by G. R. Carter
“I’m afraid I must have not received all the information you think I have,” he stammered.
Isa looked up at him with unmasked disgust. “I was told you were hooked into the network. Are you telling me you aren’t?”
“You mean Grapevine? Yeah, I mean, we’ve got a station hooked up, but I haven’t received but maybe one or two messages. Demetrius’s been the one briefing me on what Continuity wanted me to do.”
Isa rolled his eyes and stood up. “That freaking moron. I swear, sometimes I wonder if we kept the wrong people. He didn’t tell you anything about why we’re even here?”
Maxwell shrugged. “Um, to spread Continuity? To bring down the infidels?”
Isa laughed out loud. “He really gets into it, you know. Sometimes I think he actually buys what he’s selling. A real piece of work, that one. Where’s your Grapevine terminal? Let’s catch up on what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
They made the trip up to the third floor, where the central server of ARK’s RenOne supercomputer was. The darkened room hummed with electric life, an obscure sound until it no longer existed. Cool air blew around the corridor to dissipate heat generated by the stacked silicon brain. There were three people in Peacekeeper uniforms monitoring screens, checking lines running in and out, occasionally tapping out commands at work stations.
“Good god, these Diamantes were really the class of the field,” Isa said as he walked in. “How did they manage to build all of this without Grapevine knowing?”
Maxwell said nothing. He couldn’t bear to give Tony or Nicole Diamante credit for anything.
“And you’re pretty sure the one who escaped, the wife, has a similar system hidden somewhere underground out west, right?”
Maxwell nodded again.
“Well that’s a problem, Maxwell. Bigger even than you getting the lights turned back on here. And you can somehow access Grapevine without her knowing?”
“Not access, just monitor. I’ve been careful about trying too much. I didn’t want it to shut off on me.”
“How in the world did she not detect you?”
Maxwell let a conceited smile creep on to his face. “I’m pretty good at this, remember. It was me who used RenOne to open all the gates here, shut down all ARK communications…”
Aguilar stared at him with the dark look he’d flashed before. “I’ll talk to Atlanta. We’re going to have to dedicate some resources to finding the other ARK system. That’s some nasty exposure to the network.”
“Who is Atlanta?”
Isa shook his head with an offended look. “Atlanta is the mother ship,” he said. “The reason I am paying penance by leading this motley crew to the south. Atlanta is the capital of the Continuity of Government. And when I get there, I’m never coming back to this godforsaken hellhole ever again.”
“But Isa…”
“Please, you can call me Luis. Luis Aguilar.”
Maxwell rubbed his head for a moment. The man’s face was familiar, and so was the name. He just couldn’t place from where.
Aguilar laughed. “Former President of the United States. It’s been a long time, right? I don’t hold it against you.”
Maxwell had carried the whiskey bottle with them on their trip to the server room. He was glad now that he had. He tilted the bottle and poured it straight down his throat. He took a quick breath, poured again and reached for a pack of Marlboro Reds he had stashed in his pocket. They tasted fourteen years old, because that’s what they were. But he didn’t care; he couldn’t get his hands on recently-made Creek cigarettes from Grand Shawnee anymore.
He handed one to Aguilar, plopped down in a chair and lit up. He took a long drag of stale smoke, coughed it out, took another shot of whiskey, then smoked again. He ignored the dirty looks of the other people working in the room.
Aguilar waved the three Peacekeepers out of the room and lit off Maxwell’s lighter, coughing and spitting on the floor. “Tastes like dog crap,” he cringed. But he took another drag. “Gets better the second time.”
Maxwell watched with irritation as his three underlings left without checking with him first. They simply followed Aguilar’s orders without question.
Aguilar smiled at Maxwell through the acrid smoke. “What? All the computers in the world shut off one night, new empires grow up out of American small towns, and I’m what amazes you?”
“Yes. Well, all of it. I mean, I got a few bits and pieces, but I had no idea the government survived. Why didn’t they come and rescue us?”
Aguilar nearly choked on his drink. “Dumbass, they caused this! They weren’t coming to rescue you because they wanted you to die. You and about 95% of the world’s population.”
“Intentional? I thought maybe sabotage, terrorism of some kind.”
“Oh yeah, intentional terrorism. They knew exactly what would happen to the average citizen when they turned on the Killswitch virus.”
“But why? What’s the point of killing off so many of your own people?” Maxwell asked. He was surprised at his own feelings of betrayal at the hands of public servants.
“Resources,” Aguilar replied. “I don’t know why for sure, but the climate is cooling. Start of a new ice age, the Cogs claim. To survive they decided to move to a warmer climate.”
“And there wasn’t enough room for everyone,” Maxwell concluded on his own.
Aguilar nodded. “Only the best and brightest were allowed to make the move. Their aim was to hack evolution. A Great Leap Forward,” he said with an ironic smile. “Only the best of the gene pool would survive the ice age and the mass extinction that comes with it. Happened with elites all over the world, not just here.”
“Well that didn’t work. At least not around here. The Red Hawks kept lots of people alive. Including me.”
Aguilar’s mood turned dark. “Uh, yeah. No kidding. Why do you think I had to come out here and fix the screw-ups?”
Maxwell was feeling the effects of the booze, getting more comfortable with the presence of someone who had just a short while ago killed a full-grown man with a single touch. “You keep saying ‘their’ like you work for somebody. I thought you were the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world.”
Aguilar looked into the bottom of his glass. He took another drag and blew it out through his nose. “I thought the same thing. Then I got caught up in the Continuity thing. I found out real quick that the true shot-callers are behind the scenes. I was a pawn, a mouthpiece. The real power was behind the throne. And now we work for them – Continuity of Government. Everyone just says Cogs for short.”
“Why didn’t Demetrius tell me all this before? More important, why are you telling me this now?”
“We’re moving to the end phase. This has been a process, since before they shut the lights out on us.”
“Every country’s government survived?”
Aguilar stifled a laugh. He leaned back and stretched his long arms and legs, crossing his feet and lacing his hands behind his head. His cigarette dangled from his lips and shook back forth as he began to speak. “Oh no. No way,” he smiled as ash flaked off and landed on his shirt. He seemed not to notice, and Maxwell found it odd such an important person would be so careless. “It was a total screw-up most places. The ones selected to survive may have had more money or a higher IQ, but that didn’t mean they were savvy enough to pull something like this off. Talk about hubris, huh? Most of them died in their bunkers. Or went crazy, lots of that happened. Some got anxious and emerged too soon. They got overrun by survivors. Turns out the human animal is a lot more resilient than Cog scientists thought.”
“Was the Caliphate supposed to survive?”
Aguilar shook his head emphatically as he pulled on the cigarette and then turned it around to look at the glowing ember. “No way. Not like they did. That was a major problem. The Cogs figured the factions would kill each other off, but that was a remarkable feat of organization by those imams of theirs. Took out all level
s of government. Military, too. I mean, just like that,” he snapped his finger, “it was a stable theocracy. Well, if you don’t count the raping and pillaging of infidels, of course.”
Maxwell was beginning to put the pieces together. He’d gathered tidbits here and there since the dawn of darkness. The “Culling,” Aguilar called it.
Now the puzzle became clearer: “You had the problem of all these nations rising up out of the ashes, keeping alive the people you needed dead. You’re using all of them to bleed each other out.”
“Very good, Mr. Maxwell. Impressive deduction.” Maxwell wasn’t sure if he was praising or mocking. Aguilar continued. “Same strategy we used all those years before the Reset in Africa, the Middle East, Europe…keep them at each other’s throats and they’ll never figure out who their real enemy is.”
“Kind of dangerous to let that type of horde lose. What if the Caliphate wins and just keeps right on marching their way to Atlanta?”
Aguilar shrugged. “That’s what the whole jihad thing is for. The morons think they’re fighting for their god. I can control them with ‘magic’ and ‘miracles’.” He finished the sentence with air quotes.
“Is that how you killed Locke? And how did you know his name? I could barely remember it, and you knew all about him.”
“Modern-day parlor tricks,” Aguilar said dismissively. “I killed him with a nerve agent I keep in my robes. I put a little on my finger, touch my object on the face somewhere and poof, instant miracle. The savages love it when I do that.”
“But it doesn’t affect you?”
“No, I’ve had the antidote. It’s a sort of super-VX developed by the CDC before the Culling. Really short persistence but a lot deadlier. As long as I get a booster every once in a while, I’m immune.”
“Chemical weapons, huh? I didn’t even think about that. I bet Diamante wishes he’d had some those. He would have used them in a heartbeat,” Maxwell said.
“He tried. The Texans and the Red Hawks got to them first,” Aguilar told him.
Maxwell felt his jaw drop. Of all the crazy things he’d heard today, this one might be the most outlandish. “You’re telling me the Red Hawk Republic has chemical weapons?”
Aguilar nodded. “Sure. The Cogs had them stored in Fort Knox and Fort Hood. Figured they might need a clean way to wipe out a few pockets of resistance here or there, so they stored it where they thought it would be safe. Texas had ahold of Ft. Hood from day one, some sort of resistance movement caught wind of Cog plans before the Culling. Texans were ready for them. The Cogs never stood a chance there.
“When the Red Hawks conquered Vincennes, they found everything General Hopkins recovered from Ft. Knox. Diamante had bought all the concentrated forms, since Hopkins didn’t want anything to do with poison and needed something Diamante had, but the trade never got made.” His face twisted into a frown. “We just couldn’t get our horde there in time to capture the weapons, so we lost it all. Including some other items that should have been destroyed long before that.”
A knock came at the door and a man with a featureless metal disc face appeared. Maxwell recoiled involuntarily but Aguilar waved the figure in. He continued, “My Unseen are immune to the poison, also. Not the rest of the bodyguards though, the ones in robes. They’re true Jihad believers. They’ve witnessed plenty of my miracles,” he laughed.
He slapped the mysterious figure on the shoulder. “But not my Unseen. They’re just as big a part of the show as I am.”
“Bloody exhausting, keeping up this charade,” the Unseen man said as he pushed behind his ear, removing his facemask and head covering. Behind the silver plate was an ordinary-looking man with dark chocolate-colored skin and a close-kempt beard.
“Mr. Brookins here is former MI6. One of the loyal special operators chosen to be included in the new world of the Cogs. The other Unseen have got similar backgrounds. They’ve been with me ever since I left DC and came out here to become the great leader of the Jihad.” Aguilar waved his hands around like a magician.
“Be glad when we get out of the suck and into some kind of civilization.” The man’s accent betrayed the land of his birth. “Any ideas when we can get this herd movin’ again?”
Maxwell watched the two banter back and forth, discussing strategy and timelines. “You still haven’t told me how you know so much about people you’ve never met,” he finally cut in. The liquor was making him brave. After all, he was Premier of ARK now. He should have some say in what went on around here.
Aguilar looked up at him impatiently. “Targeted Neuroplasticity Training,” he said.
Maxwell broke the phrase out bit by bit. The liquor slowed his cognitive processing slightly, but allowed him to consider the impossible. “Your brain’s been hacked!”
“Something like that. Brookins and I,” he pointed to the black man seated with him, “and every other Unseen, are all implanted with a chip that’s constantly giving input into our brain. Got it before we came out here to take over. We get updates every once in a while. Not so many recently. I’ve got every citizen’s background accessible, even those that didn’t survive the Culling. Plus, facts and figures about everything relevant in the new world and the old. We tie it all in with maps and facial recognition. Literal magic, to the believers out there. Pretty useful.”
“And the Cog computers, including yours, are all protected from the Killswitch virus?”
“Now you got it.”
“Incredible,” he said with a big smile.
“Yeah, you should have seen us when we had the drones,” Brookins said with a laugh. “That’s how Luis got the two factions of the Caliphate to merge finally: he rained fire down on the infidels,” he said, still laughing and making the rain motion with his fingers. “Sodding savages thought it was the wrath of Allah. Been pliable as mash ever since.”
Aguilar smiled as he reminisced. “Too bad they all ran out of juice. Bad planning on that one.”
Maxwell was excited, but still confused. “What are you going to do when you get all those rabid believers to Atlanta? They’re not going to be very happy when they realize it was all a hoax.”
“They’ll never find out. They’ll get to live their lives in the religious squalor they seem to crave so much,” he said, shaking his head. “And they’re sure as hell not going anywhere close to Atlanta. We’re taking this group to the Gulf coast. Same with the eastern branch: they’ll meet up with us in Memphis, then we’ll herd them south around New Orleans. Maybe some to Houston, if we can get rid of the damn Texans.” He stopped and looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought.
He looked back at Maxwell and smiled. “The herd is our labor force for the oilfields. Not like we can run on solar!”
Brookins laughed along with Aguilar. “Got a sleepy sun to thank for that.” The bodyguard pointed to the glass and raised an eyebrow.
Maxwell got up and grabbed an empty glass he’d left on top of a server’s cooling tower.
He poured Brookins a full glass and plopped back down with a sigh. “I can’t believe you had this all planned out. How did you know it would all work?
Brookins and Aguilar both laughed. “This wasn’t anywhere close to the plan,” Aguilar told him. “I already told you, the Cogs didn’t anticipate this many people staying alive. And whatever science they had about the climate was way wrong. According to the instruments on Luna, the temperatures are dropping a lot faster than anticipated. Now they’re talking about some kind of polar shift causing havoc.”
Maxwell broke in. “The colony on the Moon is still functioning?” he gasped. Maxwell had once been an important part of the planning for that base.
“Sure,” Aguilar replied with a shrug. “They were self-sufficient before the Culling. All the Cogs had to do was make sure the Killswitch virus didn’t affect Luna’s network.” He rolled his drink around in his glass and shrugged again. “If you ever feel like you’re being watched from up above, well, it’s because you are.”
Maxw
ell tried not to look up to the ceiling.
Aguilar continued. “Anyway, our Cog friends who wanted a perfectly green garden paradise all to themselves have discovered they’re going to need some good old-fashioned fossil fuels to stay warm after all.”
“And since they weren’t going to do the dirty work themselves…”
“They came up with the plan to move the excess people where they needed them.”
Brookins laughed and chimed in. “If there’s one thing Cogs now how to do, it’s figure out ways to get other people to do the bloody work for them.” He pointed over to Aguilar, then himself.
“What’s in it for you two? You’re the ones out here risking your lives,” Maxwell asked.
Brookins deferred to Aguilar with another pointed finger.
“Redemption, I suppose,” the former President replied. “Even if all this jihad crap is nonsense, I still believe in Continuity. If we want our Profiles to be uploaded to Grapevine, get our chance to live on after our bodies fail, we’ve got to do something important enough.”
Maxwell squirmed in his seat. “Who decides what’s enough? Is there one person, a committee?” The muscles of his jaws flexed as he gritted his teeth. “I don’t even know who these Cogs are, and I’ve got to try to convince them I’m worthy?”
Aguilar looked Maxwell over from top to bottom. “Grapevine knows,” he said calmly. “Grapevine decides.”
Maxwell was still agitated. “I brought down one of their biggest adversaries,” he said bitterly. “ARK could have been a real rival and I brought them down. That should be enough!”
Aguilar still stared at Maxwell, silently judging every inch of him. He didn’t agree or disagree. “We’ll see, Maxwell. ARK was a big step, I’ll grant you that. But if you truly want to impress Grapevine, you’ll figure out what to do with those Red Hawks. They’re the real problem.”
Chapter Fifteen
Banks of the Illinois River
Near Beardstown
Western Frontier of the Red Hawk Republic