7 - Prisoner’s dilemma
[i]
GRETYL CAME FROM the fabber with everything they needed to build shelter – flexible frames and connectors the boys quickly assembled, photo-reactive film they stretched over each piece, clicking it together to make a half-dome with a vertical face and a doorway. They set it up in the field where they’d watched the drones. The area in front of the prison’s gates was crowded, no room for new structures big enough for a family of four. It was quieter. The rest of their crew were setting up there, too.
Limpopo wasn’t ready to go and might never be. She wanted to build an onsen. The mention of this put a gleam in the eyes of those who’d known her at the B&B, including Iceweasel. They emerged a consensus that they’d stay and help. The boys had never seen an onsen – they’d gone out of fashion in Gary – and avidly watched videos about them. They were committed to the project. Gretyl could have headed home, but there was no reason to be there as opposed to here. She could teach her classes anywhere. The little serious math work she did with colleagues was geography independent.
She didn’t like it here. It was too close to Toronto, to Jacob Redwater. It was weird that Iceweasel named their son after him, but being this close to what Gretyl thought of as “Jacob’s lair” made her edgy. That’s why Iceweasel wanted to stay. She needed to prove – to herself, to the world, to her monstrous father, who knew her every move – that she was unafraid. This had been hashed out during the naming thing. Gretyl understood there was no new information to be gleaned by refactoring that painful discussion. Once, she’d been foolhardy enough to argue with Iceweasel about this – a pregnant Iceweasel at that – and learned her lesson.
She still jumped at shadows.
“You hate this.” The boys were at the onsen job site, clicking fabbed bricks together. They’d been promised a salvage expedition to a site where a drone cataloged a whole butt-load of useful matériel, on condition of diligent work and good behavior that morning. Iceweasel had come back and flumfed on the camp bed, swooning, sipping her pack’s straw and glowing prettily with sweat.
“I don’t hate it. I totally understand—”
“Hating and understanding aren’t opposites. I want to let you know I know you hate this, and I’m grateful you’re doing it anyway.”
Gretyl shook her head. “I love you, too.”
Iceweasel stretched out an arm and felt blindly for her, patted her on the butt. Gretyl took her hand. It was nice to have a kid-free moment. It had been a while. They held hands and Gretyl closed her eyes.
“I got a new scan today,” Iceweasel said. “The boys, too.”
Gretyl opened her eyes. “Oh.” She tried very hard to keep her voice neutral and failed.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
Iceweasel took her hand back and sat up. “There was a crowd doing it, moms and kids, now the scanners are burned in and working. You know it’s harmless.”
“I know you can’t be harmed by the scanning process, but—”
“But someone could steal your scan and do something terrible to us. I know. We’ve been through it. They’re locked to my private key, or a supermajority of our friends’ keys, the usual group, same one we use for the rest.”
Gretyl shook her head. “Fine.”
“Obviously, it’s not fine.”
“Explain why you would feel so threatened that you got yourself scanned, but not so threatened that you wouldn’t just leave?”
“Getting a scan gives us some insurance.”
“Insurance? As in, if your father kidnaps you, I can run a sim of you to raise our sons? If we all die, maybe our friends will run us in simulation and wear us around their necks and we can talk out of their tits for the rest of time?”
“My dad’s not going to kidnap me.” In the first five years of their relationship, Gretyl got good at spotting when Iceweasel changed the subject. In the years since, she’d got better at figuring out when to mention it. She didn’t mention it.
“How do you know?”
Iceweasel moved her arm off her face, spat out the straw and sat. “Because I heard from him.”
Gretyl literally boggled at her wife. “Say that again?”
“I heard from him. Come on, you know he’s sent me messages. I don’t answer. I never answer.”
“Before, we weren’t in his back-yard.”
“You’re being superstitious. It’s no harder for Jacob Redwater to get to any place than it is for him to get any other place. Distance isn’t what keeps us safe.”
Gretyl had also been married to Iceweasel long enough to recognize when her wife was right. She shut up and tried to stop fretting. The boys returned, looking for clothes suitable for a salvage mission. They were distracted by hosing them down and dressing them up. Then all was forgotten, or at least they could pretend.