.
The sleeping bag opened, and the intimate, slightly stuffy body-heat trapped inside vanished upward into the frigid darkness. A flashlight clicked on, gracing the drab brown interior of a canvas tent with light, if not heat. The sleepy figure rising from the bag shivered and hissed. It fumbled for and upended a boot, then its twin—
...a scorpion, no longer than a man's finger, fell from the second boot.
"Well, good morning!" A voice, slightly froggy-sounding from the early hour and the cold, chirped with mocking, condescending cheerfulness. "Found a warm spot to spend the night, did you? Brr! I certainly sympathize!"
A blade impaled the chitinous creature. It squirmed violently as a second set of metal, the scissor of a Swiss Army knife, hoisted it by its tail. The blade vanished. Then a brownish, salty liquid rained down upon the creature, mixing with its vital ichor.
"We haven't met. My name is Kino. And unlike you," the arachnid, sans stinger, fell. There was a crunching noise.
The traveler gulped, fought down a gag, flicked away the stinger and closed her knife, and finally screwed the cap back on her little bottle of soy sauce.
"...I'm a survivor."
A Green and Growing Land
— A Progress
A bee settled upon a rosy blossom, the buzzing of her wings blending in a counterpoint to the melody of birdsong. But even after she landed the buzzing continued. Soon the source of this unnatural sound, the engine of a vintage racing motorcycle, crested a nearby hill.
The motorcycle hummed forward, making the even, smooth sound of a high quality touring vehicle, if one somewhat the worse for wear after heavy use. The motorcycle's rider was equally careworn, with a tattered khaki coat flapping in the wind.
The coat's wearer had taken careful steps to see it stayed relatively secure, and - heaven forbid! – never got caught in the rear wheel or gears. Despite these steps, the thing flapped in defiance.
The coat was characteristic of a peculiar breed of traders, though some might call them gypsies, or even hobos. One might call the coat a duster or a long coat. Its wearer thought of it as a trench coat, though that wasn't quite right either.
"We'll be there in about an hour, Hermes." The rider said over the engine noise. The voice was surprisingly youthful and androgenous, now that the morning frogginess had passed.
"You don't sound happy about it." The answer, the voice of a husky male soprano.
"I'm dreading it."
The rider's name was Kino. Kino traveled. She lived for travel — a three day visit every stop, then she moved on without fail. Hermes, her motorcycle and companion, spoke. This unusual fact made her life considerably less lonely.
Kino let her mount slow to an idle and stilled the engine's noise. She always liked to stop, at least for a few minutes, to admire a field covered with this particular creeper. For about half an acre, the ground was covered with green leaves and funnel-shaped crimson flowers. Kino favored this plant because she'd once borne the same name. That seemed so long ago now that it might as well have happened to a different person. In so many ways Kino truly was a different person; so much besides her name had changed.
"Uh oh! Not another place with a scary secret?"
"Hmm? Oh, not that I know of! The travelers I spoke to said this town's prosperous and filled with industrious people. That's why we turned this way. You need gas, and I'm just about out of money. It's gonna be a working visit."
Working visits weren't anything new. As necessary, Kino took odd jobs during her travels. After all, finding out how people made a living certainly helped her learn about a place, especially when the towns had grown up around some factory or trade route or other industry. Kino's master had given her a generous sum when she'd left, but had also wisely taught her all sorts of useful skills to help her earn a living on the road. Glamorous it wasn't, but it was the necessary downside of a vagabond lifestyle.
Just beyond the meadow covered with the scarlet flowers waited a thick patch of lush ivy, crowned with cones of tiny purple blooms. Kino barely paid it any attention, until they drove over the hill and Kino gasped.
"Whoa!" Hermes said.
From where they stood, from the crest of a ridge-line to the rough hilly horizon ahead, that thick ivy covered everything with a waving verdant blanket. It climbed up trees. It straggled onto the paved road ahead. It was everywhere!
"Amazing! It's beautiful," Kino commented as she drove Hermes into the rolling green sea.
"I guess," Hermes answered. "If you really like green. So why are you dreading a working visit?"
"I suppose I've gotten a little lazy," Kino admitted. "This time last year we got lucky and had plenty of cash. But that's all spent and the last few places we visited were too interesting to spend our three days worrying about money."
"Yeah, 'interesting,'" Hermes mocked. "I've been counting: we've gone two whole weeks without somebody shooting at you. A new record!"
Kino chuckled.
It's beautiful!
...if you really like green.
Kino walked Hermes through the well-tended street with satisfaction and no little relief after her day's trip through a desert. The natives hid their obesity under bright colored clothes of rich material. Squirrels played in the thick, dark green leaves that climbed up tree trunks, street lamps and the sides of buildings. Everything in sight spoke of prosperity and ease.
A few quick questions at the visitor's center had sent her to the building in front of her, a worker's placement agency. Kino popped her bike's kick stand down, dusted off and straightened her black leathers as well as she could. Then she headed toward the entrance.
"Good luck," Hermes called after her.
"Entry level?" I don't understand. "With the skills I'm—"
"Well you see, miss," the man's bored-sounding monotone cut her off. "While you certainly have some... unique and impressive qualifications, our employers base their hiring strictly upon seniority and references. If, for example, you'd been working for one of the local franchises, I'm sure the others would be interested in placing you in a comparable position."
Kino looked at the man as if he was speaking an unfamiliar language, and she'd learned several languages.
"As you have no employment history with the franchises, I'm afraid entry-level is the best we can offer. I have an immediate opening—"
"I'll take it."
The man promptly began handing her forms. "You don't need to ask what the job entails? I understand."
"I don't have much choice at the moment." Kino began filling out the form, the fifteenth form she'd filled out since entering this city. "May I ask you a question?"
The man nodded, his second and third chin bobbing and wiggling as he did.
"What is that plant?"
"What plant?"
"The ivy that's growing over everything here."
"Eh? Are you... talking about the kudzu?"
"Is that what they call it?"
"You mean you don't have kudzu where you come from? How do you get on without it?"
"Pretty well, thank you. Why is it... all over everything?"
"Well, that's the way it grows! Kudzu was imported to our lands oh... well over a century ago. It's edible, extremely hardy and grows rapidly. Almost unkillable, in fact. One must admire that sort of efficiency!"
Kino grunted. "So, where am I working?"
"Oh!" Hermes raved. "Oh, that's priceless! You never looked better, Kino."
It was late at night when Kino finished the first day of her employment. As she was new and had the least seniority, she was obliged to help the manager clean and close the shop for the night.
"Hermes," his rider growled, "I'm warning you. I'm very unhappy and I'm doing this for my stomach and your gas tank. So don't you dare make it any worse." She took off the paper hat and waved it at him threateningly.
Kino stood on the back step of the shop, looking perfectly miserable in the baggy brown uniform she'd been required to wear. Hermes restrained himself, but she could still hear amusement in his voice even when he said, "is the work really that bad? What do they make you do?"
"I'm taking orders and delivering food."
"Cooking? You're great at that! Sure, your cooking used to make people retch. But ever since you—"
"I'm not cooking," Kino interrupted with a corrosive tone. "That's all automated."
"Oh! That makes it easier, huh?"
"No. No, it doesn't." Kino opened a paper sack and skeptically removed her dinner from it. "It's drudgery. It's a very busy shop, but it's mindless work. I feel like a zombie." She bit into the sandwich. "Everyone there but the manager is my age, and none of them have ever been out of the city limits."
"So you have stories to tell them."
"No time," Kino said around the sandwich. "And they're not much interested, either. Gak! I smell like I've been deep fried."
"Huh. What now?"
"Well, if I try to stay at an inn we'll never get out of here. So we camp out, and I come back tomorrow. At least my dinner's free."
"How is it?"
"It's... okay. Bland. Seems that plant really is edible, but I think by the third day here I'm gonna be really sick of kudzuburgers."
The evening of the second day, Kino met Hermes at the back door as before. She walked him over to their secluded campsite without a word. In stony silence she sat in her tent and ate her kudzuburger until Hermes couldn't stand it any longer.
"Kino," he said, all trace of humor and irony banished. "I'm really sorry you're having to do this."
She stuffed the rest of her meal into her mouth as if trying not to taste it. "I'll live," she finally said. "I can get through it. I can stand anything for three days. I can do this!"
The next day, during Kino's allotted break time, the restaurant's manager decided to get to know his new employee. They sat together in the plastic chairs at the back of the building and chatted.
"Oh yes, I've been working here for two years," he said. "You stick with it, you'll be managing your own restaurant in about that time," the old man nodded encouragingly.
Kino bit back a caustic reply and asked, more to make conversation than anything else, "what did you do before this?"
"I ran my own restaurant, just across the street there. I was the head chef." The man smiled at the memory.
"Really? What happened?"
"Well, Kudzuburger opened here. Because my business had done well, they decided they wanted this intersection. They're so large and have so many restaurants they could afford to run this one at half capacity as long as they needed to. Me? I sure couldn't with only the one. So I closed up shop and applied to work here."
"Don't you miss making your own decisions? Do you miss owning your own business? Cooking food yourself instead of letting machines do it?"
The old man shrugged. "You can't fight progress. What about you? What did you do before this, Kino?"
"I'm a traveler."
The man looked at her quizzically.
"I enjoy traveling to other cities."
"Sounds pointless to me."
That night, Kino exited without her brown uniform. She tossed the paper hat into the garbage bin with gusto, slid her khaki coat over her leathers and climbed onto Hermes.
"You know the big disadvantage of learning how other people live their lives, Hermes?"
"Sometimes you hate the way they live their lives?" he ventured.
Without another word, she kick-started the engine.
"Kino, we're riding after dark? That's not safe."
"Only until we're well out of city limits. I won't feel like myself until I've seen the back of this place."
So they drove over to the bank. Kino cashiered her voucher and used much of the meager sum she'd earned to purchase gasoline for Hermes. Then they rode into the night, drove as far as Kino dared to go in the darkness before setting up camp. Kino draped her sleeping bag over the thick carpet of deep green kudzu leaves and instantly fell asleep.
Before the next morning was out, Kino and Hermes arrived at the next city.
"Whoa!" Hermes said in amazement for the second time this week. "I don't believe this!"
Kino gaped in voiceless astonishment. The new town... looked exactly like the old town, except that everything had been rearranged. Here stood a Sparkle Laundry, there a Huckabee's coffee stand, and over there a Kudzuburger. And of course, the kudzu vines climbed over every surface untrod by human feet.
Kino spent an hour examining the town, barely able to believe what she was seeing. When she'd verified it was, in all but arrangement, identical to the last, she hopped onto Hermes' saddle and announced, "we're leaving."
"You're not going to stay three days?"
"I've already stayed three days in that last town. There's no point in staying here."
So for the first time in many months, Kino broke her personal rule and did not stay three days.
I enjoy traveling.
— Sounds pointless to me.
That afternoon they arrived in a third town. This time they expected to find the Ultramart, Easy's Electronics and, of course, Kudzuburger.
"They're all wearing the same clothes, listening to the same music, eating the same food..." Kino's voice trailed off. Her face was a study of wide-eyed, incredulous misery. Finally she announced flatly, "I'm in hell."
She stopped a passerby at the edge of the town and asked, "how far does the kudzu go on?"
"Go on?" the man repeated, confused. "What do you mean, 'go on?'"
"It's got to end somewhere, right?" Kino asked urgently over the gentle purring of Hermes' engine.
He looked at her as if she'd asked where she could buy an extra nose.
Kino's eyes widened and she abruptly wheeled Hermes about. In that instant Kino broke another personal rule — she turned around and headed back the way she came.
Two days later, Kino and Hermes emerged at last from the green labyrinth. She'd half-feared vines of kudzu would leap up from the ground to entangle Hermes' wheels, would wrap around her ankles and drag her back. But of course, nothing of the sort happened. Kino breathed a long sigh of relief.
"Well, I had to refill your tank again, so... we've double what we had when I started work." She smiled ruefully. "Twice nothing is still nothing."
"Kino?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm not sure I understand. Everybody looked happy and content except for you. Those were obviously wealthy towns. Sure they were the same, but what's so horrible about that?"
"Hermes, I'm a traveler. If everywhere's the same, what's the point of traveling?"
"...oh."
"Yeah, 'oh!' Meaning you'd end up rusting in some junkyard and I'd end up running a Kudzuburger."
As they drove, Kino abruptly noticed they'd already passed the meadow with the flowers. She stopped the engine long enough to look at the flora.
Kudzu stretched down the hill. It had reached into the scarlet flowers and was already strangling them, covering them with its thick blanket of uniform green leaves and crowns of violet blossoms.
Kino looked over the silent, hopeless green battlefield frozen before her. Then she restarted the engine.
"Hermes, how fast and far can you go?"
Don't you miss making your own decisions?
-You can't fight progress.
(Note: Chapter two of Dead Man's Curve may be found in the Crossover section.)