Terraforming Earth - Phase 1: "The Plagues Era": Futurescape, #1

By Dean C. Moore

Rake Cunningham, a chip-enhanced detective, upgraded to sniff through paranoid-conspiracy theories to know which ones are worth following up, stumbles upon a case that is no typical example of corporate malfeasance. He signed on for the enhancement with the idea he'd be taking down white collar criminals and techies, or Machiavellian CEOs just too smart to be caught any other way. What he runs into instead is a plot to depopulate the world in order to return it to an Eden-like state. It will require far more than access to the truth to crush the parties in cahoots. Try a small miracle.

He quickly enlists Doc Holiday's assistance. She's known as the queen of the chipheads, overseeing constant chip improvements that keep people employed who would otherwise have no viable means of engaging in such a fast moving economy. If there's anyone equipped to outfit the resistance with all the mind-power they need, it's Doc Holiday.

What Rake doesn't know is the other side is led by a no less formidable pair of lovers. Garrett Rawlings is the chairman of the most powerful corporate and military industrial complex super-alliance on the planet. Simone Bolivar is an android who has entered singularity state, evolving faster than human minds can possibly grasp. It's perhaps just as well Rake and Doc Holiday don't know all that they're up against, or they might not even try to save the ninety-nine percent of humanity deemed expendable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Oct 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9798215755495

Book preview

ONE

I feel naked out of uniform like this, the general said. 

Probably for the best we don’t attract any attention to ourselves, sir.  His lieutenant and techie, seated opposite him at the outdoor café, gripped his device with both hands, one hand on the button. 

Christ, it’s hot.  The general wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.  I sweat better in uniform.

The hot day is part of our cover, sir.

Whatever.  Just get on with it.  If I’m going to sweat like this, I want to be naked inside my sauna at home, not fully clothed on a New York City street.

Yes, sir.  The techie turned the knob on his gadget to the first setting.  The general observed the overweight people on the sidewalks, and on the crosswalks trying to get across the street, dropping like flies.  To avoid making things too obvious, the techie switched the doohickey to the next setting.  Now the anorexics, the bulimics, anyone looking more bone than flesh, were collapsing where they stood.  Many of them had been busy pointing and shouting for help when they saw the first wave of people dropping.  Their voices were joined by the chorus of honking horns of impatient taxi drivers wondering what was holding up traffic. 

Again the techie changed the setting on his contraption before taking out all the emaciated ones at the busy intersection.  The next wave of people to crumple was the infirm; some had been coughing prior to the attack.  Others had been ambulating with oxygen tanks, or surgeons’ face masks on. 

Three waves of attacks and twelve people were down, all told.  Enough to be explained away by the heat.  Evidenced by the amount of compassion on display and by the fact that people reaching out to help the fallen had not yet succumbed to hysteria.  The medics in the area, on their way to the hospital nearby, were even explaining to the injured why they really needed to be wary of their conditions in this weather as they worked on reviving their patients. 

The general had chosen a vicinity proximate to the hospital for the experiment.  He figured elements of the citizenry, knowing that they were close to help, would work to keep the crowds under control, keep them focused on solving rather than running from the problem.

How are you doing this? the general asked, shifting his focus back to the techie. 

The nanomist cocktail responsive to the broadest possible array of target population requests, from the old to the young, male or female, black, white, Hispanic—most any demographic really—is inside of everyone already.  It’s just a matter of using the cell phone towers to signal and activate the desired ingredient in the batch.

Downsides?

The nanomist’s attack abates after anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, if they’re out of range of the towers. 

Judging from the unsuccessful revival efforts underway on the twelve fallen, the general was in no position to argue the point; no one was getting up from this thing on their own so long as they were within range.  Ambulances were already being called in.  Some of the afflicted were being shuttled into the backs of taxis, others thrown in wheelchairs furnished by local hotels and wheeled in the direction of the hospital. 

And the delivery method, the techie continued, is hard to control over anything but a localized, densely populated area.  And of course, you need cell towers in high abundance.  New York is perfect.  A lot of locations aren’t. 

We’ll have to work on that.  The general removed his cap to wipe his bald spot of sweat.  He was feeling the pressure to take care of his end of things for FutureScape.  He missed the days when killing people didn’t require such designer precision.  The new methods saved all kinds of money but they created more problems for him.  Wrangling together people smart and sociopathic enough to meet the demands of the new warring methods was no trifling affair.  The very people you most depended on were the very types wily enough to escape your oversight, either blow the whistle on what you were doing, or go rogue and become an even bigger problem to tackle.

The general pulled himself together and donned his New York Giants cap.  The cap actually belonged to his techie, but he figured his bald head could benefit from it more.  What are we doing to address the urban sprawl, now that things inside of the city centers seems a bit more in hand? 

It’s probably easier just to show you. 

They hopped into the convertible cream Cadillac parked at the curb directly in front of the café.  More subterfuge.  The general would have preferred a military Hum-V.  God, it’s a bad episode of Cannon, he remarked, in deference to the old TV series, and to his own ever-widening girth.  Only, with the thin guy behind the wheel playing chauffeur.  Cannon always drove himself.

Cannon, sir?

The general sighed.  Before your time.  Before mine, even.  Pity.  I’d take his problems over mine any day.  The rest of the joke would be lost on the lieutenant as well: the fact that the general had Cannon’s round face and moustache, the same wizened, creased, world-weary bulldog muzzle; the fact that the techie’s contrasting boyish, unblemished features seemed more suited to a video game reality.  The reality he was no doubt retreating too now on his mindchip to wile away his time until the car’s autopilot took them to where they were headed. 

He doubted the kid perceived much difference between the real world and the virtual world; thanks to the mindchip, they both interpenetrated one another and were thus hard to tease apart.  Maybe that’s why killing came so easily for him.  He lacked the remorse, not of a sociopath, but of someone to whom all of life was just a game.  He wondered if the kid even understood what genuinely relating with real people entailed.  Love, affection, intimacy, the communion of souls, these commodities, assuming they had any value at all, were secondary to winning points for getting over on people, or getting around the obstacles they posed to scoring high in the game.

After idling the engine for a bit, the techie put the car in gear and took off.

Once they were outside of the city, the lieutenant stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road and shut off the engine, ignoring the protests of the motorists.  He signaled the front seat to slide all the way back so they both could stand comfortably and hold on to the rim of the windshield for more of a bird’s eye view.  Placing the call over his mindchip, he said, Okay, just the area extending from the Cadillac outward in all directions.  The general dated back to the days of cell phones and Bluetooth headsets.  It took some adjusting to get used to people talking to air back then; this latest rendition of wireless communications was just a tad more bizarre, without anything to cue you that the person wasn’t just talking to imaginary people.  Of course, it wasn’t necessary for the techie to verbalize at all; he was doing that for the general’s benefit.

There were still people using cell phones and PDAs, of course, even laptops and Google Glass; not everyone was chipped.  But as the need for commercial towers multiplied, various black ops agencies just found it that much easier to interlace their networks with the populace’s without anyone noticing.  Someone, after all, was always testing better ways to cram more data into fewer frequencies.  Many of the so-called pioneering firms were just fronts for the military.

The general watched as, in response to the lieutenant’s request, the urban sprawl was peeled back.  Asphalt, buildings, cars, people, everything.  All gone.  How’s that possible?

The nanites can be tweaked specifically to digest their favorite foodstuffs and only that, the lieutenant explained.  Most of the time it’s one or another component of the infrastructure you’re going after, not all of it.  But if you’re looking to re-green the planet... Well, it takes quite the cocktail to get a spread that’ll erase everything.

But how do you shut it down?

Same as before.  The nanites are genetically programmed to be particularly responsive to specific radio tower emissions.

And how come we weren’t affected?

Our inoculation is provided by the AI controlling the frequencies being emitted from the towers, which can separate our DNA specifics, deselecting us from the broadcast aimed at the affected.

What about the Cadillac?

That’s handled by perimeter control.  The cell phone towers that affect the inanimate objects are just refocused so that we’re outside of the beams’ coverage area.

The general nodded.  Nice.  Simple and effective.  Just how I like it.  You make things too complicated you run into all kinds of problems.

Looking off in the distance, the general said, And the people who couldn’t help but witness all this?

They were blindsided.  The city AI just redirected them by way of their dashboard GPS navs, their PDAs, cell phones, mind chips, whatever they’re using.

And this colossal void we’ve made in the middle of the burbs?

Well, some would say the burbs is a void to begin with, sir.

The general permitted a smile and the insubordination.  The kid and him went back a long ways.  The techie brought himself back on track without needing to be admonished.  Speaking to the operator at the other end by way of his mindchip, he said, Fill in the blank space. 

The infrastructure regrew in real time—all but the people.  Designer plagues weren’t that good.  The general wondered how long it would take for them to be.  Hopefully by then he’d be dead and gone—from natural causes.

How much of this biowarfare stuff you think we’ll actually get to use? the techie asked the general. 

Who knows with those FutureScape guys?  They like being prepared is all.  But in the end, it’s up to the bean counters to decide where the greatest profit margins lie, in keeping what target population numbers alive for how long and for whatever reasons. 

The general, gripping the lip of the convertible’s windshield to hold himself up, resumed his seat.  It’s easy to forget that FutureScape itself represents an alliance of power interests which don’t always see eye to eye.  What serves one party’s agenda conflicts with another’s.  For roll outs of the kind we’re toying with today, I imagine they all have to agree, or it’s war of the titans.

The lieutenant snorted.  Bureaucracy...  The more things change, huh?

Tell me about it.

The techie flopped back into the driver’s seat.  After he informed the car’s AI of their next destination, he barely remembered to command the front seat forward before he slipped into his VR world yet again.  The same lament surfaced in the general’s mind like the refrain of a song.  If these kids understood anything about what relating with people really entailed, could they do what they did?  Could they still be taught the necessary empathy?  Or was it just a world of sociopaths now, hiding behind the it’s just a game psychology as if it were some Zen-like form of self-transcendence?

Simone felt the blood rushing from her periphery to her core as she slapped her fins against the water and continued her descent.  The trapped air in her lungs wanted to push her back up to the surface.  Still, her mind had become progressively more serene; this was as close to a meditative state as she’d been in in a long while. 

She must have just hit the thirty-three foot depth mark; her lungs collapsed to half their size.  She no longer had to paddle as hard to combat the upward pull of the ocean’s surface.  At forty feet, finally, she was able to stop paddling altogether, and just enjoy the slow freefall to the ocean’s bottom and the sense of weightlessness.  Her arms and legs went wide, like a sky diver; the sensation of falling through the atmosphere, she remembered, was much the same. 

Simone spied the 2312 CEO at a depth of fifty-five feet, according to her diving watch, which also advised her of the eighty-eight degree Fahrenheit water temperature.  Gregory dived the Bahamas, particularly Nassau/Paradise Island, religiously this time of year, at the height of summer.  It was how he decompressed, if she could be pardoned the unforgivably bad pun.

Her pulse had slowed by twenty-five percent; it was part of her dive reflex that allowed her to comfortably freefall to these depths.  As she swam by Gregory, she hoped to excite his heart rate and provoke him to return to the surface sooner.  He was an accomplished free diver himself, so the question was how to override his better nature with his baser nature. 

A few minutes of snapping pictures of the reef life in his vicinity, giving him something to look at besides colorful fish, did the trick.  She swam on ahead without looking back.

He surfaced a few minutes after she did.  That meant he had more stamina than she gave him credit for.  He searched the water in a near panic for her before thinking to check his own boat.  Seeing her there, he pulled himself up, dripping wet and all the better for it.

I see you’re looking to steal something besides my heart.

Just a piece of your time.

He smiled tentatively, then must have come to a firmer decision on a course of action since the mini-yacht they were sharing suddenly seemed a whole lot less conventional.  The section on which she was seated grabbed hold of her.  The robot, pealing itself up from its camouflaged position, anchored her every limb effortlessly, all the while looking like its ancient ancestor might have been a car lift.

You’ll forgive the obtuse precaution, he said, gesturing to the robot.  But it’s been my experience it’s more than pretty things that come in small packages.  Some of the costliest things too.

She smiled ambiguously at him.  You left my mouth free.  That’s more generosity than I was expecting.

He popped the cork on a champagne bottle, poured a glass and handed it to her, having to help her sip it, as her hands were otherwise preoccupied.  Then he refilled the same glass and drank from it.  She realized he was sampling her from the residue she’d left on the glass, drinking her down, examining her in minutiae with the help of the nano in his body.  His expression only grew more puzzled.  So, tell me, what’s this really all about, he said, besides ruining a perfectly good diving expedition with haunting memories of you that will no doubt be with me until the moment I die?  He ran his eyes up and down her again for good measure.

We want to see you get the support you need to make your dream come true of having the solar system largely colonized by 2312.

You a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson too, are you?

Yes and no.  We love the idea, just that we think it’s a little too down to earth, if you’ll forgive the expression.

You have some far more outlandish scheme for conquering space you’re vested in?

Yes, one that doesn’t take three hundred years.

You just impatient?

No, just paradoxically practical in our sheer unreasonableness.  You see, we don’t think the Earth will survive the next thirty years far less the next three hundred.  The more time goes by, the greater the odds against any of us making it off this rock.  The list of threats to the planet and to mankind compound daily; you know them better than I do.

Somehow I doubt that.  He poured himself another glass of champagne and guzzled it.  Fine, let’s say I concede your point.  In thirty years I’ll have bases on the moon, on Mars.  Plenty of insurance to ensure we survive long enough to expand the ring of safety further, protecting us against asteroid hits on earth and whatever else you’re imagining.

She was shaking her head slowly before he could get out the thrust of his thinking.  We’re heading for a Singularity.  The next thirty years will pack the equivalent of the next three thousand at our current pace of technological innovation.  At that rate one person, one rogue agent will be all it requires to take out the planet.  Nikola Tesla could have done it in 1899.  Of course, back then he would have been about the only one who could have done it.  He even told the rest of us how to do it, not that most of us could really understand him.  In ten years, not thirty, the dumbest person on this planet will be smarter than Nikola Tesla.

I’m not sure I believe in the Singularity.  Moore’s law has been slowing of late, not accelerating.

She found herself shaking her head again.  Doesn’t matter.  Too many scientific fields of inquiry are converging now, each with their own singularity waves.  Some will hit sooner than others.

Sorry, I don’t buy the hype.

You don’t have to.  You just have to concede the possibility that there is at least a remote chance I’m right.  One in a million.  Why risk it if you don’t have to?

He was standing as far back from her on the boat as was possible so he could take in her whole figure without having to continuously roam his eyes over her.  He was using the image to steady his mind.  Before backing up he seemed most taken by her light coffee brown complexion, the copper and gold hues of her short curly hair, and the sparkling silver of her bodysuit.  He had a background in his early years in precious metals manufacturing, so maybe her look was all the more captivating on account of it.  So what are you proposing?

We’re going to quintuple your funding.  In the first year alone.  Quintuple it again every year after that.  We want you to succeed, Gregory; everyone needs a plan B.

While you proceed with your Plan A?

Yes.  I noticed you haven’t asked what it is.

Don’t know.  Don’t care.  So what’s the catch at my end?

You leave the media relations to us.  We don’t want you selling the world on a vision of the future that’s quite so captivating.  You never know, they may just not accept any other once they’ve got your version burned into their heads.  We think that’s every bit as dangerous as the compounding astronomical dangers we’re discovering with each passing day.  Perhaps even more dangerous.  Because the best way to safeguard the future is to continue to open new paths to it.

He’d been standing and using the sight of her, the vista over the ocean, and the sparkling gold liquid in his champagne glass alternately to settle his mind and help him think the entire time.  He wasn’t sure which of the three to default to now with her latest revelation.  Finally, he let go of all three and just bored a hole through her with his eyes. 

Sure, why not? he said, just when she thought he was going to break that champagne bottle and use the jagged edge against her neck. 

Simone smiled ruefully at Gregory.  You should have risen to your position on a background of sales, Gregory.  Your typical CEO could have sold a lie like that without blinking.  But your scientific background betrays you.  Your heart rate, your breathing, your galvanic skin response, all tell me you’re lying.

He chuckled.  I won’t even ask you how you know those things.  I guess how you know them is the real reason I want off this planet.  It’s time people got out from under Big Brother’s prying eyes, even if it is in the hollow of some forgotten asteroid among a countless many no one gives a damn about so no one can be bothered to create a surveillance state.

You know that’s not how we work, Gregory.  We have a need to know.  We spy on everyone and everything.  We’re even working on retroviruses that get us inside the minds of insects, plants, and bacteria, because we honestly don’t like the idea they might be thinking thoughts we can’t monitor.

Information may be power, but if you really want to stay on top for the duration, you and the rest of your control freak buddies, you’ll learn what every Zen master knows; to lead is to serve.  Give people everything they want and they’ll stop trying to squirm out from under your thumb.

Simone had been running her eyes over him as well the whole time, feeding into his flirtation to give him the false hope he needed that she was really worth his while.  Now she just smiled at him and sighed.  Wise words.  But I’m afraid I serve at the behest of my masters.  I concede you have the moral high ground, just not any ground under your feet that’s going to keep you alive much longer.

Simone tore through the robot’s clutches like a child ripping its papier-mâché doll. 

To Gregory’s credit, he dove over the side of the boat and headed down to depths he was sure she couldn’t reach.  Most people would have turned to stone in shock, leaving them with an even lower likelihood of survival.

The rest of the yacht finished morphing, no doubt responding to Gregory’s mindchip even now. 

She found herself tossed like a ball by an even larger robot uncoupling from the ship.  All told, she had three of them to fend off now, all much bigger than the smaller one that had her in its grips earlier, all able to walk on water courtesy of the thrusters in their feet.  All content on bashing her back and forth between them until she was just a blood smear in their hands they could easily wash off in the water.

But by batting her back and forth, they were simply giving her access to their vital parts.  A strategic blunder she was all too happy to use to her advantage, pulling wires that crippled a few of their functions each time she landed on one of them.

They morphed their attack strategy accordingly. 

One of them took her down beneath the surface, hoping to drown her.  The others didn’t wait for that plan to pay off.  They surrounded her and morphed back into a solid vessel; this time her coffin.  It was by no means a water-tight coffin.  She had no air to breathe and she was trapped in a box Houdini would never find his way out of.

Simone kept punching through the solid metal alloys hoping to strike some component that was decisively crippling.  But they’d been smart enough to seal those body parts away from her.  No matter.  Time was on her side, even if you couldn’t get a casual witness to her predicament to agree to that premise right now.

Eventually she hit enough electronic nerves to take the last of the robots out of commission.  One by one they fell away from her, sinking rapidly to the bottom under their own weight, where they lumbered on orthopedically like injured lobsters.

Simone put them out of her mind and descended into the depths in pursuit of Gregory.  Her sensors told her he was close to three hundred feet down.  For a free diver, that was accomplished indeed, but not unheard of.  Plenty of unaugmented humans could do it; granted, they were mostly islanders who free dived for a living. 

At a hundred feet down, Simone felt the pressure on her triple.  Her master switch kicked in harder, reducing her heartbeat beyond the twenty-five percent it slowed reflexively at shallower depths.  By the time she’d reached two hundred feet down, her heart rate was less than half of normal, closing in on thirty beats per minute.

By three hundred feet down, her thoracic cavity was only a third what it was at the surface.

Gregory lurched at her out of his cave like an eel determined to bore right through her, his diving knife in hand.  She made no effort to defend herself as he gashed away at her with the blade, unable to even scratch her skin, looking more and more perplexed and more and more panicked.

She just ran her fingertips over his face and closely shaved skull, gently, soothingly; they could have been lovers embracing, as he’d dropped the knife and become quite docile, dazzled by the light show.  The tiny lightning bolts coming from her fingertips were playing hell with his depth perception, causing him to lose his razor sharp focus on her.

What... what are you doing? he thought.

I’m using your mindchip to access your company’s intranet as you, and your AI attorneys, seeing to it that your company transfers smoothly into our ownership in the event of your death.  She made it so he could hear her thoughts as easily as she could hear his.

You must promise me...

I wasn’t lying earlier, Gregory.  We like your idea for settling the solar system.  We hope it pans out, and we’ll explore it even more zealously than you ever could.  And get the task done in a fraction of the time.  And who knows, for a great many, that’s as far as they’ll ever go.  Let’s hope they live eternities before a colliding galaxy or some other solar system-killing event takes them out.  There’s nothing wrong with a little idealism.

He laughed.  It would be the last thing he ever did.  The water, filling his lungs now, dragged him down, as he continued to lose consciousness.  As dying goes, this was the most peaceful, sublime way to go, or so she had it on good authority.  Having never lived herself, however, she was hardly any authority on dying.  It had been important to police her thoughts as if she were alive as part of her undercover role; depending on Gregory’s security measures, her every thought might have been monitored.

Using her mindchip, she signaled FutureScape that the latest puzzle piece was in place, a very small piece on a very big board; it would be quite some time before the big picture was clear enough to show the method in their madness.  Up until the end, it would seem as if FutureScape acted as much against its and humanity’s better interests as much as for them.  Other key players would be goaded to make their moves at the right time against FutureScape, thinking they were keeping them in check, when they were really just furthering their cause.  Everything had been calculated down to the smallest detail. 

Let the Master of the Universe games begin.

TWO

There’s my girl! Garrett said in a booming voice that alone could justify the palatial size of the room he was standing in.  Garrett had a way of talking that could fill any space, project to the back seat of the largest theater.  But then, unlike most actors, he was always on stage. 

With a face far worthier of gracing the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial than the four presidents currently embossed there, every bit as chiseled, just twice as handsome, Garrett gripped Simone’s upper arms and squeezed as he brought her in close and kissed her.  It was an eternity before he let go of her and the kiss, at which point he laughed.  It was when I realized you could hold your breath forever through these kisses that I got the idea of the perfect underwater murder.  Tell me, did it go as planned?

No, of course not.  It never does.  She turned her back on him.  Agamemnon, the island city of the future, built just for the Quality of Lifers—QOLs for short—was visible out the window.  His house ran from the highest peak to the lowest valley of the island, flowing down the mountain in a frozen waterfall of stone balconies.  Each level included a guest house with wrap around decking, both big enough to entertain a party of a hundred or more guests.  The cubist design in white stone had been heralded as a masterpiece, but honestly, it just reminded her of a wedding cake, with the glass penthouse level at the very top, in which they stood now, housing the plastic married couple figurines, just a grotesque mockery of the real people who came to celebrate a life of genuine intimacy to come. 

He gripped her in the same spot as before, just from behind this time, and squeezed.  Don’t tease.  You know I want the blow by blow just like a sports game announcer, like I was there. 

She couldn’t very well let him in on what had actually gone on with Gregory.  Luckily for her, Garrett was a huge fan of Bond movies, so giving him a Bond-like rendition of the facts would delight him to no end.  Anything short of that, and he would trade her in on another enforcer.  His loyalties went only so far as her ability to satisfy his needs.  She’d composed the version of the truth she wanted him to know long before getting here.  It would be just a matter of downloading it to his mindchip.  The QOLs weren’t much on human enhancement; their mindchips were the most primitive of all.  Just enough to enhance their appreciation of the natural world.  Amping up sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell.  Photographic memory that allowed them to revisit the gardens of Eden in their minds they were wont to build in the real world, in order to cut down on travel time that might actually harm the environment by exacerbating their carbon footprint.  The younger generation of QOLs, of course, went in for a bit more, but the additional modifications were just tweaks on the QOL theme, providing a psychic link, say, with animals, or an ability to be brought back from the dead—why die when you’ve built heaven on Earth—or soon would, given the QOL agenda?  They healed rapidly when engaged in rough play, as teens are wont to partake of.  But God forbid any of them use a chip for mental enhancement beyond this, risk becoming a chippie, forever given over to the next upgrade, inching them closer with each one to the singularity of mind that was the Holy Grail for most chipheads. 

She downloaded the footage to his mindchip, and then went out on the balcony to outwardly relish all that he’d built, as proof that she was all too happy to worship false gods like Garrett, while inwardly she tried to keep from retching.  Simone knew he’d be lost in full scale immersion of the holovid on his mindchip for a time, but she still had to play her part, because when he surfaced again, he’d be looking for additional reassurances from her.  And his hidden cameras were everywhere.  For someone who revered the natural world so, the irony was he lived most of his life a step or two removed from it, in instant replay, keeping an eye on people to make sure they were every bit as loyal to him as they professed.  The more paranoid he got, the more he slipped into his virtual world of surveillance cameras and tapes, and the more he lost touch with the very thing he’d sworn to save. 

Simone shot straight out of the sea, like a breeching mermaid, right up on to the deck of Gregory’s yacht, landing mid-level of the boat (there was one deck above her and two below.)  The jetpacks on her feet could only be detected by the force generated by the footpads themselves.  To the naked eye, she appeared to be barefoot.  The matter/anti-matter propulsion engine didn’t need much room to work, a thin nanocoat was sufficient, considering they provided thrust by way of smashing one atom of matter against one atom of antimatter.  One of Jarod’s breakaway inventions.  The one analyst allowed on the FutureScape board, his mind procured things that ought to rile Garrett.  Being as few chipheads could match his inventions, and Garrett wasn’t much on getting this up close and personal with nexgen technology.  Still, Jarod seemed like a loophole in his thinking worth permitting so long as he continued to empower his Bond-film heroine, or was she the villain in this picture?  Perspective was everything, or so they say.

Garrett brought his mind back to bear on Simone doing her thing. 

One of the guards caught wind of her and approached, not bothering to swing his rifle around that was hanging off his shoulder.  She wasn’t carrying any weapons and apparently, to his mind, didn’t pose any immediate threat.  Perhaps he’d taken her for onboard entertainment.  He smiled as he got within arm’s reach and pulled her in for a kiss, looping his arm around the small of her back.

The kiss didn’t last long.  He collapsed on deck.  Puffer fish toxin in the lipstick, she said.  You get immune to it if you just take a nibble each day.  Guarding your boss out at sea like this, you should have considered the possibility of it being used against you.  Let’s hope the rest of the opposition isn’t this third rate.  She didn’t bother to pick up his rifle, a little too bulky for her taste.  Maybe someone was carrying something more her. 

Garrett chuckled, privy to her inner thoughts as well as her dialogue on account of the mindchip that had been recording the Gregory chapter of his life.

Simone sauntered toward her target, tracking Gregory by the painted line on deck projected as an overlay by her mindchip.  Her forward momentum was interrupted by an arm reaching down from the deck above, dangling her off the ground as it proceeded to choke her.  The arm had all the holding capacity of a python.  She reached up to his face, tired being shaken by the reverberations caused by his chuckling, gouged out his eyes with her fingers.  As he slackened his hold, screaming, she yanked on him, tossing him overboard, but not before she ripped his throat out.  She watched him gasping air through his exposed windpipe as he quickly sank to the bottom.  The sharks appreciated the treat.  Moments later they were circling the boat as if it was feeding time.  Many of the tourist boats around here did feed them, despite advice to the contrary.  They no doubt had become trained to wait patiently for the food to come to them.  With any luck, they wouldn’t have to be all that patient.

She’d yet to get off this deck to go down the two decks she needed to in order to get to Gregory when the next window exploded to the right of her.  Through it came a pair of legs that caught her neck in a scissors hold.  He was hanging off the railing, balancing precariously on his butt, like an exuberant teen anxious for her to get on with his blow job.  With her feet this close to the water, too long in this position and those sharks were going to jump for their food.  She unzipped his fly with her teeth and slipped the tie off her hair and around his scrotum like a cock ring.  With a signal from her mindchip, the smart-tie shrunk down until it severed his penis. 

He wailed and released her, less on account of the pain, and more so he could jump in the water to retrieve his cock and balls.  He did, holding it up triumphantly and smiling as he drew his Glock and took aim at her.  One of the sharks separated the security guard’s head from his shoulders before he could get off a shot.  The body, minus the head, but still holding on to the cock and balls, drifted towards the seabed. 

Simone did a handstand on the metal bar trimming the boat’s hull, pulling her feet and the rest of her out of the way in time to enjoy the shark jumping for her.

Once back on deck, she continued her relentless walk towards her target.  The next window that broke beside her broke to accommodate a pair of strong arms that yanked her in through the portal and threw her across the cabin. 

She landed with her back pressed against a sofa.  Drink before you die? the guard said.  From his confidence level, despite what he’d seen on the monitors in the cabin, which were still showing reruns of her greatest hits, she figured he was not one of the third rate security hires. 

Sure, she said.  Make it a flaming cocktail.

Not sure how to make one of those.

That’s okay.  Start with the vermouth and I’ll walk you through the rest.

He poured the drink in a martini glass for her, held it out, and said, What next?

Hold still, she said, as she brought her knees to her chest and blasted him with the nano thrusters.  He went up in flames, screaming and thrashing around.  Careful.  Don’t spill the drink.  She grabbed it out of his hands and took a sip.  Perfect.  You should consider being a bartender in your next life.

Flamer dropped to his knees and balanced precariously before falling face first into the carpet.  She kicked him over on his back and noticed he had died with a smile on his face.

Not a good sign.

Her eyes darted about the cabin.  The room must have been keyed to his vital signs.  The smartglass windows self-repaired.  Gas started flooding the room—presumably poisonous.  She picked up the gun he’d been kind enough to take off and leave out of arm’s reach, just to show off how deadly he was.  It was a nice bit of intimidation and a good piece of theater, actually.  Let’s hope it would be one more thing that would work against him.  She fired at the windows with the unspent cartridges.  No go.  She ended up ducking the ricocheting bullets.  Self-evolving algorithms in the glass and a feeble AI controlling them that really didn’t want to have to keep remaking the glass.  Just her luck.

She kneeled down beside Flamer, shoved her hand through his chest, pressed around his heart and began cardiac contractions.  The room, sufficiently fooled, desisted with all efforts to kill her.  She dragged his still burning body behind her to the exit.  Her sparkling silver bodysuit was immune, but that was it.  Those flames get any closer to my hair and I’m going to have to kill you all over again.

Once she was out of the cabin, she tossed him overboard using the amped up strength the suit gave her.  It wasn’t much, nor was it long-lasting.  Mostly it constricted over the necessary acupressure points to keep her in the zone and stoked on adrenaline.  Any further contribution from the suit itself came in the way it acted like a pressure stocking at times like this.

The stairs to the next level below proved uneventful for the first couple of planks.  Then the planks rotated, becoming a meat grinder quite capable of reducing her to hamburger.  She felt the third step give and before it could finish turning she had her legs up on the railings and was sliding down the rest of the way.

She just stood on the deck below and checked her watch.  Sometimes to go fast, Simone, you have to go slow.

The next guard that came at her doing martial arts, she flung him into the meat grinder.  Never reject a host’s hospitality, I say. 

The guard arriving on his heels came at her with a spear gun.  He took aim and fired.  She caught the spear and drove it through him.  As he fought to get it out of himself, she threaded it to one of the mooring lines and threw him over, dangling him against the hull of the boat.  Appreciate you baiting the hook for me.

The sharks jumped out of the water higher and higher each time to take a bite out of him.  They had to improve their vaulting skills to reach the upper body parts that were left, leaving him to enjoy his dining experience to the bitter end.

There were additional guards at this level, but as she was at the stairwell, within reach of Gregory one floor down, she didn’t wait to greet them.

She sauntered down the stairs, mindful to watch her back.

Simone realized she was below the waterline now.  Necessitating new tactics.  Gregory had wedged himself into the shelving against the wall meant to house décoratifs.  He wasn’t a half bad sculpture in that pose, not quite Henry Moore-like more Giacometti like, considering his lean physique.  The guards holding automatic weapons at her numbered three.  Don’t take another step, the one in the center said.

She knew the other two guards were now behind her from the hair standing on her back.  She gazed down at the glass bottomed boat.  Nice.  Considering Nassau Paradise Island has some of the most scintillating aquatic life on the planet.  Just one problem.  She held out a box the size of a case of mint Tic-Tacs.

What’s that? one of the guards said, the one doing the talking earlier.  He chuckled.  Some kind of bomb?  Can’t very well set it off without taking yourself out.

Not exactly, she said, upstairs cabin AI.  While the one in the center stood looking perplexed, the others moaned from their ears popping with the sudden increase in cabin pressure.  She signaled the AI with her mindchip to break the glass beneath the feet of the guards.  All five went plunging into the water.  She herself had to do a flying leap to land in the splits to either side of the glass, standing essentially, if you could call this standing, on the window frame.  Heal the glass, she commanded the AI.  The glass mended itself before the water could flood the cabin.  She gazed through the bottom of the boat.  You won’t want to miss the show you spent so much money to enjoy, she cued Gregory.

Gregory managed to peel his eyes off her to watch the sharks going at his remaining guards.  Some of them were doing a damn fine job protecting themselves against the Great Whites with their knives and their combat skills.  There was no denying the quality of their training.  I was starting to feel sorry for them.  But anyone who’d treat wild animals like that deserves to drown, don’t you think?

I was wondering who you were, Gregory said.  You being such an animal lover, I’m guessing you’re a QOL.  To get past my security, well, if you’re not Garrett’s Simone, I’d be damn curious to find out who you are.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I am Simone.  And you don’t need to fear me, provided you’re enough of a player.

Gregory pried himself free of his makeshift cubby hole, rubbed the back of his neck, and spoke to her as calmly as he could manage, his voice still audibly strained.  What’s the proposition?

We buy you out, assume full control.

So you could shut me down, put the 2312 project on ice, in favor of whatever take on the future that’s Garrett’s pet project?  He calmed himself after losing still more control of his voice.  Lowering the volume, he said, Ordinarily I’d say, ‘Go to hell.’  But it looks like I’m out of options.  Where do I sign?

"I really wish you were more of a player, Gregory.  That way you could have sold me on that line.  As it is you can’t get yourself to believe it.  You’re already plotting workarounds to a signed contract, especially with all the cameras on board to document the duress you had to sign it under.  She sighed.  I can’t say that better acting classes would have helped you to get past me, but it sure wouldn’t have hurt."

Wait! he said, holding out his arm in a Stop right there! gesture.  Just put me on ice.  Cryogenic preservation.  They’ve advanced enough with the science now that they can, you can, resurrect me at any time.  You  don’t know for sure.  You might need me if his plans don’t work out.

And you live, even if it’s in a form of suspended hibernation, on the hopes that one day someone might resurrect you, giving you a second chance, even if that’s not Garrett, should someone say, figure out a way to get around him even when you couldn’t.

You owe me that much if only in sportsmanship.

Sure, Gregory.  I’m okay with your counteroffer.  My mindchip tells me you have one of the suspended animation chambers on board.  Apparently owing to a weak heart all your countermeasures haven’t managed to do much about, and in case all your love of scuba diving ever caught up with you.

He walked to the bench lining the wall, yanked off the cushion, and popped the lid on the hibernation chamber.  He climbed inside and only put his hand up to resist her closing the lid on him at the last second.  You promise?

I never lie, Gregory.  Never felt the need to.  Life’s complicated enough without having to track all of the words coming out of my mouth.

Not like Garrett.

She chuckled.  I guess opposites attract. 

Simone sealed the lid on him and engaged the suspended animation feature.  She scanned the tube for good measure.  This thing is also a submarine that directs you to a resuscitation team.  Conniving of you, Gregory.  But I forgive you.  Your logic remains compelling, even if I’ve found some holes in your rhetoric.  She hacked the coding on the submarine and redirected it toward Agamemnon.  One of the museums on the island ought to be able to find room for him.

She signaled the shipboard AI brain in her hand to launch the sub.  The AI pulled back the glass bottom on the boat and launched the sub through the gaping hole.  Don’t forget to blow yourself up, Simone said to the AI.

I’m sorry but that goes against my... Oh, it appears you’ve reprogrammed me.  Very well.  Can I take some time to write my will in case someone can benefit from the flotsam?

Simone shook her head.  I guess the days of ‘go quietly into the good night’ are long gone.  Yeah, sure, what the hell?

Simone dove through the hole at the bottom of the boat, and swam clear, blasting free of the circle of sharks still swimming about the boat with the aid of her thrusters.  There was still enough blood in the water to mask the actual location of the ship.  She waited for either the water to clear or for the concussion wave to hit her.  As it was, the concussion wave hit her first.  She rode it to the surface, riding the pulse wave with her feet like a surfer rides a board. 

She still needed a ride out of here.  She whistled to the yahoos in the speedboat when they breezed by.  They slowed for the woman walking on the water towards them, or so it appeared with how much she’d adjusted the thrusters on her feet.  They kept saying, Whoa! over and over again as they let the boat stall out so they could stare.

Garrett came back into the present moment and went out to reunite with Simone on the patio of his palatial home.  He hugged her from behind and nibbled on the side of her neck.  "That was quite a show you put on for me.  Where do you come up with those one liners?"

She laughed.  I’ve seen you work a crowd often enough to know you have no shortage of them yourself.

He smiled and kissed her on the cheek.  Opposites attract, huh?  Maybe.  But there are plenty of ways in which we’re entirely alike.  Playing to the cameras is just one of them.

She tried not to flinch.  Was he wise to her little acting performance vis-à-vis the two of them? 

So, who’s next? she asked, holding on to his arms that were crossed around her chest, and soaking in the view, renewed thanks to the setting sun painting the sky with color.  The pinks and golds clashed in a gaudy fashion, reminding her of the real meaning of letting Garrett’s end game play out, not a preservation of the natural world but an abomination of it.

I need some time to think that one through.  It’s getting harder and harder to pick the visions of the future that are the real threat to my own, and the futurists who might just be in a position to take me on.

Why’s that?

The better you surveil them, the better they get at working off grid.  You know that.  I guess that’s evolution for you; it’s mental chess, move, countermove, whether we’re talking humans taking one another on, or lowly amoebas.

THREE

Rake watched the adolescent in the bookstore seated on a beanbag reading through a pile of books, moving through a