Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
“Kevin, you just bought yourself flock chores this afternoon,” said his father. “Less attitude, more attention.”
Kevin bit back an angry reply and kept quiet, although it wasn’t easy. Was it really his fault that one minute of his mom talking plants put him so off the grid? He didn’t want to waste his afternoon shoveling flock drop; he wanted to show Tom the project he had finally finished late last night.
His parents and Cass turned away, and Nick began walking up the trail after them. Kevin kept to Nick’s left, his blind side. He quickly stepped off the path, grabbed the shiny object, and shoved it into his pocket. He prayed that nobody had noticed. His heart pounded. Just from the quick look, he could see that it was full-on fletch tech—a wafer-thin perfect rectangle, with a mirrored glass surface and a polished gunmetal edge. It was feather light. It had to be pre-Rev; nothing like this was made after the war.
“Kevin, come on!” Nick called.
“I’m coming,” Kevin said. As he walked, his hands jammed into his pockets, he felt the device. He rubbed away the specks of dirt with his thumb. The metal was cool, slick, almost wet-feeling. He was tempted to take it out, examine it, so tempted it was painful, but he knew he had to be patient. He’d have time later, at home, in private.
Their family shelter was a mix of high and low tech—part scavenged pre-Rev weatherproofing canvas and lightweight super-strong Kevlar-veined plastics, part timber and hand carpentry with a dug-out earth cellar. Kevin shared a room with Nick and didn’t have much space. Nobody did in their small home. Still, he had a secret spot behind his worktable, a split section of floorboard under which he had dug out a small cavity in the dirt. Kevin quickly stashed the tech and then headed out for flock-drop duty.
On his way out the front door, his mother handed him an apple and a biscuit and kissed him on the forehead. He shoved the warm buttered biscuit into his mouth, mumbled a “Thank you” with his mouth full, and headed off to the coop. He cut behind his family shelter, past the neighboring shelters, all small, one-story structures made of wood and scavenged goods—more weatherproof canvas, or a patch of plastic roofing, or in the case of Will and Nancy Patterson, a yellow
WELCOME
mat and two ceramic garden gnomes.
He crossed the central village clearing, with the community tent and the fire pit where the council gathering would be held that night. Then he headed north for a few hundred yards along the path that led to the chicken-wire coop, tucked among the trees to shade the birds from the heat of the sun.
He didn’t mind flock-drop duty, truthfully, though he liked to complain about it like all the other kids. He actually found the cooing relaxing. The smell was nasty, yes, but he could put it out of his mind. And the birds seemed to like him; when he wasn’t rushing, he’d sometimes pick up one of the female whites and sit with it on his chest. The whites were gentler, for some reason, and better flyers, too. Once a month, when six birds were sent out to other Freeposts to share news, it was always the whites that returned first.
But today Kevin was all business. He wanted to show his finished project to Tom and then be home during the Council and kidbon fires, so he’d have some time alone with his new discovery. He quickly but evenly poured out a thin line of grain and seed along the feed trough, freshened the water with the hose that piped in from the central reservoir, scooped out the flock drop from the sand underneath the nests, dumped it into the barrel for later use as fertilizer, shoveled in a layer of clean sand, spread it, and he was done. He washed his hands with the hose, wiped them dry on his pants, left the coop, and glanced at the position of the sun. Half hour to sunset. Still time for Tom.
Tom’s shop was up in the north end of Freepost, in a clearing surrounded by solar panels and two short wind turbines. Thin black gridlines snaked out to the edge of the clearing, where they spread out to the Freepost charging stations. The shop was an army prefab medical field station, green and brown camouflage, made of insulated, waterproof material that could break down, fold up, and be carried easily by two people.
Tom was hunched over a table working on a solar grid. He wore his straw cowboy hat, as always, along with his ratty, dirt-stained, solder-burned jeans and one of his prized old “concert T-shirts,” a subject to avoid getting him started on. This one read
THE SHAME, MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, WORLD TOUR 2049
in red letters on a black background. He didn’t look up when Kevin walked in. “That you, K?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Who else?”
Tom grunted, which Kevin knew from long experience meant “Hello,” then motioned Kevin over with his hand. “Look at this. What do you think?” He held up the solar panel, the gridline dangling, frayed.
Kevin looked at the line and rubbed it between his fingers. “Looks like something chewed it. Maybe a raccoon?”
“Or maybe the Wallaces’ damned mutt, that’s what I’m thinking.” Tom pushed up the brim of his hat, scratched his ear. “So, what’s the fix?”
Kevin shrugged. “Easy. Just replace the gridline feed, test it to make sure the panel’s not blown, and plug it back into the grid.”
“No, I mean about the dog.” Tom stood, walked over to the galley, and poured a glass of water from a pitcher.
“I don’t know. Talk to the Wallaces? Listen, Tom, I finished that project I’ve been working on—”
“I’d bet it’s the dog,” Tom cut Kevin off. “No self-respecting wild animal would waste its time chewing a gridline. Only a domestic mutt with nothing better to do would bother.”
Kevin didn’t take it personally; he knew Tom didn’t shift focus very quickly when he was stuck on something. He walked to the back of the shop, to the personal workspace Tom had let him carve out from the surrounding clutter. He found what he was looking for and brought it over to Tom, who was still staring off into space. “I finished my project.” Kevin held the small rectangular block of wood and metal up in Tom’s line of sight.
“Ah, finally, the famous secret project!” Tom smiled and reached for the metal block. “The one you’ve been hiding from me for a month. So what do you got?”
Kevin quickly pulled the block away. “Get your guitar.”
Tom raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He fetched his prized acoustic guitar, a scratched, dinged-up pre-Rev relic that he always complained was “just a cheap Korean knockoff of a real American axe that sounds like crap, especially with my shop-made strings.” Still, he loved it like it was his child.
Kevin reached for the guitar. “May I?”
Tom hesitated, rubbing at his beard, then handed over the guitar. Kevin placed it on his lap, carefully slid his metal block under the strings, and clipped it to the sound hole to keep it in place. Perfect. He had guessed a bit with the dimensions, but it looked like he’d gotten it right. Next he turned on Tom’s radio, set the frequency to 100, and turned the volume up loud. Nothing but static, of course. Nobody had transmitted anything in years; Tom kept the radio working by request of the Council and checked it occasionally—thankfully never with any success—to monitor for robot communication.
Kevin flipped on his project, a push-button toggle at the bottom of the block, and the hiss of the radio static switched to a warm hum. He handed the guitar to Tom, who was grinning wider than Kevin had ever seen him smile before.
Suddenly Tom frowned. “Radio transmitter? Not safe …”
“The range is like ten feet, Tom,” said Kevin. “If a bot’s that close, you won’t need to worry about it picking up a radio signal. Play something.”
Tom smiled again, fretted a chord, and strummed. The noise burst out of the radio, distorted and metallic and scratchy. Kevin winced. “Not the best sound. Sorry.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s fantastic! Like a Les Paul running through a Marshall stack!” Tom strummed another chord, producing another burst of angry sound from the radio. He clapped Kevin on the shoulder so hard it almost knocked him over. “K, my friend, you have reinvented one of man’s greatest inventions. Don’t know why I never thought to do this myself.” He began playing again, filling up the shop with sound from the radio.
“I’m glad you like it!” Kevin shouted over the racket. “I’ve gotta go!”
Tom gave him a nod without looking up, still playing.
The sun had set and the shelter was empty when Kevin got home—his parents and Nick were at the Council, and Cass was at the kidbon. Perfect. He pushed the worktable back, pried up the split floorboard, then quickly took a surprised step back.
The screen on his piece of tech was flashing red, on and off, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat.
NICK, AS USUAL, PLANNED TO STARE AT THE FIRE THAT EVENING AND keep his mouth shut. Now that he was seventeen, he was expected at the Council gatherings; his parents had made a big show of inviting him to his first meeting. There had been lots of “You’re a man now” attitude that birthday: slaps on the back, talk about responsibility and leadership. His father had even pulled out a bottle of his cherry wine from the dug-out cellar for a toast. And Nick, he was embarrassed now to admit, had bought it, got excited about the whole silly show. He had ideas to share. Good ideas.
But the few times he had opened his mouth at meetings, the first gens had all looked at him like he was speaking squirrel.
We need to do more to connect with other Freeposts
, he had argued.
The monthly flock messages are useless
. Nothing but silent stares.
And what about studying the bots themselves? We’re doing nothing to find weaknesses. Maybe we can even recon the nearest City, to the east
. More silence. Second gens, he quickly realized, were supposed to be seen and not heard at the gatherings. Not that anyone would ever tell him that directly. He was supposed to feel so incredibly grateful to be allowed to sit and quietly soak in the wisdom of his elders. To be amazed by discussions of where to graze the goats and how many wheels of cheese had been stockpiled and how many solar panels and wind turbines needed repairing and to be reminded, always, always, that the first gens were survivors of the Robot Revolution, and only they could really understand the robot threat.
Nick sat on one of the carved wood benches that had been placed in a half-circle around the central campfire. It was a nice night—a clear sky, with just a touch of chill in the air. Freepost was quiet; everyone was here at the Council, or at the kidbon in the southern square, or in their homes. He yawned as he watched the flames dance and waited for the meeting to start.
Danielle sat down next to him, her leg brushing against his, said hello, and
bam
, he was instantly wide awake. He turned to look at her, at her soft brown hair and tan skin and her green eyes meeting his eyes. He wished she had sat on his other side, so she wouldn’t have to look directly at his scar and his blind eye. Everyone in the Freepost knew Nick and had seen his eye hundreds of times; his childhood days of getting in fights over teasing about his eye were gone. But still, Nick was always aware of how ugly it looked. The jagged pink scar running from eyebrow to cheek. The milky haze clouding the iris. He would carry it with him forever—a reminder of what the bots had done to him and his family.
“Hey, Dani,” he said, and he was happy with the way it came out, like it was no big deal that the most fletch girl in Freepost was touching his leg and smiling at him. Except she was still looking at him, waiting for him to say more. His mind went blank, and he felt his cheeks start to burn. Then he was saved by Marcus standing up to begin the meeting.
Marcus, at fifty years old, with gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard, was one of the oldest of the Freepost first gens. He walked to the fire and poked at it with a stick. “It’s time,” he said, looking down at the campfire. The firelight flickered across his face. He tossed the stick into the fire, then turned to the group. “The Council has decided it’s time for Freepost to move on.”
A wave of murmurs spread through the crowd, and Nick’s mother stood up. “Marcus, why? The children are doing well here.” She spread her arms out to the group. “We’re all doing well here, aren’t we?” Most near her nodded. “And moving could expose us even more than staying put! We’ve got, what, four hundred Freeposters now? Even a few babies. How is dragging everyone and everything through the woods to another clearing going to make us any safer?”
Javier rose. He was tanned, with cheeks that seemed windburned, and his silvering brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “Miriam, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said.
Nick sat up straighter. He had never liked Javier, who was so full of himself, Mr. Hotshot Tracker with his camouflage gear, always looking for an excuse to strut around Freepost wearing his green and black face paint. Javier may have been right—Nick was not “doing well here,” he was sick of hiding in this crappy little clearing in the woods where his opinions didn’t matter—but still, he didn’t like the tone Javier used on his mother.
“My mother always knows what she’s talking about, Javier!” Nick said. He had stood up without even realizing it. His fists were clenched; he forced his fingers to relax.
Nick’s father came to his feet. “Look, Javier …”
“David, Nick, we’re just sitting here like fools waiting to be found. We haven’t heard any flock messages from the south for months, you know that. We don’t want to be next.” Javier paused, taking a deep breath. “Miriam, I’m sorry; nobody wants to pack up and leave our homes behind and rebuild. But my recon is showing that the robots have begun searching again. They’ve been quiet for a long time, and that’s lulled you into feeling safe. But no more. The bots are active. They’ve begun seeding chaff beacons.”
There was a silence, and then Nick’s father said, “They’ve seeded chaff before, Javier. And we’ve been fine.”
“It’s different this time,” said Javier. “More extensive. And even if we don’t trigger any chaff and bring them to us, they’ll still come for us soon.” He paused, then continued, “Look, the truth is, we’re not hard to find. The bots must know we’re in the area, but for whatever reason they’ve left us alone. But it feels different now. They’re actively looking. If we stay, they find us and we die.”