Sanitation Run

Chapter 4: Alter

STREETS, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Black-glass monoliths fill blocks like newfangled forest. Curbside parking asphyxiates the street. Invisible birds chirp in the canopy. Rumor is they’re fake.

Looking up at the pinprick of warming sky induces vertigo but keeping grounded invites claustrophobia. Locals navigate by their screens: survival through ignorance.

Vibrant people dressed to vie for periphery march down the sidewalk. Valerie, the black shadow among them, unwittingly wins the game. Black won’t work here.

Valerie dips into the first open store she sees.

STREETS, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Valerie exits into foot traffic.

She hates what she’s wearing but has achieved conformity with a beige capelet and beret. She carries her change in a bag.

DINER, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Booths, tables, and counters: Sue’s Diner has it all. Most customers are old timers, grey-hairs, men who pay in cash.

Seat yourself.

Valerie collapses into the rear booth.

She allows herself three seconds of rest, eyes closed, and orders from a tablet.

She swallows several aspirin with water. Ice rattles in the glass. She can’t stay the shakes, stares at her hands in disbelief.

They had guns.

I killed something. A stray cat. A sewer rat. :.No and no.:

I lost it.

FLASHBACK: LIVING ROOM, CLAIRE’S APARTMENT, DOWNTOWN (AFTERNOON)

Two young women lazing about: a younger Valerie (late teens) sits crosslegged on the floor, her sister, Claire (early twenties) is curled up on the couch. Both are deep in their phones.

A TV babbles to a passive audience.

VALERIE: I think I found something.

Valerie tosses her phone onto the couch.

CLAIRE: Courier? Really? (tossing the phone back) I told you, the only solution is getting out of here.

VALERIE: You’re really leaving me?

CLAIRE: Vale...

VALERIE: I can’t afford this place on my own.

CLAIRE: Then move back in with the parents.

VALERIE: (half-serious) I’d sooner be homeless.

CLAIRE: I said you could come with me.

VALERIE: You’re going to the boonies. And for a boy.

CLAIRE: So?

VALERIE: I’d just be in the way.

CLAIRE: You can actually see the stars out there. You have no idea.

VALERIE: I’ve got a good enough imagination, thanks. This job looks promising. There’s a number...

CLAIRE: Not promising enough to keep living here, though. (shaking her head) A courier...

VALERIE: Hey, I ran cross-country.

CLAIRE: You’re assuming a lot. Maybe they’ll want you to drive. You don’t even have a license.

VALERIE: No need to rain on my parade. I’m going to call.

Valerie hops to her feet and takes off down the hall, phone to her ear. She enters the bathroom and closes the door.

LADIES’ ROOM, DINER (MORNING)

Buzzing fluorescents illume three closed stalls and a pair of sinks, tile walls stained the color of tobacco teeth, and mildewed caulking. This isn’t the place to be doing first aid, but Valerie’s seen worse.

She has a leg up on the sink, SCRUBBING FURIOUSLY with alcohol wipes. She’s amassed a pile: rust-brown. Blood.

It’s all from the fall, she tells herself. From trees and tarmac and grazes with bullets. Not from that thing.

The center stall bangs open. Valerie catches it in the mirror: bedraggled blonde tangles to the elbows, a strappy red dress under an open leather jacket. The worst thing is her face:

Too round. Too smooth. Too gold. Inlaid with ornate filigrees. Smiling.

The woman levers at her face with fingers sharp as talons before burying her head in the sink.

That’s when Valerie realizes it’s just a mask. That it’s not blood streaming from her eyes but mascara.

VALERIE: Rough night?

DINER, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Back in the rear booth, Valerie stares at her phone, pulls at her hair.

Her handler is silent. She’s off script until she gets THE PAYLOAD back and knows it.

Her eyes dart around the diner. Big guy with a plate of bacon and eggs across the way. Senior citizens at the counter clinging to the city’s last newspaper. Playbills papering the walls. One catches her eye:

GO WITH THE FLOW

It takes a second to click.

Valerie dives into her phone, nose deep into the MAPS app. She flicks away the LOW BATTERY warning. That’s a Future Valerie problem.

FLASHBACK: KITCHEN, CLAIRE’S APARTMENT, DOWNTOWN (EVENING)

Claire prepares dinner, reticent. Storm clouds gather with the steam from boiling vegetables.

VALERIE: I passed the interview!

CLAIRE: You call that an interview?

VALERIE: They’re sending me a phone and everything.

CLAIRE: You just had a five-minute Q and A with a robot. Aren’t you even a little suspicious?

VALERIE: I found a job.

CLAIRE: (dismissive) I don’t know what you found.

VALERIE: You don’t want anything good for me. You don’t want me to succeed where you have failed.

CLAIRE: Vale. For the umpteenth time, I just worry about you.

VALERIE: Well don’t.

CLAIRE: I won’t be there to--

VALERIE: (heated) I don’t need you.

CLAIRE: Vale--

VALERIE: (storming to the door) Eat your own dinner tonight. I’m out.

DINER, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Valerie slips through the bustle, drowning the clink of cutlery with music--a poor but necessary decision. She can’t afford to lose focus.

She swipes her phone over the sensor to pay and she’s out the door.

DINER, DOWNTOWN (MORNING - MINUTES BEFORE)

The “genuine human” took Bruce’s first choice of seat, leaving him with a two-seater near the counter.

Bruce waves down the waitress and orders from memory. She smiles crow’s feet and rouge and flits away like a butterfly.

He rubs his eyes, exhales, catches a streak of red which he follows like a magnet. He’s only human.

The blonde stumbles into a wall. She’s not drunk, just dealing with a broken shoe heel. RAVISHING. He can’t glimpse her face before she pushes into the ladies’ room, only a flash of gold under her arm. Maybe a clutch.

The young woman from the rear booth goes for the ladies’ room. She carries a shopping bag.

Bruce feigns interest in the tablet to avoid eye contact.

His food shows up faster than instant ramen. Famished and unquestioning, he starts in.

When he looks up again the young woman is stalking for the door. He sees her earbuds and knows she’s jamming but can’t deny her agency. She’s not lost in the flow.

She is flow.