The Deluge, page 55
I continued calmly. “Furthermore, I have great skepticism regarding the logistical components of this plan. It requires a vast number of interlocking features.” I nodded to Erin Brockovich with what I hoped was appropriate scorn. “An untested app notwithstanding.”
Ned Stark returned to his seat, though his lips maintained an angry and contemptuous moue.
Donald Duck Trump spoke softly. “Ash, I hear what you’re saying. I’m begging you, though, if you can’t be a part of this, stay silent. Give us a chance. Brave people are going to put themselves on the line.”
Seth watched me, and I pretended to consider this. I allowed enough time to make it appear as though I was wrestling with the decision, though I already knew precisely what course I would take. “Seeing as how you’ve involved my partner, you’ve ensured that I won’t betray your confidence. That was clever.”
With that, I became the third person to remove my headset.
Outside my windshield, a misting rain was falling. I sat blinking for a while, adjusting to a gray light that now seemed foreign, like another man’s private worlde.
At home, I found Seth waiting for me. We each stood there for a moment in the home we’d made together, as in the final showdown of an old Western. I said: “You’re a surprisingly adept liar.”
“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to involve you in this. Then I knew I had to.”
I believed him. Or at least believed that he believed this. Carrying secrets in a relationship is a complicated thing. One must convince himself that he is telling his partner the truth in the moment, as when I first allowed Seth to believe there was a possibility I would want a child with him, when I knew that I did not. One convinces himself to allow for a gray area in which the truth is mutable. I told him I was going to my study.
“Stay. We have more to talk about, Ash.” He said it quite gently.
I knew Seth would get his way, on our child and on this thing a group of vapid activists was asking. I was powerless to deny him, my affection simply too uncompromising. I did not let him touch me, though. I left him alone in our expensive condominium and went back out into the one true world where the drizzle still fell.
Conclusion: The global order cries out for a hegemon. Cities of the developing world swell with peoples trudging out of the drought-stricken dust bowls of North Africa and the Middle East and the swamped lowlands of Asia. Europe’s militarization of the Mediterranean continues. Dwindling harvests in Central and South America as well as cyclonic activity in the Caribbean have created the same conundrum in our hemisphere. The fear of refugees arrives before they do, and a supranational nexus of right-wing xenophobia grows. Small groups of individuals are able to forge enormous social and political chaos through relatively small acts of violence, and the dispossessed and discarded internal and external proletariat will breed new and more vicious insurgencies. The problem with insurgents, however, is that unlike Donald Duck Trump and her crew of naive left-wing warriors, they tend not to bother with comprehensive governing philosophies. They simply want to make others feel their disillusionment. History demonstrates that the most powerful empires, in the end, turn out to be surprisingly fragile. With its expansive coastlines and fire exposure in the west, multiple studies have concluded that the North American continent is in fact extremely vulnerable to climate chaos. We see environmental calamity manifesting in the fracture of our political system, which over the course of the last thirty years has responded to increasingly frequent institutional crises with escalating degrees of gridlock and mismanagement. When I write of my mauve dread, the slice of the color spectrum that has followed me my entire life, I perhaps speak of what I long intuited before I even had the mathematics to explain it: A new dark age brims on the horizon. Religious fanaticism, ethnic factionalism, and political extremism will engulf the planet, and the pillage of the natural world will indeed accelerate as the elite make one last futile attempt to gather as much capital as possible in an effort to wall themselves off from the inevitable. Perhaps this is why I remain funereal about the coming election. Civilization’s abrupt retreat will be marked the world over by every flavor of warring chief in crisp, elegantly tailored suits murdering to obtain power in the hope that they might rule this barbaric and alien age.
Book IV
NATION OF HEAT
6DEGREES IS COMING
2033
Shane had felt this combination of exhaustion and fear only once before, during Islali’s birth. Echoes of that ten-hour ordeal, and the postpartum darkness that followed, seemed to vibrate within her as her plane touched down in Charlotte. She exited to Gate B15, feeling like she wanted to collapse onto the grimy carpet. Every nerve ending humming with the dread. She wondered when she would ever get sleep again.
Quinn met her in short-term parking and handed her glasses and a face mask for all the cameras they’d pass on the way. Shane pushed her greasy hair back and slipped on the FaceRec-disrupting lenses.
“We’ll be picking up one more,” said Quinn after they pulled out of range of the airport.
“Who?”
“Jansi.”
Shane stared at blondie for a moment. Quinn wore a light purple cashmere sweater and had her hair carefully parted in the center. She wore a diamond engagement ring because, as she’d explained via the code, she’d decided to further her cover and their aims by marrying the CTO of her company. Quinn, of course, anticipated Shane’s reaction to the news they’d be picking up Jansi.
“You’re good, Shane. I didn’t find her. She found me. We’ve been in contact for a year now.”
GET ON A FLIGHT As soon as you can. Don’t contact anyone else. Quinn found Shane’s message in a multiplayer VR game where she and Shane had set up a dead drop after the last meeting in Wisconsin. They’d decided to open their own line of communication. So here they were. Smashing protocol in an emergency. Taking back control. Quinn had told her fiancé a friend back home had been in a car accident.
Shane ignored that her back channel with Quinn was not the only one, ignored the danger of their organization developing clandestine pockets within itself. “And Jansi knows the situation?”
“I had to bring her in.”
“Okay,” said Shane, nodding. “I’m not angry. That’s good.”
As they waded through traffic, she noticed that Quinn was wearing a boot on her left foot. She asked what happened. “I broke it a week ago getting out of the goddamn shower. Just another indignity of being a woman and getting old.” She thunked the boot against the side of the door.
As she and Quinn cobbled their plans together, she’d scrambled to find Lali a sitter at the last second. Obviously, she couldn’t go to Kai, so Teddy it was. His moon-face looked perfectly credulous as she explained that she had a cousin who’d been in a head-on collision and she needed to go home to Austin for a few days. Teddy was eager for any morsel of her trust after she’d put a stop to their infrequent sex. She’d dropped Lali off that afternoon, her girl crying and begging to go with her even as Teddy promised she could play VR with his boys. Then Shane rushed to the airport on no sleep, barely making the flight, too keyed up on adrenaline to nap.
“This could be the end of it,” said Quinn. Then she smacked the steering wheel and shrieked, the sound piercing in the close confines of the car. It made the hairs on Shane’s arms stand on end.
“We don’t know that,” said Shane.
Quinn only shook her head, furious. “Don’t kid yourself, Shane. Of course we do.”
* * *
They drove into the descending fire of the sunset, keeping an eye out for speed trap drones, though the act of piloting a vehicle would soon become conspicuous itself. Because the car was neutered, they had to drive in analog mode. They fled over nondescript highway and past the standard fast-food and gas station carnival that appeared to Americans as familiarity and homecoming, as if interstate sprawl was the natural state, and what one thought of as nature was nothing more than a curiosity, a relic of a time before civilization advanced to the state of a Whopper Value Meal.
Quinn looked at the battery gauge. “We need a charge.”
Shane hadn’t eaten anything that day and purchased a nutrition bar for an unbelievable $17 while Quinn got coffee and a full charge for the car. They sat outside at a picnic table waiting on the battery, watching the sun disappear and feeling a mild brush of winter air descend. That gust of cold air reminded her of what she’d been dwelling on all day: the time she’d taken Lali, as a newborn, to a taqueria off the highway.
Then she and Quinn were back on the road, through the last remains of daylight, quiet except for the buzz of pop radio. Quinn took an exit, traveling down a state two-lane until they reached a dark turnoff for some meager Carolina town. She pulled into an alley, and it felt as though she barely stopped the car. The locks unbolted, the rear passenger door popped open, and Jansi darted inside, tossing a pack onto the seat and slamming the door closed in one swift motion. Then Quinn was driving again.
“Howdy,” said Jansi, jamming her overlong body into the front to hug Shane. Long, bony, and horse-faced, Jansi wore a green fatigue cap tucked low over her brow. She had overlapping teeth and dry black hair, split at the ends. Big brutish moles protruded all over a ghost-white neck. “Oh my god, girl, I can’t believe we’re here!” Jansi squealed to Shane, as if this were a vacation. Like they were on their way to a bachelorette party. They hadn’t seen each other since the Second Cell went operational in ’28.
“You opened a line of contact with Quinn,” Shane groused. “Outside of Second.” But her voice only sounded childish and petulant to her own ears. Guys, that’s not how we’re supposed to play the game! You’re not doing it right!
“Special circumstances,” said Jansi too brightly. “And not to be a bitch about it, but it’s not my cell that’s the reason we’re in this mess.”
Shane bit her tongue and went back to looking out the window. Jansi then proceeded to talk for the next hour, almost without taking a breath, as if she really were catching up with long-lost friends—friends who badly wanted a disquisition on the state of contemporary American politics. Had Jansi always been this platitudinous? She sounded every bit the armchair revolutionary Shane had spent her whole adulthood abhorring, the reason she found Kai Ismael and Allen Ford in the first place. When Shane tried to shoot eyes at Quinn, she was surprised to see Quinn listening intently.
JANSI Was so excited to be with her comrades, to finally get off her chest what she thought of Vic Love and his new administration: “As if we didn’t all see this coming! It’s pathetic how fast the liberals swamped to a true fascist. The Dems finally take the Senate back, and they’re ready to rubber-stamp anything! As long as he gives a speech from a corporate diversity training handbook. He’s executing a textbook authoritarian takeover, and he’s already got practice. His company’s been privatizing the police force of every city in the country for the last decade. And now he’s putting in Xuritas cronies at DOJ. Then the CIA and FBI will both be replaced by loyalists. And we’re the ones who saw all this coming, right? And laid infrastructure for resistance, you know? And Vic Love knows it!”
Jansi droned on as Quinn took the final exit, and they wound their way into the back roads near Clemson, out past a town called Tamassee. They pulled to the top of a long driveway that led into a copse of trees, but just beyond those woods she could see the lights of a house, the edges of a farm stretching into the blue-black light. Quinn produced an old-fashioned burner cell from the glove compartment. She dialed, waited.
“Hi,” Quinn said robotically. “It’s your former student Erica. I’m here with a couple friends, and we were wondering if you could come out tonight. Have a beer and catch up.”
The three of them sat in the silence of the car. Waited.
Quinn nodded. “That’s right. Outside. At the top of your driveway. We wanted to talk. About your plans for the future.” And they waited, just the hum of their hats, the faintest internal whine from the EV’s drivetrain, and a tinny sound from the speaker of the old phone pressed hard to Quinn’s ear. She said, “I understand, but this is an emergency. We received extremely distressing news, and we need to discuss it.” Another pause. “Okay, that works. Okay. Okay, perfect.” She hung up, turned to Jansi and Shane. “He’s home alone. We can talk in the house.” They stared back at her. “He said his dog is sick and he doesn’t want to leave him alone.”
“No way,” said Shane. “Who knows what he’s got in there that’s internet-connected? TV, VR, glasses, oven—hell, his whole house could see us walking in—”
“It’s fine,” Jansi cut her off. The clipped way she said this, as if biting off the tip of her own tongue, caught Shane off-guard. Her face cloaked by shadows and the brim of her hat, Jansi put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder and then pointed forward, urging her on.
HOW THIS WOULD GO Jansi did not like the tension filling the car. She did not like the way Shane and Quinn felt to be on a different page from her. In war, one had to be decisive or risk losing everything. They were arguing about every little point. Action, action, action. Keep moving. Be decisive!
They drove down through the acre of woods to the farmhouse, a pleasant two-story with bright track lighting spilling through the windows, a rusted basketball hoop over the garage, a dingy box truck parked perpendicular to the house with Ford Custom Furnishing stenciled on the side, and a John Deere tractor beside that. Quinn asked for her backpack and pulled from it a large brick with an antenna—a battery-powered jammer, she explained. It would send multiple frequencies to nearby cell towers and ensure their conversation was private and uninterrupted. The three of them exited the car into a wind shivering the branches overhead. Quinn thumped her boot along in a half-limp. She rang the doorbell.
“Hello, hello!” The woman who answered the door had such merry eyes, a smile so big, and a southern drawl so thick, Shane forgot where she was or why she was there. Like she’d blinked herself onto a sitcom. Allen Ford’s wife reached for her first and wrapped her in a hug. “I’m Emmy! It’s so good to meet y’all!” She hugged Quinn next, who managed to look not the least befuddled. “So y’all just showed up at the door hoping Allen would feed you? Not surprising.” She hugged Jansi, and now Shane saw Allen behind his wife in the entranceway, hands in pockets, looking like an old sheepish mouse. He wore a beat-up ballcap that read KIAWAH ISLAND, loose pink scalp tucked inside.
OPSEC Quinn felt her hand shaking as she switched on the jammer. Shane was right; they didn’t know what they were walking into. New speech recognition tech could place a voice to a name with startling accuracy. Stingrays could trick your phone into transmitting data without you knowing. Don’t even whisper near a coffeepot was the best advice. She felt nauseous. She felt exhilarated. She’d waited until the others had left the car to draw one last item from her pack.
“This is my fault,” he aw-shucksed. “You said you might stop through tonight on your way up from Florida, and I just totally blanked on telling the one person I was supposed to inform.”
“What they don’t tell you about getting old,” said Emmy, ushering them in, “is that it all goes—everything! Your memory, your back, and most of all, telling your wife a bunch of pretty former students are dropping by for dinner. Lucky we got plenty to eat, and I’m no jealous type! Honey, what’d you do to the leg?”
Quinn thumped into the living room where the television was turned up to an unfathomable volume. “Speaking of getting old. I fell getting out of the shower. Stupid. Probably osteoporosis catching me early.”
“Shut it,” said Emmy. “You’re too young for that nonsense.”
“So,” said Allen, gesturing toward Quinn. “This is Erica. And I may have told you about this young lady, Abigail.” He looked at Shane, his gaze fond, and Shane smiled weakly. She tugged at the dirty hoodie she’d thrown on before leaving her house and felt gross and underdressed even though that didn’t matter. “One of my favorite students in all my years of teaching.”
“So nice to finally meet you,” Shane said to Emmy, trying to remember Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. “Allen talked about you all the time.”
“Please. He probably came to class without his wedding ring on.” She stretched her neck to peck her husband on the cheek while Allen studied Jansi.
“And I don’t believe I know your friend,” he said.
Jansi extended her hand to him. “Hi. Jansi. I’m sure— What was it, Erica? I’m sure Erica mentioned me before.” Shane’s stomach was a coiled rattlesnake, and she could see the wave of horror pass over Allen’s face. Jansi was beaming a wide and playful mouth of crooked teeth, like this was all a joke. Even Quinn looked shocked by the brazen “Erica” comment. Emmy, however, appeared not to notice.
“I’m so sorry, I have this garbage too loud. Sony!” she hollered. “Lower volume to five!” The MSNBC pundits’ voices dwindled and the debate about the newly inaugurated administration’s first bill fell to a whisper.
She led them to the kitchen table, and as Shane passed through the spacious living room, shelves loaded down with books until the wood sagged, the couches and blankets filthy with dog hair, her eye landed on the picture facing out from an end table. The whole family. Allen, squinting a smile with his hands on the shoulders of a mischievous little boy, Emmy holding on to a teenage girl whose braces looked painful both physically and reputationally. Two more boys and another girl. She could almost remember the names. Jake, Anna, Zack, Perry, and… the name of the younger girl escaped her. They sat at the kitchen table, and Emmy fretted that if she’d had some advance warning she would’ve cooked more, and maybe she could order a pizza—if she did so now, it would be on the table in no more than forty-five minutes.
“Not necessary,” said Jansi. “We already ate.”
“Well, now how far are you girls driving?” asked Emmy.
