he doesn’t know. Not really.
People have hidden in these bushes for centuries, long before us. Long before there were ships in the skies.
First the Chumash lived here, then the Rancheros, then the Spanish missionaries, then the Californians, then the Americans, then the Grass. Which is me, at least since the Padre brought me back as a baby to La Purísima, our old Grass Mission, in the hills beyond the ocean.
These hills.
The Padre tells it like a story; he was on a crew searching for survivors in the silent city after The Day, only there were none. Whole city blocks were quiet as rain. Finally, he heard a tiny sound—so small, he thought he was imagining it—and there I was, crying purple-faced in my crib. He wrapped me in his coat and brought me home, just as he now brings us stray dogs.
It was also the Padre who taught me the history of these hills as we sat by the fire at night, along with the constellations of the stars and the phases of the moon. The names of the people who knew our land before we did.
Maybe it was supposed to be like this. Maybe this, the Occupation, the Embassies, all of it, maybe this is just another part of nature. Like the seasons of a year, or how a caterpillar turns into a cocoon. The water cycle. The tides.
Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass.
Sometimes I repeat the names of my people, all the people who have ever lived in my Mission. I say the names and I think, I am them and they are me.
I am the Misíon La Purísima de Concepción de la Santísima Virgen María, founded in Las Californias on the Day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, on the Eighth Day of the Twelfth Month of the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred Eighty-Seven. Three hundred years ago.
Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass.
When I say the names they’re not gone, not to me. Nobody died. Nothing ended. We’re still here.
I’m still here.
That’s all I want. To stay. And for Ro to stay, and the Padre. For us to stay safe, everyone here on the Mission.
But as I look back down the mountain I know that nothing stays, and the gold flush and fade of everything tells me that the sun is setting now.
No one can stop it from going. Not even me.
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY
To: Ambassador Amare
From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke
Subject: Icon Research
We still can’t be sure how the Icons work. We know, when the Lords came, thirteen Icons fell from the sky, one landing in each of the Earth’s mega-cities. To this day, we still can’t get close enough to examine them. Our best guess is that the Icons generate an immensely powerful electromagnetic field that can halt electrical activity within a certain radius. We believe it is this field that enables the Icons to disrupt or disable all modern technology. It appears the Icons can also shut down any and all chemical processes or reactions within the field.
Note: We call this the “shutdown effect.”
The Day itself proved the ultimate demonstration of this capability, when, as we all know, the Lords activated the Icons and ended all hope of resistance by making an example of Goldengate, São Paulo, Köln-Bonn, Cairo, Mumbai, and Greater Beijing … the so-called Silent Cities.
By the end of The Day, the newly arrived colonists gained complete control of all major population centers on the Seven Continents. An estimated one billion lives ended in an instant, the greatest tragedy in history.
May silence bring them peace.
2
PRESENTS
By the time we reach the top of the hillside, the sky has turned dark as the eggplants in the Mission garden.
Ro pulls me up the last slide of rocks. “Now. Close your eyes.”
“Ro. What have you done?”
“Nothing bad. Nothing that bad.” He looks at me and sighs. “Not this time, anyway. Come on, trust me.”
I don’t close my eyes. Instead, I look into the shadows beneath the scraggly trees in front of me, where someone has built a shack out of scraps of old signboard and rusting tin. The hood of an ancient tractor is lashed to the legs on a faded poster advertising what looks like running shoes.
DO IT.
That’s what the bodiless legs say, in bright white words spilling over the photograph.
“Don’t you trust me?” Ro repeats, keeping his eyes on the shack as if he was showing me his most precious possession.
There is no one I trust more. Ro knows that. He also knows I hate surprises.
I close my eyes.
“Careful. Now, duck.”
Even with my eyes shut, I know when I am inside the shack. I feel the palmetto roof brush against my hair, and I nearly tumble over the roots of the trees surrounding us.
“Wait a second.” He lets go of me. “One. Two. Three. Happy birthday, Dol!”
I open my eyes. I am now holding one end of a string of tiny colored lights that shine in front of me as if they were stars pulled down from the sky itself. The lights weave from my fingers all across the room, in a kind of sparkling circle that begins with me and ends with Ro.
I clap my hands together, lights and all. “Ro! How—? Is that—electric?”
He nods. “Do you like it?” His eyes are twinkling, same as the lights. “Are you surprised?”
“Never in a thousand years would I have guessed it.”
“There’s more.”
He moves to one side. Next to him is a strange-looking contraption with two rusty metal circles connected by a metal bar and a peeling leather seat.
“A bicycle?”
“Sort of. It’s a pedal generator. I saw it in a book that the Padre had, at least the plans for it. Took me about three months to find all the parts. Twenty digits, just for the old bike. And look there—”
He points to two objects sitting on a plank. He takes the string of lights from my hand, and I move to touch a smooth metal artifact.
“Pan-a-sonic?” I sound out the faded type on the side of the first object. It’s some sort of box, and I pick it up, turning it over in my hands.
He answers proudly. “That’s a radio.”
I realize what it is as soon as he says the words, and it’s all I can do not to drop it. Ro doesn’t notice. “People used them to listen to music. I’m not sure it works, though. I haven’t tried it yet.”
I put it down. I know what a radio is. My mother had one. I remember because it dies every time in the dream. When The Day comes. I touch my tangled brown curls self-consciously.
It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know. I’ve never told anyone about the dream, not even the Padre. That’s how badly I don’t want to remember it.
I change the subject. “And this?” I pick up a tiny silver rectangle, not much bigger than my palm. There is a picture of a lone piece of fruit scratched on one side.
Ro smiles. “It’s some kind of memory cell. It plays old songs, right into your ears.” He pulls the rectangle out of my hand. “It’s unbelievable, like listening to the past. But it only