I Try To Be of Help — The Evening Gathering

A blizzard struck Invernali just before the guests arrived, and the tower was quickly snowed in, including the rooftop patio.

I arrived at the party on the forty-seventh floor at the same time as a thousand guests. Potestas Tower was snowed in. One of the staff told me the roof was an inhospitable frozen tundra and directed me to take the elevator down from the floating penthouse into the main building to the bar and lounge.

An entire floor of the company building was a night club and billiards room, already packed like a concert venue, and every seat was taken. I couldn't believe how crowded it was. It was just after hora octava. Cristo had promised the entire empire would want to squeeze into one room, but damn. Stars damn. It was packed.

The buzz of gossip got louder, so the band played louder, so everyone shouted, so the band played louder.

An idea struck me as I pushed out of the elevator and I squished through the uncomfortable early birds to make it happen. "Give them the run of the building," I told security. "Open links to the other floors." The random security guard I had ordered put a hand to her ear and relayed what I had said.

Sixty seconds later, the seats remained occupied, but there was space to move between the bar and lounge space to the windows past which white snowflakes blurred the view. There was even room to stand in front of the three fireplaces and some of the dozen small fire pits, but, feeling like I already made a huge contribution to Sunyin Aura's campaign, I headed to the bar first for a drink.

I wasn't going to drink it.

Well, maybe a few sips. An estimated six thousand liquor bottles looked down on me from the bar that ran the span of the building. I just wanted a beer in my hand for when I had to talk to people.

I asked for a pilsner when there were four different ones on tap, but the bartender didn't argue follow up questions with an Aurelian; he just brought me a draft.

Leander continued to marvel in frustration at the Solari. He monitored arrivals in the lobby of Potestas Tower with melted snow on the floor slowly pooling deeper around his brogues. "This way please," he directed guest after guest stepping out of links, pointing them to the security staff who actually had the capability to check for weapons.

He still didn't see why he couldn't just pat the guests down, but apparently the most powerful Soliari would find it barbaric to have a security guard feel up and down their bodies with his or her hands.

Three security guards in three lines scanned a hundred guests for guns, but each test was over in seconds. Three orderly queues passed security with no complaint and gathered into a mass to wait for the elevators to the lounge on the antepenultimate floor of the main building.

That Potestas Tower, a place of business, would have an entire floor taken over by a swanky shadowy bar with dazzling views of Invernali and indoor fire pits that linked away the smoke surprised Leander — but it shouldn't have at this point.

Leander tapped his foot, then paced. The boss had made sure he understood: "No one is permitted to link into Potestas Tower, anywhere except for the lobby."

Yet Leander had still had more questions. Three links remained open for arrivals, and guests draped in completely different and equally expensive dress from last night stepped one at a time through them; but Leander's understanding was that they didn't come from the same three places.

He didn't ask, though. He just kept the procession moving. And eavesdropped.

"Great theme for a party, the audacity," a woman passing him whispered. "But we'll all look back on it as the party of the year." Others were saying the same in full volume.

"End of the world party, this ought to be memorable," said another guest.

"As long as the world doesn't actually end," a man with her said.

Pretending to be nothing but the queue monitor, with his hand always on the ridiculous dagger hilt at his side, Leander felt like he was right back in the saddle of doing police work. Potential assassins would keep their eyes on the security guards who actually had guns in their holsters.

"Pitch black already, you realize it's hardly afternoon?" a guest said. A young man. "Want to place bets on when the sun will rise?" Almost no one cared the president was dead, except for in relation to the sun setting. "I heard she died the second the last rays of sunlight vanished beneath the horizon."

"I always knew President Solin would come to a sticky end. When the sun came up early, I should have known today would be the day," said someone else. In reply, not even whispered, someone said, "It's his fault then, no doubt. The question is, was Gaia Solin the only person who could fix it?"

Leander wanted to know what they were doing to fix it. Unless these speakers were here to petition the boss to investigate, not enough.

With a beer in my hand, I had no idea what to do next. There were far too many guests. Certainly we needed many here for background noise; we needed extras to back up the key players. The noise volume, though, was not helpful.

Meandering back into a crowd that was thickening again already, I wondered if it would be too rude to mandate everyone unimportant to link to somewhere else in the building, anywhere else.

Offices, detention level, my bedroom, I didn't care.

I spotted Cristo across the floor in shadows that alternated with the flash of lights. He was with Diana Aemilia, who, if tears weren't currently streaming down her face, had just been crying.

Or he had been with Diana Aemilia for a second or two, before he walked away and abandoned her, leaving her alone with light flashing on the wet shining on her cheeks.

I nursed the pint in my hand and looked for anyone else I knew, and turned down an offer of appetizers from a passing waiter. My stomach churned.

The guests, on the other hand, had all skipped dinner to be here and made the appetizers disappear.

Not one of them wore the same outfit as last night. Obviously, but here I thought two parties in two nights would be too little time for trends to change. To which the Soliari responded challenge accepted.

Even though it was warm and they were inside, dresses had long sleeves, and big heavy coats warmed shoulders until taken off and piled on lounge chairs to complement the roaring fires. Coats would have made more sense outside last night, where I remembered bare arms and shoulders and the occasional plunging back. Taupe and crimson, black, celadon and cedar, dark winter shades I'll never understand replaced colorful masks and colorful dresses.

The men looked exactly the same — as each other and last night — but that didn't mean a single one of them wore the same indistinguishable suit as last night. Except me. It happens to be my favorite. Shirts, ties and vests came in different colors. Taupe and cyan, not aqua and lilac.

Rapid inhalation of whiskey and vadio bairrada were also trending.

Pilsner clutched in my hand, stumbling soberly through the crush of bodies that were somehow thicker still as if the whole damn empire were linking into the building, I thought of something I could do to help that was fairly useless — but not entirely useless — and within my capabilities. You know, attainable goals.

I was just going to stroll around with my hands clasped behind my back, not talking to anybody, until I identified and located the fourteen voters expected to have been loyal to President Gaia Solin. Just scope them out. I had all night to get up the guts to ask each to vote for Sunyin Aura. 

For now I would just find them.

Hands clasped behind my back, I wandered into the middle of the lounge and made my way back toward the elevators. In seconds I found two: Julia Veturius sat on prime couch space talking to Laura Pontius. A fire pit warmed them; a link facing downward transported the smoke away. It was too warm, so the women had taken off their coats. It looked like if they could have they would have rolled up their sleeves. What the hell I was supposed to go over there and say to them to stop them from voting for Justin Marius was beyond me, so I ticked them off on my mental list, check! and felt very accomplished.

I turned my head one way to see hundreds of strangers' faces. Five more strides across the lounge and I found three more board members and made a mental note where they were. I could see Nova sitting at a bar near the window with Tony Solari. I let her handle him. Sidled up next to him at a small bar in the corner by the windows, it didn't look as if she had tried to talk with him yet.

Downstairs, Leander paced, alert but a bit bored already, watching harmless wealthy invitees filter into elevators.

He tried to remember the last party he had been a guest at himself. It had been over a year ago, he decided. A summer gala to honor civil servants, the ballroom was an ancient venue that could be appropriated by the city any time, and he pre-drank enough to not remember much except for the architecture and the end under the stars out on the terrace. Another sparkling wine in hand that was definitely not brand name champagne, Leander remembered laughing, almost falling over, leaning on the balustrade with one hand gripping it and the other around a beautiful girl.

As far as he could picture in his mind's eye, that was the last time he remembered Dianthea laughing, period. Or at least laughing like that. Actually happy. Before despair set into her eyes and rippled out into bags under them from sleepless nights, back before her laughter alternated between taunting, cynical or snide. It wasn't a giggle, it was a roar right in his ear, he couldn't remember what they were laughing about, but somehow within minutes he screwed it up.

But for a minute there her curls had been almost in his face, he had her if not in his arms than in one arm, and he still believed she had actually been happy for a moment. Even without a gun in her hand. That was the last time he saw her like that, and it was probably something he said. She laughed at him too when she walked away. That had been a mean kind of laugh.

He immediately wished he hadn't remembered the sound of that mean laugh, even though he remembered yesterday with the vague detached pain of waking up from a tragic dream. Was it, in any sense, actually yesterday?

Dianthea had stabbed me in the back. Was that yesterday? Was it a thousand years ago? A million? A billion? How long was I dead? Seconds later Athena shot me. Overkill. Maybe she didn't want me to suffer. Unlikely. How similar the styles were after a billion years. Not much had changed, dresses clung to silhouettes, suits had peaked lapels or notched lapels, and that was it. Guns were magical. America was somewhere else and maybe dead. Or maybe it was only yesterday, and today it was all still there somewhere. Leander hoped Dianthea was crying somewhere.

But he also hoped she was just laughing.

"We're doing absolutely nothing to make it stop. Is anyone even working late? Whose responsibility is this? What's next?" A woman walking past Leander was the only one really panicking. Like he wanted to panic, but couldn't, because he had been killed yesterday, so what could it possibly matter if this universe he resurrected into last night careened into oblivious implosion today.

An impulse struck Leander as his thoughts ran parallel to the words the woman was saying at the same time she said them, "Everyone's oblivious to the possible implosion of the known universe," and he grabbed the girl by the wrist with a "Come this way please," and walked away with her arm. The young woman tottered after him on high heels in quick desperate long strides. "Excuse me?" she yelped, over which he responded, "Secondary security check," and pulled her into an alcove.

"You don't even have a scanner," she protested.

"What's your name?"

"Claudia Solace. Aurelian Sol — I mean . . . Exequi Claudia Solace. Listen, what do you mean security—"

Leander talked over her. "Whose responsibility is it?"

"Excuse me?" Claudia Solace said a second time. While she spoke, he ran his eyes over her. She was a bit younger than Dianthea's age, a little rounder, just as short, but her face was identical to Cristo's.

"I said, whose responsibility is it? To fix the sun. The president is dead, whose job is it to do something?"

She shook her head, discombobulated at the change of subject from secondary security check to world events and company policy. "I don't know, I don't even work for the company yet," she said. "Surely someone should have gotten to the bottom of this first thing this morning. They should have pinpointed which department is responsible. The executives and branch bosses should have talked to department heads, then we would know who could fix it. But everyone's subdued, everyone's acting like there's nothing we can do about it. When did everyone become so indifferent?"

"How long has it been like this?" said Leander. "How long has everyone been complacent? How long has Soliara been barreling on towards almost certain destruction with everyone complacently standing by and watching while magic careens out of control?"

"That's just the thing," said Claudia Solace. "It hasn't been like this. Soliara isn't normally like this. We're not complacent, we don't sit back and watch with apathy. We fight each other over every position from Gaia Solin, every decision made by Constellation, every possible opportunity for unintended consequences puts us at each other's throats, because we're so scared of the future, so terrified of what will go wrong if we make another misstep.

"But not today. Comparatively speaking, today it's been like everyone woke up and saw that the world was ending, and decided not to worry about it."

Can I get anyone a drink? What's a good cocktail for the end of the world? I looked it up, and there are a few real drinks that could be contenders: the Judgement Day, the H-Bomb, The Last Round, or the Southern Bound Meteor. Or perhaps an Apocalypse Now, with tequila and dry vermouth, topped with Irish cream. I might prefer a Death in the Afternoon, which is just champagne in an absinthe rinse glass.

Cheers! And thanks for joining us tonight, or this afternoon, or whatever time it is when the sun goes to bed early. Whatever time it is where you are, stay safe and be well!