Shard: The Shard Series, #1

By Stephen Cote

"Rich in its epic proportions, it transcends the usual science fiction tropes for a refreshing imaginative world." IndieReader.

 

Two centuries from now humanity is facing perilous dangers from Earth to the Mars colony and Earth's survival lies in the balance.  A young Bolivian discovers a shard of alien technology that guides him into the center of the action. He searches for answers as he is caught up in political intrigue, mining company greed, and cartel violence. With help from the Emperor and a Native American shaman, he explores new realities and uncovers unworldly surprises. Approximately 280 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Cote
• Release date: Mar 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215013830

Stephen Cote

Steve is a sci fi author, historian, and park ranger currently living in Philadelphia. 

Book preview

SHARD

Stephen Cote

Chapter One

Commander

The bird spiraled slowly in an updraft, circling slowly from below us until I could see the breadth of its wings and the white ring around its ugly bald head. A condor. A good omen from the gods. I watched until it was far above, until the bright sunlight left spots on my vision, then I turned around and started walking again.

I breathed in short raspy gasps from the cold thin air on Illimani. My aching calves felt like they were wrapped in weights. Although I had grown up in high altitude, and like most people who grew up in the mountains, had large lung capacity, we had been moving at a steady pace for a couple of hours. The sweat had dried on my upper back, sticking to my blue-striped tee-shirt. My worn-down sneakers crunched on the brittle earth and slipped on scree. The small rocks skittered away plummeting out of sight into the gathering mist below. My ribs ached, my head pounded, and my eyes burned in the strong sunlight and stiff wind that was peeling the dark skin on my toned arms and high cheekbones. Still, I was far ahead of my friends who kept stopping to rest. I paused on the narrow gravel trail to let them catch up.

I was surprised when Miguel suggested that we climb Illimani. He was in no shape to climb a mountain, but he had other motivations. Micah, he said, "look at those putas from Europe in their expensive clothes. If those flatlanders can climb the mountain than so can we. We live here. It’s our home."  So my school friends and I had decided that we were going to attempt to summit the massive peak that had dominated the landscape of our young lives. Illimani floated like a giant stone dirigible above our city, La Paz. We ignored the warnings of our parents and teachers that it wasn’t safe – that the mountain spirits, the apus, would be unhappy. People came from all over the world and climbed the mountain all the time. Why not us?

On a cool Saturday morning in April, we met at the soccer pitch near our school with our backpacks full of snacks and water and hopped onto a local bus that whirred its low electric gears up the narrow switchback roads to the base of the 6,400-meter peak. Illimani grew more massive every minute as we approached until it entirely blotted out the sky.

The night before, Papa had made sure I checked the weather and that I had a good chompa to wear. We lit a candle beside some coca leaves on a shelf in our house as an offering for the apu. Papa told us to turn back at any sign of clouds because we didn’t want to get caught up there in a hailstorm. Mama was quiet in her displeasure. She was there at the door, though, to give me a hug and see me off. Three hours into the slog, however, we were not in any danger except for maybe dying of boredom.

Micah! Miguel yelled from two switchbacks below, "Venga, amigo, we’re heading back. This is shit!"

Ah, Miguelito, okay, okay, I yelled back down, listening as my voice echoed off the bright granite cliff face ahead of me. Miguel was heavy in a way that was confused for healthfulness in the Andes; heavy enough to make him slow. Yet it was his idea to make this trek to begin with and he was a loyal friend. I stopped to catch my breath and admired the incredible view of the altiplano to the north and west, once colorfully dotted with llamas and fields of golden quinoa, but now a massive suburban sprawl. Looking down so far made my head spin. We had climbed to over 5,000 meters, anyway. We could try again another time. After all, the mountain wasn’t going anywhere. Then I spotted something around the corner reflecting the sunlight. I pushed ahead.

Hey, Micah, where are you going? Come on! I looked back at the three of them: Miguel, Diego, and Rosanna below on the thin stone trail, Diego with his hands on his skinny hips bent over like he was going to heave, and Miguel shuffling his feet, face downward. Rosanna sat cross-legged and picked at some stiff yellow grass that managed to survive up here in the cold dry rocks. Rosanna was skinny like Diego but taller than any of us.

I’ll be down in a second, I yelled over my shoulder, I just have to pee. I clambered around a squarish granite boulder and looked closer at the dark metallic object sticking out of the ground. It reflected the sunlight in swirling rainbow patterns and had tiny carvings on one side. I picked it up.

It was a broken shard of something, maybe one-third of a meter in length. It fit easily in my palm but was surprisingly heavy. The texture was smooth, and it was hard like metal or rock, maybe obsidian, but not quite like that either because of its oily sheen. I didn’t recognize the curved markings on the only unbroken edge. Maybe it was some old Inca relic, I thought. I hefted it in my hand and rubbed the carvings with my thumb. Suddenly I was nauseous. The strange object throbbed in my hand. Everything went dark. I felt empty and weightless. The air smelled bitter, like sulfur, and then bright lights flashed in my skull. I dropped the shard and ran down to my friends.

That’s when the headaches and strange dreams began. That’s when they awoke.

My name is Micah Quispe Quispe, and I was born in a small village south of Cusco, Peru, high in the Andes about halfway between the old Inca capital and what was left of the dying Lake Titicaca. When I was little, my parents moved us to the El Alto metropolis on the rim of the La Paz river valley. At one time La Paz was Bolivia’s capital.

El Alto’s economy thrived on mineral markets controlled by the twelve corporations that made up the powerful Mars Mining Consortium. The mines attracted millions of people to the cold high plains. My family struggled to find space in the crowded outer reaches of the sprawl. My father, Fernando, repaired visor screens, while my mother, Maria, sewed textiles into brightly colored geometric patterns much in the fashion of Andean weavers since pre-Incan times. We clawed our way through the poverty and misery of the migrant city, like so many other migrant cities all over the world, replete with shantytowns and dirt streets, half-finished concrete buildings, and stray dogs.

I was not a tall boy, but tall for the Andes, and considered handsome with thick black hair and dark eyes. My height gave me advantages in sports, so I played them all, but mostly futbol. I learned to win humbly and lose graciously, which made me many friends, like Diego, who otherwise might have been jealous of my skills. The two of us played on different squads, but we practiced together.

Diego lived in La Paz in a modern high-rise owned by the Mars Mining Consortium, who were much more than mine owners. They were also the major landlords in the mining cities. In that way, miners ended up giving their paychecks back to the Consortium through rent. Maybe Diego’s wealthy upbringing - his father was a mining executive - explained why he was less motivated, or less disciplined, or ... something. He had mad soccer skills, but gave up far too easily, and complained about things like the hardness of the field on a cold Andean morning. I was just happy to get time to play.

Before school I would help with chores around our small drafty house, like the thousands around it, with its makeshift tin roof that turned late night hailstorms into the sound of artillery. I would cook breakfast for my papa and bratty little sister, Paola. Then I would work the local bus for an hour. I yelled out the street stops and collected fares from the dusty streets of El Alto all the way down the crowded twisting highway into La Paz with its gleaming skyscrapers reaching almost as high as the valley walls. I would watch as the morning sky turned from charcoal to deep blue. The buses collected copper credits rather than scanning electronic payments because miners received their daily wages in hard currency. I didn’t care either way. I yelled out the stops, listened to the heavy clinks of the coins in my hand, moved along with the ever-present music, and got a free ride to school.

After school, I played sports. During the rainy season I would join my mates at indoor games – basketball mostly. I liked shooting baskets, but it was not as challenging to me as soccer. Playing basketball at the gym also meant getting home much later at night. After I got home, I would eat, and then clean up the kitchen before doing homework, and then try to sleep.

I washed the dishes in a bucket filled with rainwater collected in a large bin on the roof. Then I would feed the guinea pigs that were ubiquitous in Andean kitchens and hit the books. I shared a room with Paola and Katari, our sad-looking dog who had only one eye and a limp. He had joined our family on the road when we moved from Peru. He just showed up one day and stayed with our little caravan. No one else claimed him, so we took care of him.

During the dry season, which was most of the year, I would come straight back from school, collect Katari and an old soccer ball that I had found in the bus yard, blue with peeling plastic and faded lettering, and join in a game. Then I would head home, Katari limping loyally behind me, eat a small dinner, usually potato soup that mama had made earlier in the day, clean up the kitchen, and hit the books. When school was not in session, I would join my father in his home workshop. There, I learned to build visors of all types.

My father’s business focused on repairing screens, some of which were plasma-based bendable glass that dropped over one’s eyes from a visor or cap, and some of which were VR projectors embedded in eyeglass frames. Repairing screens was delicate work that involved fine motor skills, knowledge of hologram technologies and computer-board and chip technology. I was able to repair advanced devices and help my father run the business by the age of fourteen. He might have pulled me from school and had me work full-time in the shop, but there wasn’t enough business to justify that, and anyway, he wanted me to achieve more than he had. He was a strict but generous man who would not tolerate any unkindness from me or my sister and spoiled us whenever he could. He knew life was tough enough as it was without hatred and anger making things worse. He would look at me and say, Do something good today. Help someone else. I still try.

I loved the shop. It was spotlessly clean and packed with all manner of electronic gadgets and small whirring motors. When I was younger, my father told me that the gadgets were magic and that he was a wizard. I believed him. How else could he make metal and wires come alive? I still get warm feelings when I smell oil and grease and ozone. My favorite gadget in his shop was an old model airplane that hung from the ceiling, slowly circling as it shone a spotlight onto the center of the room. I stared at it and imagined where it could take me.

I liked school and got good grades. I got the required credits to qualify for university, and with assistance from the Province of South America, moved to the Bolivian city of Sucre at age seventeen, two years after our mountain trek, to study propulsion engineering. Sucre was the site of one of the oldest universities in the Americas, and not too far from home by air. It was a long way by ground travel, however, and very dangerous because of the mountain roads, so I flew home on breaks whenever I could afford it.

I found the immaturities of dorm life annoying but wasn’t in the dorms much anyway. I lived in the library, which reminded me a little of papa’s shop with its orderliness, and the lab, and on the soccer pitch. I didn’t make many friends but also didn’t try very hard. I couldn’t understand why most of the students didn’t take things seriously. It was all parties and games as if they didn’t have any goals or ambitions afterwards, as if they were already set for life. And unlike most of them, I had to work extra hours just to afford the commissary, so that is where I chose to work. I also got free food that way. I met one of my few friends, Dukembi, there. Dukembi’s family were from Africa and were involved in mining. Like me he needed the job and also enjoyed playing soccer.

Somehow, the shard that I had found on the side of Illimani had changed me. I had awful headaches sometimes that would paralyze me with pain and nausea and temporary blindness. Fortunately, the headaches were infrequent and short-lived. Since finding the shard, I also had strange dreams at night. The dreams seemed so real that when I woke it took me a little while to figure out where I was. But I rarely remembered any details, which left me with strong feelings of unease, of being disconnected from place and time. Many of the dreams were of Mars although I had never been there. My first roommate moved to another room because my mumbling and even screaming at night upset him so much. No one else wanted to move in with me, so I ended up with a single. Alone, I was able to concentrate more on school.

My professors were very impressed with my studies. I helped one of them, Professor Jose Murillo, work on a project that had driven a half-dozen graduate students close to madness. It involved the stabilization of quantum particles for computing devices. Bio-quantum computers had always been a chimera, like cold fusion reactions or perpetual motion machines or alchemy. Centuries of failure, however, didn’t keep people from trying. Our breakthrough didn’t change that state of affairs, but it did move the needle closer. I thought of quantum states as a new kind of magic, much more advanced than anything I did with visors in my father’s shop, somewhere or even somewhen beyond the material reality and temporal progression we take for granted. The ground-breaking journal article that Murillo published included my name as one of the authors. This happened my second year as an undergraduate.

I graduated from university with high honors in just two and one-half years. I had to write a lengthy research paper to replace the credits from electives that would have kept me in school longer but that I saw no reason to take. I wasn’t at university just to be there and party and socialize. I was there to learn what I needed to know to move on.

My scholarship required service to the Province after graduation, and I anxiously awaited the letter that told me I was assigned to Space Force South America. This was what I had expected, but it was also what I had most hoped for, so I was overly nervous when I opened the message from the Governor’s Office on my visor. I could have been assigned to some industrial shop in Recife, or Sao Paolo, building fusion engines, or worse, put to work as a teaching assistant grading lab assignments until I was a few years older, but the letters of recommendation from my professors emphasized my intellectual capacity and maturity level, and that was enough to get me assigned to cadet academy near Buenos Aires to train for space duty.

Academy was a breeze. I had no trouble with the physical training because of my high-altitude upbringing and athletic ability. I also had no trouble with the math and science classes, the labs that reminded me of papa’s shop, or the rigid discipline. In just three years of exceptional service at cadet training school, one year quicker than the average cadet, I graduated and went home for a visit with family and friends. This visit was one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life.

x

I took a van from the airport in El Alto to the bus stop near my parents’ house. My parents’, and not mine anymore. My new home would be on a space cruiser and then on the domed colony on Mars. I stepped off the bus and started to walk along the sidewalk, always watching to make sure I didn’t step on trash or dog shit. I had been away for years, long enough that the thin air took some getting used to. I walked slowly and breathed deeply, feeling a little light-headed. The neighborhood seemed the same – ramshackle houses of cinder blocks and corrugated aluminum painted in bright colors with small urban gardens everywhere. I missed it all terribly. I turned a corner down one more street and saw my parents’ house. I sent a ping to my father from my visor and walked inside where they were waiting, and straight into my mother’s embrace.

Micah, why do you need to go to Mars? Mama asked right after giving me a long hug and wiping the tears from her eyes. She looked so much older than when I had left. She had lines I had never noticed before around her eyes and on her chubby neck.

Maria, said Papa, You know why. Why make this harder for him? We should be happy. My father had always wanted to fly in space, and I could tell that he was proud and also a little jealous.

He could do engineering work here. In El Alto or La Paz. He could find work with the Consortium. We won’t see him again for years! And Mama started crying again.

Mama. I gave her another hug. Everything is going to be okay. I have to serve my two years to pay back the Province for my scholarship, and then I’ll be back. You’ll see. And we can still talk through the visors. Even in space. I hoped this would help but knew better. It hurt me to do it, but I wanted to go so badly that I was willing to cause some heartbreak.

After dinner I made some calls and said goodbye to Diego, Miguel, and Rosanna. They were all still here. None had been able to attend university because of money, grades, or both. Miguel was fatter and drinking. He had a thick dark beard. Rosanna seemed so much older and tired than when I had seen her last. I heard that she had an abusive partner. Only Diego seemed the same. We met near our old school the next afternoon and kicked the soccer ball around. He told me of his plans to get a job in a hotel near the high-rise he still lived in with his parents. I wished him luck and then asked him to join me on a quest.

A quest, Micah? What, like some knight looking for a treasure? Diego asked jokingly.

Something like that, yes. I replied. Do you remember when we climbed up on Illimani?

"Si, of course, it was awful." Diego looked down and kicked the ground.

Aw, it wasn’t that bad, I said. It was really beautiful up there. You have to admit that much.

Okay, it was an amazing view, but it was just a lot of walking uphill. What was the point?

The point was to do it. And we never really finished. We stopped long before the summit. I knew I was probably asking for too much, Will you hike back up with me tomorrow morning?

I don’t know, Micah. It’s not really my thing. Why would you want to go back up there?

Well, it’s like this, amigo. The last time we went up there, I found something. It was like an old Inca relic. It might be really valuable. I hid it up there because I didn’t want to carry it. Let’s go see if we can find it. I didn’t want to tell him about the flashes of light in my skull or the headaches or the weird dreams.

If you really think you can find it, then sure. I don’t have any plans tomorrow.

Great, I’ll meet you around 8:00 at your place. Bring some water.

We started up the slope around 10:00 in the morning. Clouds started moving in about an hour later, so we called it off. It didn’t really matter, though, because I knew the shard was gone. I don’t know how I knew, but I could feel it somehow. The shard had...left...Illimani.

x

Three weeks later I traveled to a space elevator in the Amazon Desert. I was as anxious as any young man on a new adventure. This is what I had most wanted – a chance to see Earth from space and to visit the colony on Mars. My strange dreams of Mars reinforced these desires in a bizarre and compelling way. It was as if I knew Mars already, like I had some sort of purpose there.

Japan had constructed the first space elevator in the twenty-first century, and while the technology had improved some since then, the elevator was still a set of massive graphene nanotube cables anchored on one end near to the equator and the other end to a counterweight above geosynchronous orbit. The cables were constructed by nanobots that became the building blocks of the tubes when their task attaching other pieces together was over. Watching a factory line constructing cables was eerie. The cables seemed to grow out of thin air as the nanobots built, then fused into the cable. Ships and cargo cars tethered to the cable could carry heavy payloads to orbit much more efficiently and economically than through a traditional launch. Twenty of the tendrils now rose from the Earth’s equator like badly spaced spokes of a wheel.

I flew from El Alto to Brasilia in a slick-looking hydrogen-cell airliner operated by Space Force. I gaped in amazement out the round window as the white and brown hues of the high desert plains and jagged Andean peaks that I had known all my life erupted into a verdant rainforest as we passed over the eastern slopes of the mountains, which an hour later just as suddenly disappeared into a stark desert landscape far below to the north and east. Brasilia looked like nothing more than a gray, cross-shaped smudge on the desert floor with the space elevator a thin vertical line in the distance. The cable housing reflected the bright sunlight as we began to descend toward the city. The city was a transportation hub for the space elevator and not much else. Once designed with Modernist idealism as Brazil’s capital city when the Amazon was still a forest, now Brasilia was too hot and dry for habitation. The capital was moved back to the canals of Rio de Janeiro a hundred years earlier. Sea level rise had begun a discussion to move the capital yet again.

The intercom blared scratchily, Prepare for descent. I could feel the heat seeping through the skin of the airliner when we landed and the sweat forming on my skin underneath the solid gray, tight-fitting Space Force ensign uniform. I deplaned and navigated my way through wide, crowded underground tunnels that reminded me of the tubes the guinea pigs would explore in our kitchen. Men and women and outres in various Space Force uniforms, their colors denoting rank and grade, elbowed their way in both directions. Some carried equipment or viewscreens and some, like me, their duffel bags. Signs pointed down the connecting tunnels every few hundred meters, but I just stayed with the crowd pushing straight forward to the hyperloop shuttle that would take me to the space elevator. The first shuttle was full, so I had to wait with the crowd for the next one, which arrived only five minutes later. The train car was packed full of Space Force personnel including some other nervous-looking first-timers. I hoped I didn’t seem as anxious as them, but I could feel a knot growing in my stomach as the shuttle zipped along.

A large circular waiting room at the end of the line gave me my first close-up view of the space elevator. Enormous conical hangers ringed the base of the cable and spread out for kilometers along the four runways that led to the elevator. The elevator normally took only one ship or cargo car per hour, so there was often a long wait sitting on the shuttle for transport to the top. I walked to my assigned shuttle car and found an empty seat. The wait gave me an opportunity to meet some of the other newbies, all of whom were a few years older than me. Awkward would be an accurate description of our conversations. They went something like this:

Uh, hi, I’m Micah.

"Mucho gusto, Micah. I’m Alejandra." The young lady put out her hand for shaking, then pulled it back, then put it forward again. I couldn’t help but notice how her breasts nearly poked through the thin uniform material and felt heat rising to my cheeks as I crossed my legs.

I gently shook the fingers of her gloved hand and said, Are you going to Mars?

Hahaha, she laughed, um, no, I’m just going to the elevator station.

Oh, I said, and then sat there for a few minutes trying not to stare at the people straight across from me on the other side of the train (and the various bulges in their uniforms), which meant looking at the floor, the ceiling, the windowpane, the floor again, and so on. Finally, I said, What will you do on the elevator station?

Hmm? She had been on her visor screen, "Que pasa?"

Sorry, I said, I was wondering what you will do on the elevator station?

She pointed at the small black star on her uniform. I work in the control room. I help with traffic control.

Oh, I replied and went back to staring at the floor. The young man to my left said, Are you going to Mars?

Yes, I am. I’m Micah. We shook hands.

"Me too. I mean, I’m going to Mars, too. My name is Hernan. Are you assigned to the Huascaran?"

Yes.

Me too. I heard from my cousin that it can hold 500 people. And it’ll take more than a month to get there. He had chubby cheeks that lit up in his excitement. I liked him immediately.

"Si, Hernan, I know." I smiled at him, then looked back to that gray pattern on the floor and the white boots of the personnel sitting across from me as the shuttle slowed.

After a blast of heat from the outside as the doors slid open, we boarded a half-donut shaped passenger shuttle for the trip up the elevator. It took about an hour, so I used the time to read the orientation packets that Space Force Command had uploaded to my visor. They were mostly common sense (don’t forget to practice good hygiene) and smothered in propaganda (good hygiene makes Space Force South America the cleanest and healthiest Space Force). From the top of the elevator, we took a space shuttle carrying 100 of the crew to a Condor class cruiser. I sat by the window the whole time staring in awe like a kid in a toy store as we approached. The ship was massive. It looked like pictures I had seen of