Paradise Reclaimed

by Raymond Harris

  She swam further out to sea where she knew there was an underwater cliff. She had always been drawn to the depths and had even put her hand up to go on an expedition to study the leviathans of the northern sea: impossibly large crustaceans, sinuously long sea draco and large spherical glow fish, but she had missed out, the position going to those with more marine knowledge.

  She hovered over the cliff edge whilst she drew in breath through her snorkel. When she was fully oxygenated she dove, using gentle sweeps of her fins to dive deep. Here the fish were large and an especially friendly snub-nose came toward her, its sensors picking up her curious scent. When it darted away she instinctively turned to see what had startled it. Her heart beat faster for a moment until she had found the source of the disturbance. She backed away from the cliff face when she realised she was perhaps too close to spear-plants with one pulling in its catch, a medium sized puffer writhing about on a small piece of sharp bone. It would be unlikely that it would consider her suitable prey, but it might lash out to defend itself. She had not seen this species before and didn’t know if it carried a toxin, so best to keep away.

  She continued to explore the area for a further half hour, cruising along the surface while she oxygenated, then diving as deep as she could. Further along she found a particularly large and beautiful tower of sea fungi shimmering with bioluminescence tempting small fish into its many crevices and caves where they would be trapped and devoured.

  Eventually she found her way back to the beach and collapsed on its white sands, feeling the type of pleasurable exhaustion not unlike the completion of sex.

  She must have dozed for an hour before her guardian interrupted her sleep. “Sorry Nuku, you were expecting Dr Drake to call you.”

  She opened her eyes to the glare of the midday sun, her skin hot, the grit of sand on her hands. “Bill, sorry, you caught me asleep.”

  “I can call back…”

  “No, no, it’s fine. I hadn’t intended to doze for so long.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Cascade, I’ve just been exploring the eastern reef, spotted a new species of spear-plant.”

  “Lucky you, might I guess you are now supine on the beach, soaking up the sun?”

  She laughed. “So tomorrow is okay?”

  “Yes, morning tea too early?”

  “No, I’ll catch the first foil.”

  As soon as she walked through the door her guardian delivered a message from Miriam: “Nuks, I’ve gone out for supplies, be back late afternoon. David and Maxim have gone into the capital and won’t be back for a few days, so just you and me tonight. Make yourself at home.”

  She foraged for food, something indulgent. She found crystallised joop berries, bread and some amber nectar to use as a spread, and settled in front of the large screen. It had been a long time since she had just relaxed and caught up with screen entertainment. She asked for a search of items relating to interstellar travel and new planets but only found items containing old news. So it was true that it had so far been kept secret? Ah well, she thought; time to catch up on some sport. At first she watched the most recent sports news, with highlights of matches, which included an announcement that Zhang Biyu was going to defend her title at the end of the week. She had heard of Biyu: who hadn’t? It had been a long time since she had been to a live sport event and when she watched a highlight of Biyu’s previous bout her mind was made up. She was exciting to watch, each move graceful but efficient, the champion of the moment. She asked her guardian to book her a seat. She got one of the last remaining - up the back. Disappointing, but the atmosphere of the crowd would make it all worthwhile. That completed she requested to see a football final, a match she was desperate to see but had been unable to attend because she had been away. The match was especially significant because it was between her old team the Gliders and the Northern Runners. Like many Edenoi children she played sport and had become a promising striker in the junior squad. She was destined to make the senior team but her love of biology had dominated and she had to make a choice. The match would bring back memories because she had old friends on the senior team, and it had been where she had met Miriam.

  When Miriam walked in with a drone filled with supplies gliding behind her, Nuku was cheering a goal scored by the striker Tara Genzo, an Arcadian beer in hand.

  “Catching up? Didn’t you once have a massive crush on Genzo?”

  Nuku turned and laughed. “Who didn’t? The way she commands the ball. Here, let me help you,” she said as the screen froze on Genzo completing a scissor kick over her head.

  “No, you continue to watch…”

  “No, it can wait… What did you get?” She asked as she got up from the couch and the screen went blank.

  “I thought we’d have grilled deep-sea gumblin, crispy fried tator and northern salad, the rest is just staples for the week,” she said as the doors of the drone hissed open level to the bench.

  Nuku helped put away the supplies and prepare the meal as they reminisced amiably about friends, family and work acquaintances. Miriam seemed especially nostalgic and Nuku sensed there was some as yet unspoken reason behind it. Yet each time there was a pause in which she might ask what was really on Miriam’s mind, Miriam quickly filled the silence with small talk.

  She thought she might get the opportunity at the dinner table but Miriam suggested they curl up on the couch and eat their meal while they finished watching the football match. Nuku knew Miriam well enough to know that she was building up to a significant revelation – a few more wines and she would open up. In the meantime she didn’t mind the distraction, even when the Gliders lost with a penalty shot.

  It was later in the night after they had watched a recent dance performance over a bowl of sugar nut ice cream that Miriam suddenly became pensive.

  “David and I have decided to end the circle, or what remains of it. I’m moving north to help build the new city. I’ve been assigned some major buildings. It will be a permanent move.”

  Nuku was silent for a moment. It wasn’t a complete surprise but she was still saddened by the news. “I suppose if we’d decided to raise kids… If I had decided to be a mother…”

  “Or anyone of us. It’s not your fault Nuks. We’ve all put our careers ahead of taking on a parenting agreement.”

  “It’s odd, you know. I was just thinking that I would take on a parenting agreement when this section two is over.”

  Miriam considered her, choosing her words carefully. “Somehow I think this section two is more than you think.”

  “Why, what do you know?”

  “That I’ve heard of a number of people who’ve been called up – in mysterious circumstances,” she said pointing to her left to indicate that her guardian would be listening and that she couldn’t say too much.

  Nuku nodded, although she thought Miriam was being a bit paranoid. The conversation was still very vague and she did not think she was close to revealing any confidential detail. She was well aware that Miriam didn’t like the guardians; that she thought they were far too intrusive and wished that she could turn them off. She was not alone in this sentiment. There had been a long debate when they had been introduced. Nuku understood the objections but thought the benefits far outweighed the constant surveillance. The crime rate had almost dropped to zero because the guardians were always there as a witness. This especially meant that women and children were protected from sexual predators (even if the number of criminals had been vastly reduced through gene therapy). It also meant that if you became injured when you were alone, the guardian could alert someone. She had known the guardians to save many lives and parents now felt secure in letting their children roam free because the guardians were always watching. She also thought the checks and balances were more than adequate and made the guardian more a servant than a master; and the immediate access to the central AI had become close to essential. It would seem odd not to have them there; people had come to rely on them.

  “
I don’t know Nuks,” Miriam sighed. “Things are changing so fast. I know a lot of circles that are breaking up, especially amongst our age group. Some of the older ones are more stable. But everything’s changing…”

  “What do you mean?” Nuku asked trying to get Miriam to articulate her disquiet.

  “There’s talk of a third city. The population is booming at an accelerating rate. I can’t believe how young some new mothers are. I feel old and I’m only twenty-five.”

  “I know, my sister is having her first…”

  “Little Aloha?”

  “Not so little anymore… And I think I got propositioned by a preeb – she’s already a citizen and a member of the Academy…”

  Miriam laughed. “I tell you, they’re taking over. We have a prodigy from the Design Institute who’s just starting accepting commissions. He’s eleven. I think I hate him because he’s so fucking talented – and ambitious. He’s quite the player, very political, very socially adept.”

  “Yes, that’s the thing I noticed about this girl, very socially assured and charming. She acted as if the future was hers…”

  Miriam smiled mischievously. “So, sounds like she was working you?”

  Nuku shrugged. “Of course, but very openly, as if there was nothing to be ashamed of. She told me she was already in a circle…”

  “With adults?”

  “I assume so.”

  Miriam shook her head. “We waited until we were probies before we dared to try and seduce adults, now it’s the preebs. You know there are more and more of them hitting the clubs.”

  Nuku didn’t know what to say. The exponential growth of human intelligence had long ago separated from the evolution of the body and it had created fully adult minds with adult desires in physically immature bodies. The theraputae had been trying to speed up the physical growth of the body to match, but there were serious limits, most especially with bone growth. They had experienced this on old Earth in the late twentieth century with the problem of precocious puberty, which had caused problems with skeletal development. It had also challenged many of the assumptions around childhood. What was a child? Was a child a body or a mind, or a cultural and moral construct? What do you do with a person who, by all measures, has the mind of a genius but the body of a child? On Earth adults had tried to pretend that precocious children were still children, even when the prodigies told them they didn’t want to be treated as children. It seemed as if adults had constructed the concept of childhood to satisfy adult emotional needs to quell adult fears. It wasn’t about real children at all. And so in order to defend the idea of childhood against the progress of evolution, adults did all they could to extend childhood for as long as possible, even to the point of arguing that young adults were still children, conveniently forgetting that several important historical figures had been adolescents, like the precocious Alexander the Great who had lead an army when he was sixteen and went on to found an empire. On Eden it had been the second generation of the native born who had overthrown the romanticised notion of childhood and demanded they be treated according to their actual developmental age, not their chronological age.

  Eden had become a planet of children and adolescents.

  Nuku wanted to tell her that this girl was going to be on an interstellar exploration team but couldn’t. “Actually, this girl has made an important breakthrough in the field of exobiology…”

  “So you fancy her?” asked Miriam to tease her.

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Nuku didn’t know how to proceed given that she was bound to confidentiality. “I fancy her mind Mims,” she said knowing that she could not tell Miriam there was no point in starting a relationship because they were both leaving Eden, soon.

  Miriam looked at her with scepticism, but it seemed to mask another emotion: sadness. Her eyes had begun to water just slightly and her smile seemed forced. It was then her intuition prompted her prefrontal cortex with the obvious reason. “Is this about Maxim?”

  Her question prompted an immediate response and tears began to well in Miriam’s eyes. “David’s fallen in love with Maxim.”

  “So this is not really about you moving?”

  Miriam shook her head.

  “You’re moving because of Maxim?”

  Miriam nodded. “David’s been spending more time with Maxim’s circle…”

  “Ah,” said Nuku. “I see, and Maxim is primarily same-sex attracted…”

  “To ephebes. There’s a group of them amongst the aesthetes, some sort of Greek pederast revivalism. They all meet in a symposium and indulge in Dionysian excesses…”

  “But women also worshipped Dionysus,” Nuku reminded her.

  “Dionysus, Eros, Adonis, Apollo, Ganymede…”

  Nuku nodded. “A cult of male beauty?”

  Miriam wiped her eyes. “Yes, all a bit decadent, with no place for women. I confronted David about it…”

  “Maybe it’s just a fad…”

  Miriam shook her head. “Thing is, he’s moved on and I was caught standing still, oblivious to the changes going on around me.”

  “Oh Mims, I’m sorry…”

  “I thought of creating a Sapphic circle for revenge, a rival cult of the beautiful girl, but it’s not really what I want…”

  Nuku looked at her intently, waiting for her to finish the sentence.

  “…I don’t think I know what I want. Oh look, I’m sorry, this is such a downer.”

  “Don’t apologise,” said Nuku. “You’re just going through a period of change. You’ll find your feet again.”

  Miriam stood. “I know, that’s exactly why I’m moving. The capital has become stale. With the new city we get to try something new. It’s not good for our species to stand still.”

  If there was ever a point that Nuku could tell Miriam that there were new planets to explore it was now, but she couldn’t.

  “Come,” said Miriam. “I need some fresh air,” she said as she reached for Nuku’s hand.

  They walked outside to the patio. Eros was rising over the Luminous Sea. “Oh look, the tide’s brought in a large cluster of shimmer,” said Miriam pointing to the beach and the waves glowing, filled with bioluminous krill.

  “Oh wow,” said Nuku. “Remember when we went camping with the Glider’s junior squad on that team building exercise?”

  “And the little bay was glowing with shimmer?”

  “And they stuck to our bodies?”

  “Do you want to?”

  They did not hesitate. They took the lev lift down to the sand and ran into the water. When they opened their eyes they were surrounded by luminous dots. It was exhilarating and disorienting, like being caught in a nebula with no sense of up or down.

  When they finally left the water their bodies glittered with shimmer caught in droplets of water. They collapsed on the beach as small luminous waves tickled their bodies. They kissed and made love as Eros rose in the sky. Out of the corner of her eye Nuku saw a small flash of light in the sky – another starship returning?

  She rose early, just as the sun’s first rays were rising over the sea. Miriam was still asleep, her body twisted in a sheet, one leg and one arm exposed, her hair tousled. Nuku looked at her for a moment and was hit with a wave of sadness. It might be the last time she would see her, or any of her old circle.

  She dressed and grabbed some fruit for breakfast. The hydrofoil was just pulling into the jetty as she arrived. She stood on the bow. The sea was choppy and the waves kicked up sea spray as the hydrofoil crashed through. Her thoughts turned to the night before and her sadness lifted to a kind of contented nostalgia.

  Things ended and things began.

  It was the way of life, the way of the cosmos.

  27

  Biyu

  Njoko threw a hard right and then attempted a kick with his left. She saw both coming. She never took Njoko for granted. He was strong and when he connected it could hurt. But this was a spar and he wasn’t supposed to do too much damage.


  “Good,” shouted Tower. “Seems your little bender didn’t dull your reflexes.”

  She responded to Njoko’s left kick with a leap and a kick of her right foot. Njoko attempted to deflect it but was too late and the kick thudded into his protective helmet. There would be no such luxury in a bout. He recovered quickly and made a grab at her leg. It unbalanced her and she fell hard.

  “Should have seen that. Come on Biyu. Concentrate,” shouted Tower.

  She rolled immediately and slipped out of Njoko’s grasp. She sprang to her feet and performed a roundhouse kick to his right-side ribcage.

  “Better. Good sequence. You okay Njoko?”

  Njoko nodded but he looked winded.

  “We’d better have a break. Njoko, take a breather, but you Biyu, time on the robot. I know you’re tired but that’s when you need to focus.”

  She took a deep breath and wiped beads of sweat from her forehead just as a drone hovered into the centre of the ring. It did not hesitate to attack, swinging its robotic arms and legs in a random sequence, only stopping when she had successfully blocked the move. She cursed. Tower had set it to a high speed and some of the swings were landing. They were programmed to stop as soon as they made contact but she hated the thought of a fucking bot getting the better of her. She took a deep breath. She was tired, her muscles aching and her reactions too slow. She had to break through and find her second wind. It was a matter of mind control; the body would follow.