#2: Anthropolis One: The Never Clock

7:30am

Jonah woke with a short gasp, eyes wide and staring. A bright dart of light came from a clear blue winter morning, lighting the wall of his room and the familiar wooden rafters of his grandfather’s sprawling ranch house. He blinked his eyes, to stave off the momentary ache of too much light all at once. A deep breath, and the shock of his dream began to fade quickly. Reality melting the dreamworld into the waking day like snowflakes landing on the surface of a hot coffee. All the fear, adrenaline, and anguish evaporating with such speed, as to make him laugh with relief. Jonah sat up and stretched, his laugh waking Daisy. Daisy was the oldest of the farm dogs and since Jonah was a toddler she treated Jonah as her personal charge. Daisy got up from her bed and shuffled across the polished expanse of hardwood, stopping mid-way for a dramatic dog-stretch. She gave her head a loud and jowly shake, before plopping her large wrinkled face on the edge of Jonah’s bed.

“Moof,” she uttered, while raising her eyebrows with an expectant look that only a loyal dog can master.

Jonah regarded her languid eyes for a moment, as he scratched her head and ears in greeting. Daisy was a unique hybrid breed designed by his grandfather to enhance one primary trait, longevity. Currently, twenty-one years of age himself, Jonah knew that Daisy was about twenty-three years old. He did not remember life without her, or any of her siblings for that matter. Daisy, adopted him as her own, from the day of his birth. Larger than the average dog for her unaltered breed, Daisy also displayed considerably greater intelligence than your average Bull Mastiff. A more pronounced muzzle, smaller ears, and larger eyes that were much lighter and clearer than any dog you would meet elsewhere. For what would be an extremely advanced age for most dogs, Daisy showed no signs of slowness or discomfort as she walked to the door, deftly pawing the latch handle of the door and letting herself out. Jonah could hear her casual progress down the hall as she headed to the central living area of the house. Jonah dressed quickly and followed the smells of his grandfather cooking breakfast.

“Morning Gramps, how are your numbers today?”

Nathan MacMillan looked up from the glow of his impossibly, outdated, tablet computer and regarded Jonah with a critical eye.

“A fair sight better than yours I’ll bet. Did you forget that we head out for a hunt today Jonah? I’ve been waiting for more than half an hour!”

Jonah’s eyes widened with only half a sense of mock surprise. “Um, no… yes, yes I did. I’m sorry. Let me dress right now. I was working in the lab too long last night I think.”

“Well I can’t fault you for that, let’s not let such a glorious morning go to waste.” Grandfather’s bright blue eyes lit up under his snow white brows, “Besides I think I’ll get old Brucie today! He’s been rooting up the south slope fields. Practically asking for it, hah! We’ll find him yet, if we get a move on.”

Jonah grinned broadly and hurried to grab his winter gear, before heading out to the garage to join his grandfather. Jonah jogged the wide expanse of open lawn, recently covered with fresh snow. The morning promised a spectacular day, with a deep blue sky, completely cloudless and bright. The air was not too cold, even at their altitude in the foothills to the east of the rocky mountain range. Just enough to keep everything frosted with a fine white crystal haze.

Jonah reached the double sliding doors of the garage, and entered the smaller main-door directly to the left. His eyes took a second to adjust to the momentary relative darkness within. He entered the interior of the cavernous building. His footsteps echoed on polished concrete as he passed by a small collection of pickup trucks, cars, a positively antique gas powered helicopter (still functional), two electric quad-copters, a speedboat, and finally to the far side of the building where his grandfather readied two aggressive looking four-wheel ATV’s. His own was already strapped and loaded with provisions, his rifle carefully laid across the rear racks. His grandfather moved with a confident swiftness that still regularly amazed Jonah. While he had only known his grandfather as a comparatively old man, the effects of his life’s work were evident, and amazing. Jonah could scarcely tell he had aged at all. From his earliest memories as a boy, his grandfather was a vibrant man who appeared to be approximately seventy years of age. He had a full head of mostly white hair, cropped close. A large and angular nose framed by lines formed through years of concentration, and a steady gaze that unnerved people when they first met him. This picture of Nathan MacMillan had remained a constant in Jonah’s twenty-one years, but he knew his grandfather was now a few months shy of turning one hundred and thirty years of age.

Nathan regarded his grandson with an arched eyebrow as he turned to carefully remove his own rifle from their cabinet. Even at his advanced age and long memory, he still handled this gun with reverence, it was old even on the day of Nathan’s birth. A simple yet graceful relic from the late 20th century, a survivor of adventures that seemed distant in the past even to him. Nestled in a gleaming carbon-fiber case, he gently placed it on the rack of his quad and popped the latches.

Jonah held his breath expectantly. He knew the history of this gun, and always marveled at its perfect condition; a unique icon he associated closely with many fond memories of his grandfather. The stalk was a deep walnut polish, with glossy carbon fiber components highlighted by brushed aluminum and steel. The ammunition, carefully hand-crafted from brass and lead, was as much a labor of love, as it was art and skill. The gleaming brass shells had been re-loaded countless times and held a patina of many uses. With all their tools for modern fabrication, this ammunition represented craft and materials that would be unheard of nearly anywhere else in the world; antique in ways both completely obsolete to new technology, but still incredibly effective.

Jonah whistled softly, “Wow. You really do want to get old Brucie today, don’t ya?”

Nathan cackled and his eyes shone brightly, “Don’t you know it,” he said with deliberate glee. “Let’s go son, before he gets our smell and hightails it off to the east quarter.”

With that, he threw a leg over his quad, causing it to whir softly to life before rolling out with the squeak of rubber on polished cement. Jonah popped his field glasses on, which were larger and sealed around the edges with foam to keep out the cold better than his regular day glasses. His field of vision was instantly filled with the basic data for the day including his heading and ambient temperature. He charged left in his vehicle. A pulsing dot hovered just to his left, his grandfather already having set a destination beacon. Jonah laughed as he watched his grandfather rip off ahead at a much faster pace than was even close to necessary. His blood was indeed up. Time to show the old man how it was done.

Jonah called up a new display and focused on it for a moment to monitor his grandfather’s vitals; pulse, temperature etc. There was no cause for concern, but Jonah’s last few years of joining in on his grandfather’s research was now a daily habit. Jonah switched to a custom power band setting he had prepared, pushing the full torque of the four electric motors into all the wheels at once, he rocketed forward out of the garage and tore out of the compound with a loud, “Whoop!”

Jonah quickly caught up to his grandfather and the two rode along a path together for a few minutes, to the edge of the woods east of their home. Ahead of them lay a broad vista of rolling grassland dotted with copses of frosted trees. The land sloped away to the east, where it disappeared into the white morning frosty haze. On the far eastern horizon, in the haze, you could make out an impossibly tall, glinting monolithic tower. Jonah and Nathan’s gaze could not completely ever ignore this artifact. It grew ever so slowly, but inexorably. Here and there they would spot sharp little glints of light, a sign of the ceaseless construction underway. The base of the tower was shrouded in a low lying morning mist. In that mist sprawled a massive skyline, one of the largest in Western North America. And, near the approximate center of the city, rose Anthropolis One, the first of seven such buildings that were found around the globe.

Some 400km to their southeast, the Pentacity region dominated the horizon of the winter plains. While Jonah had grown up with this view on the horizon, it never ceased to give him pause whenever he saw it. In the 21st Century, the largest city in the area was known as Calgary, now absorbed into a vast and sprawling center of humanity defined by five metropolitan zones. The heart of the WRCP, Anthropolis One was the political, economic, and military center of Western North America. The Western Regional Coalition of Protectorates, or WRCP, had emerged in the 22nd century as a very stable and livable region. The local population of the Pentacity region exceeded 80 million people. Spared mostly by distance from the increasingly destructive coastal super-storms, the rocky mountain range also served as a natural boundary to the constant pressure of refugees from the harsher coastal regions, collectively referred to as the Coalition zones, or Cascadia by the people who lived there.

The MacMillan family had been the owners of the ranch currently owned by Nathan, since the early 21st century, and their maintenance of more than one hundred acres as relatively wild and undeveloped land was an extreme rarity, and an extreme luxury. Nathan attributed the ownership to nothing more than pure luck. But Jonah knew the continued maintenance was purely afforded by Nathan’s momentous contributions to the understanding of genetics and practical applications to human healthcare. It was to this legacy that his current nearly limitless wealth was very much a result.

It was estimated that in no short measure, nearly every modern treatment available in the mid 22nd century was a direct result of Nathan’s work in nano-mechanical genetics. Indeed his own current advanced age and ability was the result of daring and brilliant work that was still considered too experimental and risky to even think of human trials. So Nathan applied it to himself, enlisting only his own grandson to trust its untested secrets.

Nathan and Jonah crested a hill, and slowed to a stop before dismounting their vehicles. They both stepped off the road into the tall grass to hunker down and scan the horizon with their glasses on 50x optical zoom. Nathan sighed, “Alright that’s what it is. I thought maybe I’d spotted Brucie. Just a sentry though.”

Jonah nodded. He spotted a bulky figure confidently bounding toward them in the distance. Eager and loyal almost to a fault, Jonah and Nathan both felt an obligation to talk to the members of their security forces. They both waited in silence as the figure drew nearer, the soft mechanical whine and clank of each step growing slightly louder as it approached at an easy jog. The sentry drew up, and walked the last few steps to greet them politely. The three sided visor of its face was initially blank, but a glowing feminine face quickly blinked into place as the sentry raised it’s hand in greeting. “Good morning, sentry Gibson at your service,” she said brightly.

Nathan and Jonah narrowed their eyes slightly with polite smiles, “Yes, thank you sentry. We appreciate your service.” Nathan cleared his throat before continuing. “We’re both to be out in the North quarter today for a hunt. We’d appreciate it if you and your team stayed close to the perimeters today to avoid startling the animals as much as possible.”

The projected face of the sentry’s operator brightened with a smile, “Yes sir! You can count on it.” She paused for a moment and turned to her left to survey the scene “Wow! These guys really weren’t kidding. It is like the old west out here! It’s… beautiful to see it in real time like this.”

Nathan and Jonah both smirked at each other with the irony of this statement from the young and eager operator; buried as she really was in some distant operations center, likely in the outlying areas of the Pentacity region.

But they allowed her this moment to gawk before she snapped to, and stammered,

“... Oh and, Dr. MacAllister, I must say I am at a loss to say what an honor it is to meet you I worked like crazy to get this detail and I just-”

“Okay thank you Dear, well met. I’ll note your efforts to your commander shortly, okay? On your way now if you please.” Nathan said patiently.

They could both see her head rotate inside its projected visor uncomfortably as she stammered, “Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” saluting accidentally with her rifle arm instead of her free hand, smashing the sentry in the head with it as she did so. The loud alarm clearly startled her as if she was looking at some painful bee that had just landed on her left ear. The sentry turned on its heel and bounded back off down the slope into the mists.

Jonah watched her go for a moment, stifling a chuckle. “It’s easy to forget they’re out here you know? I don’t think I can remember the last time I saw one this far in from the perimeter.”

“Mmmm, yes that’s because I’d asked their manager to keep the ground units away from our compound, and only patrol the interior regions from the air with high altitude micro-quads. Some five years back now… must’ve been.” He glanced at Jonah with a look that for a moment struck Jonah as peculiar, before he inhaled quickly and deeply of the crisp air, “No matter. Good dedicated folk these operators. She’s just young and eager. Now let’s sight that Elk.”

Jonah and his Grandfather continued on for some twenty minutes at a leisurely pace on their four-wheelers before cresting one of the higher hills in the north west quadrant of their ranch. Nathan eased his vehicle to a stop behind a thickly frosted bramble, the large tires crunching through the top layer of icy crust, before he hopped quickly off into the snow with a muffled thump and a slight smile as he did so. Grabbing his pack and rifle from the back rack of his vehicle, his bright blue eyes peered out from under his bushy white eyebrows, as he beckoned Jonah to follow with a nod. Jonah quickly parked his own quad and grabbed his pack and gun, although he knew full well that his rifle was not going to be of any use today. Should they indeed spot the impressive elk, known between them both as “Old Bruce”, there was no way his grandfather was going to let the shot be taken with anything other than his prized .30-06.

The two of them headed to the top of a rocky outcrop to gain a better vantage point and survey the area, walking with measured steps through the crunching snow in comfortable silence. Once they had both negotiated their way to the top of the hill, they were afforded an impressive view of the Rockies, marching off into the pale faded mists of the northern horizon, and the rolling hills that gave way to the flatness of the prairie to the east. To their south east the entire horizon was dominated but the varied skylines of the Pentacity region. In the intervening distance, a complex patchwork of industrial farms, greenhouses, solar arrays, and smaller outlying districts, generally referred to as the Outlands, bordered the confines of the MacMillan ranch to the immediate west and south.

Catching the longing gaze of his grandson toward the horizon, Nathan squinted toward the distance and said “It’s been too long since you’ve been to the city I think. You should plan a trip to meet some of your friends face-to-face for once.”

Jonah made a sour face, “I dunno Gramps. I feel like lately I’d just as likely be mistaken for a Cascadian refugee in the cities.” he smiled and added with a shrug, “I can barely keep my virtual style up to date. I’d be hopeless in the flesh.” His brow knitted into a frown, “Besides, you need me here. It’s a full day trip by road to get there, and I don’t want to even begin to contemplate the regulations I’d need to work around to book a quad-copter route over the city airspace. Not to mention, I don’t even know where most of my friends actually live. It’s not a topic of importance really. It would be odd for me to ask.”

Nathan barked a short laugh “Ah, you know Jonah, I’d be fine for a week or two. You can’t dedicate your extreme youth so completely to my fool’s quest for immortality.” Smiling again and turning his attention to Jonah directly “Do you remember when you were seven? When I last took you to the city?”

Jonah’s eyes lit up, “I’ll never forget it. Who was it we had to visit again? I don’t remember much beyond taking the train into the core to meet someone who seemed important? I seem to recall there being a huge crowd of media and reporters.”

“There was yes. It was a Dr. Kendra Milne we met, the understudy to none other than the enigmatic Dr. Zhou Sun. You’ve a sharper memory of that time I think than you really understand Jonah. Kendra took a real shine to you. She very nearly ordered me to leave you behind with her you know.”

Jonah looked surprised, “Really? Why would she do that? I do remember now that I was quite sad to leave her behind that day. But I don’t know why.”

Nathan’s look became pained, “She was your mother’s closest friend. More like sisters really, even though Dr. Milne was a decade her senior. It’s no exaggeration to say your mother was closer to Dr. Milne than her own husband. They certainly spent more time together. But, to no fault of your father, you understand? When your parents were lost to us, my paternity to you was the only relation I had, you being just newly born. I had literally just met you, and your mother for the first time since she married your father. To Dr. Milne, I was a stranger. Worse than that, possibly not a very nice fellow in her eyes.” Nathan’s gaze rose to the sky with sudden sadness, steeled with many years of practice to not be overcome. “You are my only direct surviving family so there was no legal debate. But to Dr. Milne, I was just an impossibly ancient, and decades absent geezer, taking away her best friend’s baby.”

“I can see that would have been difficult for everyone,” Jonah looked confused, “but, I seem to remember her being friendly enough when we met her again back then?”

“I did my best to mend that wound. In time she understood and given our mutual interest in research, she came around to understanding that this might be the best place for you.” Nathan looked to the ground to inspect a suddenly interesting stick, “Still, I can’t help but imagine how different life may have been for you. Growing up in the very heart of it all. Almost alien to me now, but I can understand the intellectual appeal.”

Jonah did his best to lighten the mood, “Oh, and miss out on the incredibly rare opportunity to eat… old…gamy... elk steaks for supper?” At that moment, a small blip hovered in the distance, superimposed by Jonah’s glasses. He raised his hand to point to the north, almost in disbelief. Jonah had nearly forgotten that he’d deployed a surveillance drone to this area last night, and it apparently had found a likely match to their intended target. Nathan’s eyes grew wide with realization, and he turned on his heel and bounded to the north end of the ridge before snapping his field goggles into place to zoom in on the distance.

“Great… Gods!” he exclaimed, “There he is! Goddamit Jonah there’s that old bastard alright!” Nathan unlocked his rifle case, and removed his gun quickly, placing the stock to his shoulder and clicking the cartridges into place before pulling back the bolt in one fluid motion. The well oiled components slid together with a muffled click and clack unique to precisely machined metal, and Nathan inhaled deeply as he raised the rifle to sight his prey. Jonah knew his grandfather’s field goggles were calculating a range and trajectory, as were his own from his vantage point of the rifle. Once the target had been acquired, the targeting software illustrated the bullet trajectory for them, with a green line that faded to orange and then red near the end as bullet velocity gave way to gravity. Nathan raised the rifle, which produced an arc but the orange and red zones of the line drew closer to them, ending in a soft edged orange circle that was overlaid on the Elk in their glasses.

“Damn,” Nathan said in a coarse whisper. “685 meters… just barely inside the effective range at this elevation.” He held the rifle steady “Come on Brucie… just a little stroll this way.”

Jonah zoomed his view in by 30%, and a slightly grainy and pixelated image of the elk now showed a large animal nosing through the snow and ripping up large clumps of grass, munching slowly through a cloud of his breath vapor. “That would be quite the shot Gramps, but it’s quite still... there’s no w--”

The report of the rifle thundered through the air as Nathan took the shot, a small ‘wump’ of a shock-wave hitting both their lungs and setting their ears to a slight whine for a few seconds. Jonah kept his eyes on the elk as the slug hit the snow just near his feet in an anticlimactic puff of snow. The sound waves reaching his ears a few milliseconds later, causing the lumbering animal to lurch off away from them in a loping run.

Jonah sighed, “Alright, well let’s head up to the next ridge. See if we can’t catch him coming back up the creek.” Jonah turned his attention to his grandfather, who was still standing with his rifle in full aim, looking like he was ready to take another shot. Jonah noticed that the spent shell casing was sitting in the snow, steaming a small tendril of smoke, the bolt of the rifle still locked forward as his grandfather had not readied another round. And still he stood frozen on the spot. “Uh, Gramps? You missed that one and he’s on the run. We should get a move on.”

Nathan didn’t move a muscle. In fact, his face was rapidly taking on a paleness that alarmed Jonah immediately. “Gramps?” Jonah said with growing alarm, flipping his glasses to basic vitals display for his grandfather on instinct. Nathan’s vitals were essentially normal, however his pulse was decelerating with each heartbeat, blood pressure dropping quickly. A few more seconds and Jonah guessed Nathan would keel over onto the uneven rocks. He quickly positioned himself to catch Nathan as he fell. Nathan indeed did fall a few seconds later, slowly, with a peculiar lack of awareness. Jonah could see his eyes wide behind the lightly tinted lenses of the field goggles as he gently lowered himself to kneel beside his grandfather in the snow. Vitals still dropping, but less quickly, Jonah gently shook his grandfather by the shoulders, “Gramps! Where are ya? Come on now.”

Nathan slowly began a low cackle, his eyes quickly snapping to focus on Jonah. “Ah… ha haaa! I got ‘im, all these years, and I got him!”. But, as soon as his eyes met Jonah’s his look turned to one of shock and confusion. ‘Jonah! What’re you...?”. His eyes darted around and he stammered incredulously, “Wh… where… winter? What the hell…” he trailed off. Raising his gloved hand, he whacked the side of his goggles a few times.

Nathan flapped his grandson away with his hands as he straightened up and sat in the snow for a moment, taking in his surroundings as if for the first time. Jonah stood up and began to dust the snow off himself, shaking his head and thinking his grandfather was having a joke on his behalf. “Not funny Gramps… really!”

Nathan sat in the snow with his legs straight out in front him, looking like a child who just sat up from making snow angels. He looked up at Jonah and blinked a few times, “Well! That was weird.” He reached up and pulled his field goggles over his forehead and squinted off to the horizon.

Jonah chuckled, “Ya you might say that. You gave me a bit of a fright there. Your vitals took a brief detour south of healthy, you know?”

“Did they? Did they now...”, Nathan stood up stiffly, “Jonah, I’ve just had the strangest experience. How long would you say we’ve been standing here?”

Jonah pouted and shrugged, “Can’t be more than 5 minutes. You sighted up ol’ Bruce pretty quick and took your shot with no warning. Thanks for that by the way.” Jonah grimaced as he wiggled his pinky finger in his left ear.

“The shot? Ah ya, the… shot. We’ve been hunting Brucie in the north quarter! Ha!”, Nathan shook his head in disbelief as he turned to face Jonah, “Jonah, in the space of standing here, I was overtaken with a sense of time flowing by me at an incredible rate. I watched the snow melt and the sun fly across the sky in a streaking blur, a spring and summer flowing around my feet like a river. I feel like I’ve been frozen on this spot for more than a year, unable to move as the greens quickly changed to gold and tan, and then back to white snow!” Nathan’s hands were wide in gesture, his blue eyes darting and glassy, as Jonah regarded him doubtfully. “The snows came again and blew around me and I was sure I’d be frozen to death, but still I couldn’t move. And then you grabbed me and then well then I was just back in the snow. “Least I can, move now.”

Jonah raised his goggles from his face, and pulled the strap down to let them hang under his chin. He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, “Gramps, seriously, are you having me on here or something? What’s this all about?”

“I’ve no immediate idea Jonah, but I can tell you something must be wrong with my implant system. I don’t feel any worse the wear for the moment, but we must get back to the lab. I don’t have any mobile diagnostics available to take a reading. I need to get back to the field stasis chamber. But I’m telling you, I saw a full year pass in front of me like a time-lapsed movie.”

This alarmed Jonah. His grandfather wasn’t joking around, no matter how odd his story was becoming. He nodded, “Can you ride?”

“I should think so. Point of fact, I feel better than I can recall in quite some time.” Nathan looked at his gloved hands and flexed his fingers, shaking his shoulders. Jonah cocked his head to the side, observing his grandfather’s hair for a moment.

“Gramps, your hair at the temples. It’s not just white anymore. It’s… got a bit of dark gray. It looks like, uh, well it looks like it did when I was a kid.”

Nathan shrugged, “Well, that can’t be all that bad can it? Definitely strange but we’re not going to sort it out here in the boonies. I suppose we can use a recon drone to go collect old Brucie. It’s getting cold and I want to get back.”

“Gramps, you missed him. Brucie ran off as soon as he heard the report. There’s nothing to collect.”

Nathan turned and looked doubtfully and popped his goggles back on. After a moment he muttered, “Well be damned then. I thought I made that shot!”

Jonah just stared at him blankly, “You also seem to think you took a short trip to next year apparently. I’m gonna classify your judgment at somewhere between sleepy-time-silly and half a bottle of whiskey stupid until we can get you checked out. You follow me back okay? No screwing around.”

Nathan held up his hands in surrender, “Yes boss, let’s go.”