Winnie in the Fields

The basket dinged as Winnie dropped another onion into it and wiped her dirty brow. The readout showed fourteen more until she hit goal and could go sit in the shade for lunch. The soft purring behind her reminded her that the Helper Hob needed its motor cleaned before she checked it back in to avoid the same fine she got last week. It buzzed close like an eager fly around a carcass. Winnie reached down to grab another onion top, digging her hands into the cool earth, and noticed a shadow pass over her.

“Back up.” She voiced the command without looking up and heard the Helper Hob retreat. They were so cumbersome sometimes in the fields, where there was no digital signage or brightly painted road markets to give clues as to where they should hover. The vast expanse of green and brown confused their sensors so they tended to lock onto any human in the vicinity and follow them around. And in this complex, that human was almost always her. Another shadow passed over. She jerked up with an onion in hand, ready to chuck it at the annoying drone, but she saw it hovering the mandatory six feet away, idly scanning the ground for green tops and dropping lit markers over them so that she wouldn’t miss them in the growing darkness of dusk. A breeze ruffled her hair, and she glanced up, then nearly fell backwards, trampling the little bed of greens. Hovering in the sky above her, lazily making its way to the ground, was a sherbert-colored silk hot hair balloon with golden tassels, a tiny basket bobbing underneath it, drifting on the wind like it had floated right out of an old circus advertisement.

“How did that make it past the sensors?” Winnie jumped at the voice and smushed another onion under her foot-- the count was going to be so off, now. She whirled around and saw a grandmother, C2-5 by the color of her jumpsuit, shuffling down one of the garlic rows. Winnie could tell from here that the old woman hfwqa. She had just cleaned the entire building’s slippers yesterday.

“Go back in, grandmother, I’ll bring you your evening vitpak.” She felt something brush her head and looked up. The tassels on the balloon basket brushed her upturned face. She reached up and pulled it from the air, surprised at how heavy it was. She turned back to C2-5, who was still shuffling towards her, gently kicking the greenbots as they rolled by plucking strawberries. A ding sounded from Winnie’s wrist, and she hefted the balloon to one side to glance at the message that C2-5’s door had been opened for an extended time. She walked over to the old woman.

“Everything ok, grandmother?” She asked, taking the woman’s elbow with her free hand. C2-5 nodded and closed her eyes.

“It’s beautiful today.” C2-5 answered, eyes still closed as they walked back down the path. As they came in sight of the building, Winnie automatically looked into the distance, where she could just make out the mountains, glittering with the lights of a town that shouldn’t exist, out where everything had gone feral. The training manual was strict about not calling attention to the mountains, but she always found it hard not to stare. Especially now that she’d been placed at a facility so close to the border. She turned away.

“Come on, then!” she yelled to the Helper Hob. The drone blinked its lights reproachfully. It whirred towards Winnie, the row of light markers it left behind reflecting on its metallic underbelly like a bioluminescent fish. She lead C2-5 back to the C Building, walking down the middle of the aisles so as to not smush any more of the crop. Winnie motioned for C2-5 to go inside, but the woman just smiled, and shook her head.

“I need help with-- vitpaks.” C2-5 said, her voice quavering, and Winnie could tell it was a lie, “and... It’s been quiet here recently.” She sighed, and hoisted the balloon up on her hip, walking past the sensors into the C building.

There were a few grandmothers standing in the hall when Winnie walked in. All of their eyes went to the balloon she was holding, as if to a beacon. Some of them were already typing furiously on their wrists, and notifs were popping up on Winnie’s wrist, letting her know which residents were in need of vitpaks, towels, a bot reset. Winnie knew that the more residents that saw her, the more support requests she would have to fill before going home, so when C2-5 opened the door to her rooms she ducked inside, ignoring the insistent dings.

As Winnie sat down, C2-5 busied herself making a vitpak in a set of cracked but beautiful handpainted teacups that must have been old even before lockdown. After a moment Winnie noticed that C2-5’s eyes skated over the balloon sitting on the seat beside Winnie as if it were invisible. When Winnie moved to grab the teacup, the balloon shifted with her, and Annie’s wrist notification dinged. C2-5 jerked her hand away quickly.

“Thank you, grandmother.” Winnie said, bowing even though the woman couldn’t see her. C2-5 nodded back, absently, grabbing the handle of the fridge. But instead of opening it and taking out the vitpaks, C2-5 reached into the gap between the fridge and wall, and pulled out a battered black notebook. Winnie stared at it. Its pages curled on the edges as if it had been dropped in water, and there was no mistaking it for the digital copies she’d seen in the shops years ago, before everyone’s com was updated. “You-- have paper!” Winnie asked, her voice coming out nearly accusatory in her shock.

“Shh!” the woman held up an age-speckled finger and opened the book, glancing around even though they were alone in the dim kitchen. Winnie caught sight of pages filled with tiny, scrawling writing. Winnie had opted out of Analog Studies, which was arcane and nearly useless at this point, but she’d heard they were standard for some older generations. Winnie really didn’t think the grandmother could be that old, but... the woman’s eyes scanned the pages quickly, as if she could read the scribbled script. She stopped on a spread and held it out. These pages were completely filled with an elaborate pencil drawing. Winnie’s wrist dinged again, but she ignored it and scanned the picture.

“What is this?” she demanded, but it was obvious. The detail was immaculate, down to the finely crafted basket and the tassels. It was a drawing of the balloon that was sitting on the chair beside her. There was an arrow pointing to the bottom of the basket, and a series of marks that looked like sprawling plants. Winnie picked up the basket and finally understood why it was so heavy. The diagram was showing how to unweave the basket bottom, and Winnie could see through the weave another notebook was hidden inside. A strange sound pulled her focus away. She looked up, and realized that C2-5’s teacup and saucer were shaking as she held them. “Do you know--”

“They’re still there” C2-5 said, her voice as pale as her face. “They finally sent it.” Winnie frowned,

“Who--” but her words were cut off by another series of insistent dings from her wrist. She glanced down at it. 400 messages since she walked in. That couldn’t be right. She clicked open the first message, and saw that it was from C2-7, right down the hall. She must have seen Winnie walk in. She swiped down to the message, ready to put the request in for another vitpak, but then stopped. The message was only one word--

C2-7. 16:55--

Run.

Winnie closed the message, confused, and opened another one.

C2-6. 16:51--

Run.

She closed the message. What was going on? Some kind of prank? The grandmothers rarely worked together anymore, the bots specifically encouraged independent activities. But sometimes they could get mischievous with their coms, especially if they thought Winnie had taken too long with deliveries. She scanned down the messages, opening and then swiping away, growing more anxious with each one.

Run.

Run.

Run.

Run.

Run.

The messages went on and on, from what looked like almost every room in the C building. Could it be a malfunction with the system? Her wrist dinged again, and she opened the newest message. It was from Dana, and came through the inter-employee messenger, a system apart from the glitching comms units that the residents used. Dana did not prank. Maybe she’d seen the glitch as well. This message was nearly as short as all of the others.

D-Employ Comm. 17:00:

They’re coming.

C2-5 had rounded the table and grabbed the basket, and began ripping at the woven bottom, ignoring the carefully drawn diagram. The woman managed to wrench the middle apart, dropping twigs onto the table. The black notebook dropped out of the hole. Winnie dove for it, but C2-5 clicked her tongue and snatched it up, opening it smoothly. She flipped through the pages, and then turned it over by the spine and shook it. Bits of colorful paper fluttered onto the table. Annie reached for one, and then stopped. The delicate designs looked vaguely familiar.

“Is that-- money?” the word felt foreign on her tongue. She’d heard about a system of paper bartering used before lockdown, but study of ancient culture wasn’t in the manual.

“This is a ticket.” C2-5 said, and without asking she grabbed the roll of tape from Annie’s belt that was used to box empty vitpaks for recycling. The grandmother began taping the pieces of paper together, carefully matching up the designs. “This is your ticket,” she repeated, “20,000. That is- used to be- enough.” The woman looked pained as she stacked the money on the table.

“Ticket to where?” Winnie asked, glancing back to her wrist comm. Who did Dana mean were coming? The OVC-Rs? Winnie knew the incident with the balloon was strange, but usually the OVC-Rs only came to remove residents after their vitals were cut off. “Enough for-- for what?” she asked, receiving two more messages.

Run.

Run.

C2-5 nodded distractedly out the window, her knobbly fingers shaking as she taped. Winnie walked over to the window and looked out to the mountains that always glittered with that strange light, far from the protective fields she’d lived inside of her entire life. In school she’d learned the lights were the sun reflecting off the snow, pristine nature untouched by humans, unaffected by lockdown. But Winnie had seen the lights at night, and when it was raining. Sometimes they turned off, and on again. For the first time, as Winnie stared out at the lights, she allowed herself to wonder if there were people on the other side of them.

“Go.” C2-5 called, “if they’re still there--” her sentence ended with a cry. Winnie whirled around in time to see the grandmother sink to her knees. The OVC-R behind her was holding a stick that pulsed a blue light. How did they get here so fast? Winnie stared at C2-5 lying on the ground, unmoving, and felt her brain slow down, as if she was plunged suddenly underwater.

“Why--” but its weapon pulsed again and she dove away as a blue light hit the wall. “Stop!” she yelled, but it was already charging up again. She grabbed the taped money from the table, plucked her Helper Hob out of the air, and dove out of the open window. She landed in the flower garden, and the drone in her hand vibrated wildly, trying to escape. A pulse of blue light connected with a flower beside her and it crumpled.

She scrambled up, facing towards the mountains she had always thought were empty, and ran.