“Where are we going?” asked Nathan.
“As far away from California as we can get.”
“Good plan.”
The car rolled through the outlands and away across the arid plains that had once been home to so many but were now little more than dust, then up the rise past the customs and immigration outpost and off into the Wilds. Sam pointed the car east and retrieved a tootsie-pop from under the seat.
“So,” he said, “How’d you do it?”
“Get away?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t. I mean, I did, but it wasn’t me.”
“Vincent?” Sam glanced at Nathan. He didn’t doubt that Vincent was capable of breaking out of a rickety jail like the one in city hall, but he couldn’t believe he’d help Nathan. Last Sam saw, Vincent was getting some genuine jollies making Nathan squirm.
“No. He got hauled off for his flogging around noon yesterday. It was Alma.”
“Alma?!”
“She said Bast had fed you some poison or something and you wouldn’t be coming back.”
“Yeah, but—”
“You shoulda seen her, Sam, it was beautiful. She made no more noise than a cat. Slipped in, right past the cops on watch, opened my cell and next thing I know, I’m on the back of her bike heading out of town.”
Sam was stunned. The more he found out about Alma, the less he understood her. She’d virtually admitted that she wasn’t working for Bast, which made her some kind of spy. But who for? And why?
Well, actually, he could think of lots of reasons why someone might want inside information on Bast’s organization, but not why they’d send a sixteen year old girl to get it. And what was she thinking anyway? Like her situation wasn’t dangerous enough without waltzing around breaking people out of jail. He bit down on the tootsie-pop until it cracked—he’d gone from impressed to angry in the space of moments.
“So what’s your story?” asked Nathan.
Sam told him most of what had happened, leaving out the part about how he opened the safe and exactly why the fish toxin hadn’t worked. He needed more time to think about those. He did mention the locule thing, though…and the fact that Drake had used the same word.
“What does it mean?”
“Beats me. It’s something to do with the plex, though.”
“With Mutha?”
“I’m not sure. Bast asked me if I could hear the plex. I said I couldn’t.”
“But you can?”
Sam tossed the tootsie-pop stick into the back seat. This was it. He was going to say it out loud. From now on it would be real.
“Sam…can you hear the plex?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I hear…I think I hear voices. I mean, sometimes it’s just a buzzing, but…”
“Voices?”
“Yeah.” Sam was beginning to wish he’d kept this to himself too. “It depends. It seems to be worse when I’m near stronger datapoints, like the digivends or Bast’s central control.”
“Sam, voices isn’t good. I met a guy who heard voices once. He ended up killing his whole family.”
“They’re not like that. They’re not telling me to do stuff. They’re just…talking.”
“And you think it’s Mutha?”
“No. I don’t know what it is…It’s like traffic, y’know? Like I’m listening in to other people’s conversations.”
“But it’s something to do with whatever a locule is?”
“I guess.”
Sam tried to ignore Nathan’s eyes, which were staring at him as if he’d just announced that he had a second head in the middle of his back. He decided to concentrate on the road instead, which was one of the worst preserved that he’d seen, with massive potholes and large sections where the asphalt had completely disappeared, leaving little more than a gravel track.
The car jounced across the landscape as it slowly changed from grassy scrubland to rolling hills and then to the craggy mountains that ringed the Los Angeles basin. Sam rolled down his window and let the wind blow in his face. It felt good to be out and even better to be far away from people. It was people that were the problem. They had caused the four collapses and brought the planet to the brink of destruction, yet still they plotted and schemed and strained to find ways to have one over on the other guy.
His parents had been right to stay away from the city states. It was better to be out here, eking a living however you could, than back in so-called civilization. At least in the Wilds you could make your own future. In the cities everyone, even people like Bast and the mayor, were cogs in someone else’s machine, grinding through the days in return for a few creature comforts and a roof over their heads.
Once the car reached the crest of the mountains, the country started to change. Trees and grass were replaced with parched earth and tumbleweed, and the air became hot and oppressive.
“Holy crap!”
Sam had never seen anything like it. Stretched out below them along both sides of the old highway and up into the hills on either side were huge rusted metal poles. It was like a forest after a fire, when nothing remains but the trunks of once-great trees.
“Wow,” said Nathan. “A wind farm.”
“A really big one,” muttered Sam.
He let the car coast most of the way to the valley floor and then drove slowly through the ranks of turbines. He’d seen plenty of wind farms before, of course, but nothing quite on this scale. His dad had told him that most of them managed to keep functioning for years after the fourth collapse, but eventually the lack of maintenance and the failure of the chips embedded within them had led to their wholesale destruction. The main culprit was the wind itself, whipping through the hills at over a hundred miles an hour. The turbines had been designed to shut down in high winds, but with that ability gone, the storms were able to spin them faster and faster until the housings and blades tore themselves from the poles and ricocheted through their neighbors scything them down as they went.
There were places like this all over the Wilds. Long abandoned reminders of just how many people there had once been. Sam had always wondered what it would be like to live then, with people everywhere and cities sprawling without walls.
“So…how did you open the safe?”
Sam glanced at Nathan. He’d hoped the question wouldn’t occur to him. Particularly considering how well he’d taken the “voices” thing.
“It wasn’t locked,” he mumbled, unconvincingly.
“Bullshit. How did you open it?” Nathan’s voice suddenly had an edge to it, a hardness that hadn’t been there before.
“ I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. How did you do it?”
“Nathan, I don’t know. I just…it’s all new…that is…” His voice trailed off. The fact was, he didn’t know what to say, how to make it seem reasonable and not as scary as it really was.
For a while neither of them spoke and Sam just drove along the dilapidated highway, past rank upon rank of the rusting white poles, hoping that Nathan would be able to drop the whole thing. None of it mattered. They were away from the city, away from all those datapoints that made his head scream, away from the things that made him seem different. Here in the Wilds they could just go back to what they’d been doing before Nathan had his stupid light bulb idea.
He knew it wasn’t possible, but a part of him still hoped.
“So the safe was locked. Then what?”
Sam sighed. Once he’d got an idea in his head, Nathan was like a dog with a rabbit.
“Well?”
There was that tone again, that steely bite to the question that made it seem more like an accusation. Sam knew he’d have to answer, but how could he explain something even he couldn’t begin to understand?
“I touched it,” he said. “That’s all. Just touched it…and there was a feeling…a prickling, kind o
f. And then I lay my hand on it, flat…y’know?”
“Uh huh.”
“And I could see it, inside. No…that’s not right…I couldn’t see it, well I could, but…it was more like I was it. I was the lock and I could move it as easily as I can move my legs or hold a glass of water.”
“And it had never happened before?”
“No, never. Nothing like that. Um…except for the pulse.”
“Wait…the pulse? The electro-magnetic pulse in the clearing? That was you?”
“Yeah. My dad taught me to do it. He said it might come in handy.”
“Your dad? Could he do it, too?”
“I guess. I mean he couldn’t have taught me if he didn’t know how to do it himself, right?”
Nathan looked at him long and hard, then sat back in his seat and gazed out of the window as the car ate up the miles. That was worse than the questions.
“So what d’you think?” asked Sam, when he couldn’t stand the oppressive quiet any longer.
“I don’t know.”
They drove on in silence, stopped for gas in Blythe and then on into Arizona. The old “welcome” sign still stood at the border, battered and bent, but it was enough to make Sam feel as if a weight had been lifted. By dusk they had reached the tiny desert town of Quartzsite, which seemed to be home to about twenty people, clustered in small dwellings around an ancient general store.
“I’ll see if I can get some food,” said Sam. “Why don’t you ask around and find out if there’s a good place to set up camp.”
“Sure.”
Sam took an immersion blender and a couple of pocket generators from the trunk and sauntered into the store.
It was like most general stores in the Wilds, long and narrow with rows of shelves holding very little and an ancient fridge holding even less. Sam selected some long-expired cans of food, a couple of large bottles of water, a bag of oats and some honey. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with the oats, but they were there so he thought he may as well buy them.
The guy behind the counter eyed him suspiciously.
“What d’you plan on paying with, kid?” he rasped.
“This,” said Sam, placing one of the pocket generators on the counter.
“What is it?”
“It’s a pocket generator.” Sam plugged the immersion blender into it and fired it up.
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Sam unplugged the generator and handed it over. The storekeeper turned it over in his hands as if he couldn’t believe it.
“How does it—?”
“Solar,” said Sam. “But not the old cells. My friend made special cells. They store up to thirty times the juice.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said the man again.
“So are we good?”
“Sure. Man, this is amazing.”
Sam was about to offer him the other one in return for an old sleeping bag he’d seen near the back of the store, when the door suddenly burst open.
“Sam!”
It was Nathan, and he looked terrified.
“Sam, it’s them! We have to go!”
“Who?”
“Come on!”
Nathan scooped up the purchases and hustled Sam out into the hot desert evening. Sam stumbled briefly, then looked up and saw them: two ancient trailers, a dilapidated late twentieth century RV, and three pickup trucks. Rovers.
“I thought you said they never left California.”
“They don’t. Not normally.”
“Then why—?”
“Who gives a crap! Just get in the car!”
Sam rolled his eyes. He still had no idea why Nathan was so terrified of the Rovers. Sure, they kinda looked like they veered towards the shady side, but they’d shown no sign of being genuinely dangerous.
Still, he got into the GTO and started her up. Nathan threw the food into the trunk and jumped into the passenger seat.
“Let’s go!”
Sam peeled out. As they overtook the Rover convoy he glanced in the rearview and saw Vincent wave cheerily. Nathan had to be nuts.
It was late by the time Nathan felt safe enough to let Sam pull over for the night, and even then he insisted that they drive about five miles off the road and into a dusty ravine, invisible from the distant highway. Sam sighed and complied, shivering as he stepped out of the car and into the freezing desert night.
“You stay here,” he said, pulling his coat close. “I’ll see if I can find anything we can use for a fire.”
Nathan nodded.
“Here,” he said. “Take this.”
He handed Sam a small red plastic flashlight that looked like it had been the prize in an old cereal packet.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Hey, it works.”
Sam sighed, flicked it on and went in search of firewood. After half an hour of stumbling among the rocks and tripping over the abandoned holes of rabbit-things, he’d found nothing but a couple of desiccated tumbleweeds that would probably burn for less than a minute each. He turned and trudged back up the ravine. They’d have to move on, that’s all. The desert cold can kill you as fast as the heat. Nathan would just have to suck it up and agree to camp nearer the highway.
Sam was still working on exactly how he was going to break the news, when he saw a faint orange glow up ahead. He picked up his pace and discovered Nathan warming his hands in front of an old space heater hooked up to one of the pocket generators.
“I didn’t think you’d find much out there,” he said, grinning.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” muttered Sam, sitting in front of the heater and letting the warmth thaw his bones.
“Can’t cook over it, though,” said Nathan. “What did you get at the store?”
“Water, oatmeal and honey. I got some cans, too, but that stuff needs to be heated.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, there were a couple of sleeping bags, which would have come in handy right about now, but some loon dragged me away.”
“Well, I guess oatmeal and honey might be okay.”
Sam shrugged. Nathan waited a moment, then went to the car and returned with two bowls and the oats and honey. Sam expected it to be dry and cloying, but it turned out to be pretty good. They washed it down with some of the water and huddled closer to the heater as a chill wind whipped through the ravine.
“How long will the generator last?” asked Sam.
“Until morning, I reckon. It was fully charged.”
Nathan shivered, retrieved a blanket from the car and sat down again.
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“What does the box do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Yes, you are. You could have just dumped the thing and avoided all that hassle. But you didn’t. You said it was important. So what is it?”
Sam stared at the glowing bars of the heater. He didn’t want to explain anything else. There had been a time when he never explained anything. Never told anyone what he thought or felt. When had that changed? And why? The world he’d grown up in was far too dangerous, and people you thought of as friends could turn on a dime. But it was hard, holding all his cards close to his chest all the time. Keeping his own counsel. As if his own opinions were the only ones of any value. On the other hand, he’d already told Nathan pretty much everything else.
“It’s an interface,” he said, finally.
“An interface? What, like a keyboard?”
“Kind of…I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Look, I was ten when my dad died, right? My mom went two years before that. They told me stuff, but you don’t…you don’t remember everything. Even when you want to.”
“What do you remember?”
Sam wanted to tell him about the yellow and green kitchen, and the summer days and the laughing, but that wasn’t what Nathan wanted to hear. Sam had a sneaking feeling that Nathan was trying to
work out if the thing was valuable or not and, if so, what it might be worth in barter.
“Sam?”
“It’s called the Paradigm Device,” said Sam, keeping his eyes on the heater and casting his mind back. “It was made by Hermes Industries Research in San Francisco.”
“Huh. Should’ve guessed,” said Nathan, grimly.
Sam glanced at him sharply, then turned back to the heater.
“Yeah. Well, my mom and dad worked there. They developed new systems. The place was divided into divisions and Alpha Division was new systems.”
“What does that mean?”
“They developed Mutha. Well, not them. The division did. But that was a long time ago. Anyway, the interface was always a problem. The interface between the plex and the users.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Probably the hyperspatial thing. Anyway, they tried a bunch of things over the years, including drones, which worked. But they were banned pretty fast.”
“How come?”
“They’d developed a kind of pod and…um…people would be placed in them. Then they were…I don’t know…jacked in or something.”
“Jacked in? You mean a brain-computer interface?”
“Yeah.” Sam nodded. “I always remember that story. It gave me nightmares for years. They’d plug the people into these things and then the machine, Mutha, would communicate directly, using their brains and voices. They’d only last about six months. Then they died. My dad said they were like husks—completely empty.”
“Shit. That is messed up.”
“They were outlawed some time before the third collapse, back when there was still a national government and they could do stuff like that.”
Another icy wind sliced through the camp, creating stinging dust devils as it went.
“Okay. So where does the Paradigm Device fit in?”
“That was later. Years later. Systems division started developing it, but then… something went wrong. My dad said it was all a crock.”
“It didn’t work?”
“No, it did work…at least I think it did. But he said it wasn’t them. They didn’t design it.”
“Wait.” Nathan leaned forward, forgetting about the cold. “They developed it but they didn’t know who designed it?”
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