Chapter Twenty-Three

It was dark and she was alone in a very strange place. The look of the clear-cut forest had been unearthly; stumps spread out in all directions, dotting the landscape, leaving the area looking like the surface of some strange moon. The throngs of people leaving the walled city had thinned out, and she felt less paranoid that she was being followed. But as there were fewer and fewer people around her she saw more and more danger in the few men who remained.

At first she was determined to find her way out and back to Simon and the Colony. After the events of the past day she felt exhausted and vulnerable. But 15 minutes of stumbling through largely clear-cut forests in the dead of night killed that idea, and quickly. For a moment she felt as afraid as she had back in the cage. Men kept coming up silently behind her and passing by through the dark. Afraid to stand still, she kept moving.

The house must have been grand, once. It was nestled in one of the clumps of undisturbed trees; she caught sight of it only because of the light spilling from the windows. Creeper vines snaked their way up the sides of the frame and spilled into filthy gutters, but an orderly tomato garden stood at the edges of the overgrown lawn. There were no overhead wires, but neither did she hear the tell-tale tones of a gas generator. She did not know just how late it was, but she felt she had no choice. She stumbled her way to the door and knocked.

Like so many she met, the woman who greeted her was of indeterminate age, her skin wrinkled and tanned like leather, but with bright and unyellowed eyes. She seemed to look just past Haojing, her eyes focused someplace just over her shoulder, and she shuffled softly, moving her weight lightly from one foot to the other.

“Hello, I’m sorry, I know it’s late –”

“You aren’t a logger,” said the woman, reaching out and grasping Haojing’s hand, bringing it up into the light. She caressed it as she examined it, and Haojing shuttered from the sudden intimacy. “Are you a feeder?”

Unsure of what else to say, Haojing said yes.

“My Johnny was a logger,” said the woman. “He got the fever a year and a half ago.”

“I’m sorry,” said Haojing.

She felt that if she did not speak, they would have stood there forever. And with the sudden pleasure of human touch she was not sure she would mind.

“I know it’s late. But I’ve lost my way and I’m tired. I was wondering if I could spend the night here.”

The woman still clutched Haojing’s hand and seemed almost to hum softly to herself. Finally she spoke.

“You’ve been having a bit too much to drink with the boys tonight?” she said. “Is that the real problem?”

“Yes.”

The woman nodded theatrically.

“I had a feeling.” She finally dropped Haojing’s hand. “Well, yes, alright dear. Come and we’ll get you set up in the extra room.”

As she opened the door behind her she turned conspiratorially.

“You should feel lucky. I make the men sleep in the shed.”

The house was messy but not dirty. There was the familiar smell of damp and mildew in the air, but none of the more unpleasant bathroom smells one was liable to run into.

She showed Haojing into the kitchen. Pots and pots filled a sink that did not look to have seen water in the previous decade. Plants grew out of old earthenware and, in places, out of the floorboards. Conspicuous was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, flickering but bright.

“Your electricity comes from the fires,” said Haojing.

“Yes. We are lucky. This house was tapped into the lines from the original power station, back in the old times. We would never get new lines dug now.”

She reached up and fingered the chain on the light.

“And we need it so badly.”

She led Haojing into the living room. Three boys sat squished next to each other on a ratty old couch. They were chubby, red-cheeked, and healthy. They did not turn to greet Haojing and instead sat rooted, transfixed. In front of them sat a giant old CRT television, paneled in thick black plastic. A DVD player with frayed wires sat next to the TV, giving off a soft whine as the disc spun.

On the dim screen a pair of dancers in black and white moved deliberately and at a slightly low frame rate, making everything look just out of step with reality. The scene was shot through a windowed door so that the dancers were framed by the cross pattern. The man wore suspenders over a long-sleeved white shirt with black dress pants; the woman twirled in an elegant black gown. They pressed their left hands against each other’s back and held their right hands out and away from their body. Slowly, to the tune of a monotonous piano line, they spun and turned around the space, somewhat stiffly but still beautifully. Every once in awhile, he bowed slightly to her. Every once in awhile, she ran her fingers through her hair.

“I’m afraid it’s the only disc we’ve ever found,” said the mother. “Have you seen many?”

“Discs? Someone came through when I was ten with dozens. But no one in the village had a player. Other than that, a handful, from time to time.”

“But how many have you watched?”

“Oh, a good amount.” Haojing had in fact seen half of a detective movie and several hours of occupational safety videos.

“Hold on boys,” said the woman. She moved over to the television and flicked a switch in the back. A sickly green image of the backyard of the house lit the room, grainy but legible.

“How did you…” Haojing trailed off. She traced wires from the back of the TV as they snaked up the wall to the point where they were awkwardly stapled to the ceiling, following their lines until they branched off down a hallway.

“Follow me,” she said.

The woman led Haojing into a breakfast nook. A monitor sat on a little round table that seemed in imminent danger of buckling under its weight. She reached next to a big black dial that had been repurposed from some other machinery and turned it, click-click-click. As she did the image on the monitor flicked over, first between several different security cameras, then to an interface that looked like something used to control industrial equipment. Haojing craned her neck around underneath, looking for a PC, but found nothing, just a tangle of wires. She frowned.

“Where’s the processing?”

“Come. I’ll introduce you to my other child.”

She was led up a set of stairs that did not seem to be entirely reliable. As they reached the landing she could hear soft sounds she could not quite place.

In the bedroom sat a large four-post bed. Dead in the center lay its sole occupant. She appeared to be perhaps 15, but it was hard to say. She sank into the center of a mattress that had long since given up. She looked not so much thin as desiccated. Her modest dress had been bleached in the sun. A thick sheath of wires extended from the region of her liver; a ventilator tube emerged from her mouth. Various other tubes and probes dotted her body. Her eyes were vacant and stared at the ceiling above.

“This is my Shannon,” said the mother. She say on the edge of the bed and stroked her daughter’s hair tenderly. For a moment she rocked where she sat and hummed imperceptibly as she gazed at her daughter. The ventilator clattered slightly and seemed in general to be just short of functioning properly. As she stood awkwardly in the doorway Haojing noticed one of the thick black wires from below that snaked into the room and led directly into the child’s body.

“She is the processor,” she murmured.

The mother kept stroking her child’s hair for a moment before responding.

“It’s remarkable, all the things she gives to this family,” she said, rising. “I’ll have to put the boys to bed. Time for you to climb in too. Come with me.”

She led Haojing to a little guest room. It too smelled like mildew but the sheets were clean and the floorboards were sturdy.

“Breakfast in the morning and then on your way.”

And with that she shuffled off.

Haojing lay in the little twin bed for several hours, counting. She found she could not sleep, though her accomodations were pleasant. Finally she rose from the bed, surrendering, and walked to the window. The outdoor lights were still on in the middle of the night, and she found she recoiled from the consequences of cheap power. Briefly she thought about another commodity that came cheap around this home.

She crept gingerly into the girl’s room. There were no lights on, but the blinking machinery and small monitors of the equipment that kept her alive lit her sufficiently to see. Haojing leaned in close to her face, searching for something she couldn’t describe, but saw only a blank face, either vacant or at peace. The ventilator gave off its three-part sounds, bmmmmm-puh-buh. She sat on the edge of the bed, just as the girl’s mother had. She could see her implant protrude from the girl’s chest, the skin around it scarred and purple. The sheath of wires that emerged from it looked like a perfect handful, like they were made to be grasped.

She leaned over and, in a fascimile of what she had seen before, she brushed the girl’s hair. A pillow looked at her invitingly and asked her to press it against the other girl’s face, but Haojing’s conscious mind rejected the thought before it was processed. Still there was something she felt she had to do, some mark to make, but the feeling was gone as quickly as it came. Electricity from a massive wood fire snaked its way through the woods and to this home, where it ran into the insides of a catatonic girl, whose apparatus in turn ran security cameras, played videos, organized data. Haojing felt as she sat there as if she was meant to be similarly a part of such a machine, and wondered if she already ways. She rifled through her pockets but found no gift to leave behind, and merely glanced at the inviting thicket of wires one last time before slipping out of the house. She was surprised to find herself where she had been before, lost in the woods, stumbling, feeling ahead of herself as she sought to make her way in the dark.