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©1998 F. Alexander Brejcha
Published originally in the Spring 1998 issue of Absolute Magnitude
Propelled by an explosion of sound, I threw myself out the car door and hit the ground rolling as my face was slashed by cutting concrete slivers thrown up by the bullet that slammed into the sidewalk inches from my shoulder. The coppery taste of blood filled my mouth, and my hands were stinging and oozing red and clear liquid from where they were scraped raw from my ungraceful landing. Wincing in pain I scrabbled to my feet. But before I could make another move, the front door of the squad car burst open and Officer Sawyer jumped out to fire at me again. People screamed and threw themselves to the side as I froze, unable to move even though I felt the tug of a bullet in my jacket and a breeze at my side before I heard the thunder of her gun. Then glass exploded behind me from a shop window that took the bullet that might have been meant for me.
The crystalline shower snapped my trance and I turned to duck down the stairs at 16th and JFK. I didn't know anymore if this was real or not, but I just burrowed into the passages that honeycombed the ground under Philadelphia's City Hall. It was familiar turf and I felt safe down in the eerie underground world where the subway, the commuter trains and the elevated all linked up, and a whole other city had come into existence. Shops, vendors and homeless were all swirled together in a bizarre melange that mirrored -- in a slightly distorted and fluorescently-lit manner -- the dying commercial world above. But here there was no more pretense. It was a battle to survive and no one denied it.
I ran through the concrete and tile maze trying to ignore the depressing images assaulting me. I could see the despair in the haunted looks of the woman selling flowers from a home-made cart as she called out to me.
"Please, buy a flower for your lady, sir!"
I hurried past and ignored her as she reached out undaunted to someone else behind me: "Buy your man a little life for his drab suit, lady. You wouldn't believe how much better he'd look with this on his collar..."
I could also hear the hopelessness in the voice of the newspaper and magazine vendor as he pitched his latest acquisition: a data-link to the State lottery computer -- the newest one down here. "Get your lottery tickets," he hawked. "Couldn't you use a couple of million extra? Only two dollars for a chance to buy a part of the dream. This week's Escape Ticket is up to twenty million dollars. Just think: maybe you'll be the only winner!"
And people were lining up to try. I could almost feel the tug myself. Where else was there even a chance to win freedom? The lottery computer knew no sex, no race, no blood type or H.I.V. infection. Only a number.
But there was an Aider after me and I ran, dodging through the press of people.
Around turn after turn I rushed, running down long corridors covered with graffiti under which some faded tile tried to shine though. Smells of urine, beer, marijuana and despair rose up to taunt me with every thudding step, but I stayed down in the hidden world because I knew that down under Broad street I could go all the way south to Spruce street, and then I only had to come aboveground for four blocks on the way to 10th. I passed Chestnut and turned away from an older man in a stained and tattered coat pissing against a support post while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony -- perfectly in tune and tempo. Ten years earlier he had probably been First Violin with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
As I saw daylight briefly from the stairs leading up to Locust street I heard the sound of sirens, but I couldn't tell from where or how close. The Mummers were strutting up Broad Street, and their irritatingly frantic banjo strumming and the accompanying, discordant brass and drums masked and diluted the wavering tones of the siren. I moved on. Only one person knew that I was heading for Jackson's, and as I climbed cautiously up to street level at Broad and Spruce where the underground tunnel ended, I looked around for any scarlet squad cars or uniforms. But there were none. Just a thinning crowd as the Mummers disappeared, the last contingent having passed on to leave the dingy, snowless Broad street littered with a sea of confetti and crushed paper mugs reeking of beer and stronger spirits.
I kept to the walls of the houses and held my head bent down as I hurried east on Spruce, heading for 10th street as I mentally rehearsed my introduction to the people at Jackson's. I wondered how quickly Sawyer could spread the message about me, but considering the number of people who had police-band radios, I was sure the word would spread. Hopefully all the Aids-Police knew what was going on and would leave me alone. Assuming Sawyer was on the level. But as I picked concrete chips out of my raw and bloodied palms I realized that the officer could easily have killed me if she had wanted to. She had just made sure my escape looked real. But that left me trying to come to terms with the bizarre concept of helping an Aider.
Just that morning I had started my day with a demoralized walk along the Schuylkill river, shocked by confronting my image in a plate glass mirror strapped onto a glass truck stopped at a traffic light. I had stared at the reflection of the ragged letter "A" organically embedded in my forehead, close to vomiting as the reality of how my life had changed was reinforced...
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