Lake Adandoyi shimmered beneath the vernal sun, licking at the banks of hardened snow, which still lingered from the harsh winter. Bridge Whitedeer stretched in her hammock and gratefully absorbed the warmth from above. She turned to her companion, perched upon her haunches in the sand nearby. “What do you think, Juola? Will it be a good year?”

“It will be what it will be, young one. Perhaps your Molly will return soon. Is that what you are thinking?”

“Always,” said Bridge. “At this moment, I suppose I’m also wondering what’s going to happen to us? And when I’ll be well again—if I’ll be.”

“There is a saying: you can try to read the smoke if you wish to chase the wind. But kindling, dear child, has yet to be gathered for tomorrow’s fire.”

Bridge smiled warmly at the old woman. It seemed strange to be referred to as a child. She was nearly forty, after all, and she felt much older.

Juola regarded her somberly. “You need not worry for Inagei. She will find her way. As for your own health, Ajaia, you must let go of the other world, or the gravity will pull you apart.”

The old woman had spoken these same words before. They were important. But how could she turn off her memories. “Why do you call her that, Juola? Why Inagei Kanega ? What does it mean to say, She Speaks the Forest?”

“She is a very special young woman, your Molly. She has a gift.”

“What do you mean? She talks to trees, or something?”

“Something. Something you will not understand until you fully arrive. Let us say she is a trail blazer.”

Another riddle. Bridge sighed and closed her eyes, turning her face to the sun. For a brief moment, she was nine years old again, stretched out on the hammock her father had strung between two knobby pine trees, and the light coming through her eyelids was a different color, hotter— the color of Earth light. She could hear the voices of her parents far away, words obscured by time and unknown light years.

She didn’t know if it was sadness she felt. If so, was it sadness for her parents, or for her lost childhood, or her fading memories? She wanted to understand. She felt that she needed to pinpoint the precise cause of her malaise, so she could come to terms with it. Juola insisted she must let go of it entirely. How was that possible?

When Bridge opened her eyes again, the old woman was gone. The sand where she had squatted was undisturbed, as though she had not been there at all. Bridge wondered if she would ever get used to the mysterious comings and goings of The People.

She closed her eyes again and allowed herself to drift into sleep.  In her dream she was Claire Deluna, the beautiful lady detective, and across the booth from her, Mickey Nines, her underworld informant, lazily stirred his coffee with a swizzle stick. Next to her sat Joe. Not Joe, the New Life avatar, but Joe, the flesh and blood man, the father of her daughter, his warm arm against her shoulder. Mickey was saying something about the world never being the same again.

—

Bridge woke clinging to the remnants of a memory or a dream, she didn’t know which. She blinked tears from her eyes and noted in passing that the sun now hung above the trees in the northwest—only a few hours before sunset. She tried again to recall the dream or the memory, but it  hovered like an elusive hummingbird, just beyond her reach.

Eventually, her thoughts returned to Molly, her wide-eyed, eager child, insatiable in her curiosity, born starving for knowledge. As hard as life had been in those early years, Molly had been cheerful and undemanding, and she had become a resourceful and self-sufficient young woman. Now she walked among strangers in a distant, dangerous New America, and although Juola assured her that Molly would find her way, Bridge couldn’t help feeling regret, some failure as a mother. Those months she had spent away from her young daughter exploring the new world ate at her conscience, undermining her self-esteem. She should have been there, supporting Molly. Jessie would chastise her for thinking this way. Many Mothers, ran the communal philosophy, yet how could she not feel responsibility and a special bond for her own flesh-and-blood?

She walked the trails of her life, as she did every day, searching for an escape from her pain. But no matter which path she took, it led back here, to this moment. There was no escaping it, no leaving the well-worn trail to go off cross-country, no ending up somewhere else in some happier place, because whenever her eyes strayed from the road ahead, they caught the shadow lurking in the forest at the far reaches of her vision. And it frightened her.

©2010–2011, Duane Poncy

Joe Larivee woke screaming in terror, sweat pouring from his body. He sat abruptly in bed, holding his head between his hands, reassuring himself—it was only a dream. The nightmares had become more frequent, and he seldom remembered anything about them afterward, just that cold, horrible fear. The terror itself he had no trouble identifying, it was the terror he felt seven years ago, the night the bomb exploded in his apartment complex, leaving Allison lifeless, and her blood splattered everywhere, on the floor and the walls and the ceiling, on his naked arms holding her as the light left her eyes, the horror of witnessing countless friends and comrades slaughtered before his eyes, the aftermath of two bloody wars. He had resigned himself to the nightmares.

Outside his window, the sun was about to rise on a clear, May morning, outlining Mt. Hood in orange-red haze. He took a shower to rid himself of perspiration and dressed for work. He had several appointments this morning with citizens’ committees concerned about the recent changes in the Ministry of Wellness. As the Minister’s Ombuds, he took the flack when unpopular decisions were made, but on the flip side he had extraordinary influence on whether those decisions stood or fell. It wasn’t a perfect system. After a decade of struggling with consensus decision-making, and its endless meetings, the people of Free Cascadia had finally given some of their democratic power over to the bureaucracy. But Free Cascadia, as a loose federation of city-states, held stubbornly to its libertarian-socialist ideals, and if pronouncements became too unpopular, the citizens would still toss Joe and the Minister and the whole bureaucracy out on its ear.

Joe arrived at the office early to find Melissa Monroe, Chief of Biological Research, in the break room, sipping tea and nibbling on pieces of shredded pastry.

“Joe,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, Mel. I came in a bit early this morning—not sleeping well.”

“Nightmares, again?”

Joe nodded. He had known Mel since she was a young girl, a childhood friend of his daughter, and she was one of the few people he could talk to about such personal issues. She had been through the wars with him, by his side much of the time. Of course, everyone here had been through the wars, but Mel was special.

“I’m sorry, Joe.”

“It’s okay, Mel. Really.”

He looked into Mel’s sad, dark eyes and smiled. Jessie would be her age now, a grown woman. It had been the one downside of working with Mel, being reminded of his daughter every day. He had foreseen that problem when he recommended Mel to the Department Collective, and Mel had turned out to be one of his most valuable colleagues. She had become something of a substitute daughter as well.

“Joe, are we still on for tonight, Benson High…?”

He had nearly forgotten. He felt guilty because he wanted to forget; but he had promised. He nodded, but his frown gave him away.

“Joe, this will be good for you. You need to be around people who understand. We’re not the only ones who have loved ones on Sweetland. There are millions of us, and we can support one another.”

It’s the religion crap I can’t tolerate, he wanted to say, but who was he to deny Mel her comfort. The Temple of New Life wasn’t the only thing that bothered him; after all these years, he no longer believed in Sweetland, either. With no letters or news in seventeen years, nothing had become real for him; the Jessie he knew was gone, and he was resigned to the fact that he would never see her again. What did it matter if there was a planet out there, across some vast incommunicable distance, if it was inaccessible, if he would never see his daughter again, if he had no way of knowing whether she was safe or not, alive or not?

—

Melissa Monroe discon’d from her node and gathered up her bag and jacket. Joe watched from his office window as the pretty, young, caramel-skinned woman made her way down the corridor in his direction, hoping somehow she had changed her mind, but when she arrived, he knew he had no such luck. He gave her a forced smile as she took his arm, and together they walked out into the Portland rain. The old high school gymnasium was packed when they arrived, but Mel led Joe through a side door where they could push their way to the front of the stage.

Inside, a current of apprehension charged the crowd, and people talked in intensive whispers. Joe picked up fragments, but  the gist of it eluded him.

“What’s the debate?”

“A rumor’s going around about a messenger from Sweetland. We’re hoping to learn more tonight. Everyone’s nervous because the only way that could be possible is if they somehow have a d-gate online.”

“Or they’re spiriting them over from those New America d-gates in the US.”

Mel put her hand on his arm. “It’s hard, Joe, but if you could just suspend disbelief for an evening. What we experienced on Sweetland was real, damn it. Jessie is there and the Mother willing, she’s doing fine.”

For just an instant, it came back to him; those four hours he had spent with Jessie and Bridge, so long ago under that strange sky, the alien air smelling of exotic spice. He had been pushing it away for so long; and what if it was true; what if he could somehow talk to Jessie again?

“I wish it were that easy, Mel. I don’t understand why it has to be wrapped up in all this religious mysticism?”

“Because people have been burned by science. Science can’t fix everything and science can’t explain everything.”

“I can’t believe you’re attacking science, Mel.”

“Joe, I’m not attacking science. I’m attacking historical excess. I’m attacking the conceit that science can have an answer to everything. All of your quantum physics will never figure out how something can be created out of nothing. So, what is that eternal something, Joe? What is it?”

“I don’t know, Mel. I don’t know that it matters.”

“The thing is, it does matter for millions of people. They need to believe they know what that thing is. It’s called faith.”

“But, you’re a scientist, Mel. Why do you need faith?”

“Because my personal observation is no longer trustworthy. Not where this is concerned. Any d-gates are off limits to us, and those people who could give us the scientific proof are dead or silent. We’re biased observers, in any case. If I could take you to Sweetland, and show you that Jessie was sixteen years older than she was when she left, that A, B, and C has happened, that she has two beautiful little children and a real life, then would you believe Sweetland exists?”

“I don’t know, Mel. You’re right, I can’t trust what I see anymore. If I could, I wouldn’t be having these doubts. And it’s not that I doubt Sweetland exists. What it is, however, remains in question, and more importantly, it doesn’t exist for me. I would rather live with uncertainty and confusion than have faith in—no offense— some weird gnostic cosmology.”

“I understand. I don’t believe in all this popular nonsense, either. The Book of Chaos and Light is a collection of stories and myths, like The Bible or the Gnostic gospels, or any other religious text. It’s the underlying thematic principles…”

Mel trailed off as a woman in a red robe stepped up to the podium. A murmur of excitement filled the room. The woman was exceptionally tall, with blond hair and striking, chiseled features. Joe guessed she was about his own age, fifty-five or so. She tapped the microphone to verify it was on.

“The red robe…she’s a Sofia,” Mel whispered with a reverence that gave him a chill.

“Good evening,” said the woman. “I am Sister Norea. I am here this evening to bring good news, and to warn of grave danger. But first, let us have an invocation of the spirit.”

Here we go, thought Joe. He looked around uncomfortably as voices filled the hall.

Holy Spirit, Mother of Chaos, descend upon us,

Illuminate us with the True Light of the Pleroma. 

Science through the back door; is that what Mel was trying to say?  If so, this is what happens when science becomes religion—theatre, mystification, ritual, hierarchical order. No different from any other religion. He began to fervently wish he hadn’t come. It all seemed so wrong, and he felt a wave of embarrassment for being here—and for Mel, who was enthralled. He closed his eyes, attempting to focus on something else, anything else. He imagined Jessie, thirty years old, living in a forest community tens of millions of light years distant. Somehow he could almost see her there with her children—his grandchildren. Yes, he wanted it to be true, but no trick of his mind could make him believe it was true.

When he dreams, though, he dreams it is true. Jessie walks along a cobblestone street in a strange city, and there is a horrible sense of apprehension and loss in the air. The children. Where are the children? She looks back over her shoulder at the forest; the strange sun is setting, and it is the end of…something.

“…and now, the good news.” Sister Norea’s voice drifted through his reverie as Mel gently nudged him. “In five weeks, a Messenger will arrive from Sweetland, a young man born in the village of Meadow Springs. He will arrive in Free City and will bring important news—news so monumental, in fact, that the Temple is organizing a pilgrimage. I encourage every one of you who can to be there. We have reserved a meglev to Free City. We expect it to be booked up quickly.”

The crowd hushed for several seconds before a murmur rolled across the auditorium. Sister Norea held up her hand, signaling that she wasn’t finished. “I have told you the good news, and now I must be the bearer of a warning. It is possible that, within a few months, a war will commence for Sweetland. You have heard the rumors for years. New America Corporation is building an empire in Sweetland’s West. It’s population is now many times that of The Communities. The Sisters and Brothers of The Temple have tried our best to protect our fledgling offspring, but the enemy may soon overwhelm us. Yet there is a plan. There is hope.”

Pandemonium broke out in the hall, and Sister Norea waited until the mood of the crowd built to a seething anger.

“War,” someone shouted. “If they want war, we’ll give them war.”

“What is the plan, Sister?” someone else shouted.

“You will find your answers in Free City. The Mother be with you.”

Sister Norea stepped away from the microphone and into the tumultuous crowd.

“Meadow Springs, Joe!” Mel shouted in his ear. “It’s someone who knows Jessie.”

Joe didn’t know whether to be humored by the show or furious at the shameless manipulation. This kind of talk was bound to stir up new anger against the US and the New America Corporation. Relations were strained enough already. Grim faced, Sister Norea moved through the crowd, warding off questions, and when she moved in his direction, Joe turned deliberately away.

“Joe Larivee,” someone called, and he looked back to see Thomas Arbour, a colleague at the Ministry, standing at the Sister’s side.  “Joe, I would like you to meet Sister Norea.”

No getting out of it, now. “How do you do, Sister.”

“Mr. Larivee,” said Sister Norea,”the pleasure is mine. I heard you would be here this evening. I need to speak to you.”

Joe turned to Mel, who looked away evasively. He felt betrayed. They had set him up—but why?

“Of course,” he said. “The Ministry’s ears are always available.”

“This isn’t concerning the Office of the Ombuds, Mr. Larivee. It’s a private matter.”

“Private? I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain. Is there somewhere we can escape the crowd?”

Mel pointed out the hall door, and the three of them worked their way to the edge of the auditorium.

“Please join us, Ms. Monroe,” said Sister Norea when Mel halted at the door. “You will also be interested in what I have to say.”

The hall was empty except for a few stray individuals seeking the toilets. The din of the crowd inside was muted, but not Joe’s curiosity. “So, Sister, what is this about?”

“Mr. Larivee,” she said, “we need you and Ms. Monroe to come to Free City.”

“It’s not possible,” Joe protested. “My job…I couldn’t.”

“I believe you will find the way easier than you anticipate. Please consider it.”

“Why, Sister? I am not one of your followers. Why should I do that?”

“Because,” said Sister Norea, “the Messenger is your grandson.”

©2010–2011, Duane Poncy

Use the sidebar on the right to select fragments to read.  I have posted part one of each novel. Novel one, Sweetland, is completed, and I am about two-thirds of the way into New America. I would love your comments and suggestions!
Thanks,
Duane Poncy

The town of Law and Order was situated in the Pecos Valley on a little crook in the river, amid the sage and bitter brush. Since Pedro Blasón’s falling out with Matt Dillon, by mutual agreement it was now actually two towns: Law on the north bank of the Pecos, and Order on the south side. As far as Pedro was concerned, the twain need never meet.

Pedro wiped his brow. The hot sun hung at its median in the northern sky, and he considered dropping by Donna’s Truck Stop for a coke and burger, rare and juicy, with onions and mushrooms and lots of cheese, that’s how he liked it. He stopped for a moment in the shade of a willow, and gazed across the river, wondering for just a moment about life on the other side. Law was a wild, wide-open sort of place, and Dillon had seen no reason to change it, as long as everyone more-or-less obeyed the rules. But it was the sort of environment Pedro couldn’t abide, the lack of control made him nervous. And that was the source of his falling out with his old amigo, Matt; that and Dillon’s insistence on playing by the rules, when any fool could see that the only applicable rule was that the guy at the top of the food chain got to eat the best meal. Fuck that rules shit, that was for the peasants.

Law and Order had been established to ensure that the independent ore haulers coming down from the mountains with their payloads tithed their share of taxes to the New America Corporation. Pedro insisted that it was only fair that he and Dillon take a little extra for their trouble. But Dillon didn’t look at it that way. As a consequence, the riverboat crews boycotted Order, purchasing their goods on Dillon’s side of the river. It had forced Pedro to set up his own taxing station further up river at the narrows. Dillon didn’t like that, but Dillon didn’t have the balls to challenge him.

Pedro had the highway on his side, as well. The independent bauxite triple-trailers had no choice but to stop and pay taxes to the City of Order. With the weekly construction convoys coming through, and the soldiers that accompanied them, the inns were full, the whores were happy, and the business men were getting fat. That meant Pedro was getting fat. And if the rumors were true, if the corporation was really building a highway along the edge of the forest to connect a series of military outposts, Order would soon be a rich boomtown, ripe for the pickings.

A brief thunderstorm the previous evening left the air filled with the sweet smell of wet sage and ozone. After five years, Pedro still couldn’t believe how much this place felt and looked like the chaparral country of south Texas where he grew up. Only the northern sun was wrong, and you couldn’t really convince yourself it was south, because then it would be going in the wrong direction. The southern hemisphere, they told him, but it was still unnerving when he thought about it, so he tried to not think about it when he could.

What he did think about today was the imminent arrival of Her Majesty, along with some special guest. Landing with her whole god damned entourage this evening. It was all a big pain in the ass, but he couldn’t complain, really—it was his job.

“The young man will be a guest of the good Sisters at St. Magdaleine,” her messenger had said. “He will have an around-the-clock guard, and his presence must be kept secret at all cost.”

“Tell Ms. Cheng, no problem.”

Pedro didn’t like the Sisters of the Temple. He didn’t understand them, and their secret hierarchies and hidden agendas didn’t mesh with his need for control. But they were Jolene’s bambino. As long as she protected them, their was nothing he could do. Just keep his eyes and ears open, try to make some sense of it all.

Jolene Cheng rewarded him well for his little favors. One of those favors was to keep her doings and goings out of sight of Dick Miglia, and by extension, that meant Matt Dillon. Pedro had no idea what it was all about. Some corporate power struggle that didn’t concern him. He could take care of himself. Jolene Cheng may or may not be Queen of the Fucking Universe, but Pedro Blasón was the King of Order.

Dillon

On the Law side of the river, Matt Dillon had been singing the blues, practicing most of the morning for a gig with his band, Indigo River, but now the hot sun was burning in through his north window, turning the room into a furnace. He wiped the sweat from his dark forehead with the back of his hand and turned off his karaoke machine. The new material was difficult, but it would have to be good enough. Dillon sang an occasional lead, but mostly he performed backup for Carmella Johnson, a gorgeous ebony-skinned beauty who fronted the band. Dillon loved to sing, and if it weren’t for his other commitments, he might consider moving to the big city, doing it full time. But, for now, it was all in fun.

Dillon thought maybe he was in love with Carmella Johnson, but he wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly. Carmella was a hard woman to know, and even though he had been sleeping with her for two years, he still couldn’t figure out where he stood with her. He wondered if maybe the price of power was never understanding what anyone really thought of you beneath that deferential mask they all wore. Even the ones who shared your bed.

He sighed, grabbed a beer, and headed for the front door. From the shade of the porch, he gazed across the broad expanse of desert, the ramshackle houses and dusty dirt roads, the willows along the river, and on the other side of the river, the tidy little town of Order. Something was happening over there in Order, Dillon could feel it. The Monitors had been alight with signals all week, encrypted messages. Jolene Cheng, no doubt—what the hell was she up to?

Dillon and Pedro Blasón had once been Jolene’s soldiers, back on Earth, but now he worked for Dick Miglia. Dillon was nothing if not loyal to his employers. Cheng was going rogue, and Pedro, the opportunistic little bastard, was betting on Cheng and trying to position himself for the biggest crumbs when it all settled down. It was pathetic, but no kind of reason could sway Pedro.

Dillon trigged his com and waited for Sharma Xerxes, his Monitor supe.

“Yes, Sir?” Sharma’s voice sounded hollow and distant, and he wondered if the New America techs were working on the com grid again.

“Sharma, are our ears still online across the river?”

“No change in status, Chief. Something new come up?”

“No. Just a feeling. Whatever is going on in Order, it’s happening soon. Just keep up the vigilance.”

“As usual, Sir.”

“Thanks, Sharma. I know you’re on top of it.”

Dillon cut the com. Sharma was a good girl, competent, and he trusted her. He just couldn’t stop worrying. Jolene Cheng made him nervous.

—

The night was unbearably hot, so Dillon pulled a mattress out to the veranda, and he and Carmella laid beneath the stars, but even outdoors it was too hot to sleep, so they spent their time naming constellations.

“See, there’s a bison,” said Carmella, pointing. “See it’s legs…there… and its horns.”

Dillon tried to picture it. “I don’t know, Carmella. The bison are gone. Should we name constellations for things that no longer exist?”

“All of those constellations back on Earth were named after Greek gods and shit,” said Carmella. “They never existed at all, Sugar.”

“You have a point.”

“Besides, Walker says he saw a white-tail deer up the canyon a couple weeks ago. If there are deer up there, then maybe there are bisons, too. They just haven’t been discovered yet.”

Dillon bristled at mention of Walker. Walker was the drummer for Indigo Blues, and he had a sweet spot for Carmella. “Damn fool wouldn’t know a deer if he saw one.”

“Matt,” scolded Carmella, “you know I won’t tolerate jealousy over Walker. That kind of shit will tear the band apart. Walker don’t mean a thing to me, Sugar. You remember that.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dillon squeezed Carmella’s hand. But, Dillon was no longer thinking of Walker. He was contemplating bison.

“Carmella,” he said, after a while.

“Yeah, sweetie.”

“You ever hear the idea that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, maybe there are tiny universes that are just like our own universe, a kind of mirror. Do you know what that would mean?”

“Uh-uh.”

“It’s hard to get your mind around, unless your a Hindu or a Buddhist or something. It would mean that each one of those tiny universes would contain even tinier universes on into infinity.”

“Hmmm.”

“But, here’s the thing. The big universe would also just be part of an even bigger universe, and this too would go on into infinity. So there is infinity in both directions. And there we are, living in an infinite number of those universes–an infinite subset of infinity. And in some of them we are laying here on the veranda, but in others something has changed and we are somewhere else, doing something else. Or we are dead. Or never born.”

“So there would be bison in some of them?” Carmella asked.

“Yes, that. But, then I was thinking—”

Carmella let out a sigh.

“—I was thinking that maybe we are sleeping, and we are trying to awaken. But first, all of the Dillons and all of the Carmellas and everyone else in the tiny universes beneath us must awaken first, and then we will be awake. When that happens, and everyone in this universe is awake, then the universes above us can become conscious. And when everyone in all of the universes is awake, then God will be awake.”

“So,” said Carmella, “God is sleeping, lucky guy. Heaven is sleep. I think you may have something there, Sugar.”

“Yeah,” Dillon chuckled, “maybe so.”

—

Carmella had finally found sleep when Dillon heard his mobe chime softly from the pocket of his trousers. He slipped from bed, grabbed the pants, and carried them into the living room as he fished out the mobe. The clock on the wall said three. This had better be good. He hoped he hadn’t disturbed Carmella, the girl slept like a log once she was out, but she didn’t like to be roused by Dillon’s comings and goings.

“Dillon, here.”

“Boss, this is Sharma. I think you better get down here right away.”

“We finally have something on Cheng?” he queried.

“No, boss. We have a massacre up at Newton’s Spring. Got some travelers here who found the bodies. Think you might want to talk to them.”

“Shit. I’ll be right down.”

Dillon slid on his pants, and buckled on his Colt .45. He returned to the veranda for his shirt. Seeing that Carmella was still sleeping, he tiptoed down the porch stairs, skipping over the squeaky step.

The night air had cooled somewhat, but still brought out the sweat as he hurried along the path to the Sheriff’s Department. Sharma Xerxes was waiting at the door when he arrived. Inside were four men and a woman. The men had several days growth of beard, and all were covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. Miners, most likely.

“This is Alex Martine,” said Sharma, indicating a short, stocky redhead. He’s the crew leader.”

“Miners?” asked Dillon.

Martine scowled. “Corporate Geological Survey. We’ve been out at the big rift looking for signs of ore deposits. Decided to drive down to Manifest Destiny for supplies. Found everyone dead.”

“Did I hear that right? Everyone?”

“Yeah, twenty-four bodies. Men, women, and children. Mostly killed by arrows. A few scalps taken. Some of the women might have been raped. The buzzards were moving in—and the coyotes—so we buried them. Figured they deserved to be buried.”

Dillon looked at him with his mouth hanging open. “You buried them? Jesus Christ, how the hell am I going to do an investigation without bodies.”

“Hell,” said the redhead, “how were we supposed to know? Besides their bones would be stripped clean before you got out there.”

“Okay.” Dillon bit his tongue. “I need to see your ID. Make sure you’re who—”

Sharma cut him off. “I’m on top of that, Boss. They’re what they say they are.”

“Okay, Sharma. Take them into the interview room and get all the details you can. Even if it takes the rest of the night.”

He should keep them in town for a few days until he had a chance to ride up to the Springs. But they were Corporate Geo. He’d get his ass in a sling if he did that.

Jolene

The boy’s face, as dark as the moonless night, stared out the limo window at the chaparral landscape rushing by. The vehicle hummed quietly, and its interior lights reflected off his somber profile, outlining his features in sharp relief. He would be a handsome young man in a few years.

Jolene Cheng looked at him for a time in silence. “You know that this must be done,” she said at last. “The Sisters at St. Magdaleine will treat you well. They will continue your education, and it won’t be long until you see your mother again.”

The boy was silent, but she could see the slight change in his face, a hardening.

“It’s all for the best, Joey. My daughter has allowed you to grow soft. You will not survive this world if you are weak. Do you understand that? You have a destiny. You could rule this world someday.”

The armored car ahead of them braked as a jackrabbit bounded across the road. She could see the lights of Law and Order on the horizon. The boy’s face showed no sign she could read.

“Why?” he said at last. “Why can’t you just let us be in peace? Don’t you have enough already?”

Jolene let the fog of silence engulf them again. The boy would be her heir one day, but she couldn’t tell him that, he wasn’t ready to listen. So, it came around to the same argument every time, and what could she say that would change it? He needed to learn that the bad guys don’t give you a break. If it’s not the barbarian natives, it will be Miglia’s minions. You have to be as ruthless as they are.

The first time she had told him this, he protested. “The natives aren’t what you think they are. Aunt Bridge lives among them. She thinks they are people, too, but they’re not.”

“Then what are they?”

“I don’t know,” said Joey.

“There, you see. It doesn’t matter what we call them, they are still savages who ambush the miners and kill our settlers.”

Joey pouted. “It only wants to protect itself.” His words trailed off.

The boy was obviously confused, and he possessed too much imagination for his own good. What he needed was a disciplined, down-to-earth education to prepare him for his future. The Sisters would set him straight.

Pedro Blasón met them at the edge of town, his small coterie of police vehicles merging with flawless choreography into Jolene’s substantial entourage. Pedro roared up alongside the limo on his City of Order Police Department Harley and gave Jolene a thumbs up. He flashed an enormous grin, his long hair whipping wildly beneath his dew rag, before he sped off toward the front of the procession.

Pedro was too cocky with this outlaw act. Jolene hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with him before the Joey business was behind her. She needed a loyal lieutenant, not some fucking Pancho Villa. Over-taxing the truckers was one thing, but shaking down the ore barges had to stop. If she didn’t stop it, Miglia would move in, and nothing good would come of that.

The boy was sleeping now. In sleep, he had a look about him that reminded her of his grandfather. The association with Joe wasn’t negative, and that surprised her. It stirred up a fleeting sadness that she didn’t recall having ever felt before, and it disturbed her in some fundamental way she didn’t understand.

©2010–2011, Duane Poncy

The blood red stones of Avenue St. Sofia arced broadly, giving berth to the Temple of the Martyrs before returning to follow the gentle curve of the Rio del Corazon. Perched atop a small, forested hill, the gray stone towers of the temple rose above the trees like a walled fortress. Jessie Larivee shivered at its sight, and turned onto the nearest side street, a muddy lane lined with colorful, stucco houses. Best one avoid St. Sofia at this point, or risk being accosted by one of those annoying acolytes.

Michel often teased her about her extreme aversion to things religious, and she could laugh at herself in her better moments, but the Temple of New Life worried her. When Jessie first arrived on Sweetland seventeen years ago, Meadow Springs had been a tiny hamlet on the Muddy Red River on the far south frontier between Deep Water and Red Sky. At that time, the so-called Temple of New Life was a small group of scientists with an odd assortment of gnostic beliefs.  She had convinced herself that all that superstition would simply fade away after a few years on Sweetland, that it was merely a necessary evil to help the people adjust to their new reality. That had been their line, and at fourteen Jessie had swallowed the worm, hook and all. But the Necessary Evil had taken on a new and threatening life of its own.

Over the years Meadow Springs had quadrupled in size, but it still contained less than 500 souls, until the Sisters orchestrated the evacuation of the frontier. The threat had been real, she had no doubt about that, but what bothered Jessie was the fact that the Sisters had come for them, rather than the Concilio. The Sisters were everywhere in Sangre del Corazon, on the councils, in the guilds and the marketplace, and in the schools. They had become powerful enough that they now openly challenged the secularist majority on the Concilio.

Of course, that was their right. It was a democracy, after all, and as long as they abided by its secular principles, well…

She pushed away all thought of the Temple, and contemplated the mysterious message she had received yesterday, the catalyst which had sent her on this unplanned trip to Refugee City. Arlena Anderson, a fellow refugee from the upper settlements, had sent a note by messenger.  “Dear Jessie, please come to 29 Calle del Nuevo Mundo tomorrow at noon. We’ll have lunch. I have important news you will want to hear.”

That was the entire message. Now, she was wondering if the news had something to do with Joey and Molly.  She had been sick thinking about them since the evacuation four months ago. What was going to happen when they returned to Meadow Springs to find it abandoned. She had left a message for them there, instructing them to make their way down river to Sangre del Corazon. But would they find it? If only there were some way to reach them, tell them to stay put with Bridge until this whole thing became sorted out.

Dark thoughts stirring, Jessie arrived at Avenue of the Disappeared and turned east onto the empty, narrow street.  Following the southern edge of the town, the avenue’s round, red stones eventually merged back into Avenue St. Sofia as it looped around the peninsula. Bordering Avenue of the Disappeared to the southeast lay the ramshackle Refugee City. It held nearly twenty-thousand people, twice as large as Sangre del Corazon proper.

Refugee City had a reputation for being untamed, like the upper settlements of the Muddy Red from which most of its residents came. Something happens to you when you become a refugee—you lose an anchor, you lose trust in those who had once been your friends and neighbors. Anger stirred here just beneath the surface, and she felt its intensity whenever she visited.

Accompanying it was her own guilt for not living with her people.  Michel’s work and Jessie’s connection with Felicia had pushed them into an older part of the city. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, influence and favoritism weren’t supposed to procure special treatment in the New World, but there it was. Felicia’s mother, a physician, had a house with an extra room, and it would have been awkward to refuse, so Jessie acquiesced.

Calle del Nuevo Mundo was no more than a muddy alley, the house she sought no more than a crudely made shack, its tiny yard strewn with debris, a temporary shelter until it was safe for its residents to return to the upper settlements, or more likely, a new home to the more hospitable north. The refugees were divided over that question. Many were tired of the harsh winters and difficult frontier life in the South.

After carefully traversing the street’s swampy ruts, Jessie arrived and knocked on the rough plank door. A youngish woman with a weather-aged face like the timbers answered wearing a rough country smock and the trousers of a field worker. She looked at Jessie without smiling.

“Welcome, Jessie,” she said.

“Hello, Arlena,” Jessie replied. “How have you been?”

“Getting by. Please come in.” Arlena stepped aside to usher Jessie through the door.

Jessie ducked slightly to clear the low doorway. Dim light filtered through two tiny windows on the north side of the house, illuminating a small room, void of decoration. Two dark figures sat in the shadows, peering up at her. A vague anxiety overcame her. “I didn’t know there would be others joining us.”

One of the figures stood, a tall woman in the deep red robe of a Sister. Not just any Sister, but a Sofia. Jessie’s anxiety deepened.

“Sorry, Jessie,” said Arlena. “This is Sister Magda. The Sisters have something important to talk to you about.”

“I’m the one who must apologize,” said Sister Magda. “I asked Arlena to keep our attendance confidential. This is a very delicate matter. It involves your son, Ms. Larivee.”

Confusion supplanted anxiety. Why were the Sisters involved with Joey? “I don’t understand.”

“We are here to tell you that your son, Joey, is safely under the care of the Sisters of the Temple.”

Confusion gave way to relief and then suspicion. “Sorry, Sister. A Sofia comes to a secret meeting in Refugee City to tell me Joey is safe? Not damned likely.”

“You’re very astute, Ms. Larivee. We have, shall we say, other motives. We would like to bring Joey here, to you, but we need your cooperation.”

Fury bubbled up from Jessie’s depths. “It’s my fucking mother, isn’t it?”

“I assure you, we don’t work for your mother. This is a very complex situation. You seem to have some political savvy, so I’ll try to be as candid as possible with you.”

“I won’t hold my breath.” Jessie regretted her sharp tongue, even before the words left it.  But Sister Magda merely smiled, indulgently.

“This is the situation, Jessie, if I may call you by your given name.” It didn’t sound like a question. “Your son has become a pawn in a political game. Although he is in our care, it is only because we have made a temporary alliance with Jolene Cheng.  Miss Cheng’s enemies would like to do harm to the boy. Do you understand?”

“I understand that my mother is a ruthless woman, and I don’t trust her or you or any of your Sisters to have my son’s best interest at heart.”

“Then look at this as a chess game, Jessie, and let me give you the layout of the board. We would like to move Joey to Sangre del Corazon. We can’t do that without Jolene Cheng’s cooperation. Ms. Cheng needs something from you—she wants to open a dialogue with the Concilio. She is interested in an alliance of sorts with The Communities. Ms. Cheng is in a power struggle, and an alliance would be beneficial to both sides.”

Jessie scowled at Sister Magda. “And your interest in this?”

“We want to reunite a mother and son, nothing more than that.”

Fat chance, thought Jessie. “What about my sister, Molly?”

Sister Magda handed her a card. “Molly is safe, Jessie. We can bring her, too. Think about what I’ve told you. It’s what we call a win-win situation.”

“Sister, the problem with win-win situations is that they may be good for everyone at the table, but it’s the onlookers you step on as you dance together out the door—those are the ones I worry about.”

Sister Magda gave her a deep, appraising look, and smiled wryly.

©2010–2011, Duane Poncy

The Compound, perched like an aerie on the edge of La Mesa de Los Muerto, overlooked Ciudad Esparanza with its red adobe houses aligned along radiating arterials and an ever-widening grid of streets like a spider web spreading out from the river on either side, slightly larger to the west and north with their giant industrial complexes. La Mesa—which wasn’t really a mesa at all, but a geological shelf about 350 meters up the face of El Pared Magnifica—retreated beneath the pounding rain of La Cascada and emerged again, smaller, on the other side of the great falls. Gabe Proctor gazed out the cafeteria window at the tumbling water and idly wondered if it might be possible to traverse behind the falls, from one side to another—a more tangible puzzle than the theoretical one he had spent most of his morning trying to solve. Since joining the cloister twelve years ago at the precocious age of nine, he had often imagined jumping the railing and exploring, but courage always fled before the act. It wasn’t the physical danger that held him back, but the social ostracism of breaking the rules.

His thoughts shifted subtly from a vague fear to guilt over his many evasions—work, correspondence with his mother, Arkady’s insistence that he ‘grow up’, and this morning’s more palpable object of retreat, the imminent arrival of the Sofias. The Sofias reminded him of the hypocrisy behind his own privileged existence. It insulted his humble origins, somehow, in a way he didn’t fully understand. Gabe’s view of the Sisters was no secret to his colleagues, many of whom shared it, but avoiding the benefactors was frowned upon by some of these same peers, who viewed schmoozing as a public duty.

Gabe slid open the glass doors to the veranda and casually strolled out to the south gardens, as far as possible from the Compound proper, where he could feel the thunder of the falls and the promise of its cool spray on his face. Without further consideration, lest he change his mind, he grabbed the rail and swung himself over, landing on firm ground. Only fifty meters to the falls, but each step he took toward the edge felt like a step toward himself, toward some sort of independence.

Once there, however, he was unprepared for the sheer power of the water and the incredible distance to the basin floor. His stomach reeled, his balance shifted, and he stumbled back from the abyss. He waited for the vertigo to pass and for his knees to stop shaking. He now saw the water-eroded contour of the shelf where it disappeared behind the spray, and the path, wide enough to walk upon. Now, it had become a challenge, and he moved forward cautiously. Behind the falls, centuries of water carved out an indentation deep into the soft cliff, leaving a small, muddy ledge dangerously sloping toward the precipice. The narrow passage, a half meter wide, hugged the wall, and Gabe edged along in small, prudent steps, keeping his eyes on his goal until the ground felt safe again beneath his feet. A brief moment of triumph.

Beyond the falls, the shelf widened out once again to fifteen meters or so, and extended another hundred meters before narrowing and vanishing back into the face of the cliff.

The ledge was flat and grassy, with a few small pines and scrub oaks clumped near the wall. He located a comfortable spot, pushed aside the accumulated acorns and small pine cones, and laid back in the grass. He decided to call his new hideaway Ugatayi, seed place. For the first time in years, Gabe thought about his childhood in the hills of eastern Oklahoma. They had been hard but happy days with his parents and extended family, Keetowah Cherokees, a tradition going back all the way to his famous outlaw ancestor, Zeke Proctor. His parents were academics and cultural traditionalists, not in the least bit religious; for them, as for the scientists who had educated him, the scientific method was all the religion they needed. It was all the religion Gabe needed.

In many respects, his childhood was a normal one. Tramping the fields and hills of the western Ozarks, his uncles had taught him to hunt and honor his prey, to bathe in the river, and to fend for himself in the woods—what little was left of the forest. He learned to play soccer and stick ball and run with the boys from the neighboring farms, but these hours were strictly limited, and his parents expected him to spend much of his time studying.

“You have been given a gift, Son,” his mother would tell him. “It is your responsibility to develop it and use it for the good of the people.”

Gabe’s gift was math. At four years old he had an uncanny ability to solve complex mathematical formulas. By the time he was six, his extraordinary intelligence could no longer be hidden from the world, and he had attracted the attention of important government and academic players, intent on using the child’s talent to further this or that cause. A tug of war began for Gabe’s soul, but his parents, sympathetic to the Bolivarian Alliance and its call for indigenous ascendancy, had discovered the Temple of New Life and another option for their son’s future—the utopian experiment called Sweetland.

The memory of his arrival on Sweetland had a bitter taste for Gabe. His father, Nathan Proctor, had died crossing over. Gabe and his mother, Carla, eventually settled in Echota with several other Cherokee families. Carla taught Earth History and tried to keep alive the Tsalagi language at the University of the South. But Gabe became a lost, lonely child. He made the University library his home, and spent every waking moment hiding behind a book. So, it was no surprise that he first said ‘no’ when the scientists came from Esparanza to offer him an elite education at The Compound. But Carla had been insistent.

“This is your chance to develop your gift, Gabe.”

“I can do it here in Echota, Mom.”

“You can do better than that, Son.” And so it went, around and around until he relented and, swallowing his tears, left with a guide for the long river journey to Esparanza. Gabe received a letter from Mom every Primerdía, without fail, but he missed her terribly, and he missed his father, and he missed the Cherokee hills of Oklahoma.

In his quarters that evening, Gabe began writing a proposal. It had little chance of success—return to Earth was essentially limited to the Sofias and the inner circle of senior scientists—but the more he considered it, the more important it became in his mind. The difficulty would be in convincing the Directorate that a junior quantum neurophysicist had a legitimate reason to cross over.

One thing might get their attention, he thought, and that was his work on neuro-entanglement and his theory about the origins of the mysterious disease, popularly called the saudades. A number of suicides over the past several months were believed triggered by this condition, named by the Galician immigrants, who described it as a sort of heart sickness. Saudades was approaching pandemic dimensions in The Communities. It was a long shot. The theory wasn’t much more than a postulation at this stage, but if he could conduct tests on some of the tiny number of permanent returnees, then perhaps he could learn something.

There were so many buts and ifs, and late in the night Gabe nearly gave up on the whole idea. He knew the proposal was dishonest on its face, that his true motive was a desire to return to his childhood home. He could almost here Arkady’s scolding voice: “Grow up, Gabe, it’s not about you.”

His mentor and substitute father, department head, Dr. Arkady Zharkov, had not been easy on him over the years. Gabe had a lot of trouble with this growing up thing. He was a twenty-two year old who had been denied his childhood, and he wasn’t ready for the responsibility entailed in that whole concept. It wasn’t that he didn’t hear the constant voice of his mother insisting that he had a duty to use his gift. It wasn’t like he was running away. Couldn’t he go home to Indian Country and do useful research at the same time?

Finally, in frustration, he put down his pen and climbed into bed. He could decide all of this tomorrow.

©2010–2011, Duane Poncy

Kolvin’s eyes shift from the left screen to the right and back again, too rapidly for his mind to process the alternating images. Slow down, he tells himself. Breathe deeply. He recognizes the anxiety attack, he’s suffered them before in stress conditions. The problem is hyperventilation, more than anything. It’s this forest: something about it rattles him, something that doesn’t seem to bother the younger soldiers. 

He focuses on monitor one, which tracks his squad as they spread out up the canyon. The spy drone, with its motion-sensitive cameras, hovers silently eight meters above the lead man, high enough to follow the movement of the two targets, and to keep an accurate position on each of the seven men in the squad. They were boys really, just turned seventeen and fearless, the way young boys are. That would be sixteen Earth years, he thinks, too young to be out here on their own. The targets are not armed, as far as Kolvin knows, but it isn’t the targets that worry him, it’s the hostiles in the forest, whomever or whatever attacked Outpost 47 two weeks ago. That’s where monitor two comes in—it watches his ass. But the drones have their limitations, and that magnifies his fear. 

The forward camera on monitor one shifts rapidly, showing movement up a deep ravine. Kolvin touches his com switch. “Target to your right, thirty degrees, forty-five meters. Acknowledge.”

“Ack,” comes the reply. “Closing in on Target.”

“Once you have them, get back here pronto, Cooper,” he says.

“Will do. Almost have them, Sarge.”

—

“See this blaze?” Young Molly Whitedeer pointed out a healed-over scar on the tree trunk, and her nephew Joey nodded. “See how it’s pointed like an arrow? If you follow the arrow, there is a big pine tree, taller than the other trees. Do you see it?”

“Yeah,” said her nephew, nodding again.

“That’s where we’ll find the next mark.”

“What if it gets hit by lightning?”

“If I don’t see a marker tree, then I’ll look for a lightning strike, I guess. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Molly pushed aside the thick undergrowth, stepped over a fallen branch, and headed off toward the next marker.

“Molly, why did they send us up here to stay with Aunt Bridge this winter?”

“Joey, we’ve been through this before. You’re mom and dad thought we’d be safer up here, with all the recent raids on the upper settlements. You know that. You’ve asked me that same question a dozen times.”

“Yeah, I know, but I still don’t understand. Why are they attacking us?”

“Because they want to control us before we’re able to defend ourselves,” said Molly. “They’re afraid we may be rivals for natural resources.”

“You said that before, but why do they need so much?”

“You should listen to your mother more often, and study your history, then you’d understand that there are just people like that. Even when they have it all, it won’t be enough—they’re never satisfied.”

“Is my grandmother one of those people?” He was speaking of Jolene Cheng, head of security for the New America Corporation, whom the children had met only once, a few years before.

“Yes.” She caught herself before repeating, you know that. The boy was only trying to understand. They had been too sheltered, and it was difficult for him—for both of them—to accept the changes of the last few months.

“What happens if we get home and they’ve killed everybody or something?”

“Joey, don’t talk like that. There’s no point in getting yourself all worked up before we’re there. I’m sure the adults can take care of themselves. There are nearly five hundred people in Meadow Springs, and they have an armory if they need it.”

“Okay,” said the boy, but he didn’t looked convinced. Neither was Molly, but she wasn’t going to let him know that fact.

The children pushed on through the dense wilderness in silence, until Joey tapped her shoulder and whispered, “Molly.”

“Can we change the subject, Joey?” She winced at her snapped reply.

“I think I heard something.”

Molly stopped in her tracks. Somewhere behind them, to the left, a branch snapped. Then another one on the right. Molly’s heart raced as she quickly sought her bearing. She pointed at a steep canyon ahead on the left.

“Up there,” she whispered fiercely. “Go.”

—

On the lower half of monitor one, Kolvin watches seven blue dots, representing his men, converge on the two red dots. Once they have them, it will take another twenty minutes for the squad to return to base, and forty-five minutes more to clear out of the woods. That’s too damned long. Monitor two comes to sudden life, and Kolvin sucks in a deep breath. The cameras swivel upward into the treetops, and high in the branches a shape moves slightly, its outline too vague to identify. It moves once more, just a hair, and the sun glints off something long and metallic. 

—

Molly swung her leg wildly, missing the soldier’s head, but managed to pull free of the strong hand that gripped her ankle. She scrambled up the slope toward Joey, who was now some distance above her near the top of the hill. Dislodged by the boy’s boots, pieces of crumbled shale showered down upon her, making her own flight more difficult. But the falling rock gave her an idea, and as she climbed, she kicked chunks of shale into the face of her pursuer, who quickly fell behind, cursing as he dodged the hail of stone.

When she looked up again, her nephew had disappeared over the edge. Molly renewed her effort, kicking ferociously at the loose shale, but the soldier had pulled down his visor and no longer bothered to avoid the debris. He headed straight up the hill at her, and she switched tactics, concentrating once more on the climb. When the top of the incline was within a few centimeters, two pairs of strong arms emerged from nowhere to seize her and drag her roughly the remaining way up and over the edge of the embankment. Military boots, camouflage trousers—she had been outflanked. Joey was in the grip of two burly boys in uniform.

Joey screamed in rage and anguish. “Let us go. Why are doing this?”

“I can’t say,” said one of the boys, who appeared to be in charge. “Ms. Cheng just said to keep her grandson safe.”

Molly’s breathing stopped. Jolene Cheng. This hadn’t been a random attack at all. What did Cheng want with Joey? Why now, after all these years?

“We were perfectly safe until you came along,” said Molly.

“Might be, Ma’am, but Miz Cheng wants to see you.”

Molly didn’t respond. Jolene Cheng was an ambitious woman who had once been married to her father back on Earth. Molly had never met her father. He wasn’t even aware of her existence, yet his absence felt like a void in her very core. If only she could somehow go to Earth and bring him here, he would make things all right, he would cure Mama’s sickness and stop this horrible war which was coming as surely as the sun would rise in the morning. But going to Earth was not a possibility.

There were seven soldiers altogether, six men and one woman. The leader was called Private Cooper. None of them appeared older than Molly herself, who had just turned seventeen. Borns, she thought. They were Borns, like she and Joey, and that would explain why they moved so confidently through the forest.

After searching their backpacks, the soldiers snapped electronic anklets on them, and warned them not to wander more than 30 meters from Private Cooper, unless they were prepared to experience the most excruciating pain of their lives. They were escorted by two soldiers in the rear and one on either side, with Cooper in the lead. Escape was out of the question.

—

“Zoom in,” Kolvin says, feeling the panic return. The camera pulls the image closer—it looks to Kolvin like an Egyptian AP70. He’d seen a number of these anti-personnel launchers during his service in the Sinai Wars, too many to ever forget. 

“Artillery,” he says under his breath, but it’s too late. He hears the shots and watches the camera follow two AP rounds hurtling toward him in slo-mo. Funny I see them so clearly, he thinks. They should be a blur at 500 kilometers per hour. Paralyzed now by fear, he watches the miniature grenades rip through the roof of his canopy and explode in a circus of color, dispatching scores of nano smart bombs into the air to snuff out all life within a fifty meter circumference. He doesn’t feel or see the minuscule projectiles entering his body to deliver their peaceful death. 

—

The brisk downhill pace picked up and Cooper sent the woman and one of the men ahead down the canyon. His eyes reflected panic. Molly didn’t know what to make of it, but the soldiers were in a hurry, that much was certain. Molly and Joey walked in brisk silence, listening to the sound of tramping boots and snapping branches. The trees near the western transition zone were what Mama called pines, although Molly knew that pines were Earth trees, so they couldn’t actually be pines or firs or anything like that. The party pushed through the underbrush until it reached the trough of the canyon where a small creek ran to the west, and they turned to follow it downstream.

“I’m sorry, Joey,” Molly said, when she thought the soldiers were distracted. “I didn’t think they would come this far in.”

“They’re Borns, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She had counted on the fact that most of the adults who had crossed over from Earth eighteen years ago, before they shut down the gates, had an unnatural fear of the deep Sweetland forest. It was an ominous sign if the New Americans were inducting Borns into the military. In a few years, when there were enough of them, they would be a great threat to The Communities, which had no army to defend itself—and until recently hadn’t needed one.

The radio on Cooper’s belt crackled, and a broken voice chirped for several seconds in an excited but unintelligible garble.

“Shit,” said Cooper. He halted the procession with a raised hand and motioned the other soldiers to gather around. “That was Roz. They found Sarge. He’s dead just like them others.”

“We told him he should let us handle this,” said another young man.

Molly listened with alarm. “What killed him?”

The soldiers merely stared at her. Then Cooper said, “Whatever it is they see and we don’t, Miss. Some call ‘em Indians, some say enemy soldiers, but whatever it was ran through a whole outpost two weeks ago, killed every last man up there.”

—

They carried the body of the man they called Sarge down the canyon on a stretcher constructed from his canvas tent and loaded it into a flying machine that looked like a dragonfly with a fat belly. She had seen helicopters in books, but the real thing seemed strangely unreliable. How could such a thing possibly fly?

The landscape was treeless and alien to Molly, who had never before been outside the shelter of the forest. The barren earth expanded as far as she could see into the western horizon, and it seemed to her, for the first time in a visceral way, that the universe was infinite, and she small and insignificant.

The big rotors began to turn, churning up dust, and one of the soldiers took Joey by the elbow and pulled him toward the helicopter. Molly tried to run after him, but Cooper clamped her wrist in his strong, unyielding hand.  Halfway there, Joey twisted away from his escort and shouted, “Molly!” before being grabbed by a second soldier. The men, one on each side, dragged him the remainder of the way to the helicopter as he continued to call out her name. She struggled, furious and ineffective. Finally she called back to the boy, “I’ll come and get you Joey, I promise.”

Molly kicked at Cooper with a viciousness that surprised her, but he nimbly avoided her boot and laughed. “You’re a feisty one, ain’t you?”

Her anger quickly turned to something like grief as she realized her helplessness. “Where are they taking my nephew?” Her voice was a terrible howl of pain. “I need to go with him. I’m responsible for him.”

“You ain’t responsible any longer, Miss. We’re going to take care of him, now.”

“Why can’t I go with him?”

“I guess someone figured you’d be less trouble separated,” said Cooper, grinning. “Don’t worry, Miss, you’re both going to be taken good care of.”

“What are you going to do with me?” She fought to hold back the tears.

“We’re going to Port Harvest where someone’ll pick you up.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know, maybe Ms. Cheng, herself. Or someone who works for her.”

Just then the helicopter lifted off, taking Joey from her reach. Molly waited in misery, sprawled on the dusty ground, until a green military truck with New America Corporation, Special Security Forces painted on its door arrived and Private Cooper escorted her into the cab. The driver stayed behind with the unit as Cooper climbed in behind the wheel.

“Better buckle up, Miss. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

© 2010–2011, Duane Poncy

She hasn’t even place the tap yet and someone or something is pinging her, searching for a chink, a vulnerability in her code where a tracer can be attached. She tries to not let it bother her as she waits for Maxi to scan the server code for a vulnerable hook.

“Were in,” says Maxi, finally. “Here comes the flood, hon.”

The datastream flashes by on her VR overlay. It’s intermediate level code; she will have to get Stan to examine it more closely, but even with her relatively untrained eyes, she makes out some of the references: grid nodes for one; some she recognizes as high security government and corporate pipes; references to something called Sweetland; more references to Sweetland. A code word maybe?

“Tracer,” says Maxi with urgency.

Shit. She’s waited too long. As she shuts down the tap, she feels electricity shoot up her spine, a vague shock that ends at the base of her skull. Her head feels as though it’s about to burst, and pixels scatter into a rainbow of static. Without warning, she finds herself sitting on her virtual office floor, her real-life head throbbing.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Something trig’d your mods, hon—tried to boot you right out the back door, so I pulled you.”

Maxi speaks in a syrupy Appalachian drawl. The beautiful, middle-aged brunette with a no-nonsense demeanor stands in the doorway behind Claire’s desk. Claire’s assistant, Maxine Magnolia was programmed by KT Willow, one of the best hackers on the planet. She’s more sophisticated and trustworthy than your typical out-of-the-box concierge, and she’s specially coded for the PI biz, a package with access to a number of corporate, law enforcement, and DHS databases. If anyone can protect her butt, it’s Maxi.

“How deep did they go?”

“Might have compromised your alias.”

“Shit. Any data on its origins?”

“Negative, darlin’.”

“But we captured some good code?”

“Couple hundred k.”

“Okay, Maxi. I need you to trace those pipes. I also want to find out everything we can about Mitologías and Futures, LLC in connection with something called Sweetland. Do a level six matrix search. Any possible relationship at all to our investigation, I want to know what we’re looking at here.”

“I’ll get right on it, darlin’. You know Maxi never sleeps.” Maxi winks and disappears through her door.

—

It was supposed to be a quickie, a simple in and out, a parent corporation checking up on its kids; that’s what Bigshot told her, that’s what she knew how to do best. But Claire Deluna feared the job had transformed into something else, something more difficult and dangerous. The damn pipes passing through the Bolivarian firewalls had trig’d feelers before she was even close. Not by a mile.

The Mitologías SA backend connected to a complex maze of pipes carrying data between a number of discreet servers. Some or most of those servers were behind the so-called Jalapeño Firewall, a tricky gate to crash. She’d copied the node information for Maxi to google and decided to attempt a capture at the faucet. The faucet—the point where quantum encrypted data translated into readable code—is really the only option, unless you can find a leaky joint to exploit. These guys would have impeccable plumbing. Of course, they would have known about her presence the instant she intercepted the quantum encryption key and rerouted the datastream. That was a given. But how did they get that tracer on her so damned fast? And how the hell did they trig her mods to send a shockwave through her body?

She hadn’t even seen it coming. Was she was getting sloppy? She remembered when she had started out, a mere girl, she had expected backend snooping to be like the glamorous depictions in those cyber novels back at the Turn, but there were no whirling datastreams or fancy icons taking up unnecessary bandwidth here, no complex avatars slowing down your code; that was gamer fantasy, and this was the work world. Her simple toolkit displayed a VRO grid with nodes and gateways, labeled when the data was available, but mostly anonymous. She was no code expert, but she knew enough to access the proper gateways, recognize patterns, and eventually find the files she needed. It was the adrenalin factor, though, the excitement of waiting in the shadows watching, slipping in undetected to ferret out secrets, knowing you might be caught in a bad place, that’s what had made the game fun. But now she was no longer so sure of herself. She had been in hard places before, but her targets had been small players, not transnational corporations.

Now she would have to wait for Maxi to run the search. Claire made her way to her old, battered forties couch, with stuffing spilling from the tear in the cushion. She had spent hours getting every detail of her office just right, including stains, paper-strewn desk, overflowing ashtray, half-empty whiskey bottle. Her clients, those few who actually came to her, always got a good laugh from the decor. Reclining on the couch, she immersed herself in Red Harvest, a Dashiell Hammett novel she had recently begun, but she soon found her eyelids becoming unbearably heavy.

When she awoke, Maxi was insolently lounging in the client chair, eyeing Claire as she took a long sensual drag on her cigarette, releasing the smoke slowly, allowing it to billow out around her face. On some level the image of her sophisticated assistant, laying back in the comfortable overstuffed chair, a cigarette between her full red lips, gave her an almost sexual pleasure. A hundred years of advertising and popular culture had done its work. Yet, she despised real tobacco smoke. It occurred to her that if they ever started to program the smell of the stuff into the sims, it would force her to move somewhere enlightened enough to ban it. That was partially why she had resisted the host of new mods coming out lately. She could only imagine the so-called enhancements various misanthropic individuals would unleash. But, she knew she would have to submit eventually. It was part of her job to stay on top of the tech.

“Hey, hon,” drawled Maxi, as she exhaled a geyser of smoke up toward the ceiling. “I have that research you asked for.”

“Thanks, Maxi. Go on.”

“Two of those nodes are data servers based in the Alliance of Bolivarian States. Two other pipes terminate on a sim farm called New Patagonia. Lots of typical tourist stuff there; it’s a bit of a showcase for the Bolivarians. One of the nodes belongs to the Universidad de Simon Bolivar School of Science.”

“A research conduit?”

“Could be, hon. The other one seems to be something called the Temple of New Life. It’s sim address is 54 Calle Tierradulce, New Patagonia. Data flow analysis suggests this node may be connected to its own agricultural complex, bigger than the New Patagonia server farm itself. The address is evidently a public interface.”

“Where does the final pipe go?”

“A node belonging to D-Brane Technologies.”

That made sense. DBT was a Mitologías sister company, and the two had been the object of a months long bidding war between Futures, LLC, and the New America Corporation. Futures had paid the Bolivarians nearly twenty-five billion for controlling interest. D-Brane kept its products tightly under wraps, but they had two products on the market—both were citspecs mods which worked in tandem and used nano-neurostimulators to excite areas of the brain that triggered physical sensation. The tech had been out there for some time in the R & Ds, capable of engaging all of the senses in virtual reality, no longer just sight and sound, but smell, taste, touch, and programmable, synthetic drug-like experiences, some of it already actuated in the more affluent sims. The mods had become very popular among certain groups of young people over the past several months.

“What about Sweetland?”

“The term Sweetland came up a number of times,” said Maxi.

“Context?”

“All over the map, darlin’. The term has been in popular use over the past year, possibly the result of a guerilla marketing campaign. The name is also being used for a number of disparate product lines. Rumors began circulating about six months ago concerning the nature of the new Mitologías product, code-name Sweetland. There’s speculation that its a new sim technology or some sort of nanotech breakthrough. But the bulk of the Sweetland buzz seems to be around this Temple of New Life.”

“What is this temple thing? An RPG? A religious organization?”

“Maybe both—the religious element is definitely there.”  Maxi examined her cuticles, then eyeballed Claire. “I found something else interesting. There seems to be an unusual correlation between the Temple of New Life and missing persons in the FBI database. There is talk that the Temple might be a cult of some kind.”

“No shit?” This was a complication she didn’t particularly care to hear. “Let’s take that Temple-Missing Persons correlation up to level seven. Compile a list of individuals correlating to temple references. Compare it to police logs, media reports, anything in the public records.”

Maxi disappeared for a moment before she was back leaning in the doorway, batting her big eyelashes. “I got very unusual hits on some of these Temple of New Life names, darlin’.”

“Yes?”

“We have clusters of recently missing or deceased. Over a thousand all together out of some ten thousand names. That’s a lot, hon; way outside statistical probability. Most of them are young—under thirty. You have about two dozen from Phoenix, most of them reported missing or at the morgue. You have nearly an equal number of missing in both Denver and Portland, but no correlations at all, nothing on reported deaths. That’s why I say clusters. And here’s the really interesting thing—I found this article in The Albuquerque Journal. I quote: Seven bodies were found today in an abandoned storage facility. All of the youths, between fourteen and twenty-one years of age, were wearing cyber immersion technology devices called citspecs. They appeared to have died of starvation and dehydration. Police are investigating a possible suicide cult. Hon…” Maxi hesitated.

“Yeah, Maxi?”

“Hon, four of the seven correlated with that Temple list, and all were wearing DBT mods according to F.B.I. memos.”

The feeling returned—the sinking fear that she might be onto something she was not prepared to handle.

“Make an appointment with Andy Stephens, would you? I’ll see Mickey Nines tomorrow morning, but[Duane Poncy, 06/25/11 10:21 AM] I’m out of here for today.”

—

Bridge Whitedeer transluced her ocs and sighed. Some cautionary tic in her neural pathways nagged at her—your in way over your head, girl. But sheer exhaustion quashed the nascent protest; it had been a hard day, and it was time to put Claire Deluna to bed. She always regretted leaving her avatar behind: that life for this. For this…what?

She gazed out her window over the darkening waters of what had once been the south edge of downtown Seattle. Most of the buildings south of Pioneer Square remained, rising like drowned ghosts from the sea. A few people still lived inside these doomed towers. At high tide, they exited through windows just above the waterline and rode one of the taxi dinghies or homemade rafts created from plastic bottles and other floating garbage. When the tide dropped low, some donned waders and slogged their way to higher ground. At night, you could see their dim lights flickering in the windows. Other buildings leaned and twisted, undermined by the rising water which had flooded the Seattle underground and eroded their footing. Many older brick structures were clearly crumbling, and the city engineers declared that Smith Tower would likely go within the next few years. The skyscrapers further north still stood untouched by the advancing shoreline. Seattle, protected by the Sound and the Olympic Peninsula from the worst effects of the rising ocean, had fared much better than other cities, such as San Francisco, where the strong tides pushed constantly at the western hillsides, pulling the old structures, and the hills themselves, into the sea.

A little over two decades ago, about the time she was born, scientists began to grow seriously alarmed about the melting ice. Still, when the Greenland glaciers began to collapse in earnest, only a few cities had adequately prepared. By then, the country was in perpetual war and deep depression brought on by the oil crash. The sea rose three meters between the time Bridge began high school and the time she would have graduated in ’21. Since then, it had risen another twelve meters, fed by the sudden, unexpected disintegration of Antarctica’s ice shelves.

Bridge hunched her thin shoulders and pushed her short black hair back from her eyes with scrawny fingers. She considered her reflection in the window, absentmindedly teasing the mods embedded like tiny jewels behind her right ear. She looked nothing like her alter ego, Claire Deluna. She imagined Claire was actually attractive, with her cute red hair, and breasts you could actually see. A girl with more moxie and flair than her real life puppet master. More suitable as a private eye. Bridge could never be an investigator in the real life world; who would possibly take her seriously? And yet, Claire was the best. Even someone like Mr. Bigshot knew that.

She continued to look out the window for a time, watching the lights and listening. The drumming had begun, its tribal rhythm calling out from the homeless enclaves and the drowned buildings, as it had every night since the beginning of summer. It seemed more insistent now as the weather grew wet and inhospitable. There was something indescribably comforting in it.

Finally, Bridge crossed the floor to her tiny refrigerator, grabbed a half-eaten sandwich. She sat at her little kitchen table and took a bite. Then she put her head down on the table and fell asleep.

©2008–2011, Duane Poncy

The ancient TriMet bus lurched forward without warning, throwing Joe Larivee into the passenger standing behind him, upending Joe’s bag and spilling its contents. “Sorry,” he said as he watched his sandwich skid down the aisle toward the back of the bus. A skinny bare arm, red and pocked with oozing sores, reached out and snatched it.

“Shit.” No lunch today. He should have left it in the fridge at work. No checks had come on payday, the Agency was out of funds, and he was out of food stamps. And out of creds with the burrito man on Division, not that Arturo had had any edible tortillas since the wheat rationing; you couldn’t even buy a loaf of real bread in Portland these days. Joe squatted to retrieve his belongings from the floor. As he rose, the bus pitched, and he braced himself on the back of the nearest seat. The SmartSpots above the bus windows flashed simultaneously in red, white, and blue. Make her happy tonight. Guaranteed. The spammers had struck again.

“One-hundred-twenty-second and Stark,” announced the prerecorded voice. “This stop sponsored by Tommy Tonkin Bicycles by Toyota.” An old woman rose with difficulty from the seat next to Joe and hobbled from the bus. Joe sat in her place. A large gaping wound in the plastic seat pinched and poked his buttocks each time the bus encountered a pothole. The young man seated beside him gripped a ragged backpack tightly against his chest. He looked frantic, his eyes darting between the window and the front of the bus, as though searching for an escape. Joe’s heart skipped. What’s in the backpack? Why is this boy so scared? That was what he was, just a boy with a few scraggly hairs jutting out of his chin. Settle down, he told himself, there’s a hundred or more reasons this guy might be scared. He looked too much like a jackrabbit to be a ’cider.

In front of him, a woman wearing buds jerked her head rhythmically to some fast-paced music. Tweaking. She was likely younger than he, but her teeth were gone, and her face was scarred with the pockmarks of an old-fashioned meth addict. He seldom saw active trash-tweakers anymore, with all the new designer drugs. Plenty of his customers were recovered tweakers or had merely moved on to a drug more subtle in its ravages. This one wasn’t using a common methamphetamine. He suspected a derivative called black trash, or death, due to the speed with which it destroyed the mind and body. Some called it a suicide drug. Joe couldn’t imagine taking that exit. Why not just throw yourself in front of a bus, for God’s sake?

Next to the tweaker a young woman with wrap-around sunglasses, her head turned toward the aisle, moved her lips almost imperceptibly, her throat pulsing. He had a vague idea about the wraparounds: popular new hardware that tapped into the simulated worlds of the grid. Joe didn’t have much knowledge about that type of thing. Just another way for the advertisers to get into your head and sell you crap.

He sighed and pulled a file folder from his bag, “Connie Velasques” written in pencil on the tab. Beneath the name he could see the ghosts of Mary Snider, Tomas Sylvan, Letitia Jackson, partially erased; erased just enough so that a stranger would not recognize them. But Joe did. And he knew their children, and their ex-spouses and lovers, their job history, their drug habits, and their pain.

“You’ve got to remove yourself from all that.” Susan Miller’s voice echoed from some cubicle of memory. “You’ve got to mind your boundaries, Joe. You’re not responsible for the mess these people’s lives are in. If you hold on to all this suffering, you’ll drown in it.” That was five years ago, his first week on the job. He wondered whatever became of Susie; one day, she just didn’t show. It seemed like a recurring script. Many new caseworkers didn’t last six months, but even old-timers like Susie disappeared without notice, worn out, unable to heed their own advice.

He returned to Connie’s folder. This would be a routine check-in. Find out how Connie was managing at her new job, how the children were faring, if she was keeping clean. Connie had just kicked a seven-year heroin habit when his supervisors assigned her to Joe in January. She had done exceptionally well over the past nine months. School had started last week, so daycare would be less of a money sink while Connie looked for work or performed the occasional temp job. He had high hopes for her.

Joe’s heart sank when the bus pulled up in front of the apartment building—the ambulance, the blue and red flashing lights of police cars, a knot of officers standing around an open door. The door to Connie’s apartment.

It was going to be another one of those fucking days.

Joe tucked Connie’s folder back into his bag as he stepped off the bus. He hated talking to the cops. His Uncle Louis had been a cop, and Joe knew a little too much of what went on in the back room. He didn’t like most of these young uniforms, just back from war, with their arrogance and their disgust for these poor people trying to survive on the broken streets—as if this wasn’t a battlefield, too. But here the land mines were everywhere, not just underfoot.

At least he was in popo territory and he didn’t have to deal with the clean-n-safes. The private security firms hired by the local business associations were Portland’s solution to social and economic breakdown. For them, he held another level of disdain altogether. But less-organized East County businesses were unable to hire their own private police force. There would be anarchy here when the PPD was finally phased out.

Across the street, a blackwater, the Fed’s contribution to local law and order, stood sentry at the westbound MAX stop, clutching a semiautomatic. Even from a block and a half away, Joe could see the nervousness in his young face and the uncertainty of his footing. Waiting commuters eyed him with skittish diffidence.

Joe approached the popos with caution, flashing his identity badge to let them know that he worked for the Agency. He deliberately set out on a path close to the building so he could see through the window as he passed.

“You got business here?” the officer nearest him demanded.

“I’m her caseworker.” Joe looked askance through the window. Inside, Connie slumped on a couch, a rubber tourniquet wrapped around her arm, the hypodermic needle still dangling from her flesh; on the coffee table the lighter, the spoon.

“You were her caseworker,” said the cop. “Your docket just got cleared of one problem. This one’s gone to Sweetland, permanently.”

“She’s got kids at school,” Joe said, adding asshole under his breath.

“Well, I guess you get a paycheck then, after all.”

Joe swallowed his anger and nodded.

“You should go take care of them kids, now,” said the young cop, dismissing him.

Don’t argue, Joe told himself. Arguing just gets you in jail. Or disappeared. “I’ll do that. Thanks, officer.”

Joe retreated to the bus stop across the street, weaving his way carefully through the bicycle traffic. Out of nowhere, a group of young boys dashed past and a bottle flew through the air, landing at the feet of the blackwater, who raised his gun to his shoulder. Crouching, his muscles tense, Joe felt the adrenalin rush through his body as he hurried across the bus lane. Almost immediately, a bus pulled up to the stop. He stepped into the vehicle, and two of the young troublemakers broke from the pack, boarding behind him. They took the seat across the aisle. Joe clenched his jaw and nervously wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Did you see that blackwater’s face?” one kid whispered excitedly.

“Yeah, chuck,” said the other. “He was friggin’ ready to piss his pants.”

“You boys should be a little more cautious,” admonished the sixtyish woman behind them.

“Whatever, Grandma,” said the first, but they became silent and left the bus after two more stops. Joe exhaled slowly.

—

The General Dynamics Church of Christ Building housed the Agency in its basement. The chapel had been converted to corporate offices, but a few die-hard church members still met in the attic. When they lost their tax exemption, the church had succumbed grudgingly to the realities of Privatization. Soon the Agency would follow. In two more years, there would be no public sector, just the so-called free market; police, libraries, schools, churches, social services, all under the dictates of private profit. Joe could see the havoc being wreaked by the gods of the Free Market. There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing anyone could do. It was what they called a done deal.

A deep despair consumed him as he entered the basement and walked down the dim, shabby hall, its light green paint peeling and scuffed by the shoes of hundreds of weary people resting their feet against the wall as they waited for assistance—help that often never came. He slunk past Christi, the receptionist, signed in, and bee-lined to his cubicle to verify that Children’s Services Corp employees were picking up Connie’s kids. Then he discon’d and put in his buds, surfing to his favorite gridcast channel to zone out on some soothing music. No one would know, or care.

“Today,” said the news announcer,“the war in sub-Saharan Africa has taken a new turn. Nigerian federal troops, advancing on rebel camps, met no resistance. The camps were empty, claimed startled commanders. They reportedly found no insurgents, yet inside the tents, arms and ammunition waited, along with some meager food supplies and a handful of field computers. One British observer reported that, ‘it seemed as though the mothership came along and beamed them up. Very eerie…’ Meanwhile, in New York, to no one’s surprise, Governor Chelsea Clinton announced that she would run for President in the coming election. At a news conference announcing her candidacy, she stressed the need to combat domestic disorder…”

Joe removed the buds, put his head between his hands. All the children—and the missing rebels were children, because it’s the children who fight the wars, who go missing—like the children of his clients, never heard from again. “To hell with this,” he whispered, almost silently. “To hell with this,” again, shouting, not caring who heard. He picked up a broken cup he used as a pencil container and threw it across his cubicle with a violence that startled him. “I’m going home,” he announced to the office, making sure that everyone could hear. “Fuck this!”

—

Joe coasted to the curb and dismounted, pressed his bike through the vendors, hawkers, and hustlers, who daily set up shop on the sidewalks, up to his apartment building bicycle corral. From Jessie’s window emanated the faint but unmistakable blue glow of her VJ screen. He clearly remembered going into her room after she left this morning to make sure everything was shut off. It was routine because Jessie inevitably left something on, and although he lectured her about the cost of electricity and climate change and the threat of further rationing, nothing seemed to get through to her. It wasn’t defiance, just forgetfulness. She had been like that since she was a little girl. Her Grandma Amy used to tease her, “You’d forget your head if it weren’t screwed on.”

So, what was Jessie doing home on a school day? Inside the apartment, all was quiet, except for the murmured voice emerging from Jessie’s room. He put down his bag and crossed the room to her bedroom door, gently pushing it open. Jessie leaned back in her chair, involved in some fantasy world, talking to the air, wearing a pair of those wrap-around sunglasses like the ones worn by the woman on the bus.

“Jessie.” No answer.

“Jessie,” a little louder.

No acknowledgement. Joe walked up behind her and removed the glasses. Jessie jumped and wheeled around in her chair.

“God, Dad. You scared the pee wadding out of me. What are you doing home so early?”

“The question is, Jessie, what are you doing home so early?”

He saw the look, the evasive movement of her eyes to the right; Jessie was about to lie. Instead of stopping her, he would let her spin her story. He would gently challenge her until she became caught up in her own web. It never failed; the fourteen-year-old was a terrible liar.

“I wasn’t feeling good.”

“So why aren’t you in bed?”

“Well, I wasn’t feeling that bad.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Just some friends.” The Look again.

“And what friends would these be?”

“Pox and Cedar,” she said. Names he’d not heard before.

“So, why aren’t Pox and Cedar in school? Are they sick, too?”

“I think maybe they’re in a different time-zone or something.”

“Jessie,” Joe lit into her, “how often have I told you that people you meet online are not your friends? You don’t know them. You don’t know anything about them. They might not be kids at all. They might be rapists or terrorists or human traffickers. You don’t know what they are. Don’t you get that?”

She looked as if she were ready to cry or scream at him, Joe couldn’t tell which. It could go either way these days, but to his surprise she did neither. “I’m sorry, Dad. The kids told me about this sim on New Life. It’s really glitch. Everyone’s doing it.”

“So, where did you get the new hardware?” He held up the glasses.

“They’re citspecs, Dad,” she said. “You are so living in the past. They were selling them in the mall at SimWorld. They only cost $20.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I think the idea is to get people into the sims so they shop and buy stuff on New Life.”

New Life was the latest generation of life sims on the grid, not so much a game as a simulated world. For a couple of years now it had been the buzz among the Agency’s customers and some of his coworkers. Joe examined the glasses more closely and found they were slightly thicker than normal sunglasses with a tiny reset switch and two removable modules on the inside of the frame. They had buds built into the earpiece, otherwise they seemed quite ordinary. He grunted and put them down on her desk. Escapism. But probably no worse than some of the grid games kids played, or those stupid reality shows. Maybe he was being too harsh with Jessie.

“Jessie,” he said, “I just want you to be safe. You know that, right? Just don’t let anyone know your real name or where you live, okay? Be careful. And promise me you won’t skip any more school for this nonsense.”

“I won’t, Dad,” she said. “I promise.”

Joe closed the door and retreated to the kitchen. He pulled a beer from the fridge. He intended to zone out on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t want to think about work, or Connie Velasques, or Jessie, or the state of the world. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep.

—

It was nearly 6 o’clock when Joe woke, his back stiff from sleeping on the couch. Jessie had covered him with one of Amy’s frayed old quilts from the closet. She could be a sweet and thoughtful girl. He probably should give her some slack.

Joe stood and stretched, a faint headache lingering in his forehead. He closed his eyes momentarily and rubbed his temples. He folded the quilt with care, laying it across the back of the sofa, then he washed, shaved, and changed his clothes. This morning he would prepare a real family breakfast. Maybe a couple of those rare and precious eggs he had saved in the fridge and some toast made from what passed for bread these days.

He took out the eggs and placed them on the counter. Then he pulled out the fred, the little infrared cooker stashed away at the back of the counter. He hardly ever used it anymore, except to reheat leftovers; most of their meals came in self-heating cartons these days. He set the table before knocking on Jessie’s door. “Hey, little girl, breakfast is cooking.”

No sound came from the room, so he pushed the door open. Jessie was sprawled on top of her bed, sound asleep. He watched her for a long moment with something that felt a little like sadness. A pretty young woman with her mother’s long, dark hair. She was growing up too fast. In a few years, he would be alone, and what would that be like? He didn’t want to think about it just now. He surveyed her room, still in transition from a little girl’s. Teddy bears and childhood games mingled with posters of pop stars and the paraphernalia of teenagers. On her desk, the screen of her virtual journal glowed. He walked over to turn the VJ off, and he picked up her gamer glasses. What did she call them? Sit specks? He pronounced it slowly in his mind. Then, with a little twinge of voyeuristic guilt, he attempted to peer into her world, but he saw only darkness. He placed the citspecs gently back on her desk. He noticed a slip of scratch paper there, “Gretel deVoid” and “Old Paris” written on it in Jessie’s scrawl.

It looked like some RPG. He smiled with nostalgia, trying to remember being a teenager, engulfed in online role playing games in the middle of the night. Things really hadn’t changed that much. He shut down the VJ and roused Jessie from bed. She seemed more groggy than usual.

“Up too late playing on the grid again,” he complained.

“Oh, Dad, do I have to get up?”

“I’ve fixed breakfast, believe it or not.”

She buried her head beneath her pillow, pulling the quilt over her. “I choose not to believe,” came the muffled reply.

“I have a riddle for you,” he said. “What has five bare toes, and is connected to a silly bone?”

Jessie giggled, and pulled her exposed foot under the covers. “Don’t you dare, Dad! I’m not a kid anymore!”

“Okay, sweetie. There’ll be no feet tickling today. But come have breakfast with the old man.”

“You know, civilized people consider tickling a form of barbaric torture.”

“Just preparing you for life,” he quipped. He regretted the words before they left his lips, but he couldn’t stop them. They sounded cruel and cynical and whining.

Jessie must have sensed his despair, because she sat up in bed and took his hand.

“Better times are coming, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t you always say that?”

“Yeah, sweetie,” he said, “better times will come.”

But, Joe couldn’t see how that was possible. Maybe in another life.

©2008–2011, Duane Poncy

The thing’s breath, hot and foul, touched the back of her neck. Her muscles tensed as adrenalin kicked in. The predator’s shadow, crouched and still, hung just off to her right. She tried to judge the distance, but the other shadow, a little further out and behind, complicated the calculation. What had they taught her? Triangulate. She sensed the vircat tense, its movement nearly imperceptible. Perspiration rolled down her forehead. Time to decide. Now. She jumped, whirled around, swinging her long knife point forward toward the vircat. Miscalculation. The thing’s huge claw came down on her shoulder with a terrible ripping sound, and Gretel deVoid fell hard under the full weight of the cat.

The vircat disappeared, and Gretel stood, shaking her head. “Damn, I don’t think I’ll ever get this right.”

“You’re doing just fine, Gretel.” Toxine’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “Your calculations just need to come more quickly. Practice. Shall we try again?”

“I can’t. I have homework tonight.” She couldn’t believe she was saying this, she had never let homework decide her path before. But this was different. This homework meant something.

“Very well,” said Toxine, as the nighttime forest, with its two moons, faded, and the classroom at Universidad de Simon Bolivar appeared around them. Toxine looked at Gretel approvingly. “You are a brave girl, you know, going off to a new world, forging into the wilderness.”

Self-conscious, Gretel looked at the floor.

“How are things going with your dad?” Toxine asked.

“I haven’t told him yet. I still haven’t figured out what to say.”

“That will come too. Now off to your homework, eh?”

“Thanks, Toxine,” said Gretel.

Jessie Larivee, aka Gretel deVoid, zoned from the grid and sighed. Since classes began three months ago, a silence had grown between herself and her father. She had let it go too long. Now, when she played the scenario in her head, she could hear his voice saying, “It’s impossible, you can’t get to another planet on the grid,” or “You’re only fourteen. You’re too young to make these kinds of decisions,” or maybe he would stand there, slack-jawed and silent before sending her to her room. How could she possibly convince Joe Larivee, the proud luddite, that yes, you can go to another world, and no, I’m not too young, and yes, I would like you to go with me, Dad, but whatever you’re decision, I am going.

Talking to her mother would be so much easier. Jessie had neither seen nor heard from Jolene in nearly six years. How could she possibly care one way or another?

Toxine had urged her to speak with both of her parents. “You know,” she said, “you may be leaving them forever. You need to say your goodbyes.”

Jessie didn’t know Toxine’s real world name, only that she lived in Montreal; but she trusted the older girl unquestioningly. Toxine was at Masters Level and had taken Gretel on as her protégé, helping her through the tough exam preparation. The Sweetland sim was as close to the real thing as a sim could come, and with the new citspec mods, you could smell the odors and feel the ground beneath your feet as though it was some solid, real thing. Even the claws of the vircat ripping through her shoulder left a lingering discomfort; not pain, exactly, but more like the scratchy stinging that comes when you reach barehanded through a blackberry bramble. Most sims had yet to be programmed for the new mods, but it was only a matter of time before almost every sim on the grid would be hyper-sensed.

Pox Americano, Toxine’s younger brother, claimed to have worked on the Sweetland sim, but Jessie didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She thought he might be a bit of a braggart. “You should try the glitch sex script I wrote for the Sweetland sim, cherie,” he had said earlier in the day in his cute Quebecois accent, and she laughed at him.

“I suppose you want to try it out with me?”

“You know, as the designer, I could show you how to get the most out of it.”

“A product demonstration. How romantic,” she replied, laughing. “Well, it so happens that I plan to remain a virgin until I marry.”

“You are a virgin?” He pretended astonishment. “What a pity.”

Jessie shook herself out of an evolving fantasy. Dinner. Homework. She had a bunch of homework for her immigration classes. Hormones would have to wait.

—

“Jessie,” Dad called from the living room, “please take out the recycling.”

“In a minute.” She shut down the grid and waited for his objection. It came like lightning.

“Now.”

Recycling as the Titanic is going down was how she thought of it. When you are drowning, why the hell are you taking time to sort the garbage? But in reality she knew her futile resistance was a habit from childhood when occasionally she got out of some onerous task or another. No more. And yet she couldn’t help herself. “You have a stubborn gene,” Grandma Amy used to say. “Got it from your Grandpa.”

Jessie sighed and marched to the kitchen with heavy feet to the nook where the recycling containers spilled over onto the floor. She rounded up the stray cartons and bottles and fitted them into the bins as best she could, leaving a scattered few behind. Then she carried them down the hall to the back door. The grimy door to the alley stairway was reinforced with thick steel plates, and the lock disengaged with a heavy thunk as she turned the knob. She dragged the bins out onto the landing.

The mist that had been falling earlier in the day had subsided, and the Portland sky showed signs of clearing. The alley was wet, and standing pools of rainwater filled the depressions in the aging pavement. From the shadows came a voice she recognized, but the words were muddled and incoherent. She heard a rustling sound at the garbage dumpster. If not for the familiar mumbling cadence, Jessie might have thought rats were scuttling through the dumpster. She stopped at the top of the stairs so she wouldn’t frighten him. “Alan,” she called, “are you hungry?”

“Jessie,” came the pleading reply, “I’m looking for something to eat. You got something for me to eat?”

She still couldn’t see him, but the edge of his cart protruded from behind the fence that shielded the dumpster from the street. She set the recycling bins down at the foot of the steps. “If you’ll put these bins out for me, I’ll go get something for you.”

She returned to the apartment and tiptoed back into the kitchen. Dad was oblivious on the couch. She worried about him. Nearly every evening, he came home and fell asleep or stared off into space. He might as well be a gridhead. At least on the grid, you could learn things and interact with people.

She opened the fridge quietly. She couldn’t let Dad know about Alan. She had promised. He was one of Joe’s old school buddies. She had met him for the first time when when she was eight, shortly before he had joined the army and gone to fight in Africa. He had come over several times that year, and he had seemed to the little girl a kind, easy-going, witty young man. He always stayed late in those days, talking into the night with Joe, Frank and Amy. They would argue about capitalism and the wars and whether it was better to work inside the system or out, whether or not joining the military was morally defensible. Amy attempted to dissuade Alan from signing up, arguing that war is never ethically defensible, but Alan insisted that his options were limited.

“What am I going to do if I don’t join up. I got no work. I got no skills. I got no education. The army will pay for college.”

“It’s a chimera, Alan,” Amy said, prophetically. “I’ve seen those kids who come back. They’re too damaged to go to school.”

In the end Amy lost the argument and Alan shipped out to Azania. Then one day about six months ago he had shown up again at their door while Joe was working. Alan had lost all of his quick-witted charm, and seemed dull and confused. “I been out of work,” he had mumbled. “I thought maybe Joe could help me…it’s all a mistake. I don’t want Joe to see me like this. Please don’t tell him, Jess. I should never have come here. Promise me.”

Jessie had promised. It had been easy at the time, because she had a secret too. She had been skipping school, and it was a whole lot easier to just forget the whole thing than face getting caught. Then a month later she had seen Alan again in the alley, rummaging through the dumpster, and she offered him some food. She suspected that Alan was schizophrenic and maybe mentally impaired, but he seemed harmless enough. He began coming around on recycle days, and Jessie had taken to feeding him leftovers, if they had them, heating them in the fred. Sometimes she would take him a new carton of beans or a peanut butter sandwich. Then they would sit on the bottom step and talk while he ate.

Today there were leftovers, and Jessie heated the sautéed veggies with tofu on brown rice, careful to remove it before the fred’s alarm sounded. It was some disgusting pre-packaged dinner, therefore uneaten. She was well aware of the irony—that the world was starving. that her friend Alan was malnourished, that there were days at the end of every month when she and her dad went without, and yet she could still be spoiled and picky.

“Got a nice hot dinner for you tonight, Alan,” she said as she descended the stairs. She noticed that the recycle bins were still at the bottom of the steps where she left them. She would have to remind him.

“Alan.” Why didn’t he answer? Had he moved on down the alley?

“Just put it on the step, Jessie.” The voice came from behind the dumpster. “I’ll get it in a minute.”

Something was wrong. Alan didn’t just come around to eat. His loneliness was as acute as his hunger. If he hadn’t told her as much, she could see it in his face, hear it in his attempts to hold her attention. Many nights she awkwardly found herself interrupting him, saying, “Goodnight, Alan. Dad’s going to get worried about me.”

She put the dinner on the step and picked up one of the bins, carrying it around to the pick-up area. Alan stood in the shadows, unmoving, except for his hand, which he instantly raised to cover his face. But not before she caught sight of the split eyelid and swollen, mangled lip. One side of his face bore a huge purple bruise.

“Alan, what happened to you?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this, Jessie. I don’t want to scare you.”

“What happened to you, Alan?”

“Some fucking gestapos beat me up. They kicked me in the face. They said that I was sleeping in their place. But I been sleeping there, Jessie. I been sleeping there since summer, fucking bastards.” Alan punched a fist in the air above his head, staring wildly at some phantom opponent. His voice was intense, but barely above a whisper. “Who had a fucking election and elected you fucking assholes dictator of the fucking planet? I didn’t have no chance. The bastards come down on me like a fucking blitzkrieg from the USA fucking air force. Like I was some fucking peasant in fucking Afghanistan or something. Jesus Christ, take me to Sweetland. Jesus Christ.”

Jessie stepped back. She had never seen him so angry before. “Take it easy, Alan,” she croaked weakly. He wrapped his arms around his torso and said, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” over and over, rocking on his heels until the rhythm of his mantra seemed to calm him.

Finally, Jessie extended her hand. “Come. Dinner’s getting cold.”

He refused to take her hand, but he followed her to the back steps. She brushed away the flies and pushed the plate at him. He grabbed it and began shoveling the now-cold food into his mouth, wincing at the pain from his injured face. She made a few attempts at conversation, but he stared down the alley blankly, his eyes glazed.

Then he vomited. The dinner he had just eaten spewed over the apartment stairs, mixed with blood and reeking of alcohol. “God, Alan,” she said, “you need to get some medical help.”

“No, no. Leeches won’t help me. They use leeches. Suck your blood dry. That’s what they do. They suck you until you’re dead. Fucking hospitals. Fucking doctors. Just wanna go to Sweetland. Can you help me go to Sweetland, Jessie?” His eyes were glassed over in a teary film.

“Alan, let me talk to Dad—you need help.”

“No, Jessie. Don’t tell Joe I been here. You promised. Remember.”

Jessie’s stomach knotted, and she was becoming nauseous from the stench. Think. What can you do? Her own eyes were tearing now. Take some time to think this out. 

“Wait here, Alan,” she said. “I won’t tell Dad. I gotta go get a mop to clean up this mess. I’ll figure out something.” She ran up the stairs to the building’s custodial closet on the second floor and grabbed a bucket and mop. As she filled the bucket, her mind raced. How can I convince Alan to find help? Is that free clinic on Burnside still there?

She dragged the bucket back down the hall to the rear door and pushed it open. Alan was nowhere in sight. She left the bucket and bounded down the stairs. “Alan,” she called. She looked into the dumpster cage, then ran down the alley to the street, searching for his cart, calling his name. He had vanished.

—

Jessie ate dinner in her room, picking listlessly at her food, Alan foremost on her mind. Dad would know what to do, but she had promised. Alan didn’t want Joe, his old school friend, to know what had become of him. Don’t be ashamed of mental illness, she wanted to tell him. But it would do no good.

Then there were the goodbyes to come: Jolene, Mel, maybe Dad. What would she do about Dad? Pushing her food aside, she lay face down on her bed, clutching her pillow tightly to her chest. The sound of a drum circle drifting in from St. Francis Park seeped through her cracked window, comforting her. She tried to remember the first time she heard the drums—maybe last year, maybe before. At some point the rhythm became a nightly event. Whenever the drumming faded, other drums in the distance called back, saying, “You aren’t alone. We’re here with you.”

Her thoughts took her to school, real world school, pit school, where she hadn’t been since early September. She didn’t want to return, it felt like going to a foreign country, but she had to say goodbye to Mel. Melissa Monroe had been her best friend in eighth grade, and over the summer Mel had lived off-grid in Eugene with her father. Jessie felt as though she had abandoned Mel. Something about the whole Sweetland thing had made her withdraw from her old friends; the decision had been too monumental, too life-changing, too sudden and unexplainable. Now she felt guilty. If school seemed like a major distance, how could she measure the journey she was about to undertake? The enormity of her decision once again overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t think any longer about the life she would leave behind—about the possibility that her father might be lost to her. Instead, she closed her eyes and lulled herself with the drumming, until she drifted off to sleep.

—

She could have made the call silently from her room, but it never really seemed private with Dad in the apartment, so she slipped quietly away to the downtown library. She biked across the Morrison Bridge, stopping at the top to survey the barren landscape—it was one of her rituals. She remembered when the city had been part of a vast urban forest; when everything greened in early spring, the dogwoods and cherry trees blooming,  Dad walking her to school along sidewalks covered in a magic carpet of pink and white petals; and later, as summer approached, the bumblebees emerging from their earthen hives to swarm around the lavender and rosemary Grandma Amy planted in the front yard, everything smelling so wonderful. This time of year, mid-October, the leaves would begin to drop, and there were so many leaves that the city sent out trucks to help residents clear the streets so that the drains wouldn’t clog and cause flooding when the rains came. Mountains of leaves by the curbs, smelling sweetly of decay.

The first die-off came when she was seven. Dutch elm disease, spread by elm bark beetles, left dying trees throughout the city. A few years later, the city’s black walnuts had mostly died, destroyed by a twig beetle which carried the spores of a deadly fungus. By that time the bees were gone. And the cherry trees. The die-offs continued throughout her young life, the horse chestnuts and oaks and more exotic, imported trees first, then the evergreens. Now there were only patches of trees left on the west hills and some higher elevations, like the Alameda ridge and Mount Tabor. Forest Park had been decimated. The path of destruction left a massive scar where the big fire had traveled up through the hills to the park, turning posh houses and everything else in its path into embers. Now, the West Hills were beginning to green again—from invasive ivy, which competed with thickets of newly immigrated kudzu, strangling anything in their paths. Only the native willows and dogwoods survived in abundance, spontaneously springing up in the alleys and along the river, like weeds. If anything will survive, she thought, it will be the grass and the dogwoods.

At the library she found a quiet corner and put on her citspecs, transluced, set the visuals to real world, and opened a comlink to her mother.

“Hello?” replied a strange voice. Jessie panicked, nearly shutting down the connection. The voice repeated, “Hello?”

“Mom?” Jessie’s voice tentative, barely audible.

“You have the wrong party,” the woman said.

“Mom,” Jessie repeated, a little louder. “It’s Jessie.”

“Jessie? Jessie? How did you get my number?” Was that all her mom had to say after so many years?

“I’m sorry,” Jessie said, “I think I made a mistake.”

She was ready to cut the link, when Jolene said, “Jessie, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Jessie, what are you talking about?” Her mother’s voice had an edge of panic. She would need to explain.

“Mom, I’m not going to off myself or something. I’m leaving, and I thought you should know.” Jessie felt six years of anger and confusion bubbling to the surface.

“Jessie, what do you mean? You aren’t making any sense.”

“Mom.” She raised her voice, almost hysterical. “Six years. Six fucking years. I cried the first two, every single night. And then, I just got pissed. And now I just want to frigging say good bye.” I will not cry, she told herself. I will not cry.

“Well, I can see your father taught you how to swear just like him.” Jolene was cold. “So, where are you going?”

“You won’t understand,” Jessie snapped. She remembered her surroundings; looks of disapproval penetrated the thick air, and she glared back in defiance. Go ahead, get the gestapo.

“Try me,” challenged Jolene.

“I’m going to Sweetland.”

Through a long silence, Jessie could hear her mother breathing on the other end. Finally, “What did you say?”

“I said Sweetland, Mom. I’m going to Sweetland. And I told you that you wouldn’t understand. I just had to hear your voice before I left.”

“Sweetland. But what is Sweetland?” Jolene’s tone had changed, softened, became the sound of a mother suddenly interested in her daughter’s life.

How was she going to explain Sweetland?

“It’s a place—there’s a community in the forest,” she said. She left out the part about the two moons. “It’s a kind of environmental community. There’s no grid or any way to stay in contact with—” She almost said the Earth, but thought better of it. “—with you.”

“Is this your dad’s idea?” Jolene queried.

“Not exactly. I learned about it on New Life.”

“You have a New Life account?”

“Of course,” she said. “All the kids have one.”

“Why don’t we do lunch or something, and you can tell me more.”

Sweetness and concern. Jessie was confused. Why was Jolene making nice all of a sudden? “After six years, just like that, you want to have lunch?”

“Isn’t that why you called? To say goodbye.”

“Sure, I guess. I’m Gretel deVoid. You can message me inworld.”

“Okay, I’ll do that. My handle is Su Ato2. Thanks for calling, sweetheart. Talk to you soon.”

Silence. Jolene had discon’d.

Jolene

Jolene Cheng disengaged from the grid and cried. After one minute and twenty-three seconds, she determined that an appropriate amount of time had passed, and abruptly ceased. Not that she watched the clock, or anything so crass as that. She did have feelings. It was precisely because she had feelings that she had maintained complete distance from her daughter. Her responsibilities were too great. She was far too important to the firm to be distracted by sentimentality.

She went to the kitchen and poured the morning’s second cup of coffee. She didn’t need this. She really didn’t. But the kid said she was going to Sweetland. This could be important. It didn’t surprise her that Jessie would be involved in this Bolivarian shit. She was Amy and Frank Larivee’s grandchild, after all. And Joe, the spineless bastard, was no different, deep down beneath that quivering surface. He was weak, was all. But her ex be damned.

What Jolene wanted to know, what the Anti-Terrorism Office wanted to know: just what the hell is Sweetland? For the last six months a cloud of lies and misinformation had descended on the grid, on New Life –a cloud so thick, it reeked of black ops. It didn’t help that the corporate world had moved in and co-opted it, adding a whole new layer of obfuscation. Something was up. Something big. It could be theirs, it could be ours, but it was big. She would get to the bottom of it, one way or another.

She just didn’t need any emotional garbage screwing up her investigation.

©2008–2011 by Duane Poncy