by Chris Weitz
Rab: “Listen. I wouldn’t have done any of this if it weren’t really, really important.”
Me: “Why?”
Rab: “Because your president died at the UN, in a terrorist attack during the conference.”
Me: “Bullshit.”
Rab: “It’s true. We didn’t know for sure until recently.”
Me: “Okay, boo-hoo. Lots of people died.”
Rab: “Yes, but he had the football.”
Me: “What football?”
Rab: “The football is the name of the briefcase that contains the launch codes for America’s nuclear arsenal.”
Cold sweat starts.
Me: “I remember I saw that in a movie. But that was just so that he could give the order, right? It was just a bunch of codes so the president could prove he was who he said he was.”
Rab shakes his head.
Rab: “That’s what it was from the fifties until relatively recently. A list of instructions for the Emergency Alert System, a folder with a list of secure locations, a notebook containing the various strike options, and the biscuit, which was a laminated card with the codes you’re thinking of. But they changed it after the outbreak of the Sickness. They wanted to be able to override the system remotely. In case the civil and military infrastructure went down.”
Me: “Which means what?”
Rab: “Which means that, in theory, whoever has the nuclear football can bring the US nuclear arsenal out of hibernation and launch it whenever they want.”
I take a while to absorb this.
Me: “So… doomsday?”
Rab: “Possibly. In the wrong hands.”
Me: “Whose are the right hands?”
Rab: “Look. I’m not going to pretend that I always agree with what the government and the Reconstruction Committee do. But they are doing what they’re doing so that the world as we know it can continue.”
Me: “What if the world as we know it shouldn’t continue?”
Rab: “You want to get rid of this? For what? Utopia? That’s Jefferson, not you. Utopia isn’t coming.”
My face flushes. He has no right to say his name. He continues—
Rab: “You were always more practical than that, Donna. I don’t think you want a nuclear war, do you?”
Me: “Well, that’s kind of a loaded question, Rab. Who’s going to start this war?”
Rab: “When you met them, they called themselves the Resistance.”
Chapel and the rest. The enemies of the new order.
Me: “So—what—these are just some sort of mustache-twirling baddies you’re up against? Why the hell would they want to start a war?”
Rab: “They don’t want to start a war. They want to start a revolution. They want to bring down the system. You’ve seen that kind of thing, right? The system crumbling? No authority? No laws?”
I nod.
Rab: “How did that work out for you?”
Me: “So what do you want from me? You were going to come to me sooner or later, right? What do you want?”
He smiles.
Rab: “We want a man—we want a woman—on the inside.”
Me: “You want me to go back?”
Rab: “We do.”
Me: “Fuck you.”
Rab: “Think about it.”
Me: “I thought about it. No way. I’m not going back. Throw me in jail. I’m not going back to New York. There’s nothing for me there.”
Rab: “You’re wrong. There is something for you there. Or rather, there’s someone.”
I can’t speak. There is no more bandwidth. Too many feelings.
Rab: “Yes.”
Is it possible that he doesn’t look too happy about it?
Me: “Jefferson.”
Rab: “Yes. Jefferson’s alive.”
Me: “No. Welsh told me he was dead.”
Rab: “He was lying.”
Me: “Fuck you. Fuck him. I’m going to kill him.”
Rab: “I understand.”
Me: “No, you don’t.”
Rab: “For all we know, he may be dead. He was alive when he left the ship. There was no shootdown. I didn’t want them to tell you that, but… they wanted to make you more…”
Me: “Emotionally available?”
Rab: “Open. To me. Yes. They play for keeps, Donna. I don’t like it, but they think they have to do it that way. If it were up to me… well, I always felt like you and I belonged together no matter what. Without any lies.”
I look at him and balance the hatred I feel for him and all of them with what I feel for Jefferson.
Me: “I’m going back for him.”
I’m going back to him.
THEY DO THE CURE-AS-SACRAMENT THING AGAIN, a long line of kids waiting in hushed anticipation for new life in the form of Jefferson’s reengineered plasma.
The old Moroccan tent at the Square felt like a little parish church; this is more like a cathedral. The big old mural with its handsome stereotyped figures and millions of crazy-pants, indiscernible meanings looms over us. The crates of serum that Solon brought down with him are heaped within the magic circle of the Security Council desk; we block the way in with our bodies and administer to the throng one by one.
Given that we know we are giving new life to all of them, it’s hard not to cop a certain messianic attitude. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m the Second Coming. More like we’re evangelists. Hold the dropper over their tongues and let half a century of future drip down their throats. It’s hard for the kids we’re saving not to get rewired by the experience. They look up at us like we’re more than rescuers, more than benefactors. Word has gotten round about us, and especially Jefferson, and he walks in a radiation cloud of worshipful gratitude, a supercelebrity. Maybe people need that sort of thing. Not so much that they want to see people as greater than so much as that they want to be lesser than. That way they don’t have to make their minds up for themselves.
That’s the problem I see in this whole democracy thingamajig we’ve got going. Ain’t no way that Jefferson counts as just one vote, given that he’s suddenly Florence Nightingale meets George Washington meets Jesus. People listen to him, like everything he says is in boldface. And since he was the one who got this whole thing started (at my guy Chapel’s urging, I hasten to add), it seems like he gets to set the agenda. Everybody around him who has been part of getting the Cure to the people has a kind of special status, too.
Right beneath that in the political pecking order is Cheekbones, aka Evan, who seems to derive his special status from the fact that he’s opposed to Jefferson and Solon on pretty much everything, which means he attracts all the people who are in his ideological vicinity, the thugs and meatheads and wing nuts.
Below that, you’ve got the people with a rap, who can talk up a storm and convince people of things, whether or not the content of what they’re saying is actually worthwhile or even sensible. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good your idea is if you can’t express it right, and you can get all sorts of wrong-ass ideas across if you put them the right way.
Anyhow, motherfuckers be talking.
They talk about justice and they talk about rights and they talk about laws, and they keep going on and on, the football flying around here and there like nobody’s business. It’s Jefferson’s wet dream, DIY Utopia.
Which is great, I guess, except that it feels to me like a too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth type sitch? Every time Jefferson proposes sweeping legislation or whatever, it gets barnacled with ideas by what I’ll call special-interest groups. People look out for their tribes. They all want to be considered as legal entities or whatnot, as nobody can really get their heads entirely around the idea that we’re just one big tribe. Or they think the idea sounds like it’ll be hunky-dory until the shit hits the fan. So right away we get to a sort of two-for-one deal where there’s an assembly of tribes that decides what the full Assembly is gonna vote on. Of course, this means that the littlest tribe has as much say as the big
gest in what’s on the docket. Which seems to me like it’s gonna lead to a lot of fracturing, like big tribes turning into confederations of smaller tribes, as the Uptowners claim to be.
The Uptowners are the biggest problem. For now they go along with everything, but it’s pretty clear to everybody that they can choose to blow the whole thing up whenever they want. They’re hanging with the process so long as they’re guaranteed the Cure. Meantime, they’re holding their own carrot and stick, which is they’ve got half our tribe hostage.
Jefferson and Solon and the Assembly are, as far as I can tell, cutting and pasting off whatever constitution they can lay their hands on, from the US one to the UN charter to something some dude called Hammurabi wrote, whoever the hell he was. Freaky Hafiz keeps arriving with new books from some diplomatic library on the compound, suggesting laws like he’s a waiter pointing out good items on the menu.
Anyhow, you know how it is. It’s great to be high-minded and stuff, but the moment-to-moment is kind of a bore. The first bunch of laws are pretty big and simple to decide on, your basic “ape no kill ape” type of common sense.
Then we get into some more involved arguments about what private property is when you’re living a scavenging post-apocalyptic lifestyle. Of course, most of the stuff we actually have nowadays used to belong to somebody else, except they’re unlikely to claim it back, since they’re dead. Up until now, the rule has been that your private property is whatever you can keep somebody else from grabbing first. Of course, that doesn’t work in the perfect city-state-of-grace that we’re whipping up. Can’t have everybody jacking everybody else all the time.
But when you try to define what property is, things get kind of twisty. Turns out the only thing you really own is your body. I mean, theoretically, that’s the only thing you can’t be separated from and remain you, right? So that’s where we start. And it means more than you think. Like, nobody else has a right to your body. Somebody using it without your permission, or damaging or destroying it, otherwise known as slavery, rape, and violence, that’s against the law.
Of course, we’re used to owning other stuff, too. But what does it mean to own something? We spend about an hour or so on this. We decide that owning something means you can keep somebody else from having it. You can also give it to somebody, but they can’t take it from you.
See where I’m going here? I’m finding all this a little bit conceptual and tedious. Why don’t we just go back to the way it was before What Happened? Needless to say, Jefferson isn’t down for this. Nothing but a complete reboot will do. From time to time, I ask myself whether it’s worth it. Like, was it just less of a headache living in armed compounds instead of having to work it all out in a massively multiplayer group therapy sesh? But then I remember that we’re trying to lay down some ground rules for the long term. Like, I plan to end up being one old-ass queen. And for that to happen, I gotta make sure nobody steals my snacks, know what I’m saying?
Days pass. At noon and six, we break to eat, and when the sun goes down, we break to sleep. The constitution of Utopia, known colloquially as the Doc, takes shape—laws, principles, medical corps, constabulary, sanitation.
One day Chapel and Jeff and I are eating sandwiches in a garden overlooking the East River. Sautéed Spam in fresh-baked rolls from a pizza oven they’ve fired up down the street. That’s what the future tastes like, I guess. Spam calzone.
“Well,” I say, “we’re practically there.”
“Where?” says Jefferson.
“The future.”
Jefferson smiles.
“We should commemorate it,” I say. “Like, when all of us sign the Doc. We should dress up. This is big, man.”
Jefferson thinks. “Frock coats and tricorn hats?”
I shrug. “Whatever you want, man. You’re the president.”
That’s what people have started calling him, and I bet if they actually held a vote, that’s what he’d be. But Jefferson isn’t comfortable when you call him that. He was the same way about being generalissimo of Washington Square. People thought he was humble and diffident. Myself, I wasn’t so sure. I figured he was just scared.
“I’m not the president,” he says. “Presidents make history. I’m just a tool of history.”
I chew that one over. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, I figure. As if he thinks he’s fated in some way.
True confession? I used to be just a little teensy eensy bit obsessed with celebrity. Not individual celebrities—I could take them or leave them—but the whole ecology of celebrity: how people became famous, what kept them famous, what brought them down to disgrace or obscurity. It was like sports for me. Except the rules weren’t written down, and they were bafflingly complex and subject to change without notice. The best players could even change the rules themselves.
I always figured I’d be one of those players down the line. Which is odd, because I didn’t actually do anything, like the way Taylor Swift sang or Brad Pitt acted. I just figured my magnetic personality would assure me money and adoration. Anyhow, the apocalypse wrecked all that.
So I once read this thing on the Web—a psychologist made up this diagnosis? Acquired Situational Narcissism. The idea is that becoming famous leads to a warped sense of self because everyone around you starts treating you as if everything you do is great. You become frozen in the mind-set you had when you first became famous and can’t move past that point because you don’t have the same growing experiences as everyone else. Instead, your life becomes a bizarre series of outsized rewards in a social milieu that gives you an utterly inflated idea of self. Which sounded great.
But I wonder, as I hear Jeff call himself a “tool of history,” if he isn’t suffering from a bit of ASN, given the general adulation he’s been experiencing, being Patient Zero of the Cure and whatnot. Which is a bit worrisome, since this city-state is built on some pretty shaky ground.
“We have to let them know the truth soon,” Jefferson says to Chapel, as though he’s picking up my train of thought.
Chapel nods. “Soon enough. But we have to be careful about it.”
Jefferson says, “How is Theo? When can we let him go?”
“I’ve lost contact with Dooley and the others,” says Chapel. He tries to keep worry out of his voice. “It’s no big deal. Comms get messed up all the time.
“After the signing,” he says, “we tell this story: We’ve picked up signals from the Ronald Reagan. Then we let them know that they’re hostiles. Which they are, of course. If we’re careful, it all dovetails in without a hitch.”
Jefferson doesn’t look happy about this.
“The truth needs a soft landing,” says Chapel, “or they’re gonna burn us at the stake.”
I’ve forgotten all about that in the flow of good feelings and kumbaya. But he’s right, of course. I’m not saying that just because we’re in love. I think that life is an even bigger game than fame. And sometimes you’ve got to deceive people. For their own good. That’s right, right?
“What about Theo? What if he still doesn’t want to play ball?”
Chapel shrugs. “I don’t know.” But I feel like he does.
We get back to the session. A last push before victory is declared and the Doc signed. They start hashing out whether the city-state is going to take over the Uptowners’ bank at the Bazaar or they’re going to start a federal reserve, and I sorta kinda lose interest again. I notice Chapel looks a little antsy himself. He’s been watching the proceedings, taking a note here and there, mostly staying out of it. His cover story is holding. Nobody figures he’s any older than them, since he’s all cute and twinky.
Anyhow, round about the time the scintillating banking discussion rolls into its second hour, the lights that have been running off the complex’s emergency generators flicker and die. We’re left in the blue darkness. There’s a universal awwwwww. Chapel jumps up and says he’ll go check it out; Brainbox says he’ll go, too, but Chapel says he’s got it handled. Brainbo
x insists. They head off.
After a while, I decide to follow them. I’m more interested in Chapel than fiat currency anyhow.
NEVER STOPPING THINKING FROM THE MOMENT I wake that’s me and welcome to it we keep going down down I did not know there were so many levels but of course there must have been so many countries peoples ideologies in contact so much hatred influence and pressure brought to bear does Jefferson have any idea how difficult this will be they couldn’t organize themselves and make peace or stop the earth boiling or feed the potbellied children or stop the plague and he thinks he can get a hundred thousand juveniles to stop killing and raping and stealing oh well that is why I like him I suppose the way you like a dog chasing birds good boy what a dreamer she was a dreamer too Chu Hua her flower-petal hands and exquisite face and matchless courage and now she’s dead and her flesh is feeding the bugs and rodents and the corruption of her beauty is aloft in the air and maybe drafts of air carry her past all the paintings in the Metropolitan that’s enough of that I grab my attention and rope it back like I do all day like I do all my life the aim now is one foot in front of the other down the raw concrete stairs we have taken 1,217 steps since we left Jefferson up at ground level and have descended 72 stairs what use is that to me now I remember when I recited that whole page back to Mom when I was only six it was just as clear as a PDF scan in my mind’s eye and she looked proud amazed scared and this is a blessing and a curse I remember every moment with her every slice of the extruding spheroid of my witnessing of space-time like I notice that Chapel and Peter tend to brush against each other more than is statistically likely and especially more than would be invoked by the rules of society curious perhaps an impulse toward the continuation of the species but then the action of evolution is on the level of the gene not the species I believe Dawkins not Wilson it’s all the same to me I mean it’s all the same smiling breathing touching pleasure attachment plus what I have realized since she is gone and part of me with her there is not enough love in the world anyhow why would I find it wrong we are as we are made by nature which is the only God and love really is only a spandrel in the architecture of biology but the accidental beauty of the world is the only reason to live now the stairs level out and we are in the underbelly of the complex vast and dark and damp I suppose if I were poetic I would compare it to something like a living organ but things are what they are exactly and precisely if we had the equipment to see things truly instead of these five weak and lopsided senses we would know that and Washington said people are the sensory organs the universe uses to apprehend itself and maybe that’s why I’m stuck here in this little machine of a body I’m just a taste bud on the tongue of God ha-ha how’s that for a metaphor there is a central corridor rooms to the side at first the corridor is blank but then we find evidence of a fight not kids but adults of long ago something went wrong here even in the larger going wrong of it all skeletons in dark suits earphones umbilicaling up to their skeleton nonears their guns fired empty and others with submachine guns clubs knives a wall blown out and collapsed from an explosion Peter is registering shock and gooseflesh fear but Chapel looks excited why is that we stop at a metal door where someone died jammed in the doorframe beyond that a round room comfortable but utilitarian a panic room maybe here everyone is in a gas mask guns in hand we look at all of them and I see a face through the pane of a mask I have seen this man many times he was the president of the United States when there was one Peter says is that I say yes it is holy shit says Peter and Chapel says nothing he is not even looking at the president he is looking at the bodies nearby and he finds what he is looking for a fat soft black leather briefcase or suitcase it is attached to someone by a stout gray wire Chapel is staring at it I say what is it nothing he says just some papers but he has not even looked inside so why would he say that I say we should look inside he says no time we need to get the generators going so we keep going and down at the end of the corridor we find the works department a big genny there are stores of fuel to get her going a simple business for me I tell Chapel I need to go back for more fuel though and Chapel looks like he does not believe me but he says go I go back to the room with the president and his men and I open the bag a kind of satellite phone a fat binder full of plastic-coated sheets of protocols a card with codes now I know what this is I look over all of it and take pictures with my mind and I thought so says Chapel he is standing in the doorway I understand I say the whole reason this makes sense the Resistance what do you really want and he says justice and I say this can’t give justice and he says it is the only thing that can give justice his gun FLASHES
