William Dietrich - Getting back

"Do you wish to leave a message?"

"There's no number?"

"Do you wish to leave a message?"

He drummed his fingers, considering. "Yeah, I want to leave a message. Tell her I called."

"We'll do that."

The connection went dead.

Daniel stared at the phone a long time. They hadn't asked his name.

Room upon room, level upon level, link upon link. A descent into an underworld in which the passwords and riddles and locks were always changing, identities shifting, allegiances unclear. Not just cyberspace, but a cyber pit of mysteries. He clicked and probed, searching for himself: could he find any reference to Outback Adventure? His search engines revealed no matches. Information on Australia had been wiped, except for rumor and uncertain memory. Coyle was right. It was ignorance that made wilderness.

Disbelieve.

Spartacus again, like an electronic nag. Have you decided, Daniel?

"I'm going away."

Away? Where?

"To the wilderness."

There is no more wilderness. Except here.

"I'm going to a special place."

Your place is here. With us.

"I can't do your truth cookie. I don't know how and besides, they've made me. I'm dangerous to you now. They found out about my hacking and they watch me. So… I'm going."

There was no response.

"I'm sorry. I know this GeneChem stuff is- "

There's nothing in the wilderness. That's why it's called wilderness.

"I think I can find something there."

What?

What indeed? Raven? "My reason for being."

Your reason for being is here.

"Goodbye. I have to go now."

The truth is inside, not outside…

"I'm crazy, but not a fool."

The phrase became Daniel's mantra as he started his preparations. You make your own luck, he told himself. He would research, he would train, he would purchase, and because of that he would survive. When he awakened in the Australian desert he would be self-contained and self-sufficient, a twenty-first-century primitive, ready to live as prehistoric man must have lived but with the added edge of modern technology. The challenge was daunting, but also energizing. Once equipped, he would need no one and nothing, except the fruits of the earth. He would enjoy total freedom.

Because of the peculiarities of its challenge- the emphasis on self-survival, unaided and undirected- the training and guidance from Outback Adventure was alternately generous and guarded. The mix put him off-balance. From earliest memory Daniel's life had been crammed with advice: recited by parents, drilled by teachers, whispered to him from office walls, pounded at him in commercials, nagged by machines due for a tune-up, or scolded by corporate officials conducting performance appraisals. Everyone, it seemed, knew exactly what he should do next. Until now. He could learn quite a bit about generic survival tactics, and very little about the place he would use them. Survival could be taught. Australia must remain mysterious.

What Daniel was presented with were catalogs. There were endless lists of available equipment. Inventories of Australian plants and animals. Data on the temperature (hot), rainfall (erratic), and elevation (low). Survival manuals so general that they included advice on building igloos, drying fish, and distilling sea water. The descriptions of the country he was to be deposited in, however, were spare.

"That would defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?" said Elliott Coyle.

"It's just odd, and difficult, preparing for a place that's been turned into a deliberate secret. There're no maps and no journals by previous adventurers."

"How did Columbus prepare? Cabot? Boone?" Coyle tapped his head and heart. "In here, not out there. They knew little of where they were going, but an immense amount about seamanship or forest travel. They succeeded on common sense. If you succeed it will be because of you, not because of us."

That's what he wanted. That's what he feared.

The shopping was initially exhilarating. Suddenly, money seemed to have no meaning. Departing on something as timeless and ill-defined as Outback Adventure was liberating. He felt like a kid in a candy store who could buy to fulfill a fantasy: Second-Skin to don for cold desert nights. A solar blanket squeezed into the size of a matchbox. Chem-candles to start fires. Torso webbing to hold clip-ons. Freeze-dried Stroganoff, couscous, strawberry shortcake, and Szechwan chicken. A water purifier, a solar battery recharge wafer, vitamin drops, a solar-lithium flashlight, a hydrogen pellet stove, Spider-Line, Supra-Boots, and a bush hat with band pockets for fish hooks, spare buttons, a barometer, and data wafers for his palmtop computer.

He spread it across the floor of his apartment and regarded its titanium glitter with initial glee. The paraphernalia of survival! Yet as he toyed with his acquisitions, weighing them individually while toting up his load, he began to feel misgivings. How much of this world did he really want to saddle onto his back? Every step would be a reminder of where he'd come from. Would that be reassuring, or oppressive? He sat on his couch and looked at his purchases, receipts curled like party streamers and box lids gaping like hungry mouths. He put on the bush hat and regarded himself in the reflection of a computer screen.

"G'day, mate."

He frowned.

"You look bloody ridiculous."

Suddenly the gear seemed a miniaturized replication of the United Corporations world, as cumbersome as a space suit. Out of curiosity he bundled the instruction booklets and weighed them. A pound right there.

He sat down again and began to think.

How could he carry enough on his back to keep alive for the months it would likely take to hike to the Australian coast and find Exodus Port? Even with the new food concentrates it suddenly seemed impossible. To be put down in the middle of nowhere, to find your own way to an unclear destination… was he insane? But then that was the nature of exploring, wasn't it? "Because of you, not because of us," Coyle had said. Damn right it would be a way to explore himself.

Raven carried no water underground because she knew where to get a drink. "Water's heavy," she'd said.

He moved to his window and watched the pigeons fluttering across Silicon Square. They carried nothing at all, and neither had primitive man. If you knew what to eat, the wilderness was a garden. He needed to carry less on his shoulders and more in his head.

He went to a hardware store and bought a dowel and block of wood. Then he came back, sat down, and began drawing up a new list of what he thought he truly needed. Next to it he wrote a goal: "45 pounds." He scratched some items out and added others. How light could he travel? How fast could he move? He considered, then wrote again: "35 pounds?" He flipped through the books. How good a garden was Australia? He'd been taught all his life that information was the tool of success, and now information was frustratingly vague. He underlined a passage. "Your environment is neither friendly nor hostile, but rather the product of preparation and the discipline of your mind."

He took the wood block and with a pocketknife whittled a small depression in it, then roughly sharpened one end of the dowel so it rested in the new hole. The wood shavings he carefully hoarded. Then he began to experiment with ways to pivot the dowel in the hole.

Four hours later, the building superintendent was pounding on his door. "Dyson! Hey, open the door if you're in there!"

Daniel opened it a crack. He looked tired.

"Christ, the stink!" the super greeted. "The goddamned fire alarm sounded! You okay? You burn something?"

His tenant held up a blackened piece of wood with a look of grim satisfaction. "I started a fire, Mr. Landau. With this."