Gaia's Toys

by Rebecca Ore

  The machine must have echoed my information. Kearney said, “What indoor walls in the L.A. area would be available next weekend?” He listened to the machine, then said, “Yes, book three climbers on Class Five to Five Point Two climbs for Agora Hills Rec Mall next weekend.” He turned to us and said, “They also have an indoor trail if we can’t get time on an outdoor trail.” He turned to the phone again and said, “Before the weekend, what Southern California trail time is open?”

  Mike said, “We’re here. We could do Mount Tam.”

  Kearney said, “We don’t have a record for her doing anything in…” He stopped. He was right. I’d never spent much time in Southern California. Earthquakes could protect the ecosphere there.

  I said, “I’ve never been on an indoor trail. Is it a virtual reality trail, or would we walk through real air?”

  Kearney said, “Okay, book us for four days of hiking at Agora Hills Recreation Mall, with a day afterward for climbs.” We’d always sneered, my fellow eco-warriors and me, at indoor outdoor recreation, but I wanted Kearney to seem less nervous about me. And I couldn’t be tempted into running again. The Feds could control all the exits. Besides, I’d never been able to afford a rec mall before and I was curious.

  The mall, a mile and a half long, ten stories high, loomed over the other buildings in the area. The outside looked as though some giant had cut slices of El Capitan, Seneca Rocks, and other famous climbing walls, and made them into building veneer. All of the building was covered with climbers, supreme advertising visible from the freeway. We parked in the underground garage and took an elevator to the forecourt.

  Looking more like a real mall, the forecourt was filled with restaurants and branches of Gucci, L. L. Bean, and Orvis. Behind the forecourt I saw the entrance gates. Tennis, swimming, and weightrooms in the basement, a velodrome on the roof. I walked up to a diagram of the hiking trails. They’d folded them through the building so that the mileage was staggering. Besides the outdoor climbing walls, we could climb on rope-length climbs throughout the building.

  The only thing that appeared to be missing was loose rock at the climbs’ bases. Oh, well, talus mainly served to sprain ankles, and the mall couldn’t afford the insurance.

  I wondered what the lighting bill was. Some of the trails were advertised as caving experiences, so they didn’t get the full-spectrum fluorescents and hologram walls that the fake-outdoor trails got.

  I said, “This is insane.”

  Mike said, “It spares the real wilderness.”

  The trail guide told us that we’d see three species of cave fish in the caves, four species of endangered butterflies and their host plants on the Coastal Trail, and a Pacific Northwest rainforest complete with salamanders and banana slugs. Real, not virtual or holograms.

  I said, “If it spares the real wilderness.”

  Kearney said, “It’s more like a zoo, okay, but extinction is forever, and this way the animals pay their own way.”

  “I won’t say more. I agreed to come.”

  Kearney picked up fanny packs with snacks, water bottles, and a sweater. We wouldn’t carry sleeping bags or a tent. No stove. Nothing for the evening meal. I put my pack around my waist and entered our trail head between Kearney and Mike. We’d hike to our campsite, where little robots in the walls would pop out to supply us.

  The air inside the mall was purer than the air we’d been driving through. We went into a tunnel of plants, walking on what looked like real dirt and rock.

  Kearney kicked a rock overhanging a too-round cavity. “It’s an earthquake shelter,” he said. “The pod supposedly could resist the building collapsing on it.”

  Every fifty feet, I saw some clever way to disguise earthquake protection. Wonderful clever apes that we were, the pods gave the hike a subliminal thrill. We weren’t just mall walking. We were exploring our human-ness in earthquake country. The walk was inside us, the plants and animals imported by us to entertain us.

  The campsite had all our night supplies. Mike and Kearney checked to see if the tent had been set up properly while I found the small hatch for the food and cookstove and the larger hatch for the campsite’s earthquake pod. In a strange way, I felt I’d come home again, to the machines.

  Mike said, “I suppose this annoys you, Allison.”

  “No, it’s like walking around in the collective mind of Southern California. When I was a kid, I loved malls.”

  Kearney said, “It is a mall, really, isn’t it?” He pulled his sleeping bag out of the tent. “If you want, we can call for a movie. The screen is on the ceiling.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  Kearney said, “Allison, you’re full of surprises.” He didn’t sound too happy. He said to the air, “Movie menu.”

  The plants around the ceiling faded, only holograms. The ceiling screen flashed scenes and titles of the movies that we could watch instead of constellations. I said, “Anything that’s not a nature flick.”

  We watched an ancient movie about a German submarine. I thought the Germans had been our enemies in that war, but here they were suffering like heros.

  After the captain died, I lay back, thinking of how a person had to have some status in the world to care about things like honor and name. Maybe not, the guys I knew who stole for a living cared tremendously about their reps. I thought at one time I’d like being the best sex display on the machines. I said, “Who shoots me if I don’t work out?”

  Kearney said, “I do.”

  I sat up and looked at him. He sat up, too. Mike stayed on his back, looking from one of us to the other, and back, as if he was watching another movie.

  I said, “Nice to have that cleared up. And if I work out, and we get your mad scientist, what next?”

  Mike said, “A house, me if you want, kids if you want. Passes to RecAmerica malls everywhere. A job. We can train you quickly through the head set.”

  I wondered what they’d offer the mad scientist. No, that one would die. Couldn’t afford to have hackers taking notes on improving bugs.

  In the night a skunk tried to steal our food. I woke up to the scuffling, Kearney about to grab it. The machine voice said, in a high pitched excited girl’s voice, “No, it’s not descented.” Part of the interior adventure was having a fully intact skunk steal breakfast. I started giggling like a fool. The lights brightened.

  An old hand at this drama, the obese skunk looked up at us, then returned calmly to his meal before waddling off.

  Later in the day, Kearney said, “They’ve got a griz in here, but the path is optional and we’d have to sign a waiver.”

  I said, “I don’t believe it.”

  Mike said, “I’ve read about her. They bring in semen from the Bronx Zoo when she’s in heat.”

  Kearney said, “I don’t want to see the bear.”

  Oh, well. We hiked on, did a cave with a swim, goggles waiting for us at water’s edge. The cave fish, lateral lines jolted, swam for cover. I stopped at a handhold for a second and saw tiny crustaceans and snails eating a film off the artificial limestone. The filter hummed gently in the background.

  By noon the third day, we’d reached the velodrome.

  The velodrome was under an air-conditioned bubble on the roof. Kearney bought us tickets so we could sit in the bleachers eating hot dogs and watching bicyclists in skintight shorts circle and pose on fixed geared open machines. Some balanced their machines at almost full stop, moving backward and forwards, pedals not moving completely around in either direction.

  I said, “What happens to them if the big one hits?”

  Mike said, “They’re on top. They can ride off the rubble.”

  Kearney said, “No, they’d probably die.”

  I said, “We’ll only have a day to get back,” then realized we were only six stories up, just a short walk if we did it on staircases.

  Kearney said, “We’re going to go back on a route that has some rock scrambling on it. I thought we’d see how your shoulder muscles recove
red.”

  I flashed on Kearney with his fingers up my snatch, feeling for a suicide kit. Having Kearney along inhibited me with Mike. Putting my hands on the bleacher seat in front of me, I tried a mini-pushup. “They’re better, but I’d better stick to climbs that don’t require a lot of upper body strength.”

  Kearney said, “If you like, we’ll give you a pass to a rec mall in New Jersey. Keep you from being too bored on your off-weeks.”

  “Bored?”

  “Time to think about your assignment. You’ll be under the wire in shifts of two weeks, two weeks off. You’re going to be aware of what’s happening when you’re under the wire because we want you to be able to react quickly if the insect hacker figures out what you are. We’re not sending you in to die. But, then you’re going to have to have some cerebral cut-outs because you’d go nuts just lying there for hours on end, processing data. Still, you’ll need a violent activity outlet. We’re going to arrange that you win a free membership. Drode heads love to win stuff. The government and companies that use them sponsor raffles. And you’ll have a transportation pass on a seat-available basis just like a real drode head.”

  Mike said, “We’ve got to introduce you to drode head culture when we get back. I’m sorry we didn’t sooner.” He sounded apologetic, but he could have faked it.

  I shrugged, leaned forward and tested my chest muscles again, then said, “I almost could have stayed with Lucinda. Odd.”

  Neither of them said anything. Kearney ordered us each a beer before we began our descent to the next campsite and the hike to the climbing walls outside.

  “If you’ve only got one shot at El Capitan, you practice here until you know what you’re doing,” Mike said as we waited to be assigned a wall. “And your experience at the real face is enhanced because the park’s not crowded with several thousand other people.”

  Maybe this was Mike’s joy, rock climbing. I said, “There are some real climbs in the East, Mike, if you’re really into this. We could go up to the Gunks, down to Seneca Rocks.”

  Mike said, “Drode heads can’t afford East Coast climbing time.”

  Kearney got our tickets and led us to the north face of the building. I didn’t recognize the mountain, but it looked like artificial conglomerate, smooth fist-sized stream pebbles in a matrix of sandstone turned to quartzite. Kearney pushed buttons at a waist-high display and three top ropes dropped from ledges and the roof. One rope reached us, the others reached only to higher ledges between us and the roof.

  A human guide came out with our climbing harnesses and rock shoes.

  “No,” I said, “I’ll just watch.”

  Kearney waved. A pair of guys in chinos and teeshirts split off from the crowd and came up to us.

  I said, “Don’t you trust me?”

  Kearney said, “I’m too tired to want to worry about it.” The guide clipped a mike to the top of his shirt, then fitted Mike.

  Mike said, “Do you really like watching other people climb?”

  “Yes, especially if they’re guys.”

  One of the guys in chinos handed me a pair of binoculars.

  They went up the first climb without a fall. In another fifteen minutes, Kearney and Mike rejoined us. They looked a bit bored.

  Mike said, “Can we do one without top ropes?”

  The guide said, “You’ll have to sign another waiver and put down a five-hundred-dollar deposit.”

  Kearney flashed some ID at the guide. The guide nodded, okay, you guys don’t need that, and fished in his equipment bag. He pulled out a belay plate and locking carabiner. “We’ve got two Class Five Point Three climbs and one Class Five Point Six set up for belays. Bomb-proof belay stands.”

  Mike said, “We’ll take the Class Five Point Six. I’ll lead.” Kearney looked at Mike as if calculating their relative weights. The guide ran the biner and belay plate through a scanner, to see if they were sound, then rigged Kearney to catch.

  I was sorry now that I hadn’t at least tried the top-roped climb. The top ropes retracted. The guide pushed some buttons on the controls. A line of white light resembling the printed route lines in climbing guides ran up the building. I looked at the line through the binoculars. It resolved into dots of river cobble turned electric. The guide said, “After you get off the ground, the belay stands are here, here, and here.” The face flashed dashes of green across the white line.

  I said, “Isn’t making this so safe and predictable a subversion of the very reason to climb?”

  Kearney said, “Obviously, Allison, this is a surrogate adventure.”

  On belay.

  Climbing.

  At the second pitch, after Kearney hitched himself in and propped his legs against the belay foot braces, Mike started climbing again.

  The earth swayed a tiny bit. A microscopic earthquake tumbled Mike off the wall. Kearney caught him.

  But Mike hit the wall hard enough to bleed. I put up the glasses and watched Mike’s face, his eyes squeezed shut, his lip and chin cut. Kearney lowered him to the belay point. Behind Kearney, a square of the rockface pulled back.

  The guide said to me, “Do you think he’ll want to finish his climb?”

  “That was an earthquake, wasn’t it?”

  “A little one. Maybe a Richter three. It must have startled him. Maintenance says nothing happened inside.”

  I wondered how many people ducked into the earthquake pods. “What about the guys inside?”

  “The building’s so long, it dampens the waves. Probably only noticed it here and on the south wall,” the guide said.

  In the circle of binocular light, Mike stood up and stared at his right hand. He must have caught the wall with it. His nose also bled. He seemed to be saying something. Kearney unhooked from belay and stood up, too. They went in through the square hole by the belay point.

  One of the other guys said, “Pity about the earthquake. Mike’s a better climber than that.”

  The other guy said, “Universe is out to get us.”

  I thought, now we’re both bruised, me by hackers, him by Momma Gaia herself.

  The guide said, “If you like, we can met them in the infirmary.”

  The infirmary was behind an unmarked door by the food court. The people inside hadn’t noticed the quake at all. Maybe all of Southern California should be put in long flexible buildings, headed north on granite floats.

  In a few thousand years, they’d be in Oregon. What we now call Oregon.

  Mike sat on an examination table, his left hand holding a sterile dressing against his nose. The physician spread the injured right hand on a plate, then wheeled a scanner up. Mike looked at me and said, “I generally don’t come off Five Sixes.”

  “We had a little earthquake,” I said.

  The physician said, “Can you remove your shirt?”

  Mike could, with a bit of help. His right shoulder was bruised, too. I’d never seen him this close to naked before. I hoped he had no broken bones in his right hand.

  Kearney looked across Mike’s body at me. I couldn’t read his eyes, but I began to be embarrassed to be looking into them. I looked at Mike’s hand.

  The physician said, “Nothing’s broken. I’ll tape your wrist and give you painkillers.”

  I couldn’t look at Kearney, or the other guards. I watched Mike’s face. He seemed pale, trying to hide the hurt. Oh, men.

  Kearney said, “We’ve got a hotel room for tonight.”

  Mike said, “It doesn’t hurt that much.”

  I felt like we were breathing in unison, Mike and I. Kearney said, I’ll go get the car.”

  Wounded guys, yes. Wounded women are too vulnerable. Just nakedness makes us helpless, open to fingers, cocks, plans of eggs and sperms. A guy’s skin doesn’t have voids to the interior unless it’s broken. A woman with broken skin is scarred, sexually damaged, but not a guy.

  I was going to fuck Mike tonight if he was at all able. Now I said, “Is your nose okay?”

  He pulled the dressi
ng away and said, “I’m just bruised.”

  The physician said, “Lie down and I’ll check that.” He washed Mike’s nose carefully, then greased a probe, pushed it in one nostril, then the other. “Light doesn’t show anything serious. I’ll try ultrasound.”

  Mike said, “I’ll get it checked when I get back to the base.”

  The physician poked around Mike’s shoulder, then said, “You waived liability. Who do I bill?”

  Mike reached for his wallet and showed the doctor his ID. The doctor scanned the ID with another light wand.

  That night, Kearney left Mike and me in the motel alone between nine and whenever. As soon as the boss was gone, I asked Mike, “Do you need a massage?”

  “A careful one,” Mike said.

  We examined each other’s bruises. Mine were fading, a yellow under the skin. We breathed at each other, hands careful. We had sex gingerly, the threat of getting so emotionally ripped we’d lose control and hurt each other an added excitement.

  In the morning, Kearney woke us up. He gave me a hard look, to the face only, then said, “Mike, is everything okay?” Mike smiled, carefully. “Yes.”

  Kearney grunted and left us. Before Mike dressed, I ran my tongue around the bruise on his shoulder.

  He said, “So it took an earthquake?”

  “Kearney expected this, didn’t he?”

  “Not the earthquake. But we both knew you had to make the first overtures.” Mike let me help him put his shirt on. He flinched slightly when I touched his shoulder. I almost said, You look good in bruises, but sensed that would come across too kinky this morning.

  Mike said, “Heroes are often injured before they triumph.”

  I thought, So he sees himself, not me, as the hero of this adventure. “You’re the control officer, so you must be the hero, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not that injured. Maybe this will turn out to be a comedy.” Ah, fuck, why had I said that? Mike turned away from me and, despite his bruises, got his shoes on, laces tied. If this was a comedy, then was I the fool?

  At breakfast, Kearney said, “Enough fun. We’re headed back east to put you in place.”