Green Valley

by Louis Greenberg

‘Jesus,’ David muttered.

  She shrugged. ‘She asked, sweetie. It’s your fault anyway,’ she added. ‘You outsiders. So mistrustful you had to destroy the promise of the internet. How’s it going out there? Are you back to riding cows and drawing on walls with burnt sticks?’

  ‘You shouldn’t make assumptions,’ I said. ‘Not everyone’s like that. Don’t you get the news in here?’

  ‘Never trusted the news.’

  After the Turn, everyone thought we had reached some final consensus and that there was no more need for politics. If I were to tell Eloise the honest truth, I’d tell her the world had become stifling out there, ripening for an explosion. But instead I said, ‘I see that. Maybe you’re not so interested in what’s happening out there.’ I indicated the door – the world outside, or her own home. I looked into her eyes again, catching some understanding there, or imagining I did. ‘So tell me, Eloise? Does everyone in here have to follow the collective’s rules?’

  ‘There are still some who do their own thing. But they cluster at the wall, at the conceptual edges. As close as Egus could come to expelling them, I guess.’

  ‘Come on, Eloise,’ David huffed. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s a consensual arrangement. They have as much freedom as we do.’

  ‘More, I’d say.’ Eloise shrugged. ‘Plus it’s consensual only because the collective can’t exactly send them out of the enclave, allow them to reveal our dirty secrets to the cavemen outside.’

  David tutted in disgust. ‘You talk a lot, but you wouldn’t go and live there, would you? You like the comfort of the rules a little too much. Try and pull this shit off out there and you’d be branded a fool and exiled from exile land.’

  Eloise shrugged and turned away, back to her screens.

  ‘This is why I didn’t want you to meet her,’ David said. ‘She’s such a phoney. Enough bullshit, Eloise. Do you know where Kira is?’

  She turned to face us again, and now she looked like nothing other than a worried parent. ‘What do you mean where she is? I thought you were watching her today.’ In Green Valley, watching a child meant something quite different.

  ‘Nuh-uh, not my turn,’ David said.

  ‘It is, David. Check the schedule,’ she complained. ‘Anyway, here she is.’ She brought up a map and pointed out a beacon. ‘She’s in the garden with Cisco. Don’t know why you couldn’t have checked yourself.’

  David frowned. ‘I tried. There was a glitch.’

  ‘System update this morning. You need to keep up.’ She turned back to the screen. The interview was over.

  ‘Can I see her?’ I asked David as he led me away from Eloise’s lair and through the sitting room to the front porch.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Why not? That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Yeah, but who should I say you are?’

  ‘I’m her aunt, David. Or—’ Did Kira even know I existed? ‘You have told her about me, haven’t you? She knows Odille had a family – that she’s got family outside?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said. ‘But it’s not that easy. I can’t just say, “Here’s your real mom’s sister, stopped by for a visit.” We’d need to find the proper time and way to introduce you. She doesn’t know you, Lucie, and though she knows intellectually that Odille was her mother, Eloise is her mom. You can’t just… appear. It would be confusing, bewildering. And on top of that, you’re wearing Jane. What is she supposed to think? Who are you supposed to be?’

  ‘Okay. I get it.’ Even though it skewered me, I did understand. As much as I wanted to meet Kira – Odille’s blood, my family – I couldn’t do that to her. ‘But I just want to know that she’s fine. Can you just show me to her? I could look at her through the window or something.’

  David softened. ‘How about I introduce you as someone else? Then you can meet her and she doesn’t have to know who you are. You’d just be a random stranger. For now.’

  As if there would ever be any chance of me being anything else to her. I never would – the hopeless fact of it dragged a lead weight through the middle of me.

  ‘Sure. Okay. Thanks.’

  He led me through the kitchen and out to the back garden, where I saw the girl from the picture, a beautiful mutation of my sister, standing with a boy and poking a stick into a tall cypress tree.

  ‘Hey, sweetie,’ David said as we approached.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said. ‘You wanna see our spider hotel?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I hung back as David peered into the tree and Kira told him about her game. The boy hadn’t turned, almost deliberately swivelling to avoid my gaze. The evasive motion reminded me that I was looking at projections. I needed to know the real girl beneath this figure of Kira.

  I stepped forward. ‘What you got there?’

  Kira turned to me with a blank look.

  ‘This is, uh, a colleague of mine,’ David said. ‘Uh—’

  ‘Jane. My name is Jane,’ I said, holding out my hand.

  The girl looked at my hand, up to my face and then put her palm in mine. I concentrated in that one second of physical touch on the solidity in her palm, the grip of her fingers, a precious second of connection to tell me that everything was okay.

  The boy still didn’t turn, moving as I moved, evading me like the eyes on a trick painting, and Kira’s hand seemed to jitter for a fraction before it pulled away, the substance of it feeling light and hollow under the avatar, like a deflating balloon. For a second I doubted, but just a second.

  It was the smile that did it – that convinced me that Kira was safe and well. It tore away the decades and brought me home, to the warm light of Odille’s face.

  5 ‘Thanks for that,’ I said as David led me back into the house. While I was buoyed by the fact that Kira was safe after all, and that she appeared nurtured and well, I was also dumped by an immeasurable sadness. I had just come face to face with everything I’d lost.

  If Kira was fine, though, the dead boys certainly weren’t. What had happened to them, and how could we be sure that the same wouldn’t happen to Kira or the other children here? What I’d seen today had led me to trust David enough.

  ‘Listen, David,’ I said. ‘The reason I called, the reason I came, is that we found two dead children in Stanton – and they came from Green Valley.’

  ‘What?’ His shock was genuine – I was certain he wasn’t putting on an act, electronic mask or not. ‘What do you mean? When?’

  I told him the basics – the two dumped bodies, The I architecture, the nanotech in their blood – so that he was in no doubt. ‘This is why I came, and I’m glad that Kira’s here, but you need to keep an eye on her. Do you know anything about missing children? Do you have any records?’

  ‘God,’ he said, wiping his face with his hand. ‘It’s not really my area.’

  ‘You have to tell your police or security services or whatever passes for them in here. There has to be a record, hasn’t there? Everything’s tracked in here, isn’t it? Everyone’s movements.’

  ‘Sure. Of course. Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ll get onto it. I’ll speak to them.’

  ‘Keep me updated, all right? And I’ll let you know if I find anything useful out. We’ve – you’ve got to keep Kira safe, okay?’

  ‘Sure. Don’t worry about it,’ he said, his confidence already returning after the shock. ‘It must be an anomaly. Things are fine here, amazing safety record. That’s what we always stood for, you know?’

  I ignored his bald appeal for approval. That ship had long since sailed. I left the house, glad when Kira’s laughter ringing out from the back yard was the last thing I heard.

  ‘Clara,’ I said, recalling the syntax we’d used all those years ago, ‘display route to liaison office.’

  ‘No route found,’ the soothing voice replied. ‘Please select a valid destination.’

  ‘Clara,’ I said, recalling the frustration we’d all grown used to, ‘take me out of Green V
alley, to the exit.’

  ‘Which direction do you want to travel?’

  ‘Clara, dial Gina Orban.’

  ‘Please select a valid contact.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. How do you get the fuck out of here?’ I said, aware as I did that the shameless abuse of a faceless AI was a nasty habit of humanity that I didn’t want to perpetuate. ‘Sorry. It’s Gina Orban, right. I thought she was called the liaison officer,’ I said awkwardly, knowing the syntax of doubt would not compute.

  ‘Please select a valid destination.’

  ‘Cancel,’ I told her, and started walking. Even The I and all the virtual rendering in the world couldn’t make Green Valley any larger than it really was. If I placed one foot in front of the other, I would physically move across the space enclosed by the concrete shell. If I continued doing that for an hour, I would walk from one end of the enclave to the other. Before long, I would come up against a wall, even if it didn’t look like a wall, and from there I could trace my way around it and find the liaison office.

  I strode on with purpose, retracing the route to Main Street, then chose a direction and set out. The skating kid was back, rattling over the cobbles, and the fit thirty-something joggers were doing another loop around the square. Was the kid a simulation? Wouldn’t a real kid have school today? But then, I didn’t know much about how Green Valley worked. Education would certainly be via The I. Perhaps some pioneering educationalist had come up with a way to skateboard and learn algebra at the same time. Maybe that’s what David had meant by Mathcamp – after all, Kira hadn’t been at school either. There was a whole heap of questions I hadn’t asked him about Kira. Was she even seeing the same Green Valley I could see?

  As I walked past the coffee shop where I’d met David, I glanced in through the window. There was the buff waiter, offering muffins to the creatives at the communal table. The guy with a red computer was still there, along with the green-haired girl. Sure enough, down the table sat the same bald wrestler guy, in broad-gestured conversation with someone on a screen.

  Next door was a deli, advertising organic produce and free-range steaks by the pound. Even Sentinel had no details of what produce was brought in to Green Valley. Zeroth had made lucrative and exclusive contracts with farms outside who kept their activities shrouded in secrecy. It was another thing Stanton police ignored: if there was nothing illegal happening, there was no reason to probe into perfectly reasonable trading practices – trademarks and patents and hard-won contracts with clients who valued their privacy were nothing new, and since the Turn, the population demanded that the police didn’t go snooping around in private affairs. We’d won our privacy back.

  I walked on as Main Street curved to an end and fed into a residential crescent that looked exactly the same as David’s street. Birds trilled in trees so rich with produce that they drooped demurely towards the model-garden flower installations; a dog was barking somewhere, and closer by I heard children laughing. Across the road, the houses watched me silently from behind their floral fringes. The dog barked: yap, yap-yap-yap; yap, yap-yap-yap; the noise fell into an unintentional rhythm as one of the children shrieked higher than the others on the downbeat of the third bark. Then it happened again a few barks later, and again. I zipped my top up higher, conscious of temperature for the first time.

  Knowing I was curling back towards the centre of town, I tried to reorient myself, but after a few more curves, I didn’t know which way I was facing. Instinctively, I resisted bringing up the map. They would know where I was if I allowed the map permission to detect my location. They, the big covert corporate-state monster that we, in the rational and free world outside, had turned our backs on. Use your natural instincts, I told myself pointlessly, looking up at the false sky for signs.

  As I was about to give in, a grating sound broke the peace behind me. I turned to see the top half of a man wearing a cycling helmet gliding along the sidewalk on the other side of a hedge. He emerged on a kick scooter from behind the hedge and turned up the driveway I was marooned on. At the porch, he dismounted showily, planting his foot and sliding the little back wheel out like a Tokyo drifter.

  ‘Nice wheels,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ the man said, unclipping his helmet. He squinted as he surveyed me, unable to find a focus or a readout on me. His eyes darted nervously. ‘Are you with the birthday party?’ He nodded towards the house, guarded. A birthday party. Maybe I should ask this guy if he knew about the missing children – that sort of news should surely spread among the regular sort of parents who take their children to birthday parties. But I decided against it – any regular adult would be justly suspicious of a kidless stranger lurking outside a kid’s party, asking questions.

  ‘No. I’m just visiting. I’m looking for somewhere.’

  ‘We don’t get many visitors here,’ he said. ‘Do you know how to use the map?’

  ‘The place I want to go doesn’t seem to be listed.’

  ‘Oh.’ He screwed up his face. ‘That’s strange. This place should be entirely mapped.’

  His suspicion was deepening; he shifted his stance and turned to face me. I didn’t want this man to know where I was going, so I came up with a lie. ‘Someone told me about a place where people are free to build what they like, outside the Green Valley borders. He called it the conceptual edge, but I’m guessing that’s not a place name.’

  His stance relaxed. ‘Oh, yes. The Edges. You could call it a place if you want. We used to get a lot of tourists in to look at the architecture. That was before… Not many visitors through now, as I say. There’s not as much activity at the Edges any more, but you may still find something. Here are the coordinates to the west-side outpost.’

  ‘Is that anywhere near the wall?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘built all along the north-west boundary.’ His tone was relaxed and generous now, a proud citizen telling a visitor of the glories of his hometown. I wondered if he was an early visitor like David, missing the old days of tourism and influence, lamenting the cramping of his vision. As he spoke, a flash appeared in my upper eyeline: Message received from Tim Keevy. ‘It’ll be bookmarked on your map. But use the map – there’s no straight line there unless you can fly.’ There was no sign on his face that he was making a joke. ‘Wandering around, getting lost, can be dangerous.’ He smiled thinly and turned to climb the steps to the house’s front door. It was only when the children started screaming again that I realised they’d been dead silent while Tim Keevy and I had spoken, as if he’d put them on pause.

  The liaison office was in the western wall of Green Valley, so the Edges wouldn’t be far from it. If I got to the wall there, I could trace it around to the exit. My time was running out. I called up the map and followed the walking directions to a block of unnamed roads a quadrant away. Soon, I turned into another snail-curled street, which blushed red halfway along. I slowed my pace and glanced around me. If I’d taken closer notice of the type of plants outside that children’s party house, the exact droop of the elephant ears and the red-speckled rhododendrons, the curve of the bower in front of the watching windows across the road, I could have confirmed for myself that I was back where I’d started. But the flashing icon on the map, that icon billions of people once trusted to ward them home, showed me I was in a different quarter altogether. It was just a product of the homogeneous architecture, surely.

  Yap, yap-yap-yap. Yap, yap-yap(shriek)-yap.

  Yap, yap-yap-yap. Yap, yap-yap(shriek)-yap.

  A bolt of panic spurted through me and was suppressed, leaving me heavy and forgetful as I stepped towards the red patch in the road. The redness was made of perfectly shaped, identical scarlet polka dots about the diameter of tennis balls painted over every surface: on the tar, on the kerb, over the neat strip of lawn edging the sidewalk, across the paving blocks and even on the shrubberies in front of the house, assembled so that the shapes lined up into yet more perfect dots from precisely where I stood. As I watched, the dots divided a
nd reproduced and pushed on from every side of the blotch, until they were advancing with compelling tidal logic over the house’s porch, crawling across its windows, onto the roof.

  It was as if I’d stepped into an installation by Naoko Tamura, an artist who had been very popular ten, fifteen years ago. She’d started off several years before as a dynamic and unique creative commenting on madness and perception, but her colourful, photo-friendly work had soon been drained of its meaning and co-opted by the commercial mainstream, even featuring in Zeroth ad campaigns just before the Turn. Could this really be her work, right here, or was it just a flush of Zeroth counterfeit?

  The thought was blotted out of my mind by polka dots climbing my legs, swarming their way up, until they were gathering over my chest. They were two-dimensional, and should have been weightless, but they slid and flickered as they moved in a creeping scuttle. The weight of them began to clamp around me, restricting my muscles. My pulse beating in my neck, a cluster of dots finding their way under the hair at the nape of my neck like an insectile lover.

  As more dots clustered up my neck and over my lips and against my nostrils, I froze in anticipation, giving in to the swaddling pressure, waiting for them to crush and suffocate me, to snuff me out.

  But it didn’t happen. The dots suddenly stopped – they were nothing, not even paint – and I was standing in the middle of the road in mortifying suspension, profoundly ashamed by my lack of resistance.

  ‘We give ourselves to the projected light, don’t we?’ someone said. A withered voice. Gradually, a shape resolved itself out of scarlet rounds and gutter concrete. The figure, grey and spotted itself, was half-pressed into the surface of the road, and she raised her head and looked at me as she extruded herself to standing. ‘You wanted the end to come, didn’t you? You wanted your fate to be decided for you, not bear it yourself. Didn’t you?’

  I nodded. Scarlet spots were flaking off the tar-and-concrete woman as she stood, and fluttering like dead leaves to the ground around her. Around my feet, my empty dots were piling up too.