After the Collapse

The floor, even though padded, was a long way off, and of course I had no safety line.

So even though I was reluctant to grebnard out, I activated the artificial setae in my gloves and booties, and slammed them against the wall.

One glove and one bootie stuck, slowing me enough to position my second hand and foot. I clung flat to the wall, catching my breath, then began to scuttle like a crab to the nearest projecting holds, the setae making ripping sounds as they pulled away each time.

A few meters to my left, Williedell laughed and called out, “Ha-ha, Crispy had to go gecko!”

“Yeah, like you never did three times last week! Race you to the top!”

Starting to scramble upward as fast as I could, I risked a glance at Anuta to see if she were laughing at my lameness. But she wasn’t even looking my way, just hanging in place and gossiping with Mallory and Vernice.

Sometimes I think girls have no real sense of competition.

But then I remember how much attention they pay to their stupid clothes.

Williedell and I reached the top of the wall at roughly the same time, and gave each other a fist bump.

Down on the floor, Cheo hailed us. “Hey, Crispian, almost got you that time, didn’t I!”

Cheo’s parents owned the Climbzone, and so the five of us got to play for free in the slowest hours—like now, eight AM on a Sunday. Cheo had to work a few hours on the weekends—mainly just handing out gloves and booties and instructing newbies—so he couldn’t climb with us. Of course, he had access via his memtax to the wall controls, and had disappeared my handhold on purpose.

I yelled back, “Next time we’re eating underwater goo, you’re getting a face full!”

For some reason, my silly remark made Cheo look sober and thoughtful. “Hey, guys, c’mon down! I want to talk about something with you.”

The girls must have been paying some attention to our antics, because they responded to Cheo’s request and began lowering themselves to the floor. Pretty soon, all five of us were gathered around Cheo.

There were no other paying customers at the moment.

“Let me just close up the place for a few minutes.”

Cheo locked the entrance doors and posted a public augie sign saying BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. Then we all went and sat at the snack bar. As always, Williedell made sure we were all supplied with drinks. We joked that he was going to grow up to be flight attendant on a Amazonian aerostat—but we didn’t make the joke too often, since he flared up sensitive about always instinctively acting the host. (I think he got those hospitality habits because he was the oldest in his semi-dysfunctional family and always taking care of his sibs.)

Cheo looked us up and down and then said, “Who’s happy with our sludge-eating FarmEarth assignments? Anyone?”

“Nope.” “Not me.” “I swear I can taste oil and sardines after every run.”

That last from Mallory.

“And you know we’ve got at least another six months of this kind of drudgery until we ramp up maybe half a level, right?”

Groans all around.

“Well, what would you say if I could get us playing at a higher level right away? Maybe even at master status!”

Vernice said, “Oh, sure, and how’re you gonna do that? I could see if Crispy here maybe said he had a way to bribe his Aunt Zoysia. She’s got real enchufe.”

“Yeah, well, I know someone with real enchufe too. My brother.”

Everyone fell silent. Then Anuta said quietly, “But Cheo, your brother is in prison.”

As far as we all knew, this was true. Cheo’s big brother Adan had got five years for subverting FarmEarth. He had misused effectuators to cultivate a few hectares of chiba in the middle of the Pantanal reserve. The charges against him, however, had nothing to do with the actual dope, because of course chiba was legal as chewing gum. But he had misappropriated public resources, avoided excise taxes on his crop, and indirectly caused the death of a colony of protected capybaras by diverting the effectuators that might have been used to save them from some bushmeat poachers. Net punishment: five years hospitality from the federales.

Cheo looked a bit ashamed at his brother’s misdeeds. “He’s not in prison anymore. He got out a year early. He racked up some good time for helping administer FarmEarth among the jail population. You think we got shitty assignments! How would you like to steward gigundo manure lagoons! Anyhow, he’s a free man now, and he’s looking for some help with a certain project. In return, the people he takes on get master status. It may not be strictly aboveboard, but it’s really just a kind of shortcut to where we’re heading already.”

I instantly had my doubts about Adan and his schemes. If only I had listened to my gut, we could have avoided a lot of grief. But I asked, “What is this mysterious project?”

“In jail, Adan hooked up with Los Braceros Ultimos. You know about them, right?”

“No. What’s their story?”

“They think FarmEarth is being run too conservatively. The planet is still at the tipping point. We need to do bigger things faster. No more tip-toeing around with little fixes. No more being over-cautious. Get everybody working on making Gaia completely self-sustaining again. And the Braceros want to free up humanity from being Earth’s thermostat and immune system and liver.”

“Yeah!” said Williedell, pumping his fist in the air. Mallory and Vernice were nodding their heads in agreement. Anuta looked with calm concern to me, as if to see what I thought.

Four to two.

I didn’t want to drag everyone else down. And I was pretty sick of the boring, trivial assignments we were limited to in FarmEarth. All I could suddenly picture was all the fun that Benno had every day. My own brother! Ninety percent my own brother anyhow. I felt a wave of jealousy and greed that swept away any doubts. The feelings made me bold enough to take Anuta’s hand and say, “Count us in too!”

And after that, it was way too late to back out.

* * * *

We met Adan in the flesh just once. The seven of us four-squared a rendezvous at the NASDAQ Casino where my Mom Kianna worked. The venue was cheap and handy. Because we weren’t adults, we couldn’t go out onto the gaming floor, where the Bundled Mortgages Craps Table and Junk Bond Roulette Wheels and all the other games of investa-chance were. But the exclusion was good, because that was where Mom hustled drinks, so we wouldn’t bump into her.

But the Casino also featured an all-ages cafe with live music, and I said, “We shouldn’t try to sneak around with this scheme. That’ll just attract suspicion. We’ve hung out at the Casino before, so no one will think twice to see us there.”

Everyone instantly agreed, and I felt a glow of pride.

So one Friday night, while we listened to some neo-Baithak Gana by Limekiller and the Manatees (the woman playing dholak was yotta-sexy) and sipped delicious melano-rambutan smoothies, we got the lowdown from Cheo’s brother.

Adan resembled Cheo in a brotherly way, except with more muscles, a scraggly mustache, and a bad fashion sense that encouraged a sparkly vest of unicorn hair over a bare chest painted with an e-ink display screen showing cycling porn snippets. Grebnard! Did he imagine this place was some kind of Craigslist meat market?

The porn scenes on Adan’s chest—soundless, thank god—were very distracting, and I felt embarrassed for the girls—although they really didn’t seem too hassled. Now, in hindsight, I figure maybe Adan was trying to unfocus our thinking on purpose.

Luckily the cafe was fairly dark, and the e-ink display wasn’t backlit, so most of the scenes were just squirming blobs that I could ignore while Adan talked.

After he sized us up with some casual chat, he said, “You kids are getting in on the ground floor of something truly great. In the future, you’ll be remembered as the greatest generation, the people who had the foresight to take bold moves to bring the planet back from the brink. All this tentative shit FarmEarth authorizes now, half- measures and fallback options and minor tweaks, is gonna take forever to put Gaia back on her feet. But Los Braceros Ultimos is all about kickass rejuvenation treatment, big results fast!”