Featured Artwork by PABLO LADOSA
RIGIL touches down at Port Avanti’s International terminal. After recollecting his first few steps out of the jetway and onto America’s refined soil, he and his family come across an Ambassador, who’re idealistic figures sworn into secrecy, integrity, and diplomacy. What, or who are these Ambassadors? I wrote about this concept here… Thanks for reading!
Monday, October 4, 2021
…a place where sunray avoids concrete and lives coarsely shy of its citizens. The sun tries in the spring, giving its most effort in the summer, but finds itself blocked by towering buildings, grouped corner by corner like a motherboard. This computer, however, collects tens of millions of breaths left behind by Avantians, forgetting to take a moment to breathe.
But imagine if they did? What else would we have seeping out sewage canals and between alleyways? Maybe a wasteful society who’ll re-indulge their filth? Yet stay blind to this cycle of anxiety, and a channeling of ignorance screaming from a faction amongst them?
♦
…although this isn’t what I saw leaving the airport, it’s the same sun shining since arriving to the TheDistrict—where we’re first dropped off at the building where the ‘W’ was.
Gus is led to the entrance by the building’s leaking Avon aromas. He gets in line and directs us to stand beside the double doors adjacent to a beam of sunlight reflecting off the marble-painted floors. It creates a visible sun ray through both sides… where each Avantian, from business casual to formal wear, walks beside the heated light strip as though a beam of sunlight could impose their purpose.
“Excuse you, sir, don’t you think we all are?” A woman’s stern voice echoes over the building’s interior white noise. “Stand down,” she demands. A brunette-topped male security guard stands at Gus’s right arm. And the woman in a Vanta dress on his left shoulder wears a perm. The woman faces the guard, allowing Gus to step away and re-approach the teller.
Moving through the shadows of our sun’s glare, the woman’s arms swing wide from left to right as her hands and fingers sway to her voice’s command. I can’t make out her words, but the security guard stands with his chest out and eyes at her attention. Gus then grabs an envelope from the teller and urges us to follow him out the door.
After crossing the street, Gus pulls Remi and I to the side to stand beneath a moving fixture of neon billboard lights. We watch him sidestep pedestrians as he rushes back across Broadway Street, waving down the lady from the bank. She stops and turns, looking Gus up and down as though he’s lost his mind.
In their quick exchange, he returns, pocketing a piece of paper. “What’s that?” Remi asks.
“It’s for later,” he responds. Gus snaps his fingers for Remi to grab my hand. “Hurry. We’re meeting up with Nwaka.”
Nearing the side of Gus’s hip, Remi asks, “That lady was in black. Didn’t you see?”
“She also wore a name badge,” he chuckles. “Didn’t you see?”
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