GAIA

by Morton Chalfy

  “Because of the chip?”

  “Yes, because of the chip. Once you're tagged they have you by the shorts. You can't go anywhere or do anything without it being traceable. If they want they can put a person on to monitor your actions and there's nothing they won't know. Besides being able to manipulate any meds you might need. Besides being able to monitor all your friends and family if they want to.”

  Lucas was getting heated and Harrison tried to divert him slightly by asking, “But crime and health care costs go way down, don't they?”

  Lucas stared glumly at the floor. “Yeah, they do. That's why it's spreading so quickly. That's why they'll vote it in here in a year or two. But...”

  “Yes?,” prodded Harrison.

  “But that's not the reason Congress wants to pass it.”

  “Why then?”

  “For the control, Grampa, for the control it gives them.”

  “That may be the end result but what makes you think that's their motive?”

  A sly grin crossed Lucas' face and reminded Harrison of the impish child he had been.

  “It wouldn't surprise you to learn that we spy on the Congress, would it?”

  “No, I would expect it.”

  “And you'd be right. We have transcripts of conversations where they're already planning how to use the chips to gain control. We also have constant requests for information on how the Chinese use it.”

  “Do you give it to them?”

  “Only redacted versions. But anyway you can be sure the bastards will learn all the latest control technologies.”

  Harrison leaned back and shut his eyes. He had suspected, in fact he'd been sure, that population control was behind the chip movement and Lucas was only affirming his belief. The fact that the evidence was clear enough to drive the young man to steal Top Secret information and run for the hills with it was bringing Harrison's personal situation to a boil. He wasn't sure if his bridges had already been burnt or if he could still operate as usual, at least for a short period.

  A herd of bison, perhaps two hundred, were grazing along the side of the road. An invisible electronic shield kept them from getting on the roadway itself though they were able to cross the road at underpasses every half mile along this stretch. In the distance antelopes and elks could be seen in the hills and doubtless the wolves would appear in the evening.

  “Hey, is that a guy on horseback?”

  Lucas was pointing at the crest of a nearby hill and Harrison followed his finger.

  “Yes, I think it is. No doubt an Indigenous. I forget what tribe is in charge of this area.”

  Lucas stared at the figure. “He's not getting chipped, I bet.”

  “Probably not.”

  “How did this part of the country get re-wilded again? I must have slept through that class,” asked Lucas.

  Harrison's professorial side came to the fore when confronted by such a teachable moment.

  “Even though my specialty is Urban History the two are so entwined that I can give you a precis of the two chapters you missed.”

  Lucas grinned at the teacherly response.

  “The main driver of both the re-wilding movement and the rise of the super-cities was the onset of global warming in the early 21st century. It took decades but as the polar caps melted they diverted the major ocean currents like the Gulf Stream from their usual paths. In fact the Gulf Stream got turned off altogether. Sea level rose, droughts intensified, floods and storms intensified and denial no longer worked.”

  Lucas nodded in a way that Harrison had often seen in his students, a nod that meant “I'm able to still look like I'm listening but you better say something not boring pretty soon or I'll nod off.”

  “So every part of the world, all at their own rates of speed based on the politics and strength of the carbon lobby, imposed ever higher carbon taxes. They had to as paying to clean up the mess left by burning and to treat the health costs the burning caused was just getting out of hand.”

  “Re-wilding?” asked Lucas.

  “As the cost of using carbon went up whole industries were wiped out, and as the global distribution of water left some areas drier than ever, corporate agriculture became untenable. Irrigating arid countryside just cost too much to make it profitable any longer.”

  Lucas grinned a grin that Harrison had also seen hundreds of times from his classes, a grin that meant, “You know you still haven't gotten to the point, don't you?”

  “I know,” said Harrison. "Re-wilding.”

  The grin broadened.

  “Well, whole towns and counties dried up. People had to move to make a living and many small rural areas just became empty. The federal government bought out a lot of people to help relocation and it owned a significant part of the west anyway. The conservation people pushed re-wilding on the basis of the budget – cheaper to leave it be than to try to make it work.”

  “Uh huh.” Lucas' face showed a lack of comprehension.

  “Like that Indigenous we saw. The feds gave his tribe the right to cull the buffalo herd for sustenance. The tribe makes its living like it did three, four hundred years ago except it can sell hides and meat for big money. They also lead hunting expeditions. Very little cost of government and good for the wild animals.”

  “We need to re-wild the whole country,” said Lucas.

  “And perhaps we will.”

  Chapter Two

  A gentle chime from the console alerted them to a message from the car, “Destination will be reached in 30 minutes.” Signs were soon visible extolling various casinos, hotels, wedding chapels and restaurants and a square popped up on the horizon that prompted Lucas to ask “Just when did those city within a city buildings come into existence?”

  Harrison leaned back and smiled. This was right down the broad alley of his expertise but he had to condense the contents of Urbanization 101 into the equivalent of an elevator pitch.

  “The short answer is they grew out of the change in climate and the heating of the earth, but their rise didn't happen until after the Grow Towers were developed.”

  “You mean the greenhouse skyscrapers?”

  “Yes. As more land was forced out of production by drought, sea level rise and the subsidence of various aquifers other production facilities had to be found. The rising tax on carbon helped as well by making previously marginalized methods like bio-intensive organic farming cost competitive.”

  Harrison shifted in his seat. “The prototype was designed by a Swedish-Japanese team and used a newly developed material, plasti-glass. It's lightweight, strong and with the property of one way light entry. Sunlight pours in and then is trapped and bounces around until it is all absorbed by the plants. The heat generated is piped away to surrounding homes and businesses that can use it. The first one they built was in Stockholm and proved remarkably efficient. In those early days the scientists and designers all worked alongside the plant tenders and continued to design improvements until now they are the robot run marvels we see. They have become the main engines of food production for the cities. Crops turn over monthly, bi-monthly and occasionally quarterly. Robots do every task and very few humans are needed in the grow rooms themselves.”

  “Lots of people work on the ground floor though,” said Lucas.

  “Yes. Retail market, wholesale market and an array of restaurants from cafeteria-style to fine dining, all selling the fish and produce.”

  "Fish?"

  "The system is based on aquaponics. Leftovers from plant production plus some supplements feed the fish. Fish excreta feed the plants. Both are harvested continually."

  “So that led to the big cubes how?”

  “That same design firm learned so much about recycling water and energy and cutting out most trips in cars and trucks in the production and distribution processes that they came up with the Big Cube as a city concept that would use resources really efficiently because it was all designed in.”

  Harrison looked off in a reverie, thinking
about the development of the Big Cubes that had led to the modern one he lived in. “The architects got their first commission, which came as a huge surprise, from Dubai. They had the money and their climate, hot to begin with, had become hotter and efficiency was an important consideration. The first one, the Dubai Cube, was so successful it was reproduced all over. That was over a century ago. Now they dominate the urban landscape and incidentally, allow for the re-wilding of much of the world.”

  Lucas' face suddenly became focused. “You're saying the Wild Lands owe their existence to the cities?”

  “And will continue to. The only way the Wild Lands can flourish is if the cities do.”

  Lucas looked slightly crestfallen.

  “It's better this way,” said Harrison. “As long as the predominant sources of wealth are concentrated in the cities the governments can rule the Wild Lands by benign neglect. It's to our advantage to see that that balance remains in place.”

  Lucas looked very thoughtful.

  “Destination in five minutes,” said the car.

  The cube on the horizon grew larger with every moment until it blocked all vision of anything else. Massive and almost featureless, it housed a huge casino and hotel as well as fifty stories of residential apartments. Harrison directed the car past the main entrance and around to the service alley where he pulled up behind a plain white robo-van.

  “Change vehicles,” he said.

  The van doors opened and a young man in parking attendant livery emerged from the passenger door and nodding at Harrison got into the car and drove off. From a side door in the van stepped a huge man with a mass of curly black hair that stood out from his head in every direction.

  “Hello Harrison.”

  “Hello Sam. How's everything?”

  “Fine.”

  The huge man nodded at Lucas and opened a door in the side of the vehicle, motioning for them to get in. When they were seated inside on comfortable chairs in a plushly upholstered space he leaned forward and spoke to the robot. “Home, James,” he said and grinned at Harrison.

  “Sam's family emigrated from a small island near Samoa at the end of the 21st century....”

  “When the sea level rise drowned our ancestral home,” interpolated the giant.

  “...and they settled in the mountains south of here...”

  “Where the sea level will never drown us out.”

  “...and that's enough motivation for him and his brothers to be among our best operatives.”

  “Whose best operatives?” asked Lucas.

  “You'll see when we get there,” said Harrison. Turning to Sam he said, “Who was the parking attendant?”

  “I don't know and I don't care much,” said Sam. “He's part of a gang of car thieves we use whenever a car has to disappear. They'll do whatever they do and it will turn up on a police report as stolen and destroyed in a crash.”

  Harrison looked thoughtful. “How about the rest of it?”

  Sam looked a little smug.

  “Your friend here has effectively disappeared. We've wiped the electronic traces, such as they were, from the record. When they come looking for him they'll discover he entered the hotel and never came out. They'll look for him but obviously he won't be there.”

  Lucas looked more closely at Sam. “How did you wipe my traces clean?” he asked.

  “We'll show you when we get there.”

  “Where's there?”

  “You'll see.”

  Lucas got the point that more questions would receive more non-answers so he let it go. Sam was loosening his clothing and making himself comfortable and Harrison was following suit.

  “We have four hours or more to go, Luke. You might as well relax.”

  Chapter Three

  Lucas took Harrison at his word, reclined his seat and promptly fell asleep. When his snores convinced Sam he was fully out he asked, “Can we trust him?”

  Harrison suppressed the irritation of having a relative questioned and gave Sam an answer that was both true and respectful.

  “I think so,” he said. “If he's faking anything, knowingly or not, we should be able to suss it out at the ranch. He's my grandson so I've always been more rigorous with him than I usually am with kids. He's always been straight with me as far as I can tell.”

  Sam looked unconvinced. “He's young.”

  “That's when they're - we're - most idealistic. That's when they'll do anything for what they believe in.”

  “And what's he believe in?”

  “Apparently individual freedom and privacy. He's putting his life on the line and trashing his career to steal that little doohickey, let alone bring it to us.”

  “What doohickey?”

  “Oh, of course you don't know. He stole a set of plans and came to me to hide him.”

  “Well, it will be on your head if he's a plant, but I guess we won't know until it's too late.”

  “Don't worry about him being planted on us, worry about erasing his tracks.”

  “That's fairly easy,” said Sam. “But what about traces of you?”

  Harrison reclined his seat and shifted around to find a comfortable position. “I'm not sure yet. I might have to go back. I'll know more after we powwow with Moms.”

  With that he closed his eyes and promptly went to sleep. Sam, apparently long used to his ways, removed a reading tablet from his pocket and resumed reading “Technical Aspects of Quantum Computing” while the van rolled through increasingly mountainous terrain.

  When the gentle voice of the vehicle alerted Sam he put down the tablet and took over voice command of the van. Finally he had to take manual control to steer them around boulders in the roadway and onto a dirt track barely visible on the rocky ground. The bumpy ride woke Harrison and Lucas. Harrison looked around with approval and Lucas asked, “Where are we?”

  “Nearly home,” said Sam.

  More detail wasn't needed. Home was a lush, narrow valley, bisected by a stream of clear water tucked into a mountain range that was still raw and unfinished. Exact locations would never be announced, he was sure.

  The van bumped along down a steep slope and Sam steered around rocks, cactus and to Lucas' surprise, a couple of yaks.

  “Are those yaks?” he asked incredulously. “How did they get here?”

  Sam laughed. “Yes they're yaks and they walked here.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, a couple of hundred years ago. They were imported to start a ranch and they liked it here. A lot. When the ranch went broke the herd kept growing. They're all over the valleys around here.”

  “Different,” remarked Lucas.

  “Yeah. Watch out for llamas as well. They're around.”

  Suddenly the nearly imperceptible track Sam had been following turned into a smooth roadway and in just a few minutes they pulled up at a substantial ranch house flanked by several outbuildings.

  “We're home,” announced Sam, “and it looks like Moms is in residence.”

  “Oh good,” said Harrison.

  “Who?” asked Lucas.

  Chapter Four

  The house, built of adobe and timber, was more substantial than it first appeared to Lucas. It spread horizontally for what seemed two or three regular houses worth and, as he discovered later, was built deeply into the hill behind it. The hallway they entered was as large as a ballroom with polished wood floors and heavy oak doors around its perimeter.

  Sam indicated the door to the bathroom and said, “You can get cleaned up. Moms is just finishing the evening meeting. She'll be out in a couple of minutes.”

  With a nod the big man disappeared through a door at the back end of the big room.

  “Evening meeting?” asked Lucas.

  Harrison headed for the washroom. “Give me a minute and I'll tell you about it. Moms is High Priestess of Gaia.”

  Lucas was left to stare at the doors to the meeting room, high, wide double doors ornately carved with what looked like a jumble of figures. He took a cou
ple of steps closer to examine them without being right up on them. The work was amazing and took a while for him to understand what he was seeing.

  The figures were correct representations of several kinds of trees and bushes and other plants interspersed with animals from around the world. In just one section Lucas recognized a monkey, a lemur, a raccoon and a koala peering through the leaves of the trees with a bison and a tapir browsing below. While he was studying the next segment, which had snakes and birds and lizards abounding, the doors opened and a group of about two dozen people came out. While he drew some stares and inquisitive looks no one stopped to confront him. When the last person walked by Harrison was at his shoulder.

  “Let's go,” he said and led Lucas into the meeting room.

  The space was large, high-ceilinged and lit by the sunlight pouring through stained glass clerestory windows. A dais or altar was at the front of the room with a three dimensional picture of the Earth in space and the word Gaia beneath it.

  Seated next to the dais was a woman in a white floor-length robe. Her hair stood out from her head in a white aureole with a slight streak of gold in the front, a last reminder of her youth. She was smiling and looking intently at Lucas.

  Harrison said, “Hi. How are you feeling? This is your grandnephew Lucas.”

  “Hello Harrison, you look well. Sort of. Hello Lucas, come and give me a hug. I'm your Aunty Miriam but you can call me Moms. Everyone does.”

  Lucas dutifully stepped forward to receive an embrace and was surprised at how small and wiry she felt under the voluminous robe.

  “I can see his father in him,” she said to Harrison. “The walk, the build, the intelligence in the eyes.”

  She held onto Lucas' hand and led them across the great hall to a dining room behind another door. “We'll be eating here in fifteen minutes or so. I need to change so you two go freshen up and I'll meet you here.” She gave Lucas' hand a strong squeeze and a broad smile and left them.

  “At last I get to meet my legendary Aunty Miriam,” he said.

  “About time, too” proffered Harrison.