Gang fight

I was a gang member, part of a disorganised group in a strange urban place. The roads dry and dusty, the air hot and the dawn sky an oily yellow. The shuttered buildings and alleyways giving shadows but no welcome. Walking as a group we were purposeless after an organised fight hadn't happened. We stopped in a first floor coffee shop for drinks and to rest.

In a large garage or warehouse full of packing containers and junk, I found my bike. The proper bike and another wrong one, parts broken and ill fitting. It had to be returned but it wasn't possible yet, so I had to keep it in storage. Every time I saw them I had to check to see which was which, superficially the same yet on closer inspection, different. If ever there was a problem with the real bike, maybe parts could be exchanged with the other, but maybe not, it was so full of flaws.

Like the bike, there were two cameras. It was an easy mistake to pick the wrong one, to attach and remove parts, to get the cards ready. With all the components in place, I realised that I had the wrong camera, this one had old firmware and the other was new. I couldn't change the firmware like the other parts - by hand - so I had to strip and rebuild the thing.

In the coffee shop the open windows gave a view out of the city and towards a hill where a strange architecture like a great cemetery sprawled. All up the hill rows and terraces of ruined buildings and structures clustered together. The near ones, destroyed, almost completely ruined, had been partly rebuilt in crass undressed breeze blocks, anachronistic and inexplicable. The more distant ones grew in size and complexity, details hidden yet still clearly ruins. A track or way led straight up the midline towards the centre. In the centre of the layout, a temple, pyramid or ziggurat towered over the ruin like a small mountain. I finished the drink and grabbed my bag with the camera, to head to the track, already seeing the angles and shades of the ruins in my head.