by James Davis
Nature responded with the Rages. Too little, too late, it might be said.
With the creation of the Department of Rail Transportation, the Department of Transportation and the federal highway system were eliminated. High-speed passenger and high-speed cargo rail lines replaced the interstate and people started to come in from the country and settle in the cities out of necessity.
The Exodus picked up a notch when the Right to Income Act became law and most of the population became happily unemployed. Why live in the country when you could live in the city with free income, housing and a Link connection? Harley had only been a boy then, but even sitting on the reservation watching the world pass them by, the Navajo could see that somebody was herding everyone together, whether they wanted to admit it or not. The Navajo had experience in such things.
Things really got rolling with the solving of the energy crisis. Free energy was a benefit of living in a Hub. Price was originally designed to be a part of the Utah Hub, but the mountain pass to link it to the rest of the Hub had proven more arduous than planned and eventually the high-speed rail through the canyon was shut down and Price finished dying. But it was still plugged into the fusion plant, so the power was always on, even when no one was home.
Of course, it didn’t really matter now. After the Federation replaced the United Nations and ratified the Declaration of Human Rights, energy was a right of life, along with income, education, medical care, housing and access to the Link. Now everyone was entitled to a powerband and you carried all the energy you would ever need right on your arm.
Yes sir, the world was a pretty “intrestin” place. Even in the Utah Hub, with a population of more than 25 million, you could walk for blocks and hardly see a soul. Most people spent their days and nights on the Link, living a virtual life that was far more exciting, far more stimulating than anything reality could offer. Reality, after all, was still a little messy. It was more than the Rages reshaping the climate of entire regions from one extreme to the other; it was more than every animal on the planet hungry for human blood. Reality took effort. Too damn much effort.
Solving the energy problem of the world did have its side effects, like shaking the balance of power on the planet to its core and igniting the Energy Wars. A couple of billion dead later and China and most of the Middle East turned into a nuclear wasteland and things had settled down as the Founder Federation started to get a grip on power. Humanity enjoyed life in a utopia now, or Harley imagined most thought so. But not everyone. Some couldn’t help but feel that despite all of the technological wonders, things were unraveling, a little at a time, bit by bit, piece by piece.
Those were the people collectively called pilgrims. They would take advantage of what the world had to offer, but not directly. In the world, not of the world, they liked to say. No linktag implanted in their mind for them, thank you all the same. They linked through their eyeset, something they could take off and walk away from when they wanted. Then there were the real radicals, the ones who wouldn’t connect to the Link at all. The blinkers called them neands. They chose a hard life not connecting to the Link. It was difficult to live without the Link anymore, but they somehow made do in pockets all over the world. They were considered something of a cult, like the zombie Wrynd. Or the Catholics.
Pilgrims, neands and Wrynd were the outcasts of the New Age of Discovery and on most days they were Harley’s prey. He would just as easily prey on the blinkers or the legionnaires or even the Marshals and their deputies if the opportunity presented itself. Harley considered himself an opportunist and in this most “intrestin” of worlds, opportunities were plentiful.
Nothing moved on Price Main Street, but he hadn’t expected anything else. Most of the street lights were still working and as Harley walked down the middle of the road, his dusty cowboy boots clicked, clicked on the asphalt. In the distance, a coyote cried, and Harley put his hand on his sidearm. There were still a lot of critters in the city and the night belonged to them. It would be best to find a place to sleep. He had planned to find a vehicle and keep moving, but it had been a long walk into town and a night’s rest would do him good.
There were still a number of cars parked along the road and in driveways on the side streets. Finding something that would run shouldn’t be too hard, but it would be better in the morning. There were a lot of cats in the city and they would be on the prowl. While dogs didn’t seem to be affected by the Rages, cats definitely were. Harley guessed the Rages answered the question as to which animal was truly man’s best friend. He remembered his mom used to have a couple of cats around the house when he was a boy, back before the Rages. He didn’t care for them much then either. You could just look at them and tell they were a shifty lot.
He could feel there were people in a number of houses. Those still occupied seemed to radiate a tired, but steady pulse of life that had been ripped away from those abandoned. They just looked forlorn and fragile, waiting for nature to turn them to dust. There were more homes deserted than occupied. When most people left in the Exodus, they didn’t bother taking their cars. They were of little use in the Hub. If you needed to go anywhere, you used mass transit. Some people had a pod, electric cars to bop from commuters to home and back, but for most people even the transit was more than they needed. They didn’t have a job to go to, could order anything they wanted from the Link and explore the universe from their living room. Why did they need to go anywhere? The automobiles parked in driveways and along the streets of this dead city were useless in the Hub. With any luck, he would be able to find something he could run with his powerband or maybe even an old truck or motorcycle that ran on NG. They were rare, but Castle Valley was rich in natural gas, so a lot of people drove NG vehicles long after they fell out of favor in the rest of the world.
Harley considered taking a side street and breaking into a home for the night but kept walking down Main instead. From the shadows of the alleyways, he could see dark shapes flitting here and there and knew there were cats on the prowl. They would stay clear of him until there were enough to overwhelm him, but he knew that may not take long. A Rage was building up around him. He picked up his pace.
Price, before the world had changed, and the final nail hammered into its coffin, had been an energy town. Coal had been its heartbeat for more than 160 years. When the government finally pulled the plug on the coal industry, when the last coal-fired power plant closed and the last coal miner climbed out of the mine with his face black from coal dust, Price, like so many towns, began to die. The cities of Eastern Utah had survived longer than some because natural gas had been an alternative and the communities held on, but they were living on life support. When a college student finally cracked the mystery of cold fusion, solving the energy crisis for the world, Price and cities like her gasped their last breath. While there might still be people living here, the city had long ago stopped being anything like a city. Now it was just a corpse, waiting for the wind and the elements to scatter its remains.
Ahead of him Harley heard more coyotes howl and behind him he saw the first of the cats dare to slither out from the shadows and onto the street. They were herding him, the creatures of the Rages. He drew his blaster and picked up his pace, jogging lightly down the middle of the road.
There was a hotel at the top of a hill as Main Street led out of town. Its lights were still working, although part of it looked like it had been destroyed by a storm. Harley turned left and tried the front door to the lobby. It was unlocked and he walked inside just before the first cat dared to leap toward him. He scowled at it and went towards the reception desk. It was hard to know if the hotel was truly deserted or not, so he waited for a few minutes at the desk and walked behind the counter to peer in one of the offices. The attendant’s desk was bare and coated with dust. The hotel was his for the taking then. There wasn’t a way to access a room since he didn’t have the hotel’s Link account, but he didn’t worry about opening the door. His boot worked fairly well.
The hotel was only three stories, so he took the stairs to the top, looking for a nice suite with a view of the city. The hallway lights were all still working and it was strange to think he was the only one inside. While it smelled a little musty, everything seemed fine, and he could hear the air conditioning softly humming through the building.
He adjusted the saddlebag across his shoulder and tried the first door on his left, surprised to find it unlocked. He opened the door and stepped inside. The room was not empty. There was a kitchenette on his left and a desk and chair on his right. A king size bed occupied the center of the room and sitting on the bed, looking disheveled and with a bloody scar on her right temple was a young woman in uniform. She was pointing a pulse rifle at his chest.
Harley sighed. “I’ll try the next room.”
“Stay right there or I’ll blast you.” The woman’s voice was shaking as were her hands on the rifle.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She looked scared, and Harley had some experience in scared. He had been the cause of it, and he had been the victim of it. Looking at this slim, dirty woman with hair that looked like it may have served as a nest for mice, with sunken eyes floating in a sea of black, he would say this woman was a good deal past scared and all the way into terrified. “Do you mind if I drop my bags? It’s been a long day.”
The woman nodded and shifted in bed, thought about standing but apparently didn’t have the energy for it. She pointed the gun at his holster. “Drop the gun and sword while you’re at it.”
Harley looked the woman in the eyes and after a moment she looked away. “I don’t think I will.”
She aimed the rifle at his chest as he slipped the saddlebag and backpack from his shoulders with a sigh and went to sit on a chair by the desk in the corner. He turned the chair to face her as he sat down, and his back ached with relief. He reclined and crossed his legs in front of him and tried to smile but found that he could not. That was usually the case.
“What’s your name?”
“Kara. Sergeant Kara Litmeyer of the Founder Federation Legion, Utah Hub Brigade.”
“Kara,” he nodded as politely as his nature allowed. “Harley Nearwater.”
“Are you a neand?” Kara asked.
“No. Just a wanderer on the path. What brings a Federation legionnaire so far out in the sticks?”
Her eyes widened and then darted to him, then away, then to the windows, the doorway and back to him again. “I’m lost.” Her voice squeaked.
“Lost?” He looked at the bloody scar on her temple. “How is that even possible?”
“He took it away from me.”
“What?”
“The Link. He took away my linktag.”
Harley nodded as if what she was saying was not completely insane, but of course, it was. Crazy blinkers. Everyone on the planet with a linktag was a blinker, although the name was losing its significance with each passing generation. When the linktags were first developed and implemented people connecting to the Link mentally with their tag had a tendency to blink rapidly while trying to divide their attention between the Link and the physical world. Most people didn’t exhibit rapid eye movement and blinking when connected to the Link anymore, but a lot of that was because people spent more time on the Link than in “realtime.”
Blinkers injected nanotechnology in their right temple. The injection left a small, star-shaped scar and while you could easily get the scar removed with your right to medical account, few used their RTM to do so. Having the tag scar meant you belonged, that you weren’t a pilgrim, or even worse, a neand. The insanity in what the scared, shivering woman on the bed had said is that once injected with the nanobots, you couldn’t just perform a surgery and have them removed. They were a part of you. They connected you to the Link and the Link to you. It was one of the reasons Harley wouldn’t have a linktag. Not the only reason, but definitely one of them. He had no interest in being a blinker.
The scar on the young woman’s temple looked ugly, but whoever had done that to her had about as much of a chance of removing the linktag that way as they would have if they had removed her arms or legs.
“Who is he?”
The woman bit her lip, started to sob and fought it away. She tossed the rifle on the bed beside her.
“I don’t know. I was meditating one night, just trying to clear my head and get in tune with my emotions because it had been a pretty rough couple of days. I had been fighting with Alain, my husband. I was thinking about Alain and trying to calm myself and this strange man just appeared out of thin air. He didn’t scare me at first, even though one moment I was alone in my apartment and the next there was this stranger standing beside me. Crazy huh, that I wouldn’t be scared? But he was tall and he was handsome and so I thought it might be nice to talk to him, even if he didn’t have a brain in his head he would be nice to look at and harmless I thought. He looked harmless, anyway. The Legion teaches you how to take care of yourself, so I just wasn’t worried. If he tried anything, I would kick his ass. But then he looked into my eyes and I looked into his and I got lost I think. I think he hypnotized me. He had gray eyes, the grayest eyes I’ve ever seen and looking into them it was like there was a storm going on in there and I couldn’t move.”
“Sure you weren’t on the Link?”
“No. This was realtime. He was in my apartment.”
“Did your husband see him?”
The woman shook her head. “My husband is on the Link, not realtime.”
“Your husband. Is he flesh or digital?”
“Flesh, digi, filler, does it matter?”
Harley shrugged. “Not to me.”
It was considered improper to differentiate between a digital version of a person and the flesh and blood version. Even asking if someone in the digiverse was “real” or “simulation” was deemed hateful. It was racist, bigoted behavior. Harley made a point of always asking.
“That’s why we were arguing. His realtime is in the Paris Hub and one day while I was at work I had the strangest thought. I just thought I’ve never touched my husband. I mean flesh to flesh. I’ve never kissed his lips in realtime, or ran my fingers through his hair in realtime. I’ve never made love to him in realtime and that just made me sad. I don’t know why it made me sad, but it did. I’m not neand-minded, or anything, and I’m no bigot. What world you live in is up to you, digiverse or universe, to each his own, you know? Pick your realm and enjoy it, I say. But when I talked to Alain about maybe catching a flight and visiting him in realtime Paris he got so angry and it just escalated from there. But the thing is, I couldn’t get it off my mind and after work I found myself visiting the parks of the Utah Hub. Have you ever been?”
“No.”
“They’re so beautiful. And they’re never very crowded. I watched a couple with their children playing on the grass and it just made me want to be with Alain in realtime even more. We had talked about having children, but I think we had pretty much decided they would be digi, not flesh. But now I wasn’t so sure. So I thought I would try and meditate for a while in realtime, to clear my head and decide what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. And that’s when the man with the gray eyes appeared in my apartment.”
Harley leaned forward and his stomach growled loudly. He hadn’t bothered to eat since breakfast and the exertion from the day was catching up with him. Kara heard his stomach and stood up to go to the small kitchenette. “Are you hungry? I have food. There’s some broiled chicken and vegetables, lots of vegetables. I also have water, milk and even some beer. When I woke up I was here and my
uniform was here and pulse rifle and all of this food was here with me. I don’t even drink beer, but there’s plenty of it.” Her voice was more relaxed now and her body language spoke of fear washing away.
Harley raised an eyebrow. “I drink beer.”
Kara dished him up a plate of food and Harley sat at the bar and ate, not realizing how hungry he had been. He drank two beers very quickly, recognizing that his body probably needed the water more but not caring. He sipped the third beer as he turned Kara back to her story.
“What did he want?”
“Want?”
“The man with the gray eyes. What did he want?”
Kara leaned on the opposite end of the bar and bit into a carrot. Beneath the dirt and the tear stains, her chocolate skin was very smooth and beautiful. “He said he wanted to help me. He smiled at me and said he wanted to help me. He was very handsome, even more than Alain, and I always thought Alain was the most gorgeous man I have ever seen, flesh or digi.”
“Help you how?”
“He said the linktag was a form of possession. That with the linktag I would never be able to think clearly, never be able to make my choice.”
“Choice?”
“Yeah, choice. Crazy. He said I had to decide which side I stood for or if I chose neither, but I needed to decide and he hoped I might choose his side. He said as long as I had the whole world screaming inside my head I would never be able to find the quiet I needed to make my choice. I needed an exorcism.”
“An exorcism?” Harley smiled.
“He actually said that. The strange thing was that looking into his eyes it made perfect sense to me. So I nodded my head and he touched me.” Her hand went to her temple, and her face twisted with pain or the memory of pain as she did so. “I woke up here. And I can’t reach the Link. My linktag is gone. I can’t connect with anyone. I haven’t talked to Alain in four days and the quiet here, the quiet is deafening. How do you deal with it, the quiet? How do the neands survive in so much quiet?”