Homeland (6 page)

My jaw dropped so low I felt like it was in danger of scraping my chest. "You're
Wil Wheaton
?"

He looked embarrassed. I've never been much of a Trek fan, but I'd seen a ton of the videos Wheaton had done with his comedy troupe, and of course, I knew about Wheaton's Law:
Don't be a dick
.

"That's me," he said.

"You were the first person I ever followed on Twitter!" I said. It was a weird thing to say, sure, but it was the first thing that came to mind. He was a
really
funny tweeter.

"Well, thank you!" he said. No wonder he was such a good narrator -- he'd been acting since he was like seven years old. Being around all these people made me wish I had access to Wikipedia so I could look them all up.

We sat back down to play against the megaboss, the dragon empress. She had all kinds of fortifications, and a bunch of lethal attacks. I figured out how to use an illusion spell to trick her into moving into a side corridor that gave her less room to maneuver, and this made it possible for the fighters to attack her in waves while I used a digging spell to send chunks of the cave roof onto her head. This seemed like a good idea to me (and everyone else, I swear it!), right up to the time that I triggered a cave-in that killed us all.

But no one was too angry with me. We'd all cheered every time I rolled a fifteen or better and one of my spells brought some roof down on the dragon's head, and no one had bothered too much about all those dice-rolls Wil was making behind his screen. Besides, it was nearly 1 A.M. and there was a party out there! We changed out of John's beautiful silk clothes and back into our stiff, dust-caked playa-wear and switched on all our EL wire and fit our goggles over our eyes and said a million thanks and shook everyone's hands and so on. Just as I was about to go, Mitch wrote an email address on my arm with a Sharpie (there was plenty of stuff there already -- playa coordinates of parties and email addresses of people I planned on looking up).

"Ange tells me you're looking for a job. That's the campaign manager for Joseph Noss. I hear she's looking for a webmaster. Tell her I sent you."

I was speechless. After months of knocking on doors, sending in resumes, emailing and calling, an honest-to-goodness job -- with a recommendation from an honest-to-goodness legend! I stammered out my thanks and as soon as we were outside, I kissed Ange and bounced up and down and dragged her off to the playa, nearly crashing into a guy on a dusty Segway tricked out with zebra-striped fun fur. He gave us a grin and a wave.

We didn't see Masha or Zeb again until the temple burn, on Sunday night, the last night.

We'd burned The Man the night before, and it had been in-freaking-
sane
. Hundreds of fire-dancers executing precision maneuvers, tens of thousands of burners sitting in ranks on the playa, screaming our heads off as fireballs and mushroom-clouds of flame rose out of The Man's pyramid, then the open-throated roar as it collapsed and the Rangers dropped their line and we all rushed forward to the fire, everyone helping everyone else along, like the world's most courteous stampede. I flashed on the crush of bodies in the BART station after the Bay Bridge blew, the horrible feeling of being forced by the mass of people to step on those who'd fallen, the sweat and the stink and the noise. Someone had
stabbed
Darryl in that crowd, given him the wound that started us on our awful adventure.

This crowd was nothing like that mob, but my internal organs didn't seem to know that, and they did slow flip-flops in my abdomen, and my legs turned to jelly, and I found myself slowly sliding to the playa. There were tears pouring down my face, and I felt like I was floating above my body as Ange grabbed me under my armpits, struggling to get me to my feet as she spoke urgent, soothing words into my ears. People stopped and helped, one tall woman steering traffic around us, a small older man grabbing me beneath my armpits with strong hands, pulling me upright.

I snapped back into my body, felt the jellylegged feeling recede, and blinked away the tears. "I'm sorry," I said. "Sorry." I was so embarrassed I felt like digging a hole and pulling the playa in over my head. But neither of the people who'd stopped to help seemed surprised. The woman told me where to find the nearest medical camp and the man gave me a hug and told me to take it easy.

Ange didn't say anything, just held me for a moment. She knew that I sometimes got a little wobbly in crowds, and she knew I didn't like to talk about it. We made our way to the fire and watched it for a moment, then went back out into the playa for the parties and the dancing and forgetting. I reminded myself that I was in love, at Burning Man, and that there might be a job waiting for me when I got back to San Francisco, and kicked myself in the ass every time I felt the bad feeling creeping up on me.

Temple burn was very different. We got there really early and sat down nearly at the front and watched the sun set and turn the temple's white walls orange, then red, then purple. Then the spotlights went up, and it turned blazing white again. The wind blew and I heard the rustle of all the paper remembrances fluttering in its nooks and on its walls.

We were sitting amid thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, but there was hardly a sound. When I closed my eyes, I could easily pretend that I was alone in the desert with the temple and all its memories and good-byes and sorrows. I felt the ghost of that feeling I'd had when I'd sat in the temple and tried to clear my mind, to be in the present and throw away all my distractions. The temple had an instantly calming effect on me, silenced all the chattering voices in the back of my head. I don't believe in spooks and ghosts and gods, and I don't think the temple had any
supernatural
effect, but it had an absolutely
natural
effect, made me sorrowful and hopeful and calm and, well,
soft-edged
all at once.

I wasn't the only one. We all sat and watched the temple, and people spoke in hushed tones, museum voices, church whispers. Time stretched. Sometimes I felt like I was dozing off. Other times I felt like I could feel every pore and every hair on my body. Ange stroked my back, and I squeezed her leg softly. I looked at the faces around me. Some were calm, some softly cried, some smiled in profound contentment. The wind ruffled my scarf.

And then I spotted them. Three rows back from us, holding hands: Masha and Zeb. I nearly didn't recognize them at first, because Masha had her head on Zeb's shoulder and wore an expression of utter vulnerability and sadness, absolutely unlike her normal display of half-angry, half-cocky impatience. I looked away before I caught her eye, feeling like I'd intruded on her privacy.

I turned back to the temple just in time to see the first flames lick at its insides, the paper crackling and my breath catching in my chest. Then a tremendous column of fire sprouted out of the central atrium,
whooshing
in a pillar a hundred yards tall, the heat and light so intense I had to turn my face away. The crowd
sighed
, a huge, soft sound, and I sighed with it.

There was someone walking through the crowd now, a compact woman in goggles and grey clothes in a cut that somehow felt military, though they didn't have any markings or insignia. She was moving with odd intensity, holding a small video camera up to one eye and peering through it. People muttered objections as she stepped on them or blocked their view, then spoke louder, saying "Sit down!" and "Down in front," and "Spectator!" This last with a vicious spin on it that was particularly apt, given her preoccupation with that camera.

I looked away from her and tried to put her out of my mind. The temple was burning along its length now, and someone near me drew a breath and let out a deep, bassy "Ommmmmm" that made my ears buzz. Another voice joined in, and then another, and then
I
joined in, the sound like a living thing that traveled up and down my chest and through my skull, suffusing me with calm. It was exactly what I needed, that sound, and as my voice twined with all those others, with Ange's, I felt like a part of something so much larger than myself.

A sharp pain in my thigh made me open my eyes. It was the lady with the camera, facing away from me, scanning the fire and the crowd with it, and she'd caught some of the meat of my thigh as she stepped past me. I looked up in annoyance, ready to say something
really
nasty, and found myself literally frozen in terror.

You see, I knew that face. I could never have forgotten it.

Her name was Carrie Johnstone. I'd called her "Severe Haircut Woman" before I learned it. The last time I'd seen her in person, she'd had me strapped to a board and ordered a soldier hardly older than me to waterboard me -- to simulate my execution. To torture me.

For years, that face had haunted my nightmares, swimming out of the dark of my dreams to taunt me; to savage me with sharp, animal teeth; to choke me out with a tight bag over my face; to ask me relentless questions I couldn't answer and hit me when I said so.

A closed-door military tribunal had found her not guilty of any crime, and she'd been "transfered" to help wind down the Forward Operating Base in Tikrit, Iraq. I had a news alert for her, but no news of her ever appeared. As far as I could tell, she'd vanished.

It was like being back in my nightmares, one of those paralysis dreams where your legs and arms won't work. I wanted to shout and scream and run, but all I could do was sit as my heart thundered so loud that my pulse blotted out all the other sounds, even that all-consuming Ommmm.

Johnstone didn't even notice. She radiated an arrogant disregard for people, her face smooth and emotionless as the people around her asked her (or shouted at her) to move. She took another step past me and I stared at her back -- tense beneath her jacket, coiled for action -- as she strode back through the crowd, disappearing over the horizon, hair beneath a stocking cap that was the same desert no-color as her clothes.

Ange squeezed my hand. "What's wrong?" she asked.

I shook my head and squeezed back. I wasn't going to tell her I'd just seen the bogeywoman on the playa. Even if that
was
Johnstone, so what? Everyone came to Burning Man, it seemed -- software pioneers, fugitives, poets, and me. I hadn't seen any rules against war criminals attending.

"It's nothing," I choked out. I looked over the crowd. Johnstone had disappeared. I turned back to the burning temple, tried to find the peace I'd felt a moment before.

By the time the temple burned down, I'd nearly convinced myself that I'd imagined Johnstone. After all, it had been dark, the only light the erratic flicker of the temple. The woman had held a camera to her face, obscuring it. And I'd seen her from below. I'd been visiting all my ghosts that night, seeing the faces of friends lost and betrayed and saved in the temple's fire. I'd only seen the face for a moment. What were the odds that
Carrie Johnstone
would be at
Burning Man?
It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese.

Thinking up these analogies -- and even dumber ones that I won't inflict upon you -- helped me calm down as Ange and I walked slowly away from temple burn with the rest of the crowd, a solemn and quiet procession.

"Going home tomorrow," I said.

"Exodus," Ange said. That's what it was called at Burning Man, and it was supposed to be epic -- thousands of cars and RVs stretching for miles, being released in "pulses" every hour so that the traffic didn't bunch up. We'd scored a ride back with a Lemmy from Noisebridge, the hackerspace I hung around at in San Francisco. I didn't know him well, but we knew where he was camped and had arranged to meet him with our stuff at 7 am to help him pack his car. Getting up that early would be tricky, but I had a secret weapon: my contribution to the Burning Man gift economy, AKA cold-brew coffee.

You've had hot coffee before, and in the hands of a skilled maker, coffee can be
amazing
. But the fact is that coffee is one of the hardest things to get right in the world. Even with great beans and a great roast and great equipment, a little too much heat, the wrong grind, or letting things go on too long will produce a cup of bitterness. Coffee's full of different acids, and depending on the grind, temperature, roast, and method, you can "overextract" the acids from the beans, or overheat them and oxidize them, producing that awful taste you get at donut shops and Starbucks.

But there is Another Way. If you make coffee in
cold
water, you
only
extract the sweetest acids, the highly volatile flavors that hint at chocolate and caramel, the ones that boil away or turn to sourness under imperfect circumstances. Brewing coffee in cold water sounds weird, but in fact, it's just about the easiest way to make a cup (or a jar) of coffee.

Just grind coffee -- keep it coarse, with grains about the size of sea salt -- and combine it with twice as much water in an airtight jar. Give it a hard shake and stick it somewhere cool overnight (I used a cooler bag loaded with ice from ice camp and wrapped the whole thing in bubble wrap for insulation). In the morning, strain it through a colander and a paper coffee filter. What you've got now is coffee concentrate, which you can dilute with cold water to taste -- I go about half and half. If you're feeling fancy, serve it over ice.

Here's the thing: cold-brew coffee tastes
amazing
, and it's practically impossible to screw it up. Unlike espresso, where all the grounds have to be about the same size so that the high pressure water doesn't cause fracture lines in the "puck" of coffee that leave some of the coffee unextracted and the rest overextracted, cold-brew grounds can be just about any size. Seriously, you could grind it with a stone axe. Unlike drip coffee, which goes sour and bitter if you leave the grounds in contact with the water for too long, cold-brew just gets yummier and yummier (and more and more caffeinated!) the longer the grounds sit in the water. Cold-brewing in a jar is pretty much the easiest way to make coffee in the known universe -- if you don't mind waiting overnight for the brew -- and it produces the best-tasting, most potent coffee you've ever drunk. The only downside is that it's kind of a pain in the ass to clean up, but if you want to spend some more money, you can invest in various gadgets to make it easier to filter the grounds, from cheap little Toddy machines all the way up to hand-blown glass "Kyoto drippers" that look like something from a mad scientist's lab. But all you need to make a perfectly astounding cup of cold-brewed jet fuel is a mason jar, coffee, water, and something to strain it through. They've been making iced coffee this way in New Orleans for centuries, but for some unknown reason, it never seems to have caught on big-time.