Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

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  For Samuel

  What quality soever maketh a man beloved, or feared of many; or the reputation of such quality, is power; because it is a means to have the assistance and service of many.

  —Thomas Hobbes

  America doesn’t deserve its military.

  —Emma Sky

  CHAPTER 1

  DEFY.

  Sleepy and half-drunk, Sebastian Rios tried to reason with the message carved into the wall of the subway tunnel. He’d spent the evening with friends and coworkers, celebrating the republic’s birthday, and was attempting to get home. There’d been many toasts and his mouth tasted of rye. His head swam slowly, like an eel. “Defy,” he sounded out to himself. “De-fy.”

  He ran his fingers over the word. Someone had spent time with it, he thought, given the depth of the notches that formed the letters. He appreciated that the message was both plain and mysterious, at once grounded and a bit mystical, too. Just above it lay a small, pale sticker of the American flag, its corners frayed and colors bleached by time. Sixty stars and thirteen stripes. It didn’t strike Sebastian as odd, anymore, all those rings of stars in the blue canton.

  It was a Friday, late, languid midsummer in Empire City. Sebastian turned around and set his back against the wall. He’d intentionally stood away from others but a man had neared. The stranger wore rags and a vacant smile and held a dull metal pole. He began waving it around like a sword, something everyone noticed while pretending not to. Sebastian adjusted his earbuds and cycled through songs on his phone.

  The stranger’s pole whizzed by a few feet from Sebastian, close enough for him to feel a light draft. Sebastian looked up, taking in the stranger’s mesh cap with the words CRETE WARFIGHTER in bright yellow on it. He was old enough to be from that war, Sebastian thought. Why wasn’t he at a rehabilitation colony? Veterans with troubles lived there. But—bureaucracy. Mistakes happened. Sebastian understood that.

  A bell sounded through the station. “The threat index is blue,” a woman’s automated voice said. “Homeland Authority reminds citizens to remain guarded.”

  Blue was good, Sebastian knew. No change.

  The stranger in rags felt otherwise. “Defy!” he shouted, pointing to the message on the wall and hopping into the tunnel. Sebastian ignored him and so did everyone else.

  “Defy!” the stranger repeated. He lifted his metal pole. Then he plunged it into the third rail, cracking the protective casing. The stranger’s body lit up like an illum round. The stranger fell. Smoke rose.

  Oh, Sebastian thought, looking up. This is different.

  The citizens on the platform screamed while Sebastian moved into the tunnel to check on the stranger. Rigid and red, the smile had remained on the man’s face.

  “Masha’Allah,” Sebastian said. “Be easy, dude.” Then he made the sign of the cross with his phone over the stranger. He felt stares from across the platform. They didn’t understand and, to his mind, never would. Then Sebastian walked home. Whatever powers he had, they didn’t include resurrection.

  * * *

  Sebastian woke in his studio apartment the next morning, hungover and alone. He drank from the glass of water he’d placed on the nightstand hours earlier and checked the calendar on his phone. A commitment waited there like a blister: Mia Tucker’s engagement party. Could’ve sworn that was next weekend, he thought. Time seemed to be speeding up to him.

  A gift, he remembered. People like this notice.

  It was with such a resentment that Sebastian showered. He changed into a pair of slacks and the only unwrinkled dress shirt in his closet. Deciding against a tie—he wanted to make clear he was not of Wall Street or Connecticut—he threw on a sport jacket and a pair of aviator sunglasses and stepped into the day. Monitor drones hummed from above, ever-steady, summer light beating down. Sebastian squinted into it, wondering when the absurdities of life had turned into something else.

  An anxious minute passed until a cab pulled over. “Uptown,” he told the driver. “Park and Sixty-Fifth.” He took out his phone to avoid conversation. The cab smelled of old potato. Sebastian lowered his window. Boiled air rushed the breach.

  On his phone, Sebastian read an article about Congress repealing an amendment to allow the president to run for yet another term. The parties of the governing coalition cited wartime precedent and extolled the move. The parties in the minority argued that it brought the nation closer to authoritarianism. Sebastian thought the president grimaced too much in his photos, which called attention to a protruding vein in the center of the man’s bald head. He was dour enough as it was. Sebastian wanted a political leader who’d smile every now and then, even if they didn’t mean it.

  The cab arrived at the restaurant. Sebastian had never eaten there, but a web search yielded a year-old “Intoxicatingly Elegant” headline from the Imperial Times. The menu consisted mostly of foods with French-sounding names but also offered “a variety of neo-nouvelle cuisines,” which Sebastian couldn’t comprehend, even though he was good with words. He put away his phone and paid the driver, tipping too much because he was bad with numbers.

  Sebastian looked up at a three-story building the color of melon and sighed. If he had finished reading the review online, he’d have learned he was looking at a Greek Revival town house that had once served as the headquarters for a conservationist club founded by Teddy Roosevelt, and had a garden patio in the back he might enjoy. He hadn’t read that, though. Besides, his mind was elsewhere.

  Two people with silver hair blocked the restaurant entrance, a man and a woman. They held drinks and appetizer napkins and appeared to be arguing in a restrained sort of way. Sebastian tried to part through them to get inside. The man put his arm around Sebastian’s shoulders and pulled him to the discussion. Manners mattered to Sebastian, even though he pretended otherwise, so he didn’t resist. The woman seemed disturbed by his sunglasses, and kept trying to peer under them.

  “Here’s one of Mia’s military colleagues.” Sebastian didn’t say anything to that. The man’s tongue carried conviction on it. “No other country in history could wage the Mediterranean Wars and last, let alone prosper. Don’t you agree, young man?”

  Sebastian nodded. The silver-haired man continued.

  “A testament to our warfighters. But where’s the strategy? What’s the endgame? We learned this lesson in Vietnam: battles must be won before the war can be. Decisive battles.”

  “And your solution would be?” the woman asked. “You still haven’t said.”

  “Wogs need to be treated like the enemy they are. Same as we treated the British. Same as we treated Nazis. How we beat back the red gooks in my day. Overwhelming force, no apologies.”

  “We’ve been at this thirty years, Bernard. When is enough enough?”

  “When our way of life is secure. George Orwell said that.”

  Sebastian felt sure he’d spent more time in the Near East than the silver-haired man, and he didn’t think George Orwell had said anything about securing a way of life, but he wasn’t about to argue with a member of the Next Greatest Generation. Especially one wearing his old combat ribbons on his blazer. They’d saved the free world from communism. So he kept to listening. It seemed a heavy conversation for an engagement party, but at least they weren’t talking investment portfoli
os.

  “Isn’t that the whole issue? They don’t fight normal. So when we go into these countries to help, to rebuild, they blend in with the population.”

  The woman was right, Sebastian had seen it himself in Tripoli. But the man remained undaunted.

  “They said the same about our war. Until they didn’t,” he said. “Locals helping enemy are enemy. Families of terrorists are terrorists. That’s how the wogs fight. That’s how it works. Weren’t you a protestor? Flower power didn’t save Saigon from the horde.”

  “That’s not fair.” To be accused of being a peacemonger was a big deal for older people, Sebastian knew. “We were doing what we thought was right. We were trying to protect our friends and classmates. Our brothers.”

  The silver-haired man turned to Sebastian again. “How would you feel, young man,” he said, “if your friends and classmates took to the streets with picket signs while you were getting shot at for your country?”

  “Hmm.” The Found Generation, protesting war? An absurd thought. They’d been raised to trust the government. But Sebastian didn’t say that. Instead he repeated the common wisdom used for years to resolve conversations like this. “It’d be strange. I know we’re all thankful the protestors helped end the draft, though. Made the all-volunteer force possible. Which is how you all finally won Vietnam.” Should he add the pat phrase you were supposed to use here? Why not. “Praise to the Victors.”

  The veteran and the protestor both nodded at that. Sebastian excused himself, saying he needed to find the betrothed. Eighty or so people were inside the restaurant, talking and laughing, gathered in clumps like raked leaves. Glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling and bathed the room in a yellow glow. Every man he could see wore a navy blazer with a bright summer tie. He tugged reflexively at his own collar. Waiters with trays moved around the dining room in step. Sebastian took a breath and routed for the bar, cutting through groups with apologies he didn’t mean. He looked for people he might’ve known from before but recognized no one. Maybe it’s the wrong engagement party? he thought. Then he spotted the gift table with a placard on it that read, “Tucker—Stein.”

  A gift, Sebastian thought. Whoops.

  The bar line proved long and slow-moving. Sebastian kept his head low but his ears open. He listened to a conversation in front of him. A middle-aged man was complaining about his niece going to a pricy school like Empire State to become a teacher. He listened to a conversation behind him. A pair of brokers about his age were complaining about the unreliability of their drug dealer. Getting high in Empire City used to be easier! He listened to a conversation adjacent to him. An elderly woman was complaining about the Tucker grandfather. She was descended from Mayflower pilgrims, too, she said. Where did he get the nerve?

  This fucking place, Sebastian thought. Becoming an American city-state had only made it more of a bubble. He rubbed at his eyes under his sunglasses, wiping away beads of sweat. The line remained slow-moving. He looked up and studied the wall behind the bar. A watercolor of a broad-shouldered man wearing a Stetson and a mustache like a bandit covered it. The man stood in front of a fallen gray elephant, presumably shot by the musket the man held in the crook of his arm. He resisted an impulse to salute the painting. Serious people stood around him, and serious people took things like watercolors seriously. Still, the gun and the elephant stirred something in him. What it was felt slippery to Sebastian. He had strong feelings neither about guns nor elephants.

  “Of course you’d be here,” Mia Tucker said, approaching Sebastian from the side. He grabbed his whiskey and coke from the bartender—he hated drinking beer on an empty stomach—and congratulated his friend with a hug.

  “Drinking away the day,” Mia continued. “Tsk-tsk, See-Bee.”

  Sebastian smirked at the old nickname. “It’s a party, you know?”

  “It is,” she said.

  Tall and thin, Mia didn’t look like the type of woman who’d served in the army, Sebastian thought, which he knew was probably sexist of him, but he still thought it. He’d always thought of her more as a tennis player, or the serious friend in a romantic comedy. Her olive skin and close-cropped raven hair emphasized features he’d once described as “hawkish” in a profile for their college newspaper. Wearing a floral maxi dress, she may as well have been attending a fraternity formal instead of her own engagement party.

  “You look nice,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You look like you.”

  Sebastian and Mia’s friendship had begun as freshmen in Philosophy 101, which felt like a long time ago to them both. The next semester she’d convinced him to join the army ROTC program with her, something he’d soon drop but she’d find much purpose in, becoming the cadet commander their senior year. Just the second woman named to that position in Dupont University history, Mia went on to commission as an active-duty officer and fly attack helicopters in the Mediterranean Wars, fighting terror across four combat zones (Syria, Albania, New Beirut, and the Barbary Coast).

  “Biggest testes in the family,” the Tucker grandfather had said at her college graduation dinner, something only Sebastian had laughed at. Everyone else had stared at their plates, no one harder or deeper than Mia.

  That had been six years before, though, before Tripoli. Before a lot of other things, too.

  They caught up on mutual acquaintances and gossip. Had he heard about the volleyball girl joining the separatist cult out west? Some people just couldn’t get it together. Had she heard about the creepy Sig Ep from sophomore year who fell off a cruise ship? Police suspected his new bride had pushed him. Sebastian was figuring out how to bring up the night before when a pale man approached and put his arm around Mia. She pulled him in as if gravity depended upon it.

  “Jesse Stein,” the pale man said, putting out his hand.

  Sebastian did the same. Jesse squeezed hard and tilted both palms toward him. Sebastian squeezed back and introduced himself, all the while thinking, I hate alpha power games. They’re so un-alpha.

  But he said, “Congratulations. Good to finally meet.”

  “I’ve heard a lot ab-about you,” Jesse said, a verbal tic almost coached away dashing his words. “You’re another Yankee who went south for school.”

  “Who says that anymore?” Mia asked. Her voice made it clear that Jesse should not be saying it anymore. “And he’s not. He’s not anything. He’s from California.”

  Her attention shifted to an end of the restaurant before Sebastian could summon a response. She patted both men’s forearms and walked that way. Sebastian whistled, low and without melody. Jesse tapped his foot and looked at the ground.

  “So,” Sebastian said. He always felt awkward around people his age who had money. He was also surprised. Mia’s type in college had been different. Tall, dark, and awful, mostly. “How’d you kids meet?”

  “Through, uh, work.” Jesse coughed and straightened his tie—Sebastian took in his choice of a classic sack suit, deciding it was a good decision for someone with his build, round and loose, like an old balloon.

  “Fantastic.” Sebastian patted Jesse’s shoulder and swigged more whiskey and coke. “Well done on the rock, man. That thing could blind Stevie Wonder.” He tapped at his sunglasses for effect.

  Jesse laughed, an honest, raw laugh, Sebastian thought, which pleased him. For a few minutes Jesse explained the complexities of diamond negotiations. Sebastian tried to care but couldn’t, his mind drifting to the night before, and the man who’d defied his way into suicide.

  “You were in Tripoli, too, right?” The question brought Sebastian back. Jesse stuck out his hand again. “I know it’s a stupid thing to say, but America Honors the Warfighter.”

  “Oh.” Sebastian laughed. “Not a soldier.” He raised his now-empty glass to his lips to suck an ice cube. He hated nothing more than the conversation to come, and something hot burned in his chest. “I was the hostage they rescued.”

  “That’s right.” Jesse’s voice turned flat.
“I knew that.”

  The questions came as they always did, in the same order. Yes, Sebastian had been the kid who went to war on winter break. A magazine intern looking for a story and his MIA cousin. Second cousin, really. No, he hadn’t embedded with an American unit. Because he’d fashioned himself rebellious back then, like a fool. No, they still hadn’t found his cousin’s remains and probably never would. How did he get there? By renting a car in Egypt and driving west. It’d been that easy.

  Most people stopped asking questions then, either because of the subject matter or because of the strange pitch Sebastian put into his voice. Jesse pushed on, though, something that surprised Sebastian more than it bothered him. He found the memories of it all had become vague recently, like a fog he couldn’t grab, so he stuck to the facts. Who? The Promised Day, a pan-Arab insurgent group. Where? Different basements around Tripoli. How long? Twenty-six days. What’d he eat? Flatbread. Sometimes dates. How’d they treat him? Well, except for one short guy with a scar like an asterisk splayed across his neck. Why didn’t they kill him? Sebastian didn’t know, but his family going on television and saying they’d pay a ransom probably had something to do with it. Yes, that had upset the government. What did they talk about? Soccer, sometimes. Supermodels and actresses, other times.

  “Then you got saved.”

  Sebastian began chanting with supreme tedium. “Recognizing that I volunteered, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession. Never shall I fail my comrades.” He was trying to sound ironic but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. Rangers. Rangers lead the way.”

  “Well.” Jesse’s words were flat again. “And the helicopter pilots.”

  “True. I owe a lot to Mia. And the others.” Sebastian took a breath and raised an eyebrow. The feeling in his chest had cooled. “That’s the short of it. Empire News did a piece about it last year. If you’d like the government-approved version.”