Ch. 4: A New Society | "Cereus & Limnic"

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The feeling was electric. Jinhua felt the fresh rush of adrenaline propelling her long legs to thrust her through the open air in front of her.

Each kick was precise, optimized to give her maximum force, while keeping the amount of time off of the ripboard to a minimum.

Half an inch in front of her, Harpreet’s attention was just as focused on winning the race.

Her balance was questionable.

But what she lacked in grace, the power and length of her legs more than made up for, making her an even match.

After passing under the old highway ninety-nine, Jinhua nearly lost her balance as she weaved through a throng of elderly walkers casually enjoying a morning chat.

A man with a sun-spotted, warm beige complexion mumbled obscenities as she and Harpreet cut through.

“Going left!” Harpeet shouted from up ahead.

Jinhua, quickly adjusted her trajectory, wondering why she had not taken a right on Gray Avenue toward the old mall and their committee meeting, which was scheduled to begin in three minutes by the time on her device.

Where is she going?

Let’s see if you can keep up.

Harpreet’s thoughts rushed by like the wind under the wings of the board, as she gave a hard kick, widening her lead.

Jinhua’s board edged only six inches behind, gliding over large cracks and great circles of discolored gray in the sidewalk.

The filled holes were grim reminders of a flood disaster that had killed millions and left the entire city underwater for months, years before her birth.

When was the flood?

Was it in the twenties?

Or maybe thirties?

She never could get historical numbers right.

Unless the figure was attached to science, her memory, like an efficient computer operating system, flagged it for disposal, then tossed it into the digital dustbin.

They had reached the intersection of Washington and Gray Avenue.

Distracted by her thoughts, she gasped as Harpreet made a sudden U-turn, cutting across the width of the street, without pausing to look for oncoming people or cars.

Safely on the opposite side, she resumed her kicking and gliding, throwing up tiny rocks every time her foot touched the concrete.

“Got you loser!” Harpreet yelled over her shoulder.

Damn you Harpreet! I’m not gonna lose!

Jinhua made a swift U-turn across the street to follow her.

She looked right, becoming fixated on a large white pickup truck that was headed right for her.

Panicked, she sped up, narrowly reaching the other side of the street before being struck by the honking vehicle.

What she hadn’t seen was the hapless middle-aged cyclist who had turned onto the street between her and Harpreet’s rapidly shrinking frame at this point some fifteen feet down the sidewalk.

By a narrow margin, Jinhua avoided the man, who had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with a dumbfounded look on his face.

She attempted to shift her balance, but acted too late and plummeted onto the sidewalk, her roll dampened by dry grass under a small tree.

As she staggered to her feet, the sting of a cut registered in her brain, warm blood trickled down to her shin.

Harpreet rushed back down the street.

A look of triumph was quickly replaced by concern.

“Wow, crazy wipeout. You ok?”

Harpreet reached out her arms to clasp Jinhua’s slim shoulders.

She looked her up and down, performing a motherly scan.

“Nothing looks broken.”

“Thanks Doc,” Jinhua said.

Harpreet dusted clay-colored dirt from Jinhua’s shoulders and arms, as a devilish grin crept onto her face.

“…Looks like I won…”

Jinhua gave her a playful slap on the arm.

“Looks like it.”

Her eyes fell to her bleeding knee.

The gash looked like a jagged red mark, oozing a steady stream of dark blood.

She applied pressure using a single tissue from a small plastic pack she carried in her back pocket.

A habit she had picked up from her father at a very young age.

Always good to have them on you, he had told her on some random day in the distant past.

Now, she was thankful for the advice.

Harpreet clenched her teeth and tensed her jaw at the sight of it.

“Looks pretty deep. Might have to hit the market to get it wrapped up.”

“Ugh. I’ll probably have to give his daughter ripboard lessons in exchange. So boring! She just runs around with the pole the entire time and can’t even open the wings!” Jinhua complained.

Harpreet shrugged, “Maybe you can trade the babysitting time for something else?” The mocking tone bled skepticism.

“Doubtful.” Jinhua exhaled frustration, glancing down at her device with her free hand.

She remembered that the committee meeting had begun five minutes ago.

“Shit. We’re late.”

Harpreet’s expression remained unchanged.

She was undaunted by the threat of being tardy.

“Is that right? Ok then, let’s get going space cadet.”

It didn’t take long to make the short walk to the old Yuba-Sutter Mall and make the exchange.

Jinhua recalled through rose-tinted nostalgia endless hours roaming the rows of stalls of the barter market with her father as a young girl.

The experience left a lasting impression on her psyche and stoked a sense of home within her. A comforting feeling.

The open-air market of the old world clashed in broad daylight with mid-twenty-first century technology.

The result was a uniquely distinct ambiance characteristic of all comvil barter markets nationwide.

It was possible to trade money, credit, or any type of service, for almost anything here.

Biohacked humans hawked t-shirts, beside heavy-set clear-skinned middle-aged artisans, craftsmen, and specialists of all disciplines.

A group of farmers traded baskets of almonds for the latest digital entertainment, a source of infinite pleasure and intrigue.

Music from various sources mixed in the air around the girls as they walked the main path through the market, greeting friends and neighbors along the way.

Harpreet raised her nose, large nostrils flaring, in response to the smell of fresh baked bread, honey cinnamon rolls, mangos, and chocolate drifting in the air around them. Her eyes followed her stomach’s calling.

Though hungry too, Jinhua urged her forward through the increasingly dense packs of early morning shoppers and traders.

Her bent over position, holding bloody tissues over her knee, was beginning to attract unwelcome attention.

The trip to the doctor’s stall hadn’t lasted long.

He was an old man with a stubborn looking face, but was caring at heart.

His bushy white mustache contrasted with dark brown skin, but also made his teeth appear brighter than they were.

Dr. Ross had been a longtime friend of Jinhua’s father, Li, and always made time for his daughter’s cuts and bruises.

Harpreet stood by with the vigilance of a well-paid mercenary, as the doctor sanitized and wrapped the afflicted knee.

After the services were rendered, he scanned her all-in-one life card.

Though his daughter was at home sick, the scan digitally obligated Jinhua to provide ripboard lessons at some unknown date in the near future.

She was thrilled to escape the lessons for the moment, but dreaded the day when she would have to make good on the debt.

There was no getting out of it.

The consequences for trade-jumping (as it was colloquially known) worked on a tiered progression system.

The first offense was a suspension of services from the aggrieved person’s specialty (in this case medical services) for one week.

The second, was a thirty-day suspension from all similarly categorized services throughout the entire comvil, which in her case would be no access to local medical care at all.

The third, and final offense, was potential expulsion from the comvil.

Though Jinhua had never heard of anyone actually being removed, she imagined that getting back in and reestablishing trust within the community was a monumental task that few were willing to undertake.

So it was better to keep your promises, and pay your debts as quickly as you were able.

Her knee wrapped, Jinhua walked with a slight limp behind Harpreet, weaving through the growing crowd with quick steps on their way to the community center.

Once inside, it took them another minute to reach the back of the building.

The committee room was located in an old furniture store.

The large open space, where once upon a time, eager retail workers showcased overpriced sofas, beds, dining room tables, and cushions, had been partitioned off by tall white room dividers that did not quite reach to the ceiling.

The dividers could be rolled by a very strong person or a machine to rearrange the layout of the committee rooms at any time.

This allowed them to be adaptable for almost any academic purpose.

Jinhua had heard that it had even served as a physical fitness committee room at one point in time.

The rumor crossed her mind as she and Harpreet arrived outside of the door to their committee room.

A simple door housed within one of the wall dividers.

Jinhua felt as if she had completed a brisk warm up in a gym committee, heart thudding and breathing uneasy from the exertion of the race and her power walk.

Made it. Only 15 minutes late. Jinhua thought.

She opened the door and walked casually to her seat in the center of the space, ignoring the pairs of eyes of her ten committee mates.

Most gawked at her wrapped knee and overall disheveled appearance with curious glances, each forming a personal narrative concerning the cause of her rough image.

“Mind your own business!” Harpreet snapped, in an echoing whisper.

Jinhua flashed her a grateful glance as they both sat and adjusted themselves into their seats, and began to remove their needed supplies from a locked compartment under the desk top.

Jinhua held her all-in-one card to the desk then heard the click of the lock, concentrating on organizing her supplies to take her mind off of the events of her morning so far.

When she was ready, she straightened her back, and her face switched into academic mode.

Her pupils widened like a camera aperture, facial muscles relaxed, her lips formed a perfectly straight line.

It was the position of a model student, one any teacher would be delighted to see on the first day of school.

Eyes staring straight ahead, she realized for the first time that their instructor was not there.

Jinhua swiveled her head as if it were a security camera around the front of the room, but saw no sign of him.

“Hey, where’s Master Scholar (MS) Rhodes?”

“Hasn’t showed yet.”

A dark-haired man with a brown complexion and a serious face spoke.

“No idea where he’s at.”

“Thanks Derak,” Harpreet cast a flirtatious wink in his direction.

He seemed not to notice the gesture and returned his attention to a video playing silently on his desk screen.

“He’ll come around eventually. He knows he wants all this,” Harpreet said, bringing a flask of water from under her desk to her lips, viewing him out of the corner of her eye.

Jinhua shook her head.

Her mind was still on MS Rhodes.

Creeping concern replaced the look of academic readiness on her face bit by bit.

“He’s never late. I wonder if something happened?”

In the next moment, they both heard the heavy footsteps of MS Rhodes approaching just beyond the thin wall.

The door opened slowly and MS Rhodes entered the room, squeezing his fat body through the door frame.

A few steps behind him, a young man with a quiet countenance walked in.

Instantly, Jinhua felt a large quantity of blood gather in her face at the sight of the youth.

Who is that!?

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