by D. J. Molles
It was a tickle of familiarity, almost like déjà vu. Something that came with the changing of the seasons.
But then again, Walt tended to try to focus on the positive.
There was another aspect to it. One that he didn’t like to entertain, because there just wasn’t shit he could do about it. And that was just the perfect utility of it all.
Sometimes all he could see was the cold practicality in it, and he could almost picture the Chicoms and Russians drawing up the plans for all this farming infrastructure. How to maximize the farmable land. How to make soil-hydroponics large scale so that people like Walt could grow more food, and faster.
Because if you kept people busy, if you kept them focused on their work, then they would just keep making you money, and their opportunities to rebel would shrink.
He could see their efficiency in this, if he chose to look at it.
But instead he chose to keep his head down. That was what his Pops had taught him to do.
There was a saying that the growers had. It went, “So the wind blows, and the seasons go, and the seeds grow.”
In other words, “There ain’t shit you can do about it.”
It was an invocation of the complete futility of trying to fight unstoppable things. And long, long ago, the Coalition—or “CoAx” to their detractors—had become another unstoppable thing, right up there with the blowing of the wind, and the changing of the seasons, and whether or not a seed chose to germinate and grow into a plant.
“So the wind blows,” they would say, and shrug off life’s inequities.
And it embodied the apathy of a population with no power over their lives.
Keep your head down. Do what you’re told. It’s easiest that way.
Walter could have a wife. He could work. He could have the satisfaction of a job well-done. He could have a quiet life. And there was nothing wrong with that. There was a beauty, a peace to it. And he was okay with the fact that it was small. Small dreams were good enough for him.
Walt stretched his back a bit and refocused himself on the two vidfeeds.
One from the right strut. One from the left strut.
He was operating a 2.7 million dollar machine, attempting to guide it onto a 1.4 million dollar rail system. He knew those numbers because SoDro Growers Group saw fit to remind him on a somewhat regular basis—probably about once a week. So he was well aware that any error on his part could be very costly, and there was an applicant pool of nearly a thousand qualified growers who were stuck on maintenance trucks that would love to have his job.
So he focused. And he was very gentle with the controls.
Steady as she goes.
He’d operated that machine for the last five years. When he’d first started, he’d been a nervous wreck. Now, it was just another day at the office. Every once in a while, the reality of it would hit, and he’d get that little jump-start in his chest. But then he’d be lulled by the normalcy of it, the every-day nature of it. This was nothing special, really.
That was how you had to think about it.
To his right, his partner, Merl, sipped coffee from the planter’s seat. Feet on the dash, making his section of the cab muddy. Walt’s side was pristine.
“Careful now,” Merl said. “Don’t want my taxes going up.”
It was a long-running joke. Hardly worth laughing about, so Walt just ignored him.
When the first tumults of war had hit the Districts, it had left the hydroponics systems damaged so much that the Fed raised taxes on land ownership to an extravagant level to pay for the repairs. Of course, everyone clamored that it was a punitive tax designed to punish the growers, because the Agrarian Districts had harbored so much of the resistance.
The Fed didn’t even try to deny it.
“You break it, you buy it,” was the tongue-in-cheek response.
The old joke struck a little closer to home for Walt, though. The acreage he’d been contracted to plant had once been owned by previous generations of his family. An old birthright that had never had the chance to be passed on. Now it was owned by the government, leased by SoDro Growers Group under five year contracts, and Walter Baucom was paid his paltry commission to work the land that his fathers once owned.
So the wind blows.
The Baucom family had tried to hang onto it for a while. They’d succeeded a little longer than some of the other families in the area. But little by little the land had been bled away from them, as it had from everyone else. They couldn’t keep scrounging the money up to pay what they owed on it.
He’d been a kid when his Pops had finally made the decision to sell out. The Land Patronage Act made sure that the Baucom family received a tax subsidy for working the land they once owned. Walt guessed that was supposed to salve any resentment. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. At the end of the day, he supposed they were better off financially.
He got the right strut lined up, then focused on the left. That was how you had to do it. Power to the right, then to the left. Kind of wiggling the big beast of a machine up into place, until both of your running struts were about six inches from contact and perfectly lined up.
His eyes shot back and forth between the two monitors. Judging the pictures from the vidfeeds. Making sure that they were mirror images of each other. If he didn’t, there would be a cracked strut, or a damaged rail, and he would have much explaining to do.
Everything looked right.
The feeds were both reporting near-identical measurements.
The ramps were steep. He had to feather the power just a bit to get the multi-ton planter up onto the rails. Couldn’t just stomp on the gas. That would be disastrous.
Five years ago, he would have been “sweating in his creases,” as Merl put it.
But today, he just wanted to get the damn thing on the rails and get to planting. He had a shit-ton of acres to plant, and he really didn’t want to work on his day off. Carolyn’s day off was finally due to sync up with his, and if he screwed that up, he wouldn’t hear the end of it. She’d been excited about their day off together for a month.
Walt smiled through his concentration. Fiddled the controls a bit.
Merl took another long sip of coffee. He leaned over and saw where Walt had positioned them, and he pulled the cup away from his face, knowing what came next.
Walt feathered the power. The planter started to rock back and forth.
“Easy now,” Merl said again, mainly because he knew it would get on Walt’s nerves. Then he began making sudden noises every time Walt tapped the power, as though Walt had made some terrible mistake: “Whoop! Oop! Watch out!”
What a bastard.
Planters thought it was all fun and games. The computer did all their work for them, and if by some insanely improbable happenstance, the coulters struck a hydroponics line, it’d be a measly few thousand in repairs. Not enough to get them shit-canned.
Walt kept the planter rocking back and forth, making a little more progress onto the ramp. Little by little. A little more…
He felt the resistance give way and the giant bulk of the machine made it onto the tractor rails, moving just a bit too quick. The planter jerked around and made a nasty groaning sound.
Hot coffee splashed on Merl’s leg. “Fuck!” he yelped. “Come on, man!”
Walt immediately loosened his grip on the controls, letting the rails guide the tracks of the planter. He took his foot off the power, allowing the machine’s own inertia to slow it down. Then he gently applied the brake.
He looked over at Merl, smiling.
Merl glared back. “Smooth, y’knocker. How long you been doing this now?”
Walt scoffed. “We’re in there.” He moved his hips, suggestively. “Little rough, but that’s just what she likes.”
Merl rolled his eyes and took another swipe at his coffee-stained tans. He stowed his cup of coffee and took his feet off the dash. A few taps of a few buttons. The computer scanned the ground beneath them.
Walter watched his partner’s body language with the unconscious ease of a natural born talent, and confirmed that Merl was just blustering at him. There was no true anger there.
But Merl was an easy read. Not only had Walter been partner’s with the man for a few years now—goodness, had it been that long?—but Merl didn’t know about Walter’s abilities, and Walter didn’t advertise them, so Merl had never tried to hide his body language.
All Merl knew was what everyone else in District 89 (and in the casinos in the city) knew: you don’t play poker with Walter Baucom.
Poker was the game that Walter had squandered his talent on, earned himself money with, gotten the shit kicked out of him over, and eventually abandoned, because no one would play with him. Or, in the case of the casinos, they didn’t allow him to play.
But Walter was an enterprising young man. He’d found other ways for his abilities to make him money. Other, much more dangerous ways. And soon he would learn just how much danger he was putting himself in, but for now he was just a grower getting paid a pittance to operate this giant piece of machinery.
Walt felt the huge planting arm lower down as Merl activated it. It came through as a slight vibration in his feet and a dip in the tachometer. The agitators in the giant hopper full of corn seed started whirring, making the planter rock slightly.
Then a thunderous roar.
Which was not normal at all.
“Shit, what…?” Walt looked at his readings, his gauges, his hands instinctively removed from the controls. But then he recognized the sound for what it was.
Merl was already leaning forward, looking up into the sky through the viewport.
Three gunships went overhead, flying low and fast.
Walt caught the markings on their tails.
One Fed. One Chicom. One Russian.
“Oh, look,” Merl said, flatly. “It’s the Three Brothers.”
Fraternity Flights, the growers called them. No real purpose but to fly over, slow and showy, and demonstrate to any insurgents on the ground that the Three Brothers were still united, still holding hands, still ushering this country into the new era of safety and security, and they’d better get the fuck on board, or else.
Except this didn’t seem like a Fraternity Flight.
Walt squinted at them as the three gunships hung a hard right and began circling around, heading for the Town Center area. “I dunno. Those looked like they were goin’ somewhere fast.”
Merl watched them silently for a moment, lips pursed in thought.
Fast and low.
That wasn’t how the Fraternity Flights went.
Merl knew Walt was right. Those gunships were heading to something. And the thought of that filled the cockpit with an uncertainty. Both of the growers leaned out a bit and looked in the direction of the Town Center, and Walt knew that they were both looking for the same thing: smoke trails.
These were violent times. It’d been almost docile for a while. But something had happened. Something in the last few months, and the rumors were flying.
Some said it was another country that had come in to aide the resistance. Others said it was a portion of the Fed military that had defected. Still others said it was a prison break from one of the DTIs—Domestic Terrorist Internment—out west.
According to the grapevine, it was any one of a dozen different things.
But whatever it really was, the Fed-controlled newsfeeds weren’t saying, and in all the silence, they were seeing more gunships, more guntrucks, and more patrols than they’d seen in previous years.
And everybody knew somebody who was involved in one way or another.
Somebody who could die in the violence at any minute of any day, on one side or the other.
Merl sat back in his seat. He swallowed and frowned at his controls. “World’s goin’ to shit.”
For a fleeting second, Walt wondered if he should call Carolyn, check in on her, make sure that she was okay. Make sure that some wingnut resistance group hadn’t detonated a bomb too close to the dining hall where she worked…
Walt shook his head.
You couldn’t live your life in fear.
It would be fine. Everything would be fine.
“She’s ready,” Merl said, in an almost subdued voice. He opened the feed tubes from the hopper to the coulters. “It’s on you.”
Walt took a calming breath and focused on the good things. The familiarity. The beautiful view. He let himself at least try to feel satisfied as he throttled up the power to the planting arms and pulled the speed down to a solid ten-feet-per-second.
Steady as she goes.
***
He went with Merl to the tavern after work, because Merl offered to buy him a beer and they’d actually finished their acres ahead of schedule. Carolyn wouldn’t be home from the dining hall for another two hours. He wouldn’t be missed.
Nothing on the news to tell them what the flight of gunships had been going towards. Nothing to alert them to anything out of the ordinary, although they did pass two separate patrols on their way in. One Chicom. One Russian.
The days were lengthening and it wasn’t quite dark when they got there. The tavern was tucked into the back corner of their Town Center—pronounced “tan sinner.” To most everyone that grew up as a grower, it was the center of their universe, the only commercial space allowed to exist inside the borders of their District. You could go into the city if you were feeling ritzy, but it was a rare occasion when driving an hour and half each way to be sneered at by a bunch of urbies sounded like a good way to spend your night.
Their Town Center was a sprawl of brownstone buildings that had been constructed damn-near a hundred years ago. Stuffed into all of those old buildings was a collection of small businesses, a lot of them owned by SoDro Growers Group. Hardware stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, rec centers, mess halls, a few restaurants, a smattering of apartments, and of course, four pubs. All four were nearly identical. For some reason Walt and Merl had long ago chosen Brown’s Tavern as home base.
Driving into the town center, Walt saw the usual run of people. Old, beat up trucks just like his own, carrying old, beat up men and women fresh from the fields and pump stations, their tans still smudged with dirt and purple regulator cleaner, all heading to a bar, or a mess hall to cash in on their meal ticket—generously provided by their gracious employer, SoDro. They were the first shifters, of which Walt considered himself lucky to be one.
Parking was a bitch, which was about average for shift-change. Walt followed Merl’s pickup truck mindlessly, letting the other man figure out where to park. Merl circled around Brown’s Tavern three times, like a dog trying to find a comfortable spot to lay down. They finally found a pair of spots and pulled their trucks in, close enough that the mirrors scraped.
The two of them edged out of their half-open doors, cursing and mumbling half-heartedly. They met at the back of their trucks with a pair of smirks, and then walked the block to Brown’s. Walt zipped up the front of his tans. The evening was as crisp and clear as the morning had been.
Walt turned the corner to Brown’s and almost stopped walking.
He caught himself at the last second and covered his hesitation with a cough.
Outside of Brown’s, three guntrucks were parked. A few soldiers—Russians, it looked like—stood around the big vehicles, their battleshrouds undone, talking and smoking.
Merl took a glance at him, evaluating his partner.
Walt just looked straight ahead. But not directly at the soldiers. Off to the side a bit, while he clenched his teeth. It was best not to make eye-contact. He felt the heat, the resentment, rising up in his chest, but he pushed it down and went for the door to Brown’s, hoping that the rest of the soldiers weren’t inside the tavern.
The Russians were known to take drink breaks while on patrol. Sometimes they hung around the taverns after-hours. Some of them were nice. A lot of them weren’t. And nice or not, they all knew that they commanded a level of
fear, and so the barkeeps pushed free drinks at them and hoped not to get on their shit list.
If they’re in there, I’m walking right back out, Walt thought bitterly.
The two of them pushed through the old, white doors and into the tavern.
A bit of peeling white paint clung to his palm. He brushed it off on his tans.
The place was dark and musty. It smelled like growers that had worked all day, and stale beer drying and re-fermenting on the floor mats. One could make the case that it was a bad smell, but it long ago stopped being offensive to Walt. Now, he associated it with the feeling of finally being free of work, and the taste of a well-deserved beer.
The interior was lit by advertisement lights and the monitors of people’s PDs. A few dim recessed fixtures struggled to be important but weren’t offering much.
Walt glanced around the dimness, looking for the soldiers. But it was just growers.
He let out a low breath of relief.
The tavern was crowded. It was payday. So, naturally, the first bill to be paid is to the barkeep. SoDro Growers Group, who leased 90% of the land in 8089, had come through again with their meager weekly salaries. It wasn’t much, but when your balance is always so close to nothing, a $9,500 jump makes you feel like a rich man.
Of course, it would all be gone by Thursday, without a doubt. A week’s groceries alone would take about a third of it—a gallon of milk for $80, a loaf of bread for $65, oh the joys of fifty years of runaway inflation. Then there was utilities. And rent. Both of which were paid directly back to SoDro, who owned their house, so paying that bill was always darkly amusing.
Walt flipped up his PD monitor and traced his eyes over the transparent blue glow. His balance sat at $9,437. Walt opened his mouth, coughed rudely, standing there in the middle of the tavern entryway.
“What the fuck?” he snapped.
Merl looked at him. “What’s the problem?”
“We got shorted,” Walt said back. “Or at least, I did. Did you get shorted?”
As he said it, his fingers scrawled across the projection, opening the itemized deductions list. He scrolled through all the taxes that he already knew and expected—property, income, energy usage, grocery (yeah, that was a good one, considering he grew the damn groceries to begin with), vehicle ownership, healthcare, charity, roads and infrastructure.
