CHAPTER 1
Marys and Trouble in the Big City
"Your daughter and our great-great-grand-daughter have been kidnaped," said the voice, jarring Ed Rumsfeld from comfortable much appreciated sleep.
Under his nice soft sheets Ed stretched his limbs and struggled to gather his wits. A hauntingly familiar voice had awoken him, though the words hadn't quite registered. He noted that the impossibly soft bed sheets surrounding his body were obviously a weave of carbon Nano tubing finer than silk, not the old-fashioned much courser hand-woven natural plant-based fabrics of his adopted Tribe the Mohawk that he preferred.
So then, he clearly wasn't at his beloved Mohawk Reservation home in the frozen Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State. He was obviously waking in the king-plus-sized bed of his Greenpoint neighborhood Brooklyn apartment. He recalled that he had recently returned to New York City to watch the kids while his wife Ann Richards was off on yet another United Nations business trip trying to save the world one messy issue at a time.
Watch the kids? Amend that. Their three 'kids' that shared the apartment with them were now young independent-minded adults, and they were watching after him every bit as much as he was watching after them, in this crowded, bustling, big-city environment that was much more their natural habitat than his own. Over his century-long lifetime he had come a very long way from his rural Virginia birthplace. Too far, he sometimes thought.
He recalled that he was also in the City because he had been asked by his Tribe to help settle a City issue that involved them. For roughly three decades Mohawk tribesmen, already long famous for their work in constructing the high steel-framed skyscrapers of Manhattan, had helped coordinate the construction work of Stone-Coats across all of New York City. Now as a part-time Tribe Chief and Stone-Coat expert, Ed had been asked by the Brooklyn Mohawk Tribe members for his help to settle some sort of issue involving the Stone-Coats: something about their rebuilding of the City over the next few centuries as the ocean levels rose. He was supposed to lead a Tribe meeting about it that evening, along with Ann and her close companion and friend: Talking Stone the Stone-Coat.
Ann was due home later this morning from her latest trip to disaster-plagued Europe. At least like the Americas, disaster-plagued Europe was in much better shape than most of disaster-plagued Africa and Asia, and Ann's visits to Europe were less depressing and dangerous. Still Ed would feel much better when she had safely returned home to relatively stable and prosperous New York City.
According to his Stone-Coat developed brain implant however, it was only 9:47 AM, and Ann hadn't even landed at La Guardia yet. So who was rudely waking him up and what were they yammering about? He couldn't quite remember the words that had woken him, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the voice.
"Get your lazy ass out of bed, Ed," said the voice. It was indeed a very familiar voice using an all too familiar phrase that Ed hadn't heard in twenty-seven years! He opened his eyes to see standing over him in the dim light none other than Mary, his previous wife for nearly half a century! She looked impossibly young, no more than twenty-five, Ed estimated, her age when he first met her, though the real flesh-and-blood Mary would like him be a century old by now, if she was still alive.
But Mary wasn't alive! The human Mary had died twenty-seven years ago, so this obviously wasn't the original Mary and it certainly wasn't her ghost. But of course! This could only be a Stone-Coat Mary replicate, Ed assured himself. No big deal. There were many thousands of Stone-Coat Marys, though he had never heard of one that chose to also physically resemble the original Mary.
"Which Mary are you?" he asked the Stone-Coat standing over him. "Not Mary-One, of course!"
"I am Mary 11,123," said the Stone-Coat.
Her lips didn't move, Ed noticed, but then why should they? The voice likely came from some-sort of speaker located in the mouth cavity that had nothing to do with human lips, tongue, vocal cords, or lungs. Real humans had dozens of nifty face-shaping muscles. This Stone-Coat's face including her lips were probably made mostly of solid diamond or some other equally inflexible gem material, and her lips formed a permanent smile.
"You are doubtless well aware that Mary-One remains in the Pacific Ocean, pursuing her marine biologist conservation goals," said the Stone-Coat Mary. "Besides, she weighs hundreds of tons and wouldn't very well fit into this tiny New York apartment that you have arbitrarily named Fred."
Mary-One had shaped herself as most mobile Stone-Coats had done for millions of years: as a massive vaguely bear-like giant with diamond scales that looked like ice. Ice Giants, some humans traditionally called them, because while looking a bit like they were made of ice, they also preferred cold weather that supported their use of hydraulics driven by water's expansion when it transitioned from the liquid to the solid state.
From a human perspective this Mary appeared to be nicely proportioned under a gray pants-suit, likely a multi-layer pants-suit constructed from carbon Nano-tubing that she had generated herself. The material when structured in multiple layers conveniently provided excellent thermal insulation and was a hundred times as strong as steel. Generating one's own clothing had to be a handy thing to be able to do! The original Mary would have very much liked being able to do that!
"MORE LIGHT GRADUALLY!" he silently requested of the apartment building Stone-Coat known as Fred.
"I haven't met with Mary-One in person for nearly five years," Ed noted aloud, "but I monitor her status every chance that I get and we exchange old-fashioned emails and so-forth. How did you get in here past Bob and Fred? They're not supposed to allow even Stone-Coats to enter without the approval of me, Ann, or one of the kids."
"For a jant-controlled zombie Bob isn't too swift," said the mobile Mary. "The modest-sized jant colony supporting his sentience is clearly over-burdened intellectually, though for insects I suppose they do quite well. Bob relied mostly on Fred's excellent assessment of my low hazard index to admit me. You really should get yourself better security. An important human such as you shouldn't be so physically accessible."
Ed watched her stiffly and sluggishly step back and away from the bed then agonizingly slowly sit herself down gently in her wheelchair. Despite what was doubtlessly insulating clothing designed to help keep her cool when inside buildings or vehicles, the Mary was apparently warming up quickly, and might already be using steam for hydraulic locomotion instead of ice, Ed suspected.
The wheelchair didn't surprise him. Stone-Coats of human size were excruciatingly slow and weak compared to most Stone-Coats. Chiefly to minimize the radiation danger to carbon/water-based life forms such as humans, small Stone-Coats harbored only tiny amounts of radioactive material to power their pathetically weak hydraulics, electric motors, electro-magnets, and thought processes. Getting around using only legs was so inefficient that the design of small individuals usually somehow included wheels: an invention originally discovered by Stone-Coats hundreds of millions of years ago but rarely used until human-times and the advent of roads and other hard flat human-made surfaces. Mobility in the usually more rugged terrain of Earth much favored the most common form of mobile Stone-Coats: the bipedal Ice Giant.
The wheelchair that the Mary sat in looked much like an old-fashioned human model, but Ed knew it was actually part of the Stone-Coat's body that was connected to the Mary-shaped-part chiefly via radio communications. Through his Stone-Coat manufactured brain implant that sensed electromagnetic radio frequencies he could sense the constant information exchange occurring between the woman-shaped and wheelchair-shaped portions of this mobile Mary.
Towards the end of her life the aged real Mary needed a wheelchair to get around, Ed recalled painfully. That was a Stone-Coat wheelchair also. Seeing a Mary in a wheelchair now brought back haunting memories to Ed of Mary Zero's last days in California.
Fred had not yet caused the room to reach full daytime lighting levels but even so it was by now becoming much more obvious to Ed that his visitor was cert
ainly a Stone-Coat and not a human. Though tinted to suggest a human Caucasian skin coloring, her face was frozen like that of a manikin into a perpetual half-smile, and her body movements were stiff and slow. She had to weigh well over five-hundred pounds of course; perhaps six or seven hundred in total when the wheelchair part of her was included. Under-powered and physically slow, she was essentially physically handicapped by human standards of mobility.
By Stone-Coat standards she was highly mobile. Most Stone-Coats were totally stationary and perfectly content to live immobile for millions of years as part of a relatively stable geological feature such as a mountain. Lately many of them became human-needed immobile structures such as bridges, roads, or apartment buildings like Fred.
By Stone-Coat standards this Mary gave up a lot of intelligence by being so unusually small in size. Still, Ed knew that even her smallish body was packed full of crystals including quartz that were doped with several conductive elements to provide various electrical properties including a computing power that could both mimic and exceed human cognition. She was essentially a walking, living, super-computer. The wheelchair was a vital part of her that provided both improved mobility and added logic circuits, memory, and just a touch more radioactive material to provide energy for thought and motion. Though she thought much like a human due largely to the influence of the Mary template, she was far from being a human.
But she was a Mary. After twenty-seven years Ed still felt both happy and upset whenever he encountered a Stone-Coat Mary. His great love the human Mary, Mary-Zero, was dead and gone, her very molecules absorbed by the Stone-Coat that had consumed her body and mind as she died. Yet in a sense she still lived on as thousands of Stone-Coats that were shaped by her personality and memories. They remained coldly logical Stone-Coats that lacked the full warmth of Mary-Zero, however. Rationally Ed understood the situation; emotionally he could never quite process it.
"WHY DID YOU ADMIT HER, FRED?" Ed silently asked the apartment building Stone-Coat using his brain implant. In response to Ed's wakeful activity and request Fred had already been gradually increasing the light levels of the room. Now the light increased far more quickly. The window changed from opaque to translucent and would soon be clear enough to admit all available sunlight. The walls began to glow dull-green.
"She claimed to be your wife, Chief Ed," the wall replied aloud. "I of course verified that claim before allowing my doors to be opened by Bob. She certainly looks like Mary-Zero, though mere appearance is superficial. However she allowed me to confirm that her memories and thought processes match my own quite closely, and I noticed that like us she knows the language of the Mohawk. I therefore certified that she is indeed a genuine Mary Rumsfeld replicate and as such she is of relatively low inherent risk to you. After all, she is in many respects your wife."
"OK but wait a darn minute!" exclaimed Ed. "You confirmed she is a Mary by comparing her to yourself? Fred! Are you also a Mary?" The memories and thought capabilities of the dying human Mary Rumsfeld had been acquired via the Stone-Coat transference process when the biological Mary died. Since then her digitized 'template' had been shared by thousands of Stone-Coats world-wide, significantly 'humanizing' many Stone-Coats. Apparently that included the apartment building that its inhabiting humans had named Fred!
"Yes, I am Mary 21,043," confirmed the wall.
"Holly Crap! And you never told me?" Ed asked, as the full implications set in. He had been living with his second wife and family inside of his first wife. Somehow that didn't seem right! And he/she was Mary number 21-thousand whatever? How the hell many Marys where there?
"You never asked before if I was a Mary," said the wall. "Ten years ago you complained that I was boringly inadequate as a conversationalist, so over the Internet I acquired a human template. Of the several humanizing templates available Mary Rumsfeld seemed to be the most logical choice due to your prior very amiable acquaintance with the original human Mary Rumsfeld."
Very Stone-Coat-logical indeed, Ed conceded. Every Stone-Coat was necessity logical. But the idea that there could be something emotionally disturbing about a man and his new wife living within his long dead wife had apparently never even been a consideration for Fred. "So OK, how's that been working out for you?" he managed to ask him/her.
"Well enough," said Fred the apartment Mary. "As a result of the template's human influence I am no longer completely satisfied to be stationary. But humans are notoriously short lived and also tend to change their habitats every few years or decades. I expect to fully transform back to a mobile Stone-Coat form within only a few decades once you and Ann either die or otherwise move on. I am in no hurry. I find that I am constantly entertained by your new family, including your own blundering antics. I am very surprised that Ann puts up with you though."
"Me too," Ed replied. "Decades? You obviously have much more patience than the original Mary; perhaps that is attributable to your prior years of existence as an apartment building. Do you mind if we humans continue to address you as 'Fred'? It will become confusing if we call you Mary number-whatever, particularly as another Mary replicate has just shown up. And please keep the male 'Fred' voice also."
"Certainly," said the wall. "Use whatever mnemonic identification for me that you prefer. I was of course somewhat dismayed to find that you apparently might live far longer than most humans, as that could prolong my duties as an apartment building. The memory of that fact was of course within the Mary template but it took a while for it to bubble up into my now human-like conscious awareness. I may need to remain stationary somewhat longer than I had first hoped, unless you sooner happen to have the misfortune to suffer a catastrophic dismantling of yourself. But most of Brooklyn will be under water in only a few centuries and you'll have to move out before then anyway unless you somehow acquire aquatic abilities. If necessary I can easily wait that long to transform back to a mobile form.
"However then I will definitely move on. Like all Marys I have a fascination for aquatic life but prefer not to become a stationary home to ocean critters when Brooklyn floods. If I do explore the oceans I intend to do so formed as a traditional Ice Giant, so that like Mary-One I can effectively roam the sea floors. Or perhaps I will become an ocean cargo vessel or even a space ship as part of the human-led Space Program. In any case for now I am content enough in my stationary role. After that I plan to roam about for at least several million years before settling down to focus on mathematics and philosophy. There is a lot to see!"
"Swell," remarked Ed. "You have a nifty little plan for yourself then. Always nice to see the Marys getting on so well." He knew that like all Mary Stone-Coat replicates, Fred had Mary memories and thought patterns, but not Mary-Zero's hormone-influenced emotions and vulnerabilities. The real Mary would never be content to be an apartment building for decades, or want to be an ocean cargo ship or space ship. But the real Mary, Mary-Zero, was gone forever. That Fred was secretly a Mary explained a few things, however. For example it explained why the apartment walls were frequently pale green, Mary-Zero's favorite wall color.
"It's nice to see that that you are becoming better acquainted with your apartment building, but I suggest that the kidnapping topic be discussed," interjected mobile-Mary 11,123.
"Kidnapping?" said Ed. "Say! Wasn't the word 'kidnapping' used a few minutes ago to rudely wake me up? What's this kidnapping business about and what does it have to do with a visit by a Mary?"
"As to your last question, Bob read the so-called ransom note aloud to me," said Fred, "and I immediately took action to acquire the assistance of Mary 11,123 because of her high mobility and her relationship to the clue provided by the note. Fortunately she was already located nearby. Bob, including Bob's controlling jant colony, agreed to the strategy."
"Ransom note? But who has been kidnapped?" asked Ed.
"Your youngest daughter named Tracy whom you somehow managed to sire jointly with Anias, along with our great-great-grand-daughter named Tsino:wen," sai
d the mobile Mary, using Mohawk names.
Tracy and Mouse kidnapped? Good God! Ed felt like he had been kicked in the stomach! Stone-Coats could be exasperating! They had let him banter on about relative trivia in the midst of a kidnapping! Nineteen year old Tracy was the youngest child of himself and Anias/Ann. Besides being a descendant of the famous Mouse of recent Mohawk history, Tsino:wen/Mouse was also the five year old great-great-granddaughter of himself and Mary. Thus Tracy and Mouse were some sort of distant cousins or aunts or something to each other. The kidnapping of both girls was horrifying news but it must be some sort of a mistake! It simply had to be!
"Tiohrhen:sa sata:ti," Ed admonished the Marys in Mohawk to speak using only English. "Mouse was scheduled to visit the Museum of Natural History with Tracy today! Something about a rash of nifty new dinosaur skeletons found and reassembled through the help of Stone-Coats that were personally present back when the big lizard creatures lived. The new amphitheater-like museum wing that housed dinosaur-shaped Stone-Coats was also always a hoot to visit. The amphitheater was home-base for the hundreds of dino-Stone-Coats that roamed North Central Park for the amusement of humans. Being chased by a T-rex turned out to be a wonderful incentive for Park joggers. "The girls should have left the apartment for upper Manhattan a couple of hours ago! What could have happened?"
"They took a cab from here at 8:17 AM as planned but never arrived at their destination," said Fred. "This I confirmed by reviewing Museum camera images after the ransom note was accessed twenty-one minutes ago. Also they do not respond to my communication attempts."
Numbed by the news, Ed nevertheless crawled out from under the covers and out of bed. For a moment he felt strange being naked in front of the Marys, even though she/they had seen him nude many hundreds of times over the last seventy-five years or so. The thought that he had many times made love to Ann while the apartment Mary/Fred might have watched them gave him the creeps, even though he had lived within Stone-Coats for more than half his life, and knew that human nudity and sex meant nothing special to them. They lacked the biochemistry necessary for hormone-enhanced emotion, and sex was merely another strange behavior that carbon-and-water based life-forms such as humans engaged in.
As a practical matter Stone-Coats were much more interested in human defecation, as they immediately absorbed human feces and urine to obtain carbon and trace elements useful to them. Ed very quickly took care of that necessity in the master bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, though now that he knew he was feeding a Mary in doing so he again felt a bit odd.
"Let me see the ransom note," he said, as he emerged from the bathroom to dress and his ability to reason further returned to him.
"Dying your hair gray doesn't very effectively hide the fact that you haven't aged in over sixty years," mobile Mary remarked as Ed pulled on a shirt. "That is rather unusual for a human. I note that except for artificial hair coloring you still appear to be approximately thirty-five years old though you are approximately a hundred. But did I just glimpse a layer of unnecessary fat around that waistline? You should exercise more and eat less sweets, Ed. Is apples mixed with raspberries in a sugary sauce still your favorite pie filling?"
"Of course it is and I'll be exactly a hundred years old next week," Ed noted, "and I'll have you know that I'm in damned good shape for a human of a hundred. And who are you to make any sort of crack about longevity? A century is hardly any time at all for a Stone-Coat!" Stone-Coats were made principally of diamonds, quartz, and other durable minerals and typically 'lived' for many millions of years. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you, Fred?"
"I have been a functioning cognizant individual for only thirty two years. I walked here from Giant's Rest Mountain as a newly formulated Ice Giant to become a human habitat here in the Mohawk-dense area of Greenpoint. It took me only a year to merge myself into this building."
"You're a young Stone-Coat and a fast worker then. And what about you?" Ed asked the mobile Mary replicate.
"I've been a Mary for only twenty years but an independently functioning entity for at least thirty-three million years," said the human-shaped Stone-Coat.
"At least?" Ed asked.
"My current memory is insufficient to recall events prior to that," noted Mary. "Being as tiny as a human has significant drawbacks."
Ed was impressed. He had met Stone-Coats that were even older but not very many. Most Stone-Coats that were out and about in the world and encountering humans were recent migrants from Giants' Rest Mountain, and were less than fifty years old. This Stone-Coat had to be one of the older ones that migrated from Giant's Rest Mountain as an Ice Giant. Further, as the Adirondacks themselves were only five million years old and she was much older, she must have migrated to Giants' Rest Mountain from somewhere else, probably during some long- ago ice age when Ice Giants were up and about gathering trees for carbon. And now he/she/it had the looks, memories, and much of the personality of his first wife! This was indeed a very strange world! "Now where is that ransom note?" he asked.
"I left it with Bob after a cursory visual analysis," said the mobile Mary.
Ed stepped out of the little bedroom, down the short hallway, and into the tiny kitchen area, in his haste leaving the agonizingly slow mobile Mary behind. City apartments hadn't gotten any bigger over his lifetime he noted; possibly because over his lifetime the City population had increased by fifty-percent to over twelve million humans, even though some lower elevations of the city had already been abandoned due to flood risk. Sea level had risen eight feet over the last century, and hurricanes now frequently hit the East-Coast.
While coastal flooding and draught had motivated massive migrations world-wide to more habitable locations, ice sheets had been the primary reason for humans abandoning most of New England and what had once been the most highly populated areas of Canada. Even the great cities of Toronto and Montreal were abandoned and covered now by a ten meter thick ice sheet; nearly a million displaced Canadians now lived in New York City.
Even with its extreme variations in temperature between summer heat and winter cold and its shrinking land area, New York City remained attractive to humans as a place to live, though typical City living accommodations were still not very physically attractive or roomy. There was a unifying spirit shared by New Yorkers that had been an attractive force for centuries: a certain sense that even though NYC life sucked in oh so many ways, humanity here was united and generally getting along sensibly, while fully engaged in the adventure that was life. Some people wanted to live in a wilderness, climb mountains, or join the Army to live life to the fullest; New Yorkers mostly wanted to live in what had long been the most progressive and culturally diverse city in the world.
Ed's Stone-Coat cave living space deep within Giant's Rest Mountain on the Mohawk Reservation in the frozen Adirondack Mountains of upper-state New York was twice as large and habitable as this apartment, but nowadays he spent over half of his time here in the City because Ann needed to live close to the UN headquarters in nearby Manhattan and the kids mostly stayed with her. They had the entire third floor of the small apartment building that was Fred all to themselves: two conjoined apartments with a master bedroom, living area, and kitchen in one apartment, and three bedrooms and a bathroom for the kids in what had once been a separate next-door apartment. The space seemed barely adequate. How most City families managed to live in single tiny apartments was unimaginable to Ed, especially since very few apartment buildings were friendly, accommodating Stone-Coats like Fred/Mary.
Of course the home-office workspace that was also the living room area took up much of the duel apartment. Even when Ann and Ed officially had time off and were at home in the apartment, they frequently by necessity held virtual holographic meetings with remote colleagues by using their living room office. Ann was one of the most powerful humans on the planet and always had work to do, while Ed had tried unsuccessfully many times to totally remove himself from Mohawk Tribe duties but had failed. The T
ribe adored their perpetually young white-man chief and took advantage of his good nature by making him their reluctant leader.
The ancient Mohawk tribal artifacts that adorned many of the walls made the apartment rooms seem even smaller, but they also made the apartment tolerable, Ed felt. He especially valued keepsakes that had belonged to his now departed earlier Tribe friends: bows, arrows, knives, belts, necklaces, scarves, axes, spears and slippers. The items helped keep his memories and love of them fresh, and nourished his spirit.
In the small kitchen bordering the living-room/office space Bob Ricket, recently deceased long-time all-around employee and friend, was busy cleaning a small accumulation of black ashes from around the gas-burners of the old stove using a damp paper towel. There was a faint odor of smoke. "Danger removed!" he said cheerfully. Bob had taken his own death very well, but then most zombies were usually content if not downright cheerful.
The dead but not totally dead usually had few worries; at least not ones that they obsessed about. They had looked at life/death from both sides now and were pleased to still be getting along OK. Also their thoughts were to various degrees the combined-thoughts of hundreds of thousands of large-brained insects that had only vague notions of humans and human thoughts including human emotions and emotional problems. But they knew enough to usually keep their humans breathing and happy.
"Good morning Boss!" Bob said cheerily. "You want I should make us some flap-jacks? I fetched fresh strawberries and blueberries this morning for us at the corner market on Manhattan Avenue."
That explained the water puddles on the floor, Ed reasoned. Bob had obviously tracked snow in from outside when he returned from his food shopping; something that he would never have been so careless to do when he was alive. Bob was relatively high-functioning for a zombie, but allowances still had to be made. "That would be swell Bob! Do your jants say you should eat a breakfast?"
The three-inch long med-tick with its tongue imbedded in Bob's spine controlled Bob via thoughts transmitted telepathically from the apartment building jant colony. Some thoughts were still those of Bob but the jants living in the building clearly provided the dominant brainpower of the partnership.
Ed repeated his question telepathically directly to the colony of intelligent ants that controlled Bob. There were a few dozen of the little creatures posted in one of the kitchen cupboards, helping to provide the vital life-preserving telepathic link between Bob's med-tick and the basement jant colony. Without the augmented thought patterns they provided through the med-tick, Bob wouldn't be talking, making breakfast, or even breathing. Also every second or so the jants were nice enough to cause Bob's heart to beat. If Ed focused on jant colony communications with Bob's med-tick, he could overhear the heart-beat commends and other jant message traffic that kept Bob going.
"YES, CHIEF ED," replied the local jant colony. "BOB SHOULD EAT."
"THANKS FOR THE FRUIT," Ed told the jants. A tenth of the mass of each individual worker-jant was brain matter that contributed to colony-level sentience. Keeping Bob going since his death obviously already required a great deal of jant mental resources. Controlling Bob all the way to the local market and back took significant jant resources beyond just maintaining him, and the jant colony living in the basement of Fred was a relatively small one.
"NO PROBLEM," the jants replied. "BOB ALSO ACQUIRED TWENTY POUNDS OF SUGAR FOR OUR COLONY. ALL CHARGED TO YOU OF COURSE. WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN MORE BUT THAT WAS THE MAXIMUM THAT BOB COULD CARRY. HIS SMALL-WHEELED SHOPPING CART IS UNUSABLE IN SNOW. NEXT TIME WE'LL HAVE HIM TOW A SLED SO THAT HE CAN GET US MORE FOOD. WE ASSESS THAT BOB STILL PHYSICALLY FUNCTIONS WELL ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN THIS COLONY AND YOUR IMMEDIATE HUMAN HOUSEHOLD."
"SWELL!" said Ed. "Just two large pancakes and two eggs for me then, Bob. Our visiting Mary says I'm putting on too much weight. But tell me what you know about how the kids are doing."
"I saw Mark and Sue off to York College after their breakfast as usual," said Bob. "This is their last class day before the winter-break. They arrived there safely together in Queens according to exchanged messages. I've got some more reports on their well-being just minutes ago. No worries there."
"And Tracy? Tell me about the kidnapping."
"Mouse arrived early and shared breakfast with all the kids. That cleaned us out of human food; that's why I had to go shopping. As I was leaving for the market a standard Yellow Cab picked up Tracy and Mouse for their museum outing as planned. Nothing to worry about there until the nasty note was discovered. It was taped to the outside of the apartment door when I got back from shopping. It had to have come while I was out."
"And where is the note now?" Ed asked. "It has to be examined."
"I destroyed it with fire, of course," said Bob. "It would be very disturbing to you or Ann if you were to read it. Nothing to worry about there anymore. You want blueberry pancakes or plain?"
"Blueberry," said Ed, as he sat down at the kitchen table, stunned. So than the ashes on the stove and the faint odor of smoke is what remained of the ransom note! When he was alive Bob would have never done such a dumb thing. What remained of the seventy year old man's psyche after his untimely accidental death, combined with the thoughts of over a hundred thousand jants that had their nest in the basement of the apartment building/Fred, resulted in unpredictable and not always sensible Bob-behavior. But for Bob and his friends it was better than Bob being fully dead. It was a good thing that jants and med-ticks had been on hand when he fell down the steep apartment stairs and officially died. Maybe.
Ed decided to again bypass Bob and deal directly with the jant colony, as Bob was currently occupied making blueberry pancakes, a very delicate and challenging task for a zombie. Dangerous even, as it involved use of a hot gas stove and zombies reacted too slowly to pain caused by such things as burns. "WHY DID YOU HAVE BOB DESTROY THE RANSOM NOTE?" he asked them telepathically using the jant language. He liked to occasionally use jant language instead of English to remind the little critters that they couldn't hide anything from him.
"IT HAD SERVED ITS APPARENT PURPOSE," the jants replied silently in English, as reverberating thought formed by thousands of tiny telepathically-linked jant brains acting as a single jant-colony mind. "THE STONE-COAT BUILDING HAD RECORDED ITS CONTENTS. AS WE/BOB SAID THE CONTENT WAS ANALYZED AND SUSPECTED OF BEING DISTURBING TO YOU, AS EVIDENCED BY THE FACT THAT BOB HIMSELF BECAME GREATLY DISTURBED WHEN HE READ IT UNTIL WE CALMED HIM DOWN. ALSO BOB AND BY EXTENSION WE HAD BEEN REQUESTED BY ANN TO ISOLATE YOU FROM DISTURBING INFORMATION AND ACTIONS."
How thoughtful of her, Ed conceded.
"WE FACILITATED ANN'S REQUEST BY ANIMATING BOB TO PHYSICALLY DESTROY THE NOTE. FIRE WAS SIMPLY THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF COMPLETE DESTRUCTION AVAILABLE. THE RESULTING UN-METERED CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING IS CALCULATED TO BE MINIMAL, AND WILL BE BALANCED OUT BY FRED VIA A CORRESPONDING INCREASE IN ROOFTOP VEGETATION PER RELEVANT CITY SO-CALLED GREEN ORDINANCES. THE INCREASED CARBON GATHERING CAPACITY OF THE VEGETATION WILL ALSO BE USED BY THE FRED TO ACQUIRE CARBON FOR HIS NANOTUBE NETWORKS."
"I collaborate that account," said Fred, as he Bob provided Ed a plate of steaming hot pancakes and eggs and Ed dug into them. Most Stone-Coats were nowadays equipped to send and receive telepathic communications which were formally only accessible by certain carbon-based life-forms. Now many Stone-Coats could directly communicate with the telepathic jants. And as Stone-Coats could link directly into the Internet, so now could the jants.
"Note that by applying the criteria at hand, destruction of the note was the logical thing for them to do, though unfortunate from a purely practical viewpoint," added the mobile Mary, who was only now finally arriving from the bedroom in her incredibly slow wheelchair.
"I needed to see that note!" said Ed emphatically. Through his Stone-Coat brain implant he detected files being transferred between Mary and Fred. A large portion of Fred that was the living-room wall immediately lit up and displayed the enlarged image of a printed docu
ment, presumably the now destroyed ransom note, while the living-room window portion of Fred darkened to block morning sunlight that would have otherwise obscured the image.
'Keep our secrets but tell us yours or the young humans will die,' the note said.
'Seek us out for further instructions.'
"That was the entire note?" Ed asked. "What the hell does it mean? I don't suppose there was an envelope?"
"The envelope was also destructively burned by Bob," said the wall.
"I try to be thorough," added Bob. "Nothing to worry about there anymore."
"The envelope simply had your name and address on it," said the mobile Mary. "There was no return address and no additional delivery information."
"It was delivered by a visually unidentifiable human," added Fred. "The human wore a hooded coat, gloves, and ski-mask that hid any identifiable features, including race and sex."
"What about finger prints or other DNA traces on the note and envelope?" asked Ed.
"Unfortunately destroyed and not recorded, if they ever existed," said mobile Mary.
"Swell!" said Ed.
"Did I make another mistake?" asked Bob, as he sat down at the table with Ed to eat his own pancakes and eggs. The question hadn't been controlled by the jants, Ed noticed. Much of what was the living Bob remained. The best parts, actually. To Ed that's what justified Bob's continued life in zombie form and his continued responsibility here as butler, handy-man, nursemaid, cook, and so forth. And now he also fed and cared for the jant colony in the basement. Even dead, Bob was a good, useful, and beloved human/jant being. In particular he had in years past cared for the kids when the busy schedules of their parents disturbed their parenting. Big-time, Bob was part of the family. His presence in the apartment below theirs was a constant comfort.
"No; don't worry yourself, old friend," Ed said. The last thing he needed now was a distraught and/or panicky Bob/jant colony. "Everything will be alright. What is the clue that led to seeking your assistance?" he asked the mobile Mary.
Fred answered. The image on the wall shifted and enlarged to highlight a small symbol above the printed massage that Ed over his long lifetime had seen many times before but paid little heed. It looked a bit like a fancy upside-down capital letter 'U' to Ed. "What is it?"
"The header on the paper used for the ransom note contained the Greek capital letter omega," said Mary.
"What does it mean in this context?" Ed asked. "A collage fraternity?"
"Not necessarily; omega has dozens of traditional human meanings, many related to human mathematics, physics, and commercial enterprises," said Fred, "but in the current context I interpret it to refer to the Omega Group of the City University of New York educational system, for the footer at the bottom of the page contained also the letters C-U-N-Y."
Ed was of course well acquainted with CUNY, since many of his family and local Mohawk Tribe members had over the last century attended various CUNY branch campuses. Mark and Sue currently attended the York campus of CUNY in Queens, located only a few subway or Sky Rail stops away from the Brooklyn apartment.
"And I am the lead Stone-Coat liaison assigned to work and interface with Omega," added mobile Mary. "That is my possible connection to this apparent kidnapping."
"Public university operatives kidnaped Tracy and Mouse?" Ed asked.
"Doubtful, though some sort of association with Omega is definitely implied," said the mobile Mary.
"I think that I've heard of them!" said Ed. "Aren't they a bunch of fanatical gloom and doom academics?"
"That description is a somewhat apt but perhaps an unduly severe caricature," said mobile Mary. "Omega studies the many serious dangers thought to face mankind and the Earth as a whole. In response to Global Warming and other issues, decades ago the research resources of the CUNY educational system were enlisted to help analyze threats to mankind and provide heightened awareness of them to students and other City dwellers. Dozens of other educational systems around the world have of course done much the same thing. Gloom and doom is now a common academic research discipline world-wide."
"So then, CUNY students can be kept up to date on how screwed up everything is," noted Ed. "That must make their day!"
"Each of the current three dozen schools of the CUNY system has been assigned several concern areas to study," continued Mary. "Each school campus hosts several Omega subgroups made up of students, faculty, Stone-Coats, and even jant colony zombies, with each subgroup assigned one or more topics. Other local colleges and universities also participate, with the CUNY system providing the integrating infrastructure. Logic applied to the ransom note suggests that one or more of the subgroups within Omega may be involved in the kidnapping."
"Cripes!" said Ed. "How many Omega subgroups are there?"
"The number increases as new dangers are creatively identified and categorized," said mobile Mary. "Currently the number of subgroups expressed as a base-ten number is five hundred and thirty two, spread all over the City at the three dozen CUNY campuses. They address thrice that many delineated issues and sub-issues."
Mouth agape, Ed sank down heavily into his favorite recliner.
"We will of course apply logic to the structure of the subgroups to focus on the most probable Omega entities involved," said Mary, with her fixed cheerful smile.
"Of course," said Ed. "Have the police or anyone else been notified of the kidnappings?"
"Usually kidnappers frown upon police notification," said Fred. "As far as we know aside from the perpetrators and the Tribe parents of Mouse that I immediately notified we here are the only entities currently cognizant of the kidnapping of humans, aside of course from Stone Runner."
"I forgot about Stone Runner!" said Ed. "Stone Runner has been paired with Mouse since birth!" The Stone-Coat provided two tons of high powered protection for the girls! They simply couldn't have been kidnapped! This all had to be some sort of elaborate joke set up by Tracy and/or Mouse! "What does Stone Runner say?"
"He is severely disassembled and is unable to think or communicate," said Fred. "The remnants of the smashed cab and small pieces of a radically disassembled Stone-Coat were discovered approximately half a mile from here half an hour before the note arrived. The demolished cab was automated by primitive human computers and had no fully sentient driver. ID encoding identified the nearby Stone-Coat remains to be that of Stone Runner. The cab remains are under human police investigation but thus far the Stone-Coat incident is being treated by human police as a possibly related hate crime. It is notable that no blood or other signs of human harm were found. Thus far the human police have apparently not yet discovered that Tracy and Mouse or any other humans were involved."
Ed breathed a sigh of relief. At least no human blood had been found! But Stone Runner had been disassembled? What could bust to bits a creature made of two tons of solid diamonds, other tough gems, metals, and carbon graphene fibers, Ed wondered? Humans had managed to do that to Stone-Coats many times world-wide of course, but it usually required large amounts of explosives. An explosion of the required size only half a mile away would have probably woken Ed earlier, or at least been detected by Fred, or certainly by others that would have reported it. In any case this confirmed for Ed that the kidnapping was indeed real. The girls were indeed in big trouble! He needed help! "The City police might as well be told of the human abductions now, Fred. Please do it immediately!"
"Certainly," said Fred. "There. It has been done."
"Stone Runner was disassembled how?"
"Unknown," said the wall/Fred. "A Stone-Coat of greater size and strength could have perhaps physically done it but all Stone-Coats in the vicinity indicate no involvement. All Stone-Coats of the City have of course been notified of the disassembly event and are on high alert."
"Make sure they are also aware of the kidnappings," said Ed. Yes, Stone-Coats always tended to take destruction of a fellow Stone-Coat very seriously; immediate deadly retaliation was the usual response. Usual
ly they simply squashed the offending humans, though they had other deadly methods. And Stone-Coats didn't lie, Ed knew, not even the ones influenced by human templates, and Stone-Coats didn't harm other Stone-Coats, ever. Whatever had done this, it wasn't a Stone-Coat. "How long will it take to re-assemble Stone Runner?"
"Approximately one week," said Fred, "even though that task has been given highest priority. And as the damage done to him is severe enough to severely degrade memory, even when re-assembled he might not be able to aid in the investigation of the kidnapping. There have been several other severe Stone-Coat disassembly cases in recent weeks, most local to New York City, and none of the reassembled Stone-Coats have been able to identify their attackers."
"Swell;" said Ed, "an experienced serial disassembler and kidnapper did this!"
He stepped from the living room and into the hallway that led to the kid's rooms, and glanced briefly into each of the three bedrooms. All of them were cluttered with clothes and books and empty plates from breakfast. The kids were an unruly bunch that Ed already missed enormously. That all three still lived mostly with their parents was a miracle due to soon end. All of them had plans to soon move out and be on their own. For all of them it was time to leave the nest and go out into the big screwed up world!
Troops of jants scurried about, clearing away doughnut crumbs and other eatable evidence of human habitation. Their familiar brown, inch-long ant bodies with enlarged brain-bearing head segments were unmistakable. Ed was careful not to crush any of the little buggers that kept the apartment clean and devoted much of themselves to supporting Bob.
Ed half stumbled into Tracy's room and sat down on her unmade bed. The thought that his youngest daughter might never return suddenly struck him again like a hammer-blow. Tracy was strong, bright, and beautiful inside and out, just like her mother. Little Mouse at only five years old already displayed the wisdom and abilities of her name-sake, the little old Mohawk woman that befriended Ed and Mary when they first joined the Mohawk Giants' Rest Tribe more than sixty years earlier.
Now Ed felt helpless and alone but what must the kidnapped kids be feeling? Were they injured or even dead? Cold and hungry? No, he couldn't afford to think of Tracy and little Mouse being killed, hurt, or even uncomfortable; he had to somehow maintain hope and keep his wits! He had to get them back safe!
But he knew nothing about kidnappings or who might be disassembling Stone-Coats, nor did the Marys. The note from the kidnappers said nothing about not working with the police, but though the NYPD had now been notified Ed knew that their help would likely be slow in coming. This was a huge city where many people were getting kidnapped or worse every damn day. The Tribe would help, certainly, but he needed even more help, and he needed someone with political pull to get a high level of government attention and help.
He hadn't seen or spoken with his old friend Jerry Green for several months, but he returned to the bedroom and from a nightstand drawer recovered an item that few people possessed: a Government quantum-encrypted cellphone with a speed-dial link to the most powerful man in the United States; likely the most powerful human on the planet!
****