Court of Discontent

Read by Vandana Bhalla

The Global Alliance for Intelligent Arbitration (aka GAIA) was meant to steer mankind away from real-world warfare, giving nations a VR platform where both diplomacy and combat could be conducted without further harm to the planet or themselves.

What it's also done, however, is give Omala's ex, Rex , a robust system he can copy, dress up, and monetize. If she wants to preserve her legacy for their daughter, Omala will have to step up to the battle prepared. All that stands between her and victory is Rex's new wife, the devious Johanna Tieg.

If the real world had been laid out as Omala Grover had designed her virtual one, it would be as beautiful in the day and as it was at night. One wouldn’t need to wait for the cover darkness for the wastes to be blighted out. Every light of the Oakland hills would glow from clean energy, not serve as another blip on a grid measuring mankind’s slow and steady fall into destruction.
She breathed deep, reminding herself that she shouldn’t linger out on the balcony too long. Today had been the third air quality advisory day in a row. The pollution hanging in the air wouldn’t do much damage during a few minutes, but a few minutes had come and gone.
The goddess grant her prayers that Gaia could reverse this downward slide.
“Ma’am, she’s asking for you.”
Omala sealed off her prayer with a bow to the invisible forces that held the world together, knowing their concerns wouldn’t be with her tonight, leaving her fate to the good humor of bad mortals. She swept back into the flat, holding up the bottom hem of her silver sari and sliding the balcony door closed behind her.
“Is she already in bed?”
Asla Duncan, a woman with silvering hair and diminishing features, smiled, even as her eyes went to the floor. “In the most technical sense.”
“Did she say anything more about the gala?”
The nanny tried to balance deference to the woman who paid her salary and the tenderness she felt for her young charge.
“She tied together her impassioned arguments with threads of regret for her outburst. Maybe she’s asking for you so she can apologize.”
No, that wouldn’t be the reason. Omala could guarantee that. Her eleven-year-old daughter had inherited many of her own flattering traits: a tact for high-level logic, a deep empathy for the less fortunate, an inventive spirit that always saw her designing her own little bots or coding projects Omala hadn’t learned how to do until college. Only time and the experience it allowed could be credited for the mother remaining her daughter’s superior when it came to code writing, but how much longer would that be true? Even now, Cindira could hack into systems that challenged some of Tybor’s professional staff. Once Omala felt Cindira was ready to understand why its knowledge needed to be kept from her father, she’d teach her the full breadth of Purusha. Then, she too could code worlds to compete with this one.