June 23, 2433

Dear Mother:

Old Jacob and I have been getting along famously. He's taught me to shoot, and I'm getting pretty good with both pistols and assault weapons. They're very different from the pacifiers that the grunts use: they're actually designed to be lethal. They go off with a bang and throw a small pellet of lead or copper or, in some cases, uranium out the front. As you might imagine, hitting something the first time is a skill, and hitting something moving is an even greater skill, so assault weapons make up for this by allowing you to fire many times, quickly.

They get hot, though, when you do that. They have a mechanism in them that compensates for the recoil, but it generates heat in addition to the heat that the explosion of the propellant causes. They have heat dispersal units, usually located at the front where your hand won't fall on them. This is a good thing, as some of them glow red after only a few shots. It depends how powerful the weapon is: the less powerful ones generate much less heat.

I'm typing slowly for this very reason. I burned the fingers of my left hand on the heat dispersal unit of a Kharkov 77, and there's no doc out here. Jacob gave me some ointment to put on the burn, but it's painful, and it makes typing slow.

It's late now, well after dark. In spite of my burn, we worked hard today, and did a lot of business. Jacob took in a lot of food in exchange for ammunition. I guess there's a bit of a turf war going on between some of the farmers east of here.

He also got water. There is none here, but I was mistaken in assuming that this whole area is called the Wasteland because it is a desert. It is called the Wasteland for several reasons, none of them having to do with the lack of water. One is the lack of government. The formal government, I was astonished to discover, resides in the City, our (ok, not mine any more, but your) city, the City of New LA. But it's shut up behind steel walls and only comes out occasionally, usually in the form of grunt raids, so this whole area effectively has no government.

Another resson it's called the Wasteland is that it is where the City dumps all of its waste. Of course, that's obvious when you think about it, isn't it? And I guess that's what I am: waste. City waste.

I realized after I sent the last e.letter that I hadn't really told you what had happened after I left the walls of the City. There's not much to tell. My water was gone, and I started across the sand, following what looked like a faint trail north along the beach. I was getting pretty desperate for liquid, but the huge expanse of water was salty, and I knew I couldn't drink that.

It was late that day, maybe six hours north of New LA along the ocean (that's what it is, Mother, an ocean. That's where New LA gets its water from, apparently. They have a way of taking the salt out) when I saw something ahead. Up at the ridge at the top of the beach, there were some houses, low things. And there were people.

They took pity on me. I guess they were used to seeing refugees from the City. They gave me water and a little food in exchange for my light, and told me that the best way to go was to head inland until I found a road.

They let me stay the night. I gathered, from their conversations, that they harvested fish from the ocean. From the smell of the place, that they processed the fish in some way. Everything had the pong of fish on it. Everything, including the oily coffee they begrudgingly gave me the next morning.

It was clear that I wasn't wanted there, so I walked toward the rising sun. My water bottle was full, and I had the dried fish and bread that they'd traded to me, plus a little of the Delta food left, so I was in pretty good shape. On this, the 11th day (or was it the 12th? I'm not sure) my feet were starting to toughen up, and I walked with less pain.

Almost immediately after leaving the beach, I realized that I wasn't walking through any ordinary desert. Not that I know all that much about deserts, of course, but you'll know what I mean when I explain.

Only a little way back of the beach, I found a wall of crumbling concrete. Then some twisted and rusting metal. Then more and more, until I was walking through what looked like a parody of a city, broken walls, all crumbled, none of them over a meter high all around me, the whole covered with drifted sand.

There were other things, too: the occasional ancient and rusted vehicle, badly decomposed road surfaces, empty cans, bathtubs, those sorts of things. I wondered how long it had been ruined, and what had happened.

It slowed my progress until I found a section free of ruins that led east. I suppose it had been a roadway at one time. Now it was merely a section without broken walls sticking up through the sand.

I followed it east until, late that evening, I found a road. A road that looked like it saw at least some use. There were tracks in the sand, and it looked like major holes had been filled in.

It was getting dark, so I found a sheltered spot near a broken wall, and ate a little of the smelly dried fish (you'll eat anything when you're really hungry, Mother). I crawled into the bedroll, and slept like a log until I woke with the morning sun just starting to come up.

I was warm and comfortable in the bedroll on the sand, so I lay there, wondering what had awakened me. I realized that there was a low sound penetrating the early morning silence. It was a sort of rumble that got louder and louder.

I decided that I should probably stay where I was until I could determine what was making the noise. Before long, the grumble got very loud, and a wheeled vehicle appeared in my line of sight, moving along the road.

It was large, with three sets of wheels that I could see, one set near the front and two near the back. There was a glassed-in box near the front, in which I could see two heads. The back part of the vehicle was flat and piled with boxes, crates, and bundles. Two more men rode on top, carrying what looked (to my then-uneducated eyes) like weapons. Their heads swiveled as the watched the horizon.

Behind the first vehicle was a second, smaller, wheeled vehicle. It had two sets of wheels, and no roof. It was crammed with men, probably at least eight. All of them seemed to be armed with similiar weapons to what the men on the first vehicle had, glittering black and silver in the orange morning light.

As an aside, Mother: that's something we really miss in the City. The walls block out the early morning light. The only way you can know it exists is look up to the tops of the towers while going to or from your work if you should happen to be on A or C shift. Then you'll see the polished steel lit up, pure and golden and sweet.

It is beyond gratifying, almost mystical, to stand in the cold and feel the warmth of the sun, to let the warm red rays fall on your face, and then to turn and see the world bathed in warmth, the cold blue of night pushed up into the far sky, or skulking in the shadows.

Anyway, the two vehicles passed by, silhouetted against the sun as they made their way north. They rumbled and squeaked by, wheels bouncing over the rough parts of the road, and were gone again in a few minutes. They hadn't seen me, concealed as I was.

I got on my way quickly, and walked to the road. A smoky smell, thick, lingered in the air. I decided that since the vehicles had gone north, I would head that way too.

Inland from the ocean, it got hot. Eventually, I had taken off both my jacket and my shirt. I drank sparingly, not knowing when I was going to find water again. The road was rough in spots, and it appeared to have been repaired in places, most noticeably where it ran over a bridge, or through an area where water drained on those years when it rained a lot.

I walked along this road for three days before I saw anything other than road, ruins, sand, and encroaching, tough vegetation.

On the morning of the fourth day, I was starting to worry that I might not find anything to eat or drink before my now-thin supply ran out when I saw what looked like a human figure in the hazy distance ahead. I walked steadily toward it as it squatted down on a sandbank a few feet from the edge of the road. Distances in the flat, sunbaked open are deceptive, and it took me a good few minutes before I was within hailing distance.

"Hello!" I said. After the wary fishermen, and the guys armed to the teeth in their odd vehicles, I thought perhaps that caution and early warning were appropriate.

The figure turned its head toward me and raised a brown arm. I took this to be a sign of greeting and walked cautiously closer until I was perhaps five meters away.

True to my suspicions, the figure had a gun, a lethal looking blue-steel and plastic implement resting against a large bundle or pack.

"Sit down a while," the figure said, the voice that of a man. It was hard to tell, for the face was so weathered and time-cracked that it was impossible to guess a sex. Except, of course, for the lack of a beard.

The man motioned to a soft-looking spot to his left, in the shade of a fragment of concrete slab. I sat.

"Where are you heading?" he asked. His white hair was drawn behind his head into a queue that went all the way down his back, outside the filthy upper garment he wore. He had not bathed in months, I would guess.

"I'm not sure. North," I said, hesitantly.

"Not sure? What the fuck are you doing wandering around this country if you're not sure? This ain't a place for those who ain't sure they either need or want to be here," he said.

"Well, I guess I need to be here," I replied, "and I guess I need to be heading north. I'm from the City."

His eyes darted at me, seeming to notice my clothing for the first time.

"Well," he said, "that explains it." He didn't seem to be worried about me. "You'd best keep going north, then, son."

"Why?"

"Because you'll be looking for a place to live, I'd think, and this here's no place for anyone who ain't a lunatic to live."

"Do you live here?" I asked, indicating with my hand that I meant right here, this spot right here.

He shook his head. "Nope. I live that way," and he pointed to the east, out across the sandblasted ruins. "A long way that way. Three days walk."

"I've come more than three days from the City," I said, as if that made me equal to him.

He nodded. "Yep. You've another couple of days to go till you get to the City of Angels." His skin was burned deep copper brown by the sun. For the first time, I realized that it wasn't just his person that was malodorous: his bundle reeked of something pungent, too. I sneaked a peek at it. Under the sleek blue steel of the gun, there was a grubby bedroll and a sack of heavy cloth, but the bulk of the bundle, I saw, were what looked like animal skins. Lizard and snake-skins, mostly.

"Do you have to be a lunatic to live where you live?" I asked, in what I hoped was an inoffensive way.

He laughed, exposing a mouth with less than half the normal number of teeth. "Even more so, son."

I must close for now, Mother. More anon. Hope you are keeping well. Have the Powers That Be filled my bunk yet? The bunk right under yours? The bunk where I grew up?

June 18, 2433

Dear Mother:

No reply from you, I see. Oh, wait, that's because there's no way for you to reply to me. This goes out half-blind. I see that the previous e.letter was picked up by someone, presumably you.

It's odd, writing this way. I'm talking to you as if you were here, but you're not, and you never will be again, I suppose. I write as if expecting a reply, but none can come.

First, you'll be relieved to know that the proprietor of this establishment didn't want sexual favors from me in return for using this terminal. He wanted currency older, even, than that: the sweat of my brow. I helped him unload boxes and crates and bags of stuff - goods which he holds in a small warehouse built into this building, and which he trades to people for other goods.

He gets his goods from others of like occupation, and takes the materials he gets in trade (mostly food, it seems) and trades it with those others in kind. It's a simple and effective system, requiring no cumbersome medium of exchange.

As to what I unloaded, there were agricultural tools and rope. There was heavy, smelly cloth that left some sort of residue on my hands. There were steel barrels of something called gasoline, and a few of something called diesel oil.

And there were weapons. Not like the little pacifiers that the grunts carry: there were all manner of knives and other sorts of blades, for one thing. Mostly there were small flat crates of guns and steel boxes of ammunition.

That's one quite startling thing about the Wasteland, Mother: the number of guns. Almost everyone has at least one. I'm beginning to feel naked without one.

Old Jacob (that's the unwashed elder who runs this place) has begun to teach me to shoot. As I mentioned, he seems to hold this place partly by force, and there is always danger. We went out this morning and he showed me how to load and fire a pistol, which is a small gun, only a little bigger than a grunt's pacifier, that you hold in one hand. He kept me at it until my hand was tingling from the repeated recoil. I got so that I could hit a man-sized target at ten meters pretty reliably, and Jacob said that was good enough for a start.

He's given me a job. He needs someone here to help him defend the place in case someone tries to rob him, and to do some of the heavier work. He's a big, strong man, but he's getting on. I don't know exactly how old he is, but his hair is white and he's got deeper wrinkles than I've ever seen.

As for needing someone to help defend the store (as he calls it), I haven't seen any sign of trouble so far. But I've only been here three days, and the building is made of concrete and steel. It's set under a section of something that looks like an old aerial roadway, up against a massive concrete pillar. The windows are slits, set high, with walkways inside, and the door is a massive steel thing.

Ah, well, it's time for me to go. Work beckons. Adios, Mother.

June 16, 2433

Dear Mother:

I know this e.letter will come as a shock to you, assuming that it gets through. I am assured that it most likely will. Other .content from the Wasteland gets into the Outer City. That, of course, will shock you as well, as it would have shocked me just a month ago.

Is it only a month since my conviction and exile? If the .feeds here are correct, it is. They're spotty, and of odd quality, these .feeds, not like the feed.content we used to get in the Outer City. They tell me that today is June 16, 2433, and that means that it is just over a month since I last saw you.

How have you held up? Well, I'm sure, once you got over the shame of it. Once I was convicted and you were exonerated of blame in the affair. I assume that the .feeds have stopped talking about it. Stopped talking about the boy who raised his hand against his teacher.

How is old Suthburt? He started it, you know. He's the one who hit me first. You pretty much have to accept what I say now, because there is, as you know, no way back for me. I will never see you or the Inner City again. Exile from the Outer City is complete. I looked for a way back in for something like ten days. I don't believe one exists.

Therefore, you should, (if you are even halfway aware, which I suspect you are not) accept what I say because I have absolutely nothing to gain or lose.

Suthburt was going on about the City, and the wonders of the structure and the joys of living there, about the glories of the people who live in the Inner City. Much as you, and nearly every one else does. As the .feeds do. You know me, though, Mother (to your shame and chagrin,) and I had to speak up.

"How do you know that's true, Mr. Suthburt?" I asked. That's true: I called him "Mr. Suthburt". I wasn't disrespectful to him, as they claimed at my trial. Ask anyone who was there. The court didn't, a fact which I believe escaped your notice.

He looked at me, mildly aghast. "Because I am your Teacher," he said, as if that explained everything. People snickered. At me, I presume, and at the obvious truth of Suthburt's words. Why should they be different? They're sheep like the rest of you.

"I can see that," I said, "but how do you know that what you say is true?"

"Because-I-am-your-Teacher," he said again, looking around at the suck-knobs up front who relentlessly curried his favor.

"That's not sufficient proof for me," I said. I was being perfectly reasonable, Mother. Not pushy or threatening or anything.

He reddened, his wispy grey hair standing out around his beet-red ears like a grubby halo.

"I AM YOUR TEACHER!" he bellowed at me, striding down the aisle between the little cubicles we sit in to stand beside mine.

"Yes, I know that, Mr. Suthburt," I said to him. I said it soothingly, as I used to speak to you when you were irate with me for asking questions, such as why we should be so impressed when some Inner City actress marries her 14th husband, or when her one of her ex- husbands makes yet more money and buys another yacht.

"Be quiet!" You'd say to me, sharply, afraid that the neighbors would hear. I have news for you, Mother: they always heard. They were in the next set of bunks, barely three meters away. They couldn't help but hear.

Anyway, I was similiarly soothing to old Suthburt, but that didn't seem to calm him. In a fit of rage, he grabbed at me, swinging with his hand at my head. All I did was react, pushing back at him. In the process, my fist hit him in the nose.

There was a shocked silence in the classroom before he ran, his wispy hair flying, back up the aisle to hit the button that summoned the grunts.

You know the rest: they took me away, and eleven days later I was convicted of assault, sentenced to exile, and dropped into the tube to the Wasteland, all in one afternoon. As I was led away, I turned to look at you, and you had an odd look on your face. It was a mix of pain and relief. Pain, I suppose, at the shame and humiliation I'd already cost you, and relief that it would all soon be over.

That's my final memory of you, Mother. Relief at my exile.

Not that it matters now, though. Shall I tell you where I am right now? Why not?

Why not indeed?

I'm sitting at a small industrial terminal in a rundown building along a stretch of torn up blacktop, maybe fifteen days walk from the walls of the City. The terminal is probably a hundred years old, the screen cracked. The keys have all been rewired at least a dozen times, and it makes the age-old practice of typing interesting. The owner of this place, who is called 'the owner', really, due to his being strong enough to hold it, has let me use the terminal. In return for what, I don't know. I guess I'll find out when I'm done. This gives me some incentive, as you might imagine, to provide you a full and complete account. This is by way, you understand, of putting off that reckoning for as long as possible, and is not done out of any sort of filial duty.

It's really quite amazing how ingenious people are out here. It isn't called the Wasteland for nothing, Mother. They (I guess it's 'we' now) don't have anything that we're used to: no grunts to keep order. No organized systems of running water or power. No infonet. No garbage collection. Nobody watching them, telling them what to do. I'm beginning to rather like it out here, and I'm not really sure why. I've been hungry most of the time for the last month.

Anyway, the story:

After I turned back from you, they took me by car out to the outer Wall, to that big set of doors. You know the ones, way down at the end of the street where the Deltas live. They opened them, and inside there was another, smaller set of doors. They opened those, too, and told me to walk up through them on a set of steps.

The judge spoke to me.

"Listen, son. Once we close these doors there's no coming back, so don't bother trying. The tube is smooth inside, and it will start tilting up until you slide down. The best thing for you to do is head down as fast as you can as soon as I tell them to take these handcuffs off you. Otherwise, you're liable to wind up with a broken ankle, understand?"

I nodded. He nodded to the grunt beside him, who shucked off my restraints, thrust a pack into my arms, and pushed me through the doors. I took the judge at his word, and pelted down the echoing tube as fast as I could go.

When I'd gone perhaps thirty meters, there was a grinding noise, and the tube started tilting slowly up. I ran faster, and almost broke my ankles as I hit something soft at the bottom. I rolled, the wind knocked out of me, and stopped. I was out of the tube.

I was lying on sand. I got to my feet and looked behind me. Set in the base of the wall, the tube continued to rise, the sand at the bottom of it grinding in the ancient joints made of steel at least a meter thick.

It finally stopped. I went back and looked up. It was dark, but it looked like the tube went up nearly vertically, which probably meant that the doors at its upper end were lodged securely in the upper reaches of the steel wall that surrounds New LA. (That's what they call it Outside, Mother: not 'the City', but 'New LA', pronounced New Ell Ay. What it means, I don't know.)

I don't mind telling you, I sat down in the sand against the wall and cried. Ridiculous, I agree, for a boy of seventeen to do that, but I did. I was lost, completely lost, and alone, and as you well know, none of us in the Outer City is ever alone.

I don't know how long I sat there, but it started getting dark. Really dark. I know you don't know what I mean, but if you imagine what it's like when you get into your bunk at lights out and they turn out the lights, then duck your head under the blanket, well, it was heading toward getting that dark.

I cursed myself for sitting and weeping like a fool while the world faded. I felt around in the pack that they had given me, and found a few objects. There was a bedroll like the ones that the Deltas get, thick enough to keep them warm in their unheated bunks. There was a flat pack of something firm, and a round thing, smooth and cool. I pulled it out, feeling along its length in the half dark until I found a knob. I pressed the knob, and light suddenly poured out if it. I recognized it as one of the hand lights that the grunts carry for looking under and behind things.

It was starting to get cold, so I used the light to crawl into the bedroll, where I lay. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up in the cold morning, the cold blue steel wall of The City above me.

I was hungry. I looked in the pack and found that the package was a foil of the rations they give the Deltas (do you notice a theme here, Mother?) that thick, dense smelly stuff. I choked some down, and took a swallow from the water bottle, and found that it really isn't that bad. It fills you up and gives you energy. Which, after all, the Deltas need, right?

I packed up and took a good look. I couldn't see anything but sand and a few scrubby bushes stretching away from the walls. I thought about what to do: I could follow what looked like a faint trail that led off through the sand and rock, or I could follow what looked like a rough road that went along the wall to the left and right.

I won't bore you with the details, Mother, of my first ten days, for they were of an incredible sameness. I walked out along the wall for five days, and then turned around at the end of the fifth day, not having found a single tiny crack in the wall, and headed back. When I got back to the mouth of the tube at the end of the tenth day, my feet sore, my skin burned from the sun, blisters on my shoulders from the weight of the pack, I contemplated continuing past the mouth of the tube and heading round the wall in the other direction.

I considered this in the same way that someone who is losing at cards or dice does: I'd been on a losing streak, and surely, just around the corner, there was a way back in. I'd slip in among the Deltas, and that would be it. I'd have a hard life of toil with no privileges, but at least I'd be fed, housed, and inside. I'd be secure.

But there was no way in, and I was almost out of Delta food. So I struck out across the desert, heading, I think, due west, toward where the sun set every night. I hadn't gone far (they don't measure distance in meters out here, or blocks, as there's really nothing to measure against, but in how long it takes to walk), walking for perhaps an hour, when I crested a rise and saw, across the sand, a vast expanse of glittering water. It was enormous, far beyond anything I had imagined was possible. It went from one side of the open, unwalled world to the other, for as far as you could see. I could not see anything on the other side.

I had another choice. Turn left, and walk along between The City and the water, or turn right, leaving The City in my wake. It took me no time at all to turn right and head north.

Well, dear Mother, I must go. The proprietor of this establishment is motioning to me. I've been using his terminal long enough, and he wants his payment. I only hope it's nothing sexual. He hasn't had a bath in a while.

As they say out here, Mother, adios. You'll be hearing from me again, I'm sure.