Waiting for Jade to open her eyes, he reviewed the volunteers’ profiles. He enjoyed seeing the hard results of their cerebral formatting efforts. He also enjoyed being the first thing Jade saw upon waking. That momentary confusion was priceless.
Slowly, she worked her way up from the delirium, blinking languidly at him. “Who are you?”
He smiled at her and took her hand in his.
Chapter 18
Mesa lost herself in the expanse of the Pacific. The water stretched out beneath her on either side of the small private jet as far as she could see. Subtle shades of blue separated clear sky from ocean. She felt humbled and insignificant in the seemingly infinite stretch of nothing.
The flight from Ely was a non-event. The county–run airport seemed to be on its last legs, and the desk jockey was unconcerned with the minutiae of paperwork. Money was far more important, and Mesa had it. He handed her a stack of papers to sign, gave her initials and signatures a cursory glance before tossing them onto a different stack of papers, and printed her ticket. More concerned with the wad of chew that ballooned his right cheek, he’d hardly examined her identification.
The desk jockey ended up being the stick jockey, too. After working his way loose from the desk, he led her outside to the small single-engine quantum jet and spat in the dirt. Then he went up a small ladder, opened the door, stepped inside, and waved her up—all without saying a word.
Two hours later, she lost sight of land and began to relax, slightly.
A half hour later, she caught the first edge of humanity’s touch. She stared hard at it, waiting for the details to resolve.
Passing over the enormous floating breaker walls that protected the city from large waves, Mesa caught sight of the giant polyhedral aquaculture farms. Beneath the clear Dura-Plast were the most vivid, freshest greens she had ever seen. Ocean algae was grown for food and energy and helped keep the startup cities that shaped the growing and evolving seasteading movement operational and independent. Domes were dedicated to farming brown microalgae to produce bioethanol. All of the city’s fuel needs were met by what they produced in the massive greenhouse domes and by capturing the ocean’s thermal energy and converting it to sustainable power.
As the jet descended toward the landing area, she could make out the men and women working the fisheries and hauling in oysters, clams, and mussels. The marina was a vibrant hub of activity as ships maneuvered the channels and boat crews rushed along the gangways and decks.
Mesa followed the main artery of the docking ring north, to a multi-storied residential square lush with greenery. Men and women jogged through the neighborhoods, where sunlight glinted off the enormous stretches of Dura-Plast.
Helicopters navigated the sky, where the air traffic was surprisingly busy. Sea taxis maneuvered through the canals, passing under the bridges that connected the cities together in a ring formation and joined them to the marina along the outer stretches. There were six distinct cities, each defined by the effusion of multiculturalism that generations of seasteaders had embraced.
In the center of the six city-states was a tall winding spire that rose in steppe-formation, the tallest structure among the collective. Part of its height was achieved by a collection of data arrays and antennas. Housed inside was the central seat of government that united the city-states, while the exterior twisting arms collected rainwater and extracted moisture from the air for freshwater production. The surface of the building was a solar capture array, making it one the largest natural energy producers within the community.
The quantum jet settled on the landing pad with a slight jostle. Outside, a service crew pushed a ladder toward the jet. A moment later, the captain was striding down the aisle toward her to open the door.
“Hope you had a nice flight,” he said.
She thanked him and gave him a slight bow then turned to set foot on solid ground. She took a deep breath, enjoying the saltiness of the air and the warmth of the sun on her skin as she tilted her face skyward.
The city’s calm quiet certitude and sense of security was infectious. For a moment, she actually felt safe, before reminding herself of why she was there. The seasteaders had worked hard at building an idyllic haven that nearly resembled a perpetual ocean-side vacation, but Alice was subtly reminding Mesa not to let her guard down.
Rameez was quartered in a hotel on New Venice, three rings away from the landing promenade. Mesa studied the map and decided to walk, the bag heavy on her shoulders. One strap bit painfully into the fresh, tender skin of her recovering shoulder, which protested the weight.
White winding stairs led down to the central thoroughfare, and she melted into the crowd of walkers occupying their own lane alongside the bike path.
After a few minutes, Mesa already felt out of place. Her black militaristic garb stood out against the airy beachwear most of the natives wore. Shorts paired with silk shirts with flower prints, if any shirt at all, appeared to be the standard attire for the men, while most of the women were clad in loose blouses or T-shirts with shorts, skorts, skirts, or bikinis. She felt as if she were walking along the Santa Monica pier before realizing Alice was recalling the comparison. A chill ran across her arms as a teenager on skates whipped past, a corgi chasing after her. The only people wearing more clothing than Mesa were three Muslim women in black burqas, sitting primly on a stone bench and talking to one another, their eyes hidden by black mesh screens.
As she walked, she casually studied the faces and scenery around her. She randomly altered her pace but never went too fast or too slow. A few blocks deep, she turned down a path that ran through the commercial district and passed the storefronts. Window-shopping gave her a good excuse to stop, and the Dura-Plast provided a convenient reflective surface where she could watch people come and go, wondering if any would stop with her and linger nearby. Slowly, she moved on, smiling at the store clerks, occasionally stopping to touch the clothes on the sidewalk displays.
Casually cataloguing the faces on the street, she decided to enter a women’s clothing shop. The small boutique had caught her eye, particularly the emerald dress on display behind the window. She found the rack, searched through the dresses for her size, then went to the dressing room.
She took off the hat and shook her hair loose, letting the long tresses of one side hang loose over her face, half-punk, half-1950s LA starlet. She worked her way out of the boots and clothes then slipped the dress over her head. The fit was both sexy and fashionable, and she admired the way the fabric accentuated her curves. She turned in the mirror to study the angles, a smile curling onto her lips. The dress was the nicest thing she’d worn in what seemed like forever, and it made her feel remarkably good—not at all like a woman on the run, with death chasing her. The dress was a fantasy, but she felt the need to indulge it. And besides, it would help her blend in with the community. The material was light, virtually weightless, unlike the heavy cargo pants and sweaty black tee.
She picked up her clothes, stuffed them into the bag, struggled to get the zipper closed, and went out to tell the clerk she was going to wear the dress. She paid, taking note of her dwindling supply of u-cash, then realized she needed shoes to match the dress.
May as well go all out.
You shouldn’t be wasting money so frivolously, Alice chided her.
Think of it as an operational necessity, Mesa said. I need to blend in.
A nice pair of flats, a few pairs of underwear, and a new bra later, she was finished shopping. She left carrying the undergarments in a recycled paper bag, the backpack hooked over her shoulders once more.
Stepping back into the bright sunlight, she let her eyes readjust then scanned over the faces. She saw nobody familiar, and no one sprang into action. She checked both ways before joining the slow-moving crowd then worked her way north, through the commercial district, maintaining her non
chalant browsing.
As the stores grew closer to the docks, they took on a more obvious nautical theme. Storefront logos became variations on old-world wooden steering wheels, and she spotted more than one wooden pirate with a peg leg and a bright red-and-green parrot atop his shoulder. The fashions catered toward an old-school yachting clientele, with masculine mannequins wearing white khaki shorts, pastel polo tops, and white sweaters tied around the neck. She passed a few garments for women and was practically electrocuted by sticker shock. The cheapest blouse she saw cost five hundred credits.
It’s become a fucking yuppie-fest, she thought. A certain amount of willpower was required to not utterly condemn the entirety of seasteaders on this small cult of nouveau riche debauchery.
She followed the promenade around the outer ring of the city to the bridge connecting one island to the next, stopping to admire the view. The community was truly a beautiful sight. While it had been deeply impressive from the air, the enormousness of her new surroundings struck her hard as she stood among the buildings.
There was much to be said for the perverse will of mankind to make a home of even the most uninhabitable. Some would have called the initial builders madmen and their financial backers crazy, but the results were undeniably amazing. The founders had broken free of their nations and established a new place to live and a new way of living—one that was respectful and entirely at the behest of the sea.
With the land overcrowded, polluted, and stricken with violence and warfare, the planet’s oceans were truly the last frontier for mankind. While plenty had gone off-world to build new lives for themselves, a few had sought such harmony and kinship with their home planet on the ocean.
The community planners had turned to the oceans for support, enrichment, growth, and sustainability, turning their backs on the politicians and armies who fought for dirt and oil. The seasteaders had their eyes toward the future, and they had built it themselves. Their creation was a beautiful sterling testament to mankind’s tenacity and will to succeed. Six cities with the promise of expansion, the seastead was home to more than two hundred thousand souls.
Standing on that bridge, watching over the seataxis ferrying their passengers to and from the neighboring island states, Mesa realized that she could live here. She could turn away from Daedalus and lose herself in New Venice or one of the other habitats.
You think they would just forget about you? That you could disappear and never worry about them again? Alice pulled Mesa back to reality and the threat of the present.
Of course she was being stupid. She had business to attend to, matters to resolve.
Maybe after all that’s done, though, she thought. Maybe after that.
Like the original city that was its inspiration, New Venice was navigable by narrow channels cutting paths through the city. Slow-moving smart-boats utilized the waterways, their passengers taking in the sights around them and enjoying one another’s company, unable to escape the romance of the experience.
Storefronts and habitats along the branching channels attempted to mimic an old-world ambiance of Venice and capture the Mediterranean influences and Gothic architecture. Balconies overlooking the water were adorned with Gothic arches and traceries, and boat moorings resembled ancient barbershop poles with their red-and-white candy-cane striping.
While the design aesthetic of New Venice was a far cry from the modern constructs of the surrounding cities, the architects had gone to great lengths to incorporate new-world tech into the old-world appearances. The solar panels were an obvious departure from the ancient Venetian influences; more subtle, however, were the carbon-capture nodes, desulfurization systems, and hyper-filter arrays used to draw in harmful gases. Many of the boats and transit systems employed in the community relied on solar or blue energies, but the occasional old-fashioned gas-powered or oil-driven machine, particularly ancient freighters that much of the third world had bought from shipping agencies undergoing upgrades, visited the seastead. The seasteaders employed anti-pollution measures as a natural artifice to their buildings and design schemes to absorb the hazardous waste produced by those ships reliant on the scant remnants of fossil fuels. The hyper filters absorbed the waste and converted it into clean oxygen. On the underside of the structures, multiple layers of baleen filters drew in water waste, such as gas and oil residues left behind in the wake of the freighters, then clarified and purified the seawater before discharging it back into the ocean.
Mesa kept her head on a near-constant swivel, appreciating the clusters of people flowing around her as much as the architecture. An active scan protocol was running in the background, filtering each individual she saw against a facial recog program. If the men trailing Rameez were in the vicinity, the scan and capture software should pick them up. Despite the thick crowd and sea of faces, Mesa barely took notice of those around her. The cybernetics absorbed it all for her, storing the visual stimulation for later recall or using it for the active data comparison she was currently relying on it to carry out.
She stopped at a small café and took a seat on the patio. She dumped the backpack and shopping bag in the empty chair opposite. Her eyes roamed over the passing figures as she readjusted the spaghetti straps on her shoulders and smoothed the fabric of the dress.
A waitress approached, and Mesa ordered café mocha, no whip.
You should have tea, Alice advised. It is a smoother balm for your soul.
Too bland, Mesa said.
You need to work on your patience, learn to savor the delicate things in life.
And switching to tea would help with that, huh?
It’s calming, nourishing.
You sound like it’s a spiritual thing.
In some ways, it is. Coffee is acidic and potent. It frays your nerves, eats away at you. Tea soothes. It’s pleasant, relaxing.
Whatever. Maybe later.
The waitress set the mocha on the table and smiled softly. Mesa inhaled the sweet aroma, enjoying the intermingling of coffee and chocolate notes on the back of her tongue. This, she could savor. She didn’t know what the hell Alice was talking about.
How long did my father work for you? Mesa asked.
A few years. Life in California… it was not easy, Mesa. I’m not sure you would understand.
Because my life has been such a fucking walk in the park, huh?
Comparisons are relative. I will concede that the last few days have been unusual.
Mesa gripped the hot cup in both hands, trying to force herself to relax. Oh, you’ll concede, will you? These last few days wouldn’t have been so fucking unusual if it weren’t for your insane, megalomaniacal plans.
We will make this right, Mesa.
You know what? I don’t think we can. What you did? What you did to me—I don’t think the genie goes back in the bottle. Making this right means you getting the fuck out of my head. Do you understand that?
I do. And in order to do that, we need particular resources.
Daedalus. Schaeffer. Mesa knew all that already.
And what exactly are you going to do? she asked. Neither of us is exactly whole. And if I understand the score correctly, you’re only one-fifth of the woman you used to be.
Because Alice had divided up her mems into separate data packets, which she disbursed to multiple individuals rather than a single source, large parts of her personality, mind, and memories were missing. And with her data carriers gone, she could never return to her complete original personality.
Perhaps we are more equal than you care to admit, Alice said.
The barb took Mesa off-guard, but she had to admit that Alice was right. Neither of them was whole, and neither could ever be made cohesive. Both had suffered too much damage, loss, and destruction to fully recover from any of it.
After finishing the mocha, Mesa set off for the
hotel. She approached Cavour without slowing and walked past, down to the next block. She kept her speed consistent, using the reflections of the Dura-Plast to check for people either following her or taking an obvious notice of her. She headed east, putting more distance between herself and Cavour. Then she looped back around the block for her approach. Feeling safe, she moved toward the door, which slid open smoothly upon sensing her.
Cavour’s interior was a study in elegance. She admired the marble floors and the brilliant white columns. Plush black chairs decorated the lobby, and stained cherrywood tables and spacious sofas formed a sitting area where guests could take their drinks and reading material or enjoy conversations.
Moving past a massive winding staircase to the check-in desk, Mesa pressed her thumb to the touchscreen and clicked the Arriving Guest button. The biometric sensors captured her fingerprint, recognizing her as Juliet Landreau. The fake ident was courtesy of Rameez’s fresh set of credentials, and she was grateful for his expertise. The check-in process was fast, and a moment later, a room key was dispensed from the console.
She took the elevator to the fifth floor and found her room. The accommodations were as luxurious as the lobby had promised. The door separating the adjoining rooms was already open, and she was delighted to see Rameez sitting on the edge of the bed.
The gun in his hand, however, was a complete surprise.
Chapter 19
“You scared the shit out of me,” Mesa said. “Fuck’s sake, Rameez.”
He blushed, apologizing profusely while she turned to lock the deadbolts and slide the chain into place.
Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2) Page 19