Victor goes on a sentimental journey back to Fysikós Farm. There he discovers aspects of his past he never knew, traces of his lost lover, and what happened to the Farm after his mother's death.
Notes: the "Dirty Drone" incident mentioned was a terrorist attack on the Washington Monument in which a dud tactical nuke contaminated much of the National Mall with its unexploded plutonium warhead. As a result of this attack, Frances Clarke (Victor's mother) and most of the adults from the Farm were killed by plutonium poisoning.
FIANCHETTO Book I is available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. Trade paper print-on-demand copies are likewise available there.
Nobody Home
The
sun was going down when Victor crossed the Chatham County line. Hurrying
westward to avoid rush hour traffic, he skirted the Research Triangle Park and
town of Chapel Hill, proceeding directly to the Farm. Crossing the bridge over
the Haw River, the setting sun stabbed at his eyes. He'd ridden this route
many times as a child, clinging to a handhold on the transit system buses that
made daily runs from Chapel Hill to the Chatham County seat, Pittsboro. Adults
from the Farm always accompanied these field trips to the University library or
to the medical complex at UNC when someone needed treatment. Sometimes they
could go shopping, but that meant double the number of chaperones. Adults went
along not only to assist the Farm kids, but to make sure they didn't sample any
forbidden technology.
The
Ford Famiglia followed the route he requested, off the highway onto a rural
road. Better kept than the dead zone roads of eastern North Carolina, the way
to the Farm was still used by locals. Near the last turnoff, the car slowed.
Feeling like a sleepwalker, Victor went to the front window and stared at the unmarked, unpaved side road.
"Pull
over here." The car rolled into the high grass and stopped.
He
got out, locking the Ford. Off to the left was a wide dirt path studded with
large boulders set half their height into the ground. This had been Frances's
way to keep unwanted vehicles off the premises. No one could drive over the
stones, and the closely growing trees on both sides of the path also
discouraged visitors. Victor wound his way through the boulders just as he
used to as a child, trailing the fingers first of one hand, then the other,
over the worn granite blocks.
The
Farm was a full kilometer back from the paved road. It got darker as Victor
wandered amid the stones. Peepers began to sing in the trees and crickets
joined the chorus. It was strange, very strange. Victor had spent the first
eighteen years of his life here and he hadn't been back since the day in August
2058 when he'd left for college. Predictably, he'd had a scene with Frances
when he announced his intention to leave.
Face
clouded with anger, she stood in the doorway of her cabin, barring the way out.
"I
know what you're doing. You're chasing after her!"
He
rolled his eyes. "I'm going to N.C. State to study electrical
engineering."
She
grabbed his arms, hard. "Stay away from her! She's dangerous!"
He
broke her grip. "To you, maybe. Not to me."
"Do
my wishes mean nothing to you?"
He
thought about it, then said, "Yeah, nothing."
That
was the last time they spoke. The next day, Victor lugged all his worldly
possessions--clothes, books, and a small boxed chess set stuffed into an old
Navy duffle bag--down the path to the road. He had to hike all the way to the
highway to catch the CTS bus. Frances stood on her cabin's porch, watching him
go. Two weeks later he was served with a restraining order forbidding him to
set foot on the Farm ever again. Victor was so proud of the injunction he
printed it and tacked it to the door of his dorm room. He still had it,
carefully filed away at home.
The
path descended at a shallow angle, bottoming out in the ancient floodplain of
the river. He could see buildings ahead through the trees--white siding
mildewed green, galvanized roof panels heaped with drifts of pine needles. The
only sounds were mindless insect songs in the underbrush. Victor sniffed the
air. There ought to be cooking smells from the canteen and white light from
battery-powered lamps in the buildings. Lights and odors were notably absent.
He
soon saw why things were so quiet. A curled, one use scripter was stuck to the door
of the Farm office. It was a sheriff's notice. The owners were in default on their taxes. September 2, the
site was going up for auction.
Victor
bent forward and peeked into a dusty window. It was black as ink inside, but he
glimpsed some shelves and the soft silhouettes of furniture. Papers, bright in
the darkness, were scattered about.
He
went to Frances's cabin next. It was padlocked. He couldn't see them, but he
felt the plank door for the letters carved there a dozen years ago. B-I-T-C, he
read like a blind man. Every time his future lover finished a letter, Victor
got a kiss. Time ran out and she never got around to whittling the H. Funny,
Frances must have seen the letters, yet she never mentioned them, or tried to
remove them. By that time in their relationship, Frances seemed to regard every
affront as an affirmation.
Slowly,
he walked to the Hall. Here he'd lived thirteen years, and here he'd met her.
The door was not barred, so he pushed it in and surveyed the long, dark room,
lined on both sides with bunks. How small it was. The Hall had both passive and
active solar panels, generating electricity and hot water. In winter there
sometimes wasn't enough sunlight to power the heaters or make enough hot water
to keep the place comfortable. Victor and the others layered on socks and
sweats until it was hard to move. The best solution was to cling close to
someone. That's what they had done. In cold weather everyone dragged their
futons to the floor and huddled close together for warmth. When spring rolled
around and the weather warmed, the other kids migrated back to their beds. She
and Victor moved to her bunk. Neither asked the other to stay, they just did.
Standing
in the center of the old Hall, looking over the empty bunks, Victor heard the
distinct sound of a guitar being strummed. Music filtered through the walls
like a sweet aroma. The Farm wasn't completely abandoned.
A
man sang:
There's a pale, drooping maiden who
toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her
voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh! Hard times
come again no more.
Outside and around the corner he spied a warm aura of light.
He hurried to it, curious to see who remained in this forgotten, empty place.
Behind
the Hall was a small shed once used to store potatoes and other vegetables for
the winter. It was small, about three meters square, with a sloping tin roof. A
man was sitting on the steps in front of the shed. He held a battered
six-string guitar on his lap. At his feet a Coleman lantern burned brightly.
Victor
slowed his approach. When he reached the outer boundary of lantern light he
halted.
"Boris?"
The
old man stopped strumming. He squinted into the darkness.
"Who's
there?" His voice had the round corners of someone who'd lived his entire
life in rural North Carolina.
Victor
stepped forward. "It's Victor."
"Victor?
Victor Leventon?" He always pronounced it Lee-ven-ton instead of
Lev-un-ton.
"Yeah,
Boris, it's me." He approached the stronger circle of light.
"I'll
be damned. I ain't seen you in what, ten, twelve years?"
"Not
that long," he replied, smiling. "It's only been seven."
He
sat down on the plank porch beside the old man. Boris--Victor never knew his
last name--was one of the original members of the commune. Most of the land the
Farm occupied had belonged to his family. To Victor, Boris had always been an
old man, but looking at him now he realized Boris was no more than seventy,
which made him sixtyish during Victor's youth.
"Are
you alone?"
Boris
nodded. "Been alone for a while. Frances and the team went off to D.C. and
never come back."
That
was in the summer of 2059, exactly six years ago. Victor asked what happened to
the Farm after Frances and 'the team' failed to return.
"We
kept going awhile, then the county came in and took all the kids away. Social
Services, you know. We told them we was their legal guardians, but they didn't
listen."
"Did
all the adults go to Washington with Frances?"
"All
of 'em but me, Cookie, and Dave."
Cookie
was the Farm's nutritionist. Dave was the Farm's chief mechanic. Victor didn't
know their last names either; no one ever used them on the Farm. That meant
twelve people, including Frances Clarke, died in the Dirty Drone incident.
"Cookie
and Dave moved to Siler City, but I stayed here," Boris said.
"Why
stay here all by yourself?"
He
shrugged. "It's my home." Boris gave the old Alvarez instrument a
slow strum. "What about you, Victor? What you been up to?"
Having
no contact with the outside world, Boris would not have heard about ARAKHNA or
his challenge to the EMs. He tried to explain what he'd been doing, about
facing FORT in the near future.
"I
didn't know machines could play chess. How do they move the little men
around?"
Victor
had to smile. "They announce their move, and somebody moves the pieces for
them."
"Is
it hard to beat them?"
"Pretty
hard, but I can do it."
He
looked back over Boris's shoulder at the silent shed. "I remember this
place."
"The
tater shed."
"They
locked her up here, that time."
Boris
coughed a little and looked at his feet. "Stormy girl. You still see
her?"
"Sometimes."
"She
okay?"
He
wondered that himself but said "Sure."
Boris
played a bit. "You sang to her, the night they locked her in the
shed." Victor remembered. "'Dream a Little Dream.' Made her cry.
Never heard her cry, before or after."
"She
didn't!"
He
held up his right hand. "On my oath! After you finished, I sat here a
while. I heard her."
Victor
could not imagine his lover crying. She was only fifteen then, and he was
twelve, but unless physically injured he'd never known her to cry for as long
as they lived on the Farm.
"Victor,
why'd you come back?"
"I
wanted to see what was left. I beat the Russian machine at chess a couple days
ago, and before the year's out I expect to play the Swiss machine. They say
it's the best, most powerful artificial mind in the world. I'll beat it,
though. Coming here was just a reminder."
"Reminder
of what?"
"How
I got to be who I am."
Boris
held out a hand. Victor shook it firmly.
"I
know you'll win," he said. "You come from smart people. Frances and
the Doc, they were real sharp. Makes sense you'd be smart too."
"Thanks,
Boris."
Up
close the old man wasn't too clean. If the Farm's solar panels weren't serviced
properly, the electric well pumps would give out and there'd be very little
fresh water. Victor also wondered if Boris got enough to eat.
"Can
I give you some money?"
"I
ain't got a box to put it in." He meant he had no PDL to accept a transfer
of funds.
"How
do you eat? How do you pay your bills?"
He
grinned, showing gaps in his teeth. "I don't do much of either. I work the
gardens in summer, and Welfare brings me paks of food twice a month."
Victor
bolted to his feet. "That's ridiculous! Let me start an account for you,
get you a PDL!" He could put a few thousand in the account every month.
Boris didn't have to starve.
The
old man strummed a few bars. "Don't know how to use one," he said.
"Too old to learn."
This
was intolerable. Victor resolved to find a proxy nearby, probably in Pittsboro,
to see to it Boris got regular meals, and a warm place to stay in winter. He
didn't tell Boris. The old man would shrug off his offer. The Farm's doctrine
of the evils of technology was a hard habit to break.
Victor bid Boris goodbye, but the
old man asked him to wait. Getting unsteadily to his feet, he said, "I got
something for you."
He
started across the yard to Frances' cabin. Victor called after him that the
door was locked. Boris held up a ring of keys.
"I
go anywhere I want."
He
fumbled a bit fitting the old-fashioned metal key in the padlock, but he got it
open and pushed the door in. Victor stepped into the once-dreaded heart of Fysikós Farm. Boris's Coleman lantern hissed in the
closed, quiet space, filling the front room with warm light.
Here
time had stopped. There was a calendar chalked on the wall declaring it to be
2059. Her old desk was there, papers neatly piled on the front corners. Just as
Victor remembered, the walls were covered with beautiful murals of meadows of
wild flowers, a hardwood forest, and the shore of an idealized mountain lake.
Frances had painted them herself. They were well done, but had no people in
them, lending the room even more of a liminal feeling.
Victor
went through the door behind the desk into his mother's private quarters. There
was a thrift store dresser and wardrobe, a Hollywood bed frame, and a plain,
twin-sized mattress. An odd thought occurred to him: was he conceived on this
austere, joyless bed?
Victor
shook off such thoughts when Boris called him. Back in the office, the old man
had Frances' file cabinet open. He extracted a green hanging file and gave it
to him.
"Yours."
It
was weighty, about fifteen centimeters thick. Because Frances wouldn't use any
sort of digital media, everything was written on paper in her distinctive,
highly legible script. Page one read, in toto:
LEVENTON, VICTOR ADAM
2 MARCH 2040 C.E.
WEIGHT AT BIRTH 3.67 KG
There followed a pair of smudgy footprints, inked
impressions of the soles of baby Victor's feet.
"Thanks,
Boris." Before he closed the file, he stole a glance at the remaining
folders. Her name glowed among the others.
"I'll
take that one too."
"Not
yours," Boris protested.
"I'll
give it to her when I see her."
The
old man didn't like it, but he grudgingly agreed. Victor hauled out her file.
It was massive, maybe twenty centimeters front to back. A quick riffle through
the pages showed everything from her birth certificate to police citations,
copies of court summons, and many Farm disciplinary reports. Stormy girl
indeed.
He
started for the door, but Boris called him back. From Frances's desk he
produced a wide, leather-bound album. The cover was unmarked, but inside were
numerous flat, 2D photos.
Victor's
breath caught. He saw pictures of himself as a baby, and as a toddler. Frances
was holding him, and smiling. A handsome man with dark blond hair and closely
trimmed beard stood next to her.
"That's
Doc," Boris said. Victor stared. He'd never seen an image of his father
before.
"Can
I keep this?"
"Sure.
Should be yours. It's all about you. Show it to your kids someday."
His
eyes stung. Victor resisted an urge to hug the old man.
"Thanks,"
he said.
He
offered to give Boris a lift to Pittsboro or Chapel Hill, but he declined. It
was night, Boris said. Time to go to sleep.
Victor
walked slowly back to the boulder strewn road. Boris sat on a maple stump and
played "Hard Times Come Again No More," though this time he did not
sing along.
Burdened
as he was with files and photo album, the walk back to the car was longer and
hotter than the journey in. The night was steamy, and mosquitoes haunted the
woods in clouds. Victor could barely keep them off his face with his hands so
full. To keep his morale up, he began humming 'Dream a Little Dream' as he
marched.
It
was warm the night he serenaded her in the potato shed. The adults had locked
her up for fighting. He heard she knocked someone out cold, but he never found
out who. She spent two weeks inside, on a punishment diet of spring water and
raw vegetables. One of Cookie's pet theories was that meat fed the body's
temper, making carnivores more excitable, more violent. Victor's lover told him
living on carrots and broccoli would make anyone peaceful--from sheer
malnutrition.
Frances
forbade anyone talking to her while she was confined. Victor's literal
twelve-year-old mind took this to mean singing was okay. On her first night
locked in he rounded up Boris and his guitar and they sat on the steps of the
potato shed. Victor asked the old man to play the song, and Victor sang in his
newly broken, adolescent voice. Several adults came out to see what was going
on. They listened, but no one tried to stop him. When the song was over, Victor
ran back to the Hall. En route he passed Frances, standing in the deep shadows
outside her office. Their eyes met, but neither of them said a word.
Back
at the car, he dumped the files and album on the seat and got in. It felt like
midnight, but the Ford's clock said it was only a little before ten. He linked
to Lex Bradley. His former Farm-mate advised Victor to meet him at his store, Village Surplus and Vintage Tech, on the north side of
Chapel Hill, off Interstate 40. Victor dialed in the destination. The Famiglia
climbed out of the weeds, headlights piercing the rural night.
Along
the way Victor had a look at the files. The front of his folder contained
mundane medical information: growth charts with his height and weight at
different ages, vaccinations, minor injuries. He'd forgotten about the time he
found the dead raccoon by the compost heap and Frances worried he'd been
exposed to rabies. Fortunately tests of the carcass revealed no sign of the
disease, so Victor was spared the lengthy and painful vaccination series.
Other
entries dealt with school, test scores, and such. Several of the adults on the
Farm were credentialed educators, and Frances gave them free rein to test
personal pedagogical theories on the Farm kids, as long as these theories
didn't conflict with the cardinal rule of No Information Technology.
According
to various tests, Victor's intelligence was above average, but not startlingly
so. His problem-solving ability did provoke comment. His third-grade teacher
wrote: Victor took apart a broken
electric fan in the classroom and fixed it. It now runs perfectly. When I asked
him how he knew how to do this, he said he saw a picture of the inner workings
of an electric motor in the encyclopedia and figured out how to repair the fan
just by looking at this illustration. Frances had underlined the last
thirteen words in green pencil.
As
to behavior, early pages labeled him as "deeply introverted,"
"withdrawn," "friendly but extremely shy." By age ten these
assessments changed to "independent, kind, loyal," and "exhibits
superior problem-solving ability in daily tasks." By the time he was a
teen these had changed to "arrogant," "opinionated,"
"discounts others' feelings."
She
started figuring in his entries about then. "Victor has developed a close
association," "They are always together," "Victor followed
her into the girls' lavatory and had to be forced to leave."
The
Ford entered Carrboro, the bedroom community and bohemian suburb of Chapel
Hill. With more street lights around, he was able to read the penciled notes
more easily.
Victor has formed a premature attachment,
Frances wrote. The object of his
affection is anti-social, aggressive, and rebellious. He does not display these
characteristics himself, but his devotion to her is obvious and growing. She is
a leader type, and he is her follower. I don't want him to go where she takes
him.
Her
handwriting grew cramped as she scribbled with obvious force. As one of the greatest assets of the Farm, I
cannot allow him to get involved in such an unhealthy relationship. Then: I fear they have crossed a line that cannot
be uncrossed. Michelle [one of the girls in the Hall, and a snitch] says they sleep in the same bunk every
night. None of the children dare speak to her about this for fear of a beating.
There was more, about Frances's attempts
to wean him away from her. Nothing worked. Favoritism from adults made his life
hell with the other kids, and punishment only pushed them closer together.
Near
the end he found: She's left the Farm;
good riddance. I give her six months before she ends up in jail or dead. And:
Victor is inconsolable. She couldn't have hurt me more if she'd stabbed me
in the heart. How can I reclaim Victor after this?
Face burning, Victor skipped a whole page
of his mother's private invective. It
ended with: Poor Victor. I hope he knew
how to say no.
He'd never said no to her. Maybe one day
he'd have to learn how.
The illustrations with this excerpt were created using Google's Gemini AI. The results are eerie and unexpected, especially "girl crying in a shed." They represent the ideas I wanted illustrated quite well. Purely as an experiment, I've decided to use Gemini to generate images of the characters in the novel (book 1 and book 2).
