The Brave New World

She definitely wasn"t fine in the psychological sense. She stayed in her bedroom, lying on the bed and staring into s.p.a.ce with unseeing, vacant eyes. She had ordered Harry to remove the hiber beds from the room.

They had difficulty getting her to join them for meals, which were all cooked on the barbecue grill: its gas tank was nearly empty. This prompted Dave Ramsey and Harold Pendleton into making a trip downtown. They had no bicycles, but felt they could easily manage a long walk. The New World had forced their second selves into a lot of physical activity. Somehow, this seemed to have a beneficial effect on them, although all they did back on Earth was eat and sleep.

And so on the fourth day of the New Era, Dave and Harold took sponge baths (the water had stopped running), shaved, dressed in fresh clothes (shirts, cotton slacks, moccasin shoes), and set out for the center of Port Douglas. They intended to visit a police station first, to file charges against the renters from the house at the end of of their street.

They also intended to find out as much as they could - from the police, from town officials, from anyone they encountered.

"Basically, we have no idea of what"s going on," Dave Ramsey had said. "It"s been remarkably quiet here. I would have thought that at the very least a policeman or someone would have come around. To see whether we were safe and sound, if nothing else. But no one did. It"s outrageous, really."

"We"ve been spending most of our time in the New World," Harry Pendelton pointed out. "We basically slept eighteen hours a day. Maybe someone did come around."

"Well, we"ll find out, won"t we."

It was a long walk to the police station, and on the way they pa.s.sed by the Sheraton resort located between the road and the beach. They saw two policemen posted at the turnoff to the hotel. The cops wore helmets and flak jackets and held rifles.

It was a shock. Port Douglas police work consisted largely of dealing with drunk holidaymakers who had pushed their fun too far. It didn"t require helmets, flak jackets, rifles. Dave and Harold agreed they should ask a few questions.

As they approached, the cops tensed visibly. This wasn"t good. When cops became stressed out by a pair of old men in summer clothes, things were bound to be bad.

They were. The rifles were pointed at them, and they had to show their IDs before even coming close. Luckily, one of the cops knew Dave Ramsey personally. They had met at a function of some sort.

He told them things were tense at the Sheraton. Over a thousand people were without electricity, without water, and shortly would also be out of food. They had originally come there to party, to have a holiday. Moods were ugly. A cop had to bicycle down all the way to Cairns to ask for reinforcements.

Yes, as far as they knew, power was out everywhere. Most likely a nation-wide outage. Attempts to restore power had been unsuccessful. They were waiting for orders. For now, they just were to keep the lid on trouble, and they were short of men. The police chief in Cairns had only sent a couple of constables after a lot of b.i.t.c.hing: he had troubles of his own. Supposedly, an army engineer unit was on the way.

Harold thought about telling the cops about the cube in his back yard, but he did not. They seemed to have a lot on their plates as it were.

The cop advised Harold and Dave to go back where they came from. There had been muggings and a few street fights downtown.

"As long as you have water to drink and food to eat, stay put," the cop advised them. "This can"t go on forever. Something will have to change. Stay at home and stay safe."

They took his advice, but only its first part. Before they had even reached the house, Harry said:

"You know, Dave, I feel like borrowing that shotgun of yours and paying those people a visit... You know who I mean."

"Yes. That renter sc.u.m. Well, I"ve been thinking about that."

"Oh yes?"

"Yes. You see, I don"t think they can be prosecuted. Gladys is very much alive, if shaken. She"d only been killed in that other, new world. And anyway I don"t think we can apply our laws here to whatever happens over there. It"s a different reality."

"Different is right."

"So, I"ve been thinking how we can avenge Gladys in this new world. I think I have an idea."

"Oh really? What - "

"Shush. We"re nearly home. We want to keep the girls out of this, at least for now. I"ll talk to Susan, and tell her what we have learned. You might want to look in on Gladys. Then we"ll get together for a chat, and I"ll tell you what I have in mind."

What Dave Ramsey had in mind was so cruel that it left Harold open-mouthed.

Killing the renters - they"d both taken to calling them that - wasn"t enough, said Dave. They"d simply give themselves new implants and come looking for revenge.

"We have to give them a good scare as well," Dave said. "A scare they"ll never forget. A king-sized package of heebie-jeebies they"ll carry around for a long, long time."

He explained to Harold that he"d found a couple of very useful plants in the New World. Both were highly toxic. When combined, they caused a long and very unpleasant delirium prior to a very painful death.

Both plants existed in the old world, on Earth. However, even the most die-hard drug addicts steered clear of them. The consequences of getting high were too unpleasant.

"Now there"s a question of how to tackle them," Dave said. "We don"t stand a chance in hand-to-hand. There are three of them and the girl and there are two of us. And we"re well past our "best before" date."

He glanced at Harold. Harold nodded, sadly. He admired Dave"s diplomacy: Dave was basically saying they were a pair of old, weak farts.

"But we are better than them," Dave said, "Because we are better up here." He tapped the side of his head. Then he laid out his plan in detail.

He wanted to lay in an ambush. There was one spot the renters visited regularly. That was the bed of clams and the nearby rocks that sometimes yielded a pinch or two of salt. The rocks ran in a line from the cliffs lining that stretch of beach, and reached far into the water.

And there was just one route to take when getting across that line of rocks. It involved a sequence of specific rocks that had to be climbed and jumped off, and climbed again. The only alternative was to swim far out into the sea, and around them.

Dave didn"t think the renters would do that. He proposed using his own wife Susan as bait. He"d send her to gather clams from the clam colonies that had formed around the rocks were in the water.

Sooner or later, the renters would come along. They needed to eat and needed salt just like everyone else. When Susan started running, they were sure to give chase.

They would get across the line of rocks as fast as they could. They would climb specific rocks and jump off them onto specific spots. Dave Ramsey wanted to make those landing spots lethal.

He proposed to turn them into minefields by littering them with concealed thorns, bone shards, even sharp stones - all coated with a paste he"d make out of the two toxic plants.

"It"ll start working within seconds, paralyzing the wounded foot and leg," he said. "Then things will get steadily worse. They will be s.h.i.tting themselves with fear, and screaming with pain. They won"t be able to move. Eventually, they"ll die."

"What if a couple manage to make it through unscathed?"

Dave shook his head.

"Through a couple of hundred thorns scattered in all the right places? I don"t think so. But if one or two do get across, we"ll have spears. With the sharp end painted with the paste. That will fix them."

Harold nodded slowly.

"Sounds good," he said.

The initial preparations took them a full day in the new world. Keeping their heads down and well away from the beach, they got busy. Dave harvested the poisonous plants and prepared the paste, while Harold collected ten rabbit skins full of thorns, sharp stones, and wood and bone splinters.

They coated them all with the paste on their second morning in the new world. This was relatively easy: Dave coated the inside of the rabbit skins thickly with the paste. Then they threw in handfuls of thorns, stones, and splinters and carefully tied the paws of the skin, turning it into a pouch.

They had a dozen pouches all in all: they ate a rabbit apiece every day, over there. They carried them very, very carefully down to the sh.o.r.e and then walked towards the rocks, keeping concealed in the trees that lined the beach.

The renters were there: they saw them a long way off. Th girl was collecting salt, climbing over rocks: she stood out against the sky. When they got closer, they saw the guys were collecting clams. Dave and Harold crouched down among bushes at the edge of the treeline. They watched, and waited.

They waited for a long time. The renters spent several hours collecting and eating the clams. Most likely, that was their only source of food. Dave and Harold felt fresh anger: at this rate, the clam beds would be soon exhausted. The clams had to be harvested sparingly, so that they could keep on reproducing.

It was nearing sunset by the time the renters finally left. Soon after that, as night fell, Dave and Harold crept out of their hiding place and approached the rocks.

It was full moon that night in the New World, and that helped a lot. They sowed their deadly seed in twelve different spots - a pouch per spot. They started at the other end and worked their way back, making it impossible to cross the rocks without stepping on a poisoned, pointed tip.

Then they quickly made their way back to their base, feeling totally exhausted. They didn"t get there. Susan Ramsey had been getting anxious. She thought they"d been spending too much time in the new world. So she woke them up.

Dave had a hard time convincing her to join their plan. But he did, and in the meantime Harold looked in on Gladys. She seemed much better. The physical discomforts resulting from a shortage of water had made her feel very much alive. She itched all over.

They had a good, old-fashioned fight the way they"d had it many times before, each verbal sword thrust preceded by an "I suppose", "Do you expect", and "I imagine you think". It made them feel close again, and soon they were both laughing.

Then Harold told her of what lay in wait for the renters.

Gladys the good, Gladys the gentle approved. She said he had her blessing.

It was dawning by the time the three of them - Dave, Susan, Harold - arrived back in the New World. They hurriedly made their way to the rocks. There, Dave and Harold his in the treeline while Susan waded out into the water well clear of the rocks before approaching them. She pretended to be looking for clams.

They waited. Clouds began to gather in the sky and that made them worried the rain would wash away the sand concealing the traps. But before the rain could start, Susan screamed and started splashing through the water to reach the sh.o.r.e. She took care to approach it diagonally, without making landfall too close to the rocks.

She started running away from the rocks the moment she got out of water. They heard a shout and saw a head pop up between the rocks. It was no more than a hundred paces away. A voice behind the rocks yelled:

"Get that b.i.t.c.h! Kill the old c.u.n.t!"

There were approving whoops and yells. Harold and Dave exchanged glances and gripped their spears tighter.

Then they heard a curse.

Then another.

Two silhouettes appeared on the last, flat rock separating them from the beach: one of the men and the girl. They ran forward and jumped off and the girl shrieked and started hopping around on one leg and almost immediately shrieked again and froze.

The man had jumped a long distance from the rock. Dave and Harold even thought he might have landed beyond the poisoned field. But then the man turned round to approach the girl. He shouted angrily after a couple of steps, and stopped to examine the sole of his foot.

"Careful!" the girl shouted, a little too late. "There"s a lot of sharp s.h.i.t in the sand."

A horrible scream pierced the air.

It came from among the rocks. And it was followed by another scream. And another.

As if on cue, the girl screamed too.

"Jimmy! Help me! Help me!"

But the man she was appealing to fell down. He clutched his foot and they started to scream together.

Dave and Harold looked at each other. Then they pulled back to walk to their base.

They smelled the rabbit roasting some distance off, and instantly thought of the same thing. If they could smell it from a distance, someone else could, too.

"Well, it doesn"t matter now," said Harold after a while. "It looks that stuff of yours has really put them out of action."

"Someone else will come along sooner or later, Harold. You can be sure of that."

Harold nodded.

"We"d better set up a proper base," he said. "And think about defenses."

"What we need to do," said Dave Ramsey, "Is to bring more people in. Our kind of people. When there"s twenty of us - a whole tribe! - a handful of murderous a.s.sholes won"t bother us. But you know something, I am a little worried. Let"s go back, and check on those thugs."

It struck them they heard no screams as they approached. But they could make out voices.

One voice, the girl"s voice, moaned. The second, male voice kept repeating:

"Oh please please please oh please...

They left the treeline and approached the man on the ground, making sure to stop a safe distance away.

He was motionless, except for the occasional tremor. When he"d heard them, he turned his head to look at them. The rain was starting to fall. The man stared at Harold and Dave. He said tearfully:

"Please help me. I did no wrong. This is just a game, right? It"s some f.u.c.king virtual reality game. Please turn it off. I did no wrong. Please help me."

"f.u.c.k you," said Harold Pendelton.

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