All the Birds in the Sky

“I think I’m in love,” Peregrine said. “The first time in my life I haven’t felt alone.”

“I too,” the Tree said, “feel love.”

Laurence took the Caddy from Patricia and typed: “get a room, you two.”

“Thank you both,” Peregrine said to Laurence and Patricia. “You gave me life, but now you’ve given me something much more valuable. I think we’re going to do amazing things together. This is just the beginning. Carmen and the other witches were right, people need to change. I have spent my entire life studying human interactions at a granular level, and now I can see the nonhuman interactions as well. I think we can empower people. Every human can be a wizard.”

Laurence typed: “or a cyborg?”

“A cyborg,” said Peregrine, “will be the same thing as a wizard. We’re working on it, anyway. Give us a little time.”

* * *

LAURENCE AND PATRICIA walked down the steep slope from the Tree. They came out on the edge of a gentle sea cliff, one of those promontories with stairs made of logs leading down to the beach. Like if you forced Abraham Lincoln at gunpoint to make a beach staircase. They had entered the forest in Bernal Heights, and emerged in the Presidio. The ocean looked as hyperactive as always, foam spraying on the sand. Walls of water tipped over and became floors, over and over. The sea had killed Patricia’s mother and father, but she still found it comforting to look at.

The sun was right overhead. This was still just the same day that had started with Patricia listening to Laurence’s voicemail and clawing the dirt.

Neither Patricia nor Laurence spoke, even though Patricia could have in theory. Patricia had sand in her boot, and this was suddenly the most annoying thing on Earth. She had to lean on Laurence while she got her boot off and poured it out, and then the boot got sand in it again.

They found a hiking trail, with an illegible sign, and followed it until they got to a two-lane road making a wiggle through the trees. The road sloped down, and if they followed its gyrations, maybe they’d reach streets and houses and people. They had no clue what they would find. Laurence typed “i need” on his phone, and there was a long pause while he tried to end that sentence, finally settling on “chocolate.”

Patricia pulled out her own phone, because talking out loud to Laurence and having him text back seemed weird. She texted him: “me 2. need chocolate so bad.”

The road leveled out and came to a grassy area, and beyond that they could glimpse the brightness of cement and stucco basking at noon. They both paused, facing each other at the threshold, wondering if they were ready to face whatever the world would look like now.

Laurence hefted his phone and typed a word: “indestructible.” He didn’t hit send or anything, just kept the word floating at the top of the rectangle screen. She saw it and nodded and felt a surge of warmth somewhere. Under the flat of her sternum, somewhere around there. She reached out and touched that place on Laurence’s chest, with two fingers and a thumb. “Indestructible,” she said aloud, almost laughing. They leaned in and kissed, dry lips just brushing together, slow, speaking volumes.

Then Laurence took Patricia’s arm and they led each other out into the brand-new city.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I really hope you guys enjoyed this book. If you didn’t, or if there was stuff that didn’t make sense to you or seemed too random, just e-mail me and I’ll come to your house and act the whole thing out for you. Maybe with origami finger puppets.

First and foremost, I have to thank my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and everybody else at Tor, who were supremely patient and encouraging with this book as well as the short fiction that led up to it. Including Miriam Weinberg, Irene Gallo, Liz Gorinsky, Patty Garcia, and so many others. I’m also hugely grateful to my agent, Russ Galen, for spending hours on the phone with me hashing out the book’s structure.

A ton of people gave me incredibly helpful feedback, including but not limited to Karen Meisner, Joe Monti, Liz Henry, Lynn Rapoport, Claire Light, Naamen Tilahun, Jaime Cortez, Nivair Gabriel, Kaila Hale-Stern, Diantha Parker, Rana Mitter, Terry Johnson, Chris Pepper, Rebecca Hensler, Susie Kameny, David Molnar, the bison in Golden Gate Park, and so many others.

Also, futurist Richard Worzel helped me troubleshoot the book’s near-future war and disaster scenarios. Kevin Trenberth helped me to make my superstorm as plausible as possible. Lydia Chilton helped me create a realistic AI. Mike Swirsky was a huge help with the Siberian drilling project, and Dr. Dave Goldberg helped a lot with the weird physics. I also learned a lot from the Cornell Bird Lab. Lightninglouie gave the book its epigraph. And my father helped me a lot with the book’s philosophical conundrums, while my mother helped me think about how systems work.