NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT
‘TOUCH ME NOT WITHOUT HURT’ OR
‘NO ONE PROVOKES ME WITH IMPUNITY’
CAMEROON. SRI LANKA. VENEZUELA
2045
“Okay, gentlemen and ladies, listen up. I’ve got a mission briefing for you. We deploy at 0500 hours, so check your kit before you rack out.”
The grumbling started and subsided at once. Mission orders on short notice were the rule rather than the exception. The United Nations EcoForce squad consisted of a dozen infantry troops. In the past twenty-four hours, they’d been assembled in Rotterdam, briefed, equipped, and dropped into equatorial Africa.
In combat boots, Sergeant “Big Mike” Imfeld stood five feet, four inches. He was married to the military—no wife, no children. The chain of command was his family, the barracks was his home.
“What are we doing here, Sarge?” a voice called out from the small assembly.
Imfeld’s troops operated with an easy camaraderie. Although the men and women scrupulously observed rank, they considered themselves equals in combat. Imfeld maintained razor-sharp discipline, but fostered an esprit de corps that allowed for informality in the question-and-answer session during the briefing.
“Gentlemen and ladies, we’ve got a reconnaissance mission to observe a pirate army that’s looking to take over a natural treasure. Estimates put the pirates at battalion size—five hundred or so ragtag child-soldiers under the command of a sixteen-year-old leader who calls himself General Ade Aluwa. Don’t underestimate this boy. Alexander the Great wasn’t much older when he conquered most of his world.
“Open up a heads-up display and invoke a map of Africa. I’ll give you a bird’s-eye view of the area we’re going to recon.”
The soldiers complied and peered at the African continent.
“Okay, look along the west, right where the continental coastline juts out westward. Cameroon straddles the equator and looks like a sorcerer’s cap. Due west, you’ve got the nation of Nigeria, which is where Aluwa was born and where he recruited his army.”
“Any help from the neighbors?” The soldier’s clipped speech marked him as South African.
“No. We’ll be operating on our own.”
“What makes this here Aluwa a threat?” called out a thick Alabama accent.
“Good question. He was orphaned at age ten, courtesy of the local police. At the time, there were about two million homeless children in the country. Aluwa did the math and figured that he could outnumber the police if he could organize the street kids. He started with a fistful of children and picked off policemen, one at a time, using rocks and luck. Within a few months, he had a platoon of three dozen child-soldiers, a taste for fighting, and a small cache of weapons.
“That was six years ago. Now his army is five hundred strong. He wants to occupy a national park in Cameroon, and we’re going to scout the young general’s operations. An EcoForce battalion will follow us and persuade Aluwa to find other quarters.”
“What are we facing?” called out another voice.
“That’s what we’re tasked to find out. We think he has precision-guided, rifle-fired munitions—50-caliber explosive rounds with GPS chips and guidance. Our job is to find out what other toys the boys plays with.
“Let me tell you what Aluwa doesn’t have: smart uniforms. His troops are vulnerable. You make sure your smart wear is running properly. Your uniforms have enhancements that will keep you invisible, armored, and alive. That and my good leadership, of course.”
“Hoo-yah!” A dozen voices shouted out in affirmation.
“Gentlemen and ladies, we are going in full stealth mode. This is recon only. Make sure you check sensors, power, electronic control systems, and armor in your uniforms. You’ll be safe as long as you follow me and keep your gear in working order. Your shirtsleeves and pant legs will transform into bandages and splints if you’re injured. Run diagnostics on your biomed sensors. You do not want those going silent if you need a medic. You will stand inspection before we move out and may the good Lord may have mercy on you if your gear isn’t perfect, because I will not.”
It was a familiar speech. Imfeld would rather drill his soldiers to death than let them suffer even a scratch from the enemy. And so Imfeld took them through their preparations, like a parish priest leading a responsive reading. He might have given this speech fifty times, and his troops could recite the words back verbatim, but none dared ignore a single syllable.
“Gentlemen and ladies. You have magnetic shearing fluid embedded throughout the uniform. It will turn to armor upon impact from bullets, bayonets, or shrapnel. But it does you no good if it’s not working. Check the ferrites twice tonight before you hit your racks. Your uniforms include plastic and glass fibers. They will change color to match the environment and provide camouflage. Do not even yawn before your gear is checked. Some of you might like to survive this little expedition and I will personally wring your neck if you don’t.”
“Hoo-yah!” The troops called again with one voice. They knew from experience that the worst danger they would face was not the enemy, but Imfeld, if their gear wasn’t ready.
“Gentlemen and ladies, fall out!” Imfeld shouted.
Imfeld’s orders were crystal clear. His troops took the upkeep of their equipment and uniforms seriously. None of the gear was more critical to their survival than the nanoarmor provided by NMech’s military products division as part of the company’s commitment to environmental protection projects. Dr. Marta Cruz started the program. She would not have known Sergeant Imfeld in particular. But Eva Rozen did, and tracked his movements, feeding the information to her fledgling Cerberus program.
Nine thousand, nine hundred forty miles due east, and at nearly the same latitude as Cameroon’s Waza National Forest, Jagen Cater boarded a train at the Colombo Fort Railway Station in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. He fell, more than sat, into his customary window seat on the left side of the train. He travelled this route repeatedly, and never failed to gaze in wonder at the rugged hill country, waterfalls, misty peaks, and neatly-clipped tea estates as he travelled the eighty-six-mile route to Badulla. From Badulla, he would travel north to a tea plantation in Kandy, near the ancient royal capital.
Today Cater stared straight ahead, exhausted, and noticed none of the scenery. He slipped off his shoes and noticed that his feet were swollen. Leaning back, he closed his eyes as the locomotive pulled its train out of the station, first by straining inches, and then gathering momentum. The morning was young, yet Cater was fatigued. His muscles cramped and twitched, and his dark skin itched. And his feet! It must be all this travel, he thought. This was Cater’s third trip to Kandy in as many weeks. There were troubles in the fermenting plant and the tea harvest could be lost. MacNeil Tea Brokers, Ltd., employed Cater to ensure a successful harvest, and so Cater was headed to Kandy.
The harvesting and fermenting of tea is a delicate process that combines farming practices unchanged for thousands of years with technology that was no older than Cater’s own five decades. The best plants were reserved for the fine plucking. Harvesters searched for plants with silvery-white fuzz and painstakingly picked only those buds, gathering the tiny blossoms in the early morning to ensure the most delicate flavors for which MacNeil was famous. A healthy bush might produce three thousand buds, enough for just one pound of tea.
When the fine plucking reached the factory it was dried. It must be the baking equipment, Cater thought. If the equipment were overheating, the entire spring flush could be lost. And Cater, who never failed to watch the scenery with delight, closed his eyes. He leaned his head against the window and drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep as the train glided east.
Cater felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up, confused. The conductor had roused him. He handed his ticket to the attendant, a man with whom Cater had shared this journey for several years.
The conductor looked at his friend with amusement. “Oh, there must be something going on for you, sir. You will be staying in Badulla? Maybe you have a woman there, eh?”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been with a woman since my wife, bless her soul, passed away two years ago.”
The conductor pointed to the ticket, “One way.”
Cater stared at the ticket. “Saints preserve me. I’ve been so tired I cannot think straight. I’ll buy another one way for the return.”
The conductor peered at his passenger and his voice softened. “Tell you the truth, you don’t look so good today. Your face is puffy. Are you all right, old friend?”
Cater heaved a sigh. “Not so good today. I haven’t felt this tired since I got the filter to clean my blood.”
A thumb-sized packet replaced cumbersome dialysis sessions that required him to sit connected to a machine for several hours each week. Researchers had tried for decades to develop an implantable filter. The problem was that the better the filter worked, the faster it became clogged.
Absolute efficiency in a self-contained module eluded nephrologists until an NMech scientist took a whale-watching boat from Boston to Nantucket and marveled at the giant beasts’ feeding habits. The whale’s baleen caught his attention. The feeding filters that sieve plankton and small animals from seawater to provide food for the beast reminded him of something. He invoked a heads-up display and studied the anatomy of the baleen. Its elongated pores resembled nephrons, the kidney’s filtering cells.
The solution to an implantable kidney filter was slit-shaped pores, modeled on the whale’s baleen. The NMech approach permitted a self-contained unit to process variable-sized nutrients and wastes in the blood. Dr. Marta Cruz had been able to insist that NMech provide 10% of its filters to poorer countries as part of NMech’s commitment to public health.
Jagen Cater had been one of the first recipients of the NMech IDD—Internal Dialysis Device. It had been a lifesaver for Cater and for thousands of others who suffered from chronic kidney disease. A signal from an NMech medical equipment datapiller kept the IDD operating properly, or else it would quickly become a clogged roll of inert plastic the approximate size and shape of a cigar. The NMech maintenance signal and redundant safeguards were monitored continuously to ensure Cater’s survival.
They were also monitored by Eva Rozen’s Cerberus program.
Five thousand, five hundred twenty-three miles east of Staff Sergeant Mike Imfeld’s United Nations EcoForce recon squad, and 9,889 miles east of Jagen Cater’s tea estate, Nancy Kiley gritted her teeth and left her smartbed’s comfort. Kiley was a good boss. She shared the hardships of her charges, and so she had been taking night shifts, working alongside her subordinates. Just as she fell asleep after a difficult evening, an alarm rang. Cursing, she donned a sun-proof and insect-repellant work suit. Kiley exited her small cabin at El Cerro Rojo—“The Red Hill”—a desalinization plant on Venezuela’s Paraguanà Peninsula.
The private cabin was one of the project manager’s few perquisites at the desal complex. Scant compensation, she thought, for the time she spent in a landscape slightly less hospitable than the living conditions she imagined a planetologist would find on Mars. Would safety protocols on the Red Planet include thrice-daily examinations of clothing, linens, and shoes for biting creatures? Scorpions, Kaboura flies, and poison dart frogs were among the nasty critters that preferred the cool, dark comfort of Nancy’s clothing and shoes. One learned to check, to stay alert.
Mother Nature’s a bitch, Kiley thought, not for the first time, scratching at one of the many patches of dry skin that flaked and cracked in the peninsula’s arid climate.
Her imprecations were out of character for the cheerful and charismatic woman who inspired loyalty among her staff. She relied on kind words and praise and sprinkled them like the gentle rains that once fell on South American’s coastline. But the rains had dried up and her mood had soured. A torrent of maledictions had replaced her upbeat patter. She damned the sun that beat mercilessly on her head, cursed the sand and pebbles that ground under her boots and made walking a chore, and swore at each tormenting species of insects with which she was forced to share the desiccated habitat.
Kiley’s compact body cast a short shadow in the midmorning sun. She clenched her square jaw in frustration at what was becoming a hopeless assignment. She squinted despite vision enhancements that included a photosensitive nictating membrane, a third eyelid—biological sunglasses for her ice-blue eyes.
Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. Coleridge’s couplet was Kiley’s mantra. She repeated it while hurrying to the desal plant’s command center. What’s today’s screw-up? she wondered as she subvocalized a heads-up display. I’ll be dipped in turtle dung before I have another surprise like yesterday.
Twenty-four hours earlier, her staff panicked when the nano-controlled biocide levels at the plant dipped unexpectedly. The biocides killed off bacterial contaminants in Cerro Rojo’s water. Then, as now, Kiley scrambled out of her slumber to attend to the malfunction. As she watched, the ’cides returned to their normal levels for reasons that were inexplicable. An hour later, when her heart had stopped racing and she was drifting back into sleep, a second emergency summoned her from Morpheus’ arms. The desal filters had quit. Electric currents that animated the ion transfer mechanism still flowed, but it was as if the system had stopped listening to its programming. The temporary halt in production scared the bejeezus out of Kiley and her staff. Had it lasted much longer, the 30 million people in the arid cities and hills of northern Venezuela and the island nations of the Caribbean would get thirsty. And thirsty people become angry people—desperate and prone to violence.
Kiley cursed the woman who coaxed her to this hellhole from the security of a government job with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I don’t know who’s the bigger bitch, Kiley thought, Mother-freakin’-Nature, or Eva-freakin’-Rozen.
One year earlier, NMech’s Chief Executive Officer linked to Kiley in an abrupt attempt to prise her away from NOAA to become the Chief of Operations for the Cerro Rojo desalinization plant. An installation as complex as Cerro Rojo requires the steady hand of a manager who possesses a thorough understanding of the science behind the miracle.
She had turned Eva Rozen down. “I’m not interested in private industry,” Kiley had said, “I do good work here at NOAA.”
“You like petty people and petty science?” Eva had shot back.
Kiley shrugged. The gesture was invisible. Rozen waited until Kiley broke the silence.
“Look, I’ve been in government service for 18 years. Another 7 years and I can retire. NOAA may not be as exciting as your life, but I’ll have a nice pension and the time to enjoy it.”
“So it’s money?”
“Are you kidding? Government work and money do not a partnership make. No, I get to do good science. That’s the key, Ms. Rozen—science.”
“It’s Dr. Rozen. Chemistry and computer science. Harvard.”
“Well, Dr. Rozen, I have my science and a secure position. Why do I need your little startup?”
“Little startup? Any idea how much NMech is worth?”
“Ms.—excuse me—Dr. Rozen, I don’t follow financial reporting. So, no, I don’t know. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t see what you can offer that I’d want, and I have some petty science waiting for me.”
Eva simply stated a figure before Kiley could end the link. The number was an attention-grabbing number, a round number, a digit followed by zeros, as many zeros as there were digits in Kiley’s current salary. When the scientist hesitated, Eva lowered the figure. A second reduction, and Kiley capitulated. In the face of Eva’s irresistible force, there were no immovable objects.
A year later, the sugar plum fairies of fame and fortune no longer danced in Kiley’s head. This morning’s disaster? The desal filters had failed entirely. Not one drop of water was being generated. No one could find an explanation for today’s outage, nor determine when the filters might go back on line. This morning, a forlorn Kiley missed her former life in government service, with its scheming competitiveness, its venality—and its boring safety.
From 2,240 miles north, Eva Rozen observed Dr. Kiley’s frustrations. She smiled without mirth and entered the results of her observations into the Cerberus program.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2045
While Marta prayed for the Rockford victims, Eva paced in her office. She was restless. Her forearm itched maddeningly and she scratched it until the skin bled. The rhythmic hiss of her pant legs rubbing together as she walked was a whispering voice that further agitated her. Ssst-ssst. Ssst-ssst. Too bad! What now? Too bad! What now?
It was impossible to concentrate. The din from the Table of Clamorous Voices overwhelmed her. The cacophonous shrieks and moans and cries, the accusations and taunts battered her sanity like a tidal wave falling on a seaside village.
Eva struggled to review the past forty-eight hours. An investigation of the explosion was in full swing and NMech’s records had been subpoenaed. The company was ‘a party of interest’ in the search for a cause of the blast. She’d instructed corporate counsel to cooperate. But NMech’s many layers of security slowed the company’s response which created the appearance that NMech was interfering with the investigation.
What to do about Marta and Jim? They suspected her, too. After the blast, Marta spoke of healing and her role as a bohique—voodoo doctor is more like it, Eva thought—but now Marta refused to talk or even make eye contact with Eva. She’d been cool and distant for the last year, blaming her for Dana’s growing pains. Marta had seen to it that Dana spent little time around her, a circumstance Eva found surprisingly distressing.
Now this. Was Marta a threat, a neutral, or an irritating ally? Marta’s support was unlikely, her opposition uncertain. Jim was a wild card. She had to be careful around him. She thought he was her friend, but he’d spurned her. Granted, she’d been acting a bit out of character, but everyone had ups and downs, didn’t they? And the boy, Dana—what could he do? Plenty, she thought. I know how well he jacks and ghosts. He’s like a kid brother, but now he’s under his mother’s control. Damn her interference! She’d planned to bring Dana into an executive role at NMech. Together, they’d be unstoppable. But now the boy could be the biggest problem.
She shook her head to clear that thought. I just have to finesse this, keep them all preoccupied until the investigation blows over. Just a couple weeks at the most.
She continued pacing. Every sound in her office was a chorus of voices, mocking her. Too bad! What now? Too bad! What now?
Her desk was as bare as her thoughts, with only a white coffee flask and mug. She nudged these items into place—was that the third time?—to center them precisely along the upper edge of her desk. The walls and carpet were set to a milky white and gave the impression of congealed pabulum.
Coffee. She remembered the coffee. Even though the addition of neurochemicals enabled her to think faster, to work faster, to complete the bid, she’d had no chance. The damned bid was rigged! Now they all want to blame me for the explosion? Nobody insults me without paying a price.
She brewed a cup, adding carefully measured drops of the neuroactive concoction, and gulped it down. She was rewarded with a paralyzing stomach cramp and bit back tears. Finally, her heartbeat slowed and became regular. Her skin flushed. She could feel her thoughts reorganize. She was pacing faster now, nearly running. Her arms and legs and hands responded faster than she could ever remember. She felt good.
And the Voices sang in harmony, once again.
What’s the plan? She looked around her office. Her eyes fixed on Gergana’s brooch framed on one wall, a relic from, well, from before. Her attention shifted to a small terrarium on the credenza across from her desk—plants and flowers from around the world that provided medicines and recreational pharmacopeia for synthesis.
A second planter housed a pair of intertwined green and black vines. An ugly and useless gift from Marta. It was supposed to represent anger and grace, qualities that exist in everyone. Marta and her legends. Yocahu and Juricán. Give me a break. Who the hell does she think she is, preaching about her gods? She’d be nowhere without me. And what did the gods do for her father, rotting in a Mexican jail?
Eva paced. Then an idea struck. Would it work? Could it neutralize Marta and Jim? Yes! She calculated the moves and likely outcomes with the cold precision of a chess master. She stared into the terrarium and saw the vines as lambent branches of a flowchart rather than mere plant matter. The divisions and offshoots became the steps she would need to take. It would be straightforward. She’d jacked deep into the legal system before and she could do it again.
Eva subvocalized and as soon as a heads-up display appeared, she mouthed a few commands and found her target. Perfect. The man was accessible. She had to bring him to Boston, unnoticed. The office was too risky, but her home? Yes.
Leaving no tracks, Eva jacked into several secure databases, starting with a United States Department of Agriculture public information portal in Seattle. She ghosted through a half dozen others, soaring on currents of thought, leapfrogging and crisscrossing the country and leaving too many trails to follow.
What if Marta didn’t cooperate? That was possible. Oh-so-holy Marta, as if her own foibles made her a saint. If she doesn’t cooperate, then I’ll run the company myself and Dana gets a shot at management sooner than I expected. I’ll give Jim a second chance. He was a good friend. Maybe things will turn out differently this time…
Eva paced and scratched. What if the investigation into NMech led to Cerberus? Impossible. No one would find a link between Rockford and Cerberus because there was none. And Cerberus was secure. In the meantime, she would prepare for a special guest. She rubbed at the raw skin on her forearm. The damned itching wouldn’t stop. Never mind, I have work to do, accounts to settle.
It was time to let Cerberus off his leash. Time to cut off the leeches, starting with the soldier and the scientist and the tea man. Once she was certain of Cerberus, then all the thieves who’d stolen her time and her money would be on their own.
But first, she thought, it’s long past time to settle a personal account. It was a small matter, a point of personal pride. No one insults me with impunity. We’ll see who’s the runt.
Time for a reckoning.
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
The next time I saw Eva Rozen was almost like old times. She was playful in her own way. If she’d just caused a disaster that killed scores of people, then she didn’t show it. True, her skin was flushed, her hands trembled, and her eyes had a nervous tic, like she was winking at me over and over, but Eva was always unpredictable. Besides, we’d always gotten along like peas and carrots—until my mother pulled us apart, that is.
I was trying to come to grips with the disaster I’d just seen. None of this had made any sense to me. I was mature for my age, but a fifteen-year-old can draw just so much from experience. Even a fifteen-year-old who’s closer to sixteen.
I was alone in the conference room. My parents went home. I told them that I would take a P-cab back to Brookline. I heard the door open behind me. Even with my back to the door, I knew that Eva stood there. Everyone has a unique sonic signature, although hers is more like an absence where there should be a presence, like a chalk outline where a body had been. I sensed a small hole in the air currents that blew into the boardroom when the door opened. She displaced so little air that she might as well not exist.
She stopped just inside the door. Neither of us moved nor spoke for at least a minute. I was looking out the window and reached my hand up over my shoulder to offer an upturned palm, like a back-facing beggar. I held my hand loose, no tension in the fingers, and kept my gaze forward. Eva walked forward and slipped her hand into mine. The skin felt leathery and hot. We held hands for several moments, me with my back to her and Eva erect, looking over my shoulder. She subvocalized and the windows became mirrors. I was suddenly staring into the eyes of—of what? A murderer? A misunderstood friend? All I saw was anguish.
“You scared of me, Little One?” Her voice was uneven but her grip on my hand was as steady as a sailor on a tiller. I squeezed her hand once to signal that I wanted my own hand back. She didn’t let go but leaned over me and placed her other hand on my forearm. Her strength seemed to have grown and I was pinned in place.
“You think I did it?” I was still thinking over her first question, whether I was frightened by my mentor and friend. I got the feeling that Eva wanted an answer now. I had no time to ponder the day’s events.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Either you did or you didn’t.” She made no move to release me. “If you didn’t, then there’s nothing to be afraid of, right?” She shook her head.
“Answer the question. Do you think I caused the Rockford blast?”
“Eva, I’ve known you my whole life and I’ve seen you when you’re mad at somebody. Maybe you’ve even been mad at someone to the point where it was fatal. I don’t know. But I’ve never seen you hurt somebody who didn’t make you mad.”
“I’m not going to ask you again,” she repeated. My hand was beginning to ache in her grip. It was cards-on-the-table time.
“If you did, then you’re not the same person I know. So, I would say, no, Eva Rozen didn’t cause the explosion.”
Not good enough. “So, I’m crazy like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? My evil twin did it?”
“Oh, crap, Eva, give me a break.” That was better. “I’m not even sixteen years old. What do you want from me? Word games? Then do a crossword puzzle. You want a diagnosis? See a doctor. Now it’s Jekyll and Hyde? What, you’re suddenly reading fiction?”
“Funny,” she snorted. We were heading towards rapprochement.
“Tell me, yes or no. Do you think I blew up the Rockford plant?” I tried to turn around to look at her but her hand remained on my forearm and I remained in place.
“Eva, I don’t believe you blew anything up. But—you have been acting weird lately, and other people are going to look at you for Rockford. I hope you’ve got a good alibi.”
There was a sudden rigidity in her bearing. She pressed down ever so slightly on my forearm, relented and pressed again. Just long enough to catch her balance—or download a file to my datasleeve. A gentle touch was Eva’s style. She didn’t need to touch someone’s sleeve to jack it; it was simply part of her own gestural vocabulary. It meant, “Tag—you’re it.”
“You aim to repossess my hand?” I asked and wiggled my fingers in her grip. I pitched my voice low and calm. I looked down, submissively. If this was an Eva I didn’t know, if this Eva triggered the blast, then I was holding hands with a mass murderer.
She made her decision, gave another snort, and let go. “What would I do with your ugly old hand? Besides, I’m not done with you.” She sat down at the table next to me.
“What does that mean?”
“We both know that your mom’s been keeping you away from me. But we still have work to do, lessons to learn.”
“Don’t be mad at my mom, okay? Everybody’s mad at everybody else now. She needs to cut you some slack, but you need to be a little more…normal.”
“You say so.”
I think she intended her voice to be flat, but there was strain in it, pain as well. My left hand moved of its own volition to cup her face. She stroked my hand for a moment. Touching her felt good, despite the odd texture to her skin. I leaned forward with my eyes closed. Our foreheads touched and we sat in silent communion for what could have been just seconds or maybe minutes.
“Little One,” she said quietly. “I still have two important lessons for you but we have to be careful. Your mother is—”
“She’s afraid of you, is what she is! She doesn’t trust her own son!” I nearly shouted. My own emotions were still quite volatile.
“She’s concerned, Dana. Concerned. She’s wrong. She hurt my feelings—a lot—but she cares about you. You think you’re being treated like a child but she’s doing better than any mother I’ve ever known. Even if she’s wrong about me.”
“You know a lot of mothers, Eva?” I regretted the remark as soon I uttered it. Too late to pull it back.
Eva just looked at me for a long minute. I saw an entire childhood pass across her eyes. I saw hope and longing, disappointment and dispossession. Then anger. “One was enough,” she said, “and I know that good mothers make mistakes, but they’re always looking after their children. You got one of the best.”
“Fat lot of good it’s doing us right now.”
“Yeah, well get off your high horse, sonny boy. I have a plan.”
At that, I grinned. “A certified, grade-A Rozen Plan?”
“Exactly.”
She smiled back. Not a grin, not a grimace, but something tender that reached up into her eyes. Suddenly I just wanted her to hold me and make everything all right—like a mother does. I was confused, but beyond caring. She could have kissed me then, not a chaste kiss from a treasured aunt, but full on the lips and I would have been her lover. She could have hobbled me, and I’d have been her pack animal and carried the lifelong burden of grief she’d collected.
“Listen, Dana, listen carefully. This is important. Shit is going to hit the fan. You’re going to need help. I could tell you what to do, but you’ll learn better by figuring it out. So, I have two more assignments for you and then your schooling with me will be complete. You ace this, and there’s no stopping you.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “What assignments?” I asked.
“A puzzle and a treasure hunt.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, but my curiosity was piqued. We were Eva and Dana again, the co-conspirators. Mentor and pupil. Hero and sidekick. Friends.
“Follow me,” was all she said.
We walked out of the conference room and down six flights of stairs to NMech’s street-level atrium. The wide-open area featured trees growing inside, nourished by full-spectrum lighting that radiated from the brightwalls. The area was littered with sofas, comfortable chairs, and small tables that created sitting groups or spots where someone could rest quietly for a few minutes in some semblance of solitude. Sound strips were built into the floors and walls for private conversations, or so that a person could play music without disturbing others. It was a favorite place for scientists to think, and for workplace romances to flourish—an NMech hotspot for productivity, of one sort or another.
At the far side of the atrium, Eva paused in front of a blank wall and palmed a spot on the wall that was indistinguishable from any other spot. The wall opened inward and led to a set of stairs. When we entered, the brightwalls illuminated automatically and we walked down to a basement and then a sub-basement.
“Wow! This is like in the old, old movies.” I was swept up in the spirit of adventure. “We should program the room to look gothic.”
“Right.”
She touched the brightwall and it illuminated in a nondescript gray, casting a pallid blanket over the room we’d entered. Hardly gothic.
In the corner of the room was a smaller room, maybe six feet by eight feet. The door opened to reveal a small table which held several items: a rolled-up dataslate, a set of old-fashioned wrenches, a pencil, a large, circular magnet, some abrasive cloth, and a square box with a button on it.
“Go on in,” she said, gesturing for me to enter first. “Here’s your first test,” she said. “You have one hour to get out of this cell and not a second more. You get one try only. You can use any one of these items,” she said, gesturing to the table. “But here’s the catch. You may touch only one of these items. You must use whatever item you’ve touched in some way. And you get only one try to escape. Let’s see how much you’ve learned.”
She asked, “Any questions?” When I hesitated, she said, “Good, because I wouldn’t have answered anyway. You’re going solo. Give me your datasleeve. Come up to my office within the hour and you’ll get it back,” she said, and walked away without a backward glance.
After I had handed over my datasleeve, she slammed the door shut. I whirled around, confused. I felt a tiny vibration in my feet when the door slammed home and a thrill of fear. What if she did cause Rockford and I’d just placed myself in a cage?
My cell had carbon shielding around the perimeter, and a carbon floor and ceiling. It could be harder than diamonds or as brittle as graphite. Maybe I could kick the door open or just break down one of the walls. But Eva had said that there was one way out and that I was only permitted one try.
I started by inspecting the locking mechanism on the door. I couldn’t see anything besides an old-fashioned doorknob. No visible biometrics sensors, no old-fashioned combination keypad. I reached to check how sturdy it was, but pulled my hand back. One try.
I turned to the small table. The dataslate was rolled up. Could I use it to reprogram the door? If it worked, I could. Maybe. But I couldn’t tell if it was operational. Heck, I couldn’t even tell if it was real. If only I could lift it up and examine it.
The pencil was an ordinary #2, made from old-fashioned wood. I could use it to write the Great American Novel but I had maybe 55 minutes left. Not even enough time for a short story, let alone a novel. I doubted I could create a decent three-line haiku poem in that time. But I could use it to poke at the dataslate and see if that works. Would that be within the rules?
I looked at the doorknob again and ruled out the wrenches. The magnet might work if the doorknob were metal. No dice. The locking assembly appeared to be a non-magnetic material. I couldn’t think of any appropriate use for the abrasive cloth. I couldn’t file my way out in an hour.
That left the square box with the round button on it. I looked at the device. Nothing on the outside of the box gave me any kind of a clue as to what was inside of the box, nor could I intuit anything about the doorknob and doorjamb. Was this Eva’s sense of humor?
I wondered how much time I had. With my datasleeve gone, I was cut off from the rest of the world. My pockets were as empty as my inventory of solutions for escaping from this coop. I didn’t think a lot of time had elapsed, but in the isolation of a very small room, it was hard to estimate the passage of time.
If I could solve this problem, Eva and I could continue to collaborate. I had to try.
“When you want to hide something, put it in plain sight” was a maxim that Eva had drilled into me over and over. So, I looked around my little cage for something obvious. Eva, for all of her eccentricities, would never give me a test I couldn’t pass, and she always kept her word to me. But would anyone find me if Eva went mad and forgot about this room?
Time was running out. My hands were sweating and my mouth was dry. I had an itch on my back that was driving me crazy. I could think only of the itch. If it were not for her instructions, I’d grab the pencil and use it to scratch my back.
Then I saw the answer. I smiled. An elegant solution, simple and economical, like her software coding. I picked up the pencil. It reached the itchy spot on my back and I scratched. That felt good. I stuck the pencil behind my ear and walked over to the door. I grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and walked out of an unlocked cell.
Five minutes later, I walked into Eva’s work area, whistling a happy tune. She looked up and grinned for a second and then pointed me to a chair. She tossed my datasleeve back to me.
“You put some nice security on this,” she said. “I couldn’t jack it, at least not here and not in the time it took you to stumble out.”
“I made a few modifications,” I said, trying for nonchalance. “What’s next?”
“You solved the riddle. Remember, when you face an impossible challenge, your first move should be to look for the easiest solution. That’ll probably be right.”
“Now I have a self-study project for you. To finish this last assignment, you’ll need to use every bit of the chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science, and physics that you’ve learned.” She got up from her chair and walked around her desk. Perched on the edge, she was about as tall as I was, seated.
“Fact is, it’s time for you to fly solo. Take on a role at NMech. So here’s what you have to do. Here is a list of 34 senior researchers at NMech, 26 department heads and 18 executives.” She held up her arm in a transmit gesture and my sleeve pinged receipt of a file. “Your job is to jack every single one of them. Learn the chemistry or physics or materials science of each one of them by ghosting through their pillars. Learn how they manage their departments by observation and by jacking their diaries. Then link to me and we can carry on our conversations again.”
“That’s a big job, Eva,” I said, with maybe a little complaint or trepidation in my voice.
“And you’re a big boy. You’re fifteen—”
“Almost sixteen…”
“—and you’ve been taught the science by your mom and me, and your dad taught you some lessons that will make the assignment a lot easier.”
“Why all of this? Why jack 78 people’s sleeves?” I asked.
“Keys to the kingdom, kiddo. When you’re done, you can run the show if you want.”
Great, I thought. I need a one-man corporate takeover like a bald man needs a comb. But all I said was, “Gee, Eva. Thanks.”
“Dana? Get your ass in gear. I have things to do, places to go. Time for big mischief.”
Her voice was starting to quaver again and the sound made me nervous. I had a very bad feeling right then, but nothing I could put my finger on, just a sense of foreboding. Had she really been her old self the past hour or so? Or was she just putting up a good front? Either way, the sound of her voice right then worried me.
Still, I did as Eva asked, and over the course of the next few days I would learn more than I ever wanted to know about the business end of nanotech and 3D manufacturing. I also found a strange piece of art in an unlabeled account. Eva would say nothing about the image. No matter how I pressed her, she refused to discuss it with me.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2045
Dr. Colleen Katy Lowell, creator of morphing textiles technology, walked along Boylston Street, near the Public Garden, looking into the window displays of high-end clothing stores. She joined the shoppers who stopped to watch as the garments on display morphed from style to style. Colleen’s technology had made its first appearance at the expensive boutiques in the heart of Boston. She grinned and rushed past strollers on the broad sidewalk. Well, lah-di-dah, lah-di-dah, lah-di-dah. I don’t need NMech after all.
She was exhausted and elated after a successful week of around-the-clock negotiations to secure funding to produce her line of nanocouture. She signed three prominent designers on the promise of venture capital money, and the VCs came on board when Colleen promised the designers.
The week had flown by. Meeting with the money people, then the nanofabbers. After agreements were reached, on came the marketing and distribution experts, and channel sales organizations. The manufacturers were the toughest of a tough lot—the few factory managers who understood fashion also understood that they were a very small group and wanted to charge accordingly. Admins crept in unnoticed with food and beverages and crept back out with the trash that the week’s conclaves generated. Samples of fabric, design, and prototypes appeared when required and disappeared when no longer needed. Colleen barely noticed the faces of the bearers of these items. She scarcely remembered breaks for food, changes of clothing, or the odd shower. Sleep? Forget it.
In her triumphant, if dazed, march down Boylston Street, she passed the alphabetically-arranged cross streets—Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth—and paused at the public library, the nation’s oldest. Two heroic bronze sculptures—female figures representing art and science, one holding an artist’s palette, the other an orb—flanked the entrance to the building. She felt as invincible as the bronze heroines. What could stop her now?
Colleen reached her building. It was nestled in Copley Square, a hub of business, learning, and leisure. She sleeved past the security pillar and took an elevator to the eighteenth floor. The door recognized her and opened as she approached. She stopped in the entryway, kicked off her shoes, and stepped onto a thick pile rug. Today it displayed a traditional Moroccan design, an ivory background with brilliant blue diamonds. Colleen adored the soft cushion under her feet.
She was shaking with joy, ecstatic at the fulfillment of a dream. There was more work to do than she could imagine, but right now was a time for a quiet celebration. She had done it.
Colleen crossed her living room, picked up a crystal decanter from a sideboard, and poured two fingers of a Laphroaig Scotch Whisky. She swallowed the smoky liquid, letting the peaty Islay malt warm and relax her.
After a moment’s rest, Colleen went to the bathroom to wash her face. She noticed a smudge on her sleeve. No matter. She would activate the garment’s cleaning properties while she changed it from a business suit to something casual and comfortable.
Dr. Colleen Katy Lowell’s last living act was to subvocalize instructions to her datasleeve to refashion the garment. She chose culottes and a loose-fitting top for freedom of movement. She decided to let her sleeve pick the color from a palette that complemented her light brown hair and fair skin tones. The sleeve displayed a selection of reds and Colleen confirmed the choice. Perfect. Designer Bill Blass had said, “When in doubt, wear red.”
Colleen never tired of watching the fabric stretch and pull, reforming itself. She imagined that it was like a second skin, conforming to her figure and mood. She stood still as the jacket lost its pockets. The sleeves shortened and the jacket wove itself from an open front to a pullover. The legs had begun to pull up away from her ankles when her datasleeve processed a string of code that lay hidden in her sleeve’s memory.
The tightening across her chest was the first indication that something was wrong. Colleen subvocalized but the jacket continued to constrict. First it was uncomfortable, then painful. The jacket compressed her chest and pinned her arms, an anaconda on its prey. She couldn’t breathe. She stumbled into a wave of vertigo and collapsed. Pinpoints of light speckled her vision. She tried to call out—nothing but a hoarse whisper. Then, blackness. Her lifeless body lay cushioned on the soft pile of her treasured rug.
Four minutes later the garment relaxed and followed Colleen’s original instruction. It morphed into a loose top and culottes. Medical sensors, briefly deactivated, now triggered a distress beacon. The garment began rhythmic pulses, attempting CPR to revive the inert form. A recording of the event would show a spike in blood pressure followed by asphyxiation from a stress-induced myocardial infarction, a heart attack. It was understandable given her workload, a pity given her age.
The fatal databurst had travelled from satellite to satellite, from pillar to pillar, losing its pedigree. It would never be traced from the dataport on Eva Rozen’s Cerberus datapillar.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2045
Colleen Katy Lowell was interred in a beautiful setting on a dreary day. The memorial service was held in Harvard College’s Holden Chapel, one of the oldest college buildings in America. The tiny edifice served as a house of worship in 1744. Later, it became part of the College’s medical school. The building’s diverse history mirrored Colleen’s eclectic talents.
Marta, Jim, and Dana sat in the front row of a small group of mourners. Colleen’s mother was a convalescent in a Minnesota nursing home. Her father had passed away and she had no brothers or sisters. A college friend, Rebecca Avery, two programmers from Colleen’s small company, and a scattering of others rounded out a scant assembly. Avery spoke briefly, and briefly cheered the mourners by describing Colleen’s wild streak as well as her brilliance. One of her design colleagues spoke of Colleen’s dedication to beauty. The other was mute with grief.
Jim helped Marta stand to address the assembly. Her skin was fever flushed, her pain obvious. “Colleen was different from anyone I know. I believe that everyone has seeds of anger and of grace—human weaknesses and God-given strengths. The way we balance these forces determines our good days and our bad days. Colleen had her faults but she was without guile. She was unpretentious—just look at how she mingled with corporate executives, runway models, and backroom maintenance staff. The years that she spent pursuing her dream testify to her confidence. She was my friend and I miss her terribly.”
Marta led the small assembly along a two-mile procession from the chapel to Mount Auburn Cemetery. They drove in silence. The funerary convoy would process past Cambridge Common, grey and muddy in the late winter gloom. The mourners would be escorted along Memorial Drive, a broad roadway that hugged the Charles River. Elm, linden, hawthorne, and lilac trees stood barren in the winter chill, rigid sentinels honoring Colleen’s passage.
Not one of the trees at the cemetery, nor the gardens, nor the ponds, nor the dells salved the bitter ache in Marta’s heart, neither did they soothe the fever that burned in her face. She summoned the last of her strength to stand alone over the yawning grave and to watch Colleen’s casket feed the hungry earth. When the coffin was in place, Marta took a lilac-hued aster to place on the coffin. Ancients believed that the perfume from an aster drove off evil spirits. “It’s too late for that now,” Marta said, and dropped the useless flower on Colleen’s casket and then turn to accept her husband’s arm and comfort.
It was unlikely that there was a more uncomfortable person anywhere in New England, perhaps the entire eastern seaboard, than the woman who stood behind Marta Cruz, waiting to speak with the grief-stricken scientist.
She was a bookkeeper at NMech with neither managerial authority nor seniority in the company, having joined the accounting staff only months earlier. She recognized Marta—Dr. Cruz—but had never spoken with her. She knew Colleen Lowell from news vids. She had met Eva Rozen once, and then managed to avoid the CEO. That was an easy task. Denise Warren was, after all, just a bookkeeper.
But I’ve been a conscientious bookkeeper, she thought. I like it when things balance. She believed that she’d been given a gift, a sixth sense that prompted her to dig a bit here and there. Sometimes, when she dug a bit here and there, she found something that Didn’t Fit. Not so much a gift, Warren thought, but a curse that’s cost me two jobs, and now maybe three.
Her first disaster came two years ago when she uncovered something that Didn’t Fit—a scheme to inflate her employer’s sales figures. My luck, I bring this to my boss and find out he’s the one who rigged the charade. He gets promoted. I get fired. Nine months later her intuition led her to discover an innocent error, but the company’s restated financial report forced the business into bankruptcy. Warren’s position fell to a cost-cutting program prompted by her findings.
So it was with understandable trepidation that Denise Warren approached Marta Cruz to offer condolences, and to bring her Jeremiah-like intuition to bear on an inexplicable series of entries in the NMech accounts receivable department. The funeral of Dr. Cruz’s friend was neither the time nor place to discuss a business matter, but the discrepancies had aroused her curiosity, which led to more discoveries. The irregularities would be a serious issue for the annual audit. But what prompted a now-hypothermic Denise Warren to linger at the funeral of a stranger was a bothersome detail that looked, well, criminal.
But what do I know? I’m just a bookkeeper.
Denise blew on her hands and shifted from one numbed foot to the other. Despite the warmth-preserving fibers in her gloves and socks, her hands and feet seemed about as warm as meat in a butcher’s refrigerator. When the rest of the mourners had departed, she approached a weary and equally cold Marta Cruz.
“Dr. Cruz, I’m so sorry for your loss, and, urn…” Warren stammered and hesitated. Would this cost her job?
“Thank you,” Cruz murmured.
“I’m Denise Warren from accounting. I’m sorry to trouble you at Dr. Lowell’s funeral, but I need to tell you something. I know this is a bad time, but—”
Jim Ecco stood and placed himself between the two shivering women. “This is a bad time. Why are you here, anyway? Did you know Dr. Lowell?”
Warren’s eyes turned down and she felt them well with tears. She had visions of losing yet another job. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t urgent and I don’t know who else to turn to. My boss won’t listen to me, but there’s a problem that will hurt NMech.”
“There’s going to be another problem if you don’t leave my wife alone.”
Marta placed her arm on Jim’s and looked at the distraught woman.
“I know that I’m nobody.” Warren drew in a breath and then pressed on, “I’m an ant.”
Marta started. She looked more carefully at the accountant. “What did you say?”
“I, uh, I said, no, it’s not important.”
“Yes, it is. You said, ‘I’m an ant…”’ Marta’s voice trailed off. “Bibijagua…”
Denise looked confused. “N-no. Bookkeeper. I, uh, I’ve only worked at NMech a little while. But I found a problem and it can’t wait.” She faltered. It was useless. Why would a scientist care about a bookkeeping problem?
Marta looked at the woman. She was pale with cold, fatigue, and fear. Marta took her arm. “Ms. Warren? Are you as cold as I am? Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee? In fact, I could use something stronger. Maybe a lot stronger. Let’s find someplace warm, shall we, dear?”
Twenty-five hundred miles southeast, on a small island off the coast of the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, two guards herded prisoner 14162C from his cell at the Isla Maria Madre Federal Penitentiary. The prisoner coughed and reached for a cigarette. One guard told him to get his things together. He was being released.
Prisoner 14162C did not comprehend the news. He had years left on his sentence, assuming he’d survive that long. He’d managed to make a place for himself in the minimum security facility. But he’d aged, and was weaker than a 56-year-old who had not spent most of his adult years in prison. Still, Isla Maria Madre was warm and blessed with fresh air. In another environment, 14162C would have perished from infectious disease or unrestrained violence.
The guards marched him past the prison’s encampments, construction sites, and farming areas. They stopped at the prison commissary where he was allowed to purchase two loaves of bread for his journey. The guards could not or would not tell him where he was going, or why. They herded him into a jeep and travelled to a small airfield. Prisoner 14162C was to be flown to the Mexican mainland, and from there he would be taken into custody by someone else. The guards were expressionless. The prisoner was confused, but excited.
When the small prison plane landed at the Puerto Vallarta International Airport, three security agents met 14162C. The prison guards unlocked the man’s shackles. The security agents gave him a change of clothing and slapped a narrow strip of nanofabric on his neck. It looked like a priest’s collar. They warned him that if he tried to escape he would be subdued quite painfully. One of the agents touched his datasleeve and the prisoner winced and clutched his neck, where the nanofabric had been placed. “That is just a taste of what you’ll get if you even look cross-eyed. Understand?” The prisoner nodded and was herded to a small plane bearing an NMech logo.
Rafael Cruz was headed north, a perplexed but willing guest of Eva Rozen.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2045
Marta Cruz watched Denise Warren stare at the place setting in front of her, glance at Jim, and then quickly look down again. Jim studiously ignored her. Dana gazed at her, fascinated. Denise had a round, open face, freckled, and framed by light brown hair cut in a pageboy bob. Her black slacks were an expensive blend of silk and wool, well-tailored and well-worn. A dark purple jacket with a Nehru collar was buttoned carefully over a black blouse. Marta looked at her eyes. Another day they might sparkle inquisitively, but now Marta saw only grief.
Marta felt protective of this woman she’d met only moments ago. She put her hand on Denise’s. “I don’t know about you, but I’m still cold. Right now I feel like I might never be warm again. Would you care for a glass of wine? And I hope you won’t make me eat alone.” She caught the waiter’s attention and asked for menus. She turned to Denise and asked, “Do you like red wine or white wine?”
The bookkeeper shrugged. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”
Marta assumed hostess duties. She pointed to the wine list and ordered a bottle of Stag’s Leap Chardonnay and one of Cakebread Cellars Merlot. “Please bring us three,” she paused and looked at her son, “no, make that four glasses. And some apertivos for the table if you would, please.”
Wine, water, and plates of bread materialized and Marta asked, “Red or white?”
“Either one,” said Denise.
“Oh, my dear,” said Marta, “I’m not sure what you think of me, but mindreading is beyond my capabilities. That’s my husband’s province. In fact,” she turned to Jim, “which wine does Denise prefer?” To her puzzled guest, she explained, “He’s good at this, you see.”
Jim studied Denise. “Red.”
“Good guess, dad,” said Dana, “but I think you’re wrong.”
Jim gave his son a look that said, “Don’t start with me.”
“I don’t quite think I understand,” said Denise.
Dana turned to her. “It’s like Mom said. Some people think Dad’s a mind-reader but he just looks for the tiny gestures people make. He sees things that others don’t see. But he’s trying to figure out why you’re here and he can’t. That’s making him nervous and he guessed wrong about the wine.”
Jim said, “‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful child.’”
“King Lear?” asked Denise.
“Excellent,” said Jim. “Somewhere in Act I, if I remember correctly. I don’t know Lear, but I think every parent has that quote down pat.” He grinned at Denise and her face relaxed. They had found a small common ground.
Marta turned back to Denise. “Ms. Warren, this is a game that my husband and my son play. They call it ‘reading’ people. Do you mind?”
Denise looked back and forth between Dana and Jim and shrugged. “I…don’t know what you mean, but okay.”
Marta watched as Dana considered their guest for several seconds. Her pride in him helped to balance her grief. Dana was beginning to develop the features of manhood. His face was chiseled, quite unlike Jim’s; he looked more like Rafael, her father. Dana had a hawkish nose and pronounced Adam’s apple. The hint of a beard that he was developing added shadow to his face. He was built with broad shoulders, like Rafael, and would grow to about six feet, unlike anyone in Jim’s family or in her own. He was a unique individual.
Dana looked Denise over and said, “You’re a solitary person, but not always by choice.” A slight tension appeared on Denise’s forehead. “Ah, gee, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have started there. Mom says to start with the things people like to hear.”
“How did you know that?” asked Denise, interested and, for the first time since they’d met, a bit more at ease.
“I’ll explain everything in a minute,” he continued. “You are more orderly than most people. You got laid off or fired before you came to NMech.” Dana paused and watched her reaction. “Twice?” She nodded. “Whistleblower?” She cocked her head and stared at Dana before nodding again.
“You thought about coming to the funeral all night and didn’t get much sleep. You made up your mind to come at the last minute. You have a cat—is it named Rex? Mom trusts you and she wants Dad to trust you, too. And he’s wrong, you prefer white wine.”
Denise stared, openmouthed. Jim smiled and Marta beamed at her son.
“How on earth did you know my cat’s name?” Denise asked. “Did you get that from your sleeve? I didn’t think that was in my cloud data.”
“No, that was a guess,” said Dana. Marta watched her son. It was his turn to beam. She knew that demonstrating his skills in front of his father filled Dana with satisfaction.
“You have a few cat hairs on your clothing. They’re very curly. Only a Rex cat has hair like that. I took a chance it’s a male and that you named him Rex.”
“Did my son get it right, Denise?” asked Marta.
“Yes, he did,” she said, nodding her head. She smiled at Jim, “You must be proud of him. But Dana, what about the rest? The last-minute decision? Job troubles? All that?”
“I’m sorry if I got too personal right away. But you’ve got cat hair on your forearm and on the bottom edge of your jacket, and on your slacks where they would meet your jacket if you were sitting down. So, your cat jumped on your lap as you were sitting and you were wearing the jacket at that moment. You seem like a careful person—I mean, you’re an accountant, right?—so you would have taken off the jacket before you sat down. Or you would have noticed the cat hair if you weren’t in a rush.”
“You’ve got a good eye,” Denise said quietly. “Now tell me the rest. This actually makes it easier for me to tell my story.”
“Okay. Your clothing is stylish, the edges of your sleeves are frayed. So times are a little tough and that points to job problems. You passed on buying new clothing, but made sure your hair was properly cut. You are conscientious, which is why you came to see Mom at Colleen’s funeral, so you didn’t lose your job because of anything you did wrong. Maybe it was something you did right that got you in trouble?”
It was clear to Marta from Denise’s smile that she enjoyed the boy’s attention. He will be quite a prize for a lucky woman some day. Or a lucky young lady very soon, the proud mother realized. She felt a momentary pang of—what? Not jealousy, but something akin to it. She felt protective. Dana would find someone to love him. She would have to trust that person to love him as deeply as she did. Could anyone care about him as much as a mother?
Her rumination was interrupted as the waiter came by with a platter of appetizers. Crunchy cod fritters, sweet plump cornmeal fingers, and crescent-shaped turnovers, some filled with lobster, some with beef. Steam floated up from the platter and carried a piquant aroma of pepper, oregano, and garlic. The four diners attacked their food. The only sound from the table was the clink of silverware and expressions of enjoyment.
When the waiter returned, Marta asked Denise, “Do you mind if I order for the table?” Denise nodded and Marta spoke for a few minutes in the rapid, guttural Spanish characteristic of Puerto Rico. The waiter smiled his approval and returned to the kitchen.
“This restaurant has the most authentic Borinquen food you’ll find in Boston. I’ve never been disappointed,” said Marta.
“Borinquen?” asked Denise.
“The Taíno word for Puerto Rican,” Marta explained.
“Taíno?”
“Ah. The indigenous people of Puerto Rico were the Taíno Indians.”
“Well, this will be something new for me. It’s hard to find any cuisine in Boston other than Italian. Or seafood—but it’ll probably be in marinara sauce,” said Denise. The family facing her chuckled.
A tureen of black bean soup appeared, following the appetizers. Marta smiled. “Some people say that the black bean soup is Cuban in origin, but I do not accept that. One hundred percent Puerto Rican puro.”
They finished their soup and awarded plaudits to Marta for her choices. Then the table grew quiet.
“Suppose you tell me what’s troubling you,” Marta said to Denise. “Relax, take your time.”
Denise Warren drew in a deep breath and exhaled. She lost her hesitant manner. “Okay, here goes. NMech’s bookkeeping for accounts receivable—the money that customers owe us—is easy to automate. Same transactions, over and over. Every month the same prescription or the same lease payment for an environmental project. That’s the key. The transactions are repetitive, and no one really has to look at them.”
Denise continued, a professional in her element. She had the table’s full attention. Waitstaff cleared plates, poured wine and water, and left, unnoticed.
“If the accounting system is up to snuff, then you can trust the results, as long as people use the system.” She looked around to make sure the family was following her explanation.
“Okay. One more technical bit, then it’ll be clear. There are millions of transactions. Accountants, auditors, regulators—they can’t check each one. So the auditors pick a sample and test. If there are any discrepancies in the sample, then there’s a problem.”
Heads nodded around the table.
“Well, I’m new at NMech. I wanted to learn more about my job, so I spent some time looking into the operations. And that’s when I found it.” The forlorn look returned to her face.
“And it is…?” Marta prompted.
“There’s, um, too much money. I know that sounds crazy. But revenue exceeds what we were owed. The amount of money that people pay us should equal the amount of money that they owe us, right? I mean, nobody pays extra. The difference was barely enough to notice. A few dollars. Even auditors disregard this small of a discrepancy. But I was curious.”
“What I found was that there were some customers paying us even though the accounts were closed.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?” asked Marta.
“The accounts were closed for nonpayment. But those customer accounts were current.”
“Okay, so we owe them a refund. I still don’t see the problem.”
“Most problems were minor. When customers complained, we apologized and gave them a free month or two. They were happy and life went on. But here’s the scary part. I don’t know how to say this.”
“‘Start at the beginning, continue to the middle, and stop at the end,’” said Jim.
“Alice in Wonderland,” Denise smiled.
Jim started to speak again but Marta stopped him. “Tell us the rest, dear,” she said.
“Some customers didn’t complain. And the reason those customers didn’t complain—” Denise hesitated.
“Go ahead, Denise,” Marta prompted gently.
“—is…they’re dead. They died. Their meds were cut off and they died. And I think it was done deliberately.”
“You’re kidding,” said Marta.
“No.” Denise picked up her glass and sipped her wine. She looked around. The shadows outside had grown longer as the day ran out. People hurried by on the street. They were like streaks of color flashing across the restaurant’s window. Denise studied her wine glass as if there were an answer there to the riddle she’d found.
She shook her head slightly and refocused on her story. “I dug a bit and looked into the patient backgrounds to see if there was something they had in common. Maybe that would identify an error in the accounting system. And I found it.”
She picked up her glass again and drained it. “Not one of them had any family to speak of. No husbands, no wives, no kids or parents. I couldn’t even find any friends. Nobody to miss them. Dr. Cruz, Marta, I’d swear that these customers were selected because nobody would ask questions. It’s just too much of a coincidence.”
“Holy crap,” said Marta, who never swore. “How long?” she asked in a clipped voice.
“The first case I found was a SNAP user named Emery Miller in Venice, California, about a year ago. Since then, I’ve found eleven other customers who had their nanoagents terminated for nonpayment. Each one was from a different division of NMech. None of the deaths looked suspicious, so there was no investigation. But we’re still getting paid. So the problem is not with the accounting programs, but with someone tinkering with the program, someone who’s smart, but not an accountant.”
They stopped eating while to absorb the news. Jim waved off a waiter who hurried to the table to ask if there were a problem. Marta picked up a wine bottle. “I think I need another glass. Anybody else?” There were nods around the table and Marta poured.
“That was about a year ago, you say?” asked Jim.
Denise nodded.
Marta and Jim looked at each other. Marta said one word, “Eva.” Jim nodded slowly and said, “That would have been about when Eva was getting the bid ready for Rockford. Do you think that there’s a connection?”
Movement stopped around the table. Denise looked puzzled, but realized that Marta and Jim, even Dana, knew something that she was about to learn.
The waiter served the main course family-style. Beef stew served in a heavy kettle, accompanied by a delicate chayote squash and fried plantain slices. They pondered Denise’s revelation while they ate. Dana only pushed his food around his plate.
Marta turned to Denise. “Can you make a list of the customers who were affected? We have to deal with this.”
Denise looked miserable. “No. I can’t. I was locked out of the system two days ago. I thought I’d been fired but I’m still on the payroll. Just all of my company access is gone.”
“What the hell is Eva up to?” Jim asked. There was no reply.
The NMech jet circled Boston’s Logan airport until the air traffic controller indicated a break in the commercial traffic and provided landing instructions. The pilot taxied to a private hanger and rolled to a stop. Rafael Cruz and his escorts were met by two more NMech security agents. He was frisked and warned again.
A woman’s voice said, “You’re coming with me.”
Rafael turned and saw a small woman. She directed the security men to flank Rafael Cruz, and then waved her sleeve at the ex-prisoner.
“Recording. Say hello to your daughter. She’ll get the datafeed soon.”
Eva Rozen’s Boston home resembled her office—functional and unadorned. The dwelling’s front door led to a stairway. At the third floor there was a narrow hallway that ran the length of the unit’s spine. The lighting was dim and consisted of old-fashioned light bulbs. There were no brightwalls here. She’d even removed all of the windows in the apartment and replaced the self-cleaning, insulated nanocoated glass with old-fashioned window panes. It had been difficult to find a glazier with ordinary panes, but Rozen had the resources to pay for the out-of-style glass.
The apartment had the same configuration as her childhood home. The first room off the narrow hallway was a small bedroom, unused. This would have been Gergana’s room. Next was the bathroom—cramped by the standards of Eva’s current wealth, but one that matched the dimensions of her childhood apartment. Then a small bedroom, just large enough for a standard-sized box spring and mattress with ordinary sheets, a thin blanket, and a pillow. Next came the master suite and, finally, the kitchen. That was reduced to a small cupboard and refrigerator, stocked with an assortment of the humble foods from her childhood: blood sausage, spicy salami, vinegar-dressed potato salad and mish mash—an olio of vegetables, eggs, cheese, and spices.
The master suite housed the sole concession to luxury, a smart-bed. It was king-sized, ironic given Eva’s stature, and appointed with nanofiber sheets that were as frictionless as graphite and touched her skin as lightly as a whisper. The smartbed adjusted to her fidgety slumber and matched her body temperature, degree for degree. Despite the luxury, she slept no more than three or four hours at a time.
The black-clad NMech security agents who escorted Rafael to Eva’s apartment spent little time observing their CEO’s odd decorating sense. She had used them often as bodyguards, and, on occasion, for special services of a more intimate nature. They delivered Cruz to the guest room. One of the agents subvocalized a quick command to the apartment datapillar and explained to Rafael that he was to remain in the guestroom. He was not to wander anywhere else in the apartment, save the bathroom, nor was he to attempt to remove the security collar unless he enjoyed considerable pain.
“How long am I going to be here?” he asked.
“Don’t know.”
“What about my daughter? Can I see her?”
“Don’t know. Stay put.” They guards rechecked Cruz’s security collar and then left.
Rafael sat down on his bed. It was even more uncomfortable than it appeared. He paced along the room’s length and looked at the bare walls. He’d had more freedom in prison.
The waiter brought coffee—Puerto Rican coffee, of course. “Our coffee was once considered the best in the world,” said Marta, proudly.
“Right, Mom. Everything is better in PR. Is this from Yocahu, too?”
Marta smiled at her son. “Dana,” she said with a gentle intensity. “Every growing thing is a gift from Yocahu.”
Dana had been watching Denise and looked thoughtful. “Mom, we need to get Denise out of Boston, away from Eva.”
“Why?”
“Mom, don’t you see? If Denise knows about whatever Eva is doing, and Eva knows that Denise knows, Eva isn’t going to let Denise alone.”
“So, she’ll fire Denise. We’ll rehire her.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Dana. “Do you think that Eva will let the only person with some proof of what she’s doing just walk away? Eva will, uh, get Denise out of the way.”
Jim spoke, addressing Denise, “My son can be melodramatic.”
“Dad! Listen to me! Ever since Eva took on the Rockford bid there’s been something wrong with her. I could see it even though you tried to keep me away from her. And every time I tried to talk to you about it, you would change the subject. You and Mom wouldn’t admit it. You think Aunt Colleen really had a heart attack? The last thing Eva said to me was that she had some ‘big mischief.’ What if Aunt Colleen was just the beginning?”
Turning to Denise, Dana said, “There’s something wrong with Eva. She’s going to see you as a threat, and she’s not going to let you just walk around knowing about what she’s done. You’ve got to go somewhere safe.”
“I can go home,” Denise said. “I live in Melrose.”
Marta nodded. “Dana, you’re right. And Eva will find Denise in Melrose.” To Denise, “My dear, I’m sorry, but you’ve stepped on a hornet’s nest. She must know that you figured it out.” Marta thought for a moment and then smiled.
“Denise, have you ever been to a rainforest?”
“You mean, like the Amazon?”
“Like that,” said Marta. “There are rainforests all around the world, but the gentlest one is called El Yunque. It’s the most beautiful place on earth, and I have family there you can stay with. No one will find you there.”
She touched her datasleeve and called up a display and was about to make travel arrangements. Dana put his hand on her sleeve.
“Mom, stop,” he said.
“Why? Abuela’s family can take care of Denise.”
“Mom, think. How’s Denise going to get there?”
“She’ll fly. I’ll pay for the ticket.” She turned to Denise. “Don’t you worry—consider this a work assignment. NMech will pay for your travel, and your time.”
“That’s just it, Mom. Eva’s going to find out. You’re still missing the point. Eva may be the richest woman in the world, but right now she may be the most dangerous person in the world. Let me do it. I can jack the airlines and get her on under another name.”
“Since when does my son jack anything?”
“Mom, I’m almost sixteen. I know as much about ghosting as Eva does,” he boasted. “Remember—she used to teach me. We kind of covered a little more than most kids.”
“How long have you been ghosting?”
“Can we talk about it later? Right now, let’s get Denise to Puerto Rico.”
“Puerto Rico?” Denise exclaimed. “I’m going to the Caribbean? You mean it?”
Dana turned to her. “Make up a name. First, middle and last.”
“Okay.” Denise thought for a moment. “How about Simone Ann Bening?”
“Where did you get the name?” asked Dana.
“After the Flemish artist, Simon Bening. I just borrowed it.”
“Better avoid a name from history. Eva will be looking for you already and her pillar will do a wide search. The searchbot will notice any coincidence and follow up on it. Let’s make it, uh, Barbara. Barbara Anne Benning. Anne with an ‘e’.”
“OK,” said Denise. “Barbara Anne Benning, Anne with an ‘e’ it is.”
Dana held up his hand. “Link your sleeve to mine.” She mimicked the gesture. Dana called up a display and subvocalized for a few moments. There was a half-second electronic conversation between the two sleeves.
“Okay,” he said at last. “You’re travelling as Barbara Anne Benning. Take the maglev from the South Station depot. You’ll be in Philadelphia in about two hours but you have to leave now. There’s a John Jays one block from the station there. I doubt that Eva will look for you in a high-end store that far from Boston. Buy yourself a carry-on bag and some summer clothing. I’ll use my ghost to link to Mom’s family in Puerto Rico and let them know they have a special guest on the way. They’ll pass the message to Abuela, Mom’s grandmother. You’re going to love her.”
“Dana, I can’t afford John Jays,” Denise said.
“Don’t worry. You have an open account there now. Don’t try to link with Mom or Dad because Eva will find you.”
“Can I call my neighbor to take care of my cat?”
“Yes, but don’t say where you’re going. We’ll deal with Rex later, after this is resolved. Until then, you can link with my ghost account. It’s already on your sleeve. Anytime you link to me, start by saying, ‘Abuela says hello.’ Don’t trust anything you think is from me unless I start by asking about Abuela’s health. If you’re in trouble, say that Uncle Roberto says hello.”
Marta interrupted. “Dana, my uncle died three years ago.”
“That’s the point, Mom. You know that and I know that, but Eva won’t because that part of your family doesn’t use pillar-and-sleeve tech.”
There was a hurried round of hugs. Barbara Anne Benning hailed a cab for the train station. She turned to the family that had befriended her. “Remember this. It’s important. If you find the pillar that Eva is using to control the NMech accounts, look for some code that would put a hold on customer accounts for nonpayment. Look in the accounts receivable programs. Normally, it’s the credit department that places a hold. But look in receivables and you’ll find her backdoor into the system. And thank you for everything.”
She turned and looked at Dana. “If you were about ten years older…”
He blushed.
Then Barbara Anne Benning, née Denise Warren, stepped into a cab and disappeared into the Boston traffic.
Marta looked at her son. “I’m proud of you, but when this is over, we’re going to have a little talk about ghosting. Let’s get home now. I’ve got something that will help.”
Eva arrived home three hours later. Rafael called out, “Hello? Somebody here? I’m hungry. Can I get out?”
Eva walked to the guest room-cum-cell. “Hold still,” she said. “I get you something. Later, you will see your daughter. Maybe. Do what I say and Marta and your grandson will be okay. Don’t cross me or all three of you have great pain.”
Eva left and returned with food and water. “Eat up. I’ve got work to do.”
She returned to her office and thought for a few minutes. How the hell did that accounting clerk stumble onto Cerberus? What did she tell Marta and Jim? This on top of the Rockford investigation? I need that complication like I need a stump.
Eva started to pace. Her arm itched again. She put on a piece of medical cloth to deaden the sensation and to repair the skin where it had been rubbed raw by her scratching.
“I need to hold them back for a while.” She was talking out loud, addressing no one in particular. She touched her datasleeve. “This will do quite nicely.”
A status light on the datapillar she called Cerberus turned green. She called up her display and subvocalized. Then the light turned from green to red.
The Great Washout had begun.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
WAZA NATIONAL PARK, CAMEROON
PARAGUANÁ PENINSULA, VENEZUELA
BADULLA, SRI LANKA
MARCH 4, 2045
Halfway to their home in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Marta’s sleeve pinged an incoming link from Eva Rozen. It was tagged “urgent.”
“I just got a link from Eva,” said Marta. She reached for her sleeve but Dana put a hand out to stop her.
“Wait until we get home,” he said. “Whatever she wants, let her stew. She’s had plenty of time to plan. Let’s figure out how to respond.”
Ten minutes later, they arrived at a rambling Federal-style home in their Pill Hill neighborhood, a two-story white house with black shutters. Fir trees dotted the front yard. The driveway passed the front door and dog-legged back to a large, well-maintained garden, now lifeless in the Boston winter. Theirs was one of the first homes built in what had been farmland nearly four-hundred years earlier. A wooded area abutted the residence, and beyond that, the ponds, brooks, and culverts that connect the Muddy River to the Charles River.
They left their scarves and coats in the mud porch and headed for the living room. Dana touched the wall and pressed gently. The walls, ceiling, windows, and floors radiated heat and the room was comfortable in moments.
Floor-to-ceiling windows covered the living room’s length and offered spectacular views three seasons of the year. Today the winter view was dreary. A walking trail through the wooded area behind the house looked like a ragged streak of mud drawn across the frozen landscape. There were no robins, no crocuses, no tender green shoots. The first signs of spring were hiding, well aware that Boston winters could last for months. Snowstorms in April were not regular but not uncommon.
The family sat on chairs arranged in a grouping around a low, oval-shaped walnut coffee table.
“Mom, quarantine Eva’s message before you open it,” said Dana.
Marta pointed her sleeve to the pillar and transmitted Eva’s message. The pillar would sequester any suspicious data to ensure the integrity of their sleeves and the house systems.
“My son, the security expert,” Jim grinned.
“Dad, it’s what I do. Let me open the file,” said Dana. He stared into a heads-up display and began to subvocalize. “It’s a vid feed. I don’t see anything hidden in it but I’m going to have the dumb pillar display it just as a precaution.”
The dumb pillar was not connected to any house systems, or to anyone’s sleeve. Its function was entertainment, to project films, holos, vids, and music. Dana subvocalized again and the pillar emitted a beam of light. The rainbow holographic transmission focused in the center of the room. The image was a bit grainy suggesting that the recording was created on the fly. A plain room appeared, with a simple bed in the background and a man of moderate height in the foreground. His mahogany brown skin, black eyes, and salt and pepper hair looked out of place in wintery Boston. Dark wrinkles were evidence that he had spent years in the sun without anti-UV enhancements. He wore a simple cotton tunic, a security collar—and a frightened expression.
The man in the recording was looking ahead. “I remember you. You were with my daughter. Is she okay? Is that why I’m here?”
They heard Eva’s voice, “She’s fine. You see her soon enough.” Then the field of view expanded. Jim and Marta and Dana could see two black clad NMech security men flanking the man in the video.
“Oh,” said Marta, very quietly. “Is that my father?” She stared at the holo for several long moments and burst into tears. “Dios mío!” That’s my father! How? I don’t understand. He’s supposed to be in prison.” She started to crumple. The stress of the past several days had taken its toll on Marta’s health.
Jim and Dana rushed over to catch her. Dana pointed with his head and said, “The sofa. Put Mom on the sofa.”
The vid feed of the holo cut off. Eva’s features replaced Rafael’s. Her voice was strained, agitated, her speech reduced to simple thoughts. “Marta, you owe me. You owe me lot. I keep Jim out of jail. I make you rich. I help your poor. I get your father out of prison. Now he is here. You must do what I say. I mean it.”
They watched in sickened horror. Eva had been friend, mentor, and colleague for years. She’d been a difficult friend, to be certain, but she maintained a unique brand of loyalty. Now she was changed. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her hair was unkempt, unwashed. Her recent tics, jitters, and odd mannerisms had progressed to jerky movements, nearly uncontrolled, as if she were a marionette in the hands of a palsied puppeteer. She alternated between brushing non-existent bits of lint from her clothing and scratching hard on her left arm.
Eva’s voice rose. Normally flat and uninflected, it was shrill and unsteady. “Forget police. I stop them anytime. You blame me for Rockford? Soon NMech gets Rockford. We get everything. I reorganize NMech. I get rid of waste. Stay away or I hurt your father. Stay out of my way.”
The link ended abruptly.
“What the hell?” said Jim.
“My father,” said Marta.
“He looked scared, but healthy,” said Jim.
Marta’s eyes welled with tears. “I’ve lived with the fact that I might not see him again, at least not for another decade. But that was him. If Eva got him out of prison now, why didn’t she do it sooner? When she was still, well, sane?”
Jim wrapped his wife in his arms. She buried her face in his chest and sobbed.
Dana stood quietly. When his mother’s cries subsided, he walked to the tall windows and stared out. Without turning back, he asked, “I wonder where Eva has him. Did either of you recognize where the vid was shot? Did anything look familiar?”
“No, nothing,” said Marta. “But did you notice Eva’s speech patterns? The syntax? Even her accent is returning. I don’t like this one bit.”
“There’s something about the vid I can’t quite put my finger on,” said Dana. He turned away from the sad view of dirty snowdrifts and mud—and touched the window to darken it. He said, “Let’s see the vid again.” He subvocalized and Rafael Cruz appeared once more. They could see off-white walls in the background, the corner of a bed and the edge of a window. Once more, Eva delivered her tormented edict.
“She looks terrible,” said Marta. “Her left arm is bleeding. She’s scratching herself raw.” Marta subvocalized and accessed information in her medical database.
“Why is she doing that?” asked Dana.
“Some of the medications for personality disorders can cause itching. I’m guessing that she’s self-medicating in some way. Maybe it’s induced some kind of mood disorder, like BPD.”
“What’s that?” asked Dana.
“Borderline personality disorder. It’s a prolonged disturbance of the personality. A person with BPD can experience mood instability—”
“That’s our Eva,” said Jim, “But she goes a wee bit beyond instability.”
“And it goes way beyond moods, Jim. Listen, we’re dealing with Eva at her worst. We’re in for a rough ride. Eva can’t handle the emotions she’s feeling. They’re too complicated and too threatening. So she splits her feelings. It’s easier to see things as all bad or all good. She idealizes herself, exaggerates her positive qualities, then devalues others. They become the ‘all bad’ to match her ‘all good.’”
“Why now?” asked Jim.
“I can’t even guess, but I can tell you that if we push Eva too hard, she could tip. She would demonize us. If she sees us as all bad, it will be easy to devalue us, to make us non-persons. Then she would have no compunction about killing us.”
“Mom, do you think she killed Aunt Colleen?” asked Dana.
“I’m sorry, but yes, she might have.”
“But if she killed Aunt Colleen…” said Dana, his voice trailing off.
“Remember, we’re not dealing with a sane person anymore,” said Marta.
“She was always nice to me,” countered Dana. Jim said, “She’s never been normal.”
“She was always nice to me. She was okay in her own way until you and Mom teamed up against her.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Jim spoke, “Dana, the Eva you knew when she was your teacher is not the Eva we’re seeing today,” Jim said.
“Why would she turn on us? Would she hate me now, too?”
“Dana,” Marta said gently, “something happened to her, something changed her.”
“Mom, I’ve been trying to tell you and Dad for a long time. But you kept on saying, ‘Oh, that’s just Eva,’ or ‘She can be moody.’ But it all came down to public health. Without her all that would have been impossible.” Dana choked back a sob. “And then you made sure that I couldn’t spend any time with her. One of my best friends—and I needed a chaperone to be around Eva. Maybe I could have helped her. You could have helped her. You have all these herbs and plants from Yocahu”—he spat the word—“and you could have helped her.”
Marta started to cry. Dana’s accusation rang true. “Hijo mia, come here.”
Dana held his mother at arms’ length. He held her tenderly and respectfully, but at a distance. There was a mixture of pleading and command in his voice, “Mom, you have to figure out what happened to her so you can fix her. I like plain old weird Eva.” Then he embraced his mother and they absorbed strength from each other.
But Dana wasn’t finished. He turned to his father. “And you? She was your best friend. Then you didn’t want anything to do with her. I don’t know what she did to you, but can’t you forgive her? Look where we are now. Why did you shut her out, anyway?”
“It’s a long story, Dana,” said Jim.
“Baloney! ‘Long story’ is what you say when you really mean, ‘I screwed up.’ Okay, you don’t want to tell me why you stopped being her friend after all these years? Fine. But you took her away from me. And you had no right to mess with my friends.
The three stood silently. As one, they reached for each other, huddling together, each mourning in his or her own way. Jim shed silent tears. Marta sobbed gently. Dana stared straight ahead, angry one moment, crushed the next.
At long last, Jim spoke, his voice tactical. “Right now, we have three related problems. First, where is Rafael? Second, how do we get him away from Eva? Finally, there’s the small matter of what she’s going to do next.”
“Play the vid again, Dana,” Marta instructed.
They watched it again and then Marta pondered out loud, “This is troubling. My dad is one thing, but I’m terrified about what she’s going to do. She said, I ‘reorganize NMech. I get rid of the waste.’ I wonder if she’s going to do something with our public health projects. That was how she described them—a waste. She said over and over that she only did it to get me to join NMech. My god, if she terminates the public programs, there are people who will die. I mean thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.”
“What kinds of projects, Mom?”
“Ah, a lot. Let me make a list.”
Marta touched her sleeve and subvocalized. She frowned, and tried again.
“Guys. We’ve got trouble. I can’t access any of the public projects, the subsidized patients, the donated nanomeds—none of it. I can’t tell if she’s terminated those programs or just locked me out. She could wash out every charitable activity we’ve built.”
“How do we stop her?” asked Jim.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what she’s doing. I don’t know how she terminated the accounts that Denise Warren told us about. I don’t know how to stop her.”
“Can the public health projects be restarted?” asked Jim.
“I don’t know that either. I don’t even know if NMech still exists. Oh God, I feel helpless.”
“Dana, link to the newsfeeds. See if there’s anything,” said Jim.
Dana subvocalized and a series of images projected before them.
“Look. There. And there,” Dana pointed.
One feed showed a panorama of hospital entrances, flooded with ambulances. There were desperate fathers and screaming mothers carrying their children. Old men and women with labored breathing, their faces pale or jaundiced. Another series of feeds showed the chaos and violence of street riots or worse—running battles between military or police agencies on one side and pirate armies on another.
Dana stood, speechless. Marta sat down heavily, her legs unable to support her. Jim watched the feeds. Dana moved to comfort his mother.
“How is she doing this?” Marta cried.
Dana asked, “Can she be controlling this from her office?”
“I don’t think so. Eva would have hidden everything. I had the technical staff search for anything that looked suspicious right after the explosion. Eva’s pillar had been dormant. She must have another one somewhere.”
“I bet that’s where she’s got my grandfather,” said Dana. “I think I saw a clue in the vid. I’m going to play it again to be sure.”
Morning broke on March 4. The usual chitters, howls, and grunts of Waza National Park’s wildlife were joined by a new sound. Cries of dismay and alarm echoed among Sergeant Mike Imfeld’s squad. Their uniforms were dead. It was as if a master switch turned every uniform to dumb cloth. The medical sensors were muted; the protective liquid armor puddled uselessly; shirtsleeve bandages for cuts or scrapes morphed from medical marvels to blood-mottled fabric. Even the command, control, and communications applications were dead. In the event of an attack, they would be reduced to blind firing.
Imfeld’s problems were compounded by his foe’s skill. Aluwa’s scouts had come of age in the forest. A small company followed Imfeld’s squad’s every move. Seventy-five child-soldiers circled north above Waza and then south to reach the park’s eastern border and set up an enfilade with a company on the western border with Imfeld’s squad in the middle. Aluwa knew he would have the element of surprise. What the teenaged general did not know was that the EcoForce’s defenses had been disabled by instructions from Cerberus.
When Aluwa’s attack began at 0700 hours, local time, the Eco-Force squad’s defense was unfocused. The battle for Waza National Park was over in less than thirty minutes. Aluwa suffered nine casualties. None of Imfeld’s troops survived. The Great Washout claimed its first military casualties.
Dana Ecco subvocalized and the dumb pillar projected Eva Rozen’s vid feed. There was Rafael Cruz. Behind him were the plain walls, the small bed and the edge of a window.
“There,” said Dana. “The window.”
Jim said, “So what? We can’t see what’s outside of the window.”
Dana said, “Look at the window itself. That’s not smart glass. It’s an old-fashioned window. Look at the glass. See the little ripples in the window?” He subvocalized and magnified the image which showed a moiré pattern in the glass.
“You’re right,” said Marta. She stared at the vid. “Nobody uses plain glass anymore. Building codes require smart glass.”
Dana said, “So where does Eva go that would have this kind of a window?”
“I bet it’s her home,” said Marta. “I remember, back at Harvard. One of the few times she ever talked about her childhood, she described the apartment where she grew up. She swore that if she ever was successful—no, make that when she became successful, she never had any doubts—she wanted to recreate her childhood apartment in Sofia.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Dana.
“We’re going to pay her a visit,” said Marta.
“Not yet,” said Jim. “First you and Dana go to her office and see if you can find anything that will restart the public health programs. I’m going to get your father.”
Marta said, “I think she’s taken on some enhancements. If I’m right you can’t face her without being prepared. I’m expecting a delivery, something for you that Eva won’t expect. And I need a little time in the lab to confirm my suspicions about her.”
When the Cerro Rojo plant failed, Nancy Kiley made an inventory of the region’s available water, took stock of her own situation, and made an executive decision: she fled.
The region’s principal water reserve was the eight million gallons remaining in the pipeline that carried Cerro Rojo’s output to its customers. Kiley did a quick calculation to estimate how much time she had. Eight million gallons of water for thirty million thirsty people. Fifteen quarts each. Survival ration for a healthy human at rest is a bit over three quarts daily. If they used the water in the pipelines only for drinking, the region’s population could survive for a few days—if it rested in the shade. Factor in sanitation and hygiene, the need rises to fifty quarts a day or more. But agriculture and industry also lay claim to the liquid treasure.
She had little time. Within hours, the populations of six Caribbean islands and the northeast coast of South America would be parched. And Nancy Kiley wanted to be anywhere in the world other than in the middle of a water riot.
Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. Nancy Kiley stuffed her travel documents, a change of clothing and a few personal items in to a bag. Before she commandeered an NMech land vehicle, she doubled back to her tent and stuffed a treasured pair of comfortable shoes into her pack—I’ll be damned if I have to wear freaking boots when I’m out of this shithole.
“What are you doing, Dr. Kiley?” her administrator asked as he watched Kiley leave. I can be in Maracaibo in less than two hours, but not if I have to take time to explain. “It looks like there might be a problem upstream of the plant,” Kiley temporized. “I should be back in a few hours.”
“You can’t leave now. What are we going to do here? The whole system is down. What do we try now?”
“You’ve got a whole team to figure it out. Stop complaining and get to work.” Startled, the admin turned and left.
Kiley went back to her escape plan. Canada had been spared the worst of the drought and its climate harbored none of the fire ants, scorpions, and the other creatures that had bedeviled her here in Paraguaná. She could walk on pavement, not gravel, and enjoy seasons with temperatures less than 90 degrees. If she could make it to Toronto, then she might be safe.
Kiley subvocalized and checked airline schedules. Bad news. No flights to the northern United States or Canada until the next day. By then riots would overtake the airport. She started to weep. Goddam Eva Rozen for getting me into this. Why don’t you come down here for a spell, you fucking dwarf! She pounded the dashboard in frustration, then chided herself. Come on, Nancy—think like a scientist, an executive.
An executive? That was an idea. She wasn’t part of the most senior management, but perhaps she could appropriate one of their privileges. Eva spared no expense to get me here. NMech can spare no expense to get me the hell out again. She found a corporate jet in Boston, fueled and idle after a flight from Mexico. Kiley linked to the pilot. He was agreeable. There were no travel orders from Rozen and anyway, she’d been unreachable. Nancy agreed to a fare equal to a month’s salary and the promise of some personal time with the pilot. He would be in Bogotá when she arrived and would take her to Canada.
Kiley left her vehicle at the Maracaibo depot and sprinted to the maglev. The region would soon be bloody, but with a little luck she’d be airborne before it all went bad. For the first time in weeks, she began to relax. A long shower topped her list of things she’d do when she was safe. No, make that a bath. Hot water up to her chin. Quiet music, a bottle of wine. Make that two bottles. She would soak till her skin was as wrinkled as a prune.
The maglev decelerated at the airport and Kiley came out of her reverie. She grabbed the pack with her travel papers and clothing and headed for a private terminal where the NMech jet was fueled and ready. Fifteen minutes later she was pressed back in her seat as the aircraft accelerated. The landing gear bumped as it folded into the belly of the craft, and after a steep banking turn into the sun, they were heading north. Within minutes she and the pilot were cruising at 30,000 feet, destination: Toronto. There she would find cool weather, moist air, no water shortages, and no damn bugs.
Nancy Kiley unbuckled her seat belt and stretched. From the plane’s bar she poured vodka into a tumbler of ice and swallowed half, cherishing the cool burn in her throat almost as much as the quiet roar of the jet. She shut down her commlink. Let her staff, no, make that her former staff, let them deal with the desal plant. For the next few hours, Nancy Kiley would enjoy the solitude of the plane’s small but comfortable cabin and its well-stocked bar.
She freshened her drink and took her pack to the lavatory. There was a shower, large enough to lather and rinse. She drained the glass, stripped, and stepped in. The water was tepid. As long as I’m away from Cerro Rojo, I’d shower in a glacier, she thought.
Nancy lingered, lathered, rinsed, stepped out of the shower and toweled dry. She poured another vodka, her third. Her clothing was stained despite the self-cleaning nanofibers. No matter. She would buy a new wardrobe in Toronto. She shrugged into clean bra and panties from her pack, along with a fresh tee-shirt and slacks. Nothing fancy, but clean.
Her one nod to fashion was the shoes, a pair of Dolce & Gabbana ballet flats, shoes that she’d carried halfway around the world. Nancy handled them with the reverence reserved for a holy relic. They were comfortable, lace print silk and leather with a tiny version of the distinctive D&G logo worked into the print pattern. Kiley smiled in anticipation. There hadn’t been an opportunity to wear D&G in the Paraguanán scrubland.
The shoes. Something about the shoes. What was it? Fatigue, dehydration, altitude, and alcohol slowed her thinking. She giggled and reached again into her pack. Where were her socks? Well, Dolce & Gabanna was made for bare feet. She steadied herself, sighed, and slipped the left shoe onto a tired foot.
Had Nancy Kiley been sober, she might have looked inside the shoe before slipping it on, out of habit, or to admire the fine Italian workmanship. She would have seen the bright yellow amphibian, smaller than the tip of her thumb, enjoying the cool darkness in the toe of her shoe. A sober Nancy Kiley might have found her socks. The material’s tough nanofibers would have repelled the frog’s poison. Even after direct contact, Kiley might have survived were it not for the cracked skin on the bottom of her feet.
The stowaway was a female Golden Dart Frog, Phyllobates terribilis, reputed to be the most poisonous of the area’s small amphibians. Its skin accumulates a cardiotoxin that leads to convulsions, swift and certain. Brilliant markings warn predators—a caution that Kiley would have seen nine ounces of vodka earlier.
At first, Kiley felt a warm, rubbery sensation. Then pain. The Golden Dart’s toxins offer an unpleasant death, mitigated by hallucinations and by the speed of the poison. A few minutes of agony and disorientation for Nancy Kiley, then oblivion.
When the flight landed in Toronto, the pilot taxied to a private terminal. Once the craft’s engines were silent, he went into the passenger compartment, and halted abruptly. He stared, uncomprehending. His passenger, quite dead, was curled in a fetal position, wearing a shoe on her left foot and clutching her right shoe in a rigid fist. The pilot recoiled in panic, then giggled uncontrollably and recited an old nursery rhyme. “Deedle, deedle, dumplin’, my son John. One shoe off and one shoe on.” He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had just landed an unauthorized flight carrying a dead body into a foreign country. He subvocalized to ready his flight back to Boston and noted that martial law had been imposed in the larger Caribbean islands and that over a thousand civilian casualties had been recorded in the first few hours of the Great Carib Water Riots.
Jagen Cater stumbled out of the train’s lavatory and took hold of the top of each seat he passed to steady himself until he fell back into his own seat. He closed his eyes in resignation. The face he’d seen in the mirror was jaundiced. The task of urinating had become difficult and what he saw had terrified him. His urine was cloudy with waste. Its frothy presence in the toilet told him that his dialysis device had failed.
Now he understood the exhaustion, the disorientation. All of the symptoms of end-stage renal failure were present: fatigue, confusion, swelling of the feet and hands. No wonder his shoes felt too tight. Even bad breath—hadn’t the conductor shied away from him? Next would come the nosebleeds, the bruising, the bloody stools and urine. His hands and feet would become numb. Walking would be difficult. Confusion would peak just before he lapsed into a coma.
With stoic fatalism he reasoned that the IDD had given him five years of life. If it were his karma to leave the material plane today, then so be it. Too bad about the fine plucking. The year’s harvest would have been superb…
Before this day was over, Jagen Cater’s thoughts would turn to the Compassionate Buddha. His invocations would be joined by the prayers of some half million other IDD users—invocations to Jesus, to Allah, to Krishna, to the Great Spirit, to a higher power. All would fall on unresponsive ears.
Eva Rozen’s Cerberus program was implacable and denied their appeals for life, turning the murmured pleas into prayers before dying.
Eight thousand, five hundred, seventy-seven miles east of Jagen Cater, one third of the world’s circumference, a disheveled Eva Rozen paced. She was jittery, her movements awkward. Her hair, normally a tight mass, was tousled. She picked repeatedly at her rumpled clothing, pinching nonexistent bits of lint. For the past two hours, Eva’s assistants, public relations in particular, had tried without success to link to her. Proposals to review, contracts to approve and plans to implement, were ignored. Eva’s thoughts were far from NMech operations.
Her focus was internal. Images below the level of her conscious awareness pressed insistently. Unconscious memories vied with immediate needs. The push and pull of the past, set against the demands of the present, was taking a massive toll on her equilibrium. She couldn’t concentrate. Her arms continued to itch. She was speaking to herself—or was it to an unseen audience? The patter was unintelligible.
For the first years of Eva Rozen’s life, Mama and Papa treated her first as an object of pride and then as one that inspired disdain. The child Eva looked into this mirror and found herself both worthy and contemptible. Her self-loathing grew despite the nurturing she received from her sister. Eva developed survival strategies—aggression and an exaggerated sense of entitlement to bolster a fragile ego. Strike first, lest ye be stricken; strike harder if ye are struck.
For four decades, she balanced antagonism with an unrelenting need for acceptance. She found this acceptance in only three people. The first was her sister, Gergana, who loved and sheltered and comforted the infant Eva and the juvenile Eva. The second person who had accepted her without reservation was Jim Ecco, whose marriage to another Eva facilitated. And she found acceptance from Dana. Eva idealized him as the child she could have been, the life she could have lived, the child she could have borne, until Marta ripped Dana out of her orbit.
The weight of memory, the inexorable pull of longing unfulfilled became unbearable, and the structures that supported her rational mind collapsed. The mechanisms that filtered the bewildering din from the Table of Clamorous Voices were swept away, and with them Gergana’s murmurs of comfort and adoration were lost. The loudest voices—those of Bare Chest, Doran, Papa—held sway.
Eva Rozen began to decompensate and an unquenchable rage emerged.
Jim and Dana waited while Marta excused herself to her home office and lab.
“What’s Mom doing?” Dana asked.
Jim shrugged. “Either something with science or something with Yocahu. I can’t always tell the two apart.”
“Do you believe in Yocahu and Juricán?” Dana asked. He sounded nervous, as if trying to replace fear with philosophical speculation.
“I don’t know. It works for her. And the herbs and plants that she’s found also work. If your mom wants to credit Yocahu, then that’s fine with me.”
Their desultory conversation trailed into silence. Dana told his father that he worried about him. What would happen when he found Eva? “I can help you, if you let me, but you just think of me as a kid. Remember, Eva herself taught me computer science and nanotech.”
Jim said, “We’ll see,” the universal parental response which means, “The answer is no but I don’t want to discuss it now.”
“What about Mom?” Dana pressed.
“She needs your help, Dana. The last few days have been tough on her.” Marta’s gait, already slowed by her long battle with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, had deteriorated. Her range of motion narrowed and she hobbled more than walked. Her skin was flushed with a rash. This meant that her periodic fevers were raging once again.
A few minutes later Marta reemerged. “Let me tell you what I found. I started to wonder why Eva had what appears to be a psychotic break.”
Dana interrupted, “What’s that?”
“Loss of contact with reality,” Marta answered. “A major personality change. Did you notice how her language had become reduced to simple sentences? Her language pattern suggests thought disorder. It’s a clue to her thinking.”
“She did talk strangely,” Jim agreed.
“She also is extremely jumpy and excitable. Lately, she’s even moving more quickly, almost like she had taken a stimulant. For a while I thought maybe she was using cocaine. It fit, except for the language patterns.”
“Couldn’t she be just plain nuts?” asked Jim.
“Yes, but how is she nuts? That’s the question. And can she get back to normal?”
“Who cares?” asked Jim. “I mean, why not let the police take over? They’re a helluva lot better equipped to handle her, don’t you think?”
“She holds the key to restoring the public health programs, to undoing the damage. If she stays in a psychotic state, she may not be willing to help. She may not be able to help.”
Dana asked, “Why’d she break now?”
“That’s the key question and I think I found the answer. I grabbed her coffee mug from her office to test for stimulants, amphetamines, cocaine, and even SNAP but there were no traces of anything like that. On impulse, I tested the cup for traces of neurotransmitters and found incredible levels of acetylcholine, or ACh. That explains a lot.
“Neurotransmitters relay instructions from the brain to muscles,” Marta said, warding off Dana’s next question. “ACh governs the speed of your thinking and reactions. Not enough ACh and your brain slows. Remember the old syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease? When a person loses her memory and gets confused? That was linked to low levels of ACh. My theory is that she attempted to use ACh to speed up her thinking and reflexes.”
“Why would she do that?” asked Dana.
“I think she experimented on herself when Rockford ran so far behind schedule. Again, I’m just guessing, but I believe that she was hoping that an ACh boost would help her think faster and work faster. And we did get the bid in just on time.”
“Fat lot of good that did,” Jim said. “What went wrong?”
“Too much ACh, then you can become excitable and paranoid. I don’t think that Eva knew how delicate brain chemistry is. Or she didn’t care and was willing to bet everything on this bid. Her body must be under as much strain as her mind.”
Dana asked, “So, does this, this neurotransmitter make her more dangerous?”
“That’d be my guess.” She turned to her husband. “Jim, if I’m right, when you confront her, you have to be careful. She’ll be paranoid and irrational. And you can count on her moving a lot faster than anyone you’ve ever encountered.”
The conversation was interrupted when a messenger delivered the package Marta was expecting. Inside the bulky container were two formfitting pieces of nanotextile clothing.
“Okay,” said Jim. “So, what’s up with the skinsuit?”
“Dana and I are going back to NMech to search her work areas again to try to restart the public health programs. The skinsuit is for you. It may keep you alive.”
The Great Washout was about to award Eva Rozen with the credentials of a mass murderer, and a unique one at that. It was carried out singlehanded, initiated in seconds, and fulfilled in less time than it would have taken to read a roster of the dead. There were some 20,000 fatalities from the Caribbean water riots and another 120,000 dead from dehydration. Nearly a half million IDD users; 110,000 dead from diabetic convulsions. Lt. Colonel Fierra’s dozen troops. Hundreds of recreational drug users. And millions of others were imperiled, including a close-knit Boston family that shared a passion for science and humanity.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2045
Commonwealth Avenue begins at the western edge of Boston’s Public Garden, under the watchful eyes of no less a luminary than George Washington. At thirty-eight feet, the mounted leader on his bronze steed is the city’s largest public sculpture and perhaps the most impressive. The horse’s eyes looked ahead. Its ears were pricked forward, drawn to a looming battle.
The boulevard leaves the tranquility of the Public Garden and stretches through Back Bay, Allston, Brighton, and Newton. It crosses the Charles River and continues west. Eva Rozen’s home was a stately brownstone in an elegant and exclusive neighborhood just three blocks from George Washington’s prescient horse. A grassy mall dotted with statuary and memorials divides the avenue. A few months earlier, the mall had been sanctified in the first snow of winter. Today it was cold and raw, gray and forbidding.
Jim’s senses were on high alert as he approached Eva’s home on foot, scanning the building with caution. He’d often strolled here, but in all the years Eva called Commonwealth Avenue home, she’d never entertained a single guest. Jim had long admired the rowhouse’s sandstone facing. An eagle guarded the entrance, its copper green wings unfurled. Today, he thought, it should have been a vulture.
He walked west, away from the Public Garden, past Eva’s home. He wanted a good look at the building without being noticed. He adopted the posture and gait of other pedestrians in order to blend into the street scene. He did not even turn his head, but examined the front entrance with his peripheral vision. The door’s lock appeared to be keyed with biometrics. This would not be a problem but surveillance devices might be.
Jim continued west at a stroller’s pace past Eva’s building and turned right on Dartmouth Street. He crossed the mall that bisected Commonwealth Avenue and turned right again. There was an alley between Commonwealth Avenue and Marlborough Street and Jim ducked into its narrow passage. He shed his outer garments, touched his datasleeve and activated the skinsuit Marta had given him, pulling its hood up over his head.
She’d obtained it from a small company founded by a former NMech scientist who remembered Marta’s kindness and was willing to provide the suit. “It provides invisibility and partial armor,” Marta had explained. “The armor isn’t as good as NMech’s, but Eva can disable an NMech skinsuit. And it has a chest pocket so you can carry a few small items without compromising your stealth mode.”
“How is it different from NMech’s military garb?”
“NMech’s smart fabrics use layers of light-sensitive plastic threads that copy the appearance of the environment. It’s better than camouflage but it’s not true invisibility. This suit uses a different technology that will render you invisible.”
Jim took the unimpressive-looking suit. It was covered with a pattern of tiny hexagons that resembled a quilted mattress pad for a doll house. “You sure?”
“I hope so. It bends light using tiny crystals, stacked like a woodpile. Anything underneath the crystals is undetectable at both the visible and infrared spectrums.”
“How does it work? Give me the simple version, please.”
“It’s an old technology, developed in the early 2000s. Back then, scientists weren’t able to cloak objects larger than a tiny fraction of an inch. My colleague found that by building the crystals from nano-sized carbon molecules the cloaking effect would work on larger objects.”
Jim played with the suit. “It feels like it would be comfortable. You say it’s armored?”
“Partially. That’s the tradeoff. Complete invisibility but the armor isn’t as good as magnetic shearing fluid. It uses silicon woven into tiny hexagonal cells. Each cell transmits the energy of an impact to its six neighboring cells, and these in turn to twelve more cells. Then to the next eighteen, and so on. It spreads impact over the whole suit.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this. Is it new?”
“No. The armor was developed years ago for sports gear and luggage.”
“Wait. I’m facing Eva Rozen at her worst wearing a suitcase? Why don’t I just use NMech military armor?”
“Eva can disable anything built by NMech.”
“How come nobody’s used this technology for body armor before now?”
“There’s a downside. No matter where you get hit, you’re going to feel the impact all over your body. Remember, each cell transmits the impact to each neighboring cell. The force will be reduced, but you’ll feel it everywhere. I’m hoping that this works well enough to keep you alive.”
That was two hours ago. Now Jim, invisible, approached Eva’s home on Commonwealth near Clarendon Street. He had to weave in and out of pedestrian traffic to avoid collisions. That’s a drawback to stealth, he thought.
Pausing at her doorway, Jim took a small aerosol can and sprayed an arc of nanoelectronics suspended in paint around the door. This electronic doorway would block any signals or electronic traffic from the entryway’s security. As he sprayed, he was reminded of the old Bible story of the ancient Hebrews, preparing to flee their Egyptian slave masters. The Hebrews painted a splash of the blood of a slaughtered lamb over their doorways to protect the household from the Angel of Death. Jim hoped that his sign on the doorway would disable Eva’s security measures as well as the lamb’s blood protected the Israelites.
Next, he placed a metal ring below the front door’s hand sensor. The fist-sized circle contained powerful magnets at the four compass points. He activated the instrument and turned it in a counter-clockwise direction. The magnets pulled the deadbolt free of the strike plate. If the deadbolt were crafted from a nonmagnetic material, the ring would generate an electric current to power the lock’s motor.
Eva Rozen was a brilliant chemist but she was not a security expert. The door opened to Jim’s device in seconds. Once inside, he paused in the entryway. He hoped that Eva’s determination to recreate the apartment of her youth would mean little enough security that he could find his father-in-law, stop Eva, restart the public health programs, and stay alive. All in a day’s work.
The hallway’s dark paneling lent a claustrophobic feel, and the unfinished pinewood flooring looked shabby. Jim was surprised. Eva’s wealth would have allowed any extravagance, but this part of her home was dark and cramped.
He felt his way up a stairway. There was no sense being stealthy. Most likely Eva already knew he was in. Still, he tested his weight on the outer edges of each step to minimize the groans of the old timbers. Up a second flight to the third-floor landing. He saw a narrow hallway and counted five doors down its length and saw a cramped kitchen at the end. This must be what her apartment in Sofia was like. It’s amazing how much squalor you can buy when you’re rich.
Jim paused at each door and listened for several moments and then placed a room reader on the door. The card-sized device displayed any movement within, even the slow rise and fall of someone’s breathing chest. It displayed the size of the room and the position of any occupants. It could zoom in on an object or take in the entire space.
There was nothing in the first three rooms. Jim sensed a presence in the fourth room even before he used the reader. When he did, it displayed a figure on the left side of the room. Someone was inside, sitting still. Jim enlarged and then focused the shapes within the room and saw that there was a man seated on a bed. The display showed a window on the back wall in the same position as shown on the Eva’s vid. Jim tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. He deactivated the skinsuit, took a deep breath and opened the door slowly, wincing as the old hinges complained. The man inside was Marta’s father, Rafael.
Jim slipped into the plain room and closed the door behind him. “Sir, are you okay?” he asked, his voice low.
Rafael was wearing a simple white tunic and gray gabardine slacks. He had cheap canvas slip-on shoes. Prison shoes. There was a black band around his neck. He started. “Who are you?”
“I’m Marta’s husband.”
“Jim?”
“Yes, I am. Pleased to see you again, sir. Do you know if Eva is here?”
“I heard her go up the stairs,” Rafael said.
“Is that a security collar?” Jim asked, pointing to the black band around his neck.
“Yeah. She said this thing will hurt me bad if I go anywhere in the house except the bathroom. Worse, if I try to take it off.”
Jim said, “Let me look, see if there’s any way to remove it.”
He examined the collar and then touched his datasleeve and linked to Dana. The commdisk on his jaw vibrated as he spoke with his son.
“Where are you and your mom?”
“Eva’s office at NMech. We can’t find anything here. What about you?”
Jim said, “I’m in Eva’s house. No sign of her yet, but I found your grandfather. Tell your mom that he’s okay.” He heard an exclamation of relief as Dana relayed the news.
“Look,” Jim continued. “There’s a security collar around his neck. I want to get it off. You have any ideas about how to disable this thing?” He held up his sleeve and captured an image of the collar and its schematics. A databurst transmitted it to Dana.
The link was silent for a few minutes. Then Dana said, “No. It’s got a fail-safe. It’ll generate a high-voltage electric shock before you could get it off his neck. Maybe fatal.”
“I suppose Eva can get it off,” said Jim. “I just have to convince her.”
“Dad, it’s got a fail-safe. I don’t know if Eva can get it off. I think it’s permanent.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Jim thought a moment and asked Dana, “What about modifying it? Can we make it harmless?”
Dana was silent again, pouring over the information Jim’s sleeve had transmitted. “We can try to lower the output, maybe make it non-lethal.”
“Can that backfire?” Jim asked.
“What?”
“Backfire.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a term from when cars had spark plugs.”
“What’s a spark plug?”
“Never mind,” said Jim. “Could it go off by accident when we try to lower the power?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” said Dana. “But do you have any choice? Otherwise, he’ll be stuck in that room for a long time.”
Jim had broadcast the conversation so that Rafael could follow. The older man said, “I don’t want this thing on me at all. I was better off in prison without it. Do whatever you have to do. I want to see my daughter and my grandson.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “Let’s do it. I have a feeling that Eva’s expecting me.”
“Dad, I’m going to send you a file,” Dana said. “Once you get it, activate the file then transmit it to the security collar. Let’s hope that works.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Jim said.
“Why?”
“Never mind. Just send me the file.” Jim’s sleeve emitted a quiet chime. He had Dana’s transmission. He subvocalized and then pointed his sleeve at the collar. Another chime announced that the file was accepted.
“Well, Rafael seems to be all right,” Jim reported. “Sir,” he said to his father-in-law, “I’m going to find Eva. Please stay here unless it’s an emergency. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the collar.”
He looked Rafael over one more time and then said to Dana, “This is it. I’m going to find her. When I, uh, resolve things, I’ll link back. Now I’m going to link to your mom and then I have to go to work. See you soon.”
Jim linked to his wife. “Querida, I’m going after Eva.”
“Be careful.” Her voice caught. “Te quiero.” I love you.
Jim broke the connection.
He left Rafael in the small bedroom and reengaged his skinsuit. Approaching the stairway, he took a deep breath and climbed, flush with determination and dread. Sixteen steps to the fourth floor. He heard Eva pacing. He inched his way towards the sound.
This floor was different. The construction was new. The walls were paneled with a lighter wood, a reddish hue that gave a more expansive feel. Still, Jim felt hemmed in, despite the light and airy character of the timber.
The hallway led to a large, open work area. Sunlight streamed in through full-length windows. Unlike the windows in the rest of the house, these were modern nanoglass. The floors were ebony and teak. The woods were fashioned into a black and dark brown sunburst, centered in the middle of the room.
Jim heard her before he saw her. Her breathing was uneven and there was an odd crinkling sound as she moved, something like cellophane. It reminded him of wrapping paper on Christmas presents in his childhood. He remembered the barren feeling of the holidays, wondering what might anger his father.
He had not thought much about his parents for years. He’d sent a databurst link to them after he and Marta married. His father replied with an old-fashioned card, something that appeared to have been purchased from the stationary aisle at a grocery store. The card was white, with a silver pair of wedding bells embossed on the cover. The stilted poem inside the card appeared to have been composed by a journeyman writer. The prefabricated message started with the words, “We wish you years of happiness on your wedding day…” Jim wondered how he could enjoy years of happiness on a single day. The card was signed, “Your father and mother.” Not, “Dad and Mom” or, “With love…” or even, “Best wishes…”
His father’s scrawled signature was tiny, the writing faint. Jim could see places where he’d stopped and started. Marta said that the unsteady hand and uneven pressure suggested his health was failing.
“He couldn’t have written, ‘With love’? Or something personal?”
“Shhh… Querido. Let it be. His signature looks like that of someone with some neurological degeneration and loss of muscle control. Maybe Parkinson’s. At least he sent you a card.”
“Yeah, but he’s still playing cock of the walk. He didn’t even let Mom sign it.” And then he never heard from them again, not once, until his mother was dying.
She died six years earlier. Six? Seven? I don’t remember. An attendant at the hospital where she spent her last days had linked to him, to let him know he should come immediately. Her kidneys were failing and she’d refused dialysis. “She just wants to go,” the attendant explained.
Jim flew to Pasadena in an NMech jet to make his peace with her. She was wan and drawn. She greeted him warmly at first, but within minutes, mother and son were arguing. It was as if no time had elapsed in the past quarter century. I guess deathbed scenes work better in vids than in real life, he thought.
The crinkling sound was louder and it pulled Jim’s thoughts back to the present. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Across the open studio Eva stood, feet close together. She seemed to sway. Her eyes were opened wider than normal and had a feral look. There was a rigid tension in her posture. He touched his datasleeve and allowed himself to be visible.
She spoke. “You come to me. You have to. You’re more like me than Marta.”
“No, Eva. This has nothing to do with Marta, or with you and me.”
“You owe me. I helped you. I helped her. Stay here.”
It was like hearing the petulant demands of a toddler. He tried to reason with her as he might with a child. “Eva, you’re a great woman. You are good to your friends. I admire you. But what you did is hurting people, killing them. Tens of thousands of people, maybe more.”
“Disregard that.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if Jim had announced the weather.
“Eva, do you know what is going on around the world? The good things you created are falling apart. We can work together to rebuild it all. Eva, I am your friend and will always be your friend. Let’s fix your good works before more people die.”
He started to edge towards her.
“Don’t come near me. I’ll hurt you.”
“I thought you wanted me to stay.”
“Maybe you’re not really my friend.”
“Eva, please. Let me help you.” Jim kept moving, an inch or two at a time. He averted his gaze, tucked his head down and hunched his shoulders slightly. Subtle transformations in body posture made him look smaller, non-threatening.
Eva took a step. There was that crinkling sound again. He looked carefully at his lifelong friend, now changed into…what? Her garments were covered with a network of black cables, each no wider than a blade of grass. They ran down her arms and legs and around her torso. Jim looked puzzled, then surprised. She was wearing an exoskeleton, electro-active polymer fibers that magnified her strength and allowed her to lift several-hundred-pound objects or strike with superhuman force. She began to walk forward. Jim held his arms out, palms up, as if to say, “I’m no threat.”
Eva advanced. A look of rage had replaced her usual expressionless demeanor. There was no mistaking her intent.
Marta and Dana searched Eva’s office again. There were few papers. Dana helped his mother to jack the datapillar. It was another dead end.
“Do you suppose that she wiped the pillar of any traces?” Marta asked her son.
“There would be something there to find, I think. I’d bet she used a different pillar to wash out the public health programs. Maybe from a pillar at her home.”
“Let’s go help your father,” Marta said.
“No,” said Dana, “We’ll be in his way. He’s better off solo. And her pillar is probably protected. I want to look for something here that will help disable the pillar. So, let’s wait till he links to us.”
Jim stood fast and spoke soothingly. “Eva, you have so much power. You can help. People are rioting in the Caribbean because there’s no more water. Diabetics are going into shock. Kidney patients are dying. They’re innocent. You have the power to save them. Then you and I can sort things out.”
“You can’t stop me,” Eva said in a jittery voice and continued to move towards him. She picked up a chair. Jim started to react even before her hand touched the chair’s straight back. He almost wasn’t fast enough. She threw it at him with no more effort than swatting a fly. The chair hit the wall behind him and shattered.
“Eva. You don’t have to do this. Let me help you.”
She said nothing and closed in on him, a blur of motion. She lashed out with her right hand, a palm strike to the solar plexus with enough force to stop his heart. His skinsuit kept him alive although he felt the impact all over his body. Everything hurt. He flew backwards and crashed to the floor.
Eva came closer and then kicked him just above his knee. The force of the blow stunned him and he winced, but his leg stayed intact.
“Armor won’t help,” said Eva. She touched her datasleeve as Jim staggered to his feet. She aimed a punch. It was too fast to see, but he had started pivoting as soon as he saw her tense to strike. Not soon enough. Her fist hit his shoulder. He was thrown aside but unharmed. He might as well have been an empty container, tossed into the trash.
Jim started to his feet when he felt a wave of fatigue sweep him. He felt weary to his bones. What’s the use? I should have stayed out of her life. I should have stayed a dog trainer.
His mind wandered again and he thought of Ringer. He missed her. The move to Boston had taken years from her life, and he had mourned every day since her death. Naively, he had thought that she would be happy anywhere she could have a walk and a toy. But the northern winters stung Ringer’s eyes and matted her coat. It sliced her delicate foot pads with shards of ice and then burned the wounds when she walked on the rock-salted streets. Just going outside was uncomfortable. She’d pee on the back porch, where the snow had been removed, rather than walk down a short set of stairs and search for a snowless spot where she didn’t risk frostbite on the business end of elimination. Eventually, he learned to shovel the apartment’s tiny back yard for her, an exercise that provided a good deal of amusement to the neighbors.
Eva stared as he lumbered slowly to his feet. She looked puzzled, confused that his armor still worked. Jim touched his sleeve and activated the light-shifting properties of the skinsuit. He was invisible to her once again.
“Nice trick. Won’t help. You can’t touch me,” she said and then started to whirl around like a top, arms extended. Jim knew that if she connected he’d probably be killed.
He had one option. Touching the small disc on his jaw, he linked to Marta and Dana and subvocalized, “Querida, I love you. Dana, I love you. Take care of your mother.” Then Jim crouched and exploded forward, catching Eva at the knees, below her whirling arms. She was small and he lifted her off her feet. The momentum of his charge hurled both of them towards the windows on the other side of the workspace.
The collision rocked them both, but the window’s nanoglass held. A second later she started to beat him about his back. His skinsuit kept him alive, but barely conscious. Although each blow was cushioned, he could feel himself weaken. With a scream, Eva drew all of her strength and reached back to strike a killing blow. Her fist hit the window behind them with a strength that was amplified by her madness and the exoskeleton. It was enough to crack the glass.
But the window held.
“What’s he doing?” Marta asked in a quavering voice. “Did that sound like a goodbye to you?”
“Mom. You’ve got to trust Dad. He’ll be okay. We have to find Eva’s key.”
Dana paused and peered intently at his mother. “Mom? Maybe you should sit down. You look pale and your eyes are red. Is it MAS? Mom?”
“I’ll be okay. I’m just going to sit a moment.”
She felt tears starting to stream down her face. She wiped her cheeks. The tears were bright pink. She said, “You’re right. Let’s keep looking.”
“Mom…if you’re having an attack, you need to rest. Mom? Mom?”
Eva’s face was placid. This is it, Jim thought. I’d hoped we’d go through the glass. He’d pinned her to the window but knew he couldn’t hold out for long. She began to beat him. Steady, methodical blows rained down on his back. The pain was excruciating, and his skinsuit armor transferred the impact to cover every inch of his body. With a last effort, he reached out to grab her arms but her amplified strength overwhelmed him. He was looking down at Eva’s teak wood floor and watched with detached interest as his field of vision began to narrow.
Eva had won.
Dana scanned Eva’s office. Her aerie was barren. A desk and chair. Pillar. Carpets. The standard wall decorations: diplomas, photographs of Eva, and the scarab brooch.
Dana stared at the framed bauble. “This thing bothers me, but I can’t figure out why,” he said. He took the brooch down from the wall and out of its frame as he had several times in the past hour.
“Mom. I have an idea. I need a nanoscale microscope, something with a resolution down to say, five or ten nanometers. Is there one in your workspace?”
Marta didn’t seem to hear. Her face was ashen, with streaks of blood-stained tears.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
Her mouth moved but no sound emerged. Her breath hitched.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
Pain shot through Jim’s body. Eva struck with machine-like regularity. His vision was reduced to a tiny patch of the floor below him. He noticed the fine grain of the wood and tried to conjure up an image of Marta and Dana. He didn’t want his last thoughts to be of building materials.
For a moment, Eva stopped. She bent her head down and in an low voice, nearly a whisper, she cackled. Her speech was rough and accented, as if she’d still been in Sofia. “It was simple, Jimmy boy. I knew Rockford to fail. I examine and I see. Design was not good enough. But that is not my problem. Then they blame me? I just say, ‘I quit.’ All I had to do. You should have believed.”
She stopped for a moment and cradled his head in her arms. “You were my friend, Jim. Then you treat me like a freak. You don’t talk to me. You look the other way.”
“Now I hold you last time. I wish I could see you now. Turn off skinsuit.”
The effort even to subvocalize was now beyond Jim. He stayed invisible.
“No? You stay hidden? I love you anyway. But you hurt me. You hurt me much.”
She raised her fist for a killing blow.
Then a shout erupted from the door to Eva’s workspace, a cry of animal pain and rage. Struggling to keep conscious, and with a slow, agonized effort, Jim turned his head. For just a moment, his vision returned. There was Rafael. He was out of captivity, still wearing the security collar. He was alive, enraged, and in agony. With a roar the man hurled himself at Eva, arms outstretched as if to embrace her.
Rafael wore neither exoskeleton nor armor. His strength was fueled only by his anger. It was enough. On impact, the weakened window disintegrated, sending shards of glass and three bodies hurtling through the fourth-floor window. They seemed suspended for a moment and then plummeted to the street below.
The window from which they were propelled by Rafael’s charge was typical of nineteenth-century construction. Each floor featured 14-foot ceilings. The window was 56 feet above the pavement. Eva struck headfirst with a force that exceeded the limits of her exo-skeleton’s strength. She was dead even as the other bodies hit the ground.
Jim’s skinsuit was enough to stop a fist, but the combined weight of three falling bodies transmitted too much energy to his punished body. The weakened silicon armor was useless. His heart and lungs were battered and his brain bounced within his cranium, the force far greater than the cushioning effect of the cerebral fluid surrounding it. He was already unconscious as he struck the pavement and then he joined Eva in death’s embrace.
Rafael landed on top, capstone on a pyramid of bodies. He might have survived the fall but for the security collar. Although its output was diminished, the combination of its relentless release of microwaves, coupled with the shock of impact, stopped his heart.
Less than a mile away, the executive office of the Boylston Street headquarters of NMech echoed with twin horrified cries. Marta and Dana heard Jim’s parting words, a collision, a roar and then the sound of shattering glass. Before they could comprehend the sequence, they heard the whoomp of flesh striking pavement. Then silence.
Marta slumped to the floor. Her breath came in short gasps. “Oh no. No, no, no, no…” Dana came to his mother’s side and held her. He opened his mouth and clenched his eyes shut, and uttered a wail of grief as he pulled his mother even tighter. She turned and held the child to her breast. Their anguish was heart-wrenching. NMech employees rushed into Eva’s office and found mother and child locked in an agonized embrace.
“What is it? What happened?” one of them cried. “What?”
“Jim… Jim… Jim…” Her words tapered off into inchoate cries of despair.
“What happened?”
Their only response was convulsive sobs.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 4, 2045
Marta clung to Dana like a shipwreaked sailor might cling to a a rock. She turned to him and brushed a lock of hair out of his face and wiped tears from his cheek. She kissed his forehead, sobbed again, and then caught hold of herself. She struggled to regain her composure.
“We have to figure out how Eva started this,” she said.
“But there’s nothing here. What are we missing?” Dana asked.
Marta’s self-control cracked. “You mean besides everything that Eva destroyed? Besides that your father is dead? And probably mine? Other than that?” Now her voice was near hysteria. “If there’s some way to stop this disaster, she hid it too well.”
Dana’s head snapped up in sudden realization. “Hidden? Mom, I think I can find the key to Eva’s programming. Something she told me a long time ago about hiding things in plain sight. Come on, we’ve got to do this and then we can, well, whatever. Where is there a nanoscale microscope?”
Marta lumbered to her feet. She teetered and fell back. She grabbed for the edge of the desk but missed. She collapsed.
“Mom? Mom? Mom!” Dana reached down and touched the side of her neck. Her pulse was thready, her skin cold and clammy, her breathing shallow. Dana cradled her head in his lap and called out, “Somebody help! We need help! Link to Emergency Services. Please.”
Several NMech personnel rushed in and found Marta, prone, legs sprawled open, as if welcoming death as her lover. Dana knelt beside her and stroked her hair and face. His face was a map of fatigue and grief.
“What’s wrong?” a woman asked.
“Link to Emergency Services. Now.”
“Dana, they’re all out on emergency calls. Do you know what’s going on out there?”
“Listen,” Dana said to the woman. He subvocalized a holo display, inviting her to look. “Do you see what I’m prepared to send you? I’ll give you her doctor’s cloud data. Get hold of her doctor and get him here now or she’s going to die. Keep the money, share it with the doctor…whatever. But get medical help while there’s still time. Please,” he begged.
The woman took in the sum, ready to be transmitted. Her eyes widened for a moment and then fixed on Dana. Her voice was gentle. “Dana, there’s nobody to reach. The city is under martial law. Most of the country is. All medical personnel are at hospitals or with ambulances. I would do anything for your mother. But it’s impossible.”
Dana groaned. His cry built to a banshee’s wail.
A researcher at NMech burst through the door, a physician before joining NMech. “What’s going on? What happened to Dr. Cruz?”
Dana summarized crisply, “She’s thirty-six years old, severe JRA, and having an attack of MAS.” Then his voice cracked, “Please help my mom.”
“Okay, son. Let’s see what we have.” His voice was calm. Before Dana could move away, Marta reached with one hand and clutched his wrist. Though weakened, her grasp was enough to hold him fast. Dana bent down and put his ear to her mouth.
“Go…stop Eva. Nanoscope in my workspace. I love you, son, with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my might.”
“Mom, you’re going to be all right. Hold on. The doctor’s here.”
“Dana. Listen to me. You must go to El Yunque. Find Abuela. She’ll know what to do.”
“Mom, don’t talk like that. You’re going to be okay.”
Dr. Marta Cruz, bohique and researcher, mother and widow, the scientist credited with ending the Great Washout—or helping to start it, depending on the account—summoned her last reserve of strength. “Hijo! Promise me. Whatever happens, you must go to El Yunque. Promise me!”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. He bent down and embraced her. “Oh, Mama. I promise. But you have to promise me that you will live.”
Marta smiled. “I promise that I will love you always and my spirit will look after you.” She let go of his wrist and reached behind her neck. Clumsy fingers unfastened a string that held a small leather pouch to her breast.
“Dana, take this. You will find someone to wear it. Abuela can teach her, too.” Softly now, “Go to Abuela.”
Dana stared at his mother’s leather pouch. Marta’s voice trailed off, unintelligible now, a series of moans. She was semi-conscious. And then, silent.
The doctor pushed Dana out of the way, ripped apart Marta’s shirt and applied medical cloth to help regulate her vitals, a vain gesture that would do little more than rob the body of its modesty. Dana turned his eyes away from the sight of his mother’s torso. Too cheerful sunlight streamed in through the window, and reflected off the dull surfaces of Eva’s furniture. The shadow cast a gray pallor on Marta’s slack face. The color of life was gone.
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
Imagine waking up every day with a stiff neck, unable to turn your head to the left or to the right. Imagine your back, legs, arms, hands, and hips, as stiff as a rubber toy left overnight in a snow bank. That was my mother’s every morning.
She never complained.
What would you do if your wrists, knees, spine, shoulders, jaw, and ankles were swollen, hot, and tender? Your fingers puffed at each knuckle? Would you cry out? Seek the comfort of human sympathy?
My mother did not complain.
How about the fevers, aches, and fatigue? “Ah,” you would say, “That I can bear. I’d force fluids, nip some whiskey, and take to my sickbed for a few days.” But what if these symptoms persisted, not for a few days, but for years? Would you beg for mercy? Or take the advice of Job’s wife, and “curse God and hope to die”?
My mother did not complain.
What if you bled during times of stress? The odd bit of deep muscle hemorrhage or retinal bleeding? Would you shriek in terror, one fine morning, if your eyes were red-rimmed from blood?
My mother endured all of this silently, cheerfully, even with humor. I remember the year she greeted the neighborhood trick-or-treaters at Halloween red-eyed with blood dripping like tears. Few costumed visitors returned the next year.
At the end, would you accept your progression from morbidity to mortality? Or would you “rage against the dying of the light”?
My mother suffered from a chronic illness, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, JRA. Macrophage activation syndrome or MAS is a painful and life-threatening side effect of JRA. Microphages, literally, “big eaters”, are white blood cells that consume debris and pathogens in the body. If these microphages rampage out of control, they cannibalize the body. MAS’s effects are rapid and often fatal. The stress of the Great Washout triggered an MAS episode.
My mother was a healer and a researcher and she had lived with JRA for years. She understood the significance of her symptoms. Had she sought medical treatment immediately, she would not have collapsed on the eve of the Recovery. Instead, she stayed focused on discovering how Eva Rozen triggered the Great Washout.
My mother didn’t complain. She merely left this world with one more orphan.
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
Years after the Recovery and the humiliation of a lengthy inquest into my parents’ role in the Great Washout, my anger is still fresh.
Dr. Luminaria, the behaviorist who mentored my father, explained to me that the unconscious mind lacks a sense of time. Events that made a mark on me years ago are still current affairs. The mind’s ability to capture sensory input is unimaginable, but it hoards information, doling out memories with a parsimony that would embarrass a miser.
Another agent works with the same automatism as the unconscious mind. My body colludes with my memories and floods me with the chemistry of emotion—cortisol, adrenaline, acetylcholine, catecholamine. I rage, weep, and cower in equal measures, just as Eva Rozen raged for the whole of her unhappy life. My conscious thoughts might dwell on the beautiful or the mundane only to be washed by a bath of neurotransmitters offered by the rage of an eternal fifteen-year-old child who dwells within my unconscious mind. In an instant, I may shiver with fear, quake with rage, or drift into a fugue state—then wonder where I’d gone. The world had its recovery. When will I have mine?
My mother lay dead in her work area. I bent down and kissed her eyelids and cheeks and lips. I picked up her medicine pouch and Eva’s scarab and walked to my mother’s lab. I felt numb, a blessed sensation that would pass all too quickly.
I powered the nanoscope. The device sprayed a phased pattern of X-rays above and below its target. The emissions have a wavelength of just over one-tenth nanometer so it was accurate to the atomic level. The nanoscope analyzes diffraction patterns and produces a detailed image of an object’s surface and electrical composition.
I focused on the scarab. The nanoscope was maddeningly accurate. It was like searching the boardroom conference table with a jeweler’s loupe to find a single grain of salt.
I cursed Eva and her damned scarab, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, but with enough relative space at nanoscale for the contents of an entire library. Where to look? I remembered Eva’s words, “If you want to hide something, put it in plain sight, but make it very, very small” and started with the irregularities in the pin. On the third try, I found her journal. But I faced a bigger challenge. It contained thousands of pages.
I tore myself away from the nanoscope in frustration and helpless rage. How could I find what I needed, what the world so desperately needed, the key for which my parents had given their lives? How would Eva have tagged the information?
I returned to Eva’s workspace, averting my eyes as I passed my mother’s corpse. The doctor and two NMech admins were tending to the body and looked up at me. Judging by their expression, my absence from her corpse was incomprehensible. I continued before they could try to console me.
Eva’s scant possessions were lined up on her desk. An entire lifetime contained in a half-dozen photos, diplomas, and a few pieces of art. I looked again at the photos and artwork. Nothing there. I was running out of time. Where would she have hidden the key I needed?
Then I remembered my last interchange with Eva, when she penned me in an unlocked cage and instructed me to jack nearly a hundred datapillar accounts. One of the accounts bore no name. It had only one item, a strange piece of artwork. At the time, I gave it little heed; events were starting to move too quickly. I had assumed that the unnamed account was hers.
Now the item called out to me. I invoked a heads-up display and looked at the piece contained in that anonymous account. The image was of an antique lithograph, out of place in the ultra-modern sterility of Eva’s world. It portrayed a powerful three-headed dog, eyes bulging, mouths snarling and snapping. One massive paw clutched a human figure. In the lower left corner was a word, all caps: “HELL”, and below that, “Canto 6.” Why would Eva have it? She hated dogs.
I scanned the print with my sleeve and had the office pillar search for the print. In less than a second, I had the answer that had eluded me for hours.
My mother was still lying where she collapsed. Her colleagues stared at me as I passed by, heading back to the nanoscope. I had no time to stop. I’d found the key. The lithograph was by William Blake and it portrayed Cerberus, the guardian beast of the underworld. It fit Eva’s sensibilities perfectly.
Cerberus. That had to be the password. I moved her private journal from her pillar to my sleeve, invoked a display, and skimmed her notes. They were clear, precise, terrifying. The enormity of what she had done made me reel. First, the test cases. A water desalinization plant, disabled. A squad of UN soldiers rendered helpless, overrun. Then kidney dialysis, insulin regulators, terminated for hundreds of thousands, and medication ended for millions by a simple electronic command. What good is a miracle when it is controlled by a madwoman?
Eva’s attack was indeed launched from her home pillar. I ran for the street, ignoring the calls of those attending to my mother’s body. I would grieve later, but now I need to get to Eva’s home as fast as possible. People were dying and I had no time to spare.
I looked across Boylston Street toward Commonwealth Avenue. Four blocks to Eva’s home. An easy jog. But it would be surrounded by emergency workers. I doubled back into my mother’s office and found an NMech military-grade skinsuit with cloaking capabilities. I donned the suit and ran back across Boylston Street and the short distance to Commonwealth Avenue. I turned left and headed west, one long block to Clarendon Street and then a few feet further to Eva Rozen’s home. Six minutes had elapsed.
I was able to avoid police and emergency workers, but not the view of a pyramid of bodies. It was an angry canker on the street. My heart lurched and my gorge rose. I turned away, and scanned the front of the building. There was the fourth-floor window, my father’s passageway to the concrete below and my destination. I slipped in the front door and hurried up the stairs to Eva’s workspace. There was a pillar. I was gambling that it was the one that had launched Great Washout.
I approached it cautiously, scanned with my sleeve and found a data sensor. I triggered a burst from my sleeve, a software cue. The pillar demanded a recognition code. My sleeve emitted a single word, Cerberus. The pillar’s status light turned green. My sleeve pinged.
I was in.
I scanned the programming, afraid that gaining access was the easy part, that Eva’s programming would be incomprehensible. But she was an economical coder, well-organized. She had created an elegant application. It was exactly as Denise Warren had described: there was a sub-routine in the accounts receivable programs that had shut down customer accounts for non-payment. This was an outcome for which Denise had prepared me. I pointed my sleeve at Cerberus and another data burst travelled to Eva’s pillar and deleted the rogue code. Each account’s payment status changed to current. It would take several seconds for all of the accounts to reset, and it would be too late for hundreds of thousands of victims. But millions of others would live.
Emery Miller, Sergeant Mike Imfeld, Nancy Kiley, and Jagen Cater, may they rest in peace. Kiley’s staff survived because the threat posed by region-wide rioting ended when their desal filters came back on line. Kidney patients regained their bearings and backed away from renal failure. Diabetics found their insulin levels returning to normal.
My parents were dead; Colleen Lowell was dead; the Eva Rozen I knew was dead and so was her doppelganger. I was alone.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 4-7, 2045
Twenty-one point eight seconds after Eva Rozen plunged to her death from her Boston brownstone, an electronic Presence awoke. It had been programmed to lie dormant unless a signal from Eva’s datasleeve ended. It was a dead man’s switch, triggered by Eva’s death.
The Presence, a sub-routine within Eva’s home datapillar, reached out with electronic senses. It noted human biological signatures in the Rozen mansion. Immediately, it returned to dormancy. The detection cycle went unnoticed, lasting a mere two milliseconds. The Presence repeated its cycle of animation, search, and dormancy until there were no indications of any complex organic life forms in the dwelling, some three days later.
Finding itself alone for the four seconds required to carry out preprogrammed instructions, the Presence sent hundreds of data-burst signals. Most of these went to financial institutions around the world. Three found human targets and sent pulses to their datasleeves.
One found the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, slipped through her sleeve’s security and pinged an urgent message. The second reached a newly-appointed Special Prosecutor. He was in a press conference and would not see the message for seven minutes, during which time all hell would break loose in the governor’s office.
The last signal activated software that had been downloaded days earlier, when Eva Rozen pushed gently, one final time, on Dana Ecco’s forearm. Dana’s sleeve accepted this last inbound transmission without notifying the preoccupied scion of the Cruz-Ecco family.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 7, 2045
Suffolk County District Attorney Sean Doyle, elected to the first of the public offices he coveted, had progressed in the years since Jim Ecco’s trial for assault and subsequent conviction for disorderly conduct. Doyle rose steadily through the legal system and he won the DA’s office by a comfortable margin two years earlier. Now the legal and political powers that controlled the Commonwealth of Massachusetts believed that the best choice for a Special Prosecutor in the matter of the Great Washout was Sean Doyle.
Granted, there was the small matter of determining exactly whom to prosecute, but Sean Doyle would be the People’s Champion once again.
Doyle kept his trademark navy pinstriped suit, changing only the material to a lustrous nano-silk befitting his enhanced station in life. His red and blue striped club tie still formed itself into a perfect Windsor knot which never loosened or came askew. He no longer needed enhancements: the gray hairs that salted his blond curls fit perfectly with his image of energetic maturity. He strode with purpose into the State House and walked to a podium to greet the media. The event was important enough that the reporters attended it in person, rather than in virtuality.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a brief statement. First, let me thank all of the emergency personnel who helped avert an even greater catastrophe than we might have suffered. My staff is working with governments around the world to ensure that water and medical supplies will not be interrupted again. We restored service to NMech customers just hours ago. Now it is time for an accounting and I can assure the public that we are doing everything in our power to bring those responsible for this vicious act of terrorism to justice.”
“Three persons of interest were killed during what is being called the Great Washout. We believe that they may have had knowledge of how this catastrophe was committed. We have pledged every resource to learning exactly what happened so that we can prevent another attack. The combined resources of the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States government have been placed at my disposal to ferret out the truth and take appropriate action.”
“I will not take questions today. Again, let me thank the emergency responders who prevented a much worse tragedy, and the valiant efforts of those, who, under my direction, stopped the Great Washout. We have begun to restore normalcy to the world.”
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
The family home was now mine although keeping it would prove to be a challenge. My parents’ estate, including the house and their NMech stock had been held in a trust. Their wealth was to transfer to me upon their deaths. On paper, I was one of the richest people in the world.
A battle over my inheritance had already begun. Sean Doyle, Governor Azevedo, the mayor of Boston, Congress, and an army of attorneys were seeking to pry it all away. I was too young, immature, too vulnerable to inherit property. A custodian should hold and manage my wealth until I was twenty-one.
Never mind that my education in wealth-management was more thorough than the self-appointed guardians’ knowledge. They wanted my parents’ estate and would find a way to wrest it from me. Just being in control, even for a few years, would be lucrative. And the possibility of carving up the estate for their own purposes made the prospect of a bruising fight worthwhile.
Eva’s share of the company was in dispute. The City of Boston lay claim to it as did the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and several agencies of the United States government. Sean Doyle assigned himself the ambitious task of trying to find a legal precedent by which he could appoint himself executor of Eva’s estate. Then there were the lawsuits. It would take years to probate her holdings and to settle with the millions who suffered at her hand—a legal limbo that would prove frustrating to all except to the attorneys who poured their best billable efforts into tangling and untangling Eva’s affairs.
The ersatz beneficiaries did not fail to consider that the portion of Eva’s holdings and my parents’ estate included large blocks of NMech stock. If the company failed, the value of the estates would be slashed. They had a vested interest both in keeping NMech alive and in appropriating it.
I focused on my parents’ legacy, not the estate, on their memory, not their money. I used my ghosting skills to have their bodies released from custody then slipped electronically into the pillar of a funeral home and had their remains picked up and delivered to our home. Our home? My home. Now they lay interred near the tree-lined edge of a pond where the Muddy River trailed one last streak of wildness within a great city.
I tried to meditate on their lives but I could not be still. I paced relentlessly, as if expending energy could ease the ache in my heart. Instead, I grew angrier with each step as the shock wore off and rage surged into its place, like a tidal comber filling a rocky void.
I looked through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows and contemplated my parents’ graves—unmarked save for a spray of the healing flora my mother cherished. Soon the plants would wither and freeze in the gloomy Boston winter.
I tried to convince myself that there was a future. I imagined the view from the living room windows in the seasons to come. The earth would celebrate my parents’ sacrifice in three seasons: pastoral spring, teeming with birds, delicate flowers, and tender buds dotting the trees as if from a pointillist’s brush, a reanimated totem of hope; summer’s heavy green blanket, marked by slashes of floral color—yellow asters, orange day lilies, multi-hued clematis—an impressionist rendition of lustful nature; and fall’s crisp cool, concentrating sugars and pigments in the foliage, a harvest celebration of dappled yellow and purple and crimson, a multihued expressionist cry of mortal beauty.
It was a beautiful future, until winter, Eva’s season, an inanimate still life.
Today, spring hid. It waited to heave up through the rime. My anger would not wait. Every muscle in my body was tense. I paced and paused, looking out at the graves as if scanning for reanimation, for resurrection.
My parents died for a world that cared little for their deaths, one that tarred their sacrifice with questions of complicity, grave inquiries by solemn pundits. They were being investigated. Was my mother an accomplice? Had she been guilty of careless science? Did my father join Eva in death as a foe or as an ally? Why was my grandfather, a convicted terrorist on the scene? Many took that as proof of my parents’ involvement in the Great Washout.
As the enormity of what had happened became clearer to me, my tread turned heavier. I could feel my heart break with each step. I replayed my father’s final words to me, “Take care of your mother.” I remember first thinking that I had failed, then realizing that my opportunity to care for her had been stolen.
Now the survivors demanded an inquiry. No emotion but rage would suffice. I would collapse without it.
At last, I truly understood Eva.
The next several hours are still unclear to me. I remember that I screamed and sobbed, cursed God and then tried to negotiate with Him. Eventually I slept.
Sleep is the great palliative and I awoke with an appetite for food and for justice. I pored through Eva’s journals and drew three conclusions. She was brilliant; she had become a different person. And she had planned a catastrophe: gray goo.
Eva had used the puzzling phrase repeatedly in her last several entries. I invoked a heads-up display and found that in 1986, a nanotechnology pioneer considered the possibility of a nano-induced apocalypse. He envisioned trillions of self-replicating nanobots that would break down the structure of all matter on earth into what he dubbed grey goo. The vision was chilling. It was also demonstrably unfeasible. By 2004, the futurist withdrew his apocalyptic hypothesis and confessed, “I wish that I had never used the term.”
Nano-scientists considered the matter closed. Eva didn’t. Nanoapplications need not turn the earth into mush to suit the thing she had become. There were other solutions. Bind even a little of the atmosphere’s oxygen to carbon and the resulting carbon dioxide would kill us all. Develop an artificial microphage, one that attacked cell membranes like the rampaging cells that killed my mother. That would render humans into a primordial soup, while leaving the earth whole.
Her notions were farfetched, I thought. It would take decades to achieve a toxic mass of CO2. She would have to protect herself from the marauding microphages. But if anyone could do it, it would have been Eva. She was a genius. Her reason had been destroyed, but not her skill.
Eva left me a second puzzle, the last entry in her journal. At first, it was incomprehensible. Her voice must have been jittery and the transcribed words were broken. I invoked an edit program and reorganized the characters into something meaningful. Her last words were in Latin: “Nemo me impune lacessit,” and then the initials, “EAP.”
I linked to the home pillar and came up with a translation and source of the Latin phrase. It was used by the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, a Scottish chivalric order created by King James VII in 1687. It is the motto of the Royal Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Scotland. It was used by law enforcement agencies on the mourning bands commemorating a fallen officer. It is also the family motto of a murder victim in an Edgar Allen Poe short story, “A Cask of Amontillado.”
The motto’s translation was a fitting epitaph for Eva Rozen. “No one insults me with impunity” or, “Touch me not without hurt.”
Of all the things that confounded me in those days, this was the most puzzling. I could not imagine Eva reading ‘worthless stories.’ Yet she must have in order to have quoted Poe.
But that was not the end of Eva’s legacy. She left me a final gift.
It was waiting for me on my datasleeve.
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
Dr. Luminaria explained to me that anger is a normal reaction to loss. She compared anger to a life preserver. It is an emotion strong enough to keep a person from drowning in sorrow after a tragedy. Once on dry land, a healthy person discards the life preserver. But many cling to the anger as their misfortune continues to play as a current event in the unconscious. My anger would remain with me for many years and play a near-fatal role in my future.
After I disabled Cerberus, I returned to NMech, to my mother’s workspace. It was hard to see. My eyes brimmed with tears. I sank into the deep pile carpeting my mother favored—an easier surface for her diseased joints to bear. I approached her pillar and invoked a program on my sleeve. I had determined that neither her work nor Eva’s would be left behind. I alone would decide how the world was to benefit from my mother’s labor and I could not allow Eva’s notes into anyone else’s hands. Good and evil would be in my hands. Yocahu and Juricán.
I used my sleeve to relay my mother’s research to my own private pillar. I had done the same at Eva’s home. I reset both pillars to an electronic tabula rasa. ‘Swipe and wipe’ Eva called it.
I could develop the work of the erstwhile colleagues—Eva’s weaponry, my mother’s medicines. Either would take time. I would have to immerse myself in the study of medicine and biochemistry. But I believed I had time, and I’d been trained in science by experts of no less rank than Eva Rozen and my mother.
I took a final look at the place my mother spent so many of her hours, the inviting salon that had been a second home to my father, who enjoyed the simple act of watching his wife lose herself in her work.
It was all gone.
One keepsake caught my attention—an old-fashioned photograph. It was of my great-grandmother, Abuela. I remembered my mother’s tales of Abuela’s great healing prowess. “She saved me,” my mother had said, recounting a childhood summer in the rainforest. I picked up the photo and looked at the lined face of the old woman. Was she really a shaman, a medicine woman? Was the lush green canopy behind her, El Yunque, really a place of magic? Enough wool-gathering. There would be time later for contemplation.
As I set the photograph of Abuela back on the workbench, a memory beckoned. “Hijo. You must promise me that whatever happens, you will go to El Yunque. Promise me!”
I had not paused long enough in the last few days to respond to my mother’s demand. But the voice was insistent, and I had promised my mother. I would go to El Yunque.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2045
Sean Doyle was summoned by state capital security officers to appear ‘forthwith’ at Governor Mariana Azevedo’s home near the State House on Beacon Hill. Azevedo wished to avoid the press, and the Massachusetts Constitution does not provide an executive residence for the governor, although Part the Second, Chapter II, Section I, Article I, of that document invests the state executive with the title, “His Majesty.” Azevedo briefly considered reinstating the title after her election but considered the gender reference to be a demotion.
A hand at each of Doyle’s elbows guided him gently but firmly to the governor’s home, six blocks from the press room at which Doyle had been speaking. The streets were cleared of P-cabs and private cars, and they arrived in minutes.
“Why are we meeting here?” Doyle blurted out when he stood in front of her desk.
Azevedo wore her trademark white baiana dress and turban, the traditional garb of the Bahia region of Brazil. Brazilian immigrants to Massachusetts had become the second-largest voting bloc in the state, and the occupant of the governor’s seat was likely to be determined by the Carioca and Baiano population for many elections to come.
“Sit down, Sean,” Azevedo ordered. “What are we going to do with Eva Rozen’s message?”
“What’s to decide? A full holographic confession? Details on how she triggered the Washout? Where’s the issue?”
“It’s perfect for you as Special Prosecutor, but what will it do for the Commonwealth?”
“You mean for your reelection,” Doyle replied.
“Sean, are you planning to run in ’48?”
“Well, a confession, a conviction of a mass murderer, etc., etc., Madame Governor—I’m not going to waste that kind of political capital.”
“For chrissakes, Sean. Drop the formalities. Do you see any cameras in here?” Doyle looked around and then shook his head. “Then let’s not dance around this. If we release Rozen’s message, how do we both manage to get what we both want? You’ve been drooling over my office for years, and I just fought tooth-and-nail to win it. What will you take instead?”
“Why do I have to take anything if I have her confession?”
“Simple. I fire you on the spot for malfeasance and appoint one of my own people as Special Prosecutor. A few years ago, this nobody, this—what’s his name?—this Jim Ecco character gets off with a disorderly instead of a felonious assault. You screwed up the prosecution, Sean. Now he lands in a pile of bodies with the worst mass murderer in U.S. history. How’s that going to play to the voters?”
“I did no such thing. It was a routine plea bargain.” Doyle’s pale Irish features reddened. He shouted, “And that was years ago!”
“Calm down, Sean, or you’ll bust a blood vessel and trigger a med-alert. That won’t play well with voters.”
Azevedo watched as Doyle grew still. He looked dangerous. When he spoke again, she heard control return to his voice. “Attorney General in ‘48,” he said, “and I want your support in ‘52 if I run for governor or for the senate.”
“I’ll support you for AG. Unless you screw this up or cross me, you’ll pretty much run unopposed. You can have the AG’s office in ’48 but you support me for the senate. You can look at a senate seat after a couple terms as governor—hell, you could try for the Oval Office then. But I announce Rozen’s statement. Deal?” asked Azevedo.
Doyle rose, his pinstriped blue suit following him as carefully as a diligent mother of a two-year-old child. His club tie remained perfectly knotted. He offered his hand. “We have a duty to the people. You announce and then I’ll take questions.”
Azevedo winced inwardly at Doyle’s pompous rhetoric, then smiled. Her political future was secure, at least for the next eight years. After that? Well, she just might see Doyle again, likely on the hustings during a presidential primary race some years from this day.
Azevedo’s flowing white dress and Doyle’s pinstripes made an unlikely diptych as the two politicians addressed the press. As agreed, she announced and played Eva’s confession and then handed Doyle to the media.
Eva Rozen had recorded a holograph. She stood life-size, four feet, four inches tall, wearing her trademark black cargo pants and a black work shirt. Her hands trembled as she spoke. Her accent, gone since childhood, had returned.
“I have nothing to do with Rockford. You want to know how that happen? Go to Texas to find out. Look at results of tests. Look at containment building. Data is no good. I warn you and you ignore me. You cheer when they finish ahead of schedule. You know how they finish early? Sloppy science. That’s why building leaks and explodes. Okay, you pay for that in blood. But then you accuse me of murder? You say I trigger Rockford?”
“Nobody accuse me. You are fools. You will pay. I do not attack you. But I stop my charities. Nobody make me do them. I do myself, I pay for myself, and I stop them myself. You call it public health. Except I pay, not the public. If I cancel anybody by mistake, don’t worry. I give refund. All is fair. Nemo me impune lacessit.”
The conference erupted. Doyle took his time fielding questions, while Governor Azevedo looked on, looking solemn for the vidbots, and left when the obvious question, “Why did she make a confession?” caught the Special Prosecutor by surprise. “I think she was bragging,” Doyle managed, “It was her way of going out with a bang.”
In fact, her confession exonerated Marta and Jim. Doyle did not consider that loyalty might be a part of a mass murderer’s emotional inventory.
A reporter cornered Azevedo backstage and asked how she felt. She peered at the reporter and noted the presence of vidbots. “How do I feel? Terrible! Thousands of people died. However, I am satisfied because a killer will be brought to justice, if posthumously. Her presumed accomplices were cleared of wrongdoing. In fact, I am going to issue a proclamation honoring the memory of Dr. Maria Cruz, who was a hero.”
“What about her husband, Jim Ecco?” the reporter asked.
“Yes, him too.”
Dana Ecco’s datasleeve was the third human target of the kill switch’s transmissions. It activated a series of commands that had lain dormant in the sleeve. There followed hundreds of electronic conversations. These flashed from Dana’s sleeve to financial institutions targeted earlier by Eva Rozen. Data sped back to his sleeve. One by one, Eva Rozen’s assets were transferred to her only beneficiary, Dana Rafael Ecco, along with additional software that prevented the transfers from being traced. By the time the claims and counterclaims among Doyle, Governor Azevedo and the United States government were resolved, there would be no financial assets remaining over which to bicker.
FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO
The journey to Puerto Rico had been fraught with reminders of the past days’ horrors. I flew in the same NMech jet that had delivered my grandfather to Eva and Nancy Kiley to her death. Sean Doyle had seized the craft, but with the assistance of a handful of attorneys, and a bit of ghosting on my part, I’d regained the use of some of NMech’s assets.
I landed in Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport and dismissed the waiting NMech driver and security. The fewer reminders of NMech the better. I stood wilting in the tropical heat outside the terminal, unsure of my next destination. In the end, I took a P-cab, still undecided. I sat in the driverless car and hesitated over several preset destinations. I did not choose El Yunque, but the fortress of El Morro, instead.
The Spanish conquistadores built the stone fort at the tip of the island. For centuries it was an impregnable stronghold on the land they’d conquered. But it was no match for the United States’ military might. In 1898, the fort yielded during a brief assault. Soon the defenders capitulated and Puerto Rico became property of the United States. The conquerors called the military action the Spanish-American War. The island population came to know it as the Invasion of 1898.
I walked the ramparts of El Morro’s stone walls and the wind asked me, What is there here for you? Leave this monument to war and find peace in the forest. Still, I walked. The open ocean hugged one side of the battlements, the old city the other. Both vistas called me—the surging ocean with its wild currents and the well-constructed old city. Would I find peace in wildness or in order? Revenge for my parents’ death or healing for the needy?
Night fell, as sudden as a sneeze this close to the equator, and the stress of the last several days caught up to me. I sat heavily in the courtyard of an apartment building. It was high above La Perla, the city slums below Old San Juan. I leaned against a wall, listening to the faint sounds of the shanties and alleys below. Sea breezes began a steady march inland and cooled the earth. Stars rose and fell and I relaxed into the rhythms of the night.
The sounds of explosive breathing—a grunting family of pigs—drew me out of my reverie. I lay very still as the sow and her shoats snuffed at my legs. Indifferent, they moved on, heading on their rounds before returning to La Perla. It was possible that I was the wealthiest person in the world, and yet I had nothing of interest to a drove of swine.
With that observation, I was ready to travel to El Yunque, to meet Abuela. How would I find my mother’s family—my family? I had only a small photograph of the old woman. I could imagine my mother telling me that Yocahu would show the way.
As the sun inched above the horizon, my P-cab rolled to a silent stop at El Portal, the visitor center at the rainforest entrance. This was part of the journey that a frightened thirteen-year-old girl had taken. She had just lost her mother. I’d just lost mine.
I decided to explore the rainforest that my mother held so dearly. Perhaps I’d find Denise Warren, the NMech bookkeeper we’d met at the beginning of the Great Washout. I put that thought aside; it would be another NMech reminder. I wanted to see El Yunque with the same clear eyes that my mother would have brought to bear on it.
Which way to go? El Yunque Peak beckoned, a bristling shard of rock, green-carpeted and crowned with misty clouds. Was this the home of the legendary Yocahu? A place of magic or mere volcanic debris hoisted up during the formation of the Caribbean tectonic plate?
The morning’s hike brought me six kilometers to the peak. Would the All-Powerful deity descend from the mountain like Moses carrying the Law writ in stone? What a waste! At least I had kept my promise and come to the mountain.
I sensed the presence behind me before I saw her. No footsteps announced her approach. A small, wizened figure stood near, just as she’d once stood near my mother. Again, she was still, save a crooning voice. The old woman’s face was even more deeply lined with sun and age and care but her eyes shone clearly. She spoke the same words to me as she had to my mother.
“Hijo” she intoned, stretching out the vowels—child. A single word carrying eight decades of love and wisdom. Abuela. My great-grandmother. She was real.
“Hijo… Mira aquí.” Look here. Abuela touched her hand to my heart. “Estás tan airado.” You are so angry.
“I’m not angry, Abuela,” I had said. “I’m just tired and sad and I miss my mother and father.”
Abuela merely pointed to my tightly-clenched fist. Then she took my hand, uncurled the fingers and led me into the rainforest, into a place where I could choose peace and life.