The Errant Tree

Great London

The island of Albion is long, stretching from the English Channel in the south to the Scottish Highlands in the north, and it has many cities, but none can begin to match the size of Great London. The city-state encompasses the entirety of the island's southeasternmost corner, from Southampton to Ipswitch, Brighton to Cambridge, Canterbury to Oxford. It is home to fifty million people. Ubiquitous high-rises keep the streets in perpetual shadow, and wind-shields erected at regular intervals thwart the powerful downdraught and steal its power. Near the coast, great barriers maintain the River Thames from overflowing.

It is easy to cast such places in a purely negative light, especially for we who have fled from them. But we should not forget that even in the most overcrowded cities, there are still green places. There is still light and laughter, hoping and dreaming, charity and community, for people create those things for themselves wherever they go and under almost any circumstance. But just as universal is the presence of some counter-force, which seeks to peel our autonomy away from us. The exact nature of that force is what changes from time to time and place to place, and each person will find they prefer to grapple with one kind of demon over another. A practical definition of freedom, then, is not the ability to validate oneself—which comes naturally and free of charge—but rather the ability to freely select the manner in which one is abused by the world while seeking that validation. Do you prefer to be haunted by a watchful and power-hungry bureaucracy, or left subject to the machinations of cruel and uncaring nature? Will you grapple in the night alone with your own hateful thoughts, or will you present your throat to the wolves of public opinion? And what will you do when you cannot choose the demon for yourself?

There is, of course, no one right answer, no proper way to suffer. But it is something we all must do.

Picture in that city of Great London, in the not-too-distant past, a woman of middle-age, stood upon a low stool, sweating in the April sun, a mop of blond hair sticking to her cheeks. She wore a loose, sleeveless top, and her arms were spread wide for balance. Her legs were exposed below the hip, and trickles of blood ran down them to drip from her ankles. Surrounding her, five robotic hounds snapped and snarled, barely restrained by taut chains staked to the grass, their muzzles close enough to break the skin of her calves should she falter. All of this was contained within the boundaries of a rope threaded through makeshift stanchions, which was all that separated the grisly scene from the thousands of disinterested passersby.

Their lack of interest might have been attributed to the fact that the sight of Dylan Force placed in some precarious situation in full view of the public was a common sight in that place, Greatfields Park, a field some dozen kilometers from the city's heart. Long had Dylan exhibited her work there, which she would have labeled performance art: one day, she might be stacking heavy boxes into meaningless piles at the direction of needle-armed drones; another, she might struggle to stay afloat in a clear tank of water as autonomous, swimming weights attempt to drag her to the bottom. Whatever the scene, it was rarely pleasant, designed to instill the viewer with a sense of unease. All of it Dylan created herself, wiring and welding in shared maker spaces and testing code in her tiny apartment until all hours of the morning. Whatever part of her discretionary income did not go to whiskey, went to her art. And so it had been for decades.

To those whom the gods wish to destroy, an old adage goes, they send forty years of success. But what does it mean to receive from the gods forty years of lukewarm public reception? Very little had changed for Dylan since she'd begun her career, and so her ambition, unfed, had withered. In the beginning, there had been some success. When Dylan had been in her twenties, the Great London Artists' Guild had accepted her with open arms and sponsored her transfer from the Pink Zone to the Orange Zone—in social terms, a journey from the lower-middle to upper-middle class—where she had plied her trade ever since. But decade followed decade, and Dylan rotated through one Orange Zone apartment after another, renting the cheapest possible busking lots at whatever parks were nearest, showing off her work, and receiving minimal attention and spotty praise.

In an effort to recoup its investment, the Guild had provided Dylan with a PR agent, albeit an unconventional one: Shaazz Michaels moonlighted as a promoter for the arts, but most of her clients were gamers who made their livings streaming their digital adventures to vast online audiences. I do not need to tell you, Oskar, the level of immersion, the sheer amount of pleasure produced by these games, built and operated collaboratively by humans and computers—imaginary worlds so splendorous and rich with reward that, had we no need for sleep and sustenance, many on Earth would gladly live within them—nor must I remind you of the nearly universal phenomenon of burnout, that mysterious threshold which, once reached, causes many to step away from those games forever. The stimulation can overwhelm us, but until it does, why not indulge? And so Shaazz spent her days shepherding the eyes and ears of the experience-hungry this way and that, from one stream to another, filling infinite stadiums with insubstantial bodies—bodies who would not be interested in sussing out the moral message of a woman subjecting herself to robotic canine assailants behind a rope in Greatfields Park. Though ideally Dylan should have had as many fans as the streamers, the fact that she did not meant that, for Shaazz, dealing with her served as a kind of respite. So she took every excuse to call her client, whether or not the client desired it.

"How did it go?" Shaazz asked, reclined on a couch, wearing a blazer over a t-shirt and not much else, speaking to Dylan through a tablet computer.

"Same as always," Dylan replied through an earpiece while dismantling and packing her now limp and lifeless scene partners.

"I didn't get any new queries," Shaazz said.

"You don't have to tell me that," Dylan replied. "I will always assume that. Is that all you called me for?"

"Just being a good agent and checking in, like always."

"Well, I'm peachy. Just over the moon about everything, my life and my work. I hope this never ends."

"Alright, Jesus. I also called to tell you my friend who's got a stall in the Camden Market is willing to do a little cross-promotion."

"Camden? What's he selling?"

"Home decor."

"So I'm to be a conversation piece in some Green Zoner's drawing room, am I? I admit it may be the only way I'm ever likely to live in that part of the city."

"That would be hilarious, but no. He'll give a discount to anyone who's snapped a photo of your act—"

"—my performance—"

"—right, if you feature some of his wares, tag them up properly, and mention him in your show's description wherever that appears."

"You are joking, aren't you?"

"I know you feel like this kind of thing erodes your integrity as an artist, but—"

"No, Shaazz, that's the end of the sentence. It absolutely erodes my integrity as an artist. Period. I'm not having this conversation again."

"Fine. It's just, you're making it hard for me to do my job, Force."

"But you love a challenge, don't you? I'm going to go, now. Keep up the great work."