The Refreshing, Post 5...

5.

11am, Chicago time was when the broadcast went out live across the world. The time set for the experiment itself was five past the hour. The stop sign would go up then, the camera (already hooked up to the live feed, and filming, to save time) would go up 1.5 seconds later. I was watching, glued to my screen in a way normally only reserved for stupid cartoons and the like that I should have long grown out of. In the moments leading up to the broadcast, I took a look out of my window to see what, if anything, was happening outside. I took a check of the cloud, which seemed much closer, and wondered what in the world (or not of this world) could be above the cloud. I looked up and down the street, peering in one or two of the windows opposite, and was told all I needed to know about whether anyone else gave a damn about all of this by the quiet and empty street, and the people in the windows I looked into adjusting their TV sets to watch the broadcast. Next door I saw a window wide open and, with them not being the quietest of people to live next to ordinarily, swung my window open so I at least had some chance of hearing someone else’s view on everything, albeit a view peppered with far more swear words than even the most open minded person would find acceptable. I went to the fridge to fetch a glass of water (it was too early for me to be adding Jim Beam, even under the circumstances) more to pass the time than for thirst reasons. I knew if I sat watching and waiting for the broadcast to come on I’d be so tense all my fingernails would be chewed away in seconds, leaving only the packet of cigarettes hidden under the front right hand side of my couch, that I had done so well not even tearing the plastic off of yet. No, keeping busy was the key to keeping it that way. Of course, with all the thoughts (and attempted non-thoughts) of cigarettes, I had managed to make myself as tense as I had been trying to avoid becoming sitting idle in front of the TV, and realised that my thumbnail had strayed to my mouth and found its way between my teeth. I stopped as quickly as I has noticed I had started and closed the fridge with my water in my hand. The same second the fridge door clicked shut, a shout came from next door that made me turn on my heel, the glass slipping out of my hand and, incredibly, not shattering but merely bouncing three times, spreading water across the floor. I ran back to the window to get a clearer listen, and from what I heard, decided that there was something important happening on the TV. I ran back to the couch where I had last ditched the remote and turned the set on. All the stations, including the more specialised ones like sport and music were pretty much devoted to the cloud and its developments, with only a smattering of regular programmes every now and then, mostly in the graveyard slots overnight. This meant that whatever station I put on would surely be able to tell me what I wanted to find, and it was, as soon as the picture on my set had faded up properly. As it did, I found myself echoing my neighbour’s “What the holy hell is that?” sentiment, as I realised what I was seeing. Next I knew, a voice sailed in through my open window, strangely close, asking “You seen the animals dude?”
I had. A couple of hundred in fact, pouring out of the front lobby of a large building that I recognised but couldn’t place, running amok in the nearby streets. I returned to my window and poked my head out, to be greeted by my neighbor peering back at me with a shocked look on his face that I’m sure I too must have been wearing myself.
“Where is that?” I enquired.
“London. Canary Wharf. But it don’t stop there, same thing has been reported at a bunch of other skyscrapers” He informed me.
“The same? With the animals and all?” I asked.
“Yep, animals, bugs, birds. It’s crazy dude.”
I nodded and agreed, before we both retreated back into our apartments to return to our TV’s. this new bulletin confirmed that an assortment of animals from mountain goats and snow monkeys to lizards and insects had come stampeding out of Canary Wharf, when the cloud had suddenly dropped lower a little while earlier (I thought it had looked nearer), and that while the authorities were attempting to round up the creatures causing havoc in London’s Docklands area, no one knew what they were doing there, where they had come from, or what had happened to all the people who had gone into the building at the start of the working day to do their jobs as normal on the floors now above the cloud.
Another little admission the news bulletin had for us viewers was that there were already reports of people around the world having gone to work on the upper floors of the taller skyscrapers and office blocks before the cloud had appeared, but not returning home from work once the cloud had taken hold. No one knew where they were, and when search teams tried to reach their floors, they all found some kind of obstruction preventing them from going above the cloud, unlike in the open air in places like Chicago. How people could be allowed back into buildings where half the staff were inexplicably unreachable I will never know, but I guess some people’s minds work in very unusual ways when faced with very unusual situations. Finally, the bulletin ended with a message that occurrences involving animals, like that in Canary Wharf, were also being reported at other buildings including the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and others, and then showed the alarming footage before switching to the live broadcast from the top of the apartment block in Chicago. I had gone from tense to stunned to scared in the space of three and a quarter minutes. I really didn’t want to see what was happening above the cloud, but I couldn’t turn off now.
The mood from Chicago was notably muted when the live feed came on our screens. People at other broadcasts over the past couple of days had been buzzing with excitement. The people at this one looked sick with anxiety. Even though this was something that affected the whole world, I felt a little more at ease knowing I was not where the camera crew shooting this historic event were. I knew that whatever was above the cloud in Chicago was above me too, and above the rest of the population, but it seemed less directly linked to here, seeing it on the TV…seeing the stop sign going up…
This was it, the time had come.
It was beautiful. For the brief, live moments, it looked like Heaven. The sun was blindingly bright, the sky a mesmerising clear shade of blue I had rarely seen living in a big city. The stop sign stood out boldly against the backdrop of the blue sky, clouds as white as the one covering our world, distant snow-capped mountains and tall lush green trees. It was stunning, and were this a normal thing to be seeing it would have been a peaceful, serene view. Naturally, snow-capped mountains and tall lush green trees were not a normal thing to be seeing above the middle of Chicago, especially when they seemed to be coming out of the tops of skyscrapers and high rise towers which had their peaks above the cloud. This made the view creepy and extremely surreal. What happened to the stop sign managed to top even that. I had forgotten about the sign, momentarily distracted by the background of the shot, until it disappeared. If it had simply disappeared there is every chance I would not have noticed it go, my attention being diverted as it was. I did notice though, when, without warning, the sign glowed brightly and then burst into a ball of brilliant white light, out of the centre of which appeared a large bald eagle that hovered in the air for the briefest of moments before flying off towards the mountains. Then, nothing. The camera had clearly had its three seconds, and they cut back to another live camera down on the rooftop of the building, where the reporter stood silently, visibly shaken, the crowd behind her stood in exactly the same way. Even next door was quiet. I think it is safe to say that no one expected to see what we all just did. The reporter explained (when she finally regained the power of speech) that the footage was about to be taken for review by experts, and would be shown again in later bulletins, but that in her opinion, we were all done for. She was cut off as she got the last word out, replaced by a commercial for the station’s later prime time news show, before the hysteria she had quickly been taken over by could rub off on viewers. I felt that was too late; if I was prone to hysterical reactions I would have gone off on a doozy of one triggered by that. As it was, I was not what you would call calm and collected. I was even too freaked out by the footage to say “to hell with being good” and reach under the sofa for my cigarettes. This was not a situation for the sick/happy sensation of having filled my lungs with sweet smoky goodness. It really required more of the mood a nice head clearing walk in the open air would provide. So I grabbed my coat and headed for the door.