The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  8 ∞ Yokohama Slim Esq. Rare Books

  2056

  Box awoke to an argument. She, Brin and Pax had slept through the journey to Earth. Kitou was left in command.

  “This is unacceptable,” said Pax.

  Kitou was hanging her head in contrition.

  “What’s happening?” asked Box.

  “Kitou used the Cult device to contact Macro,” said Brin.

  “What’s wrong with that?” asked Box.

  “Everything.”

  The device was a milky green sphere, the size of a grapefruit. It reminded Box of the mainframe core she’d seen at the bank. Brin said it might be a sex toy. Kitou rolled her eyes at that.

  Pax said to Kitou, “Explain.”

  Kitou said, “I was experimenting.”

  “I have no problem with that. Details?”

  “I asked the Bat. He suggested an input. I tried it. It opened a channel.”

  “To the Cult?”

  “Yes.”

  “The interesting thing,” said the Water Bear, “is that this happened inside a warp bubble. That’s new physics.”

  “What happened then?” asked Pax.

  “I asked for Macro.”

  “First mistake,” said Pax. “And then?”

  “I called him again, later.”

  Pax sighed. “How did the Cult react to all this?”

  “They were unsurprised.”

  “You should have told the Water Bear, and woken me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Consequences.”

  Kitou looked up. She didn’t care about consequences. She was already experiencing the consequences.

  “See me in the practice area,” said Pax. “In five minutes.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Box. Kitou seemed relieved.

  “Pax will teach her a lesson” said Brin.

  “He’s going to hurt her?”

  “Probably.”

  There was no great skill in the fight. They had their wetware off, in the Bat’s erratic local gravity, and there was skin in the game. Pax advanced, and Kitou danced away. Pax advanced again. He tried to ease into his Po routines, where he had the advantage, but Kitou avoided him.

  Then Pax caught her off guard, and slapped her hard on the side of the head, drawing blood.

  Box winced.

  Kitou shook her head, and returned to the Po starting position. This routine continued, until Pax launched a fluid combination of punches, and caught her again, flat on the same side of the head.

  She sprawled on the floor.

  “Stay down,” whispered Brin.

  Kitou rose to her feet, to the starting position.

  Pax nodded, and went directly after her, launching a second flurry of punches, and caught her again, this time with a flat fist to the shoulder, and she went down, hard.

  There was an unpleasant pop.

  “Stay down,” he said.

  Kitou shook her head, and rose unsteadily to her feet. Pax moved in to finish her, but she anticipated him. With blistering speed, she spun inside his defenses, and landed a full-powered elbow, directly in his ribcage.

  “That’s going to hurt,” said Brin.

  Kitou danced away, and Pax couldn’t catch her. She sprang forward again, while he was advancing, and landed a perfect Muay Thai combination, to the same part of his ribcage. There was a meaty crunch.

  “And that,” said Brin.

  It was finished a few moments later. Pax simply ignored her defenses, marched in, and delivered a clinical punch to the point of her chin, knocking her unconscious.

  He looked down at her, and frowned.

  “Brin,” he said.

  “Yes, Navigator?”

  “Take her to the medibay. Bring her to me when she’s able.”

  Brin nodded.

  Box watched Kitou stirring on the medibay. She couldn’t begin to untangle her feelings. Anger. Disgust. Reluctant admiration. Nauseous rage. A mother’s pain for her injured child.

  An ultrasound machine began a bone knitting operation.

  “Will she have scars?”

  “Only if she wants them,” said Brin.

  “You seem remarkably sanguine about this.”

  Brin seemed surprised. “What do you expect?”

  “What do you think, Water Bear?”

  “I approve.”

  “How can you?”

  “A sharp punishment is superior to a long humiliation. Now the air is clear. Kitou won’t forget this lesson. Nor will Pax.”

  “I don’t get you people.”

  “You can’t,” said Brin, gently. “You’re a normally socialized human. We’re soldiers. We wager our lives. We must absolutely trust each other.”

  “How is this different to a training injury?” asked the Water Bear.

  “They’re not deliberate.”

  She stormed out of the medibay, as furiously as she could manage in zero-gravity, and cannoned into Pax, who looked puzzled.

  “What was that all about?” she demanded.

  He raised his hands placatingly.

  “Don’t give me that horseshit, Pax. You’re a grown man. She’s a child. You could’ve killed her.”

  Pax winced. “I could not have killed her.”

  Box stormed away.

  Later, Brin and the Water Bear followed a serene Kitou into the communal space. Box sensed the presence of strong analgesics in Kitou’s demeanor.

  Pax nodded. “You fought like the wind,” he said.

  He took a pouch from his pocket.

  “Ito was saving this, but it’s time.”

  He gave Kitou two carbon-black starbursts.

  “You understand your responsibilities?”

  She nodded.

  “Then excuse me, young soldier, while I have my injuries seen to.”

  He pushed himself gingerly towards the medibay.

  Later, Box watched as the Water Bear installed Kitou’s combat wetware.

  “Will it hurt?” asked the Bat.

  “More than Pax’s blows did,” said the Water Bear.

  It didn’t look painful. Kitou just fell asleep.

  “What does it do?” asked Box.

  “It’s a full military system,” said the Water Bear. “Built on a different architecture. It attaches lower in the autonomic nervous system. She’ll be better, faster, stronger.”

  “God help us,” said Box.

  “Indeed,” said the Water Bear.

  “Will it affect her personality?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Poor Kitou,” said the Bat.

  “Does it really hurt?” asked Box.

  “Yes,” said the Water Bear.

  While Kitou nursed a powerful headache, the others looked down on Earth. It was the same blue-white jewel she’d seen from the Pnyx, twenty years in the future. On the ground, it’d be a different story. The biosphere was in a death spiral. Soon, without intervention, the methane monster in the Arctic would begin to stir, and that would be the end of it.

  “There’s a young Ophelia Box down there,” said the Water Bear.

  “It’s been a year since my family died,” said Box.

  “I’m sorry,” said Pax.

  “If only we’d come a year earlier.”

  “It may have made no difference,” said the Water Bear.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “There are a few theories of retro-causation: of the future changing the past. One is that time is self-healing. No matter what we do, it returns to its original shape. Another is that when we try to change past events, we become the cause of them.”

  “You mean we could start the war we’re here to prevent?”

  “Or cause the atrocity at Fluxor.”

  “Then why are we even here?”

  “Because we were sent,” said Pax. “And we’re taking the path of least assumptions.”

  “Hopefully, the universe has no problems with paradox,” said the Water Bear.

  “That
hurts my head,” said Box.

  “Mine too,” said Kitou.

  They fell in the usual way, trusting their suits not to trigger a terror alert. More than one Caliphate cruise missile had been intercepted over the skies of southern England.

  They drifted over a sprawling metropolis. This was London, in the dog days of the climate wars. Some parts of the city raged in uncontrolled fires. Box could see all of Bow, up in flames. She saw Ashburton Grove, spotlit for an Arsenal game, surrounded by flashing blue polis.

  Half a country away, a twelve-year-old Ophelia Box was learning to sell black-market pharma in the mean streets of Glasgow.

  Her skinsuit blossomed, and she settled with gossamer wings on Wimbledon Common.

  Her facemask retracted.

  She took a breath of fetid air.

  London, before the Aurora Galactinus.

  The parched grass of the Common was tufted and spiny.

  “Like Fluxor at the end,” said Kitou, unhappily.

  “Okay team,” said Box. “Listen to your mission specialist. We’ve come at a time of great social upheaval. I chose this route because it takes us through four safe areas.”

  “We could have landed closer,” said Brin.

  “I know,” said Box. “But I wanted to see it.”

  She’d dressed them in halter tops, loose-fitting combat trousers, and trainers. London’s ubiquitous summer streetwear, although this was winter. Since no one in 2056 had wetware, Kitou and Brin had downloaded Box’s soft highland burr.

  They were three Scottish lassies, walking in London.

  They set off to walk the 15 km to Clerkenwell.

  At the edge of Wimbledon Village, smiling boom-gate guards waved them into the Glorious Nation of Tooting. One man, a young Rastafarian, asked for Brin’s number.

  “Are those real countries?” asked Brin.

  “It all began as a surreal joke,” said Box. “Then the gates were installed.”

  It was past midnight, and there were street parties spilling out everywhere. Every bar was filled to overflowing. Groups of youths gave them good-natured waves.

  “This isn’t threatening,” said Brin.

  “London has a history of this kind of thing,” said Box, “of bringing out its best in a crisis.”

  “I like these people,” said Kitou.

  “So do I,” said Box.

  London’s streets had always had a bustling, overcrowded feel, now even more so in the new age of fin-du-temps parties, when the town centers were continuously refilled with revelers. Closed urban borders hadn’t put a brake on the population. Twenty million people now lived here. They stuck to the high ground of the obvious party areas, passing directly along the high streets of Earlsfield and Clapham, avoiding the swampy fens of crack houses and drug deals. Brixton announced itself with a lightshow, spilling over the brutalist Clapham skyline: a wall of sound, and a tremor in the pavement.

  “Is that another country?” asked Brin.

  “No,” said Box. “It’s the 24x festival. There’s another in Notting Hill. They alternate. When Brixton is banging, Notting Hill is chilling.”

  “Is Brixton banging?” asked Kitou.

  “Oh yes,” said Box. “I do think it is.”

  Brixton had always been Box’s London postcode of choice. Partly, because of its eclectic history. Electric Avenue was the first street in London to be lit by electricity. Its tough history resonated with her politics. It was also her fondness for diversity. London had it in abundance, but Brixton was the wellspring. All life was here, as the old bromide went. She was drawn to this time and place, and wasn’t about to miss a chance to see it.

  And to party, of course.

  Kitou chose a shiny plastic party frock with ballet flats. Brin wore a cocktail dress and heels. Box kept her combats and trainers, and wore just a frilly black sports bra on top. The passing revelers who saw their clothes morph, hooted approval.

  “We’re dangerously sexy,” declared Box.

  The hulking, concrete church on Brixton Green was garlanded with bunting, like a medieval castle; like the gun emplacements on Avalon. Round the edges of the Green was a funfair, complete with sparking old dodgems and chuntering fairground rides. A calliope wheezed along with the electronic dance music. People of every age, color and gender were dancing. There was even a hayride: a magnificent Percheron, unfazed by the commotion, hauling cartloads of shrieking children around.

  The soundtrack was pure twenty-sixties. Balearic trance had made its decadal comeback. The death metal of the forties and fifties had been discarded as a tautology.

  “This is great music,” said Kitou. “What is it?”

  “This is called house music,” said Box. “Down the street there is reggae. Over there is drum ‘n bass.”

  “They’re all intoxicated,” observed Brin.

  Box nodded. “Many of them are. 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, commonly known as ecstasy, the party drug of choice in this milieu.”

  It was ironic, thought Box, that at the end of the world, the consumption of alcohol had fallen. The great, poetic drug of depression had been replaced by uppers. It was partly a function of cost. Now that the world had crowdsourced the supply of precursors, pills cost only pennies. Tobacco had disappeared. Party drugs had taken over. In some respects, the population had never been healthier.

  On the other hand, there was the teeth-grinding paranoia.

  “You’re an expert,” said Brin.

  “I’m an expert historian,” said Box.

  “Can we take some?” asked Kitou.

  “No,” said Box.

  “I want to dance,” said Kitou, and for the next few hours they did; three good friends at a festival.

  “Pax will be shaking his head,” said Kitou.

  They all laughed at that.

  “Dr Box,” said Brin, as they left Brixton town center behind. “Their world is ending, yet these people are having a huge party.”

  “Yes, and not a creepy bacchanalia, like some other places on Earth. This is a party you can take your family to.”

  “A positive attitude,” said Brin. “I’d do the same, if my world was ending.”

  “London is wicked,” said Kitou.

  “It’s the best,” agreed Box.

  Lambeth gave way to the People’s Republic of Southwark. This was a quieter place. Most of the crowded tenements were sleeping. Box imagined them full of sleeping children, waiting on an uncertain future. She wished she could reach in and tell them the good news. That they’d be saved. Would it be good news? She hoped so. She hoped they weren’t all heading down some other rabbit hole, where death arrives by a different entrance.

  A sphere of decoherence, or some bug-eyed monster throwing an asteroid.

  Instead of by our own hand, by broiling.

  After a few kilometers of inner-city housing estates, they gazed over a sandbagged Thames, into the mazy canyons of the financial district. They’d taken a scouting position on Southbank, where soundsystems turned the archways round the bridges into miniature Brixtons, with parties all through the night. Across the river, the City had a darkly post-apocalyptic feel. Out on the river, barges were burning. These were kept going for years, fueled by oil from a tanker grounded on the Thames Barrier.

  “We call that the Square Mile,” she said, pointing over the river. “It used to be one of Earth’s great banking centers.”

  “Like Praxis?” asked Kitou.

  “Not quite like Praxis. More like an old-fashioned market.”

  “What happened?” asked Kitou.

  “Political schism. When Britain brexited from the regional economic union, the City cexited from Great Britain, so they cut off its power supply.”

  “Is it safe to go there?”

  “Yes. If anyone makes trouble, they get zapped with a laser from orbit.”

  There were no gates to the City in a city, only hundreds of CCTV cameras. The few people they saw hurried past with their heads down.

&nbs
p; “We’re here at a pivotal moment in Earth history,” said Box, as they walked beside the smoked-glass facades of venerable banks and insurance companies. “Europe’s become a techno-anarchic freakshow. North America’s a shooting gallery. The start of the complete breakdown of society.”

  “A system on the edge of chaos,” said Brin.

  “Yes. And in a year, when the first lightships arrive, everyone will shake their heads, and pretend it never happened.”

  “So no closure?” asked Brin.

  “Not really,” said Box.

  They crossed into a modish warehouse district, with fashionable shops, hunkering over narrow, crooked streets. Here, there were people: the same festivities as in south London, winding down for the heat of the day. Just a few miles west was Notting Hill and the other 24x festival.

  The streetlights sputtered, due to the endemic coal shortages.

  “Clerkenwell,” said Box. “We’re almost there.”

  A rosy dawn was climbing over the spiky inner-London rooftops. Already, the temperature was rising. They arrived at a small shop, hardly more than a kiosk, in a quiet back street.

  The sign said, Yokohama Slim, Esq. Rare Books.

  The towering man who answered the door was of mixed oriental ethnicity, with long black hair tied back in Kanzashi sticks, dressed in a blue city suit, despite the early hour. Slim claimed to be part Japanese, part Tuniit nomad, part Koryak fisherman. He looked down his long nose at their party frocks.

  “Well, it’s Ophelia Box and Kitou Gorgonza. And you must be Brin Lot. Please, come in.”

  He ushered them into his shop, which Box knew so well from her past. Dusty first editions lined the shelves. Books about magick, and philosophy, competing for space with Manga collections.

  Slim was the Slim she remembered, a rawboned man in late middle age, immaculately dressed, as always.

  “How can you possibly know me, Slim?” asked Box, while he boiled water for tea. “Why are you the same? We don’t meet for two years.”

  “Let’s say I have a good memory.”

  Over bowls of tea, he told them more.

  “Ito and I have been working on the Fa:ing problem for some time,” he said.

  “You mean you will be working on it,” said Box.

  He shrugged. “Time is a knot, Box. Best cut right through it. Pretend I’m the Slim of your era. Now introduce us.”