Athena's Choice

by Adam Boostrom

  A message appeared on her display.

  Nomi has requested access to your massage implants — *Granted*

  As she toggled her apartment into its night-mode — bed formed, lights off — Athena felt the initial warming hum of vibrations coursing throughout her body. Neither she nor Nomi spoke as Nomi, hundreds of kilometers away, activated in sequence the countless massaging nodules implanted within Athena’s lithe frame. From the unusual patterns of warming and cooling pulses, Athena suspected that this was not one of Nomi’s pre-choreographed massages — but there was no way to know for sure.

  The tiny implants worked their magic on Athena’s feet, legs, lower back, and shoulders. Depending upon the feedback they received, Nomi activated or deactivated specific nodes to elicit a more enjoyable response. Special attention was given to Athena’s neck before returning to her stomach and thighs. To Athena, it slowly became clear where this massage was heading, but she made no attempt to stop it.

  The buzzers geared up and down, teasing in every way. Athena parted her legs, hoping for an acceleration in purpose, but Nomi denied her the quick satisfaction. Rhythmic vibrations traced shapes around, but never directly on top of, Athena’s tingling center.

  Gradually, pulsing echoes built up on her left side, right side, outside, and inside. Like a piece of music that required the entire orchestra, Nomi’s massage conducted all of the instruments to contribute on cue to a symphonic crescendo. When it finally came, Athena saw stars and gave thanks for her apartment’s sound-proofing. In the seven minutes that followed, her muscles continued to quiver and convulse at irregular intervals. Pleasurable waves crested repeatedly throughout her body.

  Afterward, she fell into a deep sleep.

  June 10, 2099

  That I Cried to Dream Again

  Bypassing the meadow altogether, Athena immediately found herself standing in front of the now-familiar library, surrounded by mountains. The difference this time, though, was that the building didn’t appear worn or dilapidated at all. No chunks of roof were missing. No vines grew from cracked orifices. The structure looked freshly-built and brand-new. In front of the library lay well-manicured lawns. On the lawns stood dozens of grazing buffalo clad in pants, skirts, and backpacks.

  As Athena approached the building, two shining doors swung open to welcome her inside. She entered. To her right, at a nearby table constructed from brightly-colored pinewood, sat an enormous buffalo with a broken horn. He wore a blue sports coat, beige pants, and had spectacles balanced delicately atop his massive nose. In one hoof, he held a small cup of coffee. In his other, there rested a glowing manuscript adorned by the words Original Sin is Real. The small image of a spiraling ribbon appeared just below the title.

  Athena closed in on the buffalo and took a seat at his table. “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Shhhhh,” he hushed. “I’m trying to study.”

  The woolly creature continued to read in between sips of coffee. When his cup ran empty, he placed the manuscript face down on the table and got up for a refill. Athena saw her chance.

  She rushed around the table and lifted the heavy book up to her face. Large black letters on white paper greeted her. They said:

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches toward Chicago to be born?

  The buffalo raced back. Angrily, he snatched the manuscript from Athena’s grasp. “If you are not prepared to learn the answer,” he cried, “then you should not ask the question.”

  His front hoof drew back as if to strike. “The truth in the library can save her, but it can also destroy the world.” Violently, he swiped his hoof at Athena's face.

  Ducking just in time to avoid the hit, Athena turned and ran as fast as she could. She sprinted through the doors and past the six square columns. Once she had reached a safe distance outside, she stopped to look around, but when she did, she noticed that all the freshness and life were gone. The sky had grown dark. The clothed and grazing buffalo had disappeared. The lawns had become overgrown and unkempt.

  Behind her, the library had changed too. No longer clean and new, it had resumed its slow decay into an ancient, aging ruin.

  June 10, 2099

  24

  Incoming Call from Captain Bell

  Still half asleep, Athena’s brain struggled with the confusing and upsetting noise of constant ringing. In her unconsciousness, she mumbled phrases of whispered nonsense. “No thank you, Ms. Pillow. No thank you.”

  Incoming Call from Captain Bell

  Athena’s eyes opened to complete darkness. She activated her display and looked to the clock. It read 4:30AM. Slowly, her mind recalled where she was and how she had got there. The call notification rang again. With a two-fingered air-click, she answered. “What?” she replied gruffly. “What’s going on?”

  “Get in here, Vosh.” Captain Bell sounded almost chipper on the other end. “And don’t dawdle. Michelle’s found something you need to see.”

  Athena leapt to her feet. She sped through her morning routine. In minutes, she had made her way back to Officer Evans’ fortieth floor workstation. When she arrived, she found a crowd of eight PS officers gathered there. Some stood very close to the desk, swiping into the air. Others stood a bit farther back, merely observing the action. The rest of the office floor appeared completely abandoned, the cubicles dark and empty. Overhead, the interior lighting shone with a tinge of ultramarine.

  Athena’s eyes found Captain Bell — fully dressed in her uniform, despite the early hour — near the rear of the crowd. “Did she find it? The library?” Athena asked, almost stumbling over her words in her excitement to get them out as quickly as possible. “Did Michelle find the library from my dream? Where is it?”

  “No,” sighed Captain Bell, stifling a grin between her pale cheeks. “But…”

  “But what!” The anticipation was too much. “What is it?”

  Maliciously, Captain Bell drew out the suspense. She smiled at the sight of watching Athena squirm. “…but you were right,” she finally declared. “There is a connection between your library and the genome’s disappearance. It seems you are somehow a part of all this after all.”

  The captain shook her long black hair, casting it against her shoulders. “Within the Helix mainframe,” she explained, “the program that stole the Lazarus Genome left behind some electronic fingerprints, some small traces of its work. Nothing major, just a few lines of code out of place. Standard protocol is to run these criminal fingerprints against all the other electronic crimes on file.”

  Athena nodded raptly.

  “So Officer Evans followed protocol, but she found no other crimes with the same fingerprints. So dead end, right? But…”

  “But? But what!”

  “But here’s where it gets interesting.”

  Never in her entire life had Athena listened more intently.

  “Because your library seemed to appear from nowhere, Officer Evans ran the criminal fingerprints against all of our Public Safety digital archives as well. She theorized that maybe we had been hacked too, only we never knew it.” Valerie paused. “You still with me?”

  Athena nodded up and down vigorously enough to give herself whiplash.

  “Sure enough, Officer Evans found a small trace of the same electronic crime on our own network. In other words, whoever stole the Lazarus Genome, also hacked into our Public Safety archives and stole something from us, too. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what was taken, but it disappeared from the folder containing historical records for the 2050’s and before — pre-fever, that is, so possibly a time when your library would still have been intact.”

  “What about the other networks?” Athena asked, without stopping to breathe. “Did you check the national archives for the missing files? Did you look everywhere?”

  Valerie’s blue eyes twinkled. “Yes. We followed protocol, and exhaustively searched every online resource available to us. They’ve all been hacked wit
h the same program — decades ago in many cases. All of us have had something taken from our historical archives. Something that whoever stole the Lazarus Genome doesn't want us to find. This theft is a crime that goes back decades.”

  Outside, the dawn’s light had just begun to appear. The sky had turned from dark black to dark blue. Athena couldn’t understand how the rest of the city could still be sleeping at a time like this. “The book I keep dreaming about,” she gasped. “The one about Original Sin. It must contain a physical copy of whatever information’s been stolen. We have to find that library.”

  Valerie sighed and looked off into the distance. “Indeed. We came to the same conclusion. But how do you find a thing, even something as large as a building, when every trace of it has been deleted from every corner of the internet?”

  Puzzle pieces twisted into place inside Athena’s head. “It would have to be somewhere remote,” she realized. “Very remote. You can’t just delete a whole building if people keep stumbling across it.”

  “Makes sense,” added Valerie. “Maybe somewhere off-limits? Or somewhere that no longer exists?”

  “I think it belonged to a school,” Athena whispered. She closed her eyes and remembered her most recent dream. “Last night I saw the library again, but it wasn’t old and decayed. It looked new and fresh and clean. It felt welcoming.” She reconsidered her words. “I mean, I dreamt that I saw it.” Her eyes reopened.

  With a firm grab on the arm, Captain Bell escorted Athena to the front of the pack of officers. Endorphins pulsed through the girl’s body in response to the public validation of her self-worth.

  “Alright,” ordered the captain. “You know the drill. Tell Officer Evans everything about your latest dream. Include anything that might be relevant. When we find that library, we find the book. When we find the book, we find out what’s been deleted from the public record. And when we find out what’s been deleted, we discover who stole that genome.”

  Officer Evans looked up from her screens. Her eyes took a moment to refocus on a subject that didn’t emit its own light. “Welcome back, Athena. I’m glad you’re here. We could use your help.” Michelle summoned a lev-chair and placed it directly next to her. “Let’s get to work.”

  As Athena recounted her most recent dream, a quiet voice chanted at her from the back of her head. It repeated a line over and over and over again: “The truth is in the library. You must find the truth to save her. The truth is in the library. You must find the truth to save her.”

  Arrest Date: May 17th, 2095

  District: 1st Midwest

  Arrest Locale: Helix Campus, Hyde Park

  Arrest Number: 4935-9276

  Names of Perpetrator(s): Mirza Khan, Aya Okur

  Crime: Trespassing, Civil Disobedience

  Time of Arrest: 9:23 AM

  Superior Officer on duty: Lieutenant Valerie Bell

  Brought to: Holding Cell #6, PSHQ Underground

  June 10, 2099

  25

  Outside of Public Safety Headquarters, the morning sky turned gradually from peach to lemon. Simultaneously, the ceiling lights of the fortieth floor altered their hue to match the dawn’s progression. To Athena, it felt like only minutes had passed when Captain Bell came by, hours later, to let her know that she needed to break away from the library-search. It was time for the interview with Mirza Khan.

  “Here,” sighed Valerie, pulling Athena aside. From behind her back, she produced a gift-wrapped box and handed it to the young girl. “You won’t have any real authority, of course, but if you’re going to be a member of our team, you should at least look the part.”

  Athena accepted the box with a mixture of joy and skepticism. Carefully, she unwrapped its blue ribbon and peered inside. Neatly folded within lay a crisp, blue Public Safety uniform in just her size. “Thank you,” she said, without taking her eyes off of the garment. “I’ll put it on right away.”

  Captain Bell raised an eyebrow. “Well hurry up then, Vosh. Don’t make us late.”

  Only minutes later, a city-car deposited Athena and Captain Bell just outside the posh entrance of a ritzy, condominium tower. In the decades since she had immigrated to the NAU, Mirza Khan had become a successful clothing designer. Accordingly, her home reflected the wealth of someone receiving an income substantially greater than just her Citizen’s Benefit.

  Mirza’s unit, Athena had learned on the short ride over, occupied half of the eighty-first and eighty-second floors. Additionally, it possessed specially-carved, solid-oak front doors; large windows with unbroken views of the lake; and complete magnetic controls throughout. Those magnetic controls meant that, while inside the confines of her unit, Mirza had an essentially telepathic power over every object contained within.

  As Athena and Valerie waited in front of the imposing entrance to Mirza’s unit, they clicked in the air, ringing an internal doorbell. Minutes passed, and no one answered. Growing irritated, Valerie loudly promised to return with an arrest warrant. Finally, a tiny crack appeared between the massive, oak slabs. A woman poked out her head.

  Athena had never before laid eyes upon Mirza’s assistant, Aya Okur, but now that she wore a PS uniform, PS background-information streamed onto her display. Aya’s full legal name, age, arrest record, and other vital information immediately appeared before her eyes.

  “Ms. Okur,” announced Captain Bell. “Please inform your missus that we’ve come to speak with her.”

  Aya exchanged long, blank stares with her guests. Her sallow face and blood-shot eyes conveyed a mixture of confusion and complete apathy. She squinted in an attempt to shun the excess light emitted by the external hallway.

  Athena’s display alerted her with a notification in bright red.

  The exhale of Aya Okur indicates slight inebriation

  “Oh. Right,” answered the lean Aya in a stupor. “That’s today.”

  She spread the doors wide open and about-faced. Clumsily, she headed down the darkened hallway toward the condo’s brightly-lit grand room. With complete indifference, she called out behind her, “Well, are you coming or not?”

  The condo’s grand room was quite the space. To start with, it towered two stories high — larger than Athena’s entire cabin. A spiral staircase led up to a second-floor balcony that bordered the first floor on three sides. Along the walls, wooden shelves displayed a wide-collection of fine art. Expansive floor-to-ceiling windows covered the fourth wall. Every wood surface looked ornately carved. Every metal outcrop had been gilded with gold.

  As elaborate as the room itself, Mirza’s marvelous furniture added to the sense of extravagant wealth. She owned a full-size grand piano; several micro-lace Parisian divans; and various other items which Athena couldn’t recognize, but which her display quickly categorized as prized pieces of functional sculpture.

  However, detracting greatly from the room’s impressive appearance, Athena observed an abundance of clutter covering practically every square meter of open floor space. The remains of at least two different Tiffany lamps could be made out, along with about six or seven wine glasses, the bottom half of a broken marble statue, piles of clothes, and at least a dozen mostly-empty wine bottles. By the large windows, purple-velvet drapes were crumpled in a heap on the floor, apparently having been torn from their mooring to the ceiling. Their absence led to an enormous influx of broad daylight. Athena tried to picture the party which could have left a room in such a state. Her imagination conjured up images of Toulouse-Lautrec's lecherous Moulin Rouge.

  “You guys have some kind of celebration last night?” Athena inquired, motioning her hand in the direction of the many empty wine bottles.

  “Oh?” asked Aya, somewhat confused. “You mean this mess?” The personal assistant gave a sly, subtle smile while looking toward the cluttered room. “Madam does this every night.”

  After shoveling a pile of clothes onto the floor, Aya motioned for her guests to seat themselves onto one of the divans — which they did. “Mirza will be
down in a moment,” she said before wandering off down another hallway. Athena assumed she intended to go back to bed.

  A call rang out from the balcony of the second floor. “Captain Bell!” Mirza cried. “So good to see you again. Will I be needing to present my wrists for hand-cuffs this time? Or…no cuffs?”

  “That depends, Mirza.” Valerie answered with a surprisingly broad smile. “Have you done anything that deserves arresting?”

  “Who me?” gasped Mirza. “Never!”

  Ms. Khan made her way down the spiral staircase, a difficult feat, due to the fact that it was almost entirely blocked by the top half of the broken marble statue. She wore a long, fuchsia brocade robe, barely fastened at the waist. Information about her, including a lengthy list of arrests for civil disobedience, poured onto Athena’s display.

  In spite of the repeated arrests, or maybe because of them, Athena noticed that a casual warmth and familiarity begin to dominate the disposition of Captain Bell. She had an obvious fondness for Ms. Khan, and the feeling appeared to be mutual.

  “Can I offer either of you a drink?” Mirza asked once she had landed on the first floor. She held out her palm and a wine bottle flew into her expectant hand. She nodded toward her guests. “Drink? Drink? No Drink?”

  Athena’s display informed her that Mirza Khan was also somewhat intoxicated.

  Without waiting for an answer, Mirza poured herself a glass and sat on a separate divan by the window. Her olive-skin and light-brown features looked flawless, save for a large scar covering her left cheek. Athena tried to stop herself from staring at the blemish, but she couldn’t.