#
The Process-head stays at the airport. Praise the bugouts. If he'd been aboard,
it would've queered the whole deal.
I press my nose against the oval window next to the hatch, checking my comm from
time to time, squinting at the GPS readout. My stomach is a knot, and my knee
aches. I feel great.
The transition to Process-land is sharp from this perspective, real buildings
giving way to foam white on a razor-edged line. I count off streets as we fly
low, the autopilot getting ready to touch down at Aristide, only 70 kay away.
And there's my Chestnut Ave.
God*damn* the wind's fierce in a plane when you pop the emergency hatch. It
spirals away like a maple key as the plane starts soothing me over its PA.
I've got a safety strap around my waist and hooked onto the front row of seats,
and the knots had better be secure. I use my sore leg to kick the keg of solvent
off the deck.
I grab my strap with both hands and lie on my belly at the hatch's edge and
count three hippopotami, and then the charge on Stude's kegger goes bang, and
the plane kicks up, and now it's not the plane coming over the PA, but the Roman
tyrant's voice, shouting, but not loud enough to be understood over the wind.
The superfine mist of solvent settles like an acid bath over my Chestnut Ave,
over the perfect smile, and starts to eat the shit out of it.
I watch until the plane moves me out of range, then keep watching from my comm,
renting super-expensive sat time on Dad's account.
The roofs go first, along with the road surfaces, then the floors below, and
then structural integrity is a thing of past and they fall to pieces like
gingerbread, furniture tumbling rolypoly away, everything edged with rough
fractal fringe.
#
Dad's greyfaced and clueless when I land. All he knows is that something made
the plane very sick. He's worried and wants to hug me.
I totter down the stairway that a guy in a jumpsuit rolled up, ears still
ringing from the wind and my big boom. I'm almost down the step when a little
Process-troll scurries up and says something in his ear.