Tag: the visitor from outside

Fighting through the Not-Covid Plague! Now my oldest kid has it! Yay!

So today I got to see the inside of the Sentinel Dump for the first time. This primitive phone I was given ‘rang’ for the first time, and that was fun; I almost completely missed it. Fortunately, I figured it all out quickly enough to take the ‘call.’ It was Osborn, and he wanted me to know that I could just go to the Dump at any time I liked. My morning was free, so I went.

You know, you read in books just how primitive the 20th century was, but you don’t really think of what that means in real life. I was expecting some piles of trash and maybe a shack or two, but the Sentinel Dump is huge. Which makes sense, because it was getting so much trash from everywhere. What I didn’t expect was how loud it was. Osborn’s put up soundfences in various spots, and you can see why once you’re past them. Everywhere I turned, there was another hulking mass of ancient industrial equipment (and I mean ancient. Like, pre-electronic, sometimes), wheezing and growling and whining everywhere. And they’d move on their bases, rattling and shuddering, like they were just about to fly into pieces the moment you looked at them.

I don’t know what they were doing. Taking large bits of junk and breaking them into smaller ones, mostly. People would dart between the machines, dumping pieces out of baskets and putting them into hoppers, heedless of the oils and ichors that might get smeared on their clothes and faces. And the smells! The air tasted of metallic grease and slime, and I took with eagerness the face mask offered to me by a Dump employee here to show me the site. She was eager to help (they all were), but I left as soon as I possibly could, and breathed a real sigh of relief when I came away from that place, and could breathe cleaner air. Which tells you a lot about how filthy and nerve-wracking the Sentinel Dump is.

Lets see who buries who, shall we?

“The USOld wasn’t like we get told now, you know.” Zealia told me that fact with slightly horrified glee. Or maybe slightly gleeful horror, like it was some sort of whispered folk tale. “They weren’t always the good guys. They did dark things.”

“Well, sure,” I replied, wishing I could eat in this library. These books were pretty fragile. “Slavery, Old Devil Wilson, the True Gaians. We learned about all of that in school.”

“Sure, but I don’t mean those things. I mean secret things.” Zealia tapped one book on the table. “Like the stories in that one. It’s a bunch of transcripts about some operations the USOld did two hundred years ago against a bunch of cults.”

I thought about “Cults, two hundred years ago… oh. The Reds?”

“No! That’s what I thought, too, but this is even earlier. Before World War II. They were local cults, not taking orders from the Great Provider or anything –”

Right about then I snorted. “I hope not! Come on, you know they made that guy up for the teracts.” 

Zealia waggled her hand. “Sort of yeah, sort of no. The Great Provider really existed, but he probably didn’t sleep in a pool of blood. But that’s not important! Forget him! This is about why we have the Sentinel Dump.”

‘The door dilated!’

I started back up on the second leg of my survey this morning. It actually took shorter than I expected, but only because I hadn’t really understood just how big the Sentinel Dump is. Maybe I should have taken the ‘garbage dump for half of New England’ thing more seriously.

You can’t see much of the dump from the road, but you can smell it from a mile off. It’s not an intense reek, but it’s powerful. The aroma gets past any kind of mask or filter, and moves right into your nose. As to how it smells? I can’t describe it, just break it down to individual scents. Lots of chemicals, a bunch of decay, things that were on fire that shouldn’t have been — I haven’t smelled anything like this since my pre-college Service. We were dismantling a pre-Reform refugee work facility, and it was one of the ones where they tossed anybody who died into a chemical pool in the basement… well. It’s not something you expect to encounter while doing your year, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, from what I can see of the dump, it’s got at least one hill that looks perfect for the towers. It’s big and it’s bare, and I’d like to have a third reason for symmetry’s sake, but I don’t need more than ‘big’ and ‘bare.’ That it’s also ‘foreboding’ isn’t really relevant in this case. It’s a century’s old garbage dump. It’s going to be foreboding.

Well, that’s not good.

June 16
So, there’s a problem.

I got the weekly data squirt from Outside, and when it comes to my actual job nothing’s changed. I still have a week to finish things up, and we’re all ahead of the timeline, so that’s not going to be a problem for me. I’m not going to lie ( mean, I can’t lie here, right? It’s still a felony); I was worried I’d have to switch paths again, only this time at the last minute. Finding out we’re good made me feel good.

That state lasted, right up to the moment where I saw the time-sensitive message from Memetic Health. They’ve flagged my journal records, asking for clarification on my dream reports. Apparently my numbers are high enough to be a potential concern. Accordingly, they’ll need to know what self-therapy and palliative care techniques I’ve been using, and whether I’ve found a primary information therapist yet to keep an eye on my status. I’m still cleared to work, but I need to let them know if any larger problems show up regarding my difficult dreaming.

Considering that I don’t remember reporting any difficult dreaming, I’d say that one definitely has.

It takes shape.

Well, that put a different spin on my lunch. Now that he pointed out, I could taste the subtleties of meat that hadn’t come out of a lab. “This is all real? And not costing an arm and a leg? Why the heck don’t you have more tourists?”

“Because we are officially off the modern maps?” Bill replied. “After the F-SOBs put down the Free State and transported the surviving rebels, they wrecked any navpoints that survived the uprising. We’re lucky they didn’t break up the roads.” He sipped his coffee, and shrugged. “Even when Reform really got going, this area was always low priority. We’re only getting Weaved in now because everybody else in the NewSA already had.”

“Well, there’s some parts of the north that won’t get Weaved until we start resettling people up there,” I observed. “But, yeah, this is the last part of the Original States that’s getting taken care of. I dunno why the Bureau waited this long, either. I guess it’s ‘Ze Feds do as ze Feds do, Mistair?’”

Bill snickered, but I think it was just because of my bad becky accent; I doubt he recognized the line itself. I am really way out in the sticks here.

Backfilling!

Spent the day doing research in Aylesbury proper. Which is to say, I sat in a musty-smelling library, looking through records on a computer that was old enough to be my grandfather, and even flipping through physical maps. Physical! They were so old, I was terrified to even touch them. Had to be done, though. This whole area wasn’t exactly a technological wonderland even before the Mistakonic Free State rebellion, and what modern gear was here got destroyed by the rebels themselves. They just didn’t care for technology, it seemed — or a bunch of other things, very much including people.

It’s funny. I remember hearing about the rebellion when I was a kid, and I couldn’t figure out why my parents were almost… happy to hear about it. It wasn’t until later that I realized that they were happy to hear about anything bad. I guess they didn’t really believe that Reform was going to be real until then, huh?

Anyway: primitive library. Primitive library. So primitive, there was even a librarian. I guess that makes sense. I mean, physical books have to be put back after people are done with them, and what happens if they’re not put back in the right place? You’d never find anything, then.

I realized, like an idiot, that I had missed something obvious with the dates. But I can make it work.

After lunch, I went on the second part of my grand loop. The rain was done, and the sun was out; I hoped that would mean prettier countryside, if only because everything would be fresh.

It did not. Mosquitos everywhere. The old kind, too, the ones that aren’t allergic to humans. Either that, or the one that got into my car somehow was suicidal; the damned thing bit me at least a half-dozen times before I could swat it. I almost crashed the car in the process, too. The vehicles inside here have barely enough autopiloting to maintain a constant speed, and you still have to steer.

…Did I really call this place ‘inside?’ Yikes. Anyway, I decided to cut the trip short, before I ended up in a ditch full of demonically croaking frogs. I’m not exaggerating that, by the way. They really do sound the way you’d imagine devils would, if devils sang base. I’ll finish the second-second part tomorrow. I’m not really behind, if it is true that I won’t have to fight the locals to get the survey data I’ll need…

Yeah. It got a little complicated in the USNA, for a while. You feel me?

Had a working breakfast with Bill to discuss Frye’s… offer, I suppose. He surprisingly thought it was a good idea. “You gotta understand this place, Ray,” he told me. “This isn’t like the Weave, where everybody’s hooked up with everybody else, all the time. People lump up in here. We’ve got networks. Frye isn’t in mine, and neither are a lot of the people he knows.”

“So, he’s some kind of official, then?” I frowned, because that didn’t sound right at all — and then I had a horrified thought. “Wait. He wasn’t a, ah…”

“Rebel?” Bill bit his lip to see my reaction to that particular word. “This ain’t the Thirties, Bill. The snoops are gone, buddy. Not that they liked coming in here, anyway.”

“Sorry. Old habit.” I shook my head. “Besides, they must’ve transported all the Free State rebels to one of the colony worlds after they quashed the rebellion.”

“Probably,” agreed Bill. “Before my time, though. I got cycled in here the year after the clean-up sweeps. All the old F-SOB guys still around swore up and down that they put everybody hinky on a one-way trip to Zheng Ho, and would they lie to us?” He used his toast to scoop up the last of his fried eggs. “We never found any mass graves, so they were probably telling the truth.”

Finally. A name!

At any rate, while we were waiting for the charge to go through, he actually asked me a question! “You’re that guy from the Feds, ain’t you?” (I’m not going to try to duplicate his accent, which was so thick it sounded like a joke.) “The one doing the survey?”

“Yes, I am!” I replied, putting on my I’m-from-the-government-but-we’re-all-better-now face. “I’ll be going through the area this week, looking for good sites for the Weaving hookups. Not on private property!” I hastened to add. “Not without permission, at least. We’ll be putting them up on public lands.”

“That’s good,” the owner told me. At first I had thought he was an older man, but as I got a closer look I realized that was mostly him prematurely graying. “That’s real good. Lots of stuff there, Outside. Good to get some of that on here. Whatcha looking for your, eh, sites? Maybe a few of us could set you right on where to put your towers up.”  He gave me a smile; God help me, but I expected him to be missing half his teeth. “You’ll find people around here’ll be right eager to help out.”

Well, that sounded unexpectedly promising. I’d been expecting to have to overcome resistance to the Reweaving process by the locals. “Mostly, I need to find suitable high ground. Nothing too elevated, but it’s got to be stable. Small hills are good, especially if they’re bare. The fewer trees we have to cut down, the better.”

He laughed at that, harder than I expected. “Bare hills? You’ve come to the right place, Mister Fed! We got plenty of those! And we’ve sussed out every one around here worth sussing, too.”