“I think we will have some work to do in the next few days Paloma,” Li Li said as she stroked her face gently. “There will be consequences after tonight.”
“Si, I understand the responsibility. Many utopian experiments faltered due to personal politics, especially the most basic emotions of jealousy and envy. Perhaps the greatest challenge will not be building a new society, but building new people.” Paloma smiled at Li and held her gaze as she began to surrender to the sensation of David moving inside her. She took Li Li’s hand and guided it to her vulva. Yes, Paloma was dangerous because she was passionate and completely uninhibited and would purposefully push everyone’s comfort zones. Li Li looked down and the sight of Paloma’s swollen clit in the flickering firelight made her burn with lust. This was Eden. There would be no sin. Pleasure would not be forbidden. Taboos would be challenged. She and Paloma would make sure of that.
Freja stretched and yawned. She pushed against a limp body. Slowly she remembered. In her dream she had been at home in winter in Sweden, but as she slowly opened her eyes she realised she was light years away. She sat up and the night’s events flooded back. She looked around her, confused. Everything was still and silent and there was a faint glow of sunrise. She looked up at the remaining, unfamiliar stars in the dawn sky. She had fallen asleep in Jules’s arms, too tired and stoned to have sex, but still needing the comfort of a familiar body. She stood slowly and tried to get her bearings. They had fallen asleep not too far from the fire. In the growing light she began to make sense of the camp layout. The First had cleared nooks in the forest, and keeping as much greenery as possible, had erected semi-permanent, military-style tents as accommodation, with a much larger mess tent in the centre. She relocated what she was looking for, the amenities block. As she made her way she noted the number of naked bodies that had failed to make it to their beds: Anaïs was lying with an arm and leg across Prosperous’s prone body, looking very content. She felt a small twinge of regret. He was a beautiful specimen, his impressive, semi-tumescent cock lying draped across his thigh. She was tempted to touch it, Anaïs certainly wouldn’t mind.
Li Li was tangled in David and Paloma’s limbs (that had been a surprise, but then, Paloma was full of surprises); and her brother Lars was curled up, spooning the petite Sarakit; Eva and Tehani similarly curled not too far away. All the others had apparently made it back to their tents and the comfort of beds, so it was impossible to tell who had fucked whom. She only knew that it had been a hell of a party, with people surprisingly quick to drop their inhibitions, as if they had all become enchanted, or possessed. She just hoped that people had been smart about it and that there would be no awkwardness or recriminations in the days ahead. They had to get the interpersonal stuff right from the beginning.
She released her bladder and took a quick, refreshing shower. Then she made her way to the mess, letting the warm air dry her skin as she walked. The kitchen was surprisingly tidy. Archimedes, Constance and Shunji had made a point of cleaning up, perhaps because they understood the consequences if they didn’t. It was a sharp reminder that the process of colonisation was ninety-nine per cent slog; best to get it done quickly without fuss. She looked around for water and food. She found a strange purple, peach-like thing and smelled it: it was peppery and floral. She bit into it and was rewarded with a complex citrusy grape flavour. As she continued to savour the strange new fruit she wandered about the camp. She was the only one awake, although she suspected not for too much longer, judging by the now distinct glow of a rising sun. She followed a dirt path through a small copse of trees and was startled by rustling in the canopy. She looked up to see a red, hairless bat-like creature regarding her with casual curiosity. Her first reaction was fear, but she had been told about them. They had discovered three species so far. They had called them draco. They were harmless seed and fruit eaters. She shivered as she recovered her composure. She thought of returning to find something to put on, but there was logically no need. It was just an instinctive, protective reaction. She doubted she would ever need clothes again.
She walked through the work and storage area where the three spherical jumpers and the cargo hull sat surrounded by workshops, laboratories and machinery. She came to a fork in a well-trodden path and had a moment of doubt about whether or not she had chosen the right direction. She stood still, recalling the satellite images of the local area that she had studied. She had wanted to walk to the cliffs overlooking the bays and inlets. She took the path to the left; the one to the right ought to lead down to a beach. She walked into the forest. It was becoming increasingly alive as the sky grew brighter, the crazy display of colour still disorienting and the smells and sounds unfamiliar. She walked through a cloud of small orange, aphid-like creatures, some landing on her skin, one on her left nipple, only to flitter away with disinterest. She became worried she might get lost. Foolishly she had forgotten to tell someone where she was going, a basic safety measure. What had possessed her? She almost turned back but she heard the enticing sound of the ocean. She continued along the path and the vegetation began to change and to thin. And there it was, the sun behind her creating a vivid display of sunrise colour on high altocumulus clouds. It was simply breathtaking.
She stood on the cliff edge to watch the day arrive. Before her stretched an azure ocean dotted with islands and a network of red sandstone headlands and sandy bays, the almost full, pink moon they had called Psyche was starting to set. In the distance a flock of flyers circled and took turns to plunge into the ocean to feast on swimmers. The sight struck her with profound awe. She would turn fifteen in a few months and she was pregnant and this was now her planet - a whole, glorious, fucking planet. Beyond the enormous horizon lay empty lands filled with unimaginable wonders. It finally sank in. It was all real, all very real. She could see it before her very eyes, feel the ground under her bare feet, feel the cool breeze on her naked skin; smell it, hear it, taste it. It would take them centuries to explore it. In time they would build a city and she wondered briefly what it might look like. They could build something new and beautiful, like nothing on Earth. How long would it take? Would she live to see at least a small town? She rubbed her stomach and cried. What better gift to give her child than a new world of limitless potential?
Humanity couldn’t fuck this one up, could they? Not now, not with thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, knowledge of what had been done wrong on Earth? She shuddered. This was what she dreaded. Dread and hope, two sides of the same coin. She felt tears fall down her cheeks, one side for each emotion. She would remember this moment and tell her children.
She wouldn’t let anyone fuck it up. Not again.
126
Akash
He was sure there must be a German word for it - the moment of pause and reflection before you decide to open a door and walk through it. The first snows had fallen and the night sky was crystal clear. It was cold and he was rugged up in a pashmina shawl. He wasn’t at all sure he would ever see the Thimpu valley again. He turned and looked back into the home he had made in Bhutan. Tshering was calmly organising the final packing. They would keep the apartment so that Tshering would have somewhere to stay on her return visits. After that, it would pass to Sigyel to maintain, perhaps continuing the hotel (the basement control centre had been gutted and sealed).
If they had packed up and left completely, it would have simply raised too many suspicions. Up until this moment he had been able to keep a low profile but the takeover of Shunyata had created a stir and rumours were running wild. It had been a complex deal, one that was still unfolding. Divisions had been sold off and new corporate entities had been forged. The effect was to create a multi-headed hydra with a much greater global reach and a broader spread of interests. At the centre was his own top-secret research group registered in Geneva, the rather dull sounding Neumann (pun intended) Partners Engineering Group. They had found a nondescript, medium sized factory in a new industrial park on the outskirts of Saint-Genis-Poui
lly, just a few kilometres from CERN, and workers were furiously racing to meet a deadline to reconfigure it to accommodate hi-tech labs and offices, all protected by the latest security. Outwardly it would appear to be just another engineering company supporting the needs of CERN and ESA.
The biggest challenge had been relocating and reassigning staff, especially those listed for future migration waves to Eden. All of them were under some form of contract, which placed an obligation as much on him as on them. He simply could not afford to let any of them go and potentially compromise the project – there could be no loose ends. He had a new HR department to organise all the detail and some candidates had been happily sent on extended study leave, all in disciplines of use to a new colony.
He had tried to keep abreast of everything, but that was impossible. Both Tshering and Aviva had close to physically forced him to accept more personal staff. He knew that he was being diplomatically removed from certain responsibilities and a cordon placed around him and his family. It was to be expected. The project now had its own momentum.
Aviva still monitored security, but her division had also been broken up. There was now a large legal department looking after patents and intellectual property protection in multiple jurisdictions, a cyber security division and a corporate security division. Aviva had stepped into the shadows and was now dealing almost exclusively with corporate warfare and espionage in cooperation with various deep government counterparts. It was this aspect that concerned him the most. Aviva had been intensely loyal to the project, to the point that she would protect it at all costs, something he was not as prepared to do. He wasn’t sure she was telling him everything.
As a result of the merger, most of the US based divisions of Shunyata had been moved offshore, except for mid-sized sales and administrative offices in San Francisco and New York. All of their retail outlets had been turned into franchises. This in itself was not unusual. All large corporations had long ago abandoned any pretence at national loyalty, many were in fact nations unto themselves and the new political reality meant that in order to survive economically, governments increasingly treated such corporations as sovereign entities, insulating them from national laws. And under a series of supposed “free-trade” agreements, his trans-national monster was virtually untouchable.
Keeping the game going was now the only game. Politicians of all stripes lived in constant fear of losing corporate support and corporations ruthlessly employed carrot and stick tactics. If a government did not cooperate, they simply shifted whole industries to other, friendlier jurisdictions, creating mass unemployment and the consequent social unrest. If the politicians cooperated they were rewarded with access to some of the spoils. There had been attempts to step outside the system, some failed and some succeeded. But for the most part these experiments were simply too small to be relevant. The bourgeois still held onto aspirations of making it; of positioning themselves close enough to the table to get just enough crumbs. As for the rest - the plebeians, well they were either too dumb or uneducated to comprehend the full reality, a reality that was becoming ever more complex and even less comprehensible. So they simply did what they had always done, turn to petty schemes and petty crime and some form of escape through mindless diversions: alcohol, drugs and baubles. All their anger and frustration directed towards futile, self-destructive and easily commercialised pursuits. It was difficult to avoid becoming cynical, especially when you understood that nothing had really changed since the Roman Empire. Juvenal had been right: panem et circensis – bread and circuses - was all the masses had ever wanted.
If the masses had genuinely revolted in any kind of coherent manner, they might have stopped the elites. But that wasn’t what had happened. The elites had long ago understood how to divide and conquer. And now the planet was teetering on the edge of environmental and economic collapse, with the various cabals jostling for prime position. Competition for access to Arctic and Antarctic resources had intensified. The Russians and Norwegians had opened more gas and oil fields and the Texans were growing ever more desperate in wanting access via Canada. The Arab oilfields were fast drying up and the US/Arab alliance was collapsing - they were being shut out of the carbon economy. Shunyata had pulled out of the US just in time. A week earlier a coalition of northeast and northwest states had privately threatened the Texans by announcing their intention to secede from the United States. Tensions were now exceedingly high with a civil war a matter of days or weeks away. News had just come through that New York State Special Operations had just foiled a terrorist plot planned by a group calling itself the New Confederate Patriots. It was in reality, a carefully planned exploratory attack designed to test the will and preparedness of the new coalition. There was still talk of a political solution but people had started to choose sides and large numbers of people were starting to flee across borders.
He knew this was just the beginning. As resources grew ever more scarce, the elites would fight to survive. There was really only one solution – to make a radical break.
He heard a baby cry. Tshering had given birth to a daughter they had named Tara. He instinctively turned to heed the cry but Alice was already attending to it. He had been redundant throughout the whole process, although he had been there to witness the birth. In Bhutan birth was a largely female affair anyway and Tshering had plenty of support from her family, and Alice had been a great help. He had found himself in a very strange position and he couldn’t quite work out how he felt about it. Out of control he supposed, without really having the right to be in control. He had played his part in providing the sperm (in the most enjoyable way) and now his role was to oversee the business. Sigyel was also carrying his child but she had kept him at a distance, as if he had been just a night visitor with no paternal claims on a child that would be raised in a traditional matrilineage. And a few days earlier he had spoken to Freja, who was now quite noticeably pregnant, again with his child. He had wanted to try and express how he was feeling, but it seemed utterly futile, she was metaphorically and literally light years away and far more concerned about Li Li, who was due any day. He contented himself with the knowledge he would see his daughter soon (it was a she, to be called Yrsa Sigrun Thorsson, because the women had decided to give all females their mother’s name and sons, their father’s).
Everything else was going well on Eden, in fact much better than projected. They had explored further afield, both inland and around the coast and out to sea, and found new sources of food and some key mineral resources. They had even started building permanent structures out of local stone and timber and were planning basic infrastructure: paved pathways (mud was a problem) and underground plumbing and electricity conduits (there would be no overhead wiring). The early agricultural experiments had been moderately successful, some plants seemed amenable to cultivation, others not, some would need modification just as Earth plants had been modified and they were debating the merits of adding Earth plant genes (especially grains). Po had been able to create some secondary foods: salt, a refined sugar, a glutinous flour, fruit jams, two kinds of nut milk, three herb teas (one high in caffeine), an assortment of dried fruits, a porridge and a vinegar (which could be used for preserving). They had been able to go for days without using any of the supplies from Earth, not even rice.
He had spent most of the last few months flying back and forth to Europe. He had approved a new home and they were taking the final flight in the morning. Willy had done most of the house hunting because the bank’s portfolio included extensive property investments. He had argued for something simple, but Willy would have none of it, arguing that because he had achieved a high level of wealth, he would be expected to display it, that is, if he wanted to be taken seriously amongst those now bankrolling his enterprise. Greta had suggested a top Paris interior designer. So, again under pressure, his family were now the occupants of the newly renovated Idyll Pays sur la Rhône, a medium sized country estate overlooking the Rhône River (on the French side) that
dated to the mid nineteenth century. Close enough to commute yet secluded enough to guarantee privacy and security. He thought they might get at least one good spring and summer where the girls could roam the estate before they left Earth for good.
Pema and Nour would be home schooled. They had hired a nanny, a young Dutch/Irish woman shortlisted for emigration to Eden, Siobhán Goya, a specialist in education for the gifted. And Alice, well she was something of a loose cannon. She had applied to several Swiss universities and was going through the administrative hoops, but even if she were to be accepted, she decided she would defer. By the time it became a problem she would be on Eden. It was simply a ruse to satisfy the authorities. She was a free agent. Truth was, she had become an invaluable part of the family: an enormous help to Tshering, a mentor to Pema and Nour, and above all, a wife and a confidant. Outside of that, she was effectively in charge of the enhancement program, working with Sauvaterre who had returned to Paris. They would both be busy, sorting through the shortlist, administering an enhancement program, as well as continuing the work with the Huxleys.
Then there was Angelika… Of all the issues he had to deal with, she was the most confounding. He had had little to do with her in the intervening months because she had returned to her studies. He had asked to see some of her work. He found it uneven: patches of brilliance interspersed with sloppy work, as if she had been bored. The problem with her inconsistency was that physics required considerable concentration and dogged persistence, void physics even more so. Her immaturity was evident and yet the flashes of brilliance might be all she needed to work it out from first principles, leaving others to do the slog work. And this was the danger. That she might hand it over without realising all the implications. Somehow he had to bring her in without exposing the project. He couldn’t get her to sign a contract because she was a minor and it would have no legal standing. It had been Alice who had ended the stalemate. “I’ll tell her if you don’t.”
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