4

Jon sets off

Saturday came. Jon glanced over the shopping list he had made the night before as he stepped outside into the bright sunshine.

1 thermal tent

1 raincoat

2 flashlights

1 canteen

1 purifier

2 bike reflectors

1 electric grill

1 quicklime pot

1 ice pack

2 fire starters

1 bike basket

1 sunhat

1 sleeping bag

1 pillow

1 air mattress

It occurred to Jon as he read over the list that it was rather a lot to carry. This was also not including what he already had. He had never gone on a bike ride with such a heavy load before, and it made him nervous.

Nothing was particularly difficult to find, however. Bike riding might have gone out of style, but camping was relatively popular, especially in Mo, although people usually camped around the same places for one or two nights out of the year.

He bought the smallest size of everything he could, even the tent. The only thing he had trouble finding was the bike basket. He ended up buying a gardening bucket and contrived an attachment for the front of the bike.

The shopkeeper of the gardening shop watched curiously through the window as Jon rode off with shopping bags hanging from both handlebars; one bag sat in the bucket that he had just attached.

Having gotten everything, he rode home and organized the supplies, then packed them all up into an enormous backpack.

Tomorrow he would buy food for the first few nights, so for the rest of that afternoon he napped and then had dinner with Catherine and Harold, who wanted to eat hot pot.

“Just one more day before you go,” said Harold, using a ladle to fish for beef in the bubbling pot. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” said Jon. “A little nervous, but good.”

“What did your dad say?” asked Catherine.

“He liked the idea.”

“You guys really are a traditional Mo family.”

“For a girl from Co, you really do overthink everything.”

“You should pity me for that. My dad’s from Ii, and I overanalyze just like him. It’s awful.”

Harold stopped eating for a moment and looked at Catherine.

“I didn’t know your father was from Ii.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t guess, being from Ii yourself.”

This made Harold blush.

“Well, I did, in fact, have a theory…”

On Sunday morning, Jon shopped around for beef, bell peppers, mushrooms, honey, cumin, soy sauce, salt, and pepper. He planned to eat two meals a day, breakfast and dinner, with a light snack for lunch.

The butcher had plenty of freshly cloned beef direct from the cloning farm. Jon had never eaten real meat in his entire life, and neither has anybody else in Icomo. The last generation of true meat-eaters had been his grandfather’s.

(A small number of elderly people in the isolated mountains of Upper Co are the exception, and have continued eating farm animals despite technological advances in artificial meat generation, which has earned them the title ‘the barbarians of Icomo,’ or alternately, ‘the shame of Co.’)

At home, Jon packed the beef in the cooling bag, sprinkling it with salt to preserve it, then sealed the vegetables and mushrooms in a separate poly-carbon bag.

The backpack was nearly bursting with stuff, but everything had a designated place and fit snugly. It was not too heavy either, as it had anti-gravity lift. He walked back and forth across the room with the backpack on his shoulders and felt relieved.

All that remained was to tidy up the house, make sure there was no food in the fridge or trash bin that could go bad, and arrange for someone to water his jasmine plant, so Jon called up Harold via the Eye.

“A jasmine plant? Yeah, I can water that for you, but if you’re going to be gone so long, I might as well take it over to my place.”

“I’ll set my door so that your Eye has unlocking privileges.”

“Okay, I’ll grab it tomorrow night after work.”

That being settled, Jon had nothing more to do than watch the sun go down and sleep. He grabbed fast food in town: three kebabs of spicy chicken breast and a bowl of salted potatoes, which he ate on the boardwalk.

Needing to wait for tomorrow made the evening feel long and dull. He wanted to fast-forward to the morning, but even in Icomo the mysteries of time-travel are elusive.

By midnight, Jon had not fallen asleep and lay awake for hours, tossing and turning and fluffing his pillow. He fell asleep only after three in the morning. Nonetheless, he woke up before his seven o’clock alarm feeling refreshed.

In the dark room he rose to dress and threw on his backpack, making sure all the lights and devices were powered off, and quietly stepped out the front door.

The sky was streaked with pink and yellow clouds. Jon’s hands were trembling as he mounted his bike and headed north along the boardwalk.

Early morning walkers roamed the beach. An old man stood untangling a windless kite. Children with backpacks jogged to school.

As the middle school passed by on Jon’s right, Catherine noticed him while supervising her students.

“Jon!”

He braked.

“Morning duty?” Jon asked as Catherine jogged over to the school’s gate.

“I was hoping I might see you.”

“Tell the kids it’s a special day. It’s the day I set off on my grand adventure.”

“I have a feeling they won’t be that interested unless we make it some kind of public holiday.”

“Well, maybe someday,” said Jon, laughing.

“Don’t fall behind on your schedule, Mr Legend. I’ll be here teaching the kids how to unscrew the backplate of a broombot.

“Invaluable information.”

Jon pushed off the ground with his feet, propelling himself forward, and waved goodbye. Catherine stood watching until he disappeared around a turn.

Not long after, Jon stopped again to look back. The sky was still brightening and there was not a cloud anywhere. The buildings and trees threw long black shadows behind them like ink spills. White seagulls circled overhead, cawing.

This moment is preserved in Jon’s journal entry from that day.

It’s a strange feeling when a dream starts to become reality. I had dreamed of that moment so many times, but it had always looked and felt differently in my head.

To tell the truth, I almost felt a little sad… Although I can’t say I wasn’t happy, too.

If it’s possible to feel both sad and happy at the same time, I was certainly feeling it then. And the sadness began to fade after I stopped looking back. The farther I went, the more the sadness got left behind and only the happiness remained.

The dream was finishing its long transition from fantasy to reality, and nothing could stop it from coming true any longer.

From there, Jon rode north away from Sandwich, crossing through Minor Sandwich, and spent most of his day pedaling around the bend which defined Sandwich Bay.

Jon realized around one o’clock that he had forgotten to eat breakfast. Stopping by the beach to sit in the shade of a tree, he ate the flake cakes he had bought yesterday. We know so much owing to Jon's Eye archive. Records indicate that he researched via the Eye a species of bush growing in the vicinity, which was blue rockwort.

Blue rockwort: locally known as rockles, this perennial plant species is common in the coastal areas of western Mo, and grows between the crevices of rocks where sunshine is plentiful. This shrub-like plant is easily recognizable by its tiny, blue-wooly leaves of complex pattern.

Having escaped the bustle of the town, Jon saw only the waves and sand and boulders of the beach. Behind him a hill rose up, hiding the entire continent of Icomo on the other side. Far away down the coast was the town of Sandwich, small and shiny like a game board piece, and very far away he imagined he could see the glittering Port Midalles…

In the other direction was the peninsula of Sandwich Spoon, jutting into the ocean. On the end of the spoon were the remains of an ancient temple from the time of the three kingdoms, when the Co and Mo had fought over the peninsula for decades, almost a century, to gain control of the bay. Many people had died there, all for nothing more significant than a spoon-shaped piece of dirt. The monks of the temple, who had worshipped an ancient goddess named Siriadne, had repeatedly fallen into the hands of the other side.

Jon had once written that he had trouble imagining how the glittering bay had ever been anything less than peaceful, as it appeared to him then. In times of peace we always fail to conceive of anything different, as in times of war the sufferers of tragedy resign themselves to endless struggle.

Being a time of peace, the ancient chaos of Icomo was incomprehensible to Jon and more akin to fable. Jon lived in one of those golden windows of time wherein children are born, grow old, and die without ever learning what war is, and our wish is that, in the future, there will continue to be such lives untainted by the darker aspects of humanity.

After lunch he set off again. Few people came to these beaches, far as they were from Jar access. A shepherd dog trotting along the sand perked up as it saw Jon and froze. The dog was every earthly color a dog could be: black, silver, brown, white… It followed Jon’s progress, tilting its head. Jon stared back. Even for a dog, a bike was an unusual sight.

By dusk he had reached the peninsula of Sandwich Spoon where it disconnects from the continent. Jon planned to camp there and ride around the edge tomorrow. It is a popular tourist area, even today, because of the temple.

As he came to a rest, watching the violet clouds, the Jar emerged from an underground tunnel and slowed to a stop. Jon had not expected anyone to disembark at that hour, but two people stepped out with tent bags like Jon’s and ran toward him.