Free The Cydonian Pyramid by Pete Hautman

a cart propelled by digital magic. The horse slowed on the rises, sped up on the downgrades, and sometimes changed speed for no apparent reason. The slightly jerky motion of the cart was letting her know that she had already been sitting on that hard seat for a very long time. She could see how using the real Gort to travel all the way from the hospital would have been impractical.
    The dirt road became a single lane with rutted tracks for the wheels and a grassy strip down the middle. On either side were cultivated fields. She recognized corn and wheat, but most of the crops were a mystery to her. The road dipped. They passed through a shallow swale, then climbed a gradual rise. A collection of buildings came into view as they crested the rise: a few hands of houses with peaked roofs, a row of long, low wooden barns with rounded metal roofs, and several silos.
    “Harmony,” said Artur.
    A man dressed in the same somber black and white as Artur was driving a team of horses from a barn toward a field to their right. A pair of women dressed in similar colors were hanging white sheets from a line. A man on a ladder was painting one of the houses. An older woman, bent over a row of bushes, filled a small basket with red berries. A young boy wearing shorts and a straw hat guided a small flock of sheep along the edge of the field to their left. Lia tried to catch the boy’s eye as they passed him, but he would not look at her.
    “It is good to be home,” Artur said.
    None of the Boggsians looked at them as they made their way through the settlement. They might as well have been invisible. Lia had the sudden thought that she was no more substantial than a not-horse. Had the not-horse known it was an illusion?
    “Why doesn’t anybody look at us?” she asked.
    “They think I am
meshugeh,
” said Artur.
    “What is that?”
    “Crazy.” He laughed, crazily.

T HE LAST BUILDING IN H ARMONY WAS ANOTHER metal-roofed barn, somewhat longer and wider than the others. Its roof was mottled and streaked with rust, its wooden sides were long overdue for a coat of paint, and it was surrounded by a fringe of ragged-looking weeds. It looked like the sort of barn that might belong to a madman.
    Artur stopped the cart in a shady area along the side of the barn.
    “We are here,” he said.
    Lia regarded the barn suspiciously. “What is in there?”
    “My life’s work.” Artur clambered down from the cart and held out his hand. “Your future, perhaps,
nu
?”
    Lia looked from his broad, thick-fingered hand to the neglected barn, then back toward the rest of the settlement, feeling increasingly uneasy.
    “You said there were Pure Girls here,” she said.
    “I tell you only what is true.”
    With a sense of foreboding tinged with hope, Lia took his hand and stepped down. She stood by as Artur unhitched Gort. The horse moved off, sniffing the weeds by the barn, then tossed his head and trotted off toward a nearby field.
    “Always looking for food, that one,” Artur said, patting his own belly. “And you? Are you hungry?”
    Lia shook her head. She was hungry, but she was more interested in meeting the other Pure Girls.
    “
Goot.
We eat later.” He led her to the front of the building and pushed through the wide double doors. Lia followed him inside.
    The cavernous interior of the building felt larger than it had looked from the outside. The first things she saw were several long tables and desks loaded with equipment. There was a video display, its screen crowded with unfamiliar symbols, along with several complicated-looking machines in various stages of assembly or disassembly. Cables and wires in a variety of garish colors were coiled and piled on tables and benches, snaking across the floor, hanging from the high ceiling, connecting everything to everything else. The floor looked as if it had never been swept — every square foot was littered with bits of wire, dust balls, metal shavings, and unidentifiable debris.
    As her eyes