She slid into the water beside the noobs. Seen from this side of hot/cold treatment, they were gnarled by years in default reality. Being in the death cult of money and status marked you. They bore the marks. She hoped to erase her own someday.
“Can we join you?”
“You already have,” the sarcastic one said, good natured. He was between her and Etcetera—who’d followed her into the water—and Etcetera gave him a brotherly elbow in the ribs. They were at ease side by side, like brothers but not, pink arm by brown arm, hairless chest next to Etcetera’s thick mat.
“Herr Von Puddleducks,” she said, “what say you to our humble baths?”
“Decadent,” he sniffed. “Sure to be a breeding ground for something entirely unsavory.”
“Don’t listen,” the girl said. “It’s amazing.”
Etcetera said, “You’ve got to try that hot/cold thing. It’s consciousness-alteringly good.”
“Maybe later,” the sarcastic one said.
“Definitely later,” the girl said. “How’d you get your scar?”
Which was very forward of her and a good walkaway kind of question, in that it violated every norm of default. Limpopo levered her torso out of the water and torqued to look at the mess of burn scar from her ribcage down her thigh. She ran her fingers over it, the tightness and its irregular surface merely sensations now, no longer horrors.
“Happened not long after I first went walkaway. We’d built rammed-earth houses on the escarpment, two dozen of them. Real refu-luxury: power, water, fresh hydroponics, and soft beds. Took about three hours a day each to keep the whole place running. Spent the rest of the time re-creating a Greek open-air school, teaching each other music and physics and realtime poetry. It was sweet. I helped build a pottery and we were building weird wheels that did smart adaptive eccentric spinning in response to your hands and mass, so that it was impossible to throw a non-viable pot.
“We were right up on the edge of default, close to the border. It was nice because we’d get day-trippers we could talk to about what was going on in the world. Tell the truth, I liked being on the border because it was an escape hatch. If things got bad, I could throw it in, walkback. Call my mom.
“The day-trippers weren’t always nice. There was a group of guys, neighborhood watch, who’d show up whenever anything went wrong in their fortress-condos. Someone got robbed: it must have been a walkaway. Graffiti? Gotta be walkaways. Murder? One of us, can’t possibly be one of those civilized types.
“For people living with continuous surveillance, they had a lot of crime. The property violations were their kids, who’d figured out how to turn off daddy’s spyware so they could get busy. If you think drones are going to stop teenagers from fucking, you’re out of your mind.
“I don’t know who did the murder. I heard it was horrible. Arson. Someone pwned a whole block of houses and did something with the safety sensors and the gas and whoof. Twenty-plus dead, including kids. Including a baby. I can’t imagine someone doing that, and I know it wasn’t anyone from our settlement. Something like that, it’s got to be personal.”
The three watched raptly, looks of horror dawning as they realized where the story was going. But Etcetera, bless his earlobes, spoke up: “Maybe totally sociopathic. A six-sigma event in someone’s neurotypicality. Not saying that a stranger doing that wouldn’t be totally fucked up and shit, but don’t discount the school-shooter/bad brains hypothesis outright.”
“I’ve wondered about that. I thought it might be provocateurs, because of what happened.” She traced the scar with her fingers. “Those rammed-earth houses, they’re really easy to instrument. The standard build has environmental sensors and fail-safes and alarms. They used the earthworks machines near the camp to mound up dirt on the façade and back lane of a whole row of houses, shifting tons of dirt and gravel in front of the doors. They walked down the line, calm as you like, smashing out windows and throwing Molotovs in each. Then they walked around the other side and tried the same for the back windows.
“But those windows were shatterproof, which is what saved us. They had a big argument about the best way to get through them. While that was happening, we were inside, organizing. The rammed-earth houses were two-up/two-downs, a family room and kitchen on the ground floor, an upper loft with two small bedrooms and a toilet. They were built to be thermostatic, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, circulation channels cut into each connecting wall, with nautilus-chambered noise-labyrinths that let air through but dampened sound.
“My house—I shared it with three other people—was at the end where they were arguing about smashing the windows. I knew that I had to get out, the place was full of smoke and fire. We were on the top floor, in the sleeping rooms, because it was the middle of the night. That meant that we weren’t in the flames, but the smoke was congregating on that floor. My friend kicked out the noise-labyrinth and we were able to squeeze through it into the next house, where there were five people, with the walls knocked out between their bedrooms to make one big sleep pit. They were in a panic because one of them had already passed out from the smoke. They wanted to try for the door. We calmed them, explained what was going on outside, sent them through the noise-guard into the next place.
“I had to get the word going, get people moving to that last place, so I hung back and messaged everyone, sipping at the pocket of fresh air until it got too rank, then I followed them. The next place was already cleared out and so was the next, and the fire in that place wasn’t so bad, so I paused to do some more messaging.
“I misjudged the smoke. Passed out. One of my friends figured I was missing and came back, pushed me through three more noise-guards until I was with the rest of the group. They split into two teams, one group downstairs to fight the fire and the other trying to bust through the end wall. The rammed earth was really good at deflecting blows, but you could claw and dig it away, and I thought there was enough crew working on that to get the job done.
“I went downstairs to fight the fire. The walls were impervious to flames, of course, but the Molotovs had their own fuel, and there was plenty of paper furniture and plastic kitchen appliances that burned if you got them hot enough. I had a wet cloth around my face, but it had dried, and I could hardly see or breathe. I didn’t even notice that my shirt was on fire until one of the other women in my crew tackled me and rolled me on the ground.
“By then they’d scraped a good-sized hole in the top floor, and thrown a pile of bedding and clothes onto the ground outside and we hang-dropped into it as fast and as quietly as we could.
“The vigilantes figured out what was going on, and came to ride us down. They had a lot of macho A.T.V. shit, plus drones. We had the clothes on our backs, and some of us were nearly naked. We scattered. I let the woman who’d put out my fire lead me into the brush, to a muddy culvert where we lay with just our mouths and noses out of the mud, so we wouldn’t have an IR signature. I had to get up first, all my body heat gone, the hypothermia setting in. I knew what it was, knew I’d be dead soon if I didn’t get warm.
“My friend tried to keep me from going, but I knew I was right. Whatever else was going on, I was going to die if I didn’t get warm. I stood. I shivered, and there was this pain here—” she traced the scar. “My friend cursed me back to the settlement, convinced we were going to get shot. But she came. Safety in numbers.
“Safety in numbers is a powerful idea. By the time we straggled to the smoking ruins, nearly everyone was there. The walkaways were in bad shape, hurting and coughing and cold. Staring at us from the other end of the houses were the vigilantes, hostile and unsure of themselves. They’d had a group madness that let them burn their neighbors’ homes. They’d been a mob, with diffused responsibility, the whole thing an emergent property of social mass, and now it had dissipated.
“My group set up an infirmary, right in front of them, treating our wounded with whatever we had. There were some people who’d hurt themselves jumping, some
who’d gotten hurt in the scramble through the woods. It wasn’t until dawn broke and we did a head count and a network sweep that we discovered four people were missing. Two of them straggled in later. Two were found in one of the houses, charred to bone, missed in that scramble. One of the dead was fifteen years old, and no one knew how to get in touch with his parents, somewhere out there in default.
“Word got out about the fire. There was a lot of U.A.V. traffic, not just copters and gliders, but bumbling zepps with medical relief and food. Soon there were people, more walkaways, and the straights freaked out and started to arm up, build a rampart to defend themselves from reprisals.
“There was no revenge. The straights had stolen our earthmoving gear for their defensive rampart, but there were new diggers within a couple of days. Don’t know who brought it. I was laid up with bad fever, infection. When I came to my senses, they told me they hadn’t expected me to make it. I was too poorly to help for weeks. It was only once we had some wet printers running that I had pharma for the infection—some silver-doped antibiotics that knocked it out.”
They listened raptly. Then the girl shook her head like there was a bee in her ear. “Am I getting this right? You got burned out by insane vigilantes who killed your friends and nearly killed you, personally, and you hung around?”
“We didn’t hang around.” She smiled at the memory. “We rebuilt. The normals watched from their ramparts, like a militia, but we didn’t fight. First thing, we built a kitchen, then we baked, because rammed-earth construction is hungry work. Every time cookies or granola bars came out, we brought a tray over to them under a white flag and left it. The trays piled up, untouched, until one day they were gone. Don’t know if they ate them or not.
“It was very Gandhi-ey, though I had an itchy neck from the thought of all those scopes trained on me. They’d dial their laser-sights up to visible and make the dots dance on our foreheads, or over our hearts. But when we put out videos—including a red dot over the breast of a very pregnant woman who’d come to help—there was such a flood of net-rage for the vigilantes they quit it.
“We dozed the old houses when the new ones were done. We’d lived in hexayurts and tents, because our old places were uninhabitable. Having them there, the mummies of our dead, kept us working and shamed the vigilantes. Once the old places were down, we planted wildflowers and grasses that would have been beautiful when they grew out.
“The new settlement was three times as big. A lot of our volunteers wanted to stick around, and then there were new walkaways, so disgusted with the vigilantes they left the gate-guarded town. Some were double agents, but that was okay, since we didn’t have any secrets. Secrets were just overhead.
“As we got nearer to move-in, the atmosphere got festive. There were movie nights on the sides of the buildings, which we’d painted white. We always tried to paint our stuff white, just to do our bit for the planet’s albedo. We turned our excavation site into a swimming hole with water from the creek. The earthworks machines turned into rope swings and dive platforms.
“I was in the pool when the vigilantes moved in again. They HERFed our drones and used pain-rays and sonic flashlights to herd us all into the square between the four rows of houses. Then a guy with a semi-military private security badge used a loudtalker to warn us that he was deputized by the county to clear the land and we had ten minutes to vacate. There was a EULA after that, about how they could just blow us away under the Anti-Terror Act of such-and-such if we engaged in conduct likely to represent a threat to life or property. As soon as he was done, he cranked up that fucking pain-ray. No one even thought about going back for their stuff. It was like your face was melting. There were kids in our group, under ten, and they screamed like they were being sawn to pieces. You hear stories about parents lifting a car off their kids, but that’s nothing—I saw parents walk straight into the pain-ray to get their kids. One of them fell down seizing, and her partner lifted her in a fireman’s carry with a kid under the other arm. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more impressive physical feat.
“We couldn’t hide in the woods. They had their U.A.V.s flying overlapping coverage, following us in flocks until we were twenty klicks away. I limped all day and all night, and every time I slowed down, babycopters would drop out of the sky and ram me, nudging me along like cattle. I stuck with a couple who were carrying their kid. They stopped and tried to camp because their little boy couldn’t take another step and none of us had it in us to carry him anymore, and I stood guard over them, batting the copters with a leafy branch. More and more of the little bastards descended on us and eventually we moved on. They begged bicycles from a noncombatant couple on the road, and then I was slowing them down. I moved off on my own.
“I eventually dropped, and I must have been out of the copters’ enforcement range, because they hovered off on the horizon, making that cricket-noise, but I drifted off even so and when I awoke they’d gone. Must have needed a recharge and the vigilantes didn’t think I warranted a relief squadron.”
“What happened next?” the girl said. Of the three, she was most horrified. Limpopo guessed that this was because she was the richest of them, the one for whom this was the most inconceivable.
Limpopo shrugged, felt a tightness in her shoulders, realized she’d harshed her mellow by reliving the experience. It was three years before, and she still got some PTSDish moments, but not for a while. This telling made it come strong. These three reminded her of whom she’d been, a fresh walkaway and, yes, a bit of a shlepper. The fire and the forced march had burned shlepper instinct out, made her realize the uselessness of getting attached to stuff.
“I walked away. That’s what it comes down to. It’s a big world, and most of it is fungible. Doesn’t matter where you are or what’s around you, if you can cover your basic needs and find something productive to do. I ended up with this crew, and forked a tavern off the UNHCR refugee design, and that’s how you find me today.”
“What about the rest of your old camp?”
“Here and there. Some worked on the Belt and Braces. Some went somewhere else. A couple dropped off the walkaway grid, and I’m guessing they walkedback, it was too much for them, which is ‘totally their business and absolutely cool with me,’ as the song goes. I checked in on the site itself. It’s got a high-security perimeter. The buildings have been bulldozed. My meadow’s still growing, and the wildflowers are as beautiful as I thought they’d be. I made the world a measurably better place, which is more than you can say for the assholes who chased us off.”
“Amen,” said Etcetera. “That was an insane story and I am very glad you told it to us. Now I want to go and try a different pool. You coming?”
“Hell yeah,” said the sarcastic one. “Did you say there’s a pool where the fish will come and give you oral pleasure?”
“Follow me,” she said, and led a parade of dripping, naked people outside into the chill of the early evening and the gorgeous heat of the water. The fish came and ate away their dead skin while they lolled back and became creatures of pure nerves and breath again.
[iii]
Someone said a whisky would be perfect, someone else said a toasted cheese sandwich would be incredible, someone said she could barely keep her eyes open and wanted to find something soft to crash on, or somewhere horizontal. Limpopo called time on the onsen. “Let’s find a midnight feast and a bed.” She thought of the cushions in the big room on the third floor, ideal for cuddle-puddles, just what she needed at that moment.
They showered again in the communal antechamber, floatingly relaxed. Without saying a word—without it being overtly sexual—they scrubbed one another’s backs. Sexual or not, there was animal pleasure in being groomed by someone, and it deepened the feeling of sweet, tazzy decadence.
They were so boneless that it took five minutes for anyone to realize that the noobs’ stuff had been stolen.
Before that, there was just an ambling wobble as they looked for their clothes.
Then mounting alarm, and finally the girl said, “We’ve been robbed.” The two boys said, “Shit.” They looked at Limpopo. Her clothes were right where she’d left them. They were the kind of clothes you could get anywhere that walkaways gathered.
Limpopo took a breath. “Well, that happened.”
“Come on. We’ve got to go and look for our stuff—” the girl said.
“You’ll need clothes first,” Limpopo said. “I hate to say it, but I think it’d be a waste. When stuff gets stolen, it disappears fast.”
“Funny how you’d know that,” the girl said. “Funny how you’d know why it wouldn’t be any use to try and track down the stuff you told us to leave here.”
“I never told you to leave it here,” Limpopo said. “I just said you couldn’t bring it in there. I specifically said I didn’t know if it’d be safe.” She looked at them. They were upset, suspicious of her. The girl most of all, but the guys looked like she was to blame, too. They’d want someone to blame, because the alternative was to blame themselves. Limpopo felt sad. She’d been looking forward to that cuddle-puddle.
“I know this sucks. It happens out here. Not everyone is a nice person in the world.”
“So why didn’t you build lockers?” the girl said. “If not everyone is as nice as you, why wouldn’t you provide for your guests with a minimum standard for security? How about footage? There’s cameras around, right? Let’s get some fucking forensics, make wanted posters—”
Limpopo shook her head, and the girl looked more furious. “I’m sorry,” Limpopo said again. “There are sensors in the B&B, of course, but nothing that buffers for more than a few seconds. That’s in the building’s firmware, and anyone who tries to change it will be reverted in milliseconds. The people who use this place decided they would rather be robbed than surveilled. Stuff is just stuff, but being recorded all the time is creepy. As for lockers, you’re free to put some in, but I don’t think they’d last. Once you’ve got lockers, you’re implicitly saying that anything that’s not in a locker is ‘unprotected’—”