Lost Among the Stars

by Paul Di Filippo

Kioga waited a moment for Mallory to break off and accompany him to table, but she showed no signs of wanting to flee present company. So he simply said, “I’m very hungry, so I’ll see you after the presentation.”

  He walked into the dining hall feeling crestfallen and sad.

  But the sight of Jimmy Velvet seated at a table and surrounded by seemingly every waitress in the commissary cheered Kioga immensely. He strode over.

  Jimmy familiarly held the hand of one young uniformed woman, a native beauty, and chattered in rapidfire Spanish that caused her to grin and nod. Finished, he kissed her hand and she departed, giggling, with her fellow refectory angels.

  “Ky, my ligand! You’re just in time! I’ve only now promoted a bottle of Valdivieso 2035 from that brilliant lass. What a peach! And that gorgeous rump! As for the wine, it’s a trifling Chilean Champagne. Undoubtedly inferior to the Veuve Clicquot you regularly bathe in, but needs must. Not on the menu, but the Director has a private stock. Join me, lig, join me!”

  The wine arrived in a homeostatic chiller, along with two giant bowls of steaming ajiaco soup, with succulent avocado on the side. Kioga realized then just how famished he was. He forked up the floating encobbed corn from his bowl and stripped it clean in well under sixty seconds. Jimmy matched him, bite for bite. The cold bubbly went down smoothly and seemed not to interact badly with Kioga’s meds, leaving him feeling buoyant and vivid. And for business purposes, he could always pop a tab of Null-borracho if necessary.

  Their hearty soup finished, awaiting the dessert of bocadillo and panelitas (guava and panela candy), Jimmy dabbed neatly at his lips with a cloth napkin. “So, I see Mallory is networking up a storm while she’s here. And we’ve got the presentation in an hour or so. Does all that leave any time or spirit whatsoever for a little mattress gymnastics? Or will you be debating candied almonds versus cocktail wienies until the wee hours of this splendid, moon-kissed tropical night?”

  Kioga winced. He felt he had to defend Mallory against the very charges he himself had been harboring a little while ago. “Come on now, Jim, she’s not at all like that. You’re being much too harsh on the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.”

  “Better I speak now than when the matrimonial saddle is fully cinched.”

  “I’m certain the orgiastic noises spilling from my quarters tonight will shock the entire staff.”

  “Hrm. Well, if you find yourself at loose ends this evening, be advised that I and some others are heading into the city. The Zona Rosa, Poblado ’hood. The Parque Lleras district, to be precise. Many, many square blocks of wanton women, inveigling intoxicants, hip-oiling music, and finger foods of the gods. Or so I’ve been promised.”

  “Thanks. But I know I’ll be extremely busy with my own exclusive amorous affairs.”

  “Your phone knows my phone, lig. Hey, look at the time! We’re due a mile away a week ago! What are they using for personal transport here? Not those cheesy little Tata PicoPods! Oh, my word! My spine will never be the same.…”

  Kioga tried to spot Mallory as they rushed out, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Large yet somehow intimate, with its reconfigurable walls and fixtures, the conference room already held all the expectant and highly polished Mercosur representatives when Jimmy and Kioga arrived. Kioga felt pleased that he was not the last braintruster to show up. In fact, Mallory and Stuart kept everyone waiting till a whole ninety seconds past the scheduled start of the presentation. His fiancée smiled hastily at him, squeezed his shoulder in the manner of a sports teammate in passing, then settled down at her assigned seat.

  The group presentation went well, thought Kioga, although, truth be told, he gave only half his concentration to the speeches, even including his own part. The only slight glitch occurred when Jimmy, explaining the efficacy of the new options for seabed mining, his speciality, likened the process to “hoovering vomit off a Scotsman.” But aside from that gaffe, the Mercosur suits seemed well pleased with the valuable new insights and profit-enhancing technologies presented to them.

  When the meeting broke up, the time was almost seven PM. Kioga hastened to Mallory’s side, intent on cutting her out of the herd.

  “Oh, Ky, so wonderful to be together at last. I’ve missed you so!” She fussed with her phone. “Step over here a minute with me, please.”

  Mallory guided Kioga behind some slowly repositioning panels she had requisitioned that pivoted and angled, butterfly-gentle, to enclose them in a privacy alcove. She gazed at him with her limpid driftglass eyes and Kioga felt his heart get the whim-whams.

  “Ky, dear—I’ve just realized what’s truly important in our relationship.”

  Kioga could hardly believe his ears. “Yes, dearest?”

  “We need to make babies. Several of them. Just as soon as we’re married.”

  This urgent procreative game plan was the last thing Kioga had been expecting to hear. Naturally, he was disconcerted, so much so that he had trouble composing a response. But Mallory filled in the conversational gap.

  “Have you been following the newsfeeds lately? Something clicked inside me today. I had the most startling revelation. Life-changing, in fact. It jumped out at me when I was talking with the others at lunch. I realized that despite everything the Science Parks have been doing, this world is still in dire shape. Just look at those weird things breeding in the Pacific Garbage Patch—my god! Oh, of course we’ve made great progress. Essential stuff got done just in time, and is continuing to get done, thanks to our kind of people. We’ve halted the planet’s tragic slide over the past twenty years. Without us, and people of our cadre, there would have been nothing but chaos and suffering, mass die-offs and one unending catastrophe after another.

  “But the idiocracy is out-birthing us! Nine billion humans right now, with another two billion to come before population growth is finally halted. More and more marching morons to fuck things up, every minute! Now, I know we don’t have to match their numbers one for one. We have brains and talent and money and organization and virtue and character on our side. But still, it’s a race to the finish, which element in the equation will determine the outcome for the planet. Will it be our smarts, or their animal fecundity? Can we possibly save the breeders from themselves?”

  Mallory gripped both of Kioga’s hands and gazed imploringly and sincerely into his eyes. He could not doubt her sudden passion for the topic.

  “And here I was, worried over the trivialities of our wedding, when I should have been focused on blending our superior genepools to produce the next generation of global saviors. Cognitive homogamy, to ensure our future security.”

  Cognitive homogamy? Next generation of global saviors? Suddenly Kioga felt like the Virgin Mary. Or was Mallory Mary and he the Holy Ghost?

  “That’s why I know you’ll understand, Ky, when I explain that I have to leave right away tonight. Stuart has presented me with a rare chance to earn a solid nest egg for our future family. But I’ve got to jump on it immediately. We want to give our children the best start in life, don’t we? Of course, I knew you’d agree! So kiss me quickly now, and I promise you that there’ll be no more foolish talk of seating arrangements. We’re going to get married as simply and quickly as possible, once we’re together again. I’ve consulted my schedule, and that appears to be at Instituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, three months from now. And then we can start raising our superior brood.”

  Mallory was pressing her lips efficiently against Kioga’s before he knew what was happening, the wings of their little shelter had parted, and she was gone.

  Outside the conference building Kioga found Jimmy Velvet waiting for him. Jimmy mantled Kioga’s shoulders with a comradely arm and said, with lateral, soreness-deflecting tact, “As Omar the Goofy Sufi once remarked, ‘I often wonder what the punters buy one half so noxious as the stuff they swill.’ Let us conduct our own field trials, my lig!”

  * * *

  The nighted, OLED-lit, club-dense, numbered streets aroun
d the small Parque Lleras throbbed with roisterous humanity. Kioga found himself so instantly and immersively swept up in the weekend carnival of flesh and frolic that all the hurt and confusion surrounding Mallory’s absurdly sociological treatment of their love dwindled down to a tiny, almost totally ignorable kernel of disappointment and unease located, as best as Kioga could tell, midway between his navel and groin.

  Jimmy started the liquid part of the night’s menu by ordering mojitos made with maracuya passion fruit. Apparently it was illegal for the drinks to be served in any container smaller than liter-sized plastic tumblers. Toting his beverage through the happy crowd gyrating to ambient music—some kind of chutney-fado mélange, at once hip-shaking and mournful—Kioga marveled at the scads of beautiful women sauntering arm-in-arm. Apparently, Colombia produced nothing along the XX lines but gorgeous females ranging the spectrum from pixieish waif to Junoesque Amazon. He felt lubricious stirrings all throughout his body that promised to drown, at least temporarily, the radioactive kernel of regret Mallory had implanted.

  Jimmy intuited Kioga’s thoughts and said in a loud voice that still hardly penetrated the surf of speech and music, “Colombia’s number three globally in recreational somatic tailoring! More licensed and unlicensed omics tweakers than Brazil and Macau combined! Be careful though! They’re not all baseline double-ex! If that even matters!”

  Having manfully dealt with their original cocktails, Kioga and his pal began an increasingly unsteady crawl through a variety of clubs and bars, intent on participating fully in the scene, sampling all the native drinks while not neglecting a modest amount of alcohol-buffering foodstuffs. After a few hours of metronomic imbibing, close to midnight, Kioga devoured two plates of aborrajados, cheese-packed plantain fritters, followed by some arepas de chócolo, and achieved a momentary lucidity, the eye of a swirling internal ethanol hurricane.

  He found himself precariously perched atop a stilt-legged bamboo chair at a quaintly neon-decorated bar. Jimmy was visible nowhere.

  Kioga turned to his left, and discovered an alluring woman staring at him with frank interest.

  Rather petite, yet busty and well-curved, the woman wore her long dark hair simply, in lustrous parallel curtains that framed a strong set of features: hazel eyes topped with naturally thick eyebrows; delicately hooked nose; wide expressive mouth lipsticked a Boysenberry shade; an impudent chin. She wore a tight-fitting short-sleeved shirt, on whose front abstract animated artwork ceaselessly replicated the colorful gyrations of the autocatalytic Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction; simple classic piña-spidersilk jeans; and high-heeled lizard-skin espadrilles.

  “Hola,” Kioga managed.

  “You are from Parque Arví,” responded the woman in English.

  Kioga’s Science Park affiliation had never sounded less glamorous. “Is it that obvious? Couldn’t I be, oh, some rich princeling from Swaziland?”

  “Yes, I think maybe. In another life. But I heard you and your friend talking, so I know different. But why are you here?”

  Kioga swiveled around, away from the woman, and almost fell off his stool. “Jimmy! Where are you, Jimmy! I’m being cruelly interrogated!”

  The woman laughed brilliantly. “Your friend cannot help you now. He has gone off with two very indecorously dressed tarts. This is the correct word, I think, ‘tarts’?”

  “Knowing Jimmy, it is probably an entirely accurate description.”

  “Very well, then. You have no hope of rescue. So, I ask, why are you here?”

  “Well, just to have a good time.”

  “You cannot do that in Parque Arví, with others of your kind?”

  “Hey now, wait just a minute. ‘My kind?’ I’m as human as you, aren’t I?”

  “Sometimes I wonder. You Science Park people seldom descend to this level. You live apart from me and my kind. You work with each other, play with each other—marry each other. Maybe you are indeed a separate species—or becoming one. It is very much like something I read once, by a Mister Wells.”

  Kioga felt vaguely offended. “Except that we Eloi are the ones in this scenario who do all the work.”

  The woman’s delicate nostrils flared. “Ha! You think I and my friends do not labor like donkeys, just to survive! I could show you such things—”

  “Oh, you work hard, I’m sure. That is, those of you who aren’t on some kind of government dole. But even your best workers don’t really perform intelligently, or with any long-term vision. You’re too focused on pleasure, and instant gratification. You have no code to live by, as we do in the Parks. No guiding principles.”

  “Instant gratification! I would be instantly gratified to kick you in los huevos right this minute!”

  Kioga held up a placatory palm. “Okay, stop. Somehow we got off on the wrong foot. Couldn’t we start over? My name is Kioga Matson.”

  “Please accept my apologies. I am Avianna Barranquilla.”

  They shook hands. Avianna had a strong grip, noted Kioga. Yet still, her small hand, lost in his, proclaimed a femininity he found inflaming to his rising lust. A brief flash of Mallory’s terse goodbye kiss interrupted his wet reveries, then dissipated like exhausted utility fog in a maker cabinet.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Gracias. Just a Club Colombia beer, if you please.”

  Kioga opted for the same. A sweetish lager, the beer refreshed Kioga without contributing too much more to his inebriated state.

  “You know I work for the Science Parks, Avianna. But what do you do?”

  She looked slightly distressed. “It is a long story. Basically, I am trying to help my brother with an entrepreneurial project of his. But perhaps we should avoid speaking of our vocations too much, yes? It seems a touchy subject. All my fault, I admit.”

  “All right then. What should we talk about?”

  “Well, what do you think of my beautiful country?”

  “To be honest, I’ve hardly seen enough of it to form a worthwhile opinion. Parque Arví, of course, is well run and has produced some good things—but that’s true of every other Science Park on the planet. The people I’ve seen downtown here seem happy and healthy and carefree and congenial—but I assume they’re middle class or above and quite secure. I don’t know anything about other levels of your society, so I can’t say how prosperous or equitable your nation is. As for your country’s politics—sorry, no idea. Just not relevant to my life or anything that really counts in this world.”

  Kioga paused to sip his beer, and the influx of alcohol prodded his courage and tongue.

  “However, I will happily proclaim with the utmost sincerity that Colombia produces the hottest women I’ve seen in my last dozen assignments.”

  Avianna seemed unperturbed by his overblown statement, and in fact appreciative of the compliment. Her smile lit up her face.

  “You truly think so? Myself included? But perhaps you are just being polite?”

  Kioga placed a bold hand on her knee. “I always tell the truth to una chica muy linda.”

  Avianna failed to raise an objection to his touch. “And I always accept protests of honesty from a handsome man. Let us celebrate our mutual accommodations.”

  Before Kioga quite realized an order had even been placed, the bartender was delivering a bottle of clear booze, which Avianna commandeered.

  “This is aguardiente antioqueño. Once opened, the bottle must be finished.”

  “Start pouring!”

  Somehow Kioga found himself on a dancefloor—whether in the same club where he had met Avianna or a different one, he couldn’t say. The explosively loud and high-BPM music seemed to be located within his skull. Avianna was grinding against him, all lean flanks and tight roundels of ass. She cast a sultry, smoldering backwards glance every half minute or so that sent ripples through his loins. Finally, Kioga couldn’t withstand the erotic sensations. He spun Avianna around, clutched her length tightly against his own burning skin and kissed her. Her tongue drove back against his.


  They were at the bar—some bar, any bar—again, and Avianna was proffering a bowl of snacks.

  “What’s this—these? What is it?”

  “Ai, hombre! These are las hormigas culonas. Fried ants! They are so good for your manhood. Just try them!”

  Kioga grabbed a sloppy handful, crunched them up. Not bad. One ant popped liquidly. Weird …

  Outside everything whirled. Colored lights with nimbuses, demonically laughing people, screeching night birds, automobiles powered with infernal electricity. Boozily, Kioga marveled that the aguardiente seemed to have positively killed all his flu germs.

  “Try to walk, Kioga, just a few more steps. Here is the car.”

  Car? What car? He and Jimmy had gotten dropped off by Parque Arví staff.

  Kioga laughed deliriously at the thought of Jimmy in a taxi. That had to be the answer. “Jimmy! Jimmy! Where are you, my lig?”

  The car door opened and a strange man said in a kindly but forceful manner, “Oh, Mister Matson, Jimmy cannot help you now.”

  * * *

  The smell of a leaky bioreactor allowed Kioga to focus his newly reborn consciousness. As an expert in industrial metabolics, he could not mistake the yeasty pong. So many clients had benefitted from his help in optimizing their production lines. Surely these new owners would be no exception. Gotta show them that Science Park boffins had the best goods. He must be out on the fab floor now. Though how he had gotten here remained unclear.…

  With eyelids hoisted leadenly upwards, however, Kioga did not see the expected gleaming large-scale facility of pipes and filtration units. Instead, he discovered a dank, poorly lit basement stuffed with amateur kit. A black economy sartorialist suite. The cheap bioluminescent jellyfish scabbed to the walls lent everything a suboceanic tint.

  He found himself lying on a rickety cot. Seated patiently on folding chairs opposite him were three men—and Avianna. The innocuous yet competent-looking men wore stern, unmenacing expressions. Avianna looked only slightly less dour and no-nonsense.

  “You return from your sad little decadent spree,” said the woman. “Bueno. Now we can discuss things.”