My half-lie to Cleary is this: I did fly myself here yesterday. I just passed over a lot of other places before reaching the Republic of Kambar.
Honestly, naming a country after yourself? Not even the cyborgs did that. I don't know if I'll be able to stay professional for as long as I need to when Mr. Machete and his paunch walk through the door.
In the absence of any real battles, it's my routine to fly myself to exhaustion. I go as fast as I can, burning more power than I need, and dare myself to make it to whatever my destination is without tiring out and crash-landing. Or drowning in the ocean, which is the more likely scenario. It's one of those things where I hope I fail as much as I instinctively fight to survive.
I fly just below the clouds most of the time, so I can map out what I'm passing over. The remains of the Himalayas, their once proud peaks decimated to rubble. The plains of Tibet and the sprawling desert and canyons of west Asia, left relatively untouched because the cyborgs never bothered to visit. The nuclear wasteland of Russia. The nuclear wasteland of half of Western Europe. Ditto for most of Africa. The beginnings of reconstruction above ground in the Middle East. The last of the force fields being dismantled around the biggest oil fields. The English Channel, plugged and unplugged and plugged again whenever the politicians there decide refugees are a nuisance. And then the vast ocean that's almost claimed me on several of these trips, before I hit the United States. Starting at the Great Lakes, it turns into the United Republic and the remains of its failed cousin of rebellion, the 10th Corridor.
The map winds on. History is a popular field of study these days in universities around the world, alongside all the practical majors that help with rebuilding infrastructure. There's so much that was lost, broken apart and smashed back together in jagged pieces, narratives that were all but drowned out in the mass hysteria that followed the cyborgs' initial rampages across east Asia, the nuclear wars that followed, the civil wars that followed those, the puppet government 17 set up for his own amusement out of Washington, D.C., the continental sundering of North and South America by 18.
I read a lot of history books growing up. Mom was always adamant about that. She wanted me to know the truth, not what the politicians were saying or whatever the cyborgs wanted the stations to broadcast. She wanted me to remember the things we were fighting to save, even if most of them were slipping from our grasp while I read about them. And, once she started building the time machine, she wanted me to know the world I was going back to and not have shell shock over how different it was. It would already be enough of a shock to see all her old friends and family alive, and to be an alien among them.
Kambar is setting up a fiefdom in Southeast Asia, where the devastation during the cyborg years was mostly from disease. He rose to power by whipping the people into a frenzy over the conspiracy theory that the monarchy had set loose a genetically engineered virus on its own citizens, in the hopes that it would take out the cyborgs during their months-long "vacation" there.
History is still being rewritten every day. Most people will buy into whatever gets them food, clothing, undamaged land and revenge against somebody they'd like to blame.
Bulma and Gohan asked me about what my world was like, during my second visit while we prepared for the Cell Games. They were the only ones who did. The others seemed to pity me too much to ask, or they just didn't care. The same cyborgs that had destroyed my world were threatening to destroy theirs, and more of the bastards were crawling out of the woodworks, models that I never knew Gero had planned. I don't blame them for not thinking too hard about where I came from, and what I'd be going back to.
Last night I started wearing out around the northern part of Australia. When my vision started to black out I lowered my altitude. When I couldn't feel my hands I pushed myself harder even as I dropped out of Super Saiyan. The scope of my thoughts narrowed down to the emergency routine: Stay alive. Or don't. Drop into the ocean now, and no one will ever find you. You're a fucking coward.
I made it, of course, like I always do. I threw down a capsule house on the beach, stumbled inside and passed out on the floor. Woke up mid-morning, freshened up and strolled into the hotel looking only slightly worse for the wear. Cleary and his team promptly shoved me into a suite and made me memorize the notes they'd drafted.
I feel a mellow kind of tiredness on the days after I almost die. A strange mix of disappointment and relief.
Cleary's texting me now, some last-minute pleas to stay on script that I'll take as suggestions. The conference room is swept for bugs one more time by security. I'm sitting here sipping coffee and studying the portraits on the walls of ordinary citizens before and after the cyborg years. A sobering touch to remind me of why I'm here and why I agree to the government's requests each time a little "enforcement" is needed.
The doors open and a dozen children file in, dressed in the dictator's colors and cheerily singing a welcome song. They part into two rows and clap as the man himself strolls in and offers me a broad smile from across the room. A good number of soldiers flank him, ignoring the children entirely.
"Welcome to the Republic of Kambar," he says in his drawling accent, hands spread wide. "I trust your journey was smooth?"
I smile with steel. The children are another reminder. "Just a hop skip over the ocean. It's nice to meet you, Mr. President. I can't wait to get started."