Earth

When they passed a row of hooded cancer plague survivors in wheelchairs, he slipped some dollar coins into their donation cups, getting another smile in reward.

Encouraged, he wound up accepting a pile of chip brochures, until at last she began ru

But Remi knew it would only be a moment. In seconds, the others would reclaim her. So, as casually as he could, he told her he would like to see her personally and asked for her net code to arrange a date.

She, in turn, met his gaze with soulful brown eyes and asked him sweetly to show his vasectomy certificate.

“Honestly,” she said with apparent sincerity. “I just couldn’t be interested in a man so egotistical he insists, in a world of ten billion people, that his genes are desperately needed. If you haven’t done the right thing, can you point to some great accomplishment or virtue, to justify clinging to… ?”

Her words trailed off in perplexity, addressing his back as Remi seized his friends’ arms and rapidly departed.

“I’d show her somethin’ more important than genes!” Crat snarled when he heard the story. Roland was only slightly more forgiving. “Too damn much theory crammed into that pretty little head. Imagine, invading a guy’s privacy like that! Tell you one thing, that’s one bird who’d be happier, and a whole lot quieter as a farm wife.”

“Right!” Crat agreed. “Farm wife’s got what life’s about. There’s plenty room in Patagonia for lots of kids. Overpop’s just propa-crap—”

“Oh, shut up!” Remi snapped. His face still burned with shame, made worse by the fact that the girl obviously hadn’t even known what she was doing. “You think I care what a bleeding NorA ChuGa thinks? They only teach ’em how to be — what?.”

Roland was holding his wristwatch in front of Remi’s face, tapping its tiny screen. Lights rippled and the machine sang a warning tone.

Remi blinked. They were being sca

It was just one thing after another! Remi felt like a caged tiger. Hell, even tigers had more privacy nowadays, in the wildlife survival arks, than a young guy ever got here in Bloomington. The park used to be a place where you could get away, but not anymore!

He looked around quickly, searching for the voyeur. Over to the south citizens of many ages were busy tending high-yield vegetables in narrow strip gardens, leased by the city to those without convenient rooftops. Bean pole detectors watched for poachers, but those devices couldn’t have set off Roland’s alarm.

Nor could the children, ru

There were other teens around too… though none wore gang colors. The silent, boring majority then, who neither slip-shaded nor dazed — students dressed for fashion or conformity, with little on their minds — some even carrying pathetic ba

Then he saw the geek — a codger this time — leaning against one of the slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector, looking directly at the three of them. And sure enough, amid the bushy gray curls spilling under his white sun hat, Remi saw a thin wire, leading from an earpiece to a vest made of some sonomagnetic fabric.

Wheeling almost in step, the boys reacted to this new provocation by striding straight toward the geezer. As they neared, Remi made out the ribbons of a Helvetian War veteran on his chest, with radiation and pathogen clusters. Shit, he thought. Veterans are the worst. It would be hard wi

Then Remi realized the coot wasn’t even wearing goggles! Of course he could still be transmitting, using smaller sensors, but it broke the expected image, especially when the gremper removed even his sunglasses as they approached, and actually smiled!

“Hello, boys,” he said, amiably. “I guess you caught me snooping. Owe you an apology.”

Out of habit, Crat squeezed the fellow’s personal zone, even swaying over a bit as he flashed his scalp tattoo. But the geek didn’t respond in the usual ma

Remi grabbed Crat’s arm when the idiot seemed about to spit. “You know using a big ear’s illegal without wearing a sign, tellin’ people you’ve got one. We could cite you, man.”

The oldster nodded. “Fair enough. I violated your privacy, and will accept in situ judgment if you wish.”

Remi and his friends looked at each other. Geriatrics — especially those who had suffered in the war — hardly ever used the word “privacy” except as an epithet, when accusing someone of hiding foul schemes. Certainly Remi had never heard of a codger willing to settle a dispute as gang members would, man to man, away from the all-intrusive eye of the Net.

“Shit no, gremper! We got you—”

“Crat!” Roland snapped. He glanced at Remi, and Remi nodded back. “All right,” he agreed. “Over by that tree. You pitch, we’ll swing.”

That brought another smile. “I used that expression when I was your age. Haven’t heard it since.*Did you know slang phrases often come and go in cycles?”

Still chatting amiably about the vagaries of language fashion since his day, the geep led them toward their designated open-air courtroom, leaving a puzzled Remi trailing behind, suddenly struck by the unasked-for exercise of visualizing this wrinkled, ancient remnant as a youth, once as brimming as they were now with hormones and anger.

Logically, Remi supposed it might be possible. Perhaps a few grempers even remembered what it had been like, with some vague nostalgia. But it couldn’t have been as bad to be young back then, he thought bitterly. There was stuff for guys like me to do. Old farts didn’t control everything.

Hell, at least you had a war to fight!

After the Helvetian holocaust, the frightened international community finally acted to prevent any more big ones, putting muscle into the inspection treaties. But that didn’t seem like much of a solution to Remi. The world was going straight to hell anyway, no detours. So why not do it in a way that was at least honorable and interesting?

Do not go gentle into that good night… Poetry class was just about the only one Remi really liked. Yeah. Back in TwenCen there were some guys who had it right.

From a grassy step they could look out over much of downtown Bloomington, a skyline still dominated by preserved TwenCen towers, though several of the more recent, slablike ’topias canted like ski slopes to the north. From somewhere beyond the park boundaries could be heard the ubiquitous sound of jackhammers as the city waged its endless, unwi