Titan
Author: Robert Kroese
Date: 2021-10-12 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Publisher: Independently published

MAMMON

BOOK ONE:TITAN

A Novel by Robert Kroese

Copyright ©2021 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-one

Pre-order Mammon:  Book Two: Messiah

About the Author

Review This Book!

Acknowledgements

More Books by Robert Kroese

Chapter One

2036

A two-hundred-thousand-ton hunk of rock and ice hurtled toward Earth, its approach observed only by the powerful telescopes of a handful of satellites. In the scant seconds it took for the images these satellites captured to be converted to a string of numbers, beamed to Earth’s surface, beamed back to another set of satellites, beamed to the surface once more, disseminated by a byzantine network of cables and transmitters, and finally reassembled on a billion LED screens all over the planet, the asteroid had traversed several more miles. Its progress was silent, rapid and inexorable.

The coming of the asteroid (its official name was 2024 LF, but by this time most people just called it “the asteroid”) was the event of the year, if not the decade—evidence that despite the general malaise of the past two decades, humanity was still capable of amazing things. Well over a billion pairs of eyes watched it approach.

Visible at first as only a faint point of light among hundreds of pinpricks in a dead black canopy, the intruder soon differentiated itself from its peers, growing brighter and more defined. Weeks earlier, when the lead impactor craft transmitted the first grainy photos of the asteroid, newscasters straining for a touch of the poetic had called it an hourglass, but it more closely resembled a dumbbell: two roughly spherical masses of rock joined by a slightly narrower middle section. One would be hard-pressed to make a definitive case based on the satellite imagery, however: even an hour after the point of light appeared, the asteroid was visible only as two small white blurs separated by a sliver of black. The blurs eventually became rough circles, but before the dumbbell shape could be clearly discerned the circles turned into crescent moons and then disappeared entirely. The Earth, perhaps jealous of the attention, had interposed itself between the newcomer and the Sun, plunging it into shadow. Spectators around the world watched in disappointment as the dumbbell disappeared. For the next hour, the asteroid would be shrouded in darkness.

Disappointment was palpable even among the two-thousand-some employees, shareholders, various VIPs and family members watching 2024 LF’s approach on a huge screen that nearly covered the upper half of the far wall of Hangar Six at the launch facility and headquarters of Ad Astra, Inc, just north of Cape Coral, Florida. Not only was the eclipse expected at Ad Astra; it had been scheduled to within a quarter-second on either side. In a little over an hour, if all went as planned, the asteroid would emerge from the Earth’s shadow. By that time, the spectators in the hangar would know whether Ad Astra’s years of hard work (and billions of dollars invested) were going to pay off. People in the hangar chattered excitedly with one another, many of them tugging at sticky shirts and fanning themselves with sheafs of paper or notepads, as the air conditioners struggled to keep the huge space cool and dry. A few continued to stare anxiously at the screen.

Although most of the screen was now covered by stars scattered across a black field, a small box in the lower right corner still communicated a wealth of information, and it was being constantly updated by data from the satellites, which could still “see” the asteroid by bouncing laser beams off it. The text in the box currently read:

Right Ascension:

20 07 04.2

Declination:

-59 23 37

Distance (miles):

330,659.4

Rel velocity (miles/s):

5.01

Time to capture:

18h 20m 06s

It was these numbers that would determine whether the asteroid would soon continue on its way back out into deep space, get trapped indefinitely by Earth’s gravitational field, or—Heaven forbid—fall to the surface. The odds of the last occurring were currently somewhere around one in a billion, and even if it did happen, the asteroid would in all likelihood hit ocean or an uninhabited area. Still, the possibility could not be entirely discounted. Ad Astra had been forced to appeal to the U.S. government and the United Nations for special indemnity against lawsuits and criminal claims that might arise in the case of a black swan event. The Tunguska meteor, which leveled 830 square miles of Siberia, wasn’t much bigger than 2024 LF.

The probability of the asteroid slipping the surly bonds of Earth were significantly greater but still small: they currently hovered around one percent. The likeliest possibility, according to their models, was the one for which the men and women of Ad Astra had been striving over the past six years: 2024 LF—“Larry Frank,” as it was affectionately known in-house—would fly near Earth just slow enough that a final round of impactor craft (twenty of which were currently in orbit) would suffice to ease the asteroid onto an elliptical path with the Earth at its center. Earth would then have a second, very small moon, and Ad Astra’s mission would officially be declared a success.

Kade Kapur, standing near the front of the hangar with his beautiful blond wife, Christy, projected confidence, as he always did. No media people were present; the reporters and cameramen had been sequestered in a smaller, more comfortable building a few hundred yards away, where they were privy to the same view on another screen. Kade hadn’t promised them any attention, but he would probably swing by to toss them a few crumbs when the event was over. Right now he supposed that most of the big news outlets were filling time with interviews with various “experts” on asteroid capture and playing the same tired segments about Tunguska, Chelyabinsk and the extermination of the dinosaurs. Predictions of imminent doom made for good TV, no matter how far off base they were. The die-hard skeptics—the ones who were convinced that moving an asteroid into orbit around Earth was simply not feasible—were rarely heard from these days.

From the beginning, back when Kade was just a young entrepreneur with a dream, he had always believed it could be done—more than that, it had to be done. If humanity was going to survive, it needed to colonize space, and space could not be colonized by building things on Earth and launching them into space on huge, expensive rockets. If extraterrestrial settlements were going to be viable, humans had to be able to build things—spaceships, dwellings, factories—in space with raw materials that could be found in space.

The first thing they needed, though, was water: for drinking, for bathing, and for irrigation. Water could also be broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, which could be used together as spaceship propellant. Water was too heavy to carry into space in large quantities, and without water, any other endeavor in space was going to be phenomenally expensive and probably short-lived. That was why his team had picked 2024 LF as the first asteroid to be redirected into Earth orbit: Ad Astra’s scientists estimated that it contained over a million gallons of water. To carry that much water from Earth into space would cost over $100 billion. The 2024 LF redirect mission cost a tenth of that, and future asteroid-redirect missions would be much cheaper, now that the infrastructure was in place.

Still, ten billion dollars was a lot of money, even for Kade Kapur—and even with the rapid inflation the U.S. had seen over the past several years. If this mission failed, Ad Astra would go belly-up and Kade would be ruined. So although the grin on his face never wavered, relief washed over him as the numbers on the screen continued to show that the asteroid was precisely in the center of the capture window.

The physics of determining the trajectory of an asteroid was complex but straightforward; most of the uncertainty in predicting Larry Frank’s course came from the limitations on taking precise measurements on an object millions of miles away. But now the asteroid was close enough that its course could be predicted with a high degree of certainty. The only thing left to worry about at this point was outgassing: before Larry Frank slipped into shadow, it had gotten within ninety million miles of the sun—close enough for the sun’s radiation to boil frozen water on the asteroid’s surface. Steam erupting from one side of Larry Frank would push the asteroid ever-so-slightly off course, in accordance with Newton’s third law of motion. It was for this reason that the last impactor craft to slam into Larry Frank three weeks earlier had been aimed just off from its center of mass in order to increase the asteroid’s spin. This would cause the sun’s radiation to fall more evenly across Larry Frank’s surface, lowering the chances of outgassing as it neared the Sun.

Any trajectory-altering outgassing that was going to occur would already have happened before Larry Frank slipped into Earth’s shadow: the asteroid’s surface would cool in the shade, and by the time the sun had a chance to heat it up again Larry Frank would be—for better or worse—a slave to the whims of Earth’s gravity. Any water vapor boiling off the asteroid’s surface would be too diffuse to be seen even by the powerful satellite telescopes, which meant that they wouldn’t know if Larry Frank had been pushed off course until the lidar measurements indicated a problem. As the minutes ticked away, though, the numbers on the screen remained within the optimal range: Larry Frank was dead on target. One hour and three minutes after the eclipse began, 2024 LF emerged into sunlight, and the anxious crowd inside Hangar Six erupted in cheers.

Kade Kapur kissed his wife on the temple and made his way to the rear of the building, where some scaffolding had been assembled into a makeshift stage. It took him a while to get there, being subjected to hugs, handshakes and hearty pats on the back the whole way. Kade liked to believe he was above needing validation from other people, but he had to admit it felt pretty damn good. And these weren’t just any people, he reminded himself: these were some of the smartest, hardest-working men and women in the world. He’d hand-picked many of them himself in a relentless quest to build the best team of scientists and engineers on the planet. And by God, they’d done it: they’d moved a motherfucking asteroid into orbit around Earth.

Chapter Two

2036

Kade climbed the ladder and stepped up to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, pausing to glance at the giant dumbbell-shaped rock over his right shoulder, “allow me to introduce you to Earth’s second moon.”

The crowd, which had managed to subdue itself for a few seconds when Kade took the stage, exploded instantly into cheers and howls of exultation. The roar inside the cavernous building was deafening. Kade, genuinely taken aback by the magnitude of the uproar, stood silently, half in a daze. He’d labored alongside these people for ten years, seen how hard they worked, felt their passion for the project. But so intent was he on his goal that until now he hadn’t realized that every one of them was just as consumed by fervor for the mission as he was. He was the catalyst, the spark that had ignited the fire that blazed in each of them. He’d given them purpose and a chance to be part of history, and their joy and gratitude nearly overwhelmed him. The ovation lasted for a long time, which was fortunate, because Kade was too choked up to speak. At last he regained his composure, took a deep breath and raised his hands in front of him. It took another couple of minutes, but finally the crowd quieted down.

Kade grinned his trademark grin, turning dramatically to look once again at Larry Frank, which had grown noticeably larger on the screen since he took the stage. The satellite transmitting the image was about twenty-thousand miles up, somewhere over the western Pacific. People in New Zealand and Australia, where it was now early morning, could probably by this time see Larry Frank with their naked eyes. It was not technically in orbit yet, but Kade was familiar enough with the calculations to know that the odds of success were now well above 99.9%. Hubris be damned, it was time to celebrate. He turned back to face the crowd.

“This has been a hell of a long road,” he said, and the crowd burst into cheers and applause again. “All right, all right,” he said, his grin widening, “y’all have to quiet down or we’ll be here until Cerulean gets off the ground.” Raucous laughter rang out: Cerulean had been Ad Astra’s chief competitor before a series of problems with the company’s CX-21 rocket had sidelined its own asteroid redirect mission. “Seriously,” Kade protested. “You know how much I hate this shit. Let me get it over with.” More laughter followed, but the crowd soon quieted down enough for him to continue.

“As I was saying, this has been a hell of a long road, and not an easy one. A lot of people said this couldn’t be done, and when we started making progress, they did their best to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Boos rang out at the unsubtle reference to various activist organizations and their puppets in government who had tried to shut Ad Astra down: those who objected to spending money on space projects while there were still problems to be solved on Earth, those who objected to the mere existence of billionaires like Kade Kapur, those who claimed that altering the orbit of an asteroid was a violation of some natural order, and of course those who worried that a redirected asteroid might fall to Earth and wipe out civilization. (There was some merit to this last objection, Kade would admit, but there was a solid counterargument to it: once the infrastructure was in place to redirect an asteroid, humanity would be much better prepared to deal with asteroids that threatened to collide with Earth.)

And those were hardly the only political challenges they had faced: the wealth tax passed by Congress in 2027 had nearly ended Ad Astra’s prospects before it even started. In 2029 a species of snail thought to be endangered was found on the land Kade had planned to use as a launch site, delaying construction for nine months and obligating him to pay $180 million to construct a snail habitat (after which it was discovered that the snail in question could be found by the millions in Louisiana). In 2032, Kade was forced to cut back the money he was funneling from his other ventures because of the ratification of the Global Minimum Corporate Tax.

So it went, year after year, the stagnant global economy and chronic budget deficits prompting the government to enact increasingly reckless and draconian measures to stay afloat. Sometimes, as with the billionaire tax, the measures were short-lived, but the overall trend seemed inexorable: a vicious cycle had taken hold, in which onerous regulations and high taxes led to a stagnant economy, which led to poverty, unemployment and budget shortfalls, which led to calls for increased taxes and regulations on businesses. The country’s trajectory was as intransigent as gravity.

By the time the Samson IV rocket launched carrying the first battery of impactors in December 2034, the national debt was $50 trillion—more than double the country’s gross domestic product. The federal government was drowning in debt, and Kade knew that eventually they would come to shut Ad Astra down. No matter how important Ad Astra’s mission was for the future of humanity, the feds saw space exploration as an expensive luxury, and the goose would be on the chopping block before it had laid a single golden egg.

Kade didn’t know what form the shutdown would take. Perhaps Congress would pass a law allowing them to seize assets of companies engaged in “frivolous activities,” as had happened in Japan and some European countries. Maybe they’d pass another wealth tax, this time barring American citizens from leaving the country. Or hell, maybe the President would just wake up one morning and send the FBI in to seize Ad Astra’s headquarters. After all, that was what she’d done with Vodacore, under the pretense that the company had sold American military technology to the Chinese. And Blankenship was a Republican, for fuck’s sake. Nobody at Vodacore had ever been charged with a crime, but the company was essentially kaput, the bulk of its assets having been sold for pennies on the dollar, reducing the federal budget deficit by a hundredth of a percent. It was idiotic: in five years the government would have made more on tax revenue on Vodacore than they’d made on the sales of its assets, but nobody had ever accused the federal government of thinking ahead.

The only chance Kade had against the momentum of such bureaucratic stupidity was to make it so blindingly obvious that Ad Astra was a boon to the government and to the nation as a whole that even the most rapacious socialists in Congress would think twice before shutting the company down. Sure, he probably could have bought himself some time by throwing a few million more at congressmen who were on the fence about space exploration, but he needed every dollar he had to fund Ad Astra.

Occasionally he had been forced to violate his no-politics rule, the most notable incidence being in 2031, when he, along with the founder of Cerulean and several other aerospace companies, successfully lobbied for passage of the Asteroid Redirection and Ownership Act, commonly known as ARROW. Although it was still technically impossible to “own” an asteroid, ARROW granted mining rights for forty years to any company that successfully maneuvered an asteroid into orbit. Thanks to that law, in just a few hours Ad Astra would have exclusive rights to all the water on Larry Frank, as well as any other minerals they might find there. Already they’d received over seventeen billion dollars’ worth of bids from companies eager to start drilling into Larry Frank. In one fell swoop, Ad Astra had changed the economics of space exploration, putting the entire solar system within human reach. This was bigger than the opening of the Silk Road, the discovery of the New World, the prospect of a Northwest Passage, and Magellan’s rounding of Cape Horn, all rolled together. They had opened a doorway into the infinite reaches of space! Even the bean-counters at the IRS (he hoped) could grasp that. The tax revenues from space exploration over the next few decades would dwarf the value of Ad Astra’s assets.

“But we persisted,” Kade went on, “even when they said it was impossible, when they said we were wasting our time, when they said there were more important things to do. We persisted, because we know the future of humanity, if it is to have a future, is in space. We persisted precisely because those people do not understand and so cannot be counted on to do what is necessary. We persisted because humanity was not put on Earth merely to survive, but rather to meet the challenges we faced here so that we could one day leave our home and live amongst the stars.” Kade paused again as the cheers and applause threatened to drown him out. “But you didn’t come here today to hear from me,” he went on after a moment. “Well, most of you came here today because I’m paying you damn good money to watch TV.” He turned to look at the dumbbell again as the audience burst into laughter. He turned back to face the crowd. “And at least a few of you came here today because you—like myself—have a hell of a lot of money riding on this venture.” More laughter. “Hey Rami,” he said, spying a slightly built man in the front row. “What’s the stock at right now?”

“Eighty-four fifteen,” Rami shouted, the barest hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Gasps and then cheers followed. “Up fourteen percent since yesterday.”

“Not that you’ve been watching,” said Kade. Rami’s face reddened a bit as more laughter rang out, but his smirk only grew wider. Rami Essak, Ad Astra’s second employee, was known to have bet big on company stock. Not as big as Kade, of course, who was up by several billion dollars. And that was on top of a very respectable run over the past three years as the market gradually realized Kade’s mission to capture an asteroid was no pipe dream. Kade had bet nearly his entire fortune, and it was finally beginning to pay off.

“Great job, everybody,” Kade said. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. We made history today, and I want you to take some time to celebrate and to reflect on that. And then tomorrow morning, I want you to get back to work, because we’re just getting started!”

Cheers and applause rang out. Kade waved and then climbed back down the ladder. He shook hands with several board members and then apologized, tapping the frames of his glasses with his index finger, indicating he had an important call to make. The glasses were something of an affectation; he could have had his mild near-sightedness fixed with a ten-minute procedure. But the glasses allowed him to browse the internet and make calls with his netcard surreptitiously, without having to pull a screen from his pocket. Screens these days were as thin and flexible as neoprene drink koozies—and nearly as cheap—but he liked to be able to browse without drawing attention to himself, and to keep an eye on his surroundings while he did so. He made his way behind a partition wall that blocked a series of cubicles from the rest of the hangar. The cubicles were empty; the engineers who used them as temporary workspaces were all at the celebration.

“Call Lowell,” he said, holding his fingertip to his eyeglass frames. Calling Lowell Benjamin… appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of his field of vision. After a moment, he heard Lowell’s voice in his ear.

“Hey, Kade.”

“Saw that you called. I was giving my big speech. Don’t suppose you wanted to congratulate me?”

“Congratulations, Kade,” Lowell said without enthusiasm.

“Ugh, forget it. What’s the bad news?”

“What makes you think I have bad news?”

“I don’t pay you a thousand dollars an hour to tell me how handsome I am.”

“No, you do not. Remember that special election in Minnesota I warned you about?”

“The one with the commie nutball running a Hail Mary third party campaign?”

“That’s the one. Guess what?”

“No. Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. In two weeks it will be the honorable commie nutball Jacob Fliss, from the great state of Minnesota.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck indeed. The leftist coalition now has a majority.”

“Capital gains tax will go up again.”

“Kade, the capital gains tax is the least of your problems. I told you about Fliss’s campaign, right?”

“Sure, but that was a lot of hot air. A single socialist congressman doesn’t have the power to—”

“Kade, you’re not listening. The balance of power has shifted. The Democrat-Socialist coalition now controls the House, and word is that snake Miller is going to switch parties.”

“They can’t override a veto.”

“There isn’t going to be any veto, Kade. Blankenship’s getting hammered by the populist wing of the Republican party for caving to big pharma on the excess profits tax. She can’t afford to look soft on big business right now.”

“Big business!” Kade snorted. “We’ve got three thousand employees!”

“You’re a high-profile billionaire competing with the likes of Lockheed and Boeing. That makes you big business in the eyes of the public.”

“Goddamn it, Lowell. They can’t. After all we’ve done!”

“They can and they will. I’m hearing that legislation is already being drafted.”

“Well, throw some money around! Make some calls! Do what I fucking pay you to do, Lowell!”

“I’m doing it, Kade. I’ve been doing it. And I’m telling you it’s too late for all that. We’ve lost. At this point, you’ve got two options. One is to play nice. I can get you a meeting with the Speaker of the House. If we can get some input into the legislation, I think there’s a good chance they’ll keep you on board in an advisory capacity. The fact is, whatever bureaucrats they pick to run this thing aren’t going to have a clue what they’re doing, and if you make an effort to appear reasonable, they’ll likely defer to you on a lot of—”

“No. Fuck that. Fuck that right in the ass. What’s option two?”

“Sell as much stock as you can. The market hasn’t figured it out yet, but it will, very soon. The moment people realize the wind has shifted, Ad Astra is going to tank.”

“They’d nail me on insider trading.”

“Not if you fly to Utanau tonight.”

“No,” Kade said. “Forget it. I’m not going to run. I’d be betraying everybody at Ad Astra. The captain is supposed to go down with the ship.”

“That’s very noble, Kade, but it’s also pointless. You’ve said before that this isn’t about you. It’s about the future of humanity. If you stay on as an advisor, you can still help ensure that humanity has a future.”

“With a hundred Washington bureaucrats second-guessing my every move? No. I’d rather start from scratch.”

“You may very well have to. And there’s no guarantee they won’t just pull this same shit on you again.”

“I’ll be smarter next time.”

Lowell chuckled. “One thing you do not need to be is smarter. Maybe work on being humble. Or realistic.”

Kade didn’t laugh.

“I’m sorry, man. I wish I had some better news. For the record, you are startlingly handsome.”

“Shut up, Lowell. Call me if you find out anything else.”

“Will do. Later.”

Kade ended the call and let out a long sigh. On the other side of the partition wall, the celebration continued unabated.

“Hey,” said a voice behind him. He turned to see Christy standing a few feet behind him, a concerned look on her face. “Lowell?”

Kade nodded.

“Bad news, then.”

“Yeah.”

“How bad?”

Kade sighed again. He took off his glasses and ran his hand through his rapidly graying hair. “Those sons of bitches are nationalizing my asteroid.”

Chapter Three

2036

Kade stared across the aluminum-and-glass patio table at Faraj Kapur, looking for some sign of comprehension. His father’s decline had been gradual, thanks to a battery of drugs that were supposed to improve cognitive function, but there was ultimately no cure for entropy: complex systems break down over time, and the human brain is one hell of a complex system.

His dad was better in the mornings, which was why Kade had driven to Tampa as soon as he had left Ad Astra the night before. He and his father had greeted the sunrise together on the deck, Kade sipping black coffee and his father meticulously carving every bit of flesh from one half of a giant pink grapefruit. Kade knew his father enjoyed the ritual, but finally his patience had run out. The markets would open in New York in just over two hours, and by now everyone would know about Fliss’s upset in Minnesota. If the news about Senator Miller changing parties came out, Ad Astra’s stock would drop like a meteor.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” his father asked in response to Kade’s summary, seeming not so much irritated as bemused by Kade’s predicament. Ever the hard-nosed engineer, his father constantly probed for what he called the “hard facts” of a problem. These days, though, it wasn’t always clear whether he was really asking for clarification or just repeating one of the stock phrases that had accumulated in his mind over the years. The neurologist had told Kade that this was a coping mechanism sometimes employed by highly educated people who were slipping into dementia: their linguistic skills remained largely intact, allowing them to create rhetorical smokescreens that hid the magnitude of their own confusion.

“I don’t want you to do anything, Dad,” Kade said. “I’m just bouncing ideas off you, like I always do.”

“Mm,” said his father. “It’s a tough problem, all right.”

“It sure is,” said Kade. He resisted the urge to let out a frustrated sigh. This was a mistake, he thought. He doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. I should be in Cape Coral right now, coming up with a plan. But what plan? What did he think he was going to do? If the U.S. government decided to steal your property, there wasn’t a fucking thing you could do about it—particularly if that property was in orbit fifty-thousand miles away. Ad Astra couldn’t even launch a rocket without the government’s approval.

They weren’t calling it theft, of course. They weren’t even going to use the word “nationalize.” In the U.S. it was still easier to sell socialism if one avoided socialist language. According to Lowell, whom Kade had talked to for another half hour on the way up from Cape Coral, the people working on the bill to nationalize 2024 LF were planning to use the old “space belongs to everyone” trope. For Kade, “Space belongs to everyone” was an admission that socialism only worked where there weren’t any people. Nobody ever said “New York belongs to everyone” or “The Pentagon belongs to everyone.” As far as Kade was concerned, Larry Frank was real estate, and it belonged to Ad Astra just as surely as his wife owned three hundred pairs of shoes—more so, as Ad Astra had moved the asteroid from a place where it was essentially inaccessible and of no use to anyone. He and his team had created wealth ex nihilo, and it was being stolen right out from under him.

“Only one way to deal with that kind of people,” his father said. Rather than elaborate, he went to work on the final chunk of grapefruit. A dragonfly, caught inside the screen-covered aluminum frame that enclosed the concrete patio, buzzed in lazy figure-eights over the little oval-shaped swimming pool.

“And what’s that, Dad?” Kade asked. Kade’s right hand rested on his thigh, and he dragged his index finger across a hand screen, browsing the morning’s email with the heads-up overlay from his glasses. Both were wirelessly connected to the credit-card-sized netcard in his pocket. Stealth was hardly necessary to keep his actions hidden from his father, but he’d developed the habit while trying to make better use of his time when sitting through the endless meetings that were an unavoidable part of his position as CEO. Through the sliding glass door, Kade saw his mother holding a coffee pot in a solicitous gesture. Kade smiled and shook his head, pointing to his wrist, although he wasn’t wearing a watch. His mother, understanding, returned to the kitchen. Kade had to get back to Cape Coral soon, and he preferred not to stop on the way. These days he was likely to be recognized, and he didn’t have time for impromptu photo ops.

“Smash the frame,” his dad said quietly, and Kade thought at first that he was talking about his grapefruit.

“Sorry, Dad. What’s that?”

“Use your imagination. Smash the frame. Reject the premise.”

There it was: the string of stock phrases his dad was using to cover the fact that he’d lost the plot. Kade closed the email window, scanned the headlines on his news aggregator and slipped the pad back into his pocket. Mercifully there had not been anything yet about the plan to nationalize the asteroid, but a few outlets were hinting at Senator Miller’s defection. It wouldn’t be long now. Kade doubted he would make it back to Cape Coral before the story broke.

His dad set down the serrated spoon next to the empty grapefruit husk and pushed his plate away. “Only way to deal with bullies.”

“Bullies, Dad?” Kade asked. Maybe his father had followed what Kade had told him after all.

“Bullies!” his father exclaimed. “That’s what we’re talking about, right? Those punks harassing your friend. What did you say her name was? Cute little dark-haired girl.”

Kade sighed. His father had been doing this more and more lately: regressing to some conversation they’d had twenty or more years before. There was no telling what might trigger it: a word, a phrase, a dumb insect buzzing futilely over a swimming pool. Sometimes there was a tangential connection to the topic at hand; other times the only connection was a delusion borne of misfiring neurons.

“Valerie,” Kade said. “Valerie Muñoz. Listen, Dad. I’ve got to get going.”

“Valerie!” his father said. “What a little cutie.”

“Yep,” Kade said, getting out of his chair. He walked over to his dad and put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the road, Dad. I’ll see you next time, okay?”

“Hm? Oh, okay. See you, Kade. Say goodbye to your mother.”

“I will, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you too, son.”

Ten minutes later, Kade was on the freeway, doing eighty in his Lexus LS-900.

Chapter Four

2014

Valerie Muñoz had been two years behind Kade at Bryan Smant Academy, in Pasadena. She and Kade hadn’t exactly been friends; until May of 2014 they had hardly spoken a word to each other. At the age of thirteen, Kade was dealing not only with the typical awkwardness of adolescence but also the highly atypical awkwardness of having a highly atypical brain. Besides, she was an eleven-year-old girl and he was a thirteen-year-old boy. What were they going to talk about?

Kade only knew Valerie at all because they shared six blocks of the walk home from school; Valerie lived two streets over from the Kapurs. Sometimes his father would show up at school unexpectedly and give the two of them a ride home. After they dropped Valerie off in front of her house, he would jibe Kade endlessly about his “girlfriend,” prompting vigorous protests from Kade. “She’s in sixth grade, Dad!” And judging from the number of words she had spoken to Kade, he wasn’t even sure she was fluent in English. But she was cute.

Valerie had transferred from the Pasadena public schools just after the winter break. Kade felt a little bad for her: she was very shy and seemed to have trouble making friends. Kade did too, of course, but he told himself he wasn’t particularly interested in having friends. He spent most of his time reading science fiction and playing with Kerbal Space Program. He thought he’d located a potential common interest when the kids in his class started talking about cryptocurrencies, but they gave him funny looks when he started talking excitedly about smart contracts or Byzantine fault tolerance. They just wanted to brag about how much money their dads had made (or would have made, if they had just held on!). So Kade kept to himself.

One day he and Valerie were followed most of the way home by a group of three older boys; Kade thought they went to the public high school across the street. The boys never got closer than about thirty feet, but they made remarks about Valerie and Kade that made his face redden. He was relieved when, as he and Valerie turned down Valerie’s street, the boys kept going straight.

The boys followed them the next day, and the day after that. They never approached, but their remarks grew louder and cruder. It embarrassed Kade, but that was a minor concern. Valerie was eleven years old. Sure, she looked older, but that was no excuse. Kade wouldn’t have talked that way about a sixteen-year-old. Not even in private!

His hopes that the boys would find a better way to spend their time after the weekend were dashed when they showed up again the next Monday. Kade had been thinking a lot about what he would do if they did, so this time when they started up with the rude comments, he spun around, planted his feet, and shouted, “She’s eleven years old, you assholes! Just because girls your age won’t go out with you, that doesn’t mean you can hit on eleven-year-olds!” He’d practiced the line a few hundred times, and although his delivery quavered a bit, he thought it was a reasonably good performance.

The boys burst into laughter, barely pausing in their stride. One of the boys, a fat redhead, gave Kade a shove as they walked past, causing him to stumble and nearly fall to the ground. “Watch your step, hero!” said the tallest boy, who seemed to be the ringleader. “Hey, mamacita, does your hero have a big dick? Does he stick it in your panocha?” The boys were white, but they were evidently capable of being assholes in two languages.

Furious, Kade ran after them, but the short boy at the rear turned as he approached. Kade made a wild swing at the boy’s head, which he ducked. The boy gave Kade a kick in the ribs and Kade sprawled to the sidewalk, his palms scraping across the concrete. He rolled onto his back, fighting tears of rage and pain as beads of blood welled up on his abraded palms. The boys paid him no mind, continuing to shout vulgarities at Valerie.

Kade took his time getting up, not eager to have the shit beaten out of him and realizing he wasn’t helping matters anyway. He watched as Valerie turned down her street and the boys continued on their way, pausing a moment to look back at him and laugh.

Kade’s father would never have noticed the scrapes on his hands, but his mother was a doctor and had a sixth sense about such things. So, after his mom had meticulously cleaned and wrapped his hands, he was forced to confront his father.

“Noble,” his father had said when Kade had told him what he’d done. “But stupid.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Kade protested, on the verge of tears. “They’re bigger than me. And there were three of them!”

“I assume you’ve considered apprising the authorities?”

“What authorities? Our school? Their school? The police? What is anybody going to do about it?”

His father nodded. “I concur with your assessment. Have you considered solutions other than open confrontation?”

“I mean… we could take a different way home, I guess. But the thing is, I don’t even know if it bothers Valerie. I think I’m more upset about it than she is. So I’m probably causing her more trouble if I ask her to go a different way.”

“You can ask her what she wants to do.”

“Yeah, but she’ll probably just go along with whatever I suggest. She doesn’t talk much, and girls never come right out and tell you what they want.”

“Don’t let your mother hear you say that, but again, I agree with your assessment.”

“They’ll probably still follow us,” Kade went on, “and anyway, she shouldn’t have to take a different way home.”

“You mean you shouldn’t have to give in to them.”

“That too!”

“Well,” his father said. “Only one way to deal with bullies. Smash the frame. Reject the premises.”

“Huh?”

“Bullying is a standard power dynamic. Did those punks seem surprised when you turned around and started yelling at them?”

“No. They laughed.”

“Exactly. Because you reacted like a victim. You bought into their power dynamic. Smash the frame. Break the power dynamic.”

“How?”

His dad shrugged. “This is your problem, Kade. Frankly, I’d say you’re better off doing nothing. It doesn’t seem like these boys are interested in doing serious harm. If you hadn’t reacted, they’d probably have gotten bored of the game. Did it occur to you that that’s why Valerie didn’t react? She’s likely dealt with bullies before.”

Kade flushed. Had he actually made things worse for Valerie?

“Anyway, now it’s your problem,” his dad continued. “You’re stuck in a power dynamic with those boys now. How you get out of it is up to you.”

*****

His father stubbornly refused to give him any actionable advice. Looking back on it, Kade liked to think that his dad would have taken stronger action if he thought Valerie (or Kade) was in serious danger, but with his dad, one never knew for sure. Even back then, Faraj Kapur acted according to an internal logic that was never fully evident to anyone else—even his wife. As for going to his mother, Kade knew that was pointless: his mom would advise him to avoid confrontation at all costs. She’d worked in hospital emergency rooms for most of her career, and those experiences tended to bias her heavily against any course of action that might cause bodily harm—to Kade or to anyone else.

In the end, Kade decided his father was right: his involvement was only making things worse for Valerie. The next day, after school, he told her he couldn’t walk home with her anymore because he was going to be staying late to tutor another student. Valerie said nothing, but her eyes went wide with fear. Had he been wrong? Was his presence actually reassuring to her? It didn’t matter. Whether she realized it or not, he knew he was only making things worse. “Okay, listen,” he said, tearing a scrap of paper from a notebook he carried. “This is my number. My name is Kade, in case you don’t know. If anybody gives you any trouble, you can call me.” He jotted his phone number down and handed it to her. Valerie, like every other kid at Smant, carried a mobile phone.

She looked at the paper, looked up at Kade (were those tears in her eyes?), and turned away. She ran off toward home.

“I mean it,” Kade shouted. “If you have any trouble, call me!”

Kade let out a heavy sigh. He felt worse than ever. He had intended to take a different route home, but he decided to follow Valerie at a distance to make sure she was okay.

The three boys fell in behind her shortly after she passed the high school, as usual. Kade couldn’t hear them, but he knew they were taunting her. Occasionally they would look around, probably wonder where Kade was, but he kept a safe distance, moving stealthily between trees and houses. Valerie turned down her street and the boys kept walking, as usual. Kade followed them a bit longer and then went home.

The next day went much the same way, except that the boys didn’t look behind them as much. The third day they didn’t look for Kade at all. But this time, rather than walking off when Valerie turned down her street, the boys passed her and then stopped on the sidewalk, blocking her way. Valerie’s house was only six houses down, but it may as well have been a hundred miles. She might be able to dart past them on the street, but she would never outrun them if they went after her. Usually there were some adults outside at this time of day, mowing the lawn or washing the car, but today it was cloudy and drizzling; everyone was inside.

Valerie barely hesitated before continuing down the road—the way the boys ordinarily went. If she continued another block, she could turn at the next street and circle around to her house from the other side. But again, the boys followed. When Valerie turned at the corner, they went after her.

Kade ran. The boys weren’t watching for him, but he wouldn’t have cared if they were. Better for them to attack him than Valerie, if that’s what they intended. The houses on this street were farther apart and farther from the road, making it unlikely that anyone would hear her if she screamed. He considered shouting but bit his tongue. Surprise was the only advantage he had.

The tall boy got in front of her, blocking her way again. She tried to go around him, but the boy moved to stay in her way. The other two came up behind. She was surrounded. Kade, now only a couple houses away, saw that she had taken off her backpack and was riffling through it. Looking for her phone?

The tall boy in front of her ripped the backpack from her hands. The other two moved closer. Kade could hear them speaking in low, menacing tones.

The tall boy turned his head in time to see Kade approaching, but before he could warn the others, Kade was on them. He slammed into the short one, catching him in the small of the back with his forearms held out in front of him. He felt something crunch in the boy’s spine as his neck snapped backwards. A second later, the boy was on the ground. The fat one turned toward Kade, and Kade launched himself toward the boy. He had no plan, no strategy other than Don’t be a victim. Ducking under the fat boy’s fists, he tackled him around the middle. The fat boy had a good forty pounds on Kade, but Kade’s momentum threw him off balance and they fell together to the ground. Lying on top of the boy with his head a few inches from his soft abdomen, Kade scrambled to seize the advantage, but the boy brought his knee up, slamming it into the bottom of Kade’s jaw. Kade’s teeth clamped down on his tongue and his mouth filled with blood. Dazed, he rolled off the boy onto the grass beside the sidewalk. His head felt thick and he choked on blood. He tried to put his hands up, but it felt like he was moving underwater. The fat boy was on top of him, raining blows on his head and neck. Kade coughed, spraying blood across the boy’s face and shirt. The boy recoiled. “Gross!” he shouted. “Look what he did to my shirt!”

Kade scrambled away. The short boy was still on the ground, moaning softly. The tall one was holding Valerie, one arm pinning her arms and the other wrapped around her throat. Valerie struggled mightily, gasping for air, her feet dangling nearly two feet off the sidewalk. Don’t be a victim.

Fatty, having recovered from his horror at being splattered with blood, had gotten to his feet and was walking toward Kade. He looked mad. Without the advantage of surprise, Kade didn’t stand a chance against him. Kade crawled away, and the boy followed, kicking him hard in the ribs. Kade fell to his side. He wanted to curl up, put his hands in front of his face, and just lie there until it was over. Maybe a grownup had heard the commotion and would come to break things up.

Don’t be a victim. Kade got back on his knees and tried to stand, but the boy kicked him again, knocking him over. Don’t be a victim. Kade got to his knees. This section of sidewalk was broken, cracked by the roots of a big elm tree. A chunk of concrete the size of a softball had separated from the corner. Don’t be a victim.

The boy kicked him again, but this time Kade leaned into the blow so the boy’s shin struck him at the same time as his foot, spreading the impact across Kade’s ribcage. Kade reached forward with his left hand, sinking his fingers into the dirt around the chunk of concrete. Don’t be a victim.

The fat boy kicked him again. Kade fell, but his fingers remained anchored in place. He dug into the dirt, trying to penetrate far enough to get a hold on the concrete. Don’t be a victim. The boy kicked him again and again. Kade was vaguely aware that the short boy had gotten to his feet; apparently Kade hadn’t broken his spine—a shame, that. While the fat boy kicked at Kade, the other two subdued Valerie. Where were the adults in this neighborhood? Not a single car had passed since the fight began, which felt like it was hours ago. Don’t be a victim.

There! The chunk of concrete had come loose in Kade’s hand. The fat boy was winding up for a real doozy of a kick. Kade got to his knees, pivoted right, and swung the chunk, connecting with the side of the fat boy’s kneecap. The fat boy howled and went down, clutching his knee. Kade got to his feet. Don’t be a victim.

“Put her down, asshole!” Kade heard himself shout. The short boy had his arms wrapped around Valerie’s legs, and he and the tall boy struggled to keep control of her. Kade never knew if it was something in his tone, something in his eyes, or just the five-pound chunk of concrete in his hand, but something shifted. His father would have said he’d altered the power dynamic, but to Kade it felt as if reality itself had cracked. He advanced toward the boys, holding the chunk of concrete before him as if it were the skull of a vanquished enemy. As one, they dropped Valerie and ran. The fat boy continued to writhe on the grass, screaming.

“Hey you!” a man’s voice shouted from somewhere in the distance behind Kade. “What are you doing?”

Kade realized he was standing over a crying boy, holding a chunk of concrete in his hand. Depending on when the man started watching, this might not look good.

Valerie got to her feet, disheveled but apparently unhurt. Kade made a split-second decision.

“You should go home,” he said thickly, a wave of bravado washing over him. “I’ll take care of this.”

Valerie looked from Kade to the fat boy on the ground and back to Kade again. She thinks I’m a monster, Kade thought. Some kind of psychopath.

She ran to him and threw her arms around him. Kade, his arms pinned to his side, dropped the chunk of concrete. And then, before he could think of anything to say, she was gone: running down the street toward home. Kade realized his whole body was shaking.

“Jesus Christ, kid,” said the man’s voice behind him. “What did you do?” Kade said nothing as the man, a jogger Kade had seen in the neighborhood before, knelt down next to the fat boy, whose lung capacity seemed to be limitless. The jogger touched the boy’s knee, and somehow the boy managed to ratchet his screaming up a notch. The jogger got to his feet. “Don’t move,” he said sternly to Kade, and pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

Kade said nothing. He could barely talk anyway, with the way his tongue was swelling up. It didn’t matter what happened now. He’d done what he had to do, and that was all that mattered. He spat blood and then lay down on the grass and waited for the police to come.

Chapter Five

2036

Kade laughed to himself as he guided the Lexus down Interstate 75 past Sarasota, remembering the episode with Valerie. In retrospect, it was lucky he had bitten his tongue nearly in half; when the policeman finally showed up, Kade hadn’t been able tell him anything. That night he and his parents met with a lawyer, who suggested it would be helpful if Kade could tell the police that he’d “seen red” and hadn’t been fully aware of what he’d been doing. Evidently a chunk of rock was considered a deadly weapon under California law, and there was some question whether Kade’s response was properly proportional to the threat. So Kade told the police that he didn’t remember picking up the concrete or hitting Marcus (the fat kid), probably because his head was still fuzzy from being clocked by Marcus’s knee. It was a lie, though: Kade remembered everything, and he knew exactly what he’d been doing. He had wanted, if not to kill Marcus, at least to maim him—for life, if necessary. And he felt no guilt or remorse about it; like his father said, it was the boy’s own fault. In the end, no charges were pressed.

Some people probably would have considered his father’s advice irresponsible, but Kade didn’t think so. Sure, he could have given Kade more specific advice and possibly saved him a trip to the police station, but he would have been robbing Kade of a more general life lesson: there’s only one way to deal with bullies.

He wondered what had triggered the memory of Valerie Muñoz in his father’s mind. Was it just the random firing of neurons, or had he seized on a connection between the episode with Valerie and Kade’s current situation?

There was only one way to handle bullies, and one thing was certain: the federal government was the biggest bully of all. They had made a deal with Kade, allowing his company to claim ownership of 2024 LF in exchange for future benefits to the American space industry, and now they were reneging—with no justification other than the fact that they could. And there wasn’t a damn thing Kade could do about it.

Don’t be a victim. It was true, he realized: he’d been thinking like a victim. He’d ceded the frame, accepted the power dynamic that had been presented to him. But he was Kade Kapur! He was no victim! Whenever he’d been in a situation like this in the past, he’d been able to get out of it by rejecting one or more premises and reformulating the problem. So: reject the idea that there’s nothing you can do. Reject the bully/victim dynamic. Reject the zero-sum formulation of the problem. Smash the frame. Think bigger.

The vague outline of an idea began to form in Kade’s mind. Yes. Think bigger. Much bigger.

He tapped the phone icon on the dashboard display to switch control of his netcard from the hand screen to the dash. “Call Myra.” Myra Bostwick, the senior astrophysicist at Ad Astra, answered a moment later.

“What’s up, chief?”

“What are you working on?”

“This is a joke, right? I’m doing mass spectrometry on Larry Frank. You know, the asteroid we lassoed yesterday?”

“Drop that,” Kade said. “New project.”

“Okay, now I know you’re joking.”

“Dead serious, Myra. I’m dealing with some bullshit in D.C. The kind of bullshit that could make or break Ad Astra.”

“I’m listening.”

“How many candidates do you have for the M-type redirect?” Ad Astra’s second big mission was going to be moving an iron-rich metallic asteroid into orbit.

“Four, the last I checked. Haven’t spent a lot of time on it lately, as you might imagine.”

“What’s the mass of the biggest candidate?”

“Hold on.” There was a long pause. “Looks like… just over two point four million metric tons.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s over ten times the mass of Larry Frank. It only made the cut because its orbit is just about ideal. We could get it on a circular orbit intersecting Earth’s with just a small nudge. The Hohmann transfer would be a bitch, though, with that much mass.”

“I need something bigger.”

“For what? All our research indicates that there’s no relation between mass and mineral content. If you just want to take samples, the mass doesn’t matter. Makes more sense to look for something small that comes closer to Earth.”

“I’m not talking about taking samples. Humor me. I want a list of asteroids over a hundred million metric tons, ordered by accessibility.”

“And by accessibility, you mean…?”

“I mean how easy it would be to move them into orbit around Earth. A weighted value taking into account velocity and trajectory. The same way we picked Larry Frank.”

“We picked Larry Frank primarily based on its size. Big enough to make mining worthwhile, small enough to be moveable. We rejected anything over eighty million tons outright, because the number of impactors we’d need to alter its orbit would be insane.”

“Let me worry about the mass. Just give me a list of, say, the twenty M-type asteroids over a hundred million tons that would require the least amount of energy to move into Earth orbit.”

“Even though even the smallest of those asteroids is too big to move using our current technology?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Okay.”

“How long will that take you?”

“Not long. We’ve got the bigger rocks pretty well cataloged. Give me half an hour.”

“With an estimated mineral content breakdown.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.” Kade ended the call. An hour later, he walked into the Cape Coral office. It was 8:50 am. The New York exchanges would open in forty minutes. By the time he got to his desk, the news was out: Senator Eldon Miller of New Mexico was changing parties. The leftists now had control of both houses of Congress. The only thing that could stop the nationalization bill was a veto from President Blankenship herself.

An email from Myra had arrived with an attached spreadsheet listing the twenty big asteroids that would require the least energy to move into Earth orbit. She had even included an estimate of how much energy each would require to redirect. The value for every one of them was at least two orders of magnitude greater than the energy that had been needed to move Larry Frank. The asteroid with the lowest value in the “Energy to Move to Earth Orbit” column was, ironically, the largest one. It was a spheroid nearly a kilometer in diameter, with an estimated mass of just over four billion metric tons. Its name was 2015 RK 16 Maimonides.

Asteroids, like planets, moved in elliptical orbits around the sun. To bring an asteroid into orbit around Earth required breaking its original orbit and moving it to an orbit that brought it more in line with that of Earth. Because Earth was moving as well, the transfer between the two orbits had to be conducted at exactly the right time. There was a small space/time window that the asteroid had to hit in order to avoid either striking the Earth or zooming back out into space. To hit this window required taking into account many factors, the three chief ones being the asteroid’s mass, its velocity and its current orbital trajectory. The more massive the asteroid, the harder it would be to move, but the closer the asteroid’s velocity and trajectory were to Earth’s, the less they would need to move it.

There were lots of ways to alter an asteroid’s orbit, but by far the most effective method was to slam something into the front of it to slow it down. Hence the development of Ad Astra’s BORIC system, an extension of NASA’s DART system from the early 2020s. NASA stopped doing space exploration in the late 2020s, thanks to crippling budget cuts, but Ad Astra had taken their technology and built on it.

In keeping with the NASA tradition of tortured acronyms, BORIC stood for Battery Of Remotely deployable Impact Craft. The system consisted of a series of small spacecraft, launched by one or more rockets, that accelerated over several months to a velocity of at least ten miles per second, maneuvering to place themselves in the orbital path of an asteroid that was due to pass near Earth. These “impactors” were intended to slam into the asteroid, slightly reducing its velocity. After an impactor struck the asteroid, the remaining craft used lidar to measure the resulting change in velocity (as well as changes in spin and minor changes in trajectory). The course of the next craft could then be modified to impact the asteroid to change its velocity, spin and trajectory as needed—or to maneuver out of the way entirely.

There was always some gray area in determining the number of impact craft that was necessary to sufficiently slow the asteroid, because of imprecision in measurements and other factors, such as the slight push of solar radiation against the asteroid. An earlier impact would have more dramatic effect on the asteroid’s course, but it also meant relying on less precise measurements. Thus there was a bit of a catch-22: by the time you knew exactly how much force to apply, it was too late to apply it. That was the chief engineering problem that Ad Astra had been concerned with for its first three years of operation. They solved it in part by developing an algorithm that more accurately modeled the effects of solar radiation and gravitational fields. That algorithm, called COPPA (Celestial Object Path Projection Algorithm), was the best-kept secret at Ad Astra, and what differentiated it from its rivals. Rami, Myra and several others had worked on it for a year and a half. Not only was Ad Astra the only company that had successfully moved an asteroid into Earth orbit; it was the only company that knew how to do it.

There was also the problem of discrete force increments: each impactor could be ordered either to hit the asteroid, imparting an amount of force f determined by its mass and its velocity relative to the asteroid, or miss it, imparting zero force. There was no in-between. So if you needed to apply .5f to hit the redirect window, you were out of luck. This problem had been ameliorated to some extent by the more powerful variable-thrust ion engines Ad Astra had developed. Each impactor in a battery was programmed to accelerate at a slightly different rate. The fastest moving impactors, in the lead, would hit with greater force than those farther back. By picking which impactors would strike, one could control the amount of force imparted with a reasonable degree of precision. This strategy, of course, required that each battery had a few impactors to spare.

The longer Kade stared at the spreadsheet, the clearer it was: only Maimonides would do. The orbits of all the others were too far off. Although the others were smaller than Maimonides, moving any of them into Earth orbit would require an absurd amount of energy. He didn’t have to run the calculations to know that they’d never be able to launch enough impactors to redirect any of them. For that matter, they’d never launch enough impactors to redirect Maimonides either—at least not if they followed the game plan they’d used for Larry Frank.

But there was another option. Asteroid paths were cyclical; you could theoretically hit an asteroid with impactors a cycle in advance. The modeling wouldn’t be very accurate so far ahead, but if the orbit was reasonably close to intersecting Earth’s, you could slow it enough that it could be brought into Earth orbit on the next cycle. The energy required to redirect Maimonides would shrink by at least an order of magnitude if they hit it a cycle ahead, which would put it within the feasible range for a redirect.

Maimonides would come within six million miles of Earth in a little over two years, and then again four and a half years after that. Two years would give them just enough time to organize a mission, launch the rockets, and accelerate the impactors to impact velocity before it swung by Earth the first time. None of the others on Myra’s list was positioned that well. And besides, why settle for a smaller asteroid, when the biggest one was his best bet for success?

There were risks, of course, but even an asteroid a hundredth the size of Maimonides could end all life on Earth if it scored a direct hit. If you’re already going to take the risk, why not go big?

He knew what Myra and the rest of the team would say: trying to move an asteroid that size was crazy. But to Kade, it was just physics. Orbital dynamics were well understood. An asteroid wouldn’t just jump out of its orbit and fall to Earth any more than a baseball traveling eighty miles per hour from a pitcher’s hand toward the catcher’s mitt would suddenly veer off toward first base. Things could go wrong, but with enough redundancy, you could get the risk down to almost nothing. And there were, he reminded himself, risks associated with doing nothing as well: humanity would be stuck on this planet, doomed to die off in a nuclear war, environmental catastrophe—or, like the dinosaurs, when the next big comet or asteroid struck. If he could move Maimonides into orbit around Earth, not only would they have proven they could handle anything the solar system could throw at them; they’d be halfway to colonizing other planets.

He tapped out a reply to Myra’s email:

I want to know what it will take to redirect Maimonides. I assume first round of impactors will be launched at least a cycle in advance. Launch windows, number of launches / impactors, Earth capture window. By tomorrow EOB if possible. Still not a joke

He sent the email and then tapped his desk screen to call Lowell.

“Market opens in fifteen minutes,” said Lowell. “Got any hot stock tips for me?”

“You said you could get me a meeting with the Speaker of the House, right?”

“Sure. He’s a big fan. Will probably talk your ear off about colonizing Mars.”

“A big fan who wants to steal my property.”

“You know what they say. Theft is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it goes, Lowell.”

“Whatever. You want a meeting, you got it.”

“I don’t want a meeting with him.”

“You don’t.”

“No. I want you to tell him to table the nationalization bill.”

“Table it?”

“Bury it, table it, feed it to the dog. Whatever you do with bills you want disappeared. Tell him that unless he wants to make an enemy of the President, he’ll kill that bill.”

“You have Blankenship on your side?”

“Not yet. Speaking of the President, I need one other favor.”

“Let me guess: you want a meeting with the President.”

“See, I knew there was a reason I pay you so much.”

Chapter Six

2014

Kade never saw Valerie Muñoz again. He was expelled from Smant Academy over the incident with the three boys. It didn’t matter that he had acted in self-defense; the school had a zero-tolerance policy for violence—even violence committed in self-defense. His parents gave him a lecture, his mother making it clear that violence was not the answer. They didn’t punish him, though, evidently figuring that being expelled was punishment enough. After his father threatened to sue, the board agreed to let Kade take his final exams, which he aced despite missing the last three weeks of the semester. And that was that. When his exams were done, his father informed him that they would be selling their house and moving to Florida.

“What else could I have done?” Kade protested, tears welling up in his eyes. “You told me to change the power dynamic, but you didn’t tell me how!”

“I suppose some of the blame is mine,” said his dad, in a typical understatement. “I said ‘smash the frame’ and you heard ‘smash someone’s kneecap.’ You know that kid will never walk right again?”

“I don’t care. He shouldn’t have been doing that to Valerie.”

“Between you and me, son? You’re absolutely right. It’s his own fault. And while the strategy you opted for would not have been the one I picked, I have to commend you on successfully altering the power dynamic.”

“But we’re still moving to Florida.”

“Yes. Understand, son, that this isn’t just about you. It’s been a long time coming. Your mother is pretty fed up with her job. She took the position as the director of that hospital thinking that she could improve things, to make the hospital better serve the community. But with all the new regulations the state and federal governments come up with every year, she spends more and more time attending meetings and doing paperwork. She doesn’t have time for anything else, and even if she did, she’s so hemmed in by regulations that she can’t make any real changes without running the risk of a lawsuit or worse.”

“What about your job?”

“I’m fortunate in that I can do my work from anywhere. JPL and Lockheed don’t care where I am as long as the work gets done.”

“Why Florida, though? That’s about as far as you can get from here.”

“Because at least for now, Florida isn’t trying quite as hard as California to crush innovation, hard work and risk-taking. Don’t get me wrong; I make good money working for those big companies. But it took me a long time and a lot of hard work to get to the point where those companies trust me to do the work right and on time, and it seems like both California and the feds are doing their best to punish me for putting in that effort. Every year they take a little more in taxes, and between this absurdly expensive house and the tuition for that school… anyway, it’s not easy. Your mother and I agreed never to go into debt, except for the mortgage on this house, which is why I drive a twelve-year-old Ford and our family vacation is going to visit your mom’s sister in Montana once a year. Moving to Florida will give us a little breathing room, I hope. Your mother has an old friend who has a private practice in Tampa, and she’s been trying to get your mom to take over part of the business. We’ve been thinking about it for a while, and now seems like the right time.”

“I guess that’s what my teachers call ‘white privilege’,” Kade said.

“What?” his father asked, surprised.

“You know, white people have all these connections with other white people. So even though you and Mom aren’t rich, you have benefited from the way the power is structured in society.”

“Good Lord, son. If this is what they’re teaching you in that school, you’re lucky to have been expelled. Do I look white to you?”

“Of course not. You’re Indian. But still, Mom—”

“I’m American, Kade. I came here from India and became an American citizen. I have Indian heritage, and I’m proud of that, but my skin color has nothing to do with my success. And your mother would say the same thing. She’s of Scotch-Irish descent, but she’s American. We both worked extremely hard to get where we are, and it’s insulting to suggest it has something to do with our race. Did you know that Indian-Americans have the highest median income of any ethnic group in the United States? On average, we out-earn whites—that is, Americans of European decent—by over forty-thousand dollars per year.”

“Really?” asked Kade. “Then why didn’t you…?”

“Why didn’t I tell you this before? Because I didn’t think it mattered. I’m an individual human being, not a representative of some tribe. But if you want to reduce me to an ethnic minority, fine. Let’s talk about ‘privilege’ by ethnic group. Asians of all sorts—even East Asians, many of whom came to this country with nothing but the clothes on their backs—do better in school and earn more than whites, on average. And it’s not just Asians, either. Nigerians out-earn whites as well. Why don’t we talk about Nigerian privilege? And on the flip side, there millions of white people in this country who live in abject poverty. Where is their ‘privilege?’”

“Well, I suppose that privilege in itself probably isn’t enough to make a person successful. You still have to put in some effort.”

“Are you saying that white people who are poor are lazy, Kade?”

“I mean, I guess some of them….”

“And what about black Americans who are descended from slaves? Are they poorer than Nigerian-Americans on average because of laziness?”

“I don’t… I mean, I wouldn’t call it laziness. But slavery and Jim Crow laws kept black people down for a long time in this country.”

“That is absolutely true. But let me pose another question. No black American alive today was ever a slave, and Jim Crow ended in the sixties. Presumably bigots who hate black people do not typically make an exception for Nigerians. So how is it that a dirt-poor Nigerian who came to the U.S. in 1980 typically does better in school and earns more than the great-grandchildren of slaves?”

“I guess… cultural differences…” Kade stammered.

“Not white privilege?”

“I mean, I don’t see how white privilege would apply, if we’re talking about different groups of African-Americans.”

“Indeed. In fact, if you look at which ethnic groups perform best, skin color turns out to be a piss-poor explanation in general. Whether one is white is very far down the list of explanatory factors.”

Kade’s father sat back in his chair, letting all this sink in. After some time, he continued, “For the record, your mother’s friend with the private practice is of Haitian descent, not that it matters, and she’s been bugging your mom to join her because your mother is one of the best doctors in the entire country. Now, tell me again how this is all about ‘white privilege.’”

“I guess it’s not.”

“No, it’s not,” his father said, nodding. “And do you see how insulting it is to suggest that it is? Your hypothesis assumed that because your mother’s friend is successful, that she must therefore be white, and that she asked your mother to partner with her because she is white. You reduced two very capable, extremely hard-working people to racial stereotypes—erroneously, I might add.”

“I get it, Dad.”

“Good, Because I swear to God, Kade, if I hear one more word about ‘white privilege’ from you, well, I’m not going to kneecap you with a hunk of concrete, but it’s going to hurt.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“No, it’s good that we’re having this discussion. Privilege is a real thing, and it’s good to be aware of it. You’re more privileged than most. You have the privilege of having two loving parents, for one thing. You’ve had the privilege of living in a nice house in a good neighborhood. Up until five minutes ago I’d have said you were privileged to have a good education. I guess I figured that a private school wouldn’t feed you that racist bullshit, and that’s on me. I should have paid closer attention. Most of all, though, you’re privileged to live in what is, for the moment, mostly a free country. You can do whatever you want, be whatever you want. Do you know how rare that is throughout human history? Do you know how rare it still is, in most places in the world?”

“Yes, Dad. They did teach us some history. And geography.”

“Good. Kade, you’ve got some of your mother’s genes and some of mine. You could pass for white, or you could pass for Indian. That means you have a choice. You can choose to be a victim, moaning about your oppression in the hopes that people will feel sorry for you and give you things.”

“I’m not a victim.”

“No, you are not. And I’ll tell you a secret. Even if you were victim of some kind of systemic oppression, it’s better to act as if you weren’t. I don’t mean better for society; I mean better for you.”

“Huh?”

“Kade, we’re not chimpanzees. Use English, please.”

“Sorry,” said Kade. “I don’t understand.”

“A marine biologist once conducted an experiment where he put a hungry shark into a large holding tank. He then released several smaller fish in the tank along with the shark. As you would expect, the shark swam around the tank and quickly gobbled up the smaller fish. Then the biologist placed a glass divider into the holding tank, dividing it into two separate partitions. He then put the shark back into the tank on one side of the divider, and put some smaller fish on the other side. Once more, the shark swiftly attempted to attack. This time, though, it collided into the divider. The shark tried for the fish again and again, but he couldn’t get to them. After about an hour, the shark finally gave up trying. At this point, the marine biologist took out the divider. Still, the shark made no attempt to attack. It would have starved to death if the biologist hadn’t given it some food. Do you know why?”

“Because it thought the divider was still there.”

“The shark starved because it had been trained to think of itself as a victim.”

“Is that story true?”

“Almost certainly not. Stories don’t have to be true to be valuable, though.”

“I get it, Dad. I’m not a victim. I won’t think of myself as a victim.”

“Good. Now, another option you have is to realize how privileged you are, feel guilty about it, and spend your whole life trying to make up for it.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun either.”

“It isn’t. It’s also pointless. You’ll never repay the debt for the privilege you’ve been given. That leaves you with one option: accept your privilege and the responsibility that comes with it. Work hard. Be your own person. Make the most of your freedom. Help others when you can. Don’t judge them, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Above all, stay humble. A wise man once said that a lot of people were born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Good. You smell that? It’s almost dinner time. Go wash your hands. Your mother makes some damn fine curry for a white woman.”

Chapter Seven

2036

President Ramona Blankenship regarded Kade with a bemused smile. “Your friend Lowell must really like you,” she said. “He called in a lot of markers to get this meeting. I’ve got the Prime Minister of New Zealand waiting.” Tall and blond, the President possessed a set of pronounced, slightly birdlike features that had limited her prospects as a swimsuit model but lent her enough schoolmarm severity to make her a credible political leader.

“I thought that guy looked familiar,” Kade replied, straight-faced. He didn’t dislike President Blankenship. He hadn’t voted for her, but then he hadn’t voted since 2024, reasoning that given the likelihood of his vote changing the outcome of a national election, it was a poor use of his time. In any case, it seemed to matter less and less who occupied the Oval Office. Hemmed in domestically by untouchable entitlement spending and internationally by the expansionist Chinese government, the President was essentially the Crisis-Manager-in-Chief. Having lost wars on poverty, drugs and terror, the U.S. government was now battling insolvency and irrelevance.

“You’ve got five minutes, Mr. Kapur. But I can save us both some time: I know why you’re here, and the answer is no. I don’t know anything about any bill to nationalize your asteroid, but if one happens to come across my desk, I wouldn’t veto it.”

“You understand, Madam President, that signing such a bill would be extremely foolish and short-sighted.”

“From a fiscal perspective, I can see your point. From a political perspective, it’s unavoidable. I’m sorry, Mr. Kapur. There’s nothing I can do for you. That asteroid is going to belong to the American people.”

“I understand, Madam President.” said Kade. “I didn’t come here to contest the government’s claim to 2024 LF.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, ma’am. I came here to solve your budget problem.”

The President smiled again. “You’re a very wealthy man, Mr. Kapur, but you and I both know you’d need a couple more zeroes after your net worth to be of any use to me in that regard.”

“With respect, ma’am, that’s not true. The government’s problem isn’t lack of money. It’s lack of faith.”

“Faith? Mr. Kapur, you’re running out of time, and I’m running out of patience.”

“Please, ma’am, call me Kade. Let me cut to the point: people have lost faith in the United States. Our manufacturing has moved overseas. Our military now runs a distant second to China. We punish entrepreneurs, so there’s no innovation. We print money as fast as we can just to keep up with all the handouts we’ve promised people. Our money used to be backed up by gold. Then it was backed by the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States. That worked okay as long as there was something for people to have faith in. But nobody has faith in our government, or in the country itself anymore. Our money is collapsing because it isn’t based on anything.”

“And you’re going to give people something to believe in, Mr. Kapur?”

“We are. You and I. And you’re going to be known for centuries to come as the woman who saved America.”

“You’ve got my attention. Go on.”

“My people have proved that it’s possible to pluck an asteroid from its orbit and put it in orbit around Earth. I know you’ve heard this sales pitch before, but whatever your advisors have told you about the momentousness of what we did last week, it’s bigger than that. We’ve established a steppingstone to the rest of the solar system. Having a ready source of water in orbit solves eighty percent of the problem of colonizing space. And with space colonization will come limitless wealth. There are millions of asteroids out there full of iron, nickel, cobalt, gold, platinum, iridium… basically any valuable resource that isn’t a fossil fuel, and with unlimited solar power and nuclear energy, we aren’t going to need fossil fuels anymore. Not even on Earth. We can generate power in space and beam it directly to Earth. More power than we could ever use, one hundred percent renewable, with zero emissions. The envirofreaks’ wet dream, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

The President raised an eyebrow but kept listening.

“We made a big step toward that dream yesterday,” Kade went on. “We’ve got water now, which is huge. But water alone isn’t going to cut it. We need all those other resources too. And to get them, we either have to go to the asteroids or bring them back here. Going to them isn’t practical, for a lot of reasons. So the next step is—that is, the next step was going to be capturing a metallic asteroid and putting that in orbit too. That gets us from eighty to ninety percent of the way there. We’ve got robots that can mine the asteroids, refine the metals, and build… well, basically anything we want them to build, from more robots to spaceships and nuclear reactors. All we need to do once the basic infrastructure is in place is to get the people up there. So you see, Madam President, you’re killing the goose just as it’s about to lay its first golden egg.”

“You’re being dramatic, Mr. Kapur. Kade. We’re not killing anything. All that technology will still exist under the repatriation plan.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it won’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s only one company on this planet with the technology to place a substantial M-type asteroid into Earth orbit, and that technology is largely in the form of software that resides only on secure servers at our Cape Coral headquarters. Do you remember when China took over that chip manufacturing plant in Taiwan back in ’24?”

The President’s gaze had turned cold. “The Taiwanese company that owned the plant had an EMP on a remote trigger. Ten minutes after the plant was commandeered, every hard drive in the place was wiped. The CCP was stuck with a big building full of scrap metal.”

Kade met her gaze. “Of course, we don’t have to worry about that sort of tyrannical overreach in this country, so I apologize for the digression.”

“I don’t respond well to threats, Kade.”

“I don’t make threats, Madam President. I just want you be aware that proprietary algorithms aren’t as easy to ‘repatriate’ as big hunks of metal.”

“Consider me apprised. You’ve got two minutes.”

“You’ve got a problem, Madame President. The federal government’s debt is unsustainable. You have maybe five years until the house of cards collapses. Stealing my asteroid might win you enough support from the far left and the populist right to secure your reelection, but all that means is that you’ll still be President when the shit hits the fan. And again, whatever your advisers have told you, the collapse of the dollar will be far worse than anyone is expecting. The U.S. dollar still has value because it’s the blood running through the veins of the global financial system. When the Treasury misses its first bond payment—or the market realizes that the government is printing money at an unsustainable rate—that system is going to have a massive coronary. And you’re going to be remembered as the President who let it happen.”

“And your solution is what? Moving another asteroid into Earth orbit?”

“Not just an asteroid. A metallic asteroid nearly a kilometer across. Four billion metric tons of metal. That’s twenty thousand times as big as 2024 LF. I’m talking ten trillion dollars’ worth of minerals.”

“The national debt is over fifty trillion.”

“We don’t have to pay off the debt. All we have to do is convince people that we can meet our obligations. Debt isn’t a problem as long as the market believes we can keep making interest payments. Faith in the Treasury means that real interest rates remain low, borrowing money is inexpensive, and we keep paying. A virtuous cycle.”

“You’re saying the value isn’t in the asteroid itself, but in the accomplishment of moving it into orbit.”

“It’s both. That’s the beauty of it. Not only do we suddenly own ten trillion dollars’ worth of metal; we’ve also shown the world that we can move a gigantic asteroid whenever we feel like it. China can’t do that. Nobody can, except us.”

“We could nuke the Moon if we wanted to. Being able to do something doesn’t carry any prestige unless the thing is worth doing. Aren’t those asteroids mostly iron? We’ve got plenty of iron on Earth.”

“Iron and nickel, yes. The value is mostly in the trace elements. Iridium and cobalt, to name two off the top of my head.”

The President smiled. “You’ve done your research.”

“It’s not a secret that we’re hurting for those two elements. Most of the world’s cobalt is in the Congo, which is why our Special Forces are there, trying and mostly failing to keep the mines running.”

“The Chinese buy cobalt from Russia and fund Communist rebels in the Congo, who sabotage the mines and ambush convoys leaving with shipments of cobalt.”

“My understanding is that the situation with iridium is even worse.”

The President sighed wearily. “The civil war in South Africa makes it almost impossible to get iridium out. And again, Russia supplies China and locks us out. Without iridium… well, I shouldn’t comment on national security matters.”

“Our best military technology relies heavily on iridium. There’s no substitute for it in some applications. Our allies in South Africa and the Congo are being beaten in large part because we can’t get them the weapons they need, because they use iridium, and we can’t buy it at any price.”

“How much iridium are we talking about?” the President asked.

“Our people estimate that Maimonides contains twenty-two thousand metric tons of iridium. That’s three hundred times the amount produced globally in a year.”

“My God. And the iridium is accessible?”

“Well, it’s buried in a lot of iron and nickel, but yes. The mining companies we’re working with have developed processes for mining it in orbit, and it’s only marginally more expensive than doing it on Earth. Once you get the people and equipment into space, of course. The good news is that there aren’t any Marxist assholes up there trying to kill you.”

“And cobalt?”

“We think Maimonides has about seventy times as much cobalt as is produced on Earth in a year.”

“Jesus. That would certainly solve some problems. How do we get the minerals to Earth?”

“With iron and nickel, we don’t. They’re more valuable to us in space. As for iridium, cobalt, and other expensive metals, a railgun is probably the most efficient way. One of the advantages of capturing such a big asteroid is that it gives us a place to stand in order to throw things.”

“I’m not following.”

“You’re familiar with railguns?”

“It’s like an electric cannon, isn’t it?”

“Basically. A railgun uses an electromagnetic field to fire a projectile at extremely high velocity. We could build a railgun in space to fire loads of cargo at Earth. But if the railgun is just floating in orbit, the recoil will send the gun flying off course. If we build the railgun on a big rock like Maimonides, the recoil effect will be minimal.”

“So you would just shoot big chunks of metal at Earth? That sounds… dangerous.”

“Not really. The idea would be to fire the cargo opposite the trajectory of the asteroid’s orbit, hard enough to cancel out the velocity imparted to the cargo by the asteroid. The cargo would leave the railgun’s barrel at roughly zero velocity relative to Earth’s surface and fall straight down. You simply time the firing of the railgun so that it falls where you want it. To move it laterally, you crank up the power a bit and aim the railgun a little to the north or south. Iridium and cobalt are heavy enough that you wouldn’t have to worry about the package drifting much. Put some aerobraking on it and you could hit a target the size of a football stadium, no problem.”

“And if the braking mechanism fails?”

“A lot of really expensive metal vaporizes in the atmosphere.”

“No chance of it destroying a city?”

“Not if we keep the shipments small. The smaller the package, the greater its ratio of surface area to mass. That means more air resistance and more heat. The package heats to ten thousand degrees and turns to vapor.”

The President nodded thoughtfully. “You have the capability of redirecting an asteroid the size of this…?”

“Maimonides. We do. We’ve solved the basic engineering problem. The physics is all the same, regardless of size. We just have to hit the asteroid earlier, with more impactors.”

“Why not start with a smaller asteroid? Something between the size of 2024 LF and Mai—the other one.”

“Maimonides is the best candidate, based on its current orbit. And there are other advantages of capturing such a big asteroid. With an asteroid the size of Maimonides, we can bore tunnels into it as we mine, creating more space to live and work in, rather than having to build separate facilities in space that are much more susceptible to meteorites and structural failures. One of the problems of living in space for more than a few weeks is the amount of radiation you’re exposed to. A few feet of iron is a highly effective shield. Another problem is the lack of gravity: living and working in zero gee is difficult and has a lot of bad effects on the human body, like the loss of muscle mass and bone density. Once we have tunnels throughout the asteroid, though, we can start it spinning, in order to provide simulated gravity for the people inside it.”

“Interesting. Kade, I’m afraid I have to cut this meeting short. I’d like to continue this discussion after I’ve had a chance to talk to my staff.” She pressed a button on the screen on her desk. “Carter, can you find another thirty minutes for Mr. Kapur in my schedule for tomorrow?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said a man’s voice. “Does two p.m. work?”

“That good for you, Kade?”

“I’ll be here.”

Chapter Eight

2014

Kade’s family moved to Tampa just before the school year began. Kade wanted to say goodbye to Valerie, but he didn’t know how to approach her. He walked by her house several times but she was never outside, and he didn’t dare ring the doorbell for fear of her parents’ reaction. He gathered, from postings on some local online message boards, that he was considered something of a loose cannon by many in the neighborhood. He found this amusing, but it did complicate his efforts to speak to Valerie. When he at last got up the courage to ring the doorbell, no one answered; a neighbor told him the Muñoz family was on vacation in Seattle.

Kade’s family toured three different private high schools in Tampa, but Kade’s dad was not impressed with any of them. He asked pointed questions of the teachers, embarrassing both Kade and his mother. Few of them could answer the questions, none to his father’s satisfaction. His parents wouldn’t even consider the public school.

In the end, Kade suggested homeschooling, and to his surprise, his parents acquiesced. His mother was already working long hours at her new practice, so the teaching duties fell to Kade’s father. Kade’s father, however, had other ideas: he insisted that a true education was self-directed. He would be available as a resource, suggesting books to read, videos to watch and projects to undertake, but Kade would do all the work himself. That included, it turned out, administering his own tests and filling out all the homeschooling paperwork required by the state. All his father provided beyond some rudimentary guidance and apocryphal anecdotes was an occasional signature.

Kade poured himself into his various interests, which were varied enough that he fulfilled the state-mandated homeschooling requirements almost by accident. Inspired by books like Gerard O’Neil’s High Frontier, he had decided he wanted to start a company to colonize space—he’d already come up with a name: Ad Astra, a Latin phrase meaning to the stars. His father never discouraged him, but rather encouraged him to come up with a list of milestones he would have to hit in order to reach his final goal. He may have intended this as a way of getting Kade to understand the true scale and difficulty of the challenge he’d set for himself, but Kade took it as an opportunity to develop a concrete plan.

The biggest problem was that the startup costs for such an endeavor would be enormous. He would have liked to go to work for an aerospace company like his father did, but while such a position would provide vital experience and a steady income, it wouldn’t come close to garnering him the sort of capital he was going to need. Knowing that being able to write software was a skill that would serve him well whatever route he took to his goal, he taught himself several programming languages and familiarized himself with multiple operating systems and relational database systems.

The cost of living was lower in Florida than in California, but his mother had taken a big pay cut going from hospital administrator to a partner in a small private practice that only took cash, so they lived frugally. Kade’s father continued to do work for several big corporations, and as Kade’s skill in programming developed, his father occasionally farmed out chunks of projects to him. By the time Kade passed the state high school assessment test, he was on a first-name basis with half a dozen senior managers at as many different multi-billion-dollar corporations.

The work was enjoyable enough; Kade liked the challenge of writing elegant code that accomplished a task in as few lines—and CPU cycles—as possible. But it was also frustrating, because big corporations tended to have a lot of ridiculous rules (security protocols that made things less secure, code formatting rules that made the code harder to read, rules about accounting for his time that made him less efficient, etc.). Big corporations whose biggest customer was the federal government were even worse. Most of the work Kade’s father did was related to helping the company comply with various federal regulations; it was only tangentially related to aerospace. So when Kade was offered a high-paying job at a Silicon Valley startup, he took it. The year was 2019. Kade was eighteen years old.

The only catch was that Kade would have to spend at least some of his time in the office in Palo Alto, and commuting to the Bay Area from Florida wasn’t practical. Kade, who had never before lived away from home, bought a plane ticket at eighteen and flew to San Francisco. He found an absurdly overpriced studio apartment within walking distance of the startup and went to work.

The company, called Spectral, had been founded by a Hollywood agent and the former CTO of a Fortune 500 software company. Spectral had received a huge infusion of venture capital from a group of private investors, and it already had several big-name celebrities as clients. Kade was Spectral’s fourteenth employee.

Spectral’s business model was simple: it offered a way for the rich and famous to do business online anonymously. If, for example, a certain pop sensation decided she wanted to build her dream vacation getaway in rural Colorado, she could use Spectral’s platform to handle all the details of the transaction without ever revealing her identity. Real estate brokers, builders, zoning boards, and anyone else involved in the various transactions would know only that the client was someone represented by Spectral. They could infer that it was someone of means, but that was all. The seller, not knowing the buyer was worth $100 million, wouldn’t hold out for top dollar, knowing she could afford it; environmental groups wouldn’t try to shame her on social media for clear-cutting fifty acres of old growth forest; tabloids wouldn’t run stories about her irresponsible spending spree; crazed fans wouldn’t be waiting for her at the gate before she’d ever set foot on the property.

Because it was vital to Spectral’s public image that their data remain absolutely secure, they had hired a well-known internet security expert and ex-hacker named Steve Gracin as their system administrator and lead programmer. So confident were they in their security that Spectral offered a one-million-dollar bounty to anyone who offered proof of having hacked their system.

The weak link in Spectral’s system, as always when secrets needed to be kept, was the human beings involved. The company trained its employees in proper security procedures, had them sign bulletproof non-disclosure agreements, and paid them well, providing large annual bonuses if no sensitive information leaked during the course of a year. Spectral also provided security training to its clients, but little could be done to prevent a loquacious pop star from oversharing. The vital thing was to ensure that the source of any leak could be identified, and that it could be proven to originate from outside Spectral.

Kade, who had received national security clearance before he had even graduated from high school thanks to his dad pulling some strings to get him approved to do work for major defense contractors, was hired to be Spectral’s second programmer. Steve Gracin had designed Spectral’s database and built its custom apps. As an assistant programmer, Kade was ostensibly not privy to Spectral’s client data, but in practice it was virtually impossible to prevent him from snooping if he felt like it.

A typical man Kade’s age might have been curious about the private lives of Hollywood stars, if only to use the information to pick up women. Kade, however, had absolutely no interest in celebrities of any sort. Even the tech billionaires he hoped one day to emulate (he gathered that there were at least three among Spectral’s clients) didn’t particularly interest him. He assumed that these people had affairs, hired prostitutes, met with the heads of murderous foreign regimes, went on elephant-hunting safaris, and committed other sins with the help of Spectral, but he didn’t care. None of that information was going to get him where he wanted to be. Even if he didn’t find the idea of blackmail morally repugnant, he wouldn’t have been tempted: blackmail was a zero-sum game, which to Kade meant that it was a game for losers. He didn’t want to get rich by stealing from someone else; he wanted people to voluntarily give him money because he provided something of value.

Two years into his employment at Spectral, rumors surfaced on the internet about a ranch in southern Mexico that employed prostitutes as young as fourteen. Among the ranch’s clientele were said to be several wealthy Americans. No names were mentioned, but enough details were leaked to make Spectral’s CEO, Basil Kallis, nervous.

Ordinarily a company concerned about its data security being compromised would have hired an outside firm to perform an audit, but Kallis was evidently so paranoid that he insisted the matter be handled in-house. Kallis interviewed every employee who had access to the relevant data, each of whom swore they were not the leak. Kade was tasked with determining whether any of the leaked information had been obtained by hacking Spectral’s systems.

He began by tracing the source of the rumors to a posting on an internet message board by a user going by the handle VonDoom. The posting suggested that a wealthy retired politician was one of the ranch’s frequent customers. Going through the client records in Spectral’s database, Kade had no trouble identifying a certain ex-Senator as the culprit, but it was unlikely anyone without access to that data would have made the connection. The message seemed to be intentionally vague. Either the poster had more information than he had posted publicly or he was an excellent bluffer. It was as if he was releasing just enough information to make Spectral nervous.

Kade thought it unlikely the information had originated from a hack of Spectral’s systems. Why release vague teasers online when he could have gone to Spectral with the data and collected the million-dollar bounty? Or, for that matter, kept the information to himself and used it to blackmail the people involved? Such a hack would have given the hacker access to a lot more data. Why hadn’t he released anything else?

Despite this, Kade spent the next three weeks analyzing Spectral’s code and systems, trying to find any weak points. Eventually he did find a vulnerability, but it was unclear whether it was how the hacker (if there was one) had gotten access. By this time, it appeared that VonDoom was not going to release any more information or threaten any of Spectral’s clients with blackmail. Kade’s boss, Steve Gracin, instructed him to patch the vulnerability and forget about it. Kade got the distinct impression Gracin had already told Kallis that there had been no hack.

As Kade often did when he faced a difficult choice, he called his father. And as usual, his father cut right to the heart of the matter.

“Do you think the information was acquired by hacking Spectral’s database?” he asked.

“It seems unlikely,” Kade replied. “This vulnerability, it’s not something your typical hacker could exploit. He’d have to know about the open port and have pretty detailed knowledge of Spectral’s database schema.”

“It sounds like you’re saying the hacker had inside information. Who else besides you had access to that information?”

“Well, nobody. I just found out about this database vulnerability, and as far as I can tell, it isn’t documented anywhere. Nobody else has reported it.”

“But somebody else might have discovered it as well. What about the other programmer?”

“Steve? I guess it’s possible, but he’s got direct access to the data. Why hack it from the outside?”

“It would be an effective way to divert suspicion.”

“He devises this absurdly complicated plan to hack Spectral from the outside just to post some vague insinuations on an internet message board?”

“I’ll admit it seems like a long shot. The real question, though, is: what are you going to do about it?”

“As I see it,” Kade said, “either the vulnerability poses no real danger to Spectral or its investors, or the hacker already has a big cache of sensitive data that he had done nothing with.”

“Sounds like you’re planning on playing a cat-and-mouse game with this hacker.”

“You think it’s a bad idea?”

“I suppose it depends on what your goal is. Listen, Kade, I’ve got to go. Your mother’s gotten it into her head that we’ve got too many books. She may be right, but I’ve got to make sure she doesn’t dispose of any Larry Niven hardcovers. We can talk more later if you want. Whatever you do, be careful.”

“You know me, Dad.”

“That’s what has me worried.”

That night, Kade installed logging tools on the server to monitor activity over the open port and then reported the vulnerability fixed. Steve Gracin was happy, and Basil Kallis seemed to have moved on to other concerns.

Kade made one other small change as well: he altered the data type of an important field in the database, so that a hacker wouldn’t be able to use his knowledge of the schema to get inside. For two weeks, there was no sign of any attempted intrusion. Then one night Kade’s logging tools reported several queries through the open port. The hacker, unable to retrieve any data, soon gave up. The logs contained nothing that would help Kade find or identify the hacker: the IP addresses he (Kade thought of the hacker as a he, although he had no evidence other than statistical probability and the name VonDoom) was using were all over the place. The hacker was undoubtedly using a VPN to hide his IP address.

The next evening, however, brought a barrage of queries. Again, the IP addresses used were from all over the world, but they clearly all originated from the same device. The frequency of the queries suggested a script or other semi-automated process. Over the course of several hours, a pattern emerged: the hacker was attempting, through process of elimination, to pinpoint the schema change. It took nearly a week, but eventually he was successful. Kade restrained himself from blocking the open port as the hacker began pulling data that had been added since his last attack. If he shut the hacker down now, Kade knew he’d never figure out who he was.

Analyzing the hacker’s queries, Kade eventually found a pattern: the hacker was using some of the data he’d already stolen as a sort of key to unlock other records in the same tables. This should have been impossible, but Kade tried it himself and verified that it worked. The hacker had found a vulnerability not only in Spectral’s systems, but also in the database engine they were using. The database engine was used by tens of thousands of companies around the world, but as far as Kade could tell, no one had reported the problem. Who the hell was this guy?

Another question nagged at Kade: now that the hacker had a bunch of Spectral’s data, it was a simple matter to create a “key” to get the rest of it. But how had he gotten the data he’d used to create the original key? Only Spectral’s employees had the data he would have needed.

No, that wasn’t true, Kade realized: the clients themselves also had some of the data. A client would have nearly all the data that went into his or her own records in the database. With that information and knowledge of the database vulnerability, the hacker could, with enough time and effort, create a key to get to the rest of the data. Was the hacker one of Spectral’s clients?

Although Spectral provided its clients with anonymity, it was scrupulous about verifying the identity of its clients. No random hacker could get himself anonymously added to their database. Unless the hacker had somehow gotten past seven different identity checks, including a personal visit from a Spectral representative, his real name was in the database.

As a high-end service provider, Spectral didn’t have many clients. Kade’s query of the clients table produced two-hundred thirty-seven records. Kade imported the records into a spreadsheet and then marked the names he recognized: a few privacy-conscious billionaires; a best-selling romance author; several actors, musicians and politicians. Kade thought it unlikely that such people moonlit as hackers. He did web searches on the remaining names, and was able to eliminate many more. He had forty-three clients left to check when he came across an entry that made the hair on his arms stand up. The man’s name was Rami Essak.

Chapter Nine

2036

“The good news,” said President Blankenship, “is that my science advisor confirmed most of what you’ve told me about… the asteroid you want to move. Plenty of iridium and cobalt, just there for the taking. There was some question, though, whether you could actually deliver. Isn’t this asteroid something like a thousand times the size of 2024 LF?”

“About twenty-thousand times, actually,” Kade said. “Going by mass, that is.”

“How the hell do you move something that big?”

“We’re not really moving it. We’re slowing it down so that it comes closer to Earth than it otherwise would. The short answer is that we hit it a lot sooner. Our impactors will only slow Maimonides down by a tiny fraction of its current velocity, but over a few years, that change adds up. Then, when it comes around again, we hit it again to actually put it into Earth orbit.”

“What if you miscalculate, or something goes wrong with your impactors?”

“The odds of Maimonides striking Earth on its first pass after the initial impactor barrage are essentially nil. Hitting Earth with an asteroid that size would be like trying to shoot a bullet through a keyhole from a mile away: even if we were trying to do it, we’d almost certainly fail, and we’ll err on the side of caution. The next time it comes around, it will be closer, but even if there’s a catastrophic failure with the BORIC system, the worst that could happen is that Maimonides misses Earth completely, and we have to wait for it to come around and try again.”

“Mmm. That was the line you used with 2024 LF. It’s not exactly true, though, is it?”

“Setting aside the possibility of an incredibly boneheaded miscalculation—”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about what happens if you miss, and the asteroid comes around again four and a half years after the scheduled rendezvous date. There’s no guarantee that it won’t hit Earth then. Or four and a half years after that.”

Kade nodded. Whoever was advising Blankenship had done a good job of apprising her of the risks. “There’s never any guarantee. Space is full of asteroids like this. The better we are at redirecting them, the better our chances of survival.”

“I’ve heard that line too. But what we’re talking about is something different. If you redirect an asteroid so that it narrowly misses Earth, you’re increasing the odds it will hit when it comes around again, are you not?”

“Well, yes. As I say, we cannot completely eliminate risk, and there’s no reason we can’t redirect the asteroid when it comes around again. We’ll have the infrastructure in place and plenty of warning.”

“Hmm. If you’ve got this all worked out, what do you need me for?”

“If you nationalize—sorry, repatriate—2024 LF, Ad Astra is done for. All the contracts we’ve got with mining and aerospace companies evaporate, because without exclusive rights to the asteroid, we can’t deliver. But even if we were fully solvent, we don’t have the cash on hand to pull off a mission this size.”

“You just got done lecturing me about our unsustainable debt.”

“My plan doesn’t require the federal government to take on any additional debt. In fact, it doesn’t require any cash from the government at all, and will actually relieve some of your debt burden.”

“So now you’re printing money out of thin air? Careful, Kade. The Treasury doesn’t like competition.”

“We don’t need more money. We need to make the money we have worth something. And we do that by giving people hope for the future.”

“All right, I’m intrigued. Tell me how you plan to finance this project without any cash from the government.”

Kade smiled. “A new company will be formed, chartered by the federal government. I’m partial to the name High Frontier Mining Company, but we can go with something else if you’d like. The government will provide the company a guarantee of exclusive mining rights on the asteroid. The government will also allow conversion of treasury bonds to stock in the company at a discount. The point of this would be to alleviate some of the debt as well as reassuring investors of the value of their bonds.”

“Clever. Make T-bonds more attractive by giving people the option to exchange them for stock.”

“Exactly. And not just any stock. Stock in a company with potentially infinite returns and zero competitors. A company with the backing of the U.S. government and founded by the first man to move an asteroid into U.S. orbit. If we handle this right, this could be the biggest IPO of all time. Imagine having to tell your grandchildren that you missed out on an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the company that made it possible for humans to colonize the solar system!”

“You call this hope for the future, but it’s really just speculation on an astronomical scale.”

“But that’s what speculation is! We’re going to do what every entrepreneur with a great idea does: ask for cash now in exchange for the promise of a better future. Madam President, the American people are tired. They’re tired of dead-end jobs, stagnant wages, money that’s worth less every year, and endless red tape and regulations. You used to be able to get ahead in this country if you worked hard and kept your eyes out for opportunities. When I was a kid, people used to say that my generation was the first in American history to be less well off than their parents. These days the only question is how much worse things are going to be for the next generation. We have to keep importing foreigners just to keep our population from shrinking, because most Americans aren’t bothering to have kids anymore. Hope for the future used to be part of the American DNA. You’re a few years older than me, so I know you remember. It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s still an entire universe out there to explore. Humanity is just getting started. Hell, America is just getting started. All the American people need to seize that future is a little hope. And we can give it to them!”

“No hope is better than false hope.”

“With respect, Ma’am, I disagree. Any hope is better than no hope. And sometimes false hope can turn out to be true in the end. Sometimes to make something happen, all you need is to believe that it will happen. If you and I stand up before the American people and tell them America is going to colonize the solar system, they will believe it. And they will make it happen.”

“You give a good speech, Kade. You should have gone into politics.”

“I’m passionate about things I believe in. Since I was a little kid, I’ve believed that it’s humanity’s destiny to live among the stars.”

“Okay. So High Frontier Mining Company gets a big infusion of cash from this IPO. Then what?”

“High Frontier is essentially a shell company. It has a board of directors and a stock ticker but no assets. What it does is hire other companies to make asteroid mining a reality.”

“Starting with Ad Astra.”

“We’re the only company that can capture Maimonides—or any other asteroid worth mining.”

“It will look a little fishy if the first thing the company does is to hire one of its founder’s other companies.”

“Not at all. We’ll make it clear that it’s our intention to hire Ad Astra from the outset. Ad Astra transfers its ownership of 2024 LF to HFM, and in return HFM hires Ad Astra to handle the Maimonides redirect mission.”

“People are going to say we’re just shuffling paper around.”

Kade couldn’t stifle his laughter. “With respect, Ma’am,” he said when he’d regained his composure, “you know where you are, right?”

To Kade’s relief, the President’s expression went from consternation to amusement. “Point taken.”

“In seriousness, the paper shuffling is the point. There was always a legal cloud over Ad Astra, even before the threat of nationalizing 2024 LF. ARROW helped, but there’s not a lot of case law on asteroid mining, so anyone investing in us was taking a big risk that our endeavors would be tripped up by some legal technicality. But if the government comes out and explicitly endorses HFM, that cloud is gone. Suddenly there’s a legal umbrella under which any company that wants to get in on asteroid mining can work. There are even models for this sort of thing, like the British East India Company. In the seventeenth century, no single shipping company had the resources to conduct trade with the orient, so the British government formed a quasi-private company as a sort of umbrella organization.”

“And the asteroid itself becomes U.S. territory, like the islands claimed by British explorers in the seventeenth century?”

“I’ll let somebody else work out the legal details, but my assumption is that the government will control the rights to any captured asteroids. Ad Astra was never interested in owning the asteroids per se; leasing mining rights to other companies was the only way for us to fund our operations. I’d be happy to let somebody else handle that part of it, so Ad Astra can focus on what it’s good at.”

“Some of our friends in the international community might not be so keen on the American government claiming territory in space. China, in particular, comes to mind.”

“Technically, the asteroid would be owned by HFM, which will be a private company. The Outer Space Treaty only prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies, not private ownership. In any case, let them complain. I don’t see that there’s much else they can do about it. Frankly, the U.S. getting its hands on another source of iridium and cobalt might put some pressure on them to stop fucking things up in the Congo and South Africa.”

“What you’re really after, then, is the federal government’s imprimatur on space mining.”

“Precisely. The space mining industry gets a jumpstart from the U.S. government’s support, and the government gets a boost in its credibility for taking bold action toward securing a better future. Everybody wins.”

“Especially Ad Astra.”

Kade shrugged. “I don’t expect any guarantee that we’ll be the exclusive asteroid capture company for HFM. I just want to stay in the game.”

“Once you’ve redirected Mai—the asteroid into Earth orbit, then what?”

“Then HFM starts taking bids from contractors to handle the surveying, construction of facilities, mining, and anything else people want to do up there. Tourism could be a big draw. There are a lot of people who would spend a hundred grand or more to say they’ve been to an asteroid. And I’m sure NASA would love to have a lab up there.”

“My people will have to verify all this.”

“Of course. I won’t be able to share proprietary algorithms with you, but you are more than welcome to verify the feasibility of the redirect mission.”

“I could probably get the pro-nationalization folks on board, since they’d be getting what they ostensibly want: public ownership of 2024 LF and any other captured asteroids. Some of the small government types in my party might bristle at the idea of government getting so entangled in the affairs of a private company, but I can deal with them.”

“Then you’re on board with the idea, Madam President?”

“I will think it over. If I decide to lend my support, though, we’ll have to do something about the name.”

“You don’t like High Frontier Mining?”

“No, Mai… the other name. Maimo….”

“Maimonides. I didn’t pick the name. The amateur astronomer who discovered it named it after some medieval Jewish philosopher.”

“Well, we’ll have to think of something better. I’m not going to try to say ‘Mai-mon-i-des’ ten times in a televised address from the Oval Office.”

Chapter Ten

2021

Rami Essak was an Egyptian graduate student working on a doctorate in mathematics at California Polytechnic State University, in San Luis Obispo. His occupation in the Spectral database was listed as “performance artist.” It was fortunate that Kade was alone in Spectral’s offices late at night when he read that, because he burst out laughing. Essak’s bio identified him as the anonymous street artist known only as “McHeadroom,” who had committed numerous moderately clever acts of “anti-capitalist” vandalism in San Francisco and several other cities over a span of five years, the most famous of which was hanging the Monopoly man in effigy from the Golden Gate Bridge. Kade suspected, however, that Essak was using the street art as a cover; his real performance was hacking Spectral—and hiding in plain sight while he did it. Certainly his theft of Spectral’s data had necessitated a level of intelligence at least two standard deviations higher than that required to hang a dummy from a bridge.

It wasn’t clear from the records what Essak hoped to get out of his relationship with Spectral, but Spectral was not in the business of turning away potential clients. As long as he’d provided them adequate proof that he was who he said he was and paid the $25,000 startup fee, they would be happy to represent him. And sure enough, a $25,000 payment from a credit card in Essak’s name had been recorded in the database—only to have been quietly refunded as an “over-payment” twenty-nine days later. Essak had put the startup fee on credit and then hacked their transaction processing—an entirely separate system from the main database—as well, taking the money back just in time to avoid being charged interest by the credit card company. Essak’s venture was breathtaking in both its scope and its technical virtuosity.

On the other hand, what the hell was Essak thinking, putting his real name in Spectral’s database? Was he the smartest hacker in the world or the stupidest? An idiot savant? There was only one way to find out: Kade emailed him.

He sent the email from his personal account, with the subject “Performance art.” It read:

Would like to talk to you about your work.

He signed his name, knowing that a simple web search would reveal him to be a programmer working for Spectral. He didn’t expect a prompt reply; no doubt Essak’s first response to the email would be panic: he had been found out! Then, after he’d had some time to think, he would realize that if Spectral intended to press charges, they wouldn’t have had a low-level employee send him a vaguely worded email. He would conclude that Kade was working on his own, and that it was in Essak’s interest to find out exactly what he wanted. So a day or a week later, he would email Kade back.

The thing was, Kade didn’t know what he wanted. He’d already solved the mystery: he knew who the hacker was. Why hadn’t he gone to Steve, or to Basil, or to the police? Was his email to Essak driven by idle curiosity, or was there more to it?

Five minutes after he sent the email, he received a response from Rami Essak that read:

What do you want?

And then it was Kade’s turn to panic. Sitting in a cubicle in the climate-controlled Palo Alto office at two a.m., his eyes affixed on the thirty-inch flat panel monitor on his desk, he broke out in a sweat. For the past three weeks, he’d been playing a cat-and-mouse game, and suddenly he had the distinct feeling that he was the mouse. You idiot! He thought to himself. He’s a super-genius! He’s been toying with you this whole time!

Calm the fuck down, said a more rational part of his brain. You’re the one with the leverage here. True, Kade had taken advantage of his employer’s trust and been careless with their data, but the worst that could happen to him was getting fired. Essak had committed multiple felonies. Kade had all the evidence any prosecutor would need to send him to federal prison for a very long time.

Kade got up from his desk, took several laps around the office, breathed deeply, did some stretches, and then went back to his cubicle and sat down. He replied:

Just wondering why you did it?

A few minutes later, a reply came from Rami Essak:

Why do you do what you do?

P.S.: You don’t need a question mark at the end of a declaratory sentence.

Kade stared at the screen in bewilderment. He had this guy dead-to-rights on multiple felonies, and he was correcting Kade’s punctuation?

He replied:

They pay me well. Your turn.

But Essak wouldn’t let Kade take control of the conversation. The reply came back:

They aren’t paying you to do this. Why are you doing it?

Kade replied:

Curiosity.

To this, Essak replied:

Bullshit.

Kade was at a loss. Should he threaten to go to the police? He had the sense it was too late for that. Essak would know that if he was going to go to the cops, he would have done it already. How to get answers out of him, then?

Without pausing to think, Kade wrote:

I’m going to start a company to go into space. I could use someone like you.

He hit Send and then waited for the inevitable ridicule that would follow, as it always did when he spoke of his dream.

And waited.

Ten minutes went by. Then twenty. Then forty.

After an hour and a half, Kade gave up and went home. He had enough time to shower and get a few hours of sleep before having to go back in to the office.

By the time he got home, though, there was an email waiting for him from Rami Essak. It said:

I hacked Spectral to show it could be done. Didn’t intend to go public with data, but pedophiles deserve to burn.

Kade replied:

The client in question has been dropped. You gave up $1 million to make a point?

He got up from his desk, took a bean and cheese burrito out of the freezer, and put it in the microwave. When he sat down again, there was a reply from Essak:

Yes. You won’t make enough working at Spectral to start an aerospace company.

Kade replied:

I know. Working on it.

Essak emailed back:

Get out soon. Spectral is going down.

Kade wrote:

Are you going to take them down?

Essak replied:

No. Business model is untenable.

Kade emailed back:

What do you mean?

Kade got his burrito and a Dr Pepper and sat down at his desk to eat. There was no reply from Essak by the time he finished eating, so he went to bed. When his alarm woke him up four hours later, there was another email from Essak. It read:

Good luck.

That was the last Kade heard from Essak for some time. When he went into work that morning, he closed the port Essak had been using and sent an anonymous bug report to the middleware vendor. Three days later, he put in his notice. He couldn’t really afford to be unemployed, but Essak’s warning had spooked him. He had a pretty good idea what Essak meant when he said that Spectral’s business model was “untenable.” By selling itself as a repository of sensitive data, Spectral had painted a big target on its back. Hackers were one thing: if Spectral was extremely careful, they might avoid having their data stolen by bad guys. It was the ostensible good guys, though, that posed the real threat.

It was an unavoidable fact that anonymity attracted people who were up to no good. Spectral did background checks on its clients and made them sign agreements acknowledging that criminal activity voided the guarantee of anonymity, but this was all done with a wink and a nod. Spectral catered to the rich and powerful, but there would always be one entity richer and more powerful: the government. The company’s only chance at long-term success was to become so big that the government didn’t dare shut them down, and the only way they could do that was by adding clients as quickly as possible. That meant occasionally looking the other way when criminal activity was involved. Spectral was playing a dangerous game: they would either become the world’s biggest repository of incriminating information outside the NSA or they’d be stomped into oblivion by the feds. Rami Essak was betting on the latter, and Kade suspected he was right.

Kade’s father assured him he was more than welcome to come back home for a while if he couldn’t find another job, but for Kade that would be an admission of defeat. He was determined to make it on his own. Fortunately, he landed a coding job at an insurance company shortly after his last day at Spectral. It wasn’t his first choice, but he figured he could work there until he found something better. Six weeks later, the retired Senator was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography. The news sites said that the police had received an anonymous tip. Three months after his arrest, a federal judge issued a subpoena for all of Spectral’s client data, supposedly as part of a tax evasion case. Spectral’s stock cratered. The company went bankrupt and was dissolved.

Chapter Eleven

2021

Kade’s job at Peregrine Insurance was less demanding than his position at Spectral. Much of his job consisted of developing custom reports for internal users, and he found that by automating some of the key steps in the report building process, he could reduce his workload by about three quarters. At Spectral, Kade had been eager to prove himself, so whenever he automated something, he would let his superiors know, in the hopes that they would be sufficiently impressed with his ingenuity to give him a raise. It rarely worked out that way: he found that doubling the amount of work he did tended to net him about a ten percent raise at the end of the year. So at Peregrine he kept his process improvements to himself and used the extra time to work on his own projects. Usually this involved familiarizing himself with some aspect of computer technology or researching market trends, hoping to come up with a multi-million-dollar idea.

What he thought about most, though, was how a company like Spectral could have avoided its fate. Spectral’s Achilles’ heel was its centralized data repository. All that data, sitting in one place, just waiting for someone to take it. If you could get away from a single, centralized data repository, you could eliminate the threat. There’d be nothing for hackers to steal; nothing for the feds to subpoena.

The idea of a decentralized data repository led Kade to investigate blockchains. Invented in 2007 by an anonymous developer going by the name Dorian Prentice, a blockchain was a constantly updated list of records, called blocks, that were linked together over a peer-to-peer network. Each block contained a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and data on particular transactions. As blocks each contained information about the blocks preceding them, they formed a chain, with each additional block reinforcing the ones before it. Because of this structure, blockchains were resistant to modification of their data, because the data in any given block couldn’t be altered retroactively without altering all the subsequent blocks.

Blockchains were originally used as public ledgers for cryptocurrencies like Dorian Prentice’s own creation, Cryptocoin. Dozens of other cryptocurrencies—Lumenium, MatrixCoin, Asterisq.coin, Iota, Silicoin, to name a few—were created using variations of blockchain technology. Often collectively referred to as “crypto,” such currencies were still used in only a small fraction of financial transactions worldwide, but a cryptocurrency that became widely adopted would solve a number of the problems associated with fiat currencies.

Many other sorts of blockchains were developed in the decade or so following. One application that Kade found particularly interesting, developed in 2018 by an anonymous consortium, was called Asterisq. The Asterisq documentation Kade found online called it a “meta-currency.” According to the documentation, Asterisq was designed to allow easy creation of “exchange contexts” called agoras, after the Greek word for “market.” According to the Asterisq documentation, an agora was “a virtual market space with a set of rules that were agreed upon by all participants.” In the three years since it had been publicly released, Asterisq had not made more than a tiny ripple in the world of digital commerce, but the more Kade read about agoras, the more it seemed that Spectral’s business model could be replicated almost entirely by creating a specialized agora.

What Spectral offered its client was anonymity plus legitimacy: a guarantee that although they would not reveal a client’s identity, that client was trustworthy. Participants in an agora were anonymous by default, so there was no need for the sort of anonymization provided by Spectral, and the Asterisq model had its own way of conferring legitimacy: each user profile had a history of transactions that could be used to demonstrate trustworthiness. Parties to a transaction could also provide quantifiable feedback regarding the transaction that would affect the user’s reputation score within that agora and, to a lesser extent, other agoras.

Each agora had its own currency, which was referred to by appending “.coin” to the name of the agora. The basic Asterisq framework included many standard “smart contracts,” including one that allowed a user to loan .coin to another user on terms agreed upon by both parties. Payments could be made manually or set up to be automatically deducted from the borrower’s account. Failure to make payments per the agreement incurred automatic penalties to the borrower’s credit score. There were standard smart contracts in the Asterisq framework for setting up purchase agreements and escrow accounts. There was even a way to convert .coin from one agora to another at an exchange rate that was allowed to float freely.

As Kade saw it, the Asterisq model would allow him to do most of what Spectral’s back-end systems did—without the centralized database. The main problem was that almost nobody was on Asterisq. On the other hand, a problem could be an opportunity. Kade envisioned a company that acted as a broker: if a potential client wanted to execute a financial transaction anonymously, the company would get both parties set up on the same agora and let them work out the details. Some transactions—like purchases of land—couldn’t legally be done with complete anonymity, but there were still advantages to handling as much of the business as possible through the agora. Kade’s company would still have to keep some records, of course, but all actual transaction data would exist only in Asterisq.

The other problem was that Kade didn’t have the connections to set up a high-end business like Spectral. He might have tried contacting some of Spectral’s clients, but those people would undoubtedly be reluctant to trust an unproven startup after being burned by Spectral. Kade decided to go the opposite route: he would develop free applications that would simplify the process of using Asterisq, in the hopes of capturing a broad base of users. Asterisq was brilliantly designed, but you almost had to be a programmer to understand it. Kade intended to do for anonymous business transactions what Apple had done for the personal computer.

He worked at Peregrine for just over two years, spending all of his free time developing what he called SAFE: Simple Asterisq Front End. It was more work than he expected, and in the process he discovered some problems with the Asterisq framework that would ultimately make his project (as Rami Essak would say) untenable. He was on the verge of abandoning it when he was alerted to an interview with a billionaire named Davis Christopher, in which he mentioned Asterisq as “potentially a framework for the future of global commerce.” The quote was widely disseminated across the internet, and dozens of news outlets ran pieces with titles like “Asterisq: What You Need to Know” and “Asterisq: A Rising Internet Star.”

Kade wasn’t the only one who had spotted the flaw in Asterisq’s model. Esoteric chatter about it was all over blockchain message boards. The problem, in a nutshell, was that it was too easy to game the feedback system. A user could set up hundreds of separate Asterisq profiles and then build up his reputation score by executing thousands of transactions between those profiles. Various solutions were proposed, but none of them solved the root problem. Kade tried his hand at it as well, without success. He knew there was a solution; he could feel it. Shortly after the interview with Davis Christopher appeared, he left his job at Peregrine to focus on the problem full-time. Three weeks later, he was no closer to a solution. Queries of search engine statistics indicated the interest in Asterisq was starting to fade. Articles about framework were appearing less frequently. Kade could feel the moment slipping away. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed titled “Asterisq: A Solution in Search of a Problem.”

Had Kade been wrong about Asterisq’s potential? If he was wrong, then so was Davis Christopher. But then, what did Davis Christopher know about technology? He had made his fortune in real estate. He’d probably read an article somewhere and decided that Asterisq was The Next Big Thing.

On the other hand, if Davis Christopher really believed it, he might be willing to bet some tiny fraction of his fortune on it. A web search revealed that although Davis Christopher had a personal email address, he rarely checked it. It seemed that the best way to contact him was via a physical letter addressed to him at the address of his corporation’s headquarters in Dallas. Kade spent a day composing a letter, trying to communicate the essential facts in a compelling way while keeping the letter to less than a page. When he was done, he emailed the text to his father to review. His father deleted most of the text, leaving three short sentences. Kade printed out the revised version, signed it, and mailed it to Davis Christopher.

A week later, when Kade was still tearing his hair out trying to solve the feedback problem, he received an email from Davis Christopher’s personal secretary inviting Kade to meet with him at his ranch outside Dallas. Kade forced himself to wait an hour before replying. Two days later he was on a flight to Dallas.

Chapter Twelve

2021

Kade knocked on the door of the modest suburban home of Davis Christopher precisely at nine a.m. the day of their appointment. He had checked the address he’d been given three times, thinking that either there had been a mistake or somebody was playing a joke on him. It was a nice enough two-story home with an attached garage in a relatively posh neighborhood, but it wasn’t where Kade would have expected to find a billionaire. Kade had worn a suit and tie for the occasion, and the Texas sun, although still low in the sky, beat down with such ferocity that he soon began to sweat. He was relieved when, after a minute or so, a diminutive woman who appeared to be in her fifties let him inside.

The woman (Mrs. Christopher? His assistant? Both?) offered to take his jacket, and Kade gladly accepted. She hung it in the coat closet and then led Kade to Davis Christopher’s study, in the back of the house. Kade was again struck by the ordinariness of the place: it was a perfectly nice little study, with Ikea bookshelves overloaded with titles in a bewildering range of subjects—all non-fiction, Kade noted, and distributed according to a scheme that seemed to derive in equal parts from the Dewey decimal system and chaos theory. A man Kade took to be Davis Christopher himself sat at a large oak desk, but with his back turned to Kade, staring out the window at a backyard enclosed by a cedar fence and dominated by a medium-sized oval-ish swimming pool.

“Mr. Kapur is here for you, dear,” said the woman.

Davis Christopher swiveled his chair to meet Kade’s eyes. For a moment it seemed like he was looking through Kade, but then his eyes focused and he smiled. He was a small, wiry man with a full head of silver-gray hair. He looked younger than his sixty-four years. “Sit down, son,” Davis Christopher said. “Thank you, Dawn.”

“Do you need anything, Mr. Kapur?” asked Dawn. “Coffee? Water? Lemonade?”

“I’ll take a lemonade,” said Davis Christopher.

“I wasn’t asking you,” said Dawn, in mock exasperation.

“Actually a lemonade sounds great,” Kade said. “Thank you. And please, call me Kade.”

Dawn smiled and left.

“Married my secretary,” Davis Christopher said. “I don’t recommend it.”

Kade had no answer for this. He felt himself sweating again.

“Oh, I love her. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying, it would be better if there were two of her. Having your wife and your secretary in the same package is… suboptimal.”

“I suppose I can see how that could be the case, Mr. Christopher,” Kade said anxiously.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, relax,” said the billionaire. “And call me Davis.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kade. “Davis. You can call me Kade. I mean, of course you can. I’m Kade.”

“You’re nervous as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” Davis said. “If it wasn’t nine o’clock in the morning, I’d have Dawn put some whiskey in your lemonade. Hell, that sounds pretty good. Dawn!”

But Dawn arrived a few seconds later, bearing a tray with two tall glasses of lemonade. She held it toward Kade, and he took one. “Don’t be ridiculous, Davis,” she said. “I’m not giving booze to the boy.” She offered the other glass to Davis, and he took it. “He’s not even of legal age.”

“Of course he is!” Davis barked. “Kade, how old are you?”

“I’ll, uh, be twenty-one in August,” Kade replied.

“Huh,” replied Davis. “All right. That’s all, Dawn.”

“You’re welcome,” said Dawn.

“Thank you, Mrs. Christopher,” said Kade.

Dawn beamed at him and left the room.

“I want you to know, Kade,” said Davis, “that I thought it was pretty ballsy of you to write me a letter out of the blue like that. But now I see you’re just a kid who didn’t know any better. Ah well. What have you got for me?”

“Well, sir, I read the interview where you talked about Asterisq, and I—”

“Are you going to tell me my ideas or your ideas?”

“Sorry, sir. Davis. I just wanted to say I agree with you.”

“I was talking out of my ass,” Davis said.

“Sir?”

“I don’t know anything about blockchains or Asterisq or whatever. What’s your idea?”

“I, uh… I’m building some applications, a suite of applications, you could call it, that make it easier for users to set up Asterisq profiles and use the framework to conduct transactions.”

“Have you solved the feedback problem?”

“What?”

“The feedback problem. Isn’t there a problem where you can rack up unearned reputation points?”

“Well, yes. I thought you said you were—”

“Talking out of my ass? I was wrong. I forgot. I actually do know something about this. Sometimes I forget what I know and what I don’t. Hazards of being a polymath. Have you solved the feedback problem or not?”

“I’m very close.”

“Mmm. Three hundred thousand.”

“Sir?”

“I’ll give you three hundred thousand dollars in exchange for forty-nine percent ownership of your company. What’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name yet.”

“Are you incorporated?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. We can help you with that. Three hundred grand. That’ll get you started, right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I’ll have my people write up the papers. I think I’ve got some whiskey in my desk. You want some?”

“If you’re having some, sir.”

Chapter Thirteen

2021

Kade’s elation about receiving funding for his venture was short-lived. A month later, he was no closer to solving the feedback problem. Two weeks after his meeting with Davis Christopher he had finally broken down and asked Rami Essak for help. Rami had sent him a few suggestions, but Kade had explored them to the best of his ability and gotten nowhere. Finally he sent Rami an imploring email:

Dude, this is the future. We both know it. Somebody is going to solve this problem, in a week or a month or a year. And when they do; they’ll be the favorite to be the leader in digital commerce for the next twenty years.

Rami wrote back:

I prefer to work in the realm of the abstract. Also, that’s not how you use a semi-colon.

Kade replied:

I’ll give you $10,000 to solve the feedback problem. You may like to work in the abstract, but I know you’ve got concrete bills to pay.

After a moment, he sent an addendum:

I mean actual bills for concrete things, not bills for concrete.

Rami, who knew only that Kade had received some funding from an unnamed source, replied:

Swimming in cash, eh? Make it $20k. And after I solve the feedback problem, I’m done.

Kade wrote back:

Deal!

Kade and Rami had kept up an intermittent email correspondence since Kade left Spectral, but they had never actually met. Even so, Kade had no doubt that Rami would solve the problem. Kade had a fairly high opinion of his own intelligence, but Rami was a bona fide genius, and the feedback problem was exactly the sort of puzzle he liked to solve. If Kade had had more time to massage Rami’s ego, he probably could have gotten him to do it for free.

Rami came up with a solution in ten days. The only problem was that it was incompatible with the underlying Asterisq framework. To implement it, they would have to create their own branch of the framework. Asterisq had hardly taken the world by storm, but it had an estimated five million users worldwide. Creating a new branch meant starting from scratch, with zero users.

“Damn it, Rami. Are you sure this is the only way?” Kade said, pacing back and forth in his tiny Palo Alto apartment. Since Rami had started working on the feedback problem, he and Kade had started conversing occasionally by phone.

“I’m sure,” Rami’s voice said over the speakerphone. “I can work up a mathematical proof if you like. Within the existing framework, the feedback problem is isomorphic to the Collatz conjecture. If you’re not familiar with it, you start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half of the previous term. If the—”

“Okay, I get it. Unsolvable. Rami, I can’t build a new framework. Not before I run out of money, in any case.” This was not exactly true. The problem was more about time than money. With the guidance Rami had given him, he could probably do it in six months—and then he’d have to revise the applications he’d built so that they would work with the new framework and spend several months testing them. Then, finally, it would be ready to launch. He might be able to shorten the development time by a few months if he hired a developer or two, but they would have to be damn good—and it wouldn’t be cheap. And that was just the technical side of things. If they were going to launch a new branch of Asterisq, they would need a serious marketing campaign, and Kade didn’t think that whatever was left of the $300,000 at that point would cut it. He would have to explain to Davis Christopher that they were going to launch at least a year late, with a much smaller potential userbase than expected.

Rami was unfazed. “I’ve got to get back to work on my dissertation. I’m ten days behind schedule.”

“Rami, come on. I can’t do this without you.”

“You can. It will just take a little longer.”

“Every day we’re delayed is another day for the competition to catch up. We’re not the only ones working on this problem.”

“That is the nature of a competitive marketplace, yes.”

“And the nature of the academic world is that you’re doing a dissertation on some highly esoteric problem that has zero real-world applications and will still be right there waiting for you if you take a year off.”

“Goodbye, Kade.” The line went dead.

“Damn it!” Kade growled. He’d taken a gamble, thinking that Rami would appreciate directness, but sometimes it was the most analytical people that needed a little finesse. He’d blown it.

Chapter Fourteen

2021

Rami Essak ran barefoot on the rough sand beach, a cool, gently gusting wind off the ocean tugging at his shorts and t-shirt. It had been dark when he started out, but the hazy gray sky was now lightening as the sun threatened to peek over the coastal range to his right. The beach was deserted except for scattered clusters of gulls receiving their marching orders for the day. Rami ran to clear his head, but today it wasn’t working.

Kade Kapur was smart. Maybe as smart as Rami, though not in the same way. Kade had a better intuitive sense for the state of the market, that was certain. That’s why their conversation the previous night had bothered Rami so much: Kade was right. At some point, in a few months or a few years, somebody else was going to come up with a fix for the flaws in Asterisq. It wouldn’t be as good as Kade and Rami’s version, but it would be good enough, and that version of Asterisq would come to dominate the market, just as surely as VHS beat out Betamax. And Kade would have to start over on something else.

Rami could always release the code for his feedback algorithm on an open-source repository and let someone else implement it—Kade had never even had him sign a contract, much less a non-disclosure agreement. But Rami wouldn’t do that to Kade, and presumably Kade knew that. If he didn’t help Kade finish the project, though, he was sabotaging him just as effectively. He silently cursed himself for ever getting involved. Trying to live in San Luis Obispo on a graduate school stipend, he hadn’t been able to turn down $20,000, but now he was behind on his dissertation and unable to concentrate.

While he was ruminating on this, an old Egyptian folk song began to play in his ear: the ring tone he’d selected for his mother, who lived in Cairo. She called him once a week or so, usually just to chat, so he considered letting her go to voicemail, but the timing prompted concern: it was nearly two a.m. in Cairo. He slowed to a walk and answered.

“Hey, Mom,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, yes, fine,” she said. “Are you sick? Your breathing is so loud.”

“I was going for a run, Mom. Why are you up so late?”

“Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might do some work. But I can’t get on the internet.”

“You’re calling me for tech support?”

“You were always my favorite son,” she said. “Don’t tell Baahir.” His mother was a poet, having published two well-received compilations of verse—some in English, some in Arabic—and she liked to browse the internet for inspiration. That’s what she called it, anyway. Her practice was to write until she hit a block and then spend a few minutes browsing the most vapid content she could find on the web. She claimed that while her conscious brain was focused on what she was reading, her unconscious kept working on the problem.

“The service is probably down, Mom.” Lately the unrest in Libya had begun to spill over into Egypt, with some terrorist groups targeting the country’s infrastructure. The internet service had been unreliable even before the attacks, and now there were occasional electrical outages as well.

“I just talked to Nour next door. Hers is working fine.”

“Why is every old lady in your neighborhood up at two in the morning?”

“Be respectful, Rami. Can you fix it?”

Rami sighed. “I can try.”

After ten minutes of laborious troubleshooting, Rami’s mother announced that she was once again able to access that invaluable source of poetic inspiration, Wikipedia.

“A lot of this information about Everybody Loves Raymond is wrong,” she said after a moment. “Who writes these things?”

“Just random people, Mom. If it’s wrong, you can fix it.”

“I don’t think they let just anybody make changes to the Everybody Loves Raymond page. There have to be controls.”

“There really aren’t, Mom. It’s Wikipedia.”

“It’s probably someone in New York. That’s where all the Jews are. The American ones, I mean.”

“Mom, there is no Jewish conspiracy to propagate disinformation through the Everybody Loves Raymond Wikipedia page.”

“Well, who said anything like that? You’re being ridiculous, Rami. The Jews in New York are busy controlling the weather. How are the maths going?”

“Ehh, okay.”

The silence from his mother was somehow worse than anything she might have said. Rami had always been the smart one, the special one. The one who was going to do Great Things. No one in his family had ever specified what these Great Things might be, but it was generally understood that the more academic and impractical his achievements were, the better. The son of a poet and a structural engineer, Rami was a natural mathematician. From a very young age, he’d had an uncanny intuition for numbers and equations, and his parents had encouraged his gift with private tutors and expensive schools. He’d earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago and then, after receiving a dual major in mathematics and information theory, had been accepted into the Cal Poly graduate program for mathematics.

Neither of his parents—to say nothing of any of his other, mostly less educated, relatives—had the faintest inkling of what Rami was actually studying. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was getting an advanced degree in mathematics from one of the most prestigious American universities. And after he completed his studies, he would undoubtedly land a teaching position at an equally prestigious university, where he would spend his days writing papers, imparting wisdom to the youth, and thinking big thoughts.

For his parents, who had both come from hardscrabble backgrounds in the Cairo slums, it was the apex of success to have a son who had risen so far above the day-to-day struggle of material existence. As Rami was frequently reminded in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, however, someone had to pay the price for the opportunities he’d been given. In Rami’s case, that someone was his older brother, Baahir. Canny and personable but lacking Rami’s abstract intelligence, Baahir had the determination and political savvy necessary to get things done in the legally and ethically nebulous business environment of Cairo.

Rami’s father had worked as a builder and architect before landing his current position as one of the city’s engineers. Baahir had tagged along with him while Rami was still in diapers, seeing firsthand how some of Cairo’s biggest and most impressive building were built—and how others were torn down, often over the objections of the tenants. When Rami was old enough to feel left out, he started begging to go along on these excursions. Baahir never spoke about what he and their father had been up to, which only intensified Rami’s curiosity. One time their father returned with his right hand wrapped in gauze, and another time his shirt was spattered with blood. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that these excursions were not mere “business meetings.”

Their father had a few close associates who often accompanied him and Baahir. They were large, rough-looking men who sometimes came to Rami’s house to pick up their father but never came inside. Rami got the impression that these men worked for their father in some capacity, the exact nature of which Rami tried hard not to think about. It was not until Rami was a teenager that he realized their father had superiors as well, chief among whom was a man he heard referred to only as Timsah, meaning “crocodile.” Rami never saw Timsah and his father rarely spoke to him directly. On the first occasion that this happened, Rami detected an odd modulation in his father’s voice, which he’d never heard before. It wasn’t until his father’s next conversation with Timsah that he realized what it was: his father was afraid.

In the beginning, Baahir seemed shaken by some of these excursions, but he would not speak a word of what happened to Rami. Their mother seemed to have some idea what the excursions were about, but she never asked questions. Even Rami’s attempts to eavesdrop on his parents’ conversations were fruitless in this regard: evidently his father simply never spoke about his “business” to her. Rami’s requests to go along on the excursions were rebuffed, and he soon learned not to ask questions. At one point it was suggested that if he could not restrain himself, he might have to be sent to a boarding school in London. From that moment on, he kept his inquiries to himself and redoubled his academic efforts. This seemed to mollify them.

At the same time, he did some digging on his own, mostly on the internet. This was when he learned to hide his tracks through proxies and VPNs—from the government, from his parents, and from anyone else who might have questions about a young man in Cairo researching criminal organizations. He slowly and methodically pieced together a picture of his father that was not exactly a surprise, but which did not fit the image Rami had grown up with.

To Rami’s relief, his father did not seem to be a member of any of the more radical Islamist organizations that had proliferated in the region since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Rami’s family had always gone through the motions of Islam for the sake of appearances, but his father was too hard-nosed and materialistic (in the philosophical sense) for religion to hold much appeal for him, and his mother was at best agnostic. As far as Rami knew, neither of them had any sympathies for Al-Qaeda, ISIL, or any of the other more extreme Jihadist groups.

Rami learned that his father was, however, a high-ranking lieutenant in a criminal organization aligned with anti-government militias in Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. The organization also had ties to major political parties in those countries and elsewhere. Egypt was still one of the more stable and peaceful North African countries, but as with the other nominal democracies in the region, there was no clear line between legitimate and illegitimate groups, but rather a complex web of interrelated parties, religious groups and militias that could be laid out along a continuum. At one end of this continuum were the more reputable political parties, which were at least publically in favor of transparency, fairness and the rule of law, and at the other end were the radical Jihadists, whose goal was to destabilize the region in order to create an opening for a fundamentalist Islamic state. The organization to which Rami’s father belonged, called The Islamic State in Egypt and the Maghreb, was somewhere in the middle. ISEM was either allied with or outright controlled several other groups along much of the continuum. Rami’s father’s evolution from street tough to respected builder to city engineer was clearly due in no small part to his involvement with ISEM, but it was unclear to what extent his father adhered to its tenets. Knowing his father, Rami suspected his involvement was largely pragmatic.

Throughout his teen years, Rami respected his parents’ policy of not talking about his father’s work, but after experiencing a few months of independence at the University of Chicago, he felt emboldened enough to ask his brother, during one of their occasional phone conversations, what sort of work he was doing. Like their father, Baahir held a cushy government job—in Baahir’s case, as a city building inspector—but Rami knew his brother spent most of his time on tasks assigned by his father or someone else at ISEM. Whatever these tasks were, they allowed Baahir to drive all over northern Egypt in a Mercedes with a pistol on his hip and an arsenal of other weapons in the trunk.

“Baby brother,” Baahir had chided, “do not ask what you do not want to know.”

“I do want to know, big brother. It’s why I asked.”

“You think you do, but like Adam, who was tricked by Eve, you would regret getting what you wanted.”

“Enough with the condescending bullshit, Baahir. If you won’t tell me, just say so.”

“I won’t tell you. But it is for your own good, Rami. Focus on your maths. Make the family proud.”

And that was the end of it. Six years had passed, and although they still talked on occasion, the topic of Baahir’s avocation had never again been broached between them.

“How is Dad?” Rami asked his mother, as he continued his stroll along the beach. An errant surge sent a sheet of cold water to envelop his feet before sliding back into the Pacific. Over the distant hills to his right, the sky was turning pink.

“He’s away on a business trip,” his mother said curtly. “If I email you the edits, do you think you can get it to the people who run Wikipedia?”

“Mom, there are no ‘people who run Wikipedia.’ They’re just people, like you. Edit it yourself. Why is Dad on a business trip during Ramadan?” All non-essential businesses shut down during the Muslim holy month; there was no legitimate reason for his father to be away from home at that time. No wonder his mother couldn’t sleep.

“I will write it all up. You just have to get it to them.”

“Mom, why is Dad on a business trip during Ramadan?”

“Rami, you know I can’t talk about what he and Baahir get up to.”

“Baahir is with him?”

“Rami, please.”

“What are they doing, Mom? What is so urgent that they need to leave Cairo to ‘do business’ during Ramadan?”

“Focus on your maths, Rami. Make us proud. I will email you those changes.”

Rami sighed. “All right, Mom. I’ve gotta go. I love you.”

“I love you too, Rami.”

Rami slipped his phone in his pocket and stood for some time, staring out at the whitecaps in the distance. An infinity of sine waves, sometimes overlapping and sometimes canceling each other out, terminating in a chaotic graph being eternally rewritten a few inches from his toes. At last he turned and made his way toward the dry sand and the parking lot beyond, where his 2008 Toyota Prius awaited him.

He unlocked the car and took a seat behind the wheel. Taking a deep breath, he pulled his phone from his pocket and made a call. After a few seconds, Kade Kapur answered.

“I’ll do it,” Rami said.

“You will?” Kade replied, stunned. “Are you going to have time to work on the framework and your dissertation at the same time?”

“No,” Rami said. “I think you’ve ruined me for abstract work. I want to be part of history.”

“You will be!” Kade said excitedly. “Rami, this thing is going to revolutionize the way people—”

“Not with this,” Rami said. “I’ll help you with the framework, but this is a means to an end. You’re right: this thing is going to be big. And it’s going to make you a lot of money. Enough money to start an aerospace company.”

“Damn straight it will! Rami, I’m so excited to have you on board. Name your salary.”

“Whatever you think is fair. I don’t need a lot.”

“I can probably give you a pretty good-sized stake in the company, too. I just have to run it past—”

“No. I don’t want to own any part of the company. Owning things makes me antsy. I don’t want to have to go to stakeholder meetings or hire people or shop for health insurance plans or any of the other shit you have to do when you have a stake in a company. I want to build software to solve problems. That’s it.”

“You’ve got it, Rami. Just wait. This is going to be amazing.”

Chapter Fifteen

2023

Valerie Muñoz hated the Sunday brunch crowd. She wasn’t keen on the Saturday night crowd either, but at least there was a predictable baseline of behavior on Saturday nights. It was all drunk college kids and couples out on first or second dates. She could count on being hit on four or five times, and usually she could stoke the embers of hope just enough to get a decent tip, which she collected with a hand that had magically sprouted an ostentatious diamond ring. It was a shameless ploy, but she thought of the augmented tips as a sort of hazard pay.

The Sunday brunch crowd, in contrast, was a volatile mix of families with small children who had just been released from church, fixed income retirees who tipped a dollar for every hour they monopolized a booth, and tipsy soccer moms gossiping about whatever member of their clique hadn’t shown up that day. Each table seemed to be vying to be heard over the others, and the table that came out on top was inevitably engaged in a conversation so banal that the talking heads on the execrable panel discussion program that droned from the sixteen flat-screen TVs in the restaurant sounded like the Algonquin round table in comparison.

Valerie was aware that her attitude was not helping. She reminded herself that the waitressing job was temporary. Once she graduated from college, she would… well, hopefully get some other kind of job. Preferably one with health insurance. It wasn’t clear what sort of job she might get; she had changed her major three times. Currently it was biology. She had considered going on to veterinary school, but recently someone had told her that veterinarians had the highest suicide rate of any profession, and she felt like she didn’t need to check off any more risk categories for that particular problem.

It was these sorts of thoughts that ran in a near-constant loop in the back of her mind as she struggled to keep up with the pointless intricacies of the breakfast orders of table thirteen. It was always the women who did this, she thought. Men just ordered what was on the menu. Maybe they’d substitute French fries for hash browns. Women treated the menu as if it were a collection of elements that had to be assembled according to a secret alchemical formula into the perfect brunch food.

“Turkey salad sandwich on an English muffin instead of a croissant, no onion, no pickle,” Valerie said, scribbling at her notepad.

“Sweetie, no,” said the chubby, middle-aged woman with bleach-blond hair, shooting a longsuffering glance at her friends across the table. “Turkey salad sandwich. English muffin. Onion on the side. Side salad instead of a pickle. No lettuce.”

“No lettuce in the salad?”

“No. Lettuce. On. The. Sandwich,” the woman said, clearly never having encountered someone as stupid as Valerie.

“Oh, okay,” said Valerie. “You can’t really substitute a side salad for the pickle. I mean, I can give you a side salad, but you’ll be charged for it.”

“I know that!” the woman exclaimed, rolling her eyes.

Valerie gripped the pencil tightly, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “And to drink?”

“Iced tea. But I want the ice in a separate cup. Do you have Stevia? I only see Splenda packets. Miss?”

But Valerie’s attention had been captured by something on the TV screen facing her. The panel discussion program had mercifully ended, and a financial program had started. Valerie had never been very interested in money or economics, but the program caught her attention. The host was interviewing a handsome young man about Valerie’s age. With his dark hair and tanned skin, he could have passed for Mexican, but Valerie knew he was not. She would have known those big brown eyes anywhere. Kade Kapur, all grown up.

Oblivious to the consternation of the gaggle of women sitting around the table before her, she slipped her notepad into her pocket and walked closer to the TV. She strained to hear over the din of the restaurant.

“—just the start,” Kade was saying. “As governments and big corporations become more intrusive and controlling, the need to do business anonymously is only going to grow.”

The camera cut to the interviewer, a pert young blond woman, who nodded in a thoughtful manner. Her eyes narrowed, indicating that she was about to ask a Serious Question. After a carefully timed pause, she asked, “What about the criticisms leveled by some that your network is used by criminals and terrorists?”

The camera cut back to Kade, who smiled disarmingly. “Okay, first of all,” he said with a slight chuckle, “it’s not my network. My company, Stellaris Systems, Inc., built a better version of an existing framework, and a lot of people are jumping on board. But we don’t own it, and we don’t control it. We just help people navigate it. Asterisq is a peer-to-peer system that’s distributed across several million computers. As to the second part of your question: do you know what the number one currency used by criminals is? The U.S. dollar. Nobody is calling for an end to the U.S. dollar as far as I can tell. Look, if you develop a useful technology, bad people are going to use it as well as good people. That said, the Asterisq framework—and particularly our implementation of it, Stellaris—has a built-in means of discouraging criminal behavior.”

“And what is that?” asked the interviewer.

“Well, let me ask you this: would you rather live in a good neighborhood or a bad one? A good one, of course. And what differentiates a good neighborhood from a bad one?”

The interviewer smiled and shrugged, as her role in the discussion required.

“Trust,” said Kade. “In a good neighborhood, neighbors know and trust each other. In a bad neighborhood, people are strangers to each other. It’s a low trust environment. And low trust environments breed crime. Well, the Stellaris network is a high-trust neighborhood. Actually a whole bunch of neighborhoods, called agoras. People know each other—not necessarily by name, but by reputation. They trust each other and they look out for each other. That’s the genius of the Asterisq system, and in my opinion Stellaris is the best implementation of it.”

“Because you solved the feedback problem.”

“That’s right. The first implementation of Asterisq was a little too easy to game—that is, it encouraged bad actors rather than discouraged them. But Stellaris is virtually impossible to game. Our algorithm alters the incentives, so that users can actually increase their own credit by identifying attempts to game the system.”

“But doesn’t that lead to the sort of problem you have with social media, where a group of people could mass report an individual and get the person banned, even if the person hadn’t done anything wrong?”

“Dogpiling, yes,” said Kade, nodding. “The Stellaris algorithm takes that into account as well. What really differentiates Stellaris is that at its core, it incentivizes beneficial transactions. Any action that reduces the net value of beneficial transactions is disincentivized. Engaging in the dogpiling of a user whose presence has been a net positive for the system will tend to reduce your reputation score. And the algorithm actually learns as it goes, because feedback ratings are applied not just to individual transactions but to the activity of the algorithm itself.”

“Incentivizes how?”

“Each agora has its own currency, called coin. You can think of it as money, or you can think of it as your ‘reputation’ in that agora, the way you have a reputation within your neighborhood.”

“Is coin money or is it reputation?”

“It’s both. That’s the beauty of it. We’ve long talked about ‘credit’ as a sort of measure of one’s reputation that can be equated to money. Stellaris takes the guessing and subjectivity out of it.”

“It sounds a little like the so-called ‘social credit’ system that some have been advocating for.”

“A little, but there are some important differences. The most important difference is that there’s no centralized authority in charge of your Stellaris rankings, so it’s much more difficult to abuse. A government can’t just step in and alter your ranking to punish you. And there’s no single ranking that follows you everywhere. Your ranking is specific to the agoras in which you participate.”

“And every one of these agoras has its own coin?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that get complicated?”

“Behind the scenes, yes. To the user, it’s mostly transparent.”

“I’m not sure I followed all that, but—”

Kade laughed. “Welcome to my world,” he said. “My eyes glaze over when our chief developer explains this stuff to me, but to the extent I understand it, it really is amazing.”

“Back to the idea of good neighborhood versus bad ones.”

“Sure,” Kade said, nodding.

“Can you explain to those of us who aren’t rocket scientists what makes Stellaris a good neighborhood?”

“I can try,” Kade said with a grin. “Basically, crime is a low-trust activity. Criminals are criminals because they don’t want to live by the rules governing polite society. They cheat, they steal, and they lie. You can get away with this sort of behavior in a low-trust environment. But in an environment where people know each other—by reputation, if not by name—it’s much more difficult. If you’re a liar, well, your reputation for lying is going to follow you, and people aren’t going to be eager to do business with you.”

“On the flip side,” said the interviewer, “there are reports that Stellaris is becoming very popular with underground movements in repressive regimes. Is that something you actively promote, or was it more of an accident?”

“We’re not political,” said Kade. “Stellaris is about creating high-trust environments and facilitating trade and communications in those environments. All I would say is that if Stellaris is being used to circumvent controls of speech or capital in some countries, the governments of those countries might want to ask themselves why they aren’t doing more to promote the free exchange of goods and capital, and whether such restrictions are in the long-term interest of that country.”

“Now wait a minute,” the interviewer said. “It sounds like you’re contradicting yourself. First you say that crime is a low-trust activity, but then you say that people break the law to engage in the sort of activity that you characterize as being ‘high trust.’”

When the camera switched back to Kade, Valerie recognized the expression on his face: it was the same look he’d had just before he picked up that chunk of concrete and crippled a boy for life. For a split second, Kade was a scared little boy, trying to figure out the answer to an impossible question. And then the moment passed, and the self-assured Kade was back. Valerie doubted anyone who didn’t know Kade had seen it. The roar of a motorcycle engine outside drowned the first part of his response, but Kade’s expression projected confidence.

“…like neighborhoods,” Kade was saying, “can be high-trust or low-trust. Most are somewhere in the middle. In low-trust countries, governments pass more and more laws, trying to control behavior.”

“I assume you mean laws like the Federal Misinformation Act?”

“I’d rather not get into specifics,” Kade said. “The point is that in such countries, the people will increasingly turn to solutions like Stellaris.”

The interviewer tried again: “Then what can we infer from Stellaris’s growing popularity in the United States?”

“Stellaris isn’t political,” he said. His smile was unfailing.

The interviewer chuckled as if they had shared a private joke.

“Miss!” shrieked a voice from Valerie’s left.

Valerie spun to face the blond woman. The restaurant had gone silent except for the TVs, which were now showing an ex-actor and one-time presidential hopeful extolling the virtues of reverse mortgages.

“Do you think you can finish taking my order today?” the blond woman demanded.

“Oh, fuck off,” Valerie said. Several people at nearby tables gasped.

Valerie couldn’t have said why she reacted that way. Something in Kade’s demeanor made her wish she could be like that: somebody who always took control of the situation. And in the back of her mind was her memory of brave little Kade telling her “If you have any trouble, call me.” It was a ridiculous thing to remember at that moment, but she still had his number on a wrinkled piece of paper in a pocket inside her purse. It had been nine years, but she’d never been able to make herself throw it away.

She turned, intending to walk to the back of the restaurant to get her things. She walked right into a tree.

No, not a tree. Just a very solid human being. He was six foot two and probably two hundred and forty pounds of immovable mass. He wore a leather jacket and smelled like gasoline and Old Spice. “Whoa there,” said the man, with a low, gravelly voice. He had a day’s worth of stubble on his square jaw. His dark brown hair was cropped short. He didn’t look to be much older than Kade, and he wasn’t bad looking, but that’s where the similarities ended.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Valerie said, feeling her face getting hot.

“Valerie, could I see you for a moment?” said a man’s voice behind her. It was her boss, Calvin.

Valerie turned to face Calvin as he approached, eyes downcast. Calvin, who made the most of his position as restaurant manager, was roughly the same size as the man who had just walked in, although his mass was decidedly more pear-shaped.

“I’m leaving,” Valerie said. “Just have to get my things.” She started toward the back of the restaurant.

“That’s right you’re leaving,” Calvin said.

“Bro, relax,” said the big guy.

This did not relax Calvin. “Sir, this doesn’t concern you.”

“Maybe we let her decide that.”

“Listen,” said Calvin, wagging a finger in the other man’s face. And then, before Valerie could even turn around, he was on his knees, moaning, “ow-ow-ow-ow-ow….” The tall man held the Calvin’s right hand twisted upside down, Calvin’s elbow locked and arm fully extended. Then the tall man let go and held out his hand.

“Sorry, bro, but you best not come at me like that.”

Gasping for breath, Calvin dragged himself to his feet with the help of a chair, spurning the tall man’s offer. The tall man shrugged. As Calvin massaged his hand and glared at the man, Valerie turned and went into the kitchen.

She hurried past the three cooks and got her purse out of her locker. Pulling the strap over her shoulder, she started back through the kitchen. Then she stopped. She felt inside her purse until she found the little scrap of paper Kade had given her. She pulled it out and looked at it. The number was still legible—barely. She tore it into pieces and tossed them into a nearby garbage can, then continued across the kitchen.

Calvin was waiting for her, arms crossed, outside the door to the kitchen. She ignored him and walked to the front door. She found herself on the verge of tears, but she wasn’t about to break down in front of Calvin and the Sunday brunch crowd. Just get to your car, she told herself. Then you can cry as much as you want.

Momentarily blinded by the glare of the midday California sun, she spent a moment rooting around in her purse for her sunglasses, gave up, and started down the street, shielding her eyes with her hand. She was already sweating, and it was only going to get hotter. San Bernardino was only fifty miles east of Pasadena, but the difference in climate—particularly in August—could be extreme.

She was twenty steps down the street before she remembered that her car was in the shop. There was nothing wrong with it, but she’d gotten a notice from the state that her catalytic converter needed to be upgraded to meet the new emissions requirements. That meant another $500 on her credit card and no car for a week—all for an almost undetectable decrease in the emissions of a car that produced half as much pollution as one of the new EPA-approved SUVs. She would have to take the bus.

Choking back tears, she stopped and turned—and once again ran into the tree.

“Oh my God,” Valerie exclaimed again, as she was enveloped by the scent of gasoline and Old Spice. Her worries slipped from her mind as she went into survival mode. She stiffened. “Hey, are you following me?”

“No, ma’am,” said the tall man, taking a step back and holding his hands up. “You seemed upset. I just wanted to… are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Valerie said reflexively. “I just forgot where I parked.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

Valerie shrugged. The tall man pivoted on his heel and took a step back, out of Valerie’s way. There was something about the man’s demeanor—his rigid posture, his hair, the way he talked….

“Are you in the Army or something?” she asked, as he fell in next to her.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Sergeant Rick Sutherland of the 75th Ranger Regiment.”

“Hooah,” said Valerie. Her father had been in the Army before going to college. “You guys down here fighting the Crips?”

“I’m on leave, Ma’am. My father is sick. He’s at the hospice down on Fifth.”

“Oh,” said Valerie. “I’m sorry.” Her own parents had been killed in a car accident the year she graduated from high school.

“What was that about, back at the diner?”

“Poor impulse control,” Valerie said. Couldn’t this guy see she wanted to be alone?

“I figured out that much,” said Sutherland. “It seemed like… what were you watching on the TV?”

“Huh?” Valerie replied. “Oh, nothing. I wasn’t really watching. Just daydreaming. My car is down this way, so I guess I’ll see you around.” The bus stop was just ahead. If Sergeant Sutherland would just leave her alone….

“I’ll walk you the rest of the way to your car.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“I’ve got nothing else to do. Dad’s napping. He sleeps most of the time now. Probably won’t be up ‘til six.”

“Look, Sergeant—”

“Call me Rick, ma’am.”

“Look, Rick, I’m fine. Really. Go do some pushups or something.”

“With respect, ma’am, you don’t seem fine.”

“You pick up a lot of chicks with that line?”

“Huh?”

Valerie started to laugh, but the laughter quickly turned into crying. She stepped into the doorway of a hair salon and sank onto the stoop, sobbing uncontrollably. God damn it. She would have been okay if it weren’t for Rick’s prodding. Now she was going to make a fool of herself, bawling like a baby in public.

Rick sat down next to her. “You ever ride on the back of a Harley?” he asked

Valerie’s sobs turned back into laughter. “What?”

“That’s my bike down there.” He gestured toward a Fat Boy parked about fifty yards down the street. “I got an extra helmet. I could take you home if you want.”

“My car….”

“Ma’am, we passed like twenty parking spots. I don’t think you got a car.”

“It’s in the shop. I forgot.”

“Okay, I’ll take you home when you’re ready. Maybe you feel like getting a drink first though? There’s a bar on Third that I go to sometimes.”

Valerie found a travel packet of Kleenexes in her purse—under her sunglasses—and pulled one out. She blew her nose and stared out across the street at a furniture store that had been going out of business for nine months. LAST CHANCE! screamed the giant placard in the window.

Rick Sutherland was not her type. She liked smart, understated, quietly determined men—men like Kade Kapur. She had known Kade was going to be someone important, probably before he had known it himself. But, her childhood crush notwithstanding, she had also known that a guy like Kade would never be interested in her. Kade had grown up, and maybe it was time she did too. Sometimes growing up meant accepting that in real life, things just didn’t work out the way they were supposed to. She wasn’t going to be a veterinarian or an accountant. At the rate she was going, she wasn’t even going to graduate from college. Maybe it was time to stop striving for things she was never going to have and try to make the most of what she had.

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go get a drink.”

Chapter Sixteen

2023

With Rami’s help, Kade had been able to release the revised Asterisq framework within eighteen months of his meeting with Davis Christopher. Davis was unperturbed by the delay; he’d had enough experience with startups to know that nothing ever went quite as planned. He was sufficiently pleased by the success of the beta tests to provide another $10 million—most of which was earmarked for the marketing campaign for the release of Stellaris.

Reaction from the Asterisq community—which had nearly doubled in size since the founding of Stellaris Systems, Inc.—was almost universally positive. The Stellaris branch of the framework was so clearly superior to the prevailing Asterisq model that over the next year, three quarters of existing Asterisq users made the switch. During the same time, another ten million new users came on board. Stellaris was hailed not only as a robust digital commerce and cryptocurrency platform but also the likely replacement for social media platforms. An application built on the Stellaris framework could provide everything a social media site could, plus genuine anonymity and control over one’s own information, along with a seamlessly integrated means of conducting financial transactions—and because it used a peer-to-peer network, there was no need to maintain huge server farms. The computation required to run the applications was spread across millions of computers, most of which were idle at any given time anyway.

The role of SSI in all this was primarily to create software that would help people get on the Stellaris network and facilitate its use once they were on board. With the sudden appearance of Stellaris and its meteoric growth, SSI was well-positioned to dominate the market. Between the start of the beta testing and the release of the framework, Kade hired eighteen people—developers, testers, technical writers, and marketing and public relations people. The pace of hiring only accelerated after the release. Soon Kade had to hire a personnel director (Davis Christopher loathed the term “human resources”) just to keep up with the hiring.

With the initial success of Stellaris came increased scrutiny. Although there was a good deal of truth in Kade’s oft-repeated assurances that high-trust environments tended to discourage criminal activity, the fact was that Stellaris was used by criminals—as well as by many millions of legitimate users. While Stellaris’s algorithm was effective at weeding out low-level criminals, it was less successful in eliminating sophisticated criminal organizations. The Italian mafia had thrived in the twentieth century precisely because it was a relatively high-trust organization. Loyalty was prized over all other virtues in the mob, and the same was true of many ideological terror groups and cartels in the twenty-first century. In some ways, Stellaris was a boon to such groups: it lent them a degree of legitimacy and eliminated less reliable competitors. The result was that the criminals who used Stellaris tended to be what the FBI called “high value targets.” Stellaris kept only minimal client data on its internal servers, but even so, a federal search warrant would force them to make some very difficult choices.

After Kade’s FNN interview, where he’d been forced to tacitly admit that Stellaris was being used by anti-government groups—possibly even within the U.S.—Davis Christopher flew to Palo Alto to meet him. After a brief tour of SSI’s new headquarters, Davis met Kade in the latter’s office.

“This isn’t going to work,” Davis said.

“Um, what exactly?” asked Kade, who had been under the impression things were going pretty damned well.

“This,” Davis said, indicating the office around him. “Headquarters in Palo Alto.”

“It’s expensive,” Kade said, “but this is where the talent is. Hiring in—”

“Not what I’m talking about. You saw what happened to Spectral.”

“Our business model is completely different from Spectral’s. Spectral was playing with fire, catering to the elite who thought they were above the law. We provide tools to anybody who needs to do business anonymously for any reason, and the way the Stellaris algorithm works, it incentivizes—”

“Christ, spare me the algorithm speech, would you? I know how it works.”

“Sorry, Davis. But come on, the FBI isn’t going to raid us. We’ve got nothing that could link any of our clients to any criminal activity.”

“You’re assuming the FBI’s goal would be to build a criminal case.”

Kade’s brow furrowed. “Well, yes. What else would they be doing?”

Davis sighed. “You know, you’re so fucking smart that sometimes I forget you’re just a kid who has no idea how the world works. Kade, the FBI isn’t in the business of making criminal cases any more than you’re in the business of committing terrorism or tax fraud. What does your algorithm do?”

“Now you want to hear about the algorithm?”

“Yeah. Give me the spiel. Right where you left off.”

“The algorithm incentivizes behavior that’s beneficial to the network and disincentive behavior that’s—”

“Yes!” Davis said, slapping Kade’s desk with his palm. “Now, what do you think the FBI does?”

Kade thought for a moment. Suddenly it hit him, and his gut tightened. “They disincentivize behavior.”

“Bingo. They disincentivize behavior that’s detrimental to the government. Tax credits and government contracts are the carrot, and the FBI and the other alphabet agencies are the stick. They bring cases to the Justice Department not primarily to punish wrongdoers but to make an example out of them. Now when you go on FNN and talk glibly with a wink and a nudge that you don’t cater to terrorists and tax cheats, what the feds hear is that you’ve set up a system that can be used by terrorists and tax cheats. It doesn’t matter that you broke no laws. It doesn’t matter that they won’t be able to find any evidence that any of our clients broke the law. You are, in their thinking, engaging in activity that is potentially harmful to the government. They will get a warrant and they will find a way to shut you down. You and I will be lucky if we don’t end up in prison.”

“Oh my God,” Kade said. “Can they really do that?”

“Of course they can! You’re too young to remember Silk Road, but you must have heard about it.”

“Darknet black market. The feds shut it down and arrested the people running it. But Davis, we’re not running a black market for drugs and prostitutes.”

“No, we’re making it possible for other people to run a black market for drugs and prostitutes. Do you think the feds are going to give a shit about the distinction?”

“Why… why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

Davis sighed. “To be completely honest, I thought you were going to fail. Most of the ventures I invest in do. Maybe one in ten succeeds and makes me enough money to make up for all the losses. My strategy has always been to invest in people, rather than ideas, and I could tell you had potential. I figured SSI would crash and burn, we’d all learn something, and you’d move on to the next thing. Even after I wrote that $10 million check, I thought the odds were good somebody was going to beat us to market with a better implementation. But here we are, way out ahead with no real competition. And then you go on the most watched financial news show in the country and basically dare the FBI to shut us down.”

“I didn’t….”

“I know that’s not what you intended, but that’s how they will see it. I guarantee somebody at Justice is working on a FISA warrant right now.”

“There has to be something we can do.”

“There is. We can divest ourselves from SSI. Sell it off to the highest bidder and hope we find a sucker. Hell, we might still turn a profit. Take that money and sink it into your next endeavor.”

Kade frowned. It wasn’t that he didn’t have other ideas. The problem was that he was counting on SSI’s exponential growth to generate the capital he would need to start Ad Astra. Starting over with another company would cost him time. Just a few months ago, a billionaire named Scott Dennis had announced the formation of a company called Cerulean Endeavors, with the ultimate goal of colonizing Mars. Kade thought Cerulean’s approach—building components on Earth to be assembled on Mars—was fundamentally flawed, but it was competition that he didn’t need. Both Cerulean and Ad Astra would have to prove themselves by reliably launching low-cost reusable rockets to carry satellites and other payloads into space, and if Cerulean beat him to that market, it would be tough to catch up.

“What if we move offshore? I’ve been thinking we might have to do that eventually anyway. It seems to be pretty easy to set up a corporation in Belize or the Cayman Islands.”

Davis sighed heavily. “Kade, relocating on paper is not going to cut it. It’s going to do us no good to have a fictional headquarters in Belize if we still have a room full of servers thirty miles from the FBI field office in San Francisco. You would have to physically move the entire operation out of the country.”

“We could move the servers and leave the people here.”

“Kade, you’re smarter than that. If your people have access to the data….”

“Then the FBI will too,” Kade said. “Damn it.”

“More importantly, if you and I remain in the country, we’re subject to arrest.”

“Do you really think they’ll arrest us?”

“I’ve got sources at Justice, and they’ll warn me if anything like that is in the works. But I doubt that will be their opening move. They’ll start with a friendly phone call to my office. If that doesn’t work, they’ll send a cease-and-desist letter. Bureaucrats follow the path of least resistance. Arresting us is probably Plan C.”

“So we would have to actually move to Belize.”

“Belize is no good. Extradition treaty. Same for the Caymans. Besides, you know what’s keeping U.S. Marines out of Belize?” Davis asked.

Kade, at a loss, threw his hands in the air. “Malaria?”

“The same thing that kept the Chinese out of Hong Kong. Not a goddamned thing. The only reason the U.S. doesn’t own Belize, the Cayman Islands, and every other tax haven in this hemisphere is that seizing them hasn’t been worth the hit to the U.S.’s respectability. You may have noticed, though, that our reputation isn’t what it used to be. Our level of debt is unsustainable, crime rates are skyrocketing, schools are churning out students who can’t read or write but have been taught that America is irredeemably racist, and we’re losing an arms race to China. The U.S. is a dying empire. At some point, somebody in Washington is going to decide they have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by seizing all those tax havens. It may be ten or twenty years from now, but when it happens, we want to be somewhere outside the U.S.’s sphere of influence.”

“What about Switzerland?”

“Better, but still not great. Switzerland has a history of refusing to extradite, but I wouldn’t count on them not buckling to U.S. pressure. The way things are going, there isn’t going to be any neutral ground in a few years.”

“Then there’s nowhere we can go.”

“Well,” said Davis, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Where? Antarctica?”

“Listen, Kade. If you’re determined to stick with Stellaris, there may be a way. But I can’t go with you. My wife would never agree to it, and as much as the idea of being five thousand miles from Mrs. Christopher appeals to me on an emotional level, I’d be lost without her. And if I can’t leave the country, that means I can’t have any involvement in SSI.”

“You want me to buy you out?”

Davis laughed. “With what? No, I was thinking more along the lines of a silent partnership. But that still wouldn’t insulate me enough from criminal liability. How’s this: we restructure my investment in SSI as a loan at, say, ten percent interest, with a balloon payment due in five years. That gives you some time to generate some revenue and gets me something for my trouble without implicating me in any of your legally questionable behavior.”

“Thanks,” said Kade. “I think. But you haven’t told me how I avoid getting arrested.”

“Utanau,” said Davis.

“Utanau? That island in the Pacific?”

“An island country in the Pacific. An independent constitutional monarchy since the end of World War II.”

“Didn’t the U.S. have an airbase there?”

“Until sometime in the 1970s, yes. The Navy still leases an airstrip. Utanau allows it as long as the U.S. doesn’t meddle in its affairs.”

“Like foreigners shielding their assets there.”

“Right.”

“Couldn’t the U.S. take Utanau by force, just like with Belize or the Caymans?”

“Not without pissing off China. Utanau is within an area China considers its sphere of influence. They don’t complain too much if we land a plane there once in a while, but they’d raise holy hell if we claimed the island.”

“And China can’t take Utanau without pissing off the U.S.”

“Exactly.”

“So it’s not so much neutral territory as territory that’s claimed by both sides.”

“Under the circumstances, it’s the best we can do. I’ve done a fair amount of business with the King of Utanau.”

“What sort of business?”

“Between you and me? Moving assets out of the U.S. I still own over ten billion dollars of dollar-denominated assets, but I’ve been quietly moving my fortune outside of Uncle Sam’s purview for a few years. Precious metals, foreign currencies and cryptocurrencies, mainly. That was one of the reasons for my interest in Asterisq. Anyway, the point is that I can make a few phone calls and the King himself will probably meet you at the airport.”

“If we do this,” Kade said, “we’re essentially betting that SSI isn’t worth going to war with China over.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Hell. What’s the weather like in Utanau?”

“I understand it’s nice. Never actually been there. A bit humid, I think. And there are sometimes typhoons.”

“That should do wonders for server up time.”

“Trust me, they’ve got that part worked out.”

“And an educated labor force?”

“They’re still working on that. For now, I expect you’ll have to import technical people.”

“I wonder how much we’ll have to pay programmers to move to Utanau.”

“The cost of living is low, at least compared to the Bay Area. Build some dorm-style housing, provide free meals and entertainment. Have them work sixty-hour weeks and give them one week off a month. Throw in twelve round-trip tickets per year to San Francisco. Or, hell, anywhere else they want to go.”

“Is there an actual airport on Utanau?”

“There is. Weekly flights to Honolulu. Most of your programmers are young and single. You’ll get some takers. Those will be your core group. Some will want to stay here, and that’s fine. Just firewall them from any sensitive data. I assume that’s doable?”

Kade rubbed his chin. “Should be. It’s going to take a few months to get everything set up though.”

“I can stall Justice for a while. Just stay off TV and we’ll be fine.”

“The market for programmers is tight,” Kade said. “We were already having trouble finding good people. We’re going to have to offer some signing bonuses to get them to relocate to the middle of the Pacific. Twenty grand or more.”

Davis shrugged. “You’ve got the cash to keep that up for a year or two. The question is: how confident are you in the revenue predictions?”

“Very,” said Kade.

“Good. Because I’m not giving you another dime.”

Chapter Seventeen

2023

Utanau was an archipelago of twenty-six geologically young islands about a thousand miles northeast of Australia. Colonized by France in the 1880s, it arose to moderate importance as an Allied base during World War II. Although the islands remained under nominal French control for the duration of the war, the presence of several thousand American troops tended to undermine colonial authority, and after the war the French struggled to maintain control. An independence movement formed and slowly gained in popularity until the French formally withdrew in 1974. Two decades of political turmoil between various factions culminated in the crowning of seventeen-year-old King Annat (a descendant of one of the pre-colonial Utanauan tribal chiefs), who promised to organize a constitutional convention to determine the country’s form of government. Although originally selected only as a unifying figurehead, the young King made such an impression on the various factions (who otherwise agreed on virtually nothing) that he was made chief executive in perpetuity. While a parliament would be elected to handle Utanau’s legislative business, enforcing the country’s laws would fall to the King, who also held the formidable responsibility of “symbolizing the country’s unity.” The monarchy would not be hereditary; the constitution explicitly stated that elections for the office of President were to be held in the event of the King’s death. Now seventy-four, Annat remained firmly in charge.

The three mainstays of the Utanau economy were agriculture, tourism and offshore financial services. The country was widely known as a tax haven, and since the 1990s King Annat had cannily played China against the United States, accepting loans and other economic assistance from both. The country, with a population just under 100,000, also had a nascent tech sector, fueled by companies like SSI, fleeing the increasingly onerous regulation and politically motivated censorship in the United States and elsewhere.

Kade learned all this from a book titled Utanau Then and Now written by an American expat named Eric Estrada, whose bio took pains to clarify that he was not the individual who played Officer Francis Llewelyn “Ponch” Poncherello in the television series CHiPSs. After finishing the short book, Kade watched four and a half episodes of CHiPs, partly because he was bored and too tired to read anything else, and partly because his traveling companion, a lawyer named Lowell Benjamin, would not shut up.

Lowell, a ginger Jew of Ashkenazi descent, had come along at the urging of Davis Christopher to oversee the legal aspects of incorporating in Utanau. Davis had evidently used Lowell’s services for such endeavors in the past, although it was unclear to Kade as to why. Kade had at first tried plying Lowell for information about the legal situation in Utanau, but Lowell’s answers were evasive, unhelpful, and uniformly accompanied by gratuitous complaints about the food, weather, and native wildlife of Utanau. Kade gathered that Lowell intended to keep Kade in the dark regarding legal matters, possibly to protect him, but more likely because Davis Christopher had told him Kade was a strong-willed kid with a big mouth and an insufficient grasp of his own limitations (Kade was in the room at the time). Kade took the hint. He would stick to asking technical questions and writing checks while Lowell handled contract negotiations.

Kade put his tablet away as the little ATR-72 600 descended. Outside the window to his right, individual whitecaps were discernible below a clear blue sky. As the plane banked right to align itself with the runway, Kade caught sight of a dozen or more clumps of dark green amid the deep blue water—some of the other islands of the archipelago, most of which were uninhabited. The plane, carrying a mix of tourists and business travelers, would be landing on the main island, which had a name that he’d already forgotten. Everybody just called it Utanau.

Utanau—that is, the main island—was a vaguely hourglass-shaped blob of land with its longest dimension oriented northwest/southeast. It was roughly forty miles long and fourteen miles wide at its widest point. It had a single port, located on a harbor formed by the concave stretch of land on the eastern side of the narrow part of the hourglass. The airport was just south of the harbor. The total area of the country was 1,623 square miles, making it the thirty-first smallest country in the world. By population, it was the eleventh smallest: in 2023 the population of permanent residents surpassed 120,000 for the first time.

The plane set down, braking hard on the tarmac, which was short even for a sixty-eight-seat turboprop. Ten minutes later, it was parked in front of a Wal-Mart-sized block of glass and steel that was evidently the passenger terminal. Kade, following a group of excitedly chattering Japanese tourists, stepped off the plane into a wall of humidity. Having spent three summers in South Florida, Kade was not entirely unprepared, but the dry heat of California had taken the edge off his memories. Silicon Valley could get hot in the summer, but the air didn’t wrap itself around you like a hot, damp blanket. Kade was already regretting wearing a suit and tie. Behind him, Lowell Benjamin, in tan cargo shorts and a white polo shirt, muttered curses under his breath. They climbed down the ramp and made their way to the building.

As promised, King Annat, a tiny brown man with thick, perfectly white hair and a permanently bemused expression on his face, met them at the arrival gate. They were treated to dinner at the King’s palace, an almost aggressively bland concrete block and stucco building with a ceramic tile roof.

The King spoke fluent English, which he employed to grill Kade about what celebrities he had met in California. Having met exactly zero celebrities (unless Davis Christopher counted, which Kade was fairly certain he did not), and unwilling to share any of the juicy tidbits he had accidentally gleaned during his search for Spectral’s hacker, Kade at last fabricated an anecdote about going on a blind date with a starlet whose existence he had learned of from the cover of a magazine at a newsstand in the San Francisco airport. The King, whose penchant for young women was well-documented in Utanau Then and Now, seemed quite pleased with this.

After dinner, Kade and Lowell were transported to their hotel in an ancient Toyota 4Runner driven by a paunchy, tanned man of indeterminate ethnicity who called himself John Walker. Walker, who spoke excellent English, chattered to them in a sing-song cadence that was so hypnotic that Kade fell asleep two minutes into the trip. Jet lag and three glasses of rum-infused fruit juice probably contributed to the problem. Somehow he and Lowell (who had also fallen asleep) got checked into the hotel, where Kade slept until nearly noon the next day. Lowell woke Kade with a poke to ribs, causing Kade to jump out of bed uttering a string of incoherent curses. The curtains were open, and from their fifth-floor room Kade could see the glimmer of the bay past the lush green environmental preserve on the east side of the city.

“Minister for Economic Development is waiting for us,” Lowell said. He was already dressed—the same tan shorts as yesterday, but with a light blue polo.

“What?” Kade asked, still addled. “For us?”

“Yup.”

“I need to shower.”

“No time.”

“Fuck. At least let me brush my teeth.”

Lowell shrugged. He grabbed his tablet from his bed and flopped down in a faux-leather armchair.

Kade used the toilet, brushed his teeth, and did a once-over on his armpits with a damp washcloth. He put on clean underwear, socks and a shirt, then put on his suit and tie.

“You are an insane person,” Lowell observed, not looking up from his tablet.

“At least one of us should look like a professional,” Kade said.

Lowell shrugged. “Ready?”

Kade nodded, and they headed downstairs. They were met in front of the hotel by John Walker, who was obliviously singing along to The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes.” Lowell knocked on the passenger’s side window, and John Walker hurriedly exited the vehicle and ran around to open the rear door.

“Gentlemen, good morning!” John Walker exclaimed. “You sleep okay?” He seemed to be wearing the same faded blue jeans and white t-shirt that he had worn the night before.

“Not bad, thanks,” said Kade. “Are you taking us back to the palace?”

“Nope nope nope. Already took you there, not much more to see.” John Walker got back behind the wheel. He had turned the radio down slightly, but the music was still too loud to allow for casual conversation. By the time the song ended, they were on a road heading outside the city.

For the next hour, John Walker drove them around the island, pointing out various tourist attractions and points of historical interest (“MacArthur’s personal aide slept in that bungalow. He was bitten on his earlobe by a bolo snake”), while Kade and Lowell fought to stay awake. The radio station’s programming was eclectic-bordering-on-schizophrenic, and John Walker’s mesmerizing cadence seemed to float on top of the music like an undulating jellyfish riding ocean swells. Kade was about to ask John Walker what time they were supposed to meet the Minister for Economic Development when Walker announced, “The first property is just outside the city. Easy airport access, but not much around in the way of food or entertainment. Don’t worry, if it’s not what you’re looking for, you have other options.”

It was at this moment that something clicked in Kade’s brain. John Walker wasn’t taking them to see the Minister for Economic Development; John Walker was the Minister for Economic Development. He turned to look at Lowell, who smiled back at him. That bastard had known the whole time.

Chapter Eighteen

2023

Kade, Lowell and John Walker spent the afternoon touring available office space. It was unexciting, but that in itself was an encouraging sign: according to John Walker, all the buildings he showed them had been built to American standards. They would withstand earthquakes and typhoons (and most already had). Internet service in Utanau was first-rate, and while the Utanau electrical grid occasionally experienced brownouts, all the office buildings had backup diesel generators. The Utanau infrastructure was, in other words, several notches above California’s.

A sign in front of the first property they visited suggested that Minister for Economic Development was at best a part-time position in Utanau: the property was offered for lease by “John Walker and Associates Commercial Real Estate.” Walker explained that business had been so good lately that he was looking to make good on the “and Associates” part of the company’s name by hiring a secretary.

At least two of the properties were potential candidates for the new headquarters of SSI. One of these was the top floor in Utanau’s tallest building, which towered twelve stories over the center of the city. The three men ate lunch at a barbecue place nearby, and the food was as good as anything Kade had eaten in Palo Alto. There were eight other restaurants nearby, and John Walker claimed they were all excellent. The building was a ten-minute drive to the beach or the airport. Kade didn’t think it would take much arm-twisting to get a dozen or two young, single developers to move to such a place.

What clinched the deal in Kade’s mind, however, was what John Walker showed them last. He drove the 4Runner to a parking lot near a series of boat docks on the north side of the harbor and then led them aboard a small yacht, where they were greeted by a tanned, wiry woman with sun-bleached blond hair. John Walker introduced her as Sharon Sloan. She had a youthful way about her despite her weathered skin; she could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. Her accent marked her as Australian.

She undid the rope holding the boat to the dock, jumped back aboard, and then instructed the three to have a seat before ducking inside the cabin. They sat in the sun on the open deck. The yacht’s motor roared and the boat pulled away, the breeze a blessing in the heat. John Walker ignored Kade’s entreaties to tell him where they were going, pretending he couldn’t hear him over the hum of the engine and the swells slapping against the hull. This time, Lowell seemed to be as much in the dark as he was. Kade hoped they weren’t going far; he had learned in Florida that he had a tendency toward seasickness.

Less than ten minutes later, though, the rumble of the motor diminished. Kade had noticed a group of buoys just ahead; presumably this was their destination. Sharon turned the yacht hard to starboard as they passed between two of the buoys, and then cut the motor. As they drifted closer, Kade grew more puzzled. The buoys—ten in all—were arranged in a rough circle about a hundred yards in diameter, at the center of which was a flat barge about forty feet on a side. The barge rested on huge aluminum pontoons that were only half-submerged, so that the deck of the barge was just below the level of the yacht’s. The yacht coasted until it bumped gently against a rubber bumper. The angle was such that while the front of the boat was brought nearly to a halt, the stern swung around, bringing her almost parallel with the edge of the barge. Sharon leaped off the deck, holding rope coiled over her shoulder. She brought the rope taut and then leaned hard to pull it back against the bumper. When the boat was snug, she tied the rope off on a hook and beckoned for the three men to follow her.

John Walker went first, leaping easily from the deck to the barge. Kade, feeling only a little queasy, followed. Lowell muttered softly behind him. The lawyer’s face had turned bright red in the heat, and rings of sweat had formed around the armpits of his shirt. When they were all on the barge, John Walker led them to a cylindrical steel protrusion that arose like a squat chimney near the center of the deck. It was about three feet tall, with a similar diameter. As Kade approached, he saw that the cylinder was capped by a hatch with hinges on one side. John Walker walked to the cylinder, pulling a white plastic badge from his pocket. He waved the badge in front of a sensor, and there was a barely audible click. He released a latch and then swung the hatch open. It was evidently counterweighted or connected to a motor, because although the hatch must have weighed eighty pounds, he had no trouble opening it with one hand.

“What in the hell,” Lowell murmured, leaning over to get a look inside. He turned to Kade. “What is this thing?”

Kade, who by this time had a pretty good idea, just smiled at him.

“Who wants to go first?” asked John Walker.

“I’ll go,” said Kade.

“Don’t take too long,” Sharon Sloan said, inclining her head toward an ominous bank of clouds moving their way. “Storm’s moving in.”

“Is this safe?” Lowell asked.

“You’ll be safe as houses as long as you’re down there. But if you’re not back before that storm hits, you’ll have to swim home.”

Kade swung his left leg over the lip of the cylinder, planting his foot on a steel rung. Holding onto the lip with both hands, he brought his other foot over and began to climb down.

“Stop at the first landing,” John Walker said. “Lowell and I will be right behind you.”

Kade nodded and ducked into the shaft.

The shaft was dimly lit by small inset LEDs, not that there was anything to see on the way down. After a few steps, he could no longer hear the waves above; the only sound was the faint creaking and groaning as the structure was pushed about by the current. Kade assured himself this was to be expected: a facility like this would have been constructed with articulated joints to allow it to bend and twist like a willow in the wind. These assurances, however, did not keep the waves of nausea at bay. He breathed deeply and continued down the shaft.

He thought he had descended about fifty feet when the shaft suddenly opened to reveal a circular room about twenty feet in diameter, centered on the ladder, which continued below. The room was perfectly symmetrical, with a grated metal floor and four identical steel doors, labeled A1 through A4, respectively. The air in the chamber was surprisingly warm. Kade tried one of the doors but found it locked: next to it was a card reader like the one on the hatch outside.

John Walker descended from the ceiling and stepped off the ladder. Lowell, still muttering, followed a moment later. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “What the hell,” he gasped, “is this place?”

“Underwater data center,” Kade said. “Judging from the logos I saw on the barge, it’s of Dutch design.”

“Dutch and Japanese,” John Walker said. “The outer structure was built by a Dutch company,” John Walker said. “The cooling system was designed by a Japanese firm.”

“You’ve got computers down here?” Lowell asked, befuddled.

“Twelve hundred of them,” said John Walker. “Come on.” He waved his badge at the reader next to the A3 door and turned the door latch. There was a satisfying pop as the door’s seal was broken, like opening a can of Pringles. Hot air wafted out. He swung the door open and stepped inside. The passage was narrow but the ceiling was at least two feet above his head.

Kade followed him into the narrow passage, which terminated in a blank wall about twenty feet away. To the left and right, behind plexiglass panels, were racks of hundreds upon hundreds of rectangular black plastic boxes adorned with small red LEDs that glowed in the dim light. “That is a hell of a lot of processing power,” Kade said.

“They tell me they’re the most powerful you can buy,” John Walker said, “but I don’t know much about it. I can hook you up with our tech guy if you want to know about gigaflops and whatnot.”

“But why?” Lowell asked, staring at the banks of computers. “I mean, you guys have buildings. I’ve seen some of them.”

“Water transmits heat better than air,” Kade said. “The seawater this far down is pretty cold, and it’s constantly moving, so it makes for an excellent natural cooling system.”

“Also, the cost of real estate is a lot lower out here,” John Walker said.

“Okay, but what about typhoons and tsunamis?” asked Lowell.

“The facility is designed to move with the current,” John Walker said. “They tell me it’s like a snake with five segments connected by flexible joints. A cable running along the ocean floor connects the facility to the mainland. Your data is a hell of a lot safer out here than on land.”

“Probably safer than in California,” Kade said.

“For sure,” John Walker. “Don’t have to worry about earthquakes out here. And supposedly it can withstand a tsunami a kilometer high, although I don’t know how they can know that.”

“What powers the servers?” Lowell asked.

Kade nodded. It was an excellent question.

“Sea swells,” said John Walker. “This whole facility is built like a pogo stick on top of a big steel shaft. As the ocean rises and falls, we move up and down, buoyed by those giant pontoons you saw up top. The vertical motion is transmitted to a series of flywheels that are connected to generators. The generators feed a huge bank of batteries. They tell me the batteries can power the whole facility for three days without any additional power input.”

“In case the sea stops moving?” Kade asked.

“In case the generators go offline for any reason. So far the longest outage we’ve had is four hours, to do some maintenance.”

“What if the shaft gets bent or misaligned?”

“The facility is anchored to the ocean floor with something like twenty variable-tension cables that are automatically extended or retracted to allow it to move up and down but not side to side. It would take waves in excess of a category five typhoon to override that system. It can happen, they tell me, but if it ever does, the shaft is supposed to automatically disengage from the ocean floor until the storm passes. As long as we get it back online within three days, there’s no service outage. We’ve got two engineers onshore, and a whole team ready to fly out from Japan on a moment’s notice. Hey, we’d better get back if we don’t want to be stuck out here. Not much more to see anyway. The other levels are just like this one, except colder. Heat rises, of course. Lowell, lead the way.”

Lowell, whose polo was now drenched with sweat, didn’t need to be asked twice. He retreated into the relative cool of the circular room, and the other two men followed.

By the time Kade climbed onto the deck of the barge, the wind was gusting and the sky had grown dark. As they boarded the yacht, they were pelted by drops of warm rain. The motor roared, and the boat made a sharp arc to starboard and then headed back toward the harbor at top speed.

“Who owns it?” Kade asked.

“The government of Utanau,” John Walker replied. “The King spent a sizeable chunk of his fortune on it. He believes that Utanau has a future as a data haven.”

“He’s probably right,” Kade said. The King was savvier than he let on. “And we could lease space on these servers?”

“As much as you need,” John Walker said. “The King may have been, uh, overly optimistic about Utanau’s attractiveness to business. I’ll get you a price list. If you want the top floor in the Burton building, I can get you a deal, because the King owns that building too.”

“Good to know,” said Kade. The rain had caught up to them, and the machinegun patter on the aluminum roof discouraged further conversation. That was all right; Kade had a lot to think about. He had heard of floating data centers, but he’d never seen one. Usually they were kept in a harbor where they were safe from the sometimes violent seas. But this one had been set up just outside the Utanau harbor, presumably to take advantage of the bigger waves for generating electricity. But if this thing could be set up two miles from a harbor, it could be set up in the middle of the Pacific, in international waters. That meant that one could store data and run applications on a platform that was literally outside of any nation’s control. No doubt the King was aware of this as well: having played nations against each other for five decades, he knew how precarious his position was, and he was preparing for the storm that was to come. And if Stellaris took off the way Kade expected it to, that storm might well come sooner than he expected.

Chapter Nineteen

2025

Valerie stood outside her tiny Pasadena home, fidgeting with her wedding ring and watching Rick’s Harley recede down the street. Soon it was just another light in the pre-dawn darkness. The rumbling of the motorcycle’s pipes was audible for some time after he turned the corner, like distant thunder from a passing storm. When she could no longer hear it, she went inside and sat by the kitchen table. Her coffee—decaf, of course—was still warm: their goodbye hadn’t taken long. She shoved it away.

She knew she should try to get some sleep. She’d been sick most of the night again, and she had a shift in three hours. She’d been lucky to land a job as a flagger for Cal-Trans, and she didn’t want to lose it. A few more weeks and her probation period would be over, but if she called in sick one more time before that, she’d be back on unemployment. She couldn’t afford to be pregnant and unemployed.

Another wave of nausea came over her but passed before she lost what little of the coffee she’d been able to keep down. She got up, dumped the coffee in the sink, and poured herself a glass of ginger ale. She used to hate ginger ale, but it did seem to help with the nausea. She sipped at it and wondered, for the ten thousandth time, where she had gone wrong.

She had found out she was pregnant three weeks before Rick was to ship out to the Congo. The next weekend, they had gotten married in Las Vegas. It seemed the thing to do.

For just a moment, as she sat there with the test strip in her hand, she had considered not telling him. But that was crazy: it was as much his child as hers, and in any case, she couldn’t afford a baby on her own. Hell, she couldn’t even afford their house payment on her own. To his credit, Rick didn’t suggest an abortion, but neither did he offer to ask his superiors for a different assignment. They would have given it to him; he had volunteered for the Congo deployment because (he had told her) “he wanted to do something more challenging” than coordinating anti-insurgent training at Barstow. She took this to mean he was bored, and he wasn’t the only one.

It hadn’t all been bad. They’d had a lot of fun in the beginning. He rode his bike out from Barstow every other weekend, and they’d drink and watch terrible action movies from the 1980s, like Red Dawn and Commando. After a few weeks, they had an unspoken agreement that Rick would sleep over on Friday and Saturday nights, and whenever he was on leave. He even helped out with rent, which was nice, because it was a while before Valerie found another job.

She took classes part-time and worked temp jobs when she could, and before she knew it, two years had gone by. She wanted to get out of California and try to make something of herself while she still could, but her grandfather was in poor health, and she felt bad leaving her grandmother alone.

Rick wasn’t a deep thinker, but that was okay: Valerie thought enough for them both, and it had never done her much good anyway. She’d done well at college, but there just weren’t a lot of jobs for someone with a B.S. in biology. There weren’t a lot of jobs in California, period. The big biotech firms had begun moving most of their operations overseas or to states with a lower tax burden, much as the tech industry had been doing. Even Kade Kapur had moved his company, SSI, to some Pacific island.

California kept raising the minimum wage—it was now $16 per hour—but that just meant that businesses weren’t hiring for low-skilled positions at all anymore. Not long after she was fired, California passed a law requiring restaurants to pay the same minimum wage as other businesses, before tips. The effect was to eliminate about half the waitressing jobs in the state. Many fast-food restaurants had already automated the ordering process, and now higher-end restaurants were starting to do the same. Convenience stores and gas stations were being replaced by vending machines and self-serve kiosks.

The job market had gotten so bad in San Bernardino that after finishing college, Valerie moved to Los Angeles, just west of Pasadena, where her grandparents still lived. The one positive aspect to the stagnant California economy was the collapse in real estate prices. After a chronic housing shortage that lasted until 2023, so many people and businesses had left the state that the supply of housing now exceeded demand.

She knew this life was the aggregate of a lot of little choices she had made—taking that scholarship to CSU San Bernardino, telling off Calvin that day of Kade’s first big interview, hooking up with Rick, deciding to stick it out in southern California rather than abandon her grandparents. And yet, every step of the way, she felt hemmed in, confronted with a choice between the status quo and losing ground. At some point California—and maybe America—had stopped being the land of opportunity. Her grandfather had come from Mexico in 1963 with nothing. He’d worked as a gardener for several years, met Valerie’s grandmother at church, became an American citizen and started his own landscaping business with an old Ford pickup and a push lawn mower. They’d had three children together, all of whom went on to be successful, productive Americans. Valerie’s mother had been a Hollywood costume designer, and her father had taught high school math. They had died in a car accident when Valerie was very young, and her grandparents had raised her.

For Valerie and most of the rest of her generation, the American dream had always seemed just out of reach. She had the bad luck to graduate from high school shortly after the Democrats finally pushed through a lavish student debt forgiveness program. Not only did she not qualify for debt forgiveness; the program had the unintended side effect of inflating tuition prices even further, as universities took advantage of a student population that was suddenly flush with cash. Even with Valerie’s scholarships, she had racked up over $40,000 in student loans, and now that people in D.C. were finally starting to worry about the national debt, another round of student debt forgiveness seemed unlikely. They were even talking about cutting Social Security, so her chances of retiring at a reasonable age were dwindling. Inflation had been so high over the past few years that her grandparents had taken out a reverse mortgage, and with her grandfather’s medical bills, there was a good chance her grandmother would be left destitute. Valerie’s two uncles, who had children of their own, weren’t in a position to help. It was a horrible thought, but these days she often found herself wishing her grandfather would pass away quietly in his sleep, rather than dragging things out for another five years.

Her reverie was broken by the realization that it was getting light outside. If she was going to get any sleep at all, she needed to get to bed. She took another sip of ginger ale and slowly stood. So far, so good. If she could get even a couple hours of sleep, she thought she could make it through her shift. She ordinarily took the bus, but she thought she could justify springing for a car this time. That would give her an extra twenty minutes.

As she neared the bedroom, though, the nausea overcame her again. She turned and hurried to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time. Oh well, she thought. I’ll find another job somehow. I have to.

Chapter Twenty

2025

King Annat, a bachelor at seventy-six, possessed a notorious predilection for young women, particularly those of Eastern European descent. Leveraging his wealth and his position as head of state, he had been importing dozens of women a year for nearly forty years, through channels Kade tried not to think about. As a result, a sizeable proportion of Utanau’s population now evinced Slavic ancestry. The King evidently lost interest in the women when they reached the age of twenty-five or so, but the women were allowed to remain in the country and were granted citizenship if they could find employment and/or a husband. Nearly all of them chose to do this rather than return home—a fact that Annat’s supporters cited in defense against claims that the women had been mistreated. The truth was somewhat messier: Annat was known to import girls as young as sixteen, so by the time they “aged out,” Utanau was as much a home to them as Ukraine, Romania, or whatever other country they had come from. In any case, a woman’s choice to remain was more indicative of the conditions in their home country than of Annat’s treatment of them.

With the end of the Cold War, Annat’s pipeline from Eastern Europe shut down, and he was forced to make new contacts in China and Southeast Asia to feed his appetite. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and Utanau’s ascendance as a tax haven, however, also brought greater scrutiny. The West had been willing to overlook Annat’s peccadillos while he was an ally against the spread of Communism in the Pacific, but the toppling of Manuel Noriega in 1989 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1991 gave the King pause. He made a show of returning several girls under the age of eighteen to their home countries, and although he continued to quietly import women from Asia, he insisted that every woman provide identification proving she was at least eighteen and sign a document attesting that she had come to Utanau willingly. How effective these policies were in reducing human trafficking was unclear, but they provided Annat some cover against charges of human rights violations.

The women who chose to remain spoke well of Annat, without exception. In 1995 an Australian journalist flew to Utanau to dig up stories about the ‘Beach Bunnies,’ as they were sometimes called, but he couldn’t get any of the women to say anything bad about him, even with a guarantee of anonymity. In an ironic twist, the journalist married one of the women and flew her back to Sydney with him.

Kade, being a young man himself, understood the draw of beautiful young women. A young man might give up a lot of things in service of his career, but sex was generally not one of them. Even Kade, who had been working eighty hours a week since he finished high school, had found time for an occasional date. He was no Casanova, but thanks to his good looks and an innate ability to decode and mimic neurotypical behavior, he was reasonably adept at managing relationships with women. This put him miles ahead of the typical programmer, who was a socially awkward introvert. There were thousands of such programmers in Silicon Valley: young, eligible men with promising futures who couldn’t get laid because they didn’t have a clue how to talk to women. It was a tragedy and, more importantly from Kade’s perspective, an untapped market.

On their third and final full day in Utanau, Kade sneaked away for a meeting with John Walker while Lowell lay in bed, nursing a migraine. Although Kade had initially dismissed John Walker as a mere flunky for the King, it had become clear over the past three days that Walker was a very canny man. His lack of ego led to people underestimating him, and he used their faulty assessment to gather information, which he leveraged into power and wealth. While he waited at a coffee shop down the street from the hotel, Kade thought back to the conversation he and Lowell had in the backseat of Walker’s 4Runner when they thought Walker was just a chauffeur. Before Lowell had figured out he was the Minister for Economic Development, they’d inadvertently spilled their entire business plan as well as their thoughts on Utanau and the King. It was fortunate that other than Lowell’s grousing about the weather and the mosquitos, their assessments had been positive.

John Walker arrived at the coffee shop right on time. He shook Kade’s hand and sat down across from him. He seemed to understand what Kade wanted to talk about almost as soon as Kade opened his mouth. Unsure how to broach the subject, Kade rambled on about Utanau’s technical infrastructure and how impressed he was with the data center.

John Walker nodded, smiling. “Utanau has a lot to recommend it. We’ve been called the best kept secret of the South Pacific. Although with the way things are going, I don’t think we’ll be a secret much longer.”

Kade nodded. “Big tech and big government are squeezing out the little guy,” he said. “But with the help of Utanau, I think companies like SSI can give the little guy a fighting chance. Assuming we can actually get people to come out here. Most of our programmers are just kids who have never been away from home, much less to an island five thousand miles away. The low cost of living means we can pay them more, but….”

“You are hoping to provide additional incentives.”

“Yes.”

“It can be done,” John Walker said.

“I liked that resort you showed us yesterday. It needs some work, but I think it could be a big selling point for us. These guys, I mean, they’re mostly nerds. Extremely smart, but not exactly socially adept. So the idea of moving halfway across the world… well, these guys would probably be more open to the idea than most, but we have to sell them on the idea of Utanau as a tropical paradise.”

“A tropical paradise filled with beautiful, scantily clad women.”

“Well, I mean… that would obviously be appealing, but—”

“Like I said, it can be done. You’re hardly the first person to ask.”

“Nothing illegal,” Kade said. “Either here or in the, uh, host country. And no underage girls. We don’t need any more attention from the authorities.” And I don’t need Rami on my case either, he thought.

“The King shares your concerns. It can all be handled legally and discreetly. For a price, of course. There are plenty of young women who would be willing to come to Utanau if they are guaranteed employment.”

“Employment?”

“We handle this stuff through the visa program. To qualify, a woman must have a guarantee of employment from a company physically located in Utanau, and the company must submit documentation demonstrating that they have been unable to fill the position with a local. The second part is just a formality; we can help you get the paperwork in order.”

“What am I supposed to hire them for?”

“Doesn’t matter. Secretary. Data entry. Janitor. The simplest thing might be to buy a restaurant and hire them all as waitresses. I can give you some leads if you want to go that route. I would stay away from hiring them as masseuses and the like. That’s a red flag. You can, of course, hire local girls as well, although they tend to be more traditional. I’ll send an information packet on the visa program to the email address you gave me.”

“To be clear, I’m not talking about….” He trailed off. They were not alone in the coffee shop, and although there was enough background noise that he doubted anyone would overhear, he hesitated to say the word out loud.

“Prostitution?” John Walker asked, oblivious to his reticence. No one in the place paid any attention. “Of course not. Legality aside, bribing men with the services of prostitutes is not a long-term strategy. Sure, you’ll get some takers, but generally not the kind of guys you can build a company around. Your programmers may be single and horny now, but what they want long-term is the American dream. White picket fence, two point four children and all that.”

“I’m not sure you can even do that in America anymore,” Kade said. “The American Dream is on life support.”

“Exactly my point. You need to sell these guys on what they can’t get in America. What is that? Hookers? No. The American Dream, that’s what you’re selling them.”

The more John Walker tried to rationalize it, though, the worse Kade felt. “We’d be selling them a bill of goods, though,” he said. “How many of them are actually going to marry one of these girls?”

“You Americans,” John Walker said, shaking his head. “Always thinking of other people as victimized and oppressed. Kade, these women are coming here of their own free will. Are some of them coming here only because this is their one chance to escape poverty or persecution? Of course! Who do you think founded your country? People who had cushy lives in the Old World? No, they were Europe’s rejects. Criminals, religious nuts, and people who had nothing left to lose. As for your programmers—what do you think their odds are of finding love in Silicon Valley, cruising bars and browsing dating sites? I’d give them better odds on Utanau any day, particularly if we sweeten the pot a little. You’re a good salesman, Kade, because you believe in what you’re selling. I’ve been around you enough to know that much. You believe in Stellaris. Don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe it will be the answer to all the world’s problems?”

“Certainly not.”

“Even if Stellaris takes off beyond your wildest dreams, the world will still have poverty, injustice and war, right?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you sell the idea of a world where people talk out their problems and all their needs are met by trading with other people across the world.”

“That’s aspirational marketing,” Kade said. “Stellaris could make that happen if people chose it.”

“But you know they won’t.”

“Some will. Many won’t.”

“And some will use it for evil.”

“On balance, Stellaris will make things better.”

“How can you know that?”

“It gives people better information and more choices.”

“All right, then. Give your programmers a choice and the information they need to make it. Nobody put you in charge of the world’s happiness.”

“Yeah, all right. I see your point.”

“Good. Hey, I’ve got to get going. So if there’s nothing else…?”

“No, we’re good.”

“I’ll get you that info on the visa program. If I don’t see you again before you leave, have a good flight.”

“Thanks.”

John Walker left, and Kade was once again alone. He let out a heavy sigh. Playing with people’s lives didn’t come naturally to him, but he was going to have to get used to it.

Chapter Twenty-one

2027

Kade Kapur stood on a hilltop overlooking a series of huge concrete footings that were to be the foundation of the headquarters of Bitizen, Inc. It was late afternoon, and the workers had just left. Just behind him was a resort that also belonged to the company. The entire campus was now ten acres, and when the new building was finished, Bitizen would have eighty-thousand square feet of office space. The afternoon air was pleasantly warm; the sun had just dipped behind the palms on the far side of the construction site, and a cool breeze wafted off the Pacific behind him. If he listened closely, he could just make out the distant crashing of waves. Kade was twenty-six years old, and he was furious.

He should be enjoying this moment, he knew. Everything seemed to be going so well. Had been going so well. SSI had grown at an incredible pace for the past two years, as the Stellaris framework became widely adopted in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. As part of Kade’s effort to stress his company’s independence from the Stellaris network (and to better reflect his aspirations for the company), SSI had been renamed Bitizen, Inc. in 2026.

Bitizen had nearly four hundred employees, two hundred eighty of whom lived on Utanau. Although it had been difficult at first to convince top tier talent to move to a remote island in the Pacific, word got out about the low cost of living, beautiful weather (if you didn’t mind a little humidity), and phenomenal incentives Bitizen was offering. Kade bought the run-down resort on the harbor and completely renovated it, turning it into luxurious employee housing. There were swimming pools, saunas, hot tubs, pool tables, ping-pong tables and rooms full of classic arcade games from the 1980s. The biggest draw for the young, mostly male programmers coming from the U.S. and elsewhere, though, was the women.

Kade never told anyone else about taking advantage of Utanau’s visa program; the additional payments to the government were assumed to be bribes and were classified on the company’s books with the same euphemisms always used for such payments in third world countries. Kade never even mentioned the women in his sales pitch to the employees. He assumed that word would get out, and that word-of-mouth advertising would be far more effective. In this, he was proved correct. Observers of the tech scene, who were convinced that it was impossible to build a first-rate development team in a remote location like Utanau, were stunned as Kade successfully poached talent from some of the best companies in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Many attributed Kade’s success to the hostile business climate in California, and there was some truth to this as well. Silicon Valley’s population had been declining since the early twenties. Bigger corporations that had struck sweetheart deals with the state mostly stuck around, but small and mid-sized companies fled to states or countries with a lower regulatory and tax burden.

Kade didn’t go out of his way to hire young, single men, but the pool of candidates was—despite the best efforts of many in the industry to bring about gender parity—still predominantly male. And when word got out that Utanau was swarming with young, beautiful women, the applicant pool shifted even further toward a demographic to whom such an environment was attractive.

Women hired by the company were usually assigned to the Palo Alto office, because this allowed Bitizen to comply with California’s new gender equity laws, which required companies with over two hundred employees to have a female-to-male ratio of at least twenty-five percent in all positions. Because there simply weren’t enough female developers to go around in Silicon Valley, this led to some creative solutions: some companies chose to fire their development teams and outsource the work to India or China; others reorganized their teams by, for example, reclassifying a software tester or technical writer as a “developer.” This led to a revision of the law intended to close these loopholes, which led to still more convoluted workarounds.

Some companies fled to Texas, Florida or some other state to avoid these regulations, but this was not a permanent solution either: it seemed that any bad idea that had been codified in California law sooner or later caught on at the federal level. So by 2026, “gender parity” laws were the law of the land in the United States, with the predictable result that most male-dominated professions simply disappeared: skilled positions were sent overseas and jobs requiring less skill were given to robots.

In one area, though, the federal government leapfrogged over California—and it was this fact that explained Kade’s foul mood. In 2027, the United States Congress passed a “wealth tax” that applied to all citizens, ostensibly to alleviate some of the vast and rapidly growing national debt. The law instituted a graduated annual tax on one’s total net worth, starting at one percent for someone with $100 million and maxing out at ten percent for a net worth of $10 billion or more.

Economists warned that such taxes had failed to have the desired effect in several other countries, but they were largely ignored by the left-leaning coalition that now controlled Congress. Davis Christopher and fifty-three other wealthy entrepreneurs and investors signed a letter urging the President to veto the bill, but this was dismissed as a self-interested stunt.

Davis Christopher had possessed the foresight to move a large chunk of his investments into untraceable accounts in Utanau and elsewhere, but others were not so fortunate. The tax applied not only to anyone living in the U.S. but also U.S. citizens living overseas, so it was not enough simply to move out of the country. At least forty billionaires left the country and renounced their citizenship, moving to (or at least buying a house in) a country with more favorable tax laws. Ireland and Switzerland, which offered citizenship to virtually anyone willing to invest a few million dollars in their economy, were popular destinations. Others gave away enough of their fortune to a spouse or relative to avoid some or all of the tax burden.

Thanks to SSI’s spectacularly successfully IPO the year before, Kade’s personal fortune was, on paper, in excess of eight hundred million dollars. It didn’t matter that the company’s assets were worth only a fraction of that amount or that it rarely had more than a million dollars in cash on hand. It didn’t matter that Kade lived in a modest bungalow on Utanau and slept in a tiny studio apartment when he visited the U.S. It didn’t matter that he didn’t even own a car. According to the U.S. federal government, Kade had nearly a billion dollars in assets, and they wanted him to come up with four percent of that: a staggering thirty-two million dollars in cash.

It was ironic, he supposed, that he owned almost no .coin of any kind. He had bought a few hundred in various agoras early on, which were now worth about half a million dollars in total (Stellaris made it possible to instantly aggregate and convert one’s various .coin holdings into the global Stellaris.coin), but most of his earnings were reinvested in SSI.

His tax bill dropped to twenty-four million as SSI stock lost a quarter of its value in the days after the passing of the law. This was part of a broader crash: the market, anticipating that a lot of stocks were going to have to be sold to pay the tax, had reacted accordingly. Bonds and real estate crashed as well, for the same reason. Assuming that a significant proportion of these assets was held by people who intended to comply with the law, the market had anticipated a huge sell-off of hard assets. Pension funds and 401(k)s lost anywhere from a quarter to half of their value, and assurances from the President that this was due to a “one-time shock to the system” did little to ameliorate the problem.

For Kade, who now owned just fifty-one percent of SSI’s stock, complying with the law meant losing control of the company he had founded. It also probably meant he would have to call the owner of the construction firm and tell him that as of tomorrow, he had no more work for them. He felt terrible about it; he knew the owner had turned down several other jobs because he was determined to meet his obligations to Kade on time and under budget, and now he was probably going to have to lay off half of his workforce.

Kade’s phone told him it was five fifteen p.m., which meant it was eight fifteen a.m. in Washington, D.C. Lowell Benjamin should be in his office by this time. Kade had had occasional contact with Lowell over the past two years, and he knew that Lowell had been lobbying against the wealth tax on behalf of Davis Christopher. If there was any way to get around the law, Lowell would know. But as usual, Lowell had no good news to give him.

“So that’s it,” Kade said, when Lowell had finished his painstaking explanation of the law. “I renounce my citizenship or I lose control of the company.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Lowell. “Just be grateful SSI already went public. If you renounced your citizenship before the IPO, the SEC would never have let it happen.” This was undoubtedly true: since moving to Utanau, Kade had worked hard to dispel the public perception that Stellaris was a network for criminals and terrorists, but there was still a great deal of skepticism (and outright hostility) in D.C. toward SSI.

“The IPO is why I’m in this mess,” Kade said. “If SSI were still a private company, we could give it any valuation we wanted to.”

“You needed the cash to ramp up the business. Going ahead with the IPO was the right move.”

“It doesn’t feel like there are any right moves anymore. All these goddamn arbitrary rules and regulations. And now they’re literally stealing my company out from under me. What if… what if we split the company up? Spin off the consulting business. Long-term, the money is in the applications.”

“Kade, you know that will never work. You need the consulting revenue to fuel applications development. If you split them now—”

“I know, forget it. It was a stupid idea. All right, what’s involved in renouncing my citizenship?”

“Kade, think about this carefully. If you—”

“Please don’t give me any patriotic claptrap, Lowell. You know I love America. My dad was an immigrant. He taught me to love my country. But, hell, Lowell. I’m not sure that country even exists anymore. What kind of country is this, where they can just steal your property, without any kind of due process? I’m not even in the U.S. and I still spend half my time jumping through hoops to comply with their regulations. It’s infuriating.”

“The thing is, Kade—”

“And it’s not like I’m out here buying yachts and sports cars. I built this company, and I’m the only one with the vision to see it through to its full potential. These fucking morons in Congress think that being a billionaire means you have a literal swimming pool full of cash, and they can just take a few buckets of it and you won’t even notice. Half of those assholes have never contributed anything of value to society. This is the death knell for Bitizen, Lowell. I’m going to have to start over from scratch.”

“Kade, listen. I—”

“And what really drives me crazy is that they know it isn’t going to work. They say they’re doing this to pay down the debt, but they’ve seen how these laws play out in other countries. It never works, but they’re going to do it anyway, because they want to punish people like me. They don’t even hide it. Like how that Senator used to say that billionaires shouldn’t exist. That asshole knew full well that even if you confiscated the fortunes of every billionaire in America, it wouldn’t fund the federal government for a single month. He didn’t care. He just wanted to take people like me down a peg. It’s pure spite.”

“Kade!” Lowell interjected.

“What?”

“I wasn’t going to give you any patriotic claptrap. For the record, I agree with you. The America your dad believed in is gone. Maybe it never really existed, except as an idea. This isn’t a country of freedom and justice and opportunity anymore. It’s a country of envy, graft, rent-seeking and regulations. I get it, Kade. I really do. But you’re making the same mistake as those socialists who are driven by spite.”

“Oh yeah?” Kade said, skeptical. “What’s that?”

“Renouncing your citizenship might make you feel good, but you’d be shooting yourself in the foot. Remind me what the purpose of Bitizen is again?”

“We offer people all over the world a means to interact in a way that mimics the trust mechanisms of a small village.”

“Not what Bitizen does,” Lowell said. “The reason you founded Bitizen.”

“Because I want humanity to colonize the solar system.”

“And do you think you’re going to be able to launch rockets from Utanau?”

Kade let out a long sigh. Lowell was right: a space program required an extensive technical infrastructure that he wasn’t going to find in the middle of the Pacific. The best place to start an aerospace company these days was probably Texas or Florida. Kade was partial to Florida, as his parents were there.

“You think they’ll block me from starting up Ad Astra if I dodge this bullshit tax?”

“They might let you start the company, but good luck getting a fair shake on your environmental impact studies or getting approved for launch permits.”

“Even though, if we’re successful, Ad Astra will be a huge boon to the economy and the aerospace industry?”

“Stop thinking like a rational person, Kade. Imagine a petulant six-year-old with nuclear missiles. That’s the federal government. If you want to play in their sandbox, you need to do whatever you can to stay on their good side.”

“Well, I can’t sell my stock. It would set me back years.”

“Then give half of it to somebody you trust. If you can get your net worth below three hundred million, you’ll pay a significantly lower rate. What about your parents?”

“I already asked. Dad said no.”

“Your dad refused to accept three hundred million dollars’ worth of stock?”

“Yeah. He has this weird thing about never doing business with family.”

“Did you explain your situation to him?”

“He understands.”

“But… that’s crazy.”

“That’s my dad. He thinks the law is idiotic, but he doesn’t want anything to do with my business. There’s no point in arguing with him when he gets like that.”

“Well. There has to be someone you trust.”

“There is. He doesn’t want my stock either.”

“You asked him?”

“I gave him a chance to get in on the ground floor when I started Bitizen. He knew the company was going to be huge, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to own any of it.”

“I think you’d better ask him again.”

“I would if I could. He’s been offline for the past two days. Family emergency.”

Chapter Twenty-two

2027

Rami had known from the tone of his mother’s voice that something was very wrong. She had called him while he was in a meeting with the development team at the Utanau campus, and, feeling a prick of intuition, Rami had excused himself to answer it. His mother had tried to act casual, asking him the usual questions about how his work was going, and whether he found it as fulfilling as his academic work, but there was a strange, urgent tone to her voice.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Rami asked, making his way down the hall to his office. “Is Baahir okay?”

“Your brother is fine,” his mother said.

Rami’s gut tightened. “What about Dad?” Silence. “Mom, is Dad okay?” He waved off a young woman in the marketing department who had been trying to get a meeting with him and ducked into his office, closing the door behind him.

“He left… five days ago,” his mother said at last. “We expected him back yesterday. We haven’t heard from him.”

“Where was he?”

Again, there was no answer.

“Mom, tell me where he was.”

“I don’t know!” she said, and now her voice betrayed frustration. Rami knew what that meant.

“Mom, put Baahir on the phone.”

“Honey, I can’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you. I just—”

“Mom. I need to talk to Baahir. Now.”

“I have to go. Forget it. I will—”

There were rustling sounds and murmured speech that Rami couldn’t make out. Then a man’s voice spoke to him: Baahir.

“Rami, everything is under control. I’ll call you later.”

“The hell you will. What the fuck is going on, Baahir? Where is Dad?”

“Doesn’t concern you, Rami. Let it go.”

“Fuck you, Baahir. Tell me where Dad is, or I’m catching the next flight to Cairo.”

“That’s not a good idea, Rami.”

“Was Dad on some kind of mission? Where’d he go? Libya? Algeria?”

“Rami, you need to shut up and listen. I’m not—”

“Who was Dad meeting? Al-Qaeda? ISIL?” He was fairly certain his father had no involvement with those groups. His intention was only to play on Baahir’s paranoia. Mentioning known terrorist groups was a good way to make sure someone from the NSA was listening in. At this point, Baahir would do just about anything to get Rami to stop talking.

“Damn it, Rami. No, of course not. Dad doesn’t do business with any of those groups.”

“Then tell me where he is.”

There was a long pause. “Maybe it would be better if you did come out,” Baahir said. “There are some things we should talk about in person.”

“Agreed,” said Rami. “I’ll email you my flight info. Take care of Mom.” He ended the call.

*****

A day and a half had passed before Rami got to Cairo. He’d taken the first flight to Honolulu, then flown to Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and finally Cairo. He managed to get a little sleep on the last two legs of the trip, but by the time he staggered out of the Cairo airport into a waiting taxi, he was anxious and exhausted. His urgency made no difference: Abdul Essak was dead before he left Utanau.

The authorities had found his body in a ditch beside the highway, a hundred kilometers north of Aswan. There were signs of torture, and his head had been removed, apparently with a machete. Rami learned all this via terse texts from Baahir. Just before Rami exited the taxi in front of his parents’ house, he’d received one informing him that their father had been transported to Cairo and Baahir was going to the police station to identify and claim the body.

Rami’s mother, her face streaked with tears and looking like she hadn’t slept in three days, met him at the door. Rami spent the next two hours comforting her and trying to calm her down. At last she fell asleep, giving Rami license to crash in his old bedroom, which was exactly as he’d left it.

He was awoken after what seemed like about twenty seconds by his brother, looking almost as rough as their mother. “What time is it?” he demanded.

“A little after seven,” Baahir said. Seeing his brother’s confusion, he added, “At night.”

Rami sat up, nodding. He was too addled to do the math, but he knew he was a long way from being caught up on sleep. “How’s Mom?”

“Asleep.”

“What the fuck did you do, Baahir?”

“Me?” said Baahir. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Dad was supposed to be retired. From the side business, I mean.” He’d gathered from conversations with his mother over the past few months that their father was spending less time away from home.

“There’s no ‘side business,’ Rami. There’s the business. There was always only one business. And it’s not a business you leave.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“Come on, Rami. You’re not thinking straight. I couldn’t babysit him every minute of the day. In any case, if I went with him, I’d be dead too.”

“I don’t see the problem.”

“Fuck you, Rami. You don’t think this hurts me? I was a lot closer to Dad than you were.”

“Than I was allowed to be.”

“Yes. For your own—”

“Don’t say it, Baahir. Do not fucking say it.”

“Then stop acting like you’re the aggrieved party here. How do you think they paid for your tutors and your fancy schools?”

“Dad makes good money at his job.”

“I know we protected you, but even you aren’t this naïve. There’s one job, Rami. There’s only ever been one job. Working for ISEM.”

“I didn’t ask for this. I never asked for it!”

“You did ask! You just don’t remember. ‘Babai, I want this book.’ ‘Babai, I want a computer.’ ‘Babai, I want to go to America.’”

“That’s not fair. I was a kid. I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t know because you didn’t want to know! Just like you don’t want to know now. You don’t want to know what Dad and I had to do for this family, for this country. And you don’t want to know how bad it’s gotten. Leave Egypt, Rami, and don’t come back. You think ISEM is bad? You have no fucking idea what’s been unleashed across the Maghreb. We’re the good guys, Rami. You know why they killed Dad? Because they could. Because the jihadis aren’t scared of ISEM anymore.”

“What about Mom? Is Mom safe?”

“Nobody’s safe, Rami. I’ve got a place where she can stay. And no, I’m not going to tell you where it is. Don’t try calling her. I’ve already destroyed her phone. When we’re settled, I’ll set up a way for her to communicate with you securely.”

“I can help with that,” Rami said. “If you use a secure Stellaris node, you can—”

“I don’t need your help,” Baahir snapped. “I’ve been in this business for a long time, and you’re not the only one who has learned some tricks. The funeral is tomorrow. After that—”

“Tomorrow? The family can’t all get here in time.”

“No extended family. It’s going to be you, me and Mom, along with a few of my associates, for security. Mom will ride with me. You’ll take a taxi. I’ll call you with the location when you’re on the road. After the ceremony, say goodbye to Mom and head straight for the airport. Do not make a big deal out of it. She doesn’t know I’m moving her.”

“What the hell, Baahir? You can’t just move her out of her house!”

“I will do what I have to do to keep Mom safe. You will not interfere. Do you understand?”

“Of course. But—”

“After the funeral, get on a plane. Leave Egypt and do not come back. You won’t hear from me or Mom for a while.”

“Baahir, this is crazy. We need to slow down and think this through.”

“I’ve thought it through, little brother. This isn’t one of your math problems you can spend a year working out. The plan is in motion, and it doesn’t require your input. You can leave now or you can leave after the funeral. What’s it going to be?”

“Baahir, please.”

“Answer the question. Are you going to give me any trouble?”

Rami let out a defeated sigh. “No.”

“Good. I have some things to take care of. Nasir and Malik are watching the house. I don’t expect any trouble, but make sure Mom stays inside. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“And if you’re not?”

“I will be. Take care of Mom.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.

Rami, feeling utterly useless, sat on his bed for some time, staring at a poster of the solar system that he’d tacked up on his wall fifteen years earlier. How many hours had he lay on that bed, staring at that poster, imagining walking on the surface of Venus or Mars? In some ways, he realized, he was the mirror image of Kade Kapur: while Kade had from a young age focused on the practical aspects of colonizing space, Rami had come at the matter from the perspective of endless possibility. To him, space travel was as close as a person could get to interacting with pure Platonic reality. Space was where Newtonian physics, general relativity and quantum mechanics interacted to form gravitational waves, quasars, neutrinos and black holes. It was the complex equations governing these phenomena that first drew him into mathematics, and he’d never quite found his way out of that labyrinth. In mathematics, there were no physical constraints at all, and as a child growing up in a small country thousands of miles from Cape Canaveral, he clung to the purity of numbers and equations. He might never be an aerospace engineer, but no one could keep him from the joy of turning over formulas and equations in his mind. Like Einstein, he wanted to know the thoughts of God.

Rami was an even less devout Muslim than his father, but he believed in God, and if that God ever actively exerted His will in His creation, then He had done so on the day that Kade had told him about his plans to start a company to go into space. Was Kade a new sort of prophet? Rami couldn’t say, but he had a sense that the hand of God was on the man. His indefatigable drive, his ability to inspire others, and his string of staggeringly impressive business successes all spoke to the fact. It occurred to Rami, sitting there on his childhood bed, that he had fallen in with a sort of Jihadi after all.

He got up, used the toilet, brushed his teeth and took a shower. When he’d dried off and put on clean clothes, he checked his screen: there were seven missed calls and three voicemails, all from Kade.

Seeing that his mother was still asleep on the couch, he made a pot of coffee and then listened to the voicemails. Rami was still too sleepy to pick up all the details, but he understood that Kade needed him to do something to get around the wealth tax that had just passed in the United States. Rami called Kade back, but his call went to voicemail: it was the middle of the night in Utanau.

“Kade. Rami. Sure, whatever you need. Things are… a little weird here, so I hope it can wait ‘til I get back. I’m leaving tomorrow.” He ended the call and then poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat down at the kitchen table, listening to his mother snoring softly in the next room, and wondered vaguely what he had agreed to.

Chapter Twenty-three

2027

Rami signed the papers the day he returned from Cairo. Kade got the sense that Rami hadn’t been fully aware of what he’d agreed to, but he didn’t seem particularly fazed by the idea of suddenly being nearly a half-billion dollars richer. Kade sold him the stock for one dollar. The dollar had gained significantly in value thanks to the sudden demand for cash to pay taxes, but even so, the trade was perhaps the best deal anyone had gotten in the history of stock purchases.

In the years that followed, Kade sometimes joked that Rami had been playing a long con on him, pretending to be uninterested in money but somehow knowing all along that Kade would eventually be forced to give him a big chunk of his fortune. Rami didn’t find it funny, which only encouraged Kade.

Kade had never told anyone exactly how he had met Rami, but it was doubtful anyone would have believed it anyway. For all anyone knew, Rami was the most strait-laced employee at Bitizen. Unfailingly honest (even when a lie might have been a more tactful choice) and hard-working, Rami attended a small English-speaking Mosque near Bitizen’s headquarters. Rami never told Kade whether he really had been the artist known as McHeadroom, but Kade thought it highly unlikely: Rami preferred more cerebral pursuits, and to the extent that he ever expressed a political view, he seemed rather conservative. It was odd, though, that McHeadroom stopped producing work only a few weeks before Kade and Rami moved to Utanau.

The wealth tax was a disaster. Thanks to the stock crash that followed its passage, the total amount of wealth subject to the tax shrank by nearly a third before the tax was even assessed. Of those who were still wealthy enough to get hit by the tax, nearly half moved out of the United States and/or renounced their citizenship. Another quarter found a way to avoid most or all of the tax by selling assets and hiding the proceeds overseas. The rest paid the full tax, but many of them were forced to take extreme measures to come up with the necessary cash. Hiring freezes were implemented and planned salary increases were rescinded. Purchases of equipment, inventory and real estate were delayed or canceled. Construction projects were abandoned. Hundreds of businesses simply disappeared, their assets sold off for cash, and thousands more went bankrupt as economic activity dropped off. The economy was plunged into recession. The cost of unemployment benefits alone was greater than the total revenue generated by the wealth tax.

The only good news, from the federal government’s perspective, was the huge gain in the value of the dollar. The dollar’s rally, however, made American exports more expensive, leading to another round of business failures. It also increased the size of the federal debt in real terms, so that even after all the revenue from the first year of the tax had been collected, the debt remained about where it was.

As with any crisis, there were those who stubbornly refused to learn anything. The hard left insisted the plan had failed only because of the “greed” of the super-rich. What was needed, they suggested, was an international wealth tax that would leave the wealthy with no place to hide. There would still be “short-term pain,” of course, but the economy would adapt and everyone would be better off thanks to the additional social welfare programs governments could enact.

There was, however, little support for such an idea in Congress. The wealth tax had passed by a slim margin, and Congresspersons representing districts facing huge job losses were rethinking their support for it. A bill was floated that aimed to “reform” the law, and witnesses were called to testify about the problems it had caused. Lowell made sure that Kade was on the list.

Kade spent a week in Washington, D.C., most of which was spent either working in his hotel room or listening to the testimony of other witnesses. The testimony was predictable, alternating between emotional diatribes denouncing the greed of the mega-rich and accounts of the real-world damage the efforts to punish them had caused. Kade’s testimony was brief, as it didn’t advance either side’s agenda very much. The only “damage” the law had done, other than forcing him to trust Rami with nearly half a billion dollars, was a six-month delay in a planned expansion of Bitizen—and since most of the jobs that been put on hold were outside the United States, Congress didn’t much care about them. Kade would have liked to explain that it was the U.S. government’s heavy-handed tactics that had forced him to move his company to Utanau in the first place, but Lowell cautioned him against “getting political,” which Kade found darkly amusing. Kade suspected his actual role at the hearings was to be a young, non-white face among those opposed to the law. He didn’t mind; Kade had only lobbied to be a witness so that he could make some connections with powerful people in Washington who might be able to help him later.

In this endeavor, however, he had little success. He had no feel for the subtleties of politics. Lowell, despite his sometimes grating personality, was much better at this stuff. The moment the cameras were off, all the Congressmen were swarmed by staff who hurried them to areas of the Capitol that were off-limits to Kade. It was an odd sensation, being simultaneously one of the “super-rich” who had been directly targeted by the law under consideration and also a complete nobody. Even his efforts to schmooze with Congressional staff were rebuffed. Few of them even knew who he was, and as soon as it became clear that Kade wasn’t interested in donating to any of their respective bosses’ campaigns, they remembered a pressing matter that required their attention.

Even his one apparent success turned out to be a misunderstanding. After the last day of testimony, he had approached a young blond woman who was a staffer to one of the Congressmen opposed to the wealth tax. The Congressman, Shawn Merwin, whose Alabama district was home to a large aerospace company, was known to be a strong advocate for space exploration. Over the past few years he had fought a long and ultimately futile battle to keep Congress from cutting NASA’s funding. Kade had hoped to get a meeting with the Congressman to discuss his plans for Ad Astra. He might even have agreed to donate to the Congressman’s campaign once he had some cash to spare, but Bitizen had been so tight on cash even before the passage of the wealth tax that Kade hadn’t even taken a salary for six months.

Rather than scheduling a meeting with the Congressman, Kade somehow managed to arrange a dinner date with the young staffer, whose name was Christy Prince. It only occurred to him when he was in the car back to his hotel that he had given Christy the impression that he had romantic intentions toward her. He replayed their conversation in his head several more times, and by the time he reached the hotel, he had arrived at the conclusion that Christy had manipulated him into asking her out.

She was pretty, there was no denying that, and Kade wasn’t above engaging in some extracurricular activities while in D.C. On Utanau he had a policy of not dating any of the foreign women who had come over on the visa program, which had limited him to the local girls, who were nice enough but somewhat provincial in their outlook. If he hadn’t been so fixated on his failure to make any meaningful political contacts during his time in D.C., he might have asked Christy out intentionally. Maybe she knew that, or maybe she had found his apparent lack of interest attractive. Either way, he was supposed to meet her at a pizza place down the street from the Capitol in an hour.

He had just enough time to take a shower, change, and respond to a few emails before he headed over to the restaurant. Christy was there waiting for him. He hardly recognized her; rather than the bland tan suit she had worn at the Capitol, she had on a sheer blue cotton dress that brought out her blue eyes and highlighted some other parts as well. She was also young: he had taken her for twenty-five, but now he wasn’t sure she was even of legal drinking age. She waved to him and he sat down across the little table from her. She was drinking a soda.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to show,” she said.

“Do you get stood up a lot?”

“I don’t usually have to twist a man’s arm so hard.”

“Sorry, I was, uh, distracted. You look fantastic.”

“Thank you. I take it you were distracted by something business-related and not by, like, being gay.”

Kade chuckled. “It’s just this town. I don’t understand how it works.”

“My understanding is that it mostly doesn’t. If you come here trying to get something done, you’re in for a world of disappointment.”

“Yes, I had noticed how much effort you people put into keeping any work from being done.”

“Easy with the ‘you people’ stuff. Congressman Merwin does what he can.”

“He’s one of the better ones, from what I can tell, but they all have their special projects. Every politician assumes he knows better how to spend people’s money than the people themselves.”

“We do have to fund the government somehow.”

“Do we? I wouldn’t mind not funding it for a few years, just to see how much we can get done.”

“I can’t give you that, but I can tell you the wealth tax is not long for this world.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the hearings are just for show. I overheard Congressman Merwin saying they’ve got the votes to repeal it, or at least scale it back significantly.”

“Thank God.”

Christy raised an eyebrow. “I have to admit, though, as someone who can barely afford a studio apartment in this town, that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for billionaires who have to sell some stock to pay their fair share.”

“What is my fair share?” Kade asked.

“I haven’t reviewed your portfolio,” Christy replied.

“And yet you know that I’m not paying my fair share.”

“You use a lot more resources than the typical person. It stands to reason—”

“I contribute more than the typical person,” Kade said, no longer able to hide his irritation.

“Come on, Kade. You wrote some software. It’s not like you solved world hunger.”

“I wrote software that is used by millions of people, improving their lives in a small but significant way.”

“It’s also used by terrorists and criminals.”

“I would argue that my work has been a net good, for both the United States and for humanity. You are free to disagree. But if you are going to claim I’m not paying my ‘fair share,’ I want to see the breakdown.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You’re saying that I’m in the red. That despite the insane amount I pay in taxes every year, I’m in arrears. I’m taking more than I’m giving. Fine. Show me the spreadsheets. I want to see the numbers. Tell me the exact amount that I owe as of this moment and I will write the government a check.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“No, of course not,” Kade said, now red-faced with anger. “Somehow no matter how much I’ve forked over, the bill never quite gets paid, does it? I’m always just a little behind, always not quite paying my ‘fair share.’ I could give my entire fortune away today and start a new business tomorrow, and somehow I’d still owe the government half of the first dollar I make. What bothers me the most isn’t the theft; it’s the dishonesty. If you want my money to pay for stuff, just say so. Don’t hide behind this crap about me paying my ‘fair share.’”

“Okay,” Christy said. “I want your money to pay for stuff. Mostly shoes.”

Kade laughed, suddenly embarrassed. He’d been close to shouting, and people at other tables were watching. “Me too,” he said. “Not the shoes part.”

“You don’t seem like the sort of guy who is into stuff.”

He shrugged. “Depends on the stuff.”

“What sort of stuff are you interested in?”

“You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

Kade nodded. “Rockets. Space colonies. Cities on Mars. That sort of stuff.”

“Ah, another tech entrepreneur with his head in the clouds. Just like that guy who was killed when his self-driving car went off the road.”

“Bitizen is a means to an end,” Kade said. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s important in its own way. But my purpose in founding Bitizen was to fund my space exploration company, Ad Astra.”

“To the stars,” Christy said. “I like it. You plan to start Ad Astra on that island?”

“No. Probably Florida. I hope to start it within five years.”

“Just after I graduate.”

“Please tell me you’re in college.”

Christy laughed. “Georgetown. I started last fall. Probably a waste of time, but my parents are paying for it, so what the hell. My dad pulled some strings to get me a job on Congressman Merwin’s staff, so I’m only taking two classes this semester.”

“You plan to go into politics?”

Christy shrugged. “As of today, I’m a psychology major. Most people aren’t as good at planning their lives out as you are.”

“It helps to have an ambitious goal. Everything I do is in service of that goal.”

“Everything?”

“Well, I do make some time for recreation. It keeps the mind sharp.”

“If you really plan to start a space exploration company in Florida within five years, you’re probably going to have to make a few more trips to D.C.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“It’s not all bad. This place has pretty good pizza, for one thing. And there are other forms of recreation.”

“Are there?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And I suppose you’d be willing to show me some of them?”

“I might. In the interest of keeping your mind sharp.”

“Of course.”

“To be clear: I’m talking about miniature golf.”

“Yeah, I figured. What are you, like twelve?”

“I’m nineteen, smartass.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to have you home by bedtime.”

Chapter Twenty-four

2036

Speaker of the House Alonso Corcoran, a squat, balding, barrel-shaped man of African descent, sat in a plush chair in the Oval Office, paging absently through a sixty-page report titled “Recommendations Regarding the Fiscal and Economic Aspects of the Kapur Plan” while the President watched him patiently from across the desk. The plan, which had been hurriedly put together by the Treasury Department, contained the distilled wisdom of fourteen different economists regarding every aspect of Kade Kapur’s plan to create a new public/private venture to act as an umbrella corporation for asteroid mining and the settlement of space. Every aspect, that is, except for the actual capture of Maimonides. The report on that part of the endeavor, which had been produced by NASA, was more conclusive in its findings: given Ad Astra’s success with 2024 LF, there was reason to believe the company could, with adequate resources, duplicate the feat with a much larger asteroid. Without access to Ad Astra’s proprietary algorithm, called COPPA, it was impossible for NASA to estimate the chances of success with a high degree of certainty, but having witnessed the precision with which Ad Astra had guided 2024 LF, the scientists and engineers who had signed off on the report were inclined to take Kade’s assurance at face value.

The report Alonso Corcoran held was another matter. As the report acknowledged, no one had ever done anything quite like what Kade was proposing, and the nearest historical analogs were not encouraging. The report also noted, however, that the failures of such enterprises as the British South Sea Company and the French Mississippi Scheme were largely due to rampant speculation and lack of oversight. There was no reason, in principle, that such a scheme couldn’t work.

Furthermore, the risks had to be balanced against the very real possibility of a default. Kade was fundamentally correct: the federal government was borrowing at an unsustainable rate. Within the next few years, it was either going to have to default on some of its bonds or print so much money that hyperinflation was a near-certainty. Either option would be disastrous for the United States and for the global economy.

In the end, the Treasury report was inconclusive, stating that the plan’s success depended primarily on the political will to enact it and see it through. The Treasury had, in other words, punted.

“Science was never my strong subject,” said Alonso Corcoran at last.

“I don’t need your scientific opinion, Alonso,” President Blankenship said. “I need to know whether I can count on your support.” The President had come to respect the Speaker of the House since coming to Washington two years earlier. She still wasn’t sure if his slightly disheveled appearance and folksy manner were genuine or a calculated façade, but she had learned there was a sharp mind underneath it.

“You’re convinced of the soundness of the plan?” asked Alonso.

“I’m convinced that our country is on the brink of insolvency, and that there aren’t any good options,” Blankenship replied. “This would at least give us a chance.”

“You’ve got the votes in the Senate?”

“Phillipa says she can deliver them.”

“That must have cost you.”

“I agreed not to veto the infrastructure bill.”

“Really? Even I had some qualms about that one. Another five trillion in spending when we’re already nearing a crisis point with the debt….”

“Don’t get me started. Only a quarter of that spending is even infrastructure-related. But it was the only way to get enough Senate Democrats on board to pass the HFM bill.”

“Well, Fliss and the other hard lefties will be happy to hear they can deliver on the infrastructure bill.”

“Happy enough to vote for the Kapur plan?”

“It’s going to be tough to sell them on anything with Kade Kapur’s name on it.”

“We can minimize Kade’s public involvement. I would think the lefties would be happy. We’re making it possible for regular working people to have a real stake in space exploration.”

“It’s not that simple. You know guys like Fliss. If every American was a billionaire, he’d complain that there are too many trillionaires. He’s just playing on people’s envy.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

Alonso shrugged. “I’m an old school liberal. I’m all for making billionaires pay their fair share, but because I still think government can be a force for good in people’s lives. I don’t want to punish people just for having more money than me.”

“But Fliss does.”

“Fliss and the other radicals, yeah.”

“What would it take to get them on board?”

“Sounds like you’re assuming I’m on board.”

“Aren’t you?”

Alonso grinned. “Sure. Hitching our economy to an asteroid sounds a little crazy to me, but if the NASA guys say the science checks out, then I’d be willing to support it, as long as there’s proper oversight.”

“You have a plan to handle Fliss and the others?”

“I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“Tell me.”

Alonso regarded her for a moment, performing some political calculus in his head. Then he spoke: “Like I said, Fliss and his kind are all about envy. They want to be seen punishing the billionaire class. So here’s my thought: after they capture this bigger asteroid, Maimonides, why not give the radicals what they really want?”

President Blankenship’s brow furrowed. “We’re already nationalizing 2024 LF as part of Kapur’s plan.”

“Not just 2024 LF. We nationalize everything. Maimonides, Larry Frank, even Ad Astra.”

“You want to double-cross the guy who saved the country?”

“Kade Kapur runs a company that built some spaceships. We’re the ones saving the country.”

“I’m not sure the world will see it that way,” Blankenship said.

“We’ve got… what? Six years to shape the narrative? If both parties are on the same page, and we leverage our contacts in the media, it’ll be no great challenge to paint Kade Kapur as a villain. Greedy billionaire making obscene profits off an endeavor that was intended to democratize space, blah blah blah.”

“We can control the big news organizations, but it’s harder to shut down cranks and crackpots on social media.”

“Not if we make good use of the Federal Information Agency.” The FIA was the bureaucracy that had sprung up to enforce the Federal Misinformation Act of 2022. Originally called the Federal Information Bureau, the organization’s name was quickly changed due to its unfortunate acronym.

“And get bogged down in First Amendment lawsuits?”

“Most of the big social media companies will fall in line rather than risk the fines.”

“What about the decentralized platforms?” asked the President.

“Handle it the same way we did the Federal Reserve scandal in ’32. Track down a few hundred high profile users and charge them with FMA violations. Joe Stellaris User will gladly abide by a federal gag order rather than go bankrupt fighting federal charges for the next five years.”

“I didn’t expect anything so devious from you, Alonso.”

“I play hardball when I need to. You read that report. Success is a matter of political will. If we do this, we do it all the way. If demonizing Kade Kapur is the only way this can work, that’s what we’ll do.”

“There’s another problem. Kade intimated that he has security measures in place that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to seize Ad Astra.”

“What kind of measures?”

“You have to understand that most of the value of the company is in intellectual property, particularly the algorithm they use to predict the path an asteroid will take, COPPA. Destroying something like that is as easy as wiping a hard drive.”

“True, but stealing it is as easy as copying files to a flash drive.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we’ve got six years to get a mole into Ad Astra. It’s a small company that’s going to be growing very quickly. That means a lot of opportunity for advancement. If we can get someone inside now, we should be able to get them into a position where they can get their hands on COPPA and anything else we need within six years.”

The President leaned back in her chair, her eyes still fixed on the Speaker. “Between you and me, the idea of getting someone inside Ad Astra had occurred to me.”

“You’ve got someone inside already?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got people working on it. This isn’t like infiltrating a terrorist cell. We’re going to need to recruit someone.”

“The goal would be to get our hands on COPPA?”

“Or to learn enough about their security to circumvent it.”

Alonso Corcoran nodded. “Good.”

“You think Fliss and company will go along with our plan if we promise Republican support for the eventual nationalization of Ad Astra?”

“Between the infrastructure bill and this? Probably. Six years is a long time for a freshman Congressperson, but I think I can convince Fliss it’s better for his political prospects if he’s got a high-profile nemesis. If we were to take over Ad Astra now, Fliss would lose his raison d’être.”

President Blankenship nodded. “Good thinking. Let Fliss lead the charge against Kapur. Then, when we finally take over Ad Astra, Fliss gets to play the hero.”

“You’d be setting him up for a Presidential run.”

“If this plan works, I think my party will be in a pretty good spot. I’ll worry about Fliss’s Presidential ambitions then. And if we fail, well, Fliss is welcome to try to govern what’s left of the country.”

“Just to make sure we’re on the same page, Madam President,” Alonso said, “there’s a chance our plan to get our hands on COPPA will fail. The mole might be unable to get access to COPPA, or Kapur’s people might out him before he has the chance. But even if that happens….”

“You want to go ahead with nationalizing Ad Astra.”

“We have to.”

“Even though it will be essentially worthless without COPPA and the rest of Kapur’s IP.”

“For Fliss and the others, it’s not about retaining value; it’s about making an example of Kade Kapur. I have to be able to tell Fliss that one way or another, Kade Kapur is going down.”

“You mean financially ruined.”

“At a minimum. An arrest for treason would seal the deal for certain.”

“Treason is going to be a tough sell, but we can probably get a lesser charge to stick. Between Kapur’s abetting of terrorists with Stellaris and whatever the mole uncovers, I’m sure we can get him on something. No one gets that rich without committing a few felonies.”

Alonso nodded. “With respect, Madam President, I’m concerned that your personal feelings for Kapur might get in the way.”

“I’ve never made any secret of my admiration for Kade Kapur. He’s the son of an immigrant who built a fortune by working hard and filling a need in the marketplace. But America is bigger than any one man. I swore an oath to defend this country. If Kade Kapur has to be sacrificed so that America can survive, I will not hesitate to use the full force of the federal government against him.”

Chapter Twenty-five

2036

“Kade, are you out of your mind?” Rami, as usual, was not shy about expressing his unadulterated opinion.

Kade grinned, looking around the conference table at the faces of the eight members of Ad Astra’s asteroid redirect team. Judging by the puzzled and vaguely horrified expressions, Rami was not the only one questioning his sanity. It was all right; it certainly wasn’t the first time Kade had been in a room with people who thought he was crazy. And yet, here he was, two months shy of his thirty-fifth birthday and at the helm of a company that had successfully moved an asteroid into orbit.

Seven years after founding the company that was to become Bitizen, Kade Kapur moved back to the United States. Rami Essak and several other key Bitizen employees came with him. Originally Kade had planned to keep Bitizen’s U.S. office in California, but the state had become so hostile to business that he ended up moving the entire operation to Cape Coral, Florida. While California remained home to many big tech companies (mostly due to inertia, as well as sweetheart deals that allowed these companies to get around the state’s onerous taxes and regulations), the tech industry as a whole was steadily migrating to other states—and, increasingly, other countries. Comparisons were frequently made in the media between Silicon Valley in the 2020s and Detroit in the 1980s.

The founding of Ad Astra in 2028 had been almost anticlimactic: the company was at first just a block of cubicles on one floor of the Utanau building that housed Bitizen. Kade had, of course, been laying the groundwork for Ad Astra for several years. He had made several trips from Utanau to Florida and scores of trips to Washington, D.C. The D.C. jaunts became longer and more frequent as the project became more and more real—and as Kade’s relationship with Christy became more serious. Christy had flown to Utanau to marry him just after she graduated, and had stayed there with him until he moved back to the U.S.

Kade had never been a particularly romantic person. More precisely, his romantic sentiments were directed more toward space than toward his fellow humans, male or female. Kade’s happily ever after was a sustainable community on Mars. He understood in principle that this was not how most human beings, particularly women, thought. His ability to mimic the behavior of ordinary people, however, served him well. He found that if he spoke to (and about) people as if they factored as large in his thinking as the future of humanity in space, they reacted positively.

As a teenager he had considered the possibility that he was a sociopath, but he eventually rejected the idea. He did care about people, and not only in vague, broad terms. He cared about his parents. He had cared about Valerie Muñoz. He cared about Christy. Hell, he even cared about Rami. If someone he knew was in trouble, he would drop everything to help them. But on a daily basis, he just didn’t think about them that much, except as they related to his goal. Did that make him a little crazy?

“Fair question,” he said. “But rather broad in scope. Maybe we should break down the specifics of my purported psychosis.”

“First,” said Rami, barely waiting for Kade to finish his sentence, “Maimonides is four orders of magnitude larger than Larry Frank. We haven’t tested our impactors on anything remotely close to that size.”

“The physics is the same,” Kade said. “We just need to—”

Rami went on, ignoring the interruption: “The composition is completely different, and the ratio of mass to surface area is exponentially greater.”

“Maimonides is metallic,” Kade said. “If anything, it’s more solid than Larry Frank, meaning a lower chance of fragmentation. And the surface area thing works in our favor, because the relative effect of solar radiation—”

“The cost will be astronomical,” said A.J. Calvo, a tall, lean man was the representative from finance. “The Larry Frank mission almost broke us. How the hell are we going to—”

“Funding will come from the shell corporation, HFM.”

“When?” asked Myra Bostwick, the astrophysicist. A stocky, no-nonsense brunette, Myra had been with Ad Astra almost since the beginning. “If you’re serious about this, we need to start working on it yesterday. Do we have the cash on hand to—”

A.J. shook his head decisively.

“I’m looking into some short-term loan options to allow us to ramp up quickly while we wait for the High Frontier IPO,” said Kade. “I’m sure Davis Christopher is good for a hundred million or so, and if not, I can sell more Bitizen stock.”

“And lose our majority,” Rami muttered. Kade and Rami together still owned just a sliver over fifty percent of the company Kade had founded.

“My point is,” Kade replied, “I’ll do whatever it takes. Okay, let’s cut to the chase. All the objections I’m hearing boil down to ‘this is way bigger than anything we’ve done before.’ Agreed. But the difference is quantitative, not qualitative. We’ve solved this problem. The funding will come. We can ramp up production of impactors. If we need more launch vehicles, we can go to Cerulean or the Russians. Does anybody have an objection that isn’t simply a problem of funding or scale?”

The room was silent for a few seconds. Then Rami spoke, his voice low and even: “There is the possibility of wiping out all life on Earth.”

No one had anything to add to this. All eyes turned to Kade.

“Yes,” said Kade. “There is a chance an asteroid will destroy the world as we know it. However, that chance has always existed, and this mission will help us—”

“Bullshit,” Rami said quietly, staring at the table in front of him.

“Care to elaborate?” Kade asked.

Rami shrugged. “What you are saying is USDA-grade bullshit. You are talking about dramatically increasing the odds of a major impact event and you know it.”

“Where ‘dramatically’ means a change from one in a billion to one in a million.”

“Kade, we don’t know that,” said Myra Bostwick. “There are way too many variables.”

“Agreed,” said Kade. “Let’s back up. To do this, we have to hit Maimonides with a first round of impactors at least one cycle in advance, right?”

“That’s right,” said Myra. “At least three batteries of impactors, meaning three separate launches. It’s the only way to alter its trajectory enough to make an Earth intercept feasible. Then we hit it again just before its second pass, probably with three more batteries. And then a final battery of orbital impactors to complete the capture.”

“What are the odds Maimonides will hit Earth on its first pass after that initial round of impactors?”

Myra threw her hands in the air. “Very low,” she said. “Even if we get the impactors launched in time to accelerate to optimal velocity and score a direct hit with every single one, the odds are high that we’ll under-correct.”

“Give me a number, Myra. Even if it’s a SWAG.” This was tech-speak for “scientific wild-assed guess.”

“I couldn’t say.”

“One in a million?”

“Probably lower, but that’s in the ballpark.”

“Given the possibility that humanity will be eradicated by nuclear war or some other cataclysmic threat if we don’t get off this planet,” Kade asked, “are we agreed that one in a million is an acceptable risk?”

There were no objections. None of them would be here if they didn’t believe in the urgency of colonizing the solar system. After a moment, though, Rami said, “That isn’t the question, though. The question is: what are the odds of Maimonides striking Earth during any of its future passes? And while we can’t know the exact probability, we know the chances are significantly greater than one in a million.”

“I disagree,” Kade said. “We’re continually making improvements to COPPA. By the time Maimonides nears Earth again, we’ll have a very good idea of how close it will come to Earth. The odds are slim that it will hit, but if that looks like a possibility, we can redirect it. As long as we launch the impactors far enough in advance, it will only take a minimal correction in velocity, and of course we’ll err on the side of caution.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions, Kade,” Rami said.

“I’m assuming physics will continue to work as it has in the past.”

“You’re assuming that Ad Astra will remain solvent,” said Lana Singer, who was in charge of logistics. “You’re assuming a hot war with China doesn’t break out, throwing our supply chain into chaos and grounding our rockets.”

“For that matter,” Myra added, “you’re assuming we’ll continue to improve COPPA at the same rate as we have in the past. We keep pushing uncertainty back, but at some point I suspect we’re going to hit a hard limit.”

“And if we do,” said Kade, “we’ll deal with it. As I say, we’ll err on the side of caution.”

“What’s an acceptable level of risk?” asked Myra. “Suppose we calculate that if we go ahead with phase two of the redirect, there’s a one in a thousand chance that Maimonides will impact. Do we proceed, or do we throw all our spare impactors at it to increase the odds of it missing?”

Kade waved his hand, dismissing the hypothetical, but Rami wouldn’t let him escape so easily. “It’s a good question,” he said. “I think we deserve an answer.”

Kade regarded Rami. He considered Rami a friend—perhaps his best friend—but the man’s scruples and pathological honesty were a double-edged sword. Kade couldn’t get away with bullshitting this group. “In my thinking,” Kade said after some time, “one in a thousand is acceptable odds. I wouldn’t be comfortable with much more risk than that.”

The room was dead quiet for several seconds. Then Mike Starr, a soft-spoken young man who was the lead programmer for the impactors, spoke: “Who are you to make that determination?”

Kade shrugged. “I’m the guy who is going to get humanity to the other planets.”

“Along with the rest of us,” said Myra.

“Sure, if you want to be a part of it.”

“God, you’re a smug asshole,” Lana said.

Kade grinned. “That’s old business. We’re on new business.”

The silence was punctuated by nervous chuckles.

“And if one of us has a problem with your one-in-a-thousand gambit?” Rami asked.

Kade considered the question. He hadn’t intended to draw a line in the sand, but Rami was forcing the issue. “I highly doubt it will come to that,” Kade said. “But if it does, and if you have a problem with me pulling the trigger, I’d rather know now.”

“To be clear,” said Lana, “We’re talking about making a unilateral decision about the potential destruction of humanity. Because if Maimonides hits Earth, we’re done for. We’re talking about a direct hit from a chunk of metal far bigger than the comet that took out the dinosaurs. What you’re saying is that if there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance of that happening, we’re going to plow ahead, damn the consequences. Without asking the United Nations or the President or the Pope or anyone.”

“That’s right,” said Kade. “Nobody knows the situation better, and nobody has a better understanding of the risks we face if we don’t do it. I don’t think there’s anything noble in handing our responsibility off to the U.N. or the Dalai Lama or whoever else. Somebody’s got to make the decision, and it may as well be us.”

“You mean you,” said Rami.

“If it comes down to it,” Kade said. “I’m trying to be as transparent about my intentions as I can, and I’m telling you that if there’s a one in a thousand chance of that thing hitting Earth, we’re going for it. Oh, and one more thing: not a word of any of this gets out. No matter what our internal data says, as far as the public is concerned, the odds of Maimonides hitting Earth are so close to zero it’s not even worth talking about.”

The room was silent again for some time.

“Well,” said Mike, putting his hands flat on the table in front of him, “I’m not comfortable with this.” He pushed his chair back and sat up, looking a little shaky. His face had gone pale. “Kade, I will have my resignation letter to you by the end of the day.” He cast his eyes around the room. “Everyone….” He seemed to want to say something more, but then he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Kade’s heart sank. Mike Starr was one of the few members of the team other than Rami who had come over from Bitizen. He was a brilliant programmer and possibly the hardest working man at Ad Astra. Kade wasn’t surprised his plan had met some resistance, but he hadn’t expected it to come from Mike, of all people. He would have bet on Myra Bostwick, who had made it clear from the beginning that she thought trying to capture an asteroid the size of Maimonides was a bad idea. But Myra’s resistance now seemed almost perfunctory.

Kade told himself that things could be worse: Myra would have been harder to replace than Mike. Still, Mike’s sudden stand on principle unnerved him. It wasn’t just that Mike was a key employee, and well-liked by everyone at Ad Astra. Kade prided himself on picking the best people and knowing what made them tick. How had he been so wrong about Mike? And if he’d missed the signs that Mike was going to balk at their mission, what else had he missed?

Kade put the question aside. Right now he had a room full of people to reassure. The simple fact was that if Mike had a problem with taking a small risk to ensure the future of humanity, he was in the wrong place. “All right,” Kade said. “If there are no other objections, let’s talk about our next steps.”

Chapter Twenty-six

2036

Valerie managed to get Sofia tucked into bed a few minutes before the Tonight Show came on. Rick was passed out, as usual. Valerie was recording the program anyway, but she wanted to watch it live, with the rest of the world. When Kade walked onto the stage, the studio audience erupted in cheers. Valerie, sitting up in bed next to her snoring husband, suppressed a squeal. Kade had definitely aged since his first appearance on FNN, but he was more handsome than ever.

Kade strode confidently across the stage to the host’s desk. Justin Foley shook Kade’s hand and said something to him that was lost in the hooting and clamor of the audience. Justin Foley, a handsome young alumnus of the now-canceled Saturday Night Live, had only been the host of the Tonight Show for two years. Valerie didn’t think he was particularly funny, but he was a decent interviewer. Kade took a seat on the couch next to the previous guest, a rapper Valerie had never heard of. Justin sat behind the desk and held up his hands until the crowd quieted down.

“Kade Kapur,” Justin said. “It’s hard to believe this is your first time on the program.”

Kade smiled and held up his hands. “I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” said Justin, picking up a stack of cards from his desk. “It says here that you’re…” Justin squinted as if having trouble reading the card. “…planning to destroy the world.”

The audience erupted in laughter.

“God willing,” said Kade, his grin widening.

“That’s the plan,” said Justin.

“Yeah, you know how it is. You try to hit the Earth with a giant asteroid, but sometimes things go terribly wrong.”

More laughter. Valerie stifled a giggle.

“Okay, seriously. You’re actually moving a giant asteroid into orbit around Earth?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve done this once, of course. That was amazing.”

Muted cheers came from the audience.

“Thank you,” said Kade. “You, especially, ma’am. I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

“I love you, Kade!” came a woman’s voice, followed by nervous giggles from the audience.

“All right, pipe down,” Justin chided. “The man is married. You are married, right?”

“I am. It will be seven years next August.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, so you move an asteroid into orbit and then you think, what should I do next? And in your case the answer was….”

“Move a much bigger asteroid into orbit.”

“Somebody told me the number this morning, and I couldn’t believe it. This one is twenty thousand times bigger than the first one.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you crazy?”

Scattered laughter from the crowd.

“I have certainly been accused of that in the past. Look, I believe the future of humanity is in space. But to live in space, we need two things: water and steel. Moving water into orbit was what the Larry Frank mission was about.”

“Wait, the what?”

Kade laughed. “Sorry, that’s what we call it at Ad Astra. 2024 LF. Larry Frank.”

“And what’s the new one called?”

“Maimonides.”

“Mammon-what?” said the rapper, leaning toward Kade.

“Maimonides,” Kade said again, laughing.

“Think you can work that into a song, Bone Saw?”

Bone Saw shook his head. “I cain’t even pronounce that shit.”

“Why doesn’t the new one get a fun name?” asked Justin, turning back to Kade.

“I’m not sure. I guess we just haven’t come up with one yet.”

“All right. So this new one is twenty thousand times the size of the last one. It’s basically like a small planet.”

“Very small,” Kade said. “In fact, we think asteroids like Maimonides are pieces of the core of destroyed planets.”

“Left over from the last time somebody tried this, you mean,” Justin said.

The audience laughed again, but there was still an undercurrent of nervousness.

“Maybe,” said Kade with a smile, still unruffled.

“Seriously, though, this is a huge deal. And they’re telling me the odds of this actually hitting Earth are very low.”

“Extremely low,” said Kade. “We’ve got an incredibly precise system for slowing the asteroid just the right amount to make it fall into orbit around Earth. Doing this actually makes us safer, because there are a lot of these big rocks out there, and there might be others on their way here. Once we move Maimonides, we’ll be prepared to do it again if we ever have to.”

“And you’re actually doing this as a joint venture with the U.S. government.”

“That’s right. It’s unprecedented.”

“How does it feel to have the President of the United States thank you in a nationwide address?”

“I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty amazing,” said Kade. “We’ve been working on this for a while, and we’ve got the support of the leaders of both parties in Congress.”

“That’s an accomplishment in itself.”

“Absolutely,” said Kade.

“So how did this even happen? Did you just call up the President one day and say you want to move a gigantic asteroid into orbit?”

“Honestly, all the credit goes to President Blankenship. She saw what we did with 2024 LF, and she saw the potential for a much more ambitious mission.”

“The new company is going to be called High Frontier Mining. Why is that?”

“Because space really is a new frontier. And it’s a new frontier that belongs to all of us. You know, I’m a little old-fashioned. I’m of the school that believes this country was forged on the frontier. We developed an independent, can-do spirit because of the wildness of the frontier, and I think that with the disappearance of the frontier, we lost something. The President is looking to get that spirit back. High Frontier Mining is the first step in that process. In the same way that the gold rush brought thousands of people to California, mining for iron, platinum and iridium is going to bring people to space. We’ve got plans to build settlements inside the asteroid. In ten years, we hope to have over a thousand people living there. And from there, we’ll move out to the rest of the solar system.”

“Chills, man,” Justin said. “I seriously have chills. I used to dream about this stuff when I was a kid.”

“Me too.”

“And now it’s happening.”

“It really is.”

“You have to come up with a better name for this thing, though.”

More laughter from the audience.

“What did you call it, Bone Saw? Mammon?”

Bone Saw nodded, smirking at the audience. “Sumpin’ like ‘at, yeah.”

“Can you freestyle something on that for us?” Justin asked.

The crowd hooted and cheered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bone Saw said. “Check it. Have ’n’ haven’ts out here demandin’, politicians scammin’, we on the lam ‘n’ damned if we do, damned if we don’t, clamorin’ Mammon, Mammon, bringin’ nuthin’ but famine, it’s a sham and they jammin’ my signal, we broke and we stammerin’ but still they keep clamorin’ Mammon, Mammon, goddamn this madman—”

“And we’ll be right back with Bryce Fuentes, the star of the smash new show Dave’s Not Here!”

Valerie turned off the TV. Well, that had gone well—right up until the end. She’d seen that look on Kade’s face again, when DJ Bone Saw had glanced at him right as he said the word madman. Little Kade, in way over his head. Had anybody else seen it? Or was she the only one?

Kade wasn’t a madman. She knew that much. She would trust him with her life. Had trusted him with her life. When he had told her that day that he couldn’t walk her home anymore, she’d been crushed—and terrified. She thought he had abandoned her. But it wasn’t true: everything he had done had been to protect her. And he was still that person, risking everything to save others. Billions of people he didn’t even know.

She had followed Kade’s career closely since the FNN interview. It was certainly more interesting than her own career, which consisted of a string of dead-end jobs that she was, by virtue of her biology degree, ostensibly overqualified for. Rick’s career had undoubtedly had its interesting aspects, but he never talked about them. He didn’t talk about his two tours in the Congo, and he didn’t talk about his current job with the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD, chronically understaffed and riddled with corruption, was slowly losing a war for the city with the gangs, and Rick was able to pick up as much overtime as he wanted. The pay was good, but somehow they were still just getting by, and she rarely saw her husband anymore.

The ongoing crime wave left many urban areas hollowed out, and Los Angeles was one of the more egregious examples. In addition to making it nearly impossible to make a living, California’s legislature kept making it harder for law-abiding citizens to own guns. Valerie had never liked guns much; she’d never understood why America couldn’t be more like Europe. If Europeans didn’t need guns, why did Americans?

Like a lot of other people, she realized the answer to this question too late. The thing was, Los Angeles had gangs—a lot of them, with many thousands of members. Many of those members were just run-of-the-mill drug dealers or car thieves, but a good proportion of them were murderous sociopaths. Preventing decent people from owning guns didn’t magically transform Los Angeles into Copenhagen or Prague. It gradually turned it into a place where all the decent people either gave up their guns or left town, and all the murderous sociopaths no longer had anything to fear. They certainly didn’t fear the police, who had learned that confronting a gun-toting hoodlum was a good way to earn an official reprimand for “excessive force” and quite possibly a long nap in a pine box.

There were still nice areas, of course: there were the gated communities in Brentwood and Los Feliz, where the people who kept pushing for more gun control, more regulations and higher taxes lived behind concrete walls patrolled by armed security guards, and there were islands of relative calm and safety, like Pasadena. But Valerie would never have moved to their little house in East Los Angeles if her boyfriend wasn’t a trained killing machine. And now she was going to be alone, with a twelve-year-old daughter. Before Rick left, he had trained her to use a Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter. She still didn’t like guns, but she could use one if she had to.

Their Pasadena neighborhood had gotten noticeably worse since they moved in six years earlier. There was always trash in the streets, and people no longer seemed to care about keeping their houses looking nice. After several years of passing increasingly draconian laws against irrigation, the city had finally outlawed lawn sprinklers altogether in 2031, and many of her neighbors had just let their lawns be taken over by weeds. It was not uncommon to hear gunshots at night.

The bigger concern was her daily commute to Sofia’s private school in downtown Los Angeles. She worked part-time in the school office and sometimes substituted when a teacher was out sick, so she and Sofia traveled to the school and back daily. Valerie couldn’t afford a car of her own, so they took the bus or used one of the automated car services. They couldn’t really afford a car service either, but the buses were crowded and smelly, and Valerie was always worried they would be accosted during their walk to the bus stop. Twenty-two years later, and her biggest worry was still harassment from bullies on the way to school.

What a pathetic existence I lead, she thought. When was the last time I made a choice to positively affect my own future? Sofia was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but she was an accident. Valerie was like a bystander in her own life. The saddest part, though, was that even after all these years, she still pined for Kade Kapur. She watched every interview he did, read every article about him. To be fair, though, her interest was not entirely romantic: in a very real way, he embodied what was left of her hope in America. And she knew she wasn’t the only one. There were thousands, probably millions, like her. People who wanted to believe in Kade’s dream of a new frontier. People who hadn’t bought into the zero-sum thinking of bureaucrats and corrupt politicians. People who thought that America still had some good days left in her.

She ordered the lights off and lay down next to her snoring husband. This was not the life she had imagined for herself. She loved her daughter. She didn’t mind her job. And her husband… well, most of the time he was okay. He tended to be surly and withdrawn these days, but they still had fun sometimes, and he had never harmed her or Sofia.

Maybe it was pathetic, but she still had faith in Kade. It wasn’t much to hold onto, but it was something. She drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-seven

2036

To Kade’s consternation, the name Mammon stuck. It was like the whole world had been waiting for somebody to come up with a more palatable appellation than Maimonides, and a late-night TV talk show host and a guy named DJ Bone Saw had done it by accident. The clip was viewed hundreds of millions of times in the days after it aired, and within the week every talking head and internet personality was calling the asteroid Mammon.

Bone Saw’s improvised rhymes also seemed to tap into an undercurrent of cynicism: internet message boards and social media lit up with conspiracy theories about High Frontier Mining, Ad Astra, Stellaris and Bitizen. There wasn’t really that much to speculate about: as Kade had planned, virtually every detail of the project had been released to the general public. Both the financial prospectus and the technical documents had been posted online. It was no secret that Ad Astra would benefit from the deal, but it was almost impossible to deny that the main benefactor of the scheme would be the U.S. federal government.

There were, of course, doubts about how much of the benefits would trickle down from the government to the average citizen, but it was hard to argue with the economics of opening up a virtually infinite new frontier. The left-wingers were eager for increased revenue and a stronger dollar (which would allow them to borrow and spend even more), and the right-wingers liked the idea of rekindling the entrepreneurial spirit and reestablishing American dominance in space. Other world leaders, anxious to get in on the action (and having been aggressively lobbied by the President’s foreign policy staff before the plan was announced) talked up the project as well. There were outliers, of course: Russia’s President, Fyodor Zefirov, called the scheme “irresponsible and reeking of hubris,” and China issued a statement condemning it. Zefirov played up the risk of the asteroid striking Earth, but the Chinese seemed more concerned about what they called “currency manipulation.” Both cited the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited national claims to real estate in space.

The detractor who received the most attention, however, was a man who might have been expected to be one of its bigger fans: Davis Christopher. Kade and Davis had been friendly since Kade paid off the money Davis had loaned SSI, but they had not done any additional business together. Davis had been largely bullish about Kade’s endeavors, although to Kade’s knowledge he owned no stock in either Bitizen or Ad Astra. Kade was understandably appalled that Davis gave a series of interviews shortly after Kade’s Tonight Show appearance, decrying the HFM plan.

“I guess he’s not going to be loaning us any money,” Rami deadpanned, after the two had watched the latest interview on the wallscreen in Kade’s office.

“What the hell is his problem?” Kade asked. The interview, appearing on a daytime news program, had been less than five minutes long, but Davis had taken nearly the whole time to bash the Mammon scheme. There didn’t seem to be a single thing he liked about it. Even Zefirov’s criticisms seemed tempered in comparison.

“Is he selling short?” Rami asked.

“He doesn’t own any stock!” Kade exclaimed, exasperated. “Unless it’s through a holding company or subsidiary, but Davis isn’t usually so circumspect.”

“How much does it matter?” Rami asked.

“That one of the most respected voices in investing is telling the world we’re selling snake oil? It’s not great, Rami.”

“I get that. But can the damage be quantified?”

“No. There’s no real way to measure public confidence in something like this. I mean, it’s never been done before.”

“Davis disagrees.”

“That horseshit about the Mississippi scheme? Come on, Rami. They were parading guys with picks through the streets of Paris to shore up public support for a nonexistent gold-mining operation in Louisiana. We have an actual asteroid that we have solid scientific evidence is full of valuable minerals.”

“We don’t have anything yet.”

“You know what I mean. The plan is sound.”

“Well. The plan is not yet fully formed, and the results are far from certain.”

“It’s all logistics at this point. We’ve got three launches lined up, and we’re working on a lot more.”

Despite Kade’s spiel at the team meeting a few weeks earlier, the process of redirecting Mammon was going to be somewhat different than the process of moving Larry Frank into orbit. Larry Frank had required three rounds of impactors: one to move it onto a roughly circular orbit that intersected Earth’s, a second round to move it onto a path approximating its final orbit, and then a final round of orbital impactors to slow it just enough to cause it to “fall” into orbit around Earth. This process, called a Hohmann transfer, had been used since the Apollo missions to move spacecraft into orbit around the Moon.

Because of Mammon’s size, however, Ad Astra was going to execute a more gradual maneuver called a “low energy transfer.” They would hit it with three batteries of impactors, measure the change to its trajectory as it passed Earth the first time, and then plan four to six more launches to incrementally slow and redirect onto a path that would cause it to just miss falling to Earth’s surface. A final round of impactors, called “orbital impactors” because they would be launched well in advance and allowed to zoom around the planet until they were needed, would be used to actually bring Mammon into orbit. The orbital impactors would move in an orbit that was slightly lower, and diametrically opposed to, Mammon’s projected trajectory. When Mammon was approaching its nearest point to Earth, the closest orbital impactor would be instructed to slow slightly, causing it to jump into a higher orbit that would put it on a collision course with Mammon. It would most likely take four to six of these impacts to finally bring Mammon into orbit. The project would require a total of seven launches, three of which would have to be executed within a year.

The problem was that Ad Astra simply didn’t have the cash on hand to execute three launches in the next year. With some creative accounting, the finance department had managed to scrabble together enough cash to begin the manufacture of the thirty impactor craft that would be needed for the first round. Preparations had begun for the first launch, and two of Ad Astra’s erstwhile competitors, Cerulean and SpaceOne, were tentatively on board to handle the next two. The first launch was scheduled for January 2037, less than ten months from now. The others would happen a few weeks later, assuming Kade could come up with the cash in time. His competitors were more than happy to take his money, but they weren’t going to execute launches on credit.

Assuming the plan to form High Frontier Mining was signed into law, Ad Astra would soon be flush with cash, but there simply wasn’t time to wait. The bill hadn’t even come up for a vote yet, and the technicalities of setting up the corporation and launching an IPO would take several more months. To have a chance of capturing Mammon in six and a half years, they needed to hit her with the first round of impactors before HFM had raised a single dollar.

“Call it logistics if you like,” Rami said, “but a lot of things have to go right for this plan to pan out. And if they go wrong, it could be catastrophic.”

“You know perfectly well the odds of something going catastrophically wrong are infinitesimally small,” Kade replied.

“They are small,” Rami said. “Not as small as we’re letting people believe.”

“It’s not like Davis Christopher has the COPPA algorithm. He has no idea what the risk is.”

“Just COPPA,” Rami said. “COPPA algorithm is redundant.”

“For fuck’s sake, Rami.”

“So call up your friend, Ramona Blankenship. Ask her to have the Justice Department threaten him with charges under the Federal Misinformation Act.”

“I hate that fucking law.”

“Really? Because I have some news for you about a guy who is benefiting from it.”

“You know I had nothing to do with that, Rami. I’ve been consistent in my defense of free speech.”

“Consistent, yes. Aggressive, not so much.”

“Can we stick to the topic? I need to do something about Davis Christopher. Something other than threatening him with federal charges.”

“So go talk to him.”

“What?”

“If Davis Christopher is so full of shit, go talk to him. He’s a reasonable guy. At least, he has been in the past. Maybe you can talk some sense into him. Even if you can’t get any money out of him, maybe you can at least get him to keep his mouth shut until the IPO.”

Kade rubbed his chin. “You know, Rami? That’s not a bad idea.”

*****

The next morning, Kade stood on the doorstep of Davis Christopher’s very ordinary house in a suburb of Dallas, much as he had fifteen years earlier. Mrs. Christopher, looking much the same, greeted him pleasantly and escorted him to Davis’s office.

“Congratulations, Kade,” Davis said as Kade entered.

“Uh, thanks?” Kade replied. “May I ask what you’re congratulating me for?”

“That deal with the President. Very impressive bit of business.”

“I got the impression you’re not a fan.”

“I’m not. Most hare-brained scheme I’ve ever heard of. Still, I’m impressed with what you’ve pulled off so far.”

“So far.”

“Well, yes. The hard part is still coming up, isn’t it?”

“We’ve done it before, on a smaller scale. The physics is the same.”

“Sure, like an elephant is just a really big mouse. Kade, you’re smarter than this.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How many times did I have to listen to you tell me how incompetent and corrupt the government was? How you wished they would just get out of your way so that you could get things done?”

“And you told me that complaining was for losers,” Kade said. “That I had to work within the system if I wanted to accomplish anything.”

“Jesus Christ, Kade. You’re not working within the system. You’re building a new system on the carcass of the old one. There is no way this ends well.”

“How did you get so timid, Davis? What’s the story, you got yours, so fuck everybody else?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I think that if humanity doesn’t build permanent settlements elsewhere in this solar system within the next twenty years, we’re doomed as a species. My only goal is to make sure the next catastrophe doesn’t end us all.”

“Even if you have to bring about the catastrophe in the process?”

“For fuck’s sake, Davis. I get enough of this fearmongering from the media. Mammon—Maimonides isn’t going to hit Earth.”

Davis grinned sourly at Kade’s slip. “They’re getting to you, kid. It’s not a good sign.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m not talking about the asteroid striking Earth, Kade—although for the record I suspect the odds are a lot higher than you let on. I’m talking about what happens when a heavily indebted government gets a bailout without ever addressing the serious systemic problems that got it in trouble in the first place.”

“Please, not the Mississippi Scheme thing again.”

“Hits a little too close to home?”

“No, Davis. It’s irrelevant. The two situations are not remotely the same.”

“It’s the early eighteenth century. The French government is deep in debt,” Davis began. Kade let out a groan, but Davis ignored him. “A Scottish playboy and aspiring economist named John Law approaches the French regent, the Duke of Orleans, with a bold plan: the government will issue stock in a company with exclusive rights to the Louisiana territories. The Duke goes along with the plan, and it succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings: the price of shares in the company soars twentyfold within ten months. Hundreds of French citizens become millionaires. Mr. Law’s large stake makes him the richest commoner in Europe. France’s economy thrives, and the government’s financial problems seem to be solved. You know what happens next.”

“What I know is that at no point did John Law have possession of an asteroid containing trillions of dollars’ worth of precious metals.”

“The value of the real estate in question is not the issue, Kade. How do you not get this? Even if there had been gold in Louisiana, John Law’s scheme would have come to the same end. It just would have taken a little longer. There was nothing wrong with Law’s scheme, properly implemented. It failed because France’s underlying problems were never addressed. Rather than paying down the debt and cutting spending, the government took the scheme’s initial success as license to spend even more. Now what do you think the U.S. government is going to do with the promises of riches in space?”

“Look, if you’re just trying to tell me that the U.S. is doomed to fail, you can save your breath. I know this already.”

“Kid, you don’t know shit. The point of that story about the Mississippi scheme isn’t that France was going to fail no matter what. It’s that a good idea in the wrong hands can make things much, much worse. France was well on its way to default before John Law came along. If it weren’t for his brilliant idea… well, there’s no way to know, of course, but French history would have turned out much differently. We might have avoided the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic Wars. Sometimes it’s best just to let a bad system fail.”

“It’s true that things got pretty bad for France,” Kade said. “And for the rest of Europe too. And yes, it’s true that the Mississippi scheme probably contributed to the scale of the destruction. But you’re leaving something out.”

“What’s that?”

“Between the failure of the Mississippi scheme and the French Revolution, something else happened. I’ll give you a hint: it was in the same neighborhood as the Louisiana territory.”

“So now you’re George Washington?”

“Hardly. I’m just the guy building ships for the people who want to escape to the New World. My point is that I can’t worry about what’s going to happen to the U.S. It’s going to fail sooner or later, and it’s possible that my actions will worsen the collapse. But my concern is for the future of humanity, and that future is in space.”

“God damn. You were as green as a willow tree when I first met you, but I never expected you to become the kind of person who believes his own press releases.”

“It’s not hype, Davis. That’s what you don’t get. If we don’t get off this planet, we’re doomed. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Well, I genuinely hope you succeed. And if it’s any consolation, I don’t think anyone is going to listen to me. The whole world has Mammon fever.”

“I don’t suppose that means you’re going to stop trash-talking High Frontier.”

“Certainly not. This is still America, Kade. Trash-talking is my right.”

Kade sighed heavily and got to his feet. “It was good to see you, Davis. I’ll see myself out.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

2036

Kade brooded about his conversation with Davis Christopher the entire flight back to Tampa. He still usually flew commercial—first class, of course—but it was becoming more burdensome as his public profile rose. He was being recognized more and more often, and the novelty of it was wearing off. At some point he was going to have to buy a private jet.

For the time being, he had to be content with the leased helicopter that ferried him from Tampa to Cape Coral. One drawback of the location he’d selected for Ad Astra was that there was no major airport nearby. Sometimes he flew into Fort Myers, but the selection of flights was thin. He was going to have to talk to the local authorities about an expansion. Being a billionaire was getting expensive. And despite his considerable net worth, he was still cash poor. Without a loan from Davis Christopher, he was going to have to scramble to come up with enough money to launch the first round of impactors in time. He found himself wondering if he should have threatened Davis with the possibility of prosecution under the Federal Misinformation Act. Ultimately, he rejected the idea: perhaps it was true that Kade had benefited indirectly from the FMA, but personally threatening to use the federal government against Davis was another matter. In any case, he suspected that Davis had enough pull in the federal bureaucracy that he would laugh at the threat.

It was nearly midnight when he got home. He and Christy had bought a five-bedroom house in an upscale suburb of Cape Coral. Davis Christopher would have called it ostentatious, but Kade thought it was a pretty modest home for a billionaire. In any case, he had bought it for the neighborhood more than the house itself, which was admittedly too big for the two of them.

Christy was up waiting for him. That was unfortunate: he was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. She would want to know how his meeting with Davis Christopher had gone.

“You didn’t call,” she said as he walked in the door. She was sitting in the living room watching a gardening show on the wallscreen.

“Sorry,” he said. “Thought you’d be asleep.”

“I can never sleep when I know you’re coming home.”

“Well, I’m here now.” He went to the kitchen to get a beer.

“How was Davis?” she asked. She had met him once at a D.C. fundraiser.

“Ornery. Same as ever.” Kade popped the beer bottle open on the granite countertop and took a swig.

“Please don’t do that.”

“What?” he said, when he’d swallowed the beer.

“Open bottles on the countertop.”

“It’s literally granite,” he said, knocking the bottle against the edge of the countertop to punctuate his point.

“It’s literally forty thousand dollars to replace,” she said. “Is he going to loan you the money?”

Kade laughed and took another swig of beer.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Kade walked to the living room and stood in the doorway. The wallscreen was muted, but an old man was demonstrating something involving tomatoes. Christy, dressed in a Georgetown sweatshirt and sweatpants, sat in a leather easy chair. She looked up as Kade walked in, and then turned back to the screen.

“Not only is he not going to loan me any money; he’s going to continue actively undermining me.”

“Did he say why?”

“Oh, sure. I’m John Law, foisting another Mississippi scheme on an unsuspecting populace.”

“I don’t have any idea what that means.”

“It means he thinks capturing Maimonides is too risky.” He took another swig of beer.

“Is he right?”

Kade nearly spat out his beer. “What?”

“Is he right that it’s too risky?”

“Of course he’s not right! I wouldn’t be doing it if it was too risky.”

“I know you believe that, but you have a higher tolerance for risk than most people. Is it fair that you get to make the decision for everybody?”

“Is it fair?” Kade asked. “Is it fair? Jesus Christ, Christy. Somebody has to do something. We can’t all sit around wondering if things are fair. Nobody cared if it was fair that the government stole Larry Frank right out from under me. Nobody cared if it was fair when they passed that goddamned idiotic wealth tax.”

“So, what? This is revenge?”

“No, it’s not revenge! I’m just saying… shit. I’m sorry, Christy. I’m exhausted. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, I’m going to bed. Love you.”

“Love you too. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Kade went into the bathroom, finished his beer, and got ready for bed. By the time Christy came in the room, he was pretending to be asleep.

*****

Using his Stellaris stock as collateral, Kade eventually managed to borrow enough money from an investment bank to fund the launches of the rest of the initial round of impactor craft.

Kade was taking a huge risk financing the launches this way. If the HFM bill—which some marketing wizard in D.C. had dubbed the “Jumpstart Space Act”—didn’t pass, he would lose control of Stellaris and forfeit a big chunk of his fortune. The first round of impactors wouldn’t slow Maimonides nearly enough for it to fall into Earth orbit, and he would be in no position to pay for any more launches. Four and a half years later, Maimonides would miss Earth again by several million miles and hurtle back into space. The government would hold onto Larry Frank, and Ad Astra’s stock would collapse. Kade would be ruined, and it was unlikely anyone would be foolhardy enough to try following in his footsteps. Humankind’s expansion into space would be delayed by at least a generation, and probably much longer than that.

It didn’t help matters that Davis Christopher, Kade’s former mentor, was still making the internet talk show rounds to denounce the HFM plan as a “shell game” or “pyramid scheme.” Talk like that from an investor with Davis’s clout tended to scare lenders and gave wavering politicians a reason to vote against the plan.

Kade’s employees knew better than to express their doubts overtly, but clearly some resentment was beginning to bubble up from the rank and file. No technical challenge would faze them, but Kade had put the fate of the company in the hands of bankers and politicians, who could not be expected to act rationally. Several key employees, who couldn’t take the stress of not knowing whether Ad Astra was going to be around in six months, left for more stable, and often higher-paying, employment opportunities.

Even when the HFM bill finally passed by the thinnest of margins, five months before the first launch date, the celebration at Ad Astra was weirdly muted. Maybe some of Davis Christopher’s rhetoric had gotten to them, or maybe the awareness that they were still at the mercy of a government bureaucracy had taken some of the joy out of the work. Kade kept up his usual positive façade at the office, but by the time he got home, he found himself exhausted from the effort.

Making matters worse, his wife seemed to think she was somehow helping matters by playing devil’s advocate regarding his frustrations. He would sit in the living room with a beer in his hand, watching the financial news and marveling at how brilliant engineers could nevertheless be so stupid about finance (or, sometimes, how financial geniuses could be so dumb about space), and Christy would suggest that maybe his critics had a point.

She wasn’t entirely wrong, of course: he had put the company in jeopardy by entrusting its future to a bunch of shortsighted politicians. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d had little choice: if he hadn’t proposed the HFM plan, Ad Astra would already be doomed by the nationalization of Larry Frank. Christy knew this; she had been there when Lowell had given him the bad news. Yet he still got the sense that she blamed him for taking unnecessary risks. That was true, too, in a sense: none of what he did was necessary, strictly speaking. Their financial future would be a lot more predictable if he’d been content to spend his life writing code for banks or insurance companies. But Kade had a fire inside him, a drive that pushed him to do more than what was necessary. He thought that at one point, Christy understood that. It was one of the reasons he had married her.

Early in life Kade had cultivated a habit of identifying and eliminating negative influences in his life. It was one of the things he credited with his success in business. If an employee, customer, investor or business partner complained about something, Kade would do everything in his power to solve the problem. If the person continued to complain after the problem had been solved, he would spend no more effort trying to please him or her. It was more than a matter of not wasting time; Kade’s philosophy was that negative thoughts got inside of you and consumed mental and physical energy that could better be used to accomplish something. More than once, Kade had fired a key employee for no other reason than being an emotional drain on the company. Far from creating a hostile workplace, Kade found that after the initial shock of losing a colleague had passed, the remaining employees functioned as a more cohesive team. Such tactics earned him a reputation (fed by disgruntled former employees) in the media as a slavedriver, but within his companies he was admired and generally well-liked.

He could not, of course, so easily extract himself from his relationship with Christy. Not that he’d ever seriously considered divorce; Christy was a good person and someday, when things settled down, she would be an excellent mother. She loved Kade, and he supposed that he loved her too, in his own way. He knew that he was not an easy person to live with: he was, by his own admission, self-absorbed and largely oblivious to the concerns of people around him. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about other people; it was just that he generally had so much going on inside his head that he simply didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with anything else. Christy had always seemed to understand and accept that.

Now, though, on top of everything else, his wife seemed incapable of even a minimal level of emotional support. When things were going well, she chided him not to count his chickens before they hatched, and when things were going poorly, she echoed the same criticism he was getting everywhere else. He tried to explain that her reactions were not helpful, but she took such statements as personal attacks. She would shut down and barely talk to him for the rest of the evening. Was she punishing him? Did she genuinely think he didn’t want her to talk at all? Was she unaware what she was doing, acting out some repressed frustration? Was she just at a loss for words? He simply couldn’t figure it out, and pressing her for answers only seemed to make things worse. His ability to mimic neurotypical behavior failed him at this level. More and more, they both found themselves limiting their conversations to trivialities and matters of necessity. Between those two extremes, where the ups and downs of daily life were found, was a no-man’s land.

Kade, who had thought he had at last found someone to share his life with, was once again a lone man against the world. This was not self-pity but rather a simple recognition of fact. His mentor had publicly denounced his plan. His wife was at best a bystander and at worst another voice in the chorus of doom. His best friend remained at his side for now, but probably only to mitigate the damage he expected Kade to cause. His mother was vaguely supportive but noncommittal, as always. His father’s grasp on reality was slipping with every passing day. Creditors were breathing down his neck. Cerulean and SpaceOne were waiting for him to stumble so that they could step in. China and Russia were waging all-out propaganda campaigns against him, and he was playing a risky game of appeasement with the ravenous monster that was the United States federal government. Most men would have crumbled under the pressure.

Kade Kapur would not.

*****

The three launches went about as well as could be expected. The first launch, at the Cape Coral facility, was executed on time, on January 15, 2037. President Ramona Blankenship, having been reelected in part because of the popularity of the Maimonides capture mission, was inaugurated five days later. The second launch, at Cerulean’s Texas facility, also went as planned. The third launch, to be executed three weeks later at SpaceOne’s facility not far from Cape Canaveral, was delayed ten days by strong winds off the Atlantic. The delay was not expected to adversely affect the mission.

Each rocket carried a battery of ten small impactor craft. These craft, propelled by ion engines that converted solar energy to electrical impulses, deployed shortly after the rockets broke free from Earth’s gravity. The ten impactors released from each rocket sped toward Maimonides at near maximum thrust, each impactor accelerating at a slightly different rate, spreading out single-file and closing the gaps between the three batteries. The impactors would reach their maximum velocity of six miles per second in just under a year. Shortly after that, the first impactor would strike, and the others would follow suit at intervals of about fifty-six minutes.

Each impactor would transmit data, including Maimonides’s velocity, to Earth right up to the moment of impact. It was expected that nearly all thirty impactors would be needed to ensure that Maimonides would be within the capture window on its subsequent pass, but if the change in velocity was greater than expected for any reason, any of the impactors could be directed to move out of the way. Maimonides’s distance from Earth at that time would be about six million miles, meaning that radio transmissions would take about thirty-six seconds to reach Earth from the impactors and vice versa—leaving them plenty of time to evaluate Maimonides’s velocity and send an abort code if necessary.

On December 9, 2037, 6:14 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the first impactor slammed into Maimonides, reducing the asteroid’s velocity by an almost unmeasurable amount. An hour later, another struck, and then another an hour after that. Each of these somewhat anticlimactic impacts was caught on video by the cameras of the following impactors and beamed back to Earth and distributed via a live internet feed. It was like watching individual house flies hitting a dump truck head on. Most of the news programs opted to enhance their coverage with much more dramatic computer-generated effects.

By the time the final impactor of the first group struck and the first impactor of the next group approached, the change in Maimonides’s velocity was still less than one mile per hour. This was within the expected range, though: so far, so good. A few hours later, the impactors of the next group began to hit. After the twentieth impactor struck, Maimonides’s velocity had slowed by just over a mile and a half per hour. On the morning of December 11, the first impactor of the final group hit. Just before the final craft impacted, it measured Maimonides’s total change in velocity at two point four one miles per hour.

COPPA predicted that the asteroid would miss Earth by 921,114 miles when it passed by on January 12. This prediction was released publicly in hopes of allaying some of the public’s concern about a possible strike. Final measurements, conducted by several satellites and observatories, revealed that the estimate was off by less than a mile. High Frontier Mining ran a high-profile marketing campaign touting the mission’s success. Government officials denounced worries about the possibility of Maimonides striking Earth as “unscientific fear-mongering.” It didn’t take an astrophysicist to understand, though, that predicting an asteroid’s path four and a half years in advance was going to be a bigger challenge.

The best estimates Ad Astra’s scientists could make based on COPPA’s long-term predictions suggested that six more batteries of impactors, to be launched starting in May of 2041, would suffice to bring Maimonides into Earth orbit. The final capture date was projected to be July first, 2042.

Chapter Twenty-nine

New York – March 1, 2038

Space mining company High Frontier Mining shattered records yesterday to become the biggest initial public stock offering of all time. A hybrid public/private venture formed by a special act of Congress, HFM raised $181 billion in less than eight hours. By the end of normal trading, the stock’s price per share nearly doubled, from an opening price of $184 to $362.

Analysts say HFM’s performance is particularly impressive given the limits placed on purchases by institutional investors. The Jumpstart Space Act, passed by Congress in May, prioritized stock purchases by first-time stock buyers and other small investors as a way of preventing HFM’s stock from being gobbled up by large institutional investors.

HFM’s CEO, Lila Silvestri, said in an official announcement that she was “thrilled” with the stock’s reception. “With the unprecedented nature of this IPO, we have given millions of ordinary Americans a chance to own a piece of the future. High Frontier Mining represents a resurgent America and the true beginning of humankind’s future in space.”

The company’s charter authorizes it to “work with public and private entities to promote the extraction of valuable resources from asteroids, comets and other planets.” The company will fund space exploration, asteroid capture missions, space mining, and construction of human habitats and energy generation plants in Earth orbit and eventually throughout the solar system.

The IPO comes on the heels of a media blitz that included appearances by billionaire Kade Kapur, the chairperson of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, and even President Ramona Blankenship. Blankenship has called HFM “an unprecedented partnership that showcases American ingenuity and determination to realize humanity’s future among the stars.”

HFM’s founding was not without controversy. Some industry analysts criticized the choice of Silvestri as CEO, noting that the mutual fund manager and former Federal Reserve chair has no aerospace experience. HFM has also been derided by some as a “slush fund” for private aerospace companies, notably Ad Astra. Ad Astra has already landed a $13.4 billion contract to capture the large, metal-rich asteroid 2015 RK 16 Maimonides, commonly known as Mammon. Silvestri defended the selection of Ad Astra, noting that Ad Astra was the only company capable of executing the mission. Ad Astra’s CEO, Kade Kapur, could not be reached for comment.

Years later, it would be difficult for Kade to recall the euphoria that followed the success of the first phase of the Mammon capture mission and High Frontier Mining’s IPO. It wasn’t about the money, although his net worth soared as a result of Ad Astra’s contracts with HFM. Money had never been more than a tool to Kade, a lever that he could use to propel humanity into space. The thrill was in the realization of a childhood dream, of fulfilling his destiny. And it wasn’t just him: everyone on Earth seemed to be seized with Mammon Fever. Within three years of the IPO, over three hundred million people owned HFM stock, making it the most widely held company in history. Those who had bought early and held had already seen a four hundred percent increase in price.

This was the future: human beings from different countries, races, income levels, religions and political affiliations voluntarily pooling their resources to achieve something that had been out of reach for both governments and private companies. Companies like Cerulean and SpaceOne benefited as well—in the five years since the passing of the Jumpstart Space Act, every aerospace stock gained significantly, with many of the better positioned companies doubling or tripling in value. Hundreds of existing companies rewrote their business plans overnight to become more “space-centric,” and hundreds more companies appeared on the scene to fight for the billions in venture capital flowing into the industry. Perhaps most striking, the dollar not only ceased declining but actually gained in value. Treasury bonds had their best year in decades. The specter of hyperinflation having suddenly evaporated, the Federal Reserve Board held an emergency meeting to discuss options for preventing deflation. The solution was music to the ears of politicians: the government would engage in several rounds of quantitative easing and inject cash into the economy through increased spending on everything from space exploration to education.

Not everyone was so optimistic, of course: Davis Christopher and a few other prominent doomsayers continued their Cassandra routines, but few people seemed interested in listening anymore. In the court of public opinion, Kade Kapur and President Blankenship had been proved right. Davis Christopher and his ilk, having missed out on the boom of the century, were thought to be suffering from a case of sour grapes. The oft-repeated fact that Mammon had not actually been brought into Earth orbit was dismissed as a technicality. Ad Astra had proved it could be done, and now they were flush with cash and had the backing of the newly reinvigorated federal government.

Rami’s mood had improved—or at least his criticisms became more muted—and the atmosphere at Ad Astra was upbeat. The company was hiring as fast as it could, its stock was way up, and its prospects seemed limitless. Kade’s father seemed to be benefitting from an experimental treatment for dementia, and tensions between Kade and Christy seemed to lessen. They were even talking again about having children.

And yet, there was a melancholy that came with such success. Maybe it was like that old line about Alexander the Great weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. The capture of Mammon was essentially a fait accompli—the machine had been set in motion; as he’d said countless times, the rest was just physics. He was only thirty-seven years old. What could he possibly do to top this? Or maybe it was just the loneliness of being the man holding the strings, the composer of the song that the world was dancing to. The song was for the dancers, not the composer. Moses could never enter the Promised Land.

He was aware that his thoughts were grandiose, possibly narcissistic. And yet the melancholy remained. He wished he could talk to somebody about it, but there was no one. His father wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Christy would tell him to get over himself. Rami would think he was crazy. And Davis Christopher would tell him he was full of shit.

And then Hannah Berkeley happened.

Hannah Berkeley was a perky twenty-eight-year-old blonde from Nebraska who had the good luck to finish her master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering just as Ad Astra was beginning its post-IPO hiring frenzy. She had worked as a software developer for six years before grad school, so she was a natural fit for the company. There was plenty of work to be done: the original impactors had been deployed with software that was a modified version of some old NASA lander code, and it badly needed to be updated to be faster, more precise, and more responsive. The sudden departure of Mike Starr, who had been spearheading the new version, had thrown the project into disarray. Mike had dutifully documented everything he had done, but it was a complex project with many interdependencies, and his notes on what still needed to be done were terse bordering on incomprehensible.

Mike’s position remained unfilled for nearly a year for lack of a candidate with his level of skill and experience. Rami would have been the perfect choice, but he was already working full-time on COPPA enhancements and at least another twenty hours a week on other projects, thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of nearly every aspect of the technical end of Ad Astra’s business. Anytime there was a problem no one could figure out, whether it involved calculating the albedo of an impactor craft or configuring a wireless router, somebody eventually called Rami. Eventually, Rami was able to hand over most of the COPPA development to a brilliant Taiwanese developer named Kuan-yu Pek. Kuan-yu, who had worked for a major chip manufacturer before fleeing Taiwan in advance of the Chinese takeover, was a tiny, self-effacing man of fifty who would sometimes spend four hours lying in the dark in his office working out problems in his head. Meanwhile, Kade did what he could to help the programmers figure out what Mike Starr had been up to.

Hannah Berkeley was one of five programmers hired shortly after the IPO. They were all highly competent and hard-working; Kade didn’t hire any other kind of people. But to him, only Hannah Berkeley stood out—and it wasn’t only because of the skirts she sometimes wore that might have gotten her called into a special meeting with HR at a more traditional company. Hannah Berkeley was damned smart, and she had a drive to accomplish something bigger than herself that he recognized. All of Ad Astra’s employees were driven, of course, but none of the others had the fire that he saw behind Hannah Berkeley’s eyes. She was perhaps the only employee who didn’t need Ad Astra. She was going to accomplish great things, with or without him.

It was this perfect storm of circumstances and personalities that resulted in him and Hannah working until the wee hours of the morning debugging a particularly troublesome code module that Mike had left them. It was Friday—well, Saturday morning—and everyone else had left hours earlier. The problem turned out to be a stupid human error that any rookie coder could have spotted. It was unclear who had made the mistake. They argued good-naturedly about it for several minutes, Kade blaming Hannah and Hannah blaming Kade. At last they called a truce, agreeing to blame the person who’d left them with this mess. They shared a laugh over this, and then they made another stupid human error, for which they shared culpability, and which they most definitely could not blame on Mike Starr.

The affair between Kade and Hannah went on for three years. At first they met at a hotel, booking two adjacent rooms but only using one of them. After a few weeks, Kade purchased a second house not far from Ad Astra’s headquarters. Cash was no longer a problem; it was easy to hide the purchase among the dozens of other properties Ad Astra was purchasing in South Florida as part of its expansion. They often had long lunches together or met after work, making sure never to leave the office at the same time. He had warned Hannah after that first night together that there was no future for their relationship, and Hannah assured him that she wasn’t expecting one. The way she figured it, he was going to find himself a very busy man once Mammon was in orbit, and by that time she would probably be ready to move on to a new challenge.

At the same time, it was not a merely physical relationship. Kade’s success, first with Stellaris, then with Ad Astra and HFM, had been so rapid and so dramatic that sometimes it didn’t feel real to him. He had suddenly found himself atop an empire worth billions, and although he understood on an intellectual level that it was his actions that had brought him there, it was as much foreign territory to him as to anyone else. With other people—particularly Christy—he often felt that he was expected to act as a guide to this strange new land, as if becoming a famous billionaire was not something that had happened to him, but merely the outward expression of some latent characteristic he’d always had inside him. Kade felt like a caterpillar wearing butterfly wings: not exactly an imposter, but not quite himself either. He felt strangely dissociated from everyone and everything around him, like it was all a movie he was watching.

When he was with Hannah, though, he just felt like himself. She seemed unfazed by his fame and wealth. She didn’t ask for anything; she had even insisted on paying for her own hotel room in the beginning. They rarely talked about money or work, and she never asked that horrible question that always made Kade feel like an alien from another planet: what’s it like being a billionaire?

For Kade, escaping to their getaway (neither of them could bring themselves to call it a “love nest”) was like stepping out of a wind tunnel. For at least an hour or two, he felt like a normal human being.

Meanwhile, work continued on finishing the capture of Mammon, and the country geared up for the “space gold rush” that was expected to follow. Belying the claim that High Frontier Mining was just a shell company, the federal government approved the construction of a massive new headquarters building just outside of Boulder, Colorado, in conjunction with the University of Colorado. The structure would house an observatory, research and teaching facilities, and offices for hundreds of white-collar workers who would manage the logistics of the nascent space mining industry.

While the headquarters was being constructed, HFM remained largely a virtual company, with a board of directors whose members were spread across the United States and a hodgepodge of third-party companies handling the company’s hiring and finances. This did not stop the company from handing out hundreds of grants to universities, scientific institutions, states, private companies and foreign governments, all with the ostensible purpose of facilitating the process of space mining. The company also awarded billions of dollars’ worth of contracts to aerospace companies, mining companies and manufacturers of vehicles and other equipment. It was often unclear exactly who was handing out these grants and contracts; many of them were thought to be essentially political earmarks that were being laundered through HFM. There was so much cash to go around, though, that few complained.

Chapter Thirty

2039

The economic boom largely bypassed Southern California, which continued to be plagued by unemployment, gang violence, and riots. Even the relatively quiet Pasadena neighborhood where Valerie’s grandparents lived was starting to look like a war zone. It astounded Valerie that in the span of two decades, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the country had turned into a third-world slum. Some blamed the corrupt local and state governments; others blamed lack of border controls or cultural rot. Valerie supposed it was some combination of all of these. Depressingly, none of the politicians who represented the area in Washington seemed the least bit interested in solving the problem; her congressperson, a shrill young Mexican woman who had somehow been elected despite being in the country illegally, spent her time grandstanding on the internet, railing against “an economic boom that left millions behind.” The woman seemed congenitally incapable of understanding that the people being “left behind” were precisely the ones who had been the supposed beneficiaries of decades of public policy designed to help them. California didn’t benefit from the boom nearly as much as other states because it had spent fifty years rewarding failure and punishing success. Anyone capable of taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the prospect of large-scale space exploration had left the state long ago.

Valerie’s grandfather died in January of 2039, and by March, her grandmother had moved to an apartment in Tampa. Between the decline in property values and the reverse mortgage that had eaten up most of their equity, the Pasadena house was worth less than she owed on it. Once she’d secured the apartment, she stopped making house payments and let the bank seize it. The Tampa apartment was small, and the rent consumed most of her Social Security check, but she no longer worried about being hit by stray gunfire while walking to the corner store.

No longer tied to Southern California by her grandparents, Valerie began to consider leaving as well. Rick would never go for it: now a detective with an undercover gang unit in the LAPD, he enjoyed his job and had many friends in the area. Valerie did her best to fit in with the other cops’ wives, but she always felt like an outsider, like there was some big secret they had all agreed to keep from her. Did the other cops talk to their spouses about their jobs? Her efforts to get an answer to that question were met with the same knowing glances and conspiratorial smiles that she saw whenever she broached a forbidden subject.

It was a given that Rick was involved in criminal activity. Between California’s endless campaign to regulate itself into utopia and its failure to prosecute actual crimes, a baseline level of crime had been essentially legitimized and incorporated into the state’s culture, in the same way that black markets had thrived in the Soviet Union. There were no honest Los Angeles police officers any more than there were honest KGB operatives. You couldn’t be a conscientious agent of an organization that was itself built on a lie. The LAPD’s purpose was no longer “to serve and protect.” It was simply one gang among many, fighting to hold onto as much turf as it could. It was far from the worst of the gangs, of course: because of its superior organizational structure and its need to maintain a veneer of respectability, the LAPD tended to avoid unnecessary violence and collateral damage. On the whole, Valerie thought they might even be a force for good. She liked to think the same about Rick.

She suspected he was having an affair, and she was almost certain he was taking bribes. It was, oddly, the lack of evidence of the latter that led her to suspect the former. It was a truism by this time that L.A. cops could be bribed; Rick’s friends joked openly about it. Valerie knew that Rick was no angel, but somehow the extra money never made it into their shared bank account. She figured this was because he was paying for a love nest somewhere in the city, but he was too good at hiding his tracks for her to prove it.

Valerie hated herself for thinking this way, but she hated the idea of being taken for granted more. She wanted to confront him about her suspicions, but she was afraid of how he would react—and that fear, too, was a bad sign. He had never hit her or Sofia, but she saw how he struggled to keep his anger in check. She could only guess how it manifested itself when he was on the job.

Sometimes as she lay in bed at night, she would fantasize about taking Sofia and leaving the state—but that’s all it was, a fantasy. Although Rick never spent more than a few minutes a week with his daughter, Valerie had no actual legal grounds for denying him his parental rights. Besides, where would they go? They couldn’t very well move into her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Tampa. Maybe they could pool their resources and rent a bigger place, but Valerie had no job prospects, and she would have to spend most of her savings just getting to Florida. Their car was a thirteen-year-old Toyota. Rick usually used one of the department’s vehicles.

There was one thing she could do, but she considered it the option of last resort. Shortly after Ad Astra went public, she had bought a few hundred dollars’ worth of stock. She couldn’t really afford it; if she had been thinking rationally, she probably would have used the money to pay down her credit card debt. But she needed to believe in something, and she had chosen to believe in Kade Kapur. Because of that decision—and her stubborn refusal to sell in the ten years since—that investment was now worth over twenty times what she had paid for it.

She had never told Rick or anyone else about the stock, not so much because she was trying to hide money from him, but because she was embarrassed by her fixation on Kade Kapur. It was not lost on Rick that she still caught all his appearances and followed news about Ad Astra and Bitizen. He often teased her about it, and not always in a good-natured way. And now that the stock she had purchased on a whim had been transformed into a significant chunk of money, there was no good way to tell him.

There was another reason she didn’t want to sell: holding onto the stock was a way for her to express her hope for the future—for Ad Astra, for humanity in general, and for her and Sofia. Selling now might give her a few months’ breathing room, but then it would be gone. If she was going to make that sacrifice, she wanted it to be for something that mattered. Beyond that, she genuinely believed Kade Kapur was just getting started. She’d read a lot about space mining and colonization over the past few years, and she was convinced that humanity’s future was in space, and she wanted to be a part of it in whatever way she could.

Still, as the school year neared an end and Sofia finished eighth grade, Valerie’s thoughts drifted again to the possibility of escape. Maybe she could still split amicably from Rick. He spent almost no time with Sofia anyway; maybe he wouldn’t insist on dual custody. She and Sofia could go to Florida and start over. She wondered if she could keep the Ad Astra stock a secret during the divorce. If it came out, would it be used against her? She would need an attorney, and that would be expensive.

These were the thoughts going through her head the night she was awakened by the call no police officer’s spouse ever wants to get. Rick was in the hospital, having been shot several times. Valerie left Sofia with a neighbor and raced to the hospital, where Rick was already in surgery. After six hours, the exhausted surgeon delivered the news that would define the next two years of her life: Rick would live, but he might never walk again.

Chapter Thirty-one

2041

Mammon fever showed its first sign of breaking in the fall of 2041.

The first three launches of the rockets carrying the second round of impactors went as planned, but a series of hurricanes in August and September delayed the launches of the latter three by over two months. The truncated acceleration window would decrease the effectiveness of the impactors by over fifty percent. The rocket carrying the orbital impactors, which would do the “fine tuning” required to complete the capture, was delayed as well, but because these impactors only needed to accelerate to a velocity at which they could maintain a low Earth orbit, their effectiveness would not be hindered by the delay.

The public relations teams of both Ad Astra and High Frontier Mining worked overtime to reassure the public, insisting that their best modeling indicated that fewer than thirty impactors would be needed to slow Mammon enough to bring it into Earth orbit. This was true: Ad Astra had opted for six batteries of impactors out of an abundance of caution. And of course the delayed impactors (assuming they were needed) would still have some effect; just not as much as originally planned. Some critics pointed out that a margin of error had been built into the mission for a reason, and that no one outside Ad Astra actually knew how accurate COPPA was. Thanks to aggressive use of the Federal Misinformation Act, however, the voices of these critics were rarely heard, and any skepticism that was publicly aired was presented as unscientific or un-American (depending on the audience). A frequently repeated talking point was that the absolute worst-case scenario was that the impactors would fail to slow Mammon sufficiently, causing the asteroid to miss Earth completely. This last point was presented as a slam-dunk rebuttal to the alarmists—a wry suggestion that even if they were right, they were still wrong.

Had any follow-up discussion of this last point been allowed, however, some of these “alarmists” might have made publicly the point that was being whispered in board rooms, bars and bowling alleys across the country and all over the world: if Mammon failed to fall into orbit as planned, the economic consequences would be disastrous. The United States had hitched its economy to the space mining boom, and the rest of the world had fallen in line behind her. Failure on such a scale would make the fallout of the Mississippi scheme look like a bad night of church bingo.

On May ninth, 2042, the entire world watched as the lead impactor smashed into Mammon, vaporizing a small patch of its surface and sending a puff of particulate matter flying into space. When the debris had cleared, the only sign of the spacecraft was a barely visible pockmark, like a pinprick in a cantaloupe. Having been through this routine once, all the big news programs were prepared for the somewhat dull, drawn-out spectacle. The graphical simulations were much more exciting this time around, and the roster of guests had been carefully vetted for their ability to entertain and their willingness to stick to an acceptable range of opinions. A few of the more extreme cranks were allowed to claim that Mammon would strike Earth, ending civilization and probably killing everyone and everything, so that they could be roundly mocked by the host or other guests. One popular news program announced that they would be featuring live commentary by Davis Christopher only to retract the announcement an hour later. The cancelation was ascribed to “personal issues,” and there may have been some truth to this: Davis’s wife had died of cancer a few weeks earlier. His slot was filled by a Brazilian weathergirl-turned-porn star.

For the next day and a half, people around the world suffered through the scripted banter and inane antics of this focus-group-tested cast of characters while trying in vain to determine whether they were all going to be millionaires, go the way of the dinosaurs, or something in between. An impactor struck roughly once per hour, and all the major streams had round-the-clock coverage, with roughly the same format. Several minutes of nervous patter would follow each impact, and then a newscaster would break in with an announcement that Mammon’s trajectory was “within the capture window,” meaning that it was about where they expected it to be. This information was publicly available on the Ad Astra’s website, which was being updated with real-time data from the impactors themselves.

Far more interesting discussions occurred in private Stellaris groups, where amateur astronomers, physicists, and economists did their best to piece together the truth. While governments had cracked down on many of the higher-profile skeptics, thousands of such small, low-profile groups, made up of people from all over the world, thrived. Kade, who still had an active interest in Stellaris, was aware of these groups but took no action to shut them down. There was little he could do even if he wanted to: Stellaris was designed to be resistant to efforts to throttle communication. In any case, the cranks and conspiracy theorists had no more information than anyone else. Their only advantage was unfettered communication. The consensus in such circles was that the officially accepted range of opinion vastly underestimated the economic risks associated with a failed capture. Despite this, even some of the most ardent pessimists admitted to owning at least some HFM stock. Nobody wanted to be the only one left out of the game.

When the second three launches were delayed, the price of HFM shares fell by nearly ten percent, and Ad Astra dropped even further. Space stocks zig-zagged crazily over the next few weeks as the market came to terms with a small but very real possibility of catastrophic failure. Then at 4:02 p.m. Eastern time on June fourth, something very strange happened—or, more precisely, didn’t happen.

Kade was in his office, with the live feed from the impactor cameras inset on the lower right of his wallscreen, watching the ticker count down the seconds until impactor fifty-one made contact. Mammon took up most of the inset screen, its left edge visible as a jagged white line of sunlight. Except for a few protrusions that caught the light, the rest of the asteroid was shrouded in shadow. The asteroid loomed larger and larger until it filled the inset screen. Then, when the ticker read 00:00:05.00, meaning five seconds to impact, the view abruptly changed. Mammon was suddenly much farther away as the live feed switched to the camera of the impactor fifty-two. Impactor fifty-two was supposed to capture the demise of number fifty-one and then, about an hour later, suffer the same fate.

The impacts were so subtle that when the ticker reached 00:00:00.00 and Kade didn’t see the telltale puff of debris on the surface, he assumed that he’d blinked at the wrong time. The display still showed Mammon centered on the screen. On the left edge of the display was a list of the remaining impactors, with a green dot next to each of them indicating that the craft was online and performing nominally. The green light for impactor number fifty-one had gone gray, as expected, and its status now read: TERMINATED. Except for the missing impact plume, all was as expected. Kade went back to work.

A few minutes later, an urgent call came through from Myra Bostwick. “What is it, Myra?” Kade asked.

“We need you in mission control.”

“What’s going on?”

“Something happened to impactor fifty-one.”

“What happened?”

“Just get down here.”

*****

The Ad Astra mission control center resembled an updated version of the old NASA control rooms, with forty-two workstations arranged in a semicircle and oriented toward a massive wallscreen. In the center of the wallscreen was the same view of Mammon that Kade had been looking at on his own screen. To the left and right of this view, the display had been subdivided into a dozen or more views from other cameras or readouts of data. Only about half of the workstations were occupied; the key personnel for the impactor phase of the Mammon capture mission worked in shifts. There generally wasn’t much to do at this point anyway, as the impactors were fully automated. Only in some unusual occasions would Ad Astra have to send updated orders. Kade saw that Rami was already standing in the far rear corner of the room with Myra, who was talking excitedly and gesturing toward the display, but as Kade approached, Rami put up a finger and pointed in his direction. Myra stopped talking and turned to face him.

“Okay, I’m here,” Kade said. “Where’s the fire?”

“No fire,” Myra said. “No plume. No impact.”

“Can somebody decode that for me?” Kade asked tiredly.

“Something’s wrong with impactor fifty-one,” said Rami, in a more measured tone. “It seems to have missed the target.”

Kade stared at Rami, trying to make sense of this statement. He noticed that several of the other employees nearby appeared to be listening. The entire room was abnormally quiet. “’Seems to?’” he asked.

“It’s offline,” he said, “so obviously we’re not getting any data from it.”

“As one might expect from a craft that has just slammed into a wall of iron at ten miles per second.”

Rami turned to the young woman sitting at the nearest station. “Can you replay the main feed video from ten seconds before to ten seconds after impact?”

The technician, who Kade recalled after a moment was named Sally, gestured toward the big screen. “Shall I…?”

“Just your screen for now,” Rami said quietly.

She nodded. A few seconds later, an image of Mammon appeared on her screen. It was the same view Kade had been looking at a few minutes earlier. The ticker read 00:00:10.00 and then began to count down. At 00:00:05.00, the image jumped back again, as the feed switched to impactor fifty-two. The ticker continued to count down. Impactor fifty-one was presumably somewhere in the center of the screen, but Kade couldn’t make it out. At 00:00:00.00, nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for the next ten seconds. Then the screen went black. Kade hadn’t blinked at the wrong time: there had been nothing to see.

“Could have gone into a deep crater,” Kade said. “If the plume was in shadow, we might not see it.”

“On the contrary,” Rami said, “the impact should be more visible in the dark. Vaporizing metal gives off radiation in the visible spectrum. Also, there was no measurable change in velocity.”

“A hollow area inside the asteroid,” Kade suggested. “The impactor punches a hole and then ricochets, diffusing the kinetic energy.” He could see from the reactions of the others that they weren’t buying it.

Myra shook her head impatiently. “Can we cut to the chase? We’re wasting time.”

Rami nodded and then turned back toward Sally. “Could you bring up the uncut view from impactor fifty-one? Start at impact minus ten seconds again.”

Sally tapped at her keyboard. After a moment, Mammon appeared again on the screen and grew rapidly larger. This time, when the ticker counted down to 00:00:05.00, the view didn’t switch to the camera on impactor fifty-two. Instead, it stayed with twenty-one as the almost uniformly black surface of the asteroid grew to fill the screen. At 00:00:00.00, the view went black.

Kade’s brow furrowed, not sure what he was looking for. This was why the public feed switched to the next impactor at impact minus five seconds: there wasn’t much to see in the last few seconds of an impactor’s life.

“Looks normal, right?” Rami said. Kade shrugged. Rami turned back to Sally. “Now give us impact minus five minutes, but from impactor fifty-two.”

Again Mammon appeared on the screen, but now it was just a pebble in the distance. “Zoom times one thousand,” Rami said. Now a grainy image of the asteroid filled the screen.

“See anything?” Rami asked.

Kade shook his head. Impactor fifty-one should have been right in the center of the screen. At this magnification, even with some loss of resolution, it should have been as plain as day.

“Zoom back out,” Rami said. “Pan left. Put the sunlit section of Mammon on the left edge of the screen.”

The technician did as instructed. The silver-white edge of Mammon ran like a vertical river of mercury down the right-hand side of the screen. To the left several stars were visible. One of the stars was much brighter than the others.

“Zoom in on that bright spot,” said Rami.

She did. The display was now completely black except for a blurry white rectangle. Rectangle? That was no star.

“Is that…?” Kade began.

“Impactor fifty-one,” Rami said. “A good mile off target. I can back up further if you don’t believe me. It starts veering off course about forty minutes earlier. Looked like the hydrogen thrusters fired.” The impactors used ion engines for primary acceleration, but small jets that released compressed hydrogen for quick maneuvers.

“That’s impossible,” Kade said. It was highly unlikely that the hydrogen jets had fired spontaneously, but that wasn’t what worried Kade. The real red flag was the video feed from impactor fifty-one, which somehow showed it colliding with the asteroid even though it had literally missed by a mile.

“The bogus video is actually from impactor forty-five,” Myra said. “I ran a frame analysis.”

Kade frowned. “You’re saying that impactor fifty-one transmitted recorded video from impactor forty-five?” The impactors transmitted their video to each other as well as to Earth, for added redundancy in case of signal loss. But under no circumstances would an impactor transmit another’s footage as if it were its own.

“Yes.”

Kade took a deep breath. There was only one explanation: someone had altered impactor fifty-one’s programming to cause it to transmit phony video. When Rami saw that Kade had connected the dots, he said, “Now you understand our concern.”

Kade couldn’t help glancing about the room. Two rows ahead sat Kuan-yu Pek, who was frantically scrolling through lines of code.

“You told him?” Kade asked.

“I think he figured it out,” Rami said.

Kade nodded, scanning the heads of the engineers, scientists and programmers in the room.

“Real subtle, boss,” Rami said.

“We don’t have time for subtlety,” Myra said. “Someone on this team sabotaged one of our impactors. And we’ve got forty-three minutes until the next one is supposed to hit.”

Chapter Thirty-two

2042

Valerie spent two years caring for Rick. After six surgeries, stem cell treatment, and hundreds of hours of physical therapy, he was able to walk again. He would never be able to return to work as a police officer, though. Fortunately his disability payments from the city covered most of their expenses; Valerie had been forced to quit her job shortly after the shooting.

She had also been forced to suppress her thoughts about leaving. No matter what problems they’d had before the shooting, she couldn’t abandon him while he was so dependent on her. Rick alternated between tearfully grateful to his “angel” (usually shortly after the painkillers kicked in) and breathtakingly vulgar and cruel (when the painkillers had worn off). Valerie bore it all with stoic good humor. Sofia was less understanding of his outbursts; as Rick’s condition slowly improved, she spent less and less time at home. Valerie couldn’t blame her. Now seventeen, Sofia had a boyfriend, named Jian. He seemed like a nice enough kid—and freakishly smart—but Valerie worried about how much time they spent together.

By the time Sofia graduated from high school, Rick had recovered enough that he was able to attend the ceremony, walking with a cane. He was on his best behavior that day, and Valerie came close to rethinking her decision to leave him. She knew, though, that it was an act: he was always nice to her when he wanted something. Perhaps he suspected what she was planning. Rick wasn’t stupid; he couldn’t think that her exclamations of joy at his growing independence were really all about him. In any case, she had already told Sofia they would be leaving the summer after her graduation. Her plan was to give Rick a double dose of his pain meds, wait for him to fall asleep, and then head to the airport. Sofia was not keen on the idea, but Valerie had found an unlikely ally in Jian: he was eager to get out of California and promised to fly out as soon as he could afford it. He had even offered to take them to the airport.

Valerie’s plan rested on selling her Ad Astra stock. It had continued to climb over the past two years as the world anticipated the asteroid mining and space exploration boom. It had dropped a bit recently, thanks to the delays of some of the launches, but she expected it to rebound tomorrow, when the Mammon capture mission was complete. If she sold on that spike, she’d have enough cash to get her and Sofia to Florida, get an apartment, and pay their expenses for a few months while she looked for a job. Valerie’s grandmother had agreed to move in with them if they could find a large enough apartment, and her Social Security would help them cover the rent. Sofia had taken some programming classes but was more interested in graphic design. She wondered if there was any chance of finding a job in that field in Tampa.

The day after graduation, Valerie took Sofia out for lunch and a shopping expedition. Sofia had already stashed a couple of suitcases at Jian’s house, but Valerie wanted to make sure she had everything she needed. She planned to sell her Ad Astra stock that afternoon and then leave the following day. But as she parked their fifteen-year-old Toyota in front of their house that evening, she knew something was wrong.

“Whose car is that?” Sofia asked. A brand new, bright red Ford Explorer was parked where the Toyota usually sat. It was ten years newer and at least $20,000 more expensive than every other vehicle on the street. Valerie had a sick sensation in her gut. “Help me carry the things into the house.”

They each grabbed a few of the bags from the backseat and walked to the front door. It was unlocked. Valerie went inside, Sofia following.

Rick sat in the easy chair that faced the front door, a beer in his hand and an empty lying next to him on the floor. Valerie wondered how many he’d had before he got too lazy to throw the cans in the recycling bin. His cane leaned against the wall behind him.

“Hey, babe,” Rick said, a malicious grin on his face. “Did you guys have fun?”

“Yes, we had a nice time,” Valerie said cautiously. She set her bags down and Sofia did the same. “Whose car is that?”

“Oh, did you see that? I was going to giftwrap it, but I didn’t expect you home so soon.” He held up a keycard with his free hand.

“Where did you get the money for a brand new car?”

“That is an excellent question. Where would I find that kind of money?”

“I don’t know, Rick. That’s why I’m asking.”

“You don’t know. You don’t know. Okay. Then I guess it’s not a problem that I sold your stock.”

Valerie felt light-headed. She held up a hand to brace herself against the door frame behind her.

“Mom?” Sofia said. Valerie could hear fear in her daughter’s voice.

“You should thank me,” Rick said. “I sold at the peak. You couldn’t buy a vehicle like that if you sold now. That’s why you don’t let emotions control your investment decisions.”

“You… you’re saying that buying a new car when we can barely afford groceries is a smart investment?”

“Oh, that’s different,” Rick said with a grin. “That’s a special gift for us as a family. Now that I’m feeling better, we can take it on trips together, like families do. Won’t that be nice?”

“Rick, we can’t keep it. It’s irresponsible.”

“Irresponsible? Irresponsible? Like squirreling away a fortune in stock while we scrape by on macaroni and drive a fifteen-year-old piece of shit Toyota? What right do you have to hide money from me, Val?”

“I wasn’t hiding it. I just….”

“And I suppose you’re not planning on leaving me? Where you gonna go, Val? Florida? You going to go beg your billionaire boyfriend for help? You know he doesn’t have a clue who you are, right? Your obsession with him is pathetic. And you’re delusional if you think you’re taking my daughter away.”

“Sofia’s eighteen, Rick. She can make her own choices.”

“Yeah? Is that what’s happening here? What’s the plan, Sof? You gonna take off to Florida and marry that dipshit kid, Jian?” Rick frowned and took a swig of beer. Valerie could tell he was frustrated with himself. He had pictured this going differently, lording his purchase over Valerie, but his anger and drunkenness were getting the better of him.

“Don’t call him that,” Sofia said, her face reddening in anger.

“Call him what? A dipshit kid? He’s a dipshit, Sofia. A loser. If you’re going to fuck boys in your class, at least pick one with some balls.”

Sofia was now trembling. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Enough!” Valerie growled. “You will not talk to our daughter that way.”

“No? And who’s gonna stop me? You? Jian? That half-breed dork Kade Kapur? No. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. We’re going to get in our new car together like a nice family and go for a nice ride. You want ice cream, Sof? I want ice cream. God damn, that sounds good.” The way Rick was bouncing from anger to disgust to manic euphoria, Valerie wondered if Rick had taken a pain pill or two before he started drinking. He reached for his cane, but in his agitated state, he accidentally knocked it to the floor.

“Damn it!” he growled. “Sof, can you help me with that?”

Sofia, jaw set, folded her arms.

“Fine!” he snapped. “I don’t need it anyway. Look, I—” With a mighty effort, he surged from the chair. Panic spread across his face as his legs gave out beneath him. He fell forward, catching the corner of the coffee table with his forehead. There was a loud crash, and then he lay still.

Valerie and Sofia stood for a moment, expecting Rick to get up. When he did not, Sofia started toward him.

“Wait,” Valerie said.

“Mom, he could be really hurt!”

Valerie’s mind raced. Sofia was right: he might have fractured his skull on the table. He could be dying. How ironic, after two years spent recovering from the shooting. But looking at Rick’s lifeless body lying crumpled up next to the coffee table, Valerie felt nothing.

“Leave him,” she said.

“Mom?”

“Don’t touch anything. Get your stuff together and throw it in the Explorer.”

“Mom, you’re not thinking clearly. We need to get Dad to the hospital.”

Valerie shook her head, feeling like she was watching the scene unfold from far away. Her mind was occupied by images of helping Rick through rehab all over again. A head injury on top of the spinal cord trauma he’d already experienced would likely set him back months. She couldn’t do it again. Not when she’d been so close to escape. She just couldn’t.

“We didn’t see anything,” she heard herself say. “He was asleep when we got home.”

“Mom, you’re scaring me.”

“He was asleep. He bought the car, drove it home, got drunk and fell asleep. We saw the car and realized he must have logged into my account and sold the stock. That was the last straw. We took the car and left. He probably heard us leave, got up too quickly and banged his head.”

“No, Mom. That’s not what happened.”

She turned to face her daughter. “Sofia, listen to me. You’re an adult now. That means you’re legally responsible for your actions. I wish I could shield you from this, but I can’t. So you need to make a decision. Are you prepared to sacrifice the next ten years of your life taking care of your father? Because it might come to that, and I’m telling you right now that I am not going to do it. I will divorce him, and I will probably hate myself for doing it, but I will not stay with that man for another day.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair!” Valerie snorted. “Sofia, you need to grow up. It wasn’t fair that I had to spend two years wiping your dad’s ass while you were playing video games with your boyfriend, but I did it. You want fair? Talk to me after you’ve put in your two years.”

Sofia swallowed hard, staring at her father, lying still on the floor. There was no movement, no sign of life. And yet, she didn’t go to him, because that meant taking responsibility for what happened next.

“Okay, Mom,” she said at last. “Let’s go.”

*****

They had to swing by Jian’s house to pick up Sofia’s luggage. Sofia had called him on the way over, and he was waiting outside for them with her suitcases.

“Whoa, killer wheels,” he said, admiring the Explorer.

“My idiot dad bought it,” Sofia said. It was jarring to hear her speak so bluntly, but Valerie knew she was only playing the role she’d been given. As far as anyone else was concerned, they had left Rick sleeping in his easy chair.

“So I guess you don’t need a ride to the airport.”

“No,” said Valerie. “We appreciate the offer, though, Jian.”

Jian smiled. He had an ancient Cadillac that he’d lovingly restored in his spare time. Jian was a scrawny, somewhat awkward kid, but Valerie had learned there was more to him than met the eye. Rick had never been able to see past his dorky appearance.

Jian’s brow furrowed. “Wait, are you driving to Florida?”

“Looks like it,” Valerie said, struggling to keep up a cheerful demeanor. “I wasn’t thrilled when Rick bought it, but it’s growing on me.”

“Do you need another driver?”

“That’s sweet, Jian, but we’re fine. The Explorer is self-driving.” She hadn’t actually let the Explorer drive itself yet; she’d never owned a fully automated car before and wasn’t sure she trusted them. Supposedly they were safer than driving yourself, but every once in a while there was a high-profile accident that made people nervous about depending on them.

“No, seriously, I want to come. I was going to fly out anyway in a few weeks, but this will save me the airfare.”

“Don’t you have a job here?”

“Just running diagnostics at the repair shop. I could find another job like that in Florida, easy.”

“Are your parents okay with it?”

“I’m eighteen, same as Sofia. Anyway, they know I’m planning on flying there eventually.”

“What about your car?”

“I’ll have my brother sell it. I was going to have to anyway. I’ll buy an old beater in Florida and fix it up, same as I did this one.”

Valerie, her resistance thoroughly worn down, turned to face Sofia.

“It would be nice to have another driver,” Sofia said. “I don’t trust those things.”

“Fine. But I want to get on the road. Jian, you’ve got half an hour to say your goodbyes and pack your things.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

Chapter Thirty-three

2042

“We’re sure it was someone on the team?” Kade said. “Not an outside hack?”

“There’s no remote access to the file server where the control software resides,” Rami replied. “It’s a completely isolated network. Someone outside might have written the code, but it still had to be physically smuggled in by somebody with access.”

“And we’re certain it’s a software problem?”

“Has to be,” said Myra. “A hydrogen jet might misfire, but no glitch is going to make an impactor transmit recorded video from another impactor precisely timed to look like it’s recording a real impact.”

“Why didn’t they doctor the video from fifty-two as well?”

“Probably trying to minimize their footprint,” Rami replied. “Thought we wouldn’t notice the lack of plume.”

“Okay, just how bad is this?” Kade asked. “What happens if the next one misses too?”

“With the delays of the latter three launches, our margin of error is razor-thin,” Rami said. “We might still get orbital capture with two misses. With three? No way.”

“Even if we hit it with every impactor of the three remaining batteries?”

“I was assuming all the remaining impactors hit, including all the orbital impactors.”

“What if we roll the software back to the last stable version?”

“We could try it, but without knowing when the bad code was introduced, we have no idea if it will fix the problem. Also, we’re assuming the archives themselves haven’t been corrupted.”

“Yeah,” Kade said, realizing Rami was right: whoever did this had access to the archives, meaning they could have inserted the bad code in previous versions as well.

“And if whoever did this is smart enough to do that…”

“They would have anticipated us rolling back the software, so there could be more surprises waiting for us.”

“Exactly.”

“Fuck,” said Kade. If the archives had been compromised, reverting to a previous version might actually make things worse. “Okay, forget the archives. Rami, call an emergency meeting for the programming team. I want every one of them doing what Kuan-yu is doing: scanning for malicious code. Have them break down the modules however it makes sense. I know Hannah was working on the—” Kade froze. His mouth went dry, and his heart was suddenly thudding in his chest.

“Kade?” Myra said.

“Hannah,” Kade said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Where the fuck is Hannah?”

“She didn’t come in today,” Rami said.

“Jesus. Jesus God,” Kade said. “I have to go.”

“Go?” Rami asked, alarmed. “Go where?”

“I have to find Hannah. Start going through that code!”

*****

It took Kade nineteen minutes to get from Ad Astra’s headquarters to Hannah Berkeley’s apartment, running three red lights and committing countless other traffic violations along the way. All that went through Kade’s mind during that time, though, was a nonstop refrain of how could I be so fucking stupid?

The Lexus squealed to a stop in front of Hannah’s condo. He threw the door open, ran across the sidewalk, bounded up the stairs and began pounding on her door. “Hannah!” he shouted. “It’s Kade! Open the goddamn door!”

After a moment, Hannah, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, opened the door. She wasn’t wearing shoes. “Kade! What in the hell has gotten—”

He shoved past her into the apartment. “Save it, Hannah. What did you do to the code?”

“The… code?” Hannah asked, looking bewildered.

“Jesus Christ, Hannah. I am not a violent man, but I swear to God. In twenty minutes, another impactor is supposed to hit, and if it’s got the same problem as the last one, we are all going to wish that goddamn asteroid wiped us out.” He gripped her hard by the arm. “Tell me what you did to the code!”

“Kade, stop it! That hurts!” Tears were forming in her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about a problem with the code.”

Kade gave her a shove, and she fell backwards onto the couch behind her. “You must think I’m an idiot. I am an idiot. Why did you do it? Money? Are you working for the Chinese? The Russians?”

“What? Kade, I’m not working for anybody!”

“Bull. Shit. Why didn’t you come in to work today?”

“I wasn’t feeling well. I—”

Kade’s eyes fell to a suitcase lying on the floor a few feet away. It was half-filled with clothes. Kade turned, fixed his eyes on a vase resting on an end table. In the vase was a bouquet of roses Kade had had delivered two days earlier. He walked to the table, picked up the vase and hurled it against the wall a foot to the left of Hannah. She screamed.

“Try again, Hannah!”

“My God, Kade. This isn’t you. You’re not this person!”

“You have no fucking idea who I am,” Kade said, red-faced and shaking with rage. “Answer the goddamned question.” He took a step toward her.

“Okay, okay! I’ll tell you! I got a call last night. Someone told me not to go in to work.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know! They didn’t give me a name, and they used some kind of voice scrambler. But they knew things, Kade. Things about me. Things about us. After the call, I got an email. They had pictures.”

“Show me.”

“Kade—”

“Show. Me.”

“All right.” She got up and walked to the kitchen counter, where her tablet rested. Kade followed. She logged in and brought up the email. Attached to the email were at least fifty images—some of Kade and Hannah at their getaway, some of Hannah alone in her apartment. “They said not to go to work today. Said that if I didn’t leave town right away, they would post those pictures publicly.”

Kade shook his head. “No, no, no. This isn’t right.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Kade. I swear. I was trying to protect you. They left $20,000 in an envelope under my pillow. I can show you. I was supposed to use the money to leave town.”

“No,” said Kade again. “We were careful. I was careful. Something isn’t right.”

“Kade, please.”

A call came in from Rami. It was marked urgent.

Kade turned away from Hannah. “Rami. Have you found the bad code?”

“Still working on it. You were right to be worried about Hannah, though. In the last month, she checked out six different code modules related to the control system.”

“She’s on the project, Rami.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got a code freeze in place. Nobody is supposed to be working on the control modules right now. And that’s not all. Kade, it looks like she got access to COPPA.”

“What? How?” Kade turned to look at Hannah, who was still regarding him fearfully.

“I’ll have to dig through the administrative logs to find out, but she must have sweet-talked someone into giving her access.”

“It wasn’t me, Rami,” Kade said. He knew that Rami suspected he and Hannah had been having an affair, but he’d never confronted Kade directly.

“Okay,” said Rami. He didn’t sound convinced.

Fuck it, Kade thought. Let Rami think what he wants. I’ve got bigger problems. His heads-up display told him they had sixteen minutes until the next impactor was scheduled to hit. He ended the call.

“Rami says you accessed COPPA.”

“I was curious,” Hannah said. “You know I like playing around with—”

“Enough with the bullshit, Hannah. I know you’re lying. Why did you access COPPA? And how did you get access?”

Hannah bit her lip. She looked Kade in the eyes and then looked away. “Myra gave me access. I told her you said it was okay.”

“Why? What did you want COPPA for?”

“Kade, I’m so sorry. I’m not working for the Chinese or the Russians. I’m… God, this is so fucked up. Kade, I’m working for the Americans.”

Kade stared. “Fuck me. Who? FBI?”

“I think it’s some special group under the FIA. They wanted COPPA. I told them I could get it for them. Kade, I had no choice. They’ve got my brother.”

“Brother?” This was the first Kade had heard of a brother.

“Step-brother, technically. He’s got some developmental problems, gets in trouble sometimes. Somehow he got suckered into that bullshit plot to kidnap the Secretary of Defense last year. They’re holding him on federal charges.”

“And they promised to take it easy on him if you deliver COPPA.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“They set you up.”

“No, I don’t think—”

“None of this was an accident, Hannah. They knew you were angling for a job at Ad Astra. They set up your brother for leverage. I bet this came right from Blankenship herself. That bitch planned to double-cross me from the beginning. But why sabotage the impactors?”

“Kade, I swear to God I don’t know anything about that. I never messed with the code. I was just making copies for the feds. Whoever did it, it’s probably the same people who want me out of town.”

Kade thought this over, decided it made some sense. “They wanted you to look guilty. Between skipping town and accessing COPPA, they knew I’d—oh no. Shit.”

“What?”

Kade held up a finger. “Call Rami.” The phone app rang, and rang, and rang. “God damn it, Rami. Pick up.”

At last Rami answered. “Rami, thank God. Hannah’s not the mole. It’s—”

At that moment, there was a tremendous crash behind him. Kade turned in time to see the door, detached from its hinges, hit the faux hardwood flooring. A large man in tactical gear stepped inside, a shotgun in his hands.

“What the fuck?” Kade said. “Who the hell—” Before he could finish the question, the man had taken two steps toward him, reversing the gun as he did so. The butt of the shotgun slammed into Kade’s forehead and everything went black.

*****

Kade came to an indeterminate amount of time later. For a while, he just lay there on the faux wood, trying to think around the throbbing in his head. There was something he was supposed to be doing. Something important. People were counting on him.

He rolled over and pushed himself to a sitting position. There was an explosion in his head. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he retched and nearly passed out again. His glasses were missing.

Mammon. Something had to be done about Mammon.

He crawled around on the floor until he found his glasses. He put them on. Two missed calls from Rami, three from Christy, and five more from unidentified callers. He had a vague sense that this portended something very bad, but before he could think of what it was, his eyes alighted on two bare feet sticking out from behind the kitchen cabinets. Hannah.

He crawled to the kitchen. Hannah was lying on her back, unmoving, but there were no obvious injuries. Maybe…?

No. Something was wrapped around her throat. Dark blue elastic fabric, an article of clothing of some kind. Her lips were blue, and her face was white. She had no pulse.

This is your fault, he thought. A woman is dead because of you. It was a terrible thought, and yet he was aware on some level that mourning Hannah’s death was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now. People were counting on him.

Mammon.

It was 4:52 p.m. Six minutes until impactor fifty-two was supposed to hit. He reached up for the edge of the counter and dragged himself to his feet. “Call… Rami,” he gasped in between the explosions in his skull.

“Kade, where are you?”

“It wasn’t Hannah,” Kade whispered. “It was Myra.”

“Say again, Kade? It’s loud in here.”

“Myra,” Kade said through gritted teeth. “The saboteur is Myra.”

“Are you sure?”

“Has to be. She gave Hannah access. Knew she was a spy, knew we would suspect her. Diversion….”

“Kade, are you all right?”

“No. Got hit on the head.”

“Okay, because it sounds like you’re saying Hanna and Myra are both spies.”

“Yes. Both spies. Get Myra to tell you where the bad code is.”

“We already found it.”

“Thank God.”

“Hold your thanks. It’s not going to help.”

“What? Why?”

“We’re locked out, Kade. Somehow, in all the chaos, the saboteur sent a virus to the impactors. They’re unresponsive.”

“Ah, hell.”

“That’s not all. Before we lost contact, all the remaining impactors were off course. Even if we can reestablish contact, it’s too late. Unless our saboteur left some hydrogen in the tanks, there’s no way to get them back in line. It’s over, Kade. We failed.”

Chapter Thirty-four

2042

Valerie, Sofia and Jian were on the road fifteen minutes after arriving at Jian’s house. They barely beat rush hour, reaching Palm Springs by four p.m. Sofia and Jian sat together in the back seat, and for the first half hour or so, they kept up a lively chatter. Then Sofia grew quieter; she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. Valerie knew she was thinking about her father. When Valerie closed her eyes, she saw Rick lying face down on the floor next to the coffee table. She turned on the radio, but it didn’t help.

As they drove through the scrub desert south of Joshua Tree National Park, she realized she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her husband for dead, no matter how poorly he had treated her. She would turn around and face the consequences for what she had done. First, though, she would call an ambulance. She tapped the phone button on the steering wheel, silencing the radio.

“Mom!” cried Sofia from the backseat. “Turn it back on!”

“What?” Valerie asked, confused. She hadn’t been paying any attention to the droning voice on the radio.

“Didn’t you hear, Mrs. Sutherland?” Jian said. “They said one of the impactors missed.”

Valerie had been so consumed by her thoughts of Rick that she had completely forgotten about Mammon. She and Sofia had been following the progress of the mission closely since the first impactor of the second round struck the asteroid a day earlier. She turned the radio back on. A man’s voice was speaking:

“—no impact plume, as there was on the previous impacts. As we’re finding out now, there was a good reason for that. It appears that impactor fifty-one never actually hit the asteroid, because it was nearly a mile off target. And we have so far received no explanation for why it was so far off course, have we, Dr. Germesin?” Dr. Erik Germesin was an astrophysicist who had been making the rounds, talking about the Mammon capture mission.

“No, we have not,” Germesin said. “Ad Astra has not yet even released a statement acknowledging that the impactor went off course. We only know about it because of some sharp-eyed viewers who spotted the craft in the footage transmitted by the following impactor, number fifty-two. Velocity measurements taken from satellites and Earth observatories eventually confirmed their suspicion: impactor fifty-one did not hit Mammon.”

“And what’s arguably more troubling,” the host went on, “is that impactor fifty-one seems to have transmitted… well, I don’t know what to call it. Bogus video, I suppose.”

“Bogus, counterfeit, forged.”

“Forged?”

“Well, look. This was clearly not an accident. Somebody programmed that craft to transmit video that seems to have originated with one of the other impactor craft.”

“You’ve seen the uncut footage.”

“Yes. In case your listeners don’t know: Ad Astra provides what they call a ‘digest feed.’ That is, a continuous feed that basically daisy-chains the video feeds of the impactors. But they also provide the full, uncut video from each impactor. And if you look at the uncut video, it’s very clear that the footage transmitted by impactor fifty-one was not recorded by impactor fifty-one.”

“And how would you explain that?”

“The most charitable interpretation is that impactor fifty-one’s software was hacked.”

“And the less charitable interpretation?”

“That this was an intentional deception on the part of Ad Astra.”

“Why would they do that?”

“That’s an excellent question. I tend to lean toward the hacker theory, but it’s frustrating that we haven’t gotten anything out of Ad Astra.”

“It certainly doesn’t make them look less guilty.”

“No, it does not.”

“Just how bad is this for Ad Astra, and for HFM?”

“It all depends on the next impactor. The impactors all use the same software, so if one was hacked, they might all have been hacked. We’ll know soon enough. Even if the video feed is doctored, we’ll know pretty quickly from the satellites and observatories whether Mammon’s velocity has changed.”

“We’re watching the live feed now, and we have just over twenty minutes until impactor fifty-two is scheduled to hit. Any guesses on whether we’ll get a statement from Ad Astra before then, Dr. Germesin?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Valerie, Sofia and Jian listened with rapt attention as the host and Dr. Germesin continued to chat, the host occasionally breaking in to give an update on how much time remained before impact. Some part of Valerie’s mind was aware that her husband might very well be dying of a brain hemorrhage at that moment, but she couldn’t make herself turn off the radio. The whole experience was surreal: she had waited for this moment for five years—the capstone of Kade’s career, and her source of hope both for humanity in general and for her life in particular. She hadn’t consciously planned her escape from Rick to coincide with the capture of Mammon; the timing had just worked out that way. It just felt right. And now it was all going wrong.

“And there it is,” said the host.

“Yes, it appears that impactor fifty-two is firing its hydrogen jets, just as impactor fifty-one did.”

“For those listeners who don’t have access to the live feeds,” the announcer said, “the view from impactor fifty-two shows the asteroid drifting to the right, which means that the impactor is moving left. And if we switch to the view from impactor fifty-three, we can just make out what looks like a tiny plume of white gas, which would be the hydrogen jets that impactor fifty-one is using to propel itself off course. It’s normal for the impactors to make minor course corrections, but this appears to be a prolonged burst.”

“Yes, it’s been several seconds now. Much longer than you would expect for a minor correctional burst. I think we have to assume at this point that impactor fifty-two is having the same problem as the last one.”

“Not exactly the same. We’re not getting the bogus video this time.”

“That’s right. Whoever is responsible for this either was unable to hide what they were doing or has decided it’s no longer necessary.”

“So is that… hold on. Dr. Germesin, I’m hearing that all the remaining impactors are firing their jets. I’m checking now, and… yes, white bursts from all of them. Except for the last one, impactor sixty, of course, which doesn’t have a camera trained on it.”

“Yes, they’re all moving off course. My God, what a disaster.”

“I guess that’s that, then,” said the announcer, dismay evident in his voice.

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s over.”

“No chance of salvaging the mission with the remaining impactors?”

“No, the other impactors just don’t have the velocity to slow Mammon very much.”

“To be clear, there is no danger of Mammon striking Earth.”

“None. That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about, at least on this pass.”

“And in four and a half years?”

“It’s still extremely unlikely to hit. Hopefully Ad Astra or someone can organize another mission and bring Mammon into Earth orbit, but… well, the political and economic fallout of this failure is going to be substantial. I’m not an economist, but I honestly don’t see how Ad Astra survives this.”

“It doesn’t look great for them,” the host said, “but as you say, you’re not an economist. Nothing we say here should be taken as investment advice or predictions of the performance of any particular company.”

“Of course,” said Dr. Germesin, annoyance creeping into his tone. “But Ad Astra’s entire business model is predicated upon—”

“We should probably leave such speculation to the experts,” said the host hurriedly. “I’m hearing that Ad Astra is down fourteen percent on the news, and High Frontier Mining is down six percent. Significant drops, to be sure, but hardly insurmountable for two fundamentally sound companies.”

“The markets closed before we knew the mission had failed, though,” said Dr. Germesin. “We won’t know the full extent of the damage until trading starts again.”

“As I said, Dr. Germesin is not an economist, and his statements should not be considered investment advice or predictions of the performance of any particular company. Dr. Germesin, great to have you on the program, as always. Up next, we have a national security expert who believes the problem with the impactors was the result of Trojan horse code embedded in Chinese-made chips. This is Chris Turner with BFG News.”

Just like that, Dr. Germesin was gone, and the conversation turned to what seemed to Valerie to be baseless speculation about faulty hardware on the impactors. She turned down the volume.

“I guess it’s a good thing Dad sold the stock,” Sofia said.

Valerie burst into laughter, which rapidly turned into tears.

Jian, sitting behind her, leaned forward. “Mrs. Sutherland, are you okay?”

She shook her head, putting her foot on the brake and steering onto the shoulder. The Explorer rolled slowly to a stop. They sat there in silence for several minutes. When the chime for Valerie’s phone app sounded, they all jumped. The Explorer’s dashboard display read Rick.

Valerie’s heart pounded in her chest. Was it really him? Or had someone found his netcard?

“Mom?” Sofia said, as the chime sounded again.

Valerie turned, catching Sofia’s glance. Sofia’s eyes went wide as she realized who was calling.

“Um,” said Jian, “can one of you tell me what’s going on?”

Valerie ignored him.

“Mom, you have to answer it.”

Valerie nodded. She swallowed hard and tapped the button to accept the call.

“You bitch!” Rick screamed in over the car’s sound system. “I could have been seriously hurt, and you just fucking left me. You know they gave me eight stitches in my forehead? They couldn’t believe I—”

Valerie ended the call. Thank God, she thought. Thank God thank God thank God.

“He’s okay,” Sofia said.

Valerie let out a sigh of relief. “Still an asshole, but yeah.”

“I really don’t want to know what just happened, do I?” Jian asked.

“Maybe later,” said Sofia.

“Okay, good.”

“’Good?’” Valerie asked.

“Yeah, because we’ve got other problems to talk about.”

Valerie raised an eyebrow at Jian. “Like what?”

“Well, I’ve been, uh, working on some simulations for our current situation.”

“You’ve been working on simulations of being parked on the shoulder of a freeway?”

“No, I mean for the Mammon thing. I wrote this economic modeling algorithm.”

“You did what?”

“Mom, Jian’s really into crypto and stuff. I told you about this.”

“Okay,” Valerie said. She probably had, but Valerie must have tuned it out. Jian’s esoteric hobbies hadn’t interested her.

“I mean, it’s not super-sophisticated or anything,” Jian said. “I wrote it for my senior software project at school. But I think it’s pretty good for macroeconomic modeling. As good as anything those dummies at the Federal Reserve use, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Jian. I don’t mean to be rude, but is there a point to this?”

“Yes. For sure. So, here’s the thing. Before this whole Mammon thing started, the federal government was on the verge of default. Either stopping payments on bonds or monetizing the debt by printing more money. If they had done either of those things, well, it would have been really bad. Really bad. The value of the dollar would have crashed, and people would have fled any dollar-denominated assets, which would have made the dollar drop more, which would make people want to get rid of their dollars, which would make the dollar drop more, which—”

“Jian,” Sofia interjected, “we get it. A vicious cycle.”

“Yes! A vicious cycle. And the end result is major inflation. I’m not talking inflation like in the twenties, with mortgage rates at ten percent and people on fixed incomes eating Top Ramen or whatever. I’m talking about a level of inflation we’ve never seen in this country.”

“But then Kade Kapur and President Blankenship announced the HFM plan,” Sofia prompted.

“Right. They propped up the dollar by making Treasurys convertible to HFM stock. But the value of HFM stock rests on the assumption that in a month, there will be ten trillion dollars’ worth of metal in orbit. More importantly, it rests on the assumption that HFM and Ad Astra can move an asteroid into orbit whenever they want to. And, well, both of those assumptions are looking pretty shaky right now.”

“So now the inflation they tried to prevent is going to happen,” Sofia said.

“Oh, no,” said Jian. “Now something much, much worse is going to happen. Because instead of using Kade Kapur’s plan as an opportunity to get their finances under control, the government actually increased spending. They flooded the economy with cash, and now the only thing propping up that cash has just vanished. I tried to model what would happen in this scenario, and I actually ran into a floating-point error.”

“What does that mean?” Valerie asked.

“It means the numbers were so big, the program ran out of space,” Sofia said.

“It was just a matter of changing data types, but the point is that it never occurred to me that you could have an inflation rate higher than a trillion percent.”

“A trillion percent?” Valerie asked.

“Yeah,” Jian said. “Apparently it’s actually happened a few times. They call it hyperinflation. In 2008, Zimbabwe had an inflation rate of nearly eighty billion percent. Prices doubled every twenty-four hours. And that isn’t the worst example. In Hungary just after World War II, inflation hit forty-two quadrillion percent.”

“And you think that’s going to happen here?” Valerie asked. “With the U.S. dollar?”

“I mean, it’s just a simulation,” Jian said. “And the results depend a lot on what you put into it. But this thing with the impactors going off course and Mammon zooming right past Earth… that’s pretty much the worst-case scenario. It could get bad.”

“How bad, Jian?” Valerie asked.

“Really bad.”

“Give us a number, Jian,” said Sofia.

“The exact number isn’t important,” Jian said. “The key point is that—”

“What’s the number, Jian?” Valerie asked. “You can’t tell us all this and then hedge about the number. What inflation rate did your program predict?”

Jian looked from Valerie to Sofia and then back. “Nineteen quintillion percent.”

Chapter Thirty-five

2042

“What does that mean?” Valerie asked. “Nineteen quadrillion percent inflation?”

“It’s a nineteen with fifteen zeros after it,” Jian said.

“Not that. Hyperinflation. What does that actually mean, in the real world?”

“Oh,” said Jian. “It means that the dollar becomes basically worthless overnight.”

“Literally overnight?”

“Well, no. It will take a few weeks for the information to propagate. People’s faith in the dollar is quasi-religious. That faith started to wane a decade or so ago, but Kade Kapur was basically the second coming. With the dollar linked to the infinite possibilities of space mining, everybody thought it was invincible. They are about to find out it’s not.”

“Meaning prices are going to go way up,” said Sofia.

“That’s an understatement,” said Jian.

“Prices of what?”

“Everything,” said Jian. “Food. Houses. Cars. Toilet paper. Clothing. Batteries. Tools. Everything.”

Valerie shook her head. “Okay, I know enough about economics to understand that prices are determined by supply and demand. How can prices go way up if there isn’t a sudden change in one of those things? Factories are going to keep making toilet paper, right? And people aren’t going to suddenly start using a lot more toilet paper.”

“Right, right,” said Jian. “It’s like this. Last year the inflation rate was relatively low, something like five percent. So at the end of the year, toilet paper was five percent more expensive than at the beginning of the year, assuming toilet paper follows the greater trend. Right?”

“Sure,” said Valerie.

“People didn’t buy more toilet paper. The toilet paper factory didn’t produce less toilet paper. The price just went up, because money was worth slightly less at the end of the year. Got it?”

“Yes, Jian.”

“Okay, now imagine that instead of dropping five percent in a year, the dollar drops five percent in a day. Not only that, but you have reason to think that it might drop another five percent tomorrow, and again the next day. Now how much toilet paper do you buy?”

“Well,” said Valerie. “I might buy more, if the price is going to go up. I’d probably be more likely to stock up on other things, though.”

“Exactly. Now imagine everybody doing that, all at the same time. Suddenly everybody in the country, maybe everybody in the world, is stocking up on toilet paper and canned tuna and batteries and everything else. The demand for everything goes up, because people don’t want to pay forty percent more in a week. Pretty soon, there’s no toilet paper on the shelves. People start to worry that other things are going to get scarce, so now they’re panic buying anything they might need for weeks ahead. Stores are selling out of all sorts of things.

“That leads to another problem: consumers start running out of things to spend their money on, so competition for the remaining goods increases. As a result, prices go up even faster. Store owners aren’t stupid; they don’t want to hold dollars any more than anyone else. So they keep raising prices, hoping to minimize their losses. People realize that the value of their savings is shrinking, so they take all their money out of the bank and try to spend it on anything they can find. The banks don’t have enough cash on hand to cover all the withdrawals, so they either start putting limits on withdrawals or get bailed out by the government. Limiting withdrawals just creates more panic. A bailout injects even more cash into an economy that already has too much cash chasing too few goods. There are a lot of ways things can go from there, but none of them are good.”

“The vicious cycle again,” Sofia said.

“Yep. Once it starts, it’s almost impossible to stop.”

“That makes no sense,” Valerie said. “If there’s a chance of nineteen gazillion percent inflation, why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

“They basically made it illegal to talk about,” Jian said. “Federal Misinformation Act.”

“Jian says they’ve been talking about it for a while in Stellaris groups,” Sofia said.

Jian nodded. “It was all theoretical, though. People who are into this stuff tend to be science geeks too. Nobody really thought Ad Astra would fail. I mean, even after half of the launches were delayed, the odds of success were still really high. We all owned HFM stock, and a lot of us bought Ad Astra too. That’s part of the problem, though. Nobody believed this could happen.”

“So what do we do?” Valerie asked.

“Well,” Jian said. “I guess the first thing we need to do is figure out if we’re still going to Florida.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Sofia said.

Jian shrugged. “People usually like to be home in times of crisis.”

Valerie stared at him. “Jian, you really are a weird kid.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Sutherland,” Jian said, beaming. He seemed to genuinely take it as a compliment.

Valerie thought about what waited for her and Sofia at home. She shook her head. She was glad that Rick was okay, but there was no going back there. “We keep going,” said Valerie.

“Even if all our money is worthless by the time we get to Florida?”

Valerie laughed. “Money? I have eighty-three dollars in the bank. I was supposed to be funding this trip with my Ad Astra stock. Instead, thanks to my asshole husband, we’re driving this thing.”

“He probably did you a favor,” Jian said. “Ad Astra is going to take a nosedive as soon as they reopen trading. HFM too. Sounds like the SEC shut down the stock exchanges just as people were starting to react to the news.”

“It’s a great vehicle for driving across the country,” Valerie admitted, “but it doesn’t do me any good if I can’t buy food or gas.”

“What about credit cards?” Jian asked.

“What about them?”

“How much credit do you have available?”

Valerie shrugged. “Maybe twenty thousand dollars. But I can’t just start putting everything on my credit cards. The interest rate is obscene.”

Jian shook his head. “You need to start thinking differently about money, Mrs. Sutherland. If you put twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stuff on your credit cards, and then the dollar loses ninety-nine percent of its value, you’re basically getting twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stuff for two hundred dollars.”

“How is that possible?”

“You’re borrowing money from the credit card company while it’s still worth something, but when the bill comes due, the money is almost worthless. And to be honest, I doubt most of the big banks and credit cards companies are going to be around in six months, so you probably won’t even have to pay that much.”

“You really think it’s going to be that bad?”

“I think banks failing is going to be the least of our problems. But here’s the thing: if I figured this out, other people have too. They’re going to start putting controls in place to keep people from doing what we’re about to do.”

“And what are we about to do?”

“Find the nearest big box store and buy everything we can find.”

*****

Eight miles down the freeway was a Wal-Mart. The parking lot was nearly full, but the store didn’t look particularly busy for a Wal-Mart at six p.m. The three got lunch at the attached McDonald’s, where they mapped out their plan, and then split up. Valerie was to focus on food, with an emphasis on dried and canned goods. There was no way to fit enough food in the Explorer to last them more than a couple months; their primary goal was not to feed themselves (although Valerie would buy a good supply of rice and sugar to make sure their caloric needs would be met for the next several weeks), but rather to get the most value crammed into the Explorer as possible. Jian assured her that high-protein foods treated or packaged to have a long shelf life would soon be worth their weight in gold.

Feeling like an idiot, she filled an entire cart with canned tuna, sardines, every possible variation of jerky, and Spam, and then made her way to the checkout. She laughed as she saw Sofia leaving the store with a cart full of flashlights, batteries, camp stoves, bug spray, sunscreen, and dozens of other high value-to-volume items from the sporting goods section. Sofia held up the credit card Valerie had given her to the reader at the store’s exit and paused as the RFID scanners checked everything out in her cart. Sofia confirmed payment and then continued to the parking lot. Valerie did the same with her items, but a red warning flashed on the screen telling her to “wait for assistance.” Her heart began to beat rapidly. Was the credit card company already limiting purchases, as Jian had predicted? A young female employee came over, glancing with no great interest at the odd assortment of items in Valerie’s cart. “It just needs you to verify the purchase,” she said.

Valerie stared at her a moment. “Oh!” she said, pulling her screen from her pocket. There was a message from the credit card company asking her to confirm that she was making a large purchase at Wal-Mart. She replied YES, and the transaction went through.

“Thank you,” said Valerie.

“Have a good day,” said the woman, walking away. Valerie wanted to call to her, warn her what was coming. But there was no point—you couldn’t warn everybody, and in fact their strategy depended on the three of them acting before everyone else had figured out what was going on. It was selfish, she supposed, hoarding things that other people would need. But if she didn’t do it, someone else would—and Valerie was done letting other people determine her fate. She was taking control of her life, for once.

She wheeled the cart across the parking lot to the Explorer, where Sofia was already loading stuff into the back. Sofia was always good at organizing things; she had taken over the job of loading the dishwasher when she was only ten years old because she always found a way to fit more dishes into it than Valerie could. Valerie handed items to Sofia and Sofia found a spot for them in the Explorer. They had started on Valerie’s cart when Jian showed up with a cart full of electronics, three shotguns, and dozens of boxes of ammunition of various calibers.

“These were the only guns they had left,” Jian said. “And this is the last of the ammunition.”

“Did you even get shotgun shells?” Valerie asked.

“A few. The ammo is mostly for trading, though.”

Valerie decided not to ask what sort of post-apocalyptic scenario Jian was envisioning that would require using bullets as currency. “Set aside a few boxes of nine-millimeter hollow points,” said Valerie, patting the gun she had concealed in her waistband.

“Take what you need,” said Jian. “You guys got this? I’m going back in.”

“We got it,” said Sofia. “Go.”

They had agreed to split up and buy one cart of goods at a time, just in case the store started to put limits on purchases or the credit card companies locked them out. The parking lot was now completely full, and the store had gotten busier. People were beginning to figure it out.

“Anything on the news streams?” Valerie asked. Sofia had her earphones in and had been thumbing through the various news channels while they shopped.

“Nothing,” said Sofia. “It’s actually kind of creepy. They’re downplaying the failure of the Mammon capture mission and talking about how High Frontier is going to be fine because it was never about just this one asteroid.”

“This one asteroid is all they’ve been talking about for five years!”

“Right? They’ve completely changed the narrative in the past hour, like people won’t notice. And they keep saying that the government would never let HFM or Ad Astra fail. But they don’t really say anything about how they would keep them from failing.”

“They’re just trying to keep people from panicking,” Valerie said. “It’s probably the only thing they can do.”

“So you think Jian is right? Money is going to be worthless pretty soon, just because of a couple spacecraft going off course?”

“To be honest, Sofia, I have no idea. Tomorrow we’re either going to think Jian is a genius or… well, we’re going to be eating a lot of jerky.”

Chapter Thirty-six

2042

They each filled two more carts before calling it a day. It was now past nine p.m. The sun had set, and the store was packed. By this time, two more impactors had missed the asteroid, and Sofia was rolling her eyes and shaking her head at the contortions the news hosts went through to put a cheerful spin on the day’s events. The trio had maxed out two of Valerie’s credit cards and were getting close on the third. The Explorer was so full that there was barely room for three people to sit. They stopped at a nearby gas station to top off the tank and had to wait nearly half an hour for a pump. Valerie called her grandmother in Tampa to let her know they planned to be there in two or three days. Her grandmother sounded worried, but otherwise okay.

After getting gas, they got back on the road, scanning the news streams in vain for any honest coverage of the situation. Talking points must have gone out from the Federal Information Agency, because they all said the same thing, often using exactly the same words. There was no reason to panic. High Frontier Mining’s mission had never been about just one asteroid. The government would never let HFM fail. With every repetition, Valerie got a little more worried. It wasn’t just that it was a coverup; it wasn’t even a good coverup. Multiple “independent” news organizations shoveling exactly the same bullshit was just sloppy. Clearly the FIA hadn’t been prepared for this possibility, and if the FIA wasn’t prepared, probably nobody else in the government was either. They were all just making it up as they went along.

Occasionally some actual news did get through: at 4:50 p.m. Mountain Time, a fourth impactor, number fifty-four, missed Mammon. Ad Astra had released a brief written statement admitting that the software guiding the third battery of impactors had “mis-performed.” The statement went on to say, however, that they were “confident that the remaining impactors would perform as expected.” None of the news hosts seemed to feel any obligation to note that the mission was still doomed, no matter what the remaining impactors did. Kade Kapur still could not be reached for comment, but the President of the United States was expected to make a statement at 8 a.m. Eastern Time the following day. President Javier Galiardo, who had been in the Senate for eighteen years before serving two terms as Ramona Blankenship’s Vice President, was an amiable career politician who was generally considered a competent manager if not a particularly inspiring leader. This would be the first major crisis he had faced as President.

All new vehicles were required to have FMA-compliant receivers, which meant that the car could only play officially approved news streams. Jian said he could hack it, but it would take some time. He had already taught the Explorer to respond to the name “Impunity,” because he thought it was hilarious to be able to say they were traveling across the country with Impunity.

In the meantime, they listened to increasingly absurd doublespeak while Jian used his screen to search for real news in Stellaris groups. Such groups were rife with conspiracy theories about the impactor problems: some blamed the Chinese, some the Russians, some rival space corporations, some the Jews. Most everyone agreed on one thing, though: the dollar was going to crash.

The bond market had been closed at the same time as the stock markets, so it was unclear how badly bonds had been hit. Already, though, the dollar was off by twenty percent or more against other major currencies.

Around ten p.m., when the newscasters had just about exhausted their supply of euphemisms and disclaimers, another, more salacious story, broke. This, at last, was a story they were free to tell without running afoul of federal regulators. Valerie could hear the relief, bordering on euphoria, in the woman’s voice:

“It seems that the troubles are just beginning for multibillionaire Kade Kapur. If the failure of his company’s Mammon capture mission wasn’t enough, we have learned some shocking information about Mr. Kapur’s personal life. A few hours ago, shortly after the first impactor craft missed its target, photos were uploaded to a private Stellaris group by an anonymous user of Kapur and a woman who is thought to be an employee of Kapur’s company, Ad Astra. The photos, some of which are extremely graphic, show the two engaged in intimate, romantic behavior. It is not known at this time where the photos were taken or who took them. The whereabouts of Kade Kapur, who is wanted for questioning in the federal criminal probe of Ad Astra, are also unknown. The timing suggests a connection to the failure of the Mammon mission, but we do not know what that connection might be. Kapur’s wife, Christy, is said to be aware of the photos, but she could not be reached for comment.”

“So he’s a typical guy after all,” Sofia said.

“Hey!” Jian protested.

Valerie barely heard them. My God, she thought. What a nightmare for Christy. Valerie knew little about her, but she’d always seemed like a nice, normal, decent person. She’d been so happy Kade had found someone like that. What was he thinking?

By midnight, Valerie’s nerves were shot, and they were all exhausted. They stopped at a motel just outside of Tucson for the night.

They arose just before dawn the next morning and, after checking to make sure the Explorer’s contents were unmolested, walked across the parking lot to a Waffle House for breakfast. Every table was full, and there was a line of several dozen people outside. People were talking in hushed, nervous tones or watching news feeds on their screens. Fortunately, President Galiardo’s address was delayed by forty minutes, so they were already sitting at a table enjoying coffee and waffles when the President’s seal appeared on the screens overhead. After a few seconds, the President himself appeared, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office. Except for the occasional cough and one crying baby, the entire restaurant was silent as the President began to speak.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. “I want to speak to you today about a matter of great scientific and economic importance. Yesterday, as you probably know, the mission to capture the asteroid called Mammon failed. In about four weeks, Mammon will pass by Earth on its way back out to deep space. I want to reassure you that there is no danger of Mammon striking Earth. I have spoken to some of the most brilliant and respected scientific minds in the world, and they are all in complete agreement that Mammon will not strike our planet or cause any significant physical disruptions. There is no truth to the rumors that the asteroid will cause earthquakes, tidal waves, power outages, or any other sort of natural or unnatural disasters. It will simply be too far away for its gravity to affect us. That is the good news.

“The bad news, obviously, is that the mission to bring Mammon into Earth’s orbit was unsuccessful. I do not want to downplay the magnitude of this failure. The capture of Mammon was to be an important symbolic step in the process of humanity’s expansion into the solar system and beyond. Many people worked very hard on this mission, and many others have been hard at work on other projects related to the mining of the asteroid. The effects of this setback on our scientific development and economic progress will be profound.

“That said, our nation has faced—and overcome—greater challenges than this. Make no mistake: we will meet this challenge as well. The establishment of High Frontier Mining was a historic milestone for this country, and it remains the focal point of our ongoing commitment to the settlement of space. I will repeat that: High Frontier Mining retains the full confidence and backing of the United States of America.

“To make good on that commitment under these new circumstances, today I am announcing the execution of a seven-point plan to ensure global economic stability and the continuation of America’s leadership in the effort to colonize space.

“First, I have directed the SEC to halt trading on the major exchanges while we work with the legislative branch on measures to ensure the long-term health of our financial sector.

“Second, I have directed banks to limit cash withdrawals to five hundred dollars per day per person.

“Third, I am issuing an executive order suspending the use of all currencies other than the U.S. dollar within the United States. Until further notice, no purchases conducted with foreign currencies or cryptocurrencies will be permitted.

“Fourth, I am issuing an executive order suspending the purchase of foreign currencies or cryptocurrencies within the United States.

“Fifth, I am issuing an executive order suspending the purchase of gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metals within the United States. Some exceptions for jewelry for personal use will be forthcoming.

“Sixth, I am issuing an executive order forbidding the transport of gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metals outside the country. Again, some exceptions for jewelry for personal use will be forthcoming. Transport of more than $10,000 in cash outside the country will also be forbidden.

“Seventh, I am issuing guidelines to banks and credit card companies to enforce limits on excessive purchases of frivolous items and purchases of unusually large quantities of necessary items.

“These measures are intended to prevent unscrupulous individuals from capitalizing on the temporary economic instability brought about by the unexpected failure of the Mammon capture mission. None of these measures are intended to be permanent. We will be working with both houses of Congress to develop longer-term solutions to promote economic stability and growth.

“Additionally, the assets of Ad Astra, the company tasked with the Mammon capture mission, will be seized by the Justice Department pending the filing of federal criminal charges against its CEO, board of directors, and several key employees. I am not currently at liberty to disclose any specifics of this ongoing investigation. Ad Astra’s CEO, Kade Kapur, remains at large and is considered a fugitive of justice. Anyone with information regarding Kapur’s whereabouts is asked to contact their local police department, who can forward the information to the appropriate authorities.

“The next few days will test our mettle as Americans. Together we face a choice: will we give in to fear, or will we rise above the present difficulties and work together as friends and neighbors to face the future with hope and resolve? When my predecessor was first elected to serve as your President, many claimed that America’s best days were behind her. I didn’t believe that then, and I don’t believe it now. With the Jumpstart Space Act, we bet big on America’s future, and I am just as convinced as ever that America will continue to lead the way, both on Earth and across the solar system. We will get through this, and we will be stronger as a country than ever before. May America continue to enjoy the blessings of peace, prosperity, and liberty.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

2042

Once again, the Presidential seal filled the screen. After a moment, a reporter appeared, standing outside the White House. He proceeded to reiterate what the President had just said and recap the previous day’s events, presumably for those who had just awoken from a coma. The assembled diners at the Tucson Waffle House collectively lost interest and began to chatter amongst themselves. A few paid their bills and left in a hurry.

“Looks like you were right about hoarding stuff,” Sofia said to Jian.

Jian nodded grimly.

Valerie, who had fixated on the news of Kade being a federal fugitive, snapped out of her reverie. “Will the President’s plan work?”

Jian shrugged. “Short term, it will limit dumping dollars and panic buying of hard goods. But unless he’s got some really brilliant strategy up his sleeve, it may actually make things worse in the long run.”

“Make them worse how?” Valerie asked. She didn’t like being dependent on a teenager for information, but Jian seemed to have a knack for this stuff. He was certainly more reliable than any officially approved “expert.”

“Well,” said Jian, “assuming all these restrictions can be enforced—and I’m pretty doubtful on some of them—all they will do is slow down economic activity. That’s a good strategy if you’re trying to prevent people from panicking about some short-term bad news, like the President said. But this isn’t an isolated event like a terrorist attack on a pipeline or China invading Taiwan. The federal government explicitly linked America’s economic future to the prospects of space mining. To the extent that our money is based on anything, it’s based on Mammon. The President can’t just take all that back by making a speech. He needs a long-term plan to disentangle the dollar from Mammon. Without that, these kinds of controls will just mean that the collapse will happen in slow-motion, rather than all at once.”

“Okay,” said Sofia, “but how does that make things worse?”

“Prices are information,” Jian said. “If the government puts controls on buying and selling, they are also putting limits on the flow of information. If they open up the stock market, suddenly everybody is going to know that HFM is worth a fraction of its previous value. If they let people freely trade dollars for other things, suddenly everybody is going to know the dollar isn’t worth what it used to be. Now, there is some advantage to preventing the free flow of information: in the short term, you can slow down the trends that create the vicious cycle. In other words, if you prevent people from spreading the information that the dollar has dropped by fifty percent, you’re also preventing propagation of the idea that the dollar might drop another fifty percent. Like FDR said, ‘all we have to fear is fear itself.’ You prevent the spread of information, you prevent the spread of fear. So it can be a rational policy, in the short term. But you haven’t dealt with the underlying problem, and of course basically shutting down the economy has its own negative effects.

“But on top of that, by instituting these kinds of extreme controls, the federal government has also injected new information into the system: basically, the President just told everybody that he is scared shitless. That wouldn’t be so bad if he had a plan other than limiting the flight from dollars. But if they lift those restrictions without implementing a better plan, it just means that there’s more bad news to propagate through the system.”

Valerie had become aware that the people at some of the neighboring tables were now silently listening to Jian. She found herself wondering if Jian was a genius like Kade Kapur. Sofia knew how to pick them. Like mother, like daughter.

“What if they never lift the restrictions?” asked an elderly woman at a table across the aisle.

“They’ll destroy the economy,” Jian said. “No modern economy can last long with these restrictions in place. Stocks that investors can’t sell are worthless. Pensions and 401(k)s will collapse. People will stop trusting banks with their money. Nobody is going to risk starting a business under these conditions, particularly if the President has demonstrated that he can and will change the rules on a whim. There aren’t going to be any IPOs if the stock market is closed. And certainly nobody is going to buy U.S. Treasury Bonds.

“Mostly what will happen, though, is that economic activity will be forced underground, to the black market. I’m sure that process has already started, because at least some of those restrictions are basically unenforceable. The restrictions on cryptocurrencies in particular. Decentralized systems, like Stellaris, that people use for trading in cryptocurrencies, are designed to be immune to government control. And we know these systems work, because we have real world examples from oppressive countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. No government has successfully prevented people from using cryptocurrencies without shutting down internet access entirely. And the harder a government tries to control economic activity in general, the more people flee to cryptocurrencies.”

“But they made it illegal to buy cryptocurrencies,” Valerie said.

“People will find ways, the same way they buy drugs or any other sort of contraband. There will be a lot of scammers out there, of course, which is why it’s helpful to be an active Stellaris user. You can find trustworthy people to do business with, and if you have a record of good behavior, they will be more likely to trust you as well.” Close to half the restaurant was now listening to him. Seeing the frightened and puzzled looks from the other diners, Jian went on, “But look, you don’t necessarily have to buy crypto directly. If you’re a business owner, you can start giving your customers the option to pay in crypto. Not all will be able to pay, but some will. Then you can give your employees the option to take crypto in payment. Those employees will be able to buy things from other businesses using crypto, and so on. Eventually crypto replaces the dollar.”

“You’re talking about all of us becoming criminals,” said a man in overalls with the logo of a utility company.

“I’m talking about doing what we have to do to survive,” Jian said. “Either the government lifts these restrictions or they leave them in place indefinitely. But either way, the dollar is finished. Nobody is going to be buying Treasury bonds under these circumstances, and that means the government can’t borrow money to cover the interest on its existing debt. That means they can either stop paying interest, which will cause confidence in the dollar to fall even more, or they can print money to cover the shortfall, which will devalue the currency. Either option leads to a vicious cycle and hyperinflation. My suggestion would be to get rid of whatever dollars you have as fast as you can, no matter what President Galiardo says.”

“It’s like a reset,” said a young woman at the table behind Jian.

“Exactly like that,” said Jian, nodding. “It’s a global reboot of the financial system. Right now, it’s based on dollars. In a few weeks, it’s going to be based on something else. Probably a combination of foreign currencies like the Yuan and cryptocurrencies.”

“Not gold?” said a man in a white shirt and tie standing near the table.

Jian shook his head. “Gold will remain a strong store of value, but it doesn’t work well as a currency in a global marketplace. Too hard to transport, too easy to steal. If a lot of fiat currencies follow the dollar down the drain—and they might—we might see a resurgence of currencies based on precious metals, but I doubt it. If you have an opportunity to buy gold, go for it, but crypto is an even better option.”

“It sounds like you’re telling us to do exactly the opposite of what the President said,” said the utility worker.

“Yep,” said Jian. “The President is trying to sell you a shared delusion, the idea that the dollar is worth the same as it was yesterday. For a long time, that shared delusion worked, but it’s not tenable anymore. You would figure all this stuff out eventually, whether I told you or not. And that means the eight billion people outside this restaurant will also figure it out. The dollar is worthless. Our only advantage is that the people out there haven’t figured it out yet. Buy crypto if you can. If you can’t, buy anything else you can get your hands on.”

Valerie had paid the bill by swiping her credit card across the table’s reader while Jian talked, and she decided this was a good time to leave. She grabbed her purse and caught Sofia’s eye across the table. Sofia gave Jian a nudge and he nodded. They got to their feet.

“How do I find someone to buy crypto from?” asked a heavyset blond woman at the table behind Valerie’s seat.

“What’s your Stellaris ID?” asked the man in the tie.

“Who are you, kid?” asked someone else.

“This is bullshit,” shouted a large, bearded man a few tables away. “I’m a certified financial planner, and this kid doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Crypto is not going to replace the dollar.” The man got to his feet, blocking their way to the exit. The woman who had been sitting next to the big man reached out to touch his arm, trying to get him to sit down. “No, Catherine,” The man said, pulling away. “I can’t just sit here and listen to this crap. They’ve been saying for two decades that crypto is going to replace the dollar, and it’s used in what? Twenty percent of financial transactions worldwide?”

“That estimate is low,” Jian said. “A lot of governments have put strict restrictions on the use of cryptocurrencies, so a lot of crypto transactions are on black and gray markets—”

“It’s used by criminals, is what you’re saying.”

“You’re just mad because they won’t let you dump your HFM stock,” said another man nearby. There was laughter, but also some sympathetic murmurs.

“You’re damn right I’m mad,” the man said. “I’m mad at that asshole Kade Kapur for using cheap Chinese junk components on his spaceships. I’m mad at Blankenship for trusting that asshole with our country’s future. But mostly I’m mad at armchair economists like this kid giving people bad advice. The absolute worst thing we could do right now is panic and start buying everything in sight. The one thing this kid got right was that part about the vicious cycle: if everybody dumps dollars now, prices are going to spike. A jump in prices will scare people into buying more, and prices will go up again. That’s what leads to hyperinflation. If you want your money to be worthless, act like it’s worthless. If you want things to go back to normal, act normal!”

“That would be great advice if you could convince the rest of the world to do the same thing,” a woman shouted from Valerie’s right.

The argument turned into cacophony as several people began shouting at once. Valerie shouted to Jian and pointed to the side door of the restaurant. He nodded, and Valerie led the way through the crowd, her palm against the nine-millimeter pistol in her waistband. The three got outside without further incident.

“That got weird fast,” Sofia said, as they made their way across the parking lot to the Explorer.

“Everybody is on edge,” Valerie said. “Jian, no more public speeches. It’s great that you want to educate the public at large about the shitstorm that’s about to hit, but we need to take care of ourselves. You, me and Sofia. Got it?”

“Got it, Mrs. Sutherland. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Jian. You’re a hell of a smart kid, but you need to work on your situational awareness.”

“Mom’s just mad because she doesn’t like people talking shit about Kade Kapur. She’s got a thing for him.”

“Sofia!”

“I can see it,” Jian said. “He’s super smart. And rich, of course.”

“Mom knows him. They went to school together.”

“What?” Jian said. “Why didn’t you say something, Mrs. Sutherland?”

“I don’t know him, Sofia,” Valerie chided. “We went to elementary school together for one year. All right, get in the car. We need to hit the road.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

2042

The three travelers set out for Texas. They listened in vain for more information from the radio while Jian browsed Stellaris groups. They were nearing Las Cruces, New Mexico when Jian let out a long “Woooow.”

“What’s up, Jian?” Sofia asked.

“Somebody just posted something about a programmer who worked for Ad Astra. Kuan-yu Pek. He’s wanted for questioning by the feds.”

“Sounds like anybody who had anything to do with the Mammon capture is wanted for questioning.”

“Yeah. Just about everybody but Kade Kapur and this Kuan-yu Pek have turned themselves in. And check this out: Kuan-yu’s lawyer just released a statement saying that Kuan-yu will turn himself in, but only if Kade Kapur is apprehended alive. He says Kade Kapur will testify to his innocence.”

“His innocence?” Valerie said. “Are they even charging him with a crime? I thought they were just questioning people.”

“Sounds like a lot of people think Kuan-yu was the one who sabotaged the code. He got out of Taiwan just before the CCP took over. He’s still got family there. The theory is that they used his family to pressure him into sabotaging the mission.”

“You think the CCP would do that?” Sofia asked. “I know they weren’t fans of the Ad Astra mission, but I don’t see how this helps them.”

Jian shrugged. “There will be some short-term chaos, but in the long run, it probably works in their favor. The U.S. has been effectively discredited as a superpower.”

*****

About half an hour later, they reached a border patrol checkpoint near El Paso, Texas. They were more than a hundred miles from the Mexican border, but evidently all highway traffic was required to stop for inspection. Valerie knew they’d set up checkpoints like this decades earlier to check for illegal immigrants coming over the border, but that didn’t seem to be the concern of the border patrol agent who took one look at the heavily loaded Explorer and ordered Valerie to pull into a parking space next to the little building adjacent to the throughway.

“Where you folks heading?” asked the young man, as he approached Valerie’s rolled-down window.

“Florida,” Valerie said.

He glanced at Sofia and Jian. “Family there?”

“Yes, my grandmother. What is this about?”

“Any gold, silver, or precious metals in the car?”

Valerie had two gold crowns in her mouth, and she was fairly certain some of the electronic devices they were carrying had platinum in them, but she made a judgment that this wasn’t what the officer was talking about. “No,” she replied.

“Can I have you all step out of the vehicle, please?”

Valerie hesitated for just a moment. Americans had once had the right to travel freely across the country without being harassed by agents of the state unless they were reasonably suspected of having committed a crime. She also knew, though, that the Supreme Court had ruled that the government was acting within its legitimate power to stop and search travelers within a hundred miles of the border. It was a bullshit ruling, putting over half of the population of the country within a “Constitution-free zone,” but she decided now was not the time to make a political statement. She got out of the Explorer, and Sofia and Jian followed her lead.

“Open the back, please,” the officer said.

Again Valerie hesitated. Again she gave in. She tapped the cardkey button and the Explorer’s rear door swung open.

“Jesus,” said the officer, staring at the expertly stacked goods occupying every free square inch of the vehicle. He tapped the mic near his collar. “Greg, get your ass over here.”

A stocky blond man—presumably Greg—walked over from the building a minute later. The two men spent the next twenty minutes pulling nearly everything out of the vehicle, tossing items carelessly onto the asphalt. Valerie watched silently, biting her lip.

“Come on!” Sofia cried, as a box containing a hologame console hit the pavement. Neither of the men paid any attention.

“It’s all right,” Valerie said quietly. “The sooner they’re done, the sooner we can get back on the road.” She was beginning to worry that the country was going to fall apart completely before they reached Tampa. She had never seen anything like that scene at the Waffle House, and now her car was being ransacked by uniformed men like something out of an old movie set in East Berlin before the wall came down.

After the men had thrown out the floor mats and searched the spare tire compartment, the first man said, “You’re free to go, ma’am. Have a nice day.” The two walked away, leaving them with the mess.

Sofia turned to say something, but Valerie clamped her hand over her daughter’s mouth. “You are not going to accomplish anything by yelling at those guys,” she said. “They’re just doing their job.”

“Atsuteysedaboutuhnatsees,” Sofia growled through her hand.

“Yes,” Valerie said, removing her hand and wiping saliva on her jeans. “That’s what they said about the Nazis. And they were right. Yelling at Nazis doesn’t do any good. If things are going to get as bad in this country as Jian says, we need to pick our battles. Understand?”

“I understand… that those guys are Nazis!”

The two men kept walking. One threw a middle finger in the air.

“Okay, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, let’s clean this shit up.”

It took nearly an hour to get everything back into the Explorer. Some of the electronics and other fragile items were clearly broken or damaged, but Valerie thought it better to load it all back up rather than risk the border patrol coming after them for littering.

It was nearly noon by the time they got back on the freeway. Traffic was heavy in both directions, but they moved at a steady clip. News coverage of the slowly unfolding economic disaster continued to be muted. Commentators kept to narrow specifics or expressed strained optimism that the bold measures announced by the President would give the market time to stabilize. There was a passing mention of Kuan-yu’s lawyer’s statement, but no suggestion that Kuan-yu might be a saboteur working for China. At least half of the coverage was speculation about Kade Kapur’s affair. The woman had been identified as Hannah Berkeley, a programmer for Ad Astra, but little else was known. Neither she nor Kade could be located. Presumably they had fled somewhere together, but it was hard for Valerie to believe Kade was that stupid.

The first gas station they passed was charging $13.99 per gallon—a two-dollar increase over the price they had paid the previous day. Several hundred cars were already in line. Impunity still had over a quarter of a tank, so Valerie kept going. The next gas station was charging $14.99, but the line wasn’t quite as long.

“What do you think?” Valerie asked.

“Better stop, I guess,” said Jian.

Valerie nodded. She exited, braking quickly as she neared the hundred or so backed up cars.

“How the heck are you supposed to know what the right price is for anything?” Sofia asked.

“The right price is whatever price buyers and sellers agree on,” said Jian.

“We didn’t agree to this!” Sofia protested.

“We did,” Jian replied. “Or we wouldn’t be in line. If anything, the price is still too low, judging by the number of people waiting.”

They finally reached the pumps some forty minutes later. The price had gone up another dollar in the meantime. Valerie filled the tank, putting the gas on the only credit card that wasn’t at its limit, and they got back on the freeway.

By mid-afternoon, the White House had frozen wages, put limits on how much bottled water, toilet paper, sugar, coffee, and many other goods could be purchased, and enacted price controls for gasoline. The Explorer still had over half a tank, but Valerie decided it was a good time to top off. She changed her mind when she tried to get off the freeway and saw that the line for the nearest gas station was already backed up onto the freeway. There had to be at least three hundred cars waiting. Valerie kept going.

“They haven’t learned anything from the last time they tried this,” Jian said. “If you set prices artificially low, demand goes up. And because the government has signaled a potential gas shortage, suddenly everybody wants to get gas. It will get really interesting when gas station owners realize they’re losing money on every gallon they sell.”

“What will happen then?” Sofia asked.

“Gas stations will shut down, making gas even harder to find. The real price—that is, the fair market price of gas—will skyrocket, so some of them will start selling gas on the black market.”

“Price gouging, you mean,” said Valerie.

Jian shrugged. “Prices spike when there’s drop in supply and increase in demand. Calling it ‘price gouging’ is like getting mad at the sun for being hot. You can complain or you can adapt to the reality of the situation. Anyway, I expect the government to order the gas stations to stay open, which will also make things worse, because more gas stations selling gas below market prices will just cause us to go through the supply of gas quicker. Then refineries will start to shut down, because they don’t want to lose money either. Then oil wells shut down. Eventually either the government has to loosen the restrictions or basically take over the entire petroleum industry.”

“It sounds like I should have gotten gas when I had the chance,” Valerie said.

“Hard to say,” Jian replied. “What kind of mileage are we getting?”

“The gauge says thirty miles to the gallon.”

“We’re about fifteen hundred miles from Tampa,” Jian said. “That’s fifty gallons.” He tapped at his screen. “Looks like this thing has a twenty-gallon tank.”

“It’s a little over half full,” Valerie said. “So we’re going to need almost another forty gallons. That’s at least two stops.”

“We’re in Texas,” said Sofia. “Isn’t this where most of the gas comes from?”

“A lot of it, yeah,” said Jian. “But I’m not sure how much difference that makes. If the supply chain breaks down, it’s going to break down pretty much everywhere. Supplies might last a day or two longer down here since we’re so close to the refineries, but I just don’t know for sure.”

“What if the government lifts the price controls?” Valerie asked.

“Then we’ll have another problem. How much credit do you have left on that card?”

“Not much. Maybe four hundred dollars.”

“If they remove the price controls, gas prices are going to go nuts. No way four hundred dollars gets us to Florida. We’ll have to find a place that takes crypto.”

“You have crypto?”

“Some, yeah. Mostly Cryptocoin and Iotas. Not as much as I’d like, but Cryptocoin is up about three hundred percent from yesterday morning, so I think we’ll be all right, assuming we can find a gas station that will take crypto. Otherwise we’ll have to barter.”

“You seriously think we can walk into a gas station with a stack of batteries or boxes of bullets and trade them for gas?” Sofia asked. “That’s like something out of a movie.”

“Probably not yet,” Jian said. “Like I said, information takes time to propagate, and the government is doing their best to slow it down. It’s going to take a few days or even weeks for people to figure out that the dollar is now Monopoly money. Worst-case scenario, if we can’t find a gas station that will risk taking crypto, is that we have to camp for a few weeks.”

“You mean literally camp?” Valerie asked.

“Yeah. Or stay at a motel, but I’d stay away from cities and, well, other people as much as you can. When the seriousness of what has happened does start to hit people, an SUV packed full of supplies is going to be a tempting target.”

“So what do we do?” asked Sofia.

“I guess I would say keep going until we’ve got a quarter of a tank or so and then brave the lines, unless something changes.”

More price controls were announced over the next several hours. Knowing that they were racing against the depletion of gasoline supplies, they ate jerky and granola bars rather than stop for lunch or dinner. Occasionally Sofia would spot a gas station that didn’t seem to have a long line of cars backed up, but it turned out that each of these gas stations was closed. The last one had a piece of cardboard in the window on which someone had scrawled in black marker NO GAS.

“I bet they do have gas,” said Jian, as the Explorer accelerated on the onramp. “They just don’t want to sell it at these prices. Can’t blame them, I guess, but they’re making a mistake.”

“How do you figure that?” Sofia asked.

“The people running these gas stations are betting that the price controls are temporary. They’re still hoping to make a profit, or at least cover what they spent on the gas. But I don’t think price controls are going away anytime soon, and gas doesn’t keep for more than a few weeks. If they don’t sell it at this price, they’re never going to sell it.”

“Is there a way to get the gas out of their tanks?” Valerie asked.

Jian considered this. “Well, the pumps are turned off. You’d either have to break in and turn the pumps on or use a different pump. Should have thought to buy a sump pump at Wal-Mart. That would have worked.”

“We could stop at a hardware store,” said Sofia.

“Hardware stores will be swamped,” Jian said. “I think we’re better off if we just keep moving. We’ve still got about four hundred miles of desert before we reach San Antonio. Not many people are going to drive this far out just to get gas.”

It turned out, however, that a surprising number of people did just that. When Valerie finally stopped for gas, about a hundred miles outside of San Antonio, cars were backed up in the right lane of the freeway for nearly a mile before the exit. All they could do is sit and wait, hoping one of the two gas stations at the exit would still have gas when they finally reached the pumps. Valerie, who had been persuaded by the endless flat brown landscape of western Texas to let Impunity do the driving, dozed while the vehicle inched forward.

An hour later, they were still on the offramp. The gauge said less than an eighth of a tank. Valerie turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows. Fortunately, the worst of the day’s heat had passed; it was hot, but not unbearably so. Their rejoicing upon reaching the road that would take them to the gas stations—one on either side—was short-lived: their progress soon seemed to slow considerably, and at last Jian got out of the Explorer to try to figure out what was going on. He returned a few minutes later with news that was not entirely unexpected: one of the gas stations was out, and there were still nearly a hundred cars in front of Impunity. Jian got back in the vehicle. There was nothing to do but wait and hope.

Chapter Thirty-nine

2042

They were within twenty cars of the gas station when shouting from somewhere ahead portended more bad news. Jian made to get out of the vehicle.

“Wait,” said Valerie. “I’ll go.”

“I’m the man,” Jian said. “It’s my duty.”

Valerie forced herself not to laugh. “Jian, do you know how to use a gun?”

“Uh, I guess so.”

“Wrong answer. Wait here.” She got out of the car and grabbed her nine-millimeter, ensconced in its molded synthetic holster, from the door compartment. She checked the gun’s chamber, slid the gun back into the holster, and then clipped the holster to her waistband, pulling her shirt over it. She strode toward the source of the shouting. Somewhere, a dog was barking.

A small crowd had formed around the gas pumps, where a young black woman and a tall, thin white man were arguing. The substance of the disagreement was immediately clear: two young black children sat in a little red Honda with its windows down, just behind an ancient Chevy pickup, which evidently belonged to the white man. The pump nozzle was still in the pickup’s tank, and the pump was stuck at 3.21 gallons. Per the President’s orders, each vehicle was limited to five gallons a day. The total read $38.49, indicating that the gas station was adhering to the legal price limit. A blue BMW had just pulled up to another pump, but its driver, a middle-aged ginger-haired woman, was unable to get any gas from the pump. The station’s tank was clearly empty. Already, several of the other drivers were getting back on the road, trying to beat the rush onto the highway. Glancing at the charging station, which was still working, Valerie found herself wishing her asshole husband had bought an electric vehicle. That would have been even more expensive, though: with the price of cobalt and cadmium through the roof, and government no longer offering tax incentives for electric vehicles, they had become expensive status symbols.

A large dog of indeterminate breed sat in the pickup’s cab, barking through the partially open window. The black woman was haranguing the white man about his “giant pickup truck” and her babies not being able to get home. The man protested that he was obeying the law and had only taken his fair share—in fact, not even that much, since the pump ran out before he got five gallons. The man at last gave up arguing and went around the woman to put the pump nozzle back. When he returned to get in the pickup, the woman had blocked his way, standing with her back against the driver’s side door. The dog, its muzzle only a few inches from the woman’s head, barked incessantly and pawed at the window.

A few of the spectators seemed to be trying to moderate the situation, but their words were mostly lost in the barking. The man gestured angrily at the woman, pointing toward the two young children in the Honda, who were now crying and screaming. The woman reached for something in her purse, and the man, panicking, backhanded her. She put her hands up, too late, and fell sideways to the ground. The man moved toward her, and several of the spectators intervened. A gunshot sounded, and then several people were screaming. Valerie, her hand on the nine-millimeter, studied the chaotic scene for a second, then turned and walked rapidly back toward the Explorer. The screaming and barking continued.

“What the hell happened?” Sofia asked, as Valerie opened the car door.

“No gas,” Valerie said. She started the car. Feeling her hands shake from adrenaline and not trusting herself to drive, she took a deep breath and said, “Impunity, get us back on the highway going east.”

All right, said Impunity. I’ll get back on the highway, heading east.

Impunity signaled and then pulled onto the road.

“Was that a gunshot?” Sofia asked. “What was that?”

“They were out of gas,” said Valerie. “We have to keep going.”

“Mom, you have a gun! You could have helped!”

“Sofia, that’s enough,” Valerie snapped. “I don’t even know who was shooting back there. I have this gun to protect us. You, me, and Jian. That’s it. I am not going to start getting involved in other people’s business. Things are going to hell out there, but that is not my business. It’s hard enough just keeping the three of us alive.”

“Mrs. Sutherland?” said Jian from the backseat.

“What?” Valerie demanded.

“Uh, I was thinking maybe we should avoid the freeway. Take the back roads for a while. Looks like there’s a gas station about sixteen miles north of here, in a town called El Dorado.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Valerie said. “People might not be swarming the small-town gas stations as much as the ones just off the freeway. Impunity, take us to the gas station in El Dorado, Texas.”

Okay, said Impunity. Heading toward El Dorado, Texas.

As Impunity changed lanes to exit the freeway, Valerie closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply several times. She had come close to intervening back at that gas station. She had told herself it was what Kade would have done. But then she had remembered that Kade was currently on the run from the federal government, having inadvertently crashed the global financial system. Maybe it was time for her to pick a new hero.

Some twenty minutes later, they reached the gas station in El Dorado, which was closed. Valerie wanted to cry.

“There’s another town forty miles east,” said Sofia. Maybe they’ll have gas.

Valerie nodded. “Impunity, take us east to the nearest gas station.”

All right, Impunity said. Heading east on State Highway 190.

Forty minutes later, they were in Fort McKavett, Texas. The only gas station in town was closed. The Explorer’s low fuel warning light glowed red on the dashboard display; they would never make it to San Antonio. And now, for better or worse, they were in the middle of nowhere. There was almost no traffic on this road, and no other businesses around. No one to bother them, but no one to help them either. Karma, thought Valerie. The sun was a deep red in the west, and the Explorer’s dash told her the temperature outside was dropping fast.

“What about that car?” Sofia said, pointing to a little Chevy parked in the parking lot behind an abandoned store.

“What about it?” Valerie replied.

“Can’t you, like, get gas out of another car? What’s the word?”

“Siphon,” said Jian. “Problem is, most cars these days have pretty sophisticated anti-siphon valves. Also, we’d need to find some tubing. And we don’t know how long that car has been sitting there.”

“Or if it even has any gas in it,” Valerie said. “I think we’d better keep going. One thing we do have is a gas can, so we can walk to a gas station if we need to.”

“Should have bought a bike,” said Sofia.

“Or three,” said Jian.

They continued east on the state highway, expecting Impunity’s engine to shut down at any moment. Ten miles later, Sofia pointed to a mailbox in the distance. “Let’s stop there.”

“It’s just somebody’s ranch,” Jian said. There wasn’t much out here but sprawling cattle ranches.

“They might have gas,” Sofia said. “Maybe we could buy some.”

Valerie instructed Impunity to turn onto the driveway. The Explorer slowed sharply and then turned, beginning the crawl along the bumpy gravel drive. Some five minutes later, they arrived at a ramshackle single-story house surrounded by several other small buildings. Farther down the driveway was a barn, the far side of which opened into a fenced area where several hundred head of cattle stood. The sun was setting, and the glare and long shadows made it difficult to see anything other than splashes of red and gray. With all those cattle, there had to be some people around, but Valerie didn’t see anybody.

“Wait here,” she said, opening her door. She stepped onto the gravel, took a moment to slip the gun into its usual place, and closed the door behind her. She walked toward the house.

“Howdy,” said a man’s voice, when she had gone nearly halfway to the front door. She saw him now—a small man sitting in a wicker chair a couple of yards right of the front door, wearing a cowboy hat, with what looked like a shotgun across his lap. He wasn’t hiding, exactly, but he wasn’t sitting in one of the chairs on the front porch either. She just hadn’t been looking for someone sitting there—which was clearly what he had in mind.

“Hello,” said Valerie, keeping her hands visible at her side.

“What can I do for ya?”

“We’re traveling to Florida,” Valerie said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we’re almost out of gas. None of the stations around here have any.”

“You want to buy some gas?”

“If you have some to spare.”

“What’s in Florida?”

“My grandmother.”

“Just the three of you?”

“Yes.” With the glare of the sun off the windows of the Explorer, Valerie doubted the man could see Sofia and Jian. Did he have cameras set up on the driveway? That would explain why he was ready for them by the time they got to the house.

“Who are they? Your kids?”

“My daughter and her boyfriend.”

“Tell them to come out.”

Valerie hesitated a moment, then turned toward the Explorer. “It’s okay,” she said, gesturing at them. “Come on out.” She hoped she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

Sofia and Jian exited the vehicle and walked over next to Valerie.

“I’m Joel,” the man said.

“I’m Valerie. This is my daughter, Sofia, and her boyfriend, Jian.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” Joel said, getting to his feet. He lowered the shotgun, letting the barrel point at the gravel. Joel looked to be about forty, but he had a wiry, sun-weathered look that made his age difficult to determine. “I just topped off the truck, but I don’t s’pose I have nowhere to go. Already made a supply run, and there ain’t nothin’ in the stores anymore.”

“We’d be happy to pay you for a few gallons.”

“How much?”

“We don’t have much cash on us. Maybe a couple hundred dollars.”

The corner of Joel’s mouth curled into a snarl.

“We can barter,” Jian offered. “How about a few boxes of nine-millimeter bullets?”

Joel considered this. “Ya got any crypto?”

Chapter Forty

2042

They settled on a price for a full tank that Valerie understood to be about $40 per gallon, at the current exchange rate between dollars and Cryptocoin. It seemed exorbitant to her, but she no longer had any reference point for gauging the fairness of economic transactions. It was strangely disorienting not to be able to count on the relatively constant value of the dollar. It was as if a football field was suddenly ten miles long or the boiling point of water was now eight hundred degrees.

She understood, too, that it was not just that the dollar was falling: gasoline in particular was extremely expensive right now, no matter what the President decreed. You either paid in time—by waiting in line for hours for a chance to get a few gallons—or in money. Everybody wanted gas right now, and thanks to a lot of stations closing and others running out, there simply wasn’t enough to go around. Factor in supply chain disruptions and the price would easily jump tenfold, even without runaway inflation.

Joel Cazares—who lived on the ranch with his wife, Delores, and their three young daughters—threw in a steak and potato dinner and a night’s lodging. Over dinner, Joel explained that he had been preparing for the dollar’s collapse for several years now. Like everyone else, he had been surprised by the failure of the Mammon capture mission, but he knew something would be the catalyst. Losing a war to the Chinese-backed powers over the Middle East, maybe, or a sudden spike in bond rates causing the government to miss a payment.

“Switched the ranch over to one hundred percent crypto five years ago,” he said. “I use mostly Cryptocoin, but I take Matrixcoin, Stellaris.coin and a few others. It’s hard to make a living as an independent rancher these days, and it’s harder if you don’t take dollars. It’s been tight. You can tell by lookin’ at this place that I don’t spend any money I don’t have to. But with crypto going the way it is now… I think I might be a billionaire pretty soon, whatever that means.”

“I bet you’ll be a trillionaire by the end of the year,” Jian said, in between bites of steak.

“That bad, huh?” Joel said.

“Hyperinflation or a new currency are the only ways out of this. Either one is bad news for people holding dollars.”

“Y’all must have gotten on the road as soon as you heard,” said Delores.

“Before, actually,” Valerie said. “We were already planning to move to Florida.”

“Smart,” said Joel. “You might have a chance in Florida.”

“A chance?” Valerie asked.

“Look, I ain’t no expert,” said Joel. “But it seems to me that California’s got two classes of people: the super-rich and the dependent underclass. The super-rich, they been buyin’ votes from the poor by givin’ ‘em more and more benefits. Free school. Free lunches. Free healthcare. Free housin’. Who pays for all that? The government. What do they pay in? Dollars. Connect the dots.”

Valerie saw that Jian was deep in thought, dragging the tines of his fork across his mashed potatoes like a tractor plowing a field. Was this a ramification that hadn’t occurred to the all-knowing Jian?

“You’re saying the benefits are going to dry up,” Valerie said.

“Oh, they’ll keep sendin’ out payments,” said Joel. “For a while, at least. But a thousand dollars ain’t what it used to be, and it’ll be less next week. Lotta people gonna stop payin’ rent. Lotta people gonna start lootin’ stores for food. Stores start closing down for good. Then it’ll get interestin’.”

“Papa, are the grocery stores here going to shut down?” asked the eldest daughter, Jane.

“Maybe,” said Joel. “But don’t you worry, Janie. We got eight hundred head o’ cattle and I got an arrangement with Bruce Parrello down the road to keep ‘em fed.”

“Smart,” said Jian, looking up from his potatoes. “Band together when the shit hits the fan.”

“No, sir,” said Joel. “You band together before the shit hits the fan. I started down this path ten years ago. My brother thought I was crazy. Hell, Delores thought I was crazy. I sold Bruce his land for a quarter of what it was worth because I knew Bruce was good people. Well, now my brother lives in a condo in Houston. Guess who calls me this mornin’, lookin’ to spend some time in the country? I told him, sure. Family is family. But he and his boys and his little trophy wife are gonna work. I got a barn that needs paintin’, and fences that need mendin’, and brush to clear, and a thousand other things. Funny thing, he ain’t called me back.” Joel grinned and stuck a big piece of rare steak in his mouth.

“Well, we appreciate your hospitality,” Valerie said. “Truly.”

“Y’all seem like good people. For city folk I mean. Ain’t got a callous between you, but you’ll learn.”

“This is all just so crazy,” Valerie said. “I guess we weren’t prepared.”

“Almost nobody was,” said Joel. “I ain’t sure I’m prepared, and I ain’t done hardly nothin’ else for ten years.”

“I guess I just didn’t expect things to get so bad so quickly.”

“You drive a brand-new Ford Explorer,” Joel said.

“That was my husband’s doing,” Valerie said. “My plan was—”

“I ain’t makin’ a judgment,” said Joel, holding up his hand. “I seen from the ring on your finger that you got a husband, and the fact he ain’t here tells me things ain’t right between you. But that’s none o’ my business. My point is this: that vehicle out there? That’s the end product of hundreds of different companies all poolin’ their efforts to build a machine that’s damn near perfect for what it was intended to do. Thousands of components all workin’ together to get you where you want to go, safely, with style and convenience. But every one o’ those companies and every one o’ them components represents a possible point o’ failure. One o’ those companies can’t deliver, guess what? No brand new Ford. My truck is forty-three years old. That’s partly because I’m as poor as a church mouse, but it’s also because I can get spare parts for that thing for next to nothin’. Anything that can break on that truck, I got at least two of ‘em in the barn. Worse comes to worst, I can make parts. Something goes wrong with that Explorer and you can’t get the part from South Carolina or Mexico or wherever the hell they make things these days, you are shit out of luck. My dad used to say ‘Just in time is ten minutes late.’ That man wasted years of his life waitin’ for other people. But he was never late. He was reliable, so people trusted him when it mattered. Now they got a thing called ‘just-in-time manufacturin’,’ like they’re braggin’ about how they were almost late. Efficiency. That’s what matters. Reliability, well, that’s another story. Our whole economy works that way. No room for error anywhere. So one thing breaks down, and everything goes to hell.”

The dining room was quiet for some time except for the scraping of forks and knives against plates. At last Sofia spoke:

“But you’re still working,” she said. “Other ranchers and farmers are still working. And lots of other people are still going to work, at factories and offices and wherever. So food is being produced, and things are being made. I just don’t understand why there would suddenly be shortages of food or whatever.”

“Admittin’ you don’t understand it is the first step, and I ain’t bein’ smart with you,” Joel answered. “Most politicians never get to that step. The truth is, nobody really understands how the economy works, and that’s good and bad. Nobody is in charge, so people are mostly free to do what they like, and that usually works out pretty well for everyone, because everyone is doing their share. That’s the good part. The bad part is that when somethin’ goes wrong on a real big scale, everybody gets scared and acts different than normal, and all of a sudden nothing works right anymore.

“The economy is a big, complicated machine, like that Ford. If you’re an idiot, or a politician, you might look at a machine like that and say, ‘Why’s all this gas in the gas tank, when where we need it is the engine?’ And then you build some kind of contraption on top of the machine to get more gas to the engine. But guess what? It don’t work very well, because you don’t know what you’re doin’, and there’s still all that gas in the tank, so you start thinkin’ of other ways to get that gas to the engine. Pretty soon the engine ain’t hardly workin’ at all, and gas is spillin’ everywhere, and then the tank goes empty and your beautiful Ford, which ain’t so beautiful no more, won’t go another inch.”

“It’s called the knowledge problem,” said Jian. “Bureaucrats always think they know better than individual people what to spend money on. But the economy is way too complicated for anyone to make those kinds of top-down decisions. Generally speaking, the best judge of what to spend money on is the person whose money is being spent.”

“But somebody has to make sure people don’t starve,” Sofia said.

“Individuals can do that as well as governments,” said Jian. “There are already plenty of private charitable institutions to help those in need.”

“Here’s the thing, miss,” Joel said. “I been hearin’ people talk about the government helpin’ the needy for fifty years. Guess what? We’ve spent hundreds of trillions of dollars, and there are still needy people. At some point, you gotta admit that maybe the government just ain’t all that interested in helping the needy. Everybody thinks they’re going to be the one to ‘reform’ government. Stop wastin’ money and start actually helpin’ people. Like that dipshit commie from Minnesota, Jacob Fliss. I’m old enough to remember when those folks were all praisin’ Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, ‘cause he nationalized the oil industry to ‘help the poor.’ It’s thirty-somethin’ years later and Venezuela still ain’t recovered. We’ve been on the same road in this country for a while now. We’re just takin’ our sweet time gettin’ there.”

“We can help the poor without going full Communist,” Sofia said, getting irritated.

“We can spend money on the poor,” Joel said. “I ain’t so sure we can help them.”

“Well it certainly wouldn’t hurt,” Sofia said.

“It does hurt, Sofia,” said Jian. “Charity can be a good thing, if it’s one person voluntarily helping another. But if you systematize and dehumanize that process, taking from one person by force and giving it to another, based on some mechanistic requirements, you’re just interfering with the normal incentives—punishing hard work and rewarding failure.”

“Being poor isn’t always somebody’s fault!” Sofia protested angrily.

“It’s not about fault, Sofia,” Jian said. “What I’m saying is that being poor is, objectively speaking, a bad thing. We all agree on that, right? It’s an outcome that you avoid if you can. Some people can’t avoid it, but some can—by spending money more wisely or working more hours, for example. Now, if you remove the penalty for overspending or laziness, by giving people more money when they run out, you’ve incentivized bad behavior. And you’ve also disincentivized good behavior, by taking money from people who work hard. It may make you feel like you’re helping, but all you’re really doing is making the system run worse for everybody, like in Joel’s car example.”

“So we shouldn’t give money to people who need it?”

“We absolutely should,” said Jian. “We should look for people who need help and go out of our way to help them, as individuals and as communities. What we shouldn’t do is vote for politicians to set up a bureaucracy that will determine who has too much money and who doesn’t have enough. That isn’t charity, and generally speaking, it isn’t helpful—to anyone except the politicians and the bureaucrats. Think of it this way, Sof: dollars are like the gasoline in Impunity’s fuel tank. The machine works fine as long as there’s a supply of good quality fuel in the tank. If you don’t have enough fuel, or the fuel is low quality, the machine breaks down.

“But money is different from gasoline in one important way: gasoline is valuable because of its inherent chemical properties. That is, it burns when you mix it with oxygen and introduce a spark. Money, though, is only valuable because people think it’s valuable. In other words, gasoline is a store of value, but dollars are only a symbol of value. Dollars get their value from the stuff that you can buy with them. A ten dollar-bill gets its value from the fact that you can use it to buy a cookie or a soda, or combine it with thousands of other ten-dollar bills to buy a car or a house.

“So if I intend to buy a cookie with my ten-dollar bill, and you want to sell me a cookie for ten dollars, we can make that exchange. But if a neighborhood bully comes along and says, in effect, ‘You may only make this exchange if I get a dollar,’ then somehow, between the two of us, we have to come up with an additional dollar. What that does is actually dilute the value of my ten-dollar bill by ten percent. Maybe the bully isn’t really such a bad guy. Maybe he intends to give the dollar to a poor person he knows. That doesn’t change the fact that by making the transaction cost ten percent more, he’s diluted the value of my money by ten percent.

“Now, imagine that instead of taking one dollar, the bully takes five dollars. At this point he’s diluted the value of my money so much that I probably don’t even want the cookie anymore. The more the bully takes, the less value the money has. So I lose out, because I don’t get the cookie, you lose out, because you don’t get the ten dollars, and even the bully loses out, because he doesn’t get any money unless the transaction takes place.

“Now let’s say this is a particularly ingenious and resourceful bully, with access to a printing press that allows him to print as many ten-dollar bills as he wants. He starts printing bills and spreading them around the neighborhood in the hopes that more people will buy cookies, so he can make more money. And amazingly, it works—for a little while. At first, people are happy to spend the extra money they have, but pretty soon you figure out that there’s a lot of money in the neighborhood chasing very few cookies, so you bump your prices way up, and we’re back where we started—well, actually, we’re worse off than we started, because now the bully has lots of money that he’s printed himself, while we only have what he’s deigned to give us. And somehow, despite all our altruistic bully’s efforts, we can see that the bully’s poor friend is still poor.

“Incredibly, although the bully can print as much money as he wants, he still wants more! Soon he’s taking a dollar for every dollar I spend—which, by the way, is about where the United States was twenty years ago, when the average person had to work half the year just to pay all the taxes they owed. And since people aren’t spending much money on cookies anymore, because they’re so damned expensive, the bully decides to just start beating kids up and taking their money, whether they’re spending it or not. While he’s punching you in the face, though, he tells you that you’re ‘selfish’ for ‘hoarding’ your money, and he reminds you that this ‘wealth tax’ is all for his poor friend, who can’t afford a cookie. So you reluctantly give up even more of your money, because what choice do you have?

“Amazingly, that still isn’t enough for the bully. So he seizes all the cookies from you. For a little while, he and some of his friends are living high on cookies, although somehow his poor friend remains hungry and poor. And since you no longer have any reason to bake cookies, because there’s no money in it, you stop baking them. The neighborhood quickly runs out of cookies. At this point, people either band together voluntarily like Joel and his neighbors are doing, to start building a better system, or a strongman takes control and institutes a command economy, which generally results in the deaths of millions.”

“Jesus,” said Sofia. “What point are we at in that story?”

“We’re somewhere ‘round the cookie-seizin’ point,” said Joel. “I’d say it started with the asset forfeiture laws they used to go after drug dealers in the 1980s.”

“Leaving the gold standard in 1971,” Jian said. “That’s what caused the first major wave of inflation. It’s when wages stagnated, income inequality surged, and the national debt took off.”

“But it didn’t have to go this way,” Sofia said. “I mean, the United States lasted for a long time. We learned about this in school. If they had reformed Medicare when it was still possible and they hadn’t passed those ridiculous spending bills in the 2020s….”

“Maybe if people had risen up in the twenties,” Joel said, “we might have had a chance.”

Jian shook his head. “It’s a vicious cycle. It really started even earlier, with the establishment of the Federal Reserve. You start tinkering with the system, thinking you’re going to make it a little fairer, a little easier for those on the bottom. But you just make it a little worse for everybody. The rich do okay, but the people at the bottom are struggling more than ever. So you tinker some more, and you make things a little worse, and so on. Once you start down that path, there’s only one possible destination, like Mr. Cazares said. The only question is how long it will take to get there.”

“The point, miss,” said Joel, “is that whatever might have happened, and whatever good intentions anyone had about helpin’ people, we’re too far down that road to turn around now. The dollar is done for, and that’s gonna mean a lot of pain and sufferin’ for a lot of people. I suspect me and my neighbors’ll fare better than most, but I ain’t got no illusions. It’s gonna be rough all over.”

“For how long?” Valerie asked.

Jian shook his head.

“Years,” said Joel. “Decades, maybe. And there ain’t no guarantee that what comes after is any better. Count yourself lucky that you got to see a few years of the good times. I don’t expect they’ll come around again while I’m alive.”

Chapter Forty-one

2042

They were back on the road early the next morning. Valerie figured they had enough gas to get to New Orleans, where Valerie had a cousin who was a chiropractor. Her cousin and her husband were well off and knew a lot of other business owners in the area. Valerie thought they might have connections that would help them get gasoline.

Valerie had called her cousin, Maria, a few days before they left California, to see if they could spend the night there on their way to Florida. At that time, Maria had said they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, but when Valerie called after getting back on the road in Texas, she was decidedly cooler on the idea. She still seemed willing to let them sleep there for “a night,” but she warned that “things were a little unsettled.” Valerie decided against asking what this meant, and she didn’t mention gasoline. It wasn’t like they had any better options.

They stayed to back roads until they got near Houston, where it was nearly impossible to avoid the interstate without going many miles out of their way. Traffic seemed heavy for a Friday morning, but it moved along at a reasonable pace. Except for the lines at gas stations and the convoys of National Guard vehicles that sped by with alarming frequency, things almost seemed normal.

Around nine a.m., Valerie’s grandmother called. The worry in her voice had escalated to near-panic. “When do you think you’ll be here?” she asked.

“Not until tomorrow at the earliest,” Valerie said. “Getting gas has been a challenge. What’s wrong?”

“All the Hidden Lakes employees just walked off the job.”

“What?” Hidden Lakes was the massive retirement village where her grandmother lived.

“My neighbor Anna just told me. She talked to someone in the office about an hour ago. They were all clearing out their desks. Everybody’s leaving, Val. Even the security people.” The Tampa police had been overwhelmed with gang activity over the past several years; one of key selling points of Hidden Lakes was its armed security force.

“Why?”

“Anna says the security company was negotiating for more money before this whole meteor thing happened. Now prices are way up, and the management won’t give them any more money. Say they don’t have it.” This was probably true, Valerie reflected. Hidden Lakes’ tenants had all signed leases for at least a year. They had no way of legally bumping up rents to keep pace with prices. “After the security people walked out, the rest of the staff quit too. Most of them live here, Val.”

“I don’t understand. They need to pay their rent too, don’t they?”

“I think most of them are moving in with friends or family. Val, without security, it isn’t safe here! The police were already overwhelmed, and now there’s all these demonstrations going on downtown, and even some of the police are starting to quit.”

“Is there someplace you can go?” Valerie asked. “Just for a day or two, until we get there?”

“I’ve got nowhere to go, Val!” her grandmother said, almost in tears. “Everybody I know lives here! Anna is coming to stay with me, but a lot of good that will do. Two old ladies instead of one. Nobody here even has guns. They don’t allow them. But we never needed them, because we had security!”

“It’s going to be okay, Nani. Do you have enough food to last a couple days?”

“I think so. Anna needs to pick up some medications, but I think she can go a few days without.”

“Just stay inside until we get there. We’ve got a ton of food and all kinds of other stuff. Pack a bag. We’ll get you someplace safe.”

“And Anna too?”

“Anna too,” Valerie said. If she was going to make promises, why not promise the world? With things going the way they were, their canned food was going to be worth its weight in gold soon. It couldn’t be too difficult to find someone who would take some of their booty in exchange for a few months’ rent.

“Okay,” her grandmother said, sounding somewhat reassured. “Just get here as soon as you can.”

“We’re almost to Louisiana. Shouldn’t be more than two days.”

“Okay. I’ve got to go. Anna is here. I love you.”

“Love you too, Nani. Bye.”

They continued east. There was no news to speak of. The news stations reported that the remaining impactors were expected to begin hitting Mammon in about a week, but the possibility of orbital capture was not mentioned. All any of the “experts” would say was that there was no chance of Mammon hitting Earth. The markets remained closed pending the announcement of the “longer-term solutions to promote economic stability and growth” that the President had mentioned. Evidently, high level meetings were going on in Washington, but nothing had been decided. The financial experts, hoping to avoid running afoul of the Federal Information Agency, spoke in absurd understatements about “the limited range of legislative options.” Kade Kapur and Hannah Berkeley remained at large.

Impunity reached the upper-middle-class suburb of Destrehan, Louisiana by mid-afternoon. Valerie saw no sign that anything was off. Impunity pulled into the circular driveway of the large colonial style house with the address Valerie had given it, and the three got out and went to the front door. Valerie rang the doorbell and they waited.

And waited. The afternoon sun beat down on them, and they sweltered in the still, muggy air.

Valerie rang the doorbell again. Still they waited. It had been a good five minutes.

“She knows we’re coming, right?” Sofia asked.

“I just talked to her this morning!” said Valerie, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

At last they heard the lock turn. The door opened a few inches and stayed there.

“Um,” said Sofia. “What do we…?” She broke off as they heard a woman’s muffled, agitated voice from inside.

Valerie gave the door a shove, her right hand on the butt of the Sig. “Maria?”

There was no answer. Again they heard the woman’s voice.

“Wait here,” Valerie said, and went inside. She took a few steps across the hardwood flooring toward the next room, where the voice was coming from.

“No, no. He’s never late,” she was saying. “I’ve called him five times, and he—no, don’t put me on hold. You need to—God damn it!”

“Maria?”

“Yes, come in,” said Maria, appearing in the doorway. She was a small, wiry woman with jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail. Valerie hadn’t seen her for nearly ten years, but she remembered her as a woman who was always in motion. That apparently hadn’t changed. “Where is your… hello? Hello? Damn it.” She let out a heavy sigh. “They hung up on me. Where is your daughter? Oh, who’s this?”

“My boyfriend, Jian,” said Sofia, who had just come in behind Jian.

“Is everything okay?” Valerie asked.

“Yes. No, Paul isn’t answering his phone app. His shift ended three hours ago. He’s never late. Never, ever, ever. There’s a tracker in the car, but the app isn’t working. I tried calling tech support and it just rings. With everything happening, I’m worried he might… oh my God, Val, is that a gun?”

Valerie’s shirt had caught on the rear sight, so that the rear of the slide was visible above her waistline. She pulled her shirt over it. “Just in case,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“Hm?”

“You said ‘with everything happening.’”

“Oh my God, Val. Downtown is crazy. People have lost their minds. I told him not to go to work. I closed the office, but he said he had to go. He’s right, I guess, but my God. Val, I’m so worried.”

“What does your husband do, ma’am?” Jian asked.

“Well, aren’t you a gentleman,” said Maria. “He’s a nurse at the hospital downtown. He usually calls me when his shift ends, but I never heard from him. It’s been three hours! Val, I don’t know what to do. The police are useless. They say I have to wait forty-eight hours before I can even file a missing persons report. Forty-eight hours! And this last guy basically told me they’re too busy to do anything anyway. Everyone has gone crazy!”

“It’s going to be all right, Maria,” Valerie said. “Paul is probably just stuck in traffic. Cell service is terrible right now.” This was true; it had taken her three tries to get through to Maria.

“I can get through to the police,” Maria said. “Why wouldn’t Paul’s phone app work?”

“Different radio towers,” Jian offered. “Ones downtown might be overloaded.”

“Is there anyone else you can call?” Valerie asked. “Somebody at the hospital?”

“I’ve tried! Nobody answers. Another nurse finally called me back about an hour ago. Said Paul left on time. Why wouldn’t he call, Val?”

Valerie made a decision. “I’ll go look for him,” she said. “Send me a recent picture of him; it’s been a while.”

“He looks the same,” Maria said. “Well, less hair, but otherwise the same. Are you really going to go look for him?”

“We came here because we needed your help. Now you need our help. Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t.”

“Mom, is that a good idea?” Sofia asked, clearly worried but not wanting to say more in front of Maria.

“It will be fine. You and Jian stay here with Maria in case he shows up. I’ll go find Paul.”

“You’re going alone?” Sofia said.

“Hell no,” Jian said. It was the first time Valerie had heard him swear, and she almost burst out laughing. The look on Jian’s face, though, was dead serious.

“I won’t be alone,” Valerie said. “I’m traveling with Impunity.”

“Not funny, Mom.”

“I can’t allow you to do this, Mrs. Sutherland,” Jian said, puffing up his chest.

“Look, somebody needs to stay here with Maria,” Valerie said.

No one disputed this. Maria looked like she was on the verge of a full-blown nervous breakdown.

“Sofia can stay. You and I will go, Mrs. Sutherland.”

“Jian, you’re a sweet kid, but—”

“I’ll be in the car,” Jian said. He turned and walked out the door.

“Mom, just wait with us for a little while. Paul will probably show up soon, and we can’t afford to waste gas.”

“If he shows up, great. Give me a call. I’m going to go look for him, and apparently Jian is going with me.”

“Mom, if you get my boyfriend killed, I’m going to—”

“Nobody’s getting killed!” Valerie snapped. “Good grief. You need to calm down, Sofia. Understand?”

Sofia bit her lip. She nodded, understanding what Valerie meant: you need to keep it together or Maria is going to lose it.

Valerie walked to her daughter and gave her a hug. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got plenty of gas, and I always wanted to see downtown New Orleans. Maria, what kind of car does Paul drive?”

“Hyundai Serenade. Slate blue. He always parks in the lot across the street. Hold on.” Maria disappeared into the next room. She returned holding a keycard, which she handed to Valerie.

“Slate blue Hyundai,” Valerie said. “Okay. Remember to send me a recent picture. Memorial Hospital, right?”

Maria nodded.

“Okay. Hopefully we’ll be right back. Love you, Sofia. See you soon.”

“Just…” Sofia started. “Just be careful.”

“Will do, mija. We’ll be back soon.”

Chapter Forty-two

2042

Valerie’s reassurances to Maria to the contrary, Impunity now had less than two gallons of gas in its tank. They could ill afford to undertake what Jian was semi-jokingly calling a “side quest.” Fortunately, downtown New Orleans was only about twenty miles away.

Valerie had only been to New Orleans once, many years before. She knew the whole city was fighting a losing battle against rising sea levels; supposedly the water had risen several inches since her previous visit. The change was not evident from the freeway, but she had heard that thousands of houses and business in the surrounding areas had been abandoned over the past decade. The heavily populated areas were protected by levees, and tens of thousands of people had fled to these areas, leading to overpopulation, unemployment and crime. Billions of dollars in economic aid—on top of the tens of billions of federal money spent to shore up the levees—had done little to ameliorate the problem. New Orleans had always been a vibrant and exciting place to live, but in recent years, it had attained levels of crime and corruption rarely seen outside Third-World countries.

Given all this, Valerie had no idea what to expect when she guided Impunity onto the exit for the city’s Central Business District. The radio was reporting the presence of “large demonstrations,” which sounded fairly benign, but the announcer also mentioned “some incidences of vandalism and looting.” With the heavy-handed way the government was enforcing the Federal Misinformation Act, it was difficult to know how much of this was spin. She noted that the announcer strongly recommended that people avoid the entire downtown area if at all possible.

As Impunity rolled toward the red light at the bottom of the exit, Valerie gripped the wheel more tightly. Hundreds of people were out in the streets—some of them moving with apparent purpose, others just standing around as if waiting for something to happen. Three National Guardsmen, automatic rifles pointing downward, stood on a corner across the street. Car traffic seemed relatively light, but this only encouraged the crowds to spill over into the streets. Reflecting the city’s demographics, the crowd was at least eighty percent black. Close to half of them looked to be men under the age of thirty. Valerie supposed the New Orleans natives were used to the heat and humidity, but this many people milling around when it was so stifling was not a good sign.

The light turned green, and Valerie turned left toward the hospital. She knew that she should probably let Impunity do the driving, but she didn’t trust it not to hit a pedestrian. For that matter, she didn’t trust it to run over a pedestrian with bad intent who deliberately got in her way. She had the distinct sensation that some of the men she passed were eyeing her brand-new Explorer with covetous inclinations, and it was well known that carjackers sometimes ran out in front of newer vehicles, trusting the autopilot to stop for them.

She weaved around the pedestrians, honking aggressively, braking only when absolutely necessary. She wanted everyone on the road to know that she was driving and that they were putting their lives at risk by getting in her way. Jian gasped as she nearly clipped a grotesquely fat, spandex-clad woman waddling across the road with insufficient celerity. The woman turned to scream at her, but Valerie ignored her.

She did her best to time the lights so that she wouldn’t have to stop, but she got stuck behind a delivery truck a couple of blocks from the hospital. The crowd was even thicker here, and some kind of organized demonstration was coming toward them down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. As she waited at the red light, knuckles white on the steering wheel, she saw that some of them were carrying signs with messages like “MAMMON WAS ALWAYS A LIE,” “CAPITALISM KILLS,” and “DEATH TO BANKERS.”

“Idiots,” Jian murmured from the passenger’s seat next to her.

“I can understand their frustration,” Valerie said. “They were promised wealth and prosperity, and not only did they not get that; what little money they have is now practically worthless.”

“That’s not capitalism’s fault, though,” Jian said.

“Isn’t it?”

“No, because what we have isn’t capitalism. We didn’t really have a free market economy, and we certainly don’t have one now. Our economy was rigged in favor of vested interests by the government and the Federal Reserve.”

“Okay, but isn’t that the same thing people say about socialism? Whenever socialism fails, like in Venezuela or Cuba, people say, ‘well, that wasn’t real socialism.’ Aren’t you just doing the same thing, saying, ‘well, that wasn’t real capitalism’?”

“The difference,” said Jian, “is that although our country was never fully capitalist, we were successful precisely to the degree that the free market was allowed to thrive. All the supposedly successful ‘socialist’ countries, like Denmark and Sweden, are really just capitalist countries with a parasitic welfare state built on top of them. And as the parasites have grown, all those countries are facing the same problems as the United States, to one degree or another. As they incentivize laziness and penalize productivity, they hobble their economy, create a dependent underclass, and take on unsustainable debt. And yet these idiots—” He motioned toward the protestors now passing on the far sidewalk. “—think the solution is more central control, more taxes, and more government.”

“I get what you’re saying, but again, I understand their frustration. They were told this is capitalism. They were told Mammon was going to make everybody rich.”

“Yeah, that’s probably the worst thing Kade Kapur did.”

Valerie was momentarily speechless. The light turned green, and she let Impunity crawl forward as the delivery truck began to move—just in time, because several young men on the opposite side of the street from the protestors were eyeing the Explorer and pointing at it. “What do you mean, ‘the worst thing Kade Kapur did’?” she asked. In her mind, Kade was still a hero. Flawed, perhaps, but still a hero. The consensus in the Stellaris groups Jian followed was that the Mammon capture mission had been sabotaged, and she believed it. The criminal case against him was almost certainly a witch hunt. Assuming the pictures of him and that employee weren’t fake, maybe he had been having an affair, which was a lousy thing to do, but it was a far cry from treason and the other ridiculous charges being leveled against him by politicians and the media. Kade had ultimately failed, but just getting as close as he did had taken a near-superhuman effort.

“I mean he wrapped this whole scheme in the banner of capitalism and freedom. Maybe it was a good idea, maybe it wasn’t. But it sure as heck wasn’t capitalism. It’s closer to fascism, to be honest.”

“Fascism?” Valerie said. “Jian, what are you talking about?”

“Mussolini considered fascism to be a union of corporate and state power,” Jian said. “He would have loved the idea of a state-run corporation to explore space. He would have been more honest about it than Kade Kapur was, though. Sorry, I know you like him.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to hold Kade Kapur responsible for the political environment. He did what he had to do to get things done.”

“Yeah, and that’s not working out so great.”

“The Mammon capture mission was sabotaged,” Valerie said. “You told me that yourself.”

“Sure, but in the end, results are what matters.”

“That brings us full-circle, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you say that capitalism isn’t to blame for what’s happening now. That we used to be more capitalist, but we’ve been getting more and more socialist or fascist or whatever, and that’s what caused all this. But maybe this is just what happens to free societies. Maybe capitalism always leads to something like this. It feeds the parasite until the parasite is so big that the host dies. Results are what matters, right? Well, these are the results.”

Jian was silent for a few seconds. “You may be right,” he said. “Maybe capitalism always ends this way. But it’s still worth trying. Freedom, I mean. Giving people a chance to make their own decisions, find their own way.”

“You don’t think that’s what Kade Kapur did?”

Jian shrugged. “Maybe at first. But he sold out. He should have found a way to keep going without cozying up to the government.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I don’t think it would be easy. It might even have been impossible, as long as the federal government was around. But our government was always going to collapse eventually. All Kade Kapur did is make the collapse way worse. Now it’s going to be up to people like me to build something better.”

Valerie was about to respond when something hard smashed into Jian’s window, creating a spiderweb of cracks. Valerie jumped, and Jian recoiled, straining against his seatbelt. There were dozens of people standing on the sidewalk and spilling over into the street; it was impossible to know where the projectile had come from. Several people were eyeing the Explorer. The delivery truck inched forward slowly, but a gap opened in the lane to Valerie’s left, and she cranked the wheel hard and gunned the accelerator. Impunity surged into the opening as the car behind and to the left slammed on its brakes and blared its horn. Errant pedestrians scrambled to get out of the way as the Explorer rolled through the intersection. Curses and rude gestures followed, but no one came after them.

Valerie and Jian both let out sighs of relief. “Everybody’s lost their minds,” Valerie said.

“My dad says civilization is a veneer,” Jian said.

“He may be right. Seems like a lot of people were waiting for something like this to happen so they could be the assholes they’ve been wanting to be.”

“Probably should have taken Maria’s car,” Jian said.

Valerie nodded. She had seen Maria’s two-seater Mazda in the driveway, but she’d opted for the Explorer, ironically, because she felt safe in it. She hadn’t realized how much of a target they would be. The Mazda probably had a full tank of gas too.

They passed the tail end of the demonstration, and the crowds began to thin somewhat. “There’s the hospital,” Jian said, pointing to the right.

“That must be the lot,” Valerie said, pointing to a parking sign on the left about half a block ahead. She got into the turn lane and guided the Explorer into the driveway. She pulled up to the gate, rolled down her window, and waved her credit card in front of the machine. To her relief, the gate swung open. She didn’t have much credit left on her card, and she assumed that the parking rates had kept pace with gasoline.

The lot was nearly full, but it wasn’t very big. Valerie handed Jian the keycard for Paul’s Hyundai, and they drove up and down the aisles of cars, listening for the Hyundai’s horn beeping as Jian pushed the button. They didn’t see a slate blue Hyundai, and none of the cars in the area responded to the keycard.

“Now what?” asked Paul.

“We’d better check the hospital. See if anyone saw him leave.”

Chapter Forty-three

2042

They locked Impunity and crossed the street to the hospital. It felt like a sauna outside. Valerie kept her hand on the Sig-Sauer as they walked, blinking away sweat to keep her eyes clear, but they didn’t have any trouble. She realized as they reached the door to the hospital that the gun was going to be a problem: there were metal detectors at the entrance.

“You’ll have to go,” Valerie said. “I’ll watch the Explorer. Call me if you learn anything, or when you’re coming back out.”

Jian hesitated. Valerie could see he didn’t like the idea of having to get information from people at a busy hospital. Jian was all right as long as he was conversing with people he knew or holding forth on some complex issue, but the uncertainty of social situations gave him anxiety. “You could give me the gun,” he said at last.

“You don’t have a permit,” she said. “You could be arrested.”

“Is your permit even good in New Orleans?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I’m okay taking the risk. I’m not okay with putting that risk on you.”

“We could go back to the car together and lock the gun in the glove compartment.”

“Jian, we’re wasting time. You can do this. It’s going to be okay.”

Jian nodded. “All right,” he said. He took a deep breath as if he was about to plunge into a lake, turned, and entered the building. Valerie started to walk back to the Explorer but thought better of it. She made a circuit of the streets around the hospital and then checked the alleys nearby, keeping to the late afternoon shade when she could. Her sweat-drenched shirt clung to her body. She kept her right thumb hooked in her waistband so she could get to the gun quickly if she needed to. There were people everywhere, but no one gave her more than a glance. She didn’t see Paul. In fact, she saw almost no white people at all. There were no stores to speak of in the area, just automated kiosks, so there wasn’t really anyone around to ask about Paul. She showed his picture to a few people on the street, but only received blank stares.

Finally, feeling exhausted and close to heat stroke, she took refuge in a hotel lobby. After she explained her situation, the security guard reluctantly let her in. He hadn’t seen Paul; nor had the clerk behind the desk. The TV in the lobby was tuned to a news channel, and Valerie bought a twenty-dollar bottle of water from the clerk and watched the news while she cooled down and waited for Jian to call.

Little had changed. The markets remained closed, Mammon was still going to miss the planet in four weeks, and Kade Kapur still hadn’t been found. Valerie wondered what he was doing at that moment. His whole world had collapsed in a matter of a few hours. His trillion-dollar plan had failed, his company was being dismantled by the federal government, his fortune was gone, he was a fugitive from the law, and his personal life was in shambles. He was undoubtedly the most hated man in the world. She wondered if even Kade Kapur could survive such a fall. She wondered if anyone could.

It was nearly half an hour before Jian called. “On my way out,” he said.

“Okay, wait for me. I’ll meet you at the door.” Valerie swallowed the last of the water and exited the lobby. More people were out in the street now, but the police and National Guard seemed to have things under control for the moment. Forcing herself not to put her hand on the gun under her shirt, Valerie crossed the street and met Jian as he came out the door.

“No luck?”

Jian shook his head, and they started back toward the Explorer. “The man at the front desk said Paul clocked out at noon. Said he usually worked in radiology. So I went up there and asked around. They were pretty busy, and they were going to kick me out, but then….”

“Then what?”

“Mrs. Sutherland, you have to promise not to tell Sofia.”

“We’re on a mission, Jian. You and me. Sofia doesn’t need to know the details.”

Jian nodded. “I started crying,” he said. “I can do it basically on command. People think I’m younger than I am because of the Asian thing, and then if I start crying… well, men don’t know what to do, but women get all protective. It’s super-embarrassing, but I’ve used it a couple of times to get out of trouble.”

“All’s fair in love and war, Jian.” They had reached the Explorer. Valerie unlocked the doors and they got in.

“Anyway, I told them Paul was my foster dad and he was supposed to come to my school for career day but he never showed up. This big black lady kept hugging me. I thought she was going to try to adopt me. I had to pretend I needed to pee to get out of there.”

“But did you find out anything about Paul?”

“They all said he left at noon. He didn’t say anything about where he was going.”

Valerie sighed.

“Sorry, Mrs. Sutherland.”

“No, you did good, Jian. He must have stopped somewhere on the way home. Let’s head back toward the freeway. Keep an eye out for a slate blue Hyundai.” Valerie started the Explorer, doing her best to ignore the low fuel warning on the dashboard display.

The credit card reader at the exit turned out to have been smashed to pieces, but fortunately someone had bent the metal gate enough that they were able to get out. They got back on the road and headed toward the freeway. People were now milling about in the middle of the streets, heedless of the vehicles trying to get through. Honking only seemed to encourage them. Valerie would have turned off onto another street in an attempt to get around them, but they were trying to stick to the route Paul would most likely have taken home.

Finally, by some miracle, they found themselves on an open stretch of road. The freeway onramp was just ahead. They had seen no sign of Paul’s car. Jian hadn’t been able to see through the spider-webbed window, so she had tried to roll it down and it had gotten stuck halfway. Jian had unfastened his seatbelt and was straining to see over the top of the window.

“Now what?” Jian asked.

Valerie chewed her lip. If Paul had stopped somewhere, it would probably have been near the hospital or near home. They hadn’t seen any disruptions in Destrehan, so if Paul ran into some trouble, it was probably around here. She drove past the freeway and took the next right.

“Are we going to have enough gas?” Jian asked. They hadn’t seen a single open gas station since getting off the freeway.

“It says we’ve got another twenty-three miles,” Valerie said.

“It’s twenty-two miles from here to Maria’s house.”

“We’ll be fine. If we have to, we’ll walk the last few miles.”

“And leave the car on the freeway?”

“Jian, please. I’m aware of the problem. We can’t get to Florida on what we have in the tank anyway, and Maria needs our help. So unless you have a better idea, I’m going to keep looking.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Sutherland.”

“Stop apologizing and keep looking for that Hyundai.”

Jian nodded and went back to scanning the neighborhood for Paul’s car.

They went down a street parallel to the one they had taken to the hospital, scanning the streets and parking lots for Paul’s car. Traffic was heavy, but it moved at a steady crawl. They couldn’t see into the parking garages, but Valerie thought it unlikely Paul would have left the lot where he usually parked just to park in a garage nearby. When they had gone three blocks past the hospital, she turned right, drove two streets down, and then went right again. She could see Jian craning his neck to get a glimpse of the fuel gauge. The chances were good that they were going to end up stranded on the freeway, if they made it out of the city at all.

Traffic had come to a halt, and after a few minutes of idling, Valerie turned off the car. Soon the interior of the car became unbearably hot. She’d had the air conditioning on despite Jian’s partially open window. She rolled hers down a few inches. It didn’t help. Something smelled like burning tires. All around them, drivers honked in a sad symphony of futility.

“I’m going to see what the problem is,” Valerie said.

“You’re going to leave the car in the street?” Jian asked, suddenly alarmed.

“I won’t go far. If traffic starts to move, I’ll know. Just wait here.”

“Shouldn’t I have, like, a weapon?” Jian asked.

“Jian, we’ve been over this. You could get arrested.”

“Getting arrested is starting to look like a pretty good option,” Jian said, glancing nervously at the hordes on the street. They hadn’t yet seen anyone other than police and National Guard openly carrying guns, but they were seeing more and more people with bottles, bricks, and even aluminum baseball bats. Valerie weighed the risks in her mind.

“I don’t need to use it,” Jian said. “It doesn’t even have to be loaded. I just don’t like sitting here looking like a helpless fourteen-year-old. Sometimes crying doesn’t help.”

At last Valerie nodded. “Okay, let’s get one of the shotguns out of the back.”

They went around to the back and Jian rooted around in the cargo looking for a shotgun while Valerie stood guard. They got some curious glances, but nobody bothered them. “Grab that box of shells too,” Valerie said, when Jian had found the gun.

“Really?”

“Yeah. If you’re going to risk getting arrested, you might as well have a functioning weapon. You know how to load it?” Rick had showed her how to use a pump-action shotgun around the same time that he trained her to use a pistol.

“I think so,” said Jian.

“Okay, let’s do it inside.”

She closed the back and they got back inside. Resting the shotgun against the seat with its barrel pointed at the floor, Jian opened the box of shells and slid one into the gun. It clicked into place and he grabbed another.

“Good,” said Valerie. “Keep doing that until no more will go in. Then hold in this button right here and pump the slide back and then forward.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. You’re right-handed?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, hold it in your lap with the barrel pointing toward my window. Try not to draw attention to yourself, and don’t point it at anybody unless they are threatening you. Tight quarters in here, so be very careful about swinging that thing around and hitting the butt on the dash or something. If you panic, you could easily blow your own head off. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Sutherland.”

“And try not to shoot me when I come back. I shouldn’t be long. Oh, and if the police come by, drop the gun, put your hands in the air slowly, and do exactly what they tell you to do.”

“I’ve got it, Mrs. Sutherland. I will be okay.”

Valerie nodded. She got out of the car and joined the throng heading down the street. After a few minutes, she was nearly a block away and still had no idea what was going on. Traffic was stopped as far as she could see in all directions. From somewhere to the right came chants of “Burn it all down.” She caught a glimpse of an effigy of Kade Kapur hanging from a noose.

Close to half of the cars here had been deserted by their drivers. Valerie climbed on top of an old Chevy pickup with peeling red paint, the hot metal hurting her hands. Standing in the bed, she saw a gas station on fire about a block ahead, and a huge horde of people advancing toward a line of riot police, who were mostly obscured by a thick fog of teargas. Her eyes began to burn, and soon her vision was too blurred to do her any good. She leaped down and began making her way back to the Explorer.

She was starting to come to grips with the idea that they weren’t getting out of here with Impunity, not to mention the small fortune of goods they had carted across the country. It had been stupid to drive down here in the Explorer. Maybe it had been stupid to go after Paul at all. She barely knew the man. But Maria had needed their help—and, if Valerie were being honest, she would admit that she had fully planned to siphon all the gas out of Maria’s Mazda when this was over.

Now, though, it was looking like they’d be lucky just to get out of the city alive and unhurt. So many people were headed toward the disturbance ahead that Valerie had to leave the street, taking to the far edge of the sidewalk. She found herself repeatedly shoved against masonry as she fought against the sea of people rushing past. Masonry gave way to a chain link fence, which didn’t hurt nearly as much. Emboldened by a break in the crowd, she hurried forward. Nearly ten minutes had passed since she’d left Jian; he had to be close to full-on panic.

Something hit her hard between the shoulder blades, and she was slammed against the fence. She was vaguely aware that the holster had come loose and fallen to the pavement, the gun still in it. With the wind knocked out of her, she clung to the fence, trying not to fall backwards onto the concrete. When she could breathe again, she backed away from the fence a step and looked down. The gun was gone.

Chapter Forty-four

2042

Valerie whirled around, expecting to see someone pointing it at her, but whoever had taken it was already gone, vanished into the crowd. She fell against the fence, tears rolling down her cheeks. Maybe it was the teargas or the acrid smoke, or maybe it was just exhaustion. She felt like she had been on edge for three days.

Then, blinking away tears, she saw it: a slate blue Hyundai, not forty feet away from her. Beyond the fence was the parking lot behind a drugstore. That must have been where Paul stopped on the way home.

She tried to call Jian, but it wouldn’t go through. She fought her way through the crowd, rounded a corner, and found herself on a relatively uncrowded stretch of sidewalk. She made her way to the front of the drugstore. The front windows had been smashed in, and several people were walking out clutching large boxes or bags of looted items. On a bench out front, a homeless man was sleeping. She wondered if he had seen anything. Probably not: if the looting hadn’t awakened him, he probably wouldn’t have noticed Paul.

Next to the drugstore was a tiny bodega. It had a CLOSED sign up in the window, and a muscular black man wearing jeans and a sleeveless white t-shirt stood outside holding an AR-15. Valerie approached the man, careful to keep her hands in sight.

“I’m looking for somebody,” she said. “A white man, about thirty years old, maybe five ten, with thinning brown hair.”

The man stared at her. “I ain’t seen nobody.”

“Can I show you his picture?”

The man shrugged. She slowly pulled her screen from her pocket, brought up Paul’s picture, and showed it to the man.

“I tol’ you I ain’t seen nobody.”

“Okay,” Valerie said. “Thank you.”

The man made no reply.

A heavyset man climbed through the window of the drugstore, and Valerie slid her screen back in her pocket and went in after him. The store was full of people, grabbing everything they could find off the shelves. The floor was so littered with stuff that it was a challenge to walk down the aisles. Valerie went up and down the aisles and checked the back room and the bathrooms. Paul was not there.

She exited the store and went down the alley to the parking lot, searching the area. She reached the Hyundai, but still found no sign of Paul. It was definitely his car: Maria had sent her the license plate number. She couldn’t open it, though: she’d left the keycard with Jian. Standing next to the Hyundai, she called him again. Still the call would not go through.

She was going to have to go back to the Explorer. The exit from this parking lot looked to be unobstructed; if she could get Jian over here, they could escape the city in Paul’s car if they needed to. But where the hell was Paul?

She walked around the parking lot, looking under and beside all the cars. No Paul. She went back down the alley toward the front of the store. People continued to go in and out, holding as much stuff as they could carry, not a cop in sight. The muscular black man remained on guard outside the bodega next door. And still the homeless man dozed obliviously on the bench out front.

A homeless man wearing tan cotton shorts, leather sandals, and a white t-shirt that read Best Health Chiropractic.

Valerie rushed to the man and bent down to look at him. He was lying half-curled up, with his back to her. She saw now that there was a patch of dry blood on his balding scalp. She felt for a pulse. It was faint, but steady. Thank God.

“Paul,” she said, squeezing his arm. He didn’t stir. She said it louder. “Paul!” Still no response. She tried calling Jian again, and this time the call went through.

“Mrs. Sutherland? What’s going on? Where are you?” Jian sounded terrified.

“I’m okay. I found Paul. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, nobody’s bothered me, but it’s getting really bad here. I think we might have to leave Impunity.”

“It’s all right,” Valerie said. “We can take Paul’s car. I’m sending you my location. Do you see it?”

“Um, hang on. Okay, yeah. In front of Walgreen’s?”

“Yep.”

“Should I take the gun?”

“No. Leave it. Leave everything. Nobody is going to bother a fourteen-year-old kid if it doesn’t look like he has anything worth taking.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

Valerie sighed. She wondered how much that Explorer, loaded to the gills with batteries and hologame consoles and beef jerky and a thousand other things, was worth by now. A million dollars? On the other hand, a car you couldn’t move was worth as much as an asteroid ten million miles away: nothing.

“Paul!” she shouted, shaking him. “Paul, wake up!”

“The hell you doin’ t’ that man?” said a man’s voice behind her. It was the man guarding the bodega.

“This is my friend,” Valerie said. “The one I was looking for. I need to get him to the hospital.”

“You cain’t get him to the hospital,” the big black man said, gesturing with his gun toward the riot breaking out down the block. “They got half the city blocked off.”

“Please, just help me get him to the car.”

“Nah, I cain’t help you.”

“Please,” Valerie said again. “He’s too heavy for me.”

“You want me to get shot? Cops won’t do shit about them looters, but they catch me stealin’ a white man, they gon’ put me down like a dog.”

“The car is just around back. Nobody will see you.”

“Nah. I leave this store for a minute, it gon’ look like that.” He gestured toward the shattered glass next door.

“I’ll watch your store.”

The black man erupted into a guffaw. “You gon’ watch my store. You gon’ watch my store.”

“Give me the gun. I can watch it as well as you can. Anybody tries to get past me, I’ll shoot ‘em.”

“You ain’t never shot nobody.”

“No, I haven’t. And I’ll bet you haven’t either. You act tough, but I bet you’re a decent person. Just trying to protect what’s yours.”

“Lawdy!” the man exclaimed. “I ain’t never had a white woman call me a decent person before. You need to give out medals with that shit, so people know. Poor Isaiah Robinson. Died stealin’ a white man, but damned if he wasn’t a decent person.”

Valerie couldn’t help laughing. “Please, Isaiah. There’s a slate blue Hyundai toward the back of the parking lot. Just lay him on the grass there. I’ll get him into the car.”

“You don’t trust me with the keycard?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I swear, Isaiah. My daughter’s boyfriend has it. He’ll be here any minute.”

“Why don’t he help you?”

“He’s smaller than I am.”

“Damn. What is he, Chinese?”

“Yes, actually. I think.”

“Well, shit. You know how to shoot one of these?”

Valerie approached the man. “My husband taught me.”

“He Chinese too?”

“No, he’s in California.”

“Even worse. Try not to kill nobody doesn’t deserve it.” He handed her the gun and walked past her to the bench. He bent down, picked Paul up, and gently hefted him over his right shoulder. “I ain’t stealin’ this white man,” he shouted, as he disappeared down the alley. “I’m just borrowin’ him.”

*****

Jian showed up a couple minutes later, looking harrowed but unhurt. He stopped in front of the bodega, staring at Valerie in shock.

“Mrs. Sutherland? What are you doing?”

“Guarding this store,” Valerie said.

“Wh-why?”

“Somebody had to do it.”

At that moment, Isaiah Robinson returned. “All right,” he said. “I done delivered your white man. You’d best hurry. He started blabbin’ somethin’ at me when I left him, but I tol’ him I was just the delivery service. Gimme that.” He held out his hand and Valerie gave him the rifle.

“Thank you, Isaiah. For real. If I had any money, I’d give you some.”

“If it was worth anything, I’d take it.”

Valerie grinned at him. “Good luck.”

“Same to y’all.”

Chapter Forty-five

2042

Paul was semi-conscious and sitting up when they got to him. He was disoriented and confused, but he seemed to know who and roughly where he was. They helped him into the backseat of the Hyundai. Jian got in next to him and Valerie got in the driver’s seat. They wouldn’t have to worry about gas: the Hyundai was electric, and it had three quarters of a charge left.

“Who are you?” Paul asked for the third time.

“I’m Jian. That’s Mrs.—Valerie. She’s Maria’s cousin.”

“Maria’s cousin, Valerie?”

“That’s right.”

“Paul,” Valerie said, as she pulled out of the parking lot, “do you remember how you got to that bench?”

“Bench,” said Paul.

That would be a no, thought Valerie. The streets here were less crowded; if they didn’t run into any more troublemakers in the next few blocks, they would likely have a clear shot to the freeway. The smoke in the air was getting thicker; Valerie saw multiple greasy gray plumes in her rear-view mirror. “What’s the last thing you remember before we picked you up?”

“I was… I was leaving the hospital. Something on the news…. That asteroid, right? It missed. I was thinking I should stop and pick up some canned food, just in case. Where’s my bag? My wallet and my scrubs. And my netcard….”

“Must have been stolen,” Jian said. “You stopped at a drugstore. People were looting it when we got there. Somebody must have hit you on the head.”

“God, I’m so tired.”

“You need to stay awake, Paul. Jian, don’t let him go to sleep. Looks like there’s an urgent care center just off the highway in Destrehan. We’ll have to take him there.”

They were on the freeway fifteen minutes later. Paul complained repeatedly about how tired he was and how much his head hurt, but Jian did his best to keep him awake.

“My gosh,” said Jian, looking behind them. “Half the city must be on fire.”

Valerie glanced in the mirror. Much of the view of the city was obscured by smoke. She wondered if New Orleans would survive the night. And was New Orleans a special case—a critical mass of poor, desperate, angry people crammed into a confined space? Or were scenes like this playing out across the country? She couldn’t imagine Los Angeles was faring much better. She turned on the news, hoping for some perspective.

“—shocking revelations this evening that Hannah Berkeley, the Ad Astra employee thought to be having an illicit affair with Kade Kapur, was found dead in her Cape Coral home yesterday by police. The Cape Coral police, working in conjunction with the FBI, have released a statement indicating that Ms. Berkeley’s death appears to be a homicide. We do not have any details on the exact cause of death at this moment, but we are expecting another statement after an official autopsy is conducted. It is unknown whether Kade Kapur is a suspect in the killing, but we do know, of course, that he remains a wanted fugitive in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of Ad Astra. Again, if you’re just joining us….”

Valerie’s mind reeled. Kade Kapur, a murderer? She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. Please, God. Just give me this much. I need something to believe in.

The Hyundai’s navigation system indicated they’d reached the exit for the urgent care center. Valerie turned the driving over to the Hyundai and called Maria. She and Sofia met them at the urgent care center. A scan revealed no skull fracture or other serious damage; the diagnosis was a mild concussion. A young intern cleaned and sutured his wound and then released him, advising Maria to have someone watch him for the next eight hours to make sure he didn’t have seizures or other problems.

On the way home, they stopped for burgers—Maria’s treat. Price controls hadn’t hit fast food yet, so it cost her nearly $400 to feed them all. She gasped at the price—and then paid it. It was the one of the first real meals Valerie, Sofia and Jian had eaten since setting out from Los Angeles two days earlier. They had been subsisting on jerky, nuts, dried fruit, and granola bars.

After dinner, the three travelers took showers while Maria watched Paul and did laundry. Tylenol eased the pain in Paul’s head a bit, and he dozed on the couch in the living room while Valerie watched TV. Valerie caught enough of the news to see that “anti-capitalism protests” had broken out in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta and Seattle. To her surprise, the unrest in Los Angeles was apparently relatively subdued for the moment.

It was just after nine p.m., but the three were exhausted. Valerie and Sofia shared the queen-sized bed in the master bedroom while Jian slept in the guest room. Valerie awoke at five a.m. and went downstairs to find Maria asleep and Paul sitting up on the couch with a cup of coffee, watching the news.

“How did you sleep?” asked Paul.

“Better than I have in months,” said Valerie, honestly. Paul had muted the TV, but the faces of Kade Kapur and Hannah Berkeley were on the screen. She was pretty, that was for sure. She could see Kade falling for her. But killing her? No. Valerie’s mind still wouldn’t accept it. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts like hell,” Paul said. “This guy, huh?” motioning toward the TV. “Hero to zero over a couple of days. Not even a zero. He’s like a negative trillion by now. Singlehandedly crashed the world economy.”

“Yeah,” said Valerie, noticing a couple of suitcases standing near the front door. “What’s this?”

“I packed up some things for you,” he said. “Some of Maria’s clothes, some of mine. And some toiletries and whatnot. Figured you lost most of your stuff coming to rescue me.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Paul. That was my own stupid fault, bringing the Explorer downtown. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were in a hurry, and you made one bad decision out of a whole bunch of good ones. Trust me, you’re doing better than most. Me included. I’d probably be dead on that bench if you hadn’t come get me. The Hyundai has a full charge. Keycard is on the table.”

“I can’t take your car!”

“I heard you talking with Sofia last night. You need to get to your grandmother. She needs you a hell of a lot more than I need a second car right now. Consider it a loan until… well, until things get back to some kind of normal, I guess.”

“Is Maria okay with this?”

Paul laughed and then groaned, holding his head in his hands. After a while, he said, “She will be. My suggestion, though, would be to fix yourself some breakfast and get on the road before she wakes up.”

Valerie nodded. “I’ll be quiet.”

“No need for that. Maria slept through the last two hurricanes.”

*****

Valerie took Paul’s advice. She roused Sofia and Jian, and the three were on the road by six a.m. Paul said that with a full charge, the Hyundai could go four hundred miles. That would get them most of the way to Tampa. If they could find one working charge station along the way—and could pay in crypto—they could be in Tampa by dinnertime.

Two hours out of New Orleans, though, traffic on the interstate slowed to a crawl. For the next two hours, they sat in traffic, inching toward the Florida border. There was nothing on the news to indicate what the problem was. Every news program was talking about Kade Kapur and the murder of Hannah Berkeley. Jian was asleep in the backseat, so he wasn’t checking his unofficial news sources, but Valerie doubted it would have helped.

At last they reached a checkpoint, where several National Guardsmen stood holding rifles. A man in a Florida State Police uniform approached the car, and Valerie rolled down the window. He appeared to be Latino, but his small mustache and black hair parted on the side gave him an oddly fascistic appearance.

“Where y’all comin’ from, ma’am?”

“California.”

“Louisiana plates on the car?”

“It’s my cousin’s. We’re borrowing it.”

“Mmm. All y’all from California?”

“Yes, officer. What’s this about?”

“Ma’am, you see where that green pickup is turning around? That’s where I need you to go.”

“I don’t understand. I have to turn around? We’re going to Tampa.”

“No, ma’am. We’re not letting anyone in from out of state right now.”

“What? We just drove all the way across the country!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“My grandmother is not well,” Valerie said. “The security people in her apartment complex all walked off the job, and she’s terrified. I need to get to her.”

“If you give me your grandmother’s name, address and phone number, I can have local law enforcement do a wellness check.”

“A wellness…. No. She needs groceries, medicine. She can’t leave her apartment!”

“Any minor children in the household?”

“What? No. My grandmother is eighty-five.”

“I can’t let you into Florida unless there are minor children in the state who are dependent on you.”

“Are you kidding? You can’t let me into Florida? This is the United States! You can’t just turn people away at the border!”

“Mom!” Sofia said in a low voice. “This isn’t helping.”

The officer was unmoved. “If you’d like to file a request for an entry permit, you’ll need to pull up next to the building there and talk to the young lady with the clipboard.”

Valerie let out a long groan. “An entry permit,” she said through gritted teeth. “Yes. I would like to request an entry permit.”

The officer nodded and pointed to a parking space. Valerie pulled up and parked.

“That guy was a little on the nose,” Sofia said.

“Do you think no one has told him?” asked Jian, who had been awakened by the exchange.

“I bet they all call him Officer Hitler behind his back.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell people?” Valerie moaned, ignoring them. “Why wasn’t there anything on the news?”

“Doesn’t look like this checkpoint has been up very long,” said Jian. “Even if the news people know about it, they probably haven’t figure out how to report it without running afoul of the FMA.”

“You’re saying it’s illegal to report on interstate border controls?”

“No, but the FMA is intentionally vague. It doesn’t tell news outlets exactly what they can and can’t do. It just fines them when they go over some arbitrary line. And if they get too many violations, their license is pulled. So the news outlets self-censor, rather than risk a mark on their record. The Soviet Union did the same thing.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Valerie said. “We’ve got a hundred news channels and no idea what’s going on.”

*****

Valerie filled out the form to request a Florida Entry Permit, but the situation was clearly hopeless. They met none of the criteria that would allow approval of their request. The woman who took the form told her that the border controls were intended to be “temporary,” but she couldn’t tell them if that meant days or months. She suggested they head toward Montgomery, Alabama or New Orleans, because all the hotels in Mobile were full.

“Are we going back to Paul and Maria’s place?” Sofia asked.

“I guess so,” said Valerie.

“You think they have all the roads going into Florida blocked?” Jian asked. “There’s a lot of them. I bet we could find a way through.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Valerie said. “It’s four hundred miles to Tampa, and we have Louisiana plates. We’ll never get there.”

“We have to do something,” Sofia said. “Nani needs us.”

“What do you want me to do, Sofia? It was mostly dumb luck that we made it this far. I don’t have any more tricks up my sleeve.”

“Jian, you could find a copy of one of those entry permits online, right? Somebody’s got to have uploaded one to one of the Stellaris groups.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“If you can find an original, I can forge one with my screen.”

“What?” Valerie asked. “How’d you learn to do that?”

“It’s just graphics, Mom. Relax. I’m not in the fake ID business or anything.”

“I don’t know, Sof,” Jian said. “All that stuff is digitized these days. They can probably check your permit against an online database.”

“They gave us a paper form to fill out,” said Sofia. “I bet there is no database. Not yet. This whole process is new. They haven’t digitized it yet.”

“It’s worth a try, I guess,” said Jian.

Valerie wondered what the penalty for forging a government document was. She decided it didn’t matter. Her grandmother was in danger.

Traffic was bad heading west as well, but after an hour they reached a promising exit. Sofia had left her full-sized screen with Impunity, but she said he could dummy up an entry permit on her hand screen. She was done by the time Valerie found a printing kiosk. The permit listed the make and model of their car and the names of the three occupants. Other than those details, it looked identical to the original.

“Are we sure the original is real?” Valerie asked.

“Well, not one hundred percent,” said Jian. “The user who uploaded it was pretty new, but I don’t know why anyone would upload a fake one.”

“To screw with people,” Sofia said.

“Or to entrap people,” Valerie added.

“I’d buy the first possibility,” Jian said. “I don’t think the cops are organized or ambitious enough to try something like this. Anyway, it’s what we have. We decided it’s worth the risk, right?”

“Yes,” said Valerie, with more conviction than she felt. “Let’s do this.”

Chapter Forty-six

2042

Sofia printed the bogus permit, selecting the paper size specified by the user who had uploaded the original. There was no mention of paper thickness or lamination. The user wasn’t responding to questions, and no one else online seemed to know. The entry permit system had apparently been implemented only about two hours before they reached the border.

Counterfeit permit in hand, they got back on the freeway heading east. It was mid-afternoon by the time they once again neared the border checkpoint. As the Hyundai inched forward, Valerie wondered if they were making a mistake. Her grandmother would be okay for a few days. Maybe this would all blow over by then. The federal government wouldn’t tolerate states enacting their own border control measures. Would it?

The Hyundai was now just three cars from the checkpoint. There were three lanes, and this time Valerie had taken the far right lane in the hopes of getting a different police officer. To her relief, the officer in her lane was a young black man; Officer Hitler was nowhere in sight. The officer let a white Chevy through, and now they were just two cars back. Seeing that some cars were being waved through without even stopping, Valerie placed the permit on the dashboard in the hopes that the cops were too busy to look very closely.

A lane over, the police had pulled a young woman from her car. The car, an ancient Chrysler with Alabama plates, looked like it barely ran, and the woman had the pale, sinewy look of a meth addict. While three officers struggled to control the woman, she screamed about needing to get to her baby in Jacksonville. Valerie knew the cops were just doing their job, but she couldn’t help feeling bad for the woman. Three men against one woman, and no Kade Kapur to come to her rescue. Within a few seconds, they had her face against the pavement and her wrists zip-tied behind her back.

Someone behind her honked: the car in front of her had pulled forward. One car between her and the moment of truth. As she let the Hyundai crawl forward, her eyes fell on the officer interrogating the man in the car ahead of her: it was Officer Hitler. Her heart thudded wildly in her chest. Would he remember her? He must have dealt with hundreds of people since he’d seen her. Next to her, Sofia remained in frozen silence, waiting to see what she would do.

The officer pointed to the turnaround, and after a brief exchange of words, the man complied. It was Valerie’s turn. To her left, the meth-head was being pulled to her feet. There but for the grace of God, thought Valerie. The driver behind her honked. The officer was beckoning impatiently to her. The meth-head was being escorted by two of the officers to the building. The third was talking on headset, his other hand clamped against his ear to block out the noise.

Valerie reached forward, grabbed the counterfeit permit from the dash, and shoved it under her seat. The driver behind her honked again. She pulled forward.

“I just need to make a call,” she said, as the cop leaned toward her window.

“Ma’am?”

“I have to turn around, I know. But I need to make a call first. Can I just park for a minute?”

The officer regarded her for a moment. Was that recognition in his eyes? He straightened and pointed to the parking area. Valerie nodded and pulled forward. She rolled up the window and parked the car.

“Mom, what was that?”

“I have to try something,” she said. “It’s probably stupid, but I need to at least try. If it doesn’t work, we can go around again and hope we don’t get Officer Hitler.”

“Okay,” said Sofia. “What are you going to do?”

“Make a call,” Valerie replied. She brought up the phone interface on the Hyundai’s dashboard display, took a deep breath, and dialed a number from memory. She hadn’t meant to memorize it. She’d meant to forget it forever. But she’d never had much control over her brain.

The phone app rang. And rang again. Three times. Four. Then a recorded voice said:

Hey, it’s Kade. Leave a message.

Valerie couldn’t believe it. All these years and he’d never changed his number. A chime sounded.

“Hi, um, Kade. This is Valerie Muñoz. You probably don’t remember me, but you used to walk me home from school a long time ago. I feel like an idiot doing this, but I don’t know what else to do. My grandmother is in Tampa, and things are getting pretty bad there. I’m trying to get to her, but I’m stuck at the Florida border. I know you’ve got, uh, bigger problems right now, but you’re the only important person I know, and you did tell me to call you anytime, right? Ha, ha.” She paused, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her voice caught in her throat. She cleared it and pressed on: “Kade, I know you didn’t kill that woman. And I know the Mammon mission was sabotaged. I think most people do. The government is just looking for a scapegoat. But Kade, if you run, you just look guilty. You’ve got to turn yourself in. If there’s anything I can do… no, forget that. Kade, please, just turn yourself in.” She ended the call.

“Was that…?” Jian asked.

“Yeah,” Valerie said, wiping tears away with the back of her wrist. “Like I said, stupid.” Officer Hitler was conversing with the young woman holding the clipboard. They kept looking over at the Hyundai. Valerie wondered what would happen if they searched the car and found the fake permit.

“You didn’t even ask him for help,” Sofia said.

“Didn’t I?” Valerie asked. “I guess it slipped my mind. All right, let’s try this again.” She put the car in reverse, but before she’d taken her foot off the brake, the phone app’s chime sounded. The display showed Kade’s number.

“Um, Mom?” Sofia said.

Valerie swallowed hard. Officer Hitler and Ms. Clipboard were still watching them. Valerie tapped the screen to answer the call.

“Hello?” she said.

There was a long pause. “Is this really Valerie Muñoz?” asked a man’s voice. His speech was slurred, but the voice was recognizable as Kade’s.

“Y-yes,” said Valerie. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. I guess I was a little desperate.”

There was another silence, followed by hoarse, cackling laughter. “You’re desperate,” Kade said. “You’re desperate.” More cackling, followed by a hacking cough.

“Kade, are you all right? You don’t sound very good.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. How’r’you?”

“I’ve been better, to be honest. Kade, where are you?”

“Just a house. The house where… just one of our houses. Doesn’t matter.”

“One of whose houses?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kade said again. “None of it matters. I tried, Valerie. I did. But you can’t beat them. Should have known.”

“Kade, you have to turn yourself in.”

“Naw. I like it here. Think I’m going to die here. Right here on this couch. Do you… do you know I have a gun?”

“Kade, you don’t want to do that. People care about you.”

“Nobody cares, Valerie. Can’t blame them. Can’t blame them. Valerie, it has been great talking to you. I have to go now. Buh-bye.”

“Kade!”

But he had already terminated the call. Valerie jumped as someone knocked on her window. Officer Hitler. She rolled down the window.

“Ma’am, you can’t stay here.”

“Right, of course,” Valerie said. “I’m done, I just….” What had Kade meant by ‘one of our houses’? Was he hiding out in a vacation home that he owned? No, that was too obvious. The cops would already have looked there. So… a house owned by Ad Astra or one of his other corporations?

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, sorry,” Valerie said. “I have a piece of information. It may be nothing, but maybe it will help.” She needed to play this just right. If she gave away too much, she’d be giving up her leverage. She needed to tell them enough that they give her a permit, but not so much that they didn’t need her.

“Information about what?” the officer asked.

“I need to get to Tampa,” Valerie said.

“Information about what, ma’am?”

Just say it, Valerie. I have information about the location of Kade Kapur. You’d be doing him a favor. He’s about to kill himself. If you tell them to look into houses owned by Kade Kapur’s companies, they might get to him in time.

“Ma’am, step out of the car, please.”

Valerie could feel the corner of the bogus permit against her ankle. The meth-head sat slumped against the building, weeping. One of the cops stood nearby, arms crossed, oblivious to her suffering.

“I have information about Kade Kapur,” she said.

“What about him?”

Valerie’s eyes again went to the meth addict. What must it be like to be so alone, thought Valerie. To not have a single friend in the whole world.

“Ma’am?”

Valerie met the officer’s gaze. “He’s a hero,” she said. “Mammon isn’t an asteroid at all. It looks like one, but that’s just to fool astronomers.” She lowered her voice. “It’s a spaceship. Aliens were going to use it to invade Earth, but Kade Kapur found out about it. He sabotaged the mission so that the spaceship would miss Earth. Our government was in on the invasion. That’s why they’re trying to kill him.”

“Okay, ma’am. I’ll pass that along to NASA. Right now I need you to take that turnaround and get back on the highway going west.”

“They’ll be back in five years, though. Carbon dioxide is poisonous to them. The whole climate change thing in the twenties was about reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so the aliens can breathe it.”

“Ma’am, please leave before I have to cite you.”

“Fine,” said Valerie, rolling up her window. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you!” She backed out of the parking spot and headed for the turnaround.

“I thought you were going to tell him about Kade,” Sofia said.

“So did I,” Valerie replied. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jian. “The man basically broke the world. Why do you owe him anything?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“You really do have a thing for him, don’t you?” Sofia asked.

“He was just a kid I went to school with. And... maybe I can explain it someday, but this probably isn’t the time. Should we try once more? There has to be a shift change coming up soon. We’ll have a better chance if Officer Hitler and his friend aren’t around.”

“Are we actually going to go through with it this time?” Sofia asked.

“Yes,” Valerie said, trying to convince herself. “But if something goes wrong, you guys don’t know anything. I made the counterfeit permit. You two are just along for the ride.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mrs. Sutherland.”

“I do,” Valerie said. “No need for us all to get arrested. Maybe you two can still get to Tampa eventually.”

Valerie guided the Hyundai once again onto the westbound highway lanes. She wasn’t sure where she was going. The Hyundai had less than a quarter charge left—not enough to get to New Orleans. Price controls had been enacted for charging stations, so hundreds of cars were lined up for charging at every one of them. She decided to see if they could find someplace to eat that would take crypto. Meanwhile, she tried calling Kade several more times, but there was no answer.

Valerie was getting into the right lane to exit the freeway when Sofia said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Jian, what was the name of that programmer who said he would only turn himself in if Kade did?”

“Um, hang on.” Jian tapped at his screen. “Kuan-yu Pek. What’s your idea?”

“Okay, so the feds want Kuan-yu, but he won’t turn himself in until Kade is apprehended. We have information about Kade’s whereabouts. Mom doesn’t want to turn him in to the cops, which I totally get. But what if we help Kuan-yu’s lawyer find him?”

“What good will that do?” Valerie asked.

“If the lawyer can find him, he might be able to get him to turn himself in. We call the lawyer, tell him we have an idea where Kade is. The lawyer calls the feds and tells them he might be able to get Kade to turn himself in if we’re allowed into Florida. The feds call the cops in Florida and tell them to give us an entry permit.”

“Clever,” Valerie said. “But there are a lot of links in that chain. And we have almost no information to give.”

“It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it?” Sofia said.

Valerie thought it over. “Yeah, I suppose it is. All right, find that lawyer’s phone number.”

*****

The lawyer’s name was David Roisum. He worked at a small firm in Fort Myers. Valerie called him while they were looking for a place to eat, and he picked up almost immediately. He seemed skeptical of the proposal Valerie put to him, but he said he would talk it over with his client and call her back.

Jian found a pizza place in Foley, Alabama that was offering “free” pizza (and accepting “donations” in crypto). There was a line out the door. The three had almost finished devouring a large pepperoni pizza when Valerie’s phone app rang. It was not a number she recognized. Valerie swallowed a gulp of Diet Pepsi and answered.

“Is this Valerie Sutherland?” a man’s voice asked.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“My name is Rami Essak. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course! You worked on the Mammon project.”

“You told Mr. Roisum you have information on Kade Kapur’s whereabouts. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Mr. Essak—”

“Just Rami, please.”

“Rami, I am not trying to be difficult, but I’m in a tough spot. My grandmother is in Tampa. She’s not safe where she lives. I need to get to her, but I’m stuck at the Alabama-Florida border. They won’t let me in the state.”

“You won’t tell me where Kade is unless I can get you to Tampa?”

“I just need an entry permit. My thinking was that if you go to the feds—”

“You haven’t talked to the feds?”

“No.”

“Okay, I can probably arrange something.”

“To be clear, Rami: I don’t know exactly where Kade is. But I did talk to him, less than an hour ago, and he gave me some information that may be helpful in finding him.”

“I see. Give me your grandmother’s name, address and phone number.”

“What?”

“I’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“Valerie, we don’t have time for this. The police are looking for Kade right now. There is a good chance they will find him before we do. If that happens, he is either going to be killed or imprisoned for the rest of his life. Do you want that to happen?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Then we need to trust each other. I will have someone go to your grandmother’s home and make sure she is safe. Please give me her name, address, and phone number.”

Valerie hesitated only a second before doing so.

“Thank you,” said Rami. “Where are you now?”

“Near a town called Foley, Alabama.”

“Okay, hold on.” The line went silent for nearly a minute. Then Rami spoke again: “There is an abandoned Naval landing field about two miles southeast of Foley. Can you get there?”

“I’m sure we can.”

“’We?’”

“My daughter and her boyfriend are with me.”

“Okay. It’s six forty-five p.m. right now. Be there in two hours. Take only what you can carry.”

“Naval landing field. Eight forty-five p.m.”

“That’s it. If you aren’t there, the deal’s off. Now, tell me what you know about Kade’s whereabouts.”

“I’d rather not say anything until I know my grandmother is safe.”

“Fine. But if the feds find Kade before I do, the deal is off. Your choice.”

Valerie let out a defeated sigh. “He said he was in ‘one of our houses’.”

“‘One of our houses’? That’s it?”

“I asked him where he was, and he said, ‘The house where,’ and stopped. Then he said, ‘Just one of our houses.’”

“Allah have mercy,” Rami said. A long pause followed. “Be at the landing field at eight forty-five. I’m going to be very busy for the next few hours, so do not call me.”

“Understood,” Valerie said, but the line had already gone dead.

“What the heck was all that?” Jian asked through a mouthful of pepperoni pizza.

“I don’t think we’re going to need a permit,” Valerie said.

Chapter Forty-seven

2042

The abandoned airfield was easy enough to find. Spanning several hundred acres, it had two cracked asphalt runways arranged in a V, with the opening facing the little town of Foley. The road dead-ended at a gate that was chained shut. A twenty-foot-high chain link fence enclosed the entire facility. There seemed no easy way in. The three got out of the Hyundai and stared at the gate, to which were affixed ancient, faded signs reading PROPERTY OF U.S. NAVY and DANGER. KEEP OUT.

“We’re going to have to climb,” said Valerie.

“This is crazy,” Sofia said. “Are you sure this Rami person isn’t playing a joke on you?”

“He didn’t seem like the joking type,” Valerie said.

“Are we just going to leave the car?” Jian asked.

“Looks that way,” Valerie said. “Come on.” She walked to the fence and began to climb. After a moment, Sofia and Jian followed. The sun had set, but the heat and humidity persisted, and they were all sweating by the time they reached the asphalt on the other side.

“Now what?” Jian asked.

“This way,” said Valerie, heading to the point where the two runways met. Sofia and Jian followed. By the time they reached the vertex of the V, the last light of the day was fading. The asphalt radiated heat, but they couldn’t escape it without braving the muddy ground and hip-high weeds surrounding it. Even on the runway, they were tormented by hundreds of mosquitos. It was only eight-thirty—they were fifteen minutes early. Sofia had bought something like forty bottles of bug spray, but they had left them in Impunity along with everything except their clothes and what was in their pockets.

They walked in wide circles, trying to keep the mosquitos from settling on them and slapping at the ones that managed to find bare flesh. If anyone had been watching them, Valerie mused, they would have looked like adherents of some cult of flagellants conducting a twilight ritual. Her mind drifted to the “cargo cults” that arose on Pacific islands after World War II, the adherents of which would mimic the activities of Allied soldiers in an attempt to prompt the gods to drop valuable cargo, as they had during the war. How much human activity was like that? she wondered. People going through the motions, hoping to recreate the good old days without having an iota of understanding of the mechanisms that brought the bounties of the past? The engine of the world economy had ground to a halt, and millions of people—bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, insurance agents, bureaucrats—would find themselves superfluous and impotent, like a man carrying a wooden rifle and ordering supplies on a coconut. How many would find a way to adapt and survive? How many would die?

Valerie wondered if she, her daughter, and Jian were in the latter group. She had done everything she could think of to keep them alive, but she had no illusions: they’d survived this far through dumb luck and the goodwill of others: Rick buying the Explorer at exactly the right moment, then getting on the road just before the first impactor missed Mammon, finding a rancher in Texas willing to sell gasoline for crypto, Paul loaning them the Hyundai, Kade answering his phone app.

Eight forty-five came and went. The mosquitoes were getting worse, and it was so dark that Valerie couldn’t see where she was walking. It took all her willpower not to break into a sprint toward the gate to seek refuge in the Hyundai. Just a few minutes more, she told herself. But as the seconds ticked by, she became more and more convinced that the feds had found Kade and Rami had called off the deal.

Valerie’s phone app rang: it was her grandmother. She answered.

“Val?” said her grandmother’s voice. “A man just showed up here. He said his name is Kyle. He said he’s a friend of yours?”

“Ask him who he works for, Nani.”

After a pause, her grandmother said, “Rami Essak. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yes. It’s okay, Nani. He’s there to protect you.”

“I don’t understand. Do I have to pay him?”

“No, Nani. It’s all taken care of.”

“Mom, look!” Sofia shouted.

Valerie could just make out her daughter’s raised arm against the inky near-black of the cloud-filled sky. Valerie scanned the sky but saw nothing. And then there it was: a pinprick of light, growing steadily brighter. She could hear the faint thrumming of a helicopter’s rotors.

“Nani, I have to go,” Valerie said. “Be nice to Kyle. I love you.” She ended the call.

Rami had come through on one promise, at least. Still, she told herself not to get her hopes up: the municipal airport was only a few miles away; in all likelihood the helicopter was landing there.

Valerie stood still, oblivious to the mosquitos, watching the helicopter approach. It was moving fast: within two minutes, the helicopter was directly overhead, its halogen spotlight bathing the three in a cold glow, a blast of wind stirring up dust and scattering pebbles against their calves. The deafening roar of its rotors filled their ears. The helicopter settled to the asphalt a few yards from them, its door sliding open. It was a sleek long black thing that looked like it had room for half a dozen people. The pilot, barely visible in the dim light of the craft’s interior, beckoned to them, and they climbed aboard and found seats. The pilot pointed above their heads, and Valerie saw headsets dangling from the ceiling. She put one on, and Sofia and Jian followed suit.

“Welcome aboard,” said a woman’s voice in their ears. “I’m Cody Lee. You’re Valerie?”

Valerie nodded, thought better of it, and said, “Yes. That’s me. This is my daughter Sofia, and that’s her boyfriend, Jian Long. You work for Rami Essak?”

“For now,” said Cody. “Strap in. We’re going to try to beat a storm coming in off the Gulf.”

*****

Five minutes later, they were moving fast over dark water. For a few minutes, lights were visible along the coast of the Florida panhandle, and then they were enveloped in pure black. After an hour or so, a headwind picked up, and the helicopter whined and moaned as it rocked this way and that. Valerie had asked where they were going shortly after they boarded, but Cody would only say that she was “awaiting orders.” If she had received said orders, she hadn’t deigned to inform her passengers, and Valerie, gripping a handhold tightly, opted not to distract her with questions.

Valerie spotted a line of lights ahead of them just before eleven p.m. They were nearing the Gulf Coast, but it was impossible to say where. She didn’t see anything that resembled Tampa Bay. Ten minutes later, they were descending rapidly toward what appeared to be a residential neighborhood. As they got closer, she could see that the houses here were enormous, and each of them sat on a lot of an acre or more. They came down on a helipad lit with red LEDs.

The side door slid open, and Cody removed her helmet, climbed out of the cockpit and went around to help them out.

Sofia took off her headset and took Cody’s hand as she climbed out of the chopper. Valerie came next, and then Jian.

“Where are we?” Valerie shouted, but Cody just shook her head. Cody led them across a manicured lawn toward a huge stucco house with a Spanish tile roof. Cloud lightning illuminated rose bushes and ornamental trees to the rear of the house. Cody tapped a combination to unlock a set of French doors. Warm drops of rain pelted them as they retreated inside.

They found themselves in the living room area of a large house with an open floor plan and glazed concrete floors. The air was cool and dry. The house was sparsely furnished with sleek, modernistic furniture and art deco accents. It was opulent but sterile. A man’s house, thought Valerie.

“Is this Rami’s place?” Valerie asked.

“For the time being,” said Cody. “I figure we got about three days before the feds seize it.” Thunder rumbled outside.

“Seize it?” Valerie asked. “On what legal basis?”

Cody chuckled. “Legal basis,” he said. “That’s a good one. Rami will be here at eleven-twenty. I suggest you take care of any pressing physical needs in the next seven minutes.”

Rami walked in the front door while they were helping themselves to Coke and bottled water in the fridge. Compact and neatly dressed, he looked just like he did in photos. “You’re Valerie?”

“I am.”

Rami walked to her and shook her hand. “Rami Essak. You ready to go?”

“Go where?”

“I’ve got five houses left to check. Turns out that between Ad Astra and Bitizen, we own a lot of real estate in this town. I’ve been driving around all afternoon. Checked eight houses already.”

“’This town’ being…?”

“Cape Coral.”

“When can I go to Tampa?”

“When we’re done. Your grandmother is fine. I’ve got a man watching the apartment. You can call her from the car.”

“It’s just us? You don’t have anybody else to help us look for Kade?”

“Can’t trust anybody else, except for Cody.”

Cody smiled. “He doesn’t trust me either, but he can’t fly a helicopter.” Valerie suspected from Rami’s reaction—or lack thereof—that Cody wasn’t joking.

“Coming?” Rami asked. He was halfway to the door.

“Um, yeah. What about—”

“Kids will stay here with Cody.”

The woman you don’t trust, thought Valerie.

“We’ll be fine, Mom,” said Sofia. “Go.”

Valerie nodded. Sofia and Jian were adults. She couldn’t keep treating them like children.

“You kids have fun,” said Cody.

“All right,” Valerie said. “We’ll be back… sometime.” She followed Rami out the door. It was now pouring rain outside.

A black GMC Centurion was parked in the driveway. Rami was already behind the wheel. Valerie ran through the downpour and got in the passenger’s seat. They were on the road before she got her seatbelt on.

“If you had a list of houses,” Valerie said, “why do you need me?”

“You’re the only person who has managed to get through to Kade since he disappeared four days ago. He won’t answer my calls. As far as I can tell, he’s not answering anybody’s calls. Not the police, not Kuan-yu, not even his own mother. But for whatever reason, he decided to talk to you. That’s why you’re here.”

Rami gunned the gas while rounding a corner, forcing the car behind him to slam on its brakes. Valerie gripped the door handle. “Is that necessary?”

“The feds are idiots, but they’ve got us outnumbered by several orders of magnitude. Odds are still high that they’ll locate Kade before we do.”

“What about his wife?”

“What?”

“You said he won’t talk to anybody. What about his wife?”

“Don’t know. She won’t talk to me either. Word is, she’s left the state. Gone to stay with her parents. Hang on.”

Valerie braced herself as Rami took another sharp corner, the Centurion’s tires sliding sideways on the slick pavement. As they reached a more densely populated area of town, Rami slowed a bit. “Can’t afford to get arrested,” he said. “Already went in for questioning once, but I’ve been dodging their calls today. Rumor is, the feds are planning another round of arrests.”

“What would they charge you with?”

“Who knows? Makes no difference. This isn’t a country of laws anymore. Hell, I’m not entirely sure it’s a country anymore. The cops are just the gang with the most guns. It’s right here.” Rami hit the brakes, and they came to a halt in front of a modest suburban house. Rami jumped out of the car and walked briskly to the door. Valerie ran through the rain after him.

The house was dark. Rami rang the doorbell and knocked, but there was no answer. Trying the door, he found it locked. He produced some kind of tool from his pocket, stuck it in the lock, and jiggled. A turn of the handle, and the door opened. Rami looked to Valerie, pointing to his lips and then pointing inside.

“Kade,” Valerie said. “It’s Valerie. I’m coming in.”

She took a deep breath and walked into the house. Rami turned on the lights behind her. They were in a tiled entryway that connected to a living room. The air inside was hot and stifling, like the house had been closed up for weeks. All the surfaces had a thick layer of dust.

“Not here,” said Rami. “Let’s go.”

“Kade?” Valerie said, more loudly. There was no answer. She shrugged, turned off the lights, and followed Rami back to the Centurion. She got in, and the Centurion surged forward. “It won’t do Kade any good if you get us both killed,” Valerie said.

“Kade’s a genius,” Rami said. “Strike that. I’m a genius. Kade is a great man. The kind of man who makes amazing things happen through sheer force of will.”

“I know,” said Valerie.

“Okay, then you understand. A man like that…. He told me once that he needed my help. But he was wrong. Kade rarely needs anybody. He uses people, but he doesn’t need them. I don’t mean that as an insult. I’m just saying….” He broke off, unable to find the words.

“Rami, I know. I’ve known for twenty-eight years.”

Rami nodded. “The other thing is, Kade is my friend. He’s my best friend. Really my only friend. And right now, he needs me. He needs us. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then let me drive.”

Valerie nodded and braced herself for another corner.

Chapter Forty-eight

2042

Kade wasn’t in the next house either. Valerie gathered, from a few cryptic remarks Rami made in the rare moments that all four of the Centurion’s wheels were on pavement, that the house they were looking for had served as a love nest for Kade and Hannah Berkeley. Rami had known about the affair for a while before it became public, but he figured it was none of his business. When Kade had disappeared, it hadn’t taken Rami long to start looking into properties owned by Kade’s companies. But between trying to manage the chaos at Ad Astra and being hauled to the police station for questioning, he hadn’t a chance to start checking them until a few hours before he first talked to Valerie.

The third house they checked felt different. It was modest but cheery and well-furnished. The air conditioning was on, and the interior smelled faintly of cigarettes. Two empty liquor bottles sat on an end table in the living room. Lightning flashed outside.

“Kade?” Valerie said, walking into the room. Her hair dripped on the ceramic tile. “It’s Valerie. Valerie Muñoz.”

“That’s Kade’s brand of whiskey,” Rami said. “He was here.” He tapped the mouth of the bottle, and his finger came away wet. “Recently.”

“He said he had a gun,” Valerie said.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I forgot.”

“Allah have mercy. Check the upstairs. I’ll—”

Rami’s phone app rang. He looked at his wrist display, frowned, and rejected the call. “I’ll check the rest of the rooms down here. If you—”

Another phone app sounded.

“That you?” Rami asked.

Valerie shook her head. The tone sounded again. Rami walked to the kitchen, pulled open a drawer, and picked up a phone. It was the old-fashioned kind, with a screen and netcard integrated in a single device. He looked at the display, comparing it to his watch. “It’s the same number.”

“Who…?”

“No clue,” Rami said. He put the phone on the counter and tapped a button. “Hello?”

“Rami Essak. My name is Nash. You need to listen to me carefully. I’m a friend. Kade is with me. The police are staking out the house. There are two detectives in a gray Ford just up the street, and plenty more on the way. If they find you there, they will arrest you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Go out the sliding door to the back patio. There is a stepstool against the back fence. Go over the fence and then go right at the alley. Follow the alley about a hundred feet to the street. Directly across from the alley, there is a white Honda Accord.”

“Who do you work for, Nash?” Rami asked. “How did you know I was here?”

“This isn’t the time for questions. I’m leaving in two minutes. Leave your netcard and take the phone. Go now.”

The call terminated. Valerie heard faint sirens.

“What the hell?” Valerie asked. “Do you know this Nash person?”

Rami shook his head. He walked to the front door, flicked off the light switch, and then peered out the window. “There does appear to be somebody in a car up the street.”

“That could be anybody.” The sirens were getting louder.

“I’m going to take my chances with Nash,” Rami said. He returned to the kitchen and started pulling open drawers.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Up to you. You’re a small fish. If you turn yourself in, you might not face any charges. They’re going to pressure you to tell them what you know about Kade, though.” Locating an aluminum meat tenderizer, he removed his watch, set it on the counter, and smashed it to pieces.

Valerie considered Rami’s words. He had a point. If she turned herself in, though, the authorities would kick her out of the state—along with Sofia and Jian, if she were lucky. She wouldn’t be able to do anything for her grandmother, and she would never see Kade again. She hadn’t made it this far just to give up. “Okay, let’s go.”

Rami nodded, and they headed for the rear slider. They stepped as quickly as they dared across the wet grass toward the fence. The stepstool was right where Nash said it would be. Valerie went first, Rami boosting her over the six-foot cedar fence. He followed a moment later. They went right down the alley and found the white Honda. A heavyset man sat in the driver’s seat, window down, beckoning urgently to them. The sirens had stopped, and the palm trees in the direction of the house they had just left were illuminated by flashing blue and red lights. Lightning lit up the sky. Somewhere behind them, a police radio squawked incomprehensibly before being drowned out by thunder.

Valerie got in the back, and Rami went around and got in the front passenger seat. They were both soaked.

“Nash?” Rami asked.

“That’s me,” said the man. “Who’s this?”

“Valerie Sutherland. She’s a friend of Kade’s.”

Nash muttered something, rubbing the stubble on his chin. He seemed to come to a decision. “All right, hold on.” The Honda leapt away from the curb.

“Where is Kade?” Valerie asked.

“Somewhere safe,” Nash said. “I’ll take you to him.”

“Is he in Cape Coral?”

“No.”

“Rami, I can’t….”

“Her kids are at my house,” Rami said.

“Kids?”

“Technically they’re adults. My daughter and her boyfriend.”

Nash groaned.

“We need to change vehicles anyway,” Rami said. “Stop by the house and drop Valerie off. My pilot’s car is in the garage.”

“Not going to work. Police are on their way to your house now.”

“What?” Rami said. “How do you know that?”

“Sources.”

“Rami, if they find my kids there….”

Rami nodded. He tapped buttons on the phone he’d taken from the house. A few seconds passed. “Cody? It’s Rami. You and the kids okay? Good. The cops are coming to the house. Get them in your car and drive to the Circle K on El Dorado and Fifteenth. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

Nash shook his head. “This is bad. They’re going to be putting up roadblocks.”

“Roadblocks?” Valerie asked. Why?”

“By now they know Kade was in that house. They saw you go in. They’re going to assume you took Kade with you when you left.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. We don’t have time for side trips.”

“Then you can let us out here,” said Rami.

“I can drop her off,” Nash said. “Then you and I can get out of town and get to Kade.”

“No,” said Rami. “Valerie and the kids are too important now. The feds are going to think they know where Kade is, and they’re going to make their lives hell unless they turn him in. Drive to the Circle K on El Dorado and Fifteenth.”

Nash cursed under his breath, then swerved to change lanes.

Ten minutes later, they were parked in front of the Circle K. Cody was already there, sitting in a bright red Acura hatchback. Sofia and Jian sat in the backseat. Mercifully, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.

Rami, Valerie and Nash exited the Honda, and Cody got out of her car to meet them. “We need your car,” Rami said.

“Um, okay,” Cody said. “Who’s this guy?”

“Nash,” said Nash, holding out his hand. Cody ignored him.

“He’s going to take us—” Valerie started.

“We’re leaving town,” said Rami. “Nash, give Cody your keycard.”

Nash complied. Then he held out his hand, and Cody reluctantly gave him the keycard for the Acura. “I need everybody’s netcards.”

“The whole card or just the SIM?” Valerie asked.

“You can give me just the SIM, but you need to turn everything off and take out the batteries.”

Valerie took out her SIM and collected Sofia’s and Jian’s. Nash dropped them to the asphalt and crushed them under his heel.

“You can take the Honda,” Rami said to Cody. “But be careful. The cops may be looking for it.”

“Am I going to get my car back?” Cody asked.

Nash shook his head.

“Probably not,” said Rami. “I’ll send you enough crypto to buy a new one when we’re on the road.”

“Oh,” said Cody, digesting this. “Okay.”

“Thanks, Cody. And for the record, I do trust you.”

“Yeah, you trust me now.”

Rami gave her a quick, awkward hug. “All right, let’s go.”

Nash got behind the wheel, Rami took the passenger seat, and Valerie squeezed into the back with Sofia and Jian. The Acura peeled out of the parking lot, leaving Cody standing next to the Honda, looking puzzled.

*****

They hit a checkpoint on Highway 41, just before the Caloosahatchee Bridge. Fortunately, the police were not looking for a family of five in a red Acura, so they breezed through. Two minutes later, they were doing seventy across the bridge toward Fort Myers.

“Where is Kade?” Valerie asked again.

“Someplace safe. I’m sorry, I’m under orders not to say more.”

“Orders from whom?”

“I can’t answer that either. Look, I’m not forcing you to come with me. Say the word and I’ll let you all out at the next exit.”

“This isn’t your car,” said Rami.

“Then I’ll let myself out and y’all can go to Disney World. Or you can extend me a little trust and let me drive.”

They stopped asking questions.

Half an hour later, they got on I-75 heading east. Evidently they were headed for the Miami area: this eighty-mile stretch of highway, called Alligator Alley, had no other exits to speak of. It was nearly two a.m., and Valerie was exhausted. Sofia was already dozing on her shoulder, and Valerie leaned against her and let herself fall asleep.

She awoke with a start as the Acura came to a stop at a traffic light. “Where are we?” she asked, looking around, bleary-eyed. It was still dark outside.

“South of Miami,” Rami said. A moment later, they passed a sign that read “MIAMI EXECUTIVE AIRPORT.” Nash took the turn the sign indicated.

“Kade left the country, didn’t he?” Valerie asked.

“No,” Nash said. “Not yet.” Valerie could hardly believe he had answered a question. They must be getting close to their destination.

Nash continued to follow the signs for the airport. He passed the terminals and continued toward a group of hangars, finally coming to a halt in front of one of them. After a moment, a door slid open enough to let the car through, and he pulled inside. The door closed behind them.

They got out of the car. They were in a vast, well-lit hangar that was empty except for a small jet plane and a few pallets of boxes toward one corner. A tall, skinny man in jeans and a black t-shirt sat on top of one of stacks of boxes, smoking a cigarette.

“Where is Kade?” Valerie asked.

Nash pointed toward the pallets. Valerie saw now that a corner of the hangar had been framed out to form an office, accessible by a single human-sized door.

She ran across the concrete floor toward the door. The man on the pallets barely glanced at her as she passed. She tried the door: it was open.

Inside, it was dark. An air conditioner hummed, and cool air hit her face, along with the smell of body odor.

“Kade?” she said, stepping inside.

There was no answer.

“Kade, it’s Valerie.” She felt for a light switch, found it. “Kade, I’m going to turn on the light.”

She thought she heard someone stir. She flipped the switch. LED strips lit up overhead.

Directly ahead of her was a large steel desk with a faux wood surface. Next to it was a counter with a sink and a coffee pot. To her right was a series of filing cabinets. In the far left corner, on an inflatable mattress, lay Kade Kapur.

Chapter Forty-nine

2042

Kade was wearing black polyester workout shorts and a dingy t-shirt that may at some point have been white. He lay curled in the fetal position, facing the left wall. A half-empty whiskey bottle sat on the floor behind his head. He let out a soft groan.

Valerie walked to him and sat down on the floor next to the mattress. The smell was even stronger here, and it wasn’t just stale sweat. She wondered if Kade had showered in the past four days. “Kade?”

“Go away,” Kade moaned.

“Rami’s here,” she said.

Kade didn’t respond.

Valerie sighed. She took a swig of the whiskey and nearly choked on it. After coughing a few times, she croaked, “I’m not used to the fancy stuff.” The label said Seagram’s 7 Crown Blended Whiskey.

“How did you get here?” she said after another minute had passed. “Rami and I went to the house, but you were already gone. Who brought you here? Who is behind all this?”

“Please,” said Kade. “Just go.”

“This is weird, right?” Valerie asked, studying the posters of antique Messerschmidts and Sopwith Camels tacked to the wood-paneled walls. “Me coming here, after all these years. I looked up that kid a few years ago. Marcus Peterson. The one whose kneecap you smashed. He’s fine. Got a knee replacement, I guess. Walks just fine. So if that’s what’s bothering you, you know….” She didn’t mention that she was pretty sure Marcus worked at a bank and had probably been ruined by the failure of the Mammon mission.

They sat in silence for some time. No one else came in. It seemed that Rami, Nash, and whoever was in charge of this operation were going to leave this to her. Noticing another door, next to the filing cabinets across the room, she got to her feet and peeked inside, turning on the light. It was a bathroom with a small shower.

“Okay,” she said. “Time to get cleaned up.” She strode across the room and knelt down next to Kade. “Come on, Kade. I know you’ve had a hell of a week, but you’re better than this. You need to get up.”

Kade made no response.

Valerie sighed, walked to the counter, filled the coffee pot with cold water, and then walked back to Kade. “Last chance.” When Kade still did not respond, she poured the water on his head.

“Fuck!” Kade growled, sitting up. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck?” He wiped water from his face and then sat cradling his head with both hands.

“You were my hero, Kade,” Valerie said. “You always have been, since that first day you stood up to those bullies. I never doubted you were destined for greatness. Nothing that’s happened in the past week has changed that opinion. But Kade, you stink. I don’t know how long I’m going to be stuck here with you, but this airplane hangar isn’t big enough for me and someone who smells as bad as you do. Get up.”

Kade sat for a moment, rubbing his head. Then he swung his legs awkwardly over to the floor. He rolled forward, and Valerie caught him before he fell on his face. She caught a whiff from his clothes and nearly gagged. “Upsy-daisy,” she said, helping him to his feet.

Very slowly, they made their way across the room. Valerie helped Kade into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, shoved him in the shower, and turned on the water. Kade howled as the cold water hit his skin. She closed the door to the bathroom, retched into a wastebasket, washed out her mouth in the sink, and then stepped out of the office.

“He’s getting cleaned up,” she said to the group that had assembled near the pallets. Besides Rami, Nash, Sofia, and Jian, there was the tall, skinny man, a small man with Asian features, a roundish redheaded man, and an older man whom Valerie thought she recognized.

“Valerie,” Nash said, “this is Sam Colby, our pilot. To his left is Kuan-yu, who was a programmer for Ad Astra. The Jewish ginger is Lowell Benjamin, who is a decent person despite being a Washington, D.C. lawyer. I imagine you recognize this gentleman.” He gestured toward the older man.

Valerie’s memory failed her. She knew that face from somewhere. She didn’t think she’d ever met him, though. That meant she’d seen him on TV. That was it. She’d seen him on the news programs, ranting about the “unmitigated folly” of the Mammon capture mission.

“Davis Christopher?” she said. “You’re behind all this?”

“If you mean bringing Kade and the rest of you here,” said Davis, “then yes. Nash is my personal bodyguard, and Sam is my pilot. Mostly what I did is pay the equivalent of a small country’s GDP in bribes to get us out of here. It remains to be seen if it was enough.”

“Where are you going?” Rami asked.

“We are going to Utanau,” Davis Christopher said. “At the moment, that island is about the only place on Earth that both China and the United States are afraid to touch. I can’t force any of you to come, but I wouldn’t recommend staying in the U.S. Kade Kapur is now public enemy number one, and anybody who’s had contact with him in the last four days is going to find themselves the subject of a lot of interest from people in Washington. Valerie, I’m not sure how you or your kids got mixed up in all this, but Rami tells me you’re the only one Kade will talk to.”

“My daughter and her boyfriend,” Valerie said. “All I did is leave Kade a message. He called me back, and I—”

Davis held up a hand. “Please,” he said. “I’ve got some calls to make before we get off the ground. There’s plenty of room for you and the kids if you want to come. I could use someone who can talk some sense into Kade. Lord knows I can’t.”

“I don’t understand,” Valerie said. “You did everything you could to ensure Kade failed.”

Davis chuckled. “If I wanted Kade to fail, he’d ‘a’ failed a lot sooner than this. I wanted Kade to succeed, and to be honest, I was almost certain he would. But there were a lot of powerful interests who wanted him to fail, and if I hadn’t bet against him, they’d be the only ones still standing at this point. Y’understand?”

“Your opposition to the Mammon capture plan was an insurance policy,” Rami said.

“Precisely. And I put my money where my mouth was. If Kade had been successful, I’d ‘a been ruined. There’s a house in my daughter’s name and half a million dollars in an annuity fund. That’s what I would have had left.”

“You played the long odds,” Jian said.

“That’s right,” Davis said. “The dust hasn’t settled yet, but after they reopen the markets on Monday morning, I expect to be the wealthiest man in the world by a substantial margin. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Davis strode away across the hangar, pulling a screen from his pocket.

“Allah preserve us,” Rami said. “It was right in front of me, and I didn’t see it. He was ready to sacrifice everything.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Valerie. “What’s his plan? Why bring Kade and the rest of you to an island in the Pacific?”

“To start over,” said the lawyer, Lowell Benjamin. “Or at least to sit tight and weather out the storm.”

“Storm?” asked Sofia.

“You think things are bad now?” Nash said. “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

Chapter Fifty

2042

It was after dawn when Valerie finally lay down to get some sleep. Everyone present had been up all night, and they were all exhausted. There were more air mattresses, as well as blankets, canned food, and literal tons of other supplies on the pallets. Those who could stand the heat found a corner of the main hangar area to sleep in, while the others tolerated Lowell’s snoring in the air-conditioned office. Valerie opted for the heat.

When she awoke, around two in the afternoon on Sunday, Davis Christopher was still on a call. It was unclear whether he had slept; most of the others were still asleep or had just gotten up. Lowell explained that there had been “complications” with their departure. Occasionally, in between tense calls, she would hear Davis grousing about how the problem with being a trillionaire was that everybody knew you had more money than you were willing to share with them.

Kade remained sullen and withdrawn, but he was clean and—thanks to Nash taking away his whiskey—sober. Nash and Lowell had found him at the house in Cape Coral, asleep on the couch with a gun in his hand. It was unclear to Valerie how they’d known about the love nest; Davis evidently had his sources. Lowell had driven Kade to Miami while Nash remained behind to watch the house. Davis had also apparently known that Rami was looking for Kade, but he didn’t know whether Rami was cooperating with the feds. He hadn’t been certain he could trust Rami until Rami and Valerie showed up at the house, apparently unaware of the detectives waiting outside. Davis gave Nash the go-ahead to take Rami into the fold, and Valerie had come along for the ride.

Lowell had been in contact with Kuan-yu’s lawyer, and when Kuan-yu learned that preparations were being made to extract Kade and several others from the country, he asked to be included. Davis gave Lowell the okay to bring Kuan-yu to Miami along with Kade. He’d taken a chance, relying on a gut impression that Kuan-yu wasn’t the saboteur. Rami confirmed this: Kuan-yu didn’t have access to the COPPA source code. Myra Bostwick did. Unfortunately, Myra seems to have disappeared. Had she gone into hiding? Had she been killed? Had she been captured by the feds or extracted by the people she worked for? None of them could say.

Kade remained asleep—or pretending to be asleep—in the office. In his defense, there wasn’t much else to do. The plane’s cargo hold had already been stuffed full of supplies, in case they ran short of anything in Utanau. The stuff still on pallets was just the leftovers.

After Valerie had showered and checked on Sofia and Jian, she borrowed a netcard from Nash and called her grandmother, who confirmed that Kyle was still at her apartment. He had stood watch outside her front door for several hours, and then drove her and Anna to run some errands. He’d spent the night on her couch, a “very large gun” on the coffee table next to him. At the moment, she, Anna and Kyle were eating breakfast. “Kyle says he’s supposed to stay until next Saturday. But what do I do after that?”

“I’m working on it, Nani.”

“Are you still coming?”

Valerie bit her lip. “I hope so.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Nani. Okay?”

She ended the call, gave the netcard back to Nash, and then walked over to Rami, who was sitting with his back against the hangar wall, reading his screen. One thing that Davis Christopher hadn’t supplied was furniture.

“Got a second?” she asked.

Rami nodded, letting the screen fall to his lap.

“Thank you for sending that guy, Kyle, to watch my grandmother.”

“Of course.”

“He says he’s only there through the end of the week.”

“Yeah. He used to work security for Ad Astra. Had a plan to bug out to Alaska if the shit hit the fan, which it obviously has. I paid him a good chunk of my crypto stash to stick around for another week. The good news is that I already talked to Lowell about this. He’s going to make sure your grandmother and Anna are taken care of. My understanding is that Davis is buying the whole complex.”

“Seriously?”

“Thanks to betting against virtually everyone on Earth and winning, Davis literally has more money than he knows what to do with. Gold, silver, crypto, Yuan, you name it. He’ll buy the city of Tampa and build a fifty-foot wall around it if that’s what it takes.”

“That might, um, draw some attention.”

“Hyperbole,” Rami said. “Davis is more subtle than that. He’s buying the development through a holding company and using a firm he owns for security. He’s still paying the employees nominally in dollars, but he’s announced weekly ‘bonuses’ to be paid in crypto. They’ll stick around.”

“My God. Thank you, Rami.”

“Thank Davis,” Rami said. “If it weren’t for him, none of us would be here.”

Valerie nodded. Although ‘here’ was an inhospitable airplane hangar, it beat being stranded along some lonely stretch of highway or getting thrown in prison. “I don’t know what we’re going to do on Utanau, though.”

“You might not have to do anything.”

“Even if I turn out not to be the Kade Whisperer?”

Rami smiled. “Kade will come around. He’s been hit with about a century’s worth of bad news in one week, but one thing Kade is not is a quitter.”

Valerie didn’t know whether to be reassured or frightened.

*****

“You don’t have to go,” Valerie said to her daughter, as she sat with Sofia and Jian on the bare concrete in a corner of the hangar. “You can stay with Nani. I’m sure Mr. Christopher can arrange transportation for you to Tampa.”

“I’d get arrested,” Sofia said.

“The police will probably want to question you. But nobody is going to think you had anything to do with Kade Kapur’s escape.”

“I asked Mr. Benjamin about that,” Sofia said.

“And?”

“He said the feds might use me for leverage to get to Kade.”

Valerie sighed heavily. The idea had occurred to her, but she had thought it unlikely. The authorities couldn’t really think that arresting Sofia would cause Kade to turn himself in. On the other hand, they had nothing to lose by pursuing any avenue to get to Kade. And Lowell Benjamin certainly had better instincts about such things than she did. “It’s possible,” she said.

“That’s just great,” Sofia said. “I didn’t even do anything.”

“You forged an entry permit,” Jian offered.

“We didn’t even use it!”

Jian shrugged. “Anyway, a lot of people who didn’t do anything are going to get hurt in what’s coming,” Jian said.

“What about you, Jian?” Valerie asked. “Do you want to stay?”

“Are you kidding?” Jian said. “And miss a chance to work with Kade Kapur and Rami Essak? They’re, like, the smartest guys on the planet.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jian. Mr. Christopher said you can come to Utanau. You haven’t been offered a job.”

“I know, but come on. Davis Christopher didn’t put all these people together so they could sit around on a beach. He’s got something planned. Something big. I don’t care if I have to mop floors and clean toilets. I want to be a part of it.”

“I’ll remind you that you said that.”

Jian grinned. He was all-in on whatever Davis Christopher was planning.

“Will we ever be able to come back to the U.S.?” Sofia asked.

Valerie shrugged. “I wouldn’t count on it. We’re not exactly leaving on good terms. And things here are likely to get a lot worse before they get better.”

“There isn’t going to be a U.S. anymore, Sof,” Jian said. “Not like it was.”

“It still feels wrong to leave,” Sofia said. “It’s like leaving a friend who’s dying of cancer.”

“It won’t do anybody any good for us to stay,” Jian said. “America is dying, no matter what. But if we leave, maybe we can be a part of the next great thing.”

“I guess there are worse places to be than a tropical island in the Pacific,” Sofia said.

“It will be an adventure,” Valerie said.

“Can it be more like a vacation?” Sofia asked. “I feel like I’ve had enough adventure for a while.”

Chapter Fifty-one

2042

On Sunday evening, the news channels were reporting that negotiations to craft a legislative solution to the country’s fiscal and monetary woes had failed. The President announced he would be issuing an emergency order requiring the Federal Reserve to buy $8.1 trillion worth of Treasury bonds on credit, to enable the government to meet its obligations. His statement was couched in jargon and reassurances about “extraordinary circumstances.” News announcers, wary of running afoul of the Federal Information Agency, repeated the official jargon and reassurances and added a few of their own. These heroic efforts nevertheless failed to conceal the fact that the government was essentially creating $8.1 trillion out of thin air. This was not good news for those still hoping the dollar would recover.

The eight fugitives gathered in the hangar boarded Davis Christopher’s jet just before dawn on Monday morning. The plane had enough passenger space for twenty people, but over half of it was taken up by boxes of supplies secured with cargo straps. Valerie couldn’t begin to guess what all Davis Christopher thought needed to be brought to Utanau, but at present she trusted his judgment over that of roughly nine billion other people.

They sat on the runway for over two hours, anxiously waiting to find out whether they were going to take off or get forced from the plane at gunpoint by federal agents. At last, though, they got clearance for takeoff. As the plane left the runway a few minutes later, everyone aboard—except Kade Kapur, who remained morose and withdrawn—erupted into cheers. Kade hadn’t resisted Lowell and Rami’s efforts to get him on the plane, but he hadn’t shown any enthusiasm either.

The plane roared down the runway and leapt into the air. They’d made it. Valerie supposed there was still a chance they’d be shot down by fighter jets, but at least it would be over with quickly. As the minutes ticked past, however, and they gained altitude over the Gulf of Mexico, she began to believe they were actually going to get out of the country alive.

They had been in the air for less than half an hour when the markets in New York opened. Except for Davis and Lowell, they’d all been forced to give up their SIMs, but Lowell kept them updated. At 9:51 a.m., Lowell informed them that Ad Astra had lost sixty-eight percent of its value. High Frontier Mining had dropped by forty-four percent. The contagion spread quickly, starting with other aerospace stocks and continuing to the broader market. An hour after the markets opened, the S&P 500 was down twelve percent. The news didn’t seem so bad to Valerie, but Jian quickly reminded her that the dollar had lost over half of its value. Anyone selling stock now would be paid in dollars that had less than half the purchasing power they’d had a week earlier. In real terms, the losses were more than double what they appeared. If stocks didn’t fall further, it was only because investors were scared to be stuck with rapidly depreciating dollars.

Panicky bond holders sold en masse, forcing the President to authorize the Fed to buy another $10 trillion. Despite the limits on withdrawals, so many people had withdrawn so much cash over the past week that tighter restrictions were announced, and officials in Washington were meeting to discuss a bank bailout.

The sudden flood of trillions of dollars in cash into the economy, coupled with unprecedented demand for durable goods, caused the Consumer Price Index to jump ten percent within four hours, and then another ten percent four hours after that. The President had issued executive orders forcing grocery stores and gas stations to stay open, but looming bankruptcies, employee walkouts, mile-long gas lines and food riots forced him to revise the price controls. Panic bred panic, and by mid-afternoon, the entire financial system had collapsed. Banks closed, brokerage firms went offline, and tens of thousands of small businesses shuttered their doors rather than give up valuable goods in exchange for rapidly depreciating dollars—or, even worse, lose them to looting. By the end of the day, most newscasters, having given up trying to appease the Federal Information Agency, began to describe the unfolding disaster in explicit detail, fueling the panic further. Riots broke out in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Portland, Baltimore, and a dozen other cities. Large swaths of several urban areas were on fire. Making matters worse, close to half the police and firefighters in many of these cities had simply walked off the job. Many businesses, defying federal edicts, had begun indexing wages to inflation or paying in crypto, but government employees were still paid in dollars, which had lost much of their value over the past week. The Collapse, as it was already being called, was the biggest disaster in U.S. history since the Civil War, and it was still getting worse.

The jubilant mood on the plane had turned somber. Every one of them had friends and family in the U.S. Valerie gathered that Davis Christopher had done what he could to keep their loved ones safe, but there were limits to what even a man with virtually unlimited wealth could do in the face of such chaos.

The rest of the world fared little better. The Yen, having initially gained as investors fled dollars, fell on fears that Japan would default on its own outsized debt. The Euro, which had fallen slightly over the preceding week, stabilized. The Chinese Yuan gained somewhat, and gold had doubled in value. The biggest gains, though, were in cryptocurrencies. Even Jian’s modest stash would likely be enough for him to buy a small house on Utanau.

Newscasters and financial experts struggled to quantify the problem. The world had gotten so used to thinking of the dollar as a universal symbol of value that now that it was in freefall, commentators lacked the language to describe what was happening. Had the Yuan gained value or lost it? No one seemed to know. It was up against the dollar but down against gold and crypto. Everything had become unsettled, and the chaos and uncertainty bred further panic.

Just after the markets closed at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, the plane landed briefly to refuel at a small airstrip in Sinaloa, Mexico. Lowell Benjamin informed them that Davis had made a sizeable contribution to the cartel that was the de facto government of the area. Half an hour after touching down, they were in the air again, bound for Utanau.

When they’d reached cruising altitude, Davis, who had been talking with Rami and Lowell at the front of the cabin, stood and faced the passengers while the other two took their seats. “Well, everybody,” he said with a grim smile, “it looks like we’re going to make it.”

Valerie and a few of the others clapped or cheered, but the celebration was muted and ended as quickly as it began. Kade, sitting in the last seat in front of the cargo, continued to stare out the window, a blank expression on his face.

“I did what I could to prepare for this day,” Davis went on, “but I’m gonna be honest with you. There were a lot of things I didn’t foresee, and our escape owes as much to luck as to skill or planning. For now, chaos is our friend.

“As you all have undoubtedly guessed, though, Lowell and I didn’t organize this escape just to spare you from the mayhem in the States. I have… well, I won’t glorify it by calling it a plan. I have an idea.

“I know I’ve given the impression that I was opposed to Ad Astra’s mission to capture Mammon. I had my reasons for cultivating that impression, but as I’ve said, it simply isn’t true. I would have been happy to be proved wrong. I expected to be proved wrong.

“The Mammon mission failed through a combination of malice and misfortune. At this point, it appears that a woman named Myra Bostwick sabotaged the impactors, but we don’t know who she was working for or why they wanted the mission to fail. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and as is always the case when somebody sticks his neck out, the guy in charge takes a fair share of it. But Kade’s purpose was a noble one, and he might very well have succeeded. Hell, I’m probably as much to blame as Kade. I sure as hell didn’t make things any easier on him.”

Kade made no response to this.

“That said, what’s done is done, and now we’ve got to live with the consequences. The dollar is collapsing, and the global economy is going to follow it down the drain. Things are bad, and they are going to get much worse. We’re going to see widespread famine, disease and war, and there’s no Superman to save the day. I can only pray that we avoid nuclear war between the U.S. and China.

“Beyond all that, though, we face another threat: in four and a half years, Mammon is going to come around again. Rami tells me—well, Rami, why don’t you tell them.”

Rami got to his feet and cleared his throat. “I had to leave Ad Astra in a hurry, as you can imagine,” he said. “The last thing I did before I left was to wipe all proprietary data and algorithms from our local servers. Before I executed the kill switch program, though, I ran COPPA one more time, using the latest data from our satellites and ground-based facilities. For those who don’t know, COPPA is the name of the algorithm that we use to determine the path of celestial objects like comets and asteroids. According to COPPA, the odds of Mammon striking Earth when it comes around again are one in three hundred. There is, in other words, about a zero point three percent chance of an extinction-level event in October of 2046.”

Davis nodded to Rami, and Rami once again took his seat.

“I don’t know how everybody else feels,” Davis said, “but to me, a one in three hundred chance of all life on Earth being wiped out is way too high. And I plan to do something about it.”

“You want to redirect Mammon?” Sofia asked.

“I want to capture Mammon,” Davis said.

“How?” asked Kuan-yu. The little man rarely spoke; Valerie didn’t think she’d heard him say more than a hundred words the entire time they were in the hangar. “Ad Astra is gone. Employees get arrested or run away. NASA is a joke. Other companies not have resources, even before Collapse.”

“We’re going to form a new company,” Davis replied.

“What?” Sofia cried. “No! This is crazy! Haven’t you learned anything from the last time you people tried this?”

Rami stood again. “I understand your concerns, Sofia, but there’s no advantage to redirecting Mammon away from Earth. If we’re going to try to redirect it, we may as well put it in orbit.”

“Additionally,” Davis said, “the financial reality is that nobody is going to put up resources just to avert a one-in-three-hundred chance of a catastrophe. There’s no profit in it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sofia said. “After all this, you’re still concerned about money? How much money do you need, Mr. Christopher? People are going to be dying of hunger by the millions, and you need, what, a bigger plane?”

“You misunderstand, dear,” Davis said. “I have no great attachment to money. I was ready to be bankrupted by the success of the Mammon mission, and I’m ready to spend everything I have on another mission. But I don’t know if it will be enough. We will need help from other people with resources, and they aren’t going to part with those resources if they don’t directly benefit.”

“Other than not dying in a fiery apocalypse,” Valerie said.

“The odds of any given person dying from a Mammon impact are one in three hundred,” Davis said. “That’s enough risk to prompt the average person to take some basic precautions. It’s not enough to make them give up a substantial sum of their wealth, particularly at a time like this. If you had a choice between hiring armed security to protect your family from bands of thugs roaming your neighborhood or significantly reducing the odds of an asteroid hitting Earth, which would you choose? And before you answer, remember that I’ve already picked up the tab on your behalf. I can’t do that for every human being on Earth, but with some help, I might still be able to do something about Mammon.”

“And if you happen to get your hands on a few hundred tons of iridium in the process,” Sofia said, “that’s just a bonus?

“I’m unlikely to be in a position to benefit personally from the capture,” Davis said. He smiled at Valerie. “Other than, as you say, not dying in a fiery apocalypse.”

“This new company is going to be located on Utanau?” Nash asked.

Davis nodded. “For the time being. Utanau isn’t a good launch location, though, for a few reasons. Fortunately we have a head start on that elsewhere. Lowell?”

Lowell stood, and Rami and Davis stepped aside.

“In 1975,” Lowell began, reading from a screen in his hand, “a German aerospace engineer formed a company called OTRAG, with the goal of developing, producing, and operating a low-cost satellite launch vehicle. It was the first private company to attempt to launch a private spacecraft. A private consortium of six hundred European investors financed the development and production of the OTRAG satellite launch vehicle, which was intended as an alternative to the Space Shuttle.

“The testing and launch facilities were initially set up in Shaba, Zaire. OTRAG’s first test was on May 17, 1977. France and the Soviet Union were opposed to German long-distance rocket development, and pressure from those countries resulted in the closure of the Zaire facility. In 1980, OTRAG moved its production and testing facilities to Sebha, Libya, about 500 miles south of Tripoli. A series of successful tests were conducted at this site beginning in 1981. Under pressure from the U.S., OTRAG shut down in 1987, and the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, confiscated the facility and equipment.

“Shortly after the Obama administration deposed Gaddafi in 2011, southern Libya fell into chaos. For the next two decades, a series of ineffectual governments in Tripoli struggled in vain to stabilize the country against successive waves of Jihadist and other terror and rebel groups.

“In 2034, Davis Christopher purchased the Sebha facility from the Libyan government. That same year, in a secret agreement, Libya ceded sovereignty over seven hundred square miles of territory around Sebha to Davis in exchange for financial and military assistance against the rebel groups. Davis provided tens of millions of dollars in aid and built up a mercenary army of eight thousand men, primarily from North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This army successfully took control over the ceded territory, providing a security buffer to the beleaguered Libyan government.

“Beginning in 2036, Davis embarked on an effort to rebuild and refurbish the run-down testing and launch facilities. Considerable resources were spent to keep the existence of this project hidden from the general public and to ensure that no significant geopolitical opposition would arise. The project was scheduled to be completed by June of this year, but it is expected that the ongoing economic crisis will delay completion by up to six months.”

Lowell looked up from his screen. “We expect to have a fully functional launch facility by the end of 2042.” He stepped aside, and everyone on the plane sat in stunned silence for some time. At last Rami spoke.

“To be clear, Davis,” he said, “your plan is to have a functioning space program in less than four years. In the middle of the Sahara Desert. In Libya.”

“Well,” said Davis with a wry smile, “Like I said, it’s more of an idea than a plan.”

END OF BOOK ONE

pre-order mammon:
Book Two: messiah

As U.S. hegemony fails in the wake of an unprecedented economic crisis, wars erupt across the globe. Meanwhile, a small band of engineers and scientists work in secret on a mission to redirect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

Mammon: Book Two: Messiah arrives on February 28, 2022. Pre-order it now!

About the Author

Robert Kroese has had a root canal in Transylvania and plastic surgery in Budapest. He once jumped aboard a moving freight train. Another time he climbed halfway up the Y in the Hollywood sign, for which he was rewarded with poison oak over most of his body. He is the author of twenty-eight novels, including this one. And it’s pronounced KROO-zee, believe it or not. You can find him online at: Badnovelist.com.

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Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the assistance of:

- My beta readers: Brian Galloway, Bruce Webster, Dan Gainor, Phillip Lynch, Pekka Gaiser, Karl Gallagher, Kurt Hildebrandt, Mark Fitzgerald, Mark Leone, Scott Musch, and Travis Corcoran

- And the Mammon Kickstarter supporters, including: Alex Baragaño, Alexandra Borgzinner, Brent Brown, Brian Galloway, briskymint, Bruce Parrello, Bryan Smant, Charles Taylor, Chris Kaiser, Christopher Smith, Christopher Turner, Craig Meads, David Chamberlain, David Magnus, Eric Estrada, Eric Stevens, Erik Germesin, Gabe Zuehlsdorf, Ginny Higerd, Hunter Williams, Janace Tashjian, Joe, Joel Cazares, John J Giorgis, Jon, Josh Creed, Joshua, Karl Armstrong, Kevin Cronic, Kristin Crocker, Larry Prince, Lowell Jacobson, Matthea Ross, Mike Starr, Patrick A. Hoffman, Rage A, Rhys, Richard Holderby, Rick DeVos, Russell Jensen, Scott Musch, Scott Rogers, Sharon Sloan, Shawn Merwin, Steve Callan, Steve Gracin, Tim Canny, Travis Gagnon, Tyler Marcoz, VonDoom, and Wesley Kenyon

More Books by Robert Kroese

Mammon

Book One: Titan

Book Two: Messiah (February 2022)

Mammon: Collateral (May 2022)

Book Three: Nemesis (August 2022)

The Saga of the Iron Dragon

The Dream of the Iron Dragon

The Dawn of the Iron Dragon

The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

The Legacy of the Iron Dragon

The War of the Iron Dragon

The Starship Grifters Universe

Out of the Soylent Planet

Starship Grifters

Aye, Robot

The Wrath of Cons

The Mercury Series

Mercury Falls

Mercury Rises

Mercury Rests

Mercury Revolts

Mercury Shrugs

The Land of Dis

Distopia

Disenchanted

Disillusioned

The Counterfeit Sorcerer

The Brand of the Warlock

The Rise of the Demon Prince

The Book of the Dead

The Throne of Darkness

The End of All Things

Other Books

The Big Sheep

The Last Iota

Schrödinger’s Gat

City of Sand

The Force is Middling in This One