Chapter 31: Dian Mu dines
Dian Mu had dined in an abandoned mine 200 kilometers from Guangzhou, an underground cavern carved out of raw stone according to a master plan laid down in geology. All minerals of use had long since been extracted, but the space had been converted into a dinner theater.
The food and theatrics were equal parts tomorrow and yesterday, the future and the past, forward looking and backward looking. Dinner had been informed by — according to the program — Nero Wolfe’s favourites combined with misinformed readings of paleontology by American snake oil salesmen. As such, shad roe, braised duck, raw radish, macadamia nuts and a single sprig of parsley. The braised duck had been excellent.
The theater was some absurdist western farce based on the notion that EB White, some god of language, had met an afrit and a sabra in the Israeli desert and created a capella hymns to electricity, which is what had piqued her interest in the first place. The sheer novelty of it all had hooked her, had led her to make the trip along the quite delightfully twisting roads to reach this secluded place.
The communal mis-seating hadn’t been mentioned in the advanced press, but she’d ended up beside an Eastern European professor of public health called Guido, an expert on polio, who had arrived thinking he was attending an odd event based on that disease. He admitted his mistake with good humour and had expounded quite beautifully on Sabin’s oral vaccine, Gate’s amazing dedication to its spread into the farthest reaches of the globe and the eventual eradication of the disease he had devoted his life to. He was both delighted and saddened at his obsolescence, and Dian Mu was entranced yet again by the amazing things humans kept doing in the future that they continually and mutually invented.
At some point in the evening, the cavern was plunged into darkness. Dian Mu’s senses ranged out, ascertained that this was intended as innumerable behind-the-scenes technologies were humming along and power was still available in the wires. She gently removed Guido’s hand from her thigh as a sea battle was traced on the walls of the cavern in electric-blue lasers, islets, shores, naval craft and seamen etched and animated on the living, hewn rock. A selection of ryes and some sort of paleo salsa including tobacco stems were offered, both rejected by her, but not by the Eastern European poliologist. Some sort of rapprochement was made in the theatre between the electric sea battle, the god of language, the djinn and the representative of Israel to a sonic background of Bob Marley. It might have been intended as a geopolitical peace statement, but if so, the subtleties were lost on Dian Mu.
Despite Guido’s charm and offers of entertainments of a more intimate nature, she left alone, slipped back into her Roadster, battery gauge perpetually on full, and left dust devils and perplexed highway police in her wake as she ran it at speed through the night. The rapid unfolding of her plans and the delight in continuing to live in the future brought a broad smile to her face, and with it some new sensation. The delicate scent of vanilla bean wafted out of her car’s ducts. Her headlights, perhaps refracted off of minerals or left over pollutants in the atmosphere, shone ginger on the signage. The combination was beautiful and unexpected, a sensory hallucination that was just perceptible enough to notice, but far from overwhelming, a layering of choices that hinted at an ingenious plan, hinted at the artist’s aspirations but left much to the imagination.
The variance between the lasers-on-rock underground dinner and this micro-targeted theatre of the senses once again made Dian Mu grin fiercely. Her plans were indeed proceeding, her multiple overlapping goals coming into view. The future she inhabited was wondrous, and the future she could see coming and indeed was willing into being were both fascinating and full of pleasures.
She thought forward to the entertainment she had staged for the irate dragon, thought of a variant upon it, a shoe store façade upon the handlebars she would be steering it with, signage in neon. As always, she intended to wring every bit of delight from her passage through time, and this would enhance it. At a thought, her phone awoke, she passed the idea on to her dancing partner for his insights, his curious approach to the world he barely inhabited, his alert passion for new things and elaborate ploys.
As the tiny car ripped the air apart in its passage back to Guangzhou and her bed, she let thoughts slip away as she entered a particularly entertaining series of switchbacks, pushing more out of her car, tempting gravity and friction and fate, putting her money all on red in the roulette of extended life, refusing to cash out and muse on the past, but instead doubling down on the present.
