Babylon Lost

Chapter 18

Stepping on to the other side of the bridge was like walking into another world. Instead of seeing the cramped masses of a Block, there was nothing. No crowds of people pouring out over the sidewalk moving in and around gridlocked traffic. No constant drone of engines, horns, and humanity.

It had everything else, the towering skyscrapers, lifted freeways, and neon signs plastered everywhere. But the absence of anyone in it gave this normally familiar sight an uncanny feeling.

Even without the map Jiro would have been able to find the shipping dock, it was, as far as he knew the same in every Block. Characterized by the same towering metal structure located at ithe center – a control tower, or rather a backup control tower, used in the event the automated drones that carried the shipping containers needed to be directed manually.

Because the observation windows on the towers were always covered with metal protectors, only to be brought down in the event of manual operation, the exterior was featureless. Just a giant metal structure shooting up into the sky. Jiro Always thought they looked more like monuments than buildings.

It stuck up out of the yard like a giant beacon, luring Jiro onward.

Making his way to the gate Jiro pressed up against a barrier to get a better look at the port. He knew things could get dangerous now, he had to be careful.

"Are you reading anything with your sensors, picking up any movement?" he asked.

"Negative, I'm not detecting any movement from our current position."

"You need to let me know if you sense anything" Jiro said, they needed any advantage they could get if they ran into trouble "one bad step and this is all over."

Jiro made his way into the port, and here he was greeted by another eerie sight. Normally the shipping yard was constantly moving with industrial drones loading and offloading shipping containers every hour of every day. That never ending buzz of activity that dominated the yard was a staple of Block life.

But here now again just the abandoned remnants of what hours ago was a flurry of sound and movement.

Jiro weaved his way through the towering stacks of shipping containers, he'd press up against the edges, scout the corner and then move on to the next stack. Long ago he remembered watching a video that said if one of these ports were disrupted for just a couple of hours, if the flow of containers was stopped, it would cause massive pile ups, covering the entire service floor with stacks the size of small buildings.

Now Jiro was living it, the containers were multiple stories high. Soon it felt like he was getting lost in a maze them, spurned on only by the little map Pax had projected onto his display. He told himself it was too his advantage to have the extra cover they provided, but the growing sense of claustrophobia made him feel uneasy, if they ran into trouble there was a clear lack of exits.

As Jiro made his way further in, something else began to catch his attention, the lights. Half of them were off and half of them were on. At first Jiro attributed this to the power fluctuations they'd experienced back on the bridge but the more he thought about it the more it didn't make sense.

If there really was a rogue AI hiding here, wouldn't it shut down all the lights to better hide, or on the other hand, if it wanted to make it look like there was nothing hiding wouldn't it keep all the lights on?

Half of them on and half of them off struck Jiro as odd.

"Pax what are you picking up on the infrastructure here? Any kind of anomalies?"

"As I've explained my remote capabilities can only detect presence, I do not have access to this facilities network. Do you think something is wrong?"

"Yeah I feel like the lights are-"