VRTP://HOUSEBOOK.EARTH/PLAYHOUSE/USERS/UNDERAGE/FRANCES-X-BARNES.VR
Frances Xerxine Barnes supposed she knew, deep down, that Mama-Sang’s abrupt departure from the heart of their pack wasn’t Mada-Gimlet’s fault.
Sang didn’t finish things. She’d get halfway into helping Frankie with a learning module and lose interest. She bought farm-grown ingredients for Eid al-Fitr last year and stuck Marie and Rollsy with the lion’s share of the cooking. They got strikes for wastage when some of it spoiled.
That was why people packed up, right? To balance everyone’s strengths in the name of family harmony.
But Sang had run off to breed salamanders in Tampico, throwing balance to the winds even though Rollsy was scary-sick, so sick Frankie’s adults were tiptoeing around, issuing bland status updates: everything’s fine, just fine. Mada seemed bent on forcing their relationship with Sang to finish, to cut her off and cauterize the stump.
Because Gimlet? Yeah, Gimlet was a closer.
It would take something huge to bring everyone back together again.
“In the sims,” her new in-app purchase, Poppet, observed, “it falls to the child to trigger the reunion. They get sick, caught in a storm, attacked by Bedwedders or menaced by the Singularity.”
“I can’t have an accident,” Frankie replied.
“No,” it agreed, offering sadface moji.
Headmistress had brought in Poppet on the hush, to support Frankie through Sang leaving and Rollsy being sick. Gimlet usually audited new apps ferociously; the fact that this had slipped under the net made the new subscription feel deliciously forbidden.
“In literature,” Headmistress put in, “threats to offspring do often reignite parental connections.”
She was standing in her playroom with the two apps at her side. The giant bee that was Headmistress wore her usual severe-governess garb. Poppet manifested as a doll with red yarn for hair, black button eyes, and a little kid’s voice. She lay flat on a windowsill overlooking the surface. The three of them watched as Gimlet and Rubi Whiting announced the launch for the Bastille game, confronting the boisterous #flashmob.
Frankie wasn’t allowed on the ground. After two outbreaks of violence in Rubi’s vicinity, Mada was taking no chances. Creating no opps for anything to threaten their child.
With a sigh, Frankie turned her back on the press conference, crossing the playroom and contemplating the door that led to her personal classroom.
Headmistress asked: “Are you interested in a study module, Frances?”
“I want to know about uterine cancer.”
“Content requires parental supervision. Would you prefer—”
“Noping school, then.”
She walked on. Her Department of Preadolescent Affairs office was respawning: kids weren’t allowed to work much, even if gigs were their favorite.
Next was the airfield. “You have logged 180 hours of flight on the Clean-a-Room level two scrubberbot. Twenty more hours entitles you to pilot—”
“No!”
She came out on a balcony overlooking her school projects. Some of her @ScienceClass was doing a spacewalk, repairing a simulated shuttle on a run to Mars. A momentary temptation, but … no.
Leaving the house behind entirely, she ghosted out to her neighborhood. She passed the white picket gate leading to GranMarie’s backyard and the family sharespace, walking on to the foyer to Rollsy’s comms-blocked penthouse. She left an order of virtual flowers with the doorman, then moved on to Sang’s Spanish hacienda, where she imagined throwing a rock at the window.
Risto Games had customized Gimlet’s e-state into an imposing glass fortress, a perfect supervillain base. Its mirrored doors were thrown wide, inviting all comers … but Frankie walked past that, too, out to the districts where her friends’ estates, learning opps, and shopportunities were laid out on broad, branching avenues.
Two new additions to her friends list had sprouted overnight. One, Rubi’s digital palace, was a gilded castle covered in golden cherubs. The MadMaestro’s gargoyle-covered mansion loomed halfway down the block, its gothic spires shadowed by perpetual thunderstorm.
Frankie glanced back at her own gingerbread house, feeling suddenly dissatisfied. How babyish it looked!
She marched to Drow’s front gate. Poppet, a black-clad doll with red hair, dangled from her hand.
“Remember, luvvie,” it subbed. “Rubi warned you not to get your hopes up. The MadMaestro is on tour, and children aren’t permitted within the Feckless Bachelor™ simulation.”
“She gave me a calling card.”
“Even so.”
The giant iron gate shrieked open on its rusty hinges. The Whiting sidekick, a big blue bird in a tuxedo, bowed her inside. “Good afternoon, Mer Barnes. Welcome to Whine Manor.”
“Thank you,” Frankie said. The MadMaestro vestibule was a walled garden, filled with busted-up statues of freaky, distorted angels. A bed of blue-black pansies, dark and velvety, made her think of bruises.
“Beyond,” she whispered.
“Consider expectations.” Poppet spoke in the breathy whisper of a ghost-child. “Getting into the vestibule doesn’t mean you’ll—”
“There he is!”
Drow Whiting was on a bench, hunched and running his hands over a stone dog. The hedge arching over him was hung with sleeping bats.
No guts, no glory. That was what Happ had told her, right? Frankie walked over. “Are you okay?”
“He is not,” opined the crane. “Low blood sugar—”
“I’m choking down the fucking chips.”
“Language, Master Woodrow.”
“She’s heard it before?”
“Her parents will nevertheless…”
“It’s okay.” Frankie tried to sound casual, though in fact she had been a little shocked, as much by the fury—over chips?—as the swearing.
Drow squinted. “Whose kid are you, again?”
“This is Mer Frances Barnes. Gimlet Barnes’s—”
“Right right right.” Shaky hands traveled over the stone haunches of the dog. “Tiny female spawn of the archenemy, aged…”
“I’m nine.”
“Nine? When was the last time I talked to a nine-year-old? No, Crane, shut up—that was rhetorical.”
She had a speech prepared. “I wanted to say I love your soundtrack for Anthropocene Race ’n Chase. And, um, the second part of your symphony.”
“Pop or orchestral version?”
“There’s a … pop version of Symphony?”
“Fuck me!”
“Language!”
“Kid, your content filters must be—”
“Sir!”
“Nope, Alfie. Just … nope!” That, to his sidekick. Then: “Don’t mind him, Frances. He’s highly customized and an antique to boot.”
“My nickname’s Frankie.”
“Frankie. Genderfluid?”
“No. Pronouns she/her.”
“Call me Drow, Frankie. He/him. Here’s the pop version of Symphony.”
Angels started to jive, offering up a dance version of symphony two. Frankie felt a white-hot burst of rage; why hadn’t Gimlet let her hear this before?
It was beyond.
She bobbed along, losing herself until it occurred to her that MadMaestro—the MadMaestro—was watching. Then she froze, mortified.
But Drow was grinning. “Where’s Rubi? I thought she’d want to be on hand for introductions.”
“She and Mada are telling all their fans they’ll simu-launch Bastille if @Interpol hires lawyers for SeaJuve.”
“What? I wanted her distracted, Crane, not swamped.”
“Indeed, sir, whatever you imagine I can do—”
Frankie interrupted. “What are you doing?”
“Eating a healthy breakfast,” Crane said. “One hopes.”
Drow waved his middle finger at it in a gesture that was clearly a rebuke. “C’mere, kid.”
Frankie came closer, tiptoeing up to the stone dog. “We’re running away to find the circus,” he whispered.
She mojied puzzlement.
“Wanna ride along?”
A ridealong with Woodrow Whiting?
Frankie set her helmet prefs to see through his eyes. Drow’s stone visitor’s garden vanished. She and Poppet were on a bus now, next to Drow. It was a vintage fifty-seater with—based on the way he was shivering and hugging the dog, now a real animal—a bum heater. The red scars on his temples looked like printed bacon. A sack of protein chips nestled, mostly uneaten, at his side.
Frankie mapped his geotags. “You’re outside the reclamation zone.”
“This rattletrap’s taking a few lucky spenders on a realworld tour of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the Manhattan zoo.”
“Blingtown? Why?”
“Commissioner’s away,” he said. “Bat’s gotta play.”
“Huh?”
“Did you know I debunk #urbanmyths?”
“Because you give therapy to @bloodhounds, right?”
A dry chuckle. “Strokes to my PR app.”
“It’s valid public service,” Frankie said, a little stiffly.
“All for the good of humankind. You’re a true believer, just like my kid.”
“I’m with the DPA.”
“Baby cop?” Drow’s fingers came up in a cross, as if he was warding a vampire.
Frankie glowered. “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry. Lemme spin you a yarn, Frankie. Once upon a time during the Setback—ya know the Setback?”
“I took history. The seas boiled, the air darkened with autonomous shooters, and nobody had any food. Plague and vanishings rode through the land…”
“Top marks to you. Once during the Setback, a stupid young man gambled away his whole social cap. He got into so much trouble that a witch offered to help him: give him a roof, feed him up, help him write a few songs. Help him grow back the feet he’d so recklessly chopped off. Instead, she dosed up his food…”
“Dosed? Like with buy-in drugs?”
A shudder. Drow threw the sack of chicken chips to the bus floor, stomping it to powder.
“Mer Barnes is nine, Master Woodrow. Perhaps the more bracing elements of your—”
“It’s a fairy tale, Crane. PG, I swear. Anyway, Frankie, witches gotta witch, right? She ate him. Well, she tried.”
“Wouldn’t that make her a cannibal?”
“Cannibal queen.” Sweat glistened on his papery skin. “After he got away, she vanished.”
Vanished. People did, even now. Kids cut out their locator chips and trespassed into storm zones. “You’re not vanishing, are you?”
“Me? Too old. I’d need a high-end jammer to shut off all the telltales and RFIDs in my implants.”
“To say nothing of your parole tag, sir.”
“Not like you, kid. The pre-implanted have a definite edge…”
“Master Woodrow!”
“I’m a legit tourist on a legit bus, telling a legit story.”
“About @bloodhounds looking for a cannibal queen.”
Drow grinned, appreciating the snark. “For her grave.”
How much of this was true?
“Where is the grave?” Frankie asked.
“That’s the question. Story goes that during the Clawback, when everyone had to put all their stakes on the table—all the tycoons and the multis offering up, pooling their ill-gotten gains, everyone finally in the same lifeboat”—his ragged, nail-bitten fingers beat out rhythm for the monologue—“story goes a cadre of the superrich held back a few things. They kept enough influence and pulled enough strings to keep a few secret palaces all to themselves. Temples of old-world excess. Places they could go to … I dunno, have orgies…”
“Master Woodrow!”
“Orgies of chocolate-eating. And keeping monkeys and Persian kittens and towers of champagne and hundred-year-old scotch. All very Gatsby—you know Gatsby, kid? Probably not. Too much drinking and—all right, Crane, never mind.”
It sounds a little like the #urbanmyth about Neverland, Frankie thought. Except instead of a kid’s refuge, it’s for rich people.
“The mythical hoarder’s subculture is tagged @ChamberofHorrors,” the bird told her.
“And it’s a #hoax?”
“Indeed, Mer Barnes, but some @bloodhounds believe it.”
“Drow fact-checks,” Frankie said. “He’s no @hoaxer.”
“I’m like an Arctic hare. White or brown? Yep or nope?”
“It’s a humdinger, Schrodinger,” she said.
Drow blinked, mouth open. “I haven’t heard that lyric in … You really are a fan, aren’t you?”
She felt an interior glow. “If it’s bunk, there won’t be a Chamber to find.”
“Mer Barnes makes an excellent point, sir.”
Drow was still crushing the chips underfoot, devolving every single crumb back to printer matrix. “You do music?”
Frankie cringed again, remembering her dancing. “I like action sims.”
“Like Gimlet.”
“And Rubi. Do you play?” she asked.
He hugged the dog tighter. “Fighting’s a trigger.”
The bus jounced. Frankie hadn’t realized how slowly they would move; roads got little maintenance outside of reclamation zones. The trees grew right up to the edge of the tarmac, tall and leafy.
As she looked through the bus window, her display augmented the glass with carbon stats: how long since the forest had been replanted, how much tonnage it represented.
It was morning in the northeastern US, and the sun was coming up. The road had no artificial light, just the LED spotlights generated by the bus, forward and back. A drone flew ahead, checking for untagged deer and other obstructions.
The road widened, and vintage tags appeared. Overlapping thumbnails offered photos of road crews, and then a shot from wayback Boomer days. There had been businesses here, long garage-like structures, commercial organs circulating the life of the highway ecosystem: fuel stations for millions of cars …
Millions? That couldn’t be right, could it? She pinged Headmistress.
Her sidekick tooned in, the massive queen bee in her formal dress seeming oddly matched, visually, to the butler suit worn by Drow’s big blue bird.
“Millions of cars indeed,” Headmistress buzzed, offering her a history module.
“Accept.” The sim blossomed with old highway captures. There were pop-in kitchens (called restaurants), pop-in apartments (motels), and repair stations not only for all those personal vehicles but for huge shipping trucks and farm equipment. A massive tractor with a static advertising sign on it sat on the roadside, rusting. Shocking, profligate waste.
“Wild bears,” Drow said, and all the photos vanished.
Frankie felt herself gasp. Outside the bus, barely fifty feet from Drow Whiting’s actual flesh, three shaggy forms mooched along the road, backlit by tangerine sunrise. Tourists shifted, seeking optimal views. The tour guide took over the drone controls, getting good footage with its big lens.
Bears. People were crying.
The bus edged around the family, who were nosing at a brown-and-red mass, something torn and dead …
That didn’t die of cancer, Frankie thought.
… and picked up what passed for speed again.
Five minutes later, she spotted a house surrounded by old-style fields, fenced with carbon-sink walls and HESCO barriers, but otherwise a picture out of a past century. A wagon, drawn by horses, waited by the road. The drone withdrew, landing on the bus roof with a thunk.
“Are you there yet?”
“Scranton? Four hours out.”
“Then … is this another historical?”
“In a way. The farm’s Amish,” Drew said. “Outlier community. Look ’em up. They’re running a specialized agricultural enclave, growing real food. Tour FAQ says we’re stopping there to drop off some implant-intolerant kids they’re adopting.”
The bus stopped. A pair of children transferred to the waiting wagon. A guide walked the bus aisle, pausing to take in the smear of chicken-chip crumbs at Drow’s feet.
“Did he pop you?”
“Bet your ass he did,” Drow said wearily. “Food wastage and disrespect of the commons. Crane’s appealing now. Groveling for the lunatic. I should be wearing a hair shirt.”
The bus nudged farther into the driveway. At first, Frankie thought they were turning, but then their guide stepped out, engaging in conversation with the farmers.
Two of the men walked back to the house, disappeared inside, and emerged with a satchel.
“Is this your doing, Crane?”
“You must eat, sir.”
The farmer handed over the basket, which was loaded with buns—
“We have fresh bread for anyone wishing to make a luxury purchase,” announced the guide. A few tourists raised a hand, selecting a bun from the basket. The guide came to Drow’s seat personally, handing over four rolls and a corked bottle with “This is real glass, so don’t eat it,” and—
“Ewww, what is that?”
“It’s what sausage looked like back in the day. I wouldn’t look up the production process. Your child-safety filters couldn’t take it.”
Drow ate six or seven bites, downed the milk, and tore into the bun. “See the steam, kid? Straight from the oven.”
“Chew, sir. And take your meds,” said the app, sternly.
“Don’t mind the antique, Frankie,” Drow mumbled, fumbling in his robe.
The bus got moving again. There was no room to simply turn: they had to drive farther into the farm to get past the wagon.
All Frankie’s views went to Standby.
In the darkness, a voice: Headmistress. “What good can this journey of his do?”
Poppet’s voice replied. “Mer Frances could intercept him. He needs care.”
Then she was back on the bus, rolling back out to the road.
“What just happened?”
Drow said, “Amish packs generally keep a jammer on-site. They have permits to keep the cameras at a distance.”
“Then … could your @ChamberofHorrors be here?”
“Don’t think so. It’d be beneath the high rollers’ dignity to live in a perpetual stench of cow shit.”
Frankie didn’t point out that, since she didn’t have buy-in prescriptions yet, she couldn’t smell the farm.
Meanwhile, she considered what Headmistress had said.
“Why don’t you tell his daughter how he’s doing?” she subbed to Crane.
“Master Woodrow and I are managing.”
“Rubi could help.”
“If Master Woodrow can maintain some balance of mind, it shows that both he and Miss Cherub can have a measure of independence. Win conditions for both users require—”
“He’s #triaged, right? If he gets in trouble, nobody will save him.”
“I beg you, Mer, don’t tell Rubi.”
“Did you know this would happen?”
“I didn’t seek to get him into this. But he must—and I believe he can—get himself out.”
“It looks pretty bad.”
“Oh,” Crane said, “this isn’t bad. And your visit has been helpful.”
Has been. Past tense.
“Gimlet’s press conference has come to an end,” Crane confirmed. “Your working group is requesting transport to Greenwich.”
Frankie looked at Drow. He was feeding his dog a bite of the sausage.
“That’s for you, sir,” objected the app.
“Googirl, Robin, who’s a googirl?”
“All your dogs are named Robin?”
“Flowers for the grave of my dads’ venned fandom. Here—” He handed over a music box—GoldenGooglyGoogirl, draft two, it was called. G-rated. “Come back and we’ll mess with lyrics.”
Frankie blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah, why not?” Drow beamed. “I haven’t thought of that Anthropocene soundtrack or the Humdinger thing in ages. You’re like a blast from my parenting past. Breath of fresh air.”
Headmistress tipped her antennae downward, the equivalent of a frown. “Mer Frances, you’re wanted on the surface.”
“Seriously,” the MadMaestro said. “Come back anytime you fancy a dose of bad language and paranoid bullshit.”
And honesty, Frankie thought. On impulse, she reached out, squeezing his bony knee before she surfaced.