The Water Wars

by Cameron Stracher

  “If you’d like,” I said after he repeated his question. “My father should be home,” I added, in case he got the wrong idea.

  We entered the grounds of our complex, passing the empty guard station and the useless and crumbling concrete barriers. Long ago these buildings had been built for retirees who needed security and extra care. But these days few people lived long enough to retire, and there was no money for their care anyway. The guards disappeared first, followed by the upkeep and maintenance. Now we patched our own walls and prayed that the electric wiring would not fail.

  Kai climbed the steps ahead of me, his calves outlined against the thin fabric of his trousers. He rang the buzzer, and my father welcomed us. He offered us a snack of crackers and soy cheese, which Kai was happy to accept. We ate in the living room and played board games. The wi-screen glowed softly in the background, playing its constant stream of news, entertainment, and information. We ignored it. It was too early for homework, and I never had much anyway. Will returned, and the three of us swapped stories while Will tried to extract more information about the river.

  Soon this became our regular schedule. Our father would leave the door unlocked with a plate of cheese and crackers at the table. Most of the time he would greet us in the kitchen, but sometimes he would let us be. Kai and I grew comfortable with his absence, and I almost forgot the tension of having a boy in my home without a chaperone. At the end of every day, when the black limousine arrived outside our building, Kai seemed reluctant to leave. More than once our father took pity and invited him to dinner. Then we would prolong our game-playing or storytelling until it was finally time for me to do my homework. When Kai was long gone, I’d take a dry shower, set out my clothes for the morning, and read from my mother’s collection of Great Books of the Twentieth Century: a ten-volume set with torn paper pages, cracked bindings, and scribbled pen markings—the only bound paper volume in our home.

  “Poor boy,” our father would say.

  “He’s not poor,” said Will.

  But we knew what he meant. We just had to look into the bedroom to imagine what it must be like to lose your mother at an early age. Kai feigned indifference, but I understood better than he thought I did. When I tried to get him to talk about his mother, he shrugged and said he really didn’t remember her. He wouldn’t say much about his father either except that he traveled a lot. Although he was open about his diabetes and showed me the workings of his insulin pencil, he didn’t talk much about the disease. He only spoke about the mechanics of treating himself.

  Mostly we talked about scavenging, and adventure, and places we wanted to see. Kai mentioned the giant Arctic Ocean—so large it had swallowed Iceland and most of Greenland. I said I’d always wanted to see the Great Dam of China. We played board games, word games, and number games. Kai had a stunning memory and could always recall where a card was hidden or when a piece was last played. He won most of our contests and could even beat Will in Counts, a card game that required a quick hand and an even quicker mind for numbers.

  When Kai went home, Will and I stayed up late speculating about him. Will said Kai feared his father and the burden of keeping the river secret. I said Kai missed his mother and was lost without her. Will teased me and said I was falling for him. I told him I wasn’t interested in boys—especially not one whose father wouldn’t even let us visit his home. But long after we stopped talking, I would lie in bed thinking about the way Kai’s pale hair fell in front of his eyes, and how he bent his head as if he were praying when he listened to me talk.

  One weekend morning our father surprised us with three passes to the gaming center. It was a place we begged to go but usually could not afford—ever since we had gone to a party there last year, going back was all we talked about. It was a lukewarm dry Saturday with no rain in sight, but suddenly the day seemed full of promise. Our father explained that he had traded some of Kai’s water for the passes, but I noticed no water was missing. We didn’t question our good fortune, however; we just took the passes and assured our father we would take Kai along.

  In five minutes we were dressed and ready to go—but it took another thirty minutes to reach Kai on the wireless. First we had no signal. Then we had a signal but no response. Finally Kai wi-texted us back, and we made arrangements to meet. We couldn’t use our pedicycles, because Kai didn’t have one, and the black limousine was with his father—so our father told Will he could take our car. Will jumped at the chance.

  Kai was waiting outside his building when we arrived, looking as indifferent as he had the first morning we met. But he grinned broadly when he saw Will driving and actually skipped a step or two on his way to the car. “Cool wheels,” he said when he climbed inside, although the old car was anything but, and that made us all laugh. Driving anything was unusual, with gasoline so hard to come by and the electric grid so unreliable. Will sat a little higher in the driver’s seat as we headed down the road.

  Main Street was rutted and derelict. Most of the old stores had been shuttered or reconstructed to sell the things we still bought: tarps, basins, dried beans, soy bread, and small construction equipment. There were five hardware stores but no drugstore; three gun shops but no bank. The signs of older times could still be seen on the facades of sealed buildings: Gap, Starbucks, Abercrombie & Fitch—merchants that had sold things people didn’t necessarily need but always wanted.

  The gaming center was in the middle of town next to the water reclamation park. It had been built from the ruins of the old government building that had been bombed when Illinowa declared its independence from the national government in Washington, DC—back when there were fifty states and not six republics. The chief administrator had his office on the top floor, and whatever government existed in Arch conducted its business upstairs.

  Will swung the car around the front and parked in the open lot. Our father had given us credit chips, and though Kai certainly didn’t need one, he accepted his graciously. We dashed from the car as soon as Will switched it off and entered the center to the hum of the venti-unit and the buzz of generators, consoles, and players.

  Although the front of the center was open to the street, the rest of the building was windowless, which reduced the glare on the consoles. In place of windows, the owners had painted murals: lush forests, mist rising from the trees, exotic animals frolicking in the underbrush. The effect was both exhilarating and melancholy, but after a while the feeling wore off, replaced by something like yearning. This made the gamers play harder and longer, seeking the narcotic of the games. It was, of course, the reason the center was decorated this way. Gamers checked in, but they didn’t check out until they’d spent their last credit chips.

  While the center had its share of children and teens, there were also groups of shakers—men, mostly—who looked as if they had been playing all night. Like many older people, their hands shook from years of thirst. They also had the wild-eyed look of drug addicts, with unkempt hair and clothing they appeared to have slept in. They swiped their game passes in front of the machines like bots, one mechanized sweep after another. Even when they won, their eyes remained glazed and skittery. One victory, another free game, was meaningless. All that mattered was the drug itself. The chief administrator himself was said to be an avid fan and could be found here with his cronies long after dark.

  Kai tapped me on the arm. “Shootout,” he said.

  Will had already run off to play the driving games he liked best. I could see him at the pedals of a race car, both hands working intensely to control the course. He didn’t even notice us as we walked past, but I kept him within sight.

  Kai was a terrible shot. His skill with numbers was no substitute for sharp eyesight. We played five times in a row, and I beat him every game. Losing, however, did not dim his fun. He screeched and whooped and hollered. As I moved my men to avoid his rockets, he simply sat in the open and took my fire. If he had a strategy, it was to fire furiously and indiscriminately, hoping to overcome with
quantity what he could not with quality.

  “That was fun!” he said. “Double or nothing.” His face was flushed, and he had pushed his hair above his forehead.

  “You already owe me more credit chips than you have.”

  “We’ll bet something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “What do you want?”

  What did I want? He looked at me expectantly as I tried to sort the confusing puzzle that was my mind. But I couldn’t say, so I just said, “Okay, one more game, but then we play something else.”

  I beat him for the sixth time, and he teased me, calling it beginner’s luck. It wasn’t luck, I told him, if your aim was true.

  We played another game called Geyser where the object was to find water and make it emerge in a powerful jet. The higher it sprayed, the more points you got. I didn’t like wasting all that water—even in a game—and I quit after two tries. Kai played three more times by himself, and I wandered through the arcade. There was a YouToo! booth where you could film yourself, add music or mash in other clips, and post videos on the wireless. Two girls performed a clumsy dance routine which they immediately uploaded and viewed on one of the big screens that broadcast a continuous stream of content to anyone with a wireless. Although most homes lacked the technology to broadcast, nearly everyone had a wi-screen for watching and texting. In a matter of minutes, they received ten thousand views and a rating of 1.2 out of 5. Disappointed, the girls insisted on making another video, and I moved on.

  A group of boys was crowded behind Will, cheering him on as he set a new high score on Death Racer. Nearby three girls tried to catch the boys’ attention. Over by Kai two men in identical blue shirts and black trousers played their own game of Geyser. They had a terrible time figuring out how to play, and their eyes wandered from the screen. It was a waste of credit, I thought; at least they could step aside and let someone else have a turn. But their low scores failed to dim their addiction to losing.

  I made my way to Will. He stopped playing to chat with me. This earned me admiring stares from some of the boys and glares from the girls. Will asked if I wanted to race against him, but I knew better than to compete with him at his best event. Instead I suggested he race Kai.

  The boys chose their cars. Kai picked a lime-green electric coupe, while Will chose a velvet-blue hydro racer. The cars were steered by two hand paddles; speed was controlled by a foot pedal. Another pedal shifted gears. The course Will selected was an arctic tundra populated by polar bears and baby seals—animals that had once lived where the ground was still frozen. The gun sounded, and Will flew over the landscape, his racer dodging snowdrifts and navigating sub-zero waterways. Kai slipped and skidded on the curvy road, crashing several times into icy mountainsides. Once he went straight through a colony of seals, losing thousands of points for each seal he hit.

  But Will and Kai hooted loudly as if they were engaged in a neck-and-neck race instead of a blowout. Their excitement spread to the small crowd of teens who had gathered around them. The girls, who had figured out Will was my brother, wanted to know where we lived and what classes we took. The boys shouted advice to Kai, giving him tips on how to avoid the treacherous roads and packs of bears who tried to ambush him. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was more fun than we’d had in a long time. It didn’t matter that it was just a game—and not even a very good one. Playing together, being there with Kai and my brother and a group of kids I could imagine were friends, made me forget that our mother lay sick in her bed, dreadfully, inexplicably sick. The narcotic of the game worked its magic, and we were drawn inside.

  The cars raced toward the finish line. Over and under, around and through. Will was unbeatable and unstoppable, and I was proud to be his sister.

  Then I had an uncomfortable sensation, a prickling at the back of my neck, as if someone were watching me. From the corner of my eye, I saw the two men in the blue shirts staring at us, heads angled low, gazes slanted in our direction. They seemed unnaturally interested, with eyes for no one else in the room.

  But when I turned, the men were gone, and I wondered whether I had seen them at all.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next afternoon Kai wi-texted me to see if I wanted to go scavenging. In the short hills behind his apartment were the remains of an old mill. It had been abandoned in the Great Panic, before we were born. The factory was now a decaying agglomeration of empty buildings, busted silos, and broken-down trucks. Lizards and snakes coiled in the ruins. Our father had warned us never to go there—he claimed there were diseases and dangers—but Kai said it was safe.

  It was Sunday, and Will was at water mission class. This summer he would have to spend a month bringing water to less fortunate towns. It didn’t matter that we barely had enough water ourselves; the government ordered public service, and there was little choice but to obey. Will said it was just an excuse to get free labor, but even he didn’t dare risk defiance. There were “education camps” where they took people who objected and taught them social responsibility. The “lessons” left them damaged and disfigured.

  I rode my pedicycle to Kai’s complex and locked it outside the front gate. Kai was waiting at the end of the drive. He smiled with one side of his mouth when he saw me and gave a small wave with his hand. Whenever I saw him standing like that, face poised in careful expectation, my heart went out to him. There was something cautious, something held back, in his smile. Drillers trusted no one, and their children learned to be wary and shrewd.

  Kai led me through the scraggly cactus-like plants that survived for months without water. He didn’t say much, so I kept all the questions to myself. The hills were gradual and gentle, but I soon tired of walking uphill. We stopped for a few minutes, and he gave me a sealed bottle of water that was sweet and still cold. We sat on the side of a concrete barrier overgrown with a grayish lichen that brushed off on our clothes. I drank, and then Kai drank. Our feet kicked up dust.

  Before the Great Panic, the mill had produced cornmeal and flour that was shipped across the country. But once the Canadians had dammed the rivers and the lower states began fighting over the trickles that remained, there wasn’t enough water for any industry, let alone something as water-intensive as milling. The snow masses and ice packs were gone, victims of warmer temperatures and higher sea levels. The aquifers and surface lakes had dried up or had been polluted. Forests were denuded, wetlands drained. Fresh, drinkable water was in the hands of a very few whose grip grew tighter as the world grew drier.

  In truth there hadn’t been enough water for years. Our father told us the story they wouldn’t tell in school. Rain fell, but it couldn’t replenish what was gone. Growing populations made shortages worse. Although the planet was mostly water, less than one-tenth of one percent was drinkable. Riots broke out in the cities. Countries divided into factionalized republics. Wars erupted along their borders. In the aftermath hundreds of millions had died—most from disease and malnutrition. The Great Panic punctuated what men already knew but still somehow refused to accept: the world had run out of water.

  “Where do you think the workers went?” I asked. “After the mill shut down?”

  Kai shook his head. “There was nowhere to go.”

  “The planes never bombed it.”

  “They didn’t need to.”

  He held out his hand to help me up. We continued climbing until we reached the entrance to the old mill. We knew it was the entrance, because part of a broken sign still hung above the ground. Otherwise we would not have recognized it. Wooden and steel beams blocked our passage, and a tangled mass of circuitry dangled from the ceiling like webbing.

  Kai said the factory had so much power that the workers never turned off the lights and used the venti-units all night long, even when the buildings were empty. I already knew this from school, but I let Kai lecture me. He said water ran through the pipes that didn’t need to be filtered or treated; it could be drunk right out of the tap. This wasn’t entirely true. There were gia
nt treatment plants that purified water and added chemicals like chlorine to kill bacteria. I had seen the holos in the archive. Still, things were safer then, and no one got sick just from taking a shower.

  Kai held my hand the entire time he talked. Neither of us said anything about it, but I could feel his heart beating in the pulse of his palm. I wondered if this made me his girlfriend. When the girls in school got boyfriends, they usually wore a locket or an old article of the boy’s clothing. Maybe, I thought, that’s what the water was. I held tight to the empty bottle.

  We threaded our way through the beams and wires. At each step Kai cautioned me to avoid a hole, a nail, a plank. Finally we emerged into the center of the factory floor. The old milling machines hunkered like animals, all rusted gears and broken parts. They had run on diesel fuel, which was refined and processed from oil sucked up from deep within the ground. But oil was too precious now to burn in a machine. These days it was rationed and used only to power tanks, jets, and the cars of wealthy men like Kai’s father. It was hard to believe oil had ever been so plentiful that people could burn it whenever they chose. But so many of the old ways were wasteful, like letting water spray onto the streets for no other reason than to run around beneath it on a hot day.

  I thought about the other costs involved in milling grain. Not only were there oil and electricity for the machines, trucks, venti-units, lights, and refrigerators, but there was all the water to grow the grain in the first place. Millions of hectares of farmland were devoted to corn, soybeans, wheat, and rye. The government built thousands of kilometers of aqueducts that took water from rivers halfway across the country and brought it to the farms. There were places in the desert that suddenly bloomed with vineyards and orange groves. Towns without water were transformed into green paradises where people played games on tracts of perfect grass. Entire cities sprang from dust and clay, their spires reaching into the sky and their roots deep into the earth. They sucked up water as if it were their birthright and spat out sewage back onto the land. There was no limit to Earth’s resources—until there wasn’t anything left anymore.