Skin so milky and smooth it reminded her of marble statues, or melamine plastic plates, or ultramodern computer casings. He began some nice kissing on her stomach, just grazing her bra-clad breasts, edging around them with tantalizing restraint. His lips were coral pink and very soft. His mouth looked slightly swollen from rubbing her skin — he was almost girlish, pretty. He didn’t seem at all like her, with her sudden curves and subtle scents. She felt randomly colored, with tan lines and freckles, a bruise, a bump, a broken capillary. They tangled for hours on the bed, it seemed, with clothes loosened but not quite off, and long, deep kisses that unnerved Miranda at first but then made her want more and more. She drifted in and out in the darkening room, no music, no talk, just his generous mouth and his hands stroking her lower back, or her long hair, which even she had to admit probably felt nice to touch.
She did not yet love Josh. Not yet. But.
He was the real thing, wasn’t he? A serious person, a tactician, an expert. A certainist. He gave her his jacket and led her out on the balcony. From there they climbed on the roof, where the lone tree by the house gave a modicum of cover. It was hardly dark with all the ambient light from the streetlamps and pouring out through sliding glass “entertainment” doors. And tastefully lit pools, in the contemporary style, not seventies aqua-blue but a dark, econatural moss blue-green, with monument-style lighting. And here they lay back on the roof and smoked again. She ached and wanted to climb against him. Instead they lay shoulder to shoulder, nearly touching, staring at the sky. Josh told her of all the actions he had done, and then he laid out his future targets. And why.
She stared into the suburban night from their secret perch and listened.
Miranda messed with the radio. It had a search button on it, so it found a strong signal, stayed for a few seconds, then went on to the next strong signal.
“You’ll never get the college stations with that search button,” Josh said.
“I hate bad reception.”
“All the alternative stations have weak signals, though.”
“I have to pee.” They had taken Interstate 5 until they reached Ashland, Oregon. From there they went west to coastal Route One. Taking this detour was her idea. Miranda liked Route One. It was a highway, not a freeway, and you could see the difference in the surrounding areas. You could see redwoods and coastal views. Run-down old logger towns that seemed more a part of Oregon than California. Fields after fields of grapevines. Sad motels built with tree tourists in mind. The kitschy tunnel made in the base of an enormous ancient redwood so you can drive your car through and marvel at the size. She liked the lonely creaking of the trees when you walked under them, and their size. Not because big things impressed her per se but because she felt humbled and finally had a perspective of her own life in the history of the world. She felt a grasp of the spiritual, something hard for her to feel normally, walking along Fifteenth Avenue, or talking to her friends, or brushing her teeth. She loved knowing these trees would outlive her. And how tiny her life was, a blink of the universe. It comforted her, she didn’t feel insignificant, just part of something long and large and beyond her grasp. The world beyond her life and desires. It was then she felt a largeness of spirit and a generosity.
“There isn’t anywhere to go to the bathroom. If we took the interstate we could go to a rest stop,” Josh said and looked at his watch. Miranda switched off the radio.
“Why did you turn it off?”
“There’s a cafe. I’m hungry anyway.”
“There has to be at least one public station we can pick up.” It was Josh’s plan to drive down to Alphadelphia. She insisted on Highway One even though it added at least three hours to the trip. She was curious about Alphadelphia. She was curious about who actually lived there. When first inaugurated by its corporate underwriter, Allegecom, it was everywhere in the news. Allegecom — the massive corporate entity that contained everything from pharmaceuticals (through its offshoot Pherotek) to genetically modifying seeds with coordinated, matching pesticides (through its biotech arm, Versagro) — was taking an unprecedented foray into developing and running an entire community. Then the press attention abruptly stopped, as it always did, and no one mentioned it again. So how many years had it been?
“Five years. Population is now five thousand people.” Originally, three people applied for every open spot. She remembered hearing about what criteria were applied. How people tried to buy their way in. The stringent rules of Allegecom.
“That’s targeted capacity. The size that allows maximum diversity with minimum alienation.”
“Five thousand exactly.”
“Just enough people to keep you from going stir-crazy and inbred but not so many that you don’t feel surrounded by familiar faces. As determined by a precise social scientific program, developed by Allegecom’s team of crack human perfectionists.”
Josh had it all down. He had been turned on to the Alphadelphia kick by one of the anarchist groups he subscribed to online. It was on a list of targets. It seemed on the five-year anniversary of Alphadelphia, Allegecom had great public relations claims to make, great payoff for its hard work and considerable expense, in its social experiment, the First Self-Sustaining Techtopia in America. And they would announce plans for another, improved community on the East Coast. The perfect target for an action, but Miranda hadn’t heard what the action might be, or maybe Josh hadn’t figured it out yet.
There wasn’t, finally, much to see. Houses and cul-de-sacs. Lots of trees and consistent, intensely modern architecture. Horizontal homes of glass and metal. South-facing and integrated into the indigenous but cultivated foliage. Miranda didn’t think it looked bad at all.
“It’s not nostalgic or overly homogenized,” she said.
“It is just a gated tract development with a veneer of innovation. It is shallow and insidious and grotesque. A parody of a community,” Josh said. “Sustainable, ha.” He scrutinized the promo pamphlet he had in his hand. On the cover it said
Allegecom:
Building Communities That Tread Lightly
but Beautifully on the Earth
They didn’t come up with anything particularly subversive to do to Alphadelphia. But over the next few months Josh did concoct an elaborate parasite to hijack the recruitment page for Allegecom’s new community. At first glance the site looked exactly the same, but Josh inserted parody throughout. He changed the site subtitle from Green World to Greed World and revealed every counterpoint to the ecotopia they claimed to be creating and were heavily marketing. If users clicked on the little red wagon icon, which was where Allegecom discussed its community service projects, they were directed to a link about a lawsuit that a community of ten thousand in Central America was bringing against the biotech arm of the company. It showed pictures of sick animals and children, and then the company’s promotional material on the various pesticides and genetically altered seed sources to match, along with statistics of money made in third world countries by Allegecom. These sorts of hijackings and parodies weren’t illegal. Not yet. But they hovered in some middle ground, acknowledged by all concerned as soon-to-be-illegal activity.
In December Josh even made The New York Times. The Styles section did a piece on political hackers and included a description of Josh’s latest attack on Allegecom: The Corporate History Icon (a funny little anthropomorphized sprouted seed) on the Commitment & Community page took you to a Josh-hosted site describing how although Allegecom Pharmaceuticals marketed a plethora of antidepressants and antianxiety medications, it used to market dioxin to the Pentagon under its now defunct proto-pesticide division, Terrayield. It cited evidence that the research, development and marketing of dioxin continued despite the fact that their internal experiments had shown teratogenic and carcinogenic effects since the 1940s. You could then click on a little skull and crossbones icon to get the whole sad saga of Agent Orange and how hard it was to sue a now defunct, disappeared arm of the corporation. All divisions and subdivisions have separate identities, each with distinct liabilities.