“Yeah,” I said. “That’s my mom.”
“Holy shit!” said Janet. “Yeah,” said Tanya. “What she said.”
“Was she always like that?” asked Janet.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “As far back as I can remember, she’s been focused. But, it seems like in the past twelve to fifteen years, she’s gotten hyper-focused. ‘Lead, Follow or Get Out of My Way’, has become more ‘Get Out of My Way,’ if you know what I mean. I don’t know what she’s worth, but it’s a lot and almost all of it she generated on her own. I told you that my dad won the lottery, didn’t I? Well, I’m pretty sure she’s doubled or even tripled that stake.”
“How’d she get to be Duchess?” Tanya asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll try to find out more when we talk.”
“How’d Tulsa become a Duchy?” asked Janet. “Is there a Duchy of Central Tulsa? Of Southern Tulsa? How’d she become a Duchess? Is there a Duchy of Hollywood? Wow, no movies. How about New York? Duchy of New York City?”
“Don’t know any of that either. Mom probably has more information, I’ll ask when we talk.”
“Well, what did she mean by check out the map. Let’s see it again,” said Tanya.
I thought of the government screen again and then shared it with the two of them.
We looked at the map again. It looked the same, pretty detailed, but not all that special. Different enough that without prompting there’s no way I’d have called it a map of Oklahoma. It showed all of the Duchy of Northern Tulsa, it showed Sand Springs, my mom’s hill, now evidently a mountain which was labeled “Seat of the Duchy of Northern Tulsa,” the Arkansas River, the roads which used to be highways. It didn’t look that special.
Janet spoke up then, “I don’t live here, so I’m not incredibly familiar with the region of this area, where are we on this map again?”
I started to reply when the map generated a small red circle around what would have been our location. It was a little bright space in a big black sea of lack of knowledge. It was also a lot further from my mother’s home than it should have been which made my guess about where we were, wrong.
“Oh, cool,” said Janet. “Did you do that?”
“Nope,” I said. “You did, evidently, when you asked the question.”
“Hmm!” Janet said. “Zoom in and show 500 yards of our current location.”
The map started to move and then paused. “OK,” she said. “500 meters of our current location.” Suddenly, the map started to zoom in. It was very detailed in the parking lot and the surrounding area that we’d visited. For instance, the road out in front was clearly visible where we had been able to see it, the parking lot in the back was clear as well, Maxes was shown perfectly, areas that we didn’t have firsthand knowledge on were not shown clearly. It was like a fog covered them. Not as bad as a video game’s ‘fog of war’ blackout, but enough to make sure that you have realized that the information you were seeing may not be accurate. As if the map was trying to tell us that it was accurate at one time, but might not be accurate now. You could still see features like roads, houses, etc., but you knew that the map might not be accurate now.
“Wow,” they both exclaimed. “This is awesome!”
“I know, right!” I said.
“I’m moving the map,” I said. “Show the ‘Seat of the Duchy of Northern Tulsa’” I said.
The map un-zoomed back to its original state, then zoomed into an overview of my mom’s house. It’s a big house. The locals called it the Castle because it was big and had rock walls. Not the red sandstone that was so prevalent in Oklahoma, but a white limestone that had been quarried in Missouri and then trucked down to the site by the original owner. I could see the 12’ chain link fence that mom mentioned, the two smallish greenhouses that had existed on the back of the property and the three new big greenhouses that mom had made. They looked a little different, I’m guessing because they were originally made with plastic but now, weren’t. Just like all the plastics had disappeared from my clothes and the packaging, I guess they’d disappeared from everywhere they’d been used. I could see the Quonset huts that she’d talked about and there were quite a few people on the lawn. In addition, there seemed to be a group of Minotaurs, about twenty of them with big axes grounded in front of them on the lawn, their hands on the haft, the big double-edged blades resting down at their hooves. My mom was out in front of the house talking to a bigger minotaur. The bigger minotaur looked more like a bison than a bull.
“Are those men, cows?” asked Janet.
“Minotaurs exist?” asked Tanya.
“Wow,” I said. “Real-time mapping! I see why mom had to get off the call, chat, thing.”
“Is she in danger?” Janet asked.
“See the Asian guy standing behind her along with the big special forces guys?” I asked. “That’s my sifu. According to mom, two days ago he was a level 24 monk. I imagine it’s gone up since then. The big guy with the scar and no expression right beside him is, at least, a level 17 ninja. The black woman holding the broom back in the corner, see her? She just beat a 250-kilo cat to death with it. And mom doesn’t seem worried, she’s just talking.”
“Well, talking to cow men,” said Janet.
“Yep,” I said. “Cow men who evidently can talk and might be our new friends. I guess we’re going to have to start judging people or beings a little differently. So, don’t attack cow men. Unless they attack first.”
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“So, this map is kind of special, huh?” said Tanya.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so. It might have to do with me being the heir of the duchy. Maybe my map is special? I don’t know. Until you two make your decision about the government, we don’t even know if you have a map.”
“Well, that easy to fix,” said Janet. “Your mom’s who I want to be when I grow up.” Her face went blank and then she said, “Here, scope this out.” A blue screen flashed in front of our eyes and like mine, it showed a map at the top and then some information down below.
Government:
* Current Duchy: Duchy of Northern Tulsa
* Ruler: Duchess Grace Annette Seebring, Duchess of Northern Tulsa
* Population: 380,168
* Total Land Area in Duchy: 83,252 km2
* Total # of Counties: 12
* Names of counties within the Duchy:
Adair County
Craig County
Delaware County
Mayes County
Noble County
Nowata County
Osage County
Ottawa County
Pawnee County
Rogers County
Wagoner County
Washington County
She focused on the map. It looked very similar to the one that I’d shown her earlier. “Where am I?” she asked. The same red circle appeared.
“Show a 500-meter radius around me,” she said. Once again, the map showed an area that looked much like it had before.
“Show the ‘Seat of the Duchy of Northern Tulsa’” she said. This time there was a difference. The map had all of the physical features, the Quonset huts and greenhouses in the back of the estate, the house, fences, but it didn’t show any minotaurs or people. It was just a map, like Google Maps satellite view, only someone had removed all of the people, not just blurred them out.
“It’s different,” she said. “Mine is not real time.”
“No, but it seems to be up-to-date,” I said. “I don’t see anything different between my map and yours, other than the lack of people.”
“I wonder if my map updated itself when you shared yours with us?” she asked. “I wonder if any of the ‘Seat of the Duchy of Northern Tulsa’ would have shown up on my map if you hadn’t shared your view of it with us?”
“Try this,” I said. “View downtown Sand Springs.”
She gave the command and the view didn’t change.
I called up my map and said, “Share map.” They nodded their heads that they could see my map, which showed downtown Sand Springs. So I said, “View fountain in City Garden of Sand Springs.” The view changed to show the fountain that sat in the middle of the park. Fortunately, it wasn’t made out of plastic.
However, it had changed quite a bit. It seemed more utilitarian than it used to be. Beautiful, but functional now. Before it was a simple concrete fountain with five levels of what appeared to be shells or flower petals, maybe 5-6 feet tall. Just one of those decorative fountains you can buy for your yard, maybe a little bit bigger. Now it was a giant stone boulder with water shooting out of the top a couple of feet. It looked like a water main had broken, it produced quite a bit of water. The boulder was about eight feet tall and around twenty feet wide. It was red sandstone. The sides of the boulder had been grooved in a spiral around the outside of the boulder and the water ran down the groove to the ground where it disappeared into a grate. The groove had spillways that captured some of the water and let it out into the deep tank-like stone troughs that had been placed below. It was much prettier that than fountain that was there before. When the troughs overflowed, the water disappeared into the same grate that the water from the fountain disappeared into.
“Huh,” I said. “I’ve never seen that fountain before. Wherever this map is getting its information, it's not from me.” I closed the view and said, “try it now,” to Janet.
She did and said the same things and the view of downtown Sand Springs appeared. She said, “View fountain in City Garden of Sand Springs” and the fountain appeared.
“Well,” I said. “Isn’t that special! Ideas?
“Maybe, since you’re the heir, it has something to do with that,” said Tanya. I must have had my ‘well duh’ face on, because she said, “no, what I mean is that maybe it’s showing you something that someone in your Duchy has seen. Because you are part of the new government, you get your maps updated to show whatever the latest view of an area was from one of your people.”
“What about seeing my mother?” I asked. “Is this like a surveillance state tool? If there is someone from the duchy viewing it, I can view it in real time?”
“That I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it has something to do with it being her and you being her heir. Maybe it has something to do with the number of people around there that have their eyes on the scene. But don’t be peering through my eyes, Monsoon. I catch you, I’ll hurt you!”
“Well,” I said, “I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t work that way, but, just in case, I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Same goes for me, white man!” said Janet. “Don’t be a peeper!”
“That does it, the next time I see the God Box, I’m going to get some tan in this skin.”
“You’ve got that white bread thing going all the way down to the bone,” said Janet. “Even if you were forest green, you’d still be a white man. Fortunately, I like white bread.”
“Filter,” said Tanya. “Use some filters girl!”
“Ex-yoga instructor from LA,” I pointed out.
“Snap!” said Tanya.
Janet paused and took a deep breath. “Alright,” Janet said. “I’ll tone it down a notch. I’m just trying to channel my inner badass. And she evidently thinks she comes from Compton. If I think about it, I’m scared. All the time. I’m just scared.”
Tanya came over and hugged her and said, “Me too.”
We stood there, once again, doing nothing, but surviving. It was our new reality. Giant rats in the building behind us, who knows what in the woods that surrounded us, minotaurs, griffons, giant evolved mice, mountains that used to be hills, and no government to rely on. It was a miracle that we hadn’t given up and retreated trembling in a corner somewhere. I guess we were stronger than that.
Of course, that’s when the noises started.