Deep Black Road: The Head of the Snake

Chapter 1

Ricky stood outside the door of his grade-nine history classroom.

It' s a test, he thought nervously as he ran his hand through his regulation short hair. It's only a test. Then he blew out the breath he'd been holding and headed for his desk.

Sitting down, he put his school interfacer-which contained his digital textbooks and notebooks, and connected him to the school network-into its dock at the back of the desk, and laid his right hand on the glossy surface of the desktop.

As soon as Sentinel-the supervisory robot that controlled security at all the doors, monitored heating and cooling, and looked after many other tasks-read the link in his wrist, the terminal display embedded in the desk lit up, and the first test question appeared: "Describe five consequences of the Suitcase War of 2022."

This notorious war had been given that nickname because terrorists had smuggled nuclear bombs hidden in luggage into North America and Europe, and then used them to terrible effect.

History may have been Ricky's worst subject, but he was still able to think of three answers to the question right off the top of his head. Tapping rapidly on the virtual keyboard on the display screen, he listed them.

First, there was the forty-year disappearance of the United States of America as a world power because of the destruction of most of its major centres of population on its east and west coasts. It didn't reappear on the world scene until its various remaining fragments joined with what was left of Canada in the early sixties, to be resurrected as the relatively feeble Federation of North America.

Consequence two was the devastation of Europe-including Russia-leaving the continent a cluster of third-world-rated nations.

Three was the rise of Mexico as an imperial power, as it took advantage of the sudden power vacuum in the region to annex much of Central America, as well as the Spanish-dominated parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and then declaring the whole thing the Republic of Central America.

Oops! Typo! He'd misspelled "imperial."

Ricky hated keyboards. All computers and robots worked fine with speech, but tests had to be different.

Leaning back for a moment, he gnawed thoughtfully on a thumbnail.

Oh yeah! Reason four was the establishment of China as the unchallenged great power in the world, wielding that distinction with enthusiasm for over twenty years until the rise of the South African Hegemony in the late forties finally forced it to share.

How could he forget that? It was why he and his classmates were studying Chinese after all, the enduring international language of business and diplomacy.

Racking his brains, he tried to remember what number five was. Never mind, he thought. Flip to the next question.

"What was the significance of the Central African war of 2049?"

Did it tie into the rise of the Hegemony? Rats! I don't remember.

He figured out something to enter, but doubted his teacher would be very impressed.

#

When he'd finished the test, and was on his way out the door, Jerry, his best friend and classmate, joined him.

"How'd you make out?" Jerry asked.

"I just hope I passed," Ricky replied as they plowed through the crowd of mainly taller, more senior students. "History's so hard. How's anybody supposed to remember all that useless stuff?"