A shimmering, hard red slash of light cuts the sky above the camp in half. It stabs upward into the sky, and originates from somewhere to the south, where intel thinks the North Korean Army has established a new firebase.
"What is it?" Duc asks.
Information scrolls across their helmets. It's a laser. High energy, tightly focused. Most of the red slash she's "seeing" is actually interpolation from her suit's sensors.
Mai follows the path of the beam, and sees that it intersects neatly with the icon that represents the dirigible floating thirty kilometers overhead.
"They're going after our power," Duc says.
The icon wavers and blinks out.
All around them lights flicker, then go dark. Mai spins around and looks at the tower at the heart of their refugee city. The lights on the outside of the Point Defense Array flicker and go dark.
***
Satellite communications links to the armor go live, and their helmets kick on automatic recording mode: 60fps video streaming directly back to operations centers in Hanoi, Beijing, and Geneva. All local bandwidth is reserved for encrypted inter-team communications.
That results in everyone having a thumbnail of Captain Nguyen's face in the upper right corner of their visors, spitting orders and soliciting updates.
Mai and Duc are deployed to the south gate, and they sprint through the streets to get there, leaping over a small one-story refugee processing building in their way.
In the background of it all, emergency sirens wail. Citizens are, no doubt, being ushered away from windows and into the cores of skyscrapers. But if a full-on assault comes, there's little protection. The camp is vulnerable without the Point Defense Array.
Slightly out of breath, Mai scans the woods and hills beyond the border of the camp. "We should have rerouted all power from the reactor by now," she says to Duc.
And as if answering her directly, Captain Nguyen speaks up. "I've just learned that several of the power cables leading out from the reactor have been sabotaged. We are unable to power up the array fully. As a result it's in a fuel-cell powered self-defense mode right now, only targeting any rounds that might hit its tower. The engineers report that it will take as long as ten minutes to get power back up. You know your orders. Prevent any North Koreans from getting past the gate. And hold your position. Contact is imminent. Forces are building up for an assault."
Mai can see via thermal imaging that bodies are flitting through the trees.
"There hasn't been any satellite imagery showing that the rest of their army has shown up," Duc says. "It's just this battalion. We can handle that, even without the array, right?"
"Of course," Mai agrees.
Even as she opens her mouth to reassure Duc further, a brief flash flickers from behind the trees, followed by the quiet thump of sound catching up to light.
"Mortar-fire," Mai shouts, broadcasting to the entire open channel. Her helmet projects a path and warning insignia blare at her to MOVE.
Duc spins away, and Mai is leaping clear as the world erupts in orange and black. She sees stars wheel overhead, the world tumbling around her, and she turns her tumble into a roll.
She lands on her feet, legs bent, taking the force of her impact. Her left hand drags, fingertips furrowing the ground as she slides backwards on her boots and comes to a stop.
"Duc!"
He's facedown. The entire back of his suit is blackened. She rushes over to him.
"Duc!"
There's a groan over the helmet radio. The status report shows that he's just been dazed. Duc sits up as Mai scans the tree line, waiting for the next launch or the inevitable rush of bodies.
The next mortar launch arrows well overhead, and Mai frowns as she follows the trajectory over the wall. The refugee-processing building explodes in a mess of compressed fiberboard and electronics.
Mai stands up.
The next mortar round walks further into the camp.
"They're not going to try a direct attack," Mai reports to Captain Nguyen, somewhat stunned. "They're just going after civilians."
More rounds now slam into the skyscrapers at the center of the camp. Broken glass twinkles as it rains down into the streets.
The open channel fills with medics responding. Ten wounded. No deaths. But another ten minutes of this, and it was going to get bad.
"Captain..."
"Stand your ground Sergeant. It could be a trap to lure some of us out, before the charge. Do not leave your post. Listen to me, there are three million live watchers, this conflict is being streamed everywhere, as it happens, to satisfy mission backers and advertisers. We keep our course."
But Mai's already stopped paying attention. "Duc, what is that?"
Her visor has caught the sound of tracks.
"Tank?"
"No." For a brief moment, two kilometers away and only visible by the helmet's advanced computational lenses, she's seen the outline of a self-propelled howitzer, trundling through the brush between Nike and the new Korean firebase.
KOKSAN, her visor identifies it. 170MM of death on wheels.
It must have been driven up to stand in for the artillery Mai and her team already destroyed.
Mai is already moving forward before she really understands it.
"Mai! Hold your position," Nguyen orders.
"Duc, stay here," Mai says, and then before he can reply she turns off communications.
She's across the open ground and into the woods before she's drawn even two full breaths, kicking through underbrush. It's like running in sand, and she's leaving a trail of broken tree limbs and shattered logs behind her.
There are attackers, of course. Gunshots ping off her armor from every direction, and she's veering this way and that to get around uniforms that pop up in her way.
She's still broadcasting video live. She can't turn that off. The whole world is watching this, probably. She can't afford to harm anyone.
But Mai has to stop that howitzer.
Because it's going to be so much louder than those little execution pops she's been hearing in the distance.
It's going to be a bang. It's going to wipe out lives in an instant. And it's going to keep doing it for as long as the Point Defense Array is down.
And she can stop it.
She can rip it apart with her augmented hands.
Gravel crunches and pops under her feet as she bursts out into open terrain, accelerating down a road.
The firepower aimed at her kicks up an order of magnitude. The popping sound has gone from occasional plinks to a hailstorm. There are soldiers taking cover behind small boulders and shooting at her. Mai covers the last kilometer in giant lopes, leaping over heads and vehicles and hastily dug fighting positions.
But she's too late. She can see the howitzer. It is basically a large tank with an obscenely larger artillery gun bolted on top. It looks unbalanced, like it should tip forward.
The long barrel is raised just slightly, and on target. It will fire like a tank, at this range, the round arcing just over her head, at the very low end of the Point Defense Array's envelope. If it's even operational yet.
Six soldiers are scurrying around the platform. Unlike most of the world's current self-propelled artillery, the operators are not encased in tank armor.
When Mai reaches the unit, she will be able to disable it and move the soldiers away.
But one of them is already shutting the breech and stepping back.
Another is pointing her way and shouting.
She will not make it there before they fire.
Mai slows and rips a three-foot wide boulder up out of the ground and throws it as hard as she can. Two soldiers dive clear of the vehicle, but the two near fire control have nowhere to go.
Blood spatters the railings around the vehicle. Brain matter drips from the barrel of the howitzer.
Seconds later Mai reaches it and slams her fist into the breech, disabling it.
For a long moment she stands on to
p, too stunned to move.
Then something loops over her head from behind, wrapping around her neck. The armor stops it from choking her, but the loop is strong. Possibly braided cable.
Mai tries to jump free, but the cable yanks her back down. The ground meets her back hard, and despite all the protection, Mai gasps for breath and her vision blurs.
They drag her across the ground as she fights to breathe again, her body bouncing as the armor scrapes along the ground. She can hear the rumble of an old truck, accelerating, dragging her farther away.
She reaches up to the noose, trying to get purchase, but she's being bounced around by the uneven terrain.
If they can drag her far enough away, she'll be just one person in armor. Far from camp. Far from backup.
Mai screams with rage, and then suddenly, she's free, tumbling along the side of the muddy road. On shaky arms she pushes herself up. First to her knees, then to her feet, every twitch and tremor amplified by the armor.
She pulls the cable up toward her until she comes to the cut edge, then looks around.
A cluster of blue-armored figures are walking down the road at her.
Mai turns her communications back on.
"Nong Mai Thuy?"
"Yes, Captain Nguyen?"
"We have some things to discuss."
***
"Are you ready to go home?" Nguyen asked.
"No," Mai replies. But she knows her preferences do not matter.
She's standing in front of Nguyen's desk wearing her old Marine Police uniform. Everything's crisp and tight. Ribbons for bravery and accomplishment no longer feel like things to be proud of, but strange, non-functional baubles.
She should be in armor, not in this uniform.
"I guess the true question is... how do you move on?" Nguyen says. "I have two courses for you to consider."
"Two? I don't understand."
"You killed two human beings, Nong Mai Thuy. All the while under orders to not leave your position."
"I saved many lives," Mai protests.
Nguyen flashes a smile. It isn't a pretty thing. It's an expectant one. Like a predator watching prey fall for a trap.
"Yes. The inhabitants of the camp call you a hero. But you may have killed many more than you would have saved down the road. It's a moral dilemma. Academics sometimes ask you to ponder: would you push a man in front of a train to save everyone on the train? It seems like a silly question, yes? But here we are: soldiers. We often shove people in front of trains to serve a greater good. You just faced one of your own moral dilemmas, Mai. I can't blame you for what you did. But we cannot succeed if we answer violence with violence here. Our duty is to weather these storms and stand between danger and our charges. And doing so, calmly, allows us the unfettered world permission to continue our mission here. You jeopardized the larger mission. The North Koreans will claim they were unjustly abused by a technologically superior invading army, no matter how ridiculous the claim. You put this entire mission in danger of failing. It is unacceptable."
Mai considers the strangeness of this. The famous Captain Nguyen, who could be wearing three times as many medals as Mai if she chooses, who tasted violence on the Cambodian border, had eaten it for supper, is lecturing Mai about violence.
"So what is to become of me?" Mai asks.
"The Hague wants to court martial you and send you to jail." Nguyen taps the desk. "Personally, I think the court of world opinion would side with you, and you will not go to jail. You are the hero of Camp Nike, after all. But this will drag out in public and focus the attention in all the wrong places. The advertisers, the people who run this, and the Generals back at the Hague, this will tarnish their images."
Mai shrinks back without thinking. The subject of world attention. Media circuses. It sounds alien and horrific to someone who prefers their privacy.
Nguyen shoves a piece of paper forward. "If you think these people are worth protecting, if you think what the camps are trying to do is a good thing, then I suggest you take the second course."
"And that is?" Mai asks.
"An honorable discharge. It is hardly your fault, really, that this happened. I should have seen the signs, your aggressive stance. A high need for justice. I ignored them because you were a good person with a good heart. I will not be making that mistake again. Sign these, and you can leave, but without any trouble to you, or trouble that makes our soldiers or country look bad. Go back to your family's business. Go live a good life."
Mai stares at the papers for a long moment, then signs them, struggling to keep any emotion from her face as Nguyen watches.
"Well done, Citizen Nong Mai Thuy," Captain Nguyen says. "Well done."
***
The next flight out of Camp Nike is in the pre-dawn morning. Mai sits alone in an aisle, looking out of the window as the plane passes up through the flittering green of the Point Defense Array. The North Koreans are busy probing its limits once again.
An extra reactor will be flown out to meet the needs of the camp soon. For now it is getting by on rolling blackouts for all non-essential power needs. Rumor is that a Californian solar panel corporation is going to ship enough panels next week for most civilian domestic needs, but the advertising details are still being negotiated. When they're installed, it should help the camp come up to full power.
And she won't be there to see any of that.
The aircraft continues its tight spiral up and up, always staying within Camp Nike airspace as it climbs. Eventually, once up to the right ceiling, out of range of all missiles and without the grounded North Korean Air Force to worry about, they will break out of their constant turn and head out for Hanoi.
"Miss Nong?" an airman asks. He crouches at the edge of the aisle holding a small wooden box in his hands.
"Yes?"
"Some of the refugees at the airstrip asked me to give this to the 'hero of Camp Nike,'" the airman says, and hands her the box.
She opens it to find a small bracelet held together with monofilament, decorated with charms made from recently recycled brass casings.
When she looks back through the window, the camp is lost under the clouds.
Lonely Islands
I think about islands a lot. Not just the ones in the ocean like where I grew up, but the ones I encounter out on dry land. When I met someone who lived on an island in the Caribbean who’d never been off the island, I understood it. It’s expensive to get off an island to go see more of the world. A hassle to sail across to another one. The ocean is a natural barrier.
But when I moved to northwest Ohio, I found out that some of the people I was talking to had never left their own counties. They lived in self-defined islands of their own.
Many of the problems the islands I grew up on were faced by small towns and rust belt cities in Ohio. Extractive corporations that didn’t keep money in the local community. Isolation. Underinvestment.
I’ve always thought that islands were great places to experiment with alternative transportation systems. Localized alternative energy. Green technology. Then it occurred to me that if an experiment in going car free worked on an island, it would in a rust belt city, alone in a sea of corn. As gas prices increased, and the long commutes that already existed became tougher, the metaphor would fit.
The image began to form up, and when MIT’s Technology Review asked me for a story, I began to put it down on the page.
You know the city, now. Twenty thousand people, many of them trapped in rustbelt Ohio. For generations.
You saw the footage of the super-tornado. Saw that seven story building downtown with its facade peeling off into the air like wheat chaff. Rows of houses ripped up with nothing but bare earth behind: the storm’s grim harvest.
But sometimes in destruction is a chance to change direction. To do something creative that wasn’t possible before.
These Ohioans declared independence. Solar roofs. Wind turbines. Bike lanes.
When they outlawed cars, t
hough, shit hit the fan.
***
To be honest I didn’t want to go document the riots, even though I was offered the gig.
***
But there was a woman.
***
There are these algorithms that run in the background of my life. Track my buying habits, geographic migrations, peer groups, information consumption, and within a few points these mysterious daemons in the background can predict tastes.
Train them with some reinforcement and they get spooky predictive.
I’ve unleashed them to pick new restaurants, places to rent, and even hunt for new assignments. Occasionally, the software recommends friends.
It recommended I meet Sarah.
***
Our selection software worked together to find the one restaurant in the small city that would interest us: a tiny Thai place on the edge of town.
“What are you doing here?” we eventually asked each other, as picketers passed the windows.
“Say no to anti-car fascists,” one large sign read.
***
As we ate, a hundred miles away in Columbus, Ohio, the sitting governor was crafting legislature to make it illegal to deny an automobile passage through any town in the state.
“We build cars,” the governor had said in a statement earlier. “We supply parts and build them. And have done so for over a hundred years. This is an attack on our way of life.”
The opposition pointed out that people could save ten thousand a year by walking or biking to work, if the environs supported it. Helluva tax break for a working stiff.
***
This is not the first rustbelt city devastated by heavy weather. Incidences keep creeping up. Insurance companies are throwing actuary tables out windows and turning to supercomputers and climate scientists.
Mitigated Futures Page 3