Landry Park

by Bethany Hagen

  I moved on to the second journal.

  October 13th, 2021

  The Cherenkov lanterns have finally reached Africa, and news is promising. At least three hundred villages are lit, if not more by the time I write this, and increasing numbers of governments are contacting Landry Enterprises to purchase many more thousands. And the world thought American industry was dead after the Chinese invaded! If anything, the Chinese have helped Landry Enterprises. Just ten years ago, we were just a single lab, with only two or three technicians helping me develop the lantern, wearing those irksome masks to protect against the airborne flu—which the Easterners still claim they had nothing to do with. Now, after the turmoil in the economy and the famine and the war, I own almost all of the established power plants in the country. And with the displaced people from the West Coast, finding cheap employees has been easy, making the production of thousands of lanterns quick and inexpensive.

  The protests are starting up again—unfortunately—as they did after the recession and before the war. Income inequality, they say. A work ethic inequality, I reply back. Why do they stand outside my offices with their signs when they could be finding work?

  His tone and his diction reminded me of Father. The brilliance, the efficiency . . . the indifference to the less fortunate. The same indifference I had felt within myself from time to time. I stretched out onto my stomach, ignoring the creaking of the corset, and propped myself up on my elbows.

  November 2nd, 2021

  Have heard from a local source that people are leery of the lanterns—worried about radiation. We’ve done everything in our power to demonstrate that the polymer casing provides complete protection for an entire year. All the customer needs to do is send the lantern back to us once the year is through, and we’ll replace it. There is negligible danger as long as they use the brains nature gave them. Although some of these people—like these protestors I am staring at right now, chanting below my window—probably have brains no bigger than the uranium pearls inside the lanterns.

  November 7th, 2021

  Several of the African governments have called, concerned about the more remote villages not being able to trade out their lanterns before they decay and start emitting radiation. I fail to see how that is Landry Enterprises’ problem. They simply need to build a better infrastructure.

  Besides, I have other matters to consider. The treaty with the “Eastern Empire,” as the Chinese and their allies are now styling themselves, has just been ratified by Congress. Several of my senator friends have encouraged me to sit in on the negotiations and give some of my suggestions. The Chinese, now with Korea, Japan, Russia, and the OPEC nations under their thumb, perceive themselves as the new superpower and caretaker of the globe, and as such, are concerned about environmental practices. They are calling for an extreme reduction in carbon emissions over the next three years, and have cut off our supply to foreign oil to show they mean business. Within months, our coal mines and power plants will shut down.

  It is a shame for my friends in the petroleum and coal industry, but this opens a vacuum in the American energy industry that I hope we can fill.

  November 8th, 2021

  Just got off the phone with the vice president. It seems an addenda was added at the eleventh hour about large-scale fission plants . . . the type of power plants I own. He is appropriately apologetic, but I made my anger no secret. I have no idea if the Chinese or if a cadre of congressmen who oppose me are responsible for this. I am working to uncover the truth.

  But necessity is the mother of invention, they say. Nuclear power is not banned outright, only large-scale plants. Granting that the Empire honors their treaty and gives America autonomy from this day forward, I believe I can work within those parameters.

  I remembered the treaty from my days at the academy. It was designed to avoid catastrophic climate change—or so the Empire claimed—but it also had a conveniently weakening effect on many of the world’s major economies. Of course, the Empire was nothing if not ruthlessly efficient; if they could save the world by hamstringing their enemies, so much the better.

  I skipped ahead a few months, until I saw the words “nuclear charge.”

  March 15th, 2022

  The protestors seem determined to live outside my building. They’ve brought in tents and portable toilets. The stench of the toilets is horrific. But one must imagine that these types of people were quite malodorous before leaving the West. They seem the kind that protested artificial soaps and hot showers even in better times.

  The nuclear charge is close to completion. Using the polymer casing from the Cherenkov lanterns, I was able to create something like a miniature fission reactor in a case no bigger than a shoe box. The customer would have to install a small turbine and a small water tank inside their homes, but the cost would be no more than a few thousand dollars and the whole system would take less room than a coat closet. They would pay more for the charges, but without coal or gas for electricity, what else will they do? Wind power is clumsy and unsightly, solar panels are still fragile and expensive, and few have access to hydroelectric power.

  It may just work.

  April 1st, 2022

  The problems with the lanterns continue. A recent death was linked to radiation poisoning after some simpleton failed to dispose of the lantern after it expired. This would be difficult enough, but the nuclear charge uses the same casing. If I used a more permanent casing, the charge would be too heavy for the average person to lift, much less send in to our warehouse and have one sent back. I am working with all the contacts I know: my friends in Washington, my friends in the media, and my friends in the banks to convince them of the safety of my lanterns and my charges.

  But I am sensing a pushback. They are listening to the fear of radiation instead of the facts. No amount of literature I send them seems influential enough.

  I sat back for a moment. No book or teacher had ever mentioned that the charge was hailed as anything other than a marvelous idea and the savior of the American way of life. Having seen the sorting yards, I couldn’t help but wish the people who doubted the safety of the charge had won the day.

  Or did I?

  I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. The small crystal chandelier threw delicate shadows across the crown molding. If there had been no Cherenkov lanterns, no nuclear charges, then there would be no Landry Park. I might have never met David—or Jude or Jamie or Jane. I might never have been born.

  June 27th, 2022

  I have received word that I’ve been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the Cherenkov lantern. Still, bad media plagues the lantern, and the charge, too, although it has not yet been released. The coal plants are beginning to shut down and hydrogen-powered cars are beginning to show up on the streets. The clock is ticking. I need those charges to be ready by the treaty’s deadline.

  July 3rd, 2022

  A solution has been revealed—and by the protestors of all people.

  The camping toilets they use for waste management need to be emptied periodically to keep from overflowing. As one can imagine, this looks like a terrible job. The tanks holding the waste are filthy and rank from sitting in the Kansas City heat, and they are so heavy as to need to be dragged along the ground, causing the substance to slosh out of the tank’s opening over their hands and feet.

  However, the volunteers are treated like royalty. They get the best tents, the first round of sandwiches and bottled water, the privilege of using the two makeshift showers first. They are heroes, and so the odiousness of the job is outweighed by the rewards.

  I feel convinced that this could be applied to the nuclear charges. A well-paid workforce could be employed to change out the charges and bring them to the warehouse. We could offer great benefits . . . vacations, retirement, the middle-class dream. And once the customer realizes that the weight of responsibility of remembering to change the charges themselves is no longer theirs, and once they see how healthy a
nd happy the charge changers are, they will listen to reason.

  I turned the page slowly, again feeling my entire education shift under my feet, and all the certainty of facts I knew cracking under the weight of new information. Jacob Landry had considered paying volunteers? The textbooks taught that the Rootless were given the job of handling charges because they were the descendants of the worst of the plebeians in the Last War. But this job was originally meant to be safe . . . prosperous.

  August 5th, 2022

  Will they ever invent a new chant? I’ve been listening to the same shouts for months.

  I’ve been assured that the Nobel Prize is mine for the taking, but I don’t know if it will be enough. With the up-ended state of everything, people seem more reluctant than ever about the charges, even when I proposed the idea of a workforce. My friends in the financial sector pointed out the cost of insuring such workers and of the intense medical screenings they would need periodically, in addition to the sheer number I’d have to hire.

  It would be rather expensive. Even if I raised the prices of the charges, the workers would cut sharply into my profits.

  August 5th, 2022, later

  I’ve seen another solution.

  It was the last entry, written in stark black ink, as if he’d grabbed any pen nearby to catalog this one thought.

  I’ve seen another solution.

  I felt cold fingers in my chest just reading it.

  I grabbed for the third and final journal, my nails scratching at the paper in my hurry to open it. A stiffness had crept up my back and shoulders, locking my arms and neck like my corset locked the rest of my body. A nauseous urgency riled my stomach. The next journal didn’t start until a few months later, and it only had one entry.

  December 25th, 2022

  Today is the day we begin. At this moment, I can’t help but think of the curious behavior of the observed particle. Unobserved, it exists in multiple states at once. But once it is viewed, this particle, without any sentience whatsoever, commits to one destiny. I feel like since the invasion, we’ve all existed in multiple destinies. I’ve played the part of inventor, lobbyist, and now strategist. And now we are ready to reveal our true selves to the public, to commit to one, glorious path.

  After weeks of planning in the mausoleum I had built, we are ready. It was almost ridiculous how quickly my peers saw the brilliance of it all, and the more unenthusiastic were lured by an opportunity to invest in Landry Enterprises before the nuclear charge becomes ubiquitous in American homes.

  We’re calling ourselves the Uprisen. One of the congressmen came up with it; he seems to like the idea that we are the oppressed ones here, fighting for what we believe in. And so now—with the military, the banks, and the government with us—we will begin. While the protestors and the others celebrate with their families, we will begin.

  . . .

  I closed the journal carefully with shaking hands, taking care to set it gently on the bed and not to drop it on the floor. Jack had been right about Jacob Landry. He hadn’t cared about climate change or helping people in poverty. If anything, it sounded like he hated the poor. Or maybe just held them in the same regard as one holds a fly or an ant. To him the displaced and hungry protestors were nuisances. Pests.

  And so he—what? I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that Jacob, whose face haunted every wing of this house and the cover of every history textbook at the academy, had invented a war for money and power.

  That meant Landry Park was built out of violence. This whole house—the whole beautiful, ancient marble and stone house—was the product of one man’s insatiable greed. I looked around, as if expecting the walls to look back at me, as if they were displeased with the information I now possessed. I wanted to run all the way to Jack, tell him that I understood now. The imperative to shed everything that connected me to my family and this house almost propelled me out of bed and out the front door, but I couldn’t. It was night and it was freezing and I wasn’t brave enough to barrel through the worst parts of town at this hour, unaccompanied.

  I would go first thing tomorrow morning.

  I turned off the light and lay down, every breath marked by the rustling of my dress and the straining of my corset. I felt as if the house were watching me, as if I would open my eyes to find the walls closer to my bed, the chandelier closer to my face. As if Jacob Landry was reaching his hand out to me, through time and through whatever veil separated life from death, not to comfort me but to grab me and hold me tight, to pin me down until I suffocated under the weight of the Landry legacy.

  I was dreaming of the mausoleum, of a pen scratching against paper in the yellow haze of incandescent lights. Deep burgundy hair, large hands.

  It was Jacob Landry writing in his journal.

  I tried to leave, but I couldn’t run in my debut dress. The skirts grew and grew and my shoes pinched and I was stuck next to Jacob, struggling and reaching for the door. He turned to look at me and smiled and his teeth were small and pointed. I still couldn’t move.

  And then suddenly I was in a bed, in a long nightgown, burning with fever. Father stood over me with a syringe, tsking at my groans, and pushing the gleaming needle into my arm. “We have all been through it, little Madeline,” he whispered as fire filled my veins. “Every Landry before you.”

  I opened my mouth to scream and flames spilled out, burning my face, my bed, my father. I would burn alive, like a witch tied to a stake, and my father would hold the syringe all the while.

  Something jarred me out of my dream and into my dark bedroom, where Elinor was wrapped in her night robe, looking distressed. She held a Cherenkov lantern in her hand.

  “You have to wake up,” she said, helping me sit upright. “Something bad is happening to that boy.”

  The grogginess fell like scales from my eyes. “Charlie?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed.

  Elinor brought over boots, wool stockings, and my long red coat. “I’m not sure what Mr. Landry is doing, but several of the maids were called to serve him and the Uprisen men an early breakfast, at four thirty. Then they were ordering cars and having valets bring portable solar heaters.”

  “What time is it now?” I asked, yanking off the silk and lace stockings from last night and pulling on the warmer woolen ones.

  Elinor clucked her tongue at my dress, turned blue-purple by the light of the lantern. “Almost five thirty. They are going to the memorial around Liberty Park. You’ll have to change, Miss Landry, you can’t spoil that dress in the snow.”

  “There is no time. It will take you twenty minutes to undo all the laces and buttons and bustle hooks. Unless you want to cut it off me.”

  She looked sick at the thought.

  I took the buttonhook from her and started buttoning my boots as quickly as I could. “You said Charlie was involved?”

  “I heard your father on a call to the local justice of the peace, telling him to release the boy to his custody.”

  I stopped, hardly daring hope. “So they are releasing him?”

  Elinor shook her head, laying a dark hand on mine. “Your father is summoning all the Rootless to Liberty Park as well. I heard him. And I heard him mention the gibbet cage.”

  The gibbet cage. Jacob Landry’s preferred method of execution during the Last War: forcing people to swallow a packet of radioactive material and then locking them in a metal cage to die. Usually the prisoner died within hours, burning from the inside out, but there were some who held out longer. They were the ones who died of exposure. They’d shown the old news clips in the academy; images of limp bodies and bleeding mouths flooded my mind.

  If the room weren’t already dim, it would have darkened. I heard a buzzing noise that seemed louder than Elinor’s voice and my own thoughts.

  He wouldn’t hang a boy in the gibbet cage. He wouldn’t.

  Elinor was helping me to my feet, feeding my arms into the sleeves of my coat, pressing gloves into my hand.

  “You have
to go,” she was saying. “Go!”

  I made for the door, too stunned to try to make sense of the tornadic whirlwind of thoughts, protests, pleadings. “Call David,” I said faintly. “Tell him everything.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “And that book on the table?”

  Elinor handed it to me. One of the journals—the first one with the equations and plans and designs for the lantern.

  “Do you know how to scan things into a tablet?” I asked suddenly, an idea taking fire.

  “Yes, miss. Of course.”

  “Those other two books, scan them into my tablet please. It should be next to my bed. Once you have finished, I need you to send it to everyone on my contacts list. And send it to all the people you know, all the servants, all the middle-class. Send it from my address so no one can trace it back to you.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  I walked into the hallway and down to the foyer, where Jacob Landry’s bust cast its sightless eyes on me. Without a second look at him or the house, I rushed out into the snow.

  • • •

  With so many houseguests from out of town, finding a car was easy. I had the driver stop at the edge of the park, and took the rest of the trip by foot, my boots slipping a little in the soft snow, the hem of my skirt and coat soon caked in it. The trees were dipped in shining glass and the whole park sparkled in the pinkish dawn light. The branches were so weighted with ice that they drooped wearily, with icicles as long as daggers hanging from their tips. I found a wide tree to shield my bright red coat from view.

  At the top of the hill, I could see the crowded top of the war memorial. High above us, a stone tower held aloft a bowl of flame and at its base was a terrace that looked out over the skyline. To the south, the large lawn held thousands of silent people, hemmed by a border of wary police. The Rootless. They were rimmed with bristling constables, who stood facing inward, holding riot shields and batons. They all had guns. They all had gleaming canisters strapped to their backs—smoke bombs perhaps, or tear gas. But there were still far fewer police than Rootless. I suppose—as always—Father counted on fear being the true deterrent.