by Andy Giesler
1
Morton and Aura Lee at the Beginning
May 24, 2062
Morton stopped across from her station. “Excuse me. Are you Aura Lee Rosada?”
The short, amber-skinned woman with wide-set brown eyes swept aside her interface and scowled. “Yes.”
“I read your paper,” he said.
“Be more specific.”
“Reconstructing spatial gestalt via body-wide nearfield resonance detection.”
Aura Lee waited, her face impassive.
“Brilliant idea,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Sort of impractical, though.”
She turned her chair toward him and cocked her head. “Excuse me?”
Morton waved his hands. “Don’t take that wrong. Turning a body-wide bionet into a nearfield resonance detector, then feeding it into the visual cortex? Vision three-sixty by three-sixty using nothing but your own nanobots? It’s brilliant.”
“Yes, you mentioned. I also recall you using the word ‘impractical.’”
“Well, it’d be blurry. Short range. No reflections. No color sense. There’s already so much other assistive tech to enhance vision or produce it. You must already use some. Wearables, implants, shims, hovers…”
“Fucking gadgets,” Aura Lee said.
“What?”
“I want to see with my own body. Without fucking gadgets.”
“Isn’t a bionet a gadget?”
“When something’s that much a part of me, it’s just me.”
Morton nodded. “Look, if you ever get tired of the murder business, I might have a job for you.” He swiped his contact info to her.
“That’s very kind I’m sure, but I owe my evil, pustulated, baby-eating employers another couple decades.”
“Actually, you don’t,” Morton said over his shoulder as he walked away.
Before he reached the door, Aura Lee said, “I’ll make it.”
He turned back. “Sorry. What?”
“My impractical idea. I’ll fucking make it. And when you realize it’s not impractical, I might even accept your apology.”
He smiled. “I look forward to apologizing.”
Epilogue
My name is Root.
I was twenty-three when I married Miller Daivit. He was a good man. I miss him. I miss so many folks. Yet there’s always new ones to meet and to enjoy. And to miss in time when they grow old and die, I suppose, but that goes with it.
After the Shepherds’ End, Amit, Lydia, and Sumiko couldn’t bear the new way of things. Unlike their elders, they’d been born into the shepherd’s life. They could see no other truth but the cull. They sought ancient tools in the Somber to reawaken their Nothing. Before real long, Amit and Sumiko died of radiation.
A few years later, Lydia just stopped turning up. Never learned what became of her. Radiation too, maybe. Wolves. Outcasts. There’s no lack of things to die from.
By that time—must be eight or ten years after the Shepherds’ End—Gabriel, Livv, Rachel, and I was doing a new Festival. We still shared the good-old stories folks loved, but we added the truth. We stretched it out to a two-day affair, same as I’ve done for you just now. Folks were beginning to listen. And Livv, if you can believe it, took up Festival with all her strength and will. Because most shepherds loved the People. More than they loved themselves, truth be told. They did what they thought best. They gave up their lives for tens of hundreds of years to watch over us. That they poisoned us, made us weak and needy, was not their intent. They’d only wanted to save us.
We performed the new Festival together for many years. There was joy in that. I miss it. I miss them.
In the end, Gabriel, Livv, and Rachel died gentle from being old, as will happen when folks live in good fortune. Sooner or later, everybody dies—even old, used-up shepherds.
Oh. You maybe wonder why I’m still alive to miss folks all these great many years later. Why Old Root’s still telling you stories. I didn’t expect to be, nor want to be, neither. Truth be told, I’d just as soon be with all the folks I miss, wherever they’re resting.
Livv was the last of the shepherds to die. By then I was elderly, too—very nearly seventy. Her final few weeks, Livv was beside herself. Mournful that no shepherds would remain. Wary that folks’ memories were so short. Fearful that there’d be nobody left to guide us.
To guide you.
Before she died, I gave her my word. Not because I wanted to. I didn’t. Still don’t. But I gave her my word to grant her a peace she deserved.
You might not imagine it, but I’ll tell you this: the Nothing’s more burden than blessing. I never thought I would, nor did I care to, but I visited the Holy where I’d hid it.
Then I took up the Shepherd’s Burden once more.
Now it’s only me. And I must say, I am not well suited to Festival. I share my memories as best I can recall them. I tell the good-old stories in my own clumsy way. I read to you from Ruth Troyer’s journal, who we call Grandmother Root, so you can hear how it all began. And I read you something from Shepherd Gabriel’s writings besides. I juggle some little bit as I might, and when there’s no other choice I’ll croak out a half-skewed tune. But oh! I wish you could see Shepherd Gabriel give just one more Festival. I wish I could see that, too. If you saw him just once, you’d see me for a pretender.
Oh now. Now.
Come now. Shush.
I thank you, but you’re too kind by far. You would not think so if you could watch the others.
Well.
Anyhow.
At the start of this story, I said it was about choices. About the choices we make, and why we make them, and how they touch the lives of others. I told you this story because we still have important choices to make.
Because it’s nigh on two hundred and fifty years since the Shepherds’ End, and the waters have risen, as Gabriel warned they would.
So now we’re part of the World That Was.
Choices can go wrong. Maybe the Badbefore gives away too much. Maybe the Goodafter isn’t all you’d hoped. There’s no way to be sure of a good choice, but we must make choices, so we do our best using all we know. And what I’ve learned—from Gabriel Morton, and Aura Lee Rosada, and Ruth Troyer, and the shepherds, and even that ancient Humble Weaver from Holyhock—is that a choice touching many lives should not be made alone.
We can’t guess what waits us across the Void, if anything at all. But if something waits, I want to know. I’m going to see. This might be my last Festival. I hope not…though as storytellers go, you could do better.
If Old Root told folks to come with her, or to stay behind, I imagine most would do it. But I’ll not choose for you. That’s why I told the story. Now you know all that I know, and you can choose for yourself.
A great raft rests in Nyehoff, built sturdy and sound by the finest Alter woodsmiths. In six weeks’ time, we’ll take it out across the River Void, and we’ll see the World That Was—me, and whoever chooses to go with me. Those few among you who feel out of place? Who are uneasy inside the village walls? Who hanker to rove? You can find us there.
If you worry that folks will resent your leaving, let me tell you one thing I know. If you’re anything like me—and maybe you are—and if Humblewash is anything like Surecreek was—and maybe it is—then it might not be a bad thing for you to leave. In fact, it might be a kindness to those you leave behind. Let them relax a little. Let them get on with a gentle life.
But if you have no wish to see the wider world, as most of you haven’t? Well, goodness. That’s a blessing to us all. You can choose to stay right here. We’ll leave the World That Is in your thoughtful care, and we’ll hope to see you if we return. And if anything should come while we’re away, I guess you’ll be all right.
You’re as ready as you’ve made yourselves.
Acknowledgments
To my kids: Thank you. Not only for your feedback, but for our time together reading Tolkien, Lewis, Ingalls Wilder, a
nd so many others. Those are among my happiest memories. I rediscovered my love of writing through you.
To my early-draft readers Sean Bina, Wayne Giesler, Mark, Tom and Matt Giesler, Lori Hersey, and Dan Schroeder: Thank you. Your suggestions, encouragement, and tolerance for typos kept me moving forward.
To my final pre-press readers Charlie Wentling, Curt Hampton, Khiang Seow, Maggie Stack, Mary Campbell, Morgan Finn, Nathan Spande, and Sarah Carroll: Thank you. When the story had become a blur to me, you were much-needed fresh eyes.
To Katherine Corbett and Jim Denham: Thank you. For your insights in general, for your feedback on Root's blindness in particular, and for persevering through this monster with screen reader software.
Most of all, to Jennifer: Thank you. You were my first and most trusted reader, when I didn’t dare show my work to anyone else. Without you, I'd still be dreaming of writing a book someday.
And to you: Thank you for reading The Nothing Within.
If you enjoyed it, please consider saying so wherever you leave book reviews.
And if you want updates on my writing, you’ll find a mailing list at https://thenothingwithin.com.
About the Author
Andy Giesler wrote his first book when he was ten.
Attack of the Dinosaurs was seventeen pages long, variously single- and double spaced, with rough cut cardboard backing and a masking tape and white yarn binding.
It was the heart-pounding tale of Alaskan scientists using nuclear bombs to prospect for gasoline and—as happens all too often—inadvertently waking frozen dinosaurs. Without giving away too much, things didn’t end well for the dinosaurs. (Things never end well for the dinosaurs.)
He fell in love with writing and promised himself that, one day, he’d write an even longer book.
Then, one evening many years later while reading bedtime stories to his daughter and son, he thought:
Hmnh. Maybe it’s time.
Andy has been a library page, dairy science programmer, teacher, technical writer, and healthcare software developer. He's schooled in computer science, philosophy, and library science, and grew up in a town in Ohio Amish country. He’s a husband, father, and nonprofit web consultant living in Madison, Wisconsin.