Forever
To Go
A Jeep rumbled across the reserve. I dropped the pile of grass I'd been sucking dew out of. A Jeep? Moving? None of us could believe it. Every vehicle in Moneyland – and there had to have been, like, 400 vehicles – had been a statue, a stone. Even if they had keys in them, none of us had been able to start the engines. Seeing the Jeep approach was like seeing the heads on Easter Island come to life.
It was 6.40 in the morning and the permanent summer holiday sun meant thin light and crisp air. We'd gone to sleep complaining and hoping and scheming and wondering where the howling dogs were coming from as we lay in a pile of bean bags. We couldn't stand to sleep in our mansions, all haunted and lonely. Sleeping under the stars allowed us to huddle like a pile of bear cubs. Sometimes we slept on a mound of bean bags, sometimes on a trampoline and I would read my 50 Fierce Females book of girlpower. Chan and Esther, sharing a Frozen sleeping bag designed for an 11 year old girl, were the last to stir.
Omar had been prowling in the night, all restless without his Ritalin, and he'd left me a pile of stuff he'd harvested– again, pumpkins and – GROSS – what looked like a handful of tadpoles.
As the Jeep approached, I sucked on a crumpled can of energy drink, found a mouthful of liquid, and got into a boxing stance ready to fight the invasion.
Anya parked at the edge of the sandpit, left the engine running, climbed down from the Jeep. The stench of carbon monoxide made me salivate. There was a little oil burning on the engine, too. It smelled of warmth and confidence and the protection of steel and fuel. Machines can outrun nature, outrun disasters. Machines have heaters. Machines are comfort, safety. Machines come with this word Eli used in this sermon he bored us with after dinner, dominion. Machines mean we have dominion over the land.
I could see Adam in the passenger seat. I stood with my eight friends. No one had made me leader, but I was the angriest. I was owed the most. My period was coming up in about 13 days and I couldn't WAIT to flush out Adam's residue, and if my period didn't arrive, I'd just leave. I'd pay the mechs $200K, find the exit panel in the glass and GTFO.
Anya sounded the conch noise on her org.
I sensed something dodgy but Fatima walked right up to the big girl and started blurting jokes. 'You guys come to play Yahtzee? We got Yahtzee if– '
'Our leader, he is coming,' Anya said. She was reading off her hologram. It was obvious Adam had written a script for her.
I folded my arms and tossed my fringe back over my head confidently. 'Leader? Him? Seriously? Is he in there? OI! COME OUT, COMPUTER BOY. BE A MAN.''
'King Adam, he come for today market exchange,' Anya repeated.
'I've got money!' KT blurted. 'Omigod! Market, you guys!'
'King, for real? Still with that Ozymandias shit? Hey, I dunno what this market is but you have to share food if you got it. ANYA. Don��t ignore me: maybe we'll even go easy on you. For being mean to me. With the fire and all that.'
Anya looked at me like you look at a cat you're trying to step over. Then she walked over to the Jeep, opened the door and helped Adam's little legs hop out. His thick sunglasses meant my eye contact couldn't bother him, but he was probably staring at my tits. 'King Adam will hear your offering, agree on price. Begin.'
I turned to face my people, spread my arms, and I got as far as "No one's selling" before Kane stepped up, tossing a spade toward the Jeep.
'Yous morons didn't see this behind the hardware shop. It was under the dumpster. I'll give you this spade for a million bucks and some donuts, your majesty.' Kane cleared out his nostrils and spat on the grass and scratched the brown beard that was growing on his face and neck like mould.
Anya picked up the spade and placed it in Adam's outstretched hands like it was an antique sword. I couldn't stop staring at Adam. My fingernails dug hard into my palms. Adam looked like an 11 year old boy scout proud of himself for getting a shoelace-tying badge. He didn't even have any whiskers on his face like a normal boy, and the black lenses made his face alien.
'Five thousand for spade,' Anya concluded.
'Ten, Baba Yaga.'
Adam nodded at Anya; Anya said, 'Very well.' She reached inside the Jeep, took a single wad and tossed it at Kane, who stooped to pick up the money and clutch it against his chest. Then he started destroying our chance of donuts, or any other food. 'Changed my mind,' he went. 'Ten hundred grand, I meant. A million. C'mon, pay up.'
'You want spade in head?' Anya said, shaking her new weapon at Kane.
'Chill, Bloods and Crips, chill,' said Chan, stepping between them. 'We're here to do us some biz'nazz, aight?'
'NOT WE'RE NOT!' I screeched, 'WE'RE HERE TO BE A FAMILY.'
Chan grimaced at me. 'Speak for yourself, Eden. I got me a partner.' He winked at Es and she blushed and stroked her fringe. I wanted to puke. 'If everyone chose a partner, well… .'
Omar tossed a parsnip or something into the air, caught it, tossed it again. 'We can't all be studs like you, bro. Anya, Adam: I'm more of a bartering dude. You wanna barter? I like gum. Gimme some passionfruit Hubba Bubba, I'll tell you where to getcha self some fresh meat.'
'No more tadpoles. Don't get weird on me again.'
Adam smirked. 'Eat your tadpoles, Eden Shepherd. They're chock-full of protein.'
Anya shut us all up. 'You need clothes. You are covered in, how you say, horse stable manure. You look like animal.'
Anya went to the jeep, grabbed a bundle of old fat lady-sized t-shirts and knickers and jeans shorts and tossed them onto the grass. We each grabbed whatever we could and retreated, watching her warily. 'Who would like sell product to king?'
'Fuck off back to Transylvania.' Kane ripped out a hunk of muddy grass from the field and biffed it at her chest.
Eli appeared, dragging a bag of salt towards "King" Adam. He opened it to show a sample and some tiny sachets fell out. Eli must've opened hundreds of packets to fill his sack and shaken out every salt shaker in the land. 'Got me some salt to trade. Y'all need salt, right? $20,000.'
'You can't, Eli. That's everyone's salt.'
Esther shouted me down, wheeling right into the confrontation. 'You love salt so much Eden, eat it your bloody self. Eli: good work, dude. Good trade. We need money. We don't need salt.'
Adam nodded at Anya. Anya produced the cash. Eli presented the salt with two outstretched hands followed by a bow, all gentlemanly.
'You're gonna be broke soon, gas boy,' Kane taunted. 'Enjoy your spade and your salt.'
Adam beckoned Anya, whispered in her ear and chortled as if he were having a great time. Anya took the instruction and marched over to Kane, who glanced around, fidgeting. I'd never seen Kane scared before. 'King Adam is offer 100,000 dollar for your sister.'
Kane looked over at KT. I couldn't remember him ever saying a single nice thing about her, but I definitely remembered what happened that time the new kid dissed his sister.
Fatti stepped into the middle of the circle flapping her hands cross-ways like an air traffic controller. 'GUYS! WHOA WHOA WHOA! KT is extreeeemely precious to us. You can't just buy her for a hundred kay.' There was a pause before Fatti winked and said, 'Two hundred.'
No one laughed. A fight was coming. We were all too weak to intervene. Too scared. Too starved.
'You got rude thing to say, rude boy?' Anya shouldered Fatti out of the way and got in Kane's face. I'd seen Kane knock people out, and smash the head of this so-called exchange student mech who him and his friends lured to the Roboxing one night, but Kane was unlikely to win against Anya. Her shadow darkened his face. She put her chin against his nose, blocking out the sky.
Everybody was silent, waiting for the punch.
Then I noticed Anya had dropped the spade. I could pull it out of the ground with one good tug. Anya's head was right there. It would take just one swing –
'I found – scuse me.' Esther cleared her throat and swallowed. She sounded petrified. 'So I found this first aid kit thing, Anya? There's, um, some pretty good stuff in there. Band Aids, a syringe, lots of disinfectant… an Epipen, if you get stung by a jellyfish and stuff. I think we should get a council going. You could pay me to be nurse.'
The shadow cleared off Kane's face and Anya, distracted, adjusted her body language. Kane stepped forward, trying to patch over how he'd looked startled for twenty frozen seconds. He cracked his knuckles.
'Say again?' Adam called out, still metres away from us. Afraid we'd tear him to shreds, perhaps. Or just confident his guard dog would tear US up. 'Epipen?'
Everyone's eyes turned to Watson. He didn't even have to roll his eyes or pinch his nose. Watson was permanently unimpressed with the ignorance of humans.
'An epinephrine injector pen,' Watson exlained. 'It provides an autoinjection of 0.15mg of synthetic adrenaline, quite effective really, although the chances any one of us will go into anaphylaxis really are– '
'Ana…?'
'Anaphylaxis. The human body's antigen network goes haywire over an allergen. Hope it doesn't snow in here, though spring brings just as many allergies – not to mention bees, and bee stings. A person puffs up like a… I suppose the apt analogy is like a puffer fish. Fatalities have been recorded.'
Anya put the Epipen down, picked up some cotton bandage and stainless steel scissors. 'What else is in?'
'There's yummy cough medicine in here. You're totally going to need that come winter. Plus it gets you a little bit drunk.'
Anya looked to Adam, who held up two fingers. 'Two hundred thousand dollar,' Anya said.
'Deal! Oh my god, deal! Thank you sooo much.'
Adam was paying but apparently he was too lazy to get his wallet out. Anya reached inside the Jeep. She seemed reluctant to hand over the stacks of money. She placed 5, 6 then 13, 14, 15, 19 and finally 20 wads of $10,000 in Esther's lap, burying her. My fingers clenched. I wanted this horrid meeting to dissolve, but I was also happy to see Adam bankrupt himself. Yeah. That's how we'd destroy him. Sell him salt and soil and sand and leaves.
The Jeep muttered away, leaving tyre tracks in the grass. I didn't know whether to be glad he was gone or scared about the next confrontation.
Fatti snapped her fingers. 'Soooo: Yahtzee then?'
People tried to act like they had things to do – Maeve putting a new shoelace in her shoe, KT scraping a hopscotch grid into the grass – but it was breakfast time and we'd already been totally rattled.
Chan paced five metres one way, five metres back, punching the palm of his hand. 'We oughta fine that prick for tearing up our grass.���
'Oh, c'mon, gorgeous, have ten grand and cheer up,' said Esther, giggling and thumbing through her cash like shuffling poker cards. Then she threw a wad at Chan. He picked it up quick as my Robopup licking a piece of egg up off the kitchen floor. 'D'you guys just ever have one of those days when you feel blessed?'
Kane spent a few seconds confronting everyone's face in turn, stirring the group up. He even shook KT off her see-saw. 'Can everyone stop being so sad? This is dumb. Let's go find us a vending machine, chips, crack open some old ladies' blister packs, have us a party. Jesus, just 'cause we got a fat girl and the bro's babysittin a cripple doesn't mean we have to suck our thumbs and whinge.'
'Don't call me fat,' Fatima said, although her voice was weak. She wouldn't last if Kane cranked his bullying up to 100 per cent. 'And I know where there's honey.'
'Bullcrap.'
'There's bees. I saw them, what do you call it, like, circling, you know? Have you seen that wooden house on the Riviera? 603. The George Washington-y retro cabin-looking place with all the raw wood? They like the smell. They're all over the washing line. I saw a whole hive.'
We found ourselves looking at Watson for confirmation. 'You've seen nanobots, more likely. I'd say they're present in the biosphere. Preventing condensation from precipitating into rain, I'd wager. Possibly pollinating plants, also? Certainly worth studying.'
'WE NEED TO EAT, NOT STUDY.'
I clambered to the top of the jungle gym. 'SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU GUYS! JESUS! Okay? Listening up: it worries me that Adam's about to bankrupt himself and then, god knows what could happen. He's spending tonnes and STILL he's well-off. He's literally up to something. Dude began with the same million as the rest of us, spent half of that on Anya protecting him. So he's down to $500,000? Now he's just spent $200,000 on a first aid kit. So I mean, like, is he seriously poor now or what?'
'Man, I rolled the mechalover,' Kane added. 'Ten grand for a spade! How do you like that?'
'And what do you intend to dig with, when you need to dig?'
Kane shrugged. 'Buy another one? Make someone else do it? Who the hell knows. Why would I need to dig? I want truffles, I'll get Miss Piggy over here to root around in the dirt.'
'Well, I do enjoy the finer things in life, lol,' Fatti said. No one laughed.
'The point is, everything's scarce,' Eli said. 'Eden's right. We need to be closely watching Mahonyland's resources.'
'Still stuck with a cripple and a fatty,' Kane sulked.
'I actually agree,' Omar said. 'Esther, sorry babe, but I mean I was picking corn and pumpkin out in the wilds yesterday and did you help? No you did not.'
'I- I – I'M BETTER AT OTHER STUFF! Don't you see that? Don't you think we need executives to, I dunno, for decision-making?'
Chan looked at Omar like he was a painting hung askew on a wall. 'Better watch your mouth, G. That's my executive you're talking to.'
Omar got into a karate stance. 'I'm pretty handy with a bow and arrow, bro. Don't start nothin.'
Esther wheeled between them and began flapping her arms, awkwardly trying to clutch her money at the same time. 'I CANNOT GATHER FOOD IN THE SAME WAY YOU CAN, OMAR. My skill set is DIFF-ER-ENT. I don't complain 'cause your shitty grades screw up the class average, do I.'
'Then what are you good for? Like nothing personal, just in a Darwin-y sense, know what I mean? Like, unless we can tip you out and use your chair like a shopping trolley to gather up our dinner, what skills does someone in a wheelchair bring to the group? Just saying.'
I sounded the conch. 'This is a disgusting conversation. Darwinian? Vomit. Omar: I'd like you to have a time out. Under the slide. NOW.'
'I'd like you to bite my ass. Yous can be your own useless-ass city council. Me? Council of One, bitches.' Omar strutted across the park and away.