Letters from Tomorrow

It's not the future we wanted. It's certainly not the one we wished for. But there are shadows of it peeking out from behind the cameras and the corporations, and maybe - just maybe - the lessons of our time may help others. Read Chronological

[gritstuck]

[Rain]

Ivy Valley was, of course, closed the next morning; I was, properly speaking, supposed to go to the next school over, but my parents asked me some pointed questions about whether I'd thought about participating (no) or participated (hell no) or whether I understood what kind of impact this could have on school admissions (Mom Dad I have an alibi called "I'm so sick I can't move", you /think/ I'd be seen out there? If you want to corroborate it take me to the doctor's office and have them write a note). Finally they stopped asking questions and left me alone in my room to stare listlessly at cable news, my mother only opening the door to drop off bottles of half-strength knockoff sports drinks and the kitchen egg timer to drink them on.

I didn't dare call anyone; I had nobody to call. I couldn't very well consult the Network, as that was likely being monitored (people can be induced to share a lot of things, like their passwords, without even leaving a mark - I read about the methods in "The Gulag Archipelago" and human beings don't change shape that quickly).

The news had on riot police, and a shot of Samantha screaming and shattering security cameras and two-way mirrors with a stick before being overcome, and -

No, wait. There were a couple of them dressed in full gear sitting down, linking arms with some of my classmates sitting in front of the school - Jessica and Sarah and Ryan and the rest of them had been there since 8AM last morning, but none of them were asleep, they were too hopped up on solidarity and stress hormones to care. I muted the TV so as not to have to listen to the commentary. It would probably be something about dereliction of duty.

I wasn't sure what I thought of the entire thing. I was supposed to be the good girl. But I kept thinking that maybe they had their reasons.

[gritstuck]

[Stan]

Myra saw me before I saw her, but it was pretty close, all things considered.

I saw her casually swiping the plate of aged cheese from an art exhibition with catering, or slipping into the back stairwell of the library (the one that led to the roof if you slipped a thin enough pocketknife into the doorjamb and worked up and down a little), or looking down from the top branches of a tree. Just outside notice. Or most people's notice, anyway. She was small and slight and - not so much invisible, as too normal to remark upon, if you saw her in any one of those situations. And anyway, she was too good at hiding to have come from an intact normal family. I wondered who she was.

It was late April, though, that she decided to just give up the pretense and sit on the steps to the student center, with a wrong sandwich from the school's Subway franchise's trash.

Myra waved to me. I made a beeline towards her.

"So. You've been watching me."

"I have." She agreed, cordially.

"Are you going to ask me out? You've been eyeing me since Easter, at least."

"I'm not here for that." She quirked a corner of her mouth into a brief smile. "I was going to ask you a question, actually. You look intelligent enough to answer it for me."

[gritstuck]

[Myra] Chapter 1: "Breaking News: Don't Trust Anyone"

Dear Past Me,

What I say now is going to be difficult to believe. But I have to be quick about it.

Find the other five who were born children of meteors. Get them copies of the Game, Sburb, by any means necessary, legal or otherwise. The existence of our future depends upon it.

- Myra

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

The Warworn Vagabond stumped into the half-buried shipping container with a crutch under one arm, having decided that it was sufficiently stable as to provide a good shelter for the day.

He'd spent the last week working his way up the coast, only having turned inland early that evening when he knew he was approaching his destination. Skaianet GPS satellites still blinked quietly above, and the key in his pocket urged him on in the direction he needed to go.

He'd had a blade driven clean through his leg in the last confrontation. The medics had done as much as they could for him, but the leg was gimpy, and he was still missing fingers on his arm from the attempted assassination previous. But the Whiteblacks had bought enough time for the Heroes to finish the duty of breeding and placing the Frog, and their message had reached farther and wider than he'd ever thought possible - thanks to the Hero of Mind and her sharp eyes for revolution in the making.

He smiled. He'd have to thank her again later, when he got to where he was going.

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

from: [email protected] to: news:transamphibian.communities.theoldrevolution date: subjective-2:03:18:21 subject: Re: Where's Jay? (was: Our story) [Show full message headers] [Hide full message headers] ==================== > > I've already looked in the server files. > > Not seen so much as a twinkling of the expatriateAstronomer, not at any point on Transam's timeline. I guess that means Jay won't be joining us for our project here. I wonder where she is. - Stan -- Previous messages -- [snipped]

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

She asked, and was allowed to stay, as the Hero of Time sat down at the ectobiology equipment for himself and created the Heroes, or players as it were, from paradox slime. She peered down at the tiny brown child he'd placed carefully in the crick of her arm, and the "baby" had grabbed for her uniform's top button, and she'd let him have it. It was nothing much, she assured the older version of him. Merely the class symbol of a Pawn, the emblem of the Whiteblack's squadrons. Which he wore on his shirt, she pointed out.

He stared at her, mumbled something about chess, or about caste systems, or about paradoxes. "Come again?" she said, remembering one of the phrases the Heroes used amongst themselves.

"Nothing," he said.

And then he told her about a kind of dream his species had, where they all knew that, if any of them really wanted to make a difference, they just had to work hard and take opportunities as they were given. She wondered if this was the kind of dream they had in their sleep. He said no, it was a kind of dream he said was "American", and he found out too late that the people who had told him it existed were lying to him. They'd fall to their planet as children, grow up "too quickly", and eventually end up in this Incipisphere because they played a game, instead. He said he'd wanted to be a philosopher.

Then he laughed until he started crying. He said it was bitter tears, although when she reached out and tasted one, they were exactly as salty as his other tears.

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

Blood was more important to the Heroes, because they didn't have carapaces so the blood showed through their skin and crept up into their faces. Especially the Hero of Time, who explained to her that he'd come from a world where nobody liked the fact that his skin was darker than others'. He talked about racism, about the hundreds of years that people like him had spent as servants only because they were considered different from the ones with white skin.

He also talked about the fact that for his species, the difference between "races" was a little more complicated than one or another bottle of chemicals; that they were all grown inside one of the "parents" whose genetic material they came from, inside an organic equivalent of a cloning tube, and they usually came out wet and screaming and only half-formed. He pointed out that the "children" would double their weight 6 or 7 times before they reached their adult stage - "like me," he said, gesturing to himself. The Heroes were their species' adult stage.

She listened, asked questions. Listened intently to the answers, to try to memorize them. The Hero of Mind said something dismissive, but the Messenger knew from the lore that the Hero of Mind had the habit of concealing her heart under her words. She thought hard, put her words together differently, and then said something else. "Does that mean I'm a carapacefag?"

The Hero of Mind laughed. She felt good about it.

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

She had the light carapace of a Prospitian, though she'd joined the army of the Whiteblack Vanguard, so she was a Whiteblack, just like the rest of them. White was better here, it meant her carapace did not heat up so much under the planet's sun, so she needed to wear less to prevent blistering. Though it also meant her carapace was thinner, so she ran more of a risk of getting injured. Thus the rubber on her feet, after she had a festering cut from a shard of glass that kept her from traveling for two weeks.

The Whiteblack Vanguard had explained to them about how carapaces were grown. A thin black skin to keep the internal organs together; then a thick layer of white carapace, and a thinner layer of black carapace upon that if the pawn or bishop or knight was destined for Derse, rather than Prospit. Their internal organs were the same, the Hero who advised him had concluded.

The hero of Mind had also said something about epigenetics afterwards, too, but the Silent Mnemonist didn't really know how that worked. Back then, as a Surefooted Messenger, what she cared about and understood was that it only took a few chemicals' difference to turn the slime that would become a Prospitian into a Dersian, or vice versa. Chemicals that were kept in bottles in the Veil, to be dropped pre-mixed into the cloning tubes. The heroes set something up, that there were two identical pawns, in two identical tubes, facing - and one chemical in one, and the other in the other.

The two pawns were extracted, at the end of their gestation, and they were introduced to each other as brothers. She smiled. She asked why the Hero of Time was crying. Humans cried when they were sad, or happy, or both at the same time, he told her, and then he picked her up and sat her on his shoulders to get a better look at the proceedings.

[gritstuck]

[interlude]

The Silent Mnemonicist wandered, all too aware of the weight of the pieces of rubber tied to her feet to protect them as she picked her way through fields of bones and shards of glass and open cans.

The sun almost had a palpable beat (although that may have been the blood rushing in her ears), its rays bearing down upon the surface of the planet with a scouring, bleaching intensity, like the winds it inspired. Full of sand, and glass. Although, she recalled, glass was just the amorphous form of sand, melted, twirled together with small quantities of something else to keep the silicon dioxide molecules supple and disrupt crystal formation. So it was either all glass, or all sand. She decided to call it sand.

Words kept the Silent Mnemonist's mind straight. Nights spent with a campfire made of wood (driftwood, she thought, or shipping pallets), and maybe tinned meat (spam or tuna or chicken; she liked the spam best, it reminded her of vatmeat, a treat for the Calendrical Reset) or a can of vegetables to keep her company.

She'd found a can opener, the first night she was on the surface. She tied the little can opener, a rectangle with a sharktooth, to another string, and kept that around her wrist. She knew it was a can opener because it matched the one she saw in the books. It said P38 on one end. She thought maybe that was the ID number of the pawn - no, the Hero of Time said that his species called their fighting classes soldiers or police or militants - who had used it. Whoever "P38" was, their job-name was Standard Issue, and they were probably a soldiers. She was satisfied with herself for reaching this conclusion.

[gritstuck]

[Stan]

I, like Rain, didn't take the opportunity to make something extraordinary of myself when it was presented. So we became the Page and the Sylph.

Antie, as Jay, retreated into their private worlds when the world outside proved too much for them to understand. They then had to assume the mantles of Guide, and Heir.

Sauce, as Myra, both kept their struggles quiet and put up a face for everyone else, of someone who was competent and unafraid. That's what made them the Knight, and the Waste.

I think we all told ourselves, in the beginning, that our own private worlds of hurt were reserved for us alone, or that nobody else would understand, or else that it was only logical that we'd react to the world the way we did.

It turned out we weren't alone.

I wonder why the Game was designed to teach us that.

I wonder who's the storyteller, if we're the story.

Other than me, I mean.

[end of chapter 0]

[gritstuck]

[Sauce and Myra]

The neovangelicals learned to avoid my street once Antie lost his temper and shot one in the leg.

This is why I like you guys.

He's got quite the asshole to unclench. Will asking him to sleep with that bullet casing stuck in his rectum for the next year help him loosen up?

If you make a plug out of it, make sure it has a flared base.

I'm sure.

Well, hey, the option is having to explain to a nice whitecap why there's a cap in his ass, litereally. *Snap* goes the sound of the latex glove being put on...

I'm sure they live for the time when they can literally rape us instead of figuratively. They might even be so grateful as to let us off the hook for the payment.

But seriously I think we'll take Mr. Entrepreneur to the designated public camp, do some glad-handing, and send him on up to Boston with a couple of dogwhistles for our boys and girls up that-a-way.

Decent plan.

Heck, he gets busted for having us-connections?

He's the type that would blog all butthurt about it and speak nice.

Still. Sanitizing everything's gonna suck. We're actually not done assembling about it.

My sympathies.

Hey, I've got to go. Raid sirens.

Don't die.

Likewise.

It's my specialty.

scovilleSaucepan has left secured channel: "Rock the Heist Comms"

[gritstuck]

[Sauce and Myra]

Any stories from your end of the movement?

Not unless you want more he-said-she-said from the GA.

There's a man, doing a autofellatioriffic cocksucking book tour up the EST Megalopolises.

Y'know, for his POD and E-book.

The usual "Think and Grow Rich" bullshit, I take it? Or another one of those fake autobiographies?

Lil' bit. More about how to sell your creative data, with a heavy fauxtivist slant. Likes to hit up the encampments and clinics. Good mutual publicity.

And, hell, he's got at least /one/ /chapter/ where he almost checks his privilege and gets it right.

So we had a big strife about whether it was worth letting him get anywhere near our public faces, the pro-con.

What if he's tagged, proper representation, 'diversity of tactics,' all that drek.

If that was a valid way out of poverty half the LA Village would probably be in studio apartments doing the artist thing, instead of down here scrabbling at the dirt.

I'd say ask him to provide references from those of /us/ who've made it, if I were there.

Heh. Case studies and anecdotes do not statistically significant numbers make!

It is virtually certain that he'll not have produced so much as one greater suit in the past twenty years, and thus should be run out of town faster than a Nigerian prince, yes?

Those goddamn "artist deals" where they take a documentary crew down here and hold American Idol with us disadvantaged poorfaces and then whisk the most malleable idiot up to sign a deal don't count, by the way.

A Lordship generally requires family connections, does it not? But, let's be honest. Would you guys sell your dignity for a ticket out of the slums?

Hell no.

Think there was ever a time you would have?

That first year we were out there, if anything.

Freedom, Wealth, Dignity. Pick two.

Two scared kids, twelve and thirteen, with no street or business sense to think of.

Lucky you shitheads didn't get kidnapped, raped, and shipped off to make child pornography in Dubai.

Yeah, it's a damn good thing we were picked up by the ladies here.

Must be your good looks.

Sure, sure. Let me just rearrange my hair for you and have surgery to replace my eyebrows with exotic animal fur. I'll be a damn great model for a swimsuit company, that I will.

Panda is in, I hear.

Did you know how inbred they are?

Population bottleneck, right?

That's how it always works.

They started having to use computer programs to prevent the species from collapsing back in the nineties.

Heh.

I say let those "soi-disant" "collectors" go get shot, and we'll go collect their pearly whites and dump them in a basement somewhere to collect dust, just like those animals.

I love the way they grow up with brain damage from being obligate vegans with carnivorous dietary needs.

And that they're frequently less adept at fucking than 40 year-old virgins.

There's a metaphor here.

Best argument against intelligent design I've ever had. Along with the eyes being inside-out and the brain being the way it is.

Nope, sorry. Panda thumbs are clearly science-legit.

Their blind genes just decided 'herp derp there's a niche I'm gonna fill it hurrrr'

[gritstuck]

[Sauce and Myra]

Did you ever manage to figure out what was going on with that toner cartridge, by the way?

Apparently the two models I got the chip pair from are incompatible.

Not even for a good reason.

Just, "Hi! I, 3D printer, only work with this secret key cartridge-chip because we are trying to lock in our customers so we can charge them through the nose for substrate!"

Except that the company stopped producing that substrate two years ago.

Ohh, DRM. Because we *like* our users locked away like Saudi wives and sisters. We can't risk them being dangerous sluts that spread their legs for just *any* ol' third party product that gets the job done.

I concur.

Well, you're agreeable.

I have the same opinion as you. Why would I not agree with you?

I find myself wondering if you've ever considered growing a spine.

Oh, you've asked me that before.

Multiple times.

Don't stonewall me.

What if I told you I liked myself the way I was?

I've got a job to do, same as you do, really.

Patching you guys up so that you can live to fight another day.

Come to think of it, properly speaking, I was probably never supposed to speak to you as long as I have.

You certainly haven't made it easy.

That you've lasted this long under the withering glare of a honest-to-God Anon is a triumph of masochism.

Wow, I feel loved.

It's what I live for.

That and letting people in high places feel that warm glow.

Of having pissed one's pants.

EO I honestly can't figure out sometimes if you're just being vulgar because it pisses everyone off or because you're getting something from it.

It's to keep the straight-and-narrow minds out of our business.

A social selection mechanism, as it were.

If it's a selection mechanism, have I passed?

Well, you obviously have a thick skin.

That I do.

What I gather from you is that Anons turn criticism, and resistance to criticism, into an art form.

Heh.

Can't let the plutocratic Powers That Be get away with writing history, can we?

Exactly.

[gritstuck]

[Sauce and Myra]

scovilleSaucepan has joined secured channel: "Rock The Heist Comms"

Oi, EO?

Present. Whatcha need?

Did you get the shipment I sent last week all right?

Had to improvise a packing crate, they've stopped sending us the oldies in crates.

You're depriving some SOB of a nice sleeping pallet that way. But, yeah, we've got 'em.

Well.

I'm sure Antie will be pleased, he was agonizing about the damn nails yesterday.

Worrying like a little girl, I'm sure. "I hope they aren't rusted!" "I hope the wood holds up!"

Fear not, your scrap metal feeds the revolution. Last I heard the trainyard boys were picking them apart for...eh, I don't care. I'll be down at 2am tonight when my watch is over to pick up my rig.

We got some pretty sweet i9s in this shipment, I hear they've got yet another latest and greatest innovation out in the graveyards.

Again.

Is there no end to what can fall off the back of a truck?

I hope not.

Well, viva la revolucion and all that over with, how've you been?

Bored as fuck.

I'd give my left arm to be supplied by someone who lets me be bored as fuck only about 90% of the time like you are.

But noooo, we proletariats have to work for our living!

Hey, I'm not the one who has a morality pet.

Point.

Although he's none of your concern.

Of course he isn't, you just like nattering on to me about him.

And all I'm allowed to do is listen to you talk about how he's so frustrating and how you get so justifiably angry about your older brother who can't take care of himself.

But you love him, so all is forgiven!

All is Stockholm syndrome, more like.

Look.

I need someone to jaw at about this stuff who won't gossip about it afterwards.

Don't tell me you don't know what happens in a small town.

Well, tell me anyway.

I get a dozen offers of "help" in the next week, none of which last more than a few days.

I've *got* someone who'll Antiesit on short notice if I have to go to a demo.

I don't need to explain myself again.

It's just so damn frustrating.

Frustrating enough to bitch to the stranger about it, evidently.

We're going to talk about something else now.

Fair enough.

[gritstuck]

[Myra]

When Rain told me she was from Ivy Crest, I immediately asked her if she'd participated in the unrest there. She stammered something - no? - and then ran.

Stan asked the same thing, much later. I don't know what her response to him was, as Rain and Stan then agreed to move too far away for me to hear what either said, but Antie told me that he suspected that she sympathized and was merely afraid to admit it.

It turned out he was right.

I don't know what would've happened to her if our world had gone on.

I think she was too close to be above suspicion, but that it would take something she couldn't deny - a death, perhaps? - to force her to make up her mind about whether she supported us or not.

Conveniently, something of the sort did happen. Inconveniently, it destroyed our world in the process.

[gritstuck]

[Rain]

"That's not enough," Samantha said, and abruptly walked around and crouched in front of me. "Look, I'll give you the next month's worth right now if you just promise you won't talk about this before it happens. You don't even have to participate. Or give me your homework after, or ever again, for that matter."

I perceived, dimly, she was trying to break off this relationship for good so it wouldn't be used as a point of pressure. I heard it as a business transaction.

The richer kids always talked in business transactions when they wanted to say, "it's nothing personal, this is just something I have to do."

In that moment I hated business transactions.

But I said yes, and stopped talking to her.

Two weeks after, September 15, I watched, propped up on pillows while sweating and shivering my way through a bout of food poisoning, as the local news - and the regional news, and then the national news - talked about the abrupt unrest at Ivy Crest Academy, the vandalism of the Total Skaianet Security system and the ambushes of the guards working for Sandstone.

I did not wish I was there. That would defeat the point of the business transaction.

[gritstuck]

[Rain]

I stared at Samantha in shock.

For reference, she had just suggested that we consult a terrorist group for advice on how to bring attention to the arrest of someone who belonged to a second terrorist group and evade a private security company.

"What?" asked Samantha, waving her hand in front of my face.

"I... I'm not sure I should be doing this." I turned away. Cradled my face in my hands so as to hide my expression.

"I thought you liked him?" Samantha craned her head around and peered through my fingers at my eyes, milk-white behind the contact lenses printed with blue irises; not that she knew what my actual eye color was. Not even the DMV knew that. "I'm sorry for carrying on about this, I just... it's so /exciting/, for the first time in my life I have something awesome I need to do. To participate in. Something greater than myself."

"The Nazi youth groups were the same way," I shot back. "Ever read 'The Third Wave'?"

"I." Samantha shrank into herself; Godwin's Law had shut down the conversation. "At least promise me you won't talk about me being involved until the protest is well under way."

I covered my face further with my hands. "...I'll think about it."