Scarcity

by Robert Calbeck

  Qwiz breathed a shallow laugh. “I guess you’re right.”

  Bill shrugged. “So Luthor has been framed by some polluted ass-hats as a terrorist. We almost got dead last night and are now his accomplices. But we need to look at the bright side of this whole damned shit-storm.”

  “What’s that?”

  “William finally got his big exclusive! He’s been waiting to do a report like that for years. Did a good job too.”

  “You know the reporter?”

  “Course I do,” Bill said. “He’s my son.”

  #

  Marseille, European Union

  Usually one seabus left every day, carrying masses of people. Most were old luxury cruise-liners converted to nuclear propulsion and retrofitted to accommodate as many passengers as possible. The one in the dock looked to be a midsize seabus, probably capable of holding 10,000 passengers, not including the crew. While not as large as the behemoth that brought them to Europe, it still towered over them, sitting easily 20 stories out of the water. Luthor felt queasy just seeing something that tall. Smogging heights. Thankfully their economy tickets would place them in dormitories located toward the bottom of the vessel, but they would still have to cross that cursed walkway to enter the ship.

  They stood in line, waiting for the inevitable test of Vika’s CPI hacking skills. Michael voiced what everyone was thinking. “Vika, is this going to work?”

  “We got on the trains, didn’t we? This will be similar, except with an x-ray.”

  “What if they have ID screens? If Luthor’s scan shows up as a smogging Chinese body builder we’re going to be boned.”

  Luthor had opted not to voice the concern because he didn’t want to believe it was possible. Somehow hearing something aloud always made it more frightening.

  “Europe doesn’t spend the credits to power screens for people leaving the country. Only for those entering.”

  “Easy to get out, hard to get in?”

  She didn’t respond, apparently it was too obvious a question to warrant a response.

  “Just act normal,” Tanya said. “If we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we should be fine.”

  Suddenly Tanya pursed her lips: her thinking face. Luthor had seen that face before, and knew enough to get out of the way. Tanya turned to Vika. “You need to unbutton your shirt a bit.”

  Vika’s expression would have killed a puppy. “I will not.”

  Tanya smiled mischievously. “You said you wanted to help us. Here’s your chance. If you make yourself look as sexy as possible, and then go first, security won’t be thinking about us. They’ll be thinking about you. You are the only one of us who doesn’t need a fake Mark, so if they search you, it won’t matter.”

  “I will not be an object for them to lust after.”

  “Too late for that. Your parents made sure you didn’t have a choice. We just need to spice you up a bit.”

  “What if there are female carps?” Michael asked.

  Tanya shook her head. “If you are worried about that, then you clearly don’t know the first thing about how women think. They will be even more distracted than the men. They will hate her because she’s beautiful, be jealous of the attention she’s getting, and thinking up enough synonyms for whore to fill a thesaurus. They will think about her for rest of the day if we do this right.

  “Now Vika, give me your trench coat, and for God’s sake, let down your hair.”

  Luthor had to hand it to Tanya, she did great work. Vika’s dark hair was down and flowing, Tanya had done something with makeup around her eyes to emphasize them alluringly, and she was definitely showing more skin. Luthor had trouble not staring, though had enough self-control to not do so in Tanya’s presence. Vika would certainly be an excellent distraction.

  By the time they reached the front of the line, both guards in their line were openly gaping at Vika every chance they got. Hopeful smiles plastered their faces as she placed her hand under the scanner. She scowled so fiercely at them, Luthor half-expected to see laser beams lance out of her eyes and burn theirs out.

  “Thank you, miss,” one of them offered.

  “Have a good day,” said the other.

  Vika grunted something and frowned forward in the line.

  Tanya’s tactic worked, the rest of them waltzed through the checkpoint, their CPI chips beeping pleasantly under the scanners as they matched with their tickets.

  Several long minutes later as they regrouped with their luggage, Vika snatched her coat back from Tanya.

  “See, I told you that would work! They never even glanced twice at our gloves.”

  Vika arched an eyebrow, it loomed like a big sister about to strike a younger sibling. “If you ever ask me to do that again, I will tear your throat out.”

  Tanya winced.

  Luthor put his arm around his frightened girlfriend and smiled, “Look on the bright side, at least you don’t have to worry about drama with her. You always know exactly how she feels.”

  Despite their worries, they made it through the rest of security with surprising ease.

  They stashed their meager luggage in a locker between four bunks in dorm 5E. It held 46 other bunks. They could have chosen to get a private room, but opted instead for the anonymity of the economy dormitories.

  The CPI chips still had a few hours of life in them—or so Vika had told them—and now Luthor didn’t see any reason to doubt that. It occurred to Luthor for the first time that he had access to all the Asian’s accounts. He had access to his digital wallet, ID, credit cards, all through a scan of his hand. They had all purchased expensive trans-Atlantic seabus tickets with no problem. Why shouldn’t he spend a bit more? Two small meals a day were included on the voyage, but the drinks, not so much. Besides, it was always easier to tolerate the heights of a seabus with some libations. Everyone agreed that a drink would help take the edge off the worst day of their lives.

  The drinks were outrageously expensive, but Luthor couldn’t care less. He was spending a murderer’s money and only had an hour to do it. It didn’t take long before two rounds of shots went burning down their throats and a pitcher of a beautiful brown ale from Germany graced their glasses.

  As Luthor raised the ale to his lips he noticed a horrified expression on Tanya’s face. “What is it?”

  “Look at the screen,” she said, pointing toward the TV. A USNN broadcast panned over the ruins of a bombed-out building. A handsome young reporter with luscious blond hair and piercing blue eyes named William Benyard began to tell the story of an explosion that had rocked Aurora, Illinois early that morning.

  #

  Somewhere in the mid-Atlantic

  Seeing Luthor’s face on the news with the word terrorist underneath had terrified Tanya, she had hardly spoken with anyone outside of their group for fear of being found by someone in carbon enforcement. Each had done what they could to modify their appearances. Michael shaved his head, Luthor scraped off his beard and dyed his graying brown hair black. Tanya herself had cut 8 inches from her auburn locks and gave herself bangs. She hated bangs, she hated them a lot. Leaving them long made them impossible to keep out of her eyes, but cutting them short looked positively revolting. She just hoped her forehead didn’t break out in acne like it had when she was a teenager and first developed her hatred for them.

  There was no way to explain away Eli’s death, but time, even a few days, had taken the sharpest edges off the gash that his murder had made on her psyche. Crying no longer ambushed her without warning, it came on slowly, predictably, and she had been able to confine it to her solitary bathroom breaks.

  Mostly.

  Instead of crying all the time, a question had nestled down deep in her mind; it plagued her unoccupied thoughts. Who were they, these people who can summon Sabers and manipulate the news? She didn’t even know what to fear—who to fear. They had tried to steal the 126 and were influential enough to corrupt the media’s portrayal of the battle in the CERN lab. They were powerful. They
could be anywhere. Literally, anything she did could be the thing that gave them all away.

  Fortunately, despite their best efforts to the contrary, the men who had killed Eli had failed to steal Luthor’s laptop. All of Luthor’s research was safe—assuming they could ever get the water-logged device to boot up. That meant all they had to do was to get back to the states and they would hopefully be home free—so to speak. In the USW they had the benefit of being citizens, so even if they were arrested for their supposed crimes, they would have the chance to present their case in court. A big-time trial would work just as well as anything to publish the research, and potentially clear their names.

  Tanya was delighted to discover a distraction that helped take her mind off the minor problem of being an international fugitive: the 126 itself. It was bizarre. It had caused her to be more interested in an inanimate object than on people for the first time in her life. Which she figured was okay so long as she didn’t actually turn into a scientist like Luthor. God, don’t let me become a scientist.

  As crazy as the enhanced gravity was, he had repeatedly emphasized that the synthesis of 126 – not its properties—was the truly remarkable discovery. Before, scientists had only been able to produce single atoms at a time. Luthor was pumping out thousands, if not tens of thousands, in a single reaction. He had told her about it several times. It had to do with specific voltages and frequencies in the cyclotron. It was all very technical. All she knew for certain was that he had gotten lucky in finding two cheap elements that combined to form element 126, he got them both as byproducts from a nearby Nuclear power plant, depleted Uranium and a fancy isotope of Krypton. They sped up the Krypton in the accelerator and shot it at the Uranium. Luthor often said that the two elements “really liked to fuse together.” Apparently, they combined, ejected a few protons and neutrons and settled into the stable form of element 126. Or at least she thought that was how it worked after Luthor’s continual explaining; he wasn’t a very good teacher. After a year of production, they had a measurable amount of the new element. In larger quantities, it did some unbelievable things.

  Right now she was witnessing one such phenomena. She sat in one of the game rooms, transfixed on Michael. He stood calmly in the center of the room.

  Upside down.

  On the ceiling.

  Good thing they had shut the blinds and jammed the door. He might give an innocent old checker-player a heart attack. He turned toward her, his normally winning smile now felt very wrong. But then, someone standing upside down was always wrong. He smiled and Tanya noticed a fresh cut about two centimeters long over his left eye. “What do you think Tanya? Want to give it a try?”

  “I’ll pass.” She had a short list of adrenaline-filled activities that she had permanently banned from her life. Defying gravity edged dangerously close to all of them.

  “Your loss.” Michael pointed toward a small tape measure on the ground. “Will you do me a favor and measure this for me? I’m doing a little experiment.”

  “Measure what?”

  “From this point here,” He pointed to a small strip of tape on the ceiling where he was standing, “to where I fall off. I’m testing the effective range of the 126 in different concentrations.”

  Michael shuffled forward on the ceiling. After he had progressed half a meter, he slowly began floating away from the ceiling like a balloon without enough helium. “This is so cool!” he exclaimed. Michael imitated an astronaut as he reoriented himself to earth’s gravity. He gradually gained speed until he thumped, butt-first, on a table. He grinned ear to ear. “I am telling you, I have never felt anything like this! So, how far did I make it?” She held the tape measure up, “about 50 centimeters.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, jotting a note on a hand-written chart on the table. He placed a strange orange ball of goo on the table next to him. An extra pen that had been perfectly content, suddenly rolled toward it.

  The violently orange polymer was Eli’s artificial Gecko’s feet. The bottom of a gecko’s paws had a unique structure allowing them to walk up even something as smooth as glass like Spiderman. Now they had incased the beads of 126 from Luthor’s generator to small lumps of Eli’s polymer and were having a little too much fun playing with them.

  Michael hefted the orange substance in his hand, admiring it. “I wish we had had a handful of this stuff six months ago. Who knows when we will need to be able climb walls?”

  “Or hide on the ceiling?” said Luthor.

  Tanya tried to suppress her gag reflex as the nerdiness quotient in the room approached toxic levels. She moved closer to Vika, hoping for some semi-normal company. Vika wasn’t exactly typical, but she was far better than the alternative which was currently as testosterone flooded as a sperm bank.

  Now that they were safely on the boat Tanya had gotten to know the enigmatic woman a little better. Vika had settled into the routine of being ridiculously good looking. Her other hobbies appeared to be scowling and brooding, both of which were better than masturbating to science.

  Michael stood on the table, braced a hand against the ceiling and removed the little putty ball. He handed it to Luthor, “your turn,” he looked the older man in the eyes, “remember, this thing is constantly pulling things toward it no matter where it is. Be careful.”

  “I know. I discovered the property!”

  “It’s different when you experience it, old man.”

  Luthor took the ball of goo and tossed it against the varnished wall next to him. It stuck perfectly, about 10 cm from the ceiling. As soon as the 126 left his hand, Luthor’s feet started sliding along the ground toward the wall. He slipped and fell as he slid into the new gravity well. He started wailing pathetically as he was pulled off his back and bounced up against the wooden panels. “Oh crap, crap. Help!” he cried.

  Tanya and Michael burst out laughing. It was one of the most ridiculous things she had ever seen, she just wished she’d had a video of it. She would’ve watched it every day. Luthor eventually managed to remove the 126 from the wall, allowing earth’s gravity to regain superiority over him and the 126. He fell foolishly to the floor.

  Luthor breathed heavily, but didn’t seem to notice everyone laughing at him. “That concentration has an effective radius of about two meters laterally, while only half a meter vertically.”

  “That must be because when you are upside down you are fighting directly against earth’s gravity. When it’s next to you it doesn’t have to be able to counteract your whole weight to move you. It just has to slide you a little bit until you get into the effective radius of the gravity dimple.” Michael said, jotting another note on his lengthening chart.

  “Gravity dimple?” Tanya said incredulously, “you don’t have a better term than that? Sounds like you are describing an elementary school kid. Oh, look at your cute little gravity dimples!”

  Vika smiled, which Tanya had discovered was equivalent to another person snorting with uncontrolled laughter.

  “But that’s what it is!” Michael said, looking genuinely offended. He must have come up with the term. “Earth’s gravity bends spacetime over a gigantic volume. We’re talking a radius measured in millions of kilometers. 126 just dimples it a little over a very small space. Like one of those little holes on a golf ball. A couple of meters wide, that’s it. Come on, stop laughing, it’s the perfect descriptor for the phenomenon.” Tanya laughed harder as Michael struggled to make “dimple” sound cool. It felt really good to laugh again.

  Michael pointedly turned toward Luthor, ignoring her. “Why don’t we see what happens with double that concentration?” he suggested.

  “Good idea,” Vika said. “Give it to me.”

  Michael looked troubled. He consistently appeared to be afraid of Vika. Tanya didn’t fully trust her either, but she suspected Michael feared her due to the fact that she was completely immune to his charms—probably a new experience for him. He didn’t know how to react around a woman he couldn’t seduce. But he couldn’t
leave her alone either; she was just too gorgeous. He was too terrified to make a move, but too dumbstruck to have the good sense to give up.

  Luckily, Luthor came to his rescue. He mashed two of the balls of 126 together like silly putty and handed them to Vika. Tanya felt her stomach churn as the gravity altered around her. Gravity was one of those things one takes for granted. It had always pulled her down her whole life and she wanted to keep it that way. She leaned slightly against the new center of gravity to keep her balance. She adjusted instinctually, avoiding looking as spectacularly stupid as Luthor.

  Vika didn’t seemed perturbed at all by the change caused by the gravity dimple. She rolled it around in her hand, testing its weight. Both beads wrapped together with the polymer weren’t the size of a ping-pong ball. A nearby chair shifted ominously, sliding toward Vika. Without warning, Vika started sprinting across the room. Vaulting up on the table, she took a flying leap at the far wall. She threw the 126 against the wallboards and spun mid-air to land feet first against the wall. She crouched, unnaturally parallel to the floor, bracing herself with her hand to balance against earth’s gravity.

  Michael stared open mouthed at the feat of balance and athleticism. Tanya herself didn’t really know what the appropriate response was, so she started clapping. It made sense. Luthor and Michael joined in.

  “I like this,” Vika said, looking up at them. She removed it from the wall, landed on the floor adroitly. She put a hand on the table and tossed the little ball back to Luthor. As the ball passed Michael, he lurched, almost face-planting, Luthor fell toward it tripping and crumpling again. The chair slid and fell on top of him. He grunted in surprise. Tanya stifled another laugh.

  “Brace yourself when it is in motion,” she said, slapping her hand on the table in emphasis, “or you will look like a fool.”

  “Not that he needs much help with that,” Tanya said under her breath.

  “Like Laramy said, ‘they are always pulling.’”

  “Yes, and with a lot more smogging force that time,” Michael said, “that had to be almost double the power of our first concentration.”