Just Starting: Part 1

Fred woke with a finish: a sinking feeling that dragged her chest down into the bed, and a dread of what was to come that day. Next, before she opened her eyes, came a feeling that she thought really should have a name, as she experienced it so often, and she couldn't be the only person ever to have experienced it. It was a peculiar feeling known only to travellers. It was not unpleasant, though a little disorientating............ displacement? No, too negative. Quantum displacement maybe, like Schroedinger’s cat. It was resolved as she went back in her memory to the night before. As she remembered going out with friends, and later walking back in the dark, past the large industrial units, to the site she had been staying on for the last few days, she knew that outside the windows of the truck would be rustling trees, caravans and the odd smack-head rattling. Fred wondered idly if the same sensation of drifting in deep space was felt by travellers in hotels, or whether it was specific to those floating in the world inside the metal shell of a truck, with all the comforts of home but nothing definite or sure outside the closed curtains.
Fred swung out of bed and jumped down to the floor, and swore as she spilt water on the floor trying to fill the kettle from the large water butt. She put the kettle on the gas cooker, and looked around for her tobacco. By the time the kettle had boiled, she had rolled a small spliff, and she sat down with a strong coffee to smoke and contemplate the day. She was armed and ready, so she drew the curtains and looked outside, thinking for just a moment that if she concentrated very hard just before she opened then she could fall into a different reality; that until she opened the curtains and looked out she was everywhere and nowhere at the same time; but as she opened the curtains, the familiar fire-pit strewn with empty cider bottles was the reality she landed into.
This wasn't one of Fred's better times. Just a month ago, her girlfriend had walked into a pub to meet her and then promptly walked out of her life, no reason given, none guessed, and it had hit her hard. She couldn't hit back, her girlfriend had gone to Australia and was therefore out of reach, so she had hit the bottle instead. She had spent many hours sitting on the floor of the truck with a bottle of brandy in hand, or wine, or gin, sobbing and trying to resist the urge to smash things. Her belly ached with the tears, but still they kept on coming. Loss is hard, but loss without reason is desperate. Every morning, she had sat as she did today, finding a fresh hope with the fresh day. Today was going to be different. Today she could meet the love of her life, or win the lottery, (even though she had never bought a ticket), or...............................

…....................... but not yet. There was work to be done. Fred was low on funds, so it was time to go busking. As a classically trained violinist, she always imagined her old teacher looking Extremely Disappointed to see her churning out cheesy Irish tunes to a generally disinterested public. Some days, she loved her job: the days where a tired looking woman with a pack of kids in tow looked up and smiled, the days when a few lads fresh from the office pub lunch stopped an pretended to do Riverdance in the street, the days when some old romantic fool came up and told her how much she had reminded them of dances when they were young. This didn't turn out to be one of those days.
So, let's start at the beginning. The sun was shining, Fred's hangover was minimal, and her dog, Dina, was waiting patiently by the door ready to go out. All the signs were good. Fred and Dina stepped out into the track with smiles on their faces, and started the walk into town. As they walked along the river bank, Fred noticed that Dina's scales looked particularly beautiful in the bright morning light, showing a sparkling iridescence over their deep golden colour. The clear day meant that Fred could easily make out the far side of the river, almost a mile away, and see people like ants scurrying around the narrow streets around the cathedral quarter. Walking along the bank, a comforting smell of wood-smoke was coming from one of the house boats. Fred noted the boat: she would have to go and visit once she had earned some money, and see if a little of the wood might be for sale. It had been a long time since she had lit the burner in her truck, and although the solar heating worked perfectly well with a little tweaking, there was something about the smell of the smoke that grounded and comforted her. It wasn't that long ago that she had burned wood every day, but that seemed slightly unreal now. Sometimes she could afford to buy a small sack of fuel blocks, but the rancid oily smell was always reminiscent of the rotted fibres they were made from, which depressed her.
Fred reached the dock, and joined the queue. This time of the morning, all most people could manage was a tired smile as they tried to rub the sleep from their eyes. As on many occasions before, Fred thanked her lucky stars that, broke as she was, she wasn't headed for one of the huge data hubs on the edge of the city to spend her time mindlessly pressing buttons and fixing bugs on ever-broken cold-call machines. As the tramboat pulled in, she fished in her pocket for her money card, and Dina's license card. It was expensive keeping Dina's card up to date, and sometimes Fred felt guilty about the amount of toxic injections the dog had to have, but she couldn't stand the thought of walking into the Cathedral Quarter alone without back-up. When she reached the front of the queue, she passed the cards under the scanner, waved the chip reader over Dina's neck, and walked to the back of the tramboat.

As usual, several other passengers looked over and smiled at Dina, she always attracted attention, and then their eyes slid over Fred with a look of discomfort. Fred had been born into a class C family, and her accent still sounded C, but her clothes were an unpredictable combination of class A quality with a class E threadbare look, artfully created by rummaging in dustbins around the Hilltop. People never quite knew where to place her, and they liked to know where to place each other. Fred sometimes enjoyed this, and even played on it, but at other times she felt it meant she didn't belong anywhere. One of the passengers seemed to linger a bit longer, looking Fred up and down with a frown on his face. He was class C, probably a manager in one of the data hubs, and wore the pale cotton clothing typical of his class. Fred looked straight at him, and he turned away, but not before she saw the suspicious sneer on his lips. “Shit”, she thought to herself, “ I could really do without this.”. All she could do was cross her fingers and hope that he had too much to worry about when she got to work to report her. She had her card, of course, but they always hauled you in to check it, and that would be the morning wasted, and probably a few bruises for 'resisting' too. Dina always found her way home after Fred got picked up, and would be waiting patiently at the truck, but Fred had never worked out how she managed it. She could never get on the tramboat alone, but the river was a nightmarish soup of toxic oils, tow-sharks and haulage boats that Fred was sure Dina could never swim across. The genetically engineered sharks were getting more and more common now, as security for class A's to travel between the Hilltops and the Cathedral Quarter. As she was thinking, Fred looked out over the water, and saw at least three boats with the dark shadows of the tow-sharks in front of them, looking darkly beautiful under the rainbow sheen of the oily water. Despite their tranquil beauty, anyone coming near the creatures would be viciously attacked within seconds, the sharks genes highly attuned for aggression like pit bull terriers in the water. Small boats, divers and even whales would be ripped to pieces.
Fred shuddered at the thought of the tow-sharks, then shook her head to get the pictures out of her mind. She looked ahead, towards Cathedral Jetty coming closer ahead of the tramboat. The tramboat eased into the dock, and Fred held the rail as it bumped into place alongside the jetty. She stood still for a moment, waiting for the busy class C's to scuttle off and up into the Cathedral Quarter work zones. She turned towards Dina, and with a nod of her head beckoned her to follow as they left the tramboat and walked out onto the jetty. Fred swiped their cards again at the machine, and walked on towards the rising ancient brick and stone buildings of the Quarter. As she walked, she looked up at the tall spires and giant towers of the cathedral. In the centre of the complex was the small single spire of the old cathedral from before the Floods, but this had been dwarfed by the large concrete spires of the new buildings, housing all the class A offices, and the rambling court rooms for the city. She blinked involuntarily as her eyes caught the glare of the billboards as they flashed their constant harsh glittering images desperately promoting the latest products. The people who could remember the times before the Floods said that people back then had actually believed in their religions, believed in supernatural beings and magical events, but Fred found this idea ridiculous. Fairies and unicorns, powerful beings in the sky, surely no-one was that stupid, even the class E's who didn't have enough brains to walk away from their hellishly tedious lives in the data hubs. It was just another sell, another way of tricking people into thinking they were happy.
Fred walked up the hill, Dina behind her. She could feel the cobbles through the soles of her shoes, and she concentrated on making them fit into the arch of her foot as she walked, making the hard stones feel almost soothing. She was so absorbed in the physical sensations, she didn't see......