Her genie responded instantly, hacking the datastream that flowed along the beach like an invisible river. In Atlantis, every cubic centimeter of air was permeated with nanites, waiting to serve the inhabitants. Her eyes zoomed back up the tallest tower, the Bethlehem Spire. A bright green circle of light flashed around a window too far away to be anything more than a speck, even with the fine tuning of the nanites. Still, she had the coordinates, which was all she really needed.
She waited a while longer, stealing more of the microscopic machines, turning in the ever-dimming sun to charge them to their fullest. Soon, her ribs felt better, with no evidence at all that she'd been a sun-dragon's chew toy. Jazz flexed the fingers of her left hand. They were fully under her control now that she'd fortified the nanites clinging to Jandra's nervous system. Her shoulder tingled as the nanites busily worked on cutting away the charred tissue they found there. On the whole, she felt back in control, not only of Jandra's body, but of everything.
She knew what she had to do to make sure she'd never lose control again.
Humming "Somewhere over the Rainbow," she opened an underspace gate before her.
A young woman with golden skin looked up as Jazz stepped from the rainbow. The woman had glossy black hair that seemed to bubble up from her scalp like a fountain and flow down her neck and back in liquid smoothness. The woman frowned.
Jazz smiled, until she felt movement beneath her feet. She looked down. The white sand from the beach falling from Jazz's boots were causing tiny mouths to open in the onyx floor, swallowing the grains, leaving the smooth black tile immaculate.
The entire room possessed the same sterile cleanliness. It was as big as a museum gallery, yet barely furnished-its walls were clear panes of glass, free of any curtains or blinds. The golden woman sat at a black table, or at least table top. The perfectly square polished wood hovered, unsupported by legs. A pearl-white cup and saucer sat before the golden woman, full of fluid as dark as the woman's hair. Jazz wondered why the woman was drinking ink. A memory stirred within her.
"Is that… is that… coffee?" Jazz spoke the last word with in a reverential tone.
The woman's golden eyebrows scrunched together above diamond eyes. Her lips parted to reveal pearl teeth.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
Jazz walked across the floor, trying not to be distracted by the mouths gobbling up sand that fell with each step. The golden woman held her ground as Jazz approached until they were practically touching. Jazz grabbed the cup and sniffed it. The toasted, nutty odor of coffee filled her nostrils.
"Sweet merciful Jesus, I haven't drunk coffee in seven hundred years," she said.
She took a sip. Her lips puckered at the bitterness. The receptors in Jandra's tongue weren't mapped to the parts off her brain that would find the taste pleasant. She set her nanites to work fixing that. For now, there was a mildly pleasant surge of endorphins as the hot liquid scalded her tongue.
"Jazz?" the golden woman asked.
"How'd you guess?"
"One of your identifying traits is taking things that belong to me."
"Ah, Cassie," said Jazz. "Do we really have to launch straight into the old arguments?"
Cassie crossed her arms. Her chair drifted backwards, putting some space between her and her sister. A trickle of the liquid hair ran down the crease in her forehead, over her eyebrow, and down the edges of her nose. She blew it away and the liquid responded as if it was normal hair, falling to the outer edge of her cheek. She said, "I thought you died in that explosion on Mars."
"That's what I wanted you to think," said Jazz. She put the cup down and walked toward the window. Her chrome-plated skin was faintly reflected in the glass. She smiled as she realized how youthful her body looked. Her old body had been more or less frozen in development around the age of forty. Unlike the Atlanteans, she'd never had any particular fetish for looking as if she were barely out of puberty. She'd been comfortable with her body, with its stray hairs and generous curves and the familiar sags and wrinkles. It had looked, and felt, lived in. Still, there was something about this fresh, clean body that made her spirit shiver. It was the same artistic rush she felt when she picked up a sheet of fresh white paper.
Outside the window, the distant horizon curved in a perfect arc. They were on the threshold of space. The blue-gray ocean stretched out beneath them. At the edge of the horizon, the color changed as the ocean met land. She was looking at the eastern seaboard of what had once been the United States. These shores had once been studded with cities; now, it was a wild place, the abode of dragons. It was the crowning achievement of a long life.
Jazz leapt backwards as a man flashed past the window. He was naked, with bright red skin crisscrossed with black zebra stripes. He looked as if he was giggling as he plummeted toward the earth, many miles below.
"Jesus," said Jazz. "He scared the shit out of me. Is there a rash of suicides in Atlantis?"
"Don't be absurd," said Cassie, rising to stand beside Jazz at the window. Cassie was wearing a simple slip of sheer black lace that clung to her almost flat chest and barely noticeable hips. Save for Cassie's unnatural height-she was easily a foot taller than Jazz now-she looked no older than twelve. "The city won't let anyone die. The bodies of the jumpers will be destroyed when they hit the ground, but they'll awaken instantly in a backup copy. The essential part of a person is nothing but information, and information is immortal."
"Ah, yes," said Jazz. "You Atlanteans change bodies more frequently than I change my hairstyle. Speaking of which, the last four times I've seen you, you've been female. You get that boy phase out of your system?"
Cassie shrugged. "The female body has… aesthetic advantages. It supports a broader palette of colors. The male body has never looked right to me in the brighter shades."
As if to prove her point, as second man fell past the window. He was dressed like a rodeo cowboy in a fringed leather vest and chaps, but had neon pink skin that looked dumb on him. A few seconds after he flashed by, his hat dropped past.
"It's like bungee jumping without the bungee," said Jazz, tracking the hat down as far as she could.
"They say it's the ultimate adrenaline rush. If you've gotten tired of a body and don't intend to use it again, why not dispose of it in style? It's less boring than going to sleep and waking up new."
Jazz shook her head. "This is what's so wrong about Atlantis. You've let the city remove all pain and fear and worry. You've devolved into beings so jaded you have to throw yourselves off buildings to get ten minutes of feeling alive. You've been given the gift of immortality, and except for the moderately ambitious folks who went off to new worlds, you've all turned into bored teenagers looking for the next distraction."
Cassie shrugged. Her hair flowed into a new trickle along her neck. "What great goals are left? There's no hunger. There's no death. There's no fear, or want, or sorrow. Every great challenge of mankind has been solved. How are we supposed to spend our days? There are no more battles to fight."
A leopard-skinned woman in a bathing suit darted past the window, her arms pointed before her in an arrow, her feet held in perfect balance. If they still held the Olympics, this would be a 10. But, of course, any dive-all dives-could be a ten. The muscle memory for doing anything perfectly could simply be borrowed from the Atlantean datastream. Atlanteans could know everything while literally learning nothing.
Cassie pressed her forehead to the window as she looked at the world far below. She sighed. "After the struggle's over, all that's left is entertainment."