Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life (20 page)
Read Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #High Tech, #Hard Science Fiction
* * *
The final ceremony of the funeral was held at the Praxiteles family plot in Colma, with an open grave prepared and blanketed with bright green turf, right next to John Praxis’s mother, Phoebe. The rosewood coffin sat suspended in a framework of gold-colored posts and rails.
On its left side stood Praxis and his daughter, along with various friends of the family, including Jeanne Hale, and senior staff from the company, including Ivy Blake. On the right side stood Leonard and Richard with their wives and the five children between them, including the eldest, Brandon. The boy, who had been released on compassionate leave to bury his grandmother, looked good in his dark-blue service uniform.
They stood in silence while the priest, Father Demetrios from Holy Trinity on Brotherhood Way—his father’s church, not his own, not anymore—chanted the final Trisagion at the graveside: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” and repeated it twice more.
In addition to the traditional service with its hymns and psalms back at the church, Callie had asked to give a eulogy. She recalled events from her mother’s life, seen through the eyes of an adoring daughter, and told stories that even Praxis had forgotten. When he glanced sideways to where his sons were standing, he saw Leonard blotting his eyes with a handkerchief and Richard nodding his head in remembrance, while their children stood transfixed, solemn as owls, at the thought of their grandmother shooting a lion.
Now, facing his boys across his wife’s casket as it sank into the ground, he saw only stern frowns and, when they would meet his gaze, hard eyes. He knew they blamed him and Callie for the failure of the company. But the collapse of the dollar and the economy it sustained had already done that. By cashing out his shares, and his daughter taking hers, they might have hastened that end by one or two quarters, but no more. And in doing so they had preserved at least part of a great family fortune that would ultimately have evaporated in claims, lawsuits, and debt service. At least some in the family were now whole.
When the ceremony was complete, Praxis nodded to his sons, their wives, and his grandchildren, not knowing when he would see any of them again. Callie took his arm, holding it between both hands. Whether his daughter was intending to support him, or his arm was giving her strength, he could not say. Together they walked back to the limousine, sealed themselves inside, and told the hired driver to take them home by way of Highway 280 and 19th Avenue. They sat side by side and did not speak another word.
* * *
Because he stood six-foot-four, the problem Brandon Praxis always had with airline seats was the short knee room. Now, however, he also found that his side arm and holster didn’t fit between his hip and the armrest, and he had to tug the weapon around on his web belt until it was covering his stomach and groin before he could even find, let alone fasten, his seat belt.
The other thing was that his Kevlar PASGT helmet clunked on the low ceiling every time he stood up, and it caught on the seat back when he was sitting down, but Captain Ramsay had ordered all helmets secured on heads for the entire flight. They couldn’t stow them in the overhead bins, because those were jammed with each soldier’s field pack, M4 carbine, and other equipment that had to be ready to hand and couldn’t ride in the baggage hold. Nobody wanted those rifles loaded and rattling around in the pressurized cabin during the flight, so they went up into the bins with their magazines detached and safeties engaged. “Each man check your teammates on this,” Ramsay had warned.
Two days earlier, his Bravo Company of the newly formed 1/22nd Combat Infantry Group, California Army National Guard, had been mustered out of Fort Hunter Liggett, boarded a fleet of gray-painted school buses, and transferred to Travis Air Force Base, just outside of Fairfield, California. They bivouacked in temporary lodgings—essentially a two-star hotel on base called the Westwind Inn—but were told not to get too comfortable. This morning before dawn they were bussed out to the flight line and boarded an American Airlines 787—one of seven that were sitting on the pavement nose to tail. Unlike a civilian airport, they boarded by climbing a mobile ramp rather than walking down a jetway.
As an officer and platoon leader, Brandon had attended a briefing the evening before with about fifty other young men. The officer giving it was a two-star general of the regular army named Beemis. So now Brandon was in a position to know what was going on—even if he didn’t quite believe it.
Supposedly, all flights throughout the country, in the Federated Republic as well as the old United States, were still coordinated by air traffic controllers who reported up to the Federal Aviation Administration—an arm of the old government. Apparently, the newly seceded country had not had time to appoint all of its own centralized services and their supporting bureaucracy. Working with the Pentagon, on the following morning the FAA was going to quietly divert traffic and clear the air space over Kansas City. Just about the time Bravo Company and other units of the California Army National Guard were going wheels up, teams of rangers with the elite U.S. Army Special Operations Command would be parachuting into the city from high altitude.
One detachment would land at Kansas City International Airport and secure the tower and field. Others would take over police, fire, and other municipal services. A large detachment, made up of men with former transit experience, would take over the Metro bus yards and commandeer their rolling stock. The SOC headquarters unit would land and secure the city’s Municipal Auditorium, which was the temporary meeting place of the F.R. Congress. Then the California Army National Guard would land without incident, offload onto the Metro buses, and deploy into the city. By noon, the capital of the Federated Republic would be in the hands of the legitimate federal government.
Similar strikes were being coordinated at key cities throughout the region. At the same time, convoys of light armor and mechanized infantry were starting on the ground from bases on the East and West Coasts to penetrate the heartland and secure military facilities. U.S. Air Force fighter and attack squadrons were going to overfly the air bases in the secessionists’ hands and make sure retaliation strikes never left the ground.
After the briefing, Brandon had given his platoon leaders details of their assignments.
“We’re not going to dock at the jetways or anything like that,” he said. “When the plane stops rolling, we open the doors and drop the slides. Everyone goes down feet first, on your butt, with your weapon at port arms. Pick yourself up and get out of the way for the next guy. Right?”
“Yes, sir!” the men chorused.
“Then look for white buses with blue and teal stripes.”
A hand went up. “Teal, sir?”
“It’s a kind of blue-green.”
“What if I’m color-blind?”
“Then follow someone who isn’t,” Brandon snapped. “The buses will cluster at the planes, and Captain Ramsay will give the drivers our assignment. So you just get on the nearest bus and find a seat. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
So on that next morning he was sitting hunched over in this too-narrow seat as the Boeing 787 trundled down to the end of the runway, made its final turn, briefly locked its brakes, ran up its engines, and rolled smoothly forward for takeoff. As the acceleration increased and the expansion joints in the concrete thumped faster and faster under the wheels, the grip of his pistol pressed against the armrest, causing the muzzle to dig into his thighs. The rear lip of his helmet snagged on the top of his seat back and pushed the visor down over his eyes.
What a ridiculous way to fly into the history books,
he thought. But how historic this moment actually was, he did not know. If everything worked out the way General Beemis had described at the briefing last night, they would execute a flawless first strike, paralyze the enemy, and finish up this silly civil war by Friday. Then it would just be a minor incident pursuant to a political misunderstanding—not much different from the National Guard getting called in to stop an urban riot.
A flight halfway across the country would take two or three hours at least. If this had been a commercial trip, Brandon would have powered up his smartphone, logged onto the plane’s complimentary WIFI service, and done some surfing, or traded texts with friends, or read one of his ebooks. But once again, the operation was under radio silence and all cell phones were ordered turned off under penalty of six months in the stockade and a bad conduct discharge. He checked the pocket of the seat in front of him, but someone had thoughtfully removed the in-flight magazines. With nothing else to do, he pulled the helmet further forward over his eyes and tried to sleep.
He woke up as soon as the engines changed to a lower pitch and a definite lightness under his butt told him they were descending. Brandon prepared himself to execute his own special set of orders. Throughout the plane, he knew, other second lieutenants were getting ready for similar tasks.
As soon as the plane’s tires touched the runway and the jets went to reverse thrust, he unbuckled and stood up—letting the hard deceleration pull him forward out of the seat—and clunked his helmet once again on the underside of the overhead. He stepped sideways into the aisle, ran through first class, and prepared to unlatch the forward starboard-side door. Through the oblong view port next to the opening mechanism, he watched patches of grass punctuated by numbered taxiways flow by the fuselage and disappear under the wing. He saw the terminal complex and its central control tower go by, and still the plane continued at brisk taxiing speed. They passed the last of the great circular concourses lined with jetways and kept on going. The plane made a hard right-hand turn at speed and proceeded down another set of runways. The seconds ticked by as if they were minutes. Something about this long parade around the airport didn’t feel right.
Finally the plane began braking—a weird, hollow wailing that came up from beneath his feet—and slowed almost to a stop. Brandon looked out the port again, trying to identify where in hell they were. Nothing but open field and green grass. Not a bus in sight. Not white with blue and teal or any other color.
He swung the door’s locking bar over and threw his weight against it. The plane was still rolling, but suddenly its smooth forward motion changed to a sideways lurch and wiggle. The wailing of brakes became the harsh grinding of bare wheel rims on concrete. Somehow the plane had blown all ten of its tires at once. Brandon hung onto the locking bar and managed to stay upright as the fuselage jerked to a stop.
He pushed hard on the door, and the articulated arm carried it out and away.
A bullet spanged off the doorframe, missing his head by inches.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted, dropping to the carpeted deck. He’d caught the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye. Over in the tall grass, thirty yards northeast of the plane. He drew his M9 and returned three spaced shots. A pair of combat boots stopped on the carpet beside his head.
“What is it, son?” Ramsay asked.
“We’re under fire, sir!”
“Son of a bitch!”
“Yes, sir!”
Ramsay turned and called for the men with light machine guns to set up firing positions on either side of all the cabin exits. Then he told Brandon to pop the inflatable slide. The captain handed him an M4. “Go fast, son!”
“You’re kidding me, sir!”
“Make a streak, Lieutenant! You’re holding up the line!”
Brandon tapped the carbine’s magazine as he’d been trained, pulled the charging handle to chamber a round, held the weapon across his body, and launched himself, feet first and butt down, onto the yellow rubberized cloth. Above his head, the machine guns roared. He could only hope that the people in the weeds now had their heads down or, if they didn’t, then at least that they might not know how to lead a moving target. When he hit the end of the ramp he had to jump to his feet, and his momentum carried him forward into a hard roll across the concrete. There he flattened himself out and started firing short, controlled bursts, just like on the range.
At the same time, the odd thought floated up into his mind:
Whatever this is, it isn’t going to be over by Friday.
Part 3 – 2028:
Plumbing Work
1. In the Ninth Year of War
John Praxis was building a brick wall. He was doing a favor for a neighbor, Nora Graham, who lived three doors down from the small house he had bought for himself on Balboa Street in the Richmond District. It was the closest he could get to his old home in Sea Cliff, which he had been forced to sell years ago.
Nora wanted to build a series of low walls at the back of her lot to divide the vegetable patch and the flower garden and both of them from the compost heap. But the cost of a city-licensed contractor was beyond her means. So she had talked it over with Praxis, who had become the neighborhood handyman, and he drew some plans, roughed out the job, and told her how many used bricks to buy and at what price from the local scavenger, or more politely, “unlicensed urban recycler.” That had been a month ago, and since then Nora had set her two boys to sorting the bricks and chipping off old mortar after school. The weekend before, Praxis had dug trenches according to his plan and poured the concrete footings.
This morning he had mixed the grout—a trough of fine portland cement, this one prepared without aggregate—and now he was troweling it carefully onto each layer of bricks, working along two or three bricks at time, putting just the right amount of cement on the butted ends and using a string stretched between two stakes to keep them in a straight line. When each couple of bricks were set and tapped down with the heel of his trowel, he used the edge like a knife to cut away the excess grout that oozed out and slung it back into the trough. Then he used his bare finger to smooth the gap into a nicely finished curve. It was patient, methodical work of the kind he had come to enjoy.
The two boys, Tommy and Joey, ages eleven and nine, watched with fascination. They helped by bringing him bricks from the pile and adding measured amounts of water, sand, and cement powder to the trough whenever it went low.
“This one’s broken,” Joey said, holding up half a brick.
“Nuts,” Praxis said. He took the brick and studied its broken end, which was nearly perpendicular and could easily enough be made to fit. It would stagger the line, of course. He looked at the diminished pile, spotted more broken bricks, and knew it would be a near thing to finish all the wall with what he had there.
“We’ll use it anyway,” he said.
“It’ll mess up the pattern,” Tommy objected, pointing to the neatly spaced bricks in the existing layers.
“Naw, it will give your wall character,” he said. “Besides, you don’t want to trap a devil inside the wall, do you?”
“What?” the older boy said.
“Sure,” Praxis said, “all great artists leave a little flaw, a break in any regular pattern, so the devil can find his way out of it. The ancient Navajos did it all the time with their sand paintings, leave a little nick in one line, so as not to trap spirits in a perfect design. I think the word ‘glitch’ even comes from the Navajo language.”
“You’re just making that up!”
Praxis turned to the younger boy, whose face was clouding up with this talk of devils and spirits. “I’m sure glad you found that brick, Joe. It kept us from making a terrible mistake.”
The little boy tried to smile.
“Now be sure to find me another one like it real soon,” Praxis said, “so we can come out even at the end of the line.”
“Would’ve been better if my mom had bought new bricks,” Tommy said.
“Well, you know,” Praxis replied, “we can’t have everything we want.”
He finished the long wall between the vegetable and flower gardens and started the shorter one around the compost pit. He laid three bricks on the first course, straightened up to reach for the next one from Tommy’s hands, and felt the world go gray.
Praxis stood there, feet rocking gently in the loose soil, holding himself upright by muscle tension alone and not by any act of his own will. The trowel slipped from his fingers and fell a long way to earth, a distant thump. He stared into the golden sparkles that lit up just behind his eyes and knew that if God was going to take him, now was the time. And that was all right, too …
After a moment the dizziness passed. He walked over to the wall he had just finished and sat down, and be damned to what his weight might do to the still-wet grout.
“You okay, sir?” The two boys were staring at him with fear in their eyes.
“Sure,” he said. “I just get a bit dizzy sometimes. It passes.”
The little fits, due to low blood pressure, were coming more regularly now. And some days he felt just … tired. No energy. No pep. He wasn’t eating as much as he once did, either, and these days he was not much interested in food. He had been thin since he took up running after his heart implant, but now he was getting downright scrawny. He still tried to run at least a couple of times a week, but his distances were getting shorter and his breath giving out faster. It had been months since he had gone as far as five kilometers at one time, and that on level ground. A marathon was out of the question—not that any city in his part of the country had the money to stage those anymore, not even a Fun Run 10K for a good cause.
Hell, he was just getting old. He would turn seventy-five this year. His heart was still going strong, but the connective tissue seemed to be giving way. It was called life. Old age happened to everybody.
He stood up, looking back to make sure the wall hadn’t gone swaybacked under him. He looked over at the pile of remaining bricks, the trough full of grout.
“That’s enough for today, boys. We’ll finish up next weekend.”
“Aww!” Joey said and made a face. His brother punched him.
“You know where to dump that?” He pointed at the trough. “And how to clean it out without killing the grass?”
“Yes, sir,” Tommy said.
“Good then. Next week.”
* * *
“I told the damn thing both mares was due for foaling, and it would take about six months,” Edward Hopper said. “Still the dummy went ahead and ordered oats and hay like usual, vet service like usual, shoeing like usual, stabling and grooming—”
“ ‘Like usual’?” Antigone Wells supplied, with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am. You’d think a computer could add and subtract. Two horses minus two horses means how many horses do I got to feed? Quick now!”
“You told your system the horses would be foaled?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Hopper had now quieted down some.
“Did you say
where?
I mean, they’d be moved out of your stables?”
“Well, it
had
the waybills, transport fees, and insurance.”
“And is that on the same account?” Wells asked.
“As which?” Hopper’s eyebrows knitted.
“As the one that maintains your mares.”
“Well, no, transportation’s different.”
“What app are you using?” she asked.
“Farmer John two-point-something.”
“Yeah.” Wells didn’t even have to check with her tech specialist. “That’s an older model. They don’t cross-link.”
“I thought these robots were supposed to be smart.”
“Well, some are true intelligences, and some just clever programming.”
“Anyhow, it finally cancelled all the orders,” Hopper said, “but the feed store won’t take back and restock without a charge, the vet and stable will only add months to my account, and the blacksmith had already spent my payment.”
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Cancel ’em properly. Get my money back.”
Hopper was an old man—older than Wells herself. Over the years she had learned the peculiarities of computers in order to stay current in the legal business. It had taken time and patience, but the brainwork seemed to keep her young. Hopper was just that much older and probably thought he could simply install a piece of software on his smartphone and let it run a part-time stock-raising and stud business spread over four farms and six private stables in three different counties.
“You know,” she said, “that software comes with disclaimers.”
“Lawyer stuff.” He shrugged. “Didn’t read ’em.”
“Of course. Still, this matter has been tried in court—all the way to the High Court here in the Republic and the Supreme Court back in the States, parallel rulings. A properly installed intelligence system has
de jure
as well as
de facto
power of attorney. It’s like you bought those things yourself. That’s the only way the Integrated Commerce System can work.”
“But I didn’t
want
’em.”
“That’s as may be. You got ’em.”
“Well, this has been a complete waste of my time.” He paused. “You ain’t gonna bill me, are you, seeing as you can’t help me?”
She squinted at him. “Just because your horse is feeling horny, do you give your stud away for free?”
“What’s that got to do with—?”
“My ’bot will talk to your ’bot.”
Hopper jammed his hat on his head.
“Good day to you … young lady.”
“Nice try—but you still owe me.”
In the last nine years, Antigone Wells had also had to learn the ways of country people, which was “a fur piece” from her former law practice in San Francisco. She had gone to Oklahoma to visit her sister Helen, got caught on the wrong side of a shooting war, and been interned as an enemy alien. She spent six weeks on a cot in detention at the National Guard Armory in Shawnee until the paperwork could be cleared to release her into Helen’s custody.
“I’ll bet you’re loving this,” she told her younger sister.
“Shut up and get in the car …
war criminal.
”
As an essentially stateless person, because the borders were closed to both the East and West Coasts, Wells lived for six more months under house arrest, then applied for citizenship in the new Federated Republic. Two years after that, including a year at the Oklahoma University College of Law, catching up on the New Constitution and all the reformulated precedents, she passed the bar and set up Wells & Wells, LLC in Oklahoma City. She didn’t actually have another “Wells” in the firm, because Helen’s married name had been Carter and she just helped out in the office, but it looked more stable and professional. If asked, Antigone Wells said it was a “me, myself, and I” kind of partnership.
Over the years she had come to specialize in what she called “human-cyber relations.” Amazingly, the course of the war—complete with military raids, economic sanctions, occasional civilian rationing (worse in the States than in the Republic), and crushing public and personal debt (again, worse over there than here, but not so good here nowadays)—had not at all affected the march of twenty-first-century technology. Next generations of smartphones and watches, neurostims and biolinks, across the spectrum of hardware, software, and squishware, still appeared at the end of every summer and at the midwinter geek shows. All of it had vastly improved human communications and data management. And every year the devices grew smaller, faster, smarter, more intuitive, and more seamlessly connected to the human body and fringes of the nervous system, not to mention integrating people’s social relationships, commerce, banking, medicine, and government services.
Perhaps all that technological growth was actually a function of the war. An assassination drone could now be made the size of a sparrow, find your street address in GPS coordinates from two hundred miles away, and pack the explosive power of ten pounds of Semtex. A spy drone could be made the size of a bumblebee, travel a ten-mile radius through wind and rain, transmit over more than twenty miles, and still hear in broadwave, see in plex-pix, and fake a retina scan. So why shouldn’t the labs sell their goodies from three generations back onto the commercial market?
Wells might not be able to get a cup of real Sumatra coffee through the U.S. blockade on the Gulf Coast. Yet she could wear an agent on her wrist which scheduled her days, ordered her lunch, did the grocery shopping, and contracted to get her car fixed. She could wear eyeglasses—well,
faux
lenses in her case—that with a blink recorded everything she saw and read, received her emails, and communicated with her wrist to help it plan her social life. She could wear earrings that let her pick up conversations across a crowded room just by turning her head and triangulating. And all this stuff was voice activated, touch sensitive, and had the good sense to go dead the minute the physical device determined itself to be lost or stolen. Her wrist companion also kept track of her vital signs and, should they ever stop or change beyond certain limits, it would signal her current location and medical history to the nearest medical facility. If she felt threatened, she could whisper a code word to summon the police—her current panic word was “Shazam!”—not that she ever felt
that
threatened.
Antigone Wells—and every other adult she knew—walked through a virtual world that was webbed in various dimensions and at various wavelengths with personal contacts, social obligations, commercial and medical support, and information and entertainment resources. To be a citizen in the Federated Republic was to be a
wired
citizen. It meant she was never alone, unless she chose to be. And whatever she might consciously have surrendered of her privacy, she had won back many times over in terms of convenience, speed, and connection.
* * *
Business used to be personal,
John Praxis kept telling himself, like some kind of old man’s mantra. Time was, running a business either as a buyer or seller was all about relationships, about finding people he could trust, people who offered good service at fair prices, who could expedite and solve problems, who could make things happen and tell a joke along the way. Over the years Praxis had become accustomed to the business phone tree having replaced a live human person at a switchboard. He had even come to accept that most branches of that tree would take him to automated responses, where he had to speak slowly, annunciate clearly, and repeat himself until the machine stopped saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that …” Sooner or later he would press zero and be talking to a person again.
But five times in the past two weeks, when he dialed one of his suppliers he got neither a person nor a tree but a disembodied female voice: “Your call is being transferred to our automated ordering system.” And after that, rather than more robots painfully working on their language recognition skills, he got the high-frequency buzz of machine talk, an earful of static, one machine trying to communicate bits and bytes to what it supposed was another but was actually a live human person, Praxis himself.
