Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life (22 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
After class, as she was changing into her street clothes back in the bathroom, Wells paused to use the toilet. When she stood up, she was horrified to see a dark red stain filling the bowl. She had only seen it once before, after she had been kicked in the kidneys during a sparring session some years ago. She had spent two days in the hospital then. But no one else had been quick enough to tag her kidneys—or get anywhere near them—in a long time.
She whispered her finding to her wrist agent. It consulted the bioproctor implanted in the wall of her abdomen, which reported a rise in C-reactive proteins, indicating an inflammation somewhere in her body. However, it reported negative for the kind of protein loss attributed to kidney disease.
“Shall I make an appointment with your doctor?” Wells’s agent whispered into her ear.
“I guess you’d better,” she said and finished dressing.
* * *
Three days after Francesco di Rienzi was killed in an automobile accident, the newspapers still hadn’t reported it. That was odd, because he was reputedly a member of the Italian minor nobility and styled himself a
conte,
or count. And after four days the
Polizia di Stato
had yet to release either his body for burial or his mangled Ferrari for the insurance claims and ultimate disposal.
“The investigation is continuing,” was all anyone would tell Callista di Rienzi when she called the police headquarters in Torino to inquire about her husband.
So the dry-eyed widow decided she had to appear at the station in person. She dressed appropriately in black, although perhaps with more style than the occasion required. Her suit was tailored in black satin with a fitted jacket and short, tight skirt. She also wore sheer black stockings and black leather pumps with three-inch stiletto heels. After nine years in the country, Callista di Rienzi knew how to be taken seriously by Italian men.
“Cesco was an excellent driver,” she told the uniformed sergeant at the desk. “I can’t believe he would be killed in an
incidente stradale,
a mere accident.”
“That may well be,” the man said. “Still …”
“Do you suspect something more? Perhaps foul play?”
“
Scusi, signora?
” he asked with a confused squint.
Callie was standing in an open hallway busy with people both uniformed and civilian. She could not know what ears might be listening. She raised her hands just above the edge of the rail that fronted his bench, left hand cradling an imaginary gun barrel, right hand around an imaginary stock, with forefinger pulling an imaginary trigger. “Eh-eh-eh?” she said softly at the back of her throat.
The sergeant’s eyes widened. His lips compressed. And he shrugged.
That told her as much as she needed to know.
* * *
The first email waiting in John Praxis’s queue that evening was from the Janet Bormann, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It carried the notation “Personal and Confidential.” It had the subject line “Happy Birthday, John Praxis.”
When he opened the file, it blossomed into a computer-generated animation of friendly adult faces, appropriately weighted for gender and ethnicity but not for age. All of them were elderly. Although uniformly fit, lively, and smiling, all bore the marks of age in graying hair, double chins, and wrinkled skin. Behind them floated balloons and colored streamers. They were gathered around a cake decorated with a candles—not a bunch of separately burning sticks, as on most birthday cakes, but big, molded wax numerals with candy-red edging that spelled out “75.” The flames had a weird sparkle, almost like the burning of Roman candles—or lit fuses.
After flickering just long enough for Praxis to take in the happy message, the animation dissolved into a formal document, using a calligraphic typeface, like a diploma or an official declaration. In so many words the document invited him to prepare for his upcoming “Environmental Sacrifice,” reminded him of the benefits that would be made available to his children and grandchildren (if any), and directed him to a website with a helpful planning book and the addresses of convenient, local, and painless service providers. It was not an order. More like a suggestion.
In the creeping, soft-spell socialism that had settled over his half of the country, the government wanted no whiff of coercion. Unlike the books and movies that had informed his childhood notions of tyranny, from Koestler’s
Darkness at Noon
and Orwell’s
1984
to Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
and Burgess’s
A Clockwork Orange,
the voice of authority came not with jackboots, peaked caps, and truncheons. Instead it presented its demands with smiles, party balloons, and gentle reminders. The architects of his society had studied and learned from Huxley’s story of planetwide control through community, identity, stability (“I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta …”) in
Brave New World.
Praxis had the right to refuse his Sacrifice, of course. But then, unfortunately, there would be penalties. For one thing, his medical status would automatically change to PTO—Pain Treatment Only—which meant that the cure for whatever ailed him would be a morphine drip. He would also forfeit those promised favors for his children and grandchildren. And he would embarrass himself with his friends and neighbors: he would show the world he did not know how to behave, how to be a good little
Romper Room
“Do Bee.”
Eleven years ago the doctors had given him a new heart and the promise of a long and fruitful life. Now the health service that controlled many of those same doctors was inviting him to commit “ethical suicide”—the other, less grand word for it—so as not to become a burden on society.
“Ain’t life precious?” he muttered and dragged the email notice into his trash folder.
* * *
Four days after Francesco di Rienzi was killed, his widow decided to do the unexpected and visit his uncle Matteo at the villa east of the river. She wore black, although not in any fashion to influence a man, because Matteo was family—however distantly and by reputation only. She took along her eight-year-old daughter Rafaella, because the girl liked to chase the cats in Matteo’s garden. She was still dry-eyed.
The guard at the gate passed her through with a wave. Matteo himself was waiting for her on the front steps, with his son Carlo by his side. As she parked her Alfa Romeo and opened the door to release Rafaella into the garden, the old man came down to open Callie’s own door for her and hand her out onto the gravel driveway.
“Contessa!” he said with a face full of sadness, holding onto her hand as if to support her in her sorrow. “
Mio cordoglio!
My condolences.”
“Cut the crap,” she said in a low voice. “Just this once, please.”
“Of course, Callista.” The man’s face did not change. “Come inside.”
As they crossed the entry hall’s mosaic floor—the god Neptune in green and blue, complete with trident, scales, and fishtail, in keeping with the originally maritime nature of his business—and passed into the sitting room, he offered her coffee, tea, or “something stronger.”
She waved him off. “This is not exactly a social call.”
“I understand. You are upset. That is natural.”
She remained standing while the two men arranged themselves on the embroidered satin settee facing her. “All this time I’ve kept my peace,” she began, using the speech she had been rehearsing in her mind for four days now. “I’ve been a good wife to Cesco. I tried to be an
Italian
wife. I never asked what his business was. I turned a blind eye—”
“And this has been noted,” Matteo said quietly.
“—to his gambling, and his drinking, and even to his whoring—”
Carlo, who was straitlaced, flinched. The old man bore up better.
“—and when he asked me for money, I gave it to him. The more he asked, the more I gave, because I loved him and he was the father of my child.”
“You also knew the marriage laws here,” Carlo said. “What each brings to the marriage belongs to the marriage.”
“We had a prenuptial agreement. You know what that is?”
“Yes, of course,” Matteo said.
“I never called him on it. And when he made ‘investments’ with you, I never questioned him. I gave him my support, as a wife, even if I did not agree.”
“As was proper,” Carlo said.
“Now Cesco is gone. I do not ask under what circumstances. I do not seek to place blame …”
The old man pursed his lips and nodded at this.
“But I must think of my future and that of my daughter. I plan to take Rafaella back to the States. So I need to redeem whatever shares Cesco had in your business.”
Matteo looked pained. “This is not a convenient time, Contessa.”
“I understand. I am prepared to be patient. Work out a repayment—”
“You do
not
understand,” Carlo said. “There will
never
be a good time.”
“I still have the prenup he signed. It is binding on his family as well.”
“Ah, but you see,” Matteo said, “ ‘family’ is a term with many meanings.”
“This is a legal document,” she said quietly.
“And you would enforce it—
how?
” Carlo asked with a grin. “In an Italian court? As a woman? And a foreigner? Against
us?
”
“If necessary.” Callie was determined to stand her ground.
“Americans are no longer much loved—or feared—here.”
Matteo placed a hand on his son’s arm. “Please,
mio figlio.
She has some justice on her side, I think. And Francesco was not always wise. Loyal, yes, but foolish. His wife, on the other hand, is not such a fool.”
Callie looked at him with narrowed eyes. She knew instinctively to keep her mouth shut while he worked out a compromise in his head.
“Contessa,” the old man went on, “truly, I cannot pay you back what your husband took from you—and lost with us. But I do acknowledge your situation. We owe you a debt of honor.”
“Father, please!” Carlo protested.
“What we cannot repay in money,” the old man said, “we can pledge to you in service. I will, of course, put you and your daughter under my protection. And you may call on me at any time—”
“But, Matteo … I will not remain in Torino for long.”
“I understand. I will see that you are equally well known to our American affiliates—on both sides of the border. We are an ‘old, established firm,’ as the English like to say. And we understand the nature of blood obligations.”
Callie considered. She had lost to her husband, to his schemes and his whims, a good deal of the fortune she had rescued from the collapse of the Praxis family business. But she still had enough to get herself and her daughter home to America and to live on—frugally, for a couple of months, until she figured things out. But the Italian dream was over. And if she could not be made whole financially, it was not a small thing to have a man like Matteo di Rienzi acknowledge a debt to her.
“I see,” she said. “I think I see …”
The old man smiled warmly. Carlo stiffly nodded his acknowledgement.
She was smart enough to know she would never have anything in writing. She could claim no assurances. Nothing would stand up in a court of law. But for as long as these two men lived, she would hold a Get Out of Jail Free card. Not because she had anything on them. Not because she could threaten them in any meaningful way. But because they believed in a concept that was fast disappearing in the world. Matteo had used the magic words: “honor” and “blood.” She knew the code. And she had no alternative but to accept.
“I understand,” she said at last. “Thank you.”
“Come now,” Matteo said more easily. “Let us see if your daughter has caught any of my cats.”
2. Sixth or Seventh Armistice
Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Praxis checked the morning roster on his Tactical Tracker. The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Combined Arms Division, temporarily stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, was at half strength: 575 combat effectives, plus staff, support, and mechanics. His company of Tortoise Fighting Vehicles had gotten badly shot up in the attack on Atlanta last month, and repair and resupply were slower than in the early days of the war. The Air Force still had plenty of C-17 Globemasters for putting his battalion in the field, but he didn’t have enough troops and vehicles to make it worthwhile. Praxis made requests. Command made promises. Everyone bided their time.
He studied the device on his wrist: a little slab of silicon glued on one side to a piece of armored glass and on the other to a ceramic antenna and button-sized battery. The loops for the wrist strap were cut directly into the glass, the strongest part of the Tactical Tracker-109. Total cost to replace this tech sandwich was about three dollars, and his people went through a lot of them, even though Praxis had taught his men to wear them on the inside of their wrists instead of outside and cover them with their cuffs—less banging into things that way. The technology of the device itself was insignificant, having been around for a decade or more. But the web of data that it tied a man into—his chain of command on secure links upward and downward, his own medical stats through the biobead punched into his belly, his senses through more biobeads in his eye sockets and ear canals, and the status and location of every piece of equipment and supply he needed to support himself in the field through RFID tags and barcodes—that was priceless. With it, Praxis could contact anyone under his command, look through his eyes, hear through his ears, and place him—or her, because this man’s army boasted lots of good women—at any point of an operation.
It was a far cry from his first big assault nine years ago, the supposedly surprise attack on the capital of the breakaway republic in Kansas City, as well as other key points in the seceding territory. Yes, every soldier had something like the TT-109, but it wasn’t army issue and it wasn’t secure.
What neither the commanding general—what was his name? Beemis? Gone now—nor his own Captain Ramsay could know, and Brandon himself would only piece it together in the weeks that followed, was how difficult it actually was to coordinate a massed invasion with thousands of soldiers. Many of them, like his own Bravo Company of the 1/22nd Combat Infantry, had been fresh out of training and experiencing a strange new adventure. The officers had instructed the platoon and squad leaders about the need for secrecy. But, unlike previous wars, this one was being fought in a society that was saturated with smartphones, social media, photo sharing, web logging, and the pervasive and childish mindset that “Information wants to be free.” Before Bravo Company even boarded their commandeered airliner, details of the strike were slipping out in personal updates and posted images on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Not to mention heartfelt good-byes to wives, sweethearts, brothers, fathers, the banks that held their auto loans, and their bail bondsmen. So long, Mom! Look for me on TV! They were all such a bunch of babies back then: college boys with some physical training and a new rifle, but not really military-minded.
Pundits and bloggers had immediately begun translating hints from these various social feeds into a historical perspective. Radio talk-show hosts were actually taking bets on the outcome of the raid. And of course the strike teams themselves, who were maintaining “radio silence” that morning, knew none of this. The initial wave of rangers from Special Operations Command had landed in a cross fire of combined forces from the Missouri National Guard, local sheriff’s deputies, and municipal police SWAT teams. By the time Bravo Company was crossing the Utah-Colorado border, the strike had effectively failed. But for good measure, the Missouri National Guard commander at the airport ordered the air traffic controllers, at gunpoint, to bring the fleet of 787s from Travis AFB on in. Then he had the tower instruct them to taxi to the end of Runway Two-Zero West. There a team of police snipers in the deep grass shot out the tires. Praxis and his squad had fought their way off the plane, but for all their firing they never hit any of the snipers.
How had he gotten out of that one? Oh yeah, returned a month later in a prisoner exchange. Those were the good old days, when the war was fought by gentlemen and everyone thought it would be over by Christmas.
It had been a long and bitter war. They came within an inch of being invaded by the Chinese, out to make hay while the Americans devoured themselves in civil war. But social disruption in the Middle Kingdom prevented any real occupation. First came popular revolt against the crippled hand of the ruling Communist Party, then the revolt of the
Fennu Xiong,
the “Angry Bears”—the legion of young men deprived of female companionship, family life, and progeny by the gender imbalance resulting from the One Child Policy. No, China had been in no position to follow up on the first air strike in Seattle. Neither was anyone else ready to invade. Russia still feared the U.S. government’s nukes. And no one in Europe, the Middle East, or the Subcontinent had the wherewithal to go adventuring.
Brandon Praxis had lost his father and mother. After the family company fell apart—and wasn’t it a good thing he had not graduated a year earlier to join in that debacle?—Leonard had tried to recoup his fortune with real estate deals in a declining market. Then, as the war grew worse, he made the fatal mistake of confusing remoteness with safety. Leonard and his wife retired to a vacation lodge north of Lake Tahoe and disappeared in the predawn strikes of the Federated Republic’s narrowly successful Donner Incursion.
Who was left now? His grandfather John was still in California, doing something with plumbing services. His uncle Richard and his wife had moved to Texas, where he joined a firm involved in computer design—computers had been his uncle’s first love anyway. And his aunt Callista had taken herself to Italy and become a countess. His own brother Paul had joined the U.S. Army, been wounded in North Dakota, and was now in physical therapy with a bionic leg. His sister Bernice was married to a soldier named Littlefield, out on the West Coast. His cousins had gone along with their father and mother to Texas: Jeffrey was fighting for the other side now, and Jacqueline had trained as a mechanical engineer and immediately gone into defense work in a cyber-munitions plant. So the Praxis family was represented on both sides of the war, as well as outside of it.
War had torn his family apart. But then, hadn’t the family been in full disintegration mode the summer before, for reasons Brandon Praxis had never really understood? These days, he actually felt closer to the men and women in his unit than to the people who shared his genes. War had taught him about the different kinds of blood, and that blood spilled was stronger than blood shared.
But how much longer could this war go on?
He sent another repair requisition up the chain.
It couldn’t hurt. They were only electrons, after all.
* * *
After a combined three hours of waiting for security clearance, first in Milan’s Malpensa Airport and then at London Heathrow, followed by a twelve-hour flight over the pole, and four hours clearing U.S. Customs in San Francisco, Callista di Rienzi was exhausted and her daughter Rafaella had passed from unusually irritable to unconscious.
It took another hour to find transportation into the city because of restrictions on vehicular traffic and Transportation Commission permits. Her Electrocab pulled up in front of her father’s house sometime after one o’clock in the morning. But the lights were still on in the living room, and the window curtain twitched as she was getting out of the passenger pod and hoisting her sleeping child up on one hip with arms draped around her neck. The front door opened before she had figured out which buttons to push and where to insert her card to pay the fare. Because she was still thinking in euros, the amount seemed exorbitant, but Callie was too tired to argue with a machine.
“Do you want me to take her?” John Praxis asked.
“No, she’s okay. Can you get the bags?”
He opened the bin lid and took out their suitcases and travel packs, setting them on the sidewalk. The machine wouldn’t leave until all the luggage was cleared, but her father still hurried, as if he was inconveniencing it. He carried the first two pieces up the front steps behind her.
“I hope you’ve got a spare room,” Callie said. “She’s down for the count.”
“Sure, top of the stairs, first door.” He motioned with a suitcase.
“
Chi è che, mama?
” the little girl asked sleepily.
“Your grandfather, Raffi. Say hello.”
“
Buona sera, Nonno.
”
“In English, honey.”
“Good night, sir.” And the little head went back down on her shoulder.
When they got to the room, Callie left it darkened, laid her daughter on the freshly made bed, and slipped off her shoes. Washing up and undressing could come later. John put the bags down in the hall and went down for the rest of their luggage. As he returned with the last of the pieces, he was breathing heavily. In the overhead light in the hall, his face was gray and slack, with shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks.
“My God, Dad! You look terrible.”
“It’s just age catching up with me.”
“A year ago you were running marathons.”
“More like ten-kays, and a couple of years ago.”
“Sure you’re all right? What do the doctors say?”
“Well … you know doctors these days.”
“But what did they
say?
”
“Some kind of hormone imbalance. They prescribed some pills for me, but the California Medical Service ruled they were ‘age inappropriate’ and won’t issue them.”
“What hormones? You mean like testosterone?”
He shook his head. “Cortisol and aldosterone. My adrenal glands don’t seem to make them anymore. I need corticosteroids.”
“That doesn’t sound like too much trouble.”
“They’re not approved for a man my age.”
“Well, that’s just nonsense, if your body needs them.”
“It’s the law now, Daughter. Welcome to California.”
* * *
“And finally,” Philip Sawyer, chairman and chief executive of Tallyman Systems, Inc., announced to the firm’s assembled directors at the monthly board meeting, “the ‘grand enterprise’ proceeds according to plan, with indices showing we’re thirty-five days ahead of schedule.”
Richard Praxis stared out over the spaghetti tangle of freeway interchanges that lay to the west of downtown Houston. His eyes tracked the pulsed arterial flow of monomeric units—colloquially, “cars and trucks”—through its concrete channels, and he nodded soberly. So did everyone else around the table, although with greater and lesser degrees of understanding. They all appreciated, in general, what the “grand enterprise” represented. However, the board minutes would show no more detail than that single reference. Praxis, as vice president of Government Affairs and one of the original architects of the project, knew that not much more documentation existed anywhere else within the company. He could only hope that the project’s clients and ultimate benefactors were being just as discreet.
Inside Tallyman Systems, the people most responsible for the enterprise believed they were testing a proposition in game theory, a mammoth “what if” that had no practical purpose in itself but that might, with a major amount of tweaking, one day be sold into the internet gaming market. For now, it was an intellectual exercise under the project name “Realpolitik.”
Richard had come into the company not long after the mammoth failure of the family business that had borne his name. Tallyman was a startup working on artificial intelligence, originally with neural networking. This was on the premise that complicated problems in distribution, routing, and leveling, as well as problems that had to draw on diffuse and poorly integrated data sets, could best be solved by networks of independent but massively interconnected computing nodes, like neurons in the human nervous system. Rather than a single processor working to a strictly linear algorithm, the network nodes all worked in parallel. Each node would already have been taught a single pattern which activated it, or not, based on inputs received from neighboring nodes. Each node then applied its own pattern to the problem’s outputs. Neural networks could learn. They could weigh choices. And that meant they could solve problems where the programmer himself had limited knowledge. The programmer might have understood the nature of the choices involved and the tests to be applied but have no idea how to approach a solution.
The company had hired Richard Praxis because of his expertise in construction of major projects. They wanted to apply neural networking to problems in public policy, population density, city planning, rights of way, transit system and highway grade design, and water and power grids. The fact that he had dexterity with computer systems was a plus. So Richard had moved to Texas just before the war’s outbreak and settled his family in the Houston area.
More recently, Tallyman had been pursuing analysis of the same kinds of complex, diffuse problems through evolutionary theory. In nature, evolution applied random genetic mutations to living organisms that were experiencing environmental change. The changing environment imposed a new set of criteria—a new set of survivability tests—without specifying what bodily forms or traits would best be able to meet them. Living animals and plants suffered mutations all the time, tiny modifications in DNA coding that might or might not affect the structure of their proteins. And those modified proteins might or might not affect the organism’s metabolism, tolerance for bodily insults like heat or cold, physical structure, or some other functional characteristic. In a stable environment, where the old biological pattern had been proven to work, most mutations were either unimportant or minorly helpful or hurtful, while some were downright lethal. In a changing environment, with new criteria for survival, a small number of tiny, marginally beneficial modifications suddenly mattered.
