by Sean Platt
“What about Siberia?” Nicolai asked. There was plenty more arctic land in non-NAU territories, too. Greenland. The Nordic countries. The EU and Asia might be able to heal themselves with an infusion of raw materials. If the same was available in the southern cap, the existence of land in Antarctica meant there was more than enough to go around.
“They’re too far gone,” said Micah. “Who’s going to organize mining operations? The Russian Mafia?”
As platters of food were stripped from the table, the hole reappeared in its middle and spilled downward, seeming to reel the five diners closer to one another again. Nicolai watched the table’s surface descend into the hole as if it were liquid rather than wood. Was this a material that had been manufactured from something found under the ice in Northern Canada? Was this how the NAU’s coming wealth was being spent — to create gorging tables in high-end restaurants?
Now that they were closer, Nicolai could feel Natasha’s leg brush his. He looked over, not as annoyed as he should have been. She was truly stunning. He was a fan of her music, too. She was so raw, so emotionally charged. Natasha had a way of making a person feel, just as Nicolai was feeling against his will as her bare foot touched him.
“What he means,” Natasha said, “is that nobody from the NAU has bothered to tell them to look for riches under the ice.”
“Because they’d just fight over it and make things worse,” said Micah, annoyed.
Natasha rolled her eyes for Micah, looking at Nicolai. Micah watched her. Nicolai felt certain that Micah was restraining himself from hitting her. She was sloppy, Isaac was sloppy, and both were making fools of themselves, making a fool of Micah in the process.
Nicolai didn’t ask further. He’d pry information from Isaac in the morning, if he was still curious. It all made sense. Still, Ryan Industries had thrived throughout the turbulent times, and Micah said that they’d discovered the precursors of Plasteel just one year before. There would have been a lot of upfront expense to get it ready for prime time. Soon, Ryan Industries would be astonishingly wealthy, but how had it survived in the meantime?
When the bill arrived, Micah paid in full, using dollars. The waiter told him that the restaurant only accepted universal credits, but Micah replied that he’d not had time yet to convert. The maître d came to the table and apologized in an underhanded way, perfectly balancing sycophancy and condescension as he explained that the restaurant was no longer equipped to accept dollars, indicating that the gentleman had been pre-warned about the change for months. Micah told the waiter (who had a French accent) that the universal language was English and that the NAU was mostly America and that the NAU only spent money within its own borders, and that a wholesale conversion to the same currency as the Wild East was idiotic.
The maître d’s European pride seemed to unravel his composure, but then Micah slipped something into the man’s palm to calm him. Then the maître d bowed and walked off, a moment later a waiter returned with an old fingerpad, and Micah paid for their meal with dollars.
On their way out, Nicolai took on the burden of keeping an eye on Natasha. She needed it. Micah and Paige had both sipped at a few drinks but were more or less sober, and Isaac was drunk but at least wearing flat shoes. Natasha, on the other hand, was in high heels (which made her taller than Nicolai) and looked like a baby giraffe trying to walk. Isaac was ignoring her, tagging along behind Micah like a sidekick. So Nicolai walked with Natasha, ready to catch her if she fell. Soon it became apparent that he had to actually hold her, which she took as a come-on.
They were a few steps behind the others when she said, “You like me, Nicolai.”
“I like you both,” said Nicolai, looking toward Isaac. The official version of their collective story said that Isaac had saved Nicolai. It was bullshit, because Nicolai had always saved himself and always would. But he was appreciative for the Ryans’ help (he certainly wouldn’t have all of those credits in his account after only a few years in the NAU without Isaac), and he was loyal, with an acute ability to see the good in everyone. He liked Isaac and Natasha, and parts of what he saw in Micah. But he also saw how badly Isaac and Natasha needed someone’s help, though neither would ever admit it.
“You think I’m beautiful, even though I’m fat.”
“You’re hardly fat,” he replied. Natasha had entered new levels of celebrity spotlight since her first album was released a year ago. One year, it turned out, was just enough time to start thinking of five-ten, 150 as fat. Natasha pretended to be above the gossip sheets, but they were clearly getting to her. If you couldn’t see a woman’s ribs, Natasha was coming to believe, then she was too fat.
Natasha smiled at Nicolai. He held her arm as they walked toward the cars. Nicolai had told the valet to bring the cars around, but Micah had wanted to walk. Nicolai had also told Natasha to remove her heels, but she’d refused, saying the ground was filthy.
She stumbled. Despite his disadvantage in leverage, Nicolai managed to catch her. He ended up with her breasts pressed into his arm and looked down to see that the top button of her blouse was open. He raised his eyes to find her green eyes already watching his brown ones. He looked away, toward the retreating backs of Micah, Paige, and Isaac. None had noticed.
“You’re such a gentleman,” she said.
“I’m just trying to keep you alive.”
“You’re still a gentleman. You stayed with me.”
“Come on,” he said, trying to right her.
“Why are you in with us, Nicolai? You’re better than us rich assholes.”
Nicolai hadn’t bothered to tell the Ryans that, back in Italy, his family had had much more money than the Ryans. He saw no need to tell them now.
“You’re not assholes.” She was fishing for compliments, and he was throwing them right back, not knowing what else to do. Ignoring her would be rude, and as confident as Natasha pretended to be, he knew how fragile she was inside.
“I made the wrong bet with Isaac,” she said.
Nicolai looked at her for a moment, but that was one he didn’t — couldn’t — respond to. He pretended he hadn’t heard and started helping Natasha to her feet, ignoring the something inside him hungry to parry.
“Come on. Get up. They’re getting away from us.”
Nicolai pulled Natasha to her feet, and they stumbled after their party, his thoughts filled with arctic treasures, wealth, and betrayal.
“Leah.”
Leah looked up, saw Leo standing above her, and gestured for him to sit. Leo lowered his old body into an ancient red plastic seat that looked like a bucket beside her. He didn’t moan, and his body didn’t crack or pop. Yet she knew Leo was ancient. It all went to show that everyone these days needed at least a few tiny bites of synthetic assistance to get by, whether they admitted it or not.
“Thanks for calling,” he said.
“They have phones here. Can you believe it?” She gestured toward a white device mounted on the wall by the nurse’s station.
The rustic mountain hospital had Beam access, but diagnostic machines were the only systems directly wired into it. Admittance and billing were done on a manual console and batched in, and once Leah had told the nurse she was from the Organa village (along with the safe version of what she’d been doing with Crumb up at the house in Bontauk), the nurse had taken Leah and Crumb even further offline, recording their account in a large book, using a pen. Crumb’s visit to the hospital was more off-record than off-record, and taking them off-record had been done with a conspiratorial “It’s us against them, sweetheart” air. Out in the sticks, city technology was often regarded as sour grapes. If the people of the hills couldn’t afford the best connectivity, they mostly declared it to be no good and worth opposing. So when Leah had wanted to call Leo, she’d started to use The Beam…and the nurse, seeing this, had shown her the phone instead. Leah was amazed that the phone system even handshook with The Beam when she used it to contact Leo (who, Organa as he was, didn’t have access to
a true phone), but then again, what didn’t handshake with The Beam these days?
“I used to have one of those in my house,” said Leo, nodding toward the phone.
“You’re kidding.”
“I had a gasoline car too.”
“Just how old are you, Leo?” Leah asked.
“Let’s just say that when diagnostic and scavenger nanos came on the market and rich people started using them to keep themselves young, I was already old. So I settled for using them to stay alive.”
Leah looked over at Leo, taking in his headband and gray braids. Tech knew tech, so Leah had long ago decided that Leo had had nano treatments, but this was the first time she’d heard him admit it. She could imagine him the first time he became an old man, a decade from his grave, accepting an injection that would hit the pause button on his aging. She found herself newly impressed. Even the best nanos couldn’t keep a body from decaying forever, and usually couldn’t keep up at all if the recipient was too old by the time of their first treatment. That meant that before Leo had gotten those first treatments, he must have been in prime shape. Even when he was purely biological, he must have been eighty going on twenty-five.
“How’s Crumb?” Leo asked.
“In a coma. They say there’s no brain damage, thank West, and that he should be fine. They dosed him with some cleanup nanos and will apply stimulation once those nanos show green. He should wake within a few hours at most.”
“Did you find anything?”
Leah stared at the hospital tiles under her feet. All was well that ended well, but she still felt guilty. She’d nearly killed Crumb by rooting around inside his head. Or at best, she’d nearly burned him. He could have woken up as a vegetable, or never woken up at all. She remembered not wanting to hook him up, then remembered Crumb saying he wanted to see the Wizard — as if he knew exactly what was happening and was giving her the thumbs-up to proceed.
“I found something small. I’ll tell you later.” She looked around, trying to tell Leo without words that even as rustic and disconnected as the mountain hospital was, the walls here might have ears.
Leo stood. He rose easily. If Leo was old enough to have owned a wall phone, he must have maintained himself fantastically to stay as spry as he was.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
“A walk?”
“I want to meditate, and we need a spot that’s not here. You said Crumb will be out for a few hours? Let’s not lose any more of our life to these uncomfortable seats. Let’s find a nice place to clear our heads.” He looked down at her and smiled knowingly. “I can see guilt all over your face.”
“I could have burned him,” she said.
“But you didn’t.”
Leah nodded.
“You handled this perfectly, Leah. Like a grown-up. You weren’t rash or impetuous, you got him the care he needed, you let me know, and you’re not your usual cocky self right now, making excuses. You’re respecting the gravity and reality of the situation. You’ve done well. I’m proud of you.”
Leah twirled a pink dreadlock. “Thanks.”
Leo held out his hand. “So come on. Let’s meditate.”
Leah took Leo’s hand, and they left the hospital together. They walked through the grounds until, leaving the hospital’s small oasis of civilization within the mountain wilderness, they found themselves surrounded by trees. The wood’s silence immediately helped to soothe Leah’s guilt and fear, and after a short time hiking by Leo’s side, she felt herself settling in to nature’s rhythm and as eager to meditate as Leo. Meditation was a sort of safety valve for Leah — and, strangely, it felt a lot like navigating The Beam. Leah could hack code and hit keys better than most, but at its best, steering through The Beam’s hive mind (or the minds of those willingly attached) felt more like a trance or a dream than pushing buttons.
Once out of ear and eyeshot of the hospital, Leah told Leo about her nugget of discovery: the book, the name of Stephen York, and the building with the red roof somewhere in District Zero. She asked Leo if any of it meant anything to him, and he shook his head. Then he repeated that she’d done well and agreed that the level of complexity in Crumb’s mind made the fact that she’d gotten anything at all was amazing. As to the complexity of Crumb’s mind, Leo only shook his head. He said there was clearly more to Crumb than they’d thought, and reiterated that hooking him up had been the right decision. As loud as Leo’s instincts were about Crumb before he’d sent Leah on her errand, they were louder now. He was more certain than ever that it all meant something, and that the book and Stephen York were both worth finding.
They found an open area in the trees and sat down a few feet apart, facing each other, on a bed of brown pine needles.
Leo closed his eyes and placed his hands palm-up on his knees. But instead of doing the same, Leah studied Leo. He seemed old and not old at the same time. His skin was wrinkled around his eyes and mouth, but it was smooth on his forehead and arms. He had a glow about him rather than the fading light you saw around most of the oldest people. He moved like a man of biological fifty, yet looked at first glance like a man of biological eighty. Yet based on what Leo had said, he had to be older than that.
“Seriously, Leo. How old are you?”
Leo blinked. His brown eyes opened and peeked at Leah.
“I can keep a secret. You’ve pretty much told me anyway. I could figure it out.”
“Go ahead,” he said, his body unmoving.
“Ninety.”
“Sure,” said Leo. His eyes closed.
If he were ninety, Leo would have been born in 2007. But hadn’t phones — the kind that hung on walls in houses — already been on their way out by then? Leah wasn’t sure. She wasn’t good with history. She was born in ’68, and The Beam was mostly everywhere by then. She’d lived all her life in ultra connectivity and had always had to leave the city to pull any of those plugs.
“Older?”
Leo’s eyes opened again. “You’re making it hard for me to find inner peace.”
“A hundred? Are you a hundred?” Nanobot technology had blossomed in…what? Maybe mid-century? If Leo was in that first wave (which she didn’t know) and had been old when he’d done it (which she couldn’t be sure of), then he could be…
There was too much she didn’t know.
“I’m over a hundred. Satisfied?”
“Were you around before The Beam?”
Leo nodded. After Leah nodded back, he closed his eyes again.
“Before the early Beam? Cross…whatever?”
“Crossbrace,” said Leo, sighing and putting his hands in his lap. Leah wasn’t remotely trying to find a meditation posture, so Leo let his collapse. “A ‘beam’ is stronger than a ‘crossbrace,’ so it works. Get it?”
“And you were around before Crossbrace?”
“Leah, we thought Crossbrace was going to take over the world. It was a topic of great debate. And look: It did take over the world. You can’t forget to buy milk anymore. Your refrigerator knows and has it delivered for you. You can’t get lost. You don’t even need a handheld to keep from getting lost; if you carry a spark toggle, you can flash your ID at The Beam from the most remote locations, and it’ll send a bot.”
“Unless you don’t have an ID,” said Leah.
“And assuming you don’t actually want to get lost,” said Leo, agreeing with a nod. “My generation used to want to get lost. We talked about ‘getting away from it all.’ People don’t do that anymore. They have the vacation islands, but those places are even more wired than DZ. Or they take virtual vacations, staring into visors. Nobody wants to march out into the woods and unplug anymore, except for fruits like us. Have you heard about the tragedies that sometimes happen during Beam outages?”
Leah nodded. Two years back, there had been a citywide outage in District Zero that had lasted for two full days. The lights and power had stayed on, but during those forty-eight hours of lost connectivity, seven people had become
so despondent that they’d committed suicide. A few of them left notes indicating that they felt like they’d lost all of their limbs and senses. They said they felt like invalids trapped in beds, like how Crumb was right now. There had also been a rash of depression that had lingered for months after connectivity was restored — a strange sort of post-traumatic stress. City counseling centers had been overwhelmed.
“I remember the first July 21, Leah,” said Leo. Then he chuckled. “Well, not the first one, but the first one that was an official holiday, in 2019, when they established the lunar base in the Mare Frigoris and started finding all of that great space stuff out there in space. They had that new far side radio telescope, where there was total radio blackout from Earth’s interference, and that big old array was seeing all the way back to the beginning of the universe.” He inhaled slowly, lost in the memory, a smile of recalled optimism on his face. “Everyone thought it was so important at the time. And it was important, back then. Strange, how seeing new celestial objects and seeing back in time all the way to the Big Bang bolstered the world. The tech Renaissance followed quickly afterward, with the first hovertech showing up, and the HIV cure, and all of that.”
“You say it like one thing caused the other,” said Leah. She knew a lot of this, of course, but she knew it in the distant, sepia-toned way that history books portrayed it. Leo, on the other hand, had lived it in Technicolor.
“It sort of did,” he said. “The telescope came first, and it gave the world a feeling of ‘We really are all in this big universe together.’ The vaccines came very quickly afterward, as if that global optimism allowed people to finally work together for a change. Hovertech popped up next, and for some reason, the way nanobots could make things float exploded into thousands of other applications, which spawned even more new ideas, and on and on. There’s a reason they call it a Renaissance, because so much of it happened pretty much all at once. They even have a word for that kind of thing, where everything happens at once, in evolution. It’s called ‘punctuated equilibrium.’ It means that evolution doesn’t occur slow and steady, but through distinct periods of phenomenal growth. That’s how it was for us back then. All of these new treatments and technologies at once, one followed another, and each was better than the one before. It was as if all of humanity stopped our fighting and turned our attention toward moving forward as one. The notion was paradise for a hippie like yours truly. The world all held hands, it seemed, as we found our global purpose.”