After the Collapse Read Free Page B

attention only when he had powered them down.
    Outside the vehicle’s polarized plastic shell, the sinking sun glared like the malign orb of a Cyclops bent on mankind’s destruction.
    When the bug-wide door slid up, dragon’s breath assailed the Power Jocks. Their plugsuits strained to shield them from the hostile environment.
    Surprisingly, a subdued and pensive Tigerishka volunteered for camp duty. As dusk descended, she attended to erecting their intelligent shelters and getting a meal ready: chicken croquettes with roasted edamame.
    A.B. and Thales sluffed through the sand for a dozen yards to the nearest infected solarcell platform. The keek held his pocket lab in gloved hand.
    A little maintenance kybe, scuffed and scorched, perched on the high trellis, valiantly but fruitlessly chipping with its multitool at a hard siliceous shell irregularly encrusting the photovoltaic surface.
    Thales caught a few flakes of the unknown substance as they fell, and inserted them into the analysis chamber of the pocket lab.
    “We should have a complete readout of the composition of this stuff by morning.”
    “No sooner?”
    “Well, actually, by midnight. But I don’t intend to stay up. I’ve done nothing except sit on my ass for two days, yet I’m still exhausted. It’s this oppressive place—”
    “Okay,” A.B. replied. The first stars had begun to prinkle the sky. “Let’s call it a day.”
    They ate in the bug, in a silent atmosphere of forced companionability, then retired to their separate shelters.
    A.B. hoped with mild lust for another nocturnal visit from a prowling Tigerishka, but was not greatly disappointed when she never showed to interrupt his intermittent drowsing. Truly, the desert sands of Paris sapped all his usual joie de vivre.
    Finally falling fast asleep, he dreamed of the ghostly waters of the vanished Seine, impossibly flowing deep beneath his tent. Somehow, Zulqamain Safranski was diverting them to flood A.B.’s apartment….
    4.
    The Red Queen’s Triathalon
    In the morning, after breakfast, A.B. approached Gershon Thales, who stood apart near the trundlebug. Already the sun thundered down its oppressive cargo of photons, so necessary for the survival of the Reboot Cities, yet, conversely, just one more burden for the overstressed Greenhouse ecosphere. Feeling irritable and impatient, anxious to be back home, A.B. dispensed with pleasantries.
    “I’ve tried vibbing your pocket lab for the results, but you’ve got it offline, behind that pirate software you’re running. Open up, now.”
    The keek stared at A.B. with mournful stolidity. “One minute, I need something from my pod.”
    Thales ducked into his tent. A.B. turned to Tigerishka. “What do you make—”
    Blinding light shattered A.B.’s vision for a millisecond in a painful nova, before his MEMS contacts could react protectively by going opaque. Tigerishka vented a stifled yelp of surprise and shock, showing she had gotten the same actinic eyekick.
    A.B. immediately thought of vib malfunction, some misdirected feed from a solar observatory, say. But then, as his lenses de-opaqued, he realized the stimulus had to have been external.
    When he could see again, he confronted Gershon Thales holding a pain gun whose wide bell muzzle covered both of the keek’s fellow Power Jocks. At the feet of the keek rested an exploded spaser grenade.
    A.B. tried to vib, but got nowhere.
    “Yes,” Thales said, “we’re in a dead zone now. I fried all the optical circuits of the vib nodes with the grenade.”
    A large enough burst of surface plasmons could do that? Who knew? “But why?”
    With his free hand, keeping the pain gun unwavering, Thales reached into a plugsuit pocket and took out his lab. “These results. They’re only the divine sign we’ve been waiting for. Reboot civilization is on the way out now. I couldn’t let anyone in the PAC find out. The longer they stay in the dark, the more irreversible the changes will