by Simon Royle
“Dev - When Sammie’s back online ask her to send the letter to Coughington and Scuttle’s address. I’ll talk with her after 11:30am our time.”
“Yes, Mark.”
I reached for the coffee mug, realized it was empty. Make some more? No. Time to go get the supplies. Gabriel and I had virtually destroyed the global economy back in March. The Nation is on rationing. It provides the food, we eat it, and contribute what we can back to The Nation. The system seems to work, but only on the basis that it is a temporary situation. A large part of my day is spent figuring out how to move beyond this temporary system and help build new systems that society can operate by. Meanwhile I collected my rations like everybody else.
I got up and headed out of the study onto the deck. Sliding open the Clearfilm doors into the master-bedroom-come-living-room. I tiptoed over to where Mariko was sleeping with Philip, her hand across his little tummy. Slipping on a pair of shorts, I headed back out to the deck. You have to wear shoes walking up the beach. Scorpions come out at night and it’s easy to step on one. It wouldn’t kill you but it is not pleasant. Problem was I couldn’t find mine. What is the hardest shoe in the world to find? The one that is lost. Local joke. I couldn’t find mine. No joke. I decided to risk it.
Abdul’s house, restaurant, and, lately, local ration center is about a half a kilom up the beach from our house. I could see his lights, spilling down to the incoming tide. Walking on the wet sand was safer. It was also easier on my knee. I’d torn all the ligaments in it nine months ago. The same night Gabriel and I deleted everyone’s identity and caused a global financial meltdown. Hermit crabs ran for cover. I thought of Sammie. Wondering what she was doing. I hoped that she hadn’t thought of going to my public address. Did I cover that in her first briefing? I wasn’t sure. My public address is thousands of kiloms away from this beach where I live. For good reason. Mariko and I registered our abode as being in California, San Francisco. If Sammie had gone there, all she’d find would be a wall with storage lockers and non-retrievable, tamper-proof, slots.
I left the wet sand and walked into the soft stuff, white by the light of Abdul’s back porch. The lights were on in his kitchen. I climbed the stairs and went to the open kitchen door. His giant Devscreen was on, showing the feeds.
“Abdul, are you here? Abdul?”
Abdul had lived in Sisik all his life. He'd sold us the house and land next to the headland bluff that I had just walked from. We had known each other for just under a year and become good friends.
“Just be a minute.” It made me think of my Devstick. I realized I’d left it at home. I smiled, thinking, maybe that’s what I’ll talk about in class.
The voice came from the back of the kitchen but I couldn’t see him. I edged around the counter bisecting the kitchen, and at the far end, kneeling down in front of the open door of a refrij unit, was Abdul. He looked up at me and smiled, his hands full of fish.
“Moving the fish. New catch in tonight. Putting yesterday’s catch on the left.”
“Need a hand?”
“No, no done now. Help yourself to a coffee. I’ll be with you in a sec,” he said and slid a green box filled with red Snapper into the unit with a grunt. I wandered back around the counter, over to the food prep area and scooped up the coffee pot. This is a ritual. I offer to help. Abdul politely refuses, and I drink his coffee. Then we have a chat. Abdul’s caught fish all his life. An occupation much given to the art of thinking, and if you’re a thinking man, as Abdul is, then fishing is a good occupation to have.
I sat down at the counter nursing the hot mug in my hands. Abdul finished washing his hands and sat down opposite me in front of the mug I’d poured for him. Part of the ritual. The Devscreen, large on the wall behind him, ran the morning feeds. Abdul twisted in his chair to watch over his shoulder.
Darcy’s Deal opening credits, took up the left half the screen, a collage of over two hundred feeds in the right half. Darcy’s Deal, hosted by Darcy Wu was Abdul’s favorite morning show. It aired 6:00 pm from its studio in New Manhattan. In the evening, his favorite was Rags to Riches and the topics of either would usually form the starting point of our morning chats. I’d been on Darcy’s Deal. It wasn’t fun, she was tough as nails, and Abdul still blamed me for causing Rags to Riches to go offline.
Darcy was mauling the Honorable representative of the Christian Fundamentalists Party, as the icon above his head said. According to the stats he had five million supporters on his feed. Darcy had three hundred and twenty million on hers. This was going to get nasty. Abdul glanced back and grinned. Anticipation of a good Darcy drubbing putting a twinkle in his eye.
“So what you’re proposing, let me get this clear councilor, you’re proposing that...” Darcy stopped talking and with both hands folded in her lap, stared at a space somewhere on the floor about two meters from her feet.
Abdul turned to look at me, raised his eyebrows and turned back to the screen. Darcy nodded. The Honorable Pastor Brinks appeared confused and awkward. Darcy nodded again and looked at the camera.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been asked by our network to tell you some sad news. Two minutes ago Annika Bardsdale was assassinated as she was leaving her Central Park Env.” I noticed the feeds on the left had all changed to the same shot: an image of the front of Annika’s Env, the twisted remains of her car beside a large hole in the travway. Abdul turned to look at me, his mouth open. I sat staring at the screen, Abdul’s open mouth echoing my thoughts exactly.
One-half of my mind running with calculations. What does this mean for us? Who did it? Why? The other half. How horrible. Poor Annika. I miss you already. I feel sad, more, distraught, scattered, my center of being displaced. I knew in my bones that I would remember every tiny detail of where I was the morning I heard that Annika Bardsdale had been killed. The light green paint on the walls of Abdul’s kitchen, the coffee cups, the cloth on the table, Darcy, Abdul, and my sense of devastation. Every detail of that moment physical and emotional would be with me to my last breath. Everything seared into my brain fused by the news of Annika’s killing. I reached for my Devstick and remembered I’d left it at home.
“Abdul, I’m sorry, I have to go.” I stood.
“Yes, yes, of course. I am very sorry, Mark. I know she was a friend of yours, and a great woman for us all.”
“Yes, she was. Thank you, Abdul. It’s a bad day for all of us. We will have to be strong. I fear for the consequences of this act.”
“Go, Mark, I know you have things to attend to. I’ll bring your rations along later.”
“Thanks, Abdul.” I turned swiftly to hide the tears in my eyes, my choked out thanks betraying my outwardly stoic stance, and started walking.
I walked some way before I realized that I was slogging through the soft white sand. The sun not yet risen, the jungle to my right, a forbidding darkness, the sea to my left, black, a whispering fringe of white where it curled softly onto the beach.
I angled my way down to the water’s edge and stopped. I should cry, I thought, yet no tears came, held back by grief that went deeper. A feeling that humanity had taken a wrong turning, down a slippery slope, with nowhere to turn around, and no way to get off the slope without plunging over the precipice. Annika, the First Casualty. Unbidden anger surged.
I realized I was angry with Gabriel, my brother. You were supposed to be protecting her. I tried to push this latest thought away, but it persisted. Some rational part of my brain recognized this thought for what it was. Irrational. Gabriel loved Annika as much as I did. The irrational me fed the angry thought and helped it grow.
Gabriel. I had to talk to him. I turned and walked. I passed my own footprints engraved in the wet sand. When I had laid down those prints, Annika lived. By light, that mark of mine, the mark of Mark, would be gone, washed away by the incoming tide. Transient as the life of our First Lady, Annika Bardsdale, Secretary-General of the United Nation, rest in peace. Is this what we have come to? A glance to my left rev
ealed the sun giving color to the world, dark clouds far on the horizon. I stopped again.
The light of our living room was on. I had to lift myself before I got home. I cannot bring this feeling of dread, hopelessness and despair into our home. I would share a part of it, but it feels unfair to me, to burden Mariko, and by her milk, Philip, with these terrible thoughts of mine.
I promised myself that I would get control over my emotions, and then, and only then, talk. Having made this promise to myself, I pulled my thoughts and emotions together as best I could.
I sniffed in loudly, pulling salted air hard through my nostrils. Deep, noisy, long, chest expanding sniffs. It worked, to a degree. I reached the bottom of the steps up to the deck of my house. The jungle around me alive now with raucous squawks, bursts, and echoes of chatter, a twittering. I slid the door open and stepped into the living room. Mariko was brushing her long black hair sitting on the sleeper facing me.
She smiled, and then stopped smiling and brushing. Laying the brush on the sleeper beside her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
I glanced over Mariko’s shoulder at Philip, asleep on the bed, walked over and sat down beside her. Reaching into her lap, I took her hand and looked into her eyes.
“Annika’s been killed. It happened about ten, fifteen, I don’t know, maybe twenty mins ago.” Swallowing hard I felt my chest tighten up again. I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed out heavily. I was trembling.
Mariko slid her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a long time.
***
I leaned against the wooden post in the corner on the deck, looking out to sea, trying to shake off the gloom. I was failing. Mariko sat on the bench seat, Philip nursing at her breast. It was hot and humid, the sun reflecting harshly off the white sand. There’ll be a thunderstorm before evening, I thought.
“She really wanted the best for people. For us. She didn’t judge us. Not who we are, or what we do. All she wanted was to help make life better. How many people can you say that about? Not many. And very few, if any, politicians. Everyone out there is pushing an agenda. Like a shop auto-loader, the choices piled up for purchase in front. How do we stop that?”
“Not by griping about it to your wife and your three month old son, that’s for sure.” Mariko said, square-jawed with shoulders to match, wearing only a sarong. Our beach area was private by local understanding more than law. Her thick black hair hung over Philip hiding him from view, held in the crook of her tanned arm. Their difference in skin tone, white and tan, muted in the shadow of the deck. I held her eyes, smiled and looked out to sea again. My beautiful wife.
“You’re feeling guilty because she asked for your help and you turned her down...” I started to interrupt, turning to face her, but she held up her hand. “I know. You’re feeling sad at the world losing a beautiful person. I am too. But I also know you. I’ve known since the day I met you on the Moon how sensitive you can be. I remember you telling me how you felt as a young boy. I also know how tough you can be. Annika’s death is not an accident. Someone planned and executed a flawless assassination. Gabriel and Martine are missing. How long before the blame is placed on them? I would say a matter of hours from now if it hasn’t already been done. So if you’re going to think about something, think about that.” Philip had stopped feeding. Wiping his mouth with a soft cloth, Mariko stood and handed him to me. She walked over and checked the valves on the air tanks stacked against the wall of the house.
She undid the sarong and lifted it to cover her breasts, retying it before stooping down to pick up the tanks. “I’m going for a dive. I’ll be about an hour.” She smiled at me - warmth, love and understanding in her look and then she strode down to the beach below.
I walked over to the bright blue wicker rocking chair that Abdul had given us for a birth present and sat down. Philip settled against my chest, sleeping. I watched Mariko stroll down the beach and into the sea. Once in up to her waist, she took the sarong off and rolled it into a rope, tying it around the tanks. She liked to dive naked, said it made her feel more like a fish. She slipped under the next wave and didn’t reappear.
I rocked slowly back and forth.
She was right of course. By default she always is. I allowed myself a tiny smile at this thought and let out a sigh. Philip stirred. I took a long breath in through my nose. Let it go. As thoughts come, let them go with each breath. Get in the nothing of the moment. Breath by breath, time passed, until I felt calmed. Philip was fast asleep.
I did feel guilty for turning down Annika’s request that I become her advisor. It was a position that my father had held with Bo Vinh. The Secretary-General selects their own advisor without needing the counsel or approval of others. It was a great honor to be selected and I knew she had meant it as such for me. I had turned it down. I had my reasons. Good reasons, but they gave me cold comfort now. I had just wanted out. To live a peaceful, happy, simple life. So I turned her down. The Oliver Foundation, now renamed after my father, ‘The Zumar Foundation for Children’ was another excuse. As was my desire to write. In truth none of the reasons I gave her to justify my decision, would have prevented me from offering a little advice now and then, even often. I turned it down, because I didn’t want to tread the same path as my father. The path that got him and my mother killed. The path that had led to the first thirty-six years of my life being stolen from me.
The awful irony? The reason my father was killed was not because he was Bo Vinh’s advisor, but because he was investigating who assassinated Bo Vinh. And here I am. Parallels in life are easy to draw, and once drawn are hard to shake off. They cast a shadow across your thoughts.
I shifted Philip gently over to my right arm, and kept rocking slowly. I smiled, thinking of Abdul’s gift. A good chair to sit and think in is an essential tool. He knew a thing or two that man.
Gabriel would be blamed. The extent of the blame hard to say, but at the least, Annika was killed on his watch. I still felt angry about that. I was calm enough to observe that I was still angry about that and irrationally so. There would be an explanation, and if you had faith in Gabriel as I did, then it would be a good one. Still I’m human, and like all humans, anger is a chemical in my body initiated by a primal switch in my brain.
I looked over to the bluff on my right. Trying to judge the time by the cast of the shadows on the jungle and red rock. It was probably noon. An earthy smell reached my nose. I smiled and rising from my meditations went inside the house. I laid Philip down on the soft mat we had put over the hardwood floors and removed his nappy. Picking him up I took him over to the sanitizer and popped him in. Thirty secs later it switched off and that was a signal for Philip to start crying. Milk. We had installed a small fridge in the upstairs room to keep his mother’s milk in. I placed it on the heat pad, set to simulate the warmth of Mariko’s fresh milk. As soon as he smelled the milk he stopped crying.
After I got Philip dressed, I picked him up, taking the milk with me. I needed to get back on the web. I needed to find Gabriel and some answers. The air felt hot and heavy. I leaned out and took a quick look up at the sky. Dark grey, the sun hidden, the white sand of the beach subdued. It was going to rain and soon. Far out to sea, across the now white-topped waves, lighting flicked above the horizon. I went into my study.
I pulled the Siteazy across and laid Philip on it, looking at him, trying to keep my thoughts and feelings cloaked. A child should not know grief. I folded my arms on the edge of the Siteazy, gave him the milk, and reached over to my Devstick to bring it closer.
“Dev, show Philip our solar system. Project it about thirty cents above his head. Make the planets bright colors, please, Dev.” Philip loved this image swirling slowly around his head. When he first saw it, he had cooed, also for the first time. “Play ‘Cada Beijo’ for him, softly, please, Dev, a bit lower, good.” Philip’s eyes tracked the movement of the planets as he suckled the milk. Life goes on. We eat, we sleep, we
talk, we touch, we reproduce, we die. ‘We are born astride a grave’. Ibsen. A gloomy thought. Philip was staring at me, colored balls ignored.
“It’s OK, my boy. Daddy’s just feeling a little sad. A good friend passed from my life today. I don’t know where she is now, and I’m just a little sad about that.” I sent him some very light theta waves, low bandwidth, a slow calming pulse, and stroked his cheek. His eyes closed. Beethoven concerto number five in E flat minor, as the Devscreen showed, played softly.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the Dev cockpit arrayed before me, like a conductor in front of his orchestra, about to pick up the baton, but did I want to play? I glanced down at Philip, sleeping, peacefully, his biometrics on the devscreen next to Beethoven’s meta data. I dared not look at my biometrics, there are some things better left alone.
“Dev - monitor Philip. If he starts to wake give me an alert.”
“Yes, Mark.”
“Give me a single view of my current online status. Tag all mentions of Gabriel’s, Annika’s, and my name.” I had pre-configured this view of my connected status: all mentions of my name, number of mentions by locality, frequency, topics, shown on a global basis - high frequency mentions and large numbers of people, in deeper colors.
“Break out the stats for number of mentions by name. No, move it to the far left. Good, yes.” The stats showed Annika was way ahead of either Gabriel or me. In a league of her own. I ran a distant third to Gabriel. “Give me a breakdown of topics on Gabriel, put it under the stats.” The graphics swirling and moving with different colors bore an uncanny resemble to Philip’s virtual solar system mobile.
Gabriel’s mentions spiked. My Devstick buzzed.
“Mark, it is Dietrich Flederson. Do you wish to connect?”
I let out a long breath and didn’t look at the topics under Gabriel’s name. I didn’t want to see what might be there.
“Connect - voice only.”
“Yes, Mark. Connecting now.”
