Back in his Regiment days, that’s what they’d called it. A master kill-switch for all of the lights that would trick the vehicle into thinking they were still working. More than just that, a kill switch for all the electronics, too, as a double safety feature for explosive environments. As he spoke Raxx grew thoughtful, running his hand over his tool belt. When he finished the Mechanic wandered off without saying a word. Multimeter in hand, he began probing the truck’s electrical veins.
For the rest of the evening he worked. Occasionally Wentworth would hear the vehicle start up, then shut down as Raxx ran tests. For a while the man just sat in the passenger seat thinking. Later he’d disassembled some of the interior moulding, and Wentworth saw him contorted under the dash. This was the first time he’d struggled against the vehicle’s nature.
Twilight was descending and still nothing in the settlement. Hunger pangs had forced Raxx to take a break. He was glaring directionlessly, eating his unheated meal.
Wentworth took a swig from his canteen, staring at the placid town. Raxx must have eaten in a hurry; he could already hear him working on the truck again. He lit up a cigarette and continued watching. The sun’s red light was diffusing through the gathering clouds, turning the sky tan and amber. It was going to be a dark night.
“Fuck!” Steel clanged as Raxx threw a tool at the ground. Wentworth glanced back in time to see it bounce toward the house, lodging in a piece of rotted drywall. Turning back toward the settlement, Wentworth could hear the man muttering, and putting his tools away, then slamming truck’s hood. A few minutes later Raxx hauled himself up the stone wall, and joined Wentworth on the log.
“Didn’t go so well?”
“Nah,” said Raxx, his voice relaxed and calm, “Either there’s something I missed — some relay I didn’t notice — or — hell, I dunno. I wish I had a good electrical diagram for my girl. The one I’ve got is wrong in some parts. I should be able to find a way around it, eventually — but for now I just rigged it.”
Wentworth butted out his cigarette and looked down at the truck. Squares of duct tape covered the headlights.
“That’ll do. You want to take over the picket? I’m going to go wash my canteen cup.”
He got up and vaulted down to the landing, walking down the stairs to the rear of the truck. Unscrewing the cap on the water jerry sitting on the bed, he tilted it over and rinsed out the aluminum cup. Shaking it dry, he put it back into its pouch, topped of his canteen, and rejoined Raxx on the hill.
By the time he returned Raxx had lit a cigarillo and was looking thoughtful. “You know, earlier this week, just after we got into town and were doing all that boozing, you said something that stuck with me and it’s been going around my head.”
“Yeah?”
“You asked me ‘Do you think the war helped us appreciate tragedy?’ I was wondering what you meant by that.”
The words sparked a memory, flashing him back to the Tracy’s Roadhouse. The beer had been catalyzing his brain, letting disparate thoughts flow together.
Tragedy.
An off the cuff remark, made as various elements crystallized — only to fall apart with the next sip of beer.
“Tragedy.” he said it out loud, tying to evoke the forgotten thoughts. One by one the pieces drifted in from his subconscious, but some were fragmented, others missing. His eyes ticked back and forth across the horizon, alert for the raiders, but it was reflex-response. His mind was focused inward, trying to find the paths he’d travelled before.
“My entire life,” he spoke slowly, “has been spent studying war — not just any war,
“I know what you mean. It’s everywhere you go.”
“Not just in the physical sense, either. That part’s obvious — farmers lyeing their fields against acid rain; mutations in crops, livestock, people; the social and structural breakdown — say, you know what a horse is?”
“Yeah — it’s an old pre-metric measurement for wattage. Horse Power’s how it’s usually written.”
“That’s not what I meant. The ‘Horse’ part of Horse Power is the name of an animal they used for riding back in the pre-tech days. When they made the first vehicles I guess they measured how good they were by how many horses they were equal to.”
Raxx canted his head to the right. “…yeah! They used to use ’em for riding on. Like your motorcycle? You ‘saddled’ ’em for riding, right?
“Yes. They were sort of like an ox, only skinnier and faster.”
“I’ve read about them in old stories, only I didn’t really get what they were talking about ‘till now. I haven’t read any of those since I was a kid. Huh. So what, none of them survived?”
“Well, I don’t know. There might be some left somewhere, I guess, but I haven’t seen or heard of any since E-Day. And I guess you haven’t either.” He shrugged, “They must have been more sensitive than other animals to the radiation, or to something else. Maybe they all got eaten. Who knows? But I don’t think there were that many before the war, there wasn’t much use for them. So that didn’t help…”
He’d gone off track. He thought for a moment before continuing. “Take farmers. The way their lives have changed, how their farms have changed… what’s happening now is something new. It’s not… it’s not just like they just threw away all the tech — they’ve still got some of it — but it’s… schizophrenic.”
“It’s what?”
“Crazy, all mixed up. They’ve got mechanical threshers they pull by hand. A bit of both… but neither, not prewar, not pretech — both at the same time.”
Raxx nodded, “Okay, I get you, it’s the same for everything else. Merchants’ll sell electronics, but they’re using animal power to transport ’em. Tech shops using coal fires to blacksmith the tools they need. Precision machined firearms,” he hefted his shotgun, “and handmade cartridges.”
“Sort of… I don’t think I’m explaining it right. Everything we do is different, different from ever before, and it all traces back to the same place… to the War. It’s hanging over our heads. I remember what you said to me that one time, you said that people can use the tech, but they don’t understand it. They can’t build it, but they rely upon it. The ancients… their tech — it’s a blessing, but it’s a curse too.”
“He giveth and He taketh away…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Wentworth shook his head, and stared at the settlement. He was beginning to worry that the bandits wouldn’t show. Then what would they do? Go back to square one. “Now here’s the part that starts to get a bit complex. Mostly because it’s not all sorted in my own head. Have you ever heard of Pandora’s Box?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“You read more than most. I was hoping you hadn’t, actually, because I could have explained it to you in under thirty seconds. I wouldn’t have had to tell you the whole legend, and that’s the argument I’m trying to make.
“Pandora’s Box is a great example of the old cultural myths — when it was opened out came all the troubles, but along with them came a silver lining of hope. There’re other myths that are basically identical, but I can’t think of their names just now. They’re all about how innocence lost can never be restored, but that along with the problems and responsibilities of adulthood, there comes the ability for agency, for hope, or whatever you want to call it. A cold stark freedom.”
“Free Will,” intoned Raxx, “Knowledge of Good and Evil. Moral choice and responsibility. The ability to choose who we become and what we are. To know the cost of moving with grace.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, only it sounds like you’re using myths I haven’t heard before; but it’s all the same thing.”
Raxx only nodded silently to this. Wentworth was too preoccupied to notice the faraway look in his eyes.
“When I said earlier that I could have explained Pandora’s Box to you in thirty seconds, it was because we’re both products of thousands of years of culture and philosophy. The myth’s about an idea, and when it was first realized it had to be put into story-form to help explain it. But nowadays, all of these ancient ‘Truths’ are obvious to
