"If every single one had turned and run simultaneously perhaps I would have taken notice but as it was I just ploughed straight on. It took ten minutes or so to realise that the crowd was thinning and a further ten to grow concerned. Still I put it down to strength of rumour.
I'd first got whiff around lunchtime but I was slow; my connectivity rating in the low twenties. Old fashioned I guess. I like my own company. I laughed it off of course. Conflicting messages. The city had its own life these days, literally some said, but not like this.
I tended to restrict my movements to south of the river. Somehow Clapham Common had survived as an oasis...in the what? I'd read somewhere this thing by a scientist who said that the problem with creating greater comms capability and IT was that in doing so more information was created. You can never catch up. On top of that, the information becomes more important. Ain't one of us could survive more than a couple of days of disconnect. Even me.
So I kept my head down and zigzagged through the Kensington sprawl. Not a person to be seen by the time I got to Gloucester Road and approaching the museums I realised my mistake. A wall of flame leapt from Exhibition Road, tearing between the two giants. They had grown beyond all recognition warped into strange diagonals so that they leant across the road, each taunting the other. The fire licked at them and together they roared. Nuhm swung with ancient fists and Var gestured back in its own, furious language but the heat ripped the both equally.
I felt the heat of the melting pavement beneath my feet and realised I would not get away. As I sunk the behemoths thrashed away regardless."
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