Convergence

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  I spent hours driving aimlessly, waiting for updates from Alice and word that her contact had been able to obtain the mem chips we needed. The car was a newer electric, a small model that had been built in Vietnam by a PRC state-run facility, so I didn’t have to worry about gas. The large battery under the hood could go three hundred miles on a single charge and had a back-up twelve-gallon gas tank, which was half-full.

  I wasn’t planning on driving forever, and the clock was rolling past lunchtime. I was hungry, and I needed to get out to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. Walking around the city for a bit had its own set of complications. I could get stopped by roving military police, and although I didn’t think that possibility posed much threat to my personal safety, arguing across a language barrier the size of the Pacific Ocean would be a long, drawn-out hassle. They would want to know who I was, why I was here, and why I had left my refugee camp. When they discovered I was from Echo Park, that would further complicate matters, and I would have to explain my displacement and face more uncomfortable questions.

  I weighed my options. I’d been making a circuitous route between Figueroa and Hill, avoiding the random checkpoints along the way. I pulled into a parking garage near the Fig and took the stairs down from the third floor. Pedestrian traffic was light, but dressed in a button-down shirt and black slacks on a weekday, I blended in well enough with the crowd. I paid attention to the people around me, occasionally taking a casual glance around. Nobody seemed particularly interested in me, and I was confident no one was following me.

  I walked to what had once been the Staples Center and went through the entrance off Figueroa. Before the war, I had seen Kings games here, and Selene and I had brought Mesa to see a Disney on Ice show when she was five. The crowd was thicker that day than it had been during the Center’s entertainment heydays. A throng of bodies stood shoulder to shoulder, damn near chest-to-back, inching their way forward. I got in line and waited patiently to pass through the checkpoint. UN soldiers positioned on either side of the line at regular intervals randomly asked people for IDs. They largely avoided asking for idents from those of a clearly Asian background, focusing their attention instead on easier, more politically correct subjects such as small children and the elderly. I provided my ident when asked. The soldier said nothing, so I said nothing. He pressed my card against a small device, his head bobbed repeatedly between the monitor and me, then he handed back the card and moved on.

  My trip to the checkpoint took nearly half an hour. I was instructed to remove my shoes and socks and to raise my arms over my head as I was corralled through a body scanner, then wanded and patted down before being directed to stand in another line for almost another half hour.

  The security procedures were artificial precautions, a well-orchestrated show to give the illusion of safety. Nano securiclouds webbed the entrances, alerting security to potential threats before the individuals were even past the main entrance hubs, giving the guards a chance to neutralize most threats before they ever made it into the central lobby.

  I was asked to present my ident again. I kept it at the ready in one hand, holding my socks and shoes in the other. Eventually, I made my way up to another guard station, where I was met with a bored, blond-haired, blue-eyed man barely out of his teens. He scanned my ident card for a fourth time.

  “Purpose of visit?” he asked with a heavy accent. Dutch, or maybe Swedish.

  “I want to talk about political asylum for myself and my daughter. I was hoping to get some food, too.”

  “Where is your daughter?”

  “She’s staying with some friends.”

  “She’s not with you now?”

  “No,” I said, slightly annoyed.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” I said, again. “Don’t you take walk-ins?”

  “We do. It may be a, uh, long wait. Lots of people. You see?”

  “Yeah, I see.”

  “It says you are assigned to Echo Park,” he said, gesturing toward the computer.

  “That’s right,” I said. “You must have heard about the attack?”

  He nodded, and I could see sympathy crack through the all-business façade he’d been nurturing.

  “You are seeking asylum to where?”

  “Seattle. Or the seasteaders. Wherever.”

  “Hold out a hand.”

  I did. He pressed a heavy rubber stamp against it, leaving a large purple blot of ink.

  “Okay, my friend, you proceed. Amnesty and asylum representatives are in the central court. Long line today.”

  When I was past the guard’s kiosk, the line loosened considerably as people moved off in different directions. I found a bench and put my footwear back on, then found a food vendor. Massive liquid-crystal displays hung over the center of the promenade, where paper-thin screens broadcasted satellite newsfeeds from the PRC, CBC, BBC, and Al-Jazeera.

  It took the CBC’s mindless talking heads fifteen minutes to get through the local weather, the latest “leaked” celebrity sex tapes, and an update on an ailing musician’s battle with the common cold before they got to the assault on Echo Park. They turned the piece over to a live on-scene reporter who talked solemnly while casually strolling through the scene of burnt tents and PRC soldiers dressed in white Tyvek suits and rubber gloves, hauling out the dead soldiers and refugees. His narration continued over the B-roll footage of the camp in its prime, of our weathered but intact tents and weary refugees standing in long lines to get fresh water and food.

  I wasn’t surprised by the damage. I’d seen enough similar sights. During the live footage, I studied the background as best as I could, looking for people I might have known. The carnage made it impossible to tell, though. The background was fuzzy and indistinct, while the reporter and his immediate surroundings were sharp and clear but devoid of any real information. The broadcast was as close to an on-air media blackout as you could get.

  When his report concluded, the correspondent sent the program back to the studio, where a panel of so-called experts continued to hash it out. Two male liberals and two conservative women comprised the panel. They all tried to speak at the same time, their conversation escalating into a shouting match, and were at each other’s throats in the span of three words, trying to drown each other in righteous fury and indignation. I wondered what the point of the segment was then figured the talking heads were getting bent out of shape simply to vent, create drama, and feel really good about themselves while they basked in their on-air spotlight.

  I found it curious that they had labeled this an “American” story and used figureheads from the liberal and conservative movements—ideologies that, even prior to the country’s death, had long since ceased to truly represent the views of the American people.

  After Al Qaeda launched a series of attacks in the Midwest and the PRC began their loud sabre rattling in the Pacific, US officials began heightening security. “Heightened security” became a euphemism for “excuse to strip you of your rights.” Afraid to challenge the politicians out of fear over lost interviews and exclusive info, the press corps turned a blind eye. The dissolution of civil liberties progressed slowly, mounted over successive periods of hysteria. We stopped wearing belts to the airports, disposed of bottled liquids, and took off our shoes while government officials used virtual strip-search securiclouds to take nude pictures of us, all so that we could assure them we were not a threat. Nobody would admit that these “precautions” had done nothing to prevent the following waves of terror attacks, which had been completely unrelated to airport security, in other major cities across the country. But we submitted and were primed to submit again. National Guard checkpoints on our nation’s highways became another minor inconvenience. A necessary evil, we were told, like having our commNets tapped and e-mails read. We submitted willingly to America the Police State in exchange for the empty promise of security.

  Then the PRC struck. The media, in the days and weeks that followed, spec
ulated on the death of democracy, ignoring the fact that democracy had already been long forgotten. Dirty bombs and poison gas attacks in the nation’s capital, New York, and Philadelphia had seen to that.

  When people in Boston and Chicago reported to emergency rooms with mysterious illnesses and doctors found injection wounds on their backs or arms, a new wave of panic gripped the country. Terrorists had wandered American city streets, stabbing people with hypodermic needles filled with a cocktail of hearty, drug-resistant bacteria. Scores of the infected died, while others grew so sick that they needed organ transplants and amputations. The terrorists’ escalation to germ warfare generated such widespread fear that hardly anybody disagreed with the President’s order for the military to occupy city streets in order to help local police maintain safety and alertness.

  I wondered which America Kaften was fighting for. Which ideology was he hoping to resurrect? The military-police states the major metropolitan cities had become? Or an earlier, more idealized version of America that he knew from historical downloads? When he was drafted, had they even bothered telling him about the Constitution, or had it been completely wiped from memory by then?

  I thought about Mesa and wondered if the Northern Alliance was really any better. Would I be trading one dictatorship for another, forcing her under the thumb of some other demagogue run by the corporate machine and the military-industrial complex? Or would it be something similar to the life we used to know, where we could safely walk the streets or go to a movie theater without first passing through an hour-long security checkpoint to “establish our safety”?

  The burger and fries on the plate before me were cold. I’d eaten a small portion, mindlessly chewing without tasting any of it. The fries were limp and soggy and glued together into a thick, gelatinous bundle of grease. The burger wasn’t even real meat, but some unnaturally bright-pink artificial concoction jammed between day-old buns and hidden beneath relish, ketchup, and mustard. I doused it in Sriracha to give it some heat and flavor. If I burned off my taste buds and didn’t study what I was eating, the food was edible enough.

  I took my tray to the garbage kiosk and threw away the paper items, left the tray on a stack of similarly colored trays, and made my way through the promenade and seating area, down the stairs to the center court. I’d always wanted to be courtside, but not quite like this. Not jammed up against a suffocating crowd and bureaucratic rubber stamps.

  A long row of tables with dividers between them gave the illusion of privacy, and each station had two chairs. UN office monkeys and Alliance reps staffed the tables and did the interviews. Dressed in expensive suits, they had the air of self-entitled arrogance that marked them as government sanctioned power whores who got off on playing with people’s lives and enjoyed juggling fates in the palms of their hands.

  I was annoyed by everything right then—the hackneyed farce of tables and chairs, the crowd of human cattle I was stuck in the middle of, and the denigrating presumption that I should have to ask for permission to live my life. I was expected to petition for it in order to afford my daughter safety in a part of the continent that had not been torn apart by warfare, power-hungry invaders, and in-fighting among the survivors.

  These Alliance reps, with their crisp haircuts and shiny shoes, were the same as the UN and the rest of the world. They had watched America crumble and burn and had done nothing. They’d sat by, unconcerned and uncaring. Even at the height of their occupation, nobody asked the PRC to leave. There was no timetable for withdrawal. Nobody condemned them. They were given a handful of economic sanctions and trade restrictions, but even that was another farce. The world’s politicians were weak and their silence made them willing participants in the destruction of the United States. They wanted to avoid war because it would be bad in the polls, and their country’s citizens were weary of long, overdrawn battles that would claim thousands of their countrymen. War was almost as unpopular as America, and the weights didn’t balance, so a democracy was allowed to die, and an entire nation’s worth of people were deemed politically expendable. The UN was trying to place us as best as they could. States throughout the Alliance had a refugee quota, as did UN-member countries in Europe, but asylum candidates were rarely sent overseas.

  Mesa had wanted to go to Seattle, through the Underground Railroad the refugee immigrants had established. We could sneak away through Nevada and find help with a host of sympathizers then apply directly for asylum in Washington. The governor had opened the state’s borders in a politically unpopular decision that would probably cost him the next election. He had said he would always be American, first and foremost, and he considered it his duty to help other Americans, no matter how they found themselves in his state.

  The people around me talked about rejection rates, how many times they’d applied before, the whys and hows of their prior rejections, and their hopes that this time would be different. My annoyance turned into full-on pissed off. The line moved forward a smidge. Then a message from Alice popped up on the private comm frequency. I listened to it, dividing my attention between her words and the chatter around me, as I shuffled forward with the rest of the cattle. Her contact had reached out to let her know we were good for a meet.

  At the table ahead of me, a woman was crying into her partner’s shoulder. The man in the suit tapped a brief message on the datapad and asked them to leave. She cried harder, and the suit asked them to leave again. No sympathy. No compassion. Not a fucking care about them.

  Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck their new world order.

  I shoved my way through the throng, losing my place in line. It earned me some whispered contempt, and I could feel the stares on my back as I shoved my way back up the steps. A guard stopped me and asked if something was wrong. I told him I was feeling sick to my stomach, and it was more truth than lie.

  I went out the Eleventh Street entrance. The guards left me alone, probably thinking I was another dejected soul who had been ground up and spit out by the political machinery. I wandered the streets, taking an indirect route back to the parking garage on Figueroa, where I’d left the car. Inside the garage, I did a quick once-around the floor and checked the other vehicles to see if anyone was waiting for me, maybe another one of Jaime’s hit squads, for instance.

  I listened to Alice’s message again. Her contact wanted to meet in three hours at a sushi joint on Third Street. In prime conditions, the trip would take about a half hour on the Santa Monica Freeway. I was given a route to follow that would take me around the checkpoints, and I estimated it would take almost an hour to get his location.

  Traffic was moderate, and the directions proved good. I had plenty of time to kill, so I parked some distance away from the restaurant on Swall, along a residential block of apartment buildings. The area was nice enough. The tall tan buildings with stucco walls and balconies overlooking the street had gone largely untouched by the war. My car blended in with the other vehicles parked along Swall. I walked down Third, in front of the single-story businesses that lined the street. Most of the multi-floor complexes, such as Cedars-Sinai and Bloomingdales, had been crushed, but a lot of single-story businesses had reopened, mostly mom-and-pop shops and some restaurants. I passed a liquor store housed in glass-fronted A-frame and a bar advertising Happy Hour and half-off sake, then I turned down Holt, took Burton to Sherbourne, and went back up to Third.

  Satisfied that I was alone, I took an outdoor table at a coffee shop, where I could keep an eye on the sushi joint. I sipped a spiced latte and started to relax. The tension and anger I’d been carrying around with me began to bleed away, and I was grateful for the quiet calm and the open spaces around me.

  I let my guard down a bit but remained mindful of the people around me. I kept track of those who walked by then waited to see if they reappeared. A few other customers joined me on the patio, but I lingered over my drink longer than they did, and they left ahead of me. I was there for a while but not longer than would be considered unusual. I leafed throug
h a newspaper that had been left behind on another table and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  The meeting was slated for five thirty, but traffic to and from the restaurant across the street had been minimal. Ten minutes ahead of the meeting time, a wiry Chinese man exited a car parked curbside and went inside. I watched for a few minutes, but nobody followed. I gave him another ten minutes, erring on the side of caution and deciding to be fashionably late, then paid my bill and left a decent tip for the waitress.

  I went to a table at the back of the restaurant, near the bathrooms and away from any windows, where I found the Chinese man picking at a plate of udon with chopsticks.

  “Mr. Tsou,” I said, taking the seat opposite him.

  He called for the waiter, fired off a rapid string of words in a language I did not understand, and poured me a small cup of hot tea. His arms we thin cords of muscle and vein, and his neck was long and slender. He wore a short-sleeve button-down with a thick blue tie. His sport coat was draped over the back of another chair. His salt-and-pepper hair was short, and he had the distinct air of a cop. When he spoke to me, his English was impeccable and softer than his Chinese.

  “You are a friend of Alice’s,” he said. “I ordered you udon, too.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your help on this.”

  He shrugged, his head cast down toward the bowl, his eyes closed against the steam. He seemed small and defeated, and I wondered what Alice had held over his head to ensure his cooperation.

  “You’re police?”

  A small smile crossed deftly over his lips, and he canted his head this way and that, as if to say maybe yes, maybe no.

  “I was,” he said, “before all this.” He made a circle in the air over the table with his chopsticks, pointing at nothing but including everything. “Now… it doesn’t matter so much anymore what I am, I suppose. I am police, sure.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a lot of access to get what we needed for somebody so non-committal.”