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Heaving waves rumbled with a reassuring repetition, tapering into a shiny quarter-inch layer sighing "aahhhh" up the remote beach in El Salvador. The lip of water reflected the coppery sky and foamed at the edges like tattered lace. The destructive ocean force was submissive, for now.
My feet pressed water out of the sand, making widening halos around my toes with each step. I was back to wearing an old sarong and T-shirt, devoid of any makeup, hair hanging down limply in the heat. It was like all the bad stuff was sucked out of me, all the things that had happened since Ralph Zinder sought me out in this very same place. What had he said back then?
“I dare you to take this job and do something spectacular. Don’t you want to climb back on your horse and kick the shit out of the world?”
Turned out, Zinder and Rico got the shit kicked out of them. Rico was dead. Had to be. Never found out where Jarat had buried his corpse and didn’t want to know. Zinder was off licking his wounds somewhere. He’d taken a hiatus from the campaign trail, and Nuhope. At least that was the official word. Would he reenter the race a chastened, more thoughtful man?
Heaven knew I’d changed. It was as if I’d been taken over by some nurturing spirit. A lot of people were that way now. The recording of Luscious Melada’s archangel appearance had been seen by almost every single person on the planet at this point.
Sure, some people went back to normal after a few days. Clashes broke out. There was still plenty of apathy among the Elites toward the Chav. But some people wanted to keep the feeling of what Luscious had awoken in them. As soon as they started to change back to the hardened thought patterns from before, they would watch the recording of her speech and get all the harmony back.
Some leaders of the vast continent nations were exploring ways of working together far more creatively than ever before. The impoverished were getting so much more relief from the Elites, not just in our own nation, but across the entire world. A few members of the U.A. Congress who had shared the same views as Andrew Massot were taken far more seriously. For now. In the end, maybe everything Luscious had done would fade away. I feared it would.
My newly adopted son, Shakespear, scampered toward me down the beach. I would never forget the day my father had called to tell me about him. The boy had been left on the doorstep of Dab's bot shop. He was so young and traumatized.
Dab had calmed the kid down. And I flew out to meet him. At that time, we weren’t aware that Jarat had rescued Shakespear. All I knew was that the second I saw his wispy black hair, he was mine forever. In time, he’d probably stop crying at night for his Mama, brother Deko and sister Lilya. Their terrible deaths were still vivid in his mind. Every new day I tried to help him find a little more joy.
Before long, our family would grow. At my instructions, Jameson had ordered the extraction of sperm from Dove's dead body and had it frozen. Soon, it would be coupled with some of my eggs. I'd had some frozen after that Luceel debacle, just before my body completely shut down its reproductive system. A young woman of my choosing would bear the child.
Would the baby be a girl with startled eyes? Contemplating that question was like looking at a brightly packaged birthday present that would be so much fun to unwrap.
I held Shakespear close, breathing in his salty skin, marveling when he smacked me with a kiss. It was still so new to be loved with such abandon. I pulled up my air screen and linked to Jarat.
Jarat
As Shakespear came up on my air screen, crowing with delight at the sight of me, I smiled so broadly my mouth almost cracked in two. Before the attack on Mama Neeta's place, I had never noticed how his devilish grin was an exact match to Jewles' smile. From what I'd seen of him in nearly every picture.
It was one of the best things I'd ever done, getting the kid to Petra's father. When I was in spy mode hanging out in her office, Petra had talked with the man she called Dab on her mobile a few times. And I'd really liked the guy and everything I could see of his bot shop in the background. It seemed like an excellent environment for the kid, and things got even better when Petra decided to take him on.
“How’s she doing?” Petra asked.
I waved the air so that my mobile camera picked up Luscious, asleep in bed. She was still critically ill.
It had been a harrowing moment when her heart stopped after that speech, and we worked to resuscitate her. After several minutes she'd come around. Jameson had kept her within Nuhope's secretive creative sciences unit for weeks, watching over her so attentively. He had finally given in to her pleas to let her stay with her grandmother in Pompey Hollow. That's where we were now.
“Is she out of the danger zone?” Petra asked.
“No. She’s still very fragile.”
“The world needs her to live, so much.”
“Listen to me, Petra: if she gets better, we can’t let her shoot up that many vials, ever again.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m with you on that. But do you think we could stop her if she wanted to? She’s got such a savior streak in her.”
Luscious
Petra’s voice mixed in with the rain beating on the tin roof outside, bringing me out of sleep. “No way I’d do that,” I said, then went into a coughing fit.
“Please take it easy, darling,” Petra said. “We want you alive for a long, long time.”
Jarat looked really worried, like he didn't know if that was possible, so I gave him a big grin, to get him thinking on the upside of things. It seemed like a miracle, having him there with me, visible all the time. I was still getting used to that and never wanted him to disappear unless I went invisible with him.
We tried to figure out when we'd all meet up in New York. I really wanted to play with Shakespear. We'd bonded on the air screen. But Petra wasn't quite ready to leave El Salvador, and Jameson didn't want me to move around for a while.
“I’m not even sure I want to back to Nuhope,” Petra said. In theory, she was just taking some time off.
“Why not?” Jarat asked. “Everything’s changed. They’ve shut down all the dreamisodes. And you can do so much more, with people like Ginseng and Jameson around.”
“There’s no way I’d ever go back there without you,” I said to her. No telling what some other CEO would want me to do.
“You want to go back?” she asked.
“Sure. If I could get on a space dancer show. That’s all I really want to do, except be around this guy,” I said, looking at Jarat.
Petra laughed. “I’m sure you can be on any show you’d like.”
Jarat gazed at me so deeply as we swiped off the call. The whole universe was right there in his brown eyes. We hadn't made love yet 'cause I was too weak for much of anything. Besides, I needed to wean myself off the Juice more so that he wouldn't get all besotted. It was just about killing us to wait.
Petra's question lingered in my brain. Would it ever make sense to go back to Nuhope? What if I could help the worl' be kinder? Jarat wanted to make it that way, too. Everyone was clamoring for him to get into politics. He just needed to pick the best shot.
Someday, maybe the two of us would just fade away to some far-off place. Maybe we would become legends. That’s how people thought about Dove now: a legend. The memory of him sank me into a heaviness. It beat inside me with the rain.
Gram shouted from below, “Hey! I got fried catfish down here.”
Jarat touched my hand. A thrill passed through us. “Go on,” I said. “Go get some. I better just stay here.”
He went downstairs, and I closed my eyes, listening to the two people I loved most in the worl’ talking back and forth. If only I could stay inside this moment, this watery day.
THE END