by Gish Jen
“It’s what I think you call the Autonet.”
“That which rules us all, you mean.”
“She, we would say. She who rules us all.”
Sylvie smiled. “ ‘Aunt Nettie’—I like that. Though your chip sounds like less of an OmniPass and more of an OmniPain, I have to say.”
“ ‘An OmniPain’—I like that.” Gwen smiled, too.
Then off Sylvie wafted, saying she would be back soon and leaving behind a spicy scent—incense, maybe?—and an ocean-blue basket full of yoga paraphernalia. A mat, blocks, a strap. Therapy balls, some sort of ring. A striped Tibetan blanket labeled in English “100% genuine YakWool.”
So was it a generous gesture that Pink and Sylvie had offered to let her have the single? Gwen asked as Eleanor taught her how to make a bed. Or was the offer the opposite—a sign that neither girl wanted to share a room with her?
“My advice,” said Eleanor, pulling on one corner of the fitted bottom sheet and working it under the mattress, “is to assume the best of people. Try to distinguish ignorance from malice.”
“And keep your animus for malice,” finished Gwen, pulling on the opposite corner.
“Yes.”
They did the other two corners next, their respective backs curving in so beautiful a mirror image of each other’s, I wanted to take a picture of them. But instead I had a DeviceDetector out and was checking the room for signs we were being bugged. Eleanor glanced at me as she straightened up; I signaled all clear even though I was in fact still worried. Could Aunt Nettie be using something I did not know how to detect? And was Gwen’s bedroom somehow different from the other rooms, and was that related to her roommates offering her the single? To be on the safe side, I set up a deflector.
“Otherwise I will exhaust myself exuding animus,” Gwen was saying.
“It’s no way to live, that’s all,” said Eleanor.
“ ‘And enjoy the silver linings because there will be clouds,’ ” recited Gwen.
Eleanor smoothed the sheet. “Who taught you that?”
“Dad.” Gwen winked.
We all laughed.
Top sheet next, and a tan blanket. Gwen had brought her blankets from home—hand knit, as Surplus blankets were generally woven from DisposaCloth, and scratchy. Ours, in contrast, were thick and soft: Eleanor had figured out a way of picking up a stitch or two from several rows below the one she was working to produce a field of undulations both mysterious and heat-trapping. Around the edges of this blanket ran a narrow border of puffy tomatoes.
“Did no one ever teach you how to fold a hospital corner?” asked Eleanor, amazed.
“No, you never did,” said Gwen.
Eleanor coughed.
“Dad, either.” Gwen smiled.
“Well, there was no point with the AutoHouse, was there?” I said.
Gwen watched carefully. Then on her side of the bed, she replicated Eleanor’s motions.
“Now you can join the Marines,” said Eleanor.
“Do the Marines do hospital corners?”
“Yes.”
“How about hospitals?” said Gwen.
“Hospitals,” I said, “do Marine corners.”
Gwen giggled.
“Much as you are not going to miss the house spying on you, you are going to miss the HouseBots,” I said.
“Truth,” said Gwen.
We were surprised there were no DormBots. Was housekeeping seen as somehow character-building? In any case, Gwen and Eleanor lay a top blanket over the first one as a kind of bedspread. This was goldenrod yellow with a border along its short border that read in gray, True North True North True North True North—Gwen’s idea, way back when. Now the border faced south.
“And it’s true about the silver linings, by the way,” I put in—circling back, I knew, but belatedly compelled to reinforce Eleanor’s point. “Your mother is right. You have to enjoy them.”
“I get it,” said Gwen, suddenly turning irritable. She did not quite have Eleanor’s temper, but she did sometimes have Eleanor’s impatience put through the wash once or twice.
“Also,” I said, moving closer to the deflector and indicating that Gwen should move in, too, “remember how Juan Palombo used to send his messages?”
Gwen perked up. “Of course. By messenger pigeon.”
I took a moment before going on—enjoying the sweet sun of my daughter’s full attention. “I am thinking about training one to come here.”
“Could you really do that?” she said. “I mean, if I agreed?”
“Yes.”
I produced a little signal box for her window ledge. I do think, looking back, that it was the only thing I ever made she truly admired, and I was glad I’d taken the time to fashion it as I had—flat as a flounder, with the texture and color of concrete.
She gave me a thumbs-up, while Eleanor flashed a “hey, not bad” smile.
“That’s some match,” said Eleanor, also moving toward the deflector.
“Maybe a little dark,” I said modestly.
“No, no,” said Gwen, quietly. “You got it perfect.”
“It might look like a stain of some sort. I had to make an educated guess. In any case, you don’t have to agree.”
“But what if my GreetingGrams are being monitored?”
“Exactly.”
“And even if they have FacePhone here…”
She didn’t have to finish. We did not have FacePhone or anything else requiring NetSpeed in SurplusVille.
“And what if…” I began.
“What if I’m in distress.”
“Exactly.”
Opening the double-hung window—no screen—I hiked my torso a good distance out, swiveling from one side to the other as if to take in the whole impressive panorama. Then, as I levered my body back in, I pretended to place my palm on the window ledge for balance, and left the device behind.
“Watch for the pigeon.” I closed the window. “It will either have a little package attached to its leg or a bigger one strapped to its chest.”
“Can pigeons handle stuff larger than a capsule? I mean, that’s what Juan was using.”
“Long ago they used pigeons to get pictures of baseball games out to the newsrooms. They’d tie rolls of film to the birds’ legs. And in the First World War the birds wore reconnaissance cameras in little harnesses strapped to their chests. So yes.”
“Okay. I’ll watch out. Though, you know, I’ve never been very good with birds.”
“It’s not going to fly in and flap all around your room. And you don’t have to feed it or anything, though a small snack wouldn’t be a bad idea. A bit of behavioral reinforcement.”
“What do they eat?
“Bits of apple or carrot, that sort of thing. But hold the guacamole.”
“Because?”
“Allergies.”
“Pigeons have allergies?”
“They are allergic to avocados.”
“You are pulling my leg.”
“I am not. And his name is Hermes. He’s on the light side—more brown than gray.”
“Hermes,” she said. “And I can summon him by…”
“By pressing this.” I showed her.
Eleanor began to pack up the plastic bags in which we’d brought the bedding; they crackled loudly. It was late afternoon, and the sharp light was growing diffuse, like something that had been compressed but was now expanding.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Eleanor asked abruptly.
“No,” said Gwen.
“Well, then…” began Eleanor.
“I know,” said Gwen—and in place of the sweet attention with which she’d greeted the idea of the pigeon, there was the irritation again. “I can come home any time.”
�
�But we’ll forgive you if you stay,” I said.
Normally steely Eleanor blinked hard. “Speak for yourself,” she said.
We helped Gwen put up her baseball posters—Jackie Mitchell. Mamie Johnson. Ila Jane Borders. Mo’ne Davis. All women with golden arms, like Gwen. Women who had bucked the system.
“Won’t Ondi be here soon?” I asked.
“Training starts next week, so. Of course, now she’s saying I’m the one who got her into this.”
“Maybe she got cold feet,” said Eleanor, after a moment.
Anyway, it was time. Eleanor and I were just going to be repeating ourselves if we did not say goodbye. I called an AutoLyft and, as we pulled away, turned and saw Gwen waving at us; if she was afraid, it didn’t show. She entered the dorm as we left the gate. With the AutoLyft driving parallel to the front of the dorm for a bit, we could see her window and hoped she would turn on her light. She didn’t. I did spot Pink on her way back to the room, though, surrounded by friends. Where was Sylvie? And why didn’t we think to take Gwen out to the café Sylvie’s parents had found? It was the mall trucks, we realized. We had the money and the Living Points to eat out, but it just wasn’t our habit. Maybe we should turn back, I said. See if Gwen wanted to try the café. But we couldn’t, as we very well knew. As the AutoLyft took flight, we could only wipe our eyes and hope she was going to be okay.
* * *
—
Eleanor and I could not eat without thinking of Gwen. We could not read without thinking of Gwen. We could not garden without thinking of Gwen. It was as if a sinkhole had opened up in our house. Why did the house say nothing about it? We had never found the house too quiet, but now we found it too quiet. As for the sinkhole, though we knew it to be bottomless we could not stop staring down into its depths. How could we not worry about Gwen, there among the Netted? We were what my mother would have called stuck eyes.
Then the Surplus Fields case was suddenly going to court and Eleanor was busier than ever. That left me alone with early morning, midmorning, and late morning, followed by early afternoon, midafternoon, and late afternoon. Then came the evening and the night—the long night.
In fact, I had led a perfectly full life before Gwen was conceived, and I remained involved with the League. But Gwen had brought a brightness of focus I missed now. Some afternoons I stood in her room, taking in how little she had left. Some old balls and gloves, including that first child’s glove I had found for her, its seaming restitched a dozen times. And there was that pink Spalding ball she had so loved as a baby—soft as a flat tire. I was glad she had not thrown it out. With no posters on the wall, the window seemed smaller, somehow; I wished she’d left the posters. And how forlorn the flapping of the curtain, announcing to no one in particular another storm. Every day the house asked, Shall we roll’n’clear? We can roll’n’clear and get that mess right up.
But every day I said, “No. Please, no. Leave it alone.”
It’s your choice, said the house. You always have a choice.
And, one day, Children grow up. It is in the order of things.
And, An empty nest was a well-used nest.
“Thanks,” I said.
* * *
—
For her part, Gwen seemed to be doing all right. Though we sent a message to her via Hermes, and received a return message confirming both that she had received our message and that she could send messages as well, she seemed aware that to send no e-communications could raise suspicions. And so, to our delight, she GreetingGrammed more often than she might have, saying that she missed us but loved her single, for example, and that it was nice to have some privacy. She loved it, too, that her window not only overlooked the library but faced north and sat under a big overhang, which meant protection from the early fall heat. And what a smart building! The SmartBricks expanded and contracted to allow air circulation; a SmartFlange extended and retracted to block the wind. The SmartShutters open and shut for the storms.
As for her suite, the common-room kitchenette meant that she saw quite a bit of her roommates. There being no mall trucks at Net U, Gwen and Pink and Sylvie all made coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, and kept snacks in the fridge—most of which were healthy, she reassured us. Yogurt almost as good as what we made at home. Nuts, a real luxury. And fruit much like what we grew, only larger and more spherical—like baseballs, she said, predictably. But Pink made scooter pies one weekend as well, and Sylvie made a chai pavlova—bits of meringue layered with chai-flavored whipped cream. She topped this with RealGrown mango and strawberries—with results, Gwen GreetingGrammed, like nothing you’ve ever had from a mall truck.
The third week, Gwen made a blueberry pie, complete with an elaborate crust. She did not say that this was like the piecrusts she and Eleanor used to make for League games, but its inspiration was obvious. The only difference was the design: our League pies had not featured the Net U logo, complete with its Capitol Hill background and SuperFactory foreground. But in any case, everyone loved it, she reported, including the many people from other suites in their building who came to have a piece. Was that the whole story, though?
A PigeonGram arrived. We pried the little package from Hermes’s leg, gave the good bird a reward of pellets mixed with carrot chunks, and smoothed the bit of paper he’d delivered. This was a note written in fantastically small script—smaller than we’d ever seen her use, and for which she must have somehow procured a pen with an extraordinarily fine nib. Had she deployed a magnifying glass as well? In any case, from under our own round glass emerged quite a different story than what we’d gotten in the GreetingGram.
A lot of people took pictures of the pie. And a lot of them took pictures of it with me. Which maybe meant nothing? Why should I mind that I was a novelty? It’s ignorance, not malice—you’re right. But I feel like a one-person marooned place. Except when I see Ondi. Then we are a two-person marooned place. A little Blasian island.
We answered her message using the larger pigeon package—the size that could be strapped to the bird’s chest—so she would have it to use, if she liked, and wouldn’t have to write so small.
Sounds like Ondi is proving a help—that’s good, though we certainly wish you didn’t feel marooned. Hopefully that will change. Here, the Lookouts miss you. They got trounced by the Jedis despite an amazing double play—you should have seen it! Juan Palombo at third went flat-out horizontal to cut off a line drive, and not only caught the ball but threw to first for another out. Sadly, Bo Anders on the mound gave up so many runs, they still lost 18–2. He says he never wants to pitch again. Still, he says hi and everyone else does, too. You are missed!
What we didn’t say, not wanting to upset her, was that Bo gave up ten of those runs in the last inning, and that it was because he was disconcerted by the reappearance of drones above us—and not just a NosyDrone or two, but a veritable platoon of SwarmDrones. Two or three dozen of them, in fact, weaving back and forth across the sky. They made a pattern like a giant veil, furling and unfurling—a fascinating, even beautiful pattern, if you could block out their menace. Indeed, as one of the parents said, they looked very like a murmuration of birds.
But they were not a murmuration of birds. They were terrifying, especially since we had failed to capture them on our DeviceWatch—“we” now meaning the official League technical team, an assortment of Surplus digital gurus who before Automation had all been programmers. Who would have imagined that Aunt Nettie would learn to program so well herself? That she would even master things like how to be resourceful and how to keep the end user experience in mind? But she had, just as she had mastered the art of identifying Unretrainable programmers. Or was that undesirable programmers? “Of course, for that she recycled golden-oldie measures for risk, like had we ever fibbed to get out of doing something? And did we distrust authority?” Jody Commoner gave a short laugh. “Some things don’t change.” And so
it was that she and Bart Emmenthaler and Ben PfoHo were now huddled alongside me down in the basement, asking, What were the SwarmDrones about? And why, after so long a period of quiet, were they suddenly here?
This incident with the SwarmDrones was not the first time a DeviceWatch had failed. But the earlier failure had clearly been mine, and this team had bested me on every front. For example, they had finally got my emanation meter not only to detect the Surplus Field emanations but to gauge their level and identify their agents. And sobering as the truth was—horrific, really—it was still gratifying to know we were right. Yes, there were winnowing agents—enfeeblers such as, yes, would gelatinize muscles. And, yes, there were a lot of them. How satisfying it was, too, to be able to hand the information straight over to Eleanor’s team for use in the case. Was that related to why the SwarmDrones had appeared, though? And why couldn’t we see the buggers on our screen? How embarrassing that our electronics could not detect things we could see with the unaided eye—things in plain sight.
“Of course, that may be the point,” suggested Jody, gesturing with her pencil.
And others agreed. The SwarmDrones might well be intended to unnerve and humiliate us. We therefore refused to be either unnerved or humiliated. We were stalwart. Seeping around the edges of my own determination, though, was a particularly insidious worry. Namely, what did all this mean for Eleanor?
* * *
◆
Even as Gwen continued her cheery GreetingGrams, she sent another PigeonGram.
So it turns out Sylvie and Pink were encouraged to give me the single. They didn’t know why, but just did it, they said. What does it mean? I’m using the little package, btw, so poor Hermes won’t have such a load to carry.
Who knew what it meant, indeed? But upon receiving this message, I promptly began bugging Gwen at school. I did not tell Eleanor, recalling her reaction to my bugging Gwen many years ago, when she was in grade school. This was by way of trying out some equipment, and innocent enough, I had thought. But Eleanor was incensed.
