New Earth City, 2 August Entry

So, things got back "normal" after I got home from being arrested. Of course, Ande was upset and concerned, but I was able to calm her down within an hour or so. I didn't blame her at all. Though, really, if the situation had been inverted, I think I'd be more likely to take a little longer to calm down.

"I'm just glad you're OK," she told me. "You hear stories of what happens."

I knew what she meant. I had heard the stories. The so-called "intelligenters" on the inFeeds try to tell us in their blogfeeds about horrible abuse by our leaders. As a journalist, I've shied away from pursuing such subject matter. It's not very marketable. Deep down, everyone loves a good conspiracy, but no one will admit it these days.

Now, I'm not saying what happened to me the other night was part of a conspiracy, but it was an interference with my rights. If they had said I committed a crime, that would be one thing.

"So, why did they arrest you?" my wife asked me during that first hour of being home.

"I don't know. All they said was that I'd been picked up on a technicality and that my arrest was a formality."

"Technicality, formality, I hate all those legal words."

"Ande, you should read more."

"I read plenty, Jim."

"You should read more, then."

"Well, I would, but you don't write more or else I'd have more to read!"

I smiled at my wife. "Well, I may have the basis for my first writing sample in NEC."

"The arrest?"

"Of course! I got swept up in some big police action or some such thing. Who knows how many other people were swept up in the same wave?"

"You think there were others? Aside from those in the room with you?"

"I have no reason to assume it was just us."

"So, you're going to pursue this?" Ande asked.

"I'm thinking about it," I said.

Ande was quiet. The look on her face told me that she was concerned about something.

"What?" I asked.

"Just be careful. I know how this kind of story effects you."

I rolled my eyes. "Ande, it's fine. I'm only going to go where the facts lead me--just like I always do."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"You sound as paranoid as me."

"But you always say you're not being paranoid."

I smiled again. "Don't let the neighbors hear you sounding aware, now."

She glance at the kitchen window which was closed, then back to me and smiled, embarrassed. I caressed her shoulder and smiled. "I probably won't even find anything. You know how most of these things go. You dig and you hit a steel wall and that's it."

"OK."

The steel wall is what I'd always gotten back in the West Quad. Of course, before I could really know the wall was steel, I'd lose funding or something else would come up that wouldn't make any sense in the over all story.

"You could just right something that people would want to read," Ande suggested to me in the hour after she calmed down.

"You know I can't write mainstream stuff--I can't write about station events, or community street fairs or...whatever."

"But would it be nice to get paid to do what you love?"

"I don't love writing that kind of thing. How many times am I going to have to tell you that?"

"I know, I know."

"Just let me sit on this for a bit."

Which is exactly what she did. She went off to her job and I sat at home, using my smartBox to research. The inFeeds had several tiny stories about the rain from the other night. I didn't even have to look up what that old man, Van Bush, had said to me because it was all discussed in the info blurbs that made all the inFeeds. Well, nothing about the conspiracy stuff, but the weather stuff.

Turns out, according to the mainfeed (and everyone who picked up the MF's story) that the rain came about because of slight miscalculation by an NEC engineer. It wasn't a technical fault at all. The engineer in question has been disciplined and it shouldn't rain again.

Good. Those topfloor explosions and energy losses were not good for anyone's productivity.

Of course, after reading the mainfeed news, I knew there was always more to the story--this was particularly true since I had been part of the story that wasn't being told.

So, I dug. I did a blog search first, and found close to three hundred city-area blogs that had all said something about being detained the night of the 23rd. Some were vague and light on details--just that they had been taken to a warehouse and that was it. While others had pictures of the rooms they had been held in. I saw a picture of the one I was in--I could even see myself. Well, my shoulder is visible in the picture, anyway.

The important thing is that this happened to more than just the people in the room with me.

The other thing was that this had happened to people in other stations, too--while I got just short of three-hundred local-area posts, I found many more from other stations. All of them about being arrested on the night of the 23rd. There were too many to go through right away, but I saw some from all four quads--even a couple from Angels. I didn't know the writers, though.

So, it wasn't just a local engineer who had made a mistake with his figures--the problem was wider than that if other people in other city-stations had been arrested, too.

There was a lot to read and I'm not entirely sure how to encapsulate it neatly.

Put simply, there was an event that got a lot of people out onto their topfloors in a number of cities in the Ring. It did rain in other stations, but not all of them. In some instances there were topfloor explosions with no cause at all. Anyone who happened to be taking out their refuse or (I assume) tried to investigate were swept up, but so far, I could find no one who was actually charged with anything.

I couldn't find any mention of the word "vidi" either. I did a separate search for it on my smartBox and couldn't find anything.

Once again, I'd run into a steel wall.

Where else could I look?

All I could do was keep reading people's posts. So much of it is duplicated information. I know there's valuable information out there someplace and I waste time when ever I read the same information again.

I've tried contacting few of them, but none have responded yet.

There's not much more for me to do until someone responds.

Still no word on my job. It's been weeks since I had my last interview. Not sure what's taking them so long. Need to do something to get money flowing again. If I'm going to get any funding for the rain/arrest story, I'll need to have something with a bit more meat than just "it rained and three-hundred people and I got arrested and released three days later."

More soon, hopefully.

-Jim