“I don’t know what that means,” said Osa, confused by her mate’s hysteria.
“Corpus Chrome, Incorporated is going to re-body my sister!”
Osa was stunned.
“They are going to bring her back to life,” cried Lisanne. “They are going to bring Ellenancy back to life!”
“That’s wonderful,” said Osa. “That’s really great.”
Lisanne hugged her mate fiercely. “Mein Gott, mein Gott, mein Gott!” She laughed and wept, pressing herself into the tall beauty’s chest.
Osa wept.
Her tears were different from the ones that were being shed by her mate.
Part II:
The Battle for the Empire State
Summer, A.D. 2058
Chapter I
An Airborne Riot Wagon and
the Little Reprobates
“This is your last chance!” the fifty-two-year-old policeman shouted at a dozen eleven-year-old children, all of whom were clothed in baggy blue uniforms. The morning sun shone behind the Jamaican-American officer like an interrogation lamp, and his police badge transmuted from a clenched fist to an outstretched helping hand twice each second. “Put your hands up, you little reprobates! Put them up or there’ll be trouble!”
Eleven of the children raised their hands and (delightedly) awaited incarceration. The twelfth child said, “Don’t talk to us that way. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Snapdragon was annoyed that Autumn always had to spoil things. “Man!” he complained. “It’s just for fun. Don’t take everything so liberally.”
“‘Literally’ is the word you mean. And I don’t think it’s fun when an authority figure abuses his power and calls us names.”
“All right children, put you hands down.” Lieutenant Vashan Mumbe knelt on the tuffgrass beside the little objector and inquired, “What’s your name?”
“Autumn Tannstein.”
“When we go up, would you like to sit up front?”
“Of course. One can see more.”
“Who should sit beside you?”
“Snapdragon needs to sit beside me.”
The chubby Chinese-American boy did a crescent kick of joy and fell over. He stood up, wiped tuffgrass from his buttocks and violently cheered.
Lieutenant Vashan returned his attention to Autumn. “Is he your friend?”
“He gets into trouble. Miss Karlsson told me to watch him.”
Snapdragon did not recall the instructor ever telling Autumn to monitor him, but that was what the girl said whenever anybody asked why they were playing together. (For a moment, the boy contemplated the possibility of a secret meeting in which the matter had been discussed.)
Lieutenant Vashan smiled at Autumn, stood up and walked to the airborne riot wagon, an eight-meter-long cigar-shaped vehicle that was a little taller than the policeman and the exact same color as the tuffgrass upon which it sat.
“How come it’s all green?” asked Reggie.
“This is the camouflage function,” said the policeman.
Snapdragon said, “But I can see it right there. Everybody can.”
“Let me explain how it works. The airborne riot wagon is covered with magnetized light pixels like the ones in your m.a. sets. They can change color and brightness to whatever we want them to, but they can’t make things totally invisible be—”
“That sucks,” remarked Snapdragon, thoughtfully.
The policeman continued, “Particle camouflage can’t make things totally invisible, but it can change the color and brightness of the A.R.W. so that it’s very hard to see. It depends on who’s looking at it and from what angle.”
Lieutenant Vashan kneeled to the level of the children. “This A.R.W. is the same color as the tuffgrass right now, so if you were looking down at the park from above—like from a shuttle or jetcopter—it would blend in with the tuffgrass.”
The children nodded.
“But since you’re on the ground, you can see it clearly because the background for you is not the tuffgrass, but the park, the sky and some trees and buildings.”
The policeman clicked the closed-circuit acorn in his left ear and said, “Iris, give her a hop.”
Telescopic legs loaded with combustion relay springs detonated, launching the vehicle into the air. Eleven of the children cheered. Gravity soon overpowered the inertia of the hop, and at an altitude of five hundred feet, the ship began to fall. Hull engines burst alight, keeping the craft in the sky like a buoy.
“Now watch me blend it in.” Lieutenant Vashan clicked his acorn and said, “Match: sky.”
The craft disappeared; only the flames of its hull engines were at all discernible in the blue vault. Eleven of the children clapped.
“The A.R.W. is camouflaged to us, but someone flying over it could see it very easily. They’d see a blue shape floating over the green park.”
Standing up, the policeman clicked his acorn. “Iris, bring her down.”
The hull boosters darkened, and as the airborne riot wagon sank from the sky, a dozen five-meter-long hydraulic supports unfolded from the bottom of the vehicle. Snapdragon felt the tuffgrass shake as the craft landed. A moment later, the twelve insectile appendages retracted into their nooks, whirring.
Lieutenant Vashan clicked his acorn. “Match: Country night; cloudless; stationary.” The motes that covered the vehicle darkened, and upon the faux night sky, stars twinkled.
The policeman pressed his fingertips to the craft’s black surface, and a fleximetal door retracted into the floor, revealing white padded walls, inflatable benches, human-sized containment cylinders and a dozen floating head clamps. A ramp extruded from the portal.
“Get into the wagon, you little reprobates!”
Ten children scampered into the back of the vehicle. Snapdragon followed directly behind Autumn as she climbed up the ramp and entered with dignity.
Pseudopodia extruded from the bench, tickling the Chinese-American boy as they clasped him. He giggled, even though he was aware that this was not a mature behavior. His young guardian was directly beside him, her regular leg and her special one swinging pendulously.
On the bench in front of Snapdragon sat Lieutenant Vashan and Sergeant Iris Smith, a white thirty-year-old woman who held the steering scepter. In front of the adults was a huge bugview windshield.
“Let’s go!” Pinto said from the holding cabin where he and the other ten children sat on inflatable benches, clasped by pseudopodia.
Sergeant Iris tapped the windshield; the poly-perspective octagons were replaced by a natural view of trees, bushes, fields, running children and the buildings beyond the western perimeter of the park.
Snapdragon looked over at Autumn, and his pulse quickened. Whenever he imagined putting his lips on her cheek or rubbing against her or licking her hands (or Miss Karlsson’s neck), his heart began to thud like it did during kung fu class or when he stayed up late watching violent mote aquarium experiences that depicted the many beasts and crazy people who could come and rip out his heart or suffocate him with a pillow or turn him into a blind wolf or replace his eyes with crab apples or teleport his blood out of his body into glass cylinders in an underground vault on the moon where the vampires lived after the humans had completely ruined planet Earth.
“We’re about to hop,” Officer Iris said into her lily, her voice booming from the grids in the rear of the wagon, emboldened with reverb, thickened with bass and stripped of its gender. “Is everybody ready?” inquired the sexless deity.
“Yes!” eleven of the children cried out.
This time, Snapdragon was the noncommittal exception: He had never been in a flying vehicle before, and he was scared. The boy did not want to appear cowardly in front of
Autumn and the police officers, but all that he could think about was a mote aquarium experience in which a bunch of cops ran into an airborne riot wagon, shut the door and launched themselves directly into the bottom of a spaceship that was covered with spikes.
Lieutenant Vashan said into his lily, “I am going to count from three down to one. After the number one, you are all going to shout, ‘Hop!’ and Officer Iris will launch us into the air.” His voice was also sexless, reverberant and emboldened with bass frequencies. “Does everyone understand?”
“Yes!”
Snapdragon began to sweat.
Autumn looked over and asked, “Are you scared?”
The boy did not reply.
“It’s perfectly safe. There’s no need to worry.”
Snapdragon nodded his head, terrified.
Lieutenant Vashan said, “Three. Two. One.”
The students yelled, “Hop!”
Officer Iris stomped the jump pedal with her right foot. The ground outside dropped away. Snapdragon sank in his seat. Great oaks slid from trunk to treetop. Apartment windows raced down the windshield; buildings sank as if demolished. Suddenly, the airborne riot wagon crested the skyline. The western expanse of Brooklyn City, the sun-struck East River, the solar-panel barbican that surrounded Nexus Y and the skyscrapers beyond sat like a diorama outside the craft.
Five hundred feet in the air, the airborne riot wagon stopped.
Gravity overtook the vehicle, and it began to sink. A few children yelled; Snapdragon became queasy. The tallest Brooklyn City buildings rose toward the craft.
Sergeant Iris ignited the hull boosters. Thuds resounded beneath the craft, followed by the crackling of flames.
The airborne riot wagon paused, suspended in midair.
In the corner of the windshield, Snapdragon saw a blinking green word that he did not recognize from his studies. Pointing at the confusing conglomeration of letters, he asked his neighbor, “What’s that say?”
“Equilibrium,” said Autumn. “It means balance.”
“I know the definition of eaglelabia,” defended Snapdragon. “I just couldn’t read the word from here.”
“The next part of our field trip is very, very serious,” Sergeant Iris said with the deity’s sexless voice. “We are going to the Empire State Building Memorial.”
All of the children became quiet and serious.
Snapdragon’s stomach knotted. Half of the students in the congregation had stayed in the building with Miss Karlsson because their parents would not allow them to go to the memorial.
“Lieutenant Vashan Mumbe will tell you all about it. He was there when it happened.”
The fifty-two-year-old Jamaican American stared out of the windshield; his smile had vanished.
Sergeant Iris tapped a thrust button. The airborne riot wagon sped forward, and Snapdragon sank into his seat. Building tops flew past.
The Asian boy straightened himself and glanced at Autumn, who looked scared. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Do you know anything about what happened to the Empire State Building?” asked Autumn, her voice thin and weak.
“They exploded it.”
“Yes, but that was after a lot of really, really bad things happened.” The Jewish girl shook her head. “This’s going to be scary.”
“I watch scary stuff all the time,” boasted Snapdragon, omitting the deleterious impact that these experiences had upon him. “I even watched ‘The Bare-Handed Surgeon of Beijing.’” He neglected to mention that he had slept in his parents’ bed for the two weeks that followed, fearful that a midnight vasectomy or hysterectomy or mastectomy awaited him.
“But those are fictional,” said Autumn. “They’re not real. What happened at the Empire State Building is real.”
Snapdragon grew nervous; he could taste heartbeats in his throat. The eleven-year-old Chinese-American boy suddenly wished that he were amongst the children who had stayed with Miss Karlsson.
Chapter II
The Battle for the Empire State
The airborne riot wagon sped between the ivy-covered fiber-metal skyscrapers, which had been erected atop historic Brooklyn Heights brownstones. Snapdragon inspected the buildings’ windows.
Autumn shook her head. “You aren’t going to see any naked women.”
“That’s not what I’m looking for,” he replied as he scanned for nudity.
“It’s not your fault. You had your puberty.”
“Okay.” The boy openly scanned for nudity.
Sergeant Iris pressed her steering scepter to the right; the craft swiveled, caught a western wind and arced over the solar panels that lined the near shore of the East River. A red fire wagon shot past the left side of the craft, pulling twelve tanks of water behind it.
“Must be a big fire,” Snapdragon said to Autumn. “I hope they put it out or that it’s a school.” For a moment, the boy pondered his admission. “Don’t tell Miss Karlsson I said that.”
Autumn, preoccupied, did not respond.
The airborne riot wagon shot past the solar barbicans on the west side of the East River, over the wall and into Nexus Y. The craft turned north.
Snapdragon saw: skyscrapers, birds, an animated billboard for “The Ugliest Newlyweds,” a stone park with a circular fountain and a big white arch, another airborne riot wagon, two jetcopters, an American flag, a Pizza Overlord skyfloat (a giant pie where each pepperoni was filled with two hundred cheese pizzas [all of which were fake and hollow]), and thirty new blue buildings that seemed identical except for their street numbers, which were bright and silver.
Sergeant Iris thumbed the brake and pushed the scepter forward; the craft slowed, relinquishing altitude. Gray buildings and steel-fiber skyscrapers slid past, each decorated with an American flag that was animated by the wind of the flying vehicle.
Snapdragon looked at the traffic below. Foam-rubber ladybugs and box vans jostled each other along Fifth Avenue, and a stopwall shot up from the road, creating a route for the contrary vehicles on Twenty-Third Street. Pedestrians and vending carts swarmed the blue-gray sidewalks.
Lieutenant Vashan said, “I want everybody to look up ahead.”
Snapdragon faced forward and saw a twisted, blackened mass that rose thirty meters from the ground and culminated in stalagmites of tortured steel. His heart pounded.
The airborne riot wagon’s shadow was absorbed by that which had been scorched as it flew toward a gray platform.
All of the children were silent.
* * *
Upon the observation dais, Snapdragon, Autumn and the other students stared up at the blackened fangs of the wreckage.
Lieutenant Vashan faced the eleven-year-olds. “I’m going to give you a little history and then tell you what happened and what I saw.”
He motioned to the six and a half stories of molten wreckage and continued, “The Empire State Building was constructed nearly one hundred and thirty years ago, during nineteen-thirty and thirty-one. At that time, it was the world’s tallest skyscraper and an icon of and for this country.
“I want all of you to look straight up.”
Snapdragon gazed at the blue sky, which was scratched with white clouds.
“Suspended up there is an American flag. Does everybody see it?”
One after another, the children responded, “Yes!” or “I see it!”
A moment later, Snapdragon located the flag; the floating icon had silver stripes, onyx stripes and an ivory box that contained onyx stars. “I see it!” he proclaimed, blood rushing to the rear of his tilted head.
“The Empire State Building used to be as tall as that.” The policeman let the children ponder the edifice’s immensity. “For more than a century, t
he space in between that floating flag and the wreckage down here was filled with people.”
Snapdragon lowered his head so that he would not get dizzy.
“In twenty-forty-five, President B.R. Gregs was elected. His main goal was to fully commit our nation to the Global Senate, the unified world government that we now belong to. Most of the country supported him—he was elected by a massive majority—but those who were against him were very outspoken about how joining the Global Senate would hurt our economy, military, culture and independence.
“A week after his inauguration—that’s when he becomes the president for real—President B.R. Gregs announced that he was going to a summit—a meeting—in Berlin in early July to fully commit our nation to the Global Senate. His supporters applauded him, and his detractors hated him more than before.
“Most of the people who opposed America committing herself to the Global Senate were peaceful people who held protest rallies and made speeches and wrote letters by hand.
“But some of the people who didn’t want us to join the Global Senate were extremists. Extremists are people with very strong opinions different from the majority, and extremists are people who will hurt other people to make a point.
“The most infamous extremist group was led by Isabelle Xia and Nicolai Dhanikov, a married couple from Montana. Have any of you heard of these two people?”
A couple of the children nodded, and a few shook their heads; Snapdragon did not commit himself either way.
“In nineteen-eighty-two, Nicolai Dhanikov escaped the USSR—what Russia was called back when it was our rival—and came to the United States, a thing that was called defecting. He became a surgeon here and for the next four decades practiced medicine. Eventually, he settled in Montana where he met Isabelle Xia, who had escaped persecution in China where her entire family had been tortured and killed when she was a little girl.
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