Dark Thoughts

Jensen wandered out from the front door and across the parking lot devoted to the task at hand. Striding confidently beneath the clouded dark night sky he swung the keys on his right index finger, distracted as he was, by his errand. Tucked beneath is left arm was a photocopy of a small portion of the luminous drawing, the secrets which he had just glimpsed intruding on his psyche.

Catching his bunch of keys in the palm of his hand he deftly flipped the key in his hand and pressed the button unlocking the doors to his black Honda Prelude. Opening the door, he eased into the embrace of the sheepskin seat covers and coaxed the engine into action. After swiping his security card over the panel that allowed the gate to the car park to open, Jensen let the tension that had been building in him find an outlet through the conduit of his right foot and the power of the tubocharged engine.

He followed the route that was almost automatic to him as the cable traced the first 2 or 3 kilometers of his route home. At the end of Francis Street where he would normally turn right, Jensen instead followed the quick left-right chicane that traced around the border of the scenic park where he walked with his dog, and occasionally his wife, Jenny, before he left for work each shift.

At this time of night the traffic was fairly light, but even so, he was forced to halve his speed quite suddenly, as the traffic merged into a single lane, to avoid reshaping the front end of his automobile and that of the small 2 door Ford, illuminating his Prelude with it's brake lights.

Up ahead the yellow flashing lights of roadworks splashed their discordant rhythm of light off the occasionally tinted windows of the oncoming traffic. At his stunted speed, Jensen glanced across to the crowd of onlookers inspecting the open excavation into which the backhoe had it's arm extended into innards of the earth. The crowd was unusual in it's size, particularly for this late hour of the night.

Allowing the veil of fluorescent lettering to lift briefly, Jensen recalled the purpose of his mission, and suddenly jamming the brake to the floor, immediately raising a din of horns from his rear, he grabbed the map from the passenger seat and noted the cable running down the road border of his drawing. The drawing only showed the two lanes of an older relation to this road, prior to it's strongly disputed encroachment into the park, though the left hand border of the road had moved little.

Pulling up onto the footpath on his right, Jensen leapt out of his car bringing another chargrined din of car horns, as the he momentarily forgot his chances of a one on one with a car. Pulling up inches from the passing car he earned himself a vicious knock on his left hip from the wing mirror of the passing car and a muffled string of expletives from the driver. Awaiting a break in the traffic, he quickly crossed the road and joined the engrossed crowd, pressing to the front of the pack and peered into the maw of earth in front of him.

From his vantage point he couldn't actually see the cause of the crowds interest, but his mind could almost see the broken cable that had been unearthed by the backhoe. Forcibly he shuffled around the barrier tape along the front of the crowd until he could see the scorched cable welded to the side of the bucket. The driver and a couple of the laborers were down the trench with a shovel attempting to prise the cable away from the bucket, in order to free the machine, but it was appearing like a lost cause.

Glancing across the trench, Jensen noted a chubby, unkempt man in a day-glo orange vest barking orders to the men down the hole. Pushing his way past the crowd Jensen jogged around the torpid machine and approached the bright orange barker.

"Whoa, whoa, what are you guys doing here?" yelled Jensen, to distract the foreman.
"Who the fuck are you?" was the short and pointed response
"I'm the guy that 20 minutes ago was sitting at the control panel at the other end of this cable, when you took it upon yourself to ruin my shift" retorted Jensen, violently pointing to the spectacle below.
"Really. Well that saves me a few hours of phone calls to find out who I can send the bill to?" came the reply as the near canine temper rising close to boiling point, and the barking foreman invaded Jensen's personal space, his foul breath stinging Jensen's nostrils
Thrown off guard, and instinctively stepping backwards, Jensen feebly replied "Bill?"
"Yeah" continued the foreman. "Someone's gotta pay for the damage to my machine."
"Damage to your machine" snapped Jensen, "What about the damage to our infrastructure? When are you guys going to learn to read cable maps" continued Jensen, waving his photocopied map in the foreman's face.
"Well, if you suits bothered to put your cables on the maps, then I'd stop digging them up" said the foremand defensively.
"What do you mean?" responded Jensen more calmly. "It's on my map right here" he continued, opening the folded photostat.
Glancing at the map "That's no Energy commision cable map" countered the foreman. "Look" he said, motioning for Jensen to follow towards the battered utility parked on the footpath.
Opening the tattered map Jensen could clearly see the distinct absence of his cable, the "official" map showing only a water main next to the buildings lining the footpath and the stormater drain under the edge of the second lane of the road, with the remaining utilities being located in the more convenient location of the park.
"Shit..." came Jensen's puzzled response. Quickly thinking, he instructed "Get your boys out of the hole. I'll get a team down here to sort this out" while simultaneously dialling Charles' number.