Amber & Ice

Chapter 2: Perhaps a fuse blew

Four storeys above the chaos of the streets, Athena felt a little better, although her heart was still pounding and the ringing in her ears hadn’t stopped. Her memory of the journey from the street back to the student flat she shared with Cress was little more than a haze of text and images flitting across her feed-glasses; the networks were in turmoil and the overload of information wasn’t doing anything to help ease Athena’s anxiety. She was relieved to be off of the streets and in relative comfort of home.

 From the kitchen window she could see smoke rising in the distance, forming a sickening black smudge across the skyline. Reading the feeds reassured her that no one had been seriously injured; the explosion had been smaller than it had appeared to Athena’s novice eyes and no one had been standing too close. There were a few minor injuries from the chaos in the crowds and more than a few headaches from the noise, but otherwise the voting populace had survived unscathed. Cress had injured her wrist in the crush and was getting it seen to right now, finally making a lot of fuss about it on her public posts. For once, Athena was pleased that Cress was complaining; at least it meant that she was OK.

As Athena tugged off her gloves and put them on the velvet rose bench by the kitchen table (which Cress had picked out and put in over the holiday), it occurred to her that she hadn’t really been in London for long enough to know if this was normal. Perhaps this sort of thing - although she wasn’t even really sure what sort of thing it was: speculation varied from equipment malfunctions to Pro-smoking sabotage - happened quite often at the large results announcements. Perhaps it was so frequent that it barely made the news in her area, which would explain why she had never heard about it before.

But as Athena pulled off her hat and ran her fingers through her hair she took in the anxious posts on the feeds. They didn’t sound as though nothing out of the ordinary was occurring.

 The city had seemed beautiful when Athena left her flat this morning: a dazzling clean slate in which anything could happen. But now, with the streets turned into a treacherous icy sludge beneath multitudes of hurried footsteps and smoke still drifting into the sky in the north, it seemed tarnished and spoilt.

 While filling the kettle, Athena pulled up the live feed from Trafalgar on her glasses. The top of the stage was obscured beneath a many-pointed star of blackened wood. The announcer was sitting a little way off to the right, medics bustling around him, tending to his wounds. He was shocked, but in no imminent danger other that what the loss of his hair and eye brows might mean for his career.

 Some minutes passed before Athena’s friends appeared, during which time she researched the explosion on the feed, watching replays from those closer to the front of the crowd. It looked as though it had originated from something off to the side of the stage and had been constructed to shock rather than to injure - more like a theatre explosion than a real one. Athena now knew that her friends were all safe because Dora had been filming the entire event. Dora filmed everything; she hardly ever ventured outside without her glasses cam switched on. They had been positioned close to the front, but at the opposite side of the stage to the explosion. All three had fallen to the floor when it went off. Dora wasn’t currently live-uploading though, so Athena couldn’t follow what her friends were doing now. Cress was still uploading a lot of public statuses to the feed; making it clear to anyone who was following her that she was very unhappy with the ‘results sabotage’ and also in a considerable amount of pain from her wrist.

 Her on-line complaints were soon replaced with audible ones as she entered through the front door clutching her right wrist, her cheeks flushed pink with anger. Cress’s hair was pulled up in her customary bun and her thick-rimmed glasses took up half of her face. She was scowling, Athena’s second clue that she wasn’t in the best of moods. Beside her was Dora, a doe-eyed brunette who was currently sporting a square of white gauze on her forehead and Demi, who still managed to look camera-ready, despite the morning’s drama.

 The light to the right hand-side of Dora’s glasses was blinking green, an indication that she was currently filming. Athena was too used to the constant camera attention to care now anyway and Dora very rarely posted her everyday footage on-line.

 Cress threw herself down onto the bench, her face the picture of a helpless victim, while Athena poured out four cups of green tea. “Oh, Athy, it was horrible. You are so lucky you weren’t there; I wish my train had been delayed. My wrist hurts so much.” She looked around at the other two, who had taken their seats less dramatically. “How could someone do that, after all of our hard work?”

 Dora, whose family had moved over to the UK from North Korea a few generations ago and had grown up with stories far worse than a flash-bomb, merely shrugged.

 “Don’t worry, Cress,” Demi told her sympathetically patting Cress’s uninjured wrist. “The explosion won’t affect the results of the vote. It will still get announced.”

 Putting the four mugs onto a tray, Athena took them over to her friends and took her own seat next to Cress.

 “Athena, I love what you’ve done with your hair over the holiday,” Demi told her, as soon as she was seated.

 “Thank you,” Athena replied, subconsciously tugging her now-shoulder length locks. At the end of the last term, her brown hair had gone down past her shoulders, but now it only dropped a few centimetres below her ears. She was still struggling to get used to the change, although everyone who had seen her so far said that it looked better.

 “Speaking of the holidays,” Dora added, after giving Athena’s haircut an approving once-over. “I guess no one is going to be talking about what they did over the break when we go back to lectures tomorrow now - all anyone will be discussing is the vote.”

 “As they should!” Cress said. Her brown eyes had taken on the wild look they always got when she was feeling passionate about something. “It’s an absolute disgrace.”

 “It might just have been an accident, Cress,” Athena suggested softly. “Perhaps a fuse blew.”

 “Or perhaps someone was afraid the result wasn’t going to go the way they hoped - what is the point in having a direct democracy if people are going to treat it like that? How could anyone try to take away our freedom of speech! We have a right to be heard!”

As if on cue, the lights on the side of the girls’ feed-glasses blinked purple and a chime sounded.

 “A new Quick Vote!” Cress exclaimed excitedly as all four read the text running before their eyes.

 “Oh good,” Athena said. “We definitely need to buy more road-grit – this morning was ridiculous. Perhaps someone slipped and seriously hurt themselves in the rush to get away earlier. This one is a no brainer.”

 “Agreed. Vote ‘for’,” Dora said confidently, nodding. The other girls said the same and the purple lights on their glasses blinked out, signalling that there were no new votes to consider. The lights had been a more recent addition to the voting system – a way of pointing out those with important or medium-band votes outstanding, so that they would feel pressured into responding.

 The girls spent the rest of the afternoon discussing their plans for the following day and the new challenges their second term would entail. The only further interruption came from the news-feeds alerting them that the handsome results presenter had been released from hospital unhurt and that the police were, thus far, unsure what had caused the explosion. The result had been rescheduled for two weeks’ time.