Ultraviolet (22 page)

And wouldn’t you know we found it. It took a little time, but we got it. Apparently the government didn’t want people searching for “3D printed food”, because most of the search results were just conspiracy theories and white noise. But then we got onto a bunch of Nigerian sites and there it was, plain as day.

Organic printing.

It was a thing. It was real, out there in the world, the big horrible world where we were told that everyone was poor and starving. Out there they had organic printers making food out of dirt, and grass, and water.

And they’d had it for the last four years.

I double-checked the date.

Four years.

“Does it make you want to scream, too?” I whispered.

“Yeah, a little bit,” he whispered back.

We spent a couple hours trying to read everything we could find about organic printing, how it worked, what we needed to do it. Unfortunately, a lot of the materials we found were in Chinese, Russian, and French. Felix glanced at me once when the Chinese web sites came up, but he didn’t ask if I could read it so I didn’t have to admit that I couldn’t. My dad did try to teach it to me once, but I did better learning Spanish from my mom, and besides, no one else in the neighborhood spoke Cantonese, so I didn’t try very hard and after a while, neither did he.

Eventually we figured we had learned as much as we were going to about the new printer tech and how it used a cold laser array to basically turn organic material into a slurry, and then it used a centrifuge to separate the slime into different densities, which were then baked and frozen and sorted as cubes of protein, sugar, and plant fiber. The diagrams were pretty confusing and the pictures weren’t pretty, but the walkthroughs were straightforward enough. So we downloaded the specs and printed one out.

The first one must have been corrupted because the machine came out all crooked and didn’t work, so we had to recycle it and start over with another spec from another site, but the second one turned out fine. In fact, it looked a lot like Dean’s recycler. Felix and I exchanged a few uneasy looks as we loaded the hopper with grass, leaves, bark, pine cones, walnuts, and dirt, and let it run.

A few minutes later, we had food. At least, the machine said it was food. It came in the shape of a sandwich, or maybe a wrap. There was something hot and brown in between two layers of green. Felix shrugged and took the first bite.

I watched him chew. He chewed very thoughtfully, and then swallowed.

“Well?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s not delicious, but it is food. A little salt and pepper would go a long way, and so would some ketchup, hot sauce, spicy mustard, and some cooked onions. But it is food. It’s… sort of like a veggie burger in a seaweed wrap. Sort of.”

So I tried it, and he was exactly right. The printed food was not delicious, but it wasn’t bad either. It was chewy and warm, and oddly filling. Bland, but okay. So we finished our first printed lunch and spent the rest of the day learning more about this new miracle in our house.

The good news was that everything had worked just fine. The weird meat sandwich was a very common meal all over the world, and people from China to Chile all described the sandwich exactly the same as Felix had. And apparently it was fairly healthy. Not awash with a variety of vitamins and minerals, but it had protein and fiber and a handful of nutrients.

For the next few hours, we pulled down lists of common wild plants and household objects that could be turned into food, and then spent a little while in the woods beyond the back yard searching for the raw materials for our printed pantry.

That evening, after dining on a pair of burritos made slightly tasty by the addition of several fistfuls of flowers, we sat on the back porch and watched the stars come out.

“So… how are things?” Felix asked. “How are you doing?”

“Good. It’s so quiet. I can really think. You know?”

“Yeah. No people.”

“It’s not just that there are no people. It’s that there’s no stuff. No work, no boss, no bills, no worries. Just work enough to make a decent home, and then… stop.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s going to be weird when we’ve got other people here.”

“Oh, right.”

I looked at him and caught the disappointed frown as he turned away. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine.”

“What was that face? You don’t want to tell people about this place?”

“Not really, no. I mean, yes, I want to give them the machines and all, but I don’t want to give up this place.” He nodded back at the house, at the living room and dining room full of artfully carven tables and chairs, chandeliers, carpets, and digital artwork spread across the walls. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Or had a home like this before. I guess I don’t want to give it up, or share it.”

“With me?”

He smiled. “No, with other people. I like the quiet here.”

“Well, we’re not going to invite a thousand people into this house, you know. We’re just going to set them up in the other houses. Start over. Start clean.”

“Yeah. It’ll be good.” He put his hand on mine and squeezed my fingers gently.

I smiled. “Should we start spreading the news?”

“Yeah, why not?”

I got out my phone and started tapping out the message that I would post anywhere and everywhere, from the Ultraviolet site to the 3D printer forums. I told everyone what we had done, what we had discovered. Dean’s recycler, the Nigerian food printer. Everything. I described the house we had set up, and the life we were creating, a life of building things for ourselves, feeding ourselves, all the conveniences of the modern world without any of the madness.

We weren’t just standing on the shoulders of giants. We had leapt right off their heads into some wild new world with rules that barely made sense, if they existed at all. We didn’t know how it would turn out, but everyone was invited to come and help us try.

“I’ll try to keep the directions simple, but we may want to put some signs out on the road,” I muttered.

“Okay. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

“And I’m telling people to bring their own printers and feedstock, to get started.”

“Good idea. Actually, they should probably bring everything they can carry, shouldn’t they? Otherwise, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time wandering through these neighborhoods, house by house, pulling out materials to recycle.”

“Well, we’ll have to do that anyway, sooner or later.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I hit Send. The message went out, suddenly and silently, to millions of people all over the city, and all over the country I suppose. And the rest of the world too, if they bothered to look. 

I laughed.

“What?” He smiled at me.

“I was just thinking about all the people all over the world who are going to see my message, telling people to come live in a town with 3D recyclers and printed food, and they’re all going to think we’re crazy for just now figuring it out, for just now catching up.” It was a humbling thought, but still a happy one, to be joining the rest of the human race in the new world. The better world.

“Yeah, probably. I wonder what sorts of jokes they make about us backward people and our folksy ways?”

We laughed.

And then we kissed.

I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d kissed him. There had been so much running and worrying, and so much work, and somewhere along the way I’d gotten too busy to think about him that way, to let myself breathe and feel like a normal person. But right then, after all those days alone in the house, working together, enjoying all the little projects and discoveries together, the world had shifted back again. I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t scared, and I didn’t have a million things on my mind anymore.

It was just me and him, and the world was a nice place again, and it was nice to be with him, and I wanted to kiss him.

We sat out on the porch for hours, talking about the house, about ideas we had, and crazy silly things we wanted to try. A firehouse pole, a zip line, a swimming pool, a tree house. Pretty much everything we’d ever wanted as kids. And between every idea there was more kissing, and holding. And that’s where we fell asleep, together, watching the stars.

Chapter 16
Early Adopters

Bang, bang, bang.

The next morning I woke up with an ache in my neck from where I’d been lying on Felix’s arm, and it took me a full minute to really wrap my head around the fact that we were still on the back porch and that we’d slept the whole night outside.

Bang, bang, bang.

I sat up straight, my heart racing.

Bang, bang, bang.

It was coming from the front door, and the first thought that came to mind was Cygnus. Frost and his goons. A whole SWAT team, armed to the teeth.

I shook Felix. “Wake up, wake up! Felix, they’re here! Frost!”

He jerked awake, blinked, and seemed to instantly understand what was happening. We both raced into the house and locked the door behind us, and then I ran upstairs to grab my holo-suit while he went to barricade the front door. I yanked on the jacket and gloves, leaving the boots behind, and dashed back downstairs yelling, “Lux, armor one!”

As the black-and-violet holograms blazed to life around me, I arrived at the front door just as Felix was pushing a bench out of the way and swinging the door open.

“What are you doing?!” I lunged at the door, but he stopped me with a grin.

“We have visitors.”

I leaned around the door and looked outside, and saw people. People on the porch, and on the lawn, and in the street. They were standing and sitting, straddling bicycles with kids nestled in bicycle trailers, and piles of boxes stacked and heaped both neatly and crazily in wagons. All in all, there were at least fifty of them, mostly young couples and half of them had children, but there were also a handful of older faces in the crowd too.

“Hey, it’s her!” A young woman pointed at me. “It’s Ultraviolet, this is the place!”

The crowd cheered and clapped.

“You all saw the message?” Felix stepped out on the porch.

“Yep,” said an older man. “Only just retired last week from the South Side plant, and figured, hell, I’ve got nothing better to do than come out here and see if you were for real. And by the looks of things, you are.”

I shut down my armor and we invited the whole crowd into the house. There was barely enough room, but they all spread out and filtered around, ooh-ing and ah-ing at every room, touching the furniture and playing with the screen-walls. I even whipped up a mini-batch of the burritos that we’d had for supper and let everyone try printed finger food for the first time.

It went well. It went really well.

After an hour of trying to answer a million questions about the printers and the food and the little question of who legally owned the houses we were proposing that they move into, we got everyone together out in the back yard and explained the plan. We’d help them all get set up in their own houses, get their printers and recyclers up and running, and then they’d be free to build their dream homes and live their lives however they wanted.

We also did a quick check of what sort of people we’d attracted and were relieved to find that we had one doctor and two nurses in the group, as well as three guys who had worked for the city sewage department and could help us keep the water flowing.

So things were looking good. Really good.

I mean, I know we still had a long way to go. Lots of problems to solve, some of them technical, some of them legal, and even more that we hadn’t even thought of yet. But as far as first days go, it felt like a really good one.

We exchanged contact information with everyone, and people started picking out houses. Some folks planned to go back into the city that night to get more family, friends, and personal belongings. And then, finally, as the sun was going down, I slumped down on the couch next to Felix to have another burrito-like supper made from flowers, nuts, and leaves.

“Wow.” Felix shook his head. “That was crazy.”

“But crazy-good, right?”

“Oh yeah. Very.”

We chewed for a while in silence. The printed food was very chewy. I tried not to think about how much wood I was technically eating.

“So, we’re going to have to figure out who actually owns these houses,” he said.

“Yeah. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be Cygnus.” I smiled, but only for a second. The possibility was too real to be funny.

Felix pulled out his phone and went to work. I kept eating. I didn’t want to know the answer a second earlier than I needed to.

“Okay, this neighborhood is called Oberon Lake,” he said. “When the homeowners left, the entire division was acquired by DayStar Bank, which went bankrupt and got bought by the Calverton Credit Union, which folded into the North American Banking Consortium, which collapsed six years ago, and…”

“And what?”

“Huh.”

“Huh, what?” I looked at him.

“Well…” He raised an eyebrow. “If I’m reading this right, the ownership of this land, and a lot of other properties, all reverted back to the state of Maryland two years ago. And check this out.” He threw the screen image from his phone up onto the wall so I could see it. It was a government web site that let people purchase parcels of state-owned land. Felix scrolled down and selected parcel 33405-J, Oberon Lake residential division, Howard County.

Current market value: $219.

I stared at the number. “Is that right?”

Felix’s mouth hung open as he slowly reached up and selected “Buy” and entered his account number.

Payment accepted.

Oberon Lake was now the legal property of one Felix Wilfred James.

We burst out laughing.

“Sometimes the good guys win!” Felix grabbed me and kissed me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him close, but I couldn’t stop laughing and I fell back. “It’s about time, Wilfred.”

“Oh, no, no you don’t!” He tickled me and I tried to curl up into a ball to escape his playful fingers. “No one calls me Wilfred!”