by Rod Carstens
He touched the window and said, “Displays.”
The window turned into his desktop, with five separate screens. The screens were the live, real-time readouts of the Global Resource Program developed by Brandon Rule. The GRP had saved more lives than he could count by making the division of the limited resources left as scientific and equitable as possible. Those who made society work and then down a long list of priorities according to someone’s contribution to society as a whole. It was an agent-based model that collected statistics from a number of different interacting parts. The food system, including agriculture, food production, and imports, then the industrial system, the population calculator, and the nonrenewable resource monitoring system. Then, using modeling and simulations combined with feedback thinking, loop dominance, and nonlinearity logic, it produced the predictive graphs that Alek Geoff reported to the Council. The Council used this predictive information to make the critical decisions that kept the city-state thriving as all of those around it slowly succumbed to a combination of climate change, scarcity of resources, and population growth.
Ashton carefully adjusted the cuffs of his shirt before he reached up to once again read the latest projection. The more he read it, the more uncomfortable he became. They were reaching a cusp. A tipping point for the entire system. He was about to make the most important presentation of his career. One more time he went over the numbers and graphs. Nothing had changed. His comm device chimed softly. Time for the meeting. He reached up and pinched the display with his presentation on it. It floated off the windows and under his arm. He carried the display like a book as the embedded electronics in the smart cloth of his suit networked with the window and kept it glowing with its multicolored graphs.
Ashton strode out of the door and down the hall. It was time for the Council to meet. He touched his sleeve and adjusted the temperature of his suit. He wanted to make sure that he presented a cool and calm presence. The Council could be very critical of even the tiniest perceived weakness. The secretary looked up from the displays on her desk and smiled a small, cold smile.
“They’re ready for you, Ashton. Mr. Geoff is already in there.”
Ashton stepped through the double-brushed metal doors that looked more like artwork than simple metal doors. The Council were taking their seats at their famous semicircular table. Here sat those at the pinnacle of the success pyramid in the City-State of New York, and therefore the world. New York was the unofficial capital of all the city-states. So to reach this table meant you were smarter, tougher, and more ruthless than the other millions who desired to sit where you were. More than one had left dead bodies in their wake through one device or another. Madelyn Holm, the chairwoman, was rumored to have left the most bodies behind her as she climbed the pyramid of power. Behind her back, her nickname was Mad Holm for her reputation as a ruthless player in the power infighting among the Council.
Ashton walked down into what he had come to call the Pit, where all those presenting to the Council stood. When he reached his position he waved his arm, and the presentation zipped across the room and into the room’s computer. With his hands clasped in front of him, he waited to be asked to begin. Geoff looked over at Madelyn Holm, and she nodded, never changing the expression of her cold, hard, beautiful face.
“Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen. I am here to present the latest run of the Global Resource Program. There has not been much change since we made our last run, in spite of the adjustments we made to the inputs. The latest report explores the near-term global food supply. As you know, New York remains the number-one priority for the city-states, yet the pressures on the supply system have increased despite our measures. The global food supply is under chronic pressure created by the increasing population in the city-states and Free Zones. According to the GRP, we are rapidly approaching a point of no return. Even given further restrictions on the population of the city-states, the program predicts a global financial and economic breakdown and eventual collapse unless drastic measures are taken.”
Ashton glanced over at Geoff, who shook his head. Ashton could not bring himself to tell them that the financial and economic impacts were the least of their worries. Something much worse was being predicted by the program, but given the fact they could not get the type, time frame or severity of the event to stabilize between runs, Geoff had decided not to even bring it up.
“How long do we have before these measures need to be taken, Mr. Rand?” Madelyn Holm inquired, her hard eyes watching Ashton closely.
“The program has its limits. This version, after all, is ten years old. Doctor Rule had planned a newer version, but he didn’t complete it before he disappeared. While the program can formulate behavioral models, they are limited at this point because of the significant dynamics now in play in the system. With our current inputs, the interconnected loops are providing incorrect feedback to each other, and the system is unable to give us a usable time frame or even the exact nature of the collapse,” Rand said.
“What are we talking about—weeks, months, years? You must have an idea of the time we have to take steps to mitigate these events.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. The program is giving us a different time frame every time we input new data and run it. It even gives us different time frames using the same data sometimes.”
“It seems to me that we pay you, Mr. Rand, a tremendous amount of money to solve just such problems and make the needed adjustments to the program to provide us with the information we need to make decisions.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Madelyn Holm turned to Alek Geoff, who sat at a separate table to her left. “Mr. Geoff, what do you propose to solve our problem?”
Geoff seemed to shrink under her gaze. “While I studied under Doctor Rule for years, I do not possess his genius. Mr. Rand is a uniquely talented programmer, but despite his and my staff’s best efforts, we have been unable to find and change the needed parameters. Since these problems have begun, we have been using every resource at our disposal to find and capture Doctor Rule so he can make the proper adjustments, but we have been unable to do so.”
Madelyn turned back to Ashton. “What will happen if we do not change course?”
“The collapse could come at any time, and then it would be too late to take any steps to mitigate the impact.”
Madelyn said nothing. She seemed to stare through Ashton. “Then, Mr. Geoff and Mr. Rand, either you find Doctor Rule soon, or I will find someone who can. You two may leave while the Council discusses problems we can do something about.”
Ashton turned around and hurried out the doors, followed closely by Geoff, a knot of real fear in his gut. The look Madelyn had given him must be the one she had given those who stood between her and the top. He didn’t want to end up dead in the gutter the way the others had.
Chapter Three
It took two days of steady walking through the ruins of the City to make it back to the Mall. They had to move slowly and hide to dodge gangs the whole way. Blondie rarely talked, but watched Tanner carefully and was moving well by the time they reached the entrance to the Mall. It was an abandoned apartment building several blocks from the settlement; they entered the side door then went down a hall to another door. When it opened, it looked like a service closet, but if you moved deep enough into the closet and made a right, you found a set of stairs that led to the basement. Once in the basement, if you moved a rotting chest of drawers there was a hole in the wall that led into the sewers. Tanner slipped through the hole, and Blondie followed. Like she had on the rest of the journey, she did not question him about where they were going. She just seemed happy to be leaving Bear and everything he stood for farther and farther behind.
They splashed through the trickle of water that covered the sewer’s floor for ten minutes before Tanner stopped and said, “It’s Tanner, coming in.”
“Password.”
“Mall rat,” Tanner replied.
Two figures seeme
d to appear out of the darkness. A man and woman. Both were armed.
“Where have you been? We were getting ready to divvy up your stuff.”
“Thanks. It’s always nice to be missed.”
“I had my eye on your sleeping bag,” the male said.
“Sorry to disappoint you. This is Blondie. She was being held by a gang. She’s with us if she wants,” Tanner said.
“Hey, welcome.”
Blondie only nodded and followed Tanner down the sewer toward the Mall. After a couple of blocks, they climbed through a hole in the sewer wall and into a subway station. Then Tanner led Blondie up the long frozen escalator to the first floor of the old mall. It was busy with men, women, and children going about their daily chores.
A young man came by, and Tanner said, “Hey, Johnson, take these packs to Doctor Rule. He’s going to shit in his pants when he sees what we found.”
“Yes, boss.”
He took both their packs, staring openly at Blondie before he left.
“Come on. I want you to get checked out in medical. Follow me.”
Tanner led her through the old mall. They passed beds of vegetables, aquaponic ponds filled with fish, and classes being given to the children in an old store now a classroom. He led her to another one of the old stores that was their hospital and medical station. When they walked in, a small dark-haired woman turned and greeted them with a smile, then a frown when she saw Blondie.
“Hey, Tanner. I thought you’d gotten lost and couldn’t find your way home.”
“Nope, can’t get rid of me that easily. I brought someone with me. She was being held by a gang. Uh, I think she needs some medical attention.”
Then, turning to Blondie, Tanner said, “Blondie, this is Doctor Danielle. She will take care of you.”
Danielle approached Blondie, a look of concern on her face. “Sweetie, you need to let me clean up your neck and give you a good going-over. I think I can make you feel a lot better.”
“I’m all right. I don’t want to leave Tanner. He…”
Tanner turned and looked at her. He could tell she had come to trust no one, and the only reason she trusted him was he had killed Bear. It was the only way she could survive.
Gently, he put a hand on Blondie’s shoulder and said, “Blondie, as I said, DD here is our doctor. She’s saved my life and dozens of others. I trust her with my life. You are with people who will take care of you now. Now let the doctor see what she can do.”
Danielle came up to the young woman, put her arm around her shoulders, and led her into the makeshift examining room. “I’ll let you know,” she said over her shoulder.
“Thanks, I’ll check in later.”
Once Blondie was safe with the doctor, it was as if all of Tanner’s energy drained out of him. Being outside for close to a week by himself suddenly caught up to him, and he could barely put one foot in front of the other. He walked slowly down to his tiny room, slipped out of his vest for the first time in days, and lay down on his rope bunk. He was asleep before he could take his clothes off.
“Tilt-rotors! To your stations! Tilt-rotors are inbound!”
Tanner woke with a start as one of the teenage lookouts that came running down the center of the Mall, alerting everyone. Tanner groaned as he rolled out of bed, grabbed his rifle and helmet, and ran out of his room. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but it wasn’t long enough. Tanner ran past the line of what used to be stores lining the main concourse all now used for everything from storage to family quarters. He crossed over past the newly built fishpond in the center of the concourse and ran up the escalator that had long ago stopped working. The elevated walkways had vines dropping over their edges, and the floor with plants that had made their way into the Mall through the broken skylights.
He was headed for the sniper’s perch on the roof. He knew Matos would be up there and Cat would be on the way. They had been a team so long that he knew what they were going to do almost before they did. He reached the second floor and headed for the ladder that led to the roof.
“Tilt-rotors! Tilt-rotors inbound!” the boy and girl runners continued to shout as they notified the rest of the settlement.
Tanner smiled to himself when he heard the youngsters continuing to repeat the warning. He had started classes for everyone when they reached the Mall, and it was paying off. They had organized the lookouts and the kids who would be runners to notify everybody. These assignments freed up a lot of adults to man the observation posts and defensive positions around the Mall itself. The Mall was becoming more and more secure. He could hear people behind him racing to their posts. The settlement was coming alive and preparing for an attack with discipline and precision the drills had produced. He knew some were going down into the sewer below and starting the cars for an escape if needed. Others were gathering the children and heading for the sewers. Protecting the children was always the settlement’s number one priority. Others were manning defensive positions from the roof to the sewer. Anyone thinking about assaulting the Mall would pay a dear price. He reached the ladder, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and began to climb quickly to the sniper’s perch. He pushed open the hatch and crawled into a hollowed-out old air-conditioning unit next to Matos, who was lying flat with his eye to the scope of his rifle.
“What have we got?” Tanner asked.
“Not sure yet. Three tilt-rotors are hanging around too long for me to feel comfortable. They keep orbiting the area. There’re three of them, so it looks like a Spec Act Team, but I don’t think they have a target. It's more like a recon mission.”
Tanner knew the Mall was considered a point of interest by Resource Control, but they had been careful not to leave any visible signs that the it was occupied. It was an ideal location with plenty of room for expansion and ability to grow food. The skylights provided light for their vegetable beds, and there was even an old decorative pond they could use to farm fish. With this much room, they were able to accept more people into the settlement; it was now large enough that they had reached a critical mass of different skills and they were becoming more secure. Even a platoon of Special Action Teams would have a hard time cracking this nut. But if they suspected that Brandon Rule was here, they would stop at nothing to find him.
Tanner, along with Cat and Matos, had been able to spot any Internal Security teams and make sure they saw nothing. Spending years on the Resource teams had given them more than a little insight into their positioning and patrolling techniques. But something had changed in the last months. There were fewer and fewer of the Resource teams and more of the roving Spec Act Teams. They had dropped ground-monitoring sensors and listening devices in the neighborhood, but Tanner had spotted them all and avoided them. Something was changing, but they were still trying to find Brandon Rule.
He still had no idea why they were hunting Rule, but it really didn’t matter. They were not going to stop until they found him. The lead tilt-rotor banked and headed back toward the Mall, flanked by the other two ships. The lead ship nosed down on a heading directly toward his position.
“Shit,” Tanner said.
“What?”
Cat crawled in and lay down next to Tanner. She was in full combat regalia: combat vest with a deck filled with extra magazines, a pistol strapped to her thigh and her combat knife on the other, and kneepads. It was getting very tight in the old air-conditioning unit. Tanner had had a work party dismantle the unit and remove the compressor and the rest of the equipment. It was a perfect observation post for the settlement, and the roof was covered with them. No electricity made them useless, but they now formed a 360-degree set of observation posts on the Mall’s roof. They were manned night and day and were proving themselves invaluable. The roof still looked like it had before they occupied the place. It was overgrown with all manner of opportunistic plants and vines. The skylights had long ago been destroyed by Resource teams or nature. So as they lay in the old air-conditioning housing, the Mall looked for all the wo
rld like the crumbling, vacant structure it had been.
Still the tilt-rotors were not changing their direction. This was it. They were about to have a firefight to the death with a bunch of Spec Act troopers. Tanner turned to the runner standing at the top of the ladder and was about to tell her to tell the others to prepare for a firefight when Cat said, “Wait. Wait for Morgan.”
Morgan was a teenager they had saved from an ambush by a gang. Cat had initially taken her under her wing and tried teaching her the hard-earned lessons Cat had learned as a call girl and Resource Control operative. Morgan had proven to be something very different. Brandon Rule had found she was more than the usual teenager with an identity crisis. Instead she was a computer coding phenom. He had been working to hone her coding skills. Tanner had made three different missions into different zones to find the technology that Rule and Cat needed for Morgan to learn on. Now she had a working laptop that was capable of connecting with the Resource Control network over the various grids they used to monitor the Free Fire Zones. With Rule’s help, her skills had increased by leaps and bounds, to the point she was surprising Rule with her capabilities. Now Cat was asking Tanner to wait before initiating a defensive response, all because of some teenager and her cobbled-together laptop.
“Are you shitting me?” Tanner said.
“Give her a chance, if she's as good as Rule says. We’ll just wait and see.”
“You’re putting the fate of this settlement in the hands of a teenager who's good with tech?”
“Yes. Now shut the fuck up and watch. Brandon says she's a genius and a weapon that we are lucky to have. Just wait a minute. Don’t shoot anything until I tell you to. We’ve got time.”
Tanner looked over at Cat. She returned his gaze, and when their eyes met, he knew he could trust her judgment despite everything in him telling him she was wrong. They had been together for years on Resource teams in some of the roughest zones. They had become lovers, but things had changed when they decided to join the settlers, and Tanner was still trying to understand where they stood now. Tanner had emerged as the de facto leader of the settlement, while Cat had emerged as one of the leaders of a subsection of the settlement that included Rule and Morgan.