The Deluge, page 53
“I’m sympathetic to your predicament, Agent Chen. This group has catalyzed an ugly reaction to environmental remediation. No one would prefer that you arrest these conspirators more than myself. You flew me a long way. How I can be of service here?”
He removed a hand from his pocket and began picking at a cuticle. His black-pitted eyes searched the nail bed carefully. This made what he said next unnerving.
“The lists you’ve been compiling for me, of potential vulnerable infrastructure, it’s helpful. But what I really need to get in your ear about, Dr. Hasan, is the political situation. I was coming up through Quantico after 9/11. I knew a lot of what was happening was counterproductive to the goal of finding and stopping the people who’d do the country harm. I was around during Trump when the bureau was effectively at war with a traitor. None of that scares me as much as the efforts to politicize us now. It would be helpful if you could alert certain allies in Congress and the White House.”
“I assure you, Agent Chen, I will.”
Chen propped a leg up on a piece of fallen concrete and then draped his arms across it. He reached out and touched a piece of twisted rebar, protruding from cement blocks. Then he glanced around to see who might be paying attention to our conversation. Satisfied, he looked back at me.
“I wanted you out here, Doctor, because holo-conferencing, VR, FaceTime—eyes and ears are everywhere now. What I need you to relay, it has to stay off-channel. Vic Love is going to win this election, and he has a track record with law enforcement. What he’s done with policing in this country—and that was before he was even elected to public office. Word I’m hearing is he wants to turn the bureau upside down. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are goading us to shut down task forces on, if you ask me, much more dangerous groups. Militias and white nationalists. We’re getting resources yanked from important operations left and right, and it’s all political pressure.”
“A troubling situation, I agree, but I’m not sure that 6Degrees doesn’t constitute the more potent threat.”
“You haven’t seen the intelligence on the League then.”
“Indiscriminate murder is hardly sophisticated. The materials involved cost a few hundred dollars and with the modern artillery available to civilians, hitting a number of targets can be accomplished with only a modicum of training. What 6Degrees has conducted is much more impressive—a sustained, multiyear campaign of clandestine bombings with absolutely zero penetration of its leadership. They’ve demonstrated not only expertise with explosives but law enforcement protocol, surveillance techniques, and most importantly, counterintelligence. The fact that neither the FBI Laboratory nor the ATF has been able to understand how they are procuring high-explosive material, particularly Tovex, Semtex H, and pentaerythritol tetranitrate, is troubling.”
“Marie Newman gave us some clue. And 6Degrees is not more dangerous. Twenty-two years ago, this refinery had an industrial accident after a maintenance restart gone bad. The explosion killed seven. That toll exceeds 6Degrees’ entire decade of operations.”
“I’ve read your reports, Agent Chen. There were surely others like Marie Newman unwittingly supplying them. Still, other than the patsies, there has been no DNA evidence gathered, no latent fingerprints. Materials analysis, toolmark examinations, metallurgical analysis, device reconstruction have all yielded few leads other than the conclusion that you are now searching for more than one bomb maker. They are growing. And they understand how to cause greater chaos than their current efforts suggest. Should they ever decide to raise the stakes, that, Agent Chen, is what would put the fear of God into me, so to speak. L. Victor Love has called 6Degrees the number one threat to the security of the United States, and though I’m not typically given to agreeing with such promulgations, I have to say I see his point for one reason: effectiveness.”
Agent Chen said nothing to this, he simply extended his hand to shake mine, and when he tucked the thumb drive into my palm, I finally understood why he’d flown me all the way out to the relative safety of a crime scene.
The government SUV took me around Fidalgo Bay under low iron clouds. Past the still beauty of the Pacific Northwest, skirting the belly of the temperate rain forests that make up Olympic National Park, I saw a field of horses grazing in the summer sun, and I thought about how little of the world I’d actually seen. How very much of my life has been spent in front of computer screens. How little opportunity I have had to explore in the brief shock of light and color between otherwise eternal respites.
Once back in the hotel, I packed away Agent Chen’s thumb drive, slipped on my VR set, and entered The Pastor’s worlde. While waiting, I looked out over the assembled avatars moving through a fluid lambency in the futuristic Christian megalopolis. The crenellated towers of this neo-Disney kingdom spiraled majestically into a mustard-colored sky, supposedly mimicking the sky under which Jesus walked with the cross. There would be a meeting soon, Ned Stark told me. And we would all take down our avatars.
* * *
When Seth and I moved into our apartment in Georgetown, he broached the subject of becoming fathers, either through adoption or a surrogate. I told him this was not something I wished to discuss so soon into our cohabitation and left it at that. There are many things about Seth I find distasteful. He’s a poor cook, though he thinks he’s a good one. Ideologically, he is heavily invested in identity claims to one’s sexuality and pushes me to attend “Pride” events, though I find them tasteless, corporatized alcoholic displays. He doesn’t rinse food from dishes before placing them in the dishwasher, which usually means some granule will cling on, and I’ll have to wash them again by hand. When we hike, particularly our favorite trail, the Billy Goat at Great Falls, he prattles too much and too excitedly, which obviates the serenity of the forest. Nevertheless, I’m fond of him. Fond of his passion, optimism, and skewed Roman nose. His boyish blond cowlick and bright blue eyes tend to erase all petty grievances. And yet, how badly he wants to be a father. On the night of August 20 of this year, I returned from a run, and he put a picture of a lean, aesthetically pleasing African American woman in front of me.
“This is Janelle. She’s twenty-seven. She wants to be our surrogate.”
I did not take his phone. “I suppose she just approached you out of the blue and offered her services?”
“I wanted to get an idea of what our options would be. But she’s perfect, babe. Just out of law school. Smart, kind, beautiful. Genes for days! And she’ll accommodate us on everything.”
He tried to touch my back, but I moved before he could do so. I removed my ARs. They were fogged from entering the air-conditioning. Seth took my hand.
“Ash, just meet her. That’s all I’m asking. Meet her and tell me this isn’t destiny.”
“I’m sure you can guess my feelings about an insipid notion like destiny. The brain seeks patterns because that is what brains desperately do. This would be an irrevocable decision for us.” The joy drained from his face. I’d punctured his enthusiasm, and as he deflated, I admit, I found it very gratifying.
“Okay, Ashir, that was uncalled for.”
“I’m concerned about the irresponsibility of the decision. You act as though we bear no moral culpability for creating a consciousness at this particular social and environmental moment.”
He brayed an obnoxious and exaggerated laugh: “Wow! Babe! How original! ‘Oh, this world’s so cruel, how can we bring life into it?’ At least make an effort to not be cliché.”
I took his outburst in stride, but there was an instance of mental forewarning, almost a premonition of mauve darkness billowing down.
“You keep track of your emissions footprint on your glasses, Seth. You scold my sister when she eats a hamburger, and we all had to suffer through the two of you arguing interminably about low-methane beef at Thanksgiving. You do understand that every metric ton of carbon you’ve saved as a moral crusader will immediately propel itself into the atmosphere after our second year of buying diapers?”
“That’s so bogus, Ash. That’s not what this is about.” He walked behind our kitchen island and pretended to busy himself. Because our finances were so secure due to my investment strategies, he purchased an excess of upscale kitchen appliances. He now fiddled with the nutritional analyzer and a handful of chopped mushrooms. “You’re afraid.”
“I am. But not of what you think. You believe I’m afraid of late-night feedings and the responsibility of caregiving and perhaps the passing along of my insecurities and anxieties. My depression and suicidal ideation. These, Seth, are obviously banal concerns.”
“Oh, are they? Could’ve fooled me.”
Seth quit pretending at his concern over the mushrooms’ quality, grabbed the kitchen island, and clutched it as if to steady himself. His blue eyes trained on me, his high blood pressure likely spiking. I said:
“Yes. And spare me the speech about the singular joy of becoming a parent. Haniya and Peter expressed sentiments just as boring after they had Noor, so I beg you not to be as uninteresting as them.”
“Real nice.”
I replaced my glasses and noticed an alert in the lens with your name, Congresswoman. I apologize for not responding. Instead, I went to our bookshelves, which lined the wall and surrounded the television. I pulled down my colleague Dr. Anthony Pietrus’s book. I also took down those of James Hansen, Fred Pearce, and Elizabeth Kolbert. I pulled from the shelf every book of Seth’s that dealt with the climatic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and piled them under my arm, these cheap tomes of popular science meant to frighten and unsettle a particular class of college-educated, medium-to-high-income urban professionals of an energy and extraction-intensive economy, one who likely reads Moniza Farooki in the New Yorker and has a certain genre of documentary suggested to them by the algorithms of their streaming services. I carried the pile over to the kitchen island and dumped them on the food analyzer and the mushrooms. A few of the books spilled off the sides of the kitchen island.
“You’re not ignorant, Seth. You read the material, or at least the material you can comprehend. So you understand there is a better than fifty-fifty chance that by the year 2100 civilization will be drastically altered in nearly every regard, and those deviations could include violence and turmoil on a scale never before experienced in the memory of humanity.” I was glancing from the floor to Seth and back to the floor, as I did when I grew heated. “You also understand—at least if you paid attention to all these books you so proudly display—that there is a very real chance that runaway climate change could eradicate most human life, and that this could happen quickly, possibly within the lifetime of this hypothetical child you want to pay this impoverished, indebted law student to carry for you. And why do you seek this? Because of some fuzzy notion indoctrinated in you by the aspirational marketing of cloying lifestyle brands targeting the consumer habits and media diet of the yuppie homosexual? You chide the right wing for their intransigence, you chastise the working poor for their ignorance, but how are you any different? You want to maintain your beloved political signifiers out of a sense of self-righteousness while you enjoy the privileges you feel entitled to, but you are as selfish, blithe, and arrogant as the Middle American consumers you so decry.”
We stood there for a moment, the mess of books scattered around us. Seth stared at me, and I stared at the edge of Tony’s volume, with its picture of Hurricane Sandy clobbering the Eastern Seaboard. Seth said:
“It’s amazing what an asshole you can be when you put your mind to it.”
He left the room, and I slept on the futon in my office that night.
* * *
In the morning, I found Seth in front of the TV with an untouched bowl of cereal. Instead of preparing my morning tea, I was drawn to the CNN report he was watching. I’d forgotten to text you back, but I now knew why you’d tried contacting me: 542 people dead at Chicago’s Wrigley Field in the worst mass shooting in American history.
The night before, the Chicago Cubs were competing in a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers when five men opened fire from nearby rooftops. Using high-powered military assault rifles and the same guided bullets popularized by the al-Bawadis, they shot into the stands for over an hour as panicked fans attempted to flee. With the exits covered, people simply ran into gunfire as they tried to escape. Nearly a thousand were wounded. What the so-called smart bullet has precluded is the utility of “running away.” In an era of guided ammunition, to run is to ensure one’s death. The five men had each purchased a ticket to various apartments and rooftop perches and then set themselves up behind heavily fortified shooter’s nests so that the Chicago police were unable to effectively return fire. Instead, the bomb squad strapped explosive devices to separate crowd control drones, piloted those drones into the occupied apartments and, as a weeping Chicago police chief put it, “blew those monsters straight to hell.” It is the first recorded use of drones to kill combatants on American soil.
Haniya had called me in a panic because she assumed these men had been Islamic extremists. They, of course, turned out to be white separatists from Indiana with ties to the wider militia movement, and I could not help but think of what Agent Chen had told me in Anacortes the month before. One of the shooters, Robert Lynn Carmichael, left behind his infamous appeal to:
“Wake the hell up, America! They’re taking it all, and if you don’t fight for your heritage and your skin, they will destroy you. This is a genocide, and you are already standing in the gas chamber!”
Remarkable how the people who cause the most chaos are also always the most boring and insecure. When I made this remark to Seth, the first words I’d spoken to him since our fight, he looked at me with contempt.
“I suppose you’ll use this as evidence of your ‘cruel, harsh world’ theory.”
“Not remotely. It’s a mathematical certainty that in a country with such a proliferation of high-powered weaponry, citizens will find use for that weaponry. But still, the odds that our hypothetical child would die at the hands of murderous extremists remain vanishingly small.”
“You know, Ash…” Seth pushed his hands through his thinning hair. “This isn’t theoretical. You can’t quantify why children are important on a fucking spreadsheet. This”—he jabbed a finger at the screen of our opulent television—“is why we need to do this. We can’t control anything at all in this life, but if we can bring just a sliver of kindness and compassion into it, then we are helping. We are doing our part.”
“Seth, you can reconfigure an ignorant bromide all you want but an ignorant bromide it will remain.”
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but instead left for his kundalini yoga class. I poured his cereal down the garbage disposal.
* * *
Two days later, Senator L. Victor Love held a rally at Cellular Field baseball stadium in Chicago, assailing “all threats to our democracy, our diversity, and our way of life.” The implications of his speech were clear. Though he led with the attack in Chicago, he spent a great deal of his speech reminding voters of 6Degrees, the al-Bawadis’ slaughter, and the threat of terrorist infiltration along the US-Mexico border, concluding with:
“I have a message for all savages, murderers, and enemies of our country: We will hunt you, we will find you, we will end you.”
The audience thundered its approval. If you recall, Congresswoman, one of the reasons we first came to an accord was over the backroom dealings Senator Love engaged in that transformed PRIRA into an expansion of surveillance and law enforcement while deploying only tepid antipodal climate adaptation measures. He showered his former company with billions in government contracts and walked away a hero of bipartisan deal-making. Ostensibly, this document began as a measured attempt to extrapolate if you and your supporters should throw your weight behind L. Victor Love in the presidential contest, and I apologize if I’ve traveled far afield. I’m told my memos can be convoluted. However, I believe everything I’ve included here is in service to the goal of thinking through the rise of Senator Love. The dynamics of the parties have changed a great deal since I’ve come to Washington. Mary Randall’s near-certain political failure will resonate in perpetuity: The Republican establishment bent over backward to nominate a moderate woman of color, and its own voters and media apparatus rebelled. The conundrum facing the dedicated climate hawk such as Seth or yourself is that Mary Randall, who signed PRIRA, has been chastened and metaphorically gelded by her own party. She is now desperately behind in swing-state polling, and in only thirteen of one hundred simulations of Nate Silver’s 538 models does she manage to win.
Meanwhile, true power in American politics has found other avenues. Wall Street, fossil-fuel interests, pharmaceuticals, and the military-, security-, and prison-industrial complexes all began backing Democratic challengers and pushing the socialist wing of the party into a spoiler role. It is a testament to the rightward march, not of the country but of the financiers of its politicians, that this has occurred in only a few election cycles. L. Victor Love’s nomination is its crowning achievement; a handsome and masculine homosexual military veteran and businessman who, when posing with his husband shirtless in lifestyle magazines with their impressive abdominal muscles on display, seems to check every box. Yet even a dedicated Democrat like Seth can see that Love serves a specific constituency. His mantra this election has been “climate security,” a refrain meant to assuage progressive voters, while signaling that we as a nation will continue to arm the lifeboats, as the expression goes.
You may recall this conversation we had in your office after Love essentially cleared away his competition following the April primaries. You said:
“Vic is not just a corporate, Third Way Democrat. He’s what we used to call a right-wing Republican. He’s a billionaire war profiteer who bought himself a Montana Senate seat. This is about the worst possible outcome I could’ve pictured. I don’t understand how it turned this fast.”
