Matt sat looking at Ted, who stood before the window, right of desk, left of hearth, looking into the distance, past Coal Canyon and the waste of the flushed reservoir, beyond the weather-hewn ridge, beneath the near mountain. The Conductor was not using his optic, but seemed to be thinking in some topographical way gleaned from his nearly half a century rounding up the last of the Uplinked human heard and, in a karmic balance, feeding the marooned.
Ted opened his wrist watch expectantly, and so Matt began the last series of computer-watch interfaces that would grace—or curse—Earth among now living men. A red dot appeared on the topographical window of the screen, on the inside of the clam-shell lid, that was almost large enough to occupy the back of that weathered hand. Ted drew his rotary optic with his right hand, inserted it under his single silicon brow implant, visible only as the absence of an eye brow at first glance. Once inserted, the optic was calibrated by the wearer’s first finger sliding the silicon dial behind his ear. The line of sight beams each interfaced with the watch screen in three colors: red, yellow and green, as the optic extended in three telescopic evolutions. Once green dilated, the optic retracted to a squint, opal cat’s eye, with tri-color pupil. [0]
As Matt was observing this with some awe, he briefed Ted:
“Travis Branch, 7th generation Coloradan. Uplinked and certified for Uplift with wife, June, and daughter Betty in 2071, at Granby. With passing of wife and daughter in a flash flood in 2081, Travis elected to remain and has been removing fence line. He is stacking the last of it now. He has got something else going on down there. But the local drones under my network have gone dead or whackado. The Ilion Dawn Uplift Steward has not received a request for Uplift, or for Remission. [1] You are tasked with conducting Uplift or Remission, according to the wishes of Mister Branch.”
Ted yawned, oddly, removed his optic, which caused his uplink port to glow dully blue under his wavy white hair grown to his shoulders. Ted wore a gray tactical vest & tactical cap—such an ancient uniform of control—which had various tools secured in molded velcro slots: Uplift key, that was too near a Phillips’ had screwdriver to inspire much confidence in the technology, a Remission key, again too like a pair of needle nose pliers to inspire transhuman confidence in Matt’s curation mind, his dumdum slugs in 4 short 3-round bandoleers.
Below his Conduction belt featured an incredible buckle of titanium, called the Pyreon, which was detached for Uplift. On the left was a forestry machete, a classic Kershaw. On the right was the holstered dumdum gun, holding a ribbon of three shells, and the optical explant in its case.
“Questions,” gasped Matt, shocked at how out of focus THE penultimate Conductor was in person, the man that seemed like a wizard on screen trace, now diminished to a whimsical gnome in person.
“Travis’ Faith?”
Matt sighed, knowing he had left the one negative for last and that Ted sensed it, “It was originally, at Uplink, Uplift, an existential belief in science and a future with his family, among the planets and moons, to seed the stars and eventually reseed earth in a new balance. He never recertified when he opted out, which is troublesome and why he heads the list. The way he is working down there—building a sod house into a hillside, I think—I suspect he is hoping for Remission.
‘Get with it nerd Auditor. You thought he was droning out but he was ahead of you—not his first time…’
“I wish I could have provided timely intelligence on what the handful of people across this canyon have been doing for the last year. But first the focus was all on operations elsewhere. Then, when I had to manage my own backyard, I found that the drones were failing or going whackado, that the Steward has stopped asking for intelligence and seems to be reliant on orbital means…”
Ted looked at him with a hard narrow eye, and raised his finger to his lips for silence.
“The Steward knows what he is doing, some rebel transhuman, or even a feral, might have salvaged a listening device—think of all of the street light cameras out in the rurals and burbs. Think the military missed not one out of a billion?”
Ted, while saying this, was shaking his head “no” as if what he was saying was total bullshit, and then gave another narrow glance at the desk top array, as if it could not be trusted.
Matt nodded, “Okay,” or at least that’s what he thought it meant.
Ted gave him a friendly look, winked with his unaugmented left eye, and asked, “Have any aspirin. This optical implant has been killing me for twenty years now, why I take it out, can’t stand the pressure on the top branch of the nerve for long. So I memorize the topography.”
“Sure, how are you elsewhere. My aid station is first rate, plan on leaving the low tech supplies in a cache before Final Uplift when this house bomb self-detonates.”
Ted was matter-of-fact, “Knees are shot but braced, back too, both hips torn—have to stand on the ETV, which is charged thanks to your great station—way to go maintaining the solar array. Most auditors let that lax and then you’re always on half charge.”
Matt led Ted down stairs, beneath the wonderfully chinked beams of the HQ cabin, past the storage rooms, basement wood stove and the woodpile, and outside to the charging station, right next to the well.
There stood the most overbuilt, ostentatious, piece of copaganda [4] artifact ever designed and committed by Late Stage Metastatic Western Civilization.
The ETV Conduction Model, was a Honda motocross frame, powered by a 32 battery undercarraige, seemingly built around two old Jeep Gladiator tires.
“Fucking stupid! Really—it looks too gay by half, like an ode to off-roading executed by some Tech Mogul carpet surfing homo!”
“It weighs two grand, Bro!” chortled Ted, like a giddy youth, reminding Matt that the orphan boy recruited at 15 loved this overbuilt piece of comic book gear like Matt’s own Granddad had adored his 2023 Dodge Charger, last gas guzzler of that storied line.
“My bad, okay—cool in a comic book way. The saddle bags are practical Kevlar, I give you that. And the tires are salvage and make the bike frame wide enough that the batteries are double stacked under the running board side by side—all throttle control?”
“Yezzir, shift wit da thumb.”
Matt grinned at seeing a sixty-year-old teenage man-hunter recalling a few childhood years on the skateboard, and understood the Conductor’s attachment to the machine.
The vehicle came to life as it was rocked off the quad kick stands and Matt spoke levelly over the easy hum of the thing, “My regards to Mister Branch, and my thanks for the work on the fence-line.”
Speaking to someone other then Matt, that ear possibly belonging to the ETV, Ted nodded and said, “Lez go say hey ta Travis, Baby.”
And the hideous machine with its fey rider were off down the mountain into the pines, the breeds of which Matt had yet failed to identify as he obsessed over the last inventory of human technology.
‘One week to nowhere,’ he thought in his troubled mind’s eye.
…
Notes
-0. Matt would not bother the Conductor with his nerdish deduction that his optic was based on the now extinct three color traffic light. Though the thought did infect his mind that the optic, was a traffic light of a relentless kind.
-1. An orbital observation post scheduled to remain on station, with crews rotating in from Moon Base #3 annually, through 2199, supposing it survives the expected near miss of the comet in 2097. Matt supposed station morale was currently at a new low as they awaited death by ice and fire from the Galactic Core.
-2. Remission is a request that may be made by any Uplinked person, who is, by definition, transhuman, to be returned to a natural state by the removal of the Uplink. A conductor performed Remission, Uplift, and, for those who had never been uplinked, commonly called ferals, delivery of Humanitarian Daily Rations.
-3. Electric Terrain Vehicle
-4. A secret notion of Matt’s, that police were bad and had been wedded together with the ancient art of propaganda to achieve a weird beneficent delusion, that the policeman, the company, the government, were your friend.
