Homeland

Epilogue

This chapter is dedicated to DC's Politics and Prose, a wonderful store inside the beltway. As the name implies, the store is perfectly balanced mix of the wonky and the wonderful, policy and poetry living cheek-by-jowl. This is a store that puts a lie to the idea that the fanciful and the hard-nosed are incompatible -- a conclusion that I should hope was obvious from my own books. 

Politics and Prose: 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008 +1 202 364 1919

-------------------------------

I'd had eight months to debug Secret Project X-1. I even made a special midsummer trip to the Mojave, where the gypsum dust was nearly identical to the stuff you got out on the playa. I'd watched with glee and pride as X-1 sucked up the sun's rays, turned them into a laser beam, and used that to sinter fine white powder into 3D shapes. First a little skull ring. Then a toy car. Then some chain mail, the links already formed and joined, one of the coolest tricks 3D printing had to offer. I gave a presentation on my progress one night at Noisebridge and resulting praise had given me a glow you could have seen with a spy drone.

But now, here, on the actual playa, the goddamned machine wouldn't work. Lemmy sat in his lounger nearby, sipping electrolyte drink from a camelbak and making helpful suggestions, as well as several unhelpful ones. Burners passing by stopped and asked what I was doing, and I let Lemmy explain it to them so that I could concentrate on the infernal and stubborn machine.

I only stopped when I found that even the light from my headlamp wasn't sufficient for seeing what I was doing, and then I stretched all the aches and pains out of my body, swilled a pint of cold-brew, and proceeded to dance my skinny ass off for forty-five minutes straight, chasing after a giant art car blasting ferocious dubstep as it crawled across the open playa. I stopped as a thunderstrike of inspiration struck me, and I ran straight back to camp, unlocked Lemmy's car, and used its dome light to confirm that yes, I had in fact inserted a critical part of the power assembly backwards. I turned it around, slotted it in, and heard the familiar boot sequence kick in as the stored power from the solar panels kicked the 3D printer to life.

I wasn't a total moron after all.

It didn't matter how much dancing I'd done the night before, I was for goddamned sure getting up at first light to crank up X-1. I had a lot of printing to do. I puttered around it as the blue arc of laser light shone out of its guts, making it glow like a lantern in the pink dawn.

People stopped and asked me what it was doing. I gave them trinkets: bone-white skull rings; renderings of perfect knots and other mathematical solids; strange, ghostly figurines. I had a whole library of 3D shapes I'd plundered from Thingiverse when I realized that I was going to have a real, functional 3D printer on the playa this year. Word got around, and by the time Lemmy got out of bed, a huge crowd had gathered around our camp, dancers who'd been up all night, their pupils the size of saucers; early risers with yoga mats; college kids who'd somehow found themselves at the burn; and a familiar jawa with crossed bandoliers over her chest, emphasizing her breasts.

"Hi, Ange," I said, leaving Lemmy to run the machine while I grabbed us a jar of cold-brew and walked off a ways with her. She pulled down her mask. The sun had toasted a smattering of freckles around her nose and cheeks. I gave her first slurp at the coffee, then I had one. Then we hugged. It was awkward.