Lisica Chapters

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Audio for this episode:

21 – Drift Away

Triquet stands before all of them. Most are seated in chairs beside the workstation but Katrina and Mandy cuddle on the concrete floor in a nest of sleeping bags and Amy, as ever, hurries back and forth from the kitchen bearing drinks one way and empty dishes the other. Triquet nods at Mandy. “Archaeology comes before Atmospheric Sciences so I guess I’ll start. Okay, so my latest project proposal is provisionally entitled ‘Abandoned Artifacts of a Postwar Listening Post,’ but that’s a little too Scientific American for my tastes. I need to bring some kind of sociocultural insight into the paper or I might as well be a day laborer. But interpretation remains, like, so far away. So far. I thought exhuming Maureen Dowerd would solve everything but it just raises more questions. Why did she die? Who killed her? There is absolutely zero mention of anything like that in the last two years of records on board. So it was a secret. But her grave wasn’t. It kind of points more toward foul play than an accident. Or at least a cover-up. I don’t know. What is everyone’s personal favorite scenario so far?”

“Oh, I know.” Jay sits up. “Check it out. Lisica isn’t the isolated listening post the Air Force wants you to think it is. It’s a special forces playground, man. They’ve been sending in the Japanese, the Russians, and now the Chinese? Right? That old bit of the plane we found? Who hasn’t forgotten about that? And that second bunker Maahjabeen found up the coast. Yeah? This place has been contested for ages. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Not really. I mean…” Triquet isn’t really into indulging in Tom Clancy fantasies like this. There just hadn’t been enough reason to, yet. “Okay. You are definitely onto something with all those other loose ends. I was thinking myself more locally, about the beach and the items in the sub, but it’s true. In the big picture we still haven’t investigated nearly any of this island. We have no idea. So what are you saying, Jay? The Russians killed Maureen? And then the Air Force couldn’t record her death because that was all too top secret? Maybe they took those records with them when they left?”

“I don’t like it. How does that account for the buried sub?” Pradeep’s question makes them all frown. “How does anything?”

“You know who knows?” Katrina’s voice has returned to full strength. She lounges against Mandy, sucking on an end of hair. “A very unpleasant, very old lady up in the village. She acted like I owed her something. Like I’d made her some promise before. But I think she was promised something she never got. Who knows what it was. I tried to work out some language with the kids, Triquet. But I’m making like the slowest progress. It’s impossible so far. Like they have a completely different frame of reference and we can’t figure out the way the other one looks at things. Yet.”

“What do you mean yet?” Flavia demands. “You have plans to see them again? Where?”

Katrina holds up a tentative hand. “Remember, Flavia. They hate Wetchie-ghuy as much as you do. The kids were terrified of him, when I mentioned his name.”

“But what does all that old bad blood have to do with Maureen Dowerd?” Triquet shakes their head in despair.

“They always kill the woman, though, don’t they.” Maahjabeen shakes her head, cynical. “An island full of one hundred men and one woman and she is the one who is dead.”

“You aren’t wrong. They had a picture of her, in the village,” Amy recollects.

“And she had blonde hair,” Alonso adds. It was the first thing he ever noticed about the one child he saw, the way their curly hair gleamed in the moonlight.

“Ohhhhh…” Jay and Katrina both groan, rocking back with surprise. “She was stepping out!” Jay crows.

“Fell in love with one of the Lisicans,” Katrina adds. “Had the wrong color baby. Esquibel. Could you tell, during the autopsy, if she’d ever had a child? Or maybe if she was still carrying?”

“No. I didn’t have time for a pelvic exam. We focused up above on the blunt force trauma. And then the rain came.”

“And the old woman up there,” Katrina says, “was like her long-lost daughter… Wow. No wonder she feels betrayed.”

“Or maybe,” Alonso pats the air with a hand. He needs to slow down this rampant speculation before the whole day is wasted. “Maureen Dowerd fell and hit her head and they never wrote it down because she wasn’t ever officially supposed to be here in the first place. Simple explanations, everyone. Let us keep to the simple ones and not turn this into a telenovela.”

“Then why are they blond?” Katrina asks.

Amy appears, holding a tray with diced-up energy bars and a defrosted berry sauce. “I don’t know, maybe from those Russians Jay thinks were crawling all over the island. Snacks?”

Flavia takes a handful. “Or maybe both. We are talking decades or maybe even centuries here. We know this island has been discovered at least like three times: once by the Lisicans, once by the Japanese, and once by the Americans. There is no reason to think it hasn’t been visited by even more.”

But Alonso has had enough. “Speculation, people. Please. Bring Doctor Triquet evidence if you have any. Otherwise, this is the kind of conversation I have with laymen who don’t understand what I can never get past a grant committee. You all know the feeling. Let’s be rigorous here. Doctor Triquet, is there anything you would like to add to your presentation before we move on?”

“No, thank you, Doctor Alonso. I seem to have stirred the pot quite enough.”

Alonso nods at Mandy. “Then Atmospheric Sciences.”

“Well, I can’t tell you much.” Mandy sits up and stretches like a cat. “But I can say that if I was betting on when the storm ends I’d say maybe this afternoon. The rain’s getting warmer, the wind has pivoted out to the west, and it’s just getting ragged. Can you feel it? The rhythm of the storm?”

Alonso nods. “That would be very good news indeed. What can you tell us of any work you may have done in regards to Plexity?”

“Yes, well,” Mandy rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “That’s where the fun comes in. So you’ve been saying, ‘Context, context, provide Plexity context!’ so now I’m like your Queen of context. Katrina’s been helping me plot out my readings as a base timeline and then with those recorded weather stats each day you get all the context you need. Place any organism or ecological subsystem on the timeline and you get the rain opening the flowers and releasing the pheromones and then the bees and the birds and… Well, I don’t know what happens then.” Mandy guffaws into her open hand. “The biologists can tell us. I just wish I could do that AlphaFold thing Flavia keeps talking about, instead of proteins it’d be atmospheric effects and it’d like let me tell you what the daily weather was in the past. That would be fire.”

“Not impossible,” Flavia declares. “In broad strokes, at least. And we do have a hundred years of climate data from like Hawaii and California, do we not? You get me the data and we could start to look at ways to extend our resolution back in time.”

Mandy makes a face. “Oh, there are already tons of recursion models and paleo-climate nerds who just go on and on about this, for sure. I’ll see if Alonso brought enough of the internet to see if any of their work is available. Super mathy stuff, no doubt. But!” Mandy holds up a finger. This is the important thing she needs said. “What I really need is data points, Alonso. I’m not able to do this properly with just that one DIY weather station at the top of the cliff and one down here. I need sensors all over the island. And in the water, too.”

This is the kind of progress he had expected from this meeting. Alonso nods emphatically. “That is a good idea. When the storm ends, perhaps you and Miss Charrad can find a way to add some of your instruments to her buoys.”

Maahjabeen shrugs. “I mean, the base station already records air temperature and windspeed. That is where I tether them to land. We could add, what, a barometer?”

Mandy blanches, unimpressed. “What I’d really like is if you could install some stations on these sea stacks. Really get unfiltered samples from the far horizon. Is that possible? Some day? Maybe?”

Maahjabeen nods. “Yes. It will just require a new arrangement. I have had time to think of what my next move is when the storm is over and I have realized we must paddle the kayaks into the sea cave and keep them down there. It is too difficult up here to fight the way out of the lagoon. The sea cave is a far better entrance into the water. Much better protected. So we will only push out through the lagoon once more and then paddle into the sea cave. Keep them there, then come back up through the tunnels. So whenever we need—”

“Have you forgotten,” Esquibel interposes, “that the tunnels are blocked and you can’t come back up?”

“And have you forgotten,” Katrina asks, “that I just spent half the night with a bunch of native kids who don’t care one bit about your bloody blocked tunnels, mate.”

Maahjabeen shrugs. “This is how I can do what Mandy asked. I could get a weather station on a kayak to a sea stack no problem from down there. Its outlet has splendid access to them. Very safe. I can do my work as intended if the boats are down there.”

“Katrina,” Esquibel says, “I will need you to tell me where that cave was last night the children showed you. You said it was one we don’t know.”

Triquet throws their hands into the air, exasperated now. “You just really aren’t getting the whole, ‘there’s far too many caves in these cliffs for us to block them all’ thing, are you? I get that it’s your training, but please, sister.”

“Alonso.” Esquibel turns away from Triquet, ignoring them. “I can assure you that Maureen Dowerd did not fall and hit her head. This was no accident.”

“Why not? In the dark, the roots tripped me and nearly killed me, didn’t they?”

“The roots did not choke you first. Her throat was so contused it almost looked like she wore a black necklace. But the choking did not kill her. The blow to the back of her head did. And the object that fractured her skull had one straight, even edge. Not even a sharp stone would leave a wound like that.”

The bunker goes quiet. Mandy’s right. The wind and rain are more ragged now, the storm’s remnants chasing the main mass south across the ocean.

“So what I’m saying,” Esquibel continues in a weary voice, “is that we have not only a kidnapper on this island but evidence of a murder. Old, yes, but it is within the bounds of possibility that the murderer is still alive and on this island. And you don’t want me to take any security precautions. What is wrong with you people?”

“Don’t listen to them, Esquibel!” Flavia waves derisively at the others. “I very much want you to close off all the tunnels. Blow them up with explosives! I don’t care.”

“Easy for you to say, Flavia,” Triquet tells her. “None of your work requires access to any of these areas. But ours does. Doctor Daine, you’re acting like this is the first time any of us have been in a dangerous situation. Honey, please. In Honduras my dig was in the middle of a guerrilla war, okay? Alonso knew he was going to a dangerous spot in Central Asia and ended up in a gulag. We know there are risks. We aren’t these pie-eyed innocents you think we are. It’s just we accept some risks in the pursuit of what we do. Science. Just like the medicine you’ve dedicated your life to. Science is why we’re here. The Lisicans are just another risk like getting injured or surviving the storm outside. Ask Maahjabeen which she thinks is more deadly. Getting lost in a storm or interacting with the natives?”

“I was very much hoping,” Alonso says in the awkward silence, “that we could keep this meeting on track. Miss Hsu, do you have any other meteorological observations to share with us? No? Then, moving on. Who is next? The biologists? Amy?”

“Well.” Amy stops moving for once. She puts the stack of dirty dishes on a table and cocks her head, collecting her thoughts. “We were making great headway there right before the storm hit. I think you’d have to agree, Pradeep, Jay, that we were really starting to hoover up a bunch of samples.”

Pradeep only nods. Jay beams and gives a thumbs up.

“Have you noticed,” Alonso asks, “any surprising trends? Broad patterns? Things you maybe did not expect?”

“I mean, that’s everything here.” Amy spreads her hands. “The redwoods aren’t supposed to be here. I discovered a new sub-order of Hymenoptera, ground wasps that may be unique to the island. Jay is like a kid on Christmas morning. He’d bring me new things every day before the storm hit. And I can’t speak for Pradeep any more. He’s in some deep territory.”

“Yes, Pradeep? What is this territory? How deep?”

“Quite deep indeed! About a meter underground, a mycelium signaling network in the grove that talks to the roots of the plants and enriches the soils. It’s been documented elsewhere, but the ones I’ve been looking at here underneath our feet are some of the most robust examples we have of large-scale, cross-kingdom fungal and plant biochemical communication networks. We may also have Animalia agents such as Ariolimax slugs and eriophyid mites that contribute to the—the release of chemical markers that create phase changes in the wider forest. The use of the Dyson reader just allows me to document these changes in realtime. So I will say it is an unalloyed success, Doctor Alonso. Bravo.”

“Yes!” Alonso hauls himself to his feet and points at Pradeep, who beams at him. “This is what I am talking about! This is the gold here! These are the kinds of papers that will show what Plexity is capable of! Publishing world, watch out!”

“Ehh, I don’t understand how you think you’re going to be able to publish any of this work.” Flavia’s face is bleak. “Nobody will ever be able to replicate our work, Alonso. Bespoke operating system. Classified technologies. How will anyone ever peer-review what we are doing? They can’t even visit the island yet or use the readers without signing one of those terrible NDAs. It will take decades. Admit it. We are really only doing this for ourselves.”

“Years, maybe,” Alonso allows. “Not decades. The Dyson reader is slated for release some day, I am sure. And Plexity will be as well. As soon as the patents and trademarks are properly filed. So yes. This will take some time. Many of our most astounding discoveries will have to wait. But long-term, this work is everything. It is the basis for an entirely new science.”

“It’s our retirement,” Miriam amends. She’s been quiet today, letting others fight Esquibel. Also, the LSD still hasn’t entirely left her system. She remains slightly disoriented and she has trouble following the denser details of the conversation. “So A, B, who’s next? Is it me? G? Geologist?”

Flavia points at Alonso. “D for data scientist. Or G for geneticist, which comes before geology. It is Alonso’s turn first.”

“Yes.” Alonso settles back. “The data science here, well, I think most of you have each heard from me how it affects your discipline in particular. In general, it is a large-scale effort, with powerful tools that will derive new findings from huge datasets. So now that we’ve finally got the collection pipeline set up—with apologies to Miss Hsu for the delay in adding her meteorological capabilities—for most of us now our work is entirely about collection. Like ninety percent of our energies should be dedicated to collecting, recording, and characterizing life now for the remainder of our time here. Don’t worry so much about categorization or theory-building at the moment. Let’s inhale this beach and lagoon. Fill our lungs. And I would like it to be an all-hands-on-deck effort. Doctor Daine, if your medical and security issues allow you extra time, please assist in any way that you think may help. Doctor Triquet, if you can provide a human, archaeological framework to our work, to please remind us that we always see everything through a flawed, human lens. That is really why you are here. Because there is no such thing as a direct connection to nature. It all comes through our imperfect senses and our poorly-formed biases and flawed perspectives to be considered by our fallible brains. So I find the work you are doing in the sub as important as any other. We need to know what this island does to people, no? And what they do to it. Also, if you are ever free, I am sure Miriam could use more help with the digging.”

Flavia holds up a hand. “I am sorry. But using me as some kind of untrained field helper is a terrible use of resources. I will stay here in the bunker, safe and sound, and keep making sure all the code works as intended so all our machines keep running as needed. I can promise you it is a full-time job. And the rest of my hours… I am tired. I need sleep.”

“Yes, I am not much use myself,” Alonso agrees. “But I am feeling better. Did you notice I can stand like a real person again without a cane? I mean, not all day, but…”

Esquibel lifts Mandy’s hand like the winner of a boxing match. “The magic hands of our physical therapist here!”

Mandy demurs. “Oh, I’ve hardly done anything yet.”

“Yet?” Alonso pales. “That means it will get harder?”

Mandy smiles wickedly at him. “Just you wait.”

Alonso nods. “Yes, I will wait, you sadist. I will wait until I have about seventeen glasses of wine in me.” The thought of it deflates him and he finds his chair again. “Now I am the one who must apologize for taking us off track. Eh. Where were we?”

“G for geology?” Amy asks.

“Yes. Miriam. Please.” Alonso rubs his eyes as his wife begins her presentation. He sighs, hoping the concussion’s headaches aren’t back. Just a moment’s rest…

Miriam stands, a bit wobbly, a philosophical air possessing her. “Allow me to take you back to the early days of planet Earth, when the skies were red and lava ran like rivers from volcanoes. It was a time of great change, when—”

“Oh, god,” Flavia exclaims. “Why does every geologist have to start their talk like this? Numbers. Tell me the numbers. How old?”

Miriam makes a face at Flavia. “Fine. Let us begin one hundred ninety million years ago with the formation of the Pacific Plate, which is the tectonic plate under nearly all of the Pacific Ocean. Now we know that hot spots punched through the mantle to create isolated archipelagos like the Hawaiian Islands, but the model I’ve created here allows for an ancient upthrust that was initially a single event. Just one island, aye? And at first it didn’t reach the surface. It was just a raised underwater platform of coral and shellfish, slowly depositing calcium over the igneous roots. So after several more eons lava found its way up this tube again and this column had a second upthrust in the relatively near geologic past, perhaps quite near, like within ten thousand years. This is when it broke the surface of the waves, capped by limestone.” Her thoughts are beginning to run more fluidly now, the foundations established. “Regarding Plexity… there are countless examples of interactions in the geology literature such as alkalines leaching into water and changing the composition of plant life. Now I can… Well… Uh… Depending on a number of factors outside my control…” She locks her neck so that she doesn’t turn to glare at Esquibel, “I may be able to conduct mineralogical examinations to provide some, eh, fruitful matrices upon which much of the life here flourishes.” Miriam looks at a fixed point over their heads on the back wall and says stiffly, “I will only say that the study of this island’s interior would be… a rather significant event in modern geology.”

Miriam sits back down. Her brain hasn’t stopped spinning yet. This entire dim rainy day-long conference has an air of unreality to it. She is just so tired. All she wants is to sleep this day away.

“Who is next?” Amy calls out. “Medicine? Or math first? And what are we calling Katrina?”

“My maths.” Flavia stands, more formal than the others, holding her laptop. “Alonso, I know I said the beta wouldn’t be ready for testing until next week but I lied. It will be tomorrow. After these last few days with the storm and nothing else to do I have made tremendous progress. Now, when we go live it won’t have any of your precious modules, this will just be the core program…”

“Of course. Of course,” Alonso leans forward and blows Flavia kisses. “But Flavia. You are a genius. I cannot believe you are able to deliver the beta. You did it in like twenty days. What a miracle.”

She holds up a hand. “Talk to me about miracles after we debug it. But no, like you said, Plexity is only a thousand lines of code. Not so tough. Just a tricky little puzzle. Most of the tough problems were already solved years ago in bioinformatics. I will just have to keep my cellular automata for some other fancy project instead.”

“Let us work on this as soon as the meeting ends, Flavia. I am very eager to see how you resolved a few of those pathways. Were you able to keep the richness of the data? You were talking about the analog signals of the Dyson readers…”

“Yes. More of my off-the-shelf modules. These inspired from soundwave design programs. You know how they have made such advances in getting digital bits to sound like waveforms. So I was able to repurpose some of those algorithms. But!” Flavia holds her finger straight up like a referee calling a foul. “If you want your precious program to keep running and growing and improving then you will keep me out of the fields and forests like a cartoon character chasing bugs with a bugnet!”

“Yes, Flavia.” Alonso laughs. “Anything for Plexity. I will feed you espresso and noodles myself all day long. Fantastic news. Thank you. Now who did we say was next? Medicine? Doctor?”

Esquibel shrugs. “Medically, we are doing well at the moment. No new injuries. And the storm is forcing us to stay still in here so those of us who were already injured have had time to heal. Our nutrition could be better. I worry about the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Phyto-nutrients. It might start to degrade our physical and mental performance. Just a bit. If we were staying longer I’d say we should plant a garden.”

Jay sits up. “Check this out. What if we start harvesting seaweed from the lagoon? Like as a regular operation? Super healthy. Bull kelp and nori. Lots of compounds we need. And there’s so much we’d hardly make a dent. Also, kelp is the fastest growing plant on the planet. A meter a day. So, it could really help…”

They all turn to Maahjabeen. She crosses her arms. “If I can gain access to the sea cave,” she bargains, “then I will not have time to properly manage the lagoon alone. So perhaps we could discuss some compromises.”

Jay pumps his fist. “Yes! I’d be happy to take over! I’ve been a fisheries manager in the past. You won’t be sorry—”

“But this is all dependent on regular access to the sea cave first.” Maahjabeen’s voice cuts right through Jay’s celebration. They all look to Esquibel.

She sighs and shakes her head. “Okay. How about this. We have planned entries and exits. We secure perimeters and scout our route. Nobody travels alone. We do a bit of self-defense training before anyone goes anywhere. With those basic precautions… I suppose we can learn to live on this dangerous island.”

“Miriam? Triquet? These terms are acceptable? Katrina?” Alonso studies each of their faces. They are all lost in thought.

Then Katrina links arms with the other two who had been mentioned. “Yeh, boss. We’re your underground team now. Maahjabeen, you need to get to the sea cave? Just let us know. The three of us will bring you. I want to talk to the Lisican kids? They talk to all three of us. Triquet wants time in the sub? We help. Miriam wants to dig in the tunnels? We dig!”

“That will slow us down like so much,” Triquet complains. “I’ll never have a full day of work again.”

But now Katrina has seized the initiative in the meeting. “Look. Real talk, Triq. We’re only getting in all these fights about the interior because it’s new and weird and scary and we don’t know what happens next. But I bet you, in a couple weeks at most, all this will just be a memory. And we’ll be like sharing feasts with the Lisicans and we’ll have full access to the whole island and fucking Wetchie-ghuy will be in Lisican jail or whatever. Just like a week or two at the most we need to be careful. Cautious. Right, Esquibel? Just until we can adjust to this new reality. Then we can optimize.”

Esquibel grudgingly nods. “Maybe, Katrina. If we are lucky.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying, baby,” Katrina drawls, winking at Esquibel. “They call me Lady Luck for a reason.”

This elicits laughter from nearly everyone.

Katrina spreads her hands in a dramatic gesture. “Okay, freaks and geeks, you want an update? It’s my turn now. First, I got to say thanks for warming me back up this morning. That was so sweet the way you took care of me and I love you all and owe you all so much. Now, the next thing on my agenda is dance party. We got to celebrate the end of this storm, peeps. If it’s over in the next few hours, then we got to dance ourselves clean. So join me under the trees in the camp tonight and we’ll get us some soul in our souls if you know what I mean.”

“Oh my god, after last night I don’t need another party for like two years,” Flavia groans, tilting her head back. “Maahjabeen. Come on. Tell them. Last night was too much.”

“Yes, Maahjabeen, was it?” Katrina asks, a hair too eagerly. Pradeep burns holes in her, but Katrina giggles his stare away. “Was last night too much? Or was it just right?”

“Ehh…” Maahjabeen looks away. “It was all right. I do not mind the music so much any more. I guess I have grown used to it.”

“Feh.” Flavia flips a hand at her. “Traitor. But be serious now, Katrina. What about your work? What about Plexity?”

“Yeh, okay. So those readers are where I’ve been focusing my energies. Brilliant pieces of gear. Truly. But they’re still lacking a bit in the user experience side of things. I mean, you put a sample in, it flashes red or green, you carry on. The interesting results only emerge when you’re back at the lab putting it all together. But what if there was an app on your phone instead?”

“What?” Flavia is the most surprised one of them all. “What app? I haven’t heard of this. What are you talking about?”

“It just occurred to me, Flavia. We’ve talked about rigging external screens to the thing but why should we? Think about it. There’s no ports in the readers. They’re using encrypted bluetooth to speak to those USB dongles they gave us. So I can hack into the bluetooth and just run a basic app with some like simple data visualization and geotagging and such. You know. An app.”

“You’ve talked a bit about this before,” Pradeep says. “But I couldn’t really see it or how we could use it in tandem with the readers, out in the field where my hands are already full of trowels and collection bags and lights. But yes. Having an app on my phone that would allow me to instantly classify, say the various mycorrhizae… I’ve already been doing a mostly manual version of this and it would save me so much time.”

“Good! Then I’ll bash that together this afternoon. Aw, you look tired, Pradeep. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep. Well, you can take a nap in a bit and when you wake up it’ll be done! I won’t even make it very expensive, but of course there will be in-app purchases and micro-transactions for sure.”

Jay barks out a laugh, the only one who gets it. “Loot boxes yo.”

Katrina giggles. “I mean, a girl’s gotta monetize what she can in this life. Also, I have a thought about how we might use some of our maths, Flavia, to help Mandy develop better weather models. I’m thinking we might be able to emulate virtual weather stations for her at certain distances, using triangulated data and complexity theories. If nothing else, it’ll help refine her models locally.”

“Ai, it sounds like my work is gonna become about the weather,” Flavia observes, “both at the macro level and at the micro. Well. It is time I understood it better.”

“Oh my god that is so sweet,” Mandy says. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by virtual weather stations but, like, whatever help would be huge. I mean, how do you even make a virtual weather station? What’s the point?”

“It’s mostly predictive, particle physics on deterministic paths, acting like waves and currents, right? If we measure a gust of wind at one location, we can have a certain degree of confidence that it carries on over a predictable path. So if we have an accurate enough measurement of the land and sea in this general location, and then I think at minimum three actual real weather stations at wide intervals, we can create a virtual environment of the weather where you could sample it from any point—”

“Well, not any point, Katrina, dear,” Flavia amends. “Nobody brought a cryogenically-cooled supercomputer, did they? We cannot keep track of more than a few hundred data points on the hardware we have here. And we can effectively predict even fewer points. But I’m sure we can improve on Mandy’s data analysis using these techniques, yes.”

“That is wild.” Mandy shakes her head. She knows about virtual atmospheric environments from some of her computation classes in grad school, but she hadn’t thought how she might apply them in the real world. Katrina is utterly brilliant. She must think Mandy is a total dunce. She shakes her head in disbelief. “And that’s something you can just, like, whip up out of thin air?”

Katrina shrugs. “I’ll put it on the list. Also, I’ve been thinking of ways we can re-treat the wall panels in the sub to get away from that lifeless cold war aesthetic. It’s so gray! We need more warmth down there. I know that’s not strictly Plexity-related, but come on.”

“Eek,” Triquet hunches their shoulders. “This is blasphemy. Perhaps some detachable wall coverings or something but please don’t renovate my museum. It’s so… pure.”

Alonso tries to keep his focus on this conversation but their voices are starting to fade out. He is spent and he feels his age again. No. Older. Miriam and Amy remain far more vital than he is. He squeezes his gnarled hands, massaging out the pain. This meeting is interminable. They have spoken about too much and covered too many subjects. It has no clear direction any more. He doesn’t know how to wrap it up. “Okay. It is lunch time. We need to think of ways to… eh.” He waves a hand in surrender. “Enough thinking for a while. Anything else to bring up before we are done?”

Flavia lifts a shy hand. “Only that it is my birthday today, if anyone cares.”

They all cry out in celebration. The youngest ones surge against Flavia, squealing and hugging her. The others hang back, calling out and clapping. She is smothered with affection.

Katrina kisses Flavia again and again. Then she leans back and howls, “And you said no more parties! Ha! Tonight we rage!”

Finally Flavia emerges, hands upraised. “Basta! Basta!”

“How old, love?” Miriam asks. “It’s all about numbers, right?”

Flavia recognizes the jab and smiles. “Only one hundred ninety million years. No. Thirty-one. I am a… what is the word, spinster? now.”

Amy and Miriam laugh long and loud. To them, thirty-one is a whole generation ago. Esquibel links arms with Flavia. “Thirty-one gang rise up.”

Flavia is shocked. “We are the same age? No.”

Esquibel pulls away. “Why? What age did you think I was? Older or younger?”

Flavia can’t answer that. “Ehh. I guess I never thought of it like, like—I mean, Doctor Daine you are so accomplished so I guess I thought you were older—But of course that would be impossible because you look so many years younger than me…”

Esquibel’s laugh is free and easy, everyone’s favorite sound. “Ha! That is a lie! Don’t worry about offending me, Flavia! This face isn’t as fresh as it used to be! And that is fine! I’ve been trying to be an old lady my whole life! Let’s see… You are exactly… 89 days younger than me. There. More numbers for you.”

“That makes your birthday…” Flavia does a quick calculation, “Wait… Christmas Day?”

“The day after. Boxing Day.”

“The thirties are your best,” Miriam says. “Still so much energy but you aren’t a crazy person any more like you were in your teens and twenties. You’re going to survive. You’ve figured out life skills and how to live a daily life but everything is still so fresh and new.”

“Is it?” Flavia asks. “I have never had enough energy and I have never been a crazy person. I am a very normal person and my twenties were not like that. Also, nothing feels new.” She sighs, a melodramatic sound. “I guess I am also an old lady in training.”

“As am I,” Maahjabeen adds. “When I was growing up I hated being a little girl. Nobody listening to a word I’d say. I couldn’t wait to drive a car and shop for my own food. Independence!”

“Should I feel bad,” Katrina asks Mandy, “if I never wanted to grow up and move past the playdates and sleepover stage of life?”

“I’m with you,” Mandy says. “For me, childhood was playing all day in the waves of the north shore. I mean… I never wanted it to end. Getting old scares me.”

Miriam joins them. “Me too! To the young at heart!” Triquet also links arms with them. Jay does too.

They laughingly divide themselves into two groups. Only Katrina registers Maahjabeen pulling Pradeep into the embrace of the old souls. He wears his nervous, brittle smile as they surround him.

“Amy!” Flavia calls out. “You can’t stay in the middle! Alonso! You have to choose! Old or young, eh?”

But Amy is torn. “I can’t decide. Some of me feels so young and some so old. I’m a perfectly-balanced mix, I guess.”

“Ah, coward!” Flavia laughs at her. They all wait for Alonso.

He shakes his head, bemused. “I don’t know… how to fit myself into this idea. I feel… I guess… I think when I was young I was really young, even younger and more innocent than anyone here. My entire identity forever was to be this boy wonder. Remember, Amy? All our professors telling me to grow up? But then… I never did. I am like a sapling who got broken before he ever became a tree. And that makes me feel old. But I feel like… I feel like I never spent any time being an actual man, you know?”

Miriam squeezes his hand. Pradeep offers, “Isn’t that what you are doing right now? Leading this project? Being the patron of this big family? Here’s a manhood to be proud of right here, Alonso.”

“Salud. Thank you, my friend. Those are kind words…” But Alonso’s final sentence trails off. He is spent.

“Aww. Our big patron has had a big day now and it looks like he needs a big nap.” Amy steps into a cell and retrieves a blanket. “Let’s put him right back in the cell where we slept. The cots are still set up. Whose cell is this, anyway? Who did we evict?”

“Maahjabeen.” Katrina pounces on these opportunities like a cat with a mouse. Her eyes dart playfully over to where Maahjabeen stands with Pradeep. They step slightly away from each other.

“Oh?” Amy shakes her head. “So sorry to push you out. Where’d you end up sleeping last night?”

Maahjabeen just waves her hand. “I was fine. I just found a spot of my own.”

But Amy hugs her in apology. “You poor dear! You must have suffered so!”

It takes all of Katrina’s willpower not to say something.

Maahjabeen breaks away to approach Alonso. She places a hand on his arm. “Doctor, can I offer you a hand?”

“Yes… Miss Charrad…” Alonso allows her and a few others to haul him to his feet. Now his old injuries are throbbing again. Ah, well. He glimpsed health and happiness these last few days. It will be a long road back, but he is most certainly on that road now.

Mandy registers his grimace. When they get him settled, she will kneel at his bedside and put her hands on his feet again. This is a really good time for Tui Na, although she doesn’t like the damp chill in the air. Never conducive to pliable muscles and tendons. Scar tissue seems to shrink in such conditions. But there will still be things she can do to get things flowing again in his extremities.

Also, she’s still got a bit of the old MDMA afterglow coursing through her. Touching things still seems like the solution to all the world’s problems. In fact, wouldn’t deep intimate contact also be the solution to Alonso’s problems? Isn’t that how healing works?Mandy doesn’t know. But she knows who would. Katrina. “Hey… I was just thinking about working on Alonso, you know. But like, both inside and out. Not just the scars in his feet but like the scars in his brain. Those are probably even worse and we should be trying to do something about them too.”

Katrina turns surprisingly sober eyes to Mandy and she belatedly remembers Katrina’s brother Pavel. “Yeh. I think about it all the time. You know, torture is something that happens once and then it like repeats itself again and again in the victim whenever it can. And they can’t stop it. Sometimes I wish I could just cut it straight out of their heads. The trauma circuit. Just snip. Gone.”

“Yeah. Well, I was wondering if you knew at all about MDMA for PTSD. War veterans and rape victims and everyone.”

Katrina throws her hands helplessly into the air. “Of course. I’m like an expert on guided trips! I know drugs. I tried to get Pavel to do it but he wouldn’t. Not with his little sister. And he just doesn’t believe in it. So… I mean, if someone doesn’t believe an experience like that can help them then it won’t.”

“But Alonso…”

Katrina gapes at Mandy, then laughs. “Oh my god. You think? I guess I… I mean, maybe it was just really age-ist of me but I honestly didn’t think to ask him. It was such a fight with Pavel I just didn’t… Huh. Silly me. Hey, Alonso…”

Katrina and Mandy follow the others into Maahjabeen’s cell.

“Yes?” Alonso grunts from the cot. Amy is tucking a sleeping bag under his chin while Maahjabeen discreetly gathers her things for a bit of a move to another cell.

“Let’s talk drugs, mate.” Katrina sits beside Alonso on the side of the cot while Mandy kneels at his feet. She takes them into her hands and he groans.

“Drugs. Sure. I always loved drugs.”

Katrina claps. “Good man. Have you ever had Molly?”

Alonso opens his eyes to frown at Katrina. Now what kind of crazy plan is she talking about? “I never touched her.”

Miriam laughs, leaning in. “No, Zo. Molly is MDMA. What we called ecstasy back in the day. Alonso here was a major consumer of dance party drugs in the late 80s. We all were.”

“Eh. Ecstasy. Yes. I would take some and start kissing everyone. They always called me the Painted Whore.”

“Remember when you sang Happy Birthday Mr. President to Professor Bynum and grinded on his lap for his birthday?”

“Oh, god,” Alonso laughs. “I almost lost my department chair.” He sobers, thinking of the implications of their words. “But, what? You want me to take some now? I’m telling you, I just need some sleep. Then I’ll be better.”

“Not now, but maybe when you’re ready. There’s been a huge amount of documentation about how MDMA can dissociate you from traumatic emotions. You can look at them from a distance and build a new relationship with your interior reality.” Katrina knows. She’s seen it happen again and again. She’s felt it herself.

But now Alonso understands what’s expected of him. “You want me to revisit all the torture? But this time on drugs? Ah. Ladies. I can’t think of something I want to do less.”

“All I’m saying,” Katrina holds up both hands, “is that there is a significant amount of healing it can offer. Like Mandy’s hands. It only hurts at first and then it gets better. And the hurt with Molly is only the anxiety you feel beforehand. When it gets started there’s no pain at all.”

“Huh.” Now Alonso is closed off. He studies them all with heavy-lidded eyes. “That is what you think.”

Katrina pats his leg. “Well. Like I said, not now. When you’re ready, maybe. I got to see some of this Painted Whore in action, if nothing else.”

Alonso giggles, then allows himself to drift away.