by Liam Clay
Fuck you, cruel world.
After a doggedly cheerful breakfast, we sit down to decide our next move. Peace, who is becoming our expert on all things Thresh (that are described in the briefing document, anyway) informs us that 12 sets of tracks emanate from the enclave’s central hub in radial lines. These lines act as territorial dividers, and are supplemented by concentric circlewalls that also move outward from the Hub. The dynastic families have their compounds in the large inner circles, while the lesser ones get toenail clippings of land further out. We are currently in one of the enclave’s 12 terminus towns: neutral areas where families can store their goods and get rowdy while they wait for the quarterly convoys to depart.
According to Peace, these towns sit empty for solid chunks of the year, meaning it’s possible we've simply arrived during quiet season. This doesn’t explain why the gate was open, of course, but it gives us some hope of finding answers elsewhere. All of which makes our next play fairly obvious. We will commandeer one of the trains, and head deeper into the enclave.
This is one of those rare days when the low-lying pollution is totally absent, making it easy to imagine driving cattle across the range. My mood remains stable until we reach the station. Correctly guessing the slant of my thoughts, Delez rushes us onto one of the trains. But it turns out to be a case of hurry up and wait, since we still have to figure out how to make it go.
I decide to kill time by taking a self-guided tour. Starting at the locomotive, I travel back through the two passenger cars attached to it. The rest of the train is devoted to freight. Interestingly, it is packed to bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables. I sample a roma tomato from a crate marked with the letters ANP, and almost orgasm on the spot. Hive produce is the best I’ve ever tasted, and this makes their crops taste like warm garbage. Francis and Amy join me, and we gorge ourselves on strawberries, mangos, cherries and a bunch of hybrid stuff I’ve never seen before.
“What do you think ANP stands for?” Francis asks between mouthfuls.
Amy considers. “It’s probably the brand of the family that grew it.”
“Makes sense. Maybe we can ask Peace if she’s read about a family with those letters in their name.”
Amy blinks a few times. “Actually, the briefing document doesn’t have any family names in it. The Threshers are pretty anal about this sort of thing.”
“You found that out in two seconds?” I ask incredulously.
The look she gives me is pitying, with a hard undercurrent. “You could learn to do it too, if you weren’t busy getting all of our potential informants killed.”
Francis winces. “I told you we weren’t supposed to bring that up.” He turns to me. “I swear she takes after Tikal more every day.”
Amy looks slightly pained. “I know what you said, but come on! Out of the two people we’ve met so far, he lets one die and kills the other. Couldn’t he at least have questioned them first?”
I want to tell her she’s right, and that I may never be able to trust myself again. But then I remember Tikal’s advice, and so I say, “Go suck a lemon, Amy.”
The train starts to move a few seconds later. Heading back to the rear passenger car, we find seats near Lucy and Tikal. Peace and Delez are driving the train, and we can hear them whooping with delight as it picks up speed. They’ll be fucking up there before long, which is probably why Tikal and Lucy chose to sit in this car. Personally, I am content to watch this strange new world slide past through the windows.
On the surface, the Thresh couldn’t be more different from Opacity. Horizontal rather than vertical, fields instead of movie sets, mechanical engineering standing in for backroom biology. But put a few gouges in that surface, and the whole setup starts to feel rather familiar. Major film studios become dynastic landholding families. A hardware tech race takes the place of implants and telecoms. They even share the same obsession with escapism, albeit of a very specific, old fashioned sort in the Thresh's case. When you get right down to it, the only real difference is that these fuckers have managed to keep themselves fed.
Something is definitely wrong here, though. I’m about as far from a farmer as it’s possible to be, and even I can see that. We pass fields with entire crops rotting on the vine, and others that are blackened and burned. The fences between holdings have been torn down in places, not in any kind of organized fashion, but as though by panicked individuals fleeing for their lives. And yet I see no people at all.
For hours we travel like this. The squad, formerly talkative, becomes quiet as they see what I’m seeing. Surprisingly, Lucy is the one to finally say it.
“Please don’t let this be another Hive.”
I watch the possibility write itself across the faces around me. But there's no point in jumping to the worst case conclusion straightaway.
“I admit this looks bad.” I tell them. “But the Hive’s plague happened a full ten years before we showed up. The survivors had plenty of time to bury their dead. Whereas the Thresh only went dark a few months ago. So if disease took this place too, where are all the bodies?”
“At the ranches?” Delez hazards. (Thresh families live in rambling country houses near the center of their estates.)
“Sure, most of them would have died at home. But we know they don’t like to completely automate their fields, so surely we would have seen a few corpses by now?” The other argument against the plague theory is that if one existed, we might already be dead. But that is best left unspoken.
“Did anyone see that?” Francis says suddenly. We’ve just crossed into a territory ring that has been planted with corn. My friend is pointing to a random spot in the stalks.
“Sorry. What did it look like?”
“A flash, like sunlight glinting off meta -”
We hear two hollow thuds, and twin lines of fire dart out of the corn. One slams into the front passenger car; the other hits just behind us. The train is knocked off its track, accordioning in flight so that I can see Delez and Peace through the locomotive’s side window. Then gravity kicks in and we hit the ground hard - once in an upright position, and again as the car rolls onto its side. We plow a giant furrow through the corn for a full fifty meters, before lurching to a halt with a screeching roar.
At first, all I can hear is the lick of flames from where the front passenger car must be. But then a new sound starts up, growing in volume until it’s all around us.
“What the hell is that?” Francis groans.
“The corn.” Amy replies from somewhere to my right. “It’s popping from the heat.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Forget about the corn.” Tikal snaps. “We have to get out of here right now.”
“Too late.” Lucy says dully. Rolling onto my back, I look up through the car’s right side window. A face has appeared there, looking down at us from on high. He’s young, maybe 18, with a wispy mustache and hollow, pockmarked cheeks. His hair is hidden under a flame-retardant hood, but I’m guessing it’s blond, since I’ve never seen anyone so obviously Caucasian before. How tacky. But then, fashion sense is bound to be different around here (not that it matters much if he’s about to kill us). When the kid has our full attention, he cups his hands against the plexiglas.
“Do you surrender?” Although muffled, his words navigate the medium clearly enough.
“We haven’t decided yet.” Francis replies. With a grin, the boy slaps an old rifle down on the glass. My friend turns to us.
“Were your guns all stowed in the first car too?”
We confirm that yes, they most certainly were, and he sighs with relief. “Well that makes things easy, at least.” And then to the kid, “I’m happy to report that your request for surrender has been unanimously accepted! Is that, uh, cool with you?”
CHAPTER 5
So here we are, pretty as a picture, waiting on the pleasure of blondie and his gang of young Threshers. At least everyone is okay - Peace and Delez included. The forward passenger car
has stopped burning, but you can still hear the popcorn if you listen close enough. To call our captors jubilant wouldn’t be doing justice to just how very stoked they are. None are out of their teens, and I suspect they don’t have permission to be out here at all, never mind to be firing rockets at moving trains.
Beneath my obvious displeasure at being made prisoner, I’m also - and yes, I know this is weird - kind of enjoying myself. If you’d asked me to guess what kind of music Thresh kids would be into, I would have said country. But these ones are hip hop heads through and through. Turns out heatproof bodysuits can be worn below the crotch, and freestyles about farming tend to (no surprises here) suck.
Beyond making sure we don’t escape, no one is in a rush to do anything with us. A bunch of the girls are already drunk, and now that the boys have fired off their toys, they are tipping back their growlers as well. They’ve set up a ground-effect sound system that is kicking ass and taking names, and things are looking like turning into a full blown field party.
I used to be into hip hop myself, so I’ve got some vague designs on bonding with them over discussions about favorite verses and most slept on beats. Francis may be thinking along similar lines, because he’s been trying to get blondie’s attention for the past few minutes. The boy finally notices and ambles over.
“What is it, poptart?”
Francis tries to parse the meaning of poptart as a nickname, gives up, and pushes forward. “You see that guy over there?” He points to me.
Blondie glances in my direction. “You mean the big dude who looks like he’s feeling the music?”
“Yeah. You recognize him?”
“No. Should I?”
“If you own a retcom you should.”
The Thresher grunts. “Ain’t no retcoms in the freeholds. We use scrolls instead.” Rolling his sleeve up to the elbow, he taps a spot on his forearm. A rectangular screen winks on, sheathed beneath a layer of skin. “Where’s his feed come from?” He asks.
“Opacity.”
Blondie doesn’t look surprised. “Come to loot and pillage, huh?”
“Actually, the city’s new government sent us.”
The kid looks him up and down. “The government. Sent you. Bullshit.”
“Just look up my friend's feed if you need proof.”
“Maybe I will. What's his handle?”
“@thelivesoldier.”
“Fine, I'll check it out. What’s with the name, though?”
“It’s part of his backstory. Plus all the better handles were taken.”
The kid still looks doubtful, but curiosity eventually gets the best of him. I can’t help but enjoy the look on his face as he digests my numbers. While he’s taking it all in, a gangly girl with steel-capped cheekbones totters our way.
“Hey Minus, stop messing around with these chumps and come party.”
“Just a second.” He replies, shrugging off her attempts to pull him away. “Wait, what was the name of that Opacian reality star you love?”
“You mean Trel Phoenix?”
“That’s the one. Do you know how many followers she has?”
“I don’t know, like half a million? Lots of those are from unverified foreign accounts though.” She adds knowingly.
“Well check this out.” Minus points to the profile pic on his scroll.
“Hey, it’s that guy!”
“Yeah, and look at his numbers.”
“45 mill...oh damn.” She double checks my stats and spins around, dropping her bottle of bourbon in the process. “Hey guys, this treefrog over here is like, hella famous and shit!”
.
Now it’s a proper party, and this time we’re invited. Getting drunk right after being in a train wreck probably isn’t good for you; but the people with the guns were quite insistent, so it’s sort of a moot point. We're somewhere around the two hour mark. The Thresh kids have been glued to their scrolls the whole time, catching up on the broad strokes of the Anex show. Most of them are finished now, which explains why Lucy is being group-hugged by a bunch of sobbing teens.
“This is so fucking weird.” Tikal murmurs, passing me a growler of pale ale. “Earlier today they were shooting rockets at us, and now we’re all best friends.”
“Score a point for fame, I guess. Too bad they’re all too drunk to answer questions.”
“Except for that girl who’s been watching our sex scenes all afternoon.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Scenes?”
“Fine, physical expressions of our mutual attraction, if that makes you feel better.”
“Much. Say, why don’t we pay her a visit?”
“I don’t know, she’s a little young for my taste...”
“I meant let’s question her, creepshow.”
“Right, of course. Let’s do that. She owes us something in return for the raging ladyboner she must have right now.”
But some people possess an innate ability to flip a situation on its head, and this girl turns out to be one of them. She’s short, with big curves and chocolate brown hair slicked down across her skull. I’d been hoping to leverage her embarrassment to get some quick answers, but the look she gives us could be sign language for no fucks given.
“Oh, it’s you two. We need to talk.”
Tikal and I exchange a glance. “Funny, we were just thinking the same thing.”
“Singled out the soberest member of the herd, did you?”
“Basically. So how about it - will you tell us what happened here?”
She gives us an appraising look. “Yeah, I can help you out. But first you’re going to listen to what I have to say. Deal?”
Tikal waves an amused hand in the girl’s direction. “The floor is yours.”
“Alright, here’s your problem.” She says crisply. “You’ve managed to strike gold and build this ridiculously big fanbase, but you’re not doing anything with it, see? Look at this uninspired sequence, for example.” Holding out her forearm, she presses play on her scroll.
“What about that bit there.” I say a few minutes later, jabbing my finger at the screen. “I almost threw my back out!”
“You rocked my world baby.” Tikal says absently.
“I’m not talking about your sexual skills.” The girl explains impatiently. “Where’s the imagination, is what I want to know. You’ve got access to this unprecedented platform, and the best you can come up with is ropes and handcuffs? That shit might as well be Victorian, it’s so passé.”
Now it’s Tikal’s turn to act defensive. “We do more stuff than that.”
“Spare me. You are clearly both repressed in the area of sexual creativity.”
My brow furrows. “I can’t speak for Tikal, but I think any deficiency I have in that area is due to ignorance rather than repression.”
“Maybe.” The girl allows. “But that’s no excuse.” She leans forward like a predator about to strike. “Under my tutelage though, we could take your output to a whole new level. I guarantee it.”
“And what is it that you do, exactly?”
“I’m an experiential artist. Living tableaux, sexuality as canvas, erotic mindscapes, that sort of thing. You won’t have seen any of my work, though; the art scene here is abysmal, and it’s hard to get projects off the ground. Which is why I’m looking for foreign collaborators.” She eyes each of us in turn. “This is a really good opportunity for you. I’m an emerging talent - not many amateurs get offered a chance like this.”
Tikal stares at her in disbelief, and then bursts out laughing. “We'll take it under consideration. My only concern is your lack of self-confidence.”
The girl allows herself a small smile. “That won’t be an issue.”
“No shit. What’s your name?”
“Densaya. But I prefer Den.”
“Alright Den, we’ve listened to your pitch. Now tell us what happened to the Thresh.”
She nods. “I keep my promises. Where do you want me to start?”
Tikal turns
to me. “Any suggestions?”
“Well, it would be nice to know why they tried to blow us up today.”
The Thresher rolls her eyes. “Because you stole our crops, obviously.”
“No we didn’t!”
“Then why were you driving around in a train full of them?”
“None of us even knew that stuff was onboard. We just needed a ride.”
“To where, Terminus 8 or the Hub? You have to admit that was strange behavior, traveling one way and then back the other.”
“What? No, someone else stole the train from you and drove it to Terminus 8. Then we took it off them and headed back the other way. But aren’t we supposed to be the ones asking questions?”
“Do a better job then.”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that? But fine. What happened to the other farming families, and how come you weren’t affected?”
“Better.” She says approvingly. “It started about a year ago, when a traveling software salesman arrived at one of the Terminus Gates. We don’t know which family let him in; but someone did, and bought product from him too. They probably had good intentions. A lot of kids from my generation were sick of the constant bickering between families, and the salesman promised to end all that. His software allowed networks of connected individuals to share their physical senses, surface thoughts and even emotions.” She pauses. “What’s wrong? You look like you just got a surprise Brazilian wax.”
“It’s nothing.” Tikal says. “Go on.”
“If you say so. Anyway, the beta rollout was a huge success. Kids from all over the freeholds were forming networks, and experiencing each other’s lives for the first time. The adults resisted at first, but they eventually started using it too. Inter-family dialogue went through the roof, and things actually started to get better here. A lot better.”
“But it didn’t last.” Tikal says, choking slightly on the words.
“No. The fall began as a slow slide. We started to hear about kids, the early adopters mostly, who couldn’t sleep at night because they had too many emotions packed into their heads. But things snowballed really fast after that. Soon those same kids couldn't tell which emotions belonged to them, and which were second hand. And as a coping mechanism, they started to assign invented personalities to the external ones. It was the only way their brains could make sense of the jumble, but it drove them just as insane. Then the glitch spread to the adults, and everything went straight into the shitter.”