Culled - 1. Chapter 1

Something tickled.

He smiled and opened his eyes, feeling Kee nuzzle into his neck again. In the darkness, soft kisses were planted on the skin of his collarbone.

He moved his hand to stroke the smooth surface of Kee’s backside.

“Morning, Loy,” Kee murmured into his shoulder, between nips on his flesh.

“God, haven’t you had enough?”

“Never. You’re delicious.” Kee’s kisses moved lower down his neck and chest.

“We have to get up soon.”

His lover pressed his erection into his thigh. “I’m up already.”

“I meant for work.” He chuckled.

“Well, we’re still playing.” Kee shifted lower on the narrow bed and kissed the bony spot on his hip.

“I’ve got a billion units to coordinate….”

Fingers trailed up the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. He felt his groin stirring. Again. What Kee was doing to him ought to be outlawed on most planets, it was that good.

He let his fingers play through Kee’s shaggy blond hair.

“You’re not an android, are you?”

“I thought that was you, Loy.”

“I just create code for the damn – ahhhh!”

Kee’s tongue cut off all rational conversation for a moment.

“What time is it?” he managed to get out when Kee gave him a break. His boss at the Authority did not tolerate lateness.

“Don’t care.”

But he voiced no objection when he felt Kee climb between his legs, and after that, he wasn’t able to think for a while.

 

Flashing lights and a strident alarm in his earpiece jerked the two of them awake.

“Shit! The overstay warning!” Loy snapped to alertness. He shoved at the warm form at his side. “Come on, Kee, we have ten minutes!”

“It was so worth it.” Kee grinned, sliding off the bed.

Loy tumbled out and folded the bed back into the wall. He pressed his hand on his closet lock, and the door slid open. His prescheduled work suit was at the front of the tiny recess. He pulled it out; the door hissed closed again. Meanwhile, Kee emerged from the refresher unit where he’d ducked in on the speed setting. They exchanged places in the narrow area.

Even as Loy experienced the full, cold, bracing minute of radiant molecular cleansing in the refresher, he knew Kee would be pulling clothes from his own shallow closet and opening and closing his upper bunk in the wall. The sensors in the pod didn’t monitor more than that activity, and all Kee had to do was make it look to their sharepod mates as if he’d slept there. Couples paid higher rates for sharepods.

Loy didn’t have time for acid rumination over the Interpersonal Relations Regulations, or why these things mattered to the Authority. He stepped out of the refresher and pulled on his clothes. Already dressed, Kee’s grey and silver suit fit perfectly on him. Loy envied the way his nightmate and lover filled out what he wore.

Three minutes to go.

“Ready?” Kee asked.

“Almost,” Loy responded as he struggled with the strap on his sandals. “Did you remember to hit the room ‘fresher cycle?’”

“You know I did. Don’t want the day-share people to complain the place smells of sex.”

“After what we did last night, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Loy stood, and Kee stepped close to kiss. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Loy smiled for the first time since they’d scrambled out of bed. “Not at all.”

Two minutes.

“We’d better get going. The lines at the trans-portals are murder these days.” It was Kee’s first fret.

“Worse than usual?”

“Construction. They’re building a newer, bigger portal right over the old one for the Inner Planets. It closes an entire lane.”

“Why do they need something larger?”

“I don’t know. Size matters, I guess.” Kee grinned.

“It does to me anyway.” Loy smirked. “But I’m sorry you’ll be delayed at the portals. I hate using them. I never feel exactly right afterwards.”

“It’s part of working in the solar system, baby. You just catch the tube downtown, lucky bastard.”

“I can’t help it if the Authority wants me close to Home Quarters in New Manhattan. Too many programmers and monitors to supervise at long distance, they say.”

“Well, you’re one of the best.” Kee smiled.

“Wish they paid me like it. We’d have a 24-hour pod to ourselves.”

“Yeah, if we could find one open. Maybe your dad would – ”

“Nope. Don’t go there. Asking for help means he and mother make assumptions – that I need a 24-pod because there’s a girl involved. I’d give them ten nanoseconds before they shove an application for conception and childbirth underneath my nose.”

“That would be awkward,” Kee agreed.

“We’re managing on our own, and don’t need a bit of pull from on high.”

“Anyway, I don’t have far to go today.” Kee picked up their earlier conversation. “Just going to Mercury Dark Base.”

“You have to go?”

“It’s no worse than going to the Moon, and the lines are a lot shorter.” Kee laughed at him. “Got everything?”

“Just a second.” Loy picked up his carry bag.

“You love that bag more than me,” Kee joked.

“Hey, it’s an antique. My great-great-grandfather from Roswell – ”

“I know, I know, it’s passed down to you from four generations back. Made of actual animal hide.”

Loy pressed his hand to the side of the main door to the pod and it hissed open. The pair stepped onto the safety pad outside. The pad was a nuisance; other buildings had crime, but not theirs. Not much, anyway.

Kee smirked and nodded to his right. “Here comes Treena Stinkyface now.”

A thin, grey-colored woman strode up the corridor toward them. “Change time,” she called out.

“Twenty-one seconds left, Treena.” He greeted her with a civil nod.

“You’re not going to just stand there and make me wait, are you? I’m beat.”

“We’re going now. You and Ovo have a nice day.”

Their day-share podmate made a face and stepped onto the pad as they stepped off.

“I’m so glad we don’t have to share beds and closets at least,” muttered Kee. “Not with all those people.”

Loy and Kee made their way down to the main hallway in the building. Foot traffic swelled as dayshares and nightshares exchanged places. People were free to make their own arrangements, but this was a common switchtime.

“Wonder where Ovo was.” Kee spoke up as they stepped onto a moving walkway.

 

“Probably picking up the little girl.”

“The what?”

“I think they have a child living with them. I’ve seen her on the safety pad waiting a couple of times.”

“That’s got to be against the lease. Ovo wouldn’t do that, would he? The pod’s sensors would pick up and report a third body.”

“Sometimes the sensors in these old buildings can’t interpret everything. They haven’t noticed we don’t use your bed, for instance.”

“Yes, but it’s an incredible risk. If they have unauthorized offspring, the child can be terminated or sent for organ harvest. And I don’t want to think about what sentence the Authority would hand Ovo and Treena.”

They digested that sobering thought as the moving walk segued into an escalator to take them down eight floors to ground level.

“Where do you want to eat breakfast?” Loy inquired.

“I’ll just grab something after I go through the portal.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Loy tried to hide his disappointment at not being able to spend a few more minutes with Kee, but he understood. The whole dissociation-reassociation process involved in going through a trans-portal to anyplace could unsettle one’s digestion.

“Well, don’t forget,” Loy rallied. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so they say.”

“I won’t, Loy. You worry too much.”

“It’s my job to worry.”

“I don’t know how you do it. You take care of how much of the Solar Authority’s network?”

“You want me to guess? Maybe one-sixth? Eighty-plus billion nodes; something like that.”

Kee gazed at him as they neared the ground level. “You’re amazing. You’re so damn smart, and you chose me anyway.”

“Correction: I’m so damn smart, that’s why I chose you.” Loy moved his hand to cover Kee’s on the handrail for an instant and squeezed.

Then they were at the bottom and spilled out through automatic doors to the street. A canyon of tall glass buildings soared into the grey sky. Over the flood of foot traffic, flocks of drones whirred along on their various routes and tasks.

This was where they had to part. Loy would head to the tube and downtown; Kee to the trans-portals at New Grand Central.

“Supper at Ringworld tonight?” Loy asked.

“Sure. Meet you there around 18:30?”

They touched hands once more, smiled, and went their separate ways for the day.

 

Ringworld wasn’t too crowded when Loy arrived after work. Its out of the way location on the third sublevel between tube stops might have had something to do with that. He could see customers scattered around the autotables in the narrow restaurant. Kee wasn’t there yet, but that wasn’t unusual. His stomach growled. He’d put in his ten hours with the Authority, and had to skip lunch. That wasn’t unusual either. Too many relays and nodes to correct and re-code, and plenty of networking to re-route in the meantime. And there were too few people like Loy who knew how all parts of the sprawling Authority system of sensors, monitors, quantputers, and datapiles actually functioned.

Take the trans-portals that unsettled him so: a marvel of quantum physics, the departure portal instantly sensed, catalogued, and mapped the subject into its component subatomic structure. The subject was then blasted into ethereal nothingness – that is, dissociated – only to be simultaneously and seamlessly reassembled by the reassociating arrival portal at any place in the solar system.

The calculations required for this stupendous feat boggled most minds, but the Authority’s quantputers thought almost nothing of them. The portals handled billions of journeys across the planets every single Terran day.

And Loy helped to supervise them all.

Right now, he tapped a table request into the restaurant’s entry station. He received a number and a color confirmation. He pressed his hand to the screen to pay for the table. Wherever the colored number flashed next was where he would wait for Kee.

Soon, Loy was seated at a small table. He could see foot traffic passing by quite easily; he’d be able to spot the taller blond when he arrived. Loy could have given the table his order right away, but he was determined to hold off so they could eat together.

Watching the restaurant’s bots deliver hot food to other diners did not make his decision easier. He checked the time. Where was Kee?

Loy reached into his bag and pulled out his BlankSlate. There was an interesting numerical puzzle he wanted to work on, and it would help pass the time. If he got involved in it, Kee would be sure to show up and interrupt him.

But the next thing he knew, the voice of the table was announcing: “Your reservation will expire in fifteen minutes. Please place your order now. Current table requests do not allow us to renew or extend table times.”

Loy blinked and looked around. Still not there. He touched his earpiece and spoke: “Kee?”

There was no response. Very strange. If Kee couldn’t answer his call, he’d get some kind of message back, even a User Unavailable notice if he were on the far side of Saturn or someplace like that.

He tried again. “Kee?”

Silence.

Loy tried to control his irritation. Not only was his lover late, but his earpiece wasn’t working. Or maybe the damn system was down. That had to be it. If there was control failure at the Authority, that could explain both problems, couldn’t it?

He spoke again. “Kee, if you’re playing some kind of joke, it’s not funny.”

Still nothing.

“Your reservation has ten minutes remaining. Order now.”

“Two Saturnalia burgers to go, with onion rings and not fries,” Loy snapped. Kee would complain that he’d ordered too much food, but onion rings were Kee’s favorite.

He fidgeted for the three minutes it took the packaged suppers to arrive. Loy pressed his palm against the bot to settle the bill, and rose from the table.

Loy shouldered his way out of Ringworld and started for home. Once more, he touched the earpiece. “Kee, if you get this, I’m going home with supper.”

It was past change time when he arrived back at the sharepod. Inside, only darkness greeted him. No Kee.

Loy pulled down his bed and sat. He opened his dinner and picked at it, trying to think of all the reasons why Kee might be missing. He’d had an accident. He’d gone shopping and gotten distracted. He’d found someone he wanted more – someone better looking, someone less anxious.

No. He fingered his dark hair and tried not to think of that last possibility.

 

Thirty-six sleepless hours later, Loy tapped his earpiece. He looked haggard with worry and frustration. Prescription strength caffeine kept him going. He was lucky that the Authority’s command and control network on Earth and its twelve colonies actually chose to behave itself that morning. He needed to talk with someone. He had a few friends – long hours at work on the Authority’s business didn’t leave time for many.

“Nimmy?”

Silence in his ear hung for a couple of seconds. Then: “Loy? My shift’s hardly started.”

“Sorry. I didn’t…I mean…if you’re too busy….”

“Are you all right, Loy?” The woman’s voice on the other side of the conversation softened.

“Sure, I’m…. No. No, I’m not fine.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Can we talk?”

“We’re talking now. And if we keep talking, both of our supervisors are going to post us up in Resources. That’ll look good at review time.”

“I meant later. Maybe at break?”

“Wow, like face to face talking? This has to be serious, Loy.”

“It is. It’s about Kee. My podmate. He’s missing.”

“Shoot, Loy, people walk out on their leases all the time. Quit worrying.”

“No, please. Can we meet up?”

The woman sighed. “Fine, fine. 12:15 at the Luna cafeteria on sublevel eight. And don’t be late.”

The connection ended.

 

Loy signed out in plenty of time to make the appointment; in fact, he was early.

When Nimmy arrived, he waved from his autotable; the platinum-haired woman waved back and strode over.

“Nice hair. It’s new,” he commented while she seated herself.

“Yeah, I kind of like it up and over, you know? Retro style.”

“How are things in Human Security and Services?”

“Good,” she responded. “I saw you got more projects in Network Control.”

“Yeah.”

The autotable remained silent.

“Did you order already?” she asked.

“Yeah. Martian tea, no sweetener.”

“You remembered. Nice.” Her face relaxed, which was about as close to a smile as Nimmy got. “So. Your so-called friend Kee walked out on your lease. You need a new podmate.”

“I’m worried about him. It’s not like him to just go missing like that.”

“Loy, Loy. Look at me. We go back a long time, right? How many years have we been working here? Four? Five? Remember when we met in New Employee Orientation? I told you then not to get lost in your numbers. Remember?”

“Yeah. I remember. But it’s not me being lost in something. I’m just afraid….”

“Afraid? Of what? Your podmate’s an adult, right? If he was in the hospital or had police trouble you’d probably have a voice notice if he wanted you to know.”

“But what if he was…I don’t know. Kidnapped or something?”

“You’re joking, I know it. Kidnapping is a fairytale. Doesn’t happen anymore. Everything is traceable. You ought to know that better than anyone.”

Loy stared at the table surface, ignoring the advertisements for Genuine Dark Side Room Enhancer under the smudged sensor glass.

Nimmy persisted. “You want to track him down? What, did he forget to make his part of the lease payment?”

Loy fidgeted. “No. It’s just – Kee wouldn’t just leave. And I’ve checked all his network sites and connections. Solar, ZenList – they’re all gone, taken down.”

“You didn’t tell me that. You have some kind of disagreement?”

“No, not at all. Kee is a great…roommate.” Loy colored a little. Nobody knew about their unlicensed relationship, and he wanted it to stay that way.

Nimmy sighed. “Well, people don’t just disappear for no reason.”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s why I’m worried.”

“Yeah, I can tell. You look like crap.”

“Thanks. I feel like it. I keep making errors at my workstation. I’m sure my boss is going to ask me why.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of Nimmy’s tea. She slurped at it without ceremony, then set it down. “Look. What can I do to help you?”

“Can you help me find him?”

The blond woman barked a short, humorless laugh. “Why don’t you just go file a report with Authority Assistance?”

“I did. Yesterday,” Loy said evenly. “I got an error message: 4004, person not found.”

Nimmy’s eyes narrowed. Her nostrils flared, and she frowned. The woman bent her head closer to Loy’s. “I could run a Special Inquiry. Confidential. Maybe your podmate is in a private ward or in special custody or something.”

Loy felt sick at these possibilities, yet also sensed a twinge of hope. Nimmy had access to this kind of information.

“Please. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, I can do it. You have a Citizen ID number or DNA sequence code?”

“I’ve got his CIN number. Where would I get his sequence code?”

“Either you access his central medical file, or you process a sample of some biomaterial.”

“You can do that?”

She shrugged. “I have a friend who would do it for me.” Nimmy touched her earpiece. “Recording. So, his full name?”

“Keesay Fleming Riksen.”

“What kind of a name is Fleming?”

“Some family thing, I guess.”

“CIN?”

Loy produced his BlankSlate and displayed the information.

“Camera. Snap. End recording.” Nimmy spoke. “What did people do before bioimplants?”

“They wrote stuff down. On paper.”

“Right. I’ve got to get back, and so do you. I’ll run this today if things are quiet, or after work if they aren’t.”

“Thanks a trillion, Nimmy.”

“No problem. You’ll probably hear from me tomorrow morning when you get in. And if your podmate jets in tonight like I think he will, let me know. Then you can kill him for putting you through this.”

 

But Loy didn’t have to wait until the next morning to hear from Nimmy.

A blip sounded in his earpiece. “Loy? Nimmy here.”

Loy took his hand off a screen he was managing. That set of nodes would be fine without him for a few minutes.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. As in: no citizen exists with these credentials.”

“What? Of course Kee existed.” Loy blinked. “Exists.”

“Well, HSS has no record. No birth record, no school record, no health record, no housing record, no legal record – nothing. Not an access denied. Not an insufficient credential. Nothing.”

Loy was silent.

“Loy?”

“What?”

“You have any biomaterial from your friend? Anything at all, even a hair.”

Loy closed his eyes. He’d had plenty of Kee’s biomaterial at one time or another, oh, yes. But not anymore, of course.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ve been a good friend to me, Loy. I remember when my mom died; you were so nice. I wish I could help more. I really do. This is really weird.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Let me know if you think of something else, okay?”

“I will.”

“Try and get some sleep, Loy. It’s going to be all right.”

 

Loy felt numb. Like a robot, he found his way to food, and then back to the sharepod after work. He stepped into the dark, silent pod, and breathed in. No hint of Kee. No trace of the smile or warm, laughing, brown eyes which lit up his life.

He lifted a hand and the light came on.

Automatically, he pulled down the bed. He lay down, still dressed. The sheets hadn’t been freshened since…since the last time he and Kee had made love. On the pillow, he caught a suggestion of Kee’s scent. He turned and buried his nose in it.

Kee, where are you?

The memory of their last night together just about broke his heart. Tears formed as he recalled how Kee had awakened him…. Loy had threaded his fingers in Kee’s hair as his lover skillfully used tongue and lips to….

Wait. Hands in Kee’s hair.

Loy’s eyes flew open. He knelt up on the bed and blinked. With great care, he pulled back the top sheet. He shifted and inspected the rumpled white surface. There, by his left knee, something glinted gold in the light. A hair.

Trembling, Loy reached out and picked it up. Holding it between thumb and forefinger before his eyes, he touched his earpiece with his right hand.

“Nimmy?”

 

Loy shifted uncomfortably on the seat of the uptown commuter tube. The uncrowded car had a sprinkling of riders, as it was late. The stops on this part of the line served wealthier parts of the conurbation of New Manhattan – there were fewer inhabitants packed into these hectares than in the sharepod hives downtown.

The car whooshed and decelerated smoothly into a gleaming station.

“Upland Park Center,” a quiet voice announced.

Loy rose, adjusted his bag over his shoulder and exited. He did not need to follow the tasteful signage pointing him to the Upland North Elevators. He knew the way. He had grown up here.

Loy’s parents lived in a Wesse: wholly-enclosed self-sustaining environment. No matter what the season outside, it was invariably bright and twenty degrees on the Celsius scale. Inside. Loy’s ancestral home sat fifteen levels up, facing west. No mere pod this: it boasted multiple rooms. The sunsets over the wide inland estuary once known as the Hudson Valley were quite spectacular.

Such a home as might befit a Justice of the Authority Appellate Court, Inner Planets Division, known to Loy as Father.

He grimaced a bit as he pressed the button to call the elevator. He wasn’t looking forward to the visit home. Loy knew to expect a grilling from both parents about his job, his supervisors, the extra projects he ought to be volunteering for, his prospects for promotion, and whether he’d made any progress on finding a marital match. All this would be interlarded with a healthy amount of gratuitous advice and well-intentioned parental bullying.

Loy disliked these interviews, but once he’d heard back from Nimmy with the DNA search results, he knew a trip to Uplands North was unavoidable.

The elevator hissed open.

Loy stepped in and spoke. “Fifteen West.”

He placed his palm on the recognition plate; the door closed. His feet suddenly felt heavy as he accelerated. He stared at the words Otis MagLift embossed on the floor plate. Twenty seconds later, he felt the odd twist as the car simultaneously turned and slowed.

“Fifteen West,” an automated voice announced.

The door slid open and Loy stepped out. Despite his nervousness, he walked with calm steps over to the door of number five. He might have used his palm recognition to make the door open, but he chose to wait until it sensed him and announced his presence. Loy knew his parents preferred it that way.

Presently, the door slid off to the left, revealing the smiling form of his mother.

“Loy, dear, it’s so good to see you.” She hugged him close for a moment, then released him.

“Hello, Mother.”

She held him at arm’s length and eyed him critically. She hadn’t changed at all: tall, with long, dark hair and frank, fearless eyes.

“You’re not eating. Isn’t there a food service at the Home Quarters?”

“I’m fine, Mother. Is Father here?”

His mother let him go. “He’s in his study. You said something about needing to talk with him?”

Loy nodded. “Yes.”

“Should I be worried? You look unhappy.”

He looked away. He was never very good at lying to his mother. “No. I don’t think you need to be concerned. I’m just doing some extra research.”

“Are you staying the night? Of course you are. I don’t want you going back to your hive downtown so late. I’ll make up your bed. Go find your father.”

Loy slipped off his sandals and padded over to his father’s study. He knocked on the antique, hinged door, which stood ajar. His father enjoyed bizarre historic architectural touches like this. The man even owned a couple dozen books.

“Come in,” his father called out.

The Honorable Justice Oshawn Grambling sat in his old, wooden, swivel chair, skimming documents scrolling at impossibly swift speeds on his screendesk. His father’s gaze was concentrated on the text before him; the older man’s back quite straight. His iron-grey hair was cut short and combed perfectly, as it always was, no matter what the hour.

“Hello, Father. Thank you for seeing me tonight.”

“Stop scrolling,” his father told the desk. He swiveled the chair to face his son and leaned back with a creak. “So, to what do we owe the pleasure of your unexpected visit?”

“I think…I think I need your help.” Loy tried to hold his father’s gaze, to meet the piercing blue eyes which had intimidated lawyers on four different worlds.

“Really? I didn’t believe that was possible.”

Loy gritted his teeth. “It’s about a friend of mine. My podmate, Kee.”

“What use could I be? If you have a dispute, you can go to an Arbitrator easily enough.”

“This isn’t something with a digital solution, Father. Kee’s disappeared. Vanished.”

“Then contact the Authority. For galaxy’s sake, boy, you work for the Authority. You have more resources downtown than I do.”

Loy had wondered if this trip would be pointless. He tried again. “I’ve tried to track him. I’ve run several kinds of searches myself, including an Authority surveillance search and a CIN-search. I even tried a DNA Code search.”

His father’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been moving up in the world,” the man mused. “I didn’t know you could do one of those.”

“It’s the results of that DNA Code search that brought me to you,” Loy responded, ignoring his father’s comment. He had no intention of involving Nimmy.

“What about it?”

“The good news is that Kee showed up in the DNA search multiple times on the day he disappeared.” He paused. “The strange thing is that each appearance came from a trans-portal.”

His father frowned.

Loy went on. “I know, that’s strange enough. Each trans-portal journey needs to happen in pairs of portals – one for departure, one for arrival, right? But Kee’s genetics registered at only five.”

“There had to have been a sensor error, or a data miscue.”

“I thought that too,” Loy agreed. “I wrote an algorithm to search for CIN-DNA Code matches with the wrong name, or for similar DNA Codes with slightly corrupt data. Nothing; not for the inner or the outer planets.”

“You must have stayed up late. You look horrible.”

“Yes. I did….”

His father shifted in his chair. “I’m sorry, but this seems like a missing person kind of thing. Highly unusual in this day and age, but I still don’t see what you need me for.”

“There’s something even stranger about this, Papa,” Loy pursued, forgetting his usual awkwardness with his father…. “Kee’s first two portal pairs make sense. He passed out of New Manhattan Grand Central, portal eighty-seven, at 8:45 in the morning. He passed in through Mercury Dark Base portal. At 17:11 our time, he passed back out through Mercury Dark Base, and arrived at Grand Central portal twenty-one. But then…but then, at 19:33, he’s recorded for the last time passing out of a portal at a different place. One I never even knew existed.”

“So where is this other portal?”

“I traced the departure to Authority Square.”

Oshawn Grambling leaned forward. “Authority Square? Are you sure?”

Loy nodded. “Yes. The power signature and quanta measurements match.”

“You realize Authority Square has a lot of different offices and operations going on there. It’s a huge complex.”

“I know that. It houses the Authority Investigation Department.”

“And lots of other agencies besides AID,” the Judge grated.

“But AID is the largest.”

Loy’s father nodded but said nothing.

“I know you have friends there, Papa. Maybe you could call one of them to ask what happened. I just need to know.”

“Tell me about your friend Kee,” his father countered.

“You met him last year when you and mother took us out to dinner. He’s a little taller than me, and he wears his hair –”

“Yes, yes, I remember all that perfectly well, Loy. But what makes this fellow so special?”

A moment passed. “He brings a smile to every morning,” Loy began. “Kee laughs at my jokes. He listens to me. He cares…he’s…the best friend I ever had.” His voice trailed off.

“Your best friend?” The elder Grambling raised an eyebrow.

Loy’s lip trembled. He nodded.

His father made a sour face. “All right, I think I know someone I can call. You have the CIN number and DNA Code?”

“Right here. In my bag,”

Loy made a move to retrieve his BlankSlate. He handed it over.

His father took the device. “Go bother your mother for a while. I’ll want privacy to make this call.”

Loy rose and walked out of the study, closing the door behind him. But instead of looking for his mother, he stood over by the enormous window facing the western darkness. The lights of other buildings, other Wesses, winked back at him. Beyond the horizon lay more and still more suburbs, their inhabitants strewn about in their millions. Over these, stars and planets shone dimly down from space as deep as time. Kee was out there, somewhere. He had to be.

Kee, wherever you are, I’m going to find you. I can’t lose you.

Loy had no idea how long he stood there, staring out into the world; thinking, yearning, hoping. He was startled from his reverie when his father came up and stood beside him.

“It’s quite a world, isn’t it?”

“Huge,” Loy replied.

“I found out something.”

Hope surged through Loy’s heart.

It must have shown on his face, for his father hastened to add: “You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Come, sit down.” Oshawn Grambling motioned to a group of overstuffed white chairs, long out of fashion, but comfortable in their way.

They sat.

“First of all, I don’t want you asking who I spoke with. Let’s just say he’s an old friend who owes me a few big favors. Or he did, anyway.”

Loy nodded.

“I think I ought to congratulate you. Well done in your sleuthing. You had it absolutely right.”

Loy blushed. This was high praise from his father.

“It seems your friend Keesay was subject to a post-portal spot check when he returned from Mercury,” the older man continued.

Loy nodded again. Everyone knew these things happened occasionally – the spot checks determined that the trans-portals were properly reassociating the user’s subatomic and molecular structures. Errors of machine calculation even in the ninety-ninth decimal point could have terrible consequences, particularly on frequent travelers.

“So he had to go to a hospital? Which one?” Loy asked.

“It was more serious than that. From what my contact determined, your friend came through from Mercury in good health. But the scan revealed an aberrant piece of code in his DNA sequence.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The scan found that your podmate had the DNA marker for homosexuality. It’s a deviant attribute.”

“That shouldn’t matter.”

“Homosexuality is classified as an undesirable variant under orthogenetic law. AID is charged with removing persons with such traits, just as it will in the cases of other rare and untreatable pathologies, such as genetically heritable cancers or egregious cognitive deficiencies, for instance.”

Loy blinked, not able to take it in.

“You have to understand, the AID may not pursue these laws as vigorously as others, but it does so when the subject is in custody and the indications are clear. In this case, Keesay Ricksen was taken to AID at Authority Square, administratively judged according to incontrovertible evidence, and then dissociated. If it’s any consolation, his parents will have to undergo genetic therapies or be sterilized. And of course, all record of him –”

“Stop.” Loy stared back at his father. “You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I am. The Authority has to keep humankind from spreading its defects to other worlds. Keesay Ricksen was properly culled.”

Loy stood, angry now.

“Then I’d better take the next tube down to Authority Square. I’m just like Kee, you know. I’m one of them. A defective.”

Now it was his father’s turn to gape.

“Come on, Papa, didn’t you wonder why I hadn’t applied for procreation papers yet? Kee wasn’t just my best friend. He was my lover. And he loved me.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” His father struggled for control. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

“What’s not to believe? I’m right here, and there’s no holovision involved. I loved a man.”

His father rose, his palms up. “Wait. So you slept with him. You experimented. You –”

“Papa, we shared a bed every night for the last eighteen months. I’d have shared my whole life with Kee. It wasn’t an experiment.”

The two men glared for a moment; then the older one looked away.

“You put me in a hell of a position,” his father murmured. “What am I supposed to do? Turn in my only child for sexual cacogenic violations of the law?”

“I’ll save you the trouble and do it myself.”

“Stop Loy, just stop. You’re a brilliant mathematical mind. Scored highest in your class. You have immense talents and gifts to offer the world. We can – we must – find a way around this.”

“What, are you saying I can be fixed? If that’s possible, why didn’t they try to fix Kee?”

The judge wasn’t listening. “Your mother’s the physician. Maybe she’ll know the right therapy.”

“Father, you’re missing the point. If Kee isn’t in this world because the Authority wants people like us dead, then I’m not willing to offer anything. The whole damn universe can go to hell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re just overwrought. We’ll arrange a temporary leave for you from your work at the Authority. You’ve been under stress. You need a break,” his father went on. “We’ll find a discreet facility where you can get help.”

“No. I don’t want to be repaired. I’m not broken. I don’t need my code rewritten. I just want Kee back.”

“It’s too late for that. Your friend is gone, finished, dissociated. He is not and never was. And time is running out for you. There’s just this moment to get yourself back in the right orbit. You have nanoseconds to adjust the course of your life. You won’t be able to hide from the Authority forever, even if I keep silent.”

Loy looked at his father for four, maybe five seconds. The intensity of the old man’s gaze, the conviction with which he spoke, made Loy’s decision for him.

“I’m going back downtown. I have work I should be doing, things that need to be finished; and I need sleep. I’m not staying.”

His father nodded. “Good, good. Very sensible. Get some rest, live your normal life, and go back to work in the morning. You can leave everything else to your mother and me.”

Loy turned for the apartment door.

“Leave what to us?” Loy’s mother emerged from the kitchen.

“We’ll talk about it later, my dear,” Justice Grambling said.

Loy embraced his mother briefly. “Goodbye, Mama.”

“Aren’t you staying?”

“I’m sorry, Mother, but Papa convinced me I need to go home and get to work.”

She frowned in disappointment. “But I was so looking forward to having you to myself for a while after you’d finished with your father.”

“He can tell you about it.” Loy shuddered. He was glad enough that he’d be gone when his father broke the news. At least he wouldn’t have to bear her heartache too.

He broke free of his mother. The front door slid open. “Good night, Loy.” The judge called out from behind her.

“Goodbye,” he said without expression, looking back one last time; then the door slid closed.

 

Loy half expected to be arrested as he stepped onto the tube platform at the Uplands station. Instead, just a few other riders waited for the downtown express to arrive. His father either believed Loy experienced a change of heart, or his conscience still wrestled with duty.

When the car arrived, there was no difficulty finding a seat.

But what was he going to do?

I could give myself up at Authority Square. That would knock Father down a peg or two. Wonder how he and Mother would like the Authority’s therapy for their defective genes. Of course, I would be dissociated in an hour.

Loy imagined what it might have been like for Kee: taken away by strange guarddroids, wondering what he’d done wrong. Had he tried to call? Asked for a hearing? Insisted on his rights? Not that anyone really had any in the end.

Perhaps Kee had been deposited in a windowless holding room; had fear taken hold then? Loy imagined his lover being frog marched down a hallway to the unknown portal; felt the growing horror in his gut, realizing that in a moment, he’d be shoved through and unmade.

Twin tears trickled down Loy’s face.

It wasn’t right. Those beautiful brown eyes, gone forever. That infectious grin, destroyed. Kee deserved better. Everyone deserved better. The Authority destroyed the best, most beautiful man in the universe out of blind bigotry. They had to pay. But how?

“Your friend is gone, finished, dissociated. He isn’t and never was,” his father had said. “And time is running out for you.”

How much time did he have before death overtook him – either at the hands of the AID, or by some form of medical repair that made him into someone he didn’t know?

The tube slowed and stopped; passengers got off, others boarded. Loy stared at the opposite seat, lost in thought. He detected acceleration again, and motion.

Existence. Time, Kee. You aren’t and never were. Time. You are, Kee, and always will be.

Time.

Loy’s breath caught. His heart skipped a beat as a new idea flashed through his tired brain. He sat up in his seat, blinked, and looked about. No one else seemed to sense his sudden inspiration, but new energy flowed through him and into his bones.

Suddenly, Loy knew what to do.

He never went back to his sharepod that night. He went directly to his workspace at Home Quarters, downtown. Once there, he quickly accessed the mathematical research library and began reading. He was still reading when it was time for his shift to begin in the morning.

Loy did his work during the day, but half his mind still churned with the ideas he’d absorbed. After his shift, he checked in at a Pharmacy. Under the careful eye of the supervising robot, he took a measured dose of RestNot. He could function for another thirty-six hours or so, assuming he had that long.

Time.

Back at the Home Quarters, he took over a quiet meeting room and extracted the BlankSlate from his bag. He had plans to make and problems to solve.

As the small hours crawled along, Loy lost himself in mathematics and physics, the bane and delight of quantum engineers throughout the solar system. He knew the solution existed. He just had to find out how to arrive at it.

At 7:58, Loy sat back in his chair with a wide grin on his face.

His supervisor, a large woman with a brassy voice which permeated the department, happened by at that moment and looked in. “Loy? Two minutes until shift. What have you been doing?”

Loy beamed at her. “Research. Working on a project. I found a solution to an impossible problem.”

“Well, I’m glad. But your independent enquiries are done on your own time. Let’s get to work.”

He would like to have told her to do something anatomically impossible. But he held off and wandered off to his workstation. Loy figured he had only a few hours left on earth, and he had to plan them well, and in secret.

He used his break time to do some research on some very specific nodes in the Authority’s network. He kept his BlankSlate busy. Several times, he caught himself writing down elements of his plan. That wouldn’t do – he wanted no monitor, no watchful security bot to catch even the slightest current of his thinking. He only recorded data. He would go over his solution with a fresh mind in the morning. Then he’d have a day to be sure of his execution.

Just after the lunch hour, Loy heard a blip in his earpiece.

“Loy? It’s your father.”

He really didn’t want to talk but sighed and answered. “Yes?”

“Glad to hear your voice, son. I’m happy you went back to work. That’s a good sign, I think. I’ve made some plans for you.”

“What sort of plans?”

“I’ve spoken with your supervisor and told her you’re taking a leave of absence for a few weeks, starting tomorrow.”

Loy raised his eyebrows despite himself. That took power and boldness to intrude on the Authority’s Home Quarters Bureau like that.

But Justice Grambling was still speaking. “Now, when you get off work today, there will be a vehicle waiting for you on the commuter level at the west entrance. Find it and get in. It will be instructed to take you to meet your mother and me at a facility we’ve found.”

A chill ran up Loy’s spine.

“How will I know which one it is?” He played for time.

“Look for a black sedan with an Authority tag and a driver in judicial uniform. That will be yours.”

The old man was serious about this. Serious enough to send an actual driver to make sure he came along on the trip.

“Um, right. Fine. What time?”

“As soon as your shift is over, the car and driver will be there. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Loy was silent for a beat. “Fine, Papa. I have to get back to work now.”

“Of course, you do. I’ll see you tonight.”

The earpiece went dead.

Shit. Time is shorter than I thought.

But his father wasn’t going to change his mind, or his plan.

Now it absolutely has to be tonight. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong. I’m not going in for repair, and I’m not going to get culled.

For the remainder of his shift, Loy surreptitiously tapped his BlankSlate at lightspeeds, alternating with long pauses to fret. The seconds crawled by, one by one.

By changeover time, he was tight, as anxious as an asteroid miner.

As the signal sounded, Loy snatched up his bag, and dashed for the central elevators. He entered a crowded car, and wedged himself in near the doors, refusing to be budged or buffeted. When he exited at the commuter level, he made sure to walk in the midst of the crowd, hiding as well as he could in a gaggle of workers leaving the facility by the east gates.

Loy had to restrain himself from sprinting to the uptown tube stations.

Staying with a knot of Home Quarters drones moving in the same direction, he stepped into a tube headed to New Grand Central’s trans-portals.

He’d be there in a few minutes.

 

Herk Urksin’s eyes flicked from screen to screen in the New Grand Central control center. He felt overworked, underpaid, and tired. Waves of intra- and interplanetary travelers streamed through the trans-portal hub as he neared the end of his shift. In some ways, Herk and his few human cohorts at New Grand Central were increasingly redundant. Swarms of observer nanodrones supplemented sensors and cameras everywhere. These autonomously guided both android and utility bots throughout the sprawling complex, providing them with data and responding to problems or suspicious behavior in the sea of humans that flowed through it.

The bots could, and did, take care of nearly everything. Herk simply confirmed what they did most of the time; if asked, he would not have been able to remember the last time he had to override a New Grand Central bot.

As it was, he turned to his coworker. “I have a couple of weeks’ vacation banked. I was thinking of trying out the casinos on Europa. I can get a package deal.”

“Nah, not worth it,” she scoffed. “The food’s okay, but the stage acts are nothin’. I’d rather do an old-fashioned cruise around the rings of Saturn – all inclusive.”

“You want to deal with all that rocket fuel and g-force stuff? No, thanks. Besides –”

“Hey, Herk,” his partner interrupted. “What’s going on at Portal 101?”

Herk turned to look at the screen. The Authority had closed 101 for construction weeks ago. It would be demolished any day, as its newer, larger replacement had been built over and above the old portal. The construction crew had departed over an hour before.

Yet there on the screen strayed a human traveler wandering into the construction area.

“What the hell?” Herk’s irritated voice sounded in the stuffy little room. His bots should have intercepted this trespasser long before this. He stared at the screen, not quite sure how this had happened.

“Mano, check the bots in the one hundred block,” he ordered his partner.

“Check them yourself,” she retorted. “You shoulda been watchin’ better. I got problems of my own.” Her fingers clawed her control screen, trying to reactivate bots that refused to respond.

Herk spent twenty precious seconds trying to do the same on his own bot control pad, with no better result.

Meanwhile, the dark-haired trespasser knelt down by the base of the new portal construction. Herk couldn’t quite see from the stationary camera what was happening.

Herk didn’t like this at all.

He grabbed at his earpiece. “Public Address, Portal 101,” he barked. Then he spoke with as much confidence as he could muster. “Attention! Attention in the construction area! You are trespassing! Walk out of the construction area with your hands up and await Authority personnel! I repeat, Walk out of the….”

Herk ran on, but the interloper paid him no heed, moving over to the old Portal 101.

This was bad. People just didn’t wander around in sensitive areas without authorization. And they didn’t get past security bots, and they didn’t ignore directives from Control.

His hand hovered over the general alarm switch. Activation meant bringing in a battalion of crack Authority Police; the movement of people and goods for the whole solar system would grind to a halt.

On the screen, Portal 101 suddenly lit up. Somehow, the intruder had powered it up again.

“Herk!” Mano’s hand slapped his own palsied fingers away and pulled the general alarm. “Authority Nine, Authority Nine, this is New Grand Central Control, we have an emergency –” she yelled over a sudden klaxon that brayed from one end of the terminal to the other. Automated messages urged travelers to evacuate the area as quickly as possible. The view screens showed confusion on the sea of faces in the terminal first. Then movement toward the exits; then chaos. The once ordered queues of commuters and travelers became a seething, churning mass. People panicked, turned, and stampeded for the exits, trampling over one another and the helpless bots that got in their way.

Mesmerized, Herk kept his eyes on Portal 101.

The interloper stood, and then walked through and disappeared.

“It’s got to be some kind of prisoner escape,” Herk shouted over the tumult. But that was crazy. Nobody escaped from Authority Control.

Mano just shook her head and kept trying to explain the pandemonium in the station to the Authority.

Herk caught a motion on the screen again – the dark-haired figure had just reappeared through the disused portal. This time, he got a better look. It was an ashen-faced young man, rail-thin underneath a loose jacket.

He staggered over to the new construction. Coming through a portal could do that to some people. Maybe the Authority Police would get him after all. They wouldn’t hesitate to mow down any civilians trying to get out in order to secure New Grand Central and reestablish control.

In the same mysterious way he had with the old portal, the criminal managed to power up the new one. It was nearly operational, Herk knew.

A moment later, Herk’s jaw dropped. The old Portal, number 101, simply vanished. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but it was true. It was gone.

The sound of heavy weaponry sounded near the control area. Authority Police must have arrived.

Unheeding of the noise, pure joy radiated from the saboteur’s face. He turned and waved jauntily in the general direction of the camera. And then he walked through the new portal and was gone.

“Shit, Mano, what’re we gonna do? Why does this have to happen to me?” Herk wailed.

Someone had stolen a whole portal, right from under the Authority’s nose. Someone had to be held accountable.

But then Herk had other things to consider. The earth under his feet started to shake. The Authority had arrived.

 

The sun shone down out of a crystal blue October sky. The summer crowds of tourists had thinned, but there were plenty of visitors to the Mississippi Riverfront and Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The magnificent stainless-steel structure gleamed in the autumn morning.

Retired couples ambled slowly down the paths around Gateway National Park; teachers shepherded schoolchildren on a field trip toward the Old Courthouse where Dred Scott sued for his freedom. A large extended family from India trailed along, the elderly fourth generation at the back of the procession, as the newest scampered ahead, exploring.

“Yuvraj! Slow down!” A harried mother’s sharp command rang out across the grass.

Undeterred, the fearless ten-year-old raced further on and ran up to something new and odd. It looked like a kind of tunnel emerging from the trees, like something one might see at an airport. There were lights on it, but the bright sunshine dulled them. A generator putt-putted quietly at the back. Beside the structure, a young-looking man with dark, shoulder length hair sat in the grass. He tapped on some sort of tablet.

“Hallo. My name’s Yuvraj. What’s yours?”

The man looked up. His unshaven face broke into a smile. “I’m called Loy.”

“What are you doing here? Is this a playground?”

“No, it’s just…a kind of construction. I’m waiting for someone here.”

“Who are you waiting for?”

“My best friend.”

“Where is he?”

Loy looked up at the sky; he craned his neck to take in the trees and city beyond. “He’s around.”

“Can I play on that?” The boy gestured toward the tunnel.

“Not just now. It can be dangerous.”

The boy’s black eyes gleamed. “It doesn’t look very dangerous.”

“Yuvraj! What are you doing?” From fifty yards away, the boy’s mother called from the walking path. “What have I told you about strangers? Come here, now. We’re going to line up for the Arch tram.”

The boy cast a longing glance at the tunnel, then at Loy, who smiled back. “Go on. The view from the top is supposed to be wonderful.”

“See you later,” the boy grinned and trotted off toward his waiting relatives.

Loy continued to sweep his fingers over the surface of his BlankSlate. He stood, his face a mask of apprehension and anticipation.

The air inside the tunnel shimmered a moment, and then a lanky, shaggy haired blond appeared and walked out.

“Kee!” Loy didn’t allow him to take more than a step away before wrapping his lover, his best friend, in his arms.

“Hey, hey, Loy. You’re gonna crush me. You didn’t have to –”

Loy didn’t let Kee finish. He was too busy kissing him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so kissing Kee seemed to be the best alternative.

“Loy, stop! We’re going to get arrested!” Kee managed to get out.

“No, we’re not. Not here.”

Kee took in the surroundings – the beautiful day, the park, the soaring Arch. “What is this? Where are we? How did –”

Loy put a finger on his partner’s lips.

“Not where are we, but when.”

Kee looked baffled, as if Loy were completely crazy.

“You were dead. An Authority spot check scan revealed –”

“I know. The Authority android told me. They took me down to a portal to send me to some hospital. That’s what it said.”

Loy held Kee, stroked his cheek. “It dissociated you. You were gone, and I couldn’t find you.”

“Well, it seems I’m here now. Whenever now is.”

“The year two thousand eighteen. St. Louis, on the Mississippi River.”

“That’s four hundred years ago. Time travel’s supposed to be unattainable.”

“Oh, it’s possible. You just have to adjust the size of the matrix field that calculates reassociation in a trans-portal, and then use a Hypernion transform to –”

Kee cut off Loy’s explanation with a kiss.

“Stop. I get it. You’re brilliant. Either this is a cosmic joke, or you’ve done the impossible. But why this time? Why this place?”

“Because in this time and place, you and I are allowed. We can be together, and nobody will stop us.”

Loy was going to say more, but the humming in the tunnel seemed to change pitch and grow faint. He and Kee turned to watch. The tunnel itself seemed to wobble, distorted in the air, becoming translucent. It shimmered for a moment or two, and then vanished.

“What just happened?” Kee asked.

“Whatever we knew isn’t there anymore. The future changed for the better, I think,” Loy responded.

They embraced beneath the bright midwestern sky.

“Jeez, you two, go get a hotel room,” the voice of an older gentleman carried across to them from the walkway.

Loy took Kee’s hand. “We’re on our way.”