Chapter 2

The nurse was watching the 11 o'clock news, now extended well past midnight. There had been a flurry of Breaking News reports over the last hour, but the official newscast was airing now. Heisenberg Has Been Captured! Analysts excitedly hiccupped across the screen, talking heads blathered about relieved mothers with high school teens, it was amazing how so many witnesses could pop up to an event only a handful of people, well, living people, saw.

Wait, even the SWAT team didn't actually see anything.

There was a camera pan of dark sheds waiting in the glare of helicopter searchlights, waiting for their secret contents to be exposed. A single voice on the tv chirped again. "Well, there you have it. After all this bloodshed, and reports of an amazing body count…"

"And Arty, I bet the SWAT team was happy it wasn't any of their bodies."

"Yes, I'm sure they are happy about that! Good thing, body armor. After all this bloodshed, Heisenberg is ensconced in an undisclosed New Mexico hospital, in critical condition, and rumored near death."

"Near death isn't dead, Arty."

"Yes, and the DEA is good with that. They are anxious to probe the mind of the Blue Death creator."

The good nurse glanced over at her patient. He seemed to be sleeping soundly again, his eyelids flickering in dreams, and the machines dutifully hissed on. Hissing, that's probably what the nation is doing to the healthy looking pic of W.W. (deranged school teacher! watch your children!) being flashed on all the news reports. Walter White, evil among the innocents, corrupter of pre-adults, selling and recruiting to his own students. Walter White, even the name is deception. Oh, her colleagues wondered why she didn't pull a few plugs right then and there.

She wished they could see a real picture of him as he lay there, a skeleton under thin sheets.

Well, why shouldn't they? The only prohibition to cell phones in the critical ward was that they had to be in "airplane mode." Fishing out her deluxe, big screen, silvery, mega-pic-celled? smart phone from its shiny case in her sweater pocket (bought for her by a caring nephew who adored all things technical), she never could figure out what they meant by that.

…

The teen heard his sweet "message received" voice go off. He loved that voice. He heard it 150 times a day, and that was a slow day. Justin was a blogger, a tweeter, a facer, a web slinger, any net-social means he could spread his Just Message on he could, and hell damn would, do. He looked down at his cell phone. Oh, oh, it was his crazy nurse aunty. It was such a waste to try to get her to understand anything electronic. In the hospital, she could sometimes go through patient screens by route, her mind still worked that way as long as nothing changed. Fortunately, Unix based hospital systems were as cemented as the adobe basements they worked out of. Well, no, to be fair, the New Mex hospitals weren't that bad, and better than their reputations, but boy, some of the staff were sure old, and off.

At his mom's prodding, and expense, Justin bought his aunt the latest and greatest in telecommunications profundity. To be honest, he wanted to play with it himself, and used it several months before repacking it, only minor food stains notable, and handing it to his pleased aunt. She gushed over it and poked at it, fat fingers skidding past the edges, and had no idea how it worked. It was sure bright, though. Justin, mercifully, set it up so she could just poke a few places and bring up a short list of her most likely calls. His mom wanted to make sure she could reach them when she went off on one of her anxiety rants. She was deathly worried about her skin. Blotches over her cheeks and chin, even on her eyelids, worried her endlessly, and living in New Mexico didn't help. She wanted to wear an Arab head scarf, but in white instead of black, complete with a face veil that went over her eyes and underneath her wire glasses. There was some kind of mesh in it so you could still see, kinda, but the family was concerned that NRA rifle cocks would mistake her for a Real Arab, and everyone else as just plain nuts.

"It's the sun, the killer sun!" she would yell as the New Mexico morning streamed into her bedroom and over mottled blankets. "I hate it here, I want to move, IWANTTOMOVE!" Justin remembered that morning mantra even as a (younger) kid, and now, thankfully, his I-Stamp musically drowned it out most bad days.

Aunty wakes up with a new obsession these mornings. He could never understand why a 56 year old, white, New Mexico bred, conservative health worker would be interested in stories about some weird, bald, mythical druggie who could cook up blue clouds of manic happiness at night and teach sleepy young-uns by day. No one in his family was an addict (except maybe for the Web, admittedly ;), but… some old, blue psycho?

Takes one to know one, Justin.

Now tonight, most of America knows one. And they want to know more.

"Yes, Aunty?"

"How do you do that, know who's calling you? You are just too smart, mister." Justin sounded so sweet to her over the phone. He was such a good child. Too bad he was just a little too young to have known Walter White as a teacher. He could have learned to really think. How could anyone not learn from such an intelligent man. "Honey, I'm sorry to bother you from your studies, and so late, but I thought with all the news you'd still be up." Justin popped another moon pie chunk into his mouth and turned down the shooting volume of his game. "I just wanted to ask… well, you said my phone could take a picture?"

"Yeah, Aunty Rose, it's a little button on the side of the phone."

"There's lots of buttons on the side of the phone, sweetheart."

"The button has a little icon like a circle on it."

"I'm looking for a… cir-cle?" Rose squinted, but even with a magnifying glass, which she forgot to bring along in all her excitement that evening, she wouldn't know what she was looking for.

"Well, you know, Aunty, there's not really that many buttons (when the hell did seven buttons become overwhelming for a grown-up?), so why don't you point it and push each button until a picture comes up."

"Point, honey?"

"The top of the screen. You know, like a tv set, the top."

"Where you put the flower vase on it?"

Flower vase? He had to reach back in his memory past flat screen tv's. In the Before Time.

"No, Aunty, near the top. You'll see a, ugh, I mean, uh, circle."

Rose squinted at her phone again. "Oh yes, I do see that one. It's like a piece of glass. Point that?"

"Yes, Aunty, yes." Justin nodded his head vigorously, as if she could see him doing that, he was that frustrated. "Point that, and push the buttons."

"Okay, honey. I hope it works. Thank you, good night."

"Good night, Aunt Rose." Oh God, what the heck could that old bag of crazy want a picture of? A cat? A cute pigeon? And where the heck would it go with all that button pushing. Eh, who cares, it couldn't be anything good.