Pandemic Reboot: Survivors

by Krause, J. F.

  We went back to work with Irma’s report from the lawyers. “Our group met at Bobby’s request to talk about a framework for laws and governance. We’re at a similar point in our talks as the work group leaders, I think. We’re looking at a list of rights for our people, and maybe a list of responsibilities for the community or communities. Right now we’ve talked about the bill of rights. We don’t want to weaken any rights and we may want to add to it a bit, but we also think that freedom comes with responsibility. How to set up a local government is actually much easier than we might think. There are lots of examples we can choose from so we aren’t too worried about that. One thing we need to be careful about is setting up a local government that will not be at odds with any future state or regional government. Of course, we’re just at the discussion stage at the moment.”

  That left only my report, and I intended to keep it brief. I told them about the up coming Tuesday meeting with all the leaders from the different west coast communities. We anticipated that, if all went well, we would be meeting with the work group leaders or their reps on Thursday so we should have a lot more to report next week.” There were quite a few questions and suggestions that followed, mostly logistics, and George was very concerned that we were giving too much power to our Speaker. In other words, he was concerned that I would get out of control. We discussed everything at length and ended up where we started. I would be hosting a regional leadership meeting next week.

  The meeting ended, and I still had time to look in on the work group leaders’ meeting. I shouldn’t have been worried about them, but I couldn’t help myself. In the history of the world, we had never had too many workers and too few workers at the same time. At least, I think we’ve never had that problem before. Everything was free for the taking, but if we didn’t work together intelligently, we would end up with nothing left and no way to make more.

  From the very first day when we decided that we had no time to wait, we have been rushing to get things done. How long before people ran out of steam. Daily, I would see individuals or small groups just seem to spontaneously take a few minutes to grieve. Some stepped away for some solitude while others just burst into tears where they were standing. Then, after a little consolation, they went back to work. The younger they were, the less they seemed to react in that way; however, Jerry and Charlie had moments where they just sort of disappeared while standing in plain sight.

  While, I wasn’t immune to this condition, mine was much less pronounced. I’d essentially been on my own since starting college, and I’d been completely on my own since I moved to California. Kevin was similar to me in his reactions. I attributed our resilience to the fact that neither of us had actually seen a dearly loved companion or family member die. Neither of us had personally experienced the death of significant people in our lives. We assumed they had since they weren’t on the lists of survivors in the communities where they had been The Sickness struck. In my case, I had been told by the people in Atlanta who had looked for them. I had been able to accept their deaths in a gentler manner. I still hurt, but it was a less jarring pain. Of course, even for me the loss of an entire world full of people was mind numbing. In the end, we all grieve in our own ways.

  As long as people were busy, we could deny or at least delay the pain and anger. It was never able to quite take up residency in our psyches. I worried that with so much weighing on our psyches, too much idleness would have a catastrophic effect on the social fabric of our communities.

  As I entered the work group meeting, of course, everything stopped. All heads turned to me as I walked over to sit next to Avery. It looked like there were somewhere around 30 or so people there, and there were white boards placed all around the room. I could see they had been busy.

  “Do you mind if I sit in for a little while?” I looked around for affirmations and could see that I was welcome. As I sat down, I noticed that some other members of the leadership council were in the process of joining in. George was absent, thank goodness. He seemed to go wherever he chose, but I don’t think this group would be very tolerant of his “oversight work group”. I guessed, and correctly it turned out, that he had gone to the legal group. I thought his decision was poorly made since this was the group that was make or break for our future. If we didn’t handle this transition well, we could still fracture and become a mob society instead of a civil society.

  “Would you mind catching me up just a little? I’m so sorry to impose on you this way.” Seeing no hostility from the group, I looked at Avery.

  Avery smiled pleasantly. “No problem at all. We were just about at a point where we needed to take a little stock of our progress. We’re deciding what we need to do next now that some of the groups are going to be disbanding, or morphing into something else.” He looked around the group seeking confirmation, and I could see lots of heads nodding.

  “Some groups will continue their work. The housing team will move from the Belleview area to the rest of the university and then fan out across he city. They plan to essentially mothball the rest of the houses. We’ll keep them intact so that as we grow, they will be easily brought back into habitable use. Of course, some of them won’t ever be used, and we’re going to start dismantling them and storing the salvageable materials for the future. Just because we have over 3,000 people here doesn’t mean we need 3,000 houses. On the other hand, we have a lot of young people who are pretty much on their own at the moment. We’re gearing up for a baby boom starting pretty much nine months from now.

  The electricians are planning to fan out and help other communities, including some of the out of state communities. We’ve already sent a couple dozen to Hoover Dam. They plan to rotate in and out since most, maybe all, think of SLO as their new home now. I know you already know that since it was in their report a couple of days ago. They’ve restored power to Morro Bay now and actually started work at Monterrey and San Pedro today. The Davis and Stanford groups are helping out further north. Fresno is helping out in Lancaster. Did you know they have the largest, or one of the largest solar array set-ups in the world down there? They have enough power to take care of the whole country now. Of course we can’t do that, but it’s that big!”

  I could see I needn’t have worried about this group, still it was exciting to see them work and come up with solutions. They had lots of ideas and even as they were catching me up, they transitioned seamlessly into planning mode again. I sat with them until noon. As I was getting ready to excuse myself, one of the members, Rusty Holloway from housing, asked Avery to show me the work group list. Avery gave another of his languid smiles and pulled a hand written list of work groups, most of which I knew. There were, however, several new ones, and one very noticeable group had been crossed off after having been written with a question mark.

  “We decided we need to add a few since they are important and seem to be growing. You can see the entertainment group. Did you know we have a couple of well-known actors here in SLO? We have a few screenwriters and a producer, directors, a number of lesser known actors, and several camera and sound people. We think they can find projects for themselves. They’ll be a region-wide work group, maybe country-wide. We already have the radio people so it’s just a matter of expanding our sights a bit. Television can rely on reruns for awhile, but why not start telling our own stories?”

  Another region-wide group they listed was the airplane fleet. “We have several of them here, and there are even more working out of the other communities. They do a lot more than fly around with signs. And they require a fair amount of support. We would like to recognized their efforts with their own group as well.”

  I could see a lot of agreement across the room. “We would like to form a distinct salvage team. It’s pretty obvious what they will do, and we also want to form a preservation team. We know we can’t save everything, but we have a number of museums and collections that need to be preserved if we can. Right now we have people who can give us directions and we have the peopl
e who can follow those directions.”

  “I’m impressed. Thank you for all your hard work. I hope you know how important this is.”

  Before I could actually move, Rusty spoke up again. “Did you see the one we left off?”

  “Yes, I did. You should know I don’t question your group decisions. But if you’d like to share you’re thoughts on this I’d like to hear them.”

  Avery smiled, nodded to Rusty, and sat back in his chair. Rusty looked like he’d found a puppy. “We decided that the ‘oversight’ work group should be voluntary, otherwise it would be just another work group and would be subject to another oversight committee and so on. As a voluntary committee it would be in addition to the members’ other work duties. And that brings us to something we just decided needed some discussion. We’d like to suggest some sort of labor credits as a way of recognizing all the work our people have been doing. Or at least the vast majority of our people. What do you think?”

  “I think your thinking is very good about the ‘oversight’ work group being voluntary. I also think we need to begin discussions on how to recognize the work of our people. Do you have a suggestion for how to proceed with that idea?” I know how to dodge a hot potato.

  “As a matter of fact we do. We know some economics professors have survived, one in Massachusetts, one in Chicago, and another in Austin. We’d like to ask them to work with some of the legal types and give us some guidelines. We might want to do this on a larger level than just here in SLO.” Rusty was a naturally happy type I decided after he said all that with the same happy look on his face.

  “Good enough. Make sure that’s in your list of recommendations and I’ll make sure it gets discussed and decided on.” It seemed a reasonable solution so far to a problem that would begin to fester if we ignored it.

  “Before I leave you, I’d like to plant the seed of an idea. I would like you to consider the possibility of training all our young people in self-defense. Right now, our young people will begin finishing the high school curriculum at about age 15 or 16. We’re having longer school days and more of them because there is simply no place for the kids to go after school like there was before The Sickness. They’ll be finishing their high school studies well before they turn 18 as in the past. What if we took all of our 15 and 16 year old graduates and gave them a chance to join with their fellow 15 and 16 year olds from across the country in a sort of self-defense and bonding course of study.

  I was thinking of sort of a ‘gap year’ where they learn about guns and gun safety, where they learn some martial arts, and where they meet lots of their age cohort from across the country. Then they can go on to their next level of studies at one of the colleges or vocational schools. I haven’t fleshed out the details, but it would solve several problems at one time. We are going to have a lot of idle young people before long and that could become a problem. We also need to retrain a lot of older survivors in new fields such as the salvage group you mentioned, and some we haven’t even thought of yet, and right now we don’t really have enough teachers and trainers to teach all of the adults and young adults at the same time. Another concern is that we may have a problem with creepy survivors taking physical advantage of defenseless youngsters, and I think this may give our young people a little more power to protect themselves. Finally, I’d like for them to have some common positive experiences to help counter the really awful one they just came through. Now is a good time to start since money isn’t a problem. And we also won’t have to worry about a lot of anxious helicopter parents since almost none of our teenagers have parents that survived. Anyway, please give it some thought. Deep down, I think the world is a lot less friendly than we think. I think a lot of monsters survived and no one, not their former friends and families, not the police, not public opinion, no one is there to rein them in.”

  I’m afraid I sort of rained on their parade at that moment.

  I, on the other hand, was feeling upbeat at their abundance of ideas as I joined my usual group at lunch. Jane always used mealtime to catch me up on reports that were coming in. Anna and Lydia did too, but theirs was a little more removed from the local problems here in SLO. Of course, we were joined by Irma and Carl whose legal work team had been going at it much of the morning.

  After lunch, I sat through some of the most tedious discussions I’ve ever heard. Not all of the lawyers seemed to be able to wrap their heads around the notion that what we needed was less government not more. Finally I just decided it was time to share my thoughts. After all, what could they do, sue me?

  “We live in a world where no one can require anyone else to do anything, at least not for long. We can’t really enforce anything. Please keep that in mind. And while you’re keeping that in mind, keep this one there, too. ‘That government is best that governs least’. That was probably a Thomas Jefferson quote. At the time we had almost three million people living in our country. What we couldn’t do with three million people now! We’ll be lucky if we end up finding 100,000 of us, and I think that’s being optimistic. Right now, we don’t have money because everything is free. We don’t have hunger because food is everywhere. We don’t have obligations because almost all of us are bereft of family. All we have is each other. Let’s build on that! Please give us something that’s open ended and that puts it’s trust in the people. Our power is ‘derived from the consent of the people’.

  Personally, I think we need something that outlines how to lightly govern our local community. After that we need something that outlines how to work with a lot of other local communities, keeping in mind that any of them can turn their backs on us at any moment if they want too. Let’s build something on our common bonds and values, based on honest good will and pragmatism. Keep it simple.”

  “That’s all very sweet, Mr. Caldwell, but we’re all adults here and you’re platitudes are wasting everyone’s time. It’s one thing to be a manipulating little bully prancing around all your friends, but right now, we need to find real solutions for real problems!” George was loaded for bear. But he forgot about Irma and Carl who were even more tired of him than I was.

  “Bobby, do you have some concrete suggestions for us?” That was Irma and she knew I did.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. How about creating a simple city council type of government here in SLO with membership by work group representatives instead of party or geographical area. As for the regional and countrywide connections, lets make a list of commitments we’re willing to pledge ourselves to and when some other group or region makes the same pledge, then we are in union with them. A Union of North America pledged to mutual support, defense, development, training, and human rights. We can also pledge free trade, freedom of movement between communities, and equal rights for all residents regardless of where they came from.”

  I knew George was dying to say something, but he couldn’t think of what to say right then. I could see Carl smirking, something not too distant from his normal face. Of course, we hadn’t been wasting our time at lunch and dinner over the last few days. I don’t think of these things on my own. It’s not for nothing that I’m good at asking questions.

  Carl had been right. For the present, I had almost a blank check to express my opinions, even if they didn’t come from my own head. We needed to forget liberal and conservative, rich and poor. Right now, for probably the first time in human history, everyone was rich and poor at the same time. We may screw it up in no time, but at least we can get it off to a good start.

  I could see heads nodding and faces registering deep though. That is when I made my exit. As it was early for ending a workday, I decided to give myself a little fun and went to see how Nelda was doing at doggie day care.

  As I approached the kennel section, I spotted Judy Kim arriving from somewhere in an animal control vehicle. She smiled and waved when she saw me. I enjoyed our conversations and knew that this weekend would be make or break time for many of the rescued pets of the city. Judy and her volunteers were expe
cting a lot of people to adopt a pet once they were out of their motor homes.

  “Hi Bobby, picking Nelda up so soon?” she called out to me.

  “Yep, I am. Can I use your facilities to groom her before we go?” I asked.

  “Of course. Oh, by the way, we have a little boy mini schnauzer. I bet Nelda would like to be a big sister. She’s still a puppy and would love the company during the day. I’m guessing you’re leaving her at home after you move to your new home. Right?”

  “That’s the plan. Have people been pet shopping lately?”

  “Oh my yes, but as soon as I saw the puppy boy, I put a hold on him until you could look at him.” Before I could say another word, I was facing an incredibly cute little tuxedo male miniature schnauzer puppy. He tried to wiggle out of her arms to join Nelda in mine, but Judy kept a firm hand on him.

  “We have a whole litter of them. He was the smallest and looks like he’ll be the same size as Nelda when he grows up. She’s still growing isn’t she?” she asked?

  “Yeah, I think she is. Let’s see how they get along.” I put Nelda down and Judy put the puppy down. They immediately started wrestling like best of friends.

  “Told ya! They were made for each other.” Judy was in full rescue mode now.

  “Yeah, it looks like it. But I wasn’t really thinking about another puppy. Can I take him and see if he works out. We’re getting a dog door and a dog yard at Calloway House. I’m told I’ll be moving in this afternoon. It’s probably already done. Can I pick him up after I get the boys from school?” And that’s how we ended up with Cedric.

  The boys were ecstatic when I told them about him. We immediately came back to the kennel area to get him and took him home. On the way, we picked up boxed dinners for the evening. We were among the few that moved into our new house on Friday. Irma was also moving that afternoon since she lived next to me at the motor home park.