The Deluge, page 94
Tony hated this as much as I did.
“This is all so fucking ridiculous. Everyone wants their fucking toy. She wants a toy, he wants a toy, you want a toy, and, and, and—”
He sputtered, unable to expel any more fury, and I quickly took over. “I concur, Congresswoman. What you’ve described is well beyond our purview.”
Secretary Rathbone said: “It sounds mostly like you want to buy yourself new votes, Tracy.”
The congresswoman whipped her head back and forth, her fleshy cheeks vibrating with the passion I’d always admired in her. “We have to engage citizens in the process of saving their own society. Democracy has a chance to prove itself here; that in a crisis it can be creative and decisive. This will cement the bill’s democratic legitimacy as soon as the next election. In World War Two, one of the foremost strategies was labor mobilization, and the best way to mobilize labor is high-paying jobs in unionized workplaces, so people are invested in what they’re producing in a moment of rapid displacement and economic change—I feel like this is beyond obvious.”
Alice clucked her tongue. “Cool. Well. You can forget it. We’re not touching this bullshit.”
“Then you won’t have the votes of my caucus. Not with indemnification attached. It’s that simple.”
The room was silent after the congresswoman said that. She controlled the bulk of the votes we’d already assumed and were counting on. Finally, Admiral Dahms spoke up.
“You know, I have to say I agree with the congresswoman.”
All heads turned to him.
Said Ms. Li Song: “Really?”
Dahms nodded. “The Pastor may have won this election, as the rules define it. Yet we have a different man sitting in the White House. Before that, my former boss, Vic Love, won with a psyops campaign and behaved like Saddam Hussein. Even Mary Randall relied on standard Republican voter suppression. For too long I’ve watched our politicians settle for the ability to dominate. But now we must inspire. Obviously, I’m a patriot. I’ve spent my whole life in service to this country and the ideals it stands for. If we truly do believe that our nation has the power to lead the world in this moment of utmost peril, well, we had better act like it.”
Silence fell over the room as it became clear we would accept the congresswoman’s agenda.
* * *
What we delivered to President Hamby and Congress, this “Frankenstein clusterfuck,” as Secretary Rathbone called it, would face opposition, we understood as much. Upon returning to Washington, we found a city gritting its teeth, every pocket muttering terror about what our task force had delivered to the fragmented and barely legitimate lawmaking bodies. The Washington Post summarized the reaction: PRESIDENT HAMBY, CONGRESS RECOIL FROM AMBITIOUS PLAN. While Secretary Rathbone worked on the president, Jane and Haniya were dispatched to alleviate the concerns of the Climate Caucus, which was furious at the indemnification clause. Tony, Admiral Dahms, Ms. Li Song, and I were sent into the teeth of the Republican resistance. At this point, a third of its members had formed the “L2P Caucus,” which stood for “Loyal to The Pastor.” They were calling for an armed revolution to depose Hamby and install the rightful winner of the election. Obviously, we did not expect to have their votes. This left scant targets for persuasion.
We spent a day developing our pitch before our first meeting with Nevada senator Marlon Hacker, a Mormon who went directly from his missionary work in Taiwan to the Nevada Senate. He had an enormous entourage of young aides, all equally blond, polite, and friendly. They gathered around him and seemed to blink and smile a great deal. Alice McCowen, who insisted on overseeing our effort, leaned over to whisper to me: “We call these creepy Mormon robots ‘the Hackers.’ Don’t stick a finger too close to their teeth.”
I began the presentation by walking Senator Hacker through the financial crisis, the fecklessness of the bailouts, mergers, and stopgaps, and the threat of sea level rise that was keeping the markets from stabilizing. Admiral Dahms then took over to highlight the security threats rapidly developing as the country spun through financial chaos into depression; the violence of Governor Justis in Kansas; the riots, looting, and street battles being waged in cities. Those dispossessed by western wildfires were filling up abandoned big-box stores and warehouse logistics centers, whole tent cities of the homeless were sprouting up across Nevada. These images of the internally displaced, the shipwrecked of the planet’s mightiest empire, trudging down desert highways, carrying babies on their backs, pulling rolling suitcases across potholed roads, changed the senator’s face. His expression went from one of feigned concern to a more honest fear. Finally, Tony took center stage.
“Senator, we are out of time. We need to stabilize markets, backstop people’s livelihoods, and begin decarbonizing as fast as the economy can bear. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s instability is calling into question East Antarctica, and if that were to go, it would make a major economic depression look like a relatively minor problem. There’s enough water in East Antarctica to drown a third of the landmass of the United States—”
Much to Tony’s annoyance, one of the Hackers interrupted: “We had a question about the Capital Transition Authority. There’s nearly $300 billion set aside for…?”
“To move the capital away from D.C.” Tony tried to get back to his point about East Antarctica, but the aide pressed on.
“Moving it where?”
“To Cleveland.”
Senator Hacker raised a bright blond eyebrow. “You want to move the capital of the United States to Cleveland?”
I interjected: “The capital cannot remain in D.C. Already, the district is experiencing nearly one hundred tidal flooding events each year, and we’re expecting that number to double by 2055. It is impractical to have a capital in a city that’s flooding every other day.”
Senator Hacker: “But Cleveland?”
Tony whipped his hand in a “wrap-it-up” motion. “Property is cheap, there are plenty of neighborhoods that can be developed, and frankly the future of the country will depend on the Great Lakes as a water source and trading route. It’s also as insulated from extreme weather and sea level rise as you’re going to find.”
“I’m sorry.” One of the aides stood and jammed his finger at Tony. “You expect us to swallow all this bullshit without so much as allowing a rider?”
Cross talk erupted as Senator Hacker and his staff began vying to expel all their objections at once, while Tony, Alice, Dahms, and Li Song all began firing back. I lowered my head and waited for them to quiet, but it became too much. Finally, I spoke up with more volume than I’m used to: “It’s all so familiar.”
They stopped arguing to look at me, the efficacy of my tactic ever effective.
“The famines, the violence, and the stagnation of growth all point to a vicious economic contraction, one that won’t stop in any of our lifetimes. We’ve recklessly burned through three hundred years of fossilized energy to build an immense house of cards. Industrial civilization has grown to unprecedented scale and therefore the costs of disintegration will be at a scale not previously contemplated. We are already seeing intimations of breakdown in the atrocities of the League or the Kansas governor essentially declaring himself king or The Pastor all but demanding his followers massacre his way into office. These are the early signs that the rule of law is coming undone. One can always count on the fact that there are many, many people who very much want to see the collapse of centralized authority because they believe they will prosper amid a rewiring of all the known rules. Mass media have created a distorted perception of what breakdown will actually look like. They believe it will be orderly and quick, a wall of fire advancing, while others indulge in comforting fantasies that they will return to subsistence farming and holistic medicinal practices. But the truth is that for all of us, it will be grueling and unfamiliar, hunger and thirst and disease will be constant, and many will watch loved ones raped, tortured, and murdered by men who have the stomach for unlimited violence. To be clear, everyone in this room, in the congressional chambers, and in the financial, plutocratic, and corporate elite have everything to lose in this scenario. They will become the first—and easiest—targets.”
The Hackers all stared at me in disquiet. Senator Hacker looked ill. Only Alice responded:
“Boy, Hasan, you always got something to say that’ll curl the milk in your mama’s titty.”
* * *
With Senator Hacker’s vote secured, we were beginning to chip away. Congresswoman Aamanzaihou managed to secure and deliver the promise of a browbeaten affirmative vote by her unruly caucus. Similarly, the mainstream of the Democratic Party, hearing the signal from Wall Street and their financiers all too clearly, began to fall in line. And as promised, McCowen and Rathbone delivered the president, who finally appeared on TV endorsing the plan as “imperfect but necessary to restoring confidence in our economy.” That same night, a video appeared online of masked men wearing APL insignia burning a teenage girl alive in a cage. She’d been kidnapped from the House of Peace Islamic Community Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Such gruesome and pointless violence had long ago failed to surprise me. I understood too well that this kind of vicious nihilism existed within every color and stripe of humanity, but Hani was deeply shaken by it. She came over sobbing. “You and I won’t be safe. Noor and Greg and Forrest, they won’t be safe. What will we do if this doesn’t work?”
I had nothing to say to comfort her.
Though violence had long ago ceased to disturb me, I was greatly unsettled when that night Tony forwarded me a new paper from the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate outlining how the tsunami the previous spring that flooded large portions of the west coast of Svalbard had almost certainly been caused by the collapse of methane clathrates. Part of the seafloor, it seemed, had simply imploded, triggering an earthquake that sent a wave of water crashing over the shores and effectively destroying the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Given the flooding events in California, it barely registered in the global news stream. Tony and I spoke through our glasses. This was, after all, Tony’s original field. He’d made his name warning of the instability of the clathrates. He said: “It doesn’t matter right now. Well, it does matter, but not to what we’re doing—trying to sell a New Deal, a moonshot, and a Marshall Plan for the planet all in one go.”
We had our crucial meeting with Senate majority leader Russ Mackowski the next day.
I said: “You owe it to Senator Mackowski to alert him to this finding.”
“You think that knuckle dragger cares about a gas hydrate study? Wake up, man.”
“What do you think the study indicates?”
“What do you think it indicates, Hasan? You’re not exactly a dummy, last time I checked. If the Arctic Ocean experienced a sudden collapse along a continental shelf, it’s because some serious portion of its clathrate supply unfroze. It was the warmest summer for that sea since record-keeping began. It’s pretty elementary from there: the atmosphere just got a huge, unexpected dose of methane and it came from a clathrate collapse. Probably the equivalent of a year of Chinese emissions. Maybe more.”
“The science behind the mass release of Arctic clathrates remains uncertain, Tony.”
“Please. The Amazon, the permafrost, the clathrates, it’s all coming undone. We could be looking at CO2-equivalent concentrations of one thousand ppm by the end of the century. Which means even if this bill does pass, and even if we rouse this stupid fucking planet and its selfish idiot fucking inhabitants to the grandest cozy feel-good cuddle fest, it’s too late. It’ll be like bailing out the Titanic with a Dixie cup. By the time your kid and my grandchild are our age, it’ll be too hot to go outside on most of the planet’s surface.”
Senator Mackowski arrived the next morning with a smirking dismissal already stitched into his mouth and shook each of our hands like we were children petitioning our government for a later bedtime. His aides were more seasoned than the Hackers, including David Montreff, a cynical arrow-collar I’d dealt with previously. “Just like the old days, huh, Dr. Hasan?” The glare of his white, straight teeth made my skin hurt.
Silver hair swept back, Mackowski reclined comfortably, his muscled bulk creaking the hinges of his conference chair. He looked relaxed and content. Ms. Li Song began by explaining that her members were willing to shoulder enormous sacrifice if it helped save the economic system, but the senator interrupted her.
“Emii, honey, do you remember what you said to me back in ’31 when I was getting my exploratory committee off the ground to take down Randall? I was going to be president, and what did you say?”
Even I was taken aback by how crass this was, to revert immediately to grudges and naked ambition.
Ms. Li Song shook her head once. “I can’t recall, Senator.”
“You said your boys couldn’t back me because you had another candidate you were keeping your eye on. You thought putting a Democrat in the White House would be more useful, didn’t you? And look where it all ended up with Loren Victor Love, huh? Tell you what, if I’d just finished my second term, we wouldn’t be neck-deep in this shit right now. That much I got on lock.”
She said: “I’m surprised you take politics so personally. We’re in the throes of a serious crisis.”
“And then you backed this total crank-bank of a preacher, so now I’ve got the right flank of my guys ready to gut me, and everyone else on the Hill is running around like a chicken fresh off the chopping block. And then it’s hat in hand, ‘Senator Mack, please save us from ourselves.’ You understand how it might be awfully hard for me to take you seriously?”
I interrupted: “Senator, perhaps I could walk you through the legislation and speak to your concerns.”
Mackowski laughed. “Concerns? Yeah, I got a few of ’em. Like the biggest cramdown of socialism and state control in the history of the republic. This makes the travesty of the New Deal look like pure timidity. And Emii, you’re not the only game in town for oil and gas. Others in the sector have issued me assurances that, frankly, I’d never trust you to deliver on. I can’t believe you all had the balls to come drop this at my feet and expect me to rubber stamp it. D-O-A, my friends. Dead on arrival. I didn’t even want to take this meeting.”
Tony asked: “So why did you?”
Montreff replied for the senator: “Optics. So we can go to the press and say the senator heard you out, and it was even worse than he thought. You have to manage these situations pretty carefully.”
Tony bristled. “The country is spiraling into a depression it might never recover from.”
“Oh, it’ll recover. It’s just about timing. After another four years of crisis that began under a Democrat who’s locked up in a mental ward, folks’ll be looking for a change. That’s when someone who knows what the hell he’s doing can step in, jump-start the economy with a reinvigorated energy policy that will exploit all the new energy horizons and get some solar management underway. Hell, Hamby might not even make it till the end of the month. Wish you could call an election whenever you want, British-style, but, alas, we are what we are. Until then, I’ll carve my own bully pulpit with the chisel of majority leader.”
Mackowski stood, buttoning his coat.
Tony gawked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Thanks for playing, gentlemen. And gentlewoman. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around, but it’s the August recess, and I’m going on vacation.”
David Montreff looked very pleased. He and the Mackowskis quickly swarmed around their boss like fighter jets escorting a plane, and they walked out.
* * *
Mackowski’s assurance that there would be no Senate vote on the bill consumed the media for the next few days until The Pastor’s nationally coordinated Loyalty March of August 11. The footage of thousands of people clotting together in city streets around the country, heads freshly shaved, trading razor blades and box cutters, was arresting to say the least. I watched, fascinated, as they held their comrades’ skulls to the pavement and carved crosses into each other’s scalps. Then they marched en masse, from Anaheim to Atlanta, Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, bare-chested, chanting, bleeding from the crucifix wounds, blood pooling in their ears, eyes, and down their throats. They carried signs demanding that their savior ascend, that their new nation form, tagging their mark on highway dividers, road signs, and retail shops. From his worlde, The Pastor promised, “If all ninety million of my voters refuse to obey, if we rampage, they cannot stop us!”
Windows smashed, cars burning, riot police mostly unable to bring order, some unspecified number of people killed and injured, but this was not our concern. With D.C. in lockdown and the closest disturbance in Baltimore, it was merely a discomfiting distraction. We scrambled for other avenues to pass the bill. I told Peter:
“It’s incredible how the rules that govern our imaginary nation-state polities have become more real than those that govern our economic superstructure. Or our biosphere, for that matter.”
Peter admitted: “It’s a rock and a hard place, I’ll give you that. You know me and Wimpel have a relationship with the guy, right?”
“Senator Mackowski? I was aware that your paths had crossed, I suppose.”
Peter looked to Haniya, who was fixing peanut butter and banana sandwiches for the children. Her dark gaze met Peter’s. He said: “You don’t get into the hedge fund game without a strong meat hook in Congress. Me and Mack belong to all the same clubs and bullshit. I’ve seen his old-man cock in a steam room, bro.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Peter nodded to Haniya. “He likes you! He thinks you’re spunky, and he thinks I’m a hoot!”
“Yeah, Pete, so what are you saying?”
“Let’s you and me go work on him.”
