by Ginger Booth
Mangal nodded. “‘Secure your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others.’ Americans are interested in their own survival first, and their own food supply. And many of them aren’t going to get it here, either.”
Shanti pursed her lips. “How much of this food shortage is real?”
I shrugged. “The GMO blight is real, but we can get past that, to a point. The Dust Bowl is devastating. On the other hand, we used to export a lot of food, and now we don’t. It’s hard to say. At the moment, we’re probably growing less than a quarter of what we used to, which is less than enough. But the population is falling, really fast. Most of the shortages now amount to a structural disruption. The borders are forcing us into locally sustainable agriculture, instead of industrial agriculture and transportation. And we just haven’t adjusted production to that yet. But we can.”
“If the weather cooperates enough for us to adjust,” Mangal cautioned.
“There’s that,” I agreed with a sigh. “But, there are things you can do as a small-scale farmer that you can’t on one of those county-sized satellite-controlled robo-farms in the Midwest. For instance, growing a single crop – why would I do that, if my survival depends on the crop? If there’s no government bailout for crop failure? I wouldn’t. I grow assorted things. I stagger the plantings. I keep plants indoors until they’re half grown. My plots are small enough that I can throw protection over them.”
“If you know the weather is coming,” Mangal quibbled.
We stared at each other.
Shelley piped up, “The weather reports aren’t the truth, are they?”
“No,” I agreed slowly. “And they need to be. If I want to grow food.”
“Well, there’s news you can use,” Mangal concluded. “Travel and trade news, too, maybe. Steer clear of Broomfield. Town Hall is still in business in Totoket. The orchards in Otherford offer apples, seek wheat flour and cows. Stuff like that.”
“How to escape New York,” Shelley suggested darkly. “Where the arks are.”
Mangal and Shanti looked alarmed. I felt the same, but pursed my lips and said, “Let’s hold off on that for now, Shelley. You may not have thought those through. For example, if the border broke down between New York City and Connecticut right now, we’d all die, probably. Unless we had Ebola vaccinations.”
“I’ve been vaccinated,” Shanti offered. “Mangal, too, but not the children. And that’s the sort of trade news we could really use. Because, Shelley, I don’t think there’s an Ebola vaccine left to be found in Connecticut. But maybe they have a surplus in Maine.” She was good, our Shanti.
Mangal backed me up, too. “And the arks are protection from something else. I mean, our air is safe enough to breathe now. We can live and pursue agriculture out in the open. But the arks can survive nuclear fallout, epidemics, agricultural epidemics. They’re more resilient to catastrophic weather. If the arks are needed to survive, the rest of us are dead anyway. They’re a last gasp chance for humanity. I think it’s best to just leave them be.”
We’d seeded doubt, but Shelley still looked hungry for revenge and destruction. “Why should they live and us die?”
I shrugged. “Is it better if we all die?”
She folded her arms and slumped in on herself. She still wanted mayhem. But she was still awfully desperate for my approval. The high road was to tell her I had faith and confidence in her own best judgment. The truth was that I didn’t trust her judgment at all.
“Look, Shelley, just promise me you won’t do anything, or tell anyone, about New York or the arks right now,” I said. “Mangal and I had a big head start on this. We’ve had time to think about it. And if Homeland Security or whoever catches us, it’s us who get dragged away, not you. We’re the ones with the access, and we’re the ones at risk. So we get veto rights. OK? Otherwise…”
“Otherwise you’re out,” Mangal said quietly but firmly.
I was grateful he didn’t elaborate on just how far out. I just nodded and didn’t meet her eyes.
“I promise. It’s your show,” Shelley agreed in a tiny voice.
Shanti gave her a motherly hug and warm smile, bathing her in approval. Mangal and I didn’t feel that way at all.
I don’t know what I expected from our hacker connection, when he finally arrived for interview on January 2nd. He drove an electric Cadillac. From his expensive but casual business suit, and overcoat and grooming, he reminded me of a 50-something real estate agent. On TV, hackers all seem to be portrayed as grubby bums and Goths.
“Amen1,” he said with a warm smile and an offered hand to shake. “But let’s say Dave for now.”
“Oh! Amen1 – Dave – good to meet you at last! Please come in. I’m Dee. And that’s Mangal.” The men met in the living room with a handshake, and sat down.
I collected tea while Mangal covered the social niceties. As I overheard it, ‘Dave’ had studied up on our local situation and decided to make a move down to Totoket to coordinate. In fact, he’d already moved into a place near the police station in town. ‘In town’ was east of ‘western Totoket’, outside our civic association self-defense zone. But I was still taken aback.
“I thought we hadn’t fully decided to work together yet?” I put in, as I handed tea mugs around.
“I couldn’t resist your township’s Gigabit Internet,” Dave said, with a broad smile. “I’m happy to stay whether we do this project together or not. Other members are moving down this way as well. Not all of them, but some.” He really did remind me of a real estate agent. “You also have this Gigabit Internet?”
“We’re tapped into the town line, yes, and two alternates.”
“Marvelous. We were based in Cambridge, you know, then moved into western Mass before the borders could shut us in. We’ve found it… limiting.” Dave sipped his tea.
I found him moving into my town a bit claustrophobic. We’d intentionally sought hackers farther afield, and thus harder to connect to us. But it’s not as though I had any control over what this man and his team did.
Enough with the small talk. “Well, I think we’ve decided on our end what we’d like to –”
“A moment, please,” Dave interrupted. He fished a tablet-sized device out of his elegant leather messenger bag, and consulted several screens worth of information. “Good. We’re private. You were saying?”
“How reliable is that device?” Mangal broke in. He held out his hand, asking to see it.
Dave smiled blandly and tucked the device back into his bag. “Reliable enough. Of course, we do not talk in rooms with web cameras, and we turn our cell-capable phones off.”
“Those devices are in another room,” I said.
“Good enough, then. Of course, anyone can track your access.”
“We have legitimate access to the information we’re showing you. We just don’t have the right to share it.”
“We can work with that.” Dave sat forward to deliver his pitch. “As we’ve conveyed before, Amen1 is a white-hat hacker confederation. The name is based on Amendment 1 of the Constitution, that the U.S. government is forbidden to curtail free speech or the free press, or freedom of religion. We believe the Calm Act violates those rights. We’ve invested substantial effort in finding ways around the Federal Internet censorship schemes. We have the platform. We are open to proposed publications.” He opened his hand to us in invitation.
Mangal nodded to me. I pulled up the true weather satellite feed from New Year’s Eve, and told him how not even the Coast Guard was given correct information about a developing Category 2 hurricane and where it was headed. I switched to the live map view I’d shown Zack of the approaches to the Route 1 barricade, and explained how our local defense forces used this information.
The bland self-satisfied real estate agent pose was gone. Dave leaned toward my giant display with a look of pure lust.
I handed off the controller to Mangal. He ran through CDC models on the progress of the Ebola epidemic in New York. He sho
wed status reports on force levels on the nearest borders. He turned on Al Jazeera without the sound, and set the controller aside.
“Our concept,” I explained, “is news you can use. Local weather and traffic – the truth. Sufficient detail for local meteorologists to make good predictions, and share them online safely. Sufficient detail to enable safe trade. But not full satellite access to just anybody. We prefer to pick and choose who gets that.”
“In sheer self-defense,” Dave acknowledged.
“That is the problem,” I agreed. “But it’s to everyone’s advantage to be able to trade in safety. My limited goal is to empower successful and protected agriculture and trade.”
Mangal sat back and added, “I believe the U.S. government is pursuing a policy of depopulation, to track decreased agricultural output. The power vacuum they’ve created, intentionally or not, favors bullies and thieves, armed men intimidating people and stealing. We want to raise the floor on that scenario. If people can produce food in peace, we can afford a lot more people to live. Otherwise, I don’t know how low the population has to go, how devolved our civilization has to get, to reach a stable equilibrium again. We seek to arrest that freefall at a higher level of civility.”
Dave nodded. We all sipped our tea in thought. “I love it,” he eventually concluded. “Amen1 will back it. You have a deal.”
“Toilet paper is a great idea,” I said from the leadership table. I beamed at the woman who’d made the bitchy complaint. “In fact, that ties in with an initiative I’d like to bring up with the community. Bob is the landlord of that vacant building where the dollar store used to be up on Route 1 – stand up, Bob, and take a bow!” Doughy old blue-collar Bob received a rather puzzled spate of polite applause. He was surprised and pleased at the attention.
Zack, sitting next to me, irritably stabbed a finger at agenda item 10, ‘workshop.’ We were currently supposed to be on item 3.
“Bob’s willing to donate space for a community workshop,” I pressed on sunnily. “There we can share tools, sewing machines, and – make toilet paper. I bet that would have real trade value. And provide gainful work outside of agriculture and defense. Of course, food production and defense take priority. And Cameron – is Cameron here?”
Chino and button-down shirt clad Cameron stood and waved, and got an ovation as well. Father Marks, on Zack’s other side, favored Zack with a beaming smile and bracing hand on his shoulder to keep him quiet.
This first community organizational meeting was Saturday afternoon at St. Mary’s church. Father Marks celebrated Mass at noon for those who wished to come early, and we stayed in the nave for the meeting. It was standing room only, maybe 500 people attending. The church was slick modern, hushed and lovely. It featured giant non-stained windows, a definite plus since the church was still without power. Father Marks held the gavel because it was his place. He would be seen as a neutral authority, devoted to God and community and charity, but not politics.
“Cameron is general manager of the big box hardware store next to Bob’s. The leadership,” I waved up and down the table at our team, “is negotiating with Bob for a line of credit at his store. We’re not ‘liberating’ Cameron’s inventory, mind you – that would be looting. But it is great that we have those construction materials and tools available to us. Thank you for bringing it up!”
“I want to know about all these new people I see moving in,” another heckler belted out. “Who the hell brought them here!”
Zack did, and me. So I dug my fingernails into Zack’s arm as police officer Darren, off to our left down the table, fielded the question, and smoothed ruffled feathers. It’s just amazing how many euphemisms and circumlocutions there are for ‘scary black dudes’ and ‘non-whites’ in the American lexicon. Darren was master of them all. Fortunately, we didn’t have any Muslims in the community to protect.
“But there haven’t been any looters!” someone yelled. That finally roused enough popular interest that we turned to Zack on the dais. Now that’s your cue.
Zack stood and told everyone how his cadre had secured the bridge and the reservoir barricade – they knew that. He introduced all the members of his team present at the meeting. They were about a third black, which went unmentioned. We at the leadership table modeled polite listening and enthusiastic applause, and the crowd practiced following our lead.
“Father Marks, I wanted to give a summary of our actions against looters,” Zack said. “With your permission?”
“I would very much like to hear that, Captain Harkonnen. I think everyone would like to hear that, yes?” Father Marks drummed up a strong round of applause.
So Zack did. Even I was astonished at how many attacks they’d turned back. Even I was silent and rapt as anyone, as Zack told the story of the January 1st double-cross from Global Jihad. Trey Cowan had gone back into East Haven to spot for them, and very nearly got himself killed in the drone strike that took out the looter mob. Shelley wasn’t the only girl in the audience who threw arms around Trey and kissed him. At the end of Zack’s recitation, Father Marks instigated a standing ovation, followed by the rest of us at the table, and then the entire hall.
Inevitably, hecklers demanded to know how Zack had arranged for a drone strike, and other details, but he simply refused. “Look, I won’t tell you operational details. Because they might get my people killed. So that’s final. But I am looking for more volunteers. Please contact me, or any of my people that I introduced, after the meeting.”
I squeezed his hand after he sat down. You did great!
I had to get up later to outline my grand agricultural plan. My proposed agricultural czar was Caruso Farms, down by the reservoir, the only commercial farm in West Totoket. They made most of their money growing flower and vegetable transplants, before. But they had huge greenhouses, and farm market vegetable fields as well. The Carusos coordinated the East Haven farm market, and fully intended to keep doing so. But they were willing to organize a new market in West Totoket as well.
This hadn’t gone over well with Zack’s community garden crowd. But the fact was that we only had experience with home-scale gardening. We needed the Carusos, with their staff of a dozen and their vast commercial-grade greenhouses, to lead us on the road to food self-sufficiency.
In the end, we’d chosen Reverend Connolly to present the toughest sell of the meeting, donating food and supplies to the caches. On both the agricultural initiative and the caches, we made plain that membership was voluntary. But there would be no food distribution to non-members, nor participation in the community workshop, nor help with planting, and so forth. And that a cut of the contributions would be used to support Zack’s defenders.
We gave the community a lot to think about in a couple hours. And we asked them to sign up their intent to become members before they left.
Over 300 households signed up. That was nearly everyone there, considering households who brought more than one person to the meeting. I was impressed.
“Toilet paper?” Zack asked, when the church finally emptied down to just the organizers. “Have you ever made paper?”
“Yes. And I hope to God never to use toilet paper that rough,” I replied. “I’d rather use a wet rag. I just worked with what they gave me, Zack.”
“You said you sucked at politics.”
“No, I said I hated them. Still do. A decade in corporate America will teach you a few tricks, though.” I sighed. “You were fantastic, Zack.”
“Thank you.” Too quietly for the others to overhear, he added, “I hope this means you’re staying to see it through.”
He didn’t give me a chance to reply. He just turned and left, to lead the night shift at the barricades.
I would have loved to leave myself. But I stayed for tea and cookies by candle-light in the gathering night, with the clergymen, the policeman, the farmers, the landlord, the hardware store manager, and the other key lights of the non-military community.
16
In
teresting fact: Though rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere drove greenhouse warming, they never exceeded 500 ppm (parts per million), thanks to the sudden radical decrease in fossil fuel abuse. This was about double the pre-industrial level. But for most people, health and cognitive clarity were not adversely affected until the gas reached 1000 ppm. However, poor ventilation could concentrate the gas indoors, especially on lower floors, and people varied in their susceptibility.
Our boss Dan looked like hell on the video chat. I’d last seen him in Stamford at the Christmas party only a month ago. Then he looked his usual smooth self – well-dressed, well-adjusted middle management, with a sort of humming bland smile. On screen, when we reconvened work for the new year, he looked strung out. He’d lost 10 or 20 pounds, and had purple baggy circles under his eyes. The left side of his face twitched.
This was entirely at odds with what he was saying. Which reminded me of the old quote from Emerson, ‘Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.’ But then, I didn’t believe what he was saying.
“…Ark intake interviews will resume soon. The Stamford office is still closed, but the corporate psychologist will be travelling to a location near you…”
“Sure she will,” commented Mangal, dripping with sarcasm. “Because it’s so much easier for her to travel all over the state than for us to get to Stamford.”