Out of the Shadows 006
A machine-augmented MIDNIGHT'S WAR novel
Chapter Three: Axis Mundi
As the skies grew red over the towers and stones and domes of the great ancient city, Elliott sipped at his espresso and wondered at the strange turn his life had suddenly taken. He was wearing a navy blue suit that fit him like a dream and was made of a wool so extravagantly soft that it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that it was made from alpacas or llamas, or perhaps even koalas. He rubbed at his freshly-shaven chin, marveling at whatever lotion the razor-wielding barber had applied to his face; his skin felt like what he imagined the silky-soft skin of a corn-fed sorority girl from Iowa who’d never seen the sun would feel like.
He hadn’t seen Medici—Lord Medici, he corrected himself, as it appeared the man genuinely merited the title—since he’d fallen asleep on the king-sized bed in his room on the Airbus 220. He’d woken during the jet’s final approach into Fiumicino, but upon emerging from his astonishingly luxurious quarters after the landing, was informed that Medici had already exited the plane due to an urgent matter that had arisen during the night.
The Italian would, however, be joining him for dinner in the evening, he was assured.
In the meantime, Elliott was to avail himself of the tailor who was already waiting for him in his hotel room, as well as of the tour guide who would be taking him to see a few of the major tourist sites. He wasn’t even surprised to discover that Medici’s people already knew, without being told, that he’d never been to Rome before.
“So do you really believe it will be possible to let people live longer?”
He returned his attention to his tour guide, who was female, of course, and whose dark-haired Italianate beauty was overwhelming to the point of making him actively suspicious of her.
“I don’t believe it, I know it.”
“That’s so amazing,” she breathed at him.
She was a honey trap, he told himself. An obvious one. They literally teed the poor girl up for you and installed her in your hotel room! You cannot allow yourself even think about her!
But he couldn’t help it. He focused on her question with all the desperate intensity of a drowning man clutching at a life preserver.
“It is exciting. But I don’t know how much it changes anything. If you knew you would live twenty years longer than your parents, would you live your life any differently than you are now?”
“It depends. Will your new technology slow down the aging process? Or will we all look like wrinkled old turtles for our last fifty years?”
He raised his glass to her. “An astute observation! As the Greeks knew, never ask for eternal life, ask rather for eternal youth!”
“If you can deliver that, you’ll be a very rich man.”
“I suspect I will be a very rich man regardless. A young woman like yourself may not be much interested in the difference between 90 and 110, but I assure you, were you in your eighties, you’d feel very differently about it.”
“And the old people have all the money,” she observed sagaciously.
Beauty and brains. She was quite the temptation. Still, he refused to take the bait.
“It was a lovely meal, Miss del Giorgio. Best Italian food I’ve ever had. What was it called?
“Rigatoni all'Amatriciana. I don’t think you get a lot of Pecorino in America.” She smiled at his confusion. “The cheese.”
“Ah, I see. Not like that, anyhow.” He waved off a hovering waiter who was offering to give him another coffee. “So, what’s next on the agenda? Perhaps the Coliseum? Or the Vatican?”
She consulted her watch, a pink-strapped Versace that was almost, but not quite, tasteful. “Your choice, Mr. Grahame, but we have to be back at the hotel in three hours so you can change your clothes and get ready for tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight?”
“You’ll be meeting with Lord Medici and his associates. The Vatican is probably out, but we have time for the tour at the Colosseum if you’d like.”
Elliott looked out over the crowds of tourists flowing into and out of the domed cathedral. across the street. It was so pedestrian, and yet so inevitable. And so he shrugged, extended one hand, and turned his thumb up.
“So, what do you think?” Chiara asked him as they filed out of the ancient structure in the middle of a crowd of loud, overweight Americans. They were on a first-name basis now, after more than two hours of suffering through, and surreptitiously snickering at, the absurd behavior of his compatriots. For some reason, a young woman’s question about how many witches had been burned on the arena sands had set her off on a coughing fit, while the level of collective ignorance they’d witnessed made Elliott privately vow to rectify his own lack of knowledge as soon as possible by reading a little history every night.
“I think I should probably go get my picture taken with those Roman soldiers,” Elliott said, pointing to three men wearing armor and red cloaks. “Apparently pictures and gelato are the only things of interest here to my fellow Americans.”
“Don’t bother, they’re Albanian,” Chiara snorted dismissively.
“Really?” Elliott lifted his sunglasses and squinted at the men. The men were dark-haired, sun-bronzed, and looked pretty Italian to him. “You can tell?”
“Believe me, we can tell. We can always tell.”
“Please don’t tell me the gelato is nothing more than ordinary ice cream.”
“Now that, you can be certain is Italian. No one eats that hard, frozen stuff you Americans make here.”
“Hey, now, gelato is great, I respect your gelato, but don’t you be dissing ice cream.” He shook a warning finger at her. “Nothing beats a hot fudge banana split, unless it’s a hot fudge brownie delight.”
“I think she’s probably had a few of those,” Chiara said softly, indicating an obese woman testing the limits of her overstuffed pink leggings. “Maybe more than a few. Madonna, but you Americans are incredibly fat. Why aren’t you fat, Elliott?”
Iron will, he wanted to tell her. Self-discipline. But instead, he opted for honesty.
“Vanity, I suppose.”
She laughed. It was a charming and delightful sound. “I think you’ll do all right here, Elliott. In Italia, nothing is more important than presenting una bella figura.”
“Do we have time for a coffee? Or is it wine o’clock yet?”
She glanced at what looked to be an expensive Swiss watch and shook her head. “No, it will not do to be late tonight. To be safe, we should return to the hotel now.”
I wonder if AI generation will lead to books and entertainment becoming user-individualized rather than one-size-fits-all.
Is Miss del Giorgio the same woman as Chiara?
If so, is she wearing two different watches?