A poster on the wall behind him read: “To err is human. To really eff things up takes a cyborg.”
Her gaze was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows to her right, which offered a view of a white sand beach, similar to the one she had in her own memories, except the sun sat in the middle of the afternoon sky, and the waves lapping against shore were minimal.
The window was a dead giveaway that the room was augmented. Rhea momentarily disabled her augmented reality overlays and sure enough the room became a tiny, nondescript cubicle, with the mayor seated behind a small desk. The suit remained, but there was nothing on the desk, and the walls were windowless. Featureless.
She reenabled overlays and the beach scene returned, along with the remaining virtual decorations. It was interesting that the mayor would share them publicly. Then again, he was a public figure, accustomed to sharing his life with strangers.
“Where is that?” Rhea asked, staring at the beach that wasn’t really there.
The mayor glanced at the floor-to-ceiling glass. “That was a place on Ganymede.”
“What?” she said. “Impossible. I’ve seen pictures. The moon is nothing like that.”
“Not anymore, perhaps,” Mayor Grandas said. “But in its heyday, Ganymede was quite the terraformed world. The Ganymedeans augmented the weak magnetosphere with a superconducting ring network in orbit, protecting it from Jupiter’s radiation belts. They built habitable domes across the surface, melting portions of the seas inside them. If you look closely at the horizon, you can see the outline of the dome. And the distant ice that hems in the ocean.”
She gazed at the horizon, and indeed saw a strange dark line floating just above the surface. And barely visible below it was a white line—the ice, presumably.
“All that is gone now, of course,” the mayor said. “The ring network was destroyed in the war. As were most of the domes. The Europans have been trying to construct a new network. Their progress has been slow, to say the least.”
She returned her attention to him, and casually scanned the mayor’s ID.
Her eyes widened. It was a match with what DragonHunter had sent her.
“You’re Veil?” she said.
He stared at her, seeming confused. Then he glanced at the robots. “Everyone leave, except you two.”
Most of the robots departed, save for the two that held their hands firmly between the crooks of Rhea’s elbows. The door shut behind the others when they were gone.
“For the next five minutes, I want your archival devices and memory storage nodes disabled,” Grandas told the two robots.
“Yes, mayor,” the robots said in unison.
That meant whatever happened in the next five minutes wouldn’t be recorded, either locally, or remotely, effectively wiping the coming moments from the memories of both machines. However, the fact Grandas didn’t ask Rhea to similarly disable her own recording device was troubling.
“Well then,” the mayor said. “So that’s what you’ve been up to. I was wondering why you’d be stupid enough to sneak into city hall. Good job.”
“So, you are Veil,” she pressed.
“No,” the mayor replied.
“Well, it doesn’t change anything,” she said. “Veil or her agent, you’re scum either way. You sent bioweapons to destroy Rust Town. You and your council.”
“It was necessary, I’m afraid,” the mayor said. “We were doing it for your own good. We wanted to end your lives quickly, mercifully, rather than forcing you to suffer, like you will now. You have to understand, we don’t have the water to share. The oceans are running dry. At the current rate, the supply will last for maybe three years. But if we share with you, with Rust Town, we have only another year left. You slum residents are notorious for the amount of water you waste. You use antiquated reclaimers, and your recycling systems are so out-of-date that when one breaks down, there’s nobody alive around who knows how to fix it.”
“Then ration our water,” she said. “Give us at least a limited supply. Or help us upgrade the reclaimers. Don’t cut us off entirely.”
“It will take a year to finish any such upgrades,” the mayor said. “By then the reclaimers won’t be of any use.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, we didn’t want to do this. But we had no choice.” He lowered his hands. “Do you know why we used designer bioweapons rather than gassing the residents?”
“Because gassing would be too obvious?” Rhea said. “This way, you can say it was a terrible tragedy. A random act of nature.”
“Wrong,” the mayor said. “We wanted a selective weapon. You see, we planned to spare everyone under the age of five. We would have invited these children to live in Aradne with us in the aftermath of the attack. We are not so cruel as you make us out to be.”
“How generous of you…” Rhea said. “Except, I saw those bioweapons crush lean-tos indiscriminately out there. Children under five were probably under more than a few of those rooftops.”
The mayor crossed his arms. “It wasn’t a foolproof system. But anyway, that plan is ruined, thanks to your interference. We have to deal with these riots of yours. And the resulting drop in public opinion among city residents.”
“The riots will stop when you restore our water, and your approval ratings will jump back to normal,” Rhea said. “The slums and the city will work together in the year remaining to us. We’ll find a way to endure. And while you’re at it, let the population know how dire the situation is. Stop shadow-banning videos on the streaming sites whenever someone mentions how low the ocean levels are. The urgency might help spur innovation.”
The
