Out of the Waste Land

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The desert Sun was so bright that it almost blinded Margaret as she stepped out of the van. She blinked furiously for a moment and wished she could wear sunglasses again. Then she remembered her options. A sensor built into her silvery helmet’s rim measured her eye movements and fed the data into her computer, allowing her to click on the optical icon and drag the cursor across the Sun symbol. The eyeplate adjusted itself and began to reflect away some of the Mojave sunlight.

Once her eyes had recovered from the glare, Margaret clicked on her movement icons and looked around. Her head turned with none of the jerkiness she had known during her first weeks of therapy, and she got a clear, steady look at her surroundings. The van had stopped at a gas station in a small desert town—a few cinderblock houses with chicken coops and dish antennas in their sunbaked yards, a diner, and a convenience store. She had seen more impressive ghost towns. Dead, weed-choked ground stretched away from the town in all directions, while barren, eroded hills rose up a few miles to the east and north. The brown and tan colors of the land looked baked and dry.

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