W. Thompson: Out of the Waste Land

Margaret buckled the belt in place, then switched to her speech icons. “I don’t need a hat,” she said. “The helmet is designed to reflect heat. It’s been tested.”

“Yeah?” Geisler shrugged. She found herself envying the easy naturalness of that gesture. Body language was one of the many things she had lost: the simple ability to express feelings through natural changes in posture. “Well, I’ve worn helmets in hotter places than this, and I didn’t fry my brain too bad. Let’s go.” He turned and started walking.

“How far?” Margaret asked.

He shrugged again. “Ten, twelve miles today. C’mon.”

Margaret hesitated as Geisler kept walking. The ground beyond the gas station looked reasonably flat, but it was choked with weeds and dried-out desert growths, and there were angular rocks everywhere. She clicked on the autowalk icon, but before she could set the cursor to draw out a projected path the computer flashed a message on her display in indignant red letters: Terrain too rough. Advice: [1] Choose smoother terrain. [2] Use manual guidance.

She wondered what idiot had decided to send her out on ground as rough as this. For a moment she thought about getting back in the van and returning to Los Angeles—except—damn it, that would mean admitting she couldn’t handle this. Admitting she was a cripple, and having to listen to more feel good talk from the therapists. No way, she told herself, no way in hell.

And this place looked like a good approximation of hell. One more mistake, she thought in disgust. Another mistake in a lifetime of mistakes. Wrong husband, wrong doctor, wrong everything. It had all brought her here, leaving her unable to do anything for herself except move her eyes and blink. A basket case, reanimated by a computer and moving like a marionette in a land as dead and barren as her life.

She clicked on her movement icons, identified a stretch of dirt ten feet long that looked fairly smooth, and placed the cursor at the end of the stretch. The computer took control and obediently moved her legs, left, right, left, walking her over to the spot she had marked. Another icon let her step over a large rock, and then she was able to cross a dozen clear and level feet of desert ground before she had to stop to evade a dead clump of brown, shrub-sized weeds. She turned a bit to the left and made it across two yards of clear ground before hitting another obstacle.

Geisler had walked on a hundred yards ahead of her, before he stopped to watch her zig-zag her way across the ground. “Somethin’ wrong?” he called to her. Then, after a long silence: “Well?”

Margaret stopped, looked at him and switched to her speech icons. She raised her vocal volume to make sure he heard her. “Nothing is wrong. I can’t move any fwster.”

Geisler looked blank. “ ‘F’wister’?”

“Faster,” she said in irritation. Every time she misspelled a word the damned computer made her mouth generate some idiot-sounding noise. It didn’t help that the machine got confused over some of the English language’s more idiosyncratic rules. P’seechowtherapy. K’nuckless. Wurist. Every night (which the computer had originally pronounced as “ni-gut”) she had to spend time programming in correct pronunciations.

In her first hour after leaving the desert town Margaret had barely walked one mile. When she looked back she saw the van was still there, parked in front of the diner. Too late to turn back, she thought wryly; by the time she could thread her way back the driver would have finished his meal and left town. Of course, she had a cellular modem built into her helmet, so she could call for a ride—no, forget it.

Geisler stopped at the end of the first hour, took a drink from one of his canteens, then held it out to her. “Don’t drink too much right now,” he cautioned her. “There’s a supply cache about ten miles from here, and what we’re carrying has to last until we get there.”

Margaret swallowed some water, then lowered the canteen. She decided against trying to screw the cap back in place; she had practiced that maneuver, but she wasn’t very good at it and didn’t want to risk spilling any water. She handed the canteen to Geisler and switched on her speech icons. “I’m walking faster now,” she said.

“Yeah, I noticed,” he said, as he capped the canteen and hung it on his belt. “The ground gets sorta smoother in another mile or so. There’s a dirtbike trail along the foot of the hills. It’ll go straight to the number one cache.”

“That sounds better.”

“Yeah, well, it’s gonna get a lot hotter before it gets any cooler.” Geisler took off his hat and wiped at his forehead, then looked her over. “You look OK so far, so I guess you’ll make it. One thing, though. I guess you can’t walk and talk at the same time?”

“Right.” She thought about explaining how she had to switch between her different control icons, then decided against it. “Maybe I’m qualified to go into politics.”

Geisler laughed and put his hat back on. “Let’s get going.”

The trail was a set of ruts which ran along the foot of the dusty hills. It was broken by gullies and boulders which had tumbled down the craggy slopes. The trail was not much smoother than the desert floor had been, but Margaret was learning how to walk on it with reasonable speed.

Late in the evening they found a V-shaped pile of stones at the mouth of a ravine, and Geisler swore at it in disgust. “They should know better,” he complained to Maggie, as he led her up the ravine. “Hell’s bells, I told them better.”

Margaret followed him in silence. Whatever the problem was, she knew he would tell her sooner or later. He had kept up a fairly steady monologue throughout the day, filling her in on desert lore and history. He had also asked after her health from time to time, saw to it that she took enough water and salt tablets to make up for her sweat losses, and made sure she kept her exposed face and arms slathered with sunscreen.

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred,” Geisler grumbled, his fingers wiggling methodically as he counted off his paces. He stopped and looked around the ravine. “Yeah, there it is, lucky us.” He walked up to a boulder, where a steel drum painted Dayglo orange sat in its shadow. He pulled off its lid, looked inside, and pulled out something. “Take this and head back to the trail. No way are we camping here. ”

Margaret took the burlap bag he handed her and walked back to the ravine’s mouth. He followed her a few minutes later. He had tied a rope to the drum’s handle, and looped the rope’s end around his shoulders like a harness. His fingers worked as he operated his leg’s control rings. “Goddamn brainless wonders,” he panted. “Never think about… how I’m supposed… to walk and carry crap… same goddam time.”

“Let me help,” Margaret said.

“You’ll goddamn have to help, Maggie,” Geisler said. He pointed to the hillside, where a barely-visible trail ran up to a smooth ledge under a rock face. “That’s our campsite, and there’s no way I can carry this stuff up there.”

“They may have had that in mind,” Margaret said.

“What, to make you do somethin’ therapeutic?” Geisler sat down and wiped sweat from his face. “Figures. OK, get therapeutic. I’m too old for this crap.”

Margaret took the bag he had given her before and carried it uphill to the ledge. The path wasn’t too bad, she noted, and when she clicked on the autowalk icon the computer was able to take her uphill without asking for her guidance. That came as a welcome change of pace. After having to think about almost every step she took for the past dozen miles, Margaret was glad to let the computer do some work.