by Scott Rhine
Using his best Shakespearian diction, he announced, “I come in peace. I am Stewart Llewellyn, the ambassador for the starship Sanctuary. I ask to present our terms to the board of Fortune Enterprises. I have a proxy from Commander Zeiss that gives me the right to speak in open meeting.”
Camera drones closed in as security guards circled. He could have sworn he saw a shimmer blur toward the ambulance parked just off the field. The sneak suit “invisibility” didn’t mimic surroundings well at high speeds. Focus the crowds on me until the ladies are in the clear. “We’re willing to trade the technology of the Magi to the nations of Earth. However, before we begin, the UN must recognize our independence, as well as drop the charges against our leaders. As the first child born in space, I am a native of Sanctuary and subject to the charter, not your laws.”
Seconds later, seawater erupted in an explosion. Stu threw himself protectively over the closest two players, knocking both flat. Spectators shrieked. Camera drones bobbed from the shockwave. The self-destruct. The pod had practically disintegrated.
A jet roared over soon after. The athletes buzzed with excitement.
“Are you ladies okay?” Stu asked, rising again. He had never seen a bikini before, but the advantages were obvious. The fabric highlighted curves and valleys he had never suspected. He held out a hand to assist the brunette on his right. Her knee was scuffed. “I do apologize. I was afraid the jets were going to shoot at me again. I didn’t want any of you getting hurt.” He addressed the referee on the ladder. “Could you call a medic for this woman?”
Three guards surrounded him, weapons drawn. “All right, you nut job. Hands up.”
“I’m unarmed and not resisting in any way,” Stu shouted, placing his hands behind his head. “Your ricochets may harm the crowd. I will do as you ask, provided you don’t touch me or cough on me. My immune system may not be able to cope with your viral mutations.”
One of the guards ordered, “Biosafety protocols.” Each man slid a blue surgical-style mask over his nose and mouth.
A paramedic and a teammate helped the injured girl limp off the sandy court. As guards searched Stu for weapons, his face filled the giant wall of TV screens at either end of the field.
A bold drone with a Telemondo label hovered over Stu’s forehead, communicating in a tinny voice. “Permission to add you to the celebrity registry and stalk you, sir?” Two others repeated the request, the last one offering him a 0.1 percent share of any increased advertising revenues.
Stu pointed to the tennis-ball-sized robot with the monetary offer. “I grant free access to all three of you as long as you continue to transmit everything that happens to me. Someone just tried to kill me, and I want witnesses to how I’m treated.”
The drones quickly agreed to the deal.
Reporters and players shouted questions as the guards dragged Stu toward the sidelines.
The referee gestured for the guards to halt. “Let him answer. The ratings meter for the event is still climbing.”
“How old are you?” asked a tall girl in a bikini.
Stu felt compelled to brag, “Eighteen, and I’m a pilot.”
“Why did Sanctuary lose contact with the UN Space Agency five years after leaving the Solar System?” asked a graying correspondent with a drone hovering over his shoulder.
I didn’t know we had been in contact at all. “We were assisting an alien race on Labyrinth, a moon similar to Earth.”
“What were the aliens like?” asked another player.
“Pandas with spears.” So many people crowded around that he lost track of who was asking the questions.
“Were they the aliens who gave us the Pages?”
“No. The Magi are different. We’ve never seen them. That’s the way uplift works.”
“Pandas? You’re kidding. How do you expect us to believe that?”
“I speak their language.” Stu cupped his hands to his head like panda ears and recited the Ballad of Shuulagar a line at a time, first in Labyrinth Panda and then English. He bent his symbolic ears at the emotional parts of the epic poem. By the time Stu reached the code of strength, which protected women and children, a black van had arrived. The ominous vehicle kicked up a cloud of sand as it hissed to a halt. People tapped their phones in puzzlement as they were disconnected. The wall of TV screens at the end of the bleachers filled with static.
In his briefings Stu had been warned that the military blacked out recording devices when they were about to violate human rights and endanger civilians. He knelt on the ground and reaffixed his helmet. His own breathing sounded loud in his own ears. I hope no one else gets injured.
Storm troopers with covered faces leapt out of the van. Stu broadcast from his external speakers. “I am not resisting. I have no weapons. This armor is to protect me against high gravity and disease. I am the legal representative of the Sanctuary colony.”
Chapter 4 – Salome
Laura Zeiss reclined in her luxury suite at the annual shareholder’s meeting in LA. She was there to receive an award for her hundredth patent application, but her grandfather, Tetsuo Mori, would claim the glory. She had to wear thin slippers and a tight ponytail to make her look shorter than him when they shared the stage.
She hated these dog-and-pony shows. The bulletproof jacket squeezed her chest like a compression bandage, making work difficult. Her deadlines hadn’t changed, but she had limited access to her Tokyo lab. Tired of staring at the same DNA strands on her wall, she rotated the dataset for a fresh perspective. Nothing. She felt so limited without her think tank.
Laura expanded the projection to fill the ceiling and had the virtual camera fly through. Today she was looking for gene patterns that could increase intelligence without side effects like nearsightedness. She tagged three areas in red for further study.
“Dinner time.” When she heard her mother at the door, Laura turned off the projector. The complex structures of the DNA might send her mother into a compute trance, and then Laura would have to spend the rest of the day talking her down.
Laura opened the door so Kaguya Mori could bring in the dining cart of dim sum. Mother never cooked. She could be distracted too easily and burn down the building. However, she chose the food personally. Because of Kaguya’s potential to cause embarrassment, Tetsuo Mori kept his forty-three-year-old daughter a virtual prisoner. No one outside a small inner circle was allowed to meet her.
Her long, dark hair and exotic eyes made her a breathtakingly beautiful mixture of East and West. Laura wished she looked more like her mother.
“How has work been going?” Kaguya asked.
“When the slaves complained they had to make too many bricks, Grandfather took away their straw.”
Pouring tea for them both, her mother halted briefly at the acidic remark. “You must show him respect even when you disagree … especially then.”
“To him, I’m a profitable experiment who shouldn’t overstep her bounds,” Laura snapped.
Blinking, Kaguya asked, “You know about Project Antarctic Tern?”
I’m a project. That confirms it. Freak-enstein. Laura struggled to hide her revulsion from her mother. “I know you had nothing to do with it. You were practically catatonic. When I confronted Nana, she admitted I was a science experiment designed to bring you out of your compute trance, to give you someone to anchor to.”
Kaguya touched her daughter’s face. “It worked. I love you so much, and every time I see you, I’m reminded of the kindest man I ever knew.”
Her lover, Conrad Zeiss, the great traitor and astronaut who went missing two decades ago. This family never did anything shy of the epic scale. Laura had even been named after the man’s mother to honor him. She had a hard time beatifying a man who married one woman and impregnated another the same year. Men, as a rule, were scum. With her Empathic abilities, she always knew what they wanted—sex, money, power, and sometimes a little punishment. Under her mother’s skilled tutelage, she learned to provide the promise
of each to lure men to do whatever she wanted.
“How did you find out about the project?” Kaguya asked, sitting beside her, head down and hands folded.
“Please. I do genetic engineering for a living. I have gray eyes, and yours are brown. I dye my hair black and wear colored contact lenses to fit into Japanese culture better. You’re a world-renowned musician, while I’m practically tone deaf. I didn’t get your Out-of-Body skills either. When I confronted Nana, she admitted that I was a result of Grandfather’s earlier experiments to give me all the advantages he could offer. Unfortunately, tinkering with one trait can disable another.”
Her mother remained silent, so Laura kept rambling. “Just like our intelligence-enhancement product line. IQ is the most fragile and nebulous manipulation we have. If I encourage one attribute, it might boost a child fifty points but increase neurological disorders by 30 percent.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Laura shook her head. Her first patent at age fourteen had been deduced using her Pattern Recognition talent. Each trait after that had been more difficult to spot in the genome forest until her mother told her the secret. I get smarter around other people. Other Quantum Computers could borrow from Actives to increase brain power, but Laura could use anyone. In a room full of medical geniuses, genetic solutions would leap off the page.
“With several weeks of work, I might be able to graft one of these strings onto the current ‘plus twenty IQ’ bundle and safely gain another three to five points. That’s if Grandfather stops interrupting me to consult on trials.” In a room full of top litigators, her talent could find the winning strategy every time.
“You shouldn’t be a lawyer,” Kaguya said, agitated. “They might show you accounting data or other numerical patterns.” Even simple math could send an unanchored Quantum Computer talent into a trance of no return. Laura had no one to anchor her. If she went into navel-staring mode, so would her mother.
Laura tried to reassure her. “Relax. I’m an empath, so they won’t let me ask questions during a trial. I have to sit behind a screen so participants can’t see me. I help select the jury and tell when witnesses are lying. I also advise the counsel on the science of genetic engineering. No math.”
“Do they know who you are?”
“Definitely.” People in the judicial system called Laura by the middle name Nana had given her—Salome, the woman who seduced a king to have John the Baptist beheaded for telling the truth. She had perverted justice and ruined men’s lives, but she did it for family. Her grandparents had shaped her to be a corporate weapon. “We rarely lose when I assist, but I always make Grandfather pay a steep price when he takes me away from you and my work.”
“Why don’t you like my father?”
“He’s a bottomless cesspool of greed,” Laura said, knowing her words were probably being recorded. “When I was younger, I considered killing him, but Nana told me she would eliminate me if I came within a meter of him.” For a while, I played with tailored diseases spread by sneezes that would only kill old Japanese men, but he might have infected someone else before he croaked. “She confessed to having several more embryos just like me. If I misbehaved, I could always be replaced.”
Kaguya hugged her and apologized. “No child should be treated like that.”
“Please,” Laura said, stoking her mother’s silken hair. “Anyone on this planet would switch places with me in a second. I’m in the top millionth of the population for wealth. Our servants have servants. I can eat anything, travel anywhere, and never need to work another day in my life.”
“But you do. Why?”
Boredom? Gazing out her enormous window, Laura answered, “In spite of the corporate pig sty, I help people every day. I’m literally carving my initials on the future of mankind, managing millions of years of evolution in the span of one lifetime.” She paused, allowing herself to dream. “Someday, I’ll be able to do it free of Grandfather’s iron glove.”
Her badge beeped. Tetsuo Mori’s voice boomed, “Laura, dear, please stop by my booth.”
Mother and daughter glanced at each other. This couldn’t be a coincidence. As Laura left to answer the summons, Kaguya grabbed her hand. “Don’t let him use me against you.”
Ten years ago, Tetsuo had punished the pair by keeping them apart until Kaguya was a drooling zombie, painting on the wall with her own baby food. “You stood up to him for me. Now it’s my turn.”
Refusing to release the hand, her mother said, “There’s more you don’t know.”
“I know all I need to for now. I love you.” Laura made certain her suit jacket and badge were in place before jogging to the Mori’s booth overlooking the amphitheater.
Chapter 5 – The Price of Freedom
The stockholders’ meeting had begun on a Friday, after the normal close of business on major exchanges. Even so, Laura saw the stock ticker on the wall going wild. The sales volume jumped through the roof, for both sales and purchases. This can’t be good.
The old man hunched behind his desk, talking to Koku, a formidable AI. Koku eliminated whole layers of middle management, allowing her grandfather to keep a personal rein on more of his empire than any tyrant in history. The machine could also raise a defensive bubble around him in an instant. “Looking lovely as ever, my dear.” He wore an oxygen mask because his lungs had been burned by an assassination attempt five years ago. His company had merged with Fortune Enterprises during his hospitalization.
Laura bowed respectfully. “Mori-san, how may I serve the family?”
He gestured to the walls filled with news reports. Banners under the talking heads varied greatly. “A new era of alien technology or war?”
“Fortune stockholder shot down over Pacific.”
“Local SWAT apprehends the astronaut.”
Mother’s dream just turned into a shit storm. “Sanctuary has returned?”
“So they claim,” Mori croaked.
To add another layer to the circus, Mori enabled audio on the Fortune news feed. The newscaster said, “Then federal law enforcement trumped them and took custody in the parking lot. The military now has seized the crash site and is questioning witnesses. Meanwhile, the UN Space Agency is appealing to the US State Department for jurisdiction. Traffic was snarled over the entire grid as news crews and crowds tried to get a look at the man from Sanctuary.”
On screen, eight men in combat gear shoved a man in archaic space armor toward a military aircraft.
“Only one man?” Laura asked. “Who?”
In answer, Mori brought up another news channel featuring a city official. “We refuse to indulge in rampant speculation. Without a genetic test we can’t confirm this man is a child of Captain Llewellyn. Even if he proves to be Lou’s child, it in no way validates his claim of being from space. Lord knows that man slept with enough women here on Earth.”
Mori muted the chaos. “CEO Hollis has ordered the Fortune media division to keep cameras on Stewart Llewellyn at all costs.”
Laura nodded. “If we look away for an instant, he could disappear.”
“Our floaters don’t have the speed to follow that aircraft, so she declared a bounty. We crowd-sourced tracking data from the photosphere until we pulled in aerial surveillance from our aerospace division.”
“They’re taking him to a military detention facility,” Laura guessed, recognizing the model of the VTOL transport.
“Yes. Koku shows five bases within range of that aircraft. I’m sending a member of our legal team to each as a favor to Ms. Hollis.”
“We built that transport,” Laura said. “You already know who owns it.”
“Correct. It’s registered to the US Air Force. Edwards is the closest base—where you’ll be going.”
“What do you need?” she asked. “Obviously it’s something you don’t want the rest of the board to see.”
“A unique challenge to your inestimable talents.”
The more he flattered, the more she knew she
would hate the assignment. “The courtroom bores me. I earn more for you in the lab, and we both know it.”
The old man chuckled, wheezing with the effort. “If you had been a man, you could have ruled the world.”
“As a multi-talent, if I’d been a man, I would have died in the womb.” Ninety-five percent of the attempts did.
Mori raised a finger. “Ah, the heart of your mission. The young man you will be defending has circumvented that problem. Find out how, and our company will be able to name its price.” He handed her a folio of fact sheets and photos to bring her up to speed.
“Is he a scientist with a new breakthrough?” She flipped through the stack idly. To reach the court date on time, she would need to take the orbital shuttle. Her internal clock would be off by almost half a day.
“No. He carries the answer in his very flesh. Stewart Llewellyn was born of parents who possessed at least two space-navigation talents each, plus sensitivity to the Collective Unconscious.”
“Five talents … and male?” she said, raising her voice in surprise. “That’s never happened before.” Grandfather is after the Holy Grail of Active genetics.
“Bring me a biological sample.”
“I can’t just steal it, Grandfather. You know the rules. The media will be all over me. He’ll have to voluntarily give me a substantial sample—blood or semen.” She had never slept with an Active before. It was the only thing her mother had ever forbidden. The dangers from pregnancy or accidental bonding were too great.
Mori shrugged. “You’ve never had trouble extracting either type of sample from men when it suited you.”
Clouding, she said, “I’m not a whore.”
“All my lawyers say that. What’s your price?” Blood relation and human kindness didn’t matter to Mori. He cut straight to the chase.
Laura looked at the defendant on a beach video. He had an open, trusting face. As someone who had been raised in isolation, he would be simple to bend to her will. She wanted to cry, but told her grandfather, “Freedom for my mother and myself. If I get your sample from this spaceman, then you let us move out.”