Extraordinary stories and men of style: the techwear ninja (EPISODE 7)

I

It's not so much what I did that's important. Rather, that’s why I did it. And the rather bizarre situation in which I found myself at the end is for me an indelible sweet-crazy memory, like a tattoo directly on the soul.
        It has to do with my passion for techwear, that is to say functional clothing which is the shield against a hostile world, which increases my power as a man.

I don't know if you've heard of Errolson Hugh, but you could say he was the one who saved my life.

*****

“The day is breaking over Los Altos, another day in paradise, again maximum sunshine today, with a heat peak at 35°C. Ouuuuuuuuuuha! Bad times for the potbellied. And I know what I'm talking about. The water tables are as dry as...”

I mute the radio because I'm not in the mood for inelegant metaphors. And then silence isn't bad either. It's 7:30 in the morning and I already find myself turning on the air conditioning. I look at the sky through the sunroof of my car: not a cloud, not even a small one. It's not yet today that I'm going to use my JA1-GT.

Red fire. I obediently observe a pause since it is the law. I turn my head mechanically to the right and I see the yellowed poster, as if scratched but on which we can still read: “ DISCOVER VANCOUVER ”. The play on words is rather well thought out, but what speaks to me above all is that it is a photograph of the city in the rain, surrounded by conifers, the green of the forest and the mountains. Wow, it hits my guts every morning.

I am brought back to life by a guy behind who is in a hurry to go to work.

The open space where I work is empty at this hour and we don't hear the usual buzz worthy of a Wall Street trading room, nor the keyboards being hammered, nor the epileptic printers and nor the violent knocks. on the computer screen so that it works better. I throw my Phasic Sun anti-UV jacket from Arc-Téryx on my chair back.

Edward from the legal department, a worried guy with a Woody Allen physique, arrives at the office and it makes me think he wouldn't last long in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Even ! I guess it wouldn't be too bad to use this guy as a human shield to get out of a desperate situation. I laugh for a moment imagining what I would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I've already thought about it quite a few times. I think I would dress as an ACG. All Condition Gear. That means what it means. Gore-Tex against flying brains. Pockets to hold knives and food. Close to the body because I don't want them to be able to get caught on the sides of my jacket when I run away. The Revaderchi of course. And cargo with zippers in all directions. But hey, since we rarely get an invitation for this kind of thing, I always have the outfit in my car trunk.

- Mike, Edward says to me, painfully hoisting his stick insect body over the carpeted partition, I think Miller wants to see you immediately.

I tell him “ok, Ed!” because he hates being called that. We adore each other.

- Come in, old man! says Bill Miller's baritone voice as he chews a croissant that is French only in name. Ah, really, the French are the best for food, there's no denying it. Feel this Danish !

Miller is the head of the Los Altos branch of my company. Our niche is IT. We work with Google.

- Well, I won't beat around the bush Mike. Do you know that I hold you in high esteem? he said, crumbs in the corner. Hey, don't be modest, when I say in high esteem, I mean that, in my opinion, you are the future of this company. No more no less. The son I never had. Don't tell my son. But don't get carried away, I don't intend to adopt you. Still, you are the rising star of the CMS. The code virtuoso before the Lord! Take a seat, this chair is yours.

He shows me his plump leatherette armchair.

- This is where you belong, little one. And that's why I'm sending you to develop our subsidiary in Phoenix, Arizona.

Phoenix, capital of Arizona, hot desert climate. Nearby Yuma was voted the driest city in the world in 2017 by the Guinness Book of World Records. The dream for a fennec fox, hell on Earth for Mike, the techwear ninja.

- I have to think about it, I say.

- How ? Would you miss an opportunity like this? The greats of this world cut their teeth in Phoenix, you know! Ok, I'll give you until tomorrow evening to give me the answer. Think carefully, little one! And don't forget: you are the future.

        Over my shoulder, I see Miller rummaging through the bakery's kraft bag, speckled with grease stains.

*****

In the evening, I explain Miller's intentions to my wife. She finds it a fantastic career opportunity. She said this, in a dreamy tone, thinking that once in Phoenix, maybe she would finally achieve a perfect tan. She aims for Pantone color 469 C. Truly my wife is the definition of perseverance.

As I explain my reservations to her, she says to me:

- Wait, wait, wait, isn't it because you think you're a ninja?

I put my hands in my pockets like a kid.

- Stop saying that, will you. It's perfectly normal, there are a lot of people in the world you know who wear techwear.

        - Normal ? No Mike, normal people, they want the sun and they hide when it rains. This is how normal people are.

My daughter sucks her green beans just to extract the minimum vitality from them, without having to eat them entirely. His eyes move from his mother to me. Me who has only ever really played ninjas in my head and who suddenly has the violent urge to run away like a teenager.

        That night, I didn't sleep well and my life seemed very narrow.

II

I wake up the next day with an impossible hangover. The kind of hangover that gives you a mid-life crisis when you're barely thirty. It's ugly.

        At the usual red light, the poster disappeared. Instead, I see a touting advertisement for a preferential rate loan. “Never seen before” bla-bla-bla. I get out of the car with the flexibility of an alley cat and, at that moment, in my world, I go crazy because I'm like a Nobel Prize winner in Physics who realizes that the Shepherd's Star, from the start, it was a little glowworm sleeping on his astrological telescope. As I scratch the capitalist poster, I realize that the glue has eaten my poster and that we can barely see anything anymore.

        It was a terrible blow to me. Like a guy who walks for hours in the desert and realizes that what he saw all this time was nothing but a mirage. The mid-life crisis was going to take me down, and it was coming soon.

I step on the gas pedal and, when I get home, I fill the trunk with everything I own that can help me survive in a hostile environment, like the Amazon or Alan Moore comics.

I can't take the plane, because given the artillery I have, it's heading to Azkaban prison. So I got in the car and followed any sign that seemed to me pointing north. Twelve hours of travel, to Portland. Not even hurt. Arrived there, it starts to smell of rain, but still nothing, the clouds are shy and the people are dressed as if they were going to the beach. The landscape has changed: the trees are no longer the same, the sun's rays do not shine the same, they are diluted, less effective, like an opinion without argument.

However, the air is desperately dry, the canvas of the sky smeared with dust. It's not really that yet. And I cross Portland like a fugitive with death on my heels.

Before arriving in Everett, after Seattle, I took Jordan Road through Canyon Creek to arrive at the Lake Twenty-two trailhead, not far from Granite Falls. Because why not. My phone rings, it's Miller. I ignore the call.

I find a modest motel in Granite Falls in which I book a night because I don't have a tent and I leave my car there which I happily leave. To walk. Finally. The sky is clear like a beautiful Klein monochrome. But the sky is still wet because I arrive after the rain. The ground, still soaked in water, makes all kinds of sucking noises under my mid-top hiking boots from the Salomon and 11 by Boris Bidjan Saberi collaboration. I can't describe what it does to me, but just smelling the strange smell of wet tar and the calm of a forest after rain gives me orgasmic discharges.

I am surrounded by trees as tall as wooden buildings, conifers, sort of redwoods which it takes time to go around. I walk next to the plank paths that man made. If there is a puddle, I jump in it and I feel my body vibrate with emotion under the Gore-Tex of my J1A. So crispy. I move my elbows on purpose to hear the crispness of the dry fabric playing its music.

And then I start running like a free animal. I pass as close as possible to the trees so that they sprinkle me with the raindrops remaining on the leaves and I want to get as close as possible to nature, I want to be like a stone rolling down the hill but nothing can ever reach. Like the reed, bend but not break. The hollow of the forest is full of echoing noises, accurate noises, resonating like a gigantic musical instrument. My ACG freighter was made for racing. At one point I came to a waterfall and decided I needed to get under it, just to test my waterproof seams. I close my eyes. The heavy weight of the water makes my head bow.

I don't really know how to tell you, but I was happier under this waterfall than under any blazing sun. I think: “not waterproof but waterfallproof” and that makes me happy.

Some walkers see me and run away. This is my territory. But still no rain.

I continue my path at random, letting myself be guided only by my instinct and I come across the lake, located in a basin, as lakes often do, and bordered by vast sheets of eternal snow. I take the opportunity to take a nap there, crouched in the cozy snow.

I spent the rest of the day performing complex cyberpunk ninja tricks until I started to feel hungry. With a wave of my hand, I take my knife out of my gravity pocket which, in the process, unfolds and lands just a centimeter from my foot. I stifle a little cry before pulling myself together. This is my territory.

Frankly, I've never hunted before but I'm in the forest like in the pit of my stomach and don't tell me to leave because it's made for me here. Like when I first discovered Star Wars. And Blade Runner. Madmax. Halo. William Gibson. Don't tell me to leave.

It's still not raining and I'm starting to feel hot.

Instead of wandering the forest in search of prey, I lean against a tree, put on my hood and mask and stay still as long as possible. When after an hour or two, a squirrel comes to laze right on the trunk opposite, just within reach of my blade. As evidenced by the wooden pillar in my cellar on which I trained until I became ridiculously skilled, I didn't give it a chance. There's not much to eat on the beast but my wife can say what she wants: I'm a survivor.

I return to the motel at nightfall, the dead squirrel in one hand, the blood-red knife in the other. And so I open the door to my room, in which the cleaning lady is. She inspects my knives as long as screams, my shining ninja stars, my accessories of a heroic life, my unclear toys, the perfect outfit for killing all kinds of living beings.

When she hears the creaking sound of the door, she swings her massive frame around to see who is entering. When she sees me in the doorway, with my dead squirrel with its mouth open and its tongue out and my eight-inch knife with its blade reddened, me in my black outfit which only shows my surprised eyes, she takes a step back then screams to tear apart the night which has fallen like the curtain on a stage. I jump because she scared me. Wow, it makes my stomach churn because she's screaming so loudly. It's like a Hitchcock movie.

She suddenly rushes towards me like a rhinoceros and I prefer not to have to take her straight in the gut. So at the last moment, I push myself. As she rushes out the door, I think she imagines that I won't push myself and that therefore she will hit me head on. But I push myself and she continues like a bullet, until she hits her head on the bumper of a pick-up that is there. The pick-up moves a little, we must pay tribute to the solidity of the bone structure of the cleaning lady who is built like a brutalist monument from Former Yugoslavia.

When I see her lying on the ground, I am struck by the Picasso-like beauty of her pose and I take a souvenir photo with my phone that I clipped to my cobra belt. I don't know if you can fall in love with objects, but really this cobra belt is still sexy. I don't know how else to say it. No wonder Dior grabbed it. I unclip the buckle. I clip. I unclip. I clip. That clicking sound does something to me. Wow, this is so perfect. It fits together as it should. The cleaning lady is still unconscious. I unclip. I clip.

Suddenly, her boss, who is also her husband and who doesn't really like people taking photos of his wife, rushes out of his smoky kitchen with a 22 long rifle specially designed to catch things running around.

He stands in front of me and takes aim at me without complexes. Wow, I really wish I hadn't made his wife run away. The guy has the shady look of someone who has seen some twisted things in his life, maybe even he's the one who caused these twisted things to happen. His denim is all sticky and his t-shirt has crimson stains.

- What's your problem?, he said to me with all the charisma of a guy holding a gun. Are you a spy? A Viet? Are you Japanese? You're a Japanese, right? What the fuck is your vice?

- No, not at all, it's a simple mistake, I say, removing my hood and all my equipment from the future, I'm simply here to... let's say... confront nature, I say, waving under his nose he had the size of a snout the squirrel whose heart had stopped beating.

He looks at his wife on the ground and I describe to him the scene that happened. Suddenly, like a tap being turned off, he drops his gun to his side and declares that, anyway, his wife has always been a little emotional, thereby winning the world record for the most beautiful euphemism. He offers me a drink because why not and decrees with common sense bordering on genius that she “won't fall any lower”. Around the glass of hooch that takes me back to when I was fifteen when I snuck my first sip of whiskey, he said to me:

- You're not a Satan worshiper at least?

- No sir, I answer.

- Do you have a criminal record?, he asks me.

- No sir, I retort with heavy breath.

- Are you against the United States of America?

        - So no!

        - What is all your equipment there?

- It's to track down the Nexus-6 replicants, I do it for fun, influenced by the whiskey which tickled my vital organs.

- What?

- No, no, it's technical equipment for survival in the forest Sir, I said more seriously.

- Oh yeah. Well, I'll tell you: shady guys like you, especially those who kill squirrels, we don't want them around here. Understood ? You leave first thing tomorrow.

- That's fine with me, I say before emptying the filthy mixture in one go and returning to the warmth of my room.

Miller calls me again. I don't answer. Through the open window the forest sounded just in the evening fire.

III

I arrive in Vancouver like a tornado descending on a fishing village. I'm not sure why I say that, but that's how I feel.

Vancouver is a concrete raft surrounded by mountains. You would see that. In any circumstance, when you walk in the streets, you never really know which element you are in between earth, air and water. And that same evening, sometimes, the sky catches fire. And I stand at the window of my hotel room to watch this slow inferno that cuts the sky with incendiary northern lights, like fuschia waves on a calm ocean. Still no rain and Miller calling me again.

I decide to go further north. Where I want to go, I have to take a boat, to go along the coast and get to the Great Bear Rainforest.

The sailor who takes me is a guy who speaks little, whose face is purple, streaked with scars from his previous lives. His big calloused hands don't move on the rudder and when we finally arrive, he says “um” by way of goodbye and doesn't even look at me. It's like he's never really seen me.

I jump on the bank like Christopher Columbus, except that I know perfectly where we are. And it's opposite the Queen Charlotte Islands, now called the Haida Gwaii archipelago. And here, it's not exactly like suburban life.

I'm about to enter the forest and I adjust my J1A-GT which I'm pretty sure is a bulletproof vest too.

The forest closes in on me . The sailor's engine is already purring further away and I feel that I am alone in the world. But still no rain.

I can feel within me the presence of the immense red cedars I pass by, as well as the Sitka spruce trees, as tall as a father watching over his child. The moss covers the entire plant cathedral, so that the sounds are muffled and you feel good here like you are in a movie theater.

I walk through the forest with my Danner and the deeper I go into the forest the more I imagine myself, a tiny little being, like a paltry dot on the map of the world. As if behind the scenes, as on the moon, as in exile. I walk on pathless lands and, for sure, sometimes, I set foot where no one has ever set their foot before. And so, from splendor to splendor, I come across, in the diffuse light of the undergrowth, a bear whose coat is white with golden reflections and whose black eyes stare at me.

I stop because my legs don't want to continue anyway. I feel a myriad of conflicting feelings. He must have seen me arriving from afar. I hear his powerful breathing. It then stands on its hind legs and its body lengthens like the trees that surround it. It's a white and gold cedar among the reds and here, with all my techwear equipment, I don't really know what to do. Suddenly, the bear changes its balance, it will fall on its front legs. As soon as he touches the ground with his four paws, he instantly starts chasing me. And this is the second time I've been charged in a few days. Except in the case of the maid, I was the hunter and now I'm the hunted.

I saw in a documentary that you have to play dead, but when a two hundred kilo bear is charging at you like a truck full of dynamite, playing dead is the last thing you want to do. So I run. I run like I've never run before, to beat Usain Bolt, to run on water if there had been any, but the bear is getting closer. I mean, out of my four limbs, I only use two and he, whose stomach is growling because he's hungry, runs with all his paws and his claws grab the moss to project himself better towards me.

At one point, the trees are closer to each other and that slows down the beast's course a little and, shortly after, as I look behind to assess the moment the film ends, I fall into the void. A cliff. Do you believe that?

However, as I fall, my bagjack gets caught in something and I am held in the air. It's a dead stump sticking out. The bear, two meters higher, with his belly still rumbling, looks at me with the eyes of cow love.

Silence falls. I check that everything is solid, but my techwear seems to be holding up well. Sometimes the bear blows hard on my neck and drool falls on my head, so I put on my hood. Daylight begins to fade and my brain goes to sleep.

I'm woken up by my cell phone ringing, it's Miller. I pick up, still suspended in space. Network coverage is impeccable.

- Well Mike! We don't hear from your old friend Bill anymore? We are worried here. But hey, I told them that you were made of solid wood and that nothing serious could happen to you…

I glance over my shoulder to see if the bear is still there. Faithful to his post, he sharpens his claws on a tree. It's reassuring to see.

Bill Miller continues his act but I interrupt him:

- Bill… my answer is no. I can't move to Phoenix. It's incompatible with my way of life and, I even wondered if we didn't have sectors in Canada instead, I said.

- In Canada?, he said, putting down the cigar in his mouth. Nobody wants to go there, but I thought I was doing you a favor by sending you to Phoenix, man.

He said he would think about it. Right afterward, I call my wife, who is past the stage of all-consuming fury and just wants me to come home. I really miss her and my daughter but I don't know if I'll see them again. I explain to him the situation I am in and ask him to send help. I hang up and put my cell phone in the gravity pocket inside my sleeve.

Above, the sky is black and there are many stars. Feeling the violent beating of my jugular, the same one that the bear has not yet managed to cut, I feel alive. Just like that, I become aware of the electric current running through my body and, that's when I hear a huge roar that doesn't come from the bear but rather from the sky and it starts. finally starts to rain. A light rain first and then a heavy rain then and I start laughing like crazy on this cliff in the Great Bear Rainforest, opposite the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The bear is at the edge of the cliff and is moving now. I maneuver skillfully to turn around and face him. The cobra strap on my bagjack holds up well, it's definitely worth the astronomical price I paid for it. I see that the bear is dangerously approaching the edge and that under its left paw the earth is crumbling. Without thinking, I violently extend my right arm towards the fragile mound of earth on which the bear is leaning and my cell phone springs like a javelin from my sleeve and shatters just under the paw of the bear which is unbalanced. forward. As he falls into the void, he's going to hit me so I jump as best I can on the left side but it's not enough.

The bear's claws close on my ankle and I am swept away in its fall.

So how come I’m here to tell you this story?

As I tumble like a heavy stone with the white and gold bear and the rain falls with us, my J1AGT jacket begins to vibrate more and more and I feel something moving behind my back. And then suddenly, a gigantic shiny web unfolds in the night like a parachute on which there is written ACRONYM and I cry with joy. I land next to the bear. He's not breathing anymore. I put my GPS on and that’s how I was found.

And for those who think it's not possible: just ask Errolson Hugh what he says!