Quest for the Tantalum Heart

The fiction of the last age of the old world was spot on. The novels, short stories, movies, radio broadcasts, and comic books knew this new world was coming and – to some degree – what it would be like; but there was absolutely no order. Methane seepages filled the seas with the darkest of ochrophytes, and carbon emissions turned the skies an equally dingy brown; while the soil beneath our feet turned blue and foul from the overly abundant dead matter we walk on every day. All the while, the democracies of yore similarly decayed, with the white-bread agencies in this federal government fronting a faux security #ForThePeople with their beaming white smiles.

You see, once the rich got richer in the year of hindsight, there was no turning back as they turned their backs on us. Those that could, left for the stars or Mars or wherever fars they want us to believe they went, while their Hamelin rats continued to exploit all the natural resources they could (and still do). Two agencies, most prominently, were reorganized through executive-power loopholes while the legislature stood by kissing the rings of a dead king; as always, they said it was for the betterment of humanity, but at least half of us knew it was for their pockets and purses, while the other half thought it best to continue the endless bickering amongst themselves over said dead king… love live the king!

To quell anything anywhere more easily, all intelligence bodies were thrown into the same bag; thus negating the need to say "central" anymore, it simply became the IA, or as we like to call it, the Evil "I."

With no further need on their part to safeguard anything to do with fauna or flora, or air or water, one agency's acronym became an anagram of itself: EAP, or Environmental Acquisitions and Provisions (some prefer the more apt Ecological Agitation and Profiteering, despite the official name).

Early headlines called them, respectively, the Agencies of Ivory and Snow, allegedly – though to no avail – as a way for the media to stay favorable to those in charge. Those two terms, chosen as symbols of purity and goodness, did stick with some officials, but alas having a press pass still meant no more than much of anything else, as a friend of mine knows well.

Let me introduce myself, now that I have summarized the past seven years and several months in a number of words nearly equal to that number of weeks we've barely survived this Orwellian insanity: My name is Nore Le, and I was an intern for the Diggers – what we call the EAP since we know there's no need to place a chastity belt on what one might call people who are far from being pure as the driven— well, you get the idea.

Along with a handful of other college students, including Rue, the aforementioned journalist friend, we immediately abandoned our positions after Abe Isaacs, an Ivory intern, heard tell amongst hacked chatter that much of the governmental takeover – at least the overt aspect – began when an unknown billionaire came upon a method to retake and reinvigorate the earth for humanity and nature alike and that this "Old Man" may still be the key to such a global salvation.

For these long, nearly eight years, we've been spending our time surviving more than questing. The Vultures – as we call the IA enforcers clad in tusk white fatigues with delft blue, remige-shaped trim – not only hover over the remnants of society in general but have a particular penchant for ex-interns who are looking to stir up trouble for their erstwhile bosses. That makes it incredibly difficult to complete step one, which according to Mr. Isaacs, is finding the heart-shaped locket or pocket watch or whatnot that has an integrated quantum microprocessor; though the physics behind the gadget are lost to this good old-fashioned tree-hugger, I do know we are about to meet the one person who may be able to locate that Tantalum Heart.