End of Women: Part Five

Worlds Apart

A glass elevator carried Kindra up seventy flights of glittering high-rise. Great white metal beams supported the enormous crystalline skyscraper, the windows so clear that there appeared to be nothing around him, nothing above him and nothing below him. For that reason, he was keeping one steady hand firmly on the guard rail.

Seoul was brilliant in the sunshine. From where he was, the centrepoint for the reimagined city, a spiral web of roads laid out in perfect concentric circles spread out twenty to thirty miles. Inside of them were uniform buildings old and new, sky-blue glass and white framing interspersed with greenery, roofs inlaid with water harvesters and balconies deliberately overgrown with wall-climbing plants. In the distance he could spot the Hydrophonic Towers which, he had been told, were now solely responsible for collecting all of the nutrients and so-called invigorators for crop yields in distant farmlands. 

Kindra looked down at his HandTab and considered the pitch he was about to give. It suddenly occurred to him how much he was in fact pitching upwards. He had come from a country which could only dream of the kind of urban development Korea had managed to install in just a quarter of a century, to tell them that they needed to change their ways. The pit of his stomach was rumbling over more than the cavernous drop visible through the glass floor of the elevator.

"Ban Wa," he muttered under his breath feverishly, "Chuk-Yoo Park, Sang Mi-Noon." 

Kindra was relieved to step off the elevator into a cool, relaxed reception area. If it wasnt for the spectacular three-sixty degree view around him, he might have thought he was at ground level in some out of town spa or a shopping plaza. 

"Mister Mwokozi?" 

He spun around on his heel to see a woman sitting at the reception desk. Neat, petite and perfectly presented, she had a clear plastic earpiece in one ear and a holographic display scheduling appointments. 

"Yes..." Kindra coughed and shook himself, approaching the desk. "I suppose you work here?"

She nodded, a little confusion in her eyes. Perhaps she didn't know why he was here. Perhaps if he had been white, Kindra might have been recognised as an American everywhere he went. As a black man he seemed to be something of an enigma in Asia.

"The gentlemen will see you now." She told him in perfect English. 

The doors to the conference room opened up as if on command. Kindra turned his head, paused, and then walked right through, resisting the urge to say something to the girl. 

The conference room took up an entire half of that topmost floor, carpeted end to end with a tapestry-style depiction of what Kindra assumed was a vital point in ancient Korean history. 

Three men sat in high-backed seats around a shimmering polished black table. They stood with set faces and inclined their heads to Kindra, keeping their eyes on him throughout. Kindra returned the gesture, his eyes on the ground before he rose back up. The tallest of the three, a man with a bald head and glasses over a wrinkled, but firm-looking face, approached Kindra and extended his right hand, supporting it with his left.

"Great to meet you all." Kindra shook hands with the man, making sure to imitate the style of doing so. "an nyeong ha siut seum ni ka?"

The three men nodded in reply, silent, but a small flicker behind each of their eyes. Language is everything, Kindra heard in his head, in a voice he barely recognised.

"Please, sit Sir." The third man from the right said - Kindra took him to be Ban Wa - and only when Kindra had did the others take their seats at the clear opposite end of the table.