Calvin stopped and stared at David with a look of surprise. “You honestly don't know? I wonder what happened to you, what happened to get you out into the middle of the Green Zone in the first place. They must have done something to you. That's what they do,” Calvin's voice trailed off, his monologue turned inward. “They do things ...”
“So that thing was going to kill me?”
Calvin shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. You never can tell. They spend most of their time underground. In the summer heat like this they're lucky if they move at all—at least when they come up to the surface. Traveling is usually safe to move this time of year; no one can see you. Well, at least not so deep in the Green Zone at least. Their ground patrols are useless.”
“I'm afraid you lost me. I thought you said it was a snake,” David hesitated, then added, “although I'm not quite sure what an anaconda would be doing this far north.”
“It. Wasn’t. A. Real. Snake.” Calvin spoke each word deliberately, punctuated with agitation, while his right index finger nervously clawed the trigger of the dead chainsaw. “That's what we call them. Anacondas, field serpents, whatever you call them it makes no matter. They're all you're going to find out here, other than travelers like us of course. If you’re lucky, the serpents don’t see you before you see them.”
“Well, lucky for me you were there to help,” David replied cautiously.
“Lucky for you I suppose. You weren't dispatched. Regardless, they’re aware you're here, which means they'll be ready for you. And with what I did, taking out one of their sentries, they'll be waiting for me too. Lucky for me they still have no idea when.”
“What are you saying? These snakes are some sort of security system? Whatever you killed last night sure seemed alive to me—especially from the blood spray off your friend there.” David pointed to the dangling chainsaw. “... and it most certainly didn't look like some sort of camera or machine.”
“Serpents are SBS,” said Calvin. David shrugged his shoulders unknowingly. “Symbiotic Biological Surveillance?”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Of course, you don't,” Calvin muttered. “After the chemicals made the Green Zone uninhabitable they set the serpents free here. At first, they were only genetic creations, but when the neural net went wireless they programmed it so the serpents' AI systems tapped directly in. In a way, the serpents are like the Eyefields, only these bastards are mobile. Since they're primarily bio they still have to spend most of their time below the surface due to the chemicals on the top layer. When it rains though the surface layers are safe for them; the chemicals dilute in water, and they can move about nicely—they're respectable swimmers. That’s why I call them anacondas—like in the old days when the anacondas would swim through the South American marshes. They still haven't figured out a way to build an immunity to it for animals. Although I have heard talk of chimera research.”
“Okay then,” said David, oddly satisfied. “Any idea how much farther until we're there?”
“Not much more as far as distance, quite a bit further in time. We're going to have to stop at the top of this next hill.”
As the duo reached the summit, David's eyes widened; the land stretching out before them was unlike anything David had ever seen. Separated into square parcels, it closely resembled farm fields, though there didn't appear to be any plants growing other than the grass in which they were currently standing. What made each parcel distinguishable from the surrounding field of grass were the tiny pinkish “things,” accented in white, with flecks of blue, green and brown. And they were round. Whatever was growing out there, it seemed to be completely round—at least on top. To David’s mind, they were like sparkling white marbles, flickering on and off like lights on a Christmas tree, all of them changing directions in unison, their movement made visible from the dark circles marking one side of the ball.
“Here we are, the Eyefields,” Calvin said, matter-of-factly.
David blinked, attempting to bring his view into focus. “Wait.. Those are eyes?”
“What else would they be? We’re at the edge of the prairies, after all.”
David stepped forward to look closer, but Calvin reached his hand up and grabbed him at the shoulder, dragging him to the ground.
“Do you want them to catch us? I told you, we still have a bit of an advantage to us; they still have no idea when we're coming. I'd like to keep that secret to ourselves.”
David examined the landscape. “Aren't you being paranoid? There's obviously no one around here.”
Calvin put down the chainsaw, placed both hands on David's shoulders and studied him. “David, there are literally thousands of eyes down there. Each one of them is part of the network. If you want to walk through there and let them all see you, that's up to you. I do recommend, however, you keep your hands high and wave a white flag as you go through.”
Understanding suddenly washed over David. “They really are eyes, aren't they ... growing there in the field. They're part of the same network those snake things are.”
Nodding his head, Calvin added, “They grow them here in the fields for transplants, lab tests, spare parts. The salt from the sea on the far side of the fields helps keep their salinity more stable and if the levels go too low they fly over and salt-dust the bogs.”
“So that's what all the blue is? They're growing in ponds?”
“Not ponds, bogs. Like cranberries. That’s how the farmers keep the eyes and the simple muscle and bio-nutrition structure propagating beneath the surface moist. I've seen a dried-up field, once before. Farther south. The land there had gotten too arid from the encroaching deserts making it far too difficult to farm so they moved the bogs north toward the rain belts. They must have shut it down only a few weeks earlier because the smell of rot was overwhelming. The eyes had all been harvested, of course—the ones they could salvage anyway. The others had been long since pecked off by crow swarms. A cracking, drying, rotting heap of machine-flesh and the abandoned neurocables leading to the ocean. These were the early fields, the ones from before the network was able to handle that kind of bandwidth without some sort of land line. You could still see most of the nodules in the machine-flesh from where the eyes had been connected to the network, although quite a few shriveled up under the sun.”
Calvin paused, his eyes searching the sky. “It smelt a bit of hamburger, actually, depending on where you were and how long the space had been baking,” Calvin licked his lips. “I miss hamburgers.”
“So, how do we sneak past them? What are they waiting for?”
“Eyefields are still grown primarily as a crop. The surveillance? A lucky side effect The Progressives stumbled upon in building them. When the sun goes down and the horizon starts to turn pink, it will trigger their eyelids to close and we'll be safe to move through. Provided we tread carefully, of course. There are still alarms around the area to ward of the poachers, and those are on all night.”
“How do their eyelids close? They're just eyes—there is no lid.”
“It's a preprogrammed system. When they engineered these replacements, they made a point to give them an internal shut-down mechanism to prevent them from adapting too well to the dark, and therefore avoid becoming overly sensitive to light. In the city it's never dark, and once these are transplanted to a city location they won't have much need for night vision. So instead of outer eyelids, there's a skin substitute that folds down, triggered by circadian rhythm.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We wait for the sun to go down.”
“Of course.” David took a seat in the wet grass and Calvin took a seat beside him. “Hey Calvin?” he asked.
“What?”
“You have anything to eat? I'm starving.”
Calvin reached into the pocket of his coat, retrieved a paper bag of granola and offered a handful to David. David thanked him, and the two talked while waiting for sunset to come.
“The fields ... you said they weren'
t habitable, but they're green with life. Plus, other than some hunger and the fact I'm exhausted, I feel reasonably well. What's the deal?”
Calvin shook his head. “I do wonder where it is you came from, David. Do you remember anything at all?”
The thought hadn't ever crossed his mind, but, now that he thought about it, David didn't have many memories. Not of this place, at least. When he thought back on his life he remembered a wife, two kids, a house and a job in security.
“Let's pretend I don't remember anything, okay? Can you give me a history lesson?”
“How far back would you like me to go?”
“For starters, the question I asked a minute ago—what's with the fields? I'd also like to find out where everyone is, where we're going, what the plastic city is, and who the hell you are.”
“Well David, you do have an awful lot of questions,” said Calvin. He turned his head to the west, noting the sun had nearly hit the horizon. “I'll answer what I can, but we don't have a lot of time until nightfall. Once the sun sets, we have to move.”
“Tell me what you can.”
“Okay then, I'll start with your first question. The fields we're in are more or less what they seem—fields of grass. There used to be a lot more here than grass, of course, before the migration. Before The Chemical Wars. The cities still stand where they did, but there's no one there other than people like me.” Calvin considered David and added, “You, on the other hand, don't look like you came from one of the ancient territories, but you also don't look like you're from the city. If I'm to believe you, and for some reason I do, you claim you're not a Progressive, and I'll take you at your word.
“The fields, on the other hand, aren't the kind of place where anyone lives—at least not the place anyone can live for long. You said you were feeling fine, other than some exhaustion. Are you sure you’re not experiencing a shortness of breath? Try inhaling—make it a deep one.”
David took a deep breath and coughed as his chest constricted. It was as if his lungs were full; a memory flashed, reminding him of late nights spent in the bars as a college kid, in rooms full of too much smoke and too little oxygen.
“You see? That's what I'm talking about. It starts in the lungs, but it can seep in through the skin too. The eyes though, they suffer the worst of it.” Calvin pointed at David's shoeless feet. “Really, osmosis is where most of the considerable damage comes from. You're going to want to wash those as soon as you find some water.
“The Organics had it right, even if they were a bunch of nutters themselves. Too much poison for the sake of mankind lead to near obliteration. The fields are green because they're alive, because of the chlorophyll in each individual blade of grass, but they thrive because there's nothing out here to harm them anymore. Life was fine, and we kept on multiplying, but the bigger problem was people weren't dying anymore. The scientists and doctors and technologists had basically beaten death, or at least most forms of it. For those who could afford it, of course. The ones who couldn't had already been forced from the city when homelessness was outlawed, and they built their communes out here, in the fields. They were the first to go. Couldn’t fight in the war, even as it erupted in their own backyards.
“Some people blamed the farmers, but they were only doing what they had to do to survive. When it's kill or be killed, it’s better to be the one holding the hatchet than to be the chicken on the chopping block. If there's one group of people who understands better than anyone else, it's the farmers. Anyway, they did what had to be done. The chemicals were the only way to protect the crops so they'd grow sizeable enough to feed the growing population. Sure, The Organics had their own crops, but those were for their own societies and there wasn't enough to share beyond their own borders ... caused them to have quite a few battles of their own,” Calvin chuckled.
“So, without anyone realizing it, The Chemical Wars began … but no one noticed until the homeless communes started to dwindle. The ones in the cities assumed it was an act of natural selection. These people didn't serve a purpose as far as the greater good of society was concerned, and without serving a purpose they had no real means as far as financial assets, which meant they didn't have any kind of healthcare or medicine other than what they could come up with on their own. All the technology was in the cities, and they certainly weren't welcome.
“When the city people started to turn sick, however, society did notice and did care. Their concern wasn't for the ruralites, mind you, but for their own well-being. At first they thought one of the homeless somehow snuck back into the city and brought a virus with them, but eventually it became clear whatever was killing people wasn’t communicable. The doctors performed test after test while the citizens of the cities dropped like flies. No matter what tests they did, however, they couldn't find a virus and they couldn't find a bacterium. It didn't appear to be biological in nature at all and didn't match any recognizable chemical weapon. Finally, they came upon the answer. I've no idea how they came upon it, but they did. By then it was too late. Chicago was long gone, Milwaukee and St. Louis too. It spread from the Midwest out toward the coasts at a staggering rate, killing most of the population. It wasn't limited to the U.S. either. Most of Europe was already gone.”
“What was it?” David asked. “What killed everybody?”
“Like I said, it was the farmers. They started The Chemical Wars without realizing it. Whatever it was they put on their crops to keep them growing was a poison, or at least acted as one once all the chemicals started to mix together. That's why it spread from the Midwest; right out of the corn belt, although California and Idaho were hot zones too. It's also why the grass out here is so green—still full of the chemicals. It killed their predators, but along with killing the predators it also killed off the animals and insects necessary for cross pollination of most of the crops. Sure, you'll come across a wild corn field once in a while, but that's mostly due to the wind carrying the pollen. Everything keeps getting choked out by the grass in the end though. The remaining progressives built the plastic cities on the sea to escape from the land and to allow it to heal. It wasn't safe here anymore, and the sea was the only refuge.”
“So, am I going to die? If the land is poisoned, how are they safe growing the Eyefields?” David asked.
“Once the scientists realized what was happening, all chemicals were banned. The Chemical Wars raged on after this simply because what had been released was already out there, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. The land is healing, and some of us are starting to travel across it. As long as we don't linger, and we stick to the coasts, the effects are mostly temporary. You’re safer the closer you travel to the oceans, except for California. The Progressives are aware of this too of course, and they're starting to venture back here as well. Some of us think the Eyefields are more than crops—that they're also experiments to see if our biological systems can survive here again. In the Eyefields they can test new treatments and manipulate genetic code to find a way to take back the land—all of it at once, rather than be forced to wait for what could be thousands of years before nature cleans up their mess.”
“So why are you going there? Is that where we’ll find shelter?”
“We can talk about me later. Right now, we have to prepare ourselves to move.” Calvin pointed to the horizon, bright pink where the sun was about to meet the land. His hand changed direction and pointed to the Eyefields below. “Watch.” His voice was commanding, yet David could hear a hint of awe behind it as well.
As the sun fell behind them, the sky changed from pink to crimson, and the Eyefields began to shift. The rapid movement of the eyes and their pupils slowed, eventually coming to a stop. As they stopped, David felt horribly exposed; the thousands of eyes stretching out before him all seemed to be looking directly at him.
“They turn west at sundown, so they won't be damaged when the sun rises in the morning,” Calvin said, sensing David's question.
The crimson sky grew
more vibrant as the sun fell, and the eyes began to change. It happened in waves, one row at a time, a rush of pink through the bogs as the eyes closed their inner lid, shutting down for the day to avoid any unnecessary night vision training.
When the sun disappeared and the last row of eyes turned its shade of fleshy pink, Calvin stood and yanked David to his feet by his collar.
“We have to hurry. Night might seem like a long time, but those fields are considerably more expansive than you'd think.”
In the light of the moon, under a clear evening sky, they rushed down the hillside, onward to the fields of slumbering surveillance. Still, something nagged at David. And, despite the lack of trees, David suspected they weren't yet out of the woods.
FIVE
LIKE A GOD-DAMN OCEAN SPRAY COMMERCIAL
At the bottom of the hillside, level with the expanse of Eyefields, the air hung low and wet. A dense, knee high fog covered the landscape, rolling in and out of the bogs, like waves of dry ice. As they approached the perimeter a wire fence bordered the fields, humming with electricity. The entire area was, indeed, under additional surveillance—exactly as Calvin said. Crossing through here would be impossible.
“Damn it. I thought we hit farther south than where we are ... or is it north? Even I have a difficult time finding direction without a compass.” Calvin licked his finger and held it up to the air, sensing the breeze. “We move south.”
Calvin headed off and David quickly followed. The perimeter of unchanging fields of eyes glistened in the moonlight, their pupils casting grey circles under their thin, fleshy lids. About every thousand yards there would be a break where a grassy strip of land rose up, separating one bog from the next.
Like a god-damn Ocean Spray commercial, David thought.
A faint light appeared in the distance, shining increasingly brighter as they marched on. About a hundred yards out, Calvin stuck his hand in front of David. David stopped, concentrated on the light, and a tiny wooden shack materialized out of the darkness. A man sat in a chair in front directly under the lamp’s glow, reading a book in the night.
The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr David S Sparks Page 2
