Saturday, May 22, 2010

Matt & Mariko - A Serialized Novel - 5.22

CHAPTER 13

Chapters 1-12: http://bit.ly/bP2JR8

     The shining silver cube stood about the size of a small house, surrounded by a set of nine white parabolic discs, one larger than the rest. A blue haze hung over the mountains in the distance beyond. Other than that there was nothing but the alkaline sands of the dry desert lakebed in view.
     Several men in white lab coats were moving from disc to disc. A voice over the loudspeaker announced: "Clear the area." The men all walked away.
     The loudspeaker voice then counted down: "One minute warning." Then: "Ten second warning: Then: "Three ... two ... one."
     A red laser beam shot in a circle from disc to disc, then – amplified and concentrated by the main disc – bore into the cube, instantly and silently. Only a moment later, there was a loud click as the laser shut down. A hole about six-feet in diameter had been cut through the middle of the cube.
     Cheers, applause, hoots and hollers broke out from a crowd of about 100 standing behind Matt and Mariko, who had front row seats on the bleachers. Some of the engineers, probably the ones who had worked the hardest on the project, shouted "Yee-Haw!" and "Hot Damn!" and threw their hard hats into the air. Then the technicians, politicians and executives started filing down from the observation deck to a reception area off to the right, under the control tower. A group of black musicians on a makeshift stage started playing a conga-driven hard rock beat, chanting the name of Yamura's company _ "Ozawa! Ozawa! Ozawa!" _ over the pulsing rhythm.




     "Well," Yamura turned to Matt. "What do you think now? No poetry in corporate life?"
     Still a little groggy and trying to catch up with what he had just seen, Matt struggled with a response.
     "Can we go look?" he asked Yamura.
     "Let's," Yamura said. Mariko followed them across the cracked surface of the lakebed over to the cube.
     "A perfect circle,'' Matt said, looking at the hole in the cube.
     "We'll have to get it bigger, of course,'' Yamura said.
     "Why?" Matt asked. "It looks like it could blast apart anything that you needed to."
     "Not necessarily," Yamura said. "It's supposed to be a space-based anti-meteor defense. Meteors – or even some comets – get pretty big, you know."
   "I've read about this," Matt said. Then he thought for a moment, and smiled. "But, say, if need be, you could point it back at Earth if you wanted to take out, say, Tehran. Or Pyongyang. Or Tripoli."
    "Yes, that's what they say," Yamura said. "But really, we started working on it after Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter. That comet had only been sighted a couple years before. There was a reason to revive some of the "Star Wars" technology, you know, space-based laser defenses, and point them away from the Earth instead of toward it. I've worked on this 15 years. Who knows, maybe it'll save the world one day."
     "And if it doesn't?" Matt said. "Or if it destroys a city instead?"
     "Well, I guess either way, I'll have done my job. And I'll have to live or die with whatever results I've produced, even if the consequences are unintended."
     Matt turned back to the cube and recited:
     "Pour us your poison, it is soothing
     While this fire burns our brains, we go
     Into the abyss, Heaven or Hell, how amusing
     To find the new, what we don't know."
    Yamura tilted his head.
     "Ah, Baudelaire," he said. "Sublime."
     "You know it?"
     "The last lines of 'Death' from 'Flowers of Evil.' One of my favorites," Yamura said, then turned as a man in a white shirt and bright print tie approached them, small clouds of light dust kicking up around each of his footsteps. "A Frenchman," Yamura announced. "This is appropriate."
     "Mr. Yamura," said the engineer. "Nice to see you."
     "Nice to see you too, Philippe," Yamura said. "We were just talking about Baudelaire with Matt here, Mariko's boyfriend. Learn any Baudelaire?"
     "In high school," Philippe said. "We didn't do Baudelaire at the college of mining. Mariko's new boyfriend?" he asked, shaking Matt's hand. "Hello Mariko," he said to her. "You're a lucky guy," he continued, turning back to Matt.
    "I know," Matt said. "Thanks."
    Yamura touched Matt's shoulder.
    "See you at the buffet," he said, turning to walk off.  "I've got to, you know, shmooze."

     Mariko had already started her conversation with Philippe.
     "I never see you at the house anymore," she said, a fake pout on her lipsticked mouth.
    Phillipe was flirting back.
    "Not that I didn't want to," he said. "You're stunning in white. Yurei, they say? A ghost? A spirit?
    "That drives men wild," she replied. "To their doom, smashed up on the rocks. Like the sirens."
    "Yes, I remember. It just that with all this – business, you know, I've been back and forth between Beverly Hills and Toulouse."
    "The merger?" she asked. Matt saw what she was doing, and stayed silent. But he wondered what the "ghost" talk was all about.
    "I guess it's an open secret, but I've been in so deep" –  Philippe put both hands next to his eyes, signifying horse-blinders – "I don't know what's going on in the outside world."
    "Oh, I've heard," she said. "Ozawa wants to buy Mayanada for this project, so they hired my dad from them. But they could also go with PRT, if their technology is stronger. Didn't you work for PRT?"
    "Consulting. Just consulting."
    "Either way. It looks like my dad will head the project for Ozawa, whichever way it goes. You'll be on board?"
    "That's why I'm here."
     "I'm thirsty," Mariko said. "Let's get some of that champagne at the buffet before it's all gone."
     The three of them headed toward the tables, where a stiff, steady breeze was lifting the bottom of the long white tablecloths to show cheap wooden sawhorses underneath. Waiters in hard hats pulled bottles from ice-filled buckets and poured champagne for Matt, Mariko and Philippe. The golden liquid in their crystal glasses sparkled under the desert sun.

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