I watched him as she spoke loudly and eloquently. It looked like all his worst nightmares had come true and he’d fallen into a wordless funk. Good, he deserved it and as long as his words returned in time for his interrogation then I was fine with that.
Whereas most audiences in 2070 would’ve been bored with an explanation of laws, to their credit the people of Angels City were not. But it wasn’t surprising given how it could change their lives. Or maybe twenty-first century attention spans just weren’t very good. Forty-five minutes later, Laetitia-the-speaker was done. There were no questions, but nods and smiles had started to appear from some of the citizens.
“Now you’ve heard about the Constitution—and I hope you liked what you heard—I’m looking for someone to stand for election and another to organize the voting. And don’t worry, Valdus and his deputies aren’t eligible. They’ll play no part in this city from now on.”
If they were listening, they should now know what voting and elections actually were.
The crowd parted and an old bearded man with gray hair and tanned skin came forward to the edge of the pit. It was Cortez.
“What are you doing here? I thought you fled south,” I asked.
“I did, but then I doubled back here. You see, I left some very special people behind and I couldn’t have that. Under Valdus, if you do something he doesn’t like, even your family is not safe.”
“Well, you can change that now. So are you standing for election?”
“Yes, it would be my honor. All of the people need a voice. I can represent them.”
Another guy came forward as a candidate and then a middle-aged woman volunteered to run the nascent electoral commission. I had to applaud their bravery. These were just the fragile seeds of democracy and justice and there were no guarantees. But I had to try.
***
Laetitia and I stuck around while they organized the vote. Additional guards arrived every now and then, but Laetitia’s hold on Valdus and a few quiet words from the people soon persuaded them they’d be on the wrong side of history should they try anything. The vote, then the count, took place and Samuel Cortez became the first president in over half a millennium. Okay, he was interim president and it was just a local election in truth, but small acorns and all that. His first order was to have all guards swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Next, he had Valdus’s deputies taken to the cells to await a judge and jury trial.
Only the limited size of the place and having a decent percentage of the populace in one place allowed all this to happen so quickly. It was late in the afternoon when the crowd started thinning out. We couldn’t stay and oversee things forever. These people needed to do it for themselves. Maybe they’d succeed, maybe they wouldn’t, but at least Valdus was out of the picture. He wouldn’t be staying to face trial and, despite my urge to the contrary, I didn’t plan to shoot him either. I had other plans.
After shaking hands with Cortez and some of the others, we went to leave.
“Ready?” I said to Laetitia, who nodded and pulled Valdus up by the scruff of his neck.
“Get off me!” he protested, some of his vitriol having returned.
“It’s okay, Laetitia, let him walk ahead as long as he promises to be a good boy.”
She let him, go and he glared at her.
“Well, Valdus the not-so-great?” I said, placing hands on my assault rifle.
“I will comply,” he said, wearily.
“Okay then,” I said cheerfully, “let’s get going.”
Valdus walked toward the changing room and the exit out of there with Laetitia and me behind. As we entered the fifth floor lobby, several guards and over a two dozen citizens looked on. No one made a move to intervene and there were several hollers of support from the usually voiceless people. Perhaps we had initiated real change. Only time would tell.
We walked briskly toward the far exit, but when I looked, Laetitia was no longer by my side. I turned around. She was still only a few paces out of the changing room, shuffling along, her footsteps intermittent and labored.
“Are you okay?” I said, running over to her.
“My energy state ... I have switched to low power settings,” she said without emotion. “Valdus, he’s getting away.”
Her eyes left mine and fell on the place I’d left him.
I spun around to see the double doors swing shut in his wake.
“Damn! He won’t get far.”
And I started sprinting after him. But before I arrived the sounds of a scuffle grew as three men—two ordinary citizens and a guard—bundled him face-first and back through the doors.
“Get off me you sinners! I know who you are. You’ll die for this and so will you families!” Valdus ranted.
I shut him up with a right hook to the jaw.
“Thanks, guys, I’ll take it from here.”
“Do you need some help?” asked the guard, blue uniform, number 60 on it.
I looked back at Laetitia.
“Err, yeah, maybe that’s a good idea. Help us escort this piece of crap to our shuttle,” I said and went back for my ailing android ally.
I picked her up and was surprised to find she weighed no more than an equivalent sized human—less water, more metal, much of it lightweight alloy and graphene. The trek through the underground passages and derelict buildings was met with looks of incredulity from onlookers as the Great Marshal was escorted out at gunpoint. He was in no way dressed for the blizzard conditions outside, but the walk was only two miles and he’d survive. The guard and the two civilians helped secure Valdus in a passenger seat at the front of the shuttle. None of them had seen anything like the shuttle before and it lent credence to our story about coming from an advanced civilization from the distant past. Valdus ranted about us being heretics and sinners and criminals, but the three locals had stopped listening by the time the guard found a gag to shut him up. Laetitia recovered within minutes of being back within range of the shuttle’s power grid. We thanked the three escorts and bade them farewell before reclosing the cargo door, shutting out the foul weather.
“Right, let’s go have a little chat with everyone’s least favorite dictator,” I said.
“I may have some question too, Mr. Luker,” said Laetitia, back to her old self.
I smiled.
“That’s fine... and thanks for your help back there,” I said as we walked down the central aisle.
We reached the front row and stood in front of Valdus. I looked down at him bound to his seat by some nylon rope the men had found in the cargo hold, his mouth still gagged. He looked back with tired eyes and a swollen red mark where I’d punched him.
“That’s sure gonna hurt in the morning,” I said pointing to his face and chuckling. “But hey, at least you get to see morning. My guess is your subjects—now citizens—would’ve meted out some of your own medicine. Now, I’m going to remove the gag. Tell me what I want to know and I might even feed you.”
I removed the oily rag from his mouth. His eyes were downcast. He said nothing, just sat with sunken shoulders in his loose-fitting burgundy shirt and pants, wet from melted snow. His game was up and he knew it. I took off my marine-issue helmet and stood my assault rifle against the wall.
“Let me put those somewhere safe,” said Laetitia.
She gathered them up and took them to the cargo bay.
“So let’s get started, Val. You don’t mind if I call you Val do you?”
He waved his ascent. Like I cared.
“Right, so tell me about Hawaii. I want to know everything. Leave out nothing. If it goes well maybe we won’t drop you out of the cargo door from a great height.”
Laetitia returned having removed her marine gear, freeing her shoulder length blonde hair. As she strutted up the aisle in her catsuit, I couldn’t help being distracted for a moment. Too bad she was just a robot and someone else’s robot at that.
I chuckled and shook my head.
“It’s been far too long,
” I muttered.
“What did you say?” said Valdus.
“Not you, asshole. Speak, when you’re spoken too,” I said, frowning.
“Now, you were saying, about Hawaii,” I said, as Laetitia joined me.
“What do you want to know?”
“What did the two men that flew here from Hawaii tell you? You know, the guys you murdered.”
“They came from a city—one far larger in population than here. They told me of their technology—their radios and boats and flying machines—”
“So they have ice-free seas?”
“Why else would they need boats?”
“Don’t get smart, it doesn’t suit you. Now, continue...”
“Yes, for half of the year their seas are unfrozen.”
“What else?”
“They told me their flying machine was one of only three. That they had planned the expedition for years. They said the two previous attempts went missing without a trace. They also spoke of the United States and said Hawaii was once part of this nation. That is why they sought to come here. To establish links and form an alliance. But my father would not ally with sinners and heretics.”
“Your father sounds like an asshole, too.”
He went to protest but bit his lip.
“I know you took their radio and broke up their plane. What other technology did they have?”
“It was a machine using electricity. They explained it as a calculating machine of great power. It could simulate the world too—a clear breach of God’s law. Only this one reality is permitted. Yet another crime for which the Hawaiian outlanders paid—”
“Save me the dogma. What did they call this machine? Was it a computer by any—”
“Yes, yes, that’s what they called it. Computer.”
“So they said they had computers?”
He nodded.
“They show you one?”
“Yes,” he said, looking ashamed.
“What happened?”
“When they showed my father and I this computer—there was something connected to it. Yet more wizardry—there were no visible wires—but the outlanders told us it was connected nonetheless.”
“What was connected to the computer?”
“It was a helmet with eye holes that looked into another world and ear speakers allowing one to hear it. I saw what they said was here—Angels Station—many years ago. But it was nothing like it is now. There was no ice, the sun shone and people—hundreds of people—wore strange clothes as though it were indoors. The three great towers we now use were freestanding. There were myriad other tall buildings and wheeled vehicles—some driven by ghosts, for they had no one in them. People looked so very different to us. They seemed taller, although not as tall as you, Outlander. But I knew their game. It was their ruse to show us this false heaven and take us into their confidence. My father smashed their magic helmet and denounced them as heretics. There is only one heaven, as we all know. Even showing us their lies tainted our minds. What they showed us—”
“What they showed you was how this city used to be when I lived here. Come on, you’ve mined through the ice and seen some of these buildings. Surely you’ve found other stuff that convinced you it was real.”
“The heretics are clever. Their lies had elements of truth to convince us. They arrogantly peddled their false truths expecting we were dumb enough to believe them. Well, we are not!”
He was clearly too indoctrinated to be convinced otherwise. Anyway, what did I care about his worthless opinion? As long he kept on telling me something useful about these Hawaiians then that was fine by me.
“What you were using was a virtual reality headset. What did they tell you about this virtual world they showed you?”
He looked up, accessing thoughts. The mind remembers the extraordinary, forgets the mundane, and he was doing a pretty good job, despite his misguided feelings about it all.
“I remember the point at which my father’s fury boiled over. It was what they called their false heaven ...”
“Which was?”
“The Forever World.”
The words took me aback. I froze, my eyes wide, eyebrows raised.
I cleared my throat, looking at his face for signs of artifice.
“Say that again.”
He rolled his eyes as if dealing with a cretin.
“They called it the Forever World. This is why my father smashed their machine,” he said. He chuckled and continued, “We all know that heaven is the eternal world and you certainly cannot visit using a magical helmet!”
“No... right,” I said, absently.
“Are you okay, Mr. Luker?” said Laetitia.
“Err, yeah fine. Laetitia, please set a course for Hawaii. Use main engines and go suborbital.”
“Certainly,” she said with a curt nod.
She disappeared into the tiny alcove where a cockpit would’ve been before shuttles could fly themselves. A minute later, the soft hum of the thrusters announced our vertical departure. Valdus grasped his seat handles with white knuckles, his face racked with fear.
“Come on, Val. It’s not that bad,” I laughed. “Hey, wait ‘til you feel the main engines.”
Laetitia and I strapped ourselves in behind him, and moments later, the main engines exploded into life, forcing us into our seats with their raw power.
I looked through the headrest gap. Valdus just gave out a whimper and looked like he was going to wet himself.
“Enjoying the ride, Valdus-the-coward?”
He said nothing.
“Half an hour and we’ll be over Hawaii. This is what we call extradition. You admitted murdering two of their citizens to a police officer. I’m sure they’ll have something to say about that. And it should buy me and Laetitia here a little good will. If not, well I guess Reichs’d like another servant.”
Laetitia turned to me.
“Mr. Luker, your reaction to the Forever World was curious, to say the least. Does it mean something to you?” she said, earnestly.
“My fiancée, Juliet... Her company made the Forever World. It was her brainchild, but... but she died before it came online. She was setting up something in Hawaii—a secondary facility from the one in California. What Valdus just told us proves that at least part of the Forever World survived the apocalypse.”
“I see...”
“You know, all those people he saw walking about twenty-first century LA... That wasn’t just some movie. Each and every one of them was a sentient avatar, an upload of someone’s mind living on in a virtual world.”
“That is a curious notion, Mr. Luker. But why do you care?”
“I care because if the Forever World survived then... Then maybe my Mom and Nikki were uploaded and live on.”
As the words left my mouth, the thought sent waves of positive energy through my body, only to be tempered by fear of disappointment.
As we leveled off, I felt the weightlessness of sub-orbital space. Valdus sat petrified, mumbling what might have been prayers to his god. None of them sounded familiar. I unclipped my harness, floated through to the control room and activated the cabin’s display surfaces. The entire ceiling and most of the fuselage walls appeared to go transparent as they presented video feeds from outside. The view of the white planet and its atmospheric haze were spectacular, although I preferred how it used to look. Somewhere above, the giant sleeper ship orbited with its sole inhabitant, no doubt eagerly awaiting news. If Hawaii turned out to be another hellhole, then maybe I’d live out my days trying to fix the Juno Ark on some fool’s errand.
Fifteen minutes later, the shuttle descended across the cloud enveloped Pacific and the first fire of re-entry grew from nothing. Valdus closed his eyes. He probably thought we were taking him to hell. He deserved nothing less after the countless lives he’d destroyed. But, with any luck, the Hawaiians had a judicial process. And if they didn’t... Well, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
It took just minutes to rea
ch the troposphere and the ubiquitous cloud of twenty-sixth century Earth. Gravity had made itself apparent once more and we’d traveled from the hellish fires of re-entry to the heavenly clouds that were thinning before my eyes. Once the veil lifted, the sight took my breath away as the blue Pacific, punctuated with sparse icebergs, stretched to the curve of the horizon.
“The ocean... You see that! That’s the ocean down there!” I said, beaming.
Laetitia returned the smile.
“A significant find indeed,” she said, unemotionally.
Through the haze, the islands grew from the distance. The shuttle closed in rapidly, revealing more detail with every passing second.
“What’s our destination,” I asked Laetitia.
“The island of Oahu, home of the capital Honolulu. 2070 status, Mr. Luker.”
Other islands lay in the distance to the northwest and southeast—just green smudges on the horizon. Through the display surfaces, Oahu resolved into far more detail than that. The green of its lowlands and the darker green of forests covered much of its undulating terrain. A ridge ran across the eastern side from north to south, a light covering of snow capping its heights. The shuttle rounded the southern tip of the island on its approach to Honolulu. There were no signs of cities or much else that spoke of civilization. My spirits started descending from their heady heights, but then something caught my eye to the right. A crater, close to the ocean, near the island’s southern tip, the northeast wall partially gone.
“Look, over there,” I said to Laetitia.
“That is Koko Crater, Mr. Luker. It is around half a mile in diameter and a thousand feet high.”
It wasn’t the crater itself, though, but what filled its interior. Domes. Five huge geodesic domes made up of translucent hexagons.
“I think we’ve just found civilization. Laetitia, I guess we’d better go introduce ourselves.”
She nodded and got up to reprogram our descent.
Somewhere inside me, the fires of hope had reignited. The truth was what drove my mind, but the chance of a reunion with Mom and Nikki drove my heart. Even if they were a sentient copy of the living breathing article, seeing them again would mean more to me than all the truth in the world.
Home Planet: Apocalypse (Part 2) Page 19
