Episode 6
Back in the woods just west of Cincinnati in a dilapidated barn, Ridgemont and his supervisor, Harlan Brooks, were surveying the area to put signs to indicate the rural and largely undisturbed nowhere they stood was to become the path of a major railway.
In the frenzied gnats and baking sun beside an old rusting Ford F-250 just under the cover of the barn. On the back window, a sticker still visible that read “I will NOT worship your DEIty,” they had stopped for a break before they headed back to their state vehicle parked off the main road.
Brooks was a hard-working man who had been in the same department – installing wayfinding signs for the state – going on almost 23 years. He was a simple man, easy going…always on time and rarely took any sort of extended vacations.
“You do gotta be careful,” he explained to Ridgemont. “This can be a dangerous job. We’re lifting up a ten foot square of sheet metal – something happens…it ain’t secure or something…you’re lookin at a giant guillotine.”
“Has anything ever happened?” Ridgemont asked him.
“I seen it one time,” Brooks began. “About 15 years ago, we were up over just north of Cincinnati, below Clifton puttin up a new exit ramp sign. I hadn’t quite made supervisor yet, I was still on crew. This particular day we had a community service group putting in their hours they had assigned to us. And in our group, we had a new guy, about 22 years old, named Alberto. Two of the community service walk-ons were up in the bucket getting it secured to the frame and Alberto went underneath to get a look at how it was lining up. Well one of them in the bucket thought the other one had it bolted on already and they let it go and it fell straight down through Alberto’s neck and out his torso…it cut him in half, pool fella. I almost quit. One of the worst sights I ever seen.”
“Wow,” said Ridgemont, obviously unphased.
“So 2 warnings,” said Brooks, “don’t stand under no signs and we always do a triple check to make sure it’s bolted on tight before anyone lets it go.”
Ridgemont looked out into the woods, “So where’s this rail going?” he asked.
“As far as we’re concerned, to the river,” he said. “But I think it’s supposed to go down to Wichita.”
“How many signs do we need to do for this one?” Ridgemont asked.
“Says 6 from downtown Cincinnati to the river at Delhi Hills – then the Kentucky crew will take it from there. Typically we’ll get our order form for the week, usually about 50 -60 new signs, change-outs, inspections…and when we’re done with those – we’re done for the week. So we can usually finish up by Thursday – a 4 day work week. Not bad, you know.”
“Yeah,” Ridgemont said…”not bad.”
Vance Owens stood inside the Kentucky state capitol building, speaking into what was known as the media box – dubbed ‘the meadow’. It was a virtual reality room in which anyone or podcaster or syndicate could pull the feed and comment, ask questions. The senator was providing commentary on the developing space program and the new discovery of an Earth-like planet found orbiting the star, Alkaid in the Ursa Major constellation.
“Kentucky – particularly Mayfield – is committed to being a central hub and accommodating location for the pursuant space program and new efforts to reach the stars,” he said. “We are right off the Ohio River, feeding into the Mississippi. We are at a geographic location that isn’t light-polluted and Kentuckians are ready to take on this challenge and take this generation into distant reaches of the galaxy.”
Someone in the VR indicated via light that she had a question.
Owens pointed over, acknowledging.
“Thank you, Senator Owens. Recent talks have definitely gotten people talking and this all seems very ambitious. Given that the CIRN Federation is the leader in space exploration and these announcements around coming on the heels of their admittedly, now-failed ten year colonization efforts of Mars, what kinds of resistance do you expect for America 2 to pursue a mission lightyears away?” asked the woman.
“Well I think that’s a valid and grounded skepticism to hold,” he answered. “And I understand this is an uphill battle to gain public trust in the mission and we will need all 5 American sektors on board – but I have seen the science and new technology behind what might be possible and I want Kentucky to be at the forefront of this – that’s a gamble I’m ready to take.”
It was about 8PM when Ridgemont and Madame Tandoori arrived at the little studio of Ron Rosen. It was a converted upstairs bedroom of a fairly unimpressive house in north Cincinnati. Rosen had a sizeable following – but that didn’t translate to wealth. He made above the universal basic income, but no enough to be extravagant. Most of the people who hung around his house just used drugs, wasting away.
The pair walked up to Rosen’s upstairs studio and took a seat. The lottery numbers would be called at 9PM and Rosen would compare with the numbers Madame Tandoori had chosen the night before. The hour leading up to the drawing was spent with Rosen veiled insulting the pair and other jokes at their expense as the room of his ‘yes men’ types laughed.
It was 8:55 and Rosen shifted his conversation but maintained his tone of Ridgemont and Madame Tandoori being the butt of his jokes, “Alright, it’s about the moment we’ve all been waiting for…they’re about to call the lottery numbers in 5 minutes. And so last night, I asked you to put your powers to the test, and you filled out a six-numbered lottery ticket, the Cold Cash Slamma Jamma and we will reveal here, in real time how you did,” he said with inflections of cynicism.
He turned in his seat and opened a vault with a sealed envelope and asked one of his co-hosts to open them and hand the ticket to Madame Tandoori. Rosen had been insulting her all evening long and this was to be the climax of the show in which he would completely humiliate her.
“And before they call this, I want to let be known, I am so confident in this that I found a casino to take this bet at massive odds and I put down $30,000 betting you would not get any more than 3 numbers correct – and I only gave you that allowance in the event of random dumb luck. But that’s how confident I am that you are a fraud,” he said.
“Wow,” she said, unphased and looked over at Ridgemont. “I’ll tell you what, I don’t want you to walk away empty-handed, so when I win, you can have half the ticket.”
They all laughed. He asked one of his co-hosts what the winning jackpot prize was, and it was $2.63 billion.
“So it’s a win-win,” Rosen said. “Either way lads, we’re gonna be moving into a much nicer studio, better house…”
The lottery came up and the numbers began coming up and they were; 45-19-18-02-37-20.
Rosen looked up and said, “Okay, so 2, 18,19,20, 37, 45…as if the odds weren’t bad enough, but the odds of 3 consecutive numbers like that? 18,19,20….but let’s get to the main course…Madame Tandoori…please reveal your ticket to the us and 44 million other people watching around the world right now.”
She looked at Ridgemont and they grinned at each other. She held up the ticket and it read, 02, 18,19,20,37,45.
Rosen’s crew erupted. Rosen went pale, stunned and then flush red in the face, terrified. “That’s impossible,” he uttered.
He looked around and back at her, “Well, at least I get half!”
She looked at him and said, “Yep, I’m a woman of my word, here is your half,” and she ripped the ticket in half and gave it to him and ate her half.
The room was split between people shocked and people screaming.
“You sick bitch!” Rosen screamed at her. “Shut down the stream!” he yelled. “You two are dead!” He was slamming his fist on the table.
He jumped up to lunge at Madame Tandoori and as he was charging toward her he stopped and grabbed his head, screaming. His eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth agape and tongue hanging out. His arms, wrists, fingers and legs were locking and spasming and he fell to the ground. Madame Tandoori watched and looked back at Ridgemont, who sat there stone expressionless watching Rosen convulse on the ground.
One of the guys in the room got up and started charging toward Ridgemont, “What the fuck did you do??!”
As he was about to shove Ridgemont with his massive arms, he stopped and grabbed his chest, gasping for breath and collapsed.
Just outside the home studio of Ron Rosen, in a nice vehicle, sat Daphne Chambers. She looked up to the window of the studio and Madame Tandoori walked up to the window and looked outside at her and they looked one another in the eyes.
“We’ve got enough room for one more,” Madame Tandoori told her through their minds.
Daphne started the car and drove off.
Come back next week for Episode 7
hill art + graphics 