G. Fields - Under Vanishing Skies

“I’m sorry. Jin had something important to tell me.”

“What was so important that you’re willing to risk a vote on the list without you?”

“You got to promise to keep this under your hat,” I said.

“I never wear hats, but I promise not to tell,” she said. “So come on, what is it?”

“Jin hacked into a satellite… a reconnaissance satellite.”

“You’re kidding, right?” She studied my face and then said, “You’re not kidding! How?”

“It’s complicated.”

Putting her hands on her hips, she said, “Are you saying I’m stupid?”

“No, it’s just that Jin isn’t ready for this to be made public yet. To be honest, neither am I. There are some things he needs to figure out first.”

She stared at me another few seconds and then said, “But can he control it? Take pictures and whatever else a reconnaissance satellite does?”

I nodded.

“That is pretty big news. I can see why he wants to keep it quiet,” she said. “Don’t worry. I won’t say a word. Just promise me that once he figures things out, you’ll tell me what’s going on.”

“I promise.”

Ahmed’s voice carried across the room. “So we have a second on the motion to vote, so let us begin.”

Shannon and I returned to our seats. We spent the rest of the afternoon embroiled in the same old debate, whether we should allow exceptions for unqualified candidates… and there were still a lot of them. When it became clear that the debate would stretch beyond four o’clock, I sent Jin a message that I was running late. It wasn’t until after five that Ahmed eventually called for the three-day recess in honor of the Remembrance Weekend.

Before heading down to the café, Michio, Shannon, and I made plans to meet up in the hotel dining room for dinner around seven thirty. I figured I’d have plenty of time to talk with Jin about his idea before dinner. I checked my watch for the third time and realized that I was wrong. Jin was late… over an hour late. I took a sip of tea and grimaced as I swallowed the lukewarm brew.

Where the hell was he? This morning he couldn’t wait to tell me about this conspiracy theory and now he was a no-show. I checked my data mat to see if he’d replied to any of the messages I had sent him. My inbox was empty. The only thing new was a reminder from my calendar that I was late for dinner with Michio and Shannon.

It wasn’t like Jin to be late, but it happened sometimes, usually when he was working on something particularly complex. Maybe he was still working out the details on his decryption plan. He hated presenting anything that wasn’t thought completely through. I hoped that was the case. Either way, I had to go.

On the walk back to the hotel, I passed banners and decorations that had already been hung up along the street. One read, “We will never forget.” Another one read, “Remember and They Will Never Die.”

As far as I was concerned, Remembrance Weekend wasn’t a holiday; it was a fucking waste of time. I mean, what kind of sadomasochistic son of a bitch wants to spend a weekend remembering the day the human race was nearly wiped out? Not me. I had better things to do, like stand watch out on North Point and look out for unidentified boats.

I didn’t have to stand watch now that I was on the Council. In fact, since we got the automated maritime monitoring app installed a few years ago, nobody had to physically go out to North Point to stand watch. I just liked it out there.

As I continued walking to the hotel, I thought back to that weekend when Rick and I had developed the app. We had been on watch and were bored. Rick suggested that we have an old-fashioned hack-a-thon. By the end of the day, we had figured out how to pipe the video streams from four remotely controlled cameras mounted on an observation deck into a simple app that compared pixel patterns with known boat profiles. If a boat was detected, the app sent out alerts to the MDF and nearby islands. It took some tweaking to get the pattern recognition dialed in. When we first deployed it, a flock of birds triggered a false alarm. Luckily, there weren’t enough birds anymore to cause that problem, not since the fish began to disappear. Lucky for us… not the birds.

App or no app, I volunteered to spend my three-day weekend out there away from everyone and everything. North Point was little more than a coral outcropping, but that didn’t stop the Maldivians from counting it as one of the two thousand islands that made up their nation. If there was a way that I could’ve moved out there by myself, I would have done it years ago. Other than paddling around in my kayak, North Point was the one place where I truly felt alone.

I reached the hotel and climbed the stairs up to the third floor. When I entered the dining room, I scanned the tables for Michio and Shannon. It was eight o’clock so only a few tables were occupied. Even if every table was full, I wouldn’t have had any problem spotting Shannon, not in that dress. She had apparently spotted me too. She pointed at her watch, shook her head, and motioned me over.

“I’m sorry,” I said when I reached the table. “I was waiting for Jin, but he didn’t show. That’s not like him. I’m starting to get a little worried.”

“Relax. I’m sure he’s fine. Knowing him, he’s geeking out on that special project you told me about.” She flashed me a smile so intoxicating that it threw me off balance. “You’re probably just upset because he stood you up. It’s not nice getting stood up, is it?”

I fumbled for something to say. Why the hell did this feel like a date? It wasn’t. I needed to pull it together. That damned dress of hers was making it difficult. It was tight enough to be a tattoo. I had to focus, but all I could focus on were her amazing tits.

“Well? Are you going to apologize or just stand there and gawk?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated and sat down. I suddenly realized that we were alone. “Where’s Michio?”

“He sent his apologies. There was a helojumper leaving and it was going past his island, so he snagged a seat on it. He said that he wanted to squeeze in a little more time with his family.”

“I don’t blame him. What about you?” I asked. “Don’t you want to get back to Gan and spend some time with what’s-his-name?”

She picked up her water glass, took a sip, and then said, “It’s Saravan and no… we’re taking a break from each other.” She set it down without breaking eye contact and began tracing the rim with her finger.

I took a drink to rinse away the taste of the foot in my mouth. When I finished, I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Stop apologizing for everything. Besides, what are you sorry for? Saravan and I had a physical relationship, not an emotional one. Things were getting stale lately so we decided to sail in different waters, so to speak. That’s all.” She shrugged.

My mind searched for something to say, but I had no idea how to respond to that. Almost every relationship I ever had was a serious relationship. Take Marcy Davis for instance. Sure we were in the second grade, but I was in love and I had planned to marry her. I probably would have too if she hadn’t dumped me by the jungle gym at recess. All of my relationships were like that, right up until college when I met Kelly.

I knew that I’d marry her the moment I spilled my beer on her at the student union. Only once did I ever have a physical-only relationship with someone. It was during a time when Kelly and I had broken up. I only remember the girl’s first name, Jessica. She lived in the dorm room down the hall and rumor had it she had a morally casual attitude towards sex.

I’d been drinking way too much one night and crying about Kelly. Apparently my roommate had enough of my moaning because he sent for Jessica. She was all too happy to help. Had I not been so drunk I probably would have sent her away. But I was drunk, I was twenty three, and she was naked. Afterward, I felt cheap and guilty as hell. I guess I never understood how people could separate the physical and emotional components of sex. For me, they were like two sides of the same coin.