It wasn’t hard avoiding the piles of rubble that scattered the landscape; remnants of houses that had made up some of the suburban districts of Toronto. Once in a while you could even recognize an old chimney or building facade, standing stalwart in the face of destruction, but other than those few tombstones, there were no signs that life had ever existed. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I imagined the tens of thousands of people displaced from once vibrant neighbourhoods, but I kept my thoughts to myself as we fled towards the darkening sky in the east.
As we drove, the sand thickened and I was forced to slow the vehicle, navigating up and over dunes. I was relieved to discover that I was breathing easier, whether because I’d adapted to the lower oxygen level or because the car had an O2 producer, I couldn’t be sure. Both of the kids seemed comfortable, so I decided to worry about the whole breathing thing later.
We drove until the sun disappeared behind the horizon, dropping slowly out of sight in my rear view mirror. I was reluctant to turn the car off, but I didn’t want to drain the reserve battery. I wondered about the lack of wind. From everything I’d heard about the Burn Zone, the wind should have been howling around us, but there wasn’t even a whiff of a breeze. I stepped out of the car and tried to find a place to relieve myself that wasn’t completely out in the open. When I got back, I could make out the outline of Blossom laying out our supplies to take an inventory. I couldn’t believe how clear everything was in the starlight. I looked up and caught my breathe. The sky was heavy with stars and I could see white ripples of light wandering across the blackness, which must be the Milky Way. Blossom looked up from what she was doing and followed my gaze. Her mouth dropped as she took in the sweeping vastness of outer space. Under the biosphere you couldn’t really see the sky all that well, only a couple of planets and the moon, so the vista we now gazed upon was fairly mind blowing.
Jake ignored the majestic sky and sucked back four insta-meals before I even thought of stopping him, but Blossom saved me the trouble by cuffing him on the back of his head.
“What?” he squawked in protest.
“We don’t have unlimited supplies, dough brain. We have to ration.”
“But I was hungry!” he implored.
“Yeah, well get used to it. This isn’t some cushy state run dining hall, this is the Bee Zee,” she retorted with a bit of a sneer. I was surprised to hear anything government related being described as “cushy”, but what did I know of her life? Maybe she had a point. Jake turned to me for support, but I only shook my head.
“Sorry, Jake, but she’s right. Who knows how long we’ll be out here before we get to the next biosphere. Let’s hope that the communication grid is as crappy as usual, so we don’t get busted trying to enter the next city.” I surveyed the supplies and while they looked plentiful, I knew that they could run down quickly. Jake ducked his head in acknowledgement and guiltily collected the empty food packets, stuffing them into a bag.
“So where are we going?” he asked, blatantly changing the subject. I ran a hand through my hair and gave my scalp a good rub. I was sure my hair was standing on end, but the action helped me think.
“We’re going to have to look at that file of Reg’s again. I think we have to head to one of the coasts, but I don’t know which one.” I pushed my glasses up on top of my head and grabbed my computer bag from the back seat of the vehicle, hoping that there might be enough battery left to run the file, but the unit wouldn’t even start up. We’d have to wait until morning. Blossom handed me a food packet and a couple water tablets. They weren’t as good as the vacuum packed water, but they would rehydrate us and replenish our cells with electrolytes. I could see her shiver in the darkness and handed her an emergency blanket to wrap herself in. “So, Blossom isn’t a SK name…” I prodded, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging.
“Nope” she replied and took a delicate bite of her insta-meal bar.
“She’s a natural” offered Jake. He was smart enough to duck her swing and only tossed her a smug smile in return.
“A natural?” I repeated incredulously. It had been decades since I’d come across a natural. I knew that they were out there, despite government edicts for scientifically healthy offspring, but since conceiving a child naturally was against the law, if you did have a natural, you didn’t advertise it. It did, however, explain her small stature. “Where are your parents? Won’t they be worried for you?” The girl sent an accusatory glare to Jake and shook her head. “Sorry, is that a rough subject?” She raised a hand to a spot just below her collar bone and pressed hard. Her pinched expression belied her disregard despite her giving me a casual shrug.
“They’re dead” she explained after several uncomfortable minutes had passed and I searched for another topic of conversation.
“I’m sorry.” It was insufficient, but all I had. She gave another shrug and plumped up her sack of clothes before reclining on it and staring up into the sky. I guess the matter was closed. Before she got too comfortable, she sat up again and reached over to a pile of items she had been sorting. Finding what she was looking for, she tossed it over to me. I miss the item with my left hand, but managed to recover and catch it with my right before it hit the ground. Studying it in the dim light of our shared light stick, I flipped through the pages, squinting to make out the writing. It seemed to be some sort of manual. I could make out a picture of a gear shift and realized that it was for the vehicle we were driving. It was too dark to read much of it, but I tucked it under my makeshift pillow. “Thanks, I’ll read it first thing tomorrow.” I wondered where Jake had taken himself off to, but he appeared from behind a bit of rubble that had become the men’s room without any discussion regarding facilities. As usual, he was walking, head down. I watched him settle down into his bedroll. Another moment of silence passed and I felt awkward in the quiet. “Hey, Jake, take a look at the stars, can you believe that you can’t see this from inside? We might be the first people to see this in years.” I watched him tilt his head up and take in the vast expanse. The moon had risen over a cluster of half felled buildings. It was only a quarter full, but was impressive next to the star laden sky and shimmering lines of the Milky Way. The white streams faded as the moon crested its course, but the effect was still stunning.
“Have you ever been out of the dome before?” he asked me, making no mention of the night sky.
“Yeah, a couple of times, but in one of those high speed transports, they’re enclosed to “protect” us from the radiation, so you can’t see out.” I dropped my hands, embarrassed that I’d actually made air quotes with my fingers. “My parents live on the western seaboard.” It hadn’t been my intention to get personal, but I thought if I gave a bit, so would they. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be on the road or what we’d have to face, but I thought we probably wouldn’t have much more to do than get to know each other, and survive, of course. “You?” I left the question hanging for either of them, but only got head shakes in response. Well, I’d done my best, at least for now. “Let’s try and get some sleep, we have a lot to do tomorrow and we want to head out not long after day break. Good night.” So saying, I pulled the emergency blanket over my head and tried to sleep. It wasn’t long before the soft breathing of both teens told me that they’d drifted off. I tried not to think about what was coming, what we were going to do and the two lives that I was now responsible for. I lowered the blanket and looked up in to the black velvet of night and, in spite of everything, I felt strangely at peace. Not taking the time to analyze the sensation, I closed my eyes and surrendered, finally, to sleep.
Chapter 6 – One Track Mind
It was early when I woke. Even though I had set my ICD to transit mode, I could still occasionally feel it send out electrical impulses up my arm and it was that sensation that brought me out of a dreamless sleep. I debated cutting out the implant, but it was large and there were several nano-wires attached to my nerves. Removing it could mess up the sensitivity in my fingers
and I wasn’t willing to risk that right now. I rubbed my wrist and cracked open my eyes. The sunrise was painting itself across the eastern sky in shades of pink, orange and red that cut across the fading bruise of night. I felt sweaty and constricted in my Sunskin and peeled it off, letting the warming air of day dry my skin. I’d have to remember to take the damned thing off before I went to bed from now on. I looked over my charges and was glad to see that they still slept soundly. I went around the rubble pile and relieved myself, indulging in a large stretch and scratching places that were impolite to touch in mixed company. I should probably have changed in to looser clothes before I went to bed as well. I added it to my to-do list of evening ablutions.
The sun finally crested the horizon and the temperature jumped up uncomfortably. I could feel my skin prickle under the heat and scurried back into my Sunskin before the UV rays burnt me to a crisp. My skin hadn’t had any real sun exposure since I was twelve or so and the sensation of heat on my skin was strangely alluring, but I couldn’t risk scorching myself. The kids were stirring and I gave them each a package of water for a treat. We didn’t have many packets, at least not enough for my liking, but we had water tablets to spare, so I wasn’t worried about dehydration at this point.
“Good sleep?” I asked to neither in particular. Blossom sprang out of bed and after drinking the water, moved herself through a series of stretches that would have impressed a gymnast.
“Yup” she replied completing some sort of twisting pose that made my back ache just watching her.
“How about you, Jake?” I queried further. He groaned and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. Squinting against the bright glare of day, he scrambled for some sun glasses and finally offered up a half hearted shrug to my inquiry. “Not a morning person?” I teased, giving him a nudge in the ribs with my toe. I tossed him a coffee flavoured insta-meal and ripped open one for myself. Blossom declined and picked out a green tea one instead, apparent health nut that she was. The morning meals were a gelatinous compilation of manufactured vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients, but they really didn’t give you the sensation of actually eating. It was more of a thirty second process that got you out the door quickly. The other meals weren’t much more appealing, but at least you could chew them.
Sucking on my coffee flavoured gel, I perused the car manual. Apparently whatever type of vehicle it had been at one time was modified beyond recognition. The back flap of the manual had warranties and pamphlets for all sorts of upgrades; storm resistant finish, UVA & UVB filtered windows, sand proof air intake, off road suspension, terrain sensing tires and, of course, the eco-sail. My favourite was the paint job, though. It adapted to the environment, using technology gleaned from cephalopods. It wasn’t perfect, but it did provide some camouflage, which we needed to cross the wide open Burn Zone. Whoever had owned this thing never meant it for the city. I took a closer look at the tires and noticed that the knobs were gone, replaced by more scoop-like treads that provided the best navigation on sand.
Jake had finally roused from his blanket and was firing up the tablet. I could hear the sound bytes floating gently on the air and realized how silent it was out in the Burn Zone. No traffic, no people talking and no mechanical hum coming from the bio-dome; there really wasn’t a sound except the hard drive and RAM grinding away. He and Blossom watched the file run through a few times before he lifted up his head and looked at me.
“Any clues to which way we’re supposed to go?” I asked hopefully.
“The first clip with any recognizable landmark is one of the Lakes,” he said stretching and scratching his ribs. His stomach let out a fearsome growl and he coloured slightly. “I don’t know which one though.”
“Right after that, there was this weird fat white character with a red hat and some sort of scarf tied around his waist” added Blossom. “He looked like he was made out of hair mousse.”
I grabbed the stylus and the tablet and drew out a crude sketch of a portly snowman with a long knit cap. “Like this?” Blossom squinted at my rendering, mentally comparing it to the image she remembered. She looked doubtful.
“Yeah, maybe, if you could actually draw.” She erased my picture and deftly drew out an amazing likeness of the image she had seen. “More like that.” It was exactly what I’d had in my head, but was unable to transfer on to the tablet.
“Bonhomme!” I shouted victoriously. Both of the kids looked at me blankly. “We’re going east; this guy was a mascot of winter carnival in Quebec.” Both of them looked at me blankly. They’d never experienced winter, and I had only seen a tepid variation, but at least I had actually seen snow; once. I slipped in to history teacher mode. “Before the Melt, it used to be cold here in the winter, but you know that. The rivers and even parts of the Great Lakes would freeze over and people could ice skate and ski. In Montreal, they had a big festival, with crazy ice sports and lots of food and alcohol, they’d skate on parts of the St. Lawrence, when it froze and this guy was the emblem of the whole party. He’s a snowman, dressed like a Voyageur.” This explanation hit them with about as much affect as finding another grain of sand where we were standing.
“Okay, whatever you say Dax,” mumbled Jake, as he rolled up his blanket and repacked his improvised bed. He did the same with Blossom’s bedroll and stood next to the vehicle looking anywhere else but at me. I’d geeked out and he wasn’t going to let me forget it. “Are we gonna go?”
“Yeah, let’s roll,” I smiled with a perverse sense of satisfaction, I’d always wanted to say that but it made no sense on a transport, “before any trackers find us.” The fear of tracking drones was legitimate, depending on who wanted Jake and why, so we hopped in the car and after I had cast up a short mental prayer, started up the rig. I don’t know why I suddenly seemed inclined to talk to God, when I was, for all intents and purposes, an atheist, but I felt better thinking that some unseen force was on my side. I thought I saw a sparkle of silver in the sky, when I looked back in the review mirror, but I couldn’t be sure, so I ignored it and turned the steering wheel towards the Northeast.
“Dax?” asked Blossom after a long silence.
“Yeah?”
“How do you know so much stuff? Like about that Bonhomme guy?” I thought she was pulling my chain, but her expression, reflected in the mirror, seemed earnest enough.
“I am a history teacher.” I tried not to sound too sarcastic, but it was a pretty obvious answer.
“Duh!” she snorted in disgust. “I know that. But that’s just such a totally random thing, isn’t it? And the stuff about the weather and all that; isn’t it a policy violation to talk about the Melt and all the other stuff?” She was right. Our government had started systematically silencing scientists at the start of the millennia and the tradition continued through to the current administration. The only problem with that were people like me. I remembered snow, okay, mostly from pictures and I’d eaten food that needed a fork and knife; and there were still a lot of us. Reg remembered refrigerators and skating, but those folks were slowly dying out and our collective history was going with them. How long would it be until my generation was gone and no one remembered what life was like before sealed biospheres and black-op style politics? I shook my head to clear the maudlin thoughts. Blossom was giving me the opportunity to pass that information down to another generation and I wasn’t going to miss it.
“Look, I remember and experienced a life way different from yours. There was a time when you could leave the bio-domes and still go out and see the world. There were still remnants of life up in the north. We sometimes had to cook our food and do things like wash dishes. The government doesn’t want anyone to remember that. They want you to think that this is all normal – the way it’s always been, but it’s not. They’ve been lying and covering up problems for so long they don’t know how to stop.” I paused. I was starting to sound like Reg. Maybe he’d been right all along.
“That’s what my paper is about!” crowed Jak
e. “It’s like the farmer; he’s out there somewhere and knows stuff that could change everything.”
“Farmer?” asked Blossom, rolling the word around on her tongue like a particularly good insta-meal flavour. She was interested enough to pop her head between the two front seats and look at Jake.
“Yeah, it’s someone who knows how to grow food and take care of animals and stuff like that. Most people think they don’t exist anymore, at least not here, but I think there’s one out there somewhere. That’s where were going, to find the farmer!” It was the most that Jake had uttered since we found him at the pod and his excitement was evident. For whatever reason, the idea of a farmer existing out there had fired up his imagination to the point of obsession.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” said Blossom, throwing herself back on her seat, “we’re heading out in to the Burn Zone to find Big Foot? That’s why you’ve put all of our lives at risk? We’re crossing the Bee Zee for something that doesn’t even exist?” The incredulity dripped off the last few words and from the corner of my eye I could see Jake flinch at her tone.
“He does exist!” protested Jake, flicking the hair out of his eyes and crossing his arms stubbornly. “Dax, tell her!”
“No Dax, tell me you don’t actually believe this crap!” she insisted, equally mulish.
Last Farmer: Last Farmer Series - Book 1 Page 6