The Municipalists

by Seth Fried

  “And don’t worry,” he said, a moment before I realized I’d misunderstood, “I won’t be sending you out there alone.”

  2 The agency maintained a small airfield just inside the Beltway near Marlow Heights. Garrett had sent instructions for me to meet him there at 9:30 A.M. so he could brief me on Biggs and introduce me to whatever agent would be coming along as my second. At a quarter to nine I was already sitting on one of the red plastic benches in the small lounge attached to the control tower.

  I faced the window overlooking the runway, which glowed a ghostly white under the overcast sky. The air in the lounge was stale and mixed with the pinch of burned coffee coming from the old percolator in the corner. There was an uneasy flutter in my stomach and in the dim reflection of the lounge’s window I could see the desperate look of a fitful night’s sleep.

  Not only had Garrett’s demeanor in our meeting left me worried, but in all my time at the agency I had never been assigned a task so completely outside my expertise. Most of my work fell within the scope of improvement implementation and project management. The most investigative work I’d ever done was when I helped evaluate a water treatment center in Duluth and ended up proving that improper sanitation practices were responsible for the mysterious uptick in beaver deaths in the surrounding area. But testing the gums of a beaver corpse for toxicity levels wasn’t the sort of preparation I expected to help me investigate an apparent act of terrorism.

  I tried to stoke my optimism by reminding myself that I’d finally been assigned to agency business in what was without question the greatest American city. I wasn’t the type of agent to conduct a personal errand while on official business, but I hadn’t been able to keep myself from packing my old Nikon. Over the past few weeks my fellow enthusiasts on the Trains of Yore message boards had been raving about a special exhibit on model trains at the Metropolis Transit Museum. Whenever I was in the city, I made a point of visiting the MTM, with its collection of retired railcars displayed in a beautifully renovated ironworks. I loved to wander between the cars, watching decades of engineering genius unfold with the satisfying inevitability of a bedtime story. Due to the urgency of Garrett’s request, this might have been my first time to Metropolis without such a visit if it weren’t for the fact that this new exhibition included one of the rarest model locomotives in existence. It was the 1:64 DR-88, or “Steam Beetle,” as the actual train had been known due to its low, rounded appearance. Manufactured in a limited run by the O’Neil Brothers in 1898, there were only a few dozen models in circulation and one in mint condition was worth upwards of $250,000.

  When he was alive, my father kept a Steam Beetle on the desk of his little office at home. The model had been gifted to him by his father. He had no idea it was worth more than our entire house or my parents’ modestly successful dessert shop, Thompson Family Frozen Yogurt, which they owned and operated in our hometown of Steubenville, Ohio. As a boy I had loved that locomotive. Partly because it was beautiful, but mostly because it belonged to my father. I knew perfectly the weight of that engine in my hands, the brisk chug of its coupling rods when you pushed it, the faint scent of oil that someone long ago must have carefully rubbed on its axles.

  When my parents left in the summer of 1998 to attend the National Restaurateur Conference in Rochester, my father lent me the model to console me over my fear of being left with our only living relative, Great-Aunt Juniper. As he handed it to me, he crouched so we were eye to eye and told me that he and my mother would be on a train just like it. Something about this comforted me at the time, though looking back the memory betrays my father’s shocking ignorance about trains, since the Steam Beetle had about as much in common with a modern passenger train as a human being does with a lungfish. Nevertheless, I remember putting the train under my arm and hugging his leg after he rose. The light pressure of his palm on the top of my head. My parents were supposed to be back in six days but instead were crushed to death in that wrecked passenger train an hour outside Buffalo.

  Two months later Great-Aunt Juniper died of what was believed to be an aneurysm-related tumble down the stoop of her old bungalow on her way to fetch the mail. I was apparently the one to discover her and call the ambulance, but to this day all I remember of my time with her is a stretch of worn orange carpet, a sunlit hallway, and an unfriendly calico cat with a clouded eye. I managed to keep the locomotive with me for a year or two in the foster system before I made the foolish mistake of taking it to school one day for show and tell. An older boy on the bus, amused to see me holding it, took it from my hands and threw it out the window. I heard it clink distantly in the street as the bus rushed between cornfields and the boy laughed as if he’d just done the most natural thing in the world. I got off at the next stop and hurried into an unfamiliar road to where I thought it’d been thrown, but I never found it.

  I knew Garrett’s assignment deserved my full attention, but the remaining Steam Beetles were mostly in private collections and the chance to see one in person was rare. I planned to ask someone at the MTM to take a photograph of me with it, a prospect that felt genuinely exciting to me, a reclamation of something long lost.

  I was brought back to the airfield lounge by the sound of a car door slamming. I stepped outside to see Garrett and an agent I didn’t recognize already standing on the tarmac. There was a healthy wind and I had to hold on to the fedora that Garrett liked all us agents to wear when we were on duty out of doors.

  Garrett was standing in a trench coat looking up into the clouds, while the agent he had brought with him watched me approach. The agent seemed unimpressed and soon looked down to inspect his own tie.

  I put down my bag and said good morning to them both. Garrett turned to me and nodded, pulling an envelope from inside his coat and handing it to me.

  “Some details on Biggs. Find him and get him to tell you whatever he can.”

  He stepped to the side and gestured to the other agent. The wind was picking up and he had to shout in order to make himself heard.

  “This is your partner, so to speak. He’ll explain everything to you on the plane.”

  I greeted the man, but he continued to observe me without comment. Garrett took the envelope from my hand, tucking it into the inside chest pocket of my blazer.

  “I need you to keep this all as quiet as possible, Henry. The board can’t know what we’re up to.”

  Then, in what seemed like an odd gesture, he removed the tie clip he was wearing and slid it onto my tie.

  “Thank you,” he said. “The agency thanks you.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder and headed back toward his brown Crown Vic in the parking lot without looking back, his body hunched forward in the wind. He gave an all clear sign to the tower, after which I heard the whine of engines starting up. The man who was to be my partner stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the plane taxi over. He was handsome with a healthy tan, the sort of person you didn’t often see around headquarters. He had a thick head of blond hair that was a little longer than I liked to see on an agent, though it was parted neatly, giving him a slightly classic look. I supposed this must have appealed to Garrett’s nostalgia enough that he wasn’t bothered by the fact that this man was walking around without his hat. All agents hated the fedoras, with the exception of Kirklin’s people, who never wore them, but it was precisely because the rest of us hated them so much that it was seen as poor form to shirk wearing them.

  These thoughts distracted me so that it took me a moment to realize he and I were staring at each other. Embarrassed, I looked away and began to examine the tie clip Garrett had given me. It was made from a silver-colored alloy and was ordinary looking except for its size. It fit the width of my tie nicely, but the front bar was a full inch from top to bottom, making it look like I was wearing a money clip. When I looked closer I also saw several small apertures across its front. I ran my finger over them and noticed that the clip was warm
to the touch.

  “Don’t play with that,” the man said. His voice was filled with such sure authority that I obeyed him even though the rebuke seemed ridiculous.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m Henry.”

  He turned to face me and I noticed that his eyes were a bright and familiar shade of blue. I took a step forward and held out my hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, keeping his hands in his pockets.

  The plane pulled into its boarding position and I wasn’t able to make out what he said next over the noise from the engines. It sounded like he was trying to tell me something about OWEN. I asked him to repeat himself, but the jet’s automated door was already opening, its small flight of steps gently touching down on the runway. He gestured for me to pick up my bag, then walked toward the plane ahead of me. The clouds had made it dark enough that the tower decided to flip on the edge lights along the runway. They flashed with a jolt just as the agent was stepping over them. I was startled to see his body flicker and briefly become transparent before adjusting to the dramatic change in light. That was what he had been trying to tell me over the sound of the jets.

  It was his name. OWEN.

  * * *

  The only plane available on such short notice was one of our four-seaters, so OWEN and I were forced to sit uncomfortably close, facing one another in two of the cramped cabin’s disproportionately large white leather armchairs. Among other things, I was busy mulling over the convincing groan of leather that had sounded as OWEN took his seat as well as the way the seat’s padding seemed to give beneath him as if it were supporting real weight. I was also trying to determine, the way one might when left alone with a dog or a small child, just how aware of me this image of a man was and to what extent he and I would be able to interact. As the pilot chatted with the tower, OWEN was busy looking around the cabin inquisitively.

  “I know everything there is to know about planes,” he said, after some time. “But I’ve never been on one.”

  I was surprised by his tone, which was boyishly self-assured. Before I could think of anything to say in response, the plane started to take off. As we shot up the runway and began our ascent, OWEN turned around in his seat to watch the pilot with guarded enthusiasm, like someone interested in seeing a card trick performed despite the fact that he already knew the secret that made it work. Once we reached altitude he chuckled to himself and turned back around, satisfied with either the performance of the pilot or the nature of flight in general. He then exhaled deeply and clapped his hands together, the sound of it echoing sharply in the small cabin.

  “Okay,” he said, sounding reluctant to get down to business. “How can I be of assistance?”

  “Actually,” I said, “could you start by telling me what you are exactly?”

  He considered the question.

  “What am I? Well, I’m a 3-D projection of the agency’s supercomputer. And what you are is a bipedal ape with high manual dexterity and a brain that’s only really impressive if you take into account the fact you grew it yourself. Now maybe you’d prefer to ask a slightly less insulting question, like who am I?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I didn’t mean any offense. Who are you?”

  “I already told you. The name’s OWEN. Try to keep up.”

  I told him this all seemed remarkable and he smiled.

  “Now you’re getting it,” he said.

  The technical wonders involved in allowing me to converse with OWEN on an agency jet as if he were a fellow passenger seemed staggering, not least of all because the technicians at headquarters had only recently gotten OWEN back up and running.

  Even after everyone was given the all clear to resume using OWEN-linked technology, we were all reluctant to do so. Agents who worked on the top floors had been taking the stairs instead of risking getting stuck in the elevators and, despite several memos I circulated reminding everyone that it was a fireable offense, no one had any compunctions about keeping our secure doors propped open with office chairs. For research queries, the physical archives had become suddenly popular, its once empty stacks now abuzz with agents who felt more comfortable compiling their reports and analyses the old-fashioned way.

  Garrett had released a statement apologizing for the fact that the virus had exploited a secret self-destruct function in our phones, which was supposed to have been used only in individual cases to protect confidential agency data. Replacement phones with the self-destruct function removed had already been distributed, but most agents had opted to pay out of pocket for their own private cell phones. I had gone to the Iverson Mall myself to purchase a mobile phone that was in my bag still waiting to be activated. In short, trust in OWEN was at a nadir and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that Garrett had sent me on such an uncertain mission with some OWEN-tech as my only ally.

  Before the virus, OWEN had been working almost at capacity on a constant basis, but now he said his usage was practically down to zero, something he seemed to take personally. He described the aftermath of the virus with some embarrassment. From his point of view the whole thing had been like a terrible fever in which he was both himself and not himself, his own components performing tasks without him while he looked on in horror. Though the way he used the phrase “human error” to describe the various security loopholes that had allowed a virus to be uploaded in the first place made it clear that he directed blame more at the agency’s technicians than at himself.

  According to OWEN, the whole situation couldn’t have come at a worse time. The agency’s R&D division had been working on his projected interface for years, combining the latest developments in optics, deep learning, sonic projection, nanotechnology, and more. The attack had happened just as they were entering the final stages.

  “I’m still not feeling entirely myself,” OWEN said. “But Gus felt that given the recent unpleasantness it was important to demonstrate my effectiveness.”

  The Gus he referred to was the aforementioned Dr. Gustav Klaus, a renowned mathematician and computer engineer whose seminal work on parallel processing had earned him a Nobel Prize and the coveted Sterling Motherboard from the Kilbe-Klanck Institute. He was OWEN’s creator and developer, though OWEN spoke of him with the sort of irreverent familiarity that one might use when describing an eccentric relative. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Klaus had encouraged this attitude. OWEN’s name purportedly stood for Object-Oriented Database and Working Ekistics Network, though many suspected that Klaus had just retrofitted the acronym so he could name the supercomputer after a beloved younger brother.

  Klaus had personally designed the hardware for this new interface, which OWEN pointed out was the large tie clip I was wearing, containing a series of projectors as well as an array of sensory equipment. Klaus had also developed a complex system of parameters that OWEN referred to as “verisimilitude protocols.” These parameters controlled everything from the way his projection automatically adjusted to surrounding stimuli to his basic disposition when interacting with others.

  To hear OWEN tell it, his introduction to human interaction had consisted primarily of talking to Klaus and watching movies with him. It was common knowledge that Klaus’s preferred genre was old gangster films, his lab walls decorated with large color posters of Pépé le Moko and Each Dawn I Die. OWEN spoke fondly of the films of Kurosawa and claimed to have a great admiration for Charlie Chaplin, but it was nothing compared to the way his face lit up when he talked about James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson.

  Klaus’s love of mobsters could be seen in his massive pompadour of gray hair and penchant for loud suits. This vanity seemed to be a gift that had been passed down to his newest creation. As we spoke, OWEN grew preoccupied with his own physical appearance, looking down to adjust the pattern of his tie or the cut of his suit through an apparent act of will. He would frown with concentration and sprout cuff links and pocket squares and boutonnieres, his voice becomi
ng distant while he answered my questions, as if anything I said was clearly of secondary importance to his deciding whether or not his blazer looked better with a peach carnation or a plum-colored pocket square in a four-point fold.

  When I asked him if he could focus on our conversation, he asserted that he was able to focus on everything in his immediate vicinity at once. With the aid of sonar, infrared, satellite relay, and all the other complicated sensors and data feeds managed by the clip on my tie he was able to see everything from the back of my head to the pilot’s mustache and the plane’s position over the Atlantic. He was able to combine all of this sensory data into a single synthesized impression while continuing to sit across from me and fiddle with his tie.

  Apparently there were hundreds of identical tie clips back in Suitland waiting to be distributed to the other agents. OWEN explained that the ultimate goal of the new interface was for each agent to enjoy the service of someone who not only had access to our database but was our database, someone who could check the status of every electrical grid in the country in real time, report on traffic conditions, and cite building codes off the top of his head. These clips would also be able to capture an unimaginable amount of raw data just by means of that agent going about his or her normal duties throughout the city. Working in conjunction with our existing drone program, our agency could come closer than ever to a perfect system for monitoring the progress and needs of our nation’s cities. It was an undeniably thrilling vision for the future of the agency.

  Though, he was also rather frank about the fact that the project had missed several important deadlines and gone severely over budget. After all the additional setbacks that followed the virus, it was obvious why Klaus had jumped at the chance to use the interface to impress Garrett.

  In terms of how useful it actually was in its present form, I remained skeptical. But OWEN seemed confident enough in himself for both of us. As our conversation returned to his various abilities, he became much more animated and even stopped adjusting his clothes awhile. When I asked how his body managed to make an impression on his chair, he demonstrated that it was an optical illusion by creating a similar indentation on one of the cabin’s empty seats. As far as the groan of leather was concerned, he pointed to one of the apertures on my tie clip and told me that it was able to throw sound up to one hundred feet at over 180 earsplitting decibels. When I asked him how this was possible, he waggled his fingers like a magician and switched subjects, pointing to another aperture that he explained could project images around obstructions. He had me hold my hand three inches in front of the tie clip to show how, using just the silver clasp of my watchband, the lens was able to continue projecting his image sitting across from me without interruption. I also knew from my own experience that he’d had to step directly over a 200-watt runway light before his projection had been forced to carry out any perceivable adjustments. Even more incredible was when he projected light onto my person, camouflaging me to the cabin’s interior so that I appeared almost invisible. Pleased by my astonishment, he went on to perform impressions of Garrett and Klaus, taking on their shapes and voices with an amazing degree of accuracy. OWEN referred to these skills as “emergent capabilities,” meaning they weren’t intentional consequences of his design but were simply possible given the makeup of his interface. While Klaus had been aware of some of them, OWEN had stumbled upon most of them himself.