Hacked, Barrington thought, for the purpose of stealing what money remained in her municipal account.
The passing water girl saddened him because of the memories she evoked. He didn't smile back at her. He bowed his head and pushed his wheelbarrow forward, intent on surviving the long day. At noon he'd enjoy a hearty stew, followed by a short nap; by mid-afternoon he'd be back to hauling rock and concrete and old steel. For two ogres a day, double what he made digging feces out of latrine pits.
At noon, Jennings and the other field supervisors blew their whistles to announce a break in the day. Diggers, some with shovels balanced across their shoulders, headed for the scattered picnic tables set under a large awning that kept the sun at bay. When those tables filled, there was only the ground at the edge of the shade or out in the blistering heat to choose, so the carters, like Barrington, hurried to push their wheelbarrows back to where they'd dump their freight.
Barrington didn't hurry. Weary, muscles sore, he took his time wheeling his load to the dumping ground, where it would be shoveled into waiting carts and wagons pulled by teams of mules and horses. His first day, he'd asked why they didn't dump everything directly into the wagons, why the need for extra men to pitch the refuse from where it piled up on the ground into the bed of a wagon.
Jennings gave him a gruff answer. "People need jobs, so shut up."
Keeping quiet became the best way to get through the ten hour work day. The noon repast, consisting of bread and thick stew, with a helping of a gelatinous desert that tasted of apple and pear, became the best meal Barrington could expect on a daily basis. The thin morning coffee served at the dorm where he'd taken residence, though hot, always had a metallic and disagreeable aftertaste. At night, wearied by the day's hard work, and needing to save money, he settled on a small day-old roll dipped in fat.
Survive this, he vowed to himself. Get home. Somehow.
But home, for now, was a narrow cot -- one of twelve in the room -- in a men's dormitory on the fourth floor of a one-time office building. The 18 stories high structure offered just the lower six floors as living space, with men on the top two floors, women the fourth, and families in cubicles for privacy taking up the lower three. A kitchen with seating in a large dining area spread across the basement, along with shower facilities and open space where recruiters sought workers for the various employers they represented.
He lingered at one of the picnic tables near the edge of the shade provided by the overhead tarp. Someone passed with a waste barrel strapped to a wagon. He ran his fingers across the rim of his bowl and sucked in the last of the stew before tossing the bowl and the wiped-clean plate of dessert into the barrel. The woman pulling the wagon didn't slow down. She had her circuit: along the edge of the space covered by the overhead, and then to the open-air shed with its steel cauldrons full of boiling water and fire pits fueled by oil distilled from human waste.
The woman kept her head bowed. A green scarf covered her hair. Her long, dirty-yellow dress dragged across the bare earthen floor. Barrington felt her despair when she passed. A palpable aura, almost like a strong scent, permeated the atmosphere.
The secret to surviving all this, he realized, lay inside himself. He needed to tackle his spirit, take hold of what he felt and what he saw and, while not making sense of everything, savor the positive aspects and not dwell on the negative. He earned money. He ate enough food to feel nourished if not wholly satisfied. His work offered him a chance to taste the air, to ache with the effort of working. These were good things, not negative ones.
Keep this attitude, he vowed to himself. Dive into this new life. Don't wallow in self-pity or hatred or fear. Don't give up.
He needed to remind himself of these things because they were easy to forget. Looking at that tired woman pulling that wooden wagon with that tall barrel of lunchtime refuse killed his spirit. That is, if he let it. And he wouldn't do that.
He walked away from the table, away from the shaded dining area, across the open field of broken rebar and concrete and once-fashionable building stones where a few men and women huddled over their bowls of stew, slowly spooning the thick liquid into their mouths, as though doing so helped them savor every morsel. These workers hadn't found a table to sit at, so they opted for the hard, uneven ground; but they'd been served their lunch nonetheless and they wouldn't let that go to waste.
They'd enjoy what they had.
#
Everyone in line shuffled forward and Barrington finally walked out of the noon heat and into the large tent. An afternoon pass excused him from work, though he'd still have his pay docked. Worth it, he mused as he waited for his turn to speak to one of the twenty-some young lawyers sitting behind folding tables on the far side of the tent. He thought of Dell and her family. Somehow, he needed to get a message to her, and the thought monopolized his mind as he walked alongside a velvet rope that guided the snaking line in a curly-cue that took up most of the tent's cool interior.
Someone in line complained that things weren't moving fast enough for her. Two ushers pulled her from the queue, tearing her thin blouse, exposing purplish bruises across her shoulder blades. She fought back. No one helped her. Most everyone looked down at the cold bare ground, shuffled their feet. Barrington stared at the woman, who fought off her attackers until clubbed behind the knees.
Once down, she crumbled into a ball, her hands digging into her dirty dark hair, her tan, patched trousers wet between her legs. She sobbed. Odd, Barrington thought, that two of the ushers -- both older men with weathered faces -- lifted the woman gently to her feet and guided her out of the tent, away from the snaking line and the tables and the lawyers she'd sought to meet.
The incident brought quiet. Casual conversation ceased. Barrington put his hands in his pockets, fingered the few Mylar ogres he'd stashed there, and looked to the front of the line and measured how long before he'd have his turn. What was the average length of time spent in front of a lawyer? How many stood ahead of him in line? There had to be a mathematical formulae, some magic arrangement of numbers in an equation rooted in queue theory, that he could cull from his high school years; but the answer eluded him. Best he could do was calculate that he inched ahead every ten minutes, which meant he'd spend another hour in the tent before he got to a lawyer.
When his turn came, Barrington hurried to the empty chair in the middle of the line of close-together folding tables. A young man sat poised on the other side, hands folded and set against the edge of the tabletop. Soft fuzz adorned his cheeks. His upturned collar brushed the sides of his face. No older than me, Barrington thought, and looked left and right at all the other lawyers, all of them young men, young women, all smiling and perched in their high-backed chairs with backs straight.
Barrington focused on the lawyer's necklace, a thin silver chain draped around his neck, with a shiny blue stone wrapped in metal lace dangling against the blonde hairs across the V in his open-neck white shirt.
"You're a lawyer?" Barrington said.
"Sixth year student. And authorized to act on legal issues."
"This is how you get practice?"
The young man laughed. A mild chuckle of a laugh. But genuine, judging from his soft gray eyes. "I'm George Sanders. Do you have an All-Pod?"
Barrington fished the now-useless device from his front pocket. In the three weeks since he'd been exiled, he hadn't been able to charge it. The only money exchange in the area demanded a two-ogre fee just to plug it into their network for a quick once-over of his account.
"If you're charging me for this," Barrington began, and then let his voice trail off with a slight rise to his voice to accent the implied question.
George shook his head. He turned a hand-held iris reader in Barrington's direction. "No charge. Don't worry. We're here to help."
"Can you get me back inside?"
George looked at the All-Pod's screen. He tipped a large-screen tablet computer sideways and tapped its controls. He nodded a few times. He set B
arrington's All-Pod into a slot on the side of his computer.
"Checks out," George said.
"I never got my 45 day grace period. They fired me and exiled me almost at the same time."
"I can see that in your record. Somebody in legal aid already filed an inquiry."
Barrington thought of the harried law students he'd encountered in the Ready Zone just outside the city's south gate. "Can you help?"
"Problem is, Paul, you're not eligible for that 45 day grace."
"But I am. That's in my contract."
"Only if you're fired without cause."
"Cause?"
George tipped back his chair, hands folded again, his polished nails gleaming. "You failed your advancement exam. Everybody fired that day either failed the exam or never took it. That's cause."
"I didn't know -- " Barrington squeezed his eyes shut. He felt the heat rise up from his belly, reddening his neck and his cheeks and his forehead.
"It's in your contract. In fact, it's standard. Advance from your entry-level position or face termination." George tapped the All-Pod's screen. "See for yourself. Read it."
Barrington glanced at the close-set characters parading across the All-Pod's screen. He picked out the words, but didn't assemble them into any sort of cohesive meaning. But he saw his signature, his scrawl made with a fingernail, across the bottom of the page.
"No one reads these things," George said. "I know. It's always the same thing. You sign and get the job and you never really know what the contract says. I see it all the time."
Barrington ignored the smug look that painted itself across the law student's face. "Can you help me?"
"With what? You've nothing to appeal. Frankly, that's why I think they send us out here. To explain that you don't have a case. I don't mean just you, Paul. All of you."
"Can you get a message to my girlfriend?"
George chuckled. "Not in the message-bearing business, Paul."
"As a favor?"
Again, that chuckle. "If I did that for everybody who -- "
"Just a message," Barrington said, spitting out his words. "She doesn't even know I was fired and exiled. Who knows what she's thinking."
George didn't respond.
Barrington calmed down. "What can you help me with?" he asked after a short moment of silence. "How do I get back in?"
"There're always recruiters roaming around Outside. When there's jobs available. You might find someone from one of the smaller cities, or from the St Louis Meg. Maybe."
Barrington pictured a name that appeared across his line-of-sight like a marquee advertising an old-fashioned flat screen movie. "Do you know Rita Pandor?"
"That's your girlfriend?"
"No. She's a lawyer. A real lawyer. Not a student. Is she with your firm? Do you know her?"
"I told you, I'm a sixth-year. I'm not with a law firm."
"Do you know her?"
"Paul. Hold on. Settle down." George nodded sideways.
Barrington saw an usher standing to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the burly man heft his wooden club, a bat-type, not one of the extensible metal versions. This one broke bones. Made for close-in fighting.
"Do you?" Barrington whispered.
"No."
"How do I get a real lawyer to look into my case?"
George shook his head. "You don't have a case, Paul. You want back into Chicago? Find a city job. But looking at your work history and your education..." He tapped his computer screen. "Your prospects aren't good."
Barrington swallowed and replayed the young man's words in his mind.
"Okay?" George said. "There're more people waiting in line."
Barrington rose to his feet. The usher with the wooden club approached and used the blunt end of his weapon to nudge him away from the table. Head down, Barrington followed the non-verbal instructions, the threat of that club compelling him towards the exit.
"Check out Grant's Promenade," the usher whispered. "If you got enough money, there's ways to smuggle yourself back in."
Barrington wanted more information, but found himself already on the other side of the tent flap, out in the sunshine, and with the usher having left him.
#
A wide avenue, Michigan Avenue, separated the park from the rest of the city. The west side of the street gave testament to an urban battle that shaped Chicago a hundred years earlier. Stone and steel, remnants of tall buildings that once lined the street, lay as rubble. Doorways fronted the cracked and broken sidewalk. Deep pits, their innards long gone, long ago salvaged for other uses, gouged the area, with old cinder block walls separating one decrepit hole-in-the-ground from another up and down the street. Steel ladders gave access to the tents and plywood shelters built on the remnants of these cellars. Private guards kept watch and Barrington felt their eyes on him as he walked alongside the ruins in the early evening light.
His muscles ached from another afternoon shoveling and digging, pushing wheelbarrows of debris from one part of the field to another. He considered himself lucky to get a few hours of work in the afternoon after the time he'd wasted seeking legal help. Every few ogres he added to the growing store in his pockets meant more to him now than he'd ever thought possible. In some ways, money didn't mean much when he lived with Dell, worked at the motor pool, and sometimes repaired old appliances for Jake Stern. He always had some money, even if most of what he earned went to pay Dell's father for room and board. Anything left over allowed him to enjoy life with Dell.
He started to cross Michigan Avenue. The park loomed ahead. So, he thought, did the possibility of getting home to Dell, back into the city, back to his former life. Children thronged him. They lined the sidewalk. A parade of military vehicles rumbled past in the street, evidently heading for the Chicago River Bridge, on their way back to Fort Sheridan. About fifteen miles north of the old city's once-busy downtown, the old fort still served as a base for the federal government, a seat of power that grew more distant as it grew less effective. Soldiers still set out from their barracks to quell civil unrest or, Barrington assumed, attack urban gangs that had grown too big or too powerful.
An armored car and two pickup trucks with machineguns mounted above the cabs rolled past like burly beasts. Helmeted soldiers with bandoliers of pointed seventy-five-caliber cartridges strung across their shoulders leaned against the weapons. Two personnel carriers followed, groaning and squealing, their rear tracks digging into the asphalt and their huge front wheels clawing for traction. The soldiers in the rear of the truck carried a variety of assault rifles cradled across their laps or dangling from straps wrapped around one arm or standing straight up, pinned between their knees..
American flags adorned the motorcade, most of the emblems showing the latest version of stars on a blue field: 4 rows of ten stars. A sleek command car, its windows tinted, sported an old 50-star flag, but with ten of the white symbols crossed out, as though the commander inside the vehicle wanted to make a statement. Other flags flapped from the tops of the pickups or at the back of the bed of the truck or from retainers bolted to side doors.
Once the convoy has passed, the last of its exhaust drifting away, a crowd emerged from the east side of the street, from the stalls lined up on the wide sidewalk, from the other side of the bushes and spindly trees that looked newly planted. More people drifted into the wide avenue. Many were armed with long barreled pistols sitting in holsters on their belts. They wore the distinctive round hats of the local police. Others carried short, thick clubs dangling by cords from their shoulders.
The crowd jeered and hooted, pumped the air with their fists. In the distance, the army vehicles sounded horns in response. It was like a battle of noise, a strange symphony in lieu of real combat. No shots fired. No projectiles launched. No melee between the Federals and the local militia.
Head down, Barrington crossed the street, averting his eyes from a pair of close-by Rounders. He blended with the crowd in the park, found a path leading
away from the wide avenue, away from the crumbling buildings and pits and the mob that had formed to watch the army pass.
He slipped past a line of thick bushes interspersed with tall, leafy trees. A gravel path led from Michigan Avenue's wide sidewalk to a pair of stone pillars that supported a wooden sign emblazoned with "Grant's Promenade" in large black steel letters nailed in place on a straight line.
Youngsters pulled wheeled carts loaded with batteries towards the path. On the street, a few men and women unloaded crates, portable street lamps, and barrels from the backs of several trucks. Armed guards dressed alike in bloused trousers stuffed into black boots, flowing black capes pinned to the shoulders of their dark shirts stood in the street, in front of and behind the trucks.
No round hats, Barrington noted. A different militia? Private cops hired by the Promenade?
He admired the efficiency of whoever organized this assembly, with lamps and batteries and other preparations for the coming night, which would descend in another hour. As he approached the "Grant's Promenade" sign, he traded glances with two more black-caped guards. They stood on either side of the path, rifles in their hands, crossed bandoliers of blunt-nosed bullets on their chests.
He paused. A momentary gap in his forward progress, while the boys and girls with their piled-high wheeled wagons lumbered past. Two youngsters rolled a large barrel, laughing as they went. Several young women meandered in a knot with short-limbed lambs in tow. A pair of goats brayed. Their handlers prodded them.
"You. On the walk. Keep moving."
Barrington looked at the guards, and then at another guard in a tower at a second entrance to the park, this one a high gate that stood open, a fretwork of multicolored wood serving as a fence on either side. As the laborers passed with their wagons and animals and barrels, and as men and women visiting the area poured in alongside Barrington, a trio of guards with the distinctive black capes flashed iris readers at the passing faces.
Which meant, they had access, possibly limited, to the municipal network. Barrington wondered why this precaution. In case of trouble, they'd know who'd been in the park? And who were "they?" Whoever stood behind the caped men and women serving as guards.
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