“Arctic research at work.”
“I’ve culled anything that mentions the Rilkeans. You’ll find those articles at the back of the packet.”
A cocktail robot dispersing bottles of Red Stripe and platters of ackee and salt fish slow-steps down the aisle. An Atlas Skinny, the older humanoid model, its white chestplate embossed with an Asiatic lion wearing a gold crown and holding a long scepter. The Lion of Judah, his namesake.
Lion grabs a beer.
“I and I?” asks Penelope, after the bot departs, “what does that mean?”
“One consciousness. I and I means you and me. It means we’re all in this together.”
“Do you think that’s true?” she asks, smiling at him. “Do you think we’re all in this together?”
“Know why this flight is child-free?”
Penelope glances up and down the aisle. “It’s brilliant. No screaming kids to deal with. I’m amazed it took them this long to figure it out.”
“That’s marketing.”
“Cannabis-friendly, so adults only?”
“True,” says Lion, “but a legal issue. It’s child-free because the Rastas reversed their position on procreation. Go back a few decades and most Jamaicans believed birth-control was some rass thought up by the white man to keep the black man down.”
“What changed?”
Lion points down the aisle at the chestplate of the serving robot, “Panthera leo persica.”
“Isn’t that an Atlas skinny?”
“Not the robot. The Asiatic lion. Population explosion in India. Deforestation, habitat fragmentation, poaching. The Asiatic lion got listed as endangered on the Red List, and the Rastas are big on symbolism.”
“The Lion of Judah?”
Nods. “The Rastas used to be fierce opponents of birth control, but the red-listing made them reverse their position.”
“To what?”
“If we’re all in this together, that has to include animals, plants, and ecosystems. The Rastas take that responsibility seriously. The web of life isn’t a metaphor. They reversed their position because having children is pretty much the single worst thing you can do for the environment.”
“That’s why Jamaica Air is child-free?”
Nods again.
She reaches across the aisle, lifts the Red Stripe out of his hand, and takes a sip. Something about the presumed intimacy in the gesture that Lion appreciates. Then again, a little like the XOs in her texts, it’s hard to tell with Penelope—what is genuine emotion and what is business strategy.
The modern condition.
“If everyone on the planet stopped having kids for five years,” she says, working a fingernail under the Red Stripe label, starting to tease it away from the bottle, “population would drop by a billion.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He takes the beer back, the label now hanging half-off, like a sagging flag from some forgotten nation. Takes a sip. Passes it back.
She uses the bottle to point toward the envelope. “It’s in your packet. The Five Year Ban.”
“Which is?”
“One of Muad’Dib’s major teachings.” Something in her tone. Pride? Where would that be coming from? “It’s a grassroots movement among Rilkeans. A temporary moratorium on childbirth.”
“Five years?”
Her turn to nod. “The time frame needed for that population drop. Muad’Dib believes it would give the environment a chance to recover and our technology a chance to catch up to the problem.”
A deep rumble like a waking dragon as the plane starts to taxi down the runway. Acceleration.
“What do you think?” asks Lion, after they’re airborne.
“Nobody’s forcing anyone to do anything. It’s just people making up their own minds. I find it noble.”
“A kindred spirit,” then turns the envelope over in his hand. “Will Shiz tell us where Muad’Dib is?”
“I’ve only met him once.”
“And?”
“And he wanted to sleep with me.” A curious smile. “He was really polite about it. A little regal.”
“Would my lady like to accompany me to the bedroom?”
“Something like that.”
“You slept with Shiz, that’s useful. Do you think he’ll tell us?”
Penelope reaches across the aisle and squeezes his arm.
“I didn’t sleep with him, and I don’t think he’s going to tell us.” Brushing her thumb back and forth across his wrist. “But he might tell you, Lion Zorn, em-tracker of the Rod of Correction.”
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
Somewhere over Ohio, the Atlas Skinny slides by with another tray of drinks. The motion tickles his life recognition machinery, but Lion doesn’t bother to look up. He tries to remember when he stopped noticing the robots. When they moved from science fiction to science fact to everyday scenery. He wonders if there’s any measure for this, some way to track how long it takes the pattern recognition system to inculcate imagination as just another form of information. The march of progress, though he also wonders if this is true.
In the pod beside him, Penelope has fallen asleep, her sleeves pushed up slightly, revealing a conspiracy of ravens. Conspiracy is the collective noun used to describe the birds, Lion knows, like a murder of crows or a crash of rhinos. He also knows, in older dictionaries, a group of ravens is sometimes called an unkindness. And her skin beneath, a milky shade micro-dotted with pale freckles.
Somewhere over Kansas, he realizes he’s having difficulty not watching Penelope sleep. Time to take his mind off the problem. For a moment, he considers the envelope beside him, then remembers the landscape below him. Decides on the latter. Lion dials up the nose cone view on the Eye-N-Eye VR, finds Goat Shit on the ganja menu and places his order. From the beverage screen, he chooses an Americano, black, with one, no two, extra shots.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on his cabin door. Lion depresses a button on his armrest and slides the entranceway open. The dreadlocked steward steps into the room, holding a tall white coffee cup in his left hand and a silver tinfoil swan in his right. The coffee cup is decorated with some kind of cartoon, the swan the kind of thing his parents used to bring home from nice restaurants, before 3-D-printing leftover containers became the thing.
Lion takes both and thanks the steward, who starts out of the door, but stops and turns. “You’re Lion Zorn—em-tracker of the Rod?”
“Yeah,” cautiously.
“Big up for mi Bredren,” says the steward. “Before Lion Zorn preach Jamaica Air, I-man haffi Mechanical Turk. Mash up a dread.”
“Mechanical Turk?” he asks.
“Geo-tagging port-o-potties for Babylon funds. Nah way for dem free to livity.”
Lion laughs.
The steward presses his hands to his heart and bows slightly from the waist, his dreadlocks waterfalling forward. Then out the door and gone.
Unrolling the silver swan, Lion finds a small gray tub containing the Goat Shit. A couple of aromatic nugs, dark green, with the occasional purple highlight. Setting those aside, he picks up the coffee cup and studies the cartoon.
In the foreground, a cadre of heavyset birds hanging out on a beach, reading books and playing chess. In the background, a tall wooden ship filled with conquistadors. A caption near the bottom: “Unbeknownst to most ornithologists, the dodo was actually a very advanced species, living alone quite peacefully until, in the seventeenth century, it was annihilated by men, rats, and dogs. As usual.”
Nah way for dem free to livity, thinks Lion.
Setting the cup aside, he fires up the vaporizer and watches the Goat Shit reduce to ash. Three hits later, he slides on the smart glasses and launches the nose cone view. Like the jump to light speed. In an instant, he’s catapulted from the minor claustrophobia of his first class cabin to the massive agoraphobia of the nose of the plane, like he’s been transformed into some kind of Boeing hood ornament. And that still-eerie teleportation sensation
—another feeling we had no idea we felt until the virtual came along.
The camera must be 3-D panoramic, mounted on the very tip of the plane. The view is spectacular in every direction. Massive cumulus castles dead ahead and craggy mountains below, like gargantuan alligator teeth.
“Welcum dem realz Rocky Mountain high,” booms in his head.
Lion yanks off the glasses and looks at their stems. Sees a dot matrix of slender holes drilled into the plastic. Nano-Bluetooth speaker with deep cortical throw capacity. He felt that one down by his brain stem.
Mutes the audio and hits the vaporizer again. Glasses back on. The enormous vista arrives a second later, and with it the free-floating sensation that is virtual antigravity. He’s flying again, a line of text floating in his lower left peripheral providing the details: “Rocky Mountains, 32,106 feet.”
Peering straight down, Lion sees granite spires that date back to the Cenozoic. If Sir Richard’s right, and rocks themselves are conscious, what stories these rocks could tell. Then through a thick cloud and out again.
He rides the nose cone into Nevada, his reverie broken by a knock on his door. The dread-steward with an offer of a hot towel. “Iron bird in San Francisco in thirty-five,” he says.
Lion slides the smart glasses back into their holder and buries his face in the towel. Inhaling eucalyptus, he decides that there’s enough flight time left to get a little work done.
Arctic envelope and Moleskine notebook, both open on his lap.
From the envelope, he slides out the packet on Shiz and starts reading from the top. The first article is standard biographical fare, much of which Lion’s familiar with. Rasta father, Creole mother, born poor in New Orleans, raised poor in Kingston. An early aptitude for music and science becomes a string of first place wins at regional then national then international science fairs that get him a full-ride scholarship to Oxford. Then a detail Lion didn’t know before: Shiz studied environmental science.
He makes a note in his Moleskine.
After three semesters at Oxford, Shiz dropped out to focus on his music. Made his bones in the early days of YouTube VR, riding the platform rise for all it was worth. Most famous for his poly-tribe sound and dread-trances, routinely getting so lost in the music, clapping his hands so hard, by show’s end they’d be rubbed raw and bleeding furiously.
Lion glances at the accompanying photo. Shiz onstage in Amsterdam: his throwback dread-hawk with short stalks dyed a bright baby blue, eyes closed, and hands frozen midclap. Tarantinos of blood flying off of them.
He takes another sip and turns his attention to the next article. This one drills into Shiz’s time at Oxford, including a second-semester freshman-year class schedule. Lion glances at it: Early 21st Century Nihilism: Gaga Through Trump; Genetic Correlates of Acoustics, a graduate-level seminar in the Music Department; Michael Soule and the Mechanics of the Sixth Great Extinction; and a History of Eco-Empathy: Edward Abbey, Rise of the Animal Liberation Front, and the Rilkean Solution.
Rise of the Animal Liberation Front?
He glances back at the stack of articles and sure enough, Penelope’s included a reading syllabus for all of Shiz’s classes. He runs his finger down the list until he finds Eco-Empathy, and beneath: “Rise of the Animal Liberation Front,” a five-part report for the Times by a certain Judah Zorn.
He stares at the syllabus.
Lion’s early reporting on the movement won a couple of journalism prizes, so he’s not that surprised to find his articles, but it does raise the question of why Shiz wants to meet him.
He finds no answers in the next few stories, skips ahead, hunting for details of Shiz’s Rilkean conversion. Discovers a half-page photo, a close-up snapshot of the back of Shiz’s neck showing white scars above a bar code tattoo. The accompanying article describes the tale Richard had told him, but from the inside out. How Shiz noticed stories about him becoming a Rilkean showing up online and grew curious about the movement. The more he learned, the more their message resonated. Then a conversation at a bar in New York pushed him over. Lion reads a few more sentences and blinks.
Rereads the graph.
Shiz was out for drinks at a bar in the West Village when he saw a woman with the question mark tattoo from across the room, approached her, and struck up a conversation. Doesn’t remember the name of the bar, does remember the woman’s name: Sarah.
Lion flashes on silver hair peeking out from beneath a blond wig. “Thanks for the drink, Lion Zorn.”
Bo’s Sarah. His Sarah. And the uncomfortable whirl of his brain interrupted by a quiet whoosh beside him. In preparation for landing, the door to Penelope’s cabin has slid open.
He sees her, hair unbraided for the first time, smiling in his direction. If he didn’t know better, he might assume she was genuinely pleased to see him.
The plane touches down, bounces twice on tarmac, and taxis down the runway. Iron bird in San Francisco.
A SHEEP DOG ON A SHORT CHAIN
Walking out of Terminal One, heading toward daylight, and Penelope stops dead in her tracks.
“Rhechan fel ci defaid ar jaen gwta,” she snarls.
“What?”
Staring straight ahead, jaw clenched. “Rhechan fel ci defaid ar jaen gwta.”
“What language is that?”
“Welsh,” turning to look at him. “It means farting like a sheepdog on a short chain. It’s an expression,” pointing out the glass doors, “of unpleasant surprise.”
Lion follows her finger, sees the airport in busy mode. Hordes of androgynous people being trailed by hordes of autonomous luggage. He can hear the commercial in his head: “Roll, roll, rolls itself, gently through the terminal.”
Beyond that, a line of Uber autonomous taxis purring against a distant curb, a decrepit yellow Toyota and a bright pink Hummer stretch limo, festive with streamers, toilet paper, and other wedding ornamentation.
He has no idea why she’s so pissed off.
Then he spots it. On the passenger door of the limo, the outline of a heart, drawn in what appears to be whipped cream. Written inside of it: LION + PENELOPE = FOREVER.
So this is what dumbfounded feels like.
“Tongue ma fart-box ya cunty wankstain,” her voice quivering with what sounds like actual violence.
Stays dumbfounded.
“That one’s Scottish,” she says. “It means Jenka’s a wankstain who can lick my Irish arse.”
“Jenka?” He starts laughing. “Seriously?”
A dark flash in her eyes.
“Wankstain?” he repeats, still laughing.
Penelope pivots on her right leg and snaps out her fist. A lightning-quick right cross catches Lion’s shoulder. The blow rocks him forward and he stutter-steps to stay upright, accidentally kicking a dark gray autonomous suitcase, which sways, then skitters sideways.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he says, trying to right himself.
“Sorry,” she says, reaching for him.
He sidesteps her hand, rubbing his shoulder, staring at her.
“I really am sorry.”
She really does, he notices, look sorry.
“Who taught you to punch like that?”
“My therapist.” Shrugs. “Misdirected anger—it’s an ongoing issue. She suggested Krav Maga.”
“Yeah,” still rubbing his shoulder, “tell her it worked.”
The inside of the limo is worse than the outside. A lighted lime-green pathway down the center of the aisle, glowing pink bar to the left, purple love seats shaped like giant lips to the right. The ceiling is a disco wash of colors.
Jenka went all out.
Lion plops down on purple lips. Penelope sits a couch away. The Hummer glides into traffic with as much dexterity as an oil tanker.
“Four Seasons, please,” she tells their driver.
“The Four Seasons?” he says, suddenly a little queasy.
Penelope slides into professional mode. “Arctic has a relationship.”
&nbs
p; “Isn’t there a different relationship?”
“What’s wrong with the Four Seasons?”
Wondering how he’s going to explain this one. “Posh freaks me out. People wearing watches freak me out.”
“Watches?”
He takes her phone out of her hand, pushes the home button, and the time, in oversized digits, fills the screen. Points at the numbers. “Every phone comes with a clock, yet we still coat our wrists with baubles for the sake of the signifier. ‘I Have,’ the sign says. ‘You Have Not.’”
She smiles at him, then asks, “Didn’t you just fly first class?”
“Sista,” Lion says, passing her back the phone, “no-ting Babylon about I and I friendly skies.”
They pull onto the freeway and straight into traffic. Crawling up the 101 in thirty feet of hot-pink limo and stares from all sides. Penelope texting furiously, the cuffs of her sleeves flopping as she types. She slides the cloth up to her elbows, revealing bracelets of tattoos beneath: cursive script wrapping her wrists and the ravens again, like oversized black commas soaring up her arms. From one couch away, he can’t read the words, but the birds translate just fine.
Knows there’s a reason for this—but it’s not coming to him.
“I’m trying to set up our meeting with Shiz,” says Penelope, glancing up from her phone.
“I thought it was all set.”
“The meeting is set, not the time of the meeting. Shiz keeps odd hours.”
Then head down and texting again.
He glances back at the ravens and it clicks. A story Fetu had told him about environmental philosopher Paul Shepard’s “Pleistocene paradigm,” the idea that our eons of sustained contact with the natural world played a significant role in the evolution of the human brain. Animals were humankind’s initial grounds for comparison, our earliest metaphors, and remain fundamental to how we see the world. Why Shepard once said, “We learned to think in animals,” and why we still say things like “he’s as big as a gorilla” or “she’s as fierce as a lion.”
Also, he thinks, watching Penelope’s arm, why we can recognize the outline of a bird from across a room and can’t read writing. Words are too recent an imprinting. Animals, though, are part of our ancient grammar, prehistorically embedded in the brain.
Last Tango in Cyberspace Page 13
