The narrow path northeast of Yale Havens was empty. Marto glided his way up it next to the river. He was becoming more competent with the skates and swooped in great curves up along the level trail. Caravans were not allowed on passageways like this one, built on the beds of old railroad tracks. This one had been recently converted and the surface was gloriously smooth.

As smooth as the skating was, however, Marto could no longer avoid the warning signals from his feet and legs. He had blocked the pain back on the Merritt, but now those blocks were proving insufficient, and increasingly hazardous. The friction from the skates had caused blisters on his feet. His shins were screaming at him to stop and his hips ached. The soles of his feet felt wet and hot. His calves were spasming. He had to take frequent breaks, even when using the maximum power assist the skates had to offer.

The chipmunk ran out in front of his feet without warning. It zigged and zagged to avoid being stepped on, but Marto was already toppling forward, rubbing his hands hard on the road and banging his cheek against the ground. Marto found himself thinking it was the same chipmunk that had tripped him up on his unicycle at the start of his journey. Fucking chipmunks.

["Ouch!"] ["Ooh, you took a digger!"] ["That's going to leave a mark!"] His followers chimed in with their concern, but he couldn't help but get the feeling they were enjoying his little run-ins with the rodent population.

He was going to have to take time to recuperate when he reached The Middle and choose a new mode of transport. He made this data public shortly after leaving Yale Havens in the hope someone might offer him a bike or maybe even a new uni. He stopped to sit on a bench and watched the Connecticut River glide by. His feet, finally freed from the skates, looked red and damaged.

The sky was gray but bright. The day was hot. UV radiation was dangerously high, and though his hat protected much of his head, his nose and lips burned. His body felt flooded with oxygen from his exertion, but he also felt dangerously weary. He checked the distance to The Middle and decided he had just enough in caloric reserves to get there. He had a little leftover hard-tack on him, and he nibbled a bit and drank from a bottle offered at a nearby water station.

["Your body temperature is 38.62°, Marto. you may have overheated,"] FornTimbur « HraunHugur « Kristin « Katrin « Eva « etc thexted him from Reykjavik. ["Dehydration too. You might need attention."]

["You are pushing too hard Marto,"] Mem sent. ["You should stay still for a while."]

He checked his Merit. His followership had risen again to pre-Glenville levels, and exceeded them by 12.5%. His stop there had set him back significantly, but his gleeful liaison on the Merritt seemed to have spiked interest, as did his stop at the library. A discussion was underway about his current ailments and their possible solutions. He was getting an urgent message.

["We are coming to meet you Marto. Hang tight."]

The message was sent by five emissaries from The Middle heading south on the same trail. They were on bikes. He could see their names and progress. He was happy to stay put until they got to him.

The abandonment of train travel remains, in the mind of this historian slash travel writer, a mystery. Obviously, the old coal powered engine died a well-deserved death, along with the oil-powered model, but one has to wonder why photo-electric engines on an improved line of tracks have not been resurrected in post-tide civilization.

I imagine there are three reasons for this. The first being the conversion of the majority of the old tracks into more popular pathways for foot and bike travel. The second is a general lack of interest in physically moving from place to place, but that reason is offset by the continuing need to move goods and produce. The third reason might be a culture of provincialism on the part of the Interconnected communities. Not much thought is given to centralized planning for transport of people and goods in this age of revived tribalism. Centralized planning died with the dissolution of federal governments, which in turn died with the demise of the capital which fed them. Still, we are unified in our maintenance of signal repeaters, keeping us connected mentally. Why then, can't a little attention be directed toward a more effective model of transport than road-bound caravans?

– The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide, Vol. 6, lines 622 & 623

Returning from the writing tower, Marto found his body lying down on the bench, unable to keep sitting up. He was far more exhausted than he suspected and his throat hurt when he swallowed. He put his hat over his face and felt himself doze off.

He woke to see the back of a member of The Middle, peddling away in front of him. Her name was Shandraine « Martikka « Martina « Yasmine « etc. Riding ahead of her were four other members of the contingent; Rida, Happy, Tse, and Shawn. It took a while for Marto to see they were on a five-person bicycle, a "Quint" according to his followers, and he was riding on a bed extending out behind the long vehicle. Shandraine kept pedaling as she thexted him.

["You were out cold when we found you on the bench, non-responsive. Stay still, and lie back. You are on the back of a long bike. Relax and don't roll over. We are taking you to Maxtor."]

Marto thought he heard it wrong. ["You are taking me to what now?"]

["Maxtor Uber G, who we all love and adore. He wants to see you, like face to face."]

Marto was stunned and thought maybe he was playing out a kind of game. He checked and saw no telltale signs he was in a construct. Maybe this was a regular dream, and he was still sleeping on the bench. He tried to rise.

["Whoa now! Easy back there!"] thexted Happy urgently. ["We are passing 35kph. You will be in even worse shape than you already are if you slide off. We should have strapped him on. Why didn't we strap him on?"]

["Maybe it's because you forgot to bring the straps, Happy. That was your job and you effeneffed it."]

["Just steer the damn bike, Shawn. I didn't think we would need them. Poor guy is all done. He needs a med-tech maybe. Stay still back there Marto. We'll be inside in no time. Maxtor will send for you when you are well again. You might as well try to go back to sleep for now."]

["There was no time to get everything,"] offered Rida, ["We should have brought him food and drink, and maybe some med implants, but it was better to just get here as quickly as we could."]

["We have time for a quick game of TackaTack before we get back, anyone want to play?"] Tse was cheerfully trying to brighten up the mood of the quint team. ["Quick one,"] ["Yes,"] ["Go,"] ["For sure,"] came the responses.

Marto passively watched via his visualizer as the quint morphed into a cartoon spaceship being attacked by goofy looking alien flying saucers. They sent out tiny short-range fighters to intercept, and fired the main laser cannon at the swarming enemies while dodging asteroids, and shouting commands at each other through their virtual communications devices. The whole time, of course, they kept pedaling and following the glasslike path leading to the town in which the great Maxtor was awaiting the lowly Marto. He decided to try to nap again.

He woke inside an old brick building with high, wooden beamed ceilings and glass paned windows. Outside, the sky was dark. He had been asleep for thirteen hours. His temperature was down to 37.04°: normal. There were three leeches on his forearm, and he couldn't tell if they were living or bots. He lay on a standard printed bed with soft wool sheets and a spongy yellow pillow. He was alone. There were water and a vegetable drink in two cups on a table next to him. He drank one and then the other. Then he went to find the commode.

A quick glance at the map showed him he was finally in The Middle. In fact, he was in the middle of The Middle, in the historic district. Commodes were right outside, under the transparent dome which enclosed the lines of old brick buildings. He sent the contents of his bowels and bladder to be dealt with by the decompilers and returned to the bed to sleep.

He woke again to see the smiling face of Lisha « Hannah « Lori « Abagail « etc as she was gently shaking his arm. She looked much like her mother from Yale Havens and a little like Bruce. Outside the brick room windows, there was daylight. It was mid-morning. The leeches on his arm were gone. He had slept seventeen and a half hours.

["Time to get up Marto,"] Lisha was saying to him. ["Maxtor wants to meet you outside."]

Marto rose, put on his pants and hat, left his skates and the modified tube-sling containing the painting and snacks, looked down at his feet to see them dotted with blisters. He felt strangely embarrassed by this, wishing he had shoes and new socks. His old socks were in a pocket on the side of the tube, but they were bloody and torn. His followers began to jump on in exponentially increasing numbers. It was a celebrity interview, he thought to himself. He had no time to prepare. He walked out the door.

Everywhere between the old brick buildings was greenery. It hung from windows, lined the walkways, and peeked out from the rooftops. The town center was exploding with plant life. The air was humid but cool. The extra oxygen felt good. In the middle of the Atrium was a table which was not there the night before. A potted tree shaded the lone figure from the morning sun shining in through the arching windows.

Maxtor was not a tall man, but he looked like a lion. His skin was medium dark, his eyebrows were light colored, and exaggerated. He was not drastically altered like the cat-girl, Scarlett from Sherwood, but his alterations were non-standard. His hair was like a photosynthetic modification, but it was not green. It flowed away from his face and down his back, chest, and arms in a sparkle of multicolored threads, mostly orange, red, yellow and purple. Much of it was braided and adorned with different colored cubes. His face was naked, but Marto thought the artificial fur might cover all of the rest of his body, tapering off toward his hands and maybe his feet. He was staring up at the top of one of the brick buildings as Marto approached.

Seconds passed. Nothing happened. Then, abruptly, Maxtor leveled his eyes and addressed him. ["Marto, the Wandering Narrative himself! The Wakeful Wandering Node. Feeling better? Wanna Pepsi?"]

Marto was caught short by the gaze, which was predictably intense. Then he tried to figure out just what was being offered and found he didn't know the word. His followers jumped in with 100-year-old images of bottles, and ads, and television commercials. He connected the references with his own research. He was being offered a beverage that could not possibly have been preserved long enough to be drinkable. Evaporation alone would have reduced it to fermented goo, even if you could find a little to keep in a cold bunker somewhere, away from any light.

["I'm feeling much better, thank you. Whoever cured me here was superb. I suppose I had a variation of the flu? And ... do I want a ... what again?"]

["A Pepsi, you slug! I know you know what it was. What you don't know, is how I can get one for you, and you are about to find that out."]

Two freezing cold bottles of brown liquid were placed on the table by someone who vanished as soon as it was done. They all but materialized there. Ice was melting on the outside of the glass. On the side of the glass near the spout, was a red on a white oval, the words "PepsiCola" written in script.

["I prefer the 1960s logo to the later ones."] Maxtor was regarding the side of his bottle. ["Every passing decade since then, the spirit of it got hacked away until you were just left with a lopsided yin-yang circle. What was that supposed to be? Something you should know, the original drink was super, super sweet. Our team stayed true to the original recipe; not an easy find but they had to dial back the sweetness. We used a corn derivative, as true as possible to the later versions but not the one with this logo. If we used the original amount of sweetener, you would just spit it out. Lots of sodium in there too, bubbles, color, and cola nut extract for the flavor and caffeine."]

As Marto moved the bottle under his nose, he got a whiff of what smelled like a solvent. The scent was pushing violently upwards in cold waves. He turned his head.

["Oh yeah, my node, it's a bit of a shock, right? That's the carbonic acid hitting your nasal membranes. Same stuff as poisoned the ocean, but it's compressed so these little bubbles keep coming up. It's a real shocker, but you get past it, and then BAM. You feel it. Maybe the second bottle, you feel it, I dunno. I felt it on the first one."]

Marto took a little sip and held the fizzing mixture in his mouth as long as he could before forcing himself to swallow it, hoping it wouldn't immediately eat its way back out of his larynx and dribble down his chest. It did not. It went down, and the aftertaste was chemical, sweet, and intriguing.

["You're feeling it, right?"] Maxtor seemed to be enjoying this. ["Now, wait for 25 seconds, and take another."]

Marto did as he was told, and the next sip was less of a shock. The sweetness was energizing, or maybe it was the caffeine, or the bubbles or the sodium or all of it together. It was slightly bitter like coffee, but also nothing like coffee. He imagined having one of these sitting by the river the day before, overheated and exhausted, and thought it would be bliss.

["Yeah, my node, you feel it! It's like a little orgasm of taste is what it is. It's not nutritional. It's just for pleasure. In fact, if you drink too much of this, it will really mess you up, and believe me, if you drink a little more than a little, you really really want to drink too much. Pepsi does not get you high, but it is still addictive. What is that about? I'm wonderfully baffled by it. What do you think? I want to get your special perspective on it."]

This must have been the reason Maxtor wanted to meet him. Maxtor wanted him to offer his historical/cultural take on the resurrected beverage. That was reasonable since it was what he was known for. He felt disappointed but tried to push the feeling aside, as it was a great privilege to be called by someone like Maxtor for any reason at all, especially if you have something to offer. He gathered his data and prepared his analysis.

I was offered a Pepsi by Maxtor Uber G in The Middle. I think to really understand this drink, we should place it in the context of the culture of debt which created it. When the world was driven by the need to create more need, addiction was the most effective way to ensure a steady flow of currency in the direction of the producer. The addiction needn't be extreme to garner the proper results, in fact, earlier versions of another brand of this drink you gave me, did indeed get you high, fortified by the coca plant, not just the cola nut. However, access to coca-based products became restricted in the United States, and the mixture had to be adjusted to ensure its constant consumption. So over time, greater and greater levels of sweetness were added, more caffeine, more sodium, better bubbles, until it became addictive enough to survive competition with other similar beverages.

Marto paused, gathering his thoughts.

Many other versions of this type of drink didn't survive as long as Pepsi did. The fizzy beverage industry as a whole thrived even as other addictive products such as cigarettes faltered because the drinks almost fulfilled a nutritional requirement. Schools offered Pepsi and its main competitor, CocaCola (named after the addictive plant in the original formula) to children here and in other countries, instead of water to go with their lunch. It wasn't until the first decade of this century when evidence linking these beverages to the surge in childhood and adult diabetes was solidified that they began to be regarded as mildly poisonous. Even then it took decades before they were abandoned entirely.

Marto could see Maxtor responding well to his treatise. This was a glorious moment. He decided on a grandiose conclusion.

What Maxtor has resurrected, is, in essence, the heart of the old economy – The Sip of Need – the essence of the cycle of privation, consumption, fulfillment, and privation again. The spinning wheel which powered the pistons of capital, and the destruction of the natural world.

– The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide, Vol.6 lines 624 - 626

Marto leaned back, satisfied, and found himself taking another sip from the cold but warming bottle of effervescent poison.

Maxtor was smiling, but incredulous. ["Up up, my node. Way up. But couldn't I have produced a cup of crude oil for you to sniff and feel between your fingers and got the same analysis?"]

Marto felt defensive but was ready. ["The effects of oil are similar to this beverage in the mechanisms which generated need, but no wars were ever fought for the procurement of more Pepsi. Or,"] he was feeling cautious in front of someone so intelligent, ["there are none that I know of."]

["Up up, and away, my node. Dazzle. I am so happy to meet you, Marto. Thank you so much for coming to our town."]

Marto rose. ["The honor has been all mine."]

["What? All done? Where are you going?"] Marto had not seen Maxtor frown before, and it was a little frightening. He had assumed the interaction had concluded.

["I thought you meant you were done talking with me. I didn't mean to..."]

["Aw no, my node, my sib. We are just getting started, my tribal cousin."] He held his hand out, palm down, and waved it at the chair.

Marto lowered himself back to his seat. Maxtor was smiling once more. His eyes like upward arching half moons, his mane moving on its own, despite the lack of any breeze.

["Finish your Pepsi, you wandering wisdom warrior. I want to walk with you around this wonderful town we call The Middle, and then..."] He took another sip, pausing dramatically and leaning in. ["I'm coming with you on your journey."]