by Peter Smith
Kellen placed his hands on the back of his chair, his fingers tightening on the material as the color in them blanched, “You have no idea what it takes to be a leader Mrs. Patterson,” he said, emphasizing her last name, “But the first lesson you should learn is that you aren’t our leader. You don’t get to dictate to us what we should and should not do.”
She shook her head and laughed. She looked at Sean who’s eyes were locked straight ahead, doing his best to transport himself somewhere else mentally. David was looking at her, shaking his head slightly, hoping to send her the message she needed to back off. At the current moment in time, she didn’t give a rat's ass about taking the easy path. She was frustrated and upset that no matter how hard she tried, men such as Kellen and Trotsky seemed hell bent on war.
“Let me give you a lesson Supreme Commander,” her tone emphasizing the word supreme, “I have the largest and most effective army this planet has ever seen at my beck and call. How about I use that might and just drag both you and Trotsky to Kauai and force you both to hammer out a peace plan?”
David’s eyes closed and a slight sigh escaped, his chest falling some. Kellen went ramrod straight, “I don’t respond well to threats.”
She stood, slamming her hands on the table and looking him directly in the eyes, “And I don’t respond well to dick heads trying to rip apart the world that my little boy lives in. So get your shit together or so help me I’ll force you both into peace even if it means I have to dismantle your military arsenals bolt by damn bolt.”
She spun to leave the room, breezing past her mother. As she did Kellen had one more thing to say to her, “Your father would be so proud of you.”
She stopped in her tracks and turned on the man, “What the hell did you just say to me?”
Sean’s head was now hung, his eyes closed. David stood raising his hands and preparing to calm them both but Kellen ignored his long-time friend and advisor, “You are no better than your father, trying to control our lives, the only difference is he didn’t hide behind altruism.”
Her finger shot out at him, if they were closer she would have speared his breast with it, “I am nothing like my father.”
“You’re right, he never lied to himself about who he was.”
The world tunneled in her vision and any sound in the room was lost in the rush of blood that swept past her eardrums. Her hands balled into fists, and she stepped forward toward Kellen. A firm pair of hands stopped her, her head snapped to the side, her braided pony tail swinging violently behind her. Sean was there, a gentle smile on his face. His mouth was moving slowly as his head dipped slightly, his eyes warm and compassionate but his grip on her arms unyielding.
His words began to slowly work their way through the sound of her pulse as its intensity ebbed, the fight seeping from her body as the reality of Kellen’s words ate at her emotional resolve, “I am not my father” she whispered to Sean.
“I know, sweetheart.” He said, shedding his military persona and pulling her into an embrace. She could feel the stubble of his chin against the top of her scalp, but it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes, took a final calming breath and then stepped back.
She turned to Kellen. Standing next to him still was her father-in-law. His eyes were set forward, arms crossed over his chest, barely contained rage and disappointment plastered over his face. For a brief second her heart ached from guilt at the position she was putting him in, but she shoved that aside. She was a leader first, a daughter-in-law second and even though she loved and respected the man, she couldn’t let that prevent her from doing what was best for her entire family and the world. She would make it up to him, she swore that to herself in that moment, “I don’t see a point in continuing to have these meetings General Kellen.”
“On that we can both agree.” He snipped.
She ignored him, “I’ll speak to Director Canine on these matters in the future, please show yourself out.”
With that she left the conference room, the footfalls of Sean following her. The moment they cleared the threshold and turned into the hallway his hand wrapped around her wrist and she spun around to look at him, “Where are you going?”
“Out.” She said and tried to turn away, only to have him maintain his grip.
“You don’t usually go on your ‘walkabout’ this early.”
She pulled her wrist free, “So?”
He paused, waiting for her to continue, when she didn’t he motioned toward the conference room, “Do you really think you should leave it like that?”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes closing in exhaustion as she did, “His mind is made up, there’s no changing it. So I’m going to use my time more productively.”
She turned and started walking again and Sean slipped past and placed himself in her path, “It’s a bad idea to be going out into the wilderness, especially after what the Russians just pulled.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders and slowly moved him out of the way, “It’s hardly the wilderness and we’re in North America, Trotsky is crazy but he’d have to be bat shit crazy to try anything here.”
“Can I come with you?” He said to her back, exasperated.
“I won’t be alone” was all she said as she rounded the next corner, on her way to the hangar, already calling her mother and asking her to watch Alex.
Maria Patterson
Greensboro, North Carolina
The transport banked to the left and Maria looked out the almost transparent cockpit at the city below. Buildings that had been left untended for two decades were slowly being consumed by nature. Windows were missing in most structures as the forces of expansion and contraction. Local temperature changes warped their frames and powerful storms had blown them free. Walls were crumbling as roots from plants in the area snaked their way through every crack, millimeter by millimeter, every single second of the last twenty years. Mighty works of steel and concrete were nothing compared to the patient onslaught of nature.
Every time she came here it was a little different, initially that was to be expected, the first time she had been here she had been forced marched to the city. But even now, flying here after months of coming here almost every single day without fail, she could honestly say that there was always a surprise to be discovered and not always the best kind.
She wondered, not for the first time, if guilt and nature were inexorably linked. It, like the plant and animal life she saw below, never ceased working at the weakest points of your emotional walls. Pushing its tendrils into your thoughts and widening the cracks until the carefully built foundations you established crumbled to dust, and it left you with nothing but a dilapidated and collapsed husk.
Was there any way to truly keep the guilt at bay and should you even want to? As she looked out of the city that had once been home to hundreds of thousands, it looked so serene as it gave itself meter by meter to nature. Maybe if she just embraced the guilt instead of fighting it, she too could have some of that peace.
The aircraft came around for a landing and the impressive width of the mobile Reclamation Unit filled her forward view. Dozens of transports, some large enough to easily accommodate her aircraft in their storage bay, flitted about the top of the rolling factory. Several departed for locations throughout the empire, carrying reclaimed metals and technology to facilities where they were needed. Still others dropped into the Greensboro metropolitan area, retrieving raw resources gathered by the army of labor drones that carpeted the area around the base of the titanic machine.
It grew faster as she came in for landing. The artificial intelligence of the aircraft guiding her in for an uneventful touchdown on a pad that had been left empty in expectation of her arrival. She swiftly departed the transport, well aware that she had limited time to dedicate to the task ahead.
It seemed that every day she had less and less of the most precious resource in the universe, time. As her grip on her global empire solidified and as the other families not only complete
d their reconstruction efforts but were in fact expanding, her duties at the Spire and at formal functions were growing increasingly more demanding on her. As it was, being a mother was a full-time job and in that she tried to wedge in moments for Sean and her extended family.
This task, the one she set for herself and that she kept hidden from everyone, seemed to ebb away day after day as more and more seconds were stolen from her. Soon she worried she might not get here every day for the hour or two that she normally did. That she was here early today, that she could make up some lost time from the previous several days, was the only redeeming factor of her exchange with Supreme Commander Kellen.
The wind nipped at her clothes as she crossed the open expanse, heading toward an access lift. The roar of jet engines filled her ears as aircraft landed and departed. Large elevators ascended to the top, filling in the rectangular gaps that existed in the machine's exterior. Drones then loaded raw materials into the waiting aircraft and served them for minor damage from weather and bird strikes. The Reclamation Unit was more than just a way to repurpose the remains of the old world and to clean up its waste. They were vital to her ability to solidify her power across the continent.
She couldn’t sense it because of the slow pace, but the giant vehicle was crawling along the I-40, heading west. It’s inevitable advance across the land, symbolic of the growth of her family’s power and control over the world. All of which had been established by her father, who had created a system so effective that even in death it continued to enforce his vision of the future on the world.
She did her best to diminish the negative effects of his legacy, the more dictatorial parts and those that adhered to logic above all else, even human life. But in the end, she let much of it continue for one simple reason. He may have lost his mind and his soul, but he wasn’t always wrong and the system he had created enabled her to remain in a position of influence over the Spire families.
Her contacts guided her to a piece of metal, square and large enough to accommodate one of her Land Dominance Units if it was in its compacted state. She didn’t need the contacts to tell her where to go; she had walked this same route hundreds of times before in her pursuit of emotional peace. She could have flown directly to the stadium, she could easily see it from this vantage point on top of the RU, but that didn’t seem right. She had walked there the first time, she would walk there every time. Besides, the innocents that had been slaughtered there, to serve her father’s twisted logic, had walked into that place. She had the luxury of being able to leave it. Though sometimes she wasn’t sure if she ever had.
Clear glass with yellow and black lettering that suggested caution, slid up from the floor to provide her with a safe space as the floor beneath her began its slow descent into the internal workings of the RU. The blue sky and vast horizon of forests of Greensboro North Carolina slid past her, replaced by a thick piece of metal several meters deep, conduit running through it. Above her head a protective shield slid into place, preventing environmental factors or even weapons from being able to strike at the sensitive equipment deep within. As the sun disappeared, light strips within the walls glowed, keeping her from being plunged into darkness.
As she descended a new noise replaced the howl of the wind and the screech of the jet engines. The deep and intimidating hum of powerful electric motors and the harsh reverberations of metal slamming into metal. As the lift passed through the protective ceiling, she could make out light streaming up from an ever growing crack around the bottom edge. Her augmented eyes quickly made out the shapes and movement of lines of assembly arms several stories below, deconstructing every piece of reclaimed metal and technology that the human form drones were feeding into them.
Her eyes were drawn to the aft part of the space, where the rich orange glow of the furnaces could be seen. The conveyor belts with the disassembled and reduced materials were inexorably delivering them to a fiery end. Dumping tons of metals into the open furnaces where they were melted and separated by density. Tubes ran from various levels of the furnaces, allowing the melted material to rise to its density level and flow from the machine and into other devices that turned the raw metal into cooled ingots.
Much of which was destined for her initiatives, but some had been earmarked for the survivors of “The Fall”. Sending them ore was part penance, part practicality. Their fledgling settlements were just starting out and most had yet to become self sustaining. The other reason for the shipments was that she preferred that they not rape and pillage the land to get to the metallic resources that they needed to grow and develop. Eventually some would go down that path, choosing to make increase their independence from her, but the longer she could delay that day, the better for nature.
Biological materials were placed on different belts. Ground and mixed, they were used as mulch and fertilizer for the landscaping in the remnants of Greensboro that had already been deconstructed.
Even the concrete and asphalt that served as the foundation for much of the buildings and local transportation industry was reduced and recycled. Both could be reprocessed into the raw materials to repair the continent spanning road network she deemed critical enough to keep. What wasn’t used was sent to storage facilities. It was better this way.
Rather than rending the surface of the Earth open unnecessarily to gain access to vital resources, she was instead using what had been left behind. Her empire did have mining operations, the lithium mines in South America and Australia, for example. Though much of what her empire grew with came from reclaimed materials. She and her father might not have agreed on how to fix the world, but they both believed that it should be nurtured and protected.
The elevator dropped below a solid steel wall, cutting off her view of the processing floor and delivering her into the lowest level of the facility where raw materials were brought in with heavy vehicles. The sound of machines and falling debris assaulted her ears once the lift came to a stop.
Trucks the size of two-story houses rolled in and out of the massive open bay door at the front of the Reclamation unit. Drones strode from task to task, sorting reclaimed materials. She coughed some at the amount of dust and fumes in the air. Her contacts displayed the atmospheric quality data being collected by the facility’s sensors. She wasn’t in any danger, but it was not the cleanest air to breathe, which was to be expected given that these spaces weren’t designed with human workers in mind.
A small all terrain buggy rolled up in front of her as she exited the lift. She grabbed onto the roll cage and pulled herself up into one of the seats. The vehicle’s electric motors restrained themselves until she had secured the safety straps around her torso. They jumped forward, propelling her from the belly of the metal beast and out into the sunlight and fresh air of North Carolina.
The vehicle bounced some as it transition from the massive metal ramp of the Reclamation Unit and onto the old highway that the giant machine was trundling along at a snail's pace.
At one point this roadway would have been surrounded by commercial and residential districts. Now most of the space was dedicated to virgin fields and freshly planted trees. Perfectly manicured parks and walkways dotted her view as the buggy left the I-40 freeway and drove onto one of the recently repaved roads, carrying her toward the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.
Before her were the only new constructions for hundreds of miles in any direction. A cluster of ten-story buildings jutted from the recently landscaped earth. Their glass surfaces glistening in the sunlight and serving as a beacon to any who could see them.
Drones and cranes continued to work on the last of the buildings and their support structures as she drove between them. This was another agreement that she had struck with the Marines after they had revealed themselves and stopped their advance at the walls of her Spire. A portion of the reclaimed materials from each city would have to go toward building shelters for survivors that the Marines and her drones located as they went about their business in North and South
America.
Many of those that were relocated were skittish about trusting her buildings, but by now most of the several dozen small towns that her Reclamation Units had left in their paths had become populated. When one barely survived in the wilderness, with its discomfort and loss, it was difficult to resist the allure of temperature-controlled spaces, functioning hospitals and the capability to sustain all human needs.
As she continued down the road, she caught sight of the large pit that would become home to the local raw material storage facility. Her RU would deposit a reserve supply of materials for the future inhabitants or the Marines to take advantage of. There was always a voice in the back of her head that warned her that this kindness might one day be used against her. That the raw materials she was processing and gifting to the future inhabitants, could be turned around to produce weapons of war for use against her and her family.
It was a possibility that had even more weight to it than such a concern would normally have. She had seen clear to provide each of the buildings with its own industrial 3D Printers, fusion reactors and food production units. They very well could take her gifts and turn them against her.
But they could just as easily use them to rebuild their lives and create a society that was focused on the betterment of mankind as opposed to its slaughter. Her father believed the former, she was betting her family’s safety on the latter. Besides, a very attractive and intelligent person had recently said that "there cannot be peace until you accept that your enemy is capable of peace.”