by John Scalzi
I promised myself that I’d be out of the city before the crazy shit started happening.
But as I came out of the old, soot-stained brick buildings and looked out at the empty pavement and weeds in front of me, I wondered if I’d made an empty promise.
The entire tent city had disappeared.
A single, distant figure stood alone in the urban emptiness, as if just waiting for me.
I recognized the lawyer. Even at this distance.
THE lawyer waited for me by his bike, both hands holding his briefcase in front of his waist.
“Mr. Stratton, you are a very persistent man.”
I swung my bat up over my back, letting it hang loose, gripped by my right hand. I wasn’t giving him a hand to shake. “Where’d they all go?”
“Staying in one place invites complacency, and authoritarian response. Takes time to muster the resources to evict a group of our size.”
“But there were thousands of people here, with tents, and avenues between the tents,” I protested. “They can’t just evaporate in a morning when my back’s turned.”
“And yet they did.”
I stood in the concrete emptiness, forced to concede his point. “A well-ordered army, then.”
The lawyer smiled. “Now, Mr. Stratton, you’re getting to the meat of it. Are you intrigued?”
“I want the rest of the money.”
“I know. You willing to follow this all the way, then?”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. But I nodded assent. “I want paid.”
The lawyer leaned in with a tiny black wand, which he waved over my body. Around my collar it beeped, and the lawyer flicked a switch.
A tiny mote on my collar smoldered, then puffed smoke.
“Now that the Eddies can’t follow you, I have a request,” the lawyer said. He produced a dark blue hood.
I stared at the cloth. “You want me to wear that? You think the Eddies can’t just patch into a satellite and find where your mob took off to?”
The lawyer sighed. “Granted. But where in the camp you are will be secret.”
“Yeah, okay.” Here we go. I pulled the hood on. “But I’m keeping the bat,” I said, my voice muffled.
“Whatever you want, Mr. Stratton.” The lawyer sounded bored. He pushed me forward. “There’s a sidecar on my bike, please get in it.”
Why hadn’t he had me sit first before putting the hood on? To mess with my head? “So are you a part of all this, or are you just a turking lawyer?”
I could feel him climbing onto his bike. We jerked into motion. “I’m a part of the project.”
“To destroy the auto-oriented world of Detroit?”
“Among other things, Mr. Stratton. The world cannot continue on its current path.” The lawyer was huffing as he pedaled, getting us up to a quick clip. “We have returned almost to the time of city-states, like the Greeks. Each of these cities has a different past, and set of traditions and patterns set into its habits. Some of these habits have a fundamental impact, however, on citizens elsewhere. If you dump some form of pollution into the air from a smokestack somewhere, and people are affected hundreds of miles away, shouldn’t they have some sort of say? It used to be there were country-wide principals and guidance, but in this day and age, it’s city to city.
“Now, some of us don’t have allegiances to any one city. Particularly those of us old enough to remember nationalism. You know what I’m talking about Stratton, you fought for country, once, not city.”
“Didn’t do much for me,” I muttered. But I remember the days when bunting hung from porches and second floor windows.
“We have no allegiance to country, city, or company. We’re neo-tribalists at best, but even then, not forming around any constitution or hierarchal structure. We’re per-project affiliations, with reputation economics as our bond. Some of us stick from one project to another, others are committed to the larger plan of trying to create substantial memetic change to our urban environments.”
“Like getting rid of cars.”
“That’s a sub-project, one that many have coalesced around. Some of the more enthusiastic, like those who recycled your car. Yes. But the energy use and issues of transportation are realistically a small segment of the greater issue of creating a city, or environment, that is carbon neutral and thus, sustainable. We’re talking about the long term survival of the human species, Mr. Stratton, not just whether you recycle plastic and go to work in the approved transportational manner.”
“I’ve been hearing doom and gloom for a long time,” I grunted. “The end of the world’s always just around the fucking corner.”
“And you think it won’t come?” The lawyer zigged through streets. Some alleys, too, I could tell by the echoes of our voices. “You think civilizations haven’t collapsed? Someone, or something else will come along. They’ll name some streets after us, maybe create a museum. We still find ancient cities by satellite, after the jungle or desert has long since over run them. Why’d they die off? Overuse of the soil, or whatever, or just plain bad planning when it came to picking neighbors. But the point is, their world ended. You can nuke a patch of ground, and the radiation will kill everything. Years later, nature comes back. Generations later, some parts of it are livable. Still doesn’t mean setting a nuclear bomb off in the middle of your living room’s a good idea.”
“Sounds like a lot of drama.”
“We’re sitting on an edge, Mr. Stratton. You’ve seen it all change in your life. The young around us, they’ve only known the slipping and scrabbling, watching energy prices spiral out of control. They’re content to root around in their parents’ and grandparents’ trash to look for whatever they can recover. But you know better. You can feel it, that your life straddled the point where we hit the apex, and then started sliding. Remember when we used to make things.”
I remembered the long factory lines, the smokestacks belching. The rows of gleaming products, sitting perched over enticing price tags, all packaged in sexy gleaming plastics. They made so much you just tossed it all when you were done, because they’d make more.
We descended down a ramp of some sort, and the world grew dark on the outside of my hood. The lawyer slowly came to a stop, and reached over to remove my hood.
“Don’t ask where you are,” he said. “I’m a delivery man, of sorts. Now that I’m here, I can’t leave, but you may have to, and you can’t know where this is. Most of the people in here don’t know where it is. Keeps it safe.”
I clambered out into the barely lit dimness of an industrial warehouse, the windows all blacked out. As my eyes adjusted I realized it was entirely empty.
Until the doors swung open. People wearing large datagoggles over their eyes walked in. I could see that none of them could see where they were, or what was in front of them. But they marched in, like robots, following invisible lines of information.
More came in, carrying chairs, some with desks, that they sat at predetermined points. They swarmed around each other like ants, following some larger pattern of commands.
Maybe hundreds of them had already swarmed in through the room, and most had gone.
Large industrial worklights lit up the inside of the warehouse, and an entire command center’s worth of monitors had been strapped to a large metal trunk at the center, which had been quickly bolted onto the concrete floor.
Thick fiber optic cables ran all over the warehouse, terminating in a large trunk of bound cables that ran to a dish pointed out of one of the windows that had been pulled open.
The entire process had taken five very surreal minutes.
The crowds all evaporated, leaving ten individuals behind. One of them sat in a complex wheelchair that folded around him and held him up at eye level. It whirred and balanced, and trailed cables behind it.
Inside the wheelchair, the gray-skinned man moved closer to me. Sunken eye sockets, lids stitched closed, and plastic-looking cheekbones. One missing arm, with what was left
plugged into a socket on the chair. No legs; they were hidden in the depths of the chair.
One ear was missing as well, replaced with a metallic ovoid sitting over that with three blue lights steadily on.
“Mr. Stratton, I’m afraid we’ve been recruiting you,” the man in front of me said. The wheelchair raised a bit higher so his face was level with mine. A small pair of cameras on his shoulder adjusted their focus with a faint whirr.
“Someone tipped off the Eddies that I was watching them. And someone didn’t pay the other half of what I was expecting.” For some reason, I’d been allowed to keep the bat. But bashing on a man with no legs, one arm, and no eyes was not going to be part of today’s equation.
“Guilty as charged. Mr. Stratton, we’re looking for a leader, someone who knows the area, and someone who has a good sense of the Edgewater contractors here. There are a number of candidates, but you’re a service man with a record, and a good idea of what we’ll be facing.”
“Listen…” I wasn’t sure how to ask after his name, so I floundered for a second.
“My tag is Mock Turtle, the community moderator for this project.” Mock Turtle. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that. An amusing name for a man who was as much machine. He saw my amusement through his camera and nodded. “Yes. I do find some humor in my situation. The alternative was despair.”
“Okay, Mr. Turtle. The lawyer pitched me hard on your cause.” I looked around the warehouse. “I’m not interested. If people want to bike and walk the town, that’s their thing. I’m not getting involved in some riot.”
The wheelchair backed away. “We’re not, as such, asking you to volunteer. We’re willing to pay for your services. And settle up on what you think we still owe you.”
Now we were talking. “I’m listening.”
“An apartment in downtown Detroit. Maybe even continuing work as security for it.”
“A lease? How long, and how much?”
The ruin of a man in front of me chuckled. “You’re not paying close enough attention, Mr. Stratton. See, at first, we weren’t sure who we’d pick, or hire, to run the street side of this project. But then, you showed up, turking for us. It was a sign. Who better to run this than someone like you, down on your luck and needing the help? When you started snooping around, well, we had to bring you in. We’re offering you an apartment. A whole apartment.”
I stared. Like I said, there were some that would give their left nut for downtown space.
I included myself in that list.
“So you’re going to riot to turn this into a car-free city. And you need my help.” Too good to be true, it all was. And if there was one thing I learned in life, it was a little suspicion. “No way a downtown apartment’s worth it for my help. You’ve already got an army, well-trained, you showed it off when you set all this up in here a few minutes ago.”
The Mock Turtle spread his one arm. I recognized what those scars came from: a landmine. Boston, or DC, I wondered. “You’re right. It’s not just the cars. That’s a diversion. An important issue, yes. But we’re involved in some urban renewal as well.”
Which is where the apartment offer came from. They’d paid Maggie to try and overnight, I remembered. I could put a few things together. “You going to try to occupy the Slumps, are you?” All these nomads, they were going to settle in, try and reclaim some of these buildings.
I could have laughed.
“Not really, Mr. Stratton. It’s…more complicated than that. We make no guarantees, but I will put a good faith payment up in escrow right…now. Consider it a down payment on the apartment. We need a dedicated team of protestors to keep the Edgewater contractors busy, but the protest cannot get to the size that the military is called in. You have to both keep the protest in line, and keep it out of the Edgewater’s reach. It’ll be a delicate balance. If it works, and if our project works in the meantime, you’ll have an apartment of your own.
“If the project fails, you’re one of several people offered large cash payouts for your services on the ground, rather than volunteering your time. You will still get an equivalent pay. We are fair people, we depend on our word and reputations.”
Down the rabbit hole, off to meet the Mock Turtle, and now to engage in even more silliness.
But these mad hatters were certainly offering cold cash. I checked my phone, and the bank confirmed an escrow offer.
“The Edgewater guys, no deadly violence, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m your guy.”
Mock Turtle smiled. “Welcome aboard, Colonel Stratton.”
I cringed. “That’s why you came to me?”
“Of course. Welcome to Starship Detroit.”
“You have a silly name,” I said.
“You might not think so when we’re done,” said the strange man in the wheelchair.
I was in the heart of the sleeping dragon I’d sensed curled up in the darkness, the thing that S. Whatten feared.
I was deep into the crazy shit.
CMO S. Whatten, in his permanently wrinkle-free working suit, looked surprised. “Didn’t think you’d show back up.”
“Didn’t think I’d be back.” I handed him a receipt. “I refunded your payment. There’ll be a claim on the car. It was wrecked.”
Whatten took a sip of coffee, and looked down the street at the pair of men who’d biked me over to the compound. “Stratton. Colonel. I’m considering calling in reinforcements, or at least talking to the Edgewater board. I’m guessing that there are thousands of these people lurking around the city.”
“I think you’re overestimating,” I replied. He wasn’t, he was way, way underestimating.
“We tried to get satellite pictures of their camp from the other night, but someone has blocked it. A clever trick. I don’t know the size of my enemy, or their nature. And now they have a known counter turk-army specialist. You spent years taking down networked insurgencies, Stratton. Overseas. Now, if I didn’t know better, you seem to be working for one.”
I leaned forward, until my face was just an inch from the chicken wire and bars. “They are eco-freaks, Whatten. They applied for a protest license.”
“No one gets that anymore.” The right to assemble and protest had long since been finessed into oblivion. Didn’t stop them from happening, just meant you had no right to do it.
“I know. So they’re going to go ahead with it anyway.”
“And we’ll have to stop it. I’ll need reinforcements. Tell me why I shouldn’t bump this up?”
“A gentlemen’s agreement,” I said. “I promise that the protest will not exceed a number. How many can the local Eddies and their compounds handle?”
Whatten chuckled. “I tell you that and you deploy a larger number and I’m up the creek.” He sipped from his mug.
“Whatten, I shit you not, I’m trying to do you a favor. These are people who’re going to do this one way or another, but they’re scared of you. Remember fighting for country, the way things used to be? That’s what they’re after. The right to express dissatisfaction without getting a skull cracked. They hired me to keep it civil, keep things from getting crazy, because I have that expertise. Now, I could hire toughs to keep a barrier going between us, could get snipers up on the roofs, could make for some real ugly back and forths, but I just want to make an easy buck. We keep it small, balanced, and you get to round up some easy fines. They get to make their point. I get to make some serious cash from these hippies. One grunt to another, Whatten, let’s make this easy.”
I watched the gears turn. “You really think this’ll go down that easy?”
“Do you want the board staring down too close into your operation? You want them calling in military? National coverage of the event? Serious battle?”
Whatten looked off in the distance. “Some of my men are a bit jumpy by now.”
“Control them. Offer them bonuses for a calm day of rounding up these guys. Tell them chaos is not welcome. Tell th
em anything you want, but tell me what your threshold is for kicking the protest upstairs.”
“I see more than three hundred people I’m calling in reinforcements,” Whatten said.
“I’ll keep it to half that.”
“Half that?” Whatten looked incredulous. “It’s not going to be a protest, it’ll be a lunch date with a bad ending.”
“Half. Thank you, Whatten.”
“Call me Samuel. If it goes the way you say, I’ll even shake your hand when it’s all done. But Stratton…fellow grunt or not, we’re going to round people up. And if it gets big, it’s going to hit the fan. It isn’t just my men who’re jumpy. I’m getting it too. I’ll call the second it looks odd.”
“I know.” I handed Samuel Whatten my phone number. “We’ll keep in touch. Keep the lines open. The air clear. Just in case.”
I walked back down the street, blinking in the morning sun. Charlie, the bike enthusiast, waited for me.
“So?”
“The Eddies can handle a hundred protestors.”
“Damn it.” Charlie hit his bike handles in frustration. “There is no way we can shut Detroit down with a hundred protestors.”
I smiled. “We have an hour to do it, and then we have to keep doing it for twenty four hours. Come on Charlie, don’t you believe in the vision enough to trust me?”
He just stared at me.
I laughed. “We’ll need far more than a hundred people. We’ll need thousands and thousands.”
“But we’re trying to avoid getting the military to come out after us,” Charlie said.
“No more than a hundred can gather and protest. But the rest of the city is still a tool, Charlie. They still have eyes.”
Charlie was frustrated that the citizens of the city wouldn’t work to change their paradigms.
But they would.
You just had to turk them out in just the right way.
DETROIT. Late morning. The first dry run I chose was near Grand Circus Park, a big intersection near a rundown, gothic-looking church. A set of roads ran semicircle around a portion of the intersection as well.