by

Kagan Tumer

Chapter: Sparks

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”—Virginia Woolf

As light filtered through the shades, Governor Amy Chipps didn’t wake up as much as she gave up on trying to sleep. She squeezed her eyes shut, but her mind engaged, engrossed by the wild card she had been dealt. Lori Rose had waltzed into her council lobbing strategic advice, unburdened by the weight of the destruction her words and actions carried.

Amy visualized New California as a dry field at the end of a scorching summer. Lori stood at the center, her crimson hair ablaze and fluttering in the stiff wind. A spark landed on a blade of grass; the smoldering ring expanded and burst into flame, consuming the entire field.

It wasn’t an image that cured insomnia. Amy opened her eyes but stayed still for a few breaths to calm her mind, though the serenity she sought never materialized.

She swung her legs to the side of the bed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and cradling her forehead. In the two weeks since her recovery, she had gone from needing twelve hours of sleep to getting only four. Mika didn’t stir as she disappeared into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. She put on the sweatshirt hanging from the back of the door and walked through the living room to the kitchen.

The clean dishes from the previous night sat on the counter rack, so she picked a pint glass and filled it with tap water. The cool morning air hit her as she slid open the patio door. Her hold on the glass tightened as she shivered. Resting her shoulder on the door frame, she sipped her water. The unmoving leaves of the plum tree and stone patio beckoned, but the dew-covered plastic chairs warned her away. She pushed the door halfway shut and walked back to the living room.

She set the glass on the side table and stretched her back before picking up her screen and nestling into the sofa. Her morning schedule filled the left side of her screen with budget meetings, personnel matters, and complaints to be resolved. Her assistant Ferg’s daily summary would arrive at seven sharp, so she had an hour before learning the gravity of the manufactured emergencies she would face today. She tapped the news feed, all of which focused on Lori—specks of news buried under a deluge of gossip.

That the former head of Marin’s Special Forces had appeared while both Marin to their north and Kern to their south went through power transitions shrouded Lori’s simplest actions in mystery. Amy scanned the conspiracy theories, unable to suppress a chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Mika asked, standing by the bedroom door with a gap-toothed smile.

“Apparently, Lori has been plotting to replace me. Would you believe it? She’s been prepping to take over for a year and has her leadership team ready to go. Here,” she said, tipping her screen. “Times and attendance rosters for meetings purporting to have occurred over the last twenty-four hours.”

He snorted and moved to the kitchen. He filled the coffee pot and took out two mugs. They clinked against one another as he carried them from their handles before he set them on the stone counter. Mika treated the mugs as though they were as indestructible as he was. It was a small miracle they had any dishes left.

When they returned to Cal City after she’d nearly died of sepsis in the Uregs, she had invited him to stay, unsure whether she meant a few days or something more.

It had become something more.

The ease with which he had settled in and adopted their routine as the new normal had grated until it dawned on her that normal meant whatever one decided it meant.

As the coffee brewed, she flipped through more news, but it all fell into one of two categories: things she already knew and things she had no interest in knowing. Mika rescued her by putting an arm around her and kissing her neck. He then handed over a coffee mug.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip and letting the sweet, nutty aroma ground her. “Have you talked to Lori?”

Mika’s bond with Lori stretched to their childhood, forged by their struggle to survive in an unforgiving world. Amy hadn’t understood their relationship until she spent an evening with Lori while Mika lay on an operating table a year ago. The pain and anger that emanated from Lori’s eyes had left little doubt that she’d move mountains for him. Then, to dispel any doubt, she had gone ahead and rearranged a few peaks. So, if anyone could quiz Lori about what she had been up to or why she had returned, it was Mika.

“Nothing meaningful. I’ve been in the Uregs, and she’s trying to relearn the shifting political landscape of three states in one sitting.”

She nodded and put her feet on the coffee table, her eyes on her mug. She could just make out the contours of the steam escaping, like ghost flames. She waved her flat palm over the cup, catching just enough heat to warm her hand.

“Bad day ahead?” Mika asked.

She cocked her head, not sure how to answer. She didn’t expect a particularly bad day, but that didn’t make it good.

“I need to find the funds to increase the budget of our auditing department. The teachers and school board reached an impasse and demand I mediate. The superintendent of the Potrero power plant is going to get fired. After which, I need to make sure once everyone has had a chance to let me know how I’m not listening to their concerns, the lights still come on. And that’s before Ferg tells me iwhat new fires I need to put out.”

He gulped his coffee but didn’t reply.

“After lunch, I have to face the mayors,” she said after taking a sip. “Apparently, I’m not compensating the cities for the Marin business they’re losing…like I’m made of money.” She held the mug with both hands, absorbing its warmth. “On Monday, Kuipers tripled the fees for exporting vegetables to Marin, killing half of Santa Cruz’s business. In Cal City, business leaders are screaming about not being able to hire enough laborers. I can go on.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

“At the scale we’re looking at this, it’s impossible to see what I’m supposed to do.”

“Well, you can always meet the citizens to recharge. Once you got out of the Capitol, you’d see that you’re a folk hero out there.”

“That’s not going to last. I’m boxed in from all sides. Half of New Cal longs for the past and resents me for not being someone else. The other half is disillusioned with me for moving too slowly and not delivering the promised future yesterday.”

“That’s what happens when you’re so good at selling hope.”

“I can use some right about now.” She took a deep breath. “In fifteen minutes, I’ll get a message from Ferg with my schedule and my talking points. Might as well wind me up and let me go.”

“Does she ever give you good news?”

“Sometimes, when I’m really, really lucky, she tells me my lunch meeting has been canceled.”

He stood and strutted to the kitchen and set a pan on the stove. Over the last year, Mika had become a passable cook because he understood the truth about food. Learning a few principles and sticking to simple ingredients made cooking fun. And fun meant he did it more often, which meant he got better.

The cracking of shells followed by the sizzle of eggs hitting the pan filled the room. Fried eggs had become one of his signature dishes, and she drained her coffee in anticipation. She walked to the kitchen to sit at the counter. Mika picked up four slices of bread from the oven and put them between their place settings, then loosened the eggs with the spatula and slid them on the plates. He refilled their mugs and sat next to her.

She dipped a piece of toast into her eggs. The yolk burst and coated the bread. She bit into the rich flavor and savored it. “And there’s Lori. What do I do with her?”

“You’re good at putting assets to their best use.”

“Is she an asset?”

He cut through one of his eggs, crisscrossing the yolk. “Anyone with her unique skill set is an asset. You just have to tap into it.” He took a bite of egg.

“How?”

“You can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. So, make her buy into your vision, like you did with Lambert and Josie.”

The two former Marin officers had backed her and put their forces under her command, but they’d already been on the periphery of the Marin hierarchy. Lambert, exiled to a remote outpost, had generously opened her infirmary to Amy, allowing her to recover from her bout with sepsis. Josie, banished for her past support of Lori, had built a semblance of the military for New Cal. “You make it sound so simple.”

He sipped his coffee and shrugged.

“Is Lori even the same person? A lot can happen in a year.” She bit into more egg-coated bread.

“People don’t change.” He smiled. “Much.”

“It might be best if she kept a low profile for a few days.”

“Not her strong suit.”

She clasped her coffee mug tighter and spotted a spider web in the corner by the patio door. It was a heavily trafficked path, so she swept away the web whenever she noticed it. But it reappeared every few days. That spider was tenacious. Or was it just doing what it was supposed to do? Then again, was there a difference?

Instead of dwelling on the question, she finished her eggs. As she rose to take her plate back, a distant rumble shook the window. Mika rushed to the backyard, eyes in the air. She joined him to spot a rising column of black smoke in the direction of the Capitol.

He pulled her back in, and she found her screen chiming with messages, from Josie, Ferg, and Cavana—her security chief and vice-governor. A dozen reports from eyewitnesses had replaced the rumors on the left of her screen.

She tapped her tida, and Ferg appeared. “What happened?”

“Explosion in the Capitol,” Ferg said.

“Accident?”

“No reports yet.”

“On my way. Get me Cavana.”

Amy tapped her tida off as she stepped into the bedroom to dress with Mika in tow. “Give them time to clear the area.”

“I need to be there.”

She appreciated that he didn’t bring up her virus status or her vulnerability. After putting on her jacket, she headed toward the door, cradling her pendant. Touching the cool, California-shaped silver calmed her, a reminder that she had been through many a scrape.

She let go of her pendant as Cavana appeared on her tida, his thick curly hair framing a square jaw. When Cavana wrapped up his secondhand report, Mika said something she couldn’t hear. “I’m sorry, what?”

He reached for her hand. “I said I can delay my trip north.”

She gave his fingers a squeeze and let go, then drained her coffee. “No. We can’t keep fighting on their terms. Cavana and Josie will sort this out. We need you to find out what’s going on in the Uregs, so go.”

Mika took her empty coffee mug from her hand and gave her a sheepish smile. “On the plus side, your lunch just got canceled.”

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