opening as if on command. Either someone was monitoring my movements, giving me a guiding hand, or the tower’s resident A.I. knew your intentions and helped you fulfill them. I didn’t know if I still had guest access to the system, but it knew who I was and that I wanted to go to my room.
I showered, shaved with a special laser-welder thing that Superdynamic or one of his people had left in my room, and cut what was left my hair back to what it normally was. My hair is about as tough as I am, so I can’t just go to the barber down the street. As a result I’ve gotten good at taking care of myself.
I took some time to clean off my boots and put on another of the stretchy jumpsuits before settling on the bed. About three hours had passed since we had arrived, so I figured a short nap would do me well before heading out on the mission. But sleep didn’t come. I was bothered by the recordings; how had they gotten their hands on them? Maybe some of that stuff had been archived on the Rocket Flyer, and I’m sure that after the Hashima mess, it would have fallen into the good guys’ hands.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t focus; I was antsy, eager to do something. I usually had a project or ten rolling in my head. But without something to design, or a lab to work on it, my mind began to race, my body listless, and I was literally pacing across the small room. Enough, I thought, and stormed out, heading to the elevator, intent on finding something to do, even if it meant trouble with Superdynamic.
Besides, I was getting the impression he would leave me behind. More trouble than he’s worth, he’d say, justifying leaving the heaviest hitter in the dugout.
By now I was starting to understand how his little base worked, so I knew Superdynamic would know I had gone wandering. If I was violating protocol, bouncing from floor to floor, the other inhabitants of Babel didn’t seem to care, or else they were good enough to conceal their worry or concern.
The nearest floors were uniform, long halls, enormous labs filled with scientists running all sorts of experiments from electrical to thermodynamic, covering fields as vast as science itself. Superdynamic’s ambition was impressive, and he had managed to put his money where his mouth was. What was most notable was that he wasn’t shouldering the load, though he was a polymath like me, capable of solving problems in wide-ranging fields. No, he had created an environment where science was king; politics and funding were a problem that only he had to deal with, leaving the task of discovery to the finest minds on the planet.
Watching all the activity, all the progress taking place around me, made me feel like a pebble caught in a flowing river, stumbling along slowly while the current whipped by, leaving me behind. I felt helpless, and the frustration of my combat with Focus was wearing on me. I know what he was trying to do: get me to understand patience, to understand process and to learn how a team works together, but the mission to me was clear. Apogee was in danger, something was going on in D.C., and I was going through meaningless exercises. Now was not the time for training, to relearn everything. We had to get to D.C., figure things out the hard way if necessary, and take care of business.
The elevator stopped at one of the teen levels, and a young scientist got into the cab. I noticed that his lab coat was dirty, smeared with actual soil, and from this level came a light that was more natural than the others. Something else made me bounce out of the elevator as the doors slid closed: a smell, the aroma of churned topsoil, making me reminisce of my days back in our little home on the outskirts of Sacramento. My father was a doctor, with a small office in Midtown, one of the poorer areas of town, but our home outside the city proper was an actual farm. Dad had sold the arable land off to a larger farmer collective before I was born, and our backyard fence bordered a real working farm of more than thirty acres of orange groves. My brother and I would sneak back there, climb the trees, and pretend we were superheroes like