Tag - A Technothriller (26 page)

“My advice is simple but heartfelt, and please think of it as the wish of an old man passing into the twilight of his years, with no motive other than to see his fellow humans prosper in perpetuity. My wish is that you embrace the new Personal Unique Identification Law. Embrace it as brothers and sisters who have nothing to fear from each other, as it will exclude those who wish to create terror and unbalance this beautiful society we have built.

“Thank you, my fellow humans, for allowing me to contribute as I have to UNPOL these many years. Thank you.”

***

The clock on the Devscreen read 12:08am as I watched my uncle, my lips moving with the words he spoke.

I lay on a futon in the living room of the beach house watching the Devscreen we had hung on the wall. Mariko lay with her head on my lap, yawning as she flipped the page of a book she was reading. She saw me and turned to look at the screen. She hadn’t been watching, absorbed in her book, ‘A Tail Of Two Zos’ by Nomis Elroy.

She sat up, slapped my thigh lightly and said, “You wrote it?”

“Wrote what?”

“The speech he’s giving. You wrote it, didn’t you? Waving the book at the Devscreen.”

“Er, yes. But that has to be our secret. OK?”

“Yes, of course, but how could you? I mean the Tag Law, you don’t support that do you?”

“No, not support, but then I’m not against it either.”

“Then how could you write that, if you don’t believe in it?”

“Well, Sir Thomas asked for my help, and I could hardly turn him down could I? So I just imagined I was a slightly xenophobic conspiracy theory nut and went from there.”

Mariko gave a full-throated laugh and then said, “That’s kind of cynical wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose it is, but they’re really his words, not mine. I just made them sound better.”

“Yes, but you’re playing a pretty significant role in this. I mean what if the Tag really gets voted in?”

“There’s a good chance it will from what I’ve seen on the surveys so far. This is just Sir Thomas’s last hurrah, another shining example of civic duty to be laid on the pyre when his time has come.”

“Are you sure? He looks pretty serious about it.”

“Oh he’s serious enough. I just think that it will happen irrespective of the speech. So writing it doesn’t make a difference”

“Wow, that really is cynical. Of course writing makes a difference. What about Bo Vinh then? Was he just another guy, or did his writing change the world?”

“No, you’re right. He wasn’t. He was a philosopher and a true leader, and without him there probably wouldn’t be any humans left to fight over.”

“But that’s my point – by supporting something you don’t believe in then aren’t you corrupting the very ideals that Bo Vinh espoused?”

I reached up and, stroking the back of her head, said, “Come on, let’s not get into an argument about my uncle or politics in the first hour of the new year. How about we go for a swim instead?”

She smiled and said, “OK, but allow me one last comment. A woman’s prerogative, OK?” And she held her finger out in a parody of Sir Thomas.

I laughed and said, “Sure, go ahead.”

Mariko leaned in close to stare into my eyes, and said, “I don’t care about your uncle or politics, I’m concerned about you, and that’s why I’m a little upset. I like to think of you as my perfect hero, and thinking of you as cynical just doesn’t fit that image.”

She leaned her body forward and gave me a hug, pushing her chest against mine. As I held her, I smiled and thought to myself, I am the luckiest man alive.

She pulled back and reached down, stripping off her top outer. “Now let’s go skinny dipping.”

I stroked my hand up her leg and kissed her, my other hand coming up to support her as I shifted my thighs and laid her back onto the futon. I whispered in her ear, nuzzling it at the same time, “I’ve got a better idea,” and brought my hand from her leg up to her breast, stroking the nipple with my thumb.

She pulled my face from her neck, slipping away a little and looking into my eyes, and batted her eyelashes at me. I smiled, and suddenly found myself lying face down on the futon, with her knee in my back and my arm twisted up with her knee. Her lips teased the top of my ear and she said, “No, I think your first idea was better, wouldn’t you say?” giving my arm a little tug for emphasis.

“Yes, yes, it was much better idea,” I said, starting to laugh.

She released my arm and stood up, walking across the room to the open doors and out on to the deck that surrounded the beach house. She turned and looked at me lying on the futon, my head rested on one hand, gazing at her, smiling. She hooked her thumbs into her bottom outers and pulled down, stepping out one long leg at a time, straightening and hooking her thumbs into the tops of her inners. Turning to face me full frontal, she eased them down a few cents at a time. I rose and she dashed for the stairs that led down to the beach as I came through the doors to the deck. I watched as she sprinted down the beach and into the surf, not slowing down but powering in until she had reached deep enough to swim. I saw her diving in, disappearing.

I stripped my outers off watching where she had gone in. She still hadn’t appeared. My heart beat faster and leaving my inners on I sprinted down the beach to where she had gone in and shouted her name.

“Mariko, Mariko!”

Suddenly my legs were taken from underneath me and I went down into the meter deep water. I put a hand out and felt her hair, as she twisted around me and, surfacing, pulled me up. I was angry.

“I thought you’d drowned.”

She grasped my jaw, thrust her mouth against mine, driving a salty tongue in and grabbing my cock through my inners. She said, “I’m the most dangerous animal on this beach, baby, and don’t you forget it.”

Then she slipped out of my grasp and, twisting in front of me, pulled me off balance again. Taking me across her shoulders in a fireman’s lift, she straightened her legs up and dropped to one knee softly but firmly easing me onto the ground. She tore my inners off with a single harsh swipe of her hand, fingers extended into talons. With the same hand she reached down and grabbed my cock at its base before lowering herself onto me. The sudden warmth surrounding my cock unleashed something inside me, and reaching back with one hand, I pushed myself, my knees straightening and lifting us both. We surged back into the sea as she molded herself to me, wrapping her legs around my buttocks. When the water came to my thighs I held her close and toppled forward, taking my hands down to pull her waist into me. We twisted, joined together, in the sea, holding our breath, until kicking against the bottom I found purchase for us and we surfaced. With her legs wrapped around my hips, and her arms around my neck, she pulled me into another long kiss, and together we swayed with the ocean.

“How does a Special Operations Executive feel about having children?” I asked her.

She clasped her hands behind my neck, and leaning back to look in my eyes, said, “Well that would depend on who the father was going to be.”

I ground against her and said, “I think I’d make a pretty good father.”

“No, you’d make a great father. Now quit talking and get fathering will you?”

Pulling herself up on my shoulders, she lightly bit my earlobe. I braced both feet in the sand, toes curled for extra purchase, as she plunged down with her pelvis, riding me hard.

Chapter 23

Swimming With Sharks

Jonah and Mariko’s Beach House, Sisik Beach, Malaysian Geographic

Wednesday 1 January 2110, 11:40am +8 UTC

Sprawled in a tangle of limbs and blanket, I woke to the buzzing of my Devstick. I reached over, thumbed the Devstick to silent and closing my eyes tried to go back to sleep. But the Devstick had done its work.

Disentangling myself from Mariko, I got up and walked over to the shelves that we had put up on the wall facing the jungle. I pulled out one of her batik wraps and wrapped it around my waist, tying it into a knot below my belly button as I’d seen the locals do. I turned around and faced the sea. Our sleeper, large enough for four people, was against the wall to my left, positioned in the middle. Two windows flanking the bed were now shaded by the Clearfilm shading I’d put up as a temporary measure. Against the opposite wall was the railing guarding the stairs until they reached their zenith a meter up. The kitchen, shower and outlet were on the ground floor.

I went downstairs, treading lightly past Mariko, on the wooden floor that we had sanded together a couple of days ago, and walked over to the bench that we had put up that same day. It was temporary but served the purpose of holding the old-fashioned coffee percolator plus the other cooking machines. I filled the percolator with water and set it onto the electric heat pad. Searching the refrigerator I found some grapes and I ate those waiting for the coffee aroma to hit. As soon as I smelled the coffee I got out the cups and put them on a tray.

I dug the croissants out of the fridge. They weren’t as good as those from the French bakery near our old Env, but they weren’t bad. I put them under the heat and waited. The coffee percolated through and the croissants’ butter melted. I placed everything on a tray, added a tub of raspberry jam, and went back upstairs. Mariko was still sprawled out where I had left her, and I set the tray down on the floor beside the futon in front of the large Devscreen.

I thumbed the Dev on and leant back against the cushions. The late morning sun lent a hard reality to the light outside the windows and I debated getting my eye shades. Laziness winning out, I let the daily data stream flush itself out on the screen.

I flicked over to messages. There were several, mostly from acquaintances wishing me a happy New Year. But one stuck out: the subject was ‘wake up’. I thumbed it and the message read, ‘Jonah, Jonah, wake up’. I frowned and thought that’s weird but then dismissed it as a joke or spam – the sender wasn’t identified which, given that it had reached my personal contact messaging, was a surprise but not unheard of.

I reached over and got the coffee off the tray. Coffee in the morning was a new taste, but I was already a committed devotee. The smell made me hungry and the sweet dark taste made me flick data streams back to the daily feed, my brain kicking into action.

I frowned. Something bothered me but I wasn’t sure what it was. The feeling was like when you’re sure you’ve forgotten something but cannot remember what, and I couldn’t shake it. I spooned some raspberry jam onto a piece of croissant and popped it into my mouth. I felt fidgety. I picked up my Devstick to thumb the Dev again, keeping the volume down. The image changed and I was watching a roundup of global news.

The restlessness grew and suddenly an image of a stark room flashed in my mind. It felt like a dream, only I knew this wasn’t a dream. With those, if I focused, I could recall the remnant images. With this, when I tried, the images hovered just out of reach. I flicked the Dev channel back to messages and scanned the received list again.

I opened it again, and it said the same thing. ‘Jonah, Jonah, wake up’. That was it, the sender a series of numbers and an @ sign that made no sense. It was weird. Another flash hit me with searing clarity: throwing up into a recycler, a golf cart in a tube. I pressed my fingertips into my shut eyes and smoothed out over my eyebrows, pulling taut skin over my cheekbones and down my jaw, breathing deep. It wasn’t from a dream. They were memories, recent memories. Mariko gave a little snore, bringing me back to the present.

I picked up the cup of coffee and walked silently to the sliding door to the deck. Knowing the right side opened with a loud squeak, I swapped my right hand for my left to hold the coffee cup and opened the left side of the clearfilm door on to the deck. Closing the door behind me, I turned and went to the railing, leaning on it, looking out to sea. The midday sun beat harsh on the sand turning observation into a squint, the blue green of the sea easing the glare from the strip of white sand. The gap between the sea and the house was narrow with the morning tide fully risen. The sundial I’d made from a circle of wood found beside the house and mounted on driftwood showed the sun was at its zenith.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes to blackness, swarms of red, a new image. A white room. A naked man sitting on a Biosense. Jibril. Gabriel. The runner. My brother. The thought punched me in the stomach and I threw up the coffee over the railing into the hot white sand. I stared at the spew of coffee as I wiped my mouth and sniffed. It wasn’t a dream.

I turned to reenter the house but seeing Mariko lying on the floor, froze. The runner Gabriel was my brother. Somehow I knew that was true, and then another memory. A loud laugh, Gabriel sitting on a sleeper talking to me.

How will she react? I couldn’t begin to guess. I hoped favorably – that is she’d believe me and help me. Help me for what? I couldn’t trust my mind. What had seemed real was not, and reality was being displaced one chunk of memory at a time. One chunk of memory at a time, where had I heard that? Gabriel had said it, on the Moon. The sun beat viciously down on the top of my head. I walked across the deck and slid the door open, it protested with a loud squeak and Mariko woke, coming upright, shielding her eyes from the glare and looking at me from under the shadow of her forearm.

I walked over to her and sat down, leaning my back against the edge of the sleeper.

She said, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

I leaned my head onto the sleeper and, staring at the ceiling, groaned. My head hurt. It felt as if my brain had swollen and wouldn’t fit in my skull, pressing against the sides. I brought my hands up to my temples and pushed in on both sides with knuckled fists, groaning again. Another memory came. Gabriel sitting on the sleeper opposite me, talking, and this time the images came with sound. Gabriel saying, ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. At the beginning you will think that you are remembering a dream, but over the course of a couple of hours, the details of the dream will be filled in with ever-increasing clarity. Your mind will return again and again to the little reservoir of information that I’ll plant and the signals, travelling from the outback of your brain, will come in ever-larger memory chunks, until you will reach the moment where this description will be relayed to you word for word, complete with the images of me and this room’.