King's County (3 page)

"Geake, Sergeant, we’re not going to be
marrying these broads. It's just a good time. When was the last
time you saw your girl, anyway?"

"It's been almost ten years." Geake
said.

"How about another?" Snake lady said
clinking together our empty heavy crystal glasses.

"Another round. Hold on, what are you
about 22, 23?"

"Yeah, 22. Or 28. Good guess,
LT."

"Well... Jesus Christ, Geake." Strange
guy, this kid. "Let’s just see where the night takes us,
OK?"

*

WY/MT 2065

I left the squadron and didn't look
back. After the meeting with the Major, I felt almost nothing for
the place. We had a little party for me, no big deal, a minor dent
in the beer wall. The squadron slept in their bunks while I dressed
to leave. Greater prospects awaited.

The training facility was in Montana: a
single plain white and windowless box-like building surrounded by
tall double fences on an endless prairie. The helicopter landed on
the roof. I was the only passenger and a group was there waiting to
receive me. It felt pretty good, to be honest. I felt
important.

There was about ten minutes of
paperwork and I was shown to my quarters by a young airman. I
shoved the one small bag I had under the bed nearest the wall and
went to sleep still in my uniform.

After dozing about an hour, I awoke to
find a man asleep on the other bed. He also still wore his uniform.
I saw that he was a Captain.

*

Ruth 2092

The bar had gotten stale so I left to
explore the place. Geake had gone off with a couple of Colombian
girls. They dragged him off his seat at the bar. He'd played his
dumb and innocent routine but went eagerly nonetheless.

I settled on a lounge at a lower level.
There were more people here. I got a drink from one of the machines
lining the wall.

A cute blonde chick, a little too short
with closely bobbed hair, came out of the dark to help me operate
the drink machine. It was kind of complicated to get exactly what
you wanted - I didn't really know what I wanted. I ended up making
something in a big thermos type thing with vodka and salty tamarind
and what she said was a mild nor-epinephrine and dopamine
activator, a mild stimulant in other words. I don't think she knew
what she was talking about but the end result wasn't too
bad.

Drink in hand, I wandered around and
lucked upon a nice heavy easy chair that was out of the way of the
main action in the lounge, perfect for me.

From this new vantage, about midway
down the club, I watched the light show come on in the open center.
It was almost palpable. Below the distant ceiling star lights,
holograms came and went in a shifting scheme of colors. I watched
dark purple African elephants on a pale yellow savanna lazily strip
tree branches with their trunks and chew the bark. The sliver of a
cobalt blue stream weaving through the stand of trees slowly began
to widen and expand to eventually cover everything. The savanna
became a lake. As the water rose, the elephants moved their legs to
keep their heads and trunks above the clear, dark blue
water.

The elephants rose with the water to be
replaced by a universe of marine life. The cobalt blue shifted to a
deeper navy. A bright, brick red octopus jerked through a
gracefully fluid mass of silver and orange fish. A school of
twitchy bone-white sea horses poked around the railing and entered
the lounge. They seemed nervous and didn't stick around very
long.

*

MT 2065

Captain Edward Hart was my roommate. We
were selected to train together and then go into space as a two man
crew for the Artemis project.

Ed was a better man than I and it
doesn't bother me to say that. He was certainly smarter. His test
scores were all higher than mine (mine were not bad, either) but
there was more to it than that. He was smooth, easy going but
intense. Confident, I guess is the word, and not without good
reason to be. He just seemed to always know what he needed to know.
Having him for a partner gave me confidence.

As a pilot, I have to say I was
probably a little better than Ed. We were both among the best in
the Air Force, everybody picked for Artemis was. But when put head
to head in the simulator, I won almost every match-up. Maybe he was
letting me win.

It was obvious they were trying to
figure us out, to find out why we were better. A lot of the tests
and things we did at the Montana facility seemed to have no other
purpose. The truth is, beside whatever talent or ability we may
have had, the real difference was in that, on a certain level, none
of us really cared at all about the Air Force or the mission or the
war and the lies and phony secrets.

We flew because we loved to. There was
honesty in it and that's a strength of its own. We wanted to do
well purely for its own sake. There was no greater calling or sense
of duty that motivated us - and anyone who claims otherwise, I
would bet you, is not a good pilot.

*

Ruth 2092

"Yo, man. I knew I knew you. What the
fuck, huh?"

Already I regretted getting up to talk
to him. The last time I saw him he was a lot quieter. Many years
ago it was,

"Alberto, you look exactly the same. Do
you realize that? You haven't gotten fatter or
anything."

"Yeah, I guess, you know... But I've
changed! I ain't in the military no more, man. I fuckin' work now,
man. Workin' hard."

"No, yeah, you're different. I see that
but, you look the same."

"So do you, maricon!" Alberto said. He
pounded on the bar for service and he and I and his thankfully so
far silent friend took a shot of the poison that he insisted on
ordering for us.

"So when did they approve the
anti-aging treatment for civilians?"

"Yeah, formula, like twenty years?"
Alberto was starting to brood. He hunched over the bar like he was
annoyed or frustrated. Maybe he resented me. It was time to bail
out.

"Hey, look, my friend took off with
these chicks and I think I need to go check on him. I think it's
been long enough, you know? Do you have any idea where they might
have gone?"

"Maybe, yeah, maybe. Alright, cool.
Let’s head up there. We were just goin' to anyway."

*

MT 2065

Month one in the big white box was
mostly aptitude testing: written exams, repeated and cross
referenced exams by psychiatrists, and various medical stuff
including physical stress assessments.

The next month they put the chip in our
backs and did calibrations. Endless calibrations, it was a new
technology and they were learning as they went.

All of the stress tests from before we
redid with the chip in place. Instead of just watching and
recording, the scientists made little adjustments to our blood
chemistry, hormones and things using the chip. They were
programming it to work on its own.

The effect was subtle at first but when
they had it fine-tuned the difference was amazing. Everything came
together. Ed and I went from what they said were average scores to
near perfect scores on the physical tests. We now had perfect
overall medicals and scored nine and ten percentile points higher
on the intelligence tests. It was good; we felt strong, like waking
up from the best sleep of your life, all the time.

We were getting close they said. The
testing and flight training were ahead of schedule. Launch
specifics were already being evaluated. Our focus shifted to
classroom sessions studying mission details while they figured out
what to do next.

*

Ruth 2092

"So my friend, he's all like, what the
fuck, right? Right? I mean, I don't know."

Something in Alberto’s drink must have
kicked in on the way to the Sky Level. He was animated now and no
longer surly. He wouldn't shut up.

"Yeah, I know. It's..."

"Oh fuck! I remember now! Yeah, that
was some shit, I'll tell you."

He kept interrupting me like this so I
stopped responding to him. I kind of wanted to smash his face but I
needed to find Geake first.

We entered a low archway to get on a
moving sidewalk. The sidewalk carried us through a dark tunnel
leading to the sole elevator to the Sky Level.

It was densely black inside the tunnel
with only the irregular, softly glowing aquamarine lights on the
belt to orient ourselves. The ceiling stretched out above us, its
dimensions obscure.

I blocked out Alberto. The music was in
here. It was softer than outside but still perfectly discernible. I
heard a million notes underneath the beat. Flamenco guitars,
violins, snare drums, organs, all fitted together and
layered.

"Hey man, you listening to me?" Alberto
asked and went on without waiting for an answer.

The ceiling erupted into a brilliant
tropical blue sky. We were on a white sand beach with palms and
scurrying crabs. A wet, salty breeze hit my back. The tunnel was
taking us into a clear, pale lagoon.

"So then I was like, they all gonna
give it up, so what the fuck? Whatever. I hit that shit hard,
bro."

Into the water the sidewalk took us.
Within the music I could hear bubbles rushing past my ears and then
a low rumbling and minute sounds of cracking shrimp.

Clown fish, green lobsters, parrot
fish, all kinds of fish, spotted eels in little caves, jellyfish
hanging above - Deeper, we went straight out to sea, floating just
above the coral garden.

Deeper, the water darkened. Long
strands of kelp stretched upward as we lost the bottom.

"Bro, I'm telling you, bro, you don't
know. That's all I got to say."

Blue-black, beyond the reach of the
sun, cool air fell down on me. Far in the distance ahead, a
shimmering creature approached getting larger and accelerating,
coming for us. It spread its huge, flowing, red burning wings to
hover above, a dragon. Its eyes were fearless and intelligent. I
bent backwards at the waist, staring up at him, absorbing the
dragon’s energy.

The display clicked off and the
darkness returned. Alberto had finally shut up. A glowing
pearlescent door appeared in front of us and the moving sidewalk
slowed to stop at the entrance to the elevator.

*

MT 2066

"I’ve seen this before. What is that
insignia, some tech squadron?"

"Oh, you must have seen one of the
teams at your old base. Yeah, sort of."

Colonel Thomas was one of the few
people here that I could actually talk to as a human being. I was
being given one of the many debriefings before launch. His tablet
had the same symbol on it as the side of the Greek’s travel
trailer, a horseshoe turned up like the letter U with two stars on
each side.

"What do they do?" I asked
him.

"What do they do?"

"The unit, or team, what are they
doing? The guys at the base were these crazy programmers or
something."

Colonel Thomas laughed hearing that.
"It's an ongoing project. They’re building a system to analyze the
combat data more closely. It's a new approach." He poured himself a
glass of water from the carafe on the table. "That stuff is all
going semi-automated."

"Semi? We’ve always had the autopilot.
What's the difference?"

"It's a different kind of thing. Much
faster, more complex - it's a secret as of now." He sighed and sat
back on the sofa. "But I don't mind telling you this, seeing as how
you’re going into space next week. Your squadron is getting
decommissioned. Everybody’s getting reassigned, probably sometime
this year. Sorry to tell you."

"I don't care. It was all just fun and
games, anyway. Couldn't last." I said to him. "Funny. Sneaky Greek
bastards."

*

Ruth 2092

"Your name, Lt. Waller?"

I stood before the prim but welcoming
hostess in the reception area,

"My name? Can you explain what’s going
on here? It's my first time."

"Of course!" She smiled broadly and
stared into me.

The elevator to the Sky Lounge took us
up 150 meters in about ten seconds – fast, but it didn't faze me.
Alberto gasped and looked like he was going to puke. I laughed and
teased him about it. He got angry and stormed out with his weird
friend as soon as the doors opened, typical pussy move. At least I
was rid of them.

"Though we have your ID already from
reading your card at the elevator, the lounge offers full
confidentiality. We ask guests to leave a name in order for us to
provide you the highest quality personalized service. You can, of
course, use your real name if you wish." The hostess said and
raised her carefully manicured eyebrows.

"You approved the card, right? So it's
not really confidential."

"Yes, sir. But we keep no records of
our guest’s ID once approved. Do you wish to leave a
name?"