Free Hyperthought by M. M. Buckner Page B

lost heart and drifted away.
    The appalling thing for me was how abruptly everything changed in Palmertown. One day there was a war. The next day, no war. It was over, forgotten, yesterday’s news. Even now, I try not to blame the southerners. Those northern cities were no more real to the citizens of Palmertown than some exotic movie. The north existed only on the Net. The people around me had never visited Paris. They didn’t grow up in those tunnels. They hadn’t lost mothers and brothers. In fact, the war had changed their lives very little. It was easy to forget.
    Adrienne was the first to go back to her old job with the fashion ezine. “You did your best, Jollers. It’s time to move on.” Ever practical, that was my Adrienne. But I knew about the handkerchief she carried hidden in her sleeve because her beautiful azure eyes kept leaking tears.
    When my funds ran completely out, Luc found a job in human relations for a big furniture chain, and I signed on with a surface repair crew. We gave up the midtown office, and Luc and I rented a tiny residence cube in the lower city. Typical southern place, it had beige walls, dented drop-down lockers, a coffin-size toilet, and a door with a broken latch. We splatter-painted the walls and floor with fuchsia glow-foam, bought cheap yellow hammocks and fixed the latch. Luc acquired a flat-panel Net node for the wall, and I splurged on an animatronic aquarium. I love those things. But the place never felt like home.
    I kept narrow casting vidmail to Jin. He hadn’t left my mind, not for an instant. Long after we’d lost touch with our friends in Euro, I kept badgering Jonas to help me reach Jin. Why, when half the world was disintegrating, did I continue to brood over the fate of one man? Because I’d promised? Because I felt responsible? Because my damned female hormones kept urging me to protect him? As I record this years later, I can tell you the real reason. It’s because I have the kind of heart that, once it gets set, it’s like concrete. At the time, though, I didn’t stop to examine motives.
    Jonas said, “You’re flaking, love. This obsession is deeply unzipped.” But he went to work with a will. Maybe it was the tedium of inaction. We were all feeling it by then. Like a pressure between the ears, and fingers that couldn’t stop drumming, and words stuck in our throats that we knew were a waste of breath. Anyway, Jonas did everything he could to find Jin. He hacked Nome.Com’s internal datafiles—a stunning feat. Before they shut him out, he downloaded a few terabytes of newsworthy data and earned his five minutes of fame on the Net, but not another word from Jin.
    I wasted six weeks on dreary routine, welding surface ducts all day, avoiding the crew boss, checking my Net node every hour. We could only guess the fate of our friends, and no one wanted to talk about it anymore. The carnival was over. We were left with ignorance and dread—and denial. We concentrated on trivial things and pretended that tune wasn’t passing.
    Often I dreamed about Jin. I dreamed Merida had sawed off the top of his skull, and I saw his brain rise up and metamorphose into a furry brown bat. When I woke from those dreams, I prayed that Nome’s troopers would march into that scuzzy clinic and spray napalm. My beautiful Jin, he’d be better off dead than transmogrified by that quack Merida. Almost at once, I reversed my prayer and begged for Jin’s life.
    At night I hung out with Adrienne, watching the Net’s inadequate half-news about half a world. What a glum pair we made, drifting through random bars. I guzzled beer while Adrienne sipped some zero-calorie swill and smiled halfheartedly at the men who flocked around her. I put off going home, because I knew Luc would be there, snuggled up with his curly-headed Arab friend, Trinni al-Uq. Seeing them together made my insides hurt. I hadn’t snuggled with anyone since Godthaab. Since Jin.
    I knew I didn’t belong in