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Jacob’s Continuation [Part of the Continuation Archival Project] e1.1 Chapter One Jumbo has no idea that he is being watched until the realization comes to him with certainty. There is no prickling of hair or sense of danger to indicate spooky foreknowledge. It's like being hit with a brick. He recognizes her. No, that isn't quite it. He's only seen video of her from a distance, but the build of her body looks right. Regardless of such details, he knows who she has to be, like knowing where the last piece of a puzzle must fit. When he sees her, Jumbo stops with his mouth open and fork half way to it. The babble of conversation and clink of silverware in the shaded courtyard seem only to isolate him from the other customers. Men and women in expensive dress, the best masks, eating their lunches but not enjoying them. Imported food and wine, smokes, and designer drugs are ordinary opulence. Jumbo isn't like any of them. He only comes for the Catch of the Day. Today it is a rarity: a Red Snapper caught off the coast only hours ago. Real fish, fresh as sunshine, served with a simple butter sauce and lemon, and garnished with fresh parsley. Garlic mashed potatoes and crisp almond-encrusted green beans flank the fish. A local Chardonnay in a twisted wine flute presses yellow bubbles against the glass. She’s staring at him. He can see a glint of reflection in her mask optics. The dark eyes of the cameras don’t waver. The mask covers only her upper face, but it’s not a dressy model. In fact, it’s ugly. Jumbo's mouth goes dry. He finishes the bite, but the taste has gone out if it. He leaves the fork on the plate and points his own cameras straight at the woman. Before he swallows, he has her whole public history streaming in a window with a search bot looking for patterns. She sits alone at a small round table with her arms folded. She sits so still, touching neither the glass of premium water nor the turkey Reuben on rye, that she assumes the character of a cobra raised to strike. I should call Meg. 1 | Jacob’s Continuation But the idea of yelling for help on what is--admittedly--only a feeling, is galling. Anyone but Meg. Meg the bit-bitch artificial intelligence so-called supervisor who is owned by MOM, who leaks arrogance through her IO ports the way guilty men sweat. No, not Meg. The deluge of information about the woman shows nothing unusual. Lastfour 9277, she calls herself Livia. She is married with two kids, lives in the City and works as a technical assistant to one of the larger retailers. There is no indication of a predatory or threatening personality. The last warmth of the wine fades, and Jumbo's natural generosity toward the universe with it. The woman still hasn't moved. She wants me to know. She wants me to be afraid. If this is so, if it's not just his own guilt conjuring ghosts, then the public biography must either be stolen or be a fake. But that fits too, because the missing piece of the puzzle is a Quasi-human woman named Nova. And Nova is very, very good at network spoofery. She and her partner Shanghai brought the City to a halt with a desperate attempt to get Shanghai out of the DaiHai building before the MOM robots could get to her. A desperate and expensive attempt that failed. And Jumbo was the one who discovered them to begin with. All the arrows point back to him, and the idea that Nova is still running around somewhere makes his skin crawl. Jumbo's mood sours further. This is his private place to eat alone, surrounded by careless money and indifferent palates. He knows the owner and the chef. He has his own table. Damn Dawkins to day-old gruel. He took the MOM money for finding Shanghai like a lastlegs takes a handout. MOM sent a squad of mechanical monsters in to get her, but she cut three of them down and then jumped out the damned window on the floor with a number like a sideways infinity. That beautifully engineered body smashed crooked and leaking genetic secrets on the pavement. Such a vorking shame. Sometimes Jumbo can taste the shame when he chews. Shellfish from the coast especially bring it out. That slight bitterness of boiled shrimp drizzled with lime juice that pops when his teeth sever the flesh. That's the taste of shame. The taste of blood at the pink center of a warm fillet topped with ginger shavings. Shame. The peppers he likes 2 | Jacob’s Continuation so much--those little red arrowheads of spice that conjure tears when he rends their flesh with his teeth and releases their fire. Those drops at the corners of his eyes are shame too. It becomes invisible for a while, working its way through his body to his liver. There it is dealt with by the same enzymes that allowed a million other murderers to go on living. The poison is drawn efficiently by the evolved mechanisms of cruelty that are the birthright of men. But the residual must go somewhere. And so the shame is turned gradually into deposits of guilt that the body harbors in out-of-the-way places. Mostly at the front of his skull, where it causes headaches. Am I inventing Nova? Am I demanding a confrontation with her? He stares at the untouched rye growing stale on the woman's plate ten meters away. There's no reason to stare. Any frame can be frozen and reviewed later. Any angle from any camera on a mask or the pylons all over the city can tell the visual tale on demand. A fixed gaze is an atavistic signal of aggression. Jumbo sends her a message. "I get the feeling you're staring at me," is all it says. He adds a smile emotag to turn it into a creepy flirt. Her arms uncross. She reaches under her table like a snake striking. Jumbo feels time lurch, slowing to a crawl, his heart thumping loud enough to hear over the rushing of blood in his ears. He tries to push himself back from the table, but the damned aluminum legs of the chair stick on the damned pavement and he tips. His weight, all that guilt added onto his girth, twist the frame, grinding feet against the concrete creating an elemental scream. His mouth becomes an Oh to fill his lungs before Livia/Nova can point the ugly hole of a weapon at him. He can see it in his mind's eye already, the final zero that tallies a life's sum. The woman sets a cardboard box on the table. She removes the lid and places it neatly under the box, then removes a pair of shoes. Red heels, suitable for a party or stylish murder. Jumbo finally makes it to his feet, his chest heaving. The Chardonnay with all the shame removed is running liquid and warm down his legs. Chapter Two When the afternoon heat reaches its zenith of unbearable discomfort, Jumbo switches on his old electric fan and sits near the open door. He's naked except for a towel thrown across his waist as a gesture of respect for his guest. He smells of soap. 3 | Jacob’s Continuation “Hah!” Comes the latest explosion from the modest balcony beyond the door. “Another one?” Jumbo asks. It’s a routine. “Nutha vugga bugga,” comes the reply, and with it a fat green caterpillar arrives via a parabolic arc to land near his feet. “How do they get that big?” Jumbo asks. This time he's actually concerned. If this keeps up there will be no tomatoes. And tomatoes were put on the green Earth to make Jumbo happy. A white-headed man with spindly limbs and an unmasked face--sun-beaten, brown, and crinkled--silhouettes himself in the door. He sets a watering can inside and cracks a smile that looks like an old cemetery. “Canna fillit?” Jumbo sighs with the fatigue of one truly at rest, who must now stir for a profane tedium. “Now?” “Less yah won maters.” Unless you want tomatoes? Jumbo resists the temptation to challenge the logic of the thing. It's too damned hot for math, and he knows he will lose the contest anyway. “Okay, Gar.” It's also too hot to waste syllables on “gardener,” and nobody does it even in winter. Anyway, he's a man meant for abbreviation, the gardener is. Afterwards, when the precious fruits of summer have been pampered and the Marigolds watered, Gar joins Jumbo for the customary reward--a glass of rum. Gar won't drink wine or beer or whisky or gin, but he adores the distilled essence of sugar cane. “So how do they look?” Jumbo asks. “Gud,” Gar says. It's the only serious business to be conducted in conversation. A good crop of tomatoes is an uncommon treasure. Nothing taken from the earth is as complex or rich with culinary potential as the red fruit. Even the distinct scent of the vines brings Jumbo close to ecstasy. Even at the end of the season, Gar’s wife can turn the green ones into a fried delicacy. “Gud,” Jumbo says, satisfied. 4 | Jacob’s Continuation Jumbo has found that even though most of the time he can’t understand his talented friend, it doesn't matter.

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