SF novel: Amsterdam sample

"Nations have fallen. Entire continents have fallen. Yet at the heart of it, something fundamental always remains untouched. The core of life cannot be shaken - merely its manifestations". These are my thoughts when I pack my belongings and prepare for an expedition with Lucius, my precious flying vehicle with a soft silvery silklike shimmer on its surface and the gorgeous rounded forms of a classic ufo. Its corpus is an alloy of platinum and titanium: a special example of Tesla III -technology proven to last even under the conditions of the fifth time-space. As far as the aerodynamic drag is concerned, the design is faultless; even the casting is such that no visible seams can be distinguished. In this model there is to be found no such even row of round windows as in stereotypical ufos of the past. The vehicle's single window is a narrow glass pane encircling the cockpit of the second floor in its entirety.

I jump into the vehicle and bang the door shut behind me; or more correctly, an elevator with air cushions inbuilt in it closes the door silently as a summer breeze holding up a sea gull in the air: not the slightest sound can be heard. I wear space shoes with a tight-fitting stem up to my calves and overalls of glossy fabric glittering of pale blue with a zip in the front. The shiny black hair has been combed into a bun in the nape of my neck and the fringe falls heavy on my eyebrows. Agile as an otter I move from one part of the vehicle to the other. I climb up a steel pole into the second floor where the cockpit is situated.

The vehicle is small, in my private use. In the first floor, there is a tiny kitchen and a combined dining-, sleeping- and storeroom. However, when alone, I tend to take my naps in either of the two anatomically shaped recliners of the cockpit which can be adjusted to a sleeping position and otherwise moulded steplessly - like modelling clay - to respond to one's body type and one's recurrent state of mind. If one so wishes, it is possible to program the chair to give a particular type of therapy during sleep: suggestions, acupuncture, lymphatic massage or cranial sacral therapy. The options are unlimited.

The cupboards of the stockroom abound with camping food: white beans in tomato sauce, canned zucchini, pickled cucumbers, dried blueberries, concentrated fruit extract, tea, coffee and dark bread. There are also piles of sticking plaster and other first-aid equipment; and a miniature laboratory with its test-tubes and modern equivalents of mass spectrometers so that I may freshly investigate the soil-, mineral- and plant-samples taken from foreign planets.

My destination is the construction of black concrete that holds Ironhand's operational headquarters. The building's existence is not well-known and despite my efforts I have not managed digging out its coordinates. I am hence forced to either fly to the surrounding area and wander about at random relying on intuition only; or to head for the official headquarters first and try and ooze out the necessary facts. Neither option sounds particularly reliable or safe. Therefore I have made the critical decision to reveal my plans to an accomplice in Amsterdam who has connections in New York holding undercover jobs apparently as news deployment personnel in Ironhand's main building but in reality advancing the goals of the resistance. They will in person transmit the necessary data to my Amsterdam informant; I will at a designated time travel to the city; and the two of us will meet at the market place where my connection waits dressed as a pastry seller.

In Amsterdam, all goes as planned. I wear the clothes of a typical higher rank Ironhand employee, take a waterbus along the canals, exit it three blocks too early and walk at a leisurely pace to the market place. It is nearly closing time. I ask if I could have two lemon pies please, one with double fillings. I pass the money, my connection passes me the pies. No words are wasted. There is no knowing - ever - who is watching you. The lattice on top of the other pie is curvy, as if prepared in a hurry. It is a sign we agreed upon: inside that pie in a plastic tube lies the groundplan for the operational headquarters and its coordinates.

The heat of the day makes me languid. I go to an outside café in an underground area of the city where genuine ground coffee is still served, sit still watching the canals and start crunching the pie with the decent lattice. It must have been baked from Tunisian resistance lemons: the taste is full and exquisite and such that adds vigour to the whole of my being. So unlike the grey feeling one always gets when tasting even the best examples of the neat-looking artificial stuff produced in Ironhand's factories. Real food can only be obtained in resistance regions, shady outlaw zones of larger cities, parts of countryside and the guarded towers of the rich and the powerful. The purpose of the food available to masses is to keep them passive and weak and easily governable.

Opposite to me, on the other side of the canal, is a classy place swarming with Ironhand's officials: run-of-the-mill staff. No-one from the inner circle. Even from my watch place, I can distinguish by the shape and colour of bottles and servings what the clients are enjoying (in the broadest sense of the word...). The colours are ludicrous and garish: rice piled up in cones of pink and poison green, bread in neon orange that according to my remembrance is leathery as wood-wool and tastes like chipboard, cheese that not merely looks like it is made of plastic. I am reminded of an incident in the past: while spending an evening out in a pub with the enemy, I was to choose between two specialities of the house: a bottle of a non-alcoholic drink with fermented faeces as its main ingredient and another bottle of carbonated urine flavoured with garlic essence. I smiled sweetly and went for the former one. Not for a moment did I intend to touch the substance with my lips however: the dark-brown bottle neatly covered the fact whether the liquid inside was diminishing and by the end of the evening I smuggled the bottle to a disorderly table on the other side of the bar and pretended to forget it there.

I am woken up from my fond memories by a violent trembling sensation. Weather changes these days are abrupt and even though I have been sitting and observing for an hour only, a chilly evening wind is now blowing. It is best to leave. I take a train to the deeper domains of the underground. I exit the train and enter a noisy, dirty neighbourhood with children playing and animals kept in households and backyards in order to ensure the production of necessities such as milk and wool and down for pillows. I climb up the ladder of an apartment building in three storeys, shakily crawl over the edge of the roof, rise up, stand firmly on the dusty roof, and ask for fog to come and embrace me. I feel ridiculous. After the necessary precaution, I send a telepathic call for Lucius to come and fetch me.

The core of Lucius' technology, his heart, so to speak, is a huge crystal glimmering of red and violet - a gallant sight inside its hermetical glass chamber. The stately crystal is the sole power generator for my space ship. It can be activated and deactivated by the force field of one's thoughts. Since it is my private vehicle, it can only be activated by my own thoughts or the thoughts of someone authorised by me. The crystal resembles a living being: it responds to the "tone" of one's thought stream, the strength of one's intention and the clarity of one's ideas. Only with practice have I learned to steer it with accuracy and elegance.