Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

Sato shuddered inside his aloof observer brain. The ‘Play’ icon in his periphery blinked three times, froze, and faded away, breathing life into the remembered room.

“—can’t do this! They hold all the strings! You go in with a machete, and it all comes crashing down: you, me, everybody!” Sato heard and felt himself hiss in the whispers of a younger voice, yet could only watch the scene unfold like some shameful rerun.

“Are you really that blind? All of it is crashing down! The environment, industry, economy, society! The Narayana isn’t some ‘just-in-case’ backup plan; it’s the main event for these people! They spent the past fifty years squeezing every drop out of this planet so they can just cut and run and leave everybody else in the lurch!” Alan said, pushing himself from the island to pace the slate tile floor.

“You really should hear yourself right now,” Sato said, laughing, “You sound like some crazy-ass blogger with a doomsday conspiracy. They don’t want to abandon Earth; they’re working on the next logical step for all of us! Twelve billion people on the planet and counting… I’m glad someone is working on spreading us out a little!”

“Spreading us…” Rindal breathed a humorless laugh. “A fleet of fifty generational starships under secret construction worldwide. Trillions of credits bled from a suffering public in secret. And a war of attrition against the Slums waged to provide an Evil Enemy to blame. That sound like a group who holds humanity’s ‘best interests’ at heart? They built the Border twelve years ago to protect themselves. Not society, themselves . And they’re ramping up to do it again. There is no wall like Deep Space.”

Alan was right. No denying it. The powerful had deemed themselves worthy to survive and the rest undeserving. Triage of the Species. He wanted to tell Alan everything. The seats he had earned for himself, Jada, and her family. The agendas he had helped the Prescott Group draft into policy. Instead, Sato kept silent, waiting for his best friend to bury himself. For the greater good. Alan pressed on.

“If you help them with this… hell… even turn a blind eye and they’ll come after you, too one day. One day when it’s convenient for them, they’ll take you and everyone you love and toss your lives into the incinerator without a second thought. You are an asset, a tool with limited use. That’s how they see people, Enota. That’s how they own the world. I won’t just sit by and let my son grow up an unwitting slave.”

Sato looked down and away from Alan’s flashing glare. Inside his observing mind he did the same.

“Okay,” he heard himself begin the lie, “I hear you. What do you need from me?”

“Your voice. Everything you know about the back-room deals, cooked books, propaganda campaigns, and, of course, the convenient disappearances within the opposition. All of it in written in a sworn affidavit and mailed to my office,” Rindal said. Sato paused and rubbed his chin to make a show of the decision. Alan had a reputation for smelling lies.

“Then you’ll have it. But it will take more than the misgivings of an ex—collaborator to bring them down. You don’t have any proof. They’ll discredit me and shoot down my story befo—”

“I have blueprints, construction sites, and a current passenger manifest for the Narayana, leeched from the PRG’s internal files. Share-holders, bureaucrats, and other company men mixed with an as-yet uninformed contingent of doctors, scientists, and cultural figures. Unimpeachable,” Alan said.

“So why do you need my—”

“Your name is on the list. Harder to deny if it comes from you,” said Alan. That gave Sato pause. He knows? Why trust me? Alan seemed to read the question. “You’re my best friend, Enota. The brother I never had. I trust you. I need you. Humanity needs you.”

“I said ‘Okay,’ didn’t I? Where is this list?” asked Sato, realizing that he hadn’t even seen it. His observing self watched the next agonizing moments unfold.

“It’s safe,” said Alan.

“ Safe? ”

“Hidden.”

Stop playback and Close . Sato gave the internal command and Alan vanished along with that hideous kitchen, dumping Sato back in his stale three-hundredth-floor office. All these years he had wondered what ‘Hidden’ had meant. Now he had a pretty good idea.

“I’ll finish it,” he said with a knot in his throat, “I’ll find Aden and finish what you started and the whole fucking lot of it will come crashing down around them! Like it has to.” To hell with their ‘seats . ’ He reached forward and held down the Neural command key.

“Call John Kabbard.”

LIANI HAD BEEN tossing and turning under her cotton sheets since dawn. She would burrow into one position, stay still with her eyes closed, and flip over ten minutes later. It had taken them until four in the morning to get settled, depositing the passed-out stranger on her floral print futon. Since then, her half-sleeping brain swam with paranoid dreams.

Rolling over again, she compulsively tapped her temple for the millionth time. ‘ Net connection interrupted. Tower Signal lost. ’ Her Neu Feed, news tickers, email, and UptOwn resource management game sat cached in the same state they had been for hours. Her pack of robo-dogs in her UptOwn villa were probably starving by now, tearing the penguin butlers apart. That actually upsets me . Serious ‘real-time withdrawal’ had officially set in.

“Unnngh! Hell with it,” Liani said. She swiped the Neural home screen closed and sat up. The heavy, black ring on her finger glinted through the slatted light of the blinds. She turned it on her finger. An RFID signal jammer. The reason she couldn’t connect, but also the only reason Kabbard wasn’t banging down her front door. It was one of three Corey had handed out in the van. Just whipped them out of his backpack like they wouldn’t get us all thrown in jail!

Although, it had been her idea to cross the line in the first place. For what, she still wasn’t sure. Her gut had said ‘sleep on it.’ But half-dreams of being paraded naked through Mesa Park en route to execution didn’t clarify much. Ass-naked except for my running shoes…screw you, subconsciousness. She swung her long, bare legs out of bed and began the hunt for a clean-ish pair of jeans.

Liani heard snoring as she peeked her head out into the tiny living room. Her special guest’s feet dangled motionless over the edge of the futon armrest and to the right, facing the front door, Corey sat slouched in the flimsy kitchen chair. His chin rested on his collar bone, and he held a curtain rod in his lap. Each time his chest rose it sounded like a motorcycle from one of those old action movies he’d insisted on lending to her.

“My hero,” she whispered with a grin. The fossil fuel engine in Corey’s sinuses stalled as his eyes flickered open.

“Huh? What? Everything okay?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes to scan the room.

“Down boy,” she teased, then yawned, “It’s been quiet all morning. Coffee?” Corey nodded and reflected the yawn as she turned into the kitchen. She picked up the coffee pot from the sink, sniffed it, and then shrugged. Stuck it in the maker.

“Uh oh,” Corey said from his chair. Liani tensed.

“What?!”

“Seems like your new friend left a chunky, blue puddle on your rug,” he said, snickering. Liani scurried out of the kitchen. The boy who’d called himself Aden had a thin line of drool running from his mouth to the sickly sweet mess on her microfiber carpet.