Simultaneously, a Helix multi-terrain vehicle in its space-jet configuration cruised through the orange and purple stratosphere at sunset. It soared high above the frothing whitecaps of the flooded Earth, a contrail cottoning out in its wake. The Helix was the latest in Blackstone Space’s extra-planetary multi-terrain vehicles. Designed to adapt to various inhospitable environments across the solar system, souped-up, fully loaded versions could keep passengers safe beside the frozen nitrogen seas of Neptune’s moon Triton, and survive the 460-degree Celsius days on Mercury. The current pilot, Penelope Blackstone, had a sleek boutique model custom-built for her and only used it to hop at hypersonic speed between her expensive homes on Earth. Her teenage daughter Olivia Blackstone thought that was entirely indicative of Pen’s personality.
Liv sat in the co-pilot seat of the luxurious cockpit. Even though the Helix could safely fly with its own automatic navigation system, Pen almost always preferred to control it herself.
The vehicle’s interior was as lavish as Penelope’s astounding wealth could afford. Paneled in tasteful rare wood, the walls and surfaces were lined with flowering vegetation as a nod to her bohemian attitude, which Liv knew was mostly a façade, even if the purple verbena flowers wavering around the cockpit were lovely. They had just come from their semi-annual visit to New York Fashion Week, which was a full-on waste of time, in Liv’s opinion. She was a firm believer that who you were inside was what really mattered.
The gentle wispiness of Pen’s flowing faux Earth Mother scarves was a case in point that fashion was a false front. Liv was occupied elsewhere, anyway. She fought back the sadness that kept rising up inside her, the sudden sharp reminders that her beloved, scary grandfather was losing his mind. She’d also heard that Penelope’s ex-husband, Warren Montmartre, had won his Senate bid, which was bad news for everyone who wanted to keep even a speck of the remaining personal freedoms from being trampled by the frightening, ultra-conservative party he championed.
Most of Liv’s memories of Warren were from recordings and press conferences, as Pen had divorced him in the months after Liv’s adoption, won full custody, and never allowed her daughter to interact with her ex again. There were untold stories there that Liv had never managed to get Pen to admit, or even mention, but Warren still loomed as a volatile, villainous figure from the half-formed, hazy recollections of her childhood. Grandpa Arthur wouldn’t discuss Pen and Warren’s relationship, either, and had only referred to Warren as “the personification of narcissistic self-interest disguised as patriotism,” and “that jackbooted Fascist,” but then Warren supported government takeover of Blackstone’s many industries, especially the Lucid platform.
After the divorce, Grandpa had refused to support this political campaign and was not surprised when Warren aligned with the hawks and campaigned for the breakup of Blackstone's Lucid monopoly. Now, given her grandfather’s rapidly fading cogency, it was probably too late to get the full truth. To keep her thoughts from wallowing in dark places, Liv focused on her Advanced Biochemistry homework, returning to her customized homepage through the latest generation of Blackstone contact lens-accessed display. Her Lucid system featured the cutting-edge "Good as Real" mixed-reality monitor. Unlike the old-fashioned versions where the LCD gizmo floated on top of the eyeball, Liv’s higher-resolution prosthetic was implanted underneath her cornea, allowing for crystal-clear projection and a more natural-looking iris.
Plus, unlike prior versions which had finite battery life, this new model was powered by Liv’s personal electromagnetic power generator: her heart. On her vision display, translucent icons for her favorite apps were arranged along the bottom of her field of view. As Liv’s eyes scanned across the options, they rested briefly on her messaging app, and a "3" popped up, telling her how many new notes she’d received. Liv decided to check those later, or she’d get involved and never get to her Biochem.
She double-blinked on her homework app and her most recent file reopened. It was a worksheet on cell mitosis. On the upper right side, a small window looped a short 3D vid showing each stage of a cell’s magical journey as it divided in two. As the vid progressed, certain vocabulary words were highlighted, then floated on the left side: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Liv grabbed each word in turn, dragging them to connect to the correct phase of the mitosis process. Past the opaque edges of her Lucid display, Liv peered through the lower part of the glass bubble of the cockpit, noticing that the choppy seascape had changed color. She minimized her homework and stared down as they approached the border of the vast flood barrier that surrounded what remained of the island of Manhattan.
On the eastern edge, the first foundations of a dome planned to encapsulate the sinking island were being built to replace the flood barrier. As always, as they flew over the city’s edge, Liv felt a twist in her stomach. The scale of the destruction at the margins was breathtaking, as was the scope of the wall built around the island to protect it. Brooklyn and Queens were completely submerged, with only the hills of Brooklyn Heights still protruding above the bay. The bridges had all broken and hung in ruins, some spans missing entirely, snapped cables dangling.
The frothing water churned in the bloated harbor, lapping high against the barrier, the swells barely contained, some of the ocean sloshing, frighteningly, over the top. Swallowing to moisten her dry mouth, Liv asked, “Mom, what about the people who can’t afford to live in the Dome? How will they survive?”
Other than pushing a lock of curly brown hair behind her shoulder, Penelope remained focused on piloting the Helix. “Don’t think about them,” she replied in a voice that sounded both amused and exasperated yet entirely condescending, part and parcel with her sharply snooty Swiss-inflected English. “They’ll be taken care of.” Liv pulled her left foot onto her seat, tucking it under her right thigh. “But . . . how?” she asked. Penelope shook her head, and the lock of hair tumbled over her shoulder again. “Do your homework,” she said, “and we can discuss it when we get home.” Then Pen shifted her eyes to catch her own Lucid system’s attention.
“Parental override,” she commanded. “Homework mode.” Liv’s display became entirely opaque, blocking her view of the real world outside. Around the edges of her homework file, all Liv could see was the wallpaper of their beautiful home in Davos, Switzerland, with mountains rising above the snowmelt Landwasser river.
The sheer Alps surrounding Davos sheltered the high-altitude town, protecting it from global warming with a crisp, delicious microclimate that made it one of the most exclusive locations on the planet. It was only home to a few hundred ultra-wealthy families, and anytime Liv left its rarefied air, she suffered terrible homesickness. But right now she’d wanted to see New York City. “Mom!” Liv protested. “I have my rights.” “As do I,” replied Penelope. Liv managed to somewhat override Penelope’s draconian parenting by pulling up a mapping app in a small window on her display.
So she followed the path of their Helix in cobbled-together satellite images as they swooped above the Statue of Liberty in the enormous lake created behind the barrier wall. Liberty waded in the harbor, her island underwater, her voluminous skirts partially submerged.
As the Helix banked to follow the Hudson River upstream, a government warning alert box popped up on Liv’s Lucid, higher priority than Pen’s homework override. A id showed Liv a battery of missiles tracking the Helix as it buzzed up the river. “Helix,” an automated air traffic controller announced through their rigs, “you are cleared to enter Manhattan airspace. Welcome and enjoy your stay and remember to remain vigilant.”
“Copy that,” replied Penelope, dipping the Helix closer to the edge of the island, just above where West Street once snaked along the downtown coast. Liv corrected a gene sequence in her Biochem homework and realized it was good enough. She was so far ahead of the rest of her class that she was deep into extra credit anyway. At her level of studies, she was designing her own program and seeking out the advanced artificial teachers she needed. As she finished up her work, Liv noted a factoid that fascinated her: If the DNA strands in all our cells were uncoiled, they would stretch as far as Pluto and back to Earth again. Her Biochem tutor, even synthetic as it was, enjoyed comparisons as much as she did.
Then Liv saved her file, adding it to her queue to submit to her teacher, who would no doubt award her another point on her final GPA. “I’m done,” Liv said. She held her hands up as though showing they were empty. “Parental override,” said Pen, pleasantly enough. “Leisure mode.” Now that her display was back under her own control, Liv opened the messenger app that was still blinking with 3 unread messages. But when she opened it, Liv was curious to see the message number fade as it updated. Her mouth dropped open when the counter revealed 7,899 as the final tally. Which was insane. “What is going on?” Liv blurted. She scanned the list of messages, which were from friends and classmates and relatives and way too many strangers.
One message from a girl in Liv’s Calculus class, a bespectacled, serious, studious sort, had the headline, “You must watch this.” So Liv opened it. Inside was a vid press release of her grandfather, Arthur Blackstone, in his creepy exosuit from the neck down. She listened to a full two seconds before she paused it and whispered to her Lucid rig, “Send to Penelope Blackstone.” “The vid I just sent you,” Liv hissed urgently. “It’s important.” Penelope tightened her hands on the helicopter’s controls. “We’ll be home soon,” she said. “Can’t it wait?”
Liv stared blankly at her stubborn mother. Setting her jaw, she raised her fingers and traced complex commands in the air in front of herself, following an algorithm on her display that she’d devised. Pen suddenly raised a hand to her face, stopping with her palm inches from her nose. “You little...,” she spat. “You hacked my system.” Liv set the vid running on Pen’s Lucid display. “Look,” she urged. “It’s about your dad.” Penelope shot her an annoyed glare. “You know I don’t like it when you call him that.” “Well,” Liv said with a shrug, “you shouldn’t have told me I was adopted until he was gone, then.” Penelope let go of the Helix’s cyclic stick. “Autopilot,” she sighed. Liv studied her mother’s face as Pen watched the video of Arthur’s public proclamation.
It changed from surprise to discomfort to outright rage by the end. She turned to glare at Liv, fury blazing in her gaze. “He’s actually going to do it,” she said. She raised her eyebrows, as if in disbelief, and then exhaled angrily. “Manual,” she ordered the copter, and grabbed the controls again, swooping the Helix to the right. The imposing monolith of Blackstone Tower loomed directly in their view. It was by far the tallest and largest skyscraper in New York City.
The Tower’s base walled off the south side of Central Park South three entire avenues from Columbus Circle to 5th. Like its owner’s name, it was indeed fashioned with an exterior of River Black sandstone, which made the entire enormous structure appear to absorb light in its thick rectangular pillar of inky darkness. In the Tower’s shadow to the north, an enormous plaza of rough concrete sprawled out, smothering half the area that used to be Central Park. The space was overflowing with tents and shanties, mud huts and lean-tos, cardboard and tin roof shelters, teeming with refugees from the margins scrambling for existence on the streets. Liv felt a prickling of unease on the back of her scalp as Pen piloted the Helix directly toward the helipad on Blackstone Tower’s roof.
When they were half a kilometer out, a red security banner declaring Halt popped up on the Helix’s central monitor, blinking on Liv’s Lucid display, and undoubtedly on Penelope’s, too. “Helix, please divert course,” an automated voice warned. “Blackstone Tower is prohibited to unauthorized vehicles.” Ahead, servo-mounted weapons on several turrets swung toward their craft. Liv gulped as the cannons tracked them with the dark hollows of their muzzles. Penelope flexed her elbow, and the Helix hovered in place, holding its position before the massive matte-black monolith.
“You remember that time,” Pen said aside to Liv, “when you hacked into Grandpa’s computers and caused a billion dollars’ worth of damage?” Liv’s face flushed hot. “That wasn’t my fault.” She had only been eight years old and had been trying to send her grandfather a Valentine’s Day card as a surprise, but the viral worm she’d used to override the Tower’s systems had proliferated beyond her control. “Darling,” asked Penelope sweetly, “do you think you could help out here?” Liv turned to face her mother with incredulity. “Are you asking me to break into your dad’s, I mean Grandpa’s network?” Pen nodded.
“This is a family emergency.” “It is also highly illegal,” said Liv. Penelope kept her narrowed eyes focused tightly on the array of guns pointed at them. “As your legal guardian, I take full responsibility,” she said.
