“And he forgot Earth—that black boss.” He struggled to lift his hands and clap them in front of my face. “She turn on him.” Clap. “Write this down, girl.”

I scrambled to fill my quill.

“Ain’t nothing good come from the Devil!”

“And the Devil is technology.”

“Technology!” he agreed.

In truth, Kiwi had no choice; the stable master would not have let him access a hovercraft without a proper pass from the Overseer. The stable of solar-powered machines housed at Cobane were for the exclusive use of the English Diplomats. Still, I wrote down Kiwi’s testimony without contradiction.

I’d been trained not to release the workers from their superstitions, no matter how far-fetched. I didn’t tell him that he used technology every day, that there was no way to avoid it. He didn’t know about the hydroplanes. Camouflaged by solar-powered cryptic coloration, the planes were indistinguishable from the sky. They came and went silently. And the solar reflectors, according to the workers, were benevolent windmills to prevent overheating.

“You write that down, girl?”

I nodded. He eased back. It was on the tip of my tongue to say to him that he was not as helpless as he supposed. That Mother Earth was not the boss, for we, humans, had mastered her long ago. We harnessed her power to strengthen our own. We commanded her to grow, and she did as we wanted, not the other way around. All this was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it.

Even if I had time to explain the differences between the supercomputers of the past and the solar-powered modern world, doing so was against the law. And besides, there were tales, rumors of workers—enlightened by well-meaning superiors—going mad upon hearing the truth. Losing what was left of their minds, and for what? Knowledge they would never use, not in their line of work. Kiwi, sheltered beneath his white rug and fear, was better off.

I leaned forward, gazing into his face, crossed with wrinkles like dry riverbeds. Not much to him, he supposed. An acute sadness overwhelmed me. I leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “Thank you for never missing a day of work.”

His lips, entirely inelastic, split as he smiled up at me.

The sadness pooled in my chest and caught fire. “I want you to know, Kiwi, that the work you do matters,” I said, pressing a hand to my sternum. “I want you to know that everything you do has been noted and planned, for the greater good.”

I told myself to stop, leave well enough alone. But heat inside me rose up like a tantrum. “Also, you don’t have to subject yourself to any boss. You are part of America. We survived the Last War, and we are rebuilding the Earth piece by piece, as we see fit. You may not feel it, but you—we all—are part of something powerful.”