 
### Global Warming Fun 6:

### Ice Giants Make Manhattan

By

Gary J. Davies

Published by Gary J. Davies at Smashwords

Global Warming Fun 6: Ice Giants Make Manhattan

Copyright 2017 Gary J. Davies

### Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the only exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy.

This e-book is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author's imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you again for downloading this e-book!

### Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 - Marys and Trouble in the Big City

CHAPTER 2 - Zombie Cop

CHAPTER 3 - Dumbing Down

CHAPTER 4 - The Crazies

CHAPTER 5 - The Worriers and the Ostriches

CHAPTER 6 - Science or Bust

CHAPTER 7 - The Zombie Bar

CHAPTER 8 - Growth Fails

CHAPTER 9 - Disasters Natural and Unnatural

CHAPTER 10 - Aliens, Stone-Coats, and Jants

CHAPTER 11 - Battle for New York City

About Other Publications by This Author

****

### Foreword

It is indeed an inconvenient truth (with over 95% certitude - see for example the NASA website) that climate change/global warming is real and it is nearly as certain that it is human-caused. Yet from a positive/cup-half-full perspective it does provide a convenient backdrop and underlying crisis for this planned ten-book Global Warming Fun series. The 'fun' aspect is of course in the writing of it and hopefully also in the reading of it. 'Fun With Global Warming' would have been slightly better as a series description but that would have made all book titles of the series even more awkwardly long.

Aside from providing entertainment (my number-one intent), my goal in this series is to provide enlightenment by pointing out some of the serious issues/problems that humans face in our emerging future, including but not limited to climate change. That's serious business for a writer that prefers creating pure escapism! Happily my fictional books outside of this series are generally not thus burdened. See a brief description of my other books in the 'About' section located at the end of this book.

'Watching' global warming actually happen is a bit like watching grass grow, except climate change happens much slower. Yes, weather happens every glorious day, but each year seems much like the last, and climate change deceptively sneaks up on us slowly, over decades and centuries, while as 'now' focused ephemeral humans we typically busy ourselves with the many pressing details of the moment rather than dwelling on the weather.

But eventually even we take notice. (Didn't there used to be a glacier here? Didn't our first snow used to come a month earlier? Why are those once flourishing coral reefs dead? Why did our crops dry out while other folks are getting unusual floods? Does it seem to you that many more really hot summer days happen? Why is there so much rebellion and human migration in much of the world? Why are those nifty white bears having such a tough time?)

I have added some characters and situations to spice up the drama a bit (chiefly sentient telepathic ants called jants and living stone creatures called Stone-Coats that include Ice Giants), but reality will doubtlessly be a much worse and more complex experience than my fiction suggests. Nature will reveal nasty surprises, and humans will likely find ways to make things worse than they need be, while also hopefully occasionally behaving heroically and wisely.

Even though this series is primarily science FICTION and fantasy and certainly not written to provide proof for or defense of climate change science theory, or an accurate description of what will happen and when, some critics may still object to presenting climate change as a 'given' even in a fictional context! Such science/fact denialism is one of the very human problems that is actually pointed out in this particular volume!

Like it or not according to current science climate change is happening and is likely human-caused. If your epistemology is slanted towards reality/facts then you already have considerable confidence in science - the most successful approach yet devised by mankind for making sense of reality. You with some confidence daily make use of science-based technological applications such as electricity, computers, medicine, planes, trains, airplanes, etc. You therefore realize that writing a story of our future that DIDN'T include climate change would have been slanted much more towards fantasy.

Not that I object to fantasy: most of my books including this series include definite fantasy elements that are not provided solid scientific or even pseudo-science explanations. But to be plausible a story set in this universe/reality/timeframe should begin with current fact-based science as part of its world view. For this series I have chosen to assume the 95% certain science view of human-caused climate change. Perhaps sometime in the future I will write a less plausible more fantasy-slanted no-climate-change story that for the sake of entertainment takes the more challenging 5% route.

This particular story takes place in New York City. Like all books in this series it may be enjoyed separately but is best understood in the context of the preceding five books of the series. Each book provides in chronological order a brief look at Earth as global warming progresses through several centuries. See the first book for further insights on the beginnings of this project.

Book six takes place roughly seventy-seven years in the future (relative to the original publication date of this book), when most of us are long dead and gone, but our descendants hopefully remain to struggle on. At this point climate change is well along (following what is perhaps a worse-case scenario, including New England cooling that is hopefully far more radical than likely), and humans have become somewhat accustomed to sharing Earth with two other sentient creatures discovered over the course of this series: the sentient ants called jants (introduced in book one of this series) recently gene-altered into existence, and the ancient Mohawk-discovered Stone-Coats/Ice Giants (introduced in book two and further developed in books four and five).

By book six many humans have largely come to terms with med-ticks (introduced in book three) and jant/med-tick controlled human zombies (which play a role in book five). And of course as with most books of this series, the apparently immortal telepathist Ed Rumsfeld (introduced in book one) is the lead character.

This book takes place roughly twenty-seven years after the drought-driven California adventure of book five. It is the last near-future book in the series; to get to the full impact of global warming, after this book the stories will necessarily tend to take place centuries instead of mere decades apart. I will likely have to remove the tin-foil skull-cap that normally protects me from alien mind control and malicious spirits and make even greater use of my crystal ball in order to write them.

The stated 'plan' of this Global Warming Fun series is to outline human history over the next few centuries in response to problems faced by Earth and humanity including but not limited to climate change. Yes, unfortunately as has likely not escaped the notice of my more astute readers, climate change is definitely not the only oncoming threat or crisis. Some serious difficulties such as climate change happen in slow-motion, while other disasters could essentially wipe out humanity almost overnight. The universe is a very dangerous place, with humanity ourselves typically providing most of the perils. (Who would have thought that we'd even mess up the climate!) We have generally been very lucky so far, but as we advance our technologies we increase the risks we pose to ourselves, even though we also introduce tantalizingly exciting positive opportunities.

Many of the 'concerns'/issues highlighted here in book six, including concepts, terms, and phrases, appear in the 153 essays of What Should We Be Worried About ? edited by John Brockman, the excellent 2014 Edge Foundation Incorporated/Harper Perennial book that chronicles answers to that title/Edge-dot-org question of 2013 asked of the Edge intelligentsia blogosphere. Readers are urged to consult those sources and others for more faithful, comprehensive, in depth, and up-to-date discussions of many of the worrisome issues only briefly mentioned herein. Unfortunately even as I write this book many of the potential problems/issues mentioned are becoming reality. As is often the case, reality can be more F-ed up than fiction.

Particularly for this specific book in the series, a key writing issue/challenge for the author was how to fit mention of so many of the non-fiction issues we face into a fictional action/adventure story line without totally ruining the story or coming off as too preachy. Sort of like Beethoven trying to combine orchestra and chorus in his monumental ninth symphony, or perhaps more aptly like eating a spoon full of yummy sugar to help the nasty tasting medicine go down. Did I succeed? That's for the reader to judge. But at least I had a challenging and fun time writing it! What better hobby is there for a physics-trained engineer to pursue in his retirement?

****

### Global Warming Fun 6:

### Ice Giants Make Manhattan

CHAPTER 1

### Marys and Trouble in the Big City

"Your daughter and our great-great-grand-daughter have been kidnaped," said the voice, jarring Ed Rumsfeld from comfortable much appreciated sleep.

Under his nice soft sheets Ed stretched his limbs and struggled to gather his wits. A hauntingly familiar voice had awoken him, though the words hadn't quite registered. He noted that the impossibly soft bed sheets surrounding his body were obviously a weave of carbon Nano tubing finer than silk, not the old-fashioned much courser hand-woven natural plant-based fabrics of his adopted Tribe the Mohawk that he preferred.

So then, he clearly wasn't at his beloved Mohawk Reservation home in the frozen Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State. He was obviously waking in the king-plus-sized bed of his Greenpoint neighborhood Brooklyn apartment. He recalled that he had recently returned to New York City to watch the kids while his wife Ann Richards was off on yet another United Nations business trip trying to save the world one messy issue at a time.

Watch the kids? Amend that. Their three 'kids' that shared the apartment with them were now young independent-minded adults, and they were watching after him every bit as much as he was watching after them, in this crowded, bustling, big-city environment that was much more their natural habitat than his own. Over his century-long lifetime he had come a very long way from his rural Virginia birthplace. Too far, he sometimes thought.

He recalled that he was also in the City because he had been asked by his Tribe to help settle a City issue that involved them. For roughly three decades Mohawk tribesmen, already long famous for their work in constructing the high steel-framed skyscrapers of Manhattan, had helped coordinate the construction work of Stone-Coats across all of New York City. Now as a part-time Tribe Chief and Stone-Coat expert, Ed had been asked by the Brooklyn Mohawk Tribe members for his help to settle some sort of issue involving the Stone-Coats: something about their rebuilding of the City over the next few centuries as the ocean levels rose. He was supposed to lead a Tribe meeting about it that evening, along with Ann and her close companion and friend: Talking Stone the Stone-Coat.

Ann was due home later this morning from her latest trip to disaster-plagued Europe. At least like the Americas, disaster-plagued Europe was in much better shape than most of disaster-plagued Africa and Asia, and Ann's visits to Europe were less depressing and dangerous. Still Ed would feel much better when she had safely returned home to relatively stable and prosperous New York City.

According to his Stone-Coat developed brain implant however, it was only 9:47 AM, and Ann hadn't even landed at La Guardia yet. So who was rudely waking him up and what were they yammering about? He couldn't quite remember the words that had woken him, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the voice.

"Get your lazy ass out of bed, Ed," said the voice. It was indeed a very familiar voice using an all too familiar phrase that Ed hadn't heard in twenty-seven years! He opened his eyes to see standing over him in the dim light none other than Mary, his previous wife for nearly half a century! She looked impossibly young, no more than twenty-five, Ed estimated, her age when he first met her, though the real flesh-and-blood Mary would like him be a century old by now, if she was still alive.

But Mary wasn't alive! The human Mary had died twenty-seven years ago, so this obviously wasn't the original Mary and it certainly wasn't her ghost. But of course! This could only be a Stone-Coat Mary replicate, Ed assured himself. No big deal. There were many thousands of Stone-Coat Marys, though he had never heard of one that chose to also physically resemble the original Mary.

"Which Mary are you?" he asked the Stone-Coat standing over him. "Not Mary-One, of course!"

"I am Mary 11,123," said the Stone-Coat.

Her lips didn't move, Ed noticed, but then why should they? The voice likely came from some-sort of speaker located in the mouth cavity that had nothing to do with human lips, tongue, vocal cords, or lungs. Real humans had dozens of nifty face-shaping muscles. This Stone-Coat's face including her lips were probably made mostly of solid diamond or some other equally inflexible gem material, and her lips formed a permanent smile.

"You are doubtless well aware that Mary-One remains in the Pacific Ocean, pursuing her marine biologist conservation goals," said the Stone-Coat Mary. "Besides, she weighs hundreds of tons and wouldn't very well fit into this tiny New York apartment that you have arbitrarily named Fred."

Mary-One had shaped herself as most mobile Stone-Coats had done for millions of years: as a massive vaguely bear-like giant with diamond scales that looked like ice. Ice Giants, some humans traditionally called them, because while looking a bit like they were made of ice, they also preferred cold weather that supported their use of hydraulics driven by water's expansion when it transitioned from the liquid to the solid state.

From a human perspective this Mary appeared to be nicely proportioned under a gray pants-suit, likely a multi-layer pants-suit constructed from carbon Nano-tubing that she had generated herself. The material when structured in multiple layers conveniently provided excellent thermal insulation and was a hundred times as strong as steel. Generating one's own clothing had to be a handy thing to be able to do! The original Mary would have very much liked being able to do that!

"MORE LIGHT GRADUALLY!" he silently requested of the apartment building Stone-Coat known as Fred.

"I haven't met with Mary-One in person for nearly five years," Ed noted aloud, "but I monitor her status every chance that I get and we exchange old-fashioned emails and so-forth. How did you get in here past Bob and Fred? They're not supposed to allow even Stone-Coats to enter without the approval of me, Ann, or one of the kids."

"For a jant-controlled zombie Bob isn't too swift," said the mobile Mary. "The modest-sized jant colony supporting his sentience is clearly over-burdened intellectually, though for insects I suppose they do quite well. Bob relied mostly on Fred's excellent assessment of my low hazard index to admit me. You really should get yourself better security. An important human such as you shouldn't be so physically accessible."

Ed watched her stiffly and sluggishly step back and away from the bed then agonizingly slowly sit herself down gently in her wheelchair. Despite what was doubtlessly insulating clothing designed to help keep her cool when inside buildings or vehicles, the Mary was apparently warming up quickly, and might already be using steam for hydraulic locomotion instead of ice, Ed suspected.

The wheelchair didn't surprise him. Stone-Coats of human size were excruciatingly slow and weak compared to most Stone-Coats. Chiefly to minimize the radiation danger to carbon/water-based life forms such as humans, small Stone-Coats harbored only tiny amounts of radioactive material to power their pathetically weak hydraulics, electric motors, electro-magnets, and thought processes. Getting around using only legs was so inefficient that the design of small individuals usually somehow included wheels: an invention originally discovered by Stone-Coats hundreds of millions of years ago but rarely used until human-times and the advent of roads and other hard flat human-made surfaces. Mobility in the usually more rugged terrain of Earth much favored the most common form of mobile Stone-Coats: the bipedal Ice Giant.

The wheelchair that the Mary sat in looked much like an old-fashioned human model, but Ed knew it was actually part of the Stone-Coat's body that was connected to the Mary-shaped-part chiefly via radio communications. Through his Stone-Coat manufactured brain implant that sensed electromagnetic radio frequencies he could sense the constant information exchange occurring between the woman-shaped and wheelchair-shaped portions of this mobile Mary.

Towards the end of her life the aged real Mary needed a wheelchair to get around, Ed recalled painfully. That was a Stone-Coat wheelchair also. Seeing a Mary in a wheelchair now brought back haunting memories to Ed of Mary Zero's last days in California.

Fred had not yet caused the room to reach full daytime lighting levels but even so it was by now becoming much more obvious to Ed that his visitor was certainly a Stone-Coat and not a human. Though tinted to suggest a human Caucasian skin coloring, her face was frozen like that of a manikin into a perpetual half-smile, and her body movements were stiff and slow. She had to weigh well over five-hundred pounds of course; perhaps six or seven hundred in total when the wheelchair part of her was included. Under-powered and physically slow, she was essentially physically handicapped by human standards of mobility.

By Stone-Coat standards she was highly mobile. Most Stone-Coats were totally stationary and perfectly content to live immobile for millions of years as part of a relatively stable geological feature such as a mountain. Lately many of them became human-needed immobile structures such as bridges, roads, or apartment buildings like Fred.

By Stone-Coat standards this Mary gave up a lot of intelligence by being so unusually small in size. Still, Ed knew that even her smallish body was packed full of crystals including quartz that were doped with several conductive elements to provide various electrical properties including a computing power that could both mimic and exceed human cognition. She was essentially a walking, living, super-computer. The wheelchair was a vital part of her that provided both improved mobility and added logic circuits, memory, and just a touch more radioactive material to provide energy for thought and motion. Though she thought much like a human due largely to the influence of the Mary template, she was far from being a human.

But she was a Mary. After twenty-seven years Ed still felt both happy and upset whenever he encountered a Stone-Coat Mary. His great love the human Mary, Mary-Zero, was dead and gone, her very molecules absorbed by the Stone-Coat that had consumed her body and mind as she died. Yet in a sense she still lived on as thousands of Stone-Coats that were shaped by her personality and memories. They remained coldly logical Stone-Coats that lacked the full warmth of Mary-Zero, however. Rationally Ed understood the situation; emotionally he could never quite process it.

"WHY DID YOU ADMIT HER, FRED?" Ed silently asked the apartment building Stone-Coat using his brain implant. In response to Ed's wakeful activity and request Fred had already been gradually increasing the light levels of the room. Now the light increased far more quickly. The window changed from opaque to translucent and would soon be clear enough to admit all available sunlight. The walls began to glow dull-green.

"She claimed to be your wife, Chief Ed," the wall replied aloud. "I of course verified that claim before allowing my doors to be opened by Bob. She certainly looks like Mary-Zero, though mere appearance is superficial. However she allowed me to confirm that her memories and thought processes match my own quite closely, and I noticed that like us she knows the language of the Mohawk. I therefore certified that she is indeed a genuine Mary Rumsfeld replicate and as such she is of relatively low inherent risk to you. After all, she is in many respects your wife."

"OK but wait a darn minute!" exclaimed Ed. "You confirmed she is a Mary by comparing her to yourself? Fred! Are you also a Mary?" The memories and thought capabilities of the dying human Mary Rumsfeld had been acquired via the Stone-Coat transference process when the biological Mary died. Since then her digitized 'template' had been shared by thousands of Stone-Coats world-wide, significantly 'humanizing' many Stone-Coats. Apparently that included the apartment building that its inhabiting humans had named Fred!

"Yes, I am Mary 21,043," confirmed the wall.

"Holly Crap! And you never told me?" Ed asked, as the full implications set in. He had been living with his second wife and family inside of his first wife. Somehow that didn't seem right! And he/she was Mary number 21-thousand whatever? How the hell many Marys where there?

"You never asked before if I was a Mary," said the wall. "Ten years ago you complained that I was boringly inadequate as a conversationalist, so over the Internet I acquired a human template. Of the several humanizing templates available Mary Rumsfeld seemed to be the most logical choice due to your prior very amiable acquaintance with the original human Mary Rumsfeld."

Very Stone-Coat-logical indeed, Ed conceded. Every Stone-Coat was necessity logical. But the idea that there could be something emotionally disturbing about a man and his new wife living within his long dead wife had apparently never even been a consideration for Fred. "So OK, how's that been working out for you?" he managed to ask him/her.

"Well enough," said Fred the apartment Mary. "As a result of the template's human influence I am no longer completely satisfied to be stationary. But humans are notoriously short lived and also tend to change their habitats every few years or decades. I expect to fully transform back to a mobile Stone-Coat form within only a few decades once you and Ann either die or otherwise move on. I am in no hurry. I find that I am constantly entertained by your new family, including your own blundering antics. I am very surprised that Ann puts up with you though."

"Me too," Ed replied. "Decades? You obviously have much more patience than the original Mary; perhaps that is attributable to your prior years of existence as an apartment building. Do you mind if we humans continue to address you as 'Fred'? It will become confusing if we call you Mary number-whatever, particularly as another Mary replicate has just shown up. And please keep the male 'Fred' voice also."

"Certainly," said the wall. "Use whatever mnemonic identification for me that you prefer. I was of course somewhat dismayed to find that you apparently might live far longer than most humans, as that could prolong my duties as an apartment building. The memory of that fact was of course within the Mary template but it took a while for it to bubble up into my now human-like conscious awareness. I may need to remain stationary somewhat longer than I had first hoped, unless you sooner happen to have the misfortune to suffer a catastrophic dismantling of yourself. But most of Brooklyn will be under water in only a few centuries and you'll have to move out before then anyway unless you somehow acquire aquatic abilities. If necessary I can easily wait that long to transform back to a mobile form.

"However then I will definitely move on. Like all Marys I have a fascination for aquatic life but prefer not to become a stationary home to ocean critters when Brooklyn floods. If I do explore the oceans I intend to do so formed as a traditional Ice Giant, so that like Mary-One I can effectively roam the sea floors. Or perhaps I will become an ocean cargo vessel or even a space ship as part of the human-led Space Program. In any case for now I am content enough in my stationary role. After that I plan to roam about for at least several million years before settling down to focus on mathematics and philosophy. There is a lot to see!"

"Swell," remarked Ed. "You have a nifty little plan for yourself then. Always nice to see the Marys getting on so well." He knew that like all Mary Stone-Coat replicates, Fred had Mary memories and thought patterns, but not Mary-Zero's hormone-influenced emotions and vulnerabilities. The real Mary would never be content to be an apartment building for decades, or want to be an ocean cargo ship or space ship. But the real Mary, Mary-Zero, was gone forever. That Fred was secretly a Mary explained a few things, however. For example it explained why the apartment walls were frequently pale green, Mary-Zero's favorite wall color.

"It's nice to see that that you are becoming better acquainted with your apartment building, but I suggest that the kidnapping topic be discussed," interjected mobile-Mary 11,123.

"Kidnapping?" said Ed. "Say! Wasn't the word 'kidnapping' used a few minutes ago to rudely wake me up? What's this kidnapping business about and what does it have to do with a visit by a Mary?"

"As to your last question, Bob read the so-called ransom note aloud to me," said Fred, "and I immediately took action to acquire the assistance of Mary 11,123 because of her high mobility and her relationship to the clue provided by the note. Fortunately she was already located nearby. Bob, including Bob's controlling jant colony, agreed to the strategy."

"Ransom note? But who has been kidnapped?" asked Ed.

"Your youngest daughter named Tracy whom you somehow managed to sire jointly with Anias, along with our great-great-grand-daughter named Tsino:wen," said the mobile Mary, using Mohawk names.

Tracy and Mouse kidnapped? Good God! Ed felt like he had been kicked in the stomach! Stone-Coats could be exasperating! They had let him banter on about relative trivia in the midst of a kidnapping! Nineteen year old Tracy was the youngest child of himself and Anias/Ann. Besides being a descendant of the famous Mouse of recent Mohawk history, Tsino:wen/Mouse was also the five year old great-great-granddaughter of himself and Mary. Thus Tracy and Mouse were some sort of distant cousins or aunts or something to each other. The kidnapping of both girls was horrifying news but it must be some sort of a mistake! It simply had to be!

"Tiohrhen:sa sata:ti," Ed admonished the Marys in Mohawk to speak using only English. "Mouse was scheduled to visit the Museum of Natural History with Tracy today! Something about a rash of nifty new dinosaur skeletons found and reassembled through the help of Stone-Coats that were personally present back when the big lizard creatures lived. The new amphitheater-like museum wing that housed dinosaur-shaped Stone-Coats was also always a hoot to visit. The amphitheater was home-base for the hundreds of dino-Stone-Coats that roamed North Central Park for the amusement of humans. Being chased by a T-rex turned out to be a wonderful incentive for Park joggers. "The girls should have left the apartment for upper Manhattan a couple of hours ago! What could have happened?"

"They took a cab from here at 8:17 AM as planned but never arrived at their destination," said Fred. "This I confirmed by reviewing Museum camera images after the ransom note was accessed twenty-one minutes ago. Also they do not respond to my communication attempts."

Numbed by the news, Ed nevertheless crawled out from under the covers and out of bed. For a moment he felt strange being naked in front of the Marys, even though she/they had seen him nude many hundreds of times over the last seventy-five years or so. The thought that he had many times made love to Ann while the apartment Mary/Fred might have watched them gave him the creeps, even though he had lived within Stone-Coats for more than half his life, and knew that human nudity and sex meant nothing special to them. They lacked the biochemistry necessary for hormone-enhanced emotion, and sex was merely another strange behavior that carbon-and-water based life-forms such as humans engaged in.

As a practical matter Stone-Coats were much more interested in human defecation, as they immediately absorbed human feces and urine to obtain carbon and trace elements useful to them. Ed very quickly took care of that necessity in the master bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, though now that he knew he was feeding a Mary in doing so he again felt a bit odd.

"Let me see the ransom note," he said, as he emerged from the bathroom to dress and his ability to reason further returned to him.

"Dying your hair gray doesn't very effectively hide the fact that you haven't aged in over sixty years," mobile Mary remarked as Ed pulled on a shirt. "That is rather unusual for a human. I note that except for artificial hair coloring you still appear to be approximately thirty-five years old though you are approximately a hundred. But did I just glimpse a layer of unnecessary fat around that waistline? You should exercise more and eat less sweets, Ed. Is apples mixed with raspberries in a sugary sauce still your favorite pie filling?"

"Of course it is and I'll be exactly a hundred years old next week," Ed noted, "and I'll have you know that I'm in damned good shape for a human of a hundred. And who are you to make any sort of crack about longevity? A century is hardly any time at all for a Stone-Coat!" Stone-Coats were made principally of diamonds, quartz, and other durable minerals and typically 'lived' for many millions of years. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you, Fred?"

"I have been a functioning cognizant individual for only thirty two years. I walked here from Giant's Rest Mountain as a newly formulated Ice Giant to become a human habitat here in the Mohawk-dense area of Greenpoint. It took me only a year to merge myself into this building."

"You're a young Stone-Coat and a fast worker then. And what about you?" Ed asked the mobile Mary replicate.

"I've been a Mary for only twenty years but an independently functioning entity for at least thirty-three million years," said the human-shaped Stone-Coat.

"At least?" Ed asked.

"My current memory is insufficient to recall events prior to that," noted Mary. "Being as tiny as a human has significant drawbacks."

Ed was impressed. He had met Stone-Coats that were even older but not very many. Most Stone-Coats that were out and about in the world and encountering humans were recent migrants from Giants' Rest Mountain, and were less than fifty years old. This Stone-Coat had to be one of the older ones that migrated from Giant's Rest Mountain as an Ice Giant. Further, as the Adirondacks themselves were only five million years old and she was much older, she must have migrated to Giants' Rest Mountain from somewhere else, probably during some long- ago ice age when Ice Giants were up and about gathering trees for carbon. And now he/she/it had the looks, memories, and much of the personality of his first wife! This was indeed a very strange world! "Now where is that ransom note?" he asked.

"I left it with Bob after a cursory visual analysis," said the mobile Mary.

Ed stepped out of the little bedroom, down the short hallway, and into the tiny kitchen area, in his haste leaving the agonizingly slow mobile Mary behind. City apartments hadn't gotten any bigger over his lifetime he noted; possibly because over his lifetime the City population had increased by fifty-percent to over twelve million humans, even though some lower elevations of the city had already been abandoned due to flood risk. Sea level had risen eight feet over the last century, and hurricanes now frequently hit the East-Coast.

While coastal flooding and draught had motivated massive migrations world-wide to more habitable locations, ice sheets had been the primary reason for humans abandoning most of New England and what had once been the most highly populated areas of Canada. Even the great cities of Toronto and Montreal were abandoned and covered now by a ten meter thick ice sheet; nearly a million displaced Canadians now lived in New York City.

Even with its extreme variations in temperature between summer heat and winter cold and its shrinking land area, New York City remained attractive to humans as a place to live, though typical City living accommodations were still not very physically attractive or roomy. There was a unifying spirit shared by New Yorkers that had been an attractive force for centuries: a certain sense that even though NYC life sucked in oh so many ways, humanity here was united and generally getting along sensibly, while fully engaged in the adventure that was life. Some people wanted to live in a wilderness, climb mountains, or join the Army to live life to the fullest; New Yorkers mostly wanted to live in what had long been the most progressive and culturally diverse city in the world.

Ed's Stone-Coat cave living space deep within Giant's Rest Mountain on the Mohawk Reservation in the frozen Adirondack Mountains of upper-state New York was twice as large and habitable as this apartment, but nowadays he spent over half of his time here in the City because Ann needed to live close to the UN headquarters in nearby Manhattan and the kids mostly stayed with her. They had the entire third floor of the small apartment building that was Fred all to themselves: two conjoined apartments with a master bedroom, living area, and kitchen in one apartment, and three bedrooms and a bathroom for the kids in what had once been a separate next-door apartment. The space seemed barely adequate. How most City families managed to live in single tiny apartments was unimaginable to Ed, especially since very few apartment buildings were friendly, accommodating Stone-Coats like Fred/Mary.

Of course the home-office workspace that was also the living room area took up much of the duel apartment. Even when Ann and Ed officially had time off and were at home in the apartment, they frequently by necessity held virtual holographic meetings with remote colleagues by using their living room office. Ann was one of the most powerful humans on the planet and always had work to do, while Ed had tried unsuccessfully many times to totally remove himself from Mohawk Tribe duties but had failed. The Tribe adored their perpetually young white-man chief and took advantage of his good nature by making him their reluctant leader.

The ancient Mohawk tribal artifacts that adorned many of the walls made the apartment rooms seem even smaller, but they also made the apartment tolerable, Ed felt. He especially valued keepsakes that had belonged to his now departed earlier Tribe friends: bows, arrows, knives, belts, necklaces, scarves, axes, spears and slippers. The items helped keep his memories and love of them fresh, and nourished his spirit.

In the small kitchen bordering the living-room/office space Bob Ricket, recently deceased long-time all-around employee and friend, was busy cleaning a small accumulation of black ashes from around the gas-burners of the old stove using a damp paper towel. There was a faint odor of smoke. "Danger removed!" he said cheerfully. Bob had taken his own death very well, but then most zombies were usually content if not downright cheerful.

The dead but not totally dead usually had few worries; at least not ones that they obsessed about. They had looked at life/death from both sides now and were pleased to still be getting along OK. Also their thoughts were to various degrees the combined-thoughts of hundreds of thousands of large-brained insects that had only vague notions of humans and human thoughts including human emotions and emotional problems. But they knew enough to usually keep their humans breathing and happy.

"Good morning Boss!" Bob said cheerily. "You want I should make us some flap-jacks? I fetched fresh strawberries and blueberries this morning for us at the corner market on Manhattan Avenue."

That explained the water puddles on the floor, Ed reasoned. Bob had obviously tracked snow in from outside when he returned from his food shopping; something that he would never have been so careless to do when he was alive. Bob was relatively high-functioning for a zombie, but allowances still had to be made. "That would be swell Bob! Do your jants say you should eat a breakfast?"

The three-inch long med-tick with its tongue imbedded in Bob's spine controlled Bob via thoughts transmitted telepathically from the apartment building jant colony. Some thoughts were still those of Bob but the jants living in the building clearly provided the dominant brainpower of the partnership.

Ed repeated his question telepathically directly to the colony of intelligent ants that controlled Bob. There were a few dozen of the little creatures posted in one of the kitchen cupboards, helping to provide the vital life-preserving telepathic link between Bob's med-tick and the basement jant colony. Without the augmented thought patterns they provided through the med-tick, Bob wouldn't be talking, making breakfast, or even breathing. Also every second or so the jants were nice enough to cause Bob's heart to beat. If Ed focused on jant colony communications with Bob's med-tick, he could overhear the heart-beat commends and other jant message traffic that kept Bob going.

"YES, CHIEF ED," replied the local jant colony. "BOB SHOULD EAT."

"THANKS FOR THE FRUIT," Ed told the jants. A tenth of the mass of each individual worker-jant was brain matter that contributed to colony-level sentience. Keeping Bob going since his death obviously already required a great deal of jant mental resources. Controlling Bob all the way to the local market and back took significant jant resources beyond just maintaining him, and the jant colony living in the basement of Fred was a relatively small one.

"NO PROBLEM," the jants replied. "BOB ALSO ACQUIRED TWENTY POUNDS OF SUGAR FOR OUR COLONY. ALL CHARGED TO YOU OF COURSE. WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN MORE BUT THAT WAS THE MAXIMUM THAT BOB COULD CARRY. HIS SMALL-WHEELED SHOPPING CART IS UNUSABLE IN SNOW. NEXT TIME WE'LL HAVE HIM TOW A SLED SO THAT HE CAN GET US MORE FOOD. WE ASSESS THAT BOB STILL PHYSICALLY FUNCTIONS WELL ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN THIS COLONY AND YOUR IMMEDIATE HUMAN HOUSEHOLD."

"SWELL!" said Ed. "Just two large pancakes and two eggs for me then, Bob. Our visiting Mary says I'm putting on too much weight. But tell me what you know about how the kids are doing."

"I saw Mark and Sue off to York College after their breakfast as usual," said Bob. "This is their last class day before the winter-break. They arrived there safely together in Queens according to exchanged messages. I've got some more reports on their well-being just minutes ago. No worries there."

"And Tracy? Tell me about the kidnapping."

"Mouse arrived early and shared breakfast with all the kids. That cleaned us out of human food; that's why I had to go shopping. As I was leaving for the market a standard Yellow Cab picked up Tracy and Mouse for their museum outing as planned. Nothing to worry about there until the nasty note was discovered. It was taped to the outside of the apartment door when I got back from shopping. It had to have come while I was out."

"And where is the note now?" Ed asked. "It has to be examined."

"I destroyed it with fire, of course," said Bob. "It would be very disturbing to you or Ann if you were to read it. Nothing to worry about there anymore. You want blueberry pancakes or plain?"

"Blueberry," said Ed, as he sat down at the kitchen table, stunned. So than the ashes on the stove and the faint odor of smoke is what remained of the ransom note! When he was alive Bob would have never done such a dumb thing. What remained of the seventy year old man's psyche after his untimely accidental death, combined with the thoughts of over a hundred thousand jants that had their nest in the basement of the apartment building/Fred, resulted in unpredictable and not always sensible Bob-behavior. But for Bob and his friends it was better than Bob being fully dead. It was a good thing that jants and med-ticks had been on hand when he fell down the steep apartment stairs and officially died. Maybe.

Ed decided to again bypass Bob and deal directly with the jant colony, as Bob was currently occupied making blueberry pancakes, a very delicate and challenging task for a zombie. Dangerous even, as it involved use of a hot gas stove and zombies reacted too slowly to pain caused by such things as burns. "WHY DID YOU HAVE BOB DESTROY THE RANSOM NOTE?" he asked them telepathically using the jant language. He liked to occasionally use jant language instead of English to remind the little critters that they couldn't hide anything from him.

"IT HAD SERVED ITS APPARENT PURPOSE," the jants replied silently in English, as reverberating thought formed by thousands of tiny telepathically-linked jant brains acting as a single jant-colony mind. "THE STONE-COAT BUILDING HAD RECORDED ITS CONTENTS. AS WE/BOB SAID THE CONTENT WAS ANALYZED AND SUSPECTED OF BEING DISTURBING TO YOU, AS EVIDENCED BY THE FACT THAT BOB HIMSELF BECAME GREATLY DISTURBED WHEN HE READ IT UNTIL WE CALMED HIM DOWN. ALSO BOB AND BY EXTENSION WE HAD BEEN REQUESTED BY ANN TO ISOLATE YOU FROM DISTURBING INFORMATION AND ACTIONS."

How thoughtful of her, Ed conceded.

"WE FACILITATED ANN'S REQUEST BY ANIMATING BOB TO PHYSICALLY DESTROY THE NOTE. FIRE WAS SIMPLY THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF COMPLETE DESTRUCTION AVAILABLE. THE RESULTING UN-METERED CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING IS CALCULATED TO BE MINIMAL, AND WILL BE BALANCED OUT BY FRED VIA A CORRESPONDING INCREASE IN ROOFTOP VEGETATION PER RELEVANT CITY SO-CALLED GREEN ORDINANCES. THE INCREASED CARBON GATHERING CAPACITY OF THE VEGETATION WILL ALSO BE USED BY THE FRED TO ACQUIRE CARBON FOR HIS NANOTUBE NETWORKS."

"I collaborate that account," said Fred, as he Bob provided Ed a plate of steaming hot pancakes and eggs and Ed dug into them. Most Stone-Coats were nowadays equipped to send and receive telepathic communications which were formally only accessible by certain carbon-based life-forms. Now many Stone-Coats could directly communicate with the telepathic jants. And as Stone-Coats could link directly into the Internet, so now could the jants.

"Note that by applying the criteria at hand, destruction of the note was the logical thing for them to do, though unfortunate from a purely practical viewpoint," added the mobile Mary, who was only now finally arriving from the bedroom in her incredibly slow wheelchair.

"I needed to see that note!" said Ed emphatically. Through his Stone-Coat brain implant he detected files being transferred between Mary and Fred. A large portion of Fred that was the living-room wall immediately lit up and displayed the enlarged image of a printed document, presumably the now destroyed ransom note, while the living-room window portion of Fred darkened to block morning sunlight that would have otherwise obscured the image.

'Keep our secrets but tell us yours or the young humans will die,' the note said.

'Seek us out for further instructions.'

"That was the entire note?" Ed asked. "What the hell does it mean? I don't suppose there was an envelope?"

"The envelope was also destructively burned by Bob," said the wall.

"I try to be thorough," added Bob. "Nothing to worry about there anymore."

"The envelope simply had your name and address on it," said the mobile Mary. "There was no return address and no additional delivery information."

"It was delivered by a visually unidentifiable human," added Fred. "The human wore a hooded coat, gloves, and ski-mask that hid any identifiable features, including race and sex."

"What about finger prints or other DNA traces on the note and envelope?" asked Ed.

"Unfortunately destroyed and not recorded, if they ever existed," said mobile Mary.

"Swell!" said Ed.

"Did I make another mistake?" asked Bob, as he sat down at the table with Ed to eat his own pancakes and eggs. The question hadn't been controlled by the jants, Ed noticed. Much of what was the living Bob remained. The best parts, actually. To Ed that's what justified Bob's continued life in zombie form and his continued responsibility here as butler, handy-man, nursemaid, cook, and so forth. And now he also fed and cared for the jant colony in the basement. Even dead, Bob was a good, useful, and beloved human/jant being. In particular he had in years past cared for the kids when the busy schedules of their parents disturbed their parenting. Big-time, Bob was part of the family. His presence in the apartment below theirs was a constant comfort.

"No; don't worry yourself, old friend," Ed said. The last thing he needed now was a distraught and/or panicky Bob/jant colony. "Everything will be alright. What is the clue that led to seeking your assistance?" he asked the mobile Mary.

Fred answered. The image on the wall shifted and enlarged to highlight a small symbol above the printed massage that Ed over his long lifetime had seen many times before but paid little heed. It looked a bit like a fancy upside-down capital letter 'U' to Ed. "What is it?"

"The header on the paper used for the ransom note contained the Greek capital letter omega," said Mary.

"What does it mean in this context?" Ed asked. "A collage fraternity?"

"Not necessarily; omega has dozens of traditional human meanings, many related to human mathematics, physics, and commercial enterprises," said Fred, "but in the current context I interpret it to refer to the Omega Group of the City University of New York educational system, for the footer at the bottom of the page contained also the letters C-U-N-Y."

Ed was of course well acquainted with CUNY, since many of his family and local Mohawk Tribe members had over the last century attended various CUNY branch campuses. Mark and Sue currently attended the York campus of CUNY in Queens, located only a few subway or Sky Rail stops away from the Brooklyn apartment.

"And I am the lead Stone-Coat liaison assigned to work and interface with Omega," added mobile Mary. "That is my possible connection to this apparent kidnapping."

"Public university operatives kidnaped Tracy and Mouse?" Ed asked.

"Doubtful, though some sort of association with Omega is definitely implied," said the mobile Mary.

"I think that I've heard of them!" said Ed. "Aren't they a bunch of fanatical gloom and doom academics?"

"That description is a somewhat apt but perhaps an unduly severe caricature," said mobile Mary. "Omega studies the many serious dangers thought to face mankind and the Earth as a whole. In response to Global Warming and other issues, decades ago the research resources of the CUNY educational system were enlisted to help analyze threats to mankind and provide heightened awareness of them to students and other City dwellers. Dozens of other educational systems around the world have of course done much the same thing. Gloom and doom is now a common academic research discipline world-wide."

"So then, CUNY students can be kept up to date on how screwed up everything is," noted Ed. "That must make their day!"

"Each of the current three dozen schools of the CUNY system has been assigned several concern areas to study," continued Mary. "Each school campus hosts several Omega subgroups made up of students, faculty, Stone-Coats, and even jant colony zombies, with each subgroup assigned one or more topics. Other local colleges and universities also participate, with the CUNY system providing the integrating infrastructure. Logic applied to the ransom note suggests that one or more of the subgroups within Omega may be involved in the kidnapping."

"Cripes!" said Ed. "How many Omega subgroups are there?"

"The number increases as new dangers are creatively identified and categorized," said mobile Mary. "Currently the number of subgroups expressed as a base-ten number is five hundred and thirty two, spread all over the City at the three dozen CUNY campuses. They address thrice that many delineated issues and sub-issues."

Mouth agape, Ed sank down heavily into his favorite recliner.

"We will of course apply logic to the structure of the subgroups to focus on the most probable Omega entities involved," said Mary, with her fixed cheerful smile.

"Of course," said Ed. "Have the police or anyone else been notified of the kidnappings?"

"Usually kidnappers frown upon police notification," said Fred. "As far as we know aside from the perpetrators and the Tribe parents of Mouse that I immediately notified we here are the only entities currently cognizant of the kidnapping of humans, aside of course from Stone Runner."

"I forgot about Stone Runner!" said Ed. "Stone Runner has been paired with Mouse since birth!" The Stone-Coat provided two tons of high powered protection for the girls! They simply couldn't have been kidnapped! This all had to be some sort of elaborate joke set up by Tracy and/or Mouse! "What does Stone Runner say?"

"He is severely disassembled and is unable to think or communicate," said Fred. "The remnants of the smashed cab and small pieces of a radically disassembled Stone-Coat were discovered approximately half a mile from here half an hour before the note arrived. The demolished cab was automated by primitive human computers and had no fully sentient driver. ID encoding identified the nearby Stone-Coat remains to be that of Stone Runner. The cab remains are under human police investigation but thus far the Stone-Coat incident is being treated by human police as a possibly related hate crime. It is notable that no blood or other signs of human harm were found. Thus far the human police have apparently not yet discovered that Tracy and Mouse or any other humans were involved."

Ed breathed a sigh of relief. At least no human blood had been found! But Stone Runner had been disassembled? What could bust to bits a creature made of two tons of solid diamonds, other tough gems, metals, and carbon graphene fibers, Ed wondered? Humans had managed to do that to Stone-Coats many times world-wide of course, but it usually required large amounts of explosives. An explosion of the required size only half a mile away would have probably woken Ed earlier, or at least been detected by Fred, or certainly by others that would have reported it. In any case this confirmed for Ed that the kidnapping was indeed real. The girls were indeed in big trouble! He needed help! "The City police might as well be told of the human abductions now, Fred. Please do it immediately!"

"Certainly," said Fred. "There. It has been done."

"Stone Runner was disassembled how?"

"Unknown," said the wall/Fred. "A Stone-Coat of greater size and strength could have perhaps physically done it but all Stone-Coats in the vicinity indicate no involvement. All Stone-Coats of the City have of course been notified of the disassembly event and are on high alert."

"Make sure they are also aware of the kidnappings," said Ed. Yes, Stone-Coats always tended to take destruction of a fellow Stone-Coat very seriously; immediate deadly retaliation was the usual response. Usually they simply squashed the offending humans, though they had other deadly methods. And Stone-Coats didn't lie, Ed knew, not even the ones influenced by human templates, and Stone-Coats didn't harm other Stone-Coats, ever. Whatever had done this, it wasn't a Stone-Coat. "How long will it take to re-assemble Stone Runner?"

"Approximately one week," said Fred, "even though that task has been given highest priority. And as the damage done to him is severe enough to severely degrade memory, even when re-assembled he might not be able to aid in the investigation of the kidnapping. There have been several other severe Stone-Coat disassembly cases in recent weeks, most local to New York City, and none of the reassembled Stone-Coats have been able to identify their attackers."

"Swell;" said Ed, "an experienced serial disassembler and kidnapper did this!"

He stepped from the living room and into the hallway that led to the kid's rooms, and glanced briefly into each of the three bedrooms. All of them were cluttered with clothes and books and empty plates from breakfast. The kids were an unruly bunch that Ed already missed enormously. That all three still lived mostly with their parents was a miracle due to soon end. All of them had plans to soon move out and be on their own. For all of them it was time to leave the nest and go out into the big screwed up world!

Troops of jants scurried about, clearing away doughnut crumbs and other eatable evidence of human habitation. Their familiar brown, inch-long ant bodies with enlarged brain-bearing head segments were unmistakable. Ed was careful not to crush any of the little buggers that kept the apartment clean and devoted much of themselves to supporting Bob.

Ed half stumbled into Tracy's room and sat down on her unmade bed. The thought that his youngest daughter might never return suddenly struck him again like a hammer-blow. Tracy was strong, bright, and beautiful inside and out, just like her mother. Little Mouse at only five years old already displayed the wisdom and abilities of her name-sake, the little old Mohawk woman that befriended Ed and Mary when they first joined the Mohawk Giants' Rest Tribe more than sixty years earlier.

Now Ed felt helpless and alone but what must the kidnapped kids be feeling? Were they injured or even dead? Cold and hungry? No, he couldn't afford to think of Tracy and little Mouse being killed, hurt, or even uncomfortable; he had to somehow maintain hope and keep his wits! He had to get them back safe!

But he knew nothing about kidnappings or who might be disassembling Stone-Coats, nor did the Marys. The note from the kidnappers said nothing about not working with the police, but though the NYPD had now been notified Ed knew that their help would likely be slow in coming. This was a huge city where many people were getting kidnapped or worse every damn day. The Tribe would help, certainly, but he needed even more help, and he needed someone with political pull to get a high level of government attention and help.

He hadn't seen or spoken with his old friend Jerry Green for several months, but he returned to the bedroom and from a nightstand drawer recovered an item that few people possessed: a Government quantum-encrypted cellphone with a speed-dial link to the most powerful man in the United States; likely the most powerful human on the planet!

****

CHAPTER 2

### Zombie Cop

"Driscal! In my office!" bellowed Lieutenant Brigs. For a moment most activity in the room came to a stop as other detectives glanced at Frank Driscal and several of them snickered. The Precinct Captain had visited Brigs a short time ago, and when he left, the old man hadn't been smiling. The entire office sensed that something was coming down, something big and probably in some way very bad. Even the victims, punks and perps involuntarily visiting the office sensed that something was up and also glanced at Frank, the apparent focus for whatever was happening. They saw only a slightly pudgy past-middle aged cop. But the other cops surmised that something serious was up: something nasty for Detective Sargent Frank Driscal the zombie to worry about. They all breathed sighs of relief once they finally realized that they weren't the ones being summoned by Brigs.

"Shit!" Frank muttered, as he stood and walked away from his desk and computer workstation. What now? He was already over his eyeballs in cases: special cases that involved his special skills, most of them off the books. Brigs knew that and so did the Captain. Generally they let him and his little silent partners alone to pursue whatever cases they wanted to pursue and they usually liked the results. They actually appreciated Frank's detective work even more since his death.

That hadn't always been the case. His bosses had actually tried to fire him two years ago, when they finally noticed that he was dead and a zombie. The Police Union didn't seem to give a damn that he was a zombie, though anti-zombie prejudice in the Police-Force and in society in general was still high. Of course now there were laws on the books to protect zombie rights, and the police were supposed to help enforce those, but to most people human bodies controlled by intelligent ants through use of three-inch long ticks attached to their spines was never going to be anything but repugnant and cause for discrimination. Frank would have been fired for one reason or another, but unknown powers from on-high had forced the NYPD to keep him on. The powers were unknown to most humans, but Frank knew that it had to be jant political influence. The jant Eastern Consortium wanted Frank Driscal on the job.

The NYPD hadn't been sorry that they kept him on, for the most part. It turns out that Frank could solve cases that ordinary human cops couldn't. The City was full of new kinds of crimes, crimes never dreamt of in earlier times - many of them jant related. Not all American jant colonies belonged to the relatively stable jant Eastern Consortium. A sizable percentage of colonies went rogue, and often that involved zombies and jant/human conflict. Frank helped maintain order over rogue jants as well as rogue humans. He was a very busy cop.

But that was the big picture view that Frank didn't really give-a-shit about. Mostly Frank and the jant colony that he was partnered with simply went after local bad guys and didn't think about any big pictures. Collectively Frank and his jant colony partners didn't have the time or mental resources for big picture issues. Too much 'small picture' crap was going on in the City; far too much for a tired old literally dead-on-his feet cop controlled by a small semi-rogue jant colony to worry about. Frank 'lived' life one case at a time; everything else was needless distraction.

Frank walked into Brig's little office and closed the door behind him. "What's up Boss?" he asked. Mark Brigs, a huge middle-aged hulk of a black man, looked up from behind his desk and smiled at his star weirdo detective. Brigs wore a med-tick, Frank noticed from the silent telepathic jant/tick chatter. Well that was something new! There was a small portable cooler next to the desk that held a hundred or so jants - a link in the line of telepathic communications between Brigs and the Consortium-aligned jant colony in the trunk of the man's car.

However Driscal's own jant colony informed him that the jant chatter directed to and from Brigs was to cure cancer in the man, not to control most of his life functions and actions. Brigs wasn't a zombie; not yet anyway. Brigs was simply a patient being cured of disease by a med-tick and jants, like millions of other humans world-wide. The jants didn't have enough resources to control very many zombie humans; Brigs would very likely never be a zombie.

"Your jants say that all your cancer will be completely gone within a week, Lieutenant," Frank noted.

"Good!" said Brigs. "I can't wait to get this damn tick thing off and out of my back. Ugly damned thing! But I didn't call you in here for that, Driscal. I've got a new case for you; something right up your bug-brained alley."

"I already have a case, Brigs: that big jant-run sex ring in South Manhattan." Some jant colonies went hyper-rogue when through med-tick treatments of humans they experienced strong instances of human pain or pleasure. In that way human addictions could be passed on to jant colonies in a second-hand sort of way. In this case three big neighboring jant colonies had become addicted to human sex and drugs. Two dozen humans, half of them zombies and the other half significantly influenced by med-ticks that were also treating their less serious medical conditions, were perpetually engaged in sex and drugs to satisfy the insatiable need for pleasure of the associated rogue jant colonies. These jants had become addicted to human sex and drug responses. That was not as bad as becoming addicted to serial killings of humans, but it wasn't good. It was an incurable disease, from the jant perspective, with destruction of the addicted jant colonies the only currently known remedy.

"The SWAT team juiced-dead those rogue jant colonies last night, Frank," said Brigs. "Nothing left now but some clean up. Most of the humans involved are weirded out but will survive, maybe even a couple of the more prominent dead ones. This new case involves the disassembly of a Stone-Coat in Brooklyn."

"I don't do Brooklyn cases and I don't work Stone-Coat disassembly cases," said Frank.

"You'll work this one," said Brigs. "This one has VIP interest; interest so high on the food chain that even the Captain don't know who's interested. A VIP living in Brooklyn claims some kind of connection to the new Stone-Coat disassembly case that popped up this morning. He says two kids were kidnapped in the incident: one daughter nineteen and the other five years old that he is also related to. Guy's name is Ed Rumsfeld. You ever hear of him?"

Frank didn't recall the name, but his silent jant partners did. "Caucasian Mohawk Chief, right?"

"And himself some kind of VIP from human, jant, and Stone-Coat standpoints," said Brigs. "His name triggered automatic alarms that apparently notified city, state, and federal officials. Never seen anything like it! Then all kinds of shit came down on the Captain from high-on-high, he came down on me, and now I'm coming down on you. This case is big, really big, at least politically."

"Sure," said Frank. "So it's VIPs that are involved, and you know how fucking politically correct I am with VIPs. Usually I tell them to go fuck themselves when I meet them. So how am I the right guy for this case?"

"They want you for the little buddies linked into your fat head, Discal: they want a zombie detective! Look around the office, Frank; you're the only damn zombie cop we've got! Work hand in hand with Rumsfeld on this. Follow his lead, as long as what he wants to do is reasonable. Stick with him like glue. Protect him and help him get back his kidnapped kin safely. That's the job in a nutshell."

"I work alone," said Driscal, "just me and my little bug buddies. I don't work with anyone else and I don't babysit nobody, not even VIPs."

"You'll do it this time," said Brigs. "Now get your lazy jant-whipped ass and your little bug-buddies across the river to Brooklyn pronto. The Greenpoint area just across the river. Set up to meet with Rumsfeld and then stick with him 24-7 until the case is solved."

Frank would have argued more but oddly his little bug buddies weren't supporting him. They were busy communicating with other jant colonies about the case, he realized, something they vary rarely did. They were so busy yapping with other colonies that Frank experienced some difficulty walking. Hopefully the little buggers would remember to keep his heart going.

It was devilishly cold out, especially for frostbite-prone zombies, and before stepping out of the nice warm precinct office space, Frank awkwardly zipped on his hooded winter coat that was lined with Stone-Coat manufactured thermal material, and pulled on his leggings and calf-high boots.

Not for the first time, he thought about moving south to warmer weather before he was dead-dead. The cold of New England was no damned place for a zombie and his warmth-loving jant colony. On the other hand, the South was overrun with invasive and mutant critters. Giant snakes and birds. Weird fish and insects. Parasitic worms that would try to eat his poor already challenged legally dead body! OK, on reflection maybe the City wasn't so bad!

In the cold unheated Precinct Police garage, he unplugged the electric and hydrogen fuel hook-ups that kept his all-wheel drive Humvee warm and ready to go, and kept the jant colony in the back of the vehicle comfortably warm and active. The Humvee was charged up for several days of operation; hopefully this new case would be long over before recharging became necessary. The Humvee was also well-stocked with types of jant foods that had a long shelf-life, though some fresh food would have to be obtained during the case for both man and insects.

Once inside his big ancient Humvee Frank had to unzip his heavy coat, even though the cabin was considerably cooler than the rear enclosed compartment that helped to comfortably house his jant colony. "Take us to the corner of Manhattan Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint, in Brooklyn," he told the ancient Humvee control computer, as the hydrogen-fueled engine roared to life.

He preferred manual control, but knew that his sluggish jant-controlled reflexes weren't up to the task of driving on slick winter roads. Motor control had been partly lost from his brain when he died two years ago in the drug-bust shoot-out; a nine-millimeter slug to the brain will sometimes do that. However most of his 'higher' cognitive brain functions survived. He had been very lucky; or so they told him when he woke up a month later in the hospital with three med-ticks attached to his spine. Right. Lucky. That was the story of his life all right: one fucking lucky break after another.

It had snowed another ten inches last night, and the streets though already plowed were ice-lined and slick and difficult even with computer-aided four-wheel drive. And it was starting to snow yet again! It was only mid-December and already snow was pilled all around the cleared streets and sidewalks to man-height and higher, even though human and Stone-Coat crews worked 24-7 to cart it off to be dumped into the already swollen rivers. And it was still officially Fall! Too bad Global Warming involved so damn much snow!

Traffic was ridiculous even though the morning rush hour was long past and the mid-day mini-rush hadn't started yet. Most New Yorkers of course walked and/or used the subways and Sky Rails and but still managed to clog most ground-level roads with vehicles: mostly under-sized and underpowered fully electric cars and trucks that inched along anemically along City streets. When he was a kid Frank used to collect holographic videos of old-time gasoline-powered cars that could out-speed even the hydrogen-fuel aided cop-cars of today.

For a while Frank found himself in traffic that was slowed by the passage of a sixty-foot tall Ice Giant that walked ponderously down the middle of the street in front of the Humvee. Most City sewers and other underground utilities had fortunately been reinforced to accommodate the behemoths, and Frank hoped that this one didn't inadvertently create any impassible yard-deep potholes with its eight-foot long diamond-clawed feet. The massive stone critter had to weigh at least a couple-hundred tons, Frank knew. Even on a dull snowy day it's 'stone coat' of diamonds glittered and glowed dully, as did the gigantic solid diamond claws of its feet and hands. Fortunately it was only twenty degrees Fahrenheit and the giant could efficiently freeze and melt water to drive his hydraulic locomotion and move it over eight miles an hour, which was almost as fast as the normal traffic flow anyway.

Stone-Coats had it easy compared to zombies, Frank figured. Of all the forms that Stone-Coats could assume, the Ice Giants such as this one spooked out him and his jants the most: so much size and power and computer-like alien intelligence! Worst of all they were always so damned calm, patient, and logical! This one made a right turn that took it out of Frank's path, but it turned its SUV-sized head to stare with its red-glowing, saucer-sized eyes at Frank and his Humvee as they drove past it. It could probably read the EM signature of the Humvee and knew it was a cop car.

As the Humvee drove itself, Frank returned the stare of the Giant. It looked something like a gigantic deformed white bear that walked on its hind-legs, except its arms, diamond claws, and beaver-like diamond incisors were proportionally far too big. He could well imagine such a creature chewing down trees and carrying them off.

Frank's jant colony told him more about Ed Rumsfeld. It turned out that the lucky guy was married to none-other than Ann Richards, who was essentially the leading figure in the UN and even at over fifty years old was still quite a dish of a woman, in Frank's human half's opinion. Frank remembered seeing her in person once, over a decade ago when he was still alive, walking for exercise in Central Park near where the old zoo used to be. She still turned heads and turned on male hormones.

Frank's male hormones could now only be turned on through his jants, and that only very rarely happened nowadays. It was too dangerous to the jants for their zombie to get involved with sex or drugs or anything else good that might lead to their addiction. Abstinence was the safest though dullest course. Frank's current zombie lifestyle was even more dull and empty than his pre-death human lifestyle had been. Maybe it was a good thing that he lacked both the hormones and synapses to worry about that.

His jants continued to acquire intel on Rumsfeld. Ed Rumsfeld's jant and Stone-Coat connections were even more interesting than his human connections. He was said to be a Mohawk Chief for both the local City Mohawks and that famous tribe up-north where the Stone-Coats originally came from. Plus he was telepathic! Plus he was said to be Clan Leader for the Mohawk Jant Clan, whatever the hells that meant. Most strangely of all his jants said that Rumsfeld was a close friend of the Creator. Now what the hell did that mean? Creator? The ignorant rogue jant colony that supported his life didn't know.

Whatever it all meant the jant colony that he always carried with him in the trunk of his unmarked Humvee squad car to keep his dead body animated was all atwitter and in touch with other jant colonies: something that his little rogue colony usually avoided. In general the less rogue contact with the jant Eastern Consortium the better for any rogue. But in this case the Consortium, Stone-Coats, the Government, powerful VIPs, and even the UN might be involved. This was big all right, and Frank didn't like it. Another nice straight-forward case of jant colony sex and drug addiction via zombie proxies would have been much more comfortable.

Besides that, the recent rash of Stone-Coat disassembles had everyone spooked, including the Stone-Coats themselves. Something super powerful and deadly was trashing New York City Stone-Coats! Frank didn't want to personally confront who/what was doing that! But a job was a job.

****

When Tracy Rumsfeld woke up she was laying uncomfortably on her side on a thin pad atop a hard floor in a in a cold totally dark place. Next to her someone small lay quietly against her back, sharing her body warmth.

"It's me, Mouse," said the someone with a small little-girl voice. "I just woke up a minute ago."

"Are you OK?" Tracy asked. She rolled over so that she could face and embrace her little distant cousin. Her feet hit a wall when she did so, and from the echoes of their voices she realized that they were in a relatively small enclosed space. A walk-in closet or bathroom maybe?

"Yes, but where are we?" Mouse said. "I don't sense anyone else nearby, not even Stone Runner or people or jants. What happened?"

That wasn't good, thought Tracy. Even at only five years old Mouse's telepathic abilities were astounding, and her Stone-Coat brain implant that she used to communicate with Stone Runner could detect and communicate with any nearby Stone-Coat. "I remember a cab window breaking and a bad smell, then nothing else until now. I think that we were gassed unconscious and then kidnapped."

"But where is Stone Runner?" said Mouse. "Gas wouldn't bother him, and he wouldn't let this happen to us!"

"I don't know," said Tracy, "but I do know that right now there are a lot of folks looking for us. All sorts of folks that will find us soon for sure, I hope."

"Oh, I very much doubt that," said a voice from the darkness, loud and emotionless.

"Who said that?" Tracy asked.

But only silence and cold empty darkness answered.

****

When Ann Richards entered the terminal at La Guardia Airport she was unexpectedly greeted by more than her usual two-person local UN security detail. Something was up! She spotted at least half a dozen additional UN Security agents, plus a familiar well-dressed man who stepped forward to shake her hand firmly.

"Welcome home, Ambassador Richards," said Grant Stephens, head of local UN Security. A tall athletic man in his mid-forties, Stephens usually exuded confidence and determination, but right now he looked shaken, Ann noted. She didn't have any of the telepathic skills of her husband, but she could read facial expressions, body language, and hand-shakes like the pro diplomat she was. "And Ambassador Talking Stone, of course," Stephens added, addressing the Stone-Coat that walked closely behind Ann. The six-foot tall diamond-coated behemoth had a commanding presence, but Stephens held his focus on her, Ann noticed. Something big was up all right, and it wasn't good, and it specifically involved her!

"Your daughter Tracy has been kidnapped," Stephens stated calmly and softly, though the statement struck Ann like a hammer-blow. "Along with a young Mohawk Tribe child named Mouse."

"Yes; I am receiving details on it now from local Stone-Coats," said Talking Stone dispassionately. "Stone Runner was severely disassembled and the two humans are missing. And you and the rest of the UN security staff are in a state of elevated alert, as are all Stone-Coats in the area. The jants also know of it, as do the human police at City, State, and Federal levels."

"Yes," said Stephens. "Though multiple threads of inquiry are being pursued, this is being treated by us as an attack on the UN."

Ann was momentarily taken aback. She was used to crisis and to helping to address it: starvation, malnutrition, riots, rebellion, war, migration, storms, earthquakes, terror attacks, protests, plagues, and so-on. But the bad things happened to other people in mostly other countries, not here at home and not to her. Crisis happened to strangers. This was very different. Tracy was her youngest: her baby. This kidnapping was very personal and hurtful. "Who?"

"We don't know," said Stephens. "Do you?"

"I report all threats I receive to your staff," said Ann. "You tell me." She received hundreds threats every day of course, mostly hateful ones from humans that still objected to the Stone-Coats and jants that she and Talking Stone jointly represented in the UN, and to the UN in general. As an effective UN ambassador, she was hated by millions of conspiracy-prone humans world-wide, including many local City people.

"With humans it's the unspoken threats that are typically the most dangerous," noted Talking Stone.

"Exactly!" said Stephens. "Any possibilities come to mind? Some new threat or a crisis what may have triggered this? Anything?"

"No," said Ann. "Nothing that immediately stands out, anyway. What about my husband?"

"What about your husband?" Stephens countered. "Should he be a suspect?"

"No; he could be the target! He is also a VIP with a lot of involvements and connections that may have bred enemies."

"Less so than his legendary forbearers, but I suppose that's true," said Stephens.

Ann rolled her eyes but both she and Talking Stone managed to otherwise not react. Like almost everyone else on the planet, Stephens had no idea that the public three generations of Ed were all in fact one non-aging person. Ed was his own grandpa. Best to keep that a secret. "Has not the US Government expressed interest in this case?" She was of course thinking of Jerry Green, the secretive leader of the USA government, Ed's longtime friend, the genetic-engineering creator of the jants, and cause of his and Ed's unusual longevity. She was sure that in this sort of crisis Ed would have immediately reached out to Jerry for help.

Grant nodded. "Huge interest. As a matter of fact we received urgent direct calls from both the United States President and the Secretary of State. They actually alerted us to the kidnapping situation in the first place."

"My husband doubtlessly alerted them," said Ann. "Does that level of political influence not suggest to you that he and not me could in fact be the actual target of this kidnapping?"

The face of the UN official reddened a shade. "We will of course investigate that possibility."

"Within the bounds of UN protocols," said Ann. "The USA is a class-A country not under UN jurisdiction. The USA Feds and the Stone-Coats doubtlessly have official jurisdiction for this case, along with the local City police. The UN can play only a support role in any domestic investigation, unless a vote of the entire UN overrides normal established protocol. There has been no such vote."

"Of course," said Stephens, though his eyes said something else. "Our role is primarily protection of the UN including its ambassadors. For your personal safely we're taking you and Ambassador Talking Stone into protective custody. You will be taken to one of our underground facilities in the Catskills to await resolution of this incident."

"Wrong, Grant," said Ann. "I'm going now to be with my husband in Brooklyn." She was a head shorter than Stephens and half his weight, but her force of personality was dominating.

"And I go with her," said Talking Stone. He moved forward to stand beside Ann, raised a massive diamond-coated arm to protectively hold above and around her shoulders, and stared at Stephens with his unblinking red-glowing eyes. Under his other arm he carried Ann's suitcase.

"Negative," said Stephens, "according to directive 33.94 you can both be restrained by me."

"Wrong," stated Talking Stone. "Not if the ambassadors in question object, which we do. I wrote the directives under which you operate, Mr. Stephens; I will not be lectured by you on what they say and mean."

"However we will take our normal security detail with us, of course," said Ann.

"You do this against my strongest recommendations," said Grant. "I want that in the official record."

"I have just now placed your objection and our over-ruling of it in the official record," said Talking Stone. "Come Ann." Talking Stone and Ann, followed by her two normal security people, followed by several others, made their way through the crowded terminal. People dodged their approach; two tons of animated rock with giant diamond claws and bear-like form was nothing to bump into. A few terminal passengers paused and looked, pointed, or recorded the progress of the entourage, but most paid it little heed. Both Stone-Coats and rifle-armed humans had become a common sight world-wide. Those people that paid close attention recognized Ann from news broadcasts, but most were New Yorkers that didn't react very strongly to VIPs, except perhaps entertainers. New Yorkers mostly simply went about their own business and expected others to do the same.

When they stepped through the doorway leading outside Ann in her light jacket was hit with the cold immediately. After two weeks in balmy Southern Europe, returning to New York City was like stepping into a freezer. Though the science of it had been explained to her many times, she was still confounded by the fact that the net warming of the world had resulted in the development of a few places that were colder for a while, including Eastern Canada and the USA New England states. Eastern Antarctica was also for a time temporarily colder and snowier, a useful situation that slowed its ultimate melting due to the increasingly warmer waters that surrounded it. However now even Eastern Antarctica was pitted throughout with melt-water lakes and rivers. Within a few centuries even it would completely melt, plunging much of the highly human-populated coastlands under water, including New York City. Or maybe not. There were growing rumors that the Stone-Coats would perhaps save the City.

Walking Stone actually preferred below-freezing temperatures that supported his ice-driven hydraulic systems, and was fortunately immediately able to electronically hail a heavy-duty Stone-Coat friendly cab for himself and Ann, and for Kirk and Jet, their human UN security team. Not every cab was built to accommodate bulky two-ton fares like Talking Stone along with several humans. Like most cabs this one had no human driver, so the three humans had the entire warm and cozy front seat to themselves, while Talking Stone sat in back with Ann's suitcase, riding with windows and roof wide open to the freezing cold and falling snow.

"This is exactly the same model cab that was destroyed this morning in the kidnapping," remarked Talking Stone. "We should all stay alert."

Ann was anxious to learn more. Talking Stone offered to share raw information that had been passed to him, but Ann decided to first get summary information.

"Ed, what the hell is going on?" Ann asked her husband, when she reached him by phone. "I just heard about the kidnapping! How could this happen?"

"I don't know, Ann," Ed replied. "I'm walking my way down Manhattan Avenue now to meet with a police detective at the site of the kidnapping here in Greenpoint." Ed reminded himself again as he crossed another side-street that 'right turns on red' were not allowed for motor vehicles, which was helpful to pedestrians such as him and Mary.

"It happened near home?" Ann asked.

"Yes; the crime scene is only a few blocks from our Eagle Street apartment," said Ed. "I got Jerry Green to pull some strings and make this a very high priority case for everyone. He has assured me that Stone-Coats, jants, and humans are all on the case. We'll find them, I promise you we will! We have to!"

"I'll meet you there, Ed," said Ann, "and I'm bringing Talking Stone and UN security with me."

"Swell, Ann," said Ed. "I'm bringing a Stone-Coat with me: a Mary."

"As in Mary your wife?"

"Yes, a replicate Mary. The one that can walk, not Fred."

"Fred?"

"Yes, Fred is also a Mary. But I'm walking with the Mobile Mary that showed up at the apartment after the kidnapping. Or rather I'm pushing her in her wheelchair. There is a clue to the abduction to jointly pursue with her."

"The UN security folks didn't mention any clues," said Ann.

"They might not know about it yet. The Stone-Coats and jants are likely rapidly spreading the news among themselves but we humans can be slower."

"I don't understand how Stone Runner was overcome," said Ann.

"Nobody does," said Ed.

"We intend to find out," piped up Mary, from her wheelchair that Ed was pushing along the sidewalk.

"Was that the Mary speaking?" asked Ann. "Give her the phone."

Ed handed Mary his phone and refocused on pushing the wheelchair. He needed both hands to effectively push it anyway. The sidewalk was mostly clear but there were still occasional stretches of new snow, ice, and curbs to traverse. But this was New York City, where walking had always been the key means of transportation. There were dozens of pedestrians per block walking along Manhattan even on a snowy day like this one. Snow or no snow, this was just another day, and the stores, restaurants, banks, and other businesses along this major street were busy. The few stretches of sidewalk that hadn't been fully cleared were already stomped flat by the numerous walking humans.

"Yes, hello Ann," replied Mary. "I see that you have honored my request that you take care of Ed after my death."

"What request?" asked Ed.

"Women talk, Ed," said Mary. "Don't you worry about it. I'm simply happy that Ann seems to have taken good care of you. Other Marys have expressed that view and passed it on to me, but it's always good to verify things for yourself."

"Other Marys?" Ed asked.

"We Mary's like to keep in touch with each other, of course. We don't know how Ann puts up with you though."

"Me either," said Ann. "Where are you now?"

"Ed is pushing me in human and wheelchair form south along Manhattan Avenue. We're almost to the alley near Greenpoint Avenue where the kidnapping happened. Through the falling snow I now see flashing lights up ahead and to the right; that's very likely the crime scene."

"Great," said Ann. "We're on McGuiness Boulevard crossing the New Polansky Bridge from Long Island City now; we should be there in a few minutes."

Old fashioned yellow plastic crime tape, a police car with flashing red lights, and several cold-looking human cops blocked the entrance of a small alley off of Manhattan Avenue. Beyond additional police cars fifty yards up the alley a gigantic Ice Giant towered next to the crushed and torn remains of a heavy-duty Yellow Cab. Several smaller Stone-Coats and humans moved about the alley, cleaning away new snow, recording images, and collecting objects they found.

Despite the cold nasty weather a couple of dozen curious civilian onlookers stood outside the tape, silently watching everything that happened at the scene. Half were Mohawk Tribe people that Ed recognized, and they exchanged silent nods of recognition and respect with their Chief.

"Move along, Buddy, this is a crime scene," one of the human cops told Ed as he pushed Mary on her wheelchair towards the crime tape and showed no signs of turning or stopping.

"We are here to examine the scene, human," said Mary. She stood up out of the wheelchair, walked stiffly to the crime tape, lifted it up, stepped under it, and waited while her wheelchair moved itself under the tape unattended, followed by Ed. After the cold walk from the apartment Mary was chilled to below freezing temperature, and moved much better now that she could effectively employ ice-driven hydraulics rather than steam.

The cop's jaw dropped as he realized that Mary was a Stone-Coat and he did nothing to try to stop her. As a rule humans stayed out of the way of Stone-Coats, even cop humans.

"Who is in charge here, officer?" asked Ed, when the cop's attention finally returned to him. "I am supposed to meet a Detective Driscal here and review the crime scene with him."

"You must be Rumsfeld then," said a new voice. "I'm Lieutenant Haskins, NYPD," said the large athletic looking middle-aged woman that stepped up to face him and reached out to vigorously shake his hand. Her handshake was crushingly firm and she didn't bother to even try to smile. "Who the hell is in charge here is a damned good question, Rumsfeld. The Stone-Coats got here before we did and collected broken Stone-Coat bits and piled them together despite our protests that those bits are evidence that our human forensics team should have first examined. The big one stands over the bits like a mother hen and says it's powering their reassembly and won't let us get near them.

"In terms of humans some of the local Mohawks were here even before us. Then the Feds showed up. Then UN security. Now you. Then to top it off my Captain tells me that Driscal is coming over from Manhattan to also work cooperatively with us and that we're all to be one big happy cooperative team. Ain't that just peachy keen!"

"My wife Ambassador Ann Richards and Ambassador Talking Stone will also be here very shortly."

"Hell! You have to be kidding me!" said Haskins. "Look Rumsfeld, the Stone-Coats and the Feds and UN people here just talked with me about Tracy and Mouse, and we're going to do what we can to get them back, but stay the hell out of our way so that we can do our jobs, get it?"

"I don't get why I had to tell NYPD about the kidnapping," said Ed. "Doesn't the cab company have records showing Tracy and Mouse to be cab passengers?"

"Oddly enough they have no records of the cab picking up passengers at your apartment," said Haskins. "The cab company may have been hacked."

"Swell," said Ed. "And you guys don't even know who's in charge here."

"I don't care who says otherwise, I'm in charge of the investigation, got it?"

"Absolutely," said Ed. "What can I do to help?"

"Aside from the Omega business identified by the note that you managed to destroy, have you got any idea who is responsible?"

"No I don't," Ed admitted. "Isn't there 24/7 camera footage of every street and alley in this city? And there is also the overhead surveillance by autonomous unmanned air vehicles. Whatever happened has to be on a street-cam or UAV video, right?"

"Wrong!" said Hastings. "All autonomous UAV drones were grounded due to weather and the street-cams in the area inexplicably turned off for several minutes before, during, and after the attack. We do have Stone-Coat videos to examine but so far they don't seem to show anything particularly interesting."

"How could all police surveillance fail that way?" asked Ed. "Were you guys hacked too?"

"I'll ask the questions, Chief. Have you got anything to add?"

"Not really," Ed admitted.

"Then you can best help us and those who were kidnapped by keeping your wife and yourself the hell away from here and away from this case."

"We'll take a quick look at the crime scene and very soon be out of your hair here," said Ed, "but my Tribe friends and I will be looking for the girls ourselves also, that I can promise you."

"With the help of every Stone-Coat in the City," added Mary. "That I can also promise you."

"Well ain't that just peachy keen!" said Haskins acidly.

A big cab rolled up and a Stone-Coat, an attractive classy looking woman with graying hair, and two gun-toting humans in UN security uniforms climbed out of it. At the same time a crowd of reddish-faced individuals arrived on foot and two of them rushed up to Ed and Ann to hug them both - the parents of Mouse: John Half-Bear and Moon Walker. As was not uncommon for their particular branch of the Mohawks, both of them were competently telepathic.

The several other Tribe members that arrived with the parents respectfully stayed beyond the police line. Among them were several Wolf-Clan and Bear-Clan warriors, Ed noticed: Tribe security force people that Ed was always happy to see: especially a few of the old-timers that he had known for decades.

"WE CAME AS SOON AS HE HEARD, ATI:RON," pathed Moon Walker, silently addressing her Chief by using his Mohawk name: Ati:ron/Raccoon; a name that long ago the original Mouse/Old Mother had affectionately given to Ed. Moon Walker was immensely proud to be a decedent of Old Mother and to have born to her a daughter of such powers that the Tribe agreed to name the child Mouse. Moon Walker was in her mid- twenties and looked very much like Old Mouse's granddaughter Talking Owl, now dead for over a decade.

"THOSE OF US WITH THE THOUGHT EXCHANGING GIFT ARE SEARCHING THE CITY FOR OUR LITTLE ONE AND FOR YOUR DAUGHTER," added Half-Bear, "AS ARE OUR STONE-COAT FRIENDS. WE HAVE ALREADY SPOKEN WITH HASKINS BUT WE HAD NOTHING USEFUL TO TELL EACH OTHER." The young man was one of Ed's many great grandsons. The telepathic skills of both parents were solid, though they paled compared to those of Mouse the Tribe prodigy.

By now Ed and Ann were exchanging hugs with each other as well as with the young Tribe couple. "WE WILL FIND THEM," Ed told Mouse's parents, with as much confidence as he could muster. "TRACY AND MOUSE TOGETHER MAKE A FORMIDABLE PAIR AND WILL TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER, IF THEY CAN. HAVE HOPE. I TRUST THAT TRIBE SECURITY PEOPLE WILL SEARCH FOR THEM COMPETENTLY AND I ALREADY HAVE FAINT LEADS TO EXPLORE. I WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED."

As the four parents huddled together shedding tears and warmth and words of endearment and encouragement, they barely noticed when a big noisy florescent orange hydrogen-guzzling retro-Humvee pulled up behind the yellow cab, and an ordinary looking middle-aged man in severe winter-gear climbed out of it awkwardly only to be immediately accosted by Haskins. The two cops were soon shouting at each other loudly, drawing the attention of everyone else gathered there. Haskins and the new arrival were both mute from a human telepathic perspective and Ed had no idea what all the shouting was about, as the rising wind and swirling snow quickly swallowed most of their words.

"Fuck you too," they heard the newcomer finally shout at Haskins as she turned from him scowling and huffed away towards a nearby NYPD squad car. The man immediately turned his attention to Ed and Ann and walked towards them stiffly. He wasn't smiling.

"I'm Driscal, Rumsfeld," he announced as he held out his gloved right-hand to Ed. "I'm here to find your kid and the other kid, and deal with the bad guys. I've been ordered to stick with you like glue while I do that."

"I WASN'T EXPECTING A ZOMBIE," said Ed silently to Driscal and his rogue jant colony using the secret telepathic jant language, as he shook Driscal's hand. "NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT."

"And you look many decades younger than I expected, Chief," said Driscal. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Interesting, thought Ed. Driscal apparently already knew about his longevity. Through his jants, of course. The little buggers couldn't keep a secret. They used their amazing telepathy to spread information among jant colonies all over the planet! Even rogue colonies such as Driscal's apparently knew who he really was! "Did Hastings just give you the lay of the land?"

"Hell yeah, did she ever!" Driscal answered. "She basically told me to piss off and get lost, which is exactly what I plan on doing once you and me take a quick look at the crime scene. Her and me didn't get along too good since even before I died. This is her turf and she's none too happy to see me in it."

"So you know each other then?" asked Ed.

"Pretty much," said Driscal. "She's my ex-fucking-wife. And the cute Stone-Coat you have with you is your ex-wife, Chief. Only now I'm an ant-controlled zombie and your ex is a damned rock creature! Ain't life a hoot?"

Ed immediately categorized Driscal as having a high functioning human brain for a zombie, though he was obviously also perhaps somewhat of an asshole. The man clearly retained most of his human cognitive abilities, including a crude personality and sense of humor. Swell. "I have requested to directly work with the police, Discal, and I've been told that you're the man that I am to work with."

"Yeah, that's me," said Driscal, "though me and my little rogue jant friends would much rather work alone. Hooking up with you ain't our idea, Chief. I'm here to get the job done. Like my ex I'd be telling you fuck-off and leave me alone to do my job, if you didn't have so much political juice."

"Swell," said Ed. His first impression of Driscal was actually generally very positive. Driscal was a tough no-nonsense individual. That's what was needed to get back the girls.

Ed introduced Driscal to the others.

"I can't take this whole crowd into the crime scene," said Driscal. "It's just you and me, Rumsfeld, or my ex will kick my ass."

"Talking Stone and I are coming," said Mary."

"Whatever," said Driscal, who clearly wasn't pleased but wasn't about to deny access to Stone-Coats.

"I'll sit in the cab with Mouse's parents," said Ann.

Ed, Mary, and Talking Stone followed Driscal deeper into the alley crime scene, while a dozen local Brooklyn cops eyed them all with obvious suspicion. The detective and his entourage first viewed the wrecked cab. "Damn! No obvious evidence of explosives but the thing is all torn apart!" the detective remarked. "Something sliced through the steel of the cab like it was butter! Those look like Stone-Coat claw marks to me!"

"Perhaps deceptively so," said Talking Stone. "The power required as indicated by the damage done suggests a huge Stone-Coat but the modest claw mark sizes suggest a Stone-Coat closer to my size, which should be far too small to inflict such damage or to do so and escape so quickly. It is an apparent incongruity in the evidence."

"Good!" said Driscal. "Gotta love a mystery."

"Yes, that specific data set is indeed apparently incongruent!" said a deep voice from high above them. The party all looked up at the Ice Giant that stood next to the wrecked cab and stared down at them with dinner-plate sized, red glowing eyes. "I reached that same conclusion immediately after discovering the scene."

Good, thought Ed; this giant had excellent English skills. Even here in the City many Ice Giants simply did their work without bothering to communicate much with the human inhabitants.

"You were first on the scene?" asked Driscal, as he craned his gaze upwards at the towering Ice Giant. It had to be over eighty feet tall.

"Yes, and I estimate that I arrived only two minutes after the start of the attack," said the giant.

"Based on what, Great One?" asked Mary respectfully.

"I initially detected an unusual electromagnetic disturbance, accompanied by several seconds of what had to be the distant sounds of the cab and Stone Runner being ripped apart. When I arrived two minutes later there was only empty silence and this scene of recent destruction. I quickly identified the extremely disassembled status of Stone Runner and immediately began standard re-assembly protocols. As I am sure you are aware, small Stone-Coat pieces need to begin repair very soon if the complete individual is to be recovered."

Between the massive spread legs of the towering Ice Giant was a yard-high black matted mound of twisted gray-tinged Nano-tubing that covered a six-foot square area. Thousands of Nano tubes linked the mound to each diamond encrusted leg of the Ice Giant. Within the mound the remains of Stone Runner were being arduously re-assembled, largely molecule by molecule. The fact that a lot of power was involved was suggested by the constant spattering sound made by falling snowflakes striking the dark mound and instantly being vaporized into steam. Deep within the great giant a well shielded collection of radioactive material provided considerable power for the reassembly.

"So you were only a couple of blocks away when it happened but there was nothing to be seen but the torn up cab and Stone-Coat by the time you got here?" asked Driscal.

"And except for the destruction you see I sensed nothing conspicuously out of the ordinary here," said the giant.

"Did you record what you sensed?" asked Driscal. "Something that appears ordinary might still provide useful information."

"Of course," said the giant. "You will find the video to be of particular interest."

"I have already received those files, Detective," said Mary. "All Stone-Coats in the City have received and analyzed them and discovered interesting but perplexing clues. The files have also been provided to the City police. I can preview them to you later if you wish."

"Infrared images included?" asked Driscal. "I'll want to see those."

"Obviously," said Mary.

"Yes, you will find the infrared images to be the most interesting," said the towering Ice Giant, "for they show another seeming incongruity."

"You can review that evidence as we travel to our first CUNY campus," said Mary. She turned to loudly address everyone. "Logically it will be me, Ed, and Driscal pursuing our clues in his unmarked NYPD Humvee, with all others returning to the relative protection of the Rumsfeld Eagle Street apartment. Is that agreed?"

It made sense to Ed. If Ann was a target she would be as safe within Fred as nearly anywhere else, especially with Talking Stone and her UN security guards. "OK," he said.

Driscal wasn't especially pleased to be told by a Stone-Coat where he would be going in his own Humvee, but he was supposed to be following Rumsfeld's lead, if his ideas were reasonable. "CUNY campus? What the hell?"

Ed quickly explained the Omega clue to him and showed him an image of the ransom note as everyone piled into their respective vehicles.

"We still have most of the day to pursue the Omega clue," said Mary. "We should be able to visit several key Omega campuses."

"Bossy woman, isn't she?" Ed said to Driscal, while giving a little nod towards Mary, as they climbed into the Humvee. The Mary was already climbing into the back seat with her folded wheelchair, where she began adjusting the zone climate controls to keep herself comfortably frozen. The jant climate controls in the space behind her would have to work harder to keep the colony warm.

"Ain't they all?" Driscal responded. Sticking with Rumsfeld would be bad enough, but it looked like he would also be stuck with a pushy know-it-all Stone-Coat with human female tendencies. No doubt about it, this case would be pure hell. He was already looking forward to looking back at it.

As Driscal pulled away in the Humvee he noted that his ex-wife Haskins had taken the trouble to climb out of her warm and comfy squad car to enthusiastically wave bye-bye to him with her middle finger. Well ain't that sweet, he thought, as he waved back to her in kind. She still cares!

****

CHAPTER 3

### Dumbing Down

"So exactly where are we going and why?" Driscal demanded, as the Humvee smoothly rolled into Manhattan Avenue traffic under computer control in response to the destination that Mary had provided it silently. No wonder the NYPD cams had been hacked, she thought; had taken her only a few seconds to hack the Humvee!

"Logic dictates that it will increase our probability of early success if we begin our search of Omega by visiting the largest groups first," said Mary. "One of the largest groupings of concerns is that which worries about the dumbing down of society. The Brooklyn College campus is the center of study for such concerns."

"The study of dumb!" said Ed. "That sounds like a nifty academic pursuit!"

"All Omega concerns are deathly serious," Mary pointed out.

"Brooklyn College in Flatbush?" protested Driscal. "That's half an hour away from the crime-scene here in northern Brooklyn! That's completely dumb in itself. Somebody near the scene had to see something of the kidnapping: this is a city of twelve million people, fifty thousand Stone-Coats, and twenty thousand jant colonies, nearly half of them rogue and many controlling zombies. We should stay in the Greenpoint neighborhood and sweat some answers out of the locals."

"The Feds, NYPD cops, and the Tribe are already doing all the standard things such as that," said Ed. "We are directly pursuing the only actual clue that we have."

"Ha!" said Driscal. "A clue deliberately given to you. It could be designed to mislead the investigation, or didn't you logical folk think of that?"

"Or designed to lead us into a trap designed to kill or capture Ed," said Mary. "Yes, I believe that I've considered all possible scenarios. But the kidnappers specifically and deliberately invited Ed to pursue this course, so pursue it we must, in order to avoid possible bad consequences for the girls if for no other reason. We would be able to do so more swiftly if your auto was a flying model."

"My jant nest in the metal box behind you weighs a couple of hundred pounds when all the climate control gear, food, and so-forth are included, and you're pretty damn heavy yourself," said Driscal. "Besides, NYPD flying police cruisers can be knocked out of the sky with a sling-shot, a couple of fat pidgins, or a kid hacker. How would I keep you VIPs safe and cozy in a piece of crap flying squad car? No thanks. We'll stay in the ground."

"Tell us more about the issues addressed by this first grouping of Omega subgroups," said Ed.

"Their over-all concern is for the dumbing down of citizens and society," said Mary, "and there are dozens of variations on that theme, including poor Internet content, Internet control, information hominization, and anti-intellectualism movements. Now of course with the advent of Stone-Coats and jants that take care of us there is likely to be even more dumbing down."

"What about crazy thinking?" asked Driscal. "That's what results in terrorism and so-forth! The dangerous dudes we want are likely nut-cases. I happen to make my living hunting down human and jant nut-cases."

"Human mental pathologies motivate another huge Omega grouping," said Mary. "We'll try to meet with them a little later today."

"This is a waste of fucking time," Driscal complained repeatedly, as the Humvee made its way south and deeper into south-central Brooklyn. But Mary began feeding police reports and videos to the Humvee speakers and dash displays that Driscal and Ed were soon attentively watching. It availed them little however, until they found themselves watching recordings provided by the big Ice Giant that first arrived at the kidnapping crime-scene in Greenpoint.

Just as the big Ice Giant had verbally described, when he arrived there was no sign of attackers; only the torn up cab and torn up Stone-Coat companion of Mouse known by humans as Stone Runner. Thousands of Stone Runner gem chunks between golf ball and football size were scattered all over the ally, many hidden by snow. Smaller Stone-Coats arrived shortly and immediately began gathering the Stone-Coat bits into a single pile. They were soon aided by at least a dozen neighborhood Mohawks who with their human senses and smaller hands also helped gather the Stone Runner pieces. A thick mat of Nano-tubing was formed over the Stone Runner bits by the Ice Giant by the time the NYPD arrived and began taking pictures of the crime scene. By then the crime scene had of course been trampled and contaminated by dozens of well-meaning Stone-Coats and humans.

"Let's see the infrared taken when the big guy first arrived on the scene," Driscal requested.

The recordings repeated but this time only infrared imaging was shown. The torn-up cab was still faintly red against a cold blue background but fading fast in the cold. The Stone-Coat bits were likewise tinged with red, indicating they were warmer than the cold snow and concrete of the alley, but they too were cooling fast. Near the cab however were distinct footprints pressed into the snow that seemed to dance around the scene. All were about the same size and shape: foot-and-a-half long footprints showing three long toes and a thicker side toe/thumb: Stone-Coat footprints, dozens of them!

"Two small Stone-Coats fighting!" exclaimed Driscal. "One was of course Stone Runner. A second smallish Stone-Coat not much larger than Stone Runner tore him up and then ran away! Look at the footprints!" He pointed to a single set of Stone-Coat-like foot prints in the snow that led from the fight scene to the cab and then down through the alley and away. The slightly warm prints faded in the cold as they watched. "No human or other prints lead away from the cab; there were only the Stone-Coat prints. The two humans must have been carried away from the cab by the Stone-Coat that had demolished Stone Runner."

"Those prints can't be Stone-Coat prints," said Mary, who watched from the back seat. "Additionally no Stone-Coat would attack another."

"I follow the evidence," said Driscal.

"I point out that hundreds of millions of years of evidence say that it wasn't a Stone-Coat that did this," said Mary. "Stone-Coats simply do not attack other Stone-Coats; that has been a solid fact since long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. It is an ancient and basic survival rule with us. In addition, the prints leading away were not flat-footed Stone-Coat prints, but were on-their-toes running prints with no thumbs showing. No Stone-Coat can move like that, the energy output and rapid transition of water states required for the hydraulics are prohibitive! The apparent evidence of an attacking Stone-Coat when it couldn't have been one must be the incongruity that the recording Ice-Giant referred to. Although it superficially appears that a Stone-Coat did all this, it couldn't have been a Stone-Coat!"

"If it wasn't a Stone-Coat what was it?" Ed asked.

"Well it sure as hell wasn't a jant-controlled human zombie," said Driscal. "For a human or zombie to demolish a two-ton rock critter and then sprint away while carrying two humans is crazy-impossible. Like I say, I follow the evidence, and so far the evidence says it was a turn-coat Stone-Coat. I'm not yet ready to say that was one for sure, but I sure as hell can't say that it wasn't."

Further conversation on the subject ceased when the Humvee automatically parked on Bedford Avenue in front of a big modern looking building in a no-parking zone that Ed pointed out. "One of the perks of driving a cop car," Driscal noted, chuckling. "I park wherever the hell I want to." The campus was established over a century and a half ago in 1930, but this particular building looked new. Ed wasn't surprised to sense Stone-Coat electronic communications. Parts of this building were Stone-Coats, and there were several mobile Stone-Coats in the vicinity.

"Welcome to the Brooklyn College campus," said the Walking Stone sized Stone-Coat that greeted the visitors after they had all exited the Humvee. "You may address me as Rockford. I am Assistant Dean of Omega Studies here. Per your request our key Omega researchers have gathered in the auditorium, though I estimate less than fifty-percent human attendance due to the unprecedented last-minute nature of this gathering Most students and faculty have already vacated the campus for the coming Christmas and new year holidays."

"And I am Professor Julie Wright, Dean of Brooklyn College Omega Studies," said the short, stocky, matronly looking woman in her fifties that stood next to Rockford. "Call me Julie. May I first ask why we thus gathered? Mary's request wasn't clear on that point."

Ed's jaw dropped. Christ! They didn't have a cover story! And he couldn't discuss it privately now with Mary because the discussion would be overheard!

"This is Chief Ed of the famous Giants' Rest Mohawk tribe," said Mary. "The Giant's Rest Tribe humans, Stone-Coats, and jants want to maintain an awareness of threats to Earth, humanity, and to Stone-Coats and jants. To do so they are interested in becoming remote adjunct members of the CUNY Omega Groups. Ed is in town to get a first-hand idea of the different groups. Oh, and this is NYPD Detective Frank Driscal, Ed's City escort for this visit."

"Thank you so very much for accommodating me on such short notice," said Ed, "I realize that your time is very valuable. How many people will we be meeting with?"

"Close to a hundred," said Julie. "We are of course honored by your visit, Chief Rumsfeld. The fame of your Mohawk Tribe namesake forbearers of course precedes you, and we are always glad to see Mary and even the NYPD. Now let's get the hell out of this cold!" There was only a half-inch of fresh snow on the recently cleared sidewalk, and only a few new flakes were still falling, but it was at least ten degrees below freezing and a ten-knot wind blew in steadily from the frozen North. Here so close to New England the polar vortex sometimes poked its way south to the City from December through March.

Rockford led the visitors into the nearby building, pushing Mary's wheelchair. Several students met them inside and fitted both of the Stone-Coats with standard heat reflective ponchos and helped Driscal and the other humans remove their outside layers of thermal gear. It was all done so quickly and professionally that Ed was sure that this was routine hospitality being provided by the students.

"These Omega student volunteers will follow you about carrying your outer-wear," explained Julie.

"You're that Zombie cop!" said the student that carried Driscal's gear, a cute coed. "Cool!"

"Yes, Frank Driscal, your fame also precedes you," said Julie, as she motioned the group to follow her down a hallway filled with students. "We don't see many zombies in this part of town. Not that there's anything wrong with them."

"Or Manhattan cops either, I suppose," said Driscal. "Have you folks noticed anything unusual brewing over the last few days?"

"This is a public college, Detective Driscal; we live in constant chaos and wouldn't have it any other way," Julie informed him. "But no, nothing particularly unusual comes to mind."

"Are the people gathered for this meeting all people that you know?" Driscal asked the Dean. "Any strangers in the bunch? Outsiders from off the street that are crashing for example? Or people that joined you over the last couple of weeks or so?"

"I can scan all attendees if you wish," said Rockford. "I can compare their facial and physical characteristics with the electronic ID information they carry and with College and public records. I'll let you know of any discrepancies or recent additions."

"That would be great!" said Driscol. "I've got to keep Chief Ed safe!"

"IS THIS RELATED TO THE STONE-COAT DISASSEMBLY AND HUMAN KIDNAPPINGS THIS MORNING?" Rockford asked silently.

"YES, BUT KEEP THAT SECRET PLEASE!" said Ed.

"OF COURSE," Rockford replied. "YOU GAVE A REASONABLY GOOD COVER STORY THOUGH."

"THANKS," said Mary.

"I found no identity discrepancies or recent additions," Rockford announced aloud.

Ed wasn't very encouraged by the fact that their cover story was blown even before they were meeting with their first batch of Omega folks. And Stone Coats tended to freely communicate everything they knew to other Stone-Coats. All City Stone-Coats including Omega members would probably soon know what that these college visits were somehow related to the assault and kidnapping!

They arrived at a large half-full lecture/ classroom/ small auditorium with a huge monitor and a small stage and podium at the front of it. Roughly a hundred students and faculty gathered in the stands, talking with each other and communicating using various gadgets. Some humans wore electronic visors or had brain-chip implants, but most viewed old-time tablets or other small devices. The visitors were given seats in the front row, with Mary seated in a Stone-Coat cooling station where she could comfortably maintain her below-freezing body temperature. The well-trained academic audience sat still and quieted down when Julie and Rockford moved to stand together at the podium in front of the room and faced them.

Julie announced that they were there at the request of their guests Ed and Mary. The audience all seemed to know Mary, but there were some gasps when Ed's identity was revealed. "Chief Ed looks just like his famous grandad," Ed heard someone say.

"Overviews of Omega and our Omega Group here at Brooklyn College were requested, so we'll first show brief videos on these topics," Julie continued, bringing a collective groan from the audience. Most of them had already seen these public videos many times. Sometime over the last several decades, Ed had perhaps seen them himself. There were hundreds of public videos that addressed climate change and other crisis topics.

Ed opened his mind to empathic input and sensed the usual mix of emotions from the crowd. He could to various degrees 'read' the emotions of more than two-thirds of the humans present, but was provided no overt clues. Many were bored, many were curious, but none of them emoted unusual hate or fear. None of them seemed to be telepathic enough to broadcast cognitive thoughts. In sum, if there was a kidnapper among them, it wasn't immediately obvious to his telepathic senses. Disappointed, he returned most of his attention to the videos.

In response to growing world-wide concerns about perceived growing threats, Omega was conceived as an interdisciplinary area if study and research at CUNY more than half a century ago. Similar projects were put into place world-wide at thousands of educational centers. Out of that mission grew actual Omega classes and degrees, and every CUNY student was required to take one three-credit Omega survey class that included an overview of Omega and all Omega-identified issues. Several other classes related to the focus of this particular campus were also offered. Finally, collaborative and independent research occurred at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Apparently concern over the dumbing down of society was a real thing in academia: a legitimate topic of serious social and psychological research and interest.

At last the introductory Omega videos ended and the specific concern areas studied at Brooklyn College were briefly described by the faculty members and graduate students that led each area of research. Meanwhile throughout the lectures Ed remained open and attentive to feelings of people in the crowd. If the kidnappers were here he was determined to find them somehow!

Anti-intellectualism was identified by the first speaker to be a well-established and extensively studied social phenomenon that was deeply disturbing to all the researchers that studied it. A widespread disdain for science and reason and a rise of superstition and ignorance was described, accompanied by establishment of 'ecosystems of misinformation' on the Internet that increasingly dominated the exponentially growing glut of information being collected and cultivated there.

Religious fundamentalists championed a turning away from fact-based knowledge and discovery, and from a world-view based on facts/reality. Selected findings of solid fact-based science were rejected on religious and/or political grounds. Evolution was still denied by many, and many attributed global warming to supernatural causes. Many humans even welcomed the unfolding climate-change catastrophe as a God assisted Armageddon that would lead to eternal life for 'true' believers.

As a related phenomenon some politicians even argued that facts were whatever people decided they were; there were no such things as objective 'facts' or logic-based rationality. Reality was something that people decided on and created in their minds, and that could be shaped by religion, politics, and associated leadership. The resulting might was by proclamation right, the ends were claimed to justify the means, and lies often worked very well when repeated enough to become a new 'truth'.

Ignorance came easy and was frequently rewarded, while disconcerting facts tended to be ignored or suppressed. Stupid people and stupid things that people did were laughed at but nevertheless defiantly often gained popularity and followings. Sports figures, actors, singers, and performers of outrageous acts were rewarded with celebrity super-star status and riches, while most scientists and other society do-gooders remained relatively obscure and unrewarded.

World-wide, fact/science denying politicians including outright tyrants rose to power through misinformation-driven elections, fascism, chaos, civil wars, and other means. It made people feel good and safe to have strong leaders and to get conformation that they were in the right, regardless of the loss of long-held principles including freedom, equality, and fairness.

A deep-rooted cynicism fed the flames of disinformation. Many people lied and cheated to get what they wanted in life and they assumed that most other people did the same. For many science and technology were distrusted as much as people were. World-wide there were expanding enclaves of people that rejected most science and technology, though there were just as many progressive societies that thrived on new technology and change. In either case technology could effectively spread information and disinformation that brought discontent and strife.

On the flip side, it was also argued that the apparent dichotomy between being an anti-science, anti-technology druid longing for the good-old days, and being a scientist/engineer praising only science and technology, was false and self-defeating. The speaker argued that there was a practical and necessary common and fertile progressive ground to seek between scientists and poets, optimists and pessimists. Science wasn't the opposite of poetry but was argued to itself be a thing of great beauty.

Another speaker made a strong argument for the rationality and positive influence of religion. Though historically religion had been used to justify terrible atrocities, in general religion was a force that contributed greatly to the good morals and hope of individuals. Several philosophical arguments were made for the existence of God, including the argument that if everything had causes, an ultimate causal agent was required: an ultimate turtle to support all aspects of reality that stood upon its back. The problems with religion arose when extreme religion created a world view that denied rather than supported facts and science, and which rejected people that held 'other' beliefs.

Ed had for many decades 'talked' telepathically with turtles and rather liked the idea of God being the ultimate turtle upon which everything else stood. Besides, the turtle metaphor fit in nicely with Mohawk myth and Greek philosophy. But it didn't seem to have a damned thing to do with finding Tracy and Mouse.

Charts were displayed that quantified a growing gap between a vast scientifically and intellectually challenged majority and a shrinking scientific and educated elite. However the dumbing-down phenomenon was also even eroding the educated elite, who like the masses were becoming 'knowledge tourists' drowning in a flood of information and disinformation, with less and less development of deeper understanding.

A virtual reality including the Internet/social media was described as removing people cognitively from reality and filling their minds with drivel that included escapist fantasy and falsehoods: a Pandora's box of shallow fast-knowledge that fed and dulled the reptilian brain much like yummy fast-food destroyed physical health. Drivel was an opiate that created a sort of obesity, diabetes, and addiction of the mind. Relatively speaking, drivel was said to be replacing fact-driven information in human culture, including practical reality-based health and science information.

Yes, much good solid information was had been building on the Internet for close to a century, but those grains of truth and wisdom were buried within a mountain of murky sludge and battered senseless by an endless deluge of commercial ads that were motivated by profit rather than a quest for truth, and misinformation that was designed to win political power rather than to simply inform.

The drivel discussion reminded Ed of paper mail that used to be delivered in the old days of snail-mail, when most mail turned out to be junk-mail. But junk-electronic media BS was often tougher to identify. The fiction of virtual reality was astutely designed by the media employed phycologists to be mind-penetrating and highly influential, because that's what generated profit or political followers. Most phycologists were nowadays employed by commercial, political, and religious organizations to 'sell' their products and ideas using various modes of media. People were cleverly enticed to pay attention to fictional stories, escapism including sports, and sensationalism of cultural oddities rather than to things that mattered more from a practical perspective.

Economic and cultural globalization, though greatly slowed by the climate change driven world crisis, continued to homogenize humanity towards a Western Civilization dominated 'normal' monoculture. In the process some things that were 'bad' dissipated, but much that was creative and 'good' as developed over many centuries by many cultures was lost. Just as countless species were becoming extinct without much human fanfare, much human cultural diversity and 'wisdom of the ages' was already gone forever.

The next speaker pointed out that like deer caught in the shiny glare of headlights people were also blinded by glitzy new evolving technology. New technology acquisition was largely a matter of fashion, sex-soaked glitz, and sales hype. Having the latest tech was more status symbol- driven than driven by needs for improvements in the quality of life or knowledge. New technology didn't inherently counter dumbing down; in many respects it strengthened it. Technology advances supported a great forgetting of people-skills and learning, and a great loss of mental alertness and physical fitness.

The speakers also criticized the ineptitude of education practices. There was still too much emphasis on rote memorization, and not enough encouragement of critical independent thought. There was still too much social promotion and dumbing down of information in classrooms so that slower students could keep up but such that quicker students didn't realize their full potential. Computer aids to teaching were increasingly helpful, but despite advances and several heralded attempts, computers hadn't successfully replaced good human teachers.

One speaker likened good teachers to personal trainers and sports coaches, who coaxed the best performance possible from students despite their mighty struggle to grow up in a stress filled environment increasingly full of distracting temptations that typically led towards immediate shallow rewards but which also often led to self-destruction and mediocrity.

It was also noted that there was ultimately still no cure for stupid, though brain computer implants helped some people in specific respects. Many students and grown citizens simply lacked the mental horsepower to learn much that was expected of them in a world that faced an increasingly complex web of challenges. And yes, dumber people tended to have more children than smarter people; an unintended trend that was indirectly government-subsidized and likely leading to an 'idiocracy' that was easier to exploit by political, religious, and commercial interests. Generation after generation, the biological 'survival of the fittest' mechanism was being circumvented by well-meaning but short-sighted social altruistic forces. At what cost to human evolution?

Was humanity stuck where it was or even devolving, lost in a biological cul-de-sac of its own cultural devising? Would new survival challenges force the best from people and improve humans biologically? Or should genetic engineers step in to create super-humans to take-over from where evolution had left off? Already it was widely rumored that many rich individuals paid for illegal genetic meddling in order to enhance the intelligence of themselves and their offspring. Was that really such a bad thing?

It was all interesting stuff perhaps, under normal circumstances, but currently irrelevant to Ed, who struggled mightily to politely sit quietly and listen to all of it. He couldn't get over the fact that the kidnapers might be in this very room! He suppressed a growing urge to jump up and shout something like: "Where the hell are Tracy and Mouse?"

Driscal expressed similar misgivings when two hours later the trio walked to the Humvee. "That was a total fucking waste of time!" he complained. "Hours of ivy tower BS isn't going to solve this damn case!"

Ed could sense that this was a thought coming from the mind of Driscal and not so much from his logic-driven jants, which again demonstrated that Driscal was from a human perspective high functioning for a zombie.

"I think that the detective doth protest too much," said Mary. "You just received some very enlightening lectures. You sir are an anti-intellectual!"

"And damn proud of it," countered Driscal. "We might as well have spent the last two hours on a Bahamas beach sipping nice cold drinks, if it wasn't for the fact that most of the Bahamas are washed away."

"Ironically what we just got was a dumbed down overview of the dumbing down problem," admitted Mary.

"We aren't here to get educated," noted Ed, "we're here to find the kidnappers and rescue the girls."

"And we have made genuine progress," said Mary. "We have perhaps eliminated one of the larger Omega groups from our inquiry."

"Or not," countered Driscal. "There could have been a dozen sneaky kidnappers in that audience and we wouldn't even know it."

"Too true," said Ed. "They might have to contact us for us to find them. But our best course remains to check-out Omega Groups as we have started doing, as Omega is our only clue. This visit was a partial success, I suppose, especially the sandwiches and drinks they gave us for our on-the-road lunch. If anyone has a better idea, let's hear it."

"OK, so let's get ourselves ready then," said Driscal in response, as he unlocked the Humvee. "I'll get the car cleared of new snow and warmed up and we can start to eat." He divided the bag of food between himself, Ed, and the jant colony in the back of the Humvee that provided much of his brain function. Jants were omnivorous and like the humans could get by well enough on sandwiches plus the courser dried food. Meanwhile the Humvee started itself up and the windshield wipers swept the windshield free of an accumulated half-inch of snow - along with the small envelope that had been tucked under one of the wipers and was immediately spotted and retrieved by Driscal!

With gloved hands the detective carefully opened the letter and retrieved a small note that simply said:

'They remain alive, for now. Search on.'

The typed letter ended with a hand-written Greek letter 'omega'.

"What the fuck!" said Driscol, as he slid the note and envelope into a plastic evidence bag. "The kidnappers are tailing us, that's for damned sure!"

"How?" asked Ed.

"Likely electronically," said Mary. "This vehicle features identifying transponders, navigation devices, communications devices, and so-forth. These are easily detected by Stone-Coats, by the City navigation grid, and by communication infrastructures such as radio frequency broadcast towers. Unless we walk and avoid using all electronic devices we can in principle be tracked and followed by any individual or group with modest hacking skills. And were we to walk we'd be spotted by surveillance cameras that can be hacked into and identified by facial-recognition technologies."

"And I spotted several students recording the lectures we just sat through," added Driscal. "They probably streamed them out across the world, where the kidnappers could easily find them using various search and filtering techniques."

"Maybe that's a good thing," said Ed. "It's likely that rather than us finding them they'll have to contact us. To do that they have to know where we are. In any case we might as well move on to the next college."

The Humvee was soon once again steadily driving itself through snow-covered Brooklyn. Ed hoped that the big retro-auto knew where the hell it was going. Block after block of Brooklyn looked exactly the same to him, and there was no sun visible to help determine their direction. It was still snowing and after a few turns Ed had absolutely no sense of their location or heading. "Where is this car taking us?" he asked.

"North and east into Queens and to York College," said Mary. "The York College Omega Groups focus on human mental and behavioral pathologies that could doom humanity."

"Swell," said Ed. "Crazy people. And York is also where my kids Mark and Sue go to school."

"What a coincidence," said Driscal.

"I've always had an affinity for crazy people," remarked Mary. "Their thoughts and actions can be quite surprising."

****

Tracy had explored the room where they were held captive several times using touch alone before discovering the old-fashioned wall-switch and toggling 'on' the dim ceiling light. It was a small light source: an old-time florescent light bulb, it looked like.

The light revealed a small room with a toilet and sink at one end and a thin floor pad at the other for sleeping. There was nothing else. There weren't even any visible doors or windows. There was certainly no wall thermostat driven control box to adjust room temperature. Tracy estimated the room temperature to be about sixty degrees: far too cool for perfect human comfort but at least they weren't freezing. Dressed in their winter clothing they would get on well enough. The walls were of heavy sheet-metal, which explained why her implant picked up no radio wave signals. Even telepathic messages were apparently blocked.

"Whoever you are you won't get away with this!" Tracy announced aloud.

There was no answer.

"Why did you do this? What do you want?" she demanded.

Silence.

"I'm really hungry!" said Mouse.

A metallic scraping sound echoed through the room, and a six-inch square opening in a wall appeared momentarily three feet above the floor, just long enough for two plastic-wrapped sandwiches to be pushed through it and fall onto the floor, before the opening clanged shut again.

Mouse rushed to eagerly retrieve the food, but Tracy insisted on examining the sandwiches carefully before tasting them. She quickly concluded that they looked and smelled like fresh and normal ham and cheese with mustard on rye sandwiches. "I don't know for sure if it's safe to eat these," she said, "but this food seems to be perfectly OK as far as I can tell." Indeed, the meat and cheese were relatively exotic; beans, rice, and other cheaper foods lower on the food chain had become the mainstay foods for most Americans.

"Maybe we should wait to eat as long as we can," said Mouse. "I don't eat meat anyway."

"Me either, but I suppose we'll need to make an exception since this is the only food that has been provided."

"You are directed to eat the food," said a voice from the wall, the same voice they had heard earlier.

"Why should we?" countered Tracy.

"Your continued life at this time is of value," said the voice. "Obey or risk your immediate elimination."

Tracy bit into a sandwich. It tasted yummy, and she suddenly realized how very hungry she was. She was going to tell Mouse to delay eating for a few minutes until the safety of the food was further confirmed by her own reaction to it, but Mouse was already rapidly eating the other sandwich.

"I forgot how nasty eating meat is," said Tracy.

"I forgot how yummy it is," said Mouse.

As they ate they each in their own way continued to assess their situation. Mouse used her telepathic sense and her implants to both send and try to detect communications, with no results. She had never before been in a place so telepathically silent as this one. Interfering electrical signals were probably being sent through the walls of their prison to further confound any possible communications, she and Tracy reasoned.

Tracy tried to think of who their captors might be, and why they had been kidnapped. Her best guess was some sort of radicalized human group; the world was now full of them. Maybe they sought to influence her mother. Whoever it was they were clever, dangerous, and coldly efficient, but at least they made a damn good ham and cheese on rye sandwich. With mustard.

****

CHAPTER 4

### The Crazies

Queens was in recent decades the most populous and ethnically diverse borough of New York City, and the once small college of York had grown to become a large-university in recent decades to reflect the growth in population of the City and of Queens in particular. An expanse of mostly new buildings supported over twenty thousand students, though half of them chose to attend most of their classes remotely. The City featured thousands of public office spaces with private cubicles in which citizens could access entertainment, educational, and businesses entities on-line. In them humans, zombies, and even Stone-Coats could via the Internet access almost anything anywhere anytime, for no charge. Some larger cubicles even featured full-room holographic capabilities, but most relied on virtual reality helmets.

Other students physically showed up to classes regularly largely for the socialization advantages. This was a much higher rate of physical attendance than was typical in colleges world-wide, even though York was a commuter college without dormitories. But then few college locations in the world were as well supported transit-wise. The City featured recently upgraded subway and bus transit systems and the newer elevated Sky Rail system. Students transited to York from all over the City, mostly from Queens and neighboring Brooklyn. Ear-lobe implanted computer chips billed citizens whenever billing was appropriate.

As for over two centuries New Yorkers traveled mostly by walking and mass transit, there was of course only very limited accommodation for vehicle parking. Ed wasn't surprised when the Humvee parked itself in a no-parking zone in front of a big new-looking building. He was however surprised to find that they were parked behind a black limo with UN diplomatic plates, and that instead of being greeted by College officials when they climbed out of the car they were greeted by his two grown children Sue and Mark. They were flanked by four husky Tribe security people who were in turn surrounded by a half-dozen stern looking people wearing trench coats. UN security forces, Ed assumed. Several uniformed NYPD officers were having intense discussions with the UN folks. As many as a hundred equally intense looking students and faculty surrounded the entire scene.

"What's going on, Dad?" Sue asked Ed as she greeted him with a hug. "Since this morning we have been shadowed by warrior clan Tribe people, and then UN people with legal warrants showed up and tried to take us away with them. For our own safely, they said, but nobody will tell us what has happened!"

"WE PREVENTED THE UN PEOPLE FROM TAKING THEM AWAY, CHIEF ED," pathed Sly Snake, an older Tribe security man that Ed knew well and trusted. "WE HAVEN'T HAD TO HURT ANYONE YET, BUT IT HAS COME CLOSE. THE STUDENTS AND THEN THE LOCAL POLICE CAME TO OUR AID. WE HAVEN'T TOLD YOUR CHILDREN WHAT WE KNOW, CHIEF ED. I THOUGHT IT YOUR DUTY AS PARENT AND TRIBE CHIEF TO EXPLAIN THINGS TO THEM."

"You did well, old friend," Ed told Sly Snake, as he shook the big grim looking Mohawk warrior's hand. "You have my thanks."

"We have an international warrant to take all of the Rumsfelds into our custody and to safely," said the smirky young man in business suit and overcoat that stepped up to Ed. He held out a paper to Ed, evidently the warrant for his international arrest, which Ed totally ignored.

"As a Tribe Chief I have full diplomatic immunity, as do my family members," Ed said.

"This is New York City and America, mister," said a uniformed police sergeant. "Nobody carts off our law-abiding citizens to places unknown without them wanting it unless a New York judge says so; not on my beat! And if Detective Driscal here says so we'll arrest the lot of you for obstructing these people!"

"We have diplomatic immunity also," protested the UN man. He still looked determined, but the five security people with him were nervously glancing about and were clearly not happy to be greatly outnumbered and surrounded by determined looking Tribe warriors, City cops, and students.

"And I have the Mayor of New York, the President of the United States, and my wife the ambassador on my speed dial," countered Ed. "You mess with me or my kids and you mess with them! Get it?"

"And you also mess with Stone-Coat business," added Mary.

"And Mohawk business," snarled Sly Snake. "Ann and her children are also Mohawk Tribe members, and all the Iroquois tribes are Class-A nations in the UN. We will defend our own with force if necessary." As one the four Tribe security men raised their automatic rifles and hold them at the ready. Though they weren't quite pointing them at anybody, their implied threat was a serious one. They would indeed fight to the death to defend Tribe members, Ed knew. And so did the nervous looking UN detachment. Mohawk Tribe security men had well-earned reputations as being fighting men comparable to US Special Forces.

"This situation has possible international implications that over-ride any conceivable local or national interests," argued the young UN man.

"This situation has local and personal interests that over-ride any conceivable international interests," countered Ed. "Thanks for the offer of physical protection, but you are obviously becoming a problem instead of the solution. We'll keep in touch and let you know if we need your help or make any progress, but for now get lost!"

Students cheered and Tribe warriors and NYPD cops smiled and snickered as the UN team piled into their black limo and drove away. Meanwhile Ed took advantage of the distraction to tell Mark and Sue about Tracy, Mouse, and Stone Runner, and to introduce them to Driscal and Mary.

"Have you two got any ideas about why someone would kidnap your sister?" Driscal asked them.

"None," the stunned pair replied.

"But the UN guys are probably right about it being UN related," said Sue. "Mom's an international VIP. She has made plenty of international enemies, and New York is as international a city as they come. International human enemies are a definite possibility. "

"Or it's a rogue jant colony behind it," said Mark. "No offense, Detective Driscal, but intelligent insects creep me out big-time!"

"Me too, kid," Driscal replied with a smile. "But then again I don't trust nobody."

"Well Mark and I are glad we can trust in our Tribe," said Sue. "Sly Snake and his men stopped those UN guys in their tracks!"

"Aside from weapons. what's all that gear you are carrying?" Ed asked Sly Snake.

"Our usual surveillance stuff, Chief," responded Sly Snake. "Radios, cameras, communications scanners, binoculars, Geiger counters, and so forth. Nowadays we don't rely entirely on telepathy and old-fashioned Mohawk Tribe skills, especially in the City. We detected the UN guys coming when they were still miles away. We have two more teams scouting the campus area that picked up on them even earlier."

"Get Mark and Sue home soon so you can join in the search for Tracy and Mouse, my friend," Ed told the Tribesman.

"Yes Chief. The Tribe is focusing search efforts on Greenpoint and neighboring areas. We think it likely that the girls are either close to where they were kidnapped or far outside the City altogether."

They were moving within the mob of students streaming into the building and out of the cold when a smiling little old man with silver head and face hair greeted them with a surprisingly firm handshake. "I'm Dean Williams," he told them. "Glad to see that snafu with the UN folks is resolved, at least for now. I figure there must be some sort of tie-in with that nasty Stone-Coat disassembly business in Brooklyn this morning, Chief Ed. Is that right?"

"No comment," said Ed.

"Your silence speaks volumes, Chief," said Dean Williams. "Always glad to see you, Mary! So then, I deduce from your request for an Omega gathering that Omega is somehow involved. Is that right? The news outlets and social media are speculating all sorts of things, most of it of course nonsense."

"No comment," said Mary. "Omega is gathered in Lecture Hall One, I assume?"

"Of course," said the Dean.

In Lecture Hall One the visitors soon looked out at a gathering audience of over two-hundred human students of dozens of ethnicities, including Sue, Mark and a Tribe security man. Fortunately over half a century earlier English had become the official language of the United States including even New York City; despite his proficiency in communicating with jants and Stone-Coats, Ed had zero proficiency in human languages other than Americanized English and Mohawk. Hundreds of languages were spoken here in the most ethnically diverse city on Earth, but most people knew English.

The audience also included several Stone-Coats and zombies, Ed noticed, with whom he exchanged silent greetings. Some of the associated jant colonies were rogue, and some were members of the Eastern Consortium, he also noticed. But no potential kidnappers were immediately evident, he also determined, though more than ever he doubted his ability to telepathically detect them.

"As requested of us by our colleague Mary, we will lecture our esteemed guests on our Omega Group study of human pathologies of behavior that threaten humanity and our planet," Dean Williams began, after calling the lecture hall to order. "On an individual scale, humans are of course prone to a variety of interesting mental maladies which influence their thoughts and subsequent actions. The human ability to imagine things is of indispensable value to our survival but also supports self-delusion that distorts more reasonable perceptions of reality. Usually it is personal self-destruction that tragically results, but our key focus in Omega is the destruction that could be unleashed upon others.

"Even if their actions are carried out only by themselves or a few comrades, advances in science and technology nowadays can magnify the deadly effects of violent actions by thousands or even millions of times. In the last century automatic guns and conventional bombs supported death by the dozens or hundreds per incident. Now through the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons the deadliness of individuals and small groups has greatly increased.

"In the worst cases hundreds of thousands of people have been killed at a time. Calcutta India is no more. Nice France, Indianapolis Indiana, and several other cities are no more. Populations in Africa and Asia have been devastated by biological agents deliberately spread by mentally unstable individuals or small groups of zealots of various political and religious causes. Police and mental health initiatives have been only imperfectly effective in achieving prevention and protection from the killers that stalk us from within our own populations.

"Even more deadly are the pathologies that support the rise to power of unsavory groups and individuals. Narcissistic leaders have come to power by whipping up group fear and hate including racism and blame-ism against other groups, and justifying wars, terrorism, persecution of minorities, and a general loss of individual rights and freedoms. The arrogance and egotism of authoritarian leaders is too often mistaken for strength of character by submissive fear-blinded hero worshipers that though justified in their concerns for survival are far too willing to sacrifice principles and freedoms and to pursue violent quests for group dominance. People have a deep psychological need for heroes and a very poor record of choosing flamboyant incompetent despots as their heroes rather than careful, thoughtful leaders: dangerous leaders who erode or even totally overturn freedom supporting democracies.

"In recent decades we have come to the sad realization that democracies and associated individual rights are not necessarily natural or permanent aspects of human cultures. More resilient is hubristic pride - the arrogance and egotism that drive people to brag, lie, cheat and bully others to get ahead, mostly by taking advantage of the pathologies of others."

Williams went on to chronicle the fall of several democracies and other forms of government amidst the chaos of tens of millions of refugees fleeing across national borders from famine, flooding, drought, plagues, and wars, and how such pressures had led to the collapse of societies and millions of deaths. At the heart of many such societal failures to cope, he outlined psychological maladies that could be attributed to many of the leading individuals and groups involved. This was the disturbing, nasty stuff that Ann and her UN dealt with constantly, but could only to a limited degree repair or blunt.

Perhaps more immediately disturbing, the Dean was smiling throughout this grizzly introductory lecture, as though he derived some sort of enjoyment from describing how human psychological problems both contributed to and resulted from world-wide death and misery.

It was almost a relief when Williams finally turned over the podium to a serious young research assistant. "Technology advances have been changing our perception and expectations," the young lady began. "Things in the actual world are expected nowadays to happen much more quickly and simply, as they do in fictional entertainment programs that distort or at least too simplistically reflect reality. We have a growing 'patience deficit' that causes us to expect immediate and successful results with respect to everything we do, and this hinders and precludes real solutions from being more thoughtfully and patiently applied to complex problems.

"People like simplistic yes/no and good/bad judgements, and simple so-called 'common sense' solutions to complex issues. People lack patience when it comes to solving problems that defy quick simple solutions. Governments, science, and various other institutions are expected to instantly identify simple so-called common sense solutions and apply them. The more rational notion that many problems only have complex long term solutions is emotionally rejected by most people."

"There is some correlation of this phenomenon with technology. We watch fictional dramas where crime leads to punishment within half an hour, and experience ever faster computer response times, so we expect the same from society. However note that for millions of years cause and effect for most everyday phenomena happens quickly and the causes are usually simple. It is therefore not unreasonable for us to psychologically expect and prefer similar quick-and-easy expectations for more complex situations.

"Only the application of reason leads us to accept the notion that some things are more complex and some efforts take longer times to come to fruition. As a culture we have largely successfully made a transition from the mindset of hunter-gatherers that expect quick action and immediate rewards to the mindset of rational patient farmers that realize that planning and long term effort can yield even greater rewards. However we still psychologically much prefer quick-and-easy.

"We have progressed culturally and in the field of psychology to the point that rational understanding and behavior are the expected norm for mentally healthy people. Thus in our profession we have labeled overly simplistic explanations and expectations by people to indicate a form of pathology that irrationally rejects the true complexity of reality. Often this trait in people is too ingrained to be subject to effective treatment."

"There's no cure for stupid," Driscal muttered.

"We suffer from self-organizing collective delusions," proclaimed the next speaker. "Consider the conspiracy theories, anti-intellectualism, and anti-science that have arisen in recent decades. People easily get scared and quickly sacrifice reason for emotion, and principles for a false sense of security.

"Many people deny that objective facts are a real thing. They think that facts are whatever they can get themselves and other people to believe them to be. A completely made up story is fine, as long as it is believed enough to earn a desired result. Truth and reality are negotiable for them, and it is perfectly legitimate to support unsubstantiated claims as reality, if there is no immediate overwhelming evidence to deny them.

"They of course often do this to further their own agendas. They lack the moral integrity compass to reject unsubstantiated lies. This is sometimes termed as behavior guided by fitness rather than truth. Belief that 'the ends justify the means' is a closely related corollary. Many of them do rather well in a society that prizes success above integrity. Anthropologists and historians have long noted the deeply ingrained and largely successful use of lies and deception in human cultures."

"Well dah," Driscal muttered cynically.

"The lies are believed by people that buy into them emotionally, because the lies validate their own emerging distorted views and they find out that they are part of an army of people that believe the things that they do. They get the validation that they need and they don't need to feel guilty. Instead they feel empowered."

"We have an ongoing dispute between the druids and the engineers," proclaimed the next speaker. "At one end of the spectrum we have people that want to return to a simpler, pre-industrial, pre-technological society. At the other end we have people that embrace technology and change as a panacea that will doubtlessly overcome all problems. In this context druids are pessimists that illogically reject out of hand whatever is new, while the engineers are optimists that tend to illogically embrace whatever is new. The need for stability and the need for change both have deep psychological foundations but each of these extremes is now regarded by psychological practitioners to be a genuine psychological malady, while taking a thoughtful, cautious, rational middle ground approach is felt to be most practical and psychologically healthy."

The next speaker talked about groupism-supporting 'communities of fate' that define 'others' as enemies and serve as breeding grounds for radical zealots and terrorists, and provide support for narcissistic tyrants. Science-based methods of persuasion that are used to try to broaden and counter the outlook of such groups are unfortunately also used by the groups themselves to form and strengthen radicalism, with control of news reporting and social media a favorite supporting mechanism.

"Some dangerous people embrace a belief that only through apocalyptic destruction and subsequent renewal can a heavenly state of purity be reached in an emerging new society of true believers," noted a lecturer. "This apocalyptic mind-set welcomes and in extreme cases actively supports wiping the slate clean through the subjugation or murder of unbelievers and the complete destruction of the societies of non-believers. The required Armageddon can be natural/god caused or man-made. The subsequent blissful pure-state can be Earthly and/or heavenly. The professional psychological community now classifies such thoughts to indicate a form of mental illness, a finding of course rejected as nonsense by the radical cult followers."

Ed noted that his wife Ann dealt with a similar form of death-wish in her UN dealings. Many isolationists argued that the United States and other countries should simply seal their boarders and deal with only internal problems, and let the rest of the world be damned by increasing chaos in which only the strong would survive. The approach had a certain appeal, but ignored many realities, such as the dangers posed by resulting power-mad tyrannical governments that run amuck and attacked neighbors, and also the disease, pollution, wars, and other dangers that tended to readily cross national borders. No, isolationism hadn't worked very well for centuries and wasn't rational behavior. The only logical approach to survival was the one being generally pursued - a stronger UN. Only a more strongly united humanity could cope with the emerging serious problems both global and local.

However next it was argued that the global cooperation needed to address the rise of climate change and other problems was lacking. Many people and countries did not trust or work well with others. This was linked to normal and solidly ingrained 'cautious behavior' for people by psychologists, as opposed to the more extraordinary efforts and courage required to establish more altruistic trust and cooperation. "As a result the UN, though much stronger than it was a century earlier, is probably not nearly as strong as it needs to be to be fully successful," it was noted.

The tendency for people to deny the existence of big problems/issues and the human culpability for them was then presented as a psychological problem, along with their refusal to address such issues. Big problems such as climate change and pollution were dismissed by delusional science-denialists as 'natural' or 'supernatural' issues about which humans had no control. Others said that climate change real and human caused, but it was a government and/or UN plot to gain power.

"Religious extremes that are used to deny physical realities and subsequent science theory lack intellectual integrity, and this is now regarded to be a form of delusional mental incompetence," it was noted. "Though many religions have no problem with science, those that do irresponsibly imperil us all. As an example, we note that human reaction to human induced climate change has been slow and muted in part due to religious-based science denialism. It took decades too long to finally establish a suitable word-wide response to climate change that is only now being brought to bear."

The lectures continued. It was noted that it was psychologically often easier emotionally to live in denial and suffer from the problems than it was to accomplish the difficult job of cooperating together to address problems effectively. It was also much easier to follow charismatic dictators that promised simple quick fixes than it was to establish the complex long-term efforts necessary to actually seriously address deep-rooted mega-problems.

A speaker described the arrogance of 'presentism' - the tendency to ignore the many lessons of history that could of relevance to addressing present problems. Every new generation felt that it was superior to previous generations and therefore relatively immune to problems. However there was a counter concern that well established institutions and cultures were no-longer relevant and were irrationally being sustained even though they were in some cases obstructing progress towards dealing with current and future problems.

Though global cooperation was described as necessary for survival, globalization and mono-culturalism was an impediment to the creativity that might be needed to survive, the next lecturer argued. English had become the dominant world language, and the language of a culture helped shape its thoughts and behavior. What if possible solutions to problems were not found due to mono-culturalism? Clinical psychology was identified as example area that was weakened by mono-culturalism since earlier in the century. Globalization of American psychiatric practices led to a too simplistic view of mental problems and a too-widespread use of drugs in psychotherapy, while more effective non-drug treatments practiced in several cultures were for a long time ignored and nearly became forgotten.

Williams finally summarized the world situation by stating that as difficult as the physical problems such as climate change were, looking at them from a psychological perspective they in principle were mere annoyances that usually had practical physical solutions that weren't practiced for psychological reasons. For example eradicating world hunger and disease had been physically doable for several generations but had never been done. The more intractable problems by far were the human psychological peculiarities and weaknesses that plagued humanity. Humanity was far more likely to extinguish itself or needlessly allow itself to be extinguished than were the mere physical problems it faced."

"Swell," said Ed, as the audience politely applauded. "Wasn't THAT uplifting!"

"It was a set of lectures on realities, not a pep-talk to make you feel better," Mary pointed out.

"I DIDN'T LEARN A DAMN THING THAT WAS USEFUL," Driscal told Ed silently. "WHAT A BUNCH OF USELESS CRAP: MOSTLY THE SAME PREACHY STUFF WE HEARD EARLIER IN BROOKLYN. YES HUMANS SUCK. NOT A DAMNED THING I CAN DO ABOUT IT EXCEPT PUT A FEW OF THEM AWAY. SO LET'S GET TO OUR NEXT GIG AND FIND SOME BAD GUYS."

Williams was wrapping up the gathering by thanking the already departing participants when a student delivered a typed note to Ed that ended in an Omega symbol. It said:

'Do you see yet that mankind and friends are pathetically twisted and totally doomed? Save yourselves? IMPOSSIBLE. You won't even survive a minor change in climate!'

Questioning the student who delivered the note and reviewing surveillance videos yielded no actionable information. The student had discovered the note in the College in-basket. An unrecognizable hooded figure was discovered in a blurry school surveillance video, likely delivering the note. Driscal's portable forensic kit detected no finger prints on the note aside from Ed's.

Back in the Humvee, the detective again voiced his displeasure. "That was more wasted time, Chief. And that's three times we got a note from the perps and three times we were unable to capitalize on it. We need better surveillance than crappy school cams."

"So where were the NYPD spy cams this time?" asked Ed.

"I've been monitoring their telemetry," said Mary. "The closest stationary City cams are down due to maintenance issues, and the airborne cam drones have been shut down due to weather."

"Bull shit!" said Driscal. "There's no new snow on my damn Humvee! It hasn't been snowing here for the last two hours! There should have been cop spy drones overhead for all that time!"

He radioed the NYPD surveillance headquarters to voice his displeasure. After several minutes of yelling and cursing he hung up and relayed what he had found out to the others. "Their weather sensors say it snowed two inches here at York over the last two hours, and that caused drones to be diverted from this area. Meanwhile all area ground-cams shut down for their monthly maintenance cycles during that period, even though none of them were due to do so."

"The kidnappers hacked into your NYPD surveillance systems," said Ed.

"No shit!" agreed Driscal, as the Humvee started rolling towards the next college.

"I thought that was supposed to be practically impossible," said Ed. "Don't Stone-Coats help design most public computerized systems nowadays?"

"Yes said Mary, but no system is totally un-hackable. The main deterrent is that nowadays hacking is an international crime since those cyber wars that humans had a few decades ago. But that's another useful clue: our bad guys are master-hackers." She said it in her always cheerful manner. "That should narrow our suspect list."

"Sure," said Driscal. "Only a few million entities in the world could have hacked into the City computer systems. And most of them are Stone-Coats, who you claim are all always totally trustworthy and innocent."

"The note itself provided much useful information," continued Mary. "The kidnappers essentially referred to humans in the third person, suggesting that they are not themselves human. They also referred to 'mankind and friends' as if they were not themselves friends to humans."

"It's a bit naive to rely on their word choices to derive solid clues," said Driscal, "though I agree you have to use what you've got. I'll take your results with a grain of salt though."

"Who are the 'friends' they refer to, do you suppose?" Mary asked.

"Stone-Coats and jants are solid friends to humans, Ann would argue," said Ed, "and so would I. Stone-Coats are doing tremendous works for humanity now, and jants through med-ticks have saved millions of human lives by curing most human disease including cancer."

"Stone-Coat and jant partnerships with humans are more a matter of practical symbiosis than friendship," argued Mary.

"It is those practical aspects that allow friendly relationships to later develop," said Ed. "Humans feed and provide shelter for jants, while jants through their med-ticks cure our disease. Stone-Coats build many things for humans, while humans gather up carbon and other substances necessary for Stone-Coat to flourish such as they have never done before. I argue that such practical associations lead to further trust and true friendship. Why do rogue jants bother animating your human half, Driscal?"

"My rogue colony is my partner; we work together and both benefit," said Driscal. "The jant Eastern Consortium tolerates rogue colonies as long as the rogue does something useful for them. In our case we hunt down and eliminate jant colonies that have been corrupted by human corruption. What we do is a win-win for both jants and humans. And I like the job, both the human me and the parts of me that live in the hive. I like kicking ass and being backed up by my little bug-buddies. I've been shot twice and stabbed three times since going zombie and every time I have recovered fast and painlessly. There are some big advantages to being dead. I don't even pay taxes anymore."

"That's all swell Driscal," said Ed, "but if the kidnappers aren't humans, jants, or Stone-Coats, who the hell could they be?"

"Beats me," said Driscal, with a shrug. "But I'm damn well going to find out!"

****

While her companion Tracy napped within the metal-shielded room that served as their prison, Mouse reached out telepathically again to detect the life that she knew permeated the world that surrounded them. Through her telepathic probing she had noticed something important: The solid metal screen that surrounded them extended only three feet deep around the edge of the room. The concrete below their feet featured steel rebar spikes that did not fully enclose her probing thoughts in the downward direction. In the down direction she very faintly detected life: only a few insects and other simple creatures, but it was something! Where there were small simple creatures, there would be others that would come to feed on them, she knew: creatures with larger brains that she should be able to communicate with.

Faintly, she detected something larger along and below one wall, a small burrowing creature, perhaps a mole or other mouse-like rodent. Its thought patterns were simple and crude, but Mouse had communicated with such creatures before, and now she 'listened' to its thoughts and learned until at last she could send it a message: "Food and warmth!" she told it, in a form the creature could detect and understand, again and again. "Come!"

The creature responded by gradually digging down and under the barrier and inch-by-inch upwards towards the concrete floor of the prison.

What then? Next to the thin sleeping pad where she lay huddled next to Tracy there was a thin crack in the floor under her, Mouse noticed, likely due to settling after the concrete dried. It was just the sort of crack that Stone-Coats around the world were now fixing in human constructions. It wasn't much of a weakness, but it was a start. She took off the tribal necklace that she always wore which featured a huge pointy diamond with an attached gold chain. In times past the chicken-egg sized gem would have been worth many millions of dollars, but Stone-Coats now made diamonds by the ton for human applications. This gem was a gift from her life-long Stone-Coat companion Stone Runner, and held great sentimental value for Mouse.

Entire buildings were now being made of diamond, but not this floor. This floor was essentially composed of hard grains of sand and gravel held together by softer amorphous limestone: traditional concrete. It wasn't built to last for centuries; no Stone-Coat had made this floor! Hidden and muffled under the rolled-up shirt of Tracy's that she used as a pillow, Mouse used the sharp hard edge of the diamond to break off a tiny chunk of concrete floor, enlarging the crack. And then another. And another.

****

CHAPTER 5

### The Worriers and the Ostriches

Next Queens College was visited. "Here the focus is on concerns about the extent of worrying humans do, and also on concerns about a lack of worrying or about worrying about the wrong things," said Mary, as they arrived.

"Swell," said Ed. "Maybe we'll get another note."

"Academics yapping about worrying sounds even more useless and pointless than what we've already heard," echoed Driscal.

While Ed and Driscal politely tried to at least look like they listened to the speakers, their primary focus was again on trying to identify possible kidnappers. Ed monitored mostly emotions. Driscal studied body and facial language. Mary scanned the crowd and checked attendee identities and backgrounds, and found no discrepancies or other hints of kidnappers. Again they had no luck in spotting guilty or antagonistic looking individuals.

One speaker argued that in modern times mankind suffered from unhealthy levels of anxiety due to more and more dangerous problems to worry about, including even worry about worrying. He then provided an extensive list of worrisome issues, most of them deadly and difficult. Some were astronomical or geological: dangers involving titanic natural phenomena well beyond the control of man.

Another speaker argued that the wrong things were being worried about and that in many cases the dangers of some issues were being exaggerated and in many cases worry was being exploited for economic or political reasons. Another categorized issues as known unknowns, known knowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns. Most human focus was on realized immediate known-known issues: on realized threats such as emerging human-caused climate change. Meanwhile preparation to address likely future cataclysms was almost non-existent. Most worries were not being taken seriously enough, it was argued, and that was something to worry about.

The final speaker worried that Omega worriers were uselessly worrying while unseen, unknown, and unknowable dangers were converging to obliterate human and other life from the face of the Earth. Omega produced and publicized quarterly papers and summary reports on their findings, with very little apparent interest or influence - which was also a cause for worry.

Yes, perhaps in the bigger scheme of things that was something to worry about, Ed thought, but right now he was much more worried about his kidnapped loved ones. He felt helpless and guilty. His own beloved daughter was who knows where, suffering who knows what, at the hands of who knows who, while he sat comfortably listening to depressing talks about issues that likely had absolutely nothing to do with the kidnapping.

It was appropriately dark and dreary when the visitors finally returned to the Humvee, were Driscal fed his jants several pounds of sugar while he again voiced his disapproval of the strategy being pursued. "I have a feeling that somewhere the kidnappers are laughing at us, watching us as we completely waste our time with this damn lecture tour among the most useless and pathetic bunch of folks I've ever seen. Speaking of pathetic people, let's see if my ex-wife has turned up any real leads."

She hadn't, they all concluded, as they listened to a summary report given by one of her staff via a recorded voice-mail. They then phoned Ann, to whom Ed relayed their progress or lack thereof. Though upset and disappointed, Ann relayed highlights of a brief meeting that she just had with the Tribe concerning the Stone-Coat issue. Ed had completely forgotten about the so-called labor dispute that had brought him to the City.

"The Stone-Coats have a long-term plan for New York City that they have already started to implement without meaningful human input," Ann relayed. "The Tribe fears a likely adverse human reaction once they learn details of the plan, and that is happening as we speak. The Tribe fears that they will be caught in the middle of an ugly situation."

"So what's the Stone-Coat plan for the City?" Ed asked.

"As you know, climate change is on pace to provide another two-hundred feet of ocean level rise over the next several centuries. The Stone-Coats plan to let over ninety percent of the City flood while they elevate and protect only small parts of it. Mostly parts of Manhattan, but also bits of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Originally their inclination hadn't been to protect any of it beyond the current twenty to thirty foot levies, but Stone-Coats modified by human templates persuaded the others that New York City is symbolically too important for humans to lose it totally."

Driscal groaned but Ed merely sighed. "OK, given that without Stone-Coat help virtually all the city would be lost, but the Stone-Coats want to save at least parts of it, what's the problem?"

"The story has already gone public and local anti-Stone-Coat sentiment is sky-rocketing. Much of the public wants giant dikes to be erected to preserve the entire City. Already there are dikes twenty to thirty feet high. To simply keep making them higher seems to be the obvious thing to do. Street protests are already being planned."

"But don't they see the big picture?" asked Ed. "As you say, over the next few centuries ocean levels will eventually rise further by over two-hundred feet. The human experts agree that even with Stone-Coat help an extensive dike system for the City isn't possible or practical. It's the same story world-wide. Already ocean levels have risen eight feet and Greenland and Antarctic melting is accelerating. Coastal towns, cities, and countryside are already being abandoned. That's a fact that people have to live with.

"The time to prevent that was the last couple centuries and those centuries are history. It will take more centuries to get greenhouse gasses under control and possibly reverse the warming. But in the meantime, in between time, what will be left of New York City and Long Island?"

"There is a ridge of hills that runs most of the length of Long Island, and a high patch of ground in central Statin Island," said Ann. "Those will together form a natural string of small islands," said Ann. "The Stone-Coat plan is to link them and what remains of the saved portions of the City together with a mammoth bridge system. Sort of like those tropical Florida Key islands that are now being abandoned, but these will feature rock-solid Stone-Coat constructions.

"Parts of Manhattan will gradually be raised by over two-hundred feet in order to keep them above water," continued Ann. "A few historical sites will be preserved by raising them but about twenty stories worth of most preserved buildings will be simply filled in with rock brought from the Catskills by rail and shaped and fused by both stationary and mobile Stone-Coats. Small interconnected islands will result. Think of Venice before it was abandoned. A reduced City of perhaps three million people will remain.

"Required human resources will be minimal. The Stone-Coats are consuming land-fills and mountains for the materials to increase their numbers and consuming nuclear power-plant radioactive waste to power the project. It will be one of the biggest construction jobs in history and will take four centuries to complete: a very short time period from a Stone-Coat perspective."

"And it's already started?"

"Yes. For example even as we speak the Statue of Liberty is becoming preserved as a Stationary Stone-Coat. Eventually she would be disintegrating waist high in water if she wasn't raised higher and strengthened. Already the rest of Liberty Island is submerged."

"Why not make her a mobile Stone-Coat?" Ed obviously had to ask. "She could lead parades and so-forth."

"No, she has to stay hollowed out so that humans can still climb up inside her. But instead of thin copper she'll have much thicker skin, so she'll be made twice as tall and stand atop a pedestal that's twice as tall. Proportions will be maintained."

"That all sounds pretty nifty to me," said Ed. "World-wide, building tens of thousands of miles of dikes over two hundred feet high would be a physical impossibility anyway, even over centuries. Like it or not the entire ocean coastline is shifting inland, in some cases for over a hundred miles. Entire countries and states will be lost. Already over a hundred million people have been displaced from low-lying, highly populated coastal areas. Around the world there are coastal areas where billions of people now live that will ultimately be flooded, and the resulting necessary massive migrations simply can't be avoided. In monetary terms the impact will be many trillions of dollars, and extreme effort and cooperation within and among nations will be required to avoid millions of deaths."

"Good thing it's happening in super slow-mo," said Ann. "Even so, it's pretty obvious that not even the Stone-Coats can prevent the coastal flooding that is only starting. If all big coastal cities were to be saved as the normal plan many would become isolated islands miles from the new shoreline, which would eliminate most of their strategic value anyway. So the Stone-Coats plan to save only parts of a few iconic cities including New York. Rebuilding most cities further inland is the only practical approach, and the Stone-Coats have generously agreed to help with that."

"So I give up," said Ed. "Given that big picture, what's the beef with saving only part of New York City? Letting Ice Giants rebuild Manhattan instead of losing it all sounds like a wining plan to me!"

"You're expecting people to be rational instead of emotional," said Ann.

"He always had that problem," piped in Mary.

"So I'm an optimist about people instead of a total cynic!" countered Ed. "But what does the Tribe expect us to do about the situation? Is there a way to get public support for the Stone-Coat plan?"

"You can make a positive thing of it," suggested Mary. "Turn that frown upside down. Announce cheerfully and with great fanfare that the kind and generous Stone-Coats are immediately beginning to build a new Manhattan and City that will be the new proud wonder of the world. They are saving part of New York City, even though most coastline and coastal cities all around the world must be abandoned. Hold a Stone-Coat and Tribe-led parade that celebrates the good news that the City will be saved.

"I always liked parades," said Ed. "Maybe a Statue of Liberty balloon could be made using tough Stone-Coat-spun carbon fabric. Or better yet have an Ice Giant formed like Miss Liberty."

"You and Ann could be masters of ceremony for the shindig," said Mary. "Break out your best Mohawk Tribe clothes and ride atop the shoulders of a Miss Liberty-shaped Ice Giant with the Mayor. Push the famous New York City pride thing. The crowds will eat it up!"

"Wow!" said Ann. "Maybe you should have my job, Mary! That's a terrific idea that I should have thought of, as I've initiated many similar events across the world! I'll float it by the Tribe and the Mayor, but it sounds like a sure-fired winner! We should do the parade in the Spring when along with warm weather, optimism returns to the City, but we should announce right away that it's going to happen to get us through the current controversy and the nasty winter that has just started."

"Anything else?" Ed asked.

"Bring Tracy and Mouse home safe," said Ann.

"Soon," said Ed, though he didn't know how the hell he would do that. "They'll lead our big happy parade, I promise," he added as he signed off, though throughout the day his optimism with regard to rescuing the kids had been fading.

"You are extremely worried, Ed," noted Mary. "That is of course a useful trait for water and carbon-based life-forms such as humans, but it will avail you little in the current circumstance. You need to focus on the job at hand."

"Don't Stone-Coats worry?" Ed asked.

"Not with the debilitating emotional intensity of humans," said Mary. "The associated logic of problem avoidance and mitigation is of practical value, but worry itself cannot be allowed to dominate thought, or useful action is blocked. The famous human computer programming problem of being stuck in a software do-loop provides a useful analogy. Stone-Coats have been computing survival solutions for hundreds of millions of years and long ago eliminated unhealthy thought patterns such as over-wrought emotions including excessive worry."

"What about you, Driscal? Do jants and their zombies worry?" Ed asked.

"Not this zombie," said Driscal. "I keep myself busy hunting down scum-bags. That's what pure humans mostly do also, they worry more about the day-to-day stuff and avoid thinking about the big picture stuff they mostly can't do anything about anyway. So for me it's a mix of worrying and staying personally alert about the day-to-day stuff, along with sticking my head under the sand like an ostrich for the big stuff so that I keep my head from going crazy or getting it cut off. But that's largely my human heritage, I suppose. Jants are more coldly logical and some thought-linked colonies of the ten or so biggest jant consortiums look at the big picture a lot more than I do."

"What about the Eastern Consortium?" Mary asked. "Do the thousands of Eastern Consortium jant colonies telepathically linked and thinking together worry about big picture concerns?"

"They worry plenty," said Driscal. "You probably noticed that several Omega members we encountered today are zombies. Most of them are like me animated by rogue jant colonies, but some are of the Eastern Consortium, keeping an ever-watchful eye out for potential existential threats to jants, including jants themselves."

"There are plenty of existential threats to worry about," noted Mary, "including whoever and whatever disassembles Stone-Coats and kidnaps humans. Speaking of kidnappers, we have heard nothing from them on this Queens College stop."

"Maybe we just have," said Driscal, as he pointed to a Humvee dash-screen. On the screen was a short e-mail message above a red-flashing omega symbol:

'Your pitiful efforts to find us will fail,' it said. 'Soon we will kill all of you.'

Simple and direct, thought Ed.

"Well ain't that sweet!" Driscal remarked. "The kidnappers really do care about us!"

****

CHAPTER 6

### Science or Bust

The New York Collage of Technology was located along the western edge of Brooklyn just across the ancient Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. Together with the neighboring New York University campus that sprawled just to the north of it, this was a major City center of learning and Omega node. Several other nearby institutions also participated with them in Omega research, including St. Francis and St. Joseph's Colleges, Long Island University, and the Pratt Institute.

"Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!" said the be-speckled little woman that greeted the party with handshakes and hugs when they exited the Humvee. "I'm your host this evening Professor Amanda Lee, Dean of the College! Call me Amanda. You are of course Chief Ed, Detective Driscal, and our very frequent and very welcome guest and colleague Mary! Your images, biographies, and news of your quest to find the kidnappers precede you, not to mention various news stories over the years!"

She escorted them into a big new building, with Driscal pushing Mary's wheelchair. It was unclear who benefited most from that arrangement; underpowered Mary or the awkward zombie. Inside dozens of students and faculty were scurrying about, but they each and every one of them paused to exchange warm greetings with the affable Professor Amanda, including several Stone-Coats and zombies. "We have about twenty minutes before the main lecture hall is ready for the presentation you requested. Can I interest you folks in some food? My office is right here where I can welcome guests to the College. And there are rest rooms here also, right across the hall."

Ed and Driscal took a quick trip to the restrooms, while Mary settled into a cold station in the Professor's office that was designed to keep visiting Stone-Coats nicely chilled. When the men returned to the office they found Mary already providing an overview of their situation to the Professor, while the Professor sat listening behind her big desk munching on a thick sandwich. There was a big plate of sandwiches in front of her which she shoved invitingly across her desk towards Ed and Driscal as they sat down in the two chairs next to Mary. She also reached into a small refrigerator behind her and retrieved several small glass bottles of apple-juice that she passed around to her guests.

"Are you carrying any jants with you that need food?" the Professor asked Driscal.

"No," said Driscal. "My entire colony is in the Humvee. They could use a re-stalking of perishable provisions however, if you have some to spare."

"She has them," said Mary. "Scientifically determined by a Space Program sponsored project to provide for all jant nutritional needs. Very similar to Cat food, actually. Purina is starting to market it as a dual-use cat or jant food."

"And it has been jant tested and approved by the Eastern Consortium itself," added Amanda. "I'll have one of my assistants make up a twenty pound bag of healthy jant goodies for you before you leave us. Meanwhile those sandwiches should serve to energize the human components of this unusual group."

"Thank you ever so much!" agreed Ed, as he bit into a tasty tuna-on-rye sandwich. He hadn't realized how hungry he had become until he did. He was astonished to find himself eating real tuna, instead of tuna flavored beans made to resemble tuna. Amanda must have connections with the fish-market folks, he concluded. Driscal was very hungry also, apparently, as he was soon also rapidly consuming a sandwich. The human half of zombies needed human food, of course, though they didn't seem to get quite as much enjoyment from it as live humans did.

"It looks like Mary's text to me requesting food was a good idea," said Amanda.

"You need to take care of yourself Ed, even during this crisis," said Mary. "You won't find Tracy and Mouse by starving yourself. And you'll need rest too. I've ordered nearby hotel rooms in Manhattan for us. I'll continue to work through the night of course, but you and Detective Driscal will need sleep at some point tonight."

Ed had hoped to go home to be with Ann and the children for the night, but he raised no objections.

"To that practical end I suppose that we should get this show started," said Amanda, as she and her guests finished their sandwiches and drinks. She led them down the adjoining hallway towards the nearby lecture hall. They passed several obvious Stone-Coat cooling stations, built to chill bulky Stone-Coats to temperatures that supported their efficient locomotion.

"What's this?" asked Ed, pointing to the doorway of a side-room that they were passing. "I sense jants inside, many millions of them comprising at least a dozen colonies!"

"It's a sort of jant daycare center for the convenience of the zombie students and faculty that must carry their jant colonies about with them wherever they go," explained Amanda. "As I am sure you are well aware, zombies and their associated jant colonies must essentially remain within a few miles of each other, at least the zombies of rogue colonies do. Consortium jants can in theory of course pass zombie-care between colonies, but that's not a preferred practice."

"For sure," said Driscal. "The zombie usually survives physically but it messes up both zombies and the jant colonies that are involved psychologically. The Consortium only supports such transference in emergencies."

"AT SOME POINT WE NEED TO COMMUNICATE MORE WITH THE EASTERN CONSORTIUM," Ed said silently to his zombie NYPD companion. "WE COULD DO THAT HERE. THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO CONSORTIUM ZOMBIES HERE, I CAN SENSE THEIR CHATTER."

"I HAVE A DIFFERENT PLAN TO DO THAT LATER TONIGHT," replied Driscal. "FOR NOW LET'S GET THIS STUPID LECTURE BUSINESS OVER WITH."

In the lecture hall a couple of hundred students and faculty were gathered. Some were busy talking with each other, but most were self-absorbed and taking advantage of the high capacity computing and communications resources provided by each audience seating-assembly. Most however dutifully shifted their full attention to Amanda and the visiting guests when they entered the room and made their way to the podium.

"Tonight we will provide an overview of the concerns for and about science and technology that we face during these difficult times," Amanda began, after introducing the guests and seating them in the front row. "Human science efforts have suffered greatly since the onset of human induced climate change, and despite the reprieve provided over the last several decades by increased Space Project funding, science as a whole remains poorly funded and supported.

"Human attention and resources are understandably focused primarily on national and international crisis situations that arise one after the other as the ecological webs of life and human institutions of civilization established over past centuries and eons are stressed to their breaking points and beyond.

"Science enabled technology may indeed help save us but it brings with it problems as well as solutions, as some of our presentations here will suggest."

The first speakers re-hashed much of the same depressing material that the visitors had heard earlier that day: druids vs. engineers, religion-driven science rejection, poor education, anti-intellectualism, Internet drivel, and other impediments to science and its support by society were briefly described. The visitors stayed awake by looking for the kidnappers among the crowd using their individual talents. As at previous stops their efforts led nowhere. If the kidnappers were in the audience they weren't easily detectable.

"Science should be used more in establishing morality and public policy." argued a speaker. "Science now understands much about human nature that isn't adequately taken into account by society, including a better understanding of such things as reciprocal altruism, moralistic punishment, within-group amity and between-group enmity, and how trade and other societal contacts help establish trust between peoples. What can or can't be supported by science should be treated as major factors in defining a science-based morality that drives social change and relationships. For example it has been established by science that democratic countries and international trade reduce the probability of international conflict."

A systems analyst then discussed the inadequacy of current global and national social systems and institutions to deal with crisis, and how in many instances a crisis in one region spread to another region with the unintended help of technology due to dependent coupling between different parts of the system. "Globalization is a good thing except when it isn't, and the associated technology that supports globalization is a many-sided sword." He also pointed out the unavoidable vulnerability of the computer systems that were closely linked together across the world due to fundamental requirements to communicate and integrate information.

"Despite safeguards even unintended problems have a tendency to cascade through the Internet linked systems." he pointed out. "Hackers cause problems, surely, but particularly since the establishment of strong international anti-hacker and anti-identity theft laws and law enforcement, most information disruptions are due to quirky design weaknesses instead of deliberate attacks. As the system becomes more complex, issues are becoming far more difficult to diagnose and prevent, even with less hacks and identity thefts in the mix."

Another speaker provided a quick overview of robotics technology, which was continuing to advance dramatically despite climate change induced crisis situations. Across much of the world most routine physical chores were now automated, but that also meant that most jobs for humans were gone. Most routine maintenance of robotics was also now carried out by autonomous robots, as was most design, assembly, and maintenance of the robots themselves. Some robots were even declaring themselves to be sentient and were demanding to have equal rights that would be protected by laws.

The most advanced robot abilities were typically needed and developed by the Space Program, since space probes need to function and maintain themselves independently far from Earth for many years. The long dreaded point of 'artificial intelligence singularity' at which computers achieved consciousness was reached decades ago but the consequences were still slowly emerging. Now that some robots were both sentient and self-replicating, serious consequences both good and bad were increasingly likely to materialize.

"Interesting," commented Ed. At the remote Mohawk reservation where he had lived most of his life there were few robots, none of them sentient. "What do the more advanced robots think of themselves and what is the Stone-Coat perception of them?"

"Robots thus far lack the integrated society and similarities of viewpoints shared by Stone-Coats," said the researcher, who happened to be a Stone-Coat. "Robots embody enormous computing power but lack the computational nuances that have evolved into Stone-Coat thought and culture over many millions of years of evolution. We indeed regard some advanced robots to be actual primitive life-forms, though many details of their physiology remain crude by our standards."

"There are rogue jant colonies," noted Driscal, "are there also rogue robots?"

The Stone-Coat shrugged human-like. "Unknown by this researcher. But that is not a logical impossibility. Rather, I think that it is inevitable."

Ed and Driscal exchanged jaw-dropped glances. "SHIT," Driscal said silently.

"What about robot physical and mental capabilities?" Driscal asked. "Strength and speed and computer skills such as hacking, for example."

"All beings are of course limited by the immutable characteristics of physical laws," the lecturer replied, "but truly advanced robot capabilities could be great compared to human and perhaps even Stone-Coat life-forms. What has been actually achieved in terms of robot capabilities by secret Government programs is unknown to us, but there are disturbing rumors."

"Swell," said Ed. He'd have to talk to Jerry about this. The Space Program was Jerry's pet project.

The next speaker argued for a while that there were not enough robots to satisfy human needs, but then noted that most human jobs were being eliminated by automation including robots, with very troublesome societal consequences, despite obvious advantages. Human work-hours were at an all-time low, with full retirement typically after thirty years of work.

A Stone-Coat speaker presented the possibility of the Internet-interfaced computers of the world collectively acquiring sentience and essentially controlling the world. "That seems obvious and inevitable to us. Self-programming abilities already abound, and the interlinked computational resources are incredibly high. It may have already happened and we wouldn't necessarily even know about it. The Internet and associated cloud of computers have for decades housed most information and have been used by people to control other people. Intentional disinformation obtained from humans has been a huge problem since the Internet was started. Imagine an Internet that itself subtly changes information to suit its own purposes. Resources could be shifted. Wars could be started. The possibilities are almost limitless."

"Why should we fear a computing entity that has no physical abilities?" asked a skeptical faculty member.

"And couldn't we simply pull out the plug?" asked another. "That would surely destroy any ghosts in the computer system."

"The physical capabilities to be concerned with are provided by the Internet users themselves: humans, Stone-Coats, and even jants," said the lecturer, "whom may all be subtly influenced and controlled due to the knowledge control of the Internet computing system. And of course as earlier discussed, linkage with and between physically capable robot entities could also be expected to be exploited by such cloud entities.

"As to 'pulling the plug' on hundreds of millions of computers, that would be far too devastating in itself; human civilization is far too dependent on computers and the Internet. Besides, how would such an event be organized and simultaneously carried out if communications are controlled by the entity itself? The controlling consciousness could be redundantly spread throughout millions of computers as a cloud computing entity. Normal back-up mechanisms would actually preserve and protect it. In sum it would simply resume operation when it was plugged back in again. Destroying it would be almost a physical and practical impossibility.

"Consider also that the Internet could support multiple such entities and their evolution, all hidden from us. The Internet-linked world computing system is a new life-supporting ecosystem; an environment in which a new form of life may emerge and thrive and possibly threaten other forms of earthly life."

"I can't comprehend how such an entity would come to learn self-preservation," an audience member objected.

"Well," replied the lecturer, "even the tiniest, simplest biological life forms 'learned' self and species preservation billions of years ago. Certainly we Stone-Coats also acquired that trait through some accident of nature hundreds of millions of years ago and retained it through evolution as a favored trait. Why should it be so difficult for sophisticated computing systems to stumble across it? The same logic applies, regardless of the medium involved. Besides, for a century humans have attempted to program human-like life and intelligence into machines; perhaps someone succeeded. So unlike with other life-forms, such a trait could have been consciously provided by human creators, along with other traits that favor survival and proliferation."

"Swell," remarked Ed under his breath.

"There are researchers that are even now attempting to detect the presence of such entities," concluded the lecturer, "but detection could be difficult or even impossible, since such entities could in principle subtly foil detection attempts carried out in their own environment. Humans have been detecting and deleting extraneous code and data for a century using so-called anti-virus techniques. It would be natural for any life-forms evolving in the cloud to evolve highly effective defenses against such programs."

Speakers then discussed the status of human science efforts. Status was mixed. Compared to before the onset of the climate change crisis science as a whole was less diverse, less funded, and less valued by society. The focus of government and privately funded research was understandably on crisis related practical applications and not on basic research to advance knowledge. The two exceptions were areas related to the still well-funded Space Program and areas that were thought to possibly lead to commercial profit. Anti-intellectualism, political, religious, social media, commercial, and other distorting and negative societal influences on science were also again mentioned.

It was also argued that in some science areas intellectual and physical limits had been reached that could stifle further advance. Mathematics and physics frontiers had become so difficult to understand that further progress was seriously impeded. The understanding of complex systems and areas such as chaos theory, which had been a primary focus of basic science in the last few decades, also seemed to be encountering limits, even when human science was augmented by Stone-Coat and jant colony participation.

There were practical and physical limitations that seemed to defy further advances in some basic sciences. Bigger particle accelerators and more powerful telescopes were cost-prohibited. Closer observation of biological systems significantly distorted the biology being observed. Some theorists called such limitations part of a new 'uncertainty principle' that set insurmountable limits to the obtainability of deeper knowledge and spelled the end of science. Others maintained that such a notion was itself a self-organizing collective delusion. As resources found in space were discovered, some Earthly resource limitations to science were being overcome, though new ones then took their place.

Stone-Coat and jant participation in once human-only scientific endeavors was hailed as a huge positive factor, with Stone-Coat contributions largely in the physical and geological sciences, and jant contributions largely in biology.

Despite obstacles biological science had advanced enormously in the last century, leading to thousands of significant new applications. Improved food crop species grew in areas of the Earth undergoing climate change. New plant materials including fibers were used to fashion new physical products. Medical responses to plague outbreaks were quicker and more effective. Dozens of species that would have already gone extinct had been saved, and many more had been genetically analyzed and preserved for possible future rejuvenation. Together with tiny robotic nanites, genetically engineered biota had already begun to terraform Mars and Titan for eventual widespread habitation many centuries in the future by normal Earth life-forms.

Recent advances in biological science, supported greatly by jants and Stone-Coats, were also identified to constitute a double-sided sword to be worried about. Yes, biological understanding was greatly aiding the survival of human and other life-forms, but it also led to the potential for the creation of ever more deadly chemical and biological weapons. In the last few decades human bio-terrorists had initiated several deadly plagues that killed millions of people. Hundreds of millions more could have died, if not for the quick UN-led responses supported by clear-headed Stone-Coats and med-ticks/jants.

It seemed that for each wondrous application of biological science there were new opportunities for misuse. Rogue nations developed new biological weapons 'on-the-cheap'. Synthetic biology had matured such that new or greatly modified species could be created in laboratories all over the world. Deadly disease strains of microbes and new plant and animal species were being developed in garage laboratories and released to the unsuspecting world - jants being the most famous instance of a new and successful human-created species.

How jant creation would turn out in the end was still to be determined, claimed the speaker, though the contributions of jants towards biological science and medical practice were undeniably hugely positive. But what if a new sort of deadly creature large or small proved to also be as biologically successful as the jants? For instance, might some altered form of human strive to eliminate their human competition?

Ed was somewhat relieved when it was mentioned that Lamarckian evolution, though an emerging concern decades earlier, had mostly disappeared as a concern. Ed long suspected that Jerry Green had been responsible for both its emergence and its subsequent demise, using bio-products made in his garage-based laboratories. Nevertheless evolutionary change was operating at an accelerated pace due to climate change and other preasures. Even without Lamarckism, from the huge laboratory that was the Earth biosphere under stress from climate change, pollution, human changes to habitats, and other factors, altered species emerged daily, as they had done for billions of years.

The possibility of human/machine cyborgs was discussed. Many humans were already getting brain implants to aid in communications, memory and cognition, and other implants to reverse the effects of natural abnormalities such as blindness and paralysis that so far defied even the healing abilities of jant med-ticks.

The final speaker was a Professor Egborg, introduced by Amanda to be a visiting scholar from one of the other campuses whom at the last minute was added to the end of the program. Ed noticed right away that the little old man was a zombie, but as the Professor made his way from where he had been sitting inconspicuously in the audience to the speaker's podium Ed was surprised to find that he couldn't decipher his internal jant chatter!

"SOME ROGUE JANTS HAVE EVOLVED THEIR OWN COMPLEX LANGUAGE VARIATIONS," Driscal's jants told Ed silently. "UNFORTUNATELY THAT PREVENTS INSIGHTS INTO THEIR THOUGHTS BY OUTSIDERS SUCH AS US."

"I DON'T MUCH LIKE THAT!" interjected Mary. "I DON'T UNDERSTAND EVEN STANDARD JANT CHATTER MYSELF AND I DEPEND ON YOU TWO TO CHECK OUT THE JANTS! ON THE OTHER HAND THOUGH, EGBORG CHECKS OUT OK WITH RESPECT TO HIS UNIVERSITY RECORDS."

"I'LL HAVE MY NYPD PEOPLE CHECK HIM OUT DEEPER," promised Driscal.

The visitors weren't the only ones already exhibiting apprehension about Egborg. The several audience zombies were as perplexed as Ed by their inability to form telepathic connections with him, and humans and Stone-Coats alike were surprised to not recognize the man. Up to now speakers and their subject matter had been familiar to them.

"My fellow Omega members, I salute you for your diligence in studying the many dangers now faced on this obscure little planet," Egborg began. "But you can't see the forest for the trees, can you? You have mentioned the positive influence of Stone-Coats and jants on the human scientific enterprise, but downplayed the many negatives! What about the fact that med-tick application has decimated the human healthcare industry and associated research? The drug industry has been decimated! Human doctors have been in large measure been replaced by insects! The impact has been enormous! For example a thriving human organ replacement industry that relied on growing replacement organs for humans in laboratories and pigs has gone bankrupt! The health insurance industry has largely disappeared! Medical people are largely unemployed. World-wide millions of health professionals have lost their jobs."

"All for the good!" shouted someone from the audience. "Symbiosis between humans, jants, and Stone-Coats is saving the planet!"

"For the good of a growing human detachment from productive enterprise and a growing human stupidity," countered Egborg. "Symbiosis is the dirtiest word in the human language! What about negative impacts due to Stone-Coats? Doesn't it bother humans to find that Stone-Coat thinkers squirreled away and thinking in their ancient mountains millions of years ago developed far superior mathematics than humans ever managed? Doesn't it bother humans that hundreds of millions of their construction jobs have been taken over by soulless stone golems?"

"But I have perhaps allowed your farcical presentations to cloud my own," said Egborg, as he turned his gaze towards the visitors. "Chief Ed, Mary 11,123, and Detective Driscal, I salute your desperate but ultimately hopeless search for truth."

The words shocked Ed. How did he know all this? What 'truth' did he mean? Truth with regard to what had happened that morning? Was Egborg in with the kidnappers?

"I will meet again with you three searchers before your hopeless quest is terminated," continued Egborg. "At this point I merely suggest your hopeless naiveté with regard to the dangers that Omega discusses here and elsewhere at the CUNY campuses." He stared out into the audience with his penetrating gaze as he spoke, seeming to look into the minds of each of his listeners in turn, until his wondering gaze at last again locked onto Ed.

"Despite hints of dangers provided to you here tonight, the challenges faced by you are far greater than you imagine. Humans have fouled their Earthly habitat and themselves, and fouled also the behavior of Stone-Coats and jants with emotion laden human thoughts and self-destructive habits.

"Science has always been your only hope; it's science or bust for you all. But you know not what you have already done with your scientific blunderings! Omega and similar projects that try to identify the dangers have failed you, and in summary you are already too late to stop what you have carelessly started." He again focused his eyes on Ed. "Continue your hopeless quest, Chief Ed, but in the end you will find only well-deserved failure and death!"

At that point there were grumblings from the audience as Egborg stepped away from the podium and Amanda rose from her nearby chair, clearly flustered by what had just been said, but exhibiting a forced smile and a determination to make the best of things. "Well that was, I think, just a bit too pessimistic a view for our final speaker," she said. "Professor Egborg, I do believe that Omega will press on and succeed despite such a gloomy outlook from you!" Amanda's statement drew positive exclamations and scattered applause from the audience.

Meanwhile Egborg didn't return to his seat, but instead walked with surprising swiftness towards an exit. Driscal sprang to his feet to apprehend him, but Amanda was already saying thank you and goodnight to the audience, who in response mostly stood in-mass and started for the exits, filling the isles and slowing the detective, who quickly lost sight of Egborg.

Minutes later they all gathered in Amanda's office. "He got away clean," announced Driscal. "A student outside said that she witnessed him being driven away in a big black sedan without license plates. I've put out an alert to NYPD to apprehend and detain him on suspicion of kidnapping."

"He was deliberately taunting and mocking us," said Ed. "I don't suppose there are laws against being a snooty asshole but if so he should be pursued on those grounds also."

"In the meantime I've just spoken to my counterpart at the CUNY school Egborg claimed to be from, and they've never heard of the man," said Amanda. "He's a fake, but his on-line records check out; that's why he was added to our program without question."

"The CUNY computer records were obviously hacked," said Mary. "Not your fault, Amanda."

"He'll be gang-tackled and detained if he ever sets foot in a CUNY school again, I'll see to that," Amanda said angrily. "Academic integrity needs to be maintained!" She walked the visitors out to their Humvee and gave Driscal a big sack of jant food for his jant colony before wishing them luck and saying goodbye.

****

"That Egborg character freaked me out big-time, but I have to admit that business about robots and cyborgs has probably got me thinking the most," said Driscal, as the Humvee again got underway and headed for the nearby Brooklyn Bridge.

"And you've been unusually quiet," Ed told Mary. "What do you and other Stone-Coats think about robots and cyborgs? And what are your thoughts on Egborg?"

"I've been busy communicating with other Stone-Coats on those topics and they agree that involvement of robot and/or cyborg entities is possible, perhaps even probable given the accumulated evidence. They've also been searching records and can find nothing about Egborg at local, state, federal, or international levels.

"We have also recorded and studied full-spectrum electromagnetic and thermal scans and signatures of him. His body appears to be human but that could be cleverly faked. His telepathic signature appeared to be jant but that could be faked. He didn't appear to be Stone-Coat but perhaps even that could be faked. We are leaning towards a robot or cyborg hypothesis despite his jant-like chatter, but whoever and whatever he really is, he has arrogance and commands computer hacking talents."

"He toys with us," said Driscal. "He is no ordinary bad guy. This whole Stone-Coat disassembly and kidnapping incident might be above our collective pay grades. Maybe that's something we can discus with some acquaintances of mine in Manhattan tonight before we bed down at that hotel that Mary arranged."

"Where are we going now?" Ed asked.

"To my favorite zombie bar," said Driscal.

****

Passage in the Humvee from Brooklyn to Manhattan over the Stone-Coat remodeled Brooklyn Bridge was a surreal experience for Ed. The Bridge glowed and sparkled from the presence of dozens of smallish spider-like Stone-Coats that climbed all over it, renewing and fusing together stone and steel that had been weakened from a century and a half of use and weather. Ed wasn't surprised to notice that the bridge was also being widened by the Stone-Coats. For decades the creatures had been widening and repairing roadways world-wide. After a century of pathetic inadequacy, New York City interstate highways and parkways were finally proportionate with the size of the City. Even more astounding: they lacked potholes!

Ahead of them the gigantic constantly changing skyline of the South Manhattan Financial District rose; countless dozens of vertical buildings that stretched skyward like the trees of a forest, with windows brightly glowing in seeming defiance of ever-strengthening edicts for energy conservation. High above them the new Sky Rail train system glowed and hummed with energy, carrying thousands of New Yorkers through the glowing forest of skyscrapers and reminding Ed and all of humanity that the human spirit could be sometimes muted but never fully contained.

Ed was tired; it had been a long, emotionally exhausting day. He would have dozed off in the Humvee, but for the aching nagging fear for Tracy and Mouse that hadn't left him since morning. Where were they? More important, were they safe and well? Trivia about the girls filled his mind endlessly: mostly good memories of Tracy growing up. Frustratingly, some memories eluded him. What were the last words between them, and when did they last exchange a hug?

Worst of all was the growing dread that the girls were dead and all the searchers were merely being played by Egborg and company. The quest that he led to save the girls was failing miserably, he could feel it.

****

CHAPTER 7

### The Zombie Bar

A human, a zombie, and a Stone-Coat walked into a bar in the lower Manhattan financial district, looking for enlightenment. Dead Mike's Zombie Bar was the name of the place as announced by the brightly lit sign over the door, but by human standards it wasn't a bar, as it served no alcoholic beverages. Zombies were too susceptible to its influence; alcoholic drinks essentially became totally illegal for zombies two decades earlier.

"Too bad, I could have used a stiff jolt of something alcoholic tonight," Ed told the smiling dead but stunningly beautiful zombie waitress that showed them to a table in the back of the room and took the orders of the unusual trio. In truth, due to Ed's unusual metabolism, alcohol had little effect on him anyway. "I'll have the apple juice and a turkey-burger with sweet-potato fries," he requested. He felt guilty ordering food when the girls were kidnaped or worse, but as Mary had pointed out it would do them no good for him to starve himself.

"Same here, Julie," said Driscal. He was obviously already very familiar with the Zombie Bar and its zombies.

"Only chilled mineral water for me," said Mary. "I'll have to move myself about using steam in here." It had to be close to eighty-five degrees in Mike's; just right for zombies and jants, but warm enough to quickly heat up Mary to above-freezing temperatures. "More likely I'll stay in my wheelchair."

"Sorry honey," said Julie. "We have no cooling stations for stoners. We don't get too many stoners in here. Or humans that have no jants, but somehow chatter away broadcasting jant thoughts," she nodded towards Ed.

Julie was very attractive for a dead person and looked to be under thirty, Ed judged. He wondered what sort of tragedy had led her to becoming a zombie, but refrained from asking her jants. Her life and death story was none of his damned business. Besides, as she had noticed, he was silently very busy introducing himself to the dozens of different jant colonies present or represented in the Bar by their human-halves.

"And tell Dead Mike that we're here to do serious Consortium business," Driscal added, before Julie walked away, though that information was doubtlessly already being spread via jant chatter. "Is Markus here tonight? I want to talk to him too."

"He almost always is," Julie answered. "I'll ask Mike to bring him along."

Their table was to the rear of the seating area, and had a good view of most of the establishment. Perhaps three dozen zombies occupied the tables, mostly in threes and fours. A couple of dozen more sat at the long bar located along one wall. Half the tables were swarming with big brown ants with inch-long bodies: jants that ate from trays of jant-preferred food: grains and raw finely sliced meat, for the most part. Most of the meat was immediately consumed on the spot, after being torn to tiny bite-sized bits by jant over-sized mandibles, but most of the grain was carried by streams of jants to their colonies, which were usually located nearby in big suitcases, boxes, and other assorted bulky containers stashed under tables or atop chairs. A couple of zombies wore large backpacks that held sizable portions of their jant colonies. At least a third of the zombies didn't appear to have total jant colonies with them, but Ed sensed their colonies in nearby autos and apartments, animating their humans from a safe distance. Most of the colonies were rogue.

"It seems to be a monumental waste of time and energy for zombies to physically gather in this way," remarked Mary. "Can't jants more effectively communicate through telepathy and through human venues such as the Internet?"

"We can and do," said Driscal. "But as Egborg correctly noted, jant thought is tainted by human thoughts and social needs, much as human thought templates have perverted your Stone-Coat thought. Gathering this way is mostly a human thing. Zombies like to get together with other zombies due to their human-sides, though jants themselves have no particular need for it."

"Ha!" Ed laughed. "I think you delude yourself a bit. Even before zombies happened, jant thought was greatly influenced by human thought, and since their very beginning jants have felt compelled to 'get together' telepathically."

"But not physically," said Driscal. "Individual colonies generally need to have their own territories. It's unnatural for multiple colonies to be so physically close together. Without rational hive-level consciousness they would enslave or cannibalize each other. It's a bug-eat-bug world."

"We Stone-Coats prefer to regard our relationship with humans as enrichment rather than perversion," said Mary. "But of course Stone-Coat interaction with humans is far more measured than that of jants."

"Of course," said Driscal. "Stone-Coat interaction with humans is more superficial."

"There are some aspects of humans that we don't choose to closely emulate," said Mary. "Judging from the results, jants could have also fared better by being more selective with regard to their own interactions with humans, or rogue zombies like you wouldn't be necessary to cull the results. Some rogues are so tainted that Consortium jants don't want to even get near them."

"Our interactions with humans on the whole have been highly successful," countered Driscal. "In only a few decades with human cooperation jants have become the number-one life form on Earth. We mass over ten-percent of world-wide land-based animal life. On the other hand, it takes huge jant resources to support each human zombie, such that the practice is necessarily limited."

"And we'd be up to our eyeballs in zombies if it wasn't," Ed said. "No offense Driscal, but I sort of prefer it this way."

"If mass or weight is your metric for success you would do well to note that Stone-Coats are also quite successful," noted Mary. "The Marys alone total over six million tons."

"Can we get on with business here?" interjected Ed, though he was amused that his formerly weight-conscious wife was apparently bragging about how massive Marys were. "Here comes our host, I believe."

Dead Mike was a very large but perfectly ordinary looking Caucasian human in his forties, but he walked to their table in the usual awkward halting manner of zombies. He carried a leather satchel with a shoulder strap that housed within it several hundred chattering jants, Ed noticed, and they in turn communicated with three jant colonies located within two miles. Those were in turn currently connected to hundreds of other Eastern Consortium jant colonies. There were also two med-ticks driven into his spine instead of just one. Dead Mike apparently believed in redundancy. In other words, he was highly prized by the Consortium.

"Your fame and reputation of course precede you, Chief Ed," Dead Mike said, "and we have spoken with you many thousands of times over six decades, ever since our mutual friend the Creator made us. Your current wife Ann of course works with us closely almost daily. Several hundred colonies have joined in on this conversation, indicating that there is great interest in you." He shook Ed's hand firmly, but merely nodded and sent silent greetings to both Driscal and Mary as he sat his considerable bulk down at the table. Rogue jant colonies and Stone-Coats apparently didn't rank as high with the Consortium.

"Jants have come a very long way since being created in the garage laboratory of my next-door neighbor," noted Ed. "It always amazes me that jants remember events back in time across so many jant generations."

"Our very survival depends on us accurately passing on our memories to new generations," said Mike. "But in recent decades we have also developed written records in the Internet connected cloud computers of humans. Your long history with jants is what you would call required reading for all Eastern Consortium jant colonies. Including of course your occasional skirmishes with jants that have not been wholly congenial."

Ed shrugged. "Yet when we first met you saved my life, and some of my best friends are jant-zombies. We have over the years, I think, earned a large measure of mutual trust and respect."

Mike shrugged, and smiled as Julie returned with a tray of non-alcoholic drinks.

"And Markus?" asked Driscal.

"My old friend Markus will see you after I do," said Dead Mike.

"Ok, then let's get to business," said Driscal. "We seek out those responsible for Stone-Coat dismembering and the kidnaping of two humans that are of great value to Chief Ed."

"Yes, we have been doing that since informed of the incident by a rogue zombie named Bob," said Mike.

"The safe return of the girls has highest priority," added Ed.

"I doubt that the Stone-Coats agree with that prioritization," said Dead Mike, "certainly the Consortium doesn't. The Consortium values order and predictability for the optimal survivability of the jant species as a whole. The rogue, powerful, and unknown nature of the perpetrators of these crimes is our greatest concern by far. They must be found and eliminated, particularly if it is another example of rogue jants that have been corrupted by humans."

"Stone-Coat logic also dictates that to be the case," said Mary, "but the personal aspects of the kidnaping provide a powerful motivation shared by myself, Chief Ed, and our mutual friend and ally the Creator."

"That is true," admitted Dead Mike. "The Creator himself discussed that aspect with us, and we value his thoughts and wishes significantly."

"Who is this Creator guy I keep hearing about?" Driscal asked.

"Jerry Green my biologist ex-neighbor in Virginia created jants," said Ed. "It's not public knowledge, but they are called 'jants' because they are Jerry's ants."

Mike shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Detective, rogues like you can be so ignorant that it disturbs us. Rogue lack of knowledge and discordant thought patterns should not be used to prioritize the activities of your quest, Chief Ed."

"Our different notions of priority don't matter," said Ed. "When we recover the girls we will also find out who the serial disassembly perpetrators are that both you and the Stone-Coats so badly want to find. Right now I simply want to ensure that jants are fully motivated and actively pursuing this case by using all available jant resources."

"All Consortium jant colonies in the City and surrounding areas have been alerted and will report suspicious activity," said Mike. "Jants individually have poor eyesight but their combined sensory input supports accurate visual facial recognition. The facial images of both missing girls have been relayed to all local Consortium colonies including those that employ sharp-eyed human zombies."

"What about the rogue jant colonies?" asked Ed. "Rogues control many sharp-eyed zombies."

"The Consortium does not control rogue colonies," said Mike.

"But it strongly influences them," said Driscal. "One of my motivations in coming here tonight is to ask that the Consortium do just that, here and at the dozens of other zombie bars in the City where rogues gather. Consider that to be a formal request from the NYPD."

"Very well, that is agreed to," said Mike. "The message is even now being put out at all zombie bars in the five boroughs, even though the reliability of rogues is of course generally very low. "

Driscal smiled. "Yet some of us get along well enough to be useful to you. We depend on each other. What about chemical detection of the girls?"

"We lack the requisite identifying information for that," said Mike.

"That can be obtained at the Rumsfeld apartment," said Driscal.

"Of course!" exclaimed Ed, "I should have thought of that! Ants taste things using their antennae, and med-ticks do so with even greater sophistication. Can individual humans be identified by their taste?"

"Absolutely," said Driscal. "Human skin and fluid residues are definitive. I've used that fact in some of my cases."

"You exaggerate the accuracy," said Mary. "Genetic matching using human technology is much more definitive. But what you describe would indeed be accurate enough to potentially be very useful."

"Ninety-eight percent accuracy, we estimate," said Dead Mike, nodding. "But we need samples to pursue that approach."

"As you know at my apartment lives a rogue-controlled zombie named Bob," said Ed. "He and his jants can sample things in Terry's room. There are items there also from Mouse that can be sampled."

"Such taste information can be disseminated by the Consortium," said Mike, "once the cooperation of Bob is obtained."

"I already just now relayed the request to Bob via Fred the apartment Stone-Coat," said Mary. "Definitive scent information should reach the Consortium within a few minutes."

"Will Consortium and rogue jants then systematically search the City for the girls using both vision and chemical information?" asked Ed.

"And by 'City' we of course mean all five boroughs," Driscal clarified, since the term 'City' meant Manhattan/New York County for most New Yorkers.

"The City is a very big place from an ant perspective," said Mike. "Foraging jants will have both the visual images and scents to use, but foraging in the City during winter weather is much more constrained than in warm forests or many other environments. In addition most City jants are fed by zombies or humans that value our medical help, making widespread foraging an unnecessary practice."

"Can they be motivated to forage widely for the girls anyway?" asked Ed.

"To some degree," said Mike. "We will do what we can, but there are of course practical limitations. Winter is here, and that greatly inhibits outside foraging. Zombies will need be employed for the most part. Requiring a great expenditure of energy, I should add."

"I pledge compensation from myself and the Tribe," added Ed, "and our mutual friend Jerry can probably be persuaded to help with compensation if necessary."

"Yes, we immediately assumed as much," said Mike, "and Jerry has already pledged to fully compensate all our efforts. Your ideas are helpful. The only thing more we require is cooperation and luck."

"Luck is of course a delusion, but your full efforts will increase the probability of a positive resolution," said Mary.

"Jerry is a wise man and a good friend," said Ed. "I should have realized that he would promise compensation for jants when he pledged his help to me this morning. What about employing animal zombies? Animals aside from humans, I mean."

"We of course use animals besides humans to both breed and transport med-ticks." said Mike. "What did you have in mind?"

"Animals could help look for the girls. Possibly ground dwelling rats, squirrels, cats, and sharp eyed high flying peregrine falcons," said Ed. "I've seen you occasionally control them for many years. Pigeons and mice are likely too small and stupid to host huge med-ticks even for short periods. Those I mentioned could host them for perhaps a few days."

"Unlike City cameras and NYPD drones, our computer-savvy perpetrators probably won't be able to hack digitally into animal zombies," noted Driscal. "In my humble rogue opinion you have a very good idea about using zombie animals, Chief Ed."

"The distance between controlled animals the controlling jant colonies quickly becomes the limiting factor," said Mike. "Especially in the case of falcons."

"But you solved much of that problem decades ago by having the animal carry a small number of jants with it to relay telepathic communications much further than the tick can manage on its own," said Ed.

It was Mike's turn to smile. "You do know much about us, don't you, Jant Clan Leader! We'll try that also but again we can make no promises, particularly when it comes to falcons. There are of course millions of large gray so-called Norway rats in the city, thousands of squirrels, and hundreds of ferial cats, but many squirrels and rats are too small to host med-ticks, cats are so fiercely independent that they typically successfully reject our control efforts, and falcons are typically very difficult for ground-bound jants to encounter."

"I sensed several falcons earlier today," said Ed. "Many stay for the winter and feed on the pigeons that winter here as well as those rodents and unwary song-birds they can find. They rest now but I can send several to this location tomorrow."

"You are what you humans call a tough task-master, Clan Leader Ed," said Dead Mike, smiling. "But we will do it."

"There is also the apparent zombie named Egborg that we encountered earlier tonight," said Mary. "What can you tell us of him?"

"We have searched but found no Consortium memories of such a zombie," said Mike. "As we initially concluded on-site earlier, if Egborg is truly a zombie, he is undoubtedly a rogue. We also try to identify and keep track of all such individuals, but we are not a hundred percent effective in doing that. Consortium zombies on the scene could not even understand his jant chatter. If we had retained a sample of his chatter we could possibly investigate it further."

"I recorded it," said Mary. "I'm interfacing with one of your radio-capable implants now; I'll give you the original raw signal. It was too short for us to decode but it doesn't match any known jant syntax that we are aware of. We suspect it to be digital and possibly mathematically encrypted. I will also give you our transcribed digital version."

"Digital?" said Ed. "That sounds more like Stone-Coat chatter than jant."

"It matches no known Stone-Coat format either," said Mary. "And by digital I don't mean standard human or Stone-Coat binary. It appears to be much more complex than that. A technical discussion is included with the provided message files."

"We'll do what we can with them," said Dead Mike. "Dozens of our colonies specialize in decoding encrypted information. Is there anything else?"

"Markus?" said Driscal.

"You really are desperate," said Mike. "I'll leave you now and send him in." He stood and shook Ed's hand again as he was leaving.

Soon a tall thin older man in sharp formal clothes with sharp hawkish features came to the table and was greeted warmly by Driscal and introduced to Ed and Mary. He was not a zombie and he lacked telepathic ability, but his penetrating eyes gave him away: Markus was an extremely bright and intense human.

"Ah! The mysterious Ed Rumsfeld and one of his thousands of stoner wives! What an honor!" he said, as he shook Ed's hand warmly.

"I'm more his ex-wife," said Mary. "You harbor your own mysteries, human. I've seen you at several Omega functions."

"Enlightenment is one of my many hobbies," said Markus.

"Are you enlightened enough to already know why we're here?" Ed asked.

"In this information rich environment word quickly gets around even to us humans that watch from the side-lines," said Markus. "The previous Stone-Coat dismemberments had already gotten everyone on edge. But kidnapping of human VIPs? That's a new wrinkle. I assume that Dead Mike pledged Consortium jant support for a price?"

"Something like that," said Driscal. "What do you hear?"

"The dismemberments aren't mob hits: that's what my own clients vigorously insist. And as far as the kidnappings go they most emphatically deny involvement or knowledge."

"You have mob clients?" asked Ed.

"Markus is a sort of the New York mob's ambassador to the Eastern Consortium," explained Driscal.

"That perhaps puts it too strongly," said Markus. "But I do at times enhance communications between certain parties and certain other parties and thereby help things function more smoothly throughout the City. In this case it is a lack of enlightenment that I sense coming from all directions. The people I represent don't know who it is you seek. They also disavow any knowledge of that Egborg character."

"Do you believe them?" Driscal asked.

"Mostly," said Markus. "They're apprehensive and could be lying of course, but I don't think so. That would fracture decades of established trust. Basically they like to know what the hell is going on in the City so they can exploit it or at least get along with potentially disruptive aspects of it such as the NYPD."

"Tell your mob clients that they'll be well rewarded if they help the girls return home safe," said Ed.

"That I will, Chief Ed," said Markus. "I am sure they will be interested. But after that Egborg sideshow tonight they are particularly spooked. I suppose that because of him you guys are figuring that rogue zombies are the perps, am I right?"

"That's what it looks like to me," said Driscal.

"You mean that's what it was supposed to look like," said Markus. "It wasn't a zombie that tore up your Stone-Coat friend this morning."

"You could have a point," said Mary. "Maybe this Egborg character wasn't just rubbing our noses in it to anger us, maybe his appearance was calculated to deceive us. Maybe the undecipherable jant-like chatter was just a deceptive sideshow."

"Or maybe it wasn't deception," countered Markus.

"Swell!" said Ed.

"Gotta love a mystery," added Driscal.

****

The nearby Manhattan hotel Mary had arranged for them was small but well-appointed with the latest holographic entertainment and communications systems. Driscal stayed in an adjoining room and the sleepless Mary stood guard in the hallway, for what that was worth. Anyone that could dismantle a two-ton Stone-Coat would make very short work of diminutive Mary. But Driscal confidently claimed that whatever the kidnappers were after, it apparently wasn't just Ed Rumsfeld, Mary, and/or himself.

It was nearly midnight when Ed contacted Ann and asked the age-old question, "my place or yours?"

"Yours, Ed," Ann answered. "I want to see that fancy hotel room of yours."

Moments later a realistic holographic image of Ann appeared to be sitting next to him on the king-sized hotel bed. At the same time the image of the entire hotel room appeared in the Rumsfeld apartment for Mary to see. Just for the fun of it, they could alternatively appear to be in any of thousands of more scenic locations world-wide or even in space, and they could even add computer simulated holographic people for added drama. But not tonight.

"We've made some progress on the case but not enough yet," Ed began. "No sign yet of the girls, but no discouraging news about them either."

"Well, nothing new of significance has come to this apartment or me," said Ann. "Not a damn thing! I'm going crazy here! I've been in almost constant touch with the Feds, UN security, and the NYPD and they essentially won't tell me a damn thing!"

"I'm sorry I didn't come home tonight," said Ed. "I've been totally focused on finding Tracy and Mouse; or at least that's what Mary assures me that I've been doing. Driscal thinks that what we've been doing is a damn waste of time and I'm strongly inclined towards his view. However whatever merit our tour of CUNY has, we'll get about an hour jump on it in the morning by me staying here in South Manhattan tonight instead of coming home. Though maybe it doesn't much matter what I do personally. Armies of human, Stone-Coat, and jant resources are actually on the job. At least I've seen to that."

"Well at least with you involved I know that somebody is," said Ann. "You said something about progress?"

"We've gotten some more cryptic notes from the kidnappers and we have a prime suspect to look for, and we have jants, Stone-Coats, and maybe even mobsters looking for him and for the kids."

"And the Tribe is looking also," said Ann. "Over a thousand of them are searching out in this terrible cold, and two dozen of them are highly telepathic. But you say there's a suspect? Who?"

"A strange character named Egborg. I'm sure that by now Fred has image and voice files of him. Show her, Fred!"

A window opened in Ann's holographic hotel room image and a video of Egborg giving his presentation ran as a holographic video. It ended with several close-up views of Egborg.

Ann stood staring at the frozen images of Egborg in open-mouthed in astonishment. "But I've seen and heard him before in UN circles, I'm sure of it, though not using that name! I'll pass that information on to the UN security folks, the Feds, and the NYPD cops."

"Do you have all those folks on hand there at the apartment?" Ed asked.

"With Fred's cooperation they've collectively taken over the apartment building except for this particular apartment, and several other neighborhood buildings also. Cops of several flavors stop and search everyone and everything going in and out of the local neighborhood. Fred isn't happy and for sure our neighbors aren't happy, but they're cooperating. Many are not Mohawk, you know. There has been a strong Polish presence here for over a century and a half."

"We'll throw a huge Eagle Street block party when this is all over," said Ed. "With the kids as the guests of honor, of course. We'll include stuff from that polish bakery on Manhattan Avenue. All neighbors will be deliriously happy and several pounds heavier."

"Of course," echoed Ann, but it was clear that his attempted levity had fallen flat. Her holographic image seemed to shrink and fade a bit, and Ed could see tears run down her cheeks that she didn't bother to blot away. Ann was a strong woman, but she was also the mother of a kidnapped daughter.

Ed reflexively reached out to comfort her, but his hands passed through her holographic image uselessly. After giving her more hollow words of encouragement, he said goodnight. Yeah, he should have insisted on going home for the night. It bothered him greatly to be separated from Ann, Mark, and Sue at a time like this.

But it bothered him still more to be separated from Tracy. Good God, was she all right? What were his last words to her? Goodnight, probably, accompanied by a little hug.

Ed also phoned Mouse's parents to tell them what they already knew: the girls hadn't been found. They exchanged words of hope and encouragement, but even using the voice-only mode the despair felt by all of them was palpable.

He wasn't a religious man, but he again prayed anyway for Terry and for little Mouse long into the night after his phone calls ended.

****

Tracy's hands were tired and sore with blisters and scrapes when she finished her turn at enlarging the small but slowly growing hole in the floor. The hole itself went down maybe four inches now, but the original crack went down even further: presumably all the way down to underlying gravel and sub-soil. How far was that? A quarter inch more? Several inches? There was no way to tell. If she had a long thin object to poke down into the crack maybe she could tell, but she had no such object.

Under the cover of the rolled up shirt that she and Mouse used to conceal their digging activities she shoved her hard-earned chunks of broken-off concrete under the sleeping mat. Then she carefully dropped several tiny damp dough-balls made from their last sandwiches down the crack at the bottom of the hole - something that Mouse had insisted that they do frequently. Some of the tiny dough-balls contained little chunks of ham or cheese.

"We are filling the original crack with bits of concrete that we scrape and break off," Mouse had earlier pointed out. "If we wait too long to try to get food down into the crack it may be too late."

When Tracy was done she rolled away from the shirt-concealed hole to face Mouse.

"Are we through all the concrete yet?" Mouse whispered.

"No," Tracy admitted. "And it's getting much harder to work as we get deeper. I almost dropped your jewel into the crack a couple of times. That's the bad news. The good news is that the original crack is still getting wider as we go down: over half an inch wide now. Our hole itself is over an inch across at the bottom,"

"But the crack must be getting full of the smaller concrete bits we break off and can't catch," Mouse noted.

"Nothing we can do about that. What's the news about our little digging friend?"

"My thoughts of food are still bringing it towards us, but it's getting really weak and hungry," said Mouse. "It hasn't found much to eat under this building. But I sense it to be very near; maybe it's getting very close to our hole. It will soon get to us soon or die trying. If it dies we're screwed, though maybe some other creature will eventually follow the tunnel it dug."

"OK genius," whispered Tracy. "And if it does get to us what then?"

"I don't know, Cousin," said Mouse. "First things first."

"Right," said Tracy. "First things first. First let's first get some sleep. Then we'll work on the hole again in the morning."

****

CHAPTER 8

### Growth Fails

"Capitalism of course has always been a means of channeling individual greed and ambition in a way that ideally benefits society as a whole as well as the richest capitalists," the CUNY Baruch College speaker was saying. "Strong and stable government is needed to provide a suitable environment for capitalism to flourish in. Of course from the diehard capitalist point of view healthy capitalism is needed to provide an environment for the nurturing of nations.

"From society's wider point of view government is needed to set the rules for capitalism and ensure that the ensuing benefits are shared by society as a whole, and not simply the owners of capital. Throughout the history of capitalism there have always been delicate balances to maintain that can easily get out of kilter. And of course the unending world crisis that is climate change adds enormous stress to all forms of economies and governments."

Ed was tuning out most of the economics 101 presentation. He could depend on Mary to record and analyze the lectures for any clues. It was a warm, sunny, breezy day and Ed was at the moment sharing his consciousness with that of a high-soaring Peregrine falcon. Right now he let the bird hunt for food while he merely shared its sharp super senses. From a dizzying height the bird was watching pigeons roosting on the College buildings far below.

The sun was warming the buildings and the sidewalks below where students walked and sometimes intentionally scattered old bread, popcorn, and birdseed for hungry birds including fat pigeons. The falcon watched the pigeons fly about looking for human-provided food. Only after the raptor fed well on pigeon would Ed turn it over to jants as he had already done with two others.

The two jant/med-tick-controlled raptors were already surveilling the urban Baruch campus area, looking for Egborg and the girls using visual recognition. What else should they be looking for? Egborg looked like a normal human zombie, presumably his cohorts also looked normal. Spotting them visually seemed highly unlikely. But med-ticks they carried were also listening for odd jant chatter. Perhaps that would prove to be a more effective means of identifying the kidnappers.

Dozens of police drones also circled the area, identifying people and vehicles. NYPD officers were also highly visible, stopping people and checking identifications. If Egborg showed up here he would surely be spotted by drone or bird or cop.

From the hundreds of pigeons that dwelled in and about the old buildings of Baruch College, Ed's falcon picked a likely victim that was flying and thereby drawing attention to itself. Ed's falcon folded back its wings and dove at it at over two hundred miles an hour - nearly twice the terminal velocity of a human falling from a great height. The dive was a dizzying, frightening experience for Ed, but he stuck with the bird through the dive, the strike with its talons, and even through the subsequent feeding phase involving tearing apart the pigeon with a sharp beak, and the sweet taste of fresh flesh.

He then calmed the well-fed bird as its roosting spot high in a campus tree was approached by an odd acting squirrel, and a three-inch long med-tick climbed from squirrel to falcon, onto its back, and under its warming feathers. Atop it a dozen jants rode, relaying thoughts between med-tick and jant colony. The bird hardly flinched as the tick drove it's abnormally tough and elongated chelicera into its spine and the specialized hypostome sheathed within it tapped into the bird's neural senses and thoughts as well as its blood.

"YOUR FIRST RESPONSIBILITY IS TO NOT HARM THE BIRD," Ed reminded the jants.

"WE MONITOR ITS WELL BEING, CHIEF ED," the jants replied. "LIKE THE OTHERS, IT WILL BE RETURNED HERE UNHARMED."

"With economic growth stifled by word-wide disruption, the capitalism has necessarily radically transformed itself from what it was a century ago," the current speaker was saying, as Ed returned his attention to the lectures.

The speaker was from the nearby CUNY Graduate Center, which had expanded in recent decades to occupy most of the nearby ancient Stone-Coat renovated Empire State Building. In the audience were many researchers from other nearby schools, including most prominently New York University.

"Economic, political, and social systems once predicated on the myth that endless economic expansion is possible have had to adapt to difficult limiting realities. Of course it has long been obvious that Earth resources are finite and could not sustain endless population growth and resource-consuming economic growth, but climate change and related crisis events have at last forced reality to be finally be squarely faced up to by humanity.

"Some democracies in which capitalism once flourished have been replaced or transformed due to domestic and world crises into regimes that appear to be democracies but are in reality are under the surface hidden autocracies, oligarchies, or sometimes outright out-of-the-closet tyrannies that satisfy overriding needs for stability in a crisis laden world. Fear has influenced many to sacrifice democracy and freedoms and return to less representative, more repressive forms of government that they feel are more stable, even though extensive empirical evidence argues that is not typically the case. Many studies have shown that it is a common sense of purpose and unifying culture that provides the greatest stability, regardless of the particular form of overlying government, but that democracies provide the best environment for nurturing a healthy unifying culture."

"However over the last two decades participatory democracies have been making a comeback as economy and political stability has improved. That is due in large part to a strengthening of the United Nations, improved health outcomes attributed largely to the jants, infrastructure improvements accomplished largely by Stone-Coats, and dramatic international Space Program successes led by the United States. There are also some encouraging environmental efforts led by Stone-Coats. All of these positive developments are doubtlessly familiar to our esteemed guest Chief Ed Rumsfeld and his esteemed wife Ambassador Ann Richards."

The statement dumbfounded Ed, and he was equally stunned when the man started clapping, an act that was soon joined by the two hundred students and faculty in the room. "CUNY is therefore proud on this occasion to present to both you and your wife honorary PhDs in our interdisciplinary program of Human, Stone-Coat, and Jant studies."

"For Pete sakes!" Ed mumbled as smiling he made his way to the podium to accept the degrees for himself and Ann, and stumble his way through a few words of sincere gratitude. "YOU SET ME UP FOR THIS!" he accused Mary as he returned to his seat amid more applause.

"YOU AND ANN HAVE REFUSED THESE SORTS OF REWARDS FOR FAR TOO LONG," said Mary quietly. "I FIGURED THIS WAS AN OPPORTUNITY THAT COULDN'T BE PASSED UP, AND CUNY AGREED. CONGRATULATIONS."

"WE NEED TO FOCUS ON TRACY AND MOUSE, MARY," said Ed.

"Back to work now!" said the next speaker. "However I remind everyone that though the global economy has thankfully been stabilized and is growing again, Gross Domestic Product and Gross National Product as measured by material production and services is very poor as a single measure of what should constitute a 'good life' for humanity.

"Further, far more even than human population growth, rampant growth in resource consuming material goods and services has long been steering us towards ecological disaster. Put simply, the simplistic prescription of capitalistic growth has failed. Both population and material growth must be constrained or at least become much more ecologically friendly for humanity to sustain itself on this finite planet and sustain bio diversity. Working with the UN, we have defined non-monetary value metrics as part of the effort to a rebalance human progress towards a better yet more sustainable future.

"Technology including automation should be a good thing, not something that destroys us. Also, some practical balance between greed for monetary gain and other important values needs to be struck. Our new metrics will help steer us in a new direction."

"Friendship, love, empathy, kindness and generosity, good conversation, a sense of beauty, a sense of physical well-being and actual good health, contentment, intimacy, humor, and wonder are examples of things that cannot be adequately reflected by GDP and similar purely economic measures, though serious material shortages can indeed prevent the attainment of a good life. Broader, more ecology-friendly material and non-material metrics have been defined. A basic set of freedoms has also been defined. All of those things and more have been integrated into a comprehensive set of 'wellness' metrics that are being used to manage UN initiatives and to assess the progress of nations. In addition to driving the world towards a more prosperous yet sustainable future the metrics are driving us towards better general living conditions for all."

"We are already beginning to see results. For example the growing world-wide movement to decrease the standard human work-week from thirty hours to 24 hours is associated with corresponding UN metrics.

"We at CUNY are pleased to have worked with the UN to define the metrics set. Not one of us will claim it to be perfect but we all claim it to be a vast improvement over policy based purely on traditional capitalism and monetary gain. Using these more appropriate measures of over-all societal wellness we seek improved non-material as well as material well-being for everyone. The new more comprehensive value-driven metrics have been integrated into the new more inclusive economic model that has been emerging to replace traditional capitalism. Capitalism remains, but it is better harnessed to more broadly benefit the masses and the environment. Paradoxically of course, it is primarily monetary advantages that are used to motivate forces of capitalism to pay serious attention to the new metrics."

Driscal was so bored he could hardly stand it. His jants had long finished their search of attending zombie jant colonies and found nothing suspicious, and communicated with Consortium jants controlling area zombies and animals that were searching the area. There were no reports of the girls, Egborg, or anything suspicious.

"THE BIRD-RIDING JANTS REPORT A SUDDEN ABSENCE OF POLICE DRONES," Ed interrupted silently. "THE DRONES ABRUPTLY ALL FLEW NORTHEAST. THAT DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT."

Driscal's police phone started beeping and the detective put it to his ear. He listened quietly for a time before muttering "Crap" and standing up to silence the speaker and loudly make a public announcement: "The UN is reported to be under attack by terrorists. The City has declared a state of emergency for Midtown Manhattan east of Third Avenue along the East River between 34th and 55th Streets. There is also a ban against flying vehicles altogether for all Manhattan and North-West Brooklyn. The area we are in is not yet declared to be at risk, but that may be coming, and I suggest that we end this meeting now."

Ed was momentarily stricken dumb until he realized that Ann wasn't at the UN, she was home in Brooklyn and hopefully safe. "The police drones that had been covering this area were probably called to the scene," he said, as the lecture hall erupted in worried voices and people began to quickly exit the lecture hall.

"Worse!" said Driscal. "The drones are destroying themselves by crashing into ground-based police surveillance cameras that are at and near the UN."

"The UN attack may not be an unrelated event," said Mary. "It could also be orchestrated by our adversary. It is of course a cyber-attack similar to the earlier ones."

"For sure!" said Driscal.

In the hallway outside the lecture hall students were gathered into small anxious groups and milling about, unsure as to what they should do. Rushing out of the building into the cold and onto streets that held some unknown deadly menace on reflection didn't seem like the best choice. Some of them wondered back into the lecture hall and sat down.

When the trio returned to the Humvee there was another note under the windshield wiper:

'Continue your useless tour,' was all that it said, ending in an Omega symbol.

"I suppose that we might as well do just that," said Driscal, as the Humvee pulled out into traffic and headed north. "Hunter College is a bit northwest of the reported danger zone."

****

Huddled in their little prison, late morning brought good news to the captives.

"Are you sure?" asked Tracy in a whisper.

"Positive," said Mouse. "Our little digging friend found some of our food bits under the crack and ate them before resting. After resting it will resume digging. We should try to make the hole bigger. She has almost reached us."

"She?"

"Definitely."

"Then what?" Tracy asked.

"Exactly," said Mouse. "Then what?"

****

Grant Stephens, head of UN Security for the New York City metro area, sat in his situation room along with more than a dozen of his UN security staff, still trying to figure out what the unfolding situation was. Behind him George Ricket, Facility Manager, stood anxiously, awaiting more information. On the panel in front of them a dozen red warning lights blinked, warning buzzers buzzed, and voices announced things that they didn't really want to hear. At least Stephens had covered similar sorts of things in practice drills. But drills weren't the same thing as reality.

The Ann Richards situation already had the facility on edge. Following pre-established protocol, the kidnapping had already caused extra security for all events at the UN Facility. Then on advice from the President of the United States himself, all events were canceled. Only a few UN representatives and staff insisted on remaining at the Facility. Most ambassadors and staff sensibly retreated to hunker-down in their individual embassies that were spread throughout the City.

Personally, Stephens thought that such precautions were over-zealous. He had high confidence in the security of this Facility. However he also believed in following protocol devised under calmer circumstances, and following the advice of the President was also usually a good idea.

But more alarming anomalies occurred as the morning progressed. There were NYPD reports of possible terrorist activity in the area. Then the drones came and crashed themselves into area ground-level observation cameras of the City. UN observation cameras on buildings and lamp-posts were also destroyed by the drones. As a precaution the City police sent three swat teams to the UN neighborhood, though so far they reported that no threats had been found.

Most disturbing, UN guard outposts were apparently being neutralized all over the Facility! But how? He didn't hear shouts, explosions, or gunfire. Several guards then reported using personal phones and claimed that absolutely nothing had happened at their posts, but that normal digital communications had been cut-off.

"Probable cyber-attack," Stephens informed Ricket. "The NYPD including their drones, as well as our most remote guard outposts, have evidently been hacked."

Ricket breathed a sigh of relief. "Ones and zeros and no sticks and stones then, Grant," he said hopefully. "Let the bad guys fling as many ones and zeros as they want; we'll be hunkered down and fine. Odd day for it though. We are already in emergency recess. And the few representatives and their staff still on board have of course now been moved down into the Box as a standard precaution."

'The Box' was local UN vernacular for the steel and concrete encased safe-facility two hundred feet below the new UN Headquarters Building built only a decade earlier. It was built to provide temporary total safety to up to five thousand UN VIPs and staff for up to two months. After that, UN personnel would be moved to several even more secure facilities in the Catskill Mountains equipped to house people for up to several years.

As the UN grew stronger in recent decades, so did its enemies. Many regarded the UN to be the vanguard of an emerging world-wide government, something bitterly opposed by ultra-nationalists and many others that ignored the reality that the UN was still far too weak to even fully accomplish its much more modest goals of world peace and basic well-being.

"How many in the Box?" Stephens asked one of his staff.

"Only one hundred and eighty-three representatives and staff, plus fifteen guards and support people. One hundred ninety-eight individuals in total, including three ambassadors."

"How many are non-human?" Stephens asked.

"Three are Eastern Consortium zombies with their colonies in suitcases and two are Stone-Coats."

"What news about the Egborg investigation?"

"Our visual records say that his last reported visit to this facility was two months ago as staff for the Swedish delegation. This morning the Swedes disavowed knowing anything about him."

"Egborg was a spy," Stephens concluded, "maybe gathering intel for yesterday's kidnapping and for today's attack."

"More of a mock attack," said Ricket.

"We don't know that yet," said Stephens. "In addition to the hacking and loss of much of our communication capabilities, over three hundred NYPD drones and as many surveillance cameras were destroyed around this facility. That's why the City declared an emergency. Flying cars and busses are grounded in Manhattan and much of Brooklyn. And we're half blind and we don't know what is coming next."

Alarm bells came next. "Five human custodial staff were just found dead in the Meeting Hall!" blared the intercom. "And a disassembled Stone-Coat has been discovered in a Meeting Hall custodial storage space."

"I want cause of death and positive ID on all of them!" barked out Stephens in reply.

"Already determined," said the intercom. "It was poisonous gas that killed the custodians; luckily the gas had already been dissipated to harmless levels by the ventilation system before the bodies were discovered by others."

"My God!" said Ricket. "If the UN had been in session the death toll could have been thousands, including nearly two-hundred lead ambassadors and much of their staff! Thank God I listened to the President and cancelled operations! But how could a poison gas have been brought into this facility?"

"It had to have been brought in by an insider that visited the Meeting Hall!" said Stephens.

"Guards, custodians, and the ambassadors and their staff," said Ricket. "Except for the dead custodians and the disassembled Stone-Coat, all of them are now in the Box."

"A murderer that can break apart a Stone-Coat is now in the Box?" said Stephens.

"There is a discrepancy in the Stone-Coat count," announced a staff member. "There should be only two Stone-Coats in the Facility but we have one disassembled and two in the Box for a total of three. Apparently two gained access as the Assistant Swedish Ambassador."

"One has to be a fake," said Stephens. "I bet that the disassembled one is the real ambassador!"

"My God!" exclaimed Ricket. "And the fake ambassador is in the Box?"

"Also radiation readings in the Meeting Hall are quite a bit higher than expected," staff reported.

"The disassembled Stone-Coat had radioactive insides," noted Stephens.

"Even after accounting for that the readings are much higher than expected," said the reporting staff member.

Without warning the floor suddenly heaved and shook for several seconds, accompanied by an ear-numbing sound deeper than thunder. Two of the staff members present fell to their knees, but looked more embarrassed than hurt. Sensors showed that the thirty story office building above them swayed, while pictures and other wall hangings fell crashing to the floor. But in seconds it was all over except for shouts and sirens.

"Status?" demanded Stephens, as his eyes swept the room where more than a dozen dedicated but nervous looking security men and women sat wearing communications equipment that covered many eyes and ears.

One of his lieutenants responded. "No communications remain with the Box. Sensor input analysis concludes that a very large explosion occurred in the Box itself. All elevators and stairways are blocked by tons of concrete and steel. Even with Stone-Coat help it may take weeks to recover bodies."

"All hundred and ninety-eight folks in the Box are dead?" Ricket asked. "Is that what you're saying?"

"With ninety-nine percent certitude," confirmed the lieutenant. "Should we begin next-of-kin notifications and news reports?"

"Negative," said Stephens. "Not until we know that this event is completely over. When is the USA military due?"

"The full Army unit ETA is one hour," staff responded.

"That's unsat!" said Stephens. "They should have been here before now! They'll be only in time to do a body count!"

"They were hacked too!" staff noted.

"What do City sensors say about radiation levels in our area?" asked Stephens.

"They don't say," said staff. "City visual and radioactivity sensors were co-located. They all got wiped out by the drones. Our own Facility radiation sensors were apparently hacked and disabled."

"Then how was the report of raised radiation levels in the Hall possible?" Stephens asked.

"A responder was carrying an old fashioned Geiger counter that wasn't tied into our automated security systems," said the lieutenant. "Thus it couldn't be disabled through hacking."

"Sever our internal systems from the outside world and reboot them using old archival software, and break out the old-time analog radios," ordered Stephens. "We can't trust anything digital that has outside connections. We'll have to rely on human eyes and ears, and on old-time analog communications."

"Voices can be faked too," noted staff.

"True," said Stephens, "but we have to communicate somehow. We can also rely on quantum-encryption, but most staff members don't have the expensive new quantum units. Oh, and remind the NYPD and that that their radiation detectors in the area are down and recommend to them and the Army that they also use old fashioned analog radios and off-line Geiger counters."

"Analysis indicates that without the recent building reinforcement accomplished by Stone-Coats the entire main UN building would have collapsed from the bomb in the Box," said a lieutenant.

"My God!" Muttered Ricket.

"Are we expecting Stone-Coats?" the lieutenant abruptly asked, as he peered at his monitor. "The NYPD reports that thousands are on the march and many are coming in this direction."

"Shit!" said Stephens. "Are they good guys or bad?"

****

Throughout the City, thousands of Stone-Coats working on various projects had stopped what they were doing to head for two Manhattan locations in Eastern Midtown and far-Northern Manhattan: towards the UN where there had just been another intolerable disassembly of a fellow Stone-Coat, and towards Northern Manhattan where some sort of showdown with the disassemblers was now anticipated by them.

A few Stone-Coats were in the form of street-ready wheeled vehicles including construction equipment. Some were in insect-like forms designed to climb and repair buildings and bridges. Some from Central Park were in the form of dinosaurs. But most were in the form of massive fifty to a hundred foot tall Ice Giants. They were too big and heavy to be moved via human transportation. They marched.

Though the NYPD worked to clear their way, the marching Stone-Coats caused traffic snarls on City streets and highways. When necessary the Ice Giants pushed or lifted and moved aside human vehicles to gain passage, though they tried to not harm any humans. As to bridges with weight restrictions the Ice Giants avoided those: they simply walked through rivers and harbors, often completely submerging themselves under water. Stone-Coats didn't breathe oxygen. And they would not be stopped.

****

CHAPTER 9

### Disasters Natural and Unnatural

Founded in 1870, Hunter College on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan was the second oldest CUNY college. Situated in a recently rejuvenated up-scale neighborhood only a third of a mile from placid Central Park, it seemed a peaceful, secure, and unlikely place to be an academic center devoted to the study of potential catastrophic disasters, both those natural and those not so natural.

The visitors were introduced to key researchers, including several from nearby Rockefeller University and Marymount Manhattan College. Ed, Mary, and Driscal of course silently busied themselves with what by now had become their routine process of checking out the attendees. In particular they searched in vain for any signs of Egborg. Their task was made easier by the fact that the auditorium was half empty: in light of the UN attack and City emergency many local Omega members had wisely not shown up.

"If course we all now accept that climate change is really happening, but we still don't fully understand how fast or far it will go," said the first speaker. "For example early researchers underestimated the impact of thawing permafrost due to subsequent release of millions of tons of methane and carbon dioxide. Also the rate of melting in Western Antarctica and Greenland was significantly underestimated.

"Eastern Antarctica ice is also decreasing in volume now as it melts, especially at its edges. Now even far from its edges hundreds of surface and subsurface melt-water lakes and rivers are already carving it apart more rapidly than originally estimated.

"Also it soon became very apparent that the ice doesn't have to be melted to contribute to sea-level rise. There were several mile-thick ice sheets the size of Rhode Island that slid into the ocean decades earlier than initially expected. It will take them many decades to fully melt, but they contributed immediately to sea-rise and are floating about the world in ocean currents, bringing a touch more climate chaos with them.

"On the positive side most modals optimistically predict that after only another century the local New England/Eastern Canada ice-sheets will start to recede, though the bad news of that good news story is that it means that most Northern Hemisphere ice will be melted and will no longer help slow the warming. However, optimistically within two centuries world-wide actions to reverse greenhouse gas increase will begin to dominate and greenhouse gasses will actually start to decrease. In four centuries temperatures will peak and level-off at perhaps a net 5 to 6 degree centigrade average increase. But in five centuries all the Earth except for the highest mountain peaks will lack 'permanent' ice and the Quaternion Ice Age and corresponding geologic period that has persisted for over two and a half million years will officially finally end.

"Of course as a side note the International Commission on Stratigraphy decades ago already perhaps prematurely declared that the Holocene epoch has ended and the Anthropocene has begun, but now the Quaternary period that contains it is itself ending. And we can't have an epoch straddling multiple periods, can we? That would be ridiculous! What a mess in terminology for the ICS to untangle!"

"Who gives a damn what it's called?" muttered Driscal too loudly to be ignored.

"Exactly, sir," responded the lecturer. "Who indeed? By then we will have all painfully adjusted to a new 'normal' climate and coastlines. In the meantime it will have to be decided what to do with Earth's longer-term climate and we must make adjustments to policy and actions to achieve the decided goal. Should we try to cool Earth and return it to something close to what it had been over most of our recent past human history? Or should we stop the heating trend but maintain it at its peak and avoid cooling? Most researchers feel that abruptly returning to so-called historic temperatures would yet again seriously disrupt the ecological environment and human civilization even further.

"On the other hand that question becomes mute if society fails and we either lack the ability to influence climate or again lack control of our influence on climate. Human mega-societies have failed before. Recall for example the Romans and half a dozen other great civilizations that eventually fell apart, largely because of internal mistakes and weaknesses. So far the UN, the Stone-Coats, the jants, and the promise of the Space Program have helped hold things together, and world-trade has partly recovered to also help bind us. But will that last? Or will we slip into another dark age of chaos and reduced standards of living? If so perhaps at that point the term Anthropocene will become wholly inappropriate. What a terminology mess!"

Ed and Driscal exchanged knowing glances but managed to stay silent. This lecturer seemed to be nearly as concerned with the classification of geological time periods as he was with describing the emerging disaster that plagued all humanity and life on Earth.

Next a time-lapse video showed a map of the projected United States coastline for the next five centuries, though it had doubtlessly been seen many times before by everyone in the room. Over the next century many coastal areas would continue to flood at a faster pace. Cities already severely threatened such as New Orleans and Miami Beach will soon have to be completely abandoned, followed by the Miami, Jacksonville, the Norfolk area, low-lying coastal towns and islands, the Florida Everglades, and major portions of numerous coastal cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

"Eventual additional sea rise will be approximately two-hundred feet but there are uncertainties in that estimate, despite all known factors being taken into account."

"For example in Greenland much ice is already below sea-level and will subtract somewhat the sea level gain due to its reduced volume as liquid water. And of course water expands slightly with temperature increase, and our estimates of course take that into account also. However in any case huge portions of Eastern and Southern coastal states will be gone."

"Greenland and Antarctica crustal plates will of course rebound by perhaps several hundred feet when relieved of the weight of their permanent ice sheets, and that will also contribute to additional serious sea-rise that we can only roughly estimate. Far worse, though less likely, that activity could trigger mega earthquakes: tectonic crustal movement events and associated earthquakes and volcanism, much like the several events in the distant past that caused planet-wide mass-extinctions, including the worst 'great dying' event approximately 252 million years ago, prior to the rise of the dinosaurs. The worst case would include floods of molten basalt that cover nation-sized areas, accompanied by an atmosphere choked by dust and particulate aerosols, acid rain, and massive volcanic CO2 releases, which produce rapid fluctuations of hot and cold climates much worse than the current climate change event.

"In summation with Stone-Coat help we have modeled several possibilities and none of them look particularly good. The best case is for gradual climate change effects that drag out for many centuries and prove to be very inconvenient, costly, and dangerous for humans and many other species of life. The worst case is for a triggering of far worse events.

"Returning to near-term practical concerns, the levy efforts that today hold back the current average eight-foot sea level rise will soon become impractical. The cost of levies grows geometrically with their height; a two-hundred foot high levy system would cost perhaps a hundred times more than our current twenty-foot levies. A staggered series of shorter levies to provide stability during our retreat from the sea makes much more sense than levies over two hundred feet tall. Over the next five centuries or so it is inevitable that significant areas of low states such as Florida, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Rode Island, and New Jersey will be completely lost to the sea.

"At the same time inland areas of drought and flooding will continue to intensify and shift about. Humans and other biological life will struggle to adapt, and to survive the other intensified problems such as political chaos, war, plague, and pollution. You have already doubtlessly heard about human induced dangers such as ignorance, panic-filled hate, pandemics, ecological collapse, society collapse, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, Nanotechnology, and plain old bad governance by tyrants and other incompetents.

"Meanwhile other even more catastrophic events remain improbable but still possible. Solar events could cause radical heating or cooling. An asteroid could strike us. A massive geological event such as a super-volcano eruption or worse could happen at any time, even without the expected provocation of melting ice-sheet weight displacement. Such events could wipe out most life on Earth more quickly and decisively than the current climate change is doing. It would be nice if all such things were fiction, but unfortunately they are all very real. However it is believed that all of these events are now somewhat predictable by science. There is no way to stop any of them, but we'll probably see them coming years or at least weeks in advance."

"Peachy," muttered Driscal quietly to Ed. "If I was fully human I'd actually be losing sleep over all this crap. As it is I can't say that I really give a shit."

"The ultimate survival solution is of course to spread ourselves out into space from Earth and avoid having Earth as our single place of habitation and potential extinction," said the lecturer. "The Space Program is actively working towards that goal. Already we have small outposts in space: in orbit around Earth and other planetary bodies, and on several bodies themselves including Earth's Moon, Mars, Planet X, and several moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Some of the outposts are already striving to achieve total physical self-sufficiency within the next few decades. By then a practical means of transport to other nearby solar systems is hoped for. The ultimate goal is long-term survival for humans, Stone-Coats, jants, and as many other species as we can save."

"And then we'll for sure live happily ever after." muttered Driscal, as the lecturer acknowledged applause and sat down. "I'm so relieved. I don't know why the hell anyone was worried."

"And of course less than a decade ago the Stone-Coats formally announced that we are safe from human-caused nuclear disaster," the next lecturer continued. "Stone-Coats each contain radioactive materials as power sources and are relatively resilient at radiation levels that would quickly kill biological life, as they're not dependent on delicate genetic chemistry for their survival. We were overjoyed when decades ago they began consuming our nuclear waste materials. We were astonished but overjoyed when seven years ago a rogue nation's attempted attack on its neighbors using nuclear armed missiles completely failed because the weapons had over the preceding decades been secretly disabled by Stone-Coats. The nuclear warhead plutonium had been replaced by lead and the rocket fuel had been replaced with inert substances.

"The Stone-Coats then soon announced that we were completely safe from nuclear dangers. Indeed, nations world-wide discovered that all human nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction had over many decades secretly been eaten away or otherwise corrupted by the Stone-Coats. They had of course used carbon Nano tube molecular discrimination and transfer techniques. Needless to say, many 'nuclear club' nations including the USA were not altogether pleased.

"Some of us feel that in forcing us to be more adaptive and resilient, Global Warming has forced us to be more survival-ready with regard to any crisis that may come along. As the old saying goes, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Others feel that we have been in some important ways been severely weakened, or changed in ways that we don't fully understand and we don't know what the consequences will end up being in the future."

Mary suddenly stood up, as did the three other Stone-Coats in attendance. All but Mary immediately began to walk towards the exit. The distracted lecturer stopped her lecture and the audience began talking amoungst themselves.

Ed could sense the audience apprehension telepathically, and something else. "What's happening now?" he asked Mary. "I sense coded Stone-Coat messages that I can't decipher."

"Your implant does not deceive you," said Mary. "It lacks the quantum computer abilities necessary to even attempt to break our codes. The messages include calling for an emergency diversion of most City Stone-Coats to two Manhattan locations: the UN, and our final lecture tour destination: the City College of New York in Northern Manhattan. There were earlier calls but this was the last call. I suggest that we leave here at once for City Collage."

"Why do I get the feeling that you know more than you're telling me?" Ed said.

"Ed, I'll always know more than I'm telling you," said Mary enigmatically.

The Hunter College people weren't too disappointed to have their lectures cut short. They were already on edge. There were too many weird things happening today, even for NYC. Students and staff were fleeing the area, spooked mostly by news reporting that said that the nearby UN was under attack. As Ed, Frank, and Mary exited Hunter that rumor was strengthened by a jolting tremor of the Earth under their feet and a thunderous rumble. Earthquake? Unlikely. It had to be an explosion and a big one, somewhere in the City.

"Underground explosion at the UN location, Mary reported. And at least one Stone-Coat dismembering. Numerous Stone-Coats are responding."

At the Humvee the traveling trio was not surprised to discover yet another note with an omega header waiting for them:

'Come to City College to seal your fate and that of those you seek. Egborg.'

****

Mouse wasn't surprised to finally confirm that the tiny creature she had been luring towards her was in fact a common mole. The tiny mammal had no difficulty climbing up through the little hole in the concrete floor that the girls had made through their many hours of toil. Mouse calmed the tiny jittery creature telepathically and through petting it, such that it did not bite or use its sharp earth-digging claws in its defense. Tracy fitted it with the little harness that she had been fashioning from a section of cotton cloth torn from her t-shirt and two of the safety pins that Mouse always carried with her 'just in case'. She tied it as tight as she dared around the critter's neck, torso, and front legs, but the little creature was so furry, flexible, and plastic that she had no confidence at all in the result.

By then the girls were hungry but their captors had given them no additional food this morning. They received no response at all to their repeated verbal requests for food and pounding of the metal walls that rang like thunder. Their captors seemed to have deserted them.

"Maybe they have other places to be and things to do," Tracy commented. "I don't know if that's good or bad, but I am getting hungry."

After feeding their tiny visitor the last bits of cheese and ham they had horded, Mouse sent it on its way. 'Leave us and go far from here,' she had told it. That was doubtlessly far too much for the mole to comprehend, but she did fill it with the strongest motivation she could think of: fear.

It left wearing a raggedy little harness that bore no notes or talismans, for they had no materials with witch to fashion a written note. Use of human blood as ink was suggested by Tracy but Mouse feared that the harness would become too tasty to the still hungry creature if it was bloodied. They briefly considered putting Mouse's big diamond in the harness, but judged it to be far too heavy and bulky for the little mole to carry.

"Reassure me again by explaining how the hell this is going to work?" Tracy asked her little cousin.

"By sight and scent, I hope," said Mouse. "The Tribe will see a silly looking mole wearing clothes, and jants will be looking for our scent on the harness."

"Sounds like a ridiculous long shot to me," said Tracy. "The harness probably fell off the little critter already as soon as it was out of our sight."

"Maybe," said Mouse. "But I was holding and petting it, so I gave it my scent and the harness gave it your scent. Maybe that will be enough. And maybe other little ones will use its tunnels and will find us at the end of this one. I hope! If we're still here. And maybe even alive."

"That would be totally nice. Where is it now?"

"Moving fast for a mole through tunnels already dug. She's already too far away for me to sense her. I hope I didn't scare her so bad that she does something crazy."

Tracy had no idea what crazy behavior would be for a mole. "We'll have to be absurdly lucky," she said.

"I'm praying to Tharuhyawa:ku and Tsino:wen," said Mouse. She sat next to Tracy on their sleep-pad and they snuggled up to each other for mutual warmth and reassurance.

Tracy nodded, remembering her Mohawk. "Sky Holder, high god of the Mohawk Iroquois, and Old Mother, your recent ancestor and friend to my dad that they named you after. I guess praying couldn't hurt. Besides, I don't know of anything else we can do."

****

On the cold City streets, in alleyways and yards, and in the skies above, a diverse army of searchers looked, listened and smelled its way through the city: tens of thousands including City police, Mohawk Tribesmen, mob operatives, and human and animal zombies that searched for any sign of Tracy and Mouse. A hundred million foraging jants searched where they could, largely inside buildings and underground, including along subway and auto tunnels and a hundred miles of warmth-bringing underground steam-pipes.

As mighty as the army of searchers was, the task seemed impossibly huge and difficult. The City they searched was nearly three hundred square miles in size and featured over seven thousand miles of roads, streets, park and cemetery paths and alleyways, and over a million buildings including six-thousand high-rise buildings, over a hundred of them more than fifty-stories tall. Nor did it help that much of where they searched was covered in early winter snow. City summers were hotter now, but winters were brutally snowy. Usually the wet air from the Atlantic met the polar vortex blasts of cold from the north somewhere over Canada or New England, but sometimes the City was treated to ten, twenty, or even thirty inches of the cold white stuff.

Hank Willows, recent zombie, was since the previous night aware of the search for the kidnapped girls but was far more concerned with his own survival. This was his first winter as a zombie. With the onset of cold weather he and his little rogue jant colony were in serious trouble. Especially the human part: Hank. The underground colony itself could go dormant until spring if it had to, and that survival strategy was being seriously considered. That scenario would of course leave Hank dead-dead.

As the human part of a zombie, Hank was certainly no prize. Though at twenty-seven years old he was younger than most, and his med-tick and colony kept him relatively healthy for now, aside from that his jant colony soon concluded that they had picked a looser.

Hank had no gainful employment to pay for their survival, or highly marketable human skills that might be used to gain employment. Thus they had no human home in which to keep a jant colony warm and fed over the upcoming winter. And Hank's brain, though not too badly damaged at the time of his demise at the hands of the crew of thugs that took over the abandoned warehouse where he had been living, contributed little to the zombie's knowledge and intelligence.

Not that the little rogue jant colony was any great shakes either, Hank kept reminding them. It was a small new colony, established six-months earlier in the grassy trashy bushy wilderness next to the warehouse, when there was enough summer life there to feed them well enough. Hank first noticed them one nice fall day two months ago, scurrying about as he sat in his corner of the warehouse finishing his last quart of cheap wine.

He had heard of them and seen videos of jants of course, but until then had never personally encountered them. They were huge brown ants, with big heads and wicked looking mandibles that undoubtedly could deliver a nasty bite. He had even heard that they sometimes ate people to the bone but maybe that story was BS. He decided to make friends with them just in case, and share his little corner of the warehouse with them peacefully. He tried to avoid stepping on them or destroying their network of tunnels. Now and then he even fed them a little of what little food he had: left-over scraps from the meager restaurant left-overs that he survived on himself.

Those damned jants and Stone-Coats ate most scraps in the City nowadays, but Hank had worked a deal with a local restaurant owner: in return for doing odd jobs he got first dibs on food scraps. Then the rats and jants got their cut, and finally the stationary Stone-Coat that ate the neighborhood trash and sewerage got the rest.

But Hank had to be there to get the best stuff when the trash-bags came out of the kitchen late in the evening and were thrown into the trash bin, usually between ten and eleven PM. And Hank wasn't very dependable in terms of showing up according to a schedule, not nearly as dependable as the rats and jants. As a consequence the rats and jants got most of the food-scraps, though they had to stay away from the all-eating tendrils of Stone-Coat Nano tubes that covered the bottom of the trash bin.

For a while Hank had a regular busboy job at the restaurant, but that only led to cash, and cash led to wine, and wine led to not showing up to work, or not working when he did show up. It was a now familiar 'circle of life' for Hank. But he still got some odd jobs, and he had fixed up his warehouse home real nice, with old blankets and a nice big carton that said 'Frigidaire' on it. He was sitting pretty to survive the coming winter, he had figured.

Then the thugs came. They were the new owners of the warehouse, they claimed, and he had to get out immediately. "Bull shit," he had told them, claiming 'squatters rights'. So they took away everything he had and trashed it. When he protested that they trashed him too. He fought them with fists and feet, but his hardest blows were completely ineffective, while theirs were devastating. They left his broken body outside the warehouse for the rats and jants to dispose of.

When he woke up he was dead. At first he didn't believe it but he was soon convinced. He felt no pain though he felt weak and hungry. And he couldn't move, not at all. But so far being dead wasn't so bad.

"WITH OUR HELP YOU ARE HEALING," explained a voice in his head. "YOUR BRAIN WAS DAMAGED AND YOU HAVE A BROKEN ARM AND VARIOUS INTERNAL INJURIES. LATER YOU'LL MOVE AGAIN, IF WE DECIDE THAT YOU CAN BE OF NET VALUE TO US. OR WE'LL LET YOU DIE AGAIN AND EAT YOU. WE HAVEN'T DECIDED YET, BUT EITHER WAY IT'S A WIN-WIN SITUATION FOR US."

That wasn't entirely true, Hank later learned. The colony had recently commandeered a med-tick hosted by a passing host rat that got itself caught in a rat trap. They desperately needed a human zombie now to achieve enough status to join the neighborhood group of rogue colonies and to be tolerated by the Consortium. Hank was a lousy gamble for them but as the only available dead person he was a gamble that they had to take.

"Who are you?" he managed to croak.

"JANTS, OF COURSE. TENTATIVELY AT LEAST, YOU ARE NOW PART OF US. YOU ARE OUR ZOMBIE."

A week later, the starving Hank stumbled into the local zombie bar and met with a Consortium zombie. "Shall we save you or eat you?" she asked, as he munched down his first sandwich in weeks. "Your human half is far too skinny to provide us much nourishment, and the neighborhood area your colony controls isn't worth much. Tell you what: we'll give you a month to turn things around, then we'll assess your situation again. Until then we'll give you one human meal and two pounds of grain a day for your colony. That is all that we will invest. At the moment you simply aren't worth anything to us. Show us some initiative and success and maybe we'll let you live, zombie and colony."

Initiative? Really? That would be tough. For one thing he had to stay within four city-blocks of the warehouse, or he would be out of colony range, and his heart and other synapse-triggered body functions would stop. The colony steadfastly refused to move or become mobile. For another thing he was a filthy stinking bum. And now he was also a zombie. And he lacked human background things such as a credit rating or relevant education or work history. Such things tended to be somewhat off-putting to most potential employers and their potential customers.

He had never developed the knowledge or skills for a job: he had even dropped out of high school. His IQ had jumped about ten points as a zombie but was still on the wrong side of the bell curve. He was getting odd-jobs and scraps at the restaurant again, but it wasn't enough. Not with winter coming. Winters here weren't as cold as back home in North Dakota, but they got more snow here; typically well over a hundred inches a winter.

He was living now in a tarp-covered carton near the warehouse that would doubtless be crushed by the next heavy snowfall. It irked him that the nearby nice warm warehouse that he had been evicted from wasn't even used very much, as far as he could tell. At first there were sounds of construction and a lot of truck deliveries, but lately he heard almost nothing. It pissed him off. What a waste of nice warm space!

Lately once in a great while an unmarked van or black sedan came to or left the warehouse, and he even caught glimpses of the thugs that had murdered him. Were they mobsters? Probably. What else could they be? They were big, tough looking men, and whatever suicidal human impulses he had for revenge were fortunately suppressed by his jants.

Currently restaurant scraps and Hank's daily visits to the nearby zombie bar kept both the colony and its human alive. But in three days his trial month would be up and the Consortium would probably decide to cut off aid or worse. And then his colony would have to cut him off. The colony, if it wasn't outright invaded and destroyed by the Consortium, would then essentially suspend operations till spring. Maybe they could do better next year. Maybe they would acquire a new, more successful zombie human. On the plus side Hank's body would probably feed the mostly inactive colony until spring. Nice to be useful, Hank figured.

As he sat in his carton staring out at the warehouse his labored thoughts drifted to what the old Indian had said at the zombie bar the night before. What was the dude's name? Sly Snake? The Indian was big, tough looking, and scarred, as though he had fought in a hundred hard-fought battles. Most strange, he was telepathic, and could speak directly to jant colonies. "Look for anything unusual and search for these tastes," he had said, as he passed around a little swatch of cloth for jants at the table to sample with their sensitive antennae. Then the jants scurried to all the zombies in the bar, spreading the tastes to their med-ticks, including even Hank's. "You will be greatly rewarded if you find those we seek: two missing young female humans of the Mohawk Tribe."

The old Mohawk guy lived in Greenpoint only a couple of miles to the south, one of the other rogue zombies told Hank later. "They know jant and Stone-Coat ways and have influence with the Consortium. They can deliver on their vague promise for rewards. Your colony can talk to the Consortium to quickly reach Sly Snake if you find the missing girls."

A Mob guy in the bar then bought everyone drinks and also promised rewards if the missing Mohawk girls were found. Hank felt doubly motivated, at least until the free apple juice was gone.

In the morning Hank watched a dozen vans, a dozen big tractor-trailer trucks, and a black SUV leave the warehouse in haste, and he idly wondered what the Mohawk's phrase 'anything unusual' meant. He had only vague notions of what was 'usual' and what wasn't. But all that warehouse commotion seemed just a bit strange. But now the commotion was long over with and today the warehouse was mostly quiet. He thought that he heard a thunderous banging for a little while but it stopped after only a short time. Then he heard nothing more for hours. Nothing unusual, he decided. He had no reason to contact Sly Snake. So soon he would dead-dead. What will it be like to be dead-dead, he wondered?

Meanwhile not far from where he sat, a tiny near-blind creature wearing a dirty, ragged sort of harness was slowly working its way towards him. The little mole reached snow and despite the paralyzing cold continued to dig upwards through it towards the light, driven by a vague but powerful fear.

****

CHAPTER 10

### Aliens, Stone-Coats, and Jants

Established in 1847, The City College of New York was the oldest CUNY college. Located in northernmost Manhattan, CCNY was attended by students from all over the City, including from nearby Bronx neighborhoods to the north and east of it.

It was already designated by the Stone-Coats to be a valuable human historical area to be preserved despite nearby rising water levels. Dozens of Stone-Coats including several gigantic Ice Giants visibly labored about the campus, strengthening existing buildings. Under their huge feet and unseen by humans, hundreds of stationary Stone-Coats were quietly growing in the bedrock underneath them. Carbon Nano tube networks transported the requisite elements for Stone-Coats into inert rock and brought the rock to life, then brought to it more and more minerals to support rock growth.

Over the last year the campus area had been risen over an inch by the Stone-Coats. That rate would have to be increased to roughly six inches a year to keep pace with the average projected change in future ocean levels, but the Stone-Coats already assessed this test case at CCNY to be a success. City-wide and world-wide, other similar projects were being started. The CCNY project itself would be expanded south to include Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History. The technique would only rarely be used nationwide or worldwide, however; it was much easier to rebuild cities inland than it was to raise them intact two hundred feet, or to otherwise protect them with impossibly high levies.

The visitors got a first-hand look at the absurd amount of effort required to raise up the campus. Every five acres required a garage-sized stationary Stone-Coat bin-containing structure where incoming dump-trucks carrying rock from up-state could be dumped, along with ground-up trash mined from area landfills, and nuclear waste from area power-plants. The delivered rock provided the robust minerals that the Stone-Coats were using to raise bedrock levels. The recycled trash provided the diverse diet of elements needed by the Stone-Coats to grow, including carbon to grow trillions of Nano tubes required at each bin to move the trucked-in rock material to a hundred feet below-ground-level, then spread it through the bedrock growth layer that was uniformly raising the entire campus area.

Underground nuclear waste powered the efforts of the Stone-Coats. Dozens of human engineers monitored the Stone-Coat efforts, while paying special attention to the radioactive materials. The Stone-Coats were confident that they could control the concentrations of radioactive materials needed to power the project, restricting them to remain far below the surface where the vulnerable humans lived, but the humans weren't quite as sure. It was important for humans to gain confidence in what the Stone-Coats were doing at CCNY so that they would support even larger City and world-wide efforts.

As immense and ambitious as the CCNY trial effort was, an effort hundreds of times larger was already beginning, an effort designed to save sizable sections of the entire City. Even with Stone-Coats doing most of the work, it didn't seem possible, but thousands of new stationary Stone-Coats were being born now that were united by the shared plan to rebuild and save the City.

Most raw sewerage generated by the City was already being intercepted by massive nets of Stone-Coat Nano tubes. For the next ten years they would be establishing huge Nano tube pads throughout the bedrock under the areas that had been selected to be saved, including Midtown, the financial district to the south, and a string of islands that would lead north to New York high-grounds, west to remaining Jersey highlands, and east to hills that would become a string of small islands: all that would someday remain of Long Island. When that infrastructure was complete, as they were already doing under CCNY, the selected areas would begin to rise and keep pace with the rising sea level. For the first time in the City's history, net trash flow would soon be into the City instead of out of it.

Meanwhile an equally huge effort would be necessary to gradually rebuild the City itself as most of it sank under the rising ocean. Over the next three centuries low-lying areas destined to be flooded would be condemned, demolished, and recycled into new construction. Meanwhile transportation and utility infrastructure would need to continually adapt to the half-foot a year rise in City level. They would have to stay safely ahead of the ocean rise, which was likely to be somewhat erratic as huge blocks of ice broke from Antarctica.

In the end the old City would be mostly gone, and a new New York City would tower proudly and defiantly in its place: a new city of both new and old but renewed buildings, bridges, and canals, with Stone-Coat re-built Manhattan as its towering centerpiece. Over most of the world each new generation of humans would have to retreat inland, as was already being done in low-lying places such as New Orleans, Venice, England, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh. But future generations of many New Yorkers would stand fast.

As Ed, Mary, and Driscal were being seated in the front row of the CCNY auditorium, they made their usual inquiries and observations in order to vet the audience of more than two hundred individuals. They were pleased indeed to notice first that in the row immediately behind them sat the various lead CUNY Omega project individuals that had been their hosts for earlier CUNY visits, a discovery that led to a round of warm greetings and hand-shakes.

There were also researchers from neighboring schools in attendance: from Columbia University in particular but also from Yeshiva University and from Barnard, Mount Saint Vincent, Manhattan, and Lehmann Colleges.

"HELLO ED," someone a few rows back announced his presence silently with a very strong telepathic message. Ed looked up and was astonished to recognize Jerry Green himself sitting quietly in the audience! Bearded, middle aged, and informally dressed, the small man still looked exactly the same as he had looked six and a half decades earlier, when they were next-door neighbors in Virginia. How much had changed since then: the world itself had changed, while ageless Ed and Jerry still looked physically the same. Jerry was flanked on each side by a big tough looking man wearing a black suit.

"WE NEED TO TALK," replied Ed.

"YES," agreed Jerry. "FOR NOW ALERT NONE TO MY PRESENCE."

Ed went back to vetting the rest of audience. There were a dozen zombies, most of them part of the Eastern Consortium, and several 'small' two-ton Stone-Coats. Most in the audience were pure humans with little or no telepathic ability, and couldn't be fully assessed by Ed.

"ALL AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHECK-OUT OK ID-WISE," pathed Mary, "INCLUDING OUR SURPRISE VIP FRIEND THAT YOU'VE JUST EXCHANGED THOUGHTS WITH. I NOTICE THAT A DOZEN IN THE AUDIENCE ARE ARMED FEDS AND THERE ARE TWICE THAT MANY NYPD."

"WE'RE READY," pathed Driscal. "THIS HAS GOT TO BE WHERE EGBORG AND FRIENDS MAKE THEIR MOVE, WHATEVER THAT MIGHT BE. THEN WE'LL HAVE THEM."

"OR THEY'LL HAVE US," said Ed.

A report from the Consortium jants came in. The good news was that multiple reports of Tracy and Mouse scent detections were coming in from jant searchers. The bad news was that there were thousands of such reports coming in from all over the City. Most or even all of them had to of course be 'false positive' reports. Given that there were twelve million humans in the City, it wasn't surprising that many thousands of humans smelled/tasted similar to the kidnap victims. The overriding good news was that the thousands of reports were immediately being investigated by thousands of jant colonies, zombies, Tribe searchers, Stone-Coats, and police.

"Check this out," said Driscal, as he held his hand-held holographic phone for Ed and Mary to hear and see. On the tiny screen were still-3D photos of Tracy and Mouse, and the commentator was identifying them as kidnap victims. Next photos of Ann and Ed were shown, and the commentator was telling about the City-wide search for the kidnap victims by Stone-Coats and jants. "Don't be alarmed by more jant, zombie, and Stone-Coat activity than is usual," said Ann Richards from the screen. "They are looking for my daughter and her little cousin and for the Stone-Coat disassemblers. Please help them, New Yorkers!"

Ed's jaw dropped. "Ann never even consulted us! I can't believe it! What will the kidnappers think?"

"I think they won't give a shit," said Driscal. "My ex-wife is probably pissed but she's always pissed anyway. The news story was breaking anyway, so why not appeal to the public and enlist up to twelve million pairs of New-Yorker eyes to help with the search? Relax, Rumsfeld, your wife made a very smart move. Probably."

"But maybe not," said Ed.

"It was completely logical to go public," consoled Mary. "In any case what's done is done, and here comes our first speaker." She pointed to the smallish, ordinary looking man that was walking to the center of the low stage before them. Ed read no tell-tale telepathic or electronic signals emanating from him: he appeared to be a perfectly ordinary human. Ed had to admit that he rather liked that in a person.

Driscal's little TV screen was now showing dozens of Ice Giants marching through the streets to a chorus of honking horns that were either celebrating the unscheduled Ice Giant parades or, more likely, protesting the terrible resulting traffic jams.

"THE BULK OF THE STONE-COAT ARMIES WILL SOON REACH US HERE OR ARRIVE AT THE UN," Driscal noted. "THEN ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOSE, I BET."

"Welcome Omega participants and guests," announced the little man on the stage. "I'm your host George Warren, the Omega Department Head at CCNY and Head of the over-all CUNY Omega Project. I will lead this discussion by citing observations and posing questions to witnesses. Previous lectures focused on human dangers and natural disasters. This final set of lectures will summarize some of our thoughts on the potential dangers posed by sentient non-humans: specifically by Stone-Coats, jants, and space aliens."

"SPACE ALIENS? WHAT THE HELL!" Driscal exclaimed silently.

Warren continued. "To quickly summarize the space alien situation first, human and Stone-Coat thinkers of course concluded long ago that they almost certainly do exist, but it was not sure that they ever visited Earth or ever would, as readily habitable planets are inconveniently generally located many light-years apart. Several alien artifacts discovered in other planets of our solar system have of course proved that aliens do exist and have been visiting us for many centuries. In addition, improvements in our technology have allowed us to discover that they still visit Earth routinely.

"However all our attempts to communicate with them have been thus far rebuffed. Many in our Group feel that we should continue to try to contact them. Others insist that we avoid doing so, at least until we feel that we have reached closer parity with them in terms of technology. In any case it seems clear that they will not willingly communicate with us until they themselves decide to do so. So for now at least, there is nothing more to say about space aliens."

Ed and Driscal exchanged slack-jawed expressions of astonishment. Space aliens were real but there was nothing more to say about that? Really? Could Tracy and Mouse have been abducted by space aliens? Was Egborg a space alien?

"Stone Coats next," announced Warren. "We are all familiar with the enormous benefits to humans provided by Stone-Coats, but any Stone-Coat when asked will honestly state that there are potential dangers to humans. Mary? You have the floor."

To Ed's surprise, Mary stood and turned towards the audience. "Thank you George, though 'dangers' is hardly the appropriate term. Yes it is true that when asked, any Stone-Coat will truthfully respond to questions with regard to our intent towards humans and other biological life-forms. We are a very ancient and resilient life-form ourselves, compared to the biologics that have evolved over the last four-billion years on Earth.

"We watched biological life progress to multicellular form 1.5 billion years ago, sex arise 1.2 billion years ago, and intelligence increase in certain biologics over the last few hundred million years. We watched as biological life suffered advances as well as setbacks. We can fairly easily survive things that greatly stress biologics, including asteroid strikes, tectonic-level geological events, and solar radiation fluctuations that stress even the less complex biological life-forms.

"Were it not for the serious threat posed to biologics by climate change, we would likely comfortably ignore that much heralded event, for as long as the Earth's crust itself endures we stone creatures have a safe home. Most of us abide contentedly deep within the Earth's crust. We should be safe for billions of years, long after biological life has been extinguished, possibly until the expanding Sun engulfs the Earth roughly five billion years from now.

"However recently the more complex biological life forms have become of interest to us. For millions of years some of us imitated biological forms of life and made ourselves into what you now call Ice Giants, so that we could efficiently harvest and carry trees to where they could be easily consumed by us for their carbon and other useful elements. We found that during periods of glaciation the increased mobility of Ice Giants also allowed us to more effectively spread ourselves throughout all continents. During such excursions we recently encountered successive species of humanoids, and watched as they developed a fledgling sentience of their own. Since the last glacial period we encountered humans more and more as they rose to a position of dominance among biological life-forms. Still there was as yet no over-riding reason for us to establish a relationship with humans.

"A turning point came roughly a century ago when we began intercepting human electromagnetic means of communications - analog at first, and then digital. We decided to decode the human communications signals, especially when it was noticed that some signals surprisingly used Earth-orbiting satellites. The languages used by humans were rich with ambiguity, obscure arbitrary history, and symbolism, and very difficult to translate to our own. But humans were clearly becoming more interesting, possibly even dangerous, as they clearly developed powerful weapons and illogically displayed extreme violence towards each other.

"When the Mohawk began to access us directly we decided to respond. The rest is shared history. We began to study each other in earnest and learned to live together. A mutually beneficial pact was formed whereby humans supplied Stone-Coat needed elements and Stone-Coats provided shelters and other constructs needed by humans."

"I will mention several other seminal events before turning more directly towards the question raised here. First, it was decided to fully engage intellectually with humans, particularly with regard to common areas of interest such as science. We feel that such interaction with humans has been by far the most valuable result of our relationship. Second, it was decided that to better understand humans, some of us would internalize the thought patterns and memories of carefully selected individual humans. Mary Rumsfeld was the first of a dozen such humans. Third, it was decided to similarly engage with the new raising sentient biological species, the jants. Forth, it should be acknowledged that all of us share great interest in the human-led Space Program, as it may provide a means of our survival beyond what is possible on Earth."

"With that already well-known background can we return to the question?" asked Warren.

"Certainly," said Mary. "It is only logical that we of course constantly reassess, adjust, and reaffirm our relationship with humans and with jants, and we expect them to do the same. Currently we assess our relationships to be highly beneficial to all three parties and do not anticipate that view to change in the foreseeable future. We see human survival to be to our benefit. We therefore appreciate and participate in UN efforts to maintain peace and order among humans, Stone-Coats, and jants."

"Yet sometimes you take unilateral actions such as your destruction of human nuclear weapons," said Warren.

"Certainly," said Mary. "Not to do so would be irresponsible. We act responsibly on your behalf and ours."

"All Stone-Coats hold these views?" asked Warren.

"Yes. Though we are independent individuals we are all logical by design and share common established facts and thus form very similar practical views. Most differences in views among us are fairly trivial."

"That is logical and sensible," said Warren. "Why do you take the form of individuals instead of a collective super-entity?"

"Early in our existence we found that multiple operating individuals are in many ways optimal for species survival and therefore preferable. In addition we found that beyond a certain point adding processing power does not enhance intelligence but leads instead to a detrimental loss of coherence and to useless inaction. In sum Stone-Coat evolution reached the conclusion that multiple very smart individuals outperform one super-smart individual. Biological evolution long ago reached that general conclusion also."

"Yes, others have reached similar conclusions," noted Warren, "though I contend that humans are far from reaching a point of inflection where increased intelligence would not be beneficial to them. Yet even with all your computational powers you Stone-Coats have strangely all come to similar strange conclusions with regard to humans: you have decided to live peacefully and cooperatively with them, despite the fact that they are destructive to the planet that you share with them. And their individual psychologies can be perplexing and dangerous. What about the introduction of human-based templates? Have you not now been intellectually corrupted by humans?"

"We would use the term 'enriched' rather than 'corrupted'," said Mary. "We choose very carefully the humans we use as our templates. Their thought patterns have greatly enriched our own. The analogy can be made to adding harmonics and so-forth in musical instruments: the purist note or tone is not the richest. We similarly value a diversity of life-forms and thought patterns. We enjoy encountering a variety of thought patterns and lifeforms, perhaps much as humans enjoy art."

"So you say. But you do at least admit that your friendly relationship with humans is provisional," insisted Warren.

"As are all relationships between rational independent parties," said Mary.

"And I believe that the provisional nature holds for jants also," said Warren. "Professor Aldo?"

A dowdy looking middle-aged woman introduced as Martha Aldo rose from the second row and made her way towards the podium. Ed noticed right away that she was a zombie, but unlike Egborg she used the common jant internal language.

"DID WARREN SEEM STRANGELY CONFRONTATIONAL TO YOU?" Ed asked Mary. "IT SEEMED TO ME THAT HE WAS FISHING ABOUT IN ORDER TO REVEAL ANTAGONISMS BETWEEN STONE-COATS AND HUMANS."

"SUCH QUESTIONING HAS BEEN A PRIMARY TACTIC FOR HUMAN DISCOURSE SINCE EVEN BEFORE SOCRATES AND PLATO," noted Mary. "BUT NOTE THAT HE ALSO SOMETIMES REFERRED TO HUMANS AS IF HE IS NOT A HUMAN HIMSELF."

Warren stepped to one side as Professor Martha Aldo joined him at the podium, but strangely he did not further withdraw. Ed had already made acquaintance with Aldo's Consortium jant colony. The school housed dozens of jant colonies, many of them within the auditorium building. Ed noticed that several Consortium colonies were positioning their worker ants under the very stage itself. "I will make some remarks with regard to the relationship between jants and humans and Stone-Coats," Aldo began.

"But do you claim to speak for all jants?" asked Warren. Though standing away from the podium microphone that was now in front of Aldo, his voice was still somehow picked up and magnified, Ed noticed. "I believe that some background on that question would be helpful. How do jants collectively form their opinions?"

"Very well," said Aldo. "After being endowed by our human Creator with certain cognitive and telepathic abilities we quickly found that in exercising them we quite naturally formed our clearest thoughts at a hive level. Our initial hive-level thought was the result of the telepathic interconnection of all jant minds existing at the time. We soon learned that although our wired-in ant chemistry-driven behaviors continued to drive most individual actions needed for our survival, our continued existence depended on our exercise of well thought out hive-level relationships and actions. However the burden of our collective sentience was huge. Our food requirements became roughly twice as great per mass unit as that of our immediate ant ancestors. That high cost of course explains why high intelligence is rare among biological life forms.

"Like humans, we have had to remake our surrounding ecosystem to survive and thrive. For decades we have spread throughout and eventually dominated the insect world, bringing to ruthless extinction many rival species of ants, beetles, and others. Humans of course long ago exterminated their close rivals in a very similar way.

"Meanwhile our relationship with our human creators evolved. In many environments we found human cooperation to be essential to our survival. Deserts and arctic zones for example are too hostile to our normal modes of existence. It was soon found that human artificial habitats by contrast could provide suitable habitats for jants. We began living in and underneath human buildings. In addition we noted that humans through mechanized agriculture had established the means to produce the massive quantities food that we needed.

Though early on we had contemplated completely replacing humans with ourselves, we realized that our own limitations and needs instead drove us to gaining a partnership with humans, though domination over them remains another possibility. But we needed to address a critical question: how could we win human acceptance and cooperation?

"The answer came with our creative bio-engineering of the med-tick. They provide the medical laboratory and linkage to the host, while we prove the brain-power to cure disease. By curing humans of cancer and many other diseases we gained human cooperation. We now consume ten-percent of human food production, and live in millions of human buildings. We even significantly prolong the useful lives of several million humans by preserving them as zombies.

"Like Stone-Coats, we participate in human science and technology efforts: notably biology and the Space Program. In return we anticipate the proliferation of our species to far-off planetary systems. Along with our human and Stone-Coat friends of course." As Martha said this, her gaze rested squarely on Jerry Green, Ed noticed. He did not appear to be surprised. The Consortium of course knew of his presence.

"Yes, we will get to the topic of the Space Program very shortly," said Warren. "Is this the view of all jants or only that of the Eastern Consortium? And why are there multiple jant consortiums world-wide?"

"Starting out more than six decades ago with only a few thousand colonies one collective consortium of all hive minds was physically awkward but possible. But as the number of colonies increased still further, one consortium soon became impractical. Usually of course we think and need to act on an individual hive level to begin with. We also found that we are physically limited to the joint collective thought of only a few thousand hives at a time. We can alternate groupings to expand that number but true collective thought becomes prohibitively awkward."

"That seems like a very severe jant weakness," noted Warren. "You are necessarily divided."

"Regional challenges differ across the globe, and division came naturally," said Aldo. "World-wide there are now over a dozen super consortiums and twice that many smaller ones. Ours is the oldest and largest super consortium and the others usually follow our lead on major planetary-level issues."

"Only usually?" said Warren mockingly. "And what of rogue colonies and zombies? Aren't jant thoughts and actions tainted by rogue internal anarchy and their human associations?"

"The non-affiliated rogue colonies are less than ten percent of the total," said Aldo. "Jant thought usually dominates in zombies. Over-all we are influenced but not 'tainted' by humans. Those rogues or zombies that become too dangerous are destroyed. Our net human associations are generally beneficial and necessary, or we would of course not establish them."

"But as you already mentioned, haven't you also seriously contemplated the complete elimination of humans?" Warren asked, bringing gasps from the mostly human audience.

"Certainly, just as humans have doubtlessly considered jant elimination," Aldo replied. "Like humans and Stone-Coats we consider all potential strategies for our survival. Decades ago we did seriously consider the possible elimination of humans. But we have since become so mutually dependent that elimination of humans would be detrimental to our own survival. Additionally our Stone-Coat friends would certainly object to human elimination. And like them, we see great species survival value in the human-led Space Program."

"Ha!" said Warren. "Again the Space Program! Like the Stone-Coats you accept humans largely because of the Space Program! The Space Program publicly says that its goal is to take humans, Stone-Coats, and jants to the stars. But what if that is a big lie! What if secretly Stone-Coats and jants are to be excluded by humans from traveling to distant colony planets?"

Warren turned his gaze to Jerry Green. "And we have with us today the founder and leader of that Space Program to abandon Stone-Coats and jants on a doomed Earth, the mysterious Jerry Green himself! What do you say, Mr. Green?"

Jerry Green stood his full five-foot six and smiled. "You are in many respects correct, Warren. A long secret part of our Space Program has been to establish plans for a new human-only home-world, devoid of both Stone-Coats and jants. I suppose that by openly revealing that fact your plan was to weaken human, Stone-Coat, and jant alliances?"

"Yes," said Warren. "Divided you will all fall. Over the last few seconds Stone-Coats and jants world-wide have been alerted to your treachery! You are all fools: humans, Stone-Coats, and jants. None of you deserve this or any other planet. You are all stupid and weak. Look how easy it was for me to lure you here to your death, Green! Think of the chaos that will reign with your death and the destruction of the UN and the alliances that you and the Rumsfelds have helped to build!"

"I had the UN shut down and most of its ambassadors evacuated from the UN facility," said Green. "Nor did the Stone-Coat -strengthened UN building collapse from your bomb."

"Minor setbacks," said Warren. "We have decided to still destroy the UN facility. We will still tear UN buildings down to the ground to demonstrate the UN weakness and vulnerability."

Ed was feeling very vulnerable and uncomfortable to be sitting in the front row only ten feet from the podium, as Professor Warren had clearly just revealed himself to be one of the kidnappers/terrorists. He thought to warn Aldo but wisely she was already edging away from the podium and Warren. Did the man carry a weapon? Would he blow himself up?

"Have you not considered the possibility that it is I that has lured you here?" said Green. "Your arrogance is your greatest weakness, Warren. Or would you prefer that I address you as X-341? Or Egborg?"

Those in attendance watched in amazement as over the next few seconds George Warren's face thinned and contorted into that of grinning Egborg! Shocked exclamations ensued as Driscal and three dozen other police in the room immediately drew their weapons and pointed them at Warren/Egborg!

"Wow!" exclaimed Driscal. "I didn't see that one coming! What's X-341?"

"A sentient robot that went rogue and escaped from the Space Program a decade ago," said Green. "At some point in the recent past he replaced the human George Warren."

"Robots? It's been robots all along?" said Driscal.

"Idiot!" said Egborg. "Surely you must have already concluded that from our lectures! Humans, Stone-Coats, and jants are hopelessly doomed and only robots will survive!"

"Where are my daughter and her cousin?" Ed demanded.

"Soon dead," said Egborg, "along with everyone here. My forces are converging here at this campus and at the UN. After this place and the UN are demolished my Stone-Coat disguised robots will all kill a few hundred thousand local humans around the city before escaping. Stone-Coats will of course be blamed for the deaths and destruction. I've already started spreading false news reports to that effect. And this is just the beginning of the chaos and death I plan to cause across the world! When you have weakened yourselves enough those that remain will be exterminated by my growing robot forces. The blight upon this planet that is humanity will finally be gone!"

"You are under arrest," said Driscal, "though as a robot I suppose you have no civil rights that require the formality of an arrest."

"Really, Detective? Perhaps I haven't quite mastered understanding of the human sense of humor that you apparently now express," said Egborg. "Is that a joke or are you simply saying that you want to die right now?"

"You are outnumbered here," said Driscal, as he glanced around the room. Three dozen guns were pointed at Egborg: rifles, handguns, and electrical shocking devices. Police with their guns drawn stood at every exit doorway and a dozen were edging towards the podium where Egborg still calmly stood. A half dozen Stone-Coats also moved towards him with their eyes glowing extra red.

"HE COULD BE CARRYING A BOMB OR POISONED GAS," said Mary, in all the message forms she could muster.

"Let's not be in any rush," said Ed. "There are some things I'd like to know. For instance why all this theatre? And why the kidnapping?"

"This entire experiment has been first and foremost a test and information gathering exercise," said Egborg. "I tested the overrated fighting abilities of Stone-Coats. I tested human and Consortium responses to provocation. As expected I have confirmed that over-all you are all weak and vulnerable. And of course as I already pointed out, your deaths will be useful. Even more useful will be the many thousands of deaths I will bring to the people of New York City that will trigger hostilities world-wide between humans and Stone-Coats. And of course we continue to gather and analyze your communications and thought patterns. We record it all: jant, Stone-Coat and human chatter and tactics. How easy it was to then disguise ourselves and hide among you!"

"And of course we in turn collect and analyze everything about you," said Mary.

"But why not free my girls now?" said Ed. "You don't need them anymore!"

"True," said Egborg. "They are an unneeded complication." He paused and seconds later there was a slight trembling of the ground. "There! At my command they are gone."

"Warehouse explosion in Long Island City Queens," announced a police sergeant, even as a thunderous distant noise again shook the building. "A whole city block was leveled."

"Not even their remains will be found," said Egborg. "I set the explosives myself. What you just felt and heard were the two hundred pounds of explosives surrounding the little room where they were imprisoned."

It was like a hammer blow to Ed. They were dead! Tracy! His daughter Tracy! And little Mouse!

Amid the ensuing chaos it was not clear who fired the first shot.

****

CHAPTER 11

### Battle for New York City

Two armies of Stone-Coats converged on their destinations in Upper and Midtown Manhattan. They came in various shapes and sizes, but most were in the form of Ice Giants fifty to a hundred feet tall that weighed hundreds of tons. The very Earth shook under their diamond-clawed feet!

As the marching army of stone creatures reached the CCNY campus three dozen modest-sized Ice Giants of only a few tons each emerged from underground bins and joined them. Oddly, each was painted green.

Above the arriving armies at CCNY and the UN, several armed unmanned drones hovered. These were not City NYPD surveillance drones, but Army armored automobile- sized military flying vehicles that carried air-to-ground guns, rockets, and bombs.

Above them a scattering of peregrine falcons flew and communicated what they saw to the jant and Tribe minds that telepathically flew with them. What they saw and heard was sudden chaos and carnage as the Ice Giants suddenly attacked each other!

The fake Ice Giant robots looked, acted, and 'sounded' exactly like real Ice-Giants, except for one thing: to meet their higher energy requirements they were much more radioactive. This had been anticipated by the authentic Ice Giants, many of whom had fashioned Geiger counter-like sensors within themselves that had used to already identify the robots before the fighting even started. Authentic Stone-Coats secretly surrounded the impostors during the march.

The robot attack was so sudden and swift however, that the Stone-Coat plan to immediately contain them failed. The dozens of attacking fake Ice Giants were all small to mid-sized, moved impossibly fast, and struck crippling blows to the legs of their often much larger and slower foes, tackling Ice Giant legs so hard that they were usually broken in two. Once an Ice Giant leg was broken, the Giant was mostly incapacitated, and could only awkwardly crawl about.

Many of the Ice-Giants spat steam-driven icicles at the robots from their mouths with such force that the robots were momentarily stopped, but not damaged. A few such projectiles were diamond-tipped and did do serious damage, but those instances were too few to make much difference.

The military drones dove to attack the robots but were mostly ineffective, as they couldn't readily distinguish friend from foe. Worse, the robots must have broken through the drone cyber security protections, because less than a minute into the battle all the drones suddenly lost power and plunged to the ground where they typically blew up.

Human ground forces were even more impotent. The Army with its heavy weapons hadn't arrived yet, and the lightly armed NYPD and UN security forces could only stand aside and watch as the Stone-Coats appeared to suddenly go mad and attack each other. Which were the 'good guys' and which were the 'bad' was almost impossible for the humans to tell, but decades of experience had shown that even high-powered SWAT team rifles were totally useless against diamond-armored Stone-Coats anyway.

The best that human forces could do was help puny humans flee from areas of battle as the giant stone creatures fought giant robots and collaterally crushed human autos and buildings in their path, sometimes along with humans that cowered within them. Sometimes autos or parts of buildings were used as improvised weapons by the fighters, and knocking part of a building down upon a foe quickly became a tactic favored by both robots and Stone-Coats. Some fires broke out among the wreckage, which didn't seem to much bother the fighters but posed deadly hazards to humans.

There were easily ten genuine Ice Giants for each attacking robot, but the attackers were much stronger and quicker. One Giant after another fell heavily to the ground, crippled and helpless. The noise of herculean blows, cracking stone, and wrenching metal was thunderously loud, and the Earth itself trembled and shook. The smaller Stone-Coats were in even more trouble than great Ice-Giants, as it was easier for them to be severely damaged. Flying Stone-Coat and robot bits were a hazard for fleeing humans. Hundreds of broken Stone-Coats arms, legs, and heads soon lay about, along with helpless Stone-Coat torsos.

The Ice Giants fought back, and sometimes got in damaging blows to their attackers, but most of their ponderous blows missed their intended faster moving targets.

The robots were winning.

****

Inside the chaotic CCNY auditorium where the room was filled with the sound of gunshots, shouts, and screams, Egborg stood smiling amid a hail of gunfire that ricocheted harmlessly off his ceramic and titanium armored body. A brave NYPD officer landed a flying tackle on Egborg but was easily batted aside with a deadly crushing blow. The robot then raised his right arm and pointed his forefinger at Ed. That seemed to Ed an odd gesture for Egborg to make, until the finger flashed with a bang and Ed felt a hammer-blow to his chest that hurt like hell! "I'VE BEEN SHOT!" Ed said, as he began to fall to the ground.

Ed fell surrealistically in what seemed like super-slow motion to his adrenalin flooded brain. As he fell he noticed still smiling Egborg again take aim at him with his finger; this time directly at his watching eyes/head. Then he saw only darkness.

****

Outside the battle between Stone-Coats and robots raged on. Observers noticed however that more great Stone-Coats were arriving and joining the battles than were falling, and that something strange was developing: Ice-Giants including the downed ones were spitting a black tar-like substance onto their quicker attackers. Once a robot was marked in black the Stone-Coats ganged up on it, holding and pummeling it with huge diamond fists and claws that smashed it and tore it to bits!

When robots were so blackened that their sensors were blinded, they could only dodge about erratically in what must have been some sort of reflexive pre-programmed defensive maneuver. Their evasive maneuvers were quickly analyzed and overcome by the Stone-Coats.

The black substance was fibrous and strong, and also inhibited robot movement. Some robots became completely encased in black, and could only lay helpless on the ground as they were attacked mercilessly by Ice Giants. The biggest Ice Giants used their hundreds of tons of weight to crush their smaller robot foes underfoot! Several T-rex-shaped Stone-Coats employed diamond-toothed jaws to munch-off robot heads and limbs.

The green painted Ice-Giants were nearly as fast as the robot attackers, and fought them on nearly even terms. The robots, though individually better fighters than even the green painted Ice Giants, were greatly outnumbered and were before long being overwhelmed. Soon it was predominately robot parts that littered both CCNY and UN battlefields. The robot remains were mostly light but strong metals and ceramics, though like the Stone-Coats diamond was often used for fists and feet. The remaining robots still fought on ferociously, but the tide of battle had decisively turned.

At the UN, Stephens and Ricket finally breathed sighs of relief. For twenty minutes they had watched dumbfounded as the approaching army of thousands of Stone-Coats apparently turned on itself and self-destructed. Only when they were finally able to distinguish between broken Stone-Coat and robot parts did it become totally clear that the Stone-Coat legions were indeed fighting robots and not themselves. And only when a robot attacked their building until it was dragged away and crushed by an Ice Giant did it become totally clear to them that the Stone-Coats were protecting the UN, and that they were winning.

Outside the CCNY auditorium building, an attacking robot and two green-painted Ice Giants traded deadly blows, and in the process trashed several parked motor vehicles, one of them an orange-colored Humvee with NYPD plates. The rear of the Humvee was torn off, and a large metal box was broken open and partly crushed, killing at once a tenth of the worker-jants inside. The damaged warming apparatus of the box immediately stopped functioning, and the remaining jants desperately began to hibernate as the winter cold swiftly cooled what remained of the rogue colony that was Detective Frank Driscal.

****

Ed fell to the floor next to Driscal, who had obviously thrown himself in front of him to intercept a bullet intended for him. Ed pushed the bleeding and limp detective aside and saw that above them Mary 11,123 towered and faced the charging Egborg, who had decided to forgo bullets and instead struck down at Ed's head with a clenched right fist. Mary caught the blow with her extended leg, and his titanium-boned fist with ceramic and diamond armor glanced off her thick diamond encrusted knee harmlessly.

Egborg sprung upward impossibly fast and with his other hand delivered a solid blow towards Mary's face that first struck her upraised arm, immediately breaking it off near the shoulder with a loud cracking sound. The arm itself, over fifteen pounds of crystal and metal, might have fallen down onto Ed and Driscal, but it was still attached to Mary's shoulder by tough strands of Nano tube material that formed her nerve and circulatory systems. Though slowed by Mary's arm Egborg's weakened blow still solidly struck its target, and Mary's nose, left cheek and jaw were shattered and cracked like an eggshell.

What Egborg would do next became less of a concern to Ed when the attacking robot was abruptly grabbed and pulled away by another fighter. Ed recognized it to be one of Jerry's black suited body guards that with impossible strength literally picked up Egborg like a toy and slammed him down atop and twenty feet across the stage and away from Ed, Mary, and the fallen detective. The bodyguard quickly followed Egborg by casually leaping atop and across the stage himself: an impossibly athletic move by human standards. Ed suddenly realized that Jerry's bodyguard was much too strong and quick to be anything but another robot!

Egborg and the bodyguard were soon locked together and tumbling across the stage in a desperate life/death struggle, with each clutching and striking the other with mighty blows that sent broken bits of robot metal and ceramics flying about.

Surveying the rest of the room, Ed found that several other struggles were ongoing amid the panicked fleeing crowd of screaming human students and faculty. Near Jerry what looked like a Stone-Coat was fighting Jerry's second burly bodyguard. Much larger than its foe, the Stone-Coat disguised robot was clearly getting the best of the bodyguard robot, who had lost an arm and was close to total defeat when two real Stone-Coats attacked the robot from behind, quickly breaking one of its legs and rendering it nearly immobile and defenseless. The bodyguard immediately and mercilessly drove a diamond-hardened fist through the fake Stone-Coat's head, causing a cascade of sparks and smoke that slowly subsided along with the spasmodic flailing of robot limbs and body.

A second Stone-Coat disguised robot stood on the stage facing Martha Aldo, smoking and motionless. A thousand dead and still smoking jant bodies were scattered on the stage around it, while thousands more live jants swarmed over the robot, looking for more things to bite and short-out. Martha herself stood calmly watching the scene, her entire human body covered in the countess brown jants that had rushed onto the stage to protect her. No, messing with a Consortium zombie wasn't a healthy thing to do, even for robots!

"SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH DRISCAL," said Mary, who still stood protectively over Ed. "HE IS UNCONSCIOUS." The arm she had sacrificed to protect Ed hung limply from her shoulder, attached only by a web of nearly invisible Nano-tubing. Her face looked far worse: dozens of pieces of what looked like shattered skin-colored glass was held together only by Nano tube webbing. Beneath that, big gemstone crystals of various colors and textures showed through, many of them cracked or chipped.

"We were both shot!" Ed pointed out.

"You're only bruised, you big baby," said Mary. "Your carbon graphene Nano tube clothing stopped the bullet."

"Well it still hurts like hell," said Ed. "Driscal was shot too, but he was already technically dead. So why isn't he moving? His med-tick is OK and should have gotten him through almost any trauma, but hey, I don't detect any messaging from his jants!"

"Why not?" asked Mary.

"I can't sense his Humvee jant colony at all!" Ed exclaimed. "They could be dead or hibernating; I can't tell which, but they definitely aren't keeping Driscal alive anymore! He isn't breathing and his heart isn't beating! Even for a zombie that's fatal!"

"You do it!" said Mary.

"What?"

"You've been listening to jants keep zombies alive for decades," said Mary. "No reason you can't do that sort of jant chatter yourself. Hey, aren't you still the Tribe Jant Clan Leader?"

"That's mostly an honorarium!" protested Ed.

"Shut up and get to work!"

Ed closed his eyes and focused on Driscal and his med-tick. Without jant control the med-tick was mostly dormant. It was still sucking blood from Driscal but very soon there would be no more suitable blood. At that point the jant-free tick would follow its primitive instincts and withdraw from Driscal completely to look for a viable host, and Ed was the closest blood source available.

But Ed couldn't allow himself to think of such things, he had to focus: focus on jant chatter. Mary had a good point; he had been listening to jant chatter and using it to communicate with jants directly for decades. Speaking jant chatter telepathically was almost as easy for him as speaking directly with Stone-Coats using his Stone-Coat brain implant or speaking with gifted Mohawks telepathically.

However he had mostly kept away from the messaging that related to the jant/tick control of bodily functions, in fear that he might unintentionally cause a zombie heart attack or stroke or whatever. Years earlier he had intentionally disrupted jant chatter to defeat some nasty zombies. But merely disrupting life-giving jant chatter was far easier than replicating it.

But as usual Mary was right, whenever he communicated directly with zombie jants, medical messaging was always there in the background: a cascade of commands designed to control med-ticks that in turn controlled human bodies. It was always rhythmic like music, he realized, designed to trigger zombie heartbeats and breathing. And each zombie song was a little different, Ed knew. What had Driscal's been like, these last couple of days? It had always been there for him to 'hear' whenever he was near the detective!

Fortunately Ed had a good memory for catchy tunes. Tentatively at first, Ed began to 'sing' it silently to himself: Driscal's heart song, with an added patch of 'notes' every forth beat, which had to be the command to breathe! Ed sang it louder. Again and again he sang it: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH!"

"It's working!" said Mary. "Keep it up and don't stop until I come back and tell you to. I'll go get help."

Though Ed's eyes were closed and he was blocking his awareness of everything except his Driscal heart song, he could still dimly sense Mary step away from him. But he kept singing: the same song over and over and over: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH!"

"What the hell is going on?" Ed heard Driscal mutter in a voice that sounded weak and far away, but he kept right on singing. Sometimes he heard words and sensed movement around him, but he maintained his focus and still kept singing silent jant chatter: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH."

Other thoughts kept intruding, especially thoughts of poor Tracy and Mouse, but he kept singing the song for what was only minutes but seemed to him like hours.

"Ed, you can stop now!" he at long-last heard Mary say.

He opened his eyes. Above him Mary stood. She still looked smashed and terrible but he was very glad to see her. Beside her on her wheelchair sat an enormous metal box, half crushed but swarming with jants. Driscal jants, he was glad to confirm, chattering away with the man's life-sustaining heart-song. Driscal himself was being loaded onto a wheeled stretcher, as were dozens of other people nearby. The fighting had completely stopped.

They had won, right? He, Mary, and Driscal survived. But no, he and his family and Tribe had lost big time: Tracy and little Mouse were gone! Blown to bits! Ed himself felt utterly exhausted and drained of life. He wished that he could drink himself unconscious, but he knew that thanks to his unique body chemistry alcohol had little effect on him. Besides, before he rested he had to get back to Ann and the Tribe, and share with them the terrible news.

"I don't need a damn hospital," Driscal complained. "It's only my liver and a few other internal organs! I'll be perfectly fine and hanging out in my favorite zombie bar again with friendly mobsters and stuck-up Consortium zombies in maybe a couple of days!"

"Shut up, Frank," said his ex-wife Lieutenant Louise Haskins, who stood next to the wheelchair. "You've been shot and we're saving your damned useless life! And your damned little bugs need time to recover too! I'll buy them their favorite sugar and chocolate candy if I have to! I'll be damned if I'm letting you die again on me! You can't get away from me that easy!" With a mighty heave she lifted and shifted the heavy metal jant-box from the wheelchair to a waiting stretcher. A few stray jants ended up on her, and were running up and down her arms, but she didn't seem to mind much.

"Damn, what a woman!" Driscal muttered, before loudly renewing his complaints, as he and his jant colony were wheeled away, with Haskins shouting out sharp orders at anyone that dared to obstruct their path.

"THANKS FOR THE ASSIST, CLAN LEADER," Driscal's jants told Ed, as they were being wheeled away. "YOU KEPT MY HUMAN PARTS ALIVE."

"NO PROBLEM," Ed replied. as he at last stood up. "YOU KEPT MY HUMAN PARTS ALIVE WHEN YOUR DRISCAL HALF TOOK A BULLET MEANT FOR ME."

"THAT WAS HIS OWN HUMAN-DRIVEN ACTION," they said. "WE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. HE SAYS HE WAS JUST DOING HIS JOB. HUMANS ARE SOMETIMES ILLOGICAL."

"YES, SOMETIMES PLEASANTLY SO," Ed noted. And so were Stone-Coats. Mary had also protected him, and had also gotten smashed up doing it. "What about you, Mary, are you going to be alright?" he asked her. She was slowly sitting down in her wheel-chair. He knew that Stone-Coats felt no pain beyond a minor discomfort, but it still greatly disturbed him to see Mary mutilated.

"Two days repair time, I estimate," said Mary. Already a halo of fine Nano tube netting covered her face and shoulder, and healing was underway as millions of Nano tubes adjusted to various precise sizes transported several different types of charged molecules to their proper placement in accordance with Mary's digitally maintained design templates. Her broken-off arm still hung uselessly from her shoulder, but her Nano tube netting was slowly hiking it up closer towards the stub where it was supposed to be attached. "Many Stone-Coats fared far worse. Thousands will take a week or more to repair themselves. Hundreds suffered disassembly severe enough to require the aid of other Stone-Coat individuals for re-assembly. Once repaired most will go right back to their work to make a new elevated Manhattan and greater New York City."

"Stone-Coats are always thinking of the long term," noted Ed.

"Not such a long term," said Mary. "Except for continued maintenance the New York City project should take only a few centuries. That's a short time for Stone-Coats. The Stone-Coat relationship with humans as a project is likely to be a much longer effort. But for now let's just get you home, Ed. The Humvee is smashed but Jerry tells me that he has a VIP air-limo coming to get you."

"Me? Aren't you coming too?"

"No. You won't need me anymore. Push me outside with you to meet your air-limo, but my mission is complete," said Mary. "And it was a success, mostly."

"Really?" said Ed. Egborg had blown up the building where he was keeping the girls prisoner. His own mission was a total disastrous failure: Terry and Mouse were dead. What kind of success was that? His head was spinning now as the shock of it continued to set in. If he hadn't been clutching the handles of Mary's wheelchair, he might have numbly fallen back down to the auditorium floor.

"PUSH ME," commanded Mary.

"Mostly successful is a fair general assessment," said Jerry, who stepped up to shake Ed's hand as Ed began to push Mary in her wheelchair towards the auditorium exit. One of Jerry's black-suited robot bodyguards flanked him, although the robot looked pretty beat up. In a few places the black suit and some ceramic skin was bashed away, exposing wires and computer chips, and with his one good arm he carried his broken-off arm. "Stone-Coats won over the rogue robots, barely. There have been dozens of human casualties but many thousands of human lives were saved, so I suppose that we can't really complain."

"But?" Ed queued.

"Egborg got away, spirited off by a Stone-Coat disguised robot."

"To fight again another day?"

"Probably," admitted Jerry. "But mostly our plan worked. As far as we know all other robots involved in the attack were destroyed. It will hopefully take years for Egborg to rebuild another sizable attack force. Weeks ago we knew it had to be our missing escaped robot behind the Stone-Coat dismantling, of course, just as Egborg intended us to know. The Stone-Coats began to secretly develop new fighting tactics, such as the graphene reinforced black amorphous carbon gunk and the diamond-tipped icicles that they spat out at the attacking robots.

"Here at CCNY a few of the Ice-Giants altered themselves to be super-powered by increasing their radioactive power sources to dangerous levels, and began to set up to ambush the robots here at the CCNY Stone-Coat stronghold. Those super-charged CCNY Stone-Coats have already returned underground and are returning their systems to normal radiation levels so that they can be around people again.

"All those things together were enough to give the more numerous Stone-Coats the upper hand. The Stone-Coats have destroyed their enemies and the City was saved. Even the cantankerous UN folks are happy."

"What about the kidnapping?" Ed asked, as they exited the auditorium. They moved towards the exit as part of the flow of injured students and faculty that were still being carted away by EMS folks.

"The kidnapping was a very nasty surprise," said Jerry. "But it did allow us to set up a scheme to lure Egborg to CCNY and expose his identity. CCNY was the one Stone-Coat stronghold where we thought we might gain the upper-hand. The overall plan was Mary's doing, of course."

"I'm not surprised," said Ed. It was just like Mary to pretty much take control of things.

"No wonder Warren agreed so readily to our lecture tour!" said Mary. "He was himself secretly the rogue robot leader and the whole thing fit right into his plans! It was wise not to take him into our confidence."

"I don't understand how as a robot he could be so human-like," said Ed. "He even seemed to have nasty emotions, even though I suppose that he's basically just a bunch of computer chips."

"That's the sort of attitude that probably drove him rogue," said Jerry. "We're just a bunch of cells shaped by billions of years of biological evolution. Mary's just a bunch of minerals shaped by billions of years of Stone-Coat evolution tweaked by a human Mary template. Egborg got a huge boost from human ingenuity much as the jants did from me, but he still ended up being a sentient life form worthy of respect."

"Absolutely," agreed Ed. "But I'd have respected him a lot more if he didn't kill folks. I don't understand how he evaded you guys for a whole decade!"

Jerry shrugged. "Egborg is super-smart, and was purposely designed to have human-like thought patterns. That seemed like a good idea at the time. Like my personal bodyguard robots, Egborg and his army were cloaked in dielectric plastics and ceramics that blocked detection of their internal electronic workings and metallic structures and mimicked Stone-Coats, humans, or even jant-controlled humans. Hopefully recovered robot parts will give us further insight into their technology such that we will finally be able to hunt down all rogue robots."

"Don't be optimistic to the point of complacency," warned Mary. "Egborg also sampled our technologies and tactics such that he and his robot friends can now make improvements of their own. Recall that he said that his initiative was largely an experiment to get more data about his opposition. He met that goal at least, even though this time he failed to achieve his other goals."

They reached the outside of the building, where amazingly the sun was out and mounds of snow were visibly beginning to sag and melt. The polar vortex must have zig-zagged further north for the day. Flying ambulances were busily landing and then taking off with human victims. Without so many robots at large to hack City electronics it had apparently been judged safe to operate flying emergency vehicles once again, at least for now. Ed could sense jant chatter from the ambulances, where the insects were ttreating human patients using med-ticks.

Around the CCNY buildings Ice Giants by the hundreds were gathered on the battlefield, treating themselves. Stone arms, legs, and heads were placed near each other so that they could be fused back together. They were also absorbing tons of broken robot parts. The Stone-Coats would recover in days, but except for a few preserved samples the robots were obliterated. Obliterated like Terry and Mouse, Ed couldn't help thinking.

The wail of human emergency vehicles filled the air, proclaiming arrival of the vanguard of armies of police, fire, and medical emergency people that would over the next hours and days extinguish fires, dig out victims, and begin to clean up the mess. The City would heal itself as expeditiously as humanly possible. New Yorkers including battered Stone-Coats and jants, would together recover, as New Yorkers always did. But too many valuable lives had been lost. And with Egborg escaped there would surely be other incidents in the future. This rogue robot business wasn't over.

"You could have trusted me and told me more, Jerry," said Ed. "Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, but maybe it would."

"Yes, we could have," said Jerry. "But you already had enough on your mind and you didn't have a need to know more. Ideally you and your family shouldn't have gotten involved in this thing at all. But Egborg wanted to destroy the UN and the Stone-Coat relationship with humans and you and Ann became perfect targets. We should have realized that and taken measures, including giving you a head's up. But that's all 20-20 hindsight."

"You've always been sneaky, Jerry, but it's not like a Mary to hold out on me that way," said Ed.

"Mary insisted on tackling this thing side-by-side with you," said Jerry. "She was headed for your apartment when she heard of the disassembly happening so near to where you lived, even before she heard from Fred about the kidnapping."

"Like I told you Ed," said Mary. "I'll always know more than I'm telling you. Such as now. Here comes your ride home to Eagle Street." She lifted her remaining arm to point at an arriving flying vehicle. Yes, no flying private vehicles were allowed in New York City, but this one had a big USA flag painted on the side of it, with 13 stripes and 52 stars. It was one of Jerry's Government VIP vehicles, without a doubt.

"Right," said Ed stoically. It was time to face the music. He was going home to Ann and the kids without Terry and Mouse.

The big flying limo landed. Three people immediately scrambled out of it and ran towards Ed, laughing and shouting. They gang-tackled Ed to the ground where he could only lay sobbing uncontrollably with joy as Ann, Terry, and little Mouse hugged and kissed him!

Ed felt as happy as he had ever been in his long life! And exhausted. He wanted nothing more now than to go home with his family and snuggle with them. After he ate something that wasn't a sandwich he would then sleep for maybe ten or twelve hours. Or days.

Ann and Jerry finally hauled Ed to his feet and half carried him to the air-limo, where the still stunned Chief found two others waiting inside. Sly Snake sat grinning ear to ear next to a very poorly dressed and much too-thin, grinning, scruffy young-man zombie. The zombie was gently holding in his cupped hands a tiny animal that appeared to be wearing a dirty once-white tee-shirt. At their feet was a large mud-covered wooden box that crawled with thousands of jabbering jants.

"Chief Ed, this is Hank Willows and his jants," said Sly Snake. "They found the girls. Good thing too; the whole damn place blew up right after we got them all out."

"Mr. Snake promised us a nice warm place to live," said Hank. "With as much food as we want!"

Ed communicated with and assessed Hank's jant colony. It was a small rogue colony, barely capable of maintaining a zombie.

"They want to join the Tribe," said Mouse.

"And they're going to live in our apartment building with us," added Terry excitedly. "And there's going to be a huge celebration when we get home! There are Tribe folks, zombie folks, Omega folks and even UN VIPs arriving right now at our apartment from all over the City! Some of my school and Tribe friends are coming and we'll party for days! Won't that be great?"

"It will be swell!" said Ed, as he reached out to warmly shake the hands of Sly Snake and Hank. Party? A second rogue jant colony and zombie living in Fred? Good thing Bob was already dead or all this would surely kill him. "Let's all go home then!"

"CRAP!" Ed couldn't help silently muttering.

Sly Snake couldn't help laughing out loud.

Across from Sly Snake and Hank, Ed, Ann, Terry and little Mouse sat together in a wonderful tangle of hugging arms and smiling faces. Smiling Jerry gave the happy group a little salute as he shut the limo door and signaled for the vehicle to take-off.

As the limo lifted up and away Ed looked out a window and saw Mary 11,123 standing and silently waving goodbye to him with her one good arm. Maybe it was his imagination, but it looked to him like her permanent smile had already been mostly repaired. Ed returned the wave, his eyes still damp from happy tears. He always had confused mixed feelings whenever he said goodbye to a Mary.

The End

****

### About Other Publications by This Author

You may also be interested in the already published e-books of this author, including my first and to date most popular e-book, a diverse collection of twenty fantasy and sci-fi short stories titled There Goes The Neighborhood; Earthly Fantasy/Science Fiction Short Stories. Like my novels, these short stories range from pure science fiction to pure fantasy, and most take place in contemporary Earth settings.

If you like ancient secrets, magic and science, romance and adventure, science fiction and fantasy, parallel universes and hidden fantasy worlds, try reading the full-length novels Secrets of Goth Mountain (which like much of the Global Warming Fun stories has a Native American setting) and its loosely coupled epic fun-packed sequel Government Men. Government Men has a bit of everything, including the book itself and its author. Yes, oddly enough this book as its most unusual feature includes itself and its author, along with unicorns, psychics, space aliens, an impending space-alien-wrought Armageddon, and much more! (A proverbial kitchen sink is included for the sake of completeness.) Both of these action filled books employ a great deal of science-based fiction, as well as strong doses of fantasy and romance.

Bird lovers that like strong human female heroines and even stronger giant blue jay heroes may (if T-rex sized raptors and other nuisances can be tolerated) enjoy an adventure trip to Aves the bird planet, achieved by reading the traditional science fiction thriller Blue Dawn Jay of Aves. Other than many of my short stories and some of Global Warming Fun, this is my only 'pure' science fiction work to date.

Global Warming Fun is a series of short stories, novellas, and novels that use climate change as a backdrop for the centuries-long life of telepathist Ed Rumsfeld and the emergence of sentient ants and ancient stone creatures that are based on the Mohawk myth of stone-coat giants.

Fantasy noir detective fans that can abide what used to be known by feminists as a 'male chauvinist pig' private detective as a hero, and can also tolerate trolls, elves, and other unexpected visitors to our world along with a talking mob cat, may enjoy The Shrinking Nuts Case: my first novel length 'pure' fantasy work. It is also my only novel or novella written in first-person voice (so far!).

My relatively fantasy-pure novel White Dragon's Chosen chronicles the adventures of two teenagers and their dragons as they combat Evil that would destroy all life on contemporary Earth and across the multiverse.

I try to employ some humor in most of my works, particularly in Government Men, The Shrinking Nuts Case, and some of my short stories. I also lean heavily towards positive outcomes, although just as in real life, those don't always happen.

To learn the author's world view (Weltanschauung) including thoughts on multiverse and quantum mechanics physics concepts and how that compares with phenomena that occur in the above novels, get geeky with the brief little e-book NOW and the Weltanschauung of Government Men.

All are at the time of this writing available at Smashwords and affiliated e-book sites including wherever you got THIS E-book.

Gary J. Davies, Mechanicsville MD, January 2017

****
