looked at Amy. Instead of a frown, a smile beamed from Amy’s wan face.
“Don’t tell me you like it?”
“Like it? This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Sally examined the other girl more closely. She was an agronaut whose life was meant to be spent in the nutro-swamps of the Arkansas Plains. Hers was destined to be a hard life. No sim-time. Days spent under the swamps or floating on a harvest barge. If she’d been born into a metro, things would have been different for her. She’d have been more like Sally. But she hadn’t been. She was an agro.
“But aren’t you worried about the radiation? My learn-verse mates tell me it can cause all sorts of defects.”
“I’m not worried about the defects.” For the first time the girl frowned.
Sally looked around at the others as if for the first time. There were several unlucky kids like her, but there were also a lot of adults. Some looked hale and healthy like her parents, but there were quite a few elderly, someone’s grams and gramps. Then there were some like Amy, their bald heads giving them away, like beacons of ill health riding above the seats.
A hum sounded as the train began to slow.
They were due to change trains.
But not before the showers.
***
Sally screamed as the orange water hit her. From every direction at once, it shot into her pores and private places. The soap that made the water orange smelled sickly sweet. They said it killed all germs, thus eliminating the chance of a superbug being created in the radioactive areas. Sally could care less. It felt as if the hot water was lacerating her and she couldn’t wait for it to end.
And all because of a hurricane: Hurricane Uma, to be exact.
No one had known about the RBMK–1000 reactor Fidel Castro had built in the Cuban jungle until it blew. The same model as those at Chernobyl, the Soviet Union built a nuclear reactor in Cuba during the height of the Cold War. But the war ended, as did Castro. And it wasn’t a dozen years later when the reactor suffered a meltdown, its outdated components mismanaged by undereducated technicians. The radiation might have been localized had it not been for Hurricane Uma, which passed over the island, scooping up the radiation and pushing it forward, as a communal gesture to Cuba’s fraternal nemesis, America.
***
When she slid onto the seat of the clean train, her pout was full on. Her skin throbbed. They made her wear a red pantsuit, the shirt short-sleeved and awful. She ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair as she stared at the vidscreen. It showed Florida as it had been: trees, swamp, the occasional alligator, roads, combustion cars, buildings, people, life… So much had changed. In some ways, Florida now was no different than the rest of the world. Global Crises. Meta-bugs. Economicides. Gone was the way of the 20 Century. Sally touched the bottom edge of the vidscreen and watched as it flipped to now. The ground was brown and green, prime real estate returning to swamp. Here and there black scorched earth marred the landscape like scars, melted metal and glass from additional nuclear strikes by U.S.-fired missiles, a coup de grâce to the eternally wounded land of Florida. She touched the screen again and it superimposed a ghostly image of the past onto the present. Only then did she realize the totality of the devastation and the loss.
“Can I do that?”
Amy Judd slid next to Sally. She wore a yellow pantsuit that looked ghastly. Sally gestured to the window as if to say, be my guest.
“No. Not that.” Amy lowered her head and blushed. When she looked up, she wore an embarrassed smile. “That.” Amy pointed at Sally’s hand as she repeatedly pulled it through the lustrous long hair.
Sally stared at the other girl’s baldness. She didn’t want the girl to touch her at all. But a spark of humanity ignited within her, and as it grew, so did Sally’s desire to make the other girl feel better. After all, she was going to die.
Sally nodded.
Amy quickly reached for the hair, but stopped before she could touch it. She seemed to gather herself, then slowly let her fingertips caress Sally’s hair. She pulled her hand through several times. It wasn’t long before tears came into her eyes. She removed her hand, wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, then dropped her hands