Karen hooked the reel to a concrete-anchored barbecue grill.Karen hooked the reel to a concrete-anchored barbecue grill. The kite would easily stay aloft all day, given wind. Karen plugged her goggles into the display plate. She tested the trackball controlled lens movements. The stabilized lens mount really cut down on vertigo. She switched through her visual hallucination series satisfactorily with the remote device. The view was centered downwind from her position. Karen started looking at her surroundings in an expanding spiral from the duck pond directly below the kite. She tarried briefly while watching the city maintenance crew loafing near the lake's pump housing. Only a single weather-beaten Pinto occupied the nearest parking lot. Karen spotted a boy walking purposefully toward the junked out ovenmobile where an equally weathered man sat eating a burrito in it. The boy had the eager, slightly feral look of someone exposed to particularly harsh realities of life at too young an age. The lad leaned in the passenger side window and apparently spoke with the driver. As he walked away he stopped and seemed to meet another person whom Karen hadn't noticed. The kid and the woman walked together toward the Pinto. Both crowded at the window briefly. Karen twiddled the controls to get maximum zoom and the best angle. She watched something pass hands from the woman to the driver. Then the woman and the boy got into the car. They crowded together in the middle of the car making detailed observation impossible. After a few minutes the woman and boy got out of the car. |