by Kieran Shea
“Yeah, but I was kind of looking forward to the Embrace ceremony.”
“Mmm, the Embrace ceremony,” Koko says. “Do you have any idea what happens to a body on terminal velocity? Splits open just like this girl here, only in a thousand tiny pieces.”
“But it’s quick.”
“Quick.”
“And they say it’s a beautiful flight.”
Koko makes a face. “Who says that? The survivors?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. The doctors are supposed to sedate you with a calming hallucinogenic, so the word is the whole jump is kind of exhilarating and peaceful. We’ll be over the southern Pacific. I had my last words picked out and everything.”
“Let me guess. Poetry?”
“More like a curse, actually.” Flynn rubs his face with both hands. “Look, Koko. I get it. I mean, I do. I’m a liability to you, and you need to move quickly. No matter what I swear to or promise right here, I know you shouldn’t trust me. But listen, if you’re going to kill me, can you at least allow me the courtesy of clearing my thoughts first?”
“What the hell for?”
“I don’t know. To be civilized.”
“Don’t be such a baby.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Oh, yeah? I suppose you want a blindfold too. I’d give you a stick of crinkle-flake for dramatic effect, but my smokes are ruined thanks to this dead one here.” Koko cranks the levels on her gun, cocks her head, and crosses her arms. “Fine. You’ve got one minute to clear your thoughts. But listen up, okay? Fair warning. If you even think about making a move or try some kind of hero antics here, I promise your last moments alive will be so painful you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
Flynn nods. “I understand.”
“Good.”
Flynn shifts on his feet and glances around his quarters. Not much to speak of, his mundane life’s slovenly trappings and belongings. He considers his donations to NLI Relief Services and his dismal legacy—molecular traces of skin, sweat, and bodily oils soon to be cleaned from the items given to those in need. Time seems to undulate radically, speeds up and slows, and his hands start to shake. Is this really it? Really? After all his inconsequential striving and meager, senseless achievements, this is how he is going to die? At the hands of a trained corporate killer bartender? It’s all so absurd. Flynn wants to laugh but he can’t. God, he thought he’d at least see some memories flash by in his mind, but he doesn’t and Flynn finds that more than a little disappointing. Should he say a prayer? No, his intention is to be brave in the face of his mortality and curse. He looks up as Koko levels a reticent look. Those eyes. Such a remarkable shade. So impassive and green.
Wait. Does he really want to be shot? Shouldn’t he, well, shouldn’t he have some say in how he dies? Perhaps Koko knows something less messy. Something painless, something dreamt up in some clammy Hapkido den that could take him from this world with a measure of kindness. Flynn starts to utter something, but he can’t find his voice, let alone his breath.
Slowly, he forces himself to open his palms at his sides as Koko meanders from around the bed. Over the funk of death, Flynn catches a faint whiff of her cinnamony scent as she moves closer. Soon twenty feet becomes fifteen. Then ten.
All of Flynn’s nerves are frenzied, and the elation blended with sheer terror in his heart is beyond electrifying.
Koko is seven feet away now, and Flynn believes he can feel the warmth emanating from her body. As she enters his comfort zone, he squeezes his eyes shut. A tight, hard knot presses the skin above his sternum. The barrel of her gun.
Here it comes, Flynn thinks. The flash, the inconceivable rush of killing heat.
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes…
The barrel leaves his chest and lifts the soft space beneath his whiskered chin. Startled, Flynn opens his eyes. Koko tips back slightly and with her free hand thumbs away a tear streaming down the side of Flynn’s face. No. It can’t be. She’s actually smiling at him.
Smiling?
“You know what?”
A croak escapes Flynn’s throat.
“I think I’ve got a better idea,” Koko says.
MOVING OUT
Ten minutes later Flynn is hustling Koko up a protracted climb on the curving outer maintenance passages, decks, and ladders that skirt Alaungpaya’s massive hull.
Even with his turned-in credentials, Flynn knows how to bypass security access panels on alternating decks. To ward off the cold, he’s provisioned them both with the heaviest coats and gloves he could find from his scanty packed-up possessions. But despite these extra layers, the freezing, less-oxygenated air near the hull is cruel. The sub-zero infrastructure appears endless, skeletal, and utterly confusing to Koko. Sometimes it looks as though the two of them are heading up and other times it seems they are awkwardly galumphing their way back down. Tree-trunk-thick stanchions of cable web out from the walls, and longitudinal pipes jacketed with dense, dripping stalactites of frost elbow out at almost every turn. Now and then, massive crisscrossing spars twang above them with great creaks of turbulence.
Koko’s leg muscles burn and her lungs ache from the climb’s exertion. She wants to keep at least one of her hands on a gun, but in the narrow, grated passageways it is more than a little difficult. They found the dead bounty agent’s rucksack outside Flynn’s quarters and discovered it was crammed full of weapons. Koko took the extra power clips for both her Sig Sauer and his confiscated Beretta and threw the rest back inside Flynn’s quarters.
On the next passageway they bustle past a handful of worker-drones in heavy hooded oil coats. A couple of the maintenance workers appear to recognize Flynn and assume he is trafficking through the area on official ASS business.
Koko can’t stop her teeth from chattering.
“C-c-can you move any f-f-faster? My nipples are about t-to snap off.”
Flynn glances over his shoulder. “Any faster and we might draw unwanted attention. Word travels fast up here, and someone might get suspicious. Just be cool, all right?”
Koko gestures to the icy surfaces around them. “Be cool, he says. That’s got to be the understatement of the twenty-sixth freakin’ century. It’s a meat locker out here, Flynn.” Koko compresses her hands into tight balls to keep the blood flowing to her fingertips. “Damn, how many decks more do we have to climb?”
“Forty. Maybe forty-five.”
Forty-five? Koko shivers. Goddamn, how she misses The Sixty. The oppressive soggy heat, the vibrant hyper-growth tangle and succulent blooming flora. Annoying as they were, she finds herself missing those crazy Gibbon monkeys that hung around her bar.
“Had to live on top of the world didn’t you, Depressus boy?”
“Hey,” Flynn chides, “you could have blown my head off back at my quarters. I’m doing you a favor here.”
“How about a lift? Any of those bad boys around?”
Flynn shakes his head and keeps moving. There are tiny sweat icicles beading the hairs of his beard. “Lifts always empty out onto public decks,” he says. “It’s too risky. Just keep moving, and we’ll be there before you know it. Man, I thought you diehard mercenary types were supposed to be tough.”
“Tougher than you.”
“And yet who’s the one complaining?”
On a stretch of scaffolding up ahead a group of dark-goggled maintenance technicians in full-length oily parkas are taking a break. With ear-protection headsets looped around their necks, they sip steaming tea from reservoir thermoses strapped beneath their coats and nibble on buttery triangular biscuits. Koko and Flynn start to hew their way through the group, and Flynn gives the men and women a busied look. Koko keeps her head down.
“Excuse us, friends,” Flynn announces. “Security Services. Be out of your way in just a second. Got us an urgent classified breach infraction, degree-code seven.”
The group moves apart as best they can, cramming themselves back against the narrow passage’s frosted rails. Flynn and
Koko are almost through when a burly parka on the end of the group blocks Flynn’s path with a raised arm. Koko bumps into Flynn’s back like a halted caboose.
“Restricted area here, officer,” the burly parka growls, his breath fogging the air. “Can I see your credentials?”
Flynn dead-eyes a stare forward and doesn’t move.
The burly parka continues. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’m master chief here. Not busting your chops or nothing, but like I said, this section is restricted. Breach infraction or not, I still need to see identification.”
Flynn is still looking forward when he finally speaks. His voice is unemotional and restrained.
“Officer Jedidiah Flynn, C-class. Badge number two-two-nine-four.”
One of the techs behind Koko chuckles hollowly into her tea about the bogus nature of breach infractions, and the rest of the crew don’t even bother to suppress their commiserating laughter. Koko clamps her cheek with her back teeth and bites down.
The big parka doesn’t lower his beefy arm. “Regulations,” he snarls. “Yeah, I know they can be a hassle and all, but I still got to see identification no matter who you say you are. Nothing personal.”
Bit by bit Flynn turns his head. Over the tilt of his shoulder, Koko can see Flynn’s eyes reflected in the burly parka’s protective goggles. It’s an irritated look she’s seen plenty of times on senior officers in the field—a heady mixture of contempt, calm civility, and aggravation. If she didn’t know Flynn was a bit of a cardsharp and somewhat skilled at the bluff, it would appear that the big man blocking their way had just kicked a snake.
The burly parka shoves Flynn back a little. “Hey, you deaf?”
“What?”
“I said, are you deaf? The ears. Hard of hearing. The noise out here near Alaungpaya’s hull, I know it does a number on the eardrums over time. That’s why techs like us are supposed to wear ear protection. Anyway, I still got to see your creds, man.”
“Step aside, sir,” Flynn says.
“Hey. I don’t make the rules, buddy, I just follow ’em. If you don’t present proper identification I’m afraid you’re going to have to turn around and go back the way you came.” Burly parka finishes chewing some of a biscuit in his cheek and passes a fleeting look at the other workers in his crew. Flynn’s darkened look doesn’t waver.
Subtle and slow, Koko moves her fingers under her coat, her mind percolating. The massive network of ducts and pipes around them, who knows what hydrogen fusion magic is whisking through them to keep Alaungpaya aloft? Drawing her gun could be a big mistake. Her mind downshifts to tactical defaults. Six techs on two. Clipping leg sweeps, incapacitating breaks of bone, and crushed windpipes. But what then to do with all their bodies? No, she needs to wait for Flynn’s call. Flynn then utters something so quiet that none of them can hear.
The burly parka grunts. “What did you say?”
Flynn speaks louder. “I said, regulations got your back, huh?”
“That they do,” the burly man answers. “That they do.”
Flynn moves his face five inches from the big man’s bulbous nose. “So I suppose then, as the master chief of this crew, you are familiar with the penalties for impeding a Security Services emergency.”
“Huh?”
“Sure, yeah,” Flynn says. “It’s pretty laughable stuff now here in front of your crew, but interfering with an officer like me on an issue like this? Do you really think your precious regulations will have your back?”
“Now, hold on a second…”
“No, you hold on. I don’t have time for this. This is an emergency and it’s classified, you got that? All wrapped up in that fragile ego of yours, you just thought—hey, let me swing some attitude around, be the big man and mouth off to a guy just trying to do his job. You know what? I really hate that. How about I drop some background probes into your and your buddies’ files here? Specified and careful work, rig engineering, hard to erase the taint of even a minor inquiry.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I don’t have to take shit like that from you, that’s what I think.”
Flynn’s voice is louder and even more mocking. “Oh, really, now? And who do you think they’ll believe if you report it, huh? Me or some jerk who doesn’t have the good sense to get out of the way?”
Reluctantly the burly parka ponders this as the other technicians in his crew grow still. Flynn reaches out and puts his hand on the burly parka’s obstructing arm.
“Show me how smart you are,” he says.
A few minutes later Koko and Flynn are scaling up four more deck levels, taking the metal stairs two steps at a time.
“Urgent breach infraction degree-code seven?” Koko asks.
Flynn bats a hand in the air like he’s swatting away an annoying fly.
“Give some meathead a PhD in fusion propulsion and anti-gravity physics and he kind of gets dopey on the details.”
PEDDLING THE FAITH
NEW ONE ROMAN CHURCH OF THE MOST HOLY LIBERATOR RECRUITMENT FEED ADVERTISEMENT “FOG SPOT”—0:60
CLIENT: New One Roman Church of the Most Holy Liberator (NORC/MHL) Division of Populace Assessment and Public Affairs
PRODUCTION ENGAGEMENT: 2516 All Hemispheric Seasonal Cycles
VISUAL FEED 1: USING CELEBRITY STAND-IN AVATAR INSERTIONS. (See attached creative brief for available endorsers with fees, demographic specifics, languages, and agent contact information.) NARRATOR, IN WHITE, EMERGES LIKE A SPIRIT FROM THE MIST AND STEPS INTO A ROCKY, BARREN FOREGROUND. THE SCENE IS OF INDETERMINABLE ORIGIN, NEITHER COLD NOR WARM IN NUANCE. CAMERA DRAWS IN SLOWLY AS NARRATOR STOPS AND LEANS THOUGHTFULLY AGAINST A LARGE BOULDER IN THE FOREGROUND. NARRATOR SMILES AT CAMERA, TENDERLY.
AUDIO: GENTLE, SOOTHING, SOFT WIND SOUNDS. BARELY DISCERNABLE WHISPERS OF DEITY NAMES IN SUCCESSION. [Yahweh, Allah, Mulungu Christ, Bhagavan, etc. See attached creative brief for specific names and pronunciations.]
NARRATOR: Questions. Since the beginning, the hearts of many have struggled to attain answers. Questions defining our very existence. Some speculate this is an egocentric flaw in our very natures—to ponder such deep questions. Yet questioning one’s meaning in and of itself is arguably part of what makes us human. You know this. I know this. And we both know in the past few centuries the world has survived [PAUSE]…
[CUT TO] VISUAL FEED 3: NEW ANGLE ON NARRATOR.
NARRATOR (CONT.): …trying times.
[CUT TO] VISUAL FEED 4: NEW ANGLE ON NARRATOR.
NARRATOR (CONT.): In the past hundred-plus years, from the despicable heaps of deliberate destruction, all shades of worship and manners of faith are surging again. A commitment to rebirth, to faith and moral absolutes—this is hardly something to be ashamed of. The challenge, however, is to humble yourself before omnipresent truths. To accept and marvel at the grace of humankind’s miraculous survival. For one to wallow in dissolute confusion in the face of our unlikely persistence is (LAUGHS GENTLY, BUT NOT DERISIVELY) absurd.
[CUT TO] VISUAL FEED 5: TRACKING, CIRCULAR PAN AROUND NARRATOR.
NARRATOR (CONT.): No, my friends, you feel, as I do, the turning. A yearning to fill the hollow ache within yourself. A calling to higher matters of the spirit, yes-yes. But how do you choose the right path? The best faith? An introspective soul like your own deserves better. The most encompassing credence for peace and success. All I can ask you today is that you consider. Consider the right way and the life. And join us.
[CUT TO] VISUAL FEED 6: CLOSE UP NARRATOR’S FACE. NARRATOR HOLDS UP A NORC/MHL MEDALLION.
NARRATOR (CONT.): Good news and prosperity to you. I’m [CELEBRITY NAME] and I endorse this feed.
VISUAL FEED 7: [DISSOLVE, LOGO UP—NORC/MHL]
KNEEL BEFORE YOU RISE
While waiting for news on Koko, Portia Delacompte contemplates popping back yet another hit of Q just as the glowing orange projections above her desk bleat to remind her it is time for her daily supplicatio
n.
Delacompte mutters a curse out loud but stops herself. She knows that once the notification is locked in on her location the Church is likely listening.
Shit, this keeping up appearances is getting stale, she thinks miserably.
Supplications are unavoidable. As an aspirant to the New One Roman Church of the Most Holy Liberator, Delacompte is mandatorily required to log in for the daily sacrament. Even with 79-million-plus members and millions more like her going through the acolyte process worldwide, the sanctimonious bean-counters kept track of every single detail of her application. How many prayers. How many deficient confessions, how many credits she’s tithed and how often she’s attended their boring collective missionary mobs, the fasting and all the post-flagellate medical anointments—ticking off her faithful affirmations and inadequate stumbles like so many hash marks on a scoreboard. The Church keeps track of everything. Everything.
It makes Delacompte feel so tired.
You’d think they’d have better things to do than ride fresh applicants like this. She doesn’t know—maybe, instead of engaging directives they have conveniently extrapolated from their pruned ancient scriptures, they could spend their time helping those crushed in the embattled disease- and famine-ridden regions. Perhaps feed the plebeian re-civ minions who actually believe in their revamped, monotheistic mumbo jumbo and huckster platitudes.
But of course not. That would mean work, and who wants to work when you can lie back and roll around in devout fantasy like a pack of overfed dogs?
Really, the reinvention and resurgence of organized religions across the globe after centuries of human-made sub-apocalyptic cataclysm defies logic. Take the best of the world’s bankrupt faiths and cobble them into a unified belief that supports and espouses status and commerce—all of one cast and yet anonymous at the same time, inclusive yet formless. Pure genius in terms of mass control, and no doubt admirable. But after the razing of the planet, after technology’s meltdown and generations of effort patchworking scattered nations’ corrupt power structures back into a tenuous workable engine, after all the suffering, environmental collapse, contagion, war, and moral dearth… don’t you think the Most Holy Liberator—or any deity, for that matter—would have shown up by now? Powered down on some superstar cloud flanked by a bunch of bored-silly angels and said, “Okay, idiots. That’s enough. Knock this shit off right now.”