Undisclosed location between Baltimore and Philadelphia - February 2028
----------------------------------------
Field
Parker Slolley sighed as he unscrewed the large red bulb for the three hundredth time today. When he accepted this covert mission, he thought it would be more sneaking around in government-controlled territory, but instead it was six straight days of screwing and unscrewing two big light bulbs through miles and miles of tunnel from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Screw in a bulb, then walk back to the last socket and unscrew the previous bulb, then walk to the next socket down the line and repeat. If he skipped even one socket, he ran the risk of not only being picked up on the enemy surveillance but potentially being demolecularized instantaneously by their node technology. Nobody knew what the Nodes were for sure yet, but that didn’t stop the United States government from weaponizing them against their own citizens. Their node weapons could blast massive amounts of energy to remote locations instantaneously, doing damage worse than a nuclear strike, but highly contained. The only thing between Parker and being microwaved off the face of the earth was the red glow of these two bulbs.
Parker’s thoughts went down the dark road of what would happen if he failed: the Anti-Nodal Field tubes would be lost, the codes he was bringing to the resistance cell in the still US-controlled north would never reach them, they wouldn’t be able to shut down the node disruptors at the Philadelphia warfront, and the resistance would be unable to take over the capitol. With his mind clouded by this dark potential future, Parker’s focus had slipped and he fumbled as he was screwing in the next bulb.
“Shit!” he dropped his arm down to try to catch the bulb, but he overestimated the distance and slapped the bulb on an arcing path back over his shoulder. “FUCK!” he spun around at whiplash speed and his eyes widened as he saw the bulb careening toward the floor. Parker dove forward, both hands outstretched, and slid across the tunnel floor. The bulb landed softly in his palms. Parker burst into tears of relief, and lay on the floor for several minutes thanking every god he could think of.
When he eventually went back to the task at hand, Parker was absolutely stoic. His focus didn’t waver again a single moment in the final seventeen hours of his trek. As he approached Philadelphia, he thought he was beginning to see a faint glow building beyond the sphere of his own ANF tubes, like the faintest bit of light left over after reflecting for a mile or more in the absolute dark of the abandoned train tunnel. After another mile or so it was becoming clear that there was something awaiting Parker at the end of the tunnel. He had no choice but to hope they were friendly, as there was no way to hide the light of the tubes without leaving himself exposed to nodal forces.
As he steadily approached closer and closer to the source of the light, he began to feel unsettled. Distracted by his emotions and unsteadied by his increasing heart rate, Parker removed the bulb at an odd angle and the metal scraped against the socket with a screech that echoed down the tunnel in both directions. He winced, and then realized with a strange combination of deeper fear and also relief that he was so unsettled because whatever was at the end of the tunnel wasn’t making any noise.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
It turned out to be a node, and Parker’s Anti-Node Field tubes were not phasing it at all. He figured it must have been out of the array the United States government was controlling, so it didn’t have the right kind of energy signature or something. Parker didn’t fully understand how the ANF tubes worked so he hoped that he was right because he didn’t have any option but to go straight past the node. It was a golden sphere of light hovering maybe five or six feet off the floor of the tunnel just up ahead, directly between him and the doors to the relative safety of the intra-Philadelphia tunnel network. Parker was less than ten feet from the node as he screwed the bulb in for the last time. The bulb’s filament warmed up and the sphere of its red-orange glow expanded; as the golden orb was overtaken it seemed unphased.
Then there was the humming. Or perhaps buzzing is a better word for it. Parker clapped his hands over his ears as a low, oscillating sound seemed to come from everywhere around him at once, stinging his eardrums and causing his bones to ache. He looked on in agony as the surface of the node flashed and a beam of light came at his face. Then, as suddenly as it had all started, the sound stopped, the golden sphere vanished, and Parker Slolley felt an incredible sense of peace and hope.
He headed on into the uncertain dark of the city tunnels and before long met up with the local rebel operatives. There was no risk of node attacks here because the government wouldn’t risk damaging their own systems, so Parker had tucked away the Anti-Node tubes securely in his bag. He now carried a red flashlight, which had no practical function but was the rebels’ way of signifying their presence under the cover of darkness in which they usually worked. Parker had heard they chose red as a reference to the French revolution, but he was fairly certain it was actually because the red light wouldn’t be picked up as well on security cameras. Darting across an active subway tunnel just after a train passed, Parker finally saw the red flashes of the local operatives signaling to him ahead.
“Are you Slolley?” called one of the rebels. Parker thought there were at least three of them, but they were holding a red beam at his eye level so it was hard to see anything.
“Yeah, I’ve got the package from Baltimore. Can you put that light down?”
“Of course, just a precaution,” they said, pointing the beam down to the tunnel floor.
Parker now saw there were actually four people there with him, including the one who had the light, and once he had come the last ten feet to join their fold, they darted off together through some side tunnels and then up into back alleyways on the Philadelphia street level. Arriving at an operations center in an abandoned grocery store, Parker finally handed off the data key with the codes for the US encrypted transmission lines to a commanding officer. Parker also gave over his ANF tubes, so the resistance could deliver the keys further north into government territory.
In doing this, Parker felt like he had some sort of hopeful, golden energy glowing from within him. He knew with an inexplicable yet absolute certainty that the rebels could win this war and get justice for the citizens of this country, who had been abandoned by the government after the appearance of the nodes in favor of defense research and corporate profits. At that moment, he decided he was going to take a bigger role in this fight; he wasn’t going to run back to rebel territory again. It was time for Parker Slolley to stop dreaming of dangerous missions and start doing them instead.
[https://marts.notion.site/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2F304b1c34-ec0a-4cba-badb-6d118de8f406%2Ffield_tunnel.png?id=be8e8690-cd06-40ed-b048-48d2c8966436&table=block&spaceId=f55aaa38-563a-4fb9-b6f7-a8add6e64006&width=2000&userId=&cache=v2]