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Isaiah Jones vs. the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)  

Hustle Culture Reprise: Just Us Aftermath pt 2      

Isaiah Jones vs. the Sea      

Marcus Garvey Port, Ghana      

(formerly Accra Bay, capital of AUA African United Alliance

/ ADF African Defense Force)      

August 8th, 2029, Office of Internal Affairs      

Mister Virgil Elinam Boateng’s esquires sat behind the Mahogany desk, reading over the daily security reports from the intelligence agents in North America. He was a thick-necked, barrel-chested man built like the former #1 props rugby player that he had been while studying law at Cambridge. He dressed in a tailored indigo suit of light cotton suitable to be worn in the African heat, always looking like the consummate professional that he was, as head of the Emperor Jones security.  

The NIB / National Investigative Bureau team, the AUA equivalent of the Secret Service assigned to Isaiah Jones’s family living outside of Africa—his Excellency’s grandparents, retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Hector Leonardo Jones and his wife Ariella, who lived aboard a 40 year old 50 ft catamaran currently moored in Long Beach, California.

Isaiah, along with his fiancée Aeon, his legal counsel Penelope, and an alleged cousin to one of his excellency’s 10 wives named Sybil, were visiting his grandparents while his sloop, the Exodus, was in for a full haul out and refit in Marina Del Rey. The encrypted communiques were sent daily from the Ghanian ambassador’s office at their US embassy since the US was one of only a handful of nations that refused to recognize the sovereignty of the AUA.    

The daily report detailed the events aboard the SS Ariella and included a personal recommendation from the Emperor Jones for a 17-year-old Marvin Wallace. The other two boys who were recommended along with him would not be able to make the pilgrimage and enlist in the ADF/African Defence Force to guarantee their citizenship in the AUA/African United Alliance along with him. It was tragic to hear that his cousin Dominick Winnfield and their friend Vincent Dawkins had both been horribly injured in a car accident, resulting in permanent injuries to both young men.

At least, that is what was reported in the official LAPD records; his encrypted secured documents revealed a more complicated story—first of a botched robbery attempt by the boys onboard the senior Jones’s ship, followed by a baffling $500 cash withdrawal from Isaiah’s personal account at a nearby ATM shortly before the alleged accident.  Following the money, the only other charge on his excellencies bank card was a midafternoon thirty-one dollar and forty-one cents expenditure at Robert Earls BBQ, obviously lunch with his American fiancée Aeon Gabriella Zavala. 

Victor Boateng contemplated the contents of the classified report as he puffed his Cohiba, his face a perpetual scowl of inquiry as his mind raced, recognition seeing the unseen connecting the invisible dots that would lead to the truth. He noted that this Marvin fellow was the only one of the three young men with no priors. The other two young men had numerous arrests for crimes ranging from aggravated assault to armed robbery.  Both had already served time together in juvenile facilities, little more than boot camp for young hooligans.

He placed his reading glasses on the table and massaged his temples as he looked out of the polished Aluminum oxynitride window of his office on the 90th floor of the 100-story ziggurat overlooking the Franz Fanon suspension bridge. From here, he had an excellent view of the Biko river, as well as the elevated monorail sailing by, suspended just above the jungle’s verdant canopy. From up here, he had a clear view of the river, the beachside bungalows, and the growing wild community of immigrants and refugees across the bay in Freetown, the no man’s land just across the bay from the Port Garvey Museum of African Arts and Letters.    

 The dock was filled with all manner of watercraft from across the globe. There were temporary workers of every race, color, and creed living on their boats at every one of the eleven 100 story ziggurats locations. Ten located in Africa, and one constructed in Havana, Cuba. The greatest numbers of AUA foreign workers came from China, India, and even a contingent from North Korea. The massive infrastructure projects required more engineers, programmers, and skilled laborers of every type to support the rapidly growing infrastructures construction and maintenance of the megastructures.

The programmers and engineers lived in the poured cement high rises while the manual laborers that worked beside the robots doing the construction all stayed on the flotillas, living in the ever-growing slums in the suburbs of each super structure’s sprawling cities. Their work visas expired, they lived on their boats, not being of African descent and thereby ineligible for citizenship or first in line for the new poured cement housing rising around the AI-designed robot-constructed megacities.     

Virgil had lived here in a modest bungalow on the Accra Bay beach near the end of the bay for the last decade; the city was unrecognizable from when he and his family first moved here from Ghana’s Embassy office in London. He puffed on the cigar, a gift from Isaiah, the last of his Cohiba’s, as he reread the LAPD’s police report.

The two boys had stolen a car and, according to this police department’s document, lost control of the stolen vehicle, resulting in the passenger being permanently paralyzed from the neck down. The screwdriver they used to hotwire the car ended up lodged under the eye of the driver, damaging the cerebral cortex of the young man’s brain. This Marvin Winfield fellow was a very lucky young man indeed; it was fortunate for him that his two friends dropped him off at home before their critical accident.  

The American police had no idea Sybil O-kesa existed, and neither did he until she popped up out of nowhere in a news story published by their embassy liaison in Japan—a fluff piece about the Emperor Jones, who has not lost touch with the working class, featured security footage of Isaiah Jones riding the train with her in Tokyo three months ago. He still had no idea why Isaiah had flown to Japan alone after leaving Mexico the week after his birthday. He visited one of his wives while he was there, but his excellency’s half-Japanese, half-Mali wife Sumiko Hanzō only answered to 10Q, and as far as he was concerned, the emperor’s ten African wives may as well have been ten elder gods.     

On the surface, all of Sybils paperwork seemed in order, but there was something odd about this Sybil O-kesa, this mysterious cousin of the Emperor Jones’s wife from Egypt. His agents reported she was with the three boys when they left the marina in Long Beach and that she returned on foot alone this morning with a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and gourmet coffee for him and all of his agents.    

Virgil was not so easily fooled; a nice girl from the village had charmed his best men, he chucked to himself, with pastries. For men with minds that functioned like his, this accident with the boys did not pass the sniff test. Three healthy boys left the marina last night; now one is a quadriplegic and the other lobotomized. Virgil didn’t believe in coincidences. Mister Virgil Elinam Boateng exhaled a plume of white cigar smoke as he sat back in his crimson-colored leather wingback office chair, staring out the polished aluminum window. He would have to keep an eye on this green-eyed Egyptian girl with bubblegum pink Bantu knots, this mysterious Sybil O-kesa.     

Isaiah’s itinerary had him leaving the U.S. in the next few days as he and his motley crew headed east on motorcycles to Los Vegas before heading south to Mexico. Motorcycles. The big man shook his head slowly as he sighed. Isaiah was not making his job easy; he grinned. Still, he could breathe a sigh of relief once his agents reported they were safely out of the United States and aboard the Bedowitz’s recently purchased super yacht, the world’s largest sailing catamaran Hemisphere. As long as he was in America, there were simply too many white people with too many guns; it was a recipe for disaster.

The AUA had better allies in central and south america as well as throughout the Caribbean island. They had gotten lucky when the riot with drunken workers broke out on the docks in Kingston. Aeon and Penny had handled themselves quite well. But he could not hope to be saved by luck again. He sent a message to his embassy in the U.S. to double the guard until Isaiah and his friends left the States and were safely in Mexico. Then he phoned Naomi Galetea Cabala, the right hand of the Albino, to alert her of the situation. Once they left the States, her clandestine underworld network would be invaluable.     

Virgil’s phone rang as he finished. His face now held a rare smile; it was a message from his daughter Majid.

“Tata, meet me for lunch at 8 Dogs at half past. My train will reach the Port Garvey station at noon. I hope to see you there. Love Majid.” hearts, smiles, kissy face emojis. Virgil looked at the time; it was 11:30. he would make time. Virgil was always happy when his daughter took time from her studies to join him for lunch.

He would ask her all of the usual boring questions about how school was this semester, her classes, and her teachers. His daughter would regale him with tales of her friends and her social life and ask about their dog, Starbuck. They would eat spring rolls dipped in sweet peanut sauce with large bowls of their favorite Vietnamese Pho Bo soups and practice the language as well as using chopsticks. She was the daughter of a diplomat after all, so she should be able to say “Thank you” in Vietnamese, “Cảm ơn pronounced Cow Moo.” without giggling. 

[-about the author:

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx.]