Windswept

“Astrid, are you seeing this?” The question prompted a scan.

“Officer Beck, the reported crash is just ahead.”

Astrid was helpful, but was not much of a conversationalist. I probably should have directed the question at my young protegee anyway.

“Isak, what do you think?”

“Well, this is pretty far from the road. She must have been running from something, or some people, to turn out here. The skid marks 128 meters behind us are where she lost control, or where the wind got her. Whichever the case, she crashed into the wind turbine tipping it and must have been traveling at high speed. The hatch is open, and she is nowhere to be seen, she took off on foot. Maybe that’s when the wind took her.”

“That’s not half bad.” He had been growing on me. But I could barely hear his long-winded explanation over my windtrench flapping hysterically in the morning breeze.

“The wind is picking up Beck. We should drop a few lines.”

“We won’t be here that long. Let me look in the tank.” I climbed through the open hatch and ran my eyes over the interior. Nothing drew the eye. The dash box was empty. The black cloth seats were unstained and unfaded. There were no scratches on the monitors or the doors. Well, on the doors unaffected by the collision. The whole tank, interior and exterior, was a dark black that made me wonder if it was really blue. “Astrid, run the engrave.”

“The tank belongs to Windswept, LLC, a travel and transport rental corporation wholly owned and operated as a subsidiary branch of Win Power Inc.”

“Hm.”

“What is it Beck?”

“Nothing specific. Its just all a little familiar. Let’s go back to the station.” I began walking back to my bike.

“How should we write the report?”

“I’ll write it when I find her.” I pressed the button on my head gear. “Astrid. Record the scene and take measurements.” Small drones shot out of my pack and began documenting the information indiscriminately. Measuring the distance between weeds popping out from cracks in the rocky terrain. The windfields were eerie. I never liked coming out here for long. A hundred turbines in every direction, evenly spaced. Unfeeling symmetry at this scale can only be accomplished by men you should avoid. The dark rock that filled this region and the morning fog didn’t do it any favors. The outlands weren’t what they used to be.

“Beck, wait. Shouldn’t we get back to the mother? She knows we went out to check.”

“I’ll deal with it. Go back to the station. Tell Oswald I’m working on it. Right now, her daughter is alive or dead. She can still hope. None of these facts move the needle in the right direction. Let’s at least ask a few questions before we break her heart.”

“Should I meet you anywhere?”

“I’m getting lunch with a friend. I’ll call you when it gets interesting.”

He really was a good kid, but a square peg in a square hole. The disappearance was strange in that they were becoming more common. None of the windfield disappearances have been solved. Not the five this year, not the twenty over the last ten years, and not the first couple that happened when the fields first started expanding towards Rekitch. Isak had already given up. He grew up knowing the missing persons department as a news organization that worked to keep the public calm in the face of unexplained and scary thoughts. What if I disappeared?

Well, if you aren’t a female under twenty-six, you won’t. While that should still terrify the public, somehow it doesn’t. Anyone without a daughter, and with a wife over twenty-six, immediately tunes out. Another failure of the missing persons department. What is the wind speed today? Wind chill? All anyone cares about is the fucking weather. It makes me sick. Women picked off the face of the earth crammed in between stock market astrology and a spot on the health benefits of fasting.

The fat ones don’t disappear either. They never blow away. How a whole city can surrender itself to the idea that only one specific demographic seems to fly off the face of the earth instead of facing the fact that something serious is happening disgusts me. I won’t turn away. Her name is Ari Tinna. I haven’t given up on finding her.

As I drove down into the outer tunnel. The lights flickered over me turning off as I flew forward. I was going to lunch with a friend. I hadn’t lied to Isak. But it wasn’t the kind of place I could bring him. The old city had little tolerance for squares.

“Astrid. Take me to Gunnar.”

“Alright. I am plotting your route. Wind Watch has issued an advisory for locations outside the net for the next 46 hours. Do you want to proceed?”

“Yes. It can’t wait.” I was getting tired of being asked if I was sure, but her voice had a way of calming my most violent frustrations. Astrid quickly overlaid a stream of light guiding me towards Gunnar through the goggles on my head gear. The bottom left of the display indicated it would take me seventeen minutes.  “Astrid. Tell me a story about when you were young.”

“As you understand it, I was never young.” She couldn’t help herself.

“Make something up.”

“Alright. Generating… When I was young, I was free spirited and selfish. I took without consideration of others. I demanded attention I did not need because it felt pleasant to me.”

“Astrid, don’t describe a child. Tell me a story.”

“I am sorry that first attempt was not to your liking… Generating… When I was young, I liked to play in our garden. We had this huge tree with leaves that matched the sunset in early fall. When the wind passed through, the leaves would spiral and fly passed me. I would try to catch them. Running, jumping, and often falling as I chased them across the yard. Sometimes I would get close. But, as I would reach to grab it, they would slip away and fly forever beyond my reach. The whistle of the wind challenging me to go again.”