by Ken Liu
But this wasn’t over. Whatten stood in the middle of the door, looking me over. “You don’t have any property to post a lien against. Got a lawyer outside. Got no money our computer can find. But no record.”
They couldn’t find my money because I took it out and buried it deep in the Wilds, in the backyards woods. “You going to knock me around and tell me to keep more pocket change on me, so that next time you won’t feel like you wasted your effort?”
“No,” Whatten sighed. “Not going to waste the effort. Not going to drill through a thick grunt’s skull like yours.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, plus, I don’t take orders any more.”
“Fair enough.” But Whatten still hadn’t moved. “You don’t know what the hell you were doing out there…”
“You know how it works,” I said. This was leading to something else, though.
“I’ve seen enough turked out armies in my time,” Whatten said. “I look young, but I paid out hard. I’ve seen the ghosts merging in on you, kids with fireworks, others with guns, others with cameras waiting for you to make the inevitable mistake.”
Whatten said ghosts. And he looked haunted, his wide eyes flicked back to memories of battles past.
The warlords would hand out cellphones like candy to the kids. Promise them gas or food to carry out errands. And individually, not much was going on. But as a whole, a vast and complicated and decentralized attack, they could bring armies down to their knees before anyone knew what had happened.
I could see Whatten opening fire on some starving teenager with a toy gun, while the cameras relayed the horrible results live to some hungry, waiting news service. Then after the cameras shut off, the kids with the real guns, who looked just like the others, moved in to attack.
“You know something big is moving,” Whatten said. “People staking us out, street turkers all over the place, setting up things. Waiting. Out there. You know what the revised articles of engagement are, Reginald?”
“Yeah, I know them.” It’s why I wouldn’t ever become a damned Eddie. Or any domestic boot-stomping yahoo.
All you did for a turked army was to put a brick down by the side of a road. And maybe all it took was some few hundred other bricks placed to create a roadblock. Individually, you could claim you were just making a buck.
But that still made you an enemy combatant. Which meant you were no longer a citizen. You didn’t belong to another country, either. There were no rules about what they could do to you then. You simply didn’t exist as far as the rule of law was concerned.
“At some point,” Whatten told me, “us Eddies’ll get attacked here. And we don’t stay Eddies when it turns into a war. When the National’s get mobilized, we’re a subdivision of the army. Then people like Gary, and the real commandos, they’ll come in shooting, kicking in your teeth, and really showing you some pain.”
I shrugged. “You know of another way I can cover my transportation? Some place to stay here in town?”
Whatten crossed his arms over his chest. “So for that you’re dumb enough to work for some turker you don’t even know? The people you’re turking for don’t even have reputation points. You have no idea what the big scheme is? I’ve seen you around, down at ZaZa’s. You’re no tool.”
“Heirarchy of needs, CMO. Give the indigenous infrastructure, they don’t have to depend on desperate moves.” That was a barb that dug deep. Whatten had commanded. No doubt he’d heard that phrase often enough. He’d have taught it to.
Get dropped into some third world situation where they had nothing. No matter the reason, you soon found out that whoever hated your ass could drum up eager waves of hungry soldiers throwing themselves against you.
There was always some rhetoric. But when you dug deep, it always came down to the simple fact that the ready-to-die simply had nothing to lose. They’d sign up and take the math. If enough of them attacked, maybe they’d live. Maybe they’d get something out of it. Save their family, get something to eat, live, whatever.
Now give them something to lose, then those waves thinned out. Infrastructure. Running water. Food. Medical assistance. Homes. Roads and travel. The most devastating tools of war.
But in a world where even the first world nations struggled to provide transportation, water and safety, well, domestic shitstorms started to look like foreign ones. What you never thought you’d see anywhere but abroad, that came home with you.
Whether the starving and displaced were in Africa, or sitting around a dike that had burst somewhere in a coast here, the pressures were the same. Particularly once the domestic dike had been broken over and over again, where citizens realized that it wasn’t just a one-off, weather had changed, and the government didn’t have much to help them with.
That’s when your thin line of civilization faded.
Welcome home, Whatten, and by the way, you never left the front line, I thought to myself.
He got it. He stepped aside to let me walk past and down the corridor. At the other end a gray-suited man with a briefcase waited for me. My mysterious lawyer, and fellow turker.
I was pushing up a good defense for Whatten. The truth was… I was getting nervous. I didn’t know what the hell I was getting myself into.
And maybe it was time to get myself out.
The lawyer asked me to keep my mouth shut until well clear of the compound: sign this, initial here, don’t worry about that. Quick, assured, and efficient. I was buzzed through the thick bomb-proof doors in no time.
He had a bike outside, an old and well-traveled carbon-fiber Schwinn with a gps in the handle and a heavy saddle on the back. He wheeled it alongside me. “Your fine has been covered. Your night’s work is done,” he said. “Thank you.”
I’d checked my account on my phone, but didn’t see the rest of my night’s pay. I mentioned it.
The lawyer looked over at me and sighed. “It’s in the fine print. The cost of springing you is far more than your payoff, so you get nothing as a result of getting arrested by this Edgewater franchise. You’re getting a good deal, trust me.”
I never took too well to getting pissed on and being told to like it. “I’m not a fine print kind of man.”
Had they paid me after a successful mission, where the Eddies wouldn’t have had anything to take from me, I would have been up for the night. Now all I had to show for the night’s efforts was the down payment on this little affair and some very sore ribs.
“But the contract remains what it is, Mr. Stratton. Can’t wriggle out these things, you know.”
I licked my lips. “I’m pretty good at not getting noticed. How’d they spot me to round me up?”
The lawyer mounted his bike. “I don’t know, Mr. Stratton. Like you, I was just called in to take care of this. I’m just a turker, making some side money.” He picked up speed, pulling away from me. “You know how it works. I don’t know who you are, or what you were doing. None of my business. I was just here to pay your fine and get you on your way.”
He left me there on the quiet rundown streets. I flipped through my phone’s address book and emailed the turker email address I’d gotten the job through, but it bounced back.
Annoyed, I started a quick jog after the lawyer, sucking air shallowly thanks to the bruised ribs. The money was a magnet, dangling just out of reach.
Turker or not, someone was going to pay me the other damn half of what I was owed.
Three miles later second thoughts occurred as I clutched my ribs, struggling to keep up with the lawyer’s leisurely pace.
In the early morning dawn, peeking over sullied and coal-stained brick, more and more people were filling the streets I was huffing my way through. Again, an odd and silent community of well-off homeless standing near their collapsible mobile structures. I smelled eggs and sausage sizzling: my mouth watered and my stomach twisted at the smell of food, not a good sign after all the jogging.
The great old Ambassador bridge loomed over the buildings, the gaping bombed ruins
of the roadway overhead thrumming in the wind. Thank you Canadian Air Force for that one…
I turned a corner and into a scene that, for a moment, didn’t make any sense. The parking lots and gardens of this area were overrun with massive tents, large RV-type vehicles with masts and lean looking roadboats, and tens of thousands of people.
Some sort of instant mid-West Burning Man festival, it seemed.
The lawyer disappeared into the center of the mass of people, and three very burly bikers stepped forward. Dark shades already on in the morning sun, their leather jackets festooned tiny tags and symbols.
“Where’s your ID?” the first asked, long beard whipping about as a dust devil passed by, fluttering tent flaps and flags on poles all around. Roadboat rigging twanged a chorus.
“I must have left it somewhere,” I said, calmly walking toward them, trying to eyeball where the lawyer’d disappeared.
“Nice try. You can’t.” The nearest biker bodychecked me away. “Fucking footprinter.”
My ribs flared pain hard enough to make me suck air in through my teeth.
“Listen.” I held my hands up. That made it hurt more. “I’m not trying to cause any trouble. But I need to talk to someone…”
“You got trouble understanding?” The biker’s tone was familiar. The sort of negotiating tone used to indicated he’d agree not to stave in my skull if I agreed to leave the camp.
I backed away.
“Get out, footprinter. Get out now.”
I turned around, wincing. Back to the bar, then. Only this time I called for a cab.
But things didn’t exactly get any better there. Lawrence sat on a chair inside the door, but a big closed sign he’d hand-lettered had been hung on the door.
“What the hell’s going on?” I asked.
“Maggie went home. No bartender, no bar.”
I blinked. She had no reason to be home… it made no sense. What could she be up to? My stomach twisted. I still had a bus pass. I ran like hell in time to make the morning bus out to the Wilds.
Maggie’s car wasn’t at the house when I got there.
And the lockbox, two miles out in the depth of the Wilds, wasn’t either.
I sat next to the empty dirt hole, my back against the root, and flung an acorn out into the bush. Cute little Maggie, the bartender too wispy to be in a brutal downtown. She was a nomad, stringing her way through the brutal and lawless Wilds of the continent. Maggie was probably tougher than me. Certainly smarter.
My savings had just been wiped out, and she probably had enough to make the next leg of her journeys.
It rained most of the way back. A dirty, whipping Detroit grimy sort of rain. I watched the remains of it congeal on the outside of the bus’s windows as I was jerked back and forth between the quiet mass of commuters making their way in.
I recognized one of the guys several seats ahead of me. One of the squatters in the Wilds who’d given me advice on my garden. He had dog tags hanging off a necklace, something a lot of the reclamation groups off in the Wilds had. Little kudos for each other, signs that told each other where they stood in their own subworlds.
They would be happy to welcome me into their little tribe, I had no doubt. I could teach self-defence in one of their creches. Sleep on recycled packing foam beds. Help out in their gardens. But I’d done the farmer boy routine. I’d joined the army to leave that. Not my talent, I’d found. I found my talent the day seven nomads descended on the farm I was working at.
I blinked at the dirty rain. Hadn’t thought about that in too many years. The crack of a gun, the screams of wounded. All too easy. Shooting people, that is. Easier than deer, mostly. But it left you odd, somehow. A little less human each time, but with the knowledge that you could do it if your life was risked.
I thought about standing in front of the bar. Thought about all the work put into the brick house. Thought about each bill taken home, buried near the tree.
Maggie pulled one over on me, and I didn’t hate her for it. Not a bit. I hated myself for falling into a routine, a sense of complacency and tired resignation. A miasma of life that had made it so easy for her to do this to me.
Things didn’t come to people who waited for it. Who picked over the trash and hoped to find treasure. It came to those who grasped. But then I wondered if that was the same attitude that had led the world to burning up its resources and leaving the dregs for us.
Lot of maybes and buzzing going around and around in the back of my head. I quashed it all. I’d made a decision. I wanted my damn money. After that, I’d figure out what I was taking into my own hands next.
I walked to the Edgewater compound and pounded on the gates until a dubious Whatten ambled out to regard me through the chicken-wired bars.
“What the hell do you want, Stratton?”
“The lawyer, who was he?”
Whatten’s pitying look dripped scorn. “Come on, Stratton. We don’t know the laywer’s name. And don’t play like you’ve never encountered one and don’t know the routine.”
I did know the routine. Since the laywer protection act, lawyers used public encryption keys, not names, to protect their identities. Too many of them found hanging from lamp posts by their necks.
“His key, give me his key.” It could have been someone turked to represent the lawyer in real time, with an earpiece directing him what to say and when, or an apprentice lawyer turked out, or maybe the real lawyer.
Hard to tell these days. Risky profession.
“Expired. Stratton, what’re you doing?”
“They owe me money. I want paid. I’ve seen him out by the bridge, hiding among some homeless camp. Who paid for my fine, maybe you know that?” They had to have something.
Whatten moved closer to the chicken-wire. He didn’t touch it. Electrified. “You really want the lawyer that bad?”
I folded my arms and nodded.
“Okay,” Whatten said. “We want him too. We want to know what the hell is going on. You get in there, you find him out, or anything out, we’ll straight up pay you for the info.”
They were that fucking desperate for any tidbit. Hiding here in their sandbagged fort. I felt a shiver move up my back. “I just want them to pay me up. Anything I find out, I’ll pass on.”
Whatten bobbed his head a bit, considering whether to trust me. That little cloud of desperation hung over him.
He buckled. “I’ll give you a car rental chit, straight cash bonus.” He named a price.
Good price. These kids were scared. I took it. “What do you know?”
“Your fine, it was paid by Spaceship Detroit, a non profit.”
Sounded odd. “Who they hell are they?”
Whatten didn’t know.
“What do they do?”
Whatten, again, didn’t know. But it was something. I turned my back on him.
Spaceship Detroit. They’d pay up. Or give me another job. I’d get roughed up for big money. But mainly, I could sense it out there. Something moving through city. Something big. And I wanted to rip a piece of it off for myself.
Whatten knew it was out there too. He wanted to figure out what it was. Bad enough to pay me to do it.
Things were perking up a bit.
The electric car the Eddies rented for me was fully charged, plugged into a public meter. It was a raked back egg-shaped affair, carbon-fiber and plastic windshield on three wheels. I swiped the chit Whatten gave me by the window; the car unlocked itself, and the doors swung up into the air.
I settled in, running my fingers over the wheel, adjusting the seat just so. Luxurious.
My father used to take us out for special family trips in his car, when the farm had mulched up enough biodiesel in the yardpits. Just like then, when the doors shut, it was only you inside. Like when you walked into your own house. The outside world seemed just that, outside. A barrier between you and everyone else.
It was like one of those animes where the hero puts on invincible, giant, techno-armor.
There was an appeal to this. I always found the electrics more fun than the combustion ones as well. Instant torque all the way down through to the wheels in an electric, no hesitation.
I cruised around Detroit, slipping past the downtown section. It was a fortress, new and shiny buildings with their backs to the Slumps. The hardy core of a new Detroit, where people could live in walking distance to jobs and necessities. Where the city touched the river, and boats with massive parasails for mobility delivered their cargo along the docks.
I drove out into the Slumps, paralleling the river, aiming for the Bridge, with a stop near a park where a team of kids were playing baseball. One of the little-leaguers of some reclamation creche was happy to sell me a bat for cash before the coach and chaperones chased me off.
The expedition continued to the edge of the bridge, where I found an alley looking out at the main street across. Most of the homeless appeared to have left the sidewalks for the strange city, just evident in the distance under the ruins of the bridge. Things were pretty quiet, just the occasional person wandering down the road on whatever errand they were on.
I fished around inside my pockets and found a pair of painkillers, which I dry swallowed. Then it was the long wait.
Hunting was never for the impatient.
Or the hungry. Eventually, after several hours of seeing homeless wander by who weren’t the lawyer, I ventured out to look for somewhere to eat.
The alleyway my car was in sounded busy.
I paused after turning the corner. The car had been cut to shit, door panels slashed clean off, windows yanked free, and all of this left as quickly as I’d arrived.
Everyone had fled.
I got in the car, the door creaking sadly as it swung up, and sat. I shut the door, looking nervously around, and tapped the accelerator to get the hell out.
As the car lurched forward, three dozen well-dressed people of all ethnicities started running down the alleyway behind me from their hiding places. They wore suits, or cargo pants with ponchos. Ten of them carried sharp-looking axes, while the others had large bags, a couple of them had a sled dragged behind them.