“Interesting project. Caught my eye this morning. Lots of challenges. But it looks like you’re heading for disaster, unless you get some coordination. Mind if I butt in?”
“Are you kidding? I’d be honoured. Go for it!”
FooDog ambled over to the workers, both human and cybernetic, streaming ubik instructions with high-priority tags attached faster than I could follow. A galvanic charge seemed to run through people, as they realized who walked among them. FooDog accepted the homage with humble grace. And suddenly the whole site was transformed from a chaotic competition to a patterned dance of flesh and materials.
That’s the greatest thing about wikis: they combine the best features of democracy and autocracy. Everybody has an equal say. But some got bigger says than others.
Over the next dozen hours, I watched in amazement as my house grew almost organically. By the time dusk was settling in, the place was nearly done. Raised high above sea-level against any potential flooding on deep-sunk cement piles, spired, curve-walled, airy yet massive, it still showed hallmarks of rival philosophies of design. But somehow the efforts of the various factions ultimately harmonized instead of bickered, thanks to FooDog’s overseeing of the assorted worldviews.
One of the best features of my new house, a place where I could see myself spending many happy idle hours, was a large wooden deck that projected out well over the water, where it was supported by pressure-treated and tarred wooden pillars, big as antique telephone poles, plunging into the sea.
Three or four heaps of wooden construction waste and combustible sea-wrack had been arranged as pyres against the dusk, and they were now ignited. Live music flared up with the flames, and more food and drink was laid on. While a few machines and people continued to add some last-minute details to my house, illuminated by electrical lights running off the newly installed power system (combined wave motion and ocean temperature differential), the majority of the folks began to celebrate a job well done.
I was heading to join them when I noticed a new arrival sailing in out of the dusk: a rather disreputable looking workhorse of a fishing sloop. I pinged the craft, but got no response. Not a privacy denial, but a dead silence.
This ship and its owner were running off the ubik, un-SCURFED.
Intrigued, I advanced toward the boat. I kicked up my night vision. Its bow bore the name Soft Grind. From out the pilothouse emerged the presumptive captain. In the ancient firelight, I saw one of the most beautiful women I had ever beheld: skin the colour of teak, long wavy black hair, a killer figure. She wore a faded hemp shirt tied under her breasts to expose her midriff; baggy men’s surfer trunks; and a distressed pair of gumboots.
She leaped over the gunwales and off the boat with pantherish flair moderated only slightly by her clunky footwear.
“Hey,” she said. “Looks like a party. Mind if I crash it?”
“No, sure, of course not.”
She grinned, exposing perfect teeth.
“I’m Cherry. One of the Oyster Pirates.”
And that was how I met Cherimoya Espiritu.
3. IN LOVE WITH AN OYSTER PIRATE
Gaia giveth even as she taketh away.
The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers, shifted rainfall patterns, altered animal migratory routes, disrupted agriculture, drowned cities, and similarly necessitated a thousand thousand adjustments, recalibrations and hasty retreats. But humanity’s unintentional experiment with the biosphere had also brought some benefits.
Now we could grow oysters in New England.
Six hundred years ago, oysters flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters.
Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine.
The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy.
But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defence, poachers would be found.
Cherimoya Espiritu hailed from a long line of fisherfolks operating for generations out of nearby New Bedford. Cape Verdean by remotest ancestry, her family had suffered in the collapse of conventional fisheries off the Georges Bank. They had failed to appreciate the new industry until it was too late for them to join one of the legal oyster wikis. (Membership had been closed at a number determined by complicated sustainability formulae.) Consequently, they turned pirate to survive in the only arena they knew.
Cherimoya and her extensive kin had divested themselves of their SCURF: no subcutaneous ubik arfids for them, to register their presence minute-to-minute to nosy authorities and jealous oyster owners. The pirates relied instead on the doddering network of GPS satellites for navigation, and primitive cellphones for communication. Operating at night, they boasted gear to interfere with entomopter cams and infrared scans. They were not above discouraging pursuers with pulsed-energy projectile guns (purchased from the PEP Boys). After escaping with their illicit catches, they sold the fruit of the sea to individual restaurants and unscrupulous wholesalers. They took payment either in goods, or in isk, simoleans and lindens that friends would bank for them in the ubik.
Most of the oyster pirates lived on their ships, to avoid contact with perhaps overly inquisitive mainland security wikis, such as the Boston Badgers and the Stingers. Just like me prior to my island-buying—except that my motivation for a life afloat didn’t involve anything illicit.
Bits and pieces of information about this subculture I knew just from growing up in the Archipelago. And the rest I learned from Cherry over the first few months of our relationship.
But that night of my house-raising, all I knew was that a gorgeous woman, rough-edged and authentic as one of the oyster shells she daily handled, wanted to hang out on my tiny island and have some fun.
That her accidental presence here would lead to our becoming long-term lovers, I never dared hope.
But sure enough, that’s what happened.
Following Cherry’s introduction, I shook her hand and gave my own name. Daring to take her by the elbow—and receiving no rebuke—I steered her across the flame-lit, shadowy sands towards the nearest gaggle of revellers around their pyre.
“So,” I asked, “how come you’re not working tonight?”
“Oh, I don’t work every night. Just often enough to keep myself in provisions and fuel. Why should I knock myself out just to earn money and pile up things? I’m more interested in enjoying life. Staying free, not being tied down.”
“Well, you know, I think that’s, um—just great! That’s how I feel too!” I silently cursed my new status as a land-owner and house-dweller.
We came out of the darkness and into the sight of my friends. Guitars, drums and gravicords chanced to fall silent just then, and I got pinged with the planned playlist, and a chance to submit any requests.
“Hey, Russ, congratulations!” “Great day!” “House looks totally flexy!” “You’re gonna really enjoy it!”
Cherry turned to regard me with a wide grin. “So—gotta stay footloose, huh?”
To cover my chagrin, I fetched drinks for Cherry and me while I tried to think of something to say in defence of my new householder lifestyle. That damn sexy grin of hers didn’t help my concentration.