“Never mind.”
“Besides, the ISP has made everyone in Hollow World immune to germs. And people don’t die anymore, so this whole idea of a better afterlife is just…well…silly.” Bob frowned.
“So why are you here?”
“To be special—to be like you and Ren. You’re just so—I want you to know how much I admire you. We all do. Ren explains that to be like you, we need to build character. Can’t be an individual without character. He says it’s through pain and struggle that we grow as people and become unique. We need to be rocks like the two of you instead of what we are, dandelion puffs blown in the wind.”
“Ren called you that?”
Bob smiled. “No—my own thought. Nice, don’t you think?”
“Very poetic.”
Bob threw the latch on the barn and pulled the big doors open. Inside was a dark, manure-scented cave defined only by white slices of light cutting between vertical boards. “Everyone needs to be responsible for themselves. No free rides. If you can’t cut it, you don’t deserve to live. It’s that simple.”
Ellis grinned, hearing Warren’s words spilling out of Bob’s mouth. In his head, Ellis imagined a giant clown getting out of a tiny car.
“Survival of the fittest,” Bob said. “That’s the Darwins’ creed, isn’t it?”
“That was Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection—which traditionally hasn’t coexisted all that comfortably with Christianity.”
Standing before the row of cows, Bob paused, looking at Ellis with a puzzled expression. “I don’t know about such things, but”—Bob held out the buckets—“Ren said you’d want to contribute for your breakfast.”
“Oh, right, of course. No free lunch.” Ellis smiled and took the pails. “You’ll need to show me.”
Ellis expected milking a cow would be a complicated thing. It always was in movies, but, then again, according to Hollywood grown men, who could build highways and clean out putrid city-sewer tunnels, couldn’t manage to change a baby’s diaper without rubber gloves and a gas mask. The process was remarkably easy once he formed a rhythm and was assured he wasn’t hurting the cow by tugging. The hardest part was avoiding the swish of the manure-coated tail while sitting on the little stool and holding the bucket between his knees.
Bob watched until satisfied that Ellis was doing okay, then went about feeding and watering the barn’s other residents.
“How long have you been here—at this farm?” Ellis asked over the jet of milk hitting the side of the pail.
“Little less than half a year.”
Ellis couldn’t see Bob, who was on the other side of the cow that had been introduced as Olivia. “And you like it better than Hollow World?”
“Oh—much!” Ellis heard the scrape of a shovel. “I didn’t think I would, and I didn’t at first. Life in the forest must have been hard. Only Ren could appreciate that challenge. Too advanced for the rest of us. But here it’s much—well, it’s a lot easier.”
“Don’t you find it boring? Even a little stupid—I mean, struggling when you don’t have to?”
“That’s the point. It’s unpleasant living here—especially when you don’t feel well and you have to go out in a cold rain. I’ll stand at the door sometimes just looking out and wonder what the bleez I’m doing. Then I force myself, and a funny thing happens. I get the work done, hating all of it, but afterward I feel great. I mean, I’m exhausted and filthy, but I know I did something. We call it Ren’s magic. It’s like a delectation that you can get all by yourself. You don’t need a device to feel pleasure, and the good feeling lasts for days. I never really felt that back in Hollow World. Nothing anyone does really seems to matter there. That’s another part of character building—a sense of pride.”
By the time Ellis finished filling the four buckets, he had sore hands, and, as inclined as he was to ridicule Warren’s patchwork of philosophies, he had to admit it did feel good to do something worth doing. Everyone in the house would appreciate the milk, and the cows appeared to appreciate being relieved of their bloat. In all his years of ten-and twelve-hour days filled with thousands of hours of meetings, he had never felt that sort of pride or accomplishment. Somewhere along the way people had traded the virtues of work for a steady paycheck.
“It makes the food taste better when you’ve a hand in making it,” Bob explained, picking up two of the pails and leading the way back to the house, each of them sloshing buckets of steaming milk.
Breakfast was better than dinner, consisting of unburned blueberry muffins and omelets. After the meal, Warren abandoned him and disappeared upstairs with Pol and Dex. Ellis didn’t mind; he didn’t know exactly when Pax would return and preferred they meet alone. He helped Yal with dishes, then walked out the front door and down Firestone Lane, figuring Pax would port in about where they had separated the day before.
What am I going to say?
Hig was out cutting hay, and Ellis marveled at the ingenuity of the mowing machine. Circling the field in a clockwise manner, the two big horses—Noah and Webster—pulled the device, which appeared to be little more than two big wagon wheels and a seat. A crankshaft and connecting rod transformed the rotary power of the axle into the reciprocating motion of the saw blade that sliced back and forth between triangle ledger plates as they combed through the grass. The whole thing was just a larger version of hair clippers, but what Ellis found fascinating was how it was powered by the rotating wheels. It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise; he’d seen the same concept in a push lawn mower. This just worked so much better cutting a wide swath with each pass as Hig drove the horses from the seat between the wheels.
The smell of cut grass filled the air. Ellis sighed.
What am I going to say?
He didn’t really know.
Warren had invited him to be part of his little village. Life at Firestone might be harder than he was used to, and for Dex, Yal, Hig, and Bob, this might be a pretend life, like dude ranching used to be, some sort of rugged vacation or spiritual retreat. But for Warren and himself, who didn’t have a natural place in Hollow World, this could be home. He was a bit too old to be hauling bales of hay, but it was familiar and felt real, and he liked the idea of building something. Having faced death with nothing to show for it, he had discovered such things mattered.
But then there was Pax.
Ellis found he was anxious for Pax’s return, and surprised to find he was trembling as he waited at the fence. He couldn’t help thinking how great it would be if Pax would join them at Firestone. They could share a house, farm the land, create their own food, and read around the stove in winter. Living with Pax would be different from how it had been with Peggy. What had attracted him to her was sex. When it dried up, and it had all too quickly, all they shared was their child. At Isley’s passing, all that had remained was convenience. It would be different with Pax. He felt—
I thought maybe you were going native, walking on the other side of the road, so to speak.
Warren was nuts. He liked Pax—that was all. Who wouldn’t like Pax? The two of them just sort of clicked, like old friends who’d just met. Friends-at-first-sight, if there was such a thing. Pax made him feel better about himself, made him feel like he was someone important. Pax had a strange way of making him feel happy. That’s what good friends were supposed to do, right? Maybe he just never had a really good friend before. Maybe that was why…Ellis watched Hig orbit the field, wondering if it was possible to fall in love with someone—just someone—not a woman, not a man—just a person. What is love anyway?
Ellis shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. What the hell am I thinking?
He was starting to feel a little light-headed. His hands felt a bit numb as well.