Subject: Priscilla
From: jvotaw@nmsu.edu (JOEL A VOTAW)
Date: 20 Apr 1996 21:21:50 GMT

This is a very short beginning to a theoretical novel which I wrote 
between classes the other day. No warranty to quality or completeness is 
made, but since there hasn't been scads of stories around here lately I 
thought I'd throw it out. Comments strongly encouraged.

2.

	Anthropolgists in the Amazon forest will tell you the basic 
heirarchy of survival is pretty simple. In order to survive, you have to 
have food water and shelter; everything else is secondary. If you were to 
visit the western reaches of Brazil, you'd see this -- each tiny village 
has a communal water supply with wood huts hunkered down around it.
From here the hunters of the village stalk out with blow guns and 
poisoned bows in search of monkeys and birds; the women in turn search 
for roots and edible plants.
	In a lot of ways, the squatter villages around Juarez are a lot 
like this. Guirella fighters from Mexico and ex-patriot Mormons from 
Guatemala alike flock to the old border cities like this in search of The 
American Dream. Doesn't matter that there is no such thing anymore, 
blatantly hasn't been for 20 years; they come all the same, in search of 
life, liberty, and 24-hour pizza delivery. Life can't be worse than 
it is farther south, they think, with the seasonal plagues of AIDS and 
Typhus and Ebola-7, so they keep coming. And as they do, they bring their 
villages with them, reorganized and accreted into larger groups around 
the seed crystal core of cities like Juarez and Tijuana and Mexicali. 
Huts of mud and corrugated aluminum and refrigerator boxes sprout out of 
the ground overnight, froming complex swirls and patterns visible from 
the air as dots frozen around a strange attractor of prosperity. The 
place is different, the materials are different, but the idea is the same.
	Sometimes, into these places, technological reality will intrude. 
Franchised highway systems seeking a faster route between identical
megalopolises will arc across the desperate landscape, cutting a high-tech
swath of Ultimate Driving Efficiency. And, like magic, these highways will
drop down pre-fab rest areas every 10 miles. Here, the heirarchy of
survival is a little different: the most important item for a road-weary
traveller, before even shelter or food or uppers, is gas. It doesn't
matter if he hasn't eaten in days and is asleep at the wheel, what the
drvier wants before anything else is to JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, out
of this godforsaken landscape of poverty and starvation.  Staring at such
things, even if they're insulated behind 50 feet of mined astroturf and
razor-wire (as they are here), is bad for the health. Not to mention 
insurance rates.
	Anyways, these pre-fab rest areas are self-sufficient oases of
civilization, made exactly the size of a flat-bed traiuler so delivery
trucks can drop them off without even comig to a complete stop. The basic
unit is an automated gas-station, capable of taking a customers and
dispensing high-octane wonder-fuel all on their own. With luck, they only
need to be refilled once a week and rarely wound would-be vandals with
their automated defense mechanisms.
	As time advances and the traffic on a given rest-stop increases,
additional flat-bed-sized modules will be added. The most basic of these
is the food/shower/sleeper unit, usually added up to three at a time so
they form a kind of sleazy quadrangle with the gas unit. The available
food is generally limited to nutritionally-balanced vita-pies, instant
espresso, and a variety of uppers; the showers, though arguably wide
enough to turn around in, are guaranteed to infect you with every possible
commuicable disease as soon as you step into them; and the sleeper
sections are really just rows of cells, each not much larger than the
showers would be if they were laid on their side and plastic wrapped on
the inside like some kind of man-sized condom. More advanced 
accomodations are theoretically possible, though rare, especially along 
this part of the old Mexican-American border.

	It is into a place like this Carpiogli pulls one summer night, his
tires squealing on pavement wet from late summer showers. Beside him the
young girl awakes, frightened. Her eyes are wide open and dewey with dried
tears. Carpiogli pulls up to a pre-fab sleeper unit, leaves the keys in
the ignition of his late-model Audi. A few light sprinkles collect on his
windshield as he hops out to open a sleeping compartment with his credit
card.
	"Whattaya want?"
	Carpiogli turns to see an old man weathered under the sun to the 
point where his ancestery is indeterminate. He is so tanned he could be 
from Mesoamerica or Minneapolis. "Who are you?"
	"The manager."
	Carpiogli pauses, effectively blocked by the old man. He stares
past grizzle and grease into the old guys squinted eyes, and is reminded
of _High Noon_. Under normal circumstances, this guys is about as likely
to be the manager of a franchised rest stop as the Emperor of New
Singapore, but this place is pretty run-down. Carpiogli can see some of
the sleeping cells illuminated in his headlights are broken open, their
ACTIVE/VACANT signs no longer glowing, ruptured open like a cell
victimized by the virus of decay and violence. Rain drips through several
of the compartments.
	Carpiogli looks back at the old man. He's tired from 17 hours on 
the road from SoCal, tired from the last desperate months before that. He 
has no energy left to fight the Last Marlboro Man. "Just need a place to 
spend the night," he says. "Just me'n the girl, no harm done." He nods at 
her, still pale and trembling in the passenger seat, and lets the old guy 
turn the idea over in his mind. Carpiogli can practically see perversions 
and fantasies being filled in before Marlboro replies.
	"Whatever... you can take this one here..."
	Carpiogli nods and opens the indicated pod. A few moments later 
the old man is gone and Carpiogli climbs into the sleeping cell, 
disregards the sweaty, unchanged wrapper, and hauls the girl and 
overnight luggage up after him. Under normal circumstances, he'd rent two 
rooms so they could sleep separately. But these are not normal 
circumstances; he needs to keep an eye on the girl. She crouches in the 
far corner of the compartment, eyes still wide with fright. Carpiogli 
slings the two Gucci bags into the middle of the floor and crouches down 
near the entrance himself. He's tired, so tired.... and tempted by the 
image of uppers in the food dispensers. But he resists, in no mood for 
bottled human adrenal extract imported from giant geengineered hydroponic 
farms in Kowloon or, as is more likely the case, from less idyllic black 
market sources. He cradles the needle gun in his hand, determined not to 
fall asleep.
	He dozes off within five minutes; the girl remains awake,
quivering. 


--------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 1996 Joel Votaw / jvotaw@nmsu.edu