"The Lineman" (NEW MATERIAL ADDED!!)

(NEW MATERIAL!! This posting includes two sequences of a new fiction piece I'm working on that I am tentatively calling "The Lineman." In it we meet Chez [sounds like fez], learn a little about his present situation, and get introduced to the story. I have now added some new material to the initial sequence, as well as adding a second section -- Steve)

THE LINEMAN
By Steve Orr

Chez Makes a Discovery

Alphonse “Chez” Chesterton was simultaneously enjoying one of the positives of his current employment while dealing with one of its negatives. On the positive side, his new iChip had synced perfectly with his gauntlet despite the fact they were produced two years apart and by different companies (as advertised, he had to admit) and he was currently vibing on a rollicking piece of music being played by a group who’s general popularity had peaked in the previous millennium. But Chez had liked them the first time he had heard them; and now his iChip was loaded with them (as well as with several other bands from that period – who knew I’d ever like this stuff?).

On the negative side, he was also currently climbing a tree out in the back end of nowhere. Nobody cared if he listened to his chip on this job, so he did it all the time; driving from location to location, during analysis & repairs; even when he, on rare occasions, had to actually talk with a client or some other local (hey, they couldn’t tell). The big downside was that he had to do things like he was doing today … finding out why the video feed from this location had gone to snow.

Somewhere in New York City, just off Broadway, was a cozy little restaurant (not really cozy or little, but patrons thought of it that way) with one of those menus that doesn’t list the price of anything (way above my pay grade, that’s for sure). Strategically placed on its walls, so each group of diners had the sense they were dining somewhere else, were large video panels, each with its own separate view of some bucolic scene; sheep grazing in New Zealand, Kobe cattle doing much the same thing in Japan, a relatively empty meadow with occasional breeze riffling through the wildflowers, “Main Street” in a small Texas Panhandle town, the Serengeti Plain, etc. There were more than 70 of these “dining experiences” scattered through “Tableaus,” each with its own collection of groupies.

The ambiance at “Tableaus” (and its above-top-dollar menu) made it a big profit center for FSC, Chez’s employer, and keeping the technology working that produced all that ambiance was Chez’s job. When Chez had come to work for First Solar Corp (FSC; he had to remember to call it FSC … they had switched to letters recently because, they said, people were confusing them with the eco’s) almost five years ago he’d been especially excited about working for them. First, he was already on his third round of living on the dole; if he didn’t come up with a job pretty quick he was going to have to move into a shelter (not the bottom, but you could definitely see it from there). Second, it seemed like someone had tailor-made the job for him; tech (he liked tech; he and tech got along really fine, far better than he and many of the people in his life), world travel (something he had always wanted to do but could never afford), almost complete daily autonomy (he had a boss, but rarely saw or even heard from the woman – “Chez, get it done. Get it done right. Get it done fast. And then move on to the next thing. Keep your log up to date. I’ll contact you if I have any questions.”).

So here he was, high up a tree in the Texas Hill Country (a little too high for comfort); and what does he find? The camera was there, still securely strapped to the tree and facing a meadow that rolled gently down to the Perdenales River. However, the transmitter (the key fail point to the whole shebang in Chez’s estimation … if the scene could not be transmitted to the satellite, no one was going to enjoy it over dinner) was nowhere to be seen. An uninformed observer would not have realized this as quickly as Chez did since the whole operation was encased in a small, flexible weather-proof housing. But Chez knew there would be a small bump on the crown of the housing if the transmitter were in place, and, even from behind and to the side, he could see there was no bump. It was possible, he knew, that the transmitter had somehow come loose within the housing, but the likelihood of this was just about zero. No, the whole situation smacked of human intervention. Someone had fiddled with his tech. Chez did not like that; no-sir-ee. Not. At. All. He would note that in his log. Corporate might need to have a little talk with the folks that this tree was leased from; nobody should be up here messing with FSC property.

In order to see into the housing, Chez needed to swing around so he was facing the clear thermoplastic screen that formed the “front” wall of the housing; the piece that allowed the device inside to “see” the meadow. Ideally, he would look in, see that the transmitter was there, just not connected. If that was the case, he thought the rubbery housing was flexible enough that he could manipulate the transmitter back into place without having to remove the housing, and that would be that. Off in time to drive back in to Austin and grab some supper at Chez Nous. He’d been hooked on French food ever since spending a few days working in Provence last year. Plus, he thought it was kind of funny that, even though they were spelled the same, his name sounded like “fez” while the restaurant’s name sounded like the “sha” in shake. (Those French).

The problem was his safety harness. The harness was prevented from dropping any lower by a limb growing from the opposite side of the tree, and he needed to be just a tad lower to see into the housing. He had tried loosening the harness, but even at its most forgiving it would not allow him to swing around in front of the housing at the right elevation to peek inside. Of course, company safety policy required he do his work in harness; but, he reasoned, this was just one of those situations the policy did not take into account. Besides, it would only take a moment to swing around, look inside, and, he was certain, wiggle to transmitter back into position. He reached around the trunk and flipped the catch on the strap that tethered him to the tree, but left the main belt cinched around his waist. The two lengths of strap now hung from the left and right side of the belt,, respectively.

The limbs were thinner this high up, so Chez tested it before he transferred all of his weight to the limb he would need to stand on so he could do his peering. It gave a little when he pressed down with his foot, but it seemed sturdy enough for his needs. He thought he would be okay if he kept his weight close to the trunk. At times like this he really missed using his spurs (he had an excellent set back in his apartment; Buckingham tree spurs that had somehow followed him home from his stint in the military). After the eco’s got the UN to adopt the Tree Preservation Initiative following the “green wars,” all the countries that still had trees signed on immediately; and those countries that wanted trees eventually signed on when they realized there was no way to get trees without agreeing to abide by the Initiative. Now, no sane person would make a hole in a tree—the fine, alone, would kill you—because you were likely to be sued by the eco’s, or worse. Some of those folk were not entirely rational when it came to the ecosphere.

He reached up and grabbed a much smaller limb that grew from the trunk a few feet directly above the housing. This one had been trimmed back a little so as to not block the view, something the local was required to do from time to time in satisfaction of the lease agreement. Keeping his hand on the upper limb, Chez moved around so he was facing the front of the housing, and then leaned out a little because his eyes were still just a smidge too high to see what he needed to see.

For a few seconds he was disoriented. Something wasn’t right. He was still trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what should actually be inside the housing when, with a loud “crack,” the limb beneath him gave way. Everything seemed to happen all at the same time. He tightened his grip on the limb above, searched left and right for another to grab hold of with his free hand. Then, before he could find another purchase, the upper limb broke from the trunk as well, never having been strong enough to hold his entire weight. As he dropped, one foot hit a lower branch. This resulted in Chez being flipped onto the horizontal, almost perpendicular to the trunk, face to the sky. As he helplessly tilted outward, he saw the jagged end of the upper limb, opposite from where his hand still clutched its leafy extremity, strike the tech housing.

Chez watched as everything at the level of the housing and above disappeared in a loud, bright explosion. He felt the lower limbs smacking his back as he continued to fall, and then, slamming into the ground, knew nothing more.

Chez in Deep

He was really deep this time. Why had he dived so far down? This deep in the Amazon River there was nothing to see; all about him was pitch blackness. And no light. Why would he dive so deep without a light? And no cage. There was nothing between him and everything else that lived down here. He had to surface! Where was the surface? In the all-consuming darkness he started to panic. But then his training kicked in. Inventory: nothing … no, wait. He was breathing, so he must be rigged. Panic would only use up his air faster. He forced himself to take slow, even breaths until he felt himself calm down. His arms … for some reason he could not move his arms very much; and there seemed to be some cords or straps on his left arm. His feet … ahhhh! He began to kick. Yes, there was something limiting his legs as well; but not so much that he couldn’t accomplish scissoring flips with his feet. And in knowing there was something restricting his legs told him where “down” was. Now that he was oriented, he tilted his head back a bit and … there. It wasn’t much, but it would do; a gray smudge where all about everything else was fully black.

Slowly, he moved toward the smudge; coming a bit closer with each little kick. In time he sensed the smudge was growing brighter. He kicked harder, wanting to breach the surface more than he had ever wanted anything. Finally he looked up and saw the smudge had become a disc of light rumpled by the movement of the great river. And then, just before he got to the surface, while still surrounded by the gray-green of the upper waters … that’s when he heard the voice.

“Why aren’t you dead?”