wallwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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rainbowfic2016-08-05 11:42 pm
wallwalker) wrote in rainbowfic2016-08-05 11:42 pm
Blackstar 1; Chestnut 2; Color Party 23
Name: wallwalker
Story: Container Town
Verse: Container Town
Colors: Blackstar 1. Well, you're dead, you just ain't buried yet → Under the God (Tin Machine); Chestnut 2. Contrails; Color Party 23. Gridelin
Styles: Graffiti (Sprinting)
Word Count: 600
Ratings/Warnings: SFW, no standard warnings
Summary: A bit about the life of a container dweller.
Miguel's home has moved five times in the past month.
They hardly ever warn him in time. He gets the obligatory texts, of course, but they usually arrive hours after the scheduled time, if not days; the system is overloaded, and the messages just can't be sent out any faster. That was hardly his idea of a timely warning, and certainly no comfort to him when he realizes that the tower at the address he'd memorized wasn't accepting his ID swipes for crane transport anymore.
It wasn't as bad when he stayed home during a move. Usually they moved him when he was asleep, and aside from a few dreams of climbing trees he didn't even notice the motion. He does remember being awake for the move, hearing the chugging of the crane as it lifted him and swung him from one tower to the other; the force fields didn't impede his view at all, and the sky had been red with reflected light, drawn over with a web of dark trails from various drones. It had been pretty, as long as he hadn't thought too hard about where the colors were coming from.
They've been moving him to higher and higher perches in the city; his latest move had put him a mile above the ground. It would've been another nice view if there'd been anything to look at below him, but there wasn't much, just the dull purple clouds of smog. Anything with a view was reserved for the people who didn't have to rely on public housing.
Would anyone even notice if he never went back to his container again? The housing authority was supposed to keep track of abandoned containers so that they could be cleared out and re-assigned, but if they were anywhere near as overworked as the messaging service that they used, he would probably be fine for a few months. He'd been told that people had been allowed to live without homes in earlier days, before they'd developed the container system and found a way to extrude them cheaply enough. Any home was better than none, right? That was what the housing authorities broadcasted.
Maybe it would've been easier if Miguel hadn't had so much trouble making this dull grey box into something more like a home. It felt so confining, living in the little box; he rarely slept at home, and would instead go out to visit whatever friends he could find, people who were better at making their containers look less like dull grey boxes. It was funny how people always misunderstood him asking to stay the night, how they always seemed surprised when he was happy to sleep on the floor or in a chair. He didn't want anything from them, not like they expected. He just wanted to be more comfortable for a night.
Didn't they used to bury people in boxes? It had been a long time since he'd heard of a real burial, but he'd heard the old stories, the pains that people would take to preserve their loved ones only to abandon them underground. They'd been so vain then. And yet, that didn't feel too different from what they were doing to themselves now, except that they were moving in the other direction. They'd run out of places to bury them in the earth, and the smog-choked sky was the next-best place. Out of sight, out of mind.
wallwalkerStory: Container Town
Verse: Container Town
Colors: Blackstar 1. Well, you're dead, you just ain't buried yet → Under the God (Tin Machine); Chestnut 2. Contrails; Color Party 23. Gridelin
Styles: Graffiti (Sprinting)
Word Count: 600
Ratings/Warnings: SFW, no standard warnings
Summary: A bit about the life of a container dweller.
Miguel's home has moved five times in the past month.
They hardly ever warn him in time. He gets the obligatory texts, of course, but they usually arrive hours after the scheduled time, if not days; the system is overloaded, and the messages just can't be sent out any faster. That was hardly his idea of a timely warning, and certainly no comfort to him when he realizes that the tower at the address he'd memorized wasn't accepting his ID swipes for crane transport anymore.
It wasn't as bad when he stayed home during a move. Usually they moved him when he was asleep, and aside from a few dreams of climbing trees he didn't even notice the motion. He does remember being awake for the move, hearing the chugging of the crane as it lifted him and swung him from one tower to the other; the force fields didn't impede his view at all, and the sky had been red with reflected light, drawn over with a web of dark trails from various drones. It had been pretty, as long as he hadn't thought too hard about where the colors were coming from.
They've been moving him to higher and higher perches in the city; his latest move had put him a mile above the ground. It would've been another nice view if there'd been anything to look at below him, but there wasn't much, just the dull purple clouds of smog. Anything with a view was reserved for the people who didn't have to rely on public housing.
Would anyone even notice if he never went back to his container again? The housing authority was supposed to keep track of abandoned containers so that they could be cleared out and re-assigned, but if they were anywhere near as overworked as the messaging service that they used, he would probably be fine for a few months. He'd been told that people had been allowed to live without homes in earlier days, before they'd developed the container system and found a way to extrude them cheaply enough. Any home was better than none, right? That was what the housing authorities broadcasted.
Maybe it would've been easier if Miguel hadn't had so much trouble making this dull grey box into something more like a home. It felt so confining, living in the little box; he rarely slept at home, and would instead go out to visit whatever friends he could find, people who were better at making their containers look less like dull grey boxes. It was funny how people always misunderstood him asking to stay the night, how they always seemed surprised when he was happy to sleep on the floor or in a chair. He didn't want anything from them, not like they expected. He just wanted to be more comfortable for a night.
Didn't they used to bury people in boxes? It had been a long time since he'd heard of a real burial, but he'd heard the old stories, the pains that people would take to preserve their loved ones only to abandon them underground. They'd been so vain then. And yet, that didn't feel too different from what they were doing to themselves now, except that they were moving in the other direction. They'd run out of places to bury them in the earth, and the smog-choked sky was the next-best place. Out of sight, out of mind.