Crypto Nation
an excerpt

I know why I’m here.

Well, okay, I don’t, but I have a vestigal idea as to why I’m here, and it involves that fashionista Sarkovian and a few hundred others besides. My direct boss, the Marmoset, set me and Eckbo on this boat—ship, beg your pardon—to more or less keep an eye on things, make sure, and this is the Marmoset talking, that there is smooth sailing from here to Cabo Lago, and from there to wherever the fuck jungly banana republic this cruise takes us to next.

The parameters are typically vague and Ops-tastic; keep tabs, keep them happy, keep them in line—and if something gets out of line, fuck their day up. I can’t imagine what Rehm is doing here, though. He is not an Operator, not even really an Analyst, except at some ominous macro-level where Echelon types wave their hands around and talk abut the Big Picture.

“The Marmoset—“ I begin, very cautiously.

“Nathan, I can’t tell you anything about this. I wasn’t,” he laughs and the sound is grim, “even supposed to imply in the slightest that I wasn’t on vacation. We’re already points down. Got to stop here. Okay?”

“Cool,” I say. “That’s cool. Would hate to get you in trouble.” Condensation is beading on Rehm’s water bottle. He notices my gaze and uncaps the bottle, takes a swig and passes it to me. “As far as I’m concerned, dude, you are on a much-needed vacation.”

“’Dude,’” Rehm says warningly, under his breath.

“I mean, here we are, on paper anyway, in Paradise. Didn’t they think this was paradise, or something, at some point? On the fry side of the Big Sargasso, people eating coconuts all day, something like that?”

“On the fry side of the Sargasso,” Rehm says softly, “people thought we were going to fall off the edge of the world. Thought the ocean was on a big flat plate. The Big Sargasso was just a little business right before the end.” His eyes are drooping closed again. “They wrote about the way you could tell you were getting ready to sail off the edge. The Silver Sea, the Flower Sea, and right at the end the Sea of Grass.”

“Sounds beautiful, Eric,” I say, handing the bottle back.

“Suppose death can be very beautiful,” he answers in a muffled voice.

His words send me back; not six months have passed since pretty much everyone in Belltower believed Rehm himself had gone to death, beautiful or not. I have never liked this thing in him, this predilection for the endings of the world, of himself.