

### Pangaea

One race. One world. One company. One mind.

Copyright 2013 Revelly Robinson

Published by Revelly Robinson at Smashwords

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Prologue

The year is 2257 and the world is governed by a global regime. Sydney is no longer known as Sydney, Australia. Sydney Metropolis is now simply regarded as location -64+30 in the grid, the epicentre of economic and financial activity for the south-eastern quadrant of the globe. A city unto itself, without the added complication of belonging to a nation state. All distinctions between countries have long since disappeared, lost to the gradual implementation of the global regime. After intense lobbying by multi-national corporations to create a more favourable environment for global economic growth, the system of law and order by which countries maintained their sovereignty over the people was ultimately transferred to a separate international governing body. The global regime was given irrevocable authority to rule on behalf of all people in the world and upon being granted such power, so began the demise of the nation state. Countries began to allocate greater powers to the global regime, allowing it to expand evermore in jurisdiction. In due course, the global regime was granted with the power to exercise all the functions of a nation state, both domestically and internationally. As the world began more and more to trade as an integrated whole, so the divisions between countries broke down until eventually, the concept of a nation became largely irrelevant.

After the establishment of the global regime the international corporations stepped up their lobbying of the global government. Corporations themselves began to run for seats on parliament and over time, progressively ousted the political parties from their seats. Fewer than 10 international companies came to dominate government, as eventually the people chose to elect representatives from companies rather than political parties to form government. The citizens of the world became the shareholders of these corporations, voting not only for the economic viability of the corporations, but also ostensibly for the future of all people. Elections continue to be held by the global regime every four years. However, the process is more about an examination of the ruling corporation's profit and loss statements than a platform for issues faced by the people.

Corporations jostle with each other for votes based on which one is more successful and can turnover a greater profit. It stood to reason that what was good for the company was good for the people of the world. The most successful company dominates politics until a risky venture triggers a downturn that forces it to regroup, or another company initiates a hostile takeover of one its subsidiaries. The cycle of power from one company to another continues, until eventually only five companies are left jostling for control of the global regime. Democracy remains, but it is hanging by a thread.
Chapter One

A New World Order

Chantel Wild yawned and stretched out her arms in the suggested stretching motion recommended by the 'Policy for Promoting Physical Wellbeing and Ultimate Happiness in the Workplace'. It had been exactly two hours and twenty seven minutes since she had started her workday and in precisely three minutes, it would be time for her allotted ten minute break to "re-energise and reinvigorate". Mundanely watching the timer, Chantel employed various other tension relieving techniques to allow the last few moments before break time to elapse, all the while giving the impression of maintaining productivity.

As soon as the time for her break ticked over, Chantel was up. Away she rose from the desk she occupied as a technical engineer, or 'tech eng' being the more common term. Through the corridors she passed in the building occupied by the multi-national conglomerate Pangaea to the pod station. Into the pod she jumped which she programmed to take her out to the Martin Place exit. Down, up, over and around she travelled in the pod through a network of tubes intricately interwoven throughout the building. Forty-seven seconds after she had left her work station on the 167th floor of Pangaea towers, Chantel was spat out of her pod into the pulsing tempo of Sydney Metropolis.

That morning when Chantel stepped out into Martin Place, Sydney Metropolis, location -64+30, she was typical of a generation that was raised to believe that international companies ruled the world and that it had always been this way. She also took for granted the chip embedded in her head that had been hard wired to her brain since the time when her skull had stopped growing and contained the accumulated collection of all the intellectual property she had acquired over her lifetime. Through this chip she licensed, rented, accessed, viewed, read, used all the movies, music, readings and other material acquired from Pangaea. Some material she collected on a more or less permanent basis, other material was licensed on a pay per view or multi-view arrangement which would automatically be deleted upon expiry of the licence.

Each of the five international companies represented in the global parliament had developed their own chip that would only accept downloads in the format specified by that company. Once Chantel had made the decision, at the age of thirteen, to implant a Pangaea chip in her head, she knew this would be a lifetime allegiance. Procedures to remove the chips were costly, invasive and fraught with ramifications. Removal represented repudiation of the terms of the licence agreements which Chantel had agreed to for the implantation of the chip and in removing it, Chantel would have to surrender her full archive of entertainment as well as any personal creations stored on the device. Most people used the chip as their own personal hard drive, storing photos, documents and home movies onto the implant. Once this material was created and stored on the chip in Pangaea format, it could not then be transferred to a different format.

Although, having a Pangaea chip, Chantel could easily have downloaded her chosen content using the wireless transmission available throughout the entire Pangaea tower, on this morning Chantel felt like having a morning stroll before her daily download. At 11am in the morning, the temperature in Sydney Metropolis had already climbed to 50 degrees Celsius and would rise further to 55 degrees by midday. However, she knew it would not take her long to find a download station, there being millions dotted around the central business district alone.

Various download stations, each belonging to one of the big five and branded accordingly, were melded into buildings, light poles, sidewalk eateries and the like, merging with and becoming part of the city scenery. Some were low to the ground and adorned with bright colours to cater for children; others were behind a dark screen to shield the choices being made by perverts downloading porn. Some were in self-contained, air-conditioned booths for those wanting to take their time in deciding upon a download; others were designed for downloading on the run. Each station, though branded according to its company, was targeted at a niche market and personalised to give the downloader the illusion of individualism. Regardless, the content from each company was exactly the same.

Because Chantel usually executed wireless downloads at her workplace, she was unaccustomed to the perception of choice displayed by the different kinds of download stations in the city. She could immediately perceive the stations designed to tap into the young, professional market – brightly lit, trendy booths playing the latest range of music available for download. Instinctively she avoided these, steering clear of the all too obvious aggressive marketing techniques targeted at her niche. Sweating profusely already in the pervasive Sydney heat, Chantel turned down the slightly less populated Pitt Street. Spying an inconspicuous-looking station, replete with tinted windows and shielded interior, Chantel lowered her sunglasses, did a quick sweep of the street to make sure no one she knew was watching and, as furtively as a paedophile, dashed into the dark download booth.

Once inside the dark surrounds of the Pangaea download station, she was greeted with the all too familiar sight of the holographic download database dinosaur, performing its usual introduction, just like she had witnessed countless times before.

"Welcome to the greatest collection of entertainment in the history of the world! What would _you_ like to experience? Will it be a movie, music, reading, video game or viiiiiiiiirtual reality?"

"Movie," Chantel stated assertively.

"A great choice! Now what sort of mooooovie gets you in the mood? Will it be a horror, a sci-"

"Comedy" said Chantel, cutting off the dinosaur before it could finish its spiel.

"After something a little...light-hearted are we? I'm sure I've got just the movie for you. Just to make sure, why don't you give me a bit of clue about what tickles your funny _bone,_ hehe-"

"Comedy classic."

"Well I'll be damned. I never took you for someone with an interest in _pre-hysteria._ Ho, ho, ho!" chortled the imaginary dinosaur.

Chantel groaned. Despite her own position as a tech eng in Pangaea she would never understand how the company had programmed an interactive voice service to deliver the most tedious of puns. She was sure that some neglected, overlooked engineer, had a lot of fun designing this dinosaur.

Scrolling through the comedy movie selection Chantel's eyes glazed over the usual brainless, light-hearted escapades. She wanted a film in which she could rejoice in escapism, without losing too many brain cells in the process. After all, Chantel already had the rest of her workday to do that and she was relying upon her post work-hours for at least a smidgen of stimulation. Conscious that the allotted time for her break was well and truly expiring, she grew so impatient with flicking through the thousands of titles on offer that she impulsively closed her eyes and pointed at random.

"Well, what do you know, you've picked _Soul,_ " squealed the dinosaur in delight.

"Ugh, whatever," Chantel muttered, rolling her eyes at the dinosaur's exuberance.

As per the usual regime, Chantel raised the stylus pen on the download station to the contact point on the chip in her head. Pressing the confirm button, she heard a beep and the process was finished. Chantel felt the scanner lightly brush the payment chip in her arm, debiting 50 dollars from her account to purchase the movie download. 5MB of movie had just been transferred to her head for permanent use. Chantel was, as always, reluctant to select the pay-per-view option. If she enjoyed watching a movie and wanted to see it once more, it was usually impossible to find it again in the vast database operated by Pangaea. The other reason she chose to own rather than rent movies was because Chantel was a verified hoarder who relentlessly felt an ancient, primeval need to acquire more despite the fact that the only physical belongings in the entire world which could actually be considered her property consisted of barely more than a bed and a set of table and chairs, in addition to the obligatory wardrobes of clothes and shoes. Everything else she rented or was supplied as part of a package deal. Even her implant did not belong to her and could theoretically be removed at any time by Pangaea if she breached any of her licence conditions. So when given the choice, Chantel chose to 'own' whatever she could 'own', despite the equivocality of whether transferring a few megabytes of data onto a rented chip embedded in her head could be called an acquisition. Nevertheless, Chantel added _Soul_ to her collection.

"Lucky me, I'm now the proud owner of _Soul_ ," Chantel mumbled to herself, skimming the blurb of the movie. "A retired widower builds a time machine so he can travel back and relive the time he spent with his since deceased wife. However, he accidentally sets the machine for a time before their marriage, when his wife was still enjoying her wild and rambunctious youth. Right..."

Chantel shrugged. She figured she could have made a worse decision. Glancing quickly at the timer again, Chantel panicked. She would have to race back up Pitt Street and Martin Place to get back to her desk before the next person was due to take their allotted break time. If there was anything that the 'Policy for Promoting Physical Wellbeing and Ultimate Happiness in the Workplace' did not condone, it was exceeding one's time for breaking from work. This, Pangaea's policy sternly warned, would ultimately not lead to happiness.
Chapter Two

Soul

Navigating herself from one pod station to the next, Chantel rode the tubes home as she had done countless times before. It was an isolating, meditative experience. Chantel still felt ill at ease with the transportation process, no matter how many times she had endured the ride before. Regardless, she was now accustomed to being confined in a pod and travelling over a vast distance through an intricate network of tubes criss-crossed throughout the city. She knew that there was no dedicated route that would take her from A to B and each day it was a different journey. At any given time she was not to know if she was below ground or a hundred stories above ground, if she was passing through a building or going over a bridge. Her journey could be recalibrated at any second depending on the volume of traffic, energy efficiencies or an unforeseen obstruction. Each day after she finished work, Chantel would step into a pod, shut the door, close her eyes and pray for the best.

When she opened her eyes, she was greeted with the familiar sight of the pod station closest to her home. The neon billboard for Utopia, another global corporation also represented in parliament, greeted her with irony. Although a Pangaea devotee and employee, Chantel felt a twinge of betrayal at starting and ending each work day basking in the glow of Utopia's translucent advertisement. There was no reason she should feel so guilty, Chantel convinced herself. All corporations were much of a muchness in this world.

Chantel started walking back to her apartment in the residential zone of the city. She would have to stop by a vending machine on the way to pick up some food packs for dinner, but this wouldn't be an issue, there being one every few metres along the short corridor to her apartment. She paused at a machine about two thirds of the way along the 100 metre corridor to her high rise apartment.

'The closer to home I get dinner the less distance I'll have to carry it,' thought Chantel.

Glancing over the range of cuisines in the glass window that were available, Chantel wondered what sort of food would go with a comedic, time travel movie. All foods were a type of fusion nowadays, commensurate with the general population. Egg noodles with creamy bacon sauce in a white wine reduction, Bolognese sauce over fried rice, vindaloo curry and chips – these were the general meals on offer for those working professionals who didn't have time to make use of their own kitchen. The selection would be rotated intermittently with different combinations as food producers tried to keep the menu interesting. Chantel chose an appetising concoction of couscous and chicken pizza for her meal to be warmed up later.

As the vending machine retrieved the pre-packaged meal from its bowels Chantel presented her arm to be scanned for payment. $199 was the standard fare for take home meals nowadays and Chantel was convinced she should have at least that amount in her woefully meagre account. Waving her arm in front of the vending machine scanner, the machine registered payment with a series of beeps and a steely sounding 'Payment complete' voice activation. The remaining balance in her cash account flashed on the screen for a brief moment, which caused Chantel to groan. Chantel collected her takeaway pizza and proceeded down the corridor to her apartment.

A total of three electronic implants were inserted into the average human being, as well as a clear Perspex retinal implant coating over the eyeball. The main implant was the hard drive in the brain which was made to operate with the Perspex retinal implant. There were also implants for the payment account in the arm and the communicator in the ear. The communicator was usually inserted as soon as a person could communicate intelligently, at the age of three or four. The hard drive was inserted into a person's brain when their skull stopped growing, usually around the age of 11 or later. Similarly, the payment implant was inserted when the body stopped growing, roughly around the age of 13. Retinal implants were usually inserted later when a person's vision stopped developing and stabilised, approximately at the age of 21. Special eyeglasses were available for viewing material off the hard disk before the insertion of the retinal implants.

All implants were generally inserted for a person's lifetime and each implant was wired to operate only with the other implants. The sound for playback of material from the hard drive was channelled through the communicator. The hard drive was used to visually access the details on the payment account. The retinal implant made the content from the hard disk viewable. Consequently, all implants acted like a circuit of information that relied upon the operative functions of each of the other devices. The electronic implants, being the hard drive, communicator and the payment account, were connected to the Pangaea mainframe, meaning any time Chantel was in a wirelessly enabled Pangaea area, she could access any information from the mainframe through any of her electronic implants. The electronic implants were powered by the energy emanating from the human body. Each device was designed to self-charge, providing that it had enough heat, movement and kilojoules. Of course, all devices had to be aligned to the same global company to work together.

Chantel had just arrived home to her apartment to see the sun disappearing over the edge of the arrays of skyscrapers stretching to the ends of metropolis zone and breathed a sigh of relief. Even with the air-conditioning on full power in her climate controlled building, the heat of the sun was still immense. She struggled enough as it was to fulfil her recommended 30 minutes of physical activity per day and if the sun's rays were beating down upon her windows, she found this feat almost impossible. Regardless, she still adhered strictly to her exercise regimen, as opposed to most of the other people living sedentary lives.

Chantel activated the news on the holographic device built into her hard drive chip. Because her apartment had already been set up to receive wireless transmission through Pangaea she could receive direct streaming of Pangaea's 24 hour entertainment service as a projection to her visual sensory receptors. These contained a special substance to link the projection to her hard drive so the image was viewable only by the user. No matter which way she turned, rolled or jumped as she scrambled her way through her physical exercises, she had unimpeded vision of the live news service projected directly in front of her retinas and a dedicated feed of the soundtrack into the communicator lodged in her ear.

The news for today contained nothing unusual. There was the regular cycle of cyclones hammering the -50+27 agricultural zone. Severe storms were a common occurrence these days and Chantel worried about how her parents were faring in the nearby location -54+29. She refrained from fretting too much about it, knowing that they had an underground bunker equipped especially for such situations. They could survive for another 100 years on the stock they had stashed in the bunker if they absolutely had to. She was concerned about the havoc the cyclones were causing on the crop production in the area though. The frequency of these cyclones and the problems they created for farmers was the very reason why her parents favoured produce that grew underneath the ground. They would still be damaged in the event of severe flooding, but at least they could not be blown away, so they thought.

After finishing her physical exercise, catching up on other current events in the media and winding down with a quick shower, Chantel continued her usual daily ritual of heating up her vending machine takeaway pack and settling down to watch the movie she had purchased that day. She activated the holographic download for _Soul_ and proceeded to tune out for what she was expecting to be a completely brainless plot.

'Pft, time travel movies,' she muttered to herself. 'As if we haven't seen it all before.'

It was true. Time travel stories were the most recycled, regurgitated plot lines of any creative work. Writers loved to fascinate about what living in the past might have been like. There was little remaining evidence of how life once was for the humble population of Earth. All records of history had been stored on a gigantic server in what used to be known as Silicon Valley. Just under a hundred years ago a massive earthquake had struck that area destroying all records and data stored on the servers. Attempts were made at recovery of the data but most of the information had been irretrievably deleted from the face of the earth. It was after the 'Great Mainframe Disaster of 2160', as it became known, that all data centres were moved to Shanghai, being the city from which the global regime governed. History had but all been wiped out.

After the disaster data formats proliferated into those used currently by the global five. Any interoperability between programs, documents, intellectual property or anything stored in digital form, became impossible as, with the slate wiped clean, each of the global companies could start releasing information in their own distinct formats. All Chantel's files on her hard drive were '.pga' files for Pangaea and consequently, could not be transferred to another device. The question of interoperability soon became irrelevant in any case. With hard drives becoming devices that were mounted onto the head and hard wired into the brain, it was only possible for the registered user to access those files and any sort of file sharing was not only breaching the licence conditions, but also the law. Eventually, everyone became complacent with such a life and like the situation of the global regime and holding of government by the global five, people soon began to forget the time when it was ever any different.

As every file download was programmed to be operated only by the receiver, each person's movie cinema, television and dance floor existed only in their own head. Gradually these institutions died out and the concept of watching a movie together was replaced by the reality of each person being isolated in their own entertainment. Families would sit together in the same space, each member connected to his or her own device, and spend hours enrapt in their own little world of personalised entertainment. There were no fights over the remote control for televisions nowadays, but consequently there was genuinely no need for interaction with any other human being as each person could remain enthralled in their own little world, courtesy of their own private chip and communicator.

Although Chantel had a handful of friends, she often found it hard to conjure the excuses to see them. Movie dates were obsolete. Concerts were no longer the norm. Eating out was an extravagant luxury that she could only afford every so often. With such an astronomical difference in price between fresh food and the pre-packaged take away boxes she could obtain from vending machines, she often found it hard to economically justify splurging money on food. So, like the several million other people that called Sydney Metropolis home, Chantel slipped into a routine of singularity and self-entertainment, which she believed was and always had been the norm.

There was definitely no shortage of movies available. Movies and other visual or virtual forms of entertainment were still being created en masse. Chantel skimmed through the previews programmed into the _Soul_ viewing and settled down for what she assumed would be a totally uninspiring and unoriginal movie. She had long since ceased having high expectations for entertainment when she had pretty much seen it all before. Nonetheless, she thought, this should kill the few hours of the night left until it was time to retire to bed. She activated the soundtrack on her communicator and sat back.

Just at the time when the opening credits should have started appearing before her eyes, Chantel was alarmed by an almighty crackling sound blasting into her earpiece. The hologram of the viewing became warped into a jumbled display of numbers and letters flashing at random. Scrambled images started to appear. Chantel sat up alert. Never before had she received a corrupted Pangaea download. This certainly didn't look like the movie _Soul._ She squinted her eyes as she tried to make out the content of the file glitch.

Through the fuzzy images coming through on the hologram, Chantel could just barely discern the dark shapes of rows of bodies pushing something; whatever this 'something' was it seemed to be astronomically large and unfathomable. It looked to Chantel like a massive spiral or coil, like nothing she had ever seen in her life. But it was the people doing the pushing that caught her attention. As glimpses of the images phased in and out of view, Chantel could perceive, for the briefest of moments, the individual bodies of human beings straining with the exertion of the intense manual labour they seemed to be doing. While the different images flickered in and out of focus, it seemed that there were tens if not hundreds of these people, all pushing something together.

Chantel widened her eyes. Given the poor quality of the hologram, it was difficult for her to make out if the people that seemed to be rotating in a giant circle were working in the dark or if, yes – they were actually dark. The skin of each and every person was the colour of the sea at night when there was no moon. The gritted teeth and eyes of each person shone like white foam tips cresting on the waves just before they broke to shore. The mass of all bodies pulsated like a giant tidal force, rising and falling as one. Chantel was captivated by the colour of their skin. All these people, the hundreds pushing around in a circle, the skin of all of them was pitch black.

"Purebloods," Chantel mused. 'Could it really be possible?"

She looked at the mottled colour of her own skin, a deep beige. She, like everyone else she knew, had a mixed genetic heritage. It would be impossible to categorise her ethnicity or indeed anyone's ethnicity in this day and age. Like countries, ethnicity had become irrelevant. Purebloods, being any race that retained a consistent genetic heritage, had not been seen in modern day society for so long that people thought that they had ceased to exist.

Chantel had heard rumours of purebloods existing in faraway lands, hidden deep in the desert or on the wilderness of the South Pole. Having never left the south western quadrant's main island though, Chantel's knowledge of such things, as always, depended on hearsay. Certainly during her time in the metropolis and even when she was growing up in the agricultural zone, she never saw anyone with skin darker than a deep tan. She could not imagine how her community would react if it did encounter a dark skinned person. Would they be taken away for testing? Would they be shunned and ridiculed? Or would they be idolised and revered for retaining such a pure genetic heritage? Chantel found it hard to believe that people could be so different.

Chantel tried to look closer at the vision before her. These people, even with the colour of their skin being so completely foreign to her, they also had something else different about them. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was like they were not all there in spirit either. Chantel was reminded of comparable images she had seen of people working in the manufacturing zones. They also displayed a similar level of automation in their movements. However, there was a difference. The boredom displayed by people in the manufacturing zones was due to the monotony of the production lines. These people, on the other hand, were just drones. Chantel could see no spark of life in their faces. Each expression was as vacuous as the next. Their eyes all conveyed a fatigable weariness which seemed to suggest that the person behind them could not care less whether they were dead or alive. But each one of the human beings shown in the glitch was very much alive. Every person was slickened by the moisture of their own sweat, proving that they were not robots. Regardless, almost as a single organism, these people were mindlessly, tediously enduring this massive task, like they were zombies with no mind of their own.

Then, just as suddenly as the interruption in the movie had started, the images stopped. The hologram started showing the movie and the file contained no further traces of corruption. Chantel was puzzled. What did the images of the purebloods all mean? Why were so many of them labouring together? Why did they all look so lifeless? What on earth was that giant contraption? Chantel tried to take it all in. The existence of purebloods was a notion entirely unfathomable to her. Even if the footage on the glitch was genuine, where on earth could they be? Surely so many purebloods would not go unnoticed.

Chantel went to bed confused and excited. After all she had seen a pureblood. Not just one but hundreds of them. She wondered how she could go about verifying the content of the glitch. Who had taken such footage and how had it managed to corrupt her _Soul_ download? For some reason she was not sceptical about the veracity of the footage. The only explanation for something so strange and peculiar had to be the truth. The content certainly did not look fabricated, although the thought did cross Chantel's mind that the footage could have come off the set of a movie. However, movies involving such a sheer scale of people rarely required a large number of actors these days as such images could be computer generated. The people in the glitch did not look like computer animation. Chantel was not convinced this was a plausible explanation. Her innate intuition told her that there was a much more sinister story behind the glitch and her intuition also told her that the images were real. Whether it was in the present or past, Chantel knew she had to verify that purebloods were not just a myth.
Chapter Three

Beren

It had been a few weeks now since Chantel had received the corrupted _Soul_ download. Since that day she had tried playing the hologram over again and each time the glitch was the same. The momentary grainy images, the distorted vision, the synchronicity of the purebloods. She didn't know what to make of it all. Each day she continued her usual ritual, but she could not shake the visions of the purebloods from her mind.

It was something she would have to speak to Beren about, she decided. Beren Marley was a dear of friend of hers. She had known him since the time a few years ago when he was the most brilliant tech eng at Pangaea. The brightest graduate of his class, a software hacker by the age of 10, Pangaea had no choice but to hire him. He was the best, and he knew it. However, despite his obvious intelligence and thirst for innovation, Beren was hampered in his ambition by possessing a strong moral compass and a propensity to question all that he did not agree with, and he disagreed with many. The use of implants, the restrictions on data formats, the laws against migration, the law against interoperability. These were matters against which Beren expressed such vehement opposition that he was eventually sidelined in his career, shunned and forced out.

On top of all this, there was the hacking scandal which gave Pangaea the convenient excuse it needed to quickly turn its back on Beren. There was no question that Beren indulged in some unconventional hacking. Being a genius at his art, it was only natural that Beren's intelligence would manifest into an uncontrollable curiosity and thirst for knowledge. His deep cravings for information extended to everything from history to current affairs. His quest for access to facts from the past, present and future was insatiable. What really lay beyond the wasteland? What algorithms did the global five use for their data compression formats? Who were the people representing the global five in parliament? These were all questions he had tried to answer through legitimate and illegitimate means.

Finally, being the smart Alec that he was and not being content with just accessing the information but with sharing it also, the affinity that he felt towards his fellow human beings got the better of him. Hacking into Pangaea's mainframe he accessed a number of files ranging from research reports to historical databases. Unscrambling the algorithms that protected these files in the .pga format, he then format-shifted the content into a technology neutral format so that it could be accessed by anyone and using any device. To do so, Beren determined and unscrambled not only Pangaea's format algorithm but also each and every algorithm used by the other companies in the global five.

Naturally, the global five were outraged. In an uncharacteristically cooperative move, all companies banded together to effectively hunt Beren down. Every trace of the format shifted content was deleted from global servers and the algorithm Beren used to release the content in the technology neutral form was immediately classified as a breach of security protocol and put on a watch list. Its use would be considered a breach of global security in the highest order. Beren himself was arrested and prosecuted. However, knowing that it would take some time for the global police to reach location -64+30 from Shanghai, which was located in the central quadrant, Beren had the time and foresight to destroy most of the physical evidence that could incriminate him. Unfortunately, in the process of destroying the evidence and being pursued by the global police in a city wide automobile chase, Beren lost control of his vehicle, crashed and suffered horrific injuries. He suffered a broken spine, collarbone and arm. The bones in his collarbone and arm eventually healed. His spine didn't. Beren was left a paraplegic and paralysed from the waist down.

With the court case against him delayed while Beren recovered from his injuries, the filters Beren imposed on the format-neutral information he released gradually deleted most of the incriminating data. The case against Beren for circumventing the technological protections on data remained circumstantial at best. He was given the lenient sentence of incarceration in Sydney's white collar prison for three years. It was here, ensconced with fraudsters, embezzlers and plenty of other computer hackers that according to Beren, his mind was able to flourish. A component of white collar crime would generally involve some level of infiltration into the networks of the global five, whether to extract money or falsify records and other such technological theft. These were the gravest crimes imaginable that required the most extreme punishment. The white collar prison was a particularly severe prison, reserved for those who had committed the most serious of crimes. As punishment, all prisoners in the white collar prison were cut off from the mainframe. The internet of information, entertainment and communication was isolated from prisoners as retribution for the sins these people had wrought upon society. Any electronic implants inserted in prisoners were deactivated for the time of their incarceration, rendering inaccessible any files on the hard disk. If a prisoner wanted to use a communicator they would have to enter a separate room where communication devices were set up on a table and had to be raised to the ear to function. The only sources of entertainment available to the prisoners were of the analogue kind. While others deplored their situation and attempted suicide, Beren rejoiced in the freedom of being beyond connectivity. He found himself being inexplicably attracted to books of the past. As a consequence, Beren's main pastime for the three years of his imprisonment was reading.

"Books, Chantel. Glorious books!" Beren would shout, his eyes glistening with excitement when meeting Chantel upon his release. "Books, with actual spines and covers, with pages I could turn. Oh, it was wonderful. I couldn't believe how many there were. I had never even seen one book before and there in the prison, there were more than I could possibly imagine, all waiting for me to feast my eyes on. Chantel, I have to find a way to go back there. There's still so many I haven't read!"

Chantel could hardly believe it. Her friend, that she had not seen for three years as a result of him being sent to jail, had not atoned, had not repented, had not at all reformed but on the contrary seemed to be plotting ways in which he could break the law again.

"Are you absolutely crazy? You were just released early for good behaviour and you want to be sent back to prison?"

"Godammit, don't remind me about that. Me and my cursed good behaviour. Of course I was like an angel in there. There wasn't really much mischief that a cripple like me could get into, was there? And being stuck in this wheelchair all I could do were the boring, hands-only chores, so of course I did an exemplary job at finishing all these. I was just the model prisoner wasn't I, damn it all to hell!"

"Well you are out now and you better stay out. No one will want to look at you if go back in again. Even as it is now Pangaea will never take you back. In fact, none of the global five will ever go anywhere near you. You'll probably be arrested again if you even go near their office."

"Oh Chanty, are you giving me ideas again? I knew you were always the bright spark."

"I am dead serious Beren. Don't even think about it. You need to get your act together now. You need to find a job. We need to get those chips working again. We need to find you a place to live."

That was a year ago and miraculously, Beren had not managed to return to prison since. He became a teacher of history at the university - the only other place where he could get his hands on the occasional book. It was the history in the books that excited him. After his three years in prison Beren acquired a wealth of knowledge that was noticeably absent from the annals of history available from the mainframe. Chantel had to agree that it was only after his prison stint that Beren became a more interesting person. Rather than boring her with technical details of his latest hacking venture, after being released Beren regaled Chantel with tales of ancient cities and countries from a past no longer known by many on earth. He was fascinated with the migration of the human race and studied trading and travelling routes from one country to the next. He analysed ancient systems of government and the evolution of democracy to the present day election of the Chairperson. After his stint behind bars, Beren became a wealth of knowledge and Chantel knew that he would have the answers to the mysterious appearance of the purebloods on her _Soul_ download.

Finishing work slightly earlier than usual that day, Chantel's mood was elevated at the prospect of breaking from her usual routine and riding the tube to the other end of town to Sydney University. She arrived on the campus which was one of the few vestiges of foliage left in the metropolis and proceeded to Beren's office. She found him there, nose buried in a decrepit looking manuscript, analysing the great financial turmoil that wreaked havoc across developed economies over two hundred years ago.

"Beren, where did you dig up that moth-eaten rag?" Chantel joked.

Beren swung around, knocking over several piles of books and a cup of coffee in the process.

"Well, bloody hell Chantel, if it isn't you sneaking up on me again. You could have given me some warning that you were coming. Oh wait a minute, you did too. I remember now. Look at that, is that the time already. Okay, come in and sit down. Yes, just put those books in the corner. I'll make some room as well. To what do I owe this pleasure? Did you tell me over the communicator or telephone should I say? No wait, you said it was all very hush hush. Yes, it's all coming back to me now."

Chantel was used to the drill by now. While the offices of all the other lecturers were squeaky clean with nothing but a projection screen and interactive display to light up the otherwise bland space, Beren's office was a cluttered mess. Even now, she wondered how he managed to manoeuvre his wheelchair into the space behind his desk. The entire floor space was strewn with books, coffee cups, odd bits of paper, take away containers and the random banana peel. She perched herself in the midst of all this on a rickety looking chair.

"Beren, I'll cut straight to the chase."

"Yes, fine, good, it's nice to see you too. What wonderful weather we're having today don't you think?"

Chantel ignored Beren and continued.

"I downloaded a movie the other day, from a download station on Pitt Street. I didn't use the wireless download this time. It was a bizarre little booth, one I haven't been to before. Anyway, it was a movie called _Soul,_ supposed to be a romantic comedy _._ When I tried to watch the movie later that night, the most bizarre images flickered over the hologram. It was just for a moment, it couldn't have been for more than a minute. But there was some sort of glitch on the file showing all these bizarre images. There were these people, all turning some giant spiral around and the colour of these people Beren...they were all purebloods. There must have been fifty, maybe even a hundred of them! Beren, I've never seen anything like it. It all sounds crazy doesn't it –"

"Whoa, hold on there tiger," Beren remonstrated. "Just take things back a notch now. What the, what, you saw what?"

"Purebloods, heaps of them! Pure black purebloods. All...I don't know what they were doing, labouring, pushing something. I couldn't really make out what it was all about. It was just the craziest thing I've seen in my life. It came out of nowhere, on this movie I downloaded, which was supposed to be about time travel, and a comedy at that!"

"Time travel, you say. Could it be possible the hologram you saw was actually made in the past? Purebloods haven't been seen for hundreds of years."

"Well it could possibly have been...but something did make me feel that this was more recent footage. I mean the hologram technology only came about in the last twenty years or so. This had to have been filmed at least that recently."

"But where Chantel? Purebloods are a lost race. If there were as many of them as you say you saw...why, where would they all be hiding?"

Chantel paused, struck suddenly by what should have been obvious to her all along.

"There were letters and numbers, flashing before the footage. Randomly, now that I think of it, they might have been coordinates. Of course, why didn't I realise that before. -23-134, I think was there, -32-85 was one I remember. They all seemed to be in the -134 to -85 range come to think of it."

Beren's eyes lit up with excitement.

"-134 to -85, you know what lies along that longitude right? Its times like these when I need to pull out my trusty old map."

Chantel returned a blank stare.

"My dear Chanty, after everything I've taught you. Okay, let me show you a map. It's a very ancient map so please be gentle."

Beren rifled through his books, finally digging out the one he was after.

"Now let's see here. Oh yes, here we go. Here is a map of the world. See we are here on the grid. Location -64+30. This continent here was what used to be known as Australasia and this huge country – Australia. Sydney was...well, not the capital of the country but let's say the most lived in city. Now if we go across to the western quadrant of the grid. This huge land mass here – this is all Africa, home of the purebloods with the dark skin. See this used to be broken up into all different countries. Each colonised by another country, but that's a story for another day. Now what did you say one of the coordinates were? -23-134. Okay that would be somewhere over here. The old nation of Sierra Leone. A place called Freetown by the looks of it."

Chantel was stunned. Rarely had she seen a map of the globe before and the existence of lands on the other side of the world was a concept she found difficult to fathom, let alone names being given to each of these different land masses.

"Africa? What's Africa? Are you sure that's what the numbers mean? There were letters as well. What did those letters stand for?"

"Well look at this map Chantel. Let's see if we can pull up something a bit more recent, hey. Look I'll put something up on the projection screen that is from this century. Ooh, it has pretty colours as well. That's a language you can understand isn't it?"

Chantel ignored Beren's jibes. While other people commonly felt affronted by Beren's deprecating manner, she had become more or less immune to his oblique way of teasing. She chose to ignore it, partly because he was brilliant and there was always an element of truth in his underhand comments and partly because she knew that despite his insensitivity, Beren was the most well-intentioned, genuine and upstanding person she had ever known. However, it was easy for Chantel to forget this when he turned into an obssessed, crazed lunatic upon coming across a new idea. Beren projected a map on the projection screen in his office and began gesticulating wildly with reference to both maps.

"See, almost the whole of Africa is a manufacturing zone or wasteland, except for these few agricultural tracts around what used to be Kenya and South Africa. Oh and one metropolis right at the tip of the continent. Okay, now if we transpose this map of today over this prehistoric map with countries on it, we can see where all the zones are. What you're describing sounds like something that if it was happening at all in this world, it would be happening in a manufacturing zone. And it makes sense that the coordinates point to Africa because that's where the purebloods originated from."

"Okay, but if the numbers that I mentioned point to these coordinates, which was - what was the name of the place, Freetown – then that place is in the wastelands, not the manufacturing zone."

"Which is why this is stranger still, Chantel! No one knows what is in the wastelands right? This glitch that you've somehow managed to download for yourself, that could be the greatest clue ever discovered. Chantel, you have to let me have a look."

Chantel's face whitened.

"Beren, you can try to download the movie yourself and see if the glitch is on the copy you download...but you know I can't let you see my copy, and you can't offload it from my hard disk. Beren if they catch you doing that sort of thing again they will throw you in jail for sure and they will definitely charge me as well for offloading the file to you. Beren, it's not worth it. I don't want to take the risk!"

"Oh poo you goody two shoes. So you should go to jail. It will do you a load of good. You never know, you just might learn something useful in there," Beren sulked. "Well I have to have a look at what we are dealing with here somehow. It's perfectly evil of you to tell all of this to me without letting me see with my own eyes what this is all about."

Chantel knew that Beren could behave like an insolent child if he didn't get what he wanted and as much fun as she had taunting and aggravating him further on such occasions, she also knew that in this instance, his point was entirely warranted.

"Okay, I'll cut you a deal. If you download the movie and this glitch is not on the copy you download, then you can tap into my hard drive if you promise, absolutely swear, that there is no way in the world anyone can possibly trace you. But I agree Beren, you need to see this with your own eyes."

Beren's face brightened.

"That's more like it Chanty. And of course no one will be able to track me. You know you are dealing with the master here. Now what time is it...oh, would you look at the time. Let's head back to my apartment so I can grab my glasses and see what all this crazy talk is about."
Chapter Four

The Life of Beren

Disabilities were practically obsolete in this era. Blindness had been cured by the bionic eye, prosthetic limbs functioned almost as good as the real thing and the communicator devices had made such vast improvements to the cochlear ear implant that deafness was a thing of the past. Genetic engineering had all but eradicated hereditary diseases. Modern medicine had advanced to such a state that cures for cancers had even been found. All of this sounded promising for Beren in his desire to walk again, except that access to stem cell technology for the purpose of regenerating broken spinal cords was hampered by the all-encompassing patents placed over stem cells by Utopia Corporation's research and scientific subsidiaries.

Access to medical services was determined as a matter of nepotism. By the year 2187, all genes had been patented and ownership of gene patents were dispersed amongst the global five. Provision of health care by any of the global corporations was usually a matter of showing an allegiance to that company by proving oneself as a dedicated customer. Whole families migrated from one global corporation to another just so one of their members could receive the required health care from that company. People understood that receiving health benefits from any of the global five would have to be a matter of cajoling and persuasion. These were practices in which Beren steadfastly refused to engage, despite being in a position where he had a genuine desire for medical treatment.

As a previous convicted felon and disgraced hacker, Beren had a reputation that was very much out of favour with any of the global five, Utopia among them. As a consequence, Beren had learnt to adapt to the irrevocable changes wrought upon his life by being bound to a wheelchair. Life was not made easier by his situation, but Beren had no other choice than to learn how to cope. It was already difficult enough for him to find employment, as all the details of his past were available for anyone to access. Through a series of coincidences and connections, Beren was miraculously able to secure his tenure at the university because history academics were so scarce. Most history academics did not know the first place to look to ascertain history over a hundred years ago and the history lessons they provided would often be skewed depending on which company of the global five they had the most loyalty to. Beren enticed the selection panel at Sydney University with his tantalising knowledge of a version of history that many had thought was lost.

Soon enough, the faculty was clamouring to offer him a position. Knowing that he had them like putty in his hands, Beren could, and in a brilliant stroke of manipulation, did take full advantage of the university's desperation to negotiate for himself a position that was not only overly favourable but gave him free reign of his intellectual endeavours. Down on the streets around Sydney University, Beren attracted the attention of all the passers-by around him. The sight of a person in a wheelchair was almost as rare a sight as a flock of birds flying through the metropolis. As Beren rolled past the queues of people lining up for the pod stations, heads everywhere turned around to catch a glimpse of this queer looking man nonchalantly pushing his wheelchair down the street. Being paralysed, Beren was unable to ride the tube home, so out of necessity he had to find a place to live that was within wheeling distance of his office. To avoid the heat of the sun during day, Beren usually made this journey later at night which suited him as it gave him more time at university to study his books and create the perception of diligence.

Fortunately, he had managed to locate a ground floor apartment close by to the university, courtesy of the university, which avoided the need to ride the tube. He had a small wheelchair friendly courtyard in his apartment where he could still enjoy the outdoors somewhat. Lined up in front of his apartment there were plenty of shops and restaurants where he could buy his everyday goods and as Chantel and Beren ambled down the street, they attracted the attention of every customer in the shops along the way. Beren was used to suffering daily abuse, as anyone in his situation would. The insensitive stares he received were compliments compared to the torrent of insults being yelled out at him by the strangers watching him pass by.

"There goes Professor Rolly Polly!" yelled an overweight, middle-aged lady towing along her small child by the hand.

"Check out Mr Metal Legs!" shouted another boy who was loitering with his mates in the middle of the crossing.

"Look at who's too lazy to walk!" smirked a young woman around Chantel's age, who cheekily spun around in a mock pirouette in front of Beren, as if to show off her physical ability.

This was just some of the abuse Beren copped in his day to day life. Like anyone who had regularly been subjected to such intolerance, Beren learnt to build a shell around himself, grit his teeth, block out the insults and ram his wheelchair into anyone who dared to confront him. This instance was no different. Before the snarky youth had finished her twirl, Beren had already started to bear down upon her generating speed and dexterity in his wheelchair which was completely unexpected to all the passers-by. The bewildered bully soon had the wind knocked out of her as Beren mercilessly ran her down then proceeded to give chase, as her friends tried to gather her from the ground to flee.

Chantel rolled her eyes at Beren's violence. She had heard of his retaliatory antics but had never seen them in action before. Beren was unrepentant. Those who had insulted him once and were within ramming distance quickly learned never to do so again. For others that were just slightly out of reach, Beren would give chase and if they were lucky enough to escape unharmed they were certainly given such a scare that they would never try it on again. Any students of Beren's that were audacious enough to even so much as tease him and his paralysed limbs, soon found themselves expelled from university without a case to answer. In a defensive mechanism, Beren literally turned his disability into a weapon that could be used against anyone that dared to attack him. In his own abrasive way, Beren rebuked his perpetrators' feelings of superiority until they succumbed to fear and eventually learnt to respect Beren's persistence. Despite this, Chantel knew how difficult it was for him to adjust to a life on wheels.

Giving him some respite from the exertion of using his hands, she helped to push him down the street. Although Beren's wheelchair was equipped with an electric motor she knew that he refrained from using it when he could because of the sheer cost of electricity. The resources for fuelling combustion engines had long since been depleted from the earth and the only source of energy remaining was electricity. There were several sources of renewable energy, solar energy being the most efficient. However, the prevailing source of electrical energy was nuclear. Although the global regime assured its citizens that there was no danger of nuclear energy being depleted in the next two hundred years or so, electricity still remained an expensive resource for many. Given this, in addition to his naturally frugal nature, Beren tried to avoid using his wheelchair's electric motor when he could.

On the way back to Beren's apartment they stopped by a Pangaea download station to again grapple with the dinosaur for the _Soul_ download. Beren scowled at the dinosaur as he went through the usual voice activation motions. Being of restricted height, Beren was forced to use the child high download stations that, to Beren's disdain, were designed to treat their customers like children.

" _Soul_? This has an 'M' rating. Are you sure you have your parents' permission to download this file?" the dinosaur asked condescendingly.

"Oh, stop patronising me and give me the damn download!" Beren yelled back.

"Okay whatever you say," the dinosaur replied. "Remember Pangaea accepts no responsibility for –"

The dinosaur was cut off as Beren rammed the download stylus into his external hard drive to trigger the download. A beep sounded.

"Yippee! Your download is now compleeeete!" the dinosaur decreed with delight.

"Fantastic, let's get out of here," Beren muttered, rolling away as fast as he could.

As Chantel rolled Beren up to his apartment, she was greeted with the sight of another incorrigible mess, similar to that in his office.

"Welcome to home sweet home, Chantel," chirped Beren. "You can see that I rolled out the red carpet for you. I must have been expecting visitors. I even put the air freshener out."

The smell of mouldy oranges wafted over to the front door where Beren and Chantel had just arrived. Chantel paused before entering, taking time to assess the disparate state of the room and trying to work out a route to navigate the wheelchair through. Beren dispelled the need for this when he simply proceeded to roll over the rubbish on the floor.

"I'll take over from here thanks Chantel. You've been a wonderful chauffeur. Much appreciated. Now where did I put those blasted glasses?"

Chantel groaned.

"Beren those glasses are so old school. Are you still a teenager or something? Why don't you just hook your hard drive up again?"

After his prison stint, Beren had refused to re-connect his implants to the Pangaea mainframe and as a result his interaction with the world was akin to the way a child would connect before their bodies had developed enough to have the implants inserted. He had a separate hard drive device from which he could view the holographic contents by wearing eyeglasses, his communicator device was a stand-alone component with a microphone and speaker that he had to raise to his ear to use and his payment chip was a tiny piece of metal that he carried around with him wherever he remembered to bring it.

"Unlike you my dear Chanty, _my_ body is a temple," Beren bragged, spinning back precociously on his wheelchair. "I don't want Pangaea digging inside my head again, tracking my every movement like they did before."

"Beren, you're paranoid," Chantel sighed exasperatedly. "Why would Pangaea do such a thing? Why would they even be interested?"

"As if anyone would not be interested in me, Chanty! No one else has a brain the size of mine," Beren gloated.

Chantel suppressed a smile. Despite his irreverence, Beren was still the smartest person she had ever known.

"Why are you so worried? You know that the _Human Integrity Act_ will stop them doing that. They can't do anything to track us or trace us. It's the law."

"Oh, pft Chantel. What does the law mean when they control parliament?"

Chantel started to protest.

"Don't worry about answering that question," Beren stopped her, putting up his hand. "In case you didn't notice, it was a rhetorical question."

The _Human Integrity Act_ or an 'Act to preserve the integrity of the human mind, body and spirit against involuntary intrusion and observation to ensure the freewill of all people-kind for future generations' was a statute passed by global parliament four score years ago, despite having been originally introduced just after the inception of the global regime. It was one of the last remaining acts from the original suite of legislation promulgated by global parliament, eventually passing approximately around the time electorates ceased to be represented by countries and corporations were granted the right to representation in government. The bill was debated and revised for almost a century, constantly churned and re-churned through the vestiges of Parliament before it was finally championed by a dedicated Parliamentarian who worked tirelessly to secure the passage of the legislation through the house. In her second reading speech introducing the Act, the brilliant young stateswoman, Parwardah Hassanzadah, originally from the country of Afghanistan, gave such a powerful endorsement for the longevity and relevance of the Act that it was one of the few, if not only, laws of parliament that resonated and became engrained in the mindset of the people.

Let the record show that we, the people have spoken. As we join forces across the world, for the sake of the betterment of humanity, in an act of solidarity with all humankind, to show that we are truly one world and bound as inextricably to this earth as we are to each and every one of our neighbours, let us together make this decree. Humanity is sacred. Humanity cannot be stifled. Humanity must remain free. Freedom remains the essence of our lifeblood. It is as essential to our souls as air, as water, as food. Without freedom our souls would perish.

What makes us part of humankind \- this inexplicable force that ripples through our hearts and minds and pumps our veins full of independence, virtue and wisdom? What makes our lives beat with a sense of purpose? Why must we strive with relentless ambition, to build more, to improve the world, to achieve what is great? It is because we are bound in our determination for freedom. Not only for the freedom of this generation, but for future generations so that we can keep improving, keep making life better for our children and our children's children. We owe this not only to them but also to our ancestors before us, who fought so hard to win us this freedom so that we might enjoy life without servitude. The liberty bestowed upon us cannot be taken for granted.

The world has taken a remarkable turn in the last century. In forming the global parliament we have realised that we the people, are all brothers and sisters of the same blood, that there is no longer any need for the world to be sundered into artificial divisions. In recognising this, we must also recognise that to work together in harmony with this earth we must all be entitled to the same choices, that the same opportunities should present themselves to each of us, that we should be able to go wherever we dream we can go. That is why we must all come together, as one, to support this legislation.

Nobody should be able to force their will upon the life of another person, without due regard to the consent of that human being and the proper application of the law. The life of each and every one of us should be respected and treated as sacrosanct. Every man, woman and child must be guaranteed the right to freedom. To curtail this right is to damage the very fabric upon which humanity has inherited this earth. To sacrifice the will of the people for whatever reason, is to admit that we have failed as a society, that all our lessons in governance, law and policy amount to naught if we are unable to ensure that most fundamental and basic of concepts for civilisation – human liberty.

The Human Integrity Act guarantees exactly that – the freewill of each and every citizen in this global regime. The Human Integrity Act makes it illegal to control the will of another person. The Human Integrity Act prohibits unwarranted intrusion into the life of another human being. The Human Integrity Act will become the cornerstone upon which generations to come will realise the most integral and evident of truths - that the integrity of all human beings is inviolable. Maintaining humanity's unalienable right to freedom is a responsibility that we all bear. I hereby proclaim the passage of this Act – to preserve the integrity of the free will of the people.

The global parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill, and so the modern day Magna Carta, the _Human Integrity Act,_ became enshrined into law. The Act of course, did nothing to prevent voluntary intrusion and so millions of people merely opted in to various encroachments into their daily lives without realising that in doing so, they were violating the freedoms that had been fought for them by generations before.

Few people had ever read and understood the Act. Chantel, like many others, knew of the existence of the Act and understood its purpose but beyond that she was vague on the precise details. Nonetheless, she was aware of its significance in shaping the constitutional rights upon which the global regime governed and the notions espoused in the Act against unjustified intervention. She believed in the law and that Pangaea would obey and apply the law. Beren, on the other hand, was not so convinced.

"The _Human Integrity Act_ ," he said mockingly. "Well, sorry for being sceptical but when is the last time you heard about anyone breaching the Act? Has anyone ever been taken to jail under the Act? Do the global police even investigate the Act? Of course they want you to believe that they would never do anything to violate the Act. But Chantel my dear girl, they also control the Act."

Chantel rolled her eyes. In the meantime, Beren had retrieved his glasses and plugged in his hard drive for the viewing.

"Nothing," Beren stated. "I mean there's that silly movie here and that's it. Nothing else. No glitch."

Chantel groaned.

"Okay, you can do your thing then to tap into my hard drive. But remember, you must promise..."

"Yes, yes, my pet don't you worry. I'll make sure no one traces you. Or myself either. God forbid. Imagine that, going back to prison. How awful!"

"Beren, I'm serious!"

"Okay, yes I know. Things like a job and life on the outside and...dare I say - _liberty,_ whatever that entails - is important to you. Wouldn't want to take that away, would I now."

After tinkering with a few lines of code, Beren had decrypted the _Soul_ file so that it could be viewed using his glasses from Chantel's hard drive. He was aghast with what he saw.

"Chantel, this is incredible. I simply have no words to explain this. You've definitely done the right thing in showing this to me. Just imagine, what could this be all about?"

Chantel could not help but wonder.
Chapter Five

The Perils of the Journey

Barely a week had elapsed when Chantel received the call.

"Pack your bags. We're going."

"Are you crazy, Beren? Where, pray tell, do you think we're going?"

"C'mon Chanty. Where is your sense of adventure? After what you saw on the glitch. Doesn't that just arouse your sense of curiosity? Doesn't it bite at your insides? Doesn't the mere thought of purebloods somewhere out there make you froth at the mouth in rapture as your mind writhes in torment for an answer to what it could all mean? Surely you must just want to know."

"Uh, no Beren I certainly don't froth and I certainly don't get as melodramatic about it as you do. Sure, I wonder what it's all about. I can't stop thinking about it and the whole thing baffles me. But being curious and wanting to run to the other side of the world are completely different things. One concept involves insanity for a start."

"If you're curious, don't you want to do something to find out the truth? This is too amazing an opportunity to go to waste. I will never feel satiated until I unearth the explanation behind this all."

"I'm sure there are plenty of things in life that are more satiating than risking your life on some adventure that you have no clue about except for this 60 second glitch on a single file download. You've only seen the thing once for crying out loud!"

"Well my dear Chantel, if you won't travel with me you leave me no choice but to attempt this on my own. You know how vulnerable I will be, just one man in a wheelchair on his lonesome out on the high seas."

Chantel screamed silently. She had forgotten how persistent Beren could be.

"Okay, can I at least have some time to think about it Beren?"

"Sure you can, but the boat leaves in ten days."

"And where is this boat going now?"

"The boat is going to the metropolis of Cape Town. That won't be our final destination though."

"Freetown. You want us to go to Freetown don't you?"

"Of course I do. Unless one of the other coordinates took your fancy. After doing my research I thought this one would be the easiest to get to. We can take a boat to the tip of Africa or location -64-103 on the grid. Then we jump on another boat heading north that travels along the west coast. Basically we can jump off at any of the ports along the way and then ride by road up to Freetown. Location -23-134 that's where it's at baby!"

"Right. Well I need some time to think and request leave from work and see if I have the funds in my payment account. I can't just dump everything at the drop of a hat. A trip like this usually takes years of planning. And another thing, stop calling me baby."

"Relax honey. I meant it in the purely non-sexual, generic sense, unless of course you were to act like a baby."

Chantel terminated her communicator call with Beren. 'Goddamit!' she thought. She knew that if she showed the glitch to Beren he would make these hasty decisions. She knew that he would stop at nothing to track down the source of the footage. She also knew that this was exactly what she had bargained for and she had been secretly hoping that he would take just this initiative. The deep restlessness that Beren had always exhibited, that same feeling that had driven him to start hacking, had made his actions as predictable as the melting of polar ice. In showing Beren the glitch, Chantel had written their destiny. They would pursue this puzzle to the other side of the world.

The decision for Chantel, however, was not one to be taken so lightly. The thought of relinquishing from work, even for a temporary period was a disquieting prospect. She didn't like work, but she liked what was in work. The familiarity of the job, the expectation of the mundane, the lack of surprise and lack of uncertainty. A comforting concept. The place where she could feel connected, part of something larger, a greater ideal, solidarity with something, whatever that might be. The prospect of being absent from this great civilising force was one that made her apprehensive. This freedom from the familiar was something she found at once terrifying and electrifying. She was on the cusp of embarking on a journey into the great unknown; harkened by an adventure when she herself was unsure what an adventure was. The idea of parting from her conscious routine had previously been an inconceivable notion for Chantel. Suddenly, this idea cast a deep rupture in her version of reality, both present and future. She saw the future now as appearing on the other side of an impassable void, a chasm forming in between the expected and unknown and she knew that once she passed onto the other side of the chasm, there would be no returning to the known.

She thought of her life as she knew it. The faces and names of her friends and work colleagues that lived parallel lives to hers, her parents battling to make a living off the land far away in the agricultural zone, the booth where she spent at least a third of each day. She thought of the one thing that she could identify as representing a uniqueness, an atypical quality, a je ne sais quoi about herself. Sure, she had made a massive migration from the agricultural zone to the metropolis zone when she was still a teenager. Such a move had been uncommon amongst her generation, particularly when her family for generations before had remained staunch agriculturalists and quashed any temptation of previous family members to migrate. Chantel felt that she had only been able to get away with it because her parents didn't really want her there. Something still made her feel that her presence tormented them with painful memories. Her friendship with Beren was another aspect of her life that defied typical social trends. While every other work colleague at Pangaea had relinquished ties with such a criminal and ex-con, Chantel's relationship with Beren deepened after he was released from jail and now she counted him as one of her closest friends.

She knew that he was right. She would never let him tackle the danger and risks of leaving Sydney metropolis on his own. Like Chantel, Beren had never left the island. In fact, she wasn't even quite sure that he had ever left the metropolis, particularly not since his accident when transportation for him would be difficult. She knew that once Beren was determined to do something, he would persevere relentlessly. There was no talking him out of it now. She began making the necessary arrangements to take a well-earned 'holiday'.

\-----------------------

Chantel had always been of the Pangaea camp. Her parents were Pangaea people, their parents were Pangaea people and so on and so forth. In her mind, she believed that she was onto a winner. Pangaea was now the ruling player in parliament, her faith in Pangaea had secured her a job as a tech eng, she was able to feast on discounted take away boxes each night. Although there were some devotees that became almost militant in their allegiance to a particular brand, Chantel was content to revel in the quiet satisfaction that she had picked the winning horse, or rather that her parents' choice to stick a Pangaea implant in her ear had been entirely vindicated. Invariably, it was the brand of communicator implant that would eventually sway a person's shopping habits for their remaining life span. Products and services for each type of implant were only available from the same brand. Customer loyalty schemes ensured that discounts were given for shopping with the same brand. With each brand dictating the specific format with which their products could be used and preventing other services from being used on their product, the concentration of power in the global five grew in strength until eventually it was impossible for any other player to compete in the global market.

The Wilds were an honest, simple, hard-working couple. Being agriculturalists they were prevented from moving freely into the metropolis region and as a result, Chantel only visited her parents once a year at most. Crossing the border from the metropolis zone of Sydney to the agricultural zone of -54+29 in the grid where her parents were located was a logistical nightmare. Restrictions were arbitrarily placed on inter-zone migration, so it was not easy to predict what level of bureaucracy it would be necessary to surmount in order to obtain the administrative privileges to travel and when the next transportation across the zones would be available.

For this very reason Chantel's parents begged her not to move to the city. It was like being cut off from civilisation, they would say. Once people moved to the city, they were never heard from again. She would never be able to find a way back, was their greatest lament. Nevertheless, Chantel made the impetuous and headstrong decision to leave her parents to their potatoes, parsnips and beetroots and applied for migration to the metropolis so she could enrol in an engineering course at Sydney University.

She would try to call her parents occasionally, but the communicator lines from the metropolis to the agricultural zones were frequently disrupted and her well-intentioned attempts to maintain contact eventually became a chore which she grew to resent.

"I'll just be going away for a few weeks Mum," Chantel explained to her parents over the fuzzy sounds of the communication system. "Nothing to be worried about. Just a cruise to the eastern quadrant. We'll see some nice beaches, relax on the deck, I doubt we'll even get off the boat on the journey there so we'll be safe."

"You just stay away from pirates now. There's so many of them running around that part of the world," Chantel's mother fretted.

"Sure, sure. I promise not to play with any pirates on the holiday."

The reception on her communicator started to crackle. The storms were again wreaking havoc around her parents' agricultural area and the reception they received in their bunker was not the best.

"Okay, it's getting hard to hear you now. I better go."

Chantel relieved herself of the communicator call and continued packing. Conversations with her parents were always a tortured ordeal, partly due to the communication systems and partly due to the past. What would she need for a journey to the other side of the earth? She had no idea what to expect.

'Bring some laser shooters,' Beren had suggested. 'Just in case...'

She wasn't sure what he had in mind for this trip but Chantel was dead certain that laser shooters would not be involved in her journey. She checked her boat booking details. Sydney to Cape Town. A 12 day journey. 11,042 kilometres. Two stopovers on the way for only one night each. Apart from that, the rest of the time would be spent on a standard passenger water transportation vessel.

The primary mode of transportation from one land mass to another was by water. Jet airplanes now relied upon rechargeable batteries to fly making a single journey for a person, prohibitively expensive. In fact, only the extremely wealthy could afford the price of an airplane ticket and even when the expense for such a purpose could be expended, it was generally for business not pleasure. Travelling for sheer leisure became a thing of the past as the price for transportation spiralled out of the average worker's budget. Many people, particularly those from the manufacturing zones, could not even afford the excessive cost of travelling to a destination a few hours away by land and resigned to spending any time off from work they had at home hooked up for hours to their entertainment hard drives as their own form of holiday. The second most popular type of holiday was a cruise.

Water transportation became the most favourable mode of transport over land and air. Each non-cargo transportation vessel was equipped with a sail, electricity turbines and a rechargeable battery. Movement was propelled by the natural energy of the wind, wherever possible, or by aligning the boat to the existing ocean currents. Where additional energy was required the rechargeable battery would be used. The battery drew its energy from electricity turbines located underneath the boat. These turbines rotated when the boat moved against the tide of the water. Additional wind mills located on the deck of the boat also captured wind energy. Solar panels were also installed on the roof of the boat. These sources of electricity, once routed through an inverter, powered all electronic equipment on the boat making each boat journey by sea self-sustainable. Due to the ability of water transportation to take advantage of renewable sources of energy, it quickly became the most efficient, economical and affordable type of travel.

However, because of restrictions upon migration between zones, there were limited destinations available for a cruise to actually travel to. Certain areas had been designated as tourist spots within each type of zone. Travel for people from the Sydney metropolis zone to the Cape Town metropolis zone to experience the Cape Town tourist district was relatively hassle-free. It would not, however, be as easy for people from the agricultural or manufacturing zones to visit. Nonetheless, Chantel packed her passport documentation just in case.

Cross communications between the metropolis and agricultural zones were not as bad as communications between the other zones though. In the opinion of those from the metropolis and agricultural zones, the manufacturing zone was the place to be ostracised. Smelly, smoggy and dirty, the manufacturing zones had been pushed to the perimeter of the grid and were the place people would resort to only if they had no chance of employment in the metropolis or agricultural zones. Pulsating with the rhythm of industry, the manufacturing zones and all the people in them had become like machines. Each person in the zone knew their role, to perform like a well-oiled cog in the wheel, and with ruthless efficiency they completed each task on hand on time to the second. Not a moment was lost to unproductivity and as a result, the world kept churning up all sorts of products. New inventions for cleaning the bathroom, more vending machines than you could possibly store in a building, the world was becoming full of such things and almost as quickly as they were made, an oversupply of stuff would result in many of these items being discarded.

Most of these supplies were shipped to the metropolis zones. The metropolis was the core of the world, there was no doubt about that. The agricultural zones were the outer core. The manufacturing zone, on the other hand, represented the engine room of the world, a constantly changing landscape of factories, steelworks and processing plants. Each area chugging up waste and refuse as quickly as it produced the latest automobile, transportation device or implantation chip. As vast tracts of land became unusable, being consumed in a manufacturing mire, the industries in the zone would shift to some untouched region in the grid, rendering the previous manufacturing zone a wasteland.

No one knew what became of these areas once the manufacturing industries had deserted the area. The wastelands were widely believed to be uninhabitable. If it was difficult enough already to migrate between the zones, it was nigh on impossible to enter the wasteland. Shunned beyond the periphery of communication, various urban myths about the wastelands abounded. Some would say the places were rampant with mutant creatures, grotesquely deformed beyond recognition due to intense exposure to pollution. Others speculated that without the intrusion of human civilisation, the wastelands flourished into an animal nirvana where wildlife could roam free without being forced off the land due to construction or farming.

However, the general consensus was that the wastelands were simply that – fields of ashes. It was commonly thought that to completely eradicate the machinery and equipment used in the manufacturing zones, a nuclear bomb was set off. The explosion would completely vaporise any structures and a few hundred years later, when the nuclear fallout and all traces of radiation had dissipated, the land would be usable once again. It seemed to be the most plausible explanation.

Regardless, most of the general population living in the metropolis, like Chantel, would never know. The wastelands, and even the manufacturing zone, were areas which the typical city-sider had absolutely no inclination of entering. The city folk joked, chided and teased about being banished to the wastelands and almost immediately upon mentioning it, they would shudder with fear at the thought of what lay beyond, in the emptiness of the unknown. For city people, the vision of enormous steel structures extending endlessly to the horizon was a source of comfort. This was the view that greeted them from both the office and in the home environment.

Chantel thought it might be more difficult for her to get the time off work. Rosters for leave were generally planned for months in advance with ad hoc or urgent requests such as hers being granted only in the most egregious circumstances. As it were, her leave request was approved without any questions being asked. Not only that, but the decision to approve her leave had come from someone very high up in the chain of command.

"Someone obviously thinks you need a break, " Chantel's supervisor scoffed when communicating the approval to her. 'This is the first I've heard of anyone being given an indefinite period of leave just to go on a holiday. Usually a child or something needs to die before management will even look at a request such as this. Well, use it wisely Chantel. Remember time off like this is a privilege not a right."

Her supervisor marched off in scorn. Chantel was no less confused. She was certain that she would have had to concoct some elaborate excuse for leave to be granted. As it wasn't necessary, there were no longer any excuses to be had. She called Beren to let him know that everything was in order.

"I'm all set," she said.

"Really, Pangaea didn't have a problem with you taking time off?" Beren asked in bemusement. Regardless of whether or not his leave request was approved or declined he would have taken his leave without a care in the world. The university knew better by now than to stand in the way of Beren and his various whims.

"Apparently not. It was all approved, no questions asked."

"Interesting..."

"What's even stranger is that they approved the leave for an _indefinite_ period."

"Why, Chantel. You should just not bother going back to work. You're obviously giving them good value for money whether you are there or not. Might as well milk this for all its worth."

Chantel became immediately defensive.

"Don't be silly. Of course they need me. What will I do if I don't work?"

"The answer is obvious. Become a pirate with me, argh!"

"You just keep dreaming Captain Marley. My mum warned me to stay away from swashbucklers like you."

"Oh, your mum doesn't know what's good for you. Anyway, what are you going to bring?"

"Uh, a bikini, a—"

"I have my bags packed with everything I think we need. Hologram recorder, dried food supplies, re-hydrator, inflatable floaties –"

"You didn't bring a laser shooter did you," Chantel asked sarcastically.

"Oh, I have a couple of those. I've hidden them though so you don't steal them from me. I know how you've always wanted to get your hands on my laser shooter."

"Beren! Really, is it necessary? If they catch you getting on a boat with one of those things they will dump you at the nearest port and tell all the other boats that you're a terrorist. Do you really have to bring one?"

"Ah, Chanty. Will you stop chucking a tanty again? Not even you will be able to find my laser shooter okay, so just chill girl."

"Okay, but I've said it before and I'll say it again Beren. I'm not getting arrested because of you."

Hanging up her communicator call, Chantel shook her head and resigned herself to the fact that in making the choice to travel with Beren, she was by default accepting all the craziness that would come with the journey.
Chapter Six

Cruising to Cape Town

The day of the cruise departure had finally arrived and Chantel wondered how she would survive 12 days on a boat knowing only Beren as company. She hoped that there would be other people she could converse with on the boat. As it turned out, she needn't have worried so much. Beren turned out to be charming and affable company for the entire journey. Along the way he intrigued her with stories from an era long past. By the end of the journey she was unsure how many of the tales he told were real or pure embellishments from an imaginative mind. She had experienced before the amazing ability of Beren's mind to expand and contract the truth. During his employment at Pangaea she had witnessed Beren encounter several situations to which he would apply his own reasoning and in trying to reason with his own reasoning he would eventually derive such a contorted version of the details that it was as if he were working on a different plane. His was a brilliant mind at work but the sheer brilliance of its ability consumed itself.

Chantel had no way of verifying whether the tales Beren told were the same as the annals of history captured in the books he had read in prison and at Sydney University. The only versions of history she was familiar with were those she had read from the Pangaea mainframe and this information was not very detailed. This world view was altogether different from the tales Beren spun of battles between empires and struggles for independence. Regardless, as implausible as his fables were, Chantel was enthralled with Beren's story-telling. The scholarly approach to narration that Beren had adopted whilst working at the university, together with his restless passion for the pursuit of adventure mesmerised Chantel as he recounted a version of the past, from before the great mainframe disaster that was known only by him.

Beren described the division of the world into different continents and even further into individual countries. He explained how each race of purebloods occupied a different area in the world. He elucidated on the rising economic powers of various regions to form shifting blocks of influence and domination. He opined on the reasons for the rise and fall of each of the different civilisations and conjectured on the shifting focus of power from each resource rich area to the next. By the end of each day, Chantel's mind was in overdrive as she basked in the fountain of Beren's knowledge. She found almost incomprehensible the notion that so much had happened in the world before the formation of the global parliament. That the world had been splintered into arbitrary divisions dependent upon borders marked in the land was astonishing to her. Property was an ethereal concept in Chantel's mind as well as in everyone else's. Its existence was defined as much by the value given to it in one's mind as anything else. The notion that people had fought wars and died for a piece of soil was baffling. But above all, it was Beren's introduction to the world of slavery that captivated her the most.

"Freetown – as the name suggests was founded as the land of the free," Beren explained. "After centuries of slave trading where dark skinned purebloods were transported to the farthest flung continents to be bought and sold, Freetown was birthed as a land where freed slaves could return to their home continent and start lives unto themselves."

This didn't make sense to Chantel. Why did people need to commemorate a place for freedom? Was not freedom an ideal that should have been granted upon them from birth? Why was Freetown necessary? It was like naming a place after humanity's need to eat or to drink, the basic facets of survival. Chantel couldn't understand why such a place had been established, in the name of freedom, when freedom was an aspect of life as integral as life itself. She didn't understand it until Beren confused her further with three words.

"People were property," he said simply.

Chantel was aghast.

"What do you mean? Yes, we are all property. We all have the physical features that define us. We can't be not property because we exist as matter, not like a hologram or something like that. But property is something that is owned. And no one owns me but me."

"Chantel, the world was a very different place five hundred years ago. There was none of your beloved _Human Integrity Act_ or whatever you call it. These people lived off the land. They needed hard, cold labour to work the fields. The agricultural revolution had increased food production and gave humanity the ability to live off harvested grains and domestic livestock, but that sort of work needs a lot of hands and when the white purebloods crossed over the earth to the north eastern quadrant they found that they needed more labourers than there were willing to go with them."

"Why not invent machines to work the land? One tractor on my parents' farm is more capable than ten people."

"Well that came later. The need to work the land though was just one reason why people were brought over no doubt. There was another more palpable premise behind it all. People are instinctively drawn to power and power in that age was determined by control. Control over people was a mechanism for retaining power. This was in a time and age when civilisations fought with each other for land and to occupy each other's resources. Without land, a civilisation was without its means of survival, they were without their identity and stripping these people, these slaves of their land was a tactic to isolate and deprive them. That was why the slaves were extricated from their land and shipped far away to the farthest reaches of the earth, to subjugate and disorientate them."

"Surely a home in one location is as good as a home in any other location. What does it matter what land it's on?"

"It was racial as well. It was a mark of one race's domination over another race. In that age of colonisation the colour of one's skin would determine their destiny. The white purebloods had such a strong hold on power that of course they wanted to retain this and enslaving people was a method of asserting their power."

"Why was it necessary to own another person? I mean we have the same practice in our century but it's called gainful employment not slavery."

"What is power if it is not asserted? It would only be a chalice for someone else to take over and control. Power, by its very right involves some element of suppression and what greater suppression is there than taking over, body and soul, the life of another person. Slavery was nothing more than power retention but it took centuries to abolish and even the laws abolishing the practice were only enacted after a bitter struggle against staunch opponents. John Clarkson and his compatriots finally got their way though and in 1792, he formed Freetown. That was the version of history I came across. Who knows if there are other versions out there that state the contrary?"

Chantel mulled over this information in her head. The waves lapped against the bow of the boat as it sliced through the water making gentle sucking noises. The wind rose and fell with the rhythm of the boat as it surmounted the crest of each wave and then lurched onwards bobbing with the tide. The ocean breezes conversed with the billowing sail as it remained puffed and taut above their heads. All around them the expanse of the ocean spoke to them in gurgles and splashes, plods and squelches. Then, as often happens with the rhythm of the world, there was an arrested silence; as if the ocean, wind and sky combined were drawing their collective breaths in a pregnant pause, digesting the information imparted. Even the whispering of the water seemed to stall for a moment as it took in the last words of Beren's litany. The conversation was absorbed in a timeless hush.

\-----------------------

"What if it is the truth?" Chantel asked as she sun-baked on the deck of the boat, hands dragging in the water. "Do you think we should let people know?"

"Why for my dear Chantel? What difference would it make in the end?"

"But what if the same thing should happen again?"

"Well, what difference is knowing going to make? If it is destined to happen again, then destiny wills it so."

Chantel turned to face Beren in disbelief.

"Can it be? The great, almighty Beren Marley. A law unto himself, a god of his own making. Are you really telling me you still believe in destiny, after all you've been through?"

"Well why shouldn't I Chantel? I've never tried to tempt fate."

"Really. Hacking into all of the global five's formats, getting sent to prison, being locked up – that isn't tempting fate?"

"Ah, that wasn't me tempting fate Chantel. That was me tempting the global five. Unfortunately for me, there are limitations on my abilities...especially when five of the most powerful entities on the planet join forces against one single person."

"Yes, but no one else tries to rock their own boat like that."

"But that's precisely it, I was merely rocking my own boat...and maybe those also of the five most powerful entities in the known universe but I wasn't rocking destiny's boat. Once that ship has sailed, it's gone."

"So you are saying that slavery was the destiny of those people who were forced into it and if it was going to happen it would happen and you would accept it. You wouldn't hack into some mainframe on one of your missions, you wouldn't try to warn everyone by releasing one of your freedom files, and you would just sit back, relax and enjoy the claustrophobic, tortuous, chained and cramped ride for six months in the bottom hull of a ship to the other side of the world."

"No. I'm just saying that there are more things in heaven and earth, my dear Chantel, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. One person cannot change destiny...unless of course it is that person's destiny to change destiny," Beren added as an afterthought.

"Okay, then. What about your accident? What about breaking your spine? Is that destiny?" Chantel huffed.

Beren glared at Chantel and she knew she had taken it one step too far. His paralysis was still a touchy subject which he was paradoxically flippant about at times while at other times, if one happened to touch the wrong nerve it would provoke a furious response. Chantel had inadvertently touched just that nerve. Wheeling his wheelchair perilously close to Chantel's feet, Beren turned his back on her and rolled away. She knew it might be awhile before he decided to speak to her again. She also knew that with only a senile geriatric couple, a family of entertaining musicians and a few other stern-faced business-people as the other passengers on board the boat, he would be compelled to engage her company before too long.

\-----------------------

The ocean was a strange place to someone who had only ever known land. The constant motion of the boat made Chantel feel horribly giddy. The smell of the sea cast a sickly taste in her mouth and the salt residue from the water found its way onto every inch of her body, drying up her skin and tangling her straightened hair. She found herself peering into the not quite blue of the water and straining to spot any signs of wildlife under the sea. It was pointless. For the entire journey she saw only water and more water. Keeping her eyes on the horizon had therapeutic benefits at least and allowed her to calm her mind. Being in the midst of the ocean, Chantel had no connectivity on her hard drive to the Pangaea mainframe. She tried watching a few re-runs of movies she had seen previously but quickly grew bored of the repeat entertainment. She could not keep her attention focussed and her mind constantly wandered off track. In addition, viewing entertainment as a hologram quickly made her feel even queasier. She contented herself with staring at the waves as they persistently frothed into tiny white peaks only to be subsumed again into the expanse of the ocean. Here was a place where Chantel felt beyond the reach of civilisation, where she could not even access the mainframe to keep abreast of what was happening in the world, where she could not even use her payment chip on board the boat. The ocean was the last vestige of open space impervious to global five infiltration. She resigned herself to the fact that she was as isolated from the world as she had ever been before on this boat.

Chantel spent the nights on the boat at unease. As darkness fell the wind died down to a mere whimper, with barely enough energy to inflate the boat's sails. The boat chugged along relying upon the electronic motor and ocean currents, travelling with less buoyancy than it did when relying upon the wind and slicing through the water instead of bounding over the top of the waves. The constant murmur of the engines only accentuated the disquiet Chantel felt as the sounds of the boat drowned out the noises emanating from the ocean. The lights of the boat were dimmed to conserve electricity for the motor; the ambient light reflecting upon the waves in a ghostly haze. Darkness extended beyond the glow from the boat stretching out to where the sea would meet the sky on the shapeless horizon. Chantel's deep sense of paranoia shirked at the thought of such emptiness.

From Sydney, the boat headed south and then west, hugging the coastline the entire way. Chantel watched the boat navigate around a huge land mass tracing along its entire southern border. She watched the cliffs fade in and out of view as the boat hovered along the outer circumference of the land and wondered what sort of zones lay beyond the shore. Occasionally they would come within sight of the beaches that dotted the coast, each one collecting piles and piles of rubbish that had been dumped upon it by the crashing waves. The bright, garish colours of the discarded food containers, drink bottles and other disposables attracted the attention of passing seagulls that swarmed around the rubbish piles squabbling and squawking over their precious finds in the garbage. Chantel was grateful for the break in monotony from the otherwise congruent landscape of the sea and would stare wistfully at the land, as polluted as it was, yearning for the solidity of soil.

The first port stop the boat made was at a small, dusty harbour on the other side of the land mass that Sydney was situated upon. The first night's stopover at the port unveiled no surprises. The port town bordered upon a wasteland zone and as a result, passengers were prohibited from disembarking off the boat. By this stage, after four or so days of experiencing the unrelenting rocking of the boat, Chantel was craving some stability. Stability would have to wait though as the night spent at port was just enough time to restock. Before she knew it the boat was continuing its journey on the deep, blue ocean.

The seven day journey across the Indian Ocean was the most monumental journey Chantel had ever embarked upon and the most uneventful. The sheer expanse of the ocean was daunting to Chantel. Never before had she felt so humbled than when standing at the bow of the boat looking out across a horizon that gaped miles away from one end to the other of her vision. Never before had she seen such a deep expanse of nothing. Never before had she experienced so great a range of space unoccupied by land and without structure. She could not imagine that there were places on earth such as this that had not been built upon, or harvested, or mined. The ocean was the largest expanse of empty space she had ever seen.

The second port stop was in a slightly more salubrious location. The port was on the edge of the agricultural zone and this at least allowed the passengers to walk around the port district and explore the area. The port town was small. It consisted of only a few tourist oriented restaurants and the obligatory pub. By this stage, Beren was on speaking terms with Chantel again and they had a rowdy night downing drinks together. They instantly regretted such a night of revelry upon resuming their journey the day afterwards worse for wear. It was with bitter experience that they discovered how recovering from a hangover on an undulating boat was one of life's most extreme discomforts. The rest of the boat trip was spent staring at the sky in an attempt to steady the swaying in their minds. The boat continued carving its way listlessly through the water.

At last, Chantel could see the fluorescent tipped towers of a metropolis peering over the horizon and she knew they had finally reached Cape Town.
Chapter Seven

Vacation in the Metropolis

The boat that Chantel and Beren travelled on, being a recreational vessel, was automatically directed towards the tourist district of Cape Town. All metropolis zones were situated upon the coastline to enable ease of accessibility for shipments from manufacturing zones. Cape Town and Sydney, sharing similar latitudinal coordinates, fortunately had temperate climates conducive to holiday-makers flocking there for the sunshine and surf. Other metropolis zones were not so naturally blessed with an abundance of beaches and had more limited recreational opportunities. It was nightfall by the time the boat arrived at Cape Town and Chantel could only discern the city as a silhouette, a montage of shadows lurking in the light of the moon.

As the boat docked in the harbour amidst a sea of gigantic cruise ships, Chantel and Beren took in the view of a city that was strikingly similar to their own but on the other side of the world. Neon signs winked at them from atop the summits of various skyscrapers. The earth's horizon was again obstructed with a never-ending landscape of multi-level towers. Human-made structures conquered Chantel's view of a skyline that for the past 12 days had barely been interrupted by a protruding wave. Just as Chantel had previously amazed in wonderment at how the great expanse of the ocean remained so pristine and untouched, upon alighting upon land, she was conversely in awe at how humanity had created such incredible structures all amassing together in a gigantic, pulsating organism. Upon stepping onto shore she felt comforted again. Not only because the past day on the boat had been spent in the haze of a hangover in which she would have given anything to be on firm ground, but also because the expanse of the metropolis provided a distraction from the nothingness she had been staring at out on the sea. Her eyes were more receptive to the shimmering of the lights that flickered from the distant buildings than to the moonbeams glinting off the water. Surrounded by the buzz of the big city, she felt at ease again.

They entered Cape Town without any administrative issues. Chantel was astonished. Even when she travelled home to her parents' place in the agricultural zone just north of Sydney she had to undergo the process of obtaining the appropriate visa for the visit, getting approval from all the relevant ministries and digging out her documentation and verification files. There were some instances when she even had to check in to the registry office in the agricultural zone from to time to time while on vacation at her parents' place. Given the extensive bureaucratic process involved in her jaunts to the agricultural zone, she expected a similar amount of rigour to be enforced on her journey across to the other side of the world. Although she was pleasantly surprised with the absence of bureaucratic process, she also pondered why this was so.

It was with great difficulty that she tried to keep up with Beren as he rolled off the boat ramp. No matter which way she arranged them, she felt that trying to juggle two large suitcases was like balancing two eggs on a spoon. Even when she activated the remote control devices on the suitcases and used the joystick to direct where the suitcases rolled they would end up in a tumbled heap. Beren was predictably oblivious to her predicament and continued talking to her without the slightest concern as they disembarked.

"Chantel, we were so lucky we did not get caught up in a storm. Out on the high seas the weather can get pretty wretched and once the wind hits the water, what's a little boat like the one we were in going to do? We would be washed away for sure or even tipped overboard or eaten by a whale," Beren chattered on.

"We made it thankfully but that was just the easy bit. Now we have to work out how to travel north."

A lack of response from Chantel did not perturb Beren.

"Now where do you think we should stay tonight? I don't want to be too close to the beach. Of course, I would like to be on the beach but I can't go on the beach so no point trying to find somewhere too close to the beach but I would like to at least have a view of the beach. Oh, how I miss the water!"

Beren paused for a moment in reverie of the times when he used to swim in the ocean. This at least gave Chantel the opportunity to get the suitcases in order and catch up to him. They wandered onto the main tourist strip and starting scoping out the different hotels. Accommodation options were not a problem in the tourist district. Bordering upon the white sand of the beach were rows of hotel towers, all flanking the ocean like a battalion of guards standing at sentinel. Each hotel was part of a global conglomerate. Positioned assertively for every potential customer to take note of was a sign detailing the hotel's affiliation to its respective global five parent company. Depending upon the corporation, hotel patrons could get discounts off the rack rates, extra accommodation options like breakfast and dinner included or any other number of perks. The hotels were all arranged in clusters depending upon their relevant associations. Chantel noticed that in Cape Town, and she imagined in the whole of the south-western quadrant, Utopia had a greater presence. Each of the various global five companies had their own spheres of influence. Pangaea was clearly more prevalent in the central and south-eastern quadrants. Being the most populous region on the globe, retaining influence in these areas secured Pangaea's control of the global parliament. The south-western quadrant, it seemed, was Utopia's domain.

The dominance of Utopia was not the only observation Chantel made about Cape Town. The people here were also different. They were not purebloods. That was obvious. But they were not like the people in Sydney either. The skin of people in Cape Town was darker; the jawline more pronounced. Chantel also noticed that while most people in Sydney had straight hair, the hair of people in Cape Town was significantly curlier. Regardless, the differences were hardly significant and essentially there was still uniformity in the appearance of people across the south-western and south-eastern quadrants. She wondered what the world must have been like with people being divided into regions, segregated into divisions based on colour. She could not imagine a world such as the one Beren had described, in which a person's life was dictated by the colour of their skin. Despite the slight difference in shade between the skin colour of people in Sydney and those in Cape Town, the colour of one's skin hardly allowed for such a basis of discrimination. For such an attribute to form the basis of a person's destiny was a bizarre notion, considering that in Chantel's world there was no such thing as race.

Chantel and Beren wandered along until they finally found a Pangaea hotel on the outskirts of the main tourist district. A fibreglass replica of the Pangaea dinosaur beamed down at them from atop a gaudily lit sign. They hesitated to enter. However, at that stage of the night Chantel's arms had grown weary from battling with the suitcases and as the night grew longer, the more drunkards there were prowling the streets. The hotel was the best and practically only option for Pangaea affiliates. They checked into the hotel and went straight to their rooms. Chantel had never been so appreciative of a shower and a bed. That night, being the first night in 12 days spent in a sleep without movement, she dreamt eerily of the sea. Although she was so deep in slumber that she was beyond consciousness, she felt that she had been transposed onto the boat, bouncing to and fro on the waves. The darkness of the sea beckoned to her even as she lay safe and sound wrapped up in her cocoon of comfortable quilts and freshly washed linen in the Pangaea hotel. The enigma of the sea was still lurking on the outskirts of her mind, tempting her with the unknown expanse of the wilderness.

\-----------------------

Chantel awoke the next morning foggy and disorientated. She peeked out from underneath her eyelids and saw the standardised décor expected of a contemporary living space – the window shades drawn against the harsh early morning sun, the placid pale brown colour of the walls enclosing in on a restricted space – and wondered where she might be. In a flood of realisation, the purpose of her mission suddenly invaded her consciousness. The glitch showing the purebloods, Beren's crazy thirst for adventure and the last 12 days spent incessantly swaying on a renewable energy powered vessel. She opened the window blinds and looked out over the expanse of beach stretching endlessly along the ocean. Even at this time of the morning the sand was flooded with holiday-makers and sun-bakers, all trying to squeeze in as much sunshine as possible before the sun's rays became too strong, taking on the force of laser beams and scalding all those who were not appropriately protected with excessive SPF levels. She regretted not having taken advantage of the early morning sun when she was in such a convenient proximity to the coast, but hoped that Beren was not so eager to continue his adventure that there would be at least one other opportunity for beach action. As her mind turned to Beren she pondered over her good fortune that he had not yet bothered her given the hour of the morning and she that had been given an opportunity to awake gracefully from sleep. Just as she was thanking her lucky stars, there came a pounding at the door.

"Rise and shine, Chantel," Beren's voice penetrated the emptiness of the bare hotel room like water flooding into a gorge. "It's time for us to start moving again. We need to start lining up our next boat ride. We have work to do remember. This is no vacation now."

Chantel's hopes of spending some time lapping in the coolness of the ocean instantly evaporated. She remembered again how painful it could be travelling with Beren.

"Beren, it's barely even 6.30 in the morning," she called back. "Surely we don't need to start moving yet. We know the people we need to ask. We just need to give them a call, tee up a time, name a price and voila – all done, without needing to get up at some ridiculously early time in the morning!"

They had asked the crew of the vessel from Sydney for referrals to a similar boating company that would take them to London metropolis. The crew had given them the name of such a company that chartered small vessels for recreational passengers. They had learned that most boats between Cape Town and London travelled along the shore to the north western quadrant, stopping at one or two ports along the way. According to the maps they had available, the port town of Lagos would be the closest to their final destination. The plan was to find a boat that would take them here and while stopping over at port, Chantel and Beren would sneak off the boat and find transportation by land that would take them to Freetown. The plan sounded simple enough in their heads.

"How much longer do you need for your precious beauty sleep, Chantel princess?" Beren asked snidely.

"Give me two hours," Chantel responded, in part just to get Beren off her back.

"Okay, I'll call these Saharan shipping dudes and see if they can meet us in two hours," Beren said, in a unilateral exercise of executive decision-making.

"Whatever," Chantel grumbled back in acquiescence.

Two hours later Chantel and Beren found themselves on the harbour dodging newly arrived tourists, porters, touters and other random personnel.

"Let me see, she said she would be on wharf 5, next to the Conquer-All cruise ship. The biggest boat in the port apparently," Beren mused.

"We're catching a ride on the biggest boat from this port?" Chantel inquired optimistically.

"Not our boat. The boat it's next to is the biggest boat you've ever seen I was told, which would be that one over there."

Beren pointed to a monstrosity of a vessel. Taking pride of place in the centre of the port was parked a cruise ship as big as a building and towering almost as high as some of the hotels on the coastline. Billboard sized video screens beamed down at the mere humans on the wharf, enticing them with bigger-than-life displays of patrons dancing, singing, swimming, running, sleeping, eating, doing everything one could ever want to do on board the Conquer-All. 'The Conquer-All caters for all activities, has something to suit everyone, is your home away from home that you won't want to leave,' the videos screens screamed. Chantel wondered how a mountain of that size managed to move through the water and without realising it, was careless enough to wonder this aloud.

"With infinitesimal slowness!" was Beren's curt rebuttal to her self-addressed question. "Why, if we had ridden on board one of those things, we would barely even have left Sydney by now. It's much more fun to go on one of these babies!"

As Beren and Chantel rounded the obese circumference of the Conquer-All, they were greeted with the sight of the sailboat that would transport them, if it could make the distance, to the port of Lagos. Compared to the Conquer-All, the Saharan sailboat was tiny. Barely more than a rowboat with a sail perched from a crudely fashioned mast, the Saharan certainly did not embody the confidence of its neighbouring cruise ship. Even in the gentle waves of the port, the Saharan was like a clumsy polar bear, mimicking the way the extinct being used to slip and slide over ice. The slight frame of the boat made Chantel quiver with apprehension. Numerous dents battered along the bottom of the hull belied the boat's previous altercations with rocks and other structures. The boat's mast seemed to imbalance the vessel even more, as it fumbled on the low tide of the water. Chantel wondered how she would manage to stave off seasickness on a boat that looked like it would be thrown around like a kitten's toy.

"G'day, she's a beauty isn't she?" a husky voice asked, penetrating Chantel's thoughts.

Chantel looked up. The perpetrator was a slight, slim-waisted woman with short grey hair and a vicious tan.

"I see you've already been introduced to the Saharan," the woman asserted. "Julie is my name."

She proffered her hand for the obligatory shake.

"You must be Beren and Chantel," Julie rambled on. "Beren told me to watch out for the rollers, haha!"

Chantel stared quizzically back and offered her hand in return.

"Uh, yes. I'm Chantel, Chantel Wild. So you are Julie..." Chantel trailed off, expecting more information from Julie or at least a surname to complete the introduction.

"Captain Julie, if you prefer...or just Captain for short. I'm easy either way. Nice to meet you Chantel. Likewise Beren, Beren Gnarly is it? Yes, that's right we spoke on the phone. Well, what are we standing here on the shore for? Why don't I get you on board for the grand tour, ay?"

Captain Julie marched off towards the Saharan, leaving Chantel and Beren to stare dumbfounded at each other in her wake and with no choice but to follow her on board.

"Now I know what you're thinking," Julie rabbited on. "It's a bit small, maybe a tiny bit pokey. Can it handle the high seas? Well, let me tell you that contrary to first impressions, this Titanic model CU28 is no piece of junk. You name the place and this contraption can take you there. It is fully equipped with the latest state-of-the-art technology, from the automatically calibrating GPS system to the intuitive sail system that repositions itself depending on wind pressure. That's right, this baby can practically sail itself to London. You don't need any other hands on deck with such a dependable fully automated steering system. Okay, so it's no Conquer-All or even no Titanic B03C, but the Saharan is sturdy alright and reliable on the open water. There ain't no berg gonna bust this hull, that's for sure."

They completed the very short, very sweet tour of the vessel, replete with Julie's wild gesticulations and animated facial expressions.

"Uh, Julie," Beren began.

"Captain Julie, you mean," corrected Captain Julie.

"Sure, Captain Julie. We've just spent a very long journey trying to suppress our dinners from disappearing back into the ocean. This next leg of the journey is going to be just as painful as the first. I'm not so sure that we can handle another round of playing puke-a-boo with the fishes."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that," Julie reassured Beren. "This boat has an automatic sensor stabilising system as well to quell the roughest waves."

Beren looked at Chantel and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, what other option do we have?" he reasoned. "Can we leave tomorrow morning?"

Chantel fumed. 'So much for consultation,' she thought. 'When Beren was on a mission, he meant it.' The next leg of the journey on board the Saharan was decided.
Chapter Eight

In the shadow of the cruise ship

"I thought you said this thing had some sort of auto stabilising-function?" Beren yelled to Captain Julie over the din of the Conquer-All's engines.

"It does, this is it," Julie responded, gesturing to the gigantic vessel in front of them.

"What? Being in this mammoth vehicle's undertow?"

"Exactly! If we ride the undertow right in the centre of the cruise ship's drag then we won't rock around so much. This is the guaranteed solution against motion sickness. Problem solved!"

Beren looked up in horror. The stern of the Conquer-All cruise ship stared imposingly back at them, intimidating the Saharan with its sheer bulk. On the deck of the cruise ship, passengers could peer down mockingly at the Saharan, upon which the patrons looked no larger than bits of litter on the sea.

"Are you saying that we are going to remain like this, stifled in this ship's shadow for the entire journey to Fre- I mean London," Beren antagonised, throwing his hands up in the air. "Are you absolutely crazy? This gargantuan thing, this island of a boat, is moving no faster than a snail's crawl. It would take us literally years to get to London if all we can do is follow in the footsteps of this giant. We simply can't be expected to just hang around with such a big oaf until it actually achieves the level of acceleration required to counter the latent energy of the ocean's currents and dispel the centripetal forces of astounding mass anchoring this vessel which contradicts the buoyancy of the water so that the levels of energy required to generate movement of this thing would be the equivalent of the earth's molten core being channelled through a pin sized hole building up such huge amount of pressure that its release would be sufficient to knock the earth out of orbit and sent it in a gravitational path straight towards the sun."

Beren concluded his rant to a response of blank stares.

"We are in the need for speed peoples!" Beren cried. "We can't just spend our holiday wallowing in the wake of this self-proclaimed land mass. Let's get a move on!"

Julie hesitated.

"This is the fastest we can go. Unless you want to row the boat yourself that is."

"What are you talking about? This boat has a sail. It must also have some sort of motorised mechanism. How about powering that up, hoisting the sails and overtaking this man-made mountain."

"The sail is not designed to be relied upon when travelling on the open water. The engines are, well, lacklustre. The way we have always travelled on the Saharan has been to rely upon the suction of such larger vessels as the Conquer-All. In a boat the size of ours we simply cannot be expected to harness the power necessary to tackle the oceans."

"Nonsense! I don't believe a word of that. With a properly hoisted sail it doesn't matter what the size of the boat is. This boat can go anywhere. It may not be the most comfortable ride because, well let's face it, this boat is barely bigger than the size of a leaf, but it is entirely plausible for the engine you have to conquer the Conquer-All. Why, you could probably overtake it by just drifting alone."

"We could, but I'm the Captain of this ship and I will steer it the way I want," Julie huffed.

"You can hardly call this thing a ship," Beren grumbled to himself, finally showing cracks in his resolve.

And with that the matter was sorted. As much as Beren tried to convince Captain Julie to step out of the Conquer-All's wake, she stubbornly refused. She simply would not entertain the notion of venturing away from the cruise ship. Beren eventually gave up fighting with Julie and retreated to the other side of the deck in a huff. There was another issue with the boat that Beren had not fully investigated before embarking on the journey. All the living quarters on the boat were located downstairs in the hull of the boat. The captain's office provided a means of shelter on the deck of the boat but besides that enclosed space, the rest of the deck was entirely open. The downstairs areas in the boat were precisely that – down the stairs and could only be accessed accordingly. Beren refused to undignify himself by crawling downstairs for his daily activities. For the entire journey, Beren would have to spend the time on the deck or where his wheelchair allowed. Chantel tried to offer as much assistance as she could by bringing up food from the kitchen and lugging warm water up the stairs for Beren to shower with. There were some matters though with which Chantel could not render any assistance.

The thing that mortified Beren the most was when he needed to attend to his bodily functions. Without a toilet located on board the deck of the boat, Beren was left with the only other option of disposing his waste over the side of the boat. For certain bodily functions this was a relatively discrete process that could be averted from prying eyes. In other instances, Beren was subjected to the humiliating process of perching himself on the edge of the boat, buttocks dangling over the side and excreting faeces into the water. Chantel and Julie were sensitive enough to make themselves scarce during such a process. Chantel had delicately offered to be of assistance, although she knew that Beren's pride would not allow her to be present throughout the ordeal. However, five stories above Beren and bearing full witness to the humiliating process was the entire population of the Conquer-All. Some of these witnesses did not hesitate to subject Beren to further ridicule by calling out horrible insults and pointing and laughing. The exposure of having such a private moment open for all and sundry to see was debilitating. Throughout the day, Beren suppressed whatever urge he had to purge and clenched his butt cheeks in fierce determination not to become a laughing stock for the already spoilt passengers of the decadent Conquer-All. He delayed his bodily functions until late in the night, when he could hide behind a blanket of darkness and there were few witnesses to behold his humiliation. This change in his body clock of course had ramifications upon Beren's other sleeping and eating patterns and he became irritable and reclusive.

By the third day of the journey, Beren had become intolerable. Incensed by the laborious progress they were making, annoyed by Julie's insistence to cling to the Conquer-All and resentful of the embarrassment caused by his inability to access toilet facilities, Beren retreated entirely. Like a nocturnal animal, he slept during the day and was only awake at night. Being prone to isolation, Beren cordoned off a section of the deck by forming a barricade of boxes, food wrappings and old blankets to form a crude abode. He became a hermit, sinking deeper and deeper into a malaise exacerbated by aggravation towards Julie and his discomfort being on the boat. With his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic, Chantel eventually gave up making any attempt to draw Beren out of his shell. Causing even greater consternation to Beren was Chantel's growing relationship with Julie. All during the day he could hear the two laughing and talking. It wasn't long before Beren and Chantel had sunk into a pattern of behaviour where they barely saw each other. Before going to bed in her downstairs cabin each night Chantel would leave dinner, breakfast and lunch above the deck along with sufficient supplies of water for Beren to shower with. Despite such conciliatory attempts, Beren viewed Chantel's blossoming bond with Julie as an act of betrayal and he spurned her company by simply ignoring her. The tension on the boat lingered like an omnipresent cloud of smog in the air. So they continued on their journey with painstaking lethargy.

As Beren shrank away from society on the boat, Chantel and Julie grew closer. As she had on the previous journey with Beren, Chantel delighted in hearing of Julie's tales of adventure across the oceans in the Saharan. She learned that it was rare for Julie to have company on such journeys. She had travelled the leg between the London and Cape Town metropolises countless times before but such journeys were usually cargo runs for non-perishables such as shoes and clothes. Julie could take her time on such ventures. Chantel wondered how one single person coped with the loneliness of being on the boat by themselves. She wondered how the boredom of the boat, with its cramped living quarters and limited chances to escape would not drive anyone crazy. As irrational as it seemed to Chantel, Julie enjoyed the solitude. She derived a sense of solace from the monotonous sound of the sea lapping at the boat's casing. Out on the open water there were no complications; there was only the overriding purpose to get from A to B in the journey. All other things were irrelevant. Julie explained to Chantel that it was useless trying to understand her relationship with the sea. Captain Julie, as Julie constantly reminded Chantel, was from a seafaring family. The need to be near water ran as plainly in Julie's blood as air in her lungs. It was natural for her to be out on the ocean. She was not perturbed by the water's endless depths or the apparent lack of limits to such a great body of liquid, only attracted by the infinite expanse of the horizon.

As much as Chantel, in deference to Beren, initially tried to appear standoffish to Julie she found it difficult to withstand Julie's charisma. Despite spending so much time alone on the sea, Julie displayed a natural easygoingness and down-to-earth attitude that made it easy for her to relate to people. Chantel could easily bask in Julie's company, sharing jokes and banter, while being drawn to her witty reflections on life. Being away from civilisation for such extended periods of time had made Julie all the more open in her approach when dealing with people. She was not encumbered by social niceties or generic responses. She could relate as innocently to Chantel as a child would. Like a child, Julie was altogether too honest and knew nothing of how to stifle her opinions and temper her behaviour. Although she had omitted to disclose a few important details about the Saharan, this was a deliberate technique she had developed for the purpose of closing the deal. She had the natural air of a salesperson who could draw people towards her and maintain their trust while at the same time employing a selective surreptitiousness that ensured any secrets about herself she did not want disclosed, would stay as locked up as a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean. She was a lady of mystery without appearing to be so and for this reason Chantel trusted her entirely and Beren did not trust her at all.

\-----------------------

On the fifth day Beren made his move. By this time the Saharan, tethered with invisible ropes to the Conquer-All, was only halfway to the port city of Lagos and still making painstaking progress. After four nights spent on the boat, Beren could stand it no longer. During the middle of the night he decided to take the journey into his own hands. Beren discovered that Julie was not wrong when she said that the Saharan could practically steer itself. In defiance of the Captain, Beren commandeered the boat while Chantel and Julie were asleep and raced it full steam ahead in front of the Conquer-All. The bewildered passengers of the Conquer-All bemusedly observed the wheelchair bound Beren tackling with the sail for what seemed like an eternity before he finally managed to hoist it up in a position that captured what little wind there was that night. They regretted the fact that with the Saharan eluding the Conquer-All they would be deprived of the derisive entertainment gleaned from watching a cripple struggle with his regular routine each night. They relished their comfortable position in the salubrious surrounds of the Conquer-All, where they had no need to lift a finger whilst being waited on for the entire journey. They watched the moon glinting off Beren's butt cheeks for the last time as the Saharan sailed away, with Beren giving the Conquer-All's voyeurs the finger and a mooning that was ironically apt for the circumstances.

\-----------------------

Chantel awoke the next morning to the sound of Julie's and Beren's voices shouting full blast at each other.

"How dare you, you, you little squid! Don't you know that _I_ am the Captain of this boat! _I_ steer this ship the way that _I_ decide! What makes you think that you can just, just...kidnap this boat and take it where you want? This is my property!"

"Oh, _your_ property, everything belongs to _you._ Of course it does. It's easy for you to live on this floating prison. It's easy for you to retreat downstairs where no one can see you. You don't have to deal with hundreds of gawking clowns who have nothing else to do but amuse themselves at my expense. Do you think its fun to have to shit into the water every day? To have my ass cheeks flapping in the breeze for everyone to see? Do you think I enjoy being laughed and pointed at? I am not an animal goddammit and if you think I'm going to stay trapped on this boat just to become a laughing stock then you better think again. I cannot, will not be caged like that. I would rather tie a life vest to my wheelchair and paddle to Lagos than be stuck in those conditions. Look at how I'm living! Look at that hovel that I have to sleep in. This is torture. Are you a torturer? Is that what this place is all about? Then you should have bloody told us before we stepped foot on this jail of a boat. You should have said, hi come on a journey with me where I imprison you for months on end on the sea and I make you endure excruciating conditions – I'm Captain Torturer, a real sadist at heart. I just love seeing people suffer."

Julie recoiled in horror. Chantel wasn't sure if Julie had previously been merely indifferent to Beren's suffering or was simply oblivious to the detrimental effect the mockery was having on Beren's psyche. Regardless, it was evident that Julie clearly resented to being labelled a torturer.

"It's still no excuse," Julie stammered. "My ship means my rules and you've broken them clear and simple. Obviously this is not really working out. I'll take you as far as Lagos, but from there on you guys are on your own. You'll put my vessel in danger if you keep trying to run away in the middle of the night like that...more danger than we might already be in." Julie muttered under her breath.

"Perfect!" Beren agreed. "With the Saharan travelling at a somewhat reasonable speed now, we'll be at Lagos by the night after next. I think we can both be civil to each other until then and once we reach the port, Chantel and I will be only too happy to part ways, won't we Chantel?"

Chantel hesitated.

"There's one other thing I didn't mention before about why we were staying so close to the Conquer-All," Julie reluctantly added.

Looking off into the distance, Julie then said the words that made Chantel's blood curl and body tense.

"At least when we were in the shadow of the Conquer-All, the pirates would not come near us," Julie remarked. "Now, we are exposed...for anyone to pounce on us."

As Julie's last words trailed off, Beren and Chantel exchanged panicked glances. They had not even thought of the possibility that the Conquer-All might be protecting them from the terror of the savages. Pirates in these waters were renowned for being ruthless vagabonds who would pillage and plunder anyone they came across. Suddenly the realisation of the danger they were in bore down upon them like an avalanche.
Chapter Nine

Attack of the pirates

It was just past nightfall on the second night after the Saharan had deserted the Conquer-All that the pirates attacked. Beren, who was just beginning to doze off on deck was the first to see them and sounded the alarm.

"Sweet, bloody, Jesus, hail, Mary, Christ, mother-of-God, Lord, Allah, shoot me in the leg...I think the pirates are coming!"

Below deck Chantel and Julie rushed immediately from their respective cabins to see the commotion Beren was shouting about. In the distance Chantel could see, faintly silhouetted on the horizon, the billowing sail bearing the unmistakable skull and cross bones of a pirate ship. Julie swore a string of so many nasty words Chantel wondered where she had picked up such a vocabulary, being out on the sea for half her life. There was no doubt that the pirates had spotted the Saharan and even in the light emanating from the red rim of the setting sun, Chantel could see that the pirate ship was heading straight towards them. Trying to outsail the pirates would be futile. All that the crew on board the Saharan could do was watch in horror as the pirate ship gathered speed in their direction. With the attack of the pirates now imminent, Beren and Julie erupted again into a row about who was to be blamed for the almost certain capture of the Saharan. Chantel listened to their bickering escalate as the dreaded pirates advanced.

"Thank you once again for getting us into this, Beren. We could be raped, murdered, robbed, or even worse, enslaved! I would say that it's been nice knowing you, but it hasn't been. It's been a nightmare!"

Beren was unrepentant.

"Well if you had mentioned before that there were pirates on these seas that would have been really useful information. But despite being paying customers, you thought it would be okay to just keep us in the dark and withhold secret Julie business from us. Don't you think we have a right to know these things?"

"You should trust in your Captain. That's why you hired me. If I didn't want to travel faster than a snail's crawl then there was a good reason for it. You should have known that your Captain is here to protect you."

"Pft! Protect us? My bulging brain cells! Like you care about protecting us! I wouldn't be surprised if there were some other secrets you were keeping from us, Captain Crock."

By this stage the pirate ship was in plain sight and Chantel was certain that Beren and Julie's argument could be heard across the water.

"Oh shut your gob traps both of you. Look, here they come."

Beren and Julie both surrendered the dispute as a lost cause and looked up to see a fearsomely decked ship, a fraction the size of the Conquer-All, but still quadruple the size of the Saharan rounding around to the starboard side. Even in the disappearing twilight Chantel shuddered at what she could make out of the ship. Enveloped in metallic surfaces, the entire body gave off a menacing glare cast by the reflections of the fading light. Its hull was layered with sheets of patchwork aluminium, giving it the appearance of scales wrought upon a robotic amphibian. A plethora of different metal alloys held together the ship and as the light reflected eerily off the various metal sheets, the pirate ship looked like it was enveloped in a hazy glow. With darkness quickly descending, the ship could easily be mistaken for a mechanical creature floating towards them on a cloud.

As the ship came closer Chantel realised the reason for its speed. The ship was flying like a bird, or at least that's what it looked like to Chantel. With the ship now pointed forward towards them Chantel could see on either side of the ship extended arms, flapping like wings to a regimented rhythm. These oars directed the boat with precision to the starboard of the Saharan and brought the pirate ship so close, Chantel almost thought that they would be rammed. Instead, just when the pirate ship was almost touching the Saharan, shadowy figures threw down some ropes over the deck of the Saharan and slid down these ropes in silence. Clothed in black, these figures said not a word upon touching the deck and simply raised a laser shooter to each of the three people on the Saharan, gesturing for them to climb the rope and board the pirate ship.

"Well easy for you to climb that with your super human ninja strength I bet. You'll have to give me some time to build up my biceps before I can get myself up on that thing," argued Beren, as defiant under captivity as he was in any other situation.

Chantel and Julie abruptly did as they were ordered, leaving the faceless figures to confer about what to do with Beren. When they climbed on board the deck of the pirate ship they found it empty, momentarily.

"Well I'll be damned, I never thought I'd see you again," a voice boomed from the darkness.

Chantel heard a distinct groan from Julie, from which Chantel could immediately deduce that Julie knew this person.

"What is this you have brought for us? Fresh meat? You really are too kind. How will I ever repay your generosity?"

"These are good people, not toys for you to play with Condor. Leave them alone," Julie retorted.

As Julie shouted, a figure stepped out from the shadows.

"C'mon Julie, what happened to the respect? You know that it's Captain Condor, or rather co-Captain Condor...co-Captain Condor," the figure smirked.

Chantel could see now that the voice belonged to a middle-aged greying man, around the same age as Julie and just as lithe in figure. Even in the minimal light available, Chantel could see that the man's face was as lined and hallowed as a train track, furrowed with leathery lines formed under the harshness of the glaring sun. Just at that moment, Beren was bundled on board by the black-clad ninja figures who hoisted him and his wheelchair on to the ship.

"I knew it! You are a pirate," he shouted accusingly at Julie.

Captain Condor, the man, turned to face Beren.

"She's not just any pirate. She's the pirate queen of this ship, the Kazaa. The greatest ship in this part of the world. I have no idea why she abandoned this ship to steer that piece of junk down there."

"You know very well why, Condor. You know that I've put my entire heart and soul into this ship and it broke my heart to leave. But I just couldn't sit there and watch you use this ship for evil."

"Evil, schmeevil. Why are you so quick to judge? You are the only one who labels what we are doing evil. I haven't heard anyone else on this ship complaining."

"Condor! You are stealing those people's lives. I simply couldn't be complicit in that."

Beren and Chantel watched intrigued as the argument progressed. Julie, their Captain Julie, it would appear was an ex-pirate. Chantel was mortified. She had trusted Captain Julie completely. She had defended her against Beren's suspicions. To have that trust misplaced made her stomach churn. Chantel suddenly felt like she had been struck by a tidal wave. Beren could not help but give Chantel a slightly smug raised eyebrow, in vindication for his earlier distrust. Beren never could resist the opportunity to give someone the 'I told you so'. His 'I told you so' skills were so advanced he could even apply them in silence.

Suddenly out of nowhere a woman rushed onto the deck and embraced Julie in a humungous bear hug.

"Julie, it's so good to see you again. How could you leave your Aunty Bessie like that? Without saying a word. We were all so worried about you."

Aunty Bessie epitomised the image of an archetypal grandmother. With her thinning hair tied up in a tightly knotted bun complemented by an outfit that would not look right on anyone younger than seventy she played the old woman character as fittingly as the logo for a brand of homemade biscuits. Julie reciprocated Aunty Bessie's affection with a look of contentment that Chantel had not seen on Julie's face for the entire time she had been on the Saharan. Chantel knew that Julie was home. Aunty Bessie immediately began fussing over her long lost niece-in-law like a mother bear pawing over her cubs.

"Condor, leave her alone for now. Look at her! She must be tired. Let her rest for goodness sake. You two have so much to talk about. You can take your time to talk things over. Don't do it out here in front of everyone. Take care of your guests first."

Captain Condor regarded his ageing relative and sighed. Just like that, Aunty Bessie had diffused the situation.

"Okay, Aunty Bessie. As you say."

He eyed Chantel and Beren for the first time. His face expressed alarm upon seeing Beren sitting in his wheelchair.

"Lordy, what do we have here? A cripple! Well, well what is your story? A shark attack? Laser shooter skirmish? You don't see many people like you around nowadays," Condor queried curiously.

Beren rolled his eyes. He had been grateful that Condor's reunion with Julie had provided a momentary distraction from the universal attention given to his condition. He knew that it would be too good to be true for such a distraction to be long lived.

"Well if you must know, I was involved in an accident while on the run from the global police," was Beren's haughty response.

"No joke!" Condor exclaimed in awe. Being a fugitive from the global police was no laughing matter, as Condor was only too aware. "What did you do?"

"Hacking," Beren replied abruptly.

"Ah." Condor raised his eyebrows. "You'll have to tell me the details later. Sorry to see that it put you in this condition. On the plus side, you must have nice strong arms then, eh?"

"I make do," Beren said, failing to see the relevance of this comment.

Aunty Bessie chipped in again to save the day.

"Come on now everyone. Let's get something to eat. It's time for dinner and lucky for our guests, I've cooked up a feast! Some sixth sense must have told me that our dear Julie would be joining us again with these lovely guests. Come," she gestured to Chantel. "Let's get some food into you. Look how skinny you all are."

That night was the strangest night Chantel had ever had in her life, up to that point. She was certain that if she had been given some fore-warning that embarking on this voyage would involve being kidnapped by pirates en route to Lagos she would have thought twice about leaving her life in Sydney behind. As it turned out, these pirates didn't seem so bad, or so Chantel thought. She could definitely think of worse things that might have happened to her on her journey.
Chapter Ten

The extraction

Chantel woke the next morning in a stupor, still groggy and hung over from the previous night's activities. The entire night had passed in a blur. At Aunty Bessie's insistence the party had moved to the eating quarters where, in the warm glow of the kitchen, the guests were welcomed into the fold of the pirate ship with open arms. The table was a revolving lazy susan of various crew people and their families who all dropped by in curiosity to gawk at the latest visitors. They were particularly interested in Chantel and Beren. It was uncommon for anyone on the boat to have had met a person from the metropolis of the south eastern quadrant. Chantel and Beren were bombarded with questions about what it was like to live in Sydney metropolis. What did the city look like? What were the people like? What did they wear? What did they do for entertainment? The line of questioning soon turned to Beren's paraplegia. How did he manage? Didn't he miss walking? Did he have to travel everywhere with the chair? How did he cope by himself?

Beren abruptly became annoyed with these questions and feigned tiredness. Aunty Bessie came to his rescue and showed Beren to a ready-made cabin just off the kitchen area, which Beren could access easily in his wheelchair. It wasn't too long afterwards that Chantel also made her excuses and crashed on the bunk above Beren's in the four person cabin. The other bunk bed was occupied with two adolescent aged siblings, who were well and truly asleep by the time Chantel retired. Her last memory was of falling asleep listening to Beren's wheezy breathing from below and staring enraptured at the faces of the siblings sleeping adjacent to her. Like the people of Cape Town, the features of the siblings were subtly different from the demographic in Sydney. The differences that Chantel had noticed among the people in Cape Town of having slightly darker skin and curlier hair than people in Sydney, were even more pronounced in the features of these teenagers and indeed the other inhabitants of the Kazaa. Chantel remembered the purpose of her adventure and her heartbeat quickened. They were getting closer to finding the purebloods. Chantel just knew it.

\-----------------------

When Chantel climbed down from her bunk bed, she expected to see the same two adolescents across from her that she had fallen asleep staring at the night before. She was surprised to see that the bunk bed now had different occupants. A man and a woman were sound asleep in the bunks, despite it seeming to Chantel that the hour of the morning was already outrageously late. She could smell the scent of coffee drifting into the cabin from the kitchen area. The moment she descended Beren had just sat up in his bed and was in the process of transferring to his wheelchair. Just as soon as Chantel rushed to offer assistance Beren quickly and swiftly effected the transition.

"Thanks for the offer Chanty but you have to be quicker than that to be of any use to me," Beren said cheerfully, already displaying a merrier mood than he had for the entire journey on the Saharan.

Chantel and Beren crossed into the kitchen where a familial gathering was already bustling. Julie and Condor were nowhere to be found, as was the case the previous night, but Chantel and Beren recognised some of the faces of the people that had been so insistent in their questioning the night before. With the guidance of others, Chantel and Beren each poured themselves a cup of coffee and found themselves a breakfast pack to reheat. Just when they had settled at the table to start digging into their meals, Condor made another bold entrance.

"So I trust you both had a comfortable night's sleep. We try to make our guests on the Kazaa as welcome as possible. I mean, this place is no hotel but we can still try to turn on the charm. We like to think of it as being like a B&B on water. That's an accurate description of our quaint, little pirate ship wouldn't you say?"

"Well thank god you rescued me when you did from that awful Saharan. I was like a prisoner on that thing," Beren piped up.

"Haha, prisoner you say! Make sure you tell Julie that. She's the one that has an issue with being a prison guard," Condor sneered.

Chantel was instantly repulsed. Beren knew only too well that Julie was no oppressor and his depiction of being a prisoner on the boat was nothing more than an exaggeration.

"So what is the story between you and Julie," Chantel inquired. "I get the feeling that there is some intense history between you two."

Condor grimaced and shook his head.

"Boy, oh, boy. You folks know nothing," Condor said, pulling up a chair at the table. "Julie is my wife. She's the other Captain of this ship, which we built together. Ten wonderful years we had, sailing the seas together. It was marvellous being a pirate on these waters in those days. The pickings were rich and plentiful. Ay, did we have some good times. Well, I tell you this...it ain't easy running a pirate ship in this day and age. The supplies, the port restrictions, fewer pirates to man the decks. With less chartered vessels roaming the seas and more goods being transported on those massive cruise ships, it's getting harder and harder to find what we need to make this baby run. We had to find different ways of gaining the comparative advantage, so to speak. Julie and I disagreed on what the best way of doing this would be, but the way I saw it...I didn't really have a choice. I didn't really know how much Julie disagreed with what I was doing on the Kazaa, but one day, five years ago, I woke up and she was gone leaving just an angry message that she would not be a part of such injustice."

Chantel was floored. Julie simply didn't seem to have the temperament of a pirate. She could not imagine Julie as being in the same league as Condor, who friendly as he was for the moment, did appear to have something sinister about him. Beren was slightly less taken by surprise.

"So what was it that Julie disagreed with as being so evil?" he blatantly asked. "Should we start running away from you now? Because if so, it is going to be easy for you since I can't swim."

Condor burst into laughter for the first time, and in doing so, skilfully skirted around the topic.

"I'll let Julie explain that one to you, as I'm sure she will in due course. In the meantime finish your meals. I'll be back in a little while to perform the extraction. We are pirates after all."

Chantel froze. Extraction? What did Condor mean by that? Before Chantel could query further, Condor had gone.

"What do you think he means by the extraction?" Chantel whispered to Beren. "There's something bizarre about this whole thing."

"Sure is," Beren replied. "Why would you give up living on a ship like this to steer a boat like the Saharan? That doesn't make sense. At least this ship has ramps!"

"Beren, I'm talking about Condor. He seems shifty to me. How do we know we can trust him? I think we should try to find Julie and speak to her about this."

"I think I'd rather trust Condor than Julie to be honest. How do you know Julie didn't lead us into this trap in the first place? It seemed all too convenient that we ended up like sitting ducks in the path of a pirate ship."

"Beren! You know that was your own fault. What with stealing the boat like that and sailing it into a trap. I don't think Julie planned to get us into this. Did you see her face when she saw the ship? She was traumatised."

"Hehe, yeah. Imagine coming face to face with a long lost husband. Julie sure has some skeletons in her closet, that's for sure. I can see that they are a good match for each other though. I mean, not as good as you and I obviously--"

Chantel ignored Beren's jibes.

"You might think this is one big joke Beren, but I'm scared. I don't have a good feeling about all of this."

At that moment Condor reappeared in the kitchen.

"Don't worry folks there's nothing to be scared about," Condor said, unashamedly revealing that he had been listening to the conversation. "It's just a simple extraction. It won't hurt at all. Now if you've finished your meals I'll take you down to the extraction room and you can have a bit more of a look around this ship. What do you say?"

Not knowing what else to do, Chantel and Beren did as Condor suggested and followed him down a winding corridor into what they imagined was the centre of the ship. Deep in the bowels of the vessel, they were led into a cavern, in which the diffused light from the outside sun illuminated various cords and buttons on a jumble of computer servers. The heat emanating from the servers in this room was intense, as was the distinct robotic hum reverberating from the computer equipment.

"We try to save energy in this room by keeping the lights off when no one is in here," Condor explained, switching on the lights.

Suddenly the entire cabin was illuminated with bright, white, LED light. The room was crammed with computer equipment; servers and hard drives of all different sizes filled every nook and cranny of the cavern as well as wires, microchips and various other circuit boards strewn across the floor. One wall of the room was covered with projection screens upon which images of the ocean surrounding the Kazaa from different vantage points flickered intermittently over the screens. A huge sonar screen in the corner vigorously scanned the area, emitting a high-pitched beep upon detecting other vessels in the tracking zone. Chantel and Beren realised that the Saharan would easily have been detected by the Kazaa using this equipment.

"Welcome to the Computer Control Centre, otherwise known as the triple C if you're into acronyms, and let's face it, who isn't?" Condor joked to himself. "This is where we do all our tracking among other things. You can see we have a state of the art sonar syst over there, the security cams down that side, we even have a high tech alert system that's honed into the wireless frequency used by the global police so we can listen in on all their communicator calls. We gotta be on our toes here on the Kazaa."

Chantel looked over to Beren. His face was bright beyond delight. She could tell he was in heaven being in a hacker's paradise such as this. Even with her advanced capabilities as a tech eng at Pangaea, the technological capacity she was witnessing surpassed anything she had previously dealt with in her day job. Within the depths of the CCC in the Kazaa, Chantel was surrounded by highlights of innovation that were at least five years beyond anything Pangaea had been working on. While Pangaea and the other global five companies had been concentrating their efforts on developing greater satellite capabilities for communications and monitoring movement, it would appear that the team on board the Kazaa had been working on the opposite. Sonar was the frequency of choice for the communication systems used on the Kazaa. Using encrypted frequencies sent via sonar wavelengths, the Kazaa could send messages to other vessels in its pirate network and by using this previously untapped technology, could also prevent detection by the global police. It appeared that Beren and Condor certainly did have something in common.

"This is absolute genius," Beren exclaimed. "Defying the global police by using sonar waves. You mean that even the global police haven't developed the technology yet to communicate under the waves?"

"Apparently not," Condor smugly replied. "So this is the way we pass all our information."

"What sort of intel is being sent?" Chantel asked. "And who are you sending it to?"

"Anything and everything that can be stored as data can be sent under the sea," Condor continued. "We have clients that are interested in whatever we can give them. As long as they give us a good price, then it's no skin off my nose to send them what they want. For instance, I bet we will have a fair few people that are keen for what is on the chip in that pretty little head of yours. Are you ready for your extraction?"

Chantel was suddenly on guard once again.

"What do you mean? You want to take from me what is on my hard drive? You know that is illegal."

"Relax," Condor reassured. "We are out on open water. If the global police caught you now, you would probably already be thrown into jail just for fraternising with pirates. This is what we do whether you like it or not."

At that point, Condor's voice took on a menacing tone and his eyes narrowed. Chantel knew that his last words were meant as a threat and there was nowhere for her to escape. She looked to Beren for reassurance. He shrugged his shoulders unapologetically. With no choice but to acquiesce Chantel took a seat on an impressive looking throne of a chair. She imagined hand cuffs springing out from the arm rests and metal latches encircling her waist to hold her captive in the chair. Her heart pounded as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, wondering what this extraction involved and if it would hurt.

"Just hold still while I put this stylus in position," she heard Condor say.

She felt something metallic resting against her head and the hum of a hard drive close to her ear. She opened her eyes and at that moment Condor announced that the extraction was complete.

"There you go. That wasn't so bad was it?" Condor smirked. "It's just like going to the dentist."

Chantel turned to face Condor, but he was already engrossed in reviewing the entire contents of Chantel's hard drive.

"A Pangaea chip. We don't come across too many of 'em in these parts I gotta say. It's usually all Utopia chips around here. There should be some good buyers for this stuff."

Chantel watched aghast as the entire contents of her hard drive were displayed on the projector screens in the cavern. The catalogue not only had material she had downloaded, but her own personal creations and data were also on display. It was all there to be traded on the black market.

"Fascinating," Beren piped up. "What algorithm did you use to decrypt the digital rights management on the files?"

"Now, now, Beren," Condor said, oscillating back to his slightly more scary demeanour. "You, just like any other self-respecting hacker should know that I can't disclose that sort of information. If I do, I just might have to kill you. You wouldn't want that would you, so it's best to nip your curiosity in the bud now."

Condor once again exuded a more threatening disposition for a fleeting moment and then returned instantaneously to his usual charisma.

"What about my personal stuff?" Chantel asked. "I can understand you selling the download files but no one will be interested in my own data will they?"

Condor turned to face her.

"Oh, I see. Protective are we? Scared that our privacy will be breached? Well, to be honest you never know what people will buy nowadays and there may be people who are interested in your personal life. Then again, I do sort of feel a little bit grateful to you both for bringing Julie back to me. And I know that she thinks the world of you. What do you say I cut you a deal? I'll delete the files that you want deleted, if Beren lets me in on his secrets about how he performed his hacking heist."

Chantel was confused. Condor had threatened to kill Beren for inquiring about exactly the same information of Condor's just moments before.

"That's entirely up to him," she said. "It doesn't make sense for you to bargain off his knowledge for my information. Plus that's completely hypocritical. You were almost ready to kill him for just asking you to share the exact same information. How can you expect Beren to give his intel to you?"

"No, that's okay. I'm happy to share," Beren interrupted. "No need to keep such intel to myself after everything I've been through. Relax Chantel. He's a businessman. He has to keep his trade secrets secret. On the other hand, I'm only too happy for my intel to be open sourced for whoever wants a piece of it. The more people know the better, the way I think of it."

And like that, the deal was struck. Condor must have thought that Beren's information was actually more valuable than Beren thought his information was, realised Chantel. Hence his desire to trade Chantel's private information for Beren's intel. Whatever the reason, she would never understand the nature of trade between hackers. Chantel left Beren and Condor in the cavern, with each criminal opining enthusiastically to the other about their respective hacking experiences. Beren could never resist a bragfest, Chantel chuckled to herself. Now it seemed like he had finally met his match.

Chantel rubbed the Pangaea chip in her head to check that it was still in there. The extraction hadn't been such a terrifying process. She wondered if that was what Julie had meant when she said that Condor was stealing peoples' lives. If that was all Julie was worried about then she needn't have been so concerned. Chantel had survived the extraction process unharmed. She certainly didn't think it was worth causing a rift between Julie and Condor's relationship. However if Condor was also stealing the personal information of his extractees, Chantel could see how that would be a concern. Nevertheless, Chantel decided that she would try to assure Julie that Condor's actions were not as reprehensible as Julie made them out to be. At the end of the day, it was clear that Condor still cared about Julie and it was a shame to see them both so unhappy apart. If Condor thought that extractions were necessary for life as he knew it on the Kazaa to continue, then perhaps they were a necessary evil but a lesser evil than what might potentially be the case. There were worse crimes imaginable. It was only data after all, thought Chantel. Unfazed, she set about exploring the rest of the Kazaa, trying to find where Julie had disappeared to.
Chapter Eleven

Another era

After silently extricating herself from the excited conversation continuing in the cavern, Chantel retraced her steps back up the winding corridor to the deck of the Kazaa. From the surface, the vessel looked deceptive in size. She looked down the side of the ship to see the water lapping at the hull below. The waves were more subdued today, as if experiencing a lull of temperament, in between bouts of fury. The Saharan remained tethered to the stern of the Kazaa, being dragged along behind like a petulant puppy on a leash. The oars that had given the Kazaa the appearance of a bird when Chantel had first seen the ship were circling lazily in the water, no longer powering along with the same energy they had exuded during the Kazaa's advance to the Saharan. Peering down the length of the ship's exterior Chantel could not have imagined that beneath the innocuous looking deck resided a cabin of ground breaking information technology. She wondered how many of the other crew people on the Kazaa were privy to the ship's use as a hub of illicitly gained intellectual property, being traded through the waters right under their noses. She figured that most people on the ship must in some way have been partaking in the exercise. Condor did not seem to regard the CCC as much of a secret. Chantel looked across the waters and tried to speculate as to the number of other pirate ships that were out there, sailing the seas with similar resources of technology hidden within their hulls. She estimated that there must be hundreds of other similar vessels all in the same boat, so to speak, eking out their own existence in whatever unconventional manner suited them on the sea.

Chantel was convinced that the ocean was the last remnant of un-civilisation left in the world. The last time she looked at a map of the world, every space on land was already colour coded and categorised representing areas that had been explored and inhabited, already developed to their greatest capacity in the conquest for resource wealth. The oceans were the only blank spaces on the map, without any markings of population. She wouldn't be surprised if a whole ulterior universe existed out on the ocean, different to everything she had ever known in her Pangaea world. From what she could tell, the children living on the Kazaa had vastly different upbringings to those experienced by children in the metropolis zones, or even Chantel's own childhood growing up in the agricultural zone. There would be no implant initiations for the children on the ship for a start. Chantel had observed that few children on board the Kazaa had chip implants in their heads. Most of the adults were implanted with hard drive chips, although Chantel could not imagine that there would be much use for such devices out on the ship. She divined to think of what it must be like for a child being raised on a ship, sailing from destination to destination at the mercy of the ocean and never knowing what the next stop on land would behold. She remembered the inquisitive faces of the children that had been so interested in Chantel and Beren from their first night on the ship.

\-----------------------

Suddenly she was transported back to a time when she was a little girl, growing up in the agricultural zones north of Sydney metropolis. She could recollect that innocent thirst for adventure that she felt when she was younger and remembered how she loved to go searching for unexplored realms. Her parents had driven the family out to a neighbouring farm to look at produce and other equipment. She had a brother back then. This was before he fell ill. While her parents were discussing business with the proprietors of the other property, Chantel and Brad had run off to play in amongst the warehouses and other buildings on the farm. The farm owners were jovial folks and only too happy to let Chantel and Brad explore. They had run off excitedly together, thrilled by the prospect of being able to run around without adult supervision. Chantel had been nine on that day. Brad was seven, which was the age he would always be.

Chantel remembered how she and Brad had wandered onto the farming lands first of all. The farm they were on predominantly grew maize and they had spent a joyful time playing hide and seek in among the towering stalks of corn. Despite being two years younger than Chantel, Brad was already up to Chantel's shoulders and could run just as fast as she could. They dashed around the rows of neatly planted crops in delight, giggling at the way the fronds of the plants stroked their skin as they brushed past. They tried to climb the maize stalks by hoisting each other up to grab at the bushels of corn that were just forming on the plants. The heat festering in the humidity of the air was absorbed by the pores of the maize plant, making the corn cobs warm to touch. Chantel and Brad tossed the vegetables at each other like they were hot potatoes, dodging in and out of the maize forest as they did so. They were both such high energy sprinters that they were quickly exhausted from such activity and meandered away in search for shade and a respite from the heat. They found a channel of water, similar to the canal they had on their own property that indicated the demarcation between this farmer's property and the next. In an attempt to cool off, they both dove into the water.

It was not very deep, this manufactured rivulet of fresh water. It was the farm's guaranteed water source in the event of drought and it formed a network all throughout the vicinity of farms, ensuring that each farm had access to a supply of water. They could both stand easily in the water and peer through the clear, trickling stream to the pebbles beneath. They laughed as they splashed each other mercilessly with the water. Chantel remembered now how refreshing the water had seemed that day, how Brad had beamed with delight as they both ended up saturated. He had always loved the water and even at a young age he was already adept at swimming in the dams and water holes around their farm. As opposed to Chantel, Brad had a spirit for outdoors adventure which gave their parents confidence that he would be responsible for the farm when they retired. Chantel had never shown much interest in agriculture and this was made only the more evident when she moved to the metropolis to enrol in university after high school.

As soon as they had cooled off in the water, Brad was off again; this time running towards some abandoned warehouses on the neighbouring property. Chantel gave chase and followed him inside a huge dilapidated building, inside which the heat was baking at an extreme temperature. It took her eyes sometime to adjust to the mottled light filtering through the crevices and holes in the walls of the building. When she was able to peer through the darkness and garner a sense of her surroundings, she could see that the interior of the building had been partitioned off into various storage areas that were empty now, containing just smatterings of the produce that must have been kept there previously. Brad had run off to one of the other levels underneath the ground and she could hear his footsteps echoing throughout the vast emptiness of the warehouse as he trumped down the stairs. She called him to come back, warning him that they shouldn't stray too far away. There was no response.

She went in search for Brad. She remembered how each movement she made felt heavy in the musty air. The heat cooped up in the warehouse made the air difficult to breath and inhaling through her nose was an exhausting exercise in itself. Not only that, but there was a strange smell in the air. An acrid, unpleasant odour made her wrinkle her nose and gag. She breathed through her mouth instead, trying to filter the pungency out of the air by pursing her lips as she sucked the air in. Regardless, no matter what she did she could not get rid of the distaste in the air. She wished Brad had never entered the warehouse. She would not understand the direness of the situation he was in until later.

She proceeded to follow the direction of the sound of Brad's footsteps. Each step she took made a crunching sound as her shoes pressed down lightly against the floor of the warehouse. The accumulated dust and grit on the ground rolled underneath her feet like she was stepping on gravel. With each step she took, her feet seemed to slide in the dirt, one step falling unsteadily in front of the next. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She followed Brad down one of the stair cases, stepping gingerly and trying not to touch the filthy bannister. She walked down one of the corridors lined with storage rooms, her footsteps echoing around her the entire way. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She saw something dart into the shadows in the corner of her eye. Frightened she let out a shriek and called Brad. She started running in his direction. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Her legs were almost tripping over each other now as she ran. The ground had turned even slipperier the further into the building she went, as more grit seemed to form on the ground. She could hear Brad calling. She ran quicker. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She saw more of them now, scurrying away at first when she approached. Then there were so many of them they were not even scared of her as she ran past. Her heart pounded. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Rats were piled everywhere in the bottom cavities of the warehouse. She saw them squirming over each other in their nests. She ran faster so they wouldn't touch her. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She wanted to vomit with the sight of them. Plump, satisfied looking creatures, basking in the comfort of the abandoned warehouse. She was disgusted, but she had to find Brad. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She ran until she turned a corner and the horror of what she saw made her stop in her tracks. Crunch. Brad was squirming on the ground, trying desperately to beat away the rodents that were attacking his face, his hands and any bit of exposed skin they could nip at. Chantel screamed.

The next few moments seemed to happen in slow motion. She remembered running up to Brad. She remembered beating away at the dirty, infested rats as they snarled and hissed at her. She remembered dragging Brad up off the dirt as he cried and covered his face, rubbing even more dirt and rat droppings into himself. She remembered bumbling over the correct corridor to follow, the correct staircase to climb, the correct door to push as she struggled to find a way out of the warehouse. Before too long she was crying also as her and Brad both emerged from the empty warehouse covered in sweat and dirt and tears. Still hanging on tightly to Brad, she led him to the stream where they both plunged again into the cool, flowing water. She retched on the ground, finally, purging all the putridness from the warehouse. She would never forget how instantly their day of fun had turned to terror.

She brushed Brad off and calmed him down. He was still hysterical and swatting aimlessly at imaginary rats. Distraught, she held him close to her until he finally stopped sobbing. She didn't know what to do. She had never been as terrified as when she saw Brad covered in rats. She was still traumatised by the thought of it. Eventually they headed back towards the farm house where their parents were still cheerfully negotiating the terms of their business. Their parents hadn't noticed that anything was immediately the matter and so, to their peril, Chantel and Brad kept the incident with the rats silent. Brad made the excuse that he had been cut by the brittle leaves of the maize stalks as he was running through the crop field. Scared that they would be reprimanded for venturing onto a neighbour's property, not a word was mentioned about the warehouse until several days later.

Sores soon started to appear on Brad's body. He fell ill and had to be confined to his bed. All the while the sores became more swollen and started to change colour. By this time, although their parents knew what Brad was dealing with, it was too late for treatment. He was quarantined and given the best care the Wilds could provide. Even if medical treatment could be provided, all the facilities available for administering assistance were located in the metropolis zones and there was not enough time to apply for the relevant migration permits to travel to these areas. Eventually the sores became black with the unmistakeable mark of gangrene. Slowly, Brad's youthful body withered and faded away.

With the plague affecting Brad for some time before his eventual demise, Chantel's parents had sufficient time to let the reality sink in. As he lay wasting away in his room, the rest of the family cried all the tears they could summon until finally they could cry for him no more. At that point, they pushed his impending death to the outskirts of their mind and tried to get on with the daily tasks at hand, all the while burying their sorrow with work. Chantel never forgave herself for letting Brad run off as he had to the abandoned warehouse. She told her parents about what happened that day and they accepted the truth without any further questions, realising without doubt what the black sores were. They never mentioned the issue again to Chantel, but Chantel could not shake the feeling that in some way, they also held her responsible for what happened to Brad.

After the shock of the sickness had set in, each member of the family dealt with the inevitable in their own way. Chantel remembered lying in bed for hours at night listening to her parents quarrel about the most miniscule matters, all in an attempt to push Brad's death from their minds. She remembered how withdrawn her mother became when the diagnosis was made and how her mother could not talk to anyone or even show her face to other friends or family for weeks at a time. On the other hand, Chantel's father dealt with the loss of his son differently. He spent much more time out of doors; he tended the crops and fixed the machinery. Whatever needed fixing, no matter how long it had been neglected previously, he made it a mission to fix, with varying degrees of success. Her parents soon began to live separate lives.

With each person in the family living their own vortex of a life, the daily routine became just a matter of waiting. When Brad's death finally came, there was a terrible silence that descended on the house. It permeated the roof and the walls so that even the floors were scared to creak. Chantel remembered how furtive her mother and father acted towards her during that time. If, by coincidence, their paths would cross, her parents would lower their eyes and walk briskly away, as if they were embarrassed that speaking would interrupt the impermeable atmosphere of solemnity enveloping the house after Brad's death. There were instances when Chantel would not speak to another soul for days at a time. They continued for months like this, a family shattered by tragedy and fragmented in grief.

Over time Chantel and her parents regrouped, increment by increment, until a steady routine re-emerged. With time, Chantel and her parents eventually became a family again, minus Brad. Chantel had to get used to being an only child. Her parents had already reached their quota of two children per couple, and even with the loss of Brad, it was unlikely that they would be granted the right to reproduce further. They were past the child bearing age now. Chantel had the feeling as well, that her parents were too devastated to try for another child. They had invested so much love into Brad that once this was displaced, it seemed like they hadn't the energy to do it all again. With the loss of such an irreplaceable life, some part of the family also disappeared, imploding like a burnt out star leaving a black hole with an imperceptible sense of nothingness behind.

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Chantel remembered all this now unwillingly as she set off to scour the rest of the unknown spaces on the Kazaa. That was the last time she remembered being in a similar situation, being in a place unknown, on her own and so far from civilisation. The vessel of the ship was a huge unexplored vicinity. She remembered the initial exhilaration she felt when she first entered the warehouse and the slight giddiness she experienced when realising that the place was not like any other she had ever known. This feeling was re-visiting her now, as she explored the Kazaa. However, remembering the horror she had encountered that day, it was with trepidation that she ventured her way into the unknown. She walked curiously through the usual living quarters expected to be found on a ship such as this. All the cabins were lined down a single corridor and furnished with two bunk beds each, exactly like the one her and Beren had slept in on their first night aboard. Strangely, Chantel could see that all the beds were occupied. The kitchen galley opened out into a larger dining area that also housed various lounge suites where the crew could relax and enjoy their entertainment. She noticed that this room featured several projector screens and control panels which she figured must all be connected to the hard drives in the CCC. No doubt this room would be a hub of activity for entertainment gatherings when new material was harvested from the various communication networks operating under the sea. Scattered on the couches, a few of the crew people were sleeping soundly away from the heat of the mid-day sun. Chantel whisked quietly past them so as not to disturb and continued down a ramp to the lower floors of the vessel.

She proceeded down another dark corridor, similar to the one that led to the CCC, which she imagined would take her down to the depths of the ship. She could feel that she was advancing towards the less public areas of the ship now. There were no other people around. The corridor was illuminated with sensor lights that were activated as she walked past. With such low levels of light guiding her way, the corridor looked like a dark tunnel, which she could not see the end of. As the lighting flickered on and off around her, it cast fleeting shadows that would dart back and forth between the lights. The hairs on the back of Chantel's neck stood on end. Her footsteps echoed around her as she stepped gingerly down the corridor, feeling again like she was nine years old exploring a new place by herself again. She walked alone down the corridor. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Chapter Twelve

The secrets below

At the end of the corridor, with its temperamental lights that activated upon passing, Chantel came to a metal door that was constructed of a similar scrap metal to that which made up the rest of the ship. She figured from her position that this door would lead her into the very bottom of the hull. She suppressed the resurging feelings she had, reminiscent of the time in her youth, when despite her curiosity, she had been equally nervous, scared and apprehensive of entering the unknown. The thought of what lay inside the warehouse again made her want to vomit, but determined not to be paralysed by fear, she put her hand on the door. She opened it and found herself in an enormous brightly-lit cavern. What she saw in the cavity below stunned and shocked her.

She looked down into a huge chamber. Seated in rows of two flanking both sides of the ship, were scores of people all working together to power the movement of the vessel. Each pair of people was holding onto the rod of an oar. She watched as each person, in unison, swung backwards, bringing the oar with them until their bodies lay almost prostrate, then together like a well-oiled machine, she saw the entire room of people push their rods forward again until they came full circle. A monitor at the front of the room kept the pace, with the animated image on the screen directing the rowers as to the timing of the stroke. Powerful speakers somewhere in the room bellowed out the rhythm like the ominous banging of a tribal drum. There must have been at least sixty people down there, all moving together as one. She realised that this must have been what Julie had so vehemently protested against. Just at that moment she felt a hand on her shoulder and let out an instinctual scream. She turned around to see Julie.

"There you are, Chantel. I've been trying to find you all morning," said Julie, looking concerned.

She gave Chantel an awkward embrace, making it obvious that she was unaccustomed to such intimacy, but wanted to express her affection in some way. Chantel was taken back.

"Julie, what is this all about? Who are these people? Why do they need to row like this?"

Julie sighed.

"This was why I left the Kazaa, Chantel. Look at them. All these people, poor unfortunate souls whose only crime was to be born into an unfortunate life. There they are, just trying to find a better one. Is it so wrong to want to change the hand dealt by destiny? Yet, these people are prisoners for trying. I fought so hard with Condor not to do this to them. He was right that this was the only option to make the ship run. Regardless, I couldn't stand it...and left."

Chantel could barely hear Julie over the banging of the drum. Julie's voice, as she relayed this information softened and dimmed, like she was trying to tap into some deep reserve of energy by letting the past resurface in this way. Chantel looked over to see an anguished look of sorrow spread on Julie's face as her eyes took in the scenario below, the masses of unhappy people toiling away in monotony. It made sense to Chantel now that they were the reason Julie felt that she could not remain on the ship, not the extraction process. The people deep in the pit were not perturbed at all by the presence of the two women. Chantel noticed Julie's eyes moistening as she stared down with a mixture of horror and pity at the rows of people who continued rowing, oblivious to the spectators. Chantel could see there were whole families down there. She recognised the adolescent brother and sister that had shared the room with her and Beren the night before. They looked exhausted at this hour of the day and she figured they must have been rowing for a few hours. In order to balance out the strength of the rowers she could see children coupled with a parent, matched by a pair of similar size on the other side of the boat. Although the activity did not look entirely strenuous with so many pairs of hands sharing in the work, she could imagine that it would be tiring over a prolonged period.

"How long do they row for?" she asked Julie over the din of the drums.

Julie shrugged.

"Who knows how long the shifts are now? When Condor started using them for this, it was just a necessity. They would row for however long it took to get where we needed. People volunteered just to help us out. No one thought it was a big deal. Then when people complained that some were doing more than others, Condor started rostering shifts. They were only for an hour at a time to begin with, but as more and more people were needed, the volunteers dropped off and Condor made it one of the rules of the boat. As far as I know, it's compulsory to do your shift now. If you don't, Condor might decide to walk you off the plank. Compulsory for everyone that is, except for the Captain."

Chantel looked inquiringly at Julie, who knew what her next question would be.

"Let's go somewhere quieter to talk," Julie said, intercepting any further questions before Chantel could fire them off.

Chantel followed Julie out of the chamber and back through the psychedelic corridor she had originally entered through. The flashing of the lights no longer made her dizzy as she passed, mainly because her head was spinning instead with the revelation of what was contained in the room below. She watched the back of Julie's head, silhouetted against the lights flashing in the background and wondered what other secrets were buried in that memory of hers. The more she knew about Julie, the more Chantel was intrigued by her personality. Her beliefs represented a contradiction of terms. She was a ruthless salesperson while simultaneously adhering steadfastly to principles of justice. She was completely comfortable with being a pariah among her people, yet ached for her previous life as a Captain on a pirate ship. Chantel had no doubt that the crew on the ship was Julie's family and that Condor was the love of her life. There was an almost mother-daughter relationship between Julie and Aunt Bessie; Aunt Bessie treating Julie as one of her own. For Julie to have had turned her back on that encircling fold of familial warmth must have been heartbreaking.

However, nothing represented the conflict of her personality more than her devotion to Condor. From their first meeting Chantel could deduce that this was a person of supreme importance to Julie. Their reunion the other night was like the eventual convergence of two rivers, whose paths were persuaded by the contours of the land to flow towards each other and embrace in a low-lying valley that would eventually lead to the sea. Chantel could feel that the energy pushing Julie and Condor together was part of nature itself; an ethereal force that existed in the currents of the water and the wind in the sails to reunite the two Captains in a rendezvous that was ultimately inevitable. Chantel now sensed Julie's predicament. She had been guided by some higher principle to flee, to turn her back on a way of life that tormented the very fabric of her soul, yet such escape was only temporary. The world would conspire to return her to the fold.

They reached a room along the corridor which Julie deftly unlocked the door of and guided Chantel into, shutting the door closely behind her. As soon as the door clicked shut, Julie collapsed on a double bed that lay in the centre of the room and wept uncontrollably. Chantel rushed to comfort her friend and as Julie cried tears of grief and relief into Chantel's lap; the as yet untold story of her life on the sea spilled out.

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Julie had been born on a pirate ship, similar to the Kazaa, to seafaring parents. At least that much of the story of Julie's life told hitherto to Chantel could be confirmed as the truth. However, her childhood on the rough and tumble seas pretty much stopped there. Her parents, wanting a more stable existence for their daughter, deigned to settle on solid ground and moved to the port city of Abidjan. There Julie led a sheltered existence, growing up along the intersecting edges of an agricultural and a manufacturing zone. Her world was confined within the 20 kilometre radius of the port city where there were minimal avenues for amusement. One of the few things in which Julie gained solace was the Utopia chip implanted in her head when she was 9. The virtual reality games she played through the chip kept her imagination alive. She would gather constant delight from the fantasies she conjured of living in faraway places where each day was like a new adventure. It was only when the game was switched off that she came plummeting back to the reality that her world in the port city was nothing more than a hotel, a school and a shopping centre. Upon being confronted with that realisation she retreated again into the surreal fabric of her alternate universe, far from the mundaneness of Abidjan. There she spent 17 listless years, nestled on an island in between the manufacturing zone, agricultural zone and the sea. Julie described her childhood as akin to growing up on the corner of a pyramid. Peering down the edges of the pyramid from her vantage point on the corner, she could see what was on each side in a two dimensional view, but she could never enter the different worlds so as to be able to experience them in a three dimensional sense. She remained stuck on the corner of where three planes intersected. Her virtual reality downloads provided the closest thing possible to any tangible appreciation she could have of another world.

Her parents ran a small hotel in the port town and each day travellers would pass through with tales of their latest venture at sea or stories about the cattle they were raising deep inland. From each of these narratives, Julie pieced together her own version of what these different worlds must be like. The agricultural zones she imagined to be full of all sorts of creatures bred for harvest, together with plentiful supplies of fresh produce bound for the metropolis zones. The manufacturing zone she imagined to be a land where machines ran rampant and the entire space was filled with the industrial sheen of smoke stained metal. Her obsession with virtual reality games lent her a vivid imagination and she was constantly dreaming up fantasy worlds in an attempt to escape the rigours of living in a place that seemed to her like an island of stone in a sea of vibrancy and colour. Of all the transient characters that camped at her parents' hotel from all parts of the world, the sailors captivated her the most. She was enrapt with their tales of journeying over miles of sea in whatever rickety boat could withstand the journey. She would take with a grain of salt the yearnings of the sailors when they described how lonely and bored they were on the sea and entreated her to travel with them. 'They knew nothing about isolation', she would think; 'at least they were moving from place to place'. Nonetheless, she resisted the whimsical requests of sailors to whisk her away with them on the seas until she turned 18. Soon after her eighteenth birthday, she came to be captivated by Condor and could not resist the temptation of the sea any longer.

Condor was, even then, the most dashing of pirates. He was sailing a much smaller ship at that time, the Pedigree, which he had inherited from his parents. They were actually sea-faring folks but had drowned overboard in a storm several years earlier. Condor was no more than five years older than Julie. However, his worldliness and charm made him appear to her as if he were far older. It wasn't long before Julie fell under his spell. Sneaking out of the hotel one balmy summer's night, she said goodbye to the place which was the only place she had ever known for her entire life and boarded the vessel that would be her new home for the next ten years. Admittedly her initial years on the boat were tough. Condor could be as cruel and unforgiving as the sea that he had grown up on and his patience wore thin easily. She would have to remind him constantly that she knew nothing of the world, that she was ignorant of the myriad of places that lay beyond the waters and that she depended on him to learn more about these foreign environments. This seemed to earn Julie a temporary reprieve from Condor's temper, at least in the initial years. Gradually they grew used to each other and Condor would let Julie captain the Pedigree, which was naturally a precursor to asking Julie to be his wife.

Julie fondly recounted the memory of her first few years after marriage as being filled with blissful happiness. She remembered the day that she and Condor decided to upgrade from the ship they were sailing to a larger vessel, one that they would make themselves. It would prove to be a massive turning point in their relationship. Prior to the Kazaa, Julie was always acutely aware that the Pedigree was his family heirloom, a relic from his parents that was his last remaining connection to them. Julie unsurprisingly yearned for a home that could be theirs to share without the ghosts of Condor's parents looking down upon them in what she believed would be disdain. A new ship would be something they could build upon together. Julie described the numerous trips they took to the wasteland zone north of Abidjan to source the materials for their ship. By then they had accumulated a crew for the ship who were like a close knit team. They all worked together to trundle through the scraps of garbage in the wasteland zone and pounce upon the pieces of metal that could be salvaged and polished like precious stones to form the hull of the Kazaa. Chantel gasped in surprise at Julie's description of life in the wasteland zone.

"Yes Chantel," Julie explained. "The wasteland zone is just that – a land of waste."

They had heard of whole communities that lived in the wasteland zones, forging out their lives in the garbage that was sent there from other regions. Julie and her crew never ventured too far into the wasteland to find out how these societies lived. They wanted to stay close to the water and most of these tribes were located deep inland. Occasionally some members of the wasteland communities would spot Julie's crew foraging for scraps of garbage that could be recycled as part of a ship. They would venture down and attempt to barter goods that they hoped would be of value to these peculiar beings from the sea. It was on one such occurrence, by some strange coincidence, that they found Auntie Bessie.

Julie chuckled to herself as she recalled the look of shock on Condor's face when, just as he was about to fire off a series of expletives at the scavenger straying from the wasteland zone, he realised that it was his long lost Auntie Bessie. Auntie Bessie, as much of a darling then as she still was to this day, recognised Condor immediately and embraced him close to her bosom in a way that only an older, bumbling woman could get away with. That was the only time Julie had ever seen Condor break down into tears. She watched him collapse as he told Auntie Bessie about his parents' demise when he was barely an adolescent and how he had been in charge of the Pedigree ever since. Auntie Bessie was horrified that she had been oblivious to the death of her sister for so long and Julie could see that she was also shaken by Condor's vulnerability when relaying this news. Whatever the circumstances that had elapsed since Condor last saw his Auntie Bessie, the invisible bond of family instantly retied itself between the two, making Condor a subject of Auntie Bessie's instinctive nurturing.

Julie wasn't quite sure what happened after that tearful reunion. Auntie Bessie and Condor disappeared into the wasteland together for several days. By the time they emerged, Julie had been driven almost frantic with worry. Condor mentioned that Auntie Bessie would live with them on the ship and not a word more was uttered on the issue. Since that time, Auntie Bessie was like a fixture on the Kazaa, the ship that she eventually helped Julie and Condor to build. She became like a mother figure to both Julie and Condor. For the time anyway, the family was complete.

By working steadfastly with their busy team of would-be pirates, Julie and Condor eventually scraped together the pieces needed to build the Kazaa and the moment was ready for the ship's maiden voyage. Julie didn't know what came of the Pedigree after that. She recalled Condor looking forlornly at the ship as it remained anchored in the bay of the wasteland zone while they sailed away on the Kazaa. As it disappeared from sight he withdrew and retreated into the bottom cabins of the Kazaa for hours, leaving her to steer the Kazaa out on the open ocean. She remembered that experience as the most exhilarating one she had ever had. Without Condor's reprimanding supervision, she could take her own risks with the vessel, buffeting it against the winds to build up momentum and then turning it sharply to catch the currents so that it travelled as lightly on the water as the mist hovering above the waves. The Kazaa sailed beautifully. She was awestruck with how magnificent the thing they had created turned out to be.

Julie was much happier on the Kazaa than she had been on the Pedigree. Each passing day she grew prouder of the ship's accomplishments as if they were a direct reflection on her, the mother of the ship. For the next few years, Julie and Condor crisscrossed the oceans transporting and bartering any goods they could get their hands on both legitimately and through illegitimate means. They found that their most profitable trade by far was people transportation. Whether for a holiday or business, Julie and Condor could name their price for passage on the Kazaa. With few other ships out there at that time willing to roam the ocean so wantonly and with airline ticket prices soaring, hitching a ride on a pirate ship was a perfectly sensible option. However, as the years rolled on, the pickings started to slim. More massive cruise liners were being built and passengers no longer wanted to weather the risk of being ferried across the waters by pirates. The crew of the Kazaa eventually had to resort to more technological terms of trade and they stumbled upon a breakthrough when they discovered another pirate ship using sonar communications.

The focus of Kazaa's operations immediately changed course and the CCC in the centre of the vessel was set up. Of course, venturing into the black market business of intellectual property interception was not without risk. The crew of the Kazaa soon found that the meagre supply of electricity they could harness from the sun and waves was not sufficient to power the engines on the ship, with the CCC taking up so much energy. They had to resort to more traditional means to propulsion.

Chantel could guess how the story progressed from here. Grief-stricken, Julie described how they travelled to the wasteland zone to reconfigure the Kazaa to include the rowing benches. Condor would not return to the same place where they had originally built the ship so they visited a different wasteland zone, which was similarly compacted with mounds of garbage. Julie wondered how much waste there was in the world if so many areas in the wasteland zones were covered with refuse. She had rarely studied a map of the world now that navigation of the ship was done almost entirely by GPS coordinates but she could remember from her schooling days that the wasteland zones represented a significant proportion of land mass on the globe. Scavenging again through the trash, they managed to find long sticks and other scraps that could be fashioned into oars. The crew would take turns to row the boat when necessary to escape detection from the global police or when travelling against the currents. However, each time they were required to do so, the Captains could sense the dissent coming from their team members and eventually, to prevent a mutiny, other options had to be canvassed.

The Kazaa again delved into the people transportation trade. However, this time the commuters were not vacationers or business people; the crew of the Kazaa were left with no other choice but to target people who wanted to migrate. Most of the people they encountered were from the manufacturing zones and seeking passage to the metropolis zones. The crew nicknamed these people the 'hippo fairies' because they would often lie in wait, submerged in the water near the port until a pirate ship came near. Once a pirate ship was within sight they would quickly rise up on electrically powered hovercraft, which could spring out of the water and fly to the ship in a momentary burst of energy before the battery gave out, leaving the engine to splutter and die. Condor learned that just by going to the right ports he could have dozens of hippo fairies crashing onto his deck each night. Often the people arriving on the ship would have no means of paying their own way or even any goods to trade, except for the buffeted hovercraft that they arrived on. This was of no matter. The Kazaa wasn't seeking payment from these people, but the labour they could provide. As the hippo fairies would plead for safe passage to the closest metropolis zone, realising that they could offer nothing in return, Condor played it cool by suggesting that there was certainly a means by which they could pay for their journey.

Just as Julie had alluded to before in the rowing room, the hippo fairies were initially used purely out of necessity. Only a few hippo fairies were taken on board in the beginning, as was deemed necessary for powering the ship. Eventually this number grew as the CCC required more and more energy and the ship had to keep moving to generate electricity from the turbines below the hull. Eventually, a steady supply of hippo fairies were accepted on board and they slipped into a routine almost as drudgerous as the life they had escaped. Most of them knew at the time that they bounded onto the ship that they would be taken for a journey outside of their control and with no guarantee of ever reaching their destination. This was a risk most of them were willing to take. A significant proportion of the hippo fairies were not averse to the daily routine of rowing. However, Condor was not able to give any of them any guarantee of when they would reach their destination. Some might stay on the ship for months, others could be stuck on the ship for years. Julie tried to contest the use of the hippo fairies on the Kazaa but she was overruled by the other crew on board the ship who were relieved that they would not have to perform the labour themselves.

Gradually, Julie began to feel ill at ease on the ship that she helped to build. She no longer sensed her heart leap with pride as the Kazaa strode out on the water. She knew that the reason the ship glided with such elegance was because it was propelled by the rotating oars of the hippo fairies beneath. She reminisced of the time when she could bask in the glory of the Kazaa's streamlined majesty. Those memories felt tainted now. Instead she would feel a sense of shame when the Kazaa soared on the waves, knowing that it meant the rowers below were going into hyper-drive. Eventually she sank into a deep depression with the belief that everything she had worked so hard to build had become tarnished with the cruel stroke of exploitation. She knew then that she had to leave. She pried herself away from the Kazaa one night when it was docked in the city of Cape Town. The first few years were tough for Julie. She worked as a crewperson on various ships coming and going from the metropolis until she could save enough money to put down a deposit for the Saharan. Once she had her own vessel again, she found once more like there was a spark in the future and she had been sailing ever since.

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Julie slumped with exhaustion after relaying the mammoth tale of her life. Chantel could almost feel Julie physically deflating with relief as the burden of her past was released like air escaping from a balloon. Chantel tried to imagine what it must have been like for Julie, having been raised with such a sheltered upbringing to be suddenly thrust out on the equivocal world of the sea not once but twice on her own. The few adventures of Chantel's life paled in comparison to what Julie had been through. Chantel thought about the hippo fairies living their lives in a routine of rowing and other ship duties. She thought about the ridiculous name given to the migrants by the ship's crew, a term used purely to ridicule and belittle the people. Most of all she thought of Condor and what sort of person he was. Beren obviously thought he was a decent guy. Chantel had never been convinced about Condor but she never thought that he was in any way evil. Regardless of what she had been told, Chantel still didn't think Condor was an evil man. Opportunistic perhaps, but not quite evil.

With her mind bursting with information, Chantel thought again of the purebloods she saw on the glitch and wondered if their fate was the same as that of the hippo fairies. She recognised the same look of resignation on the faces of the hippo fairies and the purebloods. However, the hippo fairies retained a glimmer of hope in their eyes that the purebloods did not have. She wondered if she would ever see them in real life. As the reality dawned on her that her hijacking on the Kazaa had thrown her completely off the original intention of her journey, she realised that the possibility of her actually seeing the purebloods was becoming more and more remote.
Chapter Thirteen

The last pureblood

No sooner had Julie finished her story than there was an urgent knocking at the door and in burst Auntie Bessie.

"Thank goodness, I thought I would find you both here. I've been looking everywhere for you two," Auntie Bessie huffed.

Auntie Bessie paused to take in the scene before her. Julie lay in Chantel's arms on the bed; her face stained with tears as Chantel consolingly stroked her hair. Auntie Bessie's excited grin immediately disappeared.

"Why so sad?" queried Auntie Bessie. "Cheer up now Julie dear. You've been back on the ship for all of a day and you're already bawling your eyes out. Surely coming home is not that awful is it?"

Julie managed to muster a smile from behind her reddened eyes.

"Auntie Bessie," she laughed. "You know how happy I am to see you again. Its other things on this ship that bother me."

"Julie," Auntie Bessie sighed, joining Julie and Chantel on the bed. "You're like a daughter to me you know that don't you."

Julie gave Auntie Bessie a reassuring hug in agreement.

"I wasn't running away from you when I left last time Auntie Bessie," Julie sobbed. "It was so hard to leave you."

"There, there dear," Auntie Bessie comforted Julie. "No need to explain. I understand your reasons completely. I know how difficult Condor can be at times and I know you two have had your differences. He does care for you though Julie, body and soul."

Julie let out a small sob in recognition of Condor's affection and confirmation that his sentiments had always, and were still, entirely reciprocated. Auntie Bessie sat up suddenly, becoming acutely aware of Chantel's presence and rebounded back into her usual maternal composure. Chantel observed the dynamic between Julie and her adopted mother with interest. Since Brad had died, the relationship between Chantel and her own mother had cooled significantly. Her main contact with her mother in recent years had been the laboured communicator conversations where she spent the entire time desperately scrounging for topics of conversation. The interchange between Julie and Auntie Bessie reminded Chantel of a time when her mother had been just as warm and familial. That was before the shadow of Brad's death began to linger over the family like a grief-stricken ghost.

"Now, then. The reason I came to find you both is that I actually had something to ask Chantel," Auntie Bessie explained nervously.

Chantel perked up unexpectedly. For some reason she was oddly drawn to the overbearing Auntie Bessie and eager to impress her. Auntie Bessie looked her square in the eye letting Chantel know that she had a serious side that was not to be messed with.

"Chantel, I scanned the contents of the intellectual property files that Condor extracted from your hard drive. You are aware that you have a movie called _Soul_ on your hard drive. Are you not?"

Chantel was taken back. For some reason she had forgotten that the movie with the glitch had also been extracted by Condor and that he and his crew now had access to the footage showing the purebloods. Chantel nodded.

"Are you aware of any irregularities experienced with this movie?" Auntie Bessie probed.

Chantel hesitated for a moment, before deciding that it was better to confess rather than deny the information she had at hand. She closed her eyes for a moment, then blurted out her story.

"I know what you're referring to. You must be wondering about the purebloods. There's a glitch on the movie _Soul_ that shows footage of purebloods. That's why Beren and I made this journey to the south-western quadrant. That's why we hired Julie to take us north to Lagos from Cape Town. We were chasing the purebloods. The whole idea of leaving our homes on this jaunt across the world seems crazy now, come to think of it. But the glitch appeared on the movie I downloaded, which I then showed to Beren. Once an idea gets into Beren's head, it's hard to persuade him otherwise. He became obsessed with the footage of the purebloods and we decided to come all the way out here to find them. Based on the coordinates in the glitch, we think they are in a place that used to be called Freetown. It's in an area north of here that's now in the wasteland zone; a part of the world we know nothing about. There are no traces of this place in any of the webpages on the Pangaea mainframe that I could find. From the books that Beren read while he was in—uh, university, he said the place was founded as a city for emancipated slaves, who were—"

Chantel stopped abruptly, realising that neither Julie nor Auntie Bessie would know about the world's history of slavery. Any remnants of information remaining from that time, over five hundred years ago, would have been wiped out in the great mainframe disaster long ago. She decided that this was information they did not need to know for the moment.

"Step back a minute Chantel," Auntie Bessie commanded. "I've seen what's on the glitch. There's many, many purebloods shown in the footage. You think they are all in this place, this Freetown?"

Chantel shrugged her shoulders.

"That's why we were going there to find out. Back in the south eastern quadrant, in Sydney anyway, the rumour is that all the purebloods are extinct...that there's just no more of them anymore on the face of the earth. When Beren and I saw this, when we saw what was on the glitch, we just had to find out for ourselves."

Auntie Bessie raised her eyebrow quizzically.

"What if I told you that there is one pureblood I can vouch for...I thought he was the last one left in this world, but if it turns out there are more..."

Julie and Chantel each gave Auntie Bessie a stunned look and this time it was Julie that broke the silence.

"Auntie Bessie, but how do you even know of the existence of any purebloods. Of all the places we've been in the world, we haven't seen _any_ real purebloods, even in the places where we thought they would be."

Auntie Bessie stammered slightly before continuing.

"Julie, I know you've always asked me about my life in the wasteland zone. Well...I haven't been entirely honest with you. There's more to my past life than I told you before. We lived in a community in the wasteland zone, as you know. Our little band of people was like a breakaway group from civilisation. We were completely sustainable in the wasteland zone. We built our own dam; we grew our own vegetables; we even raised our own pigs and chickens by taming the wild animals roaming the rubbish stacks. Julie, you may not believe it, but life was good. We enjoyed living a completely autonomous existence away from it all. The only reason we even had contact with the outside world was if the outsiders came to the shores of our wasteland zone to trade, like the day you and Condor rolled up on the beach. My lord, was that a surprise!"

Auntie Bessie chuckled with nostalgia.

"That day Julie, was like the past running at me from behind and knocking me off my feet. How could I forget my little nephew Condor for so long? To see him all grown up like that – and captaining a ship! – I suddenly realised that it had been years since I'd seen my family, especially my dear sister. I couldn't believe she had been gone for so long and that Condor had been left all alone. Thank goodness he found you Julie. I always remember him as being such a sensitive boy. The deaths of his parents must have been so hard on the poor, poor lad.

But anyway...pardon me, I digress. Yes, Chantel, you want to know about the pureblood. Well, let me get to that. Our little community in the wasteland zone, we had few rules. We prided ourselves on being an egalitarian society. Things just got done without us having to set out who was going to do it or what they were going to be paid. We didn't care about all that. But there was one thing that we did care about; the only thing we cared about was that our leader was okay. Wolram. He was, by default, the only reason our little community functioned the way it did. He didn't instate himself in power; he didn't claim to be the ruler; there were no contests for leadership. There was never even any dispute about Wolram being the decision-maker. I don't know what the genesis of his authority was, but from what I understand, when the community started out it needed a leader and there was no way of determining who it should be. Wolram was the natural choice...because, well he was different. He was a pureblood. His word was like gospel. He made the decisions, and it worked. Things just flowed naturally from there...and that's what it was like ever since I joined the community.

That's why I'm so intrigued about this glitch, Chantel. Wolram, always claimed that he was the last pureblood. It made him more...powerful to us I guess, for us to believe he was the only one of his kind. I don't think he was lying to us about this. I think he actually thought that there weren't any other people out there like him. He always said that he couldn't remember at all how he got to the community and what his life was like before he got there. This could be the biggest clue we've ever had about where Wolram came from."

Auntie Bessie turned excitedly to Julie and Chantel.

"Don't you see what this means? she exclaimed. "There's more purebloods out there. Wolram is not the only one. They aren't extinct!"

Chantel tried to process this information. She wasn't sure what she expected from the footage in the glitch. She wasn't even sure if she had dared to believe before that the purebloods in the glitch had been real. Auntie Bessie's revelation confirmed that actual purebloods, or in her case a pureblood, existed. Her first thought was that she needed to tell Beren. They had steered themselves far off course after being commandeered by the Kazaa. She would tell him that they needed to continue their journey to Freetown.

Julie was shocked at the latest revelation from Auntie Bessie.

"Auntie Bessie, you've never spoke of your time in the wasteland before. All this time I thought you were kept prisoner there. You didn't mention anything about this, this Wolram or this community you lived with there. Whenever you spoke of living in the wasteland, you sounded so unhappy. Had I known that we took you away from all that...that you were actually content there, well..."

Auntie Bessie gave Julie a comforting hug.

"Julie, you don't need to feel bad. I have no regrets about my decision to join your crew. It all worked out for the best as well, don't you think? I got the chance to know you, didn't I?"

Chantel was once again touched with the poignancy of Julie and Auntie Bessie's relationship and ached for something similar with her mum.

"So this pureblood, this Wolram that you mentioned Auntie Bessie, do you know if he is still alive?" Chantel asked.

Auntie Bessie paused. It was clear that she hadn't even thought of this possibility.

"I've been away from the community for so long now...I never thought that he might actually be dead by now. I guess he is a mere mortal after all, but strange to think of him that way when he was always larger than life to us..."

"Can we find out by any chance?" Chantel asked.

Julie turned Chantel in disbelief.

"Chantel, do you know what you are saying? There isn't any communicator reception in the wasteland zone; there's no connectivity there to any of the mainframes. The only way of communicating with the people in the wasteland zone is to go there yourself. It's been over a decade since Auntie Bessie left the community. We don't know what it's like now; we don't know what's there; we don't even know if the same community is in existence."

"That's what I'll need to do then," Auntie Bessie chimed in. "I have to go back and show Wolram this glitch. It's the only way for him to find out about his past and to let him know that there might be others like him out there. It seems almost impossible to believe that there are as many purebloods as there were shown in the glitch. If there are really that many purebloods still alive today..."

Julie threw her hands up in the air.

"I don't believe what I'm hearing! Auntie Bessie, you've been away from the community for so long now. You can't expect things to be like they were when you left. You want to go all the way back there now for what's on this, this glitch...and what exactly is this footage you guys are both talking about anyway? It's just dawned on me that I have absolutely no idea what you are going on about."

Auntie Bessie winked at Chantel.

"We need to show Julie the glitch. Then she'll see why she needs to take us to Freetown," Auntie Bessie cheekily suggested.

As Auntie Bessie directed Julie to the files on the hard drive in the CCC to download a movie called _Soul,_ Chantel wondered what the next step would be from here. She was flabbergasted with the news that Auntie Bessie knew of a pureblood from her previous community. She was even more amazed that Auntie Bessie wanted to travel back to her previous community to inform Wolram about the glitch and the possibility of other purebloods. Chantel wondered how tight the community must be if after all these years, one of its members would still go to so many lengths to try to appease her former leader. Chantel suddenly remembered that Beren was still with Condor in the CCC. She had so much to update her friend on. Recalling Condor's remark about Beren's arms from the previous night, she wondered if Condor had told Beren about the hippo fairies and the obligations they were under to row their shift. It dawned on her that she and Beren would also be subjected to compulsory rowing shifts if they stayed on the Kazaa. She would have to tell Beren of Auntie Bessie's story and the possibility that there might still be a pureblood living in the wasteland zone. She wondered if he, having come this far on the adventure, would be willing to join them on the next stage of the journey, which seemed to Chantel like it would be heading into the wasteland zone.
Chapter Fourteen

A waste of waste

"You want to go where?" Beren asked incredulously. "Chantel, do you really believe this Auntie Batty's story about a community living in the wasteland zone? The wasteland zones are nothing but miles of radioactive dead land. It's practically toxic to even go near there."

"Beren, you're just speculating about what the wasteland zones are like based on what you've heard. No one in the metropolis zone has actually been to a wasteland zone. It's all just hearsay."

"Okay, even if we were to go, how will we get there? Do you really think Condor will agree to transport us there on his ship?"

Chantel realised all of a sudden that she hadn't thought about the logistics. Getting there on the Kazaa would require Condor's agreement and lots of arms to complete the journey. She wasn't sure if she could trust Condor enough to show him the glitch. She also didn't know how much of Auntie Bessie's previous life in the wasteland zone Condor knew about and if he would be comfortable with her going back there again. As she lay once again on the top bunk in the cabin that she shared with Beren and the adolescent siblings she stretched out her arms above her head, letting her fingers brush the ceiling of the cabin, and figured that these questions could be answered the next day. All she wanted right then after all the day's excitement was a good night's sleep.

\-----------------------

Chantel awoke the next morning in even more of a daze than the morning before. Her mind reeled with the events of the previous day. She remembered the hippo fairies working in drudgery in the hull of the ship, living their lives on the precipice of hope and despondency. She looked across to the other bunk. Sure enough, a different pair of people were sleeping in those bunks than there were the night before. She peeked underneath to the bottom bunk where Beren lay still sound asleep. Careful not to wake him, she climbed gingerly out of bed and left Beren deep in slumber while she went to find Julie. Working her way down the same corridor that led to the hippo fairies, she found Julie and Auntie Bessie in the room they were in before. They looked tired from a restless night's sleep. She gave them a hearty greeting and realised that they were deep in discussion about how to get back to the wasteland zone.

"There's no other way about it Julie," Auntie Bessie implored. "I don't want to let Condor know that I'm going back there. We'll just tell him we're going on a side trip for a few days."

"You really think he won't try to track us?" Julie responded. "He's too controlling to let us go for a jaunt by ourselves like that."

"Well what else do you propose we do? Convince Condor to steer this whole ship to the wasteland zone? That will bring too much attention to the community and could ruin our chances of seeking out Wolram."

"I don't want to tell Condor that we are leaving though. If I try to leave another time, after I've just come back, it will just be too much for him."

"Julie, are you saying that you just want to sneak away again...after all that you've put him through these past five years."

"Auntie Bessie, I'm too much of a coward for confrontation when it comes to Condor. You know he won't be happy if I take you with me. I just don't want to have to face..."

"Very well then. It's settled. When do you think we should leave?"

"Tomorrow night?"

"Tomorrow night it is."

Chantel marvelled at the efficiency with which the plan was made in front of her. She was almost afraid to ask about the plan, fearing that it would somehow make her seem ignorant in front of the two people she had come to admire and respect the most in her life. She eventually succumbed to the suspense.

"So the plan is...?"

"We're leaving for the wasteland zone tomorrow night," Auntie Bessie stated. "In the Saharan. We won't tell a soul. You and Beren are welcome to come with us, but Condor must not know about it...not for now."

Julie nodded in acquiescence and tacit agreement that the best course of action was as Auntie Bessie described. Chantel acknowledged her acceptance of the proposal. She didn't feel safe on the Kazaa and something about Condor was still a bit off-putting to her. She wanted to go where Julie and Auntie Bessie went. However, she wondered how she would convince Beren to leave with them. He hated the Saharan and it would need a damned good reason for him to want to set foot on it again. She hoped the original purpose of their journey, the chance to see actual purebloods, would be enough to convince him to leave with them.

\-----------------------

Chantel relayed the plan to Beren later that day.

"You want me to go with you on that godforsaken junk bucket?" Beren cried. If you think for a moment that I'll even consider setting foot on that thing then you have got to be crazy."

"Beren, it's the only real way. For some reason Auntie Bessie doesn't want Condor to know that she's going back to the wasteland zone. Julie doesn't want Condor to know that she's leaving again. It's all very complicated but the plan has already been decided. It's either take it or leave it. Beren, you have to come with us. There's something else about Condor that I haven't told you about and I don't want you staying here on the ship with him on your own."

Chantel implored Beren to join them on their planned trip to the wasteland zone the next night, using the threat of being forced to join the hippo fairies below the deck as intimidation. Beren was unconvinced.

"Look, I've spent more time with Condor now than you and I've gotten to know him fairly well. We share similar opinions on a range of things. We are both against the global five putting rights management technologies on their download files. We're both hackers for a cause and we both abhor the global police. I don't think that he's as much as a monster as you make him out to be. I've gotten to meet a few people on this ship and they don't seem all that unhappy."

"Beren, we have to stick together and I'm not staying on this ship with Condor without Julie and Auntie Bessie around. I don't trust him Beren. Do you know why they call the people below hippo fairies? It's a derogatory term for people from the manufacturing zones. Condor is using them and he'll probably do the same thing to us. We can't rely on him to look after us."

"Chantel, you remember how unhappy I was on the Saharan. I can't go back on that boat after what I was subjected to. You don't understand how humiliating it was..."

"I've spoken to Julie and she thinks that it will only take a day or two to get back to the wasteland zone on the Saharan, going full speed ahead of course. Don't worry, the journey won't be like the last time. I'll make sure she gets there quick. Once we're in the wasteland zone, if it's what they say it is, we'll get them to reconfigure the boat to make it more comfortable for you. Beren, this is the only way we'll continue our journey to see the purebloods."

Chantel persisted in convincing Beren to depart on the Saharan and eventually Beren surrendered.

"Alright, alright Chanty. Keep your panties on will ya. Fine I'll go with you to the wasteland zone to see this Wolram guy or whatever his name is, but afterwards we have to stick to our plan to get to Freetown. We have to find out what this glitch is all about. That's why we are here after all."

Chantel agreed. Their hijacking on the Kazaa had been a distraction and it was only fortuitous that Auntie Bessie was harbouring a secret past from her time in a community led by a pureblood. Luckily, her stumbling across the glitch gave Chantel and Beren the opportunity to get back on track on the way to Freetown. Chantel's eyes glistened with the thought of seeing purebloods. It was incredible for her to believe that she might actually find out soon enough whether they were real.

\-----------------------

Chantel spent the next day in a nervous wait. She hadn't seen Condor since the time she left Beren with him in the CCC. She had no idea what his routine was and if he would detect them leaving the ship in the middle of the night. Julie assured her that Condor was a deep sleeper and that they would wait until he had retired for the night before making their move. Chantel queried about the other crew members on the ship and whether they would report the escapade to Condor. Julie didn't seem to think that it would be a problem, making Chantel believe that she had the implicit trust of the crew, or at least Chantel hoped as much.

The issue of how to get Beren off the ship was a slightly trickier matter. When Beren came aboard, he had the help of three faceless ninjas to lift him onto deck. There would be three people to help lower him down to the Saharan tonight as well but they would need tact and teamwork to ensure that Beren was not harmed. Julie had prepared a number of ropes to tie to Beren's wheelchair and when the time was right, these could easily be fastened in between the spokes to suspend the chair like a swing. Chantel had watched amazed as Julie exhibited her talents at knot-tying to develop a pulley around which the ropes were slung. The ropes hanging off the pulley would position Beren to land exactly in the centre of the Saharan's deck. With any luck, he would touch down without a sound and start raising the sails while waiting for the rest of the group to climb on board.

As night fell on board the Kazaa, the time crept closer to the scheduled departure time. Julie had convinced Condor to give the hippo fairies working below deck a reprieve for the night and Condor reluctantly agreed to allow the oars to rest. Without the steady rhythm of the rowing propelling the ship along, the Kazaa was allowed to drift on the water like a floating mechanical lotus flower. Chantel remembered her first sight of the ship only a few days before. She had wondered how such a piecemeal contraption managed to sail on the water. She thought that with so many pieces of metal holding the ship together, there would be bound to be a leak somewhere. It turned out that the Kazaa was robust. The dedication of the crew in their tenacious plunder of the wasteland zone to retrieve the rubbish to build the ship had resulted in a remarkably well-engineered vessel. Just like the Saharan, the Kazaa was a solid piece of manufacturing.

The plan was for Julie to stay with Condor in his cabin until he fell asleep and once she emerged, it would be time to leave. Chantel waited restlessly in the kitchen with Beren for that moment to come. Beren was in a foul mood at the thought of having to sail in the Saharan again and he barely spoke to the numerous hippo fairies who wandered into the kitchen, wanting to have a chat to the people from the other side of the world. Chantel was left to fend off the questions on her own which proved at first to be a welcome distraction from the other thoughts plaguing her mind. As the night wore on, Chantel grew more and more wearisome of the discussion and wondered when Julie would be ready to leave. At the same time, the clustering of hippo fairies in the kitchen became more boisterous as they rejoiced in the prospect of being given the night off.

'It would be tough to get away,' thought Chantel, 'without drawing attention to themselves.'

She wondered where Auntie Bessie was this entire time. Finally Julie appeared. Her face was red and blotchy, like she had been crying. Chantel decided not to ask.

"Chantel, Beren – it's time to go. Where is Auntie Bessie?"

Chantel and Beren shrugged their shoulders in unison.

"Oh, bloody hell. I know where she'll be." Julie started to stomp off before she turned abruptly around and said with a softer tone, "Chantel, do you mind coming with me."

Chantel obediently followed Julie as she marched away, leaving Beren scowling in the kitchen amongst the raucous hippo fairies. They headed back down the corridor to the CCC. There, in amongst the flashing lights of the servers a frantic Auntie Bessie was scrambling to collect and pack various computer equipment.

"Auntie Bessie, it's time to go. We really don't have time for all this," scolded Julie.

Auntie Bessie continued fussing over the contents of a hard drive upon which she was transferring files extracted from the CCC.

"Just a couple more downloads and then I'll be done. Just give me two secs."

Julie let out an audible sigh and ostentatiously started tapping her foot as she sternly crossed her arms.

"How did it all go anyway Julie?" Auntie Bessie asked.

Julie lowered her gaze.

"It was as expected. Goodbyes are never easy. I ended up, uh-um, supplementing his scotch to make him fall asleep. He'll be out cold until next morning. We don't need to worry about Condor."

Auntie Bessie looked up and gave Julie a reassuring pat on the shoulder

"It's for the best Julie. No point worrying about it now."

Julie nodded, stifling her tears.

"Ready to go now Auntie Bessie?"

Auntie Bessie transferred the last file to the hard drive and bundled it into a tightly packed suitcase of projectors, processors, glasses batteries and other random equipment, which she then asked Chantel politely to carry. Julie struggled under the weight of another bag filled with similar items.

"Good lord, Auntie Bessie," Julie groaned. "Is it really necessary to take all this with you? You know how tiny a boat the Saharan is don't you?"

Auntie Bessie chuckled and nonchalantly swaggered ahead.

'She had a distinct lightness in her step now,' thought Chantel. 'No doubt she was glad to be venturing back to her old turf.'

Chantel wondered what other skeletons were hiding in the closet of the unassuming old lady in front of her. She hoped that Auntie Bessie was not leading them into a trap. Chantel's imagination went off on a frolic as she conjured up various possibilities of what might potentially lie in wait for them. She shuddered thinking about the prospect of flesh eating cannibals driven to starvation due to a destitute existence in the wasteland zone. She wondered if perhaps Auntie Bessie had been sent out as a scout to search for and summon fresh meat back to the wasteland zone for an extravagant feast. Chantel told herself she was being silly, but nevertheless these fanciful notions crossed her mind.
Chapter Fifteen

The lady returns

Chantel stared once more at the black expanse of the ocean. She felt yet again like she was stranded in the middle of a vast vortex of nothingness, like she was swirling aimlessly amongst the black space in between the stars of the night sky. They had made it aboard the Saharan again in relative obscurity. Although it did look for a moment like their cover might be blown when the hippo fairies broke from their revelry to wave goodbye to the band of absconders, the party quickly lost interest in the sight of the boat sailing away when a member of the group discovered a stash of Condor's rum hidden in the Kazaa's cellar. Once the lights of the Kazaa began to fade away across the billowing waves of the ocean, Chantel and the others could breathe a sigh of relief.

It had been slightly nerve-wracking loading Beren onto the boat by dangling him precariously from the side of the ship. Beren himself had endured this ordeal by simply folding his arms stubbornly until the wheels of his chair touched the deck of the Saharan. Once Beren was on board again he, as expected, immediately wasted no time in creating his hermit's den off to the side of the deck. There, he sat, scowling at anyone who dared approach and preparing himself for a journey of converse sleeping and eating patterns. Chantel knew not to expect Beren's mood to lift again until they were on dry land.

As the Saharan sailed on into the night, each of the occupants retreated into their own individual moods. Chantel observed Beren, Auntie Bessie and Julie embrace the forthcoming journey with a mixture of trepidation and romanticism. Auntie Bessie seemed to practically swoon when talking about revisiting the community in the wastelands.

"A dump of Eden," she would call it chuckling nervously to herself at her own facetiousness. "That's the world we lived in, a dump, but the most beautiful dump I've ever known."

Julie was more reticent about the trip towards the unknown. She had never been beyond the shores of the wasteland zone and it was hard for her to imagine that the life described by Auntie Bessie beyond the garbage walls could be as idyllic as a Garden of Eden. Chantel sensed that the more Auntie Bessie gushed about life in the community, the more Julie withdrew from the discussion until eventually the topics of conversation on board the Saharan became more and more scarce.

Julie steered the ship onwards using all the power she could muster from the meagre energy supply stored on the battery and, wherever possible, harnessing the puffs of air preening the sails. For three days they travelled like this with nothing but the sound of the waves beating against the hull of the Saharan for company. Each passenger on the boat had drenched themselves in their own unexplainable silence. Chantel watched them drift away with dread. It reminded her of another time long ago when her family had similarly splintered into a pattern of reclusiveness and she could do nothing to help it regroup. However, this time there was no horrific event that triggered the detachment. There was no singular moment that sent each of the passengers into a spiral of segregation from each other. They simply slipped independently into a rhythm where they let the absence of their voices descend upon the boat like a deflating parachute.

Inadvertently, the sound of the sea reigned supreme. The battering of the ocean on the boat was like its own triumphant symphony that neither of the passengers dared to interrupt. Chantel listened to the beating of the waves with a mixture of fear and awe. At times the lashing would rise to a crescendo of incomprehensible sound, a blanket of noise that wrapped up each of the boat's occupants as prisoners, hijacking their senses in the process. When the breaking waves retreated, the release from the imprisonment of the sound was almost like a palpable relaxation of the body. Chantel could feel all the muscles in her body ease with each momentary lull in the sound of the waves, only to tense when they surged again and squeezed her in a suffocating embrace.

Together, each of the passengers continued in this way, cocooned in their own contradictory prisms of silence and noise. As the Saharan floated along the water, inching ever closer to the mysterious wasteland zone, the passengers on the boat remained caught in limbo, held in the captivity of a journey where the scenery never changed. Chantel watched her friends that she had come to know so closely and treasure during these past few weeks finally come together, only to start living fragmented lives. She couldn't put her finger on what force was teasing them apart, only that whatever imperceptible influence it was could not be stopped. Chantel, once again, was powerless to prevent the chains of isolation from entering into her world.

She passed the time trying to escape this purgatory by lying back and watching the sky. She found the constant blue comforting, unlike the inconstant blue of the ocean which sparkled and glimmered with varying refractions of light. To imagine that she was in some place other than on the deck of the Saharan, Chantel enjoyed gazing at the uniformity of colour encircling the area directly over her head. When she turned her head to the horizon, she found the colours of the sky too diluted and washed out like icing dripping down the sides of a cupcake. By staring vertically upwards, however, the constancy of the colour made it seem like she wasn't even moving, like she was perpetually staring at the same patch of sky.

Chantel passed days like this, pondering the basis of the party's quest for Wolram. He was, as Auntie Bessie had said, a man of colour, a distinct person who was not like any other that either of them had ever known. She wondered if he was different in any other way, if the pure blood running through his veins contained some other ancient secrets from a world long past. Chantel concocted a vision of Wolram based on Auntie Bessie's anecdotes that referenced him as akin to a god. She conjured up images in her mind of a man standing over eight feet tall, towering above all others around him, whom he commanded at will by merely raising an eyebrow or a finger. Chantel imagined the community in the wasteland zone worshipping Wolram, idolising him and his black skin; all the time cherishing the wisdom of his leadership. Curiosity was drawing each of the passengers of the Saharan closer to him. She could feel the primeval calling of the pureblood drawing the Saharan closer to the wasteland zone almost like the beating of an historic drum. Chantel felt nervous and anxious that she would have the chance to see a part of history that the world thought had been erased.

As Chantel lay on the deck one day thinking about these things she saw a flicker out of the corner of her eye. A shadow passed over her and she saw the silhouette of wings superimposed against the blue of the sky like a beacon calling out to whoever was watching. It was a bird, flying nonchalantly over the ocean. Chantel sat up immediately to find the others on the boat equally as excited as she was. Beren spoke for the first time in days.

"Blimey, a bloody bird! That's the best thing I've seen for ages. Come down here my feathered friend so I can give you a kiss."

Auntie Bessie and Julie were just as exuberant.

"We must be getting close," Auntie Bessie cried. "I can't believe I'm actually going back home after so many years!"

Julie checked her coordinates.

"That's strange," she announced. "We are a long way off from where I thought the wasteland zone was supposed to be. We'll have to track where it is once we see land."

The sighting of land didn't take long after the bird had been spotted. Once again, Beren was the first on the scene to make the announcement.

"Land ahoy!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.

Sure enough the blue line of the horizon gave way to the craggy formations of hills and cliffs breaking up the scenery of the sea. Beren almost leapt from his wheelchair into the water in delight. As the Saharan swept closer to the shore the passengers could start to discern the beach strewn with rubbish which must have been the last sight Auntie Bessie had of the wasteland before she left her community over 10 years ago. Julie gasped with surprise at what was on the beach.

"Is that the Pedigree?" she exclaimed. "It's still here, after all these years!"

A look of dread passed over Auntie Bessie's face before she made her revelation.

"That's the Pedigree alright. I'm surprised that it's still here...and it doesn't look like it's been used for years. Julie, I think you should know that the Pedigree was part of the trade made for my release. It was the condition upon which I could leave the community and follow you and Condor onto the Kazaa. Wolram made that the deal and for that reason, Condor will never return to these shores. He gave up one part of his family for another and he doesn't want to be reminded of what he lost. It will just be too much for him."

Julie turned to Auntie Bessie with incredulity, finally realising what had transpired all those years ago when Condor visited the community in the wasteland. She understood now why Condor had been so bitter about leaving the Pedigree on the shore of the beach when they sailed away in the Kazaa and why he would not return to the same place when the Kazaa had to be reconfigured to implement the setup for the rowers. It dawned on her why Auntie Bessie had not wanted to let Condor know that they were returning to the community. Julie all of a sudden sympathised with Condor. She realised what a brutal sacrifice he had made to give up the only thing that he had which still bore a connection to his parents. She could see why it would be too painful for him to return.

The Pedigree lay perched on the beach of the wasteland shore like a bowl of decaying fruit. Half submerged in the sand, what was left of the Pedigree was covered in the ravenous tendrils of creepers that reached their tentacles deep into the cracks of the ship, slowly prying it apart from the inside out. The only pristine part of the vessel was the stainless steel mast, a proud edifice of metal contorted into the shape of a bird that stubbornly protruded from the otherwise rusting structure, like a matted flag clinging tenaciously to its flagpole.

"Thank goodness Condor is not here to see this," sighed Julie, knowing that the image of seeing his family heirloom rotting like a corpse would destroy him.

The mere sight of the Pedigree being sacrificed to the insatiable hunger of nature was unnerving to Chantel. She was used to seeing a multiplicity of towers; endless miles of steel gleaming with invincibility, suffering no interruption of greenery in between the rows of buildings. She thought about how long it had been since she had taken in such a view; a sight that she used to take for granted, and how peculiar the supremacy of the weeds claiming the Pedigree seemed in contrast. Chantel thought that the world of the ocean had been foreign, but this land exceeded the sea in its oddity.

Beyond the shore, the wasteland was just as Julie had described – full of rubbish. Chantel caught glimpses of the wasteland zone that reminded her of the beaches they had passed just after leaving Sydney metropolis, on the southern side of the great south-eastern island. However, the concentration of rubbish in these quarters was amplified threefold. The piles of waste reached mountainous heights, mimicking the formations of the land so much so that rivers carved their way through the stacks of rubbish, dragging plastic and foam into the tepid trails of water. The accumulation of moisture in amongst the contours of the land caused reflections and tricks of light that, from the vantage point of the arriving boat, made the whole scene almost seem like an optical illusion. The most arresting sight to Chantel though, were the trees and foliage growing in amongst the refuse. Despite her upbringing in the agricultural zone and being surrounded with crops during her childhood, Chantel was accustomed to seeing vegetation manicured into meaningful plantations. The sight of the jungle sprouting like mangled spiders from every crevice in the garbage pile unnerved Chantel in a manner she could not describe. She found the whole scene confronting in its unruliness.

"Try to steer over there towards the rivulet, where you can travel up to the community," Auntie Bessie directed, pointing towards a gap in the trash piles where a small stream of water sat barely moving.

Julie navigated the small boat closer to the shore in the direction of the tributary. There the water was deep enough to let the boat pass and it glided effortlessly from the sea to the river. As soon as the Saharan passed beyond the reach of the buffeting waves the boat seemed to relax and it seemed to Chantel that they were almost drifting above the water. The boat ceased bobbing involuntarily as the water underneath lost buoyancy and the sound of the lapping waves against the side of the boat hushed into an eerie silence. The only noise accompanying the crew was that of the small motor whirring audibly in the background. Not a person on board the Saharan spoke or moved as they watched the landscape pass by, each of them transfixed by the amount of life in the wasteland. As they peered closer at the hills and mounds of refuse making up the land, they could glimpse thousands of tiny insects and rodents scurrying amongst the plant life. The whole ground seemed to be alive with the movement of creatures. Chantel observed the myriad of wildlife with a mixture of repulsion and fascination. She remembered the rats that had swarmed upon Brad that day long ago in the warehouse and the disease they carried. She recoiled in horror at the proximity of the rodents to the boat and dreaded the possibility that one of them might leap onto the deck at any moment. Despite her disgust, she could not look away.

All the while the Saharan seemed to levitate itself further upstream towards the calling of the community in the wasteland and the voice of the leader, Wolram. Auntie Bessie was brimming now with excitement and could not stop beaming despite the apprehension felt by the other passengers on board the Saharan. Sensing the nervousness of the other passengers, she attempted to break the silence with some reassuring banter but found her anecdotes falling upon deaf ears. The calls of cicadas chirping in amongst the piles of waste echoed the futility of her conversational topics as the chorus of screeching insects eventually drowned out all other noise. The sun lowered itself closer to the horizon casting longer shadows across the land. Stubbornly, the Saharan led them further along the river, as if being pulled along by an invisible rope.

Suddenly the rubbish gave way before them and opened out into a clearing. There, falling in the shadows of the trees that surrounded it, lay an oval of pristine grass. At the far end of the oval Chantel could just make out the forms of houses and other accommodation built into the structures of the trees on the edge of the clearing. At the front of the oval, near the banks of the river, they were waiting. A band of people were lined up along the river, expecting the arrival of the Saharan like the homecoming of a cruise liner. Chantel squinted her eyes for a glimpse of Wolram. The sun by this time was falling low on the horizon behind the clearing, with just a few rays of light piercing through the trees. Despite the sun shrouding the people on the banks in silhouettes of shadow, Chantel immediately recognised the immense shape of the person that she imagined must be the leader of the community.

Chantel's perception of Wolram was not far from the truth. As the Saharan drifted closer, she could see that he was indeed a huge man. He was just as muscular as the purebloods featured in the glitch and stern in his presence. His face wore the timeless wrinkles of one that had stopped ageing decades before. Even with the light disappearing rapidly behind the towering trees at the edge of the oval, Chantel could discern Wolram's bald head glistening with sweat and a hard drive chip firmly planted on his skull, just like the chip that she bore.

'Maybe he's not that different from us after all,' she thought.

Her attention turned for the first time to the other members of the community. Like the crew and hippo fairies on board the Kazaa, whole families lived in the community. She watched children run barefoot alongside the approaching boat, waving cheerfully at the arriving guests. The community gawked in wonder at the Saharan's arrival. Most of the people looked dishevelled, dressing themselves in rags and odd pieces of clothing, no doubt scavenged from the tip. However, despite their matted hair and dirty clothes, Chantel could not deny that all of the people looked happy and healthy. Each of them seemed to greet the visitors with a welcoming smile. Chantel smiled and waved back at the families on the shore, finally appreciating a sense of relief after the tenseness of the journey up the river. The Saharan came to a stop just in front of the main group of people. Chantel was close enough now to see the whites of Wolram's eyes, almost glowing in contrast to the black skin of his face. Finally he spoke with such a booming resonance that it seemed to shake the leaves of the trees and silence the cicadas with a single command.

"You have returned, my lady."
Chapter Sixteen

The wasteland

All eyes turned to Auntie Bessie now who burst immediately into tears at the sight of Wolram. As Julie docked the boat along the banks of the river, Auntie Bessie leapt from the deck and rushed onto the shore to throw her arms around Wolram. For a moment it didn't look like Wolram would return her gesture of goodwill. He continued staring taciturnly down at the woman who barely reached his chest. Then all of a sudden his demeanour broke into a grin and he reciprocated Auntie Bessie's affection by lifting her up into a gigantic bear hug.

"I never thought I would see you again!" he boomed, giving her a long heartfelt kiss.

Auntie Bessie wept in Wolram's embrace.

"I didn't even know if you would be alive if I came back here. Yet, here you are, looking better than ever! You must think I'm just some wrinkly old woman, showing up here again after all these years."

Wolram lifted up Auntie Bessie's chin and looked her in the eyes.

"You still look as beautiful as you did ten years ago, my love. You know that I will always think that about you."

He kissed the tears glistening on her rosy cheeked face and held her close once again. The community around the couple watched in amusement, unaccustomed to seeing their leader so vulnerable and overcome with emotion. Julie also looked bemused at the scene unfolding before her.

"I always knew she had a fella in her life," Julie whispered to Chantel. "Sometimes I would catch her crying, long ago on the Kazaa. She would never tell me what the matter was. Auntie Bessie would always say that she didn't have any worries in the world as long as Condor and I were with her. But I knew that we weren't enough. Full of secrets that one isn't she?"

Julie nudged Chantel and gave her a wink.

'She's not the only one with secrets,' thought Chantel, biting her tongue from saying this out aloud.

\-----------------------

That night Chantel enjoyed one of the most delicious feasts she had ever had in her life. She was amazed at the freshness of the produce that appeared upon the dinner mat. Plate after plate was brought out of barbequed meats and leafy green salads that were prepared simply but succulently. She laughed at the sight of Beren wolfing down his meal like he was a starved pauper. He had not eaten this well for all of the days he had been on the Saharan, if not for the weeks prior. He moaned with delight at every morsel of food he put into his mouth.

"It is only after tasting this meal that I can say I have lived," he exclaimed. "How do such tiny bits of meat have so much flavour?"

Beren was clearly in heaven. The rest of the community members giggled at the fervour with which the visitors devoured their meals. The radiant glow emanating from the beige skin of the wasteland dwellers indicated that these people were used to such quality levels of sustenance and Chantel thought that all of them looked healthier as a result. She especially admired the pink hued cheeks of the children in the wasteland zone. She noticed that none of the children, or the adults for that matter, seemed to have any implants, unlike the majority of the people on the Kazaa. The reason for this was obvious to Chantel now, knowing that the majority of adults on the Kazaa were refugees from the manufacturing zones and most of the children would have been born on the ship. She wondered where Wolram had received his implant and why he was the only one in the community to have been implanted. She wondered how long the community had lived in the wasteland, particularly seeing as no one there appeared to be a migrant from the civilised zones. She imagined that some of them would have been pirates like Auntie Bessie, who had surrendered their aversion to land to live in a veritable paradise of nature. Looking down the field at the selection of dishes on offer, Chantel could understand how such a choice would have been easy to make.

After their introverted journey upon the Saharan, the party's first night in the community was a stark contrast to those lonely nights on the boat. Beren was laughing and enjoying himself for the first time in days.

'It's amazing the difference a good meal and accessible toilet makes', thought Chantel to herself.

She lay back on the grass of the oval with her hands clasped behind her head as she had done on the Saharan just earlier that day and reflected upon the stars in the sky staring back at her. They were just as bright as they had been on the boat but she could see them clearer now, without the unsteadiness of the boat rocking beneath her. The twinkling light from the stars was joined by the flickering glow coming from several flames lit up around the oval. She could smell the faint whiff of citronella coming from the candles and she was relieved that so many were stationed around the oval to ward away the insects. Chantel imagined there would be thousands swarming amongst the rubbish. In addition to the heat coming from the fires, the night air was balmy. Chantel could feel her skin perspiring profusely, without the breezes of the sea to cool her down. The air felt heavier as well, almost clogging her nostrils like a heavy sponge when she breathed. Being out in the middle of a field with the jungle surrounding her, however, Chantel didn't mind the humidity of the air. The heavy moisture dripping through the warm night seemed natural, almost comfortable to Chantel. She decided that she felt much more at ease in these surroundings than she was on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

All around her she could hear the laughter of children running freely around on the grass while the adults chattered away. She turned to look at the mat spread out on the oval, upon which there was still plenty of food on offer. Chantel cringed thinking about the vending machine meals she had relied upon when working in the city.

'Compared to this meal, those takeaway packs were like eating cardboard,' Chantel thought.

Various families were seated around the mat on the ground picking at the pieces of food with their hands and passing dishes around. Chantel thought for a moment that it would be difficult for Beren to participate in a dinner where everyone was seated on the floor while he gravitated above in his wheelchair. She found the opposite to be the case. Children fought over who would be the one to bring him dishes and everyone made sure he had his choice of the food on offer. Beren lapped up the attention like a spoilt toddler. Chantel smiled, relieved that Beren was finally enjoying himself again after the latest traumatic experience on the Saharan. Chantel saw Julie out of the corner of her eye. She also seemed to be content, chatting to strangers and drinking some sort of cocktail that made her blush. Considering that Julie was initially the person who was the most nervous about coming to see the community in the wasteland zone, Chantel was thankful that Julie's reservations seemed to have dissipated for the moment and she was fitting in comfortably. With all feeling right in the world for a rare moment, Chantel tried to recollect each of the bizarre things that had happened to her since leaving Sydney and before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.

\-----------------------

The next morning Chantel awoke to the warmth of the sun's rays dancing against her eyelids. She opened her eyes to see that the sun was already high in the sky, its light filtering through the leaves of the trees surrounding the clearing. The sun's beams, usually so harsh and unmanageable at the height of the daytime were diluted by the greenery surrounding the clearing. Chantel rejoiced at actually being able to bask in the glow of the sun, without feeling her skin sizzling in the heat. As she slowly resumed consciousness she found her mind marvelling at the series of surreal events that had transpired since she decided to join Beren on his irrational quest to discover the purebloods in the glitch.

"It all started with _Soul_ ,' she mumbled to herself. 'It turned out to be much more exciting than the movie about time travel I thought it would be."

Chantel found the word repeating itself in her mind.

Soul, Sole, Sol... What a strange word,' Chantel thought to herself, as she peered through the leaves at the glimpses of the sun behind. 'The one, the only, the original – who could have thought that it would lead to this.'

She touched the hard metallic disk on her head that was the Pangaea chip she had borne since she was a teenager. The sheer edges of the implant pressing against her fingertips gave her enough of a sensation to realise that she was not dreaming. Chantel traced the sides of the implant feeling the area where it melded to her scalp, becoming as much a part of her as any other limb or body feature. She wondered what happened when the people from the manufacturing zones migrated to the metropolis, if they ever made it of course. Could they ever be traced back to the manufacturing zones from the information contained on each of their chips? Did they enter through the standard migration points like she had always done when passing from the agricultural to the metropolis zone and vice versa.

Chantel couldn't imagine any of the hippo fairies being able to withstand the scrutiny of the migration points, considering how difficult it was for her to go through the zones each time she visited her parents. She wondered if it was possible for Pangaea, or any of the global five, to detect the migration of the hippo fairies. She imagined that the employers of the hippo fairies would not have been too impressed when they failed to attend work all of a sudden and she could understand if any of the employers wanted to take steps to track down their employees. Regardless, Chantel was sure that, even if the technology made it possible, it would be illegal to monitor the hippo fairies through their chips. The _Human Integrity Act_ forbade any mass form of tracking or surveillance, subject of course to any security requirements. Chantel couldn't see how it would be possible for the hippo fairies to pose such a major threat to security that the need to locate their whereabouts would fall under an exception to the _Human Integrity Act_. With the world in such a harmonious state of cooperation under the global regime, there were few concerns about the potential for resistance movements to form, which would invoke the need to rely upon such security exceptions to the _Human Integrity Act_.

Chantel wondered how the people in the community and the pirate crew on the Kazaa coped without a chip for their entire lives. She had seen the small wedge of metal lodged into Julie's skull and she remembered thinking that it was odd that Julie had a hard drive chip. After hearing of Julie's story, Chantel realised that Julie was originally of the civilised zones and must have the usual set of implants. Condor and Auntie Bessie on the other hand, like most of the other crew on the Kazaa, had no such implants and accessed their intellectual property files from external devices. Like Beren, they viewed holograms through a specific set of glasses or projected the entertainment onto screens for easier accessibility to multiple viewers. Chantel thought the whole process unnecessarily cumbersome.

'Why bother with carrying extra items around when I can just get everything from my hard drive chip,' Chantel thought.

She wondered what else the hard drive chips were capable of and who in Pangaea was working on improving the chips. Although as a tech eng at Pangaea, Chantel had worked on improving product technology, she wasn't involved in design of the chip's capabilities. Her job was more involved in the integration of Pangaea devices so they could function together seamlessly, to the exclusion of other platforms. Chantel decided that when she returned to Sydney she would request a transfer to the hard drive innovation section of her company to work on improving the capabilities of the Pangaea hard disk chips. She intended to tell her manager about whole societies of people living in the south western quadrant, and undoubtedly in other areas of the world as well who, as yet, were not connected to the Pangaea mainframe. She would put forward the untapped potential Pangaea had to market to these communities by introducing functionality into the hard drive chips that would cater to these people, such as in-built GPS navigation for pirates or on-demand weather forecasts for the community dwellers.

As Chantel stared absently into the trees thinking about how much she had learnt about the world since she left Sydney on this journey, she wondered all of a sudden where the other people from her party were. She looked around the clearing and she could see various other people dozing on the oval, which was clearly the makeshift bedroom for the community. She saw Julie curled up in between two children, one child holding each of her hands as she slept peacefully. Chantel couldn't see Beren or Auntie Bessie amongst the people scattered around the clearing and she figured that they must have retired in one of the buildings situated at the far end of the clearing. After deliberating for a moment longer Chantel finally arose, stretching her hands above her head as she took in the scene in front of her.

Chantel paused to look out over the scene in the clearing. Various men, women and children of the community lay strewn throughout the oval, some curled up in the arms of others, some barely clothed, all looking relaxed and peaceful. Chantel gained a sense of comfort just taking in the scene. In the distance, the sounds of birds warbling their early morning wakeup call shook the air with their high-pitched cackles, making Chantel feel that nature was reverberating all around her. This place was a world apart from life on the sea and the metallic confines of the Kazaa. In comparison to the expansiveness of the ocean, Chantel could feel that the spaces around her were no longer empty realms. To the contrary, her surroundings felt cluttered. The trees, birds and insects of the wasteland all appeared to be clamouring in competition for whatever vital space there was to be shared with the mountains of rubbish piled high on the land. The only interruption to the supremacy of the flora entangled throughout the waste was a series of houses built by the community for those times when they needed shelter from the elements. Obscured by the trees and other shrubs that clung to the buildings in what seemed like a desperate bid to reclaim the wood to the land, the jumble of ramshackle lodges manufactured from timber stood defiantly amongst the foliage at the edge of the jungle. Chantel made her way to where the lodges were located, sitting perched on stilts at the far end of the clearing.

She peeked into the first house and saw Beren sleeping peacefully in a dorm room. She decided not to disturb him as he looked like he was getting the best sleep he had had in a long time. Chantel poked her head into a few of the other houses and found various people up and about doing different things. In one house which contained the kitchen, she was shown where to help herself to the drinks and food on offer. A communal effort was already underway to prepare another massive feast celebrating the arrival of 'the lady' and her friends. Chantel was impressed with the organisation involved in the preparations. Every person was so busy with occupying themselves at their task that Chantel's offers for assistance were quickly rebuked.

In another house, she found the entertainment hub. Not quite as technologically advanced as the CCC, the room was equipped with an out-dated projector and external hard drive rigged up to a rechargeable battery, which all looked like they had been retrieved from the garbage piles. The equipment sat neglected in the corner and it looked like this room was the most seldom used of all the buildings. Chantel figured that with no connectivity in the wasteland, the community would have quickly exhausted the entertainment available on the hard drive and lost interest. Regardless, it seemed like there were plenty of jobs available to keep the community members of the wasteland occupied, without time being spent on entertainment. Chantel deduced that most of the tasks to be performed in the wasteland were labour intensive and the community would need all the hands it could access to chop wood for fires and pluck vegetables and do other things necessary for basic survival. She thought back to her own daily routine working in the metropolis and the chores that made up her out of office hours. She rarely cooked at home, so time spent on food preparation was minimal. The robotics in her apartment took care of most of the cleaning for her. It dawned on Chantel how much of a disparity there must be between the time spent on day to day matters by people in the civilised worlds using modern technology to assist with their lifestyles and the time the people in the community spent on taking care of the basic necessities for living. She decided that when she returned to Sydney she would request assistance from Pangaea to help the people in the wasteland improve their standard of living. She imagined that much could be done to help the wasteland community just by introducing electricity for lights and running water for drinking. Chantel believed it would only be a matter of time until members of the community could also have the opportunity to access downloads from the mainframe onto an implanted hard drive disk.

Chantel continued exploring the area. As she wandered around the community, she did not experience the same sense of trepidation she had when she had she explored the Kazaa. Rather Chantel was buoyed by her sense of optimism that she could play a part in improving the lives of people in the community and thinking of how they could benefit from the advantages of being part of the civilised world. Remembering normality and the life that would once again await her when she returned to work, Chantel felt proud that she was a part of the Pangaea empire. She decided that she would definitely have a conversation with the corporate social responsibility area of her company when she returned to the office to ascertain if there was anything that Pangaea could do to assist the community dwellers. She figured that it would be the least she could do to help the people she had just met and had developed such a fondness for. Chantel resolved that she would take it upon herself to make the lives of the community dwellers better in whatever way she could, provided of course that she could convince Pangaea to also play its part.
Chapter Seventeen

Wolram's dark past

Chantel reached the end of the patch of houses bordering the clearing and soon found herself immersed in the jungle. The trees towered over her like skyscrapers but thicker and more enclosing. She found herself being diverted along a track that meandered through the garbage piles, forging straight into the darkness of the forest. Chantel could feel the air around her drop a few degrees in temperature when she entered the cavernous canopy of foliage and the hairs on her arm tingled with the sudden cool change. She continued walking with the rainforest now so dense that the trees completely obscured the sun above the dirt path and she could barely see two metres in front of her in the dappled light. The sounds of the insects droned on in the depth of the jungle, sometimes pausing when Chantel walked past, as if they were also mystified with this bizarre being that had the audacity to venture amongst their midst. The wildness of the jungle echoed around her. Chantel dreaded the possibility that there might be rodents lurking in the wilderness just as there were in the warehouse where she and Brad had ventured so long ago. The thought made her quicken her pace.

In the distance, Chantel could see the trees in front of her opening up and light shining down on the path. She started to move quickly towards the break in the trees, wanting to get away from the claustrophobic feeling of the forest. She emerged at last from the density of the shrubbery and found herself in a vast clearing. The intense rays of the sun shone unimpeded on Chantel's face, blinding her momentarily. She blinked through the sunshine and when her eyes adjusted to the light she saw a sight that instantly transported her to her childhood on the farm. Nestled between two mountains of garbage lay a wide valley in which a running creek meandered, trickling and gurgling with much more vibrancy than the flaccid river they had floated down to get to the community. The land and garbage in the valley had been cleared and transformed into stepped agricultural fields. Rice paddies were hewn into the sides of the mountains. Rows of green lines mapping the contours of the hills created a neat, organised patchwork of vegetation that reflected a resounding sense of order and conformity. The contrast of the green paddy fields against the backdrop of the disarray that was the wasteland momentarily confounded Chantel. She regathered her composure soon enough though to take in the majesty of the landscape. Juxtaposed against the chaotic surrounds of rubbish, the tidily arranged fields were a soothing reminder of the innate comfort to be gained by imposing sanity on the wilderness. Chantel audibly let out a breath of air in admiration of the beauty she saw before her.

She knew what Auntie Bessie meant now when she had spoken of the community in the wasteland as being a Garden of Eden. Here, surrounded by garbage was the fountain of life essential for the community's survival. The crops in the valley grew in abundance, thriving off the fertiliser deposited by the rotting rubbish. The fronds of the plants glistened with the light they soaked up from the sun. The free flowing creek provided a natural source of irrigation, spitting up a shroud of mist that hung in between the mountains like a low lying cloud. All these factors combined to create a mecca for agriculture. Chantel ventured down into the fields and wandered amongst the plants. The tips of the rice plants that had been lovingly planted in pristine lines peeked out from the mud, almost ready for harvest. She skirted around the ditches to the other side of the valley where the sight of further fields of crops greeted her.

Chantel wandered amongst the fields of vegetables and other crops that produced the harvest the community had feasted on the night before. She recognised the leafy tops of potatoes and beetroot protruding from the ground with much more vigour than those that had ever sprouted at her parents' farm. Further afield, immaculately trimmed rows of trees stood to attention in similarly well-organised orchards. Even from a distance the fruits dangling from the trees were a strong indication of the healthiness of plant life that sprung from the piles of refuse rejected by the civilised worlds. Chantel could not believe that she was standing in the middle of a wasteland, and that it was so beautiful. The rumours that she had come to accept for as long as she could remember of the wasteland zones being nothing but dead areas of the world were laughable to her now as she struggled to comprehend the strange sight in front of her.

The further Chantel walked the more astounded she was at the range of produce being grown. She could see in the far distance, a handful of people tending to the crops and made her way towards them. She was surprised when she was close enough to see what they were doing. The people were leading a huge bull, dragging some sort of device around the field.

"What in the world is that?" Chantel asked.

The heat of the day was already intense and the people looked exhausted. The person guiding the bull seemed to be slightly irked by Chantel's comment but responded diplomatically.

"What do you think it is? It's a plough," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Chantel was confused. She remembered the huge tractors dragging ploughs which turned soil in preparation for sowing from her days on the farm. The equipment towed by the tractors was heavy grade machinery. The tractors practically guided themselves using the coordinates programmed into the GPS. She couldn't imagine the same job being performed by this buffalo. Chantel suddenly realised how primitive the community in the wasteland was and resolved more than ever to make a proposal to Pangaea for the improvement of the community.

"But it's so small!" exclaimed Chantel, almost without thinking. "And the bull dragging it is so slow. It must take forever to plough these fields."

The people gathered around the bull looked dumbfounded.

"If you're so smart, what other way is there to do it then?" asked the bull guide.

Chantel bit her tongue. She realised that she had been impulsive when suggesting that the antiquated methods being used by the community folk were, well antiquated. The realisation dawned on her that the people she stood among had probably never even been to the agricultural zone and it would be pointless for her to try to explain the advances in technology that had occurred since livestock was used for labour. Chantel could not imagine having to depend upon something as unpredictable and wild as a buffalo with the integral task of ploughing. She thought about how easy the job of ploughing was with the automated equipment used on the farm and how much less time was spent on agricultural duties without having to perform everything by hand. She marvelled at the difference that power had made to the civilised worlds. Here was a community, surviving in the wasteland without the benefit of electricity. There were no lights to guide the community at night, no power to fuel the engines for machinery, no energy to process the raw materials needed for cooking.

Chantel had seen the odd solar powered rechargeable battery lying around the community, no doubt a discarded relic rescued from the rubbish. She presumed that these were only used to fire up the projector screens and hard drives for viewing holograms and the like. Apart from the few batteries Chantel had seen in the entertainment room, she could barely see any other evidence of electricity being used for daily tasks. From her impression of the daily life in the community so far, almost all everyday tasks appeared to be performed manually. It was incredulous to Chantel that even the simplest, most basic tasks, such as ploughing, were still undertaken manually. She involuntarily chuckled to herself just at the thought that there were still people in the world that had been left so far behind in terms of technology. In contrast to the glittering towers of advancement that she was used to in Sydney, the wasteland community was like a civilisation starting from scratch. She reminded herself that regardless of how beautiful the wasteland community appeared to be, there must be deep seated difficulties in the society if the people didn't even have electricity.

"What's so funny now?" the man with the cow asked irritably.

Chantel regained her composure.

"Oh, um. Nothing is funny. I was just thinking how strange it all is...how we arrived here last night...and the big party."

The people gathered around the cow broke into their respective grins. The weary wrinkles lining each of their faces, each one looking tired and hallowed by the sun, made it impossible for Chantel to estimate how old any of these people were.

"You come here with the lady. I remember now," one of the people said. "We all thought she was lost to us, but you found her."

Chantel laughed politely but refrained from delving into the whole story. Instead she used the opportunity to segue into her next question.

"Have you seen Aunt-, I mean the lady by any chance?"

One of the community members pointed just past a large hill covered in orange trees.

"She up there at the big house. Wolram's house. That's where he live, with her when she's around. But she been gone for a long time now. It's a miracle she returned."

Chantel thanked the people gathered around the cow and proceeded climbing the hill. Although most of the rubbish had been cleared from the fields, upon closer inspection Chantel could see that the orchard on the hill was not as pristine as it appeared to be. Lurking in amongst the orchard of trees the odd plastic container and empty box still lay half submerged in the ground, unearthed by the roots of the trees as they delved ever deeper into the earth in search of higher quality nutrients. As she rounded the crest of the hill, Chantel beheld an even grander sight than that which had introduced her to the community farms. There, sitting perched on the side of a hill was what must undoubtedly be the 'big house'. The 'big house' itself was more than just big, it was a resplendent boasting of grandeur, an ornate multi-layered edifice that towered over the gardens and trees around it with an omnipresent, mocking façade. Its extravagance was in stark contrast to the surrounding levels of subsistence living in the community and indeed from anything that Chantel had seen in the wasteland. In front of the big house stretched an overabundance of orchards, a sea of undulating greenery cascading to the rhythms of rubbish in its midst. Chantel gasped again at the splendour of it all.

As she climbed the hill to the big house Chantel wondered again what all this was for. Why did Wolram and the community feel the need for such levels of abundance when there was really no one else here to appreciate it? It was not like the big house was a building in the metropolis that could be appreciated by thousands, if not millions of onlookers throughout its lifetime. Here there was nothing, no one to admire the magnificence of the building, except for the people from the community themselves. Chantel found it hard to believe that the people in the community would be able to appreciate something as spectacular as the big house, given how simple the people with the cow had been. Chantel shook her head again at the paradoxical impressions given by the wasteland community and wondered what Beren made of it all.

As she reached the big house she was confronted by two community members standing sentinel. She mentioned that she was one of the people that had arrived on the boat the day before and she was seeking Auntie Bessie, more commonly referred to as 'the lady'. The people at the door, servants it would seem, ran to collect Auntie Bessie and Chantel beamed when she saw a familiar face again.

"Oh, Chantel! How did you find me here? Come in, come in. Come inside, out of the heat now. You must be baking! Did you walk all the way here?"

Chantel was glad to see that Auntie Bessie was her usual bustling self, despite the reverence with which the people in the community treated her.

"You must be thirsty after coming all the way here. Won't you have a glass of juice to cool yourself down?"

With a terse command issued to one of the community members that were gathering around looking curiously at Chantel, a team of people were whisked away to prepare some fresh orange juice. When they returned with the drink, Chantel was once again treated to one of the most delicious embodiments of sustenance that she had ever tasted. She felt instantly revived. Buoyed by the drink and being reunited with Auntie Bessie once more, Chantel fired off a flurry of questions about the community, the house and what Auntie Bessie's role in the community was. Just as Julie had been previously, Auntie Bessie was slightly circumspect in her responses but did try to address Chantel's interrogation as best as she could. The more Auntie Bessie revealed about the community, the more fascinated Chantel became. She was more convinced than ever now that she would pursue her original inclination, to work with Pangaea for the betterment of the people in the wasteland. She had no doubt that once Pangaea were advised of the predicaments faced by a society living such backward lives that the company would commit to its altruistic objectives, and assist those in need.

The legend about the wasteland was that it indeed had been started by roaming pirates. Sometime hundreds of years ago, it was said that they had capsized near the shore where the Pedigree now lay cocooned in the sand like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar. With no way to return to the civilised worlds and with only the discarded debris of civilisation scattered around them, the pirates decided to start their own world using whatever they could find from the material in the wasteland. Naturally, the Captain of the pirate ship was the leader of the original community and the rules that applied at sea, applied equally to the ship's crew in the wasteland. With the passage of time, the original Captain eventually passed away leaving self-proclaimed Captains to vie for control of the community in the deceased Captain's wake. The wasteland society erupted into anarchy with various factions forming amongst the ship's crew, all contesting for leadership. Auntie Bessie couldn't be sure how they functioned as a society in this time, marked by such a constant struggle for power and unrest.

According to Wolram, this was how he found them. Conversely, according to who Auntie Bessie asked, this was how fate would dictate the leader for the community. Auntie Bessie relayed her understanding of the story, a story that had been passed from mouth to ear so many times now that it had become the stuff of fables. From what Auntie Bessie could gather from the people in the community who would speak to her of such things, he simply wandered out of the jungle one day at a time that was fortuitous for both him and the community. If it had been at any other time when there may have been an established leader in place, he might have been seen as an intruder and instantly killed. As luck would have it, he came to the community at a time when they had become weary with fighting amongst themselves. The competing factions had been waging a perpetual battle to destroy the livelihood of their opponents since the death of the Captain. As a result, everyone suffered. Neither faction was able to rear the crops required for basic nutrition before they were sabotaged by a competitor. Life in the community had become a series of retaliatory attacks and reprisals and all sought to free themselves of this pattern of petty behaviour. When Wolram stumbled, bloodied, sore and bruised out of the garbage, the community declared it a sign of their destiny that he become the leader.

From Auntie Bessie's recount, Wolram was terrified of these people when he first joined them two decades ago. The mentality of the warring factions had bred a people that were inherently suspicious of each other, a society tottering on the brink of paranoia. The tacit aggressiveness of the people put Wolram on edge and he remained apprehensive about assimilating entirely into the society ever since his arrival. The community thrust their own leadership aspirations upon the newcomer and he graciously accepted before he had time to think about what that entailed.

"Being a leader is different from just being in power," Wolram had told Auntie Bessie. "A true leader uses his power to lead, while those who just seek power will have no idea how to control it once they gain power."

Wolram was a quick learner and realised what he needed to do for the community to regain a sense of harmony. At his direction, the community set up the agricultural fields, built the houses and managed to maintain a sense of civil order. By the time Auntie Bessie landed on the shores of the wasteland from her pirate ship, seeking to barter with the renowned community, it was already a thriving centre of fresh produce for sea travellers weary of snacking on preserved foods.

By then, the community had been flourishing for only a few short years and when Auntie Bessie arrived she witnessed the community at its peak of civilisation.

"I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw this place," gushed Auntie Bessie again.

She elaborated again on the beauty of the wasteland, the benevolence of Wolram's leadership, the community's unquestioning acceptance of Auntie Bessie when she joined them as Wolram's partner. After the first glimpse of the wasteland, the lure of the subsistence lifestyle had been too strong for Auntie Bessie. She left the Pedigree one night, on a boat smaller than the size of the Saharan and that was the last she saw of her dear sister and the rest of her family. She accepted Wolram's invitation to join him in the wasteland, to live as his equal and confidant, to share in making the decisions that would guide the welfare of the community, to be as much of an outsider as he was. Wolram would not take on a partner from the community. For all the years that he dictated the people, he was steadfast in his singularity. He maintained his distinction from the people he led by building the big house on the hill. He exercised a reclusive lifestyle and was only seen when he needed to be. Wolram was seeking someone from the outside to be a loner with him and Auntie Bessie acquiesced to this paradoxical request.

It wasn't until Auntie Bessie unexpectedly saw Condor scavenging on the wasteland beach almost a decade later that she remembered what it was like to belong to a family again. The fact that she had abandoned her sister on the Pedigree and would never see her again wracked Auntie Bessie with guilt. When Condor begged her to leave Wolram and join him on the Kazaa, she was so filled with remorse for her dead sister that she agreed. Days of intense negotiations with Wolram followed in which Wolram agreed to Auntie Bessie's departure on the proviso that he would keep the Pedigree. In his mind he could not give up something for nothing. There had to be some sort of trade off. Condor was enraged that Wolram would dare to propose such a bargain, especially when he had no use whatsoever for the ship, as indicated by the Pedigree's currently decaying frame. Nonetheless, Condor agreed to the deal in order to have his dear Auntie Bessie returned to the fold and upon doing so, he swore never to return to the wasteland again. Wolram was alone in the wasteland once more and had remained that way it seemed until Auntie Bessie's recent return.

Chantel found it difficult once again to digest all the information she was hearing. So many questions still remained. Where had Wolram come from? Who was he before he stumbled upon the community? How many other purebloods were there? Why did he have a chip implanted?

"Perhaps you can ask him yourself," Auntie Bessie suggested as Wolram suddenly appeared in the room.

Chantel instantaneously found herself lost for words. The presence of a pureblood, right there in front of her was an intimidating moment. She wasn't sure if she should stand to bow before this pureblood or what action would be the most appropriate. Auntie Bessie ended up coming to her rescue once again by knowing the exact right thing to say.

"Wolram, I'd like you to meet Chantel from Sydney. She's come a long way to find you here, or others like you wherever they may be," said the matriarch, opening up the lines of communication.

Chantel was still speechless. As she stood in awe of the presence of the pureblood, Wolram beamed the warmest smile Chantel had seen on anyone for a long time. She figured that this was how he had managed to win the hearts of the people in the community, needless to say, the heart of Auntie Bessie.

"Yes, Bessie has told me all about the little adventure that you and Beren have been on," boomed the charismatic leader, winking at Chantel as he did so. "You guys came all the way here to the other end of the world chasing some random footage that you saw on some glitch, hey? That takes some guts alright."

Wolram erupted into a bout of laughter so boisterous that it seemed to shake the walls and floors of the room as vigorously as an earthquake, a process which was uncannily effective in dispelling Chantel's nerves. From that moment, an instant serenity washed over Chantel. She was captivated by Wolram's charm and innate blackness. She recognised his uniqueness, his absolute exclusivity from anyone else she had ever before encountered. There was in his presence something ancient, something that heralded from a time before technology and chips in the brain, something that seemed to associate itself with the land itself – a primeval enigma that inextricably linked him to the earth as it would have been before it was consumed by rubbish. Soon, the sounds of Wolram's chuckling made Chantel feel so comfortable that she was relaxed enough to utter her first words to the pureblood.

She attempted to probe him about his origins. Why was he the only one anyone had ever seen that looked like him? Why was he so different? Were there any others that he knew of that were different like him? Chantel tried to politely gather as many answers as she could but Wolram's response was always the same.

"I can't remember a thing," was his steadfast reply. "It was over twenty years ago now. I walked through the jungle...for days it felt like, I don't even know how I survived out there in the wasteland. I can't remember where I was coming from or where I thought I was going to. I think I just followed the water as best I could. All of a sudden I came upon this clearing and there, thank heavens, there were people! I must've looked a wreck. They took me in, gave me a decent feed. That's all there really was to it."

Chantel bit her lip at the simplistic response. She wished Beren was with her at that moment. He knew more about the history of this land. He had read more about this place, this Africa that was now the south western quadrant of the world. He would know how to find the answers they were seeking.

"What if we go there," Chantel blurted out excitedly. "Once you see what's on the glitch...it will baffle you, you'll want to find out what it's all about. We have the coordinates of one of the places. I'm sure it won't be far to go to get there. If we take you to this place, will you remember what happened? There are more purebloods out there, I just know it. When you see the proof, you'll want to find others like you too."

Auntie Bessie echoed Chantel's enthusiasm.

"Wolram, you've always talked about how lonely it is...you know, being different and all. As soon as I saw the glitch, I just thought of you. I knew that I had to come back here to help you find out where you had come from. This footage Wolram...it's unbelievable, you have to see it for yourself. You won't believe your eyes, I swear."

Under mounting pressure, Wolram was finally persuaded to view the glitch. Servants were called upon to collect the equipment from the boat and Chantel and Auntie Bessie waited, brimming with excitement, at the prospect of unveiling the answers that they had travelled across the seas to uncover.
Chapter Eighteen

The horror

Chantel stared, transfixed at Wolram's glistening skin. It was as dark as the skin of those purebloods she had seen in the glitch. He was one of them. She just knew it. He would lead them to the rest of the purebloods. The light reflected off the pitch black surface of Wolram's forehead like the beams of the sun gleaning off the waters in the ocean. The implantation of the chip lodged permanently onto Wolram's skull was distinctly incongruous with the rest of his appearance. It's presence, embedded into his ancient skin, was like a collision of two eras. The purpose of the chip, since Wolram couldn't access any intellectual property from it, mystified Chantel. Why had the hard drive been implanted if there were no downloads on it and who would have implanted it? Clearly there was no facility in the community for installing the hard drive and this area was outside the reach of any of the global five's wireless mainframes. The chip didn't seem to have a purpose.

Wolram could have been carved out of granite as he sat motionless in his chair, as still as a sculpture of a king in his throne. The whites of Wolram's eyes, as white as his skin was black, were mesmerised by the footage from the glitch showing on the projector screen. Chantel had forgotten how powerful one's first experience viewing the footage was. She had seen the glitch so many times now that the full force of the footage did not elicit as intense a reaction from her as it did after her initial viewing. She expected someone seeing the glitch for the first time to be traumatised. The sight of the soulless purebloods was not a pleasant experience by any means. What Chantel was not prepared for, was the utter violence of Wolram's reaction.

The footage finished playing and the movie _Soul_ resumed. The complete attention of both Chantel and Auntie Bessie were now directed towards Wolram. His face, barren and expressionless, was like a mask of composure, eyes of white burrowed into a shield of black. Then, almost involuntarily it seemed, his mouth twitched. He gritted his teeth, baring two rows of pristine white specimens. He let out a low growl and then suddenly pierced the air with a high-pitched shriek. Chantel and Auntie Bessie covered their faces in fear at the sudden change as Wolram raged.

"The _horror_ ," he screamed, over and over again.

It was as if he had instantly turned into an animal. He became like a beast, unchained and thrashing about all the while roaring at the top of his lungs. He started scratching at the chip in his head, like he was trying to claw it out. While Chantel and Auntie Bessie looked on helplessly, Wolram writhed uncontrollably until his fingers bled and his tormented cries attracted the attention of everyone else in the house. The servants rushed to the room with terrified looks upon their faces.

"What is the matter, lady?" they asked Auntie Bessie concernedly. "We've never seen him like this. Is there something we should do?"

They were shocked at Wolram's incarnation into a subhuman being.

"There's nothing we can do but wait for now," was the lady's only response to these questions.

So the rage continued, for hours it seemed, until Wolram eventually ran out of steam.

\-----------------------

"We were all utterly stupefied," Chantel recounted to Beren later that day. "You see Beren, when you meet Wolram...there's something about him, there's a presence. It's almost like he's a mystical being from another world. And then, just the sight of the glitch completely transformed him. It was absolutely frightening. Whatever it was that he saw in the footage, whatever it meant to him shook him up so badly. He became like a completely different person. It-it was like he wasn't even human anymore. He was transformed. He was wild. Something in him became unleashed when he saw what was on the glitch."

"What calmed him down in the end?" Beren asked, curious and annoyed that he had not been there to meet Wolram.

"Nothing in particular. He just did, calm down that is. His cries became whimpers and he started to run out of energy. By that time his fingernails and scalp were covered in blood. It was just awful. We couldn't stop him trying to claw his chip out. And all the while he was shouting, 'the horror, the horror' like something was tormenting him. Then eventually he curled up into a ball and sobbed himself back to normal. It was truly bizarre, Beren."

Beren brushed back his hair, deep in thought.

"It's impossible," he mumbled to himself. "It was abolished...centuries ago now."

Chantel nudged Beren.

"What are you talking about?"

"Slavery. Maybe Wolram was a slave. The purebloods in the glitch...perhaps that's the connection. "

Chantel considered it for a moment then vehemently debated the proposition.

"No, he can't be. We have the _Human Integrity Act_ , Beren. There's simply no way that anything like that can happen in this world. The global regime wouldn't allow it."

"Chantel, what have you discovered about this place? Look around us, girl. There is no global regime here. This place is completely off the radar. No one in this community has chips, no one on any of the pirate ships had chips either. This is the land that the global five forgot. Not even Utopia has a hold on the people here and they were everywhere when we were in Cape Town. Freetown is also in a wasteland zone. Maybe there's another community there just like this one that lives completely without rules. Maybe that's what Wolram is so traumatised about. These wasteland zones, Chantel...these places are ungovernable. I could never have imagined that any place like this existed before we somehow managed to arrive here. Don't you see...this place is lawless. We're outside of the civilised world. There's no _Human Integrity Act_ here. They can do whatever they want without the global regime watching."

Chantel pondered Beren's words. He was right. They were in a place where the laws of the global regime did not seem to apply. They were in one of the empty spaces on the map. Nothing existed here and while they were in here, they didn't exist either. The sudden realisation frightened her. If anything happened to her or Beren out here, no one would know. There was no one was monitoring them, no one to report on their existence. They had dropped completely out of the empire of the global regime's protection. Chantel felt nervous that for once in her life, Pangaea was not watching over her.

"So do you think that's what it is, Beren? Is he from the past perhaps? Do you think that someone has actually invented a time machine to bring purebloods back from the past, from centuries ago when they were used as slaves?"

Beren furrowed his brow, deep in thought again.

"It's a mystery, Chantel. But one thing is for sure...we have to take Wolram to Freetown to find out."

Chantel nodded in agreement. The challenge now would be getting Auntie Bessie to convince Wolram to agree.

\-----------------------

A few days later Wolram had regained the composure he was so accustomed to exhibiting. As expected he refused to talk about the transformation that had taken place upon his exposure to the glitch. However, he did agree to accompany the group to Freetown, the place that he acknowledged was the site of the footage. Beyond this snippet of information, he would reveal little else about the source of the glitch. He insisted that he did not know what the purebloods were doing, only who was making them do it. In his usual mysterious way, Wolram promised that he would lead the group to this person, but would elaborate no further on who this person was and how Wolram knew them. The more Beren and Chantel pressed Wolram for further information, the more his smile would become like a mask of charisma with which he would cunningly deflect their curiosity. Auntie Bessie warned them that it would be pointless to try and pry for answers. Wolram had never been known to surrender information about his past.

It was agreed that they would leave as soon as the Saharan was ready. Wolram, with all the benevolence that had allowed him to retain his stronghold of leadership over the community, had decreed that the Saharan must first be reconfigured to accommodate ramps for Beren's wheelchair. Beren was absolutely elated with this decision.

"Wolram, I hardly know you but I feel that I must kiss you," he squealed. "This is possibly the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for me, uh-um, except for everything you've done Chantel, but this, this gesture of goodwill...I'm absolutely overwhelmed. Oh, what the hell, can I hug you? Is that okay Auntie Bessie?"

The community roared with laughter at Beren's antics as he attempted to wrap his arms around the gigantic man from the confines of his wheelchair. Chantel couldn't contain her laughter either. Beren really seemed to be enjoying himself here, and come to think about it, she was too. There was something about the place, the vibe of the place that was harmonious, thought Chantel. For some unexplainable reason, she felt that everything in this place was in synch with everything else. The air, the water, the trees, even the miles of rubbish that formed a barricade between the community and the civilised world, the entire existence of the community seemed to be rising and falling with the same inimitable breath. It was like the earth's consciousness had been slowly seeping out through the ground of the wasteland community, becoming absorbed into all the artefacts and living organisms so that they all swelled with the same substance, each and every thing bearing the indelible mark of the earth's aura. Everything seemed swept up in an all-encompassing swoon and Chantel was only too happy to let herself succumb to this swoon and be subject to a sanctuary that was in complete and utter harmony with the world.

While waiting for the ramp to be built in the Saharan, Chantel, Beren and Julie had moved into the big house with Wolram and Auntie Bessie. Amongst the idyllic surrounds of the orchard plantations they passed the next few days sharing stories with the servants and enjoying the fresh produce that arrived regularly from the fields. The servants inquired incessantly about life in the civilised worlds. They were astounded with Chantel and Beren's descriptions of technology in the metropolis zones. It was unfathomable for them to believe that machines could be programmed to do the entire work of the farm in a matter of hours.

"How can they move if they aren't pulled by a cow?" asked the cook of the house, November 9, with a genuinely quizzical look upon her face. "Do they use some sort of magic power?"

Chantel gave Beren a stern look of warning to refrain from bursting out laughing. In turn, Beren bit his lip and addressed November 9 with a twinkle in his eye.

"Correct, we have appointed a number of magicians to the agricultural zones and when each of these magicians point their magic wand in the direction of a machine, it zaps to life – hey presto!"

November 9's eyes lit up for a brief moment before the thump that Chantel delivered to the back of Beren's head made November 9 realise that Beren was having her on.

"Don't listen to a word he says," Chantel warned. "He always likes to believe that he's funny when he really has nothing sensible to say. The machines are powered by electricity...which performs wonders like magic, but has a much more logical explanation."

"What is this stuff, what is this electricity?" inquired November 9 looking more and more puzzled.

"Well, it's hard to explain," attempted Chantel. "Um, how can I put it...it's like this charge of power that make things function...like, it turns lights on and powers up projectors and makes machines move, as long as they are charged. And it can be stored on batteries...so most automobiles and boats and the like have batteries so they can move...and the batteries need to be recharged by plugging them into the grid and once they are charged, then they have like a zap..."

Chantel trailed off, realising from November 9's perplexed expression that her explanation of electricity was not really making much sense.

"So where does it come from?" asked November 9 intriguingly. "Does it grow out of the ground?"

"Um, it comes from the sun mostly or wind. Some power is nuclear, which is...oh geez, I don't even know how to start explaining that one. Beren, can you help us out a bit? How do they make electricity?"

Beren gave Chantel a sly look before he started turning his wheels to roll away.

"Chanty, you know I never have anything sensible to say. What makes you think that I would know anything about electricity?"

And with that sarcastic comment he left Chantel to try to deflect November 9's further enquiries.

\-----------------------

November 9 was by far Chantel's favourite person in the community. Young and inquisitive, she reminded Chantel of herself just a few years earlier. Being stationed in the big house, November 9 did not have the ruddy complexion of the community dwellers Chantel had met in the fields. In comparison, her fair skin and large eyes peering out from under a crop of tussled auburn hair gave her a childlike appearance that epitomised the aura of innocence carried by these people living in the wasteland. Chantel empathised with November 9's desire to educate herself about more than the simplistic life encompassed in the community. She could see in November 9's eyes the spirit for adventure that Chantel would also have borne just about the time she left the agricultural zone to move to the metropolis zone.

'She has the same sense of innate curiosity as I did, once upon a time,' thought Chantel. 'But she didn't even know that there was a different world out there before we came along. Imagine being oblivious to the whole entire real world...'

Chantel made a mental note to herself to try and see if she could arrange for November 9 to visit her in the metropolis zone when she returned to Sydney. She would pitch it to Pangaea as a wasteland scholarship – an opportunity for the brightest minds from the wasteland to experience and learn from the civilised worlds. Chantel was excited about the prospect of spearheading such a campaign and whiled away the hours at the big house thinking about all the things that she could teach November 9.

She tried starting the hypothetical lessons early by telling November 9 about how the world worked and how the wasteland zone was not like reality. This, Chantel discovered, was as difficult to explain in abstract as it was to present a hologram to someone without a chip implanted in their head.

"Back in the real world, we have a certain order, a way of doing things. Rules for living life. There's no system here, November 9. There aren't any laws for people to follow. How do you tell right from wrong?"

"What do you mean Chantel? We all have to live by the rules here. The rules are just what we're used to. Nobody thinks about doing things the wrong way because we only know one way of doing things. As long as everybody helps the community, Wolram is happy and as long as Wolram is happy, we're happy."

"But what if you disagree with what he says. What if you wanted to work in the fields for instance, but he wouldn't let you leave the house? What would you do?"

November 9 shook her head.

"Why would I ever want to try to do something that I'm not sure about? I wouldn't even know how to work in the fields. I only know how to do house work."

Chantel thought about the hippo fairies for some reason. She thought about the ultimate sacrifice they had made to upheave themselves from the manufacturing zones to move to the metropolis, if they could make it there. They chose the ultimate choice of last resort precisely so they could do something different. In contrast, the people in the wasteland zone bizarrely wanted nothing more than to do the same thing for eternity. Chantel decided that as beautiful as the community was, as comfortable as the place made her feel, she would never be able to understand its world. For the first time in several weeks, she felt a pang of yearning for the shimmering towers of Sydney metropolis and the structure of her normal life.

Chapter Nineteen

Back on track

Chantel had lost track of how much time they had spent languishing in the big house. On a day that seemed to be just like the day before it, she and Beren were passing the afternoon in the same way they had idly consumed each day ever since their arrival in the community. As the post-meridian sun descended towards the horizon, spilling the house with golden light, Chantel and Beren were in the living room, reclining in large wooden armchairs bolstered with makeshift cushions of stuffing. The windows of the house had been flung open allowing the cool breeze to sweep into the room on its saunter down the hill, scouting out the dust in the crevices and corners before being ejected from the house, billowing the curtains upon its triumphant exit in a last hurrah. The retreating sun hung low in the sky, casting its last warm rays of sunshine upon the trees in the orchard like a multi-coloured net of flames, illuminating each of the leaves with a fiery texture. Laziness seemed to be in order for the pastime of the afternoon.

The servants had just brought freshly squeezed juice to the idlers. Chantel and Beren had watched November 9 lead a band of people to the orchard to pluck the fruit from the trees and minutes later, bring the pulped fruit directly to the lounge room still oozing with freshness.

It was into this scene that Wolram casually burst in.

"Its all fixed now," he declared, implying that it had been broken before. "The Saharan is ready."

Beren turned around, startled at Wolram's entrance but soon enough elated with the news.

"My ramp is ready?" he asked, eyes bright with excitement.

With Wolram's emphatic nod, Beren instantly clambered into his wheelchair and manoeuvred himself out the door of the living room to assess the modifications made to the boat. Chantel scrambled up to follow Beren back to the river. They made their way to the spot where the Saharan had been docked the entire time, revisiting the place where they had first set foot in the community. The boat had been cleaned up since they last laid eyes upon it.

"She looks good doesn't she?" interjected a proud Julie from the bow of the boat. "Come up on board and check out the new digs."

Beren wasted no time in wheeling himself aboard the familiar deck of the Saharan, a place that he had formerly loathed beyond all belief because of the captivity that it represented. The change in his mood upon this revisitation was noticeable as he headed straight to the ramp that was now located where his hermit fortification had previously been stationed.

"Weeeeeeeee," squealed Beren, rolling down the ramp with his hands in the air before coming to an abrupt stop at the bottom. "I bags the master bedroom!"

He swung himself into the various chambers below deck, exploring the cramped conditions of the Saharan that were now accessible to him.

"Geez, is that the size of the bathroom? I don't know if I'll fit in there after all the weight I've put on these last few days. Wolram, you're really gonna struggle in here too mate! Its all your own fault though for feeding us so goddam well."

Julie and Chantel laughed at Beren's youthful jubilance, relieved that his elation at the ramp signified his approval of the changed conditions, which in turn heralded a more exuberant mood for the journey ahead.

"Well I guess its time to take off again for the high seas," said Julie, throwing her arms around Chantel's shoulder in a cheerful hug. "Back on the road again."

"Back on the ocean again," Chantel echoed, with a twinge of disappointment that they would be leaving the good life of the community and the good food that accompanied it so soon.

\-----------------------

The sound of Wolram's vomiting was thankfully drowned out by the gales of wind thumping the sails and rocking the boat. Chantel was uncomfortable enough on the boat and this was her third trip on the Saharan. For someone who had never been at sea before in their life, she could only imagine how difficult this journey would be. She realised that they had been blessed previously with the calm weather that had accompanied her and Beren from Sydney to the wasteland community. As soon as they left the shores of the wasteland, the storms hit and for the last few days they had been battling night and day to keep the boat on track and upright. Chantel looked at Julie behind the steering wheel in the Captain's box, concentrating on making sure the navigational coordinates were correct using the boat's unsophisticated GPS and doing her best to steer away from any rocks that might be lurking beneath the water. Chantel was sure that Julie had not slept for days and even Chantel was growing weary with fatigue after spending the restless nights on the boat being tossed from side to side in her cabin. She hoped they would be arriving at Freetown soon. There was only so much inclement weather all of them could take.

The next day they had their first calm day on the water since setting out on this latest leg of their journey. After going to bed in the midst of howling wind and buffeting waves, Chantel was surprised to awake the next day to clear blue skies and calm water. She ventured to the top of the deck where she saw Beren taking Julie's place in the Captain's seat.

"Are you for real? Did she really let you steer this thing?" Chantel could not contain her astonishment.

"Well she needed to get some sleep finally. Plus I've done it before, I can do it again."

Chantel had to admit that Beren did seem entirely comfortable behind the wheel of the boat. His previous escapade on the Saharan had evidently paid off.

"Just don't make me call you Captain or I'll vomit like Wolram has been the last few days," remarked Chantel cynically.

While Julie was no doubt below deck sleeping, Wolram and Auntie Bessie were already enjoying themselves in the sun on the top deck. Wolram seemed obviously relieved that the weather had cleared up finally, although he was still sure to stay near the boat's railing in case he needed to hurl over it. Chantel observed him finally at ease on the sea.

'This must be such a strange place for him,' she thought, 'after having only known the community for so long.'

He appeared at rest in Auntie Bessie's company, although he was far removed from the community that adored him. Chantel and the others had stood by awkwardly for what seemed like hours while Wolram and Auntie Bessie bode their farewells to the community dwellers. They did not take the news of Wolram's impending departure lightly and when the time finally arrived for the Saharan to set sail, the masses lined the shore of the river weeping and bawling for Wolram not to leave. He placated each of them individually, reassuring them that he would be back before they knew it and that they would hardly even notice that he was gone. Despite this, a few of the community dwellers seemed to be inconsolable and Wolram gave many a hug and clutched many a hand before the crew could finally be on their way. Chantel wondered if she would ever be as distressed if something were to happen to the Chairperson of the World, the leader of the global regime and head of Pangaea. She tried to conjure up an image of the Chairperson, a person that she had undoubtedly voted for on numerous occasions. However, she found her mind drawing at a blank and realised that when elections occurred she had simply ticked the box for Pangaea without even bothering to find out who the Chairperson of the company was. Chantel shrugged off her ignorance. Unlike the situation in the community, it made little difference to her who was running the civilised world, as long as Pangaea was the dominant brand.

"We should be getting to Freetown soon," Auntie Bessie announced. "Once we're there, Wolram says he knows where to take us."

All eyes on the boat turned to Wolram with a mixture of hope and anticipation, as he steadfastly averted their gaze by staring out to sea.

"The storm has put us back a day or two," he mentioned. "We'll be there soon enough though. I can feel us drawing close."

The mood of the passengers on the boat had been noticeably bolstered with the fine weather as the boat bobbed along, bearing them ever closer to their long sought-after destination. They were hugging the shoreline on this journey, the view of the beach lining the perimeter of their voyage like a static compass, leading them ever northward. The Saharan was no longer like an island, with the ocean spread out on all corners as it had been on their expeditions before. Instead the boat gravitated incessantly towards the shoreline, the border of the wasteland serving as a constant guide for the travellers as they crept ever closer to Freetown. The interruption to the skyline gave Chantel something to keep herself occupied, scenery to watch as the journey developed. The wasteland zone on the shore was piled high with garbage, mountains of rubbish enveloping the land for the entire stretch of the horizon. The legacy of the civilised world to the neglected zones. Chantel wondered if other communities lived beyond the waste, like that of Wolram's. Despite her first-hand experience of the community, the thought that anyone else could survive out there in the dump, that there could be other communities in the wasteland, was almost inconceivable. She wondered again what the purebloods featured in the glitch were doing, how they managed to survive in a wasteland such as Freetown.

Later that afternoon, it was once again Beren who heralded their arrival at the destination.

"Location -23-134. We're here!" he called to the sleepy passengers of the Saharan reading off the coordinates on the GPS.

They craned their necks towards the shore, straining to catch a glimpse of some sort of signal that this was indeed Freetown.

"It doesn't look any different from the rest of the wasteland," Julie stated blatantly.

"No, this is the place," Wolram affirmed. "Bring her to shore where you can and we'll walk the rest of the way."

"How long will the walk be?" Auntie Bessie asked looking slightly concerned about the requirement for exertion.

Wolram shrugged.

"Could be hours, could be days...it's been over 20 years since I last made that long walk to freedom. I can't be sure how far inland the facility is."

Julie moved to take over the controls from Beren.

"Why don't we drop the anchor here and rest for the night," she said sensibly. "We can start out fresh early tomorrow."

Chantel sensed a hint of disappointment from Beren who she assumed was ready to go charging into the wasteland.

"Are you sure this is the right location, Julie," Beren prompted. I wasn't sure if I was reading your GPS correctly since it's from the last century and all."

"Positive," Wolram asserted. "But Julie's right. We should wait until tomorrow before wandering in there. We'll spend tonight out here on the water. We'll have one more chance to sleep...to dream."

The weary crew agreed with this plan and made the arrangements to bunker down for their last night on the sea before the next day, the day that would hopefully deliver the answers they had been seeking. That night, the cries of Wolram calling out from his nightmare echoed around the cabins of the small boat, shaking the walls with his pitiful screams.

"The horror, the horror..."
Chapter Twenty

The glitch revealed

The next morning Chantel awoke in a daze, her head filled with dust and dreams of dungeons. The non-stop screams coming from the neighbouring cabin had given everyone on the boat a deep sense of foreboding and made them empathise with Wolram's dread upon revisiting this place. The mystery about what horror lay in the place that used to be Freetown, now a wasteland, hung like a sickly pallor over the faces of the disparate group, doing nothing to mask their concern about what was before them. Wolram was once again dismissive about his outbursts in the night. However, his nightmares had aroused some memories from his life before. He remembered that there was a dock further along the coast, with a road from it leading deep into the wasteland. He was confident of these details as he directed Julie around the peninsula of land where the Saharan had rested for the night and urged her to travel further up the coast. Once they passed a crest of land they could see a jetty built purposely for a much larger ship than the Saharan. There the Saharan docked, a baby chick sitting in a mother chicken's nest. They enjoyed the last breakfast that they might have for a while on the boat before heading to shore, each of them trying to engage half-heartedly in the usual banter while ignoring the taunting of the secrets stashed deep in the wasteland. They each grabbed a few of their personal belongings and some food and water just in case they would need to spend the next night on shore. Then with some trepidation, they made their way onto the jetty.

When they wandered off the jetty, they could see a road leading deep into the wasteland.

"Where does this lead to?" was the obvious question.

"This road? This leads to the place where it all began," replied Wolram. "The road to see the Creator."

When probed further about who the Creator was, Wolram would simply spit and gnash his teeth with contempt, all the while avoiding the question. Nevertheless, the group followed him deeper into the wasteland. The rubbish had been excavated to make way for this massive road like the parting of a path through the sea; the banks of refuse hanging on either side of the road as if they were waves frozen in time. The dry sand bore marks in the ground of a huge vehicle that would have travelled on the track in times before. Julie looked closely at the trails left in the ground by a set of massive wheels.

"None of these tracks look recent," said the Captain. "But whatever made them was big, that's for sure."

The group continued on, following the trails in the sand that extended as far into the wasteland as they could see, the golden road that would lead to the Creator. The sun shone its steady glare on the rubbish all around, reflecting off the rusting metal and other silver surfaces buried in the heat. The garbage piles were different here from those in the wasteland near Wolram's community. The heat here seemed more intense and drier than that of the jungle wasteland. Here the sun seared its blazing rays across the land and seemed to prevent any foliage from growing in the rubbish. The garbage, overwhelmingly comprising plastic pieces, appeared to wither and melt as it baked out in the open, without the lush coverage of greenery to shield the sun's rays. Chantel could feel the heat emanating from the sand radiating through the soles of her shoes. With the sizzling warmth an acrid smell pierced the air, the faint burnt smell wafting through the more putrid scents lingering amongst the rubbish. They had been walking for a few hours when beyond a hill of rubbish in the distance, they could see what looked like gigantic structures directly ahead of them at the apex of the road.

"What on earth is that?" Beren asked and all eyes in the group looked instinctively at Wolram, who remained silent throughout.

Towering ahead of them, beyond the fields of rubbish, were several gigantic stone structures. Massive edifices of round buildings without any windows or other openings on the solid circumference of each sandstone entity. The buildings simply shot out from the sand like huge rock pillars, the entire outside face blank. As the group made their way closer, the towers loomed ever larger. The tops of the towers were all connected by thick cabling, wires and other lines crisscrossed the sky above their heads reverberating with a dull buzzing sound. The air was dry with a static charge. There were different tracks in the sand now near these structures. Footprints. The marks of people shuffling barefoot across the sand.

"Purebloods...these are the prints of purebloods," yelled Chantel excitedly as she ran closer to the towers, circling them to find a way in.

"Not so loud Chantel," chided Auntie Bessie scurrying behind. "You don't want to attract any attention now. What if this person, this Creator, finds us here?"

"Chances are he already knows we've arrived," Wolram said ominously.

They had reached the base of one of the structures now and the entrance was easily visible. Only a single marking was apparent on the door – Utopia. The building had been branded. The thick, opaque glass door with only Utopia's signage on it looked like it was the only way in or out of the stone tower.

'It must be a dungeon in there,' Chantel thought reaching for the door, remembering her eerie dreams from the night before.

She swung the door open. Each member of the group huddled in close behind her peering into the darkness of the stone structure. They gasped in horror as their eyes adjusted eventually to the dim light. From the only light available that shone down from above into the cavity of the hollow column, they could discern the images from the glitch. The footage from the hologram that was so familiar to them now, was being acted out before their very eyes. Masses of purebloods, hundreds of them, marching around a gigantic wheel, slowly turning it together. A spiral extended from the ground to the height of the spire at the top of the stone column; it's metal frame crackling intermittently with lethal looking sparks. Spanning almost the entire height of the stone structure, a black pillar gravitated in the middle, the centrepiece of the coil. The picture that they had been given just pieces of through the glitch, the mystery they had come so far to unravel, was finally complete.

"This is Utopia," Chantel gasped, digesting the sight before her of the people that were working like robots. "This is what the footage in the glitch is all about."

Circling around the column the purebloods mindlessly walked as one, pushing the wheel that turned the black pillar. Men, women and children were represented in the dungeon, all of them bearing a resemblance to Wolram by the very nature of their blackness. Every pureblood had been implanted with a chip that was clearly visible as it peeked out from the frizzy black hair encircling the head of each pureblood like a raggedy halo. The band of investigators crept slowly into the cavern, as if not to disturb the purebloods. It did not matter. The purebloods were on autopilot.

"But what could they be doing?" Julie asked, echoing the question on everyone's lips.

The group was silent for a moment as they pondered what the purebloods could be toiling at, why they were wound in such a massive mortal coil.

"Electricity," Beren noted. "They are making electricity."

The group turned to face him, incredulously.

"This is how they make electricity," Auntie Bessie said amazed.

Beren's response was steadfastly matter of fact.

"Well not usually. I mean I've never seen it done like this before. A long time ago they would make it by generating heat. Steam from the heat would power massive turbines to make the magnet turn inside the coil. Of course there's nothing left to burn anymore, so I guess they had to find a substitute. Nuclear power won't last forever and from what I understand, Pangaea owns most of the reserves of uranium and other nuclear substances. We've already depleted all the resources for the materials used to make wind or solar energy so we can't build more generators than those that we already have. Utopia, I'm guessing this is their work, must have invented this massive device that runs on people power alone – an infinite resource. People making power for the people. The whole concept is deliciously circular. Oh, that reminds me. I better remember to get this on my hologram recorder."

Beren dug around in his bag until he found his recorder. Chantel also remembered that she could activate her hologram recorder through her Perspex lens that would save the footage directly onto her hard drive chip. She kicked herself that she had forgotten to use this function previously on the journey. Nonetheless she activated the hologram recording on her implant so she could at least collect footage of the purebloods.

"But why would they use purebloods?" Chantel asked, trying to zoom in on the expressionless faces of the people.

"They aren't just purebloods," a voice said next to them. "They are slaves."

Chantel almost screamed out loud. The rest of the group were equally as startled, petrified that someone had crept up behind them and entered the column while they were engrossed in watching the purebloods in automatic action.

"What the? Who are you?" Julie commanded.

At the door to the column stood a group of uniformed guards, each bearing a laser shooter and pointing it at them, signalling for each of them to put their hands up and follow them out of the column.

"Relax we won't hurt you," the guards reassured. "On the contrary, we're happy to have the company. You can't imagine how boring it gets out here with just a crusty old man and a few hundred drones for company."

The group of guards laughed between themselves as if they had just shared the most hilarious joke.

"We do have to protect the generators though so we'll need to take that back from you," one of the guards said while reaching to snatch the hologram recorder from Beren.

Chantel thought she saw Beren reach instinctively for something in his wheelchair before thinking the better of it and surrendering his recorder to the guards with a look of contempt.

"Thank you for that," said the guard, far too jovially. "Now, if you folks will follow me, the Creator is excited about meeting you."

Wolram winced upon hearing of the Creator.

"So he's still alive?" Wolram snarled in disgust.

"Oh sure, he's still kicking along as he has been for hundreds of years now," said the head guard nonchalantly. "I'm sure he's worked out the secret of everlasting life by now but he won't let on to anyone else what it is."

"Now who are you and why is a pureblood like you with these people?" asked a different guard; the guards not being purebloods.

"C'mon you lot, quit chatting," ordered another guard. "We need to get this lot back to the Creator pronto. You remember what our orders are."

The guards led them out of the structure and back along the road. As they exited, Chantel could see the tiny flickering cameras at the door that would have betrayed their presence and she cursed herself for not eradicating the devices when they entered the building. As the guards guided them further up the road, they prodded them about life was like in Cape Town. Each of the guards, it would seem were originally from Cape Town metropolis and evidently missed the place dearly. They each lamented about being stuck out there in the wasteland on the odious assignment of guarding the wasteland generators. Despite the presence of the laser shooters firmly pointed in the direction of the intruders, the attitude of the guards was receptive, almost friendly. Each of them was intrigued about where the group had come from and how they had found the place in the wasteland. Only Wolram refused to engage in conversation. His passive aggressive stance caused a tension over the group that suppressed any whispers which could perceivably circulate about who this mysterious person, the Creator, might be.

After a brief walk, they arrived at another lot of buildings sprawled out amongst the rubbish. These had to be the living quarters for the purebloods, thought Chantel. The various low lying buildings surrounded by grass and other parkland looked almost hospitable, a relaxed setting like a university campus.

"Ready to see the Creator?" one of the guards asked the group. "It doesn't matter; all you need to know is that he's ready to meet you and he will see who he wants to see."

With a curt nod of the laser shooter the guard directed the group towards a large innocuous looking building in the centre of the compound. Its reflective windows gave no hint to what lay in the interior, only that within it housed the man responsible for Wolram's rage.
Chapter Twenty-One

The Creator

The inside of the building housed the sterile interior expected to be found in a hospital or a medical laboratory. The walls and floors, coated with sleek white linings, were pristine and unwelcoming. Chantel tried not to choke as the odour of bleach tainted the air. The guards, still uncharacteristically jovial, led the group down the white corridor and stopped at a door just before the end. There, one of them placed their fingers in the slots required to activate the opening of the door. The door slid open to reveal a decadent chamber, fitted out with luxurious couches cloaked in satin sheets. The litter and crumbs of food snacks were strewn throughout the room, completely in contrast to the luxurious furniture. Chantel guessed that this was the room where the guards spent way too much time per day. The walls of the chamber were covered in projection screens displaying the dungeon interiors of each of the stone structures.

'It would have been every voyeur's fantasy,' thought Chantel, 'except for the monotonous motion on show.'

The guards gestured to a door at the other end of the chamber.

"The Creator will see you in there," one of the guards mumbled.

"All of us?" Wolram inquired. "Or just me."

The guards had already made themselves comfortable again on the couches and grunted an indecipherable response. Taking that to mean that they should all go, the group hesitantly followed Wolram through the door at the other side of the chamber. Proceeding through the door, the group found themselves again in a large sterile white laboratory. Clearly the voyeur's chamber was just an anomaly in this building. The laboratory was lined with shelves that contained all sorts of electronic equipment, a slightly less cluttered version of the CCC. However in addition to the microchips and electrical debris scattered throughout the laboratory, there also lay a vast range of paraphernalia dedicated to the human brain. Plastic sculptures of the insides of the human skull were set up along the tables, charts and other 3D projections showed close up imagery of the different brain segments, but by far the most offensive items on display were the various glass jars containing suspended extracts of the human brain in yellow coloured liquid, the pieces of the organ preserved in suspended motion like fruit set in jelly. Chantel almost gagged at the sight of them. At the far corner of the room, in a wheelchair much like Beren's, sat the oldest, frailest looking man Chantel had ever seen in her whole life.

"Adam, you've returned," he said in a barely audible hoarse whisper.

The group looked enquiringly at Wolram.

"Adam is my first name," he explained.

"And who is this," Beren asked, knowing full well the answer already.

"This is the person that made me," Wolram said, barely able to disguise his abhorrence.

"Now, now, Adam," said the Creator condescendingly, hardly even acknowledging the rest of the group. "I would expect a bit more respect from you. After all you have me to thank for being alive. And look at what a fine specimen you turned out to be. You were always my finest, my first, the prototype upon which I would base all the others."

The Creator rolled himself closer to the group to get a better look at Wolram. Chantel recoiled as she caught the whiff of a mixture of medicinal smells wafting off his wrinkled flesh, the odours of purification and preservation which had been fermenting in the folds of his skin for who knew how many years.

"You know too well that I owe you nothing. I never asked to be alive. You cannot expect to be thanked for that. You only created me so you could enslave me. What are you doing with all the other purebloods?" Wolram fumed, barely about to contain his anger at seeing the Creator again.

"Adam, you must remember that was the plan for you and the others like you all along. The slaves you saw are playing a very important part in fuelling the world with electricity. We live in a world of depleted resources. It was always my job at Utopia to find a way to create energy sustainably. If you had stayed with us, you could have been a part of this."

"I would rather have died than become a part of what you're doing out there," Wolram retorted, as the Creator ignored him and carried on with his monologue.

"What more sustainable mechanism is there than the use of human energy to make electricity? That wonderful contraption you saw out there, that generator was invented by me when I first came to this wasteland zone. It was my first assignment for Utopia – to find a way to make electricity. I was ecstatic with my success when I first built the machine. The sheer charge of the generator was enough to power up to 100,000 lights for an entire year. I was proud of having achieved what Utopia needed."

The Creator took a moment to rejoice in having had achieved such worthy accolades from Utopia before he took a deep sigh, shaking his head to illustrate his disappointment.

"What I hadn't accounted for though, was the fickleness of human nature. It was not long before the employees I took on to run the generator became slack and lazy, much like that useless bunch of guards sitting out there."

The Creator rolled his eyes, waving a feeble hand towards the exterior chamber.

"I needed diligent people who could be relied upon to perform the integral role of making power for the people. Robots would never do; they need power themselves after all. I needed people that would do it no matter what, whether they were tired or bored, or sick or hungry. I needed slaves, people I could depend on."

The Creator paused, as if to emphasise his disgust for the tardiness of human nature.

"At first I thought slavery was in the blood. I remember reading records from long before the Great Mainframe Disaster of 2160 about purebloods being kept as slaves."

Chantel almost choked. Could it be that this man was alive before the great mainframe disaster? The guards were not exaggerating when they said he was over a hundred years old.

"That's when I started the tedious process of creating you, Adam. I searched through our genetic databases for any last remaining purebloods that could be used as slaves. I couldn't find any. It would seem that there were no more purebloods in existence. Then I started the painstaking job of analysing our DNA heritage, identifying all the strands of DNA that could be traced back to the ancient purebloods. Once I linked them all together my jigsaw puzzle was complete. I had the DNA configuration I needed to make the first pureblood."

Wolram's was almost crying with rage at this point, tears streaming down his face with the revelation that his entire existence had been the result of a vile act of a mad genius, obsessed with power and Utopia's adulation.

"But it didn't work did it," Wolram choked. "You couldn't enslave me."

The edges of the Creator's mouth turned up slightly, into what would be a wry smile if he could convey any more emotion than a corpse.

"No I knew you would never obey me, which is when I realised that slavery was not in the blood – it was in the brain."

Wolram touched the chip in his head again in revulsion. The scars from his previous episode were still evident in the skin around the chip, making the surrounding scalp look red and raw.

"Yes, that was the start of the next experiment. You got away before we were successful in implementing the next stage. Unfortunate yes, but by then we had plenty more like you so all was not lost. We experimented with tapping into brain waves and seeing what we could do to control motor functions. Again this was a dead end. Slaves are not slaves because we can control their body. Slaves are slaves because we control their mind."

The Creator moved himself closer to one of the shelves to fondle one of the specimens of the brain, submerged in translucent goo. Chantel could feel her insides getting queasier by the second.

"The brain is an amazing organ isn't it? The mind is able to sense a hundred trillion different types of pleasure. Remarkable is it not? That we have so many sensors just in this one organ alone that are capable of making us happy. Eventually we, well I, worked out that all I needed to do was isolate the neuro function that gave people pleasure. Once I located that, it was pretty simple to configure the chips to suppress that nerve. Without pleasure, people exist in a state of slavery. They have no desire, no impulse, no will. They are completely and utterly mine. I basically programmed the purebloods to want nothing more to life than to eat, sleep and walk around in circles all day. Its sheer genius, is it not?"

Chantel couldn't contain herself any longer.

"You're a monster," she cried. "How could you do that to people? Have you no human decency? How do you think you can treat people that way? You're a vile, disgusting old man that doesn't deserve to be on this earth."

The Creator acknowledged the presence of the others in the group for the first time.

"Is that what you think young lady? Is that what all of you, you strangers think of me? That I'm a monster for giving purebloods a chance of life? Is that what you think when you're sitting there enjoying your holograms and riding in your tubes and charging up your electric motors? You don't wonder where all the energy comes from? Typical. You people living in the civilised worlds. You're happy to take the electricity, to use up our resources so that there's hardly any left in this world. You don't care about what it takes to make more. This is the price the world has to pay to keep turning. This is the last resort for power. What would you rather sacrifice? Another being's liberty? Or your electric chair? Don't think you can preach to me about respect for life and all that crap. Who do you think put us in this situation but you dwellers in the metropolis zones."

Chantel felt horrified. She had never thought of it that way. She hadn't realised that the consumption of electricity had been so dire, that the world was running out of alternatives, and that she, as a person from the city undoubtedly using more than her fair share, was partly to blame. Wolram wasn't going to let the Creator get away with blame that easily though.

"Don't you dare try to point the finger at anyone else except for yourself," he seethed. "This is nothing more than an excuse for you to play god. You didn't need to bring back any purebloods to run your machine. You wanted to so you could be in control of what was lost. You wanted to be the owner of a lost race. That's all this is. Don't pretend that it has anything to do with electricity or that it's the fault of the metropolis zone dwellers. This is about you and your mad obsession to create people for your own sake."

The Creator tried to conjure up another smirk.

"That's the thing about you Adam. You were always too smart for your own good. That's the reason why things were so difficult with you. But yes, I made those purebloods working on the generators. By virtue of that fact, and by virtue of the fact that I made you, they and you belong to me."

"Human beings belong to themselves!" Wolram thundered in a triumphant cry. "You have never owned me, no matter how hard you tried. You may have spliced together my DNA, you may have sown the seeds of my creation, but that's not the same as giving me life. You, you're just a manipulator. You don't have that sort of power. The only people who can make a human being are the mother and the father of that human being."

"Are you saying that you are the only person with the power then, Adam? Seeing as you are the father?"

"What do you mean..."

Wolram staggered back aghast, realising the truth now about the purebloods.

"Well you must realise Adam that the purebloods, all of them, are your children in some way or other. You were the first Adam. They are all your descendants."

Wolram reeled in horror with the realisation that his bloodline ran through all the enslaved, mindless drones working the generators.

"No," he shuddered. "No, no, no, no!"

Before anyone could stop him he was shouting at the top of his lungs in an involuntary burst of anger. Hands reached forward for the Creator's throat, arms pulled the Creator out of his chair, legs kicked and beat the Creator. It would be useless for anyone to stop him. That most primeval of human instincts, anger, had gripped Wolram by the senses and swung him into action. Amidst the screams and the shouts, the hammering and the beating, that basic irrepressible desire of humankind was making itself evident – the desire for revenge. The group watched in horror as before their very eyes a human life was lost; whether he deserved it or not, whether he should have seen it coming or not, the Creator was beaten to a bloody pulp. Wolram came to his senses all of a sudden with the limp body of the Creator slung on his arm.

"Adam, I've been waiting for you to return. I gave you life and you gave me death," groaned the Creator, still defiant to the end. "You see, the circle is perfect."

With those last words, the Creator took his final smug breath. Wolram tossed the lifeless and soulless body of the Creator away in disgust. By trying to become something more than human, by trying to play god, the Creator had relegated himself to something subhuman; he had deprived himself of that very force that defines human beings – the empathy for each other's existence. Wolram discarded the Creator's body for what it was, just the shell of a man.

Chantel slumped down on the floor exhausted. In the last few moments she had seen a man die, a victim of the most tremendous rage she had ever witnessed in her whole life. It was definitely the most action packed time she had ever experienced. After all the excitement she noticed a blinking red light in the corner of her eye and realised that she had left her internal hologram recorder recording the entire time. Thinking that there could not possibly be anything else that would happen to her today that would be worth recording, she reached towards the red light and deactivated the recording.

Just at that moment, finally realising the commotion in the room the guards opened the door to the laboratory and found themselves amongst a scene of carnage. It took them some time to react before they gathered their senses and tried to locate their laser shooters. In the space of that moment Beren had geared into action and pointing his wheelchair in the direction of the guards he delivered a series of powerful laser beams that incapacitated and disarmed the guards. Chantel looked at Beren amazed.

"You had your laser shooters in your wheelchair the whole time?"

"I told you I packed them somewhere you wouldn't be able to find them," Beren winked.
Chapter Twenty-Two

Freeing the purebloods

Chantel looked at the deflated figure of Wolram slouched in the corner. He looked entirely spent. He thought he had been a lone figure amongst a world of strangers. He thought he was the only one of his kind on this earth. Now he realised that he was the forerunner of a mighty brood of people all bearing his lineage. The tragedy of it all was too much for him to handle. Auntie Bessie was doing her best to console him, but even her kind words and nurturing presence could do nothing to quell his sobs. Luckily Beren was there to get a grip on things.

"Where is the control room?" he shouted at one of the guards he had frozen. "Give me access to the code used to control the purebloods!"

The petrified guard nodded vigorously in submission. Julie had collected the loose laser shooters and had them squarely aimed at each of the surrendered guards. Regardless, one of them was unrepentant, even in defeat.

"You can't free them if that's what you're thinking about doing. They aren't people; they are property. Once you start blurring the lines between people and property then everyone suffers. Think about it. Give a slave the same status as a human being and you'll just be creating a monster."

Chantel again felt a temper build up in her. She was entirely unfamiliar with the rollercoaster of emotions that had sent her wrath reeling towards the Creator earlier. She wasn't used to feeling that sort of passion on such an extreme level. It was only on this occasion, when she was faced with a situation that she felt so vehemently opposed to, that the blood boiled thick in her veins and she let forth a torrent of fury. It was as if she finally cared about something enough in her life to be angry about it.

"You're wrong. Every person has the right to dignity, the dignity to be their own person. The only monster is the person who tries to take that away from someone. Like that evil man, the Creator, he deserves to rot in hell for what he did.

The guard let out a hysteric laugh.

"You're not wrong about the Creator being evil. We all know he is the devil incarnate but the man is, uh-um, was a genius. And geniuses like him are needed to keep the world running. I don't necessarily agree with what he did but someone had to find a solution right? Sometimes it's only those people without souls that can make the world a better place. You can't deny that your world is better with more power, think about all the things you don't have to do by hand, the old-fashioned way. The Creator came up with an answer to the energy crisis. No one with a soul would have been able to build something as effective. So yes, he was a monster but I also give him credit where credit is due."

Chantel almost exploded with rage.

"It's against the law! We have the _Human Integrity Act_ in place for a reason. It decrees that human liberty is paramount. There are a million things that someone can do to advance our way of living, in the name of improvement, but we have standards in place to stop people doing things that go against the most basic of human decencies. What is the point of doing something, to pretend that it's making the world a better place, when it's completely immoral?"

Before the guard could respond, he was cut off.

"Relax mate," one of the other guards imposed. "Let them free the slaves, let them figure out what they're gonna do with five hundred imbeciles that are no better than puppets. If they wanna treat the slaves like humans, they can go ahead. They can try and find a way to feed them, clothe them, give them jobs so they can earn money. It's not easy to survive out there. The world can be a cruel place and if they're free, the purebloods won't be protected anymore."

"You're wrong. We'll protect them. We'll protect them because they're family and that's what family does – it protects each other."

The guards looked stunned as Auntie Bessie stood up to them and spoke these words. The group member that the guards had dismissed as being merely a diminutive old lady suddenly showed her resolve. The guards weren't the only ones who were surprised. Wolram, looking upon Auntie Bessie with renewed admiration, raised a hand to her cheek.

"Are you sure my lady?" he asked.

"Positive. Your children belong with us."

Wolram gave Auntie Bessie a heartfelt kiss.

"But, how will we get all of them to the community?"

This time it was Julie that interjected.

"Condor. We can ask Condor to transport them there."

The group looked at her bewildered. 'After the indifference he had shown towards the plight of the hippo fairies, considering that he made his trade by smuggling migrants, did Julie honestly think that he would come to the rescue of hundreds of freed slaves?' Chantel wondered. 'Especially after the altercation that he had previously with Wolram over the Pedigree.' Julie could sense the others' scepticism.

"He'll help. I know Condor. He can recognise that this, all of what's been done here, is nothing but the most debased treatment known to humanity. Even he is not as heartless to turn his back on something like this, not if these people need his help. Even if they are Wolram's descendants, he will do what he can to rescue them. He'll know that it's the right thing to do."

The group tacitly acknowledged the trust that Julie was placing in Condor's altruism, while Beren used the opportunity to jibe Julie's suggestion.

"I was more worried that he wouldn't want to help you after you jilted him again," he teased. "You know what they say about a scorned lover."

Julie looked flushed for the most fleeting of moments before regaining her composure to bark an order to one of the guards.

"How do I make a communicator call out of here," she demanded.

The guard pointed towards a device on the wall of the lounge room and Julie set about making the calls she needed to establish a connection to Condor. Meanwhile, Beren continued his push to access the codes needed to reconfigure the chips, so that the minds of the slaves could be freed.

\-----------------------

A few days later and the first boatload of freed slaves was ready to set sail from Freetown. Condor had responded to the call as Julie said he would, overcoming his distrust of Wolram to heed his wife's plea for aid. She was correct in presuming that he would take a stance against slavery. Whatever the fine line was between being a smuggler and a slavedriver had been crossed. It was not only Condor that responded to the call but he put the signal out through the sonar channels to other pirate ships in the vicinity. Together they amassed a flotilla of ships all waiting at the edge of the wasteland to help in emancipating the slaves. Auntie Bessie would go with the first boatload on the Kazaa so she could guide them into the community. The community dwellers would be shocked to see so many purebloods in existence. It would take some explaining to get them used to the idea that they would be outnumbered by a brood of strangers, all of whom would be entirely dependent on them. Once in the community, the dwellers would need to teach the purebloods how to do the everyday chores they would become used to. The purebloods would need to learn how to live like human beings. No one was expecting it to go smoothly. There might be mutinies, there might be rebellions; eventually the community would need to evolve.

The predicament of freeing the purebloods from the mind control placed upon them by the implants was, comparatively, a much simpler process. Eventually the guards relented and showed Beren where the infiltrations took place. Like the extractions, the infiltrations were performed simply by bringing a stylus into contact with the implant. The infiltration software was installed on the firmware in an instant, allowing the Creator's central command centre to act like a remote control for each being. The Creator had been clever enough to design the software so that it did not need to control every movement of the pureblood. As he had gloated before, controlling motor neuron functions was not integral to enslaving people. The Creator instead programmed the software so that it worked by limiting the slaves' purpose to life. In this way, the slaves still had autonomy over their basic living requirements like eating, sleeping and other bodily functions, all the while having no desire to do anything other than their programmed function.

While the main program installed on the chips of the slaves was to power the generator, other programs were available. There was the program for cooking, the program for cleaning and the program for procreating. Chantel shuddered with the thought of how this program was used. It was horrendous to think that the Creator had taken the pleasure out of the most primeval of pleasurable acts and made it nothing more than a necessary function that the slaves engaged in without sentiment or sensation. Chantel wondered what sort of life the Creator must have had to be capable of depriving the slaves of such a fundamental human instinct. She almost felt a stab of pity as she realised that only someone who was desperately alone would be able to inflict such heartlessness upon others.

'He must have never known the pleasure of another human being,' she thought, 'in order to be so callous as to take it away.'

The guards on the other hand, giggled like adolescents when they showed Beren how to access that program. Chantel could imagine them sniggering without mercy in the decadent chamber flouting the projection screens when the time came to install that program. Once Beren had access to all the data he needed, it was child's play for him to devise a method of deleting the slavery programs from each of the individual chips. There didn't appear to be a way of processing the purebloods by bulk so Chantel and Beren laboriously recalled each of the five hundred slaves to the infiltration room and extracted the programs one by one. Some initial fine-tuning to the process was required. For instance, Beren and Chantel were completely unprepared for the fact that the purebloods would be able to talk and always could talk; it was simply that they previously felt no desire to do so.

"What have you done to me?" cried the first emancipist, a stocky male in his thirties or forties.

"We're letting you go," Beren tried to explain.

"Go where?"

"Wherever you want to go.

"Why would I want to go somewhere?"

The response from each freed slave was invariably the same. They would scratch their head, feeling the chip and wonder what it was, ask who Beren and Chantel were, ask what place they were in and greet each answer to their questions with a blank stare. It was like each pureblood had just awoken from a coma with amnesia. Eventually the process had to be slowed until the emancipated slaves could be dealt with. Chantel began to feel herself grow frustrated with the painstaking process.

"I wish there was some way to do them all at once," she complained. "It's so strange that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for wireless downloads onto the chip here."

Beren agreed.

"Could it be that Utopia was worried setting up the wireless network here would give the Creator too much power," he wondered aloud. "Even it must have realised that there would be no limits to the Creator's quest for control."

"Utopia," Chantel spat. "It is just as guilty as the Creator. It condoned this, this travesty the whole time."

Suddenly Chantel sat bolt upright.

"Beren," she gulped, grabbing the sleeve of his shirt. "There were other coordinates on the glitch, remember? This isn't the only slave place. There were at least half a dozen other coordinates that flashed throughout the footage...which means--"

Chantel's heart sank.

"How many more slaves are out there..."

Both Chantel and Beren silently contemplated the possibility that several other communes were spread out throughout the continent, each using purebloods to fuel gigantic generators.

"We have to tell Pangaea," asserted Chantel. "Beren, it's the only option. They can send the global police. They can free the purebloods. Utopia are breaching the _Human Integrity Act_ and Pangaea needs to bring them to justice."

Chantel paused, expecting Beren to mock her reference to the _Human Integrity Act_ as he normally did. However, on this occasion his reaction surprised Chantel.

"I wholeheartedly agree. This is something the Chairperson needs to know about. It's a fundamental breach of the very thing that the _Human Integrity Act_ was designed to prohibit. Utopia needs to be shown that they can't get away with this."

Chantel smiled with relief. She wasn't used to encountering anything but Beren's scepticism so it was refreshing that in this instance she did not need to convince him.

"Who else do I need to convince about this then?"

"Julie. We need a Captain to take us where we're going next."

Just when Chantel thought the journey was coming to a close the longest segment to the central quadrant was still to come. Next destination – Shanghai, Location 0.
Chapter Twenty-Three

The capital

Chantel and Beren watched the final pirate ship depart from the port, bearing the last of the freed slaves. The purebloods lined the deck of the ship like terrified children being torn from their homeland. Chantel did not envy their position. From here they would be thrust upon the world, forced to deal with the complexities of life while possessing minds not much farther developed than an infant's. She wondered how Wolram had managed to advance in the way that he had, to become the leader of a fledging community and guide it to success knowing nothing of the world other than the perverted reality shown to him by the Creator. She wondered how the community would cope with the influx of people and hoped with all her heart that the transition would be gentle.

The pirates of the other ships had undertaken to do what they could to bring the community additional things that it might need and even take on some of the purebloods as crew if they wanted to experience life at sea. Wolram, wise and virtuous as always, had said that it would be some time before the purebloods would be able to determine what they wanted and initially anyway, it would be best for them to remain together. Chantel wondered if Wolram would be able to retain his hold on the leadership with the arrival of the purebloods. Once they joined the community he would no longer be unique in his blackness; there would be no point of differentiation which would set him apart as the natural leader. Regardless, Chantel was sure that with Auntie Bessie supporting him and providing the guidance he needed they would both be able to cope with the new challenges they faced. She wished them all the best with the next stage of their lives – the joy of parenthood and all that it entailed.

Julie's farewell to Condor was much more sentimental. There was no denying that part of the reason for Condor's response to Julie's call was the possibility that they could rekindle some part of their relationship. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that there was an important role to be played by reporting Utopia's activities to the global regime and understood that Julie would do what she felt it was right to do. Once again, he was relegated to the sidelines while Julie's conscience took precedence. Condor was willing to accept such subjugation on this occurrence, in recognition of the importance of bringing Utopia to justice. However, Julie realised that there was a limit as to how forgiving he would be in the future. As Julie explained to Chantel after she had bid Condor farewell, the bond between them had been pulled and stretched like an invisible elastic band for so many years, drawing them eventually back together after being teased apart. It might only be a matter of time before the elastic band broke.

They returned once more on board the Saharan, a place that felt almost as familiar to Chantel as a second home. She was beginning to understand Julie's view of the Saharan as a courageous little vessel, capable of handling the most perilous conditions at sea. The Saharan, with the deceptive appearance of being nothing more than a junk of a boat from the exterior, would continue their month-long journey to the capital of Shanghai. It would be an arduous journey, even more so considering Chantel's impatience to reach the capital, but this did not diminish the importance of the venture. The ramifications of the news that she would convey to the global regime were not lost on Chantel. She knew that it would mark the demise of Utopia and its ousting as one of the global five. She couldn't recall when the last prosecution had transpired under the _Human Integrity Act_ , but she was confident that if the directors and board of Utopia knew about these transgressions and authorised them in the way that the Creator suggested, they would be subject to criminal charges. If Utopia were to lose its credibility as one of the global five, Chantel was all too aware that the impact this would have upon the global structure would be irrevocable.

As the boat sailed away from the port and departed the melancholic shores of the wasteland, Chantel watched the guards glumly sitting on the shore awaiting rescue by Utopia, whenever that would be. Beren had suggested that they program the guards to operate the generators effectively subjecting them to the same treatment as the slaves, which they had delighted so much in ridiculing the entire time. This, the majority of the group agreed, would be too inhumane. In the end, it was agreed that they would destroy the central command centre and all external communications. By doing so they were assuming that Utopia's headquarters would imminently realise that there was a problem at their base and immediately dispatch assistance. As the Saharan sailed away, its passengers were leaving on the presumption that Utopia would be a good corporate citizen and rescue its guards from Freetown, despite its previous track record in cloning and enslaving a forgotten race. A part of Chantel wondered if such a presumption gave Utopia far more credit than it deserved.

\-----------------------

The tiny vessel, not more than a speck of dust on the sea, finally reached the outskirts of the metropolis. As they pulled into the port, Chantel looked upon the glimmering skyscrapers of Shanghai city with an odd feeling of discontent. She no longer felt the sense of comfort she had derived upon viewing the LED-lit shores of Cape Town, the last metropolis they had stopped at. The lights of Shanghai no longer induced the sense of warmth that the tower-filled skyline of a metropolis used to. Instead she found herself yearning for the jungle of the wasteland rather than the jungle of glass and steel that stood before her. She found the sprawling multiplicity of Shanghai's buildings strangely artificial, in a manner that she had never recognised before. The structures seemed more like obstructions standing vigil over a closely guarded treasure. The impenetrable windows of the office blocks were like barriers, harbouring inside them the faceless people that pulled the strings to keep the world turning, a testament to the dominance of the global government. Nevertheless, Chantel suppressed whatever sinister instinct she felt in order to keep her mind focussed on the task.

A month at sea had turned the passengers on board the Saharan into a bunch of unkempt vagabonds. Chantel's usually tidy, swept-back hair was now frizzy with the saturation of sea water. Her appearance, however, was orderly in comparison to Beren's outgrown, unshaven mane. Their frazzled hair was matched by a deep tan, nurtured during the hours spent on board the deck of the Saharan with nothing to do but lie in the sun and watch the sky drift overhead.

"What will you do," asked Beren. "Just walk into the Chairperson's office?"

"I guess so," Chantel replied. "There's no point in calling him first. I would never get put through."

"Are you sure you're not going to come with me?"

Beren hesitated before responding. On the one hand he was still paranoid about Pangaea, given his previous dealings with them and would rather avoid being in a position where he could end up unwittingly in their lair, on the other hand, he was reluctant to let Chantel go by herself. He stuck with his original gut instinct.

"No, I think it's best that you speak to the Chairperson. They might not trust me after all I've been through with Pangaea. Besides, I wouldn't be able to get to the Parliament as easily as you. I would just slow you down."

Chantel relented, knowing that he was right. Without any available maps of the city and being unclear where the location of Parliament was it would be pointless trying to get there by navigating the streets. The easiest way for Chantel would be to ride the tube that would transport her directly where she needed to go. Beren was of course prevented from accessing the tube. She turned to Julie, although she already knew what her answer would be.

"Not a chance," Julie confirmed. "I wouldn't be able to migrate into the metropolis zone, not with my history."

Chantel felt a sense of nervous apprehension. She would be on her own from now on, a sensation that she was now more comfortable with after the latest series of adventures but which still terrified her.

\-----------------------

Chantel stepped out of the tube pod near Parliament into the mid-afternoon sun. The office tower of the global Parliament reached far into the sky of Shanghai metropolis. Chantel quivered at the thought that this was where the most important decisions in the world were made and the most important people in the world were located. The pod platform she was standing on was the closest station to the outside of the building. No doubt all the stations inside Parliament would be secure. It felt like a lifetime since she had been inside a pod, something that used to be part of her daily routine back in Sydney. The experience was disconcerting now, as if travelling with no concept of space and distance was disturbing after having spent so much time traversing the seas at the Saharan's laggard pace. She emerged disorientated from the tube station, hardly believing that it had taken her less than an hour to reach Parliament from the harbour.

Chantel had no idea how she was going to approach her meeting with the Chairperson. She couldn't imagine that she would get much sympathy from the officials in Parliament if she just walked in and said she needed to speak to the Chairperson. However, without the option to do anything else, it was the only choice she had. She proceeded through the entrance of the building which was like a glass box annexed to the main foyer. As soon as she passed through the box, robots darted out to scan her and prod her in places where she might be hiding metallic objects. Once they were satisfied that she was not bearing any weapons, they disappeared again into the walls of the entrance and let her pass. She entered the building into a large cavernous foyer. The official emblems of each of the global five companies were adorned on the surrounding walls of the foyer, sternly demanding the reverence of all visitors to the governmental building. Chantel recognised the familiar mascot of the Pangaea dinosaur as the centre emblem, also a sight which it seemed she had not seen in a lifetime. The surfaces of the wall and floor was the colour of dull steel, faintly bearing the reflection the building's interior as a series of moving smudges, and with the place swarming with official looking people and school groups, the entire room appeared filled with commotion.

Chantel tried to remember what day it was. After all her days at sea she had completely lost track of time and overlooked the concept that it might have been a good idea to check that Parliament was actually sitting before she arrived in the capital. Luckily, it looked like it was a sitting day and Chantel was relieved that this would hopefully mean there was more of a chance to see the Chairperson. She wondered how she would get from the foyer past the security screens into the chambers of Parliament. Her first attempt was to ask the person at the reception desk if she could see the Chairperson, which was met with a sarcastic sneer.

"Sure, I'll just interrupt the global parliament and let them know that someone has just walked in off the street with a very important message for the Chairperson. Whatever it is, it's obviously much more important than world affairs or the passing of legislation or running the economy of planet earth. Clearly, something to do with the _Human Integrity Act_ trumps all of these matters."

Chantel backed away from the desk ashamed.

"Please," she faltered. "This is an extremely urgent matter, it's of the utmost importance that I see the Chairperson. I work for Pangaea as a tech eng in Sydney and I've just been on the longest journey to the other side of the world where I've seen the most horrendous atrocities being committed."

Chantel knew that it was no use trying to convince the frontline staff to let her through. She had forgotten about her unruly presence and the impression this would give to receptionists who were used to seeing people presented at their best. She retreated back into the midst of the foyer to think of alternatives, hoping that she would be obscured by the masses of people congregating around on what looked to be official business. She observed the press gallery members and ministerial advisors dressed in corporate suits passing through the security doors to the internal chambers and realised that there would be no way she could disguise herself as a member of a formal party. She considered the schools groups of rambunctious teenagers being herded in flocks by their teachers and contemplated disguising herself as a member of the class. Chantel realised she would need to obtain a school outfit for such a plan and she started keeping a close watch on any breakaway children from the group from whom it might be possible to steal their clothes. Just as Chantel thought she had picked someone she could tackle she stopped and thought her plan over for a moment.

'This is insane,' she told herself. 'I can't just go around mugging people so I can pretend to be them. This is like something out of a bad comedy movie. There has to be another way in.'

Chantel found herself wishing that Beren was there and wondering what he would do in such a situation. It had been her idea for them to go to Shanghai; she was the one that wanted to tell the Chairperson about the pureblood slaves. Now, when she was so close to the global regime, when she had reached the epicentre of Parliament itself, she was stuck on the outside in this mad, crazy, teaming foyer without any way of getting to the other side. Chantel slumped on one of the benches, frustrated and annoyed with her situation.

She looked above her at a projection of a person standing regally in front of the house of Parliament. The stadium of the seats in the background of the projection were empty but Chantel recognised the chamber from the news broadcasts she had watched of politics from time to time. The person in the foreground, Chantel realised, must be the Chairperson. Funnily enough, this was a person that Chantel did not recognise. She tried to remember any news stories that she had seen recently featuring the Chairperson, but none sprung to mind. Chantel imagined that she would remember if she had seen an image of the Chairperson. The Chairperson's appearance was entirely distinct, purely by virtue of its lack of distinction. The Chairperson seemed to lack any defining features that set the face apart from others. Baring an entirely androgynous form, the Chairperson was neither male nor female, happy nor sad, handsome nor ugly. The Chairperson was simply the most standard person Chantel had ever seen. Chantel found herself staring at the portrait, trying to think of words to describe the character being depicted, without success.

All of a sudden she had an idea, and she knew that it would be exactly what Beren would do in this situation. Getting up suddenly and walking purposely to the Chairperson's image, Chantel stood so close to the portrait that she could hear the whole foyer fall silent with curiosity as to what this lout of a person was doing. When Chantel was confident that she had attracted the attention of absolutely every person in the room, she tilted her head back and launched the biggest loogie she could lodge at the Chairperson. Wiping the spittle from her lips she could her screams and shouts escalating around her and before she knew it, she was pinned to the ground. As chaos erupted in the foyer, a faceless security guard whisked Chantel away through one of the security doors into the internal areas of the building. Chantel smiled as she metaphorically patted herself on the back for passing the first hurdle.
Chapter Twenty-Four

The Chairperson

Chantel had been held in isolation for what seemed like hours. She knew that a faceless hoard of people were watching her every movement and remote sensors were tracking her brainwaves and blood pressure as she repeated her reasons again and again for spitting on the Chairperson's image.

"No, I do not mean the Chairperson any disrespect," she repeated calmly. "On the contrary, I came here to deliver a message for the Chairperson that is too important to be passed on second-hand. I need to speak to the Chairperson directly. Very serious breaches of the _Human Integrity Act_ have occurred that the Chairperson needs to be informed about. I won't go into the details at this stage but from what I have witnessed, I think an investigation needs to be launched immediately."

Chantel repeated her diatribe to each person that interviewed her with tact and honesty. She had felt terrible for defiling the Chairperson of Pangaea and apologised profusely for going to such lengths to attract attention. However, she knew that it was the only avenue available to her to get the opportunity to speak to the Chairperson. Finally there was a breakthrough. A person who identified themself as a representative from the Chairperson's office visited Chantel in her room and upon hearing of what she had to say, immediately demanded Chantel's release. Chantel breathed a sigh of relief and followed this person through the back corridors of the Parliament building into what she imagined must be the Chairperson's office.

The office was situated in what appeared to be the prime location at the very top of Parliament tower. Heavily tinted windows deflecting the heat and glare of the powerful sun kept the room at a pleasant temperature, despite the searing warmth radiating above at this altitude. The décor of the setting was tasteful and not too regal, belying a preference for aesthetics that aligned with the importance of the office without betraying an excess of grandeur. Various official looking projections of the Chairperson posing with other similarly unrecognisable dignitaries adorned the shelves and tables along with elaborate plaques and memorabilia, no doubt gifts from other members of the global five. As the last of the sun's rays disappeared behind the vertical shutters of never-ending skyscrapers that lined the outskirts of Shanghai metropolis' horizon, Chantel slumped exhausted into one of the elaborate, firmly-cushioned chairs located opposite to the seat of the Chairperson.

It was hard for her to believe that she was seated in the office of the Chairperson of the World, a place that seemed so remote to her from the satellite metropolis of Sydney. She thought about all the life changing decisions that had been made in that chair, the cordoning off of the various zones, the advent of new technologies such as the chip implant and the hologram viewer, the alliances that were struck between various members of the global five to retain their control of the world. Before this moment, Chantel had been acutely aware of the damage that she was about to wreak upon Utopia's reputation. She looked around her at the various artefacts displaying the emblems of the global five. Utopia's symbol, an emblazoned cloud with sun streaking through its silver lined edges, seemed prominently displayed among the collection of items on display. Chantel felt a pang of doubt about what she was about to do. What if the Chairperson did not believe her? What if Pangaea was dependent upon Utopia for its support in the global Parliament and to reveal this secret would upset the delicate balance at stake between the main corporations of the world? Just when she had finally reached the capital and was about to speak to the Chairperson about the issue, Chantel felt a surge of panic about whether the global regime would actually pay credence to her word, particularly when to do so would change the entire dynamic of the government.

She looked around for the stern-faced ministerial representative that had escorted her to the Chairperson's office. Perhaps she could get an idea from that person about whether the Chairperson was likely to believe her story. Just when the niggling feelings of uncertainty were starting to pervade Chantel's belief in her mission, the door of the office opened and Chantel found herself face to face with the Chairperson. Like the image in the projections, the Chairperson was as generic a person as could be. Chantel found herself induced into a greeting that was perfectly balanced between warmth and hostility, an introduction that seemed to suggest the other person was neither friend nor foe. She observed the Chairperson's flawless porcelain skin and cropped brown hair, tightly adhering to a slim but muscular frame which fit comfortably into an immaculately manicured pinstriped suit.

'This person is such a perfect human being they could be an android,' thought Chantel, before dispelling such thoughts about the Chairperson from her mind.

Out of nowhere, Chantel suddenly felt that she would have to be careful about what thoughts entered her mind in this vicinity. Then on second thought, she dispelled such notions was fanciful.

'It must be Beren's paranoia rubbing off on me,' she dismissed.

The Chairperson certainly did not exude the affableness that Chantel had felt when she met Julie or Auntie Bessie; but nonetheless she felt she could trust the Chairperson.

"I have been told that you would like to tell me something important," remarked the Chairperson. "And that you thought the best way of doing that was to spit on me."

Chantel felt, at that moment, like she could break into a million pieces from shame.

"It wasn't out of lack of respect," she stammered. "I just—"

The Chairperson disregarded her utterances with the wave of a delicate hand.

"It was an ingenuous tactic and one that I'm impressed you came up with Chantel. I can see that you are truly Pangaea material."

Chantel sat back in her chair, relaxed at having received affirmation from her highest superior.

"So you want to tell me something about Utopia, do you?"

And with that leading question, the Chairperson directed Chantel to convey her story. Chantel nervously told the Chairperson about her journey across the oceans to Freetown and the facility of slaves. She described the callousness of the Creator and the complacency of the guards about the way in which the purebloods were used. She recounted the facts of the events without embellishment or elaboration as the Chairperson listened, emotionlessly engaged in every word. The eyes of the Chairperson were so intently focussed on Chantel as she spoke that she truncated the story to only those details which took place in Freetown, wanting to get the information out as soon as possible. When the Chairperson finally spoke, she found herself unable to answer any of the questions asked.

"What nerve did the Creator isolate to control the purebloods?"

"How long had the Creator been working in Freetown?"

"Where were the other locations of the generators?"

Just when Chantel was starting to feel distressed about her inability to answer any of the Chairperson's queries, she remembered the recording she had taken on her hard drive.

"I have footage," she beamed. "I almost forgot! I recorded hologram footage of our meeting with the Creator. It's on my hard drive implant."

The Creator's eyes lit up.

"Why, that's perfect. Would we be able to do an extraction to access that footage?"

Chantel nodded vigorously, relieved that she was able to appease the Chairperson in this regard by providing evidence of Utopia's wrongdoing. The Chairperson made a communicator call to the stern-faced assistant who appeared instantaneously at the door to the office.

"She needs to have an extraction performed," the Chairperson ordered, to which the advisor simply nodded and beckoned for Chantel to follow.

Chantel followed the representative out of the office, down a corridor and into another room in which a sturdy surgical chair was the centrepiece, much like the CCC. Chantel saw the stylus tool and various other microchips sitting on the bench next to the chair and remembered the process that she had been through on the Kazaa. She hopped into the chair and tilted her head back, waiting to feel the contact of the stylus touching her head. That was the last thing Chantel remembered.

\-----------------------

When Chantel awoke, the stern-faced assistant was nowhere to be seen. Chantel sat upright in the chair and looked around the deserted room. She had no idea how long she had been asleep for, all she knew was that her head was throbbing like a chunk had been taken out of it. She jumped out of the chair, immediately regretting the effect of the sudden movement, and poked her head into the hallway to see who was around. As she raised her hand to her head to massage her temples, that's when she felt it. Bandages were wrapped around her head securing a wad of padding where her chip should have been. When she placed her fingers on the padding, Chantel could feel the stinging sensation indicating that an open wound lay beneath the bandages. Chantel screamed. They had taken her chip.

Chantel reeled in horror at the realisation that all her intellectual property had been removed from her skull. It was then that she caught a glimpse of herself in the metallic surface of the workbench. As she suspected, her head was wrapped in bloodied bandages which explained the reason for her aching head. What she hadn't expected was the monstrosity of her reflection. Half the hair on her head had been shaven, bearing a lopsided looking skull that was smudged and stained with the marks of her own blood. Her hair, her beautiful long, brown, wavy hair clung to only half of her scalp; the other half was gruesomely exposed underneath a crude layer of stubble. With trembling fingers she started to unravel the clumsily bound bandages, knowing already what they were covering. As the last of the dressing fell away, Chantel gasped when she saw the gaping hole in her head. She let out an almighty wail of pain and disbelief that would have resonated throughout the corridors and attracted the attention of anyone in the nearby vicinity. But there was no response.

When no one came, Chantel stumbled down the corridor like a deranged being, sobbing as much from pain as from the loss of her hair and hard drive chip. She burst into the Chairperson's office in a jumble of blood and tears.

"What have you done to me?" she cried.

Both the Chairperson and the advisor were unperturbed by Chantel's dramatic entrance. She could see that they were looking at the contents of her hard drive chip. The recording taken of the Creator's laboratory was displayed on a projector screen.

"What do you mean?" the Chairperson replied calmly. "We just gave you an extraction like we said we would. Don't worry, we'll put a new chip on the other side of your head so you won't even need to be without a Pangaea chip for long."

"An extraction just involves copying the files, not taking them from me," bellowed Chantel adamantly, her tears flowing freer than ever as a result of the Chairperson's indifference.

"Chantel, don't you ever read your licence terms before you agree to them? Of course we take the chip. That's the whole point of an extraction. You have valuable intellectual property on this hard drive chip and we can't risk that getting into anybody's hands. That's why our agreements always give us the right to remove the implants at any time. This is what you agreed to Chantel, didn't you know that?"

Chantel was speechless. Like any person with a chip implant, Chantel had never thought that they could actually be removed. If any downloads needed to be retrieved from the hard drive, Chantel assumed that they could simply be transferred without the need to isolate the hardware. Why was it so important that the Chairperson remove the Freetown footage from her head?

"This is impressive material," the Chairperson praised. "Really Chantel, you exceeded all expectations by going all the way to the other end of the earth to see the Creator."

Shivers ran down Chantel's spine.

"And killing him for us as well. That was just a bonus. Still, I always believed in you my dear."

Chantel felt her nerves chill and muscles tense as the Chairperson continued.

"We thought it would be a long shot. From all your employee reports you were always described as very compliant and diligent. Great for an employee of course, but we had bigger plans for you. You were the only one we could depend on, the only one that Beren would trust to go along with him. And he was the one we needed to break the Creator's code."

Chantel's mind went numb. Could it be that this whole time she had been nothing more than a pawn in Pangaea's gameplay for corporate espionage? Were they really just trying to get to Beren this whole time?

"But, but," she choked. "Utopia...what they were doing...how could you allow something like that in this world? Isn't it illegal?"

As soon as she whispered these words, she realised she was speaking to someone to whom the laws did not matter.

"Dear sweet Chantel, the laws are one thing but power is another. Laws only serve a purpose as long as people care enough to uphold them. Regardless of what the laws is, whoever makes the power, keeps the power in this world. We couldn't have Utopia firing up these slave-run generators and taking over the world. Thank goodness their crazy Creator was only obsessed with using his programs for this purpose. Who knows what else they could have done with the technology they had? No matter, our teams have already been dispatched to Freetown to salvage what information they can get from the Creator's creations. The guards that you left to languish in the wasteland didn't expect Pangaea to rescue them that's for sure. Good thing for us too because they were all too willing to give us what we wanted and divulge Utopia's secrets. All they wanted in return was a decent drink and to get the hell out of the place."

Chantel could not believe her ears. How long had Pangaea known about Utopia and the Creator? What did they intend to do with the mind control technology the Creator had invented? The force of Pangaea's betrayal weighed down upon her now like a ton of bricks. She asked the question that she dreaded to hear the answer to.

"Why would you want technology that turns people into slaves?"

The Chairperson was nonchalant in his response.

"Why wouldn't we want this technology? Think of all the things we could persuade people to buy if we could tap into this pleasure nerve. Think of how happy everyone would be with their lot in life. There wouldn't be any illegal migration, all the jobs that need doing would get done and best of all, there would be no complaints. Remember Chantel, what's good for Pangaea is good for the world. We can make the world a better place by imposing happiness on everyone. The Creator was really an all-round genius for coming up with this solution. Thank goodness we had you and Beren to weasel it out of him. All those guards we bribed for the footage were really just hopeless individuals. Luckily there aren't many people out there that can outsmart Beren. We'll need him for the next stage of our operations."

Chantel's heart pounded when she realised that it was Beren Pangaea had been after the whole time; Beren, who she hoped was still sitting on the Saharan out in Shanghai harbour; Beren, who she would have to get a message to as soon as she could to warn him to leave. Her mind raced with the need to get Beren away from Pangaea and stop him becoming part of their plan for evil. The Chairperson quickly destroyed any hope she had of doing that.

"Oh, thankfully, we have Beren now. You led us to him as well so thank you for that Chantel. We've been tracking you this entire time through your hard drive chip."

The Chairperson flicked to another projection screen which showed Beren, sitting confused and angry, isolated in a room much like the one in which she had her extraction performed. Chantel felt a swell of anger that Pangaea had kidnapped her best friend. She wished she had spat on the Chairperson now and summoning up all the internal rage she could fathom walked up to the Chairperson and did exactly that, right in the eye.

Chantel's blood was reaching boiling point at this stage. She expected some sort of reaction from the Chairperson for her impudence – a hint of anger, an act of aggression, a stern rebuke. Nothing. The Chairperson calmly took out a cloth and wiped the saliva away, while the advisor grabbed Chantel in a vice grip and dragged her kicking and screaming from the office. Chantel could feel the smooth, artificial touch of the assistant's skin against her own. The ministerial representative was an android.
Chapter Twenty-Five

Infiltration

Chantel was thrown into the same office in which she had been subjected to her extraction. She could hear the click of the door locking her in and the android's footsteps disappear down the corridor. She wondered where Beren was held captive and started calling his name, to no avail. She felt hopeless. She had led Pangaea directly to Beren, despite all his previous warnings against trusting the company so heedlessly. This whole time, she had been oblivious to the fact that Pangaea had been using her. Her mind ached just thinking about it, in addition to the agony caused by her fresh wound. Not being able to bear any more pain from the gash in her head, Chantel found some dressing to bandage her gouge back up, gulped down some painkillers and fell asleep on the chair.

The next morning she awoke to the sound of voices surrounding her. As she groggily opened her eyes she saw the person in the world that she most wanted to see – Beren. He looked ruffled, no doubt from an uncomfortable night trapped in a parliamentary office, but not perturbed, although he must have figured out Pangaea's intentions by now and knew what it wanted from him. He rolled his wheelchair over to Chantel's side.

"Nice haircut," were his first words to Chantel, as she turned her pounding head to see the Chairperson and android also in the room.

Chantel tried to disguise her pleasure at seeing Beren with a scowl as much as she could.

"Fancy seeing you here," was all she could muster.

Beren then turned his attention to the Chairperson.

"How long are you going to keep us here? You can't keep us captive. We have rights as global citizens."

The Chairperson once again delivered a response in a steely composure.

"You, Beren Marley, have been charged with aiding and abetting a murder. Chantel's footage from the Creator's laboratory clearly shows you and the rest of your group being complicit in the homicide of a helpless old man at the hand of a psychopath. A subpoena has already been issued to the global police for your arrest."

Chantel could not believe her ears.

"What? You can't concoct a charge of accomplice to murder against him. He had nothing to do with that old man's death."

"Precisely Chantel, and neither did he try to stop it. We have the evidence at hand and you very well know that it would be enough to convict him."

Just when Chantel was already feeling as bad as she thought she possibly could for dragging Beren into this whole sordid scheme, she felt worse. This would effectively seal Beren's fate as a creator for Pangaea, to assist with its grand design of moulding the world.

"What makes you think I'll work for you?" Beren demanded.

The hint of a snigger passed over the Chairperson's face.

"Beren, we both know you won't be able to resist being on the cutting edge of technology. We know what this means to you. You will be a pioneer. You will be breaking new ground. You'll be able to access technologies that will allow you to do whatever you want. Even you can't resist the opportunity to be that innovative."

Beren raised an eyebrow.

"Well I s'pose that could be sort of cool."

The Chairperson rubbed both hands together in what would be glee if the Chairperson was capable of expressing emotion.

"Now, your first project, Beren, is the implantation and programming of these new hard drive chips using the technology we gathered from the Creator's laboratory. Are you up for that Beren?"

Beren indicated as much in the affirmative, while Chantel shot Beren a look of pure evil. The Chairperson almost seemed delighted.

"Terrific, now Chantel you'll be the guinea pig for the first newly improved implant of Pangaea so just lie back in your chair again while my assistant preps you and then gets the materials needed for the implantation."

Chantel acquiesced reluctantly to the cold steely fingers of the android touching her skin as it shaved her remaining hair from the other side of her head.

'Godammit Beren,' thought Chantel as she lay in terrified apprehension. 'Don't do this to me.'

Just when she was starting to think that Beren was never going to make his move, she noticed him surreptitiously reach for the laser shooter in his wheelchair as he changed the setting from 'stun' to 'kill'. Chantel had her doubts about whether this would do any harm to the Chairperson, considering that she was convinced now the Chairperson was an android. Chantel tensed in anticipation, waiting for Beren's signal. The android finished shaving Chantel's head and left the office to gather the other surgical supplies needed. They waited in the office as the footsteps faded down the corridor. Then Beren attacked. Pling! Pling! Beren shot two quick, targeted laser beams from his wheelchair towards the Chairperson and the Chairperson collapsed in the corner.

"Well it took you bloody long enough," Chantel said with relief as she jumped out of the surgical chair.

"I had to wait until they fixed that damn awful haircut that you had before," was Beren's excuse.

Chantel made her way towards the Chairperson with trepidation, explaining to Beren at the same time.

"Beren I think the Chairperson might be an android because..."

She stopped there. Blood was oozing from the Chairperson's body.

"B-beren..." Chantel stammered. "The Chairperson...you've killed the Chairperson."

Beren seemed surprised.

"Well that was my plan after all."

"But Beren, if the Chairperson was a real person...this is an assassination. This is treason. You'll be put in jail for good for this. Beren...what have you done?"

Beren started moving towards the door.

"C'mon Chantel. There's no time to think about this now. We have to get out of here before—"

Pling! Pling! Pling! Beren fired a few shots at the returning assistant.

"—the assistant gets back. C'mon, run!"

Beren raced down the corridor rolling his wheelchair backwards and firing laser beams at the unrelenting android. Chantel raced after him.

"I was going to mention before," she screamed above the sound of the volley of shots. "But the assistant is an android."

Beren continued firing unremittingly while the android chased them, impervious to the attacking laser beams.

"I think I've figured that out now," he screamed back. "Turn left at the end of this corridor."

Chantel obeyed his commands only to see Beren turn in the other direction.

"Oops, I mean right if you're facing this direction," he corrected himself, as he swung his wheelchair to face forward again while turning the corner and slamming the door shut behind them.

"Where to now?" Chantel yelled.

"Quick, to the automobile-pad," Beren directed, leading the way.

They turned down another corridor, passed through a door and found themselves outside, on the roof of Parliament tower. The Chairperson's automobile was sitting in the centre of the landing pad. They raced towards it.

"Get on board, quickly," Beren shouted as Chantel helped to pull him into the cockpit.

"Do you even know how to drive this thing?" Chantel screamed, panicking as the door to the landing burst open and the android started to run towards them.

"Do I?" Beren shouted with glee as he fired up the automobile so that it hovered briefly above the top of the building, before diving tauntingly towards the android then soaring off into the buzzing lights of Shanghai metropolis' night sky.

\-----------------------

Chantel wrung her hands nervously as she sat next to Beren in the passenger side of the automobile. She didn't enjoy Beren's driving at the best of times but she knew that soon the global police would be after them. They had to find somewhere to hide soon.

"Watch out for that. And try not to hit that over there. Not so close to the side Beren."

Chantel's misplaced advice was getting on Beren's nerves.

"Okay, enough of the backseat driver talk Chantel. Don't worry, I know how to handle one of these things..."

He trailed off, remembering how his last automobile accident had ended.

"We have to get back to the Saharan. We have to find Julie and make sure she's okay. They weren't interested in her when they took me from the boat. They simply drove this baby up to the dock, launched their ministerial representatives upon me, bundled me and my wheelchair on board and flew away before Julie even had time to scream. I hope she's alright."

Chantel was touched by Beren's heartfelt concern about Julie's safety.

"But Beren, do you realise what you've done? You just killed the most powerful person in the world. The government will order an emergency lockdown as soon as they find out. They will stop at nothing to bring you to justice. You are a global security threat now."

"I know Chantel, which is why I need to make sure the world knows what the Chairperson wanted to do before they get me."

"What are you planning to do Beren?"

"Remember the hologram recording the guards took from me in the Creator's laboratory? I need that as evidence that Utopia was breaching the _Human Integrity Act_ and that Pangaea planned to do the same. I'll have to stream it to the world."

Chantel considered the ramifications that this would have on the people.

"But Beren...if the whole world knows about this, the people aren't going to stand for it. There'll be massive uprisings...it will be a global revolution."

"Exactly!" Beren shouted with glee. "We'll get just what this world needs to shake off the power of the global five – a rebellion of the people that will lead to--"

"Anarchy," Chantel interrupted. "You are going to throw this world into anarchy. There'll be no global regime. The people won't respect the global five. Beren, this will change the whole world order."

Beren made a sharp turn in the automobile, just skimming the side of a building.

"If there's one thing the world needs Chantel, it's a shake-up."

Chantel heart jumped into her throat as soon as they came around the corner of the skyscraper. They had just come face-to-face with the global police. Beren slammed the brakes on the automobile before powering up the hyper-drive mode.

"Hang on Chantel," he yelled over the din of the sirens wailing and commands being issued over the loudspeaker. "We're gonna have to rise above this all."

Beren activated the hyper-drive and the automobile shot up like a bullet into the sky while the police looked helplessly on. A short-lived chase ensued but it was pointless for the global police to try to outfly the Chairperson's automobile. The Chairperson had made sure that it was the most powerful vehicle on the planet and that there would be little chance any other automobiles could catch up to it. Beren and Chantel continued towards the direction of the port leaving behind fuming police in their wake.

As they approached the murky waters of Shanghai harbour, they desperately kept their eyes peeled for any sign of the Saharan.

"Do you think there's some way of tracking her," Beren asked, like the way they were able to locate your whereabouts.

"She has a Utopia chip. I don't know if Pangaea can tap into Utopia's mainframe. Let me see if I can bring up any information on the Chairperson's automobile computer."

Chantel started opening various applications on the computer switchboard in front of her, horrified at what she discovered.

"My god, there are search functions here for everything and everyone. You only need to tell this gizmo who to look for and this app will locate them using satellite imagery. This is incredible."

Chantel tried to look up Julie Condor, unsure if she would even be searchable on the system and what name she would be stored under. The search was returned with no matches.

"I'm not getting anything," Chantel told Beren.

"That's okay, I think I've spotted her," Beren announced.

He pointed towards the stars and there, beaming off into the sky was the symbol of the skull and crossbones – the pirate's calling. Chantel released a yelp of joy and Beren sent the automobile careening towards the source of the light.

Julie viewed the incoming arrival of the automobile with uncertainty. She had her laser shooter poised for attack, just in case she needed to defend herself. Had she attracted the wrong sort of attention by beaming the pirate symbol into the night sky? She recognised the vessel that had kidnapped Beren and was fearful of its return. As the automobile slid onto the surface of the water near the Saharan, inflatable rafts sprung out from the bottom of the vessel, allowing the vehicle to come to a gentle floating halt. Beren popped the hood of the front before Julie could draw the wrong conclusion.

"Julie, there's no time to waste. We have to get to the Pangaea mainframe."

Chantel clambered on board the Saharan to retrieve the hologram recorder from Beren's cabin. Julie had more questions than she could possibly ask at that point but was too confused to pose any of them.

"Jump in," Chantel shouted to Julie; an order which she promptly obeyed.

"What's going on?" Julie cried.

"We have to act quickly," Chantel explained. "Pangaea...they were using us the whole time. They knew about Utopia and wanted the Creator's technology. We need to let others know."

"But, didn't the Chairperson care about the slaves?"

"The Chairperson is dead," Beren declared, "which is why we need to get to the mainframe quickly before the global police get to us."

"Oh," Julie mused, realising what must have happened. "So now you are going to broadcast the evidence of slavery to the world?"

"Precisely," Beren said with a glint of rebellion in his eye. "We have to get the message out. Chantel, are you able to locate the coordinates of Pangaea's mainframe? We can set this baby to autopilot mode and it should be smooth sailing all the way there, if no one interrupts us that is. Julie, can you prepare the hologram recording for release?"

As the automobile headed deep into the direction of Shanghai's inland technology zone, there was no time for Julie or Chantel to think about the consequences of what they were about to do. All they knew was that Beren's plan would plunge the world onto an irrevocable path for change. They hurtled onwards, hoping to gain what cover they could from the darkness of night in order to reach Pangaea's mainframe before sunrise. All the while, the fact escaped none of them that the message they were busily working on would change the fate of the future.
Chapter Twenty-Six

Anarchy

As the first rays of sunlight peeked over the eastern horizon, the coordinates on the automobile's dashboard indicated they were getting close. The renegades on board the Chairperson's vessel breathed a sigh of relief after what had seemed to be an extraordinarily long night. They were worried about how fortified the infrastructure would be around the mainframe. Quantum computers were notoriously unstable and had to be located away from the residential zones of the metropolis. This was as much of a security solution as anything else; isolating the servers would make them more difficult to sabotage and make it easier to detect intruders to the site. Eventually Chantel could see lights twinkling in the distance that looked almost like a miniature city. The automobile flew across the barren landscape, hurtling ever closer towards the target.

Suddenly there was an incoming communicator message on the automobile's computer.

"Please enter access code to proceed."

The security system for the mainframe had automatically detected the approaching vessel.

"What do we do?" Chantel asked.

Beren was equally baffled.

"We...um...are here on the authority of the Chairperson. Unfortunately the Chairperson could not make it out here today."

The fully automated security system tried to process this.

"Authentication required. Please provide your authority to proceed."

Chantel furiously tried to determine the access code, while Beren futilely attempted to negotiate with the system's artificial intelligence.

"The Chairperson has sent us to deliver a very important message to all Pangaeans...we are here to...um...do as the Chairperson has ordered."

The security system did not seem convinced.

"Instruction unfamiliar. Verifying request with head office."

The group panicked.

"This will alert the global police," Julie cried alarmed. "They'll be able to locate where we are."

The security system responded with the dire news.

"Request to proceed not verified. Automatic deactivation initiated."

Before anyone on board had time to act, the automobile's computers immediately shut down and left them plummeting to the ground in a manner of seconds. They landed with a sharp jolt; all power in the automobile had been deactivated.

"Is everyone okay?" Chantel asked, popping the hatch to escape the battered vessel.

She jumped out, grabbing Beren's wheelchair and quickly setting it up on the dusty ground. A disgruntled chorus of grunts and grumbles affirmed Beren's and Julie's wellbeing.

"Quickly, we don't have much time before the police get here," Julie shouted, running towards the mainframe city while Beren and Chantel tried to keep up with her paces.

Out of nowhere a spray of laser beam fire hit the dirt, narrowly missing Julie by a matter of centimetres.

"Holy smokes!" she cried as more laser beams were fired in their direction. "This city protects itself."

Julie knelt on the gravel and started firing her laser shooter back in the direction of the attacking laser beams. Her keen eyes, used to spotting objects in the distance from the deck of the Saharan, pinpointed out the targets in the wall of the mainframe, aided by the light of the rising sun reflecting off the locations of the weapons. It wasn't long before the offending laser shooters were reduced to molten metal.

"Good work Julie," Beren applauded as they raced towards the mainframe compound.

As they reached the entrance, the security system was in full alert.

"Perimeter compromised," it sounded, accompanied by the squealing of high pitched alarms.

They approached the authentication screen for visitors to the compound. Chantel could see a fingerprint reader and an iris scanner. She had no doubt that voice recognition would also require a password to gain entrance. Her heart fell with dismay when confronted by the complexity of the security screening. She had expected there to be guards located at the mainframe with which there might be the possibility of negotiating, especially if they were to find out that the Chairperson was dead. However, it seemed that Pangaea did not trust people to protect the mainframe. The security system for the compound appeared to be entirely automated. Chantel wondered how they would be able to deceive a computer system to let them in. At that moment, Beren rolled straight up to the checkpoint and allowed himself to be scanned.

"Pangaea sucks," he said assertively when prompted for the password.

The system processed his details and then miraculously, the gate opened.

"Welcome Chairperson."

"What the...?" Chantel wondered as they walked into the mainframe compound.

"I changed the Chairperson's Pangaea access codes to my own last night," Beren gloated. "I also changed the password to something a bit more appropriate."

Chantel and Julie followed Beren through the door, relieved that his foresight had prevented them from being blown into smithereens. They proceeded through tunnels of glass, encasing various rows of servers. Behind the glass windows, the flashing lights on the inter-connected technology gave the encapsulating tunnel an organic feel. The air was pulsating with the whir of components, which added to the dry heat produced by the power surging through the atomic particles as qubits were processed at the speed of microseconds. It was like they were running through the bowels of a huge mechanical beast.

"We have to get to the central command centre," Beren urged as they ran down the only path through the compound pointing the way to the processing hub.

They emerged finally into a massive atrium. Morning was breaking through the glass ceiling of the compound, filling the scene with the ambient light of dawn. The ground before them gave way to a massive cone shaped opening that radiated ultra-violet light as particles whirred around the interior of the cone at astronomical speeds. Footbridges passed over either side of the pit to the central command centre suspended in the centre of the atrium. The group ran across the footbridge as quickly as they could, trying not to look down into the glowing depths of the massive chasm. They reached the jumble of screens and projections that was the command centre.

"Quick, connect up the hologram recorder," Beren instructed, as he provided his biometrics and password for verification.

Chantel hooked up the hologram recorder to the mainframe and the file they had created the night before was uploaded in an instant.

"Okay, this is it," said Beren, tinkering with the commands on the system. "Just a few more seconds and the world will know--"

He pushed the final button to activate the broadcast.

"--the truth."

The group collectively held their breaths. At that moment, every Pangaea connection in the world was simultaneously receiving the message that would predicate the doom of the global regime. Through Pangaea's intricate satellite communications network, Pangaeans were instantly receiving the download that had the unthinkable power to topple Pangaea's supremacy in government and ultimately usurp the control of the global five. The state-of-the-art technology Pangaea had developed to make its communications system the envy of the other global corporations would now be relied upon to facilitate its demise as news of the Chairperson's death went viral around the globe. Chantel watched the message play in front of them, hoping that they had concocted it sufficiently to create the effect they were seeking, hoping that it was emotive enough to inspire chaos. She listened to the spiel she had drafted about the _Human Integrity Act_ and prayed with all the energy she could muster that it would reach out to people enough to make them care.

Fellow global citizens, we bring you this message to tell you that we have been living under a lie. Companies that we have trusted to exercise their power in good faith, for the benefit of the people, have been committing the worst atrocities known to people-kind. What you are about to see proves the lies which have been told to us by those we trust. Those in whom we placed our faith to govern with veracity and honesty have overstepped the power vested in them to rule according to the will of the people. They have engaged in the worst form of evil known in the history of the earth – slavery.

In year 2174 the Human Integrity Act was introduced as law to preserve the integrity of the human mind, body and spirit against involuntary intrusion and observation, to ensure the freewill of all people-kind for future generations. Under the Human Integrity Act, all humans are beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. We are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in the spirit of humanity. The Act gives everyone the right to life, liberty and security of person. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

At least two of the global corporations, Utopia and Pangaea are guilty of the crime of slavery. The images you will see are evidence of people being subjected to slavery. These companies have been working on the technology to impose slavery through the implants we all wear in our heads. In flagrant breach of the Human Integrity Act, these companies thought that they could get away with inflicting slavery upon other human beings. This is an abomination of the power they hold to govern the global Parliament for the people.

Global citizens, the Chairperson is dead. The Chairperson was assassinated whilst attempting to perpetrate the crime of slavery upon an employee of Pangaea. Whatever else the global regime will tell you, this is the truth. Global citizens, it is up to you now to ensure that the principles of the Human Integrity Act are upheld. We, the people, have a united duty to resist the imposition of the global regime's power upon our lives. We cannot lie complacent while our own personal liberties are eroded before our very eyes. Global citizens of the world, we must collectively make a stand to ensure that our liberty remains paramount, to preserve our right to freedom and to maintain our own autonomy. We must take a stand against slavery."

The group looked at each other in the sun drenched surrounds of the atrium. For such a significant message they were expecting its dispatch to be heralded by a fanfare, a thunderous applause, a grand hoorah; they were hoping for anything to indicate that it had been received with the intended effect. But there in the chamber of the mainframe's central command centre, they were oblivious to the impact the communication was having upon the people.

"Is there any way of getting the news or some information about what's going on out there?" Julie asked, as Beren tried scouring through the information on the mainframe to see what reports people had been posting. "Will the message go to people that aren't with Pangaea?"

"There's no encryption on the files so it can be sent to anyone," Beren reassured. "Let's hope people spread the world to all the other global citizens."

"Wait, I know how Pangaea monitors the traffic on its systems," Chantel piped up. "There's a tracking system we developed that allows us to trace all data from its source. I should be able to bring up the frequency maps which can show us all access to the data in real time."

Chantel starting sifting through the applications on the mainframe command centre until she found the one she needed.

"Uh-huh! This is it," she said, happily loading up the program to track the spread of the message. "Wow, look at it go."

On the map in front of them, tiny pinpricks representing the transmitted file were shown multiplying rapidly until the dots seemed to encompass the entire globe.

"Yes, the word is getting out there," Beren hurrahed.

Just at that moment they heard a shout from across the divide of the cone.

"Freeze! You are under arrest."

The global police had arrived. The group looked up to see three officers bearing weapons blocking off their path to the entrance.

"Hands up!" they shouted.

Beren made an attempt at diplomacy with the law enforcers.

"Look, we know you have a warrant for my arrest but it will be pointless taking me into custody now. The Chairperson is dead. The global regime is all but annihilated. You'll soon find out that rather than breaching the law I was in fact responsible for exposing those who had acted in contravention of the _Human Integrity Act_ to justice."

The global police seemed slightly resentful of their task but proceeded to do as ordered.

"No matter what you say we have to bring you in, all of you. Put your hands up now. We know you have weapons concealed in your wheelchair."

Beren and Chantel raised their hands obligingly in the air, concealing behind them the lightening quick reflexes of Julie as she extracted her laser shooter and delivered three rapid blasts towards the global police. What happened next was too catastrophic for anyone to foresee. The laser beam shots deflected off the armour of the global police, ricocheting around the atrium in all manner of trajectories. Inevitably, one of the blasts struck the side of the cone, interrupting the processing of the subatomic particles in the processor core. The core began to overheat, letting off steam and sparks in a crescendo of noise. All around them, the mainframe began to shake as if the great mechanical beast was starting to stir.

"We have to get out of here. It's unstable. It's going to blow!" yelled Beren.

They all rushed together towards the entrance, over the footbridge which was starting to bend and melt from the heat being emitted from the cone and through the tunnels of glass behind which the lights of the transistors were going ballistic. Chantel ran the fastest she had run in her life until at last they broke free from the mainframe compound and out into the clear air of the desert.

"Get on board," she yelled, as they piled back into the Chairperson's automobile.

No sooner had the group bundled themselves once again into the vessel which had just started to rise into the air, than the tempo in the mainframe reached fever pitch and a massive explosion erupted into the air. The entire compound burst into flames. Beren insisted upon receiving a high five as below them, the most advanced technology that had been developed by an global corporation crumpled into a charred mass of molten electricity.

Chantel watched the fireworks fly realising that this was the end of Pangaea - the company that was her brand, her employer, her government and had become her enemy was finished. She leaned her head back against the chair of the passenger seat and closed her weary eyes. Her journey had finally finished. It was time for her to go home.

\-----------------------

"Make sure you come to visit us sometime," Chantel made Julie promise as she gave her a firm embrace. "You'll be able to find us better than we'll be able to find you."

Julie nodded, blinking back tears as she held Chantel close.

"Yes, make sure you swing by sometime," Beren repeated also giving Julie a heartfelt hug. "That is if you are in the area and all. Bring Condor with you. That guy is awesome."

"Location -54+29, south-eastern quadrant. I've always wanted to visit that part of the world. I'll make it there soon, I promise," Julie pledged.

With those tearful goodbyes, Julie hopped back onto the Saharan to make her way back to the seas of the south-western quadrant. There she would reunite with Condor and Auntie Bessie and the rest of her family. She wondered if they had also received the message. Boy, would there be some questions for her to answer when she saw them again.

Chantel and Beren waved farewell from the deck of the Chairperson's automobile, which had been converted into boat mode for the long journey across the seas. As the sail on top of the Saharan disappeared from sight, Chantel and Beren steered the automobile to the next destination – Location -54+29. It was time for Chantel to return home.
Epilogue

The storms had finally ceased temporarily in the agricultural zone. Chantel and Beren exited the bunker to have a look at how much damage had been wrought upon the crops. In the months that had passed since the destruction of the Pangaea mainframe, the world had become a very different place. By the time Chantel and Beren arrived again on the shores of the great southern land, the people were up in arms about the dastardly intentions that the global government had for the people. There was massive upheaval all around the world, as people rioted in protest against the global regime. Chantel was glad that her parents were able to stay safely stowed away in their bunker.

She was flooded with relief to see them again when her and Beren finally arrived at the farm.

"Chantel, the world has gone crazy. We were so worried about you," her mum fretted, her eyes betraying the grief she had suffered at the possibility that she had lost not one but two of her children.

"We tried to call you but we couldn't get through at all. All the lines were down," said her dad visibly shaken with relief, in contrast to his usual stoic nature.

They welcomed Beren into their fold with open arms and together, they bore out the ensuing chaos in their own haven away from the rest of the world. Eventually they learned to live like a family again.

Chantel sighed when she saw the destruction the last cyclone had caused to the crops that had just started growing on the farm.

"Well, guess we'll just have to start over again...doing things the old fashioned way," she lamented, feeling a sense of responsibility for eradicating the centralised services that would have assisted them in the regeneration of the harvest.

"This is the cycle of life, Chanty," Beren comforted. "Don't stress so much about it."

"Beren, but what will happen to the world now. How do we know if what we've done will change it for the better. Should we really have interfered with destiny in that way?"

"Chantel, this was bound to happen. As soon as Pangaea overstepped its social obligation to the people, as soon as they conceived of the notion of slavery, as soon as they sent you the glitch on the movie _Soul,_ that put the world on a course of path dependence towards anarchy. Empires rise and fall, Chantel. History tells us that. It's the natural course of change. We didn't tempt fate at all. We were just the catalysts to bringing about the inevitable."

"But destroying the global regime, Beren...you don't think that's changing destiny."

Beren smiled and taking Chantel's hand, held it tightly in his own.

"No, that's got nothing to do with destiny...this is destiny," he said, brushing back Chantel's long wavy hair that had finally grown back again after being brutally shaven by Pangaea months ago. He gingerly touched the deep, mangled scar where her chip used to be making Chantel wince with a mixture of shame and disgust at the resurgence of memories from the events that took place in the Chairperson's chamber. Beren offered Chantel a reassuring smile, letting her know that despite the unsightly scar, he still thought she was beautiful.

And there, in their own private sanctuary away from the riots, Beren looked deep into Chantel's large brown eyes as the world around them raged in the throes of transitioning to a new world order.

THE END

