Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Praxis took a glass of champagne off a passing tray and tasted it. He looked around at all the people attending his party.

  He had been thinking about something important and had to grope for it. … Ah, the sense of time collapsing—that was it—and it seemed to be bound up with personal perspective. At the age of five or six, a person did not have much experience of time at all. An hour or a day was a relatively big chunk of what he had so far experienced. And a year would account for a fifth or sixth of his total time on Earth. A person walked slowly through such large amounts of time. On the other hand, by the age of fifty, a full year represented just two percent of a man’s total life experience, and that percentage grew incrementally smaller as each year passed.

  Comparatively, as a newborn baby, not yet a month or a year old, he must have had an almost frozen sense of time, although Praxis himself could not remember that far back. In a way, he thought, the newborn’s sense of time passing would be like that of an astronaut—back in the days when they had space travel—moving near the speed of light: nothing … much … happening … for … ever.

  Praxis wondered what would become of his personal sense of time when he got really old. What was the benefit of living longer—not just a few extra years, but a few hundred or a thousand—if the end result was all those years passing like hours, and the hours passing like seconds? Why, he would still be dead in almost no time at all!

  * * *

  Brandon Praxis studied the crowd at his grandfather’s birthday party. Everyone was having a good time. Everyone was drinking, eating, chatting, dancing—singly, in pairs, and in groups. No one seemed to be conscious of the security presence, even with a dozen high-powered government people and as many corporate executives of equal or greater weight moving around in plain sight.

  He was running security for the party and had vetted the invitation list, both with Aunt Callie and with PE&C’s corporate Watch and Ward® intelligence. After referring to its extensive incidence list, the AI had recommended no special precautions. It did grumble about all the hard, reflective surfaces inside the fort, the foreshortened sight lines, and the possibility of someone dropping an explosive device from the bridge overhead down into the open rectangle of the parade ground. But Brandon countered with seeding an interconnected team of armed Rovers on the Golden Gate Bridge’s walkways. He also put a Spangler—the modern day equivalent of the old naval Phalanx gun—on the cliffside overlooking the building.

  To protect against assassination attempts using various explosives and poisons brought in with the party goods, the intelligence had ordered three Sniffers—mechanical olfactories from the Superdog series, with discrimination down in the range of five parts per billion—to work the preparation area under supervision of a Little Brother specially coded and detached from the core unit.

  For surveillance on the people inside the party, the corporate security AI had detached another Little Brother to take side scans of the guests and service staff as they passed through the sally port tunnel, the only way into or out of the building. The scanning was done with two strips of innocuous-looking black tape stuck to the tunnel walls and ceiling that reported their ghostly images—against which hard points like weapons stood out in a blaze of sharp-edged contrast—directly into the Little Brother’s sensorium. The intelligence would then compare this imaging with the guest list, subtract the bigwigs’ own private bodyguards, and report the rest into the ear buds of Brandon and his inside team. They could discreetly watch and, if necessary, brace the offending party and lead him or her to the cloakroom for disarming.

  That was about the only use security had for flesh-and-blood people anymore: the diplomatic stuff that required a firm but smiling presence in a social situation. Otherwise, security was now almost completely the work of AIs as vulnerability predictors and pattern sorters, guiding armed Rovers that interdicted physical problems and reactive software Bugs that interdicted cyber problems. In this respect, because Brandon was a dolt about cybers to begin with, he had learned to rely heavily on Penny’s experience. Together, they had founded a sideline firm—the very same Watch and Ward®—to safeguard other companies and government agencies.

  Where was Penny, anyway? He scanned the crowd but could not find his wife. She should have been easy to spot, wearing a bright red, swallowtail British officer’s tunic from the colonial era, complete with gold buttons, epaulettes, and a black-leather shako with white plume, over a strapless pink ball gown with silk bodice and chiffon skirt, right out of a 1930s tea dance. He looked up and saw her dancing on the roof.

  “Brandon to Penny,” he said subvocally into his throat mike. “Security check.”

  “Penny to Brandon.” The figure up there didn’t pause in her gyrations. “Go get yourself a drink and then come up and join me. Over.”

  “Do you have eyes on the governor?” he said.

  “All fourteen, sir—on both of them. Over.”

  He had forgotten about the Floaters—more data feeds for Little Brother—which doubled as party balloons. He wondered how many of them the company would lose when they rose above the parapets and the wind whisked them away across the Bay. Well, the tiny cameras were damned near disposable anyway.

  “Brandon to Kenneth. Brandon to Anastasia.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” answered his son, seventeen.

  “Right here,” said his daughter, fifteen.

  “Security check,” he murmured.

  “We’re up here dancing within five meters of Mom.”

  “Did you say hello to Gee-Daddy?” That had been their name for their great-grandfather since they were babies learning to talk. “Wish him a happy birthday?”

  “Yeah, sure. First thing we got here,” Kenny said.

  “Do you want us to check on him again?” Stacy was the more responsible of the pair. “Over.”

  “I think it would make him happy,” Brandon said. “He’s proud of you both, you know.”

  “Right away, Dad. Over.”

  He had once tried to explain to his family that, with intelligently selectable bandwidth signaling, no one had to say “over” or “out” anymore. But they seemed to get off on that old-time radio jargon.

  “Thank you, sweet pea.” He paused. “Over and out.”

  * * *

  The wedding was a small affair because Antigone Wells still couldn’t be sure of her face. Through exercise and physical therapy, her features—at least the lower part, around her mouth and nose—were more mobile, so she could eat without embarrassment and talk almost without impediment on those tricky labials and explosives. But she was still numb, so she could never know without looking in a mirror whether she was smiling or frowning. For that reason, Wells almost never appeared in public.

  Until today, it hadn’t been much of an issue. She had moved back to San Francisco more than twenty years ago, after the building boom that followed the Great Bay Quake had, predictably, overbuilt the downtown area with luxury high-rises. She bought a four-bedroom suite in a condo tower on Market Street that had a view of the Bay, both bridges, and the Marin County shore. She paid cash for the place and never regretted it.

  Wells had moved her online business—research on case law and precedents, strategy formulation, and legal advice—from Oklahoma without a hitch, as her clientele was spread all over the country anyway. That fit into one of the bedrooms, which she remodeled as an office, communications center, and library. Over the years since then, she had become a sort of legal AI. Except that she had a better resume, stronger strategic skills, almost as much information at hand, considering the online databases at her fingertips, and a pretty picture of herself to put up on the website, allowing her clients to know they were speaking and texting with a real, live human being.

  She also continued with her physical fitness regimen, doing karate katas and weapons training in a second bedroom, which she fashioned into a small dojo with a hardwood floor, full-length mirrors, and a ballet barre. One day, she thought she might find he
rself a local karate school and return to teaching classes. But that would come after her face was fully healed. Until then, she kept limber, toned, and balanced with her daily workouts—which was not bad at all for a woman who was ninety-seven years old!

  The two other bedrooms in her condo both had master baths, and she took the one with the best view for herself, for sleeping. That left the other, and Wells thought it would be a shame to use it as a junk room. She didn’t need a guest room, because she didn’t entertain guests, and when her sister Helen visited the Bay Area she stayed with friends in Berkeley. … But Wells did get lonely.

  The solution to that problem had been someone whose reactions she could trust, someone who was raised with her and would not think it sad that her kisses lacked warmth and her smiles never rose to the level of her eyes. Wells had also wanted a daughter for herself, just as John Praxis had taken their son Alexander, but she realized that a nuclear family brought with it too many questions. She wanted a girl who would not go haring off one day, looking for her birth father.

  So, instead, she had returned to Parthenotics, Inc., signed on to the old account she had created with John—but applying for their services singly this time—and specified a female baby. When the question of parentage had come up for the birth certificate, Wells consulted precedents, state and local codes, and Parthenotics’s own legal staff. Together they had determined that it would be acceptable to make the genetic donation on both sides confidential. And then, when young Angela had been old enough to understand, Wells told her—with Helen’s connivance—that she was the daughter of a fictitious and much younger brother who had died in a car accident with his wife soon after the girl was born.

  Antigone Wells had then managed to lose the Parthenotics documentation as soon as Angela received other pieces of paper—Social Security card, passport, school records, driver’s license—that would prove her identity. Which was a good thing, because the county clerk’s office normally required a birth certificate—that damningly anonymous testament of her real heritage—in order to grant a marriage license. But in its place, luckily enough, those other documents had proven satisfactory.

  Being by now long past any thoughts of love and marriage for herself, Wells had never imagined Angela would eventually want to get married. She had always believed the girl would join her as a lifelong companion when she no longer qualified as a ward. Indeed, at the age of sixteen, Angela had sworn to remain celibate so that she could lead the first mission to Mars, as and when it was finally scheduled. But at nineteen, while still a sophomore at MIT in Boston, Angela had met a young man, David Appley, and fallen desperately in love. At her “aunt’s” request, Angela consented to wait until graduation before making the commitment of marriage. Unexpectedly, David had agreed to wait, too—and that lasted until Angela couldn’t wait any longer. Finally, Wells had run out of excuses and subterfuges. So here they were at City Hall on a warm day in early May, completing the paperwork and taking their vows before the Commissioner of Civil Marriages, with Antigone Wells standing behind them wearing a hat with a veil.

  For their wedding reception, she had bought out the Garden Court at the Palace Hotel for the afternoon. The venerable hotel had by now withstood two great earthquakes and rebuilt its famous stained glass dome over the central court. Although she would not attend the reception herself, Wells had sent invitations to everyone Angela and David cared to name. It was her gift to the girl upon starting a new life.

  But that left a complementary gift which Angela would have to return, because Wells had already altered the terms of her living trust and filed it with the county.

  “That locket you’re wearing,” she said, pointing to the silver heart shape on a chain around Angela’s neck. “I’ll need it back.”

  “But, Aunt, I thought that was mine to keep!”

  “I gave it to you to wear as a little girl.”

  “But it’s so pretty, and I love it.”

  “You don’t need it anymore.”

  “Need? But … I don’t understand.”

  “You have David to take care of you now.”

  “All right.” Angela gave her husband an uncertain smile. “If you say so.” She unfastened the chain’s clasp and placed the heart in her aunt’s hand.

  Wells put the thing in her pocket and smiled. Angela was no longer required to prove her identity to anyone. She was the world’s problem now—and David Appley’s.

  2. The New Generation

  Jeffrey Praxis, grandson of the founder of the largest engineering and construction company on the West Coast—maybe even in the world by now—was making one his few supervisory tours of MOLE 2 as it chewed its way through the sedimentary rocks 150 meters, almost five hundred feet, below the San Joaquin Valley floor. Even though the mole’s control room was actually more of an observation platform stationed three meters behind the cutting head, it offered nothing for him to see. Nothing much to control, either. The panel had a few dials and readouts left over for humans who liked to look at numbers. But the real work was done by the embedded intelligence, called simply “Moley,” who was boss of the rig and executive controller to all of the autobots that scurried around in the rig’s wake.

  One crew of ’bots took spoil from the cutter head and trucked most of it back to the last access shaft for disposal, somewhere east of Buttonwillow. They left a calculated percentage of broken rock for grinding in the batch plant, which was run by one of Moley’s Little Brothers. A second crew of ’bots brought in water and cement powder to mix with the ground spoil for the tunnel lining. And a third crew placed tunnel-lining forms, pumped concrete, shifted the forms, pumped concrete, shifted again … all the livelong day, twenty-four by seven by three-six-five. That was what intelligences and their machines did. Given the softness of the rock ahead, the rig had been making seven meters a day, right on schedule.

  “How’s your alignment?” Jeffrey asked the AI through a headset boom. Of course, he already knew the answer—the only possible answer.

  “We are on course, according to the last transducer blast,” Moley replied through Jeffrey’s sound-blocking earphones.

  So far underground, the rig could not navigate by taking signals from the Global Positioning System of satellites above the horizon. Instead, Moley sensed the shockwaves from seismic charges fired once every twelve hours by transducer ’bots, which walked on the surface ahead of the rig, taking their position from the GPS signals and their own internal reading of the construction plans. Between these shots, which were spaced in time to keep the neighbors happy, Moley interpolated his position.

  “Any problems?” Jeffrey asked.

  “The ground is thickening a bit,” Moley said.

  “Tehachapi Mountains up ahead,” Jeffrey confirmed.

  “We’ll be going deep again,” the rig said. “Before the end.”

  After years of dithering, and sometimes losing sight of the project altogether, the State of California had finally decided to complete its bullet train connecting the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin. Some time after the Great Bay Quake, the High-Speed Rail Authority had finally decided to scrap its scattered pieces of surface route, with all the inherent problems of maintaining grade separation in three busy transit corridors, repairing damage due to blowing sand and annual flooding, and minimizing elevation changes in the half a dozen mountain ranges that separated its two termini. Instead, they had gone deep, on the model of the English Channel Tunnel, but with air-curtained sections between the stations that could be partially evacuated to lower wind resistance for the trains.

  The project had gone to Praxis Engineering & Construction eighteen years ago. That was just a few years after Jeffrey had signed on with the family firm in its current incarnation.

  He knew the awful history, of course. How the first PE&C had collapsed right before the war, when Jeffrey was still in high school, and how the collapse had split the family. His father Richard had gone to Texas and nurtured some kind of slow
feud with his sister Callista ever since. Jeffrey himself had left school to fight in the war—on the side of the new Federated Republic and against the family’s interests. After the war, he had taken his veteran’s benefits from a grateful nation, completed his GED, and gone to the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin, where he studied civil engineering. After that, he vagabonded around the central part of the country, taking junior engineer and section lead positions on various construction projects, until the quake in California.

  With better building codes and more precise fault mapping, the loss of life and total cost of damage had been less severe than expected. But still, a quake magnitude of 7.1 and duration of two minutes, thirty-seven seconds, had guaranteed that the damage would be widespread and extensive.

  Many buildings remained upright, but with miles of broken wiring and water pipes, along with twisted elevator rails inside the high-rises, they had become uninhabitable. Roadways were ruptured, both by landslides in the East Bay, on the Peninsula, and in Marin County and by fallen highway bridges and overpasses. The Caldecott Tunnels and the East Bay MUD water conduits through the East Bay Hills were severed at the fault line, causing a water famine in the East Bay. And the Hetch Hetchy pipelines in Newark were temporarily shut down, halting deliveries to San Francisco and Peninsula customers via Crystal Springs Reservoir. The eastern span of the Bay Bridge was shut down indefinitely when the anchor rods on bearing pads and the structure’s shear keys snapped under the stain. Part of BART’s Transbay Tunnel was jarred out of alignment, which separated the caissons and flooded the tracks.

  Of the 9.8 million people in the nine-county Bay Area, 350 had been killed outright, 10,000 injured, 3.5 million rendered homeless or jobless, and the economic lives of the remainder disrupted for at least two years while the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments attempted to coordinate rebuilding. Idealistic efforts to “build it better” and “control population growth and access,” along with funding, became limiting factors.