“Oh, Jessica! You’ll never guess?”
“Tell me!”
“Jeremy!”
“You’re kidding! Is he here? Is my mom? I mean—”
“No, they’re all down near Houston. We were just closing up Ed’s house for the trip to the wedding!”
Mama’s Favorites
Etagegnehu ran out of fronds before she’d finished the baskets she was weaving. She pressed her lips together and gave a little huff of frustration. Then she remembered: there was a clump of palms with pre-dried fronds about a quarter mile out of the village, on the border of the no-mans-land. She shouldn’t go alone…but no one else was around, and she knew right where it was.
She ran the tip of her tongue along her sharpened teeth, nodded. She’d be right back.
She gathered her skirt and draped her headwrap against the noonday sun. She scurried down the trail towards the grove.
As she neared it, she caught sight of a movement from the corner of her eye. She turned and scrutinized the bushes. Perhaps a vulture? She sniffed the air and caught no fragrance of death. Isis’s daughters had keener smell than she. They could smell a dead mouse from a thousand feet overhead.
She continued. Once she reached the cluster of trees she had in mind, she shed her headwrap and hiked her skirt. She wrapped her hands for protection, then mounted the serrated, staggered stems of the tree to climb it. She was perhaps ten feet above the sandy earth when she caught sight of Momad leaning against a nearby tree.
The youth was smiling, his eyes drinking in the sight of her athletic body swarming up the tree, of her chest expanding with breath.
She flushed and breathed deeply, surprised by her own pleasure at his enjoyment. “You! You’re on women’s land!” she screeched, trying to bluster her way past her fluster. She scowled unpersuasively.
“That’s not what I was told,” Momad equivocated. He nodded. “That boulder over there is the dividing point.”
“No!” she said. “I am sure you don’t belong here!” She released the tree with one hand, waving palm down. “Go!”
He continued to regard her calmly. She broke into a smile despite herself, watched his eyes light up as he caught sight of the sharp points of her white incisors.
He smiled. “Okay, I will go.” He walked a few yards down the path, stood between two bushes, and patiently watched her cut her fronds and drop them to the dirt.
She climbed down when she was done, inserting her knife into its sheath at her waist. She crouched to trim the fronds.
When she looked up, Momad was looking down at her. He was holding his jile out hilt-first. “That little thing will take forever. Here’s what you need to make short work of the job.”
She took the jile, and a few minutes of chopping excised the overlong stems and the moldy or damaged fronds. She handed the big knife back.
He took it with excruciating slowness, his fingers lingering on the hilt before grasping its weight and looking into her eyes. “Etagegnehu, you know I have always admired you.”
She looked away. “You know it is not possible. Not at this time.”
“And why not? Your father approves.”
“I have not spoken to my father since the separation.”
“And your mother?”
“She is just glad I’m safe and…and whole.” She bundled her harvest with twine and rose, swinging it up behind her head to carry on her shoulders.
As she walked away, he followed a few paces behind. “Etagegnehu! Is there no way?”
She had never before felt the emotion which twisted now inside her chest. She pivoted to face him.
“Momad. There may be a way. But there will be pain.”
“No pain is too great for you! I’m an Afar warrior. I can bear the pain.”
“I don’t think you will say that once you learn what I’m talking about.”
“I think you underestimate me.”
“Very well. Give me five minutes and then follow behind. Let me get Bilqis, and we will meet you at the trail’s end.”
When Momad got there, the two women were waiting for him. Bilqis had become fearsome. A tall woman to begin with, her hair was fluffed into a crown adorned with beads and metal discs, with chains connecting it to gleaming plates in her nose, eyebrows, and cheeks. Her eyes gleamed with the fervor of religious passion, and he wavered.
But then he saw Etagegnehu standing a step behind her left shoulder, her eyes gleaming tenderly and her pointed teeth peeking out from under her full upper lip. He jutted his breastbone.
“Are you ready, youth?” Bilqis’s voice was demanding and strident. “Are you ready to take the spur and scarab and swear allegiance to Isis?”
“I am.”
Bilqis began to wail. Her ululations began from the deepest croak, ascended to a shriek and descended again. At the end of each cry, she paused, and a distant hum could be heard. The hum grew closer and resolved into an answering call from the other women of the compound—assembling around the tableaux of Momad, Bilqis, and Etagegnehu. The sound grew deafening.
“Fall to the ground!” commanded Bilqis.
Momad obeyed. The women descended upon him and lifted him from the ground, carrying him overhead like a fallen hero. They bore him into the chamber and bound his hands and feet, slipping the jile from his waist and the cloth from his loins.
“Wait!” He was naked and defenseless. The panic was a real creature, a lizard which scuttled into his pulsing heart and wrapped its tail around his chest. But it was too late; a rag was stuffed into his mouth.
Just as she had for Atikem, Bilqis placed the spur and the scarab. Momad fainted when the spur was being placed, and woke to the throbbing pain of the scarab. “No, no,” he whispered.
Etagegnehu stood gazing down at him with naked admiration. She reached out and stroked his forehead. “It is over. You’re safe,” she said.
“I’m safe.”
“You are safe.”
“I am safe,” he murmured as he slipped from consciousness again.
Rah!
Highland Register, December 1
The initial registration efforts for Social Security and census takers were a resounding success! Be sure to acknowledge your neighbors wearing the gold Census badge, because they have taken on this important service on behalf of our great nation. Continue to consult this publication for projected dates of Social Security payment issuance.
It has been nothing but heartening to see the constant parade of citizens entering the new US government offices downtown, heads held high, ready to rebuild the foremost nation in the world.
The President has issued the following statement:
As the forty-fifth President of the greatest country in history, let me warn you of the bad and dangerous fake news being circulated. You can see just by looking that the hand-lithography on those pages is as amateur as the thinking contained in them.
First: taxation is absolutely NOT planned for the future. This country is a great country, a wealthy country, and there is plenty of money in the Social Security trust fund to pay benefits as promised to this generation and future generations. The US Dollar is the strongest currency in the world and benefits will always be paid in dollars.
The people who spread these lies are very dangerous terrorists. The US can and will defeat terrorists. We have in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future!
Seek the Flock, Find the Wolf
Li paused at the intersection of five paths. At the memory of where Meala’s breasts had pressed against him when he awoke, his chest still tingled. He glanced at the sun, at the sky, tried to remember the layout of the hand-drawn map on the compound wall. Hard to his right, he heard the morning sounds of the men’s village waking up, so he took a soft right, thinking that would take him towards Djibouti City and the Chinese base. He had a kitchen knife and a thick wooden club which doubled as a walking stick, but no other weapons. He’d never handled a gun in his life—just guns in online games, and he
had been around for enough years to know it was probably quite different. I’d probably shoot myself in the leg and bleed to death like an idiot.
He carried a skin full of water, and he knew that once the sun got high he’d need to find shade through the most brutal part of the day. He wore a ridiculous palm-frond hat to shelter his skin from the caustic desert sun. He had good shoes on—layered canvas with rope soles, which Meala had stitched, tucked, and padded to fit him.
He sighed. Meala. One day, I will find a way to come back and be with you. One day.
He settled into a light and steady pace, meeting no one on his way, and traveled this solitary path for hours. The sun cast the bushes’ shadows when he started. When the path was all sun and there was no shade to be found, he began to look for a place to conceal himself. He eyed a house-sized boulder about forty feet off the path with no tracks leading to it, so he warily left the path and picked his way over.
Someone had used it for temporary shelter in the past. There was a crude open-ended lean-to of brush on the lee side of the outcropping. With a last glance around, he dropped into a squat and crabbed his way inside. The tiny space was not cool, but compared to the roasting weather outside, it was a paradise.
He stretched out on the dusty floor and tried to think. He didn’t know what would happen to him if the Afar or Somali men found him, but he suspected it might be bad. These men came from cultures of honor where masculinity was tied up with their fighting prowess. Many of the mela groups still considered a male to be a boy until he had killed a man in battle, and any disagreement over cattle-grazing rights and territory was liable to erupt into combat. This was foreign to Li’s experience in Chinese and US cities, universities, and corporate offices.
For that matter, Li had little experience with Chinese soldiers either. Even though China supposedly required two years of military service, the reality was that service was optional, and required grueling physical fitness testing and usually a bribe to get into. Most of the military were rougher types, not unlike most of his shipmates on his ill-fated cruise. Once he reached the base, his demeanor and educated accent could make him a target. And what could they be doing at the base? Obviously, in this post-disaster world, all bets were off. There was no longer any point in jockeying for hegemony over a global order that relied on electronic communications and hinged on control of a substance which had turned to water before their eyes.
The droning of the cicadas in the heat began to lull him, and his eyes sank closed. His brain hummed Meala’s name in rhythm with the rising and falling volume of the droning insects, droning like the Chinese drones still mysteriously flying towards the distant Mediterranean. He remembered a vacation trip to Malta he’d taken in college—the only single man in a group of young couples. He imagined Meala smiling at him from a specific sunny terrace overlooking the rocky seashore.
The buzzing cicadas began to change in tone. As he realized there was another sound, he struggled to stir himself from his doze. He opened his eyes and sat up. As he did, the quality of light in his little shelter changed, and he heard a footfall outside. His heart began to thump—he froze, a frightened rabbit hiding in its hole. More shadows passed between the wall and the sun, and then a face showed in the doorway.
It was a deeply tanned face surmounted by a keffiyeh. The Arabic words that came from the man’s mouth were meaningless to Li. The man squinted, obviously unable to see inside the relative darkness of the shelter from the brilliance outside. Li broke from his paralysis, slithering madly towards the other end of the lean-to. The triangle of light outside was occupied by sandaled feet and legs either bare or covered in serwal pajamas under khamlis robes. He froze again, paused, then made his choice and crawled into the light, quickly rising to his feet.
The seven men who surrounded him, including the one who’d looked in the other end, began to wave their hands and yell in high-pitched, animated Arabic at one another. Finally, they called a pale, plump boy over from the other side of the big rock. Li realized then that there was a veritable crowd of the Arabs threaded out among the bushes in the burning sun, moving quietly across the sand.
The youngster timidly approached. His English was terrible. Li was used to Suzanne’s American accent and the stilted Afar- and Somali-accented English used by Meala and the compound women. Still, he understood that he was to follow the boy and the group of men who’d ousted him from his hiding place.
They dragged him before Sheik Abdullah, but not before relieving him of his water at gunpoint.
“Sheik Abdullah wants to know where you go?”
“I go to Chinese base.” Li kept it simple, as years of international travel had taught him to do when faced with a language barrier.
Abdullah sneered, looking at his outfit. “Abdullah says you do not look like a soldier,” the boy translated.
“I’m not a soldier. I came on a boat that wrecked.” The boy hesitated. “Crashed. Boat broke.” The boy caught on and explained to Abdullah.
Abdullah let loose with a long speech, the boy growing more panicked at the complexity of what he was expected to translate. The boy spoke obsequiously and Abdullah harshly, back and forth.
Li’s eyes widened, flicking his gaze between the two of them, who refused to look at him. Abdullah shouted a command to the two men behind Li and they seized him by the arms. Li felt a searing pain in his back and a panicked sense of violation in his chest and belly. The lights faded around him.
Ink By the Barrel
Lou Stonegood
The Cascade Beacon, January 15
Is it overstating the case to say that the President is a liar?
There can be no doubt that the supposed “parade” of citizens signing up to be Social Security recipients and census takers is more like a furtive trickle. The four or five individuals darting secretively into the office door—like timid mice hoping to find a crumb of cheese—can hardly be characterized as “proud.”
The “gold” Census badges, dropped in the street for the taking, can be easily seen for nothing more than hammered and polished brass.
An interview with a local citizen reveals the truth of other claims. While gathering unread copies of the Register from the sidewalk outside local businesses to use as fire starter, this person stated: “They came to my house and asked a lot of questions. They pointed out the amount of preserves lining the shelves in the dining room and asked to buy them—for dollars. What can I do with dollars? Nobody takes dollars anymore. I can’t feed my children dollars! They took the fattest of my pigs, the one we were going to slaughter and smoke. But that’s not all. The next week, they came to my house and said because I had five adults of working age producing goods and services, I had to give back half what they’d paid me! It was just worthless paper money, but still.”
Once again, be wary of turning backwards to the evil of the past. There are two ways for people to interact. One is hierarchical. The other is cooperative.
Parts of humanity have lived under the hierarchical model for at least three thousand years. It has brought police states, imperialism, corruption, kleptocracy, and ruin. Think of the internet before the government brought it to heel. Think of Napster and Uber and all the elements of the sharing economy, which were based on peer-to-peer networked communication until governments joined hands with corporations and brought them under their dominion! We can have that again—with or without computers. The technology wasn’t the point; the reason technology enabled a transformation was because governments failed to foresee the growing speed of communication.
It took them twenty years to catch up, and they caught up largely by slowing the technology down instead of by becoming more nimble predators. When you are talking to your grandchildren, be on the side of those who resisted recentralization. Be among those who joined to forge a new planetary network of cooperation based on the enlightened self-interest of billions of individuals, finally set free from the boot on mankind’s neck!
For daily news and inf
ormation, set your shewanella radio to AM 1776, the Beacon of Liberty station.
Widow’s Fury
Five young women strode across the courtyard. Meala rewrapped rice from decaying woven plastic bags into sheets of cloth. She’d just finished stacking a burlap bag atop the pile when the girls surrounded her.
“Meala. We are so sorry to tell you this.”
“What? What is it?” But from her eyes and the tone in her voice, it was plain that she knew. As she erupted in a wail, the girls wailed with her, and every woman in the compound gravitated to her.
The throng of wailing women came to Bilqis. She sat on her throne, resplendent in a green silk gown, with beads of crystal, onyx, and copper in her hair, her scars shining from her eyes like the rays of the sun.
She listened patiently as the women told their tale of tracking Li’s footprints until they found his hat, plus an impossible amount of blood, in the dust, near where Abdullah’s men had passed on their way to the sea. She listened as Meala poured out her fury and bereavement.
Finally, she stood. “You will be avenged, Meala! Every woman who has a weapon! Every woman who is able! We will go, now, before the cowards can escape!”
The women scurried to retrieve their weapons—some with staves and clubs, some with jiles or kitchen knives and cleavers, some with rifles or shotguns, and others with nothing more than ropes, rag slings, or wire garrotes. Their eyes flared, and they began to run as inexorably as gnus on migration, padding towards the coast at a slow, steady pace. They ran through the night by torchlight, ululating and crying the name of Isis.
Bilqis led her forces like a new Mekeda, chanting from the Kebra Negast:
I went down like the great iron anchor whereby men anchor ships for the night on the high seas, and
I received a lamp which lighteth me, and
I came up by the ropes of the boat of understanding.[1]
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 49