With their camp set up in the woods, Matilda rests next to a warm, crackling fire. She lies on her back, looking up at the emulation of the night sky. With her eyes, she traces the digital flow of information, flickering on the background of black. The strange anomalies she detects and catalogs serve as cold reminders of what she herself truly is. A particularly-anomalous, localized error in a greater, already-corrupted world.
Frowning, she rolls onto her side toward the Taciturn. In the warm glow of the firelight, James intently cleans his pistol.
Matilda asks, “What are these… holes in the sky? Were they engineered for a reason?”
James pauses in his work.
“Huh?”
Taciturn glances up at the horizon-to-horizon sprawl of the skybox.
“Oh… those were intended to be stars, but when the first war started, the System turned them off. So much processing was needed for the destruction the Enclave and Triangle were inflicting on each other, that it viewed stars as a wasted expenditure of energy. I guess it never switched them back on.”
Despite the darkness, Matilda notices the unhappiness in his eyes.
“Sounds like you miss them.”
Taciturn offers a wan smile.
“A little, sure. It makes you wonder how many other things, amazing or not, that the System stopped supporting – because people were too focused on other things. Why do you ask?”
Matilda sits up, hugging her knees.
“I don’t know. It just seems weird that people would build something to live in that would just make decisions like that for them. I’d never want to give something that much power. It’s like people just gave up, without caring. You know what I mean?”
Taciturn nods.
“Yeah, well. People have been doing that for a long time.”
James resumes cleaning his weapon.
“We’re constantly sacrificing things as we evolve as a species. City life meant sacrificing the skills we learned in the wild. Technology meant sacrificing much of our natural – our physical – movement. Comfort and convenience obviated all our problem-solving faculties. We’d build a house, but destroy everything around it. It’s weird and a little sad, but it’s something humans do to survive.”
Taciturn takes up a long stick and pokes the fire to stoke it.
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s some irony to it. To save ourselves from extinction, we completely gave up on our world.”
Matilda watches James intently as he continues to stare deeply into the fire. He doesn’t say anything, and Matilda doesn’t intrude on his concentration.
After a prolonged silence, Taciturn blinks and looks around the campsite. “Let’s get some sleep, Matilda. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Matilda lays down again, staring down the holes in the sky.
“Oh, great. Translation: ‘More walking’.”
They reach Richmond by midday. Despite being exhausted, Taciturn doesn’t want to stay long. Ideally, he’d like to skirt Richmond altogether, but there’s something in the city they need – a resupply storehouse he set up during the war. It’s a cache he hopes is still intact after all this time.
After leading Matilda into a back alley, Taciturn opens the doors to a graffiti-covered storage unit. As the doors creak open, James is relieved to see the old azure-blue Cadillac he left in the location’s inventory. He also finds a weapon cache he’d forgotten about and adds its contents to his backpack’s inventory.
Opening the driver’s seat, he motions for Matilda to hop in, but as he tries starting the car, the engine fails to turn over. Refusing to meet Matilda’s pointed look, Taciturn tries again. Nothing. Smiling, Matilda walks over to the hood of the car.
“Pop it,” she says.
“It’s been sitting idle for a while. I just need to—”
Rolling up her sleeves, Matilda says again, “Pop the hood, Gramps.”
Sighing through slightly-clenched teeth, James activates the release and the Scry disappears behind the raised hood. Within moments, James is alarmed by the sounds of her tinkering. “Wait, don’t touch anything.”
Her voice comes from the other side of the propped-up hood, sounding like she is holding a tool in her teeth. “I know what I’m doing.”
After a minute, the hood slams down to reveal Matilda wiping her hands on her pants. She moves to the passenger seat. With a tiny smirk, she nods to his hand on the ignition key. “Try it again.”
James starts to unbuckle his seat belt, gripping the door release. “What did you—”
“For Christ’s sake, just try it!”
Yielding, James turns the key – and the car roars to life. Matilda slouches comfortably back in the passenger seat and puts her feet up on the dashboard, exasperatingly pleased with herself.
“It’s okay, James. I’ll be your Chewbacca.”
Thin-lipped, James pulls the car out of the garage and mutters, “R2-D2 was the one that fixed the Falcon.”
As the Cadillac rolls down the wide, monument-adorned avenue, Matilda looks out the window at the passing houses and landscape. James glances over at her. Despite her quips, questions and sporadic smiles, James has noticed something off about her since Neverland. Virginia’s final words about the Scry still gnaw at him.
“I don’t think I was poor,” Matilda says.
Her words catch him off guard. “What?”
Matilda continues to look out the window at the ruined city.
“My real-world self. I don’t think I was famous or anything, but I definitely came from money.”
He’s unsure where she’s trying to take him with this.
“Well… that’s good, right?”
“I guess,” she says, to the neglected red-brick and Colonial-style buildings rolling by. Soon they will clear the outer fringes of the city.
Taciturn debates a follow-up, decides to go with it.
“Did you, ah, absorb anything, about your…?”
With Virginia’s bracer now attached to her arm, Matilda rubs the leather softly.
“No, not really. At least, nothing about my mother. I guess that’s why it was easy for Virginia to…” She trails off, before switching to the next obvious channel. “My father, though… I can’t say anything for certain yet, but, I don’t know. I sense something warm there. You know what, I don’t know what I’m saying. Never mind. It’s stupid.”
She pulls a lever and her seat cants back, into a nearly full recline. Matilda turns her back to Taciturn. “If you’re cool, I’m just going to take a nap.”
He manages to mumble back. “Sure.”
Even over the road-noise, even with her back to him, James can hear her faint weeping.
James pulls the car into a small gas station near Newport to take on fuel and supplies. In the distance, he can see a data storm bulking up in the sky.
Without a word, Matilda springs out of the passenger seat and starts cleaning and refueling the car. James likewise exits the vehicle and stretches, trying to figure out what to say. “You… uh… good out here?”
Matilda washes the window with a squeegee, making an A-OK sign with her thumb and forefinger. “I’m fine. I got this.”
James’ hand starts to open and close.
“I mean, if you want to…”
Matilda stops her cleaning and cocks an eyebrow, regarding him.
James aborts his original train of thought, switching tracks to another.
“What I mean is, do you want anything in particular? From inside the store. For yourself?”
Matilda shakes her head, and the Taciturn resigns to let her be. When he’s halfway to the store, Matilda calls out to him. “Actually, can you see if they have those chocolates, with the coconut centers?”