Archive - Downwarp - Big Active

[ Return to Downwarp ] [ Return to Main Archive Page.]

Big Active

The cavernous atrium of a financial building yawns some ten stories above you. Its once-glittering glass windows are dingy and cracked now, and the huge frosted globes that make up its grand chandelier are cobwebbed and dark. The aluminum Xodonbank logo still hangs across the wall facing the entrance, bristling with the nests of an entire colony of pigeons.

The entire atrium is occupied by row upon row of tables and cheap shelving, spilling over with cables, machine parts, old hard media, and bins of miscellaneous debris. The Big Active, they call it - widely known as the best place to find those rare parts for obsolete machinery, whether mechanical, electro, bio or nano. It's constantly abuzz with tinkerers and collectors, bargaining intently with sellers over heaps of tangled components and crates of unmarked bottles. Ladders and makeshift stairs have been raised in a dozen places, affording the staff access to the upper storage floors.

At the front, a row of eight doorways lead <out> to the windswept plaza outside, its original doors long since gone. On either side of the atrium stands a row of about two dozen <elevators>.

Elevator (Big Active)

The mirrors and wood paneling have long since been lifted, leaving the walls of this elevator bare. The tough plastic panels are dented and scraped, and decorated by countless riders using everything from knives and lighters to holographic smart paint. The left-hand wall, in particular, bears a skewed rectangle that acts just like a mirror - except for the fact that everything it shows is rendered in glowing, high-contrast colour, like a deliberately mis-adjusted television.

The buttons beside the door are arranged in dizzying ranks, their numbers long since worn off. Beside them, helpful signs have been posted - some on brass plates, some on adhesive labels. Near the bottom is a hunk of old circuit board bearing the name "Big <Active>". A few buttons up from that is "<Torque>-N-Tank"; above that, around the 13th floor, is Tiny <Changes>. And at the very top, the word "<TUDE>" has been cut right out of the metal.

== Tower Tunnel ==
<pre style="white-space: pre-line; word-break: keep-all;">
The J.G. Ballard's twenty lanes roll through a landscape of shattered skyscrapers, vast, weather-scoured hoodoos of the urban badlands. Ramps split off in bewildering knots of elevated roadway, weaving crazily through the maze of buildings. The tallest of these, the golden bank tower now known as Big Active, stands directly in the Ballard's path, but the freeway rolls straight through with barely a thought. Its lanes merely spread out slightly, with the six innermost of them driving straight through the heart of bank tower, around the tenth floor.

The resulting thirty-meter-long tunnel is garishly lit along its length by sodium lights that turn everything a monochromatic yellow. The blacktop is cracked but otherwise in surprisingly good shape. Along one side of the tunnel the walls are bare concrete, the floors on this side of the building housing ventilation and other vital systems. On the other side is a row of five gigantic doors that open into a <garage>. Above the doors - and above the tunnel entrance at either end, white and purple neon spells out the words "JG's TORQUE-N-TANK".

Away to the <right>, where the lanes of the Bal converge again, the twisted hulks of several wrecked vehicles litter the roadway. From this vantage point it's hard to tell how many, but it could be in the dozens.

JG's Torque-N-Tank

The smell of oil and ozone and unspeakable solvents hangs thick, and the air is filled with the whine of servos, the hiss of pressurized air, the purr and roar of combustion engines. Vivid yellow sodium light spills in from the highway tunnel outside through the wide garage doors, mingling with the mercury lamps above. The Torque is a row of five yawning repair bays, two of them big enough to handle a small airplane. Each bay is fitted with microgravity generators and all manner of vehicular restraints - magnetic grapples, tractor beams and good old-fashioned chains and cables. Multi-jointed robot arms and tangled black hoses hang from the walls, bristling with fittings for washing, painting, sandblasting and fueling.

Drones of all sizes with a dozen segmented tentacles apiece skip and swing baboon-like from any convenient pivot, whirling through the air in a chaotic dance. Their spherical bodies are dented and grimy, and often bear multicoloured stripes of misfired spraypaint. Now and again two collide in midair with a clang, but more often they grapple and shoot past one another as though exchanging secret greasebot handshakes.

An office takes up one corner of the garage, its walls papered with faded parts ads and calendars featuring vehicles and robots in provocative poses. Papers and tools spill from the shelves and across a rusted desk, and pyramids of empties are stacked in the corners. A door leads <out> from here to the tunnel. At the back, a hallway leads to the <elevators>.

Tiny Changes Hallway, 13th Floor of the Xodonbank Tower

The <elevator> door gratingly opens into another corridor. This one shows signs of age and abuse as well, but the <floors> are swept clean and the fluorescent <lights> above are working.  The metal <walls> are dented, scuffed, and showing signs of rust, and all of the windows have been replaced with bulletproof translucent plasteel. All that can be seen through them is blurred shadows at best.

The fluorescent lights may be working, but all of the diffusion gratings over the bare tubes have long since been removed. That the tubes are still here means the owner must have some way of protecting them, or they'd have been stolen long since. Some of the tubes are flickering or dim, still in use far beyond their suggested lifespan.

Most of the doorways are sealed, welded plates of armor over the doors making entry impossible.  Some of the doors show signs of attempts to enter, from pry-bar marks to laser or acetylene cut metal, even sooty blast patterns testify to the strength of those seals. None of the <marks> appear to be recent.

The last <door> down the hallway is unsealed, light showing behind the frosted window in the door.  Above the door in neon pink letters a foot high are the words "Tiny Changes".  The same two words are also etched into the nearly unbreakable plasteel window set into the door itself.

[ Exits: <Tiny> Changes, <Elevator> Door ]

Tiny Changes: Main Office

Once inside the door, you stand in what appears to be a small office reception room.  There are several <seats> around a small <table> to one side, with antique magazines to read if those waiting get bored, plus a tiny touch-screen with a datalink port built into the tabletop, for those who must connect to the 'net even here.
  
Again the <walls> and <ceiling> show signs of age and use, but everything has been cleaned, perhaps even sterilized.  There is no dust in the air or on the floor, the air is clean and fresh to breathe - filtered? Frequent cleanings?  You can't even hear the hum of fans that might point to an air filter, only a muffled rumble from the crowds 13 floors below.

One of the walls is entirely is covered with a floor-to-ceiling wall<screen>, row after row of images scroll past.  Helpful staff manipulate the wallscreens and help others focus clearly on the <images> they desire.

Few if any people are waiting, any who arrive with appointments are quickly ushered through to one of the next rooms.  The doors leading into the next 2 rooms are heavy doors, and all too obviously protected by the two <guards> that stand on either side of the reception <desk>, one by each door.  The <left> door is the <P>rep Room for major Change inpatients, the <right> is for <T>attoos, minor cosmetic change and other quick procedures, people will be in and out in an hour.

There's no change you could suggest that would ruffle their helpful demeanor, but more esoteric requests are moved up the line to more skilled people, up to and including Pringle herself for some few special requests.

[ Exits: <Out> to Hallway, <In>patient Prep Room]
[<Tat>toos / Outpatient Services]

Tiny Changes; Outpatient Changes

Here as in the rest of the internal rooms, the <walls> look even cleaner, freshly painted and smudge-free.  All of the <lights> are working perfectly, the air is still clean enough to feel sterile, but it's not dry.

This is the room where the quickest and easiest changes are done. For those afraid of high-tech, <Floyd> the Aye-Aye is ready with an antique tattooing <needle> apparatus and a large comfy <chair> - a chair with binding straps in case his 'canvas' gets too squirmy.

Floyd's nimble fingers and -huge- sensitive eyes ensure that his tattoos are always of the highest quality.  He also handles any piercings, though he may get assistance from an orderly or <nurse>.

Floyd sits on his own <stool> near the door as you enter the room, but he's not the only occupant.  The south wall of the room is curtained off, but the <curtain> is open enough that you can see the corner of a hospital <bed> and a large boxy <machine> on wheels. You can only see the corner of one bed, but there appears to be enough room behind the curtains to hold at least two more beds.

The east wall has <shelves> and a couple of locked <cabinets>. To the west are more cabinets, and a large floor-to-ceiling viewing <mirror> in the center of the wall for people to see their  new changes. There's also a fainting <couch> on the west wall for anyone feeling wobbly or needing a rest.

Dressed in nurse's whites, twin vixens Mina and Rina bustle about the curtained area to help any patients in the beds.

[ Exits: <Out> to Main Office]

The Tude

The Tude - short for Altitude - is just your average eighteen-story high arena, nestled between the terraced spires of the former Xodonbank tower. The 100th-floor courtyard and observation deck has now become the arena floor, with a dizzying drop on either side, and the outer walls of the two spires have been blown out, each providing a sort of terraced spectator gallery with fine views of the performances and contests that go on here nightly.

As well, huge girders and overhead catwalks have been added, surrounding the stage. To these have been lashed and epoxied a fearsome arsenal of lights, speakers and holoprojectors. Combined, they're capable of causing severe damage to those not equipped to handle the punishing sound-wattage and radiation.

Much the same could be said, in fact, of the boisterous crowds that usually attend. Spectators enter very much at their own risk. Hawkers, mostly dented-up former service robots, hover and clamber over the stands, offering food, drink, souvenirs and, depending on the event, objects to hurl at the stage. The noise level rarely drops below deafening.

Behind the spectator galleries, the inner portions of the spires are a little quieter, offering lounges and bars. A bank of about a dozen <elevators> provide express and local service to the rest of the building.