Humanity 2.0, Year 146, Day 181

"Hey." Emily turned the corner, putting hers on as well. She looked up toward the door, about to say something. "Oh..." I looked over as well.

There you were, Rasima.

You were young, of course, at the time. I'd met you before, but you were even more young at the time - much of that when you were seven to eight, then again at thirteen... a young girl regardless, often away with her mother. Now you were nineteen, and every bit the image of beauty your mother had been - and then some.

You stood at the bottom of the ramp into the plane, long black curls still swirling around in the wake of Naomi's stunt, five feet and four inches tall, dark-skinned, and with the same bright hazel eyes I remembered. Your bony frame had a certain strength to it.

You wore a long dark blue dress with gold highlights - hugging more tightly to your figure than your father would have liked - with an oversized dark green military jacket draped over it, though your arms didn't go into the sleeves. You were holding your hands together in front of your waist with a bit of trepidation as you stepped forward. Your eyes widened as you saw how my two companions were dressed... or weren't.

"Uh, hi Rasima... sorry!" Emily hopped partly behind the end of my stowed hardsuit, only one foot in her outfit - small tits bouncing only a little with each awkward hop. Bethany only shrugged, finishing putting her skirt on, then stepping into her sandals.

"Rasima! I almost didn't recognize you. Didn't expect to see you so soon!" I stepped forward, arms wide and smiling at my friend's daughter, curiously blocking her line of sight to Emily and the cockpit - and sensed my sister dash at the opportunity, hopping into the cockpit and grabbing the rest of her clothes.

"Yes..." You were obviously a little off-balance - Farhad knew everything, but I actually wasn't sure right at that moment how much you actually knew about us. I doubted it was much, if anything, but you may not have even been aware of our... lifestyle - and though Osana was hardly a conservative place, I knew that Farhad kept you quite sheltered after your mother died. "Father wanted to be here, but he was called away to the defenses. He sent me and wants you to stop by before heading out to the boat."

I nodded. Interesting note - originally, Rasima tried her hardest to get me to basically write her out of this, and all other, chapters. She does the 'biblical signature' thing for her own work, where the author's own appearances are as oblique, vague cameos only, and she was actually pretty angry when I tried to not only describe her young, pre-hominus self in any detail - she actually wanted me to delete her in near-entirety from my journal.

Well, I'm not going to just say there was 'some girl' at the bottom of the ramp then ignore you for the rest of the story completely, Rasima. You're as much a part of this as any of the others from before the war, and it would be pretty damn hard to tell my own story in WW5 without mentioning you in your adult years. Hopefully it won't take too long for you to forgive me for the little editing switcheroo I pulled to get you into this chapter.

You stepped forward, diligently hugging me by the side as you led me out - only after I picked up the box I'd stashed on the plane, behind my stowed hardsuit. Bethany fell in behind. A truck was backing up to the end of the ramp, beeping loudly, three uniformed men outside and one driving - here to pick up some of the gear in the plane, for delivery to the Banana Boat. My own and Emily's hardsuits would stay here. We wouldn't be staying in Osana long.

Outside, the smell of the Mediterranean immediately hit us all, coupled with the bizarre panoply of odors that always accompanied the chaotic city of Osana. The airport itself was little more than a few hastily built sheet-metal hangars and a wooden, two-story control tower; almost everything important was done automatically anyway. The chain link fence that cordoned off the area was topped with concertina wire and lined up against the backs of several housing projects.

There was a long black sedan waiting to the left, a suited driver standing next to it and holding the large door open, limo-like seats - facing one another - in the back. I could already see the bottle of Grand Marnier and tumblers sitting ready on the little table inside; so, today would be bad news then. Farhad may have come from a culture that didn't drink, but the lifelong atheist himself did so like a fish. The sedan was idling behind a military SUV, an older model that likely had half of Farhad's security detail inside and ready to go.

I gestured for Rasima to get in, holding her hand in a gentlemanly manner as she stepped inside, then did the same for Bethany. I had to wait another minute for Emily to catch up - she hopped out, now wearing her blue flight jumpsuit with a grey sweater tied loosely about her waist, and a pair of black flats. She got in, then I did as well, and we all sat together as the car started going.

The car was a hand-me-down, actually once one of our own - like many things in Osana. It was well-furnished inside, though certainly more threadbare and worn than one would expect for the vehicle ostensibly used to receive foreign heads of state. It wasn't as if foreign heads of state were lining up to visit easily-forgotten Osana, though.

Rasima's phone buzzed with a message just as we sat, and she checked it; she looked up at me as she put it back into her coat pocket. "Father just got away from the defenses. He wants to meet you for dinner at the residence."

I nodded as the car pulled out, driving toward the exit. "Just me?"

"He..." Rasima seemed puzzled for a moment, suddenly off balance. He must not have had her doing things like this very much, I assumed. "... he didn't say. I assume present company? He sees the people at the boat often anyway." She frowned. "I can message him back-"

I waved it off. "Let's all head there. Naomi never sat still long enough for a polite dinner anyway, and who knows when she'll be back from her spin."

"That was her flying out of the plane? What was that?" Rasima seemed to abruptly remember the stunt. "I've never had one fly that close! What if-"

I reassured you that hominus had far more fine control and finesse with tricky flying than whatever simple remote-control hardware Farhad had on loan from NATO. As we pulled out of the airport, I noticed how few other aircraft were there; trade and travel hadn't tapered off completely, but there was only so much we could do on our own now that most of NATO had come to view Osana as an endless money sink and no longer their problem.

We spent the next twenty minutes chatting; Rasima was in college now, a sophomore at the local university. Her father could have sent her away, and had been more than tempted to, but she had insisted it would send the wrong message and went to the city's only college anyway. She still hadn't declared her major, though it would quite obviously be something liberal-artsy. Journalism, maybe, or political theory... maybe composition or philosophy.

No, she normally didn't run about and handle things like this for Farhad. I sensed an edge to that, a subtle tone she had put into it that doesn't come across well in English - we were speaking in Arabic - but the way she'd said it seemed to be directed at me, personally.

Emily must have sensed it too; she took over after that, talking politely about Rasima's plans for the future outside of school. She always seemed to have a soft spot for my sister, though it would be a decade before Rasima told my sister what a role model she'd been. Bethany spent most of the time on her phone, listening in to what sounded like a conference call. Very high-end biochemistry stuff, far beyond my training. She was here for a totally different reason than Emily and I to begin with.

I took the opportunity to spend more time looking out the windows. Even at night, the city was still so alive. As had evolved into a local tradition, the many storefronts were all lit by what we would have called white Christmas lights, and every home had a unique door; some took it further, decorating every visible part of their home with all sorts of things. Tall tenements and housing projects lined most streets, so those wildly colorful decorations climbed up so high, one had to crane their neck to see them all.

The streets were mostly paved with polycrete, which showed cracks all over - little grass or weeds popped out of them, sometimes. Recovered streetlamps from wrecked cities along the coast had been used to light the place - an initiative of Farhad's - but they were every different shape and color, making the place look cobbled together. We had to wait, occasionally, as the crowded crosswalks parted to make way for our official transport.

There were people dressed in every way imaginable, a hundred kinds of modern and a hundred different traditional forms of garb - formal, casual, sportswear, a few in scavenged and tattered remnants. Even Farhad couldn't fix all poverty. Restaurants lined some of the streets we passed, most of them with verandas out front where people sat and ate together under umbrellas, enjoying the cool summer air of the Mediterranean.

Navigating the place was the same nightmare as always, the automated driver freaking out at the crowds walking in all directions, hand-pulled carts, dogs and cats - everything. The human driver was just there to look good and make sure the computer didn't screw up too badly, basically - you don't see that these days, of course.

Osana had been another project we were involved in, though in this case it was a much more secondary role - it was largely NATO that once footed the bill, though now we were the only sponsors left worth mentioning. Once known as Gozo, the smaller of the two islands of Malta, Osana had sprung up over the ruins of what had once been a small island town in the aftermath of the napalming at the height of World War Four.

That had been nearly twenty years ago, and millions of people had been fleeing Africa to try and escape the Naglfar-backed empire that was spreading like wildfire... and consuming all in its path, like the same. We had bled our share then, too - and then some - and even those of us who lived came out scarred, both physically and mentally.

I might get some flak, I think, from many, for skipping those early years of the war with this journal. They were ugly, brutal, and bloody. A few years into it we had begun fitting our hardsuits with what we called failsafe devices, which were bombs fitted at the base of the skull-

I should stop. I hate talking about the war. About the children I lost. I would lose more before it was done. If you're here looking for those stories, others have written very detailed accounts of their years on the front lines; Blake's Music of Machines, Music of God is a grisly, if accurate, experience of the front lines in a bunker crash hardsuit - and his World War Fourever is fantastically detailed analysis of the overall strategic play-by-play and political aftermath of every major action, if it takes ages to get through.

Rasima herself has written several poignant, harsh volumes of her years on the civilian side of the war, in clinics and mobile aid units after her father died and she had to change her name. Similarly, Bethany's daughter Jacinta - the only one to also go into medicine - wrote a few of her own time in mobile medical units, and focused far less on the technical and medical side than I expected; it encapsulated the hopelessness and brutality of the war well.

Sienna's Blood-Feather is a brilliant portrayal of the lightning-fast, deadly reality of flying an interceptor hardsuit over Turkey at the height of the war, up to and including losing both of her sisters in a single day. Tristan - yes, I'm saying it - wrote the surprisingly brief, and even more surprisingly apolitical, summary of a single day on the front - titled after the day itself; January 27th, 2126.

It was the day we lost Jacob, if you were wondering and hadn't read it.

People tend to view me differently after reading Tristan's little book - and I accept that. War is horror, the worst parts of humanity scaled up to industrial levels. I made a choice that day that left Tristan and I forever changed. Saying it like that makes it sound like I've come to terms with that pain, but the truth is it's simply dulled with age... along with many other things. I'll never truly come to terms with-

I'm talking about the war again. I'll stop.

Suffice it to say, overall, that I'm fine with this journal not capturing where my thoughts went in the darker periods of World War 4. I'm fine with the darkest of all of those dying with me, actually.

We pulled up to the mayor's residence, a large and antiquated estate that was one of the few remaining buildings from before the napalm. It hadn't been the mayor's house then, just some rich guy's villa, but now it was effectively Farhad's home for life - he was invincibly popular, a widower that had built this city up from nothing and fought tirelessly for the poor and sick refugees that filled the place, hammered crime out of the streets whether it came from at home or abroad, gave his people new lives and opportunities...

I still scratch my head at how he did it. It wasn't like nobody tried it before, and he had started with far less than most who had; what sorcery did he have that let him gather so many to his cause so easily? In hindsight, I might have been wise to spend more time just shadowing him, watching how he led people. Maybe things would have gone differently then.

The place was a two-story mansion, built in the Southern American style - a wraparound porch on both floors with windows facing out in all directions - all in white and light beige. High bushes and trees obscured some parts of it, planted strategically by his security chief years back after an assassination attempt that had missed his heart by only inches. We pulled up to the front and I took Rasima's hand as she scowled at me, bringing her out, then Bethany and my sister.

The front doors burst open, and there he was - tall and gangly, looking older than ever, but still full of energy. He was wearing a white linen shirt and long beige linen pants, with sandals and a pair of thick glasses; feigning a day off, then. Farhad's smile was wide and his stride strong, even now in his early sixties, and he immediately came down the stairs toward us, his arms still outstretched.

"BENEDICT!" He shouted, and we hugged, slapping each other's backs. At six feet and three inches tall, though barely half my weight, he was one of the few people who was almost as tall as me. He took a step back. "It is wonderful to see you, old friend."

"And you as well." We were speaking in Arabic still; Emily knew it, but Bethany didn't, not well... though she was still absorbed in her conference call. There's going to be some translation inaccuracies here, you'll have to forgive me - a lot of it is loaded in some contextual stuff in Arabic that doesn't come across perfectly.

"Emily, you are the image of beauty." He bent down and kissed her on the cheeks, like a gentleman, and she returned it; she was always charmed by his genuine style and grace, even if she had turned down two of his marriage proposals. Don't ask her about those, it puts her in a bad mood. Rasima too.

He turned to Bethany, who had put the phone down a moment to smile at him and meet his kisses. "Dr. Lazar. My house is blessed to receive incredible beauty twice in one night. Surely, there shall not be another shred of luck for the rest of my life." He said it in English, which, well, he was good with in some areas, but not so good with in others. Seductive lines were not one of the good areas; it came off like a bad movie script.

Emily laughed. "Farhad, you used that one on me last time."

"I did?" He looked puzzled. "No no, that was when Nina and some of the others were here for dinner. Only last week."

"You've used it twice before then too, Father." Rasima glared at him, letting out an audible, entirely teenage sigh.

"Oh." He paused. "But it is such a good one - perhaps age, then. Come inside.." He gestured toward the door, then faced Bethany. "Doctor, I know your time is short. A car will take you to the facility shortly, the team is working late and has something to show you... but I prevailed on them for just an hour, to take in dinner. A hotel suite is prepared for you; only the best for our savior."

"Don't call me that until the vaccine works." Bethany shook her head. "I am starving though." She smiled, finally putting away the holo and taking his arm as he led her inside; she was hilariously short next to his towering, gaunt frame, but then I supposed the same was true of both his late wives.

The place might have looked American from the outside, but within it was a mixture of a dozen styles; the art on the walls was all locally made, yet had roots all over Africa and Asia. There were worked wood wall sculptures, framed fossils, carefully worked stone candle-holders and sumptuous leather couches. Most of it had been donated, and while each piece was fantastic, none of it ever quite matched.

We sat together at a heavy mahogany dinner table in the anteroom, Farhad at the head and myself at his right, Rasima at his left; Emily and Bethany on the opposite sides of one another beyond that. Tama, his chef at the time, wheeled out a cart with dinner servings; he knew I wasn't up to goof around with appetizers after a long flight.

A small framed photo, old and 2-D, of Farhad and his late second wife - Rasima's mother - was sitting on the table behind him; the whole rest of the room was in white damask wallpaper and decorative plates submitted in some contest from a local pottery school. Both my girls were unfailingly polite, familiar with table manners across the globe and with a palate that could appreciate virtually anything edible.

Rasima was another story. I should forgive her; at nineteen, she were just full of hell enough to be no end of trouble for her father, just smart enough to be dangerous, and just ambitious enough to constantly pester him about involving her more in the state. Even he, with his strict rules about nepotism and preventing the corruption he'd seen overtake so many other places, had trouble telling her no.

She was twiddling her hair idly and stabbing the pepper steak with a fork as the rest of us were fully in course. Bethany wasn't lying; she gobbled up the whole plate and was done in a flash, and begged off. Farhad wasn't about to keep her, with how close the team was to a vaccine - her insight could be the breakthrough they needed. She was gone a minute later.

Emily tried to start another conversation with Rasima, but she was being a little teenage porcupine - rolled up into a ball. Teenagers and their theatrics seemed a lot more hot and sexy back when I was one. Now that I'd raised a few dozen, I actually felt no real attraction to her at all - not that way.

What few thoughts of sex I had at the moment were all about Emily. For Rasima, then, it was more a uncle/niece thing - but the old school kind, not sexual. It would be many years before my desire for her surged so powerfully that I'd brave fire and death to reach her.

"Father, I found something upstairs before." Suddenly a light of mischief was in her eyes. I glanced over at him, and she were pulling something out of the inside of the pocket in the coat she'd draped over the back of her chair. A picture - she slid it over the table to him.

"Ahhh... this." He smiled, taking it, then showing it to me. I smiled back. "What a fucking day that was, ah Ben?" He'd said it in English, the NATO standard we all used in that particular theater. You weren't that good at it yet then, Rasima.