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that?”
    “I speak their language.” Stu
cupped his hands to his head like panda ears and recited the Ballad of
Shuulagar a line at a time, first in Labyrinth Panda and then English. He bent
his symbolic ears at the emotional parts of the epic poem. By the time Stu
reached the code of strength, which protected women and children, a black van
had arrived. The ominous vehicle kicked up a cloud of sand as it hissed to a
halt. People tapped their phones in puzzlement as they were disconnected. The
wall of TV screens at the end of the bleachers filled with static.
    In his briefings Stu had been
warned that the military blacked out recording devices when they were about to
violate human rights and endanger civilians. He knelt on the ground and
reaffixed his helmet. His own breathing sounded loud in his own ears. I hope
no one else gets injured.
    Storm troopers with covered faces
leapt out of the van. Stu broadcast from his external speakers. “I am not
resisting. I have no weapons. This armor is to protect me against high gravity
and disease. I am the legal representative of the Sanctuary colony.”

Chapter 4 – Salome
     
    Laura Zeiss reclined in her luxury suite at the annual
shareholder’s meeting in LA. She was there to receive an award for her
hundredth patent application, but her grandfather, Tetsuo Mori, would claim the
glory. She had to wear thin slippers and a tight ponytail to make her look shorter
than him when they shared the stage.
    She hated these dog-and-pony shows.
The bulletproof jacket squeezed her chest like a compression bandage, making
work difficult. Her deadlines hadn’t changed, but she had limited access to her
Tokyo lab. Tired of staring at the same DNA strands on her wall, she rotated
the dataset for a fresh perspective. Nothing . She felt so limited
without her think tank.
    Laura expanded the projection to
fill the ceiling and had the virtual camera fly through. Today she was looking
for gene patterns that could increase intelligence without side effects like
nearsightedness. She tagged three areas in red for further study.
    “Dinner time.” When she heard her
mother at the door, Laura turned off the projector. The complex structures of the
DNA might send her mother into a compute trance, and then Laura would have to
spend the rest of the day talking her down.
    Laura opened the door so Kaguya
Mori could bring in the dining cart of dim sum. Mother never cooked. She
could be distracted too easily and burn down the building. However, she chose
the food personally. Because of Kaguya’s potential to cause embarrassment,
Tetsuo Mori kept his forty-three-year-old daughter a virtual prisoner. No one
outside a small inner circle was allowed to meet her.
    Her long, dark hair and exotic eyes
made her a breathtakingly beautiful mixture of East and West. Laura wished she
looked more like her mother.
    “How has work been going?” Kaguya
asked.
    “When the slaves complained they
had to make too many bricks, Grandfather took away their straw.”
    Pouring tea for them both, her
mother halted briefly at the acidic remark. “You must show him respect even
when you disagree … especially then.”
    “To him, I’m a profitable
experiment who shouldn’t overstep her bounds,” Laura snapped.
    Blinking, Kaguya asked, “You know
about Project Antarctic Tern?”
    I’m a project. That confirms it.
Freak-enstein. Laura struggled to hide her revulsion from her mother. “I
know you had nothing to do with it. You were practically catatonic. When I confronted
Nana, she admitted I was a science experiment designed to bring you out of your
compute trance, to give you someone to anchor to.”
    Kaguya touched her daughter’s face.
“It worked. I love you so much, and every time I see you, I’m reminded of the
kindest man I ever knew.”
    Her lover, Conrad Zeiss, the
great traitor and astronaut who went missing two decades ago. This family never
did anything shy of the epic scale. Laura had even been named after