by Dave Eggers
—Very impressive, Alan said. He looked for Yousef, who was roaming the lobby. Alan caught his eye, urged him into the room, but Yousef shook his head quickly, dismissing the thought.
—This is where we are right now, Mujaddid said.
Mujaddid nodded to a building directly below his nose, which looked precisely like the one he was standing in, though this one was the size of a grape. On the model, it stood on a long promenade running along the waterfront. Suddenly a laser’s red dot appeared on its second story, as if a spacecraft had targeted it for disintegration.
Alan finished his juice, and then had nowhere to put his glass. There was no table, and the man with the platter had disappeared. With his sleeve, he dried the bottom of his glass and placed it on the surface of what he took to be the Red Sea, about a half mile from shore. Sayed smiled politely, took the glass, and left the room.
Mujaddid smiled grimly. —Should we see a film?
Alan and Yousef were led into a high-ceilinged ballroom, bright with mirrors and gold leaf, where a series of yellow couches, arranged in rows, faced a giant screen covering one full wall. They sat down and the room darkened.
A woman’s voice began speaking in a clipped British accent.
‘Inspired by the exemplary leadership and far-reaching vision of King Abdullah…’ A computer-generated version of the city model appeared, now animated and glowing at night. The camera swooped down and over a gorgeous mountain range of black glass and lights. ‘We present the dawn of the world’s next great economic city…’
Alan looked to Yousef. He wanted Yousef to be impressed. The movie must have cost millions. Yousef was scrolling through messages on his phone.
‘…to diversify the Middle East’s largest economy…’
Soon it was daytime at KAEC, at street level, and there were speed-boats careening through the canals, businessmen shaking hands by the water, container ships arriving at the ports, presumably sending out the many products manufactured at KAEC.
‘Inter-Arab financial cooperation…’
A series of flags appeared, representing Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the UAE. There was a segment on the mosque that would be built, one that could accommodate two hundred thousand worshipers at once. A brief shot of a college lecture hall, women on one side of the classroom and men on the other.
‘A twenty-four-hour city…’
A port that could process ten million containers annually. A dedicated hajj terminal that could process three hundred thousand pilgrims a season. A giant sports complex that would open like a clamshell.
Now Yousef was interested. He leaned over to Alan. —A stadium shaped like a vagina. Not bad.
Alan wasn’t laughing. He was sold. The film was spectacular. It looked like the greatest city since Paris. Alan saw Reliant’s role in it all: data transport, video, phones, networked transportation, RFID tagging for shipping containers, technology in the hospitals, schools, courtrooms. The possibilities were endless, beyond even what he or Ingvall or anyone else had even imagined. Finally the film reached its crescendo, the camera lifting skyward to reveal the whole of the King Abdullah Economic City at night, glittering, fireworks blooming over it all.
The lights came up.
Again they were in a showroom of mirrors and yellow couches.
—Not bad? Mujaddid said.
—Not bad at all, Alan said.
He looked to Yousef, whose expression was blank. If he had a joke to make, doubts to express, and it seemed he did, he knew better than to do so now, in this room, with the lights on.
—Let’s see the model of the industrial district, Sayed said.
They were soon in a room filled with drawings of factories, warehouses, trucks being loaded and unloaded. The idea, Sayed explained, was that they would be manufacturing things that used Saudi oil — plastics, toys, even diapers — and shipping them all over the Middle East. Maybe Europe and the United States too.
—I understand you were in manufacturing for a time? Sayed asked.
Alan was at a loss.
—We do our research, Mr. Clay. And I owned a Schwinn as a kid. I lived in New Jersey for about five years. When I was in business school, Schwinn was one of our case studies.
Always the case studies. Alan had participated in a few of them, but after a while it was too depressing. The questions from those wise-ass students masquerading as earnest young go-getters. Why didn’t you anticipate the popularity of BMX bikes? And what about mountain bikes? You got murdered there. Was it a mistake to have shopped out all the labor to China? This coming from kids whose experience with business was summer lawn-cutting. How did your suppliers become your competitors? That was a rhetorical question. You want your unit cost down, you manufacture in Asia, but pretty soon the suppliers don’t need you, do they? Teach a man to fish. Now the Chinese know how to fish, and ninety-nine percent of all bicycles are being made there, in one province.
—It was interesting for a period, though, wasn’t it, Sayed said, when you had the Schwinns made in Chicago, the Raleighs made in England, the Italian bikes, the French… For a time you had real international competition, where you were choosing between very different products with very different heritages, sensibilities, manufacturing techniques…
Alan remembered. Those were bright days. In the morning he’d be at the West Side factory, watching the bikes, hundreds of them, loaded onto trucks, gleaming in the sun in a dozen ice-cream colors. He’d get in his car, head downstate, and in the afternoon he could be in Mattoon or Rantoul or Alton, checking on a dealership. He’d see a family walk in, Mom and Dad getting their ten-year-old daughter a World Sport, the kid touching the bike like it was some holy thing. Alan knew, and the retailer knew, and the family knew, that that bike had been made by hand a few hundred miles north, by a dizzying array of workers, most of them immigrants — Germans, Italians, Swedes, Irish, plenty of Japanese and of course a slew of Poles — and that that bike would last more or less forever. Why did this matter? Why did it matter that they had been made just up Highway 57? It was hard to say. But Alan was good at his job. Not such a difficult job, to sell something like that, something solid that would be integral to a thousand childhood memories.
—Well, that’s gone, Alan said, hoping to be finished with it.
Sayed was not finished.
—Now it’s a matter of putting different stickers on the same bikes. They’re all built in the same handful of factories — every brand you can think of.
Alan didn’t have much to say. He agreed with Sayed. He wanted to continue the tour, but the business student in Sayed was deep in his case study.
—Do you ever feel like you might have done it differently?
—Me? Personally?
—Well, whatever part you might have played. Might it have worked out differently? Was there a way Schwinn might have survived?
Might have. Might have. Alan parsed the words. He would bludgeon the man if he used these words again.
Sayed was waiting for an answer.
—It was complicated, Alan mumbled.
Alan had gotten this before, too. People felt nostalgic about Schwinn. They thought that somehow it must have all been squandered by a bunch of imbeciles running the brand, imbeciles like him. How could a company like Schwinn, which owned the majority of the U.S. market for about eighty years, have gone bankrupt, sold to Trek for next to nothing? How was it possible? Well, how was it not possible? The men behind Schwinn had tried to continue making bikes in the U.S. According to some, that was mistake No. 1. They hung on in Chicago till 1983. Alan wanted to shake this MBA prick. Do you know how hard it was to hold out even that long? To try to make bicycles, very complicated and labor-intensive machines, on the West Side of Chicago, in a hundred-year-old factory, until 1983?
—Alan?
Alan looked up. It was Yousef.
—The tour’s moving on. You want to come? Might you want to come?
Sayed was standing at the end of the hall.
—Let’s go upstairs, he said.
Two flights of steps and they found themselves above the city-in-the-making. The observation room afforded 360-degree views, and Alan paced along the windows. It was raw, yes, but from this vantage point the city was beautiful. Now it made sense. The Red Sea was turquoise, a light ripple from a gentle wind bringing the tide in. The sand was almost white, very fine. A tiled promenade snaked into the distance, dividing the oceanfront from the pink condominium and what Alan could now see were the foundations for at least a few more. Palm trees were planted throughout the development, and lined the nearest canal, sky-blue and clean, taking in water from the sea and cutting through the city, heading east. What had seemed like utter failure from the road into the city seemed, now, entirely on target. The place was bustling, workers everywhere in their primary-colored jumpsuits, the place getting built. Any investors seeing the project from this vantage point would be convinced that it was being completed with great taste and with what Alan, at least, saw as admirable speed.
—You like it? Mujaddid asked.
—I do, Alan said. Look at that. All cities need rivers.
—Indeed, Mujaddid said.
Yousef was looking through the glass, too, his face stripped of cynicism. He seemed to be enjoying the sight without guile.
Sayed and Mujaddid led Alan and Yousef to an elevator. They dropped down two floors, and when the doors opened, they were in an underground garage.
—This way.
Sayed led him to an SUV. They stepped in. It smelled new. They drove up a ramp and into the light again. A hard left took them toward the water, and seconds later, the car stopped.
—Here we are, Mujaddid said.
They had driven two hundred yards. Before them was an enormous tent, white and taut, the kind used for weddings and festivals.
—Thank you, Alan said, stepping back into the heat.
—So we’ll see you at 3 p.m.? Sayed said.
At some point there must have been some mention of an appointment.
—Yes, Alan said. In the main building, or the welcome center?
—It will be in the main building, Sayed said. With Karim al-Ahmad. He is your primary contact.
Alan stood before the tent, puzzled. There was a vinyl door.
—My people are in there? he asked.
—Yes, Mujaddid said, his face without doubt or apology.
—In a tent, Alan said.
It seemed impossible. Alan was sure there had been a mistake.
—Yes, Mujaddid said. Your presentation will be made in the presentation tent. I trust you will find everything you need inside.
And he closed the door to the car, and was off.
Alan turned to Yousef.
—I’m sure you can leave now.
—You have a way to get home?
—Yeah, there’s a van or something.
They settled on a price, and Alan paid him. Yousef wrote a string of digits down on a business card.
—In case you miss the shuttle again, he said.
They shook hands.
Yousef raised his eyebrows at the tent.
—Full steam ahead, he said, and was gone.
VII.
IN THE TENT, Alan saw no one. The space was vast and empty, smelling of sweat and plastic. The floor was covered with Persian rugs, dozens of them overlapping. About thirty folding chairs were spread around as if there had been a wedding here and the guests had just left. A stage stood on one end of the tent, where Alan’s team would assemble the speakers and projectors.
In a far corner of the tent, shadowy and crouching, he could make out three figures, each staring into the grey screens of their laptops. He walked toward them.
—There he is! a voice boomed.
It was Brad. He was in khakis and a crisp white shirt, his sleeves rolled up. He stood to shake Alan’s hand, and did his best to bend the bones within. With his short, stocky build, legs almost bowed, he looked like a wrestling coach.
—Hey Brad. Good to see you.
Rachel and Cayley rose. They had shed their abayas, and they greeted Alan barefoot, in shorts and tank tops. The tent was air-conditioned but had not reached anything like a comfortable level. All three young people were glistening.
They waited for Alan to say something. He had no idea what would be expected. He knew these young people only glancingly. They had met briefly, three months ago, in Boston, at the insistence of Eric Ingvall. Plans were made, and duties explained, timelines and goals. They had been given papers to sign, waivers required by the Kingdom, stating that they would all abide by the rules of the KSA, and that if they broke a law and were convicted, they were subject to the same punishments as anyone else. The waiver pointedly listed execution among the outcomes for certain crimes, including adultery, and they had all signed with a certain giddiness.
—You guys doing okay out here? Alan asked.
He could manage nothing better. He was still trying to process the fact that they were all in a tent.
—It’s fine, but we can’t get a wi-fi signal, Cayley said.
—We get a faint one from the Black Box, Brad added, throwing his head toward the 7/24/60 office building that stood on higher ground. They’d already devised a nickname for it.
—Who put you in the tent? Alan asked.
Cayley answered. —When we got here, they said the presentations would be made here.
—In a tent.
—I guess so.
—Did they say anything to you, Rachel ventured, about why, you know, we’re out here? As opposed to in the actual main building?
—Not to me they didn’t, Alan said. Maybe all the vendors will be out here.
Alan had expected a dozen or so other companies, busy with preparations, frenzied activity in anticipation of a royal visit. But to be out here, alone, in a dark tent — Alan couldn’t figure it out.
—I guess that makes sense, Rachel said, chewing the inside of her mouth. But we’re the only ones here.
—Maybe we’re just first, Alan said, trying to maintain some levity.
—Just weird being Reliant and being out here, right? Brad wondered. He was a company man, a thoroughly competent young person who had likely never, in his life thus far, had to depart from the playbook he’d been given and had memorized.
—This is a new city. Uncharted territory, right? Alan said. You ask anyone about the wi-fi? he asked.
—Not yet, Cayley said. We figured we’d wait for you.
—And we did have a decent signal for a while, Rachel added. With that, she floated back to the far end of the tent, as if suspecting that the signal, now that it was being talked about, would reappear.
Alan looked at Cayley’s computer, saw the signal’s concentric curves, most of them gray, not black. For a holographic presentation they needed a hard line, and if not that, a massive signal, nothing faint or poached.
—Well, I guess I’ll have to ask about this. You start on setting up the rest of the equipment?
—No, not yet, Brad said, wincing. We were kind of hoping that this was a temporary situation. The presentation won’t work nearly as well out here.
—You’ve been here just looking for a signal?
—So far, Cayley said, now seeming to realize that they might have been doing more.
From the darkness at the other end, Rachel chimed in. —We did have a decent one for a while.
—Right. About an hour ago, Cayley added.
VIII.
THERE HAD TO BE some reason Alan was here. Why he was in a tent a hundred miles from Jeddah, yes, but also why he was alive on Earth? Very often the meaning was obscured. Very often it required some digging. The meaning of his life was an elusive seam of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long.
Charlie Fallon’s death made the news all over the country. He stepped into the lake in the morning, fully clothed.
Alan saw him only ankle-deep and thought not much of it. The Transcendentalist was getting muddy.
Alan drove on.
But Charlie stepped in deeper. He did it slowly. Other neighbors saw him up to his knees, his waist. No one said anything.
Finally he was standing with the water at his chest and Lynn Maggliano called the police. They came, and the fire department came, too. They stood on the shore and they yelled to him. They told him to come back. But no one went to get him.
Later the police and firemen said that due to budget cuts, they hadn’t been trained for rescues like this. If they went in after him, it would have been a big liability issue. And besides, they said, the man was standing up. He seemed fine.
Finally a high school girl paddled out in an innertube. When she reached Charlie Fallon, he was was blue and unresponsive.
She screamed. The police and firemen got their tools and dragged him in. They worked on his chest but he was dead.
—Alan?
Brad was looking at him, concerned.
—Yes, Alan said. Let’s have a look outside.
He walked toward the entrance. Rachel and Cayley made a move to follow, but Brad stopped them.
—You shouldn’t be seen outside dressed the way you are, he said.
They said they were happy to stay inside, where it was cool.
Alan and Brad walked out together. They squinted into the sun and heat, looking around for any evidence of a tower or cable apparatus.
—Over there, Brad said, pointing to the pink condominium, a small satellite dish attached to its side.
They walked to it.
—What are we looking for here? Alan asked.
Brad was the engineer, so Alan hoped to defer to him in matters of technology.
—I guess to see if it’s plugged in? Brad said.