A Mermaid Christmas

"What is this, kid," the developer had said, "is this an insult?"

"Sir," the young man's manner calm, "if you don't take this offer you know you'll never see a dime out of that mountain. You know that."

"Who are you? Who's the buyer?"

"I am merely an errand boy," the young man's answer, "this offer is one thousand percent what you paid and while your expenses have been, well, excessive for having accomplished nothing, you'll still be ahead. With this drain off your books, perhaps you won't be selling plasma next week to pay the next round of property taxes."

Over the next two weeks a succession of fiercely antagonistic parties that had crisscrossed assertions of ownership over that developer's land had quietly packed away their claims and counter-claims.

A week after the last such competing claimant had dispensed with any more such pretences the same young man walked into the Los Angeles Planning Department with an impeccable development plan. A week later a press conference was announced for the location on top of a mountain in the hills above Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills, overlooking the lush campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, the famous UCLA Bruins.

It was a mountain top property that had once been priced for a hoped-for billion dollars and a steady stream of members of the previous generation of tech entrepreneur/billionaires had gazed at the expanse the size of 150 American football fields of undeveloped hilltop with views across the entirety of the Los Angeles basin. Despite their unmatched ambitions and wealth not one had the will to navigate the multiple dangers of intertwined past family and estate claimants and city, county and state planning commissions. Only the most foolish, like the failed developer, had even tried.

To little real surprise, a helicopter with the "MU" logo had landed and Melon Bezerg had emerged to speak to the gathered journalists and social media newsfluencers. To some amount of real surprise his opening sentence was 'welcome to the location of my new home.'

"Many of you are aware," he continued, "that I've filed paperwork with the Planning Commision. Of course, anyone who desires to build a home, that's step one. I'm also aware that, right now, a bidding war is breaking out where some dedicated civil servant will need to decide if taking the money is worth the loss of their career and savings when I sue them into the dirt. Instead..."

He held his phone up and made a show of pressing a finger onto the screen.

"I've just posted all of the plans on 'melonusks new home dot net.' Feel free to download the plans for your articles and please, leave the dedicated and honest civil servants alone."

The crowd shuffled as they all tapped and swiped at tablets and phones, a variety of barely verbal mutterings as Bezerg stood quietly and spoke to a tall, impeccably dressed young man who'd come to stand next to him. The young man stepped away and gestured at two workmen who nodded and began to set up a screen near Bezerg.

"Now," Bezerg announced, drew faces, "I quietly engaged the greatest architects of the age to give me their ideas. I'd like to introduce the woman with whom I will be working and whose incredible ideas drove the designs at which you're looking."

The angle for the conference had been chosen such that the screen could be viewed by the audience with a minimum of sun glare, a long, low series of off-white buildings appeared. Those with good internet connections had already seen a similar view on the website to which they'd been directed. Behind Bezerg a woman in some sort of strange clothing stepped from the parked helicopter, shook herself and strode rapidly to stand next to the man. A murmur from about a third of the attendees indicated they'd already recognised her.

"A Nehru jacket," said one of the newsfluencers as she raised her phone to get a clear picture and rapidly tapped the screen. A ripple of snorts worked their way from her through the crowd.

"Allow me introduce Victoria Wusthof," Bezerg said, "not only the greatest living architect but possibly the only person on earth smarter than me."

"Possibly," said the slightly raspy voice of the woman, she was short, her face thin and drawn, her hair softly curled and naturally grey, "no possibly about it. Now, let's just go to questions. You, over there."

A man near the right edge of the crowd shook his head, took a moment but he mastered himself. Wusthof was famous, actually more infamous, for her irascibility. In an age when technology allowed ever more incredible buildings she was unmatched in pushing the boundaries of both materials and people.

"Ms. Wusthof," he managed, delaying for a moment to complete his thought, "you've always said you'd never accept a commission. You do the plans and tell people this is what they're going to build."

"Did we say this was different? No, some time ago an insane man walked into my office. He said to me, 'It's time for me to build my super villain lair' and he rubbed his hands together and laughed with the proper 'bwaa ha ha ha' laugh."

The crowd started to laugh, but Victoria's expression was serious.

"But he then apologised, said 'It won't be a proper test of your skills, because it won't be built in the side of an active volcano. But it will be a mountain that's defeated everyone else who's tried. Think you're man enough?'"

Her stern look, combined with Bezerg's flat look continued to block any but the odd stray laugh.

"Now," she indicated the screen as it moved to an aerial view of the mountain, "Bezerg's got over 150 acres here. But of course the actual buildings will take up only about three acres, house, guest houses, garages, pools and the like. Then, about a third of the whole will be put into production. Vegetable and fruit gardens. Not everything can be grown here but what can, will be. Enough to keep the property partially self-sufficient."

Phones streamed the speech live, others recorded, others tapped on screens.

"Finally, the remainder will be returned to a natural condition where it's been disturbed, plants native to this area. This will be a buffer around the entire property. Wildlife will be allowed to re-establish itself."

She stopped, nodded slightly. Bezerg continued the description.

"All of you know that Bezerg Industries doesn't have, and never will have, an armaments division. That doesn't mean that I would look kindly upon, what shall we call them, unannounced visitors. Therefore, in addition to the native wildlife I will be releasing basilisks to patrol my property."

A ripple of consternation made its way through the assembled audience. More than one audibly repeated that back, "basilisks?"

"Indeed," Bezerg confirmed, "basilisks. If you're not familiar, they'll be mostly consistent with the description in the seventh edition of the Wights & Wyverns Creature Compendium, with one change. They'll be half size. They, of course, won't be the sum of the security in place, but they'll be a vital piece. As my soccer hooligan great-great-great-grandad, proud in his blue, said to the Green Street boys, come at me if you think you're hard enough."

Bezerg was famously known as having been a dedicated W&W player as a teen and beyond and regularly drew from its mythos. Was this a joke? He wouldn't say. Various of his unusually colorful ancestors were also common knowledge.

The briefing continued for another half hour, Bezerg and Wusthof showed virtual tours of the planned buildings. Rather than a massive castle on a hill, it was obvious that the buildings wouldn't be invisible but would be hard to see. From anywhere but above, this would look like a mountain. The buildings were long, low-slung, built with even whole floors below ground level. This was meant to be both unobtrusive but to make use of natural elements of insulation. Onsite solar panels, batteries and a geothermal tap would make the estate largely self-contained. Water would be pulled from a deep aquifer and onsite filtration and composting of waste would mean no need to send sewage or waste water beyond the boundaries of the property.

A month later construction started. Although no one had yet seen any basilisks, no one saw much else either.

Workers had phones and devices confiscated and the few who'd been paid to sneak hidden cameras onsite had been found out and dismissed and discovered future employment prospects nonexistent. The rest had gotten the hint. After all, Bezerg was paying double the going wages and every worker knew there were ten just waiting for anyone to screw up. It was the Hoover Dam without that earlier project's threat of terrible accidental death.

As well, hundreds of drones had been sent to get views as close as possible, some as tiny as hummingbirds, others civilian versions of the military predator drones. Every single one, upon hitting the imaginary line that rose vertically from Bezerg's property line, went dark and powerless and dropped like a stone. Piloted small planes and helicopters that ignored the FAA's newly-designated 'no fly zone' were warned off when their instruments misbehaved and their pilots decided survival took priority. Once they'd turned away all returned to normal. Commercial jetliners were unaffected. But even with the finest modern camera gear pictures from any distance presented little more than the mountaintop as ever smaller abstract fractals.

The world knew that the inimitable mind of Melon Bezerg had achieved yet another breakthrough, but for now he wasn't sharing it.

Leaping the Bar

The fact that the State of California Bar Exam was given each year in February and July was simply a fact of nature. Asking why was like asking why did gravity or the strong nuclear force exist? It was simply beyond the ability of the human mind to imagine, much less force, a change.

Nature, not for the first time, hadn't reckoned with Melon Bezerg.

For reasons truly known only to him, the timing didn't mesh with the heartbeat of Bezerg Industries and their almost insatiable appetite for fresh legal minds. He hated that his 'boot camps' would be interrupted by the holiday season, and nothing interrupted Bezerg. His first approach to the Bar Association was simply dismissed.

January of the next year a third annual sitting was announced, to be held in the second week of November and open to all qualified applicants, covering the same subjects and under the same conditions, as the other sittings.

When they were girls the common wisdom told both Rachel and Sarah that the legal profession was on its last legs. AI would send lawyers packing en masse. And it was true that some aspects, such as paralegals and similar folks who pored through old cases for surprising precedents had been largely made redundant. And it was true any lawyer who couldn't work with an AI like a partner on a case would be referred to as the 'losing side.'

But it wasn't lawyers who were made obsolete, it was the law itself. The ever-faster pace of technological change as it rippled through even the most recalcitrant societies made clear that the law itself was the problem. Bezerg had seen early that he needed a new type of lawyer, ones who could affect the law itself, to work with and for governments to drag the making of the law from 18th century stodginess into a realm where technology didn't need to destroy what came before. That a 'space age' was soon to be a reality meant that 'space law' had better be a reality as well.

And even all of Bezerg's genius hadn't yet created an AI that was truly intelligent, an artificial general intelligence, that could do what the most nimble and well-trained of human minds could do. Thus, he had his latest cadre of such embryonic lawyers delivered to the two day grinder that was the State of California Bar Exam. As with the timing the Exam itself had been forced into the twenty-first century with its subjects and questions.

Sarah said softly as they stood slightly apart from the milling and pacing crowd of hopeful lawyers-to-be in the building on South Figueroa in downtown LA, a few colleagues from their own building with whom they'd studied and practiced, others more far-flung Bezerg employees and finally civilians, other highly-educated people needing to take the tests.

"Hey, Rachel, you nervous too?"

"Wha..., oh," Rachel's eyes focused before she smiled broadly, "thinking about Henry. He... was... bit of a disappointment."

Sarah's mouth gaped for a moment before she managed a half smile for her friend.

"We're about to suffer through two days of mind-shredding horror," Sarah said, "and you're thinking about sex?"

"I ALWAYS think about sex," Rachel said, "except, well, when I'm having sex. Then I'm hopefully too preoccupied to think about sex."

Sarah's smile was frozen but slowly grew as she shook her head slowly.

"And," Rachel continued, "I've got a worry though. 'I.' How many names start with an 'I' other than Ian?"

"Huh?"

"Well, I've worked my way from A through aitch," the dark-haired woman said, "now it's I."

"Sheesh," Sarah shook her head, "there's Ivan, Igancio, Israel, Ibrahim, Imani... I O A N is Welsh... I went to grade school with an Izzy..."

"See," Rachel said decisively, "THIS is why I keep you around! I'll be needing your help with Q too in a couple of weeks if we survive today and tomorrow..."

The double chimes of the first warning sounded through the building, the two women, and almost every other person nearby, took a deep breath.

"This is it," Sarah said softly as the two friends clasped hands.

"Let's go kick some ass," Rachel said softly back, they smiled at each other and hugged quickly. They separated and Rachel put the edge of her hand to her forehead as she snapped to attention, her black hair shook, "go, my captain."

Sarah laughed silently, her gaze soft, before she turned and left with about half of the crowd for the set of exam rooms on the next floor up.

Rachel turned as the remaining crowd split one more time and began the short walk to their assigned room.

"Come, my brothers and sisters," she said loudly enough to be heard by the crowd but not stridently, "we may march to our dooms but let's make it a glorious doom!"

"To our doom," most of the crowd picked up, the miasma broken for the confident, the remainder likely so nerve-racked they'd probably be carried out on stretchers without making it to the second day.

Sarah stirred her tea in the middle of Monday's morning as she stood in the kitchenette near her office, her brain fogged from the stress of the previous week's Exam. Even though she, Rachel and the others had been told to take Thursday and Friday off for a long weekend, she was still drained.

Or maybe it was the hastily-decided two day jaunt to Vegas with a half-dozen other exam-lagged coworkers that was the bigger cause, she'd managed barely one hour of sleep each day.

She shook her head as her phone chirped, she turned the face to her and saw the message. A contact card for an 'Izzy Jackson.'

Izzy?

Jackson?

Izzy freaking Jackson from sixth grade???

"Hey," Sarah looked up with her mouth hanging open, saw Rachel, "got my message, huh?"

Rachel's expression was sly.

"He's local, well, kinda, over in Riverside. And he's grown into a handsome and big, I mean big, big boy..."

Rachel's expression had gone slightly dreamy and her hands subtly slid further and further apart in front of her waist. Sarah looked down, then back into Rachel's eyes.

"BIG boy..., trust me. I know the difference."

"What? Huh?"

"Well, you were in Vegas--"

"And I'm a thousand bucks richer for it..."

"And I'm a thousand orgasms richer, so two good weekends. Anyway, like we'd discussed, I needed an I name, thought about your old friend."

"This is what you wouldn't tell me last night? Knew there was something. He... wasn't my friend, just a boy in grade school..."

"Whatever. Trust me, he remembers you. He saw that picture I have framed of us at graduation and said, 'That woman you're with, is that... Sarah?' I told him of course, she's my roomie! 'Oh wow! She was the fastest girl, hell, or boy, in school. Every boy who liked girls, and even some of the others, wanted her, none of us could catch her!' Glad I didn't tell him about you before he first plowed me with that incredible thing of his. After he found out, I had the feeling he wanted me to put on a blonde wig..."

Sarah just stared at her friend.

"Oh, and I cleaned the dining room table thoroughly before you got back..."

"The dining room table? OUR table? You, him...," Sarah's cheeks turned slightly green, "the table we ate dinner on last night... and breakfast this morning?"

"How many tables do we have, eh?"

Their phones chirped in unison, the corporate chat channel's signal for a direct, personal, not group, message. They read off in stereo.

"Margaret Timmons' office, 15 minutes."

They looked at each other. Sarah's phone chirped a second time.

"Bring your tea."

"Shit," both women's eyes spun around the room although this wasn't a surprise after their months here so they kept their heads stilled.

"Let's go," Sarah said, "we'll discuss the table later..."

"Sarah, Rachel," Margaret's deep, smooth voice was friendly, "come in and close the door please."

They obeyed, Sarah had taken advantage of a nearby kitchenette to drop off her near-empty mug. Rachel pushed the door closed with a soft click.

"Sit down," the second-most-powerful person at Bezerg Industries said as she nodded to the two comfortable if only lightly-padded chairs in front of her desk. The two young women's eyes flashed toward each other as they took in the older woman. Her grey and brunette hair was as ever perfect, a dark blue blazer was unbuttoned and showed a deeply scoop-necked opaque white top. They'd met her twice before, both times her clothing had hinted at a figure this impressive but this was the first time it was so clearly displayed.

But it was the perfectly smooth skin of her neck, her chest, that the two beauties acknowledged to each other with that glance. They'd seen, and saw, the tiny wrinkles around her eyes and forehead, the fall of her jaw, that told them she'd had no work done on her face and assumed the rest of her was as natural. So. It wasn't just professionally they hoped to follow this woman.

Her desk was nothing special and not extra large, other than being beautifully worked oak in a traditional style, a tablet, phone and a large screen to Margaret's right that faced away from her audience. Along the wall to their left were many, but they knew nowhere near all, of the awards, honors, trophies, and the like that Bezerg or his companies had been presented. Not a one had her name but they were here nonetheless. They had no doubt the wall of glass behind her was the same corporate formula that from the outside simply looked like glass, nothing, not a mirror, just didn't allow a view in.

"First off," Margaret focused their attention back on her, a soft smile seemed to acknowledge their wander but without reprimand, "let me congratulate two of the newest lawyers in California."

"Wha... huh," Sarah stuttered, "they won't announce the results until January..."

"Yes," Rachel added, "they do it that way to fuck with our minds, even with all of the technology they use, revenge for Melon getting the November test."

"You do have a first class mind, Rachel," Margaret's wide smile seemed to accept both the vulgarity and the use of Bezerg's first name, a familiarity drilled into them for all internal conversations, "that is precisely why they make you wait until January. Nonetheless, I have my ways."

The flash across her face told them to not ask more. They smiled, looked at each other and reached across to clasp each other's hands. Margaret tapped her tablet with an index finger.