Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel)

PATHs - (Nov 23, Saturday)

The catacombs, they had come to be called, but they were a far cry from the archaic namesake that wound their warren under the streets of Paris.

These catacombs had been built and had been used for decades as a warm refuge and pedestrian underpass to the tall skyscrapers that clustered in the Core. They were referred to then as the PATH system, and they had taken on the bearing of a subterranean market or town square. Shops lined the sides of broad, tiled walkways, and during business hours every day they were thronged full of people. They were commuters hurrying to and from the central above-ground rail hub or the various underground rail lines.

The PATH was a secondary layer of real estate under the street level. It wasn’t beholden to traffic signals and traffic, and so long as you were content to move yourself around on two feet, it allowed for the armies of workers that would march out of the rail hub every day, and on up into the office towers, to flow uninhibited from one place to another.

But the PATH was also built as a refuge. When it was conceived, it was back when the winters were properly cold, snow-laden, and generally far cries from the comparatively mild, rainy seasons that have since come to replace winter and have helped the Wild to thrive. Back then, despite the wide avenues and pavements, there would be times in the deep of winter when the snow would comes down so hard and so consistently that city staff ran out of places to heap it all. The walkways between the huge white drifts would dwindle and dwindle, and in the worst case scenarios, those drifts and piles would sometimes avalanche in the streets, seeing roads closed for days at a time.

Down in the PATHs, none of this registered. They were self-contained in a way that could seem to have been inspiration for the ‘Dos: networks of restaurants and groceries and service vendors that allowed residents or workers in the towers above to gather all they needed without ever needing to head out into the actual streets.

The PATHs had since come to disrepair.

When the MegaDos were first sealed off from the streets, and the immigration protocols put into place, an attempt was made to utilize the PATHs as a physical link between the various ‘Dos. On paper, it was a masterful idea. The PATH was vast and sprawling, but it was a contained system that only wound under the Core. With a little bit of work to seal off the subterranean tram stations, it became a fully closed system. The branches of it that ran beneath the ‘Dos were kept, and the branches that extended to towers that had been abandoned were severed.

However, it wasn’t a perfect solution.

The PATH had never been designed to be secure. There were all manner of service doors and maintenance portals that opened up onto electrical vaults, tram tunnels, and older, prototype PATH sections. The BuildCorp’s architects and CiviEngineers went through, trying to block off all of these holes that had been punched through the PATH, but they were ever finding new holes that they’d miss on their first pass.

It was through these multitude of holes that it is believed the first of the Sky Pirates took up residence in one of the MegaDos. Back then, the whole pirate theme was a lark for a group of reprobates who had little more motivation than causing trouble as some claimed protest against the inequality and extravagance of the rich sealing themselves up inside the ‘Dos while the world outside fell further and further into chaos. The pirates means of dissent was to flood into whatever floors of the ‘Dos they could reach, spray painting skulls and crossbones on any surface, screaming in their mad accents and taking anything they set their hearts on “by right of piracy!”.

The frenetic pace of their “raids” started to attract ever greater numbers of bored, unemployed, and dejected young people. Even with the back way into the ‘Dos from the PATH system, the Pirates only ever made it so high into the layers of the ‘Do before they reached security doors that they couldn’t manage to blast open, or the Peacemakers finally caught up with them.

Climbing through all those levels from the PATH left the raiders tired and rather incapable of escape, so once the Pirates became well coordinated and savvy enough to launch their raids from one building to another, they largely abandoned the PATHs.

This is lame and forced.

There were clicks in the dark, and screeching cries. There was the sound of claws on tile, the shuffling of something heavy dragging over the smooth floors and rubbing up against walls.

Jakob looked to Benedict, only to see Benedict looking back at him.

“Yes. I heard it, too.”

There were more cries. They sounded like dying babies, though there was definitely nothing human in them.

The light caught something furry and hideous. The patchy fur that still clung to it was grey and banded with black. There were dark black circles around each of its eyes, which were milky white and looked to be sightless, except, knowing what this creature was, Benedict assumed that those eyes could see a great deal in the dark.

“They were raccoons once, but I’m not sure what they are now.”

The thing before him was closer in size to an Ox than to the trash-rummaging scavengers that he remembered seeing scampering from alleyway to alleyway. Those creatures could nimbly scamper their rotund frames up trees when required. He doubted if this hulking thing could climb anything a low as a park bench. It seemed to be slithering along on its ample belly, its legs serving more to propel its bulk along, rather than to actually lift it off the ground.

That wasn’t to say the things were slow. Even if their legs held little use anymore, the creatures seemed to have perfected the disturbing shambling, undulating motion that they used to propel themselves.

The raccoons must have made their way into the PATH through the holes that the Sky Pirates had opened up when they “liberated” the tunnel system for their own purposes. Benedict supposed that it wouldn’t have been entirely beyond the Pirates to have introduced the raccoons to the tunnels and to have kept them just fed enough to survive so that they could act as hideous guard dogs.

* * *

The image of grotesque, bloated, near blind raccoon mutants inhabiting the abandoned PATH system. The oddly roman (?) architecture of the path system at points, where atrium-like spaces were open from the street level, down into the lower levels. The LAYERS of the PATH as being intriguing, and the way that it is so easy to get lost down in the PATH because you are underground and have no sky or sun as referent to tell you where you are or where you are going. The furthest landmark visible is only a few hundred meters away, and when you turn a corner, even that will disappear from view.

The not-exactly-claustrophobia I feel in the PATH; a feeling of frustration with the sameness of it and the forsaking of any long, straight, north-south or east-west arteries in favour of serpentine, winding and wriggling and odd-angled passageways that haphazardly open into food courts or shopping malls.

* * *

They stripped his power bit by bit.

He began to spend ever more time in his office, first so that he could do exclusive interviews with whatever media would have him, and then just to be able to avoid all of the questions and all of the cameras.

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Cranked this out on Saturday while sitting a gallery in a desperate attempt to get back up to speed. Didn't get as much written as I'd hoped I would, but it was a good start on fleshing out the PATHs.