Патрик Томлинсон - Children of the Divide

“Fifteen-meter penalty. Automatic first down.”

The Mustang fans in the stands went wild as the chains moved up. Boswell was out, but with the penalty they were at the outer edge of their kicker’s field goal range. A quick QB substitution, three run plays to pick up a few extra meters, a tense moment as the ball sailed through the air before hooking right and splitting the uprights, then his invigorated defense forced a three-and-out. A failed onside kick attempt later and the Mustangs had the ball back, up by one, and with enough time taken off the clock that all the offense needed to do was go into victory formation, take a knee, and let the clock run out to win the game.

Benson ran out into center field to shake Coach Makhlouf’s hand as tradition demanded. He leaned in and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Good game.”

“Lucky call,” Makhlouf said. “Holcomb was holding, I know you saw it.”

“You wouldn’t have complained if it went the other way.”

“Nope, not one bit.”

“Didn’t think so. See you in three weeks. Hope you’re ready.”

“Count on it.”

They parted ways and Benson returned to the Mustang’s locker room among a sea of attaboys and ass slaps. He took the opportunity to congratulate all of his players on a hard-fought victory and praise their grit, then critiqued their individual performances. The game ball went to Cha’ku for zer spectacular crunch-time catch. Ze was absolutely thrilled by the honor and cradled the ball like a newborn.

As the players changed out of their sweaty uniforms and stripped off their pads, Benson noticed his wife standing in the doorway, taking in the sights. Benson quickly shuffled her out of view. “Honey, you can’t just come in the locker room.”

“Why not?”

“It makes people uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” she grinned devilishly.

“They’re kids, dear.”

“Awful big for kids,” Theresa said. “But speaking of kids, we have to pick ours up from the airfield, remember?”

“Right!” Benson said.

“You forgot?”

“Absolutely not.”

Theresa sighed. “Honestly, Bryan, what’s the point of even setting a plant alert for you?”

“It must have glitched again.”

“Your head must have glitched again.” Theresa started moving towards the door. “C’mon, the pod’s waiting for us.”

Benson said a quick goodbye to his team, then followed Theresa to the light rail station in the lobby. A small, four-seat electric transport pod waited for them with its scissor doors open high. Benson settled into the opposing bench seats as Theresa selected the airstrip from the small control terminal. There were no seatbelts. There was no need for them. The doors slid shut and the pod silently rolled down the thin electrified tracks.

The silence extended to the cab as Benson looked out the window, avoiding his wife’s gaze. The stadium was on the far northern side of Shambhala, opposite the airstrip. The city’s neighborhoods whizzed past as the pod picked up speed. First the Museum district with its exclusive townhouses, cafes, pubs, boulevard of shops, and naturally the Museum itself. In what was considered a minor miracle by most outside observers, Devorah Feynman had, after fifty years and change, let her job as curator pass to her assistant. At eighty-five years old, Devorah was now content to keep herself busy as a tour guide. A slow, methodical, tortuously thorough guide who more than one visitor had faked a medical emergency in order to escape before the tour had reached its conclusion.

Benson was convinced she’d outlive them all.

Next came the Glades, which they called home. Five years after Landing, they’d learned the hard way that this area was prone to semi-annual flooding. A hastily-prepped series of earthen levies had seen to that little hiccup, but for a few months that summer they’d enjoyed the quaint entertainments of living in a wetland. Theresa had wanted a new couch anyway.

Beyond the Glades and across the river was the Native Quarter, but that was just the polite title everyone used to avoid calling it the ghetto. It was a labyrinth for humans to navigate, the Atlantians who built it eschewing the grid of streets in the rest of Shambhala for their more familiar village layout of concentric rings connected by spokes. From the air, the two halves of the city stood in stark geometric contrast. The Native Quarter grew into the unused land between the spaceport and the rest of Shambhala, where the humans hadn’t wanted to build due to the noise pollution and potential for crashing shuttles.

Of the fifty thousand plus residents that called Shambhala home, just over thirty thousand of them were humans. The balance were Atlantians who had emigrated from the villages of the road network and Dweller caves in the fifteen years since First Contact and the forging of the Trident.

At least their parents had. The thing about Atlantians was, once you had three of them in one place, it wasn’t long before you had thirty more of them. This wasn’t a problem before the Ark turned up. Life on Gaia had been harsh, forcing harsh choices. Choices Benson had been horrified by when he first saw them in action. Now, he knew enough to understand them in context.

It all started with a bearer with no name. Malnourished and heavily pregnant with a brood, ze’d wandered down the road network in Atlantis until ze found G’tel and the Shambhala Embassy. The bearer wove a tale of abuse at the hands of zer village elders, who demanded that ze adhere to tradition and zer judgment over which among zer brood lived or died. But ze’d heard fantastic rumors about G’tel, where beings from the sky had taught the village to grow two fullhand times as many crops on the same amount of land. Where there was more food than could be eaten, and broods weren’t culled anymore.

So ze escaped, and found zer way to this mystical place.

Tuko, still Chief at the time, wished to return the bearer to zer village, as was proper under their traditions. But Ambassador Mei was adamant, which was her tradition. Mei taught the bearer a brand new word. A human word that, until then, had never existed on Gaia, not even as a concept.

Asylum.

The political and diplomatic shitstorm that followed took months to settle back down again, but in the end, ze was granted asylum and safe passage to Shambhala, where ze gave birth to zer brood, all thirty-four of them. Ze was not the last. Within a year, over five hundred bearers, most of them pregnant, had requested asylum and moved to Shambhala. Nor were they alone. Many of the parents of the bearer’s broods also made the move, just as concerned about the fate of their children as the bearers were.

In short order, Shambhala was dealing with a massive refugee housing crisis. The urban planning council had to throw everything out the window, lift zoning restrictions, loosen building codes, and turn a blind eye to a lot of graft just to attempt to keep up with the unexpected population explosion.

Then, to make matters worse, the bearer with no name disappeared, leaving a hole in the expat community and a leadership fight that had yet to fully resolve itself. That had been ten years ago.

“Your secondary still needs work on their one-on-ones,” Theresa said, suddenly breaking the silence and causing Benson’s train of thought to derail in a spectacular fashion.

“Sorry, what?”

“Your secondary. They’re missing a step on their match-ups. They should be in position to disrupt more passes, even get a few interceptions, but they’re too slow out of the gate. Maybe a few more shuttle runs and interval drills.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Benson said. “Wait a minute. You said you weren’t watching the games anymore. You said they were, what was the word, ‘Barbaric’?”