Commitment

Rachel woke up to another beautiful day. The clouds in the sky glowed with the teal reflection of the local ashberry forest, casting iridescence in to her bedroom that changed the off-white of her walls and ceiling to an appealing tone.

When she’d decided to buy in Maven she’d thought she’d enjoy the more bucolic surrounds but had come to appreciate how well engineered it was. A good fit for her, a chameleon who tended to suck up the mood of her surroundings and fit them. The system seemed to agree when her application was accepted.

She rolled on to her side, sat up and looked across the three foot of sill out of the window. The garden below looked dewy all the way to the fence and a low mist sat tantalisingly off the lawn in a way that made her think of fairies, weddings and steaming hot soup all at the same time. The effect hadn’t been cheap of course, but why skimp on the details when you’re already so far in debt. Her ledger was so red she had to rely on printed foods most of the time, but she didn’t mind. A view like that each morning made it worthwhile.

She took three deep breaths, drank the view in and went to the shower. Her water scrubbers had started degrading, and she would need a couple of months to save up to replace the filter unit. In a series of trial and error she’d worked out which detergent she could use on her body that left the least residue so that she could barely notice the lemon scent when it made its way to the kitchen.

By contrast, the taste of real coffee, printed eggs and every detergent suitable for plates and cups definitely made it to the shower. She knew most people would switch it round but she preferred to feel clean and eat a little dirty than the alternative. The morning routine was not entirely dissatisfying anyhow. Shower, breakfast, then ablutions. With enough time the filters did their job again by lunch time.

As she made her way to the kitchen she started hearing her console chiming. It was still early but her team were starting to come online. It could wait though, she muted the noises from the control on the wall and made herself a pot of real coffee, turning on the machine for her breakfast selection.

Real coffee was of course not real real coffee. It was a cultivar of woodvines, doctored to produce berries containing the right non-volatile alkaloids and aromatics to simulate something close to what coffee had apparently tasted like. Rachel knew some people remained snobbish about it, especially those who had some memory of the real thing, but as far as she was concerned it was a luxurious extravagance; bitter, smoky, stimulating and delicious, especially compared to the artificial stuff, even if it did come with a mild lemony taste for the while.

The coffee pot filled and the printer pinged to let her know her French toast was ready. The dish, when she took it out, looked reasonably like real food, one of the reasons she liked this option, but she knew the taste would be disappointing. No, not disappointing, since she knew what to expect. It was more like she knew what it was alluding to, what the real thing was and therefore what it was trying to be, and it was this delta, this gap between the execution and the ambition, that really created the disappointment. The uncanny valley of breakfast satisfaction as Andy called it. The thought made her smile. The uncanny valley of extruded nutrition pastes, set to resemble a memory of a memory.

She sat down at the table with her food, turned on the news stream and ate, in a reverie imagining what the world would have been like in the days when there were cafes and diners on every corner, when people just wandered in and for a few dollars got real food made with real ingredients, created by the hands of real people, in real kitchens.

It wasn’t a fantasy she could occupy for long. Real kitchens burning real fuels, in real cities made of real concrete, filled with real cars and real commutes and all that entailed.  It was a thought that made her appreciate the nutritiously printed food in front of her the more and she finished her plate, putting it back in the printer along with the cutlery and setting off the cleaning cycle.

*

Rachel closed the curtains and then sat down at the console in her work room and waited for the screens to warm up in to life. She had three large screens at a desk right in front of the terminal that connected her building to the network. On the ledge in front of her she had react gloves, a control mouse and a keyboard, the latter of which she pushed away. With the gloves on she pointed at her team screen and flicked the icon to unmute herself.

‘Morning all.’ she said. ‘Rachel’s online.’

There were eleven boxes on the screen, of which four were completely inactive, and three idle, with her own face appearing in one of the remaining boxes. Two of the other three popped in to life, Amit and Syrah smiling at her.

‘Ms Maven online.’ laughed Amit.  ‘How’s life in the sticks this morning? Any cows outside today.’

Amit had been amazed when that had happened, once, many months before. He was in a small artic conurbation in Greenland that was mainly underground, and had never seen any animals in real life except for birds, most of whom were merely passing.

Being so far north he had been happy enough to match Australian hours give or take, most people up there adapted to their work average easily, without any zeitgeists, or rather, with zeitgeists that were so confusing anyway as to make no odds.  He was also quite a bit younger than Rachel and had a sense of humour, perspective and outlook that she recognised as being somewhat alien to her, affable as he was.

‘Not today. Is it you that’s been thrashing out commits this morning?’

‘Who else?’ he cackled. ‘Syrah, don’t be shy.’

‘Morning Syrah.’ said Rachel. ‘All well with you?’

‘Hi’ she said, her eyes looking away from the camera, clearly concentrating on something other than the conversation. Syrah always looked, to Rachel, unimaginably exotic, albeit she was located just on the west coast of Australia. She’d managed to retrieve very little personal information from her in their two years working together, and she was minded differently, so they never quite clicked or saw things the same way. She was, regardless, something akin to a genius, or the closest she’d met, at least in terms of results. In most cases she was completely unable to understand, let alone review, her workings.

Rachel realised that Syrah was still speaking to her, and she’d completely blanked out. ‘Sorry, can you repeat that.’

‘Away with the fairies.’ sniggered Amit. ‘Off hunting the zero code again?’

Rachel did not understand the reference but smiled anyway.

Syrah looked at the camera and directly at Rachel. ‘I was saying I’m going to send something to you for review, just a heads up. I think I’ve got a solution to the Zhodzina problem, but definitely need a second set of eyes on it.’

‘Sure send it through and will get on it straight away.’ said Rachel, sending a series of positive images at them both. Amit shot back some of his own; stock footage of a fountain shooting light filled water, a moose staring at another moose. Rachel smiled at him then muted them both and pulled up her work stream.

There was a series of commits from Amit, spread over the previous hour, but nothing yet from Syrah as she had expected given her focus on Zhodzina. She started clearing the list, commenting on a couple and sending them back, the rest being pushed to the terminal and out in to the main system, where it could merge and duplicate, verify and deploy.

As the morning wore on two of the rest of the team came online with the usual short bursts of friendly interruptions. They were, relatively, a well-knit team, especially when you considered none of them were co-located or had ever met. It was an outlier but not unique, just over on the left-hand slope of the ubiquitous bell curve.

They averaged two to three thousand commits between them a week, of which well over half made it through to deploy. By any metric they were high performing, even if Rachel could take very little of the credit. It was a team she had mostly inherited, having only added James and Xiao herself, and both of them had pretty much fallen in to her lap. The right forum at the right time… she didn’t know if she made her own luck or was just very lucky.

Every deployment solved a small problem for someone, somewhere. Every commit was a step in that solution, a task, a process update, a relocation of a resource, a thing… It could cover provision of necessities like water or energy, actual food and shelter, or, like Syrah was working on, the resolution of a decades old imbalance of an educational system. The Zhodzina problem had been handed round from team to team every time it failed. Solving it, if they did manage it, would get them some significant credit not only because of its importance but because of its intractability.

Children in this one Belarussian city, accounting for all other factors, were consistently under-served by the education system, but no one could ascertain exactly why. The system was failing and it wasn’t fair that losing the birth lottery and being born in Zhodzina should have a knock-on effect across your life. Removing inequality like that was primary goal of the system, its ethic even.

Current terminal methodology had evolved from TaME practises. In essence all systems were a series of inputs, outputs and levers, but crucially, unlike precursors like M.E. or EnsiP there were no black boxes. This was a connected world, where everything inside the system could be known, and was.

The basic problem of knowing was the central epistemological dilemma of their times. Is wasn’t enough to know the exact position of every point in a system, and their next positions too. That was predictive, but not insightful. That was machine grunt. It couldn’t answer where they should be next or why.

The never ending, always morphing, combined might of human and computer solved these issues. Automation plus imagination; machine learning plus human cunning; absolute data plus gut feel; utilitarianism plus heart. There wouldn’t be another tipping point, they’d barely survived the last one.

The right lever, the right time, the right amount.

*

At midday Rachel decided to take a short talk before the UV got too strong. According to the screen she had thirty minutes which was enough time to walk down to the stream by the forest and get a quick hit of Shinrin-yoku, an old term that really failed to do justice to the effort that had been put in to the ashberry when it had been created. It was a little like comparing aspirin to gene therapy, they both helped, but….

Maven itself was built sympathetically to the environment it had been built on. There was only one path from her house to the main town thoroughfare and it was not direct, avoiding every rock, shrub, outcrop, following instead the natural scree path the water took down the hill. Indeed, the path had to do that to a large degree. It had absorbers along both fringes and when it did rain the paths were vital for propping up the town reservoirs, bolstering what the moisture captures were getting.

She waved at one of her neighbours and headed to the town centre where the shady public easement was. A couple with their child, and another man, sitting with a screen, were enjoying the shade and the light breeze there, but otherwise the town was empty.

That was normal at this time of day. Most people were either working or would be bunkered down until the worst of the radiation passed. It had annoyed her at first, this lack of day time community presence. Her previous, rented, accommodation had been in a much larger lowland conurbation further south, where people were more active when the sun was out, but in part that was because the apartments were so small and in part because the inhabitants were so young.

It was really a glorified student digs she eventually realised, everyone studying something, or avoiding studying something, scurrying around and meeting each other, pooling their printing credits for frequent parties where they’d jam the printer to give them near pure alcohol that would get mixed in tubs with water and flavours.

Maven, by contrast, was designed for adults. Deliberately so. And Rachel had felt like an adult when she’d moved there, and had flourished there too. She knew, at least, that her application wouldn’t have been approved if it hadn’t been clear that was the case. Nothing worse than a smug Mavenite who then failed to appreciate the social engineering that went in to creating these hub communities.

Even Amit, she was sure, for all his youth and linguistics peculiarities, was not merely tolerated. His conurbation, North Simiut, she was sure, had similar cohesion inbuilt of which he was a vital part, even if the thought of being trapped underground with him for extended periods was chilling.

She took the main path out to the forest and across the plain, heading to the start of the main path through the forest. She checked her watch, calculated she could walk in for five minutes, out for five, and be back in her apartment before monitor started warning her, but only just.

She quickened her pace, crossed the bridge across the empty creek, and followed the path along the creek-bed and in to the forest.

A part of Rachel understood that there was something unnatural about the radiant blue above her head but it did not trigger disgust or discomfort. The pigments were naturally occurring, they were within the realm of what nature had to offer. Everything about the forest was.

From the water retention and scrubbing; the atmosphere cooling and humidity control; the disease resistance and sturdiness; the heat and cold tolerance. Nothing was outside the realm of what nature naturally evolved to, but nature specialised. Nature let a tree find an environment and thrive. Which was fine in a glacial world, a world where things happened slowly. And it was fine in a world where a disaster was localised.

Take all those features that nature had and combine them to not only thrive in any environment, but to enhance the environment, to define the environment. Whether it was ashberry, Juno trees or Smith pines, they were part of nature as much as any hybrid. The speed was the only difference. Fast nature for a fast world. Or, if she was being more honest, fast trees for a world hurrying to catch up. The right tree for the Maven valley.

She started breathing deeply and could feel the different compounds in the air starting to clear her sinuses – she hadn’t realised they were slightly blocked – and clear her mind too. She felt her heart rate dropping, a slight endorphin rush she had not realised had built up.

It was a beautiful day, the blue of the leaves contrasting the sharp blue of the sky, lambent path beneath her feet, the feeling that this was living, real living, in the Maven woods, ready for anything life had to throw at her.

Or almost anything. She was certainly not prepared for the man lying on the path ahead of her round the next bend, quite unconscious.

*

Rachel ran over to the man who was lying on his front. His eyes were closed and he did not respond to her questions of care. She reached down and felt his neck. His body was warm and she felt his pulse. He wasn’t too large – in fact he was skinny almost to the point of emaciation. Despite his height she was able to roll him over on to his side and put him in the recovery position.

Her alarm went off telling her it was time to turn around but she silenced it, and pondered what to do. She turned her head to one side and looked at his face. She did not recognise him and realised too that he was wearing uncharacteristic clothes. They looked like natural fibres, but quite rough, and in styles she could not pin down, almost like they were homemade by someone who knew what trousers looked like but didn’t have any pattern to print with, and so just described the general concept.

An alarm went off again, this time an impending radiation warning, which reminded her at least that time was at a premium. She used her watch to call Andrew and briefly explained the situation, asking him to come down with anyone else he could find, and bring a stretcher or whatever he could find to carry the person with.

‘Do I need to call a medic?’ he asked.

‘No, or at least I don’t know. Let’s get him inside and we can get him scanned. No point getting charged for no reason.’

‘And you don’t recognise him at all?’

‘No, he’s definitely not from here. But I don’t know where else he could have come from. Hopefully he wakes up and we can ask him. Also, could you bring a jacket for me too? Am not dressed for midday.’

‘Sure thing.’

*

Andrew arrived ten minutes later with another man, Fahad, who lived at the crest of the hill, both well covered in sun gear. In lieu of a stretcher the had bought the communal wheel barrow.

‘Best I could find.’ smirked Andrew throwing a sun jacket at Rachel who was squatted beneath a shrub. He waited for her to put it on before giving her a kiss. ‘Has he moved at all?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s just lying there. I’ve given him a little shake and sort of… stroked his head… but nothing.’

Fahad, who was squatted down next to the man, looked up at them. ‘I think he’s fainted, but a dead faint. His pupils are dilating anyhow. Let’s get him moving. Andy, heads or tails?’

‘What?’ asked Andrew, too slowly.

‘Heads it is.’ said Fahad, walking to the man’s feet and lifting them up. ‘The heavy end. On the count of three… one, two… three.’

Between the two of them the got the man in to the wheelbarrow, his bottom in the deepest part of the well, his feet dangling between the handles, his neck bent back over the front lip.

‘You got heads.’ said Fahad again, lifting the handles up and getting the barrow balanced.

Andrew gave him a blank look.

‘Lift his head mate, he might choke otherwise!’

‘Oh right!’ said Andrew, moving to the front of the barrow.

After some missteps they worked out a feasible solution, Andrew holding up the head behind his back and leading the way, Fahad following carefully and matching Andrew’s pace, as they followed the path back in to town and up the short hill to Andrew’s house.

*

“A real outsider?” asked Andrew, having thanked Fahad and sent him home. They’d had the same training, he was close if needed, he could get back to work.

‘Must be… hold on.’ said Rachel distractedly. She was using her screen to let her team know she’d be unavailable for longer than expected, setting up a delegation and then giving the medical team notice that they may be needed.

‘Are you calling a medic?’ asked Andrew. ‘I don’t think we should.’

‘Just alerting them there may be a situation so they can be prepared. No harm, no cost.’

‘He might not want that, if he is an outsider. If he’s opted out completely, he might be opted out really completely, we don’t know.’

‘I won’t give them any specifics, just that there’s a person who may need help, I won’t go in to his status. You start looking at him, I know his rights.’ she said plainly.

Andrew nodded and fetched his scanner. Rachel completed her report and looked at the man who was lain on the couch, his eyes still closed. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to go outside entirely. There was a frisson of excitement it was true of being unknown and unknowable, of fending for oneself without any of the apparatus the institutions could provide. She understood the romance of it, the worthiness, the underlying veracity to that sort of existence.

But no terminal at all? Not even when it was needed? What about education and entertainment, medicine and social care. How big was his community that it could support those higher needs. How big could it be if he was here and not there, that they could cope without him, to all appearances a prime able male, and not suffer. And if they could, if they had sent him out even, for help or for reconnaissance, how far away could they be.

She knew roughly the maths. The Australian land  in the east required around forty acres to subsist one person. If their demographics matched Maven’s and he was, as a minimum, one of only two males in that generation, it still suggested a community of at least eighteen to twenty. That would equate to a hundred and sixty acres they would need, and she knew the immediate terrain. That amount of land that wasn’t co-opted for settlements or too far gone to be considered was literally off the map.

Rachel leant over and inspected his rough shoes. Feet cladding really. The material was durable and natural clearly, but showed significant wear, in places the material so thin that the brown hue gave way to white and in some places was virtually translucent.

Andrew came back with the scanner. ‘High fashion isn’t it. I saw them before. It’s like he’s stuffed his feet in to a couple of possums and then stood in acid for a year.’

Rachel smiled. ‘They remind me of Ugg boots almost.’ Andrew gave her an unknowing shrug. ‘They were a thing, I assure you. Anyhow, there’s probably more important things than his choice of shoes. Like his health.’

Andrew saluted whimsically and attached a sensor to the man’s neck then started scanning his spine, following the directions on the screen. ‘Dehydrated. He’s ketonic by the looks of it. All alpha waves really. It says he’s likely suffering from exhaustion.’

‘Let him sleep it off then? What does it say?’

‘Yes, leave him to rest and give him fluid by wire.’

‘Damn.’ smirked Rachel. ‘I thought we were saving your IV kit for our anniversary.’

Andrew joined in. ‘Waste a vintage saline solution on his sort! He wouldn’t appreciate it awake! I think Marta might have a kit, but maybe we save that and go a bit more basic to start? Wet flannel in the mouth, it says he’ll take it on slowly, better than tipping it in.’

‘You need to get back on line?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘No.  I did an early shift with Patrice this morning. Am free for the rest of the day. What about you?’

‘I’ve got enough in lieu to take the afternoon off. We can take it in turns hydrating him together. It will be like the worst date night ever.’

‘You had me at worst.’

Andrew bought a bowl of water and two flannels and left Rachel to start hydrating him whilst he made leaf tea for them and printed a couple of cubes to dissolve in warm water for recovery later.

Rachel started applying the liquid, following the instructions on the screen to make sure the flannel was not too wet before squeezing it in to his mouth. Andrew joined her and started taking turns too. After five minutes they elicited a swallow response.

Rachel looked at the man sideways. ‘Do you think we should give him a name. We shouldn’t keep calling him him.’

‘He probably has a name. Don’t they say you should always call someone what they introduce themselves as, and if you’re unsure ask?’

‘I don’t think that rule covered this sort of scenario.’

‘Why not, we can call him unconscious in the forest or just forest for short. That’s how he introduced himself to you.’

‘If I hadn’t come along do you think he would have died. I mean, I was pretty close to the cut off, no one would have gone out after me. I know you can survive in the middle of the day normally, and there was all the shade too, but in his state, this dehydrated, do you think he would have died?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Presumably he’s hardy though. He looks hardy. I suspect the outside doesn’t affect him like it does us, or it does and he’s used to it, or it does and his life expectancy is much lower.’

Rachel considered that. ‘And have you thought where he came from. He must be an Outsider right? I mean, if he wasn’t, if he came from another settlement, where would they let him get this damaged looking, or wearing clothes like this. Even if he was just very aberrant, or eccentric, what community would support someone doing this to themselves. They’d be remediated surely.’

‘You’d think so. I guess we don’t know what all communities are like, we only really deal with ones similar to our own. Professionals, families, that sort of thing. You could sort of imagine a slide down to… like think about Agnes. She’s borderline for Maven right. She’s not regularly employed, she definitely doesn’t contribute at the same level as others, she’s a burden relatively speaking.

‘But in many communities she’d be one of the exemplar citizens really. When you combine her actual nett output even just for the East of Australia she’s well above average. So then imagine a community where she really is the best and what their worst might look like. And then take that one, the second level Agnes, and imagine what Agnes’ cube would be like. Somewhere on that continuum this forest guy could fit?’

‘I feel like you’re being unfair on Agnes.’ said Rachel, a little offended on behalf of her friend. Agnes was very much her confidante and someone she could rely on any time of day or night for support, especially emotion support. In fact more often than not it had been Agnes convincing Rachel to not break up with Andrew the next day, especially when she was new to both the community and the relationship. She accepted Andrew’s point none-the-less. ‘I guess….’

Rachel didn’t get to finish her point. The man on the couch opened his eyes a little, groaned and shifted then settled again. Andrew quickly pulled the flannel out of his mouth. ‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do we continue? Or is it rude at this point to push something in to his mouth?’

‘I think when he can tell us, though words or otherwise to stop, we can stop.’ said Rachel, dipping her own flannel in the bowl and putting it to the man’s lips.

It was enough to elicit a groan and a clenching of the lip to stop the flannel going in.

The man on the couch began to move, at first jerkily and spasmodic but the jerks gave way to more deliberate movements, eventually his upper arm coming to his face and rubbing it.

‘It’s okay.’ cooed Rachel. ‘You’re safe. You passed out. You’re being looked after. It’s okay… you’re safe…’ she continued this mantra softly and Andrew tried again with the flannel. The man opened his eyes slightly, squinted at the flannel and opened his mouth, sucking on it.

‘That’s right.’ said Andrew. ‘You need water but slow. Slow. You’ll get sick if you go to fast.’

They continued in this way for a few minutes until the man hoarsely whispered ‘More water.’

Andrew went off and came back with a bottle that had a spout. He squirted a small amount in the man’s mouth and he swallowed with a pained expression. Rachel thought she could hear his throat rubbing as he did so. They repeated this a few more times until the man relaxed and lay back on the couch, visibly unclenching.

Andrew, looking at his terminal, read off it. ‘You’ve been unconscious. You fainted. Most likely this was the result of hunger, thirst and heat. You need to relax and let us help you. I have a mixture that will help you feel better but you need to drink it slowly. Do you understand?’

The man nodded almost imperceptibly but enough to show he understood.

Andrew went to the kitchen and started preparing the warm drink, using a measuring cup and the printed cube, following the instructions on the screen.

Whilst he did this Rachel sat closer to the man and put her hand on his arm. ‘You’ll be okay. We’ll look after you. You’re in Maven, it’s a community near the edge of the plains, around two hundred kilometres from the sea. We have not informed any authorities of your presence here but if you would like us to we can, and can arrange medical facilities if needed.

‘Only three people know about your presence her, the two of us and a friend.
‘My name is Rachel. Andrew is my partner. Anything you need, just ask, we’re here to help.’

Andrew came back in with the drink and explained again what it was ‘Do you think you can sit up? It will be easier if you can.’

The man nodded again. Andrew put the drink on the side table and between the three of them they manoeuvred him upright on the couch. It was clear he was having trouble keeping his head from lolling back down so Andrew arranged some pillows around him to support him whilst Rachel assisted him with the drink, holding it to his lips, and letting him take small sips.

‘Slowly.’ she repeated. ‘No rush, slowly, little sips.’

*

The rumours had swirled until both Rachel and Andy worried they would get out of the village. Everyone they’d told had been asked to not repeat it, but they had simply passed on the story with the same condition and it was clear by sunset that everyone knew, or knew at least there was something they did not know and wanted to.

Andrew sent everyone a message asking them to meet on the lawn at eight. He used the words ‘face to face’ in the message which was code enough if not an explicit order to not express or record anything digitally. It wasn’t without precedent.

They’d been an outbreak, a virus. A few people had got sick and they knew from experience that if they did seek advice or talk about it through screens or messages that a medical team would be there quickly. In the event they’d talked on the lawn, those that were not sick, and agreed by consensus the rules of social isolation and the tipping point for when they would contact medical support. The virus was effectively contained and there was a certain amount of civic pride in that.

Rachel tried counting heads. She could see that a few people were not there but they’d been clear about the start time and had to assume it was by choice, or else they’d accept missing out.

“Thanks everyone, I appreciate you all coming.” She began, standing at the front of the lawn, under the banyan tree that dominated the north end. The moon was out and the ambient lights of the village contributed to make it light enough to not need any further illumination. She could see that there were faces at the back, even if she could not read the expressions on them.

She stuttered, unsure how to go on. Andrew signalled to her, asking if she wanted him to come up, and she shook her head. “I guess let me start by telling you what happened.”

And she did. She told them about how she’d decided to go for a walk late in the day, about how she’d found him lying there, had called for help, bought him back in the wheelbarrow. She told how they had waited and not engaged for medical help, not without his consent, in case he was an outsider.

She explained how they’d resuscitated him, and then given him water and then a dissolved cube to help him.

She explained how he’d talked to them for a bit, but had been quiet, unwilling to reveal much. That they didn’t know why, that they respected his wishes. They had asked what they could do to help him, offered him a bed for the night, food, water.

He’d agreed to the last of these, and produced a bladder they had filled for him. Then he’d got up and thanked them, left. Andrew and Rachel had walked him to the edge of the village, he’d said he was heading south, and then they’d left him there, around half past two, and he’d walked off, through the fields, heading south until he went out of sight round the back of the southern wind breakers.

“Any questions?” she asked, beckoning to Andrew to stand beside her. “I think that’s everything, I didn’t miss anything did I?” she asked Andrew.

“Nope.”

“Fahad? Anything to add?” she asked.

‘No.’ he said from a couple of rows back in the seated crowd. ‘Just that his clothes were sort of funny, like…non printed. They were made. Everything, clearly made.’

‘Yes, probably.’ agreed Rachel. ‘Or created to look made.’

The questions started.

Had he said anything to indicate where he was going? Had he said where he had come from? Was he a real outsider? Was he surprised to be in Maven? Had he heard of Maven? What was he doing there? Why had he passed out? How long had he been walking for? How old was he? What did he eat? Was his skin really worn?

They took turns answering, mostly saying they didn’t know. Rachel could tell a few people were frustrated by her lack of insight but her hands had been bound by civility and she snapped at one question from Prudence that intimated the same.

‘He was very closed off and secretive Pru. I’m sorry. The sense I got was that if I started drilling him for answers he’d have been up and out fast as a spooked cat. I actually was trying to get information out of him, but my strategy was to be so incurious and welcoming that he would open up. It seemed and still seems like the right decision. Plus… he has a right to privacy as much as any of us, more in fact.’

‘I agree.’ chimed in Andrew. ‘When I gave him the cube he asked what was in it and I explained how it had been created based on his readings as what he needed. He repeated back to me… so you don’t know? and when I said no, he stared at me and threw it back, handed me the glass. That was what he was like… just to the point.’

The crowd dissipated around nine. There were theories expressed, whispered, shared and the conversation would continue, but the forum was over, and above all, everyone was agreed to keep it in the village. Rachel sensed that the agreement centred more around how little there was to share as opposed to any real respect for outsider rights.

She went back to Andrew’s house to spend the night and after they ate and made love they slept quickly, not talking, both quietly exhausted.

*

At four in the morning Andrew’s alarm went off, waking him for his early shift. He silenced it quickly and got out of bed as gently as he could but Rachel found herself awake anyway and after a few minutes decided to get up and get her day started. She could be the first person online in the team and take the moment to catch up on the commits from the previous day, double check them and get ahead before finishing early and then maybe going out with Andrew. They’d talked about stargazing on Ludlow’s peak, but it was a two hour walk there, less back. That night could work if they both finished early.

She heard the shower start and stripped off, slipping in to it, giving her partner a wet hug.

‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.

‘No, well yes, but no. It’s fine. I didn’t want to sleep anymore.’ She rubbed soap on his back, he reciprocated, and when rinsed she kissed him. ‘I’ll go get started now, you want to take the telescope up to Ludlow tonight? We can head out maybe at three or four, have a picnic?’

‘Great idea! See you then. I’ll let you know if I get caught up.’

Rachel slipped out of the shower, closing the door and wrapping a towel round herself to walk to the bed. Andrew’s house, like hers, was always temperate, but unlike her own his bedroom was on the ground floor and its window looked out straight on to the path. It was unlikely that anyone else was up, let alone up and about, but the possibility was enough to normally make her shy. She took her clothes from the previous day in to the lounge room which faced on to the gardens and sat down to get dressed.

As she supported herself on the couch her hand touched something. Instinctively she looked at it, but did not recognise it. It was a slip of paper, thick and coarse, almost like paper bark, folded over. She could discern writing on the inside, the grey dots of ink soaking through the paper.

She heard Andrew come out of the shower slamming the door, and stuffed the paper in her pocket, quickly pulling on her clothes. He came in to the lounge room as she was buckling her shoes, kissed her on the head and went to the kitchen.

‘You sure you don’t want a coffee before you go?’ he asked.

‘No thanks, I’ll have the real stuff at home.’ she called back. “Have a good day, see you tonight.’

When she got home, Rachel made some real coffee and got changed in to clean clothes, firing up her systems whilst it brewed. She could see she was the first person on today, although she had a half-day’s worth of catch up to get through, her messages were blinking. The screens warmed up; she saw her queue.

The piece of paper was in front of her on her desk. She stared at it. There was an ethical dilemma here, one she knew she would resolve by bypassing the ethic, but pausing was enough to convince her she was at least considering it.

Privacy conventions were pretty resolute. You didn’t look at someone else’s screen, you didn’t open messages, you didn’t ghost message anyone, ever, and you could expect the terminals would maintain this standard without fail, they always did.

And that was for people with explicit or tacit opt-ins. For outsiders, even in the purely theoretical sense, wherever in the world they were, the legal and moral arguments were clear, they’d never agreed to even the tacit expectations of exposure being part of a society entailed. You didn’t just have to extend them the same rights, you had to go further, you had to actively guard their privacy on their behalf.

Rachel knew this but she also knew that she had a piece of paper in front of her that she would open so she did.

The writing was not neat but it was clear.

At the top was the word Zhodzina.

Beneath it was a series of coordinates.

Beneath that was a standard UTC time code.

She opened a query and entered the coordinates. The satellite picture zoomed in, passing through the blue leaves with a blur. She recognised it instantly. Exactly where she had found him lying.

The time code she decoded herself. It was around thirty minutes before she had discovered him.

Rachel leant back and tried to understand what this could mean. It was planned. It must have meant it was planned. But for her to find him? For her to find him and the note? For her and Andrew to revive him? How would an outside even know about Zhodzina?

She put on a react glove and opened up the commit folder. Syrah had been true to her word. A large commit was waiting for review, no conflicts. She’d found a solution. Finalised a solution, in fact, during the exact period when Rachel was otherwise occupied with the Outsider.

‘Boss!’ came a voice startling her. Amit had come online and was beaming out at her. ‘Sorry for spooking you. You in early today? Or you’ve changed your clocks again?’

Rachel smiled at the joke. Australia had been the last A-Dek country to give up summer time. ‘I err… yes.  I started early so I could finish up early too.’

‘Good morning anyhow. How was yesterday, you disappeared on us.’ he said.

Rachel gestured to bring the lights up, putting the piece of paper in her pocket. ‘Yes, I went for a walk in the forest and lost track of time, ended up getting a bit burnt. I had to spend the afternoon in a detox chamber.’

‘Hah – that’s funny. That would have happened even beforetime right?!’ Amit laughed at his joke.

Rachel smiled. “Okay Amit, about to start reviewing your commits from yesterday. Any surprises I should know about.’

“No, it’s all dinky di.’ She didn’t know where he’d learned that phrase. Very on brand for his generation to fetch cultural references like that. ‘You know me, too slow to make mistakes.’ He laughed again, turning off his video as he did.

In terms of priority she had to start with Syrah’s work, making sure nothing got merged to the terminal that might conflict, that these levers really would provide those outputs.

Rachel opened her commit list and started reviewing the cloud of commits. It was so hazy she had to zoom out and back in a few times before she could find a thread that she could follow. She could see that Xiao had reviewed some of the changes, James others, even Amit had checked one.

It was haze of actions, she got lost repeatedly and marked it up for correction but didn’t share any of them. She followed the codes, the threads, the strings. It works. Even as she looked at it she knew she didn’t know why but it did. The model was predictive, complicated, messy, but it worked. The children of Zhodzina might be elevated to where they should be, probably beyond.

It took a couple of hours to work through the pieces but she was satisfied with the work, and pushed it through to the terminal without any comments beyond approval.

After the response code for success came back Rachel thought back to the outsider, to his note.

She felt sure that had she been there reviewing Syrah’s work she would have sent it back piece by piece. There was street lighting upgrades and changes to neighbouring train services. A solar farm had its capacity reduced to the detriment of the industrial output of a couple of blocks. She’d have pushed back on it, she was conservative.

But she wasn’t there to push back on the pieces, she only got to see it in completion. And the reason for that was the outsider. For a moment the world seemed very uncomfortable. She rationalised very abruptly. She was a lever too, she’d been pulled, or pushed, she didn’t know which.

She didn’t even know which system, or whose, she was a lever in. As the fear coalesced in to understanding, a warmth embraced her. She was part of the system; she was in the right place. In Maven.