After being intimidated by the wall around Sherwood, Helen felt better about the town which lay before her now. She suspected they knew she was coming and she was right. She was greeted at the first dwellings by a girl who looked like a large bird and a boy who looked like a large cat. Helen dismounted from her bike.

["We've been expecting you,"] thexted the bird. She had a human mouth, a hard gray nose, which looked beakish and was covered in feathers. She wore no clothing. The cat-boy's lips puffed outwards, cleft below a small dark nose, and gazed at her with slitted eyes. He also wore no clothing and was covered in fur. Helen couldn't guess their ages, but they seemed young.

["Yes, I wonder if you have seen a man come through on a unicycle? He's medium height, in his early 30s, dark brown hair, medium dark skin, and brown eyes? He's sort of a writer?"]

["Oh, yes, we know Marto. He was not here, in Cos but stopped by near here. A delegation of us went to see him. How can we help?"]

["I'm delivering a message to him, in person."]

The pair of greeters stared at her, their expressions impossible to interpret. The silence continued for at least a minute, growing awkward. Helen wondered if she would be turned away, worried because of her growing hunger and need for a place to sleep.

Then without warning, the bird girl pecked at the cat boy who hissed, lifting his paw-like hands to swat her. The two stood apart, ready to attack each other a moment before abruptly returning to their previous postures.

["Follow us,"] thexted the cat. ["You are tired and hungry. We are happy to offer you what we have. Welcome to Cos."]

Relief poured over Helen and she felt her eyes well up slightly. ["Thank you so much."] She walked her bike into the town.

Cos stood on a green hill. There was grass and paths leading through it with a sparse settlement of homes, some square and some dome-like, all new. This was not like other interconnected towns, built on existing coastal suburbs. This community seemed to have sprung from a park or country club abandoned in the old days. Through the trees and homes, you could see the water, devouring crumbling homes and buildings on the coastline.

Helen had been delayed in her departure from Reverside by the violent storm that swung through a few days prior. She received the upgrade from Dizzy for following Marto but was still getting used to it. The implantation process was disturbing and disgusting. She had hoped never to have to do it again after her first implant experience back in the Jersey, but she did her best to tough it out. Her thexting had improved to the point where she was told it was acceptable for communicating with people in her local vicinity. She was still fairly disoriented when she tried to thext to people she couldn't see. Her visualizer was still adapting to her specific mental patterns. For the time being, she could only get strange blurry hints of the larger interconnected community. It gave her a mild headache.

Given the abundance of land in Cos, the farm system was ubiquitous and sprawling. Unlike the one in Reverside, theirs was low to the ground, encased in something clear, like glass, but maybe not glass, and angled its way along the walkways and around the homes. It was sunken halfway into the ground, with the glass covering only the top of the rows of plants. The structures rarely rose above waist high. It was easy to peer down into it to see the growth of grain, vegetables and other food for the harvest. Helen's stomach growled loudly when she looked at a dense cluster of tomatoes, ready to be picked by the waiting bots. They walked over a delicate arch of a bridge where part of the farm intersected the path. Ahead of them was a reassuringly human looking person, a little like Mem, but with photosynthetic hair like hers, growing over the entire top half of their body. They had dark skin like her own, and a broad white smile.

["I am Tash,"] said Tash. ["Head of security here, in Cos. Reyleena let me know you might come this way. I want you to know you are most welcome here. We will offer you what we can and help you on your journey."]

["Thank you so much. I came all the way from Reverside, and I could use a break."]

A small boy with a tangled mop of red hair walked up to Helen and handed her a cup with a tan milky liquid in it. She did her best to access ratings for him and push the meter up as far as it would go. He smiled at her and walked away.

The liquid in the cup was thick, slightly sweet, and calmed her anxious body like a heavy blanket on a cold night. She closed her eyes and felt the calories course through her. It was hard not to gulp it all down at once. "Oh," she heard herself say. The bird girl laughed. It was a high cackling sound that made Helen nervous. The cat boy licked his hand and then rubbed his fist against his forehead.

No longer starving, she had a chance to take in her surroundings. Aside from the winding farms everywhere, Cos seemed a lot like Reverside or Livings-town or any other interconnected community she had visited. The silence was the main feature. Helen could hear birds above, crows and bluejays mostly.

She remembered those sounds from her childhood home in Pittsburgh. The lands around Baywood where her mother lived after her separation from her father were quiet, and as a teen, she often walked for long hours in the wooded lands surrounding the old brick mansion. Her brother and sister were consumed with their roles as the future rulers of their worker families, familiarizing themselves with commerce and production. Helen was an outcast, born of a separate bloodline, a product of her mother's relationship with a drifter before the marriage to her father. She knew she wouldn't be called upon to take up the yoke of subjugation when she was grown and lived a life of aristocratic boredom.

Her mother kept a large library of books on the second floor of their estate and she would pick one and remove herself to a quiet rock in the woods, listening to the birds caw overhead as she read about bygone eras of nations and nature. She remembered those worlds as if she had lived in them. Stories of aristocrats and paupers, wars and flight, steamships and airships, battles for land against tribes of native peoples, now forever changed. Listening to the call of the birds brought her back to her lost youth, spent between the pages of old books.

["Let's get you situated, so you have an idea of where you will be sleeping,"] Tash thexted, breaking into her reverie. Helen nodded and followed them down the path to the left, and down the slope of the hill to a one-room empty square dwelling with a bed and a few floor cushions. Helen left her bike leaning up against the side of the boxy house and put down her pack next to the bed. She felt as if she could fall asleep there at once.

She could feel the fabric on the bed and the floor cushions were woven from tiny plastic threads. The color was pale, but with hints of green, blue and yellow woven in. ["It's from the North Atlantic gyre,"] Tash thexted, seeming to read her mind, or had Helen thexted that last thought? ["We send out colonies of bots in slow-moving solar powered bottle boats in search of the plastic. They harvest it and eventually bring it back to shore near one of the tribes. On the way to shore, they convert it into a useable state, like this fleece. Parts of this home structure are also from that gyre."] Helen thought she could smell the sea in the fabric, but it might have been imagined.

Back home, everything was handmade, from wood or wool or cotton or hemp. The house itself had been created back in the glory days of material, and it was crumbling. The old plastic plumbing was replaced by new lead pipes, thankfully. Toilets, baths, and showers were a welcome luxury, as was running water. Helen became aware she needed a commode.

["Two doors down,"] thexted Tash. ["You can access the Cos map with your visualizer. Lots of information there about where to get food, water, a bath and more. Reyleena tells me you should be able to access it now. Give it a try."]

Helen squinted, concentrating on finding a map of Cos. Suddenly, a three-dimensional map in sharp detail filled her imagination. It felt like a daydream, but sharper, clearer and fully under her control. She found herself inside the square house on the northwestern outskirts of the town, highlighted with a generic icon of a woman's face. Suddenly the icon changed to show her own face. It was an image of her approaching Cos, maybe from the point of view of the bird-girl. Her face looked thin. She had not seen a mirror since she left home. It was the first time she had seen the sprouting green hair on her head. She zoomed in and the image of her face filled her imagination. It moved as she looked at it, her puff of vegetation waving slightly in the breeze. She had missed being able to gaze at a reflection of herself but had been too busy with her travels and her mission to find Marto to think about it. She liked what she saw, and smiled a little with the satisfaction of it. The life of a wanderer had made her more beautiful, she thought, even with those small wrinkles growing at the corners of her eyes, and the new lines on either side of her mouth. Yes. She looked a little hardened from the journey, but still, she looked good.

She zoomed back out, and could see Tash's image and name, information bubbles to let her see the history of occupants at the house she was going to sleep in, the public toilets, baths further on, shelter for storms, food offered, beverages, water stations, crafters with clothing on offer, everything. ["This is amazing!"] she told Tash. ["is this all updated in real time?"]

["Of course. Up-to-the-moment information is essential. I would recommend limiting your use of the visualizer this way to just the town of Cos for now. You will be tempted to..."]

["Oh no."] Helen had impulsively tried zooming out rapidly to find Marto and it made her dizzy and sick. She sat down abruptly on the bed and disengaged her visualizer by concentrating on her body. ["That was unpleasant."]

Tash was laughing a little. ["Sorry. I don't mean to make fun. I should have warned you. So, if you don't mind, I have things to attend to, and night is coming. Also, I've just been alerted we are in for another storm. Do you mind sheltering tonight at the dome with the rest of us? It would be safer."]

Helen accessed the dome in the map. It seemed too small to hold the whole town. She pictured everyone sleeping close together, the odor of their bodies filling the space. It was not something she wanted to repeat immediately after her experience in Reverside during the last storm. She imagined it wasn't difficult for the Interconnected, who could just go elsewhere to a sunny shore or spacious landscape in their minds, but she doubted she could do that yet.

["Would it be okay if I stayed here? I would rather risk it."]

Tash paused. Their face went blank, and they got the faraway look Helen had seen in Reyleena's eyes. Was that a kind of calculation? Prediction? Did Tash have a split persona like Reyleena?

["I'm afraid we have to insist. There are tornados reported. This home is insufficient for shelter in case one of them touches down here. I'm sorry. You really must join us tonight. We'll do our best to make you comfortable. You have two hours and then we will all be gathering. You know where?"]

["Yes! I see it all perfectly."]

["Great. Just follow the map. There are five baths free right now if you want to wash up. I think you'll like them."]

["Yes, that would be good."] Helen decided to concentrate on the present moment and deal with the future when it became the now. ["A bath would be great. Then something more to eat, I think."]

["A solid plan."] Tash smiled again. Their face appeared sometimes male and sometimes female to Helen, depending on the expression. Tash was strong and gentle, and also mysterious. Helen felt a little attracted to them and that attraction felt like a sweetness in her throat. She was lonely.

["Thank you,"] she sent, smiling back at Tash, and walked out the door toward the outhouses.