Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction

DATAFALL

Rumors webbed down the peninsula through pirate shortwaves and whispered conversations. The Cloud was approaching. The Cloud was going to make a pass near the village.

Old solar laptops were taken out of hiding to charge in the watery morning sunlight. Rootkits were dug up from cellars and refurbished. Men and women pored over manuals with their cheeks brushing, and Old Derozan surprised everyone when he pulled eight thumb drives from his hollow cane, one by one, and laid them glinting on the floor.

His grandson, Solomon, was tasked with watching for the black government trucks that sometimes fought their way over the moor. Solomon had never seen the Cloud, but the anticipation was like a hantavirus. He grew to love the idea so much that his father agreed to take him out on the night, up to the knoll where they would have a good view. Old Derozan snorted at this and said they would do just as well to stay indoors. The signal would reach and there would be less chance of attracting unwanted attention.

Solomon’s father was closer to childhood, and so he kept awake with mate and caffeine sprays until midnight dropped cold over the village. Then he put the precious tablet and its rubber casing into a nylon bag, the straps of which he tightened on Solomon’s narrow shoulders, and they climbed the knoll.

The moon was a shard of scoured bone. Solomon’s small chest was hollowed out with night. He let the sea breezes slap his face while his father booted up the tablet. His young ears picked up the hum first, and he tried not to shout when the Cloud crested over their heads.

The flock of machines dipped and slid like quicksilver, aloft on synchronized rotors. Some were caked in birdshit and others scarred black by the deaths of their comrades to LAMS, but the Cloud had slipped border successfully once more. As Solomon watched, carmine eyes began to blink in the blue-black sky and the tablet on his father’s knees came awash with light.

Solomon tried to listen as his father explained the link-up, the web, but he couldn’t. He was mesmerized by the torrent of sounds and images pouring across the screen. Flesh slapping flesh, crowds of foreigners burning cars, bristles sliding across bright white teeth. Music and voices came in clipped spurts through a disused speaker.

The screen said it was downloading, downloading, downloading. Solomon’s father said there was a message from his uncle, the one who had faked his papers and shipped out on a rusty schooner.

The deluge went on and on, and Solomon could see badly-concealed lights down in the village, shadows rushing from door to door to share the invisible rain as they caught, collected. But slowly, inexorably, the red pinpricks began to blink out. The machines drifted east.

Solomon watched the tablet until it froze and his father swore, but not so angrily. Then both of them sat and rubbed their eyes and watched the Cloud disperse, until the moor sky was empty but tinged rawpink with dawn.