after east and west on the 101 as well.
With the computers down, Cal-Trans was unable to post warning bulletins on the freeway alert signs. Instead, an Amber Alert was posted to look out for a suspected kidnapper driving a black Ford Explorer, license number, etc. It was this particular (alleged) kidnapper's bad luck to be caught on the 101 westbound at Vineland. Traffic came to a halt with the SUV pocketed between a stretch limo on the left and a battered Plymouth pickup on the right, piled high with tree branches and driven by three Mexican gardeners whose command of English was limited. Behind the pickup truck, however, was a distracted mother, whose eleven-year-old son had read the Amber Alert only a few moments before and who was now intently watching all of the traffic around on the promise of a ten-dollar bill from his mother if he spotted the suspect Explorerâbut only if he kept absolutely quiet while he did, so his mother could listen to her deadbeat ex-husband (who apparently operated out of the bizarre belief that a good excuse is always an acceptable substitute for a tangible result) explain why his child-support check would be late again.
In the middle of this conversation, the eleven-year-old suddenly began
shouting and pointing. Despite his mother's annoyed refusal to accept the obviousâthat she now owed her son ten dollars that she did not haveâshe eventually accepted that indeed, the suspect's vehicle was only a few yards ahead in the next lane over. By then, owing to a repeat of the same Amber Alert news bulletin on static-riven KFWB, the inhabitants of two other vehicles had also spotted the Explorer. One driver was already calling 911. The other driver and his two passengers (all of them new enlistees on leave from the marine base at El Toro and on their way to visit the Tarzana-based fiancée of the driver) exited their own SUV, two of them carrying baseball bats kept in the vehicle for occasional trips into West Hollywood for gay-bashing. With traffic temporarily haltedâor so they believed (that it was temporary)âthey approached the Explorer on foot. The suspected kidnapper panicked, tried to hit the gas, tried to force his way between a lime-green Volkswagen Beetle and a 1988 Honda Civic driven by a harried college student whose car insurance had just been canceled, and the result was a three-way crunch, with three soon-to-be-ex-marines banging on the hood and fenders of the locked Explorer with baseball bats. They had just escalated to smashing windows when the first officers arrived on scene and ordered them to stand down.
shouting and pointing. Despite his mother's annoyed refusal to accept the obviousâthat she now owed her son ten dollars that she did not haveâshe eventually accepted that indeed, the suspect's vehicle was only a few yards ahead in the next lane over. By then, owing to a repeat of the same Amber Alert news bulletin on static-riven KFWB, the inhabitants of two other vehicles had also spotted the Explorer. One driver was already calling 911. The other driver and his two passengers (all of them new enlistees on leave from the marine base at El Toro and on their way to visit the Tarzana-based fiancée of the driver) exited their own SUV, two of them carrying baseball bats kept in the vehicle for occasional trips into West Hollywood for gay-bashing. With traffic temporarily haltedâor so they believed (that it was temporary)âthey approached the Explorer on foot. The suspected kidnapper panicked, tried to hit the gas, tried to force his way between a lime-green Volkswagen Beetle and a 1988 Honda Civic driven by a harried college student whose car insurance had just been canceled, and the result was a three-way crunch, with three soon-to-be-ex-marines banging on the hood and fenders of the locked Explorer with baseball bats. They had just escalated to smashing windows when the first officers arrived on scene and ordered them to stand down.
From there, the situation metamorphosed into a police standoff as even more motorcycle officers came racing up the still empty shoulders of the freeway, followed by the warbling and flashing cruisers of the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department. Very quickly, this nexus of confusion and rage was surrounded by armed officers, all of them crouching behind automobile fenders with guns drawn, while two police helicopters and three news choppers circled overhead and terrified drivers in all directions evacuated their vehicles, crawling quickly away through the lanes on their hands and kneesâincluding the harried mother, still on her cell phone, and her eleven-year-old son who whined loudly that he wanted to stay and see the kidnapper get shot. The suspected kidnapper, his vehicle permanently
jammed between the Volkswagen and the Honda, was unable to extricate himself from the vehicle and sat there helplessly while police ordered him to get out with his hands up.
jammed between the Volkswagen and the Honda, was unable to extricate himself from the vehicle and sat there helplessly while police ordered him to get out with his hands up.
The irony of the situation was that the Amber Alert had been posted with the wrong license number. The driver was not a kidnapper; his only relationship to the kidnapping was that he drove a black Ford Explorer. He had only tried to flee because he had seen three angry men coming toward his vehicle with baseball bats.
Nevertheless, innocent or guilty, this particular blood clot in the arterial flow of urban commerce effectively shut down the 101 in both directions, trapping even more drivers in their cars. Some of them turned off their engines and got out to smoke, leaning against their fenders or lifting themselves up to sit on the still-warm hoods of their rapidly depreciating vehicles.
Meanwhile, the clotting of the freeway system spread south and east with pernicious speed. East along the 134 toward the 5, and southward down the 101, which was already terminal. It took less than an hour for the crystallization of the system to hit the nexus of the Pasadena, Harbor, and Hollywood freeways. The four-level interchange, one of the first in the nation, was in easy view of the mayor's office in the nearby city hall, a building that, contrary to popular belief, had
not
been destroyed in the 1953 attack of George Pal's Martians and their manta-ray-shaped war machines.
not
been destroyed in the 1953 attack of George Pal's Martians and their manta-ray-shaped war machines.
With the news media now reporting that the 101 and 405 freeways were impassable and that drivers were advised to seek alternate routesâof which there were either few or none, the best thing to do was find a movie theater or a motel and wait for the weekend. Starting at city-center, the northward crush of traffic tried to force its way up the 5, an overstressed artery that crawled along the east side of Griffith Park; the results were predictable and immediateâanother nexus of crystallization. Nothing moved. The clotting of the Los Angeles freeway system was now irreversible. Within another hour, the 10, most of the 110, and
a large part of the 210 were equally out of commission as were most of the surrounding surface streets. Too many cars, not enough road.
a large part of the 210 were equally out of commission as were most of the surrounding surface streets. Too many cars, not enough road.
Unable to feed their traffic flows into the northward and westward traffic channels, the 710 and the 605 also began to solidify. Crystallization spread like ice across the surface of a lake, creeping steadily and inevitably toward a frozen stillness. As fast as new cars arrived at the outward edges of the solidification, that's how fast it spread.
And there were still four hours until sunset.
Most drivers, unaware of the scale of the growing catastrophe, unable to comprehend or believe that their trusted freeway system had finally, utterly, and completely failed them, remained in their cars, existing in a state of quiet desperationâor quiet domesticationâmost of them still believed that it was just a matter of time until traffic began easing forward again.
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