The plate glass wall shattered inward. Screams erupted from people sitting in front of computers. A shining streak flashed through the hole and exploded, consuming screams and people and computers. An arm flew past my head and smacked off the wall behind me. I dove to the floor.

Fire from the sky, more silver streaks and explosions, more screams and flying body parts. Outside sounded like the buzzing of a million mosquitoes and the echoes of a Fourth of July fireworks crescendo. I wanted to crawl under my desk and cower in terror.

"May!" I screamed as a vision of her face flashed into my mind. An explosion erased her image and emptied my chest cavity. I had to get to her. What if her office were under attack, too? I had to get to her. The stairs. Didn't they say elevators don't work in an emergency? This looked like an emergency. The stairs, where were they? I never bothered to find them - who goes down 36 flights of stairs? By the elevators. They were by the elevators. I had to get there.

I jumped up and ran for the stairs. Why was it so hard to run? I looked down and severed arms were grabbing at my ankles. Faces in bodiless heads pleaded with me to help them. I wanted to help them, really I did, but May. I had to get to May. I had to make sure she was all right.

There, the elevators, and there, the EXIT sign above the stairwell door. The door was held open by a crush of people pushing through. They were backlit, black silhouettes against an oozing red-orange background. Even if it were the Stairway to Hell, it was my way to May. I bulled through the crowd without conscience, squeezed through the doorway into the searing heat and choking fumes.

A river of people tumbled down the stairs, screaming and crying out for help as they shoved and scratched and grabbed at each other. All of them desperate to get out, to escape the flames and the explosions.

All except one, a single person fighting through the current toward me. Firelight struck copper off black hair and illuminated the face. The eyes deep set in her multi-faceted skull, unique to her, searched every face for the familiar features of the person she sought.

"May!" I called out. "MAY!" The shout, so loud in my head, came out muffled, as if trying to push its way through layers of cotton. "MAY!" She still didn't hear me and continued scanning the faces flowing past her. Why couldn't she hear me?

Then we were in front of each other, her head tilted back, my chin on my chest, a boulder amidst the rapids.

"Come on!" she finally exclaimed. "We have to get out of here! The city is under attack!" She grabbed my hand and turned to scamper down the stairs.

The heat, the flames, the screams, the explosions, the fleshy shrapnel chased us down the floors. Out of breath at the bottom of 36 flights, we shoved through the knot of tangled bodies obstructing the doorway into the lobby to find a Hellscape before us, between us and the way out.

Large white men with heads covered by military-style helmets and wearing olive green kevlar vests were fanned out across the lobby, firing automatic weapons indiscriminately into the crowds of people erupting from the stairwells and trying to flee past them to the doors. Glass and shell casings and bloody carcasses littered the floor. I pulled May to the floor behind a pile of bodies just as a scythe of bullets flew over our heads.

Catching my breath, trying to fight through my terror, I led May around the edge of the massive marbled space, hugging the wall as best we could, crawling and slithering, clambering over bodies, and sprinting hunched over the last ten feet to the gaping hole where a floor-to-ceiling window used to be. Once through the aperture, we dashed across the concrete patio to a spot protected by the raised edge of a fountain and the corner of a zig-zag planter and sat with our backs against the planter wall.

It was just as chaotic and lethal out here. More of the armed men dotted the large patio picking people off as they tried to run out the doors and across to the street. Armored vehicles parked around the perimeter of the building fired projectiles into the upper floor windows. Glass shards rained down. More armored vehicles crept slowly down the street deeper into the city. They appeared to be opposed by a force of Bowlers, large spherical drones with impenetrable skins and high-mass ballasts in them that could propel themselves across ground at high speed. One could plow through a crowd like a 16-pound bowling ball through a forest of pins, or send cars flying. They were crashing themselves into the armored vehicles to a stalemate. Men climbed out of the crashed tanks, dazed and bloodied. Other men dressed all in black sprinted through the shadows and fell upon them as they stumbled around, incapacitating them with vicious blows.

The men in black charged the square, attacking the armed men. This was our chance. "Let's get out of here!" I called out to May over the din, and she nodded. "We have to get out of the city! Follow me!" I started to get up and turn away from the battle.

"NO!" she objected. I stopped and turned my head to her. "Home! We need to go home!" Her face pleaded with me not to argue with her. I swallowed my question, shut my mouth and nodded. I pushed myself off the ground and sped off in a crouch. Not five feet away, a black-clad man wrestled the gun out of a militiaman's hands and shot him in the face with it, then snapped the barrel off the stock and tossed the pieces in opposite directions. He was searching for his next target as I started to run.

I didn't look back, trusting May to keep up with me. For one block, two blocks, three blocks the battle raged around us and we dodged bodies, men, bullets and bombs. Smoke and flame filled the air and blotted out the sky, while the sounds of battle battered against our eardrums. Faces of the dead and dying accused us of stealing their chance to survive.

We turned the corner onto our block and cast our gazes thankfully at our little house, our refuge. Something was wrong. Something was off. This couldn't be. Sheriff's deputies streamed into and out of our house, carrying our belongings out to dump them on the curb, then going back in for more. This couldn't be. This hadn't happened yet. We didn't lose the house until two years after The Battle of Seattle. Why were they evicting us now? The faces of the men shone with an evil glee that I did not remember seeing on that day. What was happening?

Next to me May burst into tears. I wrapped my arms around her and buried her face in my chest. This I remembered. I remembered her despair on that day; I remembered comforting her and cajoling her into following me to the closest shelter. But we weren't going to the shelter now. We were walking at the side of an unlined rural road barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other with a wheel on each shoulder, a tree-lined creek on our other side. We both wore backpacks and I had a rifle in my hand. May had a handgun in a holster strapped to her waist. Why do we have guns?

The growl of an engine up ahead caught my attention. I looked up to see an old pickup truck prowling up the street toward us, a White man holding a gun in the passenger seat and six more of them seated in the bed. They saw us at the same moment I saw them. The passenger pointed and the driver grinned.

"RUN!" I screamed, and turned away from the road to run down to the creek and across it. If we could make it down the embankment, through the flowing water, then up the other bank, we could get away!

After a few steps I turned to yell encouragement at May, only to find to my horror that she had not followed. She stood rooted to the ground, grappling with the holster to release her gun. "MAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!" I screamed out as a man jumped out of the back of the truck, knocked May to the ground with a ferocious swipe of his rifle butt, and stood over her fallen form with his evil face painted into a wide lascivious grin. I wanted to run to her, but my feet were buried in mud, held by roots and another man raised his rifle to firing position, the end of the barrel pointed squarely at my chest. He was going to pull the trigger.

"NO!" I cried out and everything went black. "No!" I pushed out in a strangled whisper as I rolled off my back and reached for the handgun tucked under the backpack within easy reach.

What the hell? Where was I? What had happened to the truckload of bandits? I was covered in sweat, panting, fighting cobwebs, confused. I looked around in a panic.

The first rays of the sun poked through a row of trees lining the river. The grass under my elbows and knees was wet with dew. A variety of morning birds sang a chorus, oblivious to the destruction of human society around them, unaware of the panic and terror gripping this one human in their midst.

I took a deep breath and pushed myself into a standing position, then took more deep breaths while I replaced the nightmare landscape with this idyllic spot May and I had found yesterday afternoon. May lay tangled in the sheet inside our bedbag, blissfully asleep. I came all the way back to myself at the sight of her.

I wanted to wake her up, to tell her about the nightmare, to bury my face in her chest while she wrapped her arms around me, but I let her be. She needed a break. We'd been Traveling for two weeks and we still had 50 miles to go. It was time to pause and recharge. I could sleep no more but I would let her have the rest. I climbed down the riverbank to a large flat rock anchored in the mud and jutting out into the current like a pier, kneeled down, and splashed the cold clear water in my face.

Standing on the rock, I could take in the whole 360. Across the river and south was the other side of the broad floodplain we were crossing. It was still dotted with small communities and squatter camps. The line of trees in the middle distance marked the highway. In the distance to my left, the Cascades delineated the eastern border of visibility. As if they were a mirage, the towers of Bellevue seemed to shimmer above the horizon directly south of me. To the southwest would be Seattle, where we had set out from the Laurelhurst New Life Camp next to Seattle Children's Hospital.

I turned to the right, the west, from which we had been Traveling for the last few days. We had caught the Burke-Gilman Trail a couple blocks from Laurelhurst and Traveled that to Bothell, where we switched to the Sammamish River Trail. We've been on the Sammamish for days now, following it until it hits the Eastside Rail Corridor that will take us all the way to Chaletkin, where I hope to find Isaiah Bob.

This part of the trail was on the north side of the Sammamish River, always within sight of the water. In some places, the grass went all the way to the water's edge, but most of the river's length was lined with trees and bushes - primarily blackberries. The river as it flowed away from me west had cut a shallow gorge through the floodplain soil. In some places you could find a little path through the bushes to a flat rocky "beach."

I turned to face our camp, where May still slept. The rock on which I stood was one of a group rising out of the water near the bank. From this one I could hop to solid ground created by a massive root belonging to the grandaddy Douglas-fir I had spotted from the trail. A path scooted around the tree to a little grassy clearing mostly surrounded by blackberry bushes and red alders. We had come across the spot late yesterday afternoon and cut through the clear spaces under the alder branches, guided by the massive Douglas-fir.

I hopped over to the root and scampered up the path to the grass on the tree's north side, where May still slept. I stripped off my shoes and slid into the bedbag next to her.

I'll wake her when it gets brighter and go for provisions while she sets up camp. I'd spotted a farm stand an easy walk from here while scouting last night. I would be able to get everything we need for a few days. It would be easy: I still have a good selection of powerchips to trade.

What are powerchips? You know their predecessors: rechargeable battery packs. They are basically the same thing: you plug them into devices to provide electrical power. When they run out, they can be recharged, but you have to have a charger and a power source. But these are small, ranging from the size of a poker chip to the size of a ram chip, and each one will last five times as long as your rechargeable batteries.

Chargers and power sources weren't so easy to come by these days, so a bag of fully charged powerchips was a valuable commodity. A week's worth of power for a home data system would feed us for a month. The key was to let them know you have enough on you to pay for what you need, but not so much that they decide to just take it from you.

I can hear the questions in your head. Why are we Traveling? Where are we going? Where did we come from? Why did we leave? What was that dream about? What the fuck is going on? So many damn questions. You're so impatient. All in good time. This is my story, I'll tell it how I want to.

Our story starts long before we left the Camp; it starts when I first realized that this day would come, back in 2020 when the Baby Boomers rose up and told us in the midst of a pandemic that should have been portent that we couldn't have Bernie Sanders as our president, that no looming catastrophe could be allowed to divert from their comfort and convenience. For a moment I had allowed myself to think that my species could appreciate its situation and come together to change things.

But by Super Tuesday 2020, I knew We were Fucked. We were going to keep driving our cars to work so we could eat and have a place to sleep while our efforts made the Capitalists richer and richer until the sun boiled the oceans around us. The only real question worth answering was, "What then?"

"What then?" had become "What now?" in the last ten years.

That "What now?" was why we had left Seattle and were Traveling to the town in the mountains. I wanted answers, and I'd heard that Isaiah Bob lived in that town. We just had to get there.

The sun tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced up and noticed that it was getting light. Dark thoughts could pull the shade on the outside world. May was still sleeping. I never could look at her black hair fanned out around her head without my breath catching. Her cupid's bow lips slightly parted, the angles and planes of her face softened by sleep, eyelashes brushing the tops of her cheeks, roiled emotions in me. She looked so young, so calm, so at odds with the fierce, vibrant, blazing person she was when awake.

I chuckled. Calm and peaceful now, but she did not wake well. She clung to sleep, kicked and tussled against the current pulling her from the depths of sopor into the light of the waking morning. She was not appreciative of the agent of her rising, which, these days, was me. One morning, after a particularly troubled sleep at the end of a harrowing day, she had even punched me in the face. I always half-suspected despite her protestations that she had been aware.

It was rather like poking a bear with a short, sharp stick. She woke up best when I curled up around her and whispered in her ear. Sometimes she would push her butt back and snuggle into me, grabbing my hand and holding it tight around her midsection. Today, that was just what I needed. I missed the days when we could sleep nude every night.

"Baby," I whispered. She liked it when I called her "Baby." No, really, she did. I think when you are secure in yourself and in the respect the other person holds for you, diminutive nicknames can feel comforting and special.

"Hey," I started, a little more force in my whisper. "Time to get up, Baby." She grunted and tried to swat me away like a fly buzzing in her ear. After a couple more tries, she flipped sides, pushed me onto my back, and curled up on my chest. She knew that would buy her a few more minutes, especially if she - yep - wriggled her hand inside the waistband of my pants and unders and wrapped it around my penis. I groaned, and could feel the self-satisfaction emanate from her.

Any day that started and ended with us like this was ok.

"It really is time to get up," I said. She let go and sat up, grumbling. I got water from the river, ran it through the filter into our collapsible pitcher, and dropped two tablets into it. While I dug breakfast out of my pack and poured water for each of us, she cleaned her face and changed clothes.

While we ate my trail mix breakfast, I told her about the farm stand and my plan to buy provisions there. I shared my thought that we could stay here another night before going on. "It would be nice to not change camp for once," she remarked. "How many more days do you think it will take?"

I grimaced. "It's hard to walk more than ten miles in a day. So I figure five more days." Her quick scowl then sigh of resignation pretty much expressed my feelings.

"Can we get a ride or at least buy a couple of bikes?" she asked. "We have a lot of powerchips."

I shrugged. "Maybe." I'd had no luck so far buying transit. People weren't selling their wheels, and rides required a level of trust on both sides that was uncommon these days. "I'll ask while I'm buying food." The answer pleased her. We were vulnerable out in the open and I think she longed for a soft bed and a warm shower.

We finished eating and made a plan for the day. While I went scouting for provisions and transport, she would have to stay close to the camp: you just could not leave anything unattended in this world. As I was packing up my gear, I pressed our second most prized possession into her hands: our rifle. I had a little something up my sleeve.

We had been fervently anti-gun back in the Our Revolution days. We still hated having them, but when the social contract was in tatters, only one's own force could protect against those who would take what they want from you. Many of us had gradually added nuance to our stance on guns over the last fifteen years as events had progressed.

Farmers still rose early, but I took my time getting there. Didn't want to show up before they were ready to engage in commerce. Along the way, I enjoyed the scenery. It was all grass and trees bordered in the distance by blue mountains, under a canopy of brilliant blue sky brushed carelessly with white clouds. Climate change had not made this part of the planet less desirable. On the contrary: rising temperatures had morphed the area from a cold temperate zone to a warm temperate zone. It was one of the few spots on the planet where clean fresh water was still abundant.

Less than half a mile back west, a narrow country lane intersected the trail. I turned right onto the road. It wound its way up the hill under the cover of an evergreen forest.

Anyway, You can probably guess that the moderate temperatures and plentiful water has resulted in the area facing rising migratory pressure. You can probably then go on to guess all the social ramifications. As treacherous as was the social ecology, the physical was beautiful. Although the physical had plenty of dangers, too. Bear and wolves were plentiful in this region, and when you got up into the mountains, mountain lions, too. Still, man got to the top of the food chain by being the planet's best and most ruthless killers (and white men most of all, who accounted for most of the population around these parts), so I'll take the dangers from nature's lesser beasts.

Although I don't know what the fuck I'd do if I came face to face with a bear, or a pack of wolves. After shitting myself. I would definitely shit myself.

On that cheery odiferous thought, I came around a bend in the road and the farm was nestled in a clearing to my left. It was a simple but spacious two-story house with a detached garage almost as big as the house on its far side; a decomposing barn behind it; and a wooden pavilion covering about half the area of the house next to the road at the bottom of the driveway. The buildings were surrounded by fenced paddocks, some with animals grazing and others devoted to plants. As I had hoped, the four tables under the pavilion were laden with bags overflowing with produce and goods. A woman bustled about the tables while two almost-adult children loafed in the shelter, and a young man sat on the porch of the house. He undoubtedly had the rifle or shotgun quick to hand. The number of vehicles and noises leaking out of the house attested to reinforcements inside.

This was very good for me. The several gazes tracking my progress bothered me not a bit. This was a family that would deal with you squarely and converse cordially, but was prepared for shit.

By the time I approached the front of the table with prepared meals, the family had no doubt concluded that I came to trade. Smiles and well wishes greeted me, which I returned. We exchanged observations about the weather and traded intel on places we'd seen this or been offered that, while I selected two fresh breakfasts, and four chilled meals for later.

I browsed their other offerings, such as cannabis, beer, liquor, miscellaneous remedies and hygiene goods, and a table of random parts salvaged from inoperable household appliances, adding a few things to my order, then stepped to the till and asked the smiling older woman in front of me, "Is it possible to get a ride for two people?" The initial signals were not positive, but when I added that "I have loaded powerchips to trade" the balance shifted seismically in my favor.

The woman looked behind her and the boy was already jogging over to the house calling out, "Dad!" I waited for the family negotiator to come over.

"I'm interested in Jap production 15s, 8s and 3s, and domestic 100s," the man said after we nodded our social greeting to each other. The handshake never came back from Covid-19. Our nod was as good as one had been.

"Got all those. What will this --" I indicated the items in front of me on the table -- "and a ride for two people to Chaletkin" cost me?" I asked and looked him in the eye while I waited for his answer. We went around a couple of times and settled at 20% off his first offer.

Our "ride" turned out to be a first-generation e-bike with a powerchip adapter bolted to it. I looked it over carefully. It would get us there and be tradeable, but we wouldn't exactly be comfortable sharing the seat. Still, this was a welcome relief from fifty more miles of walking. With the food I'd bought, we were set for Chaletkin tomorrow. She would be excited to have the rest of today to just relax.

That thought cheered me as I hurried back to her and The Spot. It would be a great place to sit, share the sativa I'd just bought, watch the river go by, and charge up some more powerchips to replace the ones I'd just spent. It would take most of my empties. I definitely would want to fill up in Chaletkin.

The e-bike took a domestic 15 and got me there in under five minutes. She brightened visibly when she looked up at the noise of my approach and saw me astride locomotion. That reaction made it worth every kilowatt I'd spent. I loved pleasing her.

"You did it!" she exclaimed. "Ohmygod it's wonderful!" I climbed off the bike so she could get on, grab the handlebars, and pretend to ride it as if it were a Kawasaki 1500.

I laughed. Two years ago neither of us would have been caught dead on a piece of museum trash like this. "I'm glad you think so for what I just paid for it," I remarked. The monetary value of the powerchips I had traded for it probably would have bought that Kawasaki 1500 before The Crash.

"Can I ride it?" she asked. "Just around here," she added, discerning that I was leery of her going off alone.

I shrugged. "Just a little. I don't know how many miles that thing has left on it before it falls apart."

She laughed. "I'll be gentle. I promise," she swore, and off she went. I walked the rest of the way to our little camp, set out the provisions I had purchased, and had breakfast. By the time I had finished, she was back from her little joyride.

"My feet are so happy," she said as she came up behind me and threw her arms around my chest. "Now let's see what you got. I'm famished!" she exclaimed, and relinquished her grip. I sat back for a few minutes and watched her. I loved watching her do things: the way her body moved, the energy with which she did things, just the personality - the spirit - she emanated. We'd been together almost 18 years and she still fascinated me as much as the day we met.

You are my cinema

I could watch you forever

Those old lyrics ran through my head as they often did when I found myself watching her.

But those powerchips weren't going to charge themselves. I shoved myself off the blanket and went over to my pack. A leather satchel hanging from a hook on the side of my pack held my charging gear. It was heavy and unwieldy, but it was worth the sweat.

The river current was strong enough to use my water wheel, but there wasn't enough wind to make the turbine productive. I walked around Grandpa (I decided to name that big old tree) and hopped down onto Pier Rock (I like naming things). I anchored my water wheel to Grandpa's root. The wheel started turning immediately. I attached the leads to the generator unit, plugged three powerchips in, and was rewarded with the little green lights that told me they would be loaded in a couple hours. I should be able to get three or four shifts charged while we camped here.

Once that was set up, I climbed back to the meadow and reached back into the satchel for the kinetic unit and portable pedals. I unfolded the pedals and wired them to the charger, popped a couple powerchips in, and situated the pedals so I could sit with my back against the tree and idly pedal while seeing if I could find a signal and some sites to browse - maybe even check for email. I had emailed several people in Chaletkin asking for information about Isaiah Bob. Maybe someone had gotten back to me, if servers were active.

So those of you from the past reading this are probably very confused right about now. I forget: you live in a civilization with reliable functioning grids. We do not.

The first massive failure of the power grid was around ten years ago, when fires in California burned a series of substations and transformers, and simultaneously a broiling heat wave hit Phoenix, Arizona where Googazon and CyberCash had massive data farms. The surge in demand hit the weakened grid like a thousand-year flood smashing into a rickety old dam.

The whole thing collapsed. Almost 90% of the country lost power. Never again would the whole country have power at the same time. It took between days and weeks to restore power to different parts of the country from that one drop, and by the time the last people were back online from that blackout, other blackouts had plunged other regions into roasting darkness. That would be the pattern to this day. When you could get internet, you could go to a site that would show you the areas with and without power. The map constantly changed, but never more than maybe half the country was in the green-shaded areas.

The data networks were not far behind. If servers don't have power, they can't host websites and pass traffic around. And cables broke or were taxed beyond capacity. When you could get internet, you could go to a site that would show you the areas with and without data. The map constantly changed, but never more than maybe half the country was in the green-shaded areas.

Water, sewer and transportation networks then broke down by other processes set in motion or exacerbated by climate change. Even more than with the power and data networks, these collapses were the result of under-investment and neglect of modernization as demand climbed - especially in some regions. "Climate migration" became something people lived here, not just something that happened over there, and it overwhelmed these ancient physical networks.

[^To read a summary of the data inspiring this explanation, see New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, by James Bridle, pp. 60 et seq]

The civil war hadn't made things any better, although both sides tried to minimize infrastructure damage since they were trying to control the country, not destroy it. Killing people was enough.

Anyway, it wasn't that these networks didn't work at all. We had power, we had data, we had cars - self-driving cars - and buses and trains and airplanes, we had water and sewer; we just never knew from one moment to the next if we would have them now. They were unreliable and could be available for weeks at a time followed by weeks of absence. We never knew when they would go down or be fixed. If you were to overlay a wealth distribution map of the country over the grid map, the two would largely coincide. The wealthy increasingly lived in their own walled-off communities with their own self-reliant systems.

This unreliability of the power grid led to the acceleration of a trend that had been swelling for decades: wireless devices that worked off portable power. When the grid could not be trusted, nobody wanted things that had to be plugged into it to work. Powerchip-driven electrical devices of all kinds from appliances to handheld devices flooded the market. People retro-fitted powerchip modules onto older devices and sold them on a secondary market. Powerchip manufacturing exploded and within a couple of years, billions of the things flooded the country.

Of course powerchips ran out of charge, and some devices - especially large appliances not suited for portable power - drained them fast. Then they had to be recharged. You guessed it: by plugging them into the power grid. For tens of millions of people, that made powerchips single-use products. As a result, fully loaded powerchips became prized commodities, while empties were virtually worthless. You almost could get paid to take them away.

Which is where I came in. I knew a little about electricity, and dove into learning all I could about it. It's not that difficult to make a generator - you just need magnets, wire and a kinetic energy source. I was able to get all the parts and make these babies: a pair of portable generators hooked up to powerchip chargers, with a shaft that I could attach to a motive device. I then made my water wheel, wind wheel and pedal attachments. They don't charge as fast as plugging into the wall, but they charge when there's no power available.

Basically, I'm sitting here printing money.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find a cell signal. There must not be any operable towers around here right now. I wondered if it was a temporary disruption or a permanent lapse. It was frustrating not being able to get any news or see if anyone in Chaletkin had information about Isaiah Bob.

She returned from her joyride and we spent a refreshing day by the river. We shared lunch with a young family Traveling the trail to Chelan, where they'd heard a new commune was accepting members. They traded me some empty powerchips for the meal and some of the first aid supplies I had bought at the trading farm. I charged all my empties, including the new ones. When it was getting dark I set up our security system so we could truly relax. I didn't use it all the time because it chewed up powerchips, but for tonight it was a good investment. With the cover of darkness and early warning, we stripped down and bathed in the clear, cold, fresh water of the river.

There was enough moonlight to turn her into a phosphorescent glowstick, saturating her pale skin and striking sparks off the water droplets that clung to her when she emerged from the water. With everything else painted in hues of black and midnight blues she seemed suspended in space like a heavenly body - the heavenly body she was. A modern-day Michelangelo could model a female David from her if he were so inclined. I soaked it all in and tried to remember to breathe. I felt touched by the gods knowing that she found me just as beautiful.

We lay on our blanket and let the air dry us, then slipped inside the bedbag to celebrate another successful day. "Any day that begins and ends with you in my arms is a good day," I had said to her on the night after we had learned for certain that we would lose the house. "Wherever that might be."

There were worse places to close your eyes for the night than a field next to the river under the stars. There were worse ways to wake up in the morning than in that field with the chirping of the birds and rushing of water over rocks as your alarm, sunlight all around you and a naked beautiful woman snuggled up against you.

No money in my bank account

No home to call my own

No wealth to my name

No man richer than I

Even with the overburdened ebike we made it to Chaletkin by dinnertime. We followed the Sammamish for a couple more miles, then turned right at the Eastrail intersection. The Eastrail went north along the old railroad right-of-way. At the Chaletkin County line it continued as Centennial Trail South and eventually met the Chaletkin River. We came in along the riverbank opposite the town. Between the railroad-turned-trail and the river was the old industrial district, such as it was in a small burg such as Chaletkin. Still, the area was a patchwork of factories, warehouses and fenced yards, all crumbling and overgrown now, with mushrooming populations of squatters. As the sovereignty of the City of Chaletkin ended in the middle of the Chaletkin River, its government disclaimed any responsibility for the squatters.

When the trail intersected Airport Way, the main road into Chaletkin from the south, we turned right and crossed the ancient bridge into the southern end of town. This was the old downtown that had built up when river and rail traffic were king, before cars changed everything.

Chaletkin was still a pretty prosperous town, as many Googazon and Miniware employees had moved there during the Pandemic of 2020 and it had remained a bastion of remote work for the tech industries. These tech workers brought a steady supply of dollars into the town, so its merchants still demanded legal tender. My powerchips were severely devalued here, which would limit how long we could stay. We had to find Isaiah Bob quickly and figure out what came next.

Although it was possible we could get gigs here. People who had cash these days tended to have plenty to spend and not enough to spend it on.

First objective was to find lodging and a hot meal, then start looking around for Isaiah Bob. I had a list of eight local inns and lodging houses on my phone that I had compiled before we left Seattle and relatively reliable data service. We went through half of it before we found one willing to accept my powerchips for two nights. "But anything past that will have to be cash," the owner said. She was a nice old lady and I think she let us the room because we reminded her of her children.

"I hope our business will be concluded by then," I replied, "but do you know anyone hiring temporary work?" She shook her head apologetically, and I smiled a "thanks anyway."

She didn't know anything about Isaiah Bob, but she did know a couple good places for food and drink in the district of narrow streets and century-old buildings surrounding her inn. "Over at Fred's they might know something about Mr. Bob," she added thoughtfully. "The owner has been here a long time and everybody who lives here winds up at Fred's." She smiled. "I love their fried pork skins." From looking at her, I was not surprised.

The room was acceptable. Single bed, but it was firm and the bedding was clean and fresh. Room was small and we shared a bathroom on the floor, but everything was well cared-for, which was most important. No a/c, so it was warm, but the room was overall quite satisfactory.

We shared a hot shower and I think she shed a tear or two of gratitude for what used to be taken for granted as part of the daily ritual. Chaletkin was lucky to have clean running water. We washed a few articles of clothing in the sink and carried them back to our room to air dry.

We had each packed an outfit for going out, just in case. They came out of the bottom of our packs clean and fresh smelling, if wrinkled. It felt good to dress up a little, and seeing her in the simple shift dress brought back a lot of memories. Memories from a better time when all of this was a future that was not yet real.

"Damn, you look good, baby," I said to her with a shake of my head.

She smiled and took my arm, "You don't look too bad yourself, baby," she retorted.

We walked out our door in high spirits, ready for Fred's.