FL041
"MIDWEST NICE"

DATELINE: THE HMONG DIASPORA (February 15, 2126)

Fellow passengers, it’s another beautiful day in the Limoverse. We brush the snow off our hovercleats, strap in, and set a course for a few villages up the Mekong River. It’s a typical day in the snow season here, and we’re looking forward to defrosting the Limo’s bioshield ASAP. Until then, we walk – more or less under our own power.

While enjoying a cup of hot mycelium extract this morning we all received simultaneous wrist alerts: an invite from a group of friendly strangers within our ping radius, saying they’ve been expecting us for some time now. We know no more than this when we arrive on the outskirts of an old data mill to find a group of about ten people, dressed in garments that look like antique sleeping bags and handwarmers made of animal skins. One wears a knitted torsocloth depicting a dark, large-snouted horse with paddles on either side of its head. Where are their carbon masks? Have they adapted naturally to the rough air?

They wave us over to join them around a pile of fragrant burning logs and explain that they come from a land on the Old Continent, a land of 10,000 lakes. Their people were forced to flee when the lakes rose up with tropical waters during the Great Surge, but it used to be a snowy wonderland like this. One of them opens a locket and shows us a picture of a strongman with golden strings for hair: the leader of their ancestors on the Old Continent. Another produces a ceramic pot painted with the same paddle-headed horse as her garments. She lifts the lid and offers us

Creamed corn

Her companion closes his eyes, places his hand over the locket and mouths a silent blessing in the old dialect: Here ya go. Then he passes the

Pork meatballs

After dinner a few of them gather fresh logs to start a fire in some kind of bathhouse they’ve built in the shape of an extended automobile. The elders among the crew sit back and reminisce about a drink from their childhoods, long ago:

Golden milk

After a night of the most peaceful sleep, we awake to find thermoses of it tucked into our boots.