Lost Souls and Bicycles

[snurri]

Lost Souls and Bicycles
Originally uploaded by Snurri.

"Although in recent years various parties have seen some success in the creation of alternative fuels, for all practical purposes the Exile marked the end of the internal combustion engine within the city. With no means of delivery, gas stations in the city simply sold out of their ready supplies and shut down, many of them for good. Among their final customers were commuters seeking some exit from the silver-and-gold shell which had hardened around the area. The city limits are still strewn with the debris of their desperation; more than one suburbanite, searching futilely for an alternate route back to home and family, drove until caffeine and exhaust fumes combined in the bitter, starless night to work an alchemy of surrender. Most of them struck the shell head-on; some few survived to walk away from their crumpled vehicles. Most of these undertook long odysseys to join others who had already returned to their offices in high-rises downtown, to sleep in chairs or under desks to the lullaby of dead phone lines. Many of them never recovered. 'Suits and Skirts' became synonymous with ghosts; faces at plate glass windows were understood to be souls set adrift. . . . One such soul, a certain Martin Howe, left a diary typed over the pages of an Employee Manual for the small accounting firm where he worked, a chronicle in palimpsest of meals stolen from the company refrigerator ('Ate Andrea's chicken cacciatore from Thursday,' reads one entry. 'Spent rest of day in men's room.'), coffee made with rainwater collected from the roof, and a terror of 'gremlins' which he believed wandered the offices at night, living off of carbon paper. Howe seemed to believe himself the only survivor left in the city, and apparently never encountered another living soul. His diary was later found by Mayor Faldbakken's Salvage Team, but Howe himself was lost to history after an entry which reads only, 'Twelve six down.' This has been interpreted as some sort of code having to do with elevator travel, but is likely just madness. . . . In the end the city's residents turned to a form of transport which required only themselves as fuel. Some bicycle store owners were able to capitalize on the need through barter, while others realized the opportunity too late and found their stores already looted. Rusted shells of abandoned bicycles were salvaged and repurposed, wheels were fashioned from hubcaps and garbage can lids, and home bike garages sprang up throughout the city. Today these are mostly family businesses, run by folk who piece together frames from fences and old chairs and cannibalize car radials to make tires. (Rubber is scarce in the city these days.) . . . While the traditional design remains the favorite, there are various elaborations. The city, for example, owns a fleet of team-propelled models; most are designed for four-person squads, and consist of five frames welded together in a configuration of three abreast with two stacked behind for a lookout (known to parties hostile to the Mayor as the 'target'). These bicycle 'tanks' can be used to tow small trailers, and are usually protected by groups of scout and light infantry riders. (Bike jousting, contrary to popular belief, is not a common form of engagement in city warfare; the school-child's sport gained iconic status during the long summer of '72-'73 when Patrice Washington painted a somewhat Rockwellian mural of an alley match on the side of what was once the 1st 17th Federal Bank.) . . . Today bicycle building and repair is one of the city's primary industries; another, unsurprisingly, is bicycle theft. The latter is rather severely punished in most areas. The official penalty is one year of indentured service in the city's bike garage, but in other parts of the city the old thieves' justice of a severed hand may be administered, or even death." (p.499-501)