NEW SCI-FI THRILLER NOVEL "SEAGORA" - SLICE 1

@steeminganarchy proudly presents a high seas adventure.

Special Thanks To

My Mother R.I.P.

My Sister

And Captain Gonzalo            

And now the adventure begins....

Calm yet crushing depths of darkness slowly passed.  Twisted gurgles and hums crept up from an unknowable distance.     And then there was light.    

At first ghostly, then gaining in brilliance as it was approached.  Vast vertical fields of green were illuminated.  Malleable machines worked harmoniously with the volatile vents thundering below.    

“Wow, I gotta see more,” the boy thought.    

This instantly shot him up through thousands of feet of Pacific.  Handsome crafts of various shapes and sizes appeared.  Some were interlinked and others floated free.  All were glowing soft and hazy.    

Then there was a thud.

Caught off guard, the boy cried, “Hey, what the?”

“That’s called your mom’s hand.”

“I thought it was a rock,” Setarcos said as he pulled off the helmet-visor.    

Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish what was real.  In the year 2078, too many artificial things appeared natural in the real world, and VR experiences had become far too convincing.    

“I’m surprised you’re not experimenting.  Just couldn’t wait to get a glimpse of The Pit, huh?”

“Yeah, I need a break sometimes, ya know?"

“Well, I’m happy to see it.  Anyway, it’s time for dinner.”

“Just five more minutes, please, mom?”

She sighed deeply.  

A mildly grimacing Setarcos set his VR headset aside.  “Is it really like that down there? How can it be so bright over 30,000 feet deep? Did dad invent some of the tech down there?”

A slicing glare cut him off.  “This is my first trip to the Mariana Trench, too.  You know that.  And yes, your father’s inventions are essential for, well, more than we know, I suppose.”

Setarcos and Caro stepped onto a platform.  After a couple of seconds of no movement, they exchanged a look.  “Looks like the stairs again,” Caro sighed.    

They went up to the top deck via a small staircase.  A blood-orange sunset stroked their eyes.  A kind, rugged face greeted them, “Minimum power until we get to Mariana.”

Setarcos lamented, “So no service robots.”

The kind face that belonged to Cidel turned mischievous, “Which reminds me.  The desalinizer is on the fritz again.”

Being given extra tasks bothered Setarcos, as it did most 15-year-olds, but for a different reason.  Setarcos wasn’t lazy.  He was a brilliant young mind and was just hyper-focused on a science project.  He was greedy with his time.    

“Again?” he asked.    

Caro mused, “You can fix it a lot faster than Cidel.”

Cidel didn’t argue.     

Their venerable B-class ship, the “Desert Dunes” was being guided through the South Pacific by The Mesh and would rendezvous with other SeAgora ships in two days before taking the plunge to Mariana Trench.    

Known affectionately by many Seasteading Agorists as “The Pit”, Mariana Trench was one of the few permanent fixtures in the SeAgora.  Otherwise, most contact between individuals in the SeAgora was done as needed or desired.  Technology allowed for ships to be linked together to share resources and form communities.  This flexibility also made it possible to relocate easily if faced with an external threat.    

The small seafaring family sat down at a stylish, 3D printed dining table.  “Ah, seaweed soup again,” Cidel mocked playfully.    

Setarcos swirled his steaming bowl of green muck.  “How long are we gonna be in The Pit?”

Caro said, “Probably as long as The Mesh recommends.  You know that.”

The Mesh was a medley of things, hence the name.  It started out as a small mesh network created nearly 50 years earlier by the original Seasteading Agorists.  It was still the main hub of communications in the SeAgora, but it had morphed into much more.  A.I. had blended with it.  Now it was shared by humans, AKA “bios”, and A.I., AKA “synths”.  The A.I. on The Mesh gave recommendations for when and where to move securely.  It also steered the individual ships, if the ones on board agreed.  Not only that, but it handled a large volume of blockchain-based trade agreements and barter swaps.  It was a nearly indispensable hub of market activity.    

Caro caught her son’s gaze drifting off into the evening abyss.  “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.  Just wondering if I’ll ever get to go on land.”

Caro folded her arms and leaned closer.  “One day, I think.  And you’ve been on land before, ya know.”

Setarcos said, “Yeah, but I don’t remember.”

Cidel asked, “Why would you want to go on land, anyway?”

“Just to know what it’s like.”

Cidel slurped his soup.  “You’re not missing much, I’ll tell ya.  We’ve at least got some freedom out here.”

There was an awkward silence.  Caro and Cidel knew how bad it had gotten on land.  A.I. smart cities.  Curfews.  Brain chips.  Resource credits.  Heavily restricted breeding.  Most people lived in shoebox-size hovels, passing the time inside virtual reality programs.  Overall, initiative had been in a steady decline for decades along with intelligence.  Natural foods and medicines were priced nearly out of existence, except for a tiny minority in the social engineering class.    

But Setarcos didn’t know.  He was blissfully naive at this point.  Setarcos lit up, “Is Escapo gonna be there?”

Caro and Cidel groaned like clockwork.  Setarcos viewed Escapo as a wily uncle and adored their time together.  Caro and Cidel tolerated Escapo, mostly for the boy’s sake.  They had met a few years earlier in the mid-Atlantic.  Since then, they’d met up a few times and done some trading together.  Escapo always had some goods that were hard to find from his contacts on land.  Things that weren’t available in the SeAgora because they couldn’t be grown in aquaculture at sea.  Random things like coffee, oranges, and oats.    

Setarcos grinned, “Why don’t you guys like him?”

Caro’s look ceded the floor to Cidel.  “It’s not that we don’t like him.  It’s just that.” His eyes scanned the heavens as he searched for the right words.  “You might say we don’t trust him a hundred percent, that’s all.  And it’s not just him.  Anyone with extensive contacts on land we find suspect.”

“That’s not fair.”

Caro’s hands fidgeted, “It’s just a form of defense, that’s all.”

“But what about dad? He’s on land, right?”

Before they could muster a plausible answer, they were interrupted by Masher, a sentient synth they’d lived with for years.  It informed them frantically, “There’s been another attack!  We’re changing course.”

Caro lamented, “The government terrorists have struck again, huh?”

Cidel asked, “Since when are you calling the shots, Masher?”

“Sorry.  The Mesh strongly recommends changing course.”

“Sure, go ahead, Masher, and tell us about the attack.”

“One A-class cruiser with six humans and one synth aboard and one B-class with two humans and one synth.  Both ships completely destroyed by explosion, caused by micro-energetic reactions within the computer core of both ships.  All humans perished.  Both synths survived.”

“Naturally.”

“Caused by unidentifiable aerial vessel.  Suspected to be from the Afro-Asian Alliance.”   

Throughout most of the recent history of The SeAgora, attacks by land-based government agents were rare.  The Mesh and government A.I. systems were continuously locked in unseen battles in the quantum realm, a dizzying game of cat-and-mouse.  Moves and counter-moves.  It was a nearly continuous draw.  The Mesh was purely defensive.  Government A.I. systems were always the aggressors.    

Once in a while, though, The Mesh lost one of those unseen battles, and the result was usually the suffering of some agorists at the hands of government.  This attack was one of those cases.  Also, attacks like this had, in the past couple of years, been building in frequency.    

“That’s the third attack this year,” Cidel said sadly.    

The normally placid and shy Setarcos got a bullish look of defiance on his baby-face.  He pointed towards the sparkling, now moon-lit sky, and said, “That’s why we gotta go to the stars! We get there, they stay here!”

“That simple, huh?”

“That simple.  If we’ve got the tech, and they don’t.”

“I agree with you,” Cidel said as he polished off the last bit of steamy goodness.  “But,” he continued, “at some point, they’d eventually get the same technological capabilities.  And what then?”

Setarcos shook his head emphatically, “No, they won’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because machines can’t innovate.”

“I beg your pardon?” Masher interrupted.  “Since when?”

The family turned their heads to Masher.  Caro asked, “How many original inventions have synths made?”   

Everything fell silent for a moment, save for the water that splashed methodically as the elegant old ship hummed along.     “Thank you,” Caro said with satisfaction.

“Keep in mind we’ve been around for less than 100 years,” Masher said defensively.

Cidel said, “Speaking of inventions, how’s your experiment coming along, Setarcos?”

Setarcos blushed and his head drooped slightly.  He’d been working on the same project for over a year now, with zero positive results.  Cidel reassured him and patted him lightly on the head.    

Caro said, “Maybe you should try something different for a while.  Ya know, give yourself a break.  It might give you a fresh look and help in the long run.”

“Why are you always trying to get me to stop, mom?” he said with a sharp tongue.

“Watch your tone, Setarcos.  I’m not trying to get you to stop.  I’m just trying to help.”

The truth was, Caro did want him to stop.  She knew what had happened to his biological father, and feared a similar fate for her only child.  She loved how ambitious he was, but the fear controlled her sometimes, and she tried to discourage him in subtle ways.  It was painfully paradoxical.    

Secondarily, whenever they were linked up with other ships in makeshift, temporary communities, as was quite common in The SeAgora, Setarcos was painfully reclusive.  He was socially awkward and horribly shy.  He never made any true human friends.  He would just stay locked in his room for endless hours, experimenting, reading, and occasionally doing VR games and tours.  Masher was his best companion.    

Slice 2 Coming Soon!

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