7. Bronchial dilator 

Over three hours now he had been bent over the hard copy of the plans. It was taking all his effort to stop his eyes from un-focusing leaving a blur of lines and symbols. He had methodically worked his way across the paper, checking co-ordinates, cross checking the returns, tolerance after tolerance flowed in and out of his vision. Slowly working down the large sheet, back and forth like an antique loom, laying down the yarn. His back ached and he was hungry. One more hour and he would be through. His recommendations recorded, last minute changes to a two year plan 'bagged and tagged', stored and ready for upload. 

He slowly unfurled from his crouch like a hibernating bear in spring, blinking to clear his stinging, gritty eyes.  He moved slowly into the kitchen, arching backwards as he rubbed the base of his back. 'Mental note' he thought 'dig out that little muscle stim pad before bed' the one that Lise had bought him last birthday. He remembered unwrapping the little gift to find a silk pair of jockys embroidered with his initials, folded inside was the pad and a little book of  'How to get the best from your new Muscle stim’.  He also recalled throwing the shorts into the chute the day she left. No great loss on either count.

Light flooded from the open fridge, inside the door the panel was flashing his latest shopping list that his domestics had compiled.

"Damn it! " he whispered to no one in particular.

He need only hit 'send' and the groceries would be at his door by morning. He loaded his arms with a coke, a half-eaten carton of noodles and some crackers. He stepped back and gave the door a soft sidekick to help it close. The panel disappeared into the unit still flashing his unsent list. Without the illumination from the fridge he could only see from the small amount of light coming from the his study.

 "Light 25" he grunted, again to no one in particular.

A black plastic spotlight came alive in the center of the kitchen. A small pool of light focused on the top of the long black table. Pulling a stool across with his leg, Max placed his evening meal down on the empty surface and settled himself down on the stool. The stiffness in his back was receding now but he was still going to use the pad.  He passed his hand over an area of the table edge, a screen of light blossomed into life from within the table top just to his left. Running along the bottom of the, as yet, un-clear picture was a series of graphics representing a key pad. He fingered the pad with his left hand, scrolling through what seemed to be an endless number of channels showing the same thing. After only a few seconds he sighed and pushed for 'random` and '20sec.int.'. He completed his rapid hand sequence with `audio 10' which brought a low hum quietly into the room. The hum, staying fairly low, developed into the rhythmic thudding of rotor blades. Max glanced down at the screen, eyebrows raised in the hope of catching something interesting, only to see an image of the Prime minister stepping down from his official helicopter. The hum of the blades was being faded to allow an Americanized voiceover to come through.

' ......the talks may well lead to the end of a long and bloody........' tzit....' .....But hey, how many times has yours faded like that.  Not mine! now I’ve got.....'

A plastic skinned shopping channel presenter had replaced the Prime minister and his helicopter. Max turned back to his food, knowing that the channels would continue, changing at will, spewing out audiovisual clips all evening. Max rarly absorded anything from the news channels but he preferred to have piped media than a silent flat. It stopped him thinking about being alone again. 

Max had a collection of Science fiction vids that would put most film archive servers to shame. He had been running a hobby site since moving into the appartment.  It contained a database of his film collection and trivia about each title. No-body visited it, mostly because nearly everyone of his age had been collecting films themselves and also because there were something like two million other sites all based around the same theme.  Max didn't care, it was a piece of his youth that he could retain and the weekly browse through his own data gave him a warm, comforting feeling like being back in his bedroom at Mums place. It helped keep him stable and stable was good when your health insurance didn’t stretch to psychiatric care.

He finished the coke and scooped out the last few noodles from the bottom of the carton.  He jumped down from the stool and made his way back to the study idly tossing the can and carton in the chute.  The dark gray marble floor was cold on his bare feet and made him shiver.  He reached his left hand down and around to the little black leather pouch that he wore on his belt.  He lifted the folded over top with his thumb, hearing the reassuring tear of the Velcro. 

`Bollox!` Empty.

His throat tightened and his mouth went bone dry.  Where was his inhaler?  He knew full well that he had put it down in the study just half an hour ago and anyway, his flat was littered with little stashes of the stuff.  But still the initial fear produce this panic, the sweat, the slight wheeze and dizziness.  After all these years he still couldn’t control the panic. He made his was back to the plans and picked up the little blue inhaler from the lamp table.  He raised his face to the ceiling whilst, unconsciously (almost robotically) he gave the little canister an exploratory shake.  Half empty. Good enough.  He brought it up to his raised head placing his index finger over the top. He exhaled. Finding his mouth he fired the first jet of drug into his throat, inhaling vigorously as he did.  Ten seconds later he repeated the actions.  Almost immediately he felt the muscles in his chest relax followed by a release of pressure from his head. As he started to take normal breaths again he realized that his brow and neck were stippled with sweat.  He needed to feel cool air.  He slowly made his way  to a set of full height patio style door.  They were outlined with a beaten, black/green metal. The glass was leaded to give a `baroque look` to the thermalite bricked apartment (or so the Estate agents web site had read)  There were two curved handles, made of the same metal, set into the doors at navel height.  He secured his inhaler in the hip pouch and grasping a handle in each hand, pulled open the doors.

 

Max had suffered with chest problems since he was a child.  A near fatal case of pneumonia following a severe chest infection left him with damaged lungs.  Most kids had asthma back then but most kids would grow out of it, Max never did.  Sure the drugs got better over the years but Max didn’t.  He developed well, broad back, strong arms, at first glance it was impossible to tell. In fact, with the training, his lungs developed better than a lot of healthy kids.  As the years progressed and the air deteriorated he began to realize he was not going to get `better`. He would be Asthmatic for life.  Living out of town as they did back then things didn’t seem too bad.  The air was clean for most of the year.  It was his first trip into the Cities that made him realize. 

He went through all the drugs of the day, the inhalers, blue, white, red, green, bulbous clear plastic, short black sticks that accepted little white capsules.  He was given the bronchial dilators, the steroids, the skin patches, the creams and the nasal filters.  He tried them all and all of them worked in some way or other and usually best in a combination.  He worked out routines for them.  Two squirts of the red before breakfast.  A cap or two mid morning to keep him clear through lunch.  If things got bad he blasted the blue in a couple of times which opened him up so well that he could taste the pollutants.  He developed his routines around the medicine to the extent that his body demanded the stuff and let him know when it was ready.  First the tightness around the throat, then within seconds the shaky feeling in the legs and arms.  If no relief came in one form or another the wheezing started, the bronchial tract started to contract leading to the pressure around the temples and at the back of the eyes.  If no relief came, it moved into a full-blown attack shutting down his airways, It happened regularly but he never got used to it. He feared it. It ruled him.  As the pharmaceutical industry grew the prescribed drugs improved but they never found a cure.  The quality of air in the towns and cities became un-bearable for people with the respiratory complaints.

 

It was around 10.00pm.  The late August sky was obliterated with dense cloud, heaviy with impending rain. The air that flooded into the room was foul. There was the usual metalic tang of vehicle emissions mixed with the , alledgeddly, carcenogenic chemical fumes coming from the soda ash beds across the ship canal.  Tonight it was accompanied by the pungent acidic stab of, as Max imagined, gents toilets in a Nightclub at 3am.  The balcony was in semi darkness, the only light falling from the lamp back in the study.  Max covered his nose.

“Light, Balcony please” he said, half turning his head back to the study as if he was asking someone in there to flick a switch for him.  The balcony slowly filled with light as the Domestic carried out his command.

The balcony was constructed with white thermalite blocks topped with drab gray vertical railings to height one point two meters. As his eyes adjusted to the light Max could see what had added to the nights aroma.  Someone had defecated  and urinated against the base of the blockwork.  He knew it was ‘someone’ and not an animal because around the solids on the floor was a spray painted oval reaching to the wall and continuing up into the stylised ape of a toilet seat and antique porcelain cistern. Through the middle of the image was the words ‘Pissartiste’ in stylized urban graffiti lettering.

Max leaned forward and looked up to the underside of the balcony above.  He could see the black ticked imprints from a training shoe high on the sidewall of the recess.

“YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!!” he roared at the sky  “I catch you down here again I’m gonna toss you over and wait for the thank you letter from your parole councilor.”

 

Max lived in a ninth floor apartment overlooking a stretch of ship canal.  In the mid 90's the local councils had started a program of renovation to turn old mills and warehouses into modern, affordable housing for the masses of corporate executives and office workers flooding in to the cities.  They were expensive when Max had purchesed and they had kept on rising. The governments IT division had been running national ad campaigns for years urging people to work from the comfort of their own homes. Why travel for an hour in the morning when all you need to do is punch in at the desk-office.  Most people, as has happened throughout history, saw it differently and strived to work in 'real' environments and interact with 'real' people. For the majority of people, the cost of getting into a City and the ever increasing density of traffic meant that it simply wasn’t viable to travel more than a few Kliks.  Please like Max wannted the best of both worlds.  He worked from home and conducted most of his work on-line, however, he also liked being just on the edge of the City.   The ubiquitous pedestrian areas spreading out from the centers like a creeping urban mist, prevented everything but specialized public transport and cycles reaching the heart of the City. The science fiction films and comics of the late 20th century had portrayed cities of the near-future as being awash with leviathan glass/steel towers or domes that covered the whole cityscape. Massive oddly shaped mega-corporation buildings where people lived out their entire lives never setting foot outside their claustrophobic utopia. That was Science fiction. They got it wrong.

 

 The City that Max could see from his three metre wide balcony was not pleasant to the viewer. He lived about six klicks from what was (according to historical records) the ‘Centre’. There wasn’t an actual centre that could be located by hitting ‘search’ on one of the Councils illuminated tourist guides. There was the usual mass of retail outlets of all sizes and from all cultures. The towering M&S Lifestyle building with the huddled canopies of North African street vendors around it’s base.  Innumerable designer units in neat little rows on multiple levels of brightly lit shopping arcades.  The private banking sector liked to think it held the title of `center` in the same way that the academics always referred to the Libraries, Museums and Cyber-suites as ‘Centre for Learning’.  

 Something as haphazard and sprawling as modern Manchester couldn’t have just one centre.  As with all the major cities, you had to find  your own centre.

On a good day he could make out the mismatched panorama containing buildings from every era of architectural evolution from the past hundred years. From here, through the ever present mist, they were only discolored shapes interwoven with a mesh of Grid-pylons and multileveled, snaking expressways.  If he looked straight ahead he could usually make out the spiked ledges of the telecommunications tower. 

Scattered around the periphery of his dismal vista were the little clumps of high rise accommodation that had found their second lease of life in the early years of the new Millenium. The Stone circles of the new century.  Not satisfied with the evidence from earlier years, inexperienced town planners had been un-leased on an overburdened society and exhumed the idea to house people in high rise blocks of concrete. They, in their arrogance (as his father had said) thought that reserving one or two levels per building and turning them into high rise covered park areas would solve all the ills of society. Surely these people wouldn’t vandalize and abuse these high rise areas of natural (artificial) beauty? A needle is still a needle no matter where it' s dumped. The jumpers still jumped.  They vandals stil vandalised.

It failed again and led to the same social problems as the last time.

The phone rang.

It was Rosh.