Young took two full seconds to debate whether he felt like Tina or Ike today. “Well, sir, since you asked, do you remember Thomas Ruby Hatchett?”
CHAPTER 60
“B-roll video, DupliCity Family Fun Amusement Complex, March 13th, 2036.” Truby held tightly onto the vintage video camera she’d smuggled into Vegas inside baggy clothing. Astonished at all that she saw, diehard reporting instincts kicked in as she organized her shots according to how she’d narrate a story, what was becoming her story, if she ever had the opportunity to tell it. Meantime, she kept her eyes peeled for any sign of anyone from her past.
Truby was ensconced in rich beauty and wealth everywhere she looked. New Las Vegas was quintessential modern urban living. Tall vertical gardens lifted high into the sky shaped like giant Sequoia trees supplying fresh farm-to-table fruits and vegetables to the entire city. High-rise structures, a fusion of technology and sustainability, housed central atriums with turbines that harnessed funneled wind power. Exteriors were covered in photovoltaic and perovskite crystal structure glass panels.
Integrated living and open spaces filled with fruit trees and bee-friendly gardens utilized greywater produced from an aquafarm stocked with edible fish species. Atmospheric water condensers cleverly disguised as art dotted the scenery using Vegas’s intense heat to generate water out of thin air. Even the roads and the sidewalk she walked upon consisted of solar panels that powered buildings and exterior lighting. There was no reason every community couldn’t make use of its natural resources, making poverty obsolete, if everyone made the commitment to make it a reality.
The most imposing, jaw-dropping structure of all was the mammoth waterfall in the very center of the DupliCity Family Fun Amusement Complex located in the heart of the city. At nearly twenty stories tall, it was higher than Niagara Falls. Rather than a straight drop across its thirty-foot width, the water boomed as it hit steppes with stunning lighting behind it. Truby knew anything she imagined would fall short of the actual magnificent light display she would witness when night fell.
The waterfall’s grand design was not just a showpiece but generated renewable power for Vegas and surrounding eco-living communities and their organic farms, formerly called suburbs. Engineers warning of excessive evaporation reduced the waterfall’s exposure from a grand sixty feet in width to its present size.
Remaining substructure was securely sheltered or underground to guard against contamination. Processed water was then sent to Canada, Mexico, and transocean to other continents via underwater pipelines.
As other WREN superstructures were brought online utilizing regional natural resources and existing infrastructure, they would be interlinked to form a global grid to ensure redundancy, and to regulate supply overages and shortages.
The Global Security Council had insisted the project be intracontinental not only for the benefit of zero downtime but as a way of backend funding research into the viability of underwater living and transportation.
Most astounding in Truby’s mind was that her daughter, Hemmy, was the primary child genius behind it all. Vegas was not overrated in the least. It saddened her that Hemmy had lost part of her memory after the terrorist attack. Or perhaps she’d subconsciously blocked out the part of her life that was now painful to recall.
Truby was so enthralled by this extraordinary new world she’d only seen online and its implications, at first, she didn’t hear shouting nearby.
Across green space, Pete, Rose, her soccer friend, Sway, and a few others from camp happily waved as they hung in butterfly harnesses with giant wings from an elevated rail looping around the city. It was the first time she’d ever heard Pete giggle.
Waving in reply, Truby bumped into a family of four—two parents and their children. From their accent, it sounded like they were from east of the Mississippi.
Truby jumped at the chance that they might know something. “Hey, hello! How would you like to be on the news?”
“What’s that?” the curious ten-year-old boy asked.
“A very special video camera. They don’t make them anymore.”
The boy’s father regarded the woman that towered over him suspiciously. “We’re good.”
Truby lifted her camera to record anyway, another reporter’s trick of the trade. “Are you aware we are under a global state of emergency?”
“For what?” snorted the children’s mother. “Having too much fun?”
“Is that against the law now, too?” Whirling, the boy’s father looked like he was looking for something or someone to either blame or kick. Facing Truby again, he looked directly into the camera and shook his fist. “Neo-fascists lured us in!”
The boy’s younger sister began to whine, “Daddy, take me home!”
Mother picked up her cranky mini-me tearfully collapsing against her legs. “Y’all don’t pay any attention to Gene none,” she said. “We heard the tremor damaged the roads and airport, but they said our employers would give us full pay anyway until they let us go home.”
“Who provided you this information?”
“The hotel, I guess. At least we got free lifetime passes out of it. From some Chinese soldier if you can imagine.”
“Chinese soldier? Are you sure?” Truby’s heart began to beat faster.
“My kids are not racists!” Dad ranted into the camera. “I taught them to recognize every enemy uniform before they could read and write. Do they finally own this country? Is that the emergency? Lucy, did I call that one? I saw it coming,” he said into the camera. “Manfred Gene Jenkins is my name.” He leaned toward his wife, “I listed my name just like a serial killer. I’m famous now.”
Lucy looked embarrassed, turning her back to the camera to rock her daughter in her arms.
“Then they’re still here,” Truby said to herself, taking off in a run.
“Come back here! I’m not finished yet! I’ve got more to say!”
“Thank you!” Truby ran backward. “Enjoy your stay!”
CHAPTER 61
Loren Studebaker sulked next to Dean, both strapped into the same tropical waterfall floating bubble. Anything less than pure silk was unacceptable. The synthetic fibered PNN logoed shirt was a far cry from the Jodhpuri suits he preferred. He could smell a demotion a mile away. Or maybe he smelled something else. Loren would have ditched Vegas like he’d once ditched the world if he didn’t have another reason for staying.
His time at Indian and Malaysian temples had irrevocably changed his life. Reticent to return to the “real” world when he’d just found it within, a friend had contacted him to ask for help. Despite the shallow façade he projected to the world to those still lost in Maya, his new moorings made him duty-bound to a truly heartfelt plea. And it hadn’t been just anyone. It had come from probably the only person he’d ever trusted other than his guru in the ashram where he’d stayed.
Still, he wasn’t exempt from human emotion. His commitment had inadvertently led him to stumble into circumstances he couldn’t explain. “Jesus, how many times can we do this today?” Studebaker was feeling powerless. “Doesn’t it strike you as funny that one minute we’re in the middle of an earthquake and the next PNN recruits us to report on family fun around the park? Where are all the smashed buildings? The injured people? The debris and bodies?”
“Nothing like a good disaster, right Stu?”
He would have rebutted, but the approaching waterfall’s big drop made Studebaker’s stomach lurch. A commercial-grade dragonfly drone camera appeared on cue, red light blinking before going solid red. The two men turned on game faces, appearing on oversized media screens around the park.
“Reporting live from DupliCity’s Family Fun Amusement Complex, I’m Loren Studebaker.”
“And I’m Dean Hempstead. We’re here at the Tropical Waterfall spending time with lifetime family pass winners. Rather than tell you how much fun we’re having, we’re going to show you. Isn’t that right, Loren?”
“That’s right!” Studebake
r barely concealed his annoyance, “If I had a dime for every time I’ve been over these falls . . .”
Studebaker and Dean were swept over the smaller five-story tropical waterfall water ride, the permeable ball taking a plunge beneath the broiling water. The waterproof drone camera kept pace, capturing the fantastic tumble, even dipping below the surface of the boiling cauldron to catch a shot of the two men exploding out of the water as if attached to a bungee cord.
“Looks like I owe you another dime, Loren. Live, I’m Dean Hempstead.”
“And I’m Loren Studebaker. See you at the Tropical Waterfall!”
The two drowned cats who’d had enough of cold water and each other exited the ride without congratulating and shaking the hands of the lifetime pass winners next in line to board the ride as instructed.
“My gut is saying this is bull patties.” They paused to soak in the warm and drying late afternoon sun. “Nobody can leave the park? Where’s your reporter’s sixth sense?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Just want this day to be over.”
“What do you give a crap about?” Studebaker yelled after Dean who was six strides ahead.
At the edge of the open green space, Dean punched a park beautification robot before turning around in a spit of barely concealed fury he’d kept hidden in the deepest recesses of his heart. “I lost everything I ever cared about a long time ago, since you asked.”
Studebaker was momentarily silenced. Dean had never gotten personal in all the time they’d spent together.
He suddenly hopped a moving sidewalk for the disabled without looking back. “Daylight’s used up.” Without giving Dean time to think up an excuse, “Let’s go!”
If I have an ounce of magnetism left in these aging bones, let me have dangled just enough bait that the boy will be curious.
___
Arriving the same way she’d left, Truby tiptoed her way back to the conference room they’d slept in overnight in what must be an administrative tower within the DupliCity complex. Whether she needed to sneak at all was still unclear, but until she knew more, caution was her modus operandi. The longer she didn’t see or hear from Young, the more jittery she became a boom was about to be lowered—on top of her. Call it reporter’s instinct, call it anything you like.
The room empty with no other signs of life, she began to explore. She made her way down a long connecting hall that might give a clue to the type of business conducted here. Rather than artificial lighting behind ceiling panels, above her was a skyscape filled with loftily floating clouds, the tips of tree fronds lapping at the edges and the occasional squawk of a large bird of prey as it sailed past. It cast down “natural” light that was bright enough without being blinding. As she was in the middle of the multistoried building, she assumed it to be artificially created, but perhaps it was live content streaming from another location. Either way, it was quite pleasing to the senses.
Coming to the end of the hall, she felt the flooring change beneath her feet. Tilting her head back to its proper station, Truby’s eyes flew wide. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
CHAPTER 62
Truby stood in the middle of a state-of-the-art production studio with onsite green screen. The commercial-sized studio itself wasn’t a surprise; it was her good fortune that some low-ranking minion, or high-ranking idiot, hadn’t the intel to know what they’d done by bringing Truby and her friends to this exact building. Somebody had egregiously dropped the ball.
Truby happy danced around the room like a junkie who’d gone to sleep and awoke in opium Heaven. It had been so long, would she be able to work the equipment? she wondered.
Weaving her way around desks, she found what she sought. She pulled up a chair to the most terrifying, complicated-looking video editing console in the open room. Exhaling slowly, “Okay. What now?”
She immediately went to work connecting her outdated HDMI data cable to her digital video camera. Inspecting every inch of the console, she couldn’t find a port that matched the computer end of her data cable. Truby stewed as she thought it through. Yes, technology continues to change dramatically, but any newsroom worth its salt would equip itself with the ability to reformat archived or newly discovered audio and video content for immediate use. Truby started feeling around the console for drawers, something. Bingo!
A slim panel slid out revealing a board containing a plethora of jacks of all shapes and sizes. As soon as Truby started downloading video, she looked over her shoulder nervously before scurrying to a video camera hanging down from the ceiling in front of the green screen.
Truby realized she must look like she’d spent the last week in a war zone. Somewhat true. She searched another desk’s smooth surface for an actual drawer. Several opened at her touch. Inside, Truby found a small mirror, comb, and a mini-airbrush makeup applicator. Wrong shade. She used a tissue to take the shine off her face and combed her hair. Truby tore an abandoned men’s jacket off the back of another chair, the sleeves too short.
“Make it work,” she mumbled, reminding herself if she has the will, she’ll find the way.
In another drawer was a wireless mic. Truby attached it to her jacket, pushing buttons on the master console nearest the green screen until she could hear her voice and see video coming through from the overhead camera.
“Test one, two, test.” Very cool, Truby thought. The camera lens tracked the wearer of the wireless mic no matter where the individual was in the room.
Suddenly, something in Truby’s peripheral vision caught her attention. Shadowy movement, or her imagination? Still suffering from post-traumatic stress all these years later, sometimes even a falling lock of her hair would make her jump.
“Hello?” She stepped toward an emergency exit door at the far end of the newsroom, listening from the inside for any sound or movement. Should she open it and check? Truby wanted to as much as she didn’t. When she read an alarm would sound if the door opened, her cortisol-spewing stomach unclenched slightly.
Not wasting any more time, she hastily took her position in front of the green screen and began counting down. “Three, two, one. A Hatchett Report investigation has found North American Sector M9-48B New Las Vegas, Nevada to be undamaged despite claims by Vice-President Olivia Flores it was destroyed during an earthquake. Is this an authentic global state of emergency or an internationally coordinated false flag operation?”
The latch of a heavy door closing hard from somewhere down the connecting hall made Truby stop mid-sentence. Then came voices.
She instinctively hid behind a desk and waited as the voices approached.
“I’m going to show you real investigative reporting, son.”
That voice...
“You dragged me up here for that?” Dean scoffed, the squeal of wet shoes breaking. “Stu, you narcissistic jackass. And I am not your son.”
“Ouch. Well, now I know how you really feel.” Studebaker fell wearily into the nearest chair. Dejected, he blurted loudly to a fleeing Dean, “After I’ve kept an eye on you for your father all these years.”
In a crouched position, feet growing numb, Truby nearly fell over. It’s him—them! Her eyes filled with salty fluid faster than the water that cascaded down from a mountaintop in spring. Either she was on an unbeatable winning streak, or she was being pranked by the cruelest jokester known to humankind.
“How would you know anything about my father?” Dean squeaked his way back into the newsroom to hover over Studebaker.
As Truby ran through her options, she looked around and behind her only to see the top of her butt crack on the oversized media screen. She’d forgotten she was still recording. How the men hadn’t noticed was beyond her comprehension. The fact that the jacket she wore was the same color as the flooring must have been her saving grace. She really was on a winning streak. If someone glanced at the screen too quickly, they really wouldn’t have any idea what they saw.
A debate raged in her mind, one that couldn’t be won. Finally, she
wiped away the tears to stand. Seeing stars, Truby tried not to pass out from rising too quickly. “Studebaker, you son of a baker. Are you part of this?”
Studebaker turned as white as the ghost he saw standing before him. Stuttering, he tried to form words. Truby shook her head slightly, sending a signal she hoped he’d understand.
“Now, now, I know what this looks like, but I assure you, I’m an innocent party. Didn’t you get my message?”
Truby stepped from behind the desk, moving closer to a shrinking Studebaker. “The cryptic one that said don’t worry?”
“Who the heck are you?” asked Dean.
Truby stared at Dean for a long moment resisting every primitive urge she had before recovering. She dug into her pocket, tossing a chunk of Rare Earth mineral onto the desk next to Studebaker. “Know anything about the global state of emergency we’re under?”
He inhaled sharply. Studebaker reached inside his front pant pocket to retrieve the mineral he’d saved from Dean’s package, placing it next to Truby’s nugget. “Global state of emergency?”
“Remember the glory days, Loren.” Truby salaciously reminisced. “Real fact digging, protecting sources, scooping the competition.”
Studebaker closed his eyes, a small smile playing across sunburnt lips. “I can smell it.” He inhaled slowly this time, “The sweet aroma of beating the TV station across the street.”
“You two are bonkers!” Dean cried.
“What else?” asked Truby wondering if her winning streak was still in motion.
Dean locked eyes with Truby. For reasons unknown, he was drawn to her. There was something about the woman that touched a place within him he hadn’t visited for a very long time.
Her eyes begging a thing he didn’t have to give, Dean reached into his pocket, his curious gaze holding steady. That’s when he felt it. Something passed between them that caused such grief to swell within his being, he couldn’t breathe as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
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