After the Collapse

flora and fauna of various biomes pretty deftly. But riding Zoysia’s feed, I realized I knew squat.

The first thing she and Benno did was to go into God Mode, with Noclip Option, Maphack, Duping and Smurfing thrown in. That much I could follow—barely.

But after that, I was just along for the dizzying ride.

Zoysia and Benno took down Los Braceros Ultimos like a military sonic cannon disabling a pack of kittens. Racing around the globe in augie space, they undercut all the many plans of the Pinatubo-heads, disabling rogue effectuators and even using legal machines in off-label ways, such as to immobilize people in meatspace. I think the wildest maneuver though was when they stampeded a herd of springboks through the remote Windhoek encampment where some of the conspirators were operating from. The eco-agitators never knew what hit them.

The whole roundup lasted barely an hour. I found myself back in my familiar and yet somehow strange- seeming bedroom, actually short of breath and sweaty. Zoysia and brother Benno were unruffled.

“Now, Crispian,” said my Aunt sweetly, no sign of the moderate outlaw blood she had spilled evident on her perfect teeth or nails, “I hope you’ve learned that privileges only come to those who have earned them, and know how to use them.”

“Yes’m.”

“Perhaps if you hung out a little more with your brother, and consented to allow him to mentor you….”

I turned to glare at Benno, but his homely, unaggressive expression defused my usual impatience and dislike. Plus, I was frankly a little frightened of him now.

“Yes’m.”

“Very well. I think then, in a few years, given the rare initiative and skills you’ve shown—even though you chose to follow an illegal path with them—you should be quite ready to join us in ensuring that people do not abuse FarmEarth.”

And of course, as I’ve often said to Anuta, wise and sexy Aunt Zoysia predicted everything just right.

Which is why I have to say goodbye now.

Something somewhere on FarmEarth is wrong!

ESCAPE FROM NEW AUSTIN

The song was a few years older than Amy Gertslin, but it still spoke to her and her plight.

“Redneck Woman,” by Gretchen Wilson.

Amy sang along to the tune pumping through the wireless earbuds of her fifth-generation iPod, the model that held 50,000 songs in a unit the size of a Triscuit cracker, which Amy wore on a necklace of living synthetic seaweed.

“‘Cause I’m a redneck woman, and I ain’t no high-class broad. I’m just a product of my raisin’, and I say ‘hey y’all’ and ‘yee haw’!”

Amy’s skinny fifteen-year-old arms and legs flailed about as she emulated the playing of various air- instruments. She indulged in high kicks and thunderous stomps, weird line-dancing shuffles and slides. Plainly, she had a lot of pent-up energy to release.

The door to Amy’s bedroom opened just as she was bellowing out the line about knowing all the words to every Tanya Tucker song. In the doorway stood her father, Batch Gertslin.

Batch was short for Batchelder: a maternal family name used as a given name in this instance. The Gertslins descended in part from the famed Boston Batchelders, bioindustry pioneers. A branch of the family, verifying the legendary strength of the Boston-to-Austin cultural axis, had relocated to the former capital of Texas a couple of generations ago. So although Amy and the rest of her family were Texas natives, they also boasted a rich Agnostica pedigree.

Only fitting, since Austin was nowadays an integral if non-contiguous part of Agnostica, an azure island in the crimson sea of Faithland.

Batch Gertslin possessed a somewhat moony face, shadowed by a messy thatch of black hair and generally expressive of an amiable curiosity and frisky intellect. But now he was definitely irked.

“Amy! You’re bringing the ceiling in my office down!”

Batch Gertslin was a freelance ringtone, screen-wallpaper, emoticon and dingbat designer, and worked from home.

Amy pretended not to hear. “What?!”

“Turn that music off!”

Batch’s face was shading into purple—a nice bi-national mix of red and blue, actually—and so Amy dropped her pretense of non-comprehension. A flick of her tongue against her Bluetooth dental implant controller deactivated the iPod. Her earbuds resumed their default task of ambient sound enhancement and noise filtering.

Batch’s face regained a measure of composure and normal coloration. “Thank you. Listen, Amy. Your mother and I don’t ask very much of you. You’re almost an adult, we realize, and deserving of being treated as such. For the most part. But this senseless caterwauling has got to stop. It’s most annoying.”

Amy felt her own face coloring now, heating up with anger. “‘Senseless caterwauling!’ You’re talking about some of the greatest music ever made! The music I love!”

Batch advanced into the room, holding out his hands in a paternally placating gesture. “I know you don’t like any of the music your mother and I enjoy, Amy. That’s only natural between generations. After all, you weren’t raised on classic acts such as Eminem and Linkin Park and Ol’ Dirty Bastard the way your mother and I were. Those old-school performers and their modern heirs are just not for you.”

“Damn straight! You know I hate all that emo-crunk-harsh-metal shit! Classic country-western is my zome!”

“Fine, fine. But why do you have to favor the, ah, more downmarket acts in that genre? Couldn’t you at least try some of those other artists I’ve suggested. Lyle Lovett, k. d. lang, Alison Krauss—”

“Oh, Dad! You’re making my neurons go all apoptosis! Those wimps, those feebs, those posers, those zygotes! Charlie Daniels would eat them all for breakfast and still be hungry enough to swallow Shania Twain whole.”

Batch assumed a dreamy look. “Shania Twain. What a hottie. Now there was a singer….”

“Ugh! Dad, I promise not to rattle the plaster anymore. Just leave me alone now. Unless you had something else to say—”

“I do. Your mother wants you downstairs now to help with dinner.”

“Why can’t Hilary do it?”

“Your little brother is busy studying for his Virus Construction finals. And besides, he helped last night.”

“Arrrrgh! Okay, I’m coming!”

Batch left, and Amy waited the maximum amount of time before she knew she would receive a second notice to show up in the kitchen. Only then did she grudgingly tromp downstairs.

Phillipa Gertslin stood by the methane-fueled gas range, stirring a pot of free-range-turkey chili. Phillipa’s parents had been —still were—a famous team of young-adult writers, whose current series—involving a budding teenaged paleontologist trapped by accident of birth into an intolerant Faithland community—was a best-seller all across Agnostica. They had named their daughter in honor of Philip Pullman and his quintessential Agnostica fictions.

This evening Phillipa wore loose white cotton trousers and a plain black short-sleeved cotton top. For the nth time, Amy sized up her mother’s slim figure, wondering if her mother’s decidedly non-voluptuous shape was to be her lot too. Why couldn’t Philippa Gertslin have had an endowment of Dolly Parton magnitude to pass on to her daughter, or at least one of Shelby Lynne proportions? Oh, well, Amy would just have to go in for an outpatient boob job when she came into her majority next year.

“Mom, you look like some kind of robot sushi chef! Don’t you ever feel like glamming it up a little?”

Phillipa regarded Amy’s own embroidered red synthetic shirt, rhinestone-studded denim pants, and hand-