The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page A

that way, you’re going to end up walking all night before you get to a hotel.”
    She laughed. “I don’t really . . . use . . . hotels,” she said. “I stay out here, with all the nature. Product of my upbringing. Once a Treehugger . . .”
    I hadn’t had a real conversation in ten years. It was a million-to-one chance, running into Lacey in the woods. Also: maybe she knew a little more about Detroit?
    “Why don’t you come over to my place?” I said at last. “I’ve got plenty of room. I promise you, my place isn’t the same.”
    She crouched down and looked in my eyes. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Jimmy,” she said. “But thank you.”
    We didn’t really argue. We hardly discussed it. But somehow, she ended up taking my hand and letting me lead her back home, ducking the occasional wirehead on the way.
    Back in Detroit, my dad had reconstructed the Carousel’s elaborate concrete ramp and queue area, but I didn’t have the resources to do that here, so to get up on my Carousel’s apron, you had to scramble up a chest-high wall that shielded the machinery beneath the stage and seats. I got myself up—the pack skittered up around me, scaling the wall as though it were horizontal—and then I helped Lacey up. Her hands were strong and her palms were dry, her fingertips calloused and raspy on my wrists.
    “This way,” I said, and led her inside.
    Of course, I wasn’t running the show at the time. I don’t, usually. Not that I have power woes—the cell that Dad fitted it with won’t run out of isotopes for a couple centuries yet, but it saves wear-and-tear on the parts, and those can be a bitch to replace.
    The Carousel is designed to seat six audiences at once, rotating continuously around the stage in 60-degree wedges. Between each stage is a little baffle that soaks up the noise from the adjoining set and provides a little space for the operators to hide out from the customers. At least, that’s how I used it. I suppose I could have set my bed up on one of the stages, or on the sloping auditorium aisles. I could have even removed some of the painstakingly restored seats. But all that felt wrong, after all the work that Dad put into getting it all so cherry and pristine.
    So I kept my bedroll in the gap between the first two scenes, and my clothes and things between the remaining gaps. The pack’s canisters were stashed under the stage in the third scene, which held a little maintenance hollow where we’d always kept tools and such.
    Lacey laughed when I let her in. “You live here?”
    “I forget, did you ever get to ride this?”
    “No, but I remember when you brought it back. We all came out to watch the mechas carry it through our forest. You knocked down a bunch of trees to make way.”
    I shrugged. “It’s a wide load.”
    “So what’s it do?”
    I showed her, turning it on and then rushing to sit down next to her. The lights went down and the curtains parted, and a spotlight played over the old “General Electric” logo. I loved that logo. Imagine a time when there were companies that made their fortune being generally electrical! These days, electrical stuff was very specific indeed.
    The narration started. Dad told me that the actor’s name was Jean Shepherd, and I’d heard his spiel a billion times, so often that I sometimes mixed up his calm, warm baritone with my memory of my father’s voice, the two all blended in my infinitely plastic mind. The narrator welcomed us to Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress and told us some of its history, then started with the real heavy philosophy: “The challenge always lies ahead. And as long as man dreams and works and builds together, these years too can be the best time of your life.”
    I looked at Lacey to see if she’d noticed the way that the voice-over had just dropped that on us. The challenge always lies ahead. Progress! She was looking heavy-lidded, but attentive.
    The curtains parted and we got to