Happy Hills

May 7. East of Littleville. ~2130.

Everybody had a theory about what we'd left behind. Sergei thought the big robot had been keeping the town in place so the priest could take something out of the people. The Gent thought something was rotten and somebody was getting rich, which is the Gent's theory about most things, and he's right about most things more often than I'd like. I thought Marcos was a cult leader. I didn't need the robot to get there.

Daisy had given us the rest of it before we left her. The town was dying and nobody was coming to church, so George built Marcos a way to put the sermons online. There are things that live in the neuroscape. One of them found the sermon and called itself an angel. Some people looked at that and left. Daisy knew it was wrong and was too scared to go. She said it started out beautiful. Then it wasn't. Marcos wanted to protect it. The robot was what it built for itself out here, using the town to build it, until the town was just more of its hands.

I've thought about Daisy more than I've written down. I'll leave it at that.

Sergei was driving. He kept checking the mirror and the shoulder of the road, looking for somewhere to put the car, and in the valley — not the mountains yet — he found a big sign for the Happy Hills neighbourhood and pulled in behind it. Nobody commented on the name. Somebody should have.

He asked the Gent to read from the book. The Gent read. Sergei saw the title again and laughed, short and not kindly. Holy Profits. Old market, new capital. The invisible hand as the almighty. Ten dividendments. Honor thy shareholders. Thou shalt not disrupt the supply chain. Thou shalt maximize profit. Read out loud in a parked car in the dark, it sounded less like satire than it should have.

Then Sergei came round to look at my shoulder. Through-and-through. He looked at it for a while and then he stopped being a surgeon and started being a man sitting in a ditch at night. He couldn't go on. He said so.

I was bleeding. I told him to pull it together and help me out. Not kind, but true, and it was what I had. Rock put a hand on his shoulder. Between the two of us it was enough to stop the fall. Dustin gave him a pill and a cigarette, which is the kid's whole pharmacy and he didn't hesitate.

There was time to do two things each. We used it.

The Gent went to look at the car. Rock went to fix it — he dropped forward like something had switched off, and then he came back up knowing how to repair an automobile. He found nothing wrong but the body. He went and listened to his walkman. Static slept. Dustin sat with the Gent while the Gent kept reading him the book, and the kid listened like it was a bedtime story, which I suppose it was.

I talked to Sergei. Told him I know he means well with the people under the neurocasters. That I'd seen it. It was an olive branch and he took it, and some of what had gone out of him came back.

Then he did the surgery. He did it well enough that the hole closed up like it had never wanted to be there. Afterwards he was different — taller in the face, almost. He told me he isn't good around too many people. He told me he doesn't want to lose anyone else. He meant me.

I didn't have anything to say to that. I let it sit.

Wound, L shoulder. Through-and-through.
Surgeon: Sergei. Roadside, Happy Hills sign.
Closed. No further impairment.
Surgeon — steadier after.

Rock wanted to talk about the drive. He has a copy. Sergei and I have the other. Nobody had said that out loud until tonight, and it was strange how little it changed once it was said.

Sergei found out there's a cure for what the neurocasters do to people, and he couldn't stay in the city knowing it. Rock isn't here — not the part of him that counts. His body is plugged in somewhere, flying the drone, and he wants it back, and the cure is the way. Me, I was hired to watch a researcher's back. John Pablo III. He seemed unhinged, so I checked whether anyone was following him. Then someone started following me, and that was the end of San Francisco.

We assume he's dead. Rock said, may he have peace wherever he is. He said he read it off the neuroscape. I don't know what reads that to a man, out there.

Car started. Sergei in the back, out. The Gent up front. I tried to sleep. The kid didn't want to drive, and Rock told him, you are the driver, and the Gent gave Rock a look that said don't be weird.

Next day. Into the foothills.

Forest and mountains coming up, no other cars on the road. Sometime in the afternoon it started raining. The Gent took the wheel. Sergei had tried to sleep and the nightmares found him; whatever the surgery gave back, the night took some of it. He woke quiet. Dustin asked him what all the yelling was about, being naked and getting chased by a clown. Sergei didn't answer. That was the right call.

Near Buckthorn. Rain coming through the back where the glass used to be.

There was a barn on the right, falling in on itself, and Dustin saw something move in it. A big robot face looking out, and waving. The Gent didn't want to see it. I said stopping the car is never a good idea. I meant it as a rule.

The Gent turned around to explain this to Rock, and when he turned back there was a tree across the road. He stood on the brakes. We stopped in time. He lit a cigarette and looked at Rock and told him he wasn't getting out in the wet.

The rest of us got out. Rock with a crowbar. Dustin with an axe. Me with one good arm, out of habit — the shoulder was closed, but the arm hadn't been told. The kid wanted to know whether the tree had been cut or pulled. Ambush, he meant. He decided a storm did it. I watched the trees anyway. Rock looked for buildings and found woods. Dustin chopped. Rock pulled at the roots. I didn't accomplish much. The Gent smoked.

Static was the one listening.

Chop, then snap. Chop, then snap. Except some of it wasn't us.

Static said, "hey, shutup," loud as a whisper gets.

Then the woods came apart — branches going, something heavy hitting the ground over and over — and three of them stepped out onto the road. Eight feet high, six long. Where the faces should be, a cluster of lenses, all of them pointed at us.

Static said, "fuckin' pack mules."

Mountain rd. near Buckthorn. Rain.
Tree across road — storm, per Dustin.
Three units. ~8 ft. Lens clusters.
Barn unit — waving. Unk. if related.