I think this was a mothballed entry to a fiction contest on here from a while back. Anyway I found it and I thought y'all might wanna read it. Enjoy.
--- Dream comes to end violent, quick, a noisy wakeup. The vidphone's buzzing. Roll out of bed and hit the keys for voice only. It's Jane... Jane who? The agent. She's got a job for me with Channel 24 shooting some stock footage of Ops on street patrol. They'll be picking me up in five minutes. What's the time? Clock is too blurry to see. Four-fourteen? Wonder if the job's dangerous...
"Where are they going?" I ask, my first sober question of the day.
'Some place in Downtown. Why?'
I hang up the phone and gather up the body armor on the floor. Need to get a new agent.
-- Two minutes awake. Equipment check. Vidcam clean, batteries charged, extra dataslugs, external mic's good, photoflood lamp works, armor's clean, respirator packed, comlink good, got a few doses of Kickstart. Don't forget the bootknife. Gotta move faster.
Damn, I'm hungry. Don't forget to grab something on the way out the door. The operatives are here.
-- Early morning. Forgot to get something to eat and now my stomach is aching. The ride into Downtown is taking a couple of hours, giving me plenty of time to get to know the squad. There's four of them, 3 humans and a Malice-brand stormer. Riding with operatives is one of the biggest pain-in-the-ass jobs a cameraman can get. If they aren’t yelling about you sitting too close to their stuff they’re demanding better coverage when the gore starts flying. Yeah, right, I’m gonna go and take a bullet just to make some selfish asses famous.
Is this really all there is out here? A few hours of sleep, no food, dirty rain and spending my days working with the worst people on the planet? Human beings shouldn’t live like this. I hate my job.
-- Midmorning. Downtown street patrol. I swear, if I hear one of these ops ask me if I got the shot one more time I’m going to murder the whole fucking lot of them. One of the humans is a frother, probably inbred from the looks of her, and she can’t shut up. It wouldn’t bother me except nobody can understand her incoherent clan dialect. The stormer’s a pretty big cam-pig, always getting in the shot and acting for the camera. There’s one in every bunch.
Just got a call that some pushers are meeting a couple blocks away and the squad is gonna go rough them up. Anything is better than this boring patrol shit.
-- A little later. This body armor is such a piece of shit. Where’s my Kickstart? The ops want some more coverage of their work but first I gotta clean up this gash on my arm. Dammit I GOT THE FUCKING SHOT ALREADY! Now my stomach’s growling again. I can’t take this, I’m gonna call up the network and tell them to get another sucker because I QUIT.
A rep from the network just called in with an emergency alert in our sector. Group of soft company terrorists just blew up a daycare and Channel 24 has already titled our response ‘Shepherd’s Revenge’. It’s a big fucking story and we’re the only ones in the area! We’re off.
-- On the road. It’s pretty exciting here. The ops are frantically checking weapons as I’m taping them while also in negotiations with the reps at Channel 24. Fired my agent because she only asked for a 20% increase in my contract. I talked them into a 75% increase plus a two-minute live feed during their afternoon programming. The jeep goes roaring past the bombed-out block and I lean out the window to get some on-the-fly shots of the bystanders across the street. Lot of people crying, but everyone stops to cheer us on as we zoom down the street. I’ve almost completely forgotten how hungry I am. I love my job.
We pull up to the last known siting of the terrorists, outside an old storehouse. Somebody’s gotta go up and kick down the door. While the squad talks it over I check my gear and do a comlink check with network control. The ops decided I should go in first. Shit, and it’s ten seconds until I’m live. Oh shit, oh shit, I don’t want to die. Focus. Seven seconds. I don’t even have a fucking gun! Five… four… Controller at Channel 24’s prompting me with directions. Dollying up to the door, stormer along right frame and their driver on the left. The signal’s live. Here I go…
-- …Cross to the left, behind the table barricade. Three-shot of the terrorists firing frame right. Swish-pan right, full-shot of the driver going down under the stacked chairs. No blood – he’ll live. Go wide on that hole the powersuit tore out the rear wall when it fled. Watch my screen direction, terrorists exiting the breach frame left. The ops are separating. Move up behind the terrorists as they head outside. Hit the photoflood. The last one’s blinded. Go tight…tighter. Yes, bullet in the face. He’s down. Pan one-eighty to get our investigator with the smoking Blitzer. Thumbs up for the camera. Building’s secured. Explosion from outside. I head out the breach and into a cloud of smoke. Switch on UV filter.
Screaming. I see one, no two terrorist bodies, look blown up. The stormer’s the one screaming. Both legs blown off and flopping around in a pool of blood. Go tighter, fill the frame with the blood on the ground. He sees me and starts crying for some Kickstart. Zoom in on the face. Tears? I didn’t know stormer’s could cry. Close-up on the features. Dim the photoflood and switch on image stabilization. A nice beauty shot for our dying hero… almost… almost… there. That’ll play good with the mothers out there. Heavy sounds behind me. Pan around to reveal terrorist powersuit looming over cameraman. Keep the image steady. Powersuit raises a gun barrel… movement from behind powersuit. Rack-focus on crazy frother bitch creeping up on it. Will she get here in time to save the cameraman? Rack back to powersuit finger depressing weapon’s trigger. Power claymore swings down in the nick of time, neatly severing the suit’s hand. Go wide on the fight. She’s really giving it to the terrorist. Claymore through the helmet and it’s over. Fade and we’re out.
-- Late evening/early morning. I’m back home, finally. After doing interviews with the squad and a meeting at network headquarters I managed to get some time off for sleep. Still, I gotta go back in a few hours. Channel 24 loved the story, especially when I charged through the door. ‘Channel 24: Leading the way towards Progress’ was their proposed slogan. They even talked about sponsoring me for media training. Me, an Operative…
I’m stretched out on the couch watching my story leading the late night reports. It seems like a totally different person shot that footage with the powersuit. Whenever they play that scene people start screaming at the TV for me to run. Why didn’t I? I grab a pre-wrapped sandwich from the ‘fridge and devour it just as thoughtlessly. Looking back, today wasn’t as bad as it seemed. At least I got to make a difference. Yeah, I guess things are pretty good for me after all. It’s a living.
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