"The Victor’s Heritage by Anthony Caplan is non-stop action, adventure and completely spell-binding reading from start to finish. Mr. Caplan has woven a tale that sometimes parallels contemporary events, although set in a futuristic world. [...]
Meant to be read as a standalone!
Corrag is a Democravian teenager, smart, funny and bold. Maybe too bold.
It is 2045. America has been shattered into two countries. Democravia and the Republican Homeland. Peace between the two continental rivals is always fragile.
An ill-fated escapade with her boyfriend launches Corrag on a journey of revolutionary impact, driving her to exile in the Nenkaja from which there is no escape. Will she ever find a place for herself in a society dominated by the Augment?
The Victor's Heritage, Book Two of the Jonah Trilogy, is a science-fiction thriller, a roller coaster of a book.
"The Victor's Heritage is especially recommended for mature teens to young adults - particularly for those inclined to enjoy dystopian stories of the future, who will appreciate a vivid turn of events as Corrag's initial acceptance of her future turns into questions with terrible answers. The connections between family and friends are especially well drawn and lend an immediacy and excitement to the plot, which is powered by and packed with emotional revelations and swift action." - Diane, Goodreads
EXCERPT
Chapter One --The
Augment
Corrag smiled at the idea of Gurgie
in her bedroom on Durkiev Drive across town and the shock of recognition when
she realized her friend had signed off on MandolinMonkey rather than go in for
the remnant. So characteristic of a truly dynamic soul, Gurgie would say, to
quit nonchalantly on the verge. But for Corrag the reality was less comforting.
She had ten minutes before her parents called for dinner. It was a more complex
fear coming over her -- of facing Ricky and Alana, the stalwarts of St.
Michael's Close, the exclusive, tree-lined enclave of Edmundstown where she had
grown and lived her entire sixteen years. Her parents, the Drs. Lyons as they
were titled in the annual consensus, had implied that this talk would be
“important to her future.” Whatever that could mean. Something about the boring
infinitude of possibilities always just around the corner. Like signing off on
the game rather than face the interior of the obelisk, it was easier for Corrag
to be present and accounted for -- ride the tide of her parent’s displeasure --
then to make a stand by remaining in her bedroom, the private space she
continued to carve out of the increasingly imperiled Democravian Federation
life she was about to leave behind.
She observed numbly
as the icon came up on the nanowall, the family crest with the towering crane
and the stylized image of the transgalactic, so twenty-thirties, and wished
again she’d had other siblings, that Ricky and Alana had been more compelled by
the recommendations of the Commission on Demography and less concerned with
their augmented careers. But so be it. There were also advantages to being the
basket in which were placed all the eggs of the Lyons family name. if only the
crest design were more compelling. She hit the kill button before the music,
theme of HG Wells acclaimed classic The Shape of Things to Come which she had
performed during her sixth grade drama season in a stellar role as Hillary
Perron, the Council leader responsible for the withering away of the former
power of the state of California, the sclerotic, corrupt vestiges of what had
once been democratic governance, could end. Now it just reminded her of her
parent’s unfulfilled expectations for her development as a young woman about to
assume the mantle of augmentation.
She descended the
stairs covered in royal blue carpeting and sat at the dining room table of
molybdenum, while her father, white beard trimmed neatly and his cardigan in
the colors of the University of the Upper West, maroon with cream pockets,
beamed at her. Her mother, Alana, continued to talk in that subtle, alluring
monotone with hints of New Albion that had entranced many faculty parties on
the shores of Mono Lake.
“And I’ve always maintained that
tennis induces a better oxygen wash of the skin than yoga, Ricky. Well. Here
she is. Corrag? Where is your file?” asked Alana.
“Oh my God. Can I get my food before
the interrogation?”
“Of course you can. Don’t be silly,”
said her father, trying hard to keep the sound of despair out of his voice.
Alana sighed. Corrag hated hurting their feelings, but there was nothing else
to be done. This would have to be endured. Not even Alana was going to come out
of this smelling of roses. There was probably a word in another language for
the moment when a young woman declared her independence from her family without
a pre-approved plan in place. But Corrag felt herself destined for a new form
of singular existence that depended on taking this risk.
“Have you taken a stab at the essay
yet? When is it due?" asked her father, once she had served herself from
the tray offered by the housebot of the lasagna and truffles.
“In two days,” said Alana. “It’s
getting late.”
“I’m having thoughts about it,” said
Corrag. “I’m not sure.”
“Not sure. Thoughts. That’s Corrag
for you,” said Alana. “What is sure for you? Nothing is ever sure in your
world. You are the classic case of choice overload. We never should have let
her have a PlayCube of her own.”
“Let her speak,” said Ricky.
They waited breathlessly, the two
anxious parents, while Corrag forked some lasagna and chewed without looking at
them.
“Didn’t you always tell me to follow my
desires, Dad? Well, that’s what I’m trying to decipher. I don’t really know
what my desires are. I don’t know if it’s what I really want. That’s my
problem. I want to know. I can’t just plunge ahead into fine-tuning until I do.
It wouldn’t be right for me.”
“Right for me.” Alana repeated. She
dropped her fork. It clattered on her plate. Ricky grabbed his head helplessly
with both hands. The bot, sensing some urgency, circled the table speedily. Corrag
waved it away with her hand and looked at it with a hard stare that sent it
back into the kitchen through the energy panel.
“This uncertainty of yours is in
total defiance of your education and privilege,” said Alana.
“I know,” said Corrag. “But it’s
what I want. Until we reach augmentation, we can choose what we want, right?”
“Within reason, Corrag. The parents
still have the final say,” said Alana darkly.
“It’s unbelievable, Corrag,” said
her father. “There are no more
exemptions. Look at the Calder boy. He wanted to take a year and read the books
in his grandfather’s library because he said he “valued the experience” of
holding the words in his head instead of instant upload. He tried to argue in
the consensus - you don’t remember, do you? - that the year of reading was
worthwhile. But there were no more exemptions. Do you understand? He was
effectively exiled. The only thing left to him was the HumInt Corps. Is that
what you want? Hundred mile marches in the swamps where not even the bots can go?
Certain premature death? No augmentation means no physical corrections.”
“That’s not true. There are other
things,” said Corrag, the color rising in her face.
“Like what?” asked Alana.
“I don’t know.”
“Uugh,” grimaced Alana, her face
wrinkling like a prune despite the botulin implants.
“Look,” said Ricky. Corrag could see
the glint in his eye that told her he was probably in the cloud. “It’s a common
condition of human childhood to seek individuation. We try to condition it
away, but the vestiges of the trait are stronger in some and may require
remedial conditioning. Or else you can choose the Vocag. There are some
interesting possibilities. If you like manual work.”
“Okay,” said Corrag. She’d heard it
all before, The path of the conversation had taken a familiar tack that
apparently was not remembered by her father. But Alana would not have it.
“Do you know what that is? It’s not
exactly gravy, is it. Give them run of the greenhouses. How ... utterly tacky.”
said Alana.
“So? Somebody has to grow the food.
I thought we were all in this together. Hail the Federation. Smile all the
while."
“Corrag,” said Alana sharply.
“What?”
“Look,” said Ricky. “I can accept
that you need time. You’ve always been ... different."
"What are you talking about,
Dad? I'm just like you. Have you forgotten? You've told me about refusing to
play football. How your dad took it hard. How you had to find your own
way."
"I know. You're ... different.
Yes, like I was once. That’s why we love you. We’ll continue to support you in
your choices no matter what.”
“But she doesn’t know what she
wants.”
“Give her a year. What if we send
her to New Albion to stay with Geoff and Joan. She can work with them, I don't
know, the cows and the vegetable garden and get a real taste of life in the
Republic. How does that sound, Corrag? It’s a world away from here. You haven’t
seen your cousins since you were oh, two years old.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I agree,” said Alana, with the
glint in her eye. “At first I thought it was a bad idea. After all, the
Republic’s ideas on education and adulthood are very different than ours. I
just don’t know how it will sit with the Council.”
“I’ll run it by Mitchell Culpepper.
There is the youth emissary program. It’s usually staffed by graduates of
fine-tuning, but they may make an exception for me."
“And I’ll get in touch with Joan.
There’s the risk of course …”
“Of course. But
… paradoxically there are less
opportunities for young people in the Repho. The reliance on market forces will
always prove inefficient as a mechanism to harness the singularity.”
“Do call Mitchell.”
“I will dear.
Tonight.”
Ricky and Alana
finished their dinner with occasional glances Corrag’s way. The matter was
closed as far as they were concerned. Corrag watched her parents, wondering at
their ability to turn on a dime conversationally once all the options had been
thoroughly considered. For her, though, a year abroad loomed mysterious and
menacing. She hadn’t heard them talk about the New Albion family in forever,
and why that would be the best option for her was not clear. Corrag had, in the
back of her mind, figured they would find a way to get her private tutors to
prepare for augmentation, with some kind of mental health dispensation. Sure it
would have channeled her into the arts, but that was where she felt at home,
without the responsibility for determining the way forward for the entire
civilization. Just entertain us, that was the mandate for the ArtSmile corps
coming out of the Federation system. Most of their recent mindscapes and
challenges were pretty bland. The occasional bootleg memes from Sandelsky, the
main branding of the Republic that teenaged hackers sometimes spread around the
play spheres, far outstripped Democravian productions in technical flair; and
they just seemed deeper, somehow more important.
She advanced around
the dark corner. The street was empty except for a parked vintage Bundeswehr
quadcopter on the right. She passed it and lifted her head. In her hand she
hefted the laser pistol and aimed it at the bonfire about three blocks away.
The Mandolin headquarters was a square, black obelisk, modelled on a classic
Anish Kapoor sculpture. The fire raged around its doors and she had to shoot
her way through a crowd of ripper monkeys. They were easy. They always aimed
right for your head and all you had to do was duck several inches and fire back
at the same time in their general vicinity. The game makers had been recently
faulted at a consensus for setting the adversarial level purposefully down
market in order to secure continued funding.
For Corrag, the subtext was clear. Life was a popularity contest. No
matter how efficiently the council liked to think it was going you couldn’t do
away with the basic human flaws of wanting, desiring, seeking what was out
there. Greater RAM speeds and advanced neural networks had never gotten to
grips with the pattern-making propensity of the human brain and the magnetic
allure of pleasure which threw up the energy-matter continuum all around.
MandolinMonkey did a good job of smoothing the jolts of scenic transition and
stimulating the pituitary with each new level attained. Still, she found
herself impatiently bypassing the obvious level trap with a joystick function
and flying down the hallways unmindful of lesser adventures and parallel
opportunities. Above and behind her avatar there sprung two Greckels,
stoat-like creatures capable of quick extensions and sharp tears at limbs and
throats. They were Gurgie and Mathew.
“Come with us,” said
a high-pitched voice.
She had five seconds.
She knew she should check the table for power surges at least, but she felt
compelled to follow. If they were leading her astray, so be it. She would find
a way to dodge an ill end, as the game makers called it. Her avatar, an Elfin,
had the power over water and fire and so was a logical complement to the
Greckels’ slippery land capabilities. What the game lacked was dimensionality
of power, the ability to shape shift and entertain various outcomes at the same
time. But for now it would do. In the end, win or lose, the only thing that
mattered was displaying the innovative spirit that the Founders wanted in the
future leader corps. Once you had that hacked, everything else was an easy
trick. The person that had taught her the shortcuts that had helped her to
climb the ranks Federation wide was Ben Calder. Where
was he now? Was he still alive? Or had the stint in the Humint Corps in the
Basin wars possibly killed him, as her father had suggested? A cold stab of
fear hit Corrag at the thought of Ben dead.
They were in the
obelisk. Corrag wondered how they had gotten in. Down the hall the two Greckels
paused and stood on their hindfeet at a nanowall display. There in a neon
gothic font flashed the message: Be a Vence with us at the
Spring Fest. The Vences were a
rebel punk band from the twenties, one of Gurgie’s favorites. She had their
songs posted all over the soundscape in school. The Vences had painted their
faces in ghoulish camouflage colors and had flouted the ideals of physical
perfection and the singularity long enough to gain themselves a diehard
following. Gurgie’s parents had been fans and so had Ricky, in his youth. But
he hated their music now and cringed whenever Gurgie came over for a visit
trailing “Blast Me Down Andromeda” out of her loose earpiece.
“Very smooth,
Gurgie,” said Corrag, pressing the joystick dialogue button beneath the thumb
hold. The Elfin jumped and clapped, signifying acceptance of a strange,
land-based phenomenon. Corrag smiled at the clever algorithm that had allowed
her avatar to anticipate her feelings. Then the Greckels faded into the ether
and she was alone. A blank look on the Elfin’s severe, drawn face was
intriguing, as if she were pondering the significance of life. Corrag saved and
hit the power off with her index finger, before any other competitors could
appear to threaten her, and lay down on her bed. Sometimes the Elfin almost
seemed to come alive and read her mind. That was the most frustrating thing,
the apparent gap between her capabilities and actual human feelings. There were
some who believed that bots had already made the transition, but Corrag was not
one of them. For a while she had believed, and her parents and teachers still
fostered the foundational concept, that humans and bots would soon be equals in
thought and feeling. But for Corrag the issue was now moot. In the last year,
she would guess, she had come down thoroughly on the side that this equality
was neither necessary nor desirable. Not that she dared to voice the opinion.
It would place her beyond the sphere of Democravian influence and deem her
“inconvenient” for continued leadership training. Because the ideal of the
Democravian way ever since the initial founding of the institutional state in
2022 was to raise a cadre of youth who would merge with the bots in order to
undergo the transgalactic mission -- colonize the most desirable Earth-like
habitable planets, 23 of them, that had been so far identified as potential
targets in the Milky Way. And in the intervening two decades since the first
councils and consensus meetings, the notion of youth had of course expanded so
that almost all citizens with the appropriate formation could potentially
qualify for merger. It was this very accessibility to the highest ideals of the
state that gave Democravia its missionary fervor, its self-styled
exceptionalism, and made it all the harder for Corrag to accept that she was
swimming against the stream. Though she knew, in the darkness, under the
sheets, about to fall asleep in the silence of the Edmundstown night, that she
was not really alone.
Edmundstown Senior
School was divided into two floors, the Upper Deck and the Lower Hall. On the
Upper Deck, Corrag took most of her classes except gym. Miss Schilling taught
the humanities block for advanced seniors.
They were touching on the literature of the transgressives, in the
context of the decline of the West and the rise of the plural. Miss Schilling
was a bright-eyed thirty-year old. Mathew and Gurgie sat in the front row and
laughed at her references to James Joyce as “that old man in the trench coat
hiding in the sand dunes.” Corrag sat in the back row between Julian Alvarenga
and Prualyse Kopeckwitz. She wondered what was that funny about Joyce. Was it
his notion of the circularity of time, so maligned and disparaged? Miss
Schilling, with her bright smile and sharp hairstyle, looked at her as if
reading her thoughts.
“And of course you
have had the night to reflect on the links to our core curriculum factor nine,
and that is what? Corrag?”
“Factor nine?”
It had been flashing
on the wall at the beginning of the class along with a soundscape by SwiftBoat.
“Oh yes. The need to
transcend individuation and internalize utility.” said Corrag.
“And how does our
study of Joyce tie in?”
“Well, I don’t quite
know. I mean, yes, there were a lot of voices, but isn’t it admirable for a man
to try and capture the essence of his reality like that?”
“But the end result
is a cacophony. A cacophony that at best yields a meager portrait of one
individual’s disillusion and bitterness. Democravian artists have dwarfed the
possibilities of the transgressives. To end, Corrag, with Molly Bloom
reminiscing on the romantic past, I’m sure you’ll agree. Such a shoddy
counterfeit of reality. When we compare that to the works of the Ontavians,
collaborations that we will look at next week that mix the perspectives of
symmetry and harmonics, it will all be clear,” said Miss Schilling. Gurgie
turned around and gave a hard stare.
“But it’s about the
common people struggling with the weight of history. Isn’t that a part of what
Democravia represents?”
“It’s not good
enough, Corrag. Not good enough. It disparages women.”
“But so does The
Great Gatsby Look at Daisy. Irresponsible and careless and destructive.”
“Yes, but Fitzgerald
identified the malaise. the lack of tether in the primitive, unwashed American
soul. The need for correction. The inevitability of self-destruction. That is a
seminal work. if only Fitzgerald had correctly identified Zelda his wife as a
collaborator in his life work. The myth of the heroic male was still too
strong. There were too many economic factors at work in its perpetuation.
You’ve seen that in your history block. I want you to reference the SwiftBoat
parody of masculine artistry. Nietzsche and Me. You’ll find it in Unit 28, I
believe in the Library archives for this course. In your reflective piece
tonight remember to present in a visually appealing manner and to comment on
the works of at least three of your fellow students. That’s all for this morning,
students. Smile all the while.”
Julian Alvarenga
smiled wanly at her.
“Nice try, Corrag.
Going for the gusto, aren’t you?”
“What is that,
Julian? An obscure reference to 20th century advertising? Let me guess.
Cigarettes.”
“Close. Try beer.”
“Try beer. Funny.
Very transgressive of you.”
Julian was the first
of his siblings to attend the Upper Deck. They were a family of former farm
workers, the dark-skinned people of the Valley, mostly displaced, like the
majority of work sectors, by the first generation of semi-autonomous bots. He
had a permeable quality, as if life was just passing through him that reminded
Corrag of a sieve. She looked him in the eye to test her theory. He looked her
right back and smiled. This was strange.
“Corrag? Can I see
you a minute?”
Miss Schilling lifted
her head at her desk. Corrag nudged past Gurgie.
“I’ll wait for
you," said Gurgie.
“By the O tank.”
“Fine.”
Miss Schilling looked
tired. She patted her hair behind her ear and cocked her head at Corrag, who
suddenly felt under siege, as if something had popped inside her skull.
“How is that essay
coming?” asked Miss Schilling.
“It’s not.”
“I didn’t think so.
I’ve seen this before, you know. I want to help.”
Corrag felt like
crying.
“I’m taking a year.
My father’s going to clear it with Axion.”
“Looks like poor
Corrag is having a crisis.”
“You don’t need to
rub it in.”
“I’m a little bit
angry, frankly. I offered to help you months ago.” Miss Schilling thrust her
hands out on the desk, splayed fingers on the console flashing slogans and
cafeteria menus and student visuals.
“But I don’t believe
in it anymore, Miss Schilling.”
“Don’t believe in
what? Corrag, it’s a poor poet who cannot venerate a doomed civilization. What
you’re going through is perfectly natural. Your feelings of nostalgia and ...
and anger are the signs of a higher calling. I so much want to recommend you
for higher order augmentation. And it’s going to raise questions about the
entire program here if you don’t complete the application process for Axion
Fine-Tuning. You can’t do that to us, Corrag.”
Miss Schilling was
sitting straight up on the chair and suddenly looking at her with that
eagle-eyed augmented focus that made Corrag instinctively want to squirm. She
looked down and away. Again the easy path beckoned -- to follow along and do
what she was told and hope someday it would all be okay. That was the subliminal
message, the factor X of the hidden curriculum not just of the Edmundstown
Charter School but of the town itself. Perhaps even of Democravia.
“I’ll try.”
More than try. Put in
the Corrag effort that we all know you’re capable of. Top shelf stuff. Give it
all you’ve got. Do it for us, for the Wildcats. For Edmundstown. Make us
proud.”
“Is that all?”
Yes, that’s all.
Share with me, please. And Corrag?”
“Yes?”
“Smile. All the
while.”
Corrag got out
through the faulty energy panel that zapped her back with a slight zap. The
janitor, Mr. Breen, was already coming down the hall on the beat up old Segway
with his laser torch repair tool swaying dangerously on the curves against his
hip. At this time mid morning the energy grid constantly experienced minor fluctuations
as the wind either rose or fell and the water desalination plants kicked in up
and down the Kaiser aquifer, giving the bigger power users in the area
headaches such as energy panel misalignments and nanowall absurdities. Mr.
Breen smiled at Corrag as he would at a senior with some insider knowledge of
these sorts of problems. Gurgie leaned against the wall and Mathew looked up
and down the hall nervously at the river of well-dressed and contented Upper
Deck students in their paisley and Kubik patterned neoprenes with the various
interchangeable logos of self-satisfied Democravian memes. There were few other
teachers in the Upper Deck as most of the classes conducted via upload and
lecture needed only administrators to assist with student work in the study
hall blocks. Miss Schilling had only a few more semesters of small class
teaching before she would move on in the Axion system to upload lectures in a
regional class encompassing the Western and Middle Southern districts.
At the O tank, Corrag
fastened the mask to her face while holding her standard issue ExePad tablet in
the other hand. The O had a sweet aftertaste. They added something to it, some
kind of anesthetic. That was the rumor anyways. And on some days there was a
caffeinated mix that heightened the fervor of students about to embark on a
school-wide mission, one of the collaborative, experiential pieces. The last
one, to Haiti, led by Mrs. Wilson, the head of the PTA, had been a disaster.
Seven students had caught new forms of the pulmonary virus that had decimated
the Caribbean and South America and had needed long stays at the
BethIsrael-XenKai Hospital in Matamoros.
“So Corrag. Do you
have anything to say?” asked Gurgie
“Yes, I saw your
visual. And yes, Of course I’ll go with you to the Spring Fest. What did you
think?”
“Well, you have been
acting very strangely lately,” said Mathew, eyeballing her with mock augmented
focus.
“I’ve had a lot on my
mind. I haven’t finished my application essay.”
“Why not?” asked
Gurgie. “You can’t be thinking about transferring to the Vocag?”
“I am.”
“Jesus, Corrag. You
need to come with us tonight.”
“Okay. I said I
would. But more importantly: How do we dress? We’re a team, right? Forget the
Vences. Everybody’s going to do that. I have an idea we go as Daisy and Tom and
Gatsby. I’ll be Gatsby. I have the perfect idea for a pants suit that my mother
used to wear. It’s in a box in the attic.”
“But I thought we had
discussed going as Joseph in The Assistant,” said Gurgie.
“No, I was going to
be Tobler the Inventor,” said Mathew.
“Oh, that’s right,”
said Gurgie, distracted by the sudden thinning of students as the next class
began. They walked together towards the cafe. Corrag wondered at how easily
Gurgie gave up on the Vences. The changes they all went through were happening
way too fast and Miss Schilling was having way too big an impact on their
social lives. Outside, a flock of small birds flew in a cloud by the energy
panels, distorting and magnifying so as to seem a shade, like a hand drawing
down upon the three of them as they walked along.
“The thing is,” said
Corrag, thinking aloud. “I like Daisy and Tom and Jay Gatz, whereas I don’t
like Joseph. He’s too pleasant ... and passive.”
“Exactly. Just like
Gatsby. Only the mask never slips,” said Gurgie.
“Well, I’m not
feeling very Chinese. But I am feeling destructive,” said Corrag with a cackle,
turning and leering at Mathew and Gurgie.
“Okay. Springfest is
our last fling at childish role-play. So you want to celebrate that bourgeois
trope of creative destruction. Be our guest,” said Mathew.
“I just want to have
fun,” said Corrag coldly. “Mathew.”
“Oh, God. Fun. Right,
I forgot how important that was to you,”
Corrag’s brows
wrinkled. Mathew was upsetting her.
“Doesn’t mean we all
feel the same way.” said Mathew
“You’ll feel just
like Miss Schilling wants you to feel, which is to say not feel anything at
all. Isn’t that the preconditioning? Too numb to think for ourselves so we take
on the augmented way and don’t have ourselves to answer to any more. How convenient.”
Mathew and Gurgie
looked at each other, letting their confusion about Corrag’s defiance of the
Democravian ethic of obedience just show in the glance held between them.
“Corrag. Okay. We’ll
go as Daisy and Tom and you can be Gatsby. But we’ll be Daisy and Tom as
Walser’s Chinese, as the assistants, and Gatsby will be the Inventor. We’ll
turn the two books around.”
“That’s the Gurgie I
love the best." Corrag threw her arms around Gurgie and spun in the
hall. A teacher, Mr. Aarnits, glared at
them through the open doorway of his classroom, and the emosensor directly
overhead glowed a warning green.
The crowd outside the
Taylor Jabones Civic Center seemed to undulate and throb as the Lyons family
van pulled up to the curb. Mostly dressed in velvets and vintage chambrays and
shades of purple and green, the colors of the Edmundstown Wildcats, purple for
the Upper deck and green for the Lower deck, the students were an
unrecognizable and restless mob in the customary spirit of the Spring Fest.
Corrag had mixed feelings about the night. She mainly wanted to dance and
forget about the issues confronting her at that moment.
“Good night,” she
said to nobody in particular as she stepped away from the open door of the van.
“What time do you
expect to be picked up,” said the driverbot, speaking from a juncture of the
neckpiece and the swivel-cam head. It was Alana’s voice.
“One thirty, please,”
said Corrag.
“Not acceptable.
Twenty-two thirty at the latest. We will be at the loading station then. Please
be there as well. Mind your manners.”
Mind your manners.
That was just like Alana, to remind her of the proper way to behave at a Spring
Fest. As if she had not been a party-girl herself in her youth, one of the late
2020s leading Unoits who had marched on Federation Councils demanding an end to
suppression of the Vallegos and increasing availability of mezzopeptide and
corrections to the disenfranchised dwellers of New Canaan, as Democravia had
then called itself. Corrag shuddered at the image in her mind of her mother as
a young woman just a little beyond her own age.
As she made her way
through the sea of bedecked and masked youth of Edmundstown, Corrag kept
looking out for the familiar sight of her two closest friends. She had on a
mobster fedora over her mass of long curls and a bone white Venetian bauta
mask, tight cut Wall Street pants with black neoprene Night Wolf galoshes. A
low cut, long, red vintage Hollywood silk coat and in her hands a digital
wand-clock with wings finished off the outfit. Somebody jumped into her path
with a black Zorro mask and a Spritz gun.
“Who are you?” it asked.
“No. Who are you?”
asked Corrag.
“Your best friend.”
There were hoots of laughter as the crowd of booters egged him on. Corrag
pushed by the group and they sprayed their Spritz guns into the air, letting
off the rainbow hues of the plasmic concoction. This caused an outbreak of
similar Spritz fire around the pedestrian square in front of the Civic Center.
Then the real fireworks began from the roof of the Center, and the crowd went
berserk with cheering and shouting. Corrag stopped in her frenetic rush to the
entrance steps and watched the waves of exploding color fanning out over her
and descending on the crowd from the black night sky. The explosions and the
crowd’s reactive shouting merged into a dull throbbing at the back of her mind.
Corrag had a flash image of the fireworks she’d seen in the desert at her
grandfather Al’s ranch in Sonora. The old man had never been a hand at the
consensus and thus remained outside the Democravian orbit until he died. But at
his funeral he had been made an honorary recipient of the Arts Benefit Lifetime
Award and his books uploaded into the official curriculum of the Augmentation
Board, the 14 members from around the world, mostly Republican Homeland and
Democravian, who controlled the IPP keys, the core of the Interneural Web, the
old INW along whose frequencies ran the entire collective virtual sphere.
Corrag was about to
look at her emosponder when she felt a tap on the shoulder and turned around to
see two characters from some macabre production of bourgeois musical theater
complete with wigs and vintage paper Chinese umbrellas.
“Where did you get
the umbrellas? I love them.”
“You haven’t said
anything about the matching boots.” said Gurgie. She pushed out her foot and
Mathew rolled his eyes.
“Lizard skin. There
was a Yaqui Indian in the family service who made them for my brother and I,”
said Mathew, his V mask with the smirk in the dim light of the fireworks
somehow perfectly fit him.
“Oh, you guys are
absolutely the best. Shall we go in? These Spritz guns are driving me nuts.”
“Let’s do it,” said
Gurgie.
Inside, the event
organizers had pumped up the O to maximum levels and the band onstage was
putting out a synthesized auralscape that was also simultaneously being relayed
along a local intranet. Dancers were plugged into wireless earclips and
gyrating along to the pulsating power chord driven harmonics. Refreshments in
the form of fermented Maxergy drinks were being dispensed by generic bots laid
on by the Western council, and info-point stands along the perimeter of the
hall manned by Democravian council workers were representing the various work
sectors, including a recruiting officer of the Democravian Military Defense
Wing, a cubicle of mimics and aerobesthetes from the ArtSmile Corps, the VocAg
table dispensing samples of hormone replacement snacks from local Valley
growers, and of course the Daughters of Harmonious Memory, a social
organization that looked after orphans and whose Members had ancestors who had
fought in the New Canaanite wars, were flashing images of vintage industries
such as the Hollywood cinema, the primitive visualscapes that had once so
entranced the old-time ones.
Gurgie, Mathew and
Corrag stepped along, driven by the sweep of the crowd into the middle of the
dance floor where the lights from the emosensors were pulsating the fastest.
The band began playing “Heaven’s Gate”, a classic Spring Fest staple. Dancers
jumped together, craning their heads back and pumping both fists in the air to
the bass line rocking the hall. They came closer together and then fell back
like a human wave, the youth of the Valley celebrating the apogee of the year.
The rockers with the Spritz guns, along with the girls, many of them costumed
as simple sex workers or in jury-rigged uniforms with the insignia and the
classic meme of the HumInt Corps, Ridet
Geritur, linked arms on the outside of the dancers and began to circle. And
then the choreographed symbolic imagery was lost, subsumed as the dancers
spilled out beyond the circumference of the steppers.
When the song ended,
Corrag looked around, slowly coming back to her senses. She unsnapped her
earclip and felt her way towards the outside of the dancing mob with her hand.
The next song increased the intensity, and the circle of Lower Deck steppers
renewed their boundary walk. Corrag waited for the right moment, a lull in the
energy pattern, and broke out through the human line. She walked over to the
refreshment valve and slipped on an O mask. Her head cleared and she felt for
an instant a sense of euphoria, somehow almost organic, as if she were suddenly
light years away, on a distant moon of her own, with no impinging concerns
about the future and what it held weighing her down. She wished she could hold
on to the moment, even better, share it with someone.
All the Zolafs and
Buzzyears and the Hillaries and Eunique Biebers, they were all kids she would
have known from Lightning Leagues or fencing classes or the myriad theatrical productions
she’d been in through the grade and middle schools. Corrag found it fascinating
that in this sea of familiar yet bizarre anonymity she was free, free in a way
that carried an exotic charge of exhilaration. She had overheard parental
stories about the dangers of Spring Fest, about kids not being able to
distinguish reality from fantasy and jumping from the upper balconies awash in
feelings of euphoria and invincibility. This was their first taste of the
augmented way, after all, of the freedom that came with giving up their
childish identities. But Corrag wondered about herself. Would she be truly able
to merge with the path and put the Democravian nation’s well being before her
own desires? Sometimes she thought she was too enamored of her own thought
processes, of the way her mind wanted to dig and scratch its way out of the
traps the adult world set. She was a feral creature, a throwback to a more
primitive way of life. It didn’t seem to be something she’d inherited from
Alana and Ricky, the two of them epitomes in her mind of the deep-rooted and
loyal communitarian ideals that ran in her family. Where did she get it, this
unhappiness, this habit of solitary thought she’d secretly cultivated in the
midst of privilege?
A boy in a uniform,
tall, with a purposeless gait, approached from out of no particular direction,
from the darkness. His mask was the same as Corrag’s, just a little older, not
as shiny in the pulsating flashes of neon, and he stopped in front of her.
Corrag looked carefully, noting the moment of recognition with some
metacognitive distance. Nevertheless, her heart skipped a few beats and her
mind raced. She didn’t expect this. It wasn’t fair of him to just show up.
Without turning, Ben Calder addressed her, staring out at the dance floor.
”I thought I might
see you, Corrag.”
“You don’t mind
rocking the boat. Did you miss me?”
“I don’t know what
you mean. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“You never called.
Why is that? Were you trying to forget? And now you’re here because you
couldn’t? You never even called. I mean you have an emosponder, right? They
couldn’t have taken that away. Why didn’t you ever call? I thought you were
possibly dead.”
“Sometimes I wanted
to be dead. But here I am. And you? I hear you’re entering your application for
fine-tuning.”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet.”
She had a sudden need
to see his face.
“Come with me. We’ll
check out the balconies,” she said.
“That’s not allowed.”
“Just come. We’ll
figure it out.”
“Do you know the
way?”
“I’ll find it.”
Corrag led him past
the stands to the far end of the hall. Gurgie and Mathew were dancing and
looked over briefly in her direction. She pretended not to notice. She grabbed
a Maxergy freshener shot and Ben followed suit and they walked together out
past the dancers and the presenters from the ArtSmile Corps lounging and
stretching in a circle by an unused energy panel exit. Corrag waited until the
music reached a moment of high intensity, and then reached swiftly with her
time wand and tripped the converter switch on the box like she’d observed Mr.
Breen do. This turned the receptor back
to the recently phased out former digital signal. The panel bars began to throb
in a slow rhythm in line with the less powerful digital pulse. Then she looked
at Ben and nodded and he slipped through the bars of the panel. She waited a
few seconds, held her breath, and with a sudden movement jumped between the
bars to the other side. She felt the hairs on her head and neck rise with the
kinetic energy, but not enough to set off any alarms.
The music and hubbub from
the center sounded distant. The walls of the hall were dusty and the cement
left unpainted with splotches of water staining down from the ceiling. Ben was
looking into the dim distance in some inert way. Corrag reached up and touched
his cheek and he recoiled.
“Can you just take it
off?”
“I ... you ,” Ben
spluttered. “You don’t have the right, Corrag.”
He reached up and
pulled off the mask. His face looked old, lined, tired. His eyes were dark, and
he looked away when she stared. She tried hard to remember the way he had used
to look, the memory she had of him the day he’d explained to her that he could
wait with his avatar at a crossroad and, his belief was so strong that if he
concentrated he could sense the virtual enemy before it appeared. He had been
so alive, so focused, so quick to see a way. Underneath the mask of this face
there was that other face, she was sure.
“Where have you been,
Ben?
“In the south
quadrant with the Corps.”
“What do you want to
do now?
“Corrag, why do you
think you can ask me that?”
“You’re Ben. My
friend.”
“No. I’m Private
Calder of the 175th Air Infantry Battalion, Mayagua Sector Six.”
“So, that doesn’t
mean anything to me. You’re Ben. Why did you come back?”
“I don’t know.” He
walked away, down the hall. Corrag followed. She wanted to touch him, to turn
him around. Where was he going? It scared her to see him this way. She didn’t
want to lose him. He was the last link to her childhood, to the hopes, unformed
and unspoken as they had been, of a happiness of her own. At the end of the
hall, where it emptied into a larger stairwell, he stopped and craned his head
around, looking up into the dark of the stairwell.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
“No, Ben. I mean
about us.”
“About us?” Ben took
his foot off the step and turned towards her. He shifted his weight uneasily
and looked into her face intently.
“There is no us. We
don’t exist.”
“What about trusting
your instincts, Ben? What about finding the way?” Corrag’s voice cracked with
emotion. She heard the echo of it down the hall and had the sensation of
falling, as if she’d been dropped into some time warp.
“Shut up, Corrag.
That’s just stupid.”
“Stupid? Ben, that’s
what we lived for. Don’t you remember? You taught me everything I knew. You
were the best gamer ever before you dropped it. Left it all behind. Said you’d
be back and we’d figure it out. I believed you, Ben. We can find a way to be happy. In a new way.
Our own way. What about all that? Are you going to say you don’t remember?
Private Calder or whatever you are?”
Ben turned around and
walked back towards her.
“You’ve never been on
patrol in the Nicanor. You’ve never done three weeks on the hunt. You don’t
know what it’s like to be holding a Nicanor prisoner and looking into eyes that
just mirror back the hatred. There is no you and me. Just the next day. And the
next camp. And the next. You disappears. Me is just a hole to put food into.
The Nicanor kills you.”
“Don’t go back. Stay
with me. We’ll join the open border, volunteer to clean and cook.”
“No, Corrag. Finish
your fine-tuning. Be what you need to be.”
“And smile all the
while?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Ben? Why?”
“Because otherwise it
hurts too much. We never knew pain, Corrag.”
Ben took her hands in
his.
“I know it now.”
“There is no you.
There is no me. Listen to me.”
“No. I won’t. I
listened to you before and you lied,” Corrag pulled her hands away. She wanted
to run back to the dance floor. Forget she’d ever seen him or ever wished to
see him again.
“What’s a lie?"
asked Ben, his voice small, tinny, just a remnant of the fire and humor that
had once filled him.
“What have they done
to you Ben? It’s like you’ve been augmented, only worse.”
Ben stared at her,
unable to say a thing.
“What is it?”
Instead of answering,
he turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, his legs
churning and arms flailing. He’d disappeared from sight in a matter of seconds,
just the sound of the boot strikes on the concrete echoing more and more
distantly as he ascended. Corrag followed. She climbed at a slower pace, hands
on the cold metal rail, listening for the sound of Ben up ahead. But there was
just silence. When she reached the top flight, there was a metal door propped
open.
Outside the cold
night air rushed by in a breeze from the north. The San Fermin Mountains ranged
in a dark silhouette. Ben was standing on the edge of the roof overlooking the
Convention Center plaza. The red lights of Federation weather and surveillance
drones filled the night sky. Corrag came up next to Ben and looked out over the
city.
“That’s where we grew
up, Ben. We existed in it. That was real. You and me we were real, right?”
“Yes.”
"But you think I
should fine tune?”
“I do.”
"But look out
there. We can discover it for ourselves. We can be free.”
"There’s no such
thing. All the desires will be reprogrammed and rebooted to the higher order.”
“Well, then why try?”
“Because otherwise we
die.”
"But you’re
going to die, Ben."
"Not if I kill
first. In three months, with confirmed kills in the seven hundred or higher
range, I can be a candidate for Officer Training School.”
“Is that what you
want?”
"What I want.
It’s what is, Corrag. That’s all. There is no other way. Some day we can live
in the heavens on the planets of Betelgeuse or Andromeda. Our offspring will
rule the galaxies, fill the universe with their thought forms and productions.
Don’t you want that?”
“That’s not alive
with me. I want to live here and now. With you. Have children, not offspring.
Raise them to run and breathe and drink and dream in the mountains and valleys
of Earth. That’s why I knew you’d come back. I knew you would, just not
tonight. I expected you in the summer. That’s why I was holding out on sending
off the fine-tuning application. I wanted to be here when you got back.”
“There’s a break in
the fighting now,” said Ben distantly. “The Naguani have retreated. It’s
strange. I expect they’re gathering strength for a major counteroffensive.
We’ve tried to burn them out. Dry up the water cycle with localized cloud
inhibition and carpet napalm bomb the basin. But they keep coming. They never
stop. No matter how many you kill there’s always more of them. Especially at
night. They can shape shift and come at you. The jaguars can get by the lasers.
In your sleep. That’s the worst sound.
“What is?”
“The guys in their
bunks being mauled, Corrag. All the guys in the Corp, we just want to survive
long enough to get the kill range target and get out. It’s as if the war is
bigger than we are.”
“What about the
girls?”
“Well, it’s Democravia,
right? The girls in the Corps can work their way up to augmentation with a kill
rate, too. ”
“That’s sick.”
“Yes, it is kind of.”
“Kind of, Ben?”
She couldn't see his
face in the dark, but wanted to. At that instant she sensed he needed her. The distance
between them was threatening to blow up and obliterate whatever they had left
between them, any memory of a friendship, any hope Corrag had for the future.
So she took his hand and pulled him away from the edge of the roof.
"Let’s go. I
know where we can go.”
“Where, Corrag?”
“Anywhere, I don’t
really know where. It doesn’t matter where.”
“Then, let’s go.”
They went down and
out through the dance hall with their masks on again. Corrag tapped the
emosponder on her left wrist and picked up Gurgie’s avatar on the display.
“I’m going out.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. I’m with
Ben.”
“Please be careful,
Corrag. Think about your steps before you take any. Be sure.”
“If I did that. I’d
never get anywhere, Gurgie. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”
Corrag tapped three
times on the emosponder, putting it to sleep. Together, she and Ben walked
briskly, wordlessly, until they found a zipbike out on the street about five
blocks from the Civic Center. After punching in the emergency code for civilian
first responders on the meter, Ben mounted it and motioned for her to jump on
the back. Corrag smiled. Now they were getting somewhere.
“How long do we have?
“Three hours
showing.”
“That should get us
to Ysidro.”
“Do you remember how
to get there?”
“I think so. Go out
north on the old causeway.”
Ben twisted the
throttle and the zipbike responded instantly, silently accelerating to eighty
miles an hour on the quiet streets. Ben braked on the corners and leaned as if
he’d just gotten off the speed circuit training ground. Under the Spring Fest
curfew, he didn’t have to worry about other traffic, and by keeping his
headlights off, he avoided alerting any police radars of their highly illicit
escapade.
Ysidro had been Ricky
and Alana's favorite camping ground in her childhood. They’d often pitched a
tent in the shadow of the canyon land. She felt herself feeling a way back
towards those days, the sense of security, satisfaction and rightness of those
summers, drinking in the sun on the slippery stones of the riverbed. In her mind
the golden glow of the memory was a currency worth guarding. In those years,
the wars of the New Canaanite alliance against the secessionist states had
still been fresh in Ricky and Alana’s memory, and Ricky had always kept a
firearm loaded inside the tent in case of surviving secessionist marauders, but
they never saw any. Alana had always played up the possibility to keep Corrag
close by, warning her to not go too far along the riverbed by herself. But one
of them had always been there with their old sheepdog Haj, hovering, as she had
built her fantasy castles with river stones worn soft in the wettish mud still
left in early June from the melted snowpack, an afterglow of the past. She
imagined that somehow Ben sensed her giving directions by shifting her weight
on the back of the zipbike, and they did end up somewhere very close to Ysidro,
on an old logging road. Ben pulled up on the shoulder and parked. They got off
and removed their helmets. Around the corner of the mountain there was just a
hint of the dawn to come. In a few hours the alarms would be going off and the
search drones would be activated. She couldn’t see his face very clearly.
“What are you
thinking?” Corrag asked.
“I’m thinking you’re
brave to be out here with someone you hardly know. What would your father and
mother think?”
“They already think
I’m a lost cause. It doesn’t matter to me. Besides, what do you mean hardly
know?”
“Do you think you
know me, Corrag?”
“Of course. You
haven’t changed for me. I know you’ve been through hell, Ben. Don’t get me
wrong.”
“Then help me out
here. Shine your light for me.”
Corrag knelt beside
him with her open emosponder glowing. Ben used his utility tool to unclip the
casing on the zipbike’s fuse and carefully pull two hair-thin filaments that
powered the geopositioning transponder. Then he turned the bike on again and
rolled it over to a stand of aspen and behind some rocks where it couldn’t be
seen from the road.
They hiked up a trail
that paralleled the creek in the canyon below and then crossed an old footbridge.
The sign for the trailhead was lying on the ground, rusted and overgrown with
weeds. Ben said he knew an old hunting cabin that had been used by his uncles
before the war. Somewhat hesitantly at first, Corrag agreed on it as a
destination. She really wanted to stay on the bridge and watch the water
rushing underneath their feet, the way it sparkled and crystallized into the
colors of the rainbow. The sun had come out and warmed up the trail. Flies
buzzed around the body of a dead bird. They marched ahead, Ben pushing the
pace, perhaps concerned about getting far enough up the trail to evade the
authorities.
“Gurgie will tell
them I’m with you. Mom and Dad won’t mind,” she said, thinking out loud.
“Colonel Bohjalian
won’t be so easy-going. I’m supposed to be back on base as of twenty three
hundred.”
“What will they do?”
“I’ll be assigned to
care-taker duty for a month once we deploy back to the Basin.”
“Is that the worst
they can do?”
“The worst is the CDC
labor camp in the Ozarks for deserters. I don’t think they’ll send me there for
going AWOL with my girlfriend.”
Corrag liked the
sound of being called Ben’s girlfriend. She thought of her father’s
exhortations against girls who relied on their boyfriends for their own sense
of well being and acceptance. He wanted her to be more independent and
self-reliant, but it was another area where she differed with his thoughts for
her. Corrag liked the idea of being important in a boy’s life, of being
necessary to someone and didn’t think it made her any less of a human being to
enjoy or desire it. Alana didn’t like Ben for other reasons. She thought he was
too smart to be completely trustworthy. People like Ben, she would say, often
needed re-education components before being assigned to an augmentation track.
This escapade would be further proof of the rightness of her judgment. But
Corrag didn’t want them, her parents, the school, the Council, to blame Ben for
leading her astray. She wanted to be the author of her own demise, if there was
going to be such a thing. Let it be by her own hand at least. But for Ben, let
it be, as he said, a mild reprimand, whatever caretaker duty was. It didn’t
sound so harsh. She didn’t want him suffering on her behalf.
After about a mile,
the trail took a turn up a steep, rocky face. There was a cabin just at the top
of a ridge, sheltered from the prevailing wind by the mountain behind it. The
siding was faded, and gaps showed between the boards of the roof and the scraps
of old tarpaper that had once protected the wood from the elements. When they
looked back, Corrag and Ben could see the desert with its fingers of green.
There was Edmundstown on the eastern edge and Mono Lake far in the distance -
just a dot of iridescence in the foothills. And far off behind those hills was
the ocean. The momentary sense of peace was broken by the barks of a dog and
the sound of a door clapping shut. They turned round. An old man, faded into
the dirt, had appeared beside the shack. He neither waved nor moved. Nor did
his attitude suggest fear. The dog barked again and the old man leaned down and
scratched its ears.
“Hi there,” shouted
Ben, but the old man made no sign of hearing.
“Let me handle this,”
said Corrag, putting her hand on Ben’s arm. “We don’t want to scare him.” She
was thinking of Ben in his uniform, and there was something frail and covert
about the old man’s quietness. She walked over and the dog growled as she
approached.
“Nice dog,” she said
as she got close to the old man.
He looked up and
squinted. The dog was a poodle mix, white, with blue husky eyes, an old mutt.
The old man straightened. The top of his head was at a height with her
shoulders, and his hair, greasy and long, hid his face. He wiped his hair away
with one hand and looked at her with grey, lidded eyes.
“I’ve been waiting a
long time for you,” he said.
“Who are you?” she
asked with exaggerated wonderment, placating his delusions.
“Abel. Abel Marin.
You and your friend are just fine. What are your names?”
“Corrag and Ben.
What’s your dog’s name?”
“Sandy.”
“Perfect. Hi Sandy.”
She petted the dog and the old man began to cry. She noticed he wiped his tears
away and let the hair fall in front of his eyes again. Ben came over.
"Ben, this is
Abel and Sandy. Why are you crying Abel? There’s no need for that,” said Corrag,
horrified that he might think they meant to harm him.
“Crying is good,”
said Abel. “This is how a man keeps a strong heart. I’ve been waiting a long
time. I thought the world was done with me. And now you are here at last.”
Ben looked at her.
She gave him a stern look back and shook her head.
“You’ve come back at
last,” continued Abel. “Let me give you something.”
“No, you don’t have
to give us anything,” said Corrag.
“Water would be
nice,” said Ben.
Sandy began to bark
as the old man moved back to the shack.
“Come in,” he said,
holding the door open. The rusty springs squeaked as it shut behind them.
“This used to be my
uncles’. My dad talked to me about the hunting cabin on Mt. Gabriel.” said Ben.
“He and his two older brothers that used to come up here hunting.”
“The old boys knew
how to live. They’ve died out now. Nothing left. We need to mourn for the earth
and bring back the old ways again.”
It was dark once the door closed.
There were no windows. Their eyes adjusted and Abel motioned for them to sit.
He brought them two jars of water he poured from a metal bucket. The jars were
old glass mason jars. They sat in the folding chairs by the sink. Their eyes
adjusted to the lack of light, just cracks in the siding allowing some light
inside, enough to see. There was a rough plank workbench against the wall piled
high with animal skins and bones and dried plants, with tiny flowers and
corrugated strange leaves in bunches. Corrag drank the water. She wondered who
Abel thought they were. He was a crazy old survivor, one of the holdouts from
the war of secession that the council had never bothered to track down because
he had never appeared on anybody’s lists. The fact that he could still be up
here on his own was itself an indictment of their claims of control.
“This water is strange. It has a
taste of something,” said Ben.
“Spring-fed mountain water. I’ll
show you where I get it,” said Abel. “When I first come up here there was no
water. I had to find it. I was just a little tyke. But I hardly remember that.
Anyway it’s not important. You need to know, but not about me. I’m just the
messenger. It’s the earth that speaks.”
Ben looked at her in
the semi-darkness. He thought Abel was a crazy old coot. But Corrag wanted to
keep listening to him. There was something soothing and calm about the shack
and his voice. Sandy poked her hand with his muzzle and she petted him.
“What does it say,
Abel?” she asked absentmindedly
“Hmm? I don’t know.
Listen you two is hungry. I forgot I need to feed you. Let me give you some
food.”
He disappeared into
the darkness between the workbench and the far wall. Ben and Corrag looked at
each other, shifting the folding chairs around to see each other easier. Ben
smiled, as if all of this was part of some plan he had foreseen and devised.
Corrag had questions about Abel she needed answered. Wouldn’t he need
inoculations against dengue and the killer giardia that had wiped out the
population of the mountain states? How had he avoided the orbiting aerial
surveillance satellites and their micro-infrared cameras that spotted the heat
signals of life processes from space? Why was he allowed to survive here on his
own? She wanted to whisper to Ben, but she stilled her curiosity. It was all
right to not know all the answers. Clarity was over-rated.
When he returned, he
brought with him a bowl with dried roots. He peeled them and then scraped with
the knife into a mound of flakes and then produced part of a leg bone of some
animal from which he cut sinews of dried meat and placed it all back in the
bowl at their feet on the ground. Ben got out of his chair and sat cross-legged
on the ground. Corrag followed suit. The meat was tough and hard to chew, but
the vegetable matter with some moisture left in it gave it a palatable taste.
They were both hungrier than they realized after the hike. It was about
mid-morning but almost pitch black except for the light coming in the open
door.
“My Mama and Papa
came up here from Sonora with a bunch of folks. They were mostly Pima but they
had some Apache. They were not people who farmed or went looking for that kind
of work. They were looking for the mountains because they knew the end was
coming and the Spanish missions had told them to be on the lookout for signs of
the big war. They refused to fight for General Walker when he tried to put down
the carpinteros who wanted their freedom so a lot of them were put in jail and
then the rest took off in a big convoy for the north because that way was
cooler weather and in those days there was tremendous heat, you two probably
are too young to remember. For a while we were in Arizona. That’s where I
learned my English in a little school there that was broken up by secessionists
who wanted to kill my mother because she was the leader of this group of women,
all kinds, whites, blacks, and teaching them the ways of the medicinals. You’re
eating some there, that’s lechuguilla root which is good for your organs. The
secessionists didn’t want us helping others to live free and together in
nature. They wanted it all under their control in the name of the markets. You
remember that part. The markets were going to be the answer to everything. Just
put us all on the shelves of the market, you know. So anyway we came up here I
was about five I guess by then and the deer were the first to notice and this
was after the big battles in the Mississippi where they loosed the crazy winds
and tornadoes that knocked us back and that got out of control and then there
was sickness on the land for many years, but the deer helped us survive long
enough to get our bearings and we lived up here pretty much on our own and once
in awhile we went down to the highway and just stayed there watching the
traffic, waiting for our cousins on a certain date, the anniversary of the lady
of the rosary which is in October I believe. I’ve almost lost track of time.
What year are we in? It doesn’t matter. Time is ending anyway. The planets will
sink back into the fire of the suns and we’ll soon see if there is more than
one Universe. I believe there is because the deer tend to believe that this is
not all there is. That’s why they don’t mind dying and giving up their hearts
for us. That is the sign, you see. That is the final sign of the grandmothers
that they talked about and my mama and papa talked about and even you talked
about the first time you came up here. Do you remember? You always said you
would come back and now you have.”
While he talked Ben
and Corrag ate. Soon it felt like they'd always been there and it was the most
natural thing in the world to listen to Abel's voice telling his stories that
opened up into a world they had never known, an alternative world, illicit in
its meanings and implications, just like the escape they had embarked on
together. Ben's initial anxiety went away and Corrag wondered whether there was
something in the food, the venison and lechuguilla root that was altering their
perceptions. Later, when the sun had risen halfway up the sky judging from the
light coming in the door, she followed Sandy outside and saw Abel working in
the ditch that ran along the back of the shack between it and the trail that
she could see continuing up to the face of the mountain. She wandered over and
saw Abel face down in a hollow through which she could see water running. He
was mumbling words in a language she thought might be the Pima he had
mentioned. Then a black bird flew overhead, she thought it was a crow, and
Sandy barked at it. Abel got to his knees and turned to see her standing behind
him.
"Hi there,
Corrag. I was just thanking the water for bringing you here. You and Ben. After
all these years you've returned. And the water alway promised. So I’m giving
her thanks. You know you can bring the water wherever you go if you remember
how. I'll show you later again. I'll show you and Ben."
"I've never been
here before as far as I know," said Corrag.
"Well, there's
stuff you're not aware of. Stuff about you you don't know because you've buried
it. But that's okay. It's all part of the plan, Corrag."
"Plan? We don't
believe in that. There's a process of space and time unfolding and we humans
need to stay ahead of it. We can do that with our scientists who see and
measure and analyze. Before the planet dies. What kind of God lets his planet
die?"
"The planet
dies? The planet's just getting started, Corrag. I'll show you. There's no need
to look for others."
"Are you saying
our scientists are wrong?"
"Not wrong.
Sometimes they're looking at the world through their lenses and what have you
and a little ant will come up from behind and bite them on the ass. That's God
playing with them because he has a sense of humor. He thinks they're funny.
That's all. Not wrong. It's good what they do. It's good to use what He gave
us, and that's our eyes. Our eyes and ears and put it all together like, so it makes
sense. But see what I mean? There's a lot of stuff we know that the scientists
haven't figured out. Which is more important. Listen to the Universe with an
open heart and know that anybody can do that but the scientists don't listen to
the old time ones. They make war on us instead which is a big mistake. You know
what I’m saying, Corrag.
"I never knew my
grandparents."
"Listen to the
grandparents. And the scientists, Corrag. They’re both right."
Abel laughed and
jumped up from the ditch so that he appeared beside her. His age was impossible
to gauge. He looked ancient sometimes, with his wrinkled brown skin and lidded
eyes. But other times he seemed barely in his twenties with his strong sure
movements and rapidly shifting facial expressions. Corrag thought he was like
water himself, radiant, sparkling, and larger then he appeared, as if he
contained within himself reserves of strength and wisdom.
They walked with Abel
and Sandy up the mountain along a ravine. Ben and Corrag trailed behind, and
Ben stopped to tie his shoes and look out over the valley from the ledges. They
kept going higher up, scrambling over the boulders, barely keeping Abel and
Sandy in sight up ahead. Corrag was trying to explain how she felt about Abel,
as if she had known him for a long time. She had never met anybody so strange,
and yet she had also never felt as comfortable with somebody in the first
moments after meeting. It was as if he had some strange knowledge about her
that was the missing piece of a puzzle she had been trying to reconstruct
without knowing it all her life. The school, her parents, had all contributed
valuable pieces, but had also missed the target for her.
Ben thought she
should be more wary of her enthusiasm.
"Look, there's
no way he could direct the water the way you think, with the powers of his
mind," said Ben making vibrating gestures with his hands like some old
vaudeville wizard from the movies.
Corrag couldn't think
of an immediate answer. She was hurt that Ben couldn't see what she saw in Abel
and could so easily dismiss him like some unimportant aspect of the landscape.
He was focused on seeking advantage in a way that bothered her. As if the
default setting in him was the gamer that was always looking ahead to the next
junction, always seeing any opportunity to gain strength or tools for the next
confrontation with the inevitably lurking enemies. But that wasn't the way the
world worked at a root level. Not that she knew, of course. Maybe he was right
and Abel was crazy, delusional, and just lucky to have found a little pocket
out of the sight of the Democravian Federation and its surveillance machinery.
The trail was
invisible except for a slight wear in the line of scrub. They were coming down
the backside into a valley of young pines growing out of scrub grass. Abel
detoured around the valley and kept along the ridges, hopping from rock to rock
like a mountain goat. It was tough to keep up and even Ben was getting winded.
At the end of the valley it became clear why he had detoured. There was a man-made
concrete wall, an old dam from one ridge to the next. The valley had once been
a lake.
"You know what
this was?" asked Ben.
"What?"
"Lake San
Pedro."
"Yeah. It's
pretty dry now."
"That's why they
built the desalination plant before we were born. I remember my Dad talking
about it. He said it gave the Federation more control over the water supply
then the old system which was rigged for the big farmers and fat cats."
Abel waited on a flat
rock with Sandy. Corrag and Ben took their time climbing down to him.
" ...wanted to
show you the old world that's disappearing. You bringing the new way. The water
flows strong. That's why you need to listen to your tears. It's the water
calling from inside. Don't bottle it. Here look at this."
The flat rock was actually
the top of the dam wall. Abel walked them out along it and they could look over
and see to the north beyond through the mountains what had once been the old
Inland Empire, the agricultural heartland of the United States until the years
of drought and secession wars had put an end to the decrepit model of so-called
representative government of the people by the corporate interests.
"This was lake
San Pedro," said Ben.
"That's what
your people called it. It never had a name," said Abel.
Out in the middle,
they stopped and sat on the edge. Abel handed out some food from a satchel bag
over his shoulder. It was a dried, almost unpalatable sort of plant matter. He
even gave some to Sandy, who wolfed it down whole.
"I know it’s
hard. Just eat it. You won't be hungry and it will help you see what is really
here." Abel didn't say another word. Hours passed and the sun went behind
the western mountain. Corrag fell asleep. In the dim light of the late
afternoon, Ben asked Corrag to come with him. He had climbed down the face of
the dam and come back up. She got to her feet and followed. It wasn't hard to
get down the wall, since there were built in handholds and steps. Then at the
bottom she could see what he had seen, the crack and the water flowing through,
not a torrent, just a trickle.
"He's right. The
water is winning," said Ben.
"Do you think
it's safe?"
"The dam? It
won't go immediately. But eventually it will crumble."
"What now? What
about us?"
"What do you
mean?"
"Well, we have a
choice. He’s given us a clear choice. Follow the dam or the water. Which is
it?"
"Corrag, I don't
know what it is Abel gave us to eat, but I don't really see we have a choice.
We can't stay here. We have to go back up and get home and carry on."
"Right now, Ben.
What's your choice?"
"You're scaring
me, Corrag. Don't talk like that."
She wanted him to hug
her and kiss her, to be carried away with their feelings for each other. That
would have been the right choice. Instead she could see he was as frightened
and confused as she was when faced with the wall of the world and its seemingly
inescapable logic. They sat together and waited for the night. Ben leaned over
and put his arm around her and hugged her closer. The dam wall grew dim and the
black bird swooped down from it overhead.
"Is that the
crow?" asked Corrag.
Ben didn't answer. He
was asleep.
Instead of the
concrete wall, there was a waterfall, with an iridescent cascade of water
broken up in a moonlit glow. Deer stood along the banks of the river and tall
pines had grown up in the surrounding fields. She heard Abel call for Sandy.
She heard her father call her name. Where were they?
"Ben. What time
is it?"
Ben woke up and
looked at his emosponder.
"Oh my God. It's
late. Let's go, Corrag." He stood and pulled her to her feet. Where were
they? Disoriented, she followed his voice as he called from above. Then she
could see the wall of the dam as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where had
the waterfall gone? It had been such a vivid presence. But now she felt a
gnawing in her gut and her legs shaking as she climbed. When she reached the
top of the wall she collapsed in a heap. Sandy barked and dug at her hair with
his paw.
"I'm okay,
Sandy. I'm okay."
Abel held her by the
chin and dribbled in water from an old tin canteen. It tasted sweet. Her eyes,
ears, even her sense of taste were playing tricks on her. Then there was a loud
noise and overhead lights blinded her. Sandy barked and Abel yelled.
"Run, Sandy. Go
boy."
The lights were
followed by cable dropping out of the hatches of the Federation Home Air UC7
reconnaissance choppers and rappelling soldiers descending to the ground in
quick succession. Corrag screamed.
It took about a
minute. They didn't say a word. They handcuffed and blindfolded the two of them
and bundled them towards a chopper whose four blades were still whirling.
Corrag cried out Ben's name. He didn't answer.
"Keep
quiet," said a soldier with his hand on her shoulder, dirt and gravel
kicked up from the downdraft of the whirling blades. Unseen hands pulled her
onboard. Then they picked up and flew off into black space. Corrag cried for
what she'd seen and for the childhood sense of possibility she'd left behind in
that mountain valley. She let the tears flow as Abel had said. She never had
the chance to talk to Ben and for years wondered if he had seen the same things
she had, the waterfall and the deer and the moonlit wonders of a reborn world.
About the author:
Anthony Caplan is an independent writer, teacher and homesteader in northern New England. He has worked at various times as a shrimp fisherman, environmental activist, journalist, taxi-driver, builder, window-washer, and telemarketer, (the last for only a month, but one week he did win a four tape set of the greatest hits of George Jones for selling the most copies of Time-Life’s The Loggers.)
Currently, Caplan is working on restoring a 150 year old farmstead where he and his family tend sheep and chickens, grow most of their own vegetables, and have started a small apple orchard from scratch.
Author's Giveaway
Currently, Caplan is working on restoring a 150 year old farmstead where he and his family tend sheep and chickens, grow most of their own vegetables, and have started a small apple orchard from scratch.
6 comments:
Yes! I love sci-fi/dystopian books! I think this one will be great.
mia2009(at)comcast(dot)net
Big shoutout to Mythical Books! Thanks for hosting me. Any dystopian fans out there on the tour, hello and happy reading. Always interested in reviewers.
#amreading and #amwriting in 2017,
Anthony
This book sounds fantastic. Very intriguing.
The cover is quite striking. Very cool.
Thank you for hosting this tour and giveaway.
I hope that Anthony had a successful tour with lots of publicity for his book.
Post a Comment