by James Zerndt
“This was your idea. You’re not helping.”
“Fine. Try W-A-T-E-R then,” I say and Dustin smirks, punches it in.
Nothing.
“Wasn't there something in Mom's book? Silver something?"
"Silver Oxide,” I say. “It’s used in cloud seeding. Try A-G-I."
Dustin punches it in, but still nothing happens. “This is pointless. We’re toast.”
Just as I’m about to give up, dead certain that neither of us will ever make it out of here, never live in an ordinary world again, I remember all those afternoons listening to my Dad talk about cloud seeding, about dry ice and how it was the carbon dioxide that cooled the clouds. I can see our parent’s bedroom, the Periodic Table Dad hung over their bed.
He had it framed and everything.
Mom called it Nerd Porn.
“Humor me for a second. Try CO2 in one and AgI in the other.”
It’s obvious Dustin doesn’t think it’ll work, but he punches in the sequence anyway.
At first nothing happens, but then we hear three quick beeps and the door creeps opens.
“Really?” Dustin says to Dumb cop as he motions for him to stand. “That the best you morons can do?”
For an answer, Dumb cop spits the propaganda from his mouth. “I’m the only one allowed in there.”
“That’s okay,” Dustin says, pushing him through the door with the gun squarely in his back. “Consider us guests.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting, maybe armed guards, something KGB-like, but there’s nothing like that. The only thing telling us we’ve found the right place is the ceiling. It’s made entirely of glass with six-foot long syringe-like needles poking into the sky.
Lasers.
There are thousands of them, all of them looking like they’re trying to inject something into an already dead sky.
It feels very much like we’re inside a bunker of some sort. A crazed meteorologist’s bunker. The walls are lined with video screens monitoring the weather in various parts of the state, large swirling weather systems, swaths of colors indicating air mass, varying percentages of precipitation.
One of them is of Crater Lake.
I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s where Dad used to take us camping every summer. Along the rim of the lake there’s something like generators. Generators and what looks to be rocket launchers. Along the bottom of the screen it says, Dispersal Units Active: 600.
Great.
One of Jerusha’s theories was right.
I’ll never hear the end of it.
“How do we stop this thing?” Dustin asks Dumb cop.
“I’m not allowed to touch anything in here. None of us are.”
“Then who does the touching?”
“The President,” Dumb cop says. “But he’s never actually here. He sort of works from home.”
There are cameras mounted in the corners of the room. If we haven’t been spotted yet, it won’t be long now.
“How many more guards are there?” Dustin asks and I make my way around the room, looking for anything that might resemble an off-switch.
“There’s only the four of us now,” I hear Dumb cop say. “They cut back after the number of Violators went down last quarter. It’s been a rough year for us.”
“We’re sorry to hear that,” Dustin says flatly. “Our hearts go out to you and yours.”
“It doesn’t matter, you know. Four or four hundred guards. There’s no way you’re getting away with this.”
Dustin pulls another poster down from the wall.
Green is the Color of Patriotism!
“Here,” he says, handing it to Dumb cop. “You know the drill.”
I’m about to give up, suggest we head back to Jerusha, when I hit the jackpot. Sandwiched in between a couple of computers is a metal box with the words For Emergency Use Only etched into the top. I open the lid and inside is a red switch, an old-school microphone, all silver and shiny. Like something Elvis might have crooned into back in the day.
“Dustin, I think I found something.”
“Sit,” he orders Dumb cop. “Stay.”
I show Dustin my find, but he looks massively unimpressed.
“If you wanted to poison a bunch of people all at once,” I ask him, “where would you go?”
“Dude, I’m not exactly in the mood for riddles.”
“Just humor me.”
“Fine,” Dustin says. “A poison store?”
“How about the town water supply?”
I don’t know what I’m expecting, a light bulb to go off over Dustin’s head or something, but he just stares at me.
“I’m talking about State Radio. We’re going to give a little speech about what the government’s been doing to us. We could reach a lot of people.”
Finally, Dustin’s eyes light up.
“Can I do it?”
“You know what to say?”
“I think so. You just worry about D-bag there.”
“Fine. Give me the gun then.”
Dustin’s reluctant, but he hands it over.
“And remember,” I say before I go and babysit Dumb cop. “Profanity can take away from the weight of a person’s words.”
“Well, how much are they supposed to fucking weigh then?”
“Just try not to swear too much, okay?”
“Fine. Whatevers.”
When I leave Dustin to gather his thought, I see him jot down: FUCK NO!
*
I take a seat next to Dumb cop, his mouth festooned with propaganda.
“Go ahead,” I tell him when he won’t stop staring at me. “Spit it out.”
He turns his head to the side and sort of dribbles the soggy paper from his mouth. Then, seeing that Dustin’s a safe distance away, leans over conspiratorially.
“You know we were tracking you right from the start. There wasn’t anywhere you ever went we didn’t know about.”
We’re about to lift the big thumb the government’s been keeping everybody under for years and this jackass wants to brag.
“You must be very proud.”
“Just enjoy this while you can, kid. It won’t last long.”
“You know, I can understand why people like you exist. I mean, I guess there needs to be some sort of balance in the world. Like you have butterflies and you have mosquitoes. What I don’t understand is why every mosquito is convinced it’s a butterfly.”
Dumb cop shakes his head, spits a few remaining pieces of poster from his mouth. “We knew about your Mom’s suicide attempt,” he says. “We used that. To make it look like one.”
I check on Dustin, try to see if he’s listening, but he’s busy at work on his speech. My hands are trembling. I see Dumb cop look down at the gun, smile when he sees it shaking.
I squeeze it as hard as I can, mutter, “We knew Mom didn’t write that suicide note. Poem. Whatever the fuck it was supposed to be.”
“Yeah, she wasn’t too happy about having to take dictation. Kind of a snob if you ask me. But, hey, not too bad for a mosquito, huh.”
I stand up, stick the gun in his face, the barrel about a centimeter from his crooked nose.
My hand isn’t shaking anymore.
I can picture every last detail of it in my head.
How far the blood will travel.
The pattern his stupid brains will make on the wall.
“They were good people,” I say through clenched teeth. “Good people who wanted to help other people. Can you even understand that?”
Before I can get an answer, I hear a tapping sound reverberate through the room, and all the screens go blank. The next thing I know the warm fronts are replaced with the smiling face of the man I met as a child.
Our President.
I lower the gun, take a step back.
Would you rather kill or kill?
“So what do you think of our little weather station? It’s still a work in progress, but I think your father would have been pleased with th
e changes we’ve made.”
I’d say something but my tongue is busy shitting itself in disbelief.
Dustin, too, seems at a loss for words.
For once.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you boys. There’s not much point of that now. I’m sorry about your parents, but your father was going to blow the whistle on me. If people found out, things would have gone back to how they were and another Civil War really wasn’t an option. Then there was your mother. Your lovely, beautiful mother. We already knew she was a disturbed woman. A disturbed woman intent on distributing another book of, how can I put this, of a subversive nature. Tragic. All very tragic. So you see, I really had little choice in the matter.”
Behind him, in the background, there’s a flag.
The old red, white, and blue.
Only it says In Water We Trust now.
Ridiculous.
“Our parents only ever wanted to help people. They loved this country. Unlike you.”
“Ah, the youth are so quick to judge. So confident that the moral foundations they stand upon aren’t just a comforting illusion. Do you really think I enjoyed having your parents removed? Thanks to your father, we now have the ability to manipulate the jet stream and control weather patterns. The infrared laser pulses he worked with are far more effective than the cloud seeding aircraft we were experimenting with.
“Now, by simply optimizing the wavelength, the focus and pulse duration, we can ionize the air and initiate condensation wherever we want. Or stop it. Who knew that with a few tweaks here and there and the sweep of a beam, we could be so effective? We can even cause an earthquake if we have sufficient need to.
“You see, Thomas. I am Nature.”
I watch his eyes while he speaks. They still sparkle and dance. A lightning storm of perverted ideas inside his disillusioned head.
I decide to play along.
Until I can think of something to do.
“And the rain? Where does it all go?”
“The rain? Oh, that. We herd any surplus into the states we evacuated. Well, there and into the ocean. It’s really quite an impressive operation. It gives us enough water to supply the rest of the country, not to mention a little extra to sell on the world market. Unfortunately, though, other parts of the world aren’t faring as well as we are.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “You seem real broke up about that.”
Dustin is stalking back and forth now, his face beet red like he’s going to explode if he can’t figure out something to shut this idiot up with.
“Nice water cooler you have down here at the Oregon State Rehab,” Dustin says. “You have water coolers in every Rehab? I bet you and all your friends have them at home, too.”
“It’s true, Cadet. We live very differently from most of our beloved Citizens. And for good reason. We are the architects. The puppet masters, if you will. Without us, the people of this country would kill one another. What’s a shame is that you and your brother turned on us. A few more years of service and you might have been privy to some of the same perks.”
“Perks?” Dustin says. “Since when is food and water a perk? Since when is freedom a fucking perk?”
Before I can say anything, before I can try to calm him down, Dustin storms out of the room.
“Sensitive little guy, isn’t he?” the President says. “You’d think he’d toughen up after losing his mommy and daddy. He’s going to make one sad little Leftover.”
Dumb cop sniggers at this. There’s a kind of palpable superiority emanating from him. The blind conviction that he’s in the right. And all he has to do now is wait for the cavalry. He’ll probably get some kind of reward, his own personal water cooler at home, a stadium full of free water.
I’ m trying to think of something to say, something about art and science, how I was wrong to turn my back on it, when Dustin comes staggering back into the room carrying the bottle from the water cooler.
“You’re not Nature,” Dustin says to the President. “You’re a shit storm.”
Dustin then hefts the bottle over his shoulder so that the water starts chugging out onto the control panels.
“That’s cute, son. You actually think a little water is going to bring the Operation down? Give your President a little more credit than that.”
Dustin, not lifting his head, manages to give our President the finger while turning the consul into a giant puddle. When the jug is empty, Dustin stops and stares at the screen like he waiting for something to happen.
But the only thing that does happen is the President’s smile widens considerably.
It’s too much.
For Dustin.
For me.
For anybody.
Dustin, probably not knowing what else to do, starts tapping the jug against one of the screens. He does it slowly at first, then harder until eventually he’s swinging the thing full force at the President’s face. Each time the jug bounces back a little harder, until finally it rebounds against Dustin’s face and goes flying out of his hands.
The bottle skitters to a stop on the floor and Dustin, defeated, sits down in the water pooling on the floor.
There’s a trickle of blood running down his neck.
Right where they Stamped him.
“Well, that was effective. Why don’t you put your energy into something more useful, son? Like, oh, I don’t know, saying goodbye to your friend Jer...”
The words are barely out of his mouth when there’s a flash, a puff of smoke from one of the computers, and the screens all go black.
It’s like a row of dominoes.
Soon every computer in the place is smoking, sparks jumping everywhere.
He did it.
He actually did it.
Dustin short-circuited the fucker.
I look over at Dustin and he’s pressing his hand to his neck, trying to cauterize the wound.
“You okay?”
“I’m awesome.”
“You are awesome.”
“No, I’m awesome for something other than my normal awesomeness reasons.”
“Tell me you had the microphone turned on.”
Dustin smiles, licks some of the blood from his hand. “I had the microphone turned on.”
I feel like I’m about to collapse from relief.
From exhaustion.
From everything, but the feeling doesn’t last long.
A noise fills the room so loud, so blaring, that at first I don’t really understand what’s happening.
Then it sinks in.
They’ve sounded the alarm.
Bubble, meet Spike.
Spike, Bubble.
“Turn it off!” Dustin yells over the noise, but when Dumb cop doesn’t move, Dustin steps right up to him, places the gun against the side of his face. “Turn. It. Off!”
Dumb cop just stares at him, so Dustin digs the barrel in. Hard.
“D, I get it. But we don’t have time for this. We need to get Jerusha. What if they--”
“You get it? How, exactly, do you get it, Thomas?”
“Fine. I don’t get it. Whatever. But this place is going to become real popular real soon if we don’t hurry up. And besides, we need this idiot to help us get out of here. They won’t shoot if he’s with us.”
“They’re all guilty,” Dustin says and squints like he’s looking through a microscope at Dumb cop. “Every last one of them.”
I don’t like what I’m hearing in Dustin’s voice. It’s coming from a place people usually don’t return from.
“Remember what Mom used to say, D? It’s how you treat the weak that matters. Do you remember that?”
“No,” he says, his voice cold. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, she used to say it all the time. Said everything else in life was just a bunch of BS. And she was right, D. This is bullshit. These people are the weak ones. We’ll be no better than them. That what you want?”
“Maybe,” Dustin says, his voice falteri
ng just a bit.
“Let him go, D. For Mom and Dad.” When he doesn’t budge, I add, “For me, Dustin. Please?”
He looks at me and his eyes seem so full of pain, so full of unwanted hate, that I think maybe it is too late, that maybe I’ve already lost him and have been kidding myself all this time.
“You’re the weak one now,” he says to Dumb cop and lowers the gun. “You’re the loser. You. Not us. Understand?”
“We’ll see,” Dumb cop says, but the way he says it, it’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself of something.
The Ocean Takes a Vacation
The ocean thinks she might be bi-polar,
but the doctors prescribe Dramamine
and a visit to the city
so she can relax and spend hours
gazing at a horizon of office buildings.
She brings the moon along,
takes his picture as he hides
among the rows of street lights.
Together they take boyfriend-lit strolls
and collect beer cans
to place along her shelf of sand.
When she returns home,
the fishing boats can feel her tossing
in her sleep again.
The running joke among the whales:
if it weren’t for all their constant up and downs,
the moon and ocean would have married years ago.
And yet, in the morning
as she paces the floor,
it isn’t the medication
or kelp-tea
that makes it possible for her to return to work.
It’s placing the shell
of an empty beer can
to her ear and listening
to the distant roar
of police sirens and car alarms
that eventually gives her sea legs back.
15 It’s Not Easy Being Green
If it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, my heart is now fondue.
We find Jerusha right where we left her, groggy, but more or less awake now. When I try to stand her on her feet, she kisses me on the cheek.
I want babies with this woman.
Lots of them.
“We did it,” I tell her. “We got on the air.”
