King's County (16 page)

We didn't land at SEA-TAC. Dropping out
of the clouds over the downtown core, a flat spot appeared, hemmed
in by buildings and dense gardens. It was a landing pad.

The ground felt crisp under my feet:
new rubberized concrete, slightly rough, with just a bit of give to
the still swollen joints in my army boots. Taking care to conceal
my limp, I walked down the raceway toward a building constructed of
tall panels of clear, beveled cut crystal.

"Welcome, we’re so glad to have you."
She said smiling and motioning me to sit with her on the
sofa.

"You come highly recommended." She
smiled again while sticking to the task, "...I once met Mr Leland."
She filed through something on her pad. "I’m sure...one second..."
She scrolled and stopped, "I’m Qim, by the way."

I had been admiring her. She seemed to
not notice which encouraged me. I accepted her smooth, delicate
hand and was surprised at the strength of her grip.

"John."

She smiled again,

"First things first: you need to get
rechipped. You'll get the latest generation chip which requires no
chemical supplementation" - she scrolled - "so don't worry about
that, no more little white pills...and then I’ll show you to your
home." -smile- "Tomorrow: big day. I’ll pop by to pick you up and
we’ll get your implant done and start the orientation. It's a long,
intensive process, as you may already know, but we teach on the
job. Ready?"

*

The pain in my foot was gone, whatever
it was had been repaired during my afternoon nap. I couldn't feel
the new chip back there but I could feel the effects. My body was
stronger, more solid like it had been during Artemis training. And
I was calmer, more collected in subtle ways. I wasn't groggy or
sweating like I normally would be after waking up.

From the back patio at my new house I
could see a sliver of the waterfront. The night would be just
beginning for the degenerates over there.

The rooms of my house were conjoined
with sliding walls for doors in a sort of Japanese style. There
were lots of horizontal surfaces, high and low levels, a mix of old
and new. Polished light wood floors and black lacquered wooden trim
and red appliances with silver or bold yellow accents made mine
distinct, Qim told me, from the other units in the
neighborhood.

In the bedroom was a bookcase full of
old paper books. They were on random subjects, probably picked out
by the color of the spines to complement the room. At the bookcase
I lingered standing, then sitting on the floor, then in the bed
with a stack beside me.

At midnight, I slept again, awoke
naturally with the dawn coming through the bedside window and
enjoyed a euphoric hour or so of dozing in early morning light
before Qim's gentle knock came on the front door.

Qim chatted with me the short distance
from my house to the Space Needle. She started off on a friendly
tone rather than professional which I gladly obliged.

Qim said she lived in a unit near mine.
It was bright in the glass enclosed tunnel we walked winding
through closely plotted, immaculately maintained vegetation. Qim
told me about her family’s house on Maury Island.

At the base of the Needle, we jogged up
the few steps to the door. I saw something in the way she looked at
me. But in the elevator she became quiet and only looked straight
ahead or down at the buttons.

I waited alone in a little windowless
room.

This is Qim? Hey, it's John.
meet up? - the gazebo at 8pm? - Great

At the top were two levels, A and B,
arranged around the central hub. An associate showed me to a vacant
desk on B, the lower level, and gave me an introduction to the new
technology.

Back in Wyoming, the piloting display
for the GAF’s was made up of three curved LED monitors put together
to give us about a 150 degree field of vision. We had a voice comm
system with two earpieces, splittable to allow separate feeds into
each ear, and two similarly configurable mics to allow verbal
coordination at the squad and wing level.

The cockpit controls consisted of dual
right-hand side sticks, an older touch mouse augmented by live
field sensors, three square shaped keyboards, and foot pedals:
left, right and center, with step activated buttons above and below
each one. Weapons systems were operated solely by a rectangular
left-hand keyboard set at a 45 degree angle. Every piece was
tightly set and fit to the pilot’s body, ensconcing us in the
experience to make us one with the equipment.

This new system was much different and
not intended for combat, but the basic principle was similar: the
operator was receiving live information and responding to it in the
moment. Also, like our fighter squadron, we were expected to be
able to work in concert as well as on our own.

On B there were between 25 and 30 of us
operators. We ran General Services, Maintenance and Management for
the KC+9 region. As a new deputy manager, I was in a nonspecialist
role until I developed skill and interest in a particular
focus.

At each desk was one fairly small
screen, about half a meter square and transparent, comprised of two
frames, the front one slightly smaller. There was no keyboard or
any other peripherals. The associate sat me down and clicked the
chair’s wheels in place. My eyes were drawn to the
screen.

Seated at the proper distance, the face
of the monitor appeared, starkly white, turning a light gray as I
stared into it. The gray shifted to red, which became a pulsing
violet and a complete image formed. It was a bit of brown tucked
under a shiny green bush. I saw the tail when it moved and knew it
was a rat.

I focused on the rat. I probably could
not have looked away if I wanted to. I wanted to see all of it and
to not let it escape. I hated its filthiness. It didn't belong in
this garden under this beautiful bush that it would work to destroy
in order to sustain and perpetuate itself. My disgust built and
peaked: a whirring in my stomach tightening my upper arms against
my body. A dull metallic cylinder emerged from the soil behind the
rat. Three spinning triangles at the rear propelled it up and out.
A jaw, just two plain clamp-like things, articulating out from the
sides, slid forward, and, with a jerking twist, seized the rat by
the neck and crushed.

I was the strength in those jaws and I
felt the rat die. The tail rotors spun the opposite way and the
metal mole drew itself back into the ground pulling the soft, limp
carcass with it, depositing it down somewhere I couldn't see or
feel. Then the connection was gone.

*

My first contribution to the KC+9
management system was over. The orientation assistant pulled me
back by the shoulders, the wheels of the chair came out of position
and the screen returned to transparency. Any longer in the system
without the implant, he said, would be
counterproductive.

We broke for lunch on the outside deck.
The weather had cleared. The assistant barely spoke which was a
relief. I just wanted to enjoy the view looking out over our
emerald and alabaster city with the water and over that the distant
trace of the Olympic Mountains. It was nice. I had a salad of goat
cheese, honey, almonds, and hearts-of-palm.

During lunch the assistant went off
leaving me on my own. I finished at my own pace then went back in
to wait at my desk. Only a minute later a specialist came with a
brown leather bag.

Without preamble, he withdrew a heavy
pair of opaque goggles which I put on without being asked. The
goggles beeped a few times quickly then held the tone and I felt a
stab above my left eye.

This was the ocular implant. With it, I
could use the KC+9 control screens for as long as I liked without
the otherwise inevitable headaches, fatigue and eventual permanent
neurological rejection of the system.

"Do you like my bag? It once belonged
to Dr. Watson." He said after we ran through a few simple
tests.

"James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA?" I
asked.

He frowned, "No, Watson like Sherlock
Holmes’ Watson. You know, my dear Watson?"

Like a little boy, he awaited my
approval but I just shook my head. Still cheerful, unfazed by my
discouragement, the specialist shortly left for the
elevator.

The orientation assistant was still
missing. A few meters away on either side of me were the other
operators in quiet absorption. B level was totally silent. From my
seat, the windows going around the curved walls were too high to
see out of.

I leaned and squirmed forward to click
the chair into place. The screens came alive, a little more vivid
now with the implant. All tension in me was erased. It was strong.
I was a heavy, armor-scaled fish cruising in warm prehistoric
seas.

The city gardens were the first thing
to come to mind. The gray mist dissolved and they appeared. I
wasn't in them. I wasn’t one with them or anything like that - I
had power there and influence. I knew them or could know them, as
necessary, and act on what I knew. The feeling was one of comfort
more than it was profound or even exciting. I was symbiotic with my
world, plugged into a steady, gently satisfyingly stable
existence.

So now what? I scanned checking for
more vermin. I imagined a sweeping, surface skimming run like we
did in our GAF’s. Instead, the screen centered immediately on a
single rat poking around along the base of a mango tree. I knew
without seeing, I don’t recall seeing, that this stand of mangoes
was in the eastern city garden complex along the outer rim. The
mole, a mole, appeared and the rat was killed and buried. I knew
without having to think or check that there would be no other rats
around, at least for awhile.

More problems arose and were resolved.
Aquifers running low were rebalanced with those nearly overflowing
and their mineral profiles modified according to seasonal
specifications. Different soil’s pH were noted and adjusted. I was
given a choice whether to add an acidic fertilizer to a section of
rain battered blueberries or to use a blend of waste materials,
coffee grounds, corn husks etc, as a mulch. I chose the
mulch.

"That's good. You're learning," said a
voice behind me. "Don’t pull away, we’re talking through the
interface," he warned.

"Why is that the right choice?" I
said.

"Mulch was building up: 4.31 t over the
five year mean. And the 5C fertilizer can be more easily
re-purposed or exported. Its shelf life is 20 times longer! It's an
easy call but still good for a beginner. You made the right
call."

"I didn't know any of that stuff. I
just guessed."

"Nothing can be a guess," he
said.

"Well, that makes sense. How do I find
out this stuff for myself?"

He didn't answer, whoever he was. My
question hung in the air. After awhile I could tell that he had
left.

I cruised around the city. If I thought
about something, it would come into view but only if the thought
was strong and clear. If I was ambivalent or conflicted, the action
would not happen. Getting the feel of it, I could easily choose and
switch between weak thoughts for myself and strong ones for
operating the system.

I went from plot to plot. I thought of
lists and they appeared. There were hints of things, little threads
of knowledge that could be expanded upon and explored. A single
plant or tree had a library of data available on it.

In the converted high rises, artificial
sunlight supplemented the meager amount that came in through
various apertures. Soil and air temperatures were automatically
adjusted within tenths of a degree. Watering was automated as well,
done by a network of branching drip pipes. The finer and more
unpredictable points of maintenance were left to mine and the other
B level operator's discretion.

The high rises in one section held the
legumes: lentils, tamarind, peanuts, soybeans and carob. These type
of plants fixed nitrogen into the soil. Specially engineered earth
worms tilled the soil and purified it of unwanted fungi and
bacteria. With specialized cilia they collected the fixed nitrates
then worked their way downward to deposit them at the bottom level.
From there another class of worms processed and distributed the
nitrogenous compounds as needed around the city.

From one of these high rises, I
followed the flow of drain water down to a lower terrace of coffee
shrubs. From there, the water flowed to the tightly packed rows of
wheat lining the highway.

I thought back to days earlier,
crossing over the highway to get to the waterfront and that spot
came up in the screen. The detail from the wheat planters dropped
away letting me see the area from overhead.

Groups of three or four fast moving,
windowless cars came through at regular intervals carrying freight,
no passengers. I spotted a kid standing at the edge of the highway
watching them whip by.

He wore the same red and yellow shorts
and shirt I remember from the waterfront. He was one of the
obnoxious skateboarders that everyone else seemed to
ignore.

He closed his eyes and stepped into a
lane.