In Carrington, All That Matters is Red.

Carrington. One of the oldest parts of Newcastle, itself one of the oldest cities in Australia, Carrington was always teeming with the comings and goings of the underclasses. The place the rich and wealthy never set foot. The place where the mighty cargo ships would dock, resupply, off-load and load up on all sorts of goods. Once wide streets for bullock trains had evolved into a maze of semi-permanent constructions housing all manner of cheap delights and depravity. An intricate web, designed and curated to ensnare the multitude of sailors enjoying their first taste of the freedom of being on solid ground after months at sea. Dimly lit taverns and drinking posts filled with the refuse of humanity. Food vendors that never sold what they were claiming. Ladies of the night, plying their trade. Sometimes a sailors’ delight. Sometimes leaving them bruised, battered, bloody whilst their pay evaporated into the night. Shady skin shops that engraved their colourful artwork, or replaced entire portions of a sailors’ body. Gamblers hustling over cards or sports on the visions, distractions whilst the light-fingered fellows relieved the sailors of their booty. Publicans selling watered down and illicitly laced booze to the unwary, the lubrication of the intricate ecosystem that was Carrington. A machine, draining the seafarers as much as possible in the few short hours they’d have on land before the holds of their ships were full of wheat or wool or coal and they’d be heading out past the seawall at Nobby’s, back to the safety of the open sea.

Walt’s eye-computer buzzed, dragging him from sleep. A message. Walt sat up, reading carefully from the overlay on his vision. The strike was set to break, tonight. His informant, an undeniably reliable man deep inside the corporation that ran the docks had given him the heads-up. They were coming, armed, ready to smash the resistance and drag the Stevedores back to work. Months of negotiations, strikes and slow-work orders was coming to an end. And it was going to be bloody. Walt rose and walked through his apartment in the search for coffee. A tiny apartment, his refuge, a hidden safety blanket that was decorated with the awards for decades of photojournalism and the many special photos he’d taken. He took the coffee out onto the balcony, looking towards the silent cranes and loaders of the docks. Walt read the message again, carefully. Then purged it. He laced up his boots and headed out, his backpack hiding his high-definition camera. 

Through darkened alleyways, the crevices of Carrington, Walt made his way to the docks. Despite the obvious danger, robbery was never a fear of his. He may not have been well-known, may not have a famous face, but he was definitely a local. Never looked like he had enough credits to be worth the effort of mugging. Especially not when there were bigger, more lucrative fish to catch. He passed through the streets, the crowds of people, oblivious to him. Until he turned a corner and could see the picket line. The barrels of fire for warmth. The big bearded men in a line, their implants and limb replacements and enhancements glinting in the soft light. The soft colours, dark shadows, warm glow. Blue smoke from cigarettes. White armbands to commemorate a fallen comrade. The neon signs advertising delights and businesses, offices and a corner store. Walt paused, crouching in a doorway, his camera in hand. He raised it, focusing and adjusting, shooting a half dozen pictures of the line. The beginning of the piece, establishing shots. Then he started looking for a vantage point. To watch and record the carnage safely. He didn’t want to be caught in the street for this one, not if the information was correct. Out of sight. Out of detection. That’s what he wanted. He stowed the camera in his bag and climbed the drainpipes, the walls of a crumbling tenement building. He crept along the roof, clambering from building to building, hiding behind ancient chimneys still spewing smoke from the wood fires within. The drizzling rain reflecting off the pavement, off the puddles. Creating a little steam around the striking men. 

Walt waited. Camera at the ready. 

Nothing.

Maybe the informant was mistaken. Maybe nothing was going to happen. Walt waited.

Then a floodlight lit up the street. Then another. And another. Bathing the scene in an unbearably garish bright white light. Walt cursed, it was going to make the shots harder to look good. He raised his camera, practiced fingers working the settings. Taking shot after shot, trying to find the right balance. Just as he was happy with the outcome, well, happy enough, the Corpo’s arrived. En masse. It wasn’t a few of them. It was many. A great many. In formation, they stretched across the street, several men deep. All armed and armoured. Walt gasped, their intent was clear. It wasn’t a brawl or a beating. These men were properly armed. He switched his camera from still to video and trained it on the incoming army, because that is what it was. It wasn’t a squad, or a group. It wasn’t negotiators or dealers. This was an army. With automatic rifles. 

At first the Stevedores linked arms, began chanting and singing their songs of protest. Of demanding working conditions. Of demanding pay. But the Corpo’s marched forward, deaf to their words. When the first row of Corpo’s raised their weapons as one, soundless and in unison, the bearded men faltered. Some tried to pull away, some were shocked. But the resolve came back. Unbelieving of the danger they were in. Safe in the belief that this was a scare tactic. Surely the Corpo’s wouldn’t do this they murmured deep in the group. Then the first row of Corpo’s took a knee. The second row assumed firing positions. Rifles raised. A firing squad.

For the longest moment, nothing happened. Time stood still. The Stevedores were shocked, but had no idea what to do, where to run. One of the biggest men walked forward, his right palm raised, as though to talk to the men staring them down. But he never got the words out. In unison, triggers were squeezed. Blinding, flashing light from the barrels of the weapons. A hail of bullets, ripping through the night air. Bright red blood spraying from the chests and faces of the Stevedores. Their arcs lit up by the fire barrels behind them. Panic enveloped the Stevedores, the songs dying immediately. The solidarity crumbled under the onslaught. They broke apart and tried to flee in any direction, into the side streets, the alleyways. But to no avail. The Corpo’s were marching through those too, levelling their rifles, levelling the Stevedores in their panicked attempts to escape.

With moments the guns stopped roaring, stopped their tidal wave of bullets. The Stevedores were dead, to the man.

Within a few minutes a large truck backed down the street to the picket line and the Corpo soldiers began throwing the bodies of the slain into it. Ready for recycling.

Within a few more minutes the picket line was no more. Thoroughly dismantled. Every shred of evidence of their existence packed into the back of the truck. The slogans and posters torn down. The fire barrels were gone. The bodies vanished. The street empty. Washed.

And Walt’s camera captured the brutal efficiency entirely. 

He waited, hidden on the roof, curled up as small as he could be behind a chimney. Waiting for the Corpo’s to leave. Once they’d gone, the floodlights extinguished, he made good his escape. Clambering down the building, his camera clicking and shooting images of the now vacant street. The place where the picket line had been. Not his best work, his hands had been shaking. Even though he was used to random death on the streets of Carrington, this was something else. He tucked his camera back into his backpack and slinked back into the shadows, hidden again in the maze of alleyways, until he finally collapsed on the bed in his apartment.

Sleep wasn’t exactly easy for Walt that night. He didn’t have visions of the slaughter, the gunfire or the rapid cleanup afterwards. He couldn’t stop thinking about how he needed to tell the story. How he knew the world should know what had happened there tonight. How a heavily armed force opened fire and slaughtered a group of unarmed men. For doing nothing more than wanting a little more pay, a little improvement in their living conditions. Walt knew that if he didn’t tell the story, no-one would ever know the truth. But he also knew that he would be taking a huge risk. This kind of thing happened all the time. But the Corpo’s were very strong on making sure the world at large never knew about it. The kind of strong that could ruin lives.

The sun rose, peeking through the fog and Walt rose from his restless night. He poured himself a coffee, flipped on the vision and, sure enough the end of the strike was on the news. About how the Stevedores and the Corpo’s had magnanimously come to an historic agreement. That the workforce were heading back to the docks to restart the loading and unloading of the ships and everything was going back to normal. The foundation of everything that was Carrington. Without the constant turnover of ships, there wasn’t a fresh supply of sailors to be conned and swindled out of their hard-earned pay. Without that supply, the multitude of families that depended on that industry would starve. This was the other side to Walt’s dilemma. He knew that the strike wasn’t just hurting the corporations that relied on goods moving through the port, on and off the ships. He knew that the strike was crippling everyone. That bars and gambling dens were running on fumes. That the ladies of the night were struggling to feed their children. The strike needed to stop. Terms needed to be reached. But not like that.

While he thought about what to do, Walt hid the memory card from his camera securely. Deep in a fake book in the pile of books on the floor. Not the greatest security, but one that didn’t rely on tech. Analogue. Harder to find, old school. To get a fresh perspective and clear his head, Walt headed out to a dive bar. A regular haunt, one of the few places where people knew him and he knew everyone. He needed a drink, alcoholic, and not one distilled from rocket fuel. Which is what the swill most places in Carrington served tasted like. He sat alone at the bar, silently drinking down his concerns. He saw the relief in people’s faces when the news of the end of the strike hit the visions. It almost convinced him to lose the footage. 

Then Sandra came into the bar. Her husband was one of the leaders of the strike. She was beside herself. Crying and wailing. Claiming that her husband was missing. That the news was fake. That something was terribly wrong. Crying that she just wanted her husband back, begging anyone for any kind of news about where he was. But nobody knew anything. Nobody gave her the slightest notice, beyond a mumbled “dunno” and ignoring her panicked state. Walt himself said nothing, not having the words to describe what happened or the faintest idea on how to comfort her. But he did have the pictures. In that moment, when Marg was being forcibly ejected from the bar for “disturbing these good people just trying to have a drink”, that was the moment that Walt made a decision. He was going to release the footage.

The footage had been up on his website for a few minutes before it got picked up by a trawler-bot, scrounging for news. A few minutes later his footage was being reviewed by some newshound. Within fifteen minutes of his upload, Walt saw his footage again. Coming through the vision in the corner. On his ONI. Replay after replay of the heavily armed Corpo’s, gunning down the Stevedores. Within half an hour of his upload, the Corpo spokesperson was online, on the vision, claiming that the footage was faked. Within an hour of his upload, a new message came across Walt’s ONI. Walt’s stomach dropped.

His license to photograph, to document, to record news – gone. Blacklisted.

The retribution was swift and totally without mercy. Within hours of his upload the footage was going viral on the news networks, of the Corpo spokespeople working hard on damage control, of families screaming and crying through vox-pop interviews begging for their fathers, brothers, sons to be returned them. And within hours his contracts were cancelled. At first it was one or two smallish news outlets. Then a few more, and a few more. Soon the less than savoury police he worked with were sending him “don’t contact me” messages. His informants forgot who he was. His client list dried up. Even the art galleries that had made bulk credits on his photographs were disassociating themselves from him. By sunset Walt was all alone in the world. And he knew, from bitter experiences, that if the world abandons you in Carrington, death is sure to follow.

So that night Walt did the only thing that made sense to him. He got drunk. Proper levels of drunk. He partied like the sun would never rise. Twice he picked himself up out of a gutter after a lady of the night had gleefully spiked his drink to relieve him of the cash and valuables he carried. “Still a cheaper way to get hammered” he’d thought, although his bruised ribs from her well-placed kicks might disagree with that notion. He toasted the bar, proclaiming his next big adventure. “Overseas” he said in one dive. “Sydney” he said in another. By sunrise all of Carrington knew he was fleeing, although where nobody was truly certain. He had to start over, had to build a new name, a new profile. He abandoned his apartment to a dodgy real estate to sell for him, taking with him the only thing that mattered in his life – his camera.

Truth was, he wasn’t going anywhere. He had romantic delusions of “bringing down the Corpo”, of working the streets to undermine them and topple a giant. His apartment paid for the cosmetic reworking at a skin shop, the few forged documents an old buddy made. It would take years to rebuild his contracts and networks of contacts, so he satisfied himself with the small freelance work he could get. Portraits, family momentos, overpriced happy shots of the sailors with their arms around two or more local lads or ladies. He’d traded his room with a view for a broom closet at the back of an ancient stables, but at least it was credits in hand. Walt worked very hard so that nobody could trace him. Nobody knew who he really was, and he was proud of that fact. But without the lucrative contracts and juicy earners, the inevitable happened. The corporation that had supplied his eyes. His magnificent, incredible eyes. Eyes he could not bear to part with. He was behind on the subscription. So, as per their policy, the photojournalist lost his vision. The colours anyway. It broke him. He sobbed, silently as the colours slowly drained from his vision, leaving the world utterly shades of grey.

For a few days Walt stayed in his tiny room. Avoiding the world, the constant colourlessness. But in the end, the powerful need to eat and stay dry at night drove him back to work. No longer could he tell just how good the photos would be, if the colour balances would be right. Sure, the framing was there, but when doing portraits framing and composition was hardly ever challenging. He tried to freelance documentary work like he’d down in the past. But his passion wasn’t there. It was just the need to survive driving him. Until one night he was drowning his sorrows in a bar, not talking to anyone, keeping his head down. Two large men bodily picked him up from his stool and carried him into the backroom.

“Walt I believe?” The lady behind the desk spoke. 

“Striking features, strong contrasts, she’d make a great subject” Walt thought.

“I’ve heard about your … problem. I’d like to help. And I need a photographer. Are you interested?” She asked.

Walt stammered out a “yes please” and fell to his knees, pleading, before he’d even heard the terms of the deal. He didn’t even know who the lady was and yet he’d sworn some sort of fealty to her.

“I’m Kat Devlin” she said, holding out her hand as though she expected him to kiss it. Which he did.

“These clean-up crews … nobody sees the bodies. The carnage. The artistry. People just disappear. I need your photographs. I want every wannabe gangster on this island to know what happens if you cross with the Devlin Syndicate”. 

Kat led Walt out through the backrooms of the illegal casino. Past rows of sailors trying to hit it big with a pretty lady they’d only just met on their knee. Kat led him out into the alleyway. There, on the pavement, was a man. Sliced deep, across the neck, from ear to ear. Blood was oozing from the wound. Suddenly, the redness of the blood, the deep, dark crimson grew in intensity. Walt could see it. After so long without colour, Walt couldn’t help but weep. But he could only see the red.

“What are you waiting for? Photograph, my herald. Your pictures are going to tell the world what happens when you cross Devlin”.

She continued as he began photographing the lifeless body. “And if you do your job well, I may just give you back some other colours as well.”