Joel2 was pleased to find he was feeling much more sprightly as they headed up the steep hill-cut stairs leading to the hotel lobby. He had forgotten that everything in this part of Costa Rica was hilly. They were above the clouds, after all. When they reached the hill’s crest, they were drenched to the bone. Just then, the rain dissipated, as if mocking them. The clouds parted, revealing a brilliant nightscape of jungle forest below them, illuminated by a giant half circle of a moon. Puffs of white fog were ribboned throughout the trees. Joel2 put his arm around Sylvia. The two of them drank in the moment, so different and isolated from the vertical urban crowding of New York City.
They turned to the hotel. It was a collection of twenty or so wood cabins, each with an outdoor hot tub and privacy screens composed of dense jungle vegetation. Pergolas covered in flowering bougainvillea framed each doorway. The lobby was located in the closest and largest building, which had a small restaurant and bar attached. Joel2 knocked on the door’s glass window.
“Anyone there?” Sylvia asked from behind him.
He found a button under a snarl of bougainvillea vines and pushed it. There was a loud buzz, then the door opened with a click. They entered as the proprietor stepped in from her private quarters. She was a pleasant, thickset Costa Rican woman whose brown cheeks were mottled with dark-brown birthmarks. She introduced herself as Josephine.
After Sylvia forked over a stack of international all-purpose chits and Josephine examined them to her satisfaction, she informed them they were in the Suite Principal. It was the biggest cottage they had, and built on a cliff that overlooked the cloud forest. She added that breakfast and dinner were served during one-hour blocks in the main cottage, but the bar was always open. As a welcome gift, she handed Joel2 a bottle of Costa Rican wine, an amarone made by local Quakers, but warned him not to drink it.
“This is better as a souvenir than to drink,” she said, amused with herself. “Quaker wines are not very good. Keep this, give it to your friends when you go home. If you want wine to drink, we have a nice selection of Chilean and Argentinian Malbecs in the restaurant.” She followed this with directions to their room, wishing them a good night—with one last caveat: “It gets cold at night, so cover up!”
There were even more steps up to their room. For Joel2, the climb was particularly brutal, as he had been tasked with carrying Sylvia’s bag. This he had nicknamed M’Bob, or Magical Bag of Bricks, for the unreal amount of heavy items she’d managed to cram inside it.
Their cabin door sensed their presence as they arrived. It unlocked and welcomed them with a warm “?Bienvenido!”
“Carry me in?” Sylvia asked, mischief in her eyes.
Joel2 obliged, but not without a good amount of grunting and groaning. Once they were inside, Sylvia playfully swatted him.
The room was chilly but large. The walls and ceiling beams were made of teak. There were big windows on every wall, a kitchenette, a deck with what would be an impressive view during the day, an outdoor hot tub, and a lumpy king-sized bed. A garland of violet bougainvillea flowers had been laid across their pillows.
Joel2 picked up the vine and set it aside. “Hopefully this wasn’t full of spider eggs. I think I’m gonna go wash the near-death experience off me. Wanna join?”
“I’ve had enough near-death today. But if you hurry, you might get lucky again before I pass out. We’ve got a lot of hiking to get in tomorrow.”
Joel2 pretended to sprint to the bathroom for Sylvia’s amusement. He was feeling good. Better than ever. Once the warm water hit him, he began to relax. He decided to allow himself a bit of 1980s New Wave. He resumed the mix he’d paused earlier on his comms, throwing the audio over to the bathroom’s speaker system. The sound of Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” filled the room, the humidity accentuating her sultry voice.
Had he not started singing along, he might have heard the unmistakable rumble of a people-mover flying in at low altitude and close proximity. The whistle of its turbines would have alerted him that it was landing nearby. People-movers were jet-copter hybrid drones. Most were built for rapid transport rather than comfort. They were gargantuan flying pressurized graphite-titanium mesh containers designed to quickly transport hundreds of people from one place to another. Because of their size, they were never licensed for urban transport, and they legally could not operate within 150 meters of any populated area. Joel2 would have known such a drone landing so close to an occupied hotel was likely running afoul of all legal operational boundaries. Whoever was inside must be dealing with some kind of major emergency.
But Joel2 was too preoccupied with singing to notice any of this. He jumped in to accompany Kim Carnes:
She’ll expose you
When she snows you
’She knows you
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
Such a good song. When it was finished, he played a few more choice selections from his playlist. Finally, when his fingers started getting pruny, he informed the shower he was done. The room was as wet and steamy as a sauna, which was just the way he liked it. Sylvia was none too pleased whenever he took his shower before hers back home.
Joel2 grabbed one of the two towels from the heating rack above the toilet and wrapped it around his waist. Was it his imagination, or had the nanites improved his muscle tone? Did that usually happen at hospitals? He decided to emerge from the bathroom, surrounded by steam like Feyd-Rautha in Dune, and show off his new physique with a nod to her earlier question: “You think you can handle this?”
He burst out, dropping his towel and flexing his muscles. “You think you can—” he began, but stopped short.
A man he did not recognize was standing beside his obviously distraught wife. He was paunchy, sweat-stained, and balding. Sylvia was crying again, only now it was clearly from fear. Joel2 bent down to pick up the towel and wrapped it securely around his waist, trying to look as commanding as one could after accidentally exposing oneself.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“Just look at you,” said the man, eying Joel2 up and down with an odd relish. “Sprung fully formed from Sylvia’s terrarium. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Bill Taraval, International Transport.”
TAINTED LOVE
THE PEOPLE-MOVER that Joel2 didn’t hear land outside was capable of carrying nearly two hundred passengers. Yet that particular drone only had one occupant: William Taraval. While Joel2 was hanging out with Kim Carnes in the shower, Taraval huffed and puffed his way up the many flights of stairs until he reached the Suite Principal. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he knocked.
Sylvia answered, folding her arms around herself when she saw her sweating boss. When she didn’t invite him in, he stepped past her anyway.
“Not an easy place to get to,” Taraval grumbled, going to the kitchenette and getting a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
“I suppose you’re here to fire me,” she said morosely. “I was hoping I’d have a little more time to—”
“Explain?” he asked, looking around the room in distaste. “Explain what—why you turned off your comms? Why you fled the scene of a major terrorist attack? Why you illegally restored and printed your husband from a backup in a classified, still-experimental glacier instance?” He spoke coolly, but she could tell he was furious from the way his right eyelid ticked uncontrollably.