Decision made, Ever hops onto one of the Chariots, and enters in the standard code, which is instantly accepted. The control pad illuminates. Ever Hess points the vehicle north, and speeds off toward uncharted territory.
A swamp! Heaven and Hell!
Covered in mud, swatting at mosquitoes, drenched in sweat, the cut on her foot throbbing dully—Ever is giddy. After an hour of breakneck speeding on the chariot, she’s a hundred miles into the jungle, flying just above the muck and directly through the stinging flora, leaning this way and that to avoid the larger swaths of smacking overgrowth. She feels snakelike, fast and winding, old skin shed, like she slipped out of her sleek Syn self and slithered into a new, wilder jungle-identity.
Moving through the thick green world, Ever takes in every detail. In the cool and climate-controlled centers of Syn society, greenery is valued, but only in an ordered sort of way: cultivated rooftop gardens, museums of agriculture, city parks providing pockets of green. All manicured, all meticulously maintained. She knew the outlying areas would be less sculpted, but she hadn’t expected them to be so utterly wild, verdant and heady.
A sharp stab from her foot reminds her of her injury, cutting into her exhilaration. She downloads information about plants suitable for natural remedies available in this environment, being careful not to download too much, not enough to be flagged; then she scans the greenery around her, and spots one of the recommended plants.
She slows her Chariot and tears free several leaves. Setting her vehicle on autopilot, she rips the large leaves into strips. She eases her leg upward, slipping her foot carefully from her shoe and letting it rest on the seat. With one deft hand she layers the strips of leaves to form a poultice, which staunches the flow of blood just as Heaven assured her it would. Then she crafts a raggedy bandage, wrapping the longer leaves all the way around, binding everything into place before easing her foot back into the shoe.
She’s so pleased with herself that as she kicks the Chariot back into gear, she lets fly a loud burst of wild laughter, triggering the screech of some nearby bird. Startled by the sound, Ever looks up—just in time to get whacked by a low-hanging branch and knocked right off the Chariot. She slams to the ground as the Chariot continues on its way, zipping along and quickly disappearing from view.
“Heaven and Hell!” Ever swears, all smugness smacked out of her.
Running another quick scan, she confirms that she has no concussion or other injuries. She thinks for a moment about trying to catch up with the Chariot right away, but the fast-moving vehicle is already out of sight. Without a programmed destination, though, it will only stay on autopilot for so long before going into hibernation mode and awaiting further instruction. She can pursue it slowly and eventually catch up.
Distancing herself from the hover craft might actually be a good idea anyway. Those vehicles all have tracking devices, difficult to disable. Better to let it serve as a decoy until she’s ready to ride again. For now, her foot feels better and she’s happy to explore on-the-ground. She looks around as she walks; the land still looks wild, but on closer inspection this part of the jungle isn’t quite as untouched as she initially thought. It just hadn’t been touched lately.
Hadn’t been touched by Syns, she realizes.
Aware now, she sees clues and fragments everywhere, subtle and quiet but certain. There are hewn structures. Signs, here and there. Tall tentative posts, rusted, jutting nakedly upward. There are even small wooden houses, crumbled and weather-beaten, half-hidden beneath tangled overgrowth. Some of the buildings collapsed long ago, others still thinking about it. Here and there she sees even more interesting details, like the decayed edges of a wooden frame (a sandbox, she identifies with a little help from Heaven to jog her memory), or a scrap of random metal. Twisted within a cluster of weeds, her eyes widen at the sight of a small, half-disintegrated shoe.
Each remnant seems to scream a silent story, and she wishes she could hear those stories. She wants to know about the people who lived and worked and died here in this little Original town. She can almost feel the ghosts floating in this swampy now-dead hamlet.
Don’t be stupid, Ever! There’s no such thing as ghosts.
A small box catches her eye, tucked up against one of the ramshackle old wooden buildings. It looks out of place, somehow. She walks over to the box, slipping a little on some moss along the way. Peeling back the rickety wooden box top and peering inside, she sees old fabrics. She gingerly pulls out a large rag, which it takes her a moment to identify as a shirt. She smells it; she can’t identify the scent—musty, but not unappealing. Putting it back in the box, she wonders whose it was and why it was here. How long has this place been abandoned?
She begins a new search query, using her internal GPS to provide coordinates, and then eagerly looking up the history of this town. What had characterized this place? What industry, what traditions? She begins to open the first files on the place when she stops herself. If she accesses this detailed information, even in private mode, it might trigger an alert. She decides it’s wiser to come up with her own best-guess as to what this town might have been. She looks around, noting the low houses near the water, the planks of weathered wood. She sees a low red-brick building, with faded yellow words painted on the exterior: GULF PINT & PATIO.
A fishing community?
A bead of sweat trickles down Ever’s face, landing saltily on her lips. Licking it away, Ever is suddenly aware of how hot she is. It occurs to her that if she were to pass out and be unable to signal for help, she might be in real trouble. An emergency alert would be triggered, but she’s so far from the docking area; reaching her would take a response crew a good bit of time. Her breathing is becoming a bit labored, and she’s thirsty. Ever can’t remember the last time she actually felt thirsty. In her world, such needs were always met before they were expressed.
The need is not yet desperate; she can always shift to override mode, tap in to her reserve energy, supplementing her organic needs with a synthetic-component compensation. But Ever wants to delay implementing this failsafe. Being hot, sweaty, thirsty—the novelty is wonderful. Trouble is intoxicating. She doesn’t want to compensate synthetically, or sound an alarm, or be rescued. She wants to keep making her way on her own. Like an Original. She decides to focus in on what she actually needs, bare minimum, and find it for herself.
Excited to have a mission, Ever starts hunting for water. It’s been a long time since she’s had to locate something on her own. In a world so neatly ordered, archived, searchable, with nothing unmapped, a moment of uncertainty is the sort of thrill for which she has longed. She has no idea how the hell to find water, but that’s the best part.
She pulls back branches, looks through breaks in the trees, tries to find clues. She sniffs the air, wondering if she could smell water. Does water have a smell? Perhaps if it were a waterfall or brook, she would hear it before anything else—
Shnikt.
She freezes.
Something else was in the swiftly-darkening woods with her. She holds her breath.
I should log in to Heaven. I’ll use the network scanners to identify the precise location I’m in and cross-reference it with all native wildlife and—no. No, no. Then I’ll be flagged.
Deciding again against using technology, Ever scans the area with her own eyes—and then, still stubbornly avoiding linking into the full Heaven database, she begins another internal scan, searching her own personal internal memory to help classify and identify the sound. She finally settles on a result that seemed appropriate to the context: Snapped twig.
With the sound identified, she should feel calmer, yet she remains on the edge of panic, with the larger question still looming: What snapped the damn twig?
As quickly as the rational result was returned by her search, something irrational