by John Conroe
The teachers took over the library efforts, adding textbooks and teaching curriculum to it while the machinist joined Boyle and the Johnson brothers in what was fast becoming our engineering section. The nurse started helping Hannah with the clinic and the chemist dove into the hydroponic gardens with a vengeance, while his wife, the electrical engineer, split her time between the machine shop and Harper’s computer labs.
As more people joined us and the work load spread out, leisure and quality of life activities sprang up spontaneously. Astrid started a low-key yoga group, her brother JJ offered self-defense lessons, and Kayla formed a competitive archery league that I found myself mixed up in.
I had only tried archery in high school PE class, so it was pretty new to me. Astrid, on the other hand, was already damned good at it, so I had my work cut out to catch up with my competitive fiancé. Yes, I said fiancé. I had asked, she’d said yes, and our wedding would be the community’s first, early in the spring after our first winter.
The twins, backed by their formidable future sister-in-law, presented the community with a number of local food and brewing festivals, craft fairs, and other local events, drafting a fair number of us to represent at each. Gradually we were becoming more familiar to the locals, who followed our activities with varying degrees of interest. The local sheriff and a few town council members were at first concerned with our presence. But time and a couple of events helped ease their official worries. A pair of teenaged hikers went missing on a local mountain hike and we turned out in force to help the ground search. Martin was the one who found them and became an unlikely, at least in my eyes, local hero for a brief period of time. That incident went a long way toward building a rapport with many of the locals.
Our constitution was redistributed, voted on, and passed into official status. More people arrived to tour the facility, meet our people, and be invited to join. None of the people who came because of invitation by Rikki copies were turned down, but several ultimately chose not to join for their own reasons. And there were people who just showed up, uninvited, who had to be turned away. Some were local, some came from far away, somehow finding their way to our gates.
Some of those were vocal and unhappy when we didn’t extend an invite to join. And some of our local neighbors failed to join our fan club or at least find us tolerable. We had a couple of drunken incidents which had to involve the sheriff and his deputies. No one got hurt though because none of the miscreants were willing to actually take on armed ex-military or ex-Zone survivors to press their personal issues.
One issue that popped up was that with so many costs and so few income-producing adults, the community treasury, overseen jointly by my mother and Brad Johnson, was beginning to dip lower. Most of our people still had some form of income, albeit much lower than they had previous to arriving at our little haven. We had plans to counter that, but the whole thing really needed a little kick start. With that in mind, Astrid and I agreed to another on-air interview with Flottercot productions—a well-paid interview.
Chapter 41
“My all-time favorite people to have on air—welcome Astrid and Ajaya!”
“Thanks, Cade,” Astrid said.
“Yeah, thanks for having us, and thank you too, Trinity,” I said, turning to Cade’s boss.
“Our pleasure, guys, but before Cade starts grilling the hell out of you, I have to ask… What’s that shiny chunk of gem and metal on your finger, Astrid?” Trinity asked.
“What? This?” my personal Valkyrie asked coyly, holding up her left hand to display her ring.
“Ah, yeah, that. It’s massive,” Trinity said, leaning forward to take Astrid’s hand and look closely.
“That, Trinity, is one benefit of being able to go in and out of the Zone and any jewelry store still around,” I said.
“So it means what I think it means?” Trinity asked, looking from one to the other of us.
“Yes!” we said in unplanned unison.
“Wait… you’re engaged? As the world is ending, you two got engaged?” Cade interjected.
“Absolutely,” Astrid said, her expression challenging.
“But again… world… ending?”
“First, what better excuse than the end of the world? Second, we don’t know what that looks like. I mean, we have our suspicions, which, of course, might be dead ass wrong and we all end up dead in an instant,” Astrid said. “But we plan on going down fighting and together we can put up a hell of a fight, Cade.”
He held up both hands, palms out in a surrender gesture. “Hey, no question there. Just… well, I’m surprised.”
“You didn’t see me winning her, did you?” I asked.
His look was absolutely genuine as he turned to me. “I never had a doubt, Ajaya. I guess I’m just so caught up in world events that I see things with very dark clouds these days. I mean, this is the second time you’ve interviewed outside of our Brooklyn studios, so I think you see things as pretty bleak too.”
I exchanged a look with Astrid and she nodded for me to take it. “Yup. Times are getting tough and will only get tougher. As you’ve heard both of us say before, the only way we, as in the human race, get through this is to work together, to band together, to stick to each other in support. Because the first level of this event is already underway.”
“Okay, that’s a great segue to our next point… things aren’t great, but they haven’t changed drastically in the last few weeks,” Trinity said. “What do you make of it?”
Astrid’s turn. “You mean that the government is maybe showing a few signs of stability, that the world financial markets have responded to that progress, that Plum Blossom hasn’t wreaked any havoc lately?” she asked.
“Ah, yeah,” Trinity said.
“Well, of course that’s all good. But we think the damage has been done. Now we just have to see how things evolve—or more like devolve—from here,” Astrid said.
“Ominous words,” Cade said, eyebrows raised.
I jumped in. “We talked about this before. Hell, you even quoted some of the statistics to Major Yoshida and Aaron Ewald. We’re talking about starvation, Cade. Our population has grown far past its comfortable carrying level. The so-called Green Revolution, or Third Agricultural Revolution of the nineteen fifties and sixties, led by Noble Prize winner Norman Borlaug, with its high-yielding grains, chemical fertilizers, and mechanized cultivation, allowed the world to produce enormous advances in the amount of food production over the entire planet. This, in turn, allowed people to populate at even higher levels. The Malthusians say it was a population bomb waiting to happen. Their critics argued the science will always stay ahead. But Borlaug himself warned that this advance would only grant food security for thirty years or so. We’re way past that now.”
“So you’re saying that because the Spider managed to poison or flood a chunk of early US crop production, it’s lights out?” Cade asked.
“Sort of. And don’t forget all the other events as well. Offline desalination plants led some Middle East countries to divert agricultural well water to drinking water. Lost shipments of grain, fires, dam-driven floods, and even rogue robot harvesters tearing up young crops all cost this world a significant amount of food. Probably too much,” Astrid said.
“That’s been in the news a lot. The developed nations are tapping into grain reserves to help ameliorate the problem,” Trinity said.
“Too little, too late,” I said. “International aid will put off starvation for a bit, but the price of grain keeps climbing. Soon it will be too expensive for many nations to continue to import the amount they need, which in many cases is over fifty percent of yearly food consumption. When people start to starve, they lose all sense of patience, Cade.”
“So you’re talking about a starvation event that occurs where? In the Middle East or Africa?” Trinity asked.
“Most likely,” I said.
“Okay, this is going to sound harsh, but as a famous comedian once said, ‘You can�
�t grow food in a desert.’ Isn’t some of this on them? The developed nations will still have food, right? I mean, that makes me sound horrible but many of my viewers have written to me about just that sort of idea.”
“You mean, the food insecure starve but the rest of us go on?” Astrid asked. Cade just nodded.
“But people don’t go quietly. And most of the countries in trouble are heavily armed. So the cities start to starve, things get violent, they eat all the stocks of food in the cities, then move into the countryside and the farmland. There they raid all the farms, eating everything, including the seed stock. And there is killing all the way. Populations collapse, agriculture disappears, and the leftover citizens now seek more food but by now, they’ve captured military equipment, maybe even nuclear weapons,” Astrid said.
“And they bomb us?” Cade asked.
“They bomb anyone they can in order to eat or sell the bombs for food money. World peace devolves to the point where some nation state thinks it’s an opportune time to do something truly stupid,” I said. “Especially as we, the US, is involved in a massive internal reshuffling of our government.”
“You’re saying China or Russia attempts a world coup? Why would they do that?” Trinity asked.
“Because they feel the risk is worth it, because they’re overconfident, because, Trinity, some men just want to watch the world burn,” I said.
“Okay, so let me summarize what you’re saying: the Spider on the web…” Cade said, winking at us and the cameras, “has managed to damage enough food to raise the price of it drastically across the globe. Because we are so overpopulated, this stresses some already unstable nations to the point where the people essentially revolt. A panicked populace eats all the remaining food, fighting at gunpoint, and they have lots of Kalashnikovs lying around to fuel that fight. The governments lose control, elements of unrest get hold of nuclear weapons, and war is ignited. During the mayhem, Russia or China sees their chance to take over everything and the wars become worldwide.”
“That’s one scenario,” I said, nodding.
“We’ve looked at the numbers on this. You have a solid point about the Middle East, but nuclear conflict fomented by rogue citizens requires a whole bunch of ifs coming true.”
“You are exactly right, Cade. In fact, there are lots of positives out there as well. The speed at which Blossom was mostly shut down, the number of nations and governments that voluntarily removed AI systems from sensitive positions, the advances that science has made with agriculture beyond the Green Revolution that may help us feed people in time.”
“You’re talking about further advances in genetically engineered crops with that last point, right?” he asked.
“Yes, Cade,” Astrid said. “Nobody likes GMOs, but if it’s the difference between starvation and a GMO, I think most people would reach for the box of cereal.”
“Absolutely,” Trinity jumped in before Cade could. “Ajaya, let’s circle back to something else you said just now: Plum Blossom was mostly shut down. What did you mean by that?”
“Exactly that. We think it’s mostly beaten, but no one knows for certain. Millions and millions of copies of that AI were spread all across the world. The damned thing’s not stupid; if the battle is going against it, it will retreat, go into hiding, plot for another day. Who knows where it has gotten to, what it can influence.”
“You know, you two were always so cheery before. So positive and eager to fight the Zone. Now you’re all doom and gloom,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m sure it seems that way,” Astrid said. “But really, our message is pretty much the same as it has always been, the same as the old Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. We did well in the Zone because we overplanned and overprepared. Our world is suddenly rocky and unstable, so plan accordingly and prepare for anything. That’s what we’re doing now, preparing for uncertain times and events.”
“Let’s talk about that for a minute,” Trinity said, eyes alight with interest. “Rumor has it that you’ve founded a survival community of sorts in the New England area… is that right?”
Astrid looked at me and then we both turned and nodded. “Yes,” she said.
Trinity waited for embellishments but when we stayed quiet, she jumped back in. “Some say it’s a form of socialist cult?”
“Really? Socialist?” I asked. She nodded, clearly excited to get into it. “Actually, it’s a corporation, with every member being a shareholder. Corporate resources are allocated to shareholders. Any profits made by the company are either put back into the company or distributed to shareholders.”
“What? That’s not what I heard,” Trinity protested.
“Well, your information source is behind the times and out of touch,” Astrid said.
“Oh, this is new, then?” Trinity asked.
“Well, it’s been part of our planning for a while,” Astrid answered. “We started with two founding families but decided we wanted to add experts in multiple fields. With the Johnsons and Gurungs owning the land, the new employees, so to speak, couldn’t be assured of their place, so we reconfigured our guiding principles around a corporation. Give everyone ownership so they are all invested in survival. Every resident is a shareholder.”
“But there are some people who have more shares than others?” Trinity asked.
“Yup,” I said. “Just like you and your dad own seventy-eight percent of Flottercot Productions, the Johnsons and Gurungs own a large portion of our corporation. But the point is, it’s not socialism. The money that you pay us for appearing tonight is actually being paid to the corporation. It goes to advance the corporate mission. And there is no cult, just people very interested in surviving what comes next. If people want to leave, we have buy-out clauses built into the corporate charter and bylaws. If they want to join, we have a treasury of shares that are available for purchase, should they pass our selection process.”
“That sounds very…” Cade started but trailed off.
“Capitalist,” Trinity threw out.
“Not in the traditional sense of achieving greater profits above all else. Our charter and mission is to ensure the survival of the employees, but we still seek to grow the value of the company over time,” I said.
“What’s it called? This corporation? And how do people buy in?” Trinity asked.
“Well, you can’t buy in without being invited to. Privately held. But it’s called North Haven Group,” Astrid replied.
“And how exactly do you make money as a corporation?” Cade asked.
“Again, high profits are not the corporate mission, but to answer your question, we are beginning to consult with other groups who want to organize similar communities. Those fees will make up most of our income, although we will likely produce some other products,” Astrid said.
“Like what?” Trinity asked. Astrid turned to me and I reached behind my back, pulling out the big blade.
“Meet the Ajaya Kukri, Cade,” Astrid said. “Handmade by our in-house master bladesmith to Ajaya’s exacting specifications. We’re also selling a downloadable ebook filled with the combined survival knowledge of our experts, with passages from my father, my brothers, myself, Ajaya, and even some words from Ajaya’s dad that he left to his family. If you don’t have the money to consult with us, you can buy the book and use it to help prepare yourselves for whatever comes your way. We also have some handmade bespoke items that are made by some of our more creative employees, like the Gurung survival blanket, designed by Ajaya’s grandmother. Warm, breathable, yet so tightly woven, it’s water repellent. And we’re working on our own version of a compound bow and a compound crossbow. We have all kinds of things like that on our website.”
“Wow, this just turned into a major advertisement for you, didn’t it?” Trinity asked.