Five Minute Freewrite - "Fire"
from https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-63-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-fire
"FIRE!" - the cry that always gets my adrenaline running. This time it woke me out of a sound sleep, as it'd been a very long day.
I heard lots of people hurriedly getting geared up as I rolled up and out of bed. I'm lucky - no extra gear for me, this time. Padding quickly out of the room barefooted, I dodged people struggling into protective garments and thick boots. A quick shimmy down the pole, and a running dive into home. The jacks struck like vipers, feeling like caresses as my senses lit back up and muscles I didn't always have flexed in preparation.
The tallyboard outside the corner of my eye quickly lit as firemen strapped in. One remained dark, and I got the order to head out. McKeever's bad luck.
Heading out into the dark, I followed the bouncing ball and shifted hard left as soon as I was clear. Reorienting as I continued to drift, I got my first glimpse of the blaze. Two units fully engulfed and half a dozen others kindling. Not good.
I hit the main jets and dropped a slew of firefighters on the far side of the blaze. They'd tap into the veins and be fighting in a jiffy, but my job really started now. Diving into the middle of the conflagration, and then below it, searching for tethers.
Finding only three of the ones I needed, I snapped them then grabbed onto the module and started hauling. Either the other tethers would snap or at least get to where I could find 'em quickly. One hard tug, and I felt a couple let go, then another one, but then I was stuck hugging a blazing wooden container and moving nowhere fast. ... ...
(end of time)
As @mariannewest seemed to want more, I shall deliver. :)
.... Letting the remaining tethers tug me back closer into alignment with the rest of the modules, I slipped below the outer rind. I found another 4 tethers. One of the veins had ruptured, and was still spraying its module-feed across the bottom of the blazing module - good. That would help.
A couple quick pulses and the four tethers were snapped. With only 3 left, I should be able to get that one out of the rind now. Swinging back around and grabbing its blazing corpse, I thrust back out. One, then both of the remaining tethers snapped, and the module drifted free, out of the rind.
A quick scan found a couple life signs still active in it. Happily, they were near an outer edge, so it didn't take long to rupture the hull of the module and bag them. Two humans and half-a-dozen pets, looked like - didn't have time to do more analysis than that just now. They'd keep, even if the pets started panicking in the bags - those were tough bags.
Back into the blaze, and lather-rinse-repeat, the other lost module was floating free. Ablative hull still in the upper 70's, so no big problems. No other life signs in the second module.
By now the others had managed to damp down the worst of the kindling, so it didn't look like I'd need to wrestle any more modules tonight. Command had me sitting at the edge of the rind, just in case, but I didn't need to lose more hull.
Once the modules were safed, it was time to pick the firefighters as they resealed their veins and head back to the barn. Always a bittersweet moment, getting back to the barn. Meant no more risk, but also meant I'd have to unjack. Never pleasant, that - getting locked back down into your own meat. Never felt quite real, something I carefully avoided thinking too loudly - they'd yank you from the line if they suspected you got feeling that way.
What's the point of better than normal connectivity if you can't use it? It's sad how people were still so scared of F.S. they'd make sure no one stayed that way long.
So, anyways, back to the barn, and out came the jacks. A shudder, and I wormed my way back out of home, heading back to bed.
There'll be more fires tomorrow, I reminded myself. More time to go home, and to be all of myself again.
I carefully didn't think too much about the new firefighting tools they were talking about bringing out of research. Nightmares are no fun, especially if they're something real.
For the curious - "F.S." is Frankenstein Syndrome - induced sociopathy brought about due to overuse of jack technologies. The protagonist is well along the accepted path to F.S. at this point in the story....
wow. I hope you work on this and let us know more....
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-64-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-pill
One of my problems working in this format is that I get a world-seed in my head. Complicated, twisted, incomplete, but a whole lot more than 5 minutes' typing worth. Figuring out which part(s) to type up is, for me, a big part of the challenge - given 5 minutes and the seed of a world, can I create something resembling a story?
Thus far, it seems to have mostly worked out. Thank something! (no, not me)