Having Run

NB: while the rest of the works in this volume are dialogue dramas for stage or screen, what follows is a draft of a novel--dramatic in spots yet mostly narrative. It fits the volume for the umbrella probe of physics and metaphysics, projected as the realities of the latter 21st century may unfold. The cast of characters is reasonably small, though the subplots established in the opening chapters require some sorting out of individual contexts in their shared environment. DL

 

Having Run

{Part 1}

I.

            Aamiina had lost her mother in Alexander Park, Faribault, and patrollers were baffled. Her quavering Arabic wasn’t their confusion—translation to English was instantaneous in their brains—rather, they couldn’t believe how resourceless she was, unable to reciprocate a basic understanding. The child hadn’t been streamed, they came to realize, ‘stubborn Somalis, or…’

            Nala, her mother, had gone deep below the surface of that Minnesotan city. Presently, she wouldn’t be aware of the patrollers’ signal to her own receptor cells; the izøne surely had the capacity to penetrate the bedrock, yet the architecture of this underground mosque included scramblers to erode surveillance. The plan was spontaneous and Nala thought Aamiina would remain oblivious in play—just a half-hour to slip away undetected, a minute each for her thirty years of running from poverty and warlords, forced marriage and defection, prejudice and policies to make her into something less than animal, if too conventionally human. Aamiina, inshallah, would run a different way, and for the time being, at Alexander Park.

            One patroller left for better things to do—there was no fair way to rock/paper/scissors anymore, so instead the tactic was intuiting the other’s level of empathy; the other patroller, then, waited for Aamiina’s mother. “I also have a daughter who plays in this park,” she told Aamiina, “perhaps you’ve…?”

            It happened all the time: questions would dangle unfinished because the speaker—in English or Arabic, didn’t matter—would ascertain an answer as quickly as the receiver thought it. Aamiina didn’t know, but nodded out of habit. She could have verbalized “Linda? Hani? Shel?” and the patroller would have beamed, ‘exactly—Shel! You like her, yes?’ But the names remained undetected, an unknown power Aamiina possessed. Anyway, Shel, for all her izøne knowledge, also ventured to ask some weeks ago, “Do you like me, Aami?” Playgrounds still needed such noises and nods.

            The half-hour was up, Aamiina’s mother starkly aware of the patroller the instant she was beyond the scrambler range. Not everyone could communicate telepathically—filters, by law, demanded permissions—yet patrollers were granted shortcuts to these filters in the interest of social protection. Nala let the message get to her that Aamiina was okay, waiting at the spot where she had been abandoned. “Don’t judge me,” cogitated Nala.

            “We won’t” thought back the patroller. “We’re not a nanny state.”

            The mothers ended up exchanging actual words, including an acknowledgement of Shel and times she tended to play in this park. Aamiina ran off to disguise disinterest in what adults might plan for her; perhaps she’d also keep them wondering where she’d be, create some consternation and what it feels like not to know… whereabouts, whys and wherefores.

            Nala walked alone to a bench by the Cannon River reservoir—the same one she had vacated earlier, so that Aamiina would appreciate the afternoon full-circle. Nala cast her thought on what she heard in the mosque, and why it had to be so buried below this halcyon park and the innocuous attempts to patrol it. ‘Faith has nothing to hide,’ asserted the imam, ‘and we’re in this world not to cower, nor to scheme. Rather to believe beyond what we can know. To live beyond knowledge—and that is not to champion ignorance: quite the opposite. To die beyond assurances, forty virgins and whatnot—that is also what faith entails. Always remember always: Allah worked before we put name to anything, before Al Ibrahim, before Muhammad, before caliphates and catastrophes they entertained, before the Osama shift, before the Rayhana correction, before our present khutbah, before today ends and tomorrow begins, before each afterlife, and after each before. Our work, then, is a double always: to bless such mystery and learn to let it be.’ Digging toward the planet’s molten core, the message wouldn’t deign to meet a superficial rebuke. Nala sighed in her recall, unsatisfied.

            Aamiina snuck up from behind the bench and looped her arms around her mother’s head. Her right hand was closed in her left, and slowly she opened to reveal a toad as tiny as a pebble, and just as motionless. Nala jerked her neck back, then smiled at the scenario. Her fleeting worry that such a creature could be poisonous was instantly allayed by optic-scan analysis, second nature for most moms in this day and age. Nala’s further smile was that her daughter had picked up the toad without such optic-scan at her disposal, only what had hitherto been known as common sense. She rose and held Aamiina’s left hand as they strolled toward the exit of the park. “You’ll have to set it free.”

            “Tomorrow, maybe, after visiting?”

            Few had bothered to visit their flat, even as Somalis clung to this tradition more than their paler neighbors. Nala was an unknown quantity—a mix and mixer of cultural cues, a shiftless mother of an unacculturated child too old and young to guess what troubles they’d attract. Aamiina would have burgeoned in a classroom environment, long since obsolete; Nala would have been a journalist instead of minioning the details of waste management. Their days and weeks went on in relative obscurity, except for walks along the waterways of Faribault. And because Aamiina had never been streamed, they’d return to their flat and rummage up the soured pages of children’s books and magazines that no one printed, sold, or shelved any longer, for lack of need. Aamiina was an avid reader, and tonight she’d trade that routine for tending to her little toad.

            True to her word, she’d set it free tomorrow, if on the lookout for another thing or two to visit them again.

II.

            Fall Lake, northeast Minnesota, had the advantages of being connected to civilization on its west end and being wildly free on its splay of other ends. It, and no roads, would lead to Newton Lake, Pipestone Bay, Jackfish Bay, Basswood Lake, and across the unmanned border to infinite inland seas, sluices, ponds and portages. The supply of crayfish, pike, perch, and mussels were rather ample in the boreal waters; squirrels and roosting birds made for rarer meals. Deer and moose had pushed toward territory once controlled by polar bears, failing in their crash-course evolution to hunt like grizzlies or swim like walruses. Zoologists would try to lure them to some sanctuary, but most reared up in a dignity defense: this has always been our shelf of earth to claim.

            Sanctuaries were a way to front a shameless shame. It made sense to some factions in the latter half of the 21^st century that wildlife sanctuaries could also harbor humans, with due differences. Movement in and out would be voluntary, for instance, and utilities like electricity, plumbing, and commerce would still exist. But the izøne layer largely would not, scrambled to protect the participants’ experience of pure nature. One such sanctuary was near the village of Winton, with miles of shoreline on Fall Lake.

            The village had lost population—from mere hundreds to dozens—when the nearby Kawashiwi dam burst beyond the possibility of repair. Electricity could still be tapped through the izøne, but the cost was high and wattage relatively low. The izøne’s function wasn’t to generate motors, but to extend data and thought beyond the limitation of radio waves; it had replaced the medieval apparatus of radars, satellites, and WLAN. No one, for several generations now, had to Google anything or ask an antiquated Siri; freedom had become the access to knowledge without a need to search.

            If, for example, one wanted to disambiguate the concepts of ‘consciousness’ and ‘conscience’, the izøne would supply the comfort of an explanation adjusted to the thinker and the thought. It would do so wordlessly, beyond a given language, though the thinker would channel any usage in the language he or she would know. For that matter, given time and energy to remember, the thinker could come to learn a hundred different languages, though less than that amount were truly active on the planet. Esoterica, as ever, became the penchant of some, not many. The data most desired was that which would lead to happiness with least resistance. Not the soma pills of Brave New World (though drugs were still available), but certainly a way to dream through days and nights informed.

            The Carters were a family sitting in their shuttle on magnetic Highway 35. Mia, the nine-year-old asked, “why wilderness?” Most verbs these days had gone by the wayside, and sometimes verbalization altogether, as communication had become efficient enough via izøne. The Carters, however, usually made an effort to speak in traditional terms.

            “Sanctuary from info overload,” her mother said, shooting a glance at Tim, whose sarcastic thoughts she tried to intercept. He was fifteen and unhappy about this trip. “Sanctuary for more wonder,” she added, optimistically.

            Her husband swiveled his chair from looking at the road. “Story from great-grandpa. ‘Internet’—progenitor of izøne—died a while. Business stopped. School, in buildings back then, stopped. Food distribution all but stopped, as inventory and payments were unclear. Chaos everywhere.”

            “Back-up system,” Tim was sure existed.

            “Also stopped. Great-grandpa was a fisherman—hobby, actually, not a worker at a fish farm. He drove his gasoline car from Minneapolis to where we are going today and fished a month.”

            “Dinner just fish?” Mia tried to imagine.

            “Also berries, apples, quail—food from land and water equally good. He smoked hundreds of perch and pike he didn’t eat.”

            “Like marijuana?” Tim wasn’t being sarcastic.

            “No, dolt,” shot out his older sister, whose esoterica included all kinds of slang. “‘Smoked’ in this context means food, like fish and cheese, preserves without refrigeration.”

            “Insults unhelpful, Kay,” the mother had to remind, even at the risk that Tim would browse the meaning of ‘dolt’. “Great-grandpa what, then?”

            “Packed the car with smoked fish, returned to Minneapolis and,” brushing his hands like a conjurer, “made real money—not credit, which their system also had, but cool cash.”

            “Cache?” Mia was confused. “Why cool?”

            “Spelled c-a-s-h, Mia. Physical money still around for great-grandpa, rare for grandpa and grandma, completely useless when I was your age.”

            “Physical!—funny term for money.”

            “You could hold it in your hand, like a fish. Trade it for a fish.”

            “Teach a man to fish,” Kay quoted, “hungry no more.”

            “Great-grandpa rich afterwards?” Tim wanted to know.

            “Internet fixed, fish farm back in business; great-grandpa back to his modest city job.”

            “Programmer?”

            “No. He taught art.”

            The shuttle went silent for a stretch. Avis tilted eyes at her husband, who half-smiled and then looked out the window at the rush of forest lining Highway 35. Wilderness was never far away in Minnesota, at least beyond the sprawl of suburbs. Nearby cities of St Cloud, Mankato, Rochester, and Eau Claire had morphed into supply centers, their populations largely moving inward toward the efficiency and job-availability of the Minneapolis/St Paul metropolis. Seb Carter was a programmer who would have loved to teach art, had that combination been remotely possible. To some oblique degree, he programmed art—the aesthetic manner in which society might ‘hum’: the faint jingles that revolved enough per individual not to drive one crazy, rather to drive one to relax, if possible, in the inundation of stuff each individual would demand of the izøne (and of self, inextricably). To imagine Seb taught anyone anything—Seb trying to imagine that right now—was beyond his programmer propensities. He wanted to believe he’d taught a thing or two, especially to his children. Presently, their faces—Kay’s and Tim’s he scrutinized differently than Mia’s—didn’t manifest that question, which, to him, suggested that the powers of the izøne weren’t so absolute.

            Instead, “will Pretty enjoy sanctuary?” Mia wanted to know. There was no way anything, beyond their border collie’s personality, could answer that.

            Seb whistled for her to emerge from the storage end of the shuttle, her tail wagging like it would at any point in history. “Pretty,” Seb asked exactly as his daughter had, “will you enjoy our adventure?”

             The fact that the izøne hadn’t tapped into the dendrites of such creatures most aligned to human trust fascinated Seb (and Avis, as she and he had spoken deeply on this point). The dog continued wagging her tail—but more: she went around the ring to nose each knee to endorse, seemingly, this trip to ‘wilderness’, or even ‘sanctuary’, if semantics made a difference. Pretty, like anyone, would need a place to pee, to curl up for sleep, to run and, eventually, to feed. Beyond all that, this shuttle served no more a need than to get on with it, for heaven’s sake.

            Fall Lake would be perfect for the likes of Pretty. Avis joked, when they discussed the details, that maybe she would have to morph from border collie to ‘boundary’ collie—the area’s boundary waters being the nomenclature of the area for more than two centuries, even after the United States and Canada became a unified governance called the North American Union. The boundary waters remained a retreat for those who’d had enough of fossil fuels and manufactured noise, if still vulnerable to acid rain and other ways the industrialized world would spread its toxins. True, pollutants weren’t as ‘carbon’ as before, but scientists were still at odds at how resilient the atmosphere could be after ozone depletion, incessant microwaves, inevitable radiation, the miasma of Pandoran labs. The Carters were not heading toward a geographical boundary, but a threshold nonetheless.

            “Pretty,” Seb approximated, “will newly teach us art.”

            Another stretch of silence. The wonder of the izøne was not that it would content its absorbers with a satisfactory response. The wonder was that it did so little to compensate for curveballs, which Mia, unstreamed, would just as likely handle as her older siblings, digitally enmeshed in their generation’s design. None of them, incidentally, played baseball, so even ‘curveballs’ would require a cognitive leap into that trope.

            “I want Pretty in wilderness first,” Kay asserted, quoting not from long-term memory: “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

            Tim had little tolerance for such pretense: “enemies not. Pretty just another piece of wilderness, if finally.”

            “Finally what?” Mia challenged.

            “Piece of wilderness.” Tim repeated.

            Avis intervened. “Psalms 8:2 may resource us a bit. Our dog, as nice as she’s been, hasn’t faced any enemy we haven’t faced ourselves.”

            “Unless you include the izøne,” Seb calculated. The shuttle fell silent again. Highway 35 was doing its job blurring the effect of the metropolis away, but in a matter of minutes the shuttle would have to divert to lesser routes—more ambiguous strains of why in the hell a modern wan (woman/man) would venture so far outside the paths of predictability and order. The present range of the izøne would have registered what Seb just uttered, yet had he done so in the sanctuary of, well… Everything today was increasingly tough to know.

III.

            Patroller Pam Circe usually wouldn’t touch base with the precinct on days that didn’t involve Miranda rights—arrests were relatively rare in Faribault. She’d know her shift and any updates to the duty the night before and would stay at home with Shel as long as possible, watching old movies or playing Lego and the like. Her patrols usually went from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, often along the meanders of the city’s waterways. Pam didn’t have to rejoin her fellow patroller Trig Hanson after the missing mom incident at Alexander Park, but she felt an urge to stop in at the precinct anyway, knowing Trig liked to do that. For “old time sake”, he liked to say.

            “Hey,” Pam greeted Trig and a few other patrollers, donuts and cups of coffee in each hand.

            “Cat dragged in! Or did you arrest that lost girl’s mother?” While Trig gave utterance, the other patrollers tuned out, having already dismissed that forgettable blip in the afternoon. Maybe the coffee and donuts were a way of filtering out the dull details of everyone’s shifts, the communiqués that were constant in their heads.

            “No grounds for arrest. Nala’s no worry for us.”

            “No worry,” Trig repeated. “Of course no arrest—I’d be first to know, no?”

            Rhetorical questions were always tricky for the izøne to ‘file’ for instant or future use, and sticklers for literal information sometimes struggled with notions deliberately vague or ironic. Pam was not a stickler, to be sure, and rather enjoyed how language and response didn’t need to channel such files. “In this case, first me, then Nala, then—”

            “Okay, okay, Lightspeed”—Trig’s nickname for her, which didn’t resonate with anyone else. C squared. She quite liked it, her strange double c when most surnames had evolved to the tried-and-true Smith, Hanson, Jones, Carter… The days of a Krzyzewski or McConaughey were mostly gone, and allusions like Circe were a bit of a bother. Anyone could channel meanings, spellings, word history, but more often than not the feeling would be one of mental energy wasted. Because she liked Trig, and vice versa, time together never felt wasted.

            “Worry more about throwing ‘nanny state’ around.” Pam looked up at the precinct chief, who had just come in. He grabbed a fresh cup of coffee from the wall unit that sensed his taste and timed the blend just so. “Mere suggestions of that..., well, you fill in the rest.”

            Trig felt a need to defend his partner: “it wasn’t expressed, Chief.”

            “Not the point. Must admit, Pam, she registered your thought.”

            Pam shrugged. “Fact: we’re not a nanny state. No sarcasm then, nor now. Unless I’m misund—”

            “—You’re out of line to stir up the doubt. We don’t echo political flashpoints: nanny, nazi, neorwellian—”

            “Niners are kicking our ass right now,” Trig ventured, pointing to the pick-6 interception replaying at many angles on the OLED. “Vikings aren’t mixing enough improv, telegraphing every pass.”

            The chief settled in, satisfied his admonition had been made. The talk in the room turned to American rugby and the manner in which the Vikings looped the ball and looked upfield—the complicated dynamics of backward progress. For several years San Francisco led the league’s blend of scrums, laterals, drop kicks, shovel passes, hail marys; Minnesota was competitive, but Trig was right: they were too easy to read.

            Pam watched a while, trying not to brood about the chief. The flow of the game was aesthetic, but not more interesting than her preferred sport, golf, which she channeled from time to time. Her father managed the local course, so she had been teeing up from the age of seven. Shel, the apple of her grandfather’s eye, began even earlier, even as Pam was wary about her daughter following in her footsteps. The nature is pleasant, exercise good; the culture, though, leaves a lot to be desired. Golf was too easily a cheater’s game. The lie of the ball was a traditional issue; the way the ball adjusted in the air—smart bomb style—had become a modern issue. Equipment checks were standard fare for tournaments, but on casual rounds the jerks came out to push the Pams and Shels aside. It was particularly grating when Pam worked the driving range as a teenager. She’d sit in the caged tractor that vacuumed up the scatter and knew they were aiming for her: year by year the percentage of pelts to her cage grew higher, smart bomb style. Often, despite her puffy earmuffs to block out the noise, she’d hear the cheers of some guy’s buddies in reaction to an outstanding drive—especially when the tractor was hit.

            She left the precinct with barely a wink to Trig, who may have missed it anyway. She communicated to Shel that she’d stop at the golf course, just for a little while. Shel begged to come with, but Pam insisted she stay home, check on Mrs Schuster next door, as was her evening routine. I’ll be home in a little while, she repeated, partly to convince herself not to linger in the inchoate dusk.

            Her father was there in the pro shop, a bit surprised to see her. “I nag you to get Shel here more often, then you forget to bring her when you do come!”

            “Dark already, Pop, she’s young still. I came just to swing a bucketful.”

            “I could join you if you want.”

            “Suit yourself, but I’m not here for pointers.”

            “Yours to my swing, I assume.”

            “Mine to my own, for that matter.”

            They hit a dozen each in silent concentration before Mr Circe had to sit down on a bench behind the tarp of rubber tees. “No, you play on,” he encouraged. “Just been a long day.”

            Pam scanned his eyes to gauge how winded he could be, this hyperion who always gained energy from these grounds. Admittedly, a driving range sapped some spirit from the serendipity of the game, so Pam decided, “hot chocolate back at the shop. And tomorrow I’ll bring Shel for a sneak-in round.”

            That plan made him smile, though he didn’t budge from the bench. Pam tried to read him tacitly, to no avail. He wasn’t streamed, as almost all others his age were—his job hadn’t really required him to be, and the ownership rather liked his earmarks of nostalgia. How long could he keep his position here? As a trainer, maybe a year longer; out on the links setting flags and such, it was harder to say. “I can’t keep up with the pro shop,” he announced when Pam sat down. “They’re changing the verification systems for reservations and payments. Others here keep track of things just through mental checks—they barely ever look at the clunky machines I still need. I’ll be lost without my screens.”

            Pam tried to imagine him doing what she had to do with izøned communiqués and fluid data. Getting streamed late in life was risky—suicide rates were quadrupled for a man his age. Or ‘wan’—didn’t matter, male or female. Time was, suicide was attempted more by women, succeeded more by men; nowadays, stats leveled at the legal accessibility of sure-fire, painless pills, and no nanny state to intervene with one’s freedom to self-administer. Strangely, homicides were negligible by this method. Interventions certainly happened when the hint of such violence was detectable, and much of Pam’s training went toward this cause. She recalled talking one terminally ill guy down from poisoning his wife in her sleep—not really talking, but thinking it through with him via izøne. She arrived in time to wake up the wife, unharmed, even as the husband lay on the floor, freshly dead. Yet how did Pam’s mind leap so far when thinking about her father? His retirement would be embraced by the tens of thousands who knew him—the Fairwayman of Faribault, the heart of heritage, grooming the grass amidst the happy hazards of trees and ponds and sand. Yes, the general grass had browned considerably in the constant challenges to dewpoint—the world below Minnesota fared much worse—so all the more reason to funnel support, a tithe of sorts for their deacon. Jim Circe would have nothing to fret, ostensibly.

            “I’ll be lost without my screens,” he reiterated.

            They talked for a while, finding their way eventually to hot chocolate, then to tomorrow’s plan of when to sneak Shel in. “I’ll take a sick day,” Pam mused, “so you can sneak me in as well.”

            “You sure that wouldn’t be checked?”

            “Sure it could. But I’ve been reminded today: ours is not a nanny state.”

IV.

            The shuttle was slowing at the end of magnetic Highway 35; it would know which smaller roads to take, and would just as easily jettison control in deference to Seb’s boyish needs to steer the ship. He had his great-grandpa in mind, after all, and what should interfere with that? The shuttle zipped by the turn to Duluth and tracked its way north, past Eveleth and Angora, toward Ely. Seb and Avis took mental note that some of these points would be necessary for replenishing one thing or another, guessing that the fish, berries, apples, quail wouldn’t jump out of the woodwork. The sanctuary promised nothing about food—barely promoted anything about itself—a brazen litmus test or bucking of the information system.

            “Hungry,” Tim announced, seemingly to rub it in.

            “Bare your fangs and talons,” Kay advised. She was looking out the window with jittery concentration.

            Avis touched her arm. “Where’s that quote from? I can’t trace it.”

            “I made it up. Can’t an imminent refugee think for herself?”

            “Immanent?” Tim mocked. “You and your godly sense of self.”

            Seb didn’t want a petty fight. “Check spelling, Tim. Kay is wrong on ‘refugee’, as our house in Minneapolis remains. But ‘imminent’ is accurate: we’re about to dive into a difference.”

            “Not necessarily wrong,” Kay held her ground, staring through the film of her reflection on the window.

            “Also hungry,” Mia murmured, understanding nothing else from the silly streams of big people.

            “We arrive soon,” promised Avis, pursing her lips in the silent knowledge that they had only packed enough to eat for a couple meals at most. She had calculated with Seb the greater nourishment this trip might require, and reassurance was the word that kept on cropping up. ‘Mia will need it most and least of all,’ she reminded herself, turtling that thought so others wouldn’t be able to stream it.

            Avis was good at that technique; years of working hospice care made for meditative thinking and select communication. She deciphered minds well and rejected most of what wouldn’t help toward sustaining life. She had heard versions of ‘there’s no point’ a hundred thousand times—occasionally from her own children, though those bleats she’d collate differently; she had relayed ‘there’s more than a point’ ten thousand times—often to people she’d never see again. The idea of a ‘point’ was beyond Euclidean geometry, even if the pragmatists in her encounters would want a pithy, linear way to deal with loss or leave-taking or (more stuffed within) the point of living. She knew, for example, the imminent point of this afternoon was to reach Fall Lake and the sanctuary scramble of the izøne. That wouldn’t in itself be the ultimate point. Reaching and grasping; grasping and adhering; adhering and deciding; deciding and retaining; retaining and relinquishing; relinquishing and returning—whether to the origin or to the previous retain—was what she’d intuit for her family, let alone herself.

            But the most intuitive member of the family was Pretty, who’d run from the shuttle at first chance and circle back to bark the safety quotient of the place. Tim wanted to call her ‘his dog’ for the way he tried to train her as a puppy—he playing the wolf that would sneak into the sheep fold. Mia was happy to play a lamb, while Kay would roll her eyes, baaa her brother’s machismo, cuddle with Pretty to become one with the herd. Seb would be an aging Old Major asleep in the hammock; Avis would be reading an antique novel. The dog would be aware of everybody’s purpose, without a need to psychologize.

            According to Pretty’s first impression, Winton was safe enough to disembark, despite Tim’s ‘what a ghost town’ sneer. Maybe so. Avis wondered, instinctively, how its ghosts were cared for. The sanctuary was still a mile or two east on the southern shore of Fall Lake, but Seb stopped the shuttle here for reasons he was not fully aware of—nothing in the air or in his head compelled the next five minutes, which underscored a need to keep an open mind.

            “Family,” he began, looking first at Pretty, then Mia, then Avis, then both Tim and Kay together, “we know only so much. This town has gone the way of the wind—maybe that is why it’s ‘Winton’…” Tim raised an eye, ready to disagree. “I’m being facetious, of course. We’re all aware why outposts like this don’t compete with the comforts of home. But I feel at home, in a way. Not just in a nostalgic sense for great-grandpa, but—”

            “Halt!” a ghost of Winton had suddenly emerged, none too happy for the shuttle’s idling. “Permit, have ya?”

            Seb patted his vest clownishly. Avis met the old man with no pretext that a permit was forthcoming, but did say something of the sanctuary, which drove him to conniptions. She whispered a few things more, attempting to reassure him that they were safe—or rather, he was safe when it came to them. He stomped back into his cabin, Avis following like a veteran spelunker.

            “Dad, where Mom?” Mia gasped.

            “Don’t worry, Mia,” Seb buoyed. “Folks close to nature have particular routines.”

            “Abduction?” Kay voiced, not really believing that this stranger could be forcing Avis into his place.

            “No, Kay, more like—”

            “Invasion.” Tim wanted to compete with his older sister. “Us to him.”

            “We’re just en route to sanctuary,” Seb assured them. “No invasion. What Mom finds out is beyond anybody’s script. Meanwhile, look around. Breathe in the boundary waters.”

            “Waters?” Mia, still fixated on the cabin door, wasn’t able to stream a map of where they were, already within a lush peninsula of Fall Lake.

            “Over there,” Tim pointed. “And there, and there…”

            “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” Kay noted, adding “Coleridge” when nobody cared to ask.

            “Oh, we’ll drink deep this wilderness,” Seb bobbed his head, “to be sure.”

            “Drink, ok. Eat?”

            Pretty, tired of the small talk, barked to get Avis back. The latter took her time coming out, opening the door, holding up an index finger and looking in again, as if the silence still had something more to say. Slowly she walked from the cabin, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re not the first sanctioneers to rankle him,” she determined. “But maybe in a day or two we should return to unrankle.”

            “Return Minneapolis?” Mia quietly wondered, aloud.

            No answer emerged, as if the others in the family had to gauge what the izøne might advise. They’d only have it for a little while longer, they knew, if the sanctuary was true to its billing. Drink deep while the liquor lasts.

            “Return Minneapolis?” Mia asked again, in starker syllables.

            “No,” Avis honored her concern. “Home won’t disappear. Home needs to grow.”

            Mia took that in—Kay might say ‘with a grain of salt’—as they regarded the lonely houses of Winton. Growth in this village had not reared its head for a hundred years; ‘survival’, as the sanctuary bargained nearby for space, couldn’t be synonymous with growth. If everyone knew how the izøne had grown, some felt that they merely survived within its expanse. Now the question was how scrambling the spread would affect such survival or growth.

            “Let’s walk to the gate,” Seb suggested.

            “Shuttle?” Tim reminded.

            “Can follow like a donkey. Not sure where to park it.”

            “Or if there’ll be room in the inn?” Kay gloomed, her beloved allusions on a fraction of shelf-life.

            Avis smiled. “Time to make some allusions, new.”

V.

            Aamiina. Seven years old and prone to examining things, unstreamed. Her little toad was doing alright in a corner of the flat—Nala had wedged a handy clipboard to form a hypotenuse between the barren walls—a little world to satisfy the night. That clipboard was a cast-off from a recent audit at waste management: all ways to measure such observations would henceforth have to go through the izøne, as jotting notes on yellow legal pads was… embarrassingly odd. Two or three old managers of Nala’s held tight to their routines, claiming clipboards as the genesis of genius—all ideas on the run—’til they and their reams of scribbled notes went to the garbage heap: a strange, meta-place in the docks along the Cannon River. Nala filched a couple of these boards for Aamiina, not imagining what she’d use them for.

            Arabic letters and phrasing, as it so happened. Aamiina heard English all the time—playgrounds and everything on screens; her mother spoke to her in Arabic when alone, English when with others, and taught her why these languages would need to be seen in context, and unseen. “Sort of like your little toad,” and here the clipboard bowed into the modest living room. “It has no idea what we’re saying, or how we’d translate anything.”

            “I could give her lessons,” Aamiina said, sincerely.

            “To live here? Or escape?” Nala blushed at being so this-and-that, and brash.

            The toad climbed on her finger. “To trust.”

            Nala streamed her daughter’s infinitive in a dozen different ways before retreating to the bathroom, to have a silent cry.

            Shel. Eight years old and eager to see Grandpa, the greater part of golf. Pam woke her up cheerfully, then feigned the trappings of what typically passed without much scrutiny: a 24-hour flu that ample rest would remedy. Pam could inform this to her precinct through the izøne, broadly, or channel it more privately to Chief—such discreet tunnels of communication still existed, though susceptible to leaks. “Hey,” Pam could begin, “not feeling well. Think that—” and here an answer would already emerge, before and on behalf of Chief: “resting is in order. Volunteer your vitals, if you’d like (your updates are, like anything, your right).” The parentheticals, of course, were part of the oblique, the constant reassurances that were anything but.

            She smirked: such vitals, on a sunny autumn morning with the golf course nigh! Streaming them was always demeaning—it meant various maneuvers and samplings with a complicated thermometer, but Pam did so anyway. Shel peeked into the bathroom and voiced, “sick, Mommy?” Pam’s smile, reflected in the mirror and cigarred by the thermometer, assured her daughter that the day would proceed as planned.

            “I could go alone,” Shel posed, “I’m…”

            Pam took out the device and checked its tiny screens. “Old enough, I know. Especially with Grandpa there to meet. But then I would be alone.”

            “Lonely?”

            Words are funny that way. “No and yes, yes and no.”

           

            At Alexander Park, along the Cannon River reservoir, Aamiina knelt to release her toad. Nala said she’d leave her for a little while—like yesterday, with better knowledge. Aamiina had more toads to find, now that she knew what they could handle, or even what they could enjoy as a departure from their grass-and-woodchip world.

            Shel detected her from her window of the shuttle and asked her mother to veer over. While Pam couldn’t redirect the shuttle into the park—steering into restricted zones involved buttons, switches, sometimes an izøned waiver—she did stop the vehicle nearby. She walked the river path while Shel ran ahead, then sat on a bench to let the girls have their own way of meeting. If Nala again is absent, Pam thought, maybe I also need not hover. On the other hand, her mind floated this scenario:

            Approach them with ‘permission’ streamed from Nala: “you can come with us, Aamiina, to a park more beautiful than this. There are ponds with swans and lots of sand to play in, sandwiches and shakes that Grandpa loves to make. Your mom needs more time to be alone, and we would like more company.” Then the girls would leap ahead to the shuttle, which would swoop them to the golf course for an hour or so. They could putt a bit on the practice green, a gentle introduction to the game. Shel would delay her round with Grandpa, after shuttling Aamiina back to Alexander Park. Nala would be there, pacing, panicking. Maybe she’d even summon a patrol, exposing a trend of her own abandonment, risking that to find her daughter. Then she’d see Aamiina running toward her, happy for the escapade. Nala wouldn’t need a stream to put it all together—she’d recognize Shel and me, she’d secretly be thankful, flashing teary eyes that laundered fear to joy…

            The toad-adventurers zigged and zagged their way to the playground equipment, less to climb than to build a little corral for their catch. Pam stood up to actualize her plan, perhaps not to the full extent of an hour, but just enough to make the point, to jostle consciousness and conscience, hers and hers and—

            “Hello.” The voice was soft and sudden, like sheet lightning. Pam spun around without expecting Nala to be coming from behind.

            “Oh! Surprised me. Girls are—”

            “over there, beneath the trees. I’ve been sitting in the shade myself,” pointing toward another bench, a tented book upon it. “I’m glad your daughter came to play.”

            “Well, actually, I was, um, going to…, never mind.”

            “What is this word, ‘nevermind’?”

            “No worries; irrelevant. Maybe ‘changed my mind’.”

            “Izøne points to something called Nirvana—quite confusing.”

            Pam furled her brow and laughed a little. “Never mind the izøne. I was going to invite your daughter to the golf course. My father works there, and Shel is growing in the game. Aamiina might enjoy—”

            “Golf?” Nala pulled a face and streamed the acronym she’d heard before: “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.”

            “Way back when, perhaps. Never mind what prejudice existed then.”

            It was hard to never mind. The mothers sat a while in the early autumn breeze, watching how the playground nested pure imagination. The girls had evidently found more toads, or palmfuls of fodder and bedding for them, as dreams and hopes invited. Tiny home managers—economists, the Attic Greeks would say. And toads would start their road to civilization, Shel and Aami as their sister gods.

            Nala assented that the golf course would be a treat for her daughter to see—for her as well, had the day been free. But her shift at waste management was drawing near, and never had she thought of calling in sick if not really so. She went to kiss Aamiina, then retrieved her book and slipped away. Pam had streamed her address and aimed to get her home in due time, when Nala’s shift was done.

            The golf course had its steady Indian summer flow of patrons. Jim Circe ran things amiably, if sometimes overwhelmed by the preferences for this cart or that, these pace-players or those, the barflies and the business-onlies. Though Shel and Pam were a half an hour late, he found a way to fit them in from hole 11 onward—his organizing screen tracked such gaps, and the intern had been waiting patiently to take over the shop. “But who do we have here?” Jim bent to ask Aamiina.

            “Friend, Aami,” Shel declared.

            “To watch and learn,” Pam said further.

            Jim fetched the shortest putter and presented it to her. “You can be our finisher,” to which Aamiina nodded with no understanding.

            They rolled out on a golf cart—the girls in front with Jim, Pam standing in the trundle next to the single bag they’d use, sharing clubs for the occasion. Aamiina held her putter upright like an empress and studied everything in this suddenly empirical world. Shel chatted over her head with Grandpa, who pointed out the latest details, beaming brighter than the mid-morning sun. They reached the eleventh tee, loosened up their swings and launched their fairway drives, three of them at least. Shel took twice as many shots as Pam and Jim, but just as straight as them, so the carting was easy to each ball. The putting took more time, Aamiina learning how to barely brush the green and knock the ball with purpose toward the cup. At hole 14, she sunk a six-footer to everyone’s delight.

            Except the foursome behind that stared from 200 yards, irons in hand. Pam looked over and asked her father whether they should let them play ahead; Jim agreed, but noted that the 15^th was a mere par-3 and they could quickly sneak that in before such protocol.

            Their tee shots were good—even Shel got on the green in two, and the putts were almost done by the time the foursome hastened to the tee box. Three of them stayed in their carts and swigged beer, while the shortest set his ball and tapped his foot, glaring at Aamiina missing putts from ten and six and three and two and one and one and one foot out. She made it, finally, and helped Pam put the flag back up before running toward the cart that Jim had parked well off the trail, to signal that they’d let the foursome through.

            The short man had it in mind to signal differently. He clicked his drive before Aamiina crossed the fringe and sealed his lips from any courtesy of ‘fore!’, as if Aamiina would understand it anyway, to cover her head. The ball hit her in the right temple and she collapsed, almost slow enough for Pam to catch her, but not quite. The man who drove the ball glued his eyes on what he’d done, then scrambled to his cart and steered it toward the club house—for help or, more likely, a blatant hit-and-run. His buddies promptly followed.

            Jim dashed to the knocked-out girl, whose bruise was spreading like a peacock flair. Pam streamed the code for an ambulance, and Shel dived down frantically to rub her friend awake. Aamiina was still breathing, but closed-mouth and with labor, as if unconsciously in need to cry. Jim jumped toward the cart to get a towel for her and stumbled on the errant ball. “Smart bomb,” he announced after a gasp, discerning from his years of trying to ban them from his course. Pam streamed, ‘keep it then as evidence’, forgetting that her father wouldn’t hear it.

            Then Pam prayed just as silently that the promised ambulance would hurry, as Jim zipped to the clubhouse to lead the paramedics when they’d come. Shel lay down beside Aamiina and sobbed, wishing they could go back to tending toads.

VI.

            The highway east of Winton had a mossy tarmac blending to the russet soil on each side. Seb kept the shuttle on hover mode, calculating battery drainage minus the weight of passengers. There’d be no way to charge it here—renewal ended with magnetic Highway 35. The plan he and Avis had discussed was to ‘remember the sabbath’, so to speak, and dip back into civilization once a week for groceries, shuttle fuel, intangibles and izøne peek-a-boo, spare the thought. The sanctuary couldn’t force a ‘going native’, and anyway, the payment for it wouldn’t stretch beyond a year—after which, they’d return to Minneapolis and the jobs that guaranteed to take back Seb and Avis.

            Kay would have to work, then, too, and maybe Tim. There was some wonder whether a year outside conventional technology would count as ‘plus’ or ‘minus’, skill sets often hard to measure by employers of contemporary youth. Mia and Pretty would not have readjustment needs, ostensibly, at least in terms of picking up where they left off. By coincidence or not, the girl and dog walked as if conjoined, yards ahead of the others and the shuttle. They’d sniff the sanctuary better than their elders, who were feeling some effects of the izøne dissipating, step by step. It wasn’t vertigo, exactly, but a loss of bearings underscored by insect buzz and redolence of tamarack. The breeze and sunshine weren’t unpleasant, yet these, too, felt less familiar than the selfsame weather of a few hours ago, while closing up their home.

            “Bears here?” Tim would never normally ask a question quite like that.

            “Sure,” Seb mumbled, “muskrats, too.”

            “Mosquitos,” Avis added, slapping the obvious.

            “Smallest critters, most dangerous. Ticks will kill us—”

            “Shush, Kay.” Tim tried to get his swagger back. “We have repellent.”

            “But no bear spray. Ha!”

            “’S’nuff,” Seb decided, and the family trudged on. The question of exposure to myriad, mysterious things was hours on end behind their bedroom doors. At least Avis and Seb could soften such questions with muted conversation. Mia could cuddle with her stuffed animals, blinded now within the shuttle’s storage. Kay resorted to esoterica, kindred spirits long since dead and those aficionados with whom she bantered, through the izøne, naturally. Tim… had nothing but a baby form of hubris.

            Bears were not the threat, not even a mite. How the sanctuary jammed the upper atmosphere, and how that ether escaped the markings of miasma—that concerned the older Carters. Even now, as they hiked the final mile to the designated territory, they could feel a push-pull difference in the air: brisk, as humid as they’d probably expect, tuned to distant eagle cries, palled by all the undergrowth, piqued again through breezes off the lakes. Yes, the izøne penetrated everything, the bodies of this bedrock continent eons before the brains of anybody streamed; and yes, its reach seemed weakened with each unsubstantiated stride. Kay thought hard of Kubla Khan: how the promise of his Xanadu may have met the panic of being so close, and still naïve. She grimaced at her fading memory: “all should cry, Beware! Beware!” Of what, goddammit? And where? Inside the pleasure-dome, or miles and miles outside? Like Minneapolis from here, or Fall Lake to the izøne…

           

            “Oh, what a delectably pretty dog!” A cross-fit woman in her sixties approached Mia, clutching Pretty’s collar. “Is she yours?”

            Mia swiveled her head to see if her parents would scowl (stranger-danger still a thing), and seeing that they were involved with tethering the shuttle to a tree, she decided to engage. “Pretty—her name. Mine, Mia.”

            The grandma hid her slight confusion. “Mia.. familia? Are you from Mexico? Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re a diverse community here: drifters, really, from, well—I’m a Sooner, born and bred, and that man over there,” pointing at a path and the golem walking toward them, “he’s Chicagoan. Barely knew which end the leech to hook, let alone that walleyes love ’em.” She chortled at her own recollection. Then, more businesslike: “Do you know how to fish?”

            Mia didn’t know, but said, “Daddy’s grandpa. Now us.” And Seb, coming over with the crack of introduction, supplied more sense to what she started. The golem, grinning generously, approached to be both audience and host. Tim, a cautious shuttle-length away, could not imagine such a figure calling administrative shots; more the type to lock the gates that weirdly weren’t in place—sanctuary starting from somewhere they had already passed through. Avis, looking at her son, noticed this blip, too.

            “Your Daddy is a visionary,” the grandma joshed. Mia smiled at the attention, then headed after Pretty, who’d decided that the golem’s path needed some scansion. “Oh, the dog is visionary, too! Good thing we like a Fido, once and again, to remind us of our humanity.”

            “Her name is ‘Pretty’,” Kay reminded, stepping more into the circle. The golem looked her over. “And you’re right—she is the essence of fidelity.”

            “To us,” Avis laughed, a little jittery. “To us, she’s…”

            The grandma patted Avis’ shoulder. “To us!—now, there’s the sanctuary spirit! Let’s help you meet some others.”

            They followed where the golem came from, and where Pretty, Mia, free and fearless, blazed some sort of trail. It was wide enough for a tractor or shuttle, but evidently not now used for such. Seb asked the grandma fitting questions—about the governance of sanctuary, the protocols, the very path they trod… Avis weighed in differently: what food they might prepare, and other honest W’s.

            “Good eatin’s not a problem here,” the grandma said, the golem nodding dutifully. “As I said, when walleyes sense the leech is right, the rest is academic.”

            The golem laughed at that, knowingly.

            The seven of them—eight with Pretty—wended their way to the lake, passing several squat cabins breaking from the trees. Some had festoons of laundry, rubber boots and fishing tackle littering the porch. Others had the care of flowers on each windowsill, the few that were. “Sanctuary looks…,” Mia didn’t finish. No one did, for lack of ready words.

            The grandma supplied a line, in time: “it’s modest here. The livin’s hard and also easy—once you’ve chopped your cord of wood, well,” here she laughed, “that for some is easy!” The golem sniffed an I agree. “And then there’s upkeep on Lovers Island, making sure the furnace there is amply fed.”

            “Lovers Island?” Avis asked. “A furnace to be—”

            “Fed.” The golem proved his larynx worked. The syllable, he thought, sufficed, and so the cue for follow-up decided to keep silent, instead.

            They reached a building larger than a boat house, if surely serving that capacity as well. Beyond it, on the lake, perhaps a half-mile away, a hydra-headed chimney lifted some effluvium—less a channel of smoke or steam than a shimmer, sort of like a duned mirage. Lovers Island, amply fed, each Carter swallowing the worry.

            The grandma led them inside the house to meet the manager; the golem stood outside as if a bellhop, though all the Carter’s luggage remained locked in the shuttle. They were resigned to sleep there if the reservation fell through. But that idea was instantly eschewed when Mr Childress (“call me Jack”) assured that a cabin had been scrubbed and freshened especially for them. “I’ll walk you there—or Gordon can, I see.” The golem had a name. “We have a gathering most evenings at around eight, if you’d like to meet the other having-runners.”

            “Having-runners?” Seb scrunched his face, benignly.

            The grandma tapped his forearm. “We don’t know what to call ourselves! Some said ‘settlers’, others liked ‘dodgers’—like the draft way back when, y’know?”

            Jack took up the argument. “Having run—or driven, or whatever—we want good folks to stay awhile: rest, enjoy the peace.”

            “Like ‘R.I.P.’,” Tim dared to say.

            His mom rebuked him with a stare. Kay cracked an uncertain smile. Seb pretended to ignore, extending “thanks so much for hosting us. We’re eager to just settle in, and yes—that gathering at 8pm will,” looking to Avis, “be something we’ll look forward to.”

            “Totally your option. It’s rather low-key.”

            “Better tell ’em how to find it,” the grandma almost queeked.

            “Yes, well—” Jack was suddenly self-conscious. “It may need getting used to...; unusual it is for new-comers—”

            “Having-runs, you mean,” Kay clarified.

            “Runners, or whatever you wanna be—everything here is completely safe,” Jack underscored, pointing at a door. “Could show you now, unless you’d like to—”

            The Carters looked at someone in their midst to supply an answer, and Mia, most instinctive, asked, “can Pretty come?”

            Jack grinned his answer, “come, indeed—we’re rather proud of this.”

            The door opened inward to a shallow platform. A staircase started broad enough for a half dozen platformers to descend at once, then narrowed to the dimensions of an airport gangway, evidently going underground or—as the shore would have it—under water, even if the normal office lighting wouldn’t show it. The slope was discernible, but barely. Eighty yards could pass for fifty, and perhaps vice-versa coming out again. “Toward Lovers Island?” Mia whispered with concern.

            Either everyone pretended not to hear her, or else nobody really could. Seb knew from civil engineering classes that a tunnel under water would not be viable without ample ventilation, complex controls on pressure, buoyed anchors, flexibility in carapace—he loved the writer Walker Percy, who wrestled this word: carapace. And lo and behold, the tunnel began to open to a grand-but-modest turtle dome, a Millennium Falcon maybe twice as large, with swivel chairs enough for twenty (maybe more) and glass observatories to the water that enveloped, some twenty feet below the surface of Fall Lake.

            “This is,” Jack swept his left arm sheepishly, “where our gatherings gather—the ‘having-runners’ having need to…”

            Since he didn’t have an infinitive at the ready, Avis decided to break in. “I see space enough for maybe four or five families like ours—is that about the capacity?”

            “There are more,” the grandma entertained the question. “Many don’t attend by choice, others are too tired after fishing and such—”

            “Stoking the furnace?” Tim supplied, trying to get a handle on this place.

            “Sure, Lovers Island has a furnace, but it’s nothing to ‘stoke’.” Jack decided to address that inevitable factor now: “the sanctuary couldn’t block the izøne without a constant flow of energy. The dam does part the job, as much as we have fixed it; the island, though, is why we’re here. It’s made to operate without a dint of interference to the purity that’s always been here.”

            “Is it a nuclear reactor?”

            “No, Seb, much simpler. Natural gas at a simmer creates enough heat to float a scrambler, and that covers a region of about sixteen square miles on an average day. Beyond that range, the scrambling agent dissipates.”

            Avis pulled a face. “Turns into acid rain?”

            “No, no,” Jack curled hands upon a swivel chair, “Minnesota has seen those bad ol’ days before. Science has come around to avoid such pitfalls—for those who care.”

            “But who’s to know who really cares?” Tim challenged, also curling his hands, as if a small Chewbacca.

            “I know myself—why I’d dedicate my life to conservation—and why the izøne compromises nature as it’s always been.”

            “Us, too,” Seb assured. “But what makes up the scrambler?”

            “Ancient Chinese secret,” Jack replied, smiling like the television reference of a hundred years ago, an allusion Kay longed to channel. Seb decided that such a discussion would have to happen behind closed doors—and not the door that brought them to this—this—

            “What do you call this space, beyond its use for gathering?”

            Jack looked at the grandma, who looked down somewhat despondently. “There hasn’t been agreement, but… if one can say in secular terms: we’ve likened it to ‘chapel’.”

            “Chapel.” Avis questioned without a rising inflection. “Like, a place to pray.”

            Eight minds thought about that prospect, then Jack vocalized an “as you like. We don’t resort to stagnant definitions here, and ‘pray’ is certainly an on-and-off-limits kind of proposition.”

            Kay stirred her memory: “one of his disciples said, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’”

            “I think Pretty needs to pee,” piped Mia, faithfully.

            They all assented and headed back the way they came, to Gordon, eventually. He led them to their cabin and disappeared, reflecting dignity to welcome privacy. A dozen trips or more from their shuttle to the cabin, and dinner in between, the Carters missed the evening’s nascent gathering. And yet, the day had been as fulsome as a border collie could defend, Pretty being an independent centrifuge.

            In their scrubbed and freshened cabin, they all curled up to sleep.

VII.

           

            Hospitals reflect the modern mandates of any society, though stories inside them tend to be timeless. A week before her retirement, Nurse Geraldine confessed to her colleagues at Faribault Clinic that she’d probably seen it all, “if feeling just a fraction.” They demurred and she put her hands up, anticipating that parsing feelings from care would be a long, senseless conversation. “A fraction of fifty-seven years is quite substantial. But I cannot pretend that my sympathy extends to empathy; I got loads of the former, and now I’m just waiting for the latter.”

            She was on duty when Aamiina arrived, groggy on the gurney after regaining consciousness during the ambulance ride. Pam accompanied her while Jim stayed with Shel in the waiting room. “You her mom?” Geraldine needed to know.

            “No, no—I’m just…”

            “Nevermind.”

            Pam suddenly realized that in the rush to get Aamiina here, no one had contacted Nala. No one could—no one but Pam. She thought of her options: a general izøne search which, by law, would require the intended contact’s prior permission; a reference request through her patrol channel, also through izøne yet closed to non-patrollers; a time-consuming dash to Nala’s workplace to inform her face-to-face. Hoping no one at the precinct would tune in, Pam chose the patrol channel. She concentrated on the necessary codes, all entwined in her dendrites, and gradually relayed the message to Nala (tacitly, of course): ‘This is Pam. Aamiina has gotten hurt and we’re at the clinic. She’s conscious now, but a flying golf ball had knocked her out. I’m sorry this happened. It’s…’ Pam had run out of thought.

            Geraldine, while measuring Aamiina’s vital signs, glanced at Pam. “You alright?”

            “Um, not entirely. I… I just contacted her mother. Nala.”

            “Nala what?” Geraldine lifted her chin toward another nurse, to have her note the information.

            “What? Oh, I’d need to check—I just met her yesterday, on patrol.”

            “On patrol?”

            “Well,” Pam covered her mouth, considering how much she could say.

            Geraldine continued her procedures, soothing Aamiina with whispers like, “let’s open your other eye now. Good. Look this way. And back to me. Can you tell me your name?”

            “Aamiina,” Pam said, when the girl didn’t.

            Geraldine repeated the question to Aamiina, who faintly uttered, “sleepy.”

            A doctor arrived and slid next to Geraldine, hearing her account and referencing some screens before trying to keep Aamiina conscious. “I’m Doctor Brent,” he announced, feeling her scalp. “You are—”

            Another nurse tagged in for Geraldine, who walked toward Pam to escort her out of the room. They didn’t go as far as the waiting room, where Jim and Shel fidgeted for some sort of news; instead, Geraldine led Pam to a staff room and poured two cups of coffee, hinting at a long afternoon and beyond. “She aint streamed,” Geraldine guessed, with confidence.

            “No,” Pam replied, uncertain. “I don’t know her history, as I said… only yesterday. Why would that matter, anyway?”

            Geraldine shrugged. “Just that Dr Brent is gung-ho on streaming kids. Zealous, even.”

            Pam had to stream that definition, religious rhetoric having faded from contemporary use. “Why would he..?”

            “Why would he want kids streamed?”

            “Um, yeah. Is this relevant to her injury?”

            “I’d say no. But then again, I’m kinda biased. Doc likes me okay as a person, but y’see, I’m not streamed myself. Decided that long ago: every place needs some ol’ school, if you know what I mean.”

            Pam streamed ‘old school’ and wondered whether to nod. Instead, she reflected, “sort of like my dad, out there in the waiting room.”

            “Oh, there’s more’n a couple of us. Grandfathered in to keeping our jobs—in some cases not, sadly. But gettin’ back to Aamiina. She’s in good hands regardless, and from my experience she’ll be alright. Youth is in her favor if this is a first concussion.”

            “I don’t know if it is.”

            “That’s why we need her momma here. Doc will lecture her, though—”

            “Nala?”

            “For sure, her, and differently with Aamiina. He’ll argue that preventative care needs instinctive use of the izøne. ‘Sensors reduce accidents,’ he likes to preach. And communication needs utmost efficiency—instantaneous to possible response. That’s why he won’t let me in O.R. anymore, sometimes not even E.R., though that depends on the circumstances.”

            “Can he be so finicky?”

            “He’s head doctor. He can call the shots. And don’t get me wrong—he’s a good doctor and person, at the heart of it. He wouldn’t stream a person without a legal conversation—that’s why I’m telling you now, ’fore Nala comes.”

            “You couldn’t deliver her this same point of view?”

            “I could. I’m within my bounds—now with you, talkin’ as folks do. But I’m not here to contradict Dr Brent’s advice after he’s given it. Cuz that would open up a can of worms.”

            Pam had to stream that idiom, too. This time she nodded understanding.

            Nala entered the waiting room and begged Shel for information. Shel, who had dried her tears a half hour ago, cried an ‘I don’t know’ and buried her face into Nala’s stooped shoulder. Jim introduced himself as her grandpa and pursed his lips to some level of comfort: no news is good news, a mantra meaning much to him throughout his life.

            Geraldine seemed to have an ear to the situation, coming into the waiting room, with Pam behind her, blushing another apology. “Hello, Nala? I’m Nurse Geraldine. Aamiina has a concussion but is responding well, as these things go.”

            “Is she…?” Nala gently released Shel to stand up, then rippled a reluctant frown to try to hold back her own tears.

            Pam lunged forward to hold her: “she’s going to be alright.” Geraldine nodded reassuringly, then left to fetch Dr Brent.

            Jim, meanwhile, asked the receptionist for a pitcher of lemonade and a delivery of pizzas—cheese, olive, portobello. He reached into his pocket as if, decades ago, he’d fish out some money or a credit card number to read out; the offending golf ball there forced his fingertips to curl, protectively. If it were of the smart bomb variety, he could present it now to Nala as a lever toward litigation. Then again, how crass would that be? “Exhibit A!” before she’s had a chance to see her daughter, the dent in her head now swollen, the natural glisten of her eyes, if they’d be open… He pushed the dimpled sphere away from his rising hand and offered, as the immediate moments allowed, to walk with her. Geraldine was gesturing for them to come in, and Nala looked warmly at Jim, who’d be a welcome proxy-grandpa for this turn.

            As they entered, Dr Brent was just releasing a syringe from Aamiina’s hip. The other nurse gauzed the spot and covered the sleeping girl with a blanket. Geraldine leaned into Nala, gasping in quick succession. “She’s fine,” Geraldine whispered, “just procedural.”

            Dr Brent put the syringe on a tray of other tools and approached to introduce himself. “Nala, yes? Doctor Brent. And you are?” looking at Jim.

            “Witness to the accident.” Jim felt the bulging golf ball against his thigh and shifted his stance. “Wanna lend all support.”

            Dr Brent looked into his eyes for a couple seconds, then addressed Nala, whose feet seemed frozen to the floor. “Your daughter has a grade 3 concussion and cerebral contusion—bruising—apparently free from laceration; we’re monitoring conditions and, fingers crossed, she’ll be back to her old self in a couple days.”

            “Old self?” Nala was confused.

            “Well, not really ‘new’—”

            “Can I sit by her?”

            “Of course, though allow her to sleep, now that she should.”

            “What did you inject in her, just now?” Jim leveled.

            Dr Brent again looked intently at this old man. “Information is confidential to next of kin.”

            Nala rubbed her forehead. “Me, you mean.”

            “As the record shows. You may have others speak on your behalf, but only with consent.”

            “Can I ask the same question?”

            “Sure.”

            Nala scanned the tray and then Aamiina’s placid face. “What just went in her?”

            Dr Brent moved cat-like to the tray and picked up two vials to show her the labels. “Serum standard for a grade 3 concussion, tempered for the patient’s age. This one’s an analgesic to preempt reactions of trauma; this other one prepares for the next thing we’ll need to do when Aamiina wakes up.”

            “Which is what?” Jim blurted; Nala assented with her eyes that the question was hers, too.

            “C-scan,” Dr Brent spoke directly to her, “again, standard procedure.”

            “C stands for?”

            “Cellular. Non-invasive. Harmless.”

            The room itself was a cell. Hospitals work inside out, mitochondria to the organs, face, and apertures of humankind. Aamiina, maybe hearing what the adults were saying, breathed slowly through her nose. The serum seemed to take its forecasted effect, riding now the bloodstream of the girl, several cycles through the bronchioles, airing in, erring out. Dr Brent explained in quiet terms about ‘best practice’ in these circumstances, short- and long-term. Nala looked to him and Geraldine equally, though the latter didn’t offer any extra speech.

           

            Shel was getting antsy. She tried to stream her angst to her mother, but that wasn’t working because Pam, pacing around herself, was busy streaming Trig. He had picked up on her use of the patrol signal—intuitively, as Nala’s profile had been accessed within his recent beat. He’d also want to check in on Pam as a friend: bid her flu a soon goodbye. Faribault Clinic? Could swing by. Need anything? Shel?

            “Shel?” Pam voiced, when she realized the waiting room was empty.

            The girl had snuck inside Aamiina’s room and hooked around the adults, preoccupied. She hid beneath the second bed and listened, streaming some terms beyond her understanding. The doctor’s voice confused her in his calm instance that her grandpa’s nervousness was wrong; the young nurse convinced Nala to move off her daughter’s bed and grant a chance for peace and quiet, Geraldine directing the men to exit as well.

            Just outside the room, Pam exclaimed, “Shel’s missing!”

            “Missing?” Jim graveled. “Why in the world—”

            Pam rotated her hands. “Upset, of course!”

            “Check the bathroom?” Geraldine suggested.

            “Did already. Not in this room?”

            “No,” the young nurse said, closing the door for Aamiina’s sake.

            Minutes went by—tones muffled and stark slipped through the walls. Shel repositioned herself under Aamiina’s bed, against the wall that also elbowed the cabinet and tool tray. She didn’t have a plan; to nap with her friend was presently her objective. But the doctor’s talk of streaming, her grandpa’s “Whoa—let’s hold on,” Nala’s trying to get a hold of things her own way: these prevented Shel from napping. And if Aamiina would wake up before the ‘witching hour’ (a phrase Shel had heard somewhere), she’d warn her about this witch doctor.

            And maybe then they’d run away for real.

           

VIII.

            Pretty didn’t care if it were a timberwolf or wolverine or badger or black bear—fact was, duty called. The fight was fierce and indecisive, altogether in the dark. Aurora borealis and the moon had been given the night off, helping the Carters snuggle into sleep within their assigned cabin. Pretty would naturally curl up on the floor and add to the soft snores, but roundabout midnight she had to pee, as Mia conscientiously guessed, and stayed out later than that need.

            In echoes that careened through trees, the tussle went on for a nightmare of minutes. Mia sobbed silently on the cabin porch, her quilt wrapped around her body and hair, a babushka praying for the war to die down. She thought about waking one of her parents—mother to help posse the dog, father to halt such a wild idea. Sister and brother would likewise divide, reminding Mia how ‘mushed’ she was, a sneer often thrown at the unstreamed. Pretty’s also mushed! she once retorted in Minneapolis, to which Kay bemused little sis’ further about dogsleds and double entendres. The izøne didn’t teach anyone the tendency to tease, but resourced its ageless inertia. Mia fell asleep against the log walls despite shaking with panic and umbrage.

            And after unknown hours, her dream went as such: the raft she had hopped on was stable enough, flat on the main, with islands of sand pushed into piles about knee-high, like snow she’d help shovel when making a rink. The pyramids of sand/snow kept her looping around them—five, eight, and dozens, now that the raft had expanded. It was fun to imagine skating a winter pond on top of a summer lake, the edges of both barely seen. Distantly, other kids ran around their discrete piles—she couldn’t discern if they were aboard her raft or theirs, the lake now obscured by moss extending from the floorboards and residuals. The blanket of heather and swale tempted her tread, even more than the chance to meet others like her. One of them called out to shovel the snowy sand into a path to bridge this green gap. ‘No shovel,’ she responded, but then looked at her hands, the same as she’d always seen, open and apt to carry an allocation of what was needed. And naturally, much of her nab leaked down from her lift—ballet ambitions from a backhoe scoop—and then, once lifted, tossing the granules forward proved difficult. Doubts came with each shout to keep tossing on, but they didn’t seem to be scooping their own piles in kind. And testing the path upon floating moss? Well, that would be crazy! She started to realize, as well as this must be a dream, and, like every so often, the dream itself made her wake.

            Her arms still around what she thought had been sand, Pretty had found her embrace. The dog wasn’t sleeping—sitting as such wouldn’t allow it, nor dropping her guard on this night. Mia was ecstatic, squeezing with all abandon. She said silly things, mushed mushed mushed no running again you came back my mushed mushed mushed make me not so mushed anymore. Pretty seemed to understand, sliding down so she could sleep against the girl, who also lay upon her side, cocooned in her quilt.

            They woke to the hoot and wail of a loon on Fall Lake, the dawn more gray than tawny. Mia plowed her fingers through the scruff of Pretty’s neck, familiar in its warmth and depth. Around the ear, though, the fur didn’t feel right, and deeper in Mia sensed there was a gash. She shot up to investigate. Squinting to be sure, the matted patches around the dog’s shoulder and throat were bloodied from at least that first gash, and then another on her leg. “Oh, Pretty,” she stammered, and looked with new desperation at the beautiful mug torn variously above one eye and across the snout. The other eye was blinking shut, though Mia pried the lids to find out how bad it could be—the cornea appeared unscratched, but Mia jumped out of her quilt to pull Pretty into slightly better light and check anew. A flashlight was in the cabin, she was aware, and she’d have to enter eventually….

            Instead, she walked in the direction of the beach, and Pretty (as early as it was) assumed the makings of a morning walk. Mia questioned the details of the night in mutters Pretty surely heard and perhaps apprehended. They reached the greater light of the lakeshore and Mia conducted another inspection, a smidgen satisfied now that both eyes were equally open and spared, apparently, from injury. But the other wounds looked nasty.

            Mia took a stick and tossed it twenty yards into the water. Pretty loved this routine and leaned toward back-to-normal instinct; she hesitated, though, at Mia’s trembled command to “Go!” Mia did the same with a second stick, then stripped off her pajamas to run into the lake, causing Pretty to follow. They cycled their legs when the sand gave way to muck, then Mia scrubbed each portion of the collie’s body, less to wash away the blood than discover all that needed healing. Five, six, eight, eleven places identified, Pretty flinching with each spot yet thankful for this triage. They swam a little separately, self-consciously in the strangeness of a peeking sun, or other ‘having-runners’ who might come down this early to fish.

            Or be on the lookout for a missing kid.

            Baptism done, Pretty shook dry and Mia toweled off with her pajamas. She put them on and tried to parachute the clinging wrinkles, to no avail. There’d be no way to smooth out the facts of the night. Whatever had started the fight was still nearby, yet probably disinclined to mess with Pretty again. And vice versa, she could remember her sister saying once, if only sort of knowing why.

            The cabin was still sleeping as they snuck in. Mia shivered under the cooled quilt and wished Pretty could have added body heat, like before. Sleep came to both just before Avis woke up, then Seb.

            Coffee brewed, scrambled eggs and toast luring the older kids out of bed. Then the cues of the evening started to show. Voices alarmed and whispered tried not to disturb the girl or the dog as Avis inspected their exhausted bodies. Seb circled the cabin and the radius to the lakeshore to piece together what might have happened. Kay and Tim argued about responsibilities and whether a ‘mushed’ kid could take them on, admonished several times by their mom. “Mia is more experienced than any of us,” Avis hissed, “never needing an izøne to figure things out!”

            “But she’s—”

            “Shhh! She’s sleeping.”

            “Poor Pretty—”

            “—is sleeping as well. Let be.”

            Seb gathered the teenagers lakeside to learn how to fish—Kay vaguely recalling the adage that started, 'give a man a fish'.... Seb nodded that while they wouldn't go hungry this year (budget behaving), they needed to occupy themselves and live off the land.

            "Water?" Tim smart-assed, flipping over a sanctuary rowboat.

            "Also. We start from the shore." Seb had brought some rods and tackle from the shuttle, unsure how much equipment Jack might loan or sell. He had found these rods at a relics store in Minneapolis and the tackle box from his parents' attic. The treble-hook lures were somewhat rusty yet retained an iridescence when swiveled in the water.

            "Fish eat worms," Tim asserted, annoyed that the boat would have to wait.

            "Fish eat action," Seb corrected, "and worms don't cast so well."

            Kay liked that verb and wanted a discussion. "Why ‘cast’? Why not angle?"

            "Angling happens from the boat. Casting, from the shore and the boat. Doubles up our chances." Seb spoke this way to gain some confidence, which eked away with each attempt to sling the lure; the apparatus in his hands seemed to mock him. The spooled line would only release from a well-timed thumb, as yet undiscovered. Tim and Kay, knowing they'd be even more pathetic at this enterprise, giggled just the same. They kept their distance, as treble hooks were no laughing matter. "Takes practice," Seb heaved, and, mercy of a little perseverance, the lure finally cut a rainbow arc beyond the depth of the lilypad line. His voice cracked, "see?!"

            "I see seaweed! What now?"

            "Lilies, Kay, and I'll reel in just outside their cluster. Pike hunt perch right in that region." The nylon line was old and squeaked back into the spool with each rotation. Seb paused sometimes to simulate the diving of a baby perch venturing too far from its lily-covered school. Occasionally the lure would snag onto an unseen weed and feel like a lugubrious fish. After several casts Seb came to know the feel of these and how to avoid them better, as pike would never strike at a weed-draped slug. Meanwhile, Tim took up one of the other rods and attached a red and white 'daredevil' spoon, treble hooks at the mouth and tail. His casts were wilder than Seb's yet went further, eventually. Kay kept an eye on the whole situation, disinclined to add more competing casts than necessary. Moreover, she could study the lake this way: the shadowy area where that chapel was submerged, then Lover's Island in the distance beyond. She squinted to see if any boat was docked there, as someone had to be tending to its furnace. She saw the wisps of something like smoke, but no boat, at least not from this vantage point.

            "Got one!" Tim's rod quavered like an angry cobra besieged by some aquatic mongoose. "Dad! Quick!"

            It now occurred to Seb that they didn't have a net, and so, heart racing, he shouted orders to clasp the reel with both hands and back away from the shore, to drag this monster out of the lake. On cue, it leapt to indicate its size and scare the boy to ecstasy. Seb anchored himself at the edge of the water and pulled the line as if fronting his team in tug-of-war. Kay took up her father's fallen rod on the prospect that it might hook a different fish and, except for her grasp, slide into the depths.

            Jack, from the boathouse, heard the excitement and grabbed his largest hoop net. It nearly wasn’t able to capture the convulsive fish, as the line snapped the moment Jack scooped it in. Seb fell backwards and Tim dropped the rod to run into the water, celebrating his catch, a chaos of happiness. Jack was sure it weighed twelve pounds or so—“three meals for y’all, at least!” They brought it thrashing in the net, dripping all the way to the Carters’ cabin, where Avis had made hot chocolate for Mia and the sanctuary’s grandma, who had stopped in for a visit. “Oh, my!” the grandma said, as Pretty barked at the alien captive flaring gills as sharp as its needle teeth. “Who caught it?”

            “I,” declared Tim, and feeling so grown up, decided to appease his servants: “Dad showed how, and Mr Childress,.. well—”

            “I merely sat back and enjoyed it all to death.”

            “Would have gotten away without you,” Seb reminded. “And—if you don’t mind—please teach us what’s next: it may not fillet very well without your guidance.”

            “Gordon’s best at cleaning fish,” the grandma said.

            “Gordon, the golem?” Mia softly asked her mother, who shushed her.

            “Yes,” agreed Seb. “Gordon has been more than helpful. Might he be around?”

            “Gordon?” Jack chuckled. “He’s always around. Just maybe not when you want him!”

            Kay rowed the boat toward the middle of Fall Lake. The breeze was picking up and sometimes the strokes of the oars did little to drive her direction. Practice makes perfect—she conjured the phrase to motivate—or…. She never cared about perfection; academics never do. She cared about discovery, a banking of ideas old and new.

            Lovers Island, to the west, held some magnetism, push and pull. She took note of that feeling, then paddled toward the lake’s northern shore, a half-mile into the disappearing hours of afternoon. There were skeletal structures on that horizon—deer stands and dilapidated cabins—but for the most part, the destination showed her trees and trees and more trees. Nature of the rowboat, she could only see intermittently, looking over one shoulder or the other, an awkward but necessary way of keeping helm.

            Deliberately or not, she drifted toward Lovers Island. From this new perspective, she saw that there was no boat, no dock even for a boat. The effluvia from several chimneys was more evident, if still a shimmer less-than-smoke. This wouldn’t be the time to explore so thoroughly, especially alone. But still, take mental note. Heat comes in calories stored, then released. Jack contended that logs fuel this formidable furnace, though not to the point of clear-cutting. Indeed, the forest here looked deep. What else could produce such energy? a nuclear reaction? a tapping into Winton’s dam, a century out-of-date? She missed the izøne giving nudges, here and there, to wonder.

            With the increasing wind came gray clouds and a drizzle. Kay turned the boat to the southern shore and stroked with fresh dexterity. She smiled at the way the droplets kissed the rippling surface of the lake, watery reunions. Then the rain turned into slanting stands, fascinating a different way, but compelling Kay to discover less and get the heck back home. Hail followed, pinging the metal boat and changing wetness into pain. There were two islands closer to the beachhead, about in line with the submerged chapel; Kay paddled furiously to reach the closest one and pull the boat to some security. She huddled against a clump of birch trees and hummed a song that understated the clamor of the hailstones. Into this world we’re born, into this world we’re thrown. She couldn’t remember the lyrics more, but pumped the bass line into the clutch of her biceps, feeling satisfied to be a rider of this storm on this little, furnace-free island. She stole a glance toward the direction where her family would be worried, but shrugged a bit ambivalently. They’d see her soon enough, when the rowing would be safe. The place was deemed a ‘sanctuary’, after all, and from cabin to chapel to this very island, things relied on a sense of trust.

            Gordon, from a deer stand on the southern shore, watched everything.

IX.

            Aamiina woke up in a fog, confused yet content that Shel was nudging her. The adult voices had come and gone like a disorganized posse, and Shel thought the time was now or never. They could make it to the playground, hide in the tower that suspended one end of the rope bridge. Shel had proven what her stealth could do; she could use the izøne if she needed to, message her mom or even Aami’s mom, given time to stream a general search.

            “Up, Aami,” she whispered, “let’s escape.”

            Footsteps sounded and the girls scampered to the nook behind the open bathroom door. Nurse Geraldine entered and stopped two steps in. “Oh, Lordy,” she sighed, more tired than worried. “Now we got two missing. And just when the pizzas have come, smellin’ delicious. Shame to think they’ll go cold ’fore too long. And lemonade’s ready, too,” Geraldine spoke to the vacant bed. “Gonna go warm—kinda funny how foods have their meant-to-be temperatures, ’til they throw tantrums and try to reverse their true nature.” She nodded at that, as if discussing with herself. “Well, I guess it means more for me, and I sure am hungry.” She turned and exited, not bothering to close the door.

            Shel and Aamiina remained frozen a half-minute, then peeked to see if the coast was clear. “Who’s that lady?” Aamiina asked.

            “You forgot? She checked your eyes before you slept. Before that doctor stuck—”

            “Ahh,” Aamiina remembered now. “Why she mention pizza?”

            “Grandpa ordered. Guess it’s here.” Shel suspected a trick in this but, like Geraldine, had a growling stomach. Running to the park and hiding in that tower would take an hour, tree to tree, making sure no one would see. “You hungry, Aami?”

            Still groggy, Aamiina wasn’t really sure. “I want more sleep. Maybe eat a bit.”

            “Stay here—I’ll steal some.” Shel led her friend back to bed and Pink Panthered down the hall, sliding into a laundry closet when she heard approaching voices: her mother’s, Trig’s, Dr Brent’s in querulous tones. Shel heard Geraldine try to calm them down. Patients need their peace and quiet, even—

            “So you’ve found Shel!?” Pam mocked, and now Jim’s voice joined Geraldine’s for everyone to take a chill pill, everything’s gonna be alright. Shel shook with some guilt, if also intrigued by this attention. Of course she knew her mother was begging the izøne to force Shel to receive her messages; Shel had filtered them to silent mode, storing them away—fittingly, as Pam had taught her.

            “This is exactly why they need their sensors active, all the time,” argued Dr Brent, or as much of him as Shel could hear. These bickering adults were fading away, even as Geraldine’s footsteps were coming back to check on the fugitives’ room. Shel ensconced herself more deeply in the closet as she passed.

            “Well, look who’s reappeared,” she heard the old nurse say.

            “Me.” Aamiina’s little voice, not unhappy—glad, perhaps, she had this grandma tucking her in, promising her pizza and lemonade when the time was right.

           

            An hour later, Jim had to acquiesce: everything’s not alright—his granddaughter had flown the coop—and “maybe, Trig, you should put out an APB…”

            Trig, exhausted for pacing with Pam through the problem, hesitated to stream what an ‘APB’ is, or had been; “an APB,” he stewed, “meaning, some kind of Amber Alert?”

            That term was common code in Minnesota, as rare as kidnappings and child disappearances had been in the area. It crushed Jim to hear it applied to Shel, but, “yes, I guess that’s what’s gotta be done. This aint like her, running off with nowhere to go…”

            “Maybe she went to the golf course. Could you message them there?”

            Jim scratched his nape, then looked around for Pam, who had demanded Dr Brent scour the clinic’s campus again. “I don’t suppose she’s gone back to the golf course.”

            “Just check, to make sure. Do your own…APB.”

            “Well, I would.”

            “You should,” Trig emphasized, but realized at that moment why the old man actually couldn't.

            “Maybe Doc Brent will pump me some of that serum. Get me streamed.”

           

            Nala and Geraldine sat beside Aamiina’s bed, speaking in soft phrases so as not to wake her. There was some acknowledgement that Shel’s absence had turned this upturned day a little more off-kilter. In their eyes, obsidian aquaria, they glinted assurances that the worst was over: the golfball didn’t shatter Aami’s brain. The anxiety otherwise, out there in the lobby and corridors, wouldn’t loom: Shel would be found, probably within the hour and a decade older in the scheme of things. “I only met her yesterday,” said Nala. “Aamiina knows her a little longer.”

            “Hmmn, yeah. I figured it was friendship in the draftin’ stage.” Geraldine stifled a laugh, all things considered. “I come to work with a blank slate. Observations—no judgments. You know what I mean? Oh, there’s some folks I’m not so open to—should say, they’re pretty closed to me.  I do their blood pressure and all, check their vitals, and tell ’em things are this much okay or that much not. Life in a hammock, I like to say: swingin’ when the earth says so.”

            Nala had to search that term, and imagined a ship’s hold. “Earth, or Ocean?”

            “Huh?” Geraldine had no idea why an ocean…

            “You said a ‘hammock’, which streams to me a bed within a boat, underneath the deck. In Somalia we had them… Boats, I mean…”

            “And?” Geraldine got up to check that Aamiina was sleeping okay, which (mothers’ instinct) was clear without the need for getting up. “You been on one of them boats, yeah?”

            Nala had. But hard to say what that experience might mean. “I didn’t die. Put it that way.”

            Geraldine hovered over Aamiina. “She also?”

            “Wasn’t born yet. Three months pregnant, I was, barely showing. Probably traffickers wouldn'ta taken me if they knew. Went all around the Indian Ocean, almost sent back at Sumatra. Sick nonstop midst all those islands, boat had to zig-zag through. Docked in Hawaii, had to switch boats—no more hammock, but a flat bed was no better. Back had curved like a chameleon by then, and baby inside me was growing. Not moving much, but growing.”

            “And who was lookin’ after you? ’Nother in your family?”

            “No family. They went back to the village after marrying me off in Mogadishu. Didn’t know the man that paid my bride price. Might have known he’d treat me bad. You can imagine, no?”

            Geraldine imagined, and nodded. “This girl from him?”

            “Has to be. And maybe he kill me when he found out she wasn’t male. All backward there. City glitters a show that they’re wealthy, finally, after centuries of war and starvation. But still all those lords are… malnourished? Is that the right term.”

            “Hmmn. You got streaming—you’d know! But, yeah, toward the metaphor—they seem fat cats who didn’t get fed proper values.”

            “And that’s why I left.”

            Shel had crept out of the laundry closet and into the room where the ladies were talking, proctoring Aamiina. The nook behind the bathroom door still made for a good hiding spot, however much longer Shel wanted to do this. She wanted to message her grandpa, have him tell Pam not to worry, and I’m sorry. She knew she could do this herself, but imagined a world where she couldn’t. Aamiina’s world. And Grandpa’s.

            Geraldine asked Nala a question that Shel stretched to hear: “So when you got here—then you was streamed?”

            “No,” Nala said, “not right away. Complicated. They pushed everyone to do so, voluntarily—incentive of financial credit, free. But some law couldn’t force everyone. Such a long journey, now here; many were eager for izøne to get them work, more credit, and so on. Others were suspicious and feared they’d get traced, sent back to Somalia.”

            “You?”

            “Of course that—I’m sure my so-called husband put out a search, probably a fatwa. But not only that…”

            Geraldine laid her hand on Nala’s armrest. “Only say if you want.”

            She stared at Aamiina. “I thought it would poison her. Everyone told us otherwise… Nurses did, even those older, wiser ones like you.” Geraldine didn’t move, but Shel started to. “Streamed mothers make babies that strangely also need to get streamed—like the umbilical cord didn’t do the trick. Everyone promised my streaming wouldn’t impact the baby. But… must!”

            And here Shel rushed to the other side of the bed, shocking the ladies a little. “No poison! Leave her be.” Against Geraldine’s hushes, she tumbled into the bed and wrapped her arms around Aamiina like a teddy bear. “Leave be,” she cried quietly.

            After a minute, Nala leaned into Geraldine, “should I message Pam, she’s okay?”

            “Hmmn.” Geraldine hoisted herself from the chair. “Naw. Let me.” She strolled toward the door, then smiled at the girls. “Old-school style.”

           

X.

            The Carters fished Fall Lake from the shore the following day, not expecting another fourteen-pound pike, but more fluency in the craft of casting and reeling in. They knew they’d have to launch into the open water and trawl for a consistent yield, and they also knew that fish alone would not supply a balanced diet. They’d have to learn to hunt—perhaps for that very kind of creature that bloodied their dog the other night.

             But these ventures out of the camp could wait; the Carters all desired a chance to know their neighbors—other ‘having-runners’, as Jack had called them. He hinted that they came and went at unpredictable times. Cabins being rather cold and lonely, there was more incentive to leave them than to linger, and the beauty of the boundary waters, luring endlessly into a labyrinth of lakes, would entice wanderers to their own sense of sanctuary, beyond Jack’s billing.

            “Come on by the chapel this evening,” he elbowed Seb, “’round 8pm.”

            “How would I know when that is?” Seb asked, his izøne access to time no longer at the ready.

            “We tend to ring the bell.”

            “From underwater? If that’s the chapel you’re talking about—”

            “Yes, the only chapel we have. But the bell is above the boathouse. We ring it only sometimes: two, three heartbeats for a gentle reminder of a gathering, or a cacophony of pulls for something gone wrong. Not that that happens too often—”

            “Maybe shoulda done that when we couldn’t find Kay.”

            Jack nodded doubtfully. “She’s got good instincts, finding cover when out in the rain. And Gordon, you know, found her fine. He’s real good when it comes to good instincts.”

            Seb didn’t nod back. “‘Instinct’ is… tough for us to figure. We get the general concept. Sort of know it’s there—gotta be. Potentially there, at least. But…”

            “I understand,” said Jack. “Come by the chapel tonight.”

            They did, when the bell tolled three heartbeats. Seb and Avis, Tim and Mia walked from their cabin toward the boathouse. Kay, feeling sniffly, stayed back with Pretty, who’d likely add to the chapel environment but wouldn’t enjoy it. They both were rather tired.

            The grandma was at the boathouse, typically ebullient. “Bells’ll do it! Come on in. You know your way already—from the other day. Down the hatch, as we say!” She opened the door at the northern wall of the room, which the Carters knew would lead to an actual hangar for some boats, but then beyond: the corridor that snaked beneath the surface of the lake, some eighty yards or so. It was translucent at this hour, the rays of sunset prisming the surface of the lake and the windows of this tube, supplied as well by artificial light.

            They walked quite deliberately, sometimes pausing at a window to study the way the surface of the lake affected the view—above, below, like a sea lion tank at a zoo. They talked a bit, but Seb wished he could message Avis tacitly, beyond their kids’ earshot, so to speak. Why such a tube? he’d ask her, and What would we want or not want to see in this gathering? Perhaps she’d laugh, Would you rather swim to this submarine thing? and We’ll see other, gerbil-like people. How bad could that be? Then maybe Seb would reflect on that. Other people. Weird that we haven’t seen any yet… Avis would remind him of the grandma, and Gordon. Jack, of course. Nodding impatiently, of course, them! But who else? That old guy in Winton, shouting us to stay away? Shaking her head, it wasn’t like that. He’s seen his town shrivel and the rest of the world thrive. He’s a modern-day Miniver Cheevy, if you remember him. But the fact was, without izøne, they couldn’t dialogue like this anymore.

            Muffled voices grew more distinctly female, male, old and ageless through the beaded curtain at the end of the corridor. The chapel had a heavy, air-tight door, now open—the corridor eased in some ventilating breeze—and stepping through the beads the Carters felt some reassurance that this drowned spaceship wasn’t filled with aliens, nor mutant gerbils, but ordinary humans playing cards, telling yarns, sipping drinks, saying ‘hey’ as Seb and Avis made their way to greet them. Tim and Mia hung behind, sizing up the corners of the disc, or hatches to escape, if need be. Lighting was about the same as in the corridor—phosphorescent tubes, scented candles here and there for atmosphere—and concave windows would naturally pull in dregs of light, if earlier in the day. Rugs and wooden furniture made valiant attempts to cozy up the room, and along the wall closest to Lovers Island stood a foot-bellows pipe organ, vacant for now but soon played by a silver-haired lady who took Mia’s hand when the girl asked what that was. The pumping of feet to get the air going took much of Silver’s energy, though she grinned as she did so, and encouraged Mia to pull out some of the stops—these funny knobs that slanted the groans of the instrument, tweaking the sound into song. Pushing the keys, white and black, was something Mia had done before at a friend’s house in Minneapolis, but never with so many other valves and levers. Silver played chords that enticed Mia to add her own notes, to general delight.

            Tim looked on from a swivel chair, hoping not to be next, even as the machine intrigued him. But after a minute he turned toward a chess match that was into its end game—two men in their forties battling out their lone rooks, knights, and kings. Tim knew how to play and secretly sided with black, with pawns in better position to race toward the chance to be queen. Seb came over, brandy in hand, and mentioned to the concentrating men that his son was quite good at the game. Tim blushed but messaged his dad a genuine thanks, or tried to. The man who had black nodded belief and said Tim would play winner, thumbing his own overalls.

            Avis was sitting with Jack, who had abandoned his hand playing whist. The three others, including his across-the-table partner, didn’t seem to mind, as they went on to play something simpler, partly to eyeball Avis once in a while. Jack wasn’t exactly flirting with her, but anyone could see he was glad that she had swiveled into this gathering, a gathering that obviously had started well before the ringing of the bell.

            Silver had taught Mia a little song that would serve the greater interest—suspending chess and cards and little conversations in the room. It was ‘Edelweiss’, pumped into the organ and lungs of the organist, singing “small and white, clean and bright” while Mia plinked out the approximate notes. No one could have referenced the way Captain Von Trapp led the same song with his daughter Liesl, some 120 years ago. Outside the sanctuary, sure: maybe they’d reference this moment, deliberately or otherwise. But here, internal to Fall Lake, beyond any possible whiff of izøne, the precedent mattered not at all. By the end of “bless my homeland forever,” Silver was exhausted, the bellows pumped by her feet slowly giving up. The calls for an encore were half in jest, as Silver hugged Mia and headed for a swivel chair and the brandy someone handed her.

           

            Kay, meanwhile, imagined how her family’s first chapel was going. She understood the underwater bit—a womb of sorts to suit the notion of the inchoate innocence of the place. She also understood the need to combat ‘cabin fever’, even in the mere span of hours she had ever spent in a cabin itself. Part of her knew that she could slip away—a mile down the road, or less—and pick up the power of the izøne once again, stream what ‘cabin fever’ meant throughout the ages, how it possibly was remedied, why it might have appealed to her memory in the first place.

            She glanced at Pretty, perfectly ovalled upon her blanket. “You don’t need to go out for a pee, do you?”

            Pretty flinched and tucked further in.

            That would be caution enough, in a sanctuary or otherwise. Kay stoked the stove to heat up the kettle, as if a cup of tea would quell the urge to go outside, maybe just to where the shuttle was parked, maybe as far as Winton. She’d have keys to neither, but she’d have a little rendezvous with izøne, the allusions and rabbit holes she so loved. “You won’t come with me?” she gave Pretty another chance at fealty. Truth told, the dog was already asleep and headed for rabbit dreams of her own.

            Starlight, more than the cuticle of moon, guided Kay’s steps out toward the entrance of the sanctuary. She passed the shuttle, tapped it like a circus elephant, then moved on toward the road her family had walked on from Winton, like nomads. Funny word, she thought, ‘nomad’, to which she started to receive the faint derivation in ancient French, those unfixed inhabitants of all-of-earth, if nowhere in particular.

            Strides were spirited, a little scared—especially in the recall of that manic old man with whom her mom negotiated in Winton. What did he want? she thought, and why was he so angry about a sheeplike—sheepish?—family like ours?... Of course the izøne had no response to this, not even to the conventional way in this instance to anthropomorphize sheep. But no matter! She and the izøne were once again on speaking terms, silent as friends sometimes have to be. Kay walked faster in this reunion.

            And, as if the clicks of her shoes gave all away, the old man from Winton indeed emerged from the blackened border of the ghost town. He held something in his spread-out hands, waist level, and snorted Kay to stop. She did, and without thinking, streamed the patrol hotline and mentally dialed it up.

            “Where ye goin’?” the old man demanded, sloping his rifle like a math problem, 2x – y =

            Kay didn’t answer—didn’t know—and backed away as she had once learned about how to leave a mountain lion. “Don’t.. shoot,” she uttered, trying not to panic. She could sense a faint message from Hotline but couldn’t concentrate on anything other than placing her feet behind and behind, looking straight into the old man’s glare. She had no inkling of what was behind her—the sanctuary, vaguely, but not the mossy cracks in the road. Or Gordon. He brushed by her at his normal gait, unconcerned that the rifle was moving into the z axis. He said nothing to the snorts of the old man, who started to copy Kay’s tactic of cautious backpedaling. Gordon paced steadily to the exact spot the old man had been, then turned around to pace the same way back to Kay.

            “Alright now.” He waited for Kay to turn his direction, implying he’d still be a shield against the unlikely bullet. They walked two yards apart, wordlessly, out of the fading signal of the izøne.

XI.

            The next day was like a page in a picture book. Aamiina was medically cleared to go home—even to the park, the doctor allowed, “provided you don’t overdo the swinging or climbing or hanging up-side-down.” She answered with an obedient nod, not knowing if Dr Brent would understand that she only wanted to go there to catch little toads.

            “Toads, or towin’ a line in this world,” Nurse Geraldine whispered to Nala on their exit, “keep that girl thinkin’ for herself.”

            Pam, dressed in her patroller uniform, swung by to give them a lift. She hadn’t arranged it with Nala, who thanked her yet said they were good for a walk. Aamiina, as if not hearing her mother, climbed into the shuttle and strapped in. Nala smiled at the familiarity and did the same.

            “Interesting, being in patrol,” she said, looking back to have her daughter hear, too.

            “Normally just nosing around,” Pam responded. “sometimes boring, when alone. Trig keeps me company, usually.”

            “Where’s he today?”

            “Called in for precinct work. Maybe they assumed I’d be out another day—I was ‘sick’ yesterday,” curling her index fingers for the implication.

            Nala understood. “We’re all better today.”

            “Shel?” Aamiina wanted to know. “Play at park?”

            “Yes, I’m sure she can this afternoon. She stayed with her grandpa at the golf course last night.”

            “Can we go back there?”

            Pam looked guiltily to Nala, who shrugged her shoulders, your call. “Someday, yes. Glad you’re not scared of the place. You have a good nature for nature. And that golf ball that hit you,..” Pam channeled her father’s veiled outrage, then swallowed, “was unnatural. Golf is for the good.”

            “Shel is good at it. You, too. And Grandpa.”

            “Call him ‘Mr Circe’, Aamiina.”

            “No, Nala,” Pam assured, “he’s happy to be Grandpa. Even I call him that!”

           

            Aamiina was glad to be home, cuddling into her own corner. Her mother had to hustle to work, but prepared a snack and reminded her as usual when she’d be back to take her to the park. Meanwhile, Aamiina’s school routine involved an ancient set of World Book encyclopedias, which she loved, some math puzzles, and art equipment.

            Crayons out, she drew what she remembered of the golf course. Volume ‘G’ helped her with some cues, but mostly it was the blend of water, grass, sand and trees that she tried out from several angles. The flags and golf carts had to be there, she submitted, but she sketched them lightly, proportionally small. And peopleless.

            Five sheets done of that, she replaced volume G for her favorite, and most thick. Volume ‘A’ had everything: vast continents, space workers, the entire animal kingdom… She added a mama sloth to one of her golf course trees, her baby clinging to the cradle of her tummy. And on another sheet, nestled in the overhang of grass around a sand pit, she drew an aardvark, spelling out AAMIINA. She didn’t need to flip to that first page of the encyclopedia, as she had so many times before, and instead decided to read about astronauts, when landing on the moon was still an awesome idea.

            She explored these pages without anyone knowing what she was finding, let alone thinking. Outdated, to be sure. Yet infinite in scope.

            Pam patrolled absentmindedly, mostly around Alexander Park. She considered for a while exploring the underground mosque; while the doorway wasn’t marked, it was common knowledge where it led, even as the izøne disappeared within its angles and depth. Perhaps in plain clothes, later, she thought, or with Nala’s permission. After so many decades of religious integration—not that religion mattered to most—there remained a litmus of sorts about actual practice within a heterogeneous community. The law let folks figure out their own codes and protocols, provided everyone felt safe and relatively free.

            No one entered or left the mosque this sleepy mid-morning, so Pam decided to move on, eventually toward the precinct. She hesitated outside: yet another institution, if not ‘religious’. Gathering her reasons to stop by, she pulled the door toward her and went in.

            It was too early in the day for any kind of buzz. Patrollers were out, Processors were ensuring court dates had their proper supply of suspects, witnesses, evidence, advocates, jury load, jail cells—let alone the donuts and coffee that really kept the place afloat. No one was in the R&R lounge, so Pam swung down to the gym, which tended to get good use. To her chagrin, only the chief was present, swimming (as such) inside a friction-adjusted gyroscope. He grunted a greeting, then pointed disjointedly to indicate Trig’s whereabouts. Investigation Center, he messaged, not about you. Pam forced a smile, unsure if Chief was attempting a joke.

            The Investigation Center was a labyrinth of oversized computers, mostly tall and screenless like Deep Blue, that early A.I. monolith. The screens that were active monitored the movement of many things, from blips on a need-to-know basis to clear camera shots of select locations. Some of these could have been channeled via izøne, of course—‘satellites see everything’—but these views tended to drill beneath the superficial.

            Trig sat in an alcove scanning data through a headset connected to one of these Deep Blues. His eyes were closed in apparent concentration, but opened at the slight tap of Pam’s finger on his shoulder. “Lightspeed! Feeling better, I see.”

            Pam grimaced at the notion that this room would read ironies better than the civilian access to izøne. “Feeling fine. And you? Glad to be off the streets today?”

            “Yes, those awfully mean streets of Faribault.” He doffed the headset. “Eons away when I’m sitting here.”

            “You’re not thinking of a duty transfer, I hope.”

            “Only if you are.”

            “I’m not.” She wanted to message I’d die in this environment but repressed the thought, in fear of being overhead.

            “Of course not,” Trig smiled. “You’d die in this environment.”

            Shaking her head, Pam seemed to convulse. Trig stood up and offered her a hug, which she took. “Not so fragile,” she whispered. “Just a tad claustrophobic.”

            They nudged out of the room and up the stairs to a rooftop garden. Years ago, when they had first met—Shel was a baby, Pam a surprise single mom—they spent extended lunch hours on this patio, procrastinating their return to the rather uneventful streets of Faribault. Trig tried to convince her to seek part-time, or even a full maternity leave. But Mrs Schuster gladly took care of Shel during the day, and Pam adopted a don’t fix what isn’t broke mindset. More than that, she liked lolling the days away with Trig. “There, now”—a sweep of his arm to the horizon: “the wide-open world.”

            “What were you investigating down there?” looking instead just at him.

            “What? Maybe whom?”

            “Okay. Whom?”

            “Don’ know. Chief grabbed me to dish off what he would have to do: a request from Hotline to run a disappeared signal.”

            “When? Where?”

            “Last night, 9:04. Boundary Waters.”

            “Boundary Waters? Big area, but why would this involve Chief?”

            “Not Chief, really, but a need to survey the southern side of the state.”

            “Chief is in charge of that much?”

            “No, but Faribault is sleepy; he has time on his hands.”

            Pam imagined him gripping the handles of the gyroscope, but made sure not to message that notion to Trig. As long as they were physically talking, their expression was under the radar, so to speak. “So you’re looking into this signal, disappeared. Is it… major?”

            “You tell me. Hotline streamed, then nothing. Almost always we’d be able to identify the streamer. In this case, no.”

            “Streamer disappeared?”

            Trig shrugged. He cast his gaze north-northeast and held it there awhile. In his mind he conjured up the map of what he’d learned downstairs: an abandoned village called Winton on the west edge of Fall Lake. It would be ideal there this time of year, just this side of autumn leaves and well before the snow. He knew the Boundary Waters as a kid, but not since; his father liked to take him fishing there, but died too soon to make the routine stick. “What would you say, ’Speed, about a fishing trip? Couple days off in God’s country?”

            “You don’t believe in God! And what kind of fishing?”

            “I don’t know if I don’t. And…regular: fishing is fishing.”

            “Investigating? Is Chief asking?”

            “Chief isn’t interested in asking, but he’d like to get credit for responding to Hotline’s request. The fact that it’s not on his own turf makes it easier.”

            “For you. He hates me—wouldn’t grant me leave.”

            “If he hates you, why would he want you around?”

            Pam smiled: good point.

            They abandoned the precinct and shuttled to the golf course. Shel was waiting for them at the putting green, with her grandfather quasi-coaching. They had had a morning round and a clubhouse lunch, but now were counting minutes before a chance to look for toads at Alexander Park, Shel speaking often about this new hobby.

            “I think she’d enjoy fishing, too,” Trig tested on Pam as they parked the shuttle. “And maybe even your dad.”

            That surprised Pam. “Investigation first, right?” She secured Trig’s nod in the affirmative. “Then a rendezvous, you and me, right?”

            Trig blushed and touched her thigh. “As nature allows.”

            “Nice. So why pile in the whole family thing?”

            Shel ran up to hug her mom and hop into the shuttle, just like Aamiina had done six hours earlier. She greeted Trig by his first name and smushed her face to the window to kiss Grandpa Jim goodbye.

            “That’s basically why,” Trig decided, and Pam could absolutely not disagree.

            She messaged Nala that they’d be heading to Alexander Park, if Aamiina might like to be a part of that plan. Before Nala could reply, Pam turned to Trig: “how big is this fishing trip, anyway?”

            The shuttle had seats for six, if never imagined to need them. Or to exit the patterns of Faribault’s inconsequential streets. “I don’t know, Lightspeed. Kinda spitballing things these days.”

XII.

            Kay was trying to remember, walking now within the sanctuary, why Gordon had been called ‘the golem’ by her dad. The reference was unfamiliar, begging to be streamed, if somehow refreshing in its mystery. Oh, well, she thought, this galoot got me out of a jam, if that’s what ‘golem’ means. Gordon, as if listening in, sighed some satisfaction for the night’s unfolding.

            “Safe, here,” he mumbled. “Not so much out there.”

            Kay turned around and slowed her gait. “One crazy doesn’t represent the territory, I’m sure.”

            “To him, we’re crazy.”

            “Sanctuary people?”

            Gordon grunted at that. He didn’t seem to share Jack’s lexicon of ‘sanctuary’ or ‘having-runners’, a consciousness about an outer world. These woods, the lake, the islands therein, made a universe enough and not a mere respite for flighty refugees. “What did Loon say to Leech?”

            Kay stopped at the question. “Huh?”

            Gordon waited for her to shrug, then monotoned, “Glad to eat you.”

            “Is that a joke?”

            Evidently, it tried to be. Gordon dropped his eyes and walked ahead. Kay watched him trudge past her cabin, but didn’t want him to leave on that note.

            “I vant to suck your blood,” she called out, self-consciously. “You know, like a leech would.”

            Gordon pondered. “Loon says?”

            “Sure.” And she waited for him to smile before he disappeared.

            It was another hour before her parents and siblings came back from the chapel. Kay had pulled a musty book from one of the shelves and labored to read—her eyes racing ahead and behind all these familiar words in strange rows. The izøne didn’t require old-fashioned literacy, inked strokes and serifs against a white page; because Kay loved learning, she had trained herself in the digital archives available to her. Yet smoothing her fingers across bulk paper and brushing the frayed edges was rarefied experience.

            Avis hooked her jacket on a peg and asked softly, “What’s that?”

            Kay turned to the cover, to be sure: “White Fang. Bedtime story for Pretty.”

            “Seemed to work. Sound asleep.”

            Tim yawned a jab, “good watchdog, Pretty.”

            “Shhh. Let her be.”

            Mia practically tripped into bed, too tired to change into pajamas. Seb quietly convinced her to do so, then tucked her in. Tim fumbled around the tin sink, brushed his teeth and climbed into his bunk. Seb followed in kind and kissed Avis good night.

            “I’m there soon,” she said, then turned to Kay. “You weren’t bored here?”

            How to say? “I wasn’t. Took a walk.”

            “Hmm. Explains why Pretty’s tuckered out.”

            Kay almost never lied, especially to her mother. “What do you think of Gordon?”

            “You saw him on your walk?”

            “Yeah.”

            “He saw you, too?”

            “Yeah.”

            Avis pressed her lower lip up. “What do you think of him?”

            “Funny, kind of.” Kay wanted so badly to search the izøne for better adjectives. “Lonesome, I imagine.”

            “This place has community, we saw well enough tonight. Gordon’s a part of that.”

            “He wasn’t at chapel, though.”

            “Neither were you. And that’s alright. Though next time I think you’d like to join.”

            They remained silent for a while, Avis bending to pet Pretty and Kay pretending to read. The candle between them was near to sputtering out, a waxen way of ending a wondrous day.

            Jack woke them early for a planned excursion to the east end of Fall Lake and Mile Island, where bluegill were abundant in its protected shallows. They’d take three canoes and learn how to portage beside Newton Falls and into the deeper domain of Newton Lake, where muskellunge would test their patience, then fight to the tipping point of rod and resolution—Mia’s sinking hopelessly when she lost her grip. She sobbed despite an onslaught of encouragement, even from Tim, whose munificence was somewhat due to his own success at catching a six-pound walleye: less boisterous on the line, but more delicious in the future frying pan. Mia wiped her tears and nodded, knowing all the fish in their hold were meant to constitute their diet. “What about down there?” she posed, pointing to the place her rod had disappeared.

            “Down there?” Jack echoed from the front of their canoe. “That muskie smiles for having beaten us, as should be the case every now and then.”

            “Hooked to rod all her life?”

            The question hovered over the surface of Newton Lake, each canoe paddling liably away. It was evident—mid-morning turning noon, a break on the northern shore to eat elderberries and deer jerky—that questions here had no real need for answers, as long as nature held pure patterns. Human nature, notwithstanding.

            Avis, making sure the tamarack tea came to a boil and everyone partook, turned to Kay to see if she would rather shift to the front of their canoe; “you look tired, and steering takes a lot of—”

            “Mom, I’m not a little girl.”

            Pretty, also in their fleet, perked up to see if she might have a duty change. They were almost five miles from their launch point, a distance Jack was secretly concerned about, for fear the izøne might seep through and ruin the rustic luxury. Part of his design to take the Carters here was to delineate the sanctuary—the very span of how far this non-izøne could go.

            Seb was cognizant of this very fact, steering him and Tim to navigate toward Newton Falls and homeward. “Y’know, our yield is plentiful today to sustain the whole week, ’specially those easy bluegill there at Mile Island.”

            “Agreed,” cooed Jack, “those are all the fish we really need, though Tim’s walleye there is—”

            “Bald eagle!” he interrupted, rocking the canoe. “Two!”

            The paddlers stopped to watch the majestic gliders scan the world and claim another treetop for their realm. How’d they discern the izøne, Kay wondered, flying in and out of it just now? She considered asking that idea aloud, for general conversation, but then another bird caught her backward glance, and compelled her to utter, “loon”—more subdued than Tim’s find—and “just one.”

            The journey back to the beach, then, was a rather silent search for other creatures of their sanctuary, from dragonflies to leaping fish to muskrats floating near the shore. Mia’s thoughts went to wolverines or whatever tasted Pretty’s blood. Kay’s circled back to Gordon, the golem.

            He was faithfully waiting for the canoes to come in, the fish to clean pro bono. He also had a message to deliver Jack: “visitors”, thumbing toward the boathouse.

            Seb followed Jack there, as Avis bid the kids wash up and get the cabin ready for the evening. Not that anyone expected visitors. Let alone patrollers.

            “’Llo,” Trig greeted from the customer-side of the store. Pam was closer to desk, talking to the grandma who was, as usual, all smiles and starts of anecdotes.

             Jack made a millisecond note that the door to the chapel was obscured, then echoed the hello. “Trouble in the region?”

            “Hope not,” Trig stepped forward. “We look for the lack of trouble, usually.”

            “You found it,” Jack assured, turning to Seb for an affirmation, “right?”

            Seb nodded. “Most beautiful day in memory.”

            Pam sauntered over, “memory must be interesting without the aid of izøne. You’ve been here long?”

            “Me?” Seb suddenly felt fumbly. “I…I’ve thought a long time about this place… Maybe a year ago, when—”

            “We filed for our license around then,” jumped in Jack, “and advertised a bit. Haven’t had to recently, as we’re full to the gills.”

            Trig tried to stream that idiom, but of course came up empty. “You’ve had steady clients?” he guessed.

            The grandma chimed in, from behind: “we’ve had the best. We don’t ever call them ‘clients’, though.”

            “What do you call ’em?”

            “Having-runners.” Jack drew into his comfort zone. “History having run these kinds of things before, we provide a settling force. A place to simply be, naturally. We’re not at war with izøne, mind you; just more at peace with its absence. I can provide you our charter permit, if you’d like…”

            Trig stared in some disbelief. “You mean physical documentation? It’s been years since—”

            “That, or even our reference code, if you’d like to jot it down and summon up our bona fides down the road.”

            “Okay—I mean, we’re not here to investigate you, but any data would help, especially if izøne cannot.”

            “You see,” Pam let in, “we’re following up on a Hotline signal near here that disappeared.” She glanced at Trig, who gestured go on, iron is hot. “Whether that signal had somehow been swallowed, or reversed, or…”

            “Irrelevant,” the grandma suggested, “as nobody here could have streamed such a thing.”

            “That’s what we’re gathering. Even this moment, we can’t stream anything—not even a record of what we are saying.”

            “Exactly,” said Jack. “That’s the purity of this place and this vision. We’re here to help run our—how did you phrase it, Seb?”

            “Memory. On this most beautiful day.” He grabbed a bottle of wine from a shelf and trophied it for the grandma to register. “Add to our bill, please, and if you would like to join us,” turning to Pam and then Trig, “my family is going to have dinner soon and would love to have company.”

            The patrollers had come up alone for the evening, deciding with little debate that Shel or Aamiina or anyone else would not fit into the need to actually investigate things, if that was only a pretext for Pam and Trig to have a romp for themselves. They had reserved a room at the Burntside Hotel in nearby Ely, charging it to the Faribault precinct, and their mission had little else to fulfill than doing just this: looking for the lack of trouble, as one or the other might have recalled. “Sure,” they both responded, in uncanny unison.

            Fragrant rhubarb pie was heating up when Seb and the visitors came in, unannounced but clearly welcome. Kay was making a salad and had plenty of extra cucumbers and tomatoes to toss in. Tim had mashed the elderberries they had picked into a concentrate, stirred now into a glow of pitchers refracting lantern light. Gordon was nearly finished with the filets, handing each to Avis to marinate. As those sizzled over birch bark heat, Seb poured wine for everyone, diluted much for Mia and a bit for Tim. Vocal memories of the day found their flow, from loon and eagles to gentle blurs of landscape, seen from shuttle and canoe.

            “Your dog,” Pam knelt down to pet, projecting this warm feeling over to Mia, “is really pretty.”

            “Yes. Her name.”

            “Even if she’s feeling kind of blue right now,” Kay offered, “recovering from some wild attacker.”

            Pam thought of that and kept on stroking Pretty’s fur. “I have a daughter about your age,” she decided to tell Mia. “I think she’d like it here.”

            “Is she streamed?” Mia asked, and Gordon at the stove craned subtly to listen.

            Pam bobbed her head in some surprise, then answered, “Yes. But she has a new friend who isn’t, and…”

            Trig came over to clink his glass to this ambient departure from everything they had known under the izøne. He and Pam spoke at liberty with the Carters, less to probe any sense of Hotzone signals gone awry—they never broached the topic—and more to entertain their mindsets. And be entertained, as boathouse wine drained early and shuttle stock supplied their dinner talk and tips and tipsiness into the pinpoints of the stars. Burntside Hotel might have cancelled them as no-shows, they giddily allowed, but Seb assured this cabin door would remain unlocked should they need a corner in which to crash—awful idiom extending ‘safe space’, as this sanctuary continued to affirm.

            Kay walked them out, knowing the porch steps would be perilous in the dark. “Good night,” she bid the patrollers, enviously arm-in-arm anticipating Burntside.

            “Might swing by tomorrow,” Trig mused, “before civilization requires a return.”

            “Greet the izøne for me,” Kay straight-lined.

            Pam shrugged. “Maybe. Forgive if I forget.” Their steps and giggles faded into silence before Kay slunk into the cabin.

XIII.

            Burntside Lake had the look of most of these Boundary Waters, glacial furrows slanting toward the northeast, beads of sweat thrown off the muzzle of the wolf that is Lake Superior. Waking up at the Burntside Hotel, embraced by izøne familiarity of weather forecasts, headline news, messages and such, Pam ignored these for a chance to plunge into the water, Finnish sauna style. She didn’t have to whisper to Trig, “I’m going for a swim,” as she could set the message for the instant he’d wake up, but in the spirit of last night, she poured her words gently into his ear.

            “Mmhm—mokay,” he half knew what she said, then turned to sleep some more.

            The absence of a bathing suit posed a slight problem—many hotels would stock them, yet Burntside wasn’t known for being a spa. Deeper into the Boundary Waters, beyond towns or hotels, canoers tended to skinny dip. Pam wouldn’t do so if anyone would identify her as a patroller, so she left the uniform in the room and tiptoed to the beach in towel and underwear, shedding them as dawn was firing up the waves.

            “Oooh, c-c-cold,” she chattered, sliding in and jiggling her arms. In no time, though, the lake enveloped her like a velvet gown. She ducked her head below the surface and swam as far as she could go, dodging underwater boulders and questions whether doing this on her own was wise. She surfaced a full forty yards from shore, exulting in endurance. “I’m an otter,” she uttered to no one’s hearing, then tapped into that Seamus Heaney poem, imagining Trig’s voice in lines like

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders

Surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

Enacting some of that, she tumbled about the waterline and came up breathing deep the joy of being here. On her back, rolling like a floating log, then treading water to reflect on others whom she loved.

            She pictured Shel, probably still asleep in Aamiina’s room, as Nala endorsed the slumber party plan. Lucky girl, Pam thought, having many homes to lay her head, from Grandpa’s at the golf course to Mrs Schuster next door, and now Nala’s… Her brain begged her to stream a message to one or all of these people, to thank or check up or arrange or beacon an availability for their own such messages. Then again, her father and Mrs Schuster were unstreamed and so could not be contacted like this. Nala could, but Aamiina couldn’t. Shel could, but in these circumstances, what for? And at that cabin yesterday, none of these lures to tap into the izøne mattered. That primal atmosphere imbued a strange comfort of other channels, less to ascertain than to wonder.

            After these cogitations, Pam tried to blink away a welling in her eyes, blurring her view of the Burntside Hotel in the near distance. She ducked under the surface and rubbed her face of all worry—really no worry at all. The day would retain this cleansing of her soul.

            Swimming back to shore, she noticed Trig loping like a polar bear, bathrobe white until he shed that for his leaner look as a fellow otter. He ran and dived to Pam as eager to temper the water’s chill as to tap into her warmth. Their embrace, when currents swirled them together, lasted long into the disappearance of their memory of what they’d planned to do this morning, tracking sanctuary movements or lack thereof.

            They decided to nose around Winton, abandoned as it seemed to be. Only one life-form emerged in their patrolling: an old man who drew his curtains coyly, more as a flag to attract attention, Pam decided, than to shut out intruders. Wouldn’t it be something, she messaged Trig, in the fading reception on this edge of izøne, if we were regarded as some invading force! She didn’t gather Trig’s response, but he nodded an ‘I got this’ in his modest brand of charm.

            He knocked on the door—six sequences in two minutes—while Pam pretended to surveil something else. When it finally opened, Trig cast a small glance backward as the old man tugged him inside, closing the door to cut out the world. Pam knew she could message Trig, if communication could be crackly; years of training informed her how to cover a fellow patroller in any situation. Still, she wasn’t sure what to do.

            Ten minutes passed, Pam refraining from sending a message for fear that Chief or anyone else on their channel might intercept, react, blow this romantic double-dip to bits. No noises came from the domicile, consistent with all the others in this ghost town. Pam bit her lip and considered praying, something her long-dead mother had done daily, but unpracticed after feeble attempts by others at her funeral. Abandoning that memory quickly, she thought about Faribault’s underground mosque and Nala’s experience—or what she conjured it to be—and realized she was even less equipped for dabbling in prayer. Institutions versus individual need, she seemed to message to herself, a diary of sorts for these unusual days.

            Trig came out in typical sangfroid. He glanced back at the gradually closing door, saying something along the lines of ‘thanks’. The old man inside evidently wanted no such salvo, as the short slam threw Trig for a loop. He sought Pam’s eyes to message in his own way, that was weird, but okay. Pam curved her mouth at the fact that he was out, more interested in his body language than the debrief that would necessarily follow.

            “You know, we could go back to the sanctuary,” she proposed.

            “And do what?”

            Good question. “Reminisce? Last sixteen hours or so?”

            “Could do that anywhere. I’d be up for a return there, but not as a patroller.”

            “Would they let us in, otherwise?”

            “Why not?”

            “You heard the manager say they were, what, ‘full to the gills’…”

            Jack shrugged. “They seemed visitor-friendly.”

            “Like this old paranoiac?” Pam thumbed the house they were walking from.

            “Wasn’t so bad, really. Just… incoherent. And yes, paranoid: anti-everything. He hates the izøne, hates the sanctuary from it.”

            “Hates his place in the middle?”

            “Hmm. Didn’t ask him. Should’ve.”

            “Odd to consider ‘hate’ so universally—it still must have local footholds.”

            “He didn’t come off like somebody who envisioned spending his days alone, let alone in hatred. He offered me tea, but complained it would take an half hour to reach a boil, the gas line cut off by… well, it wouldn’t matter, anyway. I mean, what services might supply a ghost town?”

            “Did you ask him that?”

            “Yeah. He wasn’t in agreement that Winton was… dead. He said, rather, the sanctuary was killing the area.”
            “How?”

            Trig looked around to see how the final houses before the forest might weigh in, then hunched closer to Pam. “Sacrifice. The izøne demanded it, he was sure. The only way to create a removal of something was to saturate its momentum.”

            “He said that?”
            Trig bobbed his head. “Well, not exactly. He implied as much. He ranted that the sanctuary has sapped this village into oblivion. Like somehow there was a push-pull…”

            “Or a pull-push? Winton folks pulled in, pushing izøne further out?”
            “He didn’t say it that way. I frankly gave up on what he was trying to say.”

           

            They reached their shuttle and Pam took the helm, directing it mentally which way to go. “You know, we have plenty of time to probe further…”

            Trig knew that. “You didn’t even ask me if that old man had any knowledge of the Hotline call.”

            “I assume he’s not streamed—”

            “He certainly is not streamed. And he recoiled at my suggestion that we were here to investigate a streamed call on Hotline.”

            “Does that mean…”

            “—that he’s a factor in that puzzle? I could ask the crickets and birds and bears that very question. Any being that moves, and has motives—not to put another being in danger, per se, but—”

             “You’re confusing me. Is he dangerous? Is he some sort of… sacrifice voyeur?”

            “No. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That was crystal clear.”

            Pam navigated the shuttle southward, not so sure. “He pulled you in,” she said after some minutes. “Like… he had some… pull.”

            Trig laughed. “Old guy? in a musty man-cave? Wouldn’t pull in pussy willows.”

            Pam didn’t laugh, or understand that reference, or want to stream it.

            “He’s a remnant of all things past,” Trig tried. “He could have had me for an hour—you, too—and nothing more would come of it. Izøne this and izøne that, like somehow I’d have no reference point. Like conversing with a dog…”

            “The dog last night?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Did you notice her?”

            Trig looked ahead. “Of course.” He tried to shape a compelling thought about the border collie that had done her job greeting everyone and making sure the proverbial sheep were all in their fold. “Pretty,” he recalled her name, “would probably win promotion over me, all things equal.”

            Pam drove on on that thought, even though she wasn’t technically driving the shuttle in its track, magnetic Highway 35, south. She cast her mind on what lay ahead, thinly so as not to get caught up in the channels Chief or even Trig could decipher. Filtering the izøne was a duly acquired skill, and if done well, arguably anyone could craft a sanctuary for herself. Shel could—she’s been working on these filters. Aamiina wouldn’t have to—she’s her own inherent sanctuary. Pam would want these girls to see this place, plunge into its woods and waters. That girl in the cabin, Mia, could show them the ropes—she’d love more kid-company, naturally. Burntside Lake and the town of Ely could be their tether to the familiar world—no ghosts or misanthropes there, as in Winton. Gosh, he was creepy. I wondered for a second last night about that big guy in the cabin, frying up the fish…Gordon, I think they called him. But he, at least, seemed lovely in his awkward way, unlike—

            “Thinking about the girls?” Trig broke into her brow.

            “Um… yeah.” Pam swallowed her surprise and reached to hold his hand, a little more secure about his impending fatherhood.

XIV.

            The old man inside his Winton house admitted he was coy—had been all his life—like a walleye, hard to hook. Strangers usually out for something, he thought, and me too: protectin’ the little lot I got. He peeked through moth holes in his drapes to make sure those patrollers were gone for good. Not that he had anything himself to hide.

            Tamarack tea was finally at a boil, twenty minutes after it could be shared. He wished he had more to tell his unexpected guest, or more accurate ways of telling—sanctuary from izøne, inventions to block inventions, chicken-and-egg sort of stuff. Unnatural designs on nature. Sacrifice unsanctified. Overdid that, probably, the old man almost said.

            He had no one meaningful to talk to since Martha slipped away. She’d been Winton Walleye Queen when both of them had attended high school, Ely class of ’29. Town was flourishing then. Kawishiwi Dam was doing its part, hydroelectric output well within the folds of economy and ecology, a pristine balance of ‘be and let be’. If five local workers ran that, ten others supplied service jobs, then twenty more for the spike in investment—ripples not-for-nothing in northern Minnesota. Years on end woke to that vision: townsfolk brewing coffee in a matter of seconds, whether by natural gas, in steady supply, or Kawishiwi electricity, before the dam collapsed.

            Population shifted, then, to where the jobs would benefit in a brand new izøne world. His job, as a deputy game warden checking licenses of anglers and hunters, didn’t depend on that—when those permits were on paper, at least. The system changed some fifteen years ago, just around the time he wanted to retire, so he never had to answer to the izøne. It was harder for Martha, working at the post office. When she couldn’t do the functions that required being streamed, she transferred to Ely and its bigger population, where she could disappear into the storage room and sift through boxes for delivery and bring one out to some excited granny, most likely also unstreamed. This lasted ’til it couldn’t last.

            Martha disappeared a year ago. She’d been izøned not long before—she talked about it at the dying local bar to those who’d weigh in one way or the other. The Ely clinic streamed her, Winton would receive their postal veteran back, and lives could twilight into tendencies of pillow talk. The old man hadn’t run interference with this plan, but knew Martha would necessarily change. Everybody else in Winton had, whether newly streamed or in reaction to those streamed.

            He sipped his tamarack tea alone. Every freakin’ one of them, he didn’t dare to toast. He ventured, however, to take a scrapbook from his shelf and flip, as if randomly, to the Valentine’s Dance of 2028, and Martha’s awkward email, printed out and cut into the heart he’d make of it: ‘Oscar, sweep me off my feet—you’d be unique and…’ just a curvy question mark with two dots smiling to complete. Of course he would—if you just don’t disappear, in freezin’ February way back then, or fifty years later, last summer. He wracked his brain where she might have gone, following some newfangled lure to city life, or into the lake with stones inside her pockets, crazed for what the izøne made of her. Why can’t a Walleye Queen just be…

            By the time the sanctuary launched its secretive operation, the town had claim to only Oscar, Martha, and a smattering of neighbors, several of whom had also disappeared by households or fragments thereof. Martha seemed the middle of some pack (or pact: everything was increasingly hard to read). She had clung to Oscar’s armchair as they watched the re-runs of a fading TV industry, even though they both acknowledged tacitly her mind was elsewhere. Oscar kissed her fingers and tried to cling to all the years they had, knowing he could never stream that in the sudden way she sorted knowledge. And now she was nowhere to be seen.

            His mind went back to Valentine’s, their first kiss and the magic of friendship turning into love. They had never not known each other, single children of small houses literally a stone’s throw away. Their parents traded babysitting stints, and by three-years-old, the toddlers could clearly watch each other. They swam without a lifeguard at age five, built a tree fort (with a bit of help) by the time they were nine. A few others kids in the town vied for their attention, and Ely’s middle school pulled them apart, day-to-day. It was Martha’s driving license that drew them closer again, as she inherited her family’s old Toyota and pooled with Oscar their junior year of high school. Summer divided them for jobs in Ely (Martha now a Dairy Queen) and east Winton (Oscar at a campground where, a half-century later, the sanctuary would sit and stretch beyond those bounds). They saw little of each other until autumn, and even then Oscar skipped a bunch of school days for his free-lance work with hunters, sprucing up their deer stands, duck blinds, sundry other tasks.

            Fall Lake typically froze over by Thanksgiving, and Oscar and Martha decided to ditch their families and skate the black ice out to Lovers Island. He had been on-and-off the hockey team in Ely and she had trained as a figure skater for a while, so both were fluid on their feet. They needed no music to create a choreography—indeed, they didn’t plan a thing at all. The ice and all the fish below it blessed their curves and energy, parallel and happily pell-mell. The island itself was less a respite for their need to rest than a fillip for their less-than-tested libido, like the name implied. Making love with skates on, scarfs and gloves, was something well beyond a scrapbook memory, and nothing any izøne could extend, even in those days when izøne wasn’t happening, and no one could portend its advent into modern bread-and-butter appetite.

            On that island, then, and countless times thereafter—season after season—Martha and Oscar pumped in earnest for a child they could conceive and raise. They didn’t need another thing to love—their own, in that regard, was pure enough; yet as love contains no out-of-bounds, they wished for each other, and themselves, a little kid to ladle and lavish and… love. If that kid never happened, as the case would be, they vowed that they would never turn their fate into envy, even though the proof would happen with the proving, and how could anyone substantiate the verity of vows?

            Oscar finished his tea and opened his garage door to pull out a canoe. He hoisted it onto his shoulders, the middle crossbar equipped with cushioned blocks to balance it this way. He walked the lonely road that dead-ended into the boat launch to Fall Lake. The dock there was in disrepair, but still skeletal enough for Oscar to tip-toe on its slats and grab hold of a stanchion and bend into the floating husk of fiberglass. Usually he would have put a ten-pound stone in the bow to keep it from acting as an unwanted sail, but today there was no wind to disturb the lake, conjuring again the slate black ice. He paddled out in that sense of recovery—memories, and more.

            In front of him, far too familiar in their sixteen months of ugliness, rose the hydra-headed chimneys from his beloved island. No smoke seemed to waft, but certainly the furnaces were aflame, somewhere on and underneath the rocky mound. Oscar had figured out through distant observation that the heat source must be natural gas, siphoned off from some supplier or—since Winton lost such services—found through fracking that wasn’t legal this side of the state. The heat source was a minor mystery; why and what it needed to heat up was the greater secret. It had to be something to do with the occasional visits of that large man from the sanctuary, rowing to the north side of the island, clicking off the virtual electric fence around the shore and climbing out with a heavy box in his mitts. All this Oscar could see with binoculars, from his walks in the woods north of Fall Lake, usually at sunset. The ogre would unlock the door of the powerplant and close himself in for a half hour, then reverse his route with an evidently lighter box, clicking the electrical shield active again, and rowing back south in the dark.

            Some of those half hours tempted Oscar mightily to raid the operation. Whatever was in those boxloads was fueling the sanctuary’s fight against the izøne, and while Oscar could empathize with a fear of this ubiquitous technology, the way the sanctuary skulked around—his few encounters with those who worked the camp—made the ‘enemy of my enemy’… not a friend. He had a sinking suspicion, moreover, that parts of Martha, perhaps, were packaged for the furnace. Aztecs did so systematically. Jephthah did so by personal mistake. Not that Oscar could investigate these sources, but he sure as hell assumed the weight of the underhanded world.

            He guided each oar stroke in a smooth but vigorous J to keep the canoe straight. His plan was to have no plan, really: plow into the island and ram the electric fence, bursting through or dying on the spot. If the former, he knew he wouldn’t infiltrate the building itself, locks and logic standing guard. And if the latter, just as well—our wedding bed will double as a grave.

            Neither happened: the force field was too strong, spilling Oscar from the canoe and zapping him at every attempt to wade ashore. He used his oar like a machete against the invisible barrier, a Quixote he had never read but now embodied, wailing for a chance to save his damsel, or be rescued by her if she could only come back from wherever she had gone.

            As he paddled back to Winton, soaked and sapped of energy, the eyes of someone like Martha, fifty years ago, espied the old man. She was sitting on the north side of an island closer to the sanctuary, as she had been days before, when the lake was not so placid. She had come to know that electric fence in her own ventures, unannounced, toward Lovers Island. Confused and curious, she vowed that she would find this man again, regardless of his rifle and snarl. They didn’t fit his heart, she was sure.

            And Oscar, unaware of her, was also sure: a broken heart was still inclined to love.

XV.

            While a patroller’s shuttle on magnetic Highway 35 could go two hundred miles per hour, Pam set the speed at eighty in deference to the deer and other creatures hazarding a cross. Sensors could scan the area far and wide, detecting sources of heat, yet it would be anyone’s guess how such sources might leap. She and Trig didn’t feel a need to hurry, anyway. To that end, he stretched the length of his recliner toward the prospect of a snooze.

            Pam would rather talk. “Boo!”

            A smile despite a little jab; “boo who?”

            “That old guy—what was he really talking about?”

            “Sacrifice,” Trig repeated in a yawn. He lifted his arms and wove his fingers to create a pillow.

            “What?... Whose?”

            “Walleyes.” Trig widened his eyes at Pam, who had to stream a definition. “He said his villagers were like those fish.”

            She shook away a stock image of Jean Paul Sartre, staring awkwardly to one side and the other on an archived photograph. Sifting him away for more relevant renditions of a walleye pike, she tried to focus just on Winton and its unstreamable old man. “You said he hated both the izøne and that sanctuary… Equally?”

            “Don’t know to what extent; everything was vague.”

            Pam wasn’t buying that, fully. “‘Sacrifice’ sounds eerily specific.”

            Trig knew as much and had taken pains to consider how much or how little to put on the record. To some degree, a patroller’s use of izøne was like any civilian’s: access to public info, notifications and ‘notes to self’, capacity to message someone in a secure network, tools like Hotline to message beyond such filters. Those apps were available for anybody streamed. Yet Trig and Pam had been trained for deeper izøne mining. They could acquire, for instance,

•  history of interventions [Winton rather scant, in that regard] or
•  personal data [the old man—Oscar, no last name, age 70 or so—drawing blanks] or
•  ripples tangential or germane [his reference to his ‘Walleye Queen’, whatever that could mean] or

Trig wasn’t sure such rabbit-hole searches right now should elbow into his desire for a nap, or making love to Pam. As vital as patrollers’ work would ever be, Trig felt happily resigned to the low-key life of Faribault, where casework was ordinary and rarely intrusive. He smiled at the image of Jean Paul Sartre, inadvertently shared by Pam’s search for ‘walleye’. Fish couldn’t be some code for 20^th century existential angst, surely, unless…“What comes to mind with ‘Walleye Queen’ and ‘Winton’?”

            Pam seemed to ponder that string of words. “Published data?” She took some time to concentrate. “Combined phrasing, articles end at the year 2028. A Winton resident, Martha Paxson, proclaimed Walleye Queen by The Ely Echo. Only internet editions by that time.”

            “Echo?”

            “Yeah. So?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Can’t you summon the same article?”

            Trig could, given the added information of the year. He even managed a snapshot of her in the Ely High School yearbook, class of ’29. Then an announcement in the Echo a year later of her marriage to Oscar Jenkins. She became Martha Jenkins, then, and—

            “Martha Jenkins had been streamed a little over a year ago,” Pam jumped into Trig’s drowsy detective work. “And disappeared from izøne register almost immediately thereafter.”

            “She was quite attractive, according to—”

            “Is this what the old guy was referring to as ‘sacrifice’? Is this Martha some kind of fishing analogy—a walleye being caught, or…”

            “This old guy—Oscar—is mushed. I mean, I understand his sorrow for losing his wife, but…”

            “Do you think he killed her?”

            “Why?”

            “She goes streamed, he doesn’t. Marriage falls apart.”

            Trig pulled up from his recliner position. “You think maybe she sent the Hotline signal?”

            Pam shook her head—not to disagree with the notion, rather to unclutter streamed thought from imaginative suggestion. “She’d been off izøne for a year, then suddenly taps in?”

            “If so, she tapped out again, just as suddenly.”

            “Maybe she’s been at the sanctuary,.. steps out for a bit, runs into Oscar, who tries to reel her back—”

            “—like a walleye—”

            “—and she hustles back.”
            “Wouldn’t her identity still come up with the Hotline call?”

            “That’s the mystery: the signal was too scrambled to point to an individual.”

            “Then that could be anyone on the fringe of that sanctuary—or maybe there’s something underground, like the Faribault mosque…”

            Trig put his index finger to his lips. They’d spoken enough on this speculation and some of it might channel into follow-ups, whether they’d be involved or not. He didn’t want to think about the loveliness of the sanctuary—the Carters’ hospitality, in particular—as something to be skeptical of. Similarly, from what he had gathered of Nala, he didn’t want to worry about the Faribault mosque and reasons why its congregation desired no izøne detection. The reasons were legion, Trig guessed; still, the effort to escape the mainstream world seemed hardly worth it. Minnesota governance had set ample safeguards to protect privacy in concert with the public interest. The ‘eyes’ behind the izøne, for instance, couldn’t care less that Trig wanted to dive back into Burntside Lake and Pam’s otterlike beauty. Moreover, if he so chose, the izøne could relay Trig’s reverie to Pam without anybody else’s judgment, as ‘keeping all things human’ was constitutional to the patrollers’ code, as well as common sense. What good would izøne be, if not to secure what’s good?

            As if to shake him from this contemplation, a deer leaped out near the town of Barnum—the sensors didn’t raise alarm—and careened against the shuttle’s hull. Mindless magnetism kept the vehicle upright, now slowing to a stop. Pam and Trig shook themselves out and jogged back to the point where the animal was dazed and dragging its rear right leg like a ball and chain. The sprout of antlers revealed this creature to be a young buck, thrashing against Trig’s attempt to grab hold and clear the road from further collision. Pam rounded to the other side and cajoled a hope for some resilience. The buck was up for this, it seemed, snorting a resolve to get off the highway and back into the woods. Worth a whoop when the buck limped in, though the patrollers also knew…

            … a busted leg would deem it unethical to let live. They walked back to the shuttle and waited for a warden from Barnum to hone in on the deer’s due hiding, its blood betraying a trail for an unrequested euthanasia. One of countless thousands in the state to die this way, tabulated or not.

            Trig and Pam wondered—separately, even if they remained in streamed contact—whether walleyes could be so honed in.

            They arrived in Faribault after sunset. Shel ran into Trig’s arms because Pam had hugged Aamiina first—arbitrary nature as to how the door had opened on their presumed second night of slumber partying. Nala assured that such an extension of the girls’ time together would be perfectly alright; Pam debated that, then accepted Nala’s invitation for evening tea at least, a chance to debrief to some degree the uncounted hours, south and north.

            “Mama!—Aami’s teaching me to draw,” Shel exaggerated, pointing to the sheaves of paper on the floor of golf course fairways never before explored.

            Aamiina blushed at her influence on things. She went for her World Book volume G, with a weird splay of pages on the history of the game, grips for driving and putting, angles for each club, how balls are made, why handicaps are a thing.… She pointed, instead, to the scheme of eighteen holes that aesthetically placed tee boxes near the greens of the previous holes. Trig, intrigued by all of this, regarded each page—from World Book to the sketches the girls made—and asked them questions they couldn’t wait to answer.

            Pam studied everything with quieter reflection. It wasn’t that the world of golf (or books) bestowed a certain wisdom on the artwork, rather a connectivity one link to the next. Pam had played this game for twenty-five years—had even enticed Trig to come out after shifts, occasionally with Shel, usually leaving her with Jim so she and Trig could golf alone, together in the front-9 or back, serving the purpose well. Trig would likely go home afterward, and maybe Pam would keep the training going with Shel, with or without Jim to grandfather the links.

            Nala brought a tray of tea cups, biscuits and apple slices. She offered to heat up leftovers from dinner, but Pam assured her all was perfect, just as is. They talked about the twenty hours passed, the beauty of the earth and people to enjoy it. They laughed about the little toads Aamiina caught at Alexander Park—harbored in that corner over there for a different kind of slumber party. A scrimmage for this one with Shel. “And not the last,” they all agreed.

            In fact, predictably, Shel and Aami played themselves to sleep, an hour after Nala did heat up those leftovers, on the welcome sly. Conversation ranged on journeys across oceans and land, years ago and now. Nala was interested, of course, in the sanctuary and volunteered the lure of the underground mosque—at least as much to find relief from izøne as to worship.

             By midnight they had agreed to a weekend escapade to Burntside Lake, swimmable as long as Indian Summer allowed. They’d reserve two rooms, maybe three if Jim or someone else would join them. There may be some patrolling to do—that follow-up to Winton’s Walleye Queen—but visiting the Carters again, their sanctuary from the izøne, would be ‘off the clock’, a proverbial walk in the park. Nala was excited for this plan.

            And Pam pulled Trig home with even more excitement. They hadn’t had a drop of alcohol but were giddy with the interlacings of love. Shel was treating Trig like a dad, even as so much of her attention was on Aamiina. Pam was treating him like the husband she never had, especially when she’d been pregnant and abandoned. Trig had always been a consummate patroller, abandoning that role when romance was their option, yet always true in and out of uniform.

            He shook Mrs Schuster’s hand when she reproached the two for coming in to their apartment block so late—“and where is Shel for a second night running?!”

            “Shel’s safe and sound, Mrs Schuster,” Trig took liberty to say, Pam blushing that she hadn’t clued in her beloved neighbor on this change of scenery. “Tucked in at her friend’s sleepover.”

            “Just tucked in? At this hour? She’s only eight years old—”

            Pam gave her a hug. “She’s been asleep for a couple hours. We’ve been talking to her friend’s mom. Planning a weekend with them—we’ll tell you, next time, when we go away.”

            “Go away?” Mrs Schuster softened her ire.

            “Just a couple days. To Boundary Waters—maybe you’d like to join us?”

            She cocked her head and seemed to consider. “Nope, I’d be a fifth wheel.”

            “We already have five going. You’d be sixth!”

            “I’ll stay here, hold the fort. Ensure that you come back.”

            “Like tonight?”

            “Like tonight.”

            “Sweet dreams, Mrs Schuster.”

            She nodded an approximation of ‘you, too’ as she hermit-crabbed and closed her door.

            Trig leaned close to Pam as she unlocked her door. “You’re lucky, Lightspeed, to have a neighbor like her.”

            Pam nuzzled into him the second they were inside. “There’s something more than luck to have a good soul watching over you.”

            “You think izøne complicates that feeling?”

            “Do you?”

            “Let’s sleep on it. And dream sweetly of this week.”

XVI.

            Seb trudged into the cabin a bit miffed. He had it in mind to take the shuttle to Ely for some provisions the sanctuary store didn’t have: a sonar fishfinder for out on the lake, gourmet dogfood for Pretty, maybe some surprise gifts for Avis and the kids. His unspoken purpose was to tap into the izøne, check any messages and scan the world’s news. He didn’t want to come off as a hypocrite, persuading Kay and Tim for months that their teenage minds would thrive in the freedom from constant streaming, then sneaking off for some streaming himself.

            Looked like it wasn’t to be. “What goes?” asked Kay, brushing Pretty for her daily check for ticks.

            “Not the shuttle. Battery’s dead, it seems. Gordon said he’d take a look.”

            Kay pressed a smile. “I guess that’s a sign to stay put.”

            “What,” Avis joined in, “no faith in Gordon?”

            “No comment.”

            Seb slumped into an armchair but didn’t settle in. “Maybe Jack has a shuttle stored somewhere. He’s gotta, come to think of it—”

            “Haven’t seen one,” Avis shrugged. “What’s your urgency, anyway?”

            “None, really.” Seb stroked his unfamiliar beard. “Just that, you know, we planned to touch base once a week.”

            “Hasn’t been a week.”

            “Who’s counting?” Tim smirked.

            “I like it here,” Mia piped in. “And Pretty does, too.”

            “I didn’t say I didn’t like it here. ‘Who’s counting’ means I’m not counting the days, mush-head.”

            Avis tossed a dishtowel at him and pointed to the sink. She went over to the armchair. “Why don’t you go ask Jack. Save a little cabin fever for down-the-road, when winter hits.”

            “Shuttle or not, I won’t get cabin fever. Promise.”

            “Promise?”

            Seb hoisted himself up and nodded something less than promising. Kay let go of the dog, who evidently needed to go out for a pee.

            The trek to the sanctuary store was 180˚ opposite the direction of the shuttle, yet Seb had to loop around to give it a second try. Gordon was already there, managing to open the engine hatch as if it were a hippo he wanted to put his head into. Seb called out an encouraging ‘hey’, to which Gordon gave an ambivalent grunt. At least he was on the job, Seb reasoned.

            At the sanctuary store—within the shore-side of the boathouse—Jack was talking casually to the grandma who never seemed to leave the place. “Heard your shuttle was dead,” she announced when Seb came in.

            Jack turned with a wry grin. “Gordon doesn’t say much, but he’s not immune to gossip!”

            Seb attempted to laugh, lapsing into cough. The grandma honed in on a bag of lozenges lying on a shelf and tossed it to him. “On the house—best to kill a cold early.”

            “Don’t… have a… cold,” Seb choked out, “just… swallowed wr..rong.”

            Jack stood up to bounce his palm on Seb’s upper back. “I’ll stop telling jokes concerning Gordon. He’s actually no gossip—heart of gold; he’ll fix your shuttle, eventually.”

            Seb shook an indication of recovery. “Hope so. Thanks—” opening the bag of lozenges and unwrapping one. “I assume you’ve got a sick-bay here if the need arose.”

            “Got a couple of nurses in residence—well, you met one at chapel the other night…”

            “Silver-haired lady?”

            “In fact, her name’s Sylvia—no joke!”

            “Hmm. She was really nice to show Mia the pump organ.”

            “That’s how we are ’round here. Another chapel tonight, by the way—”

            “Well,” Seb shifted his weight self-consciously. “I was hoping to get into Ely today, back again before dark—then, yes, chapel would be nice.”

            Jack glistened eyes of some understanding. “Depending on whether Gordon can fix your shuttle.”

            “Yeah, sorta. Or—was going to ask if you had a spare I could borrow.”

            “A spare? We sold that on Day 1. Supply truck comes round every two weeks, tops off our stock”—waving his arm to the shelves of packaged food, candles, odds-n-ends, bait and fishing gear. “Once in a while someone hops in for a ride, but rarely comes back the happier.”

            Seb eyeballed the grandma, who bobbed confirmation. “Once in a while we don’t let someone come back—not to get nasty, but the purpose of sanctuary is….” She rolled her palm out for Seb to complete the thought.

            “… Yeah—no, I don’t mean to compromise that. We’ve contracted for the year, fully committed… Just… wanted to get more the lay of the land, know where the nearest clinic is, if needed.”

            “Sylvia’s good for that,” the grandma reiterated.

            “For example. Or—if Gordon can’t fix it—where I can get a mechanic.”

            Jack sighed. “Fact is, everyone living here either got dropped off or sold their shuttles, Day 1. We just don’t have the extra electricity to keep them charged up.”

            “Hmm. Maybe then I’ll need to find a garage in Ely, harbor it there.”

            “Maybe. And, not to dictate terms too much—you’re here in good faith,  contracted and all—outsiders just can’t stroll in, whether to fix a shuttle or, well… It’s a sanctuary from those who haven’t bought in, who may represent it wrongly in their izøne return. We’re not paranoid, mind you, but also not open to misrepresentation.” Jack let that resonate with Seb, then turned to check a list behind the counter. “Supply truck comes by in a week—”

            “—Ely’s just, what, three miles’ walk?”

            “Closer to five. But, yeah, once in a while folks here do that. We’d just like to know in advance—security, and all.”

            “Think I’ll do that then, today.”

            “Suit yourself. Gordon may have worked his magic, though.”

            “Never sell him short,” the grandma beamed.

            Back at the cabin, Seb got ready to go. Avis insisted he have a travelling partner, and when Tim and Kay argued which of them should be the one, Avis pulled rank. “You two watch over the afternoon—we’d be back by then, Sebby, yeah?”

            “More likely by nightfall. Long walk.”

            “But Mom,” Tim whined, “I need to—”

            “Buy fresh bread and vegetables? Hygienic products?”

            “He needs to stream his ‘friends’,” Kay sneered.

            “Least I have some. You just got…”

            “That’s enough, Tim.”

            “No, I want him to tell me what I got. Izøne gives you a sense of friendship. What does it give me?”

            “Attitude.”

            “You don’t even know what that means.”

            “Do, too.”

            “Tell me, then.”

            Tim grabbed his fishing pole and a tackle box. He promised Seb, when asked, that he’d stay on the shore and eventually help prepare dinner. Avis set out a few things to facilitate that part of the evening, then dressed for the hike into Ely. She wondered if Pretty should stay here or come with, for her sake or theirs or the kids’. As if reading her mind, Pretty swirled a couple times to stake out a nap near the chair where Mia was reading a book. My Antonia, chapter IV. “‘Sometimes I rode north to the big ... prairie-dog town’,” she began reading aloud.

            “Pray-er-ee,” Kay corrected her pronunciation.

            “‘prairie-dog town to watch the brown earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the dogs.’ You don’t have an underground nest, Pretty, do you?”

            The border collie was already asleep. Kay slid a chair near her little sister to read over her shoulder, add a few points of interest. “God, it would be great to stream some of these references,” she threw to her parents, edging out the door. But not really. It was becoming kind of fun for Kay to figure things out for herself.

           

            The afternoon came and went. Gordon, after closing up the hippo, accepted some boysenberry juice from Kay, who sat out on the cabin porch writing in a makeshift journal—something she occasionally did in Minneapolis, if not with the compulsion she felt here. Gordon admitted, when asked, that he didn’t think he could fix the shuttle. “Too much tech,” he said, and when Kay reasoned that Lover’s Island looked quite complex from the outside, he set down his glass and mumbled, “that’s different. Nothing to fix.” He stared at the floorboards another half minute, then left without another word.

            Dinner was fried perch (fresh from Tim’s efforts), mashed potatoes and dandelion salad with walnuts. There were some packaged items from the sanctuary store they could open, but saving them for another day seemed wise—Avis would praise their resourcefulness.

            And anyway, they’d get dessert at chapel, as the grandma reminded them in the ochre of the afternoon. The bell rang a little after sunset, and Kay tacked a note on the cabin door for her parents to know: At chapel, with Pretty. She wasn’t sure yet the protocol of animals inside such a place; she had seen a half dozen cats around the cabins, and fewer dogs. For one reason or another, though, she hadn’t really engaged with those hither and yon neighbors. Maybe they were out on the lakes or gathering mushrooms or reading deep in their dens. All the more reason to gather at chapel and know who else was evading the izøne.

            Pretty was certainly welcome, even recieving her own slice of raspberry pie, or rather the juicy dregs of an emptied-out pan. Mia bee-lined to the organ, asking the silver-haired lady if she could teach her a song. Tim sauntered over to the chess board, devoid of players, and seeing that the white king was mated, set up the pieces for a fresh game—even if that meant playing against himself.  Yet like the previous evening, that middle-aged guy with the plaid shirt stepped up and offered to be black. Kay hadn’t been here before and took in every detail, walking around and feeling the walls like a spelunker. Jack joined her to explain how it came to be here, a failed flying saucer that tried to alight on the water and sank. “A plan of your hatching?” she risked teasing Jack, who laughed at the notion.

            “I’m not so daring, or dumb. I bought this abandoned campground three years ago, sight unseen, and haven’t heard but a fraction of the folklore around here. Some visionary wants to build a spaceship, another dreams up a sanctuary. Maybe, in the end, we’re kindred spirits—launching above the izøne or bunkering below.”

            Kay thought his openness would allow a query about Lover’s Island, maybe even Gordon’s role, but a gathering near the fireplace whooped up encouragement for the oldest man in the room to tell a story. He had a beard as full as Dostoevsky’s, a voice that feigned reticence against this type of attention, lapping it up in earnest. “Lou! Lou! Lou!” went the chant, and so he complied:

            “Oh, now,” holding out his thick veiny hands as if trying to find an invisible countertop. “A story you’re askin’ for.” His accent was both quick and slow, thick and crystalline. “Le’s wander about, say, some fifty years ago—could ya do for that, maybe? Okay, then. Sorry if bores you young’uns.”

            “Lou! Lou! Lou!” a man in his thirties hammed up, causing some laughter.

            Lou took a seat on the flagstone hearth. “So it’s a North Dakotan kinda day, you know—waitin’ for nothing in particular, but that’s okay too. Some buffalo come by—you can call ’em bison, but back then there was a university there in Fargo that called their students bison, ’magine that. Anyways, real buffalo been livin’ in the Badlands, out west there where nothing much grows. Ergo, Badlands. Barely ’nuff grass for ’em to eat.”

            “I once did shots of buffalo grass vodka,” a fifty-year-old cut in. “Smooth down the throat, then a little wildfire to the lungs.”

            “Maybe Jack can get us some of that!”

            Lou nodded in agreement, then resumed. “But bad has a way of gettin’ good, somehow. Town of Dickinson got wildly rich by strikin’ oil—oh, that was more likely eighty years ago, before my time, but le’s just say there was no lookin’ back, rakin’ in outlandish sums of money.”

            “’Til that industry folded, right?”

            “Oil? Stubborn son-of-a-bitch hung on for years—pardon my language,” patting the scruff of Pretty, who’d curled up in the gentle heat before this crowd had assembled. “Yeah, then, so Dickinson draws many a gold-digger, frackin’ the bejesus out of the land.”

            “Fracking?”

            “Still a thing, beyond oil. It’s like vacuuming in reverse: hoses blast into the cracks of earth, pushing up to surface what stuff’s been residin’ down there. Throw out the worms and extra debris, keep whatever else ya want.”

            “So the buffalo,..” Jack prompted.

            “So the buffalo are starvin’ out in these Badlands, where they’d been corralled for their protection. Can’t hunt ’em, and those who like to eat buffalo meat, well, could only get it from very regulated farms.”

            “Buffalo wings?”

            “No, no—jerky, mostly. There be some ostrich farms cropping up around NoDak then, so a little engineering could produce some kinda monster meat. But back to the story. Buffalo come to the conclusion that the grass is greener up there in Dickinson, catching the wave, y’know, like folks do. A mass of ’em—thousands—trot shoulder to shoulder, big furry things, a half-mile wide. Some patrollers, scratchin’ their heads, have the bright idea to put up some road blocks, don’cha know. As if buffalo stick to the rules of the road! So, and then some stampedes happen and warning shots fire and that’s all downright useless. Gotta let them buffalo go.”

            “And what was their destination?”

            “Goodlands. In the form of golf courses, see, by which time Dickinson had aplenty. They wasn’t all about work, those frackers. Had to spend that money somewhere. So the whole herd rolled into one course out there in the village of South Heart, kinda took that over, and halfa herd headed closer to the city and settled around Patterson Lake.”

            “Like ours here?”
            “Smaller, when it aint flooded.”

            “What did the frackers do?”

            “Oh, ya know, mostly stayed away, found other things to pass the time. Some grew plenty angry that patrollers and such weren’t doin’ their job. Some took the matter in their own hands, rifles an’ all. More stampedes as a result, less frackers. But some—”

            “I know!” Mia blurted. “I know what some did.”

            Lou was impressed. “Golly, didn’t know you was payin’ attention.”

            “Can I say? They made friends with the buffaloes and, and—the grass didn’t need any lawnmowers, because it was all nicely eaten, and—”

            Lou smiled away his other listeners’ inclination to laugh. “Yes, the buffalo did well wi’ that. An’ the golfers learned to do other things than golf. An’ some of them stopped fracking altogether, realizing the waste they’d been makin’ of the land.”

            “They put up with all the buffalo shit?”

            Lou leaned into that question, not posed by Mia, if she was most eager to know. “They—those visionaries—positively loved it.”

             

            The kids stayed for a couple more stories, another game of chess, Jack’s general hospitality. Kay saw that Mia was nodding off, using Pretty as a pillow, so gathered her up and got Tim to declare an early stalemate. They were quietly happy with the day and how this sanctuary was turning out, and eager now to hit the sack. Kay noticed from fair distance that the note had been torn from the door, a shred of paper still beneath the tack.

            “Hi, Mom, Dad,” she called upon opening the door. No one answered; apparently, they hadn’t yet made it home. If Tim and Mia took that for whatever, tuckered out too much to think, Kay and Pretty resolved to stay awake until the family was complete. And maybe, as the night drew on, think about the chapel and why they called it that. No one there, unlike now, showed any disposition to worry, let alone pray. Privately, perhaps, they did. Kay drew a blanket over her shoulders, let Pretty out to the porch they shared, and listened for extant evidence of sleeplessness.

XVII.

            Aamiina and Shel woke up nearly at the same moment, whispering this and that about the fort they’d made out of cushions, chairs, and blankets. Nala let them sleep inside it, provided they’d actually put some slumber in their party, more so than the previous night. Aamiina was still on a concussion protocol from that blasted golfball, and doctor’s orders included getting ample rest. Nala figured the past couple days, though, could trade some of those winks for the wide-eyed happiness this new friendship sparked.

            Pam came by as arranged, half past eight. The girls were post-breakfast drowsy and reluctant to dismantle their fort. Pam and Nala drank coffee and talked to give them more time to get the chore done. “Maybe, seeing them burrow like that, we can bring tents this weekend and camp out for real, if you’re still up for what we spoke about.”

            Nala nodded. “It’d save some money. Though I don’t own a tent.”

            “Precinct would have some; sleeping bags, too. And forget any costs—Trig and I are treating. We’d still keep the hotel reservation, chance of rain and all. Just nice to think the girls could experience the world as it’s been, centuries and millennia before the harness of humanity.”

            “Alexander Park counts a little bit that way, maybe even the golf course…”

            Pam laughed. “The golf course? Sorry—shouldn’t joke about that. It’s gorgeous in spots, but… well, prone to office rage sometimes.”

            “It’ll be kinder to Aamiina in due time.”

            “Shame that this world’s kindness has a timeline.”

            The girls came over to beg to be part of each other’s day—Shel to join Aamiina at the hospital, Aamiina to tag along again with Shel and Grandpa Jim, even to stay in the safety of the golf cart. The moms reminded them of their work schedules and errands, plus the soon-to-be weekend up north. “Gotta prepare for that,” Pam said.

            “And rest up,” Nala added, “or else the doctor may say ‘no-go’.”

            As they came into the hospital, however, Nala promised her daughter not to bring up the weekend plan. “He’s mean,” Aami whispered. “He thinks I’m mushed.”

            “You’re not mushed. Don’t say that.”

            Sure enough, Dr Brent presented himself with a visage of disapprobation. “You’ve given more thought to streaming, I trust,” he leveled at Nala, making sure Aamiina took in his seriousness of suggestion.

            “No. Just checking on the concussion.”

            Dr Brent cocked his head at some message he was now receiving, evidently through the izøne. He lifted his index finger to show which room was available, then briskly walked down the hall to another part of the clinic.

            Nurse Geraldine came in and gave a little hug to each of them. “Doc seen you already?”

            “Just to point us in here,” Nala said, “and push the streaming serum at us again.”

            “Goll damn, if he don’t have another thought in his head. Listen, you jus’ ignore all that—the law’s on your side; make sure you don’ sign nothing without knowin’ what it’s for. Paperwork’s all but disappeared here anyhow, but still they got to document the unstreamed patients ol’ fashion style. You stay ol’ fashion, Missy, long as you can.”

            “I’m Aami, not ‘Missy’.”

            “You Miss Aamiina, the Beautiful. How you feelin’ now, anyways?”

            “Good. Had a sleepover with Shel.”
            “You did? Get some actual sleep, didja? No? So now, let’s see how your vitals are goin’. If you can hop up here, roll up your sleeve…”

            Aamiina complied, and her mother backed into a chair on the opposite side of the room. She affirmed some of the questions Nurse Geraldine posed, but feeling heavy eyelids, let the growing-up girl speak for herself.

            Allowing for a dreamy transport. Nala found herself in the precious shade of the Webi Jubba River basin, back in Somalia. Seven years old and bald—as most girls had to be, to rid themselves of baby hair and avail themselves to the gradual grooming for their marriage match. Young Nala and some friends were honoring the month of Ramadan, more or less: praying took an upper hand to playing, at least as an expressed ideal. They weren’t supposed to run around, but lolling about at the river’s grassy banks could pass the scrutiny of village elders. Energy would be naturally low, eating modestly and in darkness. Certainly nothing during the day.

            The afternoon adhan sounded as Nala and Jamilah and Fawzia were making mudpies. They wouldn’t be allowed into the mosque, even with the ritual washing, as prayer spaces were limited; however, they would be expected to hustle home, clean their hands and feet, face the distant Qiblah and pray alongside grandma, mother, anybody female.

            “Let’s stay here,” Jamilah tempted, barely—the other girls gleefully concurred. They crawled to the swallow eddy and scrubbed with alacrity, careful not to giggle or seem to contradict the muezzin. Then they stepped out of the river and shook each limb; they tip-toed wide around their mudpies and figured out which way to bow beneath an Acacian canopy. From what they knew and vaguely believed, the prayers would flow from glorifying God to reminders how to worship—the Fajar, for instance, to ward off sleep—and back to glorifying God. While everything remained above their heads, they felt a purity in such routine, little grandmas in the making.

            They fell asleep, of course, the day having stretched so long. Eventually, one waking the other waking the other, they jumped back into mudpies, hungrier than before. Fawzia fashioned little cups to simulate a teatime; the spirit of Ramadan wouldn’t prohibit such hydration for kids, if not straight from the river.

            A fat man rushed from out of nowhere, screaming at the apostasy. ‘We’re only seven’ their faces would convey, now in Nala’s cross-the-oceans dream. ‘We only ate the air—not mud,’ she heard Jamilah plead, and ‘it wasn’t during the call to prayer.’ The fat man grabbed at Fawzia yet slipped into the cauldron of mud, causing her to wiggle free and Jamilah to pull her away—flight for the failure of fight. Nala, simultaneously seven years old and twenty-seven, ran the other way, as her dream would have it, plunging into the river and swimming across to the reedy other side.

            She stayed there until dusk: an hour in the water like a crocodile, roving creatures of which she was all-too-aware could devastate the sudden debacle of this day, and another two hours drying out on the southern bank. The fat man had long since gone away. Jamilah and Fawzia were hiding somewhere, probably together, but now that the evening adhan was sounding, they had likely made it each to their own home.

            And for the first time in her life, she wondered what, beyond a domicile, was home. The crocodiles weren’t interested in invading such a question—they stayed away as if allowing existential space. How Nala in fact was rescued, by raft or maybe even swimming back again, drying off in diminished sunlight and plodding to a mom and dad that would reproach and hug and set her still toward some pragmatic marriage match…. The dream would not recall.

            Memory of dreams depends on waking up before they’re done. Nala did this by design, perhaps, and opened her twenty-seven year old eyes to Dr Brent injecting something into Aamiina’s arm. A second or two of horrified recognition, Nala shrieked for someone to come and stop this Mr Hyde—not as corpulent as the madman in her dream, but doubly as vile: mother and daughter both were in his crosshairs, sleeping and awake.

            Nurse Geraldine attended to her call—not running in, but dashing with her eyes. She understood immediately, and slid as gracefully as she could to Nala’s side. “Don’t worry, it’s not quite what you think. Y’see, Doc”—and here she locked into her younger boss’ wary vision, “—Doc here is doing as doctors do. Aami aint gettin’ streamed, to put that worry to rest.”

            Dr Brent hardly lifted his eyes, yet felt a condescending need to show a modicum of bedside manner: “your daughter—Aamiina—is completely fine, and”—removing the syringe and dabbing with a square of gauze—“barely needs this antibiotic, but…”

            “…we deliver as small a dose as possible,” Geraldine completed, rubbing Nala’s shoulders. “If there’s one thing here I’ve impressed ’pon Dr Brent, it’s that the body is a temple and can repair itself jus’ fine, most days of May…”

            “Problem is,” Brent tried to joke, “most the year isn’t the month of May.”

            “Metaphorically speakin’—but let that be. You makin’ sense of any of this, Miss Aamiina?”

            Aamiina, with big, peaceful eyes, looked at her terrified mother and gentle Geraldine. “I feel good. The needle didn’t even hurt.”

            “How old are you,” Nala asked her daughter, enigmatically.

            Aamiina paused before the possible trick. “Seven.”

            The room waited for some grand reveal.

            Nothing was forthcoming.

            “I love you,” as if that was ever in question.

            ‘Me, too,” Aamiina responded, scanning Geraldine’s face to ascertain that things were alright.

XVIII.

            Among the ironies of the sanctuary was this fact: izøne infowaves could not penetrate the area Jack laid claim to (as long as Lovers Island kept its fire), yet satellites, above that invisible emissions shield, could map the area freely. Satellite imagery could track the treeless area around the boathouse, any activity on the lake itself, the thin line of the unused highway west, from Ely to Winton to here. Satellites could not penetrate rooftops or tree cover, so no voyeur taking in such data would see Kay slumped upon her cabin porch as dawn was breaking. No one would even see the cabin, as deep it was within the woods. Some cabins peeked into more open space, gradually widening toward the shore and boathouse.

            The blurry outline of the chapel, underwater, was discernable if sunbeams weren’t intensely bouncing off the lake’s surface. As odd as that huge saucer would be for anybody monitoring from above, its history was acknowledged: a Millennium Falcon fan of long ago built the thing to fly, managed to do so over Ely, over Winton, but barely over Lovers Island where the ill-fated craft pancaked on this southern side of Fall Lake, causing quite a tidal wave. Jack had constructed the tunnel connecting it to the boathouse, carefully disguising that lifeline from satellite detection.

            Otherwise, the layout of the sanctuary had nothing to hide. Lovers Island was off-limits, everybody knew, and Jack proudly showed his license from the state to anybody wondering: the furnace was determined to be environmentally safe—a generator of energy and a scrambler of the izøne, as was his right. Inspectors, few and far between in this part of the North American Union, ignored the sanctuary: it was evidently living out its self-sanctioning.

            And yes, there’d be some malcontents like old Oscar Jenkins, stomping into the Ely courthouse demanding some investigation, beyond the question of his long-since-missing wife. There’s nothing untoward in the sanctuary’s operation, he’d hear again and again, and being unstreamed yourself, it seems you’d be the last to hate their mission. While few of those voices would ever commit to a year free from the izøne, as the Carters had to in order for Jack to approve them, many sympathized with the notion and wouldn’t want it dragged down by legal challenges or bureaucracy.

            If satellites didn’t care and walleyes still had pristine waters to hide in, everything else between would have a chance at happiness, undeterred.

            Kay woke up to Pretty’s atypical barks. Three figures from the path that led from the defunct shuttle were tightly bundled: Seb, in the middle, limping; Avis, to his left, supporting his stronger leg; Gordon, to his right, bearing the greater weight. “What happened?” Kay panted, and “where the hell have you been?”

            A volley of hushes tried to honor the fact that others were still sleeping, and raw as the night had been, they were now here, in one piece (so to speak). Pretty still barked her suspicion and Kay pressed Gordon to explain. “Inside,” he said, and cradled his free arm midway to the ground to pick up Seb like a toddler and carry him into the cabin. Avis went forward to open the door and see that their bed was clear. Tim, from his bunk, leaned up on his elbow, as Mia did likewise, below.

            “Good,” Seb breathed out.

            “Good, what?” Kay demanded.

            The day’s first ray of sun creased the window above the sink, a single channel of unobstructed light, from ninety-three million miles away and through a fair weave of woods. “Good to be here, at last.”

            Then Gordon explained, unprompted, that he had worried about their lack of return. He had trekked the road past Winton, maybe just an hour ago. “Yeah, I’m usually out by then,” when Tim asked why, “’cause that’s the best time in the world.”

            “Well, not today,” Kay sniped, then swallowed a “thanks, anyway, for… what exactly happened, Mom?”

            Seb lowered his head to hear how she’d tell it. “It must’ve been,” puffing out the memory, “nine pm, ten?” She bent to Seb, who couldn’t confirm. “Not terribly late, anyway. Of course we would have contacted you, but—”

            “—izøne wouldn’t let you.”

            “No, Tim, lack of izøne wouldn’t let us,” Seb stared his son down. “And that’s not to say the sanctuary here is deficient. For that matter, Gordon did what izøne couldn’t, seeking us out by intuition, instinct…”

            “Did you try Hotline?” Kay challenged.

            Avis let the question float a few seconds. “I guess we didn’t think about that. Unless,…”

            “No,” Seb doubled. “It’s amazing what a week without streaming might do—or not do, as is the case. Just didn’t occur to us—”

            “So, what in God’s name did occur to you?” Kay pressed. “Be specific!”

            Accordingly, Avis and Seb narrated in tandem. The trip to Ely had accomplished its purpose, gathering some groceries on the way out. The town had some shuttle traffic, but nothing going toward Winton; hiking there and back had been the plan, anyway. By nine—or maybe ten—the road was dark but navigable, a bit of moonlight seeping through the clouds. Suddenly, a rope rose from the asphalt and tripped them up. The moment was so quick and unannounced, Seb and Avis crumbled into their sojourner-selves without an understanding of the thing that had caught them. That rope, Gordon then felt an invitation to describe, had been tied to a certain tree with anticipation of how the footfalls would occur. The attacker must have pulled from the opposite side of the road, clubbed them unconscious and dragged them into a ditch beside the anchor tree. That’s how Gordon found them, bound by the feet and groggy.

            Tim leapt out of bed. “Who did it, Dad?”

            “Someone with practice, it seems,” Seb paced out his answer. “A thief looking for easy loot, or someone discouraging our presence in the area…”

            “That old guy in Winton?”

            “I dunno.” He turned to his wife. “Avis, you were the only one who spoke with him.”

            Avis turned to Gordon for some cues or clues. He had his back turned, though, busying himself at the stove to boil some tea. “I.. I don’t believe that old man could have…”

            “… had the strength?” Tim grew animated. “He was angry at us coming, had this killer look—”

            “—I saw him with a gun,” Kay jumped in, eyeing Gordon’s back to see if it would shutter.

            “What? When?” Avis demanded.

            The room went silent for some seconds, as if recollecting the strains of centuries engrained into the logs, let alone the naïve immersion of these recent days. This sanctuary was to confirm the primal values of a natural world, trading modern ‘creature comforts’ for the grassroots reason humans are still, essentially, creatures. And then some highwayman throws that confirmation for a loop. Kay searched hard for an idiom the izøne would have easily supplied: out of the woodwork came to mind, but she couldn’t check her instinct with its conventional use. “Out of the blue,” she settled, “while I was walking Pretty, he shouted at me to stop.”

            “Here in the sanctuary?”

            Kay gulped and took note of Gordon turning with a steaming teapot. “We.. Pretty and I… were, like you, walking toward Winton—”

            “Last night?” Seb raised his voice. “When you were supposed to be in charge of your siblings?”

            “No. The other night. When you all went to chapel and I didn’t.”

            “So what did you do, when he told you to stop?”

            “I stopped.”

            Mia spoke for the first time: “and Pretty?”

            “Also stopped.”

            “And what did the geezer do then?” Tim spoke over his parents’ tacit perturbation.

            Kay took an empty cup Gordon had looped through the fingers of his right hand, then steadied it as Gordon poured from the teapot in his left. She flashed appreciation and a gauge for his sense what she was about to say. He didn’t make eye contact, instead looking to his next tea customer. “He backed off. He saw Gordon…”

            The Golem. Only she and her dad really understood that way of regarding the man before knowing his name. Oh, for the izøne to stretch that definition, some reference to Book of Psalms, KJV—

                        Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect;

                        and in thy book all my members were written, which

                        in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was

                        none of them.

A Frankenstein, some might say. Boo Radley. The Watcher in the Woods.

            “Gordon,” Seb addressed him, pouring Mia a cup of tea, “thanks even more for intervening then.” And to the room more generally, “let’s not stray away from sanctuary—hopefully that’s been made obvious.”

           

            A half-hour of tea and vittles attempted to get the day on its feet. Seb felt woozy and Avis insisted he see the grandma, sure to be at the boathouse by now. “You said she’d get you to that silver-haired lady—”

            “—Sylvia, in fact. Yeah,” Seb groaned himself upright, “maybe you’re right. Concussion protocol, at least—no good napping without such a check.”

            Gordon continued to act as his crutch, and Tim took the other side. Mia, not yet knowing the silver-haired lady had talents beyond the pump-organ, tagged along. Pretty stayed put, seemingly recognizing the balance of the protected and unprotected. She curled into the space where Avis had rested her feet, now that she was up and attending to routines. She’d see the sanctuary nurse after Seb, just to be on the safe side, but, in answer to Kay’s concern, she was fairly sure she didn’t have any physical trauma. “I sorta faked being knocked out. Played possum, I think the saying goes.”

            “Played dead? Did the attacker want to do such damage, or… send a message?”

            “That’s getting into the mind of evil. Haven’t really gone there much in my life.”

            “Do you think it was the old man from Winton?”

            “I already weighed in on that question.”

            Kay let the statement linger. She started to gather the laundry that would take her to the creek between Garden Lake and Fall, designated for such washing. That chore could wait until someone would come back to be with her mom. As much as Kay wanted to leave the cabin undisturbed, the follow-up question had to eventually breach: “if not him,.. who?”

            Avis looked out the window and whispered, “I think it was Gordon,” and to answer Kay’s bewildered how, “slightly by his smell.”

XIX.

            Days in Faribault twiddled thumbs for the weekend. Aamiina and Shel occupied themselves at Alexander Park, grooving the soil near the playground for the tiny toads they’d catch—narrow highways never deep enough to keep the toads from jumping out. Nor did they really want them to stay tracked, ideas of wilderness on their minds. So they dug a pond and tried to fill it with water from the river, cupping their hands tightly, to no avail. “I think toads don’t like to swim, anyway.”

            “How come?” Shel asked.

            “Frogs do. They’re different.”

            Shel streamed the difference, self-conscious that her younger friend had probably come to know things from the World Book encyclopedias she loved to look at, volumes T and F. She even streamed the phrase ‘World Book’ to access those glossy pages, but the izøne wouldn’t cooperate with this search, resorting to atlases and nudges how to navigate from the streamer’s present location.

            “Frogs swim,” Aamiina cut into her friend’s spaciness. Then, timidly, she ventured, “can you?”

            “Swim?” Shel had to think. “Yeah. Grandpa taught me.”

            “At the golf course?”
            “At a pool. He doesn’t want me near the ponds.”

            “Why?”

            “They’re mucky.”

            Aamiina stared into the river, wondering what ‘mucky’ meant. “I can’t swim. Mama did, in Africa, but never taught me yet.”

            Shel looked around, knowing Nala had left for the mosque.

            “Wanna try?”

            “Here? Without swimsuits?”

            At least to wade, not much further than their arms had already reached. Just to get their knees wet, maybe to the hem of their shorts that would dry out, after all, if—

            “Out!” Nala sprinted from seemingly nowhere. “Now! What you thinking, huh?” Her grab for Aamiina’s arm caused her to slip in herself and topple Shel, who drifted unexpectedly and began to panic. Nala pushed her daughter toward the bank and lunged for Shel, shackling her ankle by sheer luck. Thrashing their way with three arms against the surface, three feet against the slick stones, they managed to heave themselves to safety.

            Gasps of “we’re sorry” turned into tears and a yelling lesson on what lies underneath a surface—“current” each girl sobbed, compelled to repeat what they promised never to forget. “We’ll never—”

            Nala waved her hand to make them understand. “You will learn how to swim, exactly cuz of slips like this. Just not in a river, which has a hidden…”

            “…current,” both said, Shel quickly streaming her confusion with how that word meant ‘present’, too. Maybe danger lurked in every here-and-now, and she’d have to imagine more the side of something that doesn’t meet the eye.

            The wet clothes compelled an explanation which could have led to consternation, but Pam was rather thankful that such a lesson could precede their camping trip. She also was glad for Nala’s pluck: requesting more days off than her boss typically granted, standing up to Dr Brent, mining the core deposits of her faith in that underground mosque. Pam, having scant history in ‘faith’, per se, suddenly wondered why.

            She talked it over with Trig, in bits and pieces while they walked their beat. “What is God for you, in a nutshell?”

            “In a nutshell? S’that a loaded idiom?”

            “Okay, in a word.”

            Trig remotely remembered that link and streamed to be sure: “‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’”

            Pam streamed simultaneously. “Gospel of John. What else?”

            “Lightspeed, is this some kinda test?”

            It wasn’t, but Pam bit her lip to avoid saying ‘no’. “I’m thinking of the girls, their little world.”

            “Their nutshell of the world—is that why you named her that?”

            “‘Shel’?” Pam had to remember. “I’ve always liked the name ‘Shelly’, don’t know why. Doesn’t run in my family, nor her father’s.” Trig stewed on that, as Pam now realized he would. “Sorry—shouldn’t bring him up.”

            “No, I mean—go ahead.”

            She stayed silent while they walked and Trig, who had already heard about the lust-and-leave story, let her have her space. He came to know Pam seven years ago, transferring from an overcrowded precinct in Minneapolis. They became romantic in the blur of days exactly like this—twiddling thumbs for the weekend. But Shel was reason enough for Trig to reconsider his bachelor lifestyle. She once called him ‘Dad’ but, blushing, used ‘Trig’ a minute later and every encounter since. On the other hand, she liked that he stayed over for dinners more often, listened to her stories and told his own. She loved that her mom was happy, maybe because she remotely recalled her being otherwise.

            Finally Pam weighed in, streaming a message to Trig as if afraid to wrap her mouth around it. I only believed in God when I didn’t want to, like when he left.

            Trig kept his eyes on the slow direction they were headed, with no precise need to patrol. He nodded, not right away, that he understood.

            And vice versa, Pam eventually streamed.

            “And that concerns you,” Trig voiced into a question-statement.

            Pam reached for his hand, realizing some compromise of on-the-job protocol, but since Trig didn’t pull away, she kept it there as they walked. “It concerns Shel.”

            “She said so?”

            “Not in so many words.”

            “In a nutshell?”

            She smiled at that. I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space.

            Hamlet now? Trig merged with her mind.

            …were it not that I have bad dreams.

            “I’m dreaming of the weekend. In God’s country, I think they call it.”

            She squeezed his hand and gently let it go. They were, after all, on duty.

            They decided to leave on Thursday, in order for the girls to wake up in the beauty of the Burntside Hotel on Friday, swim there and then head further into the wilderness for camping, weather inviting. Nala sat in the front of the shuttle with Pam, while Trig took his reclining chair and the girls flitted around from this window to that against the occasional advice to get strapped in.

            “But it’s safe, with all the sensors, right?”

            “Who knows,” Trig posed, “we might just hit another deer.”

             They hadn’t heard about that. “Deer?” Aamiina asked, seeing her friend’s face streaming something, as she had become accustomed to.

            “Yes. Happens sometimes that they jump out.”

            “They—like a family?”

            “Well, in our case it was just one. A buck.”

            Shel proved her knowledge. “A daddy, then?”

            “Don’t know. He didn’t say.”

            Then Aami: “You talked with him?”

            Pam, overhearing, swung to clarify. “We tried to get him back home. In the woods, of course.”

            “You tried?” Shel wanted to know. “And?”

            “Well, we think we did it.” Trig cleared his throat. “He got off the road, and…”

            Now Nala swung her chair to hear about this buck. Trig hemmed a bit how tough it must have been to find his footing again—the shuttle going as fast then as now. Shel thought about ‘current’ on that suggestion of ‘now’ and buckled her seatbelt. Aamiina did the same, like a serious-minded little sister. No one wanted to broach what hadn’t yet been said, until Shel couldn’t take the mystery any longer. “Died?”

            Pam stretched for her knee, unsure how to comfort the query. “Not that we saw, Shel.”

            Trig nodded at that. “We saw him go into the woods. Home.”

            Clearly both girls, looking out different windows, didn’t believe that outcome. The shuttle would have killed him, and now it was trying to keep them safe at such speed. Pam felt it necessary to remind them about sensors, safety in general. And life cycles, including their ends. She almost streamed what had come up the other day, the izøne funneling more suggestions on Shakespeare: we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

            “Is the deer asleep somewhere?” Shel asked the shuttle, generally.

            Pam flinched, sure as she was that she hadn’t messaged anyone that quote. “Yes, Shelly,” gulping. “Somewhere….”

            “Maybe at our camping site?” Aamiina imagined, still looking out her side of the shuttle.

            Trig glanced at Nala, then Pam, then agreed with the chances of that way of putting it: “maybe, Aami. We’ll have to see.”

            “Meanwhile, girls,” Nala fostered, “pray for him.”

            Moments passed for maybe that. “And his family,” one of them said.

XX.

            While the sanctuary had no official ‘sick bay’, Seb spent many an hour in the chapel, rather unoccupied these days. Sylvia, the silver-haired organist and occasional nurse, made sure the atmosphere was serene; all Seb suffered, she determined, was a concussion that required nothing more than rest. Tim promised he’d be ‘man of the house’ to catch fish and keep routines running; Jack, behind him, projected an equal face of confidence.

            And the chapel truly was serene: Avis would wander to the boathouse and barely need the grandma’s nod to enter the veiled door to the tunnel that would, four or five times a day, usher her to Seb—well-fed Seb, as became his epithet. The fireplace glowed its sienna upkeep, usually the doing of Gordon, unpronounced. The central area of the disc had cleared its chairs to allow for an ample mattress and dozens of throw pillows for Seb to feel the soft safety of the place, including a couple tables at convenient reach for a glass of brandy, a grab of raisins and cashews, whatever else an ailing having runner might request.

            Meanwhile, Mia and the dog took adventurous walks beyond what Seb or Avis might have approved, if ‘sick bay’ had not dominated the family’s attention. Secretly, on the sly, Mia wanted to meet that old man in Winton, convince the universe that he, at least, was not the guy who hurt her parents. She liked the story about the Grinch, who had his own dog (if not so pretty) and lived in grumpy isolation until that brave Cindy Lou got to him. Maybe she’d even tell him that story, guessing that he’d view a visit with suspicion.

            The fencing around the sanctuary’s perimeter was rusted barbed wire, but easy enough to get through, either due to a fallen tree or an excavation from some wild animal—perhaps the very wolverine that attacked Pretty a week ago. Just a week ago? So much has happened here… Or, many of the same things have happened: washing along the creek and lakeshore, organizing meals, lounging at the chapel, reading by candlelight, talking like never before, listening to crickets, waking to birdsong, eager to see another day like this unfold.

            Of course unstreamed, she didn’t have the same reason for being here as the rest of her family. She had no izøne to evade, long for, sneak back to, and she hopped over a sunken stretch of barbed wire with a feeling that sanctuary, really, could be anywhere for her—even Minneapolis, as the plan was to return there in a year.

            Sanctuary was everywhere. She never felt so fortunate and free. “Now I know why you’re always smiling, Pretty.”

            Lou was back to telling yarns in the chapel. “Yep, I tellya, gettin’ clocked is no fun. No sirree. You’d think with all that’s been made—engineered an’ such—they’d have come up with a way to airbag the ol’ noggin just before some blow, y’know, somethin’ not so bulky, hiding in the collar.”

            “I’m sure they have,” Seb opined. “Especially to market to those parents who keep permanent helmets on their kids playing outside.”

            “Back in my day there were some o’ them, fer sure, but then there’s these knuckleheads like me playing hockey on lakes just like this—funny to point up to the surface!—and nobody had an inklin’ to wear a helmet. That said, though, you figured it was just a matter o’ time: braced for the puck flyin’ at yer face, then ya got the highsticking, the cross-check, all that fun stuff.”

            “Knowing it’s coming can’t be much comfort.”

            “You can say that again! But we loved it, doncha know—wouldn’t do it otherwise, not outdoors anyway. It’s inside our own contraptions where we drop our guard. Le’s see… I was at the Bismarck mall roun’ about Timmy’s age, there,” nodding at the teenager engrossed in a chess match with Jack. “Malls, y’know, were the thing, ’specially fer farm hicks like me, gettin’ outta jail on a Friday night after chores an’ all, hangin’ around jus’ to see and be seen.”

            “That’s the history of history,” Jack thought to add.

            “You betcha. But hey, this one time—gettin’ back to gettin’ clocked—I saw absolutely nuthin’ coming. It’s a mall, fer god’s sake, not an ice rink!”

            “What happened?”

            “Well, I’ll tell ya. In those days ever’body had what they called ‘smart phones’—flat slabs of plastic that sorta fit in yer pocket, or more likely the palm of yer hand, glowing when somethin’ pre-dating the izøne tapped in—a message, a meme, a I-don’-know-what, barely then and long gone by now. Of all things of boyhood to forget, that slab o’ plastic is first on my list.”

            “Certainly smart phones had their day in the sun. A decade or two, more precisely. But why did one of them knock you out?”

            “Why did a smart phone knock out a dumb hockey hack?” Lou chuckled the question. “S’pose I should’ve worn a helmet at the mall! Instead, here I’m walkin’ with this smart phone, see, swipin’ the screen in my palm for some revelation—God, that was the thing back then, to somehow see beyond the fleeting screen that had ya there in the firs’ place. Gotta imagine: these things were in everyone’s hands, and the notion of walkin’ and chewin’ gum was, well, somethin’ debatable.”

            Tim lifted his head at that suggestion. “Not so hard to multi-task in those days, was it?”

            Lou was glad to have more audience. “Multi-tasking was the norm. The ‘task’ in that, though, was almost never spelled out, let alone smart. I’m sure I was half-tasking at best, fishin’ that slab o’ plastic fer some kindred lonelyheart swipin’ the same kinda screen.”

            “Lou, I can’t envision you as a loner!”

            “Uff-da, us North Dakotans wrote th’ book on that. And to put a mall out there fer us jus’ rubs salt into the wound. But who m’I foolin’—them lonely for a minute maybe milk it fer a lifetime. Anyways, I’m walkin’ and, as Timmy here does well ’nuff, multi-taskin’ and hopin’ somethin’ glows from the plastic in my palm, somethin’ promising fer a Friday night to remember or forget—good times don’t quibble over that!—and wouldn’cha know out o’ nowhere, BAM! I run smack into Crazy Horse.”

            “Huh?”

            “The Lakota chief back a couple centuries ago.”

            “You that old, Lou?”

            “You betcha. But truth be told, it was jus’ his statue I run into, and even a replica of the real one, at that. The real one’s in South Dakota—Black Hills down there, kinda near Mount Rushmore. Difference is, Crazy Horse never got done, ’cept his face an’ outstretched arm. His horse’s head is the part that clocked me, and that’s not even finished on the mountain, to this day.”

            “Wait,” Tim happened to be moving his knight, “Crazy Horse is on a horse?”

            “Sure, ’magine that. Kinda mergin’ man an’ beast. Anyways, I hit the deck pretty hard, prob’ly more surprised than pushed over, least far as I can remember. The marble floor knocked me cold, an’ I jus’ lie there, oh, maybe a minute, maybe an hour—until some angel woke me up, gorgeous eyes gleamin’ with concern, and I’m thinkin’ wow, was that worth it! But then, doncha know, she was already hooked to some other guy swipin’ his smart phone.”

            “Maybe calling an ambulance.”

            “Doubt it. Didn’t come one, anyhow. So, I get up and try out the ol’ legs and they’re okay, y’know, and so is the goshdarn phone—bit cracked on its face, but back then that was sorta th’ norm. I put it in my pocket and fished out a dollar—that’s when money looked like toilet paper, Timmy—and since there warn’t any more angels fer to buy an ice cream, I stuffed the bill in the box at th’ statue’s base. Donation towards the completion of the real McCoy, which—last I heard—was all but given up. Way it goes, I guess…”

            Tim let the story settle a bit, then turned to his dad. “Wish I could stream this Crazy Horse.”

            “Why? You have one better than that in a real-life point of view. And I imagine you haven’t put that episode in the izøne, that right, Lou?”

            “No can do. Nor care to.”

            Mia approached the village of Winton with wonder. She remembered where the old man’s house was, if the angle to get there was new. Houses she passed were dilapidated, mostly, and the weeds everywhere looked like meerkats sizing up this unlikely stranger and her dog.

            “Hey!” one of them called out—not the old man’s voice, it seemed, nor anybody else in sight. Pretty walked her typical four or five yards ahead, not stopping for what might have been just the wind in the hodgepodge of structures and trees and meerkat-looking things.

            She knocked on the old man’s door, unprepared for what to do if it opened. Her mother went inside their first day here, even before reaching the sanctuary; that went fine, evidently. Still, instinct reminded that you should know what you’re getting into, and Pretty’s subtle whimper seconded that notion. In their minds, conjoined, was that tussle with the wolverine,

                        it may not have happened

                        if everyone were to behave,

                        use teeth just to eat

                        or claws to anchor the feet;

                        if everyone could only behave

                        like clouds not deciding

                        to rain on somebody’s day:

                        wreck a poor picnic and save

                        a mere question of harvest,

                        which may never happen,

                        given the whims of a wolverine.

She learned the word ‘whim’ from her sister Kay, after hours of conversation, partly before this venture north, and partly after Pretty had been attacked. And now she started to worry that the old man wasn’t answering, perhaps having been attacked himself with no one there to save him. She pounded harder on his door, causing Pretty to whimper differently.

            No way could he be home, or there awake. Mia turned to go away.

            That’s when the door opened, and Pretty curled herself inside. The old man (or a fraction of his face) said nothing about the dog entering, but stared intently at Mia, who looked likewise at him for ten seconds, nothing of substance between them. Neither said ‘hey’ or anything, until Pretty barked from within.

            “You comin’ in, then, young lady?”

            Mia whistled for Pretty, responding in a slither to her side. “You can come out, too,” she assured. “My parents wouldn’t worry that way.”

            Oscar puzzled that over and opened the door wider. “They worried about you?”

            “No. They don’t know I’m here.”

            “Then why you here?”

            Why, indeed. To study the guy who might have hurt her parents? To risk herself getting hurt, and Pretty, too? To extend a sense of neighborhood, more than anything Minneapolis offered in that regard? “To see how you are,” she voiced for no particular reason.

            “How I am?”

            Absurd, this whole thing. None of them budged, a polygon of points indoors and out, Pretty pacing between them. “Yes, sir,” Mia replied at last.

            “How I am. You aint happen to be from Ely, wouldja? Social services, or criminal investigations unit?”

            “What’s that mean?”

            Oscar wasn’t inclined to answer his own questions. He’d rather do the asking. “Have you caught a walleye there, from your.., your sanctuary?”

            “That’s a fish, right?”

            “That’s right. A beauty of a fish.”

            “I think my brother has. I’m still learning how.”

            “Hmm.”

            “I catched bluegills.”

            Easy pickins. “Fry ’em up?”

            “Yep. Mom taught me how…. You talked to her, ’member?”

            The cataracts through which Oscar squinted seemed to soften with his raised eyebrows. He was forming an answer, what he and that lady had spoken about that first day of their naïve adventure; instead, he decided to affirm the girl’s benign interest. “Of course. She told me y’all were here to get relief from the izøne. Is that right?”

            “Yes, sir. But it doesn’t matter for me ’n Pretty: we’re not streamed.”

            “Well,” Oscar took one step back to grip the inside knob of the door, “you make sure that big guy who works there knows that.”

            “Gordon?”

            “Don’ know his name. The guy who... keeps the furnace going.”

            Mia nodded, vaguely. “Goodbye, Mister—” to the closing door. She looked at Pretty for advice what to do next. “Back to sanctuary?” The dog understood that idea by now and began the four or five yards’ head start.

{Part 2}

XXI.

            Part of having a good time is the respect, in one mind or many, that good times aren’t automatic. Ingredients of grace, fortune and willingness all need to come together. Tumbling into the Burntside Hotel, this side of sunset, Nala and Pam glanced first at each other, then at the menu hologrammed for their approval, as if the steaming soups and fresh fish and pasta and moose medallions and sautéed veggies and wild rice could meet with anyone’s distaste. But glad you asked, their eyes told the maître d’—nothing via izøne, as they tacitly figured that message-streaming might mar this pristine territory or, rather, their experience in it for the next hundred hours or so. Aamiina and Shel dutifully munched their medallions, saving appetite for the apple cobbler à la mode that would follow. They listened to their moms making a game plan for the ensuing days—a halcyon mix of swim and snooze and serendipity.

            Trig looked on with veiled awe. His bachelor self never signed into such imagination, let alone the risks that happen with relationships. He never had to calculate beyond himself, the easy and ineffable needs. He didn’t want to calculate those needs for the nights and days to come, eager instead to consider how families worked in tandem. He balked, then, at Nala’s suggestion that both girls could sleep in her room—another pillow fort they’d make of it—to let Pam and Trig make their room a de facto honeymoon suite.

            Dawn came, waking each its own way, caressing the positive problem to continue sleeping or hop out of bed and head to the beach. Five thin wills let the morning unfold as it would, breakfast as an afterthought. Four put swimsuits on; Nala remained in her robe as she took a book from the hotel library to a deck chair on the lawn. She also took a cup of Ethiopian coffee, reflecting on the fact her family could never afford this in Somalia. She rested the brew on the hardcover of Travels With Charley: In Search of America, the aging author requiring a roadtrip to be sure his stories were real enough, and memorable. Maybe someday Nala would return to the Horn of Africa; for now, she’d read with an occasional eye over the page and toward the water, where Trig and Pam were teaching the girls to float like otters:

            “There, now, arch your back and look to the sky. Let your arms stretch out,… yes, like a cross, I suppose. Hands can paddle a bit, but keep your legs straight… Okay, swish them if they sink, but better yet, arch your back and look to the sky…”

            The izøned sky. Still. Slightly overcast. A large insect whirred overhead and caused Shel to scream. “What’s that?!” she sputtered when Pam tugged her to a depth where she could stand.

            “Just a dragonfly, Shel. Gentle as a—”

            “dragon?” Now Aamiina glided over, Trig ready to act as lifeguard. “A real dragon!”

            “Well, a rather small one. But look, here’s another—”

            The metallic blue lines of each torso hovered, the blur of their wings frenetic to bring them together, then whisk them away. They circled the area like barnstormers, then settled in tandem on a post of the dock. The swimmers cautioned themselves over to spy on this landing. The uppermost dragon crawled from the back of the lower one to the smooth surface of the post, then clamped the end of its tail to the lower one’s nape. Their twelve legs herked toward the flat top of the pole, allowing a hard-earned respite. Then the headlocked dragon forced an arching of bodies—metallic blue lines now forming two halves of a heart, upper and lower, a valentine tipped on its side. Pam and Trig knew what was happening, but the girls were agape. The newly-made heart fibrillated, causing the legs to splay for stability; the conjoined creatures seemed at war and at peace, oblivious to an audience evaluating their performance. Aamiina, whispering a question to Pam, longed for her World Book encyclopedias—she surely would have come across the pages on ‘dragonfly’, if not exactly pictures in plural. Shel, streaming the izøne and its options to match images, screwed up her eyes in the suggestion of what these insects were doing.

            “Baby dragonflies?” Aami had to repeat what Pam had whispered to her.

            Shel, a bit jealous, wondered whether to add to the inquiry or prove her new knowledge. “They’re actually ‘damselflies’,” she decided. “So they’re making baby damsels.”

            Trig splashed around to change the subject. If they were going to be accomplished otters, they would need to do more than float on their backs. They swam past the memory of damselflies, up to the moment they looked at their raisiny hands and laughed. Nala had towels for them ready as they slumped onto the grass. “If you like this lake,” Trig announced, “you’ll fall in love with Fall Lake…”

            “Fall Lake?”

            “Just east of here. Yet kind of a world away.”

            “Why?” Aamiina asked, always interested in the idea of ‘world’.

            Trig caught Pam’s eye to see if he should say, and she shrugged a why not? “It’s out of the izøne.”

            Shel glanced at the sky. “How… in the world..?” she said in her head. Then joining the others’ excitement, Shel asked aloud: “when can we go?”

           

            They left after lunch and shuttled along the shoreline of Shagawa Lake, hovering inches above the taconite roads to Winton. They went slow to conserve energy and take in the splendor, but also the last licks of izøne access, should that be needed. No need to overthink this, Pam messaged Trig, who was manually driving. Trig grinned a response and sped up a little. Nala was chatting a mile-a-minute with the girls, who were spotting all kinds of insects and birds and shadows that might just be deer.

            Like Pam and Trig’s first trek into the sanctuary, they parked the shuttle outside the barbed-wire gate and found the same gap in the fence some forty yards into the woods. They weren’t wearing patroller uniforms today, so any excuse for this unannounced visit might turn awkward, but they were taking the Carters at their word: our cabin door is always open, even though, technically, the Carters didn’t own it. Pam advised they go straight to the boathouse, square their purpose with Jack, rent a boat or beach space if he’d be so kind.

            As the path curved past the Carter’s defunct shuttle, a colossus stood where sunbeams didn’t pierce the afternoon shade. Gordon. Expressionless, perhaps—his boonie hat hid the intension of his eyes. In his right hand was a spade shovel; his left held a bucket by its handle. His overalls had pockets that bulged with other things.

            “’Llo,” Trig greeted, as they all stopped in their tracks. Gordon dipped the brim of his boonie just an inch. “You remember Pam and me from last week… Well, we’re back to visit,” Trig cleared his throat, “the Carters.”

            “Rent a boat, maybe,” Pam added. Shel, behind her, reached for Aami’s free hand, the other already in Nala’s grip.

            Gordon tilted his head, then turned with the stiffness of a walrus. His shoulder gestured, follow me.

            Despite the strangeness of keeping the twenty yard distance from their guide, the visiting quintet picked up where their conversations had been. Trig described the amazing qualities of birch bark—all from memory, now that no one could stream information; Nala promised she’d take a swim in this lake, if so far unseen; Pam pointed out the Carter’s cabin, looking dormant at the moment; the girls continued to hold hands and develop the details of the fairy tale they were inventing. Gordon probably heard slices of what they were saying, twenty yards behind him.

            The lake was gorgeous, glistening as they emerged from the woods. Gordon traipsed to the boathouse and held the door open for them to waddle in, ducklings they may have appeared. The bucket, as they smelled and now could look into, contained the offal of fish that Gordon evidently was going to bury—best to do so away from the cabins, Trig guessed out loud, on the chance a mammal might dig it up. Gordon nodded before closing them inside.

            “Why, hello there!” the grandma hailed from her spot behind the counter.

            Pam reached to shake her hand. “We’re back, Ms—”

            “Just call me ‘the grandma’. Ever’body does here, you know. And I see you’ve reproduced some since last week! Kids, welcome to our sanctuary.”

            Shel and Aami blushed but murmured a sort of thanks. Nala, then, reached out to shake the grandma’s hand. “I’m Nala, and..,”—nudging her daughter—

            “I’m Aamiina. I’m not streamed.”

            That unsolicited fact took the others a second to think over. “Isn’t that nice, Aamiina,” the grandma responded. “Wouldn’t you know, I’m not either!”

            “Um,” Pam wondered whether or how to introduce Shel, who evidently didn’t want to take that initiative.

            Trig jumped in. “We wanted to visit the Carters, if they’re around, and rent a boat if you had one handy… The girls here are learning to swim—had a good morning out at Burntside, where we’re staying.”

            “Oh, Burntside, yes,” the grandma pointed to the ancient paper map of the region, tacked to the wall. “It’s nice there, but,” directing her voice to the girls, “our lake’s nicer. No distractions here.”

            “It’s peaceful,” Pam agreed. “A breath of fresh air. You know, last time we had to pursue that Hotline call that had disappeared—”

            “I remember.”

            “—and, unless you heard anything about it,”

            “Nope, haven’t.”

            “then we’re off-duty as patrollers and simply on vacation.”

            “Well, that’s wonderful. Maybe Jack and Gordon can sweep out a place for you to stay overnight—”

            “We do have tents,” Trig told her, “and sleeping bags. The hotel is our home base these next couple days, but a little camping would really fit the bill.”

            “Oh, we wouldn’t bill you. Nice to have company, really. Now if you could sign our guest book…” The grandma turned the key that was already in the lock of the file cabinet behind her. She pulled out a dark green binder and opened it to the sixth or seventh page, where the latest names listed were those of the Carters: Seb, Avis, Kay, Tim, Mia*, their ages and Minneapolis address, their arrival date. A column for ‘departure’ was also there, but no one on the spread of these pages had that information filled in.

            Trig tried to message Pam, of course to no avail. He stepped up to take the outstretched pen from the grandma and politely remarked, “we weren’t asked to sign in last time.”

            The grandma anticipated as much and pat his arm. “You were on duty then. Deliverymen, too, come and go without so much the need to keep track. Our guests, though, we must protect.”

            Reasonable. Trig bent to write his line of information:

                                    Trig Tangent | 33 | Faribault |

“Today’s date?”

            The grandma poohpawed that: “I’ll fill that in. Next?”

            Trig handed the pen to Pam, who quickly took in his pseudonym cue. Her line, then, contained her own:

                                    Pam Lightspeed | 31 | —//— |

            “You got Indian heritage with that last name,” the grandma presumed. “Good to have you here.” She gestured to pass the pen on.

            “Shel, should I write it for you?” Pam offered.

            “No,” Shel grabbed the pen. Though writing was not required for her learning, she wanted to show that she could. She blockwrote the SHEL and looked at the surname above hers, perplexed. “What’s this mean?”

            “That’s good enough, dear,” the grandma assured. “And your age?”

            Shel put an 8 below her mom’s 31 and tried to make the same —//— for the city she didn’t at all miss right now.

            She gave the pen to Aami, who wrote in more confident block letters: AAMIINA. Then she scanned the names above her. “What’s this flower by this person’s name, ‘Mia*’?”

            “Huh? Oh, that’s an asterisk. You can call it a flower—that’s nice! Means that she’s unstreamed.”

            “Like me?”

            “Like you.”

            While Pam shot a look at Nala to check if this delineation was appropriate, Aami made an asterisk with a stem and some leaves beside her name. Then she put a 7 in the next column and ~//~ in the next. Satisfied, she handed the pen to her mother. Nala entered only her first name, wavering a second whether or not to replicate her daughter’s flower. That would keep them consistent, but wouldn’t be true.

            “Thank you all,” the grandma said, closing the book and jamming it back into the file cabinet. “Enough of the paperwork! Now let’s try to find where those Carters might be.”

            They were with Jack on another canoe excursion around Newton Lake. Seb was healthy enough now to participate, yet he sat in the bow to let Tim do the hard paddling. Jack steered a second canoe, with Mia and Pretty sharing the narrow front bench. Avis and Kay led the fleet with efficient strokes. The western headwind could have challenged their energy, but a week’s experience was starting to pay off, and they felt rather spirited going into the homestretch.

            As they rounded the bend past Kawishiwi Falls, Kay spotted some splashing near the sanctuary beach. “Big fish,” she deadpanned, “and here we paddled for miles to catch a few bluegills.”

            “They’re people,” Avis felt a need to clarify. “A welcome sight.”

            Pretty raised her ears and balanced her front legs on the triangular nose of the middle canoe. She rarely barked or whined, preferring to let her tail do her talking, but now she let out a searching howl: whhooo r youuuu?

            A hundred yards away, Trig bellowed, “Ahoy, Pretty!”

            “Hey,” Mia recognized, “the patrollers.”

            “Looks like they brought the whole fam,” Jack added, stolidly.

            Shel and Aamiina stood like statues in neck-deep water. Nala, beside them, waved. Pam swam toward the canoes and tread in the deeper water. Trig called out less loudly, “Catch anything?”

            Pretty leaped forward and swam toward the question. At first instinct, Mia would have screamed for her to come back; she suppressed that, however, to assuage the possible concerns of these unknown girls in the water. “Don’t worry, she’s a water dog! Named ‘Pretty’.”

            “Pretty,” whispered Shel to Aamiina. “That’s pretty.”

            The dog swam to Pam as the canoes followed, and before they reached shore, everyone floated for a moment. Introductions could come thereafter; now was more the chance to look around, appreciate the vibe, and harmonize.

XXII.

            It was a high day for the sanctuary. Even the late afternoon drizzle played into the joy of new friendships. Trig had put up two pup tents near the beach—Jack was happy to have them stay a couple days, no cost—so their night would be dry and not so crowded. Mia begged to stay in the tent with Aamiina and Shel, and after a parental cadence of we’ll see, the sleeping arrangements were settled. Mia would indeed be with the other girls in one tent; Pam and Trig in the other, nearby; Nala in Mia’s vacated bed. And Pretty, who usually slept at the foot of Mia’s bed,…

            Pretty was a question. She seemed intent on being a roamer, not cabin-bound or relegated to pup-status. Quietly curling up on the cabin porch was as headstrong an act as the Carters had seen. Tim, with Trig’s help, constructed a makeshift lean-to against the cabin wall and covered it with birch bark to keep Pretty dry.

            Before goodnight kisses and ghost stories, though, an impromptu potluck brought neighbors out from the woodwork—Sylvia and Lou, the grandma and Gordon, the plaid-shirt guy who liked to play chess, now outside the confines of the chapel (which curiously never entered anyone’s conversation). A little wine encouraged Jack to fetch his guitar and strum songs familiar and new—some even the izøne wouldn’t have heard of. One that got the campfire bopping went:

                                    When we’re up in heaven

                                    We’ll be lookin’ down at us,

                                    Laughin’ at the looniness

                                    And things that caused a fuss;

                                    When there’s clearly trouble

                                    The laughin’ turns to rain,

                                    Got to wash away those blues

                                    And fill your boots again!

                                          Fill your boots

                                          When it rains

                                          Life takes root

                                          When it rains…

Fact of the matter, precipitation was light and barely noticeable under the red pines. Everyone huddled in for s’mores and exaggerated pulls at ponchos, serving as umbrellas. Jack jammed that chorus a few times for reinforcement, to get the Carters and their guests singing with the long-termers. Then he soloed again for the final verse:

                                    So hope you come to heaven

                                    On a cloudburst kinda day,

                                    Dive into eternity

                                    And settle in to stay;

                                    Then you’ll throw some levers

                                    Of weather down below,

                                    Most of which will fill the boots

                                    Of people as they grow

                                          Fill your boots

                                          When it rains

                                          Life takes root

                                          When it rains…

            “Mr Jack?” Aamiina asked, when the song strummed to conclusion, “what’s it mean ‘fill your boots’?”

            “Aaah,” graveled Lou, happy and a tad drunk. “Glad ya asked that, if I may—” turning to Jack to take the question. Jack, just as happy, handed him the floor. “Y’see, Amy,”

            “Aami,” she corrected.

            “Aahmy—that’s a nice name. Whatcha got here in ‘fill yer boots’ is a idiom. Know what that means?” Aamiina shook her head and leaned forward to find out. “Any of ya youngsters know—‘idiom’?” Lou polled the polity.

            Kay waited until her brother chickened out. “A veiled phrase,” she asserted, “that usually has a cultural extension to make us think of something more deeply.”

            Lou regarded that as gold. “Young lady, I wish you were my school teacher, back when there were schools. Spot on! Idioms do ’xactly that. So, first time I heard this ‘fill yer boots’ was when I was playin’ 8-ball at the pool hall, out there in Bismarck. Passin’ good, I was, but nothin’ to write home about.”

            “Oh, Lou,” Sylvia thought to butt in, “always selling yourself short.”

            “Another idiom!” Lou exalted. “But back to the crux.” Aamiina, still rapt, had no idea what he was talking about. “So I'm playin’ 8-ball ’gainst this hustler travelin’ through from England, of all places —he play for money, y’know, back when money was a thing. An’ I make a pretty good shot, prob’ly normal as his world goes. An’ I make another one, an’ another—gonna clear th’ table, I says, and he says back, fill yer boots—sorta rival’s endorsement, British-like. Got into my head, though, an’ I missed the next shot.”

            “Does that make sense to you?” Kay softly asked Aamiina, as Lou rambled on.

            “Uh-huh,” she lied, then qualified, “a little.”

            “It means ‘keep a good thing going’.”

            The seven-year-old looked into the fire and nodded. “Can I go pet Pretty?”

            “Sure. I’ll come with.”

            Gordon, after a minute, followed them. He hadn’t spent any time with Kay these past few days and wanted to show, perhaps, he wasn’t such a loner or loser in the ways of friendship, if that was a way in for things deeper. He had dressed up, relatively speaking, for this campfire: a beige suede vest over a freshly ironed maroon shirt, buttoned up to the collar and garnished with a cowboy tie. If one looked closely—and Kay had—the oval of that tie held a small scorpion lacquered against a pearl base, its pinchers up like a tiny joshua tree. The tail, as ever with these creatures, curled within as if not a lancing threat.

            He semi-hid behind a birch, Charlie Brown style, about forty yards in front of the Carters’ cabin. Kay was completely focused on Aami and the dog, showing the former how to offer her hand for the latter to sniff, even as this introduction was no longer necessary. Then, how to scritch the neck and shoulders, circling the ears and speaking gently into them, occasionally thumbing around the eyes as they’d usually have some sleep debris to rub away—something dogs would poorly try to do with their forepaws. Always speaking gently a little lexicon of adjectives before the creature’s name, in Pretty's case a noun and adjective combined.

            “How did you get her?” Aamiina wanted to know.

            “Pretty?” Kay addressed the dog as if she could narrate for herself. “Where did you come from, anyway?” Pretty wagged her tail a fatigued cadence and lay her throat down on the porch floorboards. She was glad to let Aami blanket her with slow, steady strokes to the middle of her back. Kay sat back and clasped her shins. “We were swimming at Lake Minnetonka about five years ago. Mia was trying for the first time without water wings—you know what those are?”

            “Yep, Mama packed some for me. But haven’t used them yet.”

            “Mama knows best. And Mia was doing it right, too—asked our mom for permission to go without them. We were all watching each other anyway. Until out of the blue this mutt comes along—”

            “Wha’s a ‘mutt’?”

            “Mixed breed. Sometimes like a put-down, but—look at her! I mean, we didn’t know she was a border collie, just that she was pretty and playful, jumping into the water with us. She didn’t have a collar or anybody around that might have been walking her. Just… came out of the blue.”

            Gordon stepped into her view, hesitating whether to step toward the story. Aami asked what ‘out of the blue’ meant, “like blue water?”

            Kay indicated with her eyes a place at the edge of the porch for Gordon to come sit. He lumbered up to her definition. “‘Out of the blue’ is another idiom. You’re learning lots of those tonight. And like ‘fill your boots’, it’s something unexpected, like a surprise. In Pretty’s case, a pleasant surprise—but I suppose a dangerous animal could have come out of the blue that day.”

            “Like a bear?”

            “Like a bear. And dogs can be unsafe, too, if they feel threatened. We weren’t really sure what Pretty was feeling, even if she seemed to like the water. I mean, where did she come from? Was she lost? Looking for her owner?”

            “Looking for a new one,” Gordon offered.

            Kay cocked her head to see if Pretty was asleep. “Yeah, turns out. Especially when Mia was swimming out too far and starting to panic, and Dad sprinted from the beach but Pretty was already nearer, swimming straight for her so she could grab onto her tail—usually not a good idea with dogs, but…”

            “Pretty became a water wing.”

            “She did. Then Dad took over and everybody circled around the shallows to breathe a big sigh of relief. Pretty went further to the sand and shook and barked some warning not to go too deep. A cautionary tale.”

            “Spelled, t-a,” Gordon measured the pun, “-i-l?”

            “I know how to spell ‘Pretty’!” Aamiina bragged, and proved it with the slightest tracing of the letters with each rise of dog’s inhalation.

            Kay smiled approval. “So we started packing up to go home, and this dog—no name, of course—wouldn’t budge away from us. We walked the beach this way and that, asked questions of strangers, all of whom shrugged their shoulders. Had to take her home—well, Dad and Mom argued over that for a half-hour, exactly the amount of time we needed to make up a name, imagine a doghouse, all that good stuff. We tried for a week to izøne any leads—lost animal bureaus, vet records, breeder foundations… Lots of interest in a missing border collie, but no one could put a claim to this one. I mean, ‘claim’ isn’t a comfortable word, but…”

            Avis and Nala emerged from the darkness. Aamiina repeated her spelling feat to show her delicate touch with the tuckered-out pooch. “Shel and Mia are already in the tent,” Nala said. “Your pajamas are there—let’s go brush teeth and get ready to sleep.”

            Kay pulled herself up and considered a return to the campfire; Gordon was trudging in that direction, at least as far as she could see. Avis had gone into the cabin to light lanterns and freshen up the bedding. A few minutes, perhaps, to consult.

            “You here for the night?” Avis asked, with no apparent ambiguity.

            “I suppose.” Kay looked for some chore, but everything had been cleaned up before the campfire. She added another pillow for Nala’s bed. “Tim doesn’t need two.”

            Avis agreed. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure Mia has one for herself down there.” She took the spare and said, “I’ll go check.”

            “Maybe the grandma has a spare.”

            “Or Gordon?”

            Kay slumped into her reading chair. “Why mention him?”

            “Why not? He’s been rather helpful today.”

            “I’ve only seen him that way—every day we’ve been here.” She paused. “I know he gives you the creeps—”

            “No, no. I’ve thought that through. Whoever attacked your dad and me was an enemy of this place, and that doesn’t fit Gordon’s evident loyalty.”

            “But it fits his smell, right?”

            Avis sighed. “I just said that… without a real reference point. He’s no muskier than anybody else.”

            “Then why did you imply—”

            “—to build up some instincts, like Pretty has.”

            “That requires a whole different snout. Can’t get that by wishing.”

            “True. Listen, Kaybee: I need to learn a life without izøne as much as anyone. We’re all a bit Neanderthal here.”

            “Is that better or worse than being a ‘golem’?”

            The question could have been heard, but Avis was out the door, headed toward the lakefront.

            Seeing her, from his canoe near the opposite shore, Oscar was night fishing. He was curious about the songs and such that normally didn’t waft as far as Winton. Perhaps he needed a new mindset about this place, this sanctuary. Not a forgiveness, per se, for its role in the disappearance of his wife—he was dead certain about that. But somehow he needed a way in, a way to understand and work things out from there. The little girl who talked to him the other day, now in a pup tent with some friends—young people like them would provide him focus, motivation. He and Martha couldn’t have kids, a numbing factor in an otherwise happy marriage. Maybe he could become more grandpa-like than grumpy old hermit. Wouldn’t bring Martha back, but…

            His pole, nestled under his right thigh and over his left, bent with the hooking of something—maybe a walleye, maybe a snag. These things, despite eternal experience, were never immediately apparent, sometimes even to the reeling in and thrill or disappointment upon its view from the canoe. Walleyes weren’t fighters, compared to other fish about to be yanked from their environment.

            God, Martha, why’d you have to go without a fight?

XXIII.

            The next couple days saw less drizzle but more wind, even to the point that the pup tents strained against their stakes and needed bodies within to serve as anchors. Pam and Trig could sleep under such conditions, but not with the thought that the girls might be too light in theirs and blow away; they arranged then, on the second night, to have them sleep on the Carter cabin floor—a repeat of the fort Shel and Aamiina had made at Nala’s flat—and that much more fun with Mia involved.

            There’d be space for Pam and Trig, too, if they’d want to take the bed Avis and Seb were happy to abandon for Jack’s offer that they could sleep in the chapel—an on-the-hush offer, as this inner-sanctum of the sanctuary was not meant for such ad hoc purposes. A strong western wind meant that occasionally the izøne could break through the shield that Jack had engineered so carefully, and while Kay and Tim were excited for the chance to stream information and social networks, their parents were anxious for the wind to die down and keep a good thing good. The blips of izøne access were hit-and-miss, anyway, more prone to frustrate than to satisfy. Such blips could never bother the underwater chapel, or anyone streamed within.

            The sun came out the day before the visitors would need to return to Faribault. The girls swam—various adults rotating as lifeguards—while Tim got back to serious fishing, guaranteeing fresh walleye for dinner. Pam and Trig paddled their own direction, toward Winton, around Lovers Island. Of five islands on this western end of Fall Lake, they could explore four, which they did with honeymooners’ curiosity. Lovers Island was off-limits, they knew, well before they approached the electric force field to test its grit against their own. They looked up from their canoe to fathom how the furnace and its medusa chimney structure emitted such power against the izøne. The sky was placid—no dirty effluence, and barely a shimmer of heat. “I gotta ask Jack how he did this,” Trig mumbled.

            “Whatever it is, Shel’s been in seventh heaven here. Hate to imagine tomorrow’s tears.”

            Trig considered this for a while, stroking the water on whatever side Pam wasn’t. “Y’know, Lightspeed, you could ask if the Carters would host them through the week, and we could fetch her next weekend.”

            Pam let the idea float. “What about Aamiina?”

            “That’d be up to Nala—well, everything would be up to the Carters and Jack, of course.”

            “Of course.” Knowing she’d miss her daughter, Pam picked up the pace of her paddling to get back to the beach and plunge in for a final swim.

            Dinner was magnificent: Tim, with the grandma’s guidance, learned to broil walleye fillets and serve them with steamed vegetables and wild rice. Jack grabbed bottles of red wine and measured a fraction into the lemonade for the kids to imbibe. Nala made apple sponge cake for desert. And Lou, somewhat out of the blue, gave everyone a pocket-sized package of buffalo jerky, “to remember North Dakota by.”

            Mia hugged him, and Shel began to cry—disguised, she hoped, by the three thousand minutes of happiness they’d had together. The adults had already consulted, though, and perhaps now would be the time to say, “girls, if you’d like to stay the week up here, while we have to go back to work, Jack has graciously let—”

            “Hooray!” said Aami first, then Mia. Shel couldn’t speak in her bluster, yet nodded vigorously. Aamiina asked Trig, “Can we go back to the pup tent again?”

            He shrugged and looked at Avis, who middle-grounded, “sure, for daytime use. Cabin’s better for nights.”

            “I’ll stay in the tent at night,” Tim asserted. “Gives you guys an extra bed.”

            “We’ll talk about it,” Seb replied, then pat him on the shoulder. “You did well today to feed us.”

            “Hear, hear,” the grandma chimed, as Jack topped off glasses with a fresh bottle of wine.

            Darkness was stealthily enveloping the cloudless sky. The quarter-moon had yet to rise, so the infant glitter of stars had no competition to their beauty. Gordon got a campfire going and sat next to Kay, who pretended to be a little chilly. Jack brought out the guitar and did some classical fingering on a piece he said befit the evening, stars out, a touch melancholy for the immanent departures of Nala, Pam and Trig. A song inspired by Pablo Neruda a century-and-a-half ago:

I could write the saddest lines tonight
The night is starry bright and an ice blue orb
Shivers in the distant light
          And yeah, the night wind cries as it swirls the skies
          And it carries away every feigned embrace
          And the others that enjoy it anyway
And yeah I'll write the saddest lines tonight:
I loved her... and sometimes
                                          she loved me, too...

            It was more to cuddle to than sing along with, and arms draped accordingly, here and there. Pam risked a question for Jack to risk answering: “who was that ‘she’?”

            Jack pat the guitar as if it had always wondered, too. “And how come not here?”

            “Well, only if you want to say.”

            Lou passed him the bottle, which by now needed no glasses to filter the common cheer. “Sure,” Jack said with a swig. “There was a ‘she’ and—truth to art—‘sometimes’ can be twenty years or two minutes ago. But split that difference: ten years ago—”

            “An’ a minute,” Lou calculated.

            “—and a minute, yes, there was a Mrs Childress and even the hopes of Childress children, as long-term discussions go. We were living in Chicago—where I met Gordon, by the way—on a shoestring budget, ’cause her work was in protest movements against the izøne, and mine was in experiments on the streaming serum—testing against the government’s claims that everything up there and inside the streamed body was A-OK.”

            “Mr Jack,” Aamiina asked, “are you streamed?”
            “Aamiina!” her mother rebuked, “that’s not a polite thing to—”

            “—it’s a good question,” Jack affirmed, “especially the way I’m talking about it! Both Mrs Childress and I were streamed—are streamed—irreversible, of course. And we didn’t hate being so; did it voluntarily, as our generation was pioneering the whole thing. We were philosophically in cahoots, loved each other as the song says, but that ‘sometimes’ crept up too often: intense work, being skeptical of something normative. Her protests would have her travel far and wide, my lab work would have me forget to go home occasionally, and… I just wish she could have stuck around enough to experience this place and appreciate the best of both our dreams.”

            Murmurs of approval lent to side conversations about dreams and being streamed, what the izøne is or isn’t in terms of health and well being. There was a temptation, beyond Aamiina’s chutzpah, to inquire of Lou and Gordon and the grandma if they were streamed, but no one did so. It wouldn’t make sense, anyway, for unstreamed people to be here—they would have no need for a ‘sanctuary’ from an izøne that wouldn’t affect them one place or another. Seb and Avis had already spoke to their visitors about why they had taken this one-year commitment and how well the early-goings have been, notwithstanding the mugging outside the sanctuary grounds. Pam and Trig took mental note of that mugging, wondering silently if it had any connection to the Hotline mystery that compelled them here in the first place. But muggings happen everywhere—more likely in cities—so they decided, separately, not to be concerned.

            “I’m interested,” Trig ventured after a gulp of wine, “Jack, in how you did it. You stymied the beast—if the izøne is that—like David against Goliath!”

            “Well, that implies killing it off, which of course no one could probably do, the ‘beast’ in everybody’s control and nobody’s. I just figured out how to block it.”

            “That’s what’s so fascinating. How?”

            “How? You want the ancient Chinese secret?”

            Trig wagged his head, embarrassed to press on, but, “yeah! Not that I’d steal it, or blab—”

            “Fact is,” Trig admitted, “those that licensed me and do safety checks know full well the secret. An’ it aint ancient nor Chinese, though how other cultures deal with streaming and izøne density was a huge part of my research. I’ll throw the question back to you. How would you block the izøne, bearing in mind safety and logistics?”

            “I dunno, find some kryptonite?”

            “Fine. And do what with it?”

            “Build a dome from it. Or wear it. Couldn’t ingest it, could you?”

            “In a way, we’ve ingested the streaming serum to access the izøne. One could imagine an antidote that reverses that within the body.”

            “Is that the trick?”

            “No. That would be like chemotherapy, with plenty of downsides. Besides the questionable ethics, I wouldn’t qualify for such a license.”

            “Then how—”

            “Ironically or not, and I won’t go into the minutiae, the streaming serum combined with heat and a way of staying afloat disrupts the signals of the izøne. Inside the body, the serum gloms to certain dendrites and adapts to the biological puzzle that we are; outside the body, the serum vacuums up the ions up there, acting, I suppose, as if it needs to know everything—”

            “—but channeling it nowhere.”

            “Exactly.”

            Seb was listening, even as the conversation was on the down-low. “So, it’s just as safe up there,” he surmised, “as in here,” pointing to his temple.

            “I wouldn’t start this place if it were otherwise,” Jack vouched. “And that’s why all my work in Chicago paid off. Speaking of which,” he smiled and tipped the wine bottle before offering it to Seb, “the payment for serum is…, let’s just say, plenty. Government covers the few injections it takes for starting up the biological process. Well, I can tell ya, there’s an awful lot of injections going up from Lover’s Island, and government aint lending me a hand.”

            “Who is, then? Our fee here for the year isn’t so outrageous.”

            “Hospitals have stock that reaches expiration, but is still safe enough outside of streaming. And friends donate to the cause. Maybe even Mrs Childress out there has peddled some influence on our behalf.”

            “That ‘sometimes’ rather gripped me,” Seb confessed.

            Jack picked up his guitar to riff some more. “Always grips me.”

            Kay and Gordon took a walk toward the lakefront and west, where Lovers Island was obscured by two bigger islands, closer to this shore. “That’s where I was shipwrecked a week ago,” Kay sort of joked.

            “I know,” Gordon didn’t joke. “I watched you.”

            “You watched me? be shipwrecked?”

            Gordon blushed. “No. I made sure you weren’t going to drown.”

            “Hmm. I guess that’s reassuring.”

            They walked further, the path less intuitive, if the quarter-moon cast a modicum of light. Lovers Island a half-mile away over star-kissed waters, they stopped to take everything in. Kay wanted to ask a million questions, though not the first one on her mind. Gordon, for his part, had a mind devoid of questions but not of basic curiosity. He thought it prudent to point out Winton, a mile in front of them, as the wild, wild west—“where that old man with a gun confronted you,” as if Kay needed such reminding.

            “Yeah, he did. And you put your body in front of that threat.”

            “S’nothing.”

            Kay let him glory in his modesty. Perhaps that’s all he knew—how to disappear from common courtesies yet swoop on in when no one’s looking for the breakdown of morals. Gordon was no Clark Kent—an archetype Kay would never have to stream again—nor was she a Lois Lane, though the whole idea of superhero journalism made her happier than she already had been these days. Who knew? This sanctuary thing is panning out. For Papa and Mama to work this hard, not just to budget for this year, but to think of Mia missing out—she’s not, of course, but—missing izøne for a year (for us; for Mia a lifetime), and what that means to be a family, izøned or otherwise… Let alone the chance to fish, prepare an unmatched walleye dish, and sing these idioms to idiot degrees, and hear of North Dakota like it’s paradise, and who am I to disagree? Buffalo and memories—a clinic in never needing context more, a weird way forward in these days of always feeling—

            Her arm pulled backward, Gordon’s face upon her lips, covering the scream that should have carried back to camp, but then the golem slumped to some appeal, “I’m sorry,” as if that would be enough right now.

            “You’re what?!”

            Gordon didn’t have a leg to stand on, let alone a voice. He cried instead, like but unlike Shel an hour or two before.

            Kay checked herself, stunned if not particularly surprised. The walk assumed a burden, now on Gordon, still on her. He said ‘sorry’—she said ‘what’—they had nothing else to constitute an understanding.

            On this nether path, the two slumped in compunction; along it loped Pretty, more alert than anyone had seen her in these frenzied days of too much visitation. Kay, of course, and Gordon, too, appreciated the border collie doing what only instinct could: herd them back to wholesome ground. The quarter-moon agreed and lit exactly what was needed in the absence of a flashlight or some izøned map. Gordon trudged ahead, then Kay reached for his downcast hand and let that be their elephant cord, Pretty making sure that they were walking not too slow, if also not too fast to reenter the open sanctuary.

XXIV.

            Trig and Pam woke before dawn and left their tent for the girls’ wigwams later in the day and week. They knocked softly on the Carters’ door and went in; Nala was up and ready to go, having taken a cup of coffee from Avis, who also prepared them journey sandwiches from leftover fillets. They didn’t wake up the girls, hibernating in their indoor tent, and rather tip-toed out the door and to their shuttle. They’d stop at Burntside Hotel first, apologizing for their three-day disappearance and settling the bill. The hotel charged just half, happy that their adventure had panned out.

            And the three of them were happy, too, if awfully groggy in the brightening morning. Headaches caught them in unison, first Trig lamenting he’d drunk too much at the campfire, then Pam reminding him she hadn’t much to drink but also felt hungover, then Nala—who had no alcohol—suggesting maybe their return to the izøne was the cause. She even streamed it: side-effects to prolonged exposure in or out of izøne, but most of what came up were historical analyses of when the technology wasn’t everywhere. Nothing on the consequences of visits to underground mosques or wilderness sanctuaries.

            “Gosh, if we’re having migraines after less than three days, how will the girls do after ten?”

            “Aamiina would be fine, of course. But Shel?”

            “Should we turn back?”

            Silence for a couple miles. “Let’s see how we feel by Barnum.”

            “Where we hit that deer last week?”

            Pam frowned. “I don’t know why that came to mind, but yeah—let’s stretch our legs there and make a decision.”

            Between the re-acclimation and the need to report to work on time, the decision at Barnum was not difficult. They were eager to step out of the shuttle, shake free the dull effects of incubation. Trig traced the journey of the deer for Nala to imagine, crashing here, wobbling there, pushing toward a path back into where it came. He left out the detail of the warden’s pursuit—they hadn’t witnessed that, anyway.

            “Shame that a moment and a leap could devastate,” Nala reflected. “The risks I’ve taken have been substantial, but also in slo-mo.”

            “That speaks to our past few days,” Pam agreed. “Such a gift to just let things unfold, morning to night, land to water to campfire ring.”

            They got back into the shuttle and continued south, heads fairly clear.

            Fewer adults meant more deliberate—but essentially less—supervision of the girls. They enjoyed an easy morning spiffing up both tents, inside the cabin and at the lakefront, proud of their efforts as if contributing to some civic cause. In fact, the sanctuary did need some volunteer labor to reinforce the chapel—caulk the seams within, clear away the algae on some underwater windows. Tim took the inner job (with the plaid-shirt guy for chess breaks), Seb took the snorkeling job (to be a spare lifeguard for the beach, Avis there as well). Gordon, Jack and Lou had things to do on the Kawishiwi dam; Kay and Sylvia and the grandma tended to the greenhouse, harvesting the last of summer, planting for the fall. The girls and Pretty swam steadily to noon, then helped Avis make a smorgasbord lunch for everyone to come back in, laugh away the lure of a siesta, and go back to their tasks again.

            The afternoon left Mia, Shel and Aamiina to explore, not without Pretty, whom Avis pseudo-sternly clasped behind the jowls and implored: don’t let them get out of your sight, to which the border collie licked her wrists and smiled predictably, never having failed. The stakes were simultaneously harder and softer here: foreign kids (come down to it) but increasingly familiar bounds—the sanctuary panning out that way.

            And outward it panned. Mia whispered a plan: “we go past our shuttle, which my dad says is dead, and over the gate and toward the road that comes into this place—”

            “—into the out-of-the-izøne?” Shel managed to express, if not so intentionally.

            “Yes,” affirmed Mia, if she (and Aamiina) had no real idea what being in or out of the izøne might mean. “I know a man in the ghost town nearby, and he seems mad but also nice…”

            It was grist enough—I know and the ghost—to propel fun-loving fear while everyone else did their chores, civic or otherwise, closer to shore.

            With serious-faced musketeers behind her, Mia told her mother they’d be in the tent for awhile—not specifying which, as if that might mollify the lie. Then they skipped toward the cabin, went inside (slamming the door for effect) and jettisoned out the open window in the back, Huck Finn style. Pretty had curled up into her lean-to on the porch, but perked up to Mia’s exaggerated whisper from the woods they would go through to get to the gate. At first Pretty stood guard: it didn’t make sense that they had just gone inside and now they were out. Then she swallowed some barks—emulating the whisper—and joined the cadre of explorers.

            While Mia knew exactly where to go, she feigned some naïveté, hoping Shel and Aami would have some of the sensations of those meerkat weeds and breezy echoes through worn and torn structures. Aami was wide-eyed, asking dozens of questions that Mia didn’t pretend to have answers for; Shel was squinting away an emerging headache, as izøne adumbrations confused her sense of what to look for, how to think. Pretty sensed that inhibition and paced closer to her, a brushing tail as an offered touchstone.

            “There,” pointed Mia, a house-and-a-half away. “That’s where he lives.”

            Shel held her arms out, crossing-guard style. “Wait. I may have a message from my mom.”

            “What?” Aamiina crinkled up her eyebrows.

            “Just… something—I guess she’s just thinking of me.”

            “What is she saying?”

            “It doesn’t work that way—not ‘saying’, but I know her voice is there if I want to hear it.”

            “Well, why don’t you then?”

            Shel puzzled her options. “If I listen to the message, she’ll know I’m not in the sanctuary.”

            “Why?”

            “’Cause that’s how she sends, so she knows I got it.”

            They ruminated for a bit, discreetly. Shel imagined her mother simply saying, ‘honey, I’m here if you need anything’ and maybe, ‘have a good time this week.’ Mia thought adventures, by definition, needed to handle the unknown but also to stay out of trouble. Aamiina wondered what her own mom would send her and whether she was thinking about her otherwise. She looked down at Pretty and tried to predict what the dog might be thinking right now, sending messages beyond the construction of letters and words, English or even Somali.

            All thoughts rechanneled, however, with the sudden appearance of Oscar, opening his door and stepping out a few strides in their direction. Shel grabbed Mia’s elbow while Aamiina knelt quickly behind Pretty, who barked what seemed like a greeting. “Hi,” Mia called out, “mister—I don’t know your name.”

            “Don’t know yours, neither.”

            “Don’t tell him,” mouthed Shel.

            “Mia. And you already know Pretty, and these are my friends.”

            A small nod to each before announcing, “I’m Oscar. No need for a ‘mister’ in front of that—I’m nobody special.” He looked like he wanted to say more, unload a lifetime of why he’d declaim as much, satirically or not. He had no illusions any passing stranger would demur—oh, everybody’s special in some way—snowflake theory, it was deemed was he was small. About their age, in fact. “Well, if you’re here you might take some cranberry juice.”

            “What’s that?” Aamiina asked, more to her peers than him.

            Shel streamed it. “Might come from those bushes,” she murmured, “but I wouldn’t—”

            “Sure,” said Mia, stepping forward and joined by Pretty, then Aamiina. Shel was tempted to use the izøne more, take that message from Pam, but fell into a different temptation to follow, throw caution to this breeze.

            Pretty, like she’d done before, entered the house easily, in front of Oscar. He rather smiled at that, “good instincts, Rover. You keep that up.”

           

            A mile-and-a-half east, as the crow flies—or loon, in this case, diving into Fall Lake—Tim and the plaid-shirt guy were engrossed in a chess match. Plenty of caulking left to do, but then again, there was no urgency: the chapel was fit as a fiddle, as Jack liked to say now and then.

            Seb looked through a window he was scraping and decided he, too, could use a break, perhaps trade jobs in the interest of variety. In the time it took him to doff the wet suit and get into dry clothes, Lou also ambled into the chapel for a similar break. Sylvia may have seen him, and the greenhouse was getting stuffy—the chapel never was that, a marvel in ventilation. She wanted to play the pump organ and Avis, who had joined the afternoon shift, offered to be her audience, sing along side if she could.

            Not having had such a gathering here for the past half week, they all rather missed the club feel. It was curious that no one had broached its availability over the weekend, especially as a place to dodge the drizzle. Then again, its area was not huge and the campfire ring made for the same effect, allowing for more serendipity.

            “The thing I love about this place, though,” Seb stretched out in the den of beanbags and pillows, “is how it feels like a hammock.”

            “Geez, ya put it that way, may make me sea-sick,” Lou joked.

            “No queasiness here—helped me recover, in fact.” Seb motioned to Avis to come join him here, but she instead slid onto the bench beside Sylvia, to read the words in the old fashioned songbook:

                        Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

                        Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens—

            “—oh, Kay would love this! Honey, go pull her in from the greenhouse—”

            But Seb didn’t have to, as Kay and the grandma entered on cue, having sniffed out the croppings of a party. Kay half-sat on the other side of Sylvia, and even Lou circled round with his crackly voice to join in:

                        Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

                        Door bells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

                        Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

                        These are a few of my favorite things!

            Avis didn’t sing the next verse, wondering about the

                        Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes…

She waited out the fullness of this song and the next before going over to Seb and asking close to his ear, “do you think the girls are okay?”

            “Long as they’re not swimming, sure. They said they’d explore. What better reason for coming here in the first place?”

            Tim proclaimed “checkmate” to the wait—what? chagrin of the plaid-shirted man, who extend a hand and re-racked his side, this time with the black pieces. “What do you call it, the last game of three?” he called out to his sister.

            Lou answered instead: “rubber match. And may th’ best man lose, to keep us all happy!”

            An easy benison for a room that agreed, though Avis was stuck on where the girls could be, especially as Mia would want to show off this cave and its wonderful pump organ. She kissed Seb’s forehead and slipped out. In the tunnel she passed Jack and Gordon, drawn by the merriment. “Back soon,” she promised, “after finding the girls.”

            Gordon, anxious to see Kay, didn’t break stride; Jack stopped in his tracks. “They’re not here? Can I help form a posse?”

            Unclear on his tone, Avis gave a light laugh. “No, I’m sure they’re safe and sound.”

            “Playin’ hide-and-seek?”

            “Yeah, maybe that,” biting her lip as she pushed through the boathouse door.

            Oscar’s living room was small and dark, even as the shades were open to afternoon sunbeams. He had served up cranberry juice—tasty, if lukewarm—and freshly peeled carrots. The girls asked him questions about the town, why nobody lived here anymore. “There’s a few of us here,” Oscar waved his arm vaguely, “as long as we’re not streamed to that izøne. May’s well not be a sanctuary for people like us.”

            Aamiina piped up, “I’m not streamed, but Shel is.” The blush was immediate and shared in such a reveal.

            Mia, diplomatically, suggested it doesn’t matter who’s streamed. “I like it here but I like Minneapolis too. What’s the big deal about izøne, anyway?”

            Shel didn’t want to say anything. Her headache hadn’t subsided, if masked somewhat in the intrigue of the place. She went over to look at the pictures on the wall, resisting the urge to stream anything about them.

            “What you got there,” Oscar decided to say, “is the last streamed person to live in Winton.”

            “Who is she?” Mia asked, joining Shel.

            “Who is she? Remember we talked last time about walleyes, yes? Remember?”

            “They’re fish,” she explained to her friends, “we had them for dinner last night.”

            “Lucky you,” Oscar smirked. “Not easy to catch, walleye. And that lady there, she was the Walleye Queen of the region.”

            “You caught her?” Aamiina tried to figure out.

            “Married her. Martha.”

            “Where is she now?”

            Mia had a feeling. “Shhh.”

            Oscar stood up and walked to the eastern window that glimpsed at Fall Lake. “She got streamed late in life, then went away. Suddenly, without indication. Maybe to that sanctuary of yours.” His lips trembled to postulate more—add Lovers Island to the mix, before she’d been streamed and after—but he swiveled his head to see their innocent eyes and clamped the topic at that.

            “I’m sorry,” Shel decided, when nobody else would express the obvious. She silently streamed ‘Martha’ and ‘Walleye Queen’ and saw in her mind a young lady—Kay’s age—with a tiara and a face just as pretty as the older woman in this framed picture on the wall. Her headache was worsening, and she said “sorry” again, “I need to go...” While Oscar pointed out the bathroom door, she shook her head, “back to the sanctuary.”

            “Be careful, girls. And thanks for the visit.”

            “Thank you for the juice and carrots,” Aamiina beamed.

            Mia also flashed a measure of cheer, patting Pretty to get up. “Bye, Mister Oscar.”

            He watched them go out and hovered at the door. “No ‘mister’, just Oscar… And say hello to your mom.”

             “Why did he mention your mom?” Shel leaned into Mia as they walked rather quickly.

            “Maybe cuz she’s the only other of us to be in his house. Maybe he mentioned Martha to her, too.”

            “The what-kind-of-queen?” Aamiina tried to remember.

            “Walleye.”

            Aware that their time away might be noticed by now, they stopped talking and picked up the pace. Pretty was faster, leading them to the mossy old road that had got them here. She barked with abandon at a familiar figure striding toward them, stopping now to signal an akimbo rebuke. Avis might have been gratified by her instinct where they would go, or that they weren’t overlong, or that they stuck together, three musketeers and their dog. Of course she wouldn’t show this fair relief in order to make them squirm.

            “We’re sorry,” Shel offered, miffed that the others were poor with this phrase.

            “No, Shel, this is on Mia,” Avis waited for her daughter to nod. “But all of you, please watch each other. An apology is thoughtful; good advice is mindful.”

            “Okay, we’ll remember.” Mia reached for her hand as they walked more relaxed. “Oscar says hello.”

            “Who’s Oscar? That old man?”

            “Yes. He’s not so mean.”

            “No. But all the more you should have asked me.”

            “We’re sorry.”

            Avis squeezed her hand softly. The other girls chatted a couple yards ahead, trying to keep up with Pretty. Shel’s head didn’t ache anymore, not that she associated that with an absence of izøne. Avis might have had a headache just for the worry, not due to the influence of Lovers Island. She thought about her encounter with the old man—Oscar, according to these girl scouts—and why he was so irate. Something about his wife, a rant about the sanctuary ruining their life, or lives. And now he extends greetings. “To whom does Oscar say hello?”

            “To you: ‘to your mom’, he said.”

            “Did he mention anybody else? Gordon?”

            Mia searched her memory, at least from this visit—the only one her mother would have in mind. In that regard, the truth was “no.” And lest she think about it more, the sanctuary path had been reached and the musketeers raced gleefully to their lakefront tent.

XXV.

            Jack was furious that the girls had absconded, finding out later that evening. He had taken fifteen minutes in the chapel with the others, even breaking out the bourbon for an early happy hour (or a quarter of that). He didn’t want to compel a ‘back to work’ mandate to the jovial crowd, yet pulled at Gordon’s sleeve to imply unfinished business at the Kawishiwi dam. They didn’t head in that direction, however, as the girls almost certainly wouldn’t be there. Jack went to check cabins, asking other having-runners if they’d seen the kids, or how they viewed them generally; Gordon went along the lakeshore, his regular stomping grounds as the stoker of Lovers Island.

            The girls and Avis and Pretty returned, then, without either man noticing. By the time everyone had circled back—including the tipsy crowd exiting the chapel—the orange sun was halfway behind Winton, signaling a need to get ready for dinner. It wouldn’t be communal at a campfire this evening, as the weekend provided enough of that. It would be leftover walleye and some fresh pickings from the greenhouse, at least for those who reaped that mini-harvest. Then dishes to wash in the cabin sink, fitted with a well-tapped supply of fresh water; drainage was limited to a couple cubed feet of aggregate outside, so more substantial washing would have to be done in the bath house near the dam.

            Kay led the youngsters there to clean up before bedtime, while Tim took a pail of garbage to bury far into the woods. It left a rare quiet moment for Avis and Seb to sit back and talk. “You ready for empty-nest syndrome, Mama Bear?”

            “That’s mixing metaphors. And no—not after losing track of the kids this afternoon.”

            “Losing ’em? Where to?”

            Avis sighed. “Where I thought Kay or Tim would sneak off to by now. Out of the sanctuary, into the izøne.”

            “Why would they want that? They’re not streamed—”

            “Shel is. But even beyond that, they wanted to see Winton.”

            A knock on the door had Seb get up, asking over his shoulder: “They walked that far?”

            Jack stood on the welcome mat. “How far?” Seb waved him in.

            Avis sighed again, differently. “Not so far. Found the girls walking from Winton.”

            “From Winton? Like they were there?”

            Like she felt passing Jack in the tunnel, Avis didn’t know how to gauge his tone. “They were. Stopped in to visit an old man we’d met before we entered the sanctuary.”

            “It’s hard to say ‘met’,” Seb qualified. “You had ten-minute chat, but I don’t know him from Adam.”

            “This is the old guy that might have attacked you! And the girls went to his house for a visit?”

            “I’m sure he wasn’t the one who attacked us,” Avis leveled. “He’s just a wisp of a man. Besides, the girls went with the dog.”

            “To their credit,” Seb bobbled his head. “Still, Jack has a point—whoever attacked us is likely still out there. We can’t have the kids just roam.”

            “Of course I told them that.”

            Jack was still standing despite being offered a chair. “Listen, it’s not to put fear into anyone—I like to roam myself, and I’d like to think that attack was a one-off, as we’ve never that kind of trouble before.”

            “…But,” Seb urged him on.

            “But it’s important to honor the boundaries. Nothing against those who enjoy the izøne—I do, myself, when I take trips to town. This sanctuary, though, can turn into gossip, or worse, when outsiders try to know how we tick.”

            “How we tick?” Avis wanted also to know.

            “How we manage to scramble the izøne.”

            “How Lovers Island works, like you mentioned the other night.”

            “Right.”

            “And you think an old man from Winton is going to get intel from little kids?”

            Jack shrugged his shoulders. “If I know whom you’re referencing, yeah. He’s been against our operation since the get-go. Canoed up to shore, convinced we were doing some Satanist charms in the chapel—”

            “I can see how it seems mysterious.”

            “I keep it private precisely to protect having-runners, to give them a refuge from contrarian rants. Some prefer campfires, some to be alone as much as possible in their cabins: we don’t push folks to this way of living or that. But our common foundation—why we’re all here—is to enjoy the world as it was before izøne, and not be bullied about it.”

            The door opened and Tim came in. Jack put his palms out to suggest he had said enough anyway. Seb was still interested, however. “Do you think there’s some envy from people like him—‘the grass always greener’—”

            “Could be. From what I gather, he’s not streamed anyway. Winton for him should be sanctuary enough.”

            “Who’s the ‘him’?” Tim wanted to know.

            “Nobody,” Avis asserted. “Not worth reviewing.”

            Jack mimed a tipping of hat as he backed out the door and bid them good night, masking the fact he was furious.

            The next day planned for the next and the next, which would only succeed if everyone cooperated and passed their merit badges, so to speak. With the two pup tents and a larger one retrieved from the shuttle, the seven of them and Pretty could canoe to place they could camp, explore more in earnest instead of scratching any itch to sneak away. Tim borrowed a map from the grandma, who suggested a destination of Gary Island in Pipestone Bay, eleven winding miles in total, with two portages through Newton and Pipestone Falls. The weather looked favorable, and just to be sure, Seb walked halfway to Winton to confirm by the izøne, using the time to stream a bit more things that increasingly weren’t worthy to check. He thought for a minute whether sending a message to Nala or Pam would be wise, but then, decidedly No. We’re not leaving the sanctuary, after all, and this very step into izøne might confuse matters. Let sleeping dogs lie, the idiom he had to stream, not knowing why it came to mind.

            While Aamiina and Shel would not have to paddle, sitting on floatable cushions in the middle of their canoes, they’d still need to prove they could handle an improbable flip and (lifejackets on) swim to shore. They’d need to handle the net if the trawler hooked a fish—and be calm when that fish would go reasonably crazy. They’d need to tow their weight in gathering stones and wood for a fire circle, then be able to tend it.

            Then there’d have to be the naming of the canoes. Tim would be in his own with most of the gear and Pretty, so Shel suggested ‘Pretty Tim’ but blushed instantly at how he looked at her. Avis and Kay would paddle with Aamiina in the middle—‘Mother Ship’ made sense there. Seb and Mia would have Shel in the middle; Kay deemed them ‘Santa Maria’ and renamed her own ‘La Niña’ (the favorite of Columbus, she remembered from past streaming), leaving Tim to be ‘La Pinta’. “It was the fastest of the three,” she argued to Tim’s suspicion, “and since you know where we’re going, you need to be the point guard.” She was mashing up the Spanish, but it satisfied Tim.

            So they floated out mid-week to discover new lands, fearing nothing as much as falling off the edge of the izøned earth.

            Gary Island hosted them perfectly. The barrier of water in Pipestone Bay was meant to mitigate the problem of predators (the wolverine still on Mia’s mind) and it was easy for Tim to canoe to the mainland to bury fish heads and other garbage. Their three tents in the middle of the island looked like a stagecoach ring—safety within safety within the wilder unknown.

            Thirty-six hours after they pushed off from the sanctuary beach, they returned happily exhausted. Shel and Aamiina were extra excited that in half as many hours, their moms and Trig would be coming back and everyone would ‘fill your boots’ again.

            They and Mia got busy rebuilding their tent-within-the-cabin. Avis and Tim filleted some Mile Island bluegills for supper. Kay went to find Gordon, ostensibly to return the canoes and preservers to the boathouse. Seb rolled up the large tent and stored it back in the shuttle.

            In the short distance further, at the sanctuary gate, he noticed two figures working against the fading light. One, by his stance, was Gordon. “Hey,” Seb called out, “we’ve just arrived.”

            Gordon didn’t answer, but Jack, obscured by a fusebox he apparently was installing, echoed the “Hey.” He grunted to tighten some bolt and asked, “how did it go?”

            “Gary Island? Good recommendation.” Seb stepped toward them with no detail in mind, instead asking, “can I lend a hand?”

            “On this? No—just about done, and getting too dark to work safely.”

            “What is it—a callbox of sorts?”

            “Yeah, and security on top of that. You’ll want to remind the kids—well, I’ll mention it to each having-runner—not to touch the perimeter fence, including this gate unless someone at the boathouse gives the okay.”

            Seb looked at the stretch of old fence going into the woods in each direction and noticed new sets of wires on hard plastic poles that hadn’t been previously there. “Electric? You have enough juice for that ’round the clock?”

            Jack lifted himself, locked the fusebox and pocketed the key. “That’s what Gordon and I were doing at the dam, rigging a separate output that supplies just for this fence.”

            “Is this because the girls wandered out?”
            “More to the point—that nobody wanders in. What we talked about three nights ago, remember?”

            “I do.” Seb looked at Gordon, who had nothing to add. “Just surprised you’ve been able to do this so fast. Hope it won’t zap the folks coming in tomorrow?”

            “Trig and Pam?”

            “And Nala.”

            “Of course. Nobody legit will be zapped—I’m not done with the signage and such.” Jack gathered his tools, jiggled a new padlock on the gate as if to show a softer side to the plan. “Who was it? Atwood I think—who said in this world there’s ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’.” He nodded at Gordon’s eyebrowed request to run ahead, his duties done for the day.

            Seb watched the golem trot toward what would be likely his goal—Kay—and swallowed that thought to pick up on Jack’s. “Freedom ‘to’ and ‘from’ what?”

            “Can’t recall if she specified. It was in some weird world where government was calling everyone’s shots. I’m not interested in ‘government’ really, but I bring it up because…” Jack hesitated.

            “Because?” Seb kept walking, not wanting to stretch this talk out.

            “Because the izøne is a lot of ‘freedom to’, and I’m not sabotaging that for the wider world.”

            “And the sanctuary is ‘freedom from’, if I see where you’re going.”

            “Did you miss the izøne en route to Gary Island?”

            “You know we came here not to miss the izøne, but to experience life without it.”
            “Freedom from.”

            “Sure. And so far, so good.”

            “That’s what I’m here to protect, Seb. Freedom to let your year go as planned, freedom from anyone interfering.” Jack bumped Seb’s elbow in an extended right hand.

            “We’re shaking on that,” Seb puffed a little laugh, “like blood brothers?”

            Jack smiled for the first time in three days. “Why not? Minus the blood, of course.”

            “Minus the blood,” Seb blankly repeated, and shook.

XXVI.

            Bedtime came early for most, including Kay, who entered mid-supper in a sullen mood. She didn’t appreciate Gordon’s indifference about the details of their trip or evasions on how his own day-and-a-half had gone. Mia took her role, then, of reading a chapter aloud, pulling out The Trumpet of the Swan and putting the other girls to sleep, despite their valiant questions about Sam Beaver, and “where was the pond?” and “island… nest of… swa—hh—hh—hh…”

            Seb wasn’t as ready to sleep. He sat on the porch with Avis, whispering about the new fence. “Just the same as keeping livestock in,” he clarified, meaning less that they were sheep and more that an accidental touch would not be life-threatening. “A zap to stay away, but still…”

            Avis wondered, “only from that Winton side? I mean, we just traveled miles of sanctuary space. Jack thinking he’ll fence all that in?”

            “Who knows? He and Gordon rigged it from the dam and followed the old fence line: looping all these east cabins to the gate, then the west end looking out to Lovers Island. Basically the land he certifiably owns.”

            “What’s the big deal then? Just like us camping on an island, it’ll keep the bears and wolverines away.”

            “Wolverines are as elusive as big foot; Pretty more likely got into it with a lynx or coyote.” But the bear got Seb thinking. “You know, any creature that climbs trees is going to get over that fence.”

            “Yeah. Fences aren’t foolproof.”

            “And I’m going to test that notion right now.”

            “In the dark? You’re not. You’re—”

            “Gonna see about those cabins closer to Garden Lake, south of the old road—the one that Lou lives in, for instance. How aware is he of this electric fence? Will he have to get the grandma or someone to unlock the gate every time he comes to the chapel?”

            “Let it be tomorrow’s thing. I’d be nervous about you breaking a leg or… worse.”

            “Nonsense. I’ll take Pretty if that helps.”

            “No. Pretty can’t climb trees. C’mon, leave this for tomorrow.”

            “Tomorrow folks from Faribault come back. I want to ask Lou a few things before broad daylight.”

            Avis wasn’t going to win and didn’t want to offer, “should I go with?” to which Seb grave that it’s a free world shrug she never took as an answer. She opened the cabin door and asked Pretty if she’d come in or stay out. Free world even for this dog, Pretty decided to go in with her.

            Seb did, too, but only for a flashlight and a coil of rope that hung from a long nail. Tim, who’d want to nose into this plan, was fast asleep, and Kay, reading by candlelight, feigned disinterest. Seb tiptoed out and kissed the cabin good night.

            While he didn’t have a particular tree in mind, he was confident choices would avail themselves with a little patience. But first stop, the gate—why not just bound over that, as there’d naturally be a break in the wiring? Jack and Gordon had accounted for that, however, running the electric cord along the top rail and spring-loading a flapper one side to the other, above the padlocked gap. Along with the old barbed-wire that had been fairly easy to step over or through, the new fence covered the gaps to chest-high, a more than symbolic way to stay out or stay in.

            Birches, when clumped, were easier to climb but stingy on branches that arched over the fence. Red pines were better that way, yet their trunks were rough and hard to hold onto. Seb managed to throw an end of the rope around a branch twelve feet up, secured the loop and scaled the tree walking its trunk vertically, then grabbing the branch and shimmying over for a safe drop. He left the rope there, knowing the return would be harder but doable.

            The flashlight was more the more necessary tool to navigate through the woods to Lou’s cabin. He had been there before, exploring the Garden Lake reservoir above Kawashiwi dam: the further south, the more in-and-out the izøne would be. For Lou, unstreamed, that staticky fact didn’t matter. He lived here before Jack had bought the grounds, and rather appreciated people like him, having run an unnatural life and now having come back to nature. Seb wanted to ask if he knew the old man from Winton, but first on his mind was Lou’s take on this fence.

            Lou’s lantern was lit, and Seb flashed his flashlight toward the same window to signal this unannounced visit. A couple hushed calls of his name, and Lou opened the door, with a fearless, “who’s there?”

            “It’s me, Seb. Pardon my—”

            “Oh, Seb! C’mon in. ’Less you’re lost or sumtin’.”

            “No, not lost.” Seb ascended the almost unnecessary steps to Lou’s little porch—one that had a great view of Garden Lake, now blanketed in darkness. “Just wanted your opinion on a thing or two.”

            “Sure. Want some coffee?”

            “This time of night?”

            “Scandernavian stock—don’ pay attention to daylight or not. C’mon in.”

            He’d been reading a book by an armchair and was quick to light up another lantern and then a gas burner on an old stove. Seb smiled at the simplicity and warmth of the place—not that Lou had his fireplace lit, saving the chopped wood for later in autumn. “Yours is exactly the place I imagined up here,” Seb mused, “when Avis and I committed for a year.”

            “Hope it goes longer, what with those youngsters ya got. Take sugar? Don’ got milk.”

            Coffee. Not what Seb wanted, but “okay. Just a bit.”

            Seb settled into another chair in the main room, less sure now what he wanted to ask. “I don’t see any muskellunge on the wall, Lou. They all got away?”

            “Ate ’em.” Lou entered with two mugs. “Stuffed my stomach, better’n the walls. Fact is, I don’ go fer the biggies—no Cap’n Ahab ’n me. Easy to net perch right out the door here, practic’ly.”

            “Now, don’t give away your secrets.”

            “Nothin’ to give away, jus’ to share. That’s part of the ’sprit de corps, doncha know. You catch my fish, I catch yers, ever’body’s fed an’ happy.”

            “What are you reading, if I may ask.”

            “Why, certainly. It’s a stand-by o’ mine, tend to pull it off the shelf ’bout this time o’ year. One Hundred Years of Solitude—you know it?”

            “A biography, I think, of… I forget.”

            “Not mine, if that’s in the ol’ ballpark.”

            “No, plus your solitude doesn’t seem to be so, I don’t know, lonely?”

            “Well, it’s a bit like Macondo’s—the town that’s destined to exis’ for a century only, and mos’ o’ that in the nether regions o’ the world’s memory. I’m at this spot where Remedios the Beauty—mos’ beautiful woman the world has ever, or never, seen. Men who do go crazy, fall t’ death climbing the roof to see her hang laundry, for Pete’s sake!”

            “Does she comment on this kind of attention?”

            “She don’ say much at all. Sorta in her own state o’ heaven, not cuz she’s doing more than house chores and bathing—oh, forgot to say: she don’ wear clothes much, prefers to live au naturel.”

            “Hmm. In her own kind of sanctuary, maybe.”

            “Could say. Happy to lend this to ya.”

            “Thanks, after you’re done.”

            “Never done! That’s the charm o’ good stories. An’ the opportunity o’ book swaps, as doesn’t much happen in the izøned world.”

            “True. So that’s maybe why I knocked on your door—”

            “Don’ need no reason.”

            “That’s genuinely felt. And likewise to ours. You might know, though, that there’s an electric fence now separating us—your side of the old highway and ours.”

            “What Gordon an’ Jack been workin’ on. Yes, I talked to ’em.”

            “You fine with it? Buzzing in to the boathouse, waiting for someone to come with the key—”

            “Jack gave me a key to that padlock, so I don’ feel shut out any. I’m sorta a wandering ghost anyway—Melquíades is the guy in this book with me mos’ in mind. Shows up when the time’s right.”

            They sipped coffee and talked more about patterns in their days, how work lends to leisure and sometimes to boredom, regardless of what might be new, familiar, something to look forward to. They spoke about campfires and why they were different than chapel gatherings—the meandering factor, for one. They brought up the kids and the visitors and how they bring soul to the place. “You do, too, Lou. And that’s why I didn’t want you to be locked out.”

            “’Preciate that. But I think you’re also concerned about bein’ locked in.”

            “Come again?”

            “Jus’ readin’ the tea leaves here—coffee grounds, as ’t’were. You wouldn’ be the first here to worry ’bout cabin fever, ’specially when winter kicks in. Jack’s one-year commitments have some science to it, prob’ly. Some haven’t made it an’ disappear; some wanna re-up an’ become lifers. This li’l ’lectric fence aint gonna change that ratio none, I’m thinkin’.”

            “I’m not worried myself about cabin fever. How the kids and Avis deal with an un-izøned year is more on my conscience.”

            “Oh, let ’em hero themselves—don’ sell ’em short. Let ’em fill their boots, fer goodness sakes.”

            Seb nodded at that and stretched out a hand. “Thanks, Lou.”

            “Fer what? Caffeine t’ keep ya up all night?”

            “For letting me test that fence.”

            The rope was where Seb had left it, there for the hanging, he involuntarily thought. He considered for a minute whether he had anything to stream—not that he could do so in this very spot, but a half-mile walk toward Winton wouldn’t make much difference in the flexibility of the night. For that matter, he could have tried to stream something at Lou’s, as fluttering as the info might be. Something about García Márquez, for instance. The temptation never took shape, however, and wasn’t doing so now. Seb grabbed the rope and expended all energy to tug each hand and foot up, inch by inch. Arming the branch gave him no real rest, but there was no going back. He loosened the rope and threw it to the sanctuary side, then grunted down the trunk until he could safely drop.

            He barely needed the flashlight from this point on. No point in drawing attention to his foray from anyone who’d see through the distant cabin windows. Or Gordon, hiding behind some tree. Or Jack with his mumbo-jumbo on freedoms, from and to. C’mon, Seb, just get back to your bed and silence that buzz in your head.

            Avis opened the door and Pretty came out, sniffing Seb to fathom his past hour. “Everything fine?”

            Seb brushed off his shirt any remaining motes of red pine and embraced his wife as a response. “I like Lou, maybe more now that he’s harder to visit.”

            They went in, forgetting about Pretty. She had her lean-to on the porch, anyhow, and was now better protected due to this fence. It’s good to have guardian angels, someone might have been thinking, begging the question (or not) what demons they’d have to ward off.

XXVII.

            The headaches of Nala and Pam had glided away with the Monday morning miles back to Faribault. Trig’s lasted longer into the day, a fact he didn’t want to reveal—nothing to migraine proportions, anyway. But a dull discomfort sustained through the night into Tuesday; Pam read through his brave face and encouraged him to take the day off. “Or at least nap through the afternoon. I’ll just hang out at Alexander Park, where there’s never a need for two of us.”

            “No,” Trig decided, “I won’t compromise the beat. Rather be candid with Chief.”

            Trig hadn’t told anyone at work about their second trip north to the sanctuary. There was really no need—the personal day last week was nobody’s business, and a recreational return to a venue of investigation might appear untoward. This upcoming weekend wouldn’t entail a personal day, so all the more reason he wouldn’t reveal the plan to visit the sanctuary again. Yet this lingering headache was giving him pause. Perhaps it was a matter of duration: three days of blocked izøne as distinct from a couple hours on the first occasion. They wouldn’t have to stay another three days, but the plan was to have at least a celebratory night or two to close out the experience for the girls.

            By Wednesday, with plenty of sleep between doses of ibuprofen, Trig was not feeling any better, so he made an appointment at the clinic. It would be unethical in his own mind to take the work week off and tip-toe toward another weekend romp, especially if that could exacerbate his current disquiet. Worth a medical opinion, at least.

            Dr Brent was all ears to his situation. He expressed concern about how the izøne was being scrambled—what toxins might be involved—and why Trig wouldn’t feel their effect until after a direct exposure. And why wouldn’t Pam or Nala react the same way, or as intensely? Many studies had been conducted on how the izøne could bring on headaches (or worse) to people streamed and unstreamed. As a result of these studies, decades ago, a codified formula ensured that streaming was safe and a regulated izøne affected no one adversely.

            And now, Dr Brent challenged, where were the studies on the effects of a sanctuary from the izøne? “And how do they do it, anyway? You must have inquired.…”

            Trig had doubts about going down this road, even as Jack had spoken with confidence about expiration dates of streaming serum and its availability at hospitals. What better authority than Dr Brent to corroborate Jack’s rendition—even if it effectively reversed the good doctor’s efforts. Trig declined to say more, thinking he’d consult with Pam first, perhaps even Nala.

            As if reading his thought, Dr Brent asked by-the-way, “you were here when that girl was being treated for a head injury, yes? A golfball hit her, if I remember right. How is she?”

            Trig reviewed in his mind whether he’d included anyone other than Pam in his account of the sanctuary. “Um, that would be for her mother to say.”

            Dr Brent looked into this patroller’s eyes, an unflinching three or four seconds. “Indeed, that would be proper. But she hasn’t followed up as she should have by now, concussion protocols being what they are. You’ll see her, perhaps?”

            Trig shrugged and looked down. The injection the doctor had given him was doing the trick—the headache was gone now, if general fatigue was unchanged. “I may follow up myself in days to come, if that’s okay.”

            “Of course. Meanwhile, you might do some research on that izøne killer.” He pursed his lips into a quasi-emotion. “I know that I shall.”

            As for the upcoming weekend, Pam had an idea. She’d been talking to her father about how serene the environment was, how Shel now had two new friends in as many weeks. Jim, she said, crunched his face for the tears of happiness and wondered if he could see the place for himself. “And why not?” Pam suggested privately to Trig. “Unstreamed, he can test out this whole headache problem, too. Nala likes him, as does Aamiina, who calls him ‘Grandpa’.”

            True, all that. And Trig’s nascent jealousy was just as undeniable, if again he put on his tried-and-tired brave face. “I mean, I can handle a headache—”

            Pam snuggled into his arm. She wasn’t implying otherwise, he knew, and wanted nothing to change. “My dad loves you; he wouldn’t poach your chance to complete the otter training.”

            “I’m sure he could do just fine in that department. But here’s an idea: I can go up with you and Jim as far as Ely, you guys continue on to the sanctuary. Could even stay at Burntside—”

            “What? Alone? That’s unromantic—”

            “Hear me out. I do some research at the hospital there, find the office for the Ely Echo, maybe hike over to Winton and talk more with Oscar.”

            “To what end, Mr Tangent?”

            “Precisely—I’d use my cover, fill the time to get to know the izøned area around Jack’s operation.”

            “Spying? If you had such suspicions, why in the world would you let Shel stay the week?”

            Trig had to backpeddle. “Not spying, as such. Listen, last weekend was phenomenal—and I mean no ambiguity in the word…”

            “But you do.” She finger-walked from his chest to the temple opposite her lean. “I can sense the jukebox gears.”

            “Like changing the tune? No, Lightspeed, you can’t floodlight me like that. If I do mean something else by ‘phenomenal’, it’s this: the sanctuary requires streaming serum to scramble the izøne. Sounds simple enough on one level, sort of like the bombers of Dresden dropped magnetic ribbons to block radio waves in order to optimize their sneak attack. But it is quite a phenomenon to take a biological element—engineered for human dendrite interaction—and toss it to the physics of the troposphere. Physics and chemistry, to make it more phenomenal.”

            Pam massaged his temple. “Your headache’s made you smarter! Or is this that mad streaming doctor speaking through you?”

            “Dr Brent? I didn’t talk to him about Jack’s formula, whatever it is. I did say I was in a non-izøne area for a few days.”

            “Did you call it a ‘sanctuary’?”

            “I did. But nothing else to suggest the location or anybody’s name. I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first.”

            “Aww, that’s sweet.” She kissed the bottom of his chin. “As for your plan, let’s do this: book a room at Burntside for yourself on Friday and two more on Saturday night. We’ll join you then and have a chance to enjoy that lake, whatever the izøne gives as a difference—even some headache protocol, if we need the Ely hospital, which you’d scope in advance.”

            “You think Carters, Jack and everyone will let you go a night early? They were pretty insistent about our staying the fullness of the weekend.”

            “Sure, and I’ll ask Nala her idea on that. But we can be frank about the headache factor, the need to recover a day before getting back to work.”

            “The girls don’t have jobs, they’ll argue.”

            “Oh, I think the golf course has internships for them. That, or herding toads at Alexander Park.” She kissed him again, then ascertained, “plan?”

            He closed his eyes in a peace of mind he hadn’t felt all week. “Trig Tangent’s on board. Lightspeed?”

            “On board. Now we gotta get codenames for Nala and Dad.”

            Nala was fine with the plan—excited, even for another chance to stay at Burntside, where the meals were scrumptious and the book she had started, Travels With Charley, awaited in the hotel library. She was a little concerned about the difference of Trig’s headache to hers; she had always been good at handling rough seas and adjusting to different atmospheres, so maybe there was a psychological element. Then again, Pam’s seemed to go away quickly, too, so gender might have something to do with it. Regardless, an extra night (or even two, if they’d leave Burntside early Monday morning) seemed wise for the girls to reacclimatize. Not that the izøne would matter to Aamiina, but perhaps she’d also feel the effects of what scrambled that beast in the air.

            Jim was “just happy” for any experience that would extend the natural world to these girls—his sudden advent into grandfathering for two. Trig suggested ‘Jim Justice’ be his pseudonym for signing in to the sanctuary, to keep that part of their gambit consistent.

            “Tangent, Lightspeed, Justice—that won’t raise the grandma’s eyebrow? Sounds like we’re comic book characters.”

            “No, she had a better guess: that they’re Indian names. And while I hate lying, I can empathize a bit now why someone would take on such pale face abstractions. Kind of throwing the notion back at the occupier: ‘you bring your sense of justice, well, meet me: Jim Justice.’”

            “‘You bring your protractor machinations, meet me: Trig Tangent.’”

            Pam laughed. “And me? ‘You think you’re Einstein…?’”

            Trig pursed his lips and rocked his still smarting head. “Jack may not be Einstein, but he’s definitely done something impactful. Hopefully for good. It’s like Prometheus bringing fire from Mount Olympus, but maybe in reverse.”

            “How so?”

            “The brazen guy steals what only the gods can enjoy, then puts that power in the hands of people—to cook, to survive winter, to ‘play with fire’ and to make bombs. Lots of trust for miscreants.”

            “Got that, but in reverse? Walk me through that.”

            Trig wasn’t sure he had a clear idea. “‘In reverse’ means we got something already—knowledge of things, communication, human spirit. We evolve with those natural features to dominate the animal kingdom and effectively become gods. Mount Olympus is ours—all of humanity’s, though your royal courts and Wall Streets and Silicon Valleys tend to call the shots. But enter Jack—poor man’s Prometheus—stealing back the natural world before humans got their mitts on it. I don’t know, just a theory.”

            “A tangent?”

            “I’d have to stream the trigonometry for that. And… not today. My mind is spent.”

            Really, he was feeling better. So was Pam, vicariously. Friday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough, mostly to be with the girls again, somewhat to test the myths of modernity.

XXVIII.

           Inside the tent within the Carters’ cabin, the girls slowly woke to their sense that today would bring another adventure. “They’re coming again,” Shel declared in almost no decibels, referring to Nala, Pam and (presumably) Trig. It would be another ‘Fill Your Boots’ weekend and she, mouthing for her giggling peers, could not wait. Tim groggily demanded they shut up; Kay more kindly bid them to walk the dog—everyone aware that Pretty needed no one to walk her, especially now that her lean-to linked the cabin to the outer world, notwithstanding the barrier of Jack’s electrified fence, leapable for border collies.

             To some extent, Pretty had the keenest sense of any cognizant being on the sanctuary grounds: she knew how various dinner bells rang and how to scrounge when such patterns came short; she knew who was trustworthy and who was worth suspicion, even if she reserved any instinct to growl. She saw how humans growled all too often in their own manner, diminishing the relevance of that power. On the other paw, a more positive power generated empirically during each morning and afternoon walk, for every sojourner involved. Pretty would walk ten yards ahead to sniff out situations, while still deferential to those who needed to lead from behind.

            After such serendipity and the dog’s curl into the cabin porch, the girls spruced up the other pup tent near the lakeshore and weaved wreaths of lavender and castilleja for three adult heads to match the ones they had made the other day for themselves. They practiced a skit called ‘The Three Otters’—approximately based on the exploits of Goldilocks, an actor for which they hadn’t yet commissioned—and the three bears. Tim, of course, committed only to playing a wolf; Kay shrugged an unhelpful ‘whatever’; likewise, Avis was flexible but too busy to rehearse; Seb feigned an ignorance in anything folklorish—all the more reason he’d be the perfect Goldilocks, for heaven’s sake.

            Alas, his thespian morning efforts drooped Seb to afternoon exhaustion. He reviewed in his mind last night’s talk with Melquíades, how perhaps the sanctuary was in the infant years of Macondo’s futile century: finding self, integrating others; losing self, lancing others; numbing self, spurring others; killroying self, getting killed by others…. All with Melquíades in and out to hint at this or that, or just to bear witness, as if a reader of the very novel he semi-stars in, Lou a sentinel to a century that saw the world’s no-going-back, izøned or otherwise. The contemplation was too much, and Seb napped protractedly, clinging to his quilt.

             At the sanctuary gate, Pam read the sign to press the intercom signal. She was bemused also at the wiring along the fence; she turned to Nala with a wondering look, then told her father this wasn’t how it they entered last week. Security can’t be a bad thing, she tried in vain to stream as a message. Jim would have only received that by the look on her face, anyhow.

            Jack came half-jogging, the padlock key in his hand like a beagle straining on a leash. He joked that Trig had aged a bit—Jim introduced himself as Pam’s father, tagging in this weekend. “Headache,” Pam abbreviated, truthfully. Jack pressed his lips in a ‘shame, that’ manner, and continued in his welcoming enthusiasm to sweep them in, including their shuttle, and relock the gate.

            “Been thinking of that measure for months now,” Jack thumbed back toward the fence, even as no one mentioned it. “Not what I conceived when I took on this place—rather the opposite: wanted a free-roam zone for anyone tired of the izøne.”

            “A zone against the zone!” Jim chuckled. “Story of humanity: protect us from our Frankensteins.”

            The girls, who had guessed as much from the waterfront (seeing Jack leave the boathouse toward the gate) ran to greet them. Pam repeated the one-word excuse for Trig’s absence, and Jim was overjoyed to be led on a tour, notwithstanding the fact that he hadn’t yet signed in to the guest book. Nala imagined he’d make a flower of his asterisk; she had thought through the week about that designation—why Jack or the grandma needed to know who was streamed and who wasn’t—and the notion of headaches coming out of this place, at least for those streamed. Worth asking later, especially if she caught a quiet moment with the grandma.

            The evening would be anything but quiet, however. Kay and Gordon were having an under-the-radar argument, stemming somewhat from the secrets of the place, in plain sight or otherwise. Gordon’s lips were always sealed concerning his row-outs to Lovers Island, and Kay was starting to switch roles—watching his routines like an unshakable shadow. Conversely, she also spent more time playing chess with the plaid-shirt guy, angling for a jealous response from Gordon. The tunnel to the chapel became space for daily dust-ups: if you go there then I’ll go here, unless we go together!...

            Within the chapel itself, gatherings were increasingly extemporaneous. Nala and Pam hadn’t known of it—Pam greatly desiring to message Trig on the wonder and her slight apprehension, especially as Shel and Aamiina seemed to have gone conspicuously native in this hidden environment. Jim announced his impression of this “perfect 19^th hole—a dream feature in an active clubhouse.” Jack accepted that as a compliment and introduced him to Lou, sitting at the fireplace in the middle of some story, with Sylvia all ears. Though the disc really wasn’t large, groups formed in the semblance of pentagonal corners:

• the elders, now three, at the fireplace;
• the girls at the pump organ, having received Sylvia’s permission;
• Tim and the plaid-shirt guy, forever playing chess;
• Nala, Pam, Avis, Seb and Jack at the trolley bar, where an altar might fit;
• Kay and Gordon, hedging to exit in hushed fits of articulation.

The sixth corner,  if the disc would constitute such an angle, was the beaded entrance in front of a submarine-strength door that never closed. The middle of the chapel retained a pleasant disarray of pillows and chairs.

            “My erstwhile sick bay,” Seb pointed out, “earning full accolades.”

            Pam furled her brow. “Did you fall ill this week?”

            “No, no—it was before your weekend visit. And usually this place is for more upbeat purposes. Surprised we hadn’t gathered here then.”

            Jack was stony-faced, if smiling.

            “What was ailing you?” Pam continued. “Migraines?”

            “Hmm! Good guess. Concussion, probably, from a fall I—” Seb glanced at Avis to gauge whether the ‘we’ would be worth the telling, and quickly decided— “took. No big deal, especially immersed in such relaxation.”

            Nala weighed in. “That’s what Aamiina had a couple weeks ago—a grade 3 concussion.” She blushed in the sudden awareness that Pam would seem culpable with the fuller context, so wrapped the fact with an “all’s well, though. Some bumps should be expected on a worthy journey.”

            “She’s been a picture of health,” Jack assured. “We’ll miss her. And Shel, as well.”

            “They haven’t been too rambunctious?” Pam queried, knowing the answer.

            Avis shook her head. “Mia will be crushed not to have them here. They can come back sometimes, can’t they, Jack?”

            His platform now a kingly court. “Of course. Especially as Shel may want relief from the izøne, now that she’s experienced it. Aami, of course, is blessed never to have needed such relief! Our tiny sanctuary,” Jack twirled his arm around a fraction of the chapel’s circumference, implying the water and land tangibly beyond, “is meant to seed the world of the need for such space. Time was that the pre-izøned world had been more voluntary—a ‘dial-up’, I think the term was, for people to connect to information channels or not, depending on inclination or need. Those were the days when reception and messaging were still external from a person’s body. Nothing ‘streamed’, per se, at least in terms of blood flow and dendrites. Push-button devices. Earbuds. Medieval products of plastic and lithium.”

            “There’s a touch of lithium still in use,” Seb thought to remind, “from the injected serum to the izøne itself.”

            “You’re right, and it’s a most unnatural element. Unmineable. Something the cavemen could never have stumbled upon—until our forebears became 20^th century cavemen.”

            “And now we’re the pioneer spelunkers in this very chapel,” Avis quipped. “Mia, like Aami, could have a sense of sanctuary anywhere. But,” sweeping her arm as Jack had done, “this place is not just ‘anywhere’. Not for us, of course, but not even for her.”

            “That sounds ambiguous,” Jack challenged, “like the place doesn’t suit you—”

            “The opposite!” she elbowed back. “Winter, sure, will be interesting. I can imagine a bit of cabin fever, but,”

            “But that’s why we got a gathering place like this, Dear. Pretty good sick bay, I can say.”

            “Plus as many hours on the ice as you’ve been in canoes. Fish won’t jump outta the holes we auger, but they’ll have deeper hunger pangs.”

            “Speaking of,” Nala thumbed toward the tunnel, “dinner is my pleasure to share with anyone here. I brought more than enough cambuulo and muufo, maybe sambusa for starters.”

            “Straight from Somalia!”

            “Well, from a Faribault store. Don’t have much contact with the old country.”

            “All the more reason,” said Jack, “you are always welcome here.”

            Before dinner, however, the girls were anxious to put on their play. They pulled Seb out of his happy hour circle and gave him final cues, pointing covertly here and here and here to cover the basics of the story. “And should I talk to the audience? Solicit their advice?”

            “NO!” Mia rolled her eyes. “Goldilocks doesn’t know anybody’s looking. That’s kinda the point.”

            “But we’re gonna ask the watchers—”

            “—audience,” Aamiina corrected Shel.

            “We’re gonna ask them, ‘who’s been eating my porridge’, right?”

            “We can, but we don’t need to listen.”

            “So, like usual,” Seb gibed. “And for the ending, when you wake me up—”

            “Act real scared,” Mia insisted.

            “Yeah, that’s easy. But then—you guys never decided—do I faint or say ‘sorry’ or—”

            “Run away—back down the tunnel.”

            “I thought he should stay,” Shel asserted, “cuz he wanted to learn how to swim.”

            “But we’re not at the beach. Too dark to swim now.”

            “He can learn in the morning,” Aamiina suggested.

            “Not if I run away.”

            “Well,” Mia shrugged, “do whatever. Ask the audience, maybe.”

            Their spirited whispers were garnering the attention of that very audience, which Mia now directed to sit in the swivel chairs at the chapel’s center ring. The pillows had been carefully poached to form three beds along the wall where Kay and Gordon had been brooding. The fireplace made for a natural kitchen, and next to the chess table Mia had slid in an empty cardboard box that the grandma let them demolish. All was set, and Seb was savvy to exit on the sly. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mia announced, “we’re glad you have come tonight to see our play. It’s called—”

            Shel ratta-tat-tatted on her thighs. “The adventures of Goldilocks…”

            Aamiina made whiskers from her wiggly fingers, “and the three…”

            Since no one responded after Shel and Mia added their wiggly fingers to their cheeks, Lou called out, “bears!”

            “No! We’re…”

            “Spiders?”

            “Colder!” Mia stomped in mock frustration.

            “Bluegills?”

            “Warmer…”

            “We… give up,” Avis spoke a bit in-the-know.

            “Otters!” all three said, and scampered to their designated beds. 

            The play was mostly pantomime and giggles, if Mia filled in some necessary narrative. The three otters were hankering for a morning swim after making their beds nicely, reading invisible newspapers on their chairs and box (Aamiina quite practiced in pretend sitting), then stirring the vat by the fire for three bowls of porridge—too hot, of course, to eat immediately. “So let’s swim!” They wiggled through the hanging beads and the tunnel toward the boathouse, making splashing noises as they ran.

            The audience clapped as if the scenes were finished, Lou reminding them of a certain ingénue to anticipate. “Le’s see, who can that be? Silverlocks?”

            Sylvia tugged at his sleeve: “hey, I’m right here, Mister!”

            “Baldilocks?”

            Seb entered with his dome covered in a scramble of yellow yarn, again courtesy of the grandma, who couldn’t help but spy on the scene from her side of the beaded door. The girls, too, stifled their laughter behind her. Seb hammed the role with a wagging tongue, gobbling appetite, Victorian hauteur, Chaplinesque clumsiness. Even Gordon broke a smile at the spectacle of his pratfall, Kay folding her arms more pensively. The too this, too that, just right formula intrigued her, as if a psychological calibration of how one acclimates, serendipitously. A modicum of social sense—Seb occasionally broke the ‘fourth wall’ of this theatre-in-the-round—added to this golden refugee’s decision-making.

            And then the otters came in, drying themselves off with beach towels. They were nonplussed about the dips into their porridge bowls, Aamiina sobbing unconvincingly while her older otters moped, arms akimbo. Their stumble on the chairs (Seb had managed to upend them before squashing the box) made for more consternation and tears. Lou suggested they go back into the water, cool off a bit, and Shel appeared to agree—“maybe it’s all just a bad dream,” she ad libbed.

            “Then if it’s a dream,” Mia was quick on the logic, “we should go back to bed and sleep through it.”

            But of course their covers were rumpled, and worse: Aamiina screamed at the sight of serene Goldilocks, now waking up to her own form of nightmare. Seb jittered this way and that, a lightning bug bouncing around in a jar. “Where should I go? What should I do?”

            “Meet them,” Jim shouted, “these otters. They’re awfully nice.”

            “But, um, aren’t they… angry at me?”

            “Join the universe, Goldi,” Lou garbled. “Anger is mos’ over-rated, only useful fer makin’ forgiveness.”

            “Hmm. What do you think, Otters?”

            They huddled in earnest, not exactly sure. Shel looked out at her mom and grinned that her idea might just win. “We decided,” she said when the summit was over, “that you can come with us to swim. Last one to the beach is a rotten fish!”

            Seb ran through the beads determined not to be that.

            “Gosh, wish Trig could be here,” Pam commented, when the actors came back for a curtain call.

            “Yeah, be sure to tell him he’s missed,” Jack said.

            “Actually, if you open the gate, I was thinking of streaming a message—give him an indication we made it here fine.”

            Jack kept his gaze at the otters, basking in the praise of their audience. “Well,” thinking deliberately, “could do. Dark already—maybe Gordon escorts you with a flashlight.”

            “I could hold one myself…”

            “No doubt. But we upgraded the fence, see, for some concerns of who might be out there. There aren’t any patrollers between here and Ely, so Gordon is your best bet.”

            “But I am a patroller.”

            Jack raised his eyebrows. “True, that. All the more reason you’d go as a team.”

            She pursed her lips and nodded slowly. Perhaps morning light would be the better plan.

XXIX.

            Trig spent a fitful night at the Burntside Hotel. The plan with Nala, Jim, and Pam was rather open as to when they’d reunite here, Aamiina and Shel in tow. Maybe they were eager to get back to civilization; maybe ensuing headaches would compel hospital care. Anticipating that prospect, Trig streamed the Ely clinic to make an appointment the next morning for himself, feigning a lingering headache in order to ask questions about the sanctuary. He weighed the pros and cons of wearing his patroller uniform and decided to let that be tomorrow’s intuition.

            He also thought about contacting Dr Brent to inquire about that pain-relief injection, as an Ely doctor might regard that detail as an invitation to speak further about the nature of that antidote. In the spectrum of homeopathy and mad science, something was going on between the Brents and Jacks of the world. One side concocted a fair replica of the apple Eve tasted with Adam, the other a schoolmarm’s tactic to wash out a foul mouth with soap. Both were concerned with the communicative spread of knowledge—good, evil, and otherwise.

            Instead of poking anxiously the izøne, Trig plunged into the lake and swam to the nearest island, then its neighbor and another—three percent of the thirty square miles of surface water that surrounded them. He swam unaware of the otter performance happening a couple lakes east, a goofy Goldilocks stealing the show; he swam with a yearning for Pam, a life he hadn’t imagined before her daughter and Nala’s went searching for toads, sagely distinguishing them from frogs. He wasn’t convinced in his watery mind whether he was swimming toward something or swimming away, island or shore. A workout, he’d fathom, as any patroller should have once a week, and probably more.

             To work out the body, to work out problems: definitions bobbed with the waves, and Trig tried not to stream them—hard to do when the izøne conflated so inherently with mind functions. The brain needs oxygenated blood as much as much as muscles, the heart most active of them all. Swim the crawl a while—a lesson in breathing at three-to-five-to-seven stroke increments, as infants and toddlers would never consciously measure. Then flip to a backstroke and breathe at relative ease, if the milling of arms is that much more difficult. Dog-paddle and side-stroke, cupping water like scoops of ice cream. Fluke just beneath the surface, undulating the torso as if the arms weren’t there. Float, any which way. Appreciate the aerobics, when really the exercise is mild-to-wild consciousness of survival, the factoring of how far one could or should go before needing a proper procedure back. The islands served as reprieves or slight tricks to that cause: Trig would need to get back—the dusk descending to quash the sunset—and those same strokes did not depend on light, per se, but energy levels and confidence.

            He reached the hotel beach in near darkness and lay on the grass, aware that sleep would absorb him if he weren’t to get up in the imminent minutes. Because he’d paid for this night already (reserved the night after), it may not have mattered to anyone if he’d stay exactly here—lush grass maybe mowed a week ago, not so prone to dew during Indian summer dawns. He’d likely slumber through the nearby designs of porcupines and owls and opossums. The crickets he’d hear anyway through the open window of his room, where he decided to go, pushing himself up with due labor. He couldn’t blame them for keeping him awake, nor the bleached smell of the sheets, nor the mosquitos that always managed to sneak through the window screens. He couldn’t blame the izøne, though temptations to search serums fought with the fatigue of that topic, let alone his well worked out body. Sleeplessness was, beyond thinking about it, just because.

            He got up at ten-thirty and ordered a taxi to Ely. He considered walking the six or seven miles, yet knew he’d likely foot that distance from Ely to Winton, his target for the afternoon. And as much as having a haggard look at the clinic would endorse the idea that he was actually suffering a migraine, he wanted to keep a clear head about this unofficial investigation—read the implications of what people said about the sanctuary, its methods and mysteries. He wouldn’t blow anybody’s cover—especially his own, though in the end he decided to don his patroller uniform. He wasn’t sure Jack had a cover, exactly. “Oh, sure, we’ve heard a thing or two about that sanctuary,” a woman in the waiting room offered, “not that it matters to me, personally.”

            “You’re unstreamed, if I may ask?”

            “You may, and yes—never cared to know more than necessary.”

            “I’m new to this region,” Trig leaned forward and tented his fingertips. “So I don’t know much about…” He strained for the right word.

            “About us? Well, we’re regular folk, y’know. I see you’re a patroller—”

            “Um, yes—from Faribault. Just here unofficial, though. Off duty.”

            She nodded at that, unconvincingly. “My brother was a patroller, here in Ely. Died last year.”

            “I’m sorry.” Trig wanted to ask how and hoped some stretch of silence would effectively do so.

            “Off duty also. Drowned; ’t least that’s the theory.”

            Still fingertipping. “Missing?”

            “Drowned,” she repeated. “Loved to night fish and prob’ly was pulling in a muskellunge, prob’ly standin’ up in the boat, y’know, like you shouldn’t. Flipped over, naturally, and, well, that’s what they found in the morning—an upside-down rowboat, bits of flotsam.”

            Dead bodies float, Trig was ready to say, but didn’t. “You think the fish dragged him to the bottom?”

            “Deep lake, Burntside; could be.”

            “Burntside? I was just swimming it last night. So many islands, I wouldn’t think—”

            “West side goes down one-forty. Anyways, he died doin’ what he loved best.”

            Pause, not too long. “That’s important.” Another pause to avoid being crass. “Patrollers look out for each other—well, everyone. Send up a prayer, so to speak, for one of ours fallen. His name, if I may ask?”

            “Lee. Patroller Lee Simmons, retired. And you?”

            A nurse opened the door to beckon Trig in. He extended a hand to Lee’s sister. “Nice to meet you, um—”

            “Alice. And you?”

            “Tangent. Patroller… Tangent.” He turned quickly to face the nurse, who knew that wasn’t his real name. She frowned and let him in anyway.

            The doctor was none too happy to talk to Trig about serums and pain-relievers. “Unless you have a warrant to investigate something, you’re here for your headache and I’m here to stream your record and remediate, if necessary. I don’t have any more knowledge of that sanctuary than you do—less, really, if you say you’ve been there. It’s not an issue that has darkened the door of this clinic, so...”

            “But you must be interested that three of us—all three, and fairly immediately—had headaches after leaving the sanctuary last weekend. Theirs lasted a couple hours, mine a couple days.”

            “And now? Still?”

            Trig realized he could not afford another lie. The nurse had likely messaged this doctor on the duplicity of that ‘Tangent’ representation, however innocuous it may have seemed. Wearing this patroller uniform wasn’t helping his cause if he also had to be off duty; he imagined a doctor attempting to do the same with his smock and stethoscope, sounding the beat of somebody in no need of triage. “I’ll be honest: no headache now, but anxiety for those others who’ve returned to the sanctuary this weekend. I’m anticipating how they’ll feel.”

            “So, in the eventuality that they’re unwell, have them set up an appointment. I can only treat conditions as they are, not as they are abstracted.”

            “Fair enough. But I cannot help but ask, as I did with a doctor in Faribault—”

            “Dr Brent? I’ve streamed the relevant information of your appointment with him on Wednesday.”

            That stood to reason. Trig nodded, “Dr Brent, who expressed interest in the way the sanctuary operates. I told him that Jack—forgot his last name, isn’t coming to mind right now—engineered his idea by lofting izøne serum through furnace heat, scrambling the signals as far as the breeze allows. He’d need that serum to burn, he said, from hospitals that would sell it or dump what’s bound to expire. I wonder, as Dr Brent does, as well, whether you might enlighten—”

            “No. It sounds like you need to procure that warrant before any off-hand ideas from folks around here, uniformed or otherwise. I have actual clients to attend to, so I bid you a healthy rest of day.”

            “Thank you, Dr…”

            “Tangent,” the doctor turned away, belying any indication of a joke.

            Of course Trig could ascertain his real name if necessary, but he left with a greater imperative of streaming Lee Simmons, even Alice, for that matter. There was an unwritten rule for decent folks not to stream a new acquaintance (or ‘Google’ them, as the old world had it). As a patroller, there were protocols insofar as accessing information not available to civilians, and Trig would need to log into those channels officially, with time-stamped verification of location and probable cause. Off duty, he would never risk that, a suspendable action in or out of uniform—more egregious, of course, in the guise of a sanctioned investigation.

            Streaming the death of Lee Simmons was rather easy, if inconclusive. The Ely Echo had a typical obituary of a man respected in the community, a lifer in the local patrol force, an avid fisherman who, as Alice attested, would like his last experience to be just that. Another edition, a week later, featured homage from a poetaster:

Old Simmons, it seems,

met his match in a muskie

up there at Burntside Lake.

They fished for each other,

lost brother and brother

anglin’ for legends to make.

He wanted to delve into a precinct report on drownings in the past year, specifically that of a fellow patroller, but streaming this kind of information would be a) not so clear concerning privacy issues and b) suspiciously close to using his own officer privileges while off duty. That question of ‘duty’ was looming now, more so with each passing half hour. He somehow felt responsible for the conditions of the sanctuary, especially if his Faribault chief had abandoned the initial reason for investigating what was deemed a dead-end.

            His walk to Winton consumed as much factoids on regional drownings as possible. Most made sense, if no sudden tragedy can be said to do so: an unattended toddler scooping wet sand for a castle, slipping instead on a rounded stone; a canoer who insisted on no life jacket, battling winds that lifted the front like a sail and sunk the whole situation. Her body, like the toddler’s, was recovered and ceremoniously buried. Trig was searching for those cases, like Lee’s, where the body disappeared in the relative depths. Statistics from the state on that category showed a modest spike in the last two years, with naturally little information on the circumstances—high winds, drunkenness, naïve indiscretion, suicide, the vengeful fish that got away…

            Oscar opened his door on less than three knocks. “Glad ya found th’ way back,” he said, “as nobody ever believes me a first time.”

            “What do you mean by ‘believe’?”

            Of course that question led to the pictures of Martha on his non-illuminated wall, the picture of her as Walleye Queen as Trig recognized from the Ely Echo, weeks before. She hadn’t been named in the research he’d just done on drowning deaths—perhaps she hadn’t drowned. Yet in the crackling panoply of information the izøne allowed in this sanctuary fringe, Martha’s absence of body hit Trig in the chest, or perhaps the carotid, supplying instant oxygen to his brain. Oscar let the image sink in before amplifying: “she even knew Jack Childress before she was streamed. From his first purview of the land he’d eventually buy and monsterify. She worked at our post office, then, and Jack took advantage of that, being what we’ve been—a lonely outpost licensing things without the need of an izøne. She notarized his goddam proof of purchase. Signed it ol’ fashioned style. I bust into the office after she’d disappeared—it’d been closed down for a while by then—and the files had been ransacked. No patroller back then gave a hoot. Barely any ever since, ’fore you come by.”

            “Despite what this looks like,” Trig decided to say, “I’m off duty and rather here for less official reasons.”

            “Like what?”

            “Well, you tell me. I don’t have any marching orders. What would you have me know?”

            Oscar looked out a window as if he could see through the trees. “I’d have you know that they’ve installed an electric fence since last week, and that’s not to keep the likes of me from comin’ in, but…”

            Trig didn’t want to complete the syntax, but couldn’t help uttering: “someone’s signaling that something’s up.”

            “It’s no signal, from my poin’ of view. Or if’n it is, mos’ forthrightly stay the hell away.”

            “Not terribly unusual for such a cause—I mean, they want a sanctuary from gawkers and stalkers, right?”
            “You asked me about Lee Simmons ’fore I fully opened the door.”

            “I did.”

            “And what did I say?”

            “Nothing. You picked up on the disappearance of your wife, like first time we met.”

            Oscar nodded. “You can ask me about Gavin Jones or Patty Ventura or Francine O’Mara or Bill Sinclair or Cary McNichols or Pete Wilcox—names of folks around here I couldn’t get from no izøne. I’d respon’ the same way: they were all streamed and gone missin’, just like Martha. Purported boating accidents or just wandered off—no one’s been poundin’ their doors. An’ no one is drawin’ the line to Jack Childress. ’Cept, I expect, you.”

            “And why not you? What keeps you from blowing the lid off his place?”

            “Oh, a crazed hermit like me aint gonna make any difference. Gotta happen from within.”

            “Some kind of mutiny?”

            “You could put it that way.”

            “But what about the kids in there now?”

            “I’ve met ’em. Hope they’re still alive.”

            “What?!”

            “Time’s a-wastin’ Patroller—whad’ya say your name was?”

            Trig told him his true last name, partly because Oscar had a good memory and would perhaps be the mouthpiece to a rescue operation, should it come to that. “I’m off duty,” he repeated, self-consciously, “and don’t have a support network. Can’t call in airborne, so to speak.”

            “I got your back, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

             “You’re an honorable man, Mr Jenkins.”

            “Sometimes. When I’m not two sheets to the wind.”

            “What’s that mean? I’m not accessing izøne very clearly now.”

            “Jus’ as well. Never mind.”

XXX.

            Waking up at the sanctuary was, as coined a hundred years ago in film history, transplendent. Nala was first to rise from the single pup tent at the lakeshore for her and Aamiina. Pam had borrowed Kay’s bed, vacated when the latter chose to sleep in the chapel. Shel was slightly snoring in a sleeping bag below Mia’s bed, the very place Pretty had claimed before preferring her lean-to on the porch.

            The dog joined Nala on her walk along the beach, the slant of tuscan sunlight passing over to the northern shore, blanketing them in shade. They followed a forest path east, across the Kawashiwi stream and toward a frond of crumbled roads that led to waterfront homes in various stages of disrepair. Those that had a semblance of upkeep were likely inhabited by sanctuary residents who didn’t care to gather about the boathouse, chapel, campfire ring. As if to bark them back to such origins, an unleashed rottweiler suddenly emerged from a caved-in garage. Pretty, of course, knew of this mongrel and neither bristled nor growled; instead, she circled Nala to indicate their walk had gone far enough.

            Crossing the stream again, Nala had an arresting thought: the lack of izøne must have driven most of Fall Lake’s residents away. Generations that summered here—some extending through the winter—probably relied on Kawashiwi dam for power, patrollers for security, the izøne for connection to the broader world. Nature itself, on this transplendent day, would not do. She contemplated her childhood, wading in the Webi Jubba with Jamilah and Fawzia. Had those bright friends remained in izøneless Somalia? No paradise there, like seemingly here. People run, from and to, for hard-to-reckon reasons. And not just in the realm of geography.

            She shook the rumination at the sight of Gordon standing in front of the pup tent. Her heart rate shot as she stammered, “oh—oh, is Aamiina alright?”

            Gordon swiveled his head and brought down his chin. “Asleep,” he simply said, then returned his eyes to what he had been looking at in the first place: a sole canoer paddling along the opposite shore, slowly as a loon. Still catching her breath, Nala squinted to identify less the person than Gordon’s apparent interest in the event. “Kay,” he whispered, fixated as if the tent top were a rifle site. Her strokes were languid, barely pushing forward in an eastward line. She’d see, Nala reasoned, the other sides of houses she and Pretty had returned from. And no rottweiler could bark her back.

            “Are you concerned about her?” Nala ventured, unsure how to speak to Gordon.

            He didn’t respond for a full minute, and maybe wouldn’t at all if the canoe hadn’t swung one-eighty to face westward, toward Winton. “Can’t go in and out of sanctuary,” he grumbled. “Violates the point.”

            “The point?”

            Gordon looked her in the eye. “The point to keep out the izøne.” He brusquely paced toward the boathouse, and Nala dove into the tent to make sure Aamiina really was asleep.

            She wasn’t.

           

            The sun by mid-morning had found and fully warmed the shallow water of the beach. Boats floated out and came back in—Kay’s somewhat on the sly, shoring up west of the boathouse instead of east, where the kids splashed as otters. Avis and Seb lifeguarded them so that Pam, Jim, and Nala could enjoy the open water, Tim taking charge as their guide. He spoke against any inclination to go west—around Lovers Island—warning of headaches that sometimes occurred (Pam and Nala said nothing, but knew); he spoke for the chance to go east—deeper into the sanctuary space (Nala having glimpsed as much at dawn). Jim broke into song: “Lead on, O King eternal—that’s you, young man, as I know nothing of this lake.”

            Pam wagged her head from the other canoe. “Where did you come up with that, Dad?”

            “You don’t remember mowing the fairways with me on Sunday mornings? I could have sworn you bellowed right along, even in your imagination:

                        Lead on, O King eternal,

                        the day of march has come.

                        Henceforth in fields of conquest

                        your tent will be our home!”

            Pam blushed in the hide-and-seek of nostalgia. Few people her age ever darkened the door of a church, if some elders tried to keep that tradition viable. “Come to think of it…”

            Nala shuttered at the reference to a tent. She and Aamiina took theirs down an hour before, notwithstanding the prospect that the weekend would entice another night of use. Somehow, Gordon’s glare had put a nix on that plan, the same way the notion of circling Lovers Island would have brought on a nausea, merely in the memory of how she met him this morning. “Eastward ho,” she said, digging her paddle into the water for emphasis. Tim was pleased to commandeer the better route.

            They went as far as Mulkuk Bay, a mile and half away from the beach. While the effluence of Lovers Island kept this area free from the izøne, there would be little way for Gordon or anyone else on the sanctuary staff to secure the border, so to speak. That electric fence, thought Pam, surely couldn’t surround the lake. On the other hand, who knew how many mercenaries might be living in the woods, their own sanctuaries cloistered from the more visible center of Jack’s operations. The wilderness here had been coined the ‘boundary waters’ for good reason, beyond a demarcation of the erstwhile border between Canada and the United States. And now, in society’s reliance on the izøne, the sanctuary was potentially a threatening place for patrollers, adventurers, thieves—anyone who would naturally operate with on-call information. Anyone streamed, of course. Pam’s father, still singing his Lutheran hymns, wouldn’t sense a difference.

            Pam wished so badly she could message Trig right now, point him to this tuck-away lagoon. He’d have to access it from the roadless woods north and east of Winton. “‘Mulkuk’, they call this bay?” she checked with Tim.

            He nodded. “The grandma has a good map of the region in the boathouse.”

            “That’s good to know. How far does the sanctuary go?”

            “Further than we could paddle in a day. Past some portages and lakes just as long as ours.”

            “Hmm. Impressive.”

            He blushed in a sudden sensation of pride. “It’s awesome.”

            They came back for lunch, then Lou wandered in clutching a couple steel rods, two feet long. Draped on his forearm were horseshoes painted blue and silver and red. “Game’s usually played in pairs, but always room fer more.” Jack fetched a hammer from the boathouse while Lou paced out the span needed. He set up some lawn chairs for a spectators’ box, emphasizing “safety first.” The girls sat wide-eyed and eager to try this game. “Got ya young’uns covered for some practice, too,” Lou told them, pulling out of his overalls pocket another six rings, much smaller.

            “What kind of dwarf horse wore those, Lou?” Seb chuckled.

            “Oh, if you see ’em up close, yer sure t’ notice they’re only oarlocks with the center pin unscrewed. Now, gals, I’d like you to find a couple straight sticks and pound ’em in just like those.”

            They scampered like baby goats. Tim, meanwhile, was testing technique: now a two-step swing, now a cement stance, central grip, side pinch, high arcs and low. The plaid-shirt guy gave him pointers and then they squared off first. Lou coached the girls and in a matter of forty minutes, everyone had tossed a fair share of horseshoes and oarlocks. While there were plenty of rollers into the tall grass, no one was remotely threatened of being hit. Pretty may have had something to do with that, corralling any non-thrower away from the stakes and back to the spectators’ box. She appeared none-too-pleased to figure out the rhyme and reason of the game: lazy missiles launched without a sense of urgency, somehow trying to nuzzle up against an aloof destination, the stanchion of iron having no real stake in what would constitute success or otherwise.

            Pam stealthily walked away from the general gaiety to consider the hour and hours to come. She wanted desperately to contact Trig, ask about his day and how they’d like to bring this weekend home, adventures having run their course. It was difficult for her to disambiguate a vacant angst against the genuine love she was witnessing from the Carter family, sanctuary veterans, nebulous Mother Nature. Is this just being in love with Trig, Pam tried messaging herself, Tangent that he is right now? She toyed with the idea of asking Jack again to open up the gate, let her exit the sanctuary for ten minutes to stream that very question. By now, however, she was in the boathouse—emptied of everyone, as the stalwart grandma had been drawn to horseshoes—and that map of Mulkuk Bay and everything beyond was just behind the counter. Also, not for nothing, that dark green binder she had signed into the previous weekend might tell her something of the population here: the key was still in the file cabinet, as if inviting soft espionage.

            Instincts of patroller, mom, izøne native—all funneled into a fast decision to pull the drawer open and flip through that binder. Asterisks, she remembered, depicted the ‘unstreamed’, like Mia, like Aami, and if Jim had signed in, like him. No one’s departure date had shown on their page, and—finally flipping the dang thing open—no one’s departure dates appeared on any of the previous pages. The camp should have been (quick calculation) eight hundred people full, a few of them asterisked. Obviously only a fraction of that were in view, and only a fraction of them were inclined to throw horseshoes, or sing silly songs at the campfire, or indulge little kids in their Goldilocks pastiche—just a dozen of us in that chapel, when hundreds are listed as not departed. Where the hell are they, these ‘having-runners’, as Jack has called them with ample affection? They signed in—as each line reflected a signature hand—and never signed out. Addresses spanning from Minneapolis to Chicago to Texas, the Carters fit right in to the list of the previous pages, in age range and asterisk sparsity. It was startling that all registrants should be here, if this binder was worth its own weight. Perhaps the grandma was not the best bookkeeper, or perhaps—

            “You shouldn’t be doing that.” Jack leveled his voice the way a kindergarten teacher might command. He had no aggressive apparatus with him, still a silhouette at the boathouse door—no gun or goon or lasso—just his confident self. Instead of elaborating, he under-armed a horseshoe easy enough for Pam to catch. “See,” as she easily caught, “we’re doing that instead.”

            Pam spun a million gears. “You didn’t let me get in touch with Trig.”

            Jack stalled a quarter-minute. “And… your point?”

            “Either you have organization here or you don’t.” Pam waited for Jack to respond to that general gambit, but his silence compelled her to go on. “You had us sign in; it would only be natural that you’d have us sign out.”

            “You can sign out right now,” Jack almost mumbled, “if it matters that much to you.”

            “I got a daughter here, Jack. You make this seem…”

            He didn’t fill in that gap. Instead, he circled around the counter and pulled the binder from Pam’s hand. Like tucking in a toddler, Jack caressed the object as he nuzzled it into the cabinet, then closed it and turned the key. Holding that key by a finger and thumb, he inquired of Pam: “shall I swallow this, to be safe?”

            Pam wasn’t going to take that bait. “Why did you throw a horseshoe at me?”

            “I tossed it—different than ‘thrown’—and strictly in the spirit of the game. Incidentally, a game your daughter is still playing and, at the very least, you should be watching.”

            “Jack, how do you run this place? What fuels the furnace out there?”

            “Well, you know,” Jack extended the key toward Pam, nodding for her to grab it. As she did, he roundhoused her with his other hand. The strike was practiced and precise.

            And Pam, losing consciousness, tried to resource her patroller wherewithal. “B—ba—back-up’s… been…” She was halfway to the floor before her final word: “… streamed.”

            He let her fall on her own accord before binding her ankles with a nylon pullstring he blindly found under the counter. Dragging her limp body through the tunnel door to the chapel, he knew he didn’t need to say a thing. “Hard to resist, though,” he uttered to no one listening. “Back-up is…”—Jack gagged on an unexpected morsel of doubt—“beyond…” He closed the door and locked it, another key he’d have to hold now, and hide.

XXXI.

            Trig walked by the abandoned houses of Winton, chancing some glances back at Oscar’s house. The crazed coot said he’d have his back, whatever that might mean. Trig tried to stream the names of those deceased, to verify what Oscar had said: “Gavin Jones, Patty Ventura, Francine O’Mara,”—a couple more. The izøne was fickle this close to the sanctuary, and Trig was getting exhausted by the mental strain. Best just to remember them. Bill Sinclair and Cary McNichols and Pete Wilcox… and Oscar’s Martha. Don’t forget, dammit! he told his head.

            The sanctuary gate would be another mile, Trig having logged four already. ‘A mile in someone else’s moccasins,’ he mused, but didn’t stream. Then “funny,” out loud, assured that no one could hear. “That grandma in the sanctuary regarded Pam as an indian: last name ‘Lightspeed’ threw her off!” He longed to be with his Lightspeed now, doff her moccasins and his patroller boots, run into the woods and molt all other clothes, then dive into the lake and mate like otters.

            But the kids would be around. Tales of the past week would need their airing, and frankly Trig would need to be all ears, all eyes—not to lapse into libido. Instead, he’d gather what he could, help pack up Pam and everyone else returning to Faribault. The shuttle would be in view in a matter of minutes, just inside the sanctuary entrance. The next few hours couldn’t come and go expediently enough.

            At the gate, Trig saw a gray-haired man fiddling with a ring of keys, trying out each and staring at their tips to wonder why they weren’t cooperating. On his forearm hung a half-dozen horseshoes, red and silver and blue; iron rods were gripped beneath his armpit, adding to the struggle. He didn’t notice Trig at all until, fifty feet away, the latter floated a not-too-loud “Hello, Lou.”

            Startled, but smiling second nature, Lou responded, “G’day to you, Patroller.” He dropped his view back to his cause. “Seems my Alzheimer’s kickin’ in again, these bits o’ metal here to mock me.”

            “Want some help? Maybe toss them over and I can open from the outside.”

            Lou pursed his lips and kept on trying. “Gotta get accustomed. New security measures, see?”

            “Hmm. Hey, do you recognize me, Lou?”

            Raising up a wizened eye, “can’t say I do. Shoot, some of these keys been with me half my livin’ days and I don’ recognize them, neither.”

            “I’m Trig. Pam’s.., um, guy, I guess.”

            “Ya guess? In my day you’d be certain ’bout sumpin’ like that.”

            “Don’t you remember me, Lou? Last weekend, with Jack playing guitar at the campfire? What was it, again, something about… Jesus, I can’t recall.”

            “Wasn’t about Jesus. ‘Fill yer Boots’ is one of ’em he crooned—”

            “Yes! ‘Fill your boots when it ra-ai-ains’… All coming back now. And the drizzle then didn’t feel so bad!”

            “’S been sunnier since then. Say, why then aint you returned ’til now? Pam and her dad and the kids been havin’ a whale of a time, tossin’ horseshoes, swimmin’, puttin’ on plays.”

            “Putting on plays?”

            “Goldilocks an’ the Three Otters.”

            Trig pulled a face. “I’ll be damned. Missed everything, then.”

            “Pretty much. Ah!” rotating the right key, “got it!” Lou opened the gate toward him and bowed with a sweeping hand to let Trig come into the sanctuary. He then went out and locked the gate shut, mumbling “not in my nature to lock things up, but… house rules.”

            “What do you mean? Jack’s rules?”

            “Naturally. He figured some tightenin’ up was due ’round here. Well, maybe cuz there’s no patrollers who come by—’cept you, by chance.”

            Trig wondered how he might shed his uniform, maybe ask Lou for a spare shirt at least. Instead, he blurted out what was most on his mind. “Do you know, Lou, the man in Winton named Oscar? I assume that you must.”

            Lou scratched his scalp and slid the clutch of knuckles to his nape. “I s’pose it’d be impossible for me not to know ’im.”

            “Why impossible?”

            “Same age fella, both of us residin’ here for the fall-to-winter of our lives. Both of us unstreamed—point of disconnection, the izøned might assume. But really not. Both of us scrounging out a livin’… Yes, as this worl’ spins, I know Oscar.”

            “And his wife? Martha?”

            Lou turned away, slouching his arm with all the horseshoes on it—a clatter of careless metal. He lowered himself to one knee to scoop them up and settled there a minute. “The Walleye Queen,” he finally uttered, “mos’ beautiful I ever did see.”

            Trig let that linger in due respect. “What happened to her?”

            “Martha?” Lou hoisted himself in a grunt. “She… disappeared. Ceased to be.”

            “How? Because Oscar—”

            “—the izøne took her, I figure. She’d just become streamed, dang it. Oscar was opposed, the little I talked to him ’bout it. An’ she hadn’t much time for me, double dang it. Guess ya might say some dividin’ lines happened which don’t sit well with the good ol’ Lou you barely knew.”

            “You and Oscar had a falling out?”

            Lou finished arranging the horseshoes on his arm the way they’d balance for his short walk home. “Nothin’ worth noting. He hates this place, what Jack made. And my argument was that, hell—if a guy hates the izøne, then how can he hate a sanctuary from it? Sorta ‘the enemy of my enemy’ kinda thing. But Oscar warn’t buyin’ that logic. He’s cock-sure Jack is makin’ matters worse: pushin’ traditional folks away and luring city slickers to rule the roost ’round here.”

            “I suppose the electric fence now confirms his point.”

            “Prob’ly. He sobbed like a baby when Lover’s Island got closed off. But one’s gotta realize: the furnace there is the heart an’ lungs o’ this place—Jack had to protect that like a rib cage.”

            “And now, with all this,” Trig panned to the fenceline and the live wire riding atop, “he’s puffing out that chest.”

            The clink of the horseshoes hinted at Lou’s desire to go. “It’s the dog-gone nature of nature, I s’pose. Human ’r otherwise.”

            “Ha!—riddle in everything. Well, you take care, Lou.” Trig said, and watched the old woodsman gesture the same.

            Moments after Lou had disappeared into the elbow of his path, Trig turned to survey his own place within the sanctuary. Pam had parked the patroller shuttle next to the Carter’s, and Trig had no idea that both by now had become defunct, as if the lack of izøne had sapped their vehicular will to live. But that wouldn’t make sense: batteries were robust these days, independent of signals from the sky. Still, they seemed fish out of water in the narrow space between the pines and birches around this gateway clearing.

            Thirty yards further from the naïveté of shuttles that would be worthless in the event of an evacuation, Trig stopped in his tracks. A border collie was approaching in a crouched, oblique gait. “Pretty,” he voiced in uncertain memory, and the dog loosened up, keeping the same tempo forward to meet this unexpected visitor. She loped to him in some deference to his uniform, as if the semblance of authority might merit some difference. Of course, Trig’s bodily smell—sweatier than six days earlier—was Pretty’s gauge that all was right or not alright. She decided on the latter, and the two of them strode tentatively toward Fall Lake.

            For a while, it became Huck Finn and Jim, if neither Trig nor Pretty were intuitive for either role. Their route through the forest took them past the Carter cabin (evidently vacant at this time) and the campfire ring where Jack had sung ‘Fill your Boots’ so ecstatically. Lou’s nudge of memory allowed Trig a wary smile. Pretty appeared not to need such nudges, causing Trig to ruminate, ‘a world without reminders must be nice.’ The boathouse was now in view and voices carried from the beach, still veiled by the trees. Trig halted and called the dog to circle back. “Pretty,” he bent and whispered, “do you know what the hell is going on here?”

            Pretty seemed at odds, whether to shrug shoulders that wouldn’t be discernible in human eyes or sniff the air for updates. Pam was missing, Pretty knew, and Trig should be aware. Or prepared to be aware. How to bark that into human understanding was nothing anyone nor any izøned databank could direct.

            Tim was first to emerge between the beach and boathouse. “Hey, there you are!” he addressed the dog, and then, “oh, hello, um… Patroller.”

            “Still ‘Trig’, just coming off duty, that’s all.”

            “Is Pam with you? We’ve been looking for her for quite a while now.”

            Trig swallowed that news and forced some composure. “Just Pam? Is Shel missing, too?”

            “No. She’s just swimming now with the girls. I think she doesn’t know we’re searching.”

            “Where’s Jack?”

            “Out on the lake. He said a canoe was gone, so he ’n my dad paddled east. Me and Gordon just got in from the west side of the lake.”

            “Around Lover’s Island?”

            “That, yeah, but scouting the shoreline of Winton, too. She must have gone east.”

            Trig nodded vacantly, if a million thoughts collided behind his eyes. “Where’s Gordon now?”

            “Boathouse.”

            “Do me a favor,” Trig calculated. “Take Pretty back to the beach and don’t let on yet that I’m here. Not that I shouldn’t be—we arranged to travel back to Faribault today—but I wouldn’t want Shel to be confused.”

            “Sure. You goin’ to the boathouse, then?”

            “Yeah, but I’ll need to cut through this way to avoid being seen,” thumbing back toward the campfire ring.

            “Should I tell my mom you’re here, or Nala?”

            Trig looked at Pretty for advice, perhaps receiving it. “If you can, do that subtly. You know what ‘subtle’ means?”

            Tim knit his brow. “You think I’m an idiot without the izøne? I know what it means.”

            “Good. I thought so.” With that, they parted.

            At the beach, Nala and Avis were in the water with Aamiina, Shel, and Mia. Pretty ran in to join them. “Where’s Kay?” Tim called out.

            “Don’t know,” Avis responded. “Back at the cabin, maybe.”

            Tim nodded and wondered what to do. A normal day would have him go out fishing, chop wood, page through a book his sisters would have already read. Strum the guitar that Jack had lent, to figure out some chords and combinations. All these he could do, yet suddenly he felt the gravity of Trig’s presence, off duty or otherwise. In a matter of hours, their guests would go home—maybe that’s why Pam decided to venture off for a final foray deep into the sanctuary. Tim could empathize with that: not so much to find the outer limits (which would blend back into izøne) but to relish the isolation, the quietest stretches of this intriguing place. A week ago, or two, Tim would be chomping at the bit to get back to Minneapolis, stream stories with his friends, brag about his wilderness wherewithal. Now, even if the Faribault folks offered him a seat in their shuttle, he wouldn’t want to leave.

            He stood up from the ledge of grass that swooped into the sand. The swimmers were having a good time learning how to dolphin dive. Pretty had come out with ample satisfaction they were safe. She shared Tim’s mood, wanting a return of calmness and routine. The two of them tread quietly to the cabin, where only a novel on Kay’s chair showed any evidence she’d been there lately. Beloved, by Toni Morrison. The cover had two dandelions apparently still rooted: the taller crowned in bright yellow, the smaller a seedhead of gray. One prepubescent, the other pregnant, he remembered Kay telling him the other day. Baby dandelions are made that way.

            Despite his restlessness, Tim picked up the book and sat as her sister would. He opened to the dedication page: “Sixty Million and more.” Then the epigraph:

                        “I will call them my people,

                         which were not my people;

                         and her my beloved,

                         which was not beloved.

                                              ROMANS 9:25”.

The opening lines a code of sorts: “124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom.” Tim worked hard to decipher what he could from the strange names and instant chaos. He thought about how subtle the picture of the dandelions felt, and whether he really knew that word. Nothing seemed subtle inside the cover. He wondered why Kay had picked this one, almost necessitating izøne help. Certainly he felt helpless trying to read, but plowed on anyway, to page 13 when he finally fell to sleep.

            Trig lurked tree-to-tree like a sasquatch, the black of his patroller uniform serving his situation auspiciously. He had no plan but to spy out what he could, buy some time yet move quickly to some understanding. Pam was most on his mind, of course, but he continued to roll the names in his memory: Gavin Jones, Patty Ventura, Francine O’Mara, Bill Sinclair, Cary McNichols, Pete Wilcox, Oscar’s Martha—no last name. And what about this morning’s visit to the Ely clinic, talking with the sister of Lee Simmons? Can’t forget any of these. And Pam Circe, God forbid.

            He started to cry. This stretch of weeks had defined his whole life, from casual romance to falling in love, including the prospect of being Shel’s father. He took on this assignment as a favor to Chief, to vie for a favor back, like extra vacation time—for Pam, too, as his faithful patroller partner. He wanted Chief to regard her more professionally, which was never a question to anyone else in the precinct. He hoped that maybe cracking this case, even off duty—especially off duty—would boost their partnership and enliven their raison d’être in everyone’s minds. They’d grow as a family, give Shel a sibling and a dog like Pretty, and swim in as many of the 10,000 lakes this land boasted.

            Pulling himself together, Trig crept to the west side of the boathouse and peered through a window. The grandma was there, just like she had been last week when they all signed the register. Gordon wasn’t, at least from this angle. Going in through the front door would keep Trig out of sight from the beach, but he wasn’t sure if that door was unlocked: the only way he’d ever seen people go in or out was through the east entrance, leading a line toward the beach.

            He tried his luck, rationalizing that he might just knock on that door anyway. It had no window, so maybe he could simply rap on the window to catch the grandma’s attention. No, he decided. I can’t portray myself as a sneak. He grabbed the doorknob, knew right away it was locked, and knocked without a sense of urgency. The grandma yelled in her frail sort of way, “Side door’s open, to your right.” But Trig stuck to his spot. He waited ten seconds and knocked again. The grandma repeated herself and didn’t appear to move toward the locked door. Trig waited another ten seconds before knocking again. Silence rounded out the full minute until the door was unlocked. No steps had been heard from the counter to here, a span of around twenty feet. She might be in slippers, Trig thought, and rotated the brass knob. As he the door opened, he saw that she had abandoned her post and, perhaps, she would have been backing away from behind the swing of the door. He stepped in, announcing himself to no one he could see, even as he cleared the entryway and shut the door.

            Baffled, he froze. And just as he darted his eyes to the ceiling, Gordon leaped out from an aisle of shelves, tackling him rugby-style. Their scuffle was short, as Trig wouldn’t have guessed that the grandma had hid in the opposite aisle, supplied and skilled with a baseball bat. Losing consciousness, Trig witnessed her running back to the counter, unlocking some door veiled with maps, as Gordon dragged him in that direction.

XXXII.

            Being a dolphin was a lot of fun, but the sun was getting low in the sky and the girls’ shoulders shivered in the clutch of their prune hands. Nala and Avis were talking at the beach—they didn’t need to be such active lifeguards anymore—when Shel came out of the water and asked with due curiosity, “where’s Mom?”

            “Well,” Avis ventured in veiled hesitation, “she knows you’re set to leave soon. I think she wants you to have as much time here as possible.”

            “Jus’ as likely she don’t really wanna leave,” Nala added.

            “We’re only supposed to go when Trig gets here—” Shel announced, then half-gasped at the realization that Avis might not have been privy to that plan.

            “Oh,” said Avis, “then maybe your mom is trying to fetch him right now.”

            “With the shuttle?”

            “I dunno.” Avis looked at Nala, who shrugged a lack of anything better to say.

            The fact was, the mothers knew Pam had been missing for a quite a while, the two-canoe posse coming up empty. They hadn’t broached it in their conversation, preferring the girls to overhear their praise of last night’s play, the manner in which a seven- and eight- and nine-year-old tossed and chased and caught their imagination. Nala hadn’t seen the chapel during the previous weekend visit and hailed it as an optimal ‘theatre in the round’. “Maybe you can come down to Faribault someday. Mia would like the toad farm Aamiina and Shel made in Alexander Park—”

            “—Sure,” Avis followed with a shush, “Mia will beg to go with you even today, if we’re too loud.”

            “She’s welcome to,” Nala barely vocalized.

            Now, with the girls wrapped in towels, sitting on the same berm, Avis wished she could communicate with Nala through silent streaming. Other uses of the izøne had hardly nagged at her mind, but streaming an occasional message—sometimes to Seb, now to Nala—would come in handy. Where do you think Pam went? she’d think into the stream, predicting Nala to respond: where would you go if you were her? Avis would wonder about that and proffer, I’d go to Winton, visit that old man there again. What did the girls call him? Oscar? Oscar the Grouch, maybe, pining for some company and using reverse psychology. He must be awfully lonely, squatting there in a village that isn’t. Jack sure gave us guff for letting them wander off in his direction. It’s strange to have adversaries for neighbors—or? perhaps not so strange. What do you think, Nala? Nala? “Nala?”

            Nala had been looking east, secretly revisiting her early morning walk. “Huh?”

            “What do you think about unneighborly neighbors?”

            “Who you got in mind?”

            “Just anybody. You left Somalia. Were the people there the reason?” Avis regretted asking in such blunt, ignorant terms. “I mean, did someone push you away?”

            “Did I have bad neighbors?”

            “Or good ones—I’m just curious.”

            “My best memories are when I was their age,” pointing at the girls, who were huddling now with their own ad hoc plans. “Jamilah, Fawzia, and me. Three—not what you call ’em, ‘otters’, but—hmm, mud pie makers.”

            “Mud pie makers?”

            “That’s what we did most of all, beside the river. Made mud pie forts, too.”

            “Like we do with snow?”

            “Kinda like that. They dried instead of melted.”

            “Then maybe they’re still there.”

            “If the crocodiles protected them.”

            “Crocodiles!”

            “They were also my neighbors. Neither good nor bad.”

            They spoke more as the sun was now settling behind Winton. The day would be dark in an hour. Jim was already zonked out in a hammock, oblivious of Pam’s absence. If the Faribault folks needed another night here, they should erect the pup tent again. Apologies would need to be communicated to their employers—a ‘call in sick’, so to speak. They’d need to migrate out of the sanctuary at least to do that. Maybe that’s what Pam is up to, one or both of the women thought, using the izøne to keep the izøne at bay, at least for another day. Just wish that she would have told us so…

            Meanwhile, Pam had almost screamed her lungs out, locked within the chapel. The ventilation ducts had silencers above the water line that Jack had installed, prescient of this very moment. Similarly, the tunnel from the boathouse to the underwater disc had soundproof doors—on both ends—muting all within the capsule.

            Gordon, surreptitiously, was adding to that ‘all’. He squinted through the peephole to see that Pam was far enough away, then cranked the handle to open the door and slide Trig in like a black bag laden with trash. Pam froze at first and then dashed toward them, stumbling across the pillowed pit. Gordon smirked at the prospect that she would reach him, let alone take him down. He backed up in three demonstrative strides and slammed the door a measured second before Pam could pound on it. Her instinct blurred patroller training with personal concern for Trig, who was breathing, if not conscious enough to groan. She fell softly to his side and kissed his blood-streaked hairline, feeling for the cause that hours ago could never be a grandma’s baseball bat; now, there was no telling.

            She lit candles to make up for the lamps that had been wired from the Kawashiwi dam, now deadened by Gordon’s flip of an outer switch. Any of today’s remaining sunlight barely reached the algae-smeared windows of the disc, some twelve to twenty feet below the surface of the lake. “It’s a coffin,” she realized, cynically disguised as a funeral chamber, “as if we congregated here to mourn ourselves.”

            There was no time for such rumination. Just minutes ago she was constructing a crossbow out of a wicker chair she’d dismantled. Had she figured out the best elastic fix, scraped arrow tips from rails of the chair, she could have pierced Gordon enough to slow him down, tackle and aim for his vulnerable parts. She retained the skeleton of this plan, but now needed Trig to wake up—for his sake and theirs. She was relieved to have him here, if not in such shape.

            Her eyes watered a review of the hours that morphed this sanctuary from good to dubious to instant evil. Shel is still out there, she fretted, in the mindset that this place is good. Are the Carters part of this? Pam massaged Trig’s scalp and flashed her eyes around the disc for more ideas of what to do. Tim’s chessboard lured her attention. Half the pieces off the grid, it was hard to see which side was winning; the game had been abandoned—maybe the checkmate was an inevitable move away and both players knew it. Pam couldn’t gauge as much in the distance and the dark, and this particular game didn’t matter, anyway. But the concept did, and she knew it: one doesn’t abandon one’s chances to prevail, let alone survive.

            A canoe, as it comes in to shore, glides and wants to lift its bow according to the wedge of water left. Seb was in that bow, bracing the aluminum sides in order to time his own jettison and let the craft meet the sand more weightlessly. At the stern Jack clutched his paddle against his thighs like a weary hunter would his rifle. ‘No sign of Pam’, his face conveyed to the women assembling the pup tent. And theirs relayed dismay.

            The kids were at the cabin, tasked with getting a fire going under the stove. Pretty had gone with them, but now had come back. She came up to sniff Seb, make sure he was alright. “What can you tell us, dog?” his voice wispy from fatigue.

            “I think,” Jack decided, “we just wait. Pam’s a patroller—she knows how to operate in terms of time and space. We shouldn’t treat this like a needle in a haystack.”

            Nala would have streamed that but could only ask, “what haystack you mean?”

            Seb pulled the canoe so Jack would have less of the hull to walk. No one spoke for a while. Avis stretched her eyes past her husband to the darkened side of Fall Lake. Jack concentrated on his steps and disembarked starboard, closest to the boathouse. Nala watched him, wondering if he heard her in the first place.

“It’s a big area,” he finally said, “this sanctuary. That’s the haystack.”

            “I heard sixteen square miles. You think she could be in any one of ’em?”

            “She could be outside of the sanctuary altogether,” Avis added, “a much bigger haystack.”

            “Not necessarily,” Seb opined. “Outside the sanctuary she could stream anyone else streamed. She’d be no needle there…”

            No one said anything. Tim was coming from the direction of the cabin. Pretty picked herself up from the grassy area near the pup tent’s entrance and walked slowly towards him. Where they met, the dog threaded Tim’s stride to cause some syncopation, a half-halt toward his briefing with the adults. “The kids are alright,” he announced, oblivious to that song by The Who a century and some years before. “They wanted an A-Okay to bake oatmeal cookies.”

            Jack smiled. “Did you give them that?”

            “Um, I… didn’t know if—”

            Nala ignored such a triviality. “Don’t ya think we should try the izøne to contact Pam? Maybe that Hotline option, most inclined to find some stowaway needle, did you call it, within a haystack?”

            “No.” Jack spoke now with no smile. “The whole point of the sanctuary is not to weenie out and beg the izøne for this-and-that.”

            “Not when a person’s life is at stake?” The question could have come from any of the Carter’s, yet came from Nala, owning more the situation.

            “If Pam is out of the sanctuary, she can izøne anyone she wants. If she is still somewhere within, she can’t.” Jack paused to gauge the resonance of that. “And we are not inclined to invite the izøned world in—they wouldn’t be more resourced than any of us now.”

            “But they could span those square miles better.”

            “Especially if they had patroller instincts,” Avis thought wise to include.

            “Like Trig,” Nala proffered, “knowing her best of all.”

            Tim tried to disappear. He had planted himself in exactly the spot Pretty had been, as she subliminally guided him there. The vision of Trig had not left his mind in the three hours or so of their chance meeting. Machinations of why he had come, what he might do, how Pam’s absence meant this-or-that, to use Jack’s phrasing—all flooded the chess chambers of his teenage brain. He hesitated once, then twice before uttering, “Trig… is—”

            His mom and dad focused on what they knew was a different voice from their son. Neither said anything to help out his syntax, nor did Nala. Jack stood by the canoe, gripping his paddle with both hands. He waited for Tim to make eye contact to press out the question: “Trig is—what?”

           

            The girls decided to make those oatmeal cookies without permission. There were floured oats, naturally, and brown sugar and salt and baking soda on the kitchen shelf. Even some vanilla extract. The sticking point was the amount of eggs—five—that the girls knew were a precious commodity, as they’d seen Avis apportioning them for breakfasts and fresh bread. They could go four, or even three for the three of them; the available oats could carry eight or even ten eggs to the enjoyment of many beyond this cabin, beyond this night.

            They talked about such things. Of course, they had bluegills to fry up and potatoes to boil, dinner staples that Mia (in her mere weeks here) loved teaching to her younger peers, their time together now on a short string. They set out more places at the table than had chairs to support them: Seb, Avis, Kay, Tim and Mia, of course, then Nala and Aami, Grandpa Jim and Shel… to make nine. Pam would come to be ten. An unspoken Trig would make eleven. Pretty, to count beyond plates, would need her portion of bluegill. Anyone else would have to spill over to the campfire, which the girls hoped would still happen, last night of their visit and all…

            “Let’s add some rum to the dough,” tempted Mia, sliding her hands like a schemer.

            “What for?” Shel challenged, her chance to ask questions having all-but-replaced her instinct for streaming.

            “Because it’s here on the shelf,” hiding behind a jar of honey, “and maybe that would let our raid of the eggs not hurt so much.”

            Aami didn’t understand. “Who’s hurting the eggs? I thought we could—”

            “—Nobody’s hurting the eggs. We’re just using what’s here. And adding something the adults would like.”

            “Do you think Mom will come here tonight?” Shel questioned, biting her lip not to cry.

            Her friends hugged her tightly, whispering no clear answer. Adding rum to the mix or not, they knew they’d have to play out the evening by ear. Like fledglings, they needed to trust their new instincts, perhaps not so new.

XXXIII.

            “Trig is supposed to come here tonight,” Nala explained. “Didn’t think the whole weekend would be good for him.”

            “Why, what’s buggin’ him?”

            “He was, um, having headaches after last weekend and, well, wanted less exposure.”

            “Less exposure to the lack of izøne exposure?” Jack guffawed. “That’s absurd.”

            “To be honest, Pam and I also had headaches when we first left here. While ours went away, Trig’s stayed.”

            “We also felt woozy walking back from Ely that time,” Avis motioned to Seb, “before we were attacked.”

            “True,” recalled Seb. “Maybe made us more vulnerable for that attack.”

            Jack had heard enough. “You all feeling headachy now? No? You think somehow this sanctuary’s to blame for the izøne’s zap on your head? We don’t mess with your system—we try to purge the poison! That’s why you need at least a year here to come clean, not in-and-out weekends! Shouldn’t have bent the rules, goddammit.”

            “Listen, Jack, we’re sorry—”

            But Jack didn’t want to listen to Seb. He focused squarely on Nala. “When exactly did Trig say he’d come?”

            She looked towards Jim’s hammock, where horseshoes had been played. “Can’t say. Wasn’t my plan.”

            “And what d’you know about it?” Jack pointed his paddle at Tim.

             Pretty barked at the gesture, giving Tim time to think. “I’ve just been here. How could I know about plans outside the sanctuary?”

            Avis stood up. “Why are you so upset, Jack, about Trig? If anything, he’d be helpful in searching for Pam, comforting Shel… I mean, this seems unwarranted.”

            Jack dropped his chin and nodded. “You’re right.” His voice lost its edge. “I’m upset at myself, mainly. Don’t want folks here to get lost, or doubt what this sanctuary is for.” He lowered the blade of the oar and settled it in the loose sand. “I don’t want heavens or hells on this earth—just nature as it is. I s’pose I’m just spent today, worrying about the darkness and the unresolved day.”

            Seb pulled the canoe all the way out of the water and lifted it by the front thwart. “Hey Tim, lend a hand with the rear so we can get this to the boathouse.”

            “No,” Jack waved him off, “leave it here. I might go back out tonight with lantern light.” He headed for the boathouse without another word.

            It hadn’t occurred to anyone yet that Kay had been out of view for as long as Pam. She had snuck off to Gordon’s cabin (not for the first time) and fell asleep like Goldilocks upon his cot. There she dreamed of Elysian fields beyond the horizon of Minnesota, if not contained in her mind to the Attic Greek; she dreamed of diving into green barley and swimming through the stalks, breathing easily, then floating upon the soft awns to rest under the watch of the naked sky.

            Out of that blue, Kay had reveled in the zone beyond the izøne, the sanctuary’s sixteen square miles that could become infinity. She now knew she had within herself the capacity to recall what had been streamable—Homer’s Odyssey, for instance—and then a more creative penchant to do what streaming couldn’t. She had paddled waters toward some nascent ‘wonderwall’, unable now and uninterested in referencing some Oasis bloke who may have coined the term. Her erstwhile need to know had given way to a greater need to navigate anew.

            The home Gordon had made out of this hovel was strangely warm. The fireplace had a hook for stew or boiling water, medieval style. The stack of wood was tidy, the bellows and poker rods hung in designated places. Decorations weren’t exactly what Kay saw in the arrangement of items on the dresser and tacked to the wall. Evidence of fight-and-flight from years ago in Chicago and his journey north. A grungy pennant of a baseball-swinging cub saying in a speech bubble: “2015 wasn’t for nothin!” A blanket with ‘Lovable Losers’ emblazoned across an aerial view of Wrigley Field. A photo of Jake and Elwood performing at the Joliet penitentiary. Dried flowers—castillas, black-eyed susans—as ceiling bunting, along with practical items like garlic braids and fly paper. Fishing rods and tackle, neatly in a corner. An axe wedged into a chopping block. A stuffed recliner near the fireplace and one wooden chair tucked into a table by the kitchen counter. A bunch of rugs from blackbear hides, and antlers for a hat rack. A wardrobe and an army trunk. Several unstrung bows beside a quiver. A scattering of comic books, their corners rounded with wear.

            Another forty percent of the place was behind a padlocked door, and Gordon was agitated when Kay asked what was there. Twice, aware perhaps that a third inquiry could incur punishment. Gordon had never touched her since his failed kiss, even as she had touched him—neckrubs and such. She felt the strength of a Spanish bull in his shoulders, the flinch of unfamiliarity gradually diminishing with each visit. He said almost nothing, and she not much more. An hour would go by with little more activity than stoking the fire and simply watching it burn.

            All the more reason it was strange how he shook her awake, mumbling things about the chapel and how no one could go there. He said so matter-of-factly, like the place was leaking without any need to save it. She asked if anyone had been there lately, and he answered “me.” She wanted to ask more but was surprised when he took her hand, leaned down to kiss its softness, and stayed there as Kay stroked his crew cut with her other hand. She wasn’t sure if sweat or tears moistened the hand he clutched, or even drool.

            The tunnel Jack had made some years ago from boathouse to chapel was umbilical: meant to supply the chapel of its life blood yet also to be cut off when necessary. He loved every inch of the place he owned, less for the hint of narcissism and more for the noble purpose of returning humanity to its proper place in nature. This tunnel-and-chapel contraption did not manifest human nature in a biological sense (we cannot breathe under water) if it did in a technological sense (scuba extends our limits). The izøne, arguably, was such an extension. The difference was, in Jack’s mind, that scuba divers still came up for untanked air, while izøne streamers drowned in their own, unnatural sense of progress.

            All this was on his mind as he paced the seventy, eighty meters and more to the lock-tight chapel door. He hadn’t a script but wanted to stay cool to the moment, especially on what seemed to be Trig’s betrayal of duty, uniformed or not. That’s how he began his conversation through the sliding feed-hole. “Is the infiltrator conscious yet?”

            “Trig?” Pam blurted, incredulous that Jack gave no semblance of sympathy for their plight. “Is Trig alive from your goon’s attack?”

            “Is he?”

            A minute of shuffle enabled Trig to speak for himself. “Jack,” he wheezed, “you cannot win in this way.”

            Jack did not respond to that assertion. Instead, he offered his own: “we’re all patrollers for our own sense of right. I’ve established this sanctuary on moral and legal grounds, fully aware that outsiders might undercut my efforts.”

            Pam shouted a “stop this monkey business! Get us out and your guilt will be alleviated through recognizance—”

            “You’re going to play lawyer right now?” Jack widened his smirk. “I wouldn’t know where to start with definitions of ‘guilt’ and ‘recognizance’. Neither would you. Pharaohs, for example, were completely guiltless in making their pyramids—perhaps oblivious of the real ‘whom’ for which they directed the deal. They had no grasp of the mathematics, let alone the labor costs. They left that all to middle-management, who could be more truly culpable, all things considered. You are that to the monument of the izøne. Middle-management. Would you like to plea ‘no contest’ to that with the possible release on your own recognizance?”

            “Why reach four thousand years backward?” Trig strained to inquire. “Seems you should have… a modern analogy.”

            “No. Don’t need to cater to modernity. To be certain, tomb raiders are ageless, for better or worse. Without them, we’d only see the obelisks of perceived civilization. I don’t have to do anything to answer for your middle-management plight. You are neither pharaoh nor tomb-raider.”

            “And you?”

            “Arguably the latter, but really, I’ve got better fish to fry.”

            “Okay,” Pam put her face close to the aperture, “so those fish you’re frying—at Lovers Island, evidently—are what, exactly?”

            Jack took the question on several levels, reflectively. He waited for Pam and Trig to gasp their desperation before trying out this gambit: “Do you want to know? Because I can tell you. Or do you want to live?”

            The umbilical cord tightened, as Pam and Trig sought each other’s eyes to scan the ultimatum for its heft and hints for an escape. “Go on,” said Pam. “Tell to your heart’s delight.”

            “No delight,” Jack swallowed, as he understood the stakes. “I was on a flight ten years ago, or so. And as everybody else on board noticed, too, streaming worked less well. I thought, you know, signals at such altitude may scramble the whole scheme, like magnetic force too close to what it’s trying to affect. And even in the thinking of that—trying to stream magnets and such—I realized that these leaps of technology were smothering each self. We were, as it were, flying above our capacity to think for ourselves.”

            “Listen, Jack,” Trig offered groggily, “I’m on your side with this. Believe—”

            “—well, I don’t believe you, Trig. You came here dead set to ambush, destroy this peaceful premise—”

            “You’ve killed dozens, Jack, if not hundreds, to throw into your furnace! You know who they are: Gavin Jones and Patty, um, Ventura, O’Mara, Bill..., and Cary… Wilcox—Lee Simmons, that’s for sure, and...”

            “Are you done?”

            Trig was hyperventilating, managing a “n-no” between Pam’s demands to open up the door.

            “I won’t open anything,” Jack simpered. “You’ve just added to the list.” He slid his back to the tunnel’s wall to sit and contemplate aloud. “I started with the hospitals—serum’s never cheap, but regulation killed the option; doctors had to account for every milligram to be within a body or inventoried otherwise. I’m not the only one to have figured out how raw serum clogs the izøne when it’s lifted to the troposphere.”

            Pam pounded on the door. “There’s no time for this!”

            “Oh, there’s time indeed. I invested in cemeteries, if you wanna know. Lots of patience in that business. A body to bury would be, through the good efforts of Gordon, a body to unearth a night or two thereafter. Couldn’t let it putrefy as such—embalming fluid didn’t eradicate the streaming signal as much as lack of lymph. We became pretty good at raiding tombs.”

            “Why, Jack? Why confess all this—”

            “It’s explanation, not confession. I only wanted to recycle the product. We stored what we could in freezers but realized we had to harvest closer to home. The furnace runs on natural gas—we got lucky with the vein we found; tossing in an arm or leg every day or two has done the trick, as long as they are fresh.”

            “It’s a holocaust, then—”

            “You and Trig will keep us running another two weeks, at least.”

            “You’re a monster, Jack!”

            Jack said no more. The explanation never satisfied, but like the need to harvest, eat and defecate, systems had to be in place. He closed the feed-hole with his shoe and pushed his body up to walk back to the boathouse. Pam’s pleas had some effect on him—he wished he could have had her as a concubine at least; then again, she’d always be a risk, a run-away like he would have to say she was. As for Trig, he wouldn’t have to say a goddamn thing.

XXXIV.

            Like a lone opossum, Jim woke up in his hammock as darkness sealed off the day. He was a little disoriented, naturally, and wondered if the posse had come back with Pam. He wasn’t worried about her—not exactly—but thought Shel must be. He squinted through the woods toward the Carter’s cabin, assured of her safety by flickers of light from the windows. He’d go there, of course, but thought first to stop by the boathouse and purchase some kind of dessert.

            The grandma was at the counter, less than her cheerful self. She greeted Jim by name, then turned her back to open up the file cabinet and walk through it with her fingers. Jim went to the aisle that had chocolates and other delicacies. He took a bag of toffee pieces and an apple strudel, nosed around for what else was there, mainly to buy time for the grandma to finish her clerical task. He pulled out a large bill—physical money a rare but occasional way of paying for things—and approached the counter.

            “I can’t make change for that,” the grandma demurred.

            Jim shrugged. “Keep it. The weekend’s been lovely, and you haven’t asked us for anything.”

            “Well, you’ve been good company.” She put the bill in her pocket and went back the files.

            “Hope we haven’t worn out our welcome. Thought we’d be on the road by now…” Jim had a vague sense she knew something about Trig coming here to escort them out, but kept that thought to himself. Instead, he decided to ask, “any update on Pam?”

            The grandma closed the cabinet. She looked at the map hung on the wall and shook her head. “Could be anywhere, really. I feel badly for—”

            Abruptly, the door right next to the map flung open, the damp odor of boathouse wafting in before Jack, who froze for a second to gauge the room. A faint wail behind him spurred a quick close of the door, and the grim entry forced itself into a grin. “Find whatcha need there, Jim?”

            The older man mimicked the grin. “With the exception of Pam. Thought she’d wander back by now.”

            “Yep, it’s frustrating alright.” Jack eyeballed the grandma as if she’d want to weigh in. “I can only imagine she’s outside the sanctuary at this point.”

            “That’s why I was pointing at the map. Could be anywhere.”

            “Well, she’s a patroller y’know.”

            “I know,” Jack said, “there’s solace in that.”

            Jim bowed his head as a way to exit, but thought to ask: “you just came from the chapel?”

            Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” addressing more the grandma as if they’d need to call in someone from the izøned world. “Seems we got a leak—no one should go in there ’til we can fix it.”

            “Shame, that. It’s a cozy atmosphere.”

            “Well, keep a lid on it, Jim. Don’t wanna alarm anybody.”

            “Sure,” Jim said, if not at all sure as he headed to the Carter’s cabin.

            All eyes in the cabin turned toward him as he entered. Pretty slithered through the door, keen to listen in to what Jim might say. “Nope,” was all he could offer to this question and that, though he reassured something specific to Shel as she jumped into his arms. The strudel fell to the floor as a result, but Avis retrieved it before Pretty could react.

            “Let’s eat while dinner’s still hot.” She gestured Mia to push people into their seats: Aamiina next to her, then Nala, Seb at the far end, Jim and Shel counterclockwise, Tim and two extra chairs.

            “Where’s Kay, anyway?” Seb voiced this casually, but his eyes betrayed some worry.

            “I don’t know,” Avis admitted, “but she came in with Gordon. Sit down and—” Here she made quick strides to the door, opened it and called out, “Kay! Dinner!” Then, to the dog, “go find her, c’mon,” which wasn’t what Pretty wanted to do, but complied anyway.

            “And find Mama, too,” Shel whimpered, clutching her grandpa’s arm.

            Avis kept the door somewhat ajar and returned to the table. Tim was serving the fish and Mia passing the potatoes. Jim gave Shel a medium-sized piece of toffee, an ad hoc pacifier. Nala encouraged everyone to take salad, praising the kids who made this balanced meal. “You’ve learned so much here.”

            “How to swim!” Aamiina tried to beam, trying to pick up her friend’s spirits from across the table.

            “How to survive,” Tim thought it smart to add. “Live off the land.”

            “And water.”

            “Just not the sky,” Seb reminded, “when the izøne prevents such instincts.”

            They ate in silence for a while, until Avis broached what she’d been mulling since the beach. “I don’t know—maybe we should use the izøne tonight. Use the Hotline—” She swallowed that final word in fear of frightening Shel, and rushed to say “—contact Trig, or even Pam herself, if she did go into Ely or somewhere streamable. I’d say it’s worth a try.”

            Tim coughed, wondering if this might be a chance to say that he had run into Trig and that contacting him from outside the sanctuary would be impossible. Unless Trig was in and then out, doing whatever he planned on the sly. At his second cough, the table stared. “What?” he choked the word out.

            “Fish bone?”

            “N-no-o…”

            “You looked like you had something to say.”

            He shook his shaggy hair. “No, nothing.”

            “You’re a know-nothing?” Mia teased, but no one laughed.

            Seb picked up on his wife’s idea, with some circumspection in his voice. “I asked Jack out on the lake about his own use of izøne—”

            “He’s streamed?” Jim asked.

            “He is. But he doesn’t use it anymore.”

            “Did you ask him about headaches?”

            “No, not exactly. More about the magnetic pulls of the psyche. Why his compelled the sanctuary in the first place, and whether those who have followed that lure—us, for instance—tend toward centripetal force.”

            “What’s that,” Aamiina wanted to know.

            “Opposite of centrifugal,” Tim stated, “but what do I know, huh, Mia?”

            Seb ignored that. “Centripetal force pulls a rotating object further in. Like figure skaters twirling on the ice—”

            “—and they bring their arms tight to go faster: I’ve seen that!” Mia bragged.

            “Centrifugal does the opposite,” Seb continued, “flinging a rotating object outward, like, oh, I don’t know…”

            “Shit hitting a fan,” Jim straight-faced, “if you pardon the idiom.”

            Seb nodded and went on. “We talked, Jack and I, about what pulls people into a place like this: the serenity, the chance to self-determine, the curiosity—that he acknowledged first, actually—and,” he looked around the table to see if anyone wanted to guess. “The silence. Even as a loon breaks in several times a day, or a campfire becomes a little boisterous, the silence of the sanctuary is what keeps people.”

            “Are you saying,” Nala narrowed her eyes, “he want us to stay?”

            “Oh, well, that didn’t come up. You’d have to ask him. What I meant was that he values the silence more than the noise out there, the clamor of information and what he called ‘infiltration of the mind’.”

            “So he doesn’t go out of the sanctuary,” Avis clarified, “but we can. Silence is golden when all is good.” She looked at Shel, who may not have been paying attention. “And all will be good if we might give a holler, as neighbors used to encourage.”

            “I’ll ask Jack—”

            “You don’t need his permission!”

            “We’d need his key to open the gate. Electric current makes that fence impassable.”

            “I bet I could hop it—”

            “I’m sure you could, Tim, but that’s not the point. I think if we’re registered here and the community has its extra security, we need to honor that.”

            “So, go ask Jack then,” Avis nearly taunted, “or else I’ll follow Tim’s lead.”

            “He was at the boathouse just before I came,” said Jim. “Didn’t look too happy, nor that one you call the grandma, for that matter.”

            “I can imagine they’re,…” Seb read the cue from his wife not to speak further, in light of the girls. “Hey, maybe I can bring over some of those oatmeal cookies, if you got some to spare—”

            “Sure!” jumped up Mia, grabbing Aami to help sort then onto a couple of plates. “They have a secret ingredient to make people happy.”

            “They do?” Tim perked up. “What?”

            “It’s a secret, Mister Know-Nothing.”

            “Now, Mia,” Seb tempered, then tasted for himself. “Hey, these are good! I think they’ll help turn the evening around.” He wrapped four more into a cloth napkin and left for the boathouse.

             Besides the silence of the place, there was almost no light. Kawashiwi electricity had extended to the chapel, but Gordon had flipped that breaker when he left the tunnel. Now Pam and Trig were left with the flicker of one candle they set upon the chess table. They lay in the pillow pit and contemplated the concave of their prison. There was a hatch like a submarine would have, yet the logic of trying that broke down even without one saying anything to the other: it looked lacquered shut for the prevention of leaks, just like the thick window seals. More than that, however, what would opening one of these portals do? Flood the place with a force fuller than a dozen fire engine hoses. It would snuff out our little candle, Pam joked, wistful that she would have streamed that tacitly to Trig.

            Instead, she asked him how his headache was, waning or intensifying, and what she might do to make him more comfortable. He scrunched his eyes to avoid another answer. “I failed, Lightspeed,.. and there’s nobody out there… who knows where we are.”

            “Nobody saw you come in?”

            “The kid—Tim, so… But I impl… implied I had a plan… and he should keep… mum.”

            “What about anybody at Burntside? Ely?”

            “What about ’em?”

            “Do they know you’re here?”

            “No. Just… the old man in Winton,…”

            “Oscar?”

            Trig was fading, lolling on the pillows Pam used to prop up his head. “Yeah,.. him… And Lou…”

            “Together, were they?”

            His flinch may have indicated something, but Trig lost consciousness by the time Pam repeated the question. She searched again—ten times, already—for water, knowing they’d need hydration soon. The liquor cabinet had been emptied, evidently Jack’s calculation how he wanted her to wake up to zero hope. Kept the pillows here to encourage self-suffocation, she glowered. He’s got a hundred ways to kill us, and no reason but our fresh lymph to keep us alive. A day or two, no longer.”

            The candle might last until morning, if she needed such illumination to think, to finish the futile cross-bow with no plausible arrows to supply it. Subtly, as Gordon had also shuttered ventilation, this benign flicker was consuming a scant supply of oxygen, another means of suffocation. “Out, out, brief candle,” she droned from some memory, a play she had gone to as a teenager. Life is a tale told by an idiot, and salt to that wound, they wouldn’t even have such an idiotic platform to tell anybody anything: Gordon would carve up their bodies in the shadows he always found, then toss them, log by log, into that furnace. Lovers Island, their piecemeal tomb, until their streamed remains would loft unto the izøne and scramble it for Jack’s utopia.

            “Better us, than Shel,” she heard herself admit, searching for a way to buy the others more time, then demanding her horrified brain to dwell on that no more. She looked up to the hatch and contemplated its handle. The pillow cases she could rip in strips and tie together to make a rope—or two, as would need be. The candle could burn all night, for all she cared, just to get to get the damn deed done and force the shadows of the sanctuary to deal with them.

XXXV.

            Seb was pleasantly surprised to see Pretty halfway between the cabin everyone referred to as “the Carter’s” and the boathouse he was heading towards. The path was dark—Pretty’s eyes gleamed in his flashlight more than her patches of white fur within the predominance of black. Kay, dressed also in black, walked a few yards behind her, adding to Seb’s smile.

            “Good,” he sighed. “There were worries that you had gone the way of Pam, wherever she might be.”

            “But I was searching for her too, don’t you remember? Gordon and I pushed our canoe toward Winton, the same time you and Jack headed east.”

            “Yes, of course. Seems like a day ago already, we were looking so long. It’s just that, in the meantime, we had dinner and all, and…”

            “You saved some for me?”

            “You were missed, let us say.”

            “Hey, I’m in the sanctuary, Dad. Hard to be missed for very long—”

            “Wrong time to say that, all things considered, wouldn’t ya think?”

            Kay seemed to nod some acknowledgement. “How’s, um, Shel in all this?”

            Seb knelt down to cup Pretty’s ears and, as habit, check for woodticks. “How would you imagine her to be? Her mother’s missing, her chance to stream for any help nonexistent. And Trig, from what I understand, was scheduled to come here by now and transport them home. Shel’s confused, at the very least, if not yet crushed. Assuming you’re going to the cabin now, maybe you can read her a story or something.”

            “Naturally, I’m going to the cabin now. Where else would I be headed?”

            “I dunno, Gordon’s?”

            “Just came from there.”

            “Okay. Not sure what you see in him, but—”

            Kay huffed past him, and Pretty followed. She hoped her father might reel back that dismissal, as his physiognomy implied some regret. When he didn’t vocalize a follow-up, she told him off: “you, Paterfamilias, dragged us here, expecting our acclimation to happen on your terms, in your izøned sense of understanding! You were evangelical about it, without even testing things out for yourself! So, you don’t ‘see’ something in Gordon and wonder what I ‘see’ in him. Should I wonder what you saw in Mom?”

            “Go ahead, on that latter point—she’s there for the seven-thousandth time to ensure you have enough nourishment by day’s end.” Seb snapped his fingers and Pretty returned, grateful to have more detection for ticks. “And on the former point,” he managed to remember, “my ‘dragging you here’ was not nearly so draconian. Far from it. You and Tim—even Mia, though she had no streaming compromise at stake—both admitted early on that a one-year challenge couldn’t hurt and… no propaganda on my part to repeat what you expressed a few months ago: ‘this sanctuary could probably help our need to remember things more deeply.’ Exact quote.”

            Kay seemed to relent. “Gordon is no Prince Charming, if that helps your moral mythology. He may be more conflicted than any of us for being here, having run from his hints of Chicago abuse—”

            “Is he streamed, by the way?”

            Kay was taken aback by the question, as it had never occurred to her in their quasi-pillow talk; “I.. don’t know. Should that matter?”

            “Perhaps not. Go on.”

            “Well, now I don’t really want to. You have some design on him, I feel.”

            “As he may have on you, or any of us.”

            There was no shrug discernable, partly because Seb’s flashlight didn’t point at her. Then Kay did something she’d never done in her life, surprising Pretty as an unlikely witness. She kissed her father on his temple, sniffing out a respect that he was on to something beyond her—and maybe his—understanding. He, as paterfamilias, wouldn’t carelessly put all faith and fate into this place, but rather forage nuanced ways to go this way and that. Pam might be lost in such shuffle, but that wasn’t Seb’s fault. “Don’t worry, Daddy,” she whispered, if some sardonic ember might be hard to discern. “I won’t give myself to Gordon in any rash sense.”

            Seb felt no better for hearing her say so. “What you do—decisions you’ll make—means so much more than my approbation. ‘Approbation’—do you even know that word?”

            “Should I stream it?” Kay retorted. “Mushed mind that I’ve become…”

            It was the first time Seb had heard her say ‘mushed’, as she hated when her brother used the term as a bully. He waved it off and patted her shoulder, worrying less about definitions than primeval harmony, one family member to another, regardless of particular guy-wires.

            Seb went on to ‘prepare a face for the faces that [he’d] meet’—curious how “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” would wind its way from his sporadic memory of such. He wondered what Jack and the grandma would be doing at the boathouse this late, as the rest of the camp was deathly silent. He saw through the window that they were huddled over a map or something else on paper—planning for more posse work on Pam, he hoped.

            He opened the door without knocking, and they seemed surprised by that. “I bring gifts,” he declared, “in the form of rum cookies, baked by the kids.”

            “Well, aren’t they sweethearts,” the grandma said, gathering together what they were looking at and filing some sheets into the open cabinet.

            “Any update?” Jack asked. He took a cookie from Seb and smelled it before chomping.

            “I was here to ask you. I assume you’ll want to search again soon.”

            “Not tonight, ex…cuse me,” swallowing not to be rude, “if that’s what you had in mind. Darkness and water is a dangerous combination—”

            “—for her, too, then. Wouldn’t even just a call-out be a good idea?”

            “We did that for nearly three hours. Also, there’s those folks who live east of Kawashiwi bedding down for the night. We’ve upheld a consistent curfew against noise pollution—one of the reasons they’ve committed to the sanctuary.”

            “We’ve been none-too-quiet at campfires this time of evening.”

            “Sure, but that’s the difference in being more the village square, so to speak. You can bellow Pam’s name just outside the door here, but not out on the lake or in the woods.”

            The grandma finished her filing and shut the drawer. She took a bite from a cookie and affirmed with raised eyebrows how delicious it was. “Have those girls come by tomorrow morning and share the recipe. They can have their pickins’ from things we have on the shelves.”

            “Will do,” Seb grinned. “But for now, instead of going out on the lake, I wonder if you can open up the gate to let me and maybe Nala use the izøne. She’s gotta be at work tomorrow, y’know, and has to communicate—”

            “I don’t think so,” Jack cut him off. “Perhaps in the morning, but now wouldn’t be good.”

            “Why not?”

            He sighed and looked over to the grandma, who took this as her tag-in. “Well, you see, the whole point of the sanctuary is not to scurry in and out of it. The world out there is not meant to bail us out, nor vice versa.”

            “It’s why we had to make the perimeter more secure,” Jack added. “It was becoming too porous—not least of all when the girls took their unannounced walk to Winton.”

            “Well, they were just—”

            “Can’t have that, Seb. It’s the contract you agreed to.”
            “But, Jack, we got an emergency on our hands—something Hotline could help—”

            “Hotline would send some kinda army here, and for what? Klieg light the place and shoot cannonballs over the water? No way! Pam may be in izøned territory already, anyhow—”

            “All the more reason we’d want to know that! Okay, so I see your point about Hotline, but maybe Nala could message Trig—he was supposed to come this evening to pick them up…”

            “He was? With another shuttle? That doesn’t make much sense. And why wouldn’t anyone inform us of that? This isn’t a public place just to drop in whenever!”

            “Now, Jack,” the grandma stroked his arm, “take it easy. Trig’s a friend of the sanctuary, welcome of course.”

            “I only want him to be aware of our situation,” Seb reasoned, “as he’d find out anyway when he’d come. Hell, he may be outside the gate right now, scratching his head how to get in—”

            “There’s an intercom installed. He’d have to call us, old-fashioned style.” Jack lowered his voice. “Like Pam, he’s a patroller—can handle things fine.”

            “More than handle things, I’d like him to help us.”

            “When he comes, then, he can. I don’t want any streaming to be going on that may… take the situation out of context. The izøne constantly does that, you must admit.”

            Seb bobbed his head to consider. “All of history has its ‘out of context’ tendencies. All psychologies do, as well. I don’t think the izøne is any game-changer in that regard.”

            “To each his own,” Jack shrugged. “But as for the sanctuary’s charter, we’ve preserved our context perfectly fine without a load of izøne innuendo. I can’t have that come crashing down tonight.”

            The grandma went over to a shelf and pulled a bottle of port. “Here, this will go well with the strudel Jim bought. On the house.”

            Seb took it with some reluctance. “Wish we could drink to celebrate. Thanks, anyway.” Then to Jack: “think we can at least search again at dawn? Before Nala and Aami have to shuttle themselves alone.”

            “I’m sleeping here tonight—pointing at a cot behind the counter. Knock

when you wake up and we can give it another go.”

            “Will do.” Seb turned on his flashlight before exiting and was heartened to see Pretty’s eyes waiting for him outside.

            The night did have its howls from distant timberwolves and constant crickets’ chirp, but otherwise was quiet. Jim slept in the pup tent alone—Shel deciding to curl up with Mia, perhaps for the last time as Seb assured the cabin that tomorrow would go as planned, including the shuttle back to Faribault. He opened the bottle of port when the little otters were in bed. Nala never drank, observant of her faith, but thought tonight would justify an exception. Kay, too, took a glass and spoke softly with her parents and Nala. Tim listened in from his upper bunk. They didn’t want to retrieve specifics from their day, conscious that the kids might hear and worry themselves more. Seb didn’t say exactly what his minutes in the boathouse beheld.

            As the bottle drained, they talked about the idea of ‘having run’—history to this weekend, progress and its setbacks, energy kinetic and potential, a perfect participle allotted to the motley subscribers of this sanctuary. Not ‘having run away’ or ‘having run toward’, but dangling as the very day they’d experienced. Horseshoes having flown their arcs, having made their throwers satisfied or funnily frustrated in needless attempts to reunite the metal—piece to post—the last thing anyone remembered Pam doing, if only for a couple throws.

            Having drunk the port and eaten most the cookies, the adults brushed their teeth in the kitchen sink, took their turns in the nearby outhouse, said good night to Pretty, curled inside the lean-to on the porch, and sought the same demeanor as they curled into their beds.

XXXVI.
 

            Dawn hit the sanctuary in its slumber, neither prone nor opposed to meet the vagaries foreshadowed, if memory held its hold. Gordon, a bit perturbed that Kay had left his cabin so relatively early in the evening, having spent much time alone together, woke to a definitive sense of duty. The chapel needed cleansing, the furnace needed fuel, the weekend whoopsies needed no record of having happened in the first place, let alone available for anyone’s review.

            He slouched his way to the boathouse, eyeballing the pup tent near the beach where he guessed Jim and his granddaughter must be sleeping still; nothing roused in his appraisal of the morning, and if he’d work as quickly as he knew he could, nothing would take notice otherwise.

            The boathouse was both open and empty; the cot where Jack sometimes slept showed signs of him doing that recently, but vacant now. The grandma never slept in here, even as she loomed about the place most daylit hours. The quiet blandished him, as if a call of the wild without a trace—a dog whistle without a trainer blowing it. Gordon marched to orders no one gave, if Jack and the grandma and just a handful more were grateful for his instincts. He opened up the door behind the boathouse counter, entered the dank environs of boats that barely needed such cover, unlocked the tunnel door and walked the eighty yards of slope into Fall Lake, into the place they called ‘the chapel’, beyond his understanding or embrace.

            He had within his clutch a box of tools: hammer and hacksaw, cross cut and clamps, tongue pliers and tape rolls, most of all. A buck knife and a pair of handcuffs hung from his belt—not something he’d wear openly, but here, in the bowels of the sanctuary, he knew he’d have no witnesses. He threw a final thought about Kay, how she might have felt about the infiltrators he would have to kill in the next three or four minutes. Kay would say he shouldn’t do this; then again, Kay was easing toward a reason why he should.

           

            At the same time, a quarter mile south of the sanctuary’s electric fence, Oscar was knocking on the door of his old rival Lou. The two hadn’t spoken for over a year, each knowing the way things sometimes go. Greetings were best as a nod, host to guest, each staying to his side of the threshold. “Borrow your boat?” Oscar asked.

            Lou looked past him and up the path. No one, predictably, would be with this grouch. Then Lou squinted toward Garden Lake, the sunrise careening off the mirrored surface. His rowboat was as old as both of them, maybe even combined. Didn’t leak exactly, but always seemed to have a puddle of stink that accrued with rainy days, muddy boots, countless fish caught and ten times the live bait. “There for the taking,” Lou said, after a yawn. “So, s’yer lake all fished out?”

            “Fall Lake fished out?” Oscar dropped an unlikely smirk. “Can you imagine anything beyond the reach of man?”

            “Whad’ya mean, Oscar?... Beyond what Jack has done? ’Cuz I know yer hatred of him drives your dreary days. Hey, look—I’m as unstreamed as you are. I have no point o’ reference fer how the izøne kills a this or that—”

            “You better not be talking lightly about Martha.”

            Lou woke himself anew, shook and stepped outside to point at chopping stumps he had placed upon his porch as stools. Oscar took the invitation, tentatively, and allowed his erstwhile friend to defend himself. “Jus’ to say, I’d never speak wi’ disrespect. I’m sorry, Oscar—always have been—for the loss of Martha.”

            Oscar narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know the half of it.”

            “I’m sure I don’t.”

            “Just borrow me the boat.”

            It was strange for Lou to grant permission. He tried to lean back against the log walls of his cabin, balancing on the rounded caprice of the chopping stump. “Fer sure,” he breathed out. And noticing that Oscar didn’t spring right up, he decided to ask, “you wanna get across the reservoir, doncha?”

             “Damn right. That goon has fenced off the place from the Kawashiwi dam all the way ’round to th’ outskirts of Winton. All I want is to skirt around the mess from Garden Lake and, after that—”

            “That goon—d’ya mean Gordon?”

            “The goon I shoulda shot a dozen times by now. He’s the one that stole an’ butchered Martha.”

            Lou let that accusation settle. It would be false to frame all their interactions in this ilk, but many bent to Oscar’s strain of hyperbole and Lou’s semblance of happy-go-lucky. They’d like each other otherwise. They’d fish for hours in the grace of one another’s lake—Fall and Garden, Garden, Fall, and wherever else their curiosity and modest means could lead them. Burntside? Maybe. But that had always been outside the Boundary Waters (thus: motorized). The sanctuary had found itself, in the nestle of Fall Lake, within the everlasting law of nothing ever motorized—nothing but canoes and rowboats and an occasional, who-ya-foolin’ sailboat—and feeder lakes, like Garden, had even less to challenge such a law. Lou loved such a spot. His was one of the few cabins left to its cache of bluegills and bigger fish, trapped in reservoir transition. “I hope that didn’t happen,” was all that Lou could utter in response.

            “I’m gonna kill him, y’know. With or without your boat to get me in.”

            The old men sat upon their chopping stumps, staring somewhere between the woods and glare of Garden Lake. Lou said some conciliatory things about the sanctuary, and Oscar parried ‘quite the contrary’ views from his side of the scene. They were only miles apart, as close as either really was to any other human being.

            At last, Lou allowed, “Oscar, go ahead then, take the boat. D’ya want me with you?”

            Oscar drooped his head. “Naw.” He thought Lou would pick up the slack of what else he didn’t have in mind to say. “Naw,” he repeated. “You just stay here, as is right. I won’t rope you into this. Jus’ need your boat to get across the—”

            “I know why you need my boat.”

            Morning, by now, had broken. “You do?”

            Lou got up and sought the handle of his door, faithful, beyond his need to see it. “I do,” he affirmed. “Now git goin’.”

             The tunnel was very dark, so Gordon thought about switching on the fluorescent lights that marked every twelve yards or so. He wanted to keep his prisoners in the dark, however, so he dug into his toolbox and pulled out a flashlight. He kept it downward as he walked as catlike as possible—or lionlike, more to his size.

            Nearing the door, he set down the box and unsheathed his buck knife. His plan was to storm in—they’d have to be sleeping—and stab the first he’d see and quickly the second, then keep stabbing whichever was more alive at that point. The handcuffs were ready with a pull from a snap-button strap, though he felt confident he wouldn’t need them.

            At the eyehole, he was surprised to see the flicker of a candle, then a little less surprised at what it illuminated from below. The bodies, limp and like deer about to be flayed, hung from the shadows of the ceiling. A hint of relief glazed Gordon’s eye. He set down the knife on top of the toolbox and scooted back down the tunnel to flip on the lights for the chapel, too, now that half his work there was already done.

            Stoic that he’d always been, Gordon tended not to reflect on duties like this. But he did think about how lucky these past weeks had been: a drop-from-the-sky girlfriend; a couple streamed corpses that likewise just fell into his lap. He searched his mind for a third or fourth fortuitous thing, sure they’d be there, if elusive in the excitement that was mounting, jogging through the lit tunnel.

            He looked through the eyehole while unbolting the door, admiring the organization, the stack of chairs it took to tie the makeshift ropes to the ceiling hatch, the mathematics of using the highest and lowest points of the disc to fit in the duo-dangle, without bottoming out or reaching above to reconsider. Not for nothing, their patroller instincts had come in handy, including an honorable Roman way out in the absence of swords.

            “You’ll be missed,” he mumbled with limited irony, entering with the toolbox in one hand, buck knife in the other. He took three steps inside and rotated, wondering whether or not to close the door. Might be easier, he weighed, to drag them through the tunnel and dismember them between the tunnel and the boathouse store.... Water there, in area of the covered docks, would ease the cleanup…

            He turned again to face the deceased, as if to ask their opinion, then squinted at Trig’s sleeves. No hands. Pam’s body was obscured by his, but something didn’t seem right about her, either. He glued his focus on them as he lowered the toolbox and threw the buck knife into Trig. It pierced the cloth but didn’t thunk, and Gordon realized the ruse just before a naked Trig jumped out from behind the pump organ and naked Pam from the empty liquor cabinet. Gordon dashed for his knife, embedded in the pillows that stuffed the uniform. Trig pounced to get there first, and both men resorted to their fists. Pam hadn’t seen Gordon throw the knife—her angle of vision had been on Trig, across the disc—but dove into the tussle, aiming for the monster’s eyes and vulnerable spots. She managed to pull the handcuffs and slap one side to Gordon’s left wrist, but he grabbed her with that hand and, at the expense of taking three square punches to his face, Gordon used his right hand to cuff Pam’s. Chained to her, he fought both of them with his feet and teeth and one arm. And when Trig sprung free to grab the knife, Gordon positioned Pam as a shield.

            “I’ll break her neck,” he threatened.

            Trig dropped the knife, put up his hands, and begged, “don’t, please. Kill me if you gotta, but leave her be. She’s a mother; I’m unfamilied and—”

            “Trig, don’t say this—”

            “What else can I do, Lightspeed?”

            “You can—” Pam gripped her captor’s testicles and ducked her head more into his forearm to withstand his chokehold. Trig leapt back into the fight and heard something crack.

            “Won’t get far like that,” Gordon grunted, pleased with how he used his feet to snap Trig’s fibula, tibia, or both.

            He screamed, Pam lost her grip, and the gladiators fought on.

XXXVII.

            Nala had shaken Aamiina awake, whispering Shel to come along as well. She had indicated her plan to Seb and Avis, who drew up the pros and cons but deferred to her own instincts. She was going to start up the shuttle, back it down the path to create a running start, and leap the electric fence with the limited capacity of this kind of vehicle to fly (over logs and boulders, more conventionally). Once over the fence and on the way to Ely, she’d slow the shuttle down and stream for Pam and Trig; if neither would respond, she’d activate Hotline. On purpose, they’d leave Jim in the sanctuary. He could stay there for Pam if she was really unstreamable, and thus all bases would be covered.

            Seb accompanied them to the shuttle and offered, for the dozenth time, to pilot the craft at least across the fenceline. Nala insisted that she had this—knew enough how to drive, as really these shuttles could drive themselves. Pam had shown her the basic codes for entrance and engagement with the stored fuel, perhaps prescient of this eventuality. Maybe Pam had her disappearance in mind all the time and expected Nala to play her part. Nala the Patroller—a baptism by fire, if such an idiom wouldn’t necessarily blaspheme her reactivated tendrils of Muslim faith.

            They managed to get into the shuttle, but the engagement code didn’t work. Seb scratched his neck, wondering how similar this case was to his own shuttle, which seemed to empathize, mechanically missing the izøne—especially as no grace of wilderness would compensate. The shuttles here became mere husks as their stored fuel seeped away; even worse—the shuttles, which could float, had no design for paddles, stranded all the more like the Galàpagos tortoises they could never imagine. Nala gathered the girls and reconsidered what to do.

            Seb showed them the tree he had climbed, reluctantly, to get over the fence and drop to a Sinai type of freedom on the other side. But before he could explain his own rendezvous the other night, Jack came up the path to greet them: “Good morning, having-runners, as we like to call ourselves.”

            “Good morning,” obliged Aamiina, spokesgirl for her silent group.

            “You’ve done really well,” Jack merged the here-and-now with nostalgia, “to spend with us the week,” grinning at the girls, “and the weekend,” barely glancing toward Nala, then drilling his eyes into Seb. “You realize,” Jack continued, “the sanctuary can only exist through faithfulness, as you’ve signed into.”

            “Where’s my mom?” Shel found some faith to ask.

            Jack responded without missing a beat. “She’s still here: the sanctuary is a vast place that most people—your mom included—want to expand. You remember, Shel, when we caught so many bluegills around Mile Island?” Shel nodded. Aami, too. “Well, that’s where everyone wants to go. You guys would want to go back there again, right?”

            Nala intervened. “We gotta go home now. It’s truly suspicious that our shuttle’s gone dead.”

            Seb chose not to remain silent. “I concur with Nala, Jack. You have to open the gate for them, really. Notwithstanding what we talked about last night—”

            “You get the hell back to your cabin, Seb!”

            It was the plaid-shirt guy, sneaking up the path. Like his usual blur into an occasional background, he sought no eye-contact nor endorsement from anyone, least of all, Jack. “Yeah,” said the latter in a softer tone, “you better do that.”

            Seb gathered with his eyes the possible opinion of Nala, then Shel, then Aamiina, and decided, “we will. But not ’cause you say so. We came here precisely not to be told by izøne to do this or that, and ‘hell’ or not—” Seb stepped toward the plaid-shirt guy, who planted himself like a menhir, “we certainly won’t be told what to do by you. Keep to your chess games, whoever you are—you’ve never even tendered the common decency of your name—”

            “Tim knows who I am.”

            Seb, though stunned, refused to seem so. “But I don’t. And you’ve just pulled the carpet from under yourself. Yourselves—Jack included.”

            Jack didn’t flinch, staunchly waiting for everyone to retreat. The plaid-shirt guy led the way and made sure that they were in the cabin before taking the campfire trail to the western woods of the sanctuary.

            Oscar pulled up the rowboat on the other side of Garden Lake. No paths were established here, yet he nosed himself north to the east side of the Kawashiwi dam, where a fence continued its enclosure of the sanctuary, if not electrified. Pretty, splashing in the stream beneath the dam, recognized him immediately; after a couple seconds, as the dog ran to him, Oscar returned the familiarity and knelt in gratitude. He hadn’t brought a weapon with him for the job, and while Pretty likely wouldn’t become a killing machine at his command, at least the old man wouldn’t be alone.

            They walked along the lakeshore, Pretty leading as she did with Nala the previous morning. The forest allowed a chance to think, but soon it opened to the beach, where looking and leaping would have to take over. The pup tent was the first thing in sight. Oscar approached with caution, Pretty having sniffed the entry flap. Before reaching it, though, a voice not unlike his own called from the lilypad line of the lake. “Mornin’, how goes your side of the search?”

            Oscar crouched behind the tent to assess the possible threat, and saw from Pretty’s casual regard that this canoer wasn’t Gordon or any of his fellow goons. He whispered as loudly as necessary to carry that far across the water: “you searchin’ for what?”

            The canoer paddled toward shore, declining to parlay like this at distance. Pretty swam the twenty yards or so that would be their midpoint, then circled back. “Been searching since dawn for my daughter, Pam Circe. Missing since yesterday afternoon.” Jim’s voice relayed more fatigue than exasperation. He nudged the prow into the sand but sat still for Oscar to more fully reveal himself.

            “She streamed?”

            “Sure. But how can that matter here?”

            Lovers Island, little clump of earth northwest of the trio, filled Oscar’s vision. Jim pivoted in the canoe seat as if to see another vessel on the lake—perhaps his daughter paddling in from that direction. Pretty looked the other way, however, growling at low volume to compel their more necessary attention. The grandma and the plaid-shirt guy had stopped in their tracks, heading toward the boathouse. Jim meekly waved at them, hoping they’d have any news. Instead, without civilities, they reversed their direction and disappeared.

            Oscar clenched his teeth. “Got a gun in that tent?”

            “Heavens, no! Hunting ’round here, I learned, is only by bow-and-arrow to keep noises natural.”

            “Nothing natural about this place. Smoke and mirrors.”

            Jim braced the sides of the canoe to push himself up. “Well, I must say it’s been good for my granddaughter—”

            “Is she streamed?”

            Jim didn’t rise, but studied his peer’s weathered face. “What’s behind that question?”

            Oscar approached the canoe and in a single motion pushed it off the shore and, getting only one boot wet, hurled his body to the triangular bow that fit his knees like a Muslim prayer. While Jim didn’t paddle to fight against this new launch, he didn’t facilitate the new inertia either. “Here, toss me the paddle,” Oscar said, swinging into the seat and facing Jim, contrary to the boat’s design. Jim assented by gripping the oar end for Oscar to reach the handle. “Just want to park this into a little inlet I saw from the forest path,” Oscar explained as he dug into the water.

            Jim looked past him and bid Pretty, who wondered what was happening, to check on Shel and the rest of the cabin. The dog understood, apparently, and that allowed enough peace of mind for Jim to guess the answer to his question. “You aren’t streamed yourself, are you? Me, neither—folks our age sort of fell into it or…”

            “Now there’s a new falling,” Oscar suggested, “and you gotta save your granddaughter, pronto.”

            “Who are you?”

            “Oscar, widower of a woman who got lured into this place and ended up there”—pointing to Lovers Island on his left, Jim’s right—“to fuel the scramble of the very stuff that streamed her. Y’see, this sanctuary is not for the streamed to be free of streaming.”

            Jim took that in with due reflection. “Then, Oscar, what’s it for?”

            “It’s to feed the izøne with the izøned.”

            “That doesn’t make sense. Rather mushed, as kids say today. Why would the non-izøned need a sanctuary in the first place?”

            Oscar maneuvered around the lilypad line and toward the inlet he had scouted out. Jim mostly listened, gliding backwards with the craft and serving some capacity as a watch for the grandma or the plaid-shirt guy to return, as their cursory appearance had troubled him. Oddly, as they moved out of view of the boathouse and sanctuary clearing, Jim felt some comfort that this strange Oscar might find Pam better than last night’s posse, a term he detested as many times as he heard it, from spaghetti westerns to an outdated ‘now’.

           

            Pretty had done her job, as usual. She came to the cabin exactly as Jack approached from the opposite direction. The latter knocked on the door, and, as it opened, Pretty slithered in before a terse invite for the sanctuary’s leader to enter and have a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Avis offered that, as Kay fluffed up the pillow of her reading chair. Nala and Jim leaned against separate walls, bracing for the Samson effect of this sudden autocrat. All three girls had squirreled to the upper bunk, Tim having jumped down in readiness to be part of a posse. Jack reached to shake his hand—no occasion—and accepted Avis’ mug and Kay’s gesture for him to sit.

            Some oatmeal-rum cookies were stacked on the reading stand. Jack helped himself, toasting the upper bunk with approval. “These are great, girls. Come to the store today and grab the ingredients you need for another batch.”

            “Aamiina and I have to go home today,” Nala reiterated.

            “I’ll have Gordon look at your shuttle—”

            “Didn’t help ours any,” Seb challenged. “It’s time, I think, to get a mechanic here from Ely.”

            “Thought of that. Supply truck comes tomorrow, usually the way we communicate things like this.”

            “I just don’t understand why—”

            “As you just witnessed a little while ago, there are other having-runners to consider—”

            “You mean that plaid-shirt guy? Tim, what’s his name, anyway?”

            “Him,” Jack went on, “and a hundred more like him.”

            “Sylvia?” Mia asked.

            “Her. Everyone you’ve met here. Many you haven’t. Those who live east of Kawashiwi—they want nothing to do with the outer world, and certainly not its intrusion. Even gave me some trouble about your shuttles being here in the first place. Gotta understand: I can’t rewrite the rules for your situation, as much as I sympathize.”

            Tim felt a need to confess something. “Um, I… should have said this yesterday.”

            Avis assumed by his eye contact he was addressing her. “What?”

            He looked up at Shel. “I ran into Trig while everybody was searching for your mom.”

            “Trig?” Nala blurted. “Here, inside sanctuary?”

            “He didn’t come to the boathouse to register,” Jack flat-lined.

            “I think,” Tim hedged, “that he wanted to find Pam his own way.”

            “Then where is he now? Where did you see him go?” Seb stepped in front of Tim, who dropped his eyes. “Jack, you must know something about this—”

            “How would I know? He’s a patroller and, assuming you weren’t just dreaming this, Tim, our meagre security fence would not prevent him from coming in. Just wish if he did, he would have registered. See, ’cause this is what I’m talking about: it forces the need for a lock-down.”

            “A what?”

            As if to answer further, the muffled sound of a gun blasted from the direction of the boathouse. The cabin tensed and Jack sprang up. “Stay inside!” he ordered, and with ten times the speed of his entrance, he opened the door and slammed it behind his run, almost tripping over Pretty, who managed again to thread the needle, one environment to another.

XXXVIII.

           

            Eight sets of eyes in the cabin searched for one another, astonished at yet another rifle shot. Shel was first to cry, then Mia, then Tim. “I shoulda told about Trig,” he gnawed into his knuckles. “I shoulda—”

            “Let’s stay calm,” Avis advised. “Trig will take care of himself just fine.”

            “Where’s my mom?” Shel blubbered, now into Nala’s embrace.

            “She’s also gonna be alright—maybe Uncle Seb goes out to check.…”

            Seb looked for someone to join him. Tim dropped his head in shame. Kay rose, but then cuddled up to Mia, who sobbed Pretty’s name for fear she’d been shot. “No!” Seb assured. “We aren’t anyone’s target. For that matter, bear in mind it’s hunting season around here and—”

            “But that’s bow and arrow,” Kay protested. “Gordon told me all about it.” She sank into the memory of the old man from Winton who had barred her secret rendezvous with the izøned world. The option to go in and out seemed so compelling in those first days of sanctuary, if now she felt no such pull. Gordon saved me then, she freshly realized before returning to the angst at hand.

            Avis snapped the family to attention. “Get up, everyone. We’re going as a group to face the morning, heads held high. This place is ours by right, after all.”

            “But Avis—”

            “No ‘buts’, Seb. If hospice care taught me anything, it’s not to—”

            “We’re not in hospice-mode, Dear—”

            “Dad!” Mia pounded on her thigh. “Pretty is out there and Mom is the boss now! Let’s do what she says!”

            The atmosphere froze. No one truly was boss—even Mia knew that—yet some form of helm duty had to be imagined. The cabin itself offered negligible nudges to remain inside: novels yellowing on shelves, drams of rum for one more midnight swill, pillows propped for 19th-century ennui. Mia sunk into her sister’s armpit as if to disappear and leave this failed morning for all the wonderful days that had come before. Kay nodded at her mother: “You’re right. Pretty’s out there fronting our best interest, and we should…”

            “We should join her,” Tim finally had the temerity to say, springing from the lower bunk.

            Seb surveyed everything, from Nala’s clutch of Shel to Tim’s sudden sense of chivalry. Avis wasn’t waiting for his approval yet appreciated his proviso: “no one has to go outside who doesn’t want to,” he staccatoed. To soften things he added, “nothing forces us outside.”

            Nothing forces us outside. In synching streams of consciousness, Kay seized upon the word ‘outside’; Tim focused on the ‘forces’; Nala flashed a vision of Somalia, nothing of which would haunt her daughter’s mind; Aamiina, for her part, pattered names as if in prayer—Shel an’ Mia, Shel an’ Mia, Shel an’  

            Mia unwrapped from her sister and stomped toward the door. “Enough of being mushed!” She grabbed the handle in her right and Seb’s hand in her left, tugging him to take the lead.

           

            “Go back to your cabin!” shouted the grandma, loading new shells into the shotgun.

            “Where’s Jack?” Seb demanded. “What’s goin’ on?”

            “Jack’s around the other side of the boathouse. There’s a bear inside that’s gonna swim out one direction or the other, and you best be outta the way—”

            “A bear?” Avis was incredulous. “And that’s something you’d need to shoot?”

            “No time debatin’,” the grandma travelled her vision to the eastern skirt of the boathouse. “I got this. Jus’ get back to your place, as I said.”

            The plaid-shirt guy burst out of the store. He loped a straight line at Seb with glassy eyes. The latter cocked his head in consternation. The bear might’ve just as well been him, he realized, though the grandma didn’t turret the gun away from its line on the water. As the plaid-shirt honed in on Seb, Tim came up with his gambit. “Chess?” he loudly inflected, in stride toward the chapel—the same as he had done a dozen times before.

            It seemed to flip a switch, as everything unleashed at once: a swell of water came from that eastern skirt, and the grandma let the shotgun rip. Seb pounced at her and Tim followed suit, forcing plaid-shirt to tackle the greater threat. While he and Seb wrestled, Tim managed to grip the shaft of the shotgun and turn it skywards, against the grandma’s inordinate strength. Instead of a bear emerging from the agitated water, two human heads gasped for breath and their need to call out chaos.

            By now, Jim and Oscar belied their old hams by sprinting from their hidden harbor. Shel screamed across the beachhead as Avis abandoned her to join her husband’s fight. Kay didn’t know which way to look while covering her sister’s eyes. Pretty, with fido instincts think-don’t-think, swooped from the west side of the boathouse into the water of the east, meeting these vagrant heads on their wary way toward shore.

            To a measure of relief and horror, even from the glimpses of the grappling Carters, these heads became torsos: Pam and Trig, the latter leaning full against her guidance, as his fractured leg still lagged below the surface. Shel bolted into the water as Pretty had done, meeting her mother in the surreal spirit of the very first Easter. She shrieked at the strange feel of the hand she grabbed, underwater and invisible. She searched for another—Pam’s this time—and ushered the faux bear tandem to shore.

            Avis and Seb had at this point pinned the plaid-shirt guy to incapacity, and Tim had done the same to the grandma. Jim and Oscar fronted Jack, who had curled around the boathouse with no weapon but his ireful eyes. He huffed at the spectacle emerging—more the downfall of his sanctuary than the ghoulish trudge of bodies. Then he put his hands together like a whiffle ball and blew into the aperture that his thumbs had made; flapping his outer hand modified the pitch to simulate the call of a loon.

            “Wha’z that s’posed to do, Jack?” hollered Seb atop his squirming adversary.

            Attention, though, was on the water. Jim was waist-high, propping up Trig to alleviate his pull on Pam. Nala waited on the sand to guide them to the grass, where the duo cautiously collapsed. Everyone saw the dangling arm handcuffed to Pam’s own, yet it took Aamiina to put it to a question: “what’s that on—”

            Pam tried to shield its sight. She looked at Kay—shaking, knitting things together in her mind—and simply nodded her regret. “It wasn’t what we wanted to do.”

            “He swallowed the goddamn key!” Trig grimaced, clasping his broken shin.

            “He was coming to kill us—”

            “Where?” demanded Avis.

            “The chapel—where we’ve been held host—”

            “No!” Jack bellowed, then whistled again his loon call through his hands. “You’re trespassers here,” he rushed in the same exhale, “murderers in your own right—”

            Oscar seized the perfect chance to punch him in the face. Their ensuing scuffle held some odds that he, like Seb and Avis and Tim, would subdue the sanctuary kingpin and throw him into his own furnace as a final sacrifice. Jack would have no problem with the geriatric, though, compelling Pam to gather new strength and charge into their fray. She swung Gordon’s arm like a flail against Jack’s head; he tottered with the first strike and fell unconscious with the next.

            His whistles had achieved a purpose, however, with a gang of having-runners marching from the western woods. “Quick!” Oscar directed, “girls and mothers come with me—I have a boat to get us outta here!”

            Jim, knowing the canoe could only float a few, acted likewise: “Pam, get Trig back in the water—I’ll paddle ’round to tow you ’cross the lake. Tim, you with me?”

            The teenager had wrested the shotgun from the grandma. “Should I take this with?”

            Over his shoulder Jim shouted: “no ammo, no worth—just get movin’!”

            Tim hammered the shotgun stock against the grandma’s chest and zipped over to bash the head of his chess rival, from whom Seb and Avis had disentangled. A second blow split the skin and revealed a mesh of wires, shocking Tim to paralysis as other having-runners were closing in. His family’s screams just as instantly shook him to reality, and in no time he recouped the distance they had made toward Oscar’s promised boat.

            He had called out Shel to come with him, but she and Pam and Trig were already ottering toward her grandpa’s canoe, now in sight beyond the line of lilypads. Pretty gauged the situation and decided that Oscar would be dog enough to guide her family; she knew the Circes needed more support, and swam beside the valiant eight-year-old who, just last week, hadn’t known how to swim.

            In the eastern woods, toward the Kawashiwi dam, lived more reclusive having-runners. The Carters knew of them, but not who they were nor how they might respond to shotgun blasts or whiffled whistles. Nala was aware of at least one vicious dog here that could give them trouble. Surely nothing worse than what’s behind us; she shook again Somalia from her racing mind.

            Oscar, last in line, grunted syllables of where to go. “Up… stream to… Gar—”

            Seb circled back to help him. “C’mon, ol’ man—jump on my back if—”

            “No!... Jus’ get..,” he stopped to prop his hands above his knees. “Garden… Lake—”

            “You’re comin’ with us, dammit!” Seb wove his head and right shoulder into the slump of Oscar’s left arm and lifted him. “Garden Lake!” he yelled ahead to Tim, who had never been there but knew it fed the Kawashiwi dam.

            “Wait!” Mia was the next to stop. “Where’s Pretty?”

            Avis pushed her back to a fleeing pace. “She’s with Shel, as should be.”

            “But dogs can’t swim that far! She’ll drown.”

            “She won’t!” Avis snapped. But come to think of it, she might.

            There were no more words for the strain of legging through the outlet stream of the Kawashiwi dam. Having-runners didn’t take to water—Tim was understanding why—and for some uncertain moments, the chase seemed done. Oscar warned them not to slack, even jumping off of Seb’s back to demonstrate his second wind. “The rowboat’s up this way… and ’round the shore… ’nother… quarter mile…”

            The deerpath cut sufficiently enough through brambles to keep the escapees from stumbling. The glisten of Garden Lake seemed to bounce off the birch trees, illuminating the homestretch. Tim found the boat and unlooped its anchor rope from a root exposed in the eroded shore. Kay stepped over the front bench and guided Mia and Shel in. Nala next, and all gripped the sides to move aft. Tim sat facing them on the edge of the middle bench, ready to work the oars. Seb pushed the bow a bit to create more float, then Avis and Oscar clambered in, leaving no real room for Seb. He looked down the shore to the southern reach of the lake and wondered if it wouldn’t be best to launch them without his added weight; he’d meet them on the other side, eventually, certain he could outstride any having-runner that would exit the sanctuary.

            “Dad!” his son ordered, “get in!” He pointed to the dam and the distant figure of Sylvia, her silver hair not done up as they had only seen her otherwise.

            “Is she..,” Avis squinted to frame her question, “is she also trying to run away?”

            As if to answer, Sylvia reached across her chest to pull the bow she’d hung on her shoulder. She readied an arrow, and though too far away, another having-runner with his own bow emerged from a promontory boulder, dangerously close.

            “Get in!” repeated Tim, and Seb lunged his body into the overloaded boat. An arrow pinged against its side as Tim rowed furiously to point the bow toward the center of the lake. He slid over at Oscar’s shift to the middle bench, each pulling his own oar now with double strength. Another arrow whizzed over their heads. Nala muttered a prayer into Aamiina’s ear and Kay folded Mia to her lap. Seb and Avis used their palms to paddle the water, eight inches or so from the rim. A third arrow skittered across their wake, this time from another angle.

            “We can’t aim toward Lou’s,” Oscar realized. “Let’s hurry… toward the southern straits.”

            “Or—” Kay clasped her head with alacrity—“we use Hotline, now that our streaming’s back.”

            “Then we can row to the center and sit this out,” agreed Avis.

            Oscar grunted. “We may be sitting ducks that way.”

            “Can anyone message Pam? Maybe she’d give us advice.”

            Nala scrunched her eyes in concentration. “She don’t respond. Still in sanctuary, I guess.”

            “Sanctuary!” Seb snarled, still paddling. “God save us from apostasy.”

XXXIX.

            While arrows could have flown into Fall Lake, the greater threat to the Circes and Trig were boats accessible to the having-runners. Most of those were inside the boathouse or along the western shore as the closest link to Lovers Island. Someone (no longer Gordon) had to stoke that furnace every so often and keep an eye on any trawlers from the Winton end of the lake. Pam indicated as much to her father as she clung to the port side of the canoe; Trig, clinging starboard, cringed at the notion of landing too far east. “Gotta get to where the izøne can help us—”

            “That’d be north, maybe closer than Winton. Especially if I run ahead.”

            “No!” Shel protested from her space in front of Jim’s feet, having been picked up by him while Pam and Trig had braced against the tippage. “Don’t leave us again!”

            Pam looked behind to gauge some movement of bodies in the grassy area they’d left. Jack hadn’t moved—perhaps he was dead with that second blow from his right-hand man. The grandma, too, remained a little mound, but the plaid-shirt guy had joined the rest of his silent militia. “You’re right, Honey,” she decided to say, “I won’t leave you.” She instantly wondered if Trig would require the same promise, but glossed over that unknown, gluing the syntax shut with “ever again.”

            For a few minutes, all was rather quiet. Jim kept a smooth, strong stroke on mostly the right side, as Trig couldn’t move his legs like Pam could to add extra propulsion. Shel looked straight ahead, imagining those woods to be calm and spooky at the same time. No one lived there, according to the Carters, and whatever roads or paths that had existed were long grown over. They hadn’t any tools, of course: no machete to whack the brush, no compass to guide them northwest toward the izøne. They’d need to resort to raw instinct.

            “Where’s Pretty?” Shel asked, craning her head over her grandpa’s knee.

            Pam swung her line of sight backwards, but instantly toward Lovers Island, where a pair of having-runners had canoed themselves. “Um, Dad,” she said, “paddle this side—aim us for that inlet on your right.”

            “Mist Bay?” he clarified.

            “The lagoon there, and quick—they have a laser on us now.”

            “Where’s Pretty?!”

            Trig placed his left hand on the girl’s and shushed. “She’ll be okay, Shel. I think she just wanted to make sure you were in the boat, then probably went back to check the others.”

            “Probably?”

            No response, covered instead by the labored breathing from all paddlers. Mist Bay had a triangular shape, the hypotenuse of which faced the middle of the lake. The sandy bottom sloped toward an swampy inlet near the right angle—“there!” Pam puffed, “lagoon!… Power… us in!” Her feet reached the bottom now to Clydesdale their effort; Trig’s side, by contrast, would add more friction. But he was clever to lift his broken leg over the side of the canoe and, eventually, push off the sand with his one good leg.

            The canoe slipped through the sluice and into the haven of this less-than-olympic-size pool. Little time to reconnoiter, Pam suggested they pull into the leafiest overhang while she’d gauge the possible pursuit. “Don’t go away, Mom!” Shel reminded.

            “Shh—this here’s gonna be our fortress.”

            While she could have come out of the water, she swam across the lagoon—partly to keep low, partly to float the nagging forearm handcuffed to her sickened soul. The thought that Shel had spent a week with such monsters created new panic, reflection being the nemesis of trained reaction. She took some solace on the angelic contrast of the Carters, naïve as they had been. Solace turned to guilt, however, when Nala and Aamiina came to mind—they wouldn’t have encountered this horror without her invitation. Dummy! she winced at her own culpability, stemming from Aamiina’s injury on the golf course to the chance that she and her mother were likewise holed up in some bivouac, running from these heartless having-runners. Damn. Yet, casting a glance to the cover of their canoe, there was no time to dwell on regret. She saw that Trig had sealioned himself and was already fashioning a crutch out of a lay-about branch. He’d be no drag on the group, even if it came to it that the having-runners would surround them, and probably prevail. Oh, to have Pretty here.… But then…

            A mile-and-a-half away, the overloaded boat on Garden Lake had lowered its anchor in as precisely the dead center as could be calculated. Oscar was sullen—his ‘sitting ducks’ warning had not persuaded the others, putting their trust now in Hotline. Though the streaming was sketchy here—the southern edge of the sanctuary’s scramble of the izøne—Kay had managed a connection. Seb, in his attempts to do the same, held his aching head; Tim also complained about a sudden migraine. Nala tried to reassure: “it’ll go ’way—we had it too when we left sanctuary.”

            “I’m not feeling so bad,” Avis said, softly.

            “Maybe it’s a man thing,” Nala pondered. “Trig was worse off than Pam ’n me.…”

            No arrows came from the gallery of subtle movers around the lake. Oscar wondered whether Lou was aware—a potential victim by now, or heaven forbid! an accomplice. At any rate, the sanctuary had suffered a severe blow: literally, the arm of Gordon knocking Jack off his feet, perhaps to hell. Oscar would content himself to consequential martyrdom, yet he grieved to think the children would die with him. Here they were—Mia and Aamiina, unstreamed in this God-forsaken world—going down with the ship.

            The blades of a helicopter murmured from the west. Kay sprang up from her seat, endangering the burdened balance; no one disagreed with the need to exult in this hope and beacon their presence. The pilot would have exact coordinates, of course—Hotline was nothing if not time/space accurate. Where to land would be a question, as this one didn’t have pontoons. Another one behind it did, however, and the first made a frisbeed arc to lend recognition of the stranded boat before surveiling the sanctuary grounds. Kay’s message had been thorough enough: under siege from the sanctuary’s cronies—unclear who the enemies are. And now, though streaming still was hit-and-miss, hampered by headache, someone from the second helicopter gave instruction: stay calm and stay put. The morning’s nightmare, at least for everyone but Oscar, seemed suddenly over.

            As they stepped carefully from the rowboat to the pontoon copter, Tim told the co-pilot about the Circes and their attempt to flee north, last he’d seen. The co-pilot communicated that to the other helicopter via old-fashioned radio, a relic of an all-too-rushed past. The other chopper wouldn’t be able to land anywhere except the central yard beside the sanctuary’s boathouse, but would keep an eye on the situation north—“in fact,” Tim heard over the ancient handset, “there is a lady across Fall Lake, waving weirdly—something weighing on her right arm…”

            Since migraines were conspicuous, and medical check-ups would fit the protocol of Hotline calls, all were flown to the rooftop of the Ely clinic. Oscar pleaded to be dropped right away to Winton, desiring nothing but closure in his irrelevant house—“nothin’ interesting to izøne, and you know where to find me, anyway!”

            The pilot explained, “we can’t just drop folks anywhere—but we’d be happy to hover over your individual journey home…”

            “Nah,” said Oscar, sniffling at the consciousness that ‘house’ and ‘home’ and ‘sanctuary’ would never mean the same to anyone again. “Just… fly me… where you have to. I’ll be fine.”

            The main concerns, as triage ascertained, were in some sort of order: Trig’s fractured leg (both tibia and fibula, as Gordon’s crush would have it); the headache levels and anything else to read into them; the concern for the children, clustering as if in some Somalia pup tent—riverside, avoiding crocodiles and planning to make mudpies; Kay, whose fuller view of Gordon’s arm not only made her vomit, but let out screams that seemed to harbor in her twenty years of never ever screaming about anything before.

            Avis, of course, was mother on that: beyond the beyond, and beyond hospice practice. She cradled her daughter more carefully than she’d ever done to Tim, so into empirical proofs, or Mia, in love with a new set of friends. She cradled her eldest as no one had done so before—not Gordon, of course, and not Seb or herself—no one had thought such a brilliant being would be in such need. Certainly, the izøne could not know the need.

            And so, against protocol, the Ely clinic allowed these refugees the waiting room space to sort out the rest of their day and the night as it came. Lou, wouldn’ cha know, came in around campfire time, wielding a stringer of bluegill he’d already filleted, already fried—the microwave worked at the clinic, he might have guessed, but true to Lou spirit, he’d surely ensure that nourishment would not abdicate to buttons being pushed, waves being reliable. He said so himself: “oh, Great Spirit of this box that responds to my hope that it will respond, give heat to the cold o’ my kill—bluegills, fer what they are worth, from somebody’s aptly named Garden Lake.”

            Aamiina tugged his sleeve. “Lou,” she addressed without admonishments of whom-to, how-to, what-to say, “can you sing that campfire song about the boots?”

            “About the boots?” Lou scratched the gray hairs of his memory.

            “About filling them, when it rains…”

            The waiting room, while bluegills warmed within the microwave, constructed in the phrasal memory, bereft of a guitar. Seb began the

When we’re up in heaven

We’ll be lookin’ down at us,

Tim joined, to everyone’s surprise, enlivening his younger sister to do the same:

Laughin’ at the looniness

And things that caused a fuss;

Nala, too, remembered, and Avis—clearly troubled that Jack had strummed these lines:

When there’s clearly trouble

The laughin’ turns to rain,

Got to wash away those blues

And fill your boots again!

Pam and Shel were last to sing, their streaming being an overwhelming thing, as both thought, secretly, of their next-door neighbor Mrs Schuster, worried sick for their absence and knowledge of their well being:

            Fill your boots

            When it rains

            Life takes root

            When it rains…

XL.

            A minute later, the microwave bell rang and the first round of breaded bluegill was ready for distribution—on paper towels in the absence of plates. Lou had the presence of mind to bring a lemon from the little tree he nurtured inside his cabin. They ate with their hands, graciously.

            An hour later, Kay woke from a nap that had calmed her down—no tranquilizer otherwise. She entered the waiting room with light vermilion eyes, blinking them to a focus of the strangely festive atmosphere. Mia hugged her and Aamiina held up a portion of dinner they saved for her. She took the paper nest and deeply sniffed the fresh lemon, and smiled. She couldn’t help but scan for Pam and, having fathomed her horrific dilemma, offer some support. Right after Kay had seen her last, the chopper crew had managed to clip off the chain-link and take Gordon’s arm as forensic evidence. The lone cuff around Pam’s wrist had not been removed, however—Ely patrollers hadn’t come to that point, rushing code-red to the sanctuary instead. Pam palmed it with her other hand, its shame like that of a gang-forced tattoo. Kay, back to her thoughtful self, went to hug her, enabling those hands to be free.

            They both went to the operation room where Trig was being prepped for screws and splints. He declined the general anesthesia, trusting the local application would be enough. He told the doctor he wanted to remain aware—“on duty, especially now.”

            “You can be at ease, you know. Situation’s under control.”

            “Duty is more than ‘control’,” Trig replied, and beamed at the sight of Pam coming in. “Hey, there, Lightspeed!”

            They kissed and Kay waited to express her appreciation—“we had no idea what was happening. I’m most to blame, thinking Gordon was…”

            “No,” Trig asserted, “you’re not at all to blame. No one but him and Jack and that grandma—maybe no one but them, brainwashing anyone else.”

            “Stockholm syndrome, I think it’s called,” though Pam didn’t want to stream that for accuracy.

            Kay didn’t either. “I think so, too,” she uttered, looking from him to Pam, “and thank you for..., you know…”

            Two-and-a-half days later, the sanctuary had been scoured by hundreds of officials. Arrests were made of the human residents of the territory—a few holding out as die-hard ‘having-runners’. Sylvia threatened suicide from atop the boathouse roof, but was eventually talked down. Batteries were removed from the apprehended robots: the plaid-shirt guy, the grandma, a half dozen others.

            Those on the eastern side of the Kawashiwi dam were all human and mostly streamed. Though they generally passed their interviews to remain, headaches pushed some to the Ely clinic or farther afield. Lovers Island, of course, ceased its scramble of the izøne—the sanctuary, by definition, was no longer so.

            Not that fuel for the furnace had been depleted. Officials pried open the double locks of the freezer in Gordon’s cabin to gather the sixty cubic yards of log-like body parts, all testing positive to the effect of streaming serum. Some of the space had apparently allowed for such butchering, but most was for the stacking. Other buildings had scant evidence of the gruesome enterprise: the dark green binder in the boathouse file cabinet had the names of those registered to the sanctuary, yet largely the victims who fueled the place were not so easily traceable. Detectives felt, in fact, that folks like the Carters would have never met the fate of those who made their contract happen. Genius or not, Jack Childress seemed faithful to those who co-committed to his cause.

            Their shuttle repaired, the Carters had returned to Minneapolis, reluctant to go without their dog. Patrollers, including the precinct chief from Faribault, promised to keep an eye out for her. Pam and Trig had to stay in Ely for extended debriefing—Trig in a wheelchair by now—but Jim and Shel returned to Faribault with Nala and Aamiina. Things there were familiar, from Alexander Park to Mrs Schuster’s cooking to little lessons on the putting green. Smiles, though, were half-held in reflection of the otter fun they couldn’t quite shake.

            Avis had some calls for hospice work already, though she declined, needing rather the energy to get back into living—with and in spite of the izøne. Others in her family piddled around, not sure how to occupy their thoughts and time, newly untied to routine. They spent some afternoons at Lake Minnetonka, but each minute was absorbed in the streaming for something else. Only Mia appeared to be a fish in those waters—literally, honing her skills as a swimmer and scavenging things that had sunk to the bottom.

            Two months later, Jack was in court pleading innocent of countless charges. Against his appointed counsel’s advice, he spoke on his own behalf: “stream Raskolnikov for yourselves and you’ll see—”

            “Objection, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, “the defendant should be reminded that streaming isn’t sanctioned in a court of law.”

            The judge bobbed his head left and right before determining. “Sustained. As nearly impossible it is to enforce, streaming in an arraignment is not permitted. You’ve been advised on this already—”

            “Fine,” continued Jack, “then don’t stream Raskolnikov. Try to recall from erstwhile schooling: an extraordinary man has a right to follow his conscience and step over the law when that law presents an obstacle to what is good—”

            The judge cut in, “and you’re the Raskolnikov here, a self-proclaimed extraordinary man?”

            “You’re not my prosecutor,” Jack was correct to assert. “My opening statement is mine, and my conscience is clear.”

            The streaming spiked from journalists within and gawkers without—Dostoevsky had not been sought to this extent for more than eighty years (the infancy of the internet, in other words). Tracking references before that could only account for book sales, university courses that put him on a syllabus, an allusion given by various Gandhis or MLK Jrs and the rippled radius of their audience. In all probability, more people tapped into Raskolnikov’s theory today than at any other time in history. Statistics being what they are, however, most had no foundation of what this figment of a 19^th century imagination was or how it possibly could bear on Jack’s defense. The definition of ‘conscience’ had as many izøne hits, and arguably, for ordinary folks concerned about the whims and waifs of reflective thought, the question exceeded the fate that would befall Jack. The court was well aware of copycat syndrome, so wanted nothing unequivocal: objective law would not play second fiddle to subjective consciences, the latter leading possibly to chaos.

            “But what about the criminal being ‘victim of the environment’?” one journalist pushed on the prosecutor, once the arraignment was over.

            “Jack Childress as victim?” The prosecutor smiled, clearly having streamed the reference in advance. “You didn’t pick up on Dostoevsky’s satire. The environment here, from Minnesota north and south, became victim to this criminal.”

            Five years later, supply and demand enabled a safer version of a scrambler—still using streaming serum, but not from any biological being, dead or alive. Dr Brent, of all people, had led research in this regard, still wanting people streamed, yet sympathizing with their need for breaks now and then. Nobody called these scrambled areas ‘sanctuary’ anymore—that nomenclature was semantically captive to the legacy of Jack, the phantom of Gordon, the stormtrooper forces of robots that had found themselves in many corners of society, yet never to such evil designs.

            Alternative names floated to add color to the anti-izøne phenomenon: ‘Walden’, ‘Nirvana’, and the sometimes hard to pronounce ‘Equanimity’. Most of these places operated on a drop-in basis, no strings attached. The Faribault Islamic community decided both to keep its underground mosque (don’t give up what could be taken away) and build an outreach center that would try out this serum scrambler. Some churches did likewise, and from them emerged a new crop of schools, the first of such structures for a generation. The golf course contemplated the cost and decided to scramble the front-9 and leave the back-9 in the izøne. This way, as a fringe benefit, the pro shop could keep track of scores and potential cheaters who had relied on the kind of ‘smart ball’ guided to strike Aamiina.

            Some purists to the concept wanted exactly what the Carters had experienced—the Carters wanted this themselves. Lovers Island still had the advantage of a constant flow of natural gas, which the state had tapped for an export of energy. The furnace had been dismantled, of course, yet a new one for the safe serum formula had been set up for a haven simply called ‘Fall Lake’. Oscar protested, chaining himself for days on end to the tree closest to the place he and Martha, all those decades ago, made love for the first time. He was removed as unforcibly as possible, fatigued by a hunger strike and sleep deprivation, and brought to the Ely clinic for as much care as the place could give. Lou showed up, as did Avis. They knew a stroke was coming before the doctors did and held Oscar’s hand through it, by turns. His last request was to see Mia and Pretty. Avis gulped before saying, “I can bring Mia next time. Pretty, well, we never could find.”

            Wincing, with eyes closed, Oscar managed to admit, “she’s done okay… Saw her scroungin’… las’ time I trekked… to Kawa..shi—”

            “You saw her?”

            Oscar scrunched everything about him. “Called her…. Couldn’t lure her to Winton.… Don’ blame her… fer keepin’ true.”

            “When was this, Oscar?”

            No matter what the monitors indicated, it was at that moment the old man died. Avis knew so, experience exponential, for the release of what had burdened him, and she kissed his clutching knuckles before the need to call the doctor in.

            Sixty years later, novels had become obsolete; people had no need at all to read. Some clung to the convention nostalgically, like Kay, thinking trough every turn of Dostoevsky, every memory of siblings reading at her knee. She did likewise with her own kids and grandkids, who crinkled their noses at the musty, arylide pages.

            Wilderness still existed, sometimes defying imagination. The run of ‘Fall Lake nozøne’ had come and gone, as indeed the izøne had itself. There were other iterations of ubiquitously managed knowledge—people live to remantle mousetraps—and other ways to stream into them.

            Old Tim was now the spitting image of Lou all those years ago, fishing and hunting and greenhousing veggies and herbs in the cabin he built on Mile Island. His sisters visited him occasionally, as did Seb and Avis before they died. There had been hints in his early adulthood that he would return to Minneapolis or, more likely, follow Shel’s lure to Faribault. They loved each other and might have contributed to the natural cause and effect of generations. Instead, they remained friends and communicated however they could.

            Aamiina was now a grandmother, Nala of course a ‘great’ in that regard. Their offspring would play with other offspring—Shel’s included—gathering forest toads and learning how to swim, in Minnesota or wherever the world would have them.

            Patrollers, by now, were no longer human, as various robots were much more efficient. But that didn’t leave Pam or Trig jobless. They went to the places of concerned ambiguity—the homes that replaced those of Lee Simmons or Gavin Jones or Patty Ventura or Francine O’Mara or Bill Sinclair or Cary McNichols or Pete Wilcox. In every community there were needs for a Lightspeed and Tangent, or other such ministers of peace and reconciliation. They always worked as more than a tandem, training border collies and being trained by them.

            Mia had one, too. She’d talk to her every morning and afternoon on their walks, which often were runs or plunges into Lake Minnetonka. At seventy, she was more than spry: she questioned so freely as not to need answers, treasuring doubt as a matter of course. The izøne had never railroaded her, so she never felt off any rails or funneled to a set destination. The world was her cosmos, after all.

~~THE END~~

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken
(Roztoky u Prahy, December 20, 2019)