by Daniel David
Zoe in the Woods
It was the birds that woke her. A rowdy earful of toots, trills and barks that swept through the forest as the glow of dawn light began to creep amongst the trees. It was like nothing Zoe had ever heard before. She unzipped a gap in her pod door, just big enough to peer through and once her eyes had adjusted to the light, unzipped a little more and lifted her head and shoulders out. The forest looked beautiful. The early light was allowing only the subtlest of colour to exist, turning the scene into a faded photograph or an illustration from a fairy story.
Drips of water carried flares of stolen sunlight down with them and on the smooth tree trunk next to Zoe's pod, beetles and millipedes slunk silently over the bark. Zoe began to giggle, which turned into a laugh and soon Zoe was laughing uncontrollably at the immense awakening that was, for this moment at least, unfolding only for her.
When she climbed out of her sleeping pod she felt the tightness in her lower back and legs from yesterday exertion, but it could be worse. An inspection of her feet showed no blisters and despite an edgy sleep, she didn't feel bad at all. In fact, Zoe thought, she felt pretty damn good. Elated.
She drank some water and ate a little breakfast, before shaking out the pod and folding it back into her rucksack. Before she set off, she found a spot behind, or was it in front of, a bush to go to the toilet. It was a new experience, peeing just exactly where she wanted to, so she relished the moment and added it to her list of growing freedoms.
Revived and ready, Zoe set off again through the dense forest cover, her shoes catching once more in the thorny ground, cracking sticks and scuffing over stones. There was no path here, no one ever came this way and this route belonged only to Zoe. Everybody who swapped the certainty of AarBee to take their chances in the wilderness did so without a path and mostly alone. The faintest whispers of opportunity, folklore and legends were as good as it got. Their destination though, was almost always shared, to the Lifers and to Matthew.
Matthew's legend had grown as powerful as AarBee. He was one of the first to turn away from the promise of immortality, from the seduction of the digital realm. Some said he was a Dupe, kept alive by some program glitch or process error, others that he was born in the wilderness, the child of his mother's rape by thrillseekers. What was beyond doubt though, was that Matthew had taken the myriad of lost Ghosts and wandering apprentices and turned them into Lifers. He had turned loneliness and rejection into a choice, a movement.
Zoe walked all day, stopping occasionally for food or to rest her legs. Sometimes rabbits would wait for her up ahead, before scurrying off as she came close and once, as she sat against a rock late in the afternoon, a young deer wandered elegantly by, tugging leaves from the small trees and listening intently to the breeze.
Zoe travelled for five days like this, just her and the wilderness. As the sun went down she would shake out her sleeping pod and nestle onto the warm ground, her knife in her hand, and in the morning she would rise with the birds and continue her search.
Once, she passed a tiny wooden hut that sat silently in a clearing. She examined it from down on her belly, her eyes peering through the bracken and thorns. It looked in good repair and the clear path that led to the door suggested that somebody lived there, but it was too dangerous to find out who. Zoe didn't need to ask for help and if the house was occupied by Drones, well, that would be that. Besides, there was a faint stench in the air that tasted bad in the back of Zoe's throat and she noticed that the birds didn't sing here, so she crawled quietly away and left the little hut behind.
On the sixth morning, Zoe didn't wake up with the birds. By the time her eyes opened, the full light of the day was streaming through the trees and warming the little sleeping pod. She was tired now, hungry too, her rations were being stretched thinner and thinner and apart from a few berries, she hadn't found anything else to eat. She could have lain on the ground all day, bathing in the forest light and resting her body, but she knew she had to find either food or Lifers, so she dragged herself out, packed her gear away and strode wearily on.
Perhaps she should have knocked at the hut, she thought, taken her chances with the occupants. She had always thought that fate would lead her straight to the Lifers, or that someone would find her as she tramped away from the Metropolis, but at this moment dying alone in the wilderness was looking alarmingly possible. She would have to hunt, she thought, find somewhere to stay for a few days and get her energy back.
As she wandered onwards, adding detail to this thought, the sound of rushing water rose up in the forest. She couldn't place it at first, a mysterious hissing in the distance, but as she came nearer to the source the gurgling and gushing became unmistakable.
The forest floor in front of her dropped away and a gleaming, crystal river came into view. It was a big one, only knee deep, but wide and fast with a waterfall further upstream.
"Fresh water. Maybe fish,” she said to herself, dropping her backpack as she rushed through the fading forest and knelt on the shale bank. She splashed the cool water enthusiastically onto her face, unzipped her utility suit and rolled it down to her waist, scooping the water up under her arms and washing the forest dust from her shoulders and neck.
The water felt good, it danced over her skin in icy blasts and turned her hair to dripping icicles, jolting her senses back to life. She cupped her hands and drank a little, tasting the forest minerals that ran over her lips and down her throat, holding still periodically as she savoured the moment.
"Oh yeah, what have we here??" a voice suddenly came from behind her, making Zoe spin round instinctively.
A young man was leaning against a nearby tree, his arms lolling over the rifle slung across his chest. A second man, a little older but dressed in an identical survival suit and coat, stepped out from the forest cover just behind him.
“Well, you don't get much luckier than that,” the older man said, taking a few steps towards Zoe, “not you though sweetheart.” He smiled sarcastically.
Zoe sat frozen on the bank, her hands had moved instinctively to cover her chest and water now puddled on her collarbone and between her fingers. She looked around frantically for her rucksack.
“Looking for this?” asked the older man, dangling her rucksack by his side, “Don't worry, you can have it back in a minute.”
Zoe wanted to say something but had no idea what to say, she felt helpless and alone with nowhere to run. She leapt up and made a dash for the trees further down the bank, but the younger man had anticipated her escape and within two bounds had his arms around her waist. She struggled with all the strength she had, clawing at his arms and kicking at his shins.
The young man yelped when her heel caught his shinbone with full force and threw her onto the ground.
"Enough!" he yelled, and used the toe of his boot to deliver a precise kick to Zoe's mouth.
She brought her hand up to her face to protect herself from another blow and looked up at the young man who now towered above her. He lifted his foot for the next assault, but then a strange expression came over his face and for a moment everything stopped. It was quiet. Through the silence, Zoe heard a shrill whistle and thump and the young man let out a long breath, before collapsing on the ground next to her. Two short arrows stuck out from his back.
Zoe glanced across at the older man, who was now hopelessly fumbling with the rifle on his chest, a terrified look on his face. Another whistle, this time the arrow struck him in the throat. The man looked at Zoe for a moment, before his legs folded underneath him and he too crumpled onto the forest floor.
Zoe sat up and tugged her utility suit back up over her shoulders. The forest was quiet apart from her panicked breathing, and she scanned around the trees to look for the archer, waiting for the next whistle and thump that would sound her own end. On the other side of the river, a young woman stood watching her, her bow drawn in her hand. Her hair was tied back away from her face and Zoe could see that she was about the same age as her, maybe a
little older.
“You OK?” she called out over the sound of the water.
“Yes, thank you,” Zoe called back.
There was a pause between them, perhaps neither of them knew what to say next.
“I'm looking for Matthew,” Zoe explained finally, moving onto her knees and zipping up her top.
The girl relaxed her bow and lowered it. With her free hand, she pointed upstream to a white rock that rose in the middle of the racing water. There was a tall man standing on it, he was old like the Ghosts, with long grey hair tied up in a ponytail that snaked down his shoulder and back. He was wearing utility trousers, but had no shirt on and his skin looked like dark leather in the sunlight. On his left side, a tattoo of a large bird ran over his shoulder and down his ribs, its red wings spread out wide and glowing in the light. He smiled at her and gave her the most casual wave, like they were just meeting on the most ordinary of mornings.
Zoe got to her feet and waved back.
Matthew
On the edge of the clearing, next to a large wedge-shaped rock – its edges smoothed from centuries of wind and rain, and the more recent touchings of hands and feet that caressed its cool surface or clambered across it to sit on the large flat top – two Hawthorne bushes twisted and twined about each other. Their scrawny trunks swirled three times around, before energetically lancing this way and that in a thousand bristles that exploded with bright red and rich crimson berries. Matthew had studied their shared existence for hours, one native and one synthesised, marvelling at the closeness of the match, comparing the slightly too red red with the deeper, dirtier crimson as they both danced in the breeze with the blue sky behind them.
He wondered how on earth the modified tree had come to be here. One stray tree in the middle of the whole forest, next to an ordinary rock on the edge of one clearing, very much like all the other clearings. Had it been blown here all these miles by the wind, carried high up on the currents of air between here and the managed savannahs? Had it been dropped carelessly by a bird, or fallen from the pack of some unknown traveller, fifty perhaps sixty years earlier?
As he thought, he tumbled a small pebble over and over the fingers in his right hand. He had done it for as long as he could remember, and although the stones had changed over time, after each one was absentmindedly dropped or left in some forgotten place, the feeling of comfort it gave never left him. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Measuring the tiny variations in touch and temperature as he did so.
Today, the clearing was buzzing with the aftermath of a two-day foraging trip. Sorting, packing and storing, the first preparations for another winter, and of course the excitement about the arrival of the new girl. He swivelled around slightly on his perch and watched her for a while, sitting with Jennifer and telling her story, making friendly and enthusiastic introductions to the rest of the camp as they drifted by. She seemed sweet. So young. They got younger and younger every time. She was, doubtless as useless as all the other fresh arrivals, made naive and helpless by a youth spent wrapped in the contrived liberty of AarBee.
She glanced over to him from time to time and he sensed her desire to meet him and prove her devotion. They all did this. It was flattering but he had never really gotten used to it. For someone living in, and leading, such a close and interdependent community, he wasn't much of a people person. It didn't come naturally to him. He had always felt affectionate and compassionate, he enjoyed being a parent to so many children, but he was always one step away from belonging, like he was watching and feeling from some place beyond himself, some place nobody else could reach. As a result, whilst he knew he was loved and respected by the group, he was aware that the real laughter and foolishness, the camaraderie and love, the embraces and tears, often happened in the places and moments he wasn’t part of. There was a disconnectedness, a fundamental loneliness that sat in the shadows of every moment he spent with other people, that only really subsided when he was on his own, out in the wilds, focussed on the mundane and automatic routines of survival.
Deep in this thought, his gaze drifted slowly across the scene. There were so many of them now, perhaps as many as three thousand, based mainly at this camp, but also scattered between the two caves that sat a little further downstream and the tiny outpost in the hills. It worked well like that, people could move about as they pleased, joining the hustle and bustle of the main camp with the cave that reached deep into the hillside, each chamber or recess a meeting place, a classroom, a bakery or a place to sleep, or alternatively heading up to the outpost if they needed a quieter existence. The foraging and small game was good at the main camp. Rabbits, pigeon and river fish were plentiful, and there was easily enough to support and replenish them. But up at the outpost, where the landscape hardened up and the wind nipped at your ears even in summertime, the bigger game roamed freely. Once in a while, residents from the outpost would emerge from the trees with slings and sleds overflowing with deer, hare, wild boar and elk, once even a bear, and the whole group would come together to celebrate and share stories and information well into the night.
Their way of life was a strange mixture of tech and prehistoric. Solar panels placed strategically on hillsides and in the forest canopy provided them with basic power needs for light, hot water and to charge what tech they needed. But most of their days were spent foraging and hunting, working small agricultural plots that were cut discreetly into the forest or in hard-to-find gullies and hilltops.
Life was good, but never easy. Safaris were the biggest threat and Matthew lost more of the group to hunters than to animals or injury. They'd set a few traps on the approaches to the camp, but these would catch rabbits more often than hunters and were hard to keep track of if they set too many. Every once in a while, the sound of a hunter’s rifle would crack and echo through the forest, and he and the other Lifers would wait nervously to see who didn't return. Sometimes they found the bodies, sometimes they never did. When the hunters used bows the group would only realise their loss as the night closed in, as they bedded down and someone noticed an empty space, or a child stood waiting at the mouth of the cave for a parent who would never show.
On the occasions when they caught the hunters, waiting terrified in the traps or stumbled upon unexpectedly when their paths crossed on an expedition, their revenge was swift and total, but never joyous.
“Am I disturbing you?”
Matthew jumped out of his daydream to see the new girl standing in front of him, smiling nervously.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head a little to signify his surprise and return to the moment, “I was… Have you been standing there long?”
“No, no,” she glanced back at the group she had come from. “Well, only a moment or two. I can go if you’re busy.”
“Ha!” Matthew smiled at how he must look, sitting alone on a rock, staring intently at a Hawthorne bush. “It’s fine. What’s your name?”
“It’s Zoe.”
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Zoe. I hope your trip to get here wasn't too hard?”
“No, it was OK. The first day was the hardest. After that I found the forest quite tame. I felt like I was just out for a walk, you know?”
“You were lucky you didn’t get hunted.”
“Yeah, thanks for that, they’d have definitely done me.”
Matthew smiled at how quickly she’d relaxed again, at the teenage fearlessness that was now adjusting her stance and creeping back into her voice.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks and hello. Thanks for all this, you don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming about escaping.”
“You’re very welcome, although you don’t really need to thank me…” Matthew glanced around the clearing and back to Zoe again. “I’m not sure it’s much of an escape, but I hope you’re happy here. We’re glad to have you. Is Jennifer looking after you?”
“Yeah, she’s great!” Zoe looked over to her and on catching her gaze, gave her a
little wave.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, I wanted to say how much I admired you, what you’ve done here.” She blushed a little as Matthew smiled an uncomfortable, wordless thanks.
“I’ll leave you alone.”
She reached out and shook his hand awkwardly, barely even committing to a shake. Her palm was soft, warm and clammy, it felt like a marshmallow inside his dry and cracked grip and Matthew felt reluctant to let something so delicate go. He looked down at his hand for a moment, then watched it relax and let her free, before she jogged back to Jennifer and whatever work they were doing.
As she ran he watched her half adult, half child body, her half Lifer, half Apprentice clothes, her half best friends, half stranger manner with Jennifer and the others. Another one, he thought. Another one to join their quest for something they couldn’t define, to escape from something none of them had actually experienced.
He was the only one now who could remember the first few days, the first time he and eleven others had walked across the clearing and into the cave. They’d all gone now, and it made him feel older, perhaps less connected, every time a new one arrived. When he and the Lifers were all people he knew, people who had shared his life and experiences, who had left AarBee behind when it was still a baby project, he had felt a sense of mission and community. They were linked ideologically, a like-minded group not trying to stay in the past, but opting to follow a different future.