"The most dangerous weeds in the garden," he says.
"Sounds good. What does it mean?"
As Gran‐Gran would say, even though I walk through the Valley of Death, I will fear no evil. And Poppy would add this: Because I'm the meanest sonofabitch in the Valley. "Simple," Son says. "We show we're the meanest sons of bitches in Eden."
The guy snorts. "And how do we do that?" he says.
A raggedy ratswarm hovers on the edge of their bivouac‐to‐be, unmantled, unpleasantly naked. It's joined by a small herd of pigs and several moist‐eyed monkeys, so eager they twitch.
"Like this," Son says. He lunges toward the biggest monkey of all, stabbing with his spearstick. He steps back and then lunges at a pig on the other side of their perimeter. Fast—amazingly fast, given his recent condition—he lunges here and lunges there, scaring off masses of rats, which proceed to the other side of the circle and then surge back to attend to wounded spectators, those who don't have to deal with monkey attackers.
He soon establishes their territorial rights to a circle, the minimum radius of which is the length of his spearstick added to the reach of his lunge.
"Well done," says the guy.
Safe to say neither one of these slow‐movers has noticed the big dragon lying over there in low brush pretending to be a log, just parked there watching, awaiting further developments.
Then something new and more interesting makes the scene.
•
It's too late to run.
This thing arises without warning, emerging from cracks and crannies in a stony area bearing scorch marks from yesterday's godbolts. It resembles a roachswarm, this carpet of blurs. Though it's deeper and less evenly textured. More like a ratswarm. It sidles up to Son as if to nudge him.
"Whoa," says the cupcake, which helps not at all.
Son stabs down into the swarm as he steps back. His spearstick meets no resistance. He steps forward to stab again, and his weapon passes right through to ring against bedrock. There's no squeal, no blood. The swarm only nudges toward Son some more.
"What's happening?" Dee Zu asks.
"Dunno." He stands his ground, trying not to wince too obviously as the thing shrugs up on him a bit. Inside Son's head, Poppy slathers on the sarcasm, asking him how it feels to be immortal.
Meanwhile, the guy won't just let it go. "You're the hunter," he says. "The Man. I thought you knew all about the local wildlife."
"Call it a bio‐blur swarm without the bios," Son says. "Call it whatever you want."
"That's useful."
"Okay, it's a feral mantle. Something new." Whatever it is, it's behaving more like a fat mattress than a swarm on the hunt.
"Mimicry," Mr. Smartass suggests.
"Mimicry?"
"Maybe your Boogoo is imitating a swarm."
"My Boogoo?"
"Yeah. What does it think it's doing?"
"I have no idea. My father always said it doesn't think. It's nothing but a big dumb dust bunny."
"Maybe it's not as dumb as that," says Dee Zu.
Her friend says nothing, tries to appear wise.
So Son gives the guy a look and says, "Maybe the new Boogoo is, like, more into peaceful coexistence with other complexities."
"What?" Dee Zu is funny. She looks all around, maybe hunting for the ventriloquist or something before she focuses back on Son.
"Something Auntie said. The Boogoo eats complexities. That's its thing. But she thought it was learning to get along with some bios. Getting friendlier over time. Of course Poppy said that was total bushwa."
Anyway, this is surely part of the resident Eden boogoo, not the main item. Maybe it's aping something that's purely local. The really weird thing is this notion of a pseudo bio‐blur swarm.
Never mind. Now it collapses into a loose pile of dust. As though all its attempts to establish relations with these dumb bios finally became too much to bear.
•
Or maybe the mattress was only the opening act, and its time in the limelight has passed.
The guy picks up a rock twice the size of his fist and hefts it. "Is that a snake?" he asks.
"This can't be good," Son says.
If it isn't one thing, as Gran‐Gran would say, it's another. A good twenty‐five meters long and maybe a meter in diameter, this thing that might be a snake emerges from the ravine and comes winding over the terrain, the more menacing for its gray anonymity.
"My God," Dee Zu says.
"It's headed our way."
"What do we do?"
"Wait and watch."
"Okay," says the guy. "If you say so." And there's that edge to his voice again.
"You've got a problem with that?" Son says.
"No, no. You go ahead and show this thing who's King of the Heap."
"Or maybe I'll wait for you to fill us in on your better plan."
"I hate snakes." Dee Zu clearly thinks this is a good time to steer the conversation into new channels, an old Auntie tactic.
Son plays along. "At least it isn't a swarm of snakes," he says.
"The bright side."
The snake that isn't a swarm veers off toward the herd of pigs, which isn't quick enough to scatter. Because the snake loops half around them and disintegrates, leaving in its place a long seething heap of much smaller items.
Dee Zu knows what these are. "Ants."
Her friend knows even more about the situation. "Big ants," he says. Each of them is about six centimeters long.
Weirder and weirder. Son has never seen an ant before either. But he always had the impression they were smaller.
Auntie once remarked that the total biomass of ants used to be about the same as that of all the people in the world. But where are they now? They're basically extinct, and so are the people. Auntie speculated that colonial roaches had usurped the ants' niches in the scheme of things.
"Millions of big ants," Dee Zu says.
Then things get weirder. These ants that aren't a snake aren't ants either. More like robotic approximations to ants, they're entirely blur, not bio. Is that possible?
Whatever. They proceed to make short work of the pigs.
"What's going on?" Dee Zu directs her question at Son.
"They're eating the pigs."
"No, they're not," the guy says. "Not in any standard way."
"They can probably eat pigs any way they like," Son tells him. "Because they aren't ants."
Now the blur components are themselves disintegrating, the way the parent snake did. They turn to dust, quickly becoming indistinguishable from the ex‐pigs. Dust to dust, as Gran‐Gran would say.
"Holy shit," says the guy.
"You wanted to know what happened to our resident boogoo," Son says. "Well, there's your answer. It's still with us, right here in Eden." The thing is, like everything else, it's trying a new bag of tricks. He has never seen this type of bio‐blur interaction before. It's more like a blur‐blur process, in fact, with bios serving as both template and fuel for blur incarnations.
Even to himself now, he sounds like Auntie throwing her voice. And Poppy is quick to chip in. "Just listen to yourself, boy," the voice in Son's head says. "Could be the Boogoo ate your brain one time you weren't looking."
power of prayer
Son watches these people. Doesn't trust either one.
He's jealous of the guy, of his ease with this woman. It's like what he had with Auntie, back in the Bunker, except easier.
Sometimes, though, they sign off on each other. Like they're tuning out. Here's another one of those moments. Dee Zu's hand falls away from her friend's as they stare away into their respective thousand‐yard distances, listening to something Son can't hear. She's staring in profile, and he watches her lips, her throat, the subtle play of muscle and sinew, the smooth skin. She's speaking. She's talking to someone with her mouth closed. So is her friend. Gran‐Gran claimed she could talk to her God, though Auntie said that was only bushwa. Maybe that's what they're d
oing.
"Who are you talking to?" Son asks.
"Tell you later," says Dee Zu.
"That's going to take some telling," the smartass says. Then he laughs. Haw. A quick bark.
•
Son is happy he isn't dead. He's also amazed at how fast he's on the mend, not to mention pleased to be sitting here beside this woman.
He's less pleased to find himself parked next to her friend. Never mind. As Poppy used to say, "If you want things to be perfect, boy, first you need to die and go to Heaven."
Funny the ways our childhood can stay with us. "Our father, who are in Heaven …" Son mumbles this deep in his throat, not really addressing the prayer to anyone or anything. It's mere reflex, unbidden early childhood habit. After all, he has real grounds for gratitude, and Gran‐Gran taught him always to stay alert to what there is to be grateful for, and to tell her God about it. Of course Son learned to do this quietly, in a way that wouldn't get Poppy started about self‐reliance and how a real man doesn't need any made‐up gods looking after him. "Our father, who are in Heaven. Hallo Ed be thy name."
"The Lord's Prayer." The words erupt inside his head. Not a great bearded‐God voice, only nicely modulated female tones, pretty bland.
"Jesus Christ," he says.
"What's wrong?" Dee Zu asks him.
"Nothing," he says. Then he says it again: "Jesus Christ!"
"What's happening?" Now he also has the guy's attention.
It's still coming: "Also known as the Pater Noster …"
Is this the voice Gran‐Gran used to hear? She never said anything about the shimmer he's getting in his visual periphery. Instead of directly attending to it, he looks askance at this development, the way you optimize night vision. Jesus, Jesus Christ. Now he's seeing things. Scrolling text. He can read information at the same time he listens: "History's most common Christian prayer appears in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9–13, in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke 11:2–4."
This is surprising. Given the way Son's heart is pumping, in fact, you might say he's scared shitless.
"What's going on?" Son says.
"Voices in your head?"
"Yeah."
"That's good."
Going gaga is good? Son closes his eyes tight, opens them again; he rotates his head, listens to the crackle of vertebrae.
"Your medibots built you a WalkAbout."
"A WalkAbout? What in hell …"
"Why don't you ask it yourself?"
"You're only going to scare the boy," her friend says.
Her friend the fuckwit.
•
"Okay," she tells Son. "here's what you do. Say, 'What's a WalkAbout?' But this time don't say it aloud, just subvocalize it. Do everything you'd normally when you say something except actually make a sound. Watch me again."
Son watches. He watches the play of muscle and tendon beneath the skin in the hollow where neck meets chest. He watches all over the place.
"Hey," her friend says. "This boy thinks you sub‐vocalize with your boobs."
"Pay attention," she tells Son.
"Don't expel air while you speak," the guy adds.
"What the hell is a WalkAbout?" Son says.
The response is immediate:
This hardware human implant serves the same functions as the HIID except that the WalkAbout provides direct voice and text channels to the Lode in both the base consensual reality, currently referred to in common parlance as 'mondoland,' and in the generated realities of Worlds UnLtd. (See also "HIID.")
HIID. Acronym for "heads‐up internal information display." The HIID provides scrolling visual information from the Lode. Most mallsters may access the Lode in this way while visiting the Worlds. WalkAbout privileges, which provide the same functions in mondoland, are installed only in selected citizens. (See also "WalkAbout.")
All this erupts inside Son's head, together with accompanying text in his peripheral vision, though he can't read most of it. "Wow," Son says. "Wow."
"Did you get it?"
"Yeah. Who was that? Not too sure what she was talking about but, yeah, I heard it. And I could read it. Some of it, anyway. How…?"
Congratulations, citizen, upon your new empowerment. Medibots use novel algorithms to assemble the come‐and‐go WalkAbout 1.2. This modified beta version provides the quality and range of functions typical of a hard HIID implant, plus audio features and stealth technology capable of eluding almost any anti‐bugging device. For more information, refer to 'Come‐and‐go WalkAbout FAQs.'
"An implant?" Son says. "Just like that? Without so much as a may‐we? You sons of bitches."
"Settle down, cowboy," the guy says. "We didn't implant anything. Your medibots have reconfigured. They've connected you to the Lode, that's all. Call it a bonus."
"Like it or not?"
"What's not to like?" Her friend is amused.
Calm down, Son tells himself. Chill. How different is this from the AR goggles they used to have in the Bunker, which let them read temperature, air pressure and latitude or longitude? At least till Poppy flung them to the blurs one day. "Goddamned augmented reality. Nothing but a distraction," he said. "We can't take these things outside the Bunker to where the coordinates might change, and once we are outside, our own eyes and our own skin can tell us the rest of it."
"Don't worry," says Dee Zu. "Your medibots are still taking care of business."
"What business?" Son says.
"Ask the Lode," the guy says. "You could try this: 'Request initial medical report.'"
"Medical report?"
"Subvocalize," Dee Zu says.
Son looks where neck meets chest even though she isn't subvocalizing. He's also aware of the guy watching him do this.
"Request medical report." He tries to communicate this in the way Dee Zu suggests.
The response is immediate:
Bacterial infections clearing. Initial structural repairs underway. Associated fever should recede after infections neutralized and repairs complete. Physiological function further enhanced by removal of parasites.
Please identify yourself, citizen. A personal ID will facilitate faster, more efficient service.
"Parasites?" Son says this aloud.
"Did you say 'parasites'?" Dee Zu asks.
"That's amazing," says the guy.
"Parasites?" Son says.
"No. The fact your WalkAbout is actually serving up reports so soon."
know‐it‐alls
Cisco asks her, not caring whether the boy hears or not, how they can explain WalkAbouts to a rube who never lived in a mall, never even did any worlding. And then you have to say how WalkAbouts connect to the Lode. The collective memory, almost the collective consciousness, of a global civilization.
Never mind. The boy is really only absently present. Dee Zu's guess is that he's deep in give‐and‐take with the Lode, trying to fill in a few blanks.
Then he's back with them. "Can I ask a question?" He tries for a conciliatory tone.
"Why not?"
"Tell me again. The voice in my head—the 'WalkAbout'—it connects with exactly what?"
"The Lode."
"Right. And the voice is…?"
"The Lode. Just that."
"A big information bank."
"The biggest. The database of databases."
"Like the ken, only bigger."
"Yes. If we agree the collective memory of the human race is bigger."
"Did you have the Lode before the Troubles?"
"Sure. It grew out of the old Cloud."
"Wow. So people must have learned a lot from their big collective memory."
"It got us farther than your ken got you," Cisco says.
"You mean standing here beside me in Eden?"
Dee Zu snickers.
Son gives her a grateful look. "And it was the Lode that told you to get out of the godbolt target area?" he asks Cisco.
"The satray strike?"
"Other things use the Lode channel. MOM, for one."
"MOM."
"The mall operations manager."
"A machine?"
"Sort of."
"And MOM is intelligent? It knows what it's doing?"
"She is, and she does."
"So why is MOM helping us?" Son asks Dee Zu.
"I don't know."
•
It's getting cooler. The western sky is on fire with the setting sun. Behind them, way back beyond the smoking green anomaly that is Living End, the horizon is dark. In every other direction, the dust extends to the edge of the world.
What it is to test a world with no prep, no set rules, no idea of what's going on. No console, no bail button.
"Look there," says Son. He points to scaly areas that reflect the sunset in a lovely muddle of shifting hues. "We're getting big woogly patches."
"Woogly." Cisco snickers. "Did you say woogly?"
Son points east and south. "Have a look there. It's still catching the sun." More woogliness.
Cisco snorts.
"You see these patches high above Ahuk Hole, sometimes.
"What the hell is a woogly sky?"
"Don't know, exactly."
"Another hole in the ken."
Dee Zu asks the Lode about the sky.
"No data."
Much of this world is terra incognita even to the Lode. But it did tell her that the big red flowers fringing their bivouac are hibiscuses. And now the Lode reports on this flower's sleeping habits as Dee Zu watches the gorgeous blossoms close with nightfall. At the same time, the night air starts to sweat a sublime fragrance. This isn't the hibiscus, though at first her WalkAbout can't say what it is; the Lode generally isn't up to identifying smells. Then it says, "Probably night‐blooming jasmine. Hypothesis based on latitude and the proposed species' crepuscular blooming."
Cisco takes the first watch. Dee Zu's watch is next, so she's trying to get some sleep now. She has a last look at Cisco before she drops off.
"Satellites," he says, pointing skywards at a couple of lights.
"You reckon?" Son's tone suggests he finds this a ridiculous hypothesis.
Satellites. What a limited, not to mention way‐dated range of possibilities. Maybe it's only his imagination, but Dee Zu sounds disappointed in Mr. Know It All when she says, "Would satellites be traveling that fast?"
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