“A new one or one of the old ones?”
“A totally new one. Iran was supposed to be invading Iraq because, shit, that’s been going on for a long time. Except this time, it didn’t. The pilots they sent into Iraq didn’t drop their bombs—they landed on Kurdish airstrips. The infantrymen, soon as they hit the battle lines, they refused to fight. Bunch of officers, too. Everyone’s kind of freaked. The Iraqi side gives the order to kill the shit out of these weird-ass invaders. Instead, those soldiers refuse, too. The ones that try to fight, their buddies take away their guns. Seriously!”
“That’s too weird to be true.”
“Only because she didn’t tell you the best part,” Gretyl said.
“They were all walkaways,” Jacob shouted. “Just like us!”
“Way to clobber my punch line, kiddo.” Iceweasel swung him onto her hip and kissed the tip of his nose. “It’s a legend around here. There’s a Gulf-wide walkaway affinity group, running over the same nets everyone else uses to get around their national firewalls, so there’s cover. Once the walkaways on both sides figured they were about to be sent to kill each other, they decided, fuck that noise, and made a plan.”
“Fuck that noise!” Jacob punched the air. Stan rolled his eyes. Tam was sure he wished he’d seized the opportunity to detonate an f-bomb with impunity. Gretyl and Iceweasel insisted the boys would never learn to swear properly unless they had good role models. So they were enjoined to closely observe swearing, not attempting it until they were sure they had it right. When they tried it, they were subjected to embarrassing judging and coaching on swear-expertise. This was more effective at curbing their language than anything the other parents tried on their kids.
“That’s amazing, all right,” Limpopo said. “Why didn’t the generals drone them all? Stop the rot from spreading?”
“There’s a rumor both sides gave the order and the drone operators refused and no one wanted to make an issue out of it. Last thing a general wants is to discover that he’s in charge of an army of one, in the middle of an army of everyone else.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“What was it, a year ago?” Iceweasel said.
“Eight months,” Tam said.
“Well, shit. That’s impressive. We don’t get a lot of news in here.”
“The point is you don’t know what’s going to happen, we can’t know, but there’s reason to be optimistic. People are tired of shooting each other.”
Tam chuckled. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. There’s a—” She fished for the word. “Credibility for walkaways. A sense we’ve got it figured. Once you realize there’s a world that wants what you have to give, well, it’s hard to convince people to kill each other.”
“Fuck my ass,” Limpopo said, sending Stan and Jacob into giggles. There was some background noise from her end, a muffled conversation. “I need to think, and there’s not a lot of interface stuff here so I’ve got to give someone else a turn. Sit tight and I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure,” Tam said, and the house spirit echoed her an instant later. Everyone shouted good-bye and Limpopo said good-bye. The room went silent except for the whistling of breath in and out of Jacob’s snotty nose.
“You’re not going to wait for her to call back, are you?” the house spirit said.
“Are you shitting me? No way,” Iceweasel said.
“You want to pack for the kids or should I?” Gretyl said. The boys figured it out a moment later and exchanged excited looks and began to run in circles.
“You do it. I’ll look around for berths on a train.”
“Check the bumblers.” Seth was also bouncing. “Winds are favorable to the northeast lately, I bet we can snag a ride a long way.”
“Good thinking,” Iceweasel said. “Boys, you want to ride in a zeppelin?”
Both boys babbled and shouted. Then Jacob got so excited he punched Stan, because reasons. They tumbled on the floor, punching and shouting.
Their moms exchanged a look, shook their heads apologetically at the rest of the adults. “We’re trying to let them sort these out on their own,” Gretyl said. “Sorry.”
Everyone else was in too good spirits to be bothered. Tam looked in amazement at her housemates, her extended family, and realized she was about to start walking again.
[ii]
The train schedules sucked. There was a complex algorithm that figured out how many cars to put on which lines when. It was endlessly wrangled by wonks with different models that weighted priorities differently. Gretyl got sucked into the math, disappearing into a set of accountable-anonymity message boards where this was being hammered out, and Iceweasel messaged Tam to say that she was probably going to be stuck in that rathole for the foreseeable. So Tam should start exploring alternatives.
There were rideshares heading that way, but they’d have to split into sub-groups and reform at way stations. This was something that you could automate (Tam helped Iceweasel with a kids’ field trip to the Akron Memorial last year and they’d found it easy), but surface vehicles were slow.
“You need to find a bumbler,” Seth said.
“Yeah,” Tam said. She tapped her interface surfaces, made sure that the house spirit was locked out. “But it’s uncomfortable.”
“Etcetera is my friend,” Seth said. “My oldest buddy. Just because he and Limpopo can’t stand each other, doesn’t mean we have to take sides. You’re not betraying her by being friends with him. If you asked her, she’d tell you.”
“If I asked her, I’d put her in a position where she’d have to tell me she didn’t mind, even if she did. Which is why I’m not asking her. Friends don’t put friends in that position.”
“If she knew you were holding off on talking to him because you were worried about upsetting her, she’d be outraged.”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s why I don’t tell her.”
“Don’t you think that’s all … twisted? Especially since there’s the Other Limpopo”—they’d settled on this because, despite its least-worst awkwardness, all of them agreed “Real Limpopo” was a shitty, most-worst solution—“who was in love with Etcetera and would be glad to talk to him again.”
She sighed and scrubbed her eyes. She’d been staring at screens for a long time. “It sucks. So what? Lots of things suck. Life isn’t improved by being a dick to people who love you.”
“Etcetera loves you.”
“Fuck off.” She let him rub her shoulders. “Argh.” He found the knot in her right shoulder, a gnarl of stubborn pain that felt so good-bad when his thumbs dug into it.
“Right there.” She lolled her head.
“You’re a pushover. I could win every fight by sticking my thumb in this knot.”
“It’s my kryptonite. Don’t abuse your powers.”
“I am gonna call Etcetera.”
“Fuck you.” She snuggled her head against his belly, pushing her sore shoulder knot back into his thumb.