The Roamers by Francesco Verso

Author:Francesco Verso
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: flame tree press; solar punk; future fiction; near-future; utopian fiction; dystopia
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2023-03-14T11:23:34+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Urban Golf

Early the following day, Nicolas pops into the fragrance designers’ room to say hello to his colleagues. “Good morning, you two.”

When Mirna sees him, she raises a hand to cover her suddenly reddening face. Sudhir gets up and comes towards him, takes him by the shoulder and chuckles. “What on Earth are you wearing?”

“What? Aren’t I allowed to exercise now and again?”

Nicolas is wearing a tracksuit made of nanoporous fabric. In addition to being a novelty for him, it can’t help but elicit a certain amount of hilarity. Army green with a gold-colored zipper running from the collar down to his sternum, it’s pulled taut over his gut and stretched tight around his arms.

The two designers exchange an impish look, but it’s Sudhir who can’t resist the temptation. “Isn’t it a little small?”

“I wanted it snug.”

“It’s…awfully ‘colorful’. You know who you remind me of?”

Nicolas doesn’t answer. It’s the sort of rhetorical question one has to endure with detachment.

“Ooohh, Sud, you’re right,” Mirna chimes in, happy to play along, “he looks just like that guy we saw on YouTube the other day.”

Nicolas had stepped back behind the doorframe, but now he resigns himself to entering and becoming the butt of their joke. “Okay, I’m listening. Just make me laugh, too, all right?”

“No, seriously, Nico. There’s this British guy who had a great idea, one that’s earning him a whole lot of free fame on the web, among other things.” Sudhir goes onto YouTube and types some text into the search bar. He chooses a video and clicks. “This kid started out by recording himself making a promise on his webcam. The promise was that he’d leave home and wouldn’t come back, ever again. That he’d become…what’s the word…a ‘stray’?”

Mirna, as usual, corrects her Indian colleague. “No, you’d say wanderer.”

“Right, thank you, my dear. You see, he wanted to stun the public with an extreme adventure, but, if you look at the number of views he has now, you can see he’s attracted a lot of sponsors, like Adidas, Marlboro Classics and Timberland.”

The video shows a guy maneuvering his way through situations ranging from the risky to the desperate. First he’s crossing a swollen river on a rope bridge, then he’s making his way into a forest during a snowstorm. There he is again, climbing a rocky mountain, sleeping in a sleeping bag on a tree branch, braving blasts of wind and sheets of pouring rain, eating small animals, insects and roots.

“People spend hours watching this guy. The click frequency is incredible.”

In addition to the videos the kid has made with his own smartphone, Nicolas notices shots from above and via satellite, panoramic distance shots and tracking shots of the kind of quality you’d expect to get on a film set. There are even a few subjective shots from the point of view of a wild animal that has begun tracking him.

“Cool, but what’s it got to do with me?”

Sudhir pauses the video on a close-up of the wanderer. “Look there.

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