by Andy Giesler
I know I should have been grateful. They’d just spared us a hunting trip that I wasn’t confident of coming back from. But I was wound up from being trapped for a week, and angry from being attacked by some mercenary, and I did not entirely trust this sorry-looking fellow who was clearly keeping things back from me. “You must think me awfully backward to try such a thing,” I said. “Just because I dress Amish, mostly, and am Amish, sort of, that doesn’t mean I’m so easily cowed that you can trot out some angel’s name and think I’ll follow your rules.” Somehow I was standing by then. “I know somebody with a naughtwork when I see one, and not just the feeble worker kind, or even the wealthy live-forever kind, but the murderous military kind, judging from your friends, though I don’t know how yours are still working when the rest have gone dead. We’re not some commune of bumpkins. You will treat us with honesty and with the respect I’m sure we’re due, or else we don’t care for your protection. And either way, we sure don’t need your rules.”
He was quiet a few seconds, then he made this little noise like half a snort, and one corner of his mouth went up. “I’m sorry. I started us off wrong,” he said. “I have so much respect for what you’ve done here.” He sounded like he meant it. “You and the traditional Amish settlement south of here are the only things I’ve found that I can call civilization. I wish we’d spoken earlier, but there are less than forty of us covering nearly fifteen thousand square kilometers. The cities have been especially hard.”
He stood up and held out his hand. “And I wouldn’t try to trick you. My name really is Gabriel. Gabriel Morton.”
“Oh, sure you are,” I said, “and I’m Aura Lee Rosada.”
That made him wince. “No,” he said. “If you were, this conversation wouldn’t be going nearly so well.”
I squinted at him, and I thought back to the printnews, and then I decided I actually might be speaking with the Gabriel Morton, founder of Inner Frontier Bionetics, the company that had showered our world with poisonous gifts and brought ruin on us all.
When I didn’t take his hand, he took it back, then he sat back down. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said. He was quiet again for a minute, looking off toward the hearth, then he seemed to decide something. “Let me make it up to you. Something I haven’t done before, for anyone. Let me tell you the whole truth about the Reckoning.”
And he did. Or at least I think he did, because who would lie about murdering twelve billion people in the feeble hope of saving the tiny handful that remain?
At first it sickened me. It seemed to sicken him too, just telling me. But then I saw it for what it was. That he had faced the grandest bad-before anybody ever could. Choosing a bad-before means using your wisdom. And if his wisdom led us to this horrific good-after? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
But I’ll not judge him. If I can’t imagine a better bad-before than he chose—which I can’t—then it’s not my place to second-guess. Removing a handful of savage strays took everything that was in me. Besides, judgment is for the world that was. All that matters now is who he is, and whether he’ll help tomorrow be any better. Which remains to be seen.
After we spoke, Mr. Morton said on second thought, if the offer was still open, he’d like to stay the night after all. I called together a special Common supper to welcome them. He seemed interested in all that anybody had to say. Maybe it took his mind off his burdens, but I don’t think so. I think he just liked people, and especially liked hearing their stories.
The other two, Livv and Michael, looked as though they might rather be neck-deep in maggots than at a community celebration. But I guess not everybody enjoys the company of people. Truth be told, I don’t often.
They left after breakfast this morning. I wished them well. Mr. Morton promised to return and speak more about the wider world, and our place in it.
4
April 3, 2167
Mr. Morton came back. He said friends just call him Morton.
I said I don’t know him that well yet.
He didn’t bring Livv and Michael this time, but he brought about a dozen others. Folks with military naughtworks, all except for him. Now that I know to look for it, it shows. There’s something twitchy about how they move, even when they’re trying to move normal. As if their bodies want to skip ahead in time a few seconds while the rest of us catch up.
Apparently, all of them hid someplace shielded during the Reckoning, and it spared their naughts. Mr. Morton doesn’t seem to have military naughts, so I asked why his are ordinary—by which I meant “only” the faster, stronger, live-forever kind for the weirdly rich. He said he never liked fighting, but his naughts are special in other ways. Then he smiled and said they’re special in ways that don’t matter anymore, and never will again.
In just two days, his troop built Sugarcreek a wall, eating an army’s worth of food along the way. It’s a good and proper biblical-sized wall. It’s just logs with chinking, but it’s a great relief to us, and we can build it sturdier from there. Several dozen of us helped with it, but I don’t think all of us did in two days what any one of them did in an hour.
So that was all right.
I shooed my girls out to the celebration dinner with everybody else, so Mr. Morton and I could have our dinner in quiet and discuss what needed discussing.
He said his people were ready to start routine policing of the world that’s left to us, except that he kept calling it the “Zone.” Which I said sounds like a military occupation gone wrong, or like you went and did something in a place you weren’t supposed to do it. He snorted and asked what he should call it. I’ve taken to calling it the World That Is, and he seemed to like that well enough.
They’ll keep patrols moving around in pairs, mostly watching for chimeras, but helping with other things as they’re able. Their central listening post is up by Wooster, or what’s left of it, so if we need them when they’re not around, we can go up there and get them.
I said, “What, you want us to run up there?” He said yes and apologized that all their callcars were out of service.
He also offered that if we need to spread out and start other settlements, they’ll do what they can to help us. That’s not for now, but I can hope for a time when we’ll be ready for it.
Then he gave me the four rules we have to follow in return.
First: Since even dead-seeming devices might still be generating Wicc power, warn people to avoid all pre-Reckoning high technology.
I said I’d be happy to. In fact, that I had some little practice at warning people against that sort of technology even before the Reckoning.
Second: Avoid the Canton-Massillon area to the northeast, since it was such a biotech center. Not only did it have more working Wicc devices, but it’s riddled with radioactive hotspots from labfactories gone bad.
I said half of us who went up there died of cancer, and most folks who came from there did, too, so we had no interest in going back.
Third: We must burn our dead. They’ve seen dead people get back up again.
I said we already do.
Fourth, “and this is the hard one:” He said we need to be “proactive with cases of chimeric transferal.” I asked him what on earth that bit of corporate gobbledygook meant. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally he said if somebody’s going chimeric, they need to be killed immediately, and that decision needs to err on the side of caution. He said to help us with that for the first little while, they would station somebody in Sugarcreek to “do what was needed.”
“In other words, one of your weapon-people will live here and murder us when they feel they ought to?” He flinched a little, and said that wasn’t the spirit of it. I replied, “We’ll welcome your protection out there in the World That Is, Mr. Morton, but I’ll not have you killing us here at home. You folks may shepherd the flock, but the flock will cull itself.”
He didn’t believe me. “It’ll be hard,” he said. “To put someone down because they might be a da
nger. Especially given your pacifist traditions. Until the time comes, you can’t know whether you’re up to it. If you hesitate, it could cost you the village. It could even cost us everybody who’s left.”
I laughed. He looked worried. Probably saw no earthly reason for me to laugh at the idea of murdering people. So I explained to him our practice of bad-before and the good-after. I told him about poor Jerome, Euna, and Josh. I told him about Marsh and Quint and the strays.
He seemed satisfied.
His rules weren’t half as bad as I’d expected. I still don’t trust him and his people, but maybe we can work with them to some good end.
When I Was Twenty-Three: Grandmother's Voice
1
A True-old Story
How the Nothing Came to be Within Us
So very long ago, so I’m told, there lived a man named Gabriel Morton.
Gabriel Morton had a dream. He wished to have more things, and finer, than all of the People. Yet, having no trade to speak of, it puzzled him how he might make his dream real. But he did have one great skill, and that skill was folks. He understood them. He could take the measure of them. He could persuade them to his beliefs. So he sought long and hard for a new dream. A pretend dream. A dream that others might share, and that in sharing his dream, they might help him realize his true dream of having many fine things.
He found a pretend dream.
At that time, folks made marvelous tools so tiny you could not see them, nor even imagine their smallness. Tools that moved about gentle inside the People’s very bodies, to help the People in many ways—with healing or learning or working their trades. Gabriel Morton’s pretend dream was to take the ideas of all those other tools, and to make from them something greater. So he found helpers who believed in his new, pretend dream, and he invited them to council.
He called his council Inner Frontier Bionetics.
The wise smiths who made those other tiny tools did so in secret, and their secrets were hard to guess. So Gabriel Morton traded with some smiths for their secrets, while his helpers stole other secrets in darkness, as they should not. And just as he’d asked them to, his helpers made his new dream real. They crafted a new tool from parts of all the others, a tool that did as much as all of them together. He made a name for his new tool that meant “it floats in folks’ bodies like a raft floats in a river.”
He called his tools Bionauts.
As he’d planned, by making his pretend dream real, Gabriel Morton made his true and secret dream real as well. And oh! So fine were the many things he had. So all was well.
Except.
Gabriel Morton took little joy from all those fine things. Because somehow, without meaning to, he had come to believe in his own pretend dream. And though Bionauts were wondrous things, they were woven from the ideas of others. There was nothing in them that he might truly call his own, and he was discontent. He told his smiths to make him something new, but they struggled greatly, and they failed him.
Now, so very long ago, before the Reckoning, life was different from our own. So different you can’t begin to imagine. More different even than a tiny Alter village is from Market.
There were too many folks then. Because they had no chimeras nor wolves to fight, the People fought among themselves. Not as we fight, with unkind words or fists. They fought to murder one another, and so they did, by the hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds.
They called that War.
And while some folks had more food and fine things than they could ever need, most had not near enough. Many died for want of food, or a home, or even just water.
They called that Poverty.
In time, there was a great War. Because of that War, those who had Poverty got even more of it. Yet the Warring folks needed new ideas, so that they might murder each other even faster. A great search was made among the many folks with terrible Poverty, in the hope of finding those among them who were clever and quick. The Warring folks would take the Poverty from those few and lift them up, that they might become smiths and help with all that important murdering. They found many such folks. Yet one shone brighter than the others, even though she’d come from a Poverty so very dark and was born without sight besides.
Her name was Aura Lee Rosada.
Gabriel Morton learned of Aura Lee Rosada. Using all his great skill with folks, and his many fine things for trade, he secretly persuaded those Warring folks to set her free, that she might become his helper. When he asked her to join him, she said yes, for she was weary of all the murder.
With her to guide the others, Inner Frontier Bionetics made an even more wondrous thing. A marvel beyond all that came before. A thing that might even let folks live forever, so long as they did not have Poverty. Seeking a name for this new wonder, Gabriel Morton changed the old name, Bionauts. He made it into a word for “nothing,” because these wonders were so small that they were hardly there at all.
He called them Naughts.
Yet this marvel brought fear with it. For if the Naughts left one body and entered a new one, they might do great mischief. They might try to make the new body become like the old. So Gabriel Morton guided Aura Lee Rosada, and with all her skill at smithing, she made those Naughts obey important rules. The rules were these:
If you leave your owner’s body, you will die.
If you enter another body, you will die.
If Gabriel Morton or his helpers tell you to die, you will die.
If you change from the pattern you were built on, you will die.
And the Naughts followed these rules. So all was well.
Except.
After many years, a Naught was born that did not follow the rules. Being different from its pattern, it should have died. Yet it was different in three ways at once, which was a marvel greater than the Naughts themselves. It was such a marvel that everyone, even Aura Lee Rosada, thought it impossible. Yet that Naught was born indeed. It left its owner’s body, and it entered another.
They called that a Chimeric Naught.
In time, that Chimeric Naught and its countless children and grandchildren visited other bodies, even those of animals that give milk, as we do. At first those Chimeric Naughts were sickly and could not thrive, for the bodies they visited resisted them. But then, after years of wandering, those Naughts did thrive in a place so very far away.
They called that place Canberra.
Those Chimeric Naughts found a body where they could grow strong. A body sick and weak from all its terrible Poverty. They brought with them memories of other bodies they’d visited before. Confused, they tried to unravel their new owner’s body and remake it like the others they recalled, tearing flesh from bone and knitting it back as it had not been before. They made his body have War with itself. And because Wars murder folks, their new owner died.
Except.
Naughts, above all else, do not wish their owners to die. If it’s in their power, they will not allow it. So those Chimeric Naughts raised that dead’un up again, that they might unravel and remake him in agony, and kill him, and raise him up, again, and again, ’til they could finally agree on what he was supposed to be. The War inside him brought ceaseless voices and smells and visions and feelings, an endless, furious babble that only he could know. Soon he was mad. He fought with other folks and animals, harming some and killing others. And when his blood touched the blood of others, his Naughts went inside those other bodies, too.
Those folks were the very first chimeras.
It was a bad time for the World That Was. Gabriel Morton and his helpers knew that soon all the People would become chimeras, or else would die. Gabriel Morton and his helpers knew that a mighty Badbefore was needed, yet they could not agree on which Badbefore to visit upon the People. So, hiding his purpose from Aura Lee Rosada, who disagreed, Gabriel Morton chose his own Badbefore against her wishes. He chose the Reckoning. With his other helpers, he made it so.
In the space of five heartbeats, he murdered more folks than a
ll the Wars that had ever been. He murdered almost all of the People, saving just a few. But he also created the World That Is with its encircling Void, setting us apart from the World That Was, in case fearsome things still lurked out there. And for those who still lived, here in the safety of the World That Is, all was well.
Except.
Naughts are living things. Most Naughts in the World That Is died, but others only slept. And just as a living vine will spread, so too did those sleeping Naughts. They spread through our bodies. They spread through our community. They spread through us all. And as they spread, they yearned to wake. They listened for the voices of ancient tools that would end their sleep.
The Reckoning did not break all those ancient tools as Gabriel Morton had planned. Some tools survived. When folks came near those ancient tools, their Naughts awoke. So then chimeras roamed the World That Is, and would have killed us all.
Except.
When he brought on the Reckoning, Gabriel Morton spared some of his strongest helpers from it in a secret place. His helpers watched over us in those early years when chimeras were as common as leaves. Whatever else those helpers did, they protected us.
We called those helpers shepherds.
This story? The story of Gabriel Morton? The People shared it from parent to child. It remained a story about how, from a wish to help them, he gave the People marvelous gifts with a poison he did not intend. Poison gifts that undid the World That Was, and set it apart from the World That Is.
But through the long years, parts of his story changed. Grandmother Root and the weavers are the hearts of our villages and our lives. So in time, the story of Him became the story of Her. It became the story of the Mother of Chimeras, who loved the People more than she loved herself, and would destroy us if she could. Gabriel Morton’s name became her name, a name meaning both “birth” and “death.”