Authors: Ed Finn
Hieroglyph (68 page)
“Life is a gift,” Yuan says. “You gave me mine, I gave you yours. That means we are bound by a mutual debt, the kind you can't cancel out. Come back with me when I return.”
Several days later, much recovered, Yuan made his way back the way he had come. His companion had decided to stay in the village nearest the monastery. Here, under a sky studded with stars, Yuan heard the man's story. Yuan left with him an orange wristlet, even though the satellite connection was intermittent here. When they parted, it was with the expectation of meeting again.
“In the future that you dreamed of,” said his friend. “Don't be too long!”
“I'll be back before you know it,” Yuan said.
After he had passed through the high mountain desert, Yuan descended into the broad alpine meadow. He lay down in the deep, rich grass and felt his weight, the gentle tug of gravity tethering him to the earth. Around him the streams sang in their watery dialect. Sleep came to him then, and dreams, but they weren't about death. His wristlet pinged, and he woke up. He must be back in satellite range. He heard, faintly, music, and the sound of a celebration. A woman's voice spoke to him, a young voice, excited. Two words.
“. . . a Butterfly . . .”
Drawn Keeper/Shutterstock, Inc.
STORY NOTESâ
Vandana Singh
I am indebted to the following researchers for their willingness to spare a considerable amount of time to share their expertise: At Arizona State University: Dr. Hilairy Hartnett, ecosystems biogeochemist, for fascinating conversations on remote diving in polar seas, methane outgassing and methanotrophs; Dr. Ariel Anbar, geochemist and astrobiologist, for discussions on geo-tweaking versus geo-engineering and the possibility of trips to Enceladus; Netra Chhetri, geographer, for insights on local community action in Nepal with regard to climate change; Zhihua Wang, engineer, for invaluable information on the Urban Heat Island effect and multiple resources; and Michael Barton, anthropologist, for useful conversations on how social change occurs.
I'm also immensely grateful to these researchers outside ASU: Dr. Shari Gearheard, research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, for crucial information on Baffin Island and Inuit culture; and Dr. Henry Huntington, anthropologist with the Pew Charitable Trust, for discussions on the impact of climate change on indigenous people in Alaska as well as local action and participation in scientific data collection. I also thank scientists from Los Alamos, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Stanford University for sharing their expertise on climate change, deep sea diving, and high-albedo materials.
FORUM DISCUSSIONâ
Biomimicry and Eco-Friendly 3-D Printing
Read Vandana Singh's post about biomimicry and eco-friendly 3-D printing at hieroglyph.asu.edu/entanglement.
FORUM DISCUSSIONâ
Methane Burps in the Arctic and Climate Change
Vandana Singh, Gregory Benford, and other Hieroglyph community members consider the risk of “methane burps” caused by warming oceans at hieroglyph.asu.edu/entanglement.
RESPONSE TO “ENTANGLEMENT”â
Christian Etter
Designer Christian Etter responds to “Entanglement” and discusses how technology can help make people aware of the global consequences of their actions at hieroglyph.asu.edu/entanglement.
© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU
FRANCINE CRACKED OPEN HER
window, filling her tiny apartment with damp cold that slapped her cheeks and helped her blink awake. She smelled coffee from the breakfast food-truck below and breathed in the slightest hint of Puget Sound salt. People scurried through the bare gray of early morning, fleece coats pulled tight around them, gloved hands clutching purses and briefcases.
She watched until she spotted her granddaughter's face, brown and round, with dark eyes and a long fall of black hair that ended just above bright yellow sweats.
A few minutes later, Araceli herself burst through the door wearing her smile of hiding. She produced a small cloth bag from behind her back. “I brought you something.”
“And how are you?” Francine took the bag and fumbled it open. She pulled out a sky-blue shirt with a photo of an elephant on it. She stared, awed. It signified an approval she hadn't expected.
“You're one of us, now. They took your application.” Araceli practically jumped up and down with excitement, a bounciness reserved for excited nineteen-year-old girls. She had helped Francine fill out forms online and spent hours teaching her how to be elsewhere, had run her through all the training simulations twice before Francine took the real test.
The elephant on the shirt was a savanna matriarch, which Francine wouldn't have known a month earlier. The words
ELEPHANT
ANGEL
had been hand-embroidered along the hem of the right sleeve.
“Try it on.”
Francine went into her bedroom and pulled on the shirt, which fit her far better than she deserved. It looked good.
She found Araceli in the kitchen, stirring the special tea into a hotcup. She looked up and smiled. “Now. Your first shift is now.”
“Really?” Francine's mouth dried and she felt dizzy.
“Drink your tea.”
Francine took the cup to her easy chair and sat down. Araceli had mounted tiny speakers around the headrest, since earbuds tickled Francine's hearing aids. A small table held her teacup, her VR glasses, a pad of paper, and a blue pen.
Araceli perched on an old love seat across the room, her long legs draped over the arms and her flimsy open and glowing on her lap as the screen powered up. Araceli would see what Francine saw and hear what she heard, but would have no control. It would be in 2-D, like a movie. Part of the training had put Francine in that position, the watcher of the watcher, and it reminded her of the days when movies were flat.
After the first few sips, the bitter tea began to brighten Francine's senses, accentuating the tickle of the slender wires that rode her jaw and hooked behind her ears.
The last step was to drop her glasses down in front of her face and sip the dregs of the tea.
“Hello,” a human voice whispered. “All clear.”
“Thank you.” The other pilot winked away as soon as the exchange ended, the transition instant so that the two pilots wouldn't crash in moments of confusion. As she'd been taught, she left well enough alone for a breath, trusting the expertise of the person she replaced to have left the craft on a stable trajectory.
The hot summer sun beat down, as if Africa kissed the Northwest.
Cicadas. Always the first thing she noticed, the sound so foreign to Seattle and so embedded in Africa. Wind sighed through trees, barely louder than the swish of the elephant's feet through grass. She had entered close-in, her view almost that of the mahout. She snapped her fingers wide and flat and drove her hands up, telling the tiny machine half a world away to rise.
Flying delighted Francine. It was as simple as the video games she'd grown up with, where her movements told cartoon characters on the screen what to do.
The tiny drone gained height.
The matriarch marched in front of a family group of sixâfour females and two calves, one about two years old and the other one younger. Only the matriarch hosted a rider, long limbed and dark skinned and almost naked, swaying with the elephant's steps. The girl had a slender waist, long legs, and barely formed round breasts. She wore long feathered earrings and looked as relaxed as if she sat in a beach chair instead of on an animal big enough to crush her with a single step.
Francine did her job and spun the drone 360 degrees. This gave her a slightly jerky view in all directions. Far off, a herd of giraffe walked with awkward grace. A kite wheeled through a dusty blue and cloudless sky. Nothing else obvious moved except for the elephants, although there were enough trees to hide all manner of birds, buzzing insects, and sleeping prey.
© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU
Other Angels watched the satsites and evaluated data flowing from swarms of sensors as thick as the cicadas. Francine watched for the glint of sun on metal and listened for conversation or the interrupted call of any wild thing.
The elephants meandered. Twice they worked together to push over acacia trees and nibble at the tender, sweet tops. The rider stayed on the matriarch easily even as the big beast bent into the trees and strained. Even though Francine could hear and see the savanna, the only feeling she had was the sense of movement that came from the drone's feed, sort of a vague up and down and sideways that felt like an echo in her bones, and a very slight sickness in her middle.
These were her elephants. Would be her elephants. This was so frightening that Francine shivered briefly. She had not been responsible for anything outside of herself for at least twenty years. Or jointly responsible, she reminded herself. Each herd had help on the ground, in the air, and remotely. A universe of Elephant Angels.
She hovered above the girl's right shoulder, just behind the dangling feathers that touched her deep brown shoulders. Francine remembered the feel of skin that supple, remembered having joints that flexed and moved easily.
The matriarch watched the next biggest elephant lean forward and push against a tree almost as wide across as her wide, wide leg.
It exploded.
Not the tree itself, she realized. The ground around it.
It took a moment to recognize an attack. A rare thing, but the reason she flew a drone in Africa.
The drone sped away, up and back, a reaction to Francine's unintended jerks of surprise. The elephants' images grew small as the drone receded. Smoke from the explosion created a thin smudged line of white and black that rode the wind. Francine twisted her right hand and lifted her left, overcorrecting so that her cameras pointed at the sky and the ground and the far horizon in the wrong direction. She took a deep breath, and then tried again twice before the drone cameras yielded her the elephants.
The matriarch's head swung back and forth, her wide ears flapping. She held her tail out away from her body. Her shoulders twitched.
Her rider clung to the neck strap.
The wounded elephant lay on her side, trunk writhing, the skin on her chest and front legs peeled away as if she has been flayed with giant knives. Pink flesh glistened in the cuts.
Francine realized she had been hearing squeals and trumpets, had failed to pay attention to sounds with the sight below her so awful and the drone barely under control.
She flew close to the fallen elephant, who struggled to stand, failing.
Messages blossomed across Francine's glasses, and voices chattered with one another in her ears.
The elephants trumpeted again, the matriarch the loudest.
Pain. It was a sound of pain.
Or anger.
Francine felt what she heard in the animals' voices, anger and dismay and the sharp shock of going from a placid afternoon to death.
