Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

(more ball tampering by the bloody Australians), after which Ranveer dims the lights, converts his heated, antimicrobial, silicone-infused memory foam seat into a luxurious berth, then sleeps soundly for the rest of the flight, his mechanically stabilized suite impervious to turbulence, chop, and bumps.

—

Ranveer’s driver is entirely for show—a chauffeur in designation only, since it is illegal for humans to operate any type of vehicle anywhere in the Sultanate of Oman. But the position still exists because the wealthy never tire of demonstrating that they can afford to pay the less affluent simply to be present. And because, in this part of the world, interacting with unfamiliar AIs is considered beneath anyone of sufficient stature. It is not unlike the attendants you frequently see in Middle Eastern airports: if you pay close enough attention, you will notice that the dense flock of smart cases never follows the man whose belongings they contain, but rather an underling whose sole job it is to imprint upon their primitive neural networks and shepherd them from one entourage to the next.

In the back of the white Range Rover, Ranveer removes his metaspecs from an inside pocket of his jacket, unfolds them, then fits the wide, iridescent displays in place. The frames are a satin-finished rose gold, and the lenses—three layers of laminated, synthetic-sapphire waveguides—are connected at the bridge, where etched optical channels just perceptibly glitter. Each wide, tapered, ivory-white temple is thick enough to house a battery, plasma light source, camera, bone-conduction speaker, and the silicon required to drive it all, but thin enough that the whole rig still qualifies as a stylish accessory rather than a cumbersome, conspicuous peripheral.

From the opposite pocket, Ranveer plucks his handset, which detects the presence of his specs and redirects its output accordingly. None of his messages contain codes indicating that anything has gone wrong, so Ranveer decides that the job in Oman is still on.

He is surprised to find that the hotel’s copious open entrance is not air-conditioned today—even in anticipation of his arrival. Luxury, he has always believed, is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is supposed to be an impenetrable façade—a backdrop against which we can convincingly play the people we want the world to believe we are. Characters whose scripts have been stripped of disgrace and mistakes. Luxury is a type of meta-diversion designed to help us forget about all the things we had to do in order to obtain it in the first place.

But Ranveer also knows that it is the little things that foretell shifts in the balance of power and money throughout the world, and although he would certainly prefer not to glisten on his way into the lobby, he knows that it is precisely these dynamics that will always ensure a need for people like him. As oil-rich nations who cannot even begin to conceive of a world where their obscene wealth is not preordained continue to face the realities of a renewable energy economy, chaos and confusion and ultimately bloodshed are as inevitable as the winds, tides, sunrises, and the perpetual turn of the hydro-powered turbines that faithfully forecast their demise.

The manager of the Al Hujra Hotel, Tariq al-Fasi Hashem, greets Ranveer warmly in the lobby, and Ranveer thinks highly enough of the man to shake his hand and inquire briefly after his family. Such titans of the hospitality industry have an especially difficult balance to strike, as they must make their guests feel exceptional by receiving them personally while ensuring that they safeguard their own stations in life by subsequently delegating the more remedial tasks to assistants. Once the orderly exchange of pleasantries is complete, Tariq snaps his fingers, thereby decreeing that Ranveer is now officially in the care of a plump, second-tier manager. The young man expertly neglects to relieve Ranveer of his attaché; everyone in high-end hospitality knows that one of the keys to successfully accompanying a powerful man to his room without losing your job in the process is knowing exactly which bags he wishes never to see and which he will not let out of his sight.

Keycards are quaint anachronisms by CCW standards. As part of the check-in process, most guests are content with facial recognition systems. But not Ranveer. For him, it is an old-fashioned, short-range RFID card or nothing. He has accepted that being anything other than a recluse means being recorded almost everywhere you go, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take reasonable precautions—even if it means paying a premium for obsolete technology—to ensure that he does not leave legally admissible, biometric evidence behind. The proliferation of mass surveillance has spawned all manner of innovative and lucrative new industries, not the least of which is the art of avoiding it.

An austere man in a long white thawb and a black-banded headdress stands between Ranveer’s party and the bank of elevators, a fully grown, mottled, hooded falcon perched on his thickly gloved arm. Both man and bird appear to be guarding an ornate and overburdened luggage cart. The assistant manager is momentarily stymied, then settles on a path that would have led his guest far afield had Ranveer not already plotted his own course. Instead of avoiding the spectacle, he approaches the raptor and her handler directly, correctly identifying the species and asking her name. Sawt Alraed. Arabic for the rumble of thunder. Some sort of fraternalism passes between the two men—the strong, silent bond of the hunter.

6

  DOWNSIZING

FIVE YEARS AGO, when Quinn moved from the Office of Advanced Analytics to work under Vanessa Townes on the Nuclear Terrorism Nonproliferation Task Force, she filled seven file boxes. Today, as she moves upstairs to work on an unnamed special project led by Van’s boss, Alessandro Moretti, she only needs four.

The difference is pictures. Three boxes’ worth are now sealed in a plastic bin inside a low-cost, long-term storage unit out in Chantilly, Virginia, along with most of the rest of her past. Everyone reaches a time in their lives