NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

“I’m sorry but we can’t get you a direct flight to Johannesburg.”

“Are they all booked?” I asked.

“They’re very strictly limited,” the travel agent told me, from Virgin Maverick offices in JoBurg. “I have been asked to route you through New York, then London. One of the directors wishes to meet with you there.”

Minutes later my inbox received a surprise. It was a reservation, again on business class, to JFK Airport via Delta, and then on to London with Virgin Atlantic. I smiled when I saw the message. I hoped it meant what I thought it did.

Meanwhile another farewell was necessary. Jenni would be staying, again. My kids would go back to their routines, their father again absent. “How long will this go on?” my daughter Robin asked me, and for the first time I didn’t hear the words of a child, but of a young woman, anxious to have her future begin, and to know where to begin it.

“Soon,” I told everyone. “We’ll know a lot more soon.”

I packed a laptop and phone in a case, pulled a suitcase behind me, and walked over to our MARTA station for another trip to far away. Or was I going home? I wasn’t certain any more.

I read on the way to New York, then pulled out my eyeshades for the second plane ride. From west to east the best way to travel the Atlantic is prone, asleep. Most flights take off in the evening, arriving at Heathrow or Gatwick early in the morning. At my age it felt like a necessity.

To my surprise a chauffeur awaited me in London, holding a sign with my name on it just outside baggage claim. I’d been looking forward to a subway ride, but accepted the limo gratefully. I was dropped at a Ramada Inn near Regents Park, given a half hour to shower and change, then whisked again to an office building in Kensington, at Peel Street. The left-side door was opened, the driver handed me a card, and I handed that to the guard desk inside. A phone call was met by a calm young woman in a short, but professional skirt, who bid me toward an elevator, and then down a hall toward a boardroom.

“Coffee?”

“Tea, actually,” I said, sitting near the table’s center. “With lemon if you have it.” I was alone with a long boardroom table, and a lovely view out a window to another window.

The tea arrived and as I took a sip, a door opened and in he walked, Sir Richard Branson himself. “Please remain sitting” he said with a smile, taking the chair opposite me. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“Good to meet ME?” I stammered.

Branson smiled. “Of course. I’ve already met ME.” I had to laugh, which I believe was his signal to get down to business.

“We have another PR job for you, which I believe you’ll be interested in,” Branson said. “We are trying to convince the press, especially the British press, that Virgin Maverick is more than a pirate’s trading cove, that it’s really a major center for technical innovation, now and in the future. So we’re planning a little evening over Tower Bridge and I’d like you to be the main attraction.”

“Me? Why? What for?” I stammered.

“Why to talk about the company you founded,” said Branson, lifting a sheet before him and then looking up quickly. “Always On Technologies, I believe is the name?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“And we’re very proud of it,” Branson said. “We’ve brought in some capital there, we have two seats on the board, we’re very hopeful. Mma Ramosawa is the perfect embodiment of the story we want to tell, but she’s quite busy. We’ll have a broadband connection to her office, and you’ll handle questions from this end.”

I was unable to find any words. “I’m certain, as company founder, you’ll be anxious to do it, and quite able to tell your story ably.” Branson stood up, and offered me his hand. I took it.

The tea was still hot.

I had been to the Tower Bridge before. Just about 10 years ago now. I was in London for a BBC conference, one that would result in the company launching its now world-acclaimed Web site. During the conference I had a free evening, and accepted an invitation to a press conference at Tower Bridge.

I knew that one could enter one of two doors on either side, and go upstairs to a large conference room. I knew that many catered affairs were held in the room, so I didn’t eat that afternoon. Instead I saved my appetite, and enhanced it by taking the Tube down to the bridge’s station, then walking up with my invite in hand.

It was like old home week. All my old friends from the British computing press corps were there. Rupert Goodwins, Guy Kewney, and even Steve Gold, down from Sheffield. We drank and chatted and had a wonderful time.

But then it was time to perform, and instead of being part of the audience, for the first time I was on the stage. It was a strange feeling, as though I had left my old life of journalism behind and gone over to the other side.

A monitor had been placed next to me. I stood at a small lectern. A young woman from Virgin Maverick introduced me, to my shock, as “a leader in South Africa’s entrepreneurial revolution.” I saw Steve snicker at that. Even Guy managed a wry smile.

I had no notes and I had no PowerPoint. What I had was in my head, but it had been there so long I had no problems letting it out.

“I’m here to talk about what I call The World of Always On,” I began.

“It’s simple really. Treat the wireless Internet as a platform for applications. Use data you create in your own daily life for a new class of services.

“At Always On Technologies, in Johannesburg, a wonderful woman named Tatusi Ramosawa had read what I wrote on my Mooreslore blog, and was ready for me when I arrived in the country a few months ago.

“She believed in what I was saying, and has built a number of hardware and software products to implement my vision.

“What is that vision? It consists of simple pieces that all exist. It includes bio-chip sensors that can monitor any medical condition, or that can monitor the condition of the air or soil. It consists of single-chip radios that can move this data into an 802.11 WiFi network. Most of all it consists of a robust, scalable, modular operating system, in the WiFi gateway, that can run applications directly using this data.

“Many of the early WiFi gateways were single point solutions, designed simply to take Internet broadband out of the wall and make it available throughout the home. They ran Real Time Operating Systems like VxWorks, which were great with the limited functions of a TV remote but couldn’t handle real applications like those created on a PC.

“The Always On gateway runs Linux, and it’s also expandable. That is, you can easily plug modules into it that create applications, using the data of the sensors in valuable ways. For instance, such data can be a security system. It can monitor the condition of a heart patient, or an Alzheimer’s patient, allowing them to remain independent longer. It can control your air conditioner, or the filtering of your household air for pollution. You can put RFID chips on your property so you don’t lose your keys. Put them on your perishable food and you know what you need to get at the store.

“I’ve divided these applications into categories – medical, automation, inventory, entertainment. While there are network appliances available that deliver solutions for one or another of these application spaces, the Always On gateway delivers all of them at once.

“We can deliver these applications directly, but as I said we’re a platform vendor. Just as we had the PC platform in the 1970s, the network platform in the 1980s, and the Internet platform in the 1990s, so I’m convinced this is the decade for the Wireless Internet platform, building on all that came before and delivering a new class of applications.

“We’re looking for software vendors to write for the Always On gateway. We’re looking for hardware vendors to create application packs for the gateway. We’re looking for service providers to use this data in new and creative ways.

“We’re building an organization, or rather Mma Ramosawa is building an organization. My job, frankly, is merely to advise, and to evangelize. I wish she were here with me…”

“Who says I am not?” The voice startled me. It was the voice Tatusi Ramosawa herself, coming from the monitor next to me. Her face was upon it.

“Mma!” I said, seeing her image on the screen. “So wonderful to see you. I do hope you can answer some of the questions I’m sure my friends now have,” I said.

“I see all of your colleagues, Rra Blankenhorn, although I’m afraid the camera is turned so I can’t see you,” she replied. “Are you well? Is your family well?”

“All are well,” I said. “And I hope the company is well, too.”

“The company is very well,” she said. “Thanks to the wonderful people with Virgin Maverick, we can make contacts, and deals, as easily from here in Johannesburg as we could from here in London, from your family home in Atlanta, or from Silicon Valley itself,” she said. “We have the most wonderful broadband connections here, and we now have the human infrastructure to bring the whole of Silicon Valley to the city of JoBurg and to the great world beyond!”

A hand came up in the audience. Mma inclined her head. A reporter asked her a question. She began answering it, in a calm, reasonable, wonderful voice.

I leaned on the podium and smiled at my old friends in the press corps. They were looking at the screen. And I felt as I hoped I might someday when my own daughter graduated from college.

Although I never expected she would be a Motswana woman of the traditional shape.