Migration

Zoe In The Woods

It was the birds that woke her. A rowdy earful of toots, trills and barks that swept through the forest as the glow of dawn light began to creep amongst the trees. It was like nothing Zoe had ever heard before. She unzipped a gap in her pod door, just big enough to peer through and once her eyes had adjusted to the light, unzipped a little more and lifted her head and shoulders out. The forest looked beautiful. The early light was allowing only the subtlest of colour to exist, turning the scene into a faded photograph or an illustration from a fairy story.

Drips of water carried flares of stolen sunlight down with them and on the smooth tree trunk next to Zoe's pod, beetles and millipedes slunk silently over the bark. Zoe began to giggle, which turned into a laugh and soon Zoe was laughing uncontrollably at the immense awakening that was, for this moment at least, unfolding only for her.

When she climbed out of her sleeping pod she felt the tightness in her lower back and legs from yesterday exertion, but it could be worse. An inspection of her feet showed no blisters and despite an edgy sleep, she didn't feel bad at all. In fact, Zoe thought, she felt pretty damn good. Elated.

She drank some water and ate a little breakfast, before shaking out the pod and folding it back into her rucksack. Before she set off, she found a spot behind, or was it in front of, a bush to go to the toilet. It was a new experience, peeing just exactly where she wanted to, so she relished the moment and added it to her list of growing freedoms.

Revived and ready, Zoe set off again through the dense forest cover, her shoes catching once more in the thorny ground, cracking sticks and scuffing over stones. There was no path here, no one ever came this way and this route belonged only to Zoe. Everybody who swapped the certainty of AarBee to take their chances in the wilderness did so without a path and mostly alone. The faintest whispers of opportunity, folklore and legends were as good as it got. Their destination though, was almost always shared, to the Lifers and to Matthew.

Matthew's legend had grown as powerful as AarBee. He was one of the first to turn away from the promise of immortality, from the seduction of the digital realm. Some said he was a Dupe, kept alive by some program glitch or process error, others that he was born in the wilderness, the child of his mother's rape by thrillseekers. What was beyond doubt though, was that Matthew had taken the myriad of lost Ghosts and wandering apprentices and turned them into Lifers. He had turned loneliness and rejection into a choice, a movement.

Zoe walked all day, stopping occasionally for food or to rest her legs. Sometimes rabbits would wait for her up ahead, before scurrying off as she came close and once, as she sat against a rock late in the afternoon, a young deer wandered elegantly by, tugging leaves from the small trees and listening intently to the breeze.

Zoe travelled for five days like this, just her and the wilderness. As the sun went down she would shake out her sleeping pod and nestle onto the warm ground, her knife in her hand, and in the morning she would rise with the birds and continue her search.

Once, she passed a tiny wooden hut that sat silently in a clearing. She examined it from down on her belly, her eyes peering through the bracken and thorns. It looked in good repair and the clear path that led to the door suggested that somebody lived there, but it was too dangerous to find out who. Zoe didn't need to ask for help and if the house was occupied by Drones, well, that would be that. Besides, there was a faint stench in the air that tasted bad in the back of Zoe's throat and she noticed that the birds didn't sing here, so she crawled quietly away and left the little hut behind.

On the sixth morning, Zoe didn't wake up with the birds. By the time her eyes opened, the full light of the day was streaming through the trees and warming the little sleeping pod. She was tired now, hungry too, her rations were being stretched thinner and thinner and apart from a few berries, she hadn't found anything else to eat. She could have lain on the ground all day, bathing in the forest light and resting her body, but she knew she had to find either food or Lifers, so she dragged herself out, packed her gear away and strode wearily on.