João | August 2041 - Macapá, Amapá - República Federativa do Brasil
João Afonso Batista de Jesús walks along the waterfront, scanning the fancy shops and restaurants that line the promenade, built up high above the new seawall along the Amazonian estuary.
He finds the one he’s looking for, Anjo do Café, mostly empty after its morning rush, and not yet feeling the frenzy of lunch. It is a nice-looking café, simple and modern, with décor that would fit in any of its counterparts in Brasilia, Rio, or even New York City, pre-Equilíbrio.
He nods at the barista behind the counter, a dreadlocked young man whose unblemished complexion, full lips, and bright eyes suggest that he may be the angel of coffee implied in the place’s name. João suppresses a scolding shudder at the thought, a voice in the back of his mind assigning him penance that another part of him takes up by rote.
He settles into a seat at a small two-top up front, his internal dialogue filled with “Ave-Maria, cheia de graça...” in rhythm with the vintage Bossa Nova music that softly fills the space. Without thinking he switches to Spanish, then German, then English, then French. An old habit from childhood. He tries to vary the order of the languages, but it’s hard; somewhere deep inside, the chronology in which he learned these tongues is hardwired into him.
The view from the large plate glass window faces south so that he’s looking out over the new skyscrapers of downtown Macapá. In the distance beyond them to the west, he can just make out the enormous platform of the pé de feijão, still under construction and more than a decade away from completion.
At some point, about twelve years from now, the captured asteroid Apophis will be in its geostationary orbit directly above, a new moon of the Earth, and it will slowly unspool the woven diamond-fiber and nanotube cable that will complete the space elevator. He thinks idly about how he hopes he's alive to see it, and then the inner voice, a nun—always a nun from his childhood—scolds him, screeching “Agouro! Agouro!”
The glass of the window is slightly reflective given the lighting of the café, and he can see the image of himself, waiting patiently. He is a generically handsome white man, of completely undefinable origin. A face that is pleasant to look at, but which makes no impression beyond that initial favorable judgment accorded to attractive white men, even in this country, even still.
Years ago, the doctors of the Agência gently erased his original, more distinctive features, and blessed him with this face, in the hopes that it would aid in his work. And it has. But it means that the last links to his past are truly gone, and he doesn’t know how to reclaim that, if he wanted to. If he were allowed to, which he isn’t.
He sees the ghost of the waitress coming up behind him in the reflection, and even with just this glance, he knows that it’s her. He’s in the right place—as if his information could have been wrong—and now he braces himself, because in a moment she’s going to see him, and he will know then how dead the past is to him.
She glances at him and smiles a bland, fake smile. She is still beautiful, he thinks, even with time and age and the worn-down weariness that radiates off of her as if she has been swallowing bitter radium for years. They are both thirty-seven, but she looks like she could be a decade older.
“Have you had a chance to decide?”
He nods sharply, taken aback by her casual disregard.
“One of those chocolate croissants from the case. And a press of the Café Pilão, the dark roast. With cream. Real cream, not the half-stuff. And sugar. Please.”
She glances up at him, making eye contact, and he wonders for a moment if his cover is blown. His blue eyes are the same, of course; how could they not be? Technology here in Brazil has advanced in the last twenty years, but not that much.
But no. Whatever hint of recognition his voice or eyes might have given rolls off of her. She merely nods and says, “Good choice. The Pilão dark roast is my favorite.”
He smiles at her, and his eyes catch on her simple wedding band. Vitória Gonçalves, who inspired so many of his boyhood fantasies has another last name now, and though he knows what it is, he can’t bring himself to think of her as a married woman with children.
She smiles, a real smile, and for a fraction of a second, she is the girl from Nossa Senhora de Fátima. João feels an uncomfortably familiar tingling itch in his balls and his anus, a throb in his abused prostate, and his thrill and his shame refuse to let him squirm in his seat in front of her. He nods again sharply, and wonders if he’s kept the blush out of his face.
He had submitted to punishment three days ago, in Sao Paulo, relinquishing control to Mistress Lucrézia, his trusted dominatrix, trying to purge the sinful urges from his flesh, accepting fresh levels of damnation upon his irredeemable soul. He had hoped he would be free of the urges for longer, suppressing his desire for a next encounter—an internal war he has been losing since adolescence.
She gives him another small, sincere smile, and heads off to fetch his order. He ruminates endlessly about the contradiction that is his internal life, and his thoughts fall naturally there now. He imagines that the Agência must know about his perversion, and he wonders somehow if the Church also knows. But the Agência hasn’t killed him, and the Church hasn’t excommunicated him, so perhaps they truly don’t. Or perhaps Pope João Paulo Terceiro himself puts in a good word for his fellow countrymen. Regardless, the imagined thrill of getting caught and punished sends another wicked twinge to his perineum and his cock twitches mildly in response, Pavlovian dog that it is.
To distract himself, he pulls out his phone and begins reading from the president’s new treatise Brasil Triunfante, which is as grandiloquent and tendentious as the president himself.
Global hegemony is as much about money and ideas as it is about military might, writes President Inácio Luan Álvares de Ishii. In the definition of influence for modern civilizations, some ideas about the nature of the world and hopes for the future are so compelling that they tend to gather mass to them like snowballs rolling downhill, or primordial clumps of matter in a protoplanetary disk.
One of the ideas that kept the old United States in a position of power for so long was the vision of a human future in space. From the moon landings to science fiction, the lost nation had for more than eight decades seemed to the be fire and the flame upon which humanity would reach its birthright of the stars. Only in the final decade of its waning hegemon had other nations come close to unseating the US as the winged messenger of that starry-eyed dream. And now, Brazil emerges triumphant to carry that torch forward, for all humankind.
He looks up as Vitória returns with the press carafe of coffee, and the cream and sugar, and sets down his phone. She sets the press down first, and says, “Give it three to five more minutes, and then it’ll be ready. The longer you wait, the stronger. But I’m betting you know that.”
He glances a small smile of thanks up at her, and she flashes a similar shy smile back before they break eye contact.
She sets down the sugar, and then an elegant silver container of cream, condensation slicking its sides. She glances at his eyes again, then fumbles the creamer and spills it, cursing her clumsiness softly under her breath. A pool of white races across the table towards his face-down phone. A surge of anger washes through him, and he imagines what it would feel like to snap her fucking neck, and instantly hates himself for it.
He reaches quickly for a napkin, and their hands brush briefly as they both try to clean the mess. They both pull back as if from an electric shock. She glances at him, a blush rising in her cheeks, and then quickly wipes the remaining cream from the table.
“I’ll get more cream and bring it back with the croissant,” she says and slips silently away.
He turns back to the book.
With the Flash and the Equilíbrio, the dream of people living and working in space had seemed to quickly and irrevocably die. But now, thanks to our vision of a rebuilt world, the leadership of Greater Brazil and the Coalizão Global has begun to realize Brazil’s ambition to not just return humanity to space, but to harness asteroids and permanently access the riches of the planets.
It is a grand vision, thinks João. While the nations of 2041 might be skeptical of anything that smacks of the remembered hubris of America, the lure of dragging the human race out of its current stagnation and into a future that promises more is an enticing one. Even nations that bristle under the reverse colonialism of a powerful and ascendant Brasilia don’t want to be left out of the hope that easy access to space promises.
He wonders how this connects to his meeting with his handler later today. A new assignment related to the Elevador Espacial, possibly, as that is where they are meeting. But who can he assassinate that could impact a multi-decade, trillion-real project? What election can he subvert in another nation that would change the space mission already half-completed?
The fact that he is from this city is surely coincidental. But that Macapá, a place formerly of minimal consequence, is now the center of Brazil’s promise of the heavens has everything to do with the fact that it is directly on the Equator. If you’re standing on the north side of the Monumento de Marco Zero downtown, you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, and if you’re on the south side of the monument, well, you’re in the Southern Hemisphere.
And it is because of this quirk of geography that João’s hometown has been transformed. It is a perfect place to build the base of a space elevator. When he had escaped it at thirteen for Rio, he had thought he would never return. Now, more than twenty years later, he is back, and it is the city of his childhood that is gone—transfigured in an orgy of construction unparalleled in the last two decades. Macapá in 2041 is ten times the size it was 20 years ago—a kind of growth that no other part of the world experienced during the severe economic crisis and slow recovery.
He presses the plunger on the coffee just as Vitoria is returning with more cream and the croissant. She sets them both down on the table with care and glances at him again.
“I’m sorry about earlier. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can get for you.”
“Don’t worry about it. No harm done, and this looks wonderful, thank you.” He waves a hand and shrugs to indicate it’s in the past.
She rewards him with another genuine smile, and her shoulders seem to relax. She is about to turn away, and then she pauses and looks him in the eyes.
“Your eyes....you....remind me of a friend I once had.”
A faint blush has begun to crawl up her neck, and João wonders if the same is true for him as well. He keeps his face neutral and doesn’t react.
“Oh, and was she a good friend of yours?” He misdirects, a trick to steer her from connecting any more dots, however much some deep part of him may want her to.
She laughs a small laugh, and shakes her head, the girl from his childhood once more.
“He, not she. It was a boy, not a girl. And yes, he was...a very good friend. Once.” Her look turns wistful, and in her painful reminiscence, something fierce and hot and bright blazes within his soul, cauterizing the old wound of his heart. She glances at him again and gives a sad smile.
“He died. Years ago. When we were thirteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
He says the words before he can think, and he means them. Oh, Blessed Virgin, does he mean them. Sorry for so much more than she can ever know.
In the background, the café phone rings several times.
“You’re very kind.” She says, smiling at him, and placing one of her beautiful, worn hands lightly on his shoulder.
He’s about to say something else when the attractive young barista calls out to her.
“Mamãe! The phone!”
“Okay, Eduardo!”
She pats João once lightly, and smiles at him, begging an indulgence for her walk down memory lane that he does not need to forgive. He nods at her gently as she bids him to enjoy the coffee and food, and she heads to the back of the café to take the call.
He sits for a moment, simply awash in the emotions flowing through him. Wonder at her positive regard for the boy he’d once been and the impact the loss of him had on her. Gratitude that his ploy to fake his death all those years ago had worked and allowed him to escape. A complex mix of envy and joy that she had lived, and married.
And under all of it, the twisted carnal thrill and shame of desire, setting the fundament of him on fire with lust. Images of Eduardo—her son!—fucking him while Vitoria watches and cheers, and sobs, and hurls vile imprecations at him jackknife around his guts; vivid, horrible, delicious visions. A twisted new fantasy to toy with, the next time he submits to Lucrézia.
And buried, at the core, far deep under anything else for so long that it is simply an integral part of him, the unending love he had for her, the only person who had understood him back then—the girl he had grown up with in the orphanage—and who he had to lose so that he could claim his larger life.
Several hours later, João is in a completely different place and a better headspace.
After leaving the café, he walked along the transformed waterfront, and he made the choice to view his interaction with Vitoria as a sign of divine favor. A small gift of healing, all these years later.
He roamed around the gleaming new downtown, failing to find any signs of his childhood hometown that hadn’t been erased in the massive redevelopment. Feeling freshly untethered from his past, he called for the car to come pick him up.
The sleek and sturdy Brasinca Fortaleza that arrives for him looks like a rolling fortress. The interior is cool, dark, and sumptuous; as removed from the heat and light of the outside world as if he has stepped into outer space.
The car is pointed to the epicenter of the region’s growth: the gigantic base of the future space elevator. With the driver hidden behind a pane of tinted bulletproof glass, the vehicle might as well be autonomous, for all João can discern.
He settles into the leather seats, and gazes out the tinted windows, quickly losing himself in thought. Although it is still called the Federative Republic of Brazil, the nation he owes his allegiance to in 2041 is both larger than its former self and much more autocratic. Through the crises of the last twenty years, a series of clever leaders and a concentration of corporate wealth have solidified the position of Brazil as a global superpower. Arguably, the only global superpower now, at least by the definitions of the prior century.
With the re-establishment of the monarchy in 2029, the Federative Republic is just a part of Greater Brazil—or, as most people refer to it: the Brazilian Empire.
João is nonchalant about this. He voted for the leaders that navigated this ascent in power, and through his career, first in the military, and then in the intelligence services, he has actively participated in the machinations that have put Brazil into this position of supremacy.
Most of the things he has done, he knows, are crimes. Social crimes; spiritual crimes; war crimes—things that would get him put to death as punishment if caught, and that would have hopelessly doomed his immortal soul, had it not been doomed already. He is the broken servant; the irredeemable sinner, whose last and final hope of salvation lies in the necessary work he does to secure a future for his nation.
Buried somewhere in his ultra-secret career dossier is the log of his missions—everything he’s done to help make his nation the leader of the world. He wonders if it captures the true record of his successes and failures across the years. He wonders if it can begin to articulate his motivation.
Since the fall of the Global North, Brazil has methodically secured the South American continent. In some cases, this has been achieved through political means—usually João or his highly-trained colleagues manipulating elections in Suriname, say, or Bolivia, so that those nations aligned ever more closely with the interests of Brasilia. In many cases, to the point of true submission, becoming states in the family of Greater Brazil.
In other cases, this re-alignment was done through military means. The official line of ‘preventing the failed nations of the northern part of the continent from threatening the sovereignty of Brazil’ has required the Brazilian military occupation of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Perhaps not coincidentally, the occupation has focused mainly on those areas that included significant petroleum and natural gas reserves, and complete control over the Panama Canal.
This occupation and dominance of fossil fuels and shipping lanes has had the important consequence of providing a stable foundation for the Brazilian economy. The national government has used this relative stability in a turbulent world to entice what remains of transnational global corporations to set up shop in the newly corporate friendly nation.
Phones and cars and computers are manufactured in Brazil. São Paulo is the financial center of the world; the flow of the de facto global currency, the Imperial Brazilian real, is managed through the powerful Brazilian Central Bank.
Perhaps most far-sighted, Brazil’s oligarchical leaders have rallied the masses of the nation around a compelling multi-decade vision: that the future of humanity is in space, and that the future of space is Brazilian.
The robust expansion of the Alcantara Launch Center has made Brazil one of the few nations capable of regularly launching into earth orbit and beyond. The most important of these has been the launches of the nineteen Nosso Destino missions, the robotic crafts now shepherding the asteroid Apophis into a stable orbit around the Earth.
Simultaneously, they are mining the asteroid, collecting the hydrocarbons from which the diamond-fullerene cable will be woven in situ. The remains of the primordial rock will become the gigantic tether counterweight for the space elevator that will deliver off-world riches directly onto the doorstep of Brazil.
As the vehicle approaches the massive construction site, João can’t help but fixate on the most prominent feature—the enormous socket gantry, where the thousand-ton ballast at the end of the cable will eventually be received and locked into place. At just more than a kilometer in height, the connected towers of the gantry have overtaken the Burj Kalifa as the tallest manmade structure in the world.
While people won’t live that high up in the gantry, no one lives in the Burj Kalifa anymore either; at least, not after the nuclear exchange that wiped Israel and significant chunks of the Arab world off the map in 2026. Atmospheric particulates from those still-burning oilfield fires continue to color the sunrises and sunsets of the entire globe, all these years later.
They pass easily through several checkpoints, and the enormity of the structure first overwhelms, and then becomes so big that it’s simply not possible to comprehend the size of it all. They’ve moved into its shadow, and it is as if mountains have blocked the sun. The road they are on is as wide as a multi-lane highway and parallels multiple sets of new train tracks. Soon enough they roll through an entrance so vast that will easily one day accommodate endless platoons of tractor-trailer trucks and trains.
The car drives into the superstructure of the base, past what seems like acres of cargo loading docks, and João is surprised to find city blocks delineated within, each dense with buildings that would be skyscrapers on their own if standing in the city. Here, they are connected by sky bridges and integrated into the structure itself. They will contain administrative offices for the beanstalk, and for the shipping companies that will congregate at the gateway to orbit. Here, too, are hotels and other accommodations for the throngs of people that will travel up into the big black, seeking work or adventure or riches.
The car pulls into the semicircle of a drive for what will one day be a nicer tourist hotel. João can see an escort team from the Agency waiting for him, and it takes him a moment to realize with surprise that the smaller agent is the Director, Eliana Souza dos Santos. He had met with her before, of course, but he hadn’t expected her to be the person briefing him today. It increases his suspicions about this meeting: whatever he’s going to be tasked with, it won’t be another run-of-the-mill assassination.
He slides smoothly out of the car and extends his hand to the Director as she walks up to the vehicle. She is petite in person, smaller than he remembered. And she is beautiful, which he remembered quite well. She radiates a cold, steely resolve that reminds him of the nuns of his childhood, and for a moment he wonders what it must be like for her four children, to have this beautiful, powerful, terrifying woman as a mother.
“Agent Batista de Jesús. Good to see you. Thank you for being on time,” she says while shaking his hand. She places her other hand on his upper arm, and with light pressure indicates that they’re heading directly into the hotel. Elsewhere, the structure is a hive of activity, but not here.
“Of course, Madam Director. It is a welcome surprise to see you here.”
She flashes him a smile that reads as genuine as they pass through the large automatic door of the hotel. Inside, more of her escort team is waiting—four more large men, each of whom out-masses him by at least fifty kilograms.
She nods at a security checkpoint, and says, “You don’t mind?” It’s a question, but he knows that it is not a request.
He raises an eyebrow at her, but smiles, and says, “Of course not.”
The team is efficient, and he surrenders his weapon and two knives to them, as well as his phone, his watch, and his lighter. He can still fight, of course. He could still kill with his bare hands in a dozen different ways, but it feels odd to have none of his tools on him.
The Director and two of her team escort him to a bank of elevators. She nods at the two men, and when the elevator arrives, only João and the Director enter. She presses a button for the very top level shown, 110.
After a moment of silence, she turns to him and says, “You did good work for us in New Catalonia. The dynamic there has shifted in our favor better than expected. And your assignment in the ASA delivered more than we were hoping for, as well. Particularly your work in Botswana...your solution to the trouble in Gaborone was...elegant.”
He allows a small smile and nods at her. His estimation of her has risen just now. He likes that she used the word ‘elegant’ for his work. It’s how he would have described it as well, which, he knows, is not a word most people would use to describe bombing a capital building full of children on a field trip.
The elevator pings at the top floor, and they exit into a sky lobby that rivals anything at the new international airport in Brasilia. It is cavernous but flooded with bright equatorial sunlight, and bracingly spare, empty of the shops and vendors and the crowds of travelers that it will one day contain. She motions him towards a moving walkway.
“Impressive, isn’t it? We’re going further up.”
He inclines his head and realizes that can only mean they are heading up into the socket gantry itself. He raises an eyebrow at her, and she just smiles at him again.
“Tell me, Agent Batista de Jesús, from your perspective, what is the biggest threat our fatherland faces in the coming years?”
He glances sharply at her, sure that this isn’t small talk, but rather some kind of test. He quickly decides that he will answer honestly. He cannot determine what response she might be looking for, so he will tell her what he truly thinks, consequences be damned.
“It’s the North. Still. Even after all these years, the idea that the North could reunite and become something like a superpower again...” He shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous. And they are advancing too quickly. That new fusion project in Cascadia...Madam Director, I don’t know if it is true, but I have read that it is significantly more advanced than ours.”
They approach another huge bank of elevators, and she stops short of the agents flanking the hallway, giving him an appraising look. He feels like his soul is being x-rayed, but he doesn’t care—he feels no malice in it.
“Do you know who we are going to meet?” she asks simply.
He didn’t, until that moment. In a flash, it comes to him.
“The President.”
She nods, once, as sharply as she seems to do everything, like a raven, smart and assured.
“Yes. President Álvares de Ishii is waiting for us, up top. I think you will like your new assignment.”
The elevator door opens, and they enter. Again, she pushes the button for the topmost level. They ride in silence for a moment, and then she turns to him, some of her steely façade fading.
“It will be open-ended, João. You will have objectives to achieve by any means necessary. Full carte blanche. Any resources you need will be made available, but as you know, you will be often alone. We will maintain full deniability. If you need extraction, we cannot provide it. Anything that compromises you should be dealt with in extremis.”
He nods. None of what she just said surprises him, including the instruction to self-terminate if compromised. What did surprise him was her use of his first name. He’s still pondering that when the door to the elevator slides open.
They step out into another large, stark, brightly illuminated room. A giant kilometer high observation deck that will one day house a restaurant and a bar. There are agents standing like obelisks in the corners of the enormous space, and in the middle distance, the President is standing with his back to them, looking out the window at the astonishing view, smoking a cigar.
At the sound of them, the large man turns, and smiles, and beckons them forward. From the corner of his eye, João can see the President make eye contact with the Director and her small nod to the man. She places her small hand on João’s upper arm again, and they step forward, into the presence of the man whose role in this nation is as much emperor as it is executive.
The face of the young Emperor Pedro IV of the House of Bragança may grace the currency of the nation, but the true power is here, in the hands of the man who has been president of the nation for the last thirteen years. Indeed, it is because of this man that the current emperor occupies a throne in Brazil at all.
“Mr. President, this is Agent João Batista de Jesús.”
The President sticks out his hand, and João shakes it. President Inácio Luan Álvares de Ishii is a big man, taller than João, and broader in the shoulders. He is Yonsei, fourth generation Nipo-Brasileiros—and physically he is a perfect blend of sumo Japanese and Brazilian thug.
“Ah, yes, our carcamano agent.”
João can’t help but show his reaction to the insult on his face. The President laughs, a booming laugh, and throws an arm around his shoulder and pulls him closer to the window.
“Ah, don’t be like that, friend. I know what you went through as a child, don’t I? If I had a centavo for every time someone has called me japonês, I’d be rich. Richer than I am now!” He lets out another booming laugh that seems to ricochet around the vast, empty space.
“You and I are a lot alike, João. I’ve read your file. Tough childhoods, running away from home. A drive to succeed that most people can’t relate to. A love for this beautiful nation of ours that has so many times treated us like gringo outsiders.”
He puffs on his cigar and blows the smoke away from João.
“And a willingness to do anything to make it great. Anything to secure our place in the world. An ability to see farther than anyone else. Am I right?”
João looks out the window at the stunning view. They are impossibly high up, and the panorama is endless, stretching out to the mouth of the Amazon where it spills into the Atlantic, and far back into the jungle upriver. Downtown Macapa, with all of its new skyscrapers, is a shiny toy far beneath them. He turns to look at the man, and he nods.
The President motions towards the west, and the setting sun. “Tell me what you see.”
João focuses on the horizon; the unbroken view out to the curve of the Earth, branches of the great Amazon, clearcut forests as the new suburbs of Macapá spill off into the distance, the setting sun. He wonders if this is some kind of test, breathes, and relaxes into the view.
The sunset. The gold-limned clouds. This limitless expanse, all Brazil. The bright spark of Venus, playing her role of Evening Star.
Venus, diamond bright…and, there, so tightly close to the shining planet it’s hard to discern at first: Apopsis. The asteroid Brazil has tamed, on its decades-long gravitational dance before it can settle into its majestic role directly above where they are standing now.
“The future. Our future. Gold and green, opening up to blue sky and then to the black of space, which will be ours.”
The President laughs and slaps him on the back. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigar he presents to João, who accepts it silently. The President lights it, and they smoke for a moment.
“I need you to do two things, my boy. First, I need you to get the details on that Cascadian fusion project.”
João glances back at the Director, who smiles at him.
“And then,” says the President, “I need you to start a war.”
Prologue — João | Chapter 1 — Sharon »
The Shattered World Series | Book 1 | Light Shines Through
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This is the story that you read live, correct? I’m just getting through trying to get a grasp of your world.💕❤️ I’m so sorry I’m moving right now! But it will be here in a month when I’m done and I’m living in my car🤣🤣