Altered Seasons_MONSOONRISE

by Paul Briggs

  “Well, it depends on how you measure it and whether you’re at low tide or—”

  “That was a rhetorical question, Ms. Bradshaw. Now, when your older sister and Mr. Freitag broke up, the house got sold. What happened to the money?”

  “Rod got half, and God only knows what he did with it. Chelsey’s half went straight into a trust fund for Jourdain’s education. If we tried to get it out of there and use it for ourselves—which we would not do—Mr. Roberts would be legally required to stop us. It’s not money we can spend.” Isabel sighed. “Look, I’m trying very hard to keep my temper, but what the… what exactly is the problem? My family has been paying into the system all their lives, and now they need a little bit of help and you’re all acting like they’re trying to rip you off.”

  “Ms. Bradshaw. I believe you. If it were up to me, I would help your family. I’m just trying to understand why somebody else said no.” She folded her hands, set them on her desk and looked at Isabel squarely. “Are you looking for somebody to blame?”

  Isabel could feel her face getting hotter. Her fingernails pierced the cheap upholstery on the armrest. If you’re going to suggest this is somehow MY fault…

  “Blame anybody who ever worried that somebody out there was living high off the hog on taxpayer expense,” said Mrs. Dew. “I would really like to help your family, but I don’t have a lot to work with. This system was built by people whose worst fear in the whole wide world was somebody taking advantage of it who might not really need it. That’s why people have trouble getting off welfare—as soon as they start earning a little money, they get dropped from the rolls and lose a lot more. That’s why you have to be just about broke to get public assistance. Especially these days, when the whole state’s running on a shoestring. Any excuse to say no.”

  Okay… that’s fair. And it did kind of remind Isabel of things her parents had said—especially back during the debate over UBI. Which was why she tried not to talk too much about politics with them. Chelsey wasn’t like that, but only because any mention of politics made her eyes glaze over. Kristen wasn’t like that either, because she seemed to think real Christians ought not to be that way. She’s probably right.

  “All right,” said Isabel. “Apart from personally overthrowing the government and society, what is it I should be doing right now? I mean, forget economic assistance. I just want to know where they are.”

  “Why don’t you just call them yourself? One of them’s got to have a phone.”

  Oops. Isabel kept her armphone turned off while she was driving unless the vehicle could at least partly drive itself. She’d forgotten that was an option. It wasn’t like the state was taking them prisoner… probably. She hurriedly selected the first family number to come up, which happened to be Kristen’s.

  Kristen’s face appeared on the screen. “Hi, Isabel,” she said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Never mind me—what about you? What happened to you after Pop called?”

  “We stopped in Annapolis and some homeless people got on,” she said. “Or I guess I should say, some more homeless people. We stopped in Baltimore and half the bus filled up.” She held the phone up to let the camera pan over the bus, revealing what looked like a large group of extras in a post-apocalyptic movie. “Then we stopped in Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland…”

  “Cumberland?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Are you still there?” If they get off the bus and I get started right away, I can meet them there in… two and a half hours? Three? And what the hell are they even doing in Cumberland?

  “No, we crossed the border into West Virginia a couple minutes ago.”

  WHAT.

  “They say we’re going west,” she said. “But I guess that’s pretty obvious. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific.”

  “Do you know who’s running the bus?”

  “No. They came when the police called, if that’s any help.”

  Isabel made a noise of frustration in her throat.

  “Didn’t Mr. Roberts say the state was supposed to help us with relocation costs?” said Kristen. “Maybe this is how they’re doing it.”

  “At this point, that wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Kristen held the phone up to the rain-streaked window, giving a blurry glimpse of mountains. “I don’t know why we never came out here before,” she said. “This place is beautiful. Too bad about the weather.”

  “Is everybody okay?”

  “We’re a little nervous, but nothing’s actually gone wrong yet. Jourdain’s taking a nap. Chelsey’s conscious, alert and oriented times three, as they say.” In the nursing lingo Kristen had picked up, that meant she knew what was going on around her… or as much as any of them did. “I hope you haven’t gone to too much trouble on our account. We’re going to be fine.”

  After the call was over, Isabel just stared blankly at the screen for a moment. Homeless. Once you didn’t have a roof over your head, there was nothing people couldn’t do to you, and not much they wouldn’t do just to get you out of their hair. Isabel had always thought of this as one of those social problems that somebody ought to sort out one of these days when the country had some money again. Suddenly it seemed a lot more urgent.

  Judging by the look on Mrs. Dew’s face, she’d heard every word. “I’m sorry that happened,” she said. “But it’s quite likely that the state they end up in is going to be better able to take care of them than we will.”

  Isabel got up. “Mrs. Dew, thank you, you’ve been very… um…” Isabel’s brain spent a couple of seconds buffering. “Honest. Anyway, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  The drive back was the hard part. The rain splattered against the windshield, and the brakes were making alarming noises. Every instinct Isabel had told her she was going in the wrong direction, that she ought to chase down that bus and find her family and bring them back to her apartment… where there wasn’t room for them. She had no money to put them anywhere else, unless they went to live in the storage locker she was renting—and even that was getting to be a noticeable expense.

  Okay, now can I ask Sandy for help?

  Don’t even think about it. She’s your friend, not your piggy bank.

  If she’s my friend, she’ll want to help?

  What if she doesn’t want to hear from you? She could have called any time. You shouldn’t intrude on her. She doesn’t owe you her time and attention.

  As she headed east along Route 50 on the way to the Bay Bridge, Isabel wondered if the real reason Annapolis was such a labyrinth was to make it harder to hunt down state officials and strangle them. Those people actually did owe her their time and attention. She distinctly remembered having paid her state taxes back in April.

  In Canada, December once again brought several feet of snow over the whole nation west of the Rockies, and heavier snow on the northern slopes of the mountains. In the United States, FEMA struggled to bring supplies into the Monsoon-stricken area before winter began in earnest.

  Russia, Scandinavia, and the northern British Isles were hit with the same sort of heavy snowfall as Canada. Yevgeny Nardin, his status as president freshly confirmed in a special election, took this opportunity to shut down the airports to all but emergency flights. Those involved in Group 77—or alleged to be involved—who had not already escaped would find it much harder to do so in time.

  In China, the work of rebuilding from Typhoon Haiyan was underway. Unfortunately, with so many refugees crowded together in so many places, some sort of disease outbreak was inevitable. No one ever pinned down where it first emerged—cases emerged almost simultaneously in the area of Qingdao, Weifang, and Tianjin—but this was the month of the first recorded cases of a form of H5N1 influenza that spread rapidly from human to human.

  Saudi Arabia collapsed into civil war, as a vicious cult of extremists seized the capital without warning. The war in Nigeria simply continued.

  In Mexico, if you drew a line from the Rio Grande de S
antiago through the city of León to Cabo Rojo, the government more or less controlled everything to the south. To the north, former drug kingpins turned warlords held sway. In the heart of the city of León, one of the warlords had created a fortified area covering several blocks with over one thousand armed men and five times that many civilian hostages.

  Government forces surrounded the block, but did not attack. The attack was left to a recently-formed specialist unit of the U.S. Army, equipped with experimental weapons that Pratt wanted to see tested in real-world fighting conditions.

  * * *

  Trying to think about something other than her work or the situation her family was in, Isabel turned on the news feed. In Mexico, León had just been liberated. The Mexican army and the U.S. Army were both being very closed-mouthed about the details, just showing footage of thousands of freed hostages and maybe fifty or so surrendering gangsters. You’d think it would take more guys than that to shut down a city. Are we missing something?

  Maybe there just aren’t that many criminals. Which would be good news for places next door… like, say, Texas.

  There was no way she could keep her mind off it for very long. Her family was in a FEMA camp—specifically, Texas Foxtrot, down near the border with what used to be Mexico and was now basically no-man’s-land.

  She hadn’t heard from them in more than a week. Depending on which crazy rumor you chose to listen to, that meant they’d either been converted to Islam or converted to biofuel. More reliable voices said that it was hard to keep cell phones charged out there. If anything absolutely terrible had happened to any of them, Isabel liked to think the others would have found a way to let her know, but the sheer absence of information was driving her nuts.

  It was dinnertime, but Isabel couldn’t make herself eat. She tried to concentrate on the Latania Project. It was still in the conceptual/early design stage, but it would make the Conowingo Project look like something she’d built with her old Lego set. When was the last time anybody tried to create a whole new city from scratch?

  While you’re sitting here in this apartment sketching out an imaginary sewer system, your family is going through God knows what.

  What am I supposed to do? Move in with them? The one thing that would help is the one thing you keep telling me is a terrible idea.

  Next year was looking promising. Conowingo would be under construction by then, and there would still be Latania to finish designing. Also, the new governors of Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin had said they would only be giving contracts to American citizens. So at least with them, she might be able to demand something close to what she was worth. Assuming they kept their promises. Isabel wasn’t betting her financial security on that, but she was allowing herself a little bit of hope.

  You’re planning to take money from racist governments.

  Why, yes. Yes, I am. And if everything works out, the racists will end up with less money, I’ll end up with more money, and the things I design will help people of all races, or whatever races happen to be in the area. Win-win-win.

  That can’t possibly be how it works.

  Also, do you know for a fact that they’re even racist? They might just be biased in favor of American citizens. American citizenship isn’t defined by race. The only people who think it is are racists. Are you a racist?

  There was no answer. I’m getting good at this.

  * * *

  All evening, on into the night, Isabel kept working. She had a lot of projects to work on, and she wanted to get them done in the next four or five days. She was hoping for a chance to get out to Texas Foxtrot and visit her family.

  Visiting them is all very well and good, but it won’t help. The only thing left to do is—

  No.

  Is talk to Sandy Symcox and ask her for help. I don’t like the idea, but I’m out of options.

  No.

  Do you have any better ideas?

  Not my job.

  She’s my friend. Don’t you think she’ll want to help?

  If she were really your friend, wouldn’t you have tried harder to keep in touch?

  You told me I should wait until she got back in touch with me.

  Who says I have to be consistent?

  I do. If you don’t like it, go hang out in somebody else’s head.

  You’re not making that call.

  Isabel put her work aside for the moment and picked up her armphone. She could send a text directly to Sandy without it getting intercepted by a secretary. Come to think of it, there were probably very few people in the world who could do that. Unless Sandy had put somebody else in charge of that number.

  Isabel’s finger hovered over the screen. And hovered. And hovered. She knew why she needed to do this, but… she couldn’t escape the feeling that this was wrong. How long had it been since the two of them had actually talked? Was she really going to start things up again by asking for money?

  And now Isabel needed to go to the bathroom. This is ridiculous. I’m wasting time. I don’t want to do this. But I need to do this. Why can’t I do this?

  While she was washing up afterward, Isabel looked in the mirror. Behind the mirror was the medicine cabinet. Maybe Laurie hadn’t been planning anything sinister. Maybe her little gift had been a sincere kindness—a way for Isabel to get around her own hang-ups.

  Oh, no. You are NOT doing that.

  She knew how to take swee—she’d looked it up online about a month ago, just out of morbid curiosity. Just once. Just to see what it’s like.

  As she was opening the cabinet door, Isabel had a realization. It wasn’t just her guilt holding her back from calling Sandy. It was her pride. She was strong, she was smart, she was self-reliant, and she was going to get her family out of this by herself… except she wasn’t. Not in any reasonable amount of time.

  Isabel had always wondered why pride was considered a sin. It was one thing if you thought you were better than everybody else, but simply thinking there are people in this world who take more than they give, and right now I’m not one of them, and that makes me happy… what could possibly be wrong with that?

  Now she knew. What was wrong with it was that it was getting in her way. It was stopping her from asking for help when she needed it.

  Would swee do anything about that?

  Only one way to find out.

  Don’t you dare.

  YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

  Says who?

  Better do this quick before I change my mind. Isabel took out a packet. Ripped it open. Pulled out something that looked like a small strip of black tape, less than an inch long and less than a quarter of an inch wide.

  Stuck it under her tongue.

  It didn’t taste of anything, but it felt strangely warm.

  Spit it out! It’s not too late! The active ingredient couldn’t survive a trip through the stomach. You had to hold the strip in your mouth for a couple of hours and let it soak through the soft tissues directly into the bloodstream. It took several hours after that for it to make its way through the blood-brain barrier and reach the place where the effect began.

  No. I’m going to see this through.

  But what if I wake up tomorrow and I don’t care about my family?

  Then I just won’t do anything for them. Which I wasn’t doing before, because I couldn’t. So things wouldn’t be all that different, would they?

  Isabel went back to work. She kept working until midnight.

  Then she got up and spat out the strip into the trash. It had faded to white.

  She went to bed, wondering who she would be when she woke up.

  * * *

  Isabel’s alarm clock went off at 6:30 a.m. It might have only been her imagination, but even before she’d showered and had her chyq, her thoughts felt clearer and colder inside her head.

  Maybe not colder. But definitely clearer. As if all her life, her mind had been a band playing for an audience that kept holding little conversations or talking on the phone or outr
ight heckling… and for the first time, the audience had decided to shut up and listen.

  And yet she still felt slightly guilty about what she’d done last night. Which shouldn’t have been possible if it had worked properly. But then, like a lot of modern pharmaceuticals, Suiamor was sold in doses tailor-made for individual patients. That dose had been formulated for Laurie, who weighed somewhat less than she did.

  Isabel had a protein shake for breakfast. My family needs help. The problem seemed… still there, but a lot more distant and abstract now.

  She was an engineer. She didn’t need to feel bad about a problem to solve it. And this was a problem that needed solving, the sooner the better. People who were on her side, who had helped her before and might do so again, needed her help now.

  As far as you know, she’s still a friend. You’re asking for her help as a friend. So do what a friend would do. Make an appointment to talk. Get caught up with her. Spend a little time. If you tell her what’s happening with your family, she might volunteer to help of her own accord. It’s almost Christmas. If ever there’s a time for her to feel giving, this is it.

  Isabel sent the message.

  Either she wants to hear from me, or she doesn’t. If she does, I move on to the next step. If she doesn’t, then the friendship is already over. It’s possible that she has a new social circle she feels more comfortable in. Her fellow geniuses. Her fellow billionaires.

  If this is so, it isn’t my fault, and I’m no worse off than I was before. This was nothing she couldn’t have thought before. It was just that now she felt a lot… calmer about it.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon. Isabel was trying to do two things at once—finish the last project, and prepare her mental defenses. People who took antiautechthics for medical reasons said that you had to use the time the drug gave you to prepare yourself for when all the negative feelings came back.

  She hadn’t heard back from Sandy in three days. That bothered her. Either she doesn’t want to talk to me, or she’s busy. Either way, sending her another message won’t help.