By Sharang Biswas

They found me blue with cold, probably within an inch of hypothermia. I had never seen real snow before.

I’d thought the planet was supposed to be getting hotter.

“Winters still get brutal round these parts,” Fox told me later that day, as he ladled chunky, white soup—hot enough to scald—into a chipped, blue mug.

“Climate change remains complex and inscrutable,” Red sang. And I mean sang. His voice always carried music. “Too many variables confound our interpretation. Climate analysts are but Delphic pilgrims, dissecting seeming gibberish from an unyielding Pythia.”

“What’s a Pythia?” I asked.

Fox chuckled and nudged the mug towards me. I burned myself gulping it down.

Red gave me that minim smile of his, the one that felt like a tiny bell ushering in the springtime.

The Free Collective was a little cluster of painted orange houses by a pine-ringed lake in the Outlands.

“We take care of each other,” Fox told me.

“Why orange?” I asked.

“Protects from the mesh,” he said, which confused me then because why would you need protection from the mesh? It was anthroids that were the problem, not technology. Dalton Byrn even said that we had to use all the gifts technology offered in order to “rid ourselves of the cancer that is the anthroid phenomenon”.

“The frequencies of electromagnetic waves harnessed by the mesh deliquesce under the baleful glare of that orange pigment,” Red chimed. “Here in the Free Collective, privacy and self-sufficiency reign as our mutually-agreed-upon sovereigns. And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”

He had a faraway look when he said that last bit, as though remembering or reading something. I didn’t recognize the words.

The Collective owned this big barn where the food each family produced was stored. Red was in charge of keeping it organised. He was always fluttering between shelves, double-checking handwritten “Produced On” and “Cook By” dates, and sending messages to the designated or volunteer cooks.

He also maintained the solar panels on the barn’s roof, which powered the only electronics the Collective owned: refrigerators, desiccators, and food-preparation equipment. No one else was allowed to mess with the panels. Only Red knew how to use them properly. He would disappear to the roof for hours on end, sometimes.

Fox always volunteered to cook.

They fit together, the two of them.