Under Vanishing Skies by G.S. Fields

banners and decorations that had already been hung up along the street. One read, “We will never forget.” Another one read, “Remember and They Will Never Die.”
    As far as I was concerned, Remembrance Weekend wasn’t a holiday; it was a fucking waste of time. I mean, what kind of sadomasochistic son of a bitch wants to spend a weekend remembering the day the human race was nearly wiped out? Not me. I had better things to do, like stand watch out on North Point and look out for unidentified boats.
    I didn’t have to stand watch now that I was on the Council. In fact, since we got the automated maritime monitoring app installed a few years ago, nobody had to physically go out to North Point to stand watch. I just liked it out there.
    As I continued walking to the hotel, I thought back to that weekend when Rick and I had developed the app. We had been on watch and were bored. Rick suggested that we have an old-fashioned hack-a-thon. By the end of the day, we had figured out how to pipe the video streams from four remotely controlled cameras mounted on an observation deck into a simple app that compared pixel patterns with known boat profiles. If a boat was detected, the app sent out alerts to the MDF and nearby islands. It took some tweaking to get the pattern recognition dialed in. When we first deployed it, a flock of birds triggered a false alarm. Luckily, there weren’t enough birds anymore to cause that problem, not since the fish began to disappear. Lucky for us...not the birds.
    App or no app, I volunteered to spend my three-day weekend out there away from everyone and everything. North Point was little more than a coral outcropping, but that didn’t stop the Maldivians from counting it as one of the two thousand islands that made up their nation. If there was a way that I could’ve moved out there by myself, I would have done it years ago. Other than paddling around in my kayak, North Point was the one place where I truly felt alone.
    I reached the hotel and climbed the stairs up to the third floor. When I entered the dining room, I scanned the tables for Michio and Shannon. It was eight o’clock so only a few tables were occupied. Even if every table was full, I wouldn’t have had any problem spotting Shannon, not in that dress. She had apparently spotted me too. She pointed at her watch, shook her head, and motioned me over.
     “ I’m sorry,” I said when I reached the table. “I was waiting for Jin, but he didn’t show. That’s not like him. I’m starting to get a little worried.”
    “ Relax. I’m sure he’s fine. Knowing him, he’s geeking out on that special project you told me about.” She flashed me a smile so intoxicating that it threw me off balance. “You’re probably just upset because he stood you up. It’s not nice getting stood up, is it?”
    I fumbled for something to say. Why the hell did this feel like a date? It wasn’t. I needed to pull it together.  That damned dress of hers was making it difficult. It was tight enough to be a tattoo.  I had to focus, but all I could focus on were her amazing tits.
    “ Well? Are you going to apologize or just stand there and gawk?”
    “ I’m sorry,” I repeated and sat down. I suddenly realized that we were alone. “Where’s Michio?”
    “ He sent his apologies. There was a helojumper leaving and it was going past his island, so he snagged a seat on it. He said that he wanted to squeeze in a little more time with his family.”
    “ I don’t blame him. What about you?” I asked. “Don’t you want to get back to Gan and spend some time with what’s-his-name?”
    She picked up her water glass, took a sip, and then said, “It's Saravan and no...we’re taking a break from each other.” She set it down without breaking eye contact and began tracing the rim with her finger.
    I took a drink to rinse away the taste of the foot in my mouth. When I finished, I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
    “ Stop apologizing for