by John M Grier
~***~
Three grueling hours later they arrived in Harmony. Harmony was a small city, but as cities go these days it was much like every other one. It was located in what was once northern Virginia. But, extra names for places like Virginia and America and the like had gone out of fashion a long time ago, just like last names for people had disappeared. Many of the names still existed, mostly in databases somewhere, but most people simply didn’t care about them anymore.
Paul had lived in Harmony for many years and considered it home. But, for someone who spent as much time away on remote mission sites as he did, many of them ice covered, you would think he liked cold weather. He did not. Actually, the climate in Harmony was much too cold for his liking. After all, the arctic ice was only a three hour ride to the north.
As he walked to his tiny apartment on the civilian side of the city, Paul decided he would take a shower for as long as the timer would allow and hope he was fortunate enough to actually get hot water this time. As he contemplated his forthcoming shower, he once again wondered how people made it way back when there were so many of them. The population had been kept under strict control for hundreds of years now, and maintained at the optimum half billion people world wide.
Harmony was a city of one hundred thousand people, like all the others. As such, he was only allocated hot water once every third day. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been home for weeks, the law was the law.
As he usually did at about this point after an expedition was just over, he wondered where Jack went. He had no idea how to find Jack and didn’t know where he lived. He knew it was close, but outside of the city walls. He didn’t know of any one else that lived in such a fashion. One of these days he would have to see where Jack lived. As he thought of his shower, he wondered how often Jack got hot water.
His only way to get in touch with Jack was through his communication headset from the expedition. Jack always managed to hang onto it and keep it working until the next dig. Maybe he would call him on it later. He did seem awfully upset this time, more so than was normal. Besides, he wanted to see if Jack had made any progress on the briefcase.
