Chapter 3: Oak, Pharaoh
From /Signified ---- Book Two of 2084 Quartet
PLEASE NOTE: The following material is intended for mature readers only.
A Note on Language
It is inevitable, in a work of speculative fiction, that futuristic technologies, technical terms, and even everyday slang appear in the course of the narrative. For the convenience of the reader, the first time each of these neologisms appears in the story, it will be marked in boldface and hyperlinked to the Glossary of Terms and Slang, where you will be able to find a definition. Additionally, on occasion a non-English language will be used in the dialogue among characters. While no direct translations have been provided, never fear. The reader will be able, quite readily, to discern the meaning of these utterances within the context of the story.
Quick Plot Recap
In Chapter 2, Mall and her Sneak Team make contact, in the Wilderness Area, with Oak Wat and his force of Wobblies. After an initial violent skirmish, Mall makes Oak understand exactly who she is and what is the purpose of this EVe infiltration team into TexArc. From here on out, the two sides will work together to overthrow the tyranny of the Crats. Next, we see Brand at work in the BoiCity Pyramid trying, without success, to win back the minds of the local Serv population from Mall’s superior signification work. However, when Brand strikes upon a new propaganda strategy, it forces Mall to kidnap the Doctor of Cultural Construct in hopes of turning Brand into her ally for social revolution.
Chapter 3
Oak, Pharaoh
Cardinal devises the strategy. All of July is dedicated to its Procedure One: Amass. Two essential components need accumulation: waters and mindfree. Neither is a conventional military asset. But, then again, no one has ever brought down a meg before.
Amassing waters is a matter of steady-handed hydroengineering. Sinalco spends the high summer channeling every drop of the Upper Boise River watershed into one of its three branches. The South Fork is straightforward. It descends from the high mountains of the Sawtooth Forest, about 70 kilometers to the east, into Anderson Ranch Reservoir. This southern watercourse is an isolated one in the hydrosystem, but it brings down the heavy flow of the melting Sawtooth snowpack every spring. Luckily for the Wobblies, this has been a crest year. The reservoir is brimming, and Sinalco keeps it that way until its waters are needed.
Below the Anderson Ranch Reservoir, the South Fork of the Boise River continues northwest for some 40 kilometers to empty, eventually, into the long, two-pronged Arrowrock Reservoir. Sinalco decides this will be the primary staging reservoir for the Wobblies, where most of the waters will collect. That’s because, from the north, both the Middle and North Forks of the Boise River empty into Arrowrock as well. Those two streams cascade hard down narrow canyons and bring with them good melt. With a bit of complicated hydronomy, though, Sinalco sees a way to link them, in turn, to the Redfish Lake watershed and to the South Fork of the Payette River. Such a move will harness far more flow. But such a move depends on no harassing airstrikes. Then, strangely, after late June no more airstrikes come. Not even flyovers. No one understands why ArcAir, flying out of Mountain Home, would stand down its search-and-destroy missions. But Cardinal won’t question empty sky. She gives Sinalco the go-ahead to build as many culverts and pipelines and pumping stations as needed to redirect key flow-works through the high summit passes. As a result, by the end of July, the fattened Middle Fork of the Boise River joins the fattened North Fork at a confluence that becomes a small lake in its own right. All of these waters then sweep southwest a dozen kilometers to surge into Arrowrock. Both elongated prongs of that reservoir bloat upstream, flooding thousands more acres.
At the downstream end of that reservoir, Arrowrock Dam stands ready to burst. Cracks form in the ancient concrete, some gushing like pissing cows. The earthworks grow saturated with the unprecedented hydro-accumulation. None of that bothers Cardinal. She orders the spillways shut tight to everything but the topmost overflow. She intends to lower, as much as possible, the level of Lucky Peak Reservoir, the next holding reservoir right below Arrowrock. This is Cardinal’s feint to the BoiCity Crats. She wants to give them something to worry about—something other than what they should be worrying about. Cardinal wants the Crats to believe that the Wobbly plan is water withhold. That the river reduced to a stinking, muddy trickle through the Brown Belt is an attempt to parch out the meg. This way, the Crats will concentrate on hydro-conserve. Not perimeter defense. This way, the Crats will fall into a siege mentality, believing they’re hunkering down for a long and drawn-out blockade. This way, the meg will be put off its immediate guard. Cardinal knows, as a fortress guard herself, this is the most dangerous mentality to fall into. She fell into it herself, to a degree, before the TexArcan assassin squad dropped into Fribourg. She didn’t anticipate such a direct assault so soon. As a result of her lack of vigilance, many more of her fighters died than was necessary. Cardinal still fumes at herself for this lapse. To deepen this same kind of lethal complacency in the Crats, Cardinal leaves Lucky Peak Dam in the hands of their Damguard. Leaving the last dam before the Boise River runs through BoiCity itself in the hands of the enemy makes it that much easier to mask the lynchpin of her strategy.
Amassing mindfree is a matter of steady-handed signification. Mall spends the high summer detaching and detoxing BoiCity Servs from the Simulacrum of the ArcNet feed. The detaching work is material, requiring over 100,000 sigblock skullcaps to be manufactured and distributed throughout the BoiCity Parks. The fabrication of the caps is not especially difficult. The metallictextile can be woven from commonly available industrial odds and ends. The special blocking/transceiver modules woven in are microscopic. The foray team optimistically packed a million in with them when they infiltrated TexArc. Mall, in fact, has been producing the sigcaps, as they’re commonly called, for some time. Soon after coming into the Parks, she established a handful of small manufacturing shops spread over a wide area, to avoid detection. One in Kuna, one in Tiegs Corner, two close together in Blacks Creek and Owyhee (these with easy access to T-84), and a bigger, more remote manushop out in Melba. Enron’s kin helped her set them up and took over their eventual running. But their operation is limited, almost artisanal. They do what they can, dodging ParkPol surveillance, to get a few hundred Parkers free of the glassy. Still, it’s no mean thing taking folks from the hub’s mindfuck to the sigcap’s mindfree. Once out in the wilderness area, though, Mall sees immediately how capacity there can be a different story. She sets up three sprawling, well-camouflaged sigcap manushops around Redfish Lake. Then when it becomes clear that airstrikes are not a factor, she kicks these shops in Stanley, Sunbeam, and Obsidian into full-gear. Four-shift, 24/7 schedules triple their output. Soon the smuggling routes through Emmett and Star, from the northwest, and Mayfield and Regina, from the southeast, are jammed with sigcap shipments into the BoiCity Parks. What’s more, these sigcaps are never sold or bartered for. Caps come free to all who want one. No two ways about it. It’s pure solidarity, Uncle Wobbly style. By the end of July, more Parkers than not wear one. Sigcaps become standard Wobbly kit—the tight roll-down, the splaying out of matted hair, often the doubling over of ears. So long as the cap covers your iband, you don’t care that you look like a loon. Sigcaps deliver mindfree. And, handled right, mindfree enables fellowshipride.
The detoxing work is social-cerebral, requiring Mall and Brand to collaborate. They find they make a strong cultural construct team. The task is plain: it’s one thing to furnish mindfree; it’s quite another to engage suddenly freed minds. Serv withdrawal from the Simulacrum can be severe, sometimes taking weeks. Even then, relapse is common. Servs miss their virshopping, their virsports, their virsex—and all reacquisition requires is tugging off their stupid sigcap. Brand knows how hardwired and habit-forming idiversion is. She constructed it that way. In time, she reveals to Mall many of the awful details about the Simulacrum. Terds and Crats enthrall themselves to it, voluntarily, every bit as much as the engrafted Servs, who have no choice. It seems, in fact, that the separable ipatchs, ihears, and ibands used by the upstatus of TexArc are red herrings, designed to provide them with the semblance of individuality and independence. Via potent programming and elaborate habituation, Terds and Crats are plugged into ArcNet with the same compulsion as the lowstatus. Even more. Where Servs are force-streamed by physical implants, Terds and Crats are stream-addicted by precisely crafted cognitive hooks and emotive triggers. Their conditioning is painstaking and begins when infants. This is why, Brand explains, the Yale School spends comparatively little time tinkering and tending the Serv feed—and why Mall was able to woo the Servs so easily over to Uncle Wobbly. Mandated morons need scant attention because they’re not crucial to corp. Cultivated ones, on the other hand, entail constant reminding to be kept companyman. The real job of Reconstruction in TexArc, then, is keeping the Gaters in line—the Terds in particular. Terds have the knowhow, the preponderance of actual technological and inter-personal/cultural skills. That means they have to be allowed to think. But they can’t be allowed to deliberate certain bigpic circumstances in order to formulate beliefs and outcomes for themselves. They can’t be left to wonderboy. Terds must be conditioned to accept Corpfeud as nature and Crats as luminaries. Increasingly, admits Brand, these are harder sells. For example, the conditioning project to stimulate TexArcans into seeing EVe as a raghead roguestate needing to be invaded and destroyed is not playing well among Terds. To anyone with a wisp of a critical mind, such a proposition seems not just implausible but foolhardy. Any Terd misgiving—however trifling—to buy instantly and wholeheartedly into corpatriotic messaging spooks the TopCrats at CorpHQ. This current spate of Terd hesitancy has them going mindfuck. When Mall asks if Crats ever question corp policies, Brand says rarely openly—and those who do always soon disappear. When Mall asks what signification work she does to keep Crats in line—that is, what is it the Crats need convincing of to stay compliant—Brand replies merely of believing their rigged and inherited wealth means they are geniuses. The easiest sell in the world, she notes, is to turn someone into a DollArc bully.
Once Mall gains this signification insight into the workings of the Simulacrum, she decides that WobblyNet can’t compete. It can only contrast. She develops the antithesis of ArcNet and makes it the signature feature of WobblyNet: servchoice. Servs control what comes over their all4s. From the cacophony of ArcNet to the isolation of totoblank, the lone Serv selects. Solely and privately and absolutely. Mall knows there’s no other way. Mall and Brand also construct MarketSquare. A wholly alternative stream available on WobblyNet. News, information, education, amusement that’s candid, authentic, thoughtful, stimulating. Fed without fuss at full user discretion. Here is an actual marketplace, driven by genuine competition. Parkers take to it instantly. A favorite item quickly becomes WobblyFlix, streaming bygone Lower North American films from pre-realignment. Movies not seen for decades and decades. Each is handpicked by Brand and Mall, often with Enron as their test audience. First to stream, of course, are the films of Clucas. Then a range of their like, all that can be found, salvaged, remastered for the stream. Anything reestablishing a collective history. Anything fostering a critical consciousness and intervention in reality. Some titles: Modern Times, The Grapes of Wrath, The Garment Jungle, Network, Norma Rae, Blade Runner (The Final Cut), Brazil, Roger and Me, Do the Right Thing, V for Vendetta, Avatar, District 9, Snowpiercer, The Big Short, Hell or High Water, Don’t Look Up, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Great and Powerful Dubya, Monkey See, Trump of the Will.
By the end of July, Cardinal calculates that ample waters and mindfree have been amassed. Time then for Procedure Two: Upset and Overrun. Over MarketSquare, Mall informs Parkers to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to move. Keyword: Pyramid Scheme.
**********
Blaupunkt was born and raised in the high Pennine range, the canton of Valais. He’s liked the time in the wilderness area. Good mountains. Giant and rough. He regrets coming back down to the flatlands. As far as Blaupunkt is concerned, bad things happen on the flatlands. His Attack Team (AT), designated Wobbly, is a fast-moving force of 1,000 fighters. To avoid detection, they’ve skirted wide, coming down the western bank of the Boise’s South Fork. That’s taken many days, but the massive city cannot know they’re coming. One day ago, Blaupunkt was left behind by AT Wobbly. Those fighters pressed on to their ready-position in the southeast quadrant of the meg. Blaupunkt remained to perform a one-fighter Sneak Team mission. It’s the lynchpin task of Procedure Two Upset. He’s happy for the responsibility, for the independence. Since a child, Blaupunkt has excelled at completing vital jobs by himself. He’s also their best at concealment.
For the past hour Blaupunkt has been low-crawling. Ever incremental. Wearing a full camo-mat on his back. It’s gone dusk. The timing has to be perfect. Cardinal has been in his earpiece the entire time. One day ago, the spillways of the Anderson Ranch Dam had been opened wide. Those waters have reached the Arrowrock Reservoir. Moments ago, Cardinal issued the demolition command for the Arrowrock Dam, above his position. Simply opening those spillways would not do. The torrent must be sudden. It must be devastating. Now Blaupunkt awaits his crucial order, knowing what he must do is paramount to the Capitaine de Corvette’s strategy. A terrifyingly bright flash of lightning illumines his surroundings. He freezes, not wanting to be silhouetted on the western horizon. He counts the seconds before the thunderclap. Fifteen. Even so, the ground under him rumbles. It’s coming. Blaupunkt has never experienced anything like these TexArc storms. Then Cardinal’s voice is in his ear, ordering quietly, *Jetzt.* Now. As he rises to one knee, he swings the smackdown into firing position. He squeezes two pulses at the base and one at the middle of Lucky Peak Dam. A huge fissure opens in the dam face. Before Blaupunkt can fist out one more pulse for good measure, he’s misted to vapor by the Damguard. No matter. One minute later a wall of water washes through.
**********
In the TexArc IMS, superstorms are called thunderboomers. One hasn’t hit BoiCity for a few seasons. The one approaching now is a category force-one. A line of towering thunderheads glide toward the meg from the west. They are serene, majestic. They run the entire horizon and rise jet-black into the upper reaches of the sky. The EVens can’t quite believe what they’re seeing. These clouds are an airborne tsunami. Already an atmospheric undertow sucks at the air, producing a warm and deadly calm that contradicts the violence drawing closer. As Cardinal stares up at these clouds, she regrets having to attack under stormcover. But she had no choice. She knew her forces could not withstand air assaults. The aircraft at Mountain Home had to be grounded for her strike plan to have a chance. She just didn’t know how colossal a thunderboomer could be. Until you see one, you can’t know how it overloads even the endless western sky. How you become an ant beneath a behemoth. The vast Parks seem to disappear into a gray and indistinct landscape. The hundreds of hightowers inside the Gater District look dwarfed, hopeless. The golden burnish of the Pyramid itself is replaced by a lethal and leaden blue. Cardinal needed a storm for Upset to be effective. She needed tempest to coincide with flood—for two calamities to converge. Now she has both about to jolt the meg. The rest will be up to her.
AT Wobbly huddles amid corrugated steel warehouses along West Gowen Road. They’re just southeast of the airport. Just west of T-84. A burst of cold wind finally washes over them, rattling the flimsy buildings, filling their nostrils with intensely fresh air. Then raindrops the size of fists start to pock down around them into the thick and chalky dust. Sheet lightning flits inside the black clouds now overhead. Everyone’s hair stands on end from the electricity suddenly filling the air. The torrential horizontal rain sweeps in at the same moment three or four bolts of lightning ground-strike nearby. Those thunderclaps are instantaneous and feel to originate within eardrums, within entrails. Roofs sail off buildings. Within minutes, gully washers carry off old trucks and small mobiles on rivers of mud. Around the Parks gasoline fires pop up from the lightning strikes. Most deadly are the wind shears. Fierce and ever-shifting. Grinding into the ground or tossing into the air. While waiting for the waters to hit, AT Wobbly loses seventeen fighters to the storm. Thankfully, the Attack Team hasn’t long to wait.
Less than three kilometers downstream from Lucky Peak Dam are the giant intake grates at Barber. These archways span the Boise River and mark the southeastern start of the Gater District wall. When Lucky Peak Dam is attacked, the sturdy floodgates at Barber are closed. When the wall of water arrives, these floodgates hardly matter. The waters swirl and eddy against them for a moment or two, then crumple the gates like toys. The waters crumple, swallow, and carry off in the surge the tall Barber archways, too. With nothing standing in its way, and exactly as Cardinal had planned, the waters then knife the Gater District in two, dividing north of the river from south of the river. In the initial washout, thousands of Gaters die along the Brown Belt. Stately condos and trendy studios are swamped out, voided of their inhabitants and fashionable furnishings. Deluxe armored SUVehics—GrandCanyons, Tetons, MileHighs, Exploiters—bob and spin like twigs in the overpowering currents. Turbogolf links are consumed whole. Shopvillage boutiques and bistros implode. After several turbulent minutes of pounding, foundations beneath dozens of hightowers start to slip—then start to fail. Smogscrapers eighty to ninety stories high tilt, topple, vanish under the waves. Waters jet up the narrow side streets of the downtown, too, sucking away even more victims. All the while, the force-one thunderboomer rages.
Upset achieved. Overrun begins.
AT Wobbly divides into taskforces. Pernod leads a unit of two hundred fighters northwest to the airport. They find it battened down and lightly guarded. They take up ready positions and await Cardinal’s signal. Cardinal rushes the main group to the Parker Motors repodepot close by on West Gowen Road. There, Hap hacks in securecodes, and soon ten acres of repossessed vehics are theirs for the choosing. Hap hops into the latest Viper and revs all thirty-two cylinders in the shrieking storm. Not sharing Hap’s enthusiasm, Cardinal takes shotgun. The two then lead a high-speed caravan of oversized and overpriced petroguzzlers straight to the Broadway Avenue Gate. This is the southernmost of three major portals into the Gater District. Cardinal calculates that if the Wobblies can’t open at least two of these huge gates, they won’t be able to take the meg. The gate is on lockout when they arrive. That’s understandable, considering what’s going on inside the wall. GaterPol are urgently needed elsewhere at the moment. As hoped, that leaves just a skeleton crew of gateguard for the Wobblies to take. At the Broadway Avenue Gate, Hap skids up to the checkpoint and swears a blue streak over the vidscreen at the desk sergeant on duty. Calls him a turdloaf. Demands to be let through. Claims matters of life-or-death. When the infuriated gatekeeper shoves his way out the access door to kick Hap’s ass, he’s shot dead and his body trampled over before that door swings closed. The Wobblies own their first gatehouse. Fifteen minutes later, Hap pulls the same stunt at the central T-184 Gate. Two gatehouses are in Wobbly hands. Cardinal decides to take the final portal, the northernmost Chinden Boulevard Gate, from the inside. She sends Hap and some of his best boys up to do that job. She’ll stay behind to command the western overrun. The moment she hears from Hap that the north gate is theirs as well, Cardinal gives Pernod the go-ahead. After a brief skirmish, the Wobblies secure the airport. Then, using the central gridworks, Cardinal swings open wide the three enormous gates into the Gater District and issues the Wobbly all-go. They’ve reached the point of no return in their assault.
Hidden huddled close to the wall, heads down in the storm, a hundred thousand Servs wearing sigcaps rise as one. Over WobblyNet, they’ve witnessed Blaupunkt’s sacrifice. They’ve watched the progress of Attack Team Wobbly. They’ve waited for Cardinal’s signal to advance. Now, like a second flood, these Parkers pour into the Gater District from the west. Like a second superstorm, their collective shout thunders.
**********
Attack Team Uncle, the Wobbly motherforce, had gathered days ago in Bogus Basin, due north of the meg. Piecemeal, fighters then came down from the high mountains to infiltrate the foothills above the Gater District. When the all-go signals, their job is to blitz and secure east BoiCity, that narrower ribbon of meg running between the Brown Belt and the hills. This is the elite sector. Where Crats live in their thickly walled and heavily defended manors. Manor-to-manor fighting likely will be brutal, requiring a disciplined Wobbly force of several thousands. Oak and Jiplap each command a pincer-force wing. AT Uncle also includes a Sneak Team. Its mission likely is unfeasible: it must get inside the Pyramid—it must flush out the TopCrats. Their capture is vital. Otherwise, without such bargaining chips, seizing BoiCity might be a cakewalk compared to staying alive inside its walls. Sinalco directs this Sneak Team, with Migros overseeing its use of deadly force. As a general precaution, Cardinal also had Sinalco set up a closedcomm safeline just for EVens to use. Their staying in touch during the attack is essential. None of them trust Oak or his close circle of boys. They’re shits. They’re March hares. They’re more than likely to maverick once the real killing starts.
At Cardinal’s all-go, well-armed Wobblies stream off the black hills, punching holes in the perimeter concertina wire of the elite sector and rpg-ing the many guard towers. Jiplap’s force, as a line, quickly advances from the northwest down past Hill Road. Their objective is to sweep rapidly south to West Main Street, about where the floodwaters will be cresting, then push southeast toward the Pyramid. But before they can reach even West Sunset Avenue, Jiplap’s thrust bogs down in nasty neighborhood fighting. Each Crat manor is like a fortress. High, decorative walls—hacienda adobe trimmed in pastels and festooned with climbing roses—double as deadly autoshields. Wobbly after Wobbly is picked off by mechfire while trying to scale these ramparts. Inside the walls, the houses are fundamentally central bunker units occupied by Crats armed to the teeth. There are the private security guards to deal with as well. Every manor seems to have a handful of paramilitary types protecting the property. When Cardinal sees Jiplap’s deadcount quickly growing alarming, she orders him to start street-hopping. Just take the strategic manors. Keep the advance moving. Jiplap comms back for her to suck his butthole. Wobblies are here to kill Crats. Pure and simple. Crats and these miserable sons-of-bitches Terd security men protecting the bastards. So that’s what in the hell he and his boys aim to do. At that moment, Jiplap had just broken into a very fancy Crat rec-room. Mounted on the wall is a trophy elephant gun. After finding shells, Jiplap hoists the long, heavy rifle over his head with both hands and shouts to his men, “Hey, boys! Let’s do us some elephant hunting!” Their responsive cheers hurt Cardinal’s ears over comm. This is her first inkling, coming very early in the main assault, that mindfree Servs, like floods and thunderboomers, are forces she can guide, powers she can muster, but not control.
*Mall. Watch him,* Cardinal warns over their safeline.
*Never planning otherwise,* Mall comes back.
*Sinalco. Very fast,* Cardinal instructs.
*The same as my darling Mall say,* Sinalco assures Cardinal.
Oak drives his pincer-force wing out of the foothills from the northeast straight toward the downtown. Cardinal has put Mall at Oak’s elbow to make sure he does nothing overly stupid. Oak is wild-eyed and fearless in combat. Wobblies clamor to follow him. But all of his decisions are rash, either big payoff or big setback. Oak’s line moves without resistance through the Old Fort Boise Military Reserve, but encounters high barricades along West Fort Street, only blocks from the Pyramid. These defenses are spring-loaded to pop up out of the pavement. They set a protective umbrella all around the Pyramid that the Wobblies can’t break through or outflank, especially not with Jiplap’s wing bogged down to the west. Worse, the GaterPol behind the barriers are armed with misters. These vaporize any Wobbly stepping into the open. It’s quickly obvious that without misters of their own, the Wobblies are in a standoff. Oak is hopping mad. He didn’t come all this way to sit on his hands. Mall speaks sternly to him. Reminds him this is Cardinal’s plan. He must occupy GaterPol here, surrounding the Pyramid, so the Sneak Team can do its work.
For weeks Sinalco has been slicing deep into the BoiCity megnet looking for doorways into the meg infrastructure. Among the tens-of-thousands of items she scanned, a plot date of 20.4.04 appeared for an ancient geothermal system that used to run under the old city. These were thousands of meters of pipelines, primarily under the downtown sector, built to carry hot spring waters to public buildings for inexpensive winter heating—that is, old-line, ecologically sound thinking that had long ago been abandoned in TexArc as libby soft-think. With the help of Parker demesnes performing levee work along the Brown Belt mudflats, Sinalco eventually confirmed which of those pipelines remained intact and passable. In particular, she discovered one line open all the way from a river discharge location at the bottom of South 14th up to a source well in the old Military Reserve—a line that happened to pass directly, now, underneath the Pyramid. One eccentric old-timer had been up and down the length of this line plenty of times, talking and cackling to himself as he reverse-cast over his WobblyNet ipatch detailed images of every meter of this pipeline. There was no mistake. The Pyramid had been built on top of the line, and the line was still open. The pipe cylinder was more than wide enough to crawl through, almost big enough to walk in, bent double. Potentially, here was their way in. The impediments then became, one, how far the floodwaters would come up into the geothermal system and, two, how to get from the pipeline up into the Pyramid itself. There was no evidence of any access shafts. While Cardinal fretted over impediment one, she despaired over impediment two. Sinalco had shrugged off both hindrances and told Cardinal only to concentrate on her assault planning. To leave the Pyramid to her.
On the Military Reserve, the Sneak Team locates and digs out the hatch-head of BGL Well No.2, one of the head-sources for the geothermal pipeline. Then Sinalco, Migros, and five good underground Wobblies descend a ladder into the black hole. Fifteen meters down, they bottom at the pipeline. They begin their long crawling squat toward the Pyramid. Like Blaupunkt’s smackdowning of Lucky Peak Dam, their Sneak Team mission is the lynchpin task of Procedure Two Overrun. If they don’t find a way, all the rest hardly matters.
**********
Cardinal’s strategy for the western overrun is for the Servs to capture and secure all GaterPol stations along with other key points and installations: the vital intersections, all of the solarworks, major greenhouses, and the like. Once her Parker army streams in the three gates and starts to spread inward throughout TerdTowne, though, nothing like that tactic materializes. Instead, there is riot, looting, slaughter that Cardinal is helpless to stop. Her team leaders won’t answer her. Hap seems to have disappeared amid the chaos south of the flood. When she confronts Oak over comm, he stonewalls her, saying what in the hell else did she expect and telling her that he’s got his own damned shitstorm to deal with right now. When the EVens confer over safeline, they agree they’re being manipulated, stage-managed by Oak and his boys. They decide the only way to bring things back under their control is to reach the TopCrats first. All they can do otherwise is carry out the assault plan as best they can.
*Remember,* Malls forewarns the group, *Oak is a devious little wanker. So as these sodding pricks here like to say, best watch your backs, gals.*
South of the swollen Boise River, the Servs are incensed by everything they find in TerdTowne. They had no idea. Paved streets. Homes on solid ground. Stores full of realfood. The obscene amounts of everything. Nice vehics. Home furnishings. Goods and items in the ubiquitous shopvillages. Dessert carts in cafés. Designer hotweather wear in boutiques. There are two kinds of structures that, when Parkers burst inside them, they have no idea what they’re even looking at. These are hospitals and schools. They ransack them nonetheless. Rampage turns to frenzy. Frenzy become fury. GaterPol hasn’t remotely the manpower needed to repel this human tide. Plundering becomes meticulous. Destruction of property monumental. Killing orgiastic, bacchanalian. Terds are hacked to death, beaten to a pulp, literally torn limb-from-limb, tossed live into the towering bonfires rising at Ustick, Perkins, Boise Junction, along the length of Broadway Avenue. Those not captured are herded toward the flood. They prefer to run headlong to drown in the black and coursing waters. As in the Crat elite sector, no one is spared. Not man, not woman, not child.
**********
Through the dank pipeline the Sneak Team crawls first southwest, then veers southeast, then due south, then finally ninety degrees due west and straight on for several hundred meters. The diameter is tighter than expected. They move in a crushing silence. Then ahead of them, in the circle of light cast by Sinalco’s handlamp, they see what they feared—flood waters rising up into the geothermal system. They have a considerable straightaway to cover yet before a sharp turn north will bring them under the Pyramid. Without checking over her shoulder, Sinalco tells Migros to stay here with the others until they have the opportunity to follow. She then wades on hands-and-knees into the brackish water until she submerges into the halo of her own handlamp. Sinalco disappears frog-kicking downpipe, the trace glow of her lamp taking some time to fade out completely. When it does, Migros turns to face her fellow Wobblies. The shock on their five faces matches that on her own. Seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds later—Migros makes it a habit to time crucial ops events—the waters suddenly suck away, draining the pipe in front of them. The team follows quickly. At the sharp right turning, they find Sinalco crouching, dripping, but not out of breath. The pipeline south, somehow, has been sealed off. Before anyone speaks, she tells them to follow her through the pipeline heading north. Soon they come under a narrow shaft that looks freshly burrowed up through more than a few meters of concrete. At its top is a still red-rimmed, glowing hole etched through a thick titanium plate. Sinalco holds up her hand. No talking. No questions. Time to sneak. The job of Migros and the Wobblies is to locate an armory. To smuggle out misters for the aboveground assault on the Pyramid. The job of Sinalco is to hunt TopCrats.
**********
Dockers began this evening pleasantly—sitting in his Pyramid Eye, a smoky scotch in hand, admiring the anger of the approaching thunderboomer. Then without warning a wall of water washed through his meg. Jaw dropped, he watched his financial district swept away. Then came reports of the gate breaches along the District wall. By then the storm was too thick for him to see anything in that direction, but the reports sounded distressingly shrill. Then from the north he could see the flash of explosives and small-arms fire descending in two long arcs out of the foothills. Dockers anxiously tracked the progress of those fast-moving battles. When he saw the advance from the northwest slowing among the Crat manors, he had to grin. A Crat’s home is his arsenal. Good luck getting through the elite sector. The advance from the northeast, on the other hand, raced through the Reserve and the business district. It wasn’t halted until practically under his feet, once GaterPol managed to establish the defensive perimeter around the Pyramid. At that point Dockers switched from shitting bricks to sighing with something like relief. Misters make The Man, he reassured himself. Superior firepower is always the point. Still, whatever this was going on, it had got way too close for comfort. He ordered a Pyramid lockout. He scrambled the Pyramid Guard. He started making emergency calls to ArcAir at Mountain Home every five minutes: UNDER ATTACK! SEND EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT! Every five minutes, the same reply came back from Mountain Home: Grounded by weather.
Now Dockers huddles with his TopCrats in the Eye, strategizing best spins to put on these events. Exactly how—and how much—to report to CorpHQ? Dockers has been leading Bleach Wheat to think that everything is doublethumbsup in BoiCity. The Wobblies are staging an idiot water withhold. The District has more than enough in reserve to wait it out. This Wobbly nonsense will dry up and blow away soon enough. Their radicalizing slices are contained just to the local Serv networks. Their movement is more than isolated geographically in the wilderness area. Their revoevo contamination has no chance of spreading any further in the IMS or, for that matter, anywhere beyond. Dockers has been rosy and, needless to say, self-lionizing in his scenario-painting for Bleached Wheat. What the megmayor has failed to mention to the big bossman, though, is beyond crucial: that the skinny dykebitch has gone missing—quite likely shanghaied by the fucking Wobblies. That Terd dykebitch apparently holds some significant keys into corp. Why else had Bleached Wheat ordered the mayor to take such good care of her? Dockers prays that she’s been raped to death by now. If not, his ass is AstroGrass and assaults on megs might just become regular revoevo events in TexArc.
The TopCrat plan is to hunker and wait out the storm. By morning, it will be clear for Mountain Home to fly to the rescue. Then ArcAir will make short work of these Wobblies. And while this unexpected attack will be embarrassing, Dockers is sure he can pitch events to make himself look the hero. He’s done that so many times before. But then strikes the inexplicable—the inconceivable. Pyramid breach. Reports of Wobblies on the inside. The TopCrats panic. Dockers panics. The meg needs CorpTroops falling from the skies right fucking now—thunderboomer or no fucking thunderboomer. Hell, yank that. Yank CorpTroops. Send in fucking Netsmen. And right fucking now. Dockers places the emergency call to CorpHQ himself, private-line doublego Dmega priority-one-plus. He’s greeted by an automated voice. He’s asked a few basic questions—name, position held in corp, reason for calling. He’s put on hold. Agreeable Top80 tunes tinkle in his ear for nearly twenty minutes. Then comes an automated reply and hang-up: All of our ceos and subceos are busy at the moment. But your call is important to us. Have a nice day.
**********
Only Mall, Sinalco, and Cardinal know about Enron’s one-man Sneak Team mission. It’s so very long-shot. So very only-chance. More than the assault on the meg, it’s the thread by which the entire reciprocal insert endeavor by Caucus dangles. If Enron fails this errand, Harrods’ counter-advocacy project fails. The EVe infiltration into TexArc fails. No helpful guerrilla culture war can be waged inside of TexArc. Signification will play no role in the upcoming faceoff between TexArc and EVe. Only raw military might will decide the affair. These are the stakes hinging on Enron’s task. Yet he is the man for the job. He’s ArcGround legend at running kill-man. Stealth is his top knowhow. And before leaving the wilderness area, Sinalco handed him his OLED suit, scrupulously mended by Countermeasures teeks back in EVe—even a bit improved in its invisibility.
Two nights ago Enron split off from Attack Team Wobbly, near Long Tom Reservoir, to move by himself carefully southwest toward Mountain Home. When he reaches the base, he’s surprised by how lax security is. ArcAir seems more concerned about large-scale ground assaults than small infiltrations. He doesn’t bother scaling the fencing around Perimeter Road. Just past sundown, he strolls in through the main gate mingled with a long convoy of supply vehics. Easy as pie tiptoe to start. ArcAir bases look pretty much like ArcGround bases, so Enron soon has his bearings. He’ll avoid the low, long buildings bound to be base-ops. Security will be heaviest there. He’s looking for quarters. And it’s not hard to tell apart officers from enlisted. Enron keeps to the shadows along Gunfighter Avenue, then out Bomber Road, then crossing the turbogolf course over to the outmost loop of Silver Sage. That’s where the bigger, nicer housing is. Then it’s just a matter of finding the nicest place among them. That will be the Wing Commander’s quarters. It turns out to be a whole one-story houseunit to itself, painted clean white, with lots of windows to watch the big sky, surrounded by real grass and real shrubs. Enron’s anxious to encounter this particular Terd, this AirColonel. He’s heard the stories about him. Hell, every CorpTroop has.
Enron’s respectful once inside the house. After he clears it, he looks things over judiciously. Inspecting some photos and knickknacks on the shelves. Admiring pieces of handmade wooden furniture. Touching nothing. All he can do now is wait for the Wing Commander to come back home. Without a doubt, he’s at base-ops right now, tracking the big thunderboomer sailing in from the west. Soon enough, Enron knows, the Wing Commander will have the BoiCity Crats on his ass yelping for him to scramble air support. Yes sir, it’s about to be a busy time for this AirColonel. But he’s got to come back home sometime, even if it’s just for a change of uniform. And when he does, Enron will be waiting for him.
A prudent distance back from the picture window in the living room, Enron stands staring out into the street. He misses Jowler. Jowler could stealth over to base-ops to find this Terd. With Jowler, Enron wouldn’t be stuck here counting on some luck. Sinalco told him her teeks couldn’t fix Jowler. That the central works were fried too badly. He and she still regularly have their rough tumbles in the hay. Even so, Enron won’t believe for a second that Sinalco tells anybody everything.
**********
Jiplap has been having good luck using his elephant gun. The front of his coveralls are speckled nearly solid red from Crat blood. Small white blobs of Crat brains cling to his boots as well. If he doesn’t cut Crats and their flunky Terd security guys in half with shot from the big rifle, he swings it around like a battle club. The more Crat manors his boys overrun, the more ordnance they acquire. Most of it is vintage. Uzi, M16, AK47, AR-15. Everything lovingly oiled and in mint working condition. These guns aren’t misters, but they elevate a lot of his boys from single-shot to automatic. That starts to make all the difference in the world. They find frag-grenades and Stinger shoulder mounts, too. Plenty of them. With these, they start blowing holes through walls and flipping the light-armored GaterPol vehics. Jiplap’s bunch is really going to town when Cardinal finally manages to comm back through to him.
*Jiplap stupid fuck! What your poz? Say again. What your poz?*
Jiplap mops his brow and rolls his eyes. These bossy EVe bitches can’t even talk right.
<My poz is we’re killing shit. Like we’re supposed to. What the fuck’s your fucking poz?>
*My poz is my job finish. We take west District. How far you are?*
Jiplap doesn’t rightly know how far they are. He asks his lieutenant, who he told to keep track of shit like that. He repeats what he’s told.
<We’re almost at the junction of West State and 26th. So fucking what?>
Cardinal refers to her maps.
*Idiot! Oak is now at Pyramid. You must come from west. Go! Schnell!*
<Whoa. Don’t piss your panties, sweetpuss. We ain’t tussling with Terds over here. These folks knew somebody would be coming after their sorry asses someday, and they were ready for us. We’ll get there when we can.>
*Arschloch! Like I tell you before. Hop street! Move fast! Get to roadblocks GaterPol make on North 10 Street. Now!*
Jiplap isn’t sure what the wild bitch means by “roadblocks,” but it doesn’t sound promising.
<Is Oak’s bunch getting over the roadblocks?>
*No.*
<Then how the hell you expect my bunch to?>
*Fool! Like I tell you in plan. Migros bring out misters from Pyramid.*
<Hold on. What? You crazy bitches are for real doing that?>
*Fuck yes, stupidhead! She bring out now many. This make your tiny Dickle very hard, yes?*
Jiplap does suddenly have about half a stiffyanker.
<You’re goddamned right it makes my dickle hard, sister. And for a mister, Jesus, I’d even do you a favor and poke that dickle up your skank creampie.>
*Bruder, you not get at Pyramid now, I do world a favor to bite off that little tail.*
**********
Just after CorpHQ won’t take his call, Dockers and the TopCrats watch, far below them, the GaterPol perimeter around the Pyramid start to break down. The gun flashes from the Wobbly side along West Fort Street suddenly are longer, brighter, more wrathful. Then the same kind of flashes start to come suddenly along North 10th Street, on the other side of the Pyramid. Half of the TopCrats track one Wobbly line advance closer and closer to the base of the Pyramid. Half watch the other Wobbly line do the same. Then, without even asking Dockers’ permission, the Captain of the Pyramid Guard ascends into the Eye. The Wobblies now have misters, he informs the megmayor. How they got their hands on them, he reports, he has no idea. But they’re punching through. Time for the megmayor and his megcouncilors to make their way to the hardroom.
“Hold one,” the Captain signals for the TopCrats not to move. He covers his ear with his palm in order to ihear better. “What are you telling me?” he says to whoever is reporting to him. His face goes pale. He looks at Dockers. “Sir. Wobblies are on the lower tiers.” His voice goes stern. “We need to move very fast.”
Alarm Status One sounds as the passageways leading to the hardroom seal tight, only opening before and closing after the party of TopCrats. Nothing can penetrate this fluid corridor seal. The thirty or so megcouncilors rush headlong toward their sanctuary, situated at the very heart of the Pyramid. Huffing and puffing, they make it down, finally, to the hardroom tier. Safety is close. They pick up their pace. Then they’re all rocked off their feet by three violent explosions on this level. The Captain hops back to his feet and covers his ihear again. In disbelief, he reports to Dockers.
“Sir. The hardroom has been demolished. Blasted from the inside.”
“That’s impossible,” says Dockers.
“I know, sir,” says the Captain. “But it’s engulfed in flames. There’s nowhere safe now to go.”
Before full panic can grip the TopCrats the corridor seal in front of them melts away. Standing there is a gigantic woman. She opens up with a small handgun, wielding it nearly faster than the eye can see. In seconds she takes out four escort Guards. All single shots to the forehead. A fifth Guard sprays his mister in her direction. That should vaporize the intruder, but there’s no bloodcloud left hanging in the air. She’s simply vanished.
Alarm Status Two sounds in the Pyramid. Systems totofail. The corridor seal around the TopCrats disappears. They’re completely exposed. Then something never before heard in a TexArc Pyramid: Alarm Status Three. A calmly objective male voice repeats loudly over and over again: Overwhelming encroachment verified. Immediate evacuation advised. The Captain of the Guard covers his ear one more time.
“Sir. Confirmed. The West Bannock threshold is open wide. Hundreds are getting in.”
**********
AirColonel Bacardi throws his flightcap across the bedroom and tosses his keycards onto the bureau top. He needs some speedsleep. It’s two or three in the morning—he’s lost track—and he’s been on duty since four yesterday morning. He’s going lights out for a while, no matter what. Maybe while he’s out the yanking Crats can pull their shit together. Unlikely. Crats are born with their heads up their butt. But you can always hope.
It started weeks ago with CorpHQ first telling them to sortie against the Servs in the mountains then stop the sorties against the Servs in the mountains. Then subceo Wells is all over his ass to keep the Wing at constant highalert. Then just tonight, on top of the worst storm Bacardi has ever seen, that fathead megmayor starts badgering him every five minutes to scramble everything Mountain Home has. It seems that the apocalypse has broken out up in BoiCity. Then Wells is on the horn to order Bacardi to exercise extreme caution in committing any aircraft to the defense of the meg. Okay. Roger that. Then two minutes after that call old Blue-Eyes himself in on a secureline telling him in pleasantly threatening tones that the bigpic requires ArcAir to drag its heels on this particular mission. The big bossman said to him: “Let’s let the megmayor stew in his own juices for a while, shall we, Wing Commander? You get my meaning, of course, don’t you?” Nobody ever doesn’t get your fucking meaning, Sir. Not if they want to live past the next ten minutes. So, that’s where things stand at the moment for the ArcColonel: dragging his heels while awaiting further orders. What else is new? It’s all academic anyway. Even if the Crats told him to, he wouldn’t risk a single pilot in this mother of a storm. The moment he saw it approaching, Bacardi ordered all craft stowed underground. Satellite image shows it won’t be clear for flying until daybreak at the earliest. That’s why he’s come home to grab some shuteye.
In the bureau mirror, over his shoulder, Bacardi catches just the glinting outline of the man standing in the shadows on the opposite side of the bedroom. He decides to talk before turning around.
“Well, you’re not here to kill me. Not right away, anyway. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
By the accent and tone, Bacardi judges CorpTroop. Very odd—but also potentially good for Bacardi.
“So you’re not Net.”
“Fuck no, sir.”
“Good. I hate those assholes, too.”
“Doublecheck that, sir.”
“Can I ask who you are, then?”
There’s indecision. Then: “CorpTrooper Enron, sir. Up from BoiCity way.”
“CorpTrooper, eh?” They both know there’s no significant ArcGround presence in this part of the IMS.
“Well, used to be, sir. I’m with sort of a different outfit now.”
“Oh, yeah? And what outfit is that, Enron?”
No hesitation at all. “The Wobblies, sir.”
“The Wobblies,” Bacardi repeats, nodding his head. “Are you fellas kicking up that fuss up in BoiCity tonight?”
“We sure as hell are, sir.”
“Well, from what I’m hearing, you seem to be doing a damn fine job of it.”
“Thank you, sir. We aim to please.”
A touch of CorpTroop swagger, in a Wobbly. It crosses Bacardi’s mind just how dangerous a combination that might be. And interesting.
“So are the Wobblies here to take me out, Enron? To prevent air cover?”
“Storm’s doing that, sir. I’m here for a different reason.”
“Oh, really? What? To spread socialistic peace and harmony?” Immediately, Bacardi feels bad for his sarcasm.
“I don’t know what that means, sir.”
Bacardi rubs his eyes. He’s beyond exhausted.
“May I turn around, Enron?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bacardi turns, slowly and with his hands in view.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole just now. I’ve been on alert all day and night. I’m dog-tired.”
Enron removes his camo hood and mask. “Ain’t we all, sir?”
Bacardi judges the rugged face floating before him in the shadows to be a good fifteen to twenty years his junior. He’s shocked to see the CorpTrooper’s eyes free of the glassy. How the hell are the Wobblies managing that?
“You’ve been Trooping more than a few years, haven’t you, Enron?”
“Roger that, sir.”
“That’s no small accomplishment.”
“If you want to call it that, sir. Did you really refuse to fire on a raghead village, sir? Back when you was a flyboy captain?”
“You’ve heard about that?”
“Every Trooper hears about that, sir. The Terd that told them to go fuck themselves.”
“Yeah. That was me, all right. A stupid thing to do, but I did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t see a point to killing those people. They were mainly women and children.”
“How is it they let you get away with it? Why did the hub let you live?”
“Luck. It turned out to be a strategically good thing we didn’t take out the village. And I’m a damn good pilot. Takes a lot of DollArcs to train us. Guess they didn’t want to execute their investment for corptreason. It would play bad, too. Simple as that.”
“Still, fucking-A, sir. That’s some balls.”
“You can only get pushed around so much, Enron.”
“No need to tell me, sir.”
Bacardi feels ridiculous. This CorpTrooper has his absolute attention.
“So what are we doing tonight, Enron?”
“They want you to watch this, sir.”
Enron removes one camo glove. His hand disappears then reappears, retrieving something from his thigh-pocket. On the tip of his index finger he holds out a simudisc. It’s the size of a thumbnail.
“Who wants me to watch it?” Bacardi asks, squinting at the disc in the dark.
“The folks from EVe.”
So the rumors of insert are true.
“I see. And what is it?”
“Don’t know, sir. I decided not to watch it. Anyways, it’s made for Terds to watch.”
Bacardi thinks before asking his next question.
“And who, exactly, made this?”
Enron tells him a bit about Mall and Brand. The AirColonel pays attention to him like Enron’s never seen a Terd listen to a Parker’s words before. Bacardi asks if he can approach to get the disc. When it’s transferred from the tip of one index finger to the next, Bacardi inspects it closely.
“It’s not going to melt my brain, is it?”
Enron likes the joke. “No, sir. Not in any gloopy way. But they did say it might change your mind about a few things.”
“They did, did they?”
“Yes, sir. They sure did.”
“And if I refuse to watch it?”
“Then I’m shit-ass out of luck, sir. I’d be on my own to try like hell to get off your base.”
Bacardi shakes his head in admiration. “Jesus, Enron. Where do you Troopers get your nerve?”
“Gets beat into us, I guess, sir. Over our whole lives.”
“Yes. I’m aware.”
Bacardi checks his watchwrist for the time. He can only be out of the loop with base-ops for so long. He asks, “Do you happen to know how long this will take?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir. But not above five minutes.”
The AirColonel nods, considering matters carefully. Then he asks if it’s all right for him to go sit on the edge of the bed. When he’s situated, he prepares to slot the simudisc into the miniature port just behind his right ear.
“Okay, Enron,” says Bacardi. “Here goes nothing.”
**********
Three minutes forty-seven seconds. An unprecedented length of runtime for a maximum digiland fivesensestim. But it’s deft, gentle, expert at tapping cognitive hooks, profound at plucking emotive triggers—and computationally algorithmed at point of reception to individuate precisely its message. Inverted, breathtakingly, is the best of all possible worlds. Transformed, stunningly, from narcissist to empath is the businessman-hero. Rapacity spins topsy-turvy into harmony. Put forward is the cure of all.
**********
AirColonel Bacardi reopens his eyes. He’s on his back, on his bed. Tears have streamed from the outside corners of his eyes to pool in his ears. He entered the taste a half-hearted companyman—a doubtom. He emerges a full-blown wonderboy.
“Enron?” he speaks into the dark.
“Right here, sir.”
“How long was I out?”
“Just going four minutes now, sir.”
“Is that all? Christ. It feels like I was in there a lifetime.”
Bacardi sits up, wipes his eyes. He feels like he’s taken body-blows. He looks at the disembodied head and hands floating a respectful distaste from him across the bedroom. His guilt is still there. But the hate has been switched for shame. He clears his throat.
“I need to say something to you, Enron.”
“They told me you might, sir.”
“It’s going to sound like a pile of horseshit, though.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I’m terribly, deeply sorry for what’s been done to—” Bacardi stops himself. More ashamed. “For what I’ve done to you. To you and yours. For all these years.”
There’s a long silence.
“The taste was that hard, sir?”
“The taste was a fucking sledgehammer, Enron.”
Another lingering pause.
“Good. Then let’s just get on with the doing something part. Is that fine with you, sir?”
“That couldn’t be better, Enron. Thank you.”
The AirColonel ejects the simudisc from behind his ear. He stands and leads them to his den. He index-fingers a code into a padboard on the wall. A wall panel slides aside. He inserts the disc into a shimmering, high-priority apparatus.
“All I can do is feed this to every Terd on base. I can’t guarantee how they’ll react. I can only guarantee that they’ll watch the whole thing.”
“Fair enough, sir. Sure worth a damn try. I appreciate it.”
“There are eight Terds on base, though, that I’m not going to feed this to. They’re Netsmen. Do you get my drift, Enron?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Enron. Can I ask you to do me a favor?”
Enron is already putting back on his camo gloves, hood, and mask.
“Just point me in the right direction, sir.”
**********
Dawn reddens the eastern foothills. The sky has been ripped clean. Morning air so fresh it hurts to breathe it in. Visibility infinite overhead. From the rooftop of the Bank of TexArc, 120 stories up, Dockers starts to survey what’s left of his meg. Washed out. Burnt out. Blown up. The megmayor knows the deadcount will be Dmega. Unimaginable. Inexcusable.
The Captain of the Pyramid Guard had hurried them out the 8th Street threshold of the Pyramid. Then he’d raced them south, to the edge of the floodwaters. Then he’d turned them right, to run down West Main. He knew right where he was taking them. To the safety of the high Bank tower at 1200 Main. To where ArcAir would have the best chance of evacuating them. It was a sound move. But ArcAir never showed. The brightening sky remains empty. Now they’re trapped. Unless rescue comes.
Five or six of the fatter TopCrats had keeled over during the run, apparently from cardiac arrest. No one bothered to stop for them. During the night, the Pyramid Guard disabled the elevators then picked off any random Wobblies exploring the stairwells searching for them. But eventually the pack of TopCrats was tracked down. During the hour before sunrise, the Guard fought hard to hold the two or three floors just below them. But the TopCrats could tell that effort was slowly giving way. Now, somehow, Wobblies are popping over the low wall guardrailing the roof. Like rodents, they’ve managed to scuttle up the side of the building. These men are scarecrows. Wild. With scooped-out cheeks and sunken eyes. They level misters at the megcouncilors. They gape at the TopCrats stupidly. The access door onto the roof is kicked open by an ornery looking little Wobbly who makes straight for the TopCrats.
“Congratulations!” Dockers steps forward to meet him, shouting contemptuously. “I’m sure you’ll get a fine ransom for us! For all the good it will do you miserable shitubers!”
The runty Wobbly chest-bumps hard into Dockers and gets his yellow teeth up into the TopCrat’s face.
“The name’s Wat, you miserable son of a bitch. Oak Wat. I lead these boys. And I’m here to tell you we don’t want your fucking ransom.”
While he speaks a second group runs out onto the roof. Dockers just has time to catch a glimpse of them. All women. None Parkers. One shouts out, “Oak! No!”
“Yank that, Mall!” Oak shouts back, not turning to look over his shoulder. “Too late!”
Oak jams the minimister up Dockers’ nostril and pulls the trigger. The Crat hits the rooftop like a sack of sand.
Engine vibrations agitate the air, barely audible. Something is landing on the roof. Rain puddles tremor and spray. Sonic waves rattle ribcages. It’s a FotoFighter. Invisible. Coated with organic light-emitting diodes. Perfect for recon-and-raid missions. Dozens of them could be hovering over the meg and no one could tell. There’s touchdown. Then, out of thin air, a pilot is sliding back a canopy.
“You’ve got to be Oak, right?” shouts the pilot.
“You’re damn right I am!” Oak shouts back, fighting mad but wary.
“Good! Hold one!” The pilot looks to the group of women. “Is one of you Mall?” he shouts.
Mall steps forward. “I am!” she shouts back.
“Good!” The pilot shouts to both of them now. “I’m AirColonel Bacardi! Enron sends his best! It’s going to be like this, Oak and Mall! Start protecting Terds! Right now! Otherwise there will be hell to pay! Stop killing Crat women and children! Right now! Otherwise there will be hell to pay! Are we clear?”
“What about this mob of bastards!” Oak shouts back, obviously ready to tussle with this AirColonel.
Bacardi looks at Mall while replying to Oak.
“Seems to me that’s your call, Mr. Wat!”
**********
Over WobblyNet, hundreds of thousands of Parkers watch Oak order the megcouncilors to be pitched off the top of the Bank of TexArc. One-by-one, TopCrats sail over the side, squealing and kicking. Each time, cheers ring out across the ruined meg. Following these executions, MarketSquare streams live the mopping up of CratVillage. Jiplap, with his elephant gun, leads the way. Both spectacles transfix.
In the early afternoon, Oak ascends into the Pyramid Eye. He makes a point of his going up alone. It’s 8 August 2084. From here on out in TexArc, this day will be known as the start of The Great Crat Massacre. The first thing Oak does is sweep every item on the megmayor’s desk onto the glossy floor. Next he plops his scraggy butt into the leather ergonomic chair and bounces up and down a few times to test it out. Then he leans back and bangs his muddy boot heels onto the polished desktop. He settles in for a moment or two. Then, even better, he tugs off his boots and parks his stinking, calloused feet up on the fancy black-marble desk. Oak wiggles his toes. He chuckles to himself.
“Now that’s more like it.”
He locks his fingers behind his head. He leans back as far as he can. When he’s bored with that, he brings his feet down and swivels around a bit, having a gaze out the four tall, pointy windows. Naught but blue big sky out there as far as Oak can see. Rummaging through the desk drawers, he finds the bottle of smoky scotch. He doesn’t bother looking for a glass.
“Yes, sir,” he says to himself after a long, long swig. “A man could get used to this.”
