by Rod Carstens
“What did you want to talk about?” Rule asked.
“Doc, that was too close. You know it's just a matter of time before they find us. They will keep the pressure up as long as they don’t have you in custody.”
“Oh, they don’t want me in custody. They want me to help them either interpret what the Program is telling them or adjust the code for new realities.”
“So what do we do?”
Rule looked up, his face serious.
“They will eventually find us,” Tanner said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.” Rule put down his diary and looked at Tanner, his face showing his age and the strain of being hunted. “I need to explain some things before I tell you what I want to do.”
“Okay, doc, shoot. You’re the genius around here.”
“Get comfortable because this is a long story. It was earlier this century, around 2010, when the government first noticed the consumption of the Earth’s natural resources had dramatically increased. It had jumped from twenty-two billion tons to seventy billion tons a year. If we continued to use resources at that rate, by 2050 we would need 150 billion tons a year to sustain society as we knew it. The per-capita footprint was twenty to twenty-five tons in the first-world countries and went down to just three tons in Africa. For the top one percent to sustain their way of life, per-capita consumption by the rest of the world would have to be reduced by ninety-nine percent.”
Tanner had heard these kinds of numbers before, but not from someone who was close to the sources.
“The water wars out west had started as the state national guards fought one another over the Colorado River. The great plains were turning into a desert as they drained the Ogallala Aquifer, so the breadbasket for the world was quickly disappearing. The big cities with their populations of plutocrats began to secede from the United States and demand they be readmitted as city-states, with representation equal to the other states. In other words, the U.S. was pulling itself apart. Meanwhile, as trade dropped to a trickle from overseas and Europe fell into ruin, Brazil and India disintegrated into black-market ethnic states. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and New York and the other city-states needed a way to manage the dwindling natural resources. The big corporations all were headquartered in the city-states and controlled the distribution systems for the resources, so they wanted to coordinate the delivery. That was when they contacted me.”
Rule paused as he thought about those decades, which weren’t that long ago.
“I had made more money than I could ever spend using something called system dynamics modeling to predict the swings in stocks and commodities. Using input from a number of different sources, I was able to build a simulation that could predict human behaviors in response to external factors, like changes to the food system, the industrial system, population growth, the use of nonrenewable resources, pollution, and climate change. If you know these things, it is a simple matter to make millions a day by picking the stocks that will be affected by the coming changes. In other words, this program took all of these factors that seemed to be noninteractive and predicted how systems and humans would respond to future events before they happened. All I had to do was put money into the stocks and commodities it recommended.”
“What did they want you to do?”
“They told me they wanted a simulation that could predict water and food levels so they could equitably allocate them as they became scarcer and scarcer. And I was fool enough to believe them. I’m a bit of an idealist, and naturally, I thought they would be trying to make sure everyone got their fair share. The program would give them months’ advance notice of events that would change the supply of the resources so they could plan for the changes and then manage them. I went along for years thinking that I was helping, but nothing was getting better. Instead, it was getting worse almost by the month. Instead of using the program to distribute resources more equitably, they were using it to create reasons not to distribute them to the rest of the population. They would determine what was needed to keep their standard of living high, and anything leftover went to the balance of the population. They justified it with bogus numbers from the Resource Control Administration. It was easy to come up with stories of how the gangs were taking all the food and the Wild Zones weren’t populated with people just trying to survive. Instead they called them lawless areas where the administration didn’t have the budget to police properly. So began the long, slow spiral until the vast majority of the resources went to those at the top, and the rest began to die of starvation and disease. The more that died, the fewer resources they had to distribute. They had created the perfect system to make sure they had what they needed while the rest suffered.”
Vin put his head in his hands. Now it made sense why the Resource Control Command had sent a Special Action Team after him when he protested the latest Free Fire Zone designation. They couldn’t afford any questions about any of the allocation decisions. It would tip the apple cart.
“Is everyone in on the deal? I mean the whole lie about what’s going on outside the City.”
“No, but they are the one percent, and it’s easy for them to believe that anyone that’s not smart enough to be one of them would commit the kinds of crimes, and adopt the wasteful living, the Administration is selling. Those on top have had a generation to convince themselves that the unwashed masses are just lazy, stupid men and women that could have had it all if they had only worked for it. That line of bullshit has been out there since long before you were born. Now it’s being used for more than making sure those on top are going to make more money.”
Tanner stood and paced, trying to absorb all of what Rule had just revealed. He had been a part of it for years. He had helped keep the rest of the people down. He had to shoulder the blame as much as anybody else who was part of the system.
Tanner turned around and said, “Okay, I got it. But why are they still looking for you? It sounds like they got this wired.”
Rule paused before he said, “I’m not sure, but if I had to make a guess, the program is producing predictions that either don’t match the real world or are telling them something they don’t understand, and it needs to be adjusted. Making the program work correctly is all about adjusting the feedback loops, defining the loop dominance and nonlinearity, system structure and population dynamics. It’s more of an art than a science.”
“Okay, whatever you said. Why do they need you?”
“I had a protégé that I was grooming to take my place someday. His name was Alek Geoff. He was not nearly as smart as he thought he was, but he was very ambitious. So with his family pull and the right office politics he managed to become my boss long before he was ready. It was the final straw for me, and it was one of the main reasons I walked. He’s now in charge of the Data Collection Section, a big jump, and he’s got a guy named Rand running the Data Control Section. He was an assistant to an assistant of mine, so this Rand is twice removed from somebody that actually understands the program, and he needs me to come and fix it for him.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.”
“No, I think that is exactly what needs to happen. You know how precarious our position is here, so I need to find out what’s happening if we're going to survive. We have to find out what has changed because it could mean life and death to us. I think it's that serious.”
“How is you being up in those towers going to help us?”
“Because you are going to come and rescue me after I find out what's going on.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Couldn’t be more serious.”
Vin was too flabbergasted to say a word. He could only stare at Rule, his mouth open but nothing coming out.
“No, now listen. If I take Morgan and Cat with me, we can pull this off. You know Cat was a companion girl when she was young, before she joined the Resource teams, so she's my muscle and Morgan can help me with the program and some other things I have
in mind.”
“Why are you telling me? I’m not in charge.”
“Okay, it’s time to stop pretending. You’ve been in charge for a while now. The rest of the settlement looks to you for the big decisions. You’re the one who broke up the jobs into specific areas. The garden group, the fish group, the water group…before, everyone was doing their own thing. It was you who divided up the jobs and assigned people to those jobs. Nobody argued, and everything is better.”
“I just used something called Incident Command. It was a military organizational technique adapted for civilian use we were all taught in the teams. It just made sense.”
“And everyone listened and did what you said. Without a bunch of arguments and discussion.”
“Not because I said so.” Tanner stopped and thought about what Rule had said. Sure, everyone had done what he asked them to, but that was because it was the smart thing to do. Not because he had said to do it. Not like he was in charge.
“Look, Vin, people know you have good ideas. Now if what I want to do is going to work then you are going to have to realize who and what you are and stop playing dumb.”
Tanner had never thought of himself as dumb; he had always known the right thing to do for his team and his mission. It had been a natural transition to start to tell a bigger team what to do, not because he wanted to be in charge but because it was what he did. No more or less.
“I never wanted to be in charge, and I didn’t try to be.”
“It’s called natural selection, Vin, and guess what? They’ve selected you. Unless you accept this, I can’t do what I need to do. You’re the only one who can lead the rest through the coming weeks. I need you to step up if I’m going to succeed. Now, what’s it going to be?”
Tanner was silent for a long time. All the responsibilities he’d never asked for that came with the job swirled through his head. He finally said, “Okay, I’ll buy I’m a de facto leader around here, but what does Julia have to say about all of this? Your daughter has to have an opinion. She is as much a leader as I am.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Vin turned to see Julia walk into Rule’s space.
“I think it’s crazy, but it might work if we play our cards right,” she said.
“Okay, let’s say I go along with this plan. What do you think you’re going to find that will let us survive or even thrive? Things are certainly not getting better. The weather is worse than ever, the scavenging is getting harder and harder, the gangs are getting more organized. Resource teams are getting closer all the time, and Morgan’s little trick only means another team will be sent to finish whatever mission was left undone. So why not just move the settlement and be done with it? Pack it up and find a new place. You know I have all the division heads planning for just such a bugout.”
Rule paused and looked at his daughter before he said anything.
“He needs to know,” she said.
Rule hesitated again before he went on. “One of the last program runs I had done before I walked was a twenty-year forward look at a ‘what if’ with no changes in consumption. The ‘what if’ assumed that the current rate of population decline outside the City kept up. I wanted to see what the future looked like. I found that the resources were declining at a greater rate than the population—an unsustainable rate, even factoring in new technologies to help with production. The two lines intersected at twenty years. The program predicted a global food-source collapse, which would lead to starvation, with food riots even in the cities and war among the city-states for the last of the food producing regions”
“But you haven’t been out here for twenty years.”
“No, but for close to ten. I think the program missed it by ten years. They’re facing a complete collapse of their current systems.”
“And?”
“The only way to bring the consuming population under control was for a culling of those not ‘needed.’ A mass killing.”
Vin could only stare.
“But we’re not using that much. We’re barely surviving.”
“Even the little we use is important when you have them consuming so much. Now there’s a tipping point.”
“Mass killings. How many? How?”
“Multiple millions as a start, then more if needed. At least that’s what the program was suggesting. If what I think is true then finding out what they're planning to do would be critical to our survival.”
Vin stood and began pacing, trying to sort through what this meant. If Rule was right then they were truly in danger at a level he could not comprehend.
“So you go up there and find out this all is true. Then what?”
“We either find a way to stop it or get out of their way.”
“You just strung a whole lot of assumptions together. What if they are wrong?”
“It’s not what if they’re wrong, it’s what if they’re right? Something is pushing them to get more aggressive, and unless we find out what, we are putting the settlement at a very high risk. We have a lot of people depending on us to protect them, so we have to find out why.”
“You’ve said it before. What you don’t know will get you killed quicker than anything else,” Julia chimed in.
They were right. The patrols were getting almost desperate in their attempts to find them and Rule. If Rule gave himself up, it might give them time to organize the move, no matter what he found. Getting him back was the big question.
“How do we get you back with the information?”
“Oh, I have a plan, but first you’ve got to be on board with this.”
Tanner sat there staring at Rule and his daughter for some time. He had come to respect both of them, but what they were proposing was a risk to them all. Yet if what Rule suspected was true, they were already in a lot more danger than they understood.
“Okay, I’m in. What do you need me to do?”
“The first thing I need you to do is get us a Resource Control computer.”
“What? The only way I can do that is to ambush one of their teams.”
“I guess so.”
“Why do you need it? I’ve got you all the computer equipment that’s necessary, or so you said.”
“Not for this job. We're going to hack into their system and erase your facial-recognition file and those of anyone you take. That's the only way you will be able to rescue us once we’re inside.”
“Jeez, Brandon, you don’t ask for much, do you? When do you need it?”
“As soon as possible.”
Chapter Six
Ashton Rand stood in front of Alek Geoff’s desk while Geoff worked on his computer. He had been standing there for more than five minutes; it was the way Geoff made a point. He was not pleased because Madelyn was not pleased. Both of their heads were on the block, and he knew it. Finally, he looked up at Ashton and said, “You are positive that you can’t fix the program? You’ve tried everything?”
“Yes, sir. I tried, and so has Kurota and you know how good she is. We are simply at a point where we have got to have input from Rule if we are going to fine-tune the program to these new parameters.”
Geoff gave Rand a look of disgust then said, “All right. All right. I’ve sent for Captain Steiger from Resource Control. As you know he has as much reason to want Rule found as you or I do. We will double our efforts and put Steiger in charge.”
Steiger had been demoted and sent down to the Resource teams that made the raids and sweeps in the zones after Rule escaped the Special Action Team he had ordered to kill him. If he found Rule, he could get back to his desk job, and he might just survive. Rand was surprised he had lasted this long out in the Free Fire Zones. Few men his age could stand the operational tempo of those teams; it was a young man’s profession.
“Sir, even if we do find Rule, I don’t think it will give us much time. You’ve seen the data. Everything is following the curve Rule produced twenty years ago. The sea life has all but collapsed, and the Midwest is now a
desert. The city-states on the west coast are in a neverending series of water wars. Most of the coastal cities are flooded as the seas continue to rise, and even the top people are being forced to flee in many of those cities. I heard that the sea wall in Miami was breached yesterday. They’ve lost their power, and the Florida aquifer is compromised. Everything Rule’s program predicted has come true. The only difference is how rapidly it has begun to happen. Just because we can’t give them a time frame doesn’t mean we can’t make a recommendation based on what we do know.”
Rand paused before he said something he thought so radical, “You know what we need to recommend. We need a culling of the population if we are going to survive with anything like our present standard of living.” The thought of trying to survive out in the Free Fire Zones the way those people had to made Rand’s stomach turn with fear. He wouldn’t last a week out there.
Geoff looked at Rand sharply. “We can’t go in there and give that recommendation without a predicted time frame and the number we need to cull to protect us. I think Madelyn knows what has to be done, but I also think that because many of those culled will be part of her strata, she will need time to put a plan and method in place to accomplish the culling. A cover story. We will need hard data. To kill millions of people so we can survive is a decision she would not hesitate to make, but we don’t want to be the ones telling her with just our opinions if the timing is not right. We might as well jump out the window, because we would be disappeared in a heartbeat. We want hard data that gives her the tools and time she needs. If we do that and it works, then we will be a very valuable commodity in a world as chaotic as it looks like this one is going to be. I don’t think this will be the last of the cullings. We need to make sure they need us for future predictions. It’s our only way of survival.”
The blood left Rand’s face. “She wouldn’t…not us. We’re too valuable.”
“If she decides to cull, no one will be safe. If we can convince her the program will be useful even after the culling, then and only then are we safe. Understand?”