Red Rock

Chapter 3: Counting to X (Part 2)

Chapter 3: Counting to X (Part 2)

                Kurtis led the way through the parking garage counting the numbers painted on the pillars. "I – 27," he finally said coming to a halt. The garage was completely empty of externally parked cars, leaving an eerie perception of loneliness in the air. Kurtis dropped his hand into his right pocket and took out his finger pad. With a quick swish of his index finger the wall beside him started to move. Daire and Kurtis took a step back and watched as a rectangular slit five meters long and three quarters of a meter high slide out of the wall like a CD tray. Kurtis pressed a button on the back of the finger pad and watched two robotic arms lower a block of distorted metals to the ground, retracting back into the wall when it was finished. The distorted metal cube that the tray dispensed started to shift around, expanding while creating a pattern of productive movements. The metals kept shifting shapes until they finally seized in the form of a small black automobile.

Kurtis creaked open the car door and hopped inside, impatiently motioning Daire to do the same. Once the two were safely fastened to their seats, Kurtis pressed the gas pedal and they were on their way to New Acadia's, Akin Corporation headquarters. The drive was mostly silent, Daire glared out the window as they passed by a seemingly infinite number of houses and buildings all bordering each other with everlasting tension. Eventually Daire grew indifferent to the scenery. With each block they passed it was as if they were in a cartoon passing an infinite repeating background. The buildings gradually got bigger the farther Kurtis drove downtown, until they hit the peak of New Acadia, Endless Street.

The skyscrapers seemed a little taller than they did before as happened each time Daire visited downtown. The top of the giants glimmered in gold plating with flawless marble statues and gargoyles pointing to the sky where a United North American flag blew in a superb wind while hovering even above the highest of clouds. A totally different world ensued in the sky at the heights of Rossburg Tower, it being the perfect scenery above the clouds, seemingly at the gate of heaven, and it made even the most intelligent people forget what it looked like down below. Hundreds of meters below, the base of the tower looked worn and tarnished from the weight it had endured in its life span. The concrete was weathered from years of cold climate and was compressed from the increasing weight on its shoulders. It was almost if the building was crying for help for its crippled knees could not sustain the pressure mounting upon it for much longer. Although the screams of the Skyscraper were heard in the wind by every passing pedestrian, they were blatantly ignored because everyone admired the buildings and dreamt of how swell it would be to eat dinner with the gargoyles at the summit of Rossburg tower.

"Are you going to miss it all?" Kurtis asked, trying to break Daire's trance.

"Not this part," Daire said, turning away from the skyscrapers. "I don't think I'll ever miss New Acadia. I never felt any joy coming downtown. It almost depresses me to be down here."

"Oh, Come on now. You don't mean that."

"I'm serious! I don't recall ever being happy here. Everything is just so... dead."

Kurtis turned to Daire with a wild smirk on his face. "Not even the time when we were at the Anniversary Parade?"

Daire instantly turned red from the nostalgic memory. "You mean when you entered me in a draw to play the National Anthem on the piano with the mayor's wife? No Kurtis, I can't say I was too pleased with you - or happy. As a matter of fact I specifically remember not being happy at that moment."