Before going to Gwen’s party, Beth went into her little stash of ration cards and packaged goodies. Not just for the birthday gift itself, but also for a host gift to George’s family. Gwen hadn’t explicitly said anything, but Beth had overheard enough conversations about social events to know. If someone was inviting you to eat, then you brought enough to compensate for it. No one had enough rations to be careless with them.

  When Oakley realised she was going out, he turned his back and refused to speak. Beth ignored him. She was not going to allow herself to be emotionally blackmailed. No, she didn’t have to go to this party in the same way that she had to go to work. But she wanted to, and she deserved to do things she liked.

  Beth took the bus for part of the way and walked the rest. The first impression of the address was, not unexpectedly, the raised beds. The front garden had all the best south-facing aspects. Now large steel drums lined either side of the pretty stone path, full of soil and plants. In a different time, Beth could imagine the neighbours complaining about the makeshift materials. Now they were more likely to be envious of the enthusiastic circles of seedlings.

  After verifying the number against her instructions, and then again, just to be sure, Beth awkwardly rang the doorbell. She wondered if that simple task would ever come to feel as natural to her as it seemed to be for the older residents. Beth realised suddenly that this was her first adult dinner party. The first she had been invited to because they wanted her company in particular. Not because she was part of the family. It was a thrilling and scary realisation, both at the same time.

  The door opened, and Beth finally got to meet the infamous George. She had somehow expected either a cartoon villain with beady eyes, or a hero with windswept hair. Instead, George was a perfectly normal looking man. His hairline was just starting to recede, and the colour might have been slightly more blond than the average on Pines, but that was the extent of defining characteristics.

  He was, however, very nice. He asked about all of Beth’s family and assured her about the lovely things Gwen had said about her. In return, he asked about all of Gwen’s stories from work, showing both interest and concern. Beth liked him. His obvious love for Gwen would have excused almost everything else in Beth’s eyes.

  Gwen gave her a hurried hug and hello before she disappeared off into the kitchen again, taking George with her. The sister-in-law Louise was the one to give Beth a tour. The house was semi-detached, with a cheerful assortment of extensions and conversions. In floor space, it probably wasn’t too different from the de la Hayes house. In feel, however, it was completely different from that interior designer’s portfolio work.

  “We ended up having to combine three households,” explained Louise cheerfully. “The things the old folks left behind, George’s things from his flat, and our things from our original house. So, we just thought, you know what? We’d keep everything comfortable. Then we decided we might as well lean into the chaos, so we bought the most colourful cushions, blankets, and decorations we could. It was great fun.”

  Louise was right. By adding even more colours and clutter, it almost made the rooms feel coherent again, despite the random couch in the hallway, or the kitchen cabinet in the bedroom. The bright fleece blankets everywhere were soft and inviting. Once Beth had finished admiring the illusionary-koi-pond bathmat and the glow-in-the-dark bedsheets, Louise took them out to the back garden. She assured Beth that Gwen and George would join her shortly.

  Her husband, Arthur, was holding court with the four other guests at the wood-grill. The smell of cooking fish hit Beth like a punch to the nose. Arthur was turning the mackerel with confidence, but perhaps less care than they deserved.

  “No new laws!” Arthur declaimed. “That’s the way to tyranny.”

  His audience wasn’t letting him have his way. “Of course we have to introduce new laws. It’s not like the current ones cater for superpowers, is it?”

  “Except that they do,” said Authur, with a determined intensity that made Beth suspect he’d already had some alcohol. “It’s what you do that’s illegal. Not how you do it. If you kill someone with a knife, or a pillow, or a children’s toy, or with a skill, it’s all the same, you see?”

  “Okay, sure, for the big things, it’s already illegal. But, like, that’s only if you’re committing a serious crime. There’s no rule stopping people from using their abilities in crowded spaces just in case something goes wrong.”

  “But that’s the trick, don’t you see?” said Arthur. “They say they want to restrict usage to prevent accidents, but they really want to control everything about skills.”

  “If they want to ‘control’ my neighbour and stop him setting his grass on fire, then I’m okay with that, strangely.”

  Arthur frowned at the general laughter. “You really think those laws were designed with your interests in mind?”

  “Why are you so sure they weren’t?” demanded the man with the neighbour. “Any actual evidence? Not just what they might do, mind. What they are doing.”

  “Easy,” said Arthur. “The declaration that it’s illegal to buy or sell skills. How does that have anything to do with keeping anyone safe?”

  “Is that even possible?” asked Beth.

  “Exactly my point!” exclaimed Aurthur.

  Someone took pity on Beth and explained. “Not yet, but there’s a skill people think will allow it when it levels up. Something-something frozen moment.”

  Beth didn’t remember anything in The Book about transferring skills. “Is it a copy or a trade? I mean, does it leave the original person with the skill as well?”

  “No-one knows, because it can’t be done at all yet. So yeah, Arthur’s point about why introduce laws at all.”

  “Because,” said Aurthur with heavy emphasis, “They want to get us used to government oversight.”

  The helpful explainer took over again. “People are taking deposits on trading their skills for when it becomes possible. Pushing the narrative that if you didn’t get in early, they’d all be claimed, you see? And it gives them the money they urgently need to live long enough to eventually do the trade.”

  “Doesn’t seem like much of an assurance. You’d have no way of knowing whether they’d sold the promise of the same skill to multiple people.”

  “They’d know pretty fast when it came to trade and it turned out to be once only.”

  “If it ever becomes possible at all. I could see people taking the bet that they never will.”

  “Maybe Pines is making it all illegal to prevent the scams,” said the guest who seemed to settled into the position as devil’s advocate.

  “Scamming is already illegal,” said Author. “And until a scam actually happens, it’s a stupid law. No victim, no evidence, no transfer of goods. How would they possibly even try to prove it?”

  The group spent a little while discussing what would count as proof. Reports of people offering the service? Unexplained transfers of money?

  “I think I have won the point,” said Authur. “Pines can’t be intending to stop the trade. They must know they can’t anyway.”

  Beth wondered what the impact of the second auction was going to have on this specialised little market. Would people demand refunds so they could bid on the skill directly instead? She could just imagine the chaos, even if no dishonesty happened at all.

  In fact—

  “Maybe the point isn’t to stop it,” said Beth. “Maybe Pines just wants to wash their hands of it.”

  “How do you mean that?”

  “Imagine you put a deposit on a skill, despite knowing that’s illegal. Then it turns out you were scammed. You can’t exactly complain and ask Pines to do something about it, can you? You don’t get consumer protection rights on illegal products. You can’t expect Pines to step in and force the transfer.”

  “You know, that makes a lot of sense,” said the explainer. “Not a point to you then, Arthur.”

  Arthur waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t the individual laws that worry me anyway. It’s the pattern of laws.”

  “And the patterns of punishments,” said George.

  Beth turned to see Gwen and George had come out of the house to join them. Beth could see the resemblance between the two brothers.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Authur, pointing the tongs at his brother. “Exactly. Like how they’re going to declare theft of tokens to be an actual capital offence. Like, firing squad and everything type of offence.”

  Beth’s breath was stolen whenever she was reminded of those nine tokens she’d taken. It was fine, she told herself firmly. The bodies were long since cremated. The tokens themselves had been converted into her system. No-one had any reason to suspect anything, and there wasn’t any evidence left that she’d done anything. Besides, it hadn’t even been a crime at the time. And The Book was completely silent about it.

  “That isn’t what’s happening,” protested the devil’s advocate.

  “That’s exactly what’s happening,” said Arthur. “What do you think ‘penalties for indictable offences to be handed over to the military’ means?”

  “Personally,” said George. “I assumed it was slavery.”

  There was a round of shocked laughter.

  “George!” protested Gwen, half-laughing herself.

  “What else can you call prison labour handled by the military?” asked George. “They wouldn’t be taking people if they didn’t want to use them for something they can’t ask of their actual soldiers.”

  “The dangerous stuff,” said Arthur, co-operatively. “The stuff likely to get them infected. You also think it’s executions – just with extra steps.”

  “Come on, people. Don’t you think you’re being a bit conspiracy theory here? Pines can introduce a few more laws and guidelines, but they can’t just totally overhaul the entire legal system.”

  “Legal is whatever they say is legal,” said Arthur. “What, are you going to stop them? Quite literally, you and what army?”

  “I think they’re doing their best,” said the guy with the neighbour. “Remember when the infection first started and all those people complained about how draconian we were compared to the mainland? Well, who’s laughing now?”

  “Definitely not all those perfectly healthy kids we just left to starve,” said George with a sharp smile. “They’re all dead.”

  That statement claimed its own minute of silence.

  “We weren’t the ones who did that,” he replied quietly. “Those Southern Coalition bastards did it when they declared themselves an independent country and cut off the whole province like it was a diseased limb.”

  “Just because they didn’t do more doesn’t excuse us from not doing more. If we had the evacuation boats take only kids under fourteen, they wouldn’t have even needed a quarantine. We could have rescued them all in a few days.”

  “The government was just trying to keep us safe. Even kids can get infected if they’re exposed to infection long enough. Who knows what threat we could have exposed ourselves to? They did everything they could.”

  “Bullshit,” said George. “They just didn’t want the extra mouths to feed. Pines isn’t bothering to support the kids from Greenmouth. They weren’t going to waste resources on foreigners.”

  “I thought the refugee kids were all being hosted at the university.”

  “Yeah,” said George, “These kids watched their families become infected, one by one, in front of them. Then they watched everyone they loved being gunned down by the soldiers who claimed to be saving them. Only to be taken away from everything they know, picked up and packed up into dormitories, four to a single room. ‘Hosted at the university’ indeed.”

  “More than that. Didn’t Pines hire you to teach them?”

  “And that’s literally all they’ve done. No pens, paper, no textbooks, nothing to teach with.”

  “I suppose those are in very short supply.”

  “Not that short,” said George. “I’ve had to buy it myself, but there’s enough recycled paper and old textbooks to go around.”

  “What about clothes and food?”

  “They used to supply those, I guess. Until the auction. Now, they don’t. The system provides for the children, so Pine figures it doesn’t have to.”

  “I thought kids just got about enough points to cover food,” said Beth.

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  “And that’s all Pines thinks they deserve. ‘They get free housing, free education and free food, what more could they possibly want?’” asked George, his tone making his opinion of the person he was quoting clear. “‘Really, how much can children possibly eat? If they want some personal luxuries, they can exchange the extra food substitute for it’.”

  “Have these people ever met a teenager?” asked Beth. “Or even heard about one on TV?”

  The reasoning had moved beyond insensitive into completely absurd. Although Beth supposed if she was forced to eat pure food substitute each day and every day, and nothing but, she wouldn’t have much of an appetite either.

  “You do have to wonder,” agreed George.

  “Are the kids allowed to get allotments of their own? Or turn some of the university grounds into a kitchen garden, with the kids doing the gardening? Turn it into more of a vocational school. Teach a man to fish, and all that.”

  Arthur used his tongs as a pointer again. “It would be an excellent plan to let them fish.”

  “Arthur caught all the fish we’re eating today himself,” explained George to Beth.

  “That’s just pier fishing,” said Arthur. “Good skill for anyone to have, but not what I meant. They should be setting up a proper aquaponics system, so that they can harvest both vegetables and fish.”

  “Are you doing that?” asked Beth.

  “Not enough space on the property,” mourned Arthur. “I’d like to get an allotment and try there, but it’s against the terms.”

  “Doesn’t it take a lot of electricity anyway?”

  “Not necessarily. Sure, it’s easier if you can just rely on pumps. But there’s cultures who have been doing aquaponics for centuries without pumps.”

  “I’m pretty sure they used active rivers and height differences, then.”

  “Okay, maybe, but it’s not like rivers and height differences don’t exist here too, right?”

  “Not on your average allotment. Or on university grounds.”

  “Anyway,” interrupted Gwen firmly. “Are you done with the fish, then? Everything else is already on the table.”

  Arthur saved the last fish from burning and moved it to the waiting container. They trooped inside.

  It was a wonderful meal. The fish and the salad were a genuine treat, and Beth was forced to mentally apologise to Arthur. He was a good cook. It wasn’t just the food, though – the conversation was also fascinating. They had collectively decided to pull back from the contentious issues and return to lighter topics. The main speakers were still animated and enthusiastic, but they took the time to include the less assertive. Everyone was given their chance to speak, and everyone’s viewpoints were taken seriously. Beth was still conscious of being younger than the rest of the group, but they didn’t talk down to her or value her less for it.

  After they were finished eating, Gwen took Beth out to have a look at the raised beds. It was mostly an excuse to give them some time alone, but Beth was still interested. The rest of the party had gathered around the little piano to do some old-style karaoke and didn’t miss them. Beth pulled out her small gift, wrapped in the cover from an old cushion.

  “Happy birthday for earlier,” said Beth.

  “Thank you,” said Gwen. “You didn’t need to.”

  “I wanted to,” said Beth.

  Gwen removed the contents, returning the cover to Beth. It was just a few items. A packet of Beth’s acorn coffee. A small bar of soap she’d ‘bought’ from her father. And the most valuable item: a chocolate bar, saved from way back when she’d sent Oakley to buy snacks before the evacuation.

  “Beth,” said Gwen. “This is too much. You can’t be giving me all of this.”

  “It’s not much,” said Beth. “It’s less valuable than the seeds you’ve been giving me for no reason at all.”

  “You can’t count all that, luv,” said Gwen. “Those are just the extras I had after my own work.”

  “And this is stuff I have extra of,” said Beth.

  Saying that about chocolate wasn’t very convincing, but it was true of the coffee and the soap.

  Gwen sighed in defeat. “When’s your birthday, then?”

  Beth pasted on a casual expression. “12th February. Still a long way to go.”

  “Oh no. Did your birthday not go well this year?” asked Gwen, and Beth realised she was not as good an actor as she’d thought.

  “Well, you know,” she said. “With everything that’s going on, we didn’t really celebrate it.”

  “Was it that your family didn’t do much to celebrate, or was it more like they forgot about it entirely?”

  “My little sister remembered,” said Beth. “She gave me a lovely gift.”

  “But your mum and dad didn’t.”

  “My father was very stressed,” said Beth. “And, you know, we’re not used to coping without calendar reminders. And Sophie doesn’t really try to act like my mother anyway.”

  “Are you trying to say it that it was all your own fault for not reminding them ahead of time?” asked Gwen.

  “Not my fault, exactly,” said Beth. “But it was stupid for me not to. Sure, I wanted them to remember of their own accord. But it wasn’t worth the test.”

  Next year, and every year thereafter, she would say something. Arrange her own birthday party, if it came to that.

  “Good for you,” said Gwen. “Very sensible. I’m very sorry that you were hurt. They should have had more care. You did deserve better. But now that you know, there’s no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face about it. Did you speak to your dad afterwards?”

  “Ha, no,” said Beth. “My birthday isn’t in the top ten of the list of things I’d want him to pay attention to.”

  “Oh?” said Gwen neutrally.

  Beth didn’t think Gwen would push if Beth played it off. But Beth did want to talk. And who else was she going to speak to about it? Peter?

  She tried to explain the debt situation objectively. She didn’t want to come across too harshly and give Gwen the wrong impression.

  “He does intend to pay it himself,” Beth found herself explaining. “He isn’t trying to steal from me or anything.”

  “No,” agreed Gwen. “Taking money from you would never count as stealing to him, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never met the man, but I’ve met enough like him. While you’re in his house, you’re just an extension of him, you see. Your money is part of his money. He can’t see why you’d care if the debt was in his name or in your name, because it doesn’t matter to him.”

  That made an uncomfortable amount of sense.

  “Also,” continued Gwen, “And I know I’m poking my nose in a bit, but is your father officially employed? Like registered with the council, employed?”

  “No,” said Beth.

  “Then, he’s a little right, isn’t he? You’re only the maximum council tax band because you have a job. I bet that’s taking a third of your salary or more, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they’ve mostly given up on the community service. There was only so much maintenance and garbage collection they could ask people to do, even without the machinery. I’ve heard if the whole family is unemployed, it’s down to something like ten hours service a week.”

  “Are you saying I’m the one creating my own problems and I should just quit my job?”

  “No,” said Gwen. “Or, not quite. I’m not saying you should quit if you’re enjoying yourself. I’m not even saying that you should stop helping your family if you find your own satisfaction in it. I’m saying that you shouldn’t feel trapped. I’m saying there are other solutions. And one of those solutions is that your family can take the unemployment benefits if they need to. You’re an adult now, but you’re not the adult responsible for your family.”

  Beth opened her mouth to assure Gwen that her father hated the idea of any handouts or charity. But she stopped. She knew that wasn’t true. It was something her father liked to claim, but when it came down to it, if he could find any excuse, he’d take it. The benefits her father took were always somehow ‘not the same thing’. Gwen could be entirely right.

  “But what do I do?” she burst out.

  “Well, it’s like your birthday situation, isn’t it? It’s a pity, but you already know you aren’t going to get everything you want. Your dad is never going to think the things you want him to think. But you can still find a way to get the results you want. What do you want?”

  Beth stared at her.

  “It’s okay if you don’t have an answer now. But think about it. Is it just that you want the money back? Or do you just want a peaceful home life? Or do you want freedom?”

  Beth did think about it. She wanted the money back, but only as a way of reassuring herself. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t live without, not with her hidden wealth. What she wanted her family not to sell her away, but Gwen was right. That was a thought, and she couldn’t stop them thinking. She could only prevent the action.

  “Have a plan,” said Gwen. “Have a whole bouquet of plans. If you’ve thought it through ahead of time, then you can decide what can live with. But your dad is a grown man. Don’t waste your time waiting for him to change.”

  “There you are!” said George, slipping out the door to join them. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Oh, talking about my father’s work,” said Beth, not entirely untruthfully. “He’s participating in some sort of program to produce soap.”

  “Really?” asked George. “I saw some new soap just today. They’d converted dishwashing tablets into makeshift shampoos and soaps. Was that him?”

  “No,” said Beth, “Must be someone else.”

  “Dishwashing tablets?” repeated Gwen, sounding horrified.

  “A cleaner is a cleaner,” said George. “The only difference between shower-gel and dishwashing tablet is the amount of foam they release. The foam doesn’t actually do anything, you know. It’s just added to make people feel like it’s doing something.”

  “There must be differences,” said Gwen. “I refuse to believe my skin has as much oil as your average plate.”

  With that, the conversation drifted naturally away from the dangerous topic of her father.

  Beth was torn. Part of her was feeling guilty for having discussed it at all – she was being disloyal to her father by complaining about him to an outsider. Part of her was relieved that it wasn’t just her – other people agreed that it was inappropriate behaviour. The rest of her was overwhelmed with the thought that she needed to decide what to do about it.

  “Any decisions on the order form?” George asked her, and Beth focused back on the conversation.

  “I want everything,” said Beth with a smile. “Unfortunately, that would be too expensive.”

  George snorted. “After nationalising all the seeds and seed production facilities, of course they’d want to take their profit.”

  “They did bring a lot of this in on those military flights,” said Gwen, mildly. “They didn’t just take it from people.”

  Pines had really stepped up. That unknown speaker in The Book hadn’t exaggerated much. Compared to later years, what they were offering was downright miraculous. She could even apply for fruit trees, even if they wouldn’t be delivered immediately. Pines were taking the year to propagate as many saplings as they could, so they wouldn’t be available until they went dormant again.

  It would be further three or four years after that before the trees were mature enough to produce fruit. A long time before she could recover her investment. Longer even than the three-year loan her father had already taken out. With everything under consideration, it was ridiculously over-optimistic to plan that far out.

  Which might have been precisely why Beth wanted to. She was wanted to be safe and secure in five years, eating as many peaches and pears and cherries as she could stomach.

  “It comes down to how much debt I’m willing to go into,” explained Beth. “I figure I have enough sun for five fruit trees. But the thing is, a full tree would produce entirely too much of one type of fruit for me to process.”

  “Couldn’t you sell the excess?” asked George.

  “No,” said Gwen and Beth together.

  Gwen continued, “Definitely no selling. They used to just have a general ban on using the allotments for a profit, but with this expansion and all, they’ve clenched up tighter than bull’s arse in fly season. We’re not allowed to remove anything from the allotment grounds we’re not planning on eating immediately. They catch you even giving food away, and you lose your allotment.”

  “So I was looking at this technique,” said Beth. “You plant three varieties with the same root stock a foot or so apart from each other and treat them as a single tree. Prune each one as if it’s one-third of a whole. That’ll let you stretch out the harvest season and get more varieties of fruit for the same amount of space.”

  Beth was not being entirely honest. Yes, the technique existed, but it wasn’t really recommended in her region. It was more suited to gardens a lot closer to the equator. The impact on fruit production and longevity could vary. The fruit production wasn’t her only goal, however. She also wanted was as many varieties as she could buy, so she could use the branches to graft new fruit trees and trade them for everything else she wanted later on.

  “But that would be three times as expensive,” said George.

  “Exactly,” said Beth. “And it also feels immoral, you know? Every tree I buy is a tree someone else can’t.”

  “I’m not sure whether to feel a wee bit insulted here, luv,” said Gwen.

  “What?” asked Beth, whipping around to look at her. “Why?”

  “They don’t let us trade food outside. We’re still perfectly free to trade while we’re still on school grounds, aren’t we? We grab another person, split the trees between us. Plant each as a full tree. Then each harvest a third when it comes time.”

  “Oh,” said Beth. “Oh. Yes. We can do that. Of course we can do that.”

  Of course. They could trade anything between them even more easily than they could trade things at those future swap-meets. Beth could breathe easier. Borrowing enough for five trees was a lot more affordable than borrowing enough for fifteen.

  “Good,” said Gwen. “Then that’s settled. What else were you thinking of getting?”

  Beth laid out her plans. The typical options. More tomatoes. Eggplants, cucumbers, peas and beans. Garlic, onions and spring onions. Some strawberries, because why not. They did grow so very well in the climate.

  By the time they’d decided, the sun was setting.

  Gwen brought them in to prepare a round of hot fennel milk. Arthur was once again the centre of attention. People wouldn’t risk asking what others did with their time, for fear of embarrassing them. But people who had jobs often found ways to bring it up themselves, and Arthur was talking about his. He sold improved interfaces to the system, it turned out.

  “Arthur picked up one of the weird skills and really lucked out,” explained George.

  “There was no luck involved,” Arthur protested. “I could tell from the description that it was a programming ability.”

  “A programming ability for skills?” asked Beth, fascinated. “Can you alter how they work? Or create whole new ones?”

  “Well, no,” said Arthur, instantly less animated. “Not yet anyway. But I can create and share customised display with improved interactions. Which is a relief, considering what a pain that silly ‘blink and nod’ system was. Speaking of, care to buy one? Proper menus and buttons, and a nice display for your skills and current levels.”

  “How much?” asked Beth.

  “One ceep, friend price.”

  That was enough for a single day’s food for a person, if they were frugal. Beth would earn that in about half an hour of work with the allotment clearing team, not counting breaks and transport. It was only expensive in the sense that it was a pure luxury, and she wasn’t supposed to wasting anything.

  But Arthur made an excellent point. The provided interface was a pain.

  “Thank you,” said Beth. “I’d appreciate that.”

  Arthur walked her through the process of accepting the mod, and Beth understood better why people were so willing to believe that skills could similarly be traded. It seemed like an obvious extension.

  Beth triggered her brand-new skills menu.

  She read happily down the list until she suddenly got to the last line. Journey Immortalised? She hadn’t even bid on that, let alone won it. And at that level? She closed the interface quickly, trying not to react. She complimented Arthur on how much easier and more useful it was and paid desperate attention to the conversation.

  It wasn’t until she was back home and safely in bed that she let herself think about it again. She stared up at the ceiling through the semi-transparent screen. Now that she tried, she could interact with The Book in the same way she did any other skill. Well, not quite. It didn’t let her level it up. But she could view the contents through the same menu system as the rest.

  There was only one reasonable conclusion. The Book was an alien superpower, given to her early.

  How? Why? And why her?

  Beth had the uncomfortable sensation of having been burdened with a significant favour and no clear way to pay it back. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that at all.