Chapter Ten—Just Business at the Six Seasons

“To be fair,” Kyle said, “this place is pretty awesome.”

“This is how billionaires go golfing.”

The Six Seasons Club was spectacular with a large open golf course with excellent views of the Chylaxium’s floors as a natural view off in the distance that occasionally faded out to reveal holo-projected environments ranging from metropolises to alien planets with strange wildlife.

Right now the views were the real thing. Thousands of passengers traversed the floors and went up and down in lifts, giving John the impression of a massive, futuristic ant colony.

The gold course was laid out interestingly. Atop the course various structures for relaxation and entertainment. These areas were protected from stray balls with energy barriers. The course also included sand holes, waters holes, small forests and hedge mazes.

“Careful,” John said, “you might find yourself wearing diapers if you let this disease spread to you.”

“Are you a golfer?” Kyle asked, astonished.

“Not really,” John said, picking up his golf bag. They had opted to leave a club-provided caddy behind. “Come on.”

They left the ready building and walked out to the golf car. As he set his bag of clubs in the back, Kyle said, “These will come in handy in a fight.”

“No kidding.”

“Where we meeting this overlord douche?”

“We haven’t decided yet, but,” John said, activating the holo-map on the dash of the golf car, “I think we can find something amenable to our needs.”

“What’s that?”

“Timber Lane,” John said, reading the map. “Looks like a forest.”

“That might be good,” Kyle said. “There’s gonna be people around, but not too many if something goes down. But does it really matter? With our biometric scramblers on, we should be fine.”

“Best to limit witnesses,” John added. “Tech only goes so far.”

The biometric scramblers—nice toys sent over by May and her folks—were used by the duo to transfer the biometric data of other nearby persons to their own digital signatures and move them about, in effect, scrambling any digital trace of their whereabouts and identifications.

Great stuff.

But John, despite being proficient in a lot of tech and military-grade gear, distrusted the act of relying upon it completely. Digital security was such a complex mechanism already, that cracks could inevitably be exploited, or missed in the case of breaking the law.

“So we doing the forest?”

“Let’s check,” John said. He sent a message to Scorr. Moments later his wristlet pinged with a return message. “Looks like we’re on.”

“Good,” Kyle said. “I need to get some golfing in today.”

John chuckled. “This is a ‘business’ meeting. Try to remember that.”