The Tripping Prophet looked at the skyline of the city and watched as it was blocked out by the ant wandering across his glasses. There was no logical reason that he could think of for an ant to be scaling his glasses in direct alignment with the new VI Building that had been meticulously assembled one season in 2019. There was no reason why it should be doing what he could only call a dance, with its two feet twitching back and forth rhythmically at the top of the Empire State building either.

As he let his mind wander, the Tripping Prophet knew that he could conceive of dozens of possible hypotheses explaining the coincidence. If properly motivated, like if someone reported finding a weevil on the vessel, he would test his predictions until he came at the reason for the ant’s presence and the source of the ship’s infestation. He could study the variations performed by the insect as though seeking evidence of intelligence. He could even seek an answer to why the ant refused to leave the polished surface of his mirror shades. As to why it reminded him of her, he could not hypothesize.

Nor could he explain his own lack of worry over his impending collision with one of the world’s truly great cities. The presence of so many people to protect should have intimidated him by its scope. It had been easy to be himself in the wild, the act of self-actualization had been a daily celebration of his potent independence. In the city he would see himself reflected off of maybe thousands of people a day. He would learn their problems, and the problems of the system that they lived in. He would have to protect those humans from the problems that they couldn’t even see. It was his calling, his obsession, he had to protect them. Somehow he wasn’t appalled. Maybe he would even learn why the ant had chosen him as a companion.

Before he could smell her, he knew it was her. The cadence of her footfall was graven into the sound of the life that he had learned here. At first he had heard it through the nursing room door that he had asked be left open. After listening to dozens of strangers’ walks for hour after hour, hers had been the sole steady, sane tread. Then he had learned her smell and knew that he had well and truly fallen. He felt a bit like a fool. He was old enough he should have known better than to fall so fast.

Though he didn’t remember specifics, he knew it had always been this way when he fell. It hit him hard and fast and he never cared to stop it once it started happening. He couldn’t bring himself to feel bad that.

As her feet stopped on tip-toes, he felt her hands on his back and side, then the brush of her lips behind his ear. For all of his poise, she had learned where his soft spots were. After she had tasted his shepherd’s pie, they had spoken of the changes that had passed since his memories were of wooded glens and rocky outcroppings.

They had had sex last night. The awkwardness of the beginning definitely had not stopped either of them from a satisfying conclusion.

The captain had a prodigious library and an open-handed rule, so TP had spent a few happy hours every day resting his body and mind on a softly rocking hammock in the grip of books that were both familiar and foreign. The future was truly an interesting place. He had read that the health care plan he was on employed ‘Companions’ for those suffering from mental illness. The Companion was given the opportunity to meet the patient and decide if they would undertake a person’s healing. Companions underwent rigorous training, careful testing and could only accept an assignment if they quote “liked the person genuinely.” They were not incentivized to have sex with their patients, only permitted. The Companion’s Revelation was the subject of numerous television comedies and dramas. The science said the relationship stood the best chance of recovery if the revelation took place during an MDMA influenced PTSD treatment.

Which I have scheduled for the day of my arrival in the city... should be no big deal, right? He liked Lauria and knew that she liked him. If his suspicions were correct and she was his assigned Companion, he would have legal proof that she ‘genuinely liked him.’ Love was another matter entirely. The sex had been remedial, and if he was to be more grateful to a merciful law than a wonderful woman, that would just have to be water under the bridge. The fact his pheromones had reacted so potently with hers was just a lucky break as far as he was concerned.

He thought that maybe the treatment was already working. There were cracks in the walls the Tripping Prophet comprehended as his life, some of the cracks led back towards the glacier. Some revealed well-lit ballrooms and well-dressed people, but he couldn’t look at any of them as the Tripping Prophet. Whatever he had seen in himself-- whatever warmth, trust, and acceptance he had found since returning from the glacier-- were not compatible with demands for truth, perfection, and self-preservation that drove him as the Prophet at all times. There were truths that truths could not describe. Maybe it was some failing of the language or some deeper error in his human consciousness, but he knew that his life of carefully structured rules as the Prophet was as sturdy as a pile of kindling.

“Hello ‘Ria.”

“‘Lo True Piece.”

“That’s a good one, either way you spell it. I could change it to that if you want.”

“That one had a good Native American sound, and the way your skin takes melanin it definitely got my hopes up.”

“There is some kind of Native American royalty in the family history annals. Maybe two princesses or something; you know how memory gets a little murky after a few generations.”

She smiled wistfully and looked off to sea. “It’s amazing how much the internet has changed things. Conscientious people can now record every facet of their lives for study by posterity.” As she snuggled closer to him, she couldn’t notice the expression that mutated his face. Did he notice it himself? The disparity would have amazed both of them, and would have horrified him. That face was one that would never be recorded for posterity. It was pure guilt and regret.

She continued, “Things can change so fast now. For a lot of people who generate income on the stream, the suicide rate is down to practically zero. Neophiles celebrated in the streets on the second anniversary of the Valuestream’s release. We all knew that the Internet had changed things, but no one understood quite how much until then.”

They watched the sun set behind the city for a time. Slowly the Prophet’s face unclenched. At some point he became aware of his internal struggle and practiced the breathing techniques that he had learned since his return to help regulate anxiety. He didn’t know what had caused his distress, any more than he knew his own name.

With his equanimity restored, he started wondering about his future. Lauria had offered him a place to crash in the city on a semi-permanent basis, and he was more than inclined to accept. Being with her was a bliss that he couldn’t even comprehend. The captain had offered him a regular position aboard the Peacemonger, and the idea of making it a life with Lauria appealed to him more than he could explain.

For all those truths, the ship didn’t leave harbor for another 3 months. The regulations on the ice harvest were very specific. In fact, the information that he had been able to provide about “the crack” that he had seen just before his rescue had been of extreme interest to the scientists on board the vessel.

The harvests were supposed to be timed so that there was no net change in the ocean levels on a yearly basis. The sliver that was cut from the glacier should have been completely renewed each year be processes of condensation and freezing. The slice was designed with reducing the likelihood of catastrophic glacier collapse. His look at the extraction segment of the mission was miles closer than anyone had ever gotten, and the owner of the project, Callisto Venturi, had asked to speak with him on his return to port.

That had come as something of a surprise to him. The name rang some clarion bell in his memory, but nothing about it brought him any sort of clarity. Lauria had been more than overjoyed, she had been positively hysterical. Apparently Callisto was a celebrity of the new world order that had been established since his departure from society.

And somehow TP knew him.

For all of his seeming new balance, TP knew that his contentment was predicated on his attachment to Lauria. Such reliance was dangerous. So much of what he valued in life was wrapped up in the package that was warmly tucked underneath his arm.

That kind of chip stacking was the sort of danger that the Prophet had left society expressly to escape. There had been something that he had cared for so deeply that he had to leave it before it’s inevitable loss consumed him.

It seems pretty likely it did anyway. Who the fuck is this new person living in my skin? Why did he think that he could handle life in the city. Even in New York, the country couldn’t be more than a few hours away. The Catskill’s had to have some true wilderness left, and he could be there so soon.

“TP—you're doing it again aren’t you baby?”

That voice cut through his reverie, as it had so many times during the last two weeks. It was as though she was in his head sometimes, and she knew when the defining feature of the Prophet’s identity, a worst-case scenario program that demanded his full attention, was working at full potential.

“Yes, love. How could you tell?”

“You stopped breathing.”

“No wonder I was getting so worried. Distract me love, tell me about that building that rose out of the water like Aphrodite.”

“The VI building?”

“No… the other one on a fluid foundation.”

“Ouch… I did walk into that a little. Hmm… Let’s see.” Some of her mannerisms he found irresistible—like when she took the time to organize her thoughts before a serious question by cracking a joke. “Construction began in May of 2018, but planning for the project began in the fall of ‘17. At the time it was the most ambitious project the Valuestream had considered. They made the foundations out of titanium screws and attached them to the building using carbon nanotube arrays. When we get closer to it you can see the diffraction that results from the arrays’ separation distance.”

He looked down at her and saw a smile that she had never worn for anything but him. “The first time I saw it, I fucking cried. We were coming back from the ’Monger’s maiden voyage to the North Caps. We had heard about the construction, but someone on the ship had thought to block all construction images from the ship’s net. When we left they had just placed the bolts on the ocean’s bed. When we got back it was, well, it was like that.”

Like that was a spike stuck out of the ocean with shimmering lace falling from four sides. Where the sunset caught the nanotubes the light scattered in what was either mankind’s happiest accident or a Da Vincian masterpiece. The lace-like tubes were visible only as source beams of color. The air around them was a gently shifting rainbow of intersecting light. But the light didn’t stop at the surface of the water.

Maybe the nanotubes carried the light into the water somehow, but the beams could be seen about a hundred feet below the surface of the ocean maintaining the color that the sunset had given them, but muted by the gentle blue water that was the mother and father of all life on Earth. Schools of fish flitted around the base of the building. Larger bodies could be seen in the murkier sunset depths. On the surface boats and craft of all kinds were moored to the floating jetties that spiraled away from the building.

He didn’t know how long he watched the light play across the tubes and the water. He didn’t care. If the thing that he was seeing was real, then maybe something about the world was fundamentally different than the world that he had left.

“The building itself uses no power from the grid. The underwater floors generate tidal power that is freely given to help with the city’s former power crisis. Solar cells on the windows generate all of the power that the building uses. That’s why it isn’t shiny like most other skyscrapers—it absorbs ninety percent of the radiation that touches it. A laser on the roof shares power with a satellite swarm that provides surplus power during the winter months.”

Her voice lost the almost reverential tone for one more skeptical. “Supposedly, they model the light refraction to achieve perfect radar coverage for the airspace around the building. However it works, they’ve never had a problem landing planes or choppers on the ingress floors.” A bit more of the reverence reentered the sound of her. “Only one person has ever landed a plane without the autopilot.”

“Wait, let me guess: Callisto.”

“Spot on. It was the only time an attempt on his life has ever been made. They killed the electrics on his plane when the VIB Egress Dock was the only large airport within his fuel range. He’s been known to be a little reckless with his own life. Anyway, they underestimated him; he landed in the microdock below his penthouse on the top floor.”

“Sounds like old Venturi is something of a hero. How do you get into the building if you don’t have a plane or a boat?”

“There’s a subway. I don’t know about the whole hero business. He spent a few days in court for obstruction of justice. The details aren’t all there, but he blocked access to certain parts of the penthouse. The judge was furious; I think they even suspended him from the Ultimate league he founded.”

At this point the great cruiser had brought them close enough to the building where they were docking that TP could see the hollow floors where planes could land. Up close, the color distortion was somehow less intense and more subtle than he had imagined. The rest of the city could only be seen through a curtain of beauty.

He didn’t know what to expect from his time in New York. He sure didn’t know what to expect from the madcap owner of Venturin Industries. More and more that didn’t seem like such a horrible thing.

Sensory adaptation is truly an amazing phenomenon, he thought as he took off his glasses. The ant was still perched on the polarized surface but he hadn’t noticed it at all.

****

The truth was that Lauria was looking forward to the revelation. While she hadn’t known him that long, everything that she had learned convinced her that he would take it well. And then they could get along to the business of making each other happy. So far that part had been going well.

He was an enigma wrapped in a hero. Their first date had been something surreal. The conversation had been interesting and only paused during the actual eating. Maybe that made her shallow, but she had decided to take the assignment after tasting the pasta. The economists hadn’t let them bring any pre-made pasta aboard the vessel, so he had made some from scratch.

She would follow the process for the Companion Revelation. She was legally obligated to, but she still had the sense that she wouldn’t learn anything about him that would be a deal breaker. The part of her mind that spoke with her mother’s voice called her naive. Quickly though, his voice replaced hers. There was something about the way he spoke that soothed her. It was something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.