A Break in the Sunlight

3. Jeremy Ren

Jeremy Ren had been her stepbrother during the spring of her eleventh year, when her mother was married to the vid director from Central.

He'd appeared when he was thrown out of boarding school in March. It was too close to term-end to find a new one. So he'd shared Jaren's tutor until summer term began.

Jeremy was the first person Jaren had met with neuro-implants. He was seventeen. Plenty of people in Arden had cursor-chips–even Ellie had toyed with the idea, until she realized it would mar the perfect symmetry of her expensive features.

But there was little need for the full neural jack in a place like Arden, where vast Miril fortunes had widened the cultural divide to near-medieval proportions. Labor was cheap, and the rich of Arden liked the conceit of human servants. It helped to set them apart from the proletariat and kept them pampered and untouched in their cred-insulated compounds, safe from practical concerns and able to dole out cruelty and repression like a dowager Queen on holiday.

At least that was what Jeremy had said. Whoever dowager queens were, it was obvious Jeremy hadn't thought much of them.

Jeremy was a neo-socialist. He spent most of his nights Inside, running the underbelly of the ArdenNet from a node in the servants' quarters. On school mornings he'd stumble into the gatehouse bleary-eyed and scowling with a caffeine drink in hand, most often in the clothes he'd worn the day before. He ignored what Yoshi taught most of the time, unless he thought it was "bullshit", at which point he would let his tipped chair fall forward and proceed to shred the tutor to intellectual ribbons.

He would cite examples, dates, references and statistics until Yoshi was forced to admit defeat or close the topic altogether. Either way, Jeremy never lost a debate. Jaren would sit wide-eyed, attention flickering from the robed tutor to the intense skinny boy in black. It had never occurred to her to question what Yoshi told her. It had never occurred to her to question what anyone told her.

Sometimes Yoshi would give up, and dismiss them for the afternoon. Jeremy would usually disappear into the kitchen, but one Tuesday in May the node had been down.

That day, as Jaren trekked out through the back garden, she was followed. At the gate, among the trumpet vines, she turned and waited for Jeremy to catch up. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, and in the sunlight his pale skin looked almost translucent.

"I've never been back here," he said, when he had reached her. "What is this?"

"Mother's garden. No one really comes back here, though. Except Mard'he." Mard'he was the gardener, then.

"So, where are you going?"

"The orchard." Jaren gestured past the cobbled walls, to where the landscape got deliberately wild, each gnarled old tree perfectly placed along the swirling riverbanks. It had been carefully planned, with the help of the corporate landscaping division, and had won three awards the year it was put in.

"There's an orchard back there?" Jeremy's look through the gate was doubtful.

"Yes." Jaren said simply.

"This place is so totally fucked. I've never seen anything like it."

Jaren shrugged.

"So there's an orchard, even." Jeremy was still shaking his head. "That where you usually disappear to?"

Jaren smiled shyly in surprise, but nodded again.

"Hey, I'm not flatlined, you know. I see things." He fell into step beside her as she continued along the winding path. "So, what is it you do out here in Fool's Paradise?"

She lifted the cloth bag that was slung over her shoulder. "Draw, " she answered quietly. They rounded a bend in the path, and the compound disappeared behind the grove of willow trees.

"What do you draw? "

She shrugged, "Trees mostly. "

"That's cool, I guess. "

Jaren nodded. "I painted a horse once. With watercolour paint. It was grazing under the black walnut tree."

"No shit? " He swooped down, picked up a rock, and tossed it into the water. "I've never seen a horse."

They had reached the orchard. Jaren spread a small piece of canvas on the sun-dappled grass and sat cross-legged on it, tucking the folds of her blue cotton dress under her. She frowned up at him, where he leaned against an apple tree, brushing at the leaves with his fingers, as if testing how real they were.

"You've never seen a horse? " she asked.

"You don't have to say it like it's unusual. This place is the anomaly, you know." He shook his head at her blank look, then shrugged. "No, I haven't. Well, I guess that's not totally true. I've seen them Inside. Even rode one once. But that's hardly the same. You know?"

"Not really," she said. "I've never been Inside."

Jeremy's hand froze––his eyes narrowed with disbelief. "Not even with a cursor chip?" He slipped down the tree trunk until he was level with her, the broken leaves still in hand.

Jaren shook her head, no. "Mother doesn't really like the Inside. We use the holos, and a touchmonitor."

Jeremy tossed the leaves away. "Shit! Is she for real? F'ing Rapunzel."

Jaren paused for a moment, and then spoke the question aloud that had been in her mind for as long as she could remember.

"What is it like, on the Inside?"

Jeremy began to tell her.

After that, when Yoshi threw them out of the gatehouse, they would lie out in the East garden under the willows and Jeremy would tell Jaren about the Inside. And, eventually, about the Night City.