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SUMMARY: Maya runs Sugarcane plantations out of an Island which are used for cheap fuel. The world has moved to better fuel and Maya finds the business dwindling. Mysterious rotting threatens to kill the crop and she is losing her mental balance...

Perhaps it was the strain or it could have been the infestation she had picked up despite the precautions at the Swadesh. Maya could feel the onset of the flu. Bah! That meant more visits to the temple. The last thing she wanted was a confrontation. What was the point anyway? There was no solution to it. Just her lethargy. All she wanted to do was to fly in her micro over her fields. Hers. To run. To manage. To operate and also to make profitable. That was the reason she had to go to Bombay in the first place. Everyone else seemed to dislike the prospect of visiting the country across the Indian Ocean, but at least they were in Bombay. They had known her to visit the Ghats as well. But mostly because of the last monsoon negotiations, Bombay was all that the team had to visit to keep the production planning going on. Bombay, the islands neighbor was a critical partner buying her cane-fuel. As it is, the markets elsewhere had abandoned it for cleaner but costlier fuel. She had to fight the price pressures and still maintain a low cost option to the battered and bruised country of Swadesh, its main importer of Cane-fuel. She could keep the production on as long as battered countries could buy her fuel.

[Which is not for long. Then what? And Cane-rot? I cant handle it anymore.. ]

She decided to take a break before visiting the temple.

Acres upon acres of fifteen feet tall grass grew in every direction. The population on the island was minimal only the staff of the company-state. No human beings in sight anywhere. Such a contrast from Bombay! Hovering high above the fields were the Static Makers at work, a kilometer by half wide strips of rectangles in circular arrangement, casting their E-M fields in a sphere around the arrangement. A bionic AI would seed the cloud amidst the E-M fields. For the rain. Maya was down to only 3 such Static Makers now. She saw the last one wind down its E-M. It never stopped fascinating her, the crack of the small thunder, a purple sheet lightning amidst the gathered clouds, and the descending rain. The Statics flew out in symmetry for the hangar, their job done for the day. She flew past the hill in her micro light where she was now resorting to overhead irrigation. The cane fields stretched out to the sea where the evaporators began. A line of domes across the bay. Circling the Maurice Ile. All that was left of the company- this island and its few thousand employees.

[Don't give in. Fight. Whats the use?Stop!]

She could easily spend one more hour idling in the sky letting her day dreams give her an escape. But the west coast's sharp scenery change put a dagger thru her heart. The cane was rotting and spreading inland. The way it was growing and spreading, it shook her completely. Very worrisome considering the labs were unable to determine why it was rotting. It looked sore to the eye.

[A melancholy patch determined to eat my company. Hang on Maya. Pick up your life. There is more to it. You can become what want. I don't want anymore. I don't wish for anything anymore. No more fighting. I can't go on.