Pain seared across his face, pulsing in synch with waves of heat roiling from the magma hole. An odd, tiny movement pushed into a corner of his vision. A blister, swelling slowly, a last-ditch defense against the relentless heat.He locked his gaze back on the glowing lava, mes¬merized by the undulations of color and heat: radiant shades of red, touches of blue, an occasional yellow flare, weaving together in a hypnotic blend.He tried to flex his fingers, but they wouldn’t obey. His hands were foreign objects, no longer under his control. Skin and synth-dermal sleeve melted into each other, colors of both lost into a grayness slowly spread¬ing. He dragged his left leg forward; some of the melted overboot pulled away and remained behind, an artificial footstep in the bleak gray and black of the new lava. Hot slivers shot up his thighs and arrowed up his back.His vision swam and he fell to a knee, scream scraping out of a parched throat as thigh skin split open, exposing quivering muscle.“Choc—choco—” His lips refused to move, his voice just a whisper. He fell on his side.A bulbous object bounced into view, stopping di¬rectly overhead. He screamed again as metallic talons wrapped around his torso and yanked him off the pound. Cooling sprays washed over smoldering skin; his last conscious sensation was the diminishing of the pain as the black overtook him.He sat up on the narrow table, ran his hand across his chest, abdomen, along his thighs. Skin stayed taut over muscle; penis, toes, fingers where they should be, pink and flexible; muscles bunched and stretched with each movement. He swept a hand through thick, dark hair; it had been the first to go, melting and dribbling across his scalp. He’d almost turned back righ…
…n jumped the lesson, picking the odd phrase with a twitch of eyeball. “The words are Latin, an an-dent language derived from the ancient country Lat¬mum, links above, where the city of Rome was established in what is now called Italy. The language was spread by the rise of Rome as a military and ciii¬tural power, links left. The words mean Out of Many, One. It is the motto of the United States of America—”Lincoln cut off the droning historian but contin¬ued to gaze at the disk. Odd how the hotel cleaner-bots could miss something this big. He tossed the disk up, caught it, leaned back, tossed and caught it again, this time snapping his thumb so it spun. Who¬ever dropped it likely is lamenting the loss of some¬thing valuable, something just over 150 years old. In that age, people didn’t live very long. Now, they lived far longer.At least, in their minds they do.
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