###
--Joint Defense Conference Center, Utopia, May 23, 2054, 11:45 PM--
After I spent the three days leading up to the “surprise” attack exploring the society of Utopia (which was nearly indistinguishable from American cities, except for a few cases in which inconveniences and problems I thought were just part of city life were noticeably absent), I was retrieved by Peter to head to the conference center again. It seemed the United States’ attack was about to begin and I was to be given a front row seat to the headquarters of the defensive forces.
As I arrived, the alarm sounded signifying the first detected missile launches directed at Utopia. Clearly, this was coincided to roughly match the first bombing run, as the radars were also blaring about incoming planes. Yet it seemed everyone in the room was possessed of an intense calm as they went about their business.
I expected the bombs and missiles to hit any moment destroying various critical infrastructure and defense targets in the vicinity. Strangely, though, all I heard was a few far away explosions – almost like fireworks – and then a roar of cheering went through the room.
“Try all you like, you fools, but nothing moving faster than a swallow is going to get through those energy shields!” shouted Mr. Nicholas. Clearly, his company had taken their name literally and built actual energy shields designed to rebuff kinetic weapons. Amazing technology!
“Sir, I’m happy to report that there are only a couple of acts of sabotage being confirmed,” reported an officer running into the room. “It seems most of the Seal and Ranger teams they sent in here were caught when they got here from the United States.”
“Excellent,” declared Mr. Rafferty. “Surely, by now they are realizing there isn’t much they can do to hurt us. People pay us instead of possible competition for a reason!”
“Particularly with my Beardless battlemechs meeting the basic military incursion on the front lines,” Captain Nobeard chimed. “How can a mechanized infantry stand up against an apparently limitless supply of heavily-armed robotic infantry? They don’t stand a chance. Hopefully, the Americans give up soon so casualties are minimized on their side. I’d prefer we didn’t have to defend ourselves like this. Such a bloody wasteful business.”
“Sir, it looks like they are indeed retreating!” reported another officer, this one manning the report systems of the battlemech network. “Should we send the mechs to follow?”
“No, they’re strictly for defense. We don’t want to get pulled into a trap or anything. Hold position.”
“Uh, I hate to bring this up, but I highly doubt the President is going to accept an ineffectual strike and just give up,” I practically shouted in alarm. “They’ve just retreated and American indoctrination has consistently repeated that the failure twenty years ago was because of an unwillingness to do ‘what was necessary’. I can only think of one thing that could be coming next. A nuclear strike is in the works.”
As I suspected, that very moment the satellite detection systems indicated that silos outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming were opening and nuclear missile launches were being prepared. Meanwhile, the leaders of the various defense companies in the room expressed shock and disbelief. Rapidly, however, they leapt into action to defend their customers in Utopia.
“We cannot let that nuke hit,” shouted Mr. Rafferty. “Our job is to protect these people. Quickly, what can we do to stop it?!”
“My energy shields will protect us, but only once I fear,” responded Mr. Nicholas, reservedly. “The EMP from a nuclear explosion would wreak havoc – there would be no guarantee the shields would stay up and work as expected. And our infrastructure would be damaged, as well as Nobeard’s mechs. No way to really manage any of that, or even predict the fallout.”
“If we really must, I have a satellite network that can take down the missiles in their silos, but doing so would blow up half the US Midwest,” responded Nobeard. “Doing so would kill millions and put us in far greater danger besides after it gets spun around to be us starting the nuclear war in the press. There’s got to be an alternative.”
Rafferty and the others mulled over the situation swiftly, knowing there were only seconds before the first launch would force their hand. Almost immediately, an idea popped into Rafferty’s head and he jumped into action.
“Nobeard, I’m going to need to use your laser system,” he shouted. “Don’t question it. There’s just not enough time. Trust me on this one. I’m going to blow up that missile where no one will be seriously harmed.”
He commandeered the console where the missile tracking systems were reporting to and quickly connected them to the laser defense system through the network. As the first nuclear missile launched, he tracked it for a few seconds before firing the laser. High over Kansas, the nuke detonated sending shockwaves and the electromagnetic pulse throughout the American Midwest. The United States went dark. A few moments went by to confirm no more missiles were launched before the tension was released in the room. The fight was over.
As the celebration began, I offered an “official” US surrender to the Utopian forces. Not that it mattered much. The secessions that started this whole thing would continue as before, if not accelerated now that the power grid and electronics of the United States (its Achilles heel for at least the last half century or so) had been wiped out by their own nuclear device. With the world’s only “superpower” wiped out by its own folly and an ever-growing society dedicated to individual sovereignty, I finally felt peace had a chance in this world. And that, my friends, was worth celebrating.
THE GARDEN
AND THE MARKET
BY
RICHARD WALSH
The crossing at the border from the Minneapolis Urban Management Zone was a four-lane road manned by two pairs of patrol agents. It had been built beneath an old super-highway-overpass, the type of 20th century infrastructure that government planners now left to deteriorate.
Simon Chase stepped out of the small city-licensed cab that had brought him here, swiped the fare payment, and approached on foot. He presented his visa. Despite the autumn cold the teenaged guards manning the checkpoint were outside, wrapped in police parkas.
“Enjoy your educational tour,” remarked one, marking Simon’s visa with an old-fashioned red pen. “One of the gypsy carts will take you into Fridley.” He motioned for Simon to continue through on foot.
Simon walked for ten meters beneath the overpass, emerging to a flat, rutted expanse of concrete. On one side a motley row of vehicles were lined up. Some were small and plastic, not unlike the city-approved cab that had delivered him to the checkpoint, but many appeared much older: loud, metal, gasoline powered.
He slowly approached a boxy van in the center of the line, where a short, bearded man stood and watched for arrivals from Minneapolis.
“How far to the Freehold?” asked Simon.
“Talk to her,” said the driver, pointing to his right, to the end of the row of vehicles.
“Why?”
“She’s up first. FIFO.”
That made sense, so Simon walked down the line to the first cab. A middle-aged woman was seated inside an ancient station-wagon-style car, complete with wood paneling on the outside and seating for eight within.
“You go to the Freehold?” said Simon.
“Of course. It’s a ‡200 fare.”
“Fine.” Simon shuffled his feet, unsure about next steps.
“Get in,” said the driver. She started the car, which purred rather than roared, a surprise given its age. Simon pulled open the back door behind the driver side and climbed in, his pack on his lap. There did not appear to be any safety harnesses available. He patted the seat and then tugged at the seat cushion behind him, in search of one. The driver mumbled something.
“What was that?” asked Simon.
“Just drop you at the central market?”
“I guess. Is that where visitors tend to start?”
The driver didn’t respond – she didn’
t appear to broker much for chit-chat – but just put the car in gear and headed north, out of the lot. In the disorientation of the checkpoint and the stress of getting the cab, Simon had forgotten the first of his personal Rules of Journalism: Everyone a Subject.
He needed to take his mind off his vulnerability, riding alone in the back bench seat of this station wagon, far outside the safe confines of the urban zone.
They were northbound on some old highway, a remnant of the time before the planning initiatives had reorganized the populace into the Urban Management Zones. A century prior, during the time of sprawl, people had lived out here in flat, inefficient neighborhoods connected by a web of asphalt roads and dirty internal combustion engines.
Great walls had been built aside the widest of the roads to insulate nearby homes from the noise of the traffic. Towering wooden posts, thick as concrete pylons, were driven deep into the group: three meters at least, below the frost line, where they would be unaffected by the shifts of the tundra during the winter.
Four decades of disrepair had eroded the walls between, and the neighborhoods beyond had fallen into ruin, but those great posts still towered over the ancient highway, like a row of skeletal fingers spread toward the sky.
The road they travelled, like the parking lot at the checkpoint, had been rutted and pockmarked by deterioration. But it showed evidence of repair: shades of black where fresh tar had patched holes and signage directing drivers to one side of the road or the other.
“Who repairs the road?” Simon asked, finally overcoming his nerves. He was a journalist, after all.
“The road’s owners,” the driver replied.
“The road’s owners?” Simon repeated. “How can someone own a road?”
“Sounds like this is your first time to the Freehold,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re about to learn,” she took her foot off the gas and glanced at him in the rearview mirror, “that someone can own anything.”
They slowed as they approached a wide intersection. They turned left, wound slowly through a block of shanty houses and came to a stop before a non-descript two story building. It had perhaps once been a townhome, though the buildings on either side had been left in disrepair.
A sign hung over the front entrance of the building. The scripts of six languages were scrawled in rows: Simon recognized Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin. The top was English: BRIO’S MARKET TOURS & MONEY CHANGES
“I don’t need a tour,” he said to the driver. Best not to draw attention to himself with a tour guide.
“Whatever you say,” she said. “How do you intend to pay?”
“You take Ameros?”
“Of course. That was our deal. ‡200. But not everyone in the market does. You’d best change out some of those national electronic credits for some actual physical money. Brio’s is a good place to start.”
Simon handed her his cred stick, permissioned to pay out the ‡200 fare.
“Thank you kindly,” she said. “There’s a return lot on the west side of the market. And remember to take the first vehicle in line. That’s the rule.”
“Who enforces that rule?” he asked, remembering his third Rule of Journalism: One More Question
“We enforce it,” she said. She handed him back the cred stick.
He pushed open his door, thanked her, and pulled out his pack. Across the road was a wall of trucks and haphazard fencing, and – beyond that – Simon could see the slow movement of pedestrians and bicycles. The market.
A boy, a ten year old with a stocking cap that barely contained his black hair, emerged from the money change office and invited him in. A money changer – Brio, perhaps - stood behind the counter of the unheated office. The current exchange rates to “Freehold dollars” were posted on a board behind him. Wires and cabling hung from the ceiling and the walls, connected to a block of computers and inscrutable electronic boxes. A cacophony of antiques and improvised technology.
Simon paid for $100 of Freehold money, paying over ‡2,000. The shop keeper handed him a stack of thin $1 coins. They were stamped by the “Agora Currency Authority.”
“Who mints these?” he asked. The coins felt so substantive in his hands.
“We do,” said the shop keeper. “You can use your Ameros, too, at some of the vendors. But they’ll charge a fee for the exchange.”
Simon dropped the coins into his waist pocket.
“Want to see the market now?” asked the black-haired boy. “You can see it from the roof. Follow me.”
They ascended two flights of stairs, the second more narrow than the first, and emerged on a flat platform on the roof of the building. Only thirty feet high, but the view into the market was panoramic: trucks and stalls, arranged in loosely organized squares. Two wide avenues trifurcated the buildings into three broad zones, but otherwise there was no rhyme nor reason Simon could ascertain. Narrow aisles crisscrossed one another. Smoke rose from some of the stands, and loose circles of tables or chairs provided impromptu dining areas for customers. Carts and rickshaws wound through ramshackle kiosks and cargo vans doubling as storefronts.
The market stretched left and right several blocks in either direction. The complexity of it, the anarchy, made Simon’s head swim.
He checked behind him to make sure no one else had followed them, extracted his camera from his pack, and began to take pictures of the chaos. He had his orders: to investigate the central market of the Fridley Freehold.
###
The first scoop of Simon Chase's young journalist career had come the week before his trip to Fridley. This just two months after he’d received his first assignment on the Homeland Security desk of CommUnity, the official news service of the national government in Chicago.
He had been escorted to a conference room on the 134th floor of Nicollet Tower to meet two officers from the Anti-Insurgency Office. They were uniformed, all ribbons and spit and polish. One wore a black crew cut and spoke like a Midwesterner. The other had a blonde crew cut and a brusque northeastern accent.
“I know your brother,” said the black-haired Midwesterner, Lt. Kramarczuk. “Captain Chase.”
Simon nodded. “Martin.”
“He told us you’d be interested in a story. We’re always looking for good press contacts for the AIO.”
The AIO. The Anti-Insurgency Office.
The blonde one, Lt. Mackey, explained the situation. The police were planning an incursion into what squatters called the “Fridley Freehold.”
For five years the Freehold had stood on the north edge of Minneapolis, just outside of the city limits. There, beyond the borders of the city, it had grown like a patch of weeds on the edge of a garden; not producing any of the red, ripe fruit of management and order, but nonetheless thriving in a tangle of lush, useless greenery.
On the one hand, government leaders worried that an incursion to dismantle the settlement would signal an admission of failure, that their policy of starving the squatters out had failed.
But to allow the illegal settlement to continue growing raised a different risk: insurgency. The longer the infection of radicalism was allowed to fester there, untreated, the more difficult it would be to ultimately extract it.
And so, Lt. Mackey explained in his machine-gun manner, the AIO would cut down the insurgency in Fridley before it could take root. Cut it down before it could feed on the poverty and anarchy that reigned in the settlement.
Simon Chase had a critical role to play in the operation.
###
The market was organized, if that was the term, as a grid.
After an hour of wandering, Simon found the administrative hub: a handful of semi-permanent buildings on the north edge of the market. These were the remnants of a strip mall, apparently repurposed by the market. Sellers and buyers started their days there, checking in for the day or consulting an ad hoc directory of goods and services.
Simon watched late-arriving vendors scrawl their n
ames and grid locations on simple white magnets, which were then affixed to a high metal board by a willowy woman in a colorful woven dress.
He took a few quick pictures and then scanned the board for anything of interest. “Gustav W – medicinal herbs – grid 4, block 2A, south aisle,” he read to himself.
“You can set your HUD’s positioning to the market grid,” said someone behind him. He turned to look. It was a woman in her twenties, his age. She was brunette, with round cheeks and a sprinkle of freckles. She had bright blue eyes.
“How do you know I haven’t already?” he said.
“Because it’s your first time here. Your HUD’s probably off.”
“It isn’t. I’m on my way to Gustav’s.” He pointed up toward the name on the board. “He’s typically my first stop of each trip.”
“I don’t think you’d know what to do with Gustav’s herb once you found it.”
“Wouldn’t I smoke it?”
“That’s one possibility. But that’d be missing half the point of a product that does so much more if properly used.” She raised an eyebrow.
He had underestimated how much he stood out here. He had no idea what she was talking about and said so. “How’d you know it’s my first time here?” he asked finally.
“You’re not used to being outside the city limits,” she said. “You strut about like someone who thinks he’s being monitored.”
She waved about the room, at the bustle of vendors and visitors; the volume rose and fell as the cadence of a hundred individual conversations dovetailed and then separated. Even the administrative offices of the Freehold market were chaotic.
“No one’s monitoring you in Fridley,” she said. “You’re free here.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not free.”
Anarchy Rising: The Clarion Call, Vol 1 (Volume 1) Page 10