(Fiction) A Bad Idea

The bus pulled onto the shoulder to report the bleeder on the side of the highway. A car had clipped the man’s leg, which bent awkwardly to one side. His hands had frozen into fists and his feet were limp, and they wobbled over the asphalt as he dragged himself forward on his elbows, one after the other, as if fleeing for his life in slow motion. He felt neither cold nor pain, and his frosted eyes remained fixed on some distant salvation even as the gargantuan bus rolled to a stop behind him.

Nio and several of her fellow passengers leaned into the aisle to peer out the high windshield. In the distance, the overcast sky was beginning to retreat, leaving waves of cotton-ball clouds.

“I dunno why we gotta wait for this,” a white-bearded passenger announced from the back.

“It’s the law,” someone whispered.

The bus conductor, who tended the self-driving vehicle from a console, spoke softly into his radio as a pair of teenagers, too young to remember the outbreak, snapped pictures of the awkward, broken man now illuminated in the alternating flashes of the bus’s hazard lights. The tires of a passing car sprayed icy slush across the shoulder, and it struck the undercarriage in heavy clumps and doused the disheveled bleeder, who simply lurched forward again, pulling his legs limply along.

“That poor man,” a woman near the front told her companion. The bus had become so quiet by then that everyone heard it.

“He shoulda lined up like everyone else,” the bearded man declared. He removed his red cap and waved it like a banner. “Let’s get goin’ already.”

There was a click of static as the conductor announced over the speakers that they would be waiting approximately ten minutes for the highway patrol to arrive. The bearded man threw up his arms in frustration.

Nio pulled her eyes from the human wreck on the side of the road and unfolded her translucent phone to check for messages, but being so far from a town, the custom device had no secure connection—nothing but commercial networks—and the last message she’d received was still Semmi’s.

I still think this is a bad idea.

A second passing car honked at the bus’s partial blockage of the highway, and the baby in the seat across from Nio, one aisle ahead, began to cry. The infant’s mother rocked her child gently and tried to quiet him, but he was hungry or cold or had simply had enough of the bus and was letting the whole world know. Several passengers shuffled in annoyance.

“Shhh . . .” The young mother’s round, smooth face was darkly complected and bore equal measures of patience and fear as she whispered to her child in Spanish.

Nio leaned forward across the aisle with one hand extended. “He’s beautiful. May I?”

The young woman nodded, happy at first to have an ally. She froze awkwardly a moment later when Nio pressed her hand to the child’s forehead, as if feeling for a fever, instead of caressing it tenderly. Almost instantly, the wailing babe stuttered. After another moment, his eyes brightened and he began sucking an invisible pacifier. Nio heard quiet exhales of relief. As she leaned back into her seat, more than one person turned from the front to peer at her through the gaps. She certainly stood out, with stubbly hair and heavy loops in her ears.

The colored lights of a police cruiser flashed across the inside of the roof, and Nio grabbed the collar of her puffy winter coat and turned it up nose-high. The patrol car parked at an angle and a trooper exited and waved the bus on.

“Finally . . .” the grisly man said.

The bus tires carved valleys in the slush as the big vehicle pulled onto the highway and began accelerating smoothly. Several passengers clapped. Nio watched from the half-frosted window as the broken man on the shoulder, still lurching forward, receded from view. In his stead was the bleak landscape of the North American high plains. Tufts of brown grass poked through a fondant of white. Low hills were cut into even barbed-wire squares. She had traveled nearly 400 miles since leaving her home that morning. Somewhere ahead, a young woman was dying, perhaps inexorably—the latest victim of a killer neither of them had met. Just then, it seemed he was going to get away with it. Again. Nio took out the unopened letter from her coat pocket and stared.

Pasture and fields gradually gave way to repair shops, fast food chains, and half-derelict shopping centers, but it wasn’t until the bus passed a boarded Dollar-Savr that Nio noticed the damage. It looked like a tornado had hopped across the town on a pogo stick. A leafless tree left a three-meter hole in the earth after being uprooted and dropped onto a snow-topped house. A plump Buddha had fallen from its perch over a Chinese buffet and now golden-mooned passersby from the crumpled roof of a parked car. Ice-covered vehicles were scattered about the ditches and fields like a giant child’s abandoned toys. But it wasn’t until the bus passed the cluster of old buildings along main street that anyone noticed the enormous donut hanging in the sky. A teenage girl saw it first and half-screamed in surprise. She pointed.

“What the hell . . .” The bearded man got up from his seat and leaned over Nio to look out her window. He smelled like diesel.

The words Wonder and Land, written in sprinkles, curved around the top and bottom of the colorful confection. It seemed likely that somewhere nearby, a donut shop was missing its sign.

“How’s it staying up there?” a woman asked.

The fiberglass donut hung motionless 50 feet in the air. Everyone on the bus immediately raised their phones or tapped their lenses, triggering AR tags to appear on their screens. Nio glanced around. No two devices were the same. Each appeared to give a different cause or description, meaning everyone on the bus was seeing the same thing, and yet none of them were.

The donut disappeared behind a derelict depot as the bus turned left onto a narrow road.

“Hey, this is the wrong way,” someone called.

It wasn’t until the wide bus finished its slow turn that those in the back could see the policeman waving vehicles to the left with an orange baton. His patrol car blocked the road, along with a sign announcing a detour.

The bus was directed to a gravel lot across from a 24-hour diner, and its hybrid engine rumbled gently as the conductor announced there was a curfew and only residents were being allowed into town and everyone should be prepared to show their driver’s licenses. He added that the bus was taking a thirty-minute break before continuing to Jamestown, and that if anyone not scheduled to remain wanted to stay on board, they should speak with him.

The doors opened and Nio lifted the strap of her rolled bag over her head and stepped down to a sidewalk pockmarked in frozen footprints, like the fossil of a prehistoric riverbed. Her breath billowed over her puffy coat’s high collar, and she huddled into it for warmth. It was the fourth day of record-setting April cold. It was supposed to last another four. The half-empty town looked like it was preparing for an inland hurricane. Storefront windows were being taped in large Xs. The sidewalk display in front of a nail salon was being chipped from the ice so it could be brought inside. A handwritten note on the door of a 100-year-old pharmacy announced that it was closing early for Moving Day. A similar announcement was posted on the door of the diner, next to the sign that declared it was for “Patriots Only.”

Nio checked her phone again as the old man in the red cap and overalls hurried past her on his way to the bathroom. The last message had simply said Please. She scrolled through the public thread to confirm the address. She tapped it, which brought up her map application, but it could only display the blue track of the 8-hour, 400-mile bus ride. The signal icon at the top of the screen was gray—there was no encrypted coverage in the town. Her state-of-the-art untraceable phone still had no service.

“Shit . . .” Her breath erupted in a cloud, and she shivered once uncontrollably. It was frigid. She hadn’t expected to be out in cold weather.

Another police car blocked the intersection near the diner. It was idling with a pair of officers inside, keeping watch on the crowd. She expected the occupants to roll down a window as she approached, but they didn’t, and she knocked on the glass. A male officer lowered the window four inches but said nothing.

“Excuse me,” Nio said, shivering. She was practically dancing to keep her legs warm.

“Town’s not safe,” he replied before she could ask a question.

“But this is very important. Someone I know is—is sick.” She stopped short of mentioning that it was a matter of life and death.

“Sick?”

“She asked me to come. To help.”

“Did she call the city?”

“I don’t know,” Nio said. The cloud of her breath all but obscured the officer, whom she could barely see.

“You can have her try the city. But my advice would be to get back on that bus. Bus company’s agreed to take folks on to the next stop.”

He rolled the window up.

Nio waited in front of her own reflection, but after a moment, it was clear the conversation was done. She could probably sneak past the barrier, she thought, but didn’t know where she was going, nor how far she’d have to walk in the snow. She stepped into the diner in the hopes of getting directions—and warming herself—but she was stopped by the hostess, who politely pointed Nio to the sign on the door. Turning, she could see the officers’ watching, and she complied.

A tall, dark-skinned man sitting in the booth near the window paid for his coffee with a wave of his hand over an electronic token and walked out the front.

“You need a ride?” he called.

Nio turned. She was surprised by the question and didn’t know what to say.

“I heard you talking to the hostess,” he explained as he approached. He passed her and kept walking toward the back. “I’m heading that way if you want.”

“Why would you help me?”

He stopped. “Yeah.” He looked down. “I guess it’s come to that. Your choice,” he said and started walking again.

Nio closed her eyes and felt his bioelectrics. The hum was weak at that distance, but the pattern was precise. Organized. He didn’t have the high-pitched urgency of a man on a violent or sexual prowl. He was calm. Curious. She could feel him modulating up and down evenly in a pattern common with athletes and soldiers—anyone in the habit of reacting quickly.

As usual, the modulation reminded her of a song.

“Variable Stack,” she breathed. By Vetrans of the Meme Wars.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Nice to meet you. Del.”

He looked down at his padded work suit. The name Del was stitched in fancy blue letters inside a white oval on his chest.

Nio guessed he was in his 30s. He was fit and had narrow eyes that were constantly smiling, even when his mouth wasn’t. He unlocked a battered early 2000s pickup and leaned over to manually open the passenger’s side door, which squeaked. Except for a folded letter on the seat, resting on its torn envelope, the inside of the vintage car was immaculate. Nio picked up the paper and Del took it and moved it to the dash.

“So,” he said as she shut the door, “where to?”

“The Cedars. You know it?”

“The apartments?” The name seemed to catch his attention. “You sure you wanna go there?”

“Something wrong with it?”

He paused. “It’s kind of a dump.”

“I’ll risk it.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just promise me you’re not lookin’ to score.”

The engine started with a rumble and Del backed into the road. The interior of the truck smelled vaguely of earth and manure. Nio rolled her bare fingers in front of the vent, and they tingled in the coming heat.

“Keep your head down,” he said as they turned onto the main road.

Del waved as they passed the police cruiser. The traffic light at the next corner turned yellow and he rolled through it.

“Clear.”

Nio sat up as they passed a small boutique bakery with the NRA seal on the door. A pair of young women were chatting at a table near the window. A handwritten sign in the window said LIBTARDS NOT WELCOME.

Del saw her looking. “Don’t worry. The Starbucks goes the other way, if you’re so inclined.”

“Is it far?” she asked.

He laughed once. “In this town, you’re five minutes from everywhere. You got a name?”

“Nio.”

“Nye-oh,” he repeated. “Interesting.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Is it rude to ask what nationality that is?”

“I dunno,” she said. “You guys have a lot of rules.”

“Us guys?” Del studied her appearance. The high collar. The shaved head. The metal loops. The wide, sad eyes with lingering bags underneath. “What’s with the jacket?”

Nio looked down at it. The exterior of her knee-length puffy coat was a plain gunmetal gray, but the interior, visible only at the cuffs and inside the high collar that circled the lower half of her face, was neon orange.

“Out here,” he explained, “we wear the hunter’s orange on the outside.” He nodded to a round-bellied pedestrian in a light hunter’s vest over a camo-print collared shirt.

“Well, it’s reversible,” she said. “So, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“What brings you to town?”

“Visiting a friend,” Nio lied.

“He can’t pick you up?”

“She’s sick. That’s why I came.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

They rolled through another intersection, and Nio saw boarded houses and another roadblock and a fishing boat on top of a liquor store. A man on the roof had a hand on his head like he was trying to figure out how to get it down.

“What happened here?”

Del pointed the opposite way. Nio turned and wondered how she could’ve missed it. Far away, on a bluff near the horizon, a banded deep core mining platform straddled a hill like a four-legged god. Its massive pillars and broad, sail-like protrusions caught the red of the setting sun.

And then it was gone. The truck exited the intersection and the platform disappeared behind more houses, half of which were empty. Nio could only catch glimpses of it between the trees and electrical wires.

“Deep crust miner,” he said. “Pulls up rare metals. Stuff with funny names. Bitterbase or something.”

“Bitterbase?” She almost laughed. “You mean Ytterbium? Or Ferropericlase?”

He studied her again. “You don’t look like a mining engineer.”

“What do they usually look like?”

“Well, more facial hair, for one. You work up there?” he asked skeptically.

“Nope.” She glanced again. “Never seen one before.”

Unlike oil platforms, which rose no more than a couple hundred feet in the air, the deep core miner was a skyscraper. But since it had similar proportions to its oceangoing cousins, the winds at altitude were a serious problem. Where an oil rig could be boxy and exposed, a deep-crust driller was louvered and aerodynamic, including two large adjustable metal sails that rose in parallel from a shell-shaped center mass. Red lights spaced evenly along the ridge of the sails blinked in alternating intervals. Nio could just make out the white of a massive corporate logo.

“So, you just happen to know about funny metals?” Del asked.

“I know about lots of things.”

“Uh uh. You sure you’re not here for the big show?”

“Show?”

“Moving day.” He nodded again toward the intermittently visible platform.

“They move that thing?”

“All 800,000 tons.”

“How?”

“Same way we got the amazing floating donut.” He reached for the letter on the dash and handed it to her. “We all get one.”

The embossed seal of the State of South Dakota sat proudly at the top. Nio unfolded the paper and read aloud.

“This letter is to remind you that from 11:00 p.m. on April 23rd until 3:00 a.m. on the 24th, Central Daylight Time, the gravity in the vicinity of Long Lake will be reduced between sixty and eighty-five percent. Water and power services across Brown, Campbell, Corson, Dewey, Edmunds, Faulk, McPherson, Potter, and Walworth Counties will be suspended from 10:00 p.m. in the evening until such time as the region is deemed safe. No evacuations are ordered. However, the Long Lake area remains closed and you are urged to secure any loose belongings weighing under 30 lbs. and to remain indoors. Persons wishing to apply for relocation—”

She stopped and folded the paper again. That at least answered the question of why the latest victim was there. Easy to hide in all that chaos.

“Wait.” She scowled. “Anti-grav emitters are outlawed.” It was half-statement, half-question.

“They are.” Del nodded. “But international mining conglomerates get special exemptions.” He squinted at her skeptically. “Sure you’re not here for the move? Protest, maybe?”

She smiled. “You think I’m a protester?”

“We get them, along with the odd tourist or two. Supposedly you can see the legs light up. Gotta stay up late, though.” He leaned forward to look up at the darkening sky. Light was fading. “When they planned it, it wasn’t supposed to be this cold.”

“Sounds riveting. But I’ll have to pass.”

“Then how do you know what ferroperiscope is, or whatever? If you don’t mind me asking.”

She smirked. “Interested in geochemistry or just making conversation?”

“Neither. I guess I just wanna know what’s so important two people had to die.”

“Die?” Nio looked up and down the frozen street. Hardly anything traveled. “Is that why everyone’s packing up?”

“Couple arcs cut through town the other night. You shoulda been here.” He shook his head. “Can’t even be sure of the ground under our feet anymore. Now they can turn that off, too.”

He noticed Nio’s scalp then but quickly pointed north in a clear effort to avoid staring at the six oval scars just visible under the flat stubble of her hair.

“There’s three,” he explained as Nio ran a hand across her head involuntarily. “One across the border in North Dakota, one out west in the badlands, and that one, about fifty miles out. Ever since they started drilling, there’ve been tremors, which is apparently what triggered the emitter ‘anomaly.’ Or that’s the story. Two dead, though, so they’re moving it west while they figure out what to do.”

Nio watched the town pass. It seemed so ordinary. “That’s terrible.”

“So?” Del asked, waiting.

“So, what?”

“What is it?”

“Ferropericlase? It’s a kind of iron oxide.”

“Rust?”

Nio nodded. “Same as on your truck.”

“I’ll have you know this is a Chevy and it’s a classic.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, wait, people died so they could mine rust?”

“Not exactly. Iron oxide crystallizes at very high temperatures and pressures, like hundreds of thousands of atmospheres.”

“Sounds like a lot.”

“The human body can handle maybe five. Deep in the earth’s crust though, rust forms crystals, sort of like table salt, which conduct electricity in one orientation only. Otherwise, it’s actually a good insulator. That’s really important in certain applications of solid state physics.”

“Such as?”

“Well, if you bind ytterbium ions to an electrosensitive enzyme that—”

“An enzyme? Like something organic?”

“Yeah. Like how hemoglobin binds iron. The enzyme changes configuration to either inhibit or encourage quantum tunneling. That creates a quantum logic gate. If you stack a bunch of biomechanical wafers like that, you get a 3D quantum matrix similar to what they use for the Shri-class intelligences.”

“I thought the big treaty said we’re not making any more of those.”

“Well, no one really knows what the Chinese are doing, but whatever it is, I doubt they’re doing it with rare earths from North America.”

“Then what’s the big deal?”

“Research. Ostensibly, everyone’s cooperating, but they still want to be the first to design the next class. That’s all Shri Brahma does actually: contemplate consciousness.”

After a moment of silence, she turned to see the smirk on his face.

“You sure you’re not an engineer?” he asked.

“Ha. Would I be taking the bus? But what about you, cowboy?” she asked quickly. “Been here your whole life?”

“Naw. Moved here in junior high. Had a chance at double-A ball.”

It was his turn to notice the look on her face. “You don’t know what that is,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Wow.” Del stopped at a red light. He leaned back to examine her again in mock seriousness. “You’re really, really not from around here. Who doesn’t know about football?”

She shrugged.

“Come on. You gotta tell me.”

“I grew up in Taiwan,” she said after a heavy sigh.

“Taiwan?” He paused as if to contemplate a missing punchline. “You don’t look even a little Chinese.”

“I’m not.”

“And you don’t have an accent.”

“It was an international school. All English.”

“Do you also speak . . . whatever they speak in Taiwan?”

“Taiwanese.” She smiled again. “Yes. I do.”

The light changed, and Del drove in silence for a moment. “I blew it, didn’t I?”

“Blew what?”

“You’re smart and know about geochemistry and shit and I don’t even know what folks speak in Taiwan.”

“I know very little about geochemistry. But wait . . . Were you hitting on me?”

He laughed once. “That bad, huh?”

“No, it’s just . . .”

It was all wrong. He wasn’t modulating romantically, which meant that whatever he was after, it wasn’t a date. She’d been warned not to trust anybody, but she hadn’t really taken it seriously. She assumed a town like that wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous as anything she was used to.

He waited. “It’s just I ain’t got no game. That it?”

“No. I didn’t say that.”

“Then what?”

“You were right.” She pointed ahead. “Looks like we were five minutes from everywhere. You can let me out here.”

Del slowed and pulled to a stop in front of three blocks of aging, cheaply built ’20s apartments. A pile of planks and downed branches in the corner of the parking lot was topped in mounds of snow. Hanging inside a second-floor window, back-lit so it was clearly visible even at night, was the red, green, and yellow Kekistani flag.

“You sure I can’t interest you in a not-entirely-terrible dinner?” he asked. “This town’s gonna get really dead in a couple hours.”

“Worried about me?” Nio opened the door and stepped down carefully. Her heavy unlaced boots nearly disappeared in the slush.

“How do you know I’m not just trying to get in your pants?” he joked.

“You’re not,” she said seriously.

“So, you’re psychic, too, is that it?”

She waited for an explanation, but Del only shrugged.

“Come on,” Nio urged. “I told you where I was from.”

He exhaled slowly. He looked down the road. “I saw you get off the bus. People like you come out here, they’re one of two things: lost . . . or trouble.”

“Which one am I?”

“I was hopin’ lost. Why you think I offered the ride?”

Nio smiled. “And now?”

He glanced to the flag. “Nothing good happens here. I mean it.”

Intro to The Zero Signal, a Science Crimes Division Mystery, available here.