With a shrug, he said, “It works…”
“If you work it. Yeah.”
He took the canvas sack and pulled another packet out, hesitated, then put the packet back and handed her the whole sack.
“Good luck,” he said. He flipped the reins from the post over the mule’s head, then swung easily onto the front of the wagon. With a sharp whistle, he was off, headed west.
Jessica watched him for a moment. Then she turned her back on him and began walking east.
XXVIII.
Bridge It
Esther beamed from her vantage point on one side of the stage sheltered in the natural amphitheatre. She watched the row of young people ascend the steps to join her. Once all ten of them were seated, Esther walked across to the central podium and faced the audience, arrayed in rows leading down the sides of this hollow in the hill.
“These young journalists are extremely special.”
The audience geysered applause. A wide mix of faces, all split by grins, let out whoops and cheers. Today’s honorees were local talents, but they were gaining global fame in the new media—a phenomenon which nobody had believed would ever exist again in their lifetimes.
“This community knows them as your brightest minds and their boldest voices.”
More cheering. At this rate, it’ll take all afternoon. “Please. Please hold your applause for the awards themselves.” The friends, families, and local dignitaries grudgingly settled down. “The machine sickness couldn’t keep them down. The winter that wouldn’t end couldn’t freeze them out. Now the new-generation trilobites have given them a new voice. The voice… of the future!” A few irrepressible claps and cheers were shushed by their neighbors.
“Those of us old enough to remember the beginning of the internet will recall those heady early days. Remember that?” Calls of affirmation here and there. “I do. I remember the way it seemed like all of humanity would finally be able to communicate on equal footing. It seemed like we’d all be heard. The new medium seemed to promise us a new world.
“Many of us also remember how sadly that promise was betrayed when the internet was turned around, censored, and used to spy on us and control what we thought.
“The new era of quantum communication changes all that.” Esther took out her own ten-legged ctenophore. “Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that instantly, anywhere on the planet, we can tap into the infinite and simultaneous peer-to-peer communication these small living creatures provide. Thanks to them, and the advanced blockchain—the quantum crypto spiralchain— censorship and fraud will be a thing of the past. And these young people here are among the first voices to reach out on that network.
“Let’s review some of the stories they’ve covered in the past year: the spread of New Islam in Africa and the Middle East; the resurgence of the Amazonian and Andean indigenous people; the great oceanic upheavals and the changes in global weather patterns. These individuals on stage are just a few of the talents collaborating worldwide, digesting information and bringing it to your own devices, in your own homes.
“Media will never mean the same thing again, and these young people are the source of the innovation. They are the hope of the future. They are only now scratching the surface of the full potential of this knowledge. They are only now beginning to show us what a free press really means, in a world where it is impossible to successfully lie.”
A deep murmur of excitement spread through the crowd. Going about their daily lives, many of them had not thought of the technology in this way before.
“I can’t thank you enough for the support which has made the Global Oracle the most popular publication in the greater Carolinas. And for those of you who are late adopters, if you’ve only been reading the news and not experiencing it full-immersion, you may not be aware of this: As of this week, the Global Oracle is the fourth-most-popular publication on the entire planet.”
Applause scattered among the assembled crowd.
Esther knew that the vast majority of people still preferred to avoid entangling their minds with the ctenophores’ consciousness. For herself, Esther found it draining and dissipating. The disorientation was like falling endlessly, with nothing to grab onto, and trying to console oneself with the knowledge that there was no ground. Much of the real-time information that came through was in a form not easily digestible, unless one was fully immersed, so there was always a need for people to translate it into the vernacular and summarize it.
“Some of you may still be fuzzy on the understanding of how the ctenophore consciousness ‘knows’ what a person knows and most wants to know and can understand. It’s not crystal clear to me, either.” The crowd met her self-deprecating laugh with sympathetic nods. “But one thing that’s basic to understand is that it’s not something that can be authoritatively described—any more than the right price for a gallon of seabutter is set by any authority. It’s something that’s established by a thousand or a million tiny interactions among a billion signals throughout the universe.
“And these kids are the best and brightest of the Carolinas—only in that the catallaxy, the network of causality and consent that constitutes the spontaneous order arising from those interactions—resolves most clearly in their awareness. They explain it to us without explaining when the awareness is personified in us through them.
“I’m reminded of a teacher I had in college. He brought in a mayonnaise jar and set it on the desk. Into the jar, he poured a layer of sand. The jar was a third full. Then he poured in a layer of pea gravel, and the jar was two-thirds full. Next came a layer of pebbles, and the jar had no room for anything else. He still had river rocks and a couple of fist-sized stones left.
“Then the teacher poured out the jar and started over. This time, he put stones in first. Then he added river rocks. On top of that, he poured the pebbles. He gave the jar a little shake, and added the pea gravel, and last of all, the sand. It all fit. He asked the class what the lesson was, and when no one guessed, he announced: ‘Take care of the big things, and the small things will take care of themselves.”
The crowd was quiet now. She’d lost most of them, but the few who understood showed faces of alert recognition in the crowd, like daisies in the meadow of people before her. It was time for some pageantry to touch the emotions of the rest.
“Now, each of these young people will come up and receive a silver wreath to celebrate the wisdom they are sharing with us. In alphabetic order, let’s put our hands together for:
“Elena Abercrombie!” Enthusiastic cheering led by Elena’s parents, of course, and the named journalist rose. Esther topped her blonde hair with a silver tiara.
“Tamika Bonds!” More cheering and another tiara, this time topping a soft, close-cropped natural head of springy curls.
“Maribel Hernandez!” A wavy, dark mane was surmounted by silver.
“Cindy Nguyen!” The clapping went on and on as sleek, straight hair was encircled by the band.
The misses Patel, Rawls, Roosevelt, Santiago, Smith, and Wingo all had their turns, and finally all posed together, holding hands and wearing radiant smiles. They raised their hands and bowed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your local servants of truth. Let their light shine!”
The applause took minutes to die down, but when it finally ran its course, Esther added, “I forgot to tell you what happened next in my class. One of the students stood up and walked up to the jar and poured in a bottle of beer, soaking the sand. So the ultimate moral was: there’s always room for beer!” The crowd buzzed with laughter, primed for the party scheduled afterwards.
Esther raised her hand, the gesture for the award recipients to turn and march off stage. Instead, Elena stepped forward, holding something in her hand. She nervously straightened her tiara. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions heard her voice on her broadcasts, standing in front of a physical crowd made her voice quiver a little.
“Ms. Barrington, we wanted to recogn
ize you for what you’ve done. You came here as an outsider a little more than a year ago, and it took a lot of courage for you to keep reaching out to us the way you did. Without your knowledge of what it took to become a journalist, I don’t think we would have been inspired to experiment with the new forms of knowledge inspired by the second-generation trilobites. But you encouraged us, and we did it! You encouraged us to keep going, even when others tried to sabotage you.”
A few clued-in heads turned to glance at Lou and Emilio, but the moment passed quickly. “You encouraged us to continue even when we went far beyond what you imagined or were capable of.”
Esther laughed and nodded. “And for that, we thank you. And we want you to have this.”
She held out a jeweled metal crown with a live ctenophore at its center. The crowd watched in fascination as ten sets of fragile wings sprouted in a circle around its margins. Its silver and copper cogs and springs began to whir, and a circle of tiny encaged propellers popped up. The circlet rose from the younger woman’s hands as if carried by a hive of bumblebees, hovered slowly, and then lowered itself atop Esther’s curls, the ctenophore’s tentacles gently entwining with her hair.
Esther put a hand up and gently touched the delicate, beautiful thing, grinning with delight. The audience rose to its feet, whistling and clapping. At Tamika’s gesture, Esther walked upstage of her line of protégées and led the procession out the stage “exit” into a secluded grove on the side, where they were partly hidden from the others.
The brilliant young journalists lapsed momentarily into exhilarated girlish laughter as they hugged and squealed. Esther broke from the embrace when she spotted a group of four people off in a corner. She extricated herself from the estrogen pit and walked over.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She put a hand on a hip and elevated an eyebrow.
“Esther,” Lou sighed. “I guess I deserved that.” He scuffed the dirt with his toe, then looked up from the ground and held out a hand. “I came to apologize. And to congratulate you.”
Esther shook his hand graciously. “And you?” she asked Emilio, who raised a glass to her in a toast.
“Same. My abject apology. And let me add: I feel like a fool for thinking I could control you. You’re a force of nature, and I’m sorry I underestimated you.”
“Hardly a force of nature!” laughed Esther. “But I’ll take that in the spirit I hope you intended it.”
Lou turned to his companion. “Esther, this is Nora.” He rested a hand on the waist of the woman by his side. Thirty years his junior, barely older than Esther’s protégées, she was lovely, with creamy, perfect skin and a dancer’s sleek grace. Esther admired her beauty, met her eyes, and was surprised by a sparkle. She found with glee that she instantly adored the young lady.
She turned to Emilio’s date. “Ana, this is Esther.”
Ana was also a very beautiful specimen of womanhood, with waist-length black hair, a voluptuous body, and sloe eyes, but she had a very shy demeanor. She flicked her gaze to Esther with a tight smile and turned back to Emilio, watching him closely for cues.
When Emilio smiled and nodded reassuringly in Esther’s direction, Ana looked back at Esther and gave her a luminous smile.
Esther pressed each of women’s hands between her own. There are some moments in life when everyone seems to be exactly where they’re supposed to be, and one can, for an instant, believe the preposterous notion that everything is working together in perfect order to bring a higher plan to fruition.
“It looks like the move south has been good,” she said, “to all of us.”
XXIX.
Octopus’s Garden
D.D. was really tired of the whole “taking a beating” thing. When I left the neighborhood to start school to become a scientist, I thought I’d never have to deal with that again. It seems like the violence follows me—even though I’m a peaceful person at heart. At least I learned how to fight back as a kid. Even if this time, I didn’t fight back.
Never again.
She sat beside Alfred. She’d found that seeing the bumps and ruts coming up made it easier to brace against them and avoid hurting her broken ribs. The sunshine on her skin helped the bruises fade faster. And having a friend beside her, she just felt better.
They came around a long, easy curve and over a slight rise. and glimpsed what seemed to be a mirage on the horizon.
But the reflective blueness did not fade into invisible undulations. Instead, it grew more distinct. D.D. began to notice a slight breeze cutting the heat of the afternoon sun. She slowly breathed in, just until the pain in her side barely caught, and then let the breath out.
“Smell the ocean?” she asked Alfred.
“I love that smell. How are the ribs doing?”
“Not too bad. The salve the guy gave me at Mont Belvieu seems to help.”
“That’s good. I’m looking forward to relaxing on the beach for a bit, doing some meditations on the goddess, saluting the womb of all life.”
“The ocean is soothing.” Love this man, he’s my best friend, but the pagan piety gets wearing at times. It’s as bad as the fucking Catholics.
They rode on peacefully, the call of seagulls and the clumping of the horses’ hooves on the soft sand the only sounds. They reached a sharp right turn in the main road, but instead of taking it, continued straight towards the ocean on a two-rutted track.
“Did you know the tracks we use today are the same width as the roads of the Roman Empire?” D.D. asked.
“Really?”
“Yes. The Romans decreed that the roads had to be wide enough for two legionnaires to march abreast. Later, they began to fight in chariots—which they copied from the Celts—but they designed the chariots so that they’d fit the width of the roads the Romans had built. When people throughout Europe started to travel by cart and carriage, they followed the same measurements. As railroads were being built, they spaced the rails to follow the tracks of existing roads. Finally, when cars came along, they just followed that standard. Even in Indonesia, China, Siberia, South Africa, all over the world, the width of the roads is directly descended from the ones in the Roman Empire.”
“Interesting. Because my uncle was a railroad buff, he used to travel all over the country before he died, taking railroad tours wherever he found them—the older the train line, the better. He used to love the smaller local railroads in the southern USA, because they were built on several different gauges than the standard widths that they used all over the rest of the continent. It’s part of why the North took so long to beat the South in the Civil War. They couldn’t run their railroad cars on the captured tracks. Of course, it’s part of why the South didn’t industrialize, too.”
Gradually, the sandy ruts began to be heaped with drifts of soft sand. The wheels began to drift sideways, threatening to go off the road, and the horses struggled. The two of them got down and released the horses from the traces, stashed their shoes in the carriage, and led the horses. Presently, they came to the seashore. Kittykitty loped behind them, limping slightly but otherwise no worse from his encounter with the angry mob.
They paused as they came out between two dunes and saw the sea. To the north, rows of gatherers were loading seabutter into wheeled trolleys. They’d already harvested the beach south of D.D. and Alfred, so it spread out empty and inviting. D.D. maneuvered the orbs that controlled her drones, and they rose from the carriage top and followed them overhead.
They walked some distance down the broad beach, and Alfred flipped the reins up over one horse’s head, a placid white mare, and vaulted onto her back. He looked down at D.D., who shook her head and patted her ribs.
“I’ll pass.”
Alfred shrugged and dug his bare heels into the horse’s sides, taking off on an easy canter along the moist packed sand. D.D. waited on the beach, holding the reins of the bay gelding, and listened to the soft, soothing breaking of the waves. She brought the drones down to the lee side of a tufted
dune and let them photo-charge in the warm coastal sunshine.
The weather was calm, with just a light breeze, so the waves were regular and rhythmic. She enjoyed the musical feel, punctuated by an occasional stomp and snort from the impatient horse. She closed her eyes and was lulled into a trance, feeling the warmth of the sun healing her battered body.
Then the sound shifted slightly. She opened her eyes, expecting to see a person—a seabutter harvester, perhaps, or a turtle or dolphin surfacing in the shallows. She saw something, but it looked more like a large jellyfish, larger than usually seen in the Gulf. It was ascending from the waves, forcing them to break a few meters further out than normal.
The whatever-it-was rose further from the water. She could see that it was slick and translucent. It looked a bit like the exterior of a ctenophore. She glanced towards Alfred, but he was a barely-visible dot where the strand met the sea in a vanishing point. She looked for Kittykitty, but he had ducked into the dunes, chasing something that rustled.
The horse nickered softly. D.D. led him to a post holding the splintered remains of some sort of plywood sign, the paint of the sign and the glue of the plywood long destroyed by the P. davisii machine sickness pathogen. She tied the horse clumsily, never taking her eye off the shape that was forming in the surf.
She woke the drones and summoned one with a large, flat back. The flock flittered and trilled a quick negotiation, and the one in her hand was designated a viewscreen. The layered chromatic cells of its skin rotated through the view of each of its cohorts’ eyes, and the sensory images, from their photosensitive skins.
She walked all the way to the water’s edge. A braver wave scooped around her feet and robbed them of the sand beneath. She observed that the form was loosely human shaped, but tall, taller than any human, and still growing. The rounded circuitry, characteristic of the ctenophores, penetrated its body as well.
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