15 January 2004

It is eight degrees in Frederick, and about that in Fairfax. There is a breeze, too.

Wind chill will be way below zero.

I think I can do the day on Metro today, stay safe underground on my journeys around Washington. It is a useful thing, considering how cold it is going to be. Pipes are bursting and there is a civil emergency in progress to the Northeast. This is a day so hard that it can kill you unprotected. Most of the sane have been scooped off the streets and have found some sort of safe harbor. They have had a hard week out there already and those who cannot come in are not going to have an easy weekend.

It is a morning to count your blessings, thankful no voices command you from the lamp-posts. Thankful that no craving for drink or drug controls you, a vicious vortex controlling every motion. That hypothermia might not be your closest and most insidious friend tonight.

If I get hypotermia today it will mean that I have screwed up somehow. I do not have to go outside at all. I may not even need a top-coat.

I have a linear day. I will start with a White Paper in my office in Ballston, a turgid albatross of truth I must craft at the behest of a boss who wants to ride to new business on the strength of my last job in the government. It is a task taken out of my spare time, and my heart is not in it. It is badly written and below my standards.

At some point I will drop that project into the e-mail stream and hop the Metro for a two-stop trip to the Customer at Clarendon. There I have a budget submission, part of the program build for Fiscal 06 and I am at sea. Once I had a staff to do these things, would hold meetings and direct the forms to filled out by fiat. Now I am left filling them out myself, and I fear the former emperor has no clothes on this project.

I will fill in the forms and do what I can to make it seem plausible.

But no one understands the budget, not those who submit it and certainly not those who integrate and approve it. That will occupy the period through lunch, then down again into the tunnels to ride the Orange Line to Rossyln, transfer point to the Blue Line, doors opening on the right, and south to the Pentagon. I have a badge and every prospect that I will be admitted to the precincts of the building to attend a training meeting for a long and prickly task involving the budget in some other year.

In the old days, before the attack, the escalator ran from the Metro tracks right up into the second floor concourse. After security, you could walk into the CVS Pharmacy and buy a snack to take with you to the office, or visit the Post Office or the Credit Union or the full-service Bank.

The businesses are still there, but they sealed the tunnel that led up to the Building, and now the exit deposits you far enough from the limestone facing that I will be cold and fumbling with my badge by the time I get to the soldier to present my credentials.

On that project I am serene. If there is not a great deal of clarity on next year, which will arrive in time, the years to come are cloudy indeed. I expect this meeting will drag on, perhaps for two hours or more. Then, when possible, I will retrace my steps to the Blue Line and transfer a hundred feet below Rosslyn's streets to the Orange Line. It will be a constant sixty degrees down there, chillier as the train approaches, pushing the dense cold air from Falls Church before it. At mid-day the trains only run every ten minutes, so a transfer can add at least twenty minutes to a simple commute.

It is not as simple as civilized town like London or Moscow, or even Paris. In those cities a train will be along every few minutes. Here in the dim light below the wait is interminable. At least it is warm. They keep the homeless out of the stations in the interest of public order. I agree with the authorities on that one, since those who will not go to shelters are often in the grip of powerful voices, and we pass dreamlike through their waking trance.

Then west into Arlington once more, passing below the Homeless at the Courthouse Stop, huddled on their exhaust grates, feeling the air push up from below.

I will see how panicked they are on the budget at Clarendon, then two more stops to Ballston and clear the office e-mail queue. Then to the basement garage, and then the six blocks in the cold, peering into the darkness, hoping to avoid the pedestrians who appear suddenly in my headlights, huddled in their dark coats, invisible in the night.

Opyrright 2004 Vic Socotra