The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  “Like what happens if the system implodes?”

  “You mean caused to implode?” Murphy said sharply.

  “Maybe. Want to tell me more?” Stanton asked cautiously.

  “Like I said, however insane you think that possibility may be, you need to see it from his perspective,” Murphy said.

  “Okay, try me,” Stanton replied.

  Murphy waved at the waiter. “Bring us a bottle of Irish. My friend and I need to adjust our perspective.

  Chapter 19 - Madison Square Garden

  The laser show was super-spectacular, a Grand Canyon of light and sound. Murphy tried hard not to be impressed but failed.

  “I remember when it was just searchlights, trumpets and Wagner,” Stanton said from the back of the Press Box.

  In the auditorium, the silence that abruptly followed was as forceful as the sound and fury of the opening. A single spotlight followed Calvin November to centre-stage. For a moment he stood motionless. Murphy was surprised at how small he was. As a murmur rose from the crowd, November raised his hands and there was silence once again. From the back of the Press Box, Stanton voiced Murphy’s thoughts.

  “This guy gives me the creeps. Give me have an honest crook for a politician any time.”

  November’s first words were level toned, their lack of emotion contrasting with the magnitude of the declaration they made.

  “I stand before you at a moment in our nation’s history where new possibilities rush towards us at exponential speed.”

  “How the hell does he expect people to understand exponential?” Stanton muttered.

  “The world is witnessing the failure of the old ways. Communism has collapsed. Capitalism is buckling under the weight of its own greed and injustice. Terrorists strike at us and we hit out at shadows.”

  “He’s not making himself any friends,” Stanton said.

  “And what do I say of America? What do you say of America?” November’s voice and body language rose in intensity. “I hear the voices of your mind. We are the United States of paradox. We are an idealistic nation. We are a corrupt nation. We are a nation founded on freedom yet we have a history of ethnic cleansing, slavery and lynching.”

  There was complete silence in the Press Box and Murphy felt his mouth go dry.

  “We are a wholesome nation yet we are the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs. We are a righteous nation yet we produce more pornography than anywhere else on earth. We are a nation of conscience yet we preside over sixty million on the breadline. That is a number greater than the combined populations of Belgium, the Netherlands, all four countries of Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand put together. Our planet is precious to us yet our lifestyle consumes five times the resources per person of other industrialised nations. We are a great democracy, but the will of the people is perverted by a system shot through with avarice and self-serving mediocrity.”

  The crowd seemed stunned. November paused for effect, his eyes staring into the darkness beyond the circle of the spotlight.

  “We have been cheated of our birthright.” For a moment, November was still.

  In the Press box, Stanton wondered where all this was going.

  “So who screwed Mother and stole the Apple Pie?”

  “Shut up,” snapped another journalist from the back row.

  November spoke with growing passion. “And who is responsible for this?” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “You are responsible, I am responsible. We are responsible. Why? Because we are America. Technology has led us to the brink of wonderful and terrible things. Things unimaginable even a few short years ago. Vast prizes and unfathomable dangers lie before us. Only by facing our past honestly can we face our future confidently. Therefore, let us glory in our greatness, bind up our self-inflicted wounds, seize the moment and rule the hour.”

  At that phrase Stanton and Murphy exchanged silent looks. Slowly the applause came. At first Murphy was willing to believe that it was stage-managed. But as the volume rose, he knew that November had the crowd eating from his hand.

  Stanton’s cynicism was undiminished. “Words, words, words.”

  November raised his hands and the crowd were obediently silent. “Empty words, I hear you say. I reply – no. I give you substance. I give you the power to change America, to defend our nation against the squalid politics of here and now and the dark technologies of the future.”

  Even Stanton became attentive.

  “How is this to be achieved? Not by redistributing resources like the socialists or by amassing wealth like the capitalists, but by beginning again, by releasing the power that is inherent in everyone; by being the best we can be. Today I put that power into your hands, the power to turn poverty into prosperity, despair into hope, goodness into excellence.”

  Stanton put Murphy’s thoughts into words. “He’s gonna need one hell of a punch line to get himself out of that.”

  November did not disappoint. “Today I announce an endowment of a hundred billion dollars to the people of America. I repeat, one hundred thousand million dollars, to the people of America.”

  The Press Box was a sudden blur of activity as keyboards clattered into simultaneous use. Most astonishing offer in the history of America … If Calvin November can deliver, the world is a different place … America is asking … is this guy for real? The flurry of instantly crafted headlines died down as November continued, and news desks across the globe stood by for more.

  “I believe that there is no more useless substance on earth than money unused. This hundred billion dollars is not a gift, it is an investment, an investment in the genius of America. You are the shareholders, I am merely an officer of the company.”

  “This is getting scary,” Stanton said.

  “This investment will put within our grasp the keys to relieving disease, depravation and environmental degradation. And we shall demand that those in power allow us to unlock the doors. We are not a political party, we are more than that. We are the people.”

  The crowd roared in response.

  November appeared to be unmoved. “To create a voice for all the people, I announce the formation of a Council for a New America. Who are its members? You are its members. I shall be advised by you, guided by you and answerable to you. In thirty days I shall stand before you again, here in this great gathering place, and announce the technology which will provide access for all, so that we may give reality to our dreams and advance confidently together to the outer edge.”

  The lasers cut through the darkness and the crowd went wild. November slipped away among the lattice of lights. Cacophony broke out again among the reporters as they called their news desks or pounded their keyboards.

  Stanton was typing and talking simultaneously.

  “The bastard is going to buy the country at a hundred dollars a vote.”

  Murphy was the only one not typing or talking into a phone and he made an unnoticed exit onto the street. He tried to let the reassuring clamour of 7th Avenue fill his brain but he failed. For the first time in the whole affair, he began to feel real fear.

  Chapter 20 - Noplace, Nevada

  “They dropped two atomic bombs on the Japs and let off nine hundred and twenty-eight right here in the deserts of the good ‘ole USA.” Rocky was a large man with an even larger sense of irony. “Above ground, underground, every which way.” He paused, as if expecting some kind of response.

  ‘90 Miles From Noplace’ – the sign over the door of Rocky’s Desert Diner was a favourite with tourists but there were none about at this time of year. Murphy was the only customer. Rocky was running on automatic, telling his own story and answering his own questions.

  “They let off eleven of them at Yucca Flats, just a few miles from here. A good many of us died of cancer after that; in one town it was more than one in three. John Wayne, the all-American hero, he was killed by the all-American fall-out, right over there,” he said, making a gesture towards the horizon. “Leastways that’
s what they said on TV, and who am I to argue? He made a picture about Genghis Khan out there in the desert.” Rocky pointed to a line of fading photographs on the wall. “Signed one of those pictures for me, he did. But the desert got him, radioactive sand and dust I say, and a lot of others say so too. Like I said, it was on TV,” he said, as if it was the final proof of his argument.

  Murphy nodded sympathetically and Rocky kept talking.

  “This was a happening place back then – the movies, the stars, the rubberneckers. What they spent paid off the loan on this spread in three years, and I put some aside too. Now it’s only desert nuts like you that keep me from going under.” Murphy had been listening for an hour and Rocky was keen not to let him go. “See that road out there? Runs direct from noplace to noplace.” Rocky was unstoppable. “Why do I stay?” he asked himself. “When you’re on the road to noplace there’s no place to go.” He let out a wheezy chuckle at his well-practised line.

  Murphy had worked his way through a double cheeseburger with a heart of ice, the legacy of long interment in the massive freezer behind the counter. A truck roared by. The blue and white Celastacom logo, formed of two domes, was sliced into horizontal strips by the slatted blinds.

  “You get any business from those crazy domes down the road?” Murphy asked.

  “Nix. Everything’s trucked in and nothing and nobody comes out. Right by the gate there’s a container park. Truckers get no further than that, just drop off a full one, pick up an empty and turn right around.”

  “Did you see November, the guy who owns the domes, on TV?”

  Rocky was not impressed. “Guess he’s just trying to promote the place. It’s just like Disneyland, a world on its own. You can go on tours, did you know that?” he said incredulously.

  “You been out there?” Murphy asked.

  Rocky seemed astonished at the notion. “Me? Why would I go there? I’ve no reason to. Have no reason to do much else either,” he added morosely. “Mighty short on distractions out here. A man’d give a lot to be distracted once in a while.”

  *

  Murphy had flown down to Las Vegas overnight. Timing was critical; he wanted to get to Celastacom after the media satellite trucks had left and before the inevitable tide of tourists had time to make their arrangements. At the airport shop he had bought himself an outfit of garish tourist gear, a baseball cap and large pair of Ray-Bans. He rented a 4x4 and set out to view November’s empire before dawn. The huge domes stood out dramatically against the rising light. But reconnaissance revealed little. The only thing he saw close up was the electric fence. He guessed that it was alarmed and backed up by motion detectors, video recording and night image intensifiers.

  Forty miles away, in the small desert town that had been coaxed back to life through the tourist trade generated by the Domes, Murphy checked into the Palms Hotel, two storeys of imitation Hacienda. Where in Spain there would have been a courtyard, there was the inevitable pool. Murphy was the only guest not to use it.

  “How do I get on one of those tours to Celastacom?” he asked at the front desk.

  “The bus comes right by the door at eleven fifteen a.m., gets to the Ecosphere around one thirty,” the clerk said in a voice that sounded as if it was computer generated. “You’re lucky you can get a place; they’ve put on an extra bus after that big show in New York. The tours leaving direct from the airport are booked all month.”

  Murphy joined the cluster of brightly clad figures waiting for the bus. He was looking for camouflage. He chose a woman in her late 40s; she carried a backpack and a book. As he got closer he saw that it was an illustrated guide to snakes.

  “Collecting?” he asked.

  She gave him a cool, analytical look. “No, observing.”

  “Snakes or men?”

  “Snakes mostly.”

  “Glad you think there’s a difference. A lot of women don’t.”

  They both laughed, and when the bus arrived it seemed quite natural that they should sit together. The woman opened her book.

  Murphy continued to talk. “Been on the road for ten days. Had some time due me. Thought I’d check it out round here for a while. What’s your name? You don’t mind me asking that, do you?”

  “Carol. Carol Hirschberger from LA.”

  They shook hands. Instinctively, Murphy avoided giving a name, even a false one.

  “So, Carol, what brings you to the South West?”

  “Snakes. I teach at UCLA. But after two weeks tracking reptiles I’m ready for a break.”

  Murphy laughed. “I know how you feel.”

  “Are you a cop?” she asked. The question was too close for comfort.

  “You don’t have to be a cop to recognise the failings of your fellow man.”

  “So what do you do?” Carol asked.

  Murphy was angry with himself; a sloppy remark had resulted in him being interrogated when the purpose of the conversation was to provide cover, not exposure.

  “Leave me with my pathetic air of mystery, you’ll like me better that way.” As if on impulse, he said, “Look, I was taking the tour because I didn’t want to drive alone – I do that in real life. I’m on vacation now. What do you say we drive up there together? I’ve got a 4x4 in the parking lot. We could talk about snakes.”

  “Okay,” Carol said.

  They climbed out of the bus and walked to Murphy’s Land Cruiser. They drove in silence for a while. Twenty minutes later, as they climbed a long hill, the domes came into sight. In the crystal-clear light they seemed to be etched on the distant red-rock skyline. There was a line of buses ahead; each trailed its own plume of dust.

  Carol pulled a guidebook from her bag and began to read. “We’re now entering a twenty-mile straight road built to provide access to the domes. It’s become known as ‘The Highway to the Future’.”

  “Every road is a road to the future,” Murphy said.

  Carol didn’t respond but droned on about size, scale, distance and number of visitors.

  Though the flawless blue sky looked like mid-summer, it was cold outside. Murphy calculated that the altitude was around seven thousand feet. He decided it was time to reanimate the conversation.

  “We’re on the edge of the largest inhabited plateau outside of Tibet,” he said.

  “How do you know something like that?” she said, looking up from the guidebook.

  “Just something I read. Why are you so surprised?”

  “You don’t seem like a person who’d be interested in that kind of thing,” she replied.

  “I warned you, it’s my pathetic air of mystery.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, that just came out the wrong way,” she said apologetically.

  They were both laughing as they arrived at the huge parking lot. At the visitors’ entrance to the Domes, Murphy steered them into the centre of a group from New York City. Inside the huge structure there was an instant change of climate; the warm, moist air came as a shock after the sharp edge of the desert winter.

  The hubbub of several thousand people was lost in the cavernous interior. A young woman in corporate uniform greeted them.

  “Welcome to the home of Celastacom. Please step this way. I am your visit coordinator. My name is Sandra. I shall be with you at all times and will be pleased to try and answer any questions you may have.”

  The Dome was vast, far larger than anyone in the group had expected. The interior was laid out in a succession of interconnecting terraces. Each housed individually designed buildings surrounded by trees and forest plants. The group began to exchange expressions of wonderment. Sandra was programmed to pre-empt questions in the course of efficient visitor processing.

  “The interior is inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Each location has its own microclimate with tropical plants towards the top of the dome and temperate plants at the bottom. Please follow me to video registration and pass in single file through the entry point. You will receive your sou
venir pass, which will also show our group identity. We give each tour party an identifying name from the Greek alphabet. Ours is Gamma. Please remember this in case you become separated from the group.”

  As the group moved forward, Murphy wondered whether keeping the Ray-Bans on outweighed the attention they might attract inside. He looked around the group and saw that two others had not removed theirs and he decided his would not look out of place.

  Sandra led them to a platform set among stainless-steel sculptures and Caledonian Pines. Everyone stared upwards. She continued to speak like a corporate brochure.

  “These Domes are the largest geodetic structures in the world. The one we’re now in is Dynamos. This is the ancient Greek word for power; the word has the same root as dynamic. We like to think that this applies to the people who live here. Dynamos is our home and the place where we receive visitors. Our second Dome is our place of work. It’s called Helios, named after the ancient Greek word for the sun – the source of all life. As you can see, the plastics from which the domes are made are easily bendable by hand.” Sandra handed out samples to the group. “The strength comes from the design of the frame that locks the pieces together so that each braces the other.”

  While the group stared into the space above, Murphy bent down as if to tie a shoelace and slid one of the samples into the case of his Ray-Bans.

  “This design is a practical expression of the Celastacom philosophy of using a small amount of innovation in just the right place to achieve a spectacular result. You will notice the difference between Dynamos, which is transparent, keeping us in touch with the world outside, and Helios, which has a mirror-like surface, turning our attention inwards to unlock the mysteries of our planet.”

  “Why are the Domes built so big? Why not make smaller ones?” a woman from the back asked.

  Sandra had a ready answer. “They’re not built large just to be the biggest, but to be the right size to maintain their own climate.” She had a lot more ground to cover and another group was closing in. “Almost all our power comes from the sun and nearly everything is recycled. All domestic water is cleansed and used repeatedly. We get fresh drinking water from the condensation produced by the vegetation. At night, warm air rises and the moisture it carries collects in the upper dome. The diagonal slats you can see under the apex capture the moisture. It’s piped down again ready for use, much like rain in a temperate climate. Human waste has two uses. It is processed into fertiliser, for plants growing inside the dome, and into gas that powers the utility vehicles operating on the outside.”