America Central

Flying from Belize City to Ambergris Caye you can see the sharks. The turquoise sea is shallow and from above you can see right through it, like it’s not there at all, like it’s all one layer, flat, with dark silhouettes wielding big, thrashing tails. Those were the sharks and you really could see them from up here, Rico thought as he adjusted in his torn leather seat in the back of a tiny prop plane.

Once you left Belize City the magnet trams ran out of transport hubs and they stopped taking you places and you let oil and spinning metal and wings be your guide and somehow they kept you aloft. And this was what you wanted. You put it on your calendar of your own free will.

Rico was looking down at the archipelagos, reefs and cayes – those inkblots across a radiant blue that gave people tiny places to land their tiny, aged, industrial planes so they could just relax and, you know, hang out. A vacation, as it were. Maybe see a fish or two. A shark, perhaps.

Across the aisle so small their legs were touching was Emma, Rico’s business partner, friend and fellow vacationer. And right behind her was Anders, also a business partner and Emma’s live-in partner for years. They had become a couple before they all went into business together but right after they all first met. This is worth noting.

They were all enjoying the moment, feeling that thrill of holiday adventure when you’ve gotten through the worst part of the journey and you are mere minutes from that final touchdown, palm trees whizzing by as the wheels squeak on the dilapidated runway, right out back of the single building, mainly outdoor tropical airport. They weren’t there yet, Rico was still looking down on the inkblots and the sharks, the loud hum of the propeller his hypnotic soundtrack.

In the two seats in front of them were a woman and her two children, both very young. She was holding one on her lap and the other had her own seat. They all seemed like they had been on this plane many times, comfortable in a commuter way. They must be residents of San Pedro, the one town in Ambergris Caye where they were headed. Maybe she worked at a restaurant or bar or maybe fishing… but probably not. She seemed more likely to be in the tourist trade, Rico thought. And then, how the fuck would I know that?

The pilot was eating chips and drinking a grapefruit soda. The woman was singing a cumbia song to her kids so they would stay mellow, if not just nap. Rico had heard this song before on trips to Mexico and friends in New York and a mixed tape from a pirate radio DJ in Venezuela from a billion years ago. He knew cumbia in that way. She sang softly, but it was confident and soothing.

It was working. The kids were starting to nod off when Rico felt a bump. He snapped his head out of the window as he felt his stomach rise up from his belly and start to crawl up his throat. Another bump, and the nose tilted down, like coming over the top of a rollercoaster.

He leapt out of himself as the plane started an intense and immediate descent. He looked over at Emma. She was stone-faced, cold. Rico noticed her fingers digging into the back of the weathered, wrinkled seat in front of her. He glanced at Anders and he just looked fucking scared. He noticed the lady in front unbuckle and start to leave her kids, taking the half-step it takes to get into the cockpit. Rico looked up and saw the pilot. He was flailing a bit with one hand and one hand was trying to get into his own throat. He was choking on a chip, his bottle of grapefruit soda was on the floor, knocked over and emptying out into the cockpit.

The plane continued to go down. The woman made her way to the pilot. One of her kids threw up and it came blasting back at the three passengers, getting some drops of the kid vomit on Rico, Emma and even Anders behind her. The other child started to cry. Rico noticed a high-pitched squeal as gravity continued to accelerate the plane toward the ground at 9.8m per second squared. Rico actually had that thought as he unbuckled his seatbelt and went to settle the children.

The woman was now giving the Heimlich to the pilot. He had gone limp in her arms, his arms bouncing as she jerked on his abdomen. No one else knew anything about flying. People just didn’t fly anymore; it wasn’t a thing to learn or know. Tourist destinations. The outskirts. Out on the edges. Maybe? But practically, you got one shot. There are no copilots on an island hopper flight like this… from Belize? So, the descent continued as Rico wrapped an arm around each child.

And then the pilot spit something up and started to cough. The woman gave another hard push on his diaphragm just in case. But he was back. He grabbed the flight stick, still recovering but coherent enough to know he needed to at least do that. And the plane started to get right. The pilot coughed again and looked back at the passengers, as everyone’s stomach felt the inertia change and the plane began to fight again against the pull of the earth. Rico saw that the pilot’s eyes were watering, he had some spittle on the side of his mouth and chin that he hadn’t gotten to yet. But he was smiling, friendly and unconcerned. How are we doing? he asked in Spanish. ¿Cómo estamos?

“It smells like puke back here,” Anders responded. It smells everywhere, Rico thought, this plane is fucking tiny. And in the control of a human being? That seemed silly in hindsight. He squeezed the kids, gave them a hug before releasing them to their mom as she made her way back into her seat and Rico crouched and slid back into his. The other kid finally realized what had happened and started crying. He got loud and shrill like a banshee heralding the death of a loved one lost at sea. And that is exactly what a banshee is and does.

“¡No hay problemas!” The pilot said back to Anders. “Diez minutos. No hay problemas.” His grin was big and the chip that had lodged in his throat causing him to grapple for his life instead of over control of a plane, that had caused his passengers to nearly descend into the shark pond below, smashing up into bits and losing their state of being well before the sharks came and gobbled up the remains like the chum they would truly be, that chip and that grapefruit soda, that harmless snack, seemed a distant memory - the pilot was fine. He was living his best life, Rico thought. Flying these old, oil planes back and forth, under your own control, from Belize City to that one runway, one baggage carousel, lean-to terminal on Back Street in San Pedro, the only city on Ambergris Caye. The other two streets in San Pedro being Middle Street, and of course, Front – the grandest of the city’s avenidas.

“I work at Victoria House. You been there?” The woman asks as she puts her arms around her children, quiets the one from shrill to sobbing and wipes the pieces of puke from around her other child’s mouth with the back of her hand and then wipes it on her pants. Essentially, Emma and Anders were doing the same; the plane was regaining its mental balance, as well.

“I’ve never been there,” he told the woman. “But I know of it.” And Rico did. He had been diving down here years ago and remembered looking into staying there but it was on the southside of San Pedro, and he had wanted to go further north on the caye, where the reef was closer and the people were fewer. They were all headed to the northern part of the caye on this trip, as well. It was just quieter than the bustling, three street town of San Pedro.

“You have to learn to do the choke rescue there at Victoria House,” she said with a strong ‘B’ sound. “They teach me. I save someone once before. In their villa… not in the sky!” She pointed up like people used to do when they acknowledged God. Then she shook her head and laughed. The pilot turned around to acknowledge her, and he had a huge grin and he gave her a big thumbs up.

Eyes in front, let’s go Captain, Rico thought. The pilot did, of course, turn around and get back to the business of flying. Rico looked at his friends.

“And how we living?”

“Fuck off,” Anders said, sitting back in his seat, seemingly comfortable with his fate as soon as he was out of danger. Emma was different, Rico noticed. Her hands were unclenched from the wrinkled leather but her eyes told a different story. Rico paused as he looked at her. They were all headed to a vacation and yes, they had a 20 second flash of death but Anders was already his fastidious self, that is to say, completely recovered. But not Emma. She was still somewhere else, imagining the possibilities of what might have happened had they gone down. Rico could see it in her eyes, her stakes were somehow higher.

The woman kissed her two children on the head and settled in. She was an actual hero. Rico witnessed it and thought about that for a second - the way people move to action when they have to, taking what they know, using it and it actually works, getting something done, ending a situation, starting a newer, safer one. Amazing how life works. And then Rico thought it doesn’t always work. Even when people do act, even when they do the right thing… it often fails. Bad outcomes. Life gets worse. Or just changes to off. That’s what was in Emma’s eyes.

Rico got it. Maybe there was more at stake. Maybe there always is. But those were thoughts for another time. This was a vacation and ‘existence’ would have to give way to the good life, at least for a while. There was a bump, a standard issue, island-hopping, prop plane turbulence bump. Anders gasped for a split second. Emma remained unmoved.

“¡No hay problemas!,” the captain called out as the plane started to descend. This time under complete control of the pilot, his Takis now dislodged and his throat and mind refreshed with the remaining shot of Squirt from the cockpit floor. He was taking her down, nice and easy, towards the thin landing strip at the edge of San Pedro, the only town on Ambergris Caye. And this caye, the largest island in Belize, has a nickname, a tropical paradise name that only everybody knows…

La Isla Bonita.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico had never kissed the ground before. He had never had a reason to and maybe this wasn’t a reason either but it felt right, it had a dark humor to it and, if anything, he wanted to try to bust Emma out of her zone of deep concern. So he tasted the rocky, runway asphalt after walking down the stairs to earth and on his way to the row of luggage near the ramshackle airport building. That’s where he stopped, fell to his knees, raised his arms and lowered his head like the faithful until his soft lips brushed the asphalt and he puckered and smacked it loud so all would know he had arrived and he was alive and Emma should at least be smiling. Rico picked himself up from the ground, did a little dust off and looked at Emma. Let’s call it a smile, Rico thought, as the very edge of one side of her mouth turned up, slightly. But she looked at him, and although still distracted, recognized his efforts with a quick glance.

“You are a fool, Rico. Pure and simple,” Anders said, picking up his bag as Rico walked up to the line of duffles and rollers.

“I got us here, no?” Rico asked Anders.

This got the attention of Emma, “You were inspirational but I think the person who really got us here is that guy!” She points enthusiastically over the luggage to Felix, a friend and colleague for the last few years that had become close to the work and fun of this crew. He was walking out of the shadows of the overhang that serves as the entrance to the San Pedro airport – not really a wall or a building, but not directly in the sun, either.

Felix looked tanner than the rest of them, he was dressed more comfortably, adjusted. He’s been here for a few days, Rico guessed. He was right. Felix walked over, long strides and a confident, easy manner. He hugged Emma first and they looked at each other for a second and she gave Felix her warmest greeting, sincere and inviting - her existential crisis was seemingly over. Rico slung his bag over his shoulder and watched Anders wrap his arms around Felix and the two laughed.

“So happy you two could make it,” Felix said to Anders as they disengaged, leaving a straight line to Rico. The two stood in silence at high noon. A breath. Another one. And then Felix jumped the distance and wrapped his arms around Rico, nearly knocking him over and then grabbing and holding him up so he would not fall. The two men grabbed each other by the arms, squeezing hard and staring at each other. It had been a few weeks since they had seen each other at work and now onto the recreation. They were taking it all in.

“Motherfucker,” Rico said.

“You, sir,” started Felix, “are the one who fucks mothers!” And they hugged again quickly, letting one arm drop off and turning so they were side by side, arms around their shoulders, walking back under the airport overhang and out into the parking lot where Felix had a car waiting. Emma turned and looked at the two and Rico noticed her noticing them and he saw that flash on her face again, in her eyes, that deeper concern. It was that instant, the single involuntary moment, best for photography and novels, when your soul can’t keep up with your countenance and it shows all over you and then disappears into performance.

“You been here for a minute, my man?” Rico asked Felix, as they both let their other arms drop, straightening up, just walking together.

“Yes, yes. I have been. There is so much going on, seriously…” he looked around, changed his tone, stopped and set his hand on Rico’s shoulder, “I’m never going to leave.”

“That sounds fairly ominous, Felix.” Rico was giving his friend shit, but he thought that it did sound fairly ominous. Felix started laughing and pinched his shoulder a bit where his hand was resting. Involuntarily, Rico thought. He’s freaked about something.

“Can I take that from you?” A crazy person asked. At least this is what Rico saw. He was wiry and had horrible teeth and big cheek bones and his eyes sparkled with the kind of crazy who isn’t at all sure what ‘crazy’ is and seems confused when people say that word. He was asking for Rico’s bag. Rico pulled back without making too much of it but definitely let this person know he was going to have to try another route to get through this situation.

“Yo. Yo. Yo.” Laughing again, Felix put his arm on his wiry, jittery shoulder. “This is Bennie. He’s our driver. He’s good people, Rico.”

Fuck it, Rico thought. I only have two shirts and two swim trunks in there. And to even hesitate would be too fucked up. So he did it without missing a beat and handed over his bag to Bennie. Bennie smiled, still had that crazy sparkle happening, but Rico saw something else, an awareness, a deeper intent but Bennie turned, grabbed some other bags and headed towards the tour van.

“Fuck, Felix. Now that shit is ominous. What the fuck? Does he work for you?”

Rico looked at Felix as he tried his smile again, in fact he did smile and it was good. His face was relaxed and easy, but Rico could see it. He didn’t know what it was, but it was in there.

“Ominous? Please!” Felix was saying as he gently pushed Rico towards the tour van and Rico let him. “Ominous is the whole thing, man. Ominous is already here and ominous is what’s coming,” Felix said. “This is Belize, baby.” Smile.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The paddles cut the water in a long and hurried flight towards the reef and the sea of blue. Emma and Anders and Rico were digging into the smooth water, pushing their kayaks forward from the beach in front of their villa. It was morning. Early. Felix had stayed behind. But for these three the sun was in front of them, low and off to the left. It rippled on the water with rich oranges, yellow sometimes, white off the ripples on the turquoise water. And it was quiet, Rico thought. Only hearing his breath and his oar slapping the water, and the very slight slide of the kayak, floating, moving, using the water to propel itself forward.

“Fuck you!” Emma yelled, as she was having a slow start, having trouble finding that simple rhythm that hits a space you can’t give up, it goes auto until you can’t go anymore. Anders laughed. Rico was just paddling but he could feel that there was a competition brewing. Good natured, but a competition nonetheless. He dug in a little harder and watched his kayak skim across the ocean’s morning glass. Another glide forward. He was flying, he thought. Anders was having a similar experience to his right. Emma was just behind starting to find her rhythm and gaining a bit on the two men.

This was not unusual for this trio. Competition in any form. It might have been the magic that made their business so successful, they often cited it as such, but it usually wasn’t fun for them, or not all of them anyway, not the ones who lost, even as all of them continued to win.

Blockbuster. That was the name of their company. A production studio that made immersive experiences. Narratives that unfolded before you and you lived. Brands loved it, as they could be very clever product placement in their own universe. It was digital and 4-dimensional and haptical and all the best media things, but in the end these partners knew that it was all basically wrap-around video and they didn't want the apple to fall far from the tree and the infamous case-study in media technology life-spans and consequences had never left the lips of artists and critics. Blockbuster. Ironic, sincere. They knew who they were.

They never owned a VHS tape, but the tales of the Blockbuster video rental business were legendary. Everyone learned about it in media class. Emma had suggested it. She was most of the PR anyway and it made sense. Anders didn’t care, he was the director and his personal brand was enough to survive any stupid production house name. Rico had always liked it. He had always known Emma had an instinct for such things that went beyond her learned demeanor and so they leaned into the new model of how to make the ancient format of screen-based content grab you and hold you and throw you on the playground so you can climb the structures there on your own, the nod to the infamous media brand that died out like Easter Island was funny and smart and let people know they never took themselves too seriously. Blockbuster. Rico always agreed with that or agreed with Emma because Anders didn’t care. It often all made sense except for the competitive piece to the relationship. Maybe we all hate each other, Rico thought.

And he dug his mutherfucking paddle in for all it was worth and flew some more across the morning sea, the tip of his kayak edging back and forth with Anders. Emma just behind, “Fuck yoooooou!!!” she yelled again.

The reef was about a kilometer off the beach from their villa, they could see where the white water was coming up over the reef in the distance. It was calm and sunny in between. The water was more a reflection of the sun than its own turquoise insanity, but that poked through too. They could see it all and it was all the things you want when you head out with a couple friends for a vacation and this is your first morning. Just like that, Rico thought.

“There’s a buoy straight ahead, maybe a little to the right,” Anders yelled, and it sounded like an echo but it was just the sound of a voice bouncing across a clean surface, with no other sounds. “We can tie up there.”

Now everyone understood where the finish line was. It felt like maybe Anders had spent some energy speaking out loud, so no person spoke – their heads down, oars in the water, turn flip, glide, turn flip, glide. Emma was almost neck and neck, kayak to kayak, the tips bouncing ahead and then back between the strokes of the rowers like an EQ bouncing in the reflection of a tropical paradise, a montage, a music video, a dream. It was beautiful, Rico felt. Who cares about this unspoken, infinite race we’re locked in? But he did. Rico definitely cared.

They had all done their tours of duty throughout the networks and indie salons. The big, boardroom agencies and the cult, niche, superstars trying not to be swallowed up by the boardroom and then definitely racing to the boardroom when the owners felt like they had invested enough time, had sweat enough blood for the work, pissed enough bullets for the client. Do I die an independent with my own business? Or do I die with a giant salary and tons of money in the market? Your call.

Rico, Anders and Emma had all decided to die an independent. They decided to take what they had learned from the networks about making things with other people’s money and apply it to their own studio. Emma had learned what the business was, how it worked, how you can charge a client enough money to take ideas and turn them into things. Also how to keep the lights on. Anders framed it all up and sold it to the client, knew how to connect the dots between the business and the experience, how to make it make sense, how to get human models to follow the performance like the bots do. And sell it… before it’s even made.

Rico made it all, he was back of the house. He was an experience editor. He took all the pieces - the environments, the models, the face actors, the plug-ins, the algorithms and the ecomm and made it an experience, a thing that people could fall into and out of and love something more or less or possibly not have any feelings at all. That’s fine, too, Rico thought. Entranced by the paddles – turn flip, glide, turn flip glide — and the race.

They were all distinct and all thought that they were the most important and that made them very good but very brittle - more likely to snap. But no one wanted to be the one that snapped it and that kept them aligned, protected from each other by their own desire to be better than each other. Maybe it was classic. Maybe it was just us, Rico wondered and pushed it forward, tipping his kayak ahead, holding it, not dipping below just digging in more.

The sunlight in the glassy bounce of waves did the orange and purple shimmy shake, spanning the distance to the reef and the buoy just a few meters in front of it, now a fútbol field away. Rico could no longer see either partner in his peripheral vision, he had put them behind him.

“Ayyyy, not this one, this one!!” It was Anders. Rico turned to his right to see what he was yelling about. Anders was pointing with his paddle, away from the buoy they were all headed towards and in his direction to another buoy, about half a field’s length from the first one. “My mistake, it’s this one. This one. Here!” Anders took his paddle from pointing and dug into the water and started to propel himself to the new goal. The new finish line.

“Fuck yooooouu!!” Emma says, again. Anders is off to the buoy and doesn’t react. I look at her. And we laugh.

“This shit. Is this happening?” She asked Rico, not really asking.

Rico shrugged. He always felt better when these situations were diffused between them. He knew that Emma did not feel that way. She liked to fucking win. Especially against Anders. There was a particular delight in that, a nuance of their relationship.

They started to paddle over to the other buoy. They went slow now, letting Anders win in a landslide. That felt right. The light sound of the paddles, whooshing forward, the sound of the surf, coming off the deep blue and rising up against the coral defended by the shallow turquoise inside the reef and slamming down with a roar to let all the calm and sensitive creatures on the inside know that the outside was always looking to come in.

“This shit!” Rico said not even looking at Emma but slightly imitating her, making a cartoon of her cartoonish last sentence. “Is this happening?” Rico scrunched up his face and looked out as if into nothing.

“Fuck yooooouu!!” Emma said, making fun of herself. They didn’t even look at each other. They didn’t have to. They paddled to the buoy to tie up with their partner, Anders, and jump in on the calm side of the reef, to stare at fish and coral and all the things that belonged there.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Emma and Anders got together the way most people do. They met. And it’s strange the way people discuss the star-crossed destiny of how they met their partner. If I hadn’t ordered one more drink… or if I wouldn’t have missed that train… or if you hadn’t dropped your umbrella in the elevator… and so forth… you get it. Destiny sits up front in the encounter when the two people end up sleeping in the same bed together. It’s a retroactive destiny like when protons can change where they were in time depending on a new outcome. Entangled particles. Physics. Look it up.

But there is a larger truth. Everyone you know, you met. And there is a trail of ‘ifs’ for every single person you have had a relationship with. That could be your mailman or your boyfriend or your gym teacher or your third best friend. Front porch. Science class. Gym class. Movies. Respectively. And all of them are destiny, all of those encounters could have gone another way, could have been someone else, or could have been a moment later or an hour later or you made that train and didn’t run into your mailman 20 minutes later in your vestibule. The truth is you have to meet the person you're with one way or another and it’s all circumspect and variable and has a multitude of outcomes that could have gone a billion directions but went this one. Life, I guess, Rico thought, starting to hear his own breath now, staring down into the water, looking at fish.

Rico was there. He watched Emma and Anders get together. They were working on a project at the Zigga Agency, a giant network of digital experience agencies that created different levels of immersive experience, or XPs. The three of them worked for a wunderkind named Lucas Rey. They were working on an XP for Microsoft about Civil War II. Emma was producing, Anders was directing and Rico was editing. There wasn’t much on-location shooting as everything had gone deep fakes and studio CGI work. ‘Do it in post’ was now just how it was done. This meant the three of them all spent a lot of time together, ate meals together, worked, laughed, stunk, hit snags, solved snags, finished together. All, essentially, in a small room in a building with a bunch of screens.

It was a situation made for interpersonal contact and knowledge. And they all got to know each other very, very well. And maybe they were all in love at some point, all of them, Jules et Jim, duly noted, as it was Anders who got the girl. If that is still a thing, which it’s not, but it did happen.

Rico always imagined that it was because Anders was a director. He had control of the set, the talent, the image. It made sense. Rico was an editor, he put all those pieces together, but at the time Anders was running the show. And Emma was priming the pump… getting him the best sets, the best talent, making sure he got the best image. Rico was necessary, but came in after all the ‘decisions’ were made.

That’s not true anymore. That’s not exactly how it works. Locations and sets are over. Talent is a face scan and an algorithm and the image is a composite. So prompting the pieces together is truly the game now. Rico had known this for a long time but acknowledged how time passes and moments that could have happened, did not. And he moved on. And he spread his arms wide and kicked his flippers and scooted through the water, staring at all the colorful, diverse fish that lived on this reef off the coast of Belize.

And then he saw a barracuda. They are tough to catch, like slivers of light in this shallow clear water, where slivers of light dance as a matter of course. They are sleek and built for speed, like the cheetah of the sea. They have a severe underbite, their bottom row of jagged, ginsu teeth sticking far out underneath their jaw, pointing up for maximum bite impact. And whether they are happy or sad or just fish inside, it doesn’t matter because they have resting mean face, aggressively so, looking like they are about to attack even when at their most chill.

It’s tough to gauge a barracuda, Rico remembered. He had encountered them before. Don’t get into their space, stay cool, swim on by. All good. This is what the fisherman had told him last time he was here, about to go out snorkeling on the reef. And then he pulled up his pant leg and showed a long, nasty scar along his calf. It just came at me one day, the fisherman had told him. I don’t know why. Rico remembered that.

He looked around and saw Emma near some parrot fish, floating above them, checking them out, moving her arms slightly to keep in one spot. And Anders he didn't see at first, but then caught him out of the corner of his eye, he was down in the reef, swimming to the bottom, about 2 meters, to see something in the rocks. Rico put his hand over his breath mask that covered his eyes, nose and mouth, it was tight and good to dive. He went down.

Anders was looking underneath a rock and Rico could see the two antennae from what was probably a lobster. Rico knew that it would only come out at night and there wasn’t much to see. He got into Anders’ line of vision and signaled to him to stay away from the barracuda zone, over there, he waved his hand in the direction. He wasn’t sure Anders understood anything he was pantomiming. They didn’t have the talkies at the villa, and he hadn’t dove without them in so long he forgot all his hand signals. He did know thumbs up meant head to the surface. Not sure it was warranted, but at least wanting to discuss the barracuda situation at the surface. Anders shook him off.

Fuck him, Rico thought. He turned and swam towards the parrot fish and Emma floating above. The brain corral winding itself around like the inside of his head, he flew over it, suspended, propelled flight. He saw another barracuda, smaller, in front of him. And another. And another. Babies. He assumed. He flipped his flippers and got to Emma. He swam underneath her, she was smiling and waving. He pointed down as he swam up. As he did he saw a few more big barracuda surround the smaller ones, they were in between the humans and the buoy where their kayaks were tied up.

Emma saw the mean looking fish with their vicious underbites and sleek silver knife silhouettes protecting their babies, it would seem. Her eyes got big. Rico waved her off. Nah, nah, he gestured. He gave her a thumbs up which meant thumbs up but also stay at the surface. He made his hand flat and gestured towards the kayak. Stay up there. He gave the kick sign, nice and easy, long strides, don’t get hectic in the water, he thought. Trying to send her the message. She took a couple long kicks and headed towards her kayak staying at the surface.

Anders had noticed the frey. And was looking at Rico, suspended between the bottom of the reef and the surface. Rico was surrounded by barracuda. Anders got it. Rico gave him the double thumbs up and he nodded this time. Thank you, fucker, Rico said to himself. He began to slowly kick, his eyes on the barracuda, they were keeping their distance but certainly here for a reason. He made it to the surface.

The kayaks were all tied up separately to the buoy and had floated in different directions. Emma was at her kayak, the closest, it was right above the mean fish. Anders kayak was out further, where he had surfaced and was swimming away from any danger. Rico’s kayak was between the two and he headed that way, long even strides.

Once you’re up, he thought, you only had that ocean fear, the things below you had no control over and once up, couldn’t see, even if you did. It’s a fear for our kind of animal, primal and deep, that's been amplified by a million films, books, stories told on ancient fishing boats and modern docks and yacht clubs around the world. It’s real. But Rico thought they were going to be fine, there was a hostile animal below, recognizing a stranger in its ring of trust, but the humans had got up and out and were close to a win on this one.

Rico put his hand on the kayak. It felt good. His legs were below and he really had to kick more than he wanted to in order to get the momentum to get up and into the kayak. He did it quickly, splashing about above the anxious barracuda, and the kayak rocked but he flipped up and spun around and got his butt on it and it steadied. And he took a breath.

“Wheeeew!!!” Anders yelled out, putting his fist in the air in triumph as he had crested the kayak and got himself aboard. Rico looked over at Emma and she was still in the water, splashing. She couldn’t get herself up into the kayak. She wasn’t going to say anything, Rico knew this, knew her. And he imagined those flippers, a few feet away from the barracuda, worried about their kids, circled up looking for a reason, and she was splashing and creating a fluid commotion right in their zone of control.

Fuck it, Rico thought. Anders was still celebrating and he was a lot further away from Emma (and the fish) than Rico was. So he splashed in. He took those long even strides as he watched Emma give it a couple more go’s, making waves and white water and bubbles and noise, attracting more than barracuda, sooner rather than later.

“Here you go,” Rico grabbed Emma around the waist. He was behind her, she was between him and the kayak. And he ducked underwater, getting below her, holding her waist and just feeling her as a person, accepting her gravity as this amazing weight in the world. And he kicked, kicked hard, flying up bubbles and waves of water rippling through the sea creatures and pushing up against the reef and rolling back again. He got momentum from his swift, furious kicks and then used his arms holding her as she kicked too and up she went out of the water, falling over the kayak with her belly, landing over each side. Not pretty, Rico laughed to himself, but she was up. She could make it from here.

He looked down and saw the silver knives were twitching and moving strangely, not floating still like before. Okay. He thought. Fear was enough to throw the long, swift strides out the window and go with pure fucking energy. And so he went back to his kayak, kicking violently as he propelled himself with speed that will never match those born to do it, those silver evolutionary knives that were made to cut through water, faster than the other things that were also made to cut through water that they had to eat. All of which were faster than the human splashing about with tools on his feet trying to outrace a fish because he was scared. Such is our lot, Rico thought.

And then he saw a sea turtle. A hey, what’s up, bro? sea turtle, flipping flippers slowly and evenly, seeming to list from side to side in his circuitous shell, impervious to ocean dramas, old as fuck, safe and sound in the wildest of domains. Sea turtles are good luck. This is a known fact and something Rico did not take lightly.

He grabbed his kayak once again. Slapping his other hand on the side to get his grip and then, one, two, giant kicks to get his ass up there and he felt a sharp snip on his heel, literally his Achilles heel, but it did not deter his momentum and he slapped down into the kayak and spun around getting his legs into the vessel, as it rocked a bit and then steadied under his anxious balance.

Rico saw blood. And he started to feel the heat. He looked into the silvery waves of the water but could see nothing but flashes of white and blue and silver, being nothing and everything at the same time. He looked down at his heel. There was some blood, and the feeling that he had engaged the ocean that day. The burn of the wild on the surface of his all too human skin. It wasn’t that bad. Not near as bad as what the fisherman had shown him last time he was here. This isn’t even stitches, he thought. Just some blood and a nip, a tiny bite, fucking missed me!! Rico felt victorious.

“Babe!! Emma! You okay, babe?” It was Anders. Yelling from the buoy where he was untying and getting ready to head back. Rico looked over at Emma. She was a little shaken, but good. Anders was hitting her up with a protector tone, asking if you’re okay when you really mean you’re okay now because I got you. Emma didn’t say anything but she gave a bold thumbs up in a way that she had, somehow an authentic positive gesture with a hard undertone of sarcasm.

Emma looked at Rico directly, across the surface of the blue few meters that separated their kayaks, and she said thank you, silently just with her lips and Rico just nodded. He hadn’t really thought too long about it but he was sure he had done the right thing.

“Rico! How are you? You good?” Anders was yelling over to him. Emma and Rico were almost to the buoy to untie their kayaks and paddle back to the villa and the sandy shores of the caye.

“I’m fine,” Rico said looking down at a few drops of blood mixing in with the saltwater pooling up at the bottom of his kayak. And he was. Fine.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Dinner is what you make it and this one was good. They were all at a table in the sand, near the water, surrounded by torches, actually burning, and people were bringing them fresh fish. Two ways. Batter and light lemon and then grilled, black, charred stripes across their light flaky flesh. There were tortillas. And two kinds of sauce. The salsa, ruby brown and deep with ancho chiles and the brighter, drop by drop sauce of the islands, the caribbean scotch bonnets, the tang and burn of those hot, loud peppers vs the earthy reds of the Mexican soil. Yes to both. Rico knew this from experience.

There was also a simple, white rice, fluffy and ready to take on any flavor and some mild plantains, resting right in between sweet and savory like the way water’s freezing point is the same as its melting point. They brought a subtle texture to the meal. And the three of them grabbed and loaded up tortillas with hunks of fresh fish and began to eat with that perfect match of hunger and flavor and the act itself of eating, chomping and chewing and smelling and swallowing, aware of the life in every bite. It’s what a day out on the ocean will give you every time. Rico knew this, too. From experience.

“Are any of these barracuda?” Anders is asking the server as he brings another plate of grilled succulent fish.

“No. Dorado,” the server says, unimpressed with Anders’ question.

“It only seems fair,” Anders said, looking over at Rico. “We should get to take a bite from them, no?” He laughs.

“Good one,” Rico said. He looked down at his bandaged ankle. It didn’t need stitches; they had some medical grade bandages at the villa and they wrapped him up and it was fine. As we discussed. It only hurt when he walked, that weird slash on the crinkle in your skin where your foot bends in the back. Fine.

“You bringing your bite to the table, Anders?” Emma asked, joking but not really.

“Unscathed,” Anders said, maybe crossing a line he should not have. This was not exactly Muhammed Ali, pretty-as-a-girl vibes. He was just not in the range of assistance. Maybe he didn’t have a choice, Rico thought.

“Me, too,” Emma said. And this was a darker intonation. Low and full of accusation. “Because Rico came back for me.” She looked at Anders and Rico wanted out of this, but also wanted to acknowledge where Emma was going. There was truth in it. “I would say, as far as my world goes, Rico is the one who is unscathed.” She dropped her fork and it hit her plate like a microphone, echoing in the strange silence. No one spoke at all for a few brief breaths.

“I happened to be right there,” Rico said. “That’s all. We’re partners. We’re in this together. All for one.” He was going for the gracious move also with a tinge of sarcasm but that was how they communicated. “The closest one takes the hit,” Rico said, opening up his hand gestures, spreading his arms across the table of fish and rice and plantains. “That’s how we do. How we always have.” Rico looks each one of his business partners in the eye.

“Fuuuuuck yoooooou,” Emma called out. She was imitating herself again, but a joke only Rico had heard, directed at Anders in the unspoken kayak race results. This time Anders laughed, expecting that Emma was fucking with Rico and Rico was unsure but felt like he understood the subtext. There was more going on. And as long-time partners none of this was particularly new. Rico laughed out loud.

“Barracuda tastes like shit,” Rico said. “This is fucking delicious. This is what we want.” He held up a big chunk of dorado, light batter glistening and took a giant chomp of the delicate fish and bit off a big hunk of tortilla and began to smile as he chewed, truly appreciating the moment, his nuanced, triangulated performance notwithstanding.

“There’s a party tonight,” Emma said, her emotional transition complete, absolutely beyond the last remarks and on to the progressive platform she was about to present. “Believe it or not… house party!”

“The best kind,” Anders said.

“What’s up?” Rico asked. Coming back from the strangeness but also wondering why the sudden shift.

“Felix told me about it,” Emma said but Rico had been with Felix and the rest of them the whole time. They never talked about a party.

“Knoxville-Z,” she said, moving her gaze across Rico and Anders and the table of fish, waiting for a big response.

“Aw, c’mon,” Anders said, in the wanting-to-believe but hedging-your-bets style. Rico just looked at Emma.

“No shit. Him. Fort Knox. Knox. He’s here and we’re invited to his party,” Emma said.

Rico was ready to interject with his thoughts on the subject. “The omni-algorithm, dude? One ring to rule them all? Wanted by first world countries and on the run for security fraud because he runs every corporation’s security? Knoxville-Z?”

“Ya. That one,” Emma said beaming, very proud of herself.

“Ahhhhhhh!” Anders was out-of-control excited. He liked rare encounters with rare people, star-fucking, et al.

“Isn’t he wanted by… everywhere? How did we get invited to an international criminal’s house party?” Rico asked, a little exasperated, not against it - Rico loved a party - but questioning the reality of the situation.

Emma looked at Rico, frustrated with a come on fucker we’re in this together look even though he did not understand what she was talking about. It was like she was counting on him and he didn’t know it. But Rico felt some of that.

“Felix!” She said, again, like hey, I am saying this again. “Remember Knoxville-Z used to do work for Zigga and then with Lucas Rey at Crown. And we all know Luke Rey stays connected. They’re still working together.”

“Rumor,” Rico said, knowing that Lucas Rey was the founder of the Crown agency and he was doing some projects with Knoxville-Z before Knox became a fugitive. Supposedly the last person to speak with him before his exile, Luke had the treasure map, knew all of Knoxville’s secrets, people used to say. It was industry gossip.

“Well, Felix told me it’s not a rumor. That Knox is here in Belize, he bought a mega mansion on the north end of Ambergris Caye, bought off the entire country to leave him the fuck alone and,” she looked directly at Rico, “he likes to fucking party.”

“Haaaaa!! Of course!!” Anders was getting more into the idea. “Is this where he is hiding his Source of All Intention? Belize? La Isla Bonita?” Anders laughed. It was a fair joke. Knoxville-Z was an early behavioral hacker, an algorithmist - a group that had stopped hacking computers and started to hack people, to hack behaviors that controlled the machines. And Knoxville-Z was the master of these algorithms, these AI systems that reduced reality to compressed vector spaces, like a video game in reverse. So many of these human ‘realities’ had been compressed that there wasn’t much thinking or guessing left to do about human actions.

But they were all separate. All these algorithms were different models, different formulas and sometimes they worked together but most of the time they did not. A series of hermeneutics. So, like physics the algorithmists that prompted these behavioral models were searching for their own grand unified theory. And these three people there at this dinner knew of these things, just like almost everyone else did, this idea that was so vague and so well known that no one ever really thought about it anymore. This grand unified theory for algorithmic behavior was called - The Source of All Intention.

“Knox is a freaking nut,” Emma said. “Batshit!!”

“The Crazy throw the best parties,” Rico said, playing along, feeding into where Emma was going.

“The best!” Anders said, sealing the deal in what passed as a quorum amongst these partners.

“There is a path that leads from the villa up through the palm groves and into a clearing where there is a small group of homes. The Expat Cul-de-Sac.” Emma told them quickly.

“A path?” Rico asked, “from here? From here at our villa?”

“When Felix told me it was close to our villa, I asked the concierge if they knew the way. They said they did. We got it,” Emma said, and Anders made a sound of approval.

But Rico did not remember that conversation. Emma hadn’t run off to the concierge to have a conversation at any point since they arrived a day ago. It was weird, he felt. But Emma wouldn’t dangle that carrot without being able to back it up and however she found out about a party with the digital, magical, criminal, algorithmical Robin Hood of behavior, the one and only, extremely elusive Knoxville-Z, he was in. He was, after all, on vacation.

The darkness was real. And so was the path. They made their way along it, through the palm groves, guided by moonlight, until they came upon an ancient civilization. At least that’s what it looked like, Rico thought, looking at an abandoned resort, overgrown, shrouded in billows of darkness mixed with the reflection of the sun off a moon that circles the planet. There were vines crawling up the side of the two-story hotel, wrapped around in long rows with balconies surrounding a pool. The pool was empty, filled with rainwater and jungle fungus and certainly some living things at this point, Rico imagined as he scanned the scene.

“Whoa,” Anders said. “Did they just drop the keys and walk away?”

“It’s definitely haunted,” Emma said, and in the moonlight and with that sense of abandonment, like natural disaster level abandonment, she was right. Rico saw the patio furniture and there were drinks and scattered tiny umbrellas that had been blown out and carried like a dandelion wish, but no one was there to wish it.

It reminded him of the Jungle Book XP he had done for the Houston Safari Zoo. It was centered around King Louie, ruler of the apes, who lived in an abandoned temple, covered by the fauna but still used and adapted by this scepter-wielding orangutan, lying upon the overgrown throne, resting upon the moldy dais. Rico remembered the song. It was for kids, but he liked it.

“This was probably gorgeous.” Emma said, taking it all in, the three of them standing by the edge of the empty pool. The wind rustled some palm leaves, a scurry of night animals on the edge of the resort.

“Maybe out here no one gives a fuck,” Rico noted, seeing crusty towels, littered around the big wooden bin that you throw them in when you’re headed back to your room.

“I’m into it,” Anders told the others. And he plopped down onto a long bench by an outdoor fire pit, long since extinguished, ashes blown about and out. Emma sat down next to him.

“What?” she asked.

“It’s very cool,” Anders said. “We could shoot here. The decay of society, the end of luxury… we wouldn’t change a thing,” he spread his arms and looked about the human compound, decomposing back to nature.

“Society is always in decay,” Rico said. He was standing next to the empty fire pit, looking down in the darkness, at the outlines of his partners seated below.

“So, it started pure?” Emma asked, “and then just got worse and worse?” She added an erudite, short laugh at the end of her question. Rico didn’t worry about it. He just smiled. He knew she knew what he meant – that bad things continually happen even in a good world. Or he imagined that she knew that and then he wondered whether he even thought that. Either way, he didn’t respond. Anders did.

“We will all be on The Calendar soon and it won’t matter. It won’t get worse or better, it will just… be!” He said this as a performance, a parody of the way so many politicians and influencers had been speaking at the time. Emma and Rico looked at each other. And then at Anders. They had had this conversation before, no one was really sure who was on what side or what they were really talking about at all.

The Calendar was an AI driven social transformation agent. It started as something that appeared in people’s email and told them when they were missing a meeting. But activities on a collective network that recorded and stored your actions and your likes and your dislikes and your comments soon became better at you than you. Everyone’s ‘calendar’ started to go deeper. It started choosing people’s movies and their restaurants and when you would go and where and with who and no one ever thought or argued or complained about their choices and everyone fucking loved it. They got the best out of their experiences and so the best use of their time and the most efficient use of their money and maybe the best thing of all is that no one really had to decide what they liked anymore and people liked that. Because it worked. And they were happy.

Then the dating algorithms became so strong that it was almost like an arranged marriage. It wasn’t. There was no law, but common wisdom told people that it would be insane if they chose against their calendar. That shit would never work out, moms told daughters around the world. Funny thing is that Anders and Emma claimed rather intensely that they were not a calendar selection. They saw each other for the first time in real life.

“That’s why you’re never going to make it,” a colleague and die-hard calendar follower had told them when they decided to partner up. Rico thought that was funny, at the time. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“We’ll never be on The Calendar,” Emma said. She knew that Anders was fucking around, but she had to say it anyway, it was a point of contention.

“India?” Anders asked, just being a dick of sorts. “Mumbai? Come now, Emma. Let’s get with it!”

“They didn’t really have a choice,” Emma said, getting a little more serious than anyone may have wanted.

“Do any of us? We’re all going to succumb at some point, Emma. Deciding is horrible, isn’t it? Free will? Bleeecch!” Anders made a sound like he was coughing up spit. He was referring to some countries that had adopted The Calendar, El Diario in most countries, capitalized, the official governing arm of the AI apps that had helped individuals choose a movie but was now running governments and civil responsibility and civil obedience. The latter stopped mattering because no one made any decisions in these collective communities. They couldn’t even choose to be disobedient. It wasn’t in their diary.

“Not today,” Emma said. “And in my mind, not ever, if I can help it.” She looked up at him.

“But you can’t,” Anders said, defiantly doubling down on being a dick about it. He might be right, Rico thought. But that wasn’t the point.

Rico knew all this. They were all in the information business, the experience business, and their company, Blockbuster, a maker of classic digital XPs, wasn’t immune to the powers of AI, the behavioral shift and effectiveness it had brought to so many of them, across so many touchpoints in their lives.

There became so many behavior apps. Apps that helped you decide, that guided your life better than you ever could. Governments started to collect them or copy them or put a wrapper around a set of them to help people help themselves and thus help the state keep their coffers full. Rico remembered studying the ban of smoking by cities and then states and then the federal governments. It wasn’t to help people stay alive; it was because the insurance payouts were too high. It was an insurance law, not a moral law, an algorithm that guided behavior. No organization could make their margin on a smoker’s insurance policy. No more smokers.

Some countries and cities had started to adopt The Calendar. A collection of behavior algorithms that proved that ‘deciding things for yourself’ was as bad for society as, say, smoking. It was largely in underdeveloped countries that were already collective or communal in nature. Or that were so overpopulated, errant decisions were shown to be one of the most detrimental problems in the community - a waste of time and money and often having dire existential consequences.

Rico knew all of this and didn’t think that places like Mumbai or Manila or Mexico City had really changed all that much. Fifty million people living on top of each other with such a constant and intense frequency of stimuli that reaction was the only action, rarely made their own choices. But again, this was not the point.

“The basis of Western Civilization, liberal democracy and the modern world, is free will. Individualism,” Rico spoke up just to fuck with Anders, standing in the ancient evening’s resort dystopia. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“Capitalism, you mean,” Anders said. And it was true, if you had to draw a line in the sand about which societies were adopting The Calendar as a civic measure and which weren’t, capitalism was the easiest line to draw.

“Let’s get our capitalist asses out of this shithole and on to bigger and better things!” Emma was over it and in party mode.

“Please, yes,” Rico said.

“Knox will know,” Anders added, slyly underneath the conversation, still taking little shots and Emma seemed extra disturbed by his comment. “Let’s go to his house and ask him,” Anders said standing up from the dead fire pit bench.

He had a point. Knoxville-Z was at the heart of so many of those behavioral algorithms, an inventor and an investor and certainly a collector. He had sold sets of behaviors – algorithms of deciding, of taking the error out of free will – to governments and international organizations that were trying to make life better for everyone. As they all do, no? So, he was a trillionaire. And he was also wanted by all of those same governments and organizations that had made him trillions. Now a well-known determinist.

“Okay, Anders, my love,” Emma started, also standing up, “let’s go ask Knoxville-Z about free will.” It was a smarmy exchange, but they hugged it out and they gave each other a quick, been-a-couple-for-a-long-time kiss and then looked over at Rico. He shrugged and put his palms up to the starry tropical sky on yet another warm and balmy night and yes, of course let’s go the party he said with his body and they walked off, passed the abandoned hotel rooms and cocktail napkins and cabana towels that littered the ground in this decaying resort. They found themselves back on the dark path, through the palm grove, in the moonlight, towards the expat cul-de-sac on that tiny, pretty little isle.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The dice hit the velvet and bounced and rolled, slamming into the leather sides and back out into the center amongst the lofty spires. There were gasps in the room. Double sixes. Knoxville-Z had rolled it and he confidently gathered up his pieces, moved them across the spires and placed them in their leather sleeve. It was the end of the game, a backgammon at that, and his opponent shook his head.

“Always when you need them,” said the large man in a tropical themed button-up and a sweaty bald head. He was wiping some of it off the top as Knoxville-Z grabbed a handsome sum of cash from the table and pocketed it casually, wanting everyone to see him not wanting them to see. The strange part was that Rico had seen how this all transpired when he walked onto the veranda where the game of backgammon was taking place.

He had glanced, incidentally, at a mirror in the corner and saw a hand dropping to a person’s side and clenching into a fist. And it struck him that he had seen that movement before. It was so deliberate. It was a sleight of hand trick, a palming, that he had studied and moderately mastered as a kid. It was just one of those things, still in your brain but not in your mind until it’s pulled up from the reservoir, triggered from the outside or the inside or some such. Not there… and then suddenly… there.

He had followed the line of sight to see who that sleight-of-hand’s hand belonged to. He saw the tousled, dirty blond hair held aloft by a grey, overgrown, mangy beard and lean, mean dynamic green eyes of Knoxville-Z. He was seated at a table, playing backgammon with a sweaty bald man in tropical attire. And Rico knew immediately what was happening. Knoxville-Z was cheating. This makes sense, he thought.

“It’s all in the wrist,” Knoxville-Z said with a small flourish of his own wrist and a gracious smile.

“You can go fuck yourself with that wrist,” the bald, tropical man said, getting up from the table. But there seemed to be another ready to take his place. And this one was not so bald, not as tropically themed, but ready to sit down with Knoxville-Z and do anything. This was a legend, the Octopussy of algorithms and the people here all felt lucky to be at this party, his party, to play a physical dice game with him, a game of chance and they welcomed the chance to lose to him. And so Knox welcomed the new mark and they started to stack their checkers on the spires.

“What are we drinking?” Emma asked Rico and Anders. They were at the bar, having traversed the moonlit path and worked their way through the palms and scurries of the fauna and then followed the pounding rhythms of a big system DJ in the bottoms of the North and the beginnings of the Central of all the Americas. They were all here at the party.

“I am not sure how much of this I have time for,” Anders said.

“Seriously?” Emma asked, but this was not a unique encounter. This was them going out. “Rico? What we got?”

“Tequila. Neat. No lime. Fuck limes. Fuck salt,” Rico did not hesitate. This was a party and they were on vacation. And yes, this was a throwback. This paired down, analog vibe was sarcastic and glib but was also funny - a nostalgia but a grounding as well. Tropical shirts and dice games notwithstanding, tequila was still tequila. And that was important, Rico thought.

Emma smiled and looked over at the bartender, also in a tropical shirt, and very eager and earnest. “I’ll have lime and salt with mine. Anders?”

“Same,” Anders said, reluctantly as they all knew he would. They had all been at this party before.

There was a loud exclamation from the crowd. It seemed the new backgammoner had scored a major hit on Knoxville-Z and people were astounded by the luck of the dice, the roll of the universe.

“This…” Anders said. He sounded disappointed. Affected. “What is this?”

“What were you expecting?” Emma was quick to jump on that comment.

Anders began to lean in and almost whisper, sharing a secret that everyone knew. “This is the man who makes our decisions, he connected our realities to the numbers so that they became one,” Anders looked hard at Emma and then over at Rico. “Dice games?”

“The original algorithm?” Rico said out loud, knowing it was wrong but wanting to say something. He wasn’t able to just let Anders say this shit.

“Just random numbers, not based on data input, there is no…”

“...feedback loop,” Emma finished for Anders. They had all heard it before. The three shots of tequila hit the bar. Rico did his straight, the other two slurped the lime and shot and licked the salt, an unnecessary distraction to Rico. The dice hit the table and the crowd roared again.

“Impossible,” the not so balding man in the not so tropical shirt said out loud. And again Knoxville-Z grabbed the silly analog cash sitting on the silly wooden table with the silly dice game and put it in his pocket. This is fun, Rico thought, this guy knows that no one even thinks about cheating in board games anymore, it’s beyond muscle memory, it’s not a consideration, it’s a novelty; nostalgia is cheating, it’s built into the system because with nostalgia the system doesn’t matter.

And, indeed, there it was again - double 6’s. The man didn’t even say a word this time and just left the table. Knoxville-Z grabbed the cash again, a symbol more than a meaning, and flicked his wrist, the enraptured gadflys already knew what he meant. The wrist. It’s all in the flick of the wrist. The crowd twittered amongst themselves. He’s done it… again!

Emma noticed this time. She looked over at Anders, sizing him up, and let him have it. “You love shit like this, no?” she asked. “Beat him. Challenge him. Anders?” She seemed overly aggressive.

“What are you talking about?” Anders was incredulous. “I haven’t touched a pair of dice since I was a child,” he scoffed.

“Shots,” the bartender placed the glasses on the bartop and everyone turned their head to the situation at hand.

“Didn’t you like put yourself through fucking college playing backgammon?” Emma asked, reaching for the shot glass, and raising it aloft.

“Hardly,” Anders said. “I paid for a couple tram trips. And it was all mobile. I was just gambling on my phone. I didn’t use little, tiny cubes with dots on them.” He seemed slightly pissed. He held his shot glass aloft. Rico took the lead and clicked Anders and then over to Emma. Clink. She was fired up. It was that look again, the one from the airport. What the fuck is up with her, Rico thought. And he shot the tequila, quick and complete, down the gullet with an easy burn and familiar flavor that reminded him of tequila and parties and other things like that. The other two had a hit of salt and then a shot and a lime back like the old days. Rico didn’t have time or desire for the frivolities of drink anymore. He was industrious. Efficient, like his storytelling. Like his overall communication techniques. Get to it.

“I’ll fucking play him,” Rico said. He wasn’t sure why Emma was so fired up but it didn’t really matter. Rico knew that she wanted someone to do it, and he thought she meant him, specifically. He felt her like that. Besides, he had the inside scoop on Knox’s game and he wasn’t against using it. Same as Knoxville-Z, himself.

Rico was not wearing a tropical button-up. Just a nano-fiber t-shirt, perfect and durable and lightweight and almost waterproof. It was a vacation shirt without the palm trees and buttons. But he felt comfortable in the milieu of admirers and rich partiers and just stuck his hand up in the air as Anders and Emma recovered with that little twist you do after you take a shot but his was already done and digested and starting to fill his blood. “Next!” he yelled.

People looked over. It was loud enough and directed enough that everyone understood what was happening. Anders looked at Rico with a disgusted look, not as if he were showing him up but a why-would-you-bother look that came with Anders’ general disaffection.

And then Knoxville-Z looked right at Rico. That bushy gray hair like an aged rock god, those steely, mean sharp green eyes that seemed to hold some mysteries that couldn’t be seen but you had a feeling they were in there, knowledge possessed but not shared. Rico felt his knees shake a little, a tiny tremor recognizable only to the owner but there nonetheless, a seismic event. Rico had felt this tingle many times before and to him it always meant one thing – this is worth doing.

He matched Knoxville-Z’s eyes and then glanced away to the waiting chair at the backgammon game. He sat down and smiled. He heard the grumbling and rumblings of a crowd always eager to run with the winner and skeptical of challengers, even if inside they were rooting for them, they didn’t want to give up the space in their heads and hearts when the inevitable came to pass.

“Good luck,” Knoxville-Z said earnestly, connecting Rico with those eyes, again. “I’m Knox,” he continued, “that’s what my friends call me most of the time. My enemies, however…” he paused. “They call me number #1” and then he laughed a big, social laugh meant to suck some oxygen from the room. Rico seized the opportunity to feign a follow along laugh, smaller but almost ‘losing it’ he covered his eyes and lowered his head as if he were falling off his chair. But he wasn’t.

He broke contact with Knoxville-Z to glance low, to catch a glimpse of that pocket hand, the one that slipped those magic dice in and out of the game. Rico saw it, hanging near a jacket where a single finger could easily come up with a couple heavy six’s and get them into the cup. A person would have had to practice for thousands of hours to get it right, to get it ready for public consumption as Knoxville-Z had been performing. And that was odd, rare, at least, these days when dice games and hand-held tokens moving around on an actual board or table were non-existent, they were novelties, like flying a propeller plane to a faraway isle.

And now Rico had seen the mark. He was ready. He lifted his hand from his eyes and raised his head with a giant smile on his face, a few leftover chuckles as he struggled to gain his composure.

“Knox,” Rico said, straightening up and reconnecting across the backgammon board. “I’ll just call you Knox, if that’s cool.”

“It is,” Knox said to him, hitting him one last time with those green laser eyes. “Very cool,” he finished. And then Rico knew that Knoxville-Z knew that he was feigning laughter and got the acute feeling that Knoxville-Z knew a lot more and that he was supposed to be sitting there at this moment. But he did not know why.

So, if you have ever played backgammon on a real board, or in the form of a briefcase as they so often were, you know that if you know the rules and follow the nature of the dice and are at least competent enough not to fuck up your basic math then it will all come down to a couple moments. There are always situations that arise where you have to make a decision, a real decision where your hands are not tied by numbers, by the virtues of their stabilities, but instead can choose a path that will make a difference.

The game between Knoxville-Z and Rico got to one of these moments and Rico knew that it was time. He watched as Knox did exactly what he had expected, moving the top of his arm just slightly, a wiggle that Rico knew meant Knox had moved his hand closer to the pocket, slid a finger in. He knew that he was preparing for the next roll, knowing they were in one of those moments when a big roll finishes it. But right now, it was Rico’s turn and he was in the same exact situation, gammon-wise.

He felt his own dice in his hands. They were sweaty but not from nerves, it was humid, the dice just felt wet. And Rico was also nervous. This was fun, sure, but there were people here and he never liked to lose, especially in public. Knox felt that energy and called Rico on it.

“I feel lucky,” he said, looking around at the crowd and then over at Rico, “shall we double?”

“I don’t have cash on me, of course,” Rico said, still holding those dice, rolling them a bit in his palm. “I didn’t know it was that kind of party.”

Knoxville-Z gives a small grunt of false indignation and says, “Ok, then, let’s play for a favor. One favor between us, the winner gets it and anything asked must be followed… to the letter.” Knox looked around the room, people were mildly impressed. People liked to see people lose a shit ton of money. This wasn’t really that exciting. These were honor and showmanship bets and Rico had been in some such before and wasn’t too worried about what cashing in usually meant. Something embarrassing perhaps, mildly life-threatening or just plain scary were the usual tenets and fuck it, vacation and all, he thought. I’m out of here soon enough.

“Sure, let’s put a favor on the table. Done,” Rico said. He didn’t have that much to lose on this except showing up this legend, this algorithmic danger to society, with this one roll of his own cheating dice. That was Rico’s plan.

“I see what you’re trying to do and you’re going to need one hell of a roll, pal,” Knox said. And maybe he wanted to put a little pepper on this thing, bring the heat, at least dramatically up the stakes, a little something for the people. “And believe this, I don’t need your money but this favor, I will come calling and I do take such things very seriously.”

“Me, too,” Rico said, and he slapped his sweaty dice down on the table, to the side of the game. “That’s why I am invoking player’s privilege.” He had seen the tell, he saw the cup and he knew which dice were already in Knox’s. Rico reached across the board and grabbed it. He dumped the loaded dice into his own palm and quickly transported them to his cup, and they hit and bounced with velvety echoes.

Now this shit was interesting, Rico thought to himself. He had seen it happen when he walked in the room and he saw those practiced fingers, each of them poised to make the move. And fuck it, what would happen if he were wrong? A favor? He rolled the dice and stared at Knoxville-Z not looking down to see what had transpired. He heard the gasp of the crowd a little more interested now in this ‘player’s privilege’ idea that everyone was sure did not exist but somehow this young American had pulled it off like magic, pulled into this world as if from a film and brought it to life. Double 6’s.

“You know,” Rico leaned in, still not looking down, but knowing of course beforehand what his role would be. And he imitated the line he had heard Knox say to the bald, tropical-themed player earlier, “it’s all in the wrist.” A small twitter from the crowd.

Knoxville-Z was not one to miss out on sparring wits and he kept a quick pace, undisturbed. “What will it be then, good sir. A palatial estate? A date with an alien? An endless credit limit? It’s all possible. What is your favor?”

Rico knew this was for show as well and that any of these were simple enough to wiggle out of and this nonsense bet Knoxville-Z was now making more nonsensical and reducing the stakes for the crowd.

“I’m saving it, Knox,” Rico said using his more intimate name. “I need to think on it. A favor is all about timing, right?”

Knox paused and his eyes lit up. A small smile began to creep around the edges of his lips. It did not go much further.

“It is,” Knox said. “It is and this portion of the evening has come to a close. People!” Knoxville-Z stood up then, his big but healthy frame, and white Santa-hair popping off against his brown skin. He gave energy to the room. And people at the bar turned and those gathered around the table had already seen this show and he wanted to transition, to get to the next phase. He wanted to go deeper into the night.

“People… people… people,” he made sure he had them and then just said simply, “Let’s go to the disco.” And he waved his arms and people began to file out of this veranda bar and towards some other part of the tropical mansion at the end of this cul-de-sac of expatriates where there was apparently a disco, imaginably as analog as the rest of this party, Rico thought.

“But you,” Knox said, pointing a finger right at him as he stood up. “You are coming with me.” Then Knoxville-Z did smile and it was big and gracious and real. Rico got excited. He had won him over, somehow. “And…” this old, recluse, trillionaire genius started to say, “you’re going to bring her.” And he pointed his finger away from Rico and over by the bar right to Emma. Anders had long departed and she was there alone and staring right at them. She put her arms up in the air like what the fuck and was giddy with anticipation, for Rico, for the moment, for this crazy chance to hang out with one of the most famous criminals in the world. Knox put his hand on Rico’s shoulder, it was confident and good. “Do you want to see all of it?” he asked, and Rico wasn’t sure what he meant. The party?

Rico looked at Emma and got the tingle. Love, yes; it felt like that was in there, but the love was nestled, wrapped up and cradled in a cocoon of danger. And it was the danger that seemed to dominate the sensation. “Yes,” he looked away from Emma and right at Knox, feeling on equal terms like they were friends now for various unspoken reasons, “I want to see all of it,” Rico confirmed for Knox. And they were off.

<><><><><><><><><><>

And then came the party montage. It was exactly as you would expect. The three of our principals went deeper into the night. If it were a film, the very contemporary beat would kick in with its familiar notes of fun and debauchery as the clips would start to run – entering a private room to big arm gestures, huddled drug use around a bar, whipping head laughter, hugs and whispers in ears, elongated colors and blurred edges begin to cloud our vision as they hit the dancefloor, they are at the disco with a crowd now, spinning and weaving their way about, showing off for each other, grabbing various partners, slow motion, beautiful expressions on blurry faces blurring into time blending into a memory, a moment that sits with us now, separate from the flow of our own worlds. And theirs, having been brought into existence and beyond the present.

Knoxville-Z’s face flickered in the fire. They were out on his balcony, outside of his own bedroom, presumably. It was the time of the night that the flow had already been established and people found their places and who they were and went with what was before them and it felt good. It all did. It was that time of night, Rico thought. He was sitting across from Knox, on the edge of a poolside chair, next to a fire pit, tiny flames licking the last of the wood, dying in its embers, but casting that illuminating Rembrandt light and Knox fit the bill, ancient eyes, timeless face and big, white hair and beard, illuminated between stars and fire, approaching you out of the darkness.

“How about that favor?” Knoxville-Z asked. “Whadda I owe you, pal?”

Rico laughed. He looked over at Emma. She was talking with a few other people that had made it back with them from the disco. They were laughing and drinking and smoking at a tiki bar in the corner of the balcony overlooking this end of Ambergris Caye and out to the water, stretching under the moon to the Belize Barrier Reef, waves crashing, coming in from the Caribbean Sea. The air was nice in the early morning. The sun had been down for as long as it possibly could so it was cool and warm and easy on the skin. It was that time of night, Rico thought. And then he answered Knoxville-Z. “Nothing, my friend. This was my favor. This night. But it seemed like you knew that already,” Rico looked over and gave him his best authenticity… showed him his love.

Knox didn’t deny it but wasn’t ready to give up that easily. “The bet was you need to ask for a favor and I need to grant it,” he said flatly. “They aren’t just granted without a request – that’s not a favor, pal. That’s just being kind. And that’s not worth much,” he gave a charmingly ironic chuckle. “So, tell me, what’s your favor,” Knox wasn’t asking. He was telling Rico to tell him.

Rico looked over at Emma again, still laughing and drinking and smoking and having exactly the time she should be having. He caught eyes very briefly with another woman that had been at the disco with them – well, with him actually, on the dancefloor. So much good happens on the dance floor, Rico thought. He did not know her name. And he was getting tired of this ‘favor’ conversation. He needed to mix it up and he felt like he had earned enough with Knox to put it out there straight. He felt the flow and went with it.

“You were cheating, man. I saw it earlier when I walked in,” Rico looked back over at Knoxville-Z.

“There’s no such thing as ‘player’s privilege’ if that’s what you mean,” Knox quipped back. They both laughed.

“Why did you let me get away with it?”

“I didn’t,” Knox looked at him, green eyes in the fire. “You rolled those double 6’s”

“What?” Rico took a second to process.

“I never got the other dice in the cup. I was cheating,” he said, “and I wanted to win. But I never made the transition. Those were true dice. They weren’t loaded.”

“What?” Rico said again and then gathered himself, “Why were you cheating? Who cares?

“Well, I do, pal,” he said. “Can you imagine a game where you can actually cheat? Those were the good ones. That makes it all worth doing, eh?” He put his fingers in the air and contorted them with expert control. Rico laughed.

“I used to dabble in some sleight of hand stuff but it was outside of my time. Never had any use for it,” Rico fell quiet.

“I wanted to use it to beat you… specifically,” Knox said, rolling his fingers again.

“Why? I didn’t have any money, and who carries cash to bet on backgammon in Belize?” Rico guffawed.

“The stupid tourists and fanboys who I told to come so I could take it from them,” the fire flickered between them. Laughter from the tiki bar, the sound of a wave crashing. “But you were different, pal. You, I knew you wouldn’t have cash. No one does, right? I wanted something else.” Knoxville-Z leaned in. “I wanted that favor.”

Rico felt the tingle again. The danger part. “Wait. You wanted the favor from me?” he asked, thinking it through. Knox hadn’t gotten the loaded dice into the cup and he rolled the natural 6’s. “And I fucked it up?”

“Some thing’s just play out that way. You know, pal?” And the way Knox said it, Rico understood that he knew the whole time. That it was a setup for him, and at the last second he had beat the plan by randomly hitting the number. But what fucking plan?

“What favor could I possibly give you that you would be interested in?” Rico was incredulous.

Knoxville-Z tilted his head back and laughed, his great white mane shaking and his shoulders rolling with the waves of it. And then he settled, digging right into Rico, “Do you really want to know, pal? You did say you wanted it all.”

Yes. He had said that. But Rico liked this shit, this late night deal-making, fucked-up deep conversation-having friendships and strangers all getting mixed up in oaths and allegiances. Right on. Hit me with it, Knox. Fuck it, Rico thought. “Yes,” he said, “I did say that.”

“This is the favor I want from you,” Knoxville-Z said and he is not referred to as Knox in this moment quite intentionally. He was not Knox the friend. This was a richer experience for Rico, a full-bodied complexity that demanded a full-name or full-name equivalent. Knoxville-Z squared up his shoulders, brought his full stature out of the Rembrandt darkness and into the light and said, “I need you to guard Emma with your life.”

“Emma, Emma?” Rico asked, and was taken by surprise as this was not one of the things he imagined he might be asked to do. And so he wanted to make sure he had this right.

“Emma, that is here with us. Yes, pal, her.” And he said this in a way that washed over Rico and he had done some drugs and was certainly feeling nice and the light breeze was lovely on his skin but this was a punch to the gut, a wallop of a realization and a final understanding that was no longer a tingle that he was into some shit he had been set up for and realizing that his business partner and long time friend if not best friend, if not one of the all time loves of his life which he might have just finally realized and was, of course, unrequited, that this person had known Knoxville-Z for some time and was in on it.

This. Whatever it was, Rico thought and snapped his head over to look at the tiki bar, to see Emma, ‘that is here with us.’ And she was there and though they hadn’t made eye contact since she had been at the bar, she was staring right at him. He froze and another wave hit him and made his hair stand up and she shrugged and looked at him like everything was going to be alright. A look he had always known and loved. Maybe this wasn’t that crazy after all, he decided, thinking he was paranoid. Tripping. Not misreading things, but overreading them.

“That’s not hard, Knox. That’s part of my job, really.” Rico was lighter now, looking back and re-engaging with Knox but not in the same way, shifting the weight of his glance, not on the hunt for a tell. “I probably saved her life this morning,” he said thinking that may be the truest thing he is saying right now.

“I’m not fucking around, pal. This is all or nothing and you said you wanted it all and here we fucking go. There is no stopping it now. It’s happening, it was always going to happen. And Emma is important at this juncture. Maybe the most important. And now… so are you.” Knoxville-Z wasn’t backing down. He had switched into that richer complex mode and he wasn’t coming out of it. And still, Rico thought this could be a business deal, Emma bet some of the company on a crazy, Knoxville-Z algorithm and we were all in it now, like it or not. That was the tone he was connected to now, he mellowed it all a bit.

“Listen, Knox. My friend,” Rico reached over and put a hand on his knee, trying to get that same sense of touch he felt when Knox had set a hand on his back. The weight of it, two humans connecting. “I love Emma. She is truly a partner of mine in every way… well, almost every way possible… and I will do anything for her.” Rico felt like he meant it.

“Die.”

“What?”

“Fucking die, pal. You might need to fucking die for her and not even think once about it. Muscle fucking memory. Just fucking do it. You have to. I need that from you, it’s the favor. It’s that important. More than I even know. And, listen to me, pal, when I say this - I know everything.” Knoxville-Z was not fucking around, Rico thought. And he felt the return of that energy, the hand on the knee burning back, the circuit more than complete. Overloaded. And still, Rico could only imagine a business deal with Knox going down something like this. It seemed on brand for a character like Knox to say shit exactly like this and Rico, again enjoyed the drama of a moment and nights like this, especially about business because seriously, he thought, removing his hand from Knox’s knee, who gives a fuck? And as a partner and friend he would certainly do everything in his power to help Emma. He had, in fact, saved her life this morning. Or something like that.

“I promise,” Rico said. “I will honor your favor, Knox and whatever it is that we’re all mixed up in together, I will protect Emma with my life.”

“I hear you and appreciate that you will honor this favor. Thank you, pal. That does mean a lot to me. Now… what do you got for me?” Knox asked with a smile, relaxed and easy. “Ask for your favor.”

Rico was ready this time. After all, he had rolled those natural sixes. Knoxville-Z doesn’t play dice with the universe. Or so it was said. The person who started to build behavioral formulas, to not only predict but active formulas that made it easy to do certain things - diets and fitness routines, but also long term relationships and happiness indices started to blossom as art and entertainment were perfectly curated and people fell in love with not choosing dinners and movies. But were they being controlled? Did Knoxville-Z have the tastes and love lives and health of these people in his pocket?

Well… of course, he did. And there was a case brought against him. And then several and it became clear what was going to happen. And he disappeared. Everyone knew where he was, but he was protected in so many ways, and he knew enough about everyone to operate in a vacuum. A non-presence. But here he was asking what he could do for Rico and Rico felt the balance had to be fair. He had sworn to protect a life with his own life and he needed to match the gravitas of these ‘favors’ or so Rico was thinking.

“You put people on paths to change their lives,” Rico said to Knox. “And it did. It changed their lives. And they felt happy. So… isn’t that the meaning of life?”

“Hardly. I was a hacker. I just knew numbers and codes and how to break them more than how to make them. But codes run it all, pal. The whole thing. Numbers. You know how to fuck with a mathematician? Add 1 to their infinite set. You can do the same thing with language. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. That right there is the blueprint. Those words don’t mean anything, see? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. But you know exactly how to read it, what it WOULD mean if it DID mean something. That’s the code. That’s what I started hacking.”

“That’s closer than most get,” Rico said before he had thought about it. He was supposed to be playing along with the drama, getting to what this business was all about or whatever Knox and Emma had cooked up. Was Anders in on it, too? Shit. I fucking hope not, Rico said to himself.

“You must know more than almost anyone on the planet about what makes people do what they do. Or just plain fucking makes them do it. Isn’t that why you’re out here? In Belize? They won’t give you up and no one wants to fuck with anyone really, and some people in this industry and some people in that one, sorta put ‘missions’ together and make a pilgrimage. And you play along. And honestly it’s pretty fucking good, man. But if you weren’t wanted by every major outpost of civilization, you wouldn’t be here. Right?” Rico was warming up. Feeling his confidence build but also wondering if he believed this man had the answer to the thing he was going to ask him next.

He had all these bits and pieces, so many life codes for so many different things, but he never had the great uniter, the one ring to rule them all! The algorithm that could put all those bits and pieces together and, well, run the world. That’s what everyone thought. But that was a pop legend, this man was a pure genius, and we’ve had a lot of those before and none of them ever ruled the world, Rico thought and finally asked his question, belying a little of his irony as he put the question out into the world, right there across the fire pit on the balcony of his tropical mansion hideaway.

“What is the meaning of life?” Rico asked.

And again, Knox did not miss a beat and began to stand up. “That one is easy, pal. You shoulda given me something a little harder,” he said. “The thing is it’s all already over, it’s all happening, the before the after, we’ve all known this for a long time it’s been hard to live it, am I right? So, there isn’t any ‘meaning’ in it per se, but the thing is we have very tiny windows, small opportunities to pop through, a mutation in the code, if you get me. And you get that chance to create meaning.”

Rico was half-interested but got the bigger picture Knoxville-Z was alluding to. Physics it sounded like, mainly.

“Always keep your word.” Knox wasn’t teasing. He was intently serious, warm and almost kind but purposeful. “It’s the only truth you’ll ever know.” And he spread his arms wide, the wind picked up his beard, and fluttered his hair, the blur of the fire and the bright sting of the stars above gave him a John Brown profile, a painting, Curry’s portrait, the abolitionist with the results of his charge in waste behind him. “Like I told you, pal. It’s easy.” Knoxville-Z was excusing himself, in the way people do at the end of a late night conversation when you can tell the sun is itching to get over that horizon.

Rico barely noticed at this point, he was wondering about Emma and what the fuck she knew in all of this. He noticed the tiki bar crew seemed to have broken up and Emma was actually making her way over. This whole night had been amazing and yet another story to tell from one of their vacations and Anders would probably shit all over it but Emma and Rico knew what was what. And that made Rico happy, whatever else she had gotten them into he would deal with later.

“I have one more question, Knox,” Rico said. “Knoxville-Z? What is that? Where did that come from?”

Knoxville-Z turned back around, a few feet away and he turned up his voice a few notches and granted Rico this one extra favor he had just asked him. This was Knox, his friend.

“Johnny Knoxville. The filmmaker. I always loved that guy. He was around when I was kid and nothing made me as happy as watching that dumb-ass genius.” Knox looked out to sea, hoping to catch a glimpse of him out there, getting his balls chomped by a shark, big as the night sky, lit up like Orion or Paul Bunyan. Rico remembered the name. He was like a Charlie Chaplan for postmodern times, all on tape. You could find them at Blockbuster, Rico thought, connecting familiar dots of media history.

“And the Z? What’s that all about?”

“Well, I was a hacker,” Knox started, “And X and Y were already taken,” and then he laughed again with his head back, a deep, joyful enunciation into the air. Rico got up from the fire, tracking Emma. She was making her way around the fire closer to the bedroom door.

“I want to thank you. This is big for me, pal. This is it. The whole thing and you’re in it too.” It was Knox and he was closer now, talking low but very clearly and steadily. “This is it for me. Right now. We all have our parts. This is mine. Protect her, just like you said you would. You’re going to need to, pal.” His sharp green eyes disengaged but left Rico with something new in his chest. A pain or a ball of urgency that felt like it was not going away anytime soon.

Knoxville-Z turned, winding himself back out around the fire and before Rico had even registered what was happening, it was Knox who had made his way to Emma. They were standing across the fire pit now, she had a hand on his arm and he was telling her something softly, and she got up on her tiptoes and whispered something back and it seemed to be happening very slowly and very quickly at the same time. Their hands slipped, down and into each other's and their backs turned and Rico couldn’t move and he watched as they opened the door to Knoxville-Z’s room and went inside.

“Hi!!” It was the dance floor woman. She was in his face now, but he saw the door slide closed and Knox and Emma were gone. Together.

“Hi,” Rico said, distracted, trying to figure out what had just happened and how bad he had lost that engagement or hadn’t figured out the subtext, or he was sure he would find out in the morning from Emma herself. But tomorrow morning? He had a lot more nights he wanted to spend with her. Anders was not showing up so far and while nothing usually ever happened, he always liked to put in the time with Emma, to let her know she could probably have him if she wanted him but now she was with someone else? Knoxville-Z?

“I loved the disco. I hadn’t been dancing in so long. Feels like, ever? I don’t even know.” Dance Floor was flirting with him. “But it’s so fun. And you’re a fabulous dancer.” Fair, Rico thought. I’m pretty good. And I am on vacation. He was allowing himself the room to move, the room to not really care what you care about.

“I fucking love to dance,” Rico said to Dance Floor.

“So much! Wow. You want to keep it going?” She pointed down to the patio. The pool was still open, and there were a few late, late nighters staggering around, the music a little lower but enough to keep people up and grooving. Some laughter. Giggles. Friendly echoes from the patio

“Let’s keep it going,” Rico said.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“How could you not love Knoxville-Z?” Dance Floor asked Rico as he kissed her neck.

“I don’t know,” he said, pulling slightly on her hair and kissing her neck again, a new spot.

“He’s… I mean… he’s a genius, right?” she said with a little sigh at the end, from being kissed on the neck. “Everybody knows that.” Rico kissed her on the lips and they were dry and foreign but they reached out for his too and their lips met and felt each other in the dark of the poolhouse, behind the cabanas.

Rico stopped, holding her face in the cup of his hand. “What is genius?” Rico said out loud but knowing full well how flaccid that sounded. Knoxville-Z was a genius. Everybody knew that.

“I mean… he’s a criminal!!” she blurted out. “He’s wanted in every country… everywhere!” She was right, Rico thought. And that could be used as a definition of genius: wanted by the law in every nation. He kissed her again and it was the sex kiss; the kiss where you are probing to make sure there is more to come. Dance Floor did return in kind and the feeling was that they were going further. But she stopped, as if realizing something.

“The Source of All Intention!?” She was aghast. As if the burden of proof had been lifted and this was the last thing anyone ever needed to say. She said it again for good measure. “The. Source. Of. All. Intention.” And she looked him in the eyes, there in the dark, shadowy flickers from the tiki torches outside the poolhouse.

Rico knew about The Source of All Intention and as a matter of proof that seemed to be important to his poolhouse partner, so did everyone. It was a myth, really. For all of the real algorithms that Knoxville-Z had come up with that guided our behaviors around food and entertainment and romance and work, it was the idea that there was one algorithm that tied them all together that made Knox famous. The Source of All Intention. The myth was that Knoxville-Z had finally cracked the ultimate behavioral algorithm and while the other ones were grounded in hard data, quantifiable facts that led to actionable and livable insights, The Source of All Intention could decode the abstracts, bring to life the Platonic forms. Through The Source of All Intention we would come to understand and be able to act upon life’s greatest pursuits - truth, beauty, justice. Goodness. It is why it was not a strange thing for Rico to ask Knoxville-Z for the meaning of life. It was pop culture, public domain.

“He made me a lot of money,” Rico said, giving Dance Floor a small, let’s-pause-for-a-second, kiss. “Knowing what people like and don’t like and what they are going to do next, before they do is valuable information. It makes creating experiences for people a lot easier.” She looked up at him, letting her hand slip from his shoulder but wanting him to continue.

“He might be a genius,” Rico told her, “but The Source of All Intention is a story he made up so he could hide-out in peace.” This was also a story that people knew, the counter-argument to the idea that such a thing could exist and be real and change life as we know it. Or at least give us all the answers. “No one can fuck with him now. They’re too scared he might turn to the other side. Or just blow up everyone’s shit. It’s like having nukes back in the day. But it’s a bluff. And guess what? Knox is pretty good at that. The Source of All Intention doesn’t exist.”

She gave him a kiss back and then put her hand back on his shoulder and made sure he felt her there. She said, “So he just hides-out down here and throws parties?”

Rico gave her a kiss and pulled her in closer. “Yes,” he whispered, “as long as he stays off the grid and pays everybody, no one gives a shit.” And gave her a deep kiss and started to move his body onto hers and it felt nice but not great and he wasn’t really sure this was worth it but it was a distraction and perhaps a small revenge for being hurt by Emma, if he had to be honest with himself. But he didn’t have to be and he continued to go deeper and she responded in kind.

And then he heard the sirens ripping through the tropical air. Some screaming followed and the sounds of chaos and running, a bullhorn began to repeat - remain calm but stay the fuck where you are. The profanity amused Rico. Cop shit was universal, he thought. He lifted up and tried to peer out the slits of windows in the pool house. He looked at Dance Floor and gave a smile and a shrug that simply said I don’t know either. Their encounter was over. Time to see what this was all about. Or at least get the fuck out.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico spotted Emma immediately as he ran out to the pool, winding through cabanas, heading towards the house. She was up on the balcony, where they had been with Knoxville-Z. There were people running across the property in every direction, an air-horn like siren, cut through the noise of the party, the comandante barking orders in a bullhorn. And the distant flashlights of a wall of cops was headed their way. But Emma saw him, too. They connected across the distance, Rico froze next to the pool as partiers flew past, shrieks and screams and groans and he just stared at her caught in the moment.

Emma was not frozen, she motioned to Rico who knew what she meant without thinking. She was pointing to the back of the house, to the servant and facilities quarters where they had come into the party, inside the perimeter of the compound Knoxville-Z called his home.

Rico nodded like he was in love, anxious that they were apart, and then took off towards the back. He went sideways, away from the house and followed a path that the employees took, off the main area and hidden so people never had to look at the help. It was dark but there were small running lights along the path and the sirens roared amongst the crash of cops starting to bust into the property.

Rico was by the dumpsters, slipping in between and then through a small door, between two buildings in a tight squeeze and through a back gate, and it was unlocked, again, just like when they came through it the first time. It finally occurred to Rico that it was strange Emma had gotten them in this way. That she had known about some service entrance to the estate of an international fugitive. The truth was he didn’t care then and he didn’t care that much now, but the thought registered as he ran through the door and out into the wild palms.

Emma was there in the shadows. She was standing in a wash of moonlight, the only parts of her visible as Rico adjusted to the dark morning light. Sirens still wailed. The cops were inside the perimeter now and he was outside, here with Emma. She moved a few steps closer, she put her hands out and he instinctively grabbed them and gave them a squeeze and felt her blood pumping. His heart was racing but he was calm, serene in a way. All he had wanted all night was to be with her. And he had so far fulfilled his promise. A promise to guard and protect her life with his. A late night contract, and he had given his word. The only thing we have in this life.

“Knox is dead,” she said. And Rico had nothing. The idea had suddenly emptied his head of thoughts. He just stared at her, right at Emma with nothing.

“We need to go,” she said, into his blank face. Yes! He came up with that one thought. And they ran.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The Detective came out of the darkness towards them. They had been running furiously but had not gotten far. It was surprising enough that they both stopped abruptly. Catching their breaths, they stood before the Detective who was not a big man, but he had a presence, an energy that felt unmovable. His black hair was classically slicked back and his mustachio finely trimmed. He carried his badge in his thick wallet and had a pistola in a small holster on his right hip. The Detective was as analog as Ambergris Caye, itself.

“Good morning, my friends, I’m Detective Ignacio.” He said with a small amount of purposeful joy in his voice, like a local speaking to a turista. “Making a rapid retreat, are we?”

“Something is happening… at the party… it’s… it’s over there,” Emma was speaking in gasps.

“It’s a raid or something,” Rico spoke up, understanding instantly that this was the same police, that this was probably his raid.

“It’s a murder,” Detective Ignacio said flatly.

Rico paused for a beat and then connected the information he had been given in the very near past. Knox is dead. There has been a murder. And he looked over at Emma, but she was intent on whatever the Detective was going to say next.

“The biomonitor tells us that the heart of Knoxville-Z has stopped. A heart attack,” the Detective declared and Rico saw Emma’s shoulders shake and then relax. She let out a whimper, an audible grief for the dead. The biomonitor was a live feed of health data in a non-fungible cell anyone can have access to. It was probably a stipulation of Knox maintaining a residence in Belize. The very rich and the very dangerous often had them. Knoxville-Z was both. And the data was untouchable, it was pure. Heart attack. But Detective Ignacio had more to tell them, standing amongst the swaying palms on a black night that was turning to a purple morning.

“Knoxville-Z was a dangerous man with every means to stay alive. And now he’s dead. So, we are investigating a murder,” he said, and Rico thought it strange that this cop would be explaining his actions to the two of them.

“It didn’t feel like an investigation,” Rico said, regaining some of his natural inclination to resist authority. “It felt like a raid.”

“This is Belize, my friend,” Detective Ignacio looked Rico up and down. “Here we shoot before and we ask all the questions after, no?”

“But you don’t even know if it was a murder!” Emma blurted out. Apparently, feeling some of that anti-authority energy herself. At least Rico imagined that’s what it was.

“Anything that happens to this man is an international incident. This is my problem now and this right here is me handling it, no?” He pointed through the palms and back towards the Knoxville-Z compound. There were sirens still blaring in the distance, a quieter bullhorn, the crowd making no noise at all, having been subdued and detained. Emma followed his gaze and then looked back at me and then to Detective Ignacio. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. No, no, no, she was mumbling under her breath. Detective Ignacio got very close to her and Rico could see their profiles set against each other in the flickering ultraviolet shadows.

“Knoxville-Z was murdered,” the Detective said, “I know it and I am here to solve this one.”

Rico saw Emma stiffen, he had seen some of this strength and pure will before but always over business or relationships. This was over a murder. “Good luck,” she said simply and relaxed, pulling back into herself.

“We will get every person’s identity and go through each person 1x1 and discover exactly their purpose and reason for being here and their connection to Knoxville-Z.” Detective Ignacio told us. He was wrapping up, starting to get his bearings and head off to finish his job at the compound.

“Detective Ignacio,” Emma said before he could go and she held out an old, hardcopy ID card that was required to get into Belize, part of the rustic charm for a lot of people on vacation. “You’re going to need this then,” she said looking down at her ID card, volunteering to be included in his investigation.

“My dear,” the Detective stopped and looked intently at the card and then up into Emma’s eyes. “I know exactly who you are and why you are here.” And with that Detective Ignacio disappeared back into the darkness, headed towards his crime scene.

“¡Buenas noches!” Emma yelled after him, but he was gone. She turned to Rico and he noticed that she looked gaunt, pale and afraid, her eyes were wide and she wasn’t really trying to hide it. She was shook and Rico had never seen it before.

Emma reached out to him and Rico wrapped her up in his arms and she kissed him. Her lips went to his and he met them and he realized this was the feeling all kisses should be, this was the ephemeral touch, the psychic connection between two sensitive bands of flesh and the kinetic energy of a romantic heart. It was what Rico had wanted all night or maybe all of his life, happening then, right there in the grove of tropical flora, bathed in the violet turning auburn glow of dawn on La Isla Bonita. Fucking love, he thought.

Emma stopped kissing. She grabbed the side of his face with both her hands and he was exploding inside, the big bang of his own universe, creating a force field that would not let him go. He was engulfed in an energy that made his promise to Knox, who was murdered shortly thereafter, the most tangible and unbreakable bond he had ever known. He was going to protect her life with his. That was evident. That was his truth now. He felt her warm hands on his face. He felt the heat of her breath.

“I am going to need your help,” Emma whispered.

Anders was standing in the big cat’s open jaw. It was a wide and ferocious mouth, the jagged teeth protruding above Anders head like plaster, chipped paint stalagmites, the lower ring of teeth below functioning like a walkway, directing the patrons into the disco along the pinkish concrete tongue. El Jaguar was open for business. Anders put his hands up like claws and emulated the great beasts toothy maw. Felix gave him a sarcastic finger, like an old pistol pointed and cocked, with a click of his tongue against his teeth. Emma gave him a small smile, as she moved past him into the club. Rico patted him on the shoulder and told him he was very scary and menacing in Spanish. And Anders laughed and relaxed his jaw, lowered his finger claws and turned to go in, right on through the mouth of the jaguar.

That very morning Rico and Emma had returned to their vacation compound, running breathlessly, neither speaking a word until they got to their cabanas. And then a brief goodnight, and Rico could not see her eyes or get a read on her emotions. But it felt right to fall into a very familiar pattern and dive into a deep sleep and wake up and maybe this will all feel a lot more normal.

And while a big part of him wanted that, wanted to forget Knoxville-Z and the Detective and just get on with their holiday. And in some ways, that happened for him. But he also wanted to kiss Emma again and live within whatever circumstances brought that into his world.

The next day wasn’t really ‘the next day’ but just several hours later, waking up in the tropical afternoon. And he had been feeling groggy but nothing that a juicy papaya and strong, black coffee could not cure. And there was a murmur of the proceedings from the night before, and certainly Knoxville-Z was big news, but it was whispered and talked over in small spaces between buildings and in laundry rooms and hallways. The holiday must go on, and so if Rico were looking for some sense of normalcy, so were the staff. And together they could beat this thing.

Rico also remembered the kiss, in fact, felt it on his lips as he closed his eyes and it made his belly flip over and he didn’t want that to disappear, to fade in the background behind a wall of familiar behavior. Rico was torn by this. He wanted that kiss back, and all the things that went along with it… the promise to protect her life with his… the murder.

He saw Anders by the pool and got waved over. Emma, it seemed, was still asleep. They discussed that evening’s activities. Felix had told them about a nightclub in town, on Front Street, called El Jaguar, a classic, analog disco in the style of Central American discotechs. Dark plaster with a healthy mix of dirt that can never be washed out but seems so essential to its existence. It was lightly dangerous, a knife fight, if at all, but certainly trouble to be had if desired. Of all sorts. It had been their plan for a while and Anders was absolutely undeterred by last evening’s events. He mentioned them almost in passing, saying he heard Knox was killed and you guys got out and made it back to the cabanas. Anders said something along the lines of ‘had it coming’ or ‘it was a matter of time’. Those kinds of people always meet a similar fate, Anders had said along with a little I-told-you-so smile. Maybe, Rico thought. But he knew this nightclub outing was the right thing to do. Stay the course. The vacation rolls on. El Jaguar.

And there he was, walking past the plaster chipped fading, dirty paint of the jaguar’s mouth, the teeth losing some menace under close investigation. Night had come. Rico had not seen or heard from Emma until they met on the dock to hail a water taxi and take the 15 minute boat ride into San Pedro. They had smiled at each other and exchanged a very normal hello. It made Rico worry. But he knew how to behave around these people. These were his partners and Felix was joining them as well. It was his idea. El Jaguar. And nothing could be more natural and easy than that. He had soon lightened up, he enjoyed the boat ride to the dock in front of Front Street and was ready to jump into whatever this mouth was going to give.

The music was pounding. It always was. And certainly analog, almost to a dramatic level, potentially a health issue. But that’s what you pay for in Central America. The realness. Shitty, shitty speakers turned up way too loud, Rico thought. Fuck ya. It was some old hip hop, a dance record from pre-millennium. The DJ perhaps, loving it most, fist rocking, ripping into the air in mad swipes at the beat, actual headphones on his head. There was a strobe light, that was blinding, a blast of three primary colors, over and over again, casting weird shadows in the smoke from the smoke machine, periodically filling the dancefloor with a thick, white fog that sometimes smelled like pina colada sun tan lotion and sometimes smelled like old hot dogs. It wasn’t packed yet, a lot of regulars and some turistas were brave enough to pass through the mouth.

Emma and Anders headed to the bar, Felix talking to another person he must have met earlier and Rico, bringing up the rear, taking in the bombastic scene. Fun. Fuck it, he thought.

The bodies were writhing as a dancefloor wants. It was hot, it wasn’t totally full but people were drunk and more. On all the drugs, it would seem. Rico had his share last night, plenty of writhing, an oath, a murder, a kiss. He was going to sip on his local Beliken beer and absorb this time around. He saw Felix over at the bar, behind a couple locals in beisbol hats, lean and angry, looking for a test, for someone to tell them that this wasn’t their club. It was their club, and Rico knew he was just a visitor. He gave a brief eye nod salutation to the locals as he squeezed in next to Felix.

“Que pasa, mijo??” Felix said.

“Nada, amigo. Que tal?” Rico said, speaking in a horrible accent with some drunken confidence that he knew was always good enough to get him into trouble but never good enough to get him out.

“So you guys got into it last night, huh?” Felix said, bumping shoulders with Rico, looking out over the dancefloor.

“Another night in paradise,” Rico said, smiling at Felix raising up his beer in salute.

“Did anyone fuck with you?”

“No,” Rico answered quickly, having the sensation of being on the other side of something, and still not knowing exactly what it was. “Not really.”

“You ran into the detective, though, right?” Felix asked, not unlike the detective from last night.

“A local cop, yeah, we ran into him. Or he ran into us, really. He seemed fine. Just doing his job, I imagine.”

“Detective Ignacio, right?” Felix looked at Rico and Rico wondered how Felix knew that.

“I think so,” Rico said. “Emma might remember,” he nodded towards Emma, talking to Anders at the bar and it looked like a few more turistas had made their way into the mouth of the jaguar. “Not sure.” Rico was sure. It was Ignacio.

“Belize City. He’s not San Pedro. He doesn’t fuck around, that guy,” Felix said, sounding like it came from a source of knowledge. Felix and Rico stared at each other for a few seconds. Felix started to say something, then stopped.

“What’s up, Felix?” Rico asked his old friend.

Felix hesitated and gave Rico a long look, then he spoke up, low but clear and with purpose.

“You did it.”

Rico ran a billion thoughts at once but didn’t hesitate long. He thought about Emma and the kiss, of course. He thought about randomly running into a detective in the secluded palm grove behind a murder scene, and walking away from it.

“We did,” Rico told Felix. “We did it. We always do.” And he meant that, he meant the business he and Emma shared together, their wins, their successes, their high-end celebrations, good old fashioned fun and they always pulled it off, every business opportunity and every escapade. It was a thing amongst them. But maybe that was not what Felix meant.

“You’re going to stay by her side, right? Look after her?” Felix asked.

“Forever,” Rico said, without hesitation but wondering why Felix would ask that question.

“I knew this about you, Rico. I always have,” Felix raised his Beliken in the air, “you keep your word.”

Rico raised his Beliken and tapped his friend’s beer in salute. It seemed to Rico that his reputation had preceded him, even beyond what he knew himself to be capable of. Interesting, Rico thought. And maybe it’s true. He mildly, bounced his head along to the tinny, echoing beats from the exitos caliente as they continued to pound in the small, grimy club and the bodies continued to writhe.

Rico slid in next to Emma at the bar. A few others still chattering next to them, Anders off talking to the DJ trying to get his music played, which was quite possible in an analog club where the DJ is on the premises and music is played by touch. It wasn’t Anders first time doing this, he liked to think of himself as a DJ or DJ adjacent and if he every got the chance to fuck with technology, analog or higher up the food chain, he took it.

Rico saw an opening at the bar and got himself in position. He raised his hand for another Beliken, looked at Emma’s half empty one and held up two fingers to the bartender. The music was loud. They hadn’t talked much or even been alone since last night. The murder. He spoke so she could hear him, going straight at it.

“So what the fuck, huh? Wow!” Rico shook his head.

“What did Felix say?” she asked, tilting her head slightly and looking out of the corner of her eye.

“What?” Rico didn’t expect that. “When?”

“Over there by the dancefloor, you were talking to Felix. What did he say?” She turned around at the bar, setting her elbows on it, looking over to where they had stood.

Rico thought about it and then went for it. “He said that I should look after you.” He smiled at her.

“Good,” she said. “I want that.”

Rico was blown away. His heart fluttered. “So much,” he said. He ventured on, wanting to talk about the kiss. “Is that what last night was, ya know…?”

“Yes. It was all me. I did it,” she said.

“I did, too,” Rico blurted out. “I am right there with you.”

“Good,” she said, and she grabbed his pinky finger down low, beneath the bar as she stared straight out across El Jaguar. The bartender came and Rico had to unhook his finger and spin around and pay the man. He slapped a few dollars on the table, still feeling funny about the paper currency and the unstable nature of carrying anything around, really. Still, part of the charm, no?

He handed Emma her beer. She had started talking to another woman about boat trips out to the smaller cayes. She grabbed it and smiled at him and turned back to listen to this woman, not really wanting to engage deeply right now, letting this be a club and a bar and a meaningless conversation and fulfill its role in the world.

And then he saw Detective Ignacio. He was walking right through the mouth of El Jaguar. And at his side, was Bennie. That little, crazy-looking dude with the bug eyes who was with Felix at the airport. He had grabbed Rico’s bags, as he remembered it. Rico glanced over at Felix to get a quick read on this, but he was turned the other way.

Rico bumped his elbow into Emma. She looked up and saw Ignacio. She stood straight up, elbows off the bar. She leaned in to Rico without taking her eyes off the slowly entering detective.

“Go talk to him,” Emma almost whispered, talking out of the side of her mouth. “I have to go.” She started to walk away from the bar but Rico grabbed her arm.

“Wait. What?” he asked her.

“I’m out of here,” she stopped and looked at him; judging him all at once, taking him all in, inside and out. “Meet at the basketball courts. When everyone is asleep.”

Rico nodded as she slipped by him and disappeared into the chattering turistas. He knew what she meant. At the end of this street there were basketball courts, next to the water, in a small park. It was where the teenagers got out of their parents’ homes and met to make out on the benches. They had seen them a few nights before, kissing and groping under the stars. He would meet her there. But first he had to talk to Detective Ignacio. From Belize City. Again.

Rico started to walk towards the detective, bumping through a few dancers and drinkers, lo siento lo siento and keeping his eyes on him, waiting for the eye contact, but the detective was looking around the joint, looking for something, someone. But Rico got there finally and he stepped right in front of him.

“Detective! Ola, como estas?” Rico said.

“Hello. Thank you. I am fine,” the detective replied in very deliberate English, mocking his Spanish. “Where are your friends?”

“Friends?” Rico asked, not trying to be coy but wondering who else he meant besides Emma.

“La mujer,” he said, looking past Rico into the darkness, accented with spinning neon lights, pounding nasty beats and an occasional smoke machine coughed out a cloud of dense, dance magic. It wasn’t easy to find anyone in El Jaguar if they wanted to stay low. “Where is she?” His eyes were back on Rico.

“Ah…” Rico started, “the girl I was with last night? Ya, she was here earlier but she left. Not sure where she’s at.”

“You’re staying at the same hotel, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell her, when you see her, that she needs to come see me at the police station on Middle Street. Right by the barber shop and the carniceria.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“If you don't, I will come find her anyway.”

“Que pasa?” Rico asked, nonchalantly.

“I just have a few more questions to ask her.”

“About what?”

“The case,” Detective Ignacio said.

“What case, Detective?” Rico asked. He had read the paper that afternoon. Everyone had by then. Knoxville-Z had died of a heart attack at one of his infamous parties on the island. No one seemed particularly moved, at least not down here. The rest of the world may be in a frenzy of media and opinion and elegies, but La Isla Bonita did not indulge such weaknesses. It mattered only in how it would affect them. Not at all, really. The money that came from that villa in that cul-de-sac would be replaced by another algorithm engineer or digital currency trader that the world would be after but not so much, really. Perhaps none of them as important or strangely fucking relevant to him, Rico thought, standing staring at this old world detective on this analog island.

“Your friend, she did it,” Detective Ignacio said like a crime drama cop to a guest star perp. “She was the last one to see him when he died. And there are ways, mijo, there are ways to pass the tests but to kill nonetheless. Your friend, she knew these ways.”

“Sure,” Rico said, hoping Emma knew a way out of there, thinking about meeting her on a park bench on the cracked asphalt basketball courts near the water at the end of Front Street. “I’ll tell her, but it sounds like a local detective wants to make a name for himself.”

Detective Ignacio laughed, a big cop laugh. “This is much bigger than you, mijo. Then even Knoxville-Z. This is something else. I can smell it. I feel it in the air.” He held out his hands, palm up, surveying the energy in the room. Rico looked around and he felt like he wanted to get in on this detective game, this scene they were playing out here at a dirty club on Front street in San Pedro.

“Where is your little friend? The one you came in with?” Rico asked the detective. The detective looked at him confused. But Rico meant Bennie, the bag handler.

“Bennie,” Rico said his name. The detective snapped a look at him and there was a big commotion. The record actually skipped. And the club stopped.

Detective Ignacio and Rico looked over at the DJ and he was getting into it with Anders. A couple bouncers had stepped over and had tried to grab Anders but he had wiggled away and bumped into the turntables. Anders had his arms up, like whoa whoa whoa.

“This one is your friend, I am assuming,” the detective said.

“Sure,” Rico said.

“Good luck with this one,” Ignacio said. “And tell your girlfriend that I know she did it and I will see her tomorrow.”

“You got it, Detective. Nice running into you… again.” Rico said, with a hint of noir. And then he headed off to bust up the dust up at the DJ booth. He had been here before with Anders. This actually felt familiar and good and exactly the type of thing they were all supposed to be getting into on this vacation.

But he was only thinking of one thing: the hours that needed to pass before he would meet Emma on the basketball courts, on the bench, in the darkest of night. And it had a good old fashioned thriller as the backdrop. A promise. A murder. An unrequited love.

Rico tried to squeeze his way across the dancefloor and help Anders but the tussle seemed to have ended. He saw Anders and the local DJ in the beisbol hat hug it out just as the beat dropped and those tinny echoes of shrill rips started pushing the bodies, making them jerk back and forth, glistening, manic, programmed to the triggers pounding around them, shrouded in pools of smoke machine fog and vibrating, dizzying lights, so that no part could be wholly known but only experienced and here he was, unable to help, out of time, he was just Rico on the dancefloor, writhing with humanity in the Mouth of the Jaguar.

<><><><><><><><><><>

There were no kids making out on any of the benches. Just Rico and the night sky, animated stars, reenacting the stories of the zodiac, beaming clear and clean over the tiny, quiet caye. But he wasn’t looking up, he was peering out into the night, searching, trying to eat up the darkness, open it like a curtain and see beyond, down the beach, wanting and waiting for her to justify his love.

Rico just wanted Emma to show up like she said she would. That would be enough for him, it doesn’t even have to go anywhere or do anything, he could keep the secret, but he wanted to know that she felt it too, that it was real, even if he couldn’t have it. That was the thing for him. The thing that kept him peering into the night.

Emma did come. She came by golf cart, up on top of the beach, along a dirt path beyond the resorts. No one was supposed to use them after dark, but this wasn’t one of those situations where something like that would matter much, or so Rico thought as he heard the whirr and looked up at the path and saw Emma steering a golf cart into the park and down by the courts. Where Rico sat on his bench, excited, distraught, nervous, shy. He stood up and started to do a type of trot over to where Emma had parked the cart.

“Hi,” he said, taking her in as she stepped from the cart and out onto the court, stars putting on their show unheeded above.

“I killed him,” Emma told him. “I did it. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

This did not deter Rico in the least. He saw it as a thing to care about, a way in, a way to protect and love this person.

“Okay,” he said. “You didn’t mean to, so let’s talk to Detective Ignacio, get him to help us. You’re not a murderer.”

“Not really,” she said. “It was a truth serum. I’m sure Felix told you. It’s top secret shit, Rico. Classified. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Emma reached out with both her hands and grabbed both of his. Fucking Felix? What? Rico, asked himself. And then spoke, calmly.

“Let’s go get Detective Igna…” He was cut off.

“No. No cops, stupid. Please shut up for a second.” She squeezed on Rico’s hands, and he felt her rubbing them with her fingers, feeling the veins underneath, his hot blood coursing just beneath his skin.

“I fucking hate The Calendar. El Diario. Like what is happening in Mumbai, in Manila… in, I mean right up the road in Mexico City.” Well, not really up the road, Rico thought, but sure, he knew what she meant. She stared at him. “Fucking free will is at stake, Rico. You’re an artist, we’re all artists, we create, we need to think, freely. It’s our fucking job, Rico. And it’s more than that. So much more. It’s people. It’s the whole fucking thing. It’s what this world is about, it’s what we have always fought for, stood for, died for!! Freedom. And not just chains on our ankles, freedom, Rico. But our minds. The ability to think at all. To make a decision for yourself. I’m ready to fight for that. To fucking die for that, Rico. Aren’t you?” She looked at him, and she had tears in her eyes, moisture really, it wasn’t running down her face, but there were tears gathering. She paused, she looked down at the crooked asphalt, cracked and aged under the sun, dark lines in the dark. “Aren’t you?” she asked again, looking up at him.

“I would die for you,” Rico said, straight as an arrow, direct and true as anything he had ever said. It was a promise and he was having no problem keeping it, or at least feeling completely and totally like he was keeping it, and that’s really the idea, right?

“Okay, then. We have to get out of here,” she squeezed his hands together.

“Wait,” Rico said, “what does all this have to do with Knoxville-Z?”

Emma looked at him. Gave him one last stare, but he was there, present and accounted for, being exactly who he said he was being. She held out her hand. “This,” she said.

Sitting in the palm of her hand was a matte black cube that also seemed to shine and radiate, almost breathing. It wasn’t perceptible, but it was there. And a hum, a vibration that you felt and could hear inside but understood that it made no sound.

“It’s very heavy when I want it to be. It has no weight but immense gravity. That’s what Knox told me,” she said, staring at the cube, buzzing imperceptibly in her palm.” Emma looked up at Rico. “I didn’t really kill him,” she said. “He knew before, he knew the series of events, he knew it was his time, he, he… I swear to you, Rico… he told me to do it.” Emma fell into his arms, her head on his shoulder for a second, like a dime-store crime novel. She lifted herself, staring back at her palm, the cube still spinning.

Rico was staring at the cube too, feeling it being there. Ignoring all the other things. “What is it?” he asked.

“The Source of All Intention,” Emma said, cold and to the point. Rico knew of it as a myth but he was unconcerned about its veracity. Emma had just killed someone over it. “It’s the last algorithm. It’s Knox’s greatest work, his total and complete genius. He unified it. He did it. All those routines, all those algorithms that helped us with romance and taste and style and diet and sleep!! Don’t forget the sleep algo, Rico! But they were all hermeneutics. Little pools of experience circling each other but not adding up to the ‘mind’ to the ultimate algorithm - and this is it. This is the Source of All Intention.” Emma looked down at the cube. “It can be so heavy if I decide to feel it. And then I can make it disappear.” She waved her hand and it went away like a cheap magician. “He attached it to me. Knox did. It’s here. It’s a part of me now. She waved her hand and it came back in its vibrating, nothingness. They stared at it anew.

“So this will connect everything? Full takeover? Finish the job, really huh?” Rico asked, rhetorically.

“They will know everything about everything we know and feel and desire. Everything will be preemptive. Food. And art. And love. You will always already know all of it when you come into this world and will never have to make another choice again. The perfect system. The last algorithm.”

“How did you get it from Knox? What the fuck?”

“He gave it to me,” Emma said. “He had known about that moment for at least as long as he had created The Source. He knew everything, really. Omniscient, in as far as the word can be taken. And people found out. Governments found out. And he denied it and he ran. He hid in plain sight so that no one would fuck with him. But he was off the networks. He wasn’t hiding himself. He was just staying out of some federal jail where they wanted answers in exchange for his freedom. What he really was doing was hiding this,” she nodded slightly at the cube.

“He knew you were coming to kill him?”

“I wasn’t. I had the truth serum. I got it from Felix. It’s very dangerous. To get to the absolute truth, the heart must almost completely stop and his did. He knew it would. He told me to do it anyway. And then he told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That The Source was real. That it would be too much for people to handle and in the wrong hands could ruin everything. The universe, everything.”

“Of course,” Rico said. “So, we’re going to destroy it, right?”

“We can’t. It can’t be destroyed. It can only be delivered. I have to get it to the right person and they will know what to do with it. Knox told me this. All of it, the truth, as his heart slowed to a standstill and he laid down and died and I saw his chest come to a rest after his last breath. We just wanted… the truth.” Rico wondered who she meant by ‘we’ but she threw her arms around Rico’s neck and held on to him for a long time and he forgot. She pulled his head down and into her. He kissed her neck and felt her hips and pulled her body into his and kissed her lips and felt like he was flying away, leaving his body and joining the stars’ revue.

Emma pulled away and looked at Rico, holding onto his arms and gripping them with a confident fear. And suddenly Rico was gripped with anxiety but not about The Source of All Intention or how they were going to get it to the right person, but because he realized and was furiously angry that Anders might be a part of this as well.

“What about Anders?” Rico said, holding back his emotion.

“What do you think?” Emma asked and his heart lightened, thinking that it was obvious to everyone perhaps that she had chosen him. “He can’t handle shit like this. He’s never fought for anything in his life,” Emma told Rico. And Rico realized she wasn’t talking about love, she was talking about free will. He didn’t care.

“What are we doing next?” he asked.

“We’re getting out of here, baby, that’s what we’re doing.”

“Okay.”

“I am going back to the cabana and I am going to tell Anders.”

“What?” Rico hurriedly asked. “Tell him what?”

“I can’t tell him the truth, Rico. He’d crack, he’d confess, he’d get us all caught.”

“So, what then? What are you going to tell him, Emma?” Rico was nervous about her answer.

“That I am in love with you, Rico.” And his heart skipped through lilies in his chest. “That I am going to run off with you. Tonight. That the heart wants what the heart wants and this is it. It will be easier this way,” Emma said, losing momentum on the last bit and dropping her volume so that Rico barely heard or didn’t care to.

“And then what?”

“Meet me at the docks by the kayaks right before dawn. We’re going to paddle out to the reef and get to the big water to pick up the Quintana Roo.” She let his hands go and started to lean towards the golf cart. He knew the Quintana Roo, or the QR was a tram, a pirate tram, one that ran from the tip of Mexico to Central America, operated underground, but very common and a known way to travel from analog country to analog country. Clandestinely. But how were they getting from the reef to the QR?

“How does that work?” he asked as she was walking away, stepping into the cart, one hand on the roof.

“We’re getting picked up on the other side of the reef,” Emma said, sitting down in the cart.

“By whom?” Rico asked her, standing alone on the rough surface of the court.

“Felix,” she said, and hit the pedal with an electric whir and headed off down the path into the darkness.

What the fuck with this guy? Rico asked himself.

Emma had been there when he got to the dock. She said very little, only that she had told Anders she and Rico were in love and they were running off together and she begged him not to follow because it wouldn’t matter in the end. Rico loved to hear it all, every word, but there were few and she put a finger to his lips to quiet him when he became excited and they slid into their kayaks and headed off in the dark water, lit by the moon, reflecting the stars and the white water from pounding waves against the reef, where they were headed.

The silence didn’t bother Rico. He liked it, he was still deep in thought, wondering how at this time last night they were running from a murder. A murder that Emma had now confessed to, a willing victim, a magical cube that held the future of free will and some secret society or movement that Emma had become a part of and seemed to have sacrificed it all. Rico didn’t even really know she cared about free will so much. Or anything this much. But here they were. There was a lot to think about as he continued to glide, paddle to paddle, side to side, keeping time with Emma, just behind her, following her wherever she was going to take him.

As they got close to the reef, to the spot where the barracudas had made their stand only a couple days ago, and he felt the slight sting in the healing bite, as the saltwater splashed up and got inside the wound, the waves were roaring and the ocean swelled, where the big water met the coral, shallow on one side, deep drop off on the other. Emma stopped rowing, she gave a short yell over the waves, “We have to get to the other side!”

Rico nodded, yes. Of course, yes. And he was good in the water, a surfer, a diver and he could certainly paddle a kayak, but only on reefs and through mangroves. He hadn’t gone over the top of big swell into the deep water. But here he was and he knew Emma wasn’t turning back, so neither was he. He figured he had the gist of it but was worried about Emma. Rico held up his hand for Emma to pause.

“We have to time it right,” he yelled out, paddling right next to her kayak and putting his hand on the back end of it, holding his paddle in the other hand, useless at this point. “Wait for my sign, then paddle like crazy,” he told her, looking up at the waves, letting one after the other crash, trying to get the timing. The idea was to hit the face of the wave when it was still swelling, before it turned over and slammed into the coral in a spray of white water. The wave at that point would just flip the kayak over and take you down to the sharp coral beds with a ferocious velocity.

Rico watched and held steady on the back of Emma’s kayak, bobbing in the surf, waiting for a break. He saw a set of three waves, illuminated by moonlight, catching glimpses of the water as it rose and fell. The first two were breaking fast and Rico saw them start to turn over, to become falling water instead of rising, and smash into the reef, breaking up and rolling past them as tiny bubbles in the night. But the third swell, it started further out and wasn’t picking up momentum as fast as the others and Rico felt like they had a chance on this one.

“Let’s go. Go go go!” He yelled out and pushed as hard as he could in the rolling water on the back of Emma’s kayak. She paddled hard and the swell got underneath her and lifted her up and over.

Rico was at a disadvantage. The push had sent him backwards a bit and he had to grab his paddle with both hands and get himself righted and he started to dig in and climb the swell but he was late. The wave started to curl and even in the dark, he could see it above him, coming down, not out. Curling and turning white as he felt the kayak climb up at a strange angle. He was going to go over. The wave was going to flip him and so he bailed.

Rico’s arms lifted him out of the kayak and he threw himself headfirst into the body of the wave like a merman, flapping his feet to try and get any momentum. It didn’t really work. He cleared the kayak before it flipped over and smashed into the reef, but he was a cork in the waves, he had no direction. He got into the body of it and ducked under the white caps, but he was in the swirl, sneakers in the dryer as he and his friends used to say when they would get tumbled out in the surf. He let the water take him for a few seconds as he got his bearings and straightened out a bit and started swimming as hard as he could to the surface.

Rico’s hand exploded with fire. He had been ripping at the water with his cupped hands trying with all his energy to get to the surface, but he was going the wrong way. He had been turned around in the swirl and was swimming to the bottom. He realized this as soon as his hand hit the razor sharp coral and split open in a few places, spewing blood out into the sea. He froze for a moment, feeling the burn, realizing he was under water, in a pounding surf up against a reef in the darkest dead of night and he was bleeding.

This had not turned out well and he had a vacancy, an emptiness well up in him that made him quite numb. He wasn’t really feeling anything and didn’t care, really at all about this predicament. Maybe that was the rush of realization, maybe this was exactly the feeling you had right before you left this world so that the transition would be graceful, a not-caring to counter an entire life of caring or pretending to. He knew from a Jack London XP he had created for REI, To Light a Fire, that right before you froze to death you felt very warm and comfortable. It made sense, Rico thought as he ran out of breath.

And then another thought came to him. A bigger one. Emma! The only good that can happen in this life, is good intention. A Kantian moment amongst a largely Epicurean life, but here in the dark water at the bottom of the sea, maybe that was enough feeling to take action, to give it a shot.

The numbness melted away and he felt a warm flow of positive movement, of going for something without hesitation even in the face of insurmountable odds. He knew where the bottom was now, he was already there. And as he felt his lungs start to give, to collapse on themselves, he put one hand, cupped, after the other, bleeding, and swam in the direction he needed to go. Up.

It was black. The sea was black and Rico was fairly certain his eyes were also closed, but he couldn’t tell, really. Not sure. It felt like a tunnel, like warp speed, a transition to another dimension. Death, perhaps, but it didn’t matter, he kept pulling at the water, climbing even as his breath was gone, he had never felt anything quite like it. As far as he had ever gone without a breath.

And he popped out. His head rose above the sea and he felt the night air and opened his mouth to fill his lungs but also got a giant gulp of water as he bounded on the waves. He started to cough and spit, still trying to breath, arms slapping, hand bleeding, flailing in the dark. And maybe it was the coughing that signaled the others, but he heard a voice. Emma. She was calling his name. And he coughed and breathed and choked on the sea as he saw a light and hands reach out for him.

It was the top of the tram, like an old submarine, half in and half out of the water. A spotlight was on him and he could make out some silhouettes, he raised his hand and felt other fingers, grasping for him, he locked on and let himself be pulled, still choking, coughing up the sea he was leaving.

They pulled him onto the metal hull. He saw Emma’s face, her beautiful eyes, scared as hell, tripping, not comfortable at all here in the bounding waves. And someone opened the hatch, a metal spinning wheel that opened a door to the inside.

“Fuck, my friend. That was close,” Rico heard a familiar voice, as he spit up more water, his almost lifeless body sprawled across the hull. “Let’s get you inside,” he looked up but couldn’t make out the faces in the darkness.

“Rico!!” He heard Emma call his name, tears in her voice and he felt warm inside. He had made a good decision. He got dragged down into the portal, he grabbed onto a ladder and descended into the body of the tram. There was light that blinded him and he looked over at his rescuer for the first time and saw who it was. Felix. This fucking guy, Rico thought and he passed out.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The Pirate Tram, as it was most commonly known, had lines around the world, all run independently but almost identical in operation. Private investors fund different tram lines with dark money, supported by drug dealers and party promoters and sex workers and just some good old fashioned entertainment folks that liked spectacle and wealth. Gladden Spit was the latter but every stop on the tram had a little drugs and sex involved, like most things.

This was the Tram Caribe, running from Trinidad, up and around the curve of the islands, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat and then turning the corner at Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and past Jamaica, The Caymans and then to mainland and Quintana Roo, the line they were on that went down to Belize around to Roatan off the coast of Honduras, Costa Rica and the end of the line at Panama City, extended after they blasted the canal into the Strait of Panama.

There were other lines of course - South China Sea, the Bengal Line, Mediterranean, Pacific (Alaska to Galapagos), Trans-Atlantic and Oceania - but they were all the same. An underwater, rail less tram that operated magnetically, electrical signals that took you from one underwater hotel and experiential venue to another. Gambling, of course. But the old wonders of the sea like the Great Barrier Reef, the Mariana Trench, and where they were headed now Gladden Spit, the home of the whale shark.

As for the whale sharks, there were no real creatures of any size anymore, they were all semi-organics, made from living tissues but programmable and for the most part, controllable. Scientists and behaviorists from around the world had all worked on them to make them as close to the originals as possible and it worked. People flocked and gambled and fucked and danced all night across the seas. It was like the old Disney parks partnered with the old Las Vegas still all connected by trams, but now underwater and for all intents and purposes, still run by gangsters. It was a black-market Disney, which was how everyone wanted Disney to be in the first place. Agencies and studios were often pulled in to help create the entertainment, the promotions, the living video walls, and so on.

Blockbuster, Rico, Anders and Emma’s production studio, had never been involved, they had turned all of it down. Governments were never too pleased and they also had projects and lots of money, so it was usually a choice your company had to make. Emma had chosen. She said no to the Pirate Trams. But Anders, Rico and her all knew plenty of other companies or freelancers who had gotten in on the racket.

And they weren’t alone, celebrities would make appearances, musicians, comedians, pulling a big payout for a few nights’ work and a long dark weekend on the tram lines. You could always tell when an artist had made an appearance because they would pop up in another location around the world, without notice, without anyone knowing they had left. There were no credentials or passes you needed to travel on the trams. It was the blockchain of transportation. They were open to anyone with money. And those with a lot of it, or the power they needed to get it, could travel on a solo tram. A luxury box in the world of commuter trains. That is where Rico found himself when he came up from his unconsciousness.

“We will connect with Fausto at Gladden Spit,” Rico had not yet opened his eyes, but he could hear Felix speaking to Emma.

“And then what?” Emma asked.

“He will take us to the team, who will take us to the target and we will find the answer.” Felix sounded confident, like a leader of righteous subversives. Rico started to open his eyes. The light burned, but he wanted it, he wanted to see and started to clear his soggy eyes, his blurry vision, and get things into focus. He was lying down, a cushioned lounge, circular around the vessel, covered in video screens, ambient with old nature or patterns or nothing at all, a glow, a warmth. The inside of the solo tram could be whatever you wanted it to be. Rico had never been in a solo tram, only the more crowded tram experience. But this was more of a green room for a major celebrity that traveled around the world on a magnetic rail, almost but not quite, silent without any sensation of motion.

“The answer?” Emma asked, and through his just opening eyes he could see that she was staring at the Source of All Intention, the last algorithm. And he could feel it too. Its weight and vibration.

Felix answered quickly, “He will know what to do. He will know how to destroy it or use it or deactivate its power over us all.”

Rico was getting his vision back, and he saw Felix and Emma sitting next to each other, staring down at the black cube, levitating above her hand. He sat up.

“Who the fuck are you talking about?” Rico asked, just wanting to get into it. His hand burned in several places, and he wasn’t sure he was able to move two of his fingers, but he seemed okay. The thing was he was here now, on this adventure, protecting Emma at all costs and it had already almost cost him his life. Nature of the promise, he thought. He just wanted to know what the fuck was going on, so at least he would have that, know a little more about what was going to come at him next.

“Marcos Real,” Felix said very matter of fact but with a surge of pride. He pronounced the ‘Real’ in Spanish - Ree-awhl. Marcos Real. Rico had heard this name before. He was an activist or revolutionary from Mexico, although the people who followed him called him a prophet. Rico didn’t know too much.

“He’s been captured, Rico,” Emma said, looking up from the cube. “The Calendar, El Diario, has him.”

“We have to get this to him or him to it,” Felix said, nodding towards the cube in Emma’s hand. She moved her hand swiftly and it disappeared, gone from sight, maybe from the physical realm, entirely. Rico wasn’t sure how it worked. It didn’t matter. “That is where Fausto comes in. He is very good at finding people.” Felix said with a smirk.

“We think Marcos Real is in Mexico City, the center of El Diario, the heart of the enemy, where the algorithms run the country, control the people,” Emma recited, sounding every bit the revolutionary herself.

“Fausto will help us. We are meeting him at Gladden Spit and we’ll figure out our next move from there,” Felix told him. Rico had also heard this name, a gangster from Panama that ran the vices up and down the Caribbean, the route of the Pirate Tram, itself. Again, Rico knew little more than soundbites and clips and infrequent gossip, but it seemed strange to be connecting these dots, to pull the news into your world in a way that felt unnatural, surreal.

“Why does Fausto give a shit?” Rico asked the two of these conspirators. “He’s a gangster.”

“That’s exactly why he gives a shit,” Felix said.

“If you can’t make any life choices, if the algorithms make all your decisions, gangsters disappear first.”

“Vice is the first victim when El Diario takes over. Vice is free will in its purest form,” Emma added.

“He’s on our side,” Felix said. “Trust me.”

Rico found the sound of that last line to feel inauthentic, as if Felix was getting used to saying it, more professional than emotional. Whatever, he thought. He was here for Emma. And if he got to meet one of the world’s most notorious gangsters along the way, well, there you go.

“Okay,” Rico said, playing along with them. “But seriously, you are both in media and marketing, we all are! How the hell did you wind up involved in this? What is going on?” Rico was a bit too emotional, exasperated, willing to play along but needing to know where all this energy came from. Emma and Felix looked at each other. Rico watched Emma give the floor to Felix with her eyes.

“That project we did at Crown. With Luke Rey,” Felix started, paused. Picked it back up. “Lucas introduced us to some people at a party. They were trying to work with Crown, but Luke didn’t want any part of it. Still, we started talking to Frida, a confidant and disciple of Marcos Real and the leader of a revolutionary group in southern Mexico that were fighting the takeover of Mexico City by El Diario. We were pulled in, man. Frida is very inspiring,” Felix finished.

“You know Luke has always been one for causes, especially revolutions, right?,” Emma said, smiling at him. It was true, Lucas Rey, a colleague and entrepreneur, owner and chief creative at his agency, Crown, was also an occasional radical. He was always into some freedom-adjacent movement and throwing parties and galas and inviting global activists and the celebrities who adored them. But he also invited his advertising family so they could make nice and see how communications can be reined in and manifested as a behavior change for any of these worthwhile movements, or at least worth Luke’s while.

Rico had seen some of this before and it made sense but not at this level. There was a murder. They were headed in a pirate solo tram to an underground whale shark party, where they were going to meet an international gangster to rescue a semi-mystical wizard to save the world from mind control and champion free will. Big stuff.

“And Knoxville-Z?” Rico asked.

“We tried to get Luke involved after we had met Frida and started going to some meetings and following important threads, underground threads, dark threads. But he wasn’t into it,” Felix explained.

“But he told us about Knox,” Emma looked right at Rico. “He said that Knox had dropped out because he had cracked it - The Source of All Intention. A rumor, I know, but Lucas knew that it was real. That every government was going to use it to unite their Calendars or try and destroy it, to never let such a thing happen. He told us Knox had it. That he had seen it. And then he refused to speak about it ever again.” Emma was telling the truth. Rico could tell.

“So, you killed Knoxville-Z?” Rico asked, now leaning, from his section of the luxury tram, to get closer, more intimate for such a conversation.

“It was truth serum; we just wanted the truth about The Source. He wanted to die. He told me it was all going to happen. He knew. He knew all of this. I told you, Rico. I told you this,” Emma wasn’t losing it but Rico could tell she did not want to have this conversation.

“Where would you get a truth serum that can either make people tell the absolute truth or they die? Who has things like that?” It was a fair question. Rico was answering Emma’s energy with his own, getting down to it.

“I got it,” Felix said, butting in on a connection Emma and Rico were having. “I worked with Frida and she had contacts, she knew people who could get things like that. Untraceable.”

Rico looked over at Felix, looking him up and down, realizing that it was him; Felix was the person who set this all up. He connected the dots of this entire trip – this vacation that now felt like an assassination. Frida? Untraceable killer truth serum? It all seemed unreal to Rico, in the way that any experience that is the most real is the hardest to believe in.

“What about Anders?” Rico asked just to disrupt the flow a bit, but a good question, nonetheless.

“You know him, Rico,” Emma said, Felix falling silent, letting her take this one. “He’s into The Calendar. He believes algorithms are smarter than we are. He doesn’t care either way. And he doesn’t know about any of this. And I would never tell him. I will never tell him.”

“And Frida?” Rico asked. “Does she know you killed Knox and got The Source? How does she fit into all this?”

Felix spoke up, quickly. “Frida is in Oaxaca, where she is originally from. She is in the mountains between Oaxaca City and the ocean with Los Elegidos - the chosen ones. They are making their last stand against El Diario there. They have gone completely off the grid and are resisting every effort to get them back on the network and on the diary, The Calendar. It’s a revolution, Rico,” Felix said.

Rico felt the tiniest sense of movement in the solo tram, seated on the nano-fiber cushions, watching ambient colors wave in and out in a soothing, even tone. Nothing like that was happening inside of him. It was chaotic, different storms, colliding and crashing against him. He was centered now only by his commitment, his choice, his intent.

“Emma,” he said to her, “when did you become a revolutionary?”

“When I found out I believed in something. That the world is just competing stories, competing worlds that fucking matter, Rico. It matters which story wins. And I am not a determinist. I believe in free will, Rico. I believe in the individual and making choices right or wrong. I do.”

“Okay,” Rico said, and he meant it. It was enough for him.

“What about you, Rico? You’re on this journey with us now,” Emma looked over at Felix and then back to Rico. “When did you become a revolutionary?”

Rico stared straight into Emma’s eyes to see whatever he could see, but he saw only her passion and intensity for this cause, for the ‘revolution’ he guessed. But he was in. He knew this.

“From the moment I met you,” Rico said. And there it was, out in the open, a a hundred meters under the surface of the Caribbean Sea, headed to a rendezvous with a Panamanian gangster at a whale shark retreat and casino. Probably a bunch of other shit, too.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The average American adult makes 35,000 decisions every day — from what they wear to what size coffee they order. Each decision puts some degree of strain on their mental capacity. As the day goes on, they get tired and stop wanting to make decisions. It’s called decision fatigue. The biggest mistake they make in life is believing that choice is a benefit. No, it's a tax. Consumers don’t want more choices. They want confidence in the choices presented.

Rico had tapped into the book Anders had given him years ago, when they first started Blockbuster. It was called Freedom. It was one of the first popular books to be written by artificial intelligence, by a machine. Strangely enough it was the machines’ way of explaining to people why they should stop deciding things and let the hardware takeover. The rewards were evident and it became a trend. And then much more than that. Sometimes derided, but often applied, it was a very powerful tool for marketing and living and not deciding things and having them be perfect because of it. This all-knowing, supreme analyst had written a book on human behavior that if you followed it worked much better than all your other options or guesses or your own human analysts that were neither supreme nor all-knowing. Rico had been tapping into it again on the rest of their journey to Gladden Spit, reminding himself that it was also the basis of their business model at Blockbuster, the agency he was a partner in.

Data is the new armament in the media war. You can sell data to markets to inform algorithms so their products and services are more attractive and addictive. But data on its own is a shapeless block. Signals are the mallets and chisels that bring form and utility to the algorithms. And if data is the new oil, algorithms are the refineries, and signals make the oil lighter, sweeter, and more valuable.

“Holy fuck, man!! Look at this one! Right there, right there, maaaan!” Fausto exclaimed as they all turned and watched a giant, beautiful fish, the largest in the world, swim not 10 meters from the glass wall of the submersed edifice they were in - Rico, Felix, Emma, whom we have met before, but now joined by the Panamanian gangster and entrepreneur, known as Fausto. And he was freaking out on the whale sharks. His whale sharks. He was an owner in Gladden Spit, this mega underwater entertainment complex, constantly surrounded by whale sharks. And these giant fish weren’t real exactly, but exact replicas. Biomorphs. Impressive, nonetheless.

“Wow,” Emma said, as the enormous sea creature with its grey green, bespeckled skin, shovel-flat nose and long, but balanced body, cruised by at a slow and viewable pace. But all that Rico could think about was why they were here. He was here for Emma, of course. But they - Felix and Emma and Fausto - as he understood it, we're here for free will. The opposite of Freedom, the book Anders had shared with him about algorithms and behavior, about the burden of deciding everything. Rico couldn’t stop thinking about that.

They were sitting in a booth in the vast circular bubble that held them under the sea. It was like a club and an airport lounge and a casino with a big show every hour. People roamed about from table to table, between dance floors and gambling machines and gawkers trying to get to the glass to see themselves reflected, to see themselves watching such an amazing creature, like a mirror in the bathroom. But Fausto had gotten them the prime spot, up in the corner, raised - the booth with the best view, the booth with no reflection.

Rico felt his hand, the one that had been sliced up on the coral. It didn’t burn anymore, some chemistry had been applied and it was healing but he was worried that maybe a tendon or something he did not know the name of had been cut or impaired because his last two fingers on his left hand had been compromised; he still couldn’t truly move them.

But he was alive. Emma was here and Felix had gotten them to Gladden Spit to see the whale sharks and meet a gangster that would somehow get them to the prophet, Marcos Real. And that guy would know what to do with this cube that appeared and disappeared in Emma’s hand. The Source of All Intention.

And the whale sharks really are impressive, Rico thought, as another one drifted by like the opening shot of the battle cruiser in Star Wars that he had done as an XP for Nationwide Insurance.

Fausto switched up his gaze from whale sharks to Emma and Rico. He pointed back and forth with his finger. “You guys like to dance? To party?” Fausto said with a tiny giggle, a gangsta slip, on purpose. He excluded Felix from the pointing as they sat in the round booth.

Emma looked over at Rico. Rico smiled. “What the fuck, man?” Fausto said, now laughing a bit, letting it come out. “What the fuck with you two? Jesus, man.” He shook his head. Rico and Emma were caught off guard, too stunned to speak. Felix looked away at an ambient whale shark. “As I was saying, do you like to party?”

And Fausto spread his arms out, looking out over the Gladden Spit - named for the tiny atoll that was a favorite launching spot for whale shark sight-seeing when it was real and rare and very hard to do. And there were three different dance floors, one out in the open, one enclosed in the corner, and one an impromptu situation at a bar.

Characters were abundant, like Rick’s in Casablanca, a wayward station for people going somewhere else or nowhere at all. Gambling bells and whistles hit between the waves of different DJs across a vast cylindrical space, the deep blue sea surrounding, holding it all down, keeping it private. It was fun. It was big and good and the whale sharks just kept silently passing a nautical, mystical, magical experience as people got lit up and did all the things they were expected to in such a venue.

“We partied last night,” Rico spoke up. “Pretty hard.” He had just wanted to say something. It wasn’t a great answer.

“What’s your thing?” Emma turned on Fausto, tried to change the conversation. He laughed, then looked at Emma, over to Rico and then back to Emma again.

“Drugs!” Fausto yelled out. “And other things, too, of course. Finance, now, mainly. I mean, man, I am an investor here, no? An owner. That’s what I do, I like to own properties where people have a good time. Always. Never stops, eh?”

“Ya? That’s what you do?” Emma asked with the voice of the indignant. “Then why bother with this? Why are you helping us?”

Felix shot her a look, a look that Rico had never seen before. It was a shut the fuck up look, Rico thought. And he had not seen that before, not from Anders, not from anyone to Miss Emma. She was beyond reproach. Until now. Emma didn’t care or seem to even notice.

Fausto laughed again. “Ah… yes. I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t help other people, I don’t have to. By helping myself, I help the world. Look around you,” Fausto said this last bit leaning into the center of the table, the last thing you would think needed to be whispered but he almost leaked it out of his mouth and it sounded like a threat. Look around you.

Emma did as she was threatened. She looked around. Rico stiffened. Emma leaned back into the center of the table, and matched Rico’s threat.

“This is fucking anarchy, this thing you have created, so please… tell me why you are helping us?” Emma looked Fausto in the eye. She was not wavering. The tension broke. Fausto leaned back and laughed, again.

“You people, man… this is too much, you are too much, truly, I mean this,” he paused. He looked around at the party, at the clandestine outlaw resort that was publicly known and accepted. where everyone in the end would end up if they knew what was good for them. At least once, Rico thought, still watching closely what was happening between these two.

“The world, my dear, is anarchy. The way it is now, right now,” Fausto determinedly tapped his finger on the table to bring some emphasis to the conversation. “People like each other, they find their own dramas, they find their own ways to group together and do whatever they like, it’s better this way, just look…” and he waved his arms across the chaotic scene, reverberations of sounds, waves of noise and bodies moving in exultation ripping through the space.

“The governments, the laws, the rules… those are anarchy too. There is no rule that can’t be undone, it’s not the government versus the bad guys, mija? Please!” Fausto laughed to himself this time, quietly, almost subconscious, like he was remembering something. “We are in this together. We work together. This anarchy, this system of governments and gangsters… we are not the anarchy, the world is anarchy, we are just living here with a few different ways that humans organize themselves, to party inside the anarchy. In the WIIIILD!” Fausto almost screamed this word, stretching it out like a cat’s hiss.

It was effective, Rico thought. He got it. He thought of when he had studied the Reddit/Place experiment in school. A million pixels in a 1000x1000 square were offered up for anyone around the world to change the color of any pixel every 5 minutes. Anarchy. But individuals quickly formed collectives who organized and created recognizable patterns, images and symbols. Country flags, skull and crossbones and even the Mona Lisa.

The Reddit experiment was repeated many times, and it seemed there was no other way to do it than to organize, to become a community out of individual choice. And yet some of the pixel wars and much of the time spent were against each other, flags vs flags, skulls vs hearts. It all played out for 72 hours and then they turned it off. Frozen in chaos. But there was no chaos. It was clearly defined, an image of conflict and collectivism, derived from each individual getting to decide for themselves. Anarchy. But also free will. Rico remembered all this and maybe even agreed with what Fausto was saying, but was Emma? This was important. He looked over at her and she wasn’t reacting at all. A cold stare at Fausto.

“Then why are you helping us?” Emma said in a flat, hard tone.

“Ah… C’mon? You must know that if we let El Diario take over our cities, to make all the decisions for us, then there would be no need for a man like me.”

Felix seemed angry, Emma was glaring now with more intensity and Rico understood what he was trying to say.

“You won’t need laws either” Rico said, not trying to make Emma even angrier, although it did have that effect. “No government, no bad guys, eh?” But he also saw the long game, if this gangster was here to help us, don’t piss him off out of the gate.

“Exactly, man. Exactly right. The governments and I, we work together, we keep the laws meaningful from each side, we give the people what they want, as many things to choose from as we can,” and he smiled and it was big and quite charming. “I can’t let the machines take over, man. I will have nothing to do,” he smirked.

“Well, then tell us… what are we going to do? What’s next?” Felix sounded impatient, overwrought.

“Ah, man. This fight has been going on for a very long time, we aren’t going to solve this one tonight. Tonight, it’s time to party, to use some of that free will, no? Let’s have a good time. Then we’ll worry about what’s next.”

“I didn’t come here to party,” Emma said and started to continue but Fausto cut her off.

“What did you come here for? Why are you here?” Fausto asked her, soft and clean. But Felix cut in and answered for her.

“Our friend Lucas Rey, he introduced us to a revolutionary, someone who is in this very long fight, every day. And she taught us that this would not just ruin our professions but our lives, everyone’s life, forever,” Felix said.

“And Luke told us how to find Knoxville-Z,” Emma continued, “and locate these rebels, Los Elegidos, and help them win this war. To save us all. That has a ring to it, you know?” Emma finished with light humor. Keeping it upbeat. Rico knew she had said too much.

“Ok, yes. I have worked with both of these gentlemen before. Lucas Rey helped me create these whale sharks you see all around you. Semi-organics. They are programmed, but part of them is alive but I don’t know which part,” he chuckled. Rico got nervous. He felt a knot in his stomach, that was already there, tighten.

“And I know Knox, as well. He often needed my assistance in the more delicate negotiations with the governments around here,” he looked at Emma. “I also helped him get what he needed to throw parties. You know of these, yes? These parties… you have been?”

Felix jumped in, “You know that’s where we are coming from Fausto, that was our communication. That’s why we’re here.”

“Right. Yes, of course, Felix,” Fausto addressed Felix but did not take his eyes off Emma. Rico tightened. He felt the pain in his left hand as he made a grip.

“So, then… do you have it?” Fausto was ice, a sharp clear tone that cut through the rowdy, rambling waves of noise coming up from the party floor of Gladden Spit. Rico couldn’t let this continue. He needed to get Fausto’s attention.

“Hey! Do you think we’re fucking stupid?” Rico yelled, not cutting through the waves of sound but riding it, hitting Fausto hard.

“I barely know you, man” Fausto turned to Rico and away from Emma. This was better, Rico thought. He could change this up. He could get Fausto off the idea that Emma was holding the Source of All Intention in the palm of her hand.

“We know where it is. Knox helped us with that,” Rico said, looking into Fausto’s searching eyes.

“Is that when you killed him?” Fausto asked.

Rico ignored him and marched on, “But no one would understand what to do with it, not you, not any of the governments, or scientists, no one except one man - Marcos Real. And we’re here to find him and bring him to it. That’s how we’re going to conduct this business,” Rico felt okay with that answer, as he had never negotiated with gangsters before.

But then he saw the eyes of Fausto tighten and brighten and Rico knew in his body, down to his feet, that Fausto did not believe him and he knew that they had The Source of All Intention. He could not fight that feeling, that truth, no matter what story his head was trying to tell him. He felt in the tingling, electric knowledge that coursed through him that Fausto was surely going to kill them and take the prize. And Fausto saw that Rico knew it. And that sucked.

“Okay, man. Okay, okay. I understand. We find your guy and then we go to La Fuente.” Fausto leaned back and seemed to relax. Rico knew he meant The Source, The Fountain. And he knew that Fausto knew they already had it. He didn’t have it in him to lie at that level. It made his heart sink. He looked over at Emma, she hadn’t seen what he had felt in Fausto. Felix looked relieved as well. As if they were back on course. Like Rico had done it, had averted the danger. Rico knew he had not.

“But first,” Fausto exclaimed, rising from the table, “before we go on our little adventure, we will enjoy this party. Tonight!”

And then there was a huge commotion that ripped through the crowd, people started running and screaming. Felix, Rico and Emma also rose up in Fausto’s private booth above the fray and they all looked out over the party. Gladden Spit was under attack.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“This is not possible!” Fausto was furious. He banged on the table and surveyed the scene one more time. There was running and screaming still, and the troopers were rolling in, like the raid that had just been at the night before - more raids than Rico had ever seen, which was none before the last forty-eight hours. “Follow me,” Fausto said and jumped over the back of the booth where the employees go back and forth to serve their booth. It was a meter below where they sat, around the back and Rico lost sight of him.

He turned to his other two travelers. Emma was looking straight at him, emanating what the fuck do we do. Felix was looking around frantically as the music stopped and the screams got higher and people started to be tackled and detained. As this was Rico’s second raid in as many days, he wondered how many were left on this trip? The troopers were still a long way across the party floor but it was all happening quickly. And then Rico saw Detective Ignacio. He was cool, calm in the storm, standing in the middle of the chaos between a bar and some gambling tables, people fleeing and pursuing in crisscrossing lines of flight around him.

Standing next to the Detective was Bennie. That strange bag handler who was with Felix at the airport, who was at the Jaguar, lurking near the dance floor. He was looking at them, right at them. Rico froze. He saw Felix look away from where Bennie was standing and right at Emma.

“Let’s go down there,” Felix said, grabbing her shoulders. “They’ll know what to do.” Felix started to raise his hand, started to beckon them. Emma grabbed it out of the air and yanked it down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Emma spoke between her teeth. “He’s about to arrest me for murder.”

“No way,” Rico called out, backing up Emma. Felix looked confused. Detective Ignacio and Bennie had summoned a small group of troopers and they were headed across the floor to the booth.

“No fucking way, man. We’re leaving. Now.” It was Fausto. He had returned and came back around the booth, urging them with a look, anxious and agitated with violence in his eyes.

“Now,” Emma said, casting her lot with Fausto. Rico was already grabbing her arm and moving around the booth to the servant’s entrance where Fausto was headed. They brushed by Felix who let one last glance at the casino floor linger as the troopers swarmed through the audience, rounding up partiers. Rico had no idea what he was looking for or why he would be pausing in any way.

“Hey!!” he screamed out.

Felix turned to look at Rico, then back out again at the bad guys coming for them. As Detective Ignacio and Bennie continued in their pursuit, Felix had no choice. None of them did. They ran.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The whale sharks were almost as impressive in their homes as in the water. They were on giant long trays in a cavernous warehouse below the party floors of Gladden Spit. Rico ran his hand along one and it felt every bit as he imagined a whale shark to feel, that slimy, fishy covering, over that space-polymer texture that fish of the deep seem to have, not quite rubber, not quite skin, not quite scales but tough and felt like it was made to do exactly what it was supposed to do. It felt unreal when it was natural. He knew this was a semi-organic, but made from a biological material, grown and fused together with chips and signals and made to come alive, programmed to behave within natural parameters. This had gotten Rico thinking, having tapped into Freedom on the tram and just realizing how this periphery thing maybe was never so periphery and certainly not now that he was in the middle of it. Of a revolution he had never known to exist but had been happening around him.

The semi-organic that Rico was sliding his hand over like the side of a dry-docked submarine, moved, a twitch, a feel of itself still working through a program, dreaming, like an android, of electric fish. But Rico snapped his hand back, a natural reaction to a natural-feeling motion of the biggest fish on the planet. And that snapped him out of his tiny reverie he was, after all, running for his life.

Fausto had led them through the kitchen, hustling, one after the other as staff started to gather their things and go, hearing the commotion outside. Fausto went to a freight elevator in the back, it was buried behind a few boxes and stacked containers, not hidden, but not in use. He threw it all aside, the kitchen was in chaos, the sound of the troopers closing in. They had jumped in and Fausto had pressed a code into the elevator pad, it was not one of the floors. But the elevator had gone into motion and they went down and down deep into the belly of Gladden Spit. And when they finally stopped, Fausto pulled up the straps that swung open the huge metal doors and they looked upon the whale shark warehouse, like an underwater boat yard for a 100 giant fish, set up on scaffolding, being repaired, updated, getting sea-ready for another show.

It was dimly lit with rows of tubes along the trays, but they could all see the dark silhouettes and smell the ocean, the fish of it all in this dark underwater lab. No one said a word, strangely. Rico pulled his hand from the twitching biomorph and saw Fausto motioning them forward and they all started running between the whale sharks, following behind him, Rico could hear the slippery echoes of their footsteps in the cavernous space.

“Hey!! Wait. Stop!!!” Felix was screaming and the wet, sloshing running sounds slowed into silence. There was a light, industrial hum and the sound of their breathing. They were too far below to hear the commotion above. And Rico wondered how they would ever find them down here, but he knew eventually they would.

“Right here! This is the way,” Felix said motioning with his arm to follow him now. And they stood in a small group, the whale sharks like silent judges, looking down on them, deciding their fate. And there was another row, a path between that looked like it led to a tunnel. A dim red light sat above the tunnel, showing the way. It seemed promising, but Rico had no idea where they would be going. He wondered how Fausto had missed it.

Fausto stood motionless, but Emma was inching close to Felix, trying to peer into the grey and see somehow, to guess where that red light might take them. It was so insignificant, Rico wondered how Felix had even spotted it. Water dripped and echoed in the giant chamber.

Felix looked over at Emma, feeling that he had a convert, someone willing to follow him for the moment, and if he got her, then he had me, too, Rico told himself. Fausto be damned. He didn’t want to get wrapped up in a big mess with the Belizean police and a swarm of troopers. He would come too.

“This is it, let’s go,” Felix was motioning but also moving now towards the tunnel, a few feet in front of them, using his momentum to gather theirs and change the direction. And Rico looked at Emma and she gave the slightest of nods and they began to move forward, towards Felix. Rico did not look at Fausto. He wasn’t concerned with Fausto’s decision now. Just Emma. Ride or die. And it felt right now like it was going to be the latter.

Then Rico felt an arm across his chest barring him from moving forward. It was Fausto. He had moved quickly and gotten between him and Felix. Emma started to follow Felix, only a few feet in front of them. Felix was running towards the red light at the end of the tunnel, his back to them. And Fausto dropped his arm to pull a gun from inside his waistband, an old bullet-gun, and before Rico could do anything he clocked off three quick shots and hit Felix in the back, throwing him forward and then face down into the damp, concrete floor. His foot twitched a couple of times and Rico could smell the sulfur, the burning smell of tiny explosions, the ripe scent of classic American violence.

Emma turned away, back towards Rico and Fausto, and screamed and she stumbled forward and grabbed Rico’s chest and he felt her nails through the fabric, digging into his skin and she buried her face into his neck. Rico put an arm around her, he didn’t know what else to do. And he watched as Fausto took a few, long determined steps, closed the distance between him and Felix, face down on the ground. Fausto put the gun to the back of his head and fired off two more bullets. Rico only heard the pops as he closed his eyes and listened to Emma sob.

And then Fausto was right in front of them, wanting their attention, needing them to pay attention now.

“That,” Fausto said, emphasizing it with the finality he had just dealt, “was not the way.” Rico could smell his breath; it was like cinnamon and burning oil. Fausto was in on them, staring them down.

Emma pulled her head from Rico’s neck and unclenched her claws from his chest. “What the fuck are you talking about?!” She screamed with a ferocity and fear Rico hoped he would never have to hear again. And she began to beat on Fausto, flailing wildly against his shoulders and face. Rico knew Fausto was going to just shoot them both and he was about to start flailing at him too, get in a couple shots of his own before he took a couple bullets in his soft belly.

And then they heard the loud metal clang of the freight elevator, back down the rows of trays where they had come from, down between the whale sharks, the elevator that had brought them here was being called back home. Detective Ignacio would be here with his troopers soon.

Emma stopped wailing on Fausto. They stood there for one of those seconds that could have been hours, trying to listen, hoping it was something else, but knowing as they looked into each other’s eyes, that they all, in fact, did want to get the fuck out of there.

“I know the way,” Fausto said, turning and looking at Rico and Emma, so close they could see deep into the rich, sparkling black that were his starry, gangster eyes. Fine, they thought. It was a consensus that happened without talking. Rico and Emma just felt it. It was the type of agreement that happens when there aren’t any other choices to make. And they ran, following step for step, echoing throughout the monstrous whale shark cavern, right behind Fausto.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They were in a tight escape pod with room for four but there were only three of them. A secret tram, a gangster’s hidden card, was zooming them along the ocean floor on its invisible magnetic rails.

“Show it to me,” Fausto said. “I need to see it.”

“Fuck you,” Emma said.

“We don’t have it,” Rico said as a reflex, but no one believed him.

“Look,” Fausto was close again. All of their faces were close, their knees meeting in the middle of this small cube. “Your friend was a bad guy.”

Emma started to cry. For Felix, Rico thought, looking at her but still shaken by the ineptitude of his last comment, said nothing. Fausto continued.

“He was America Central,” he said with a grim certainty.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Rico said. It wasn’t a statement this time, but a question. So, it was much easier to commit. Emma was done talking.

“It’s beyond us, my friend. Beyond me, even,” Fausto said, shaking his head, looking down. “I don’t want any part of this. Nothing, man. Nothing.” It was the voice of a man who had given up on a quest.

“America Central?” Rico asked, repeating what he had heard him say, curious at Fausto’s resigned tone.

“I work with governments. I work with other businessmen like myself and I work with all the local cops and federales - like Ignacio.” Fausto looked up. “But this is different.”

“How?” Rico asked, noticing that Emma was paying attention again.

“Let me tell you something, man. It is not possible that a small-time Belize City piece of shit like Ignacio could conduct a raid on Gladden Spit!” Fausto was worked up. “I know this! I pay for this. There are so many deals in place, no one would cross it. It is not possible… without help. This is America Central.”

“What are you saying?” Emma asked. Rico was glad she had entered the fray, but she could lose it too.

“It’s an organization. A society. I don’t know, man,” Fausto said. “I only have brushed up against it a couple times, certain deals, certain cities, they are fighting El Diario, man. Not like a government. But like a… a… like a religion.” Fausto made an ancient symbol across his chest with his hands, kissed his fingers and looked up. For the prophet Jesus Christ, Rico remembered.

“Fighting El Diario? Fuck? So. Are. We.” Emma dealt the words like cards.

“Naaah,” Fausto laughed. “Not like this. America Central wants to end the fight. They want their way. All of it. I don’t even know what that is. But I don’t want anyone to have all of it, man,” Fausto stopped for a second and thought about something. “El Diario will ruin my business for sure, in certain cities, here and there, but not everywhere. The world has different ups and downs and you keep to what you know and find new ways to do your business, eh? Even if you lose the war, you want the fight to continue, to keep the balance, yes? Do you understand me?” Fausto said and Rico understood this and was waiting to see what Emma would say.

“There won’t be war, you fucking criminal gangster bitch. There won’t be anything for you to do or me or anyone! We’ll be automatic. All of us. It will be over,” is what Emma said. She had the energy of belief and was working it. “What do they want that we don’t want?” She sounded exhausted, but Rico thought it was a good question.

“They want you, mija,” Fausto said with a wry grin. She had just watched her friend and colleague get shot in the back and was trying to make sense of it, but Rico was trying not to get killed. He knew Fausto still had a gun.

“Emma? Why?” Rico said, but again, everyone knew why and he wondered how he continued to enter communications under a faded pretense.

“Because she killed Knoxville-Z and she took it. And she has what they want, what they all want. But these guys, this America Central, man… they are going to get it. So, for me? I am out of this one, man. You’re on your own.” Fausto said.

“And you killed Felix! In cold fucking blood, you fucking animal,” Emma had been listening, but Rico could see how she had fallen back into what they had seen, not separating them but bringing that emotion into the equation.

“He was going to kill us, mija,” Fausto said with distaste. “I am not a murderer. I saved our lives. From him, from this friend of yours. He infiltrated you. He chose you. For some reason. How well did you know this Felix?”

Rico knew him from business, from working and drinking and playing together here and there. Not too long, he realized suddenly. Only the last few years, really. Was it even that?

“You didn’t know him at all, man,” Emma said, spitting out the last words.

“I know this,” Fausto said, “there is no way anyone could have known where the escape tunnel was in the whale house. Not possible. I built that. For me. He had seen the plans, or the reconnaissance, beforehand. He was leading us back to Ignacio. Back to America Central. They are the only ones who would have the power or access to do this. This means they are in my compania, also. And I will find them,” Fausto barely spoke the last words.

“How did we get out?” Rico asked. “Why aren’t we captured then or dead?”

Fausto laughed. “Trust no one! C’mon, man. There is no such thing as one escape route.” He poked at Rico and Rico flinched a bit. “You are fucking silly sometimes, man.”

“He was working for this America Central thing the whole time? Is this what you’re telling us,” Emma asked. Rico felt the slight pull of the tram as they continued their transit, seamlessly, under the Caribbean Sea.

“Do you remember when Ignacio raided us and was all the way across the resort?” Fausto asked. “Huh? Yes, you remember this one? Why did your friend just sit there? Standing there, looking out over the casino, looking for Ignacio and his crew, looking for the signal. They knew each other. He knew the Detective was coming here. Because they are all working for America Central.”

Rico did remember. He saw this happen. He didn’t know what Felix was looking at or why he seemed to just freeze when everyone else knew to run. But it happened just as Fausto said.

“Those are fucking guesses, you can’t shoot someone in the back for your stupid fucking guesses,” Emma said.

“Ah… ya. Yes. Yes. I hear you. Perhaps. Perhaps everything is a guess,” Fausto laughed. “Perhaps it was a guess when you killed Knoxville-Z and stole La Fuente, no? So, yes, I make a lot of guesses, but I am very good at it. And let me tell you something, mija, I am right on this one. I know these things. It’s how I am alive. And today, well today, I saved your life.”

“And ended another one,” Emma said through her teeth.

“It was necessary. Now you can live to fight another day, huh? ¡Viva la revolución!” Fausto laughed again.

“Okay. Okay,” Rico was trying to calm it down, thinking about the gun, thinking of reasons why this man was not going to kill them both but also thinking how Fausto’s story made sense to him. He believed him and he couldn’t believe that. “What happens next?”

“Well, that is up to you. You will continue to fight and try to meet up with Marcos Real to come and save the day so then we can think for ourselves until the end of time? Yes? Yes!” He patted a hand on his knee, giggling to himself and then straightening up and looking at Emma and Rico back and forth. “But I will tell you this, I have only prolonged the inevitable. America Central will find you because you have what they want. And they will get it. And we will live in their world, whatever that may be. Buenas suerte, amigos!!”

Rico wasn’t having it. He had already sworn to protect Emma’s life; he had a purpose and didn’t need to know his fate. “That’s nice, Fausto. We get it. Now, where are you taking us?”

“I am dropping you off, of course. I can no longer be associated with you,” Fausto smiled.

“Where?” Emma repeated the question.

“With some friends of mine. I let them live on some small islands off the coast of Panama. God’s country, yes?” Fausto laughs and makes the sign of the cross, kisses his fingers to the sky.

“They are unplugged, man. They have nothing, run nothing, no network of any kind. And they keep to themselves, the lowest of the low. No one knows they are there… except me,” Fausto looked over at Emma. “And you will have a lot to talk about.”

“Ya. Ok. Great. Who are these people?” Emma asked.

“The people that will bring you to Marcos Real,” Fausto spoke matter-of-factly. “And I am the one that will bring you to them,” Fausto cleared his throat. “So… I am going to ask you once again… show it to me.”

Rico saw Emma clench her fist, that one that displayed the levitating cube, that metallic lockbox that she generated now at will. There was a plan. And Rico had found himself believing Fausto. He saw the only obstacle here was pissing him off, was not showing him this stupid fucking cube they were killing people for.

“Emma,” Rico looked at her. He didn’t want to say anything or say out loud that she had The Source of All Intention, but everyone knew she did. “Emma,” he said again, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“You want me to make a deal with the devil, Rico? With this motherfucking murderer?” Emma implored him.

“Ah… the Devil isn’t so bad, mija,” Fausto interrupted. “I am certainly not him, but I can assure you he likes a fair fight and he always keeps his word.”

“So we’re going to this island where no one will find us?” Rico cut to the key question.

“Well, at least not for a while. It will buy you some time.” Fausto said.

Rico was trying to get out of this tram and onto the next step. Fausto was about ready to let them go. On the right path, perhaps. Whatever, we’ll take it, Rico thought.

“And these are the people that can help us get to Marcos Real?”

“Indeed.”

“What about you? Why are you doing this?” Emma asked Fausto.

“I, too, like a fair fight,” he said, “so it entertains me to prolong yours. See what happens, make some bets. With myself,” he laughed. “But as for me? I am going back to my world where I can do as I please. Panama City. Casco Viejo, the old town, not so old anymore. I will skip from my skyscrapers from delight to delight and I will make more deals for the compania, make more money. I will live my life as I choose while you are fighting in the streets!”

“Maybe you will live as you choose,” Emma said, “if we win.” And she leaned back and took a breath and she closed her eyes and Rico could feel the energy ripping through her. She raised her arm, her fist closed, as she turned it over and opened it up.

And there floating in her palm was The Source of All Intention, El Fuente. Floating, radiating an invisible field that makes your heart dense and your brain start to blaze. Rico felt it throughout his body. Fausto was staring at it intently, examining it like a newborn child. And then he burst out with whooping laughter.

“Oh ho ho ho!” Fausto rolled back in the small space he had in the tram. “This is a trinket, man! This is a parlor trick. Nada, amigos. Nada!”

Emma closed her fist and Rico felt the energy leave the room. Fausto raised himself a bit.

“Oh, mija! I don’t even think that I have killed a man over such a fool’s toy. I have a very similar one for my gypsy show in Roatan. It’s on the Caribe Tram, too. A great stop for mystics and star people and lost souls! We make a killing, man.”

“I’m not so sure,” Rico said, unconvincingly, at this point a matter of course. “I can feel it.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Emma said. “Take us to your island so we can find Marcos Real,” she looked over at Rico and then to Fausto. “We’re already in the fight.”

“Of course you are, mija,” And he looked over at Emma and Rico like they were kneeling at the dais. “Vaya con dios,” Fausto said softly. And he made the sign of the cross and kissed his fingers up to the sky.

Individualism, the basis for modern Western Civilization since the Renaissance and inscribed into our history during Industrialization as liberal democracy or liberalism, will collapse on the day the system knows me better than I know myself. Which is less difficult than it may sound, given that most people don’t really know themselves that well.

From a classic study done decades ago, Facebook indicated that already by then the algorithm is a better judge of human personalities and dispositions than even people’s friends, parents and spouses. The algorithms on Facebook at that time predicted the users answers based on monitoring their Facebook Likes - which web pages, images and clips they tagged with the Like button. The more Likes, the more accurate the predictions. The algorithm's predictions were compared with those of work colleagues, friends, family members and spouses. Amazingly, the algorithm needed a set of only ten Likes in order to outperform the predictions of work colleagues. It needed seventy Likes to outperform friends, 150 Likes to outperform family members and 300 Likes to outperform spouses.

Even then the algorithms only needed 300 Likes on your Facebook account to predict your opinions and desires, your taste and judgment, better than your life partner. Of course, what happens when you get to 1000 Likes? 10,000? Yes, the algorithms will know you better than you know yourself.

Facebook’s conclusion to this research was simple, and even then before the introduction of artificial intelligence, just using user data, the end result was obvious.

“People might abandon their own psychological judgments and rely on computers when making important life decisions, such as choosing activities, career paths, or even romantic partners. It is possible that such data-driven decisions will improve people’s lives.”

They strode onto shore like Cortes and his men, wading knee-high in the surf, taking big steps, lifting out of the water and splashing back in again, the soft sand giving way under each step, so they moved in a rough, high-kneed style that slowly got them out of the surf and onto the beach as the sun was rising behind, turning the jungle on this tiny island into purple fire.

They had come on a skiff, powered by a pull-start oil motor that now only geos that went off the grid used. Oil was around but in so little demand it was cheap and dirty and low-class in a way maybe it always should have been but now it took its real position amongst fuels of motion. They all end up dirty by comparison to the next, as energy moves into transitional stages.

Several times on this journey they had made that transition from analog to digital and back again, oil to electric, electric then to oil, back and forth between the old world and the magnetic super clean speeds of the Tram Caribe. This time they exited from a floating group of wood planks with a propeller attached to the back and spun by a finite amount of oil that created tiny explosions, bouncing and skimming the boat across the waves.

A Panamanian boatman had steered from a stick protruding from the propeller’s engine, as Rico and Emma had held on to the gunwales not a meter from the frothing sea. They had been coming from the tram a thousand meters offshore, picked up by the boatman, leaving Fausto to his own demons and headed from the magnetic underwater tramways to an island off the grid, Bocas del Toro, the mouth of the bull.

And now on the beach they trudged through the wet sand, out of the water as they listened to the sputter of the boatman steering his skiff back out and over the surf. Rico and Emma hit dry sand and looked up and saw a figure silhouetted on a path that led between a grove of jungle trees and up and into the heart of the island.

“Hi!” The figure moved towards them and Rico towards it. “Welcome to Bocas!” Emma stopped to seemingly try and make sense of this presence.

“Gus told us you would be arriving,” they said, moving out into the sun and revealing a plain simple face, clean and warm and beautiful in its evenness. “I’m sorry,” they said to Rico and then looked over at Emma.

Rico was moving to shake hands, but then decided that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. He heard the waves crash behind him and thought about where they were. Nowhere. As Fausto had told them. A community he let thrive here, off the network. Off the magnets. He stopped and felt the warm sand on his feet and the breeze and felt strangely outside for the first time on this trip.

“Gus?” Rico asked them, wondering if he had heard this right.

“Augustina,” they said, with a lilt and jingle in their voice. “And I’m so sorry for being so rude,” they beamed a smile at Rico and he felt it like a projectile. It was served to him. “My name is Charo.”

“Charo,” Emma, a few feet back, standing on the beach, purple sky above her, “we need a place to stay.” She was being blunt and everyone felt that there on the beach, on the edge of the jungle at tropical dawn.

Charo gave a strange giggle and said, “You mean, ‘a hide-out’, right?”

Emma looked over at Rico like what the fuck is this and Rico felt the same but liked Charo a lot better than he liked being stuck in a tram car with a Panamanian gangster.

“That’s what I heard, anyway,” Charo said. “It’s tough to keep a secret around here,” they laughed, this time out loud. “There’s not much ‘around’ here, but you’ll see what I mean. It’s hard to keep a secret because there aren’t any, really. You know?”

Rico almost laughed as he watched Emma almost come out of her skin. But Rico liked Charo and he was ready to follow her wherever she wanted to take them.

“Show us the way, Charo,” he told her and by proxy let Emma know where he had cast his lot, but as with so many other things on this mission to save free will, there wasn’t a lot of choice.

Rico also knew that Emma knew this and was just expressing her actual feelings. Not sure where that was going to get us, Rico thought, but he didn’t mind the way Emma was. “C’mon,” he mouthed to her, “let’s go!” he said silently, exaggerating the motion. She nodded. Didn’t smile, but she eased up a little.

“C’mon!” Charo said aloud and waved their hand delightfully forward, like they were going to skip. But they did not. They walked off the beach where they had landed and followed Charo up the little path and into the jungle.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico realized – as they strolled along the sandy path, winding through leaves and vines and trunks and bugs the sky still purple, peaking through here and there, the hum of life really starting to pick up as the orange hues started to take over the purple and brought more of the day to the world – he realized that Charo or whomever they worked for already knew all about them, it’s why they were here. Part of the plan? Or the big dump off? Was Fausto really trying to get rid of them? Was he that scared of America Central? He had a lot of questions, but asked Charo one -

“Are we safe here?” It was important. Part of his duty, really. Even though Rico also knew the answer to that question was always meaningless.

“That’s a funny question,” Charo said, almost floating along the path.

“Funny, ha ha? Or funny like weird?” Emma asked. It was a fair question.

“You are so safe here,” Charo started, “nobody hurts anybody or really has any reason to, you know?”

“What about from outside? People coming in to hurt people?” Emma asked.

“Come here? They won’t come here,” Charo said, brushing a giant palm leaf away from their face. “We don’t have anything… or keep anything… or have any secrets, like I was saying.”

“You do now,” Emma said, looking straight at Charo who remained expressionless, a simple clean face, holding only slight delight. And Emma was right, it would seem. If you didn’t have any secrets or shit that people want, you do now. It’s her. It’s Emma they want, Rico reminded himself, rolling his shoulders as he shuddered a little underneath his skin.

“These people are looking for her, Charo,” Rico said, motioning to Emma coming up the path alongside him. “And we’re a little nervous they might look here.” Rico was trying to play it straight, to lean into the no-secrets thing, to the idea that everyone here somehow already knew all this.

“Oh, you’re not staying here, right?” Charo beckoned them further along as they spoke. “I mean you have so many things to take care of… out there, right? Not here. You’ll be leaving soon, at least that’s what Gus told us.”

“That’s quite a welcome,” Emma said, and Rico agreed that it wasn’t the best hospitality, but it kept in line with the transparency Charo claimed of this place. When Rico ran the numbers on this adventure, he knew Charo was right, there was no way they could stay here long. One way or another.

“These people that are looking for us are powerful, Charo,” Rico said, noticing that the path was widening and getting clearer.

“People? Aren’t we people?” Charo asked without asking, bemused. They wandered a bit further and Rico could start to see structures, or huts and canopies and treehouses in the distance, in bursts and glimpses between the leaves.

“They’re not our people,” Emma said like a revolutionary, drawing a line in the sand so she knew where she stood in this fight.

“So, you’re saying it’s not your people,” Charo brushed aside some foliage and they started to come into an opening. There were people starting to gather, coming out of huts, walking down branches and limbs of trees. “But then, who’s people? There’s so much not-people in the world, it’s kind of silly, right? To think of ‘other’ people? When really it’s just people and then there’s all the other stuff. So there really aren't other people, just us, just people, you know?” Charo finished.

“No,” Emma said. But she said it quietly. Rico barely recognized that she spoke at all, as he realized that they were on the edge of some type of village, built into the flora of the jungle, trees and bushes, sticks and stones placed or sometimes just used as is, where it occurred in the world. And they were on the edge in a wide clearing, a field, with a gentle slope down to a center with a stone dais at its core.

“Oh cool! We made it in time for the Morning Breath,” Charo said, motioning to the clearing where people were arriving and finding a place to be.

“What?” Emma was never in the mood for meditation or yoga or any such morning life affirming activity. She appreciated physical exertion, but only if you could score points. This is something Rico had always known but did not let stand in his way, this time. Whatever the fuck Morning Breath was, Rico thought, this is something they had planned for them, something that was part of this community they needed right now, at least long enough to keep America Central off their trail and gather their thoughts for a moment. And maybe he just needed to do that, regardless. Let’s call it a Morning Breath, he thought.

“How do we join?” Rico asked Charo. Charo smiled, and it almost broke the simple lines of their face as it betrayed a hint of pleasure in Rico’s enthusiasm. That being what it was, Rico shot Emma a glance and she knew this was one of those times she needed to play along. “Let’s take that morning breath, Charo,” Rico reiterated moments after begging in.

“I have the perfect spot for you two,” Charo said, starting to head towards the center. A drumbeat began, steady, even, a dull thud, that left a tremor in the air that was beyond hearing. Emma plodded forward, letting herself stumble in that direction. Rico was on it, into it. Ready to take part in whatever this was going to be. Hadn’t he been doing that this whole vacation?

“It’s how we start every day in the Mouth of the Bull,” Charo said and welcomed them to lie down on a patch of cool green grass.

<><><><><><><><><><>

It wasn’t that different from a few other times he had done some breathing-based meditation, relaxation, mental stimulation exercises. He understood the basics and believed enough in the mind and body to get into it when he did do it, usually on a work retreat or an analog vacation like this. In the run of things this was an event that could have been on his calendar this trip. His El Diario.

He took a breath and got in-synch with the drum and his heart and it felt good and soothing and he wasn’t going to deny a tingling and a clarity although he had learned from Zen that to recognize your own clarity is to not be clear at all, but still it was something he felt. Then he was done.

Rico opened his eyes and stood up from his spot near the center of the gently sloped clearing where the people here on Boca del Toro took their Morning Breath. Charo was breathing deeply, serene with the exact same expression as always. And Emma was there, also involved, she seemed to either be sleeping or truly invested and Rico thought for a second and guessed the former and decided either way it was best to let her be.

The other breathers lying in the clearing, eyes closed, breathed and exhaled with to the beat of the drum and their heart and the world. They seemed at peace and Rico respected that too. He looked around and saw this village, built into the jungle in such an interesting way that it almost shimmered and disappeared sometimes depending on how you looked at it. He loved that. It had a quality to it that he couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t art, though. It was something else.

“Hey!” A voice called out to him in a loud whisper over the breathers. “You! You. Hey!” Rico looked over and saw a man in blue jeans and a black leather jacket. He had on mirrored sunglasses and curly dark hair. Rico was confused by his presence as the rest of the village was silent, caught in their own breath and a far more meditative gear than this cat who walked up to Rico with a cigarette dangling from his lips and took a puff and exhaled.

“Ya,” he said, “I’m talking to you.”

Gus? Rico thought? Augusta? Augustina, was it? Wasn’t that who Charo had said sent them or told them the plan. Gus, in Rico’s mind, was in charge. And while Rico certainly imagined this could be Gus, it didn’t feel like an Augustina or any kind of person who would live in a jungle commune situation like this. In fact, Rico had a very clear image of who it looked like from old vids and AI models he had used in experiences he had built for brands. It looked like Lou Reed.

“Hey, man, you gotta make it to the end of the show,” Lou’s voice was gruff, it reeked of tobacco and poetry.

“What?” Rico asked, having heard but not understood.

“The end of the show, man. It’s where it all happens.” Lou took another puff of his cigarette and Rico could see his own reflection in Lou’s sunglasses, jilted and fuzzy looking, but he was there nonetheless, caught between the smoke and his eyes. “You gotta see the end of the show. Man.”

“Yeah. Cool. Ok,” Rico was down. Didn’t seem like a difficult choice at all. He followed Lou Reed. They walked through all the morning breathers and out of the clearing to where Lou had come from in the first place. Between two palapas, they walked deeper into the jungle and it got dark, almost back to that purple light but darker still. There didn’t seem to be a path, but Lou didn’t hesitate and Rico started to hear guitar, big wailing guitar, like the end of White Light/White Heat, screeching, clashing but staying in rhythm in conflict in feedback screaming guitar creeping through the jungle and it felt like they were headed to the end of the show.

The jungle started to take shape as they walked. The vines and the branches began to form on either side like the great cables on the Golden Gate Bridge, spiraling up now and opening up into the darkness, as they continued on a few more steps and came to a wall of foliage. But it was writhing, forming into creatures, playing to the screeching guitars, obeying the rhythm into wisps of demons and swirling ghosts of macabre nightmares and the darkest idolatries. Pretty fucking cool, Rico thought. The guitars, fucking Lou Reed, this last show seeming to be going off in the jungle with a swirling mass of demons forming into a gate, a gateway, reaching into the jungle canopy and he and Lou stood before the entrance.

“The end of the show, pal. This is it,” Lou finished his cigarette, stamping it out on the jungle floor under his big black boot. The guitars began to wail, but lost their electric sickness into a cry, a human cry at the pitch and height of a metal guitar lick, a chorus of them, screeching together.

“He can’t come in.” It was a bouncer, standing at the entrance. He was skeletal, like he used to be an amazing bouncer but he rocked too hard and he was left with only his tattered jacket and gaunt jawline, protruding forward with each word.

“He’s with me,” Lou said.

“Doesn’t matter,” the bouncer said, “he can’t come in.”

Rico looked into the darkness that sat between the swirling vines. It seemed as if the dark swallowed up everything, as if the jungle almost disappeared into it, but then he could make out movement. Wisps of ideas of people, shadows, things that night makes with light and leaves and the darkness plays tricks on your eyes. The wailing continued, the guitar almost gone now just those ghastly wails and Rico wasn’t sure how much of this show he wanted to listen to, but this was an experience and he wasn’t against it, not like this bouncer dude.

“What’s going on in there, anyway? Is this the spot?” Rico spoke to the bouncer and Lou both, looking back and forth standing at the gate, the swirling, apparitions of screaming emanating from within. “What did they do to get in?” Rico added.

The bouncer looked at him with his empty black eyes and pointed cheek bones and he just nodded his head toward a sign behind him. It was etched into a large vine on the gate like the scrawl in a bathroom at CBGBs but it was clear and Rico knew what it was going to say anyway.

ABANDON ALL HOPE

“They stopped believing,” the bouncer laughed as Rico looked away from the sign and back into the end of the show, just beyond the gate. “They’re free now,” the bouncer said, more solemnly. “They don’t have any more choices to make.”

Rico stared into the club and he saw the people now, the individuals, not just a swirl of silhouettes but the people who were wailing now like the noisiest feedback from the loudest screaming guitar and they were blue that deep blue that is no color really and they began to shake, shake like the Rauschenberg illustrations, like Turner’s shaking blue under the Battersea Bridge, the blue of night.

“And you still can’t come in,” the bouncer said.

Rico wasn’t sure if he wanted to but he looked at Lou and he wasn’t giving up on them seeing the end of the show.

“Look, buddy,” Lou grumbled at the bouncer as the demons swirled in the vines of the gate. “He’s with me and I know I can get in. Look at it like that, my man.”

The bouncer was unimpressed. He stayed cold and skeletal as he delivered his final thought on the matter. “He’s a living,” he said.

Rico felt a warm fire in his belly, it was heat, just raw burning heat and it filled him. He felt it. And he liked the heat. He still needed it to keep going.

“Ah,” Lou groaned. “I wasn’t sure at first, but yeah, yeah, I see it now,” Lou said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and popped one into his skilled fingers and then into his mouth. “Sorry, pal. I tried.” He lit the cigarette and the spirits wailed in the club and the fire created a brief light that cast the writhing demons on the gate in a glow and sucked all the blue out of the scene for a bright orange flicker an instant long.

“I’m going to get back,” Rico said plainly and he started to step away, putting the bouncer and Lou in the wide as they stood vigil at the gate.

“You can always get to the end of the show, pal,” Lou said. Rico nodded and continued to walk backwards down the path. Lou mumbled through his cigarette, “Or it will come and get you.”

Rico let the jungle start to encroach his vision, the gate and the bouncer and Lou getting covered by the foliage they had emerged from and when he couldn’t see a trace and the last screeches of abandoned souls had disappeared from whence they came, he turned and ran.

He let it run through the jungle, letting leaves and vines whip at him, mud and sticks and slimy things underfoot as he splatted and splunged for what seemed a forever but was a minute or so. He stopped to catch his breath. To think for a second, wondering how deep he was now and why he had followed this rocker dude to a club. Well… that followed a certain logic, he thought. That checked out with his brand. But now he needed a sign. Something to orient him. Put him on the map. He looked around.

In the mud and slime beneath the jungle canopy he saw animal footprints, like the hooves of a giant ox, a bull, and each one after the other leading through an imagined trail, nature’s own trail through the jungle. And he followed the Cheshire footprints into the dense foliage that brushed by his face, but he could still see the footprints clearly below until they stopped.

And Rico was in the thick of it, surrounded by the jungle, without the hoof prints to lead him and he searched, peered between the leaves and vines and finally saw the big beast. The glimpse of the hindquarters of a bull, and despite the name it was not common here in the jungles of this delicate isthmus, and the dotted islands on either side. And Rico would normally have run from such a beast but this is what he had been after, he had followed the prints through the jungle and now what?

Rico barked at the big bull and it rustled and silently turned in the bush and faced him, now eye to eye with the beast, a snort emerging from its fleshy nostrils, Rico’s vulnerable meat ever exposed as a defenseless human. And he barked again and the bull snorted again and stamped a single hoof down on the jungle floor. But Rico noticed that the shoulders of the massive animal were relaxed and down, its head cloying now, back and forth. Not violent at all. Rather, curious.

I need to find my way home, Rico thought as hard as he could, he was sweating, focusing on nothing but this thought until he didn’t want it anymore, it was just the thinking, and it was the only thing. The beast seemed to understand. And Rico was in awe of this happening. And el toro turned and started through the jungle and he could not tell now if he was following or guiding the big bull forward.

And then the jungle began to clear, he had tamed the monstrous bovine and he could see the way forward now. They went through the woods and back to the village where he had wandered off to begin with. And as he entered the village, he began to see this wild ox, the Taureon partner by his side as part of himself, and in that way, it became nothing. The world was the same again. And he was alone.

He made his way through the morning breathers, still breathing, never having left their self-inflicted cocoons, the drum still beating as he made his way to his spot, near the center, at the bottom of the gentle slope, the original place in the soft cool grass.

There was Emma, deep in her breathing. And he lay next to her and felt the drum beat and forgot all about the end of the show, and the bull that guided him home and then as he began to breathe, to fall into rhythm, he forgot about himself.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico woke up next to Emma. They were in an enclosure, an arboretum apartment, amongst the limbs there came a floor and rising from that a place where they were nestled a bed and natural windows from spaces between leaves and it was safe and warm.

Rico was hard, an erection that mornings can sometimes bring, maybe he had to pee, but there was more to it than that. There was that safe, confident warmth that could fill your cock with blood, like a coziness that became engorged. And his dick was against Emma’s thigh, the back of it, right below her round ass. And he was drawn to her, pulled to her physically, like an erotic gravity, a wave that comes over you in those moments when everything is right and the person next to you feels the way every person should feel to each other, like a magnet, like a force of love and energy that pulls you in.

Rico wasn’t sure exactly how they had gotten here, it was foggy. Up from the ground, from the slope near the center, assisted maybe, probably, back to this space, this leafy, graceful structure, and put to bed. They were robed, the most simple, elegant, natural cloth but luxurious to the touch. He could feel Emma in hers. He could feel her body beneath and his was on hers and he wanted her, he wanted to be inside of her.

“Emma, Emma…” Rico said, barely whispering, maybe he was just thinking it, he thought. “Emma,” he said louder and he could tell that he spoke that time. He pressed his hard dick against her leg. It was forward but positive, it was already there, unconsciously erect and he did want to share it with her and he wanted her to be extra aware of his awareness.

“Emma,” Rico leaned in this time and whispered into her ear. He put his hand on her hip and moved it slowly lower. She moved underneath him. Away. She moved her leg across her other leg and out from under his hand. It slipped off and his dick lost contact with the back of her thigh. There was nothing subtle about his intentions, nor hers. Rico was fine with that. It was a choice he had decided to make, to put a signal into the world and await the response. A fork in the road had presented itself, but then unforked and there was only the not-path, and that was fine, as he had already thought.

And this did not change his commitment, his word that he would keep and protect this person, to the end. But other than that, the terms of their relationship, sexual or otherwise, were up for grabs. Rico had no idea where they stood as partners in this adventure they had embarked on. And in the kindest, purely curious and gentle way he could bring this dilemma forward, he asked Emma, speaking to the back of her head as they lay side-by-side in the tree canopy house they found themselves napping in together.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“Fighting a war,” Emma said, flipping around on her elbow abruptly so she could face Rico as she said it. It wasn’t a whisper. And it wasn’t what Rico was talking about at all. He was talking about them. Him and her and their partnership.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me at this point.” She was angry. Rico just looked at her, trying to puppy dog it but it wasn’t working. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve told you why I am here, Emma,” he didn’t have to try to look sincere, he was as honest as he’d ever been when he told her again the reason he was here by her side. “You,” Rico said.

Emma softened and her eyes met his and she was sincere as well. “And I’m so happy about that, Rico. I couldn’t do it without you. And I love you for that.” Rico’s heart raced and he wondered whether she had just told him she loved him… not technically, he thought. Not really.

“But there is so much more going on, Rico. More than anything I’ve ever been a part of and now I’m in it and part of it and this fight needs me and we can win. We can change the world or save it. Be the people we want to be. It’s existence, it’s about our being,” she told him.

“Yeah,” he said, his boner now completely subsided and lying soft and compliant against his thigh.

“What did we do before, Rico? What was it?” Emma continued.

“We make… made, I guess, cool ads. Experiences people have fun with and then buy shit?”

“Yes. Exactly. Nothing for nothing.”

“I mean…” Rico started, thinking of all the work, the creativity, the imagination, the grind, the sell, the finish and polish and when it was good, the accolades, which more often than not was just that people enjoyed what they had produced in the world. “Nothing?” he asked, softly.

“Nothing,” Emma assured him. “And I know the world is not a perfect place, but I don’t want to lose the one thing we have, Rico, the one thing that will matter to all of us if we lose it…” she looked at him.

“Choice,” Rico said, obediently.

“And I signed-up. Felix introduced me to Frida and I see what she sees, I believe in her… in this. I killed a man for this, Rico. You know?”

“I do know,” he said, but he didn’t care about that at all. They could run from that, happily. But now they were running to the thing, not away from it.

“And it’s a part of me,” she held up her fist, referring to the Source, El Fuente, that lived in her hand, that Knoxville-Z had left her with, burdening her like he had burdened Rico with protecting her.

“So if we win this war, nothing changes?”

“We keep our freedom to live, Rico. Without choice we’re not even alive, so yes… nothing changes. We stay right here in the land of the living.”

“You know people say it’s not really different,” Rico was thinking out loud and maybe he shouldn’t have been but he couldn’t stop. “The Calendar cities, when they take over, when everyone’s day runs on the algorithm, people say it’s not different. It feels the same. Everyone just does the same shit,” Rico was trying to say this casually.

“It’s not a feeling, Rico, we aren’t fighting for a feeling. We’re fighting for our existence,” Emma sat up in the bed. She was staring at him, nonplussed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Rico thought about his breathing session, the visions he had had, the end of the show and finding the bull and guiding each other home, back to his natural state, waking up in this bed with Emma. Had anything changed in him? Could he tell?

Zen Masters say the very last stage of enlightenment is a return to normalcy, right back into the world as it is, nothing changes. That is the secret of enlightenment. Enlightened, and yet everything is the same. Okay, sure, he thought, but was it worth the journey? If the score is the same at the end of regulation, why play the game? And he wasn’t a Buddhist, either way. He had just taken a few notes, knew a few things... too much, probably.

The natural vine curtain that covered the entrance to their space in the trees opened up and let in the sun. Rico sat up with Emma and he felt his fingers on his bad hand give a little, the nerves screaming out. He ignored it. They both turned their heads and saw Charo and their elven elegance enter the room.

“Hello! I hope you got a little power nap after our Morning Breath,” Charo almost sang out to them, “We have an audience with Gus… with Augustina,” she told them.

Rico and Emma were caught off guard but that seemed to be happening to them for most of this trip. They nodded accordingly, honoring their host and started to gather themselves and stand. Emma looked at Rico and took a deep breath. Rico nodded at her, too. Confirming that he was still here, with her, her partner in this. That’s all he wanted in the end, to be with her. And that’s where he was. The rest of it, he thought, was a wash.

And he wanted to know more about this place anyway. He felt good here, he fed off the energy. He was enjoying this experience, and to him, maybe that is all that mattered, maybe that is all he wanted to do in this world. Enjoy the experience.

“Let’s go see Augustina,” Emma said, she moved in her natural fiber robe toward the sunlight and Charo standing patiently. Rico nodded again. Charo clapped their hands together and smiled at them both. Charo pulled aside the vine curtain even wider, reaching their arm out into the day, bringing in more light, an invitation to pass through, out into the world. Rico extended his arm to Emma, after you, he indicated. She walked forward and he followed behind.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an opening on a path of branches, made of many layers of trees, trunks and more branches, intertwining with wood structures and foliage of all kinds, woven together to make a viable village, a walkable world, winding through the jungle above, below, over and under, arches and awnings and spaces to sleep and eat and congregate. It sparkled with a green as green as springtime in the old days. High among the branches of a towering tree that stood in the center of all, gleamed a white light that came through to shower the flora below. At the feet of the trees and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and plush green; they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. The sky was blue and the sun of afternoon glowed up on the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.

Charo and Emma cast themselves onto the winding path, amongst the fragrant grass and along the many-tiered walkways. But Rico stood awhile, still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his words had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear-cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they endured forever. He saw no color but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.

Rico felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. Rico began to move down the path after his friends and he laid a hand upon a tree branch; never before had he been so keenly aware of a tree’s skin and the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.

Rico looked and saw, still at some distance, a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers: which it was he could not tell. Out of it, it seemed to him that the power and light came that held all the land in sway. He longed suddenly to fly like a bird to rest in the green city. Far away up on the hills they could hear the sound of singing falling from on high like soft rain upon leaves.

“Rico. Rico,” It was Emma, standing in the sun with Charo, their robes flowing, the green rising and falling and breathing around them. “Rico? Please… let’s go.”

Emma was less entranced with the Boca del Toro tree village. And it was probably good that they weren’t both so, so… connected to this place? Rico wondered. Emma was on the mission full stop. She knew they only had a limited time here and an audience with the leader could help them in some way, get them to the next spot, get them to Mexico City and to Marcos Real. But Rico was enjoying the journey, or trying to, when he wasn’t running for his life. At least this place truly seemed to be speaking to him on some dynamic level.

“Coming,” Rico said, “just admiring the situation you have here. How does this all work?” Rico caught up to them on the path, the green village expanding off into the distance and they made their way to the hill between the living quarters.

“Well, every hut has exactly what every other hut has and you just live in them and there isn’t a way to it, really” Charo said in a silly voice, pitching up at the end.

“What are we talking to Gus about?” Emma asked.

“Oh, this and that,” Charo said. “You are guests and she’s, well, she’s the host, ya know. Wants to say hi,” They waved Rico and Emma further down the path.

“What would you like to talk about?” Charo asked, looking over at Rico, not caring about how Emma would answer.

“Is Gus going to help us?” Emma asked. Rico wanted to ask a different question about how the structure of this tree, the building of it came to be. And as he looked around, he knew that ‘building’ wasn’t the right word.

“Oh, I’ m not sure,” Charo told her. “Depends on what you want.” They said flippantly, as they all edged past some other folks, robes and sensible gear in tow, heading about their business in the maze of winding branch paths. Emma waited for the people to pass and then stopped and leaned in on Charo, saying not in a whisper, but not yelling either, just determined speech.

“I want her to get me the fuck off this island,” Emma said. It was expected. No one was really demeaned by the exchange.

“We’ll see.”

“We’re going to need a tram again. I don’t see how we can get to Frida without getting back to civilization,” Emma was working it out in her head.

“Maybe the outskirts, huh?” Rico said and knew that no one cared or really heard him. He was looking ahead on the path and he saw, what he imagined to be the heart of the tree, a giant wooden organ, that seemed to sit in the center of the arboretum chaos and hold it all together, it made sense now, the whole place, Rico could sense it’s directions emanating out, a positioning, like being inside your own body and knowing all the extents it went to. This was the heart of the living village. It rose before them.

“I don’t know about any of that, seriously,” Charo said and now stopped as they reached the wooden heart, rising above them out of the branch path, a few stories high, like a walk-up, but more of a wall, no windows or doors that Rico could see. Charo brushed their hand across the surface like a magician’s assistant and it became obvious that there was a door there, just a pattern that seemed to rise out of the wood, but was always, already there. “Let’s go talk to Gus,” Charo said, hitting that high note, elongating their arms in a familiar movement that guided their behavior. Rico and Emma complied as no other options presented themselves and entered the heart of this jungle boogie.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The space opened into a high, natural dome ceiling and down into a circular enclosure that was filled with cushions and spiral pillows and long, foliage couches, woven and grown into the sides of the enclosure. There could have been hookah pipes, Rico thought, but there were not.

And Augustina was there in the center, reclining like an Athenian at a symposium, a smile of warmth that filled Rico with joy appeared across her lips, and she rose, her robed arms in welcome and said, “Welcome!” in a lyrical voice, a little deeper than the graceful lines of her face and flowing dark, shimmering hair, betrayed.

There were cushions intertwined around the circle formed by the dome and the perfectly entangled, smooth, branches that created the space. Rico knew they were meant to sit and reclined himself on a cushion, he saw Emma do the same, reluctance on her face, but complying with the momentum, nonetheless. Charo hovered for a few seconds, regarding the proceedings and then hovering away, staying close just out of sight, a peripheral presence in Augustina’s chamber. Augustina lowered her arms and also reclined.

“I wanted to make sure you were rested before we took audience,” she said to them, low and even and a song in it somewhere, floating throughout her words.

“Thank you,” Rico responded automatically but earnestly. He had enjoyed his rest, catching up on some of his lost energy, experiencing a vision though not thinking about it too much; he let it sit with him and become a backdrop for the things to come. Emma did not say a word.

“Charo tells me you may need my help,” Augustina, the one Charo referred to as Gus, looked them over, reclining in her world. “So then tell me… how can I help you?”

“I need to see Marcos Real and I know you know him and maybe know how to get to him, or to get him to me,” Emma was letting it all come out, but Rico understood, here we are, let’s say what we mean.

Gus laughed. She sat up a bit like she was going to tell a story and then thought better of it and looked at us and said, “A long time ago… we worked together, yes.” And she stopped there.

“Where is he now?” Emma was pressing, even though they all knew where he was - held by El Diario in Mexico City, the question was how do we get there or get him out of there.

“D. F.” Gus said quietly, pronouncing the letters in Spanish. Distrito Federal. A shorthand for the megapolis from a long way back, like the District of Columbia for Washington, Rico remembered. Charo hovered nearby. “The last that I heard of his presence, yes, he was there. But it has been too long and I don’t get out much,” Augustina smiled at them.

“You were partners or something like that?” Emma asked.

“We had a similar take on the world.”

“And you wanted people to follow you?”

“Well,” Gus was thinking back, adjusting in her seat but not uncomfortable, if anything, getting more comfortable as she spoke each word. “If we’re all being honest with each other, that’s the difference between Marcos Real and me,” she was amused. “That is why I am here and he is… there.”

“You didn’t want followers…” Rico left the words dangling, almost answering it himself.

“We were on the same path, the same version of the reality we all live in and how it works,” Gus looked directly at Rico. “But I didn’t care who came along.”

“And Marcos wanted to save the world,” Emma said, in tone and gesture, every bit his ally.

“Yes.”

“And so you ran off to the jungle?”

“Yes,” Gus told Emma unmoved by her accusation. “But it starts with what you believe. We both believe there is only one truth to existence. And Marcos knows it.”

“And you?” Rico asked because he wanted to know what she knew.

“I flirt with the truth. Marcos Real is the truth,” she seemed a little annoyed with that question and Rico felt like shit.

“So I came here… to keep looking, to get away from people who don’t believe or who don’t care or who just want to walk on through without noticing what is right here in front of us all. But I can’t make them notice. I can’t make them believe. I can’t even share the truth that I am still searching for and I don’t think anyone can.”

“So if something is fucked up in the world and you know it, you’re not going to do anything to change it?” Emma was on a revolutionary kick this morning, Rico recognized.

“You can’t change the truth of the world, Emma,” Augustina was saying her name for the first time, knowing it and owning it like she had said it a million times and Emma was moved by it, for an instant. “You can only find the truth in yourself.” Rico felt that in his bones, like he knew that the entire time. Emma was not sure. Rico could tell. And as if Gus had known his thoughts, she replied to his thoughts with her words in the chamber.

“But you can’t stop the ones who know from wanting everyone to know. And to live it! That’s going to be a fight that rages on and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.”

“We have to win,” Emma said.

“Of course,” Gus said. “And I will always support the followers of Marcos Real, because he knows the truth,” she paused and Rico felt the pause, her silence and then felt her pick up again, controlling the flow of everything. “So here we are,” she sang, “What do you need from me?”

“Where is he, is he? Where in Mexico City? How do we get there?” Rico jumped in to her prompt, he knew these loftier conversations didn’t matter in the end, he wasn’t changing his course so he wanted to get to the point. How crazy was this adventure going to be?

“El Diario controls behavior. So Marcos Real is not in a cell. He’s in a system, a behavioral cocoon that keeps you locked into an existence you no longer control. And you can’t feel it. Like the frog in the boil. Well, maybe Marcos can.” Gus was getting into detail now, Rico was tuned, he could see it in his mind, Marcos was sitting at a plain table in a plain room, the sounds of the city outside.

“They run strong routines for their prisoners,” Charo interjected. “It will probably be a strict, daily, monastic routine that will have minimal interactions or variants.”

“Not so different from the ‘free’ Marcos,” Gus smirked and Rico continued to see him, seated at the table, a pen in his hand, an open notebook.

“They will have his bios,” Charo said excitedly, “a constant feed of bio rhythmic data and position. And these aren’t people monitoring his every breath and movement, this is the system, El Diario, ya know? It’s not something you can escape from. Ever, really.” Charo added for emphasis.

“Can’t we just get to him, if everything is normal, and meet him there?” Emma asked.

“El Diario will totally know. Your bios will hit the system as soon as you get close and it will recognize you and eliminate you, like a mutant!” Charo was having fun with this, like they had run this thought experiment before.

“Sometimes,” Augustina spoke in her low, musical voice, “humans have beaten the system with body doubles.”

“Twinsies!” Charo cheered. Emma looked incredulous. Rico felt his stomach drop and his hands go numb. It wasn’t the words, it was the way Gus was looking at him.

“We are all individuals, certain imprints on the universe that make a unique pattern, but not by much,” Augustina said. She continued to look at Rico.

“What?” Emma asked.

“I can tell you this – Marcos Real is against El Diario because algorithms can be fooled, because the numbers aren’t as pure as what is real,” Gus was declaring something big here, Rico was following. He understood what she meant. Then she narrowed her focus and looked at Emma and Rico. “This means for you two, you have a chance.”

“They can’t be fooled for long. And it doesn’t always work,” Charo finished for her. “But certain people are close enough in their bios that El Diario can be tricked, it can believe one person is really another. What!!” Charo was visibly thrilled.

Rico felt sick to his stomach. He knew what was coming. Augustina, this powerful, prophet, cult-leader, expatriate magnifique, was still staring him up and down but more than that, she was sensing him, she was reading his bios, monitoring his essence or whatever she called it. And he knew it was bad. Or good. Or just about to make his commitment to Emma, his raison d'etre, get that much more complicated. Impossible? He took a deep breath.

“It’s you,” Augustina told him, just like he always knew she would as soon as she spoke it. “You can be Marcos Real.” And Rico saw him there, she gave him the vision and he wondered if it was happening in real time, if he was just looking into that plain room at Marcos Real right now, sitting in a chair at a simple table with a notebook on it. And Rico looked him over, grasped his weight and size, felt like he could feel that chair beneath him and Marcos looked at him and it was him, his own face. He looked at Augustina and then back at Emma.

“Twinsies!” Charo repeated. Emma was staring at Rico to see if he were Marcos Real and back to Gus to see if this was all happening. Rico’s heart sank, he was already so fucking involved, he didn’t need the Tale of Two Cities as another plot twist. It’s a far, far better thing that I do… he thought.

“It’s true! Oh my God,” Charo had been giving Rico the once over.

“It’s not his features,” Augustina said.

“Kinda!?” Charo squeaked.

Augustina became more formal, tried to get back to basics. “It’s his bios. His energy patterns, his rhythm and blood. I can feel it.” She looked at him and through him and Rico could feel her inside the beat of his heart, he could feel her attention on his being. It was maybe the most incredible feeling he had ever had, to have someone inside with him, and she shared it with him so that he could feel the sameness that his energy matched that of her famous partner and philosopher, wizard, revolutionary, Marcos Real. And he was scared.

“You have known this, yes?” Augustina asked Rico.

“No,” he said but not sure if he had known or not.

“And you?” Augustina looked over to Emma. Charo leaned in, amused by the revolutionary gossip that it was. Emma did not answer. She was thinking. They were all watching her think.

“No,” she finally said. “I didn’t.”

“It’s why you are here. Both of you,” Augustina spoke to them and the song came back to her voice, she was guiding them down a road that was already paved. “And I can help you. That is why I am here.”

She spread her arms and her joy and positivity and all the things that someone with knowledge and power and peace would bestow upon those about to embark on something so much bigger than themselves and yet exactly about them.

“And then you must leave, immediately,” Augustina said with a thudding finality.

“Then help us,” Emma said with frustration in her voice. She had lost some of her importance somehow here and it raggled her.

“I can only help him,” Gus said and pointed to Rico. Charo almost giggled but they did not. Rico felt his heart sink lower, his fear rising high.

“What? What is it?” Emma asked.

“A gift.”

Charo giggled. Emma sat up and put her head between her knees and sat there for a moment, gathering her strength or patience or whatever she needed to buy into this situation. She looked up.

“Can you help us or not?” It was a level and fierce deployment of language. And Augustina dropped her enchantress demeanor and leveled with Emma.

“Only Rico can get inside El Diario and the pattern they have set and replace Marcos Real. And even that is not a guarantee.”

“You don’t know how long? But it buys us time to get Marcos outside, with us, get him back to free territory.”

“Some time, yes. But then they will come. And Rico…” Gus was not sad, but she looked at Rico. “You are not Marcos Real, and I am not sure what El Diario will do. Maybe you will just stay in his pattern, live that life, there in Mexico City. There are worse things.”

Rico knew this shit was coming, knew something was up, knew he was being pulled deeper and deeper into something until he felt its gooey center. And here the fuck he was. But he still didn't know how he was getting in and why he couldn’t get out of Mexico City, of the pattern. Fuck El Diario! He wasn’t without his own tricks.

“What are we doing?” Rico asked.

“I am giving you a gift,” Augustina said back into her breathy sing-song rhythm. “Because I know now that you are worthy of it. I feel this, Rico.”

And Rico felt it too. Since he first walked onto the shore of Bocas del Toro, the sensations, the connection, the visions, the intertwining energy of it all. He was in that place and he knew that Gus knew, or wanted him to, or needed him to? Rico was still trying to gain his footing. It’s not easy to feel so connected.

“What is it, Augustina?”

Charo and Emma both sat silently, reclining in the dome of trees, observers anxious to see the outcome of this exchange.

“Sit up and close your eyes,” Gus said, and Rico did just that. He put his hands together, fingertip to fingertip and held them gently in his lap. “Yes,” she said, “now find me. Find my being here with you now. Find me.”

And Rico felt in the dark, felt his center and then he found her and felt her being there. He didn’t see her or smell her or touch her but found her there as she was. And he got warm inside and it began to radiate out and get hot and his head cocked back and he opened his mouth like a yawn but not air, not a breath but a movement an essence that was traveling and he brought it into him and it joined with him and it wasn’t spiritual, but physical one of the most physical experiences Rico had ever known. He closed his mouth and lowered his hands and they stayed together for a second, fingertips touching and he tingled all over and he opened his eyes, letting his hands fall and Augustina was there, her eyes waiting for his.

“You have it now, but you can only use it once,” she sang to him; she had him now, that was not in doubt. Emma and Charo had receded into the background, like the foliage.

“What is it?”

“You will have the power to jump,” Gus said, getting even closer, “to disappear from one part of your universe and reappear in another.”

“Teleport?”

“No, Rico, that is fiction. This is real,” she spoke low to him and he felt like she was cupping his soft cheeks and slowly running a finger down to his chin. But she was not doing this. “Two beings, entangled quantum soulmates, can exist across space and time and change their bearing, their positive or negative charge, they can change their position based on the state of the other. They revert to their being and jump. Reconnect. Reconfigure their world to match the other.”

“Physics,” Rico said, having known some of this in some form or another. It still sounded like teleporting. “Is this my escape plan when they come to get me?”

“Yes, Rico, that’s right. That is my gift to you. I only have the energy to give you one jump and you only have the energy to accept one.”

“Where will I go?”

“You will feel and see it. It is the energy in the universe you are most connected to and that is where you will jump.”

“Ok. But I’ll get away from El Diario and jump to some place I’m connected to, some place I love,” and he looked over at Emma for a brief second and it wasn’t even long enough to see if she were looking at him. Maybe.

“Or someone,” Augustina said, and Rico couldn’t tell in that one instant if she meant him, them, he felt like that about her all the sudden and it wasn’t scary or competitive with his feelings for Emma, just a presence there in him for her.

“And I just concentrate or do that breathing we just did together? Like that?”

“Yes, something like that. You will know. It’s in you, Rico. Please know that. It’s in you.”

And that felt good and right to Rico. It was in him, he knew that, too. Because Augustina knew it.

“And now you have to leave,” she said to them and leaned back to reclining and Rico felt her disengage. Charo scooted in closer to the circle. Emma was attentive.

“They’ll be here soon enough.”

“Who?” Emma asked Gus quickly.

“America Central,” Gus said. Charo let out a small gasp. It didn’t seem real when Fausto had said it, but now, in Rico’s mind, they were in trouble.

“I thought we were safe here?” Rico asked.

“They leave Bocas alone, Rico, that doesn’t mean they’re going to leave me alone,” Emma finally spoke up and clasped her hand, the one that held El Fuente.

“Or him!” Charo was pointing across the dome foliage enclosure directly into Rico’s chest. “You’re the one that’s all Marcos or whatever.” Charo was being endearing but it fell flat in the room.

“You are in this together now, but you already know this.” Augustina told them, standing up in her flowing robes and long, flowing flora hair. She said goodbye with her countenance. It was time to go.

“We need to get to Oaxaca, we need to get to Frida and the rebels,” Emma wasn’t ready to leave this meeting until she knew how she was getting to the next step on the journey.

“That sounds like a rather viable option,” Gus was raising her hands now putting them on their shoulders, “Frida y Los Elegidos, they may indeed be able to get you to Mexico City.”

“Yes?” Emma said.

“But I cannot get you to them,” Augustina looked over at Charo and then around her arboretum, “I can’t get you anywhere,” she laughed. “Except from where you came.”

“Fausto?” Rico sensed where this was going. Emma had said they needed to get back to civilization to get to Frida, and Bocas del Toro, this community, Augustina’s world here in the jungle, Rico knew, only had one connection back to civilization.

“Yes,” she said. “Fausto.” And Rico could feel her hand on his shoulder and the heat of her energy, of her power. It gave him confidence. He didn’t know how to explain it. “Remember the gift,” Augustina said to Rico.

“I will.”

“You will need it,” she told him.

Augustina lowered her hands and motioned them back out of the dome, away from the reclining cushions as the council they just had had now ended.

“Fear not,” she added as Charo now swept them along, “if you can get him out of D.F., Marcos will know what to do.” Augustina gave a farewell smile and Rico felt afraid, but he connected to her strength. And then they were outside back on the path. Charo was leading the way through the jungle village back to civilization.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“Thank you, Charo,” Rico said as they walked through the last steps out of the trees and onto the beach where they had first stomped out of the waves. And he grasped Charo’s hands with both of his and squeezed them and felt Charo and their presence here with him. He was rushed with energy, sad to leave this raw, open, harmonious outpost but renewed and full of purpose and ready to choose his own fate and, well, save the world.

“I’m not really sure we’ll ever see each other again,” Charo said, “but that doesn’t really matter. We met already so that’s forever. I’m always with you. Know that, okay!” Charo released Rico’s hands, blew Emma a little kiss and quickly disappeared back into the trees from whence they had come. And that was it. Their encounter in Bocas Del Toro had come to an end. Rico and Emma stood there in the sand, the surf pounding behind them.

“Can you believe that shit?” Emma said. “What the fuck was all that?”

“What?” Rico was confused.

“We just wasted our time, Rico. We should have just stayed with Fausto. Fuck. Now we have to deal with him again.”

“I feel like Augustina gave us intel that we needed to get to Marcos Real to connect him with you and El Fuente and win this fucking thing, right?”

“Gus? You think that crazy tree witch helped us?” Emma was not impressed. “What did she give you? Some magic gift or some shit?”

“Physics,” Rico said.

“Ya? Well, we need to ‘physics’ ourselves to Frida and she’ll get us to Marcos Real. She’s been fighting this war for a long time. She doesn’t believe in fucking magic.”

Rico didn’t say anything, he admired her strength, her focus, but he hoped that Emma was wrong. He looked out over the beach and saw the skiff with the oil-burning outboard. It glided across the smooth, blue water, and caught a small wave onto the sand. The deft old boatman was at the helm, handling the vessel like he had a million times before. Their ride was here.

They were going to head out the way they came in and meet the tram out at sea. And then ride it back to civilization or whatever Fausto’s version of that happened to be in Panama City. And he could get them up the Pacific side to Mexico and the beaches at the bottom of Oaxaca. And to Frida and Los Elegidos, her band of rebels. At what cost? Rico wasn’t sure. He didn’t have that vision.

“C’mon,” Rico grabbed Emma’s hand, he was still sworn to protect her and that commitment was keeping him on track, sane, really.

“Get me the fuck out of here,” Emma said, meaning every single word.

And they walked along the beach, hand in hand, returning to the care of an international gangster while, as Rico felt with each step in the soft sand, America Central was closing in.

Anthony strode across the tram station with confidence. He wore a tight, black suit but did not sweat in the Panamanian sun as he hustled to meet Rico and Emma. He was handsome and thick without being fat. And throw a punch? Rico thought, I bet he hits hard.

The tram ride over was uneventful. Neither of them spoke much. Rico didn’t want to bring up his role just yet with Emma. He was committed to her. This other idea seemed like a possible path to get what Emma needed, to connect Marcos Real and The Source of All Intention. But he felt like it was only getting in the way and he wasn’t sure they truly needed him yet. But he trusted Augustina and he was ready. Ready.

There wasn’t much to say and the ride went fast. They both knew what they needed to do. They had to talk Fausto into getting them to Frida in Oaxaca, by tram or by crook. Rico and Emma had received a message from Fausto officially inviting them to talk. His consiglieri, his first lieutenant, his loyalist soldier, Anthony, would be waiting to pick them up at the tram station at one end of Panama Bay.

Anthony walked up to them and spread his arms, his trim black suit had a multi-layered sheen to it Rico was picking up in the sun.

“Welcome to Panama, my friends. You are our honored guests.”

“You’re Anthony, right?” Emma said.

“I am, Anthony. Yes,” he smiled at her and it was charming, even Emma in her mission-state noticed and seemed to lighten a bit.

“Anthony, where are we headed?” Rico looked around as he spoke. They were out on a point of some sort, with a long narrow road heading out down the side of the bay with a long line of giant, modern skyscrapers - a skyline beyond explanation. They appeared radically out of place against the dense nature that surrounded it.

“Casco Viejo,” Anthony answered, closing one eye against the glaring sun and pointing out across the bay directly to the heart of the towering spires of steel and glass. The Old District looks like it had been skyscraped, Rico thought.

And they were off, across the platform here on the end of the narrow peninsula where the tram station sat, next to a restaurant and bar nearby to enjoy the view. They went down a few stairs to the street level and Anthony opened the cherry red car door of his convertible. It was an ancient automobile and it rumbled and indeed smelled like gasoline. In his smooth, black suit and big American convertible Rico noted that Anthony was in his environment, a natural, he was at ease as a tropical gangster.

Emma sat in the back and her brown, wavy hair danced about her face as they drove down the highway, across the water like a long land-bridge, back to the coast line and the city.

“At one point, the Zone was a designated area about 2 kilometers on either side of the canal,” Anthony was yelling as he drove, in the style of convertible conversations. Rico could hear him but Emma could not. It was only a gracious host making small talk, but Rico listened.

“Ran by the United States, people were subject to US laws and those born there were Zoners, they were effectively American citizens. But this whole place was Colombia until the Americans got here and they were here too. The Colombians, Medellin is just a jungle away,” and Rico knew this but gave Anthony a big smile to thank him for the knowledge. They raced along in the long American convertible down the length of the turquoise bay towards the city like a Scarface XP he had done for Mikita Industrial Saws. He pointed past the skyline and into the dense jungle that continued on up and over a hill and on and on like that for hundreds of miles to Medellín. It was far, but there was nothing in between. This Panama Canal Zone or the history thereof seemed to give Anthony and his boss Fausto this transparent confidence that their work was no longer a secret and talking, indeed, bragging about it seemed to be how it was done.

“And they used La Zona to launder money. They built skyscrapers with American property laws and engineers and our own drug money,” he laughed and nodded over at the skyline again, Rico looked on. He had been all over the world at some point, but these were truly modern and outrageously constructed buildings, buildings for their own sake. They had now taken over the historic district of Panama City like Baroque and Roll, like Dubai back in the oil days but packed in tighter, surrounded by the lush green of the tropics instead of endless desert.

Anthony kept one hand on the wheel and leaned across the seat to Rico, with a quiet yell as the wind whipped around them. “It’s still the easiest way to clean money. You put up an enormous, luxury high-rise, and get the banks to ensure it for the value of each unit. No one has to live there. These boxes in the sky are currency, man. Not so much drugs, anymore, Rico, but money. This is where money comes to be reborn!”

Anthony gave it an extra yell as he drove and even Emma from the back peaked up her head and heard his fiscal renaissance proclamation. It made sense to Rico. He had heard it referred to as Narcotecture. It stuck with him, that name. And it certainly looked like it was true, he thought as they sped across the bay and back up onto the mainland, picking up the highway that took them downtown, into all that glistening, towering money.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Anthony brought them to one of the towers, tall enough that when you stood next to it, you could not see the top even if you tilted your head straight back. It went too high, reached another apex, disappeared into the clouds but there weren’t any, just distance and perspective. It was a very tall building, surrounded by others equally as tall.

Anthony brought them through a high-ceiling, regal lobby and into seamless soundless elevators, another lobby, on another floor, looking at walkways now, connecting towers, creating a canopy, not unlike the glass and steel version of Augustina’s jungle hideaway. The building began to intertwine as you went up. The strange thing was, Rico thought, there were no people. He looked at Emma and she read his mind.

“Where is everyone?” Emma asked, traveling in a silent, empty glass elevator looking out over an infinite amount of architecture, up and down and out.

“They are only here when you want them to be,” Anthony said with another smile. Rico liked that answer. It was like a resort, so big, so sculpted into privacy that you could hide the people. Or he wanted to believe that.

Anthony dropped them off in their changing rooms on a floor that they had all lost count of, but Anthony seemed to know how to navigate. They were in these New York City-like penthouse apartments that were giant, changing closets with endless rows of clothes on hangers and shoes in slots and bathroom amenities and a shower that gifted you with spigots in every direction and long lounges with cushions for relaxing after the shower had done its work. And they were next to each other with connecting doors.

“Relax. You’ve been on quite a journey. The spa takes care of itself, just get in there. Wear something smart and important. Your meeting with Fausto is on a higher floor.” Anthony was introducing them to the changing rooms, about to take his leave.

“A higher floor?” Emma asked.

“Everything goes up here,” Anthony said. “You start at the bottom and it’s limited, but as you go up the floors here in Casco Viejo, the freedom begins. You lose all those restrictions,” he smiled, “you know what I mean.” It wasn’t a question. Rico looked at Emma, he had always liked this kind of party and so did she. She was listening.

“You just have to dress nice,” Anthony finished with a wink in his own fancy suit and walked down the hall from their changing rooms and disappeared into the endless, luxurious high-rise catacombs of Casco Viejo.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico and Emma used their spa features and put on robes and ate plates of fresh fruit and fish and it was all delicious. Then they did the drugs that were there for them and for the first time in a long time they felt open and talkative and like the friends they were and are and always should be.

“When we get through this, what then?” Rico asked and it wasn’t pressured and anxious but easy and honest. They were sitting in quantum chairs and getting their neutrons enriched.

“I don’t know if you get through it, Rico. Maybe,” Emma was also relaxed, the drugs had kicked in and given them a nice buzz, a start to the evening. “You mean if Marcos knows what to do and we end El Diario and people have free will for eternity?” She smiled at him, knowing how that all sounded.

“Yes!” Rico said. “Isn’t that the idea, we win and we celebrate and everyone loves us?” He thought about the end of Star Wars, about getting those medals. Chewie.

“I don’t know if you win like that, Rico. I think you have to fight, and when the conflict is over you have to compromise and use legal means and activate the right people for the right reasons. In one form or another, this is what we’re doing, my dear.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get that. I see that.” Rico sat there in silence for a few seconds. “I think I want to go back. I want everything to be exactly the same except we did this, we had this, we know we saved the world or whatever the fuck we’re doing but it’s all the same, that’s enough right?”

“We can still make ads!!” Emma said. “We can still get into the best parties because we make such cool shit!”

“Yes!” This made Rico excited, this is exactly what he wanted.

“And then we can get married and have kids and buy holiday decorations! And have a resort we always go to and the bartender knows our kids’ names and we see them off to college and walk old fucking wrinkled hand in old fucking wrinkled hand and sit in bathtubs on the beach. All that shit! All that shit, Rico!! I want all that shit!”

Rico looked at Emma and she was thrashing around and having fun with it, getting punk with it, he knew this Emma, he fell in love with this Emma.

“Ya,” he said. “Me, too. I want that too,” But the words left his mouth weakly and Emma was up and dancing now continuing her thrash on her feet, the music had been on and low but it recognized her movement and turned up and she grabbed Rico’s hands and they danced.

They did some more drugs and danced a little more and then got dressed in slick, nano-fiber evening wear that was gangster in every way possible - a slim, lightweight, light blue suit and a white evening dress - made for activity, for disco splits and late night dives in the pool. Emma and Rico had their vacation turn into an adventure and though they had both come to this place from different perspectives and states of mind, some with prior knowledge, some without, they were now in sync in a high-rise gangster paradise lost and they were going to take a beat and party.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They walked into the party like they were walking onto a yacht. Anthony was leading the way and had been guiding them through the Escher-like skyscraper world, and Rico felt like they had definitely gone up a few floors, but it was hard to tell. They had come to a lobby, immense, light music, light lights, lighting up the few people that milled about, preoccupied but aware of the other guests and then through a small hallway and a service door and into the party. Dark and recessed with leather booths, Anthony had Emma’s hand and Rico was close behind as they weaved between servers in sheer clothing, drinkers and laughers and party people all about.

They went through a curtain, and on the edge of a theater in the round, a circular cushioned and satin stage looked more like a bed to Rico. There were bumps and cones and different protrusions emanating from the floor as well, satin and latex. And Anthony was taking them around the perimeter, squeezing around booths and tables of fixated fans, ready for a show.

“C’mon, it’s right back here,” Anthony turned and tugged Emma along, who looked back at me and smiled. She was having fun, Rico had seen that smile before. She looked amazing, Rico could feel that energy and he loved it so, maybe that was his love, for her in fun. He straightened the already straight lapels of his smooth, smart nano-jacket and looked at Emma in her shiny, little party dress, wrapping and unwrapping around her legs as she walked. He followed along, happily, as they rounded the last booth and found themselves in a recessed area, slightly raised overlooking the stage. Anthony lifted a velvet rope. They walked through and into the small enclosure.

“There you are!!” It was Fausto. He had been seated and he stood and raised his arms up, for a hug? Rico wondered. Emma was closest but there was still a table between them and although she was in a good mood, she wasn’t ready to embrace the man who had so recently shot her friend in the back. She blew him a kiss, instead. He caught it and ate it, licking his lips like LL Cool J. Anthony laughed. Fausto looked over at Rico and gave him a nod. “¡Sientese, por favor, my friends, my guests!”

Anthony made room for them to squeeze in and find a seat and then he edged his way out of the area.

“You’re not staying for the show, Anthony?” Fausto asked.

“No puede, boss, we got some things upstairs I need to take care of,” Anthony smiled at Emma and then over to Rico with a reassuring look. “But this is a good one, this show. It’s not for the people with, well… closed minds.”

“It’s for the freaks!!” Fausto screamed out, high-pitched. Anthony, smirked and raised his hand up to let us know he was leaving. “Get out of here,” Fausto growled at Anthony and then turned and looked at Rico with a giant grin on his face. “Trisha Marsha? You know this one, yes?”

Rico did know her. Everyone did. She was an icon of the sex industry.

“She’s amazing,” Emma said.

“She works for me. Sometimes,” Fausto told her. “When she works for anyone.”

Emma gave Fausto a more appreciable and affirmative nod than Rico had seen her give to the gangster. And she was right. Trisha Marsha was an innovative pornographer, having owned her own XPs, and bio-morphs and created herself as an icon of sexuality that could scale, that everyone could fuck and she had been around for what had seemed like the beginning of time. No one ever had to age anymore as an entertainer, and even if she died, her bio-morphs and simulations are so complete that the world may never know if she was really gone or not.

“She’s here. Tonight,” Fausto told us. “This is the show I bring to you,” Fausto gestured out of their small enclosure and only a few meters out onto the circular stage that Rico now clearly saw was a sexual obstacle course, in-the-round. The lights dimmed. The small light on their table lit everyone’s face from underneath, like they were telling scary stories to each other. Emma leaned in, stared down at the satin cushioned, dildoed stage.

“Fausto,” Rico whispered. “What are we…’

“Shhhhhhh! No!” Fausto was adamant. “It’s starting now.”

The stage lights went up and out walked Trisha Marsha. She had a big butt and small but round breasts, long flowing hair, she was in lingerie that shimmered like magic and her big pouty lips and sultry eyes begged you for more, there was very little doubt about it, she was made for love. Emma seemed transfixed, Fausto was grinning and Rico, who had made love to Trisha Marsha on screen, in XPs, through goggles, and he had even tried a Trisha Marsha bio-morph, a long time ago, in college, he thought, or maybe right after, single, living alone, was caught up in her reality. This was different, he thought. Reality was sexier.

And then another creature came out into the sex circle. It was human in a way, like golem. A greenish, grey wrinkled skin and giant round eyes, Rico thought of the E.T. experiences he had been in as a kid, flying on the bike, E.T. in the basket. It was shorter than Trisha, hunched over a bit, with long extended fingers and a huge, gray and green and veiny cock, that had an unusually large head like an overgrown mushroom top. And it looked to Rico as if this creature’s enormous penis was only partially erect.

The crowd exploded with applause and cheers, catcalls and whistles. Fausto put his fingers in his mouth under his tongue and hit a shrill high note of a whistle that pierced the air around them and set Rico’s ears to ringing. Emma was clapping, too. Rico put his hands together and watched as Trisha began to caress that big green dick. And, indeed, Rico noticed it gained size as she stroked it. The creature let out a groan that sounded very human, not like an orc or underworld creature but a man, a man with an enormous E.T. dick that the world’s most famous pornstar went down to her knees and started to suck on.

Emma was engaged, watching intently like an anthropologist, like Margaret Mead at her Samoan gangsta party. But Fausto was done welcoming the talent and turned to Rico, who felt his stare and returned the gaze. Rico got the chills again. The fear.

“So what are we doing now, eh?” Fausto asked him.

“Enjoying the show,” Rico said.

“And then…”

“Oaxaca.”

“And this is why you need me? To get you to Mexico, yes?”

“And this is why we need you, Fausto.” Rico looked over at Emma when he said ‘we’. She was still focused on the sex show, but was listening, he could tell. He could also tell she just didn’t want this right now, didn’t want to deal with this situation… again. So he ran with it. “Can you get us to the coast of Oaxaca, the southern tip, the beaches there?”

“You are scared of America Central?” Fausto asked.

“Right now I am scared of everyone,” Rico said. Fausto laughed. “But you can travel safely, privately, get things from one place to another without people noticing. That’s what you do, right?”

“It is what we all do, mijo. I’m just very good at it.” Fausto sat back. He looked out over his nightclub, his sex theater. E.T. was sliding his enormously engorged alien cock into Trisha Marsha who was on her knees with her bubbly, round ass high in the air, ready to absorb the shock of entry.

“Right, my love?” Fausto directed his question to Emma, who turned and gave him an ‘I don’t give a shit’ smile.

“Great,” Rico said. “Let’s go. No need to waste time here. No offense, I mean, this is lovely, Fausto. Thank you. But we’re in a war and it can’t wait.”

“Ahhhh… I hear you, mijo. I hear you. But there is always time for one night, just to take a moment of celebration, a chance to revel in the fact that you are still here, still alive and to touch every sense and every desire. Especially when you are in a war, eh?”

Rico stared at Fausto. Emma wanted to party. He knew that. They were already feeling good and she was ignoring even this conversation in favor of more hedonistic stimulation. “So…” he said.

“So, we leave in the morning,” Fausto told him, short and sweet.

“We?” Rico asked, he wasn’t feeling very good about where this was going.

“Yes! This time America Central has fucked with me. Come into my house and fuck with me! And if they want you and her and Marcos Real bad enough to fuck with me… then I am going to fuck with them! ¡Viva la revolucion! Eh, mijo? We fight together in this war, no?” Fausto raised his glass, saluted his God, and took a long pull on it, slamming it down on the table.

Emma was startled and looked over irritated at Fausto for interrupting her sexual gaze. “Yeeeeeesssssss!” He answered his own question with a deep hiss, boiling over into a giggle. And it made Rico clench his shoulders, with a lightning rod of certainty, ripping through his body electric – they were going to die. This one night would be an infinite darkness. He and Emma would never see the dawn.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“I wasn’t always like this,” E.T. said. They were at a bar. Rico was staring into his giant round eyes, wrinkled greyish-greenish skin wrapping around and following down his torso, gangling arms, short stumpy body and small but strong legs like a French bulldog. And a cock, now at ease, but still long and girthy, almost touching the ground. The eyes were dilated, vibrating from drugs or just having had public, performative sex with Trisha Marsha or both. “I got into CRISPR Kits and started to change things, to get myself where I wanted to be, ya know?” His voice was decidedly human; it reminded Rico of a kid he went to high school with.

“Sure,” Rico said. He took a drink. Emma was over his shoulder, talking to Trisha Marsha. Anthony was somewhere around; he had brought them there after Fausto had excused himself. Business, he had said, disappearing into his own sky-maze of skyscrapers. “Everyone should be what they want to be.” Rico was in a different mood. The drugs and the fatalism of his circumstance had released him. Fuck it. Let’s enjoy what’s in front of us.

“I was pretty far along,” the golem-like sex worker told Rico, “when I came here.” His name was Star80, Rico had heard him say it earlier. “They offered me a job and sort of finished me up, gave me this,” Star80 picked up his cock with his long, bony fingers and cradled it and let it slap like meat in his grey palm. “You can definitely be whatever you want to be here, I find work all over Casco Viejo, way upstairs where it gets nasty or some stuff down closer to the normals.”

“Where are we now?” Rico asked, thinking about when they had left the last club, Anthony coming back for them after the performance and taking them backstage where they picked up these two - the stars of the show - and then rode up a few floors to this place, a lounge, Anthony had called it.

“Uh… we’re up there, I know that, but not sure how high. I’ve never been all the way up,” Star80 said, “and I work here.” He took a sip of his cocktail and Rico noticed his tongue peek out and wrap around the lip of his glass and it was also human and familiar.

“You do shows like tonight?” Rico asked, trying to ride this numbness and pretend like it was any other night at the club.

“I do whatever,” Star80 said, tossing his oblong head back with pride. He stared at Rico, “I’m an alien. I’m alien. From another fucking planet, Rico. Alien life. Ya know? That’s worth something around here.” Star80 put his drink down with a little emphasis, having worked from pride to not being respected enough for how much people liked to fuck aliens. Or piss on them. Or have them fucked in front of you by some other creature even more ghastly or cute or disgusting, whatever you were into.

Rico knew you didn’t just have coffee with one. And he saw how he was the shape of all the aliens he had known, that came out of hovering ships, that probed Mid-Westerners, that were found in swamps and backyards of the unsuspecting suburban kids of yore. Why wouldn’t you want to have a go at one of those? Rico thought. He got it. There wasn’t much to get.

“Can I get you another?” Rico asked Star80 motioning to the bartender, classic, quiet, cleaning a glass, waiting for Rico to motion to him. He gave a nod and began to mix another round. Rico tried to listen over his shoulder to see what the ladies were on about. He was excited the moment he was introduced to Trisha Marsha and it was perhaps one of the reasons he was taking his imminent death so well, but Emma had swept her away quickly and he had only introduced himself and gave her a strange but tingling kiss on the cheek. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, mainly laughs and breathy whispers. They were having fun. And Emma should. He wasn’t going to even tell her about his feeling, about the sensation that made his toes wiggle with anxiety. His realization. His truth. Fausto was going to kill them tonight. And maybe he wasn’t totally having as much fucking fun as he should. He was going to have to die protecting Emma and then she would die to. But he hoped it would be quick. We’ll see what kind of gentleman Fausto is, he thought.

“What are you about? Huh?” And though he was definitely a CRISPR alien, he grunted this time like Golem. Like a human who had gone bad. Rotted. The bartender sat down their drinks and Rico gestured toward Star80’s drink on the bar, an invitation to enjoy.

“I keep to myself mostly,” Rico said, not really knowing what he was going to say until it came out but realized it was basically true.

“You don’t do anything? You don’t have a thing? Something way way in there, man? Ya know?” His big round mouth moved almost separately as he spoke, his eyes seemed to focus in more, to pull on him. They were huge, this was Rico’s main thought. Alien eyes. He got that right.

“Sure. Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” Rico told the monster. And then the barstools made a screech on the floor behind him and he turned to see Emma and Trisha getting up. Emma leaned into him, she was loose and fun and feeling good, he could tell. And she deserved it, they wanted this and he wasn’t going to ruin it for her.

“We’re going to dance,” she whispered in his ear and it made him rise inside, to come to attention, it reminded him of why he was here. He had purpose. And even if it were coming to an end, this mission, he would die for it and that was the ask, really.

“Good.” He smiled at her, but it wasn’t happy enough. She saw it and cocked her head. You okay? she asked Rico with her expression. And he lit up his eyes and let her know he was ready to rock. And let’s do that. “Get out there!” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and a little kid push towards the dance floor.

Trisha Marsha rolled over to him. She was open and calm and used her body as a weapon and no one cared, it suited her, made her shimmer with energy all the time. She rubbed against him and also whispered in his ear.

“Let him do his thing,” she said, her hot breath making him obedient. “It’s fucking out. of. this. World!” Trisha Marsha spoke like burlesque came to language. She pulled away quickly and pursed her gorgeous red fat lips and blew him a kiss. Emma grabbed her hand and she smiled and flashed her eyes at him like O! Boy! And Rico knew she was a professional and he was taking her seriously as they disappeared onto the dance floor, lights and silhouettes of bodies enfolded them like billowing curtains.

“So. I have a thing. I can show you.” It was Star80 and he moved in a little closer at the bar, his big alien head coming up to Rico’s chest.

“Oh yeah?” Rico said out loud but not to Star80 or anyone really, he was just thinking about when Fausto would kill them. End his relations with them. Punish them for bringing America Central to his front door. For being stupid. And he would just take The Source of All Intention from Emma’s cold dead hand. Rico wondered whether it mattered or not. Any of it. At all.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They were in a tiny room in the back. Rico couldn’t see much. Star80 had his arm around his back and was pushing him up against the wall. The wall was fuzzy. Star80 made his strange grunting sounds as he slid the smooth nano fiber pants down Rico’s strong, muscular legs. The alien eyes, those big fluctuating sources of raw alien emotion, stared up at him and Rico thought, a blow job? Is that what’s at the highest level of depravity around here? An alien blow job? Okay, not bad, he thought, but still wondering if that were enough and then he saw it. The finger. This was unmistakable and while Star80 was this genetic kit of desire and fetish around the collective idea of alienism, this was specific. This was the finger that made Elliot’s eyes pop and light up a theater with its wonder and fantasy. Rico knew his face was cast in the light as he looked down at Star80 holding up his finger, lit up with some otherworldly glow, a long, skeletal grey phalange with a bulbous tip, afire with cosmic energy.

Star80 didn’t say a word but lowered the finger down and sat the tip, the lit bulb of a finger into Rico’s belly button.

“What is this? What are you going to do?” Rico asked, looking down at Star80, wide-eyed and yearning. “Are you supposed to turn me on with this thing?” He motioned down to the light at the end of the finger rimming the inside of his navel.

“No,” the little alien grunted a little laugh and said, “I’m going to turn you off.”

And Rico felt himself spin out of control, like he was the disc on a drill bit, his whole body wrapped up and around this finger and he watched as the finger entered him, he didn’t feel it penetrate his skin, but he felt it inside and he watched it disappear and the alien eyes became spinning voids, they held multitudes and vibrated out of existence until they were gone and he felt the heat begin to burn inside him, but also neither burned nor hurt him in any way and he was pushed to an edge he had never felt before a new space or the end of space and he wondered about all the drugs he’d done and this weird fucker with his finger inside of his belly hole and he thought of Emma and this world spin became steady and then became like the alien eyes, a pool of nothing and then he was gone, turned off like an old television.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The nothing. It was like the melting and freezing point, both the same degree and yet two different states, the heaviness of everything. Being outside of your own existence felt like the gravity of an infinite black hole and now being back in the everything where everyone actually was but no one felt a thing. Being there was an unimaginable lightness, a new lightness, the lightness that everything is already done and you are it and so is everyone and that feels like air, like a cloud on a cloud with no ground beneath to hold it, there is no bottom, there never was. And this sensation only happened as he turned back on, as he came back from nothing, he pulled this lightness through with him, it’s the thing he brought back from the place where nothing existed.

Rico looked down and saw Star80 slide the rest of his finger out of him, remove the heart light and it died like an ember in the dark backroom they were in. And Rico could not help himself because he now knew he had done it a zillion trillion times before and he was going to do it this time too! He grabbed the grey-green monster by the sides of his wide head and looked into its nothing eyes and kissed him, kissed Star80 on his slimy sweaty alien lips and let his own lips slurp it up and he meant it.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!!!” Star80 wiggled out of his kiss and started laughing a condescending laugh. It was a laugh like someone who had tripped you and then pointed at you on the ground. Ha ha ha ha. “I fucking told you!” He sounded like high-pitched gravel, like a goblin on acid. “I fucking told you I had a thing!! I reset you, Rico! You got reset!”

Star80 was bouncing up and down on his little E.T. legs and clapping his long fucked-up fingers and Rico didn’t care. Trisha Marsha had tipped him off and yes he came back here and wanted to get a fucking alien blow job or whatever the fuck and so ya, you turned me off, I sat outside existence for a minute and fuck it! I am way better for it. Seen it all. We’re done here, no? Got it all wrapped up, little doubt in that, Rico said to himself in an instant. And then out loud, out into the world...

“I love you,” Rico said to Star80. And wrapped his arms around him, slurring a bit, caught up in the energy of the nothing he made it back from. “What fucking floor are we on?”

<><><><><><><><><><>

Anthony took them higher. Rico and the genetic, alien sex worker, Star80 had come out of the backroom and stumbled into Trisha Marsha and Emma. They were in each other’s arms, holding each other up, touching and exploring each other while they stood there. They were all sensual and in that groove where everything is good and the tomorrows have gone away and they were almost as much in the now as the nothing. The party montage ensued.

Anthony took them higher. They went through floors like tunnels and limelights, blurs in spinning blurs wrapped in drum beats and kisses. Dancing was the language and they spoke to each other in whispers and screams winding through strangers and always reconnecting with knowing smiles and hands around the waist, curving asses, breasts and chest, wet kisses on the lips. Drugs here and there until you don’t care or forgot whether you were even doing them, maybe right now, yep and nestles in necks and sensitive fingers in all the magic places, incidental, purposeful and natural the motion of the ocean breathing onto the beach and back again. It was good old-fashioned fun.

They all ended up in the cushions of a dome room, like a sultry cabana inside a luxury lounge at the tippy top of the penthouse hotel. They were up there in the maze of skyscrapers but Rico knew, if he knew anything at this point, they weren’t at the very top, they had yet to climb to the very top of this Panamanian Paradise. It was pretty good, Rico thought, but not the end all. Or not that it mattered, at the moment.

Trisha Marsha was playing charades. Standing up in front of them and gyrating and writhing in pantomime of an old film title as the rest of them laid amongst the cushions, wistful and exhausted from dancing and drugs and just feeling so good for so long.

Star80 may be beyond good, Rico mused, his own eyes half open, watching the alien rest, comatose, but easy breathing, a smile on his slimy face. Emma was close by, lying on her side laughing at everything Trisha Marsha was doing. Even Anthony had a smirk on his face, in the corner, watching over them but relaxed and a part of them as well. They were all party perfect. A time of contentment. It was that time before the time when you never want the sun to come up; you didn’t need that wish yet.

“Programmed to Kill!” Emma shouted at Trisha Marsha, who was holding her hands out like a weapon, her silhouette a classic bombshell on a paper movie poster.

“The Quantum Thief,” Rico added on. Trisha Marsha had made the belly button to forehead hand gesture indicating a virtual performer, in this case Bruce Willis, who had become more popular as an AI essence than he was as an original. Rico and Emma were naming movies of his, and Trisha Marsha kept shaking them off, herself a globally popular essence but this person, in front of him, Rico knew or rather felt absolutely that she was the original. This real Trisha Marsha pouted in front of them, causing Emma to cry out ahhhhh… and make everyone feel bad for not guessing it. Bad because of sex. It was her undeniable effect, this global superstar.

“The Singularity,” Anthony said from the corner. Trisha Marsha turned on him, pointing her weapon straight at him. She pulled the trigger and he grabbed his heart with a smile. And then she waved him off and put her hands on her hips. Not quite. Rico knew what it was. He had seen The Singularity. The adventure epic where all people turn into information, which turns in on itself and becomes a singularity, a single beam of intergalactic light. It was years ago. He had never seen the sequel but he knew it existed. He knew virtual Bruce Willis reprised his role.

“The Singularity 2,” Rico said out into the domed lounge, across the cushions and to her ears. Trisha Marsha put her finger delicately and somehow seductively, on her nose, indicating that Rico had gotten it right and she motioned to him in a blur to take her hand and he did and he rose and fell into her in a single motion. Rico felt the warmth of her breath and curve and thickness of her body sliding slowly next to his. Trisha Marsha whispered in his ear like this was his reward.

“Take me to the top, Rico,” she breathed the words in his ear and it entered his brain and exploded his neurons. “I’ve never been to the top…” she pulled away and looked at him and he knew he didn’t care; he was there in that place and knew that none of it mattered. Yes. She saw in him the answer and he didn’t say a thing. He was trying to lock in the memory of her eyes looking at him saying yes.

“Take me to the top, Tony!” Trisha Marsha said to Anthony in the corner, letting go of Rico and turning towards him. Anthony stood up.

“No,” he said.

And then Star80 jumped up on his stumpy alien legs and his big E.T. eyes popped wide open. Emma sat up, watching Trisha Marsha intently. And then Trisha Marsha turned to him and Rico knew he was going to have to make this happen. He had told her yes, succumbed to her wiles in every way that is possible. But he had to check something first. Even in the end or near it he needed to keep his promise, to protect Emma even if he knew the outcome.

“Let’s see the top, baby. We should go up, yes?” Rico spoke softly. He wanted to let her decide to get her there gently and realize it was the only way.

“Absolutely,” she said, still staring at Trisha Marsha. Then looking at him, “Let’s go all the way.” She smiled and Rico could tell that she meant with this revolution thing they were doing. To the top for tonight, yes, but she was being clever. Double meaning. Their journey. The future. Tomorrow. She didn’t know what was in store for them.

“You heard the lady, Tony. We need to go all the way.” Trisha Marsha was sticking up for Emma and it made her beam.

“It’s not for you,” Anthony told them, standing resolute in his tight, shiny, black suit.

“Fausto told us whatever we want tonight,” Emma said. She glanced at Trisha Marsha and then over to Anthony, “And he told you to get it for us.”

“Whatever they want. Special guests. He told us the same, Tony. C’mon now.” It was Trisha Marsha. Star80 was nodding along. They had been told to indulge Emma and Rico, as well. The cards were stacking up.

“Well… you don’t want this,” Anthony told them directly. He meant it. It didn’t matter.

“We’re here, we’re his guests and we both know that it’s closer to prisoner, wouldn’t you say?” It was Rico talking to Anthony. He figured he would walk the line on the truth here and see what it bought him. “Either way, we don’t have much choice in the matter. We need his help. And he knows it.”

Anthony nodded along but gave a look that indicated he needed more.

“So he gave us this night,” Rico spread his arms and looked around at his party friends, still waving and blurring in all the right ways. “Before we go off to war, before we help him the ways we know we’re going to have to to get him to help us. We all know this, right? We don’t have a choice.” He smiled at Emma and she smiled back. “So let us choose this. This is what we want, Anthony. This is our night.”

Trisha Marsha and Star80 and Emma stood silent in anticipation, waiting for the bouncer to move the chain and open up the rope to let them pass. Anthony shook his head, looked down at the ground. Rico knew he was going to let them in, and Anthony knew he was too, it was already in the cards they were dealt from the beginning. Of time.

“I will tell you again. You don’t want this. You’re wrong about that,” And with a charisma beyond a bouncer, Anthony led with a ginger smirk and a sinister glint in the eye that belied his acceptance of the way it needed to go. “But it is your night.”

Trisha Marsha squealed like a true professional and Star80 grunted, an honest, alien grunt of satisfaction. Rico looked at Emma with the light of revolution in his eyes, free will, he said in every cell of his being. Emma saw it, she recognized it, she gave it right back. He was there now, he understood. Even in these last moments, they had chosen this one, amongst all the trappings of fate.

“Let’s go to the top,” Anthony said.

<><><><><><><><><><>

It was good to be high. To have been negated earlier and returned, to have seen the abyss, the preview of what was sure to come, but at least they would have made it all the way, all the way up. Rico heard the elevator bell ding and the doors opened.

It was an office hallway. A nice office, the lighting slightly subdued, the strange cork board ceiling a little less corky, some wood or polymer wood lined the gaps between the walls and the doors. It was nice, but it was an office hallway. They filed out of the elevator and into the hall like they were going to the big presentation. And there was a door at the end. A double-door to be fair, also a deep wood, was that mahogany, Rico thought to himself, having not seen such wood since his early days in advertising and that was only in movies. There was opaque glass on either side of the double doors and everyone sort of stepped up and stopped, all-together, looking for the leader or the head account person to open the door, in this case it was Anthony.

He grabbed the subtle matte black handle against that rich mahogany overtone. Rico took a breath. The last thing he would experience, the very top of this Faustian hell and at least he was high. Negated, finished with everything but his promise.

“Awww… c’mon.” It was Trisha Marsha. Anthony had swept the door open and they looked in on a meeting room. Again, a very nice one. The mahogany continued, the black designer chairs, the clean lines, lighting sublime, seamless technology that showed itself but not too brazenly, the mid-century modern dream of a boardroom in full realization. And still. “This is the fucking top?” Trisha Marsha was obviously unimpressed. “This looks like my fucking office,” she said.

Emma and Star80 entered slowly, taking it in for a second, wondering if there were something, almost expecting a fountain of blood erupting from a giant chained anus or a row of severed heads sucking severed dicks floating like a Piero Passolini haunted mansion or in some way a new pain that they didn’t know could be a pleasure and were here to find out. But here they were in a meeting room in a really nice office. The top of hell was a boardroom.

“Sit down wherever you like,” Anthony was still playing the account role, arranging the meeting, making everyone feel welcome.

“Fucking seriously?” Trisha Marsha had her hands on the back of a black ergonomic chair, leaning in on Anthony as he tried to usher everyone into the room. “You mean this the highest we can go in gangster paradise? I work for you people… occasionally… and this is the eye at the top of your muthafucking pyramid? C’mon. This is what we’re doing? A meeting?”

“Please, sit down,” Anthony told them. “This is what you wanted. So, take a seat.”

Everyone was frozen. But then Trisha Marsha was the first to sit. And slowly everyone found their chair and took a seat around the table. Rico and Emma on one side, Trisha Marsha and Anthony on the other and Star80 sat at the end. Anthony was the only one still standing when Fausto walked into the room from behind the wall and put his hands down at his end of the table. He laughed and his dark eyes sparkled.

“Ahh. You look disappointed,” he said, looking around the room at each of them. Rico noticed Anthony standing with his head down, shaking it back and forth slowly like a bell. “Well, I can assure you that you have made it to the top.”

Star80 snorted. Trisha Marsha tossed her hair back and looked at Fausto defiantly; she didn’t have existential concerns, she wanted to party.it

“This is it, Fausto? This is the highest high in your pleasure dome?” Trisha Marsha asked. Rico knew it was the end. He didn’t have much to say.

“So, you were following your desires tonight, I hope, and making the most of it, right, Anthony?” Fausto looked over at his lieutenant. “You showed them a good time, yes?”

“We had a good time, boss.” Anthony said. Emma looked at Rico and she did not look scared.

“And this is the end of the line, this is the highest point where desire stops, the pleasure comes to an end…”

“Fucking pain, Fausto?” Trisha Marsha laughed out loud.

Fausto looked down the long length of the shiny mahogany table, his twisted face reflected in the sheen. “No,” he said, “not pain… nothing. Your desire termine con nada!” Fausto stood up and raised his arms, like a corporate pirate finishing a rival in his own boardroom. “And this is the best part. This is why it’s all so beautiful.” He lowered his hands and looked down the table at each and every one of them, even Anthony – a devil’s toast, straight to the eyes. “Because we are free. We owe nothing to nothing. This is why we are here. To do what we like.”

No one said a word for a few heartbeats. Anthony moved towards Trisha Marsha, as if this were planned.

“And I would like,” Fausto paused for emphasis, “to have a word with these two,” he waved his fingers towards Rico and Emma. “You may go now. Please,” he said.

Trisha Marsha stood up. She felt it too, Rico thought. She knew this was the end and it could be for her, too, if she stalled. Anthony offered his arm to her like a gentleman and she wrapped her arm in his and they walked towards the end of the table.

“C’mon, ya freak,” Trisha Marsha said to Star80, who got out of the chair with a gurgling sound and a slide of his slimy skin on the rich leather. He held up his bulbous alien finger, it was not lit up, it was soft and wrinkled and grey and it was a goodbye, a mild wave and he was out the door. Trisha Marsha stopped and turned to Fausto. “You’re not as good at this as you think you are, mi jefe. All this bullshit,” she told him, standing proud and more beautiful than Rico had ever seen her, flowing and bright, not defiant as much as pure and strong.

Fausto gave a sly smile. “You are the best. A true professional. Buenas noches, querida.” And he blew her a kiss. Then Trisha Marsha turned and left the room. Anthony closed the door behind her and stood silently in the room, at the end of the table.

Emma turned to Rico, she looked strong but scared, finally, but not in realization of the outcome. Just scared. She stared at Rico, giving him her strength, knowing she needed him, just trusting in her own energy and being in the right, doing the right thing as a form of protection. She felt that, Rico did not.

Fausto made his way down the table, quickly, moving like a spirit. He pulled up a seat next to Rico, who was between him and Emma.

“I need the girl now,” Fausto said leaning in like these were the final details of a business deal that had no other options.

“Ah, c’mon, Fausto, after all that we’ve been through,” Rico was terrified but that was somehow making him calm and sharp. Emma was silent, she was letting him talk. “Besides, you don’t believe in any of this shit, man. You hate all this, you said yourself you don’t want any side to win, only to fight, huh? Don’t take a side, Fausto. That’s not your game, my friend.” It was all true, Rico thought, did it sound true? “Just get us out of here. Get us out of your system for good, you keep your boardroom atop Vice Mountain and just keep on keeping on, we’re gone, Fausto. Gone. For good.”

“This is what I thought last time we were together, but I was wrong. America Central wants her bad. They are willing to trade,” Fausto got animated. “And trust me, my friend, they don’t make deals!” He looked at Emma. “Except now. With Fausto, eh? Show me your thing, your thing in your hand.”

“My fucking trinket! My gypsy trick?” It was Emma, done being silent, still angry that Fausto had never bought into El Fuente or the revolución and why the fuck was this guy even part of this. Rico knew her well and none of this energy was good right now.

“Fausto, there’s another wrinkle to this,” Rico said, desperate for another angle. “You have to take us both. I’m in this, too. It’s what we found out in Bocas. With your friends that you let stay there… Augustina.” Rico felt strength when he said her name. “I’m a replica of Marcos Real. I’m the only one that can get him out without El Diario discovering us.”

Emma looked at him strangely, like she didn’t recognize what he was saying. Fausto banged his hands on the table, two fists in a quick rhythm. BoomBoom. “I don’t need you and I don’t know what you are saying to me.” BoomBoom, he banged his fists like he was thinking with them, working it out back and forth with the table. “You are nothing to me. America Central, they don’t know you, they don’t ask for you, so you are nothing to me.” BoomBoom. “So…” BoomBoom. His fists again. “You can go.” Fausto stood up. Rico looked up at him, not fully taking this in. Go? Fausto was smiling. “You are nothing. Who cares. Have a good time and then get the fuck out of my life, yes?”

Rico heard Anthony open the door and he saw his face, it was relief. Emma didn’t say a word. She just sat there, staring at her own hands lying still on the boardroom table. Boom. Boom. Fausto kept cadence, slower this time, like a heartbeat. Rico stood up and turned towards the gangster. He had let him go. He was free. But Rico couldn’t do it, he couldn’t move if he wanted to. His feet were planted, it was somehow all decided, his promise to Knoxville-Z like concrete in his veins. And it was okay.

“We stay together, Fausto,” Rico said.

“Get the FUCK OUT!!” Fausto screamed.

Rico didn’t move. He stood eye-to-eye with Fausto, only a heartbeat boomboom to take in the silence before he heard Anthony close the door once again and realized it was too late.

“I hope you like that little place your little fucked up friend took you to. Did you like that? Because you made your choice. ¡Nada para ti!.”

Rico did imagine that place Star80 took him to, the gravity of it, the weight of nothing. He tried to attach to the nihilism, to let it take him in this moment, but he had purpose and it ruined it. He couldn’t go quietly. He had always romanticized the frontier experiences of Jack London and the men who froze to death always had a moment of joy, a pure warmth and ecstatic delirium before they left the world. Rico wanted that but he had to do everything in his power to protect Emma and that made it feel not like nothing, but like everything. It felt like agony, and maybe that is why his promise would still count because it was real, because it refused to recognize nothing when it could be so easy to dive right in. Agony.

Rico grabbed Fausto by the throat, this would be the fastest way to die and maybe he would break his windpipe or something. Get lucky, let rage take over in this moment and the Fausto’s whole plan would fall apart and Emma and him would get away, maybe Anthony would join them, he seemed cool. But it was Anthony’s footsteps that Rico heard coming closer and Emma didn’t want to die, she stayed very still as Rico squeezed harder around Fausto’s neck and he looked into his eyes, a cm from his own, eye for an eye, and Fausto was having fun, what the fuck? He wasn’t worried or scared or even feeling Rico’s death hold on his neck, just looking straight back at him, seeming to relish in his move towards violence. Anthony was on him now. He had never been more scared. It was painful to try so hard and just fail. He trembled or that’s what he thought it was... the last wiggle of life before the end...

But it was actually armed raiders smashing through the glass walls of Fausto’s boardroom at the top of the skyscraper. They started shooting up the place and all hell broke loose.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Emma and Fausto raced, hand-in-hand, across the rooftop to the launchpad. Rico was right behind them looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming through the trap door they had popped out of and onto the very top level of the skyscraper, the top of the gangster empire at Casco Viejo... the roof.

“¡Cierralo! ¡Cierralo!” Fausto was yelling at him. Rico stopped and looked back at the escape hatch. He saw a disc like an old manhole barely raised above the ground and he took a few big steps forward and jumped on it like a giant button. The portal they had come out of and the ladder leading back down to the boardroom disappeared as a thick cover slid across the entrance until it was seamlessly sealed. That should buy us time, Rico thought. Not much.

He headed towards the escape pod. It looked like a thin egg, the size of a tram car, pointed up towards the heavens, the gloomy, dark tropical skies that hovered almost at eye level at the top of the skyscraper. The wind ripped around them. Fausto was helping Emma get inside.

Rico remembered feeling that glass hit him as he was wrapped around Emma in the boardroom. He thought it was Anthony finishing his job, but it never went dark on him and he opened his eyes and he saw the raiders, they were air-troopers using their flypacks to raid the boardroom. Sonic waves had hit the natural resonance of the unbreakable glass, shattering it and they stormed the room. Their projectile guns were blowing holes in the shiny, mahogany table, exploding up into a rain of splinters and glass. Rico had let go of Fausto immediately and wrapped around Emma. He saw Anthony taking shots across his body barely making an impact on him, nano fiber black suit absorbing most of the damage, he fired his own weapon on the troopers. More gangsters with more guns entered the fray, it was like the gunfight scene in the hotel from True Romance XP he done for Coinbase.

Then he had pushed Emma under the table and they crawled on their belly’s to the other side as the troopers and gangsters stormed above. They came out from under the table still low to the ground and they saw Fausto. He was on his belly too, slithering across the ground towards the corner of the room. Rico and Emma slithered after him.

Behind the dais where Fausto had emerged at the front of the boardroom was a panel that Fausto had reached and got to his knees. “¡Vamanos! Now!” It was Fausto motioning to Rico and Emma to come with him. He opened an invisible door and it was like he had done this a thousand times. It slid out of nowhere in the panel on the wall of the boardroom. He looked at them and said in a way that was both angry and vulnerable, “This is not possible.”

Rico wondered if this is what Fausto always said when he got raided, remembering Gladden Spit. And here they were again, running from an attack on a notorious but well-integrated gangster who was leading them to another escape route. Perhaps this was just his life. He seemed very well prepared for it. Or was this their fault? How bad did these guys want Emma? There had been no time to ask and they had stayed low to the ground as the war raged and they, once again, had slipped out the back.

Rico ran up to Fausto next to the giant egg poised to take off - the escape pod. Emma had just taken her seat, low and comfortable, there were four seats in the smooth, featureless vessel. There was nothing else.

“Get in!” Fausto said to him, yelling above the wind and the sound of a battle raging below them.

“Where are we going?” Rico asked.

“Not we, mijo, you. I am staying here.”

“What?” Emma asked, surprised and for some reason concerned.

“This was not the deal!” Fausto yelled out. “You think I will let this America Central break a deal with me? They dare come at me to get my possessions! This is not the way it works. Now we fight. Pendejos,” Fausto spit on the rooftop.

“Why are you letting us go?” Rico knew that by possessions he had meant them.

“Oh, because I try to let you go free and then you repay me by trying to kill me?” Fausto was smiling and Rico thought about how little it affected him, wondered about Fausto’s own source of power. “Is this why you are asking me this one? Okay then I tell you.” Fausto got close and Rico could feel his heat. “They broke a deal with me. A promise. And if I kill you, they will win. So… you are free! Go be dangerous, comrades ¡Viva la revolución!” Fausto laughed and leaned back. Rico could feel his world spinning with relief and disbelief. This was too many notes.

“How does this thing work?” Emma asked from her seat, looking around the cockpit for anything to press or use to steer. She seemed to be taking this all in stride, but perhaps her life had not been in as much danger.

“This one is a rocket!” Fausto said. “It is not on the network, eh? Just one straight shot. No one will know where you will be. And it has enough fuel to get anywhere in Las Americas. Just tell it where you want to go, es todo.”

“Thank you?” Emma said as a question, but she also meant it. Rico started to climb into the big egg. He could hear the sounds of the melee, the closer quarter gun battle, he saw lights in the sky getting closer, it looked like more air-troopers were on their way. Rico was anxious. Fausto turned directly to Emma.

“Show me, yes? Show me El Fuente. Una vez más,” Fausto stared at her hand. Emma didn’t say a word, she knew to oblige this and did so. She held out her hand and focused her energy and it appeared. The small cube floated above her palm, grey but colorless, matte but with a shine to it, and it sat weightless but felt heavy in the air around it. Rico always marveled at its energy. Fausto gave his most boisterous laugh, a big absurd, subversive guffaw and then quieted down, shaking his head.

“My friends,” he said with sincerity and charm, “I do not understand this world.” He rose up to his full height. Rico and Emma looked up at Fausto from their seats in the escape pod and he put his fingers to his chest and made the sign of that ancient cross and kissed his fingers to the sky. “Vaya con Dios,” he told them once again.

Rico saw Anthony running towards Fausto across the rooftop, their own soldiers following behind. Fausto gave them one last look, shook his head and then ran to join them. Lights filled the sky, fireflies behind the spire here on the roof of the skyscraper. Troopers that had made it to the top were getting into a loose formation, taking positions on the roof. Rico looked at Anthony, taking a defensive position next to his boss, against every odd it would seem, and Rico understood the strength of a promise, the only thing you can ever know before you die is whether you kept your word or not. But this wasn’t an adventure anymore, this mission was agonizing. And he wondered if Anthony felt the same.

And then, across the long wide rooftop, he saw out of the corner of his eye, that familiar tug that pulls you back to a face, a movement, a silhouette you had seen before. On the rooftop, too far to be sure, but surrounded by troopers, seemingly leading them forward towards the gangsters now circling in front of the big egg for the last defense at the top of the skyscraper, Rico thought he saw Bennie. The luggage carrier. The partier at the Jaguar. Standing next to Detective Ignacio at Gladden Spit. Fucking Bennie? Rico thought. He also wondered if he were going crazy.

“Ready?” It was a simple question from Emma. “We just need to tell it where to go,” she was anxious with good reason. America Central was closing in. Rico’s mind raced but there was only one answer that would not leave his head, a place they could reach in this escape pod from hell, Orpheus brings Eurydice back. Home. Anywhere in Las Americas, Fausto had said. Why not New York City? Blockbuster. Their lives. He saw it in front of him, he felt it. He wanted to go home. But he knew where Emma wanted to go.

“Ready,” Rico affirmed.

“Take us to Punta Cometa!” Emma said forcefully. And the rocket ignited and they felt the roar and an almost instantaneous blast-off that rumbled in their chests and flipped their guts. They were off. The war was indeed raging behind them, the eternal conflict of power playing itself out as they escaped that gravity and ascended into the dark, dense clouds of heaven.

The boy with the brown flat nose smiled to show off his jangled teeth as he watched Rico reel the fish into the boat. It was a dorado and it shimmied and yanked itself around. It was a meter long, shiny silver and green and thick in the head. The boy balanced on the gunwale of the boat in his bare feet, as the boat rocked gently back and forth in the low waves off the Oaxacan coast. Rico could feel his hand giving way, his fingers loosening their grip on the rod, the banged-up ones from the coral, still not full strength. He didn’t want to lose the fish; he was having too much fun.

The boy grabbed the line as Rico steadied himself and re-gripped his aching hand, holding up the rod for the boy, who had the fish now by the line, lightening the load. Rico was able to hold on. The boy opened the mouth of the big fish and deftly ripped the hook out. Then he let it drop to the bloody, salty sea-soaked bottom of the boat and started to bash its big head in with a small wooden club like a souvenir baseball bat. It flipped and flopped a couple more times and then the boy threw it in the pile of four other thick-headed dorado, lying near the hull, bleeding, going wide-eyed and glassy.

Emma sat on the wood board that went across the back of the boat. She smiled up at Rico and he, at her. The old man at the back didn’t pay attention to them. He had his hand on the puttering motor of his small skiff, scanning the rolling waves looking for white splashes, for motion, for birds, looking for the next catch.

Rico saw the coastline, but it was silhouetted and indefinite, a thin line on the big water. The boat rocked gracefully, but it rocked and Rico imagined it to be too small to be this far out. But the old man looked like he knew what he was doing. And this kid, Rico thought, looking up at the boy balanced on the prow, grabbing the line again so he could bait the hook.

“We’re getting good at this,” Emma looked at him with her pleasant eyes, eyes from a long time ago.

“I like to catch fish,” Rico said. “I don’t do it enough,” he smiled at her like they were on vacation. And it felt like it, under the hot sun in a strange but wonderful land with adventure and fish and boys with uncanny skills and old men of infinite wisdom. This is all Rico ever wanted.

“Ayyyyiii ayyyyyiii,” the old man let out a high pitched wail and pointed over port side and the boy saw immediately the white splashes coming through the waves, in two and then three and then Rico could see that it was groups of splashes and snouts an fins, the grey curved backs of a school of dolphin, cresting through the water, chasing after their morning feast. This is what the old man wanted. He gave the motor all the sputter she had and they turned into the waves and followed after the dolphins.

The boy cast the line out from the side of the boat as the old man settled them in amongst the dolphins, joining the school. The boy started ripping on the line and almost instantly had a bite and bent his knees to get leverage as he stayed with a foot on each side of the prow, absorbing the shock of the ocean as he reeled with demonic speed.

The boy glanced over at Rico and just gave him a nod. Rico knew what he meant, he scrambled to the prow behind the boy straddling the pile of dead fish. And as the boy brought the big shiny, dancing dorado into the boat, Rico grabbed the line and reached his hand into the gaping maw gasping for water, and he felt the tear of flesh as he dug his hands into its pink gills and ripped the hook out from the inside. Holding the fish with one hand he threw it on the ground, grabbed the bat and bashed it three times quickly in its thick fish head and it sputtered and flopped and then laid silently with the the others.

And another one came flying in as a wave broke over the prow and sprayed over Emma and the old man. They were keeping up with the dolphins and bouncing, another one, a routine, catching and bashing fish after fish. Emma came and stood in the bottom of the boat, pulling away all the dead dorado making their way for the next one. They continued on in this way for Rico thought was the entire school of fish, each one thrown in and processed by this vagabond crew.

“Ayyyiii Ayyyyiii” the old man cried out but it was not a alarm, it was a shrill victory horn, the scream to the heavens, a thank you to the gods of the mighty sea. “Ayyyyiii Ayyyyiii.”

Emma and Rico had landed their rocket with a big splash, like an Apollo mission from the last millennium. They were a kilometer or so off the coast of Oaxaca. Their egg-shaped escape pod seemed to take well to the waves and they had floated unafraid, out rolling in the deep water of the Pacific before the old man and the boy came and got them in their skiff.

The blast off from the top of gangster paradise was like what Rico had felt in all the experiences he had made, real or fictional, NASA or Star Wars, spaceships always felt the same, a blast, a burn, a force beyond gravity and a tunnel of light pulling you through a rumbling but strangely smooth journey to some otherworldly destination.

Rico knew Oaxaca and it was on this planet but the dimensions they had traversed, the complexities that had accumulated on them, their new goals, their new missions, their plan to free a human from within the grasp of an artificial intelligence-run society, these were, indeed, otherworldly experiences.

Emma had signaled Frida from an old satellite phone that was on board the egg. It was only able to send characters but Emma knew the code, knew how to communicate through an obsolete device to a revolutionary group on the edge of Mexico. How did she know how to use it, when did she get Frida’s digits, Rico had wondered. Felix he imagined, Frida herself, perhaps sometime in New York, perhaps right before they left for this vacation, perhaps this was the plan the whole time. Or at least that this connection would happen from somewhere and it did and they landed at the right spot and Frida had told them an old fisherman and his son would come out like they did everyday and they would pick them up and sink the egg. They did. And then they would continue the normal rounds and catch fresh fish for the morning meal. And they did that, too. It seemed so easy and simple, this connection. Was it possible? Rico thought but not for long. He went with it. Like most things.

And now they were slamming along, the old man really putting it into gear with that rhythmic slap of the waves on the prow as they headed back to shore. Rico was feeling peaceful and easy, he looked at the boy in the front, kneeling now, ducking his head, making his shoulders small to let the wind rip past him. Emma was in the back, she looked out to the East, across the water was Guatemala, the bottom of Chiapas and out into the great Yucatan, straight across to Belize on the other side of this grand isthmus connecting the Americas, north and south. They were on the other side now, looking back, the sun giant and orange fire, coming up for the day.

The old man continued on his path and the fish flopped here and there but mainly were quiet and still, lying in their own blood. The smell of the sea, of the protein, the life they had in their small fishing boat rose up from the floor and gave Rico a warmth, a vitality he hadn’t felt in awhile.

“Qué es eso?” Rico asked the boy crudely, yelling over the wind. No one else could hear him. What is that? He pointed to the rocky shore, rising up now, becoming visible, the layers of black rocks and lush greens dotting across the big brown of the land. But the boy knew what he was pointing to. It was a peninsula or structure of rock that came out further than the rest and seemed much closer. Rico was mesmerized by the white spray from the waves of the Pacific crashing and propelling themselves off the rocks high into the air, each wave, every impact a unique trajectory, a pattern manifest and then returning to the sea. The boy looked at him.

“Eso?” This one, the boy confirmed, pointing, himself, to the large coastal mass that seemed to be coming at them, jutting out from the land, it was a greeting, it was a welcome from the rich, deep Mexican landscape, an arm extended into the Pacific to bring them to the earth, the white spray, black rocks, birds circling. “Punta Cometa,” the boy said. Comet Point, Rico thought. The southernmost point in the state of Oaxaca on the coast of Mexico. And it made him happy.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Frida strode down the beach like a general and she was one. She had big, thick black curly hair that danced as she walked in the sand. She was brown and short and beautiful and wore her classic army fatigues like she had been born in them. A red bandana was tied around her right arm, and it meant that she was the leader. La Comandante. But she didn’t need a symbol. It was apparent.

The skiff had brought them right up to the beach at Mazunte, a small fishing village. People came to help them out but more importantly to get the fish. There were soldiers on the beach, Los Elegidos, some lounging in the sand near the surf, others smoking cigarettes sitting on rocks, washing out their faded green, distressed fatigues from long hours rebelling in the sun.

It was a camp, the place where soldiers felt safe, home away from fighting. And it felt like that. A camaraderie was in the air in a way that Rico had never experienced even as he created camps and comraderies for every kind of army in every kind of war for every kind of client. But this was real and it was different. It was in the way they gathered the fish, ran it up to the palapas to start prepping, hung their clothes on long ropes that stretched between poles on the beach, make-shift tents dotted the sand, people bustled chaotically but they all had purpose, even if it were smoking a cigarette in between fighting for freedom or whatever they were fighting for, it was in the way people coming together can’t be created, but can only be. Rico was energized by it.

Emma saw Frida and started to run to her. They hadn’t seen each other in awhile and this was the person who got us here, who turned Emma to the cause, who then killed Knoxville-Z, recovered the Source of All Intention and, yeah, here they were -- Frida on the beach, Emma running in the sand as if she were seeing an old friend on vacation. Vacation. That feeling again, Rico thought. If he squinted his eyes he could see through vacation-colored glasses, the trauma of Fausto starting to recede, some fishing with an old man and a boy and here was Emma seeing an old friend on the beach. Okay. Okay, Rico.

Emma brought Frida over to Rico, walking up the beach from the skiff. He gave a nod to the young fisherman who gave him a smile and the old man gave nothing as he was busy gutting fish in the back of the boat, throwing the guts out into the water for the seabirds. They had their roles and they were being them.

“I have heard a lot about you,” Frida said, standing in the sand, her big brown eyes almost orange with fire. “You are brave. Emma would not be here; El Fuente and the fight would be… eh… comprometido.” Frida finished with a gracious voice. Rico knew what she meant. He got her what she needed. What we all needed -- the next step in winning the war.

“This is Frida,” Emma said, “La Comandante. She brought me here. She’s why we’re here. We made it, Rico.” Emma was ecstatic, not loud, but Rico could feel her excitement.

“Comandante, we are preparing the meal and have saved space for your meeting in the back there,” A young soldier was speaking to Frida in Spanish but Rico pieced it together. He was pointing to a row of palapas at the back of the beach, brown and weathered but inviting, sitting in the sand, open in front, shade underneath, lined up before the jungle.

“Gracias, Gusano,” Frida called him by his nickname, worm, and thanked and dismissed him all at the same time. She looked at Emma and then back to Rico.

“Welcome. We have much to discuss. These are exciting times. You are here. And yet that’s not enough.” Emma looked anxious. Rico wanted to know what they needed to do next, keep this adventure moving.

That seemed to be what Frida was doing, motioning for them to follow her, up to the palapas where a meal was being prepared from the fish they had caught to feed this rag-tag band of desperados, like a street gang that had wandered into a paradise, like, well, like a proper Revolución de Las Américas.

Emma was walking alongside Frida, with her fatigues and red bandana she reminded Rico of a tough, savvy breakdancer from the Bronx of the last millennium. And that was cool. He followed behind, his feet sinking in the soft sand with every step, realizing like most things on this vacation, he didn’t have a choice. Or he had already made his choice. He was never sure.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“Do you have it?” Frida asked. “El Fuente?” Her voice was raspy and thick with confidence and a deep sadness like she sang the blues. She leaned in and Rico could smell her rich musk, she smelled like the land, like the way mezcal tasted like dirt and worms, she smelled like the earth around her. They were seated at a small wooden table at the back of a palapa. The soldiers were gathering in the front near the beach, setting up tables in a row, waiting for the fish and eggs the kitchen crew were making. Waves crashed on the beach, the sun got higher and hotter and there were little bugs buzzing around, people slapping arms and necks. This wasn’t a resort, Rico thought, he was just in a fishing village on the southern coast of Mexico. There were bugs. They sat at a table in the sand under the palm roof near the kitchen.

Emma slowly raised her hand and put it out into the middle of the small wooden table. There were a few other soldiers around the table, an interior team, more aged with lines of experience, deeper set eyes, burlier beards and tougher brows, still in the random fatigues that passed for a uniform here. They all waited intently.

“I have it. It’s part of me now. Knoxville-Z gave it to me… but… he made it part of me,” Emma was telling the table and mainly Frida what had transpired when Knox passed the Source of All Intention to her. And Rico was not sure if they could even understand what she was saying, but the name Knoxville-Z translated, they looked at each other and had an inaudible gasp that covered the table with a wave of anxiety.

And then the flat, grey but shining, dead but energized, floating cube appeared, hovering above her palm and Rico could feel its energy, its reality once again. Two of the soldados left the table. Walked away. They didn’t want to be a part of this voodoo. Frida’s main man, Anselmo, her second in command it would seem, with a dark thick beard and intense eyes, remained by her side. He needed to because Frida was in a trance, captivated, only one thing in her world now, The Source of All Intention. El Fuente.

“He will know what to do with it, yes? Marcos Real?” Emma had the power, she was revealing a wartime secret, the key to victory, here in the back of a thatch-roofed cafe bar in Mazunte, feet in the sand.

Frida looked up for a second, breaking her trance. “Close it, stop this. ¡Guarda eso!” It was a command. It sounded military in every way. Frida backed away from the table. She took a step back and looked around at a beach full of soldiers about to have their morning meal, bustling about with ripples of conversation in the air. Her second, Anselmo, looked away but did not leave; he had also seen too much or at this point didn’t need to see the reason to fight, he was just a fighter.

“Yes,” Frida looked back at Emma. She was speaking low but determined. “He will know what to do with it.”

Emma closed her hand and the floating obelisk closed with it and withdrew its energy as she shyly withdrew her hand from the table and put it by her side. El Fuente had gone now and resided silently with Emma. Frida sat back down quickly. Anselmo looked at her and Frida shook him off and he went to join his soldados out near the beach, sun rising, the ocean still crashing in the distance.

Frida spoke softly, the din of the crowd around them was a cone of silence, they could speak here now and so she did. “There is only one way to get Marcos,” she looked at Rico and he felt her purpose, her mission completely. Emma grabbed his hand across the table.

“It’s you, no?” Frida asked him directly and quietly.

She phrased it as a question in grammar only. There was no question that she meant he was the next step in their war. Rico had wondered what that step was, where they were headed and it seemed in that instant he knew it was nowhere without him. Emma was slightly more confused. She let go of Rico’s hand.

“Marcos will know what to do with El Fuente, right?” Emma started, “And he will destroy it or use it to free Mexico and Mumbai and all the places El Diario has taken over.”

“Es verdad,” Frida said. It’s true. “But right now we are so long from that place. Marcos is still in Mexico City, a prisoner of El Diario. And we need him to be here, to witness what I have just witnessed, to understand all the forces at play and our path to victory.” Frida got quiet, she closed her eyes, took a breath and then opened them again. “He will know what to do.” This felt as true as anything Rico knew up to this point. “But he is not here.” And Frida looked at Rico again and she opened her soul to him, gave him all of herself in that moment and he knew she was asking him to make the ultimate sacrifice. As she saw it. Rico had other plans.

“You mean… you mean the bio-sim? You mean the swap, right? Rico is going to switch out with Marcos Real?” Emma said. She was there when Gus had told them that was how they could get Marcos out, but she hadn’t been listening then, intent on her own piece in this puzzle. And now Frida was telling her that Rico was the solve, he was the way forward in the war for free will.

“Yes,” Frida said. “We know that Rico is a match. That he can pass for long enough to get in, to replace Marcos, so he can get out.”

“Yes,” Rico said. He knew this, he believed in what Augustina had told him but wondered at her role in all this, how Frida knew this too. Regardless, he was a match, he could bio-sim for Marcos Real and tip the revolution for the rebels. Always the way you want to play it. He felt it and he wanted Emma to win and Frida and all these soldados scattered like the invasive jungle along the beach in Mazunte, he wanted them to win, too.

“We have a way for you to get into Mexico City.” Frida was dealing with Rico now, conspiring, imploring him to this plan of attack. “I have people in Oaxaca. We have a way in from there.” Frida seemed ebullient. Emma was listening, still unsure of where this was going. “But, my friend, comrade…” she let it linger and she looked at him with her infinite brown eyes, whirls of emotion and real, real, real shit, “there is no way out.”

Rico looked over at Emma, he wasn’t concerned about this ultimate sacrifice that Frida was asking him to make. Augustina had predicted all of this. And she had given him the gift, the get out of jail free card. He had the energy and the skill for one, for one big jump to go wherever he was meant to be. To journey across the universe in the blink of a thought. So, he had that going for him, which was nice.

He met Emma and her crystal-clear gaze. It went through him like a bolt of experience, he knew her, he knew all the nuance and subtleties of her looks, her ways, her body language and she did not believe he was ever going to come back. This was, in her mind, the ultimate sacrifice if he decided to play his part in this divine comedy. But he also saw the other part, the other part he knew in Emma’s theology, the part that made her such a great partner in this cold, hard world. She wanted him to do it. She was okay with his sacrifice.

“I’m in,” Rico said. And he sat back in his small wooden chair, feet in the sand and he looked out over all the soldiers under the palapas, spilling out onto the beach, filling their bellies with fresh fish in the fierce Mexican sun, ready for the fight, ready to get this revolution won.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The fire spun in the sky in tight circles that looked like the whole world was ablaze from Rico’s perspective sitting on the beach. He was near the surf, on a little berm the last high tide had made right before the wet, silvery sand and the receding waves went back out to sea.

And it was a hippy, still the same after countless generations, occupying places like Mazunte along the untrodden beaches and surf locations along the Pacific coast of this country – that was spinning the fire, dancing, twirling a long stick with two burning torches on the end. Self-contained entertainment with a little thrill for the kids and wandering freelance revolutionaries like Rico.

Normally, he would have scoffed at such a pedestrian spectacle, but it struck him with a power he hadn’t expected. The fire kept spinning, the hippy too tan and scalded by the sun to realize his place on the planet, just scraggly hair and old shorts and a wiry beach-dog like frame, spinning burning sticks in the sun. It had a place. It was here.

There were kids now and a few families who had made their way out to the beach after the soldados had been fed and some had headed off for much needed rest. Others strode the beach with their bullet guns or stood high on the rocks and cliff edges overlooking el playa de Mazunte. But some soldados had found their free time and had shed most of their worn, ratty fatigues and wandered into the surf or were just surfing, laughing and splashing with the kids who were here to have a day, as well.

Rico was in a robe he had been given by Frida and told it was what Marcos would wear. It was well-made, nano fibers, waterproof and light and easy to move in. It was a nice piece, classic and useful, offered to him as if it were laying around in some hut of some soldier but Rico knew this was too fine, too prepared and produced to have been lying in a palapa in Mazunte. This had been there for him ahead of time. And he decided to wear it with pride.

Rico watched the fire spin some more. Kids were laughing, the waves crashed on the beach and it was easy on the ears like something you would tap to sleep to and big enough to surf but not dangerous at this tide. He turned to the west, following the long line of the beach, on a gentle curve, the place where the turtles make their run to the ocean, flopping on their tiny flippers into the surf or eaten by a bird or crab or saved by a tourist, and he saw Punta Cometa. It outlined the western end of the beach where it met a wall of rock and jungle. And then up and out into the sea, defining the bay and safe harbor for skiffs and the smaller fishing boats that populated the village. It was the point, a romantic vision to Rico’s eyes. The idea of an end. The last spot of something, the last place before it became something else or dissolved and became the sea. A rocky jut of land sitting up on high and letting the green, cool waves of the Pacific splash and spray upon its edifice - an endless array of white foamy fireworks, exploding in the distance from where Rico sat on the beach.

He stuck his toes in the sand and it felt like vacation once again, the tiny moments sustaining his illusion. The sun was setting behind the point and he felt warmed by the orange and purple light starting to break open just the other side of the horizon.

And then Rico saw Emma. She was walking out of the sun towards him. Frida had taken her to get her fatigues, to get her army gear together so she could play this game for real. And she was stunning, her hair pulled back so her slender face and strong chin pushed forward. She wore what Frida had on, green, classic, clipped at the hips with a small holster and pistola that tied to her thigh, she was ready for action. Frida was striding along behind her but took a different route towards Anselmo and a group of her soldados. Emma kept coming, she was coming to him.

Rico stood up and smiled at her. She strode with confidence, like she had fulfilled her vision of herself and this was it. She had a glow and she carried herself in her own military style, the fatigues wrapping around her like they had been waiting for the chance. It made Rico’s heart skip. If this were war, maybe there was energy he hadn’t realized could come with it. Love.

“Hi, Rico,” she said, showing her teeth in a big grin. “What do you think?”

“¡Viva la revolución!” He smiled too and put his hand on her shoulder and let his fingers slide softly away as he stared. “What else can I say… you’re fucking beautiful.” She put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him long and deep and he felt like the world was his and nothing could stop him.

“You’re amazing,” she told him. And she tugged on his robe, acknowledging its look on him. “This is amazing,” she said and motioned him gently to the ground. They sat together in the sand as the sun melted in the big green Pacific, fire-dancers and soldiers and children together screaming with excitement in the waves.

“We’re amazing,” he said. “This is amazing!!” He swept his arms across the vista, the white tendrils in the big water smashing against the base of Punta Cometa. Emma nodded along. And then turned to him.

“Frida has a plan.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“In Oaxaca. Lucas Rey. He’s there.”

“What?”

“He’s doing a project for Alibaba in Oaxaca.”

“Right, okay…” it made sense that Luke Rey would be here for his agency Crown, making some kind of visceral, live-action experience for Alibaba. But thinking about Luke also knowing Knox and seemed involved on both ends of this thing but not involved at all and he was here in Oaxaca now? It gave Rico a tingle, a short burst of concern. He raised his face to the sun and let it burn away.

“And then he’s going to Mexico City. For another project. And he has entry docs. Approved by El Diario. Impossible to get.” Emma looked up at Rico, waiting for his own elation. It was slower to come.

“Okay. So he’s our way in?” He asked, slowly.

“Yes…” she drifted for a second and then grabbed his arm. “It’s your way in.”

He was staring at Emma, into her eyes to get a read and she was staring at him as hard as she could, trying to convince him of something he had already agreed to. He knew he was going in alone, he just didn’t know how. Now he did - Lucas Rey.

“Right,” Rico said, looking down at the sand, digging his feet in a bit, feeling thousands and thousands of particles, slipping between his toes, recollecting beneath, becoming the beach in every instant. Augustina had given him the unlock, and he believed, so to some degree he was playing with Emma but he was also scared.

“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known,” she said. “All of this, from the moment this happened, from the Detective after the party to, to, to Felix.” She paused. “To fucking Fausto and all of this. You are all of it. You’re why we’re even here.” Emma wrapped herself around Rico. She had left out Gus. And Anders. She put her arm around his shoulder and her other hand around his bicep and she laid her head into the crook of his neck and he felt the weight of it on his shoulder and she kissed him there, on the base of his neck, softly and slowly and with so much love and it felt like he had come alive, all his cells were screaming.

“I’m coming back,” Rico said. “For you.”

Emma put her hand on the side of his face, cupping his cheek tenderly, she pulled his lips to hers and she kissed him and it was fire.

“Come on,” she said. And she grabbed his hand and stood up, pulling him up with her. She looked up at Punta Cometa, the obelisk of rock, jutting out into the sea. “Let’s get to the point,” she looked at him, “before sunset.”

Rico let Emma pull him along the dark, firm sand near the waterline and he was happy as they made their way to the end of the beach and the start of the small path between the rocks that led up to the top of Punta Cometa to see the stars, the clear, pure view into the romance that filled the night sky around Mazunte. This was the spot and he followed her with a new joy past the soldiers relaxing, the fire dancers dancing spinning red and yellow as the day turned purple, the sun almost gone now as the children and soldados continued to scream in the waves.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They sat on a stone dais, an organic bench worn well by lovers and friends and turistas that made their way to this small, beautiful Mexican beach at the tip of Oaxaca and climbed up to look at the stars before the time of Emma and Rico. Now there were satellites, too. There were fewer of them here at the very bottom of North America than closer to the top, closer to the United States. But they were there, doing their patterns and light shows, telling stories in the stores for all the people of the northern hemisphere.

Rico preferred the real stars. They didn’t do anything. They were just there. Shining a different light, brighter, whiter, almost silver in dynamic rays coming out of rays ever-changing, traveling to us, maybe already dead and gone, these ghost stars who may only live now as the light traveling across the universe to Rico, to Emma holding hands on a rocky perch above the sea.

“We leave tomorrow. It’s all going to happen so fast.” Emma put her hand on the side of his face again. They had walked up the worn path, trampled and cleared by partiers and beach bums and young local couples wanting to get out of their palapas. Emma had not said much and Rico was content to hold her hand and feel the muscles in his legs burn a bit with each step up the steep climb. And now they were here, catching their breath, sitting together, hands together on a stone slab like where Aslan was sacrificed to the White Witch. Rico stayed quiet and let Emma say more. He wanted to hear her, he wanted her to tell him.

“There is so much more…” she drifted off and she tried to talk with her eyes, imploring him. Rico knew there was more, there was after this, this was just the beginning of them, of Emma and Rico. “We’re a part of so much more, Rico. So much more,” she continued, giving him a light kiss and caressing the side of his face, her eyes too close to see now. “We did it. We did it, Rico.”

Emma kissed Rico with force, with deep intention and meaning. Rico wondered what they did, exactly, but he was overwhelmed with the weight of her mouth on his, the heat of her breath and he went loose and rigid all at once, desperate with anticipation. She pulled him down on to the stone bench and he felt her beneath him and the density of the rock, the natural formation smoothed and evened by asses and kisses and star-gazers, the ones now above them, the satellites beeping and whirring and the real stars beaming, gone now, but reaching out from the past to these two here - on the tip of the point of the comet - with their light.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They were together so that the stars were indeed watching over them and Rico knew now that nothing could happen to the one that did not happen to the other, that no other thing could happen more than this; this was all and always; this was what had been and now and whatever was to come. This, that they were not to have, they were having. They were having now and before and always and now and now and now. Yes, now. Now, please now, only now, not anything else only this now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other one, and not why, not every why, one only one, there is no other one but one now, one, going now, rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now; one and one is one softly, is one longingly, is one kindly, is one happily, is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now on earth with elbows against the sand and stone with the smell of the ocean and warm night; to earth conclusively now, and with the morning of the day to come.

For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the stone to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.

“He wasn’t kidnapped,” Cortes said. “He was awestruck. Overwhelmed by the aliens before him.”

They were in a bar. A border bar. One of those places between spaces, between cultures, with civilizations on both sides but occupies the middle. They were in Oaxaca City the portal between Mexico City and El Diario and the revolutionaries in the south of Oaxaca, across the Sierra Madres and down the coast into Chiapas, it was a city between the worlds of fate and free will.

“Violently deposed, imperial forces with weapons and horses and technology that refused to recognize the advanced civilization they had stumbled upon,” Moctezuma said. Not the real one, of course, but an actor paid by Lucas Rey to perform in his experience for Alibaba.

It was the end of their last real simulation here in Oaxaca, a wrap party at a local bar as they were getting ready to ship out for Mexico City in the morning for their next real-sim: a reenactment of Cortes’s escape from Tenochtitlan – La Noche Triste.

Rico only knew these actors by the role they were about to play. It’s how Lucas had introduced them, sitting here now at a table at the back of the bar. Emma tucked in close to him. Frida next to her.

“Advanced in sacrifice but little else,” Cortes said, taking a drink of his mezcal, which had been drunk in this valley for half a millennium.

“They had the clock,” Moctezuma said, “they had the answers, the calendar!! The Aztec calendar…”

“El Diario,” Frida chimed in, associating the ancient Aztec calendar to the new algorithms that ran Mexico City. It was the enemy. “Sacrificio. Es claro.”

There was some rumbling across the bar as a few of the smugglers or federales or wanderers from other worlds got into a melee that was quickly broken up by the only law in the place, two giant beasts of men that functioned as bouncers. They squashed it like professionals. People kept drinking. The music played. High and loud and shrill in its trumpet flares.

“Yes!! El Diario! The formula for living! This is the real technology, not horses or metal blades and funny hats but the map that tells you what to do. The Aztecs knew this and Moctezuma wanted to teach the Spaniards the truth of existence. And they spat in his face!” The actor playing Cortes slammed his mezcal down in defense of Moctezuma and the Aztec Calendar.

The actor playing Moctezuma seemed noncommittal, passive in the face of this attack, much like the real legendary warrior-king. But Frida took up his mantle.

“These Aztecs were not advanced. They built their empire on the blood of sacrifices. They decided the fate of men and held that power over all peoples in their reach.”

Emma light up as Frida took over the table, this had happened to her before; she had been convinced and converted in a similar situation, Rico thought. Back at home, in the city, at a bar, late at night talking and believing there was a chance here, that ideas and conversations could become a reality, could change the course of things. “And in this way,” Frida said, “the Aztecs took the will of men, they took the meaning of life from their people and made them pay for it with their lives. Cortes was their savior.” She stopped, she looked around the table. “And this is why we fight today.”

“You can not win a fight when you are already enslaved. Every individual deciding for themselves their own path? Every step a fork in the road? A new decision to be made? That’s no way to use the human brain. Infinite choice is madness. Free will is a prison you have to be free of to LIVE!” Cortes said, ending with a quote from Freedom, written by machines.

“Hey! Bestante, eh! Please, no more talk like this,” Lucas spoke up. He probably didn’t even care, but he knew a lot of authorities did, and they were on the border which meant El Diario was here, too. America Central? Rico wondered.

“Who cares for this?” Lucas asked everyone. And he smiled, his big brown beard and unruly, curly hair surrounded his lined, mischievous face. He stood slightly and clapped his hands at the bartender and circled his finger in the air. The bartender, having served this man and his crew for the past week, nodded quickly and began to pour a round of mezcal for their table. “This is all nonsense.” He sat back down and looked at each person, one by one.

“You can never know if what you decide is what you decide, eh? There is no way to know if you are a free person, thinking and feeling on your own.” He sat back, smiling. “They did not either. Moctezuma and Cortes,” he pointed to each of the actors who would be playing them in the real simulation, “They were playing dress up. They dress up like a conquistador or like an Aztec king, eh? Just like we will do tomorrow in Mexico City and just like their calendar, our calendar, our replica, will also be a rock with some pictures on it. Is it magical?” Lucas looked around the table but gave little time for an answer. “If you want it to be,” he told them, staring them all in the eye so they got see how amused he was by all this.

“People are dying over this, that isn’t dress-up, is it?” Emma wanted some validation, and she had a point, people were dying.

“People die for nothing, too,” Lucas answered. “May as well dress-up!” He laughed, it was a trademark of his, bombastic and silly but with a big, compassionate energy.

Rico thought about The Source, the floating rock attached to Emma. Fausto had found it vaudevillian. He looked over at Frida but she did not want to bring more attention to herself. She looked militant as did a lot of people in this cantina, but a few more words in the wrong direction could bring unwanted attention or worse. She settled back and Emma followed her lead.

It seemed that Moctezuma and Cortes didn’t want to continue their ongoing feud, the one that was tearing their country apart. Relating moments in history to the algorithms and the cities that were turning over to them was common these days. Or maybe the two plebeians were just getting into character, trying to feel the reality beneath their coming performance.

Rico knew the reality; he had studied the Americas at university. He wanted to teach it, to become a professor of the Americas before advertising swept him away. And he knew the reality was that Moctezuma did allow an invading force with immense power into his palace as a guest. And he had long and meaningful conversations with Cortes over many months and considered him a friend.

During this time in Tenochtitlan as Moctezuma’s guest, Cortes’s lieutenant, Alvarado, had his men violently attack the Aztecs for performing a sacrificial ritual – carving out hearts and holding them aloft, kicking the bodies down the pyramid to be eaten by the masses – as it seriously offended their Catholic sensibilities. But Alvarado’s slaughter to present sacrifice set off a mass riot amongst the citizens of the Aztec capital. This was the way of their world. Who were these outsiders to save them by killing them?

It was Moctezuma who stood before his people and tried to make peace, to bring these two powerful kingdoms together. His own people stoned him for it or so the story goes. He died of his injuries a few days later, whether inflicted by the Spanish or by the angry mob of Tenochtitlan, he died.

Cortes was forced to fight his way out of the city in the middle of the night – Noche Triste. That was the performance that Lucas Rey and his agency, Crown, were going to put on as a real-sim, the next day in Mexico City. It was his path to Marcos Real. To swap bios. It was his mission.

The mezcal hit the table in thick, short glasses, warm and ready to drink. There was no hesitation amongst the crew assembled. The short debate may never be settled in a town like Oaxaca and it was best to drink and forget. They guzzled down the fiery brown liquid and a collective sigh was released. Rico could feel it already, burning the back of his neck, making his head loose on his shoulders and his eyes water. He liked it.

The Calendar! Cortes was actually intrigued by the Aztec Calendar, that rock with pictures on it, the system of wheels inside of wheels, animals and stars, a dial that plotted the course of your life, freed you from the prison of will. Rico was flowing with the mezcal. He could see how human sacrifice, the giving up of complete control to a larger power, would be so vital to the system. He thought about how the sacrificial victims were ecstatic and willing and were honored to play that role.

The real Cortes could have gone to war at any time, but he stayed, he listened, he thought about this new way to see the world, speculated with the great Aztec ruler about what such a world would be like if they brought their technologies together, there in this city, a Mesoamerican kingdom of pyramids and ancient wisdoms.

But in the end, Rico knew Cortes slaughtered them all and ripped the guts out of this once great civilization in a matter of months. And perhaps it wasn’t just the Europeans but free will itself that would proceed to reign here in the Americas for millennium.

“Tomorrow, you will ride with us. With the construction team. You need to stay with them tonight at Monte Albán. And board the labor tram with them in the morning.” Lucas was speaking directly to Rico, wiping some of the mezcal from his lips with the back of his hand. Rico simply nodded. He had known Lucas before, but they were never friendly like that and it didn’t seem like Lucas remembered him now or didn’t want to.

It was Frida who had arranged this, had the connection with Lucas and got him on his agency’s construction team and the Noche Triste performance. Emma always said it was the only revolutionary side of Lucas Rey, this advertising mogul that liked to dabble in conflicts and underground movements and know the kind of people that connected him to Frida. It was Felix that had introduced them all at an awards show for the experiential arts, Emma had once explained to him.

Rico looked around the crowded cantina, the motley rebels and border agents and criminals that seemed to make it work in such a place, seemed to put a hold on their roles in society so they could drink together and listen to the high pitched rips and echoing calls of the traditional sones played for generations in the high plains around Oaxaca. Stories of loss and violence and love. He looked at Emma and she felt his gaze and returned it. She looked sad. Maybe for him. But she was excited, too. Something was happening to her, she was focused and hard in a way he had never seen before. And he loved her.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They were in a colectivo again riding in the back through the center of Oaxaca City headed to Monte Albán. They had taken several colectivos to get there from Mazunte. The ancient pick-up trucks still ran on oil, a thin vinyl sheet over two bent rebar to cover the back, like a horseless covered wagon. On their way to Oaxaca people had jumped in and out, as they rode through the mountains, up from the Pacific, into the high peaks of the Sierra Madre and getting to the high plains where Oaxaca City – or some form of people coming together to live – had existed in the same place since homo sapiens walked across the Bering Strait and wandered down from the cold and found paradise.

That was the day and night before, he and Emma and Frida rode with strangers, stayed quiet, slept and exchanged knowing glances as they made their way to Oaxaca, the border town. Now they were on its colorful streets, the old adobe buildings bathed in bright blues and orange and pink and deep red browns and the colors of the landscape came to life, hyper and brighter but unmistakable and natural here in Oaxaca, even in the dark, bathed in the light of a half-moon and all the big stars.

They were alone, just the three of them in the back and the driver up front in the pick-up. No strangers on this trip. It was late and quiet on the streets. They passed a few bars and drunken stragglers, but most things were closed and the night was calm and bright and had a desert warmth with a clean chill that came on the wind now and then.

Rico had taken his instructions from Lucas Rey, he was to go to Monte Albán where Crown, Luke’s agency, had just completed their latest experience - the ancient Mesoamerican game of ballcourt and the requisite death of the losers. Rico always had respect for that piece of it, the ultimate meaning behind sports and physical competition. The stakes were so high it seemed impossible not to like.

You certainly didn’t want to lose, he thought as the driver rumbled the old truck on the stone streets heading west out of town only a few minutes to the site of the great Zapotec pyramids. Luke had told him to stay with the laborers, the builders that had built up this first experience and were sleeping on cots at the site so they could be ready in the morning, pack up the crates, load them on the labor tram and get to the next location. Rico was replacing one of them. A stand-in, un clon. Frida assured him back in Mazunte they had clearance for him in Mexico City and Lucas had never mentioned it but he seemed well aware of the plan and that was enough for Rico. He was just feeling his way through this whole thing. He wasn’t going to stop now.

Emma looked over at him and he saw a flash of moonlight across her face and he smiled and she smiled and Frida sat there still and unshakeable. Rico had offered to go on his own when Lucas called for a colectivo as they had left the cantina in el centro Oaxaca. The night had wrapped up after the heated conversation and a few more shots of mezcal to quiet everyone down and send them home with warmth in their hearts.

Lucas and his producers and actors were staying at one of the grande hotels, un clasico, on the zocalo, the town square. Emma and Frida were going back to an encampment not far from town where a small squad of the revolutionaries, Los Elegidos, were stationed, watching over the city, making sure the border stayed neutral or sounding the alarm if a large show of arms were to come into the area. And Rico, he was going to lie on a cot with Mexican co-workers in the ruins of an ancient civilization.

And he had been prepared to go it alone. He knew what he had to do and Emma had started to move towards him to give him a final embrace as they made their way onto the street outside the cantina. But Frida had stopped her, grabbed onto her arm as the colectivo pulled up.

“We can all go together. I want to make sure está todo bien,” Frida said, turning Emma around. She seemed to be concerned. For him? Emma? The revolution? Rico couldn’t tell.

“Ya. Yes. Okay, let’s go.” Emma feigned excitement, but Rico could tell that she was already done with the emotion she needed for a goodbye, had committed to it and then got pulled away. Rico didn’t care. He would like to see Emma as long as he could before he went on the inside. But Rico also wasn’t quite sure why Frida cared. There was nothing to see, if Lucas was going to fuck them over and Rico was sure that he wasn’t, then it would have happened before or it will happen after. It won’t happen now. Or at all. But he wanted to take a ride with Emma in a colectivo. And so that’s where he was, with Emma. And Frida. They were all very quiet but present and that’s what mattered to Rico.

He looked up again at Emma. He couldn’t see her eyes in the glancing shadows under the jostling tarp as they left the outskirts of the city. But he could see her smile, Cheshire-like in the Oaxacan night.

<><><><><><><><><><>

In ancient times land was the most important asset in the world, politics was a struggle to control land and if too much land became too concentrated in too few hands, society split into aristocrats and commoners. In the modern era machines and factories became more important than land, and political struggles focused on controlling these vital means of production. If too many of the machines became concentrated in too few hands, society split into capitalists and proletarians. In the twenty-first century, however, data eclipsed both land and machinery as the most important asset, and politics became a struggle to control the flow of data. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species.

Rico was thinking about what he knew of history, of why he was here in the back of an oil-based pick-up truck with an actual human driver and two revolutionaries, one of them his partner in an advertising studio. This was another clip from the AI book the machines had written to explain why they wanted to take over – Freedom. Everyone who went to school had read it, but Rico never thought he would be making life and death decisions in a fight to end its central premise. Mainly, that data was going to destroy humanity. Data is a product of machines meant to be handled by machines, by the algorithms that can keep a balance, that won’t let humans use it against each other in an ever-widening gap that eventually creates distinct species and ends the existence of human beings. This is what Freedom purported, written by the machines to save human beings, to keep them a single species, ad infinitum.

Mexico City and some others, Mumbai, Manila, these were places where the inequality of human beings, where the life that people were leading were headed in such different directions that people signed up for stasis.

Algorithms started to make decisions, people trusted their marriages and kids and jobs and pastimes to the machines. They started to behave along with small apps and tips and tricks, so many of which began to run out of their calendars, that became The Calendar. El Diario. People internalized them, so they didn’t have to look at them, but it became their thoughts. It became their decisions.

Then small governments, little towns and suburbs started to run on algorithms, automatically like cars and trains and then the trams. They worked better without people making any decisions. The data was undeniable. Some megacities went, they turned over their governing bodies, their institutions, to El Diario to run everything for them. But will the gap stop widening? Will people stay whole? Will they live generations of the same experience so that the species will stay intact? Do the algorithms stop evolution for the species like they would aging for the individual? That’s the promise. Made by the machines to the people, proven by the algorithms. Will they keep it? No one knew yet. But a lot of people weren’t ready to give up their free will to do it. The war abides.

But as Rico always knew or felt or just lived out in his being – people like to widen the gap. He did. He worked hard and he wanted an analog vacation in paradise with his friends. He wanted the accolades and the feel of accomplishment from winning, from beating people, from making more losers in the world. In so many ways, he played a zero-sum game and he was never bashful about it. That felt like his fight for free will.

Meanwhile, Emma joined an army. An underground revolutionary group vowing to never bow to the algorithms, to fight and die for a way of life and guess what? That’s the side he landed on. For love, for keeping your word, the only thing we have in this world, as Knoxville-Z had reminded him.

The small mountain, the low, flat and wide hill of Monte Albán was easy to climb for the old pick-up and they sputtered up to the top as Rico was having his thoughts of revolution and evolution. He looked back over the orange and dimmed lights of Oaxaca City, lying nestled in the basin where the three valleys of central Mexico came together and had produced lively, thriving homo sapiens, the same species for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

The gravel crunched and slowed and then came to a stop under the rubber tires of the pick-up. It was dark, but Rico could see the big silhouettes of the pyramids frozen against the skyline. There was a lighted path that wound its way through the northern platform and down to the plaza floor. He could tell the lights were temporary, part of the construction, the workers left themselves a way back and forth when they were building overnight setups.

“Frida said we should walk you in, make sure you’re in the right place,” Emma said as she climbed out of the back of the colectivo. Frida was already out talking to the driver. Rico just nodded and climbed out, as well. And they stood on the gravel at the base of the pyramids and Frida wished the driver well, as he climbed back into his truck. He shut the door and looked back over his shoulder at them.

“Vaya con dios,” he said softly and slowly. And it was dark but as he turned, in the glow from the construction lighting, Rico felt a familiar pang, a recognition, a pattern of a face he’d seen before, the curve of the nose, the cheek, the set of his eye and then he turned and drove off, a growling crunch in the gravel. And they were alone.

Bennie! Rico brought the word to his visual recognition and made a connection. And in the same instant he let it go. It wasn’t possible. And now, right now, that knowledge could do nothing for him. He stopped thinking about it.

“Where am I sleeping?” Rico asked the ladies standing next to him. He was casual and unconcerned like he was staying over after a house party had come to a late-night end.

“Lucas said to follow the path and go inside the second pyramid to the sound stage where they have packed all the equipment,” Frida told Rico who nodded to La Comandante.

Emma looked at him and she was still sad but Rico smiled and she grabbed his hand and held it firmly and then let up a little, a grasp for walking. “Let’s go,” Rico said with confidence in his voice and hoped that only he noticed his tiny waiver, the lilt of his fear in the sounds he made.

Frida picked up the low-lit trail, electric running lights on ancient grounds. Rico pulled on Emma’s hand slightly and they started to walk behind her. Rico looked up at the stars and thought of the Omotecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs that had also stared at these same stars as they carved and piled and built into and on top of this natural hillside, a synthesis of nature and civilization that added layers as each ended and picked up again where the last one left off. And where does that put us right now, another civilization or the edge of one and a new one about to begin? Where are we in the stack? And here we were again, a marketing experience, a real simulation made on this very hilltop, to teach the lessons to the new invaders of the ones that came before, a performance as real as any ritual, Rico thought, allying himself with Lucas Rey.

Frida led them through the north platform and around the smaller pyramid, and down into the plaza principal and along the stone ballcourts, the earliest and closest form to American basketball... to the death. They made their way past the edificios that lined the center and headed toward the south platform and the larger of the pyramids, where all the sacrifices were made.

<><><><><><><><><><>

The entrances to the underworld were well known across Mesoamerica. The cenotes, the underground water caves were considered an entrance to the world below and an eternal fate. The altars of sacrifice that worked as a gateway to appeasement and ultimate bliss, and the caves and holes that marked the landscape in the valley of Oaxaca and the rituals of the Zapotecs who borrowed from the Aztecs and shared with the Mayans as so many cultures, long since lost or still known amongst us, borrowed from each other along this vast stretch of land from the lakes of the great valley of Mexico City to the Pacific Ocean and then up like a majestic horn that wrapped around and shapes the warm, shallow gulf, the spot where the meteorite hit, throwing earth, creating the Yokot’an and La Pascua Florida and showering the lands of Mesoamerica with dirt and dust and holes.

They were at an entrance to the underworld now - Frida and Emma and Rico. Standing on the sound stage mainly unassembled and packed away in big crates, but the basics were still present. A giant hole in the earth that seemed to have no bottom, not a big opening, but wide enough to throw human bodies into. Above sat a small dais, a stage of its own where the high priest would make his gift to the gods and send a human into the nine levels of the underworld - these were realms the souls of the dead had to cross - the place for crossing the water, the place where the hills are found, the obsidian mountain, the place of the obsidian wind, the place where banners are raised, the place where people are pierced with arrows, the place where people’s hearts are devoured, the obsidian place of the dead, and finally, the place where smoke has no outlet.

Rico did not remember all these layers of the underworld as he stood at their edge, but he had known them once and had studied them on his own, and it feels only right to note them here. He would think that the place where smoke has no outlet, the last layer, is the void, the nothing. And he would wonder perhaps if these layers were in fact the journey he was on.

Rico let go of Emma’s hand, the dim electric lights made the center of this pyramid, this sacrificial chamber, have a new world ambience, like the lobby of an experiential hotel, which in so many ways this was. An experience to live through as Lucas Rey often explained his profession. It was what he made and sold.

There were stone benches, carved into the wall of the pyramid, stacked for a gallery to view the performance. Rico couldn’t tell if those had been there for ancient audiences or these were new, authentically placed to allow the employees of Alibaba to express their corporate interest in the spirit of Mexico and its people.

The three of them stood on the dirt at the edge of the endless hole, between the dais and the bleachers and the entrance to Mesoamerican hell. Emma pointed to the back of the chamber to a small tent, a makeshift office that now looked like it was functioning as sleeping quarters. A place for the workers to lie down so they could jump up and finish the load-in and get out of town. On to the next gig. “It must be there,” she said, “your cot or whatever. You know, where you’re staying tonight.” She sounded distracted, nervous like she didn’t know what to say. Neither did Rico.

“Si,” Frida said quickly. “The workers are there. Sleeping,” she added.

Rico looked at Emma. She couldn’t really look him in the eye, she darted and dropped her gaze. “I’ll see you soon,” Rico told her, meaning it.

“Okay,” Emma said, forcing her eyes up to look into his. “I can’t wait.” And her lips curled up a little into a smile of sorts, but strained.

“Emma!!” A voice rang out in the chamber. Rico was spooked and didn’t know what was happening. He jerked his head back and forth, looking for the source. “Emma!” He heard it again. And then Rico knew who it was. He watched a figure step into the dim, electric running lights from behind the stone benches, out of the shadows near the edge of the hole to eternity.

It was Anders.

Emma turned and saw her partner, standing there before her and she froze. She had made a big decision, a life-altering choice and left him out of this next phase of her life, her mission, the things she wanted to fight for. Anders had been left behind, but now he was here. And Emma just stood there.

“Come home now. Please.” Anders told her and then begged her as he said ‘please’.

“I can’t,” Emma managed to say but it wasn’t very forceful or near as confident as Emma had been at certain moments in this adventure, Rico thought.

“Why?” Anders asked in the most honest and open voice Rico had ever heard. Emma didn’t speak. “Because of this, this… revolution? This stupid fucking war that no one even knows about.” Anders was letting some of the emotion he must have had contained or thought through and agonized over for days.

“Come home and let’s have babies,” he said, imploring her to get back on their old path. “Let’s make stupid fucking ads and then sell our company and do nothing, swim in our pool, drink wine, send our kids to college and then die. Die so fucking bored and content we can’t even fucking stand ourselves. Choose that! You want free will, choose that! You can have that. We can have that. Emma, please.”

“I can’t,” she said again.

“Why?” he asked again. He looked around the chamber of sacrifice as if the answer were there. Frida stood behind Emma, to the side and Emma stood between Rico and Anders, who glanced at Rico for a brief second and then settled back on Emma. “Why? This stupid fucking war? This cause you think you’re a part of? The Source of All Intention? Is that it? Are you the most important person in the world right now? Is that why?”

“No,” she said and it was flat and honest.

“Then why, Emma? Tell me why…” Anders' voice trailed off, as if he didn’t want to know the answer.

“I’m in love,” Emma said.

Rico’s heart sank and fell into the pit of his stomach endlessly like a hole to the center of the universe. And Anders ran at him like a bull, like a charging furious bull enraged on red and taunted by the cape of the matador. Rico did not think, but his body took over and he managed to grab the hand of Anders and moved most of his body out of the way of his charge. He took a hit in the side and it made him stumble back but he held onto Anders as Anders fell forward, his feet slipping on the dirt floor and then Anders fell into the hole.

It pulled Rico down to the ground, landing hard on his chest, his arm extended out and wrapped around Anders wrist, who was dangling over the edge, his legs and half of his torso, kicking sporadically over the abyss. But he had him. Rico and Anders looked at each other, eyes locked. Anders smiled. And Rico returned his optimism but it soured on him as he started to pull Anders up. He realized he was losing his grip.

It was his bad hand. The one from the coral, sliced up and weak and never having regained its strength and movement. His hampered two fingers, slipping on Anders sweaty wrist down to his hand, and his fingers now in a claw. It all happened faster than you can read this, there wasn’t much to hold onto anyway and Rico’s fingers on his wounded hand just didn’t have it, the physics weren’t right, even though he wanted to save Anders with everything he had. And Anders saw this too and his smile faded as he realized he was slipping out of Rico’s grasp and all the desire in the world wasn’t going to change it.

Rico saw in his eyes only one thing -- recognition of death, of heading to the other side. Anders had it. It was all he had, not friendship, or love or hate or jealous rage but just an emptiness. It ran through Rico like a bone-chilling wind, like the cold that has no defense but just owns every molecule in your body and his hand gave way and Anders fell into eternal darkness.

Rico didn’t move but laid there, belly on the dirt with his useless fingers dangling over the passage to the underworld, safely on the living side. Anders quickly disappeared into the hole, nine layers of hell. Rico listened to hear Anders meet his demise, the thunk, a scream, anything. But there was only nothing.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico stood up, disheveled, sweating, his left hand, crippled and crumpled at his side. He was using his other hand to point. He raised his fingers to Frida, now holding Emma who had her head buried in her shoulder, Frida’s arm wrapped around, comforting, holding the silent sobs that came out of Emma like convulsions.

“You led him here,” Rico spoke to Frida. “You told him to be here, to confront us, her. Me.” Rico just knew it to be true. It was one of those things that didn’t have another solution, could not have happened any other way. He stared at Frida who stared back, she wasn’t speaking, just holding his gaze, unwavering. He looked at Emma, buried in her arms. And he knew that he wasn’t the reason, and he had always known that, but Rico had thought that the revolution was the reason. A mission of transcendent charm and grand scope worthy of adventurers on their way to being heroes. But it was something else, something smaller and more personal and human at its core.

“You’re in love,” he told Emma. “But it’s not with me.” He said, having known she wasn’t doing this for him but now realizing it was for love, just not his. And he had said it and it was real. Emma looked up, distraught, sad, sickened by all of this, but clinging to Frida like her rock.

“I never promised you that, it wasn’t ever about that, Rico.” Emma was angry and Rico hated it. He was hurt more than anything else.

“You didn’t.” Rico paused. He looked at Frida, still defiant and brave and beautiful in her stance, one leg wrapped in front of Emma, protecting her. From him? Of course, and he realized she would kill him if she had to and might have thrown him into the hole with Anders if she didn’t need him for the war. And that was good. That was still his mission. Frida didn’t matter, even if Emma was in love with her. It was Emma that he would still do this for. Mainly, because she wanted him to. And that was still enough.

“It’s okay. This is what I want to do.” He turned from Frida and back to Emma. She stared quietly at him. She nodded. He was done with this. On to the next thing. “What happens with these holes, where does this one go? Is there a bottom?” Rico had abandoned the underworld and went with the physics of the situation. He was trying to move this plan forward even as he tried to make sense of what just happened on the eve of his own big sacrifice.

“Baja de las montanas,” Frida said quickly. “A river or something like this is deep and runs under the mountains.”

“Who knew he was here?”

“Nadie,” Frida said. No one.

Frida had tipped off Anders and guided him to confront the two of them. And now he was a corpse, floating in a river through under the mountains. Fuck that, Rico said to himself. Drama. Bullshit. His purpose was more important. He didn’t want to blow it. He realized he was staring at Emma.

“I didn’t know, Rico.” Emma said. He believed her. Rico was realizing Frida had hoped something like this would happen. Something to get her and Emma out in the open as partners, turn him and Anders against each other. Frida knew Emma didn’t want to be with Anders and she didn’t believe Rico could pull this off, that he would ever come back from trading bios with Marcos Real. She was executing her plan.

“What about them?” Rico spoke softly, motioning behind him, back behind the stage, the construction tent with the two other workers, presumably sleeping.

“Sueno profundos,” Frida said. Sound sleepers.

Sure, Rico thought. They weren’t going to talk is what she meant. And that was fine, too. This was a war and these were casualties. Anders should never have come. He looked at Frida with her leg still planted in front of Emma, her arm with the red bandana still wrapped around it. She definitely knew how to persuade or frighten or fall in love, to get what she wanted. But he was still here, not sure she wanted that. Now all he had to do was wake up and get on the tram with the other workers and get to Mexico City. Finish the job, right?

“Hey,” Rico said to Emma, “You’re still the reason. You’re my reason, the reason I’m doing this.”

Emma looked at him and he could tell that she didn’t feel bad about his situation, his sacrifice as she saw it and that was okay. It was better that way, if she felt bad about making him do it, it would ruin everything.

“And guess what?” Rico asked her lightly.

“What?” she said in a tiny whisper, but he heard her.

“I’m coming back.”

The solutions to everyday problems that come from algorithms tell a different story about the human mind. Life is full of problems that are, quite simply, hard. And the mistakes made by people often say more about the intrinsic difficulties of the problem than about the fallibility of human brains. Thinking algorithmically about the world, learning about the fundamental structures of the problems people face and about the properties of their solutions, can help them see how good they actually are, and better understand the errors that they make.

In fact, human beings turn out to consistently confront some of the hardest cases of the problems studied by artificial intelligence. Often people need to make decisions while dealing with uncertainty, time constraints, partial information, and a rapidly changing world. Even cutting edge AI has not yet come up with efficient always-right algorithms. For certain situations it appears that algorithms might not exist at all.

The Source of All Intention! Rico thought as he rode along with the other workers in a construction tram. He was tapped into Freedom the book that in many ways got him here and had all of them here in this conflict, this invisible war. It was how the machines had explained it to them, the humans. And even the machines admitted they couldn’t solve them all, they didn’t have all of life’s answers. But Knoxville-Z could. He figured it out and now the machines and the people were after control of The Source. El Fuente. And Rico was somehow right in the middle of it.

Even when perfect algorithms haven’t been found, however, the battle between generations of artificial intelligence and most intractable real-world problems has yielded a series of insights. These hard-won precepts are at odds with the intuitions about rationality, and they don't sound anything like the narrow prescriptions of a mathematician trying to force the world into clean, formal lines. Instead they say: Don’t always consider all your options. Don’t necessarily go for the outcome that seems best every time. Make a mess on occasion. Travel light. Let things wait. Trust your instincts and don’t think too long. Relax. Toss a coin. Forgive but don’t forget. To thine own self be true. And now people can know what that means.

Living by the wisdom of the algorithms doesn’t sound so bad after all. And unlike most human advice, it’s backed up by the proofs.

It's backed up by the proofs, Rico thought to himself. That was what this was all about. Humans were proven to be bad decision makers, in fact it was detrimental to their survival. Remove the decision-making, the free will, and humans will live on in perpetuity. But some folks don’t believe the proof. Or they do believe it and are against it anyway. He thought about Lucas Rey and how he had managed to even get him on this tram, getting this opportunity to get in and get out of Mexico City without detection from El Diario. Did Luke believe the proof? Was he for or against what was happening in this city where he was throwing an event, a real-sim?

Rico remembered when they all worked together before Lucas had left to make his real simulations. He believed pixels could never create real experiences, that these digital experiences or XPs that were dominating the media industry could not create real emotion. And that’s what Lucas Rey was after.

They all worked at Zigga, an XP agency, but Lucas Rey and the head of Zigga, Jacob Zigga had a falling out. Zigga wanted to go all in on experiences, creating worlds digitally that people could enter and experience but Lucas, he wanted to simulate real world experience in the real world, real fear, real emotion, real belief… so Lucas quit and went on to found Crown, a real-sim agency.

Rico had stayed on with his partner Anders, they became the best at XPs, at creating worlds and interactions that were pixels wrapped around people and they rose up the ranks at Zigga, doing a lot of work with a super producer who helped them manage and output these advertising experiences. It was Emma. And before long, or after long nights and longer parties, the plot to create their own production studio formed and it was an amazing time and they were all in love with what they did for a living and maybe even more so with how it was going, which was very, very well.

They opened Blockbuster with a nod to the notion of what that used to be, the failure of distributing physical video tape experiences and to the future of tap and play XPs but how advertisements could become the new blockbusters. Lucas and Rico had parted ways, had really stopped knowing each other, or Lucas stopped knowing him. He was successful and happy but a small owner in a big industry as Lucas was one of the poles on which the whole industry revolved. And at this point it was with a certain amount of wonder that Lucas was here again, right there as Rico stepped off the worker tram and into the compound behind El Zócalo in the heart of Mexico City. Tenochtitlan. He was here. And so was Lucas, although in a safety helmet with his face shielded like one of his construction workers. But Rico knew that voice and knew that he had come here personally to help him.

“Amigo. Cuidado. Come with me,” Lucas said and tugged on his worker’s robe. Rico registered that caution in his voice, knew something was up and followed along, stepping out of the crowd heading off the tram and into the designated area behind the Templo Mayor. Crown had built a replica right over the top of the very top of the original, now a site of ruins between the Spanish cathedral and the Mexican government building. A government run by machines. Most of the original pyramid lay under hundreds of years of dirt and society that covered the existence of the mighty city of Tenochtitlan until the end of the last millennium when it was uncovered and sat now amongst the living history of modern Mexico City.

This is where Lucas Rey and his team from Crown were throwing a real-sim for a bunch of executives from AliBaba trying to onboard another culture to do business as partners and ultimately subsume it. Behind the replica, to the side of El Zócalo was the construction compound, the backstage area where actors and set builders and artists got ready for their performance.

“Now they make a geo-fence for us,” Lucas said softly through his safety shield. “I cannot send you out there with the crew, they sense you this way. This is not part of our deal. This one is new. El Diario… they know something is happening.”

Rico nodded and followed him through stacks of building materials and whirring auto-lifts and the open wide mouth of a 3-D printer, two stories tall that looked tired and used up as if it had made the entire pyramid itself and perhaps it had but was now idle.

They made their way to the side of the pyramid at its base, the stacked rocks and clay that rose into the air, a simulated substance, but real enough to feel the weight of it, the existence of it connected in space, separated only by time. Lucas held his palm against the side of the Templo Mayor and a slit in the side opened seamlessly and Lucas motioned for Rico to get inside, saying something through his mask that Rico couldn’t make out and they slipped inside the real simulation of the ancient pyramid.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Lucas led Rico through a tunnel, more modern and lit than the exterior. What he had learned on his trip here in his broken Spanish with the workers was that they were all going to perform La Noche Triste. The Sad Night. The night when Cortes had to fight his way across the lake and out of Tenochtitlan. And that inside Templo Mayor, the main structure on their site, was the staging area, the green room for the experience.

Only the outside of the pyramid was for the performance, Rico remembered as they took a couple more turns past doors and people milling about and into a big open room where people were on couches and sat at tables near trays of catered food. There was a corner for hair and makeup. Wardrobe people were pushing clothes racks, urgent conversations in every corner, the energy and bustle of a production in full swing. Lucas stopped, he pulled his mask down now that he was inside.

“This is it for me,” he smiled. “I have work to do,” he looked around at the bustle. “But you, you are in the show now!” He grabbed Rico by the shoulder. “It’s your exit, man. And it’s simple. All you have to do is die,” Lucas thought this to be hilarious. Rico wasn’t so sure, but he laughed along with him.

“What?” Rico asked through the end of a chuckle.

“You will be an artilleryman. Well, a cannon-puller, eh?”

“Artillery?”

“You will be in the escape, man, La Noche Triste! It will happen tonight, and you will pull a cannon along with Alvarado and his men and cross the lake and get out of town, no?” He laughed again. “But almost everyone dies. Like you.”

“I’m not sure I can act, Lucas,” Rico said trying his own hand at light humor in intense situations. Or maybe Lucas really did think all of this was hilarious.

“You’ll pull a cannon along a makeshift bridge and an Aztec warrior will come and bash your brains in. They are very professional, my people,” He assured Rico. “You won’t have to do much. But when you fall off the bridge into the water, swim down to the base of the bridge, there is a doorway that goes underneath. It’s our tunnel for the performers, it goes the length of the bridge and comes up in our offices across El Zócalo. Just go out onto the street from there. You will be free of me. And I will be free... of you.”

“Okay,” Rico thought he understood the basics. Very professional, he repeated to himself. Lucas was always, in the end, very professional.

“And then… it’s all you, my friend.” Lucas gave him a concerned look, but his eyes still held a positive light.

“Why do you do this?”

Lucas Rey paused. He looked around at the inside of the pyramid, took in the noise of the production swarming and breathing around him, getting ready to put on a show.

“No one ever wins or loses,” Lucas let his hand go from Rico’s shoulder. “But the sweep of reason produces monsters, no?” He grinned, his teeth showing and mouth curling up to his cheeks. “So... I kick the fucking monsters sometimes.” He shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

Rico knew the answer before he said it, before it was an answer it somehow just was. It was evident in all things and ways he had known, or heard about, or worked for Lucas Rey and this way he was. His being.

“Thank you,” he said low with purpose. Rico did not know if Lucas had heard him as his safety mask was back up and he had turned and walked into the fray, the one he had created, his own particular chaos that produced simulations inside of reality. Lucas Rey was gone.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

None of them knew the color of the sky. It was pitch black and Rico’s first steps were the worst. The cannon was so heavy he couldn’t move it on the first try. He was in a robe, a native peasant level outfit from one of Cortes’ native allies, the Tlaxcaltec people. Fine. Easier to swim when he had to. Rocks were hurtling towards him as he marched in a train of men with equipment and their pockets lined with all the gold they could carry, armor, big helmets. Not Rico. He was dragging a cannon in a sarape.

The bridge extended across El Zócalo, the giant Mexico City square that houses the cathedral, the Aztec pyramids and the long, plain brown government building. And now this experience – brought to you by Crown an ad agency for AliBaba a tech company in the middle of Mexico City which was run by algorithms processed by machines. The great lake of Tenochtitlan had been recreated across El Zócalo in 5 meters of water, and this bridge, an ancient hand-built road extending from the Templo Mayor in one corner across to the buildings where the Crown production offices were, outside of the geo-fence. He could get there undetected. And whether this was actually La Noche Triste or not, Rico had a mission and that was real enough.

He got hit with a rock. He felt it and it had an impact but didn’t hurt him really. The rocks were coming from up top, that was Alibaba’s role, so he was being pelted by businessmen in Mesoamerican garb. The rocks were 3-D printed to be fun to throw but had little effect on the other end. Rico just kept putting one foot in front of another. He figured he had to die at some point.

Pedro del Alvarado took big strides at the head of this group. In full Conquistador adornment, he moved his group of soldiers and natives and cannons and gold forward, long step by long step. He was like Washington Crossing the Delaware, he was going to win this war for America.

The cannon started to give way and Rico was moving at a good clip now bowed a bit, a rope over his shoulder, bunched in with a few others, pulling artillery or wagons of gold. And then the Aztec warriors came. Hard. They swept up the sides of the bridge from their canoes, yelling and calling out in loud screams and shrieks that fell in a cadence, a ferocious drum beat of violence.

The lights came up like in an arena, not too much, so it was still dark, but so the businessmen along the rooftops surrounding the city center could see the action. And Rico saw a swarm of red capes and feathers and face paint and head gear of American eagles and jaguars, like a wave of human-animal attacks crashing upon them, beautiful and horrifying, wielding macuahuitls - an Aztec weapon like a baseball bat with glass nails in it, a weapon for the apocalypse that was upon these people but who, at that moment, had the upper hand.

Rico saw a head split open. It was so real it made his stomach churn, watching as the macuahuitl smashed the side of a soldier’s face and it split from the cheekbone, the scalp and part of an ear. The shrieks of the warriors continued as they attacked the Spanish soldiers in the front, surrounding Alvarado now to protect him, but not doing that well. Rico’s feet started to slip in the blood running towards him and back to Templo Mayor.

He understood now what Lucas had always professed. This was real. His legs trembled, his knees knocked, he couldn't think straight through a viscous ringing in his ears, drowning out all thought. The mighty Aztec warriors were upon them and they wanted vengeance and he was scared.

Alvarado and a tight group of his men had got to one side of the bridge, trying to keep moving forward but fighting a pack of warriors that had continued to hammer away on the Conquistadors. But another group of Aztecs were making their way down the bridge and coming towards them now. A few of the soldiers were trying to hold a line but they were still inching backwards. His artillery crew began to abandon their gear, cannons, balls, all their equipment was dropped. Rico dropped his rope, as well, he didn’t know, he just did it.

He heard screaming, not the enchanting violent sublime Aztec war screams but help me this is my last chance screams and it came from soldiers who had fallen or been thrown off the bridge and now were drowning with the heavy weight of gold stuffed in their pockets. Right in front of them a fellow Tlaxacaltel, a native ally, took a macuahuitl to the side and crumpled like a rag doll. His common robe offered no resistance. And Rico suddenly couldn't move and that was it. It happened to him, he was paralyzed with fear. He didn’t want this, but here he was, unable to move.

Rico saw an enormous Aztec warrior rise above him and he stared, frozen, lost in time, lost in the intricate patterns, the purposeful lines of an eagle, connected to a hard-lined, circular pattern across this warrior’s broad shoulders and wrapping up to his face, a signal, a sign in the noise, the lines of the animals, the instructions of the calendar, time in a wheel never ending. It was all connected across this man, a club with glass nails in it raised far above Rico’s head, its motion toward him imminent. Rico felt his sacrifice here and he marveled at this place, Tenochtitlan, that produced such human beings. The ones that crossed the Bering Strait. The ones that came down from the North. From the tundra, from the cold, who never stopped moving forward, generation after generation until they found their paradise, nestled in these great valleys. They never stopped moving forward until it got warm. Warm enough to build a civilization that had no connection to Europe, to Asia, to Persia… to all the civilizations and their cultures… until now.

This was Moctezuma’s son, Moctoem, the warrior who rose above him was fighting to save his universe. Forever. And he almost did it too. This night, Noche Triste, Cortes and Alvarado nearly lost to Moztzume’s son and his men. The Aztecs were overwhelming and the Conquistadors did lose most of their men and their gold but somehow, fate or free will be damned, they escaped with their lives. And then as we all know, they would be back. But the blood of these great warriors and prophets would mix with these Conquistadors more than any other place in the Americas and the mestizo would always remain the base of the population of Mexico, starting with Cortes’ own son, born from an Aztec woman, Martin.

Moctoem’s macuahuitl crushed down upon Rico and he accepted it, his frozen fear giving him no choice. Before the mighty blow could even send his body to the ground the great warrior leaned into him with his shoulder and shoved his limp corpse off the side of the bridge and into the black water below. And then Moctoem quickly moved to the next Tlaxcaltec and dispatched him, and the next one, and Spanish soldiers and anything in his path. Moctezuma’s son made it all the way back to Templo Mayor, driving the strange Spanish aliens out of his home – the palace of the greatest kingdom in the universe, actualizing his space on The Calendar, his wheel of time, eternal.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico was surrounded by darkness, but he was used to it. It wasn’t his first time on this trip and he knew what to do. He spread his arms and kicked his feet and headed down in the direction Lucas had told him, the black water offering little resistance to his native robe, bearing no gold, light and easy to swim in. He felt the side of the bridge and followed it down, pushing towards the bottom and he found a lip, a space to swim underneath and get inside the structure.

Rico was running out of breath. But he swam under the lip and then started heading up, pushing the water behind him in wide, arcing arm sweeps and up and up and his head broke the surface and he took a giant breath and treaded water, looking around as he re-filled his lungs. He was in a tunnel under the bridge, modern rails of lights ran along its walls, with a dull illumination that just broke the realm of the visible. Rico could hear the mad clamoring above, the squealing roar of a horse in battle, the grunts and wails of the warriors, the clash of metal, the screams of the dying. It was an epic performance they were putting on up there but Rico had played his part and was ready to go out and into the city.

He swam to a ladder attached to a ledge that led up to a pathway. It reminded Rico of the old car tunnels in New York City that went under the river, with running lights, along a path for service workers to walk a few meters above the rushing traffic. He remembered the car tunnels from when he was very young, before the end of oil, before the magnet trams, he thought as he climbed up the ladder and stepped onto the path.

Rico could hear some footsteps and saw shadowy silhouettes of warriors and conquistadors and Tlaxcaltec people like himself. They were quietly appearing from the same place as him and moving along the path to return to the building across the expansive city center that functioned as their production hub, keeping the illusion of their drowning and death from the Alibaba team, undoubtedly still throwing their rocks from the rooftops. These were the dead, the drowned, the ones that did not make it across and out of Tenochtitlan, and their performances, like Rico’s, were over and they all made their way quietly through the tunnel, walking along the dimly lit path under the rage of violence above.

Rico could barely hear his own footsteps, echoing quietly in the tunnel as he continued on his journey; a pilgrimage of sorts, he was getting close to completing this quest and it filled him with a strange joy and made his belly warm. He was getting closer to Marcos Real and something was pulling him forward and he had an unexplained confidence, an overwhelming knowledge that he would find this man in the vast expanse of Mexico City. It was not exactly an intuition; he already knew the way.

The nanofibers of his simple robe were drying him quickly and he wouldn’t even be wet by the time he got to the end of the tunnel. He came to a door, a classic service entrance, nondescript and functional, set into the side of the tunnel. It was open and he walked through, as he imagined those in front of him had done. He was in a dank room, like an industrial basement, some dripping water and old pipes overhead completed the experience. He saw a narrow staircase and he headed for it and up, just as Lucas had told him.

Another door at the top of the stairs and he opened it and he was in a stairwell, footsteps and loud voices could be heard above, the sound of a production still in process, all the people working on this massive real-sim. But that wasn’t his path, he was headed out and indeed, he saw the door where Lucas told him it would be. Another unassuming portal, down a short hallway to the side of the stairs. This was the ground floor. This was the exit, the next step in the journey. He took determined strides toward the door, an old-fashioned push bar sat across the middle and he laid into it with his hand and let the momentum of his body force it open and he was out, leaving Tenochtitlan behind and walking into the streets of La Ciudad de México.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Dawn was happening and Rico could see the light starting to peek around corners and run down the street. He had come out a side door, tucked in between a Men’s Discount Fashion storefront and a strange retail market called Bizzaro that sold tiny Templo Mayor replicas and the Angel of the Revolution candlesticks and t-shirts with tequila puns and piggy banks in the shape of the great Gothic Metropolitan Cathedral built by the Spanish on top of the Aztec ruins, that now sat, sinking to one side on El Zócalo. These renditions were level, but the real one had been sinking into the soft sand of Mexico for centuries. A tourist shop on a city street, a normal downtown scene about to come humming to life with the sun. It was just as he had remembered it, having come here in college a decade ago and a few times since on business or long birthday weekends.

He wasn’t sure if he had expected something different, something particular to El Diario, to this new form of rule that had taken over this sprawling megacity. But there were people hustling to work in clean suits, and workers setting up their food carts in shirts and jeans and greasy aprons and sweepers, raking up the trash from the night before with ancient straw brooms and hats to protect their faces from the sun as it continued to rise.

He stepped out with the people and put a kick in his step to not forget that he was on the clock and it wouldn’t be long before El Diario would detect his bios, would recognize it wasn’t registered in the system and then come for him. He hurried along the smooth, long grey stone street and didn’t think at all but knew exactly where he was going.

Rico saw the street sign - Calle 16 de Septiembre as he made his way across an intersection; it was the date of the start of a revolution. The date the Mexicans started to fight the Spanish who had come to this land with Cortes and ended a couple centuries later when they kicked them out. But the people had already become genetically and historically intertwined with these native Mesoamericans and their advanced civilizations.

He walked past a street with a delightful cafe and then an AliBaba Outlet across from an Amazon Market. And more people began to fill the sidewalks and wander across the streets blocked off from traffic during the day downtown. The three story buildings, stone and brick, rounded corners and small balconies like turn of the century Paris, in fact, built to emulate them as Mexico found its feet and ditched its Spanish colonial and Gothic roots towards the end of the last millennium and went modern.

And the people seemed to Rico to be exactly the same. Their movement, their morning arrivals to El Centro Historico, their professions, their shopping. Rico was witnessing a normal day in the center of Mexico, the real-sim wrapping up down the street on El Zócalo and workers and tourists starting to fill in the district avenidas. He was looking for the difference, for a new rhythm to feel a new sense of security or stability or fear and he didn’t know what these people should be feeling out in the world when their whole world had changed. He was meant to save these folks, no? But it felt no different walking through Mexico City than it did thefirst time he was here, not in a revolución but in college.

Rico turned right on Calle de Simon Bolivar at the intersection of 16 de Septiembre and went past another Men's Discount Fashion and there were auto-trucks on this road, starting their automated deliveries and one paused as he crossed the street and got up onto the sidewalk. It was narrower here, the long stone walls and red tiled roofs enveloping him as he strode purposefully, knowing exactly where to go. He was walking like these people in the control of El Diario, none of them were deciding but still knowing which action to take without knowing what to do. This is what he imagined to be happening to all of them.

Rico felt perplexed that these new masters, the machines, had left all the signs of revolution on the streets, indeed, revolution was the streets, the same names he had always known. It was more usual for streets and city names to be changed after a takeover. Simon Bolivar had freed vast stretches of the Americas from the Spanish. El Liberador. That didn’t seem like the kind of inspiration a new regime would leave around for the people to pick up on. But maybe that was the totality of their control - they left everything the same. It turns out free will looks just like determinism.

He took a left on 5 de Mayo and smiled at the thought of the nachos and tequila holiday he had taken part in as part of Los Estados Unidos. A false sense of this date made people believe back home that this was Mexican Independence Day when it was actually 16 de Septiembre, a date no one knew or celebrated in the USA. This street he was on was a failed revolution against Napoleon III and his occupation of Puebla. They won that battle but lost that war and Napoleon's descendant did take over Mexico City and rule the country for a time. Even the French have had a piece, Rico thought to himself. But also got kicked out in revolution. And here he was for that same reason.

Calle 5 de Mayo dead-ended into Palacio Belle de Artes, a grand palace for the arts built in Mexico’s first wave of independence, inspired by the museums and monuments of the European Fin-de Siecle. Its marble columns and arches stacked and built up to a gold dome ceiling. And again, Rico was struck by this sight of a paean to art and free-thinking expression that had been a centerpiece of modern Mexican culture for since the last millenium was allowed to exist. And his heart quickened. He needed to stop thinking and finish this mission. He was closer than he had ever been to do something monumental, to having his name on a Calle in El Centro Historico. Rico put one foot in front of the other and crossed the plaza in front of the palacio and into Alameda Central, the city’s oldest public park.

Young couples were kissing and groping on the benches, resting beneath the shade of trees and meandering paths, coming out to meet early or having been here in the throes of passion since late at night. Again, nothing had changed. Rico knew that this was an amorous zone where overcrowded apartments and big families put young lovers out on the street and into the park, maybe not looking for privado exactly, but anonymity, at least. He strolled now, headed to the fountain at the center and felt determined and positive, gaining energy as he walked. More people were out now, getting crowded on the diamond shaped paths lacing Alameda between the trees and statues. But he stayed the course.

Rico came out into the circular area around the fountain and walked around and across to the other side and then as he rounded the corner he saw Marcos Real sitting on a bench. It was not surprising or frightening, as he realized he had always known he was there as soon as he saw him. He was in a plain worker’s robe like the one Rico had been wearing throughout his adventure with Lucas Rey and La Noche Triste. And as he stepped forward he began to lift up and feel himself moving out and above his body.

He was familiar with this sensation, it was part of some of the experiences he had made for clients, usually a part of a more therapeutic, serious XP that focused on mental health and wellbeing. They would create a copy of a person in the virtual world and position the user above this person but give them control, so that they could see themselves from outside. You could put people into this position and then take them through several customized scenarios that they could see themselves from above. And it brought great release and relief to a number of people to see themselves and their actions not through their own eyes. This was the sensation Rico had as he floated above himself.

Marcos Real did, indeed, look very much like him. Maybe older he thought as he floated closer, getting further above with every step, leaving himself and watching himself there on the bench. His energy rose, he felt warm and light and stared down at himself on the bench, and then Marcos Real looked up and they locked eyes and then Rico was on the bench, sitting near the fountain in a very plain, worker’s robe and thinking about nothing. He was back inside his self. Marcos Real was gone. He had escaped.

<><><><><><><><><><>

SO, TEACH THEM OR LEARN TO BEAR THEIR EXISTENCE.

Rico was sitting at a small wooden table, on a small wooden chair in a tiny apartment that reminded him of the Midnight Cowboy XP he had done for Bulleit Whiskey, Ratzo Rizzo’s apartment, tiny, bereft of all but the barest of essentials - pot, stove, table chair, wall, door, man.

He was reading Marcos Real’s notebook on the small wooden table, next to a pen, an old-fashioned ink, ballpoint pen. He loved these as a child. He picked it up and held it in his hand, remembering how to grip between the two fingers, thumb underneath for ballast and control, it felt good. He looked back down at the notebook.

LIFE IS NOT REAL OR UNREAL BUT JUST A PLACE FOR REALITY TO PLAY ITSELF OUT.

Rico had gotten up slowly from the bench after he had swapped being with Marcos Real. He hoped he had escaped or jumped to another dimension or whatever the fuck but instead he had, like Indiana Jones, switched the bag of sand and the idol at exactly the right time and place and pace. He didn’t see the boulder coming. And then he had gotten up from teh bench in and started walking.

Rico crossed Avenida Juarez, another revolutionary road, filled with traffic and the Alameda Park lovers, criss-crossing their way between the green beetle taxis and the short, squat white plain delivery trucks that seemed to have always been there. He had walked steadily along the grey concrete sidewalk and felt the street and the hustle and the dirt that seemed to wrap everything in itself not in a way that was unclean but part of the land as if the dirt never really gave up but just became part of the buildings the carts and stairs. Like mezcal, and so many experiences in Mexico, they had the taste of the land, the soil and ancient feel of a real place.

He crossed the Avenida and walked a block inside to Colonia Centro and the streets narrowed and window fronts got smaller and retail gave way to bodegas and residential door fronts. He crossed Avenida Independencia and saw the revolution here too, though smaller and narrower than the big names and big dates and indeed he made his way to the next block, Calle Articulo 123 and he knew he was on his way home.

Rico did not know that Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 was the formulation of the labor laws that still, even under El Diario, perhaps especially under El Diario, were upheld and abided by to this day. After the revolution it put Mexico somewhere between capitalism and communism, a western socialism by most standards. And maybe that’s what El Diario was in the end - labor laws. But Rico had none of those thoughts as he had registered his scan at the modest front door into a modest four-story building and he walked up the rickety stairs and knew the apartment and walked into that too and now he was here. Sitting at the small wooden table, in the small wooden chair reading another line in Marcos Real’s notebook.

YOUR LIFE IS WHAT YOUR THOUGHTS MAKE IT AND IT IS NOT REAL.

EVERY BEING IS WORTH EXACTLY AS MUCH AS THEY DO.

WHAT IS DONE TO ME IS ORDAINED BY THE REAL AND WHAT I DO IS MY OWN.

There was more but Rico looked up and wondered whether Marcos had made it out. Was he with Emma? Was he continuing the fight? Were they winning? How had it all happened, it didn’t really help to think about it but he was here and he knew his time was short. The machines would find him. Their bios were close, very close, he knew that now. It felt to him as if it had something to do with how they slipped by each other like different dimensions in the same space. He was still reeling from it. Rico looked at the steel pot on the stove, dented on one side, light in its metal, cheap and simple. He felt the wooden table, worn smooth and almost like he could squeeze, move the molecules together and leave the imprint of his fingers, but he moved his hand away and the table was the same, he had done nothing.

WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY BECOMES THE WAY

Okay, Rico thought. He started to digest that, to remember his own journey, the quest, the mission, the revolution, the purpose. And to have a purpose was to take what stands in the way and make it the way. But… he rubbed his forehead, set his elbow on the small wooden table, and he turned the page.

MISFORTUNE CARRIED WITH GRACE IS GOOD FORTUNE.

Fuck, he thought. Really? Rico had always respected the grace of something, the move that went beyond the moment into a timeless being. But was the function of grace to turn shitty luck into good luck? Yeah. Maybe it was and he felt a little less enamored with grace but full of an understanding that he didn’t want. He read on.

REALITY DOES NOTHING BUT CHANGE EXISTING FORMS INTO FORMS JUST LIKE THEM.

The eternal return? Rico suddenly wasn’t sure if you needed to believe everything to be part of something. Or to believe at all. To fight for something you didn’t need to be devout, you mainly just needed to be super pissed off or, well, in love. Revolution was in the air, he was in Mexico, this was a way to be, not a belief.

Rico was starting to think of his own idea, something he had never thought about before but in light of recent events it seemed at least probable that there would be a deeper philosophy building, a world view that so many that had come before him expressed, wrote, filmed, coded brought from the depth of a war into the realm of epistemology.

And he let it come forward and he felt that pen, that weighted ancient writing instrument and he put the tip down and it made a dot and he pulled and pushed a bit and the letters spelled themselves, like Marcos Real had done in this same book at a different location in time and space. The letters came automatically.

THE BODY IS THE PRISONER OF THE SOUL

He wrote it big and he looked at what he had written, the contour of every letter, tracing it in its shape and presence, so that it wasn’t just letters but a thing on the page that lived, existed with you, like an Ed Ruscha painting it was a thought and an object in the world. He scooted in his small wooden chair and smiled to himself. There was no expression on his face but he could feel the smile and knew it was there.

And then there was a knock at the door.

<><><><><><><><><><>

They all sat at one long and winding table and the walls were video screens. The screens could project anything, a forest, a seat at the edge of the Grand Canyon or Angel Falls, the moon. A person from the office would control it for the day and sometimes they would just choose ‘wall’ and it would be like an old-timey office wall, pale white and lifeless and people loved that for some reason. And the one single desk was more of a philosophy than a function but it wound through the giant open floor warehouse-like office space they occupied above Madison Square Park in Manhattan. It had undulations and twists and turns and hills and valleys you could walk over or under, but everyone sat at it, in little clusters or groups at a bend or in the corners of the snaking, wooden desk like a skateboard ramp that had gotten out of control. It was loud and kind of silly and useless but everyone loved it.

Rico sat next to Anders and Emma was across the way. They were working on Escape From New York, a massive multiplayer XP where people were in the prison that the island of Manhattan had become in the near future and they had to escape it. It was for Adidas, as the year before Nike had released an XP for The Running Man and it had been a big hit, but Adidas wanted to go bigger and make it so everyone could tap in and play together and it was darker and more sinister and that was where they wanted the brand at that time. The Running Man was a gameshow and single player and everyone loved it but there was no community.

Escape From New York would be an even bigger hit and would run for years, one of the most successful advertising experiences ever created at the time and it would make Rico and Anders and Emma, the editor, director and producer, somewhat famous, at least in the trades and would eventually be what allowed them to leave the Zigga Agency and go out on their own. But today was not that day, they were in the very beginning of getting that idea sold and their boss, Lucas Rey had just quit and walked out, ostensibly to start his own agency and that was the topic of conversation as they sat at their one, giant desk and discussed the afternoon’s events.

“I don’t think he’ll stand much of a chance,” Anders said to Rico. Emma leaning in from across the desk.

“I don’t know,” Rico started, “he’s the best creative I’ve ever worked with.”

“You haven’t been doing it that long,” Anders said kind of fucking with him.

“I think it’s smart,” Emma said. “You can only go so far at this place.”

“It’s the best agency in the world,” Anders reminded her, “Luke isn’t just going to walk out and match it. It’s tough out there.”

“He doesn’t want to make these anymore, huh?” Rico asked rhetorically, pointing to his massive screen where the early machinations of the Escape From New York XP were starting to build.

“That’s what he said,” Emma said.

“Or they told us he said,” Anders added.

“What does that even mean?” Rico asked. “Doesn’t want to do this anymore? This is advertising now.” He was referring to these immersive experiences that people could tap into and live through. Big brands were buying up IP and attaching themselves in some integral way and creating these experiences that people could go through and connect with the fundamentals of the company, the soul of the brand in a visceral way.

“He’s better off. He’s trying something else, something you don’t have to tap into but can just experience, just walk into it and live it here in the world,” Emma said, echoing a lot of what they had heard their boss, Lucas Rey, talk about many times. He had tired of digital illusion, of pixels standing in for the real thing. He wanted to use all the tools that could make objects, biomorph creatures, 3-D printers, stuntmen and actors and real living things bumping up against real living things and he called that a reality simulation. Because even if it were fake it was still in and of this world. He wanted to make only those kinds of ads… so he left the Zigga Agency, digital to its core, to start his own real-sim factory.

And Rico had never felt so alive. Sitting there at the giant desk with a bunch of creators and artists and ad men and women that managed clients and producers that got things done and it was buzzing. He felt vibrant and confident and capable of almost anything with his partner Anders. There was a trust and artistic communication between them and they could put together XPs like no one really had before. And since their first experience they had worked with Emma as their producer, assigned to these two young creators to help them get this shit that was in their head out into the world.

Rico realized how happy he was then, how connected to these people he felt. He hadn’t fallen in love with Emma yet, but the connection was there and that would come soon enough, and Anders too, he was in there, he would be the romantic partner to Emma but right then they were just all kind of in love with each other. Partners. Working a lot and not thinking too much at all. This was it. This is where Rico had gone to when he tried to find his entangled particles, to try to find the energy to jump that Augustina had given him. As soon as he heard that knock on the door, he let his mind go, to go empty, to go to the place where the universe connects you, across the sphere of time and the experience that held your existence, eternally. In his mind he saw the Zigga Agency, the early days as they were making their best work together. He and Anders.

There was another knock on the door. Louder, more urgent and militaristic. The knock of authority. And Rico felt a rush of energy, like a fever, like a speed inside that was revving up in his mind, in his ears, he could feel the rush and ring. He didn’t push towards, he didn’t squeeze his mind or tighten his focus but let go, released it, let the rush win the fight. His entangled particles were making themselves aware of each other. Where in his universe was he connected across time and space and realities and could anchor there, change his position and be that thing instead of this?

Rico in that instant did not want revolution as the knocks from El Diario and his own fate grew louder, booms like shoulders against his frail wooden door, boomboom. He, in his modest robe, at his wooden table next to the notebook of Marcos Real, this was not going to turn out well and he needed to jump. Boom. And he wanted to go home, that’s what his mind was showing him. Go back to before and live in the dull ignorance of skill and friendship and fun. Boom.

He let go even further and the curtain dropped on that scene at Zigga, at the one desk, at the agency at the peak of his potential with his favorite people and that all went away into nothing, into darkness. It was an emptiness Rico knew from before, the menu screen in the game, the hub of the experience where all options became available, but none were present.

He wanted to go home. He was done with this vacation and was ready to board his quantum flight and get the fuck out. He was in the darkness again and the only thought he had was of Gus, Augustina, who believed he could do it and had given him the strength to look inside himself to find the path through the universe. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The wood splintered as El Diario busted in and Rico disappeared.

Rico heard the soft crackle of pine needles as he took a step and then another. He was walking. He was somewhere else. He did it! He jumped. Augustina did not let him down. He rushed with energy as he thought of her and her gift. But he certainly wasn’t at a giant, uni-desk in the middle of Manhattan with his co-workers. He looked around as he continued to take step after step on the forest floor, having returned from another bout with nothing.

Emma! She was walking next to him and he lit up with joy thinking that this was his entanglement, these were the particles that could pull him anywhere through time and space. But he realized he was in a group, all of them walking and then he saw Marcos Real, on his other side, walking in stride and looking, really, so much like Rico, himself – a slight grey marked his dark hair and beard, his firm jaw, long nose and deep set, dark blue eyes, and it wasn’t like they were twins in a weird exact copy way, but something was connecting them, they were built from the same source… something, Rico thought.

And then his heart dropped as he realized maybe this was his entanglement, these particles that he and Marcos seemed to visibly share might be deeper than that, might be the jump, the connective quantum energy, the physics that held them together and got him out of Mexico City into the Sierra Madre, step-in-step with a band of revolutionaries. .

There were others here, too. He recognized them from the beach in Mazunte, they were Los Elegidos, soldiers under Frida’s command, part of the small band that had stayed outside Oaxaca on the chance this crazy plan to get Marcos Real out of the hands of El Diario actually came to be. It appeared it had. It was Anselmo, a wizened leader with deep lines in his face and eyes that told stories you didn't want to hear. Maybe a drug runner from Huatalco or Puerto Escondido that would smuggle coke and ecstasy through Chiapas and out to the old resorts along Riviera Maya where the money was. But that was not easy money. Not even a little bit. He had that look.

And there was a kid. Gusano, the worm, young and wiry with bushy, round hair and a serene energy that held him confident not because he was arrogant but because he knew he had something in him that was sinister and capable of what this war had brought him. Confident because he knew he could go that far, or further. And it was Gusano who held Frida by the back of the arms, her hands tied, and he pushed her forward in front of him as they all walked through the forest.

Rico felt and sensed everything all at once but it also felt like he had been there the whole time, walking, stride for stride between Emma and Marcos Real, Anselmo off to the side, and Gusano pushing their prisoner forward, her head held high, her mouth wrapped and pulled tight with cloth. Frida walked willfully, choosing each step, she wasn’t being dragged or forced, she was determinedly meeting her fate, as they all were.

The small band of revolutionaries and their prisoner stopped in a small clearing on the edge of a ravine that ended or perhaps began at a cliff wall that had water rushing down its face and into a thin river that snaked its way between the rocks fifty meters below, a wooden bridge delicately stretched across the ravine at its closest point from side to side. This was Cascada de Reyes. The waterfall of kings.

Rico could see this vista, over the ravine, water running down rocks in the distance as Gusano stopped Frida in place and turned her to face her inquisition. The group stood in a small circle, in a small circle of forest in the Los Sierra Madres del Sur near the ravine’s edge, with a precarious dirt path down the ledge to the bridge. Gusano removed the gag from her mouth, and Rico could see how fearless she was, her jaw firm and defiant, her hair rustled, big and bursting like crazy fire and her eyes glints of steel like two tiny rapiers always stabbing the enemy in its heart.

She spit on the ground. And looked around at each of them. Rico did not say a word, he knew and didn’t know and was just living this reality. Marcos Real did not say a word but looked at Frida stoically and with great calm and certainty. Emma shook visibly with anger or love or fear, Rico couldn’t tell, it was a new place for him. He had never seen her like this. Anselmo stood not wanting to look, he had seen this scene play out before. Gusano held the gag cloth in his hand, ready to do whatever else anyone asked of him. The silence was long amongst them, obviously some serious shit had gone down. Frida spoke.

“He is el místico. A mystic, a sorcerer, a priest. He is no better than los padres who ruined this land for us. Al mismo.” He is the same. She spit again. Anselmo drew his gun, disappointedly. He was a veteran and would do what he had to but he wasn’t happy about it. Gusano had that serenity about him, maybe having never been a witness to something like this but knowing the outcome and being just fine with it. Confident, even. Emma was shaking.

“You betrayed us.” She said between her teeth in snapping speech.

Marcos Real kept a steady gaze on Frida, he had serenity too but it came from a different place, it was acceptance as strength. A supreme confidence.

“I do not want to be enslaved by another religion. We didn’t come this far to lose our freedom, a veces. This is your traitor. He does not want free will, he wants his will.” Frida put those rapier eyes directly on Marcos Real and they were locked in a struggle that had no end.

Anselmo lowered his gun. “Tirala por el precipicio,” he said to Gusano. Rico understood. He told him to throw Frida over the edge. He spoke again in broken English, “She may not die but she will break. And can be eaten by the wolves or the big cats. But not for us to kill her. She was La Comandante.” Anselmo shook his head. He hated this, Rico thought, he himself, still silent, not hating but just… there.

“America Central nos liberaran,” Will set us free, Frida said, loud and shocking to Rico’s ears. To even hear the name startled him but to hear Frida chant their name like a war cry that ripped him from his complacence and into fear. “Marcos Real is the same as the machines. America Central is for the free wills. They will make it so Marcos Real does not enslave us all.”

Anselmo slowly nodded to Gusano whose eyes lit up and he stiffened his grip on her arms, preparing for her final push. Frida was not resistant, she didn’t mind, she had her own confidence and she let us all know.

“You cannot escape them, they know where you are now and they will catch you and they will kill Marcos Real and end this sueño mal.” Bad dream. She looked at him and gave him his verdict. “¡Muerte a Marcos Real!”

And then an old-fashioned, wild west style metal and gunpowder bullet ripped right through Frida’s forehead. Rico spun around to see Emma holding up the small pistola she had been given by Frida when she outfitted her to be a revolutionary. Anselmo sighed as Frida slumped out of Gusano’s arms and lay on the ground bleeding from the hole in her head down into her eyes and along the ridge of her nose, across her full lips. Gusano stood and stared at her like poking a dead dog with a stick on the side of the road.

Rico knew he had never seen anything like this from Emma. But maybe he wasn’t there at the right times, he wasn’t there when she killed Knoxville-Z either. Maybe this was more of a pattern than he realized. He looked at her but her eyes were on Frida, bleeding out of the hole that she had given to her. Emma slowly lowered the gun to her side and quietly, almost robotically put it back into the small leather holster on her hip. Rico could hear the sound of la cascada in the distance, nothing but water falling on rocks.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Marcos Real stared at El Fuente, floating above Emma’s palm, with an intensity that gave Rico pause. They were all seated around a small fire as night had fallen in the Sierra Madre.

“People are the multiverse,” Marcos Real said. “Their realities become a shared reality and all their stories intertwine and it creates a world full of multiple worlds. This is the problem.”

Anselmo and Gusano had dug a shallow grave and put Frida in it like they had done it too many times before. Emma put a few small rocks around the edge of the fresh dirt and never said a word. No one did. It had been done, it needed to be done so the revolution could continue. It was understood.

“El Diario, the machines, have built their algorithms, have based their math on the people’s world, on our stories and information and it’s in bad faith. There is nothing beneath it. But this…” Marcos stared more intently at El Fuente, The Source of All Knowledge.

Anselmo looked away, Emma held her hand high so Marcos could get a better look and the small obelisk, the long diamond shaped secret sauce hovered with anticipation, but that might have been coming from Marcos Real, Rico thought.

Gusano had left their tiny camp on the edge of the ravine at Cascada de Reyes to see how close America Central was to them. Frida had tipped them off, given their position and now they were in a race. They needed to get through the mountains and down the other side to the beach, to Mazunte and Los Elegidos, the army that would greatly increase their chances of survival. They weren’t too far, another day of travel, but America Central was closing in.

“This is the truth,” he opened his palms over El Fuente, taking in its energy. “Your friend, Knoxville-Z, the great algorithmist, the outlaw and visionary, he knew. There is only one reality, there is only one way and it is the universe itself, it is the math that makes us whole. It is physical. There is no metaphysical world. There are no human stories that run the universe. And he knew it. He discovered it and it lives here, right here, now.”

Emma raised her hand slightly and let the dull light and intense energy of El Fuente reach out to those gathered, to the band of resistance they formed here in the mountains in the south of Oaxaca.

“The machines must never get this. El Diario would have complete control, they would have the one true reality and unite all their power against us, there would be no room to fight. Nothing to choose. Nothing to live for.”

Rico understood this. The machines were running on human knowledge, the fallible, inconsistent waves of data we had sold to ourselves were its base and it was wrong, unstable, it’s why they were even here now questioning it. It was an imperfect system, sold on its perfection.

“And America Central is just another story among the stories, powerful yes, but not real. It has no truth. In the end, they are just as bad. Maybe worse.” Marcos Real turned his head away, like he was blinded by the light from The Source. “Enough,” he said, waving his hands. “That is enough.” And Emma slowly closed her hand into a fist and El Fuente disappeared and they were left staring at each other in the flickering light of the fire.

“Gusano should be back soon,” Anselmo said, “and then we will know.” Gusano had left camp to scout behind their tracks and see how close America Central was to them. They were on horses, Frida had told them when they discovered she was one of them. They will catch you, she had said defiantly. Gusano had gone to find out.

Rico couldn’t worry about that right now as he put his mind to what was to become of Emma. If Marcos Real believed that neither El Diario nor America Central could ever get their hands on The Source of All Intention what did that mean for her? He had felt Marcos’ truth, the intensity and complete belief he had in the power of this trinket, as Fausto would refer to it, to control their existence. But it was connected to Emma, it was part of her somehow and Rico wasn’t sure if she could be separated from it. So if Marcos Real meant to destroy it…

“What’s the plan?” Rico asked Marcos.

“We keep running,” Marcos told him, told everyone by the fire. And that didn’t seem like much of a plan to Rico, but none of this had seemed like much of a plan, and running is really all they had been doing, so he guessed it made sense to keep on with that.

“When Gusano returns we will know our chances. To try to make it back to Mazunte in the morning or to stand here and fight.” Anselmo said the last part but he didn’t sound confident about it; fighting was not Marcos Real’s gift to the world.

They sat in silence for a long time. Rico closed his eyes, now and then, to try and rest, to see if it were even possible. But it was not. Emma rocked slowly back and forth her arms wrapped around her knees and Marcos Real sat and stared out into the night. Anselmo laid down, he was resting, he had been in this situation before and his mind was able to ease itself into some sort of sleep.

Gusano returned. He was a quiet rustle of bushes with his soft, steady steps and then he was there, next to them by the fire.

<><><><><><><><><><>

“I saw their camp in the valley,” Gusano said as the circle woke from their reveries and leaned into the fire to listen to the report. “It’s not many but they have horses and they will climb the montana in the morning, this es verdad. It is certain.”

“Then we have to cross the bridge and get to our home,” Anselmo said, raising up and bringing back his veteran energy.

“On horses they will catch us,” Marcos Real said solemnly. “By the middle of the day tomorrow they will be upon us.”

“Then we should stay and fight,” Emma said, her pistola probably still warm in on her hip, Rico thought.

“They will have the weapons. There is no network here and we have many advantages but they will bring the new guns, ones only they have and until we get home and join Los Elegidos we won’t survive.” Anselmo said.

Everyone was quiet for a moment. The fire crackled and Rico wondered about his mission. How would he protect Emma this time? He was no match for America Central. That was not a fight he could win. He understood that.

“We blow the bridge, no?” It was Gusano with excitement in his voice. He pointed over his shoulder to the path that led to the rickety wooden bridge that sat in the darkness over the ravine.

“How?” Emma asked quickly, sensing an answer and running with it. She hadn’t killed her lover and leader to die on this hill.

“This ones!” Gusano beamed with pride as he opened his ratty green burlap knapsack and inside were two sticks of dynamite like they had come from Wile E. Coyote. The sticks lay on top of a metal disc with a button in the center that Rico recognized from a World War II battlefield XP they had created for Paypal. It was a landmine – ancient but his guess was still rather explosive. “When we were camping near Oaxaca City I only thought to bring something in case we had to make a run for it. Eh? Si or no?”

Anselmo picked up his rifle, a bolt action physical bullet gun that also seemed to be from another time and place, when it used to be an efficient way to kill men at war.

“You’re going to need this,” he said, holding the weapon up near the fire.

“If we have the rifle,” Emma spoke up, “we can detonate the landmine from a distance, we can kill them on the bridge.”

“Is this the right way? Perhaps we just move quickly, do what we can,” Marcos Real said.

“They will catch us,” Anselmo said flatly and no one doubted him.

“Puede hacerlo,” Gusano said. I can do it. And he reached across the fire to take the gun from Anselmo. But Anselmo hesitated, he pulled the gun back a bit and did not hand it over to Gusano. This was a decisive moment for Rico, he had followed Emma through every twist and turn on this great adventure because he had given his word to Knoxville-Z and it felt right and worth every moment. This was the next challenge, it was existential, and he wasn’t sure if Marcos Real was going to have to destroy El Fuente and in that way destroy Emma, or how that was going to resolve, but there would be no chance for that if she ended up in the hands of America Central.

“I’ll do it,” Rico said loudly and clearly. He did not reach for the gun or make any movement at all. He just let them know this was his journey and it was the next step he had to take. Anselmo looked skeptical and Gusano didn’t want anyone to steal his chance at glory.

“El es un extraño,” Gusano said. Rico was an outsider. Emma said nothing.

“This is everyone’s fight, we fight for all humans,” Marcos Real said. “He is one of us.”

Rico knew this was a war. He ignored Marcos Real because he knew platitudes and philosophies might be what you fight for but it isn't how you fight them.

“Can you shoot?” Rico asked Gusano directly. He knew the kid was young, probably hadn’t had much experience with any weapon much less an ancient bolt action bullet rifle.

Gusano laughed at him. “What are you? Eh? A media man for the screens and nothing else!”

“I have designed and built and fired every weapon, even this one,” Rico pointed to the rifle in Anselmo’s hands. “Media,” Rico said, looking over at Anselmo now, “is mainly guns and I have shot them all.”

And it was true. Rico had made more first-person shooter XPs than anything else, it was, in the end, what sold, what worked for people and their engagement. From the grassy knoll in Dallas to the spice battle on Arrakis to the dirt streets of Dodge City and the wide-open beaches of Normandy with land mines under every step and bolt rifles in every hand. He had played and shot and killed across history and imagination. He could do it in this game, too.

Rico was not sure if Anselmo understood his argument but Anselmo also knew that Gusano was young and eager and passionate and did not have much experience firing weapons, especially at distance, especially when everything was riding on that shot.

And Rico could see that Anselmo was unsure, that he had introduced doubt. He was now the leader of this crew, Frida had betrayed them and he had lost his Comandante but such was the way of revolución. Anselmo had to make the call.

“Rico will blow the bridge,” Emma said. And Rico hadn’t really known she was even in this conversation but she had El Fuente and right now that might outrank, rank. Rico couldn’t tell if she trusted him or he was more expendable or maybe she did actually believe that he had the best chance to help them escape, to have any hope of getting back to base.

Anselmo looked from Emma to Marcos Real. Marcos nodded, and said quietly, his grave countenance and furrowed brow belying fears that a person with his universal harmony perhaps should not feel. “He is the one.” And that was it.

Anselmo stood up and handed Rico the weapon across the fire. Gusano let out an audible breath but mainly kept his disappointment to himself, he was also a soldier and respected the chain of command. Rico took the old rifle from Anselmo and felt its weight, twinging the fingers on his left hand but he maintained a firm grip and put it against his shoulder holding the barrel up and looking down the sight. There was a metal nub at the end of the barrel, there was no digital display or auto-targeting. It was just his eyes and his hands holding this heavy instrument of war. He aimed in the dark and couldn’t see anything but made the gesture of it and with a show of confidence, set it down butt first and then up and over his shoulder with the strap. He was ready to go.

“Vamonos al puente,” Anselmo said to the small band of rebels, telling them they needed to go to the bridge and people began to stand and gather themselves for a departure, it was still dark but the sun was coming up soon and they would make their way slowly until then. Marcos Real stayed quiet and serene as he gathered himself for a walk down the path to the bridge and across. Emma looked at Rico, but it was brief and professional and was all about the mission at hand, the purpose they were all here for. Rico understood this.

Gusano handed him the knapsack with the two sticks of dynamite and the landmine. These were his tools, these were the objects that would get them to where they needed to be, the tools that would allow the fight for free will to go on another day.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Rico nestled into the rocks covered with a bed of pine needles. He was on the other side of the old wooden bridge, just up a hill that went over a small ridge on the edge of the ravine and then down the other side of the mountain, down to Pochutla a friendly city and then a short jaunt to the beaches of southern Oaxaca - Puerto Escondido to Hualtuco - the base of Los Elegidos and the seat of their resistance to the power of El Diario that had taken over their great, ancient and modern city, Tenochtitlan, Ciudad de México.

Marcos Real, Anselmo, Gusano and Emma had all left him there to blow the bridge. They had wandered down the dark path along the edge of the ravine, and crossed the bridge. They had all felt its hollow wooden echoes as they crossed and then stopped at the other side and said their goodbyes.

Anselmo had put his arm around his shoulder. And looked into his eyes, checking for some sign of success and maybe did not see it but said to him in all sincerity and it rang rich and true like the voice of a soldier, “Vaya con Dios.” The original goodbye.

Gusano had wanted to be the hero, to take in the glories of war, the memory of a fight, a win, a kill for the right reasons, but he would have more opportunities and Rico didn’t feel bad about taking this one from the kid. He was untested and needed to be less a hero than to live to fight another day. Emma needed to escape and Rico wanted to be the one that sprang her. It had to be him. Gusano had reached out a fist to bump – old school and funny and just the right touch for their goodbye.

Marcos Real had approached him, a twin almost in their common nano-robes, their dark hair and solemn faces against the dawn light and they had hugged and Rico felt it, it was real. There was a power there, in that person, and he had felt that kind of power on this vacation from many sources and it always felt the same, it felt like knowledge, like knowing what was going to happen next and not caring, but carrying on. That was power, the energy that could transfer from being to being that wasn’t being, was an idea outside, looking inside to help guide the way forward.

“Es algo mucho, mucho mejor que hacer,” Marcos had said, releasing the hug on Rico and stretching his arms out, his grip on his shoulders keeping them connected. It is a far, far better thing that you do.

“Es una paz mucho, mucho mejor a la que voy,” Rico said and he didn’t speak much Spanish but it came out of him perfectly, the entanglement between him and Marcos Real more than language could hold. It is a far, far better peace that I go to.

And Emma. She had come to him last. Standing on the dirt path that would lead them up and away from here, on the edge of La Cascada de Reyes. Rico remembered the sound of the water running down rocks to the river flowing beneath, the water bouncing off water and rejoining itself for the journey down to the sea.

She had stood before him for a long, silent moment. It was dark but there had been enough light creeping around the side of the planet to see the contours of her face and the outline of her posture and stance, defiant, ready, determined, holding to a purpose that was bigger than her and Rico had understood this, because for him it was her, standing right there in front of him.

“I won’t forget this,” she told him.

Rico had looked down her arm to her hand, held in a light fist by her side but that also held the reason for all of this, The Source of All Knowledge. El Fuente was quiet then, resting inside of this Elegida, this chosen one, and he felt that connection to Emma, too, like maybe he was chosen. Chosen for her and this was it.

“I will make sure no one forgets what you are doing here today, for us, all of us.” It was so Emma, so simple and real and confident about what was next. Rico had had a vision of his monument, the one that Emma would build after she won the war, the monument to free will in New York City near Madison Square Park where they had all met and worked together. He would be a living statue, an experience himself, at the Battle of Panama City or the Escape from Gladden Spit. And those could be XPs too that Los Eligidos, the victors and their spoils, would make for giant future brands trying to understand the continuum of history so they could understand their consumer who in the end was just them.

He would be the star in the reenactment of the reenactment of La Noche Triste that led to the release of Marcos Real and then to this now, to the blowing up of the bridge, that would get them out of the clutches of America Central. He still had to do that part but didn't really know who he was quantum entangled with. Marcos Real? Or was it Emma? Either way, he still loved her and if he had free will he was using it to do this for her. He had said to Emma on the edge of the waterfall. “Thank you.” and he had meant it. And then he added the part that he knew was true, the truth of this whole fucking thing. “I’m not saying goodbye to you, Emma. I’ll see you again. Like I always do.”

Emma had nodded but wasn’t there for him. She had a bigger agenda than him and she didn’t want emotions to get in the way, at least this is what Rico imagined for himself. She had turned quietly and headed up the path, up and away from the bridge and down the mountain towards Mazunte. Marcos Real had led the way with Gusano by his side, who was still looking back to make sure he couldn’t have done a better job. Anselmo had taken the rear, the guard, the veteran who looked back at Rico standing on the edge of the waterfall, and then turned and Rico registered nothing from Anselmo. Not a thought or emotion as he walked away. He was done with that as well. Perhaps, they all were.

Rico was just waiting now, his bolt action bullet rifle resting on a rock, his heart beating into the pine needles on the dirt he had nestled into between the rocks, below the persistent evergreen trees of the Sierra Madre del Sur.

Rico had used the nano-fiber space tape that was ubiquitous around the world to wrap the make-shift explosives around the wooden cross beams that held up the old bridge. Two sticks of dynamite rested on each side of the landmine next to the ignition button that sat on top, usually waiting for someone to step on it hidden in the dirt but in this case was covered in the juice of forest berries and spit to make it stick out against the metal grey. Rico had secured it at the closest point he could climb to where the lateral angles met the vertical angles and the basis of this simple bridge design. If it went off, if he could hit the target, it would work, the bridge would blow. And he would flee this rocky perch and try to catch up with the others. Simple.

Sunlight was starting to peek in on him over the trees and he knew America Central would be there soon. He felt the boom of his heart against the earth. He was nervous but focused. Not unlike anything worthwhile he had ever done. If you’re not a little bit scared, he had always said to himself and anyone who would listen, then it’s not worth doing. He was a lot scared. But he had a clean sight on the makeshift red dot of the landmine and his chances were decent. He had his rifle and a small target about 50 meters away, taped to an old shitty bridge that would drop into the ravine and kill or maim everyone on it. He liked that. Boom. Boomboom. Boom. His heart continued to pound.

And then the fog came to fuck everything up. It was the warm morning temperatures and the cool water from the top of the mountains, running down hill, warming and then falling down the Cascada de Reyes and the spray and the warm and cool made a mist, a mist that traveled effortlessly, floating, amorphous down the ravine and into Rico’s line of sight.

This wasn’t really a thing anyone had planned for and Rico knew the plan was thin from the beginning but this was an obstacle. A beautiful, iconic morning mist, the random combination of temperatures that splashed into existence and rolled in like mother nature to thwart his best laid plans and not even be conscious of it. He couldn’t see the red dot, it wavered in and out of the light grey mist, the white mist, the clouds of vapor that were just enough to obscure a red dot on an ancient land mine that held the success of free will in its visual propensity. Would it clear, would it evaporate in the morning sun in time to give him a line on it? Maybe. Maybe not.

Rico heard a winnowing. The sound of a horse taking a deep breath after a steep climb and then another and another. He could make out the silhouettes of America Central on horses, coming down the path, on the other side of the bridge, ready to follow our revolutionaries to their demise. Rico could see them but couldn’t see the red dot, couldn’t see his target through the morning mist, beautiful and serene floating through the ravine to fuck him up.

There weren’t that many of them. It was a small band of searchers, looking for the same thing they were all looking for: The Source of All Intention. And Rico realized that if they did get on that bridge together he could end them, he could end this chase, give Emma and Los Elegidos the chance they needed. Save the world. Whatever. He waited.

He heard the horses’ dull, analog hoof clicks as they stepped onto the bridge. Old iron shoes and old wooden bridge meeting in a way that was less real and more fantasy than sounds he knew and worked with and created for people to feel. He watched the mist, it drifted by in agonizing randomness, does anyone control the fall of water? The way it sprays and covers a man’s attempt to save the love of his life, the chaos of this moment, the chaos of fog stopping the future.

Rico saw an opening, it was drifting in a certain way with gaps and holes between its fogging nature, and there was a giant gap, a space between the clouds to take a shot and it was coming his way about to open up and reveal the target. And the horses clattered across the wooden bridge over the ravine, producing their own odds of existence and reducing them considerably.

He saw the red dot through the mist, a moment of calm in the chaos and he fired a bullet. He missed. It thudded into the wood near the actual target, near the makeshift explosive that was the hope of this revolution. It was a loud miss. The bolt action rifle was not silent like the electric weapons that ruled modern warfare. This was a revolution and the older weapons revealed their secrets and it was hard to stay anonymous while making a ravine ringing proclamation of violence.

It was the charge of the light brigade. The horses rose up spooked, but then hit the wood with their hooves and were off. America Central was coming across the bridge and Rico knew he couldn’t count on the mist clearing for another shot. He threw the rifle strap over his shoulder and jumped up from his perch on the small ridge overlooking the bridge and ran down letting gravity take him until he rolled down the last few meters and came to a stop crashing into some boulders before he hit level ground. He was close to where he had planted the explosives only a short time ago. The enemy was almost across the bridge.

Rico was below the mist now. He could see the red target on the landmine. He was hurt in a few places, his fall down the hill not without consequence but the searchers were on the bridge, in a vulnerable position on a man-made contraption above a ravine of death. It made him feel like laughing. But he did not. He slung the rifle off of his shoulder and took a knee in the dirt. The rifle felt good in his hands, dense and natural like an extension of himself.

He was close now and he could see the men on horses, their grim, determined faces trying to get to the other side. The agents of America Central were galloping across the ravine, the rickety analog bridge, the water falling behind them, cascading, slamming into the rocks far below where Rico wanted to send them. He gathered himself, the explosives only a few meters away now and he stopped thinking and fired the rifle at the red dot, like he had done and would continue to do every single time, before always and forever, and he hit the target on the ancient landmine and the two sticks of obsolete TNT and it all worked like the river Kwai and he knew for whom the bell tolled. There was a massive explosion that blew apart the old wooden bridge and did almost everything Rico had wanted it to do.

Except for him. He was flying. He was flying through bowling pins and young ladies' lovely, sequined legs like the concussive dream-state in the Big Lebowski XP he had created for a celebrity tequila. He flew through the air, limbs loose and flailing, nothing keeping him aloft but explosive power, the release of violence blew him from the base of the bridge back to where he came from.

He was in nothing again, felt its deep connection that maybe was the base of the universe, the nothing, the dark that he had kissed and fucked this whole trip. He was there again as he flew through the air, but he landed in the rocks, back on earth and he felt his leg scream at him, letting him know he was still here in the something, in the world he had always lived in.

Rico looked down at the bridge. It was gone. So was most of the enemy, most of the small band of agents had been blown up or had fallen into the ravine, their horses crying out as they fell. But he saw that someone had made it, there was a horse, a figure on the other side, collecting themselves and their horse and about to come up the ridge to meet him. So close, he thought.

His leg was shattered. He was lying between the rocks and he stretched himself out and stared down at his left leg. There was a bone jutting out of the side, and even his kneecap, a white helmet peeking out between the flesh, having escaped the layer of skin and blood and muscle that held it inside.

He couldn't believe that he was alive. Immobile, broken, but conscious; he was still in the fight. And there would be more agents coming, and they would get him before he could get away. He wouldn’t let them take him, he knew what to do, but he just needed to take care of one thing first. He had bought them the time they needed, Emma and Marcos Real and The Source of All Intention. If he could get this one last straggler that made it over the bridge they were destined to get back to Mazunte in time.

Rico reached out in agony for the gun lying next to him in the rocks, he had to stretch a bit but his fingers finally got a hold of the wooden stock. He grunted and maybe screamed, he wasn’t sure. He laid himself out on the ridge, a few rocks under his belly but his balance sure as he spread out across the top of the ridge. He put the butt of the rifle against his shoulder. His leg was a raging pain, the bones outside the body warning him about the dangers of living, but he already knew. He had taken the assignment; this was his reason to be and bones weren’t going to stop him from being it. He wasn’t getting out of this one, but he wasn’t done yet.

He lowered the rifle and looked down the metal barrel, just using his human eyes to line-up its human-made length, the small nub at the end of the rifle his guide to kill the next thing that came into its scope. He could feel his heart boomboom against the very earth that held them all, that was the reality for the sum of realities that Rico was fighting for. For Emma. For Marcos Real. For Anders? And Frida? And he didn't know, he didn't know if this was his choice at all and he laughed at that idea, that concept he had abandoned during the course of this innocent, tropical analog vacation. La Isla Bonita. Knoxville-Z. He had given his word. The meaning of life. He didn’t have a choice, even in the battle for free will.

And then he saw him. Bennie. In the simple silhouette of his crooked, crazy face, he recognized the endless chase, from the airport with Felix, on the dancefloor at the Jaguar, the casino floor at Gladden Spit, the attack in Casco Viejo, the driver at Monte Albán. Bennie had always been there, his insipid profile, his perpetual presence.

And so, yes, it was him in the early morning sun, the darkness that is light, coming up the ridge on his horse, he was the one that made it across the bridge. He was the one, he was America Central, the one that had been there the entire time, entangled with his particles never willing to let go, always after him, the end, the beginning. Rico knew he would do this all again, choice or no choice, he was in a wheel of existence, outcomes complete, time irrelevant, an eternal return.

He looked down the long metal length of his bolt-action rifle. He watched Bennie come up over the ridge on his horse, his head making its way towards the metal nub at the end of his barrel that guided his action. Rico waited and waited and then it was there, lined up, the entire thing, reality itself, right in his sight, ready to go. He looked at Bennie one last time, his slowly bobbing head waiting to explode and he felt his heartbeat boom boomboom boom against the pine needles in the deep forest of his mind.

And he took the shot.