The sun was almost setting, and Micah began feeling slightly nervous. He'd learned in other locations to do everything but look like a tourist. It was embarrassing at best, and dangerous at worst. He had seen around him all day his fellow travelers holding the colorfully printed maps the city put out, and they may as well have been 'pickpocket me!' signs on their backs. He knew better, and yet, here he was completely lost. He had taken three days leave while the MS Amsterdam was docked and wanted to enjoy them, to get into the soul of the city.
He had figured at worst he could find someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt and follow them back to the ship. The customers loved that shit. His phone of course wasn't working properly, damn thing had been conspiring against him from the beginning.
He'd asked Harry to come with him since he knew the city but he had bailed to go wind-surfing, the hippie show pony. He had probably found some American chick to squeal over his aussie abs and alternative lifestyle ( on a freaking cruise ship, nice).
He figured he'd wander around the city for a few days and chance upon something indie, cool or interesting. An indie place, where being Australian could earn him some cool points and they might even think he's one of them (He could even get lucky).He saw fliers for them all around the city, but found the locations nearly impossible to find. He'd heard about a Parkour studio somewhere called 'Queenanne', wasn't that in Seattle? How big was this city? He couldn't find it anywhere. The Sakuracon was on, if he could handle the trawls of geeks lining up to have a moment with their favourite characters. Then again, his inner geek reminded him of the awesomeness that would be hidden at it's depths.
He'd spent the day bumming around the international district, and found it to be mostly geared towards appealing to tourists or anime geeks and lacking in any real culture (he patted the manga in his pocket that he had picked up and hoped he could get it onboard, without anyone finding out). He'd been too nervous to try out the city's underground bus tunnel, weren't subways full of bogans looking to rob you ? The map of the system looked like a complex maze just begging to ensnare tourists. He noticed some young teenage girls confidently walking down the stairs without any a care in the world, and felt a bit ashamed.
He walked behind them down the rather dramatically long staircase to the tunnel. It didn't really seem very tunnel-ish at all, the top was open and pigeons flew around and strutted on the strip. He noticed some interesting looking public art, but felt too nervous to examine it carefully, plus his phone camera wasn't working so what was the point? A large crowd waited for a bus, so he joined them. He'd ridden buses on the street level, so he knew the whole complicated deal with payment, and learned to just copy what the guy before you did.
A more simplistic graphic map of the tunnel system caught his eye, the last stop of the tunnel was called 'Convention Place', this could be telling him to just suck in his pride and go to Sakuracon. It was worth a try. To his surprise, rather than a bus, a very long train came to dock, its many doors opening up at the same time with a cheery 'ding' and releasing people on to the platform. Maybe it really was something like a subway after all?
Many of the people on his platform got on, and he followed suit. The train was clean and bright, but many of the people looked a bit sour and there were signs of incipient decay on the nearly brand new train car. A scratch on the window, a bit of subtle graffiti on the back of a seat... Seattle had a strange way of seeming like a shoddy older car with a brand new paint job. Perhaps he was just feeling a bit negative though and it reminded him of home.
The light rail ran through several stops, all of which were themed in rather exotic ways, and he found them very distracting. "Doors on my right" the train's robot woman voice intoned at each stop, and he found it disturbing. Why anthropomorphize something you're inside? How creepy. Slowly the people filtered off the train, until they reached the Westlake Tunnel stop "Last stop" the robot voice intoned.
Wait, what? Wasn't Convention the last stop? He felt panicked as he saw everyone leaving, and joined them at the last moment. A surly security guard noted him, and he found himself bustled up the escalator. The tunnel station suddenly started seeming like a mall, just like in a bad dream where locations melt into one another. Well, it was getting late anyway, maybe he'd just call a taxi back to his hotel. He couldn't shake the fearful feeling of being lost and confused. Around corners and up escalators, it was like he couldn't escape. How deep was he? By the time he reached the surface, he was practically hyper-ventilating and let out a thankful breath of fresh air.
Again he found himself pushed along by the crowd, across the street and towards a large building covered in glass. A lone Starbucks floated in the large open square, and people walked in every direction. Buskers played godawful covers, and petitioners begged for people to pay attention to their issues. This was at least, somewhat promising.
It was all a bit much to take in, Starbucks? Where there any cool indie coffeehouses? Wasn't Seattle supposed to be-- He was distracted by a thin blonde man stepping out of the coffee shop's doors. He adjusted his glasses, and seemed to notice Micah as well. Hm, kind of attractive in a needy nerdy way. 'Real' coffee sounded good, all the ship had was that percolated crap, mmm Soy latte was sounding good after all the stress.
A car suddenly roared by on the street in front of the square. Micah felt his adrenaline kick in, but hey maybe this was normal in Seattle. Not wanting to be hit but not wanting to look freaked out, he moved towards the building. Car after car careening around corners, someone screamed in the distance. It was like they were all fleeing from something, what the hell was going on? Somewhere, sirens blared. Fuck, of course he would choose the one day to be a tourist when bad shit was going down. The idea of being caught up in some natural disaster while his friends on the ship and at home laughed at him. Everyone around looked confused and shocked, and then the phone calls started. One after one, including the blonde man.
Micah almost felt like it was some sort of doom sign that his own phone didn't ring but then he wasn't surprised, that damn thing hadn't been working for ages , only intermittently to remind him it could. Then he noticed other people looking with confusion at their phones, which had suddenly grown deadly silent. What was going on? It was 7:15 PM and the sun licked at the edges of the horizon.
(Please elaborate as much as you wish even going back in time at the beginning, but don't take him past this point for the moment. We'll go from here to the main thread!
WELCOME MUAHAHA.)
I will change anything inaccurate. Will Alex roommate with Micah or go to condos?))