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Category: Science Fiction
Description: Pacifica. It was an artificial island created in the middle of the Pacific ocean, designed to feed the starving millions of the world. But the billionaire behind the project has other plans … a sinister agenda which will ultimately enslave mankind unless he is stopped!
eBook Publisher: Wildside Press, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2002

20 Reader Ratings:

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Words: 63726
Reading time: 182-254 min.

She swirled up to Cristopher Morrisey in a knot of friends and hangers-on, her skin painted chocolate and azure, her hair a shimmering golden bow. A blue-green holodress twined snakelike around her, revealing dark thighs and the occasional smooth curve of breast, but Marica Vonn-Grendel was like that, and Cris expected it of her. It was part of her charm, part of her power, all of which drew him inexorably closer, a moth to her flame. After all, what did he, a mere painter, mere artist, know of fashion? Only her eyes seemed normal tonight, that pale piercing shade of blue he'd always found so distracting.

"Cristopher darling," she said, and when she smiled her teeth were dark as her skin, crawling with geometric designs.

"Marica," he said. "I didn't expect you. I thought my gallery openings were too tame for your tastes."

"Wifely duties," she said, and a titter came from her coterie of friends. Cris glared and they shut up. They too sported weird holographic clothes and wild, dyed chromatic hair designs. He remembered none of their names. Just glitterfolk, like Marica; they came and went and others would replace them in an endless, mindless flow.

He forced a smile. "Of course, your portrait. I'd forgotten it's on exhibit." She hadn't been his wife in months, he reminded himself, not since he'd finished painting her. That portrait hung on the far wall, a masterful study in oil and holo laserwork, five meters high and ten wide: Marica, naked on a beach, with gulls constantly wheeling overhead, the interplay of shadows on her face the piece's focal point. It was his greatest work thus far. Something about Marica inspired him as no other woman ever had. Or, he thought, ever would again.

A lull in talk around them brought the gulls' raucous voices. After Marica abandoned him, he'd dubbed crow caws into the audio track. It made an interesting contrast to his usual hyper-realism.

"I'm having a party later tonight. Come?"

"I don't know . . ."

Her lips pursed, a mock kiss. "I'll send someone to pick you up, dear. Ta." And off she swept, followed by her glitterdressed friends, to make a quick circuit of the room. He doubted she'd even remember having asked him to her party in an hour; but that was the way she'd always been. He'd known that when he'd proposed in January. Still, their four months together while he'd dawdled over her portrait had been more than most of her lovers enjoyed.

As they passed Cris on their way to the exit, something small and white dropped from Marica's hand.

They'd gone by the time he crossed the floor and picked up the paper. Someone (surely not Marica) had neatly inked PACIFICA in all caps.

He crumpled it up. Then something made him smooth it out, read that single word again. With a sigh he put the card in his breast pocket, next to his heart, and tried to force her from his thoughts for the rest of the evening.

Accepting a glass of wine from one of the wandering servants, he put on his charm and began to mingle with patrons. Mega-money everywhere; no telling where his next sale or commission would come from.

A pair of green-haired old ladies with too much makeup cornered him by his holostatue of starships crashing into the sun. "You're a genius," the one on the left cooed, "the last artist who actually feels the human condition."

"Thank you," he murmured as she nattered on and on, "you're too kind." His gaze kept straying back to the door, to where he'd last seen Marica, and he felt a strange, empty sort of longing inside.

Idly he fingered his pocket. He pictured Marica's tall form moving away from him in a swirl of color, her dress the blue-green on the sea, her hair the blond-gold of the morning sun, the strange card fluttering down from her hand like the falling petal of a flower.

Pacifica. He wondered what it meant.

Copyright © 2002 by John Gregory Betancourt and Linda E. Bushyager