Friday, 9:33 p.m.: Exasperated again. Someone is shouting in the streets down below. I popped the police up on my Vid screen but there’s a static graphic there instead of an interface, complaining about the volume of complaints. Complaints about the service, no doubt. I have been in bed for hours, sweating, coughing. Every breath feels like someone put a knife inside my chest. The last thing I need is some wretched subhuman from downtown-and no one in my buildng would wander the streets, screaming-keeping me up all night when I need rest most. I look twenty years older, dark circles under my eyes and on my throat.
Now, I may have to swallow my pride and go wait in Killicks’s office no matter how rude success has made the man. And I might have a little tightening done here and there while I’m in there. The skin under my chin seems a little loose these days.
Saturday, 2:09 a.m.: Okay, the man has finally stopped shouting. The last hour or so he was almost unintelligible, as if he were gargling thick oil when he spoke. I haven’t been able to sleep. I can’t breathe through all this phlegm and I feel hot, so hot. I can’t believe the police let him shout like that all night. They must have their hands full. I wonder if those animals downtown have set the city on fire again.
Saturday, 11:03 a.m.: Really, I didn’t feel too bad this morning, and I thought maybe I’d gotten past it, slept through it. I felt okay until I got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I almost screamed. My throat is bruised and looks kind of swollen. The moment I saw it, it was like all of a sudden I felt awful.
Determined, I called around for a hover, but no one answered. I think most everyone got out of the city last night, but no one thought to tell me. Feeling weak I went out onto the street for the second time in two days. Big mistake. No pedicabs. Not a single fucking pedicab anywhere. I would have paid one of those sweaty slobs a million yen to drive me seven blocks, but there were none to be had, so I had to walk. In my sixty-thousand-yen Pierre Olivier stilettos, which fell apart about three blocks along, one heel just snapping like a twig. By this point I was sweating and gasping, coughing, but no one would help me. In fact, everyone kept away from me, crossing to the other side of the street. Some had these ridiculous masks on, white pieces of cloth strapped to their faces.
Oh, the punch line? Killicks’s office was closed. Fucking closed.
Saturday, 7:33 p.m.: Even getting home was hell. The city feels empty-there are people everywhere, but for some reason it feels light and thin. And every third person has on one of those masks, like that’s going to do anything. I finally got around to watching the Vids, and according to them this is just the flu, the regular old flu. And I’m late to take my position down on the street to hold hands with everyone else in New York and start singing. The flu. I know the Vids aren’t worth much, but do they really think we’re that stupid?
Sunday, 12:45 p.m.: Shit, I think it’s time to get the hell out of the city for a while, go travel a bit. I’m worse than ever and it’s got to be this rotten city air, poisoned by all the lowlifes I have to rub shoulders with. Besides, I can’t raise anybody-it’s like the whole town has skipped. I’m wheezing my way down to the street again, because of course again there are no hovers to be had, and
Sunday, 12:53 p.m.: Right here in front of me, there is a dead man in the street.
Sunday, 1:09 p.m.: Unbelievable. A Department of Public Health hover has arrived. They’re scooping him up using Droids, and they’re all wearing protective clothing-rubbery suits, masks, gloves. They won’t talk to any of us, though most people are just avoiding them, crossing the street. He’s… disgusting. His neck is like a balloon, and crusted blood is all over his front. It looks like his whole jaw is just… gone.
Shit, I’m not feeling well at all. I think it might be time to get out of the city. A little vacation. I’m heading home to make a few Vid calls. Vinnie has a small shore house somewhere in the Caribbean, he’s told me. If Manhattan is about to go all redline again, with another riot and police everywhere, it’ll be nice to ride it out somewhere far away.
Sunday, 2:35 p.m.: Total washout-no one is in. I thought Vinnie answered-the Vid screen jiggled and I thought I saw a flash of his apartment, but it might have been just a dropped connection, and he didn’t pick up when I retried. I even tried Father, which tells you how desperate I am, but the old bastard wasn’t picking up, either. Probably out in the fields whipping the Droids. I think Daddy wishes he still had people working for him instead of robots, just so he could go out there in those fucking boots and inspire them a little.
Well, looks like we’re dipping into the trust fund. I’m going to see if there aren’t a few cops willing to stick me on an SSF manifest heading somewhere better. Oh, but I look like hell. My neck is all black and blue and I’m red and shiny. My hair! Oh, my hair is a fright. Thousands of yen and it looks like a wig. I’m going to have to spend some time getting myself into shape, and then my new red coat and we’ll see if we can’t charm some lieutenant or captain into slipping me onto a police ride.
Sunday, 5:46 p.m.: Insane, fucking brutes. Just as I step outside, wearing flats for a change since apparently we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives walking everywhere, all the Vids go fritzy and there’s a goddamn lockdown. We’re all ordered into our homes. I’ve been through this bullshit plenty of times-every time those assholes set downtown on fire again, they lock the city down and order us into our homes and no one pays any attention.
Toddling on my sore feet, I made my way over to The Rock, where all the cops hang around looking tough. All I needed was a friendly young man with a gold badge and clearance to sign me onto a hover. I saw a likely-looking group-three men and a woman, one of them looking a little beat-up and weathered, but I’m used to my police looking worse for the wear-and hurried over. It had started that scum-yellow snow again, bad for the skin, and I guess I lost my footing and ended up stumbling into one of them, a nasty-looking giant with red hair. I went down on my ass, feeling dizzy, feverish, my chest seizing up into a painful fist. And then there was a team of those hover monkeys they toss out, the ones that never speak to you. I was dazed, and they just plucked me up, called me ma’am, and took me away.
No way-ma’am! I felt a hundred goddamn years old. By the time I got my lungs working again, I started coughing until I almost blacked out while they loaded me into a big, smelly hover that fucking ruined my new coat. By the time I had the strength to protest, they were all gone with a vague promise that an officer would be around to check our IDs and decide what to do with us. Half an hour later some fat asshole in a leather overcoat, hacking and wheezing like there was a smaller, much sicker man inside him, showed up and did brain scans on each of us, grunting your fate. He told us he could arrest us for violating an emergency instruction, but he’d just send us home and expect us to stay there. Fucking assholes.
Excellent. I feel like shit. Feels like someone put a razor blade in my chest. I’m taking e-tabs until I pass out.
Monday, 10:44 a.m.: So, I feel like someone’s cut me open, removed a few pounds of necessary materials, and closed me back up. I don’t dare look in the mirror. There was blood on my pillow when I woke up. I’d rather not see what I look like.
Shit, the city is quiet. I tried to go downstairs, but they finally got around to setting the building shell, and the elevators are locked. My own shell won’t boot now. It’s like living in an empty, hollow building. I can’t even get my own front door open. I don’t have any food in the apartment-who keeps food in the apartment? If this emergency goes on much longer, I won’t have to worry about coughing up my own lungs. I’ll be dead.