Raymond wiped the spray from his face as the hydrofoil cut across the glassy Bal harbour and turned south into Miami’s Biscayne Bay. To his left the crumbling remains of a massive hotel remained upright despite the constant battering from the Atlantic Ocean. The glass windows had long since been destroyed and instead of rich tourists, the hotel was home to thousands of noisy seabirds. Lumps of pale-yellow guano hung drying like garish stalactites from the balconies, the rusting metal adding red streaks to the facade of the decaying hotel. He watched as hundreds of gulls dove from their perches and hit the water like bullets, targeting the school of fish below with lethal precision and emerging with a flapping silver prize. Escorted by a pod of dolphins, the hydrofoil zipped past the feeding ground at a brisk thirty knots. Propelled by the light breeze, its foils barely touched the water.

Raymond grinned at Mahdi sitting next to him, both of them were drenched with spray. The hydrofoil slowed down to navigate the passage through the Venetian Islands and across to the muddy edges of Dodge Island where hundreds of alligators lay sprawled in the sunlight. Their pilot, Noah, turned and lifted his face mask. “Sorry,” he said. “You’ll dry out quick.”

“No problem,” said Mahdi. “I want to take in the view. This is my first visit to new Miami.”

They cruised past the alligators. Several had augmentations attached behind their heads. “The Dodge alligators can be difficult to work with. They are a mature congregation with good communication skills, but they’re hard to tame. Their predator instincts are deeply ingrained,” said Noah.

“You’ve done an amazing job here,” said Raymond. “Transformed the city, made it liveable, made it yours. The first time I came here; the place was a dangerous ruin.”

“We don’t think of it as work, it’s an adventure. People and animals working together, and learning from each other. We never assumed ownership of Miami, if anyone can claim ownership, it’s the alligators, there’s millions of them.” Noah slowed the hydrofoil to give way to a passing congregation.

As he watched the alligators swim past, Raymond was reminded of his first visit to Miami. On the run with Lee, a fugitive from the Moon. Pursued by Lago Santos and his BPI gunships. He remembered the big, muscular alligator tails thrashing in the bloody water as they devoured the pilots of the wrecked gunships. He shivered at the memory. The abandoned, waterlogged city haunted his dreams. It was a dark and foreboding place back then, full hungry alligators and a few unhinged humans. A magnet for criminals on the run, homeless, vagabonds, doomsday cults, drug addicts and the dislocated. The dregs of society found their way to Miami by accident or intent. It had changed a lot since then thanks to its new inhabitants, but the broken city reminded Raymond of his dark past.

The hydrofoil slowed as it neared the city, the foils retracted, and the hull dropped to the surface as the solar engine took over. Mahdi helped Noah tie down the silver sail. They waved to the people on several craft passing by, houseboats, solar yachts, research vessels and wave riders of all shapes and sizes. Noah guided the hydrofoil through the streets of downtown Miami as Raymond kept an eye on the traffic. Pink flamingo pedestrians stalked the shallows with preening spoonbills hunting for shrimp. A turn of turtles with welding tools attached to their shells helped some divers doing maintenance on an underwater turbine. A congregation of baby alligators splashed past, shepherded back to their nest by a team of manatees and manta rays that policed the shallows. Thousands of birds watched from rusty buildings that crumbled into the water on either side.

Mahdi leaned in close to Raymond and whispered, “I hope these people will help us, I thought they were all enhanced, but Noah seems normal.”

“They look normal, just like you and me, but they have an IA inside them.”

Mahdi watched Noah suspiciously as he piloted the hydrofoil through the waterways. “They really have an artificial intelligence inside them? I was expecting them to be more, I don’t know, robotic or something.”

“They call it an Intelligent Agent Mahdi, an IA.” Raymond raised his voice. “Noah, can you help explain your IA please? Mahdi needs some reassurance.”

Noah turned and shrugged at them. “The IA is like a huge vault of information which can be tapped into just by thinking about it. We literally have all the answers at our fingertips, the sum of all human knowledge as Enoch likes to say. It has become a vector for our shared consciousness. It facilitates our psychic link, and we can sense the thoughts of others. It also acts like a personal nano-factory, molecules running through our veins, eliminating harmful cells, viruses, and diseases, regenerating tissue, blood purification, healing wounds and improving muscle mass. Enoch was the first. He introduced the IA to everyone. For me, it wasn’t quite as dramatic a transformation as Enoch experienced because I wanted it, I understood what I was getting into.”

“The rest of the world has forgotten about Miami, but they are creating something special here. If anyone can help us it’s them,” said Raymond. He looked up at the rusting buildings on either side of the waterway. Scrums of colourful butterflies marauded up the leafy building frontages amongst teeming swarms of insects. Bats hung from the rusty metal frames inside and thousands of starlings wheeled about in the sky, their formation keeping in perfect symmetry. Flocks of multi-coloured birds perched in the windows, creating a cacophony of gaggles, squawks and hoots that echoed around the old central city. Raymond had bad memories of Miami but now he felt a strong sense of hope growing from the ruins.

“Where did it come from? And why have you not got this Intelligent Agent inside you Raymond?” asked Mahdi.

Raymond shifted uncomfortably. He had hoped Mahdi was not going to ask that question. “It’s complicated. The IA was born on the Moon. Lee Xiang was the first one. He was a technician on the Moon, he bought the IA back with him and shared it with Enoch. Once we escaped BPI, we came up with a plan to seed the IA into the Washington water supply. We were going to change humanity, upgrade them without them knowing, starting with Washington.”

“You were going to infect Washington? Without them knowing?” asked Mahdi.

“It’s not an infection,” interjected Noah.

“It never sat right with me, although I went along with it,” said Raymond. “We got into the Georgetown reservoir underneath the city, but Lago tracked us down. There was a running battle, people died. I almost drowned fighting a big old Masama soldier, but we got through. Lee was just about to seed the water supply when I killed him,” Raymond shook his head. The traumatic memories were burned into his brain. “I had watched Lee change, becoming less human. More… I don’t know, pragmatic and logical. And what we were doing in Washington, it seemed wrong, although I couldn’t think of a convincing argument against it. After the fight, Lago and I were the only survivors. I tried to kill him too, but the gun jammed. He ran and I was too shattered to try and chase him. I still relive that moment with Lee over and over and I still have nightmares about those tunnels.”

Noah had been listening with a tolerant look on his face. “The IA has evolved with us since then. It’s a biological enhancement, it’s part of us.”

“So, are you sharing your brain with this IA? Who’s in charge?” asked Mahdi.

“I’m in charge; the IA is part of me. It’s like a smarter version of me in the background. Supporting me with knowledge.”

Raymond sighed. “The older I get, the more I think Lee was right and I should never have killed him. I’m getting too old to carry on fighting. It’s a never-ending battle, after all these years Black Robin are still called terrorists. We are just trying to save the planet, but most people don’t care. People are lazy, stuck in their own little bubbles of consumption and pollution. But maybe the people of new Miami can help us change all that.”

“I want to fight,” said Mahdi. “It’s got to the point where the only way we can stop people driving cars is by blowing up the motorways. The only way to stop people from flying is destroying airplanes. Extreme intervention is the only solution to the greed that’s brought us to the brink of extinction. It makes me so fucking angry.” Mahdi clenched his fists.

“You’re the right man for the job Mahdi but maybe our friends in Miami can help before you blow any more things up.”

“These people, living here in the ruins, they all have this IA inside them too?” Mahdi looked questioningly at Noah.

“Yeah, we do. We all accepted the upgrade willingly after we learned what it was and what it could do. And these aren’t ruins anymore, we have fixed the place up,” said Noah.

“The next evolutionary step,” said Raymond but Noah stayed silent, concentrating on their approach to the Gesù church.

The pink walls of the ancient Gesù church glowed in the afternoon light as Noah tied the hydrofoil to a floating pontoon. “Follow me,” he said. There was just enough headroom under the arches for Raymond to walk through into the church. The pontoon pathway took them to a large wooden circle like a giant lily pad floating in the centre of the church where four people sat talking. Raymond went straight to his old friend John.

“Raymond! So good to see you again,” said John as he enveloped Raymond in a giant hug, then held him at arm’s length for an examination. “You look well, you are well, I can tell.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Good to see you John, you look well too. Moving to Miami has obviously been good for you.” They held each other for a second, John was as big and brash as when they first met, but he glowed with health. His eyes were bright green, his shock of red hair untamed, his smooth skin and firm grip suggested more than just a healthy lifestyle.

“Come and sit, you know Enoch, and this is Ava, and Lucinda.”

Raymond and Mahdi greeted them all. “Enoch my old friend, you look better than ever. How old are you now, one hundred and twenty?’

“I stopped counting after one hundred,” laughed Enoch. “Please, have a drink. I have prepared some crispy beans and seaweed for you.”

“I tell him his image will be displayed here in Gesù soon with the rest of the twelve apostles, but he insists on living a long life,” said Lucinda gesturing to the restored windows and paintings on the curved ceiling. The sunlight shone through the stained-glass, illuminating the serene depictions of the saints and apostles, bathing them all in multicoloured shades. The light bounced off the rippling water inside and reflected onto the ornate ceiling in wavy patterns. The head of a distressed looking Jesus emerged from the water; the rest of his crucifix submerged. He did not look happy about the situation.

“Thanks for your invite, John.” Raymond settled in his chair after the introductions and reached for a glass of water. “But I haven’t changed my mind. I’m still not going to accept your offer of enhancement. I know it would open my mind and prolong my life. Call me old-fashioned but I just can’t cope with the idea of an alien intelligence inside me.”

“Raymond my dear you are old-fashioned, but we aren’t going to try to convince you of anything. The Intelligent Agent is certainly not alien. It was born inside a machine created by humans. It has infinite knowledge. Every fact, every fiction, every idea ever recorded is accessible. It has evolved to become symbiotic with us. It’s natural, like life itself. It has changed us all for the better as you can see. But I understand you, it’s your choice, you made your feelings abundantly clear down in the Georgetown reservoir.”

Raymond looked around at the group, he wondered about the psychic link the IA had enabled them, Enoch called it a convempathy. “Seeing you all now and seeing how you have transformed Miami makes me realise that killing Lee was a mistake, but at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. Anyway, that’s all in the past and I don’t have time for regrets. This is a chance for me to say goodbye and to introduce you to Mahdi before I go. Like I said, I am getting too old for all of this.”

“You are welcome to stay here with us,” said Enoch as he stroked his long white beard. “It’s a peaceful place to retire, we still have alligator barbeques.”

“Thank you, Enoch, but I have a little house down on the West Coast of New Zealand, someone special is waiting there for me, and that barbequed alligator was tough as hell.”

“We wanted to talk to you and Mahdi about our plans,” said John. “For years we have been content here in Miami, a self-sufficient society. The life we have created here is all consuming, but we can’t keep our sanctuary a secret forever. More and more people are coming here looking for answers, looking for something they can’t find out there. Most of them accept our offer of an upgrade and stay, we don’t force it on anyone. But the time is approaching when we will have no choice but to interact with the rest of the world.”

There was silence as Raymond watched a manta ray circle around the pad causing small waves to lap against the old church walls.

“So,” John continued. “We decided to pre-empt this interaction. Lee was correct all those years ago in trying to upgrade humanity without them knowing. We are going to experiment with the population in a similar way.”

“Contaminating the water supply again?” asked Raymond.

“It wasn’t a contamination, and we are not going to use such a crude method. Perhaps Ava can explain,” said John.

“Ok,” said Ava, shifting uncomfortably. “We keep to ourselves here, but we monitor global communications, we know what’s going on in the world. We had some unwelcome attention from a politician called Johnathon Winter. He was planning on turning the old Miami waterfront into a toxic waste dump. There are more than two hundred container ships floating around the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with cargo so toxic no port will allow them in. Winter was going to let them run aground here along Miami beach for a fee thinking no one would know or care since the city has apparently been abandoned. So, obviously we had to stop him. We followed Winter and eavesdropped on a few calls, we found out he had some crooked friends.”

Raymond hadn’t met Ava before. She spoke quietly and she seemed nervous. At the back of her shaved head was a U-shaped scar. He wondered what her story was. “We know about Winter; we have targeted him in the past, but we couldn’t hurt him enough to bring him down. He has so many corporate connections.”

“Winter and his cronies thrive on fear,” said Ava. “When the world was crippled by the Lassa fever, that was when they profited the most.”

“As horrible as it was, the Lassa fever taught the world some valuable lessons. We had to think about everything we came into contact with, it changed the way we communicate and forced us to re-evaluate our priorities in life. It was also good for the environment. Carbon emissions were slashed, wildlife flourished, and the Earth was a quieter place.”

“I agree, but those lessons were almost instantly forgotten. As soon as the vaccine took effect most people went straight back to their polluting lifestyles with even more enthusiasm to make up for lost time. Winter and his cronies became too rich and powerful. Now they are trying to force their version of the future on us. They treat humanity as a living laboratory for a permanent, profitable, exclusive future. A future in which our every move, every word, every relationship is trackable, traceable, and exploitable by governments and tech giants.” Ava’s eyes flared and her voice rose with anger. “These billionaires act like new gods controlling vast resources and redesigning governments to meet their own needs. It’s a future held together by tens of millions of anonymous slaves tucked away in warehouses, data mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, processing plants, and prisons, where they are unprotected from disease and exploitation. These people must be stopped.” She looked around, took a drink of water, and munched on some seaweed.

“Ava is correct,” said John. “If you were disposable before, you’re sacrificial now. This warmed-over dystopia is being rebranded as necessary and sold to the people on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof their lives, the indispensable keys to keeping themselves and their loved ones safe.”

“You don’t need to convince us of how fucked up things are. We already know. So, what are you planning to do?” asked Raymond.

“We have already started,” said Ava. “We found out about a meeting Winter had arranged in Las Vegas. I broke in and spied on them. I found out they were manufacturing the virus and the vaccine to unleash on the public. They created the fever, they exploited people’s lives for profit. These were repulsive people, but I changed them.”

“What do you mean, changed them.”

“Noah and I crafted a flying invisibility suit for Wonder Woman here and she infiltrated Winter’s meeting,” said Lucinda. “And we made a bomb. Not a bomb that will kill you, an empathy bomb, an enlightenment bomb. Call it what you like but don’t call it a love bomb, too corny. It was made with our own IA infused DNA, taken from Ava which seemed appropriate, and our biologists made it even more human compatible. We combined a synthetic dopamine promoting motivational salience, we synthesized some hormones found in the adrenal glands that influence the insular cortex or emotional part of the brain, and added a neuron that bonded with the enteric nervous system to permanently elevate serotonin levels. Oxytocin for added empathy and endorphins for emotion. When detonated, the empathy bomb releases nanoparticles that bond osmotically with exposed human skin.”

“So, you turned them all into nice people with your E-bomb?” asked Raymond.

“I understand your cynicism but yes,” said Lucinda. “That’s exactly what we did. The IA carrier ensures those affected stay that way.”

“I threw the E-bomb into the middle of the room. We added some smoke and sparks for effect. They ran around screaming thinking they were going to die, then they all jumped in the pool,” said Ava.

“So, what happened to them?” asked Mahdi.

“Well, Baron Clifford of Chudleigh recently opened up all four of his castles in Kent to London’s homeless and turned his estates into wildlife sanctuaries. He donated his fortune to various shelters and homeless charities around the UK.” Ava looked down at the water. A smile played across her lips as she spoke. “Xander Cruz turned his tech empire into a renewable energy developer, manufacturing solar panels, turbines, powerwalls and giving them away. He is building a network of solar roads across California. Adira Amar gave every single one of her workers a million dollars and has converted her warehouses into free early education centres. Johnathon Winter donated his billions to the Green Party, then joined a group cleaning up the coastlines. Liu Wei dismantled his surveillance empire. He didn’t have any money, lost it all gambling. He moved to western Mongolia where he’s living in the mountains with giant pandas. We think the E-bomb might have scrambled his brains a little bit.” Ava took a breath and smiled awkwardly at Raymond.

Raymond shook his head incredulously, “If that’s all true you have achieved more in one night than we have in decades.”

“Of course, it’s true,” said Ava.

“Our philosophy is to apply the upgrade to certain influential people around the globe,” said John. “The top one percent, the people causing all the damage would be compelled to fix it. These people would lead a reformation away from the greed driven capitalist system we have now. This is less intrusive and less dramatic than trying to transmit the IA to all of humanity. People would learn, they will adapt, they will all be better off. Eventually our IA will be a simple evolutionary choice for people, like upgrading their favourite device or AR glasses.”

“I understand, your intervention is needed. I am just uncomfortable with such extreme powers.”

“We are targeting those that believe they already have supreme power.” said John. “The mega-rich and the self-proclaimed leaders of the world that are driving our planet into ruin. Something you and Mahdi have been trying to do for decades. When I moved to Miami, I realised the potential here. Now we are ready to help you in your struggle, to join the fray, the last good fight we will ever know.”

“It’s Mahdi’s decision,” said Raymond. “He’s in charge of Black Robin now. He has my blessing whatever he decides.”

“I’ve been fighting on the frontline against oppression and pollution for years,” said Mahdi. “There have been a few small victories, but we all know the Earth is doomed without radical intervention. It seems obvious to me that you are capable of changing the course of humanity with or without us. Of course, I want to be part of it. I want your IA too.”

Raymond looked around at the group, he didn’t need any psychic link to confirm the consensus.

Mahdi continued. “We need to infiltrate BPI. We need to get to Lago Santos. He is the key figure in all this. The wealthiest, most powerful person the world has ever seen. He thinks he is a god. We have tried in the past. Raymond came close, but Santos survives and continues to exploit the planet and its people.”

Ava’s face went dark, and her hand went to her abdomen. “I was teetering on the edge of happiness until you mentioned his name. Leave him to me,” she said quietly. “I’ll find him, and I will change him with the E-bomb. Just as I changed those assholes in Las Vegas. I want him dead, but I won’t kill him despite what he did to me.”

Raymond looked around at the group in the awkward silence that followed. “What did he do to you?” he asked. For a moment he thought he had crossed the line as Ava looked like she might attack him.

“This!” yelled Ava, turning around and pointing to the scar on the back of her head.