The sea pounded against a lumpy boulder, throwing up a heavy spray of water which still didn't look right to me. With a tongue click and a swipe of my brush, I bumped the red value two points in the nearest droplet and stepped back from the projector.
The holosculpt projected exactly what I had painted and perhaps that was the problem. A froth of white draped limply over the dark blues and grays of the ocean waves. The rock in the foreground just sat there. The clouds above appeared bored.
I flung my brush through the projection. The seascape wasn't made any worse by the smears of color left in the wake of the flying sensor tip.
A red light flickered at the edge of my peripheral vision. "Activate," I whispered, and flicked my eyes down and to the right to examine my dashboard. The glowing figures projected by my Monitor indicated six messages had come through since I shut the Monitor off, I was late for my coffee date, and my blood pressure was ten points higher than it should be.
First things first. I closed my eyes, took two deep breaths, and encouraged my racing heart to slow and the blood vessels in my extremities to relax. A pleasant vibration behind my right ear indicated my blood pressure had normalized.
I grabbed my bag as I muttered at the Monitor. "Tell me, are all the messages from Aoife?"
A green dot lit on my dashboard. "Okay," I said, walking to the front door. "Message Aoife and say I'll be there in fifteen." The dot flashed twice and went out.
I stepped outside, hoping dad would be in the front yard, and looked around the property. A screen of trees intermixed with bushes obscured the house from the bike path which was our only access to the podway. Between the trees and house, squares of waist-high grass interspersed with squares of flowerbeds.
No dad in sight. "Monitor off," I said in a normal tone.
A numeral three appeared on my dashboard and the Monitor disappeared from my peripheral vision. I began prowling the yard, hoping dad would be somewhere near and feeling more pressured to find him quickly than I knew was healthy.
My irritation grew when I didn't find him in front. I went around to the south side and searched the rows of apple trees in the orchard. Apples hung low from every branch. Although still a little green, they were growing nicely. A flock of red-winged blackbirds broke from the grass ahead of me and I startled, then whipped around at a tap on my shoulder.
Dad stood there, frowning down at me.
"Pattern recognition," he said.
"Yeah," I snapped back. "I know. I walked right past you and didn't see you and I should have. Look. I'm late for coffee, I'm irritated, and I'm pissed."
"Ooh," dad said, and took a step back. "Irritated and pissed?"
I laughed at my solid, muscular dad's imitation of cowering before me.
"So why the pissed off irritation, Alishel?"
"I destroyed my seascape just now." My statement triggered the emotion I had been holding at bay and tears came swimming into my vision.
"Why did you do that?"
"Because it was no good. It—it didn't do what I wanted it to. It just kind of...sat there. Even after the animation it just didn't—it wasn't alive."
"Alishel." Dad put one of his thick-fingered, calloused hands on my shoulder with feather-light weight. "You've got talent, my love. You're just young. You need more—"
"Right," I said. "I know. I'm young, I need practice, I need experience, I need, I need, I need. But what I want is good art now!" My voice rose and I noted the sudden silence of the birds around us even as my father's eyebrows went up. I scuffed a weed with my toe. "Sorry. I'm sorry. And I'm late, too. And we could have had this entire conversation while I was biking if you'd just get a damn Monitor like everyone else."
"Yes, right." Dad said. "Was that the source of the pissed off or of the irritation?"
His effort at humor paid off and I smiled at him. "Oh, now, let me think. I believe the seascape pissed me off and your intransigence was irritating."
"Very good language usage. Now get your bike and go."
I spun for the house, hesitated, spun back, and placed a quick peck on his cheek. "Love you dad."
I turned my Monitor back on as I peddled hell-bent down the path. "Call a pod to the intersection of home path and 34C." The Monitor flashed green at me and began a countdown clock to the pod's arrival. Good. I'd timed it perfectly.
I slammed the bike into the rack just as the pod wheeled up. The pod seat formed to my backside, and I caught my breath before we even turned onto the main podway and joined up with a train heading into town.
#
Aoife and Dembe were waiting for me under the awning of the coffee shop. Aoife frowned when she spotted me and Dembe reached over and pressed his hand to her jiggling knee. Aoife's impatience rubbed against the raw spot on my psyche left by my artistic failure, and I sighed.
"Did you not even listen to my messages?" Aoife lifted a strand of her curly hair and shoved it toward my face. "We were supposed to match!"
I made a face at her. "It's platinum week? So sorry I didn't have time, but I was busy completely screwing up something important."
She pouted and dropped the curl. "Your holosculpt didn't turn out?"
"No."
Dembe removed his hand from Aoife's leg and put it on my arm, his elegant fingers putting gentle pressure on my bicep.
"What is it?" I asked.
He leaned forward, his platinum hair contrasting oddly with his brown-black irises. "Not here," he whispered.
"Are you crying?" Aoife asked.
"Not here," he repeated, and swiped at his eyes.
Aoife jumped to her feet, bumping the table in her rush to go. My hand darted out to steady the table. She glared at me, then turned to Dembe.
"If not here, where?"
"Let's walk to the park," he said, and unfolded his lanky frame, as always making me feel short despite my greater-than-average height.
Aoife swung her compact frame into motion, driven, as usual, by great internal energy. Dembe and I followed, our longer strides making up for her head start.
A block from the park, Aoife could no longer handle the silence of my brooding and Dembe's apparent stress.
"So what?" She asked. "What's the big deal?"
"I found something," Dembe said. "I was hacking and I, uh, I guess I hacked into the wrong place."
"Oh my god," Aoife breathed. "Did you get caught this time?"
Dembe waved his hand. "I doubt it. I'm too good for that. Besides, I'd already know if I had, wouldn't I?"
"So, what'd you find?" I asked. "Flash it to us."
He shook his head, looking miserable. "I can't flash it. I won't." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't even trust our Monitors with this one."
Aoife and I stopped walking.
"What?" She screeched. "You don't—"
Dembe clamped a hand over her mouth. "Hush. No, just...just hush."
He left his hand in place until Aoife nodded. She started talking again as soon as he dropped his hand. "So how are you going to show us if you can't flash it?"
He swung his satchel off his shoulder, looked around to spot the nearest camera, and turned his back to it. Aoife and I crowded his shoulders to look at the actual piece of paper he pulled out.
Aoife saw it first, gasped, and stumbled back a step. At first, I couldn't make out what the still shot portrayed. I saw bits and pieces, flashes of green and splashes of red. Whatever it was, it made my heart go still and my limbs freeze. After a moment, I realized my eyes had drifted away from the paper to the ground. I forced them back and saw the paper shaking—no, Dembe's hands were shaking. If he could look, I could, too.
I studied the image this time with an artist's eye. The shot was framed by a riot of greens—the interlacing vegetation of jungle. Thick, white smoke rose from grass huts. Closer to the foreground, villagers lay in heaps on the ground. Women sprawled in bloody clumps, their limbs at strange angles. Black pools soaked their crumpled skirts. The tiny limbs of babies and young children poked out from beneath the women.
In the foreground three men hung by their feet from poles, their long black hair brushing the ground. The men's faces...their faces...I whirled around and vomited into a bush.
When I straightened up and turned back to my friends, Dembe was shoving the paper back into his satchel as a pair of men walked toward our group.
One of them stopped as he neared us. "Are you okay?" He asked me.
I nodded. I could feel how wide my eyes were.
"She's just got a stomach virus," Aoife said.
I wondered how she could recover so quickly from the brutality we had just witnessed.
"Get her to a House Doctor," he said. "No need to suffer."
"We were just on our way home to do that," she replied with a bright smile. "Thanks!"
My Monitor alarms were going off. I checked them automatically and saw a scroll of alerts had triggered. "Blood pressure spike, sympathetic reaction, cortisol levels elevated..." It advised me to perform immediate biofeedback and asked if it needed to contact emergency services for physical threat.
I assured Monitor there was no threat, closed my eyes, and began a calming breathing sequence. Problem was, with my eyes closed, all I saw was a pile of carnage.
Dembe's hand touched the back of my hand. "Sorry, Allie. Sorry. Are you alright?"
I jerked my chin down once and opened my eyes. "Let's walk."
We turned into the park and took the meandering path which passed huge oaks and planters full of flowers. Tall grass, shelter for many varieties of North American wildlife, brushed against my thighs as I stumbled along.
Aoife broke the silence. "Why on this Green Earth would you show us such a thing? Where did you find it? What the hell, Dembe?"
"It was archived on the Public Services site. Under a service I've never heard of."
"But..." Aoife trailed off.
I picked up for her. "But we know all the services. There's Environment, Health, Education, Technology, Security,
Agriculture—"
"Yes. And there's also a hidden menu for Biome," Dembe said.
"Biome?" Aoife repeated.
Dembe remained silent as we both processed this information.
"Those weren't humans then," I said slowly.
"They were Nosies," Aoife said. I looked at her and saw her face had relaxed.
Her declaration infuriated me. "Don't call them that. They're Biome Natives," I said. "Just because they live on a different planet and have big noses doesn't mean they're not people."
Aoife clicked her tongue. "Ooh. Touchy much?"
"My dad says—"
"My dad says," Aoife mimicked in a sing-song.
Dembe cleared his throat. The sound broke our glaring contest.
"Yes?" I asked, turning to him.
"The point is...when was the last time you saw something about the war on Biome?"
"That was a long time ago," Aoife said.
"Yeah," I continued for her. "It was vicious, but why bring it up now? And why would some mysterious department keep stills of the horrible thing?"
"The time stamp is August 23, 2345. And there's lots more like this."
"That's last month!" Aoife screeched the last word.
"That's last month," Dembe repeated.
"I don't get it," I said. "Why...what..." The varied stresses of my day overflowed into anger. "This doesn't have anything to do with me—with us. Why show us some horrible picture of something that may or may not have happened last month on Biome when it has no bearing on anything? It's like—it's like pornography or something. It's gratuitous."
Dembe stepped back. At his movement I found I had leaned into his personal space and maybe my voice was raised, too. With a sigh, I let my shoulders drop. As soon as I relaxed, Dembe laid a hand on arm.
"No bearing?" He asked. "You've seen the conspiracy worm bots just like the rest of us. Don't you think it might be important to know if our entire government is lying to us?"
Some ideas are so new and awful that it is hard to think about them. I heard Dembe's words. I recalled the last worm bot which had briefly blinked on my Monitor as I connected to the web. It had a border which flashed red and yellow and had screamed "Secret War On Biome Ramps Up!" As always, I had dismissed it with a flick of my eyes. Pressure built up in my head.
"That's ridiculous. UE wouldn't allow those worm bots if—"
"Are you hearing yourself?" Dembe asked. Now his voice was rising. "You just suggested UE should control everything we see on the web! You just suggested..." he broke off, his eyes wide.
Aoife stepped to stand beside me. "Maybe this is all bullshit," she said. "Maybe we're just a bunch of kids who have no business poking our noses into secret government files."
My brain scrambled with the words of the conversation. "Secret government files" rubbed up against "conspiracy" which became entangled with the entire government lying to us. The pressure in my head ramped up again and the blood pressure warning started blinking urgently on my dash.
"My Monitor's screeching at me," I said. "I'm going home to meditate. Do something calm. Take a long, hot bath. Something."
"Great," Aoife said. "Run home to daddy."
I spun on her, my body moving too fast, my eyes narrowing. She flung her hands up.
"Stop! I'm sorry," she yelled.
I saw her fear and it broke me a little.
"No, Aoife, I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry I lost my temper."
In one of her flash changes of mood, her face lit up even as her bottom lip trembled. She threw her arms around me and held me tightly, rocking a little back and forth. When she finally let go, we stood close, foreheads together.
"I've been mean today," she said. "It's my time to bleed. I just get so wound up."
"You do," I said. "You get really wound up, and I have a temper, and Dembe here pokes his nose where it definitely doesn't belong." I laughed a little and stroked her cheek while reaching blindly for Dembe's hand. He took mine and squeezed a little. "But we still love each other, right?"
"Right," they said in unison.
Aoife linked her arm with mine and turned us toward the podway. "Let's send you home, Allie."