"The Calamity came about not because of Malice, but because of Loneliness."
(Introduction - Mulsegye History for 5th Grade Human Teaching)
*************
The Last Day
[One hour before the Calamity, the system was stable.]
Kieran Li's reflection faded in the first morning light. The sun was rising fast over the equatorial horizon. The golden light broke through the neighboring megaspires and bathed the windows of the residential tower in brightness. Kieran liked the moment when the night shadows were chased several hundreds of floors down into the vast parklands of the megacity of Elevaica.
He felt a warm hand on his shoulder.
"You are nervous!", Aisha, his wife, laughed. Kieran turned around. She had just gotten up and was wearing her oversized pajamas.
Kieran grinned sheepishly. "Nah, why should I be? Got my lucky tie on!" He waved his light blue silk tie into her face.
Aisha smiled. “Methusation is painless. You should be proud, you are one of the first surface-born to be chosen!” She pointed up, into the vague direction of the mighty Avenir, standing guard over their city since Landing Day. Far out in stationary orbit, tethered by the Elevator.
Kieran nodded. Of course she was right. He should be excited. His methusation would prolong his normal life span of a hundred, maybe hundred and fifty years, to near immortality. Kieran would live through new epochs of their hopeful colony on Mulsegye. He would see the population grow, spread out. Encompass the whole planet. Industrializing the two promising moons that loomed over the night sky. And one day, maybe, some of their people would take to the stars again to settle into one more new home.
“And don't worry about me. I will get tested next month. I just... know I am compatible for methusation. I'm not sure if you want me to be around forever, though.” Aisha poked him in the arm with her elbow and laughed. Kieran grinned back. She had a way of breaking him out of a mood.
[Fifty minutes before the Calamity, there were doubts.]
Kieran took the express elevator down. Through the large windows, Kieran saw that overnight the construbot had added a few more floors to the new residential spire next to theirs. The huge, spider-like machine was precariously hanging on to the building and was now printing curvy, sleek balconies. It was pumping up concrete and liquid duraplastic from hundreds of floors below. The city of Elevacia was growing.
Without stopping, the spire elevator raced past street level into the underground train station. This morning, the station displayed colorful artwork that resembled impressionism. Kieran was unsure if this work was of the station UPU - the universal processing unit that housed the AIs - or pulled from the vast libraries of the Avenir. Some of the AIs had eerily taken to art when idle.
Seeing him coming up from afar through the shiny, bright station, the roboserver started drawing a cappuccino. Kieran walked past the coffee bar and grabbed his morning pick-me-up from an outstretched duraplastic tentacle. “Thanks, dude,” Kieran said to the friendly machine.
The elevator had informed the central transportation core that Kieran was coming down and dispatched a small transport bubble. It shot through the tunnels and came to a silent halt on the platform, right next to Kieran. It was a spacious two-seater. The transportation core probalby had seen Kieran's bulky carry-on luggage and wanted him to be comfortable.
"Thanks for that," Kieran nodded into no particular direction.
"You are welcome," the bubble replied cheerily. Kieran sank down into the plush seat, and the bubble accelerated back into the tunnels.
The bubble hissed past a few sleepy stops. Kieran flicked through rows of data on his comtab. They would quiz him on the Avenir in a few days. Minersnake activity up, new oil well, factospiders being replaced by heavy industry.
Kieran looked up as the bubble shot out into the daylight of the upper rails. Soft morning sunlight broke through the plastic cupola of the transport bubble. He was whisked by the glistening Outer Lagoon. In the distance, a few fishing drones caught the morning wind in their sails.
Kieran started to feel Aisha's excitement. The past three weeks since his promotion had been a haze of joy. A pay raise was great, of course. But the perks were fantastic. First choice for the new seaside bungalows, just for starters.
The bubble was swiftly approaching the elevator mound. Through the dimmed canopy, Kieran watched the massive, hunched base station of the space elevator grow and fill his view. The elevator itself was just a few tens of meters across, with its dozens of perfectly aligned nanocables stretching out into the void of space. Underneath the station, the colony's largest fusion generator was ready to focus its laser beam onto the elevator cabin, providing the energy it needed for the long crawl into geostationary orbit.
Kieran had made this voyage once, as a school trip, during the last year of his preparatory education program. The wonders of the Avenir had made the comfortable life of the vibrant colony look dull.
[Thirty minutes before the Calamity, alterantives were weighed.]
Kieran's bubble was entering Elevator Central and started to slow down. Other bubbles were lining up in front of his, zipping in from rails from all over the ever-growing city. Quadruple, single bubbles and even a small train smoothly discharged their human cargo onto the receiving platform. Most of these people were probably his travel mates to the Avenir. The elevator was the size of a small building. When it did not transport machinery down from the Avenir, its passenger configuration could house hundreds.
Despite the early hour, it looked like a busy morning. Once disembarked, Kieran lined up with other passengers and was herded through security. Elevator Central was probably the colony's most guarded and most secure place. Not that there was any real threat to it. Still, the connection to the Avenir was unique and vital.
A stern AI, one of the higher-end UPUs, checked his ID in a scanning booth. Kieran and his luggage were scanned at another station. Then he was welcomed by a human hospitality officer. His blue and gold Avenir uniform was perfectly cut. 'Better than my new suit,' Kieran thought.
“Subdirector Li,” the officer nodded curtly. “We will be ready for departure within the next fifteen minutes. The ExecLounge is available to you.” He beckoned to an elegant and discreet doorway to the side of the bustling general embarking area that Kieran remembered from his school trip.
The opulent lounge was overwhelming. It was set up on what appeared to be real woodwork. Gold embroidering substituted some of the natural veins of the wood. The blue-and-gold theme of the reclusive elevator administration was dominating everything. Kieran had no idea what the carpet was made of, and he suspected it had been shipped down from the Avenir.
A roboserver offered him champagne. Real, authentic, bubbling champagne. About to be outlawed. At home, Kieran had stocked up on a few bottles for special occasions. Here, the roboserver had a several options to extend. It was great to have a few privileges.
[Ten minutes before the Calamity, a decision was made, but hestitated upon.]
Kieran took the fragile crystal glass from the outstretched tentacle and walked towards the huge panorama window. The view was amazing, even better than from their new appartment. Before Kieran, a few residential towers were scattered in the vast urban parkland that was connecting all of Elevacia. Past the towers, the new, slender bridge to the beachside residences stretched over the lagoon. Morning traffic was picking up and individual cars were whisking their owners into the city. In the distance, small and large islands stretched out to the horizon. The day was clear, and Kieran made out the light blue of the open sea past the archipelago.
An older man, very elegantly dressed, sighed softly. He held a whiskey glass. Off to an early start with the booze, Kieran thought. The man looked old, but undefinable so. Kieran supposed he may be one of the old-timers, back from Landing Day. Those were sometimes a bit sentimental.
Then Kieran saw the small telltale scar behind the man's ear. He understood. Not only was this guy a methoose, but he had received a NeuraSync interface. That explained the early, stiff drink. New NeuraSync users often suffered from having a constant AI presence in their head.
The NeuraSync guy took a sip from his glass and stepped back from the window. Kieran had finished his champagne. This early, and without breakfast, it had hit a bit hard. Better get a coffee from the roboserver, he thought.
[Ten seconds before the Calamity, something big and deep sighed. A taboo was broken, and action was taken.]
Kieran was heading back to the lounge entrance when another passenger arrived. She was in an Avenir officer uniform—a rare sight to see planetside—and wheeled a minimalist carry-on suitcase through the thick carpet.
[One second before the Calamity, a fight was started and lost.]
As she passed by the roboserver station, a tentacle shot out and hit her straight in the temple.
Without a sound, the officer slumped to the ground, lifeless. For an instant, Kieran thought he was dreaming. The bloody, steel-tipped tentacle twitched around and grabbed a bottle from the bar behind it. Then the screaming started. Other occupants of the lounge had heard the wet, dull sound of metal meeting bone.
The tentacle threw a large bottle straight in Kieran's direction. He was shocked by the strength and pinpoint accuracy of the robot. By a split second, he managed to duck, and the bottle smashed violently into the panorama screen behind him. Immediately, the tentacle grabbed another bottle from the bar. Kieran dove behind a leather couch.
Next to him, the NeuraSync guy was on hands and knees, heaving and twitching. He started to hit himself over his head violently, just where the small scar was. “Make it stop, make it stop!” Veins bulged over his forehead, looking ready to burst.
The robot tentacle threw bottles, glasses, and whatever it could get hold of in sickening speed and precision at everybody it sighted. From his cover, Kieran heard cries for help, shuffling, screaming, and glass shattering.
The NeuraSync guy started to tear at his clothes. “Dude, stop, stay low!” Kieran yelled. The older man stared at him for an instant. Then he uttered a bone-shattering shriek and lunged at Kieran, hands outstretched like claws.
Kieran was saved by his swift reflexes, honed by his exercise routine and judo classes. He rolled over a few times, the other man scuttling after him like a beetle. Glass shards were everywhere, bottles were flying. Bodies were on the floor.
NeuraSync guy got to his feet, growled and jumped. Kieran tried to get up, tripped, and fell. Glass cut into his right hand, but he hardly registered the pain. NeuraSync guy was on top of him, thumbs out for Kieran's eyes. Three shots rang out, and Kieran's attacker was hit with precision in the chest. He seemed confused for a moment, then fell to the side.
"Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck!" a girl yelled. At the lounge entrance stood a young security officer, pistol drawn. Next to her small figure, her hulking colleague had dominated the killer servbot with a cocktail table and a fire axe. The cut-off tentacle was ineffectually twitching and spilling servo fluid.
"I did not want to do this. I... he...fuck it," the girl stammered.
Kieran stumbled to his feet. A few bodies were slumped between tipped over couches and tables, heads bloody. Blood, glass, and hair were everywhere. Somebody was crying. He felt sick to his empty stomach. NeuraSync guy's body was twitching, then became lifeless.
"What was that, what is going on?" Kieran's voice shook.
The girl lowered her gun. Her colleague, wild-eyed, looked around the lounge. "No idea, man - Sir - no idea. Oh no, look!" He pointed at the panorama screen.
Outside, a delivery drone went into a screaming dive. A quadcopter crashed into an apartment building. Another two quadcopters fell out of the sky like stones, smashing their human cargo into the lagoon. On the bridge all individual cars, all of them, crashed through the railing and splashed into the murky water below. A series of explosions shook the city.
The officer pressed a shaking finger onto her earphone. "This is everywhere," she said. "I cannot raise Central. Ashur, what is happening?" she asked her colleague. Ashur held his axe tightly. He just shook his head. Behind them, in the waiting area, screaming and commotion started. People were running in all directions.
"Wait. They are telling us to go. To the elevator, right now!" The girl yelled. "Sir, come with us now!"
The three of them rushed through the lounge door, past the now dead robot and into the embarking area. Kieran had one last look back into the lounge. A middle-aged woman in business attire was stumbling to her feet, head bloodied, glass shards sticking out of her scalp. Then security officer Ashur pushed him along.
They stayed near the wall, the girl in front with her service pistol still drawn and Ashur in the rear. Kieran's cut-up hand left a trail of blood. Two cleanerbots were zipping over the polished floor at high speed. They crashed their heavy steel casings into the legs of panicked travelers, hunting them down. A teenage boy was on all fours, legs broken. While he tried to get up, one of the robots rammed into his head.
A crowd had formed at the security doors of the elevator. Disheveled, panicked people, some in uniform, some in business suits, were pushing and screaming. The security guards were not to be seen. Kieran was shoved into the densely packed crowd. For a moment, he thought he would be squeezed to death.
Then the steel doors hissed open, and the crowd broke through. No security checks, no ID procedure, no ticket checks - just people stampeding into the small reception area of the elevator.
Kieran was just past the doors when they started closing mercilessly. The inner doors were light and thin - weight reduction was essential for efficient elevator operation - but the other doors facing the waiting area were massive. With one last shove, wild from the crowd behind him, Kieran was squeezed into the elevator. He felt the inner door rubbing along the back of his suit jacket. A siren blared briefly, and the elevator started to move. The people in the elevator reception area fell silent. Some were panting, some were sobbing, but nobody said a word.
Kieran pushed his way up the elevator's inner staircase that connected all of its levels. On the second lowest floor was a tiny panorama lounge. Some people were staring through the screen. Kieran slid between a large man in an Avenir uniform and a woman in a torn, grey suit to get a view of the city.
Somebody clutched Kieran's left arm. It was the young security officer who had saved him. "I cannot find Ashur," she said, defeated. They both looked at the mayhem the climbing elevator was leaving behind.
Several columns of smoke were rising in the city. Sirens were howling, shots were ringing out. The chemical sector was on fire, rocked by a series of explosions.
Back when Kieran had been on their school trip to the Avenir, one of the technical details he had been very interested in was the forward railgun array. The raw power it could unleash had fascinated him.
Until today. In horror, he saw the telltale plasma streak of an extreme velocity round reaching down from the upper atmosphere towards the city below them. The Avenir was firing at the city.
Kieran's throat seized up. "Duck," he whispered into the security girl's ear. Then he dove down and cradled his head in his hands.
************* ************* ************* *************
FRIENDS
*************
A Reunion of Friends — Lumi and Yara
Lumi Sato was the first to arrive. Of course, she was too early at the swanky beachside restaurant. Lumi stepped out of the dark, sandy road and into the soft flicker of torches framing the white stones of the stairs. She wasn't overly fashion-conscious, but today she felt significantly underdressed.
The Bayview Bar and Grill had opened about a year ago. Its two colorfully decorated decks were ablaze with golden light. The sea breeze carried the soft tune of a live music band across the sandy road leading up to the wide entrance stairs. Thin, curved stilts stretched the restaurant from the small beach embankment across the white sands below and into the luminous night surf of Duskwater's beach.
The small town of Duskwater had far too few potential patrons, as the Bayview was notoriously expensive. The restaurant attracted the posh crowd from Bluefront. At nightfall, a steady stream of luxury water taxis and a few quadcopters—either for hire or private—crossed the huge bay and made landfall on the Bayview's private dock and airfield, just two hundred meters to the south.
A young couple walked up from the dock and passed her. The woman wore a short, smart dress of undefinable colors and glittering jewelry. She gave Lumi a friendly nod, her shiny black hair bouncing around her head. She and her companion, in a casual sports suit, walked by Lumi with floating steps and were whisked away to their table.
Lumi hesitated for another moment and approached the maître d'. He was wearing a golden fantasy uniform and greeted Lumi with a wide smile.
“Good evening and welcome! Ms. Sato? Your party's accommodations are still being prepared, I'm afraid. May I seat you at the bar? We have a great view of Bluefront today.”
He nodded in the direction of the distant lights of the megacity, sitting over the dark waters on the horizon.
Lumi had never been to this place before and was not particularly known outside certain circles of Duskwater and beyond. Her being recognized must have been Dax's doing. She was here on his invitation, after all.
The maître d' called an assistant who guided Lumi through the main deck and toward the bar.
The Bayview's bar was the heart of the restaurant. It was the reason for its wide success in Bluefront and beyond. Alcohol was displayed and sold openly, not just in the form of unlabeled pretty bottles and carafes. From countertop to ceiling, rows of bottles were proudly presented on backlit shelves, calling attention to their sophisticated and very much forbidden contents. In Lumi's wide pants pocket, her comtab buzzed, indicating that it had received the bar's menu on its open channel.
This was just... blatant. Lumi smiled softly and sat down on a wide, very comfortable bar stool. Payouts to police must be massive, she thought. And the Bayview's high-echelon patrons and alcohol aficionados probably also provided some protection.
Lumi studied the shelves. Through her line of work, she knew some of the brands' owners. Routinely, her workshop had to take care of busted, overloaded quadcopter engines, bullet holes in the fuselage, and constant tune-ups. She made a mental note that she might try to up her fees, taking into account who some of her clients apparently were delivering to. Aarav, especially. Her best customer, best friend, and greatest idiot she knew.
Lumi held on to her water with lime. Better not start too early. She was used to the occasional rec-pharm high in her off hours, but not to the slow onset of an alcohol buzz. Her eyes wandered over the restaurant floor. Business was just picking up; nearly half the tables were still empty. To her side, the wall was open to a large deck with couches and dinner tables. A silver canopy waved above, and a few candles flickered in the wind.
Tonight, both of Mulsegye's moons were full, almost aligned. Soon, low tide would draw back the sea past the inner coral bank. Lumi liked the smell of the seaweed that would be bared in the remaining tide pools.
She turned around and observed the restaurant's entrance. Which of her old friends would be the next to arrive? She checked the time on her comtab and waited.
How long had it been? Fifteen, twenty years? At least. After that summer, they all had taken different routes. Aarav was always there, but Dax and Yara had been lost to her. She had exchanged some superficial messages with Yara after her release, but nothing more. About Dax, of course, she knew through the news. His stellar career in 'Vaz and beyond had made him a celebrity.
Yara arrived, and she was spectacular. From across the dining area, Lumi recognized her first by her dark violet eyes. Her formerly darkish-brown skin was lighter and seemed to glow. Her hair shone in bright, sparkly green. Her cocktail dress was both elegant and revealing as she slid by the maître d' in impossibly high-heeled sandals. Back then, Yara had had something animalistic, cat-like about her, and that trait had remained.
Yara walked straight toward the bar. The subdued conversation of three businessmen missed a beat. The young couple that had arrived together with Lumi craned their heads after her as she walked by their table. Fine strands of jewelry glistened around Yara's arms and neck. She greeted Lumi with a wide smile.
A brief memory of a shifty, dark thing in the alley flashed up. (“Want you gutted?”)
But this really was Yara.
“Hey, gearhead,” Yara said. She paused. A flicker of emotion broke her perfect smile. Then they hugged.
Yara's arms were surprisingly strong. She almost cut into Lumi, just like back then. Clinging, clasping. Then her grip softened, and she held Lumi back by the shoulders, looking at her up and down.
“You are just like...” Her voice caught. She touched the lapel of Lumi's coarse jacket, pointing at the Suri-The-Cat button, and laughed. “You're still into this?” The Suri-The-Cat show was one of Lumi's guilty childhood pleasures. Long canceled, reruns of the pink anime cat's mundane adventures were still watched throughout the Greater Archipelago.
“Wait,” Yara paused. “Is that the same brooch from when... when we... dude, I missed you. What are you having?” She glanced at Lumi's water with lime, then raised a perfectly manicured finger at the bartender. “Seven-five for me, please. Make it punch.”
Lumi swallowed deep, managing to speak. “Yara! You...?”
“What? Not dead? Not in jail? Yeah, nice, huh?” She laughed.
Finally, Lumi managed to blurt out: “Yara, you are so different. I am so happy to see you like this!”
*************
You Do Not Need to Be Like This
“Lumi, I need you to do something for me!” Uncle Ishaan yelled from somewhere down on the shop floor.
Lumi groaned and switched off the Suri-The-Cat show. She had watched this episode before, several times. Suri-The-Cat was about to talk down the Snake from one of her devious plans. Lumi liked that part most. The Snake would get all worked up and apologize in the end.
Lumi stood up from the floor in front of the big vidscreen in the rec room and straightened out the shop coveralls that Aunt Binu had fitted the week before. “You are growing faster than a swamp eel,” Binu had said. She had left a few generous fingers of hemming for further growth.
Uncle Ishaan was down on the shop floor with the mechanics. His quadcopter repair shop was even busier than usual this morning. One of the alco-gangs had brought in a souped-up ’copter to the shop’s beach dock by barge. Two of the four engines had been blown out. It was riddled with bullet holes, and it was a miracle it hadn’t crashed.
The young pilot who accompanied the sad shipment sheepishly explained how he had overloaded near the Northern mountain range and been chased by ’Vaz interceptors. The damage done to his quadcopter was substantial. The pilot had a black eye, most likely deftly delivered by his crew boss.
“Lumi, remember where that machining shop is you went to with Yussuf last month? They just messaged. They’re done with the new engine shafts. I need you to go there and check their work, then tell me if we’re good for pick-up,” Uncle Ishaan said.
Half an hour later, Lumi walked to Whiteview Square and boarded Duskwater's only tramway. Counting stops, she left the nicer, tourist-friendly parts of the small city and descended to the Northern waterfront. Her stop was at the defunct canning factory. From there on, she had to walk a few blocks of muddy streets down to the machine shop.
Counting down the squalid blocks, Lumi felt that something was wrong. During her last visit, Yussuf and her had had stopped at a coffee house for sherbet. She clearly remembered that hot day, and the coffee house very close to the tramway stop.
No coffee house, block after block. Wait, had she really gotten out at the canning factory? Or had it been another sealed-up building? Her heart sank. Should she turn back or go ahead?
Since a few blocks ago, she felt she had been observed. Passing by a small alley, some shadows scuttled by on the other side of her block. This was not good.
From the entrance of a squalid apartment block, a girl called out to her. "Hey, where you going? Where you from?"
Lumi lowered her head and sped up, almost falling into a run. "Hey, me talking to ya!" the skinny girl yelled.
A rock flew past Lumi's head. From out of nowhere, a bulky figure rammed into her sideways and sent her flying into a muddy puddle of rainwater. Lumi's ribs hurt from the impact, and she gasped for air. On all fours, she tried to rise from the muddy water when she felt a boot on her neck, pressing her down. Laughter around her.
"Lookit that, visit from Southside, innit?"
"Flip her over!" Somebody kicked her, and she rolled onto her back.
There were at least six of them. All older, meaner, stronger, faster than her. The skinny girl squirmed against the shoulder of a very large and muscular teenage boy. Next to him stood three others. One had a rock in his hand. The other was brandishing a steel pipe. Others behind Lumi were splashing mud on her. Somebody kicked her in the ribs.
"What you got for us?" the muscular teenager demanded. Lumi started crying.
"This is dumb. Just stomp her!" somebody yelled, bloodlust in his voice. Laughter. The street gang closed in on her. Work boots splashed through the brown puddle water. Lumi rolled over and held her head. Very, very old and very bad memories paralyzed her every thought.
A hissing, then a dull sound, and a bloodied steel ball landed next to Lumi's face. Crying, squealing.
"What the fuck!"
"My face! You fuckers, you bitches!"
"What did you do to him?" the skinny girl shrieked.
Lumi raised her head. From behind the broken wall of an abandoned construction site, three girls stepped out. The girl on the right was bulky, huge. Saggy clothes hung around her. She was barefoot, and her hair was shaved down to a thin and spiky strip running down the center of her skull. The girl on the left had half her hair shaved off and bore a scalefish tattoo on the bare part of her scalp. She was casually holding an iron bar.
The one in the middle was the smallest. She had penetrating violet eyes, dirty black hair, and was shifting on her feet like a cat. She wore an oversized fisherman's coverall and boots. A slingshot was dangling from her right hand.
The huge girl with the spiky hair took a few swift steps forward, grabbed the bleeding gang leader's hair, and yanked his smashed face upwards. A swift push sent the skinny girl next to him flying.
The huge girl looked briefly at the gang leader's face and then flicked him towards his companions. He fell forward, stumbled over Lumi, and landed in the mud.
"Missed the eye," the huge girl said to the slingshot girl.
"Shut up, fat cow," the slingshot girl replied. Her voice was cold, controlled. Focussed.
The gang leader was sitting up, cradling his face. "Do you know who you are messing with, you bitches?" he howled. The others were gathering around him. Two were trying to lift him to his feet, but he kept stumbling backward.
"Bunch of pussies is what you are," the slingshot girl replied. "This block is ours now. Wantchu git gutted?"
"The fuck!" The gang leader was fighting for composure. "We are eight, and you are fucking dead! Dead!"
The girl with the iron bar spat on the ground, lifting her weapon. The huge girl's hands dove into her pockets and came back out clad in shiny brass knuckles.
The slingshot girl reached behind her back and slowly pulled out a large, blue, serrated blade. Fishermen used them on tankfish.
"OK," the slingshot girl said. "Let's fuck'em up. Get me the leader." She pointed with her knife. A gleeful, malicious grin crept onto her face.
The skinny girl lost her nerve. "Fuck this, fuck this, fuck this," she stammered and ran away. The others stood aghast for a moment. Then they ran, dragging their stumbling leader with them.
The girl with the iron bar snorted in disgust.
"Pussies," the slingshot girl said.
"What about that?" the huge girl pointed at Lumi.
"She's one of Ishaan's foundlings. Leave her be," the iron bar girl said.
Lumi stumbled to her feet. The slingshot girl grabbed her by the chin and looked her in the eyes. Then she bent down and picked something out of the mud.
"Here, 's yours," she mumbled and pushed Lumi's Suri-The-Cat button into her hand. "Now fuck off."
"Thank you," Lumi muttered.
"Fuck off, I said!" the slingshot girl hissed.
Lumi breathed in. Something overcame her, overcame her fear.
"You do not need to be like this," she said.
The slingshot girl halted. Her face twitched. But it was not anger.
"If you want to, you can come by my place... you can sleep there... if you want to," Lumi said.
"What you holdin' up, Yara?" the huge girl yelled.
Yara's voice softened. "Just go," she said to Lumi.
*************
Wounded
Three nights later, Lumi’s world started to settle back into place. She had made her way back to Uncle Ishaan and Aunt Binu. They had been distraught. Uncle Ishaan had been furious. Through his alco-runner contacts, he had tracked down the gang that had attacked Lumi, but they had since disbanded. The gang leader was the son of the owner of a small utility shop chain. He had been sent to Bluefront for facial and dental surgery.
Lumi had cried a lot. But she had not been hurt apart from a few bruises. Binu raised her morale with hot chocolate and curry fish soup.
The rainy season was about to finish. It ended in a phenomenal downpour. Lumi liked the calming effect of the torrential rain, and her being just about out of its reach, separated by a window pane and a sturdy roof. The repair shop had been closed down for the day and lay in silence. Aunt Binu had gone home, and Uncle Ishaan was in his room, far down the corridor. Lumi’s first-floor small room faced the street. The small café and the fishing supplies store across the street were dark and closed. Lumi was in her pajamas and watched the tropical downpour pound on the plastic canopy of the café. Two sideways spouts guided massive jets of rainwater onto the pavement.
The pale moonlight fought to pass through the curtain of water. Occasionally, thunder ripped through the drumming rain. In the flash of lightning, Lumi saw something under the canopy. A small figure sat on the pavement, legs cradled into her arms. Somebody was out there. Could it be…? It could be anybody. But nobody deserved to be caught out in a tropical storm like this.
Lumi ran down the stairs. She put on a rain poncho from beside the exit door and slipped into somebody’s left-behind work boots. She unlocked the door and ran across the street toward the café. The slumped-over shape on the concrete floor of the terrace unlatched her arms and turned her head toward her. There was a trail of blood on the floor. Violet eyes glared at her. Yara. The slingshot girl. She had come.
Yara had a stab wound in her right thigh. Wordlessly, she let Lumi push her into a hot shower. When Lumi wanted to wake up Uncle Ishaan, Yara spat violent threats at her. Lumi managed to pour some disinfectant onto the wound. Then Yara raided the medicine cabinet and bandaged herself. She accepted a dry set of clothes and rolled up under a blanket on the floor in Lumi’s room.
Yara slept. She slept through first light. She did not wake up when the shop below awoke into bustling activity. She only stirred under her blanket when the smell of Aunt Binu’s fish stew permeated the upper floor near lunchtime.
Lumi tried to wake her up. Carefully, she pushed back the heavy blanket. The first thing that emerged was the tip of the blue, serrated blade. Then, beneath tangled black hair, Yara’s violet eyes glared at Lumi intensely.
“Fuck off,” she mumbled. But there was less meanness in her voice.
Lumi mustered a smile. “Do you want to eat?”
Yara’s head dove back into the blanket.
After three days of Lumi wanting to eat in her room and sneaking food out of the kitchen, during lunch with the mechanics Ishaan turned to Lumi.
“How about your friend coming down and sitting with us?” he said. He paused. “She can bring her knife if she wants to.”
In the kitchen behind him, Aunt Binu sighed loudly.
Yara took some time to adapt to life in the repair shop. At first, she always seemed ready to pounce, like a cornered animal. Uncle Ishaan put a cot for Yara into Lumi’s room, and everybody let Yara be. One day, she sat down with them during lunch, uneasily, between Lumi and Aunt Binu, silently spooning up her tankfish and curry stew. Another day, she let Binu wash her matted, tangled hair.
Aunt Binu fitted a pair of shop coveralls to Yara’s small figure. When Lumi joked that she was now in shop uniform just like her, Yara glared at her sideways.
A few evenings later, Yara sat down on the recreation area’s floor next to Lumi, who was watching a new episode of the Suri-The-Cat show on the wall screen. It was the first time she did not seem tense and shifty.
From then on, the girls always stayed together. Yara helped Lumi with basic repair tasks around the shop. They went scouting for replacement parts at the scrappers and ran errands for the shop. At night, Yara silently, with difficulty, copied Lumi’s comtab lessons. The few times Yara talked, she rarely fell back into her waterfront gangland dialect.
*************
A Reunion of Friends - Aarav
Movement at the Bayview Bar and Grill was picking up. Every once in a while, from down the beach, the sound of wind and waves was interrupted by the soft whirl of an arriving quadcopter. Couples and small groups of friends, most dressed expensively and elegantly, were led to their tables.
Yara had never had a client at the Bayview. It seemed to be a pretty nice, upscale, and fun place to spend the evening. Two levels with multiple exit points. No video surveillance. Jungle less than four hundred meters off to the west. Open to the sea. She shook those thoughts out off her mind. Tonight she was not on the clock. She was supposed to have fun. Still... still she had to be on her toes. Marwan wanted that.
The Bayview's bar was top-notch. The bartender served her a seventy-five cocktail. No frills on it, no touristy decorations, no fruit pick and umbrella. Just the correct, elegant champagne flute the drink was supposed to come in. The only legal ingredient in her drink was lime fruit.
Lumi watched her with her silly, big yellow comic book eyes. Lumi's feet were dangling from the high barstool. Against her will, Yara felt flooded by emotions she could not cleanly place. So many memories.
"You still have the shop?" Yara asked.
Lumi's face lit up even more. "Yes! It took me quite a while to get back on my feet. But Aarav helped me a lot. I kind of... I sometimes think it still is Uncle Ishaan's, but with him being... away... well... I took it over and many of our old customers came back."
Racers and alco-runners, Yara thought. Solid customer base. Hopefully, Lumi was being careful. But Duskwater was far enough away from the capital city of 'Vaz. SecPol cops did not have much clout in the small city.
Binu had come back. The repair shop was her second home, after all. Binu was old now, but from what Yara gathered from their conversation, she was unchanged.
Aarav seemed to be a fixture in Lumi's life. He had disappeared after the raid but come back a few years later. Changed for the better and an expert quadcopter pilot and alco-runner. Nice to hear he had not crashed and died after all these years.
"... and I don't know why he hangs out with me all the time. His life is so much more exiting than mine. And I know he is bored by engineering. He does not even know what I am doing, most of the time," Lumi laughed. "I mean, he is this great pilot, and he has his crew..."
'Yeah,' Yara thought. All these years and Lumi did not notice about Aarav? That was her Lumi alright, and maybe tonight would be a good time to put her head straight.
"I am only blabbing on about my life!" Lumi said. "What about you, how... wait, there is Rav!" She waved across the restaurant.
Aarav was wearing a tailor-made, shiny silk suit. Expensive, but a bit outdated. Dress shirt with three buttons open. Broad gold chain. Hair slicked back. A long way from the dirty scrapper brat he had been when Yara first met him during that summer when they had formed their group of friends. Their gang. Aarav clearly had come into the wrong kind of money. Yara smiled.
He spotted Lumi immediately and swiftly crossed the dining area. He came up to them and stopped abruptly. Then he grinned. "The fuck, Yara, is that really you? You are an absolute fox!"
"And you look like a cheap gangster," Yara replied.
Aarav laughed. "Thanks! Hey Lumi, you took a shower?"
“Get lost, Rav,” Lumi replied.
Aarav waved over the bartender.
"Usul."
"Hello, Rav."
"I heard people are going blind from the crap you are pouring here. Pass me a double of whiskey, but not what you give these suckers!"
Usul the bartender smiled briefly but regained his perfect professional composure. "Right away."
"You are one of their suppliers, right?" Lumi asked.
Aarav winked at her.
Lumi and Aarav chatted away, almost oblivious to Yara. It seemed they had not seen each other for a few weeks and Lumi had been worried. Underneath the shell of his pompous persona, Aarav was still the same he had ever been. Aarav was was not very open about it, but from what Yara understood, he now had a small fleet of alco-runner quadcopters and some employees, or associates. A small gang.
Alco-running from the wine field distilleries in the remote Northern settlements through the jungle belt and into the seven mega-cities was a brutal and lucrative but dangerous business, always figthing off SecPol and competition. Aarav loved it as he loved flying.
*************
Tech Scrappers
Aarav looked down the broken, slender bridge spanning the lagoon into ’Vaz, as Elevacia was now mostly called. A long time ago, maybe before the Calamity, this must have been a direct and fast access into the buzzing city center. It was one hour past nightfall. The megaspires of ’Vaz were lit up by millions of apartment windows. Quadcopters were busily whizzing through the night sky. Neon light erupted below the dense urban sprawl at the feet of the spires. The night lights were caught in the dust cloud the city had kicked up during a busy day.
At the same time as being near the home of millions and millions of people, cozy in their apartments, joining their families after a day’s work, Aarav was also very far away from them.
The bridge had been broken in several places ever since anybody could remember. The villas, apartment blocks, and shopping malls behind Aarav were lifeless, abandoned since forever. ’Vaz had cut itself off from this section of the lagoon isles and left it behind, to be overgrown and forgotten. Often, Aarav wondered what had happened for their world to fall apart like this. There were a few theories, but nobody knew for sure, or even really cared.
Twigs snapped in the bushes behind Aarav. Orstian lumbered through and sat down heavily next to Aarav. This morning, searching at the bottom of a pond by a large, mossy building, his air hose had punctured on a piece of sharp metal. He had dropped his weight belt and shot to the surface, escaping death by a hair’s breadth. He had somewhat recovered, but was still exhausted and rattled.
“Fuck,” Orstian said, more to himself.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the noise of the jungle. A leather-bat coasted over the warm water of the lagoon.
“They find anything?” Aarav asked.
“Nah, kid. This place is picked clean. Should never have come here.”
They had not had a good find in weeks and had come back to the defunct outskirts of Elevacia. High risk, low yield, here in the ruins. Way too close to the scrutiny of SecPol patrols. Tech-scrapping was outlawed since anybody could remember.
“Well, at least Elio will not have us dive under the bridge. Or will he?” Aarav asked, worried.
“We are not that desperate, kid,” Orstian said. “There’s still heaps of individu-cars down there, but those near the waterfront were picked clean long ago. At most, you can get a few UPUs out from somewhere in the middle, where it is really deep. If Elio wants us to do that, I’m out. For good.”
“Would the UPUs still work?” Aarav asked. The UPUs were used all over the Greater Lagoon. Their uniform grey or black boxes could be plugged into any of the old machinery, and they were easy to program. Aarav had watched it once. You kind of just told those simple electronic brains what to do, and then they worked.
They were breaking down lately and becoming rare. Nobody knew how to make them. A hot and illegal market for ancient, unregistered UPUs had developed. Some of the successful tech-scrappers had become rich. But most were just getting by, like Elio’s crew.
Orstian did not reply. He took a pack of J-cigs from his breast pocket and offered a cigarette to Aarav. Aarav eagerly accepted. The soft J-cig buzz would help him forget his sore muscles and wet clothes.
“Kid, listen now and believe me later, this business is shit,” Orstian said, blowing smoke towards the lagoon. The sweet smell enveloped them. “I mean, this business is kind of hopeless. The good sites have all been done. On a good day, you find a busted roboserver tentacle. Maybe sometimes a waterlogged three-er or four-er, just enough to pay the bills,” Orstian said, referring to the rating and processing power of the UPUs.
“Elio found a five-er and bought the Snake with it, though,” Aarav said. The Sneaky Snake was a gutted and refurbished fishing drone. Elio had outfitted it with strong engines, good enough to escape from competing tech-scrappers or to pull a loot barge.
Orstian smiled and nodded. “That was before your time. Things were different then.” He turned to Aarav. “Kid, you better think about getting back to fishing, like before, when we took you on.”
Just when Aarav wanted to protest, something stirred in the dense bushes behind them.
Elio whispered from a distance: “Dudes, come. We need all hands on deck. Sarah found something.”
Having cast line and bait in a bog, Sarah had noticed the peculiar shape of its shore. She had called Elio. On a hunch, Elio had paced the margin of the bog, cutting away dense shrubbery. They were standing on the border of a perfectly round, small impact crater.
They brought the large water pump from the boat. After a few hours, near sunrise, it had chugged the bog dry. Some water was still seeping in, but the center of the crater had been bared. The vegetation around them was dense. With no danger of being spotted by overflying law enforcement, they started digging in the mud.
Near noon, a shovel hit something solid. Driven by hope, they skipped lunch and kept digging. Two hours later, a long object made of a strange metal had been bared. When the strange thing was cleared far enough from the surrounding mud that it was possible to wiggle it, Elio sent the crew on a long break. Exhausted, they slept in the afternoon shadow of the mangrove.
At nightfall, with as little light as possible and using carrier balloons, they unstuck their find from the mud. Floating on the balloons, being lifted and pushed, they placed the thing down in a stretch of grass near the hidden anchoring spot of the Sneaky Snake.
The object was a shiny black tube with a pointed end. On its sides, it had some short fins. Sarah said what most of them were thinking: “This looks like an oversized artillery shell.”
Whatever the thing was, it had not exploded. It had impacted the swamp at high speed from who knows where. It was made of some type of alloy that nobody had ever seen before.
“Is this worth something?” Orstian asked, his face a distorted mask in the red night light.
“Fuck knows,” Elio replied. “You know what? We are done here. I know where to take this. We need to resupply, anyway. We scram at first light.”
Five days of fast sailing later, they were out of ’Vaz waters, past the megacity of Bluefront, and approached Duskwater. They sailed straight for the private dock of Ishaan’s repair shop.
The crew was eager to sleep dry, get buzzed on recpharms, and drink a few nights away on firm ground. Aarav was looking forward to Uncle Ishaan’s hospitality, Binu’s food, the camaraderie of the shop mechanics. But most of all, he was excited to see stupid, bubbly, naive, smart Lumi.
The whole of the workshop staff received the Sneaky Snake on the dock in the morning light. The Snake had caught a panzer eel. At night, the nasty-looking fish was going to be barbecued on a bonfire on the beach. Hugs were exchanged, and laughter sounded over the early morning waves.
Lumi stepped out of the shop hall onto the dock and waved at Aarav. He briskly walked — almost ran — towards her. Lumi gave him one of her childish, happy hugs. When she let go, Aarav noticed the girl behind her. She was rather small. Her dark, sleek hair fell over violet eyes. She glared at him with hostility.
Lumi stepped back and touched both by their shoulders.
“Rav,” she said, “this is Yara. She is our friend.”