William Dietrich - Getting back

"How'd you hear about it?"

"Tipped by a correspondent on the web. Pen pal fellow failure. I'd heard rumors, floating in the cyber underground, but never knew it was real."

"So what did you think about Coyle advising us to team up? Are you game for that? Maybe we could be partners."

Tucker eyed him speculatively. "Maybe. What do you do when you aren't quoting history?"

"I thought it was supposed to be why do you do. The what is a software writer."

"Sheeit."

"The why is… I don't know why. I haven't thought it through as clearly as you, perhaps. That's what I'm looking for out there: why."

"That's what unites this bunch, I'll bet. We're all looking." Tucker glanced around at the other chatting adventurers. "Listen, I wouldn't mind teaming up but I've already got someone else who wanted to tag along." He pointed. "That cute little girl over there. The one with the short black hair. Name's Chiu." He caught her eye and waved to her. "Amaya! Help me check this guy out!"

A young, pleasant-looking woman with a ready smile came over. She wasn't really little, but shorter and slighter than either Tucker or Daniel. Her round face was open and cheerful and her dark eyes danced as she looked up at each in turn.

"This is Daniel. He wants to come with us. He can quote Captain Cook."

She cocked her head. "How useful. And his field of expertise?"

"He says he's a software writer. I think that means he can type." Tucker laughed.

"And a military engineer." Daniel said it lightly. "I build catapults."

"Why Tucker!" she exclaimed. "Exactly what we need!"

"What do you do, Ms. Chiu?"

"Partly stand in Tucker's shadow," she teased, stepping slightly behind his powerful form. "He's the brawn and I'm the brains, right, Freidel?"

"I ain't doing all the lifting."

"I'm also an executive suck-up by profession, and amateur naturalist and closet romantic by inclination."

"Executive suck-up?"

"Assistant, associate, deputy, and lieutenant, rising horizontally from one middle-management post to another. A gofer who finally answered to one idiot too many and decided to really go. I love adventure stories, so I've decided to live one. And I'm fascinated by nature."

Like Tucker, without pretense. "We all seem to have a lot in common."

"And two strong males! You two can break trail. I'll point the way."

"Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea," Daniel said.

"Except a hundred eighty degrees in the opposite direction. We want to go east, gentlemen, not west. I'm already contributing, you see, by making that clear."

Tucker scratched his head in mock befuddlement. "And doesn't the sun set backward Down Under?"

Amaya rolled her eyes. "I never did have a proper taste in men. So do you really build catapults, Mr…"

"Dyson. Daniel Dyson. A little one, once. It got me into trouble."

"War machines usually do."

Daniel liked her banter. This could be fun.

"I saw you talking to the hand-raiser," Tucker said to her. "What's he like?"

"Smart. As in mouth, ass. But quick too. Maybe we should enlist him."

Daniel was doubtful. "That guy?"

"He's interesting. He'll talk your ear off. Come over and meet him."

Ico Washington wasted no time in presenting them with his worldview. He had curly hair and olive skin and a restless manner, his eyes flicking around the room as he talked. He fizzed like a shaken bottle.

"I don't take these Outback guys seriously," he explained. "I don't take anyone connected with United Corporations seriously. I haven't heard an honest word since the delivery doctor slapped my butt and extended condolences, just happy-talk bullshit my whole life and an unending list of rules and come-ons. I mean, a year's salary to dump me in some desert? It's gotta be a scam. And when an oily snake like Elliott Coyle says gee, not all of you may get to go, I know I'm being taken."

Tucker frowned. "So why are you here?"

Ico laughed with self-deprecation. "Because this is my peek behind the curtain, man. This is my chance to look from outside the box. I figure that out in the bush there's no wall whispers, no head-vid, no committee-meetings-from-hell. For once I get away from the ambient noise, you know? So I can think. So I can consider. So I can plan."

"Plan what?"

"Permanent escape." He nodded, as if confiding a great secret. "I don't want a temporary furlough, I want release from this bullshit corporate world. I want to experience real freedom. So I go along with their little mind games, even while I let them know I see through them. Because this isn't a vacation for me, this is a turning point. Once I'm down on that Outback ground, I'm not the same guy coming back. I'm going to imagine a better life. I think they're betting a taste of dirt and bugs will teach me the benefits of the United Corporations world, but I'm going to be finding my own world. We're Pandora's box, man, and they've no clue what can happen when you open the lid."

Daniel frowned, recognizing a bit of himself. "So what is it that you do, Ico?"

He looked at them smugly. "I see things clearly."

By design, there was no one to see them off.

There were thirteen pages of rules to replicate wilderness experience: "Condition 27: You will not write or speak about this experience. Condition 63: You will have completed and filed with Outback Adventure a last will and testament. Condition 81: You will have been screened and found free of communicable diseases."

Condition 17 specified an unpredictable departure time. No goodbyes to family or loved ones. No hugs. No weeping. No notice. They came, you went, like a furtive kidnapping. Daniel's call buzzed through at the trailing edge of night. "I'm in the lobby, Daniel," Coyle's voice calmly announced. "It's time for adventure."

He groaned. "Jesus, what time is it?"

"Just before dawn. The favored time for surprise attack."

"All right," he said groggily. "I've just got to pull my stuff together."

"Five minutes."

"Elliott…"

"Five minutes. We told you it would be like this. Cold plunge. The time for second thoughts is over."

Daniel knew the opposite was true. He could still quit, even now. The urgent, disorienting departure was a final test. "I'll be down. Everything's here. Just a couple items I've been debating to take."

"If in doubt, leave it out."

He swung out of bed, dressed without a shower, and grabbed his gear. His last pained decision had been to leave his sleeping bag behind in favor of a lighter, slimmer, tougher bedroll. He needed to move to survive. After another minute's indecision he pocketed the toy action trooper next to his computer. Gordo Firecracker, tough guy amulet. Then he glanced around a last time.

The apartment was already bare. He'd made arrangements for the last of his belongings to be packed and moved into storage. The video wall was a dim gray, his computer cabinet lightless. Now he threw his Microcore identity badge into the trash. "Mona, I'm gonna," he recited. Goodbye to the goddess, goodbye to the gorgon, goodbye to all that. "Raven, I'm… cravin'." Craving what? Sand in his cereal? Blisters on his heels? "Cravin' to find out why."

Coyle saw him into a cab and gave him tickets for a shuttle. A red-eye flight to a coast city, leaving in forty-five minutes. "You'll meet the others for final departure there." The door slammed.

Daniel keyed down the window. "Aren't you going to wish me good luck?"

His counselor was silent a moment. "Luck is just preparation plus opportunity," he finally recited. In the darkness of predawn, Coyle's expression couldn't be seen.

There was a two-hour flight to the final departure point, the two dozen other adventurers scattered at random through the plane, a few sleeping and most just quiet, lost in their own thoughts. At the airport an unmarked bus met them for transport to an industrial airfield. More than a hundred people had assembled there for flights that would scatter them like shot across the continent of Australia. They checked into musty dormitories.