GAIA

by Morton Chalfy

  Moms took the floor, "Remember, nothing bad has happened yet and it might never happen. We're still good citizens running a spiritual retreat. Under surveillance or not, we've done nothing actionable. We don't want to over-react to our suspicions."

  Her little speech got nods all around. Sam left to gather up the pieces of the drone and Moms and Harrison went to her quarters for a last conversation.

  Maeve said to Lucas, "Back to the dungeon with you."

  "Are you coming along?"

  "No. I'm going with Sam. I don't want him to blow up and four eyes are better than two for scoping things out."

  Lucas turned a worried face to her. "Be careful. We don't know their motives."

  "I'll be careful. If I send out a cry for help will you come running?"

  "You bet. Seriously, be careful."

  "I will be. And I'll make sure Sam is careful as well."

  She ran out to catch up with Sam.

  Harrison packed his bags and boarded the shuttle that would carry him to the transport center. These relatively few miles from the ranch to the outermost tentacle of civilization took the longest time to traverse of all the journey's legs. Once he was on the tube car he would cover the next two thousand miles in much less time than it took to go the first hundred.

  The tube would deposit him on one of the lower levels of his home cube and a robocar would carry him and his luggage directly to his apartment door. His arrival would awaken all the electronic servers in his home and he would be able to seamlessly step back into his usual life.

  At the door to his home he decided he wanted a fuller taste of the urban lifestyle than cozying up in his nest and so dropped his bags just inside the door and walked away down the corridor. He caught the first elevator down to Shopping/dining and strolled past shops full of merchandise among a medium crowd of shoppers.

  He was thinking how much at home he felt in the urban setting. The ranch was a wonderful place, he thought, but he was a city boy and felt most at home among the crowds. Strolling past the shops and watching the people walking along revived memories of his student days when walking the mall in search of company was a popular and avidly practiced pursuit. Alone or with a friend he could walk for hours, peering into faces and often enough finding an answering look from a suitably attractive female. The best encounters were with young women in engineering school. They were always bright, often possessed of a dry wit and, at least the responsive ones, very attracted to liberal arts majors.

  In the depths of the commercial sector Harrison remembered a favorite dining room and picked up his pace. The aromas artfully wafted from the restaurants he passed were subtly building an appetite for food. By the time he reached the Oasis he was fully prepared for a large meal and a stiff drink.

  He stood at the entrance for a moment, scanning the room out of habit, not looking for anyone and then saw Helene in a booth across the room. He couldn't help the smile that popped onto his face and was warmed by the answering smile that appeared on Helene's. She was on the phone and waving him over. He happily crossed the floor to her and was gratified by the speed with which she finished her conversation and her grin as she rose to greet him.

  "Well hello there," she said, stepping into his arms for an embrace. "Where have you been for so long?"

  For just a second he thought she might be referring to his trips to the ranch but then realized she was talking about the more than a year's absence from her life.

  "Where indeed?" he replied holding her closely. "In the land of stupidity I guess, to not see you for so long."

  They sat across from each other like the old lovers they were and felt again the attraction that had made them an item in the school. Over drinks and a light meal they talked about their time apart, skipping the parts that might make the other uneasy and concentrating more and more on the warmth that was flowing between them.

  At the end of the meal Helene leaned across the table and said, "I have a vial of Love Potion #9 in my rooms. Would you be interested to see if it still has the old magic for us?"

  Harrison's response was a delighted smile and the two of them left the restaurant with arms entwined and grinning at one another.

  Helene's apartment was larger and higher than Harrison's and required his biometric entry as befitted her status as an ex-chief executive engineer and visiting lecturer. Everything in it was either automatic, like the adjustments of light and heat, or voice activated and tuned to her voice.

  "Stay there," she said in the entryway and hurried into another room. When she returned holding out two pills in her hand the lights had been romantically lowered, soft, throbbing music was on in the background and a welcoming smile was on her lips.

  "You remember these, don't you?"

  Harrison nodded, reaching for one of the pills.

  "They still take about fifteen minutes to come on. Shall we take them with a little champagne?"

  The next hour was a blur of pleasure to Harrison. The tangy taste and feel of the wine and its spread through his body, the slow onset of the drug and the rise of his feelings of romance. They tumbled into bed together and found each other's arms and body. Under the influence their lovemaking was slower than usual as the drug raised the sensuousness of every act.

  At the end they lay side by side, smiling and enjoying the sensations that still rang through their bodies.

  "Oh, I missed that," said Helene. "I missed that with you."

  Harrison took her hand, "No more than I, my dear. This has always been my definition of the best time that can be had as a human. The payoff for the big brain and the nuances of sensation."

  As the feeling of tiredness from the exertion dissipated the drug in their system rose to the fore again and once more they engaged in a long, slow, loving encounter with each other. This time the aftermath was real weariness and a quick fall into slumber, hands clasped and legs entwined.

  When they woke it was morning and Harrison was a little disoriented. By the time he remembered where he was and the night he had spent he could hear movement in the other rooms and Helene's voice calling out, "Breakfast in ten minutes."

  He spent the time dressing and washing his face and smoothing his hair and rinsing his mouth before joining her at the dining table. Helene's kitchen was equipped with a robo-cook and a plate of crisp bacon, steaming eggs, toast and coffee was waiting at his seat. The bacon and eggs were made of vegetable based foods, the toast was vitamin fortified and the coffee was a blend particularly tasty to Harrison.

  "Mmmm," he said.

  The mornings after a long night's session with the love potion were always a little chancey. With the effects of the drug gone the "eternal love object" of the night often turned into the ogre of the day. Helene's and Harrison's glances at each other quickly revealed that all was still well in love-ville.

  "That was great," she said. "We'll have to do that again."

  "Are you sending me home?" asked Harrison, responding to her tone.

  "No. Well, soon, as I have work to do, but no. I'm not sending you home."

  "Good. Even though I do have to get back."

  "That was great, Harry. Last night. I really have missed you."

  "Shall we make another date?" he asked.

  "Sure."

  "When?"

  "Tonight?" she asked.

  Harrison broke into a huge grin.

  "Great. Where? What time?"

  They picked another restaurant and an early dinner hour and Harrison left for his apartment. In the elevator and along the corridors he heard himself humming.

  "I do like my urban life," he thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The urban lifestyle he so enjoyed only dated to 2070 C.E. when the price of clean water crossed a threshold that made hothouse or greenhouse agricultural products less expensive than field grown crops. It shouldn't have taken the industry known as Big Ag by surprise, but it did.

  Political clout had kept them in business long after the economics had t
urned against their methods but finally the cost of water became too much to be borne. Grow towers were well developed by then and their advantage of recycling all water usage (which cut their cost of water down by ninety percent for most crops) and their placement in urban settings (which cut transport costs to zero) spelled the end of Big Ag.

  When the traditional agricultural model fell it took huge areas of the world with it. The great plains of the United States began to empty of people and the re-wilding movement began to pick up steam.

  Harrison loved the compactness of urban life and the high tech aspects it boasted. Life was expensive but comfortable. Work was close, in his case an elevator ride away, food was plentiful, of high quality and available in any cuisine one liked. And, he admitted to himself smiling, sexual partners were plentiful and also close to hand.

  The other major advantage was security. With the rise of the cube all access to buildings were secured. One had to be identified to enter and even then many areas remained further protected. Commercial floors were accessible but residential floors were not without specific permission. Even many of the office floors were secured from casual traffic.

  The overall atmosphere of the structure, once you had passed safely through its portals, was of safety and security. It was not perfect but it came close. For the poorer urban residents security was harder to come by but still was greater than ever could be found in the old cities of the world.

  States had found that by re-wilding large areas the problem of crime could be pushed out of the urban zones and given over to the hardy inhabitants of the wild areas. In many cases those inhabitants reverted to a rough justice, viewed all strangers as suspect and showed little tolerance for transgressions.

  Harrison, encased in his ergonomic chair in front of his screen, contrasted his cozened existence with the life out on the ranch. "Perhaps it's best for me to stay here and work on supporting Moms and reporting from the belly of the beast," he mused. "Being chipped might not be so bad."

  With the rise and development of the new urban lifestyle came a realization among economists that economies worked better when every single person was considered and accounted for. As more and more countries adopted the Swiss model where every resident received a living stipend, and hoarding at the top of the heap was curtailed by taxation, the world observed that the Swiss economy grew and flourished as did the economies of all who emulated them.

  The fact that the world was a closed system and when operated through greed produced misery but when operated fairly produced better living for all slowly became accepted by the academic community of economists, more slowly by countries run more or less democratically, slowest of all by the many kleptocracies and dictatorships.

  "The poor are still with us," thought Harrison, "but they're not starving and rioting in the streets and the able are given pathways to success."

  He had written an article titled "The Inevitability of Stability" in which he had argued that the growing number of international and global systems which were required to keep trade and responses to catastrophe going had reached, indeed passed, a point of no return. Everyone's livelihood was plugged into the global financial system, the care and control of the seas and the atmosphere systems, the arms control regimes and global disease control organizations plus many regional and continental working groups. This level of extreme integration on so many fronts made major disruptions, if not impossible, highly improbable. When disruptions did occur from natural causes or man-made ones, the responses came from all around the globe and quickly restored order. No one could afford otherwise.

  The dampening effects went into action at the first signs of crisis and usually kept it from burgeoning. Small wars were endemic in parts of Africa, South America, the Middle East and Asia but they remained small. Ethnic and tribal tensions abounded where they still supported political power but the people on the ground could always see the peace and prosperity around them and that lessened the desire for conflict.

  "When everybody's involved there's nobody to fight," worked in a haphazard but effective way. Harrison knew it couldn't last forever but Pax Terra had lasted for a hundred years and seemed to be growing stronger.

  "And that's the problem we have," he thought. "Once everyone is chipped the masters of the universe, even if they rotate every four years, will seek more control. And they'll have the perfect set of fools and tools to work with."

  He knew that at least one giant computer was working on psychological methods of convincing people to do what the state wanted. Control methods could be formfit for every individual and if applied secretly and intelligently could lead to a sort of unconscious and happy enslavement of the species.

  He shuddered at the thought and felt a renewal of his resolve to struggle against that eventuality.

  "But there's no reason I can't enjoy the lifestyle while I can live it as the spy within," he thought, "as long as the seeds of independent lifestyles are scattered across the Earth."

  He began to appreciate the beauty of Moms' plan to make Gaia a religion, one that would protect the natural world no matter what twists human culture and the dominant society took. "Twists there will be," he thought, "as boredom makes humans crazy, and to avoid it young humans will literally do anything. Even, sometimes especially, self-destructive things."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lucas saw the official car pull up to the ranch house on the security screen at his desk and watched the two agents climb out. "They're coming for me," he thought, and immediately put their carefully crafted escape plan into action.

  He sent a coded message to Moms, Sam and Maeve, hit the "emergency kill" switch on his workstation, grabbed the survival knapsack from the closet and headed for the secret tunnel before the government agents knocked on the door. "With any luck," he thought, "I'll be in the woods before they see Moms."

  On his way he picked up a pair of hiking boots and ran down the corridor to the hidden door to the tunnel. Once inside the shaft with the door closed behind him he felt somewhat safer and less rushed. He stopped to change footwear and then shouldered the back pack and began walking. A soft glow of illumination accompanied him, lighting the path in front and then darkening behind him.

  After a short while he stopped to rest and refresh himself and was surprised by his emotions. He felt at once exhilarated and fearful. What he had feared for the past three weeks was both real and happening and he was relieved that it had begun. By showing up at the door the agents had validated Lucas' view of his actions and his flight from them felt like the response to a declaration of war.Another ten minutes of trudging along brought him to an exit from the tunnel concealed by a thick bush. He sat at the entrance, hidden by the leaves, and rested. His senses were alert to any and every sound but he heard nothing but bird calls. From the back pack he took an energy bar and ate it while he thought about what to do next.

  Without the computer screen in front of him he felt lost and out of touch. His thoughts raced around the questions of how long he needed to stay hidden and when he would next see Maeve. There were various coded communications he might be able to receive, but they all required he be out at night with binoculars trained on the ranch house.

  All in all he decided the hidden mouth of the tunnel would serve for a while but then was seized by the fear that the agents would uncover it and trap him there while he was asleep. Driven by that apprehension he gathered his belongings and climbed past the bush. The sun was low on the horizon and he felt rushed to find shelter. He needed a place he could watch the tunnel from but one that would be hidden, especially from above.

  Several hundred yards off he found a spot beneath a weeping willow. "Underground stream," he thought, and spread out his camouflaged sleeping bag. Dinner would be squeezed into his mouth from a survival meal pack and warmth and comfort obtained from the sleeping bag. It took a while for his preparations to be complete and he squirmed until the thin layer of air he pumped into the "mattress" part of the sleeping bag
was strong enough to provide a little comfort.

  By the utter fall of night he was snug in the bag staring at the glorious night sky and thinking of Maeve. Could they have any sort of life together with him on the run? Could she even leave Moms and the ranch? Ultimately where could he go? The thoughts whirred about his head until a series of sounds from the surrounding underbrush made the hair on the nape of his neck stand stiffly to attention.

  Lucas, the city dweller, had no guides to what the sounds might be. He had been told that he was safe inside the bag from any creatures that might be around. Anything touching the outside of the bag received a mild shock which ordinarily was deterrent enough. Rough handling produced stronger shocks, "guaranteed to dissuade even a grizzly."

  He squeezed deeper into the bag and closed it over his head leaving only a mesh covered air hole and hoped for the best. In the warmth and darkness of the bag's interior he gradually fell asleep.

  In a dream he was cowering at the foot of a volcano that rumbled in a low bass tone and fitfully pelted him with rocks. He squirmed to escape the barrage and finally emerged from sleep in response to a sharp poke in the ribs. Frightened he peered through the mesh covered hole and saw two bare feet and two sturdy legs.

  "Aquarius?" he asked.

  "Yes. Get up."

  Lucas struggled out of the bag to see the mountain man standing above him.

  "Were you throwing rocks at me?"

  "Certainly. I once touched one of those bags and that was the last time. Pack up, we're going."

  "Where?"

  "Away from here. The first person who comes out of that hole in the ground would practically stumble over you. This is no place to hide."

  "I thought that tunnel was secret."

  "Don't be so sure. Come on."

  There was an assurance in Aquarius' voice and manner that inspired confidence and really brooked no resistance. Lucas felt he would be led to a safer place. He also felt that Aquarius knew a lot more about what was going on at the ranch than a homeless hermit might be expected to. He packed his things and prepared to follow.