SORD RECALLED THE VIEW of the farms and building he and Daisy passed in the shuttle. “I get that. Hard to resist the urge to go backward in time. But none of that worked, not with the way tech spread so rapidly across society in the early part of last century. Tore the planet apart. Tore our species apart. I can’t imagine they need more proof of this than trying to survive outside Prosperity for a few weeks. Not nice out there. You can grab all the old pleasures you want, but a minute later some hybrid mech may rip your head off to take it for himself.”

“Telling you not to be complacent. Prosperity is not panacea. Brains tell people they want to be different than others. Better than others. Very hard to resist that. Feeling you need to be more than your neighbor. Special. Admired. Hate the sameness of life here. Much, much is naive about Prosperity.”

“Sorry, Lily, but I still don’t sense a lot of naive people. We get so much schooling on all of this. Like the Demagogue’s Checklist. All the things people do to gain control over others because they lack their own sense of self. I could go on and on, as there is so much more.”

“Less about people, more about nation. Prosperity is naive. Look at today. Look how that bad man smashed you with his arms. Toes dragging on the floor. Where were police? Nowhere. Why? Prosperity says have local control. Local this. Local that. Personal privacy. Security cameras not in every location. Easy even for bad Matt to escape captivity. No alarm bells going off. Too much trust.”

He shook his head. “I can’t disagree after today. If there had been a security camera, an alarm would have gone off somewhere. Not saying it would have prevented him from taking me outside the domes. Thank God you were there.”

“Naive. Too trusting, this government. Told you my doctorate of biochem. I know many things about very small worlds. Nanoparticles. Nanobots. So small, cameras do not see.”

She pointed upward toward the dome top. “Nano devices no doubt up there, watching now. Monitoring. Not Prosperity’s, but others who want in. Want what we have. Waiting and watching.”

“But we would have found those, right? We have our own ways of detecting this stuff. Countermeasures and the like. This is a constant cat-and-mouse, one upmanship we’ve all gotten used to. Our tech versus theirs, continuous threats and interplay. I can’t believe you are working a restaurant here, however, and not instead with Prosperity’s government to help with our defenses and offenses.”

“I did such work a long time ago. Retired. Tired and retired. Too many risks, every day. People out there, outside Prosperity, they have not changed. More resourceful, more angry, hateful, jealous, lazy. They prefer to take and not make for themselves. Every day a new challenge here to keep citizens alive. You don’t hear of it. Scares too many people, so never announced loudly.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy or rude, but nobody has to retire, Lily. Can I ask why you stopped your biochem work?”

“Just told you. Too much pressure to keep citizens safe. Could not sleep at night. Now working here. My restaurant. My food. My kitchen and cooking. My customers. These are good things. I can sleep at night, though as I age, it’s harder to sleep.”

“Why not just stop or reverse your aging?”

Sord paused at the end of his sentence. This was pushing too far since the decision to stop or reverse aging was a very personal one. He recalled only a few people in Durango who chose to age and die a natural death.

Lily had been looking directly at Sord until then, and her eyes dropped to the floor.

“Sorry,” he half-whispered. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Way too personal. My fault.”

“No need to be sorry. I’ll answer. Lily’s life. Eyes have seen too much. Ready for nature to run the course. Gladly take death when it comes. Prefer not to leave in pain or by nanobot attacks or means not natural. Life was long. Eventful. Many, many memories. Some good. Like today. Today is very good.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. “Very good for me that you were here today. Between Matt trying to drag me out and the racnine attacks from a few months ago, I’ve been lucky twice now that death has not come early for me.”

“Racnines,” she spat. “Many, many run-ins with them.”

“You?”

“Yes. Before coming to Prosperity, Lily lived in encampments many years. Such terrible conditions, I can’t explain and don’t want to think about. But racnines. Seen many children taken away by them. Pulled from mothers’ arms. Sometimes got the mother, too, or the father. Never should have had them at all.”

Sord felt the conversation was running thin, but Lily had given no indication she was ready to stop. “Had what, the racnines?”

“Yes. Evolved to be vicious. Cunning. Run in packs. Breed fast. Survival. Alpha animal. Stupid, stupid people.”

“You mean the people like me who should have been better prepared to deal with them?”

“No. Those were unfortunate ones. I mean the high school student that invented racnines one day at home, then put them in the wild to breed.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, recalling a little about their history.

“All this. All this happened to humans. So predictable. Tech got too easy. Everyone wanted it. Easy to get to, easy to bake the pie. Lots of different pies with many ingredients. Most did not work, and many died. Off-target monsters. Some, like racnines, worked too good and ruined our lives.”

He stared at his broken arm, now healed. “Yeah, they almost got me. Though in olden days, it could just as well have been a bear or coyote pack.”

“Not likely. I knew of them. Coyotes, wiped out by racnines. Bears, too. A menagerie now. Many mixes of things outside here not mixable before. Most don’t make it.”

“Yeah, we’re taught about that in school. Lots of pictures. Wish I could say I’m great at science, like Daisy.”

“I was expert at science. Tian and your dad, expert at theirs. Before that, though. Before that. We failed. Fucked up.”

“Wow!” he exclaimed, arching his body against the chair back. He was surprised to hear any adult swear, at least openly in front of others. Though he did this all the time with friends like Robbie, at other times it was inappropriate or in bad taste to do so.

“Yeah, you can say that again.”

“Fucked up.” She chuckled momentarily. “So predictable. Anybody with eyes could see what was to come. Gene editing labs, all city corners. Like stores in early days legalizing drugs. All had their own recipes for creating changes. Brown hair. Blonde hair. Change eye color. Skin color. Gene drives pushing code back into a person’s cells. Then mutations with other species. Apes. Bugs. Plants.”

“That’s not so bad, though. Right, Lily? I mean, some hybrids I know are proud of their differences. Some changes are really beneficial, at least for them.”

She slammed her hand down hard onto the tabletop. “Yes. See this bioplas? Good stuff. Helped us build Prosperity quickly. No way to do it otherwise so fast and cheap. But I’m not talking about now. I’m talking then. Humans should have expected such a rush, a cascade. Rich people fighting for superior tech. Making their kids so smart and better thinkers than all others. Augments with chips, biochips. Control of minds by AI systems. First offered as replacement for cell phones, then morphed. Changed into bad things.”

“I don’t disagree, if you’re talking back then, fifty years ago.”

“Yes, fifty, eighty years. Stupids. Simpletons. Ashamed to be the same species, they were so blind to a few clicks ahead. Obvious, predictable, and oblivious. People want the best for only them or family, friends. Damn to others. Damn the planet. Onrush was too big. Governments not able to manage or control. Many trampling for first in line. First to get bigger brains. Better children. Taller. Whiter. Paying big money. All this to be prettier in some way. Humans got very, very ugly instead.”

“Can’t turn back the clock, though, agree? So many people gone, and hopefully we learned our lessons.”

“Royal fucked. Human malaise. Humans were the malaise. Without direction. Amplified extremes and differences. Started with unrestricted social networks in the 2020’s, and you know about GDI resulting. Easy to predict that outcome. Society with ugly disparities, only got worse in time. Some can never growing old, never dying. Rich and fortunate get smarter, better looking, AI-connected. But you. You’re unfortunate. You don’t get a spot in line. Not enough money or connections. Wait your turn, if it ever comes. By then, we superior, fortunate ones will dominate. We’ll show you.”

Sord had heard all this in spades through his various years of schooling, though not quite so angrily. A few things were clear to him, however. She was not among the privileged class in her early days. And, in conflict with Prosperity’s teachings, she held onto anger about the past as if she had lived through countless consequences of humanity’s errors and missteps.

“Aging,” she continued. “Tian’s father. He was the aging scientist at our encampment. Created his tech for many other places, too. Was good at it, but a very bad man. Raped many women, including me, many times. Thought he was superior until I put my elbow to his throat one day while raping me. Should have killed that man before then but may never have had my Tian.”

Sord was stricken for words. Nobody had ever been so direct or so graphic with him. Pain and suffering. These were things he knew others had endured, but among all his friends, none had ever experienced the deprivations outside Prosperity.

“Jesus!” he mumbled. “So sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Many men are bad, as I know too well. Evil. Dog eat dog outside Prosperity. Memories I have never leave the brain, not even with constant teachings. Stoic philosophy helps, but not a clear cure. Never thought anything could help before this place.”

She continued clicking her pen top, though more slowly now.

“Sord,” she warned. “This can happen again. Humans are not meant to hold such power. Even with Stoic philosophy, I doubt they can manage. Too weak in their core. Fearful. Greedy. Amygdala-driven. Get power from what they have, or who and what they control. Innate and instinctual. You must ever be on guard. Humans are no different than racnines. My dominance. Your deference. My possessions. My mating partners. Yes, humans are stronger together, but I want to be on top. Don’t like number two. But when on top, even over small things, craziness sets in. Ego. Superior senses. Rationalizing all should become like them, eventually. Only they have the secret. All others are stupid, need lessons from me. This is the way of humans. Drives all behavior. I know. Too much these eyes have seen to think we can change. We can try, but likely futile.”

Sord knew her rant was far more than a second of self-absorption, and he thought his presence was exacerbating the situation.

“Got you. Hate to say it, Lily, but I probably should get home. My mom is likely anxious to hear what happened.”

Her eyes were fixed at a distance, and she nodded her head. “Remember you said ‘can’t go back in time?’ Funny to say that.”

“Why?”

“Your father and Tian. Tried to go back in time. Muon colliders. Energy fields. Discovered the unification theory. New physics.”

Sord was beyond excited. “What? What do you mean?”

Lily knew she had gone too far. She had kept the boy too long, and his mother would be wondering where he was.

“Can’t tell you now. You come back to visit Lily one day. Bring Daisy. Very nice girl. We can talk more on your dad and Tian. Science experiments.”

He was sure Daisy would love that discussion. “Okay, okay. Yeah, I need to get back. And Daisy would probably understand a lot more of what you say than I. She’s a major physics whiz. I’ll take you up on this very soon, like next week?”

“You bet,” she assured him. “I’ll make more of Lily’s good food.”

“It’s a plan, then,” he agreed.

Sord stood up, grabbed Daisy’s rose and the bioplas boot, then held his hand out to shake hers.

Lily hugged him.