He didn’t expect anyone to remember the Harry Nilsson/Three Dog Night song, but that was one of the perks of being ancient. He could plagiarize with impunity. Everything old was new again. Feeling awkward and just wanting to get away, he came off the stage to an ovation and the crowd reaching out to touch his ankles as he climbed down the steps.
“Beautifully done,” Pol shouted in his ear. “I’ll do wonders with that. Our tour will begin tomorrow, so you need to get some sleep. Dex and I will be back in the morning. Now unless you need anything—” Pol pulled out a Port-a-Call.
“Pol?” Ellis said. “Have you seen Pax?”
“No. Should I have?”
“I don’t know.” Ellis took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Have you heard anything?”
“About Pax? No, and as you’re aware, Pax isn’t an easy person to keep tabs on anymore.”
He nodded. “Could you contact Vin at least? I’d like to let them know what happened to me, okay?”
“Right away. See you tomorrow.”
Pol formed a portal and stepped through. Ellis couldn’t see if it was to the Council office or Firestone Farm.
Perhaps he should go to Pax’s home. If he had his own Port-a-Call he would. He considered asking Rex, but Wat had been right. He was feeling run-down and tired, like he was fighting a cold. Maybe in the morning before they left, he could get Pol to swing by Pax’s place. It wasn’t like it was out of their way.
“Rex?” He turned to the ISP administrator. “Has anyone tried to see me since news got out that I was here?”
“Everyone,” Rex said. “Absolutely everyone.”
Chapter Eleven
Quality Time
Ellis had tried several times to contact Pax but failed. By all accounts Pax had disappeared. As part of his agreement to go on tour, Ellis insisted Pol do everything possible to locate Pax, including daily messages to Pax’s home, where even Vin had no clue where the arbitrator had gone. Ellis was struck by the irony that by cutting out Pax’s chip, he was the architect of his own misery. This sense of guilt plagued him as Ellis finally submitted to the grand tour.
Pol had been relentless with the schedule. Each day Ellis traveled to some new corner of the world or another planet altogether. There weren’t nearly as many inhabitants in Hollow World as Ellis had expected. Just over 123 million, the majority of mankind having died during the Great Tempest. They all resided inside a honeycombed earth, scattered across the fifty-two tectonic plates, but with portals they could travel anywhere in an instant.
Mars looked nothing like Ellis had expected. After spending most of his youth dreaming of being the first person to walk on its surface, the ease of the trip removed that mystique. For the most part it was no different from Hollow World except for the ubiquitous Mars logo placed everywhere. This was because the vast majority of the Martian resort destination was below the surface. The little bit of the planet he was able to see from the viewing domes looked like Nevada under a hazy pink sky.
He did get to see the Mars rovers. They were still out there, preserved as part of Odyssey Historic Park. The rovers were the Red Planet’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Olympus Mons, the largest Martian volcano and the tallest mountain on any planet in the solar system. The one highlight of Mars was that Ellis got to see robots. He’d wondered where they were. Buck Rogers and The Jetsons had promised flying cars, jet packs, and robot maids. Once again Ellis was disappointed. Previously used to safely explore the landscape of the planet, they’d become a novelty for tourists. Robots were remote-controlled machines sent out to transmit 3-D visuals and fetch rocks as souvenirs. Mars had become like Niagara Falls, a cheesy tourist trap. And like vacationers to a Mexican resort, where tourists preferred the sand-free hotel pools to the ocean, most Mars visitors preferred walking around the virtual holo than suiting up to experience the real thing. Ellis did indeed don the suit and join the mechanical delivery bots, but after a lifetime of waiting, the experience was anticlimactic.
New planets had been discovered, like Trinity, which was outside the galaxy, but no colonies had been established. The East Indian Tea Company didn’t exist anymore. Everyone had plenty of room, and nothing beyond novelty remained to drive humanity to the frontier.
While travel everywhere was instantaneous, the outings were taxing. He felt good. He was, in fact, incredibly fit for a fifty-eight-year-old man who’d just died and had his organs replaced. His energy wasn’t perfect, but he figured that was more a result of thirty years of reduced exercise than the surgery. What drained him were the crowds. Everywhere they went, hundreds of people waited. As far as the public was concerned, Ellis was bigger than Olympus Mons. Unlike the gathering in the ISP’s Grand Cathedral, these were filled with people wearing clothes and sporting tattoos. By the time they were visiting Challenger Deep, the lowest point on Planet Earth, Ellis began to see his first imitators.
“Pattern designers are working ’round the clock to create Ellis Rogers wear,” Pol explained, seeing Ellis staring back at a gawker who wore an identical flannel shirt and jeans.
Pol had enormous amounts of energy, finding time to report to Warren each night even after a long day of appearances. Apparently it was important to keep the technology-deficient farm informed on Ellis’s global impact.
That day, he and Pol had stood under the illuminated dome of Challenger Deep, and looked up at a dead, dark world of empty water. They were too deep for fish. Ellis had preferred the city of Atlantis, an artificial coral reef surrounding a thousand-story-tall see-through city, also known as The Aquarium. The Deep was just scary. The knowledge of all that water above left Ellis haunted by the thought of a crack in the glass.
“It’s wonderful. The whole world is going Ellis Rogers crazy,” Pol said. “People are sharing your speeches. Ellis Rogers masks are big, and a hyper-realistic interactive holo featuring an interview with you is the most popular in the world for the second straight day.”
“I’m surprised people aren’t having plastic surgery done,” Ellis said.
“Plastic surgery?” Pol asked.
Ellis gestured at his face. “You know, it’s where doctors alter your features surgically. With all this desire for individuality, I’d think more people would have done it.”
“There are limits to self-expression,” Pol said. “People want to be individuals—not different.”
“How’s that?” Ellis spotted another Ellis Rogers wannabe entering the sea-dome, this one with the same JanSport pack slung over one shoulder.
“Putting on clothes, even applying a tattoo, just adds a layer of identity. It doesn’t fundamentally change a person. People don’t want to be something different—they aren’t dogs longing to be cats or even horses wanting to be zebras, although they might paint on stripes to look different. You’re fascinating to all of us. Not only because of your divergence from the norm, but your complete acceptance of it. You honestly don’t mind being separate, being alone in your singularity. This courage is what so many of us admire when we see you. We’d like to think we’d be just as comfortable standing out, being a real individual, but actually doing it—that’s a bravery beyond most of us.”