Authors: Joseph Robert Lewis
I tried to tickle him back, but he was too strong, so I just grabbed him by the neck and kissed him, and that stopped him. And we lay on the couch, kissing for a while. Then, without saying a word, I led him upstairs to my room and we spent the night together.
And that was good too.
The next morning I woke up more refreshed and alert than I had been in a long time. We made breakfast, promised each other to learn to make something other than burritos very soon, and then went outside to see if our new neighbors needed any help.
We spent the whole morning going from house to house, and finding that our new friends had mostly stayed up all night long getting their printers set up, making their recyclers, and slipping into the heady excitement of cramming old junk into a magical machine and watching the crisp, clean feedstock pop out the back. One young couple who had gotten no sleep at all were already printing out their first pieces of furniture. A couple of people needed help downloading the specs correctly, or picking out the right settings, but mostly, everyone had it all figured out. They barely needed us at all.
So we went home for lunch, and then spent the afternoon learning more about the food printer so we could break free of our woody burrito lifestyle. There were lots of strange experiments in things that resembled bread, steak, broccoli, cucumber, potatoes, and even ice cream, although we finally concluded that we’d have to start going on long walks in the woods to find a better variety of flowers, roots, and nuts to make the really delicious things on the printer menu.
We were interrupted four times by newcomers just arriving on our street from the city, and we gave them all the tour and the sales pitch, made sure they had all the gear and specs they needed, and then pointed them to an empty house.
“You know what’s funny?” I asked in the middle of the day.
“What?”
“No one’s come back to ask for help with anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, once we give people what they need, they don’t come back. I kinda thought we’d have to spend the first few days holding people’s hands, showing them how to do everything for themselves, but these guys… they’re just like us. They can handle things just fine for themselves. They just needed the tools.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “They probably won’t all be like this. These guys, the first ones, they’re like us. They wanted out. They’d probably been dreaming of living like this for a long time. But eventually we’ll start getting people who have no idea how to function without a boss and a nametag and a paycheck. And they’ll need more hand-holding.”
“You’re probably right.”
By the time the sun rose on our seventh day in our new home, life had slowed down. A lot. We stopped fixing things because everything worked. We stopped making things because we already had more than we needed. Instead, we just spent a couple hours in the morning collecting plants for our meals and tidying up the greenhouse, and then spent the rest of the day playing with our neighbors. The basketball hoops appeared overnight at one end of the street, and a volleyball net showed up the day after, plus two pool tables, dart boards, an archery range, even a single bowling alley in the middle of a back yard. So all day long I could hear people cheering and laughing as they met their new neighbors and ran friendly tournaments in their yards and basements.
We also made board games and card games, and plenty of people kept downloading video games, as well as books and movies. I met three people writing their own books on their phones, and I was introduced to a young woman who shot and produced high-end action movies just using her phone. I watched one. It was actually pretty good.
When I went to bed on the seventh night, I had no idea it was the seventh night. I had completely lost track of time already. I no longer glanced at the day or date in the corner of my phone’s screen. It didn’t matter. Felix and I talked about fixing up a house for my parents, and a place for his brother, so we could bring our families out of the city. But beyond that, we didn’t make any plans. We just enjoyed the long, free days, and I left the holo-suit in a box under my bed, nearly forgotten.
I stopped worrying.
And that was a big mistake.
We were sitting on the front porch with a couple glasses of ice tea and I was trying to teach Felix the finer points of Go on our new game board when we heard the soft hum coming from the far end of the street. In the darkness without any street lights, we couldn’t see anything. But it didn’t sound like bicycles. It sounded like drones.
“Get inside!” I grabbed his arm and dashed back into the house. “Lock the doors and windows!”
That would be just a little bit difficult. It was a big house and we’d already gotten into the habit of leaving all the doors unlocked and all the windows open to let the breeze in. So while he ran around the first floor, I ran upstairs and started shutting windows. I wanted to get out my phone and tell everyone on the street to get inside and lock up too, but I only had two hands and I was already using them both.
With all the windows shut, I pulled the box out from under my bed and rammed by arms into the sleeves of my holo-jacket. My hands shook as I shoved my shoes into the mesh boots, and I almost couldn’t get the gloves on at all.
Felix ran into the room and froze when he saw me, sitting on the floor in the shadows, pulling on the last glove. “You’re going out there?”
“I have to.” I stood up. “Unless you think the Silverstein brothers next door can protect us?”
He shook his head. The Silverstein brothers were just another pair of scrap-sorters when they first arrived, but in just a couple days they had refurbished a house and developed an obsession with trying to get the food printer to make a good pizza. “No, but Carmen, remember the trap Frost set for you before? With the sprinklers? They know your weaknesses, and if they’re coming out here, then they’re not coming to talk. They’re coming to shut us down.”
“Well, they can’t.” I headed downstairs. “You own the land. The tech is free. Everything is recycled. So it doesn’t matter what they want. This is our home now.”
I stepped out the front door onto the porch. “Lux, armor one.”
The brief flash of the laser grid all around my body instantly drew a dozen search lights to the front of our house and a swarm of drones descended over the front yard. Four large black trucks rolled up the street in an ominously straight line, and they stopped out in the middle of the road in front of my house. The doors opened and two dozen men in police riot gear stepped out.
They all had guns.
“Lux, helmet one. Felix, stay inside! And tell everyone else to get in their basements.”
“Okay. And Car? I lo… good luck. And be safe.” The door clicked shut behind me.
I smiled.
“Carmen Zhao.” The man approaching me was not wearing armor. He was wearing a suit. And when the search lights swung across his face, I recognized Frost. “You are under arrest for grand larceny, as well as the illegal seizure and use of state-owned property, in addition to prior charges of violating the Corporate Espionage Act and, oh yes, attempted murder.”
“I thought the police were in charge of arresting people,” I said, more calmly than I felt. “You’re not the police.”
“Cygnus security personnel are authorized by the Baltimore City chief of police to serve and execute warrants for arrest and seizure.” Frost stopped at the edge of the porch. His face was like stone. Whatever reasonableness or good will he might have had lurking inside that black suit must have been scared out of him that day at the zoo. I couldn’t blame him for not liking me or trusting me, but I wasn’t going to pull my punches. Not now.
“We own this land. Check the records. Felix James owns this whole neighborhood. And we haven’t stolen anything. Everyone here brought their things from home,” I said loudly as I watched the armed men form a ring around the front of my house.
“You’ve stolen printers and feedstock, and damaged Cygnus drones and office property.”
“Bullshit!” I glared at him. “I was replacing the printer and feedstock you stole from my apartment, and I was setting free the innocent people you kidnapped!”
“After your arrest, and that of everyone in these houses, as well as the impounding of all property found on the premises, you will have the right to an attorney and a public forum to dispute the charges,” Frost said. He sounded like a robot, spitting out words from a script.
I wondered how badly he wanted to shoot me.
“Absolutely not. It’s not our job to prove we’re innocent. The law hasn’t changed that much,” I said. “The only thieves here are you. The only trespassers are you. And I am done playing your stupid games. I’m so done that I left the entire city. I’m out. Do you understand that, Frost? I am out. And I’m never going back. So you can take your little stormtroopers and go back to the Death Star and tell Cygnus that we’re off the grid, we’re out of the game. Now leave!”
“That’s not the way this works, Miss Zhao. You broke the law.” Frost nodded to his left and some of the armed men started coming closer to the porch. “We have the legal right to detain all people and impound all property that we suspect of illicit activity or origin in order to protect the safety and security of our interests.”
“Your interests? You mean your profits. Yeah, I get that.” I looked around at the security goons. Twenty-two of them, all with rifles in their hands and pistols on their belts, and the drones were probably armed too. This was going to be rough. “This is your last warning. Get off our property now, or I will make you leave by force.”
“I don’t think you will.” Frost gestured back at the cars where one of the armed men stood holding a coil of hose attached to a large black tank on the tailgate. He gripped the nozzle in his hand like it was a gun. He was still all the way across the lawn, but I had to figure Frost was no idiot and his equipment could shoot water all the way to the porch.
The man pointed the nozzle at me.
I sighed. “Okay then.”
“You’ll surrender?”
I took a deep breath. “Nope.”
I ran.
Chapter 17
Change of Venue
I ran across the porch and vaulted over the railing, leaping straight toward three of the armed men with their faces hidden behind helmets that weren’t so different from mine. Their armor wasn’t so different from mine either. The only real difference between us at all was the guns, and even though the sight of them made me want to curl up into a ball and hide, I vaulted over the railing anyway.
I had a plan.
“Lux, bike!”
The huge black motorcycle blazed to life right in my hands as I fell toward the lawn and I crashed to earth not on two boots but on two fat holographic tires. I revved the throttle and tore across the grass and swerved onto the road, and I didn’t slow down until I reached the end of the street.
The men did fire at me, a handful of shots, and I dimly recalled the sounds of the bullets
thunking
against my solid light armor, but they never touched me and I barely noticed them, and they stopped after the first volley.
I slid to a stop at the end of the street and looked back. The glaring headlights of the four trucks were pointed straight at me, making it hard to see what was going on. The hovering drones swarmed in my direction, but I ignored them.
I wanted to run, like I had so many times before, but this time was different. There were over two hundred people in Oberon Lake now. Couples, families, extended families, old folks. Most of them couldn’t defend themselves at all, and the ones who could fight back would probably get themselves killed while resisting arrest.
“Lux, sword two.”
The enormous fantasy blade erupted from my right hand and I opened the simulated throttle again, flying back through the darkness toward the lights.
The SWAT team opened fire on me again, but the bullets fell harmlessly away from my bike and my armor, and I held my sword out to my side, level with the road. The holographic blade’s laser edge sliced into the first truck, tearing a long thin scar down its length that shattered its windows, burst its tires, and sent a flood of gasoline onto the pavement. I sliced open the second truck just as easily, but then I had to swerve away to avoid running over the man with the hose. He blasted my back with freezing cold water and all around me I saw the facets of my holograms flicker and flash as they fought to stay online.
“Lux, shield four.”
Shield number four was new. Nothing real, nothing fantasy. Just a huge square of perfect black photons locked in an icy lattice with no edges, no seams, no tiny gaps for water to seep inside and damage my suit. The shield appeared on the back of my arm and I held it up between me and the spray of water, and to my relief, the cold shower stopped.
I raced by the last of the trucks and headed down to the far end of the street where I pulled over to check my suit. Only the back of the jacket had gotten wet, so only the armor back there was in trouble. The bike and my weapons were fine, for the moment.
Again the swarm of drones circled overhead, but if they were armed, they didn’t show it. They just hovered there, watching me. I peered down the dark street. The armed men were all bunched up around the trucks now, still pointing their rifles at me as they came closer. A flash of light on my right revealed a pair of frightened faces in an upstairs window of a large house. Two kids.
This is way too dangerous. The longer I stay here, the more likely it is that someone will get hurt.
“Frost!” I shouted. “If you’re here, who’s minding the store?”
I hit the throttle and shot straight into the line of men and trucks with my big square shield right in front of me. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the guns firing and the water spraying, and then I heard the awkward thumps as the men were plowed aside by the edge of the shield hitting them, and I saw them go tumbling toward the side of the road as I rolled by. The edge of the shield raked along the sides of the trucks, shaving off a fraction of their roofs, but I steered clear to make sure I didn’t hit one head-on, and a moment later I was past them and racing toward the top of the street again.