“You’ll love it. Worse come to worst, we’ve got your scan on file, right?”
“It’s a hell of an afterlife,” Etcetera said. “I’ll show you the ropes.”
She considered her options—epic grump, sarcasm, capitulation—grinned and said, “Looks like we’re riding!” Seth hugged her. She heard Etcetera whisper praises of his choice in romantic partners.
[v]
They arrayed the bikes in the field, ranged smallest to tallest, and scrounged a trailer the boys could sit in that their half-sized bikes could clip to. There was general hilarity while they tried and swapped helmets, taking group photos. The aerialists, unloaded, looked on, gave advice, and tinkered with the bikes.
They reached a moment when everyone was impatient to go and no one could name a reason not to—everyone’s bladder emptied and so on. They formed up and rode. Tam grit her teeth as she started to ride, but it was smooth. The bike had the combination of rigidity and springiness of tensegrity designs, absorbing shocks with ease but still rigid enough for steerability.
Stan and Jacob set the pace for the first eight kilometers, a slow ride. Hoa and her friends kept up, hanging on Gretyl’s every word. When Stan and Jacob ran out of steam (red faced, panting) they climbed into the trailer. The rest of the party took the opportunity to pee, drink water, snack, kibitz, trade bikes, and adjust helmets. When they started again, Hoa and friends made their good-byes and turned back.
They pushed themselves hard, three abreast, sometimes passed by the odd car—most of the vehicle traffic rode on the 401, which was pure default and heavily patrolled—stopping early in a Mohawk reservation where there was a diner with pressure-cooked potato wedges served with cheese-curds. The proprietor was second generation Idle No More. They quickly figured out which friends they had in common.
The sun was low. They agreed that if they pushed it, they could be in Kingston by nightfall, maybe even have a midnight feast with Limpopo, a prospect that fired their imaginations and enthusiasms, except for Jacob and Stan, who were already asleep in their trailer, curled like a yin/yang. Iceweasel loosened their clothes and popped a shade over them and then stared at them smiling in a way that Tam could understand, but not relate to.
Seth caught her and gave her a hug and a smoldering kiss, adding sneaky tongue and an earlobe nibble; she got one hand up his sweaty back and then slid it over his butt and gave it a squeeze.
“Quickie in the bushes?” he whispered.
“Jeez, you two,” Etcetera said. She remembered he was a cyborg today and jerked away.
“You sure know how to enhance a mood.” Seth gave her one more hug. “Sorry, darling.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Let’s get this show rolling.”
She was a walkaway, had been a walkaway since she was fourteen, though she’d come and gone from default—back to her parents, then an aunt, then her parents—until she was seventeen, when she’d gone for good. She had big thigh muscles and calves that bulged, even now she was saggy and middle aged. There had been a time when she thought nothing of walking ten hours a day, day after day. In those days, a bicycle was practically cheating. She could have ridden without breaking a sweat. It was a luxury reserved for the confluence of great roads and good fortune.
Muscles or no, those days were behind her. After the first hour, she was panting. The wicking fabric of her shirt felt sticky. There were times when her calves and feet cramped and she had to do awkward stretches while riding, grimacing and suppressing groans. She could have called a stop, but there was the thought of dinner with Limpopo. Besides, Seth was grimacing, too, and so were Iceweasel and Gretyl. None of them were calling stops. She wouldn’t be the first one to cry off.
“Goddamnit!” Seth howled and shook his leg, laid down the bike, and rolled in the grass on the verge. He clutched his leg. They all got off and stretched and complained and sheepishly smiled at each other. Jacob and Stan woke from their naps and ran circles around them and demanded to be allowed to ride. They all agreed it would be unfair not to let the boys ride, so there were hours of slower-paced riding. It was much better.
The sun was a bloody blob on the horizon behind them, staining the road red, when Jacob and Stan climbed back into their trailer. Iceweasel checked their helmet straps. Gretyl did it again. The two women shot each other daggers and laughed at themselves. They were all old, and were on a long journey together. Something was changing. One era giving way to another. The sense of a change crackled through the cooling air. They ate mushy watermelon slices and squeezie pouches of chocolate scop and electrolyte. They checked the distance and by unspoken consensus got on their machines and started cranking.
There were no streetlights on the road. They switched to headlights, then nightscopes, then back to headlights when the lights of Kingston brightened the horizon. They circled the city, warned off by hovering police drones and the signs warning of OPP checkpoints. They headed for 15 north, the strip of private prisons built one after another.
The moon was up and it was getting cold when they reached the exit off the highway to the prisons, a theme-park of jailhouses built by TransCanada as part of its diversification strategy. The juvie hall. The men’s prison. The minimum-security pen. As word went round that change had arrived, each acquired rings of tents and yurts. The phenomenon followed a template that was developed and formalized in the stupidly named “Walkaway Decade.” Some walls came down, others went up. They’d build rammed-earth machines and add sprawling wings and ells, almost certainly an onsen, because that was de rigueur at anything walkaway bigger than a few people.
The rhythm of the place would change. On days when the sun shone or the wind blew, they’d run coolers with abandon, heat huge pools of water for swimming and bathing, charge and loose drones and other toys. When neither were around, the buildings would switch to passive climate control, the people would switch activities to less power-hungry ones.