Frostlands

by John Feffer

  That’s why, while I’m talking apples, I DM my daughter.

  I’ve never direct messaged anyone before, nor have I ever been so concerned about security that I needed to send a text directly to someone’s retinal implant. But now I’m worried—and not only about the capabilities of CRISPR International. I’m also concerned that the corporation has someone working inside Arcadia. Rupert showed me how to set up the message on a burner account before I left so that I could send it, encrypted, with a flick of my ghostly finger at any point during my VR trip. He assures me that DMs remain the most secure method of communication in this age of perpetual surveillance.

  Fortunately, my daughter is thoroughly modern, and that includes the de rigueur retinal implant that allows her to browse the Web, receive DMs, and even access many VR features with a blink of her eye. For once I’m grateful for that.

  While I ramble on about my favorite apple varieties, I watch my daughter’s expression. She’s squinting slightly as she reads the message, scrolling down her retinal display as if she were reading an email or a news feed. The message is short, so it doesn’t take her long to finish it. Before I can make it through the entire litany of Arcadian apples, her gaze has refocused on me.

  “Oh, well, you certainly don’t need to hear any more about apples, do you?” I say.

  She’s thinking. I can see that she’s having difficulty processing the new information while continuing to chat. She needs help.

  “Let’s see what my grandchildren are doing,” I suggest. “I miss them so very much.”

  With relief, Aurora leads my avatar to the center of the park, where Emil and Étienne are engaged in their elaborate dance. At least it looks like a dance to me. They are throwing invisible objects to one another, sometimes catching them, sometimes avoiding them, sometimes using them to build something equally invisible. They’re operating on a VR level I don’t have access to. In Arcadia, young people have continued playing real volleyball and basketball. I don’t even understand the appeal of these virtual games. We stand and watch, and I wish I could take Aurora’s hand in mine. It’s been so long since we touched.

  Our apple orchards are dying. That’s something I haven’t bothered to tell Aurora. All our delicious varieties will soon be gone if the temperatures continue to rise. The McIntosh trees, which need nearly a thousand hours of temperatures below forty-five degrees in order to bud in the spring, have already stopped producing. The Dorsett Golden and Tropic Sweet, which need only three hundred hours, continue to generate reasonable yields—but I just don’t know for how long. Vermont has gone from apples to citrus in a single generation. In the long run, barring something unexpected, Arcadia will prove as unsustainable as Brussels. Of course, as the economists used to say, in the long run we’re all dead.

  My husband Julian West, a fan of that dismal science, chronicled in detail the fragmenting of the world. He was the worst kind of academic: all talk, no action. Remember Nero and his fiddle? Julian tapped, tapped, tapped at his laptop while the world burned. During our marriage he barely acknowledged climate change, and when he finally did, it was too late. He treated my research into ice with bemusement, much as my fellow Arcadians treat it today. For him, history only happened north of the equator, among people who read Tolstoy, Gibbon, and Fukuyama. I tried to tell him about the likely impact of climate refugees on the hitherto stable societies of Europe, the United States, and Northeast Asia. I showed him forecast maps of resource wars over water, arable land, and rare earth minerals. They had only a modest impact on his seminal work, Splinterlands. Only in his final report, sent on what was to be his last day on earth, did I notice that he took climate—and the natural world more generally—with true seriousness. At one point he even compared the fracturing of the international community to the calving of a glacier. What a bittersweet reference. If he’d only shown that kind of appreciation of my world thirty years earlier, perhaps our marriage might have had a chance.

  I don’t think Aurora takes climate change seriously, either. Oh, she believes in it—skepticism is no longer an option—but she’s told me that Brussels is safe since it’s sufficiently far from the coast and remains part of a still-temperate band of habitation. It hasn’t entirely slipped into the zone of poverty and conflict that has spread like the desert sands across much of the red-hot waistline of the world. Yes, the city managed to survive last year’s PNC3 staph epidemic with almost no casualties, thanks to a strict quarantine. But Aurora is wrong to think that Brussels is invulnerable.

  I’ve watched the Zone Verte recede over the years like Lake Baikal or the Dead Sea, their life-giving waters drying up and the mud taking over. In the Zone Rouge, football thugs and refugee clans battle for control of decaying neighborhoods that city services no longer reach. Gentrification occasionally reclaims a previously dangerous set of blocks, forcing the poets and the poor to move further out, but that’s the exception. The Zone Verte gets ever smaller and more crowded. Meanwhile, the newest residential skyscrapers tower over the remaining baroque palaces and Art Deco buildings that attract a diminishing flow of Asian tourists. Most of the city’s revenues derive from financial services and the tax levied on virtual visitors like me, who slip in for a few hours to visit family or get a shot of carefully curated Old World charm. Brussels has become the European equivalent of the Native American reservations of America’s past, with their casinos and dusty tourist attractions.

  I’d rather see Aurora and her family move somewhere safe, like Xinjiang, where her brother Gordon lives. If I had any money, I’d set them up in a Himalayan mountain village or a new resort in the Kalahari. Actually, I think Gordon has already attempted to do something like that, but Aurora is stubborn. She clings to her dream of European cosmopolitanism. Her children are fluent in French, English, and Dutch. She updates me on her dalliances with the city’s literary avant-garde. I feel as though I’m getting letters from a Jewish family in fin-de-siècle Vienna. It’s a vanishing world. If the Zone Verte doesn’t turn Rouge altogether, then the political extremists will take over Wallonia and forcibly eject Aurora and her family. The status quo of Brussels, like that of the planet as a whole, is as fragile as a dripping icicle.

  “They’ve grown up so fast,” I murmur to Aurora. “You should at least bring them on a virtual visit to Arcadia.”

  Aurora turns toward me. “I miss Daddy.”

  This is her way of signaling me. Perhaps she does miss Julian, though I doubt she would ever express it this way. They did not have a particularly good relationship. She always blamed him for pushing her into academia instead of supporting her desire to become a poet. Better that than to blame herself for a failure of nerve.

  “I miss him, too,” I say.

  I don’t actually miss the last version of my husband, the one I saw shortly before his death. But I do miss the Julian West I met when I was a graduate student, the one with whom I talked late into the night about how we would conquer the intellectual universe, just the two of us, social history and hard science standing back to back in a barroom brawl against the ignorant of the world.

  I miss that earlier version of myself, as well. I miss the world as it was.

  “Do you remember all the funny little things he used to say?” Aurora asks.

  “We should have written them down,” I say, preparing myself for the message.

  “There was one that came back to me just this morning. Of every four opportunities, only one will pan out. Even if that one is the least promising, you should seize the opportunity with all your might.”

  “I remember that one,” I say. “What made you think of it?”

  “I don’t know.” Aurora crosses her arms and shivers. “I really can’t remember.”

  We’re interrupted again, this time not by an orangutan but by the two adolescents. Emil now looks like an ancient Soviet propaganda poster, all red and Cyrillic, while Étienne is covered with hieroglyphics like an Egyptian tomb painting. Their game is over, and they are excited to te
ll us how well they did.

  I understand nothing, but I’m happy to listen. I’m happy to have this brief illusion of family life.

  Chapter Seven

  “Here,” I say to Rupert. “The operation was successful.”

  Rupert receives the repaired rabbit with all the gravity of a scientist accepting a Nobel Prize. “Thank you,” he says as he submits the rabbit to a critical examination. “It is beautiful.”

  Rupert lacks the fine motor skills to fix a stuffed animal. If we had the latest 3D printer, we could upgrade his hands, perhaps even eliminate his Parkinsonian twitches with a new operating system. He probably has only another year or two before his mobility becomes seriously compromised. It’s easy to forget that Rupert is not human, given his good looks, plummy Oxbridge accent, and endearing bugs. The most human thing about him, however, is his mortality.

  “How was your visit with Karyn?”

  “We had a most pleasant tête-à-tête, Rachel. But she is quite odd.”

  “How so?”

  “There is so much she doesn’t know. And she can be quite violent with herself when she can’t answer a question.”

  “Who do you think made her?”

  “She was made by a design firm called InfoMatrix. They contract with many corporations.”

  “Date of manufacture?”

  “November 15, 2051. She was turned on at 8:51 a.m.”

  “So she’s just a newborn. Do you know who bought her?”

  “I do not.”

  “Does she have any special features?”

  “Her eyes can receive and process information in all known spectra. Her ears are extremely sensitive, too, and can pick up subatomic vibrations. Her nose can detect parts per trillion. These are impressive specifications.” Rupert’s head trembles, as if he’s overcome with envy.

  “Is she unique in these respects?”

  “Sensory capabilities at that level of complexity are not available for sale or download.”

  “Can she hurt our community?”

  “No. Like me, she is programmed with the ‘do no harm’ directive.”

  After the wave of killer bots of the late 2020s, all AI have this feature. Still, some rogue bots do remain in circulation, and a few nonstate actors refuse to adhere to the protocol. Programmed with older code no longer in the public domain, these killer bots don’t look much like humans. Most often they’re just microdrones with DNA targeting, capable of delivering toxins as quietly as mosquitos. Arcadia’s outer perimeter, after many upgrades over the years, can distinguish between such drones and the real insects that it allows into the community.

  “Is there any way she can send information out?”

  “Those capabilities have been disabled,” Rupert assures me.

  “Why was she given human form? They could have made a sphere or even a drone with the same capabilities.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can she weld?”

  “Rather poorly. Arcadia has better welders.”

  “Should we turn her into scrap metal?”

  Rupert seems to consider this question. He looks down at his rabbit. He looks up at me. “If she is disassembled, some of her parts could enhance my capabilities.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “There are pluses and minuses to such a plan.”

  “Or she could be your companion.”

  “Yes,” Rupert says. “Yes, I think that I would prefer that alternative.”

  “Then that will be my recommendation,” I tell him.

  Rupert says nothing. He strokes the nubby gray surface of the rabbit. I wish I could say that I was just being compassionate. But I’ve begun to formulate a plan that involves our new Spongebot.

  It’s midmorning in Arcadia. I had to get up early to use the VR equipment to go to Brussels. I’m meeting Zoltan for lunch, so I have a little time to figure out what my daughter was trying to tell me.

  She’d said, “Out of every four opportunities, only one will pan out. And even if that one is the least promising of the four, you should seize that opportunity with all your might.”

  My husband, Julian, never said anything of the sort. In my DM, I’d asked Aurora if he’d sent her any unusual messages that she couldn’t decipher. While we were watching Emil and Étienne in the park, she must have been reviewing his final message and any other communications she’d received from him.

  Now it’s up to me to figure out what her enigmatic statement means. And as yet, I haven’t a clue. I go back to the chapter of Matthew. Nothing leaps out at me about ones or fours. I ask Rupert, giving him access to all my correspondence with Julian, Splinterlands, and Julian’s final report for CRISPR. Rupert has nothing to offer.

  “Don’t give up,” he tells me. “That is what your former husband seems to be saying.”

  There’s only one person in Arcadia who might have a shot at deciphering Julian’s code—if indeed it is a code. But he’s the only one person I can’t share this information with.

  Zoltan is waiting for me in the foyer of the cafeteria. Lunch is leftover venison stew, plus the season’s remaining fresh apples baked into a crumble. I think of the seaweed substitutes that Aurora and her family put up with. We Arcadians seldom appreciate just how good we have it. More than one person last night complained that the venison was too chewy.

  “You were up early today,” Zoltan says as we bring our trays to one of the rooms on the second-floor balcony of the cafeteria, where we can have some privacy.

  “Early to bed, early to rise,” I say.

  “Did you enjoy your little trip?”

  It’s the unexpected opening gambit that I’d already anticipated. I know he always checks the VR logs. “I’ve been meaning to see my grandchildren for some time. The attack yesterday reminded me that I’m not immortal.”

  Zoltan is eyeing me. He suspects something. But then, so do I. Now it’s my turn to make a surprise move.

  “Speaking of family, have you been in touch with yours?”

  Zoltan clears his throat. “My mother is fine,” he says tentatively. “She prefers her smaller community.”

  I’m sure she does. Since they left nearly a decade ago, the Horvaths have been a subject largely avoided in Arcadia. They were Original Members who decamped with a dozen other OMs and their families in 2042. At the time I feared our community would fall victim to the same forces tearing apart societies all over the world, but we survived. We continue to have our divisions, but they’re containable, like the tomato blight.

  “How is the Farm?”

  “Surviving. They keep asking me to join them there.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “Arcadia’s my family now.”

  All those years ago, I was convinced that Zoltan had remained behind because he preferred to master the technology we have here. It wasn’t clear then what kind of new community the Horvaths and the other schismatics wanted to create, although they were clearly technology-averse. Now I’m not so sure of Zoltan’s motivation in staying. But I know I’ve gotten all the information he’s going to offer, so I move on.

  “What have you learned from the data you collected during the breach?” I ask.

  “They’re going to attack again.”

  “When?”

  “Sooner rather than later. They believe you’re close to a solution.”

  “How could they possibly know that?”

  “From Bjorn Amundsen.”

  “Bjorn would never cooperate with CRISPR.”

  Zoltan pushes his device across the table. I’m looking at a frantic message from Hilda Amundsen saying that her husband has gone missing. Zoltan indicates the initial post in the chain. “I was trying to get in touch with Amundsen and instead I received this message from his wife. It’s what CRISPR does when it needs information. Whisks people off for some quality face time.”

  “Bjorn knows next to nothing about my research.”

  “The timing of his disappearance correlates with ye
sterday’s attack.”

  “You didn’t need to open up the outer perimeter to get that information.”

  “True,” Zoltan concedes, “but we also learned this.”

  He makes a few swipes on his device, and now I’m looking at a lot of coding that I can’t understand.

  “And this is?”

  “It’s a list of all the electronic signatures of our computer defenses. It’s part of the massive data packet that the drones and our new friend Karyn sent before we shut them down.”

  I can barely contain my anger. “The keys to the kingdom, in other words.”

  “Don’t worry, I changed the locks,” Zoltan says.

  “But now that they know the parameters, they can deploy high-powered code breakers.”

  “Theoretically, but that would take time.”

  “I still fail to see the value of inviting them into the castle bailey.”

  “Appear weak when you are strong,” Zoltan says. “That’s Sun Tzu.”

  “Don’t be a horse’s ass,” I counter. “That’s my grandmother Ida.”

  “I dare say I’m a better chess player than either you or your grandmother.”

  “Is that how you win at chess? By deliberately sacrificing your pawns and exposing your king?”

  “If necessary. If I’m playing someone who knows all the traditional openings and is always one step ahead of me. In such cases, you can only win with the unexpected move.”

  It’s time for me to be bold, too. “Let me provide you with a different interpretation of what you’ve told me so far.” Zoltan looks annoyed but remains silent. “I think Bjorn was confirming something that CRISPR already suspected. And they suspected something because someone here tipped them off.”

  “Interesting.” Zoltan leans back from the table and folds his arms. “Because that’s what I think, too.”

  “But the only people who know about the project are you and me.”

  We stare at each other. I suspect him. And he suspects—what?

  Zoltan says, “I think we have a sleeper.”