by J. F. Krause
May 29
Enrique, Carl, and I are back together again. This time we’re in Manhattan. A Spanish cruiser will be leaving for Tristan da Cunha in a few days with the exiles. There were originally twenty headed to the island. That was increased by two with the addition of the arsonist from LA and the sniper from Dallas. Also, in our rush to find guardians for our kids, we placed some with bad people. Fortunately, the kids all go to school, and the schools were on the lookout for that sort of thing. Countrywide, we found three victimizers that way. When confronted, the men all confessed and the kids, two boys and one girl, are all getting counseling. We found two other victims and their victimizers by simply looking up the Megan’s Law website, and their names and pictures popped up. If the bad guys hadn’t been hurting their wards, their communities would have just taken the kids away from them and kept an eye out for them, but it turns out they were behaving badly. We made one final discovery that was really disturbing. The Long Island community stumbled onto several victims while doing a routine salvage and inspection. They heard dogs barking from inside an apartment building, something that is unheard of after all this time. Barking dogs still aren’t that uncommon since there are still dogs roaming around most abandoned places living on what have you. The unusual thing in this instance is that these dogs were inside a closed building and still alive. Naturally, the salvage team investigated, since the inside dogs meant someone was living there. We don’t bother people who have decided to stay away from the communities nearest them. That’s their right. But salvage team members also heard what sounded like a child crying, and we always personally respond to that sort of thing. The only children we allow to stay outside the communities are children who are with a parent or other family members. There are several tiny communities around the organized part of the world that have opted to stay outside the Coalition. We only interfere if people appear to be held against their wills or if they have minor unrelated children with them.
The salvage team stood by and called for backup and before long, they were confronting a fairly normal looking man who was holding a shotgun. After a brief, but tense standoff, he relented and the team entered to find four unrelated children ranging in age from 4 to 11. The oldest, a very angry girl who was shackled to a bed, immediately told their rescuers, salvagers and two women with counseling degrees, what had been going on. The man was quickly taken into custody, and, after a short and fair trial, will now be joining his fellow miscreants on Tristan. So, all in all, we have twenty-six bad guys headed for life on Tristan da Cunha.
In some ways it seems a horrible shame to turn Tristan da Cunha into a penal colony. For two centuries, Tristan was home to generations of decent, independent people. They took care of themselves and each other on this most isolated of places through good times and bad. Life was never easy, but they pulled together and created a society of equality and justice. Crime was essentially non-existent unless you counted the fishing vessels that came around every so often.
Now, we will literally be putting the worst people that the organized world can find afoot on this tranquil place, hoping they don’t kill each other but not really caring if they do or don’t.
On one of our last nights in Manhattan together, we all met up for dinner, and then Carl and I went to the theater. There were actually tourists there! The small theater only seated 112, and it was full. The cast was composed of a mix of professional and amateur actors from before the sickness. I even recognized a couple of them from commercials back in the day. There were three plays going on at the time, and we intended to see all of them before we returned to SLO.
I’d love to go to Tristan to look around, but nobody thinks that’s a good idea. The crew has been carefully vetted and all of them were members of their various homelands’ armed forces. In addition to the twenty-six prisoners from North America, and six more from Europe, all of whom were considered very dangerous, there were the ship’s crew of 43 and a military guard of 60, including Enrique. The ship may be Spanish, originally, but the crew is a mix from all over the world, literally. That’s about all I know so far, other than that the Captain is Swedish. This is one of the largest and newest ships in the Coalition. I don’t know what the ship was called by the Spanish before the sickness, but now it carries the name, “Unueco”. I’m told that means Unity in Esperanto. Since I won’t be going to Tristan, Carl and I will be leaving for SLO soon after Unueco leaves New York Harbor.
The day after our date at the play, Carl and I were off on an almost private excursion to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Both of us have grandparents and great grandparents who came to America through Ellis Island. The wonderful thing about traveling and sight seeing now is that there are no crowds. Of course, as soon as we started to congratulate ourselves about how uncrowded everything is, we remembered why and suddenly we had a plunge in mood. It wasn’t just Carl and I. It was everyone in the group. Then, slowly, we rebuilt the mood and realized how privileged we are to be alive and how lucky that everything didn’t fall apart. And, of course, then we all remembered Bobby’s voice on the internet calmly telling us what to do and reminding us in such a gentle way that we didn’t have time to waste. Then he would sympathize with us, and apologize for asking us to set our grief aside for just a few days. It was like we were all soldiers sitting alone in a trench being bombarded and feeling alone and scared to death listening to a soothing voice sending comfort and encouragement. That’s how a lot of us felt and still feel. And of course, Bobby’s advice and solace worked. Now, we’re all thankful for Bobby. Poor Bobby has no idea how much good will he has, everywhere. Every night someone raises a glass “to Bobby”. He’ll be horrified when he finds out!
Just let him stay in SLO raising his four kids. Something no one knows about Bobby except a few of us who have spent a lot of time with him is that Bobby hates to travel, and he particularly hates to fly. He gets motion sickness on a plane, a boat, in the backseat of a car. He told me once about when he was a kid, he got on one of those amusement park rides where they stand you in a round cylinder that goes around so fast that the riders are literally stuck to the wall as the floor is lowered from under them. Almost immediately, Bobby threw up and the vomit adhered to him and the walls all around him and then began spreading around the ride. The other riders were furious, and the operators couldn’t stop it soon enough. Bobby was 11. What an experience!
June 2
The Unueco sailed this morning. Enrique was scheduled for duty below deck when she took off, so we said our good byes yesterday. He’s agreed to send me a full report on the voyage so I’ll get to include it in my report, secondhand at least. This will be Enrique’s last assignment for a while. When he gets back from Tristan, he’ll join the next cohort of the Gap Year.
I think I envy him, maybe on both counts. Traveling to Tristan da Cunha sounds wonderful, but I’d prefer to fly. Unfortunately, flying isn’t an option and the voyage will take three weeks to make the crossings and to establish safe habitation areas for the exiles. I fear that freeing the exiles once we reach the island will be a bit tricky. I believe Hawkins and some of his henchmen are extremely cunning and worry about them somehow overpowering the guards and the crew. Carl doesn’t share my concern, at least, not to the same extent. Evil people are capable of things that are simply beyond the imagination of most of the rest of us.
This evening we are having dinner with Avery Wells. Avery actually has art and business degrees with a specialty in art curatorship. Avery was exceptionally wealthy in his previous life and was well traveled as a California based philanthropist. All his various experiences made him uniquely qualified to manage a program of salvage triage. In the beginning, he managed the formation and organization of salvage, storage, and maintenance for the vast amount of equipment, artifacts, and supplies. That work has passed on to others and he is now concentrating primarily on saving and preserving the vast collections of art found in public museums and private collections around North America. He ha
s counterparts in other areas of the world and together they are training a small army of preservationist. His problem, like everyone else’s is that we simply don’t have enough people to do the work even if they were all trained. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about manufacturing for the foreseeable future because there is more than enough work to keep us all busy doing all the things we need to do to ensure we have a future that includes memories of our past.
One thing I sort of miss, though, is weekends. Most people work a five day week with anywhere from 4 to 10 hours per day of work. A few don’t work at all, and some work a strange mix, depending on what needs to be done. Retirement is a thing of the past. Older people are just too valuable to let them spend time with their feet up reading a book, or whatever retired people do, or more accurately, did. We need their skills and experience more than at anytime since the stone-age. Mostly, they teach or give advice. Every community has gardening, cooking, mechanics, sewing, handyman, and even cleaning classes that are taught almost exclusively by retirement age women and men.
Many of us from urban areas have no cooking skills, and even though we have the cafeterias up and running everywhere, we are slowly learning that we have to make things ourselves if we want to tailor our meals to our own tastes. We’re getting past the shelf life for a number of things that we used to just grab at the supermarkets. While I was here in New York, I managed to take in a class on making pizza dough from scratch. I spent a couple of hours learning how and then baked my own pizza. A while back in Chicago, I learned how to make crackers! We started with basic soda crackers, and then I branched off into the variations like multi-grain and spiced crackers. The class was so popular that it had to be offered several times; it probably is still being offered. The same was true of this pizza dough class. I think my pizza class was the tenth time it had been offered here, and I was lucky to get a place. I didn’t even try for any of the other classes.
June 5
Carl and I are on our way back to SLO aboard a former FedEx jet. Somehow we have managed to merge the former US Post office, UPS, FedEx and a few other delivery and mail services into a new North American mail service with passenger service thrown in. I don’t know if this was one of the airline jets or one of the UPS or FedEx planes since all of them that are in use have been reconfigured to hold a small number of passengers while the rest of the plane is used for freight or mail. There really aren’t that many big jets in service considering what we had in the past. We frequently use the Gulf Stream, Lear, Embraer, and Bombardier jet variety. All of them also handle freight on occasion, too. And of course, there are trusty B-52s still in service.
While some things are best handled worldwide, like the defense forces and some of the advanced educational programs, most everything else is done locally or by region or continent. Some of the touristy things that are almost uniquely North American are dude ranches and dude farms. I can’t understand the fascination for getting on a horse and chasing cows around, or sitting on a tractor and cutting wheat, but several of them have sprung up, and it’s amazing how much work a bunch of tourists can do in a few weeks. A lot of people just keep signing up. Why not! If they can’t be cowboys and cowgirls now, when can they be?
As far as I can tell, the North American custom seems to be that as long as you pull your own weight and make a contribution, your time is your own. There are some regions and communities that are a little more restrictive than the North American model, but only marginally so. The few that have tried to get too heavy handed have ended up losing survivors to their neighbors, and people are the only commodity anywhere that is in short supply.
One thing I do understand, however, is the back to basics movement that seems to have caught on just about everywhere. It seems like most of us want to learn how to take care of ourselves. In a way, we’ve all developed a little bit of the survivalist mentality. Not only do I now know how to make pizza dough, I can grind my own wheat. (So far, I haven’t had to.) I can also preserve or can practically any food that can be preserved or canned. And I’m pretty good with a gun even though I’d never fired a gun in my life before The Sickness. I never want to feel helpless again. I suspect a lot of us feel pretty much the same way.
A couple evenings ago, Avery Wells joined us for dinner at one of the specialty eateries in Manhattan. This one actually has a former professional chef in charge and could pass for an excellent pre-sickness restaurant if it weren’t for the fact that everything was free. It’s attached to the Manhattan cooking school where the chef is one of the teachers and all the restaurant’s service staff are culinary students. Carl says that the economy is based on people doing something useful that also brings them personal joy, so as long as they have a clientele, these small restaurants and shops will stay open. If your passion is cooking, running your own restaurant is a big step up from working in a cafeteria. The downside for the rest of us is that we have to make reservations since the few restaurants that are up and running are all very small venues.
Over dinner, he filled us in on what was happening in his preservation bailiwick. Avery still has a seat on the overall goods and services think tank that meets in SLO every month, but his real love and almost all of his time is spent teaching and supervising art preservation. He was only in the New York area for a couple of days to check on progress with the different museum collections and some of the architecture that is being targeted for preservation.
Interestingly, several previously missing paintings and artifacts have been recovered after having been stolen many years ago. Some were found accidently during routine salvage operations, but others were found because searchers were able to look for them using FBI and Interpol files. In many cases, the police suspected who had them and where they were but didn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant. That’s not a problem any more, at least not the same way. The authorities don’t search homes without a warrant even now as long as the home is registered to the occupant. So, if someone had a stolen piece of art the day everyone died, and they surreptitiously moved it to their new home, they might still have it. It’s possible, but, given the circumstances, who could have planned and carried out something like that?
Since Avery travels somewhere every couple of weeks or so, during dinner we asked him who’s been looking after his little boy, Taylor, when his daddy is away from SLO. Avery looked just slightly sheepish and replied, “Mary Truitt. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now.” So Bobby was right about Avery and Mary. When it comes to trivial information like who is keeping company with whom, he’s spot on, but when it comes to reading the bad guys like George Francis, sometimes he’s the last to figure it out.
Avery is one of Bobby’s most ardent supporters and has been from the start of all the survival projects. Carl and I are too, of course. We all share some of the same reasons for being in Bobby’s corner. Primarily, we don’t think Bobby has the makings of a dictator, and right now, that is one of our common concerns, especially in view of the fact that right now a lot of people would just as soon have him be just that. Like Carl and me, Avery meets with Bobby often and tells us that Bobby listens to advice very well and has no problem giving credit where credit is due. In the end, though, Bobby has very good instincts. He has come to rely on Avery, for instance, for help on diplomacy; Carl is his political guru; and I’m one of his lawyers. He gets a lot of common sense advice from Lydia. Marco, who travels to SLO frequently, is his military advisor, and Todd keeps him up to date on media. Kevin and their kids are also very important in keeping Bobby grounded and well intentioned. I think Kevin may be even more pragmatic in outlook than Bobby.
After we shared our basic stories with each other over dinner, Carl began grilling Avery about diplomatic progress in making the world a safer place. Carl has played an important role in setting up the very limited Coalition government that’s in place, but Avery is playing a deeper role in keeping the Coalition functional and avoiding committing cultural faux pas.
“We seem to be making progress in getting communities to live up to their promises on the Rights and Responsibilities Charter. Most of the Coalition Communities had some pretty good practice in democracy before The Sickness so that isn’t too surprising. What has turned out to be the biggest headache is getting people in safe places to support the military. Being an all voluntary, locally based military is a help in that. And of course, all of the CC members want to preserve their heritages. Bobby is an enthusiastic supporter of that, too, and he really helps on that front.” Avery, it turns out, has been sort of a roving ambassador as he works with communities on preserving their cultural treasures. He landed the role as Bobby’s diplomat in chief by just doing what he wanted to do, and that was to advise and teach the science and art of cultural and art preservation.
“How many people are living in Coalition Communities now?” I hadn’t heard an update in quite some time, and I was curious.
“As it stands, about half or more of the world’s population is currently in an organized community or grouping of some type. The other half or so have just sort of fallen off the grid. We know there are people out there, but for some reason they don’t seem to have coalesced into survivor groups. We still have control of communications and weather satellites, and even some spy satellites, so we can see what appears to be activity, but the electrical grid has been lost in much of the world, and most survivors in unorganized and even some organized settlements are living without modern conveniences. Some of them are still showing up in organized Coalition Communities and telling us about their lives in the ‘void’.
