It turned out that telling the story in Spanish was easier than I expected. I stuck to the the verb tenses that I knew, and Jorge only had to help with vocabulary a few times. Telling the story in Arabic wasn’t easy on anyone.

Jorge later told me that Yenner suspected I was subconsciously blocking my knowledge of Arabic. Assuming he was right, the logical question was how to remove that block. Jorge’s answer was to drug me. He stood from the table, casually walked around to me and quickly pressed a redy-ject into my deltoid. About two seconds later, Yenner slammed him against the wall. His feet dangled in mid-air as he struggled to breathe.

“Explain NOW,” Yenner ordered.

Isaac backed away.

“It’s just a mild barbiturate to help him relax,” Jorge said between gasps. “I couldn’t very well hit him in the head again.”

“You gave him a truth serum?” Yenner asked incredulously. His face was angry and red. Saliva sprayed from his mouth. He slammed Jorge into the wall a few more times. “What the hell are you doing with a truth serum anyway?” Jorge kept trying to speak but Yenner continued to cut him off. “You dragged us down into this arid wasteland and start shooting up the only person I’ve been able to love in years?” He yelled. “Why?” Again he slammed him against the wall. “WHY?”

“You’re hurting me,” Jorge managed to choke out. I looked back at Isaac, who was silent but visibly distressed.

“Yenner, stop!” I said. I stood up go to Jorge’s defense in some way. I understood his motivation. I understood his approach. It wasn’t the class of drug I would have chosen, but it was obviously all he could get at the time. I tried to take a step but began to feel light-headed. I dropped back into my seat. Yenner noticed.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Yenner seemed suddenly aware that he and Jorge were not the only people in the room.

“Getting a bit woozy,” I said. “It’s okay though.” I watched his face. The rage seemed to dissipate, but he continued to hold Jorge against the wall and off the floor - something he seemed to be able to do indefinitely.

Isaac helped me over the sofa. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Strange,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

“Jorge or Yenner?”

He almost laughed. “Jorge.”

“It’s okay.” I believed him.

Yenner and Jorge’s voices seemed to retreat into the distance as Isaac made small talk with me. I felt myself falling into a trance-like state as I zeroed in on his face. Very handsome but haunted somehow. His skin was quite fair, his eyes dark and expressive. He had short salt and pepper hair behind a retreating hairline. I suddenly felt a great fondness for him - a drug-induced effect, I knew.

Jorge had administered the drug intramuscularly. I was surprised it was already taking effect.

“Can you tell me how Carol arrived here again?” He asked after we had been talking for a while. “I just want to make sure I have the details right.”

I repeated the story to him.

“Your father was from Mecca,” he said once I had finished.

“Yes.”

“That’s very interesting. Your accent is distinctly Jiddawii, not Meccan.”

“My accent?”

“Rabiyya.” I heard Yenner say. “You can stop now.” He and Jorge were seated at the table normally, facing Issac and me as if nothing had happened. I had forgotten they were in the room.

“Stop what?”

“Speaking Arabic. You’ve been doing it ever since you sat down on the sofa.”

In Jiddawii. Jorge and Yenner think it is some kind of miracle. I’m wondering if I have more suppressed memories from childhood. What do you think, Abuyah? If you didn’t teach me Arabic, who did?

“This is a waste of time,” I said as I pushed away from the round table near the center of our apartment. “I can’t speak Arabic.”

Yenner, Jorge and Isaac, an Arab-speaking acquaintance of Jorge’s, remained seated. Deep amber light fell limply through the front blinds. The sun was dimmed by the smoke from the cat 3 forest fire up at Big Bear. Other than the sound of the air conditioning compressor laboring to maintain a tolerable temperature in the afternoon’s blast furnace, the room was quiet. I walked over to check the air filter.

Isaac is Christian Lebanese. I guessed him to be around 40 years old. Although his family is Eastern-Orthodox, they were still persecuted enough during the height of the anti-Arab hysteria that they came to Pacifica.

Yenner had called Jorge earlier that day and told him he heard me speaking Arabic. After church, he showed up with Isaac and an idea.

“You spoke several sentences in Arabic,” Yenner said. “Quite fluently.”

“It’s just a harmless experiment,” Jorge said.

“Nothing involving Arabic is harmless,” I said blandly as I examined the filter. I had changed it when we occupied the duplex, but it was already dark brown. I fetched a new one from the kitchen and replaced it.

“Would you please sit down and relax?” Yenner asked impatiently.

“Okay.” I returned to the table. “Fine. What do I do?”

“I want you to tell Yenner a short story,” Jorge began. “It doesn’t have to be interesting or clever. Just something you did last week. From work, maybe.”

“Well, I’ve been pretty busy at work.”

“But non-technical,” he added. “You’ll understand why later.”

I actually understood then. I suspected that Jorge wanted me to tell Yenner the story in English, him the story in Spanish, then repeat the story in Arabic. Technical jargon can be notoriously awkward to translate. As it turned out, I did have a story. An interesting one about a co-worker’s experience coming to California during the war. I started to relay it to them.

Her name is Carol Martinez and she works in system development. I began working with her on a project last week. She knows her way around the OMR better than anyone else at NDF.

“What’s the OMR?” Yenner interrupted.

“The Open Module Repository,” I told him. “It’s a on-line database of open-source modules designed to be used like pre-fab building components, except for software systems.”

“Probably too technical,” Jorge said softly.

Yeah. Well, he asked. Anyway, she was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was ten years old during the war. Her family was Mexican, Catholic, and thus a target (Jorge whitened visibly at that. I asked him if he was okay but he merely motioned for me to continue.)

Her parents packed her and Oscar (her older brother) into their old off-road tribrid and joined the flood of “traitors” fleeing to California. As they neared the Arizona border, the freeway…

“I-40?” Yenner asked.

Yeah. The freeway became a parking lot. The car was an old Toyota four-wheeler with new batteries and solar plate upgrades, but it still used gas. As they sat on the freeway losing sunlight, her dad realized it wouldn’t take many vehicles running out of fuel to effectively shut down the freeway. He took them off-road near Gallop.

Although the military had scrambled America’s GPS system, the Toyota’s nav system could pick up Japanese GPS sats and they made it to highway 264 and crossed into Arizona. Her father’s decision to turn off the freeway proved to be a good one. Minutemen had blockaded 40 at the border and weren’t allowing westbound traffic through. The last of the sporadic radio reports they received claimed they were killing people - mostly Mexicans and Arabs.

Highway 264 was more or less clear to Tuba City, which is roughly halfway between California and New Mexico, where they were lucky enough to find fuel. But there they had some decisions to make. West cross-country? The Grand Canyon was in the way. North to 15, which would take them to Las Vegas? Back south to 40?

At the gas station in Tuba City, a trucker told them that he heard via his CB radio the area near Las Vegas was literally a war zone. If true, 15 was no longer an option. They took highway 64 south to the interstate and resumed the push west.

Fuel was hard to come by. Some fuel stations had already run dry. Others would only sell to people traveling in the “correct” direction. Owners and clerks wouldn’t ask directly, but just for ID. Trying to buy gas in Arizona with a Texas ID? You might be out of luck.

Travel, which was made difficult enough by the volume of traffic and shortage of fuel, was further impeded by the war itself. Although there was no military activity in the area at that time, the fighting reached down to the individual level. Soldiers or civilians, Americans were now killing each other.

Sometimes they had to maneuver around a stationary car, windshield shattered, interior blood-splattered. Sometimes they found clusters of bullet-ridden cars, the killers, presumably heading east, long gone. In other places they passed bodies set off to the side of the highway. She later found out they had been executed as traitors by pro-American vigilantes.

Carol witnessed the fighting first-hand. In the middle of their third night on the road, gunfire dragged her unwillingly into consciousness. A man just behind them on the eastbound side of the highway was standing in the bed of a pickup, screaming and firing an automatic weapon into the river of California-bound headlights. She couldn’t parse what he was yelling, if he was saying anything at all, and they shrank into their seats until someone finally took him out with a single shot. She couldn’t tell which side of the freeway their savior fired from, but it didn’t matter. More gunfire began to erupt from the eastbound side of the divide. Cars, including theirs, scattered off the highway. Her dad took them off-road again.

They continued west, headlights turned off and apparently alone, along a road that paralleled highway 68 out of Kingman. They drove slowly in darkness through a basin to the north of the highway, but could easily see the lights of two lines of cars. Both lanes were moving westbound. A fuel tanker truck was also on or just off the highway but stationary. Oscar looked through the binoculars and announced that it was refueling vehicles. Someone was either selling or giving away fuel. Oscar kept the binoculars on the truck as the Toyota crawled west.

The truck was on the horizon behind them when it silently vanished in a blinding flash and was replaced by a flaming ball that climbed into the early morning sky. The distant roar of an explosion followed, at about the same time Oscar saw a military helicopter flying low above the highway. He soon realized it was firing at the vehicles.

The relatively orderly lines of cars transformed into in a cloud of rapidly dispersing vehicles. The copter made a return pass through the now random beams of headlights, still firing, but disappeared into the east. They didn’t see it again.

By the time they and several other vehicles that survived made it to the Colorado River, the bridge across to Laughlin was impassible. The crush of cars driven by people panicked by the helicopter attack blocked the road. However, the nav system revealed a set of service roads toward another bridge and Carol’s father led his accidental convoy north toward Davis Dam.

“The bridge near the dam was still open,” I finished. “That’s how they made it here.”

For several seconds the sound of the A/C again dominated the room. It was Jorge who finally spoke. “Catholics are barely tolerated in America now.”

“You have family there,” I said. Given his previous reaction I seemed likely.

“Yes.”

We were silent again, each of us lost in thought. Jorge was doubtlessly thinking about his family. I imagined Yenner was remembering his own adventure to reach California. And I was wondering how effectively I’d be able to tell the story in Spanish after only a month of lessons.

The earthquake began immediately following the noon call to prayer yesterday. Yenner and I were hiking up to a peak about 600 meters above the valley floor. We were about half-way up when it struck.

The landslide began several seconds later.

I was about 20 meters ahead of Yenner (I discovered that my endurance at least was much greater than his) and turned back to check on him. New Dearborn sprawled across the valley behind him, brown and white beneath a hazy but cloudless sky. The sun blazed overhead. His hat and t-shirt were soaked with sweat.

He paused in his tracks and looked at me uncertainly, then crouched onto all fours. “Get down!” I heard him yell over the roar of the shaking earth. He was pointing uphill. I turned to face in the indicated direction but the heaving earth caused me to lose my footing. As I fell, I saw a rock, perhaps the size of a baseball, flying directly at me.

The mountain was no longer moving, but I remained flat on my back on the parched hillside. My camelpack, filled with water, had landed across my chest. I could feel that I was coated with dust and dirt. A few sharp objects - rocks or dead scrub - dug painfully into my skin. My head throbbed. I tried to call out for Yenner but my mouth refused to operate. In fact, I quickly realized that the only thing I could do was breathe. I was paralyzed.

With my eyes closed, all I could see was the red glare of sunlight filtering through the translucent flesh of my eyelids. The distant cry of alarms and sirens floated up from the city. Something told me that Yenner was still alive, but what if he were injured? No one knew where we were.

As I contemplated death by exposure and dehydration, my mind filled with panic. My body filled with useless adrenaline. Then I heard your voice.

At first, it seemed to be very distant. I could not understand the words, but it was unmistakably you. You were repeating something and with each repetition the phrase became clearer and clearer, louder and louder. You were rapidly approaching as if flying toward me across the valley.

Am I dreaming or hallucinating?

You seemed to hover immediately above me. “Listen to me,” you said. But you weren’t only speaking English. At exactly the same moment, you said, “escúchame.” At exactly the same moment, you said “asmaa nassiHatii.” It was as if there were a chorus of you, simultaneously demanding the same thing of me in a hundred different languages.

I could smell you and the panic dissipated. The pain dulled. “Listen to me,” the chorus of your voice repeated. “Escúchame / asmaa nassiHatii.”

“Speak / habla / atkalam,” you directed.

“Abuyah,” I said. My jaw opened. My tongue moved. My lips parted. I could hear my voice. I am not paralyzed. I am dreaming.

“Listen to me, Ibnii,” you said. And the chorus of your voice began to tell me a story.

***

A black void, then another voice. Female with British accent … a reporter. A major earthquake in South California.

An earthquake. A landslide. Your voice. Yenner. I sat up but the blinding pain in my head immediately sent me back into the pillow.

“Yenner?” My voice was a croak.

I heard movement in the dark. “I’m here,” he said from my left. A drinking straw against my lips. “We’re at home.” I emptied the water glass. I kept my eyes closed.

Home. Our temporary home in the desert. I knew that already. The familiar scents of the darkened room gave it away.

“You carried me down the hill,” I said.

“Yeah, and drove you to the clinic.” Yenner told me that they did a few quick scans, diagnosed me with a mild traumatic brain injury and pronounced me stable. The PA provided a portable monitoring device and sent me home to rest. I reached up with my left hand. Several leads were attached to my scalp. An egg-sized lump, presumably where the rock hit, felt attached to my skull. “Do you remember what happened?” he asked.

“My head got in the way of a rock?”

A soft chuckle. “Pretty much. It was actually a big clod of dirt. Do you remember what happened after that?”

The next thing I remembered was the voice of a female Brit. “No.”

“They said there may be some temporary memory loss.”

“That’s common with MTBIs,” I said. Thirsty. “Can I have some more water?”

I opened my eyes and watched Yenner walk over to the sink by the light of the media panel. None of the lights were on so it was the only source of illumination in our apartment. He had muted the audio. I watched the light, changing in color and brightness, play across his body.

The wires pasted to my head led to a small white box on the end table to the right of the sofa bed. I was tempted to disconnect it but instead performed a quick self-examination, stretching and moving my arms and legs, fingers and toes. Yenner had returned and was watching me with a soft grin on his face. “Everything’s still there,” he said.

“My back hurts.”

“Your backside is pretty badly bruised. You fell flat on your ass.”

Yenner handed me the glass of water. I emptied it again. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No, just very sleepy. I have to pee though.” After he helped me to the restroom, I fell asleep immediately.

My memory was back this morning, but not entirely according to Yenner. He told me:

“Most of the landslide was to our south, but some stuff was still falling around us. Between that and the swaying mountain, I couldn’t get up. Once the shaking subsided, I ran up to you. You were … talking, but not to me. You kept saying ‘abuyah,’ so I think you were dreaming about your Arab father.”

“What was I saying?”

“You still don’t remember?”

I hesitated. I did remember talking to you, or rather you talking to me. You told me a story, but I don’t think you finished. I’m not sure, because I can’t recall what it was about. Only that it was very sad. I shook my head slowly (it still hurt). “No. What did I say?”

“I don’t know.” Yenner’s brow furrowed. “You were speaking in Arabic.”

Yenner took me to see the barrier early this morning. We drove out 10 East in an ancient fuel-cell converted truck borrowed from one of Jorge’s friends. We were driving almost directly into the rising sun and even with my sunglasses the glare was painful. The windshield of the old truck was non-dimming.

I recently learned that many here call the highway east of Indio “The End” or “El Fin” instead of “The 10.” After passing through the urban sprawl of Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Indio, I can see why. East of Indio and the solar energy farms, there is little other than desert littered with abandoned cars and equipment that is apparently not worth recycling - relics from people fleeing to and from California during and immediately following the war.

The security barrier between Pacifica and America runs along the SoCal-Arizona border, mostly just this side of the Colorado River. It is actually two walls running parallel, a smaller one built by America to prevent emigration and a larger one built by us to reduce terrorist attacks. The barrier connects to the border wall along the Mexican border that America built decades ago. It also seals off what is left of the Colorado River from our use, thus cities like Blythe are mostly abandoned. No water, no irrigation, no agriculture - no business.

Blythe was gutted by the end of the war but enjoyed a brief recovery during the three-year construction of the barrier. It filled with a few hundred thousands of refugees and others who assisted with rock mining, component synthesizing, transportation, assembly and support services.

The barrier stands 7.5 meters tall. The base is three meters thick. The top, one meter. It stretched as far as I could see, both north and south, but is not physically continuous. It runs north on and off until the mountains east of Death Valley and south to Mexico. Around 600 kilometers. However, the entire length is electronically monitored and protected, even the physical sections like the one we were near. The freeway literally runs right up to it, but the last few hundred meters have been reclaimed by the desert. They are covered with sand.

After driving through Blythe, which other than the military base is almost a ghost town, we turned north onto 95 and and followed it for several klicks. Yenner then turned off the highway and followed a dirt road to the foot of a low ridge. He stopped the truck. The dust from our passing overtook us. I could see nothing but dust, dirt and rocks.

“You know who built the barrier, don’t you?” Yenner asked as we hiked the rest of the way up a rocky hill north of town. The sun was still climbing into a cloudless sky but the heat was already blistering.

I removed my hat, wiped the sweat from my brow and looked at him. “The company I’m working for.” There were photographs of its construction in the office.

He nodded. “It was the first large-scale use of the synthesizing technology.”

I knew this already, of course. We were surrounded by the raw materials they would have needed. The rock was crushed, separated from salt and other weak water-soluble minerals, then the remaining crystals stimulated to grow together until they became a slab of solid rock of the required shape and density.

I stopped and looked east. For the first time, I could see to the other side of the barrier. I could see Arizona. America. The border was a few kilometers away. I resisted the impulse to hide. “They could see us here, Yenner,” I said. It made me nervous.

“Let them.”

“Someone could shoot us.”

“They can try.” Yenner turned and looked across the border too. He took my hand. “I can’t believe you are going through with this.” He was referring to my planned trip to America to meet Dad.

“I have to go.”

“No you don’t. You choose to go.” He released my hand, took a drink from his water bottle and wiped his mouth.

“If you had the chance to see your father again, wouldn’t you?” I asked him.

“I can’t see my father, Rabiyya. They killed my father.” His face became hard and he stared into the east. “They killed my family.”

Yenner then did something I had never seen before. He began to weep. “They were tortured.” A pause, then in a broken voice that grew louder: “They were tortured. And for what? Why?!”

Tears were suddenly streaming down his face. He picked up a rock and threw it toward the barrier. It flew an astonishing distance. “Fuck you!” he yelled at America as he threw another rock. “FUCK YOU!” Then he fell to his knees and continued to cry. “I miss them so much. They’re all gone.” His face contorted into expressions of pain I would have never believed possible from him. “Oh, God it hurts,” he whimpered.

I stared at him, stunned. My Yenner that was always so strong and confident was on his knees in tears, right in front of me. I didn’t know what to do. He had comforted me for so long that the sudden change in dynamic left me confused. Finally, I knelt down before him and put my right hand against his stubbly cheek. “I’m sorry, Big Bear. I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

“You could stay here. I don’t want to lose you too,” he said. “Please.”

We were silent on the walk back to the truck, but the voices in my head wouldn’t shut up. I am being selfish for planning this trip? This mission? It scares me to death yet I know I will try it. The opportunity to see my father - the opportunity to bring him back despite everyone telling me that is impossible - is too important to me.

Is that selfish? Yes. Is that fair to Yenner or Mom? My unborn child? No, but I’m going anyway.

Yenner made me a cake for my birthday. German chocolate with real eggs. I had no idea he could cook. We also had real milk and ice cream, which I hadn’t had since before the war. The milk tasted strange, but the cake and ice cream were delicious.

I tried not to think about the saturated fats.

Cow’s milk is commonly available, but it rarely comes from an actual cow. It is produced in large vats of mammary gland cells that were cloned from dairy cows. I prefer soy milk, but it was still a fun surprise. I also realized to my shame that I didn’t know when Yenner’s birthday was.

“You’ve never said anything about it. Did I miss it?” I was cleaning up the dishes in the small kitchen of our one room apartment. He was sitting on the old fashioned sofa bed. I hope to buy a better one this weekend. Yenner can’t sleep on this one.

He smiled. “Nope, it is in just a few days.”

“When?”

“August 19th.”

“We are so close together! Why didn’t you say something? Do you want anything? Why don’t we go to dinner?”

“Birthdays weren’t important in our family,” Yenner said. “I’ve never really celebrated mine.”

Your family was the same way. You didn’t celebrate birthdays. Mom told me that you didn’t even know when your parents’ birthdays were.

“I don’t need you to do anything for me, Rabiyya - I mean Paco.” He grinned at using my assumed name.

Now that I am living on a tight budget it changes things, but I’ll think of something. I can’t access our accounts, but now that I am working we have some money.

I have a part-time job at New Dearborn’s largest employer, uncreatively named New Dearborn Fabrication. NDF is the world’s largest supplier of custom, pre-fabricated buildings. It got its start after the war by creating strong, lightweight, easy to assemble and transport structures. It was a pioneer in advanced materials fabrication and now fabricates everything from storage sheds to skyscrapers to highways.

I work in system development. I’d rather do hybrid materials research, but Jorge claims I would draw attention to myself there. He is probably right.

I am not employed as myself. I have assumed another identity. I am Paco Covas. Paco is short for Francisco. I’m getting used to it.

Speaking of Jorge, he has been teaching me the Spanish used in Mexican universities and Tejano, which a dialect of Mexican Spanish common in Texas. I have “between six and twelve months to become convincingly fluent,” Jorge claims.

I’m pretty sure I can keep that schedule. I spend several hours most days with Jorge and I find it very easy.

I’m working tomorrow so it’s time for bed. I didn’t think I’d be able to adapt to a new routine so easily, but I did. I’m even beginning to enjoy it.

I am 22 years old today.

In the past year, I have fallen in love with Yenner. I have made Katia Nasr pregnant. I have graduated from the University of Pacifica at San Francisco. I have narrowly escaped death twice. I have semi-voluntarily agreed to help an armed resistance organization end the American occupation of the Middle-East. I have been shown that my American father is still alive. I have made plans to go visit him in America. I have met one of the other NextGene children. I have learned that I have been genetically enhanced.

I have left home. I have unwillingly abandoned my best friend, who unknowingly taught me that even the most humble person can find happiness. I have unwillingly abandoned Katia and my unborn child. I have left your best friend, Jamal, my only link to you, behind.

I have learned that no one is perfect. I have, perhaps a little, begun to accept myself. I have learned that I can exist without mood stabilizers and anti-depressants. I have learned that I can fall in love. I have learned that someone can fall in love with me. I have learned that I have a choice between a life of self-pity and acceptance of the way things are. I have learned that a gift ignored can be a curse.

I have been separated from Mom. My mom. The woman who volunteered to carry me and I’m sure has continued to carry me far longer than she ever planned.

I wish I could tell her how much it hurts to be so far away from her. I wish I could tell her how much I love her. I am surprised by how much I miss her. I know what it means to take someone for granted. Despite the loss of you and Dad, I took her for granted. She was always there for me. Always.

Once we get settled here I will find a way to reach her. I hope she is not too worried. I am safe here in this strange city of Mexica-Pacificans and the Muslims and Arabs that were able to flee America and the Middle-East before it was too late.

When I walk among them I just blend into the crowd. I am surrounded by dark-skinned people with black hair. Although most have distinctive facial characteristics, a few do not. Unless I pick up on cues from dress or speech I can’t always tell Arab from Mexican. Muslim from Catholic. Many Muslim men do not wear a taqiyah. Many Muslim women do not wear a hijab. And then others look like they just stepped off the plane from Arabia in thobe or abaya.

Most of the children speak a mixture of Arabic, English and Spanish with each other and their parents’ native tongue at home. The adults call it Arablish. I have learned some of it already, the grammar is very easy. I like to tease Yenner with it.

New Dearborn is in the SoCal desert east of Apple Valley. It is a dry and dusty city. The destruction of so much of our water infrastructure has forced SoCal and NorCal to increase water conservation efforts. Rationing is strictly enforced. It will be almost a year before a new desalinization plant come on line. Years before they are all replaced.

It is dusty. Brown dust covers everything. I’ve even experienced my first dust storm and bought my first pair of dust goggles. Fortunately, the thousands of solar nano-panels that generate so much of our energy are self-cleaning.

It is hot. The temperature has been over 40 every day since we arrived. Everyone has air-conditioning, but somehow the heat only keeps people off the streets in the afternoon. Most people go home for a mid-day nap and back to work in the evening. Few shops are open in the afternoon.

The city is white prefab and stucco buildings. An incongruous mixture of high-tech and primitive. People pull hand carts home from the souq or mercado beneath the PacLink’s elevated guideway that runs through the city center. Buses and bicycles are the main transportation - private cars are rare.

It very different from home.

I have shaved my beard off again. They changed my eye pigmentation to dark brown. It is shocking to look in the mirror, but not as shocking as seeing my irises change color while I watched. The green/hazel color slowly spreading outward from my pupils, replacing the blue, darkening, and the brown following behind it. The entire process took about an hour. The effect should last around two years. It is the beginning of my new identity.

Yenner and I are living in a duplex in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in the southern part of town. Although there is some integration between cultures and little tension, residential areas tend to be self-segregating. Adults cross cultures when they have to for commerce or municipal administration. The kids pay no attention to culture. I imagine they will create their own.

Yenner rarely leaves the building except at night. I can blend in. He can’t.

Everything has changed, but I think I’m adapting to it okay. It’s almost like living in another country. Like starting a new life, which I guess I am.

I was right about Yenner appearing bigger. When we returned from the Sierra, I became so wrapped up with Katia and her pregnancy that he felt like I had brushed him off. I didn’t, of course. Not on purpose anyway. But as usual I was only thinking of myself. I am not used to worrying about someone else. I am not used to thinking about anyone but me. I am not used to having a partner.

Partner. That was very strange to write. Anyway, he killed time and compensated for my apparent lack of interest by working out as hard as he could. He said it helped him work off stress. He is 10 kilos heavier. I told him he is too big. He laughed at me but promised that he would lose weight.

He has some kind of surprise for me. I admit to being very excited. I can’t wait to see what Big Bear has planned tonight.

An Asian guy, perhaps Korean, had found an Allen wrench and was already unbolting the chairs in the fourth car that were covering the access panel. I looked at our position on the monitor and guessed we were about two minutes from the turn.

“Inglewood station, next stop,” the computer announced. That just validated what I already knew - the operating system was seriously compromised.

“I don’t think so,” Yenner said in response.

“Everyone needs to strap themselves in,” I said to Yenner. We ran up to the cockpit. As I sat down I could see Inglewood station a few kilometers ahead. Buildings and palm trees were flying past as we hurtled toward it. Yenner was standing behind me. I pulled my eyes away from the hypnotic rush in front of us and turned on the microphone. “Will everyone please make sure your seat belts are fastened and that all loose objects are secured, we’ll hit the Long Beach turn in less than a minute.”

I turned to Yenner. “Will you please go sit down?”

He was staring out the windshield and pointed to a column of smoke at about 2 o’clock.

“The clinic?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said as I mapped out its location in my mind.

We were almost at the station. “Oh, God. Here it comes!” I yelled, but before I even finished we had flashed through it. Even Yenner flinched. We were traveling at 200 meters per second. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“It’s actually kind of exciting,” Yenner said.

I looked at him as if he were insane. “Please go fasten yourself in,” I said. “It isn’t going to be exciting when we are all turned into chunky salsa.”

“What’s your gut feeling?” he asked. I knew he was asking about the train.

“I think it will hold together,” I said before twisting around to look at him. “Now go sit down!”

“Here’s to German over-engineering,” he said. He left and closed the door behind him.

My response really wasn’t true. I had no idea if the train would stay intact. Although the body of the train hugged the guideway, the train could still tear itself apart and send us flying into Torrance or Carson and that would be the end of that.

“Lawndale station, next stop” the computer said. The station announcements were surreal.

The drag created by the fifth car was slowing us slightly. I remember wondering if it would really be that bad. Maybe the train took the turn relatively slowly because it had just left Lawndale station? Maybe the turning radius was large enough. I had no time to look it up, however. A few seconds after Yenner closed the door, the breath was knocked out of me as I was pushed against my restraints. We were decelerating rapidly, as if someone had slammed on the brakes. The train leaned to the right, forcing the support magnets along the left side of the train to grind against the stators on the guideway. The bottom of the right side of the train scraped against the top of the guideway. The roar of the various materials grinding against each other was deafening.

The initial jolt was more powerful than I had expected. I wondered if everyone had put on their seat belts.

I was terrified. My heart hammered against my ribs. The train was vibrating slightly at a high frequency, but it’s desire to travel in a straight line - obeying Newton’s first law of motion - seemed to keep it from shaking too much. It pulled to the right as if it were desperately trying to twist itself free of the guideway.

The seconds ticked by. Our speed stabilized. The screeching continued. The frame creaked and groaned, complained and protested, but it held. About half-way through the turn I allowed myself a sigh of relief and relaxed slightly. I wondered if this was how it felt to be on a roller coaster. They have some out in Martinez.

I was nauseous. The guideway arched through Torrance (it doesn’t actually reach Long Beach). Buildings and palm trees, roads and other elevated tracks flashed by faster than I could focus on them. I had to look away before I threw up.

Yet we were still alive and several seconds later we were out of the turn, though the train still seemed to be dragging a bit. I realized that the support magnets along the left had probably been damaged. The good news was that our speed had slowed considerably. That would give us more time to disable the power to the support magnets before the end of the line at the Mexican border.

The Anaheim turn came up next and this time we were pulled to the left, though it was somewhat of a non-event since we had slowed considerably and its curve radius was much larger. I jumped up and ran back to find Yenner, who was already checking for injuries and visible damage. No one was hurt. All of the Flexiglass windows were intact. The connections between the cars seemed secure. The train was still pressure sealed. “Don’t tell anyone, but I love German engineers,” Yenner whispered to me.

We were traveling along Interstate 5 south at around 500 kph. Our speed continued to slow after the Korean man, his name was David, dropped the fourth car. At the time I wondered what material the skid plates were made of. They certainly could not have been designed to take so much friction. Eventually they would wear away to the bare metal of the train’s body.

I looked at the map. We were about 25 minutes from the border. I asked Yenner to try to contact the authorities. If they could shut off the power to the guideway, I could stop the train.

“I just tried,” he said. “I can’t connect to a network.” He looked worried.

No network. That was supposed to be impossible. I knew better, but it was still very bad news. The most likely possibility was internal sabotage. While David worked to remove the chairs in the third car and Yenner struggled to pull out the seats in the second car (he couldn’t, his hands hurt too much), I went around asking if anyone could check the news from the outside world. The train’s satellite feeds were not operating. There were no broadcasts from Pacifica. Everything seemed to be down.

Pacifica was under attack and we were stuck on a runaway maglev.

I returned to the front cockpit and looked up at the morning sky through the windshield. Aside from a few SkyScooters there was no air traffic. No fighters were scrambling. No antimissile activity was apparent. The sky looked normal. Placid. Blue.

I looked ahead. A dark cloud of smoke filled the sky in the direction of San Diego. The desalinization plants, I guessed. The deep blue of the Pacific Ocean stretched to the western horizon. Multi-million dollar homes climbed the landscaped hills to the left.

We were passing through Oceanside when the third car hit the skids. Our speed began to drop more rapidly. We were below 400 kph now. I had formed a habit of re-estimating our time to the border every time our acceleration curve changed and I looked down to check the distance. When I looked back up I saw a flash on the horizon and small mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

Another one.

Another one.

My body released a new burst of adrenalin. We really were under attack. My heart slammed against my ribcage.

I ran back to find Yenner and pull him back up to the front. He looked at the brown clouds climbing into the atmosphere. His face and neck flushed noticeably but didn’t immediately respond otherwise.

“Ten kilotons you think?” I asked.

“Probably less. Those are ground bursts. It looks like they are targeting SoCal’s water supply rather than population centers. This is some kind of strategic move.”

“To show us what they can do,” I guessed. “Who are they anyway?”

“There are a few new but surprisingly powerful groups in America that might be behind this,” Yenner explained. “Most just hate us. They consider us traitors. But there is at least one, they call themselves the Reunification Army, that desires to destabilize our government with the hope that American troops can eventually occupy the country.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Our military could easily repel such an effort.”

“Oh, really? They haven’t seemed very effective against this one. This isn’t an old-fashioned war like your War of Secession. This is terrorism. And as America discovered, it’s not easy to fight it without destroying what you stand for.”

“But you don’t know for certain this is the work of this Reunification Army.”

“No. That’s just a guess. It could be other groups that are not directly sponsored by the American government.”

America would never openly attack us. The international response would be devastating and it was still recovering from a decade of economic and diplomatic sanctions, repeated strikes by category six hurricanes and the drain of its ongoing occupation of so much of the Middle-East. But this didn’t rule out its indirect support for organizations that would. We have enjoyed relative peace for the past ten years. I now wonder if that is over.

Our route was taking us more-or-less along Interstate 805 and we passed within kilometers of the burning rubble of the desalination plants. The sky was blackened with soot. As I watched the smoke billowing into the darkened morning my chest began to hurt. The familiar squeeze was back. I felt as if everything that had happened was a personal attack against me. Yenner later told me the same thing. “I wasn’t born here, but it is my home,” he said to me a few days later.

The train slowed even more after David and Yenner had disabled the magnetic lift to all cars. The power to the guideway failed shortly thereafter and the train abruptly and unapologetically skidded to a stop. We were at grade, between a dry riverbed and 805. The operating system reset and I opened the doors. There was about a two meter drop to the bare rocky earth.

We were in Chula Vista, about 10 klicks from the border.

Yenner and I grabbed our packs and jumped out of the train. I could see a shopping mall a short distance to the east, across the dry river. I was hesitant to leave everyone, but as Yenner said, they were safe now and we couldn’t afford to be celebrities. He began to march across the riverbed and away from the train and highway.

“Where are you going?” I asked as I tried to keep up.

“Northeast. We’ll buy some water, find a place to hide, and then wait for dark.”

“In the hills?” We were surrounded by a city, but I knew there were hills to the east.

He turned to me and smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”

I just realized that my birthday is in six days. I’ll be 22. But back to the story.

About two-thirds of the passengers had gotten off the train before it lurched forward. I grabbed on to the cockpit doorway. Several people fell down. There were screams and cries of surprise. The doors began to close on their own. I returned to the controls.

“What’s happening?” Yenner yelled.

“The batteries drained. They can’t maintain the pressure against the guideway anymore.” I pulled up more information. “The power being supplied to the guideway has increased as well.”

People panicked and began forcing themselves through the closing doors even as the train accelerated. I looked back into the car. It was a mistake.

A PacTrans security officer tried to force his way onto the lead car. He attempted to hold the door open but it closed on his arm. He was being dragged along. Why didn’t the door re-open at the resistance? “Do something!” I yelled to Yenner.

But there was no time. Just as Yenner reached the door, we left the station and passed a support beam. The man slammed into it. Blood splattered across the door and windows. His arm remained in the door.

A man was killed right before my eyes.

Several people became hysterical. I was one of them. “Oh, God, Yenner. I killed him. I killed him!” I collapsed to my hands and knees.

Yenner seemed angry. “Get a hold of yourself, man! You did not kill him! He was killed by terrorists, not you! Understand?” I stared at him in shock. He was genuinely sparking off at me again. Then he turned to the remaining passengers, many of whom had gathered in the lead car and were yelling at him. “All of you will return to your seats NOW,” he bellowed. “This is not the time to lose control!”

And they did. I stood back up and watched their faces. The men became as docile as puppies with their tails between their legs. I looked back to Yenner. His face was red.

“What are you looking at?” he asked me angrily. “Don’t you have a train to stop?”

I didn’t say anything. Then scream of the skid plates stopped. The lift was active again. The silence was shocking. I returned to the control panel.

In that short time period, the batteries had recharged enough to allow the train to levitate again. What was worse was that someone had not only wiped out my hack, but also locked me out of the system. I tried to get back in but it was sealed. I slammed my fist into the Flexiglass panel and stood up. Yenner was walking up and down the aisle like a commander, telling everyone to stay put until they were needed or given permission to move. He does it so naturally, I thought.

I walked into the passenger compartment. He saw me. “What in the hell are you doing?” he asked. He was actually hostile.

“I’m locked out. All of the access points are gone.”

“Get back in there and figure it out,” he ordered.

“I can’t, Yenner,” I yelled back. “I’m not a magician!”

“Then who can? You’re one of the most intelligent human beings on the planet. We have a problem. Solve it.”

Faces turned from Yenner to me. I imagined that everyone was thinking who in the hell is this kid?

I returned to the cockpit and slammed the door. I couldn’t stop the train. I couldn’t stop the train yet again. I can’t do everything. Why was he piling so much pressure on me?

This side of Yenner was …. ugly. Abusive. I couldn’t believe the way he was treating me. As if I were some unfeeling robot. I spun about that until I found myself staring at the speed indicator. 645 kph. The urgency of our situation slammed back into me.

If only I could slow us down again. It’s all about time.

I was pulled to the left. The guideway was making a gentle curve to the right as we raced through the San Fernando Valley. Then as we plunged into a tunnel through the Santa Monica hills I heard a different screeching - the side guide rails.

Yenner opened the doors. “What’s going on?”

I shoved aside the pain he was suddenly causing me. “We hit the side of the guideway. The train is moving too fast - it’s operating beyond specifications.”

“Can you drop us again?” His voice was more gentle.

“No. The system really is sealed. I wish I could just pull the plug.”

We stared at each other. My eyes widened - that was the answer. He smiled slightly. “Can you?” he asked.

“Let me find them.” I pulled up the design schematics again.

“Sorry I was so hard on you,” he said. “It was just part of the act - mostly.”

“Mostly?” I asked while I navigated the engineering diagrams. “You are training me to work under pressure?”

“Something like that,” he answered.

I found the diagram I needed. I showed it to Yenner. “See this access panel in the floor? Just cut the cabling here. See?”

He nodded his head then looked at our ETA for Tijuana. “Twenty-five minutes,” he said.

“Less actually. That is based on our instantaneous velocity and we are still accelerating.”

“If you say so,” he said.

“Yenner?”

“Yes?”

“I have to tell you something since our odds don’t look good right now.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do. It’s so hard for me but we don’t have time.” I took a deep breath. “I love you, Yenner.”

“You’ve told me that already.”

“No everything. I haven’t expressed how I really feel. I haven’t told you, Mom, anyone. I don’t even write about it in my journal.”

“Go on - just hurry,” he grinned.

“I think about you all the time. I loose sleep sometimes. You make me happy, and I haven’t been happy in so long. So long. You’ve given me happiness again.”

What I told him is true. My unborn child gives me happiness too, and Mom, of course. But Yenner has changed my attitude in a way that I am just now realizing. He is the magician.

“Let’s get to work,” he said. “You can finish telling me how great I am later.” He winked.

We ran to the last car and located the access panel - beneath seats that were bolted to the floor.

“Shit!” I yelled as I inspected the seats. “We need an Allen wrench.” I hate Allen wrenches. Everything takes one and there is never one around when you need it.

“I need volunteers,” I called out. People actually looked at Yenner to see if he approved. I envied his ability to generate respect. He nodded. I asked several people to search for a tool kit and ask other passengers if they had an Allen wrench.

Meanwhile, Yenner was trying to yank the seats out of the floor. Sweat was pouring down his face. He was sweating faster than the fibers of his shirt could disperse the water into the air. The oversized t-shirt became damp and hung from his enormous shoulders and traps. The muscles in his arms exploded with relief. He is bigger, I thought. I noticed several people staring at him.

“God … damned … Germans!” Yenner cursed. “They have to God damn over-engineer God damn everything!”

The chairs pulled out of the floor. He had stripped the bolts. “Alhamdulillah! ” I heard a man near me exclaim. He said something else in Arabic that I didn’t understand, but his accent made me think of you. I looked at him. “Are you from Saudi Arabia?” I asked.

We stared at each other for a moment, cognizant of the incalculable loss, then he said he was from Jiddah. “You?”

I shook my head. “My Abuyah. He was at the Last Hajj.” He flinched as he struggled to maintain his composure. “Yarhamohu Allah“, he said.

“Rabiyya,” Yenner said gently, pulling my attention back to the task at hand. He had removed the panel. “This trunk of cables?”

“That’s it,” I confirmed.

He put his big hand around it and yanked. The car slammed into the guideway. I could hear the mechanical locks holding the cars together groaning over the scream of the skid plates and looked at Yenner. “We have to move quickly.”

As we ran into the next car a woman stopped Yenner. She called him “sir.” This still seems funny to me. She told him that she knew this segment of the PacLink well and that we were about to hit the Long Beach turn. She explained that after leaving Lawndale station the train maintained 200 kph to make the relatively tight turn east toward Anaheim and then another turn to head back toward the south-east.

We were exceeding 700 kph.

Once the other passengers on the train figured out what had happened, they gave us a standing ovation. Yenner, still playing Mr. Internal Security agent, stood and motioned for everyone to hold their applause and sit back down. I remained crouched on the floor in front of the airlock. I was shaking. This was nothing like the time we had to jump out of the car and into the river. I was terrified beyond belief. As I write this I am breaking into a cold sweat at the memory of hanging between the separating cars in the howling wind with Yenner’s powerful hand gripping my forearm. He saved me from oblivion.

“You saved my life,” I said once I was breathing normally.

I pulled myself back into my body and Yenner helped me stand up. “I’m so proud of you,” he said.

I looked at him, puzzled.

“You were ready to sacrifice yourself. You saved us.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” I asked. “Anyone would do the same.”

“If they could.” He said, then paused. “I’m not sure. But anyhow, it was nice to see.” Then he added, “just don’t do it again. You are more important than you know.”

“Stop it with that! I don’t need that kind of pressure. If I hadn’t been on this train then they wouldn’t have needed saving.”

He sighed, but didn’t say anything. However probable, my comment was still conjecture.

“Besides, we have larger concerns,” I said.

“What?”

“If no one is able to reach PacTrans, who is controlling the train?”

“Isn’t it programmed?”

“Yes, but I separated the back sections. Now that I think about it, shouldn’t that trigger a shutdown of the system?”

“I don’t know,” Yenner said.

“Well I do know, and something isn’t right.” I looked at the speed indicator at the back of the car - 500 kph. I pointed it out to Yenner. “Why are we still accelerating? I remember during our trip down here last time we never exceeded 480 clicks.”

“Can you control the train’s speed from here?”

“No.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, I’ll try, but I don’t think the train is communicating with operations anymore, and the computer at operations controls the power to the guideway, which determines the speed.”

“Can you hack into their webspace?”

“Systems like that aren’t online,” I said. “They are isolated to prevent unauthorized intrusion from …”

“People like you,” Yenner interrupted.

I hesitated. “Yes,” I agreed. I looked at the display again: 510 kph.

At the same time that I considered getting my pad out of my pack, my one remaining pad since I had left the newer one in the end car’s cockpit, and checking out the news, my eyes fell on one of the vid panels mounted on the back of each seat. I moved closer. The woman watching it offered me her headphones but I turned them down. I didn’t need the audio.

In the past hour, there had been explosions at two desalinization plants near San Diego and the Inglewood Behavioral Health Clinic where I had met Cara, power and web network collapses in Seattle and the San Joaquin Valley, and the partial destruction of a PacLink maglev train en route to SoCal. We had already made the national news. I watched for news about San Francisco but there was nothing.

The fear that had been burning in the back of my head for the past few months returned. Someone had killed or was trying to kill Cara. This could not have been a coincidence. She and I had been targeted for one or more reasons. I wondered about Subject 3. Was he still alive? If so, where was he?

I struggled to control my emotions. I bit my tongue as hard as I could without piercing it. I was not going to cry. I had come to think of Cara as a kind of sister to me and had hoped to develop some kind of relationship with her. We were not related, but then we were.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I relaxed my bite.

The woman I was squatting beside pulled off her headphones and looked at me. “They said contact has been lost with PacTrans control but they didn’t know anything else yet,” she said. “I wonder if all of this is related?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said simply, but I believed otherwise. I was certain that it was related. Although I know more of the story now, when we were still on the train I could only guess. Was someone manually controlling our train or had the central computer been damaged or infected? Was the train’s operating system itself infected?

“We’re speeding up!” I heard another woman yell. I looked up at the bulkhead display: 550 kph. We were passing Bakersfield. If we continued accelerating at the same rate I estimated we would reach the end of the line at the Mexican border in around 45 minutes.

Yenner handed me my pack then donned his Internal Security hat again to lead me to the front car of the train. He motioned toward the cockpit. It was unlocked, which I thought was interesting. “Do what you can,” he said simply.

I took a look at the view ahead and my heart skipped a beat. We really were flying along the ground. Although the guideway was elevated several meters above grade, the speed at which we passed cars and buildings and other objects was astonishing. It was also surreal because our travel was so smooth. The onrushing vista was hypnotizing. I opaqued the windshield.

I shut the door behind me. Even as we approached 600 kph the train was nearly silent. It seemed counter-intuitive even to me. Magnetic propulsion: silent. No wheels: silent. The only friction: air. I heard Yenner making an announcement to the passengers but I didn’t pay any attention. I was too busy trying to figure out how to slow down or stop a train with an external propulsion source.

If I were outside, the answer would be obvious. Kill the power to the guideway. The problem with that solution is that the guideway also stops the train by reversing the traveling magnetic field. No power, no braking. Of course if power were cut I could just shut off the train’s levitation and the train would grind to a halt, hopefully in one piece.

I realized that I could try that anyway, but I didn’t know if it would be enough to stop us. The electromagnets lift the train above the guideway, I thought to myself. I wonder if I can manipulate them into pulling us into it? I looked at our speed: 625 kph. My options were limited; I decided to try it.

I started to open the door to tell Yenner my plan but at that moment I heard raised voices. I locked the door instead and tried not to panic. My job is to stop the train, I told myself. I decided to do it one car at a time beginning at the rear. I reasoned that would be the least stressful to the train’s structural integrity.

More loud voices. I killed the lift to the fifth car. The cockpit shuddered but the train remained intact. I could feel the vibration of the skid plates against the guideway. I killed the lift to the fourth car and the train shuddered again. The shrieking of the skid plates became audible. Our speed was holding at around 625 kph.

Someone began banging on the door but I ignored it and turned off the third car’s lift. Then the second car. Then the lead car. The train began slowing down. It was shaking violently but it was slowing down. 565 kph.

I quickly figured out how to operate the train’s internal monitoring system and looked for Yenner. He was outside the door. I let him in.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he asked. “Everyone is panicking.”

“I’m trying to stop the train!” I paused and listened. “I heard people yelling outside,” I said, changing the subject.

“Don’t worry, I have everything under control.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Are you stopping the train?”

“I meant the passengers.”

I found it easy to believe he had them under control. Other than his rather convincing Internal Security agent act and his unflagging self-confidence, his size alone was enough to intimidate anyone that didn’t have a weapon of some kind. I realized at the time that he actually looked bigger than usual, but I didn’t say anything until later. He returned to the passengers. I locked the door again.

I flew through the train’s engineering plans and design manuals trying to see if I could reverse the attraction of the lift magnets. I was now desperate to stop the train, if only to silence the screaming skid plates. My ears hurt. It took me a few minutes, but I found it. In another few minutes I had re-programmed the magnets to pull us into the guideway, increasing the resistance. I reactivated the lift magnets at 10 percent and gradually increased the power. The high-pitched scream beneath us began to deepen to a groan.

400 kph. We were minutes from the Santa Clarita station. My goal became to not only stop the train, but to stop it there.

350 kph. I increased the power to 50%. As I watched our position approach the station on the map, I tried to finesse the controls to bring us to a stop at a point where we could get off. It wouldn’t do much good for me to stop us if we were several meters in the air. I had to stop the train at the platform.

250 kph. I suddenly remembered to make the windshield transparent again and did so. We had just emerged from a tunnel into a broad valley. I could see the station up ahead. 200 kph. We were still coming in too fast.

I increased the power to the magnets to maximum. The lights dimmed briefly but our rate of deceleration increased and the train skidded to a halt with the first half aligned with the platform. I smiled to myself, returned my pad to my pack and jumped up. Yenner was banging on the door again. I opened it.

“Open the doors!” he yelled at me.

“What?”

“Open the doors! No one can get out.”

I cursed myself and went back to the controls. Shouldn’t there be emergency releases? Ten seconds later - it seemed an eternity - the train doors for the three cars that were in the station were open. I stood up but remained in the cockpit doorway.

“What are you waiting for?” Yenner asked impatiently. The exit was right next to him.

“Everyone to get off,” I said. I didn’t tell him why.

We fled San Francisco. I choose the word “fled” intentionally. We were not able to make careful plans or even pack.

Around two weeks ago, in the middle of the night, Yenner and Beth came by and said we had to leave right at that moment. The group had intercepted communications between the American organization, possibly the one that had previously tried to kill us, and its operatives here in Pacifica. Not only had I been targeted personally, but multiple sites in Pacifica were going to be hit as well.

I grabbed my pads and some clothing, locked the door, and left our apartment. Mom left with Beth, supposedly for Vancouver. Yenner and I are in New Dearborn, one of the new cities in the SoCal desert. We’ve been here for about a week. The only news I’ve heard about Mom is that she is fine. She has been told that I am fine. I don’t think either of us know where the other really is. This disturbs me greatly, but I am forcing myself not to spin about it too much.

I am glad Yenner is with me or I would be truly lost. Mom has been the one constant in my life since day one and not only is she far away, but I don’t know where. Yenner is with me. I have to focus on that.

We took the PacLink again. It was, as Yenner described once we got here, an E-ticket ride (I had to look that up. An E-ticket used to provide one with access to the best rides at Disneyland).

The PacLink reaches a top speed of 500 kph, although it is technically possible for it to go faster. I read about how the system works after our trip to LA:

It uses magnetic attraction to allow the train to hover above the track or “guideway.” Stators are mounted along the bottom of each side of the track and support magnets are mounted on top of the section of the train that wraps under the body of the train, cradling the guideway. Onboard batteries, which are charged by the motion of the train, power the magnets that pull the train up toward the stators, thus lifting the train one centimeter off the track. Guidance magnets keep the sides of the wrap-under section of the train’s body from hitting the guidance rails.

Propulsion is provided by a synchronous longstator linear motor stretched along the underside of the guideway. It uses an alternating current to generate a magnetic field that moves the vehicle without contact. Speed can be changed by varying the alternating current frequency. Braking is achieved by reversing the direction of the traveling magnetic field.

Although lift is electronically controlled by an onboard computer that is in continuous contact with the operations center by radio, everything else is controlled by operations.

There is no onboard operator. All of this is important to understand because of what happened on the way down.

We were about halfway to LA when Yenner’s mobile chirped. I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep, unlike Yenner who was passed out next to me and snoring softly. As dawn broke, I watched the lights outside streak by and worried about Mom. His mobile chirped again. He woke up and pulled it out of his pocket. He answered in Turkish.

I could hear another voice speaking but was unable to make out the words. He then looked briefly at an image on the mobile’s screen. “I understand,” he said in English. “Stand by.”

He looked at me. “We have an unwelcome guest,” he said as he scooted by me and into the aisle.

“They have someone on this train?” I asked anxiously.

“Worse. There’s a crawler on the roof,” he whispered. “It’s on the seventh car and moving this way. The group has been unable to contact PacTrans operations so we are on our own.”

We were in the fifth car of the eight car train.

“We have to evacuate the last three cars,” Yenner added as he ran to the back. “Stay here.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “I want to go with you.”

“You have to trust me, Rabiyya. I need to check something out. You are safer up here.” He pulled an object out of his bag as he disappeared through the airlock between the cars.

I looked around nervously. There were about 50 other people on the car. It was about half full. Many people heard what Yenner had said and were looking at me questioningly. I just shrugged my shoulders. A few minutes later, passengers from the rear cars began hurriedly filing through the car and toward the front of the train. The passengers from the rear were telling us that an Internal Security agent ordered the evacuation of the rear of the train. Naturally everyone was speculating that there was a bomb.

Yenner returned. “I need your help.”

He led me into the now vacant sixth car then turned to face me. “The crawler is carrying a bomb that probably will not detonate until it reaches the second car. PacTrans is unavailable so I need you to tell the computer to release the last three cars.”

I shook my head. “That won’t work. We are being propelled by the guideway itself. Even if I could break into the operating system and disconnect the last three sections, they would still be pushed along with us.” I looked at the display at the front of the car. We were traveling at 480 kph. There would be no jumping out of this to save ourselves.

“Okay, Mr. Know-it-all, do you have another idea?” Yenner asked.

He knew and I knew that if the crawler sensed that it was threatened it would detonate immediately. Even if we were traveling slowly we still wouldn’t be able to approach it. If we fired a weapon at it, it would go off. And I guessed that if the train slowed significantly enough to make it possible for us to get to it, it would go off too.

“How much time do we have?” I asked. I had an idea.

“It will be on our car in about 5 minutes.”

I ran toward the back of the train.

“You’re going the wrong way!” Yenner called after me.

“There’s no time for me to fight my way to the front!”

It took about ten seconds for the Al-Hurriyah supplied pad to break the lock of the cockpit door. Yenner stood outside the cramped cabin. “What are you doing?”

“What you asked me to do, disconnecting the last three cars.”

“You said it wouldn’t work.”

“I’m also deactivating the levitation. The friction with the track will slow us down so the rest of the train can get ahead.”

“Slow us down? What about us?”

“I’m saving three hundred lives, okay?”

“Your life is more important. You are going to save a lot more than…”

“Not now, Yenner,” I interrupted. “Are you going to stay or get out of here?”

“Can you set a delay?”

“God, I hadn’t thought of that.” I looked at my watch. We had about one minute left.

I raced through the operating system to see if a delay was possible. It looked like I could construct one for segment disconnection, but not levitation. I disabled the safeties and set the disconnect for 30 seconds. “We have 30 seconds to get back to our car,” I said. Then I thumbed what I hoped was the mike. “Attention everyone, please hold on. There may be a strong jolt.”

I killed the levitation in the last three cars.

Our maglev trains do not have wheels, even as a back up source of lift. They have skids that are used to stop the train in emergencies, but only when the train is moving at 10 kph or less. The last three cars of our train were suddenly being dragged along the guideway at 480 kph. The abrupt deceleration threw us forward. The train shuddered and protested. My unspoken fear that the sudden drag would tear the train apart proved unfounded, but the shrieking from beneath us was not comforting. Yenner grabbed me and bolted toward the front.

The display at the front of the end car read 440 kph as we passed by it into car seven. About ten seconds later we passed the display of the seventh car as we reached car six. It read 420 kph. As we ran through the sixth car I knew it would be very close. And there was the possibility that the crawler would detect a problem and detonate before we made it anyway.

I could see the airlock for the fifth car. It became the focus of my entire existence. Yenner had already reached it and had grasped something inside. His body was just this side of the airlock, his arm reaching back for me. Over the scream of the train’s drag I could hear and feel the mechanical locks release.

I leapt, throwing myself as far as I could, reaching for Yenner’s arm. As the magnetic locks released I felt his hands, first one, then both, and the rear of the train vanished behind me only to be replaced by a vortex of air that pulled at me without mercy. The breath was sucked from my lungs and my ears popped painfully, but just as I thought the vacuum would win, Yenner pulled me into his arms. Someone else sealed the airlock. Other than my ringing ears there was sudden silence. I clung to Yenner and gasped for air.

Then we heard the bomb explode, but we were racing away at over 400 kph.