Will McIntosh - Defenders

The picture flickered and stretched, giving the Clarise Wilde look-alike a thin, otherworldly appearance.

“Man, I miss satellites,” Uncle Walter said.

So did Lila. All those channels, so clear you could barely tell the pictures from the real world. Much more than that, though, she missed her direct feed. She missed being connected to a hundred friends at once. It would be easier to cope with the terror that gripped her all day, every day, if she had her friends to lean on.

She also missed being good at something. She’d been such a good VR engineer and navigator, better than any of her friends, anyone in her entire school. The feed had been her world, and then, suddenly, it was gone, and so was everything Lila cared about, everything that made her special.

The TV image flickered and died, along with the overhead light. In a distant room, someone cursed.

Uncle Walter checked the time. “Did we even get an hour that time?” He said it in an even, almost conversational tone. No one complained. Even when they were complaining, they used a tone that made it sound like they weren’t. Only Lila complained.

Since it was going to grow stiflingly hot inside rather quickly, Lila went outside. She sat under the crepe myrtle—the only tree in their tiny fenced-in yard—and tried not to think about how close the starfish were. She put in her earbuds, played a song by Park Zero. Usually his voice lifted her spirits. Today, though, she remained tense, uneasy.

They were surrounded now. For the longest time the starfish had kept to the wilderness areas, appearing only to sabotage a rail line, a power station—places Lila would never go, so she was safe. Now they were everywhere.

Lila wandered toward the fence, trying to get her mind off the Luyten, although the knot in her stomach was always there, whether she was thinking of them or not.

There was a truly impressive pile of junk in the alley behind the low stone wall. Someone had cleared all of the crap out of her pack-rat father’s garage—probably to make room for refugee friends and relatives—and dumped it in the alley. Lila went to the fence to take a closer look.

Her dad must be heartbroken, to have all of his useless junk evicted after he’d spent thirty years letting it pile up. There were vehicle wheels and doors, engine parts, ancient video screens, busted solar panels from the time before the big solar plant was constructed south of the city. Lila hoped the starfish were enjoying all that power.

The back door slid open. Lila would never get used to the harsh sliding sound it made when it was opened manually. Dad joined her at the fence.

“This might be the only bright side to what’s going on. I finally had a reason to clean out the garage, and help carrying all the junk.”

“I was just thinking about how heartbroken you must be. All of this good junk you might need someday.”

“Yeah,” Dad said laughing. “Someday.”

Lila reached over the fence and lifted up a cylindrical object. “What’s this?”

Dad shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Lila dropped it. It clattered off a long-obsolete medical diagnostic fMRI kit and wedged against an old TV screen.

“Find something productive to do,” Dad said, not unkindly, shooing with his hands as if she were a puppy. “If there’s nothing around here you can think of, go down to Civil Defense and volunteer. They’ll find something for you.”

Lila didn’t want to go to Civil Defense. She didn’t want to be around a lot of people, have whispered conversations about which city the starfish had overrun, what human weapon they’d figured out how to convert for their own use. She picked up another piece of junk, an old solar panel, and turned it over, looking for a date. There was none.

If only the war were taking place in the virtual world instead of the real one. She’d probably be in Washington, D.C., right now, designing weapons systems, or sabotaging the enemy’s capabilities. She knew VR tech inside and out. This hard tech—Lila turned the panel on its end, ran her thumb along its thin edge. It was a mystery.

“So what’s it going to be?” Dad asked.

Lila set the solar panel down, leaned over the fence, and fished an identical panel out of the pile. If she had to do something productive, maybe she should take a crack at this old shit, see if she could make it useful again. There must be similarities between tinkering inside the feed and tinkering with actual chips and circuits. The technology was fifteen years old—how complicated could it be?

Lila spotted a bunch of solar panels, shoved aside a stuffed penguin doll she’d gotten for Christmas when she was six, and started stacking them along the fence. The satellites might be down, but they still had the standard home library downloaded on the handheld. Surely there were all sorts of old tech manuals available.

Her father was waiting for some sort of reply.

“Go away,” she said. “I’m working.”

Dad walked away, shaking his head.

March 10, 2030 (nine months later). The South Pacific.

There was nothing to do except read, watch movies, or talk to Five. If Oliver was home, he could at least be working on his comic collection. Spider-Man was complete, save for issue fourteen, the first appearance of Green Goblin. It was the early issues of The Hulk that were proving most difficult to locate.

It was insane, utterly insane, to be seeking out old comic books with the world on the brink, but it was the only thing in his life that wasn’t depressing and seemingly hopeless.

Oliver started when Five began to speak aloud. He still wasn’t used to the gurgling, hissing sound of his voice, so unlike the telepathic version.

“All of that effort, just to move paper with colorful pictures into closer proximity to you. That’s all you’re doing, really.”

“I’m not going to argue with you. I honestly don’t care what you think of my behavior.”

“Of course you do,” the Luyten said. “You used to play online poker. You were very good, weren’t you?”

“I was very good.” Oliver tried to control his rising impatience.

“Now you collect comics. Why is that, do you think?”

“Because poker takes other people, and without satellites I don’t have access to other good players.” He rubbed his eyes; he was tired, even though he was getting plenty of sleep. “Besides that, it takes energy. It taxes your cognitive resources. When I’m not working, I’m too tired, mentally and emotionally, for poker. There’s no thinking involved in collecting comic books.”

“No, there’s certainly not. A child could do it.”

Oliver poked at something caught between his teeth. “A child could do it. Yes. Provided he had a decent income.”

The comment made him think of Kai, of the decision awaiting him when he got home. If he adopted Kai, they could collect comics together. He could teach Kai to play poker; that might inject him with fresh enthusiasm for the game.

Was it foolish, to consider adopting a thirteen-year-old boy? He couldn’t imagine sitting Kai down to talk about sex, or disciplining him if he did something wrong. How did you even discipline a thirteen-year-old? His own upbringing would be no help on that front; his parents had met at an Asperger’s clinic, where they were both undergoing outpatient treatment.

Maybe all of it was moot. How much time did they have left, realistically? A year? He should adopt Kai, and let the kid eat ice cream for dinner every night, if that’s what he wanted to do.

“Do you want to know why you really collect comic books?”

Oliver groaned. “I’m not the one who tortured you. I have been nothing but civil to you. Why are you so hostile?