Humanity 2.0, Year 146, Day 181

It was a photo of Farhad and I, in fatigues, posing a mile in front to an Axumite fuel depot that we'd torched - the flames behind us rose high into the sky, cigars in our teeth and some looted Grand Marnier in tumblers in our hands. Don't ask where we got either. It had been the first week into the third big Nile offensive - the only one that got anywhere. It sure as hell hadn't felt like it on the ground after that day, though.

Rasima's voice was still flat. "I didn't know you knew him from the war, Father."

"Ah, I never mentioned that, did I..." He trailed off, his smile suddenly weakening. Clearly, he'd told her absolutely nothing about the reality of who we were. "Rasima, where did you find this?"

"You had used it as a bookmark, in the library." She paused, glaring at him - then me. "Father, that picture is from thirty years ago. 'Uncle' Ben cannot have been more than-"

He waved it off. "Ben has just aged well. He is the envy of men. Do not worry about this, Rasima."

"Nobody ages that well, Father!" She slapped the table. "He is tricking you, he is an agent in a disguise... or something. Mother said there would be spies all about, and you are too careless-"

"Who?" I finally spoke. She suddenly looked back at me, wide-eyed. Emily hadn't stopped eating the whole time, largely uninterested in this particular drama. I shrugged, trying to sound conciliatory, and looking at Farhad then his daughter again. "I'm curious. Who am I an agent, 'or something', of?"

Farhad shook his head. "Ben, relax. This is for me to resolve." Farhad turned to her. "Rasima, stop trying to fill in for your mother. You will learn but you are not so good at it now as she was. You have class work, yes? Do not lose time, and work on it now. We will talk about this tomorrow."

She crossed your arms over her chest, glaring at me through her father's warning. "If you are here, and no older than grad students teaching my courses, then you are obviously not the man who fought with my father on the Nile offensive. It doesn't matter who you are now, only that you are not who you say you are, which is reason enough to shun you."

I nodded. "Well, okay. A little sloppy, but you don't have much to work with, so I'll give you credit for having the right idea." I looked over at Farhad. "I guess I'm somebody else, working for... somebody else too. It's a pretty big deal - sorry, man."

"Oh, is that so." Farhad said it flatly, glaring at his daughter. "Perhaps I am a somebody-else too. Perhaps everyone here except Rasima is an agent of the men in black, in helicopters and hiding the aliens in the basement."

He turned to you again, as you rolled your eyes. "Go to bed, Rasima. Ben is the man in this photo. I know this beyond doubt, and would know it right away if this 'they' sent a fake; he would not even get through the door of my house. He saved my life several times. You have class work to do tonight, yes? I will walk you to your room." He glanced at Emily and I. "Forgive me. I will have Tama send in the gelato. Fresh from Italy. The finest."

Farhad nodded at me as you and he stepped out - and I caught sight of you shooting me an evil glare as the door closed. Emily was pointing toward the chair you'd been sitting in, but I already knew. I could practically feel the electric buzzing of the inept 'bug' you'd planted - your phone, crammed into a tear in the fabric of your seat cushion. It practically sang aloud to anyone with electrophoridae.

Quite bold of you. I mean, if I'd been some kind of international agent hooked up to a world-spanning syndicate, did you think I would not only fail to notice that but also fail to do something horrible to you to follow it up? As it was, I just left it there as we resumed talking.

I turned to Emily. "So how's the world domination plan going? Are the midgets in place?"

My sister brightened, obviously also sensing the 'bug'. "Yeah, and the laser-shark tanks too. Soon the whole of Earth will feel the Doom-Wrath."

I snorted, and we kissed again. Our lips had just parted when Tama came in. Emily clapped happily. I might have been a chef, but cooking and making gelato are two completely different things. In fact, I kind of sucked at pastry and desserts in general anyway. We had to outsource all the sugary treats inside the Vault's stores.

"World domination plan on hold! Gelato time!" Emily dug in after Tama left, gobbling up the chocolate-caramel stuff. It was a little too much for me, and how she kept her super-skinny figure while eating like that was a mystery even to other hominus, with our fantastic metabolisms. A lot of people these days marvel at pictures of fat people from the old world, thinking they're obviously doctored or extremely rare cases. They weren't.

Farhad returned ten minutes later. I'd written about his daughter's 'bug' on a napkin, leaving it next to his plate. His mouth was agape, and he almost stormed back upstairs to let her hear it - but we calmed him down, and we even managed to do it without talking. She had to have her little secret.

Instead, we discussed some boring stuff for a while, mostly defense plans and the specifics of what help Nadine had secured from Washington - which and how many missiles, the launcher trucks and the fuel they'd need, how to hook up guidance systems, and how his people would need to hook in the intel data feeds from our interceptor girls, zipping through the skies in hardsuits but not flying directly into the action anymore.

This was our strategy, in the wake of the first Axum war - known to most of the planet as World War Four. It was Farhad's own idea; after he'd saved my life on the Nile, he and I became close friends and I'd told him everything about us.

That was when he was much younger, of course; he was in his thirties, and I... well, I would have been about four times that, but age is funny. Humans didn't just age faster than us, they actually matured faster too. Despite the huge gap of years, I often felt outflanked by Farhad's wisdom.

We had fought our way south, mile by mile, paying in blood the whole way - I'd lost children and wives, and he his brothers, and he got news along the way - his young first wife had died, only weeks after their wedding... another victim of a retaliatory attack by enraged Axum soldiers.

Farhad and I kept each other sane for a few years, pretending we weren't unraveling as we saw everything we bled for fall apart. The offensive didn't hold any seized territory for long; NATO simply couldn't maintain the supply lines, and the strategy changed from total destruction of Axum to simple containment.

A diplomatic solution, that under any other circumstances I would have supported - except I knew what kind of monster was behind Axum's rise, and that it would never stop, never accept or even understand peace. Axum didn't truly control Naglfar; it was never simply a weapon system. All we were doing with this peace was giving it a breather.

From early in its history, as far back as when Axum was still the Sept of the Glorious Yah, it was backed by Naglfar's largest and strongest single cell - which we simply referred to as the Axum cell. The only cell that ever truly worked 'with' humans, rather than for or against them - but even then, it was only working with the Axumite cult leadership insofar as doing so provided near-unlimited harvest for its pods.

Naglfar had about a dozen cells we knew about then, each with its own quirks, patterns, and weaknesses. They even fought amongst themselves, though none dared face the Axum cell. A few of our number worked on hunting down the few other cells, but the bulk of our post-WW4 effort was focused on Axum and the Naglfar cell behind it.

The Axumites understood Naglfar as something different than just a cyber-technological machine; they though it was an order of corporeal warrior-angels, so to speak... but then, only we ever understood the Naglfar network as a single continuum of hive-mind entities, all secretly communicating and sharing information. In their defense, it was all well-hidden, and we would have been labelled conspiracy theorists at best.

To the rest of the world, there was no common thread; they just called them wet networks, and they were known as a common framework for employing cybernetically repurposed - but otherwise non-sentient- brain matter, recovered from the dying the same way organs might be used for transplant. The penchant for wet networks toward friendly fire and adding the harvested brains of fallen enemies and allies both to its collective was just a persistent bug in the design.

While a long and concerted effort by ourselves and allied causes had eventually gotten the creation and use of wet networks banned by the UN, they were still in-use by a half-dozen belligerent countries, and we had reason to think a few NATO members were playing around with their own secret versions in well-hidden research facilities. I'm sure the people working on it told themselves it was just about knowing how to counter their frightening offensive power, but I knew better.

It was all fueled by desperation, I suppose; NATO itself was fraying, resources were strained and centuries-old alliances were wearing thin. The writing was on the wall for much of the First World - their economic model had less than a century left in it, but the same old and tired 'someone will surely invent something' motto was keeping anyone from making any hard choices about what had to go. Same as when I was a kid, I assumed, and I wasn't any better than the rest of them.

It was Farhad who suggested our change in war strategy. With our numbers so few, it made more sense to simply support a real country, with a military, rather than take the fight to Naglfar ourselves. We'd thought of it who knew how many times before - but none of us could trust any of the players on the map. Elysium was bound by treaty to maintain no standing military, which wasn't due to expire for another ninety years.

So there we were, the shadowy benefactors of two players - Elysium on one side, and Osana on the other. We provided intel, ran defense grids, had a few people embedded in all the big players' diplomatic corps and greasing the wheels - like Nadine with her help on NATO airstrikes. We also provided electrophoric mastery and long-range support, like Tristan with his solenoid array that locked down Osana's airspace.

The moral of the story, to me, was that my children weren't out in hardsuits that could never be heavily armored enough, charging into ghilman formations and dying. We weren't winning the war anymore, but we weren't dying either.

Well, at the time, anyway. Naglfar wised up to the strategy, but not for a while yet. There would be far more of our blood shed in World War Five, in the following decade.

Farhad knew everything, and we winked at each other as we blatantly discussed secrets kept between us - knowing Rasima would be listening in tomorrow. She later told me that it had confused the holy shit out of her, but she figured at the time that we knew she had placed the bug and were playing with her, spinning a wild tale about immortal space people living in a hollowed-out Henderson Island in the Pitcairns - when they weren't hiding in plain sight.

"What was it you got called away for earlier?" We'd finished our business, and Emily was leaning against my side as she took little sips of her liquor. I held out my glass of our shared favorite toward Farhad.

"Ahhh... that." He let out a long breath. "Let's retire to the living room, yes?"

We got up together, and walked to Farhad's living room, him sitting down on a plush red armchair and Emily and I on a love seat across from him; she was lying down, head on my lap.

"Another, ah... compromised... refugee boat." He sighed. "This city was built by and for refugees - and while few come to us now, those that do, they are the most desperate. The Axumite council, they know that. In the last year we've seen them send us people with dormant nerve wires embedded in them."

"Mother fucker." I almost crushed the glass in my hand. I'd heard about it elsewhere, mostly used in Axum-planted spies abroad - but this was beyond low. "They stay alive that long now?"

He only nodded. "Since last year. We just turn them away. What else can we do? Axum is playing it in the news like we're spoiled fools who only care about ourselves, and a few NATO players are actually buying it. They have turned away the same boats, but nobody's reading that part of the story." He chuckled at me. "Some kids in today's-"

"Enough." I took another drink. "Enough, enough..." Even I knew when to stop listening, or get dragged into the mire of despair that was the stories of many people in that age. "... can we talk about it tomorrow? I don't want to ruin Sheldon's party."

"Of course." Farhad took another drink himself, longer and deeper than mine. "I sometimes want to spend entire days drinking this stuff." He put the glass aside. "This truth, with the nerve wires, is mine to bear, not yours." He leaned back in his chair, pointing at us. "But for you to know, though, Ben - our scanners for this, they are not well developed.

"My man running this, he thinks we only catch maybe three-quarters of them. We took care tonight, but we should assume Axum knows you are here, or will know very soon. Much as I love to have you about, my city is not as secure as others; you should not stay more than a day."

I shrugged. "It's fine. The plan isn't super solid, but I have other places to be at soon."

"Don't even tell me where it is you are going next." He smiled. "We will see each other again, I'm sure."

Sadly, that night was the last time I ever saw him. Osana was decimated by chemical attacks before I could get back there again.

He moved to retire upstairs after finishing his drink, and offering us the guest room to 'commit grievous sin under my roof'. He always loved to joke about the incestuous relationship between Emily and I. We begged off, knowing we had another engagement - Sheldon's big 40th, tonight on the Banana Boat.

We got back in the car, where my case of beer still waited - the driver taking us through small side roads, through the city's burgeoning red-light district to a wharf where a small motorboat was idling, piloted by none other than Nina... one of the First Four.

The kids had only just started using that term, and she already hated it. The speedboat was painted white, and had just a small windshield in the front and four seats in the back, with a pair of heavy engines purring.

Nina didn't get out of the boat to greet us, instead letting Emily jump into her arms, then idly locking fingers with me with one hand as I dropped down onto its plastic decking. Nina was wearing a dark blue sundress and sandals; a glance at her midsection, thigh, and ass confirmed she had lost some weight in my absence, and not the healthy kind of weight loss. She was as skinny as Emily now. It had to be the stress, and worrying over Blake.

The two girls kissed and hugged for a time, Emily's small breasts pressing into Nina's larger ones as they mumbled something about 'been so long' between kisses. Their attentions weren't simply lustful; there was a desperation to them, like two women who'd just suddenly surfaced after ten minutes underwater. I untied the mooring ropes then relaxed in the back, still holding the drink I'd refilled before leaving Farhad's, sipping it as Nina and Emily caught up.

Nina managed to drag my sister over toward the front seat and power it up, keying in a destination on the t-pilot before returning her attention to Emily. I savored the orange-hinted bite of the liquor as we rode, the ocean spray occasionally misting over my face - looking back toward the city as I vaguely became aware that it was getting increasingly heavy between the two girls up front.

I waved to a nearby crab-fisher, an older man pulling up traps along the shore, as he stared wide-eyed at the two women making out in the front seat while we left. He smiled back idly as we got further away, only then noticing the laconic, tall man lounging in the back, drinking and pointedly ignoring the sex-addled lesbians up front.

It was just an hour before midnight then, and the party was supposed to be a surprise. Sheldon knew there was going to be a party for his fortieth birthday, but he was of the understanding that it was a small gathering of those already there - ten or twenty at most. It would still be small, but he didn't know anyone was flying in.

Bethany couldn't make it tonight, the vaccine was in a critical phase and every hour really did count, but she asked Emily to give him a little present from her - one that was still in her bag, discarded on a chair as she and Nina groped each other. Bethany always had a special place in her heart for Sheldon; Wren herself said she might have popped him out of her belly, but she suspected he thought of Bethany as his mother as much as she.

Osana gleamed brilliantly, reflecting on the bay in a stunning way. It looked a bit Asian, in the way they seemed to cram lights and displays onto everything, but it had an entirely unique character - I counted the text of at least six languages on display.

It's all gone now, of course. Without anyone left after the chemical bombings, the buildings - which had been hastily put up - crumbled under the Atlantic hypercanes quicker than we saw in the better-build European population centers. Even before the last human died, Osana was turning to dust. Only a couple rusting steel frames remain, and half-buried statues and stonework.

Before my time ends, I intend to build a memorial there, at the site of his old place. I'm still drawing up the plans; I would use something that would last for eons, maybe longer than the island itself. I could hire someone, a true artist, but... I can't. I have to do it myself, even if I have to learn the entire damn art from the beginning. It won't be today or tomorrow, but it will be done before I am.

We approached the Banana Boat a few minutes later. Not sure who gave it that name, but it stuck; it was never an actual banana boat, though. It was also a brand of sun protectant at the time - or maybe they'd gone under by then, I don't know. It was the remains of a beached cargo ship, sitting on the side of a peninsula that had a fantastic view of the whole city.

Most of the ship had been cannibalized for metal, but we'd saved the aft - propping it up with girders sunk deep into the surrounding coral stone, and used it as a temporary command center when we were first building up the charred wreck of an island as a refugee haven. Farhad, his wife, and little Rasima had even lived there for a while.

When things really began to come together with the city, Farhad and them moved out and into the mayor's residence - and now, it was basically the city's hominus apartment building and love nest, and also doubled as a watch tower and hardsuit base. It had become a landmark for the city, and even drew some tourists - though at a distance. It was, allegedly, used as a training facility for intelligence-related contractors.

The Banana Boat rose up about five stories, its big propellers still partly visible - though half-buried in sand. The aging shells of barnacles covered some of the lower hull, and parts of the girders supporting it that went down into the sea sported the younger, living kind. The lower half of the hull was painted in red enamel, with the original name of the boat long since painted over, and the conn tower rose above that in a sun-bleached white.

It was lit by floodlamps on posts attached to the railings above, and the conn tower had a few lights of its own. The bulkheads exposed to the outside where the rest of the hull had been cut away had all been sealed, and we had added elevators and stairs where we needed to. Some of the corridors within had to be widened to accommodate us over-sized hominus men.