End Game (Calm Act Book 1)

by Ginger Booth

  I was trying to figure out whether I’d said anything untoward. I didn’t think so. I thought the point of the borders was obvious. Divide and conquer. Keep local disasters local by blocking climate refugees from spilling over to create disaster domino effects. The first border, and the one most bristling with arms and trap zones, was the one facing Mexico. Desperate people still tried it, in both directions. Mangal’s files told me that the death toll was higher by orders of magnitude than reported in the news. But I hadn’t spilled any secrets.

  From there, the conversation wandered onto safer topics. I learned more about him. He had a political science degree from UConn. He went ROTC to pay for it, and served his time in the Army. When he left, he had enough money to come home and start the landscaping business. He came alive talking about that. I would have thought November was pretty dead for landscaping, but he said not. His crew levelled lots and reclaimed industrial brownfields and abandoned parking lots. That work could continue until the ground froze, which wasn’t until New Year’s, if ever. The last couple years the ground never froze.

  He started to slump into the couch cushions by 9:30. Landscapers wake up a lot earlier than programmers. I apologized for keeping him up with a laugh, and grabbed my washed potato dish. He scribbled something quickly on a business card, and met me by the door with it. I’d served him my card with the lemon balm tea the other day.

  “My contact info,” he said. “So… Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes, thanks, I’m eating with my friend Mangal’s family in Broomfield. Well, more than family. More like a whole Jain community. It’s colorful.”

  “Jain… Indian, vegetarian?”

  “Extremely. Some Jains even wear masks so they don’t accidentally hurt a fly. Not Mangal. More of an ethnic Jain, maybe.”

  “Ouch! Well, I could save you some turkey.”

  “You’re eating with your sister?”

  “Yeah, and the whole community garden crew. Many turkeys.” He grinned.

  In both senses of the word. I grinned back. “Well, I’ll see you soon. If not Thanksgiving weekend, maybe another time. Oh!” I flipped the card to see what he’d written on the back.

  If I were a plant, would I be sassafras?

  Well, that was a worthy Zen koan, I thought. Especially since the identifying characteristic of sassafras was its three leaf shapes on a single tree – oval, mitten, and double-mitten. I nodded at the card, and stood on tiptoe to whisper in Zack’s ear, “Sunflower.” I stepped back and mouthed and mimed, “Because you’re tall.”

  He laughed out loud obligingly. I like a man who laughs at my jokes. “So,” he said. “Should I kiss you good night?”

  “Please do.”

  He did. Quite well at that. He traced my face with a finger first, then cupped the back of my head. The other arm pressed me into full body contact from thigh to chest. He pushed my face up halfway to press my lips into his, first kiss dry and firm, second kiss mouth open. Then he stopped right there with a wry challenging smile, and let me go.

  I climbed into my car on cloud nine. It’s a shame I didn’t stay there.

  My phone had buzzed while I was at Zack’s. I let it go to voicemail, of course. There’s nothing more rude than playing with your phone during a date. But now I checked the transcribed message. Adam said to check my robo-ride app. I did, and the app invited me to share a robo-car with Adam Lacey to Stamford the next day, at the same time we’d shared it before.

  I’d told him every Tuesday, and he remembered. Fancy that.

  I didn’t think about it. A great flash of lightning took me by surprise, followed by a giant boom! after only a second. No growly thunder, just boom. My thumb hit Accept on Adam’s invite while I was flinching.

  I shrugged and put the phone away. I probably would have accepted the offer anyway.

  Zack stepped out on his porch to invite me back in, but I said I’d be fine in the car. I waved and drove away.

  The rest of a thunderstorm never made an appearance, but I think another boom woke me in the night.

  Chapter 4

  Interesting fact: Ball lightning was a rare phenomenon until the 21st century. They weren’t sure what caused it. But the New Dust Bowl kicked megatons of dust into the atmosphere. The particles rubbed against each other, and the static discharge took many forms, including ball lightning and St. Elmo’s Fire. It wreaked havoc on electronics.

  “Mm, this is delicious!” I assured Adam. He’d texted me in the morning not to eat before our robo-ride. “Thank you so much for sharing!”

  “My pleasure. I forgot to cancel my service last week while I was away,” he explained. “They kept delivering meals, and my housekeeper kept accepting them. I think she ate the best ones, though. There was supposed to be filet mignon.”

  My eyes widened. But Adam seemed only slightly vexed at the theft. Filet mignon, if you could find it, cost upwards of $100 a pound by then. We split two other single-person gourmet meals. They couldn’t have been much cheaper – a delicate veal wienerschnitzl with spaetzle and green beans, and a carbonara with wild Alaskan salmon. He brought along a bottle of imported Riesling. But we agreed wine wouldn’t help with the afternoon’s business, and drank mineral water instead. It was quite a lunch, served from a deluxe wicker picnic basket, complete with wine goblet rack.

  The robo-car didn’t interrupt us once. Apparently Adam had instructed the pumpkin that we were an express to Stamford.

  “Dessert?”

  “No,” I declined. “Thank you, Adam. I couldn’t eat another bite.” Following Adam’s lead, I wrapped and tucked away the used dishes in the hamper. “Mm. Even without the wine, I’m going to sleep through the meeting.”

  “And is this a bad thing?”

  I laughed. “No, perfect, actually. I’ll have to rally later in the afternoon, but the first meeting is a snooze. You?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a work session, with the civil engineers. That’s never boring.” The picnic basket now fully re-packed, he leaned back and fixed me with a smile. “I just wanted to apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I wanted to, but work’s been crazy, I was out of town…” He shrugged again. “Anyway. I meant to call you.”

  “Apology more than accepted. Sorry for being underdressed.”

  He laughed. “I was hoping for steampunk again. But it’s not as though I could wear mine this afternoon.”

  “Yes. My steampunk wasn’t too well received at work that day.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, and I waved it off as no matter. I didn’t want to tell an arkitect that I flunked my ark-intake exam.

  “Wait – you have steampunk?” I asked.

  “You inspired me. It looked like fun. I saw a steampunk shop while I was walking around San Francisco on Saturday. And I thought, why not? Now I know someone I could wear it with!”

  My smile ached. “How is San Francisco?”

  “Beautiful. As always. I don’t imagine I’ll see it again. So, I had to stay a couple extra days to bid the left coast farewell,” he quipped.

  He had damned high clearance to have seen it this time. Even a UNC reporter couldn’t cross from East coast to West coast anymore, let alone a programmer like me. Only a trickle of military air traffic remained. For surface travel, five north-south borders were already closed to civilians between here and there.

  “How was the water situation?”

  “About 5 dollars a gallon, or 2 dollars for a glass with dinner. I stayed at a 5-star hotel. They shut off the water to the tub and shower, and metered the tap water. There was a little sign on the toilet that requested you ‘flush sparingly.’ I imagine it’s getting very difficult. San Francisco’s not so bad. They get fogs, and dew. Down in Silicon Valley, I didn’t see a plant left alive.”

  “And the people?”

  “I had a driver. He seemed to take a lot of detours. The people I was meeting with… They were doing alright.”

  He sat up and leaned toward me. “I didn’t intend f
or this to be a downer. What I did intend, is to ask if you still want to see Montreal again?”

  It never rains, it pours. There’s something about a little romance that makes you look happy, that inspires attention from other guys. This always seems to happen to me. No guys for a long stretch, then two or three at once.

  “Ah, I think the Quebec border closes December first.”

  “And we have a long weekend before that.”

  “You want to take me to Montreal Thanksgiving weekend?”

  “Say yes. Why not?”

  No one’s ever accused me of being suave. “Why… me?”

  He met my eye intently. He had gorgeous grey eyes. “I like your spirit,” he said slowly. “Your delight in the pumpkin carriage, the steampunk, the… joie de vivre. You don’t look… haunted. I saw San Francisco. The shell is still beautiful, but… haunted. It grieved me. Then I saw the steampunk shop, and my day lit up. I just pictured you in Montreal. Still appreciating it. Laughing, delighting in another steampunk shop, catching snowflakes on your tongue, savoring the sorbet.”

  Wow, wow, wow. That was quite a compliment. My face was burning. I stammered, “I… yes. Yes, I’d like to see Montreal one last time. This just seems, um, fast.”

  He opened an empty hand, and let it fall. “But time is running out. Including time on this ride. We’re almost at your stop. Don’t say no. We can do separate rooms, if you’d like. Actually, that kinda fits the Victorian clothes, makes it more romantic. Think about it. I’ll call you later.”

  “…Alright. Later then. Here’s my stop.”

  I managed to get out of the car without tripping or smashing my computer. I stood there on the curb at UNC and watched as the robo-pumpkin pulled away. He waved from the back window. I waved back in stunned slow motion. Wow, wow, wow…

  -o-

  Mangal disapproved. I didn’t need his crap after the afternoon I’d had at HQ.

  Dan’s inspirational pre-holiday speech to our department was restful. I didn’t catch a word he said, and didn’t need to. A higher ranking suit from some business-oriented department presented ‘business intelligence’. He illustrated his emphatic points with many (to him) emotional graphs of trending ROI (return on investment) and other TLA (three letter acronyms). It was corporate policy to bore salaried employees with this quarterly, on the theory that we’d be inspired to ascend ever greater heights of ROI and other alphabetic Mounts Everest. It was all gibberish to us programmers. There would not be a quiz. None of us were listening.

  I spent half the time remembering last night, just about the nicest date I’d ever had, and Zack’s good-bye kiss. I spent the other half remembering Adam’s lunch, and his grey eyes as he delivered about the most nicest compliment I’d ever received. Were Zack’s eyes grey, or blue… yes, blue. Later, days later, I might have considered practical comparisons and contrasts between the two men. But just then, not in the slightest. Eyes. Deluxe meals. Lips. The romance of Montreal. Picturing Zack catch a baby turkey.

  This reverie was shattered when one of my guys suddenly rose in the middle of an especially melodramatic TLA graph (who knows what the speaker was on about). Connor caromed up the aisle, pulling himself on other people’s seats or shoulders as though climbing a ladder, then slammed out the doors.

  More decorously, with head-bowed apology to the speaker, and everyone whose feet I had to clamber over on the way, I followed Connor out. He came to rest in the conversation nook out by the windows. He sat on a blue-upholstered couch, hands on his thighs. He stared blankly at the print of beach toys. I stood a couple feet off his line of sight for a few minutes, but he didn’t acknowledge my presence.

  I fetched our computers and put them on the coffee table in front of the couch before sitting next to him. You saw this mental state more and more those days. People would just zone out. It’s the end of the world, and I can’t care any more, or something like that. I couldn’t bear going into New York City any more. The streets were full of this dull stare. It was contagious.

  I hadn’t received any work from him the past week, and I should have. I checked his computer right in front of him. He didn’t appear to have done any work the past week.

  “Connor… Why’d you come here today? To work?”

  “…It’s Tuesday. I come here on Tuesday.” He delivered this like one of the earnest but intellectually ungifted who corralled shopping carts in a supermarket parking lot. One of my brightest guys, a back end server wizard, turned zombie.

  “OK. Good, Connor.” Sort of. I mean, at least he knew it was Tuesday. We telecommuters came to Stamford on Tuesday. “But we need to work, too. You know?”

  “…What’s the point?”

  “Money is good. Money is useful. We get paid for working. So look, Connor, I need you to build some data gateways. The weather API I assigned to you. Remember?” API stood for Application Programmer Interface. We had our own set of holy TLA’s, we programmers.

  Slowly, I coaxed his fingers back to work. The fingers came back before the conscious brain. At first, I had to dictate every movement, every file opened, every line of code. Then I could dictate the first half of a line, and he finished it, before drifting back to a stop. After about 45 minutes, he was actually programming again, slowly but correctly. I sat back and watched him code for a few minutes.

  “Dee,” Dan interrupted gently. “Could I see you in my office?”

  “Sure, Dan. Connor’s doing OK now. Right, Connor?” I squeezed Connor’s shoulder gently as I rose to leave. He kept coding.

  Once we were behind Dan’s closed door, he asked gently, “How much work has he delivered this week? Just the facts, Dee. Don’t cover for him.”

  “He deserves me covering for him, Dan. He’s earned me covering for him. He was fine last week. He may be fine again after the long weekend.”

  Dan smiled at me gently, compassionately.

  “OK, none. He hasn’t delivered any work this week. But he’s doing it now. Come on, Dan. The world is ending and most of us are gonna die. There are days it gets to all of us. Don’t tell me you haven’t gone zombie now and then.”

  Dan fidgeted with a pen on his spotless paper blotter, on his habitually clear desk. “For a minute now and then. Sure.”

  “I know we say ‘it’s contagious’, going zombie. But that’s just something we say. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It does mean something, Dee. We say it because going zombie is contagious.” He held up his hand to stop my torrent of defense. “It got out. That the psychologist was interviewing people for the ark. And then the interviews stopped. And not everyone got interviewed. A lot of people lost hope. I’ve had to lay off three people this week. It is contagious, Dee. I’m going to lay off Connor. You don’t have to do it. I’ll do it.

  “But look, Dee, you need to tell the rest of your team, that the interviews will resume. OK? After the holidays. Give them hope. When people lose hope, they give up. They go zombie.”

  I stared at him until he dropped his eyes and started to fidget with his pen again. “Like you’re telling me now, Dan?”

  “No. No! You are on my short list. I’m going to get you an ark berth, Dee. If it’s humanly possible.”

  “And your boss? Marley’s telling you that you’ve got an ark berth, too, right?”

  “Dee.” Dan held his hands up in surrender. “I gave you that folder. You know as well as I do. Everyone’s being lied to. Bad as it looks, the truth is worse. But I’m doing all I can. I want you in that ark with me. I want Mangal and his family, too. If my boss is lying to me… You know, I don’t even want to know.”

  “…Right. I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He rose from his chair. “Look, let’s just go wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and call this day a bust, OK?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered, rising too. “Dan –”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have a really good Thanksgiving, OK? There’s still plenty to be thankful for. Like, I
’ve got you for a boss.”

  He laughed softly. “Yeah. Thanks. You too, Dee.”

  We practiced our happy-ho-ho party faces on each other at the door. Then we sallied forth to glad-hand and lie whitely to our close coworkers and friends. Shelley was the only member of the team I didn’t have to lie to about Connor. Because she didn’t ask.

  So I really wasn’t in the mood for Mangal’s disapproval of my going to Montreal with Adam. “Mangal, I realize this is shocking. But I may not be a virgin at my wedding.” Pure sarcasm on my part – I usually told Mangal about my relationships, if not in much detail. He was my best friend.

  He snorted. “OK, so I opted out of your whole whacked-out Western dating scene. You’re perfectly normal in your own culture. Granted. But you liked Zack. I just think you’re sabotaging yourself. You like Zack, you’ve just started this thing with Zack. So just give Zack a chance. Montreal with this other guy – that’s too crazy, too fast. I think he’s weird. And he’s rich. So I don’t trust him.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s that rich.”

  “He’s not in our class. Although it’s OK for a woman to marry rich.”

  “Why do I even talk to you? You’re medieval.”

  “I’m an intelligent outsider, a rational observer of your bizarre American dating rituals. I can be objective.”

  “If you don’t realize you’re sexist, you’re not very objective.”

  “If you don’t think America is sexist, you’re not very rational.”

  “Touché. Anyway, yes, it’s OK to date someone who makes more money. Nobody’s talking about marriage. Just a weekend jaunt. Though the power differential is kinda… scary.”

  Mangal frowned. “What power?”

  “He just got back from San Francisco.”

  “Good Lord. What does this Adam do?”

  “He’s an arkitect. Like, an ark-builder.”

  Mangal stared at me wide-eyed. Then he said, “Do it.”

  I missed the 180-degree turn. “He did say we could take separate rooms.”