by Scott Meyer
“She sounds great,” Phillip said.
“She is,” Gwen agreed. “The problem is that before she did all that, she came to the past for the first time, eleven years ago, and found Atlantis here, already up and running. Then she met herself and discovered that she had gone back in time and built Atlantis so that it would be ready for her when she arrived.”
There was a long silence, which ended with Phillip yelling that this made no sense, and that the whole thing was preposterous, followed by Martin agreeing with Phillip, followed by Gwen agreeing with both of them, but assuring them that it was true, or at least it seemed to be.
“Brit has a theory about how it happened. When she explains it, it makes sense.”
“Well, let’s hear it.” Martin said.
Gwen shook her head. “You’ll have to ask her. It only makes sense when she explains it.”
Phillip grimaced. “I don’t like it,” he said.
Gwen said, “I knew you wouldn’t,” putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have plenty of time to ask Brit about all of this. For now, you just have to keep in mind that there are two Brits. We call them Brit the Elder and Brit the Younger, and they are the same person at two different ages.”
Martin exhaled loudly. “That should be easy to keep straight.”
Gwen added, “Oh, and I should mention that they’re the same age. Physically. You’ll see.”
The men did not seem reassured.
Gwen pressed on. “The summit is Brit the Elder’s idea. She saw early on that it would be easy for one of us to abuse our abilities. She wants to avoid that, but she needs everyone else to cooperate, and people don’t like the idea of limiting their own power. Because she’s the leader of the earliest known colony of time travelers, she has the luxury of time. She spoke to all of the girls who’ve come to Atlantis from all of the other colonies, pinpointed a moment a month or two after some time traveler tried to abuse his power, then invited leaders from that time to come here for a summit. That way, she knew they’d be in the right frame of mind to cooperate.”
“And I’m sure Brit the Younger agreed,” Phillip said, ruefully.
“No. Brit the Younger thought it was manipulative. They have a . . . difficult relationship.”
“But they’re the same person,” Phillip cried.
Gwen shrugged.
“So that’s why we were called now,” Martin said. “Because Jimmy tried to kill us all two months ago.”
“Which means she knows all about the Jimmy situation,” Phillip said. “That’s a bit embarrassing.”
Gwen said, “Don’t be embarrassed. I told Brit the Elder the whole story and she agreed that Jimmy had to go. She said that he was clearly dangerous, greedy, manipulative, and cruel.”
Phillip said, “I’m glad we’re in agreement.”
Gwen shielded her eyes with her hand and peered into the distance. “She also said that he lacked vision, and thought too small.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Martin asked.
Gwen smiled. “Judge for yourself.” Gwen gestured ahead. “Gentlemen, the sunken city of Atlantis.” Martin and Phillip shielded their eyes, and in the distance, they saw it.
The ocean was calm and vast. There were no islands to interrupt the flatness of the horizon, but in the distance, there did appear to be a hazy collection of square-sailed ships. It was difficult to look at them. Something about how the light was shimmering made their eyes strain. It was also difficult to look at the ships because it was impossible to ignore what was above them. Hovering above the wavering, wobbling patch of sea there were what appeared to be a great many tall buildings, just hanging in space. Seagulls soared above the impossible skyline, and the small armada of ships bobbed below.
“Wow,” Martin gasped.
“Yes,” Gwen said. “The genius of picking Atlantis as a base of operations is that it’s destined to disappear anyway, so Brit was free to build anything she wanted. Of course, that was before she knew that nothing we do seems to affect the future anyway, but still, it was clever of her.”
Martin whistled, then said, “One person built that? No wonder it took her a hundred years.”
“She spent the first week designing the city and writing the construction algorithm. She set that in motion, and the basic construction was done in a few days. The rest of the time was spent establishing a culture, encouraging immigration, and creating a system of government. That was the hard part.”
Phillip said, “It took Jimmy years to build one castle, and he had an army of builders helping him. How on Earth could this Brit of yours build that in a few days?”
Gwen rapped on the side of the crystal-clear bowl that was whisking them toward the city. “The same way we built this boat, and the bowl we sent you. You know how you copy coins and food items? We do the same thing, with individual atoms, and instead of replicating the atoms in a hat, we place them precisely next to the last atom we copied, in a pattern pre-determined by and automatically carried out by computer code.
“Domes are the strongest shape, and the easiest one to program. She got the idea from a science fiction book she read. It had a lot of diamond domes in it, but she chose to make basins instead.”
“That explains how she built the buildings,” Martin allowed, “but how did she make them float in mid-air like that?”
Gwen said, “She didn’t. They float, but not in the air.” She leaned over close to Martin. She put a hand on his shoulder, and put her head next to his, looking off into the distance in the same direction as him. She pointed at a ship at the edge of the shimmering armada. “Look at that ship on the end, with the blue-striped sail. See anything odd about it?”
“Yes,” Martin said, squinting into the distance. “It’s sitting next to a ship with the exact same sail.”
“No,” Gwen said. “Look closer.”
Martin squinted some more, then exclaimed, “It’s sitting next to half a ship with the same sail.” It was now clear to Martin what he was looking at, and it wasn’t what he’d first thought. They weren’t buildings: they were just the tops of buildings. The empty space beneath them wasn’t empty at all: it was the reflection in a giant, curving, mirrored wall. The shimmering wasn’t magic: it was distortion from the curvature of the mirror and a mirage from the heat it was reflecting. The gathering of ships beneath the city was a much smaller gathering of ships around the city, and their reflections. The city was not floating above the water, but rising up from it.
They were approaching the city quite quickly now. Clearly, the flying half-bubble that Gwen kept referring to as a boat was moving deceptively fast. With the city looming ever larger in front of them, Gwen turned to Martin and Phillip and said, “Look, guys. One last thing you should know. There are some things about Atlantis that I’m not entirely proud of.”
“What do you mean?” Phillip asked.
“You have to understand,” she said, “it’s a society ruled entirely by women.”
“We expect it to be different,” Martin said.
“Yeah,” Gwen sighed, “well, expect it to be different from what you expect.”
The guys clearly did not understand what she meant.
“I’ll put it this way,” she continued, “have you ever been to a bar where a bachelor party was going on?”
Both men said yes.
Gwen asked, “Have you ever been to a bar where a bachelorette party was going on?”
Again, both men said yes.
Gwen asked, “Which one was more out of control?”
The craft started gaining altitude, flying above the ships, massed around the perimeter of Atlantis. Ancient Greek traders standing on their ships craned their necks and watched them fly overhead.
As they approached the rim of the wall, Martin said, “Gwen, if it’s a walled island, why do you keep calling it �
�The Sunken City of Atlantis?’ ”
Gwen said. “You’re thinking sunken as in sunken treasure. You should be thinking sunken, as in sunken living room.”
The craft crested the rim of the city and kept climbing. Looking at Atlantis from above, it was as if a gigantic hole had been dug into the ocean itself. The city was a perfect circle, and while there were tall buildings around its outer rim, the interior of the circle fell away sharply, forming yet another bowl shape, this one quite irregular, made up of windows, terraces, and rooftop gardens. All of the buildings were made of a smooth, gleaming white material, formed into flat surfaces joined with rounded edges.
Tracks divided the city like slices cut into a pie. Broad, flat lifts teeming with people slowly inched up and down the tracks. Terraced foot paths, crowded with pedestrians, radiated around the city at regular intervals, interspersed with large public plazas where people could meet and enjoy the view.
It was immediately clear to both Phillip and Martin that the outer wall of Atlantis was nothing more than another molecularly pure diamond bowl, only much larger than any they had seen before. Glancing at the edge of the city, the bowl looked to be at least three feet thick. What they had taken for a wall had actually been the upper rim of the bowl extending above the water line. Gwen confirmed this, and added that it had been partially silvered, for security, and because it just looked cooler that way.
In the center of the city, at the low point of the bowl, there was a large park. At the center of the park there was some manner of pointy civic monument. Large, impressive buildings festooned with domes and columns surrounded the park on all sides.
As their craft descended into the center of the city, it became clear that their destination was one of the buildings surrounding the central park. Martin could make out a low, flat building that appeared to be made up of various rectangles intersecting each other at right angles. It was as if they had taken the home of the wealthy villain from an action movie and covered it in reflective white paint. Large glass doors led to an immense balcony with two people standing at attention. Even from a great distance he could tell that they were on high alert. Martin asked Gwen where they were going.
“To Brit the Elder’s personal quarters,” Gwen answered.
“Makes sense,” Martin said. “I’m sure she wants to personally greet all of the delegates.”
After a silence, Gwen said, “Actually, no. She specifically said that she didn’t want to meet any of the delegates until the formal reception tonight. Then, she pulled me aside and told me to bring you two straight to her.”
Phillip didn’t hear her, lost in his own thoughts. He looked down at the beautiful building and shook his head in disgust. “Typical. She builds the city and gives herself the nicest home, right in the center of the city.”
Gwen said, “Brit the Elder’s home looks different, but the inside is pretty much like everybody else’s. The only real difference is the patio. She uses it for official meetings, that sort of thing. And yeah, the government buildings are pretty fancy, but they’re sitting on the worst real estate in Atlantis. Think about it: everything’s uphill. It’s like living at the bottom of an open pit mine. The whole city looms over you all the time, on all sides. Brit says it gives the city’s leaders the proper perspective.”
“You like her, don’t you?” Martin asked.
“Almost everybody does.”
“Almost?”
Gwen sighed. “Yeah, well, Brit the Younger isn’t her biggest fan. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
The craft gently touched down on Brit the Elder’s patio, a space about twice the size of a basketball court. Instead of wood or stone, the deck was covered in soft grass. Rather than just being a uniform green, different species of grass had been employed, in various shades and lengths to give the effect of a tasteful inlaid design. Three sides of the terrace were edged by thin, decorative railings. The fourth was taken up by a perfect white wall. In the center of the wall there were large windows. There was so much light outside, and so little inside, that one could not see what was inside the building. The two people Martin had seen standing on the terrace as he approached were clearly guards, both male, both tall and slender, yet muscular. They had great definition. Martin could tell this because of their clothing, which consisted of a loose, light blue tunic, made of a semi-transparent mesh, and a sort of kilt, made of black fabric that managed to be clingy and rough at the same time. The kilt came down to just above the men’s knees, exposing their powerful, hairless legs. They wore sandals with thick leather straps and chunky soles.
Martin asked Gwen, “Are we going to have to dress like that?”
Gwen smirked, and looked at Martin’s full-length, silver-sequined robe and matching hat. “No, don’t worry. If you’re more comfortable you can continue to wear your robes.”
“You made these robes,” Martin reminded her.
“Yes, but you’re the ones who choose to wear them,” she replied.
The mirrored-glass windows parted smoothly, and two more tall, thin, muscular guards emerged, flanking a woman. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was a bit on the short side. She was not overweight by any rational standard, but she was also certainly not skinny. She wore black-rimmed glasses and a light, gauzy dress. Her reddish-brown hair hung down to her shoulders. Though she looked young, she had the bearing of a mature woman, the kind of woman who wasn’t too bothered about what you thought of her, because she knew what she thought of herself.
As the woman approached, Gwen said, “Brit the Elder, I’d like you to meet . . .”
Brit the Elder didn’t seem to hear Gwen. She spread her arms wide and said “Phillip!” She walked directly to Phillip and looked at him, breathing in deeply. “Phillip,” she repeated. “It is so good to see you. I just had to say hello to you before the reception, with all those other delegates around.”
Phillip glanced at Gwen, who seemed thrown. He extended his right hand and said, “Thank you, . . . ma’am, uh, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Brit took Phillip’s right hand in both of hers, and smiled. “Of course, you’re right. We haven’t met, but we will soon.”
“Aren’t we meeting right now?” Phillip asked.
“Yes, but not for the first time. That comes later.” She smiled at Phillip for another moment, then she released his hand and pried her attention away from him. “Hello, Martin,” she said, brightly. “How do you like Atlantis?”
Martin bowed slightly and said, “It’s spectacular, but I gotta say, I’m really more impressed with how you built it. It simply never occurred to me to make a macro copy of molecules like that. It’s brilliant.”
Even though Martin wouldn’t have thought it possible, her smile got even broader. “Yes, I thought you’d appreciate it more than most. That’s why I told Gwen to invite you.”
“Oh, uh, um,” Martin stammered. “That was your doing?”
“Yes. She suggested that someone named Tyler might get more out of the visit, but from what she’s told me about you, and from what I remembered, well, I knew you had to be the one to accompany Phillip.”
She looked back at Phillip for another long moment, then she looked away, stood straight and tall, and said, “Gentlemen, it’s wonderful to see you both. I’d love to chat, but we all have a reception to prepare for. Thank you, Gwen. I’ll see you all tonight.”
Brit the Elder turned and walked back toward the mirrored glass, followed by two of her four guards. The glass opened silently just as she arrived, then closed silently once the three of them were inside.
9.
Jimmy sat in his private jail cell, which, sadly, was the nicest home he’d had in thirty years. It was clean, the toilet worked, and he didn’t have to pedal it. Of course, he couldn’t leave, but he was sure that would change soon. Jimmy had expected to be taken into custody once he revealed himself to the authori
ties, but once he was officially working with them, he expected his treatment would improve.
Jimmy heard the agents coming long before he saw them. He heard the jangling of keys on the far side of the steel security door at the far end of the hall, which told him that someone was approaching.
Then, Jimmy heard the security door open and the sound of footsteps, which told him that the visitors were two men.
Then Jimmy heard the other prisoners greeting the visitors with a mixture of insults, threats, and insulting threats, which told Jimmy that the visitors were not the normal jail guards.
Finally, Jimmy heard one of the visitors silence the prisoners by shouting a torrent of the most viscerally horrifying threats Jimmy had ever heard, while the other man said nothing, which told him that the visitors were Agents Miller and Murphy.
Jimmy sat up on his bed and turned to face the iron bars. The electronic lock on his door and the doors of the two adjacent cells had mysteriously stopped working, so they were secured with several loops of thick chain and big, beefy padlocks that Jimmy could have picked quite quickly, if he’d had any wish to do so.
Agents Miller and Murphy arrived in front of Jimmy’s cell. Jimmy waited patiently while Agent Miller finished a particularly long and intricate threat, shouted not at any specific prisoner, but at anybody who had the audacity to be listening at that moment. When he was finished, Jimmy said, “Good morning, gentlemen.”
Agent Murphy’s face split into a wide, goofy grin. “Why, good morning, Jimmy. I hope you slept well. We’re awfully sorry about your accommodations. We’re still working on getting you someplace a little more comfortable.”
This was not unexpected. Miller and Murphy employed an exaggerated version of the old good cop/bad cop routine that Jimmy liked to call “violently unstable rage-aholic cop/friendly, talkative youth pastor cop.” As soon as it became clear that Jimmy was not a perpetrator to be bullied, but an ally to be placated, Agent Murphy had taken over most communication.