The Caryatids

So Vera’s barracks was a foamy puff of pink high-performance fabric, perched on struts on a slope above the breezy Adriatic gulf. Out in the golden haze toward distant Italy, minor islets shouldered their way from the ocean like the ghosts of Earth’s long-extinct whales.

Nearby, the derelict village of Pomena had been scraped up and briskly recycled, while its old harbor was rebuilt for modern shipping. A vast, muscular Acquis crane, a white flexing contraption like a giant arm, plucked cargo containers from the ferries at the dock. Then the huge crane would simply fling that big shipping box, with one almighty, unerring, overhand toss, far off into the hills, where nets awaited it and cadres in boneware would unpack and distribute the goods.

Next to the docks sat a squat, ratcheting fabricator, another pride of the Acquis. This multipotent digital factory made tools, shoes, struts, bolts, girders, spare parts for boneware—a host of items, mostly jet­spewed from recycled glass, cellulose, and metal.

Karen suddenly towered over Vera’s cot, an apparition still wearing boneware from the toxin mine, ticking and squeaking. “Are you sad? You look so sad, lying there.”

Vera sat up. “Aren’t you on shift?”

“They’re fabbing new parts for my drill,” Karen said. “Down in that mine, they’re so sorry about the way they treated you. I gave them all such a good talking-to about their insensitivity.”

“I had a hard brainstorm. That was a bad day for me, all my fault, I’m sorry.”

“It’s hard work,” said Karen. “But the way you ran up your favorite hill afterward, to feel your way through your crisis… ? Your rapport with this island was so moving and deep! Your glory is awesome this morning. It’s because you find so much meaning in the work here, Vera. We’re all so inspired by that.”

“Herbert gave me a new assignment.”

Karen made a sympathetic face. “Herbert is always so hard on you. I’ll power down now. You tell me all about it. You can cry if you want.”

“First can you find me a toenail clipper?”

Karen stared through her faceplate at the thousands of tagged items infesting their barracks. Karen found a tiny, well-worn community clip­per in twenty seconds. Karen was a whiz at that. She commenced climb­ing out of her bones.

As Karen recharged her bones, Vera picked at her footsore toes and scowled at the bustling Acquis barracks. New cadres were graduating from the attention camps almost every week. They bounded proudly over the island in their new boneware, each man and woman heaving and digging with the strength of a platoon—but inside their warm pink barracks, their bones and helmets laid aside, they flopped all over each other like soft-shelled crabs.

The cadres shaved scanner patches on their skulls. They greased their sores and blisters. They griped, debriefed, commiserated, joked, wept. It often looked and sounded like a madhouse.

These were people made visible from the inside out, and that visibil­ity was changing them. Vera knew that the sensorweb was melting them inside, just as it was melting the island’s soil, the seas, even the skies…

Karen returned from her locker, swaying in her pink underwear. Karen had a sweet, pleasant, broad-cheeked face under the shaven spots in her black hair. Karen’s sweetness was more in her sunny affect than in the cast of her features. Karen’s ancestors were European, South Asian, African… Karen was genetically globalized.

Karen’s family had been jet-setting sophisticates from upper-class Nairobi, until their city had imploded in the climate crisis. Australia: A very bad story, the world’s most vulnerable continent for climate change. India, China— always so crowded, so close to epic human disasters— catastrophic places. Yet disaster always somehow seemed worse in Africa. There was less attention paid to people like Karen, their plight always fell through the cracks. One would think that African sophisticates didn’t even exist.

Karen had lost everyone she knew. She had escaped the bloody ruin of her city with a single cardboard suitcase.

Some Acquis functionary had steered Karen toward Mljet. That de­cision had suited Karen. Today, Karen was an ideal Acquis neural so­cialite. Because Karen was a tireless chatterer, always deep into everybody else’s business. Yet Karen never breathed a word about her painful past, or anyone else’s past, either. Vera liked and trusted her for that.

Life inside an Acquis brain scanner had liberated Karen. She’d ar­rived on the island so bitterly grieved that she could barely speak, but the reformed Karen was a very outgoing, supportive woman. She was even a brazen flirt.

“The boss never treats you like a woman should be treated around here,” Karen told her. “I have something that will change your mood, though.” Karen handed over a box with a handwritten card and a curly velvet ribbon.

“Karen, what is this about?”

“Your niece came here to our barracks this morning,” said Karen. “While you were being debriefed. She’s the only little girl on this whole island. She walked straight into here, right up that aisle, through that big mess piled there. Like a princess, like she was born in here. The place was full of grown-ups wearing skeletons. Tough guys. Changing shifts. You know. Naked people. She wasn’t one bit scared! She even sang them a little song. Something about her favorite foods: soup and cookies!”

“’Soup and cookies’?” said Vera unbelieving, though Karen never lied.

“The cadres couldn’t believe that either! They never saw anything like that! That kid can really sing, too—you should have heard them cheer! Then she left this beautiful gift just for you.”

Vera kept her face stiff, but she could feel herself gritting her teeth.

Karen, as always, was keen to sympathize. “We couldn’t help but love that ‘Little Mary Montalban.’ I know someday she’ll be a big star.” Karen bounced on the stainless pink fabric of her surplus medical cot. “So, do it! Open this gift from your weird estranged niece! I’m dying to see what she brought for you!”

“Since you’re so excited, you can open that.”

Karen sniffed the scented gift card and ripped into the wrappings. She removed a crystal ball.

The crystal ball held a little world. A captive bubble of water. It was a biosphere. Herbert often mentioned them. They were modeling tools for environmental studies.

Biospheres were clever toys, but unstable, since their tiny ecosystems were so frail.

Biospheres were pretty at first, but they had horribly brieflives. Sooner or later, disaster was sure to strike that little world. Living systems were never as neat and efficient as clockworks. Biology wasn’t machinery. So, as time passed, some aspect of the miniature world would depart from the normal parameters. Some vital salt or mineral might leach out against the glass. Some keystone microbe might die off—or else bloom crazily, killing everything else.

A biosphere was a crystal world that guaranteed doom.

Karen peered through the shining bubble, her freckled cheekbones warping in reflection. “This is so clever and pretty! What do people call this?”

“I’d call that a ‘thanatosphere.’”

“Well! What a name!” Karen deftly tossed the gleaming ball from hand to hand. “Why that big sour face? Your gift from that princess is fit for a queen!” Watery rainbows chased themselves across Vera’s blanket.

“That toy comes from a rich Dispensation banker. He’s a spy, and that’s a bribe. That’s the truth.”

Karen blinked. “Rich bankers are giving you gifts? Well then! You’re coming up in the world! I always said you would.”

“I don’t need that toy. I don’t want it. You can keep it.”

“Truly?” Karen caressed the crystal with her cheek. “Won’t somebody get mad about that?”

“Nobody from the Acquis. Nobody that matters to us.”

“Well, I’m so happy to have this! You’re very generous, Vera! That is one of your finest character traits.”

Now Karen was intrigued, so she really bored in. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about toys like this. Dispensation people are crazy for their fancy gifts and gadgets. They’re big collectors’ items, from high society! I bet this toy is worth a lot of cash.”

Vera methodically ripped the gift box to shreds. It was lined with vel­vet, with slender walls made of some fine alien substance, like parch­ment. It smelled like fresh bamboo. “They call their toys ‘hobjects.’”

“Oh yeah. I knew that, too.” Karen clutched the ball. “Wow, Vera, I privately own a fancy hobject! I feel so glamorous!”