Ultraviolet

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Yeah, probably. I wonder what sorts of jokes they make about us backward people and our folksy ways?”

  We laughed.

  And then we kissed.

  I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d kissed him. There had been so much running and worrying, and so much work, and somewhere along the way I’d gotten too busy to think about him that way, to let myself breathe and feel like a normal person. But right then, after all those days alone in the house, working together, enjoying all the little projects and discoveries together, the world had shifted back again. I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t scared, and I didn’t have a million things on my mind anymore.

  It was just me and him, and the world was a nice place again, and it was nice to be with him, and I wanted to kiss him.

  We sat out on the porch for hours, talking about the house, about ideas we had, and crazy silly things we wanted to try. A firehouse pole, a zip line, a swimming pool, a tree house. Pretty much everything we’d ever wanted as kids. And between every idea there was more kissing, and holding. And that’s where we fell asleep, together, watching the stars.

  Chapter 16

  Early Adopters

  Bang, bang, bang.

  The next morning I woke up with an ache in my neck from where I’d been lying on Felix’s arm, and it took me a full minute to really wrap my head around the fact that we were still on the back porch and that we’d slept the whole night outside.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I sat up straight, my heart racing.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  It was coming from the front door, and the first thought that came to mind was Cygnus. Frost and his goons. A whole SWAT team, armed to the teeth.

  I shook Felix. “Wake up, wake up! Felix, they’re here! Frost!”

  He jerked awake, blinked, and seemed to instantly understand what was happening. We both raced into the house and locked the door behind us, and then I ran upstairs to grab my holo-suit while he went to barricade the front door. I yanked on the jacket and gloves, leaving the boots behind, and dashed back downstairs yelling, “Lux, armor one!”

  As the black-and-violet holograms blazed to life around me, I arrived at the front door just as Felix was pushing a bench out of the way and swinging the door open.

  “What are you doing?!” I lunged at the door, but he stopped me with a grin.

  “We have visitors.”

  I leaned around the door and looked outside, and saw people. People on the porch, and on the lawn, and in the street. They were standing and sitting, straddling bicycles with kids nestled in bicycle trailers, and piles of boxes stacked and heaped both neatly and crazily in wagons. All in all, there were at least fifty of them, mostly young couples and half of them had children, but there were also a handful of older faces in the crowd too.

  “Hey, it’s her!” A young woman pointed at me. “It’s Ultraviolet, this is the place!”

  The crowd cheered and clapped.

  “You all saw the message?” Felix stepped out on the porch.

  “Yep,” said an older man. “Only just retired last week from the South Side plant, and figured, hell, I’ve got nothing better to do than come out here and see if you were for real. And by the looks of things, you are.”

  I shut down my armor and we invited the whole crowd into the house. There was barely enough room, but they all spread out and filtered around, ooh-ing and ah-ing at every room, touching the furniture and playing with the screen-walls. I even whipped up a mini-batch of the burritos that we’d had for supper and let everyone try printed finger food for the first time.

  It went well. It went really well.

  After an hour of trying to answer a million questions about the printers and the food and the little question of who legally owned the houses we were proposing that they move into, we got everyone together out in the back yard and explained the plan. We’d help them all get set up in their own houses, get their printers and recyclers up and running, and then they’d be free to build their dream homes and live their lives however they wanted.

  We also did a quick check of what sort of people we’d attracted and were relieved to find that we had one doctor and two nurses in the group, as well as three guys who had worked for the city sewage department and could help us keep the water flowing.

  So things were looking good. Really good.

  I mean, I know we still had a long way to go. Lots of problems to solve, some of them technical, some of them legal, and even more that we hadn’t even thought of yet. But as far as first days go, it felt like a really good one.

  We exchanged contact information with everyone, and people started picking out houses. Some folks planned to go back into the city that night to get more family, friends, and personal belongings. And then, finally, as the sun was going down, I slumped down on the couch next to Felix to have another burrito-like supper made from flowers, nuts, and leaves.

  “Wow.” Felix shook his head. “That was crazy.”

  “But crazy-good, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Very.”

  We chewed for a while in silence. The printed food was very chewy. I tried not to think about how much wood I was technically eating.

  “So, we’re going to have to figure out who actually owns these houses,” he said.

  “Yeah. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be Cygnus.” I smiled, but only for a second. The possibility was too real to be funny.

  Felix pulled out his phone and went to work. I kept eating. I didn’t want to know the answer a second earlier than I needed to.

  “Okay, this neighborhood is called Oberon Lake,” he said. “When the homeowners left, the entire division was acquired by DayStar Bank, which went bankrupt and got bought by the Calverton Credit Union, which folded into the North American Banking Consortium, which collapsed six years ago, and…”

  “And what?”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh, what?” I looked at him.

  “Well…” He raised an eyebrow. “If I’m reading this right, the ownership of this land, and a lot of other properties, all reverted back to the state of Maryland two years ago. And check this out.” He threw the screen image from his phone up onto the wall so I could see it. It was a government web site that let people purchase parcels of state-owned land. Felix scrolled down and selected parcel 33405-J, Oberon Lake residential division, Howard County.

  Current market value: $219.

  I stared at the number. “Is that right?”

  Felix’s mouth hung open as he slowly reached up and selected “Buy” and entered his account number.

  Payment accepted.

  Oberon Lake was now the legal property of one Felix Wilfred James.

  We burst out laughing.

  “Sometimes the good guys win!” Felix grabbed me and kissed me.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him close, but I couldn’t stop laughing and I fell back. “It’s about time, Wilfred.”

  “Oh, no, no you don’t!” He tickled me and I tried to curl up into a ball to escape his playful fingers. “No one calls me Wilfred!”

  I tried to tickle him back, but he was too strong, so I just grabbed him by the neck and kissed him, and that stopped him. And we lay on the couch, kissing for a while. Then, without saying a word, I led him upstairs to my room and we spent the night together.

  And that was good too.

  The next morning I woke up more refreshed and alert than I had been in a long time. We made breakfast, promised each other to learn to make something other than burritos very soon, and then went outside to see if our new neighbors needed any help.

  We spent the whole morning going from house to house, and finding that our new friends had mostly stayed up all night long getting their printers set up, making their recyclers, and slipping into the heady excitement of cramming old junk into a magical machine and watching the crisp, clean feedstock pop out the back. One young couple who had gotten no sleep at all were already printing out their first piece
s of furniture. A couple of people needed help downloading the specs correctly, or picking out the right settings, but mostly, everyone had it all figured out. They barely needed us at all.

  So we went home for lunch, and then spent the afternoon learning more about the food printer so we could break free of our woody burrito lifestyle. There were lots of strange experiments in things that resembled bread, steak, broccoli, cucumber, potatoes, and even ice cream, although we finally concluded that we’d have to start going on long walks in the woods to find a better variety of flowers, roots, and nuts to make the really delicious things on the printer menu.

  We were interrupted four times by newcomers just arriving on our street from the city, and we gave them all the tour and the sales pitch, made sure they had all the gear and specs they needed, and then pointed them to an empty house.

  “You know what’s funny?” I asked in the middle of the day.

  “What?”

  “No one’s come back to ask for help with anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, once we give people what they need, they don’t come back. I kinda thought we’d have to spend the first few days holding people’s hands, showing them how to do everything for themselves, but these guys… they’re just like us. They can handle things just fine for themselves. They just needed the tools.”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “They probably won’t all be like this. These guys, the first ones, they’re like us. They wanted out. They’d probably been dreaming of living like this for a long time. But eventually we’ll start getting people who have no idea how to function without a boss and a nametag and a paycheck. And they’ll need more hand-holding.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  By the time the sun rose on our seventh day in our new home, life had slowed down. A lot. We stopped fixing things because everything worked. We stopped making things because we already had more than we needed. Instead, we just spent a couple hours in the morning collecting plants for our meals and tidying up the greenhouse, and then spent the rest of the day playing with our neighbors. The basketball hoops appeared overnight at one end of the street, and a volleyball net showed up the day after, plus two pool tables, dart boards, an archery range, even a single bowling alley in the middle of a back yard. So all day long I could hear people cheering and laughing as they met their new neighbors and ran friendly tournaments in their yards and basements.

  We also made board games and card games, and plenty of people kept downloading video games, as well as books and movies. I met three people writing their own books on their phones, and I was introduced to a young woman who shot and produced high-end action movies just using her phone. I watched one. It was actually pretty good.

  When I went to bed on the seventh night, I had no idea it was the seventh night. I had completely lost track of time already. I no longer glanced at the day or date in the corner of my phone’s screen. It didn’t matter. Felix and I talked about fixing up a house for my parents, and a place for his brother, so we could bring our families out of the city. But beyond that, we didn’t make any plans. We just enjoyed the long, free days, and I left the holo-suit in a box under my bed, nearly forgotten.

  I stopped worrying.

  And that was a big mistake.

  We were sitting on the front porch with a couple glasses of ice tea and I was trying to teach Felix the finer points of Go on our new game board when we heard the soft hum coming from the far end of the street. In the darkness without any street lights, we couldn’t see anything. But it didn’t sound like bicycles. It sounded like drones.

  “Get inside!” I grabbed his arm and dashed back into the house. “Lock the doors and windows!”

  That would be just a little bit difficult. It was a big house and we’d already gotten into the habit of leaving all the doors unlocked and all the windows open to let the breeze in. So while he ran around the first floor, I ran upstairs and started shutting windows. I wanted to get out my phone and tell everyone on the street to get inside and lock up too, but I only had two hands and I was already using them both.

  With all the windows shut, I pulled the box out from under my bed and rammed by arms into the sleeves of my holo-jacket. My hands shook as I shoved my shoes into the mesh boots, and I almost couldn’t get the gloves on at all.

  Felix ran into the room and froze when he saw me, sitting on the floor in the shadows, pulling on the last glove. “You’re going out there?”

  “I have to.” I stood up. “Unless you think the Silverstein brothers next door can protect us?”

  He shook his head. The Silverstein brothers were just another pair of scrap-sorters when they first arrived, but in just a couple days they had refurbished a house and developed an obsession with trying to get the food printer to make a good pizza. “No, but Carmen, remember the trap Frost set for you before? With the sprinklers? They know your weaknesses, and if they’re coming out here, then they’re not coming to talk. They’re coming to shut us down.”

  “Well, they can’t.” I headed downstairs. “You own the land. The tech is free. Everything is recycled. So it doesn’t matter what they want. This is our home now.”

  I stepped out the front door onto the porch. “Lux, armor one.”

  The brief flash of the laser grid all around my body instantly drew a dozen search lights to the front of our house and a swarm of drones descended over the front yard. Four large black trucks rolled up the street in an ominously straight line, and they stopped out in the middle of the road in front of my house. The doors opened and two dozen men in police riot gear stepped out.

  They all had guns.

  “Lux, helmet one. Felix, stay inside! And tell everyone else to get in their basements.”

  “Okay. And Car? I lo… good luck. And be safe.” The door clicked shut behind me.

  I smiled.

  “Carmen Zhao.” The man approaching me was not wearing armor. He was wearing a suit. And when the search lights swung across his face, I recognized Frost. “You are under arrest for grand larceny, as well as the illegal seizure and use of state-owned property, in addition to prior charges of violating the Corporate Espionage Act and, oh yes, attempted murder.”

  “I thought the police were in charge of arresting people,” I said, more calmly than I felt. “You’re not the police.”

  “Cygnus security personnel are authorized by the Baltimore City chief of police to serve and execute warrants for arrest and seizure.” Frost stopped at the edge of the porch. His face was like stone. Whatever reasonableness or good will he might have had lurking inside that black suit must have been scared out of him that day at the zoo. I couldn’t blame him for not liking me or trusting me, but I wasn’t going to pull my punches. Not now.

  “We own this land. Check the records. Felix James owns this whole neighborhood. And we haven’t stolen anything. Everyone here brought their things from home,” I said loudly as I watched the armed men form a ring around the front of my house.

  “You’ve stolen printers and feedstock, and damaged Cygnus drones and office property.”

  “Bullshit!” I glared at him. “I was replacing the printer and feedstock you stole from my apartment, and I was setting free the innocent people you kidnapped!”

  “After your arrest, and that of everyone in these houses, as well as the impounding of all property found on the premises, you will have the right to an attorney and a public forum to dispute the charges,” Frost said. He sounded like a robot, spitting out words from a script.

  I wondered how badly he wanted to shoot me.

  “Absolutely not. It’s not our job to prove we’re innocent. The law hasn’t changed that much,” I said. “The only thieves here are you. The only trespassers are you. And I am done playing your stupid games. I’m so done that I left the entire city. I’m out. Do you understand that, Frost? I am out. And I’m never going back. So you can take your little stormtroopers and go back to the Death Star and tell Cygnus that we’re off the grid
, we’re out of the game. Now leave!”

  “That’s not the way this works, Miss Zhao. You broke the law.” Frost nodded to his left and some of the armed men started coming closer to the porch. “We have the legal right to detain all people and impound all property that we suspect of illicit activity or origin in order to protect the safety and security of our interests.”

  “Your interests? You mean your profits. Yeah, I get that.” I looked around at the security goons. Twenty-two of them, all with rifles in their hands and pistols on their belts, and the drones were probably armed too. This was going to be rough. “This is your last warning. Get off our property now, or I will make you leave by force.”

  “I don’t think you will.” Frost gestured back at the cars where one of the armed men stood holding a coil of hose attached to a large black tank on the tailgate. He gripped the nozzle in his hand like it was a gun. He was still all the way across the lawn, but I had to figure Frost was no idiot and his equipment could shoot water all the way to the porch.

  The man pointed the nozzle at me.

  I sighed. “Okay then.”

  “You’ll surrender?”

  I took a deep breath. “Nope.”

  I ran.

  Chapter 17

  Change of Venue

  I ran across the porch and vaulted over the railing, leaping straight toward three of the armed men with their faces hidden behind helmets that weren’t so different from mine. Their armor wasn’t so different from mine either. The only real difference between us at all was the guns, and even though the sight of them made me want to curl up into a ball and hide, I vaulted over the railing anyway.

  I had a plan.

  “Lux, bike!”

  The huge black motorcycle blazed to life right in my hands as I fell toward the lawn and I crashed to earth not on two boots but on two fat holographic tires. I revved the throttle and tore across the grass and swerved onto the road, and I didn’t slow down until I reached the end of the street.