The Pieces of My Self

10 - Trapping Ghosts

NKUMBRA

Yemaya, The Floating City, 3 June 2174, Friday

The floating city of Yemaya filled William Nkumbra's vision as his government limo drove south along Causeway Boulevard.

He never got used to the structure's physical scale. It was the kind of place that made you wonder if you were still in Loumissala or approaching the Chinese-built Mars base at Deuteronilus Mensae.

When he held recruiting seminars for new Agency members, he would try to impress them with facts about the arcology.

The beacon on the apex stands 1500 feet above the water. Directly below it, perched like the aerie of a bird of prey, is the palace of President Mangalotte and the executive residence.

The base of the artificial island extends 225 feet below water in an excavated basin 320 feet deep. An open triangle frame allows severe gales to harmlessly blow through the structure, and the slanted legs of the tripod—the towers containing offices, residences, parks, and commercial spaces—are curved to dissipate wind loads.

Yemaya inhabitants will be safe in any storm. When the structure senses high winds, it brakes the windcatcher vanes and slides hurricane panels over windows, forming a protective barrier. This, of course, reduces power from wind and solar glass, but the reduction usually occurs when wave energy converters on the floating base are operating near peak levels. People can live and work inside snug as bugs, detached from the larger society. And the hermetic island makes most of its own food and drinking water.

Some of Nkumbra's colleagues bought into the vision, choosing to reside in Yemaya. They were mostly the younger crowd who found hive life exciting, or Type-A middle managers who lived and breathed their work.

Nkumbra needed space. And privacy. He had seen too many people kill their careers—or worse—as they nudged closer to the flame that was Artois Mangalotte. With hive living, you could never relax. The place was full of ears—synthetic and human. The odds of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong company increased significantly when you lived elbow-to-elbow with ambitious people jockeying to take your job and pervasive avatars sniffing out dissidents, looking for behavioral anomalies.

His limo crossed the floating bridge onto an access road that followed a perimeter of kinetic energy extractors around the island. It finally stopped at a controlled entry parking garage. The gate lifted when the automated sentry recognized him and his vehicle.

Nkumbra stepped from the car wearing gray exercise gear and carrying a blue gym bag. He gave the command, "Park," and let the robotic lift stow his vehicle. Then he threaded his way through the garage, ignoring signs to Agroponics and Utility Services, and entered an inclined elevator.

His mind was on the upcoming operation when he verbalized a troubling thought: "How do you catch a ghost?"

"I'm sorry, I don't recognize your request," the transporter replied.

He gave a little smile, then spoke his destination, "A-102-d," and belted himself in. The door closed, and the cube accelerated smoothly along a track, heading horizontally toward Tower A. It then bent steeply upward, moving along the outer edge of a slanted tower, passing three maintenance robots that moved on a separate rail grid. He ascended above the commercial levels with its stores, restaurants, entertainment, and common parks.

As the cube rose, he could make out the graduated urban sprawl of Covington. High-rise commercial buildings ringed the land immediately surrounding Yemaya, giving way to smaller structures farther away, eventually bleeding into intricate layers of cultural hummus to the north. In this respect, Yemaya was like a medieval castle of yore, housing elites who were surrounded and supported by an expendable population of non-elites.