Eden Burning

by Niall Teasdale

  ~~~

  ‘Your CEO seems to have something of a thing for your chairman,’ Naomi commented.

  Fox glanced across to where Jackson and Mariel were now chatting to Eve and Gottschalk. ‘Yes. Terri and I have been trying to figure out how to get them together, but it’s not easy. Jackson’s both oblivious and still in love with Lysandra. Uh, Terri’s mother.’

  ‘I’m aware of the family history. The problem you have there is that they have become comfortable with the status quo. Ms Hoarsen wants more, but is also a little frightened of going further. I believe Jackson knows how Ms Hoarsen feels, but is also frightened of taking it further. So they sit there, comfortable in the knowledge that if nothing changes, no one gets hurt.’

  ‘Huh,’ Fox grunted. ‘Like I said, not easy.’ She looked up as Jason walked over to where the two women were standing. ‘Also not easy is letting him get on a rocket tomorrow.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I believe he feels the same way.’

  ‘The weather to the south is worsening,’ Jason said as he closed the distance. ‘Unfortunately, I do not think the storm will hit until after I am due to leave.’

  Kit appeared at the mention of the weather. ‘Andrea is currently harrying the southern coastline of Virginia and West. It is expected to bounce out into the Atlantic briefly and pick up a little more speed before moving north and arriving in the New England region around midday. It should hit this metro around thirteen hundred.’

  ‘Just enough time for you to get out of its way,’ Fox said.

  ‘Yes,’ Jason said, frowning. ‘I’ve been inconvenienced by weather before, but I have never been annoyed by not being inconvenienced by it.’

  ‘Snow days,’ Naomi said. ‘When they didn’t happen and you were expecting it, that was annoying.’ She frowned. ‘You two may not be old enough to remember when we used to get snow days.’

  ‘We used to get them in Topeka,’ Fox said, ‘and I went to an actual school. Maybe one or two in a year, but we had them.’

  ‘If you forgive the impertinence, Naomi,’ Jason asked, ‘how old are you?’

  Naomi’s lips curled. ‘Only because you ask in that delicious accent, I turned fifty-three this year.’

  ‘You do not look it.’

  ‘That’s enough of the French charm,’ Fox said. ‘You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.’

  ‘Canadian charm,’ Jason corrected.

  ‘Your father’s French.’

  ‘He is charming,’ Naomi said. ‘Can’t we share him?’

  ‘Even in this body, I am not competing with you in bed, Naomi Lind.’

  ‘It isn’t a matter of competition, but of cooperation.’

  ‘Oh, sure it is…’

  ‘It is. That is the nature of good sex.’

  ‘Do I not get a say in this matter?’ Jason asked. He was smirking, but there was a small hint of alarm in his voice.

  ‘No,’ Fox said.

  ‘But of course not, dear,’ Naomi agreed.

  ‘I simply wish to point out that, practically, I need to be able to walk in the morning.’

  The Sister Superior brushed the comment aside with a flick of her hand. ‘That’s what wheelchairs are for.’

  15th July.

  Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Andrea kept to its schedule. Jason was not working in the morning prior to leaving for the spaceport, so Fox kept him in bed as long as she could and they made love in a slow, intense manner which said more about their desire to stay together and prolong the experience than anything. Then Fox escorted Jason out to Newark before taking the LI-line out to tower one and the HT-line down to tower three.

  Kit had her gynoid instance and another copy in a server there to handle things while Fox was taking a little personal time. There was not too much to do since the building was taking care of the storm preparations and the various visitors were on a MarTech-mandated rest day following the change in environment. However, Kit’s gynoid met Fox at the elevators to ride up with her.

  ‘We’re expecting the building to shut down exterior access in about eighty minutes,’ Kit said. ‘The city will be closing down the transportation system around then. We have arranged a suite for you here tonight since the storm is expected to cause problems into the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘And then they’ll be cleaning the place up for a fair bit of the weekend.’

  ‘Yes. Eve is… nervous. She is adapting better than the humans to the changed gravity, and she has an understanding of what a storm is and how it is unlikely to affect her here in the tower, but she has never really experienced, well, weather before.’

  ‘To be honest, I’ve never been in an arc in weather like this. I have no idea what it’s going to be like, aside from the fact that I know it’s stood up to a tropical storm before.’

  ‘Judging from the data I have from the last storm, I don’t believe you should even notice it’s happening.’

  Fox gave a small shrug. ‘That could be disappointing. If I’m going to be almost a kilometre up in the air during a storm, I’d hope for a bit of a show.’

  ~~~

  There was a show. Thick, black clouds boiled overhead, lit from within periodically by internal lightning. Rain hit the windows like machine gun bullets. The glass was designed to withstand more than just rain, however, and was sufficiently resilient that there was barely any sound inside the suite where Eve stood, looking out into an afternoon which had turned into night.

  ‘It’s… quite amazing,’ Eve said. ‘Beautiful, in a way.’

  ‘Destruction can be beautiful,’ Fox agreed. ‘Explosions can look really fantastic, from a distance. Tornados, volcanos… To be fair, the metro has put a fair amount of resource into handling storms like this. There won’t be too much damage.’

  ‘And this building?’

  ‘Aerodynamically designed to handle pretty much anything the weather can throw at it. The arcologies are lightning magnets, but they’re designed to handle that too. The biggest problem is windblown debris hitting the lower levels, but the walls can stand an artillery barrage, just about, and the windows are triple-layered armoured glass.’

  ‘If you watch very carefully,’ Kit said through her gynoid avatar, ‘you may notice a very slight sway in the building. It’s better that it can flex a little to absorb the stresses than it be rigid and, well, snap. In winds of this strength, however, the movement is hard to discern.’

  ‘I really wish you hadn’t told me that,’ Fox said. ‘Now I’m going to imagine it swaying while I try to sleep.’

  ‘No, you won’t, because you shut down when you “try to sleep.” It’s automatic.’

  ‘I’ll imagine thinking about it while I try to sleep.’ Kit gave Fox a look. ‘Okay, so I won’t. I’m glad this frame doesn’t come with any enhanced balance systems though.’ Fox flashed a grin at Eve. ‘My house is a lot shorter than this thing. If it sways, it means there’s an earthquake.’

  Eve moved from the window to sit down. ‘I’m swaying a little anyway. The gravity is still dragging on me even if adjusting to it is easier for me than for Doctor Gottschalk. Part of my initial training involved acclimatisation to one gravity. The speed things fall. The way things move. My muscles aren’t used to it, but my brain knows how I need to react. Doctor Gottschalk has spent so long on the station that he is having trouble reacclimatising.’

  Fox nodded. ‘That should have been taken into account in your schedule.’

  ‘It was,’ Kit said. ‘The first week will be largely small interviews with biotechnology sites and similar technology bloggers. Your first big engagement will be next Friday night.’

  ‘Straight Talk,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll get dressed up in something fashionably sexy and we’ll both be on camera for a while. The hosts sort of like me.’

  ‘You did save one of them, and her fiancé.’

  ‘Oh?’ Eve asked, sounding interested.

  ‘Sort of,’ Fox said. ‘You might as well hear the story. It’s background on Ch
arlie Iberson, and it’s kind of how I ended up an infomorph, so…’

  16th July.

  Kit’s 2D avatar appeared in Fox’s vision field not too long after midnight. ‘I have a voice-only call from Prokhorov Station,’ she said. ‘It’s Jason.’

  ‘Put him through,’ Fox replied. Aloud, she said, ‘Excuse me, I have a call I need to take.’

  And then a still image of Jason appeared before her eyes. ‘Good evening, mon chère,’ Jason’s voice said after a second, though the image remained still. ‘I thought I would call to let you know I have arrived safely, and to check you had not been blown away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Fox replied. ‘The storm’s still going, so we might get blown away yet. I’m watching it with Eve and Kit. Good flight?’

  There was a pause, a couple of seconds while the signal left Earth, reached the station some three hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away, and then came back. ‘It was… uneventful. Well, boring. I have returned to some excitement, however. Excitement is not the word, but… We have had two suicides on the station in the time I was away, one of them by cop. There were other casualties in the latter case. They seem to be related, indirectly, to your new friend. People seeing her as another sign of coming doom.’

  ‘Oh. Great. I’ll check with NAPA and our regional offices, see if it’s any kind of growing pattern. This is what your meetings were about, right? Or basically this.’

  ‘The possibility that the return of Halley’s Comet would result in increased crime and “terrorist” activities, yes. Increased potential for suicide was one of the things mentioned.’

  ‘Right. I’ll put an advisory out through Palladium. If facilities management is watching for possible suicides, we may catch some before they’re irretrievable, and Ryan’s people will need to be on the lookout for trouble.’

  ‘Your security people are less likely to be used as a suicide method. I believe it is well known that your default sidearm is a stun gun. I should be going. Je t’aime, Fox.’

  Fox smiled. ‘I love you too.’

  ~~~

  ‘There are protestors in the foyer,’ Kit said by way of a greeting.

  Fox frowned, reaching down to take off her charging belt. ‘Already? When did they open the maglev?’

  ‘Just after eight a.m. The storm died away around five, not long after you went to sleep. Clean-up operations are expected to proceed through to tomorrow morning, but there was no damage detected to the transport systems.’

  ‘Okay. Could you check on the house?’

  ‘Already done. Belle reports no problems.’

  Smiling, Fox headed for the room’s shower. ‘Okay, protestors?’

  Camera feeds from the lobby level, almost a kilometre below, popped up in Fox’s sensorium. ‘We appear to have groups both for and against bioroids, but not all on either side of the argument seem willing to get along with the others. Those against outnumber those for currently, but the protest is being covered on several IB channels and private video sites, and the numbers have been growing and evening out over the last hour.’

  ‘Make sure someone’s watching the numbers. If they get too large, we’re going to have to clear them out. It’s a public safety issue.’

  ‘Security are monitoring.’

  ‘Good. It’s not like we’re planning on going anywhere today anyway.’

  ~~~

  An hour later, Fox was going somewhere, but it was down in an elevator car to the lobby. The protestors were now making it hard to move down there; they had been cleared out of the mall because they were causing trouble, and three had been taken into custody after trying to hijack one of the elevators to go higher up the building. Sooner or later, some of them were going to pluck up the courage to try breaking into one of the emergency stairwells.

  ‘Patch me through to the lobby PA system, Kit,’ Fox said as she stepped out of the elevator and found herself facing a crowd of people with various placards being held back by Palladium security personnel. The latter were holding electrolaser carbines and looking nervous.

  ‘You’re on,’ Kit said inside Fox’s head.

  Fox took a second to decide on exactly how to handle the situation and decided on the direct approach. ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Her voice rang out through the whole public-facing lobby area. There was a sudden drop in the volume of shouting. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tara Meridian, representing Palladium Security Solutions and MarTech Group.’ The noise reduced further, probably because Fox’s voice had a lot more amplification, but there were a few shouts of abuse directed her way. Ignoring that, Fox went on. ‘While we recognise your right to free speech, your presence here is not only causing considerable difficulty to those attempting to use the building, but also represents a safety hazard in the event of any emergency. We would like to ask, politely, that you take your protest outside where you are not endangering anyone.’

  ‘Don’t go anywhere!’ someone yelled. Fox identified the man, a couple of rows back from the front and near the centre of the semi-circle of people. ‘They can’t stop us. We’ve the right to speak our minds. Down with MarTech!’ There was a restart of the chanting, and Fox heard a few shouts which were pro-MarTech and bioroids trying to make headway, but the voices did a weird sort of dying-off trick as Fox walked calmly toward the man who had spoken.

  She stared directly at him and spoke. ‘Actually, I’m being polite and asking you to leave the building, but you are mounting your protest on private property and MarTech are under no legal obligation to allow anyone they don’t want on their property to enter.’

  ‘You’re not a cop, you–’

  ‘And you look like a man who wants the private policing legislation to pass.’ Just from the slightly confused look on the man’s face, Fox could tell she was right: he did, but he really was not sure what that had to do with anything. ‘So, you have undoubtedly done due diligence and understand the current legal status regarding NAPA and private policing in order to make an informed voting decision. Palladium Security Solutions has been contracted to provide policing within this building. While we currently cannot arrest anyone, we have the right to detain anyone found performing criminal activities on this property before handing them over to NAPA for prosecution. If you refuse to leave, you will be detained pending prosecution for trespassing. In your case, sir, we’ll be adding incitement to riot. Anyone we detain will also be checked against our extensive video recordings of this area for the possibility of assault charges.’

  ‘The gentleman you are talking to is Raymond Hildrick, aka “Rayburn,”’ Kit said. ‘He’s on a UNTPP watch list as an active member of United Anarchy.’

  ‘Thank you, Kit,’ Fox said. Aloud, she said, ‘You, Mister Hildrick, would be especially advised to avoid any time in a NAPA holding cell. All right, I am now advising you that MarTech’s property boundary is two hundred metres outside the walls of this building and any of you found inside those limits ten minutes from now will be charged with trespassing and anything else we can find. If you’re here to support the production of bioroids, we thank you, but this is not the way to do it. Go home.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the last of us,’ Hildrick said, but behind him, the crowd was starting to disperse. Fox could see the people turning from the back rows in the feeds from security cameras. ‘When the people have power to–’

  Fox turned off her connection to the public address system. ‘The people have power, Rayburn. That’s what you idiots don’t understand. You got the power to vote any way you wanted, and you voted yourselves into the position you’re in. You wanted it, and you got it, but you won’t be happy until walking to the mall requires power armour and antitank weaponry. Now get lost before I pull you in for having too big a nose.’ Hildrick turned, pushing through the crowd, and Fox spoke to Kit in the silence of their combined computer system. ‘Kit, get a pair of drones tasked with following Hildrick. Find out where he goes and who he meets.’

  ‘You suspect another UA cell is oper
ating in the metro?’ Kit asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there are a couple, but if this one’s interested in MarTech and Eve, then we might have to do something about it.’

  18th July.

  The interviews had begun and Fox was glad that she did not need to be in on any of these. Okay, so the interviews she would be taking with Eve were going to be on chat shows, trying to get the public to side with the new life form, much as they seemed to have done with Fox.

  ‘Have we had anything come of the surveillance on Hildrick?’ Fox asked. She was using the time to go over various things which had slipped a little while she took care of Eve. The bioroid was highly social; so social was she that she tended to get unhappy when left alone for any length of time.

  ‘They lost track of him in the Jersey Sprawl,’ Kit replied. ‘That was last night. Prior to that, he went to what is presumed to be a safe house in the Brooklyn Sprawl and stayed there through to around nine p.m. last night. Two more suspected UA members were identified in the same area.’

  Fox glanced at the two mugshots Kit was displaying for her, filing away the man and woman for future reference. UA cells were usually bigger than three people, so it was likely that there were more about. ‘Any indications of what they were up to?’

  ‘Talking to people. Sprawlers. Whenever any of them were seen, they appeared to be simply moving from place to place, or engaging in conversation with the local residents.’

  ‘They must be up to something.’

  ‘Perhaps they are. When Mister Hildrick was lost, it was among a crowd of sprawlers who all seemed to be heading for the same building. A large crowd developed there and then dispersed after an hour or so.’

  ‘Some sort of meeting. It sounds almost like an old-fashioned political rally.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kit said, ‘and speaking of political rallies, I have Miss Barrera and Naomi Lind on a conference call for you.’

  Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Put them through.’

  ‘We have a problem,’ Barrera said without preamble.

  ‘And good afternoon to you, Dia,’ Fox said. ‘Naomi. Has our political analyst roped you in on this, or did you call her?’