AS IN PROSPERITY’S OTHER city-states, many activities in Durango revolved around its city center. A large, domed edifice commonly called ‘The Donner’ defined the location. No one could recall exactly who named it that, but everyone believed it referenced the ill-fated party that attempted to traverse the Rocky Mountains in the middle of an 1800’s winter, only to resort to cannibalism for survival. It was the perfect spot for the two to meet, away from the cramped, low-ceiling confines that pervaded the tubes, tunnels, and living quarters spread throughout the city and its suburbs.

Sord glanced at his watch, the one his father forgot wear on that fateful day. It was on his wrist when the racnines attacked, and the crystal showed a scratch mark from a claw or tooth, or so Sord believed. It was his ornament of pride now for multiple reasons.

“Daisy!” he shouted, seeing her from the shuttle exit on the second floor. Her back was to him, and she didn’t hear his call. Vaulting down the stairs, he kept a steady eye on her, fearful his ten minute tardiness might engender second thoughts about meeting with him at all. As he approached, he could hardly contain himself with joy until he tripped on the last few steps, splaying out face-down on the floor.

“Oh my!” a middle-aged woman screamed. “Are you conscious? Are you okay?”

“What happened?” Daisy inquired, running to the scene and worried he might have re-injured himself.

He quickly stood at attention as if nothing had happened.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Something caught my shoe on that last step. Sticky, like gum. Sorry, our adventure was not supposed to start like this.”

She smiled and pointed to a single tangerine rose on the floor. “Did that lady drop the rose?”

“No,” he replied, leaping to snatch the flower before a passer-by crushed it. “It was the closest they had to the color of your hair. I love your hair.”

“Really?” she replied. “That’s very sweet.”

“What an inauspicious start to the day,” he thought. “Falling down stairs I’ve walked a million times.”

Sensing his nervousness, she grabbed under his arm, wrapping her forearm around his and grasping his hand in hers. “I see a little scar,” she observed, lifting their connected arms upward and gazing at his arm. “Isn’t it amazing to recover this quickly from such a serious injury?”

Sord’s heart was pounding in his ears so loudly, he could hardly hear what she said. But he understood one thing – she was holding his hand, just like at the hospital. “Yeah?” he replied, uncertain of what she actually asked.

“Shall we get going on this big adventure you promised me?”

“Sss..sure,” he stuttered. “But lots to eat here. Hungry for anything?”

“Just ate breakfast, Dearie,” she replied with a wry smile.

A quizzical look spread across his face, and his mind whirled back to the hospital. “Did Mom call me that?’ he wondered. “Jesus, I was on pain meds and my head wasn’t clear.”

Daisy was sensitive. Confident. She had to be. Too much had happened in her short life to be anything but confident. Her mother was kidnapped from a Prosperity tunnel when Daisy was three, never to be heard from again despite her father’s ongoing attempts at finding her or the villains.

A daughter missing a mother as she grew. A father vexed and grieved. Was she alive or dead? No ransom messages. No word from the kidnappers. Just an abduction while she was visiting her sister from Helena, with few hints of foul play.

Daisy’s self-grown confidence informed her every action and reaction. “You don’t like it when your mother calls you that? I’m just teasing,” she giggled.

“Well,” he grumbled, trying to grin, “my mom has used it since I was little. I don’t think she realizes I’m not her little baby anymore.”

“My dad does the same to me,” she admitted. “Not by names, but by being overprotective. I had to fib slightly about where I was going today. He always wants to know, though for good reason, I suppose.”

They walked past the turnstiles toward the shuttles, the intracity and intercity light rail system that spanned the three thousand kilometers from Madera at the south to Calgary in the north. It was 2132, but turnstiles were still in use.

By mandate, the city possessed no facial recognition systems, no infrared counters, and no aerosol detectors. There was no AI beast monitoring and assessing who was boarding the shuttle, clocking the time, their weight, what they wore, what they said while walking the corridors and in the shuttle, what their social networking and other historical profiles indicated about their purpose and ideologies, or even what they may have said previously at home about their trip. In Prosperity, the surreptitious capture, monitoring or control of citizens’ activities anywhere in the nation-state was antithetical to its core tenets.

Though such tech had been perfected in the early part of the previous century, Prosperity’s founders had largely rejected this and similar tech. It was especially true for AI-enabled systems except for occasional use with full knowledge and approval of all citizens.

Need a new vaccine from natural or synthetic components to counteract the latest plague assault from marauding bands of outsiders? AI helped there. Need to develop a more elastic, biopolymer-based, self-repairing material to withstand harsh weather conditions? AI helped there also. But no AI could be used for the nefarious reasons that caused it to become a ubiquitous part of life in the latter part of the twenty-first century.

Given the natural and man-made threats they encountered every day, Prosperity’s government were constantly challenged to keep the confederation of city-states together. Risk of survival beyond the city-states remained high, and the constant monitoring by long-range drones of territories far beyond Prosperity’s limits always reminded them of the most substantial threats to their existence – roving bands of humans and hybrids aching to break into Prosperity to attain the living conditions its citizens enjoyed.

In order to mitigate such threats, Prosperity placed strict limits on possessing material wealth that might appear attractive to potential invaders. As a result, people lived simply with relatively few creature comforts. Any desire for special entitlements, the kind that might have served to bolster fragile egos, was tempered by the reality of the times. Humanity had been there well before the beginning of written history.

Grab it all for yourself and family. Hoard it. Gold-encrust it. Hold onto possessions as if they are you, and you are nothing without them. Impress others with your possessions, your status, your power.

None of that mattered any longer, not to Prosperity’s citizens. All that mattered was a new, viable way of living, one where pragmatism took center stage.

Pragmatism was always at the heart of material acquisition of any item at any level. ‘Do I need this object, or do I only want it? Am I acquiring it to raise my self-esteem or because I believe I am entitled to it? If so, I need to understand why I feel this way, then make efforts to correct such ridiculous yearning.’

Sord was feeling a bit less tense. “‘For good reason,’ you said. What’s the good reason? Have you always been mischievous?”

Daisy laughed aloud, then squeezed his hand harder. A formidable sign to him, a sign he was connecting.

“God,” he considered, “I wish I was better at this. I have no active memories to fall back on. No girl ever made me feel this way. I must put aside these feelings of inadequacy, as if I don’t deserve her, as if she’s too beautiful for me. Use my teachings. Throw these negatives in that mental trash can. Live and be present in the moment. Temper negative emotions with rationality and courage. Fears I tell myself are just as potent and destructive as the fears and entitlements of narratives that others might use to control me. Understand the circumstances but don’t over-evaluate or over-think. Don’t take infinite life for granted, but enjoy every experience of time where possible, irrespective of the situation in which I find myself.”

“Silly! I’m not always mischievous. Although there is a reason. Anyway, where are we off to?” she questioned.

He got the hint, knowing he would save that conversation for later. “Uh, it’s a surprise. A little surprise, for both you and me.”

An empty shuttle pulled up. They stepped in and sat beside each other. She looked puzzled. “You haven’t been to this place before then, correct?”

“No, but I know people who have.”

“Who?”

“Oh, different people like my mom. These shuttles are so slow, though, going east.”

“Ah, the intrigue builds! So, we’re headed eastward? My dad would have a hissy fit if we went too far. He’s never allowed me to get beyond the metro limits. Only in Hesperus and Durango, though once we went to Mancos together. It’s such a cute little place, but kind of scary traveling the shuttle tunnels between the foothills. You never know who or what might be watching you from there.”

This was his chance to impress her with his exploits and courage, laced with self-deprecating humor. “Um-hum, yeah. My mom has pretty much given up on me, I think. She doesn’t want to hear about the chances I take, like when Robbie and I went out on the motos. Now, that was outside the domes and all, but we only go to the flats. We’ll usually stay out of red zones entirely, though once in a while we cross from the greens into the yellows. I don’t think the city codes them as yellows because they’re worried about normal, thoughtful humans. They’re probably more worried that dangerous things will happen to unassuming idiots like Robbie and myself, then they’ll have to send Search and Rescue after us.”

Daisy hit his shoulder softly with her fist. “You aren’t an idiot!” she countered with a chuckle. “Nor is Robbie. That was just an unfortunate accident and might have happened to anyone.”

He laughed deeply, throwing his head back and bumping it against the shuttle window. “Well, I hope you think the same once we get to where we’re going.”

They were silent for a moment as the shuttle rolled above ground-level and into the summer sun. Its electrochromic windows darkened to filter out the brightness and ultraviolet waves.

“Makes you wonder,” she observed, looking outward toward the expanse of mostly barren land, “what was it like to live out there a hundred years ago. Seeing all those old farm plots and buildings. You think of the endless effort those poor farmers engaged in to get their crops out multiple times a season. How it was a relatively thankless job with obstacles constantly thrown their way and making it even harder.”

He nodded.

“We were studying in economic history class this week,” she continued. “These poor folks. Feedstock. Livestock. Changing government subsidies. Weather. Fertilization and weed control. Water rights. The machines they needed to lease or own, plus keep operating. Contracts. Futures. Options and hedging. Trade and tariffs. God, you basically needed your own AI just to operate a farm. I wonder how they managed before 3-D systems?”

“Hmm. I’ll take that class next semester. Is it any good?”

“Yes,” she replied, momentarily unclasping his hand to remove her compact from the bag. “How do I look?”

“Don’t overdo it,” he thought to himself. “Don’t tell her she’s the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen or will see. She’ll sense you’re desperate.”

“You look lovely, more than you know.”

She hit him softly on the shoulder again.

“I really like your blue blouse and matching shoes. Did you pick that out or your mom?”

Daisy turned her face away from him momentarily. “I don’t want to tell him this soon,” she thought. “I should wait until we’re a little closer and I feel more comfortable about opening up to him. He’s so nice.”

Sord noticed her facial expression change. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply your mom picks out your clothes for you. I just say stupid things, and sometimes I eventually admit it, so please forgive me.”

She grinned. “Nothing to forgive, Dearie. You know, I like calling you that. You seem very dear and kindhearted.”

He could feel blood rushing to his face. It was his moment to turn his head away.

“Well, wait until you get to know me. But hey, what you were saying about the farmers and how things were a hundred years ago. Do you think a lot about what life was like? I’m not sure why, but I do.”

“Yep,” she agreed. “I think about it more than I should despite this whole instruction set on letting bygones be bygones, that you can’t reverse time or bring things back. Or maybe you don’t want to bring things back the way they were since everything went to hell in a handbasket in the span of a few decades. You can’t help but wonder what it was like to sit outdoors in the sun without a mask. Run a marathon. Walk your dog. Have a variety of pets, for that matter. Climb a mountain. Sit under a tree and hear the birds sing. Go golfing.”

He waited a moment to respond. What she said was true. The restricted lives they now led, a result of humanity’s aberrant short-sightedness, enveloped them both physically and mentally. A large planet existed outside the safety of their bioplas and dome structures, but living out there for any length of time was untenable for so many reasons.

“Daisy, I don’t see how any sane person could not think about it often. Like, human beings built the pyramids. New York City. Dubai. They sailed ships and launched rockets into space. Drove cars and jets. The world itself never restricted them and, unfortunately, they never restricted themselves. So, yeah, I think about what it was like all the time. I really don’t tell people this much. Maybe Robbie, but he says everything I think about is bullshit.”

She laughed.

“And it probably is,” he added. “But you wonder how a race of beings could be so thoughtless and manage themselves as poorly as they did. In fact, it’s probably inappropriate to use that word. It appears they managed nothing, only their wealth or fame or glory or power and position or whatever. I mean, such gifts given to them, utterly squandered. Even so, even knowing what ultimately happened, I still wish I could have lived in those times if only for the freedoms I could have known.”

Daisy stared at the shuttle floor. “Unconstricted. Unrestricted. Do what you want, where you want. Travel anywhere. Breathe relatively clean and healthy air. Visit the poles, back when there was ice. It’s a shame, and so many billions paid the price. But we’re here right now, you and me, and I suppose those things of the past, as painful as they can be to recall, are just that. Lives not lived fully. Many lives not lived at all. No turning back time.”

Sord nodded, placing his hand over hers. Time. He knew something about time, at least that he could recall from what his father and physics colleagues told him. It was too many years ago, however, when he was far too young to understand. Physics experiments. Time experiments. Alternate dimensions and quantum shit.

He needed to muster enough courage to tell her where she was going and had rehearsed the various scenes in his mind a hundred times. “How do I tell her what happened and not let it cast a cloud over our adventure? I need to play it up, the excitement in what Dad was doing. The mystery and intrigue. Stay away from pity, whether hers or my own. Show her I’m over this. Mature about it. Reality sucks sometimes, all that, then you live in the day.”

He began. “So, this topic is probably a good intro to where we’re headed, since we’re almost there.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, waiting for the surprise.

“You’ve got the most stunning hazel eyes,” he blurted.

She didn’t flinch, as if she had been told that every hour of her life.

“Thank you. Yes?” she asked, only her lips moving.

He had an urge to kiss her, right there. Her lustrous, pink lips.

“No, no. Not a good time. Work up to it, kid. Don’t go too overboard now,” he considered.

Daisy saw he was breathing fast, so she backed away. “I am so attracted to him. I don’t get it. I only want to kiss and hug him. I don’t care where we’re going. I don’t care what he says next. Head over heels. I never felt this way about a boy. A crazy, empty, anxious feeling in my stomach. Senses are on full-tilt. I should just kiss him now, but better to wait. Don’t want to surprise the poor guy.”

She pivoted again into her small hand purse and withdrew her compact, flipping the mirror open to check that her teeth were not smudged by lipstick. It closed with a snap.

“I’m just going to tell you, Daisy. All out. I want to always be totally open with you, no matter what. No matter the feelings I have for you, how I care about you, that I’m happy or mad or crazy or anything else. For whatever reason, I have this magnetic attraction to you and feel exposed and elated like never before. Exposed, but not at risk. So I’ll tell you and not sugar-coat it.”

Daisy unclenched her grasp from his hand and placed it on his lower thigh.

Sord could hardly control himself. Holding hands was one thing, but her hand on his thigh was another. This was even more intimate, more comfortable.

She peered at his face, her eyes darting around.

“Okay, then. We’re headed to Bayfield.”

She smiled. “I got that by the signs above, Dearie. My dad will not be overly pleased I’ve ventured this far from town, but Bayfield is low risk, in my book.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know about your dad and all. I’ll gladly apologize to him and explain why we went this far.”

“Ah,” she thought, “an opportunity to tease him again.”

“I’m sure you’ll have to explain in considerable detail,” she advised in all seriousness. “He already considers you a major troublemaker, and this dangerous trip will solidify that belief. Knowing him, no doubt he’ll demand a big penance for you to pay in order to see me again, if he even allows that.”

Sord felt sweat dropping from his brow. He hadn’t thought about her parents’ approval. His plan was only about Daisy and him, and at best case, maybe an implausible case, some physical interaction between them. But having an angry father come down on him, especially one who risked his own life to pull him from the clutches of death?

“Speaking of dads. Speaking of dads. I know who your dad is, at least a little bit. At least that he was part of the team who found Robbie and me and saved my life.”

“And now he’ll think you risked his daughter’s life in recompense. Isn’t that so sweet?” she continued to tease.

He took a deep breath and felt his underarms perspiring profusely. “I’m sure I’ll have to cross that bridge. But my dad, he was a scientist, a physicist, really.”

“Seriously!” she exclaimed, gently brushing the bangs from his eyes.

“I’m having a hard time continuing. Forget the damn plan! Just kiss her,” he mouthed.

“What did you say?”

And he kissed her. He wrapped his arms around her, and she touched the sides of his ribs, not wanting to go too far on this first kiss. Then she pushed back.

“But he was a physicist!” she exclaimed, slapping his knee as if the kiss didn’t occur.

His thoughts were churning. “This is a sign. Going too fast. Too much, too soon. You screwed up your plan royally, so now you need to make the best of it. She needs to know I’m over this and have grown out of the pain. Focus on the adventure.”

“Don’t you know?” she continued. “I love physics. I’ve always loved the sciences so much that I can’t get enough of them. But your dad, a physicist? You said ‘was’ and not ‘is,’ right? Is he no longer a physicist?”

“Well,” he replied, looking straight in her eyes. “He died five years ago in a mysterious accident.”

Time stopped.

“He what?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you hear about the accident at Bayfield? About the science facility that collapsed-in on itself?”

“Um. I kind of remember something about a building explosion.”

“Yeah, that was it. He was the guy running the experiment and was inside the building when it happened. Never found his remains. In fact, most of the equipment in the experiment was never found, not even parts and pieces. Something just collapsed when it happened. A vortex or quantum paradox. Everything within a large radius of the area simply disappeared as if it never existed.”

Daisy was slack-jawed. “Why? Did they find out what happened?”

“Nobody knows,” he replied confidently, displaying his intelligent indifference. “It remains a national mystery. The whole event remains a mystery. Father gone, experiment gone, lab gone, building collapsed in on itself and everything inside vanished.”

“No explosion or anything? I don’t recall detail from the news on what happened, but I was younger then.”

“Nope. No explosion or fire or plausible evidence like that. Just some weirdly contorted biopolymers from adjoining hallways to the lab. Apparently, it was as if the place never existed in space and time.”

She was silent and myriad thoughts crossed her mind. “Poor guy. Lost his dad, like I lost my mom. Something in common, very importantly in common. Binds me to him, maybe forever. Similar effects on the boy, I can tell. He sits so uprightly as if he carries no pain. But again, only a moment of self-pity, even if those moments happen too often or in sequence. Don’t feel sorry for him or yourself. It is what it is. Shit happens. The unanticipated happens. Go with it. Let him know you’re not bothered being here with him.”

“No shit!” she exclaimed, swearing for the first time. “Like, it just disappeared? Do you understand how this gets my scientific juices spinning in a frenzy? How could something simply evaporate as if it never existed? My God, we have to see this! I’m sorry, of course, that you lost your dad, but this is an astounding, momentous mystery, and you and I are the investigators!”

She grabbed him firmly around the waist and kissed him long and hard. His eyes teared up slightly, and he didn’t know how to respond.

“Look,” she advised, “we’re about here. Last stop. I assume we get off?”

Sord was flabbergasted. He had envisioned a number of alternate discussions to allay concerns she might have about this trip and his deceased father, but he needed to use none of them.

“She loves science!” he thought with glee. “What are the odds? And physics. This is better than planned. I love her. Can’t help it. A confluence of two harmonious spirits. A quantum coupling.”

The shuttle came to a quiet stop, and they exited into the small dome at the center of Bayfield. A few shops and restaurants were open.

“Hungry yet?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Probably will be famished after this edgy adventure of ours. But right now, I’m anxious to see where we’re headed, to visit this scientific mystery location to which you are indelibly linked.”

“Both you and I, you mean.”

“Yes, you and I are both linked. And you’ve never been here? Not even to Bayfield? It looks so small relative to the domes in Durango, especially Donner city center.”

He chuckled. “Kind of a Podunkville, I know.”

“So, if you’ve never been here, how do you know where to go?”

Sord glanced around for a map of the enclave. “That’s part of the adventure. I know this research lab is within city limits and no oxymasks are required, but we’re going to need to hunt around for the location as I don’t think people regularly go there. Either some or all of it may be off-limits, even though it’s still in the city. I won’t let that stop us, however. We’ll just have to get beyond obstacles as we encounter them.”

She frowned semi-seriously. “Okay, then. We have a little challenge facing us. I’m sure between our two tremendous brains we’ll determine where this place is and get access into it, whether off-limits or not."