live anywhere near the old sites until two hundred years ago. Now that the radioactivity had dissipated they were growing, but only the central part of the continent, now known as Central City, was safe to live in after that war. It had been damaged during the other wars but managed to survive. Over time it had become the planet’s center of government and had the largest population of any city.
From a distance, the central spires in the middle of the city with the rising sun reflecting off their crystal windows looked like giant diamond triangles growing out of the Earth. Tag was fascinated by the various shapes and colors, and he never tired of studying how the view was constantly changing. His gift gave him an inborn sense of shapes and how they fit together, or, in some cases, didn’t. The huge number of floaters flying over the city at different levels looked like long, moving dotted lines that surrounded the buildings like ants moving around their colony. The city soared thousands of feet into the sky and extended as far as the eye could see. He found that gazing at the city touched him in the deepest part of his soul with an emotion that felt almost religious. The clear blue sky and white clouds gave a beautiful background for the city, and today was spectacular.
The tops of the tallest buildings were covered with low white clouds. Of course, the tallest buildings were 4,500 feet tall, and the clouds didn’t have to be low to cover them. It amazed Tag that some of these buildings extended more than three thousand feet underground. He found it interesting that the height difference from their tops to their lowest levels allowed most of these older buildings to use geothermic energy for their power due to the temperature difference between their tops and bottoms. Of course the Coronado solar panels could have powered these buildings by themselves. Eighty-four years earlier, Joe Coronado had invented a solar panel the size of a floor mat that would generate ten times the electricity of an old solar panel that covered one square mile. That really wasn’t the best thing about his invention, though. Its storage capacity was enormous. One hour of sunshine would power that five-thousand-foot-tall building for a day. This invention allowed humans to have clean, nonpolluting, and unlimited energy. It also powered the millions of floaters used to travel around the planet. Humankind soon found that the solar panels could be used in any application that required power.
It also made a great weapon when it was charged with a fusion reactor instead of the sun. The panels could absorb seemingly unlimited amounts of energy as long as the solar panel discharged its stored energy before reaching its limit. That, however, was a recent discovery that was accidentally made by miners on the moons of Mars. One of them had come up with the idea of charging three power cells to their limit and then releasing all that power into a quick blast of energy focused into a tight beam aimed at a hardened rock wall that had broken six of their drill bits. When they did this, it made an eight-foot circle one hundred feet deep in less than one one- hundredth of a second. The Coronado power cell, as it came to be known after that, made mining for metals easier and increased tenfold the raw material available to build an advanced civilization. It not only made it easier to get to these materials but it also made all the bracing that was done on the walls of a mine obsolete. A circle is nature’s strongest shape because it distributes the forces equally around its surface, so all that the miners had to provide was a surface to walk on. It also made mining asteroids and moons more economical because the walls were airtight from the intense heat, making them extremely hard and smooth as glass. Human expansion into the solar system and planets inside the twenty-light-year limit became an explosion. Every business was looking for a moon or large asteroid to mine for raw materials. Earth became a center of high technology.
On a field trip to one of Earth’s two naval shipyards, Tag’s class saw one of the new destroyers landing, and their tour guide talked about how the Coronado power cell revolutionized the building of spacecraft. They no longer had to be more than 3,600 feet long to contain all the shielding and weapons necessary to protect the crews from the old nuclear reactors in order to survive in space warfare. One of the newest destroyers could easily defeat ten of the old warships. When asked how many ships the navy had, the guide said that was classified. “I hope we have a lot, especially in light of all the trouble we’ve had with the Alliance,” Tag thought. “It can’t be a large number,” he mused. “We only have two shipyards on the entire planet and that’s for building commercial as well as military spacecraft.” In history class he had learned that the Alliance had restricted humanity to only two shipyards on Earth at the same time they imposed the twenty-light-year limit. This was done to control the number of warships humanity could build.
Tag liked watching people go about their everyday tasks. He was a keen observer of behavior, which enabled him to see things most people didn’t. For instance, that man who was planting a flower in his roof garden on top of a building they were passing had a small serial number at the base of his neck that let Tag know that he served in the naval marines. One of his hand-to-hand instructors in school had the same type of tattoo on his neck, and he explained that all the other military branches had their tattoos on their arms. The naval marines had them on their necks so their space armor could confirm that the right owner was putting it on quickly; the vacuum of space required quick entry. The army could usually take their time putting on their armor since they normally operated on a planet’s surface. Every armored suit recognized its owner’s serial number, and if it wasn’t the right number, the armor was programmed to self-destruct with the person inside who didn’t belong.
“He’s really not that big to be a marine,” Tag thought as he watched the marine tend his garden. “Of course in zero gravity you probably don’t have to be very big. One thing’s for certain, that’s one tough soldier I wouldn’t want mad at me.” He knew that marines were very dangerous people. Their hand-to-hand combat skills were well documented and respected. “He’s someone I would avoid.”
Tag thought back to his fourteenth level in school and the marine instructors that were his teachers that year. The fourteenth level is when all students are given classes in hand-to-hand self-defense. Part of the reason for these classes is to find those who have an aptitude for learning the physical moves that are necessary to excel in hand-to-hand fighting. Tag thought it seemed weird to be teaching students how to fight when if you ever had a fight you would be expelled from school; but the cities still had criminals, so learning these skills could save your life. The real reason why everyone had to take the class was so that those who were good could be considered for future military service. Everyone had to take the class once a day for the entire level. Tag discovered very quickly that he could disable and hurt anyone he was fighting. Like everything else, he discovered it by accident. Without thinking, in one of his first matches, which happened to be with Eric, he knew exactly where he was going to move and knew where to hit him so that the force of the blow and Eric’s movement combined for maximum effect. He didn’t swing hard, which was a good thing, because he broke his best friend’s arm. He knew he was only able to do this by using his gift, and he remembered his promise to his mother not to use it. So from that point on he allowed his opponents to win, but he continued to practice moves during class and especially at home. His instructors decided that that first bout was just luck. His sense of knowing where his opponent would move gave him a huge unfair advantage, and it also prevented any of his opponents from ever really landing a solid blow when they beat him. Just like his game of tag as a five-year-old, no one could really tag him with a hard blow during these sessions. These particular skills were going to save his life many times in the future. However, at seventeen years old he learned the skills simply because it gave him great pleasure to be able to control his physical movements. He would sit in these classes and close his eyes and be able to see in his mind the motions opponents made as they clashed with each other. The instructors never lost, but he could tell that they were not using all their skills. In his mind’s eye he could see the instructors start to deliver blows that could injure students, then stop and use other moves that were not as effective and were less dangerous. What he didn’t know was the instructors were observing not only the students who were competing but also those that were watching. Their reports listed Tag as someone who had no affinity or interest in what they were teaching. “He sleeps through most of the class,” they wrote. These reports eliminated the possibility of him ever having a military career. What they didn’t realize, and Tag didn’t know himself, was that he would never need training; his body just knew what to do to protect him.
Some of his classmates did quite well, including one whom he never tired of watching. Leila Barber seldom lost against her classmates. Tag knew that she loved dancing and gymnastics, and those skills translated well in hand-to-hand self-defense. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had long black hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion, possessed a slim but strong body, and moved with a grace that even someone without his gift could see. He had been watching her since he had felt her looking at his picture when he was seven years old. He had never gotten the nerve to talk with her but had gazed at her whenever he could. It wasn’t only her beauty that attracted him; she was also one of the smartest people he had ever known. This combination not only beguiled him, but intimidated him.
“How could she ever be interested in someone like me?” he wondered. It seemed that all the boys that had wealthy families and popularity were constantly asking her out. So he kept his distance and loved her from afar. Though he promised his mother not to use his gift, he would sometimes watch her and not let her see him do it. It was one of these times on the floater coming home from school where he was gazing at her that led to the start of his troubles with the Enforcement Committee. Enforcement Committee: they were two simple words that didn’t
