Tevun-Krus #20 - WattPunk

Dub-Dub - A Short Story by @sdfrost61

The 118th floor is no different from any other, just higher. In the monsoon season, when typhoons batter the coast, she sometimes feels the whole tower sway. But the forecast is for light westerlies this morning, which is a good sign. Or at least she thinks it's a good sign. You can never tell if it'll be clear from up this high until you step out onto the roof.

She bangs through a service door that says 'No Exit', out into a stairwell that smells of molding cement and dried rat poop. She holds her breath. Her father tells her that there are no rats up here anymore, but she thinks that's untrue. She's heard them, scurrying around behind the walls, fleeing the light that comes on automatically whenever the door is opened.

"Go on," she says, hoping noise will keep them at bay. "Get out." After seeing a woman bitten by a rat in the street recently, she doesn't like to take chances.

She swings her chair around until the rear wheels are hard against the bottom step. There's a nagging doubt she's forgotten something, which transforms into the realization that she should have checked the battery levels before she left. Although it's too late now to do anything, she squints at the dial, relieved that it shows they're almost fully charged. Flipping a small switch on the armrest, she activates the rubber tank treads under the chair, and with a soft whine the electric motor grinds her up fourteen steps to a door that opens out into the night.

* * *

Prosperous Billionaire Mansion in Phoenix Street was built for neither billionaires nor the prosperous. And it was never a mansion. Even in its heyday, it was a hardly more than an upended box culvert with window spaces punched out every three meters. It was built during the last gasp of support for public housing to accommodate an influx of refugees following the Crisis. And things only went downhill from there. It's still an upended concrete culvert, except now it's a dangerous one. Pinky doesn't think too much about whether it's safe or not, because the outlook north from the rooftop trumps probable risk any day. It's one of the best sights in the whole city.

Out on the rooftop, she can see it's near perfect weather for reading. There's not a cloud in the sky. Not a hint of precipitation or wind. There's not a star to be seen either, but Pinky is willing to live without stars if the nights are clear and dry and still. She rolls to the edge, nudging the front wheels against an ankle high metal bar. The property developer didn't care if people fell or jumped off sixty years ago. The building management cares even less now. In a way she's glad, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to see over the Wall.

The Wall is a great hulking mass, reaching two thirds up the side of Prosperous Billionaire Mansion. It's so close that she could throw a stone across it onto the other side if she wasn't confined to a chair. She saw Bacon do it once, and he hasn't exactly got the strongest arm in the world.

The Wall was constructed from poured concrete rammed full of steel and sensors and booby traps, topped with twenty meters of razor wire. It's thick, even along its narrower apex, five or six paces wide. At the bottom, it must be more than fifty. It was built to stop the illiterates overrunning the wealthy on the northern side, and it's accomplished that in spades. It's an impassible barrier, which in all the years since completion has never once conceded a prohibited crossing.

Pinky reaches around behind her, to the backpack hanging off the push handles. Inside is a homemade optical sensor, which she clips to a swingarm bolted to the armrests. She pulls a small reader from the pack, connecting it to her power source and then to the sensor. When she turns on the reader, the screen emits a dull white glow. Resting it on her lap, she sights through the sensor tube.

Open windows are best, but they're rare. The next best option is a closed window with a view into the room unimpeded by curtains, shades or other blockages. But there are provisos. The glass should be clean, uninfected by nanotech or other technologies that play havoc with the optical sensor, and they should be unlit by external light. Red light is particularly bad, throwing the sensor completely out of whack. She starts scanning a thin white tower, finding a closed window that meets her requirements right off the bat.