Chapter 4

Asher didn’t mind the long walk to the Anthill. She loved walking, her brain settled into a peaceful, melodic rhythm with the sound of her footsteps. The sunlight that morning was pleasant and warm, casting a golden shimmer across the trees giving each crest of leaves a halo. She thought of Penny basking in the sunlight just outside their cabin door, keeping a lazy watch while warming her fur. Asher missed her companion’s familiar panting alongside her as she walked. She hoped the dog was doing all right back home. 

The Anthill was home to the technology Main reinvented and tested for safety and usability before reintroducing it to society. The large building sat at the top of a hill some distance away from Main’s center. Parts and pieces of any salvaged machinery was collected and stored there for possible future use. Crates filled with old computers, wire, and switches lined the edges of the rooms inside. Several forms of electric generators were constructed to keep up with the high demand inside the building. When Main was formed, the Colony decided that the best course of action regarding readoption of any technologies that were devastated during The Climate Shifts was to reevaluate each one independently away from the Colony’s general population. In the time just before The Shifts decimated civilization, technology was expanding radically and many of the advances were thought to be harmful to humanity. The tech was out of control and humans were fighting what felt like a losing battle before the worst of the electrical storms wiped out the internet. Suddenly, the problem with tech took a back seat to solving the problem of survival.

Mostly The Anthill was a place for discussion, the majority of which took place in the building’s basement. The more mathematically minded members of the Colony gathered there to discuss the societal problems that arose from the technology of the past in a rather unattached and observational manner. Their conversations were philosophical in nature. A certain decency was maintained in regard to human suffering or loss of life, but ultimately these were treated as data points in history to be discussed and weighed. Good or bad. Bug or feature. The community members who spent their days at the Anthill were not well-liked, but they were respected. Proven value had come from the work they did, and most of the projects they planned and executed were successful. Only a few resulted in unexpected or unfortunate outcomes.

There was agreement among the entire Colony that humans couldn’t continue to live on earth as they had shown up on it previously. The hope of the Anthill was to remove man’s selfish desires for power and pleasure from the equation for survival, and to structure a society that allowed for the greatest chance of peace with the earth as it is now. They understood that this might require difficult sacrifices, but they believed that over time humans would adapt to their new way of life. The Climate Shifts forced an adjustment in thought. The sect that came to understand their place in the world as just one of many living creatures at the mercy of the earth’s new patterns called themselves the Seers. There was another group of humans, who had not fared as well since The Climate Shifts. The Colony referred to them as Unseers.

It took some time for the Colony to understand the elusive difference between themselves and this other group. Of course, before it became clear to everyone, there was no Colony to collaborate. Collectively, they could have assessed it much sooner, but the turmoil of erratic weather and frequent natural disasters was enough to survive through. Constant preparations and enduring difficult living conditions occupied the entire day of any human on earth at the time. It wasn’t until the extreme weather events calmed and the climate’s rhythm was found again that people were able to gather for any length of time. It was another decade before the prospect of rebuilding a permanent society became feasible. The Seers spent the time between surviving and rebuilding dissecting the new environment around them. Observing their surroundings with great interest and identifying patterns without the luxury of relying on them as unchanging. It was a time of great growth of mind.

The conceptualization of the Unseers was arrived at gradually over the years and was continually shifting with further observation. However, it seemed the measurable difference between a Seer and an Unseer was their deficit in the physical senses. Unseers appeared unaware of their surroundings in most cases. Unseers also seemed unable to prepare for alternative outcomes. On the few occasions when Seers and Unseers attempted to rebuild together, the Unseers would make a single prediction about the next weather event and fought, sometimes physically, to have all of the group’s resources allocated to preventing their current efforts from being set back by the change they hypothesized. The Seers found this maddening. The Climate Shifts had proven impossible to predict. Time and time again humans had been incorrect about the next weather event. The only option the Seers considered logical was to adapt their survival to a variable environment. Clearly, there were large changes happening and if humans had any hope of continuing as a species, they would need to focus their efforts on adaptation. It was at this point that collaboration between Seers and Unseers broke down and the groups would go their separate ways.

Unseers were struggling to build lasting, collaborative communities. Nowadays it was unusual to find a group of any more than five traveling together. Even more concerning was the apparent steady decline in their ability to simply survive. Every group of Unseers Asher came across in the recent past was struggling with food security and basic hygiene. She had a habit of approaching Unseers and engaging in polite conversation for the purpose of studying their thoughts. It was through these conversations she first observed for herself their ostensibly dulled senses. She casually mentioned the smell of crisp fall apples to a young Unseer who asked her to explain what she meant by it. Asher found this peculiarity curious. She meditated on it for weeks and found it led her to noticing similar traits in other Unseers. Older adults would acknowledge that the senses existed but seemed unable to conjure an assessment drawn from their own. The deficiency was most notable in adolescents. They were unable to sense for themselves, and more curiously didn’t expect it as a possibility. The adolescent Unseer would not know how to smell. The loss seemed to manifest at puberty. The youngest Unseers were open to the idea of using their senses, but it was regarded as a kind-of superpower. Small children would entertain the idea that they had the abilities and as a result they would experience. There had been a few cases where the children of Unseers had been orphaned and adopted by the Colony. In these cases, the children were trained to experience their senses, and the ability was maintained into adulthood. 

The humans who worked in the Anthill were able to bridge the gap between Seers and Unseers without losing their connection to their sense of the world. They offered insight into the motivations of the Unseers and hypothesized solutions that involved tricks and manipulation to produce a desired results. Asher found their conversations brilliantly thought-provoking. The ideas for facilitating human flourishing that came out of the Anthill were impressive in their scale and promise. However, Asher grew wary if she lingered too long in their basement. The Unseers were treated as data to be studied. The level of accepted inhumanity in the room unnerved her. When she searched for the source of the feeling, she couldn’t quite grasp it. Her fear was primal.

Asher’s weaknesses was a lust for trouble. She enjoyed the feeling of danger on occasion, especially when she felt a deep stir like the one she felt inside the Anthill. She told herself she was there to protect the pack, to be a voice of reason, to oversee the designers close to the projects, but often she found herself caught up in their madness. Speaking of humans as if they were only numbers; grams of grain, or seeds planted. She thought of a word from the time before—manhours. This conflict in her nature led her to prefer solitude. She did not trust her ability to resist the pull toward invention and control. She was afraid of what The Anthill’s methods would mean for the Unseers. Many of the other scribes had abandoned the mission to help them in favor of assisting with the more tech-focused projects inside the Anthill. Asher was one of the last scribes to keep her focus on survival and rehabilitation techniques. 

The sky was clear that morning, and Asher could see the Anthill appear clearly above the horizon line from a kilometer away. She found herself mesmerized by the unusual structure as she slowly approached. The large steel and concrete building was lined with glass panes reflecting the sky, contrasting sharply with its wild environment. A walking path had been cleared for travel to and from Main, but the structure was otherwise surrounded by large trees, overgrown vines, and dense bushes. The reflection of the sun off the building’s windows blinded Asher, forcing her to look down toward her feet as she approached. Closing in on the entrance, a set of glass doors with steel reinforcing them from the inside, she felt her heart quicken its pace. Heat flushed her cheeks and she paused almost imperceptibly to take a breath. Just as she reached for the handle, two men spilled out nearly knocking over her. She did not recognize either of them.

“Excuse us.” One mumbled. He caught the door awkwardly and held it for her. They looked at her quizzically but said nothing else. She slipped inside and was met with the loud hum of a generator somewhere nearby. As she walked the long hallway to the basement stairs, she passed a room filled with dozens of mismatched laptops and CPUs. Extension cords ran out of an open window to the source of the buzzing sound. A few men were seated facing away from the doorway engrossed in the glow of their laptop screens. None of them noticed her as she passed. She was looking for Neal.

Neal was the head of the Anthill project, or at least he claimed to be. Asher had her doubts. She got the sense that Ren kept Neal on a short leash. Some of the Anthill’s most controversial ideas started with Neal. He was brilliantly creative but divisive among the community. Asher found his ideas fascinating but could never fully ignore the signals from her gut. Run, fast, and far, and then sit and be still. Hide. She remembered men like Neal from the time before. She found their company euphoric and terrifying at once. Neal was particularly tempting, his attention to detail impressed her. She had great respect for deep thinking and double for an efficient manner. Efficiency was her own failing. Asher’s life was momentary. She was at the beck and call of the nature of her thoughts. If the wind shifted, she’d notice. Only when practiced could she stop her thoughts long enough to focus on the story the wind carried with it. She wondered what stories the wind would bring to her after her conversation with Neal today.  

She felt the air cool as she descended the steps to the building’s basement. The lights buzzed overhead and the smell of damp concrete overwhelmed her. As she turned the corner at the end of the long hall, Neal appeared, his broad back facing her. Asher sensed his recognition of her presence an instant before he turned toward her, in his arms he held a thick stack of papers.

“Ah, the lone star!” He said by way of welcome “Come to grace us with your very presence, eh? I do love getting checked in on by the golden child.” He took a few steps toward her and opened his arms wide, not as a welcome, but a challenge for her retort.

“Hi Neal.” Asher stayed where she was. “Ren asked me to get an update on the communication project. He said you are the man to see.” Asher lifted her hand to her chin and feigned a thoughtful expression. “Why are there so many men in here, anyway?”

“I can’t help who shows up here with the mindset needed to do the work. Whoever is here is who wants us to succeed.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe you shouldn’t push forward an idea that an equal representation of the group doesn’t want to be part of? That maybe stacking the place with more of the same compounds the problem instead of solving it? And that maybe you all aren’t the hot shit you think you are up here in your glass bubble? You got enough computers running off the generator in the front room? All life-saving efforts, I’m sure.” He had hooked her. Asher hated how she spoke around Neal. Her words were sarcastic and intentionally cutting. Neal reminded her of the time before and she hated him for it. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to leave.

She took a breath. “Will you walk me through it? Ren said you’ve been talking about a plan to connect Main and the other camps.” She attempted to recover her more reasoned attitude and continued with the task at hand.

“Ren said that did he?” Neal looked down at the papers in his hands for a moment. He shuffled the stack against his palm a few times. “Yeah, come on.” He turned and walked away from her further down the hallway. Asher followed.

They entered a large room that held several whiteboards covered in equations, diagrams and lists in thick black writing. One displayed a hand drawn map of the area surrounding Main and a dotted area indicating the plan for the new camp that Will had mentioned. Asher noted her own camp was indicated by a bird drawn on a yellow post-it note. She did not want to give Neal the satisfaction of asking about its significance, but her curiosity pestered her endlessly. She took one of the chairs scattered around and settled it in front of the board labeled Comms. She sat. Neal set down his papers on a nearby table and quietly read a note left for him on another stack to his right. He folded it carefully and tucked it into the front pocket of his button down.

Neal clasped his hands. “Supply wise, we have what we need to connect all the camps together. We’re only a few kilometers short on cable but everything else is stored upstairs. We’re ready.” His demeanor shifted, he seemed almost giddy. “We’ve got all the plans drawn out. We’re providing a computer plus some replacement parts to each camp, and we’ll run all the ground wire before winter comes. A couple of camps have been helping out with the plans; they’ve collected materials and have people willing to do the labor. The team upstairs is working on coding the thing. We’re doing it.” He smiled broadly at the board in front of him.

“What about power?” Asher asked. “Do all the camps need generators?”

Neal seemed insulted by the question. “We’ve worked out a power source specific to each camp. We’ve reconstructed some solar panels for the Flats, wind in the mountains. Benny built a turbine in the river over at Red’s. Each one is designed to power the system with no interruptions. We’ve accounted for extreme weather as well with short-term backup batteries. We’re working on drones to carry things like herbs or other emergency supplies. The hope is that the camps can get a message out if they need help without relying on the long-range walkies. Asher nodded, impressed with the plan, but curious how the communities would react to the  change. She was relieved Neal’s focus seemed to be connecting camps rather than ruling them. 

“What about the Garden?” She asked.

“What about them?” Neal shrugged his shoulders. “We need them to agree. We’d have to bury twice as much ground wire to connect to Red River if we have to go around them. Grace, will come around eventually.”

Grace was the leader of the Garden, although she wouldn’t use the term. She was adamant she was merely a representative of the Garden coalition. She and Gail arrived at Main together. Gail was Grace’s only confidant and when she died, Grace left Main and established her own camp, one that did not allow men. A few young boys lived in the Garden with their mothers, but all other men were turned away. The Garden’s camp was unique with such a rigid policy, however, they were also the most self-sustaining. After she got word that Ren locked up the library, she stopped all communication between the Garden and Main with few exceptions. Things were less tense now between the camps, but the Garden was more inaccessible to outsiders than any other camp in the area. It was surrounded by steep cliffs on two sides, and was comprised of large, open fields where the community grew plants and herbs. In the six years since Grace started the camp with just two others, their community had grown to 60 women. Aside from the meeting each summer, the Garden kept to themselves.

“She’ll never go for it.” Asher looked straight into Neal’s face. She saw the hope in his eyes and softened. “Maybe I’ll have a talk with her.”

Neal’s beamed. Asher had a way of talking to people. He opened his arms wide in surprise. “You will?”

“Sure” she said. He clapped his hands sharply and Asher jumped and let out a small laugh. “But, you better tell me everything. She’s going to have questions.” Asher walked back to the table and pulled out her notebook. Neal spent the better part of two hours going over the specifics for each camp as well as a timeline and materials list. Asher listened intently, asking questions here and there. She was impressed, and Neal could not hide his excitement. 

“I think we can do it.” He said as they reorganized the charts and diagrams he had reviewed. Asher handed him a pile. “We can bring back the internet.”

“I don’t doubt it.” She said. “But you know that Grace is not going to care if we can do it. I’m going to have to convince her that we should.”

“Well, isn’t that your specialty, Little-Miss-Sees-It-All?” He poked her shoulder a little too hard.

“I guess it is.” She said flatly.

***

That evening back at Main, Asher let Ren know that she would be leaving the next morning to visit the Garden. He said nothing other than a wish for safe travels.