NR / HongKongChapterOpening

RUNNER’S COMPANION:
Hong Kong – Chapter Opening

Hong Kong was in constant motion, even at this late hour. The illuminated golden skin of the Splendid Dragon Path wove its way up the side of Victoria Peak, carrying wageslaves drunk on Chinese beer back to their hillside enclaves. Lit ferries slid back and forth across the dark harbor underneath gaudy advertising blimps scrolling with a mix of Chinese and English characters. Only minutes ago, a suborbital super-jet roared across the night sky on its way around the globe. Hong Kong never stopped moving.

Tonight would be Ma’fan’s fortunate night. It was the eighth night of the ninth month of the year of the Tiger, an auspicious sign of prosperity and good luck. Ma’fan hoped she wouldn’t need it as she rappelled silently down the side of the Ikon Tower, but she wasn’t going to turn down a little divine favor.

The surface of the building crawled digitally in front of her, swirling in a miasma of light that her ruthenium-fiber adaptive camouflage wasn’t able to keep up with. Fortunately, the residents of Hong Kong were too absorbed in their own lives to notice the small blemish that had appeared on the five-story face of Chu May, the latest East-West amalgam sim-star smiling widely from the skin of the Ikon Tower down onto the scurrying people below.

Ma’fan attached a suction arm to the window in front of her as it danced with color, and she sur- rounded the area with an inert chemstrip. When she pressed the button and juice flowed into the strip, the activated chemical would burn straight through the glass, which she’d then quietly remove using the suction arm. The whole skin of the building was wired with sensors tied into the building’s spider, or security rigger, who would feel the removal of even this tiny section of glass as if Ma’fan was stabbing him with a needle. She waited, hanging fifty stories up like an ascending Buddha in a black catsuit, for the next part of her plan to come to fruition before activating the strip.

Ma’fan’s augmented reality display chimed quietly in her ears and windows blossomed opened, casting images of the street below into her view. Perfectly timed, the flash mob of young political dissidents had assembled on the street below, a sudden gathering of 9x9 members protesting the corporate- owned government of Hong Kong. A number of the protesters thrust their arms into the air in a motion that seemed like a rallying cheer, but Ma’fan’s cameras tracked the motion of the hand grenades as they flew towards the ground-floor lobby.

With a simple motion, Ma’fan activated the chemstrip as a half-dozen sharp explosions rocked the lobby, the grenades delivering a jolt to the security rigger that masked her illegal entry. Allowing herself a tiny smile, Ma’fan turned on her adaptive camouflage and slid into the fiftieth-story office.

Tonight was fortunate indeed.


Page last modified on 2010-02-23 15:52