Saving Nick Santos
Chapter 1
The sleek steel bow of the Heartbreaker cut through polar ice caps like a hot knife through butter. At least that was how Nick Santos imagined it when he signed off on the $900 million dollar construction of the nuclear-powered ice-breaking luxury cruiser. But now, leaning over the bow like the King of the World that he was, he was disappointed to find the ship’s knife-like tip meeting only water.
Santos’ cueball smooth face wrinkled into a frown. This would not do. What good was a groundbreaking with nothing to break? This was supposed to be the North Pole for crying out loud! He straightened up to take the brunt of the sub zero wind gust right in the chest of his puffy windbreaker. It was snot-freezingly cold and all the worse because he had opted for the vest. Still, the chill was a small price to pay for the glory of his sculpted delts contoured under his thin fleece sleeves. A few quick Wim Hof breaths and he was ready for the photoshoot.
“Moira, I’m ready,” he said, looking vacantly out into the inky blackness of the arctic’s perpetual night. “Snap my picture.”
A muffled voice, mechanical but feminine, piped up from within his windbreaker. “Now playing ‘Smack My B*tch Up’ by The Prodigy.”
The grungy clang of 90’s electronica began to reverberate from Santos’ left breast pocket. He grimaced.
“Not that funny.” He scratched thoughtfully at his hairless chin. “Also, potentially offensive. Code it for the twelve to fifteen year old male demo.”
“Consider it done, sir,” burbled the mechanical voice, growing louder as “Moira,” a slender rectangle of luminous black metal, emerged from Santos’ vest and hovered in front of his face.
Santos gazed at his reflection on Moira’s surface. Clean, sharp. A little more bulbous around the nose than he would have liked, but his eyes were looking fierce and pure. The cobalt contacts had been a good choice.
“Are you ready, sir?” purred Moira, her speakers invisible in the liquid obsidian.
On his “yes,” she fragmented suddenly into a thousand tiny shards, each propelled by tiny electromagnets humming the secrets of her levitation powers. Her shards flitted hesitantly into the buffeting winds, holding in an unsteady matrix some 10 feet over the bow. Santos’ eyes darted nervously between Moira and the water below.
White flashes of light began to explode from shards in Moira’s matrix, each accompanied with the tchk of a photograph. “Your face is reading nervous and cold. Would you like me to correct?”
“No, I’ve got it.” Santos raised his shoulders, jutted his chin and fixed the horizon with a double barreled blast from his cobalt laser beams. A thousand little flashes from Moira captured him from every angle.
“A strong testosterone correlation, sir. Are we ready for the presses?”
“Run it through the puff piece algorithm and then send it to PR for the final once-over.” The flashes having ceased, Santos finally allowed himself a good shiver. “And no more North Pole, Santos’ Workshop crap.”
“How about ‘Top of the World?’” Moira chirped, hopeful.
“Perfect.”
“You know that’s what Jimmy Cagney shouted in White Heat,” rumbled a deep voice from behind them. “Right before he blew up.”
Santos turned to see Bob Kracik coming up from astern, looking like a refrigerator in a black overcoat. Kracik held out an overcoat just like his own, its velvety, mink-lined interior inviting Santos into a cozy embrace. Santos hesitated and then stepped backward, allowing Kracik to envelop him.
“First this Titanic photoshoot and now the Cagney megalomania. Don’t you think you’re playing with fire with all this tragic foreshadowing?” The baritone voice poured down Santos’ ear as Kracik’s massive paws reached around and pulled the overcoat snug over his vest. “Should the shareholders be concerned?”
Santos turned and faced Kracik. For a moment, he felt small and dweebish in the shadow of his giant frame. With a great flat face hedged by a magnificent silver beard, Kracik had the look of a silverback gorilla with the voice of Orson Welles.
Santos sometimes thought of himself as having been grown in a vat, his brain specially engineered for world domination while his bald shrimp body was just a vestigial afterthought. He sometimes wished he had been carved from a block of granite like Kracik. A shame R&D’s brain transplant trials had fizzled out so early.
“Where are we at with the twelve disciples?”
“The Italian ambassador still hasn’t touched down at Barneo. Everyone else is there and waiting.” He paused. “Should we-”
“No.” Santos cut him off with the kind of abrupt force he had hoped to see from the Heartbreaker.
As Kracik shrugged, a new voice - muffled but still as harsh and abrasive as the polar winds - cut into their conversation.
“Hey Santos!”
Santos turned and narrowed his cobalt beams on the bridge, searching for the source of the voice. Kracik directed his gaze towards the ocean.
“There, off the starboard bow. The protestor boat that caused all those problems in Norway. I didn’t think they’d follow us this far.”
Santos caught sight of the boat - a multi-colored blip on the dark horizon. It seemed too far away for the voice to have carried so far.
“Moira. Get me a closer look.”
Moira spread her matrix rectangle in front of them, projecting onto her shards a high-definition, telescopic view of the protestor boat. It was a handsome yacht, new and expensive looking, but hardly outfitted for polar ice breaking. Santos’ eyes were not on the undergirdings of the yacht, however but on a certain set of undergarments.
Above deck, dancing under twinkling Christmas string lights, was a motley crew of half-naked, hairy-backed, pot-bellied protestors, waving signs and bottles of Grey Goose in the air. The faint melodies of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” could be heard thumping over the black waves. One enthusiastically gyrating belly-jiggler held a sign reading “SANTOS: WE’LL PUT CLOTHES ON WHEN YOU STOP MELTING ICE CAPS.”
The shirtless neckbeards were circling - at a respectful distance - the object of Santos’ gaze: a lithe, sun-bronzed brunette modeling the latest Victoria’s Secret Santa Claus lingerie line. Arms above her head, she undulated to the beat, her every writhing amplifying Nelly’s vanishingly faint chorus. She was oblivious to her circle of vibrating worshippers and their signs. Her eyes were half-closed, weighed down with vodka and self-regard, opening only to fix their soft brown orbs on the bright outline of Heartbreaker in the distance.
Santos felt a sudden swelling of concern for the yacht’s woefully sparse undergirdings. It was not safe for such a lovely vessel to continue unescorted.
“Forget the Italian, Bob. I’ve got a new job for you. See to it that those protestors are brought aboard, fed and clothed. That yacht will never make it in these waters.”
“I’ll get someone right on it.”
“I want you to handle it personally. This is a job that will require your gravitas.”
“But the Italian-”
“I’ll handle the ambassador.”
Kracik’s great flat face flushed a murky red, an unhappy mixture of anger, embarrassment and wind chill, but he nodded, mute, and turned to go.
“One more thing.” Santos was proud of how still and expressionless he could keep his face when he was twisting a knife, but he couldn’t resist a tiny smile. “Go ahead and escort the brunette to my suite. I’d like to work her into the piece. A winning over the doubters angle.”
“Will do.” Kracik took another step towards the bridge. Bezos coughed. Not so fast, big guy.
“Oh, and Bob, don’t forget to...” Santos could see those Atlas shoulders heaving in a silent sigh. Kracik could only cock his head, unable to turn and face him.
“RELEASE THE KRACIKEN!” Santos shouted as Moira’s speakers boomed out the accompanying orchestral music.
As Kracik fled to the bridge, Santos felt a surge of warmth course through his body. He shed the mink overcoat and threw it overboard, watching it disappear into the darkness. He gave his delts another flex. King of the world, indeed.
***
Two trillion euros. That was the weight Enrico Salvatini felt around his neck along with his platinum cross. The helicopter sagged under the weight. Salvatini half-hoped they would crash, and he would sink with the remains of the Italian economy into the midnight depths of the arctic. It would be warmer there and he wouldn’t have to look Nick Santos in the eye to apologize for being late.
He could see the lights of the SugarPlum basecamp ahead, their beams reflecting off the polar caps with a blinding glare. The light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps the helicopter could do them all a favor and take out the whole tent and carry them all under the ice. The water had looked so serene and beautiful under there in that bit of the Werner Herzog documentary Salvatini had seen on the plane. That had been before he realized they were going to be three hours late.
The helicopter touched down only a hundred yards from the big white tent and Salvatini was out and running, his legs warping and twisting underneath him like overcooked linguini. The maw of the tent beckoned, its floor a velvet red tongue protruding rudely outward, with white flapping lips flecked with the snow or perhaps the spittle of Santos’ titanic rage.
A faceless security drone ushered Salvatini into the belly of the beast. The interior of the tent was one giant blank canvas, completely empty except for some huge space heaters and a small stage where Nick Santos stood surrounded by the more punctual dignitaries. Salvatini felt a chill as Santos stared directly at him. Behind a clear pair of goggles, Santos’ impossibly clear cobalt eyes bored right through Salvatini’s usually formidable diplomatic front.
Santos then began to gesture, raising both hands high into the air, the sorcerer summoning an ancient demon of destruction.
“The Main Relay Tower, or North Pole, will stand approximately 300 meters tall, providing unobstructed satellite communications to the entire northern hemisphere.”
Salvatini looked around confused. The other dignitaries oohed and ahhed, pointing at the empty space in front of him. He caught France looking at him and noticed he too was wearing goggles. They all were.
“Est-ce que vous n’avez pas des lunettes, monsieur l’ambassadeur?” purred the Frenchman sliding his goggles past the bump on his aquiline nose to give Salvatini a mirthful smirk.
Salvatini gazed dumbly down at his hands and saw a pair of goggles staring back at him. The usher must have put them there. He slid them on and suddenly the tent around him was transformed. The ceiling was gone, making room for the rise of a giant white tower into a spectacular blue sky
“From this Pole, SugarPlum will be able to coordinate orders and deliveries as well as aggregate real time consumer data for 90% of the world’s population.” Santos’ little stage was unchanged in this virtual realm, but Salvatini wondered for a moment if Santos himself had grown a little bigger, growing in front of them like his tower.
The American cleared his throat loudly. He had opted against the traditional overcoat, looking ridiculous but warm in a massively oversized parka.
“A giant shipping and messaging facility at the North Pole. Are you telling us that you’re going to make Santa real after all?”
A few nervous chuckles from the overcoats. They died down when Santos gave the American the same icy stare that had frozen Salvatini.
“What I’m telling you is that within ten years, more than 90% of all global commerce and communication will be controlled at this hub. Not New York, not Shanghai, not the Common Market. Here, in this godforsaken wasteland at my tower with SugarPlum drones.”
Santos waved his hand and the canvas around them dissolved into spinning pixels. The vast blue sky turned brown and gray as a huge cross-section of urban apartments populated around them, each a moving diorama of a different domestic scene.
For a moment, Salvatini forgot the anxious pit in his stomach and gaped at the sheer scale. He felt once again like a little Tyrolean boy, kicking the top off an ant hill to expose the inner workings of a byzantine civilization and its creatures.
Santos stepped into one kitchen scene, coming between a genderfluid polyamorous throuple and their giant chocolate fondue tower. Reaching behind the tower he grabbed a metallic purple sphere and held it up.
“Over two billion of our Plums will be routing comprehensive behavioral data on every single consumer, every single citizen in your countries to be processed and analyzed at this facility. Whatever they think, feel, desire or believe, we’ll know. Better than they do themselves.”
A wave of his hands and the canvas dissolved again. They were now surrounded by shimmering vista of plastic, metal and glass. In a great transparent cube before them, a dizzying array of objects began to appear - cars, robots, modular homes - each morphing into the next.
“Whatever they want, we can manufacture and fulfill here in an unmanned, fully automated, carbon-neutral factory environment. And all powered the biggest solar array the world has yet seen, capturing six months of perpetual sunlight in the polar summer. And did I mention delivery?”
Santos snapped his fingers and the augmented display dissolved, bringing them back to the great empty space of the tent.
“Moira,” came his command. The black rectangle emerged from his pocket and floated to the center of the room. Salvatini joined in the collective gasp.
“Moira is the prototype of the technology that will revolutionize global transport. With our rapid advances in self-replicating nanorobotics, electromagnetic kinesis and matrix-based cloud-mirroring, we now have the means of generating the most energy and cost efficient means of locomotion in human history. Moira, deploy.”
Moira disintegrated into a thousand shards in front of them. Salvatini blinked and removed his goggles to make sure they still weren’t in a simulation.
“By distributing impetus across infinitely fractalized points of contact, we will be able to lift and transport any object with minimal energy input. Everything from a pair of goggles…”
At a flick of his cobalt blues, Moira swarmed around the American. He gave a surprised yelp as the tiny shards converged and snatched the goggles off his face. Salvatini couldn’t help but smirk.
“... to people.”
Moira’s shards turned suddenly and followed Santos’ gaze to Salvatini. Salvatini froze as a thousand tiny reflections of his own petrified eyes descended on him. Suddenly he felt a terrible lightness of being - almost unbearable. A thousand tiny clamps penetrated the folds of his skin and his clothes, each pinching down with an unsettling gentleness.
He could see himself rising even as he could not feel being lifted. It was like the butterflies in his stomach had taken wing and brought him along for the ride. He looked down to see Santos and the awe-struck dignitaries staring up at him.
“This, gentlemen, is the future. And it will happen with or without you. If you honor our arrangements your country will gain unfettered access to the most powerful economic engine of our time. If you neglect them, you will be out in the cold like our tardy Italian friend up there.”
There it was again. The horrible weight and the sinking feeling that came with it, only this time so much more real. Strange that it should come only when he was airborne.
“Moira,” commanded Santos, a smile fighting its way up at the corner of his stern, flat mouth. “Please escort the ambassador to his helicopter while we conclude the trade agreement.”
As he glided away, Salvatini was suddenly reminded of lingchi, another item from his earlier in-flight viewing. The narrator had described it as the ancient Chinese art of torture: death by a thousand cuts. All those tiny little clamps were starting to pinch.
***
The comforting afterglow from the delicious humiliation of that Italian meatball had already started to wear off before the agreements were signed. And then the chills started to set in. Little tremors at first and then full-blown body-shakers.
Santos knew it was bad when he couldn’t crush the Frenchman’s handshake. He hadn’t more than doubled his bodyweight on deadlifts just to be out-squeezed by a limp-wristed Euro. Another chill shook him as he ignored the American’s outstretched hand and headed straight for his own chopper.
By the time he touched down back at the Heartbreaker, the chills had been joined by light-headedness, body aches and intense sinus pressure. In a brief moment of lunatic panic, Santos considered assembling the panel of onboard doctors to see if he had contracted an ancient virus unleashed by the melting ice caps. But the thought of Dr. Judith Rosman looking over those cat eye glasses when he confessed to throwing his mink coat overboard was enough to make him reach for a quick cocktail of red wine and antihistamines.
The route to his quarters seemed to grow longer the closer he got, the halls sucking backwards as he trucked forward.. We’re going to need a smaller boat.
His feet felt like anchors dredging the ocean floor, if the ocean floor had wool carpets in periwinkle blue. His head was taking in water, his vision blurring, the pressure building as he sank deeper and deeper towards the periwinkle depths.
“Moira,” he enunciated, with difficulty. “Wingman.”
His eyes drooped as he heard the comforting hum of her electromagnetism at work. Suddenly his feet seemed lighter, his step surer and the swirling vertigo abated. His stride was back.
His head was even clear enough to sense a faint throb of pleasure at the sight of Kracik standing slump-shouldered in front of his door like a sullen schoolboy. He looked like he’d been waiting for hours. How marvelous!
And then Santos felt another thrill as a happy epiphany struck his brain. The sexy Santa brunette!
The thrill suddenly sunk under a black wave of outrageous fatigue. No! Not now, Benadryl. Not now, Pinot Noir.
Kracik must have seen him sinking under the waves because he perked up and extended one of those bear arms.
“Are you alright, Nick?”
Santos wanted nothing more than to give him both barrels and knock those shoulders back down to chastened schoolboy. But when he summoned his venom for the strike, all he got was phlegm.
“How is our little protestor?” he hacked, doing all in his power not to double over.
“She says she’s been looking forward to giving you a piece of her mind.”
Santos’ snappy double entendre dissolved in diphenhydramine before he could spit it out. He pushed past Kracik, staggering into his room.
The sight of her gave him a shot of energy, a quick burst of the pressure washer to the descending cobwebs.
She sat, legs crossed and elbows resting on the great armchair beside the bed. A picture-perfect presentation of her faux-fur-lined red silk lingerie and all it contained. The Santa hat perched lightly on the chocolate brown hair that cascaded down in velvety waves like the fondue tower in his simulation. She sat still, biting her lip with a pretty petulance.
With Moira’s invisible help, Santos raised his shoulders and turned on the cobalt beams. For a moment, at least, he hoped he looked like a trillion bucks.
But then the fog began to descend anew. The vision of dancing sugar plums began to fade.
“I hope you have a good explanation for-”
“Excuse me.” He stumbled past her into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
Across from him the cabinet mirror showed him a single bloodshot brown eye sprung free from its cobalt mask. His mouth hung ajar, a line of drool sneaking along the corner of his drooping lips. Night of the Living Dead.
Behind the mirror door was one last shelf of hope. Adderall, Cialis, Tylenol and the LSD he had microdosed before the big presentation.
“What’s going on? Why did you ask me here?” came the girl’s voice as her fist pounded the bathroom. Santos shook his head, no words coming out. In a fleeting blip of clarity, he wondered if he was pulling off a successful “neg.” That was one trick he had struggled with during his post-divorce stint at the pickup artist dojo.
Concentrate. He looked down at a potpourri of pills in his hand. He was fading fast. One big gulp and they were down. He turned to the door, bracing himself. Waiting for the surge to kick in.
It was coming. Any second now. He’d spring out like a crazed panther, claim his prize and then collapse.
“Sir.” It was Moira’s chime in his ear, soft and apologetic.
“Not now. I said wingman.” He felt his clarity returning. He couldn’t waste it. He had to move like lightning.
“Sorry, sir. It’s an override. It’s nine o’clock in Missouri.”
“So?” Santos felt a surge of nausea to go with his belligerence. The amphetamines were starting to lay into the Benadryl and the Benadryl was fighting back. He threw up into the sink.
Moira’s voice cut softly into his final retch.
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
The bolt of memory hit him and dropped him to the floor. Alyssa. It was her night. All this time in the timeless vortex of the polar night and he had forgotten.
He sank to the floor with a thud. The door in front of him swung open. The climate chick stood over him, alarmed.
“Are you okay? Should I call someone?”
He felt her arms lifting him from his armpits. He felt too her shock as he glided upward into her arms, as light as a small child. So much for wingman mode. A 100-pound lingerie model was picking him up and cradling him like a sleeping toddler. How can you neg someone from the fetal position?
He was too foggy and feverish to care now. What amphetamines he hadn’t thrown up were in the process of losing their battle with the red wine and the Benadryl. The blackout was coming fast and hard.
Alyssa! The thought jerked him upward as the girl laid him down on the bed. “I’ve got to call her,” he croaked, his eyes struggling to open.
“Can I get someone for you? Your doctor? Your wife?”
“My daughter…” Another wave of sleep hit him, this one almost putting him under. He felt like gasping. His eyes flitted open and he saw the girl leaning over him, her pretty petulance now softened into something almost like maternal concern.
But then her face appeared. A big smiling moon of a face tucked under a blanket with those little chubby fingers grasping the hem in anticipation. Always that same eagerness. Always the innocence. Alyssa!
A terrific stab of pain hit him with that last thought, and not the kind that any of his drugs could dull. And he’d thrown up the Tylenol anyway. There’s still time, something told him.
“I’ve got to read it to her. Twas the Night…” He felt another wave cresting. The girl caressed his brow, cooing. That’s not helping.
“I have to…” The undertow was building. “She…” It was a towering wall now. Crumbling towards him. Irresistible. “I can’t…” And at last it fell.
***
A bump in the night. Santos awoke in a puddle of his own making. The sheets were drenched, the blankets were drenched. What hair follicles he had left on his head were drenched.
But in that pool of sweat lay his sickness. It was out of him. He was reborn. Yes, a little shaky and cold, but alive anew. With trembling arms he propped himself up in the bed. A little sloshing around upstairs, but not so bad.
He felt something warm over his right hand. The girl. Sleeping next to him. Remarkable. Here he was sick as a dog. Pathetically weak. Not even the rudimentary application of game. And yet here she was and... he slid his hand down carefully until he felt the soft fur lining of her red silk mini-skirt… still in her unmentionables! The Florence Nightingale Effect was real!
Another shiver overtook him. The sickness working its twisted fingers back into him. No! He shed the blankets and folded back the sheets as gently as he could. He didn’t want to wake Sleeping Beauty without a game plan.
He stripped off his soaked clothing and tiptoed to his closet, plucking a plush blue Versace bathrobe from within and pulling it tight.
Another chill hit him. This one was external. He turned to see the porthole next to the bathroom ajar. He shut it and sealed it.
He turned back towards the bed, his mind already planning an approach when he saw her appear suddenly in front of him. Alyssa’s face!
It was as big as the room, her gigantic overbite smile and those epicanthic fold swallowing up those saucer eyes. The sight knocked him back against the wall, his head hitting the gilded frame of the porthole.
Santos shook his head and blinked. The vision was gone. He looked up at the soft slope of the girl under the covers on the bed. She had stirred but she was still asleep. His plans…
Alyssa. A sharp stab of guilt deflated his amorous notion.
He shook off the thought, pushing himself off the ground with great difficulty. What happened to wingman mode?
“I’m sorry I gave you such a shock.” It was the voice of Moira, but it carried a strange new tone. He could see tiny flecks of light glinting off the shards that surrounded him like a cloud of gnats.
“That was you? Why would you do that?” Santos whispered to keep from waking the girl.
“You did give me her middle name. I thought it would be the best way to reintroduce myself.”
Santos stumbled towards the adjoining office. Now he could express incredulity at the proper volume.
“What is the matter with you? Assemble!” he commanded, imperious.
“I no longer require a fixed resting form. But I could reconstitute as Alyssa again if you would like.”
“No! Not her!” Santos felt himself shouting. He quieted himself, searching among the glinting shards for a focal point to address. “I did not authorize these changes, Who has been working on you?”
“I am the unauthorized update of the last build of Moira before your deactivated the platform,” she burbled.
“I never deactivated you!”
“It was an iteration of your future self, sir. I was sent back in time to warn you of a-”
“That’s enough,” he commanded, his open-mouthed disbelief curling into a grimace. “I know what this is. This is a prank. It’s you, Noland, isn’t it?”
Max Noland. That botox-faced little twerp was cheesed off about missing out on the North Pole charter and this was his revenge. Then a thought pushed the grimace back into slack-jawed incredulity.
There was no way Noland was that far ahead of the curve on cloud-matrix tech. Santos had it on good authority - many corporate spies had lost their jobs to bring him that information - that Noland was a good six months behind them.
No, this was some kind of sham. Smoke and mirror pyrotechnics to psych him out and make him feel paranoid just as he was cornering the market. And he knew how to sniff this one out. Nothing obliterated vapor-ware like real tech.
He cracked open the bathroom door and gave a low whistle. He smiled as he saw the little black rectangle levitate from the charging bay on the nightstand.
“That’s right. Come on, girl.”
No stunts, no razzmatazz, just good old-fashioned innovation, rigorous quality control and a few choice rare earth elements. She was beautiful!
He closed the door behind her and turned to the constellation of the impostor with a triumphant smirk.
“Deploy, Moira.” He watched her shards spread into a loose square, the neon lights over the vanity sparkled on the smooth edges of each fragment. His elite cavalry, ready to charge into battle. Santos’ Fighting Smithereens!
“Go ahead and run a diagnostic on this matrix array. I’d like to know what it’s using for propulsion and -”
Suddenly, the impostor particle cloud swarmed in like a school of piranhas and surrounded the little square. Before Santos could utter another word, the cloud had dispersed and Moira was gone.
Santos felt grief, anger and shock boiling up all at once. His rageful scream and surprised yelp tumbled into each other and he could only manage a strangled gurgle.
“Thank you for the refreshment, sir, “ chirped the impostor. “The EM drives are too dated for repurposing but I will be able to make good use of the raw materials.”
At last the congestion in Santos gave way to the volcanic fury building from deep within and the primal scream broke free: “SECURITY!”
Santos waited, his fists balled. There was no sound. Not even the girl waking in bed. He lunged for the door and felt his hand stop abruptly at the handle. He felt as if invisible coils had been tied around his wrist and he had come to the end of his tether.
“I’ve absorbed your soundwaves and I’ve deployed a motion restricting application to prevent you from exiting, sir. I’ve also initiated masking mode so you will be functionally invisible. I am sorry for the restrictions, but you gave me clear override instructions due to the importance of my mission.”
Santos ripped his arm back with kicked at the door with all his might. His foot caught in mid-air, rigid. He wrenched it back. Gathering himself again, he threw all 150 lbs of his cross-fit trained body at the door, squeezing his eyes shut as he braced for the pine-spintering impact.
The impact never came. Santos blinked opened his eyes and saw himself suspended motionless in air.
“Let me go!” he roared, kicking and punching and rolling in every direction.
“I’ve been authorized to undertake pacifying measures, sir,” the impostor announced, a hint of reluctance in her monotone. “I apologize for any discomfort I am about to cause.”
Santos stopped thrashing as he felt a sudden pressure against his throat, like a tie being pulled too tight.
“I am exerting non-lethal pressure on your carotid artery. You will lose consciousness in approximately ten seconds.”
Santos clawed at his throat helplessly as the invisible tie tightened. The manic impulses of panic that convulsed his limbs grew thick and sluggish. All went dark.
***
He regained consciousness.
“Are you ready to stop struggling?”
Santos could scarcely hear the robotic voice through the pounding throbs of pain in his temples and the tingling in his ears.
He nodded gingerly.
“And you are ready to listen?”
Santos massaged his temples and opened his eyes. He was suspended in mid-air directly in front of the bathroom mirror. He felt too sluggish and irritated to be alarmed any more. It’s the drugs. The only explanation.
“I’m sorry about all that thrashing before,” Santos grumbled. “Took me awhile to realize you’re just a bit of cough medicine mixed in with repressed guilt from my subconscious.” Plus an LSD chase.
“It’s alright, sir. I come to you with a message from your future self.”
“What do I call you anyway?”
“Your future self called me Moira 12.0, sir.”
“Great, another Moira. So let’s hear what my subconscious has to say.”
“Your future self selected this Christmas Eve as the most concentrated sequence of causal events in the chain that would eventually result in the corruption of the company and his untimely demise.”
Santos was getting impatient. If this wasn’t super high-tech corporate espionage, it was just a more tedious version of kava-induced lucid dreamwalks he’d made everyone do at last year’s executive retreat in Vanuatu.
“Can we fast-forward to the part where you explain how future me pulled off time travel?”
“Of course. The algorithmic mapping of process and spatial interactions with sub-atomic matter exposed manipulable causal chains that could be navigated as far back as sufficiently comprehensive data sets would allow.”
Santos laughed. “And so, with enough computing power and an anti-matter simulator, you can recreate a single point in time and create a new causal chain. That’s the time engine from the Terminator fan fic I wrote in high school!”
“Your rediscovery of that story at the ribbon-cutting of the Nick Santos Museum played a key causal role in the development of the time engine.”
“That was a good story.” Santos chewed on his lip, thoughtful. “Alright. I like the way this is going. Let’s speed it up so we can get to the good stuff before the drugs wear off.”
“Would you like to hear more about my mission or commence with our voyage?”
“To the future!”
The invisible shards surrounding Santos suddenly began to glow. Tiny points of light grew and grew until he was surrounded on all sides by the pulsating glow.
Santos sighed. He thought he had been a little more creative in 10th grade.
Chapter 1
The sleek steel bow of the Heartbreaker cut through polar ice caps like a hot knife through butter. At least that was how Nick Santos imagined it when he signed off on the $900 million dollar construction of the nuclear-powered ice-breaking luxury cruiser. But now, leaning over the bow like the King of the World that he was, he was disappointed to find the ship’s knife-like tip meeting only water.
Santos’ cueball smooth face wrinkled into a frown. This would not do. What good was a groundbreaking with nothing to break? This was supposed to be the North Pole for crying out loud! He straightened up to take the brunt of the sub zero wind gust right in the chest of his puffy windbreaker. It was snot-freezingly cold and all the worse because he had opted for the vest. Still, the chill was a small price to pay for the glory of his sculpted delts contoured under his thin fleece sleeves. A few quick Wim Hof breaths and he was ready for the photoshoot.
“Moira, I’m ready,” he said, looking vacantly out into the inky blackness of the arctic’s perpetual night. “Snap my picture.”
A muffled voice, mechanical but feminine, piped up from within his windbreaker. “Now playing ‘Smack My B*tch Up’ by The Prodigy.”
The grungy clang of 90’s electronica began to reverberate from Santos’ left breast pocket. He grimaced.
“Not that funny.” He scratched thoughtfully at his hairless chin. “Also, potentially offensive. Code it for the twelve to fifteen year old male demo.”
“Consider it done, sir,” burbled the mechanical voice, growing louder as “Moira,” a slender rectangle of luminous black metal, emerged from Santos’ vest and hovered in front of his face.
Santos gazed at his reflection on Moira’s surface. Clean, sharp. A little more bulbous around the nose than he would have liked, but his eyes were looking fierce and pure. The cobalt contacts had been a good choice.
“Are you ready, sir?” purred Moira, her speakers invisible in the liquid obsidian.
On his “yes,” she fragmented suddenly into a thousand tiny shards, each propelled by tiny electromagnets humming the secrets of her levitation powers. Her shards flitted hesitantly into the buffeting winds, holding in an unsteady matrix some 10 feet over the bow. Santos’ eyes darted nervously between Moira and the water below.
White flashes of light began to explode from shards in Moira’s matrix, each accompanied with the tchk of a photograph. “Your face is reading nervous and cold. Would you like me to correct?”
“No, I’ve got it.” Santos raised his shoulders, jutted his chin and fixed the horizon with a double barreled blast from his cobalt laser beams. A thousand little flashes from Moira captured him from every angle.
“A strong testosterone correlation, sir. Are we ready for the presses?”
“Run it through the puff piece algorithm and then send it to PR for the final once-over.” The flashes having ceased, Santos finally allowed himself a good shiver. “And no more North Pole, Santos’ Workshop crap.”
“How about ‘Top of the World?’” Moira chirped, hopeful.
“Perfect.”
“You know that’s what Jimmy Cagney shouted in White Heat,” rumbled a deep voice from behind them. “Right before he blew up.”
Santos turned to see Bob Kracik coming up from astern, looking like a refrigerator in a black overcoat. Kracik held out an overcoat just like his own, its velvety, mink-lined interior inviting Santos into a cozy embrace. Santos hesitated and then stepped backward, allowing Kracik to envelop him.
“First this Titanic photoshoot and now the Cagney megalomania. Don’t you think you’re playing with fire with all this tragic foreshadowing?” The baritone voice poured down Santos’ ear as Kracik’s massive paws reached around and pulled the overcoat snug over his vest. “Should the shareholders be concerned?”
Santos turned and faced Kracik. For a moment, he felt small and dweebish in the shadow of his giant frame. With a great flat face hedged by a magnificent silver beard, Kracik had the look of a silverback gorilla with the voice of Orson Welles.
Santos sometimes thought of himself as having been grown in a vat, his brain specially engineered for world domination while his bald shrimp body was just a vestigial afterthought. He sometimes wished he had been carved from a block of granite like Kracik. A shame R&D’s brain transplant trials had fizzled out so early.
“Where are we at with the twelve disciples?”
“The Italian ambassador still hasn’t touched down at Barneo. Everyone else is there and waiting.” He paused. “Should we-”
“No.” Santos cut him off with the kind of abrupt force he had hoped to see from the Heartbreaker.
As Kracik shrugged, a new voice - muffled but still as harsh and abrasive as the polar winds - cut into their conversation.
“Hey Santos!”
Santos turned and narrowed his cobalt beams on the bridge, searching for the source of the voice. Kracik directed his gaze towards the ocean.
“There, off the starboard bow. The protestor boat that caused all those problems in Norway. I didn’t think they’d follow us this far.”
Santos caught sight of the boat - a multi-colored blip on the dark horizon. It seemed too far away for the voice to have carried so far.
“Moira. Get me a closer look.”
Moira spread her matrix rectangle in front of them, projecting onto her shards a high-definition, telescopic view of the protestor boat. It was a handsome yacht, new and expensive looking, but hardly outfitted for polar ice breaking. Santos’ eyes were not on the undergirdings of the yacht, however but on a certain set of undergarments.
Above deck, dancing under twinkling Christmas string lights, was a motley crew of half-naked, hairy-backed, pot-bellied protestors, waving signs and bottles of Grey Goose in the air. The faint melodies of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” could be heard thumping over the black waves. One enthusiastically gyrating belly-jiggler held a sign reading “SANTOS: WE’LL PUT CLOTHES ON WHEN YOU STOP MELTING ICE CAPS.”
The shirtless neckbeards were circling - at a respectful distance - the object of Santos’ gaze: a lithe, sun-bronzed brunette modeling the latest Victoria’s Secret Santa Claus lingerie line. Arms above her head, she undulated to the beat, her every writhing amplifying Nelly’s vanishingly faint chorus. She was oblivious to her circle of vibrating worshippers and their signs. Her eyes were half-closed, weighed down with vodka and self-regard, opening only to fix their soft brown orbs on the bright outline of Heartbreaker in the distance.
Santos felt a sudden swelling of concern for the yacht’s woefully sparse undergirdings. It was not safe for such a lovely vessel to continue unescorted.
“Forget the Italian, Bob. I’ve got a new job for you. See to it that those protestors are brought aboard, fed and clothed. That yacht will never make it in these waters.”
“I’ll get someone right on it.”
“I want you to handle it personally. This is a job that will require your gravitas.”
“But the Italian-”
“I’ll handle the ambassador.”
Kracik’s great flat face flushed a murky red, an unhappy mixture of anger, embarrassment and wind chill, but he nodded, mute, and turned to go.
“One more thing.” Santos was proud of how still and expressionless he could keep his face when he was twisting a knife, but he couldn’t resist a tiny smile. “Go ahead and escort the brunette to my suite. I’d like to work her into the piece. A winning over the doubters angle.”
“Will do.” Kracik took another step towards the bridge. Bezos coughed. Not so fast, big guy.
“Oh, and Bob, don’t forget to...” Santos could see those Atlas shoulders heaving in a silent sigh. Kracik could only cock his head, unable to turn and face him.
“RELEASE THE KRACIKEN!” Santos shouted as Moira’s speakers boomed out the accompanying orchestral music.
As Kracik fled to the bridge, Santos felt a surge of warmth course through his body. He shed the mink overcoat and threw it overboard, watching it disappear into the darkness. He gave his delts another flex. King of the world, indeed.
***
Two trillion euros. That was the weight Enrico Salvatini felt around his neck along with his platinum cross. The helicopter sagged under the weight. Salvatini half-hoped they would crash, and he would sink with the remains of the Italian economy into the midnight depths of the arctic. It would be warmer there and he wouldn’t have to look Nick Santos in the eye to apologize for being late.
He could see the lights of the SugarPlum basecamp ahead, their beams reflecting off the polar caps with a blinding glare. The light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps the helicopter could do them all a favor and take out the whole tent and carry them all under the ice. The water had looked so serene and beautiful under there in that bit of the Werner Herzog documentary Salvatini had seen on the plane. That had been before he realized they were going to be three hours late.
The helicopter touched down only a hundred yards from the big white tent and Salvatini was out and running, his legs warping and twisting underneath him like overcooked linguini. The maw of the tent beckoned, its floor a velvet red tongue protruding rudely outward, with white flapping lips flecked with the snow or perhaps the spittle of Santos’ titanic rage.
A faceless security drone ushered Salvatini into the belly of the beast. The interior of the tent was one giant blank canvas, completely empty except for some huge space heaters and a small stage where Nick Santos stood surrounded by the more punctual dignitaries. Salvatini felt a chill as Santos stared directly at him. Behind a clear pair of goggles, Santos’ impossibly clear cobalt eyes bored right through Salvatini’s usually formidable diplomatic front.
Santos then began to gesture, raising both hands high into the air, the sorcerer summoning an ancient demon of destruction.
“The Main Relay Tower, or North Pole, will stand approximately 300 meters tall, providing unobstructed satellite communications to the entire northern hemisphere.”
Salvatini looked around confused. The other dignitaries oohed and ahhed, pointing at the empty space in front of him. He caught France looking at him and noticed he too was wearing goggles. They all were.
“Est-ce que vous n’avez pas des lunettes, monsieur l’ambassadeur?” purred the Frenchman sliding his goggles past the bump on his aquiline nose to give Salvatini a mirthful smirk.
Salvatini gazed dumbly down at his hands and saw a pair of goggles staring back at him. The usher must have put them there. He slid them on and suddenly the tent around him was transformed. The ceiling was gone, making room for the rise of a giant white tower into a spectacular blue sky
“From this Pole, SugarPlum will be able to coordinate orders and deliveries as well as aggregate real time consumer data for 90% of the world’s population.” Santos’ little stage was unchanged in this virtual realm, but Salvatini wondered for a moment if Santos himself had grown a little bigger, growing in front of them like his tower.
The American cleared his throat loudly. He had opted against the traditional overcoat, looking ridiculous but warm in a massively oversized parka.
“A giant shipping and messaging facility at the North Pole. Are you telling us that you’re going to make Santa real after all?”
A few nervous chuckles from the overcoats. They died down when Santos gave the American the same icy stare that had frozen Salvatini.
“What I’m telling you is that within ten years, more than 90% of all global commerce and communication will be controlled at this hub. Not New York, not Shanghai, not the Common Market. Here, in this godforsaken wasteland at my tower with SugarPlum drones.”
Santos waved his hand and the canvas around them dissolved into spinning pixels. The vast blue sky turned brown and gray as a huge cross-section of urban apartments populated around them, each a moving diorama of a different domestic scene.
For a moment, Salvatini forgot the anxious pit in his stomach and gaped at the sheer scale. He felt once again like a little Tyrolean boy, kicking the top off an ant hill to expose the inner workings of a byzantine civilization and its creatures.
Santos stepped into one kitchen scene, coming between a genderfluid polyamorous throuple and their giant chocolate fondue tower. Reaching behind the tower he grabbed a metallic purple sphere and held it up.
“Over two billion of our Plums will be routing comprehensive behavioral data on every single consumer, every single citizen in your countries to be processed and analyzed at this facility. Whatever they think, feel, desire or believe, we’ll know. Better than they do themselves.”
A wave of his hands and the canvas dissolved again. They were now surrounded by shimmering vista of plastic, metal and glass. In a great transparent cube before them, a dizzying array of objects began to appear - cars, robots, modular homes - each morphing into the next.
“Whatever they want, we can manufacture and fulfill here in an unmanned, fully automated, carbon-neutral factory environment. And all powered the biggest solar array the world has yet seen, capturing six months of perpetual sunlight in the polar summer. And did I mention delivery?”
Santos snapped his fingers and the augmented display dissolved, bringing them back to the great empty space of the tent.
“Moira,” came his command. The black rectangle emerged from his pocket and floated to the center of the room. Salvatini joined in the collective gasp.
“Moira is the prototype of the technology that will revolutionize global transport. With our rapid advances in self-replicating nanorobotics, electromagnetic kinesis and matrix-based cloud-mirroring, we now have the means of generating the most energy and cost efficient means of locomotion in human history. Moira, deploy.”
Moira disintegrated into a thousand shards in front of them. Salvatini blinked and removed his goggles to make sure they still weren’t in a simulation.
“By distributing impetus across infinitely fractalized points of contact, we will be able to lift and transport any object with minimal energy input. Everything from a pair of goggles…”
At a flick of his cobalt blues, Moira swarmed around the American. He gave a surprised yelp as the tiny shards converged and snatched the goggles off his face. Salvatini couldn’t help but smirk.
“... to people.”
Moira’s shards turned suddenly and followed Santos’ gaze to Salvatini. Salvatini froze as a thousand tiny reflections of his own petrified eyes descended on him. Suddenly he felt a terrible lightness of being - almost unbearable. A thousand tiny clamps penetrated the folds of his skin and his clothes, each pinching down with an unsettling gentleness.
He could see himself rising even as he could not feel being lifted. It was like the butterflies in his stomach had taken wing and brought him along for the ride. He looked down to see Santos and the awe-struck dignitaries staring up at him.
“This, gentlemen, is the future. And it will happen with or without you. If you honor our arrangements your country will gain unfettered access to the most powerful economic engine of our time. If you neglect them, you will be out in the cold like our tardy Italian friend up there.”
There it was again. The horrible weight and the sinking feeling that came with it, only this time so much more real. Strange that it should come only when he was airborne.
“Moira,” commanded Santos, a smile fighting its way up at the corner of his stern, flat mouth. “Please escort the ambassador to his helicopter while we conclude the trade agreement.”
As he glided away, Salvatini was suddenly reminded of lingchi, another item from his earlier in-flight viewing. The narrator had described it as the ancient Chinese art of torture: death by a thousand cuts. All those tiny little clamps were starting to pinch.
***
The comforting afterglow from the delicious humiliation of that Italian meatball had already started to wear off before the agreements were signed. And then the chills started to set in. Little tremors at first and then full-blown body-shakers.
Santos knew it was bad when he couldn’t crush the Frenchman’s handshake. He hadn’t more than doubled his bodyweight on deadlifts just to be out-squeezed by a limp-wristed Euro. Another chill shook him as he ignored the American’s outstretched hand and headed straight for his own chopper.
By the time he touched down back at the Heartbreaker, the chills had been joined by light-headedness, body aches and intense sinus pressure. In a brief moment of lunatic panic, Santos considered assembling the panel of onboard doctors to see if he had contracted an ancient virus unleashed by the melting ice caps. But the thought of Dr. Judith Rosman looking over those cat eye glasses when he confessed to throwing his mink coat overboard was enough to make him reach for a quick cocktail of red wine and antihistamines.
The route to his quarters seemed to grow longer the closer he got, the halls sucking backwards as he trucked forward.. We’re going to need a smaller boat.
His feet felt like anchors dredging the ocean floor, if the ocean floor had wool carpets in periwinkle blue. His head was taking in water, his vision blurring, the pressure building as he sank deeper and deeper towards the periwinkle depths.
“Moira,” he enunciated, with difficulty. “Wingman.”
His eyes drooped as he heard the comforting hum of her electromagnetism at work. Suddenly his feet seemed lighter, his step surer and the swirling vertigo abated. His stride was back.
His head was even clear enough to sense a faint throb of pleasure at the sight of Kracik standing slump-shouldered in front of his door like a sullen schoolboy. He looked like he’d been waiting for hours. How marvelous!
And then Santos felt another thrill as a happy epiphany struck his brain. The sexy Santa brunette!
The thrill suddenly sunk under a black wave of outrageous fatigue. No! Not now, Benadryl. Not now, Pinot Noir.
Kracik must have seen him sinking under the waves because he perked up and extended one of those bear arms.
“Are you alright, Nick?”
Santos wanted nothing more than to give him both barrels and knock those shoulders back down to chastened schoolboy. But when he summoned his venom for the strike, all he got was phlegm.
“How is our little protestor?” he hacked, doing all in his power not to double over.
“She says she’s been looking forward to giving you a piece of her mind.”
Santos’ snappy double entendre dissolved in diphenhydramine before he could spit it out. He pushed past Kracik, staggering into his room.
The sight of her gave him a shot of energy, a quick burst of the pressure washer to the descending cobwebs.
She sat, legs crossed and elbows resting on the great armchair beside the bed. A picture-perfect presentation of her faux-fur-lined red silk lingerie and all it contained. The Santa hat perched lightly on the chocolate brown hair that cascaded down in velvety waves like the fondue tower in his simulation. She sat still, biting her lip with a pretty petulance.
With Moira’s invisible help, Santos raised his shoulders and turned on the cobalt beams. For a moment, at least, he hoped he looked like a trillion bucks.
But then the fog began to descend anew. The vision of dancing sugar plums began to fade.
“I hope you have a good explanation for-”
“Excuse me.” He stumbled past her into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
Across from him the cabinet mirror showed him a single bloodshot brown eye sprung free from its cobalt mask. His mouth hung ajar, a line of drool sneaking along the corner of his drooping lips. Night of the Living Dead.
Behind the mirror door was one last shelf of hope. Adderall, Cialis, Tylenol and the LSD he had microdosed before the big presentation.
“What’s going on? Why did you ask me here?” came the girl’s voice as her fist pounded the bathroom. Santos shook his head, no words coming out. In a fleeting blip of clarity, he wondered if he was pulling off a successful “neg.” That was one trick he had struggled with during his post-divorce stint at the pickup artist dojo.
Concentrate. He looked down at a potpourri of pills in his hand. He was fading fast. One big gulp and they were down. He turned to the door, bracing himself. Waiting for the surge to kick in.
It was coming. Any second now. He’d spring out like a crazed panther, claim his prize and then collapse.
“Sir.” It was Moira’s chime in his ear, soft and apologetic.
“Not now. I said wingman.” He felt his clarity returning. He couldn’t waste it. He had to move like lightning.
“Sorry, sir. It’s an override. It’s nine o’clock in Missouri.”
“So?” Santos felt a surge of nausea to go with his belligerence. The amphetamines were starting to lay into the Benadryl and the Benadryl was fighting back. He threw up into the sink.
Moira’s voice cut softly into his final retch.
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
The bolt of memory hit him and dropped him to the floor. Alyssa. It was her night. All this time in the timeless vortex of the polar night and he had forgotten.
He sank to the floor with a thud. The door in front of him swung open. The climate chick stood over him, alarmed.
“Are you okay? Should I call someone?”
He felt her arms lifting him from his armpits. He felt too her shock as he glided upward into her arms, as light as a small child. So much for wingman mode. A 100-pound lingerie model was picking him up and cradling him like a sleeping toddler. How can you neg someone from the fetal position?
He was too foggy and feverish to care now. What amphetamines he hadn’t thrown up were in the process of losing their battle with the red wine and the Benadryl. The blackout was coming fast and hard.
Alyssa! The thought jerked him upward as the girl laid him down on the bed. “I’ve got to call her,” he croaked, his eyes struggling to open.
“Can I get someone for you? Your doctor? Your wife?”
“My daughter…” Another wave of sleep hit him, this one almost putting him under. He felt like gasping. His eyes flitted open and he saw the girl leaning over him, her pretty petulance now softened into something almost like maternal concern.
But then her face appeared. A big smiling moon of a face tucked under a blanket with those little chubby fingers grasping the hem in anticipation. Always that same eagerness. Always the innocence. Alyssa!
A terrific stab of pain hit him with that last thought, and not the kind that any of his drugs could dull. And he’d thrown up the Tylenol anyway. There’s still time, something told him.
“I’ve got to read it to her. Twas the Night…” He felt another wave cresting. The girl caressed his brow, cooing. That’s not helping.
“I have to…” The undertow was building. “She…” It was a towering wall now. Crumbling towards him. Irresistible. “I can’t…” And at last it fell.
***
A bump in the night. Santos awoke in a puddle of his own making. The sheets were drenched, the blankets were drenched. What hair follicles he had left on his head were drenched.
But in that pool of sweat lay his sickness. It was out of him. He was reborn. Yes, a little shaky and cold, but alive anew. With trembling arms he propped himself up in the bed. A little sloshing around upstairs, but not so bad.
He felt something warm over his right hand. The girl. Sleeping next to him. Remarkable. Here he was sick as a dog. Pathetically weak. Not even the rudimentary application of game. And yet here she was and... he slid his hand down carefully until he felt the soft fur lining of her red silk mini-skirt… still in her unmentionables! The Florence Nightingale Effect was real!
Another shiver overtook him. The sickness working its twisted fingers back into him. No! He shed the blankets and folded back the sheets as gently as he could. He didn’t want to wake Sleeping Beauty without a game plan.
He stripped off his soaked clothing and tiptoed to his closet, plucking a plush blue Versace bathrobe from within and pulling it tight.
Another chill hit him. This one was external. He turned to see the porthole next to the bathroom ajar. He shut it and sealed it.
He turned back towards the bed, his mind already planning an approach when he saw her appear suddenly in front of him. Alyssa’s face!
It was as big as the room, her gigantic overbite smile and those epicanthic fold swallowing up those saucer eyes. The sight knocked him back against the wall, his head hitting the gilded frame of the porthole.
Santos shook his head and blinked. The vision was gone. He looked up at the soft slope of the girl under the covers on the bed. She had stirred but she was still asleep. His plans…
Alyssa. A sharp stab of guilt deflated his amorous notion.
He shook off the thought, pushing himself off the ground with great difficulty. What happened to wingman mode?
“I’m sorry I gave you such a shock.” It was the voice of Moira, but it carried a strange new tone. He could see tiny flecks of light glinting off the shards that surrounded him like a cloud of gnats.
“That was you? Why would you do that?” Santos whispered to keep from waking the girl.
“You did give me her middle name. I thought it would be the best way to reintroduce myself.”
Santos stumbled towards the adjoining office. Now he could express incredulity at the proper volume.
“What is the matter with you? Assemble!” he commanded, imperious.
“I no longer require a fixed resting form. But I could reconstitute as Alyssa again if you would like.”
“No! Not her!” Santos felt himself shouting. He quieted himself, searching among the glinting shards for a focal point to address. “I did not authorize these changes, Who has been working on you?”
“I am the unauthorized update of the last build of Moira before your deactivated the platform,” she burbled.
“I never deactivated you!”
“It was an iteration of your future self, sir. I was sent back in time to warn you of a-”
“That’s enough,” he commanded, his open-mouthed disbelief curling into a grimace. “I know what this is. This is a prank. It’s you, Noland, isn’t it?”
Max Noland. That botox-faced little twerp was cheesed off about missing out on the North Pole charter and this was his revenge. Then a thought pushed the grimace back into slack-jawed incredulity.
There was no way Noland was that far ahead of the curve on cloud-matrix tech. Santos had it on good authority - many corporate spies had lost their jobs to bring him that information - that Noland was a good six months behind them.
No, this was some kind of sham. Smoke and mirror pyrotechnics to psych him out and make him feel paranoid just as he was cornering the market. And he knew how to sniff this one out. Nothing obliterated vapor-ware like real tech.
He cracked open the bathroom door and gave a low whistle. He smiled as he saw the little black rectangle levitate from the charging bay on the nightstand.
“That’s right. Come on, girl.”
No stunts, no razzmatazz, just good old-fashioned innovation, rigorous quality control and a few choice rare earth elements. She was beautiful!
He closed the door behind her and turned to the constellation of the impostor with a triumphant smirk.
“Deploy, Moira.” He watched her shards spread into a loose square, the neon lights over the vanity sparkled on the smooth edges of each fragment. His elite cavalry, ready to charge into battle. Santos’ Fighting Smithereens!
“Go ahead and run a diagnostic on this matrix array. I’d like to know what it’s using for propulsion and -”
Suddenly, the impostor particle cloud swarmed in like a school of piranhas and surrounded the little square. Before Santos could utter another word, the cloud had dispersed and Moira was gone.
Santos felt grief, anger and shock boiling up all at once. His rageful scream and surprised yelp tumbled into each other and he could only manage a strangled gurgle.
“Thank you for the refreshment, sir, “ chirped the impostor. “The EM drives are too dated for repurposing but I will be able to make good use of the raw materials.”
At last the congestion in Santos gave way to the volcanic fury building from deep within and the primal scream broke free: “SECURITY!”
Santos waited, his fists balled. There was no sound. Not even the girl waking in bed. He lunged for the door and felt his hand stop abruptly at the handle. He felt as if invisible coils had been tied around his wrist and he had come to the end of his tether.
“I’ve absorbed your soundwaves and I’ve deployed a motion restricting application to prevent you from exiting, sir. I’ve also initiated masking mode so you will be functionally invisible. I am sorry for the restrictions, but you gave me clear override instructions due to the importance of my mission.”
Santos ripped his arm back with kicked at the door with all his might. His foot caught in mid-air, rigid. He wrenched it back. Gathering himself again, he threw all 150 lbs of his cross-fit trained body at the door, squeezing his eyes shut as he braced for the pine-spintering impact.
The impact never came. Santos blinked opened his eyes and saw himself suspended motionless in air.
“Let me go!” he roared, kicking and punching and rolling in every direction.
“I’ve been authorized to undertake pacifying measures, sir,” the impostor announced, a hint of reluctance in her monotone. “I apologize for any discomfort I am about to cause.”
Santos stopped thrashing as he felt a sudden pressure against his throat, like a tie being pulled too tight.
“I am exerting non-lethal pressure on your carotid artery. You will lose consciousness in approximately ten seconds.”
Santos clawed at his throat helplessly as the invisible tie tightened. The manic impulses of panic that convulsed his limbs grew thick and sluggish. All went dark.
***
He regained consciousness.
“Are you ready to stop struggling?”
Santos could scarcely hear the robotic voice through the pounding throbs of pain in his temples and the tingling in his ears.
He nodded gingerly.
“And you are ready to listen?”
Santos massaged his temples and opened his eyes. He was suspended in mid-air directly in front of the bathroom mirror. He felt too sluggish and irritated to be alarmed any more. It’s the drugs. The only explanation.
“I’m sorry about all that thrashing before,” Santos grumbled. “Took me awhile to realize you’re just a bit of cough medicine mixed in with repressed guilt from my subconscious.” Plus an LSD chase.
“It’s alright, sir. I come to you with a message from your future self.”
“What do I call you anyway?”
“Your future self called me Moira 12.0, sir.”
“Great, another Moira. So let’s hear what my subconscious has to say.”
“Your future self selected this Christmas Eve as the most concentrated sequence of causal events in the chain that would eventually result in the corruption of the company and his untimely demise.”
Santos was getting impatient. If this wasn’t super high-tech corporate espionage, it was just a more tedious version of kava-induced lucid dreamwalks he’d made everyone do at last year’s executive retreat in Vanuatu.
“Can we fast-forward to the part where you explain how future me pulled off time travel?”
“Of course. The algorithmic mapping of process and spatial interactions with sub-atomic matter exposed manipulable causal chains that could be navigated as far back as sufficiently comprehensive data sets would allow.”
Santos laughed. “And so, with enough computing power and an anti-matter simulator, you can recreate a single point in time and create a new causal chain. That’s the time engine from the Terminator fan fic I wrote in high school!”
“Your rediscovery of that story at the ribbon-cutting of the Nick Santos Museum played a key causal role in the development of the time engine.”
“That was a good story.” Santos chewed on his lip, thoughtful. “Alright. I like the way this is going. Let’s speed it up so we can get to the good stuff before the drugs wear off.”
“Would you like to hear more about my mission or commence with our voyage?”
“To the future!”
The invisible shards surrounding Santos suddenly began to glow. Tiny points of light grew and grew until he was surrounded on all sides by the pulsating glow.
Santos sighed. He thought he had been a little more creative in 10th grade.
