Tue 09/13 10:07:14 EAT
Ibrahim points out landmarks as he drives us through the city and out past the shanty towns. The road gets bumpier as the people get scarcer, the ragged paving ending in a dirt track out through the sandy, rocky plains. There’s not much to see here, and Evan looks like he’s about to sack out, so I’ve got a little time to kill.
DIAGNOSTIC MODE
I pull up the previous scans from a couple weeks ago and compare them to my live display. Things are shifting around, especially in the areas that the implant uses a lot. Remodeling isn’t supposed to happen this much or this fast. I haven’t noticed any serious deficiencies yet, so maybe I wasn’t using those parts of my brain for anything useful.
Nothing I can do about it now. Nothing I’m willing to do, anyway. I’m definitely not about to stop using the implant while I’m here.
Finally, the car stops, and Evan snaps awake like magic. As we get out, Ibrahim hands us each sunscreen and a water bottle. Evan takes the drink but waves off the small plastic tube. Unlike me, I don’t think he’s ever had a bad sunburn in his life. I slather the oily lotion all over my exposed skin as we hike out away from the road. According to Father, this area is not only mineral-rich, but safe enough that we can skip posting a sentry. All we have to do now is get our clouds up to capacity and enjoy the rest of the day.
GROW
My cloud spreads out and digs into dirt and rocks. I have to keep doing a mental push on my non-skin as it grows or they’ll stop. This place is perfect, rich in everything they need. They replicate quickly, the hot sun giving them plenty of energy to fuel their growth.
Looking out across the dry, rocky expanse, I see Father off in the distance sitting under a small canopy. That’s probably smart. I consider asking Ibrahim if he’s got one in the trunk. My cloud feels enormous now, but I’ve still got a good way to go until I get near capacity. The coordinating code I got from Jeff definitely helps, letting me push my limits far beyond what I could before I updated myself with it. I decide against the canopy. At this rate it’ll only take an hour or so to get my cloud where I want it. I can handle the sun for that long.
Evan and I spread out from each other so we’re not competing for minerals or heat. It was crazy hot out here when we started, but it’s getting pleasantly cool now as my bots continue breeding. Charging the batteries on new bots consumes a lot of energy, and they’ll drink in ambient heat as happily as they’ll take in sunlight. I take a swig from my bottle and consider my options.
An idea’s been growing in my mind. An idea dark enough that I haven’t even wanted to admit it to myself. But it’s time to stop denying it.
I want to kill him.
I don’t want justice. I want vengeance. Tomorrow might be my best shot. He should be vulnerable while he’s building the shell for the desalination plant. With the way the building is designed, he’ll need to throw everything he has at it during the build. He’ll basically be a living three-dimensional printer at that point, focusing all his bots and attention into getting the structure up. He won’t be able to defend himself. At least I think he won’t.
I’ve got ideas that should let me kill him, even with the limiters on my cloud. Lift a big rock a few hundred yards into the air, then let it go and drop it on his head. Rig up a high tension line using chained bots and use it to form a slingshot or spin a chain around like a sling. Either one of those should get a rock up to killing speed. Six other ways to kill him with a rock, including just taking a rock in my hand and smashing his head in with it.
There are a couple of downsides. First, I really am on board with the plans for this trip. If he dies tomorrow, the mission is done. I don’t feel comfortable taking away clean water and power from millions of people just because I’m peeved about a little bit of mother killing. Hmm, maybe I’m hitting the acceptance stage of my grief. See, I can even joke about it now.
The second problem is more practical and immediate. I’d get caught. My siblings will be around all the time. Our vision overlays can spot each others’ bots if we’ve got the option turned on. There’s no way I can kill him without the risk that at least one of them has that layer of the overlay enabled. Killing him by hand would be an even more sure way to get spotted. I’m not sure exactly what my sibs would do, but I imagine killing their father and god wouldn’t go over well. I’d be lucky if they turned me over to the authorities. More likely, Chad would try to kill me on the spot.
I shouldn’t do it.
I’d be as bad as he is.
And I’d get caught.
Shit.
My cloud has grown as big as I want it. I stop pushing the growth and let my senses acclimate to the new size of the cloud. I’m enormous. Even with Jeff’s code it still feels unwieldy. The amount of raw power is tremendous, like I could move a mountain. Come to think of it, I could. It would just take a while.
At this level, I can knock out one of the standard four square meter solar installs in less than a minute if materials are handy. That should be enough to keep up with any of my siblings, other than maybe Jeff. He’s a beast on the building stuff, probably from all the practice he has running his cloud extra sized all the time.
“You close to done?” I call out to Evan.
“Yeah, just about there,” he shouts back.
I flip on the option in the overlay to take a look at his cloud. It’s about half of what I’m packing. I’m guessing he doesn’t have Jeff’s improvements. After a couple more minutes, Evan gives me a wave and a nod and we head back toward the car. As we near each other, the air around us starts to cloud up with dark dust milling around. The standard distribution pattern that the bots use is no good when we’ve got this many and both of our clouds press in and overlap each other.
“We better put them away,” I say.
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I select the whole cloud into a group, then split that group into a hundred smaller ones. I issue a mass command to each of the groups to form spheres as tight as they can go and have all the bots in the group link up with each other. A cluster of one hundred balls like dull, dark ball-bearings form from the dust as the air clears. I unzip my backpack and gesture with my right hand. The balls tumble into the bag. Packed together like this and enclosed so they can't support themselves with their flight systems, it feels like I'm lugging a backpack full of bricks. No, bricks would be lighter.
Evan follows my lead, easily shouldering his lighter pack as we take the last few steps to the car. I grab two of the balls back out before I close the zipper and let them break formation and spread out. That should be enough for walking around. And this way I can leave the heavy pack in the car with these bots making a mesh network back to them when we go sightseeing.
“Hey Ibrahim, what’s good for lunch?” Evan asks as he takes his seat.
“You want local, American, or French?” he asks. His accent is thick, but he speaks slowly and clearly.
“Local,” Evan and I say in unison.
“You like spicy? Or not-so-spicy?”
“Spicy,” Evan and I say, together again.
I definitely picked the right buddy for today. Hopefully I can finally get some decent food after all these months of cafeteria blandness.
Tue 09/13 12:42:55 EAT
I grab a chunk of the spongy flatbread that Ibrahim calls lahoh. He nods approvingly, then uses some of it to grab a piece of lamb from the thick sauce. I follow his lead. It’s spicy and delicious, way better than the meals back on campus. We’re halfway through our pizza-sized platter of food when the girls follow their guide through the restaurant door. Both of them are looking a lot tanner since this morning. If I hadn’t nursed Louse through her hell day of withdrawal myself, I wouldn’t have known she’d been through it at all. Evan waves them over to join us.
They take seats on mats on the floor around our low table. Kofi, their guide, says something to the proprietor in a language I can’t recognize, and another platter appears moments later.
“You guys want to hit the markets with us after this?” Louise asks as she tentatively dabs the lahoh into the sauce. She eyes it suspiciously for a moment before taking a bite, but seems to like it. Andrea digs into the food with no hesitation. She smiles and repeats Louise’s invitation with her eyes.
“Sure, I guess,” I say, giving Evan a glance. “I mean, we hadn’t decided on anything for after lunch yet.” He nods approval, his mouth too full of lamb to answer.
Andrea laughs as I take another big bite. She waves one hand and little icons of a mouth and a stomach appear. The mouth chomps open and closed, then the stomach expands and both images flash away before anyone else at the restaurant notices.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Noah eat this much either,” Louise says. I’m glad she translated, because I wasn’t sure what Andrea meant by it.
“Well, if the food in the cafeteria tasted this good, I’d eat more.”
“Maybe we can get Father to change it up a little,” Evan says, his mouth finally clear as we run out of meat on our shared platter. “We should at least ask. This stuff is amazing.”
The girls agree as they finish up their lunch. Kofi settles our bill as Ibrahim leads us out toward the market district down the street.
The open-air booths carry a hundred fascinating things I’ll never need. The girls both stock up on long, colorful dresses. Ibrahim and Kofi do the haggling and purchasing, which takes a few minutes every time we buy something. They get some head scarves too. I seem to remember something about those from the briefing, but for some reason my memory is fuzzy and I have to look it up in my log. That’s right. Only the married women here are supposed to wear those. I ask Ibrahim about it, and he says it won’t be a problem if foreigners don’t follow the custom.
Most of the men here wear pants and shirts that don’t look all that different from my American clothes, so I don’t feel like I need anything, but I pick up some clothes anyway just to have some souvenirs. The only distinctly local menswear that I see hawked at the booths are long wrap skirts. I'm not ready to give up on pants, so I give those a pass, but Evan gets a few. I can see him pulling them off.
Everywhere we go, all the guys are chewing something that I figure is gum or tobacco until I flick through my briefing files in the console and remember that it’s a mild drug called khat. Evan tries to get Ibrahim to buy us some to try, but he refuses. I guess Father didn’t want us partaking. We don't have any local money of our own, and we don’t speak the language, so no drugs for us, I guess. Probably for the best. Given what we’re packing in our heads, maybe we shouldn’t experiment with anything mind-altering.
The afternoon goes fast. The guides take us around to all the big tourist attractions. The Hamoudi Mosque near the markets looks like someone glued a lighthouse to the top of a brick. I guess I was expecting more minarets. We don’t go in, but we get a good look around the outside. When we’re done with that we check out a bunch of French colonial buildings in what Ibrahim calls the European quarter. They’re a little run down, but still fun to see.
The four of us get to the hotel right in time for our dinner reservation, but we’re the first ones to arrive. From the furniture and decor, the place could have been any upscale hotel in America. Maybe Father thought that would make us more comfortable. The host at the hotel restaurant leads us to some regular-sized tables with chairs, comfortable but not nearly as fun as the low tables and floor mats at our lunch place. I peruse the menu while we wait for Father. They serve a fusion of Middle Eastern, African, and French cooking. It smells great. Maybe I can make up some of the weight I’ve lost this year if we keep coming to places like this. I might even need to hit the rec room’s gym when we get back.
Jeff and Marc show up next. Marc is wearing one of the wrap skirts, and Jeff is gliding along next to him. I wonder if he’s been doing that all day or if he followed instructions and actually walked while he was out around town. Before I can ask, Chad and Father arrive, coming in through the front doors dressed in suits and ties.
“See, Chad,” Father says, taking us all in with a sweeping glance. “I told you they would be here on time. Your siblings are all very responsible.” Chad nods in acknowledgement, holding back his resentful look long enough to let Father turn away from him to sit down.
Father orders a ton of dishes to eat family style. While we wait for the food, everyone compares notes on their days. Jeff and Marc saw most of the same sights we did, just at different times. Chad and Father built up their clouds, then spent the rest of the day doing interviews with reporters.
Half a dozen waiters stream from the kitchen to the table and back several times, bringing out a veritable feast. It's probably the best food I've ever tasted. Everyone seems to love it except Chad, who eyes it all suspiciously and only nibbles at the unfamiliar fare. Jeff even eats like a normal person, which is good since he’d probably get us thrown out if he worked his normal methods.
“Get some good rest tonight,” Father announces as we conclude the meal. “We have a big day tomorrow.”
We each get our own room. My only other experience with hotels is when Mom and I used to go on vacation. We always shared one of those hotel rooms with two queen beds, but I never minded that. Mom was so great to just spend time with. I could always talk to her about anything, though I can’t even remember what we used to talk about anymore.
Toiletries are laid out for me on the bathroom counter. I brush my teeth, strip down to my boxers, and flop onto the big, soft bed. It’s been a long couple of days. I can feel I’m slipping away. The nanobot control lockdown that keeps me from accidentally driving the cloud in my sleep kicks on. Weird, I usually don’t see that happen while I’m still awake.
Am I still awake?
Mmmm, sleep.