Equinox

by Christian Cantrell

  When only the New York and the San Francisco remained afloat and semifunctional—when each were probably only weeks or maybe even days away from being completely dead in the water—both were contacted by a serene female voice from the sky claiming to represent a people who called themselves Coronians, and who offered them a simple path to all the power they would ever need.

  Most people did not deal directly with the Coronians, but rather through middlemen known as power brokers. The brokers helped make several modifications to the San Francisco, the most significant of which was the replacement of the cracked and failing nuclear reactor with a quantum battery bank. From that point forward, the massive mining rig made periodic stops at broker posts all over the globe, exchanging mined magnesium, cobalt, silicon, gold, silver, copper, zinc, scandium, and rare earth elements for power, and for whatever other supplies brokers were offering. An informal economy gradually emerged among the crew that was eventually formalized by the San Francisco City Council: the more an individual contributed, the more power he or she could use for the kinds of things that made life aboard a mobile mining rig more comfortable. Devices such as heaters, fans, woks, stoves, and refrigerators were in high demand, and eventually, even various entertainment devices. For those who lived aboard the massive floating industrial city of San Francisco, the Energy Age had officially begun, and appended to humanity’s long list of currencies was very possibly the most practical and directly applicable form of legal tender ever conceived: the watt—or as it was frequently abbreviated, ₩.

  The arrangement with the Coronians and the brokers kept the San Francisco mobile and temporarily afloat, but eventually the vessel began deteriorating at a rate beyond her crew’s capacity to make repairs. It was then that the Coronians realized they had a very difficult decision to make: either they let what remained of the Metropolis fleet—the two most productive mining and refinery facilities left on the planet—sink to the bottom of the ocean, or they finally share one of the most important and transformative technologies in the history of humanity.

  With the appearance of the molecular assembler, the standard of living aboard the San Francisco rapidly improved. She even began taking on additional crew—primarily orphaned children who could be easily trained to run the assemblers twenty-four hours a day. Eventually, every above-deck structure was replaced at least once by ultralightweight microlattice and silica-paned structures, and an entirely new air-dome frame and composite-weave cover were constructed beneath the old one before the frayed and thoroughly patched shroud was at last cut loose and set adrift. Most of the steel hull was plasma-torched away and replaced with shaped carbon nanotubes and fiber-reinforced polymer. The corroded metal grates underfoot were pulled up and the streets sealed, then repaved with a soft, comfortable, antimicrobial silicon derivative, and the purification, filtration, and electrolysis systems were upgraded so many times that the quality of both the air and the water were probably about as high as any human had ever enjoyed. Although insects remained the most compact, calorically dense, and nutritionally practical form of livestock, various textures and flavors of a product synthesized from the stem cells of ruminants started appearing in the ship’s commissaries known collectively as the Union Square Mall. Life aboard the San Francisco had finally improved to the point where the City Council finally made good on one of their many long-standing promises: after a unanimous vote, every single person aboard the rig was guaranteed by local maritime law at least one day off per week, and the concept of leisure time was rediscovered.

  Watts, as forms of currency, eventually became known as caps (shorthand for the capacitors that were used to store and trade them), and the standard of one cap being the equivalent of a kilowatt was officially established (with the term watts, in the context of money, being reserved for fractions of a cap). Shortly thereafter, the practice of physically possessing and trading caps became obsolete when the San Francisco’s electrical grid was updated to a smart system that both intelligently distributed power, and served as a type of citywide credit union. Rather than actually exchanging caps, the city’s mesh simply maintained every citizen’s balance, automatically making deductions as purchases were settled and as power was used (everything electrical on the platform had to complete an authentication routine with the grid before it could draw power). As Luka discovered from archival research, caps were highly unusual among historical forms of legal tender since they were at once a fiat currency (meaning they were state-issued, and could be exchanged for goods and services), and also directly convertible into units of work.

  Of course, wherever commerce and government coexist, so too must taxes. The number of watts on the cap that were diverted for municipal use to power things like new construction, lighting, air and water purification, and to help pay the rising salaries of government workers, was constantly creeping up, yet it somehow always managed to stay just below the threshold where one’s obligations were felt more pointedly than one’s gains.

  There were no above-deck vehicles permitted on the San Francisco, which left the streets fully dedicated to foot traffic. Luka weaved his way down Market Street, then cut over on Dolores toward the Yerba Buena Gardens. The Gardens—also sometimes referred to as “the screw”—was the centerpiece of the San Francisco. The dominant structure was a giant spiral platform supporting a variety of crops cultivated along its surface, and hanging gardens suspended from trellises below, all contained inside a massive glass-paneled globe and positioned in the dead center of the rig. Among the produce were the fruits and vegetables that constituted the majority of the population’s vitamins, minerals, and fiber, and in the center column were the boxed broods of cicadas, crickets, grubs, and other insects that provided most of the protein. (With the current generation of molecular assemblers, it was illegal to assemble anything considered “organic” and/or any material labeled as consumable or ingestive, which made the envelope in Luka’s bag doubly illegal.) In the basement of the Gardens were racks of microbial cultures that were processed into probiotic supplements and distributed with boxed meals as digestive complements. The panels of thin-film diodes inside the globe dimmed in the evenings, but never entirely went out since the need for constant growth required that any notion of nighttime or wintertime be genetically eradicated from the crops’ DNA.

  Luka stayed on the west side of the giant screw, following Mariposa south toward his flat. He glanced down Sunset toward the Embarcadero: the rig’s only park, which enveloped the entire southeast corner between Millennium and Paramount Towers. As usual, there was a cricket match in-progress, and he saw the distant motion of bowlers and batsman, and moments later heard the hollow pick, pack, pock, puck of PVC balls against synthetic wooden bats.

  The shape of both Millennium and Paramount Towers defied simple geometric classification. They were roughly tetrahedral in form—magnificent forty-two-story triangular pyramids, of sorts—that appeared to lean back and thrust their great curved glass facades forward toward the Gardens like proud swollen bellies. They were designed so that as many flats as possible had front-facing windows, through which plenty of artificial light streamed after bouncing among the numerous polished and reflective surfaces that rose toward the vast artificial sky.

  The two “luxury towers” (a term adopted and propagated by the City Council back when the renovation was first proposed) were the foundations of the San Francisco’s socioeconomic formula—soaring symbols of the city’s commitments to both capitalism and social responsibility. Everyone on the rig lived in one of the two buildings, whether you were a water rat (deep-sea miner), assembly technician, doctor, teacher, grower, some form of engineer, peace officer, merchant, refinery operator, member of the City Council, or one of the acting captains. It was true that the flats got larger the higher up you went, but even accommodations on the bottom floors had to meet minimum standards ensuring they were far superior to the stacks of crude tenements that preceded them. The philosophy was intended to promote a free-market economy in
which hard work and advancement were duly rewarded, but also one in which there was no shame in spending your day below deck with your hands thrust deep inside the inner working of the rig rather than high above, seated comfortably in front of polymeth panels. Whether you showered as a group in a locker room at the end of a shift or privately in your own flat before work, if you lived on the San Francisco and contributed to her continued operation and advancement, you were entitled to a dignified existence.

  The City Council guaranteed that there would always be a flat available in one of the two towers for every productive adult citizen aboard the rig, and despite the fact that the population was higher than it had ever been, the proclamation had so far been upheld. In fact, there were usually between one and two dozen flats available, and residents frequently rearranged themselves among the combined eighty-four floors, trading a coveted view for an even more coveted extra square meter of space, or an especially favorable lighting arrangement for either proximity to a new partner, or for some distance from an old one.

  There were two primary factors that accounted for most of the excess inventory: Luka’s generation reaching an age where they were cohabiting and marrying (but not yet divorcing); and the physics, chemistry, and biology involved in deep-sea mining. Since as many as eight miners needed to be simultaneously working at depths of up to five hundred meters, there were usually four individual dive teams constantly undergoing compression (gradual exposure to breathing gasses at increasingly greater pressure), decompression (gradual reduction of hyperbaric conditions to prevent gas bubbles from forming in tissue), and preservation (maintaining an ambient pressure equal to that of the dive site in order to avoid the risks of constant compression and decompression over the course of a tour). Since getting through the entire “saturation rotation” could take as long as three months, several miners saved caps by participating in a type of time-share arrangement, thereby contributing to the San Francisco’s overall housing surplus.

  Millennium Tower was on the southernmost edge of the city. Most of its flats provided magnificent views of the Gardens, the Presidio building (which housed the air filtration and purification systems), Mission Dolores School, and the Pacific Medical Center. Its sister tower, Paramount, was on the other side of the Embarcadero along the eastern edge of the platform. Most of its residents were treated to a view of the convoluted snarl of pipes emerging from the Mission Bay water treatment plant, the cantilevered decks and turquoise swimming tubes of the Noe Valley Rec Center, and the northernmost corner of the Union Square Mall and Moscone Theater. The technology that helped create breathable air by teasing purified seawater molecules apart through the process of electrolysis was contained in the nondescript Muir building at the corner of Market and Mission, and was connected to both the Mission Bay water treatment plant and the Presidio air filtration and purification center via open glass and cable flyovers. one block out—largely hidden from residents’ view—was Cell City (an enclosed grid of quantum battery banks), the Market Street Refinery, the Mission Street Foundry, and the bulbous microlattice and silica City Hall, which almost entirely obscured the telescopic crawler crane behind it that was used so frequently that nobody thought it was worth taking apart for storage down on deck three. The only other structures of consequence on the San Francisco were the ship’s bridge, which rose from the corner directly opposite the Embarcadero, and just beyond it, the hangar: the only safe, sanctioned, and above-surface way of getting into or out of the city.

  What the architects of the Millennium Tower lobby thought of as modern design was much closer to sterility in Luka’s opinion. The idea was to create a bright and open common area for residents to convene, socialize, and—to borrow a newly jargonized term from the urban planning committee—to “cultivate” (roughly defined as social interaction through which ideas and opinions were freely shared, promoting a strong sense of citizenry and community). However, the effect was much closer to an obnoxious obstacle course of perpetually unused couches, end chairs, coffee tables, thick synthetic area rugs, and tacky optical fiber floor lamps.

  The camera by the elevator recognized Luka’s facial geometry and the silica doors slid apart on their magnetically levitated tracks as he approached. The polymeth panel inside showed the twenty-first floor already selected. Luka turned and looked back out into the lobby to see if he needed to maneuver his cube into the corner of the platform to make room for other passengers, but nobody else was coming. Although the streets were crowded with the evening shift change, most people did not go directly back to their flats after work. There was always a happy hour to track down, or shopping to be done at the Union Square Mall, or a dinner to attend. For the more privileged among the population, there might be cocktails on the rooftop terrace of City Hall, or exotic new cuisine acquired from a nearby port to sample in a private room somewhere. There were cricket rivalries to be settled, old football matches from the archives to watch at Kacis Hookah and Coffee Lounge, and algorithmically generated and digitally rendered films to watch at the Moscone Theater. Those who worked the morning shift tended to leave more or less in concert, but returning home again was generally a staggered and prolonged, if reluctant, affair.

  Aside from emergency mechanical braking systems, none of the elevators on the San Francisco contained such primitive mechanisms as motors and drive traction cables, but instead operated purely on the principles of electromagnetism. As long as there were resources to be mined and sold to the Coronians for energy, it was far easier to pump current through various conductive materials than it was to assemble, install, maintain, and occasionally replace thousands of specialized components. Anything on the rig with moving parts was regarded with great suspicion, and was almost certainly the target of one gentrification committee or another.

  With such a small amount of space allocated to each resident, flats on the San Francisco had to be highly dynamic and transformative. In fact, those that could be rearranged (which, in one way or another, were almost all of them) were usually referred to as “transpartments” to distinguish them from traditional static flats. Acoustically resonate conductive polymeth dividers provided lighting, sound, and infinitely customizable interactive surfaces which could slide and pivot on their maglev tracks and hinges to create spaces optimally configured for cooking/eating, sleeping, entertaining, exercising, or working. Futons folded up flat against walls, and entire appliances were reduced to the size of drawers. Storage was wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, and bathrooms had to be functionally divided into separate compartments for the toilet, sink, and the shower. Furniture that didn’t fold away had to collapse through a series of telescopic and swiveling operations that left it compact enough to slip into stealthy slots in the walls and floors, and absolutely everything unwanted or disused went instantly into pneumatic chutes that converged and eventually terminated just above the San Francisco’s churning and foaming wake.

  Since Luka was planning on an evening of opiate-enhanced sculpting, he used the elevator’s polymeth panel to select a transpartment configuration optimized for uninterrupted expanse. He then selected something to eat from his inventory of boxed meals so that it would be warm by the time he walked through the door: witchetty grubs infused with the flavor of the mulga wood the Aboriginal Australians once cooked them over, accompanied by a grape tomato, arugula, and zucchini salad with a light spritzing of basil vinaigrette. Or at least pretty good imitations thereof.

  Most of the doors in both the Millennium and the Paramount were of a double-pocket sliding design so as not to obstruct the narrow hallways. By default, they opened just enough to admit a resident after his or her facial geometry had been verified, though if they detected the need for additional clearance, they automatically accommodated. In this case, Luka’s calibration cube prompted an almost full-size entry.

  The space was already filled with the warm, smoky aroma of witchetty grub. Luka pivoted a catch down from its recess in the wall by the door and hung his shoulder bag from it, th
en maneuvered his calibration cube into the center of his flat. He washed his hands in the kitchen basin under warm, perfectly conditioned water and a few short bursts of ultraviolet light, then removed his boxed meal from the prep drawer. The grubs and the salad were divided by a thermal partition, and steam rose from the warm side as Luka peeled back the lid, then dropped it into the vacuum of the refuse chute.

  He ate while he unfurled his studio and unpacked the various sculpting implements he’d custom-assembled for himself over the years. The grubs had the texture and taste of a ground almond omelet wrapped in phyllo dough, and he washed them down with a bulb of cool water infused with crushed mint. Once the box was disposed of down the refuse chute and his studio prepped, he returned to his bag on the wall and carefully removed the folded envelope inside.

  Not all of the equipment Luka unpacked was, strictly speaking, intended for sculpting a calibration cube. He tore away a corner of the envelope, then tapped it above the intake of a device about the size of portable coffee press, tightened the cap, and touched the activation switch. The machine—a hacked and modified automatic cupcake decorator he bought at the Union Square Mall—vibrated for a moment, then the nozzle began moving on its two axes. When it was done tracing a sawtooth pattern, there were five perfectly even rows of yellow powder on a glass surface waiting to be consumed at a rate of no more than one line per hour.