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the left were shabby, repaired several times and then pulled tight across barred windows. There was a high fence around the whole structure, apparently wood, but with giveaway metal strips at the top and bottom. It was a steel-core oak model, and there was probably a switch in the manager’s office that would allow the whole thing to be electrified at the drop of a hat. Good choice. The only visible trees were eucalyptus, whose high branches and friable bark made them virtually impossible to climb. Even better choice.
    The structure to the right was more of an absence: a green field surrounded by a cast-iron fence, allowed to grow wild and weedy. It was surprisingly lush; someone was still watering it, despite California’s perpetual drought conditions. That meant it was the property of either a church, a private school, or both. Churches could afford to water empty lots. They had a good income from their apocalypse-panicked parishioners, and their tax breaks meant that they were always looking for something else that they could write off. Private schools were sometimes more strapped, but almost all of them were playing on the idea of “normal someday.” As in “when we reach that normal someday and this all goes back to the way it used to be, we’ll have this beautiful, secure space for your children to play in, so give us money, or we might have to sell it.” It kept the donations coming in, and it kept the idea of the virus-free promised land alive in the minds of the rich.
    Something was moving in the field. I frowned and took a step toward the street, pulling a mag from my pocket. It was a single lens mounted on a wire frame, like a pair of glasses that had been cut in half. It clamped to the bridge of my nose, amplifying my vision first by a factor of ten, and then, when I tapped the magnification switch on the side, by a factor of thirty.
    There was a moment of disorientation as my brain adapted to the virtual split screen of seeing normally with one eye and at a distance with the other. The first several times I’d used the mag it had made me sick to my stomach, unable to cope with such dramatically different visual inputs. Mat had told me sternly that they hadn’t designed the system just to have it go to waste; they ordered me to keep trying. Now, I could use it as a sniper scope if I had to, taking the long shot without hesitation and rarely, if ever, missing.
    My eyes adjusted. The movement in the field became a man: tall, dark-haired, wearing a brown suit that looked like it had seen better days. He was walking through the knee-high grass with an unsteady lurch that would have confirmed his status as one of the infected even if it hadn’t been for the drool on his chin.
    I didn’t need to activate a camera. The mag was set to auto-record unless I told it otherwise, since anything interesting enough to be looked at in that particular manner was likely to be interesting enough to film. I zoomed in one more time, getting the gruesome details before I pulled the ear cuff out of my other pocket and clipped it to my ear. It pinched the skin a little. I wasn’t usually the big communicator of the group, on account of how I couldn’t be trusted in polite company.
    Ah, well. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I pressed the side of the cuff with my thumb and said, sweetly and clearly, “This is Ash North, license number IQL-33972, requesting a connection to the Orinda Police Department. This is a high-priority request.”
    There was a moment of silence, broken only by a soft buzzing, before a woman’s voice filled my ear, asking, “Ms. North, why are you still on the street? My records indicate that the funeral you were observing concluded nearly twenty minutes ago. Please advise your business in the area.”
    â€œHello to you too, ma’am, and I hope you’re having a right splendid day, there in your nice, secure police station.”