Chapter 42: Dian Mu meditates on the cusp of change
Dian Mu skimmed low over the brilliant aquamarine of the South China Sea, small breakers throwing wisps of white into the air. As always, she was well over the speed which the manufacturers had thought was the maximum for her tiny electric craft, and also well beyond the expected range.
She pulled the stick back, pointed the aircraft straight up and rode it up and up until the propeller could no longer hold it, it stalled out, and fell back down toward the sea. She adjusted trim, pulled out of the tumbling spin, pointed the nose down to pick up speed, then yanked the stick back again, kept it back as the plane performed a complete loop.
She spun, she danced with clouds, she rolled, she slid sideways through the sky, yawing the plane around until it fell tumbling again and she caught it again, pushed it into more acrobatics. All for the sheer joy of flight.
On this last day before the world changed at her hands. When this pleasure of hers would not be the same again, perhaps never be equaled, never be so unique.
This day had been long in coming. Arguably, it had started a century before in New York, her passionate interlude with the Serbian inventor, the intellect and sensuality that they had enjoyed in one another, the components and technology she had brought back to her native land. Or perhaps more than two hundred years earlier with Watt, not famous for electricity despite his name, someone she had never met, had mixed feelings about in retrospect, so advantageous had he been for the world in some ways and so devastating in others. Another start date was years in the past, a chance thought she’d had, and yet another was only months earlier when Zau approached her so circumspectly and properly.
So many possible beginnings to this story, and so many ways this day might never have come. But it had arrived, and she was greeting it with exuberant and ebullient flight.
Her phone chimed. Her dancing partner, not here high in the air, but in another form of atmosphere entirely, had sent her a quick message. The events that they had planned had come to fruition. The world’s press was awash in stories, servers and Ethernet and routers groaning under the pressure, weibo sluggish but uncensored as a billion Chinese people reacted, Facebook and Twitter and WhatsApp swamped with other billions.
Her phone again, another message, this one from Ida. In the moment, everything was responding as predicted in the markets, free falling in some areas, buoyant in others. The prepared trades had executed. All was well.
Another text. Zhang Gaoli, as fitting now communicating with her with a new degree of etiquette based upon the strictures of the treaties they observed. His xie xie unfeigned and ebullient even through the medium of text.
She passed high over a tiny chûn under sail far below, with a thought dispatched instructions through her phone, triggered a message, forgot about the task and concentrated on the feeling of the wind, the G forces pressing her into her seat or into her harness, the sheer exuberant pleasure of flight.
With a wave, she had her phone shift to Do Not Disturb mode, concentrated once again on the miracle of flight, smiled fiercely as the world rolled beneath her and a tinge of vanilla stole into the cockpit.
She rolled the plane one last time, then pointed its nose toward Hong Kong. It was time to prepare for the evening and the night, something else which had been long in coming. She had a closing night party to attend.
And this night traffic would be unpredictable, likely worse than usual, impossible to shift as she often did. She would be earthbound, her passage linked to the humans around her, the fate of her arrival dependent upon the actions of the press of humanity she existed within. Her hands would be off the wheel, the car autonomous and its autonomy no longer constrained by the rules of the old world. Her Roadster would not be called upon to perform unreal feats of speed and lateral force tonight, but would staidly ride amidst the other vehicles on the road, a bubble of futurity among the mostly obsolete internal combustion vehicles it shared the pavement with.
This too would change. It would all change. But first, tonight.