Castles in the Sky

by Gabriel S. de Anda

Chapter I: Jose Luis Espejo-Alatriste

part 2

“The heart is a stupid thing, Sen Espejo,” he said. “It’s so easily misled by what it thinks it knows.” He blinked, chin lowered, and in a quieter voice said, “Maybe in your heart you feel that your son’s death is as illusory as you suspect me to be.”

I couldn’t help but wince.

“Our lullabies would have us believe,” I said, “that life is but a merry dream. But we should be careful while we row row row our boats. Dreams can be used as weapons.” I tried to mask my pain with a smile. “Illusions can kill.”

“Alebrije’s dreams are benign,” said Garcia-Rifenstahl.

“Then why is Alebrije building an army?”

“Dreams bring responsibilities with them.”

“One man’s dream can be another man’s curse.”

“Truer words were never spoken. But not everyone shares the Solarian dream. Can there be no room for alternative perspectives?”

I paused, thinking of Amado and how we could never see eye to eye.

“Perhaps,” I sighed. “But I must say, I’m bowled over by Avignon Lux. Quite a brilliant bauble,” I said, raising one eyebrow and pausing for effect. “Quite a daunting responsibility.”

“Just an experiment in the aesthetics of the possible, nothing more. Beautiful, no?”

“Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it. The absolute mastery over energy that allows the expenditures required to create such a jeweled showcase is...” I wanted to say “frightening” but instead settled on “profoundly impressive.”

He looked around as if searching for something. “We are not the threat you think we are,” he said, but what I heard was: You’ll never see us coming. He smiled crookedly, chewing the inside of his cheek, squinting. “We simply desire a better way of life for our corner of the universe.”

“A better way of life? Tell that to my three dead colleagues.” They’d been killed during our drop out of q-space while piercing the periphery of the Alebrijan system. Our ship, the Dis Pater, was in drydock within the bowels of an Axis frigate in geostationary orbit, the extensive damage being repaired.

“The attack on your vessel was a reprehensible act of profound stupidity. The rogue elements responsible have been apprehended and dealt with.”

“We’re not interested in justice for puppets. We want the puppeteers.”

A glitch in his hologram traveled like a swiftly falling raster line through Garcia-Rifenstahl’s face and body, and the light in his eyes momentarily flared.

“The apprehended members of the GNA were executed last night,” he said, his voice purged of telltales. I’d heard of the Galactic North Army, but not in this sector of stars. I was not surprised to hear them mentioned, though. It was an obvious ploy at misdirection.

“I thought they no longer existed,” I said.

“In short order, that will be true. They’re horseflies, what remains of them, nothing more, nothing less.”

Pretty deadly for horseflies, I thought, but I decided it might be more fruitful to let it drop. For now.

I studied Garcia-Rifensthal’s expressions closely. He could be the avatar of a human operator, or he could in fact be a wondrous piece of high tech, but in either case, he was probably no more than a shill, a puppet of some unknown operator.

“For our part,” he continued, “we welcome Solaria.” I sensed again a thin vein of suppressed anger, a note of petulance, and for a moment it was as if he were channeling my angry, youthful son to a T, merely saying what I wanted to hear. He must have sensed my doubt. His eyes grew softly apologetic and luminous, as if intuiting that our only point of mutual comprehension would be in the sorrow he knew had seeped into my bones and would never depart. As if he felt it too.

Maybe he was real. A lost child? Perhaps.

“About your son, Sen Espejo. Our records are open to you, if you are interested, even though our investigation hasn’t concluded. These things are never easy to understand. You must have many questions.”

“Many questions, yes, but not the sort that the Ministry would ever be able to answer.” I paused. “I thought I knew my son, Federico.” His love of danger, his penchant for the poetry of the reckless, his desire for adventure, his need for independence. His pigheadedness. I shook my head and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I’m only here to claim his earthly remains.”

“I am so, so sorry, honorable Espejo-Alatriste,” he said, bowing, hands clasped to his chest as if in prayer. And there it was again, that subtle but rueful smile, small nods, eyes in soft but guarded focus, a depth of fractured light. “I sincerely hope that you will call on me.” The avatar blinked and I felt the transfer of alphanumerics fluttering into my thoughts. “My contact code. Call, and either I, or my djinn, will come.”

“So, there is a real you somewhere out there.”

He chuckled. “Just as there surely is a misleading copy of yourself,” he said, pointing with his chin at the window of the far rear wall, “somewhere, out there, an avatar taking care of business. Am I right?”

I blinked at the floor, gently amused despite the circumstances. “You need look no further,” I said. “My son would have been very clear on that point. Out there, somewhere, is the real me. But here, before you, stands the imposter.” My eyes felt hot, tired.

“There is nothing fraudulent in the love we feel for our children.”

Federico stood, bowed, and dissolved into a soft swirl of pixels whose smudged lights lingered in the air for long seconds.

* * *

“Jose Luis,” said Julian Wells. He released me from a brief but heartfelt embrace.

He’d known my late wife and, as an inkblot, my son. “It’s been too long. I’m so sorry that we have to meet again” — hands splayed outward, his eyes taking in our surroundings — “like this, here.” Mostly it still did not feel true, Amado’s irretrievable death, but there were pockets of anguish that unpredictably descended. My eyes felt prickly, but I fought it off.

He looked over his shoulder as if Garcia-Rifenstahl might still be lurking somewhere. “What was that about? What did he want?”

“What everyone wants, Julian.”

“To be taken seriously?”

He shrugged.

“So, my friend,” I said. “What’s the score?”

Julian chortled, eyes wide. “You’re asking me?” He shrugged nervously, and his breath went flat. He paused as if thinking twice about something. “Rumor is that an invasion is days away. We know that ignoring the technological prohibitions has pissed off the Gahzentine Penumbralty. But—”

“But there are many strange and wondrous machines on Alebrije.”

“Our governments like to think that we are free,” he said. “There are many who doubt that Solaria has the reach it once had. That the Axis empire is on the verge of collapsing under its own weight.”

Someday, without a doubt, but not today, not in time to save Alebrije. “And what do you think, Julian?”

“I’m here, Jose Luis, aren’t I? What does that tell you? Beyond that, I don’t think it matters what I think.”

“You have a point. But as you know, I’m more interested in what you can do than in what you think you can’t.” I paused for effect. “So tell me, Julian, that you can get me Amado’s Biotech Compugenix mimicant.”

“You know, Jose Luis, Biotech Compugenix keeps a tight lid on these things. Legally speaking, your son’s widow is next of kin. Even if he’d died intestate, his matrix would go to her. The fact that his will made the bequest specific takes it, well, out of our hands.”

“If I wanted legal recourse, Julian, I would have filed a writ with the Pan-Galactic Judiciary. I want a copy, that’s all. No one need know. Are you saying you won’t help me?”

“Interstitial law is quite punitive.”

And quite draconically enforced. Yes, I knew. In my youth, as an aide to a delegate in the infamous Congress of Sentience, I’d helped write the damned laws.

I nodded, shrugged. “You’re joking, right? Is that what you’re going to hide behind?” I stood up to leave. “Fine. I wish you all the luck in the worlds with the ACE war tribunals.”

“No no no, I’m not one of the doubters, Jose Luis,” he said, standing up with me. “Please. Just tell me. What do we have to do?”

“I told you what I want you to do.”

“Yes.”

“The Axis?

“Yes.”

“A government proxy — members of the Y Lucientes clan — on your board of directors. Articles of Assignment for seventy-five percent shares of the preferential, voting stock, with all the addendums.”

“Molotov! Talk about punitive.” He was scandalized. “Why not take it all?”

“Really?” I said, drawing my head back as if at a bad smell. “I thought you’d be happy.” I gave him my Cultural Diplomat’s poker smile. “If I walk away empty-handed, they will, you know, take it all. Save yourselves, Julian. Take the deal.”

His inhalation had a few jagged stitches, like a sob, but he was narrow-eyed, gaze direct, quite sober.

“But remember,” I said, “there’s no deal at all unless you get me my son.”

“Do your superiors know the game you’re playing?”

“If I don’t get my son’s mimicant, you and your Banco Fabricanista won’t be around to tell them.”

We stood facing each other, the silence lengthening between us. He looked at his thin, chic wristband, and I thought he was subvocalizing the information I needed to me, but I was disappointed, since nothing was uploaded into my head.

His face tightened as he ground his teeth, eyelashes fluttering. He reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew an old fashioned rectangle of papyrus. Ah, yes, of course. Nothing more elusive and hard to trace in a world of interconnected cybersystems, resurrected deadmen and mysterious invisible messages than going retro.

“This is yours, Jose Luis,” he said, smiling wanly. Mum was the word. “Are we vertical?”

“Standing straight.” I nodded and began breathing again. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.” I fingered the business card with the codes scribbled on the backside, slipped it into a pocket.

And that was that. We shook hands and parted ways. On my amble to the restroom, illuminated words wrote themselves on the air before me. I saw them too late and walked through them, the lines tearing like a spider’s web, but I easily replayed the moment.

Changing the world
One line of code at a time

To be continued...