The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

mind had drifted so far away from the money and prestige, Michael’s pat solution to their dilemma seemed too easy.

“So, you think as long as we live off my bank account, it’s all good? And you’re willing to live that way?”

“Sure. We can open some doors, learn some ropes. Hell, we could travel together and see the Collectorate on your dime.”

“Despite what it would mean for you?”

She looked him in the eyes. Was he willing to subordinate himself after everything he’d been through since he arrived? After what generations of his family endured in Alabama?

“Look, Sammie, I’m not a moron. The only way I can live on Earth is by being a Solomon. It’s not as if them people are walking around in chains. Rikard and his husband are living mighty damn fine. You heard Ophelia. I’ll be your first designated Solomon. It’s all legal. We’ll be together. Anything else, we’ll work it out.”

“Michael, the way people looked at you, the things they said … it won’t disappear because you work for a rich Chancellor. You see that?”

Michael polished off a wry smile, but she saw the torment in his eyes. At least back home, he had family and friends in abundance who saw the world through the same lens. She almost said, “You’ll be alone here,” but she couldn’t bear him even considering the possibility of returning through the IDF.

“I ain’t punched any of these bastards yet,” he said. “Keep my head up and my shoulders sturdy. That’s what Gramps always said. It’s OK, Sammie. I’m chill. What choice do I got?”

As he said those words, Michael looked past her. His smile disappeared. She pivoted.

There he was, standing at the far edge of the platform, back turned to her, looking out upon the city. James stood next to his brother, hands clasped behind his back, a hulking monument to a Chancellor design she was coming to fear. She wanted to go to him, to say a proper goodbye, to demand he change his mind, to tell her the whole truth. Anything but this.

Yet she did not budge, and Michael would not let go.

“Can’t imagine what they’re planning,” he said.

“He never even told us details about his brother, or what happened between them. Three days, Michael. Three days!”

He tightened his hug. “I used to kid Jamie when he was going through his bodybuilder phase. Remember that? About four years ago he got into weights and started bingeing them powerlifting videos on YouTube? He gave it up about a month in when he weren’t seeing progress. Guess he found the easy button.”

“Like you said, he’s not the same man anymore.”

“And that’s why, if I never see him again, I’m just gonna remember the old Jamie.” Michael sighed. “First time we met, he was swimming butt naked in the Alamander River. I was throwing rocks at him. Instead of being sore, he invited me over to share peanut butter sandwiches and draw in his sketchpad. He was a good kid, before all the other shit came.”

“Before he learned his life was a fraud.”

As they watched, the second Jewel joined the brothers. She was a few inches shorter, but Sammie reckoned it was only a matter of time before she evolved like James.

“That girl, Rayna, I don’t get her. She grew up as a Cossack in nineteenth-century Ukraine. She comes to a world like this, and nothing seems to faze her. I think she’s like James … she’s a killer.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Bad vibes all the way. Deep, dark shit. But if you wanna say goodbye to him anyway, I’ll walk you over.”

She swiveled around to face Michael, inches from his lips.

“No.” The response came faster than expected. “He has his family now. We go a different way.” She kissed him. “You’re a new man, too. I’m proud you’re my friend, Michael.”

“Coming from the real Wonder Woman, that’s cool.”

His tone changed; that quip wasn’t Michael the comedian. It was someone who saw inside her. She felt it: He wanted another kiss.

Before she could make sense of the moment, Dr. Talan Langdon waved them in his direction. It was time to enter the bureaucracy, to claim a fortune, to be born again.

Yet as they slipped away toward the terminal and into Philadelphia Redux, Sammie looked back and saw three titans. She feared what chaos they were about to wreak on humanity.

44

J AMES DIDN’T CARE ABOUT THE CITY he viewed from the platform’s edge. Even as Valentin pointed out the favorite haunts of his formative years and reminisced about his triumphs in the Philadelphia Redux Kwin-sho Dome, James steadied his eyes on the stunning expanse that dwarfed one of the world’s largest cities.

Three miles due north, SkyTower rose from the Earth in pure white like a dream of the impossible given form. A two-kilometer-wide spike planted in the ground by the gods. Its skin delivered a polished sheen that blazed in full sunlight. Thousands of landing platforms and windows flickered in different colors of the spectrum. Scram and shuttle traffic orbited the great beast like mosquitoes looking for places to land, their green fuel nacelles twinkling.

James turned his eyes north, dizzied as the space elevator rose into visual infinity. Clouds appeared to pass through the structure, which climbed beyond the stratosphere, punching through blue skies, toward low Earth orbit. James searched his burgeoning knowledge base and envisioned the entire climb. SkyTower’s two-kilometer diameter decreased in stages. Down to 1.4K at two miles  high; down to 0.9K at 10 miles; down to 0.4K at 50 miles; down to 0.2K at 120 miles; down to 500 meters at 200 miles; down to 100 meters at 300 miles to its terminus at 620 miles above the surface.

“And our father hasn’t left SkyTower in twenty years?”

James’s question caught Valentin off-guard.

“Um, no. At least not in