Cicadas rarely sang anymore. Gone were the days of riverside baptisms and backyard fish fries. And no one could remember the stolen recipes. The soul of Cottonwood had been snatched up, and the place—and its people—had been hollowed out. Of course, Lorelai was too young to remember anything but dry, deadening plains, air choked with wildfire smoke, and eroded coastlines.
"We wasn't always like this, Lore," Mama would say. "Don't let nobody tell you different."
The way Mama told it, new homes hadn't been built in Cottonwood since the 2040s, years before Lorelai was born. Nobody wanted to build out in the sticks. Backcountry land wasn't worth anything to them unless it could grow crops. Hardly anything grew in Cottonwood anymore. So, they grew their cities instead, clogging them with so-called luxury apartments and clean water bars. Lorelai heard stories from classmates who snuck into the city. The ones who made it back, anyway. They'd return with tales of a hedonistic playground adorned with neon lights and buildings that clawed at the sky. She didn't know how much of it was true, but she would see it herself soon.
Cottonwood wasn't much different from the other rustic enclaves in the district. Mama called it "the backwoods," though she admitted the term wasn't particularly accurate anymore. Most of the lumber just up the way in Bluegum and Willowbrook had been cut down to feed the appetite of ever-growing cities. The scent of magnolia and pine had been eaten away by the smell of rot, barren earth, and sulfurous smog.
Lorelai's parents hadn't always lived in Cottonwood. They'd been displaced at the mercy of floods and storms on the swampy coast they'd once called home. Disasters forced them and their families further inland over two decades ago. Now a data center alley loomed at their backs, pumping a malodorous scent into the air, drinking up what little water they had left. An escalating sequence of thermal runaway events had led the district to impose rolling blackouts and other restrictions on the backcountry, hoarding energy for their voracious cityscapes and data centers to feed on.
"C'mon and eat, y'all," Dad called from the kitchen.
They graciously accepted meager helpings of a stew he had devised with venison, two sweet potatoes, and a prayer. Dad's cooking was good. Mama's was, too, but it wasn't Grandma's. Lorelai was only 11 the last time Grandma had graced the kitchen with her recipes. Seven years without a taste of her peach cobbler was a kind of lonely Lorelai had never felt and, as she was a spiteful girl, she wished that lonely on her enemies.
Mama thanked the chef with a kiss on the cheek, and they took their places around the dinner table. A place was still set for Grandma. Dad always insisted on it. Lorelai couldn't decide if it made things better or worse.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
She froze, eyes darting back and forth between her parents. Who could it be at this hour? So late after curfew?
"I thought they didn't come until tomorrow," Mama whispered, and Lorelai's stomach lurched when she realized who it was. Dad held out a hand. Steady. Quiet. Waiting.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
They sat statue still as he silently rose from the table and moved toward the door with a measured pace. Dad never hurried for anybody he didn't respect. Rusted hinges groaned as Dad opened the door and stepped aside for the compliance officer. The twilight spilled into the room with him.
This compliance officer appeared to still have most of his bio skin, more than Lorelai was used to seeing. Only his neck and the sides of his head had been replaced with cyber flesh. Exotech sheen stood out against the cozy, muted backdrop of their home. Two metallic hands hung at his sides, and Lorelai wondered if the malleable alloy reached all the way up his arms, wrapped around his torso, and formed the architecture of his legs. She could see the circuitry of his brain through polycarbonate windows that curved along his temples and met at the base of his skull. Sparks of electricity ran along the fleshy folds and interlacing silvery coils while a purple light pulsed inside the cranial cavity, a color that had all but disappeared from nature. Another thing they'd stolen.
"This should only take a moment," the officer said, the tone of his resonant voice layered with an electronic timbre. His eyes became electric violet and projected an array of dancing lights, scanning every inch. Peeling wallpaper, a sinking couch, scuffed hardwood floors, rugs fraying at the edges. Soon the lights disappeared, and his eyes flickered with pixelated numbers and images before returning to a dark, russet brown. Such warm eyes. One could almost mistake him for human.
"I only detect three heat signatures," he said. The family offered nothing. Lorelai stared straight ahead, her expression as blank as she could make it, like Mama taught her. He continued, "There is a fourth place set at the table. Explain."
Beneath the table, Lorelai twisted the hem of her dress with sweaty palms, careful not to let her face betray her fidgeting. Setting a place for a ghost had definitely made things worse. Why hadn't she thought to put the bowl away before Dad opened the door? She was fast enough to have done it. Her parents always swore she ran before she crawled.
"Tradition," Dad answered.
"What tradition is that?"
"My mom." Dad lowered his gaze and guarded himself behind folded arms. "She's been gone for some time now, but we still set a place for her."
"Eldercare?"
"No. Just gone."
The officer turned his head in a smooth, mechanical motion. Once again, the lights poured from his head as he scanned a framed photo of Grandma on the far wall, 20 years younger than the Grandma Lorelai knew.
"Inspection complete," the officer said as he turned to leave. "Have a good—"
Knock. Knock.
The faint whirring of hydraulics as his head turned was the only thing filling the silence. Lorelai's eyes widened as his ear canal dilated and a small wire slithered out. The tip flared into a wide cone and pulsated with tiny clicks as it listened for more rapid hammering.
"Old pipes," Dad said. The officer ignored him and scanned the house with violet lights for the second time. After a long pause, he turned to face Dad directly.
"Show me your basement."
The basement was a cliché. Dark, stuffy, creaky. Jammed with old furniture and things that were better unseen. Mama and Lorelai exchanged glances before they rose to follow Dad and the officer into the depths of their home.
"Basements are unusual in this part of the country."
Dad said nothing, and the officer didn't appear to expect an answer. It was simply an observation of his AI brain. The listening device materialized once more and he turned towards the dark cherry armoire against the back wall. Dad's hands balled into fists at his side as the officer marched over and opened it. Old clothes lined the rack. A medley of faded flannels, florals, and paisley, flanked by heavy overcoats.
"I heard scratching."
"Rats," Mama offered. That answer might have sufficed if Dad hadn't simultaneously answered with, "Squirrels."
The officer turned to face Dad again, brow furrowed. Lorelai wondered if they were programmed to make facial expressions. Or was it just muscle memory from when they were human?
"My wife and I are in a debate, officer," Dad said, chuckling. "We ain't seen the critters, so we can only guess what they are." The officer didn't answer. Didn't move, didn't react, didn't blink. "She's probably right, though. Usually is. I need to do some patchin' up around the house either way."
The officer returned his attention to the armoire, reaching out to tug on the dangling cord and turning on the light. A bright violet grid ran over the interior of the armoire for a few seconds. With that, the compliance officer was satisfied. He trampled up the stairs and out of the house, leaving Grandma's armoire wide open. Lorelai wished the worst kind of lonely on whoever made him.
It's hard growing up in a hainted house. Zinnia was the only friend who wasn't too scared to come over. The day she invited a few classmates to her 13th birthday, Lorelai learned their house had become the center of a local tale.
"I ain't goin' in there," her classmate Rawley said.
"Why not?"
"I don't want a ghost to eat me."
"Ghosts don't eat people, fool," Zinnia mocked him. "That's zombies."
"It don't matter! I ain't goin' nowhere near it. My mama said it's hainted 'cause your granny died in there."
It was more than knocking and scratching. Sometimes there were strange smells wafting through rooms. Objects grew legs and walked away while they slept. Every so often, a shriek would slice through the air, so loud it could be heard on the street. Sometimes it would wail with the dawn, other times it arose in the dead of night. It was fair to call it hainted. But the older Lorelai got, the more she wondered, did houses without ghosts even exist anymore?
By the time she turned 14, she'd given up on making new friends. By 15, she'd found a soul mate in Zinnia and they made a tradition of spending birthdays together, just the two of them. Zinnia was the smartest person Lorelai knew. She spoke the language of computers, coding, and cybernetics as if she'd been alive for far longer than 18 years. One year, she got expelled for hacking the school to change her History grade from a B to an A. The teacher had deducted points on her midterm paper for references to state abandonment and urban overdevelopment, as such critical "old world writing" was against academic policy. Old world writing, students were told, was filthy and improper and littered with dangerous ideas and indecent criticisms of the government. Lorelai's parents had tried to pull her from school that year, but homeschooling was outlawed before they could finish the paperwork. Academic expulsion proved to be more of a boon than a punishment for Zinnia. She spent the rest of the semester teaching herself how not to get caught next time.
After dinner, Lorelai crept down the stairs, skipping the rickety third step from the bottom. She never liked the sound of them creaking. Grandma didn't much care for it either. She opened the armoire and felt around until she found the cord. The light flicked on. She reached out to touch one of the flannels, the one she remembered Grandma wearing most often when they went on their evening walks before the curfew sirens howled. On those strolls, Grandma would tell stories from her youth. Stories that didn't exist in the world anymore.
Lorelai let out a sigh and pulled the cord again. Then held it taut for three seconds. Various mechanisms clicked and hummed as the curtain of clothes split in two and the back wall of the armoire opened into another room. She stepped inside.
"You come to put me outta my misery?"
She set the bowl of stew on the table and threw her arms around Grandma, who was hunched over her writing table, meticulously copying a passage from a well-worn book into one of her journals. There were dozens of them lining her shelves, all spilling with handwritten copies of the few books she had managed to preserve from the old world.
It had been seven years since every citizen over the age of 75 was sent to Eldercare. Whatever care the government was offering elderfolk, Grandma wanted no parts. Instead, the family held a funeral, buried an empty casket, and built an undetectable secret room with Mama's engineering prowess and Dad's carpentry.
"A lie don't care who tell it," Grandma often said. But she decided this lie was okay, and forgave herself for pioneering it.
Nobody knew what happened in Eldercare, but Grandma had her guesses. None of them pleasant. "It damn sure ain't bingo nights and water aerobics, I can tell you that," she'd fuss, forgetting she'd already said it countless times. "I'd bet my bottom dollar that place is empty. Ain't nothin' up there but ghosts."
As far as they knew, there had only been a few other successful elderlings. Many became fugitives, and most were caught within the first week. Others were found expired, usually by their own hand. Lorelai heard stories—some tragic, some romantic. One woman hid for over two years so she and her oldest friend could go to Eldercare together. Some elderlings forged documents, de-aging themselves by 10 years. That only worked for the ones who knew to hack their online data, too. Zinnia had tried to hack her grandparents' data, but she was only 11 at the time. Compliance officers dragged them away in front of her.
Overnight, the elderfolk disappeared, and any recipes they hadn't shared were stolen away with them. All the knowledge they had, the stories they held, all but vanished. By the fifth cull, there was hardly anyone left who knew anything true about the old world. Everything people knew about it came from the tongues of elderfolk. None of it was in the books they read or the films they watched or the music they heard. Remnants of elder knowledge, stories, and recipes, their rootwork, spells, and prayers—anything that hadn't been written down and hidden away—would begin to fade until they, too, disappeared.
Grandma was old enough to remember when they executed the librarians. Lorelai was grateful to still have her, but she was never the same after the day she became an elderling. She had become too paranoid to leave her hovel before curfew, taking to roaming around the house at night. A few times, the family heard pots rattling and smelled garlic and onion on cast iron. But whenever they crept into the kitchen, they would find that Grandma had scurried off back to her hiding place, leaving only the beginnings of a recipe no one else in the house could master. Most days would pass without incident, but sometimes they heard her wake from nightmares, screaming.
"My sweet Lore," Grandma cooed. "What have you brought me?"
"Stew. Dad made it."
Grandma cradled the bowl and inhaled, then dipped a pinky into the broth and tasted. "Needs more sage. Good though." She set it back down and shifted towards Lorelai. "So, what's the plan?"
"Zinnia's comin' with me. She's already 18."
Once Lorelai turned 18 at the end of the week, her parents could no longer be held responsible for any transgressions she committed. Their hearts would be broken if she got caught. But at least their lives would be spared.
"Good," Grandma said, squeezing Lorelai's hand with a warm smile. "Give 'em hell."
The night of her 18th birthday, Lorelai snuck out after curfew and met Zinnia under the last dogwood tree, about a mile and a half from the Cottonwood border. They trekked across the plains until they found the damaged part of the wall their classmates snuck through to taste of the city's wonders, emerging on the other side to dramatic neon lights on every building. Above them, drones whirred and jetted through the air, their searchlights gliding over the land in haphazard patterns. Lorelai and Zinnia covered their faces with imperfect, handcrafted animal masks, each donned with warpaint. These, too, had been outlawed.
Zinnia pulled a device from her bag. She'd retrofitted the vintage technology, and she had plans to wreak havoc with it beyond tonight's adventure. Try as she might, Lorelai could never grasp such a skill. Zinnia punched in a few commands and the drones nearest to them plummeted to the ground. On swift legs, they flew, drones falling from the sky as they passed. Soon, they reached the opening to an underground tunnel at the edge of the city, where Zinnia got to work hacking the security panel.
Lorelai looked behind them, at the space left between them and the border wall. If there was ever a time to turn back, this was it.
Grandma had just fallen in love for the first time when they first came for the books, canoodling with her lover in the library stacks. They were none the wiser when officers entered and rounded up the librarians. It was the screaming that alerted them. Gunshots came next. Then loud, clumsy thuds as bodies flopped onto the floor. And a directive from a tinny voice to, "Burn everything." The young lovers escaped through the back as the building filled with smoke. Grandma rushed home, hefted every book she could carry into the backyard, and planted them among the flowers.
"But I couldn't save 'em all," she said when she told Lorelai the story, head hung low, a river coursing through the wrinkles beneath her eyes. "Oh, Lore. I lost so many to the flames."
Gone were the subversive stories, deemed too primitive for modern minds. Digital libraries were next. AI cadets tore through every online collection of books, articles, and essays, slashing and hacking, mercenaries in the night. Audiobooks, e-books, PDFs, unpublished manuscripts. Ravaged. In return, the people were given government-curated, AI-generated, sanitized narratives, theories, and philosophies that glorified an obedient, orderly, and uniform world.
But for as long as there have been books, Grandma said, books have had fierce protectors.
"We should, all of us, be librarians now," she told Lorelai on the night she invited her into the fold. "I hope you'll become a book guardian, too."
Machinery hissed and the steel door popped open. Zinnia turned to Lorelai and winked. Before their families stopped going to church, Lorelai and Zinnia were taught that eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge was the gravest sin they could commit. Here they were. Sinners, the both of them. And down they went, into the labyrinthian underground, in search of a hidden trove of old world books, longing to taste their forbidden fruit.