Chapter 23: Center Stage (Part II)

“What’s not permissible?” asked Zane.

“Emily is throwing a concert and it’s a blatant platform to get votes,” Elaine said. “And she wonders why she keeps winning these things. She’s obviously not playing fair. She’s pouring a lot more effort into winning than any other candidate can possibly hope to and she’s got resources that would choke a fork-bomb. Except…”

“Except what?”

“There’s something else to it. I just haven’t been able to put a trace on it.”

“Hold on, I’m going to get some chips.”

The crowd cleared somewhat after the bottleneck between the lawn and the stacks, thinning to a trickle of people spread out over the cement walkway. More ASU buildings sported the concert announcement banners, twisting and shimmering as a distant, unfelt wind slapped them against the walls. She felt she should hurry to meet up with Roger, but still something prickled in her memory about the whole set up.

Roger could wait an extra minute or so.

“Isn’t it a little early for you to be going home?” Elaine asked a nearby vendor. The girl, early twenties, wearing workman’s suspenders and ruffled blouse, stood as part of a bucket-brigade shifting boxes out from behind the counter and into a flatbed truck. She looked up and brushed dust from her hands, from the look of it she’d been selling jewelry and other knickknacks. Not one of the political tables who supported candidates for one position or another.

“We have to break down in order to make space for the concert,” the girl said. “As you can see, it’s going to be huge. I’m an Early supporter myself, so anything that I can do to help her out.”

“You’re doing this voluntarily?” She’d assumed the people leaving the grounds did so out of necessity or command, not the goodness of their own hearts. For most of them this was a money making endeavor and even with the construction there would be crowds to buy their wares. Of course, the girl did wear—rather prominently—several Vote Early buttons. The sun glinted off them like miniature blimp spotlights, an effect that played off nicely with the sense of unease in Elaine’s head like an air raid siren.

“Of course!” the girl said, beaming at her own proactive school spirit.

“Oh, and don’t forget Emily Early says—”

The sound of chips crunching drown out whatever she said next. Elaine doubted it would be important, another Emily Early slogan probably; she mouthed what she hoped approximated a thank-you and moved away from the partially deconstructed kiosk and set back on her way to Roger’s dormitory post haste.

“The concert sounds really cool,” Zane said, between chips. “What bands are playing?”

“It doesn’t say.”

In her inattention, Elaine’s foot caught and skipped on a thick cable that ran across the walkway. The orange extension cord connected the kiosk she’d just quit to an electrical socket set into a plug between some trees  She glared at it for a moment and then the nascent prickle of a thought became an actual idea.

“Now that’s definitely out of place,” Elaine said to the socket and the cord, and by extension also to Zane. She pulled her goggles back down again and keyed active the electrical disturbance monitor—in the false-silhouette mapping the cable sizzled with dirty current. With a quick glance, she followed the cable to its terminator inside the kiosk: a power strip connecting some lights and a radio.

A moment later the real-time feed from her goggles updated on Zane’s computer. “That’s just another example of that sudden flood of gremlin activity,” he said. “Can you elaborate?”

“I sure can,” she said, lifting her head she cast the gaze of the goggles across the crowd to the construction crew building the stage. As the image of the electrical flux came into resolution she smiled inwardly and sang a barely remembered tune to herself. “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is just not the same.”

Under the vision overly numerous incidences of dirty current appeared as orange lines strafing beneath the lawn and falling away into an intricate pattern beneath—the Hayden Library complex—and also rose up inside the buildings up to the limit perspective of the goggles. The orange disturbed power patterns, however, flowed around an oasis of untainted D/C that seemed to rise up from the ground itself in front of the building across the grass.

The stage.

“Why are the people constructing the stage using generators and not campus electricity?”

“No kidding,” Zane said. “I can’t remember the last time someone didn’t. Even for one of these projects. Do you think there’s a connection between Emily and the gremlin activity?”

“Let’s test that,” she said. “Grab Emily’s phone and meet me at Manzanita. Make it quick. I’ve wasted too much time already so I am headed there straightaway. Call me when you arrive.”

A scraping sound emanated from his side and she could hear him dropping his bag of chips on the floor. “I’m on it.” A pause followed. She surmised to strap on his helmet on and check something on the computer. “It’ll take me six minutes and forty-seconds to reach Manzie. Mark.”

Click.

Elaine didn’t even bother to pull her goggles off when she broke from her quick trot into a sprint. As she let her legs fall into the rhythm of the run she found herself wishing she’d listened to Frog about actual exercise. At least then, her friend explained, running wouldn’t hurt as much and she could get places faster. “Why do I need to learn to run better when I have people to run for me? Like you,” she’d protested at the time.

The phone dialed at her request. On the other end, Roger sounded anxious about getting someone else to take the gremlin-possessed-coat-hangar of his hands. The relief in his voice made her happy that she could tell him that she would be there in only a few minutes.