If This Goes On

by Cat Rambo

  Mr. Halstrom put his hand on the back of my chair. “Royden says you set up a rogue wi-fi network. You went around corporate protection.”

  I kept typing. He didn’t sound angry. Yet.

  “I had to. So Royden could leave school.”

  “The police will punish him as if he did it himself, if he doesn’t turn you in.” There was a pause. I was thinking about what I was writing. Mr. Halstrom pulled on my chair, sliding me back from the keyboard. “The same is true for me, kid. I’m sorry.”

  Ice surged in my veins. I let him take the chair. I kept typing, half-squatting. I heard a police siren outside, and then more, like voices joining a chorus.

  Mr. Halstrom put his hand on my shoulder. “Please, kid. Stop. You’re making it worse.”

  I posted my letter to all students, sent a copy to my dad, wiped the browser history and cache and removed the connection to DadNet.

  Mr. Halstrom kept his hand on my shoulder until the police came into the room, but he didn’t stop me typing. I suppose I’m grateful for that.

  I hope my former classmates got to read it before the school took it down. I hope Dad posted it on DadNet. I hope DadNet has grown and others are able to read this and make their own network nodes and start spreading truth again.

  But I won’t know. There aren’t any communications in the work farm. It’s just farms, and dusty, empty buildings we sleep in, on the floor. I move from group to group so I can see them all. They let you. I’m looking for Mom.

  I hope she can tell me why Dad and all the others gave up.

  I hope if I know that, then I won’t.

  I won’t give up.

  About the Author

  Besides selling twenty-odd short stories, a dozen poems and a few comics, Marie Vibbert has been a medieval (SCA) squire, ridden 17% of the roller coasters in the United States and has played O-line and D-line for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team. She is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio. Find out more at marievibbert.com or follow her @mareasie on twitter and marievibbert on Instagram.

  Editor’s Note

  Wi-fi nowadays sometimes seems as basic a need as air, food, and water. But recent efforts to attack net neutrality bring that into doubt. And in a world where Internet access is necessary for a variety of activities—what happens when it becomes something only some people can afford, or when corporations are controlling what appears and doesn’t? Government websites have been stripped of information in the last couple of years, including health information and GLBT history.

  One reason I appreciate this story is the echo that it has of the early days of the internet and cooperative efforts by hackers to make information free and counteracting efforts to suppress or control it. Truth, I will argue, nowadays is indeed a basic need and one getting to be harder and harder to fulfill.

  Discobolos

  James Wood

  The neon hum of drones filled the night sky above Roubaix. They poured from the mothership and fell upon the town like mosquitos sniffing for blood. They wove their way through the textile graveyard’s massive brick husks. They swept past the effigy of Discobolos, and the ragged crowds that swarmed about his twisted feet. They settled over Trois Ponts, Cul de Four, Vauban, and all the other neighbourhoods of Roubaix.

  In a tiny shack on the bank of the canal, just on the edge of the quarantine, Ibrahim Al-Sahlawi was hiding.

  He stuck his head out from behind a rusted icebox and through a broken window he spied a drone. The red light of its infrared camera blinked as it peered into the shack. Ibrahim lifted a broken chunk of Roubaix cobblestone with a shaking hand, but thought better of it. Even if he managed to knock the wretched thing from the sky, five more would swoop in to take its place. He lowered the brick and the drone clicked three times. With a hiss like a puff adder it emptied its canisters, sending a violet haze floating to the ground. He covered his mouth with the rough wool of his sleeve, then chastised himself for such an irrational act; the poison wasn’t meant for him.

  As soon as the drone’s canisters were emptied, it zipped back into the sky and joined the brood as they returned to their nests on the mothership. When Ibrahim was certain it was gone he scrambled across the room and lifted a rotting floorboard. He pulled a perforated box from the hole underneath and popped open the lid. Specimen H7K was dead.

  He picked up one of the tiny peppers and rolled its shrivelled corpse in the palm of his hand. He marveled at the aggression of the herbicide. In a matter of seconds, the pepper went from red, to brown, to black. Within a minute it was dust.

  Ibrahim had seen all sorts of herbicides employed by the Agence des Aliments but never anything quite like this. Usually the A.D.A’s methods resulted in a slow death, as if the plants were being eaten from the inside by a cancer. Years ago, he had been able to keep up. Basic tricks like simple selection and crossing were enough to see the specimens through the germination period. As the regulations on private crops tightened, the herbicides became more elegant in their design. An arms race was happening between humans and nature, and humans were winning. The attacks grew deadlier by the day, and it wasn’t long before even the heartiest plants were vulnerable.

  Ibrahim had bartered for, built and stolen the equipment required to strengthen his strands but the A.D.A. was always one step ahead. Somatic hybridization, electroporation, microprojectile bombardment, nothing worked. Even the cleverest modifications only bought an extra day or two. It was rare to see anything sprout, let alone come to fruition. That is, until specimen H7K.

  When the plant had lasted an entire week, Ibrahim had been quietly optimistic. At two weeks he’d been excited. At three weeks he’d been positively giddy. It had taken months to get the genetics just right but specimen H7K had lasted longer than any plant in recent memory.

  And now it was dead.

  He put the box back in the hole and replaced the floorboard. He stood for a long while, staring out the little broken window, watching the beastly shapes of patrol boats cruising up and down the canal.

  Hunger finally pulled Ibrahim out of his reverie, a dull ache in the pit of his stomach that was impossible to ignore. How long had it been since he’d eaten? He slipped an A.D.A. labs, hermetic container out from under his pillow. A relic from a time he wished not to remember, but it kept things fresh. The airtight lid exhaled when he opened it and he plucked out a lone, dehydrated green bean. He salivated, staring at its twisted little body. So easy to just pop it in his mouth, to taste the earthy sweetness of it. To feel the crunch and sinew as he chewed. But it was the last one and the seed jar was empty.

  Instead, Ibrahim opened the rusty ice box and retrieved a flattened roll of nutrient paste. It too was the last of its kind, thanks to A.D.A. regulations. It had been nearly two years since their sweeping ban on organics. Ibrahim himself had spearheaded the scientists who denounced the ban, but no one listened. Both the government’s compassion and common sense had been bought long before by Nutricorp.

  He looked longingly at his last tube of tasteless paste before folding it in on itself until a tiny, beige nugget popped out the top. He swallowed it without relish and left the shack.

  The fractured streets of Roubaix wound like veins around the crumbling town and met at its heart, the neon market of Saint-Antoine, where the crooked figure of Discobolos presided over the masses. Ibrahim had once seen Myron’s original statue. He’d been just a child at the time, and his mother had taken him to the British Museum, back before they’d closed off the channel. He had a clear memory of looking up at that Discobolos, the marble figure holding the discus, so strong and symmetrical. That statue was a proud study of man’s natural form. This one was a vision of what he would become.

  Under the shadow of Discobolos, the people of Roubaix, twisted as the statue they worshipped, lined up for their nightly feast. They swarmed the square like insects, their bodies more metal than flesh
. At one time mankind’s solution to world hunger was to modify food. Eventually someone realized that it would be easier to modify mankind.

  All around the square neon buzz harmonized with the crowd’s cacophony. Signs glowed everywhere. Some advertised low prices on modifications and value trade-ins for obsolete units. Others showcased specials on the current provender. This week the A.D.A. had elected for stone.

  “Hey String Bean, I got somethin’ right here that could put some meat on them bones,” a hollow voice said from behind Ibrahim. He turned to find a sallow cheeked man with a cruel looking device in his outstretched hands. Ibrahim knew what it was, even if the man had filed off the Nutricorp barcode.

  “I don’t want that,” Ibrahim said.

  “Two hundred Euro,” he implored. “None here cheaper.”

  “I won’t buy anything from a chopper.”

  The man’s sunken eyes darted. He stepped closer and shook the device at Ibrahim’s face. “I ain’t no chopper, squire. I came by this honest. And look, it ain’t the old model. See?” He fingered one of the devices’ protruding tubes. “This little number does all the current buzz: sedimentary, igneous, even metamorphic. You’ll never go hungry again.”

  Ibrahim tried to brush past the man but he was grabbed by the coat.

  “One hundred. Hardly even been used.”

  Ibrahim didn’t doubt that. This man had no doubt killed the original owner and ripped out the mod before the poor bastard had even had a chance to use it.

  “Look, if you don’t leave me alone I’ll . . .” He didn’t need to finish his threat. Two armed Nutricorp security officers approached and the chopper melted back into the crowd. The officers’ black visors lingered on Ibrahim for a moment before they too sank into the press of bodies, hot on the man’s trail.

  Ibrahim let out a long breath. If those two had searched him they would have found the green bean. He’d have been in a black bag by sunrise. Nutricorp didn’t deal in just food, and the money they made pumped through the A.D.A. like blood through a heart. Ibrahim hurried along in case they came back for a second look.

  Picking his way through the crowd, he passed long lines of Discobolos’ wretched spawn. The worst were Roubaix’s poorest, stuck with early model modifications and chop jobs bought on the cheap. Boxy looking things studded them, protruding from stomachs and necks with industrial bulk.

  He watched in disgust as a woman leaning up against a stained wall placed a cobblestone in her mouth. Her jaw had been replaced with two corroded iron plates and when a tiny motor whined, they rattled as they came together with mechanical force. The stone shattered under their onslaught and the woman tilted her head back, choking the dry chunks down like a duck eating stale bread. When her belly was lumpy and distended from their weight, another engine kicked in and a series of pistons pumped underneath her torn shirt. A dirty tube which ran from the nape of her neck to her abdomen went piss yellow as some catalyst or another was added to her digestion chamber. Ibrahim did not stay to watch her finish her meal.

  He pressed through the throng, trying his best to ignore the people clawing to get to the front of the lines. There, monstrous trucks, still dusty from the quarries, dumped load after load in deep bins. Armed officers kept the crowds at bay while Nutricorp reps collected fistfuls of Euros and handed out chunks of dirty stone.

  In the center of the square, sitting directly under Discobolos’ twisted left foot, Ibrahim finally found who he was looking for. The girl might have been pretty, had her face not been frozen in a menacing sneer. He supposed there were worse reactions to a bad mod, but that didn’t make it any easier to hold her gaze.

  “You’re back,” she said, the filed points of her iron teeth brown and rusted.

  “I need to go again,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s no good. The river’s not safe.”

  Ibrahim stepped closer and slipped the green bean into her palm. She didn’t look at her hand, but recognition sparked in her eye. She glanced over her shoulder. “One trip,” she said. “And we go now. Right now.”

  Ibrahim nodded and followed her through the crowds.

  She led him to the canal side of the square, where the abandoned nutrient paste stalls still sat dusty and forgotten. The space between the stalls was laced with caution tape, which had been strung up like a spider’s web and the girl checked to make sure no one was following before she slipped underneath and disappeared into the shadows. Ibrahim hurried after her.

  They followed a damp alley to a cracked stairwell that led down to the canal. The eye watering stench of sewage was heavy down there, and Ibrahim breathed into his collar like a gasmask.

  All manner of detritus littered the water’s edge. When the canal was closed off to the public it turned into a dumping ground for the town’s waste. The cobbled waterside was a maze of broken chairs, soiled mattresses, and all other manner of abandoned housewares. The most buoyant of the lot sometimes found their fortunate way into the water and floated like icebergs right out of Roubaix.

  “Help me lift,” the girl said, pulling aside rotting cargo netting.

  Ibrahim helped, and underneath they found a makeshift barge. Not much to look at. In fact, it looked so little like a boat that she probably didn’t even need to hide the thing. Ibrahim wouldn’t have trusted it on the water if he hadn’t made the trek several times before. Even so, he stepped uneasily on its planks.

  Despite the integrity of the barge, the crossing proved smooth. The girl was a steady hand with the long pole she used to push them through the murky water. Up and down the river, the search lights of patrol boats pierced the night but none of them fell upon their tiny vessel.

  They landed on the far side, at the embankments of the quarantine where high brick walls kept the darkness beyond at bay. The girl tossed a loop of gnarled rope around a mooring spike and took out a battered stopwatch.

  “Eight minutes and I leave,” she said, clicking a button. It wasn’t much, but Ibrahim had little choice in the matter. He scurried up a slimy ladder and over the high brick of the embankment.

  On the other side, the quarantine zone was silent and dark.

  The A.D.A. had first declared the zone unlivable after an outbreak of smallpox. The government blamed Egyptian refuges for bringing the disease to France in an effort to stir up the nationalists. It worked. Ibrahim wasn’t even from Egypt but he’d nearly been stoned to death in the weeks following the outbreak. Nearly twenty years ago, but still no one was allowed to cross the canal. Ibrahim knew it had nothing to do with disease. He’d seen the reports himself, read the restricted folders. It wasn’t smallpox on the other side of the canal, at least, not anymore. It was green space and it was too much land for the A.D.A. to control.

  By the time Ibrahim reached the south gardens, his lungs were burning and his vision was blurred. According to the count in his head he had little more than a minute before he’d have to make the sprint back to the canal.

  He had been to the garden several times before. He’d mapped the place out and marked the spots he’d already searched. This time he headed to a small greenhouse on the east end of the property. Inside, he cast aside clay pots and rusted equipment with reckless abandon. He scrambled about on hands and knees, desperately rummaging through any containers or drawers in his path. Finally, under a tangled hose he found what he wanted, a small white seed packet. It rattled with promise when he shook it and he stuffed it into his pocket before plunging back into the night.

  By the time he returned to the canal, the girl had already pushed off and was leaving the embankment. He took a step back, then leapt through the air and landed with such force that he nearly flipped the barge. The girl hissed something in her native tongue but Ibrahim didn’t catch it. His breath was ragged and his heart was pounding in his ears. He reached into his pocket and fumbled with the seed packet. He held it up to the light and girl leaned in
to see.

  “Okra,” he said between breaths.

  She pushed the barge across the canal but her eyes kept darting back to the packet.

  When Ibrahim returned to his shack, it was well after midnight but he could not sleep. He tossed and turned, his mind electric with new ideas. The A.D.A. had teams of scientists working in shifts around the clock. He got up and took out the packet. Tearing open the top he plucked a seed out and placed it on the table.

  “You will be the one,” he said. “You will survive. We will not all become Discobolos.”

  In front of him, the seed was still and silent.

  About the Author

  James N. Wood is an author and educator from Toronto, Ontario. He spends his time split between the English classroom and the rugby field. For more of his speculative fiction, visit jnwood.ca or find him on Twitter @james_n_wood.

  Editor’s Note

  A number of the stories in this anthology owe their strength to the way in which they literalize the metaphor, a technique not confined to science fiction and fantasy, but particularly dear to it. The image of feeding people by modifying what they eat is not terribly off the mark until they are literally eating stones, a visceral image that the reader can feel echoing inside their own mouth.

  In a world where food is artificial, the things that are “natural,” homegrown and therefore combining imperfection of form with perfection of taste, Ibrahim’s search for a viable pepper, a plant full of flavor, seems particularly poignant.

  Fine

  Jamie Lackey

  Bobby’s mother checked the power supply on his stealth mesh and helped him into his bulletproof coveralls. The fabric was thin and slippery, but hardened when impacted. Combined with the stealth mesh, it made him a hard target for snipers. It helped that he was still small.