At the sound of his voice, the audience roared. Ellis shifted his weight, feeling awkward. He didn’t know what to say, how to stand, what to do with his hands, or where to look. He tried to remember what his English teacher once told him about speaking in front of a crowd. Just imagine your audience is naked. He nearly laughed, but managed to restrain himself to a big smile. The crowd saw it and cheered again.
When at last they quieted, he said, “I guess I’d like to thank everyone for saving my life. I feel great, by the way. You did a good job.”
Again the crowd cheered, and Ellis waited for them to calm down.
“I, ah—I really don’t know what else to say.”
“What do you think of Hollow World?” someone shouted.
“It’s very nice. Very clean.”
“What’s your favorite holo?”
Ellis shrugged. “I’ve never tried one. Still getting used to the showers and voxes.”
This brought a round of laughter and more applause.
“Are those your real clothes?”
“Yes. I probably should get some new ones. I’ve been wearing these for over two thousand years now.”
More laughter. More applause.
Ellis looked down and saw Pol with Dex alongside, looking up at him with anticipation, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Do you have a home here yet?”
“Actually, I think I will be living on the surface. It’s more familiar. That is, if that’s allowed.”
Shouts of encouragement rang.
“Do you think you’ll be lonely without a woman?” It was Pol. He was staring pointedly and gesturing with his five-fingered hand for him to say something, as if the two shared a secret, only Ellis had no idea what that secret was.
Ellis hesitated, and the pause gave the crowd a chance to quiet down. “Ah…” Ellis thought about the question. He thought about Peggy. He thought about Pax. “Yes,” he said. “I hadn’t counted on that when I traveled through time. Almost everything I knew is gone. To you maybe I’m special because I’m one of a kind, but I’m also the last of my kind. And one is the loneliest number, isn’t it?”
He didn’t expect anyone to remember the Harry Nilsson/Three Dog Night song, but that was one of the perks of being ancient. He could plagiarize with impunity. Everything old was new again. Feeling awkward and just wanting to get away, he came off the stage to an ovation and the crowd reaching out to touch his ankles as he climbed down the steps.
“Beautifully done,” Pol shouted in his ear. “I’ll do wonders with that. Our tour will begin tomorrow, so you need to get some sleep. Dex and I will be back in the morning. Now unless you need anything—” Pol pulled out a Port-a-Call.
“Pol?” Ellis said. “Have you seen Pax?”
“No. Should I have?”
“I don’t know.” Ellis took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Have you heard anything?”
“About Pax? No, and as you’re aware, Pax isn’t an easy person to keep tabs on anymore.”
He nodded. “Could you contact Vin at least? I’d like to let them know what happened to me, okay?”
“Right away. See you tomorrow.”
Pol formed a portal and stepped through. Ellis couldn’t see if it was to the Council office or Firestone Farm.
Perhaps he should go to Pax’s home. If he had his own Port-a-Call he would. He considered asking Rex, but Wat had been right. He was feeling run-down and tired, like he was fighting a cold. Maybe in the morning before they left, he could get Pol to swing by Pax’s place. It wasn’t like it was out of their way.
“Rex?” He turned to the ISP administrator. “Has anyone tried to see me since news got out that I was here?”
“Everyone,” Rex said. “Absolutely everyone.”
Chapter Eleven
Quality Time
Ellis had tried several times to contact Pax but failed. By all accounts Pax had disappeared. As part of his agreement to go on tour, Ellis insisted Pol do everything possible to locate Pax, including daily messages to Pax’s home, where even Vin had no clue where the arbitrator had gone. Ellis was struck by the irony that by cutting out Pax’s chip, he was the architect of his own misery. This sense of guilt plagued him as Ellis finally submitted to the grand tour.
Pol had been relentless with the schedule. Each day Ellis traveled to some new corner of the world or another planet altogether. There weren’t nearly as many inhabitants in Hollow World as Ellis had expected. Just over 123 million, the majority of mankind having died during the Great Tempest. They all resided inside a honeycombed earth, scattered across the fifty-two tectonic plates, but with portals they could travel anywhere in an instant.
Mars looked nothing like Ellis had expected. After spending most of his youth dreaming of being the first person to walk on its surface, the ease of the trip removed that mystique. For the most part it was no different from Hollow World except for the ubiquitous Mars logo placed everywhere. This was because the vast majority of the Martian resort destination was below the surface. The little bit of the planet he was able to see from the viewing domes looked like Nevada under a hazy pink sky.
He did get to see the Mars rovers. They were still out there, preserved as part of Odyssey Historic Park. The rovers were the Red Planet’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Olympus Mons, the largest Martian volcano and the tallest mountain on any planet in the solar system. The one highlight of Mars was that Ellis got to see robots. He’d wondered where they were. Buck Rogersand The Jetsonshad promised flying cars, jet packs, and robot maids. Once again Ellis was disappointed. Previously used to safely explore the landscape of the planet, they’d become a novelty for tourists. Robots were remote-controlled machines sent out to transmit 3-D visuals and fetch rocks as souvenirs. Mars had become like Niagara Falls, a cheesy tourist trap. And like vacationers to a Mexican resort, where tourists preferred the sand-free hotel pools to the ocean, most Mars visitors preferred walking around the virtual holo than suiting up to experience the real thing. Ellis did indeed don the suit and join the mechanical delivery bots, but after a lifetime of waiting, the experience was anticlimactic.
New planets had been discovered, like Trinity, which was outside the galaxy, but no colonies had been established. The East Indian Tea Company didn’t exist anymore. Everyone had plenty of room, and nothing beyond novelty remained to drive humanity to the frontier.
While travel everywhere was instantaneous, the outings were taxing. He felt good. He was, in fact, incredibly fit for a fifty-eight-year-old man who’d just died and had his organs replaced. His energy wasn’t perfect, but he figured that was more a result of thirty years of reduced exercise than the surgery. What drained him were the crowds. Everywhere they went, hundreds of people waited. As far as the public was concerned, Ellis was bigger than Olympus Mons. Unlike the gathering in the ISP’s Grand Cathedral, these were filled with people wearing clothes and sporting tattoos. By the time they were visiting Challenger Deep, the lowest point on Planet Earth, Ellis began to see his first imitators.
“Pattern designers are working ’round the clock to create Ellis Rogers wear,” Pol explained, seeing Ellis staring back at a gawker who wore an identical flannel shirt and jeans.
Pol had enormous amounts of energy, finding time to report to Warren each night even after a long day of appearances. Apparently it was important to keep the technology-deficient farm informed on Ellis’s global impact.
That day, he and Pol had stood under the illuminated dome of Challenger Deep, and looked up at a dead, dark world of empty water. They were too deep for fish. Ellis had preferred the city of Atlantis, an artificial coral reef surrounding a thousand-story-tall see-through city, also known as The Aquarium. The Deep was just scary. The knowledge of all that water above left Ellis haunted by the thought of a crack in the glass.