Book Tour + #Giveaway: The Jonah Trilogy by Anthony Caplan @AnthonyCaplan1 @SDSXXTours

Savior

The Jonah Trilogy Book 1

by Anthony Caplan

Genre: Science Fiction

A father and son stumble into the secret world of the Santos Muertos, a crime cartel bent on global domination. The son must find his father and keep the secret of the ancient Mayan code underlying the creation of matter in the universe from falling into the wrong hands.

A story of sacrifice and love.

Editorial Reviews:

“Set in a dystopian near-future, Savior is genre-breaking reading at its best . . . a fascinating combination of high adventure and interpersonal relationships that keep Savior an exciting, unpredictable read right up to its emotionally charged (and satisfying) conclusion.”

–Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review

“The story opened strong and it kept that level throughout…This is definitely a story of love and sacrifice.” —Highway-YA 

“The author did a superb job on creating the characters, going deep into the psycho analysis of their behavior. The plot is very well constructed….The plot is very intense and it is guaranteed that you will be hooked from the first page on this incredible adventure, showing that a love between father and son has no limits. I recommend this book to the permanent library of all readers that enjoy a very well written novel and want to be entertained.”

—Roberto Mattos, Books and Movies Reviews 

“The use of language is intelligent, and unexpected in today’s thriller/dystopian genres, with turns of phrase that startle with their elegance without ripping the reader away from the plot or descriptions . . . It is exemplary in its stellar use of language, its complex plot and characterizations, its ability to derive truths and fallacies and the thin veil separating them.”

—Diane Nelson, Sand in My Shoes Reviews

“I enjoyed the characters very much and the development of the plot line kept me interested to the end. The Canadian connection made it even more exciting.” 

—J.C., Rockwood, Ontario

Goodreads * Amazon

  

One -- The Hole

          The morning that Mary died there were F5 tornado warnings in the mid-Atlantic, a man shot up a hospital in Fort Wayne, Dittohead Larry's car dealership was promising amazing deals in Kissimmee, and a crack opened in the sky that gets bigger every day. Nobody noticed the crack, and nobody noticed that Mary and I had our two hands intertwined, as they had been for better or worse for seventeen years. Her face just held a remnant of the youthful girl I'd once known. The lines of intelligence around her eyes and the compassion that had burned brightly in them were fading before me.

          She whispered something that I had to lean down to hear.

          I pity you.

          They were her final words. She was sure she was moving on to a place beyond our comprehension and ability to touch. I have a hard time writing what I felt for her in the hospital. I wanted to turn off the television. There's something so awful about a television in a hospital room, but now I would welcome the banality of it, the familiar numbing sensation and otherworldliness of it, especially the commercials. When I think about all the time I wasted watching television, I get angry with myself. We spend so much of our lives killing off any opportunity for wonder and grace, and then when it comes we don't recognize it until too late. But Mary, even in her dying she was teaching me a lesson about how to live. I'm sure she's here with me sometimes. I'm not sure about where she is, about that place beyond our comprehension. Maybe it's there for Mary. I can almost hear her voice. It's the train that rips overhead like it would tear the roof off a house. I drop off the bunk and roll in a self-defense reflex. It disappears, leaving not even a Doppler, not even an echo of its passage.

          I'm in a hole, on the floor. I put my ear to it and can almost hear the ground water gurgling and working away at the stone. Blackness and the sound of the wind, not any real wind, are all I've got besides the resource of my senses. There's almost nothing to feed on. Slowly the senses will atrophy and without them I will lose my mind. Not my soul. But a soul without a mind must be a tortured thing. Some would say they are the same, but I have the proof of the contrary. His name is Samael Chagnon, and where he walks is a ruined place.

          Two, three steps and I come to the wall, the cold, wet, rough-plastered wall. Turn around 180 degrees and six steps back the other way. There is no sound, no light, no smell, nothing. But out of this nothing can come everything. Twice a day a vent opens in the wall. Somebody, I can hear the steps going away, the loud ringing of boot heels fading away as a corner is rounded, has slipped in a tray of cold rice and mush. The smell makes my head shake. Once in awhile there's a piece of grisly chicken in it. It's almost as good as sex. Then sometimes there are the beams of light shooting through the air over my head. It's a grey light, not daylight; some kind of fluorescence, but it hits my eyes like the glory of God's kingdom and lifts me to some other plane of existence. For a second it's enough to keep me sane.

          It is a living hell. The devils that have imprisoned me here, the foot soldiers of Samael's army, they call themselves Los Santos Muertos, expect me to roll over and forget who I am and die. But of course I have the resource, my memories to sustain me. I have to dole it out wisely though, because I don't know how long I will be here. No, it's a mistake to think that. That kind of thought lets in doubt, the pain of desiring light, touch, and mercy. The Dead Saints, Los Santos Muertos make it a point not to feel any human emotions. They train themselves to seek out pain in themselves and force it on their prisoners. There is no mercy in this underground. No light. Only my sacred soul, but he will come to try and steal even that.

          What are the numbers that he seeks? Pi out to the fifteenth decimal silences him momentarily. It's something I learned in college. A party trick. And then I hear his outrageous screams of anger. There is the momentary joy of hearing his genuine pain, until the minions, his men in black, twisted faces, as if they'd been cannibalized, or burned off, grimacing masks, are strapping me to the board. I can hear the clanking of it into place above the vat. The water's cold snaps me to attention. This is real, and if I breathe I will die.

          I can't die. Ricky needs me. Somewhere above ground in the world of light, oxygen, reason -- reality, sweet reality -- in the three holy dimensions of Earth lit through by the sun, there is a boy. His mother is dead. I'm all he has. I hold my breath until I am blue. I say that and laugh because there are no colors in this world, only blackness and his voice ordering the men. Something to my ears like a howling, guttural curse, and they swing the board upright.

          Once, in a far away, not-to-distant past there were the three of us, and our struggles were the common lot of American families in those days: how to make the mortgage payment; how to avoid the despair of not bright enough teeth, not green enough grass -- the under-pixilated reality of early 21st century Florida, not Miami, not Jacksonville, somewhere in between, in the palisades of retirement communities and trailer parks of central Florida. The very real beach town where we made our lives, pushing the stone uphill. And we were happy before Mary's death. The cancer cut her down and stole away our life. Could it have been Samael's first assault? He is after all, the leader of the Santos Muertos, the living dead, self-styled thought it may be as a title. I can almost believe, if I let myself slide, that there is a basis to his irreality. His formidable will for evil has taken him to the heights of madness after all, which are just a hair removed from the world of genuine power. He seeks the old Mephistophelian bargain of dominance and immortality, and if I help him he promises I will enjoy the same. But I would have to forget my old life. Everything that I am and ever was. He miscalculates with me, but I can't let on. It is keeping me alive, his unholy thirst for power.

          I hear the guards talking.  I have to curse him to his face because I... Don't... Know. I don't have the tablet. The fool thinks I've hidden the fucking thing, a souvenir, a trinket of our time, our innocent days in Guatemala. I have to laugh at the irony of it, because even here I see the hand of God. He comes to try all men in the proper time. This is my trial, and I welcome it. I will come through with flying colors, vanquishing blackness forever. In my day of triumph, even the night will be shot through with the prismatic effects that Mary glimpsed as she whispered to me. And I will never hear the false wind overhead. And I will be able to walk freely.

           I walk sometimes, not now when I am strapped down, but when I can I take a heavy one step, two and three. Reach out and touch the condensation on the corrugated iron sheathing. There is a joint up there in that corner. I believe it's the North in that direction. Something tells me it's the North. Here my senses fail me and I put my trust in other things, intuitions, voices, the memory of ancestors and their curiosity in the night. When I face the North I can remember. I can see Ricky and Mary. And we were happy. I can almost still remember happiness. It wasn't that long ago. The truth is I've lost count. No way to track time, the days and nights indistinguishable. I sleep whenever I can and my dreams are troubled, the vague rumblings of the train and hungry images of distant memories, another lifetime, another person. His name was Al Lyons.

          That Al Lyons. Yes! He graduated Phi Delta from the Georgia Technical Institute. Worked for a time, about ten years in the aviation industry, mostly buying and selling airplane parts all over the country while he worked on his book, his magnum, a history of flight, from Yuan Huangtou, the Chinese prince who used a kite to hoist himself skyward, to the Rutan Voyager, that stilted, sprawling spit into the wind. Couldn't find a publisher, but anyway met his wife, Mary, working in the public library in the town of Plymouth Beach, Florida. Mary was everything he could ever imagine in a woman. She was smart, caring, with delicate features that inversely matched tenacity and patience. They settled there in Plymouth Beach, and when the airline industry took that nosedive at the beginning of the millennium, he took a job teaching history in the public high school, Shelby County Regional and never looked back. Coached the football team, too. Mary and he finally had a child after seven years of trying. The number seven was significant; there were seven steps on the Buddha’s path and seven continents and seven climates and seven dwarves and...

          Absurd man, you do not exist. You are a mere speck and you answer when I call. You are just a figment of my reality, and I order you now to tell me what you know of the Chocomal and the Code of the Last Days.

          You know more than me.

          Have you forgotten everything? You know the tablet. What is the answer? Is it a sequence? Is it a table of calculations?

          I've told you, Chagnon. Are you stupid? Everything I know about it. You cannot squeeze blood out of a bloody stone.

          He's not happy. I can tell by the momentary silence. Then he says something and the guard, the little one with the moustache, flips the switch and the ions flow, squeezing my body into a convulsion that blacks out even thought. When I come to my senses, it is strangely quiet, even quieter than usual. It takes a few minutes before I realize they have left. My arms are still strapped to the gurney, but they've loosened them enough to let the blood circulate. Circulation of the blood, pulmonary system of branches and the eternal pumping of the heart at the core of our bodies that mimic larger systems, everything a reflection of the Idea, the Seed that is everything and will become nothing in the long cycle, the deepest frequency. We have no way of anticipating. Not even Jesus knows the hertz measure of the final hour. So what could a number mean to these men?

          They're done with me now. I survived again, lived to tell the tale. Memory, I breathe you. I could have died. I could have sucked the water down into my lungs and tasted the sweetness of that oblivion. It was a thought, a temptation. But I work my arms loose, a small triumph. Maybe he anticipated that. Maybe he knows everything about me. Maybe that's part of his method, to make me doubt even my small triumphs, throw me into some kind of long-term despair, until he's broken down the walls of my will. Then he will suck me dry of any knowledge I have, stuff I didn't even know I knew, throw it all into the computer that must link back to the underground complex buried deep in the jungle mountains of the Sierra Madre.  I stand up and breathe, put my finger on my neck and feel the blood pumping. Take six steps and put my hand up on the cold, wet metal. This is how I will stay alive and beat him. As long as there is blood still pumping and there is a mind still seeking. If he kills me I win. If I outlast him, I win. The odds are in my favor. His only weapon is pain. And I can deal with pain. Anything after Mary's death.

         

Two -- Plymouth Beach

          It is 1997, and they are sitting in the kitchen, the two of them, early on an August morning. Through the open window, a slider over the sink, comes the sound of morning doves in the Virginia oaks across the street. Al has finished setting up the coffee maker at the island. Mary cuts a grapefruit up in a bowl. There is a news show on the television, but neither if them is paying any attention. There are no cars going by on the quiet residential street, two blocks from the town-owned stretch of sand that has resisted the encroachment of hotels and motels blocking access to the water everywhere else along the Florida coast. Mary is talking about taking Ricky to the beach. He is sleeping at the moment, but will soon wake. Al concurs with the plan. He can make lessons on the laptop. He has the old Dell laptop from his job with Myers Aviatrix, some of the spreadsheets and contact lists have yet to be deleted. He's still surprised they let him walk away with the laptop in his car when he resigned two years previous. Such a lapse in security would be unthinkable nowadays, with the terrorist threat constantly looming and Clinton fighting to end a slow war in the Balkans, the first rumblings of the millennial clash Al believes is coming.

          Why don't you return it, Al?

          I don't think they miss it.

          It's the principle, though.

          You're right. I'll do that today. I can buy myself a new one. The newer models are lighter, more powerful. You can download from the Internet faster.

          He knows better than to argue with Mary on a matter of principle. Her light sandy hair and plain features mask a pugnacity that knows no bounds when there is an issue of weighing right versus wrong, no matter how petty. The high road always wins.

          Go do it now. I want you to come with us. Ricky loves playing with you. What is that game you play?

          Tigers.

          Where you pounce on him.

          Yeah, I hide in the sand and he runs by and tries not to get pounced on. He's a great little guy.

          Do you dream about him winning the state football championship some day?

          Of course. He's going to be the next Staubach.

          Roger Staubach. Isn't there a Florida equivalent?

          There is, but for any boy growing up in the Seventies, Roger Staubach was it. He’s going to be great.

          That's funny. I don't care if he plays football or not. I want him to find his own interests. He'll be a birdwatcher.

          Oh, that'll be fine, too. As long as he's he best birdwatcher out there.

          What if he's just the best birdwatcher he can be, isn't that good enough?

          Good enough. I suppose so, Mary.

          Al stands and goes off to look for the laptop in the study. He finds it in the bottom drawer of the desk, the big one that takes the boxes of stationery and odds and ends of cables and old floppy discs that no longer have any use, but they hang onto them just in case. He takes the laptop out and listens as Ricky makes a crying noise in his bedroom upstairs. Mary goes up the stairs and brings him down to the kitchen. When Al takes the old laptop in his case back out, the boy is sitting in the high chair in a shaft of sunlight. On the news, Rush Limbaugh is making some inane argument about the welfare state, the numbers of undocumented flooding the country and threatening Our Way of Life.  It is an in-between August day. Al is in his second year teaching. There are times he struggles with his newest career choice and wonders how things would have been different if he'd been a little hungrier starting out after college in the recession years of the mid-eighties. But Mary, with her sandy hair and no-nonsense spare features, is without a doubt reason enough to give thanks to God. And Ricky is the greatest little guy, a square built, healthy little bundle of primal energy. Here in the house on the quiet street, Al says a little prayer before he passes into the kitchen, thanks for the good things in his life. He is thirty-seven years old, thirty-five years older than his son. When Ricky graduates from college he will be fifty-six.

          Ten thirty, halfway through the morning. Al divides the day into quadrants so that he can get the most out of his time here. The beach is ahead, across the parking lot. Mary and Ricky are onto the path in the sand. He watches their slow progress and then jumps out of the car, grabs the canvas beach bag with snacks and towels and starts after them. Mary picks a spot in the sand and applies sunscreen to them before turning attention to herself. In the water, some surfers are catching the little shore break down by the pier. Al takes Ricky by the hand and leads him down to the water. The boy breaks free and runs ahead. Al chases him, his voice sounding like a freight train.

          You can't get away from me.

          Ricky laughs.

          These are the memories, he thinks, that will carry him in his old age. There are other families on the beach, and he realizes that they all are involved in the common enterprise of shoring up the defenses against the tragedy that underlies all of life, its inevitable end. Not for the first time Al contemplates his death and wonders what form it will take. He knows that Ricky signifies some continuation of himself, but what trick of the ego, he wonders, allows one to appreciate this as a compensation for one's own demise. It eludes him. Still, he plays dutifully and joyfully. One of the pleasures of fatherhood is this return to the playing forms of childhood and the way the joy is still there, only it's a vicarious joy at seeing the look of terror in Ricky's eyes when he roars, not sure if in fact he is not facing some kind of predatory tiger who will pounce and destroy him.

          That's it, Ricky, run hard boy.

          Daddy, come and get me.

          I will. I'll get you.

          Then he's driving on the Plymouth Causeway and getting on Route 5 down to the Circuit City outlet to look at laptops. He has the teacher ID that might get him a discount. In the parking lot there is a Pakistani father and teenage son wearing thick eyeglasses. Al follows them in; he thinks he recognizes the boy from his 9th grade World Civilizations class, a good student. He doesn't remember his name. The way the boy is walking ahead, distancing himself from his father reminds Al of his own teenage rebellions and the need life seems to have for discontinuity as well as continuity, the way both are contained within themselves and held together by a fragile cord.  The father's job is to sacrifice himself for the sake of the growing man. It is a lesson it will take Al a long time to learn. One of the problems he has with teaching is the selflessness it requires. Al knows that he still burns with ambition, the need to perfect himself for some unknown, distant and important purpose. Another odd pleasure that comes with greater years, he thinks: the view of the carrousel as it turns. You're still on it, riding, wanting that horse to buck faster, but you can see that everyone is pretty much going at the same pace and in the same eternal, circuitous direction.

          And then the strangest thing, the oddest picture to flash through his brain: he is back at the beach's public parking lot. Waiting for a black SUV with flashing red taillights to pull out so he can take the spot. He rolls down the window to smell the peculiar August smell of salt and ozone mixed with suntanning oil and car exhaust and the cries of gulls and small children and the crash of the waves, when the sight catches him out of the corner of his eyes. He glances quickly upwards, squinting to see the airplane towing a banner. It reads Mama Grande Get Your Future Today 1-800 656-9972. The numbers match his Social Security which is 656 05 9972.  He thinks he will call Mama Grande and have his fortune told. 

          Later, at home he cannot find any entry to match in the phone book and there is no answer, the number has been disconnected, when he dials the toll free number. Just an oddity, but even stranger to have the memory here in the blackness of his imprisonment at the hands of the evil one, Samael Chagnon. Did he imagine it, and is he imagining this now? The thought he might one day suddenly awaken pleases him with a bittersweet gnawing knowledge of its foolishness. There is no mistaking the evidence of his senses. There is none. He walks six steps to the North and places his hand against the metal wall.

Three -- The Ladder

          A year and some months after Mary's death, 2010, Al and Ricky boarded a flight in Miami for Guatemala. The flight was crowded with Central Americans and Venezuelans going to their newly built vacation homes in Antigua and Puerto Limon. Al watched their teenage children, and the way Ricky looked off to the side when they came around the curve in the ticketing line, trying to avoid eye contact this early in the morning with anyone who shared the generational anxiety, the identity malaise that was the American experiment. A scar marked Ricky's right cheek, a burn mark from an accident as a three year old when he'd done a face plant onto the fire poker lying on the ground in his Uncle Tony's Vermont ski chalet.  He naturally tended to shield his right side from people. It would take someone who really knew him well to notice.

          Guatemala City had a busy, prosperous feel in the rainy season, flying in over the mountaintops and the black rain clouds gathered on the ridges of the Continental Divide. They stayed in the city for the night and caught a taxi the next day for the bus terminal. There they bought two tickets for the Pacific coast town of Monterico. The bus ride took five hours; the last thirty miles down a rutted dirt track crossed by three rivers, and let them off by the surf shop in the center of the sleepy little hamlet.

          Ricky stepped off the bus and stretched. His long legs and arms were still catching up with the growth spurt they had recently put on, and his mind seemed to be saving itself for some later exertions. Also, he was undergoing video game withdrawal.

          Here we are, bud.

          Uhuh.

          Your Mom loved this place.

          Look at the sign above the surf shop, Dad.

          They crossed the street, lugging their duffel bags. The sign was a neon colored painted barrel curve wave and a Keith Haring graffiti surfer shooting out the end, crouching.

          It's cool.

          Coconut Juan upgraded since the last time we were here.

          That was five years ago.

          Coconut Juan himself was sitting at the counter, his feet up on the glass, chatting in Spanish with an American girl. He was a little portlier than last time, but his dyed blond hair and brown, leathery skin was the same. He smiled, seemingly in recognition when he saw them. The American girl looked at them and went back to reading a newspaper.

          Hola amigos.

          Coconut Juan. You remember us?

          You had taking lessons.  Few years ago. Coconut Juan, he never forget the cara. Where is the mama?

          She's dead Juan. Cancer took her.

          I am very sorry, my friend.

          We want to rent a couple of boards and go surfing for a few days. How's the surf?

          Very good.

          They went out the main glass door and into the board shed, and Juan took care of them with two boards that he set aside to wax later. Ricky wanted a seven foot trick board and Al chose an eight foot hybrid, not quite a long board, short enough to get through the surf and long enough to provide some stability for his 185 pounds. He was no expert, but still spry enough to at least pop to his feet once in awhile on a gentler wave. Al asked him about the town, about his business.

          Very much busy all the time now. Estrange people.

          How strange?

          They not surfing.  They not enjoying the beach. They only fly in and say adios. Two, three days. Very estrange.

          Well, who knows? Maybe they've discovered oil or something.

          Yes, banana oil.

          They had a laugh together. Ricky was getting bored and looking discomfited by the American girl reading the newspaper. He strayed over to the far wall display with the baseball hats and tee shirts while Al paid with the credit card for the boards.

          Okay, Juan. Gracias, amigo.

          No hay problema.

          Ricky was wandering, checking out the tee shirts and paraphernalia. There was a narrow wooden door, strange, almost ancient, out of place in the cinder block, utilitarian building. He tried the handle. It opened into a dark space, bare except for a louvered window high on the exterior wall and in one corner a trunk that had been left open. When he looked inside the trunk, Ricky was struck by the beauty of the stone tablet lying inside. He lifted it and held it up to the light coming from the window above. A reclining Mayan in a headdress and mysterious hieroglyphs up and down in rows. This was it. Exactly what he'd been hoping to find. Something to remind him of his mother. He felt she'd been guiding him here.

          Ricky.

          It was Al standing in the door of the room.

          Dad.

          What are you doing?

          Look at this.

          Ricky handed the tablet to Al. It was a cheap reproduction, something Juan had picked up at Chichen Itza and kept in the shop to be used as decoration, thought Al.

          Cool, Ricky.

          Yeah. It was in that trunk. I want it. For Mom.

          They looked at it together and Al handed it back to Ricky as Coconut Juan approached. His face had changed. No longer smiling, easy-going, a grey, ashen fear had come across it. He took the tablet forcefully out of Ricky's hands.

          No for sale, my friends.

          It's nice, said Ricky.

          Al was getting anxious to sit down and have something to eat. The sun was getting low in the sky.

          Come on, Ricky. Let's check in and get some dinner.

          But Mom would love that.

          You're right. She would have.

          She would love that.

          Sometimes Ricky freaked him out with his insistence that they treat Mary in their conversations as if she were still with them. But it was true that she had, on their last trip to Guatemala, fallen in love with everything to do with Mayan lore and iconography and had been teaching herself to do basic hieroglyphic inscriptions using what was known of the Mayan alphabet. She planned on doing presentations in the school district in her retirement after completing her last year in the library. Unfortunately, life had cut short her plans. Al was still sort of bitter about it. They left the surf shop with the understanding that they would be back early the next morning for the boards.

          The Hotel Costasol rented out cabanas that were linked around a small kidney shaped swimming pool and the restaurant and bar underneath a palm thatched roof. The office was on the corner of the road, air-conditioned. A young Guatemalan girl in shorts had her feet in flip-flops up on the desk, and a boy about twenty leaned against the wall. They both slowly straightened as Ricky and Al came in the glass door and approached. After the paperwork, the girl walked them down to their cabana, formerly the Casa Coleman, the original vacation home of Jonathan Coleman, a Colorado Springs orthodontic surgeon. The engraved wood paneling of the door showed dolphins and palm trees. His name was on the magazines in the bookshelf along with his address. Ricky thumbed through the books and the magazines, the guest register, while Al walked around the apartment and checked drawers below the sink and chatted about what he saw.

          Okay, we're in business. Spatula, forks. There's a, what must be a juice press. Hey Ricky, this is nice.

          Yes, it is.

          You ready to do some surfing?

          Sure am.

          This isn't going to be anything like Plymouth Beach, you know that.

          I've been here before, Dad. Don't you remember?

          Yeah, but you were too young to surf.

          I remember the waves, though.

          Let's take a walk down the beach. There's still some light in the sky.

          Okay.

          The road to the beach led past house lots where squat, bare-chested workers cleaned tools and chatted in low voices, and streams of silty water oozed onto the road from the piles of sand and recently busy concrete mixers. Stray dogs watched Ricky and Al from the empty lots lined with scrub and acacia trees from where birds lifted in flocks into the salmon-streaked sky. They could hear the pounding waves. Two surfers, wet hair and barefoot, carried their boards and made their way back to their lodgings. Ricky and Al listened to them chat about the break and the swells in English as they went by. Dozens of harlequin land crabs scuttled away from them at the edge of the road and into the mangroves, and puddles of rainwater from the most recent deluge still filled the potholes.  Ricky and Al picked their way around them.

          Over the rise of dunes, there was the pounding Pacific, a series of white, spilling, irregular lines approaching from the setting sun and, at the back, walls of dark water rising, lifting three or four surfers at a time. Their boards carved out unpredictable tracks across the face of the waves before spinning back over the top in a controlled dismount, or careening through the air in a final spinning tumble into the wash. Ricky and Al walked along the sand and down to the edge of the high tide. The beach stretched in a crescent two or three miles and ended in green headlands in either direction. Father and son made their way slowly south along the water's edge in the dusk.

          What should we talk about, Dad?

          Ricky surprised Al with the outcroppings of his budding maturity and adult judgment. Just as he'd been sinking in thoughts about Mary and how different their lives were without her. She'd been the pivot of the family, the spark plug. Everything had run through her. Without her presence, there just didn’t seem to be much of a life. Except Ricky sometimes could read his mind and with an expert touch would lift him out of despondency.

          I don't know. Are you watching the waves?

          Yeah.

          What's the pattern? Got to catch the pattern, Ricky.

          I am, Dad. Let's go in.

          I'm not wearing my bathing suit.

          Who cares? Come on. I'll race you.      

          They swam and had showers, leaving puddles of water all over the tiled floor of the rental. As they walked down to the restaurant, both of them were silent. After Mary's death they spoke rarely, just catching each other up on the bare essentials, numbed by their shared pain.  The tiki lamps around the pool let off a smell of sandalwood. Two French Canadian couples in their late twenties laughed in French and splashed in the water. Ricky and Al took a table near the bar. The waiter, a teenaged boy about Ricky's age, brought out the menus. Al ordered a Bohemia Negra beer.

          What do you want, Ricky.

          I don't know, Coke?

          Una Coca-Cola? asked the waiter.

          How old are you, fifteen?

          Yeah.

          You're not old enough for beer, are you?

          Yeah? You sure?

          Yeah. Your Mom would roll in her grave.

          Don't say that, Dad. She's not in the grave. Remember?

          You're right.

          They studied the menus, both of them with the strange feeling that they were not alone. Ricky thought about the stone tablet that he'd seen in Coconut Juan's shop and how strongly it had conjured in him the thought of his mother's presence. On the television above the bar, the news came on. The bartender was about to change the channel when a man at the bar stopped him. American, large, wearing flip flops, Bermuda shorts and a guayabera, something about the man's appearance and interest piqued Al's curiosity. He watched the television also, trying to understand the story. The Guatemalan Ministry of Security was welcoming a delegation of smoothly dressed Americans in sunglasses, professional tough guys. They were high-level bureaucrats, from Seguridad Nacional, Homeland Security, something about the cartels and a growing level of criminal behavior in the capital and increased cooperation, and then they cut to another story about the indigenous people of the southern highland Mayan region who still conserved knowledge of the antique culture, particularly the mathematical theories of the ancients. The Mayans in particular, who extended their rule over the tribes of the lowland regions, kept astronomical records based on their observations and then something about the cultural center that had recently been unearthed in Obero. Then the new Minister of Culture, a pretty and charming blonde in a long, frilly skirt, spoke to the cameras about the importance of the new government's programs to improve the conditions of the indigenous, etc., etc. Al felt a great admiration for the idealism of the Guatemalan Minister, even though he knew it was baloney. Poor people everywhere were being stuffed into museums and it didn't help them. He supposed some day somebody would want to take his life and memorialize it for its particular style of ineffective and incoherent adaptation.

          Dad?

          What?

          What are you going to have? What's on the television that's so important?

          Oh, nothing. Some kind of delegation in town from the States. Meeting with the President.

          Wow. You understand a lot.

          Well, you got to listen, Ricky. There's a pattern, like in everything.

          Dad?

          What?

          I'm having a Tex-Mex burger.

          I'm having the same, son. Sounds good.

          But Mom would not approve.

          Ricky was testing, seeing how committed he was to the mission of their journey.

          You're right. Let's forget the burgers. Shall we have the pollo en crema?

          Yeah. That's better. And tamarindo shakes.

          Okay we'll order three shakes and you and me will split Mom's.

          Okay. Sounds good.

          Al watched some more television. The American at the bar paid for his drink, joked a little with the waiter, and then left, ambling away in a hefty, oversized gait. The French Canadian couples were also gone. In fact, they were the only customers in the restaurant. The waiter took their order. Al asked him if there were a lot of guests staying at the hotel.

          No muchas, said the waiter, smiling and shrugging his shoulder. It's the rainy season and the roads, pesimas, he said.

          What's pesimas, Dad?

          Something like extremely pitiful. Beyond the pale.

          Gotcha.

          Hey, Ricky?

          Yeah?

          You know when the priest consecrates the host and it becomes the Flesh of Our Lord?

          Uhm, yeah?

          Do you believe?

          No.

          Do you believe it's possible?

          Well, I suppose it's possible. But it would be a stretch.

          You're not saying this just to comfort me?

          No. Well, maybe I am.

          I'd like to think Mom is here with us in our hearts and literally here when we drink the shakes.

          So the tamarindo has become Mom when the waiter brings our dessert?

          Well, yes. If we invoke her memory and our desire is strong enough and pure enough.

          That's crazy, Dad. Sorry I can't go there with you on that.

          But in your heart you know it's possible.

          I'm not sure. Look, can't we just enjoy the food in Mom's loving memory?

          Okay. You're right. That's a nice way to put it, I guess. To Mom's memory and her love for us and for all of nature.

          On the way back to the room, a French Canadian woman, back again for more, smiled up from the water. In the dark, a cat crossed the road and wanted to be let in the door.  Al paused on the vestibule. He studied the carved door, the skinny orange cat looking for food. There were strange stars in the sky, a smudge of light on the horizon where the sun had gone down. All manifestations of life, even the arrangement of inanimate creation, all spoke to him of the presence of his wife somewhere. Nobody knew where the soul ended up after death, but Al was sure of the continuity of personal identity and that some day he and Mary would be reunited. If only he could convince Ricky of that. But faith was something that had to be born in someone. It was out of his control. It couldn't be implanted by reasoning or by force of example. Ricky would someday find his way to seeing the light of God's true love.

          Ricky was reading a Time magazine left behind by Coleman on his last visit in the spring. Al wondered at the deal he must have had with the Costasol hotel. Maybe he was a silent partner and had funded the expansion. There was still a lot of building going on, judging by their walk before dinner.

          What are you reading, Ricky?

          Do you know Joe Klein?

          I've heard of him.

          Something about the buying up of the American economy.

          Who's buying it up.

          Foreigners. Investors. The banks. Laundered money. Ultimately the drug cartels will control everything.

          I see. Well, that's capitalism for you. Money flows like water until it finds its level or it levels everything it finds.

          Al picked out a book, Kook by Peter Heller, from the doctor's shelves, about a middle-aged guy who learned to surf and travelled down the Pacific coast as far as Mexico. It was good, with some decent descriptive passages, and it reminded Al that he was not alone in his quixotic desire to take up surfing at a relatively advanced age.

          The next morning dawned in a rain. It stopped while Al made coffee from a left over bag of Guatemalan dark roast left behind in the cupboards. They needed to shop later on, after they'd surfed. Al walked up to the surf shop, skipping over the puddles, and collected both the boards from Coconut Juan's shop and returned before Ricky had stirred from his bedroom. They drank cups of black coffee. Ricky was quiet, serious. They put on bathingsuits and slipped on the flip-flops, and walked down the road to the dark sand beach carrying surfboards like lances under their arms.

          The waves rolled in with an insistent determinism. It dawned on Al with the force of a dull crack that he might not be a strong enough paddler to get beyond the break. They watched a couple of girls in skimpy bikinis duck diving and getting pushed back and surfacing again into the face of the breakers. If they could do it, he would too. This was the test he had been waiting for. Ricky waded in without a second's thought and flipped onto his board and dug hard with the outwash. Al thought he could pick a better spot away from the peak and walked down the beach to the south and into the water. It was mild, no more of a shock than bath water. This was good. The sun behind was also encouraging. He clambered on and set to working his arms while keeping his feet pinned on the tail of the board. The first couple of waves he tried pushing the front of the board down before they broke and got pushed back a little before popping up on the other side and settling quickly as he could while keeping the nose of the board above water. Then he paddled hard, but seemed to get nowhere. He looked up and saw the waves looming larger than life. The next one broke over the top of him. He hung on as the water sucked him off the board and pushed him end over end. When he came back up, sputtering, the board was at the end of the tether and still pulling away from him. He found it, climbed back on and turned it out to sea just in time to get caught by the white water of the next wave. He dove out of reach, but the next time up for breath out of the water, he looked around and was five feet from the sand.

          He let the next wave wash him back up on the beach. A few freshly arrived tourists were sitting in the sand over by the fringe of the dune grass. He looked back out to the water and saw Ricky still paddling, patiently getting further ahead, and gaining on the edge of the impact zone, the white water washing over him as he dove under it.

          This was as trying as anything, maybe as tough as running the half-marathon in Vero Beach the summer before last. But Ricky being out there on his own bothered him. He would have to figure out a way to beat the waves. He watched the pattern of the sets, trying to conjure a solution. There was about a twelve second interval between the swells, five, maybe six minutes between sets. If he timed his entrance into the water at the end of the largest wave of a set, and was quicker getting through the initial couple of near-shore breakers, there was a short lull that could possibly see him out to the edge of the impact zone.

          After resting in the sand cross-legged for a few more minutes, he tried again. This time, paddling as hard as he could, his arms feeling like they were set in concrete, he came to the edge of a rising swell and settled over the back of it, out of the white water and into the translucent deeps. There was Ricky, paddling over to him.

          You made it.

          Yeah, finally. I didn't think I would.

          I tried catching a couple.

          Did you get them?

          Almost.

          Watch how these guys do it, Ricky. You got to be in the right place.

          I'm getting the hang of it.

          There were about five or six other surfers in a little knot that spread itself out to the north of them, just off the peak. The waves were breaking to the left. Al let the swells lift under him and drop him off their backs. At the top he could look down into the water. There were some manta rays playing underneath them. The beach was about a half mile away. Then he looked back and saw the first set wave building behind him, looking like it would topple over before it reached him.

          Come on, Dad. Catch this one.

          The other surfers were letting it go. Al paddled hard as it lifted him and looked over at Ricky, doing the same. For about a millisecond he seemed poised at the top of it before he was barreling down the impossibly steep shoulder, hanging onto the board in a freefall. Ricky had popped to his feet and had somehow managed to twist to the left the way you were supposed to. At the bottom, Al was still, somehow, on his belly on the board. He tried popping up once the white water had begun to lap at his tail. But the attempt was off balance, and he went careening into the wash. When he came back up to breathe, he was caught in the zone and spun by the next two waves. This time he knew enough to relax. The foam still sputtering in a white valley around him, he began the long, slow paddle back to the deep. He looked around for Ricky, but couldn't see him.

          The lineup was way beyond him, waiting for another big set. A panic attack crept up on him, with his arms heavy from paddling. He dove beneath a few waves, his heart in his throat. But Ricky was out there, he was sure. The next set arrived and he was still paddling out wide of the peak. One surfer popped up and looked down at him, momentary fear in his eyes, in the trough. He zipped low and cut back past Al, paddling hard for the crest before it breached.

          There was Ricky, paddling over to him again, cheerful as ever.

          Hey, Dad.

          You having fun?

          I caught that last one.

          I saw you.

          Now you.

          What?

          It's your turn. You're going to catch one.

          I hope so...It's nice out here isn't it?

          We're too far out, Dad.

          Ricky paddled towards the beach, trying to stay up with the group of more experienced surfers. Al thought he'd catch his breath. He watched the beach. There were more people on it now. It was about mid-morning. He was getting hungry.

          A few sets later, Ricky had caught three waves and managed to cut back over the top of one when the white water closed it down. The enjoyment was really just being out there, sharing the experience with Ricky. If he figured out how to do the popup on these steep mamas before they left in three days for the mountains, he'd be glad.

          One more wave, and he got to his feet this time, but hunched over instead of crouching. As he straightened too late, the board shot out from under him. He was flying, then spinning and tumbling under the churn of the wave. He held his breath, waiting for the power in the water to subside so he could shoot up and breathe. 

          Al decided that was it for the morning. He was done. Instead of turning back out, he grabbed his board and waited, holding his breath again as the next monster clamped its white jaws around him. Spinning and sputtering, he caught the board, clambered back on it, and paddled the rest of the way in, standing at last in a few feet of water as a more experienced surfer zipped past him in the classic knees bent pose of relaxed at-oneness with the wave, still being pushed by the shore break right onto the sand.

          Picking the board up under his arm, exhausted and breathing hard, Al walked up the beach to the dunes a distance and turned to study the water. The American man from the bar the night before, wearing a large canvas beach hat, was standing about ten feet from him.

          Nice out there?

          Just a little too much for me.

          Better you than me. You're a brave man.

          Just trying to keep up with my son. Beautiful here.

          A nice place. Santos Muertos taking over though.

          Who?

          Santos Muertos, he said, pronouncing carefully in expert Spanish. Up and coming cartel boys. Targeting Guatemala as the newest entry point to our underbelly.

          Drug cartels? Really? In Guatemala?

          Yeah. They say they're interested in building infrastructure, improving the roads.

          Isn't that a good thing? They could use better roads.

          That's what they say. They buy you off and steal your wife. The bastards.

          Al sighed and looked around wistfully.

          This was my wife Mary's favorite place of all the places we'd been together. She wouldn't be happy with it becoming a stronghold for some criminal organization.

          How long were you married?

          Almost twenty years. Cancer took her from us a year ago.

          Yeah, that takes some getting over. Are you on Facebook?

          Yeah. I don't do much on it though.

          Neither do I. Robert Newman's the name.

          Al Lyons. Nice to meet you.

          The two men shook hands. Al was younger by more than a decade and indebted for the friendly conversation. He waited patiently, leaning on one foot and then the other. Newman was content with standing and watching the water. Out on the water, Ricky was surfing a wave, doing a legitimate job of it, shifting the board and then dropping down on it and letting the water push him along to the beach. He was about 40 yards to the south, clambering out of the water.

          Have a nice day, said Al.

          Hey, you too. Take care of yourself.

          Al walked down to where Ricky was standing. For a fifteen year old he was almost as tall as Al, but inside, where it counted, he was still a little boy.

          Looking good, kid.

          That was my best one.

          I almost stood up. I feel like I'm almost there.

          Yeah. Just got to keep working at it, Dad.

          Ready for breakfast?

          Yeah.

          They walked back down the beach to the road. The tide was starting to go out. Al thought that a few more days and they would forget they'd ever been anywhere else. Hunger was making him almost delirious, though. He thought of Mary and said a prayer to himself for her.

          Your Mom would be proud of you, Ricky.

          I know, Dad. She didn't care that I wasn't playing football. She was proud of me for standing up to you on that.

          You're right. She was. And you were right not to play. Although I think you would have found it a worthwhile and rewarding challenge.

          Dad. Don't start.

          Well, you brought it up.

          They were silent. The ugly subject of football had reared again. Now it would take awhile. Al thought he should have just let it go. Next time Ricky brought it up, just not say a thing. First he'd been angry with Ricky for not going out for the high school team in ninth grade. As an eighth grader he'd been the leading rusher for the program, primed for high school success. Mary, of course, had backed her son up in his decision to take a couple of years and find out what he really loved to do.  The day in ninth grade he'd said football was boring, Al had exploded on him and accused him of being a quitter. The worst thing he'd ever called his son and the worst insult he could think of. Al's passions sometimes got the best of him. Why did he care so much? Had he no life? His son's triumphs in his former arenas lit some vicarious flame in the hippocampus region, the circuitry charred out in the extended adolescence of American males, stuck in some Johnny Unitas loop of positive stimulus. Self-doubt settled like a filter in the air, a momentary pall on the day. How absurd could he be, a middle-aged man pretending to master a sport for boys half his age so that he could relate to his son? It was preposterous and made him into a half pretentious nitwit. But then, he thought, it was fun. F...U...N, the three letters that justified any pursuit. This was the de facto philosophy of the street he argued against sometimes with Ricky. How fun was not enough. But as a defining concept, a rule of thumb...as long as you didn't hurt anybody. As long as the basic needs had been met, and so you were basically talking about a higher pursuit. Interchangeable concepts. Fun. Good. The smiling grace of the Puritan heartland. Fun. The some day over the rainbow, the prettiest girl you ever saw, the Higgs inside the Higgs Boson.

          The hot shower calmed him down. Afterwards he sat in the chair and saw himself wasting the rest of the day in a lazy funk. The sound of the water running reminded him that Ricky was still brooding, sunk in his own thoughts as he took his turn.

          The thing about Ricky was his soul was better, more refined by the waves of time. That was the way with sons. They were generally improved versions of their fathers, and it was what eventually made everything all right. As a father, he could officially just relax and spend some time in a chair, half-dressed, because Ricky would take care of business, kick his ass into shape and get them up to the corner to do the shopping they needed to do.

          Dad, come on. I'm hungry.

          The town was within walking distance. It consisted of the crossroads deli market run by German hippies, the Yoga Institute further up in the hills, various bodegas along the road in both directions, north and south, the Computer Center where you apparently could connect with your social media, and various tourist restaurants and hangouts such as the Gilded Iguana which advertised Live Music Tonite in neon colored, non-erasable chalk on the board outside the palm-lined entrance. Al and Ricky walked into a bodega and bought provisions with the quetzals Al had changed before getting on the bus the day before, eggs, cans of black beans, some root vegetables, a bag of oranges, two loaves of Pan Bimbo, and two cases of Dos Equis. There was a bank down the road that ran towards the northern end of the beach past the surfer camps.  This was the next stop. Ricky wanted to stop in and see Coconut Juan, so Al went to the bank on his own, and afterwards he checked out the map of the area on a bulletin board provided by the Monterico Chamber of Business while Ricky was inside Coconut Juan's. He heard him chatting with Coconut Juan. The American girlfriend was in there also, along with a young boy who was the helper.

          Mr. Lyons, come inside.

           The American girl was calling to him. Al walked inside and over to the counter. Coconut Juan was sitting on a stool looking at him. The girl was doing something under the glass counter, arranging some of the trinkets on sale. Ricky stood next to Coconut Juan, also waiting for Al. When Al reached them, he waited for some clarification as the grave looks on both their faces demanded. Coconut Juan held up the tablet, the Mayan reproduction Ricky had spotted and liked the day before. In the light from the street, it had the air of a holy relic, something eerie and power-ridden, as Juan held it up.

          Dees ees ahora de su hijo. You must to know because ees un peligro para mi y para ustedes tambien. Peligro. You know?

          Yeah. Corrientes peligrosas, said Al. What's up?

          There ees men looking for thees. You eh, keep, eh, hide.

          What men?

          Los Santos Muertos.

          Look. I've been hearing about them. What is going on? How could this, this fake... be dangerous?

          Ees no un fake, Señor Lyons. Ees el Chocomal. The eh, key to the universo Maya. Ees... una cifra importantisima!

          So now it's Ricky's?

          Yeah, I knew it was good.

          Ricky picked it up and was setting to walk out of the store with it when Coconut Juan stood, leaned over the counter and grabbed him forcefully by the shoulder.

          How much? asked Al. How much did you pay for it, Ricky?

          Fifty dollars.

          Look, no way. Give it back.

          Dad, Ricky implored.

          Coconut Juan let him go. He had a frenzied look on his face, still standing.

          Es que no entienden, he wailed in a bitter tone. The American girl, with a worried look on her face, looked up.

          Mr. Lyons, Juan believes his life is in danger because of that thing. All he's asking is you take it and get it away from here. Please. Take it away.

          Why doesn't he just bury it? Hide it or something?

          He's scared they'll find it and kill him.

          I see. So if they find us they'll kill us.

          There's that possibility.

          What is it?

          I don't know, she said, throwing up her hands in a gesture of futility.

          A national treasure, I guess. Juan's very patriotic. He wants to give it to the National Museum in Guatemala City, but he's scared. He thinks everybody is working for the LSM up there in the capital. They have a lot of money, you see.

          So why don't you just dump it in the ocean?

          I've been trying to get him to do that. He just refuses. Won't go there.

          No, no dump, said Coconut Juan, waving his hands in front of him back and forth frenetically.

          Ricky was walking fast with the tablet out the door.

          Hold it, cowboy. Let’s put a bag on that.

          What? You believe all that stuff?

          You never know. When in doubt, go with the prudent thing. Let’s not take any chances. When we get to the hotel we can figure out a place to put it.

          Uhm, like my suitcase?

          Maybe caution would dictate otherwise.

          We’ll talk about it later, Dad. Let’s finish the shopping and head back to the apartment.

          Coconut Juan gave them a striped plastic bag and wrapped the tablet in newspaper and taped the wrapping. Ricky put the whole thing in the bag as if he were handling a fish, insisting with his body language that he was above all the subterfuge and paranoia.

Cuidelo con su vida, muchacho.

What’d he say? asked Ricky.

Take care of it, said Al.

Mom would love this.

A gaggle of dirt bikes came down the rutted road, careening around the corner in a high frequency whine of redlining engines. The men sitting on them had on black pants and no shirts, heavily tattooed torsos and arms, and scarves wrapped around their heads and faces.  They slowed down enough to not run anyone over. They gave Ricky and Al quick, nonchalant glances as if they did not belong.

          That’s them, said Ricky

          Who?

The Santos Muertos.

How do you know?

          I don’t know how I know. Just... heard a voice.

          A voice, huh?

          Yeah, Dad. It sounds crazy. But...

          Well, son. We need to get some food.

          The tablet gave the trip a new sense of urgency, as if the sky had opened up and a wind had wafted away the dull, humid air of every day. Al thought of the way time passed and left you with only a residue of memory, and how this new possession, like a slap in the face or a cold-water bath, invigorated their steps. They walked shoulder to shoulder and crossed the road as buses and trucks made their way up and down what was after all the highway to Escuintla and from there points north to Tapachula and eventually la frontera and south to El Salvador and Colombia and all along the road in both directions was the chain of the mountains that rose out of the jungle. He’d read once in a newspaper, one of those human interest features from Reuters, about a man who’d walked the whole length north to south of the Pan-American highway and was headed back the other way, expecting to complete his journey in the farthest northern town of Alaska, was it Barrow? Now with the tablet, he and Ricky seemed like they were somehow linked in a similar life and death exploration. What had Coconut Juan meant by a cifra, was that a secret code, a number containing the answer they all were looking for? What would that be?

          They finished the food shopping and were walking back to the apartment the back way, passing the cemetery at the north end of the beach. Ricky was carrying three plastic bags with each hand, plus the bag with the tablet. Al had a bag of oranges, the two cases of beer and a box of Ramen noodle packs that were on sale at the last bodega. Around the corner of the cemetery, the road ran onto a path that cut parallel to the beach through the dune scrub. They came out of the shade of the ceiba and flamboyant trees that lined the road. The sun was beating down on them. In the other direction along the trail came the American man from the morning’s encounter on the beach. Al looked up and saw him and kept his gaze steady as they approached. The man looked up and smiled as he saw them coming. What was his name? Robert Newman, namesake of the famous actor but without the baby blues.

Surfer father. And surfer son.

How ya doin', Robert?

I’m fine. I expect you’ll be pros by the time your time is up.

Well, the waves here are a little over our heads. Otherwise the place is perfect.

Yeah, but its overrun.

Hey, what more can you tell us about the criminal threat in the area? You look like someone in the know.

Robert scratched his head and looked up and down the beach.

It's not good. Look, if I were you, honestly? I'd get on a bus out of here as fast as I could. This place is about to pop.

Pop? What do you mean?

These boys been running meth, cocaine, guns, through San Jose for about a year.  You wouldn't believe it. Nobody does. They're planning to take-over, and when they do, it won't be pretty. It's going to go down any day now.

The American pulled some sunglasses out of his bathing suit pocket. He polished the lenses of the sunglasses with the fabric of his oversized bathing suit, put them on, and then produced a pair of binoculars out of the other pocket. There was something seedy about him, as if he'd been too long away from the company of normal people, thought Al.

Good view from here of the water and if you look way out on the horizon you can see subs.

Subs. As in submarines, said Al.

That's right. Built in the jungles.

Al put down the box of noodles and the bags of oranges and beer. Ricky refused to do the same, looking on with exasperation as his father took a turn with the binoculars.

Can you see them?

Yeah. What are they?

 They looked like little pill bugs poking up above the water on the horizon.

I told you. They're submarines. I've even seen choppers lifting stuff with guys hanging from ropes, said Newman.

Al pulled the binoculars away from his face.

How do you know all this?

Let's just say I'm in on the play.

Okay. So you're some kind of government spook.

Like I said, I'm only telling you 'cause you asked and you seem like a nice guy. This place is about to pop.

He scratched his head one more time. His eyes glazed and once again there was something forlorn and threadbare about him.

Only thing is, nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I'm sending word up the line and I have yet to see any reaction. Task Force South is asleep at the switch. That scares me more than the subs.

Ricky. Let me have the tablet.

Dad.

          Come on.

Al gave the binoculars back to Newman who put them away awkwardly in his bathing suit pocket. Ricky put his bags on the sand and Al took the bag with the tablet. He ripped the tape off the tablet and unwrapped it.

What do you think of this? he asked Newman.

What is it?

A Mayan artifact, apparently. Ricky bought it off Coconut Juan at the surf shop. He was very worked up about it.

Didn't want to sell it to me at first. But I convinced him, said Ricky.

Newman took it from Al and turned it over, studying it.

How did you convince him? asked Newman.

I explained to him how the Mayans were the first fully written system and told him I'd read the Popol Vuh in fifth grade which wasn't really true since Mom read it to me, but how they had the concept of zero before anyone else...

This is very interesting, said Newman. So Coconut Juan was the receptor.

He’s a collector, I guess, said Al. I thought it was a fake.

This is not a fake. There's been all kinds of chatter about something like this. The Chocomal. There could be some people very interested in this.

That's what he was all worried about. Said they'd kill him for it. Why?

I don't exactly know. I do know Iranian scientists, along with Chinese and some Russians, have been looking for some time, almost twenty years for some archaeological clue. Their experts claim they know about a secret code they've been working on for building what you might call the ultimate weapon. Ancient secrets of Mayan astronomers, apparently, on the frequency of sound waves.  There have been some disappearances. Blamed on the drug cartels. Some say Samael Chagnon has an interest in it.

Who's he? asked Ricky.

Very strange, secretive guy. Leader of the Santos Muertos gang.

Well, what do you think we ought to do with this? asked Al.

Keep it out of their hands. If I were you, like I said, I'd get out of town. It's been nice chatting.

Okay. Let's go Ricky.

Al wrapped the tablet and carefully put it back in its bag. They picked up their food bags and the box of noodles. Newman had disappeared down the trail and out of sight at a velocity that was surprising for someone as large and decrepit as he apparently was.

Looks like the tide's going out, Ricky. Look at the surfers.

There was a knot of them beginning to form again out beyond the breakers. It would have been nice to have binoculars to watch them from up in the dunes, but then again, it wasn't strictly necessary. The senses were a window on the world and it helped to keep them clean, exercise them every day, thought Al. People working on computers such as his half-blind brother Tony dismayed him. Tony might have been a genius but he had all but destroyed his eyes in the pursuit of his arcane academic interests. That's why he had wanted Ricky to play football, for the extra-alive richness of it, the mud and proximity to danger, the heightened sense of being connected to the source of all creation. All that talk about the drug cartels and the submarines out on the horizon seemed very far away, not real at all. Al wondered if it was some kind of phenomenon like deer being caught in headlights, the calm that had come over the two of them, Ricky and he, as they walked back to the apartment. The sun set out on the water behind them, and the parrots flocked in the trees inland under the turquoise clouds.

They surfed for three days straight while the rain clouds swept in and the tides came in and out. It was the heaviest deluge in years. The low lying beach town did not suffer badly, but on the television at the restaurant bar the newscasts had stories of floods and drowned bodies washing up on the beaches of the Caribbean coast and the alligators gorging themselves on the dogs and cats caught in the sweep of the flood water.

Ricky got very good. Even in the low tides he could manage the ladder, the erratic pattern of telescoped waves breaking far off shore in the early evenings. Al struggled getting to his knees on the board. His face took on a swollen look with the battering he was receiving. He had not shaved in days. He would go home while the sun was hanging above the horizon in a melting after-image and cook dinner and drink a couple of bottles of beer to get over the pain in his joints. Then Ricky would come in and shower. They ate silently, both of them awkward without the intervening voice of Mary to save them from their self-pity. Al tried starting a conversation but it was never on something that Ricky would respond to. They would run down the day's surfing, and then Al hit on the idea of talking about the future, conjecturing about the state of the world. Ricky had many ideas on this, gleaned from the pages of Popular Science and the like, and Al liked to hear the wild and, in his opinion, absurd theories that had sprouted forth. Men would live in bubbles on distant planets, or in domes under the ocean.

On the fifth day Ricky had a hard time getting out of bed at dawn as they had been doing. He struggled to the kitchen and had his coffee with lots of milk and sugar. Al sipped on his and had a thought, observing Ricky's sluggish progress.

Hey. Maybe its time to head up country to see Evelio.

Okay. When do we go?

Well, We have five more days before we're due to fly home. We could go for a couple of days up to San Juan Grande and see if we could find him. Remember the cafe there with the hummingbirds?

Yeah.

If you've had enough surfing.

I don't know. I'm kind of exhausted.

Me too.

I mean it's been fun. But I might need a break.

We've been going all out for three days. At least you have.

You too. Lets go up to the mountains.

Yeah, okay. We'll give Coconut Juan the boards and go rent a car.

After a breakfast of noodles and tuna fish salad with toast, they packed their belongings into the two duffel bags and laid them by the door. Al finished off the coffee in the pot and hurried Ricky along. He was stuffing the tablet down inside his duffel bag, taking out clothes and sneakers to make room. Al didn't know why he was suddenly in a hurry. It was one of those inexplicable mood changes. Now that it was time to go, he just wanted to get on the road and out of there.

Come on, you can finish later. Let's get the boards back and get the car.

All right.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to nag.

No, you're right. There's only so much time. Although I'm sure you could have done it, Dad.

Maybe. Next time I'll get a better board. You'll see, Ricky. That'll make all the difference.

There was a crowd outside the surf shop. It was as if the entire town had congregated on the corner. A clutch of jeeps with the sun shield insignia of the Policia Nacional Civil, P.N.C, was parked at odd angles in the road. Most of the people were silent. Ricky and Al cautiously approached the crowd outside the door. A policeman saw them and motioned for them to leave the boards against the wall. Through the bodies, Al saw Coconut Juan's American girlfriend crying inside as a policewoman hugged her around the shoulders. He turned around and there was Newman still in his bathing suit, his wizened, brown, shirtless, sagging chest heaving as he stood on his toes in his flip flops to get a view inside. A wailing ambulance came around the corner and screeched to a stop behind the police jeeps. There was mud spattered on the back windshield. The back door came open, and the paramedics hopped down and stretched their legs.

Que pasó? Al asked a stoutish gentleman, in a button down short sleeve shirt and a baseball hat of the Suchitepequez FC, what had happened.

No, un hombre asesinado por arma blanca.

Quien?

Parece que el dueño. El Juan este del Coco.

Ah. Gracias.

Pobre señor. Que nos cuide Dios.

Hey Ricky.

What?

Let's go.

What happened?

Coconut Juan's dead.

Ricky didn't say anything, clearly thinking, trying out this new idea. Newman looked at them both from a distance with a strange, expressionless face that Al interpreted as fear. It was already starting. He took Newman's fear to possibly be a reflection of his own. You could create your own reality if you put your mind to it. But the reverse could also be true, that your fear could transmute into a collective nightmare of the highest order. But the individual's soul could never be extinguished or even altered, for that matter. That fact remained and it explained the calm feeling that came over him again. Or maybe it was Ricky. He was a pretty cool customer. His legs churned up the road and he darted to avoid the motorcycles that zoomed by.

That's them again, Dad.

Who.

The Santos.

Why do they all ride motorcycles all day?

It's the best way to get around here.

The car rental place was an air-conditioned island of calm. The man behind the desk got off his cell phone and smiled.

We need a car.

For how many days?

I don't know. Three, said Al.

The man took out a form and started to fill in the boxes. Al thought of Mary and had a sudden feeling of being out of time, as if floating in an endless vacuum. He could almost swear she was right behind him and he turned, half hopeful that she would be, that her presence would wipe away the nervous tension he felt. Ricky was starting to wander. But there was nothing there. He could swear, however, that her presence was almost tangible. He spoke to her, echoing the words in his mind, the last words he had said to her at the hospital.

You'll be here in my heart and watching over Ricky through my eyes. Don't you worry, Mary.

We have the Suzuki or the Hyundai.

The Hyundai is fine.

 And Ricky? His body was tugging him in all sorts of different directions. This might be the last time they would spend together before he was off on his own life to somewhere different.

Four - The Klondike

They were married In Castle Rock, New Jersey across the road from the house Mary had grown up in. There was a cupola in a neighbor's field that had been intended in the late 19th century as a setting for amateur theatrical productions and the like, and the neighbor had leased Mary's parents the field for the day. They had set up a large tent beside the cupola for the food, and in the distance, beyond the field, was the Cumberland County Fairgrounds and Union Lake. Mary's father worked as an accountant for a media company in Philadelphia. They published magazines for equestrians and water skiers and other specialized outdoor pursuits. Mary's college roommates were dressed in green and yellow dresses and Al had his best friend Joe Limosa up from Florida from Aviatrix and his brother Tony from Burlington, where he still worked in those days, in tuxedos. Mary's father walked her down the path in the field to where they waited. The guests sat in the cupola and cheered her in her white dress that had taken her months to make. Her mother, a woman who was in disgrace in her family because she had forced a divorce so that she could go overseas and teach English, whispered behind Al's ear.

She looks so much older in that dress.

The Reverend Pamela Grayson, the minister from the Methodist church, was a large, jolly woman in robes who registered official mirth on her face as she lifted up their conjoined hands like boxing champs when she pronounced them man and wife and somebody, nobody knew who, some middle-aged meathead, gave a big Bronx cheer when they kissed.

They flew to Seattle for the Carnival Line cruise of Alaska's inner passage, and a limousine picked them up at the airport. During the drive in the limo, Mary felt sick and Al told her to lie down and put her head in his lap. He stroked her forehead and hoped she would be all right. They were supposed to stop at the Pike Place Market, but Al told the driver to go straight to the hotel. Mary sat up groggily.

It's just bloat, she said.

We'll get plenty of rest on the cruise, Mary. No worries.

In the hotel room that night, they had steak and champagne with the room service. Mary ate the asparagus tips and barely touched her food. Then they watched the lights of the harbor out the large window, pulling the curtains back all the way. The television stayed off at Mary's insistence. Al thought she looked beautiful in her nightgown after she had showered and put her wet hair in a bun.

Are you feeling better?

Yes. Being with you always makes me feel better.

She snuggled next to him in bed and they just lay like that in each other's arms in the half lit room listening to the muffled sounds of the western city on the edge of the continent.

There's something wild in the air here, she said.

I know, he agreed.

Can you feel it? I could feel it in the limo, just going under those underpasses along the highway. So overgrown and lush and wild.

Yeah. It's different all right. And Alaska's going to be even better.

I wonder if we shouldn't have just stayed here and explored on our own. Eight days. Will that be too much?

Oh, no. It'll be perfect. There's music and a jogging track on deck, and karaoke...

I'm not a jogger.

It will be nice, Mary. You'll see.

He pulled her closer to him and kissed her.  Her kiss back was strong, passionate, but he felt that he would crush her with the intensity of his feeling.

Mary. Are you sure you're okay?

I'm fine. Al, she said, with a hint of exasperation.

They made love, not for the first time, and it had a hint of savagery in it, of inexplicable forces beyond their control.

The next morning they boarded the cruise ship, took a cabin on deck with a balcony, and settled in by walking down to the shopping gallery and inspecting the gift shop. It was very luxurious and stable, with almost no feel or sound of the water below. There were hundreds of people on board, and Mary felt overwhelmed. They retreated to the cabin and unpacked. Al was very excited and couldn't stay inside the cabin very long.

You go and have a walk, said Mary.

He went to the deck and watched the land slip away. Now he was a married man and it was like his youth lay behind him and the mystery of the future was like this, a boat, a large comfortable boat. It was a good life, and many of the conversations he overheard on the deck reflected the sense that the people onboard felt graced somehow with the good fortune of sharing this very day. Al wished Mary felt better, but part of the mystery of the new life was learning how to match each other's rhythms and habits. He felt sure she would enjoy herself soon. When it became evident that she would spend most of the cruise inside the cabin, the realization dawned on him that there were shades of blessedness and his was perhaps not the most vivid of all possible colorations.

But she felt better by the sixth day. At Skagway they both hiked with the more intrepid voyagers up the trail taken by the gold rush miners. Then they sat in the Gold Rush cemetery on a cold stone bench and Mary, flush in the face after the hike, told Al about a dream she'd had.

I was traveling in a boat, sailing north. The boat was being rowed. There was a castle the men were trying to get to before the ice froze. There was no way back because the ice was freezing behind us for some odd reason.

It was a dream, Mary. Just a dream.

But the strangest thing was the flying fish. They were trying to warn us but I was the only one who could understand. They would fly into the air and spell out a message with their bodies. A secret about the castle.

Wow. That sounds very vivid. Maybe you should be a writer, Mary.

No, you're the writer, Al.

Not very good, apparently.

Keep trying, honey. That book will get published someday. Flying is something everyone is interested in, after all. Do you believe dreams have some kind of basis in reality, Al?

I don't know. Probably, yes. I don't ever have strange dreams like that, though. Not since I was a boy.

I think there's an alternative universe where our dreams take place. Just like in the books by Borges. Have you ever read him?

No.

Very strange. The characters meet themselves in dreams. There are parallel universes and multiverses, long before the physicists even knew such things could exist.

Could they, Mary?

The Victor's Heritage

The Jonah Trilogy Book 2

"Is this the future of America?"

"Excellently uncomfortable and engaging."

"A fast paced read that takes you places.".

An intricately woven, futuristic tale, The Victor's Heritage parallels contemporary events. It is 2045. America has been shattered into two countries. Democravia and the Republican Homeland. Peace between the two continental rivals is always fragile.

??? Rebellious teens seek to forge their own path, but is that always so terrible?

Corrag is one such teen who has been forced into a world that she is ill-prepared for and yet is ready to embrace new ideas and concepts far from the standard "party" lines.

??? In this latest installment of Caplan's The Jonah Trilogy, he captures the force of youth, of coming of age, of new awareness that is put together into a tale that never lets up!

Drunken Druid Book Awards

Goodreads * Amazon

 

Chapter One --The Augment

          Corrag smiled at the idea of Gurgie in her bedroom on Durkiev Drive across town and the shock of recognition when she realized her friend had signed off on MandolinMonkey rather than go in for the remnant. So characteristic of a truly dynamic soul, Gurgie would say, to quit nonchalantly on the verge. But for Corrag the reality was less comforting. She had ten minutes before her parents called for dinner. It was a more complex fear coming over her -- of facing Ricky and Alana, the stalwarts of St. Michael's Close, the exclusive, tree-lined enclave of Edmundstown where she had grown and lived her entire sixteen years. Her parents, the Drs. Lyons as they were titled in the annual consensus, had implied that this talk would be “important to her future.” Whatever that could mean. Something about the boring infinitude of possibilities always just around the corner. Like signing off on the game rather than face the interior of the obelisk, it was easier for Corrag to be present and accounted for -- ride the tide of her parent’s displeasure -- then to make a stand by remaining in her bedroom, the private space she continued to carve out of the increasingly imperiled Democravian Federation life she was about to leave behind.

She observed numbly as the icon came up on the nanowall, the family crest with the towering crane and the stylized image of the transgalactic, so twenty-thirties, and wished again she’d had other siblings, that Ricky and Alana had been more compelled by the recommendations of the Commission on Demography and less concerned with their augmented careers. But so be it. There were also advantages to being the basket in which were placed all the eggs of the Lyons family name. if only the crest design were more compelling. She hit the kill button before the music, theme of HG Wells acclaimed classic The Shape of Things to Come which she had performed during her sixth grade drama season in a stellar role as Hillary Perron, the Council leader responsible for the withering away of the former power of the state of California, the sclerotic, corrupt vestiges of what had once been democratic governance, could end. Now it just reminded her of her parent’s unfulfilled expectations for her development as a young woman about to assume the mantle of augmentation.

She descended the stairs covered in royal blue carpeting and sat at the dining room table of molybdenum, while her father, white beard trimmed neatly and his cardigan in the colors of the University of the Upper West, maroon with cream pockets, beamed at her. Her mother, Alana, continued to talk in that subtle, alluring monotone with hints of New Albion that had entranced many faculty parties on the shores of Mono Lake.

          “And I’ve always maintained that tennis induces a better oxygen wash of the skin than yoga, Ricky. Well. Here she is. Corrag? Where is your file?” asked Alana.

          “Oh my God. Can I get my food before the interrogation?”

          “Of course you can. Don’t be silly,” said her father, trying hard to keep the sound of despair out of his voice. Alana sighed. Corrag hated hurting their feelings, but there was nothing else to be done. This would have to be endured. Not even Alana was going to come out of this smelling of roses. There was probably a word in another language for the moment when a young woman declared her independence from her family without a pre-approved plan in place. But Corrag felt herself destined for a new form of singular existence that depended on taking this risk.

          “Have you taken a stab at the essay yet? When is it due?" asked her father, once she had served herself from the tray offered by the housebot of the lasagna and truffles.

          “In two days,” said Alana. “It’s getting late.”

          “I’m having thoughts about it,” said Corrag. “I’m not sure.”

          “Not sure. Thoughts. That’s Corrag for you,” said Alana. “What is sure for you? Nothing is ever sure in your world. You are the classic case of choice overload. We never should have let her have a PlayCube of her own.”

          “Let her speak,” said Ricky.

          They waited breathlessly, the two anxious parents, while Corrag forked some lasagna and chewed without looking at them.

           “Didn’t you always tell me to follow my desires, Dad? Well, that’s what I’m trying to decipher. I don’t really know what my desires are. I don’t know if it’s what I really want. That’s my problem. I want to know. I can’t just plunge ahead into fine-tuning until I do. It wouldn’t be right for me.”

          “Right for me.” Alana repeated. She dropped her fork. It clattered on her plate. Ricky grabbed his head helplessly with both hands. The bot, sensing some urgency, circled the table speedily. Corrag waved it away with her hand and looked at it with a hard stare that sent it back into the kitchen through the energy panel.

          “This uncertainty of yours is in total defiance of your education and privilege,” said Alana.

          “I know,” said Corrag. “But it’s what I want. Until we reach augmentation, we can choose what we want, right?”

          “Within reason, Corrag. The parents still have the final say,” said Alana darkly.

          “It’s unbelievable, Corrag,” said her father.  “There are no more exemptions. Look at the Calder boy. He wanted to take a year and read the books in his grandfather’s library because he said he “valued the experience” of holding the words in his head instead of instant upload. He tried to argue in the consensus - you don’t remember, do you? - that the year of reading was worthwhile. But there were no more exemptions. Do you understand? He was effectively exiled. The only thing left to him was the HumInt Corps. Is that what you want? Hundred mile marches in the swamps where not even the bots can go? Certain premature death? No augmentation means no physical corrections.”

          “That’s not true. There are other things,” said Corrag, the color rising in her face.

          “Like what?” asked Alana.

“I don’t know.”

          “Uugh,” grimaced Alana, her face wrinkling like a prune despite the botulin implants.

          “Look,” said Ricky. Corrag could see the glint in his eye that told her he was probably in the cloud. “It’s a common condition of human childhood to seek individuation. We try to condition it away, but the vestiges of the trait are stronger in some and may require remedial conditioning. Or else you can choose the Vocag. There are some interesting possibilities. If you like manual work.”

          “Okay,” said Corrag. She’d heard it all before, The path of the conversation had taken a familiar tack that apparently was not remembered by her father. But Alana would not have it.

          “Do you know what that is? It’s not exactly gravy, is it. Give them run of the greenhouses. How ... utterly tacky.” said Alana.

          “So? Somebody has to grow the food. I thought we were all in this together. Hail the Federation. Smile all the while."

          “Corrag,” said Alana sharply.

          “What?”

          “Look,” said Ricky. “I can accept that you need time. You’ve always been ... different."

          "What are you talking about, Dad? I'm just like you. Have you forgotten? You've told me about refusing to play football. How your dad took it hard. How you had to find your own way."

          "I know. You're ... different. Yes, like I was once. That’s why we love you. We’ll continue to support you in your choices no matter what.”

          “But she doesn’t know what she wants.”

          “Give her a year. What if we send her to New Albion to stay with Geoff and Joan. She can work with them, I don't know, the cows and the vegetable garden and get a real taste of life in the Republic. How does that sound, Corrag? It’s a world away from here. You haven’t seen your cousins since you were oh, two years old.”

          “I don’t remember.”

          “I agree,” said Alana, with the glint in her eye. “At first I thought it was a bad idea. After all, the Republic’s ideas on education and adulthood are very different than ours. I just don’t know how it will sit with the Council.”

          “I’ll run it by Mitchell Culpepper. There is the youth emissary program. It’s usually staffed by graduates of fine-tuning, but they may make an exception for me."

          “And I’ll get in touch with Joan. There’s the risk of course …”

“Of course. But …  paradoxically there are less opportunities for young people in the Repho. The reliance on market forces will always prove inefficient as a mechanism to harness the singularity.”

“Do call Mitchell.”

“I will dear. Tonight.”

Ricky and Alana finished their dinner with occasional glances Corrag’s way. The matter was closed as far as they were concerned. Corrag watched her parents, wondering at their ability to turn on a dime conversationally once all the options had been thoroughly considered. For her, though, a year abroad loomed mysterious and menacing. She hadn’t heard them talk about the New Albion family in forever, and why that would be the best option for her was not clear. Corrag had, in the back of her mind, figured they would find a way to get her private tutors to prepare for augmentation, with some kind of mental health dispensation. Sure it would have channeled her into the arts, but that was where she felt at home, without the responsibility for determining the way forward for the entire civilization. Just entertain us, that was the mandate for the ArtSmile corps coming out of the Federation system. Most of their recent mindscapes and challenges were pretty bland. The occasional bootleg memes from Sandelsky, the main branding of the Republic that teenaged hackers sometimes spread around the play spheres, far outstripped Democravian productions in technical flair; and they just seemed deeper, somehow more important.

She advanced around the dark corner. The street was empty except for a parked vintage Bundeswehr quadcopter on the right. She passed it and lifted her head. In her hand she hefted the laser pistol and aimed it at the bonfire about three blocks away. The Mandolin headquarters was a square, black obelisk, modelled on a classic Anish Kapoor sculpture. The fire raged around its doors and she had to shoot her way through a crowd of ripper monkeys. They were easy. They always aimed right for your head and all you had to do was duck several inches and fire back at the same time in their general vicinity. The game makers had been recently faulted at a consensus for setting the adversarial level purposefully down market in order to secure continued funding.  For Corrag, the subtext was clear. Life was a popularity contest. No matter how efficiently the council liked to think it was going you couldn’t do away with the basic human flaws of wanting, desiring, seeking what was out there. Greater RAM speeds and advanced neural networks had never gotten to grips with the pattern-making propensity of the human brain and the magnetic allure of pleasure which threw up the energy-matter continuum all around. MandolinMonkey did a good job of smoothing the jolts of scenic transition and stimulating the pituitary with each new level attained. Still, she found herself impatiently bypassing the obvious level trap with a joystick function and flying down the hallways unmindful of lesser adventures and parallel opportunities. Above and behind her avatar there sprung two Greckels, stoat-like creatures capable of quick extensions and sharp tears at limbs and throats. They were Gurgie and Mathew.

“Come with us,” said a high-pitched voice.

She had five seconds. She knew she should check the table for power surges at least, but she felt compelled to follow. If they were leading her astray, so be it. She would find a way to dodge an ill end, as the game makers called it. Her avatar, an Elfin, had the power over water and fire and so was a logical complement to the Greckels’ slippery land capabilities. What the game lacked was dimensionality of power, the ability to shape shift and entertain various outcomes at the same time. But for now it would do. In the end, win or lose, the only thing that mattered was displaying the innovative spirit that the Founders wanted in the future leader corps. Once you had that hacked, everything else was an easy trick. The person that had taught her the shortcuts that had helped her to climb the ranks Federation wide was Ben Calder.          Where was he now? Was he still alive? Or had the stint in the Humint Corps in the Basin wars possibly killed him, as her father had suggested? A cold stab of fear hit Corrag at the thought of Ben dead.

They were in the obelisk. Corrag wondered how they had gotten in. Down the hall the two Greckels paused and stood on their hindfeet at a nanowall display. There in a neon gothic font flashed the message: Be a Vence with us at the Spring Fest.  The Vences were a rebel punk band from the twenties, one of Gurgie’s favorites. She had their songs posted all over the soundscape in school. The Vences had painted their faces in ghoulish camouflage colors and had flouted the ideals of physical perfection and the singularity long enough to gain themselves a diehard following. Gurgie’s parents had been fans and so had Ricky, in his youth. But he hated their music now and cringed whenever Gurgie came over for a visit trailing “Blast Me Down Andromeda” out of her loose earpiece.

“Very smooth, Gurgie,” said Corrag, pressing the joystick dialogue button beneath the thumb hold. The Elfin jumped and clapped, signifying acceptance of a strange, land-based phenomenon. Corrag smiled at the clever algorithm that had allowed her avatar to anticipate her feelings. Then the Greckels faded into the ether and she was alone. A blank look on the Elfin’s severe, drawn face was intriguing, as if she were pondering the significance of life. Corrag saved and hit the power off with her index finger, before any other competitors could appear to threaten her, and lay down on her bed. Sometimes the Elfin almost seemed to come alive and read her mind. That was the most frustrating thing, the apparent gap between her capabilities and actual human feelings. There were some who believed that bots had already made the transition, but Corrag was not one of them. For a while she had believed, and her parents and teachers still fostered the foundational concept, that humans and bots would soon be equals in thought and feeling. But for Corrag the issue was now moot. In the last year, she would guess, she had come down thoroughly on the side that this equality was neither necessary nor desirable. Not that she dared to voice the opinion. It would place her beyond the sphere of Democravian influence and deem her “inconvenient” for continued leadership training. Because the ideal of the Democravian way ever since the initial founding of the institutional state in 2022 was to raise a cadre of youth who would merge with the bots in order to undergo the transgalactic mission -- colonize the most desirable Earth-like habitable planets, 23 of them, that had been so far identified as potential targets in the Milky Way. And in the intervening two decades since the first councils and consensus meetings, the notion of youth had of course expanded so that almost all citizens with the appropriate formation could potentially qualify for merger. It was this very accessibility to the highest ideals of the state that gave Democravia its missionary fervor, its self-styled exceptionalism, and made it all the harder for Corrag to accept that she was swimming against the stream. Though she knew, in the darkness, under the sheets, about to fall asleep in the silence of the Edmundstown night, that she was not really alone.

Edmundstown Senior School was divided into two floors, the Upper Deck and the Lower Hall. On the Upper Deck, Corrag took most of her classes except gym. Miss Schilling taught the humanities block for advanced seniors.  They were touching on the literature of the transgressives, in the context of the decline of the West and the rise of the plural. Miss Schilling was a bright-eyed thirty-year old. Mathew and Gurgie sat in the front row and laughed at her references to James Joyce as “that old man in the trench coat hiding in the sand dunes.” Corrag sat in the back row between Julian Alvarenga and Prualyse Kopeckwitz. She wondered what was that funny about Joyce. Was it his notion of the circularity of time, so maligned and disparaged? Miss Schilling, with her bright smile and sharp hairstyle, looked at her as if reading her thoughts.

“And of course you have had the night to reflect on the links to our core curriculum factor nine, and that is what? Corrag?”

“Factor nine?”

It had been flashing on the wall at the beginning of the class along with a soundscape by SwiftBoat.

“Oh yes. The need to transcend individuation and internalize utility.” said Corrag.

“And how does our study of Joyce tie in?”

“Well, I don’t quite know. I mean, yes, there were a lot of voices, but isn’t it admirable for a man to try and capture the essence of his reality like that?”

“But the end result is a cacophony. A cacophony that at best yields a meager portrait of one individual’s disillusion and bitterness. Democravian artists have dwarfed the possibilities of the transgressives. To end, Corrag, with Molly Bloom reminiscing on the romantic past, I’m sure you’ll agree. Such a shoddy counterfeit of reality. When we compare that to the works of the Ontavians, collaborations that we will look at next week that mix the perspectives of symmetry and harmonics, it will all be clear,” said Miss Schilling. Gurgie turned around and gave a hard stare.

“But it’s about the common people struggling with the weight of history. Isn’t that a part of what Democravia represents?”

“It’s not good enough, Corrag. Not good enough. It disparages women.”

“But so does The Great Gatsby Look at Daisy. Irresponsible and careless and destructive.”

“Yes, but Fitzgerald identified the malaise. the lack of tether in the primitive, unwashed American soul. The need for correction. The inevitability of self-destruction. That is a seminal work. if only Fitzgerald had correctly identified Zelda his wife as a collaborator in his life work. The myth of the heroic male was still too strong. There were too many economic factors at work in its perpetuation. You’ve seen that in your history block. I want you to reference the SwiftBoat parody of masculine artistry. Nietzsche and Me. You’ll find it in Unit 28, I believe in the Library archives for this course. In your reflective piece tonight remember to present in a visually appealing manner and to comment on the works of at least three of your fellow students. That’s all for this morning, students. Smile all the while.”

Julian Alvarenga smiled wanly at her.

“Nice try, Corrag. Going for the gusto, aren’t you?”

“What is that, Julian? An obscure reference to 20th century advertising? Let me guess. Cigarettes.”

“Close. Try beer.”

“Try beer. Funny. Very transgressive of you.”

Julian was the first of his siblings to attend the Upper Deck. They were a family of former farm workers, the dark-skinned people of the Valley, mostly displaced, like the majority of work sectors, by the first generation of semi-autonomous bots. He had a permeable quality, as if life was just passing through him that reminded Corrag of a sieve. She looked him in the eye to test her theory. He looked her right back and smiled. This was strange.

“Corrag? Can I see you a minute?”

Miss Schilling lifted her head at her desk. Corrag nudged past Gurgie.

“I’ll wait for you," said Gurgie.

“By the O tank.”

“Fine.”

Miss Schilling looked tired. She patted her hair behind her ear and cocked her head at Corrag, who suddenly felt under siege, as if something had popped inside her skull.

“How is that essay coming?” asked Miss Schilling.

“It’s not.”

“I didn’t think so. I’ve seen this before, you know. I want to help.”

Corrag felt like crying.

“I’m taking a year. My father’s going to clear it with Axion.”

“Looks like poor Corrag is having a crisis.”

“You don’t need to rub it in.”

“I’m a little bit angry, frankly. I offered to help you months ago.” Miss Schilling thrust her hands out on the desk, splayed fingers on the console flashing slogans and cafeteria menus and student visuals.

“But I don’t believe in it anymore, Miss Schilling.”

“Don’t believe in what? Corrag, it’s a poor poet who cannot venerate a doomed civilization. What you’re going through is perfectly natural. Your feelings of nostalgia and ... and anger are the signs of a higher calling. I so much want to recommend you for higher order augmentation. And it’s going to raise questions about the entire program here if you don’t complete the application process for Axion Fine-Tuning. You can’t do that to us, Corrag.”

Miss Schilling was sitting straight up on the chair and suddenly looking at her with that eagle-eyed augmented focus that made Corrag instinctively want to squirm. She looked down and away. Again the easy path beckoned -- to follow along and do what she was told and hope someday it would all be okay. That was the subliminal message, the factor X of the hidden curriculum not just of the Edmundstown Charter School but of the town itself. Perhaps even of Democravia.

“I’ll try.”

More than try. Put in the Corrag effort that we all know you’re capable of. Top shelf stuff. Give it all you’ve got. Do it for us, for the Wildcats. For Edmundstown. Make us proud.”

“Is that all?”

Yes, that’s all. Share with me, please. And Corrag?”

“Yes?”

“Smile. All the while.”

Corrag got out through the faulty energy panel that zapped her back with a slight zap. The janitor, Mr. Breen, was already coming down the hall on the beat up old Segway with his laser torch repair tool swaying dangerously on the curves against his hip. At this time mid morning the energy grid constantly experienced minor fluctuations as the wind either rose or fell and the water desalination plants kicked in up and down the Kaiser aquifer, giving the bigger power users in the area headaches such as energy panel misalignments and nanowall absurdities. Mr. Breen smiled at Corrag as he would at a senior with some insider knowledge of these sorts of problems. Gurgie leaned against the wall and Mathew looked up and down the hall nervously at the river of well-dressed and contented Upper Deck students in their paisley and Kubik patterned neoprenes with the various interchangeable logos of self-satisfied Democravian memes. There were few other teachers in the Upper Deck as most of the classes conducted via upload and lecture needed only administrators to assist with student work in the study hall blocks. Miss Schilling had only a few more semesters of small class teaching before she would move on in the Axion system to upload lectures in a regional class encompassing the Western and Middle Southern districts.

At the O tank, Corrag fastened the mask to her face while holding her standard issue ExePad tablet in the other hand. The O had a sweet aftertaste. They added something to it, some kind of anesthetic. That was the rumor anyways. And on some days there was a caffeinated mix that heightened the fervor of students about to embark on a school-wide mission, one of the collaborative, experiential pieces. The last one, to Haiti, led by Mrs. Wilson, the head of the PTA, had been a disaster. Seven students had caught new forms of the pulmonary virus that had decimated the Caribbean and South America and had needed long stays at the BethIsrael-XenKai Hospital in Matamoros.

“So Corrag. Do you have anything to say?” asked Gurgie

“Yes, I saw your visual. And yes, Of course I’ll go with you to the Spring Fest. What did you think?”

“Well, you have been acting very strangely lately,” said Mathew, eyeballing her with mock augmented focus.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind. I haven’t finished my application essay.”

“Why not?” asked Gurgie. “You can’t be thinking about transferring to the Vocag?”

“I am.”

“Jesus, Corrag. You need to come with us tonight.”

“Okay. I said I would. But more importantly: How do we dress? We’re a team, right? Forget the Vences. Everybody’s going to do that. I have an idea we go as Daisy and Tom and Gatsby. I’ll be Gatsby. I have the perfect idea for a pants suit that my mother used to wear. It’s in a box in the attic.”

“But I thought we had discussed going as Joseph in The Assistant,” said Gurgie.

“No, I was going to be Tobler the Inventor,” said Mathew.

“Oh, that’s right,” said Gurgie, distracted by the sudden thinning of students as the next class began. They walked together towards the cafe. Corrag wondered at how easily Gurgie gave up on the Vences. The changes they all went through were happening way too fast and Miss Schilling was having way too big an impact on their social lives. Outside, a flock of small birds flew in a cloud by the energy panels, distorting and magnifying so as to seem a shade, like a hand drawing down upon the three of them as they walked along.

“The thing is,” said Corrag, thinking aloud. “I like Daisy and Tom and Jay Gatz, whereas I don’t like Joseph. He’s too pleasant ... and passive.”

“Exactly. Just like Gatsby. Only the mask never slips,” said Gurgie.

“Well, I’m not feeling very Chinese. But I am feeling destructive,” said Corrag with a cackle, turning and leering at Mathew and Gurgie.

“Okay. Springfest is our last fling at childish role-play. So you want to celebrate that bourgeois trope of creative destruction. Be our guest,” said Mathew.

“I just want to have fun,” said Corrag coldly. “Mathew.”

“Oh, God. Fun. Right, I forgot how important that was to you,”

Corrag’s brows wrinkled. Mathew was upsetting her.

“Doesn’t mean we all feel the same way.” said Mathew

“You’ll feel just like Miss Schilling wants you to feel, which is to say not feel anything at all. Isn’t that the preconditioning? Too numb to think for ourselves so we take on the augmented way and don’t have ourselves to answer to any more. How convenient.”

Mathew and Gurgie looked at each other, letting their confusion about Corrag’s defiance of the Democravian ethic of obedience just show in the glance held between them.

“Corrag. Okay. We’ll go as Daisy and Tom and you can be Gatsby. But we’ll be Daisy and Tom as Walser’s Chinese, as the assistants, and Gatsby will be the Inventor. We’ll turn the two books around.”

“That’s the Gurgie I love the best." Corrag threw her arms around Gurgie and spun in the hall.  A teacher, Mr. Aarnits, glared at them through the open doorway of his classroom, and the emosensor directly overhead glowed a warning green.

The crowd outside the Taylor Jabones Civic Center seemed to undulate and throb as the Lyons family van pulled up to the curb. Mostly dressed in velvets and vintage chambrays and shades of purple and green, the colors of the Edmundstown Wildcats, purple for the Upper deck and green for the Lower deck, the students were an unrecognizable and restless mob in the customary spirit of the Spring Fest. Corrag had mixed feelings about the night. She mainly wanted to dance and forget about the issues confronting her at that moment.

“Good night,” she said to nobody in particular as she stepped away from the open door of the van.

“What time do you expect to be picked up,” said the driverbot, speaking from a juncture of the neckpiece and the swivel-cam head. It was Alana’s voice.

“One thirty, please,” said Corrag.

“Not acceptable. Twenty-two thirty at the latest. We will be at the loading station then. Please be there as well. Mind your manners.”

Mind your manners. That was just like Alana, to remind her of the proper way to behave at a Spring Fest. As if she had not been a party-girl herself in her youth, one of the late 2020s leading Unoits who had marched on Federation Councils demanding an end to suppression of the Vallegos and increasing availability of mezzopeptide and corrections to the disenfranchised dwellers of New Canaan, as Democravia had then called itself. Corrag shuddered at the image in her mind of her mother as a young woman just a little beyond her own age.

As she made her way through the sea of bedecked and masked youth of Edmundstown, Corrag kept looking out for the familiar sight of her two closest friends. She had on a mobster fedora over her mass of long curls and a bone white Venetian bauta mask, tight cut Wall Street pants with black neoprene Night Wolf galoshes. A low cut, long, red vintage Hollywood silk coat and in her hands a digital wand-clock with wings finished off the outfit. Somebody jumped into her path with a black Zorro mask and a Spritz gun.

          “Who are you?” it asked.

“No. Who are you?” asked Corrag.

“Your best friend.” There were hoots of laughter as the crowd of booters egged him on. Corrag pushed by the group and they sprayed their Spritz guns into the air, letting off the rainbow hues of the plasmic concoction. This caused an outbreak of similar Spritz fire around the pedestrian square in front of the Civic Center. Then the real fireworks began from the roof of the Center, and the crowd went berserk with cheering and shouting. Corrag stopped in her frenetic rush to the entrance steps and watched the waves of exploding color fanning out over her and descending on the crowd from the black night sky. The explosions and the crowd’s reactive shouting merged into a dull throbbing at the back of her mind. Corrag had a flash image of the fireworks she’d seen in the desert at her grandfather Al’s ranch in Sonora. The old man had never been a hand at the consensus and thus remained outside the Democravian orbit until he died. But at his funeral he had been made an honorary recipient of the Arts Benefit Lifetime Award and his books uploaded into the official curriculum of the Augmentation Board, the 14 members from around the world, mostly Republican Homeland and Democravian, who controlled the IPP keys, the core of the Interneural Web, the old INW along whose frequencies ran the entire collective virtual sphere.

Corrag was about to look at her emosponder when she felt a tap on the shoulder and turned around to see two characters from some macabre production of bourgeois musical theater complete with wigs and vintage paper Chinese umbrellas.

“Where did you get the umbrellas? I love them.”

“You haven’t said anything about the matching boots.” said Gurgie. She pushed out her foot and Mathew rolled his eyes.

“Lizard skin. There was a Yaqui Indian in the family service who made them for my brother and I,” said Mathew, his V mask with the smirk in the dim light of the fireworks somehow perfectly fit him.

“Oh, you guys are absolutely the best. Shall we go in? These Spritz guns are driving me nuts.”

“Let’s do it,” said Gurgie.

Inside, the event organizers had pumped up the O to maximum levels and the band onstage was putting out a synthesized auralscape that was also simultaneously being relayed along a local intranet. Dancers were plugged into wireless earclips and gyrating along to the pulsating power chord driven harmonics. Refreshments in the form of fermented Maxergy drinks were being dispensed by generic bots laid on by the Western council, and info-point stands along the perimeter of the hall manned by Democravian council workers were representing the various work sectors, including a recruiting officer of the Democravian Military Defense Wing, a cubicle of mimics and aerobesthetes from the ArtSmile Corps, the VocAg table dispensing samples of hormone replacement snacks from local Valley growers, and of course the Daughters of Harmonious Memory, a social organization that looked after orphans and whose Members had ancestors who had fought in the New Canaanite wars, were flashing images of vintage industries such as the Hollywood cinema, the primitive visualscapes that had once so entranced the old-time ones.

Gurgie, Mathew and Corrag stepped along, driven by the sweep of the crowd into the middle of the dance floor where the lights from the emosensors were pulsating the fastest. The band began playing “Heaven’s Gate”, a classic Spring Fest staple. Dancers jumped together, craning their heads back and pumping both fists in the air to the bass line rocking the hall. They came closer together and then fell back like a human wave, the youth of the Valley celebrating the apogee of the year. The rockers with the Spritz guns, along with the girls, many of them costumed as simple sex workers or in jury-rigged uniforms with the insignia and the classic meme of the HumInt Corps, Ridet Geritur, linked arms on the outside of the dancers and began to circle. And then the choreographed symbolic imagery was lost, subsumed as the dancers spilled out beyond the circumference of the steppers.

When the song ended, Corrag looked around, slowly coming back to her senses. She unsnapped her earclip and felt her way towards the outside of the dancing mob with her hand. The next song increased the intensity, and the circle of Lower Deck steppers renewed their boundary walk. Corrag waited for the right moment, a lull in the energy pattern, and broke out through the human line. She walked over to the refreshment valve and slipped on an O mask. Her head cleared and she felt for an instant a sense of euphoria, somehow almost organic, as if she were suddenly light years away, on a distant moon of her own, with no impinging concerns about the future and what it held weighing her down. She wished she could hold on to the moment, even better, share it with someone.

All the Zolafs and Buzzyears and the Hillaries and Eunique Biebers, they were all kids she would have known from Lightning Leagues or fencing classes or the myriad theatrical productions she’d been in through the grade and middle schools. Corrag found it fascinating that in this sea of familiar yet bizarre anonymity she was free, free in a way that carried an exotic charge of exhilaration. She had overheard parental stories about the dangers of Spring Fest, about kids not being able to distinguish reality from fantasy and jumping from the upper balconies awash in feelings of euphoria and invincibility. This was their first taste of the augmented way, after all, of the freedom that came with giving up their childish identities. But Corrag wondered about herself. Would she be truly able to merge with the path and put the Democravian nation’s well being before her own desires? Sometimes she thought she was too enamored of her own thought processes, of the way her mind wanted to dig and scratch its way out of the traps the adult world set. She was a feral creature, a throwback to a more primitive way of life. It didn’t seem to be something she’d inherited from Alana and Ricky, the two of them epitomes in her mind of the deep-rooted and loyal communitarian ideals that ran in her family. Where did she get it, this unhappiness, this habit of solitary thought she’d secretly cultivated in the midst of privilege?

A boy in a uniform, tall, with a purposeless gait, approached from out of no particular direction, from the darkness. His mask was the same as Corrag’s, just a little older, not as shiny in the pulsating flashes of neon, and he stopped in front of her. Corrag looked carefully, noting the moment of recognition with some metacognitive distance. Nevertheless, her heart skipped a few beats and her mind raced. She didn’t expect this. It wasn’t fair of him to just show up. Without turning, Ben Calder addressed her, staring out at the dance floor.

”I thought I might see you, Corrag.”

“You don’t mind rocking the boat. Did you miss me?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not supposed to be here.”

“You never called. Why is that? Were you trying to forget? And now you’re here because you couldn’t? You never even called. I mean you have an emosponder, right? They couldn’t have taken that away. Why didn’t you ever call? I thought you were possibly dead.”

“Sometimes I wanted to be dead. But here I am. And you? I hear you’re entering your application for fine-tuning.”

          “Not yet.”

She had a sudden need to see his face.

“Come with me. We’ll check out the balconies,” she said.

“That’s not allowed.”

“Just come. We’ll figure it out.”

“Do you know the way?”

“I’ll find it.”

Corrag led him past the stands to the far end of the hall. Gurgie and Mathew were dancing and looked over briefly in her direction. She pretended not to notice. She grabbed a Maxergy freshener shot and Ben followed suit and they walked together out past the dancers and the presenters from the ArtSmile Corps lounging and stretching in a circle by an unused energy panel exit. Corrag waited until the music reached a moment of high intensity, and then reached swiftly with her time wand and tripped the converter switch on the box like she’d observed Mr. Breen do.  This turned the receptor back to the recently phased out former digital signal. The panel bars began to throb in a slow rhythm in line with the less powerful digital pulse. Then she looked at Ben and nodded and he slipped through the bars of the panel. She waited a few seconds, held her breath, and with a sudden movement jumped between the bars to the other side. She felt the hairs on her head and neck rise with the kinetic energy, but not enough to set off any alarms.

The music and hubbub from the center sounded distant. The walls of the hall were dusty and the cement left unpainted with splotches of water staining down from the ceiling. Ben was looking into the dim distance in some inert way. Corrag reached up and touched his cheek and he recoiled.

“Can you just take it off?”

“I ... you ,” Ben spluttered. “You don’t have the right, Corrag.”

He reached up and pulled off the mask. His face looked old, lined, tired. His eyes were dark, and he looked away when she stared. She tried hard to remember the way he had used to look, the memory she had of him the day he’d explained to her that he could wait with his avatar at a crossroad and, his belief was so strong that if he concentrated he could sense the virtual enemy before it appeared. He had been so alive, so focused, so quick to see a way. Underneath the mask of this face there was that other face, she was sure.

“Where have you been, Ben?

“In the south quadrant with the Corps.”

“What do you want to do now?

“Corrag, why do you think you can ask me that?”

“You’re Ben. My friend.”

“No. I’m Private Calder of the 175th Air Infantry Battalion, Mayagua Sector Six.”

“So, that doesn’t mean anything to me. You’re Ben. Why did you come back?”

“I don’t know.” He walked away, down the hall. Corrag followed. She wanted to touch him, to turn him around. Where was he going? It scared her to see him this way. She didn’t want to lose him. He was the last link to her childhood, to the hopes, unformed and unspoken as they had been, of a happiness of her own. At the end of the hall, where it emptied into a larger stairwell, he stopped and craned his head around, looking up into the dark of the stairwell.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. Come on.”

“No, Ben. I mean about us.”

“About us?” Ben took his foot off the step and turned towards her. He shifted his weight uneasily and looked into her face intently.

“There is no us. We don’t exist.”

“What about trusting your instincts, Ben? What about finding the way?” Corrag’s voice cracked with emotion. She heard the echo of it down the hall and had the sensation of falling, as if she’d been dropped into some time warp.

“Shut up, Corrag. That’s just stupid.”

“Stupid? Ben, that’s what we lived for. Don’t you remember? You taught me everything I knew. You were the best gamer ever before you dropped it. Left it all behind. Said you’d be back and we’d figure it out. I believed you, Ben.  We can find a way to be happy. In a new way. Our own way. What about all that? Are you going to say you don’t remember? Private Calder or whatever you are?”

Ben turned around and walked back towards her.

“You’ve never been on patrol in the Nicanor. You’ve never done three weeks on the hunt. You don’t know what it’s like to be holding a Nicanor prisoner and looking into eyes that just mirror back the hatred. There is no you and me. Just the next day. And the next camp. And the next. You disappears. Me is just a hole to put food into. The Nicanor kills you.”

“Don’t go back. Stay with me. We’ll join the open border, volunteer to clean and cook.”

“No, Corrag. Finish your fine-tuning. Be what you need to be.”

“And smile all the while?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Ben? Why?”

“Because otherwise it hurts too much. We never knew pain, Corrag.”

Ben took her hands in his.

“I know it now.”

“There is no you. There is no me. Listen to me.”

“No. I won’t. I listened to you before and you lied,” Corrag pulled her hands away. She wanted to run back to the dance floor. Forget she’d ever seen him or ever wished to see him again.

“What’s a lie?" asked Ben, his voice small, tinny, just a remnant of the fire and humor that had once filled him.

“What have they done to you Ben? It’s like you’ve been augmented, only worse.”

Ben stared at her, unable to say a thing.

“What is it?”

Instead of answering, he turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, his legs churning and arms flailing. He’d disappeared from sight in a matter of seconds, just the sound of the boot strikes on the concrete echoing more and more distantly as he ascended. Corrag followed. She climbed at a slower pace, hands on the cold metal rail, listening for the sound of Ben up ahead. But there was just silence. When she reached the top flight, there was a metal door propped open.

Outside the cold night air rushed by in a breeze from the north. The San Fermin Mountains ranged in a dark silhouette. Ben was standing on the edge of the roof overlooking the Convention Center plaza. The red lights of Federation weather and surveillance drones filled the night sky. Corrag came up next to Ben and looked out over the city.

“That’s where we grew up, Ben. We existed in it. That was real. You and me we were real, right?”

“Yes.”

"But you think I should fine tune?”

“I do.”

"But look out there. We can discover it for ourselves. We can be free.”

"There’s no such thing. All the desires will be reprogrammed and rebooted to the higher order.”

“Well, then why try?”

“Because otherwise we die.”

"But you’re going to die, Ben."

"Not if I kill first. In three months, with confirmed kills in the seven hundred or higher range, I can be a candidate for Officer Training School.”

“Is that what you want?”

"What I want. It’s what is, Corrag. That’s all. There is no other way. Some day we can live in the heavens on the planets of Betelgeuse or Andromeda. Our offspring will rule the galaxies, fill the universe with their thought forms and productions. Don’t you want that?”

“That’s not alive with me. I want to live here and now. With you. Have children, not offspring. Raise them to run and breathe and drink and dream in the mountains and valleys of Earth. That’s why I knew you’d come back. I knew you would, just not tonight. I expected you in the summer. That’s why I was holding out on sending off the fine-tuning application. I wanted to be here when you got back.”

“There’s a break in the fighting now,” said Ben distantly. “The Naguani have retreated. It’s strange. I expect they’re gathering strength for a major counteroffensive. We’ve tried to burn them out. Dry up the water cycle with localized cloud inhibition and carpet napalm bomb the basin. But they keep coming. They never stop. No matter how many you kill there’s always more of them. Especially at night. They can shape shift and come at you. The jaguars can get by the lasers. In your sleep. That’s the worst sound.

“What is?”

“The guys in their bunks being mauled, Corrag. All the guys in the Corp, we just want to survive long enough to get the kill range target and get out. It’s as if the war is bigger than we are.”

“What about the girls?”

“Well, it’s Democravia, right? The girls in the Corps can work their way up to augmentation with a kill rate, too. ”

“That’s sick.”

“Yes, it is kind of.”

“Kind of, Ben?”

She couldn't see his face in the dark, but wanted to. At that instant she sensed he needed her. The distance between them was threatening to blow up and obliterate whatever they had left between them, any memory of a friendship, any hope Corrag had for the future. So she took his hand and pulled him away from the edge of the roof.

"Let’s go. I know where we can go.”

“Where, Corrag?”

“Anywhere, I don’t really know where. It doesn’t matter where.”

“Then, let’s go.”

They went down and out through the dance hall with their masks on again. Corrag tapped the emosponder on her left wrist and picked up Gurgie’s avatar on the display.

“I’m going out.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know. I’m with Ben.”

“Please be careful, Corrag. Think about your steps before you take any. Be sure.”

“If I did that. I’d never get anywhere, Gurgie. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”

Corrag tapped three times on the emosponder, putting it to sleep. Together, she and Ben walked briskly, wordlessly, until they found a zipbike out on the street about five blocks from the Civic Center. After punching in the emergency code for civilian first responders on the meter, Ben mounted it and motioned for her to jump on the back. Corrag smiled. Now they were getting somewhere.

“How long do we have?

“Three hours showing.”

“That should get us to Ysidro.”

“Do you remember how to get there?”

“I think so. Go out north on the old causeway.”

Ben twisted the throttle and the zipbike responded instantly, silently accelerating to eighty miles an hour on the quiet streets. Ben braked on the corners and leaned as if he’d just gotten off the speed circuit training ground. Under the Spring Fest curfew, he didn’t have to worry about other traffic, and by keeping his headlights off, he avoided alerting any police radars of their highly illicit escapade.

Ysidro had been Ricky and Alana's favorite camping ground in her childhood. They’d often pitched a tent in the shadow of the canyon land. She felt herself feeling a way back towards those days, the sense of security, satisfaction and rightness of those summers, drinking in the sun on the slippery stones of the riverbed. In her mind the golden glow of the memory was a currency worth guarding. In those years, the wars of the New Canaanite alliance against the secessionist states had still been fresh in Ricky and Alana’s memory, and Ricky had always kept a firearm loaded inside the tent in case of surviving secessionist marauders, but they never saw any. Alana had always played up the possibility to keep Corrag close by, warning her to not go too far along the riverbed by herself. But one of them had always been there with their old sheepdog Haj, hovering, as she had built her fantasy castles with river stones worn soft in the wettish mud still left in early June from the melted snowpack, an afterglow of the past. She imagined that somehow Ben sensed her giving directions by shifting her weight on the back of the zipbike, and they did end up somewhere very close to Ysidro, on an old logging road. Ben pulled up on the shoulder and parked. They got off and removed their helmets. Around the corner of the mountain there was just a hint of the dawn to come. In a few hours the alarms would be going off and the search drones would be activated. She couldn’t see his face very clearly.

“What are you thinking?” Corrag asked.

“I’m thinking you’re brave to be out here with someone you hardly know. What would your father and mother think?”

“They already think I’m a lost cause. It doesn’t matter to me. Besides, what do you mean hardly know?”

“Do you think you know me, Corrag?”

“Of course. You haven’t changed for me. I know you’ve been through hell, Ben. Don’t get me wrong.”

“Then help me out here. Shine your light for me.”

Corrag knelt beside him with her open emosponder glowing. Ben used his utility tool to unclip the casing on the zipbike’s fuse and carefully pull two hair-thin filaments that powered the geopositioning transponder. Then he turned the bike on again and rolled it over to a stand of aspen and behind some rocks where it couldn’t be seen from the road.

They hiked up a trail that paralleled the creek in the canyon below and then crossed an old footbridge. The sign for the trailhead was lying on the ground, rusted and overgrown with weeds. Ben said he knew an old hunting cabin that had been used by his uncles before the war. Somewhat hesitantly at first, Corrag agreed on it as a destination. She really wanted to stay on the bridge and watch the water rushing underneath their feet, the way it sparkled and crystallized into the colors of the rainbow. The sun had come out and warmed up the trail. Flies buzzed around the body of a dead bird. They marched ahead, Ben pushing the pace, perhaps concerned about getting far enough up the trail to evade the authorities.

“Gurgie will tell them I’m with you. Mom and Dad won’t mind,” she said, thinking out loud.

“Colonel Bohjalian won’t be so easy-going. I’m supposed to be back on base as of twenty three hundred.”

“What will they do?”

“I’ll be assigned to care-taker duty for a month once we deploy back to the Basin.”

“Is that the worst they can do?”

“The worst is the CDC labor camp in the Ozarks for deserters. I don’t think they’ll send me there for going AWOL with my girlfriend.”

Corrag liked the sound of being called Ben’s girlfriend. She thought of her father’s exhortations against girls who relied on their boyfriends for their own sense of well being and acceptance. He wanted her to be more independent and self-reliant, but it was another area where she differed with his thoughts for her. Corrag liked the idea of being important in a boy’s life, of being necessary to someone and didn’t think it made her any less of a human being to enjoy or desire it. Alana didn’t like Ben for other reasons. She thought he was too smart to be completely trustworthy. People like Ben, she would say, often needed re-education components before being assigned to an augmentation track. This escapade would be further proof of the rightness of her judgment. But Corrag didn’t want them, her parents, the school, the Council, to blame Ben for leading her astray. She wanted to be the author of her own demise, if there was going to be such a thing. Let it be by her own hand at least. But for Ben, let it be, as he said, a mild reprimand, whatever caretaker duty was. It didn’t sound so harsh. She didn’t want him suffering on her behalf.

After about a mile, the trail took a turn up a steep, rocky face. There was a cabin just at the top of a ridge, sheltered from the prevailing wind by the mountain behind it. The siding was faded, and gaps showed between the boards of the roof and the scraps of old tarpaper that had once protected the wood from the elements. When they looked back, Corrag and Ben could see the desert with its fingers of green. There was Edmundstown on the eastern edge and Mono Lake far in the distance - just a dot of iridescence in the foothills. And far off behind those hills was the ocean. The momentary sense of peace was broken by the barks of a dog and the sound of a door clapping shut. They turned round. An old man, faded into the dirt, had appeared beside the shack. He neither waved nor moved. Nor did his attitude suggest fear. The dog barked again and the old man leaned down and scratched its ears.

“Hi there,” shouted Ben, but the old man made no sign of hearing.

“Let me handle this,” said Corrag, putting her hand on Ben’s arm. “We don’t want to scare him.” She was thinking of Ben in his uniform, and there was something frail and covert about the old man’s quietness. She walked over and the dog growled as she approached.

“Nice dog,” she said as she got close to the old man.

He looked up and squinted. The dog was a poodle mix, white, with blue husky eyes, an old mutt. The old man straightened. The top of his head was at a height with her shoulders, and his hair, greasy and long, hid his face. He wiped his hair away with one hand and looked at her with grey, lidded eyes.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for you,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked with exaggerated wonderment, placating his delusions.

“Abel. Abel Marin. You and your friend are just fine. What are your names?”

“Corrag and Ben. What’s your dog’s name?”

“Sandy.”

“Perfect. Hi Sandy.” She petted the dog and the old man began to cry. She noticed he wiped his tears away and let the hair fall in front of his eyes again. Ben came over.

"Ben, this is Abel and Sandy. Why are you crying Abel? There’s no need for that,” said Corrag, horrified that he might think they meant to harm him.

“Crying is good,” said Abel. “This is how a man keeps a strong heart. I’ve been waiting a long time. I thought the world was done with me. And now you are here at last.”

Ben looked at her. She gave him a stern look back and shook her head.

“You’ve come back at last,” continued Abel. “Let me give you something.”

“No, you don’t have to give us anything,” said Corrag.

“Water would be nice,” said Ben.

Sandy began to bark as the old man moved back to the shack.

“Come in,” he said, holding the door open. The rusty springs squeaked as it shut behind them.

“This used to be my uncles’. My dad talked to me about the hunting cabin on Mt. Gabriel.” said Ben. “He and his two older brothers that used to come up here hunting.”

“The old boys knew how to live. They’ve died out now. Nothing left. We need to mourn for the earth and bring back the old ways again.”

          It was dark once the door closed. There were no windows. Their eyes adjusted and Abel motioned for them to sit. He brought them two jars of water he poured from a metal bucket. The jars were old glass mason jars. They sat in the folding chairs by the sink. Their eyes adjusted to the lack of light, just cracks in the siding allowing some light inside, enough to see. There was a rough plank workbench against the wall piled high with animal skins and bones and dried plants, with tiny flowers and corrugated strange leaves in bunches. Corrag drank the water. She wondered who Abel thought they were. He was a crazy old survivor, one of the holdouts from the war of secession that the council had never bothered to track down because he had never appeared on anybody’s lists. The fact that he could still be up here on his own was itself an indictment of their claims of control.

          “This water is strange. It has a taste of something,” said Ben.

          “Spring-fed mountain water. I’ll show you where I get it,” said Abel. “When I first come up here there was no water. I had to find it. I was just a little tyke. But I hardly remember that. Anyway it’s not important. You need to know, but not about me. I’m just the messenger. It’s the earth that speaks.”

Ben looked at her in the semi-darkness. He thought Abel was a crazy old coot. But Corrag wanted to keep listening to him. There was something soothing and calm about the shack and his voice. Sandy poked her hand with his muzzle and she petted him.

“What does it say, Abel?” she asked absentmindedly

“Hmm? I don’t know. Listen you two is hungry. I forgot I need to feed you. Let me give you some food.”

He disappeared into the darkness between the workbench and the far wall. Ben and Corrag looked at each other, shifting the folding chairs around to see each other easier. Ben smiled, as if all of this was part of some plan he had foreseen and devised. Corrag had questions about Abel she needed answered. Wouldn’t he need inoculations against dengue and the killer giardia that had wiped out the population of the mountain states? How had he avoided the orbiting aerial surveillance satellites and their micro-infrared cameras that spotted the heat signals of life processes from space? Why was he allowed to survive here on his own? She wanted to whisper to Ben, but she stilled her curiosity. It was all right to not know all the answers. Clarity was over-rated.

When he returned, he brought with him a bowl with dried roots. He peeled them and then scraped with the knife into a mound of flakes and then produced part of a leg bone of some animal from which he cut sinews of dried meat and placed it all back in the bowl at their feet on the ground. Ben got out of his chair and sat cross-legged on the ground. Corrag followed suit. The meat was tough and hard to chew, but the vegetable matter with some moisture left in it gave it a palatable taste. They were both hungrier than they realized after the hike. It was about mid-morning but almost pitch black except for the light coming in the open door.

“My Mama and Papa came up here from Sonora with a bunch of folks. They were mostly Pima but they had some Apache. They were not people who farmed or went looking for that kind of work. They were looking for the mountains because they knew the end was coming and the Spanish missions had told them to be on the lookout for signs of the big war. They refused to fight for General Walker when he tried to put down the carpinteros who wanted their freedom so a lot of them were put in jail and then the rest took off in a big convoy for the north because that way was cooler weather and in those days there was tremendous heat, you two probably are too young to remember. For a while we were in Arizona. That’s where I learned my English in a little school there that was broken up by secessionists who wanted to kill my mother because she was the leader of this group of women, all kinds, whites, blacks, and teaching them the ways of the medicinals. You’re eating some there, that’s lechuguilla root which is good for your organs. The secessionists didn’t want us helping others to live free and together in nature. They wanted it all under their control in the name of the markets. You remember that part. The markets were going to be the answer to everything. Just put us all on the shelves of the market, you know. So anyway we came up here I was about five I guess by then and the deer were the first to notice and this was after the big battles in the Mississippi where they loosed the crazy winds and tornadoes that knocked us back and that got out of control and then there was sickness on the land for many years, but the deer helped us survive long enough to get our bearings and we lived up here pretty much on our own and once in awhile we went down to the highway and just stayed there watching the traffic, waiting for our cousins on a certain date, the anniversary of the lady of the rosary which is in October I believe. I’ve almost lost track of time. What year are we in? It doesn’t matter. Time is ending anyway. The planets will sink back into the fire of the suns and we’ll soon see if there is more than one Universe. I believe there is because the deer tend to believe that this is not all there is. That’s why they don’t mind dying and giving up their hearts for us. That is the sign, you see. That is the final sign of the grandmothers that they talked about and my mama and papa talked about and even you talked about the first time you came up here. Do you remember? You always said you would come back and now you have.”

While he talked Ben and Corrag ate. Soon it felt like they'd always been there and it was the most natural thing in the world to listen to Abel's voice telling his stories that opened up into a world they had never known, an alternative world, illicit in its meanings and implications, just like the escape they had embarked on together. Ben's initial anxiety went away and Corrag wondered whether there was something in the food, the venison and lechuguilla root that was altering their perceptions. Later, when the sun had risen halfway up the sky judging from the light coming in the door, she followed Sandy outside and saw Abel working in the ditch that ran along the back of the shack between it and the trail that she could see continuing up to the face of the mountain. She wandered over and saw Abel face down in a hollow through which she could see water running. He was mumbling words in a language she thought might be the Pima he had mentioned. Then a black bird flew overhead, she thought it was a crow, and Sandy barked at it. Abel got to his knees and turned to see her standing behind him.

"Hi there, Corrag. I was just thanking the water for bringing you here. You and Ben. After all these years you've returned. And the water alway promised. So I’m giving her thanks. You know you can bring the water wherever you go if you remember how. I'll show you later again. I'll show you and Ben."

"I've never been here before as far as I know," said Corrag.

"Well, there's stuff you're not aware of. Stuff about you you don't know because you've buried it. But that's okay. It's all part of the plan, Corrag."

"Plan? We don't believe in that. There's a process of space and time unfolding and we humans need to stay ahead of it. We can do that with our scientists who see and measure and analyze. Before the planet dies. What kind of God lets his planet die?"

"The planet dies? The planet's just getting started, Corrag. I'll show you. There's no need to look for others."

"Are you saying our scientists are wrong?"

"Not wrong. Sometimes they're looking at the world through their lenses and what have you and a little ant will come up from behind and bite them on the ass. That's God playing with them because he has a sense of humor. He thinks they're funny. That's all. Not wrong. It's good what they do. It's good to use what He gave us, and that's our eyes. Our eyes and ears and put it all together like, so it makes sense. But see what I mean? There's a lot of stuff we know that the scientists haven't figured out. Which is more important. Listen to the Universe with an open heart and know that anybody can do that but the scientists don't listen to the old time ones. They make war on us instead which is a big mistake. You know what I’m saying, Corrag.

"I never knew my grandparents."

"Listen to the grandparents. And the scientists, Corrag. They’re both right."

Abel laughed and jumped up from the ditch so that he appeared beside her. His age was impossible to gauge. He looked ancient sometimes, with his wrinkled brown skin and lidded eyes. But other times he seemed barely in his twenties with his strong sure movements and rapidly shifting facial expressions. Corrag thought he was like water himself, radiant, sparkling, and larger then he appeared, as if he contained within himself reserves of strength and wisdom.

They walked with Abel and Sandy up the mountain along a ravine. Ben and Corrag trailed behind, and Ben stopped to tie his shoes and look out over the valley from the ledges. They kept going higher up, scrambling over the boulders, barely keeping Abel and Sandy in sight up ahead. Corrag was trying to explain how she felt about Abel, as if she had known him for a long time. She had never met anybody so strange, and yet she had also never felt as comfortable with somebody in the first moments after meeting. It was as if he had some strange knowledge about her that was the missing piece of a puzzle she had been trying to reconstruct without knowing it all her life. The school, her parents, had all contributed valuable pieces, but had also missed the target for her.

Ben thought she should be more wary of her enthusiasm.

"Look, there's no way he could direct the water the way you think, with the powers of his mind," said Ben making vibrating gestures with his hands like some old vaudeville wizard from the movies.

Corrag couldn't think of an immediate answer. She was hurt that Ben couldn't see what she saw in Abel and could so easily dismiss him like some unimportant aspect of the landscape. He was focused on seeking advantage in a way that bothered her. As if the default setting in him was the gamer that was always looking ahead to the next junction, always seeing any opportunity to gain strength or tools for the next confrontation with the inevitably lurking enemies. But that wasn't the way the world worked at a root level. Not that she knew, of course. Maybe he was right and Abel was crazy, delusional, and just lucky to have found a little pocket out of the sight of the Democravian Federation and its surveillance machinery.

The trail was invisible except for a slight wear in the line of scrub. They were coming down the backside into a valley of young pines growing out of scrub grass. Abel detoured around the valley and kept along the ridges, hopping from rock to rock like a mountain goat. It was tough to keep up and even Ben was getting winded. At the end of the valley it became clear why he had detoured. There was a man-made concrete wall, an old dam from one ridge to the next. The valley had once been a lake.

"You know what this was?" asked Ben.

"What?"

"Lake San Pedro."

"Yeah. It's pretty dry now."

"That's why they built the desalination plant before we were born. I remember my Dad talking about it. He said it gave the Federation more control over the water supply then the old system which was rigged for the big farmers and fat cats."

Abel waited on a flat rock with Sandy. Corrag and Ben took their time climbing down to him.

" ...wanted to show you the old world that's disappearing. You bringing the new way. The water flows strong. That's why you need to listen to your tears. It's the water calling from inside. Don't bottle it. Here look at this."

The flat rock was actually the top of the dam wall. Abel walked them out along it and they could look over and see to the north beyond through the mountains what had once been the old Inland Empire, the agricultural heartland of the United States until the years of drought and secession wars had put an end to the decrepit model of so-called representative government of the people by the corporate interests.

"This was lake San Pedro," said Ben.

"That's what your people called it. It never had a name," said Abel.

Out in the middle, they stopped and sat on the edge. Abel handed out some food from a satchel bag over his shoulder. It was a dried, almost unpalatable sort of plant matter. He even gave some to Sandy, who wolfed it down whole.

"I know it’s hard. Just eat it. You won't be hungry and it will help you see what is really here." Abel didn't say another word. Hours passed and the sun went behind the western mountain. Corrag fell asleep. In the dim light of the late afternoon, Ben asked Corrag to come with him. He had climbed down the face of the dam and come back up. She got to her feet and followed. It wasn't hard to get down the wall, since there were built in handholds and steps. Then at the bottom she could see what he had seen, the crack and the water flowing through, not a torrent, just a trickle.

"He's right. The water is winning," said Ben.

"Do you think it's safe?"

"The dam? It won't go immediately. But eventually it will crumble."

"What now? What about us?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we have a choice. He’s given us a clear choice. Follow the dam or the water. Which is it?"

"Corrag, I don't know what it is Abel gave us to eat, but I don't really see we have a choice. We can't stay here. We have to go back up and get home and carry on."

"Right now, Ben. What's your choice?"

"You're scaring me, Corrag. Don't talk like that."

She wanted him to hug her and kiss her, to be carried away with their feelings for each other. That would have been the right choice. Instead she could see he was as frightened and confused as she was when faced with the wall of the world and its seemingly inescapable logic. They sat together and waited for the night. Ben leaned over and put his arm around her and hugged her closer. The dam wall grew dim and the black bird swooped down from it overhead.

"Is that the crow?" asked Corrag.

Ben didn't answer. He was asleep.

Instead of the concrete wall, there was a waterfall, with an iridescent cascade of water broken up in a moonlit glow. Deer stood along the banks of the river and tall pines had grown up in the surrounding fields. She heard Abel call for Sandy. She heard her father call her name. Where were they?

"Ben. What time is it?"

Ben woke up and looked at his emosponder.

"Oh my God. It's late. Let's go, Corrag." He stood and pulled her to her feet. Where were they? Disoriented, she followed his voice as he called from above. Then she could see the wall of the dam as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where had the waterfall gone? It had been such a vivid presence. But now she felt a gnawing in her gut and her legs shaking as she climbed. When she reached the top of the wall she collapsed in a heap. Sandy barked and dug at her hair with his paw.

"I'm okay, Sandy. I'm okay."

Abel held her by the chin and dribbled in water from an old tin canteen. It tasted sweet. Her eyes, ears, even her sense of taste were playing tricks on her. Then there was a loud noise and overhead lights blinded her. Sandy barked and Abel yelled.

"Run, Sandy. Go boy."

The lights were followed by cable dropping out of the hatches of the Federation Home Air UC7 reconnaissance choppers and rappelling soldiers descending to the ground in quick succession. Corrag screamed.

It took about a minute. They didn't say a word. They handcuffed and blindfolded the two of them and bundled them towards a chopper whose four blades were still whirling. Corrag cried out Ben's name. He didn't answer.

"Keep quiet," said a soldier with his hand on her shoulder, dirt and gravel kicked up from the downdraft of the whirling blades. Unseen hands pulled her onboard. Then they picked up and flew off into black space. Corrag cried for what she'd seen and for the childhood sense of possibility she'd left behind in that mountain valley. She let the tears flow as Abel had said. She never had the chance to talk to Ben and for years wondered if he had seen the same things she had, the waterfall and the deer and the moonlit wonders of a reborn world.

The Saints of David

The Jonah Trilogy Book 3

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN IS NOW!

WILL CORRAG AND BEN REACH DAVID'S TOWER?

WILL THE AUGMENT SURVIVE?

FIND OUT IN THIS FAST-PACED, PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

Corrag and Ben are on the run along with members of their renegade theater group -- the last of the free brained creative folk against the enslaved people of the Augment and their elite Republican Homeland overlords. 

It is 2072, and falling creative information flows in the Augment system mean there is little time to reach full power status and launch the planetary cover before the incoming Oort Cloud asteroids destroy civilization. Corrag and Ben make a run for David’s Tower, an alternative society built on the democratic power of individual stories. Corrag's father Ricky sets out to find his father’s book that he is sure will answer the deep-seated root of humanity’s evil. These are just a few of the individuals on a quest, drawn to the utopian world of the Tower, built by the man known to his followers as the Saint. David Shavelson, a former owner of a Brooklyn bookstore, is a charismatic visionary leading a community in resistance against the mental enslavement of the Augment system. The Augment leaders know they must crush the Tower or lose control of their destiny. The battle lines are drawn. All the answers will be found in the thrilling roller-coaster finale that is The Saints of David.

The Saints of David, the final book in the Jonah Trilogy series, is recommended for new and prior fans alike, who will find this wrap-up volume a powerful conclusion to Anthony Caplan's thriller/sci-fi tale.

Old connections are revitalized against the backdrop of disaster in this 2072 story of strange romances, half-humanoids, free thinkers and slaves, and the unAugmented people living outside the new norm who may prove the last bastions of true humanity.

Readers new to this world, as well as those who have imbibed of the previous Jonah Trilogy titles, will all find The Saints of David packed with a flavor of doom and hope that makes it hard to put down and an exquisitely compelling story that leads readers to question many beliefs before they are through."

Diane Donovan -- San Francisco Relocated

Goodreads * Amazon

“Why is it that the saints of David are quenched with fire?”

? Carolina Maria Machado, Child of the Tower: The Diary of Carolina Machado

“Come, let’s away to prison.”

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear

  

To the Earth and all who protect her

Chapter One -- December 4, 2072

          Dimitrievsky Laboratory, Split,

          Trans-Adriatic District,

          Corporate Union of the Atlantic

          The machine’s frothing resembled something organic, mottled and lumpish. This spuming mess was the result of months of work, including these torture sessions. The prisoner had given up some remnants of a fantastic narrative -- a melange of myth and personal redemption tale, but it was obvious they were to see little of any use. It was not what Ludmilla desired. The granddaughter of the great Frans Dimitrievsky paced impatiently and flitted with her hair. Chagnon observed with a wizened ennui. As always, he had the tiresome belief that he had seen it all before. There was the usual hum of anticipation as the chimera, Absalom, took the lees from the agent in the hologram, placed it in the sterilizing medium and read the transcript:

“Long before the World was created there was an island floating in the sky upon which the Sky people lived. No one ever died or was born or experienced sadness. However, one day one of the sky women said she would give birth to twins. She told her husband, who flew into a rage.”

“No, no. No, no,” said Ludmilla, tapping Absalom on his fleshy, naked shoulder to make him stop. He turned, and his pink, half pig, half humanoid face grew crimson with blood rising.

“I can’t believe this is what we get,” she continued. “Is nobody concerned? At this rate we will have to take drastic measures. Samael? Drastic.”

Chagnon lit his pipe and settled back in the bubble chair with greater emphasis, if it were possible, on the absolute lack of muscular tension in his articulations. He looked up from the hologram and over at Ludmilla. The Chilean agent said goodbye, and the three dimensional image faded, but not before they could hear the cries of the tortured prisoner, the last of the Andean indigenous troubadours, through the slightly indigo tints of the connection. It raised their hackles, but it was so far away and so easy to cut off before the cries grew savage in intensity. It was hardly a bother.

“There is rage. That portends a dramatic rise and fall,” said Chagnon, finally, by way of appeasing her.

“Of the husband?” asked Ludmilla, with a dangerous lack of restraint.

“Well, we don’t exactly know,” said Chagnon.

Ludmilla swatted his words away and turned her back. She walked to the window that looked out on the fantastic skyscrapers -- built by the Qatari prince Faisal Asmashan for his extended retinue of Sunni layabouts.

“I don’t want this second rate … puerile … nativist …  romantic claptrap, Samael. We don’t have time. We need juice, real juice. Now!”

The process was everything. Ludmilla’s panic was a sign of the low informational reserves the Augment held. They had never made up the lost ground after the great methane feedbacks of the 2050s. Concentrated around the ill-fated coastal fleshpots, the creative elements had been among the first to perish, the first wave of casualties of a distressed planet, along with the monarch butterflies, the polar bears and the United Nations. Now the remnants of domestic art in the surviving Living Water communities were running dry, and there was the beginning of a cannibalistic self-destruction among the elites, as they were the first to feel the pinch of flat growth lines in throughput. In such a scenario there were several dangerous possibilities. The Sunnis and the Mormons, the leading Abrahamic fundamentalists, who still held an absolute disdain for the theoretical need for artistic matter in the Augment library, could eventually go to war for the rights to the INN keys. Outliers, the masses of unaugmented humans Iiving in the southern range of habitable lands, would threaten to destabilize and possibly even topple the world order, as their organic societal organizations drew down the Augment’s capacity for information system evolution. In any of these cases, the process Chagnon had helped build, along with the Dimitrievskys and several of the leading families of the transcontinental alliance, would be over.

There was a simple fix, to find the next reserve of creative plasm that would get the Augment out of its soporific slump. In a sense the neural network, the collective body of the civilized world, had fallen victim to its own success. After the geometric explosion of knowledge had come the slow decline of lowered growth rates and now -- this implosion of stagnant cycling, reversing and doubling in a futile process of garbage production: spasms of creative non-fiction, critical musings along the tired grooves of the neo-modernist school, the revisionist social science productions of French academia, outright folklore. The lack of inspiration was felt most acutely at the points of greatest inflection, in the thought leaders such as Ludmilla, many of them the scions of those same families that Chagnon had mentored as the administrator of the Magnum Berkeley doctorate program in PDA -- Psychographic Dump Analysis.

“Ludmilla. You ought to take a break. A refresher. Go for two weeks with your friends to the Western Light Casino. Swim. Take a star course. Yoga. It will become clarified in time.”

“But we’re running out of options. Hope is not a game plan, Samael. I would rather make the decision now."

“Round up what we have left. Concentrate the Creatives in one geographic location and magnify stress levels.”

“And then what? We can't engineer savagery and mystery. Yes, we have robots with laser vision. They can run fast. So what? Neither the chimeras nor the borgs have been able to replicate the inspiration of human actors. We haven't solved the location of consciousness. Samael, the mass uptake of the Augment, no matter how willing, has had unintended consequences. Let’s admit it. Growth is flat. The algorithms are failing us. We have relied for too long on automated design systems to do the work. We still have loyal and dependable followers in everything from cuisine to gaming programs. But if you look closer you see formula everywhere you look. No real innovation. All we have left are the reservations, the Living Water programs. What was always the fall back has become our only source of high-value information. We can’t end it in one fell swoop.”

“No. But we can take advantage of scale. Absalom!”

The chimera approached, quivering with the need to please, somehow to redeem himself. Absalom was the bioengineered product of porcine and human DNA, with high intelligence ratings in service industry metrics, an appetite for tireless work, but an awkward result in personal hygiene.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Chagnon?”

“We want a report. Reproductive capacities of the unaugmented in key havens. Plus creative outputs. Overlay it in several dimensions, such as mortality rates and carbon soaks. Bring it to me as soon as possible.”

“Would you like me to include some street level reports, anecdotes and the like?” asked Absalom in a braying, servile voice.

“Yes, of course. Excellent idea. The chimera do an excellent job at that non-synoptic level. Only the best. I’ll leave that choice up to you,” said Chagnon, his hands behind his back. He paced around the room, bristling in his old fearsome style. Then he glanced at Ludmilla, and his expression softened. He was getting sentimental. She looked to him so much like Frans Dimitrievsky at that moment. He had to stifle a feeling of sadness. It was time for a momentary dip into the ether. Chagnon reached for his nose clip, attached it, and closed his eyes. He saw the swirling blackbirds forming the whirlwind tunnel that radiated back and forward in time. It reflected the self-correcting complexity of the Augment, always improving. But lately it was exhibiting some wear and tear.

Chagnon lost himself in the tunnel. In the end he could not escape himself or his old, useless limbs. It gave him little hope anymore. Even carbon graphite implants and nanofiber reinforcement ligamentation were no solace. He wanted to pass through the whirlwind tunnel to the beginning. He still believed it was possible some day, despite the delays, despite the setbacks, the inevitable shortcomings. With the right raw material, the finest of human productions, it could happen, he was sure. When the Augment had powered up to its Omega level, there would be such breakthroughs for the best, for the few who had climbed the human ladder and won a place for themselves at the summit of consciousness. In the past there had been real failures. He had known pain and suffering. He had lost friends, felt the pain of betrayal, known firsthand what a wasted effort the accumulation of power and comfort could be. Now he just wanted love and adulation, not from a chimera, but from young people like Ludmilla, like Hannah Jorvatz, and other recent Magnum Berkeley PDA graduates whose names he could not recall. Why was his memory failing him? The nanobots were not doing their job of cleaning the synapses. There was always such a lag between the promise and the performance, or maybe it was just him.

When he came to from his daydream, Ludmilla had gone. Absalom was napping in a large ball by the window, dreaming his unaugmented, natural dreams, and the light outside was growing dim over the city. There was a message on his Sandelsky artifex, buzzing on his wrist. He tapped it, and it rolled out into a scape that filled the room. It was Heather sitting on a bench in Carmel. She had a Chubaskew purse over her arm and large synthetic diamond earrings. She had an air of well-provided comfort. Behind her were the Pacific rollers with the speckle of surfers cutting diagonally and then falling into the break.

“Darling, you look the picture of a California dream. I have to pinch myself,” said Chagnon.

“I am the pinch you need, Samael,” said Heather saucily. “When will you come home?”

“I promise soon. We have a few more days before the yearly conference of the INN keys and then I will be home for the New Year party at the Wellfleet Club. You are, of course, my date.”

“You are such a sweet man, Sammy. I have a present for you when you get here. You remember the book of Mayan hieroglyphs we saw at the British Museum?”

“Yes?”

“It’s a Zeiss 3-D reproduction. I think it would be perfect in your bedroom. Look.” She held up her artifex on her wrist with a photo displayed.

“I can’t wait to see it and you,” said Chagnon, stifling a yawn.

“Hurry, Sammy. But I know how important your work there is.”

“I’ll do the best I can. The Augment must be constantly improving or we will not make the target for interstellar travel.”

“I know. I don’t like to talk about it.”

They touched holographic hands.

He got off the scape call and stood creakily. Heather was not big on the details of the Oort cloud sending its chunks of destruction their way. Absalom, awake, accompanied Chagnon, carefully cradling the old man’s elbow in his odd, pygmy-like hands, out the hatch and down through the rest of the laboratory complex. It was the time of day most of the workers had left, except for those involved in comprehensive year-end analysis work in preparation for the annual meeting of the INN keys, which began in three days time.

Uniformed personnel of the CUA, a world-class assembly of human genotypes, greeted Chagnon as he went by. Everything was routine, nothing ever out of the ordinary. Emosensors tracked facial gestures and aligned them with known personality traits to ensure the normal range of emotional response and rate of ideation as per career track and intellectual achievement. Chagnon thought with satisfaction of the work that was being done, the fluid cooperation that spread across the room and beyond, to every corner of the civilized world. After all, he was one of the architects of the Augment, the next wave of human evolution. What had once been the preserve of the very rich was now a routine and universal procedure conducted in infancy. In exchange for their intellectual force, people were now getting lifelong access to all the perks of civilized life, including the mainstream informational data sets that had erased the inequalities of the pre-Augment technological civilization. Instead of economic insecurity, there was a basic income and constant entertainment programming. Instead of private health coverage, there were government subsidized full-scale health and beauty interventions, including the immortality programs for the INN keys and their families. But the greatest achievements, for Chagnon, were the impressive levels of stability and freedom from crime, terrorism and moral deviance in the last decade. But it was a thorn in his side that they had yet to crack interstellar travel or implement the Repho's planetary protection scheme, the widely reviled Spacedome.

The power attached to his name was palpable. The security at the front door, some sleepy bots that usually hardly moved, glowed green and red and creaked into action. Their graphic panels lit up when Chagnon and Absalom reached the door. Chagnon held up his front finger bearing the molybdenum ring with the date of the Treaty of Quarrier, 2-16-66, etched in it. Chagnon never failed to remember that day when he raised his hand for this purpose. The last of the Korazan traitors, the rebel ethno-state command structure, including their propagandist, his arch enemy, old, grizzled Bannon who could barely move, morbidly obese and wracked with diabetes, had been executed in front of his parked rocket. Afterwards, their minions were scattered to the four corners of the wilderness to bear the brunt of the five-year storm.

The bots buzzed and spoke all at once, falling over each other to be the first to wish him a great evening. Chagnon swept through the door behind Absalom, who gave a piggish glare of forbearance at the swiveling, semi-conscious machines.

Outside, a greyish sky dimmed the view over the old city, the remnants of the Greek colony of Aspalathos and the palace of Diocletian, now dwarfed by the Asmashan skyscrapers, the CUA administrative nodes and, beyond them, the waters of the bay that had formed during the great floods. Chagnon took in the view and reckoned with the temporary feelings of emptiness and futility. Sometimes he was his own worst enemy.

“Where is the porter?” he snapped at Absalom. The chimera was far from perfect. But he was faithful, and in his brown, limpid, cringing eyes Chagnon took the satisfaction of seeing tears of pain and fear. Absalom wrung his small hands together as if to extract some precious rare earth.

“Here it comes, sir,” said Absalom, jumping up on his rear legs to see further down the avenue. The cab swung into view, one of the city’s picturesque two seater porterbots, designed originally with the tourist trade in mind. They climbed in the back.

“Marjdan HotelSuite,” said Chagnon. He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. Absalom’s nimble fingers attached the nose clip and began to stroke his bald skull.

The wave curled overhead, and the board shot on a perfect diagonal across the crystal swell, always just under the burgeoning arc of water. The music was perfect -- a vintage John Waters piece with ambient noise that seemed like rustling silk or the beating of a butterfly’s wings. He focused on the intersection of water, air and sand that triangulated just out of the frame of his mind’s eye. If he could get out ahead of the wave before the song ended it would be a sign that all was well with his psychological quantum field. It was as if he was holding his breath -- an exhilarating rush -- but then the water broke overhead and the vision went to black. The music continued, but now all sound was discordant and vague, without a collecting theme or gathering of harmonic intensity. The machine had run out of momentum after an initial firing.

Chagnon couldn’t help himself. He clutched at his heart. Absalom was there -- warm and black tongue licking the fingers that tore at his face.

“You fool. You absolute fool, Absalom. The total idiocy of it all.”

“We're here, sir.”

“Nowhere. Nowhere!” cried Chagnon. The bot came to a stop in what looked to him like a cornfield, but it was the lobby of the hotel.

“Tell it to stop,” said Chagnon.  He was having a bad reaction. He meant the dream.

“We are here,” said Absalom, jumping hurriedly at the door to open it. An alarm sounded as the defibrillator dropped in his lap. Chagnon held it to his chest himself. The jolt of electricity was just what he needed. He sat up and pulled at his knees to gather himself for the exit.

Nothing boded well. The Augment was losing. There was definitely information load entropy. It happened with greater and greater frequency. Perhaps Ludmilla was right. They needed some juice from somewhere fast.

Chapter Two -- December 4, 2072

          Maruequin, Split,

          Trans-Adriatic District,

          Corporate Union of the Atlantic

In the bar of the Maruequin there were a lot of boys singing all at once. It was the Hajduk supporters' club night. They sang:

Na Poljudu, Na Poljudu 

          Sa one strane Marjana 

          Navijamo, navijamo, 

          Navijamo za Hajduka! 

          Ale ale, ale ale, ale ale ale ale, 

          Ale ale, ale ale, ale ale ale...

Their facial structures were heterogenous, their skin wet with sweat, but their eyes all had an intense, nostalgic blaze. Ludmilla thought sadly of the old purpose of keeping these organic lines of males honed around the world for reproductive work. It did not exist anymore, since the production of sperm lines had extended out in so many branches of specialization. But the spectacles of sport were still a component of the sedative patterning of mass culture, part of the Augment’s ability to rule so effectively. And some of them were good looking enough to catch her eye. Her companion, Fatima Khan-Schwab, kept laughing at her own tales of confusion and travel. She had gotten lost at the Strasbourg Tubit hub and ended up somewhere in Mongolia. There had been some lexical challenges, and the local word for water, if repeated rapidly enough, to Fatima sounded like a bodily function. Ludmilla stared at Fatima’s teeth. They glistened with healthy saliva. There was something forward and telling about her mouth. However, there was also something of decrepitude, rotten old age, that would need to be remedied at the ribonucleic level. Ludmilla tried so hard not to get lost in her own thoughts. She put her hand on Fatima’s hand. They locked eyes. Ludmilla saw Fatima’s acquiescence. The bottomless, fearless quality of how she accepted things that happened to her. She was the daughter of Chicago trade specialists and had gone to work as a Program Receipt for the Atreid Group in Evanston when Ludmilla had been there in her mid-twenties, interning with her cousin Hans’s Water Rights and Soil Carbon Remediation brief.

“I’m so happy you made it,” said Ludmilla.

Fatima smiled wisely, although she was probably just hungry.

“You want to hear what I would like? I can see it now so clearly,” said Ludmilla.

“I know. My child,” said Fatima sagely.

“But it would be so perfect. Just look at these boys. Any one of them.”

“How would it be? We’re never together.”

“Well, of course. We’d have to make those decisions. I would spend more time at home and less traveling.”

“But you never really talk to me, Ludmilla. You never really tell me anything.”

It was Ludmilla’s turn to laugh. She raised her hand and waved at the waiter skulking stealthily by. He looked at her sourly and goose-stepped over to their table with an old Exe-tablet.

“Two pints of scrumpy and two more glasses of grappa, if you would. Oh, and bring my dear friend a bowl of your best barley and mutton soup,” said Ludmilla.

“Certainly,” said the waiter, retiring.

“It’s a house specialty,” said Ludmilla.

“I would have thought it was split pea.”

“Oh, you’re so funny.”

The soup and drinks came. Fatima ate and then excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. A motley group of older men and women at a nearby table vaped, and the smell of the tobacco and lemon oil mixed with the smells of the nearby port and the soapy, steroidal Hajduk boys. Ludmilla sipped at the grappa and thought of the artisanal pleasures more widely available in the Old World. The fashion in Akron and San Bernardino was still stuck on a night of pills and porn at the local. Fatima was here already and Antwine and Jesus were coming later that week. She could introduce them to a wider network of possibilities and have the added pleasure of mentoring. In the long term, there was the possibility of a family and adding to the Dimitrievsky lineage. Her generation was slow in that respect.

The night air was frigid. It sobered them somewhat. The Hajduk boys were spilling out on the street in small groups and walking bravely with arms linked up the avenue. They surrounded Ludmilla and Fatima and wolfishly pranced. Fatima laughed, and Ludmilla moved them off with some wads of crisp, oversized CUA bills she tossed behind her. They escaped into the back of a porterbot.

The next morning, Ludmilla watched the first light streaming through the large upstairs window in the house on the terraced hill facing the east. She walked over and slid the terrace door open. The air was cold and wet with the mistral blowing in from around the corner. Fatima lay in bed awake. Augments never slept. She sprawled under the sheets.  Ludmilla pulled the curtain back to bring more light in the room. She snapped a reality check of the shadows and beige tones of the rumpled bed with the reposing body of her lover and posted it to her official timeline, as required of Secretariat members. It was a pretty and pleasing sight, but something odd scratched at the corner of her consciousness, a lack, some gap in synthetic thought. The Augment was not providing her with enough data force. There was a utility fault. She seemed to feel these more intensely as she got older -- the emotion deficit of the present tense. Some of the engineers thought that it could be fixed with more efficient linguistic programming. The lines of an Emily Dickinson poem were coming to mind:

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – 

          We can find no scar,

          But internal difference,

          Where the Meanings, are –

She hadn’t thought of Emily Dickinson since her undergraduate years -- her lecture course with Quince Vully on the art of pre-modern man. The “internal difference.” Was that a reference to her and Fatima? Sometimes it wasn’t clear what the Augment intended. Maybe a walk in the hills would be a good idea, she thought. When Fatima got out of bed that was what they would do. And she would talk directly to Fatima about her fears: the Oort cloud and the need to inject chaos in the system, squeeze more raw inputs from the creative class, and the possible disruptions that would cause. It wasn’t easy being a Dimitrievsky.

A former journalist who has worked on three continents, Anthony Caplan lives in New Hampshire with his family, a small flock of sheep and several dozen carefully tended apple trees. He writes books and teaches high school Spanish. He is a graduate of Yale University and has also worked at various times as a taxi driver, shrimp fisherman and telephone salesman.

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