Harlan Robinson made it home just after noon the next day. He greeted his nephews near the road block; they had already heard about the destruction of the forward enforcement station and were glad to see Harlan safe. His wife Betty met him on their front porch, kissed him, and served him a lunch that she had been keeping warm on the stove.
“You know that the Bakers got some good photos with their drone, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’ll find them once you log on. I’m quite sure that Jerry has already distributed them.”
“Wonderful.”
“And I think you’ve already got thank you currency from some farmers.”
“Double wonderful,” he said as he pulled out a chair, motioning for her to join him. But she walked over and kissed him on the forehead rather than sitting. “Thank you, darling, but I have Miriam waiting for me on the mesh.”
He smiled. “Go, have fun.”
The “mesh” was a wireless network that people ran in the woods. It went from house to house only, which meant that the New Order couldn’t control it. If they brought their surveillance drones in they could read the network traffic, but it was all encrypted, so those risks were at least reduced.
Their mesh network – and almost every place outside of the New Order’s cities had access to at least one of them – was very slow compared to the all-fiber networks of the core cities, but sending email and text messages was never a problem and on a good day, you could stream video.
Harlan finished his lunch, cleaned up, and fell into bed. “I love my life,” he muttered to himself as he began to doze off, “I truly do.”
**
Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com