He jumps to his feet, his Hunahpu mind dissecting time and distance Jacob!
Jacob’s heart skips a beat. He sees her standing in the twentieth row, an azure-eyed vixen whose fluid movements, as she approaches, separate her from the rest of the crowd.
Lilith… please – not now!
You deserted me!
Gelatinous ripples widen as the bullet appears.
I came here for you, Jacob. I’m offering you a last chance.
Ignoring her tantalizing presence, Jacob leaps A bucket of crimson explodes from Jacob Gabriel’s black suit as he and former President Ennis Chaney tumble sideways off the dais.
Pierre Borgia smiles, then turns suddenly at the elevator bell signal. Reaching into his pocket, he fumbles to load another. 50-caliber exploding round into the chamber.
Dominique steps out of the elevator.
‘You?’ Borgia slips the bullet into place, his finger at the trigger. ‘I should have killed you and your wacko patient when I had the chance!’
‘You tried. Now it’s my turn.’
Borgia raises the rifle barrel – as Dominique’s flexes her right biceps, commanding the microwave pain-cannon to fire.
The blast of searing heat separates assassin from gun, sending Pierre Borgia writhing on the ground, his nerve endings sizzling.
Desperate cries rend the crisp November air.
Waves of onlookers at the west end of the park drop for cover. Secret Service agents sweep President Rallo into an awaiting vehicle. Congressmen and guests disperse, some for their limos, others for the interior of the Lincoln memorial, where Secret Service agents huddle around the bloodstained body of Jacob Gabriel.
Rabbi Richard Steinberg grips the white-haired youth’s lifeless hand and prays as a dozen news hovercams jostle for airspace overhead.
A terrified physician pushes through the throng. With quivering fingers he gently unbuttons Jacob’s suit coat, revealing an undergarment drenched in blood. He shakes his head.
The horrified crowd yields to an ambulance. Word carries with the panic: ‘The other Gabriel twin’s been shot! Jacob’s dead!’
Seconds later, the insanity of the moment is interrupted by screams coming from the park’s east end as a window shatters atop the Washington Monument and a body-the body of Pierre Robert Borgia-hurtles through the air, splattering like a sack of scarlet flour at the base of the Monument below.
A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.
Jacob?
Where are you, son?
Where are you…
PART 6
‘To succeed is nothing, it’s an accident.
But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.’
There is no security on this Earth, this is only opportunity.
21
The pelican balances on a wooden piling, struggling to preen its feathers. Like most of the other coastal scavengers, the bird no longer actively hunts for its meals. The shallows are devoid of fish, the marshes long paved over. Processed food sustains it now-all the scraps it can eat.
The pelican’s beak opens and closes in spasms, gasping insufficient breaths of hot air thick with body lotions, perfumes and the unmistakable scent of human perspiration. Mau-Mau music-a blend of calypso and rap-blares from hundreds of speakers situated around the Teflon-coated fiberglass pier.
A final gasp and the pelican drops from the piling, its lifeless form splashing upon the olive-colored, gasoline-tainted surf twenty-five feet below.
Another scorching Saturday afternoon in late autumn… the inner harbor at Biscayne Bay once again transformed into a human beehive of activity.
Moving inland from the piers is a latticework of inflatable walkways and air-supported bridges that weave in and out of hundreds of stores and eateries. Shoppers and sunbathers, families and students, locals and tourists, representing a multitude of races, religions-and colors-flock to the trendy mall-park.
Skin color in the 2030s is now a matter of choice, the once-popular tattoo replaced with ‘body-dipping.’ Developed by dermatologists in response to the alarming rise in skin cancers caused by the continued deterioration of the ozone layer, ‘dermo-shields’ were originally designed as clear body applications featuring an SPF-50 ultraviolet skin protector designed to wear off in 90-120 days. Unfortunately, very few people under the age of sixty sought out the preventive treatments.
Six months after its development, an enterprising group in Australia introduced color to the formula, and body-dipping became an overnight sensation.
Clinics opened everywhere. Clients could select from a multitude of flesh-toned colors, including Caucasian, Bohemian-Tan, Chinese, African, and American Indian. Dermatology became a fashion statement, racial discrimination ultimately ‘confused.’ Even better, the four prescribed annual ‘dips’ were covered by all three levels of the FMC (Federal Medical Coverage).
More radical applications quickly followed, designed to appeal to the sought-after age twelve-to-twenty demographic. Clinics introduced ‘rainbow-shields,’ and a new race of ‘alien-adolescents’ invaded the schools, their epidermis stained from head to toe in shades of greens, blues, violets, reds, and yellows. When this fad led to increases in gang-related violence, municipalities and states instituted laws forbidding rainbow dips to anyone under the age of eighteen.
The Mau-Mau music slips into prerecorded ocean acoustics. A family of African-Americans, stained Bohemian-Tan, pauses along one of the catwalks to observe the activity below.
Bonzai-boarders balance precariously on fluorescent orange-and-yellow skateboards that ride on ‘zip tracks,’ the cushions of methane microjet air allowing riders to defy gravity-at least the first four to six feet of it.
A small crowd gathers at the guardrail, anticipating either an amazing feat or a spectacular fall. Spurred on by the applause, several of the more daring riders link arms and race along a skull-and-crossbones-painted path leading to ‘suicide hill,’ a four-storey, 360-degree vertical loop.
The blueberry-stained teens rise in unison along the nearvertical wall and invert, the crowd’s oohs and ahhs quickly turning to gasps as gravity’s invisible fingers latch on to two of the boys closest to the center. Suspended upside down, they are yanked from their boards, the rippling disturbance sending the entire pack tumbling headfirst toward the crash mats forty feet below.
On ultrasound proximity alert, air-bag suits inflate a milli-second before the first body strikes the tarmac.
For a long moment the dazed adolescents lie motionless in an entanglement of purple-blue flesh and equipment, their crash collars and helmets momentarily restricting all movement. Gradually the air suits deflate, freeing bruised but intact limbs. A smattering of applause greets the daredevils, encouraging them to reorganize and attempt the impossible assault again.
Above, the bright Miami skyline buzzes with a high-pitched whine coming from a dozen VTOLs-Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles. Powered by four fixed turbine ducts that provide thrust for launch, these two-man skycars whiz back and forth over Biscayne Bay like swarms of giant polyurethane wasps. Less-maneuverable one-man VFVs (Vertical Flying Vehicles) hover over the nude sunbathers along South Beach, the two-propeller craft rented by the hour.