by Jay Allan
I ran the whole way, bouncing in long, soaring strides, my lack of fitness offset by the moon’s weak gravitational grasp. The green glass Pyramid, capped by snow-white upper floors, stood unchallenged by anything more architecturally imposing than low-story support buildings. Four hundred or more Shangri-lists thronged the Pyramid’s front stairs, a mass of earth tones and angry faces under the floodlights of the corporate HQ. Despite the darkness, I recognized several on my rush to the front lines, including the bushy-sideburned Calbert Quarro. Baxter stood among the protesters, obvious in his conservative halfvest and generic face.
“How long has this been going on?” I panted.
He shook his head at the green-clothed security guards arranged in a defensive wedge outside the Pyramid’s brassy doors. “The annotated video was posted ninety minutes ago. The first workers showed up in minutes.”
“We want answers!” an amplified and familiar voice boomed to my left. Riki Johjima stood a step higher than the crowd behind him. Between that and his nine-inch jet black mohawk, the gangly young man towered like a colossus. The soldiers knelt, silent. I didn’t see any guns, but a variety of batons, some electric, others telescoping crack-your-skull throwbacks of smooth polymer, dangled from their hands and belts. Riki turned to the crowd, omni held to his mouth to boost his voice, and waved with his free hand. “How many of you are colonists?”
A couple dozen hands and shouts raised above the throng.
“We got like thirty people here you were going to turn into slaves!” Riki hollered up the stairs. “What do you have to say to them? What do you have to say to these people who were willing to risk their lives for your business?”
I snorted. “Where was this kid yesterday?”
“Perhaps he just needed an audience,” Baxter said.
“Why are you hiding?” Riki continued. “A man was killed! Don’t you think these people deserve an explanation?” Up the soldier-barred steps, nothing continued to happen. Riki turned back to the people, face a mask of innocent inquiry. “What do you think? Do you think we should go ask Bart Linigan and Michel Correalba and everyone else on their little board of aristocrats why they think it’s okay to treat us like property? To kill their own people to hide the truth?”
Enough cried out in agreement to provoke three guards into drawing their batons. I shouted with the crowd.
Baxter nudged me with his shoulder. “Careful.”
“This is what you wanted,” I said.
His brows tucked tight above his eyes. “Sometimes you act like the grim reaper forgot all about you.”
I was speechless. I knew AI minds were every bit as emotional as the humans they were modeled after, but Baxter’s palette of feelings seemed limited to the hues between “broadly annoyed” and “pointedly furious.” This was the first I could remember seeing him express personal concern for anyone.
The callbacks and chants dissolved into a slurry of voices. Up the steps, the twin brass doors parted. Linigan, flanked by security, including Tin and Jia, emerged into the lights.
He raised an omni to his mouth and spoke in his Hong Kong Queen’s English. “You all realize you’re standing on private property?”
“This whole planet’s your property!” a woman called out.
“Including us, to hear you tell it!” a man followed up.
Linigan stared them down from the peak of the stairs. “On those other parts of our property, you have whatever rental or public rights those properties provide. Know how many you’ve got in this building?”
“Whatever we can take?” Riki hollered, buoyed by cheers.
“Zero,” Linigan said, holding his hand up in an O. “None. This is our house. And we’re asking you to leave it.”
Riki shook his head, mohawk fanning the air. “We want answers.”
“We’re looking into it. You’ll have to wait until we’ve got this whole mess sorted out.”
People around me muttered. I tried to catch Jia’s eye, but she was in watchdog mode, right hand on the handle of her baton.
Riki folded his arms. “How about we wait here until you’re ready?”
“I’m asking you a second time to step down and go home,” Linigan said. “Anyone who stays will get a person tour of our holding cells.”
“That’s bullshit,” Riki said over murmurs of doubt. “We’re not hurting anyone. All we want is answers.”
Linigan raised his eyes at the crowd, as if asking whether this loudmouth really spoke for us. The workers, strengthened by the fact they outnumbered the gathered soldiers more than ten to one, stayed silent and singular. Linigan nodded with a papal sadness, turned his back, and went inside the brass doors of the shining green pyramid.
The soldiers stood, unslung telescoped batons with a chorus of clicks. The front line of workers melted down a step. For every two the soldiers descended, the people wilted one step further back.
Riki stood his ground, waving his hands over his head like an old air traffic controller. “We have a right to be here. We have a right to know what they plan to do to us!”
It wasn’t hard to guess what happened next. Staples of democracy they might be, but most protests are rather worthless. The only ones that amount to much are the ones that provoke the powers that be into exposing their true colors.
Baxter tugged me down the steps. With Riki’s back turned, two soldiers broke the line, one grabbing for his hands. The second cocked an elbow. A matte black baton hung over Riki’s head like a tube of blank space. A handful of young men and women, faces taut, rushed forward, snatching at the soldier’s raised arm.
Soldiers poured down the steps. A baton blurred. A dark-skinned kid fell screaming, clutching his knee. I scrambled back with the mob, but like an outrushing tide before the tsunami, the workers pressed back, streaming around me to drag their friends and family away from injury or to throw punches of their own. A young woman took a baton-jab to the mouth, gouting red over the white steps.
I yanked free from Baxter, bounded up the steps, and swung my foot into the attacking soldier’s balls. A black rod twitched at the left edge of my vision. I swung my right arm to meet it, whisking my forearm so the hard plastic rolled across my muscle rather than cracking my bone. Fingers pointed at the dome roof, I pivoted and swung my arm through a 180 degree arc, maintaining contact with my forearm and the baton. The baton whirled from the soldier’s grasp at the same time my left fist smashed into his descending chin. I followed with a right jab, snapping my knuckles into his nose. A front kick sent him stumbling up the steps.
Someone tackled me from the side, driving our unnaturally light bodies into the white stone stairs. Feet stamped and struggled for balance on all sides. I wriggled as an arm barred mine across my chest.
“You moron,” Jia hissed in my face. “If they arrest you now, you think they’ll ever let you out?”
“A life sentence for me will turn out pretty pricey.”
“A bullet to the skull is a cheap investment. Now give me your damn hands. I’m going to cuff you.”
I struggled for leverage, tensing my arms to shove her off. “You just said they’ll kill me.”
She rolled her dark eyes. “Not if I uncuff you on the other side of this dome.”
I went limp. Jia bore into me, whooshing the breath from my lungs. I held up my hands, chest hitching. She bound them with a carbon strip.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were into this the other night?” I said.
“Christ.”
She hauled me roughly to my feet. Around us, people cried, shouted, fell back under fists and batons. Soldiers passed handcuffed workers up the stairs. A soldier stooped, grasped Riki by the plastic strip hog-trussing his hands and feet, and dragged him bodily up the steps, banging his face and chest on the stone. People fought in small knots, but most of the crowd had dissipated from the pyramid’s steps, expanding into the empty plaza like heated molecules. Tin joined us as Jia frogmarched me into the retreating masses, but I couldn’t spot B
axter.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I said. Jia cranked my head around, gestured sharply at a cluster of comm gear on her collar, then drew her hand across her throat. I curled my fingers in the okay sign. “What the hell’s the matter with you, pig? Get your hands off me.”
“Be safe,” she whispered in my ear at the tunnel’s edge. She snipped my cuffs, kissed my temple, and winked as she donned a look of mock outrage. “Hey you! Get back here! I will strike you!”
I turned and ran. The tunnel was jammed with terrified outgoing workers answering the confused questions of incoming peers. The tunnel reeked of fresh sweat and echoed with sob-sogged voices. I shuddered. Flooded with adrenaline, my limbs began to shake. I popped into the neighboring bubble and got out my omni.
It was blank. Amputated. I had access to all my internal files, but every network link was severed. I shook it, pounded it on my thigh.
“Fay?” I said. Nothing. “Oh shit. Fay, are you there?”
“Sorry,” it replied, distracted. “This is Rob? Are you okay?”
“I think so. My omni’s been amputated. Can you get me in touch with Baxter?”
“Yeah, OA just shut down the entire public network. Their channels are emergency-only.”
“They’re trying to cut people off from that video.” I shook my head. “By now it’s downloaded everywhere.”
“I think they’re trying to stop people from talking about it,” Fay said. “Here’s Baxter.”
“Am I speaking to the ninja?” Baxter said.
I jogged across the dome. “You okay?”
“Are you? Last I saw, you were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the entire Olympian Atomics security force.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.” People dribbled from their apartments, flagging down bloody-faced protesters for news. I visored my face with one hand. “We can’t go back to the hotel. They’ll chain us in a dungeon and throw the dungeon down a pit.”
“You should go to Hermalina’s,” Fay said. “She seemed nice.”
“A fine quality for us to take advantage of,” Baxter said.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Ah. I think I see Rob.” Up the street, a dark figure waved its arms. I waved back. Baxter cleared his throat. “It’s a good idea, Fay. I’m pointing out how widespread the fallout of human aggression can be.”
I ran up to meet him. “You guys would fight with each other too if there were enough of you to hold different opinions.”
Baxter moved toward the next tunnel. “Purely hypothetical, as we lack your species’ mania for duplicating ourselves.”
“You should praise HAL for that mania. If we weren’t expanding even faster than we can destroy ourselves, we’d never have gotten around to creating you.”
“Guys,” Fay said.
“Where’s Hermalina’s apartment?” I said. “I’m still too battle-fried to think.”
Fay guided us through streets both quiet and riotous. Stallkeepers rolled up their tarps while others moved in to set up shop and try to snag some of the pedestrians flooding away from the Pyramid. A trio of rifle-toting soldiers in green and white uniforms dashed down the middle of the street, scattering people to the winds. Baxter pulled me into an alcove until the troops’ slapping soles faded away.
We continued at a fast but attention-deflecting walk. In my offworlder’s halfvest, I felt as exposed as Riki beyond the frontlines. Every pair of questing eyes might hide an undercover soldier or corporate spy. And what was happening back at the Pyramid? Mass arrests? A massacre? For all we knew the tower was on fire. Cut off from the instant updates of my omni, the world became an unexplored wilderness—one where hungry eyes flashed beyond the firelight.
For me, however, being without an electronic network of people and info was nothing new. In fact, it was very, very old. “Fay, we need to round up the others. Get them to Hermalina’s before OA strikes back.”
“I’m on it,” Fay answered. “Be safe, guys.”
That advice sounded at odds with every leg of our journey to and on Titan so far, but I appreciated the concern. Ahead, a bald man locked the door to a shop boasting spices as exotic as pepper and salt, and explained to three young employees that he’d let them know when he planned to reopen.
“How will you do that if the omninet stays down?” said a tall girl with her red hair cut in alternating stripes of braid and shaved.
“Hell if I know,” the bald man said. “Carrier pigeon?”
Baxter and I hustled to Hermalina’s. She sounded surprised and happy to see us again. I didn’t know how she’d feel once the rest of our team showed up to bivouac—given the available floor space, we’d need to make beds in the kitchen, the bathtub, and under her own—but given her generous behavior to date, maybe she was one of those insane people who saw uninvited guests as spontaneous and fun.
After we walked into her apartment, she stuck her head out the door and peered down the hall. “Was there an accident? My omni’s dead.”
I told her about the riot. She dived into questions, at first skeptical, voice becoming soft with stunned acceptance as I traced its roots to Olympian Atomics and their alliance with HemiCo.
“Will it be all right if we hole up here a while?” I concluded.
“Should be,” she shrugged. “Good thing I don’t tribeshare this place or I’d have nine roommates to answer to.”
I snuck glances at the clock on my omni, calculating when I could bug Fay about the others without coming off as a worrywart. They buzzed up forty minutes later while Hermalina was brewing coffee in her phonebooth-sized kitchen.
“Thank God you’re all right,” I said to Shelby as she led the procession of Pete, Vance, and her two other team members into the apartment. She strode across the room and drilled me in the nose with a punch I was too shocked to block. I stumbled, clutching my nose. “What the hell?”
“You knew this whole time,” she said, head bobbing. “Their plan. The coup. Meanwhile you leave me in a room to argue with sociopaths about a constitution that won’t mean shit three months from now.”
I blinked back tears, dabbing my nose. “We didn’t want you to tip our hand.”
Her mouth tightened into a smile. “Right. Because lawyers never have to bluff or lie to the opposition.”
“We were going to tell you.”
“Quit this ‘we’ shit. It was you. Fay wouldn’t do that and Baxter wouldn’t care what they knew.” She cocked back her fist. I cringed. She blew air out her nose and dropped her hand. “You’re a weasel. You don’t trust anyone but yourself to do their job.”
Carrie, the gray-haired lawyer with the bearing of a 1940s American aristocrat, coughed into her hand. Pete and Vance traded looks. Hermalina stopped short, sloshing coffee onto the tray she’d carried from the kitchen. Shelby accepted a chipped mug and I tensed, expecting I’d be wearing it shortly.
“I’m Shelby Mayes.” She extended her hand. Hermalina raised one knee, cranelike, and balanced the tray there as she took the shorter Shelby’s hand. Shelby smiled with half her mouth. “Sorry to turn your home into a boxing ring. How are you?”
“Confused, but catching up,” Hermalina smiled. “Coffee, anyone?”
Guiltily, I accepted. Coffee bushes had an understandably difficult time growing under Titan’s weak sunlight, CO2-free atmosphere, sub-arctic temperature, and ongoing methane drizzle. OA’s import monopoly rendered it ludicrously expensive. I felt more than a little guilty watching Hermalina’s salary get slurped down by a gang of squabbling seditionists.
Baxter filled the others in about the riot. As Pete teased me about my rather minor role in the violence at the Pyramid, I kept one eye on Shelby. Clearly, she’d believed heart and soul in her role at the constitutional convention. Privately, she may have considered it her life’s work, her destiny, a marriage of personal and professional conviction that would change everything for the better.
Well, her disappointment was her own damn fault. No one’s b
orn to do anything. Except die. And that’s not normally the kind of thing you take pride in, unless yours results from an epic motorcycle jump across a high canyon.
But there was another truth involved here: I had made what I considered to be the right decision, and I’d wound up hurting someone I cared about. I didn’t feel too hot about that.
The streetlights dimmed with the artificial dusk. The omninets stayed down. Listlessly, we discussed where we should go from here: stay holed up and see how things played out? Walk to the spaceport and see if they’d let us shuttle back to Fay? Track down other colonists and solicit their advice? With no clear options, Pete volunteered to undertake a two-part mission: hit the streets for news and, more importantly, scrounge us up some dinner.
I took the opportunity to complain to Fay about how we needed to take action, a conversation it steered toward the philosophical underpinnings of that belief. I explained how once you’ve decided not to kill yourself, and you’ve got a few hobbies rolling as proof you can accomplish something if you put the effort into it, that’s when you’re in position to pursue the things you really want. Whatever that thing is—a promotion, a move to the city, a scorching-hot piece of ass—it’s not going to fall into your lap (unless you’re hit by a tornado whose last stop was a beach photo shoot). You had to take every opportunity that presented itself, and when they stubbornly refused to appear, to manufacture them instead.
Pete interrupted with a greasy sack of algae patties and a blinkered look on his face. “I’m not sure how to describe what’s congealing outside. A social funeral?”
I went to the window. People trickled down the street toward the tunnel where Go had died. Many carried small bundles in their hands—rolled-up self-printing paper, white-screened omnis lighting their chins from underneath, and in two instances, candles burning cleanly in the windless streets.
“I’m going out.” I stripped off my halfvest. My black undershirt wasn’t common Shangri-lese apparel, but it was unremarkable pretty much everywhere you went. Excepting Hidey-Hole, maybe.
“We have no idea what’s going on out there,” Shelby said. “For all we know, soldiers are shooting people in the street.”