Alias Space and Other Stories, page 14
“I’ve put my fake in charge of picking questions. She’ll choose the most unique and interesting ones, so get creative.”
A cramp fluttered across Kayla’s belly. Should she tell Natalie? No, the next moment it was gone. And she didn’t have time to worry about it—she had a long-term, high-profile project to fund. Eyeballs meant funding. She’d wear a clown costume and dance up and down the highway if it got her grants.
She chatted with her feed while installing the next ten gauges at half-kilometer intervals, but the questions were boring. How does the gauge work?—Why is the river so low?—The water is brown, does that mean it’s polluted? She’d never keep her audience interested by fielding slow balls, so she told her fake to try choosing more mediagenic questions.
How did you vote in the referendum?
Kayla told her fake to kill the question. She’d heard that question before, and had muted every possible version. Her fake should have dumped it.
Why don’t you use robots to place your equipment?
“If someone wants to build us a custom bot for free, please let me know.” Kayla grinned. “I get to use this Avatar four times a year for the next five years. The YRD was really lucky to get the grant. Without it, we couldn’t place these gauges. In three months, I’ll be back to check on them, and you can come with me.”
When Kayla got to the old Wabasso campground, she climbed up to the viewpoint and gave her audience a view of the stark peaks, the washed-out highway, and the tangled piles of snags the last flood had deposited on the flats.
What happened to the highway?
It was the perfect question at the perfect time.
“Mother Nature, that’s what. The climate on the eastern slopes of the Rockies used to be unusually stable and predictable, and in these steep valleys, flooding was brief and highly contained. No more. A catastrophic flood washed out the highway. A new climatic regime is taking hold. The river is changing. It’s my job to learn how we can live with it.”
The gauge site at kilometer ten was just below Athabasca Falls. Once, it had been a class five cataract and one of the most powerful waterfalls in the Canadian Rockies. Now it was…not a trickle, exactly. There was still enough water to drown in, and enough velocity to sweep her off her feet.
Kayla stepped into the weighted boots that a drone had dropped on the riverbank, then walked slowly through the white water, admiring the sheer limestone walls that held the falls in a close embrace. The mighty flow had hewn a rock channel six school busses wide and eight high, creating a gorge that clawed its way through geological time, with a roar you still had to shout to be heard over, even with the dramatically reduced flow.
“Athabasca Falls. Impressive skookumchuck, isn’t it?”
Social media pulsed in the affirmative. Her numbers swelled to twenty thousand, the feed streaming to classrooms and lecture halls all over the province.
Kayla rattled off some basic geology for the kids. After placing the gauge, she waded right up to the falls, so close the droplets stung her face. Here, she was part of the ecosystem, like the old photo of a grizzly standing in the rapids, jaws gaping, a startled salmon flying into its maw.
“Take a good look,” Kayla said. “From here, things are going to change.”
She ditched the weighted boots and ran to her next gauge location at the head of the falls. What had once been a broad stretch of white water was now one deep, narrow channel, excavated two years back by a contractor Kayla had hired.
Oh my god.
What happened here?
Horrid. Just horrid.
Who did this?
The shocked exclamations came as no surprise. It was ugly—so ugly it pained Kayla to look at it. Thick walls of medical-grade acrylic lined the sides of the artificial channel, dividing the water from the speed lichen that furred the dry riverbed. Drone bots hovered overhead, closely monitoring the lichens’ spread.
Kayla had pre-recorded a twenty-minute media package that explained the reasoning behind the excavation, carefully laying out the long term plan, and—of course—thanking the funding bodies that had made the expensive project possible. She fired the package at the social media feed, then slipped on a thick layer of lichen. Kayla gasped as the Avatar lurched sideways, then quickly righted itself.
Kayla’s DMs pulsed.
Is this still the best day of your life? Natalie whispered.
Kayla grimaced and shuffled slowly to the edge of the falls, where the water took its first plunge. She hefted a gauge over the acrylic berm and slipped it into place.
This channel was necessary. And it’s nothing compared to what Edmonton did to this watershed.
You don’t have to tell me, Natalie whispered.
Adaptive management is a long-term, iterative process.
I’ve heard it. Tell them.
The numbers were falling off of her feed. The people who stayed demanded answers. She told her fake to pick a question.
Do you feel guilty, knowing you did this to the river?
“No. The communities along the Athabasca River have healthier water than they would otherwise. This artificial channel is the best strategy we’ve found to keep the speed lichen toxins at minimum.”
I think this is a catastrophe. Don’t you?
“The original catastrophe was the flow diversion into the North Saskatchewan. But that’s the way the vote went and what’s done is done. Our challenge now is to manage the watershed. This is a long-term adaptive management project, with a lot of unknowns. We deal with uncertainty by constantly monitoring and adjusting our approaches.”
How long is long-term?
“We won’t see results for years. Probably decades.”
How did you vote in the referendum?
That question again. Kayla slapped it down, and shot a logic correction at her fake.
Can’t you get rid of the lichen?
Complicated question, too complicated. Kayla stammered a reply. She wasn’t feeling great. The backache gripped her abdomen, her torso from ribs down vise-clamped and aching.
She put the questions on hold and opened the DM feed.
Okay. I’m having cramps.
Thank god, Natalie whispered. I was so worried. I was just about to pull the plug on this Avatar thing.
Don’t you dare!
Kayla leaned over the berm and shoved her gauge into the riverbed with all her strength.
Don’t you dare pull me out of this, she repeated. I’m serious, Nat. I’ll never forgive you. Ever.
You don’t get it, do you? Natalie said. This is the best day of my life, too. And you’re not here. Your body is, but you’re far away.
I have to do this.
Save it. Soon, this is going to get serious and you’ll have to pay attention to what’s going on with your body. You won’t have a choice.
Kayla slapped down the social media feed—public feed, DMs, and all. To hell with them.
She stomped uphill to her second drone drop site by the highway, and tore the package open. Inside were another thirty gauges and a hundred sample bags. She stuffed them in her pack and headed back down to the river.
Low flow wasn’t the only threat in the watershed—maybe not even the worst. New and invasive species were also a problem, and speed lichen the worst of all. When it was first discovered in the Ob River watershed in Siberia, the worldwide scientific community pooh-poohed the evidence. When it colonized the upper reaches of China’s Yellow River, they’d tsk-tsked—clearly the Chinese had done something wrong. But when it was found in the Colorado River, climbing the storied walls of the Grand Canyon, marring its sunset-shaded elegance with a furry gray-green blight, only then had it been declared an emergency.
Still, there were so many emergencies.
Kayla filled sample bags at her first ten randomly-chosen sites. The rhythm of sterilize-grab-stuff-seal-store calmed her down, and she addressed her feed again.
“I’m gathering speed lichen samples for one of our research partners at the University of Alberta. So little is known about this organism, but in less than ten years, it’s colonized nearly two-point-five percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s temperate terrain. That might not sound like a lot, but trust me. It is.”
She knelt at a sample site where the lichen covered the rocks like layers of puff pastry. She coated her hands in sterilizer, and then gently pulled up a handful of lichen along with the rock it clung to. She slipped it in a sample bag.
Is this lichen the same species as the first samples gathered in Russia and China?
Kayla bit back her instinct to admit ignorance. She didn’t know. Nobody did. But she couldn’t say that, not when funding was at stake.
“When we discuss lichen, we’re not just talking about one species. It’s a complex of microorganisms. In the past, lichen have been characterized by extraordinarily slow metabolisms. These new ones aren’t like that. They’re fast. Profoundly fast for a plant.”
A cramp plunged through Kayla’s gut, so strong she had to bend over and groan. She counted the duration—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, all the way to eleven. When the pain subsided, she grabbed her stopwatch app and hit start.
Two part question: Will the lichen move to the North Saskatchewan watershed, and if so, what will happen to Edmonton’s water supply?
Kayla gasped, still reeling from the cramp.
“I don’t know,” she blurted, and then quickly backtracked. “North Saskatchewan watershed managers are extremely vigilant. Yes, speed lichen can jump from watershed to watershed, but don’t worry. They’ll make sure it doesn’t.”
Not good enough. The feed bristled with emojis, thousands of pairs of cartoon eyes staring at her in alarm. She mouthed a few platitudes and then fell silent. In some cases, the less said the better. She couldn’t speak for the NoSask managers, after all.
Kayla filled eighteen sample bags before another cramp tore into her. This time the pain was so intense she couldn’t even count. When she came back to herself, she was on her knees by the shallow upper Athabascan trickle, hemmed in on either side by the lichen’s fruitcose fronds.
No more chatting, just sampling. Seventeen bags later, another cramp. Then twenty. They weren’t getting closer. Maybe she had time—maybe. But they were agonizing. Her pulse pounded, her hands shook.
Kayla slapped open her DMs.
This is not my fault, she whined.
Okay, Natalie said. What’s not your fault?
Forget it, Kayla said, and slapped down the feed.
It wasn’t her fault the province had voted to divert eighty percent of the upper Athabasca watershed’s flow into the North Saskatchewan. The choice had been simple—either you provided enough water for two million people, or you didn’t. In comparison, the Athabasca was under-allocated, serving fewer than two hundred thousand people. Of course the diversion was a catastrophe for the Athabasca, but it had been the right choice.
Another cramp stabbed Kayla’s gut. She bent double and groaned, and a slick petty impulse floated into focus.
She would stay in the Avatar for as long as she could. She’d finish installing the gauges, then do some extra surveying all through the night until her full twenty-four hours were up. Whatever was happening to her body, it could happen without her. She could do it, easy. Just like a marathon gaming session.
Kayla got her hundred samples. She lugged them to the drop site, and sealed them into the sterile duffle. Later, a drone would pick them up and deliver them to Kayla’s research partner, who would use the samples to map the organism’s mutualistic relationships.
She hiked up the riverbed, stopping at regular intervals to breathe through the cramps, and planted gauges in the narrowing Athabasca until the river ran dry. Then she retraced her steps to the confluence with the Sunwapta, and followed that flow until it died. She ignored her social media feed. When the cramps hit, she didn’t even bother to time them.
Then they started coming on in waves. One every minute, or more, so many she couldn’t walk. A help message in multiple languages floated across her eye, repeated by soothing audio in English, French, and Blackfoot.
If you find yourself fatigued, engage the Avatar’s auto-guidance controls. Click the icon or say “Yes.”
“Yes,” she groaned. The target in the middle of her eye misted away. As the Avatar straightened, Kayla felt a disconcerting sense of bodily disjunction. She was helpless, bent double in pain, and at the same time, she walked up the riverbed, brandishing a gauge like a spear.
Kayla slapped open her DMs.
Goddamn it, Nat.
Does it hurt, honey? Natalie’s voice dripped with sympathy, which made Kayla angrier.
I want that epidural, she demanded. Now.
Sure. We’re ready, Natalie said in the gentlest of tones. Are you going to join us here?
God, no. That’s the last place I want to be.
Okay, you’re in charge. But think carefully. Do you really want to miss this?
Having a baby was important to Natalie. She’d told Kayla that on their first date. Six months later, Kayla was so deeply in love she’d agreed to carry it. She hadn’t even considered how that one decision would devastate her life.
Fuck you, Nat, Kayla moaned. Fuck you.
I’d take the pain in a second if I could.
No, you wouldn’t.
I love you, my sweet girl. Here comes the needle.
A cold and blissful numbness descended over Kayla’s flesh. From the ribs down, nothing. She was a head, arms, and a bit of torso, and yet her legs guided her up the river, stepping around snags and over boulders, avoiding the patches of fruiting lichen, thick with spores.
The release from pain was so delectable, Kayla laughed.
A hundred meters downstream, a lone barren-ground caribou lifted its head to gaze at her, then stepped its stick-thin legs delicately onto the riverbed and lipped at the lichen.
Kayla pinged the caribou’s RFID, which identified it as part of a study group monitored by the University of Tuktoyaktuk. The elegant, splay-antlered cow had migrated more than a thousand kilometers southwest over the past year.
“Have you outcompeted the locals?” Kayla laughed again. “At least somebody’s getting some benefit out of this goddamned lichen.”
The RFID reported the caribou cow was gravid.
“Why did you get pregnant?” Kayla shouted. “Don’t you know the world is ending?”
Kayla pinched off a minute of visuals and complementary time-and-location metadata. She tossed it to her fake and instructed it to send the data to the Caribou research group at Tuk-U.
One more gauge to go. Kayla turned her social media feed to Live.
“Okay, more questions. Hit me.”
How did you vote in the referendum?
Someone had hacked her fake. That was the only explanation. But it was an important question; one of the most critical of the past decade.
“I don’t have to answer that. But I will, as long as you all understand my personal political choices do not reflect the official policy of the Yellowhead Regional District.”
The feed ripped with nodding emojis.
Kayla stood in a ribbon of water hardly deep enough to cover her feet. The mountains enveloping her looked taller than when she was a child. Then, they’d been pine-green halfway to the sky. Now they were bare and brown.
“Even though I live in Hinton, I voted to divert the Athabasca headwaters into the North Saskatchewan. I did it because Edmonton is a big city and it was in crisis. I have friends there. Family. But still, it was a really hard choice.”
She told her fake to choose one last question.
Why?
“It’s no use pretending the world hasn’t changed. It changes all the time. Every choice we make, every person we meet, has the potential to transform our lives. When that happens, we adapt. Manage. Cope.”
Kayla shoved the last gauge into the trickling river. The motor drive whirred.
“I’m having a baby.”
Forty-one weeks into her pregnancy, and she’d never said those words aloud before. When Natalie broke the news to everyone, Kayla pretended it didn’t have anything to do with her.
“I’m having a baby,” she repeated. “It’s the biggest leap of faith a human can take. And I’m doing it because I believe humanity has a future. We are capable of undoing the damage we’ve caused. Maybe not all of it, but some. We can make better choices in the future, with careful, flexible long-term planning.”
She opened her DMs so Natalie could hear her.
“Our child’s world might not be as beautiful as our past, but it’ll have glories we can’t even imagine.”
With that, she walked up to the broken highway, set Avatar in Wait mode, and left to meet her future.
In 2019, Ann VanderMeer kindly invited me to contribute a story to the Avatars Inc. anthology, organized by XPRIZE Foundation to provide fictionalized use cases for telepresence technology. I knew right away that I wanted to write another story set in the area I grew up in, the Athabasca River Valley in and around Jasper National Park.
Why do some places get written about over and over again, when others never do? Each year, hundreds of novels are set in London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, but these are not the only places worth telling stories about. The land where I grew up never gets fictionalized, but it holds just as many dramatic possibilities as any other locale. It has just as much history and tragedy, and the residents live full lives just like anyone else.
In “Two Watersheds,” I draw on fifteen years of experience working with restoration ecologists, along with this idea: If the people most intimate with a problem can find reasons to hope, there’s no excuse for the rest of us to give up.
The Karen Kain Centre for Convalescent Care was generously endowed, rumor said, by a bisexual Rosedale matron who’d nursed a lifelong crush on the prima ballerina. When Margaret took the job as director, she tried to find out the mysterious benefactor’s identity. Not to out her, of course, or even to share the juicy gossip among her friends, but to satisfy her burning curiosity. No go, though. The secret was buried under a tangle of trusts and numbered companies, and soon Margaret had too much work on her plate to keep digging.
