ã€ŠKing in the Castleã€‹


 1: A New Idea

    All the really big ideas are simple. Sort of. In the big picture, anyways. Fine, whatever. I was never really good at this rhetoric stuff, so just let me explain.

    ¡°All men are created equal.¡± Straightforward, right? It''s not a complicated idea ¨C everyone is equal. But, if you¡¯ve ever tried to actually apply it, life gets complicated in a hurry. And let¡¯s not forget that mankind took a few thousand years to even start trying. Sciency stuff is the same way. Take evolution, or maybe gravity. Gravity is the force that pulls mass together. It''s the force that drops that apple on Isaac Newton''s powder-wigged head. Easy enough, we teach it to elementary kids and they get it. Of course, it took mankind a few thousand years to nail that one down, too. And even after we figured it out, it took a while to figure out the math, and we still haven''t quite figured out what we can actually do with it. Although I guess we use it to sling satellites around the planet?

    Other big ideas are the opposite ¨C simple to apply, incredibly difficult to understand. Like music. Nearly anyone with ears can work out a tune, find a rhythm, and croak along. But have you ever tried to work out exactly why some songs practically force you to move with the beat? You''ll be a while. I¡¯ve got friends who are making a career out of studying those recipes. Just working out why some frequencies pair well in the ear with other frequencies can drown a lifetime in frustration. And yet ignorant halfwits can regularly con the devil out of a golden fiddle.

    That''s me, the ignorant halfwit who managed to win a golden violin. A Stradivarius, no less. A dropout English Major who discovered how to make a material harder than diamond, stronger than steel, and more conductive than gold. I own it, I market it, and I license it, but I¡¯m still so ignorant I can''t even come up with a better description than the stuff. And trust me, I am fully aware of how much the engineers are cringing at the moment. I¡¯m sure some physicists are going to get even more irritable when I try to describe what it is. That¡¯s my point. What I do or don¡¯t understand matters less than the detail that I own the patents that really let humanity escape our homeworld, brought free ¨C nearly free - energy to the world created what is effectively a post-scarcity world, and let all the irritating Star Trek, Star Wars, and Warhammer fans fill the world with technobabble. I''m sorry about that last one. Really, I am. I never dreamt that words and phrases like ''subspace,'' ''warp drive,'' ''phasers,'' and ''plasteel¡¯ would not only become common language but actually refer to stuff used by people every day. Really, I''m sorry. The Federation and the Prime Directive can''t be far off now, although fortunately there¡¯s still no sign of Skynet or Cylons.

    I was just another college student. I was learning about post-modernism and deconstruction, listening to droning about Joyce and Woolfe and Kerouac, Looking for Godot, and wasting far too much of my time on things that were actually memorable. Like girls, pranks, and video games. Best weekend of my life? Probably the one where I spent 30 straight hours playing Halo with my roommates.

    Predictably, I did that for a year and found myself on academic suspension. Apparently, schools don''t like it much when their students don''t show up for class and miss tests entirely. To be honest, there was some criticism involved at the time. Lots of talk about wasted potential, how smart I was, and stuff like that. I was given plans to follow, things I had to do to continue towards graduation, checklists for every little thing.

    But none of that mattered, not really. The biggest impact was simple: I lost my scholarship. Whether I stayed in school or not, I now had to work for a living. And that sucked.

    My academic counselor was one of those ladies where you can''t tell how old they are. She could have been an athletic and active seventy, or a forty-year-old who liked tanning and anorexia. You know the type ¨C more bony than skinny, and the only wrinkles on her face were the ones that made it clear that her only facial expression involved pursing her lips into the shape of a cat anus. I was in her office ¨C a narrow little space with barely room for a desk and two chairs, and every horizontal surface was filled with pop psychology books and vacation souvenirs.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    Those lips opened, ¡°Ok, I see your worries. But I''m concerned, students who work generally struggle even more to maintain good grades.¡±

    She should have thought about that before taking away my scholarship. I''m just as smart as I was, and now I could manage 15-kill streaks with a needler. That should count for something ¨C it was a new skill that I hadn''t had before college. Her mouth was opening again, ¡°It''s up to you, obviously, but I think you''d be best off working here on campus. At least they can be flexible about class schedules, and we can make sure...¡±

    I interrupted her with a smile, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I can¡¯t work in the student union. I''ve worked food before, within a week everything I own will smell of pizza, or old grease, or pretzels. I can find a decent job that will let me study.¡±

    She was quiet for a moment, letting the silence fill the room, almost as though her Niagara Falls snowglobe was sucking in the sound. I kept going, ¡°Maybe it¡¯s just pride? I dunno.¡±

    She did this thing that made me think she was trying to smile but maybe had never seen someone smile before. You know what? I just realized I don''t remember her name. I''m sure I knew it at one point, she had one of those triangle name bar thingies on her desk, and I''m sure her door had a removable plaque, but it''s been so long since I even thought about her that I have no idea. But she needs a name, just to keep people straight. She was certainly memorable enough. I''ll call her Steve. I don''t think there are any other Steves in my story, so that''ll work.

    Steve did that teeth-baring grimace that didn''t touch her eyes, chin, or soul, and said, ¡°We can keep you out of the cafeteria. Do you mind working nights? Say four hours a night, six to ten on Monday through Thursday nights, and four hours at some point on the weekend?¡±

    I shrugged.

    There was probably more conversation while we filled out forms and finalized details ¨C who I¡¯d report to, how much I¡¯d get paid, that sort of thing.

    And so I found myself sweeping, mopping, and trash-emptying in the school''s new propulsion physics building.

    I call it the new building, but the building itself is well over a hundred years old. It had been renovated a few years back, they were planning on turning it into an environmental science building but changed their minds last minute after Angat''s discovery.

    Angat hadn''t officially won his Nobel yet, but everyone who thought twice knew it was just a matter of time. Figuring out how to detect, collect, and channel dark energy/matter was causing major waves at the time ¨C it was even making mainstream news a bunch if you remember. There was a couple of years where we didn¡¯t even hear about every new cancer cure. His gizmos had an energy output efficiency that apparently put even cold-fusion speculation to shame, he could even generate reactionless propulsion that had all sorts of people getting excited about Mars and the Jovian moons. Which is not to say that anyone had built anything useful yet, but if you asked one of those scientists they tended to sort of sneer and say it was an engineering problem. Angat''s experiments had finally bridged the gaps between quantum theory, relativity, and old-fashioned Newtonian physics, leading the theoretical guys to throw out string theory entirely and start from scratch. They still weren''t to a Theory of Everything yet ¨C new gaps appeared about as quickly as they filled the old ones, but people were excited.

    I wasn''t, as I still officially found Russian literature more interesting, but I was aware of it. My job made me more aware of it because I was now sweeping and mopping up the messes of those eager little physicists and engineers busy expanding on Angat''s work. Lots of messes ¨C it seemed those generators and engines and drives and scanners and widgets failed after producing just a few watts worth of energy. Or Newtons, I think? Doesn''t matter. A generator that makes a lightbulb flicker before breaking down isn''t worth much, even if the generator didn''t need any fuel. So that building was full of people trying different circuits, different wiring layouts, different materials, cooling mechanisms, and so on, trying to make a working motor. It also meant that there was plenty of sawdust, metal shavings, burnt plastic, spilled oil, and other minor and major health hazards that I got to tidy up.

    It was a pain, but I got to do the Einstein thing where I worked a boring job and got to be alone with my thoughts.

    I still know more about cleaning solvents than most fortune 500 CEOs.

 2: A New Job

    It was a Thursday. I''m not sure I know why I remember that, it''s not the kind of thing I pay much attention to, I don''t even remember my supervisor''s name. The dude was memorable, but I don''t remember his name. He was the building''s head custodian and gave all us student-employees our marching orders even though he wasn''t actually our boss. Technically, Steve was my boss. The custodian was a character. Looking back I¡¯m pretty sure he was usually a bit drunk, but I can¡¯t say I noticed it at the time.

    Anyways, the building was an old brownstone and surprisingly tall for such an old place. A broad rectangle, six stories tall, with three basement levels. If you moved it off campus into a city street it would look like an old apartment building. Random windows had been bricked up: the third and fourth floor had several rooms that had been combined vertically into extra-large space, and the second floor had been mostly removed to both raise the first floor ceilings and to reinforce the floor on the third. Which was still the third floor, despite now being the second floor. The inside was a maze of large labs, tiny offices, and narrow hallways that led to nowhere. There was a huge service elevator on the west side of the building, large enough to park a panel van or to move a first-generation IBM.

    I came in through the garage entrance by the elevator, taking the stairs down towards the furnace room. The furnace was new. Well, newer than the original coal monster that came with the building. The extra space had been converted into a large locker room and storage area. I swiped my badge through a scanner by the door to clock myself in and went to my locker to pull on the protective overalls we all wore. The big guy heard the beep, and without looking up growled to me, ¡°You''re late! You''re supposed to be here at six.¡±

    ¡°I can''t be late, Sarah.¡± So yeah, I don¡¯t remember the super¡¯s name, so let¡¯s go with Sarah. We were required to work 4 hours a night, any time after five PM and we had to be finished before five AM. The handbook specified that we could come in whenever it was convenient for our schedules. The handbook also specifically said that our oddly-shaped supervisor was only there to assign tasks. The dude wasn''t even allowed to evaluate us on whether those tasks were finished adequately. I guess there had been problems in the past.

    Sarah stood up, his bulk sorta leaning past his desk. ¡°Dr. Hansen wants help up in his lab. Apparently, there''s been problems today. He expected you there an hour ago.¡±

    ¡°Why did you tell him I''d be there an hour ago? You know we don''t have schedules, it just makes you look dumb.¡± Sarah ¨C I didn''t actually call him Sarah, but I don''t remember his name and he needs one for the sake of the biography, and I¡¯m pretty sure I never saw him again after this semester ¨C reddened down to his neck. He reddened easily ¨C he was pretty pale and blond, so it was always super visible. The man was shaped like a football, too. Not an egg, a regulation American football. Or maybe a rugby ball? No, the stretched buttons on his shirt looked like the stitches on a football. Very tall, but a small head with shoulders that somehow sloped into a barrel chest and beer gut that in turn shrunk away past his waist into smaller thighs, narrow calves, and feet that looked tiny in orthopedic trainers. What really struck me was that he had skinny arms too. Some guys get teased for skipping leg day, Sarah skipped arm day too.

    He didn''t say anything more to me ¨C all of us student custodians had these arguments every damn time we clocked in. It wasn¡¯t the first time he¡¯d been called dumb by a student-employee, and probably wasn¡¯t even the only time it happened that night. Fortunately, as much as Steve rubbed me wrong, she and the other counselors really did have the students'' backs when we worked for the school. They did a pretty good job keeping tin-pot megalomaniacs like Sarah from actually hurting our jobs or prospects. Remember kids, remember to find out if your prospective college actually likes having students. That can be more important than any ranking.

    I finished throwing on the heavy coveralls and grabbed up my cart. It was a pretty normal janitor cart ¨C mop bucket on the front, a disorganized array of cleansers, rags, sponges, and other random bits of gear on the trays in back. Filthy handle to push the thing. You''ve seen dozens just like it, I''m sure. Just because we were in a building full of literal space-age cutting-edge tech didn''t mean the support staff did anything different. There might have been some sort of GPS low jack on it somewhere, but if there was I¡¯ll bet no one knew the login for it anymore anyways.

    Hansen''s lab was up on the fifth floor, and I was worryingly surprised when I found it pristine. I had gotten used to getting called in to find burnt motor oil splattered over floor, walls, and ceilings, or scorch marks that needed to be painted over, or metal shavings so thick you used a shovel to clear them out. Even blood and vomit in the lab rooms wasn''t terribly uncommon with all the harried grad students around here. Hansen''s place didn''t even have a real smell to it, beyond what any old building had. Ok, maybe there was some burnt popcorn in there from recent history, but not the kind of stuff I normally spend my evenings mopping up. His lab in particular was usually relatively easy to deal with ¨C just dust and ash and the occasional scorch mark I couldn¡¯t do anything with. He had one of the better ventilation setups too, otherwise I¡¯d bet his room would be even more full of smoke than all the other engineers¡¯ spaces.

    I didn''t see the doctor at first ¨C I pushed my way in and looked around for whatever it was I was supposed to do. A large motor set on a low platform had pride of place in the room ¨C the framework stood about four feet wide, four feet tall, and fifteen feet long. Strung along inside the steel frame were pipes, wires, open circuitboards, what I think was a large battery, and other unidentifiable bits of electronics and machinery, all built along a long narrow design that tapered to a pronged pipe thing at the end. I remember it struck me as kinda odd when I first saw it, most of the Angat motors the professors tinkered with were more of a big ring shape. Hansen was sitting at a desk in the corner of the room, working on a computer.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    I cleared my throat and he turned, smiling broadly. ¡°Oh, great! I''m glad to see you, I desperately need another pair of hands. Come over here.¡±

    He was... unremarkable, really. Middle aged, darker skin that could have been an old tan or something more ethnic, bald with the remaining brown fringe cut very short, and a bit of stubble that spoke of a long day''s work since his morning shower. Even his blue eyes were more a washed out grey than anything you could describe as piercing. His voice was sharp, ¡°Come here, it won''t bite, I need to show you what I''m doing.¡±

    Most of the physicists around here were insanely protective of their devices. We usually weren''t supposed to even sweep out from under them, so I was hesitant when Hansen pulled me over to a long box bolted near the narrow end of the pipe. The box was open along the top, and I looked in to see a line of little thumb-sized gadgets placed against a very heavy cable or tube. The box itself was actually wood, and when I got closer I realized he had just bolted a window planter box to the side of his machine. The tube connected more machinery on the far end to the narrow pipe. Each device in the box had a flashing blue indicator light. Hansen handed me a shoebox filled with identical little gadgets.

    He reached in and pulled off one of the devices ¨C it detached easily and the blue indicator promptly changed to yellow and started flashing. ¡°Do you see the lights? The moment one turns green, pull it out ¨Cjust drop it on the floor or toss it behind you or whatever, I want you to be fast. Take one with a yellow light out of the box and plug it back in. Same deal if a light just turns off.¡±

    At this point I noticed that the little guys in my box all had blinking yellow lights too. I was still kind of confused, ¡°Um... Sarah said... I''m usually just here to clean up?¡±

    Hansen growled. Literally, growled. ¡°Grrr.¡± Like that cereal mascot. ¡°You''re here to help me with my work. Any questions about what I actually asked you to do? Or are you going to just complain?¡±

    This was more interesting than mopping. For the moment anyways.

    I asked, ¡°Ok, Green or off, I replace it. Fast, don''t worry about what I do with the green ones. Anything else I should know?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°Just make sure that the ones you plug in still are showing yellow. Otherwise drop them. Try it a few times now.¡±

    The little thumb drive thingies pulled out smoothly and plugged in easily. I had to have them lined up straight, but they weren''t terribly finicky or tight. The connectors were like those old fashioned double plugs you see for headphones on old airplanes.

    ¡°Great, lets get going. Let me know when you run out, I''ll be doing the same on the other side.¡± Hansen went back to his computer, entered a bit, and flicked a big switch on the large end of his machine. It began to hum and whine quietly. The whine was kinda painful, to be honest. It wasn''t loud, but somehow it made me need to pee and floss at the same time. ¡°Oh, if you see one of them turn red, duck fast.¡±

    And then it started. The prongs on the pipe started strobing bright white light, rattling the whole frame with each flash. Before I could even register the noise or shaking, the device closest to the flashing light turned green. I pulled it, plugged in another. By the time I had done that two more had turned green and a third had turned off. I felt like Lucy sorting chocolate, but before I had time to get truly behind I had emptied out my box and all the plugged-in boxes were green or off. The rattling and the strobing stopped immediately, and Hansen darted back to flip the switch and shut off the whine.

    ¡°Excellent! You did way better than most of my usual grad students. We managed a full forty seconds! Beautiful.¡± He rambled for a bit about watts and volts and Brinells. He was super excited for something that looked a lot like a firework, and appeared less useful. Sure, that was a lot of power, I guess, but who wants energy that requires the kind of maintenance this thing did for less than a minute of juice?

    All these drives and motors and generators that people were playing with did the same thing. Produced way more energy than they should, and then broke within seconds. It seemed like Hansen was trying to rig it so that it was easy to fix with replaceable parts, but it was still the same problem. The only thing he seemed to have done better than the rest of the yahoos was to identify which part was going to break first ¨C the devices plugged closest to the output pipe pretty much always broke first, which was the only reason I had been able to even begin to keep up.

    I must have looked skeptical because the professor quickly went into professor mode while I gathered up all the gizmos we had scattered around. ¡°Angat''s dark bosun generators produce a huge amount of force ¨C we''ve got a car battery plugged in to kick-start the process, and frankly we could have done about as well with double-As. The car battery just recharges easier and lasts a bit longer.¡± Hansen had the trick of typing one thing into his computer while talking about something different. Or maybe he was just talking gibberish. I wouldn¡¯t know. I¡¯m not even confident I¡¯m remembering things right. If you want a real explanation of the science, go find a textbook.

    ¡°The energy produces EM fields that mess with even very-well shielded electronics and motors. Not really an EM pulse, but somehow it fills anything connected to the actual generation device. I think there¡¯s some sort of bosun moving through the circuits or some other strange matter. But because the generation requires very specifically modulated energy pulse to maintain the reaction ... the chips and switches that control the EM fields break almost as soon as the reaction itself starts.¡±

    ¡°So that''s what I''m doing.¡± He looked up from his computer and saw that I clearly hadn''t reached his conclusion. He was very perceptive, actually. I hadn''t reached any conclusion ¨C his lecture made about as much sense to me as Chewie''s speeches about hyperdrive repair do. Which is why I''m paraphrasing a bit ¨C this is really just what has been laboriously explained and dumbed down for my sake over the years.

    ¡°I''m not trying to perfect a generator, not directly. I''m trying to figure out why the damn thing breaks. This isn¡¯t about producing power ¨C this is about producing a whole bunch of breaks so I can spend the day analyzing to see where, when, and why it broke. We can identify patterns, hopefully improve the engineering and shielding, and see if we can''t make it last longer.¡±

    ¡°Worst case, I think I can make a circuit breaker type system, so the power runs through a bank that can switch itself back on automatically, instead of just burning out.¡±

    ¡°By the way, I just sent an email to Sarah and to the student employment office. You''re working for me now. I expect you to come back again tomorrow night. We''ll start at sixish. You¡¯ll need to hit your councilor¡¯s office sometime tomorrow to sign the forms.¡±

    I didn''t have much to say. I guess it was better than the blood, sweat and tears I cleaned up in the rest of the building.

 3: Getting Started

    The next afternoon I dropped in on Steve¡¯s office. I guess Hansen had actually sent that email right away because as soon as she saw me she turned and opened up her filing cabinet. Somehow she did it without knocking off any of the magnets attached, although a silvery fish attached by string to a magnetic fishing pole and rowboat wobbled as the drawer passed underneath. Three forms got pulled out, already neatly paperclipped together.

    I pulled them across her desk to me, and signed the first one ¨C a glance told me it was a pretty standard liability waiver. The next made me pause though, I¡¯d expected a W-2 or something, instead, it was some sort of bonus schedule. The third was a non-disclosure form.

    ¡°You know that Dr. Hansen is an adjunct, yes?¡± I nodded, and Steve continued after pursing her lips into a tight wrinkled circle. ¡°He teaches, and publishes, and uses our facilities, but his research is controlled by his own LLC. The university has full access to his research, and most of the financial proceeds, but he¡¯s retained the right to license, market, or otherwise exploit his patents.¡±

    ¡°Dr. Hansen prefers that his research assistants function as employees of his LLC, rather than as the university. Our employment office handles most of the paperwork and such, but you¡¯ll be working for him, not us. We still have to protect our students, so most of the rules are the same.¡±

    It started out basic, but that last bit surprised me. What kind of professor actually hands out stock?

    ¡°Um, is this normal?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°It¡¯s not abnormal.¡± She turned away from me to look at her computer screen. ¡°A lot of the adjuncts have their own companies and negotiate for more control of their work. The school likes the prestige, and the professors get better resources.¡±

    ¡°No, I mean handing out shares to researchers like this.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± She pursed her lips again and I was forcibly reminded of my mother¡¯s shorthair. She reached over to check the form, then turned back to her cabinet, pulling out yet another piece of paper. ¡°Sorry, that doesn¡¯t apply to you. You¡¯re an assistant, not a research assistant. Research assistants are usually PhD candidates, not undergrad part-time workers.¡±

    The form she handed me basically outlined all the things I could be fired for, and the things I couldn¡¯t be hired for. It was nice to know that Dr. Hansen couldn¡¯t fire me for chewing gum too loudly. Although it was worrying that they had to spell it out on a form.

    ¡°You should be thrilled, Ward.¡± She bared her teeth at me while stretching her lips back to either side, ¡°I¡¯d never have recommended you as an assistant. Dr. Hansen must like you.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± I thought the sarcasm would be obvious.

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡±

    <hr>

    I swiped my card under the scanner to clock in. And, like clockwork, heard ¡°Why aren''t you on time?¡± I''m beginning to think Sarah might actually have a learning disability or a missing chromosome. I hadn''t been one of the student janitors for a month and he still tries to give me shit. Of course, he''s easy to ignore as he never likes to maneuver his bulk out from behind his desk.

    I think he might sleep there.

    But I''d been doing this for almost four weeks now, so the routine was basic enough. I''d come in, get shit from Sarah, make my way upstairs. I''d joyfully ignore the smells and debris visible in other offices on my way up, and if I was lucky I could exchange a knowing nod with a student janitor. Once in the lab, I''d grab my helmet, my box of gizmos, and spend a few hours plugging them in as fast as I could. Once done, I''d pick up the dead ones. I could plug them back into another computer and it''d usually be able to record which plug they''d been set into, and usually even have a pretty good idea where the failure was.

    Tonight it was Friday, so the building was quiet. Even eager little Oppenheimers like to get out a bit like the rest of us, I guess. Hansen had a giant stack of papers sitting next to his computer tonight. Seriously, he had a big loose pile of paper that must have been close to three feet tall. His station was surrounded with loose paper scattered around him on the ground. The papers may have been centered on his wastebasket, but if that was true the professor certainly wasn''t aiming very hard.

    I came in and got ignored. He was taking a page down, glancing over it, and entering a few numbers into his computer, and then dropping it and moving on to the next. I waited until he was between pages and cleared my throat.

    He cleared his throat right back at me.

    ¡°Don''t take physics 2010. Or 1010. Or any physics class, God help you. And God help me.¡± Another page dropped to the ground and he pawed at another.

    ¡°Professor Hansen... is this something I should be helping with?¡±

    ¡°No. And I wish.¡± This page was crumpled before getting tossed over his shoulder as he entered some numbers into the spreadsheet on his computer. ¡°Damn T.A., little fart quit three weeks before finals. Now I have to grade all these quizzes and assignments.¡±

    ¡°You teach? I thought all you researchers just used grant money to hire teachers for your classes?¡±

    ¡°They''re little farts too.¡± Another paper dropped.

    I stood quietly for several minutes while I watched papers drop down. Some of them sailed quite far. ¡°So... want me to come back tomorrow?¡±

    ¡°No, just run the machine tonight by yourself. It''ll take a bit longer since you''ll only be doing one side. Just watch out for red lights.¡±Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    I had gotten my first ''red light'' on my third night with professor Hansen. He had dropped one of the regulator gizmos and didn''t get it replaced quickly. While I was swapping out mine one of the other thingies beeped loudly and flashed a bright red LED. I remembered what he¡¯d said on the first night, but it wasn''t automatic or anything, so the burst of flame only got some hair on the top of my head, and not any eyebrows. The devices were basically a little fuse of sorts, and usually just burnt out the little filament inside. But sometimes it was the socket itself that burnt out, and when that happened there would be a more catastrophic failure than usual. Hence the ducking. By now I was pretty used to it, although I also had started bringing a face shield and helmet that I''d stolen from a chem lab in another building.

    I put the helmet on and pulled down the Plexiglas shield. Remember Plexiglas? That stuff is either in landfills or museums now. You''re welcome.

    Tonight it took eight full cycles to run through the box of repaired gizmos. With two of us it usually only took one or two. It was pretty much impossible to keep up with the failure rate on my own, but that was ok. By the time I finished the professor only had about a foot of paper still to wade through.

    And then I just sat and waited. I still felt like a janitor, so I tried to pick up and toss the graded papers he¡¯d dropped on the ground, but stopped when Hansen growled at me. While I''m not surprised why lots of people quit working for him, compared to Sarah the Prof was a paragon of reasonable bosses. So I went back to the machine and picked through the broken bits out of boredom. I pried open one of the failed regulators, unsurprised to see that it was just a few microchips and a bunch of wires connecting the leads. The same sort of cookie-cutter electronics that you see in everything from toasters to high-end gaming rigs. There was one of those brown ribbon wires, with lots of filaments, connecting some of the leads to the board with the chips. The ribbon had apparently been severed ¨C it looked clean, like it had been done with a knife or scissors. Nothing melted, no fragments, just a clean break.

    A couple of other regulators showed the same sort of damage ¨C not in the ribbons, but had wires severed right where they connected to power. A couple even had damage right on the microchip. No scorching, no melted plastic, no debris; I''d almost say the chips had been drilled out, except there wasn''t any tool scoring either. It was just weird. Even the red-light devices looked like a clean break, with just some heat damage to the casing around it.

    ¡°Hey, Prof, why would the breaks be all clean like this?¡±

    Hansen stood up, stretching his neck while he walked over to me. ¡°What do you mean?¡±

    ¡°You''ve been keeping track of all this, right? What breaks, where it breaks, how it breaks, and so on?¡±

    ¡°Yup. And we''ve been varying the voltage slightly each run, looking for patterns.¡±

    ¡°So why would it break like this? I mean, it doesn''t look like any burnt-out wiring I''ve ever seen. My roommate did something screwy when he rebuilt his computer last year, it quit working ¨C when we opened it up the boards were scorched and melted. Same deal when I blew up a bunch of microwaves in high school, they really blew up. Even the old school lightbulbs my grandpa insists on using leave black marks all over the inside of the bulb when they burn out.¡±

    ¡°These are clean, professor. Is that weird?¡°

    Professor of Applied Physics, Marshal Hansen, just stood quietly. Not even growling or muttering to himself like he had been all evening. The quiet was unusual, which may have been why I was emboldened a bit. I didn''t usually offer opinions to Hansen, just did the work assigned. I remember he called me a little fart once when I tried to clean up a bunch of wrappers left over from his dinner.

    Keep in mind that I know jack squat about science beyond what gets taught in remedial high school courses. I didn''t know it, but I was with the devil at a crossroads, fiddling for all I was worth.

    ¡°What if it''s not burning out? I mean, I know we''re all assuming this is just overload burning out machinery, right? I''ve cleaned up enough burst pumps and melted and scorched wiring that it makes sense. But I dunno. Your generator uses less power, but stuff burns out just as fast. Except it isn¡¯t burning out ¨C it¡¯s just making bits disappear.¡±

    Hansen was still silent. I continued babbling, ¡°So, like, what if dark energy is more like antimatter, or maybe anti-energy, and when it feeds into the generator it''s burning out wiring. Like it¡¯s sucking bits and pieces down a wormhole?

    Hansen finally jolted and looked at me, ¡°It''s not antimatter. If it had been, you''d know it. Each burnout would be like a grenade going off, or worse. And wormholes don¡¯t work like that.¡±

    Now it was my turn to stand in silence.

    Hansen said, to himself more than to me, ¡°But you''re right, aren''t you? I''ve been assuming more than I should, and I know better. I have no idea what the mechanism is...¡±

    ¡°You know what? Take next week off. I''ve got to do some design work, and then we''ll rebuild some.¡±

    ¡°Good thinking with the old light bulbs. We''re gonna do an Edison, and find our filament.¡±

    <hr>

    The unintended consequence of my week off was that I got the best grades of my five-year-yet-still-abbreviated college career. I didn¡¯t even worry about what filaments had to do with Edison.

    Ayup. First night ''off,'' a Saturday, I skipped my last class and came home for a good old-fashioned deathmatch with my floormates who had been bugging me about slacking off with them since I had gotten conscripted to the mop brigade. And I proceeded to remain on the mop brigade, as they all managed to consistently clean the floor with my poor ragdoll of a digital avatar. It didn''t matter what mode, I clearly hadn''t been keeping up. I guess first-person shooters aren''t like riding a bicycle.

    Sunday morning I tried again and continued my losing streak. At that point, I decided to put my dignity away next to my kill count and quit. And then I proceeded to get seriously day drunk.

    I don''t know what I did Sunday night, but on Monday morning I was confident I didn''t want to repeat any of it. I dragged myself to class, though I''m not sure how worth it the trip was ¨C I''m pretty sure I didn''t remember anything from classes by the afternoon. But Monday night was possibly the most boring night I''d had since I was ten. Games were out, drinking was out, work was out. I didn''t have a girlfriend (thanks to the work, drinking, and games, to be honest). So, by default, I ended up doing schoolwork.

    I finished a paper ¨C outlining the parallels in how the authors describe mental illness in Catcher in the Rye and Slaughterhouse-Five ¨C with enough time to proof it and even write a second draft. I skimmed chapter summaries for my communications course. I even completed and reviewed a practice test for statistics. And I did it on Tuesday, too. And Wednesday, though on Thursday I tested the waters and got roaringly drunk again. I had learned from Hansen though and tested a variable. This time I was drunk on vodka instead of cheap beer. It was faster, but I did manage to prove the null hypothesis again.

    On Friday I studied more. After the hangover faded.

    On Saturday I was back in Hansen''s lab. In hindsight, I think the fact that one week of effort outside of class was enough to net me a 3.1 GPA for the semester was probably a large part of why I was screwing up in the first place. I think that might have been the first time in my life I put effort into classes outside of attending and participating. But I''ve always had better things to do than to revise notes. Like work in Hansen''s lab. If anything, the lab was more mind-numbing than cleaning up spills had been, but somehow I felt a part of things there. Hansen clearly needed someone to do the work, and I was doing it. It felt good, more than good enough to be a happy monkey that yanked little boxy doodads in and out of a machine for hours on end.

 4: Material Gains

    Hansen was, as always, perched at his computer when I came in for the evening after my week off. That was about the only thing that was the same. The machine had been radically altered. The pronged pipe at the end was the same. Apparently, most of the impulse drives had a similar pipe -the thing generated force on the empty air and could generate exponentially more with more energy. If you stood in the field when it turned on it would feel a lot like the lurch you get on a roller coaster or carnival ride, not like something hit or shoved you. The frame itself was lower now, wider and more squat. There was also a big gas-powered generator providing electricity on the far end, and a transformer that let us control how much power was available to the drive.

    A note here ¨C A lot of this stuff was getting called all sorts of things while I was first working with Hansen. Motors, drives, devices, generators, etc. Jhonas Angat''s discoveries and experiments were too new for standard terms to have settled in, especially as none of it really did anything beyond flare up and break. Let me give you the grade-school description of how this all worked. Apparently dark matter and dark energy exist in a state that cannot normally interact with any of the matter and energy that people can normally work with. Something about bosuns, I think. The stuff only normally interacts measurably with matter or energy when things are reaching the points where relativity begins to break down ¨C when stuff gets really, really fast or really, really heavy. You know, speed of light and black hole level stuff.

    Angat figured out how to use small amounts of energy to mimic relativistic effects, which in turn could draw dark matter into our state. The dark matter is usually presented as either an intense EM field or a burst of directed kinetic energy. For a little while, it looked like dark energy was going to get renamed ''Angat Radiation,'' but somehow the press started to just call it ''plasma.'' And then someone started referring to the state of being that dark whatever normally sat in as ''subspace.'' Please don¡¯t yell at me, none of this is my discovery, and I only wish I¡¯d been able to control what people named this stuff.

    After a point, I think it must have been inevitable for people to start using some of those names. A kinetic engine got referred to as an ''impulse drive,'' and while the generators were initially just called ''Angat generators,'' while they were just used to produce electricity, they eventually started getting called ''warp generators.'' Because that makes all sorts of sense. Even to a humanities student like me. Lots of sense.

    Anyways, Hansen had built an ¡°impulse drive¡± in his lab. He said that the kinetic force variant was a bit more stable than the generator variant. The thing could generate about one horsepower using the energy of a couple of AAs. Briefly generate one horsepower. Briefly as in less than a tenth of a second. When they died, they usually just turned off. But it wasn''t terribly uncommon for them to belch smoke, or start spraying hydraulic fluid, or make sparks, or other messy issues.

    The big difference with Hansen''s new build, other than the gas generator on the end, was that the area where the little gizmos had been socketed in was now a big flat space. He had gotten a light table from somewhere ¨C you know, those things artists and drafters use to trace? Glass surface, bright lights underneath? The light table was one of those standing types, so it was up high, roughly level with my chest. The output pipe for the drive was unconnected from the rest, just a big alligator clamp sticking out of the end. Another alligator clamp sat where the machinery ended.

    I was still inspecting the changes, wondering at the point of it all when the professor noticed me. He thrust out a paper at me. I recoiled a bit out of instinct, but he just said, ¡°Sign it.¡±

    My confusion was clear. I may have said, ¡°Huh?¡± I might not have to, I''m sure my non-verbal communication was effective if I hadn''t.

    ¡°It''s the ownership agreement for lab work around here.¡± I took the paper ¨C it was that same form that Steve had accidentally given me last month in her office.

    The professor kept talking, ¡°For patents. University researchers generate lots and lots of patents. Generally, the university owns those patents ¨C just like a company owns the stuff its workers make. You follow? This isn''t rocket science.¡±

    I shook my head, ¡°So what does that have to do with me? You''re the researcher, I''m just the lab monkey.¡±

    He shook his head this time, ¡°You''re my assistant, this experiment was at least partially your idea, so you own a portion of the discoveries your work enables. Standard agreement ¨C University owns 30% of profits, and right of first refusal if the creator doesn''t want to commercialize a discovery. Head researcher gets 51% of the profits, and control of the discoveries ¨C although the funding organizations usually get a piece of that. The rest of the staff divides up the remaining 19%, with PHDs splitting 8%, PHD candidates getting 5%, grads getting 4%, and undergrads getting 2%.¡±

    ¡°Um... math...¡± I stammered.

    ¡°You get lucky, if we discover something useful. Because I am unlikeable and difficult to work with, apparently, you are the entirety of my staff, so you get the full nineteen percent, unless I happen to find someone else who loves me and isn¡¯t a bigger idiot than you.¡±

    ¡°But you get nothing if we don''t actually get a worthwhile discovery, so just sign the damn thing so we can get to work. I should have had you do this a month ago.¡± He growled again, turning back to his computer.

    So, I signed the damn thing, and we got to work.

    There was a large box in the corner that I hadn''t noticed among the other changes in the room. There was a few dozen sheets of metal in it, all labeled and sorted. Copper, iron, steel, stainless steel, and gold foil stood out to me. There were a bunch of more technical names too ¨C alloys of iron, copper, and other metals. Each sheet was about a foot and a half long, a few inches wide, and maybe a fingernail''s thickness. Most of them were floppy enough to rattle loudly, and even wrinkle and fold if I wasn''t careful with them. ¡°So, here''s what you''re going to do. Right now, we''re set for minimum power ¨C we''ll ramp up and compare once we finish the first round.¡±

    ¡°After you pointed out the burn patterns last week, I realized that I have no idea how the backwash of plasma is actually interacting with the materials in the drive. I¡¯ve been seeing and smelling the smoke but never looked at what is actually happening. We do know that the plasma has the strongest effect on the material closest to the drive output. So these sheets will be the final linkup delivering charge to the drive. Anything that happens should happen first to the sheets.¡±

    ¡°Run the test until the machine fails. Turn the power off, take pictures, and log times and effects on each sheet. If the machine itself fails, I''ll help you fix it and we keep going. I expect a few dozen runs until we get a break outside the sample material.¡±

    ¡°Got it, professor.¡± I set to work. This might actually be interesting. It could have been interesting. It wasn''t.

    For the first two rounds of testing the breaks were all upline from the inserted sheets ¨C wiring in the drive itself broke instead of the sample material. Nothing worth recording happened. In the next three rounds, the only thing that happened worth mentioning is that I dropped a granite piece and broke the sample. It cracked the glass of the light table it was supposed to rest on too. I found some old pieces of ratty linoleum to pad the glass so I didn''t completely destroy the table. It was easier than finding something more durable at the right height. Or rebuilding the drive to fit a random table we scrounged up. And on we went.

    Oh, did I mention that each round of testing took me about a week and a half? Each run we had to track down and repair a fault in the drive. I had to log the fault too. Some nights we only managed two runs. We did eventually average one run every forty-five minutes though, so that was progress.

    We had just cranked it up to two volts when something finally happened to one of the sheets. Actually, several things happened, all at once. I was zoned out on boredom and repetition at this point, so I really wasn''t in a state where I could notice what exactly happened.

    First was a loud bang ¨C much louder than the drive normally put out when it flared. I¡¯d probably have assumed it came from outside or another lab, except a burst of black smoke totally obscured the space over the drafting table, and what looked like my sample sheet shot into the air, trailing smoke and shattering a fluorescent bulb in the ceiling and adding that much more noise and debris to the atmosphere of Hansen''s lab.

    Hansen moved like he knew what was happening ahead of time ¨C he was out of his computer chair and slapping the generator¡¯s cutoff switch before the sheet of metal even hit the ground. Another step and he turned on the powerful fans in the ceiling, which began to suck the smoke out of the air through the big hood over the machine. I had thought those hoods were just relics of a previous set of experiments, I think I was more surprised by the working fans in them than I was with the sudden bang.

    I was still a bit stunned when Hansen gingerly picked up my sheet. It had been cast iron, but now it was a dull sort of off-white. Almost an ugly beige, except for a pearlescent sheen that caught the light as the professor examined it. It wasn''t shaped the same anymore, either. Instead of the precise squaring of the sample metal, it now looked like something had melted it into a flat puddle before hardening it again. You could even see ridges on one side where it had sunk into the cracks of the glass. I''m not sure which of us spoke. He picked it up with a pair of tongs, holding it up to examine closer.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°What the hell...¡±

    We spent the rest of that shift cleaning up the mess. There was soot on pretty much everything ¨C a lot of that cloud of smoke settled all over the room, despite the powerful fans cycling air through the room. Hansen backed up his computer and sent the whole thing to IT to clean or replace. Apparently, he''d had another computer burn out from crud sucked inside it, and had gotten a few lectures about how he should treat electronics. So he was taking preventative measures this time.

    I did a quick sweep of the room with a broom ¨C collected up a big pile of dust along with some broken glass and a few metal shavings. I was about to dump it when Hansen interrupted me, ¡°Put that into a jar, we may want to test the samples later.¡± So that load of trash all went into a big glass specimen jar that I had to steal from the geology building next door.

    That done, I got out my windex and rags, and cleaned the shelves, tables, instruments, and windows. I didn''t clean the walls, though probably I should have. Then I mopped down the floors. Finally, I got a can of air, a few microfiber rags, and a few other tools and began to go over the impulse drive. Every little connection, every wire, chip, and solder joint had to be wiped down. Well, it probably didn''t need to be wiped down quite so thoroughly ¨C I can''t imagine that dust on the frame or the heavily insulated power line from the generator would impact performance or testing, but I was Hansen''s monkey, and I got to do Hansen''s monkey work. Besides, he was the multiple-PhD, I was the English major undergrad.

    That cloud was nasty. I finished my second semester with Hansen before I finished cleaning his drive. 2.7 GPA, I never did take a week off to study.

    Towards the end of that semester, Steve called me into her office again. She had a deep tan, this time around. She had a few new tchotchkes made out of coconut on her desk and shelves. I guess she liked her spring break tropical. When I came in I was greeted again with the south end of a cat, scowling at me. I''m honestly not sure why those lip grooves didn''t have a tan line, the disapproving pursed lips were a very natural expression on her.

    ¡°I got an email from Professor Hansen,¡± her expression somehow got even more negative. Maybe it was the eyebrows. They weren''t drawn on, but they were narrow and curved tight around her eyes.

    ¡°He wants you to work full time through the summer, and maybe next fall too. I''m not sure if that''s going to work.¡±

    ¡°I don''t mind working for him, it''s better than sweeping and emptying garbage cans.¡± This might have been the most dishonest thing I''d ever said to Steve, given that I had spent most of the last month sweeping and wiping.

    ¡°You''re the only person I''ve ever heard say so. Most of his assistants quit before the semester is up.¡± The lips finally un-pursed, and she attempted a smile. The smile bared teeth, sure, but nothing else moved, not even her cheeks.

    ¡°You''ve been doing well this last year, but you''re still a concern to us. We don''t want to see you fail. Students in your situation who take a semester off or work full time are at risk. We really don''t want you to drop out without a degree. And Hansen especially worries me ¨C if you get into a problem the way all the rest of his help as you''ll be even more likely to fail.¡±

    She put her smile away while she waited for me to agree with her. But I wasn''t so sure. ¡°What can it hurt, really? I mean, at least for the summer, right? Lots of students work full time during the summer and don''t take any classes. If we still think it''ll be a problem, I''m sure the professor won''t mind me switching back to our old system in the fall.¡±

    It took another half hour listening to Steve talk in circles before she agreed to let me work full time in the summer. I''m not sure whether she could have stopped me. I might have had an easier time in college if I had ever taken the time to figure out where the actual lines of authority are drawn there. Steve talked like she could have prevented it, but I can''t help but feel like she would have stopped me if she''d been allowed. She spent a lot of time trying to persuade me for someone who wasn''t allowed to just say ''no.''

    In the end, I was going to work full-time for Hansen over the summer, to be ''re-evaluated'' in August. I did have to take one class every morning at nine during the summer semester: a study skills class that focused on time management. So very much fun.

    Hansen had finished playing with the dust by the time the drive was clean and Steve and I had finished hashing things out. The metal shavings I had swept apparently came from a few chips knocked out of the alligator clamps that had held the iron sheet as well as from the light fixture that had been shattered, but the soot had stumped him. A lot of it was vaporized iron. But the rest was tricky. It wasn''t the sulfur dioxide stuff that we would have seen from a burn, but there was a heavy carbon content. After mass spec testing, microscope examination, and all sorts of other tests involving most of the labs on campus, he determined that the dust was just cellulose. Wood ¨C plant stuff. But not. It had been confusing because normally you can see cell walls and fibers when you look at cellulose. This stuff had been broken down almost to the molecular level. But what we had thought was smoke was just really, really fine sawdust.

    What really bugged him was that he couldn''t figure out where it had come from. It''s not like we use any wood in the lab. Even the furniture was all plastic and steel. Or aluminum, I guess. Whatever, none of it was wood. We didn''t even have any of that plastic finish painted like wood.

    He was finally working with the iron sheet when I started full-time. He had ignored it for a while ¨C he just assumed that it had melted briefly in the overload. It was when he swabbed it to see if the dust was different on the sheet that he realized that something was different. The white color wasn''t just a layer on the iron ¨C no matter how we swabbed, scraped, or ground the thing we couldn''t get any samples off the sheet. Once the dust was cleaned off you really couldn¡¯t call it beige anymore ¨C it was just white. Maybe pearly? It kinda glistened a bit in the light.

    We couldn''t bend it, either. The thing was thin, barely more than foil. I had to be careful even with the steel-titanium alloy to make sure I didn''t bend it too much to fit in the drive. The iron sheet may have been fairly rigid, but it wasn''t that strong. I had actually broken a few sheets early on where it cracked instead of bent.

    Now, this metal was so tough it got silly. As soon as we realized we couldn''t get a sample of the new, white material, we escalated. A rag and elbow grease didn''t accomplish anything, but neither did steel wool, a heavy rasp for sharpening saws, an angle grinder, a diamond grinder, the big drill the geology department used to take core samples in bedrock, or the little grinder for cutting gemstones that we borrowed from a jeweler. We also caused some problems when we turned the university¡¯s five-petawatt laser on it. The metal heated up a bit, but it mostly refracted the beam around the room in unexpected directions, scorching the walls.

    We propped up the sheet (which we were calling a bar now) between two posts and took hammers and weights to it, and got nothing. No movement or bending was detectable at all, even when we used a hydraulic press with the laser micrometer keeping track.

    Hansen even pulled some strings and got us into the firing range at a local national guard station. They shot the bar up with all sorts of fun stuff, up to and including depleted uranium slugs from a fifty cal rifle. Not even a scratch, although one guardsman took a nasty ricochet hit to his hip towards the end of the testing.

    I didn''t get to do any of that though, I was just driving Hansen around and managing his appointments with other labs and facilities.

    Well before the summer was up, Hansen gave up trying to identify the thing we had made. It was hard, it was tough, and it broke the scales of anything we used to try and quantify its properties. It also conducted electricity pretty well, although he was able to measure that easily enough. Don''t ask me the numbers, I''m sure they''re in a textbook somewhere, all I remember is that the bar was more efficient than copper wires, but not quite as efficient as fiber optics.

    So, after exhausting his dead ends, we got to try to recreate the experiment. It didn''t go terribly well. Hansen got more growly than normal, and I was almost worried that he was going to fire me. He did kick me out of the lab a few times. We recreated the experiment as precisely as we could but couldn''t duplicate the results. Same iron (it was about as pure of iron as you can get ¨C wrought iron with less than a fifth of a percent of carbon - same shape, same charge. A couple of times the iron would break ¨C a clean crack across the sheet that broke the circuit. More often the wiring above would break somewhere. But no smoke, no bang, no strange white metal.

    Hansen was constantly grilling me, looking for precise details. We adjusted the light in the room, the amount of fuel in the generator, fiddled with the thermostat in case it had been warmer or colder in the room. I spent twenty hours or so tracking down the source of the iron, figuring out where it had been smelted, where it had been refined, mined, and so on.

    The point where I think Hansen almost fired me was when I finally remembered that I had put a piece of linoleum down to protect the glass. That was the key. Glass on the bottom, a layer of linseed oil, rosin, and calcium carbonate lined with burlap, and the iron placed on top. But that all happened after I listened to an hour and a half rant about limiting variables and recording every detail. I remember being impressed that he avoided profanity while still insulting my intelligence with a huge assortment of words that just mean ¡°dumb.¡±

    Once he wound down, we fired up the drive to let a bit of plasma pass through the iron, and somehow the metal and linoleum broke up, combined, and slapped against the glass before hardening again. And it did it again, and again, and again. In the end, we repeated it a good hundred times ¨C not only was it repeatable, but the rest of the drive never broke down during the test either. It was always the iron sample that broke first, transmuting into a white, unbreakable material.

    Don''t ask me why or how or what is actually happening. It¡¯s not just my ignorance either, the way certain metals and organic compounds behave around plasma is one of those gaps in the Grand Theory of Everything that theoreticians like to talk about. The only thing I know for certain is that all the cellulose from the burlap in the linoleum was what made most of the thick cloud every time we fired.

    ¡°This is huge.¡± Hansen was holding a little slug of our new metal. ¡°Like, discovery of metalworking huge, writing huge, fire huge. The wheel doesn''t even compare.¡±

    ¡°I know. I can''t imagine what you couldn''t make with the stuff.¡±

    We had a glass cup set up with some linoleum wadded up inside it. The iron would jump and fill the cup with a white plug, moving horizontally several inches to fall inside. ¡°It all depends on what we can mold out of it. It''ll be tough to make things where every piece is molded against a single side. If we put too much iron in, it''ll be too thick and you''re stuck with a piece that you can''t get rid of. Too little, same problem. And one side will always be flat, whatever you''ve molded on the other.¡±

    ¡°But still. That''s just a matter of planning and design. If we can make a mold and get the measurements right, we can pretty much make any solid piece we want.¡±

    Which led to the important question:

    ¡°So, what do we call it?¡±

 5: Material Progress

    Professor Hansen and I spent the rest of the summer doing two things. First, we played with the reactions ¨C how much linoleum was needed before it left some over, what we could substitute, exactly which materials were needed to prompt the reaction and which could be left out. The big accomplishment there was to eliminate that cloud of wood dust and vaporized iron; without the extra material getting worked over the process was far quieter and moderate.

    All sorts of variables got tested. It turns out that all sorts of little details mattered. The different materials had to be layered just so ¨C having the cellulose over the benzene instead of below caused incomplete reactions, and you had to have a bit of calcium carbonate mixed in with the cellulose too. The shape of the iron hardly mattered at all, just the weight of it. Steel and other impure alloys of iron worked too, although that left a lot of crap in the air just like when we used too much cellulose.

    We also figured out better how molds could be filled, what shapes were possible, what wasn''t. Somehow the glass attracted the iron during the process, and the finished material formed an imprint of the glass without regard to gravity.

    We also played with different metals and combinations. Hansen was super excited when he realized that we could get a consistent reaction out of the first row of metals, and only those. Scandium through Zinc. For the most part, the reaction in question was worthless ¨C the metal and organic component would just vaporize. The only useful thing we found at the time was a copper reaction ¨C copper and rubber (but only natural rubber, nothing synthetic) would turn into a metal too soft for any real work; it would, however, absorb a ridiculous amount of heat. It took something like a hundred times the energy to heat it up as water. Hansen got kinda excited about that, too, but we mostly just shelved it while we worked out the boundaries and tricks to our new super-steel.

    Not that we found many boundaries. No matter how thin and ostensibly fragile a piece we made, we never managed to even bend it, much less break it. You could find a resonant frequency, but vibrating it just broke whatever was holding it instead. Intense heat didn¡¯t alter the hardness or strength, nor did it seem to react with any chemical we could come up with, from pure oxygen to water to acetic acid to pretty much anything anyone in the department could imagine.

    The real boundaries were surprisingly practical. Look around you for a moment. Look at the stuff around you, and now imagine that it will never wear out, never break down, never break. Pretty cool, right? But now imagine you can only make things like that that don¡¯t move or bend at all. No springs, no suspension, nothing that fits together by snapping or similar connections. Friction connectors like screws worked, sort of, but they had to be machined to pretty tight tolerances. Or they had to be built out of not-so-durable material. There¡¯s not a ton of point in building an unbreakable machine that still has to deal with screws working loose or shearing.

    We also hit some walls with the molds. It turned out it was pretty easy to make a shape. You carve something out of glass and the iron will cover it evenly right up until the edge of another material. It turned out that ordinary paint along the edges worked just fine. So imagine a flat pane of glass, painted all over but leaving a three-inch circle unpainted. Run the machine over the top of that and you¡¯ll end up with a three-inch disk of our new steel, almost exactly the same weight as the iron we used and with a tenth the volume. If you got your hands on a concave piece of glass, like a bowl, and painted the edges, you¡¯d end up with a new-steel bowl that lined the inside (or outside, depending on how you laid it down). The limit was the glass and the paint. Your precision was pretty sharply limited by your ability to paint a precise pattern on the glass. We could also control the volume of a piece with a second glass mold.

    Neither Hansen nor I had any skills at working with glass, let alone the kind of design work that would be necessary to really explore the possibilities. Internet videos can only take a man so far. So our tedious work testing and refining was punctuated with ongoing discussion. What could be made from this stuff, what would we call it, how would we sell it, and so on.

    We decided we wanted to commercialize it ourselves. Not that greed defined either the professor or me, but the applications were obvious. The university provided some resources for capitalization and Hansen Design, LLC started figuring out how to scale up and mass-produce designs. Part of those resources was a bank account, with enough zeroes to shock me. I¡¯m less shocked now, but back then a few grand of tuition each semester was still heart-stopping.

    More shocking was that I got a bank card and checkbook with my name on it, connected to that account. I was informed as well that the university administration would handle accounting and HR concerns until we grew more. I recognized the unspoken point that I wouldn''t be able to spend any of that money on parties or cars without being in way more trouble than academic probation. But still, I had an expense account. I wasn¡¯t even tempted to go upgrade my gaming rig. Honest.

    Well, some of that temptation was sitting back in Steve¡¯s office signing the forms to get this all set up. Dr. Hansen was there too, as well as a dean of something or other and some other necktie from the admin office. Steve¡¯s tan had faded, and it seemed like the presence of higher authority in the room made her distinctly more cheerful. She even smiled at me as she explained about the money.

    That done, Dr. Hansen and I picked out what we would try and sell first and worked out what we needed to ramp up. Hansen hired an actual engineer and a mechanic ¨C he gave them each five percent of his shares in exchange for their labor while we ramped up. They got to work right away standardizing the drive that would run the material conversions. We all also agreed on what sort of pay to accept once we did start earning profits, and how much to reinvest. We never did settle on a name for the new material that we were both happy with, we figured our first buyer could name it something they liked.

    I had to start doing more than just monkey work now, to justify my dizzying nineteen percent of the take. So I did the filing with banks and state agencies, I arranged paperwork for our new partners, and I got to use some of my own contacts to start subcontracting for the material.

    Our biggest difficulty was the glass. Most of the professor and my playtimes involved cups, plates, and decorative bits picked up from antique stores. But beyond cutting the glass or etching it with tools from the local hobby shop, we were pretty much hopeless at the precision work that would be necessary for actual manufacturing. So I went and got in touch with a friend of mine from high school.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    At the time I was hesitant to call Alan Beard a friend. Not even a Facebook friend. We had both been attached to the ''smart kid'' crowd in school. We had a lot of AP and honors classes together, ate lunch together, but still didn''t spend much time out of school together. I was a slacker smart kid, he was a preppy smart kid. Alan was always dapper ¨C short, maybe five foot eight, but with that broad-shouldered slender build that makes you remember him as being much taller when he wasn''t around. Always clean-shaven, fresh haircut, dressed stylishly. You know the guys that always come to work in jeans and t-shirts, but somehow still pass as professionally dressed? Yeah, that''s Alan.

    Despite being valedictorian, Alan didn''t go to college. Instead, he opened an art studio right away, which surprised everyone. He hadn''t done any art classes in school at all, but he started making fancy blown-glass sculptures right away. Less than a year out of school, he married El. She was working in his studio too, fiddling with furnaces and metalwork.

    El, on the other hand, was definitely a friend. She was in our graduating class too. Not the smart kid classes, she spent all her time in shop. Auto-body, wood, metal, even stage crew stuff for drama; if it offered access to power tools, she was probably involved. I spent time with her in shop and even went out with her a few times. She was always fun to hang around with, especially when we had a chance to mess with people. She was, it should be stated, a large girl. Not curvy large, but mannish large. Well over six feet, and built like a football player. But our humor meshed pretty well. I remember once I distracted the office secretary while she did something to the door that made it squeak like nails on a chalkboard every time someone opened it. Maintenance took a month to figure out how to get it to quiet down.

    Economics and complementary skills directed their efforts pretty quickly. They didn''t do much that I''d have called art, certainly very little traditional art. Other than the usual knickknacks, like glass flowers and dolphins and crap like that, their biggest seller was functional microscopes and telescopes. Beautiful things, bound in brass and wood, and all working. Alan and El ground their own lenses, shaped the metal, built the whole thing by hand in their shops. Pretty much the only work they didn''t do was smelt the metal on their own. There''s a surprising market for fancy stuff like that.

    El saw me first when I walked in the door. ¡°Pixie! What the hell are you doing here? I know you can''t afford anything and you know I''d never give you a job.¡±

    She ran a hand through her pixie cut as I set my box down to shake her hand. ¡°Believe it or not, I should be able to afford a lot. I''ve got a...¡± She shook my hand and took my breath away for all the wrong reasons. I''ll admit I squeaked a bit.

    ¡°El, why do you do that, every time?¡±

    ¡°Why do you keep letting me? Besides, you should be lifting more anyways.¡±

    I managed to not shake my hands to get blood back into my fingers, but I did try and wipe the grease off them on her sleeve. Which just made my hand greasier.

    ¡°You''re too easy, Pixie. Seriously though, are you looking for me or Alan?¡±

    I sighed. That wasn''t a nickname I missed. ¡°Depends, who handles custom orders? I''m not even sure if you guys can manage this, but I figure you can point me in the right direction.¡±

    ¡°Both of us, then. Go sit in the back, I''ll get Alan, I don''t think he''s in the middle of a blow.¡± She pointed at a door in the corner and tromped off into the dark warehouse.

    The office was pretty much what you''d expect. Cheap desks lining three walls, stained tile, yellowed drop ceiling, not much investment in fixtures. There were drawings and sketches up all over the walls, along with a computer. I don''t know about its innards, but it dominated one side of the office ¨C three big flat screens in an arc around a comfortable office chair.

    I decided discretion was ideal here, so I took a rickety old kitchen chair, instead of the ergonomic office chair. The room was just barely cool enough to be tolerable, despite a vent vainly pumping cold air into the room. Even though the furnace was on the far end of their old warehouse, it made its presence felt. The summer sun wasn''t helping either.

    I was drowsing off in the heat before Alan and El made it back. Alan¡¯s pristine white shirt and khakis contrasted starkly with El¡¯s greasy button-down shirt and old jeans. I couldn''t help but be struck again by the difference between them again. El, towering over, with a smudge of black grease on her chin and old practical clothing, Alan perfectly clean, without a smudge on him, and the only indications that he had been working was the narrow line of sweat on his collar.

    ¡°So, what''s this about? You''re still in school, right?¡± Alan''s handshake was much gentler than El''s had been.

    ¡°Yeah, it''s been fine. How''s the glass business?¡±

    Alan opened his mouth, but before a sound could get out El interrupted, ¡°I''ve got two guys waiting for me, a chandelier to finish, and the furnace is still going full blast. Let''s make this quick, we can get drinks tonight if you just want to gossip.¡±

    I couldn''t help but smile and laugh a bit. ¡°I''ve got an order to place ¨C we need a few sets of molds made out of glass. Doesn¡¯t need to be pretty, and we¡¯ll need at least five copies to start with. We¡¯ll probably need more, if only because someone is going to drop one eventually. The real trick is that the large part is going to need to be in two pieces and the fittings have to be made of glass or ceramic. No metal, wood, or plastic fittings.¡±

    El and Alan both frowned. ¡°No metal? I think...¡±

    Alan interrupted this time, ¡°We can do it. It''ll be tricky, and there may be a few failures while I figure it out, but we can do it. We''ll need a thousand-dollar retainer, the final price will depend on labor and materials. Hundred an hour for labor ¨C you''re a friend, after all ¨C and material costs should be fairly small, even if we ruin a bunch of jobs. Glass is easy to recycle. It sounds like you don¡¯t care what sort of glass?¡±

    El chimed in, ¡°We''ve got jobs ahead of you though, we won''t be able to start for three weeks. And we have to keep running the business.¡±

    My smile was getting wider as they talked. I think it was making El nervous ¨C she had seen me with money before, after all. She had been with me when we blew up all those microwaves. Silently I took back everything bad I''d ever said about the university.

    ¡°Awesome. One thing... if I added a zero to that retainer, could we skip ahead of the line and get on it right away?¡±

    Alan and El shared a look. Alan''s lips tight, El''s eyes a bit wide. Maybe married couples really do develop telepathy. Alan spoke first, his tenor soft, ¡°We can push it a bit ¨C we can certainly drop our normal work building stock, but we can''t drop actual orders. That''s a big retainer, unless the mold is really complicated I can''t imagine your order costing that much. Just a casting, some grinding, some polishing, right?¡±

    I smiled again, ¡°The first mold should be simple enough, but I''m sure we''ll have more orders for you after we do the first. Eventually, if this goes the way my boss and I think it''ll go, we''ll have to give you an option to buy in. But I think this''ll work.¡±

    Hansen Manufacturing, LLC, was growing after all. Now we just had to make our first actual prototype.

    El was the one who finally asked, ¡°So what are we making a mold of, by the way?¡±

    I opened up the box that had been sitting at my feet. "Eventually, we''re going to be making all sorts of different things. For now, we just need a prototype that can work as proof of concept ¨C a single piece that demonstrates everything awesome about super-steel and demonstrates that we can make it in large numbers within standards. Hence, this.¡±

    I pulled out the very first thing I had bought with my nifty new bank card.

    The hard shell of a US army Enhanced Combat Helmet.

 6: A New Place

    Armor was the first and most obvious application of our new super-steel stuff (We really needed to find a better name for it). Armor could be made of large, simply shaped pieces. We could use historical designs to speed our own prototyping. And there was a ready market, starting with the military and moving along to police, security firms, private individuals, foreign governments, and mall ninjas.

    The best part is that it didn''t need the same infrastructure backup that other products would. A small startup could conceivably break in quickly, much more quickly than something like a new building materials firm could. Building materials would require modular design, a wide array of parts to allow for connections, assembly, customization, shipping, etc. And that didn¡¯t even mention the careful testing, licensing, state permits, and on and on. Testing armor was pretty easy, in comparison.

    I finished hashing things out with El and Alan, leaving the carbon fiber helmet with them to take measurements. When they were done (a bit less than two weeks later, Alan worked weekends for me), I had two blocks of green glass that fit precisely over and inside the solid piece of the helmet, linked by a clever ceramic hinge. He had also made a smaller piece of glass that was drilled out so that the bolts holding the straps could be made of the same material. I think he used waste glass there, as it was a kinda smudged grey piece with little swirls of random color inside.

    In case you¡¯re curious, those molds, along with that first puddle-looking piece of Plasma Steel are on display. I made a point to save them, there was no way this wouldn¡¯t be a big deal in history. Oh, Hansen and I had finally settled on ¡°Plasma Steel¡± as the name of our new super material. Plasma was already becoming the word used to describe both the particles and energy generated by Angat¡¯s discoveries, so we shamelessly decided it made a good name.

    Those two weeks we spent waiting for the molds were relatively placid. Hansen and our new engineer (who didn''t last long) designed a new drive that could pass plasma over multiple molds. It was a necessary step if we were ever going to mass-produce anything. Meanwhile, the mechanic and I kept up with the monkey work of actually assembling, repairing, and refining things. We continued tweaking, varying, experimenting with ratios and materials. Our immediate goal was to figure out exactly which parts of the linoleum were necessary, and what was just exploding into a nasty cloud of dust. For the record, the linseed oil was important, as was pine resin and calcium carbonate. A very small amount of wood flour or sawdust was necessary too.

    I was also spending time organizing. We were spending a lot of money, on materials, on the mechanic¡¯s salary, on the engineer''s larger salary, and on other smaller operating expenses. I was assured that the admin office was fine with it so far, but it made me nervous. By the time I''d picked up the mold, we''d spent about three-quarters of the money in the account. We needed some prospects lined up, or it''d be back to the normal school grind and French Realism.

    I was getting excited about this ¨C this was new, huge even. A year ago I was looking forward to teaching high school or managing a Walmart somewhere. Now my name was going to end up in history and science textbooks. I''ll admit my ambition was getting teased a little. But other than keeping careful track of expenditures, and thinking about possible products, there wasn''t much to actually do.

    The mechanic¡¯s name was Austin Beck. Big guy, with a bushy white beard. He had a disconcerting habit of tucking the beard into his shirt when he was working. Not to keep it out of the way, but as like a nervous tick. You''d ask him a question, he''d pause, stroke his beard, and tuck the ends into his shirt. He had been part of the university''s custodial staff, with a lot of experience with the school''s HVAC systems.

    ¡°This place sucks, you know,¡± Austin told me, for possibly the eighth time this week.

    ¡°I can¡¯t do anything about it,¡± I replied, again. ¡°I can¡¯t even get Sarah fired, never mind how much acetone he drinks.¡±

    ¡°Nah, I¡¯m talking about the lab itself.¡±

    ¡°Still can¡¯t do anything about it,¡± I replied. Again. ¡°At least they took the asbestos out already.¡± I''ll admit I hadn¡¯t appreciated his help at first, but he could track down and fix breaks in the drive in a quarter the time it took me, even with all my experience on the system.

    ¡°Ward, you want to expand, right? We¡¯ve got this helmet, and we¡¯ve sketched out and talked about all sorts of crap ¨C folding chairs, tables, hammers and tools, doors, dining ware, planters, structural beams, and on and on and on. You want this Hansen Manufacturing thing to get big, right?¡±

    ¡°What do you think we¡¯re working on?¡± This was new, I¡¯d gotten used to complaints, but Austin didn¡¯t really ask a lot of questions. He¡¯d mostly just been along for the ride and the salary. And probably because he no longer reported to any university admin.

    ¡°Ok, so you want to grow ¨C this lab isn¡¯t going to cut it. We¡¯ve got enough room for one machine, barely. We can produce twelve units at a time with this design, and if we¡¯re lucky we can get two runs an hour. You¡¯ve got the numbers, we¡¯re averaging what, five runs a shift? That¡¯s sixty units a machine in eight hours?¡±

    I didn¡¯t answer. The actual number was closer to forty.

    ¡°So we need space for more machines. Or maybe more workers per machine? People who know it and can fix it fast? Maybe both? I¡¯m not an MBA, so don¡¯t ask for cost-benefit from me, but either option isn¡¯t going to work here.¡±

    ¡°I still can¡¯t do anything about it, Austin.¡± Now I was just irritable. ¡°I can pay you for about three more months, and then we¡¯re done if we don¡¯t start getting more investment or customers. And you want me to what, go drop first and last months rent on lease for some warehouse somewhere?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll invest.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯ve got seven digits handy for the lease and deposits for a better place?¡± I had looked into this already. The lab seriously did suck for any sort of bigger use. Not enough square footage, getting large volumes in and out was tricky, bad lighting, no parking, and on and on and on. The absolute bargain basement places would run a buck fifty per square foot, and the machine itself occupied more than a hundred square feet. But if we were going to store product, components, material, space for employees, etc., a single machine and its support would run about seven-fifty a month. In reality, though, the smallest spaces would need ten or more machines to get our money¡¯s worth, and that would run almost a hundred thousand a year. Figure in deposits, new staff, material expansion to build the additional machines, and so on, and we were looking at half a million, easily. Figure in the need for a buffer when unexpected costs crop up, as they always did, and a million dollars made a nice round figure. Oh, and that¡¯s still not looking at salaries for the people we¡¯d need to hire to run all of that.

    ¡°Nah. But I do have a building.¡± He smiled. ¡°Want to take a break and see?¡±

    It turns out his mother owned a grocery store. An empty one. An old one. The building was almost as old as the physics building we¡¯d been working out of. The wiring sucked. I said as much.

    ¡°So? We¡¯re not running industrial fab units. Each of these drives pulls what, 60 watts? A hundred? That¡¯s a tiny generator you¡¯ve got hooked up, and I doubt you¡¯ve ever hit 10% capacity even for a moment.¡±The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    He was right, the generator only took a gallon of fuel, and we only refilled two or three times a week. Technically, if Dr. Hansen did the oil mix and refueled it, his time cost us more than the fuel itself did.

    He tucked the ends of his beard into his shirt as he led me into the back rooms, ¡°It¡¯s not as much space as you¡¯ll need, eventually, but there¡¯s room in here for a good dozen machines and plenty of stock. There¡¯s loading docks, just two, but that¡¯s probably more than enough and plenty of room for hand trucks. There¡¯s offices and break rooms. Won¡¯t even have to do remodeling, just gotta move racks around.¡±

    ¡°Ok, fine. It¡¯d be an improvement. Doesn¡¯t change the fact that we can¡¯t afford it. I already told you, we¡¯ve about burnt through our capital.¡±

    ¡°Listen, I have to manage this place for my mom. The chain pulled out, and it¡¯ll take a year of work and a major loan to get it into shape for a new lessee. We can move in as is.¡±

    ¡°Property taxes are paid up through the year already, so she¡¯s not really losing anything leaving it vacant for a bit. And you¡¯re not really out of assets, either. Hansen still has, what, forty percent? Give me ten, and you can move in, rent-free for a year. Just take over water and power.¡±

    ¡°Five.¡± It was reflex, I¡¯d have to take anything back to Dr. Hansen anyways.

    ¡°Five and the lease lasts until the end of the year, not twelve months.¡±

    And suddenly I had more to organize. We were still short on cash, and I was nervous about spending us out, but I got things ready. We moved over, and I got orders ready ¨C I just had to hit a button and the components we needed to assemble new manufacturing drives would be there in a few days. I also posted job openings and dropped a line with some recruiters and temp agencies. I dragged my feet on actually hiring anyone, but got things ready. By the time Alan and El finished the first molds, I was beyond busy.

    I had just picked up the glass molds from the Bearded Glassworks and had cranked out a single helmet on our old drive to take to Hansen. It was kind of exciting. We had made a lot of toys, bits of waste material that were more about stretching the technique than about any real usefulness. This was our first actual product ¨C the first thing with inherent worth. Hansen knew the mold was done, but I thought it would be fun to surprise him with the helmet.

    His new office looked nothing like the old one. For one thing, it was an actual office, with just enough room for a desk and a few chairs. The wall was dominated by a faded poster advertising ice cream. When I came in, Hansen was pecking away at his computer, working on an autocad design. His landline shattered across the room from him, broken plastic and electronics still attached to the cord in the wall. I cleared my throat.

    He didn''t look around, but the Prof still knew it was me, ¡°The engineer quit. You probably ought to too. Finish your degree or whatever.¡± Yeah, I don''t remember the engineer''s name. Sue me.

    I scoffed. No, really, I made that huffing noise. ¡°I can''t quit. If I did, Steve would just have me mopping floors again. I still need something to graduate.¡±

    ¡°Then don''t graduate. You can work a box store like this without a degree just fine.¡±

    I pulled up one of the other rolling chairs and sat down next to him. ¡°Ok, fine. The engineer quit ¨C nothing new. So what? You''ve had plenty of people quit before.¡±

    ¡°It''s not me this time, he just saw the writing on the wall. It''s damn procurement processes. All the pentagon wonks already have contracts lined up for now, but they''ll be happy to have someone come consider our product in four years.¡±

    ¡°Four years?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. And you know the score ¨C we have to get the commercialization moving before next summer or the school takes back control. Suddenly I¡¯m understanding why people want a war.¡±

    ¡°Well, that''s plenty of time. Let Austin go back to his day job, scale back the experimentation, and our overhead drops to practically zero. We¡¯ve got the store for another seven months. The Beards even have enough of a retainer left to make a couple more molds. I was thinking strike plates for kevlar vests. I know that strike plates won''t be as effective as the clamshells we''ve talked about, but it gives us something we can sell right away on all those body-armor sites.

    And Hansen blew a raspberry at me. He stuck out his tongue and buzzed away. Once in a while, I can see why people keep quitting.

    ¡°What? It''s a good suggestion. We could make those plates for a few bucks worth of material and sell them for a couple hundred apiece. Hell, we could even afford to sell at fifty and undercut the rest of the market. We already know the quality will be significantly better. Even at cut-rate prices, we''d only need to sell a few hundred units to satisfy the school.¡±

    ¡°It feels wrong. This metal is huge. And making a bunch of convention trash isn''t the way to do this.¡± Dr. Hansen saved his work and shut down his computer. We both kept quiet while he shifted his attention.

    ¡°The Manhattan project ended the largest war humanity has ever fought. Penicillin lengthened people''s lives. Fleming and Oppenheimer didn''t spend years flogging their ideas from the back of a train car, or whatever the equivalent of a shady internet sales page was.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m arrogant and prideful. This is big and needs to be big. We need to start as we mean to go on. But this could fail big too. And right now, Ward, you¡¯re attached to me. You should know that if I lose this I''ll probably be done. No more research, no chance at tenure. I¡¯ve already burnt my chances at a corporate research gig. If I''m lucky I''ll get an associate professorship at some community college. See how many little undergrads I can make drop out.¡±

    I smiled. I actually laughed a little. Laughed, chuckled even. However, I did not giggle. ¡°Professor Hansen? You know me, right? My big goal in life is fifty k a year and health insurance. Failing here would disappoint my parents, but they won¡¯t be surprised either. You can¡¯t really damage my prospects if I don¡¯t have any. So you want to be big? Lets be big.¡±

    ¡°Believe it or not, I do know how to get people''s attention. You just need food and fireworks.¡±

    It took trips to a few different surplus stores to get what I wanted, and I presumed on my acquaintanceship with the Beards to go a bit beyond their retainer. I also presumed on them to find a few other specialists. It''s funny, really, how many old-fashioned craftsman types were involved in this cutting-edge tech. We got this little Native American guy ¨C John Akins ¨C who was utterly obsessed with the conquistadors and late medieval Spanish history. The guy made a living as a blacksmith, making bits and pieces for Renne Faires and those weirdos who dress up and pretend to be knights and serfs and stuff. But he did know and understand body armor as well or better than any military history PhD.

    Austin, the mechanic, went back to work at the motor pool, with the understanding that we''d call him as soon as we could. He kept coming around and helping in the evenings, ¡°protecting his share¡± he said. But he still needed a weekly paycheck.

    John designed some pieces, and quicker than I had expected we had a suit of armor. It looked kinda ridiculous ¨C like something Cortez would have worn if Cortez was also both a riot cop and a stormtrooper. If you want to see it, it''s on display in our corporate headquarters. He even did it for free ¨C said the work was a blast. Hansen gave the dude a few percentage points anyways. Something about liability or copyright or whatever. I think Hansen just felt bad.

    The armor John designed had a clamshell breastplate that flared widely into a skirt shape over the hips, a tall gorget that snapped on to cover the neck joints, a helmet with an opaque visor that could be drawn down over the face. The pauldrons were just circular plates that covered arm joints, and similar overlapping plates protected elbows and knees.

    It was a mess. The range of motion was limited, and it offered very little protection to anything not aimed straight on. But it would get some attention, and it only weighed twenty-five pounds.

    I made up some flyers and talked to a few range masters at the local guard armory and a nearby airforce base. Dr. Hansen made some calls and ensured we had all the permission and permits that might be necessary.

    I offered a thousand dollars to anyone who could knock a piece of armor off the dummy with a firearm. Any gun, any ammo. With the promise of a free barbeque, the local unit let us set up on a mortar range. I also made sure those supply contracts guys knew about it. They didn¡¯t have to buy, but we had free food and some enthusiastic shooters ready to go. I also made sure they knew that if they didn''t want this stuff, I''d find someone who did.

    The range got set at a hundred yards, to start with. After a few hours of attempts, the range was opened up so that a few eager soldiers could bring out RPGs and other high explosives.

    In the end, a staff sergeant earned the money by lodging a mortar shell between the neckpiece and the visor, which broke a strap inside, sending a couple of plasma steel bolts flying. We also made sure to record the whole event, did some editing, and sent it out to internet land.

    We got a contract. Fifty thousand dollars deposit to design and test a prototype suit of armor for the infantry. If the armor was up to spec, and usable, they''d start with 500 units, and ten thousand dollars a unit. Procurement made sure I understood that there was room in the budget for prototyping and design overruns, too.

    We were in business.

 7: New Tactics

    In the end, it took us close to two years to actually put a suit of armor into any soldier''s hands. Onto any soldiers hands. John Akins was priceless ¨C the Pentagon designers we worked with were great, lots of knowledge and experience with modern battlefields and what a soldier would need out of his gear, but they were pretty lost working with a purely rigid material. It¡¯s hard to shift gears when you cant snap pieces in together. By the way ¨C if you ever find a piece and are curious if it¡¯s one of Akins, every piece of every mold made from his designs has a little stylized feather etched in somewhere. Even if the mold got pirated, that feather started on his pieces.

    So blacksmithery for the win. Whitesmithery? Plasma Moldery? Dunno. That¡¯s not a term I ever focus-grouped.

    In the end, they ended up with a much more loricated design than I was anticipating. The helmet, chest, shins, and forearms were pretty much the only bits with large solid pieces. Abs, neck, joints, thighs, back, and so on all used articulated joints, with a few ridges and large overlaps to provide protection. Early on, John and his assistants from the army struggled most just figuring out how to connect the stuff together. Back in those days, when assembly wasn¡¯t automated, it could take ten to fifteen manhours to assemble one suit.

    I wouldn''t have thought of it, but a lot of assembly work assumes that things stretch, just a little. You can flex a piece to fit it in, and then its own tension holds it in place. Or maybe that same tension keeps a bracket from pulling free ¨C think of those zip ties that riot cops like to use. That ratchet only works because it pushes in and out as it moves over the band. In the end, Akins and his crew worked out a combination of techniques. In some places, they slid parts into place like tabs and then inserted a plug behind the tab that had to be pulled before the pieces could come apart. In other places, they used a durable fiber cloth backing of some sort, attached to rings on the inside. I couldn''t tell you what the fabric was, exactly, except that I kept getting yelled at for calling it Kevlar. It wasn''t Kevlar.

    The two bits that caused the most grief were the faceplate and the boots. We were still a decade from coming up with a transparent companion to our new steel, and the other materials we had just didn''t measure up. We didn''t particularly want to leave the face wide open, but there are only so many options. The uniform goobers vetoed eye-slits early on ¨C a soldier lost too much situational awareness that way. So the awesome Corinthian helmets you see in our museums never actually got used. I didn''t see the problem, it wasn''t as though a sniper was ever going to hurt someone from behind. In the end, we figured out how to make a very fine mesh dome ¨C like the screen from a window, but with smaller holes.

    It wasn''t perfect, but nothing ever was. If you took a bullet or something hard to the face, the mesh would break it up, and the man inside would get a face full of high-speed grit. It would sting like hell, and often left distinctive scarring, but it wasn''t ever fatal. And with a pair of eye-safety glasses on inside the mask, it wouldn''t impact combat ability, either. My big complaint was that it hid the faces of soldiers entirely. They could see out just fine, but it turned them into faceless mooks like the bad guys from an action movie.

    The other problem was the boots. Ankles were doable, but we totally failed to create something that could provide traction and easy movement in bad terrain while not also messing up the feet of the wearer. In the end, we made the boots bigger than they needed to be and found a contractor who could build custom liners for them. The boots also used cleats for traction ¨C we did treads in a big piece of rubber wrapped around a Plasma Steel core, and left cleats poking through the tread to provide traction if and when the treads broke away. Never mind durability issues, there just isn¡¯t a good way to attach treads to something that doesn¡¯t flex with the sole. Never mind that Plasma Steel doesn¡¯t hold paint or glue well at all.

    To start, we provided fifty units to the military and sent John and a couple of other consultants to help with training and evaluate the end result. The Pentagon decided to give it to the marines, to start with. I got to hear jokes about how marines can break or misuse anything, as well as more serious comments about how the marines were going to be best suited for the straight-on tactics that improved armor and degraded camo demanded.

    As part of the program (which was very kindly named Project Fairy Crab; I''m told codenames are random, but that had to have been intentional), the marines assigned to work with the armor were all asked to provide reports. We specifically asked for everything ¨C impressions, thoughts, opinions about the entire course. We didn''t want just narrow reviews on the armor itself. We were building a whole new program ¨C possibly the most comprehensive change to warfare since black powder showed up.

    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    Corporal Lopez probably wrote the best report, at least from my perspective. We edited it a bit, for spelling, clarity, and to take out classified details. We also got permission to release it and use it for marketing purposes. So I''m going to share most of it:

    <blockquote>

    I can tell you one thing, we were all pissed. Every one of us had passed the A&S phase two, but now were were getting told we would not be Raiders. We were going to be part of MARSOC, sure, but not Raiders. They hadn''t even named us yet. This was all the coming from the imagination of some egghead and the brass, and we were gonna be guinea pigs.

    I¡¯m sure this was a punishment detail. At least that¡¯s why I got assigned. I had gotten chewed out after finishing phase one of A&S for brawling. A bunch of us had snuck out to celebrate, and I got in a friendly fight on the way out. No charges, but it was hard to hide the black eye and split lip the next day. Drill sergeant reamed me and I spent the day sweeping the lawn in the rain, but it¡¯s not like I got NJP either. I''m sure the captain heard about it, and I''m just as sure that was why I got volunteered to play the dangly testee.

    We got issued the armor. It took a day to get everyone fitted. Like, a full day. We started at six in the morning and most of us weren¡¯t fitted out until midnight. We all got these spandex body suits to wear, complete with thick padding in various places. Stuff was actually pretty comfortable, and breathed amazingly. I''m not sure what the padding was made of. The armor took longer to fit. Of the fourteen of us assigned to this new outfit, thirteen of us were properly suited that day. We had three really big guys, and they only had spares big enough to fit two at once. Corpsman Franklin had to wait a few days to get his suit.

    The suits looked cool enough, but were impractical as hell. Despite weighing less than twenty pounds, and despite the sweat-wicking undersuit, they were hot inside. I guess that''s normal for armor, and I couldn''t imagine what real steel would have felt like. Still way worse than normal IBA. What really pissed me off is that the range of motion was limited. I couldn''t crouch properly in the suit, and crawling was a joke. Even reaching anything top shelf would be difficult. The last straw, in my opinion, was that the stuff was shiny and white. It would stand out anywhere ¨C hiding in the thing would be impossible. The fact that it clacked when you moved was just icing, really.

    One of the sergeants started humming the Darth Vader song the first time we all stood to attention, only to have gunny come down on him and make it clear to us that we were not Stormtroopers. We were marines. And so on. He didn''t come right out and say so, but I think Disney must have some lawyers in procurement somewhere. A boot mumbled that we weren''t troopers, we were targets. He didn''t like the white either. Unfortunately the name stuck. For the first few tours, we were officially designated the Marine Special Operations Target Team.

    Once we started training for real with the things, it got better. It was hot, but not really much worse than any battle rattle. And with practice the mobility issues weren''t such a big deal. Still a few minor headaches. I missed being able to customize my harness ¨C each integrated holster was set, and could not be changed.

    My opinion really changed after a fun run near the end of our orientation. The captain did his thing, taking us through woods and up and down hills, and we ended up in a big open field where we started doing PT. While performing jumping jacks and pushups, a full rifle platoon set up behind us. A loud voice informed everyone that their marksmanship had been so poor that the Marine Target Team had volunteered to help them out.

    It took some cajoling ¨C we¡¯d become a common sight around the base, and we¡¯d all seen the range tests. But even idiot boots struggled to open fire with live rounds on other marines. But eventually the marines behind us opened fire. I''ll tell you what, getting shot is the damndest thing. It wasn''t really like getting hit in a vest ¨C the solid armor distributed the hit better, and shots usually would ricochet off you. Mostly it was like getting shoved hard ¨C if you weren''t centered well it was easy to lose your balance. Getting hit in the hands or arm were the worst. It felt like getting a bad hit on a baseball. A sharp stinging sensation would make everything feel numb for a minute.

    After seeing their efforts not accomplish much, the marines behind us turned it into a game. They discovered that if a dozen or so hit one of us at the same time, they could knock us over. Similarly, getting hit on the foot at the wrong moment while jumping could make for an entertaining pratfall. It could have been humiliating, but working out in a literal hail of bullets was pretty cool.

    We repeated that particular evolution daily until we were deployed. Brass wanted us to be totally comfortable in the armor before using it in a live combat situation. It makes sense, but still felt insane. And if I ever find out who had the idea for ''live target practice,'' I intend to find him outside a bar one night and get myself in trouble for brawling again. On the other hand, there were only two casualties in the whole mess. A drill sergeant wandered too close while yelling at someone and took a ricochet to the chest. And one of the Target Team pulled a muscle trying to jump up quickly while a joint in his armor was jammed up with crud.

    All in all, orientation and training was done quickly. We weren¡¯t green, after all. We boarded a transport and found ourselves flying to the Philippines. Our target was an Islamic Fundamentalist compound on one of the bigger islands. A paradrop from the plane and we found ourselves on the side of a mountain on the jungle.

    We oriented quickly and made our way up the mountain. The compound in question was built onto the side of a crater near the summit. Sergeant CSO Lighter was our first casualty. He fell into a tiger trap and wrenched his back. We fished him out, and the corpsman dosed him with morphine and some muscle relaxant. The injury wasn¡¯t bad enough to leave him behind, as soon as the meds kicked in he kept up fine.

    The tiger trap could have been old, but when we started finding trip wires and claymores we knew we were in the right area. I''ve already complained about the suit''s stealthiness, but the real reason we couldn''t surprise them was because Lighter managed to trip a tripwire and set off one of the mines. That was our second casualty. CSO Parker was just a couple meters from the mine when Lighter set it off. Half of us just had shrapnel rattle off our suits, but Parker got thrown hard. He was OK, but got pretty seriously concussed and the medic kept him back until he could get thoroughly checked out.

    The last casualty in our team was also a concussion. When we closed with the compound the guerrillas opened up the moment we passed the treeline. Again, there wasn¡¯t any hiding our approach. Staff Sergeant Jones in the HQ squad took an rpg to the chest and got knocked out. I heard later that he got a collapsed lung, burst eardrums, and developed some gastrointestinal problems in addition to the concussion. Jones was the only operator taken off active duty for more than a couple days. I don''t know yet whether he''ll be able to return to active duty.

    The HQ squad parked in the pass and prevented any escapes. The two tactical teams split up and worked our way through the different buildings. We were free fire, no indications of hostages or civilians in the camp. We could capture people if necessary, but it wasn''t a primary objective.

    The whole thing just wasn''t sporting, somehow. We waded upstream against bullet fire. Per Top''s orders, we only bothered shooting hostiles armed with grenades or rockets. The biggest issue was that we were far more durable than our weapons. My AR took a few hits and jammed on me. My sidearm was shot right out of my hands. I ''captured'' the survivors with a knife and my fists. For the most part, as soon as we closed the Filipinos surrendered.

    All in all, the armor is great. Stupid stealth issues aside, I don''t ever want to go into combat without it. Not that its perfect ¨C Staff Sergeant Jones was lucky to survive, and Lighter was briefly tackled down by a pair of more stubborn fighters. But that same sort of operation would have seen dozens of the hostiles dead with a few captured, instead we only killed seven and captured thirty eight targets. Spec Ops probably could have managed as low of casualties on our side, but it would have taken all sorts of planning, the best operators available, and tactics that would have left most of the hostiles dead. We just had a platoon and waded straight in to get the job done.

    I think I can be proud to be a Marine Target.

    </blockquote>

 8: Material Profit

    Back before we actually got any full suits of armor out the door, we held a celebration for the first signed defense department contract. No full armor prototypes yet, but other things were hopping. We had reformed Hansen Manufacturing LLC into a larger partnership, Plasma Products International. Professor Hansen, Austin Beck, Alan Beard, Eleanor Beard, and I were partners with varying shares. As we brought in revenue we were gradually buying out the university''s shares. The university didn''t really want control, they just like having a big mass of cash in their trust fund and something to brag about. I figured we¡¯d eventually have to donate a building or something to fully cut strings.

    John Akins had declined to take a share ¨C he had given me a brief speech about Indians and white men and business deals, and he refused a partnership share in favor of a salary. It was a fair and generous salary, and frankly, it was more than any of the rest of us took home at the time, but I couldn''t help but feel guilty about him being left out. I made sure his contract had revenue sharing and credit for anything he designed, and even for later designs starting with his work.

    And we were bringing in profit. We had a licensing deal with Boeing to build jet engine components out of our new materials. We had a licensing deal with Dyson to build a range of electric motors out of our new materials. We had marketed and distributed a line of our own branded products using Plasma Steel. We were gradually expanding those products, usually focusing on items that our own employees wanted. For a long time we mostly just sold tools and cookware. Pots and pans that hold heat like cast iron, don''t need seasoning, and don''t stick, sold well. Hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, and other hand tools that don''t bend or break also sold well.

    Boing and Dyson had provided large lump sums that we used to expand and develop the company. Our product line was providing a steady income that let us run the daily business. We had nearly fifty employees now and were outgrowing Austin¡¯s grocery store. We had a couple of marketing guys, some business-to-business salesmen, an HR guy, an accountant, a logistics team to manage inventory and supplies, even some customer service agents who managed emails and phone calls. We were a real company.

    We were even able to let Hansen continue research and experimentation independent of the university. That was what we were celebrating. The others didn''t know, but I had delivered the last check to the university that afternoon. They still had a token share, but there was no longer any threat of them assuming control if we failed. I had arranged for us all to meet up in the evening for drinks. Despite what you could assume from signed partnership agreements, the five of us hadn''t actually all met up together yet. Which was a mistake on my part. I was the common thread between everyone, and I was turning into a bottleneck as questions and problems and decisions moved back and forth. It was even worse as Hansen had dumped all the hiring on me ¨C our managers and staff all got interviewed by me, picked by me, and trained by me. Who needs that hassle. I¡¯d managed to delegate a lot of it, and had to fire a few people before I found people comfortable using their own initiative, but I was still shoving all sorts of problems right back down the line. I mean, I have a logistics team, why should I worry about finding a source of fine wood dust or prioritizing engine shafts over fry pans?

    I picked up Austin on my way out. He and a couple of our guys were picking up some new gadgets from Hansen''s old lab. They would replace the pipe on the end that generated the kinetic force and he thought it would reduce failure rates and improve our efficiency. I helped them load the last few boxes into a van, then let them take it down to the grocery while Austin and I headed for the restaurant. I don''t remember what the restaurant was ¨C one of those chains with tons of random crap on the walls. Applebee''s, or Chili''s, or something like that. I know I ordered nachos, but that doesn¡¯t narrow things down much, does it?

    I asked Austin how his two new mechanics were working out so far.

    ¡°They''re bitching about Hansen a lot. But both of them have had worse bosses, and they know I''m the one who actually gives out their assignments, so they put up with him,¡± Austin said.

    ¡°I never thought he was that bad. It''s not like he was ever mad at me, even when I screwed up.¡± I got onto the freeway easy enough. Traffic was pretty good that night, there are usually way more cars on the road during rush hour.

    ¡°He expects a lot though. I''d guess that most academic types get grumpy tightening bolts and mopping up grease. That''s why they''re academics, right? My guys are just blue-collar types. They don''t care much what they''re doing as long as it¡¯s something they can do, and as long as they get a paycheck.¡±

    That one went over my head. I was still new to the management world. I asked, ¡°Something they can do?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Austin said. ¡°Lots of times guys get hired and get stuck with goals they can''t actually do ¨C like a boss will ask a guy to change the oil on so many cars each month, but he can''t just magically bring cars to the garage. Or they''ll get a job but the boss won''t give them the tools they need, make ''em use crap materials and cut corners. Or they''ll get thrown on a task with no training at all. Like asking that car mechanic to also trim trees.¡±

    ¡°That kind of thing frustrates a guy, you know? These guys though, they''ve got a job where all they''ve got to do is Hansen''s grunt and drone work. I make sure they''ve got any gear they need, and Hansen is actually pretty good at explaining and teaching them what he wants done. I guess he really is a teacher, right? They can put up with him growling about stupid crap, or making stupid jokes, or chewing them out about wearing a pink shirt or whatever to work.¡±

    That distracted me from the road a bit. ¡°Really? A pink shirt? He cared about that?¡±

    Austin smiled, ¡°I dunno. He certainly whined about it all day. My guys handled it right though. All three of them wore pink the next day.¡±

    I laughed, ¡°I''ll bet the professor handled that well.¡±

    ¡°Far as I know, he didn''t say anything about it again. Of course, he was complaining about people eating during lectures instead.¡±

    I laughed. I¡¯d heard that complaint a few times.

    Austin continued, ¡°By the way, I''m looking forward to meeting El and Alan. I''ve been getting their packages for months now, and you''ve talked about them enough.¡±

    Hansen hadn¡¯t met the Beards yet either. We were partners, but I had handled all of the negotiations when the glassworks and let them buy into the new business on the basis of their labor. Those two had also worked the most with the marketers when we finally started building our own line and brand.

    It had been obvious for a while, but the term ¡°Plasma¡± had really stuck by this point. The press and popular culture had finally given up on dark matter/energy/whatever. Marketers and researchers weren''t happy calling it "dark", given that Angat had discovered how to observe the stuff, measure the stuff, and use the stuff. Using ¡°Angat¡± as an adjective had held on for a while, with ¡°Strange¡± as a distant third. I suppose it was inevitable, but now everyone just called it Plasma. Well, everyone except the same guys who like to insist that plasma really refers to something about ions and electrons and states of matter, but those are the same guys who get really excited to explain that Columbus didn¡¯t really discover America, so they mostly got ignored. But it stuck. My only real issue with it was that any company or business with ''plasma'' in the name or product line was getting a boost, and I didn¡¯t want to get lost in the developing fad.

    But why not get on the bandwagon? We actually had a new product, and it actually used plasma. We could go for the ride with the rest of the startups, and our stuff was unique and special enough that we could stay ahead. Eventually, we could call our new heat-sink material ''Plasma Copper;'' and in a few years when Hansen figured out a transparent material based on titanium that was as strong as steel, we broke the pattern and called it ''Plasma Glass.'' Maybe we should have called it ''Plasma Titanium,'' but who really cares?

    My good mood vanished when Austin and I walked in and saw Hansen and the Beards already at a table. Hansen''s back was to us, and the three of them had clearly come straight over from work. Alan and El were in their normal work outfits - Alan in his tailored button-down shirt and tight khakis, El all in black with a few chrome studs here and there, Hansen a stereotype in a tweed jacket with leather elbow pads. What really drew my attention was the white-faced, open-mouthed look that Alan and El were sharing. The professor''s voice carried, clearly thinking the two were confused and starting to slip into teacher mode.

    ¡°Shit... I didn''t warn them about him. Or him about them...¡± I muttered to Austin as I started trying to push to the table.

    His voice cut right through the crowd, ¡°Yeah, surely someone''s pointed it out to you? Big mannish girl like you, little fancy guy like you, and you''re both a beard. Either ironic or literal, it''s...¡± Hansen trailed off as El and Alan both stood up. El was bright red by now, clenching her fists as she loomed over him. I stopped, having a good idea of what was going to happen next.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    El spun and raced out of the restaurant. She could manage the Friday night crowd much easier than I could. I quickly weighed my options, and before I went after her I told Austin, ¡°Hey, just, um, make sure Alan doesn''t pick up a glass or a bottle or something.¡±

    I caught up with El in the parking lot. She was getting into their truck, so I just hopped into the passenger seat. She didn''t say anything to me, but she didn''t start the truck or try and kick me out, either, so I nervously filled the silence.

    ¡°I''m sorry about that El, I should have warned you. He''s... um... challenged. Especially away from a classroom. He does ok when things are formal, like when he''s working, so I forget. I dunno if he''s actually got something wrong with him, or if he''s just lacking social skills, or if he¡¯s just old. It¡¯s not malicious, I swear, he tries to be funny, but doesn''t actually know what makes a joke funny, you know?¡±

    El was crying now. She wasn''t a bawler, not dramatic about it at all. Just sitting there with folded arms while tears and a bit of snot ran down her face. Still silent. So I kept talking. ¡°Not that that''s any kind of excuse. One of the good things about him, though, is he doesn''t need to be told twice. I''ve never seen him be stupid the same way twice. He gets called out, he''ll remember, and won''t do it again. You know Alan¡¯s given him an earful by now. He''ll probably apologize too, won¡¯t even have to tell him to.¡±

    ¡°The other good thing about him, he won''t hold a grudge for getting called out. Even if the calling out is... you know... aggressive? And you know that there''s a reason why Alan''s not out here and I am, right?¡±

    I looked around, checking the door before continuing, ¡°Actually, I''m a little worried about that. He''s usually done by now, isn''t he?¡±

    El actually smiled through the tears. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ¡°He''s mellowed a bit since we got married. He''ll probably yell some first,¡± she said.

    ¡°Well good. That''ll give Austin a chance to make sure there isn''t anything sharp or heavy at hand.¡±

    More silence. So more speaking on my part, ¡°Well, then. What do you want to do? You don''t have to work with the professor if you don''t want to. But if you do go back in, I''m sure he''ll apologize. And we''ll make him buy drinks tonight. It''s the least he can do. Besides, I have news for everyone.¡±

    She nodded and sniffed again. ¡°Yeah. Ok. I''ll come back in. Give me a minute? Please?¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe swing by the bathroom, wash your face. You are kinda blotchy. And snotty. I mean, who knows what people would think? It might actually distract them from however Alan decides to act out.¡±

    She snorted, which was delightful, given the leaky nostrils. She reached out and smacked me on the back of my head, which was less delightful. I got out of the car and went back inside.

    Austin was speaking with the restaurant manager, while Alan was holding a wad of napkins under the professor''s nose. Hansen''s mouth was pretty bloody, too. I wasn¡¯t even going to guess.

    I heard Alan speaking, not bothering to keep his voice down, ¡°Quit talking. All you''re doing is spraying blood on my nice shirt. I got mine, and I''m not who you need to apologize to.¡± Hansen closed his mouth at that.

    I fished a couple of ice cubes out of a glass of water and handed them to Alan. I decided that the restaurant''s management was a more immediate problem than the professor''s face. Approaching Austin and the manager, Austin turned to me and said, ¡°We''ll have to clear out.¡±

    My in-charge-and-incapable-of-being-refused smile had been getting practice. My back was straight, my center of balance firmly over my feet, my left arm comfortable at my side, my right arm extended loosely to shake the manager''s hand. ¡°I''m so sorry about this. But they''re done, I promise you, there won''t be any more disturbances. I''m sure some of the people have been complaining, right?¡±

    I handed our business card to the manager. ¡°Give everyone here a round on us, or appetizers, if they prefer. And anyone you need to comp tonight because of us, please send us the bill. We''ll take care of it.¡±

    I had pitched my voice loudly enough that there was a clear murmur of appreciation from the room. I continued, a bit more quietly now, ¡°Could you get us some bottles? We''ve got a fifth who''ll be coming back in, I''d like to make sure she has a drink waiting. Oh, and if you could just make sure the 20% gratuity is on the bill so I don''t have to figure it out, I''d appreciate it.¡±

    At that, I turned and sat down without giving him a chance to answer.

    My three new partners had been totally distracted by my performance. Some of the professor''s blood was dripping unnoticed down onto Alan''s sleeve. They hadn''t realized, but when you spend several months negotiating with the Pentagon, with Boing, with Dyson, and with big-box retailers, you learn a few things. For the record, the retailers were way harder to deal with than the big guys. Seriously ¨C I¡¯d make a deal with some big aerospace group any day before trying to negotiate with a big box store.

    It had come as a surprise to me, being in charge. If anything, I considered myself the group''s secretary and gopher. After all, I was the only one of the five of us who didn''t bring any real skills to the table. I am a literal college dropout, remember? I didn''t think of myself as a dropout yet, but I never did return any of Steve''s messages when I skipped my August meeting with her, or when I failed to sign up for Fall classes, or when I failed to sign up for Winter classes. Actually, I wonder if I should have ever formally quit from student employee services. I don''t know what their procedures are.

    But having no real skills also meant I was the one who was always available to meet with representatives from the various groups interested in Plasma Steel. It meant that I was the one who spent his time posting openings, going through applications, and hiring staff. It meant that I was the one who set things up with the bank, with the university, and constantly coordinated between the other four. And John Akins, who was as involved as any of us, even if he refused ownership.

    But all that shuffling made me the organizer. If not the boss, then at least the first among equals. Not that I threw my status around with my friends ¨C they were surprised when I turned my inner executive on. They hadn''t seen it before. With them, I was just my normal lazy self. But when I had to deal with Mr. Boss the TGIF manager, I was in charge of all I surveyed. And I¡¯d be lying if I said it wasn¡¯t fun. Being able to pull stunts like I owned the place is the sort of thing you dream about.

    I just took Hansen''s glass of water and took a drink, while I waited for them to explain themselves. I kept my head and shoulders up though, maintaining eye contact and a still face. I enjoyed seeing Alan and Hansen both looking like little kids in trouble, the professor, especially. Professor Marshal Hansen, Ph.D., was not someone who I got to lord it over very often. I was enjoying it, a bit. Or maybe a lot.

    Austin spoke first, ¡°Rounds for everyone? Really?¡±

    By this point, El had come back, ¡°Don''t worry, the dick will cover it.¡± She gave Alan a peck on his cheek and pulled up his arm, looking for the source of the blood on her husband¡¯s sleeve.

    As she sat down, Hansen started stammering out an apology to her, but she interrupted him, ¡°It looks like you already paid. Just... don''t be a dick again?¡±

    I rapped my knuckles loudly on the table and I pulled out my phone. I showed everyone the screen, the voice-to-text recorder clearly visible. My executive voice was still on, ¡°Sit down, everyone. I hereby call to order the first meeting of the owners of Plasma Products, International.¡±

    ¡°First order of business, all of tonight''s expenses will be covered by Marshal Hansen. All in favor?¡± I raised my hand, quickly followed by El. Alan and Austin were a bit slower on the uptake but got their hands up while Hansen sputtered.

    I interrupted, ¡°Motion carries. Let the record show that a majority vote of the owners agree that Marshal Hansen covers tonight''s bill. Dr. Hansen, you will have an opportunity to object after all the agenda items are completed. Next order of business. We have a report from our accountant.¡±

    Ashley Rice had been quite pleased with herself. She was an MBA and CPA and had been hating her life at a little tax firm for the last few years. Despite being possibly the most boring woman I¡¯d ever met, she seemed to enjoy working for a growing company. Seriously, she mostly wore grey cardigans and dark slacks or skirts. Never any heels, never anything more complicated than a French braid in her hair. I never caught her listening to music, even when getting out of her car. I don¡¯t think she had a boyfriend and certainly didn¡¯t appear to be looking for one. No evidence of cats. Or hobbies. Her office had literally no personal objects beyond a plain white mug. The only time I saw her smile was when I handed her checks to deposit.

    But I enjoyed her reports, ¡°Company coffers currently hold enough funds to cover all operating expenses for one year, including our growth projections and a thirty percent buffer. Per our previous agreements, additional funds have been used to buy out the university''s remaining controlling interest in Plasma Products, International.¡±

    ¡°That done, we are finally independent. Which is why I''ve called this meeting.¡± I paused, teasing out the moment. My grin made it clear I had more to say, so everyone stayed quiet despite having an opening.

    So I continued, ¡°Which leads to our third item. We have more cash than we need to operate, and no current opportunities to invest or expand that haven''t already been funded. Which means, according to our partnership agreement, that it is time to pay out some bonuses. I have cut checks for our employees already, their bonuses divvy up a quarter of what we, as owners, will receive. Which just leaves our checks.¡±

    I pulled out four envelopes and handed them to each of the others at the table. ¡°That concludes the business on the agenda. I hereby move to close the meeting, so that we can enjoy ourselves.¡±

    I turned off my phone as the others opened their checks.

    Alan literally squealed like an anime girl when he saw his. And El calls me pixie. But to be fair, everyone was shocked. Maybe I hadn''t been coordinating all the details as well as I should have. They knew we were out of danger and growing, but maybe I should have put more effort into getting them to look at the ledgers. Austin had the smallest check, with only six percent ownership, but that still meant a six-figure bonus.

    I relaxed into my chair, taking a pull on my beer. I deliberately made myself look more comfortable than the cheap wooden piece of furniture would actually allow. ¡°I''m not going to tell anyone what to do with their newfound treasure, but I''d suggest talking to an accountant. Minimizing your tax burden is gonna get important.¡±

    ¡°Oh, and professor? You''ve got the biggest share. Don''t you dare whine about paying for everyone''s night. You can afford it.¡±

 9: Profitable Progress

    The Mk. 1 Armor was a fairly rousing success. It wasn''t perfect, there were plenty of casualties and even some fatalities. The armor itself held up beyond expectations, but that doesn¡¯t mean the person inside it was invincible. There were plenty of blast injuries, brain injuries, and even a fair number of dislocations. Sure, the armor was proof against bullets, but an IED going off under someone''s feet did plenty of damage even without getting torn up by shrapnel. Generally, over-pressurization damage and concussions caused the most casualties, though fire and heat were a concern too. I remember one nasty incident involving a Molotov cocktail during some urban action somewhere.

    One team of marines even got overrun and pinned down. I don''t mean pinned the way soldiers in a firefight usually say pinned, I mean that a handful of terrorists literally sat on top of them and held them down until they surrendered. They were rescued pretty quickly, but the whole incident got caught on film and I''m not sure if those four guys ever recovered their dignity.

    The Mk. 2 did better, and we got that into the military''s hands less than a year after the first live combat trials with the Mk. 1. The joints were redesigned - mobility was even more limited, but someone wearing it couldn''t be forced by a blast to move beyond what a body could naturally handle, and the mobility limits reduced brain and pressurization wave injuries a lot. The suit was also augmented by Plasma Copper heatsinks. Not a perfect protection against heat and flame, but it would usually give a soldier a chance to get out of the kitchen.

    2 years after that the Mk. 3 was released. The Mk. 3 was basically the pinnacle of our designs. By then Hansen had figured out how to create a transparent material using a titanium alloy (Plasma Glass) that was seemingly as impervious as the Plasma Steel. With that and a few space-age fabrics, we were able to make the armor airtight. <em style="font-weight: inherit">And the soldiers'' faces were completely visible, barring some glare.

    Blast injuries and TBIs from getting thrown around remained the most common casualties, but even those generally required a rather large explosive in close proximity to a soldier. A hand grenade at someone''s feet wouldn¡¯t do much but rattle a person inside. Even a blast that threw them against a wall was usually survivable without more than some bruising.

    At the same time, the Pentagon had been quite liberal with armoring vehicles. We didn''t have any military vehicles in production yet, but there were quite a few tanks, Humvees, choppers, and other transports that had been given Plasma Steel plating. I hear that having a few hundred pounds of high explosive flip your truck end over end is quite exciting. Sure it counted as a mission kill, but the occupants wouldn''t be any more injured than they would get in a normal car accident. Not fun, but better than having the bottom of your vehicle torn open and filled with shrapnel.

    And we got paid, of course. By procurement officers who were thrilled to pay us. We sold our armor cost for about the same as the best conventional armors. Soldiers loved it because it was a fraction of the weight of their old gear. The logistics guys loved that they didn¡¯t have to replace anything but linings, no matter what happened to the suit. So even the bean counters who didn''t really care about lives saved got to see a reduction in fueling, shipping, and maintenance costs. Silver linings, right?

    We also released a ''civilian'' line between the release of the Mk. 2 and Mk. 3. Vests with strike plates that could be worn somewhat comfortably under clothing; full clamshell-style cuirasses that strapped on over clothing; a variety of helmets; and more. The conquistador look came back in for cops and security guards, and it wasn''t uncommon to see some guards wearing full suits - bank guards, armored car guards, and bodyguards especially.

    There was another incident, similar to Corporal Lopez''s story, involving a swat team moving into a militia-type compound in Northern Idaho. The group had been long suspected of all sorts of criminal activity, ranging from human trafficking to drug dealing with all the violent crime that goes hand in hand with that sort of stuff, all covered up with the usual patina of Constitutional nutjobbery. The authorities had held their suspicions for quite a while, but they never quite did anything that would make another Branch David worthwhile.

    But armor makes for bravery. Eighteen SWAT team members walked into the compound early one morning, armed with tasers, clubs, and tear gas. A perimeter had been set up, but they deliberately moved without speed, without taking cover. They literally walked through gunfire from tower to nest to doorway, subduing the militiamen one by one. No casualties at all among the state police; two deaths among the militiamen, both caused by friendly fire. Lots of other injuries on the criminals though, chemical burns, bruising, and a few broken bones.

    There was a renaissance in tactics going on. Soldiers spent less and less time on target practice, but spent hours on hand-to-hand drills and began experimenting with old-fashioned melee weapons. SWAT teams learned Roman legionnaire tactics and bayonet drills. Sure, snipers still got trained, but every year they got less useful.

    It was inevitable, I think, given how much armor we were selling. Most soldiers and cops kept on top of theirs, but some pieces always made their way to less savory types. Never as much as you''d assume. The need for a good fit was pretty limiting. When we sold suits, we had to get pretty specific measurements, otherwise, a wearer would start dealing with armor blunt trauma. The armor worked by spreading out the force of a bullet over large portions of someone''s body, and a bad fit would just refocus that force to a few small bits. So even stolen gear wasn''t a huge problem.

    And the changes weren¡¯t limited to the United States. While we were doing surprisingly well keeping our methods secret, we were still selling products to pretty much any government that wanted them. We did have a few State Department consultants who would give us a greenlight on sales, and keep track of serial numbers, but pretty soon there were only a few odd states left out. We didn¡¯t sell to a few of the really broken African states, or North Korea. Although North Korea never really came sniffing around, either. I think they just decided the whole thing was some sort of scam.

    But conflict around the world was changing. Not that there had been any major state conflicts going on, just the low-grade guerrilla stuff that never goes away. But ambushes on convoys would just fizzle out. Clearing out caves, bases, and all those tight spaces that partisans love suddenly became safe and easy to clear out. Safe and easy enough that the big terrorist and criminal organizations around the world found themselves rapidly curtailed. Pundits started talking about a new golden age for world peace. Even drone bombing programs got scaled back - no smart bomb is as smart as boots on the ground, after all. Even marines are better at controlling collateral damage than a smart bomb. Even the Palestinians and Israelis looked like they were making nice.

    I may have been naive.

    But business was gangbusters. I think, I''m not going to bother looking up what gangbusters actually means, but I''m pretty sure I''m using the term correctly. We expended at an insane rate. Within five years of releasing the MK-1 armor we were accounting for almost a quarter of all manufacturing in the US, and nearly a tenth of worldwide manufacturing. We were literally bringing in money faster than we could spend it.

    About half of our profits were invested in research. Which makes sense, given that Hansen owned nearly half of the company. He was now one of several PHDs we paid, along with a couple of hundred other researchers. All those physicists hammering away at Angat''s breakthrough were excited to come and work for the one group that had managed to do something real with it. All we had to do was keep Hansen away from personnel decisions and we were fine. He delegated areas of research and reviewed everyone''s findings, but Austin expanded his focuses and dealt with most of the coordination.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    Austin didn''t necessarily know the science, but he did know how to keep people motivated, how to find good workers, and how to make sure they had what they needed to get their work done. He also turned into something of a savant at managing egos and difficult personalities. It turns out that the Professor wasn''t exactly abnormal among researching academics.

    Meanwhile, the Beards managed the actual manufacturing, with some help from executive staff slowly brought in. They directly handled new mold designs, new parts manufacturing, and had a finger on all the supply chain management stuff. Every month it got easier to find people with talent and experience at the nuts and bolts of large-scale manufacturing.

    That was because we were actually putting most of the other companies out of business. I didn¡¯t realize how much of a problem that was with our business model ¨C we pretty much never sold the same item twice to the same person. There''s no such thing as a repeat customer when your product never breaks or wears out. All those hand tools we were selling a few years ago? Since then we had bought out a few tool companies, and the rest had gone under. Once you sell a plasma steel hammer, that¡¯s one less hammer that will ever get purchased again. Once we got working electric motors built out of plasma steel we sold power tools, too. We bought out the companies with useful patents, but most everyone else went under. The most successful survivors were the ones who opted to buy parts from us directly ¨C people like Boeing.

    We did our best to mitigate the problems ¨C we hired people from businesses that we shuttered as much as we could, paid them a lot more than we had to, and kept more employees than we needed.

    As the issues got obvious, the five of us talked about this a lot. We were on a tiger ¨C anything we made was going to outsell the rest of the market unless we overcharged by a huge margin. But once the market saturated, we were done. We kept our prices high ¨C margins on some products were close to a thousand percent, even when counting our inflated personnel costs ¨C but that just slowed down the problem. Even at the crazy margins a lot of our products ran fairly close to market levels, and people bought them.

    But the truth was, there wasn''t much we could do. Manufacturing was on its way out. If we didn''t make plasma steel, someone else would. It was just too damn useful. Someone had to ride the wave, so it might as well be us. But I''d be lying if I didn''t say it kept me up at night. The industrial revolution caused a huge amount of horror while it lifted people up, but you couldn''t pin that any individuals in the history books, not really. This time though, it would be all too easy to pin this revolution on my friends and me.

    All I could do was all I could do.

    All those extra workers we had? Most of them were busy coming up with new products, new applications, and new ideas. A lot of those ideas were obvious. We were already building cars ¨C at least the motors, chassis, and mechanical bits; the body and interior didn''t change much. A solid Plasma Steel car was a bit too dangerous, the designers had to soften the inside and provide crumple zones for safety''s sake. Tractors too, furniture, and so on. High tech factory equipment ¨C robotic arms, drones, printers, and modular equipment that could be re-purposed towards all sorts of different products.

    We even had about a thousand people who worked from home, whose only ¡®job¡¯ was to talk to our prototype AI and use it to operate a smart home whose components we sent them.

    I was investing a lot of cash in land. We were testing out automated farm equipment ¨C our tractors and farm equipment run by heuristic AIs ¨C one overseer with a bunch of unbreakable machinery could manage huge volumes of land. It made for some good photo ops though. Most of the land I''d bought was abandoned rust belt property. Empty subdivisions in Detroit and similar. A lot of it was initially bought for reclamation purposes ¨C we were still managing to keep our techniques secret, and there was lots of old linoleum in those old houses. The glass, pipes, and other materials were used too. Technically the operation was at a loss but keeping Plasma Steel methods secret for another few years was worth it.

    Plasma Products still ended up owning most of Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio. Cleaning it up and reverting it to farmland was good PR. We also ended up using it to test out our larger concepts.

    It was one of those concepts that was causing problems for me now. We could make beams up to sixty feet long, shaped to interlock with other beams at varying angles and points. We could make opaque sheets in standard building sizes, and transparent Plasma Glass sheets sized the same as any glass available. The glass was relatively expensive, but overall we could build a building cheaper than traditional materials. The big bottleneck was labor ¨C so we started a program to train crane operators. We even started using drone tech so the operators could work from home, or out of state, or wherever.

    We built a ten-story apartment building in the middle of nowhere in a couple of days, just to test the concept. Only needed workers on site to supervise, and to handle a few tricky bits, like connecting the new building to existing infrastructure. That done, we built a skyscraper for our new corporate headquarters and donated buildings for subsidized housing in a few cities.

    And the orders started coming in. Pretty much no one building anything larger than a single-family home wanted to build with anything but us, we had a brand and we had an outstanding bounty to pay a major reward for any Plasma Steel failure. There were some surprising objections. One of those objections was eating dinner with me. He was a kind of round sort of guy, a bureaucrat from California.

    His suit was a little too small, which was probably why a sleeve hadn''t gotten dipped in his sauce yet. He was talking about how pleasant the cool fall weather was, ¡°I heard some leaves were changing already, I think I''ll drive out to see it tomorrow before I go home.¡±

    ¡°It is pretty enough, Mr. Benson. I''ll admit I don''t really spend a lot of time sightseeing, myself. I''m glad you were willing to come up though.¡± I took a careful bite of my pasta. ¡°I really do prefer face to face, and I''ve got to admit I didn''t really understand what the permit problem was when the lawyers explained it to me. I¡¯m hoping you can explain the issue to me.¡±

    He took a largish hunk of garlic bread, answering around the mouthful, ¡°I''m happy to. Everything''s documented and above board, it¡¯s not like we always have to go through the lawyers.¡± He swallowed, with the help of a sip from a glass of white wine. ¡°But permits are just impossible without more data. We have very strict fire and earthquake codes, after all. We simply can''t issue a permit without the data from your engineers about Plasma Steel tolerances.¡±

    ¡°Tolerances.¡± My voice was flat. This is what the attorneys had told me, but I still couldn''t quite believe it.

    ¡°Yeah, before we can properly evaluate a new material for building, we need to know how much it flexes, how much it can hold, and so on. We also need to know how it holds the load in high heat. We can''t have buildings collapse when they catch fire, after all.¡±

    ¡°You''ve seen our material, right? The reports about it?¡±

    ¡°Sure. This is great pasta, by the way.¡±

    ¡°Thanks.¡± I took another careful bite. ¡°Um, so why are tolerances an issue? The Plasma Steel exceeds any other building material in any rating you''d care to examine. So far as I know, the army still hasn''t managed to break any.¡±

    ¡°Well, until we know exactly where it breaks, we just can''t approve it. The law is clear, after all.¡± Benson wasn''t making eye contact with me. Apparently, the pasta was as attractive looking to him as it was tasty.

    ¡°But doesn¡¯t the law just set a minimum standard? We¡¯ve looked at California¡¯s building codes, requiring an exact number seems well beyond the scope?

    ¡°Well, I didn''t write the policy, I just follow it. Plasteel just isn''t up to code yet.¡±

    ¡°Plasma Steel. And I still fail to see how it fails to meet code.¡± I ranted at him some. I''ll spare you the verbatim recording, but I think I managed to simultaneously express how unhappy I was with California and how little I cared about their rejection. We were the largest manufacturing company in the world and had never spent more than a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year on marketing. Hell, even that marketing was more about recruiting than selling. We had subsidiary companies designing buildings around the country, and around the world. People were demanding our products, our buildings, our everything, at a rate that we could only barely supply. I made it clear to him (in an accurate prophecy) that if the California government blocked Plasma Steel buildings then the voters would make it abundantly clear when California became the most backward state in the Union.

    If they had just been trying to protect their own industries, I¡¯d have been sympathetic. It¡¯s true, we were a threat to lumber, to mining, to import businesses, even to farming. Asking us to accommodate existing business would have made plenty of sense. Instead, they just tried to hold us up for cash and petty tyranny.

    So I just had to double down. The CA legislature thought they could just tax Plasma Steel at exorbitant rates in exchange for permits. So I publicized all the negotiations and piddly little complaints they had and made it clear that I would sell nothing in their great state unless we were treated like any other material. I even quit selling our consumer products there.

    I just made sure the websites all flashed a great big warning explaining why you couldn¡¯t buy that invincible mixer for your wife.

 10: Villain in the Fields - Macs Interlude (1)

    Mack''s whole life fit into a single basket. A couple of changes of clothes, a tablet with a bad battery that still worked when plugged in, a deflated soccer ball, a cool carved stick a neighbor gave him, and some shed snakeskin he had found in the backyard.

    The truck was overloaded, and he could only carry the stuff he could keep in his lap, hence the laundry hamper with the things he could fit in it. His little sister, Mary-Ann only had the one basket too ¨C she had clothes, a baby blanket, and a couple of dolls. Baby Joey didn''t have a basket, but he didn''t care about anything but mom and his sucker, so he didn''t really need one. Mom and Dad didn''t have baskets, but really it was all their stuff in the truck.

    They had spent the day bringing as much of their house as they could into the old beat-up pickup, but a lot was getting left behind too. Dad only let them bring enough dishes for the five of them to have a single set. Sleeping bags for all five, some blankets, a box with their winter clothes, another box with a bunch of dusty papers that mom had cried over. Most of the bed was filled with what dad called ''gear.'' Tools, tents, tarps, heavy metal boxes that were carefully stowed first on the bottom. Mack had to bring up the wheat. Dad had bought tons of the stuff. Hundreds of white buckets, filled with wheat, corn, and oats, then sealed.

    Mack''s skinny arms shook when he carried them, the wire handle cutting into his hands. At first, he would carry two buckets, one in each hand, but two buckets weighed almost as much as he did, and his twelve-year-old frame tired quickly. But even as he got sweaty, he didn''t stop. He carried the buckets, one by one, up out of their basement to stack next to the old Ram. He only managed a dozen or so before his dad stopped him. The truck couldn''t hold all that much, after all.

    ¡°That''s all. We''ll just leave the rest,¡± said Mack''s dad.

    ¡°We really ought to clean up a bit, I hate leaving like this,¡± said his mom.

    ¡°No, Jackie.¡± Dad''s voice was tired ¨C the two of them had argued about this before, although it was the first time Mack had heard the exchange. ¡°They want to take our house away, even send the sheriff to kick us out, I am not going to make anything easier on them. They''re lucky we don''t burn it down as we go.¡±

    Jackie was quiet as dad pulled a tarp tight over the load in the truck bed. ¡°''Sus, you sure about this? I can''t help but worry. Your parents said they would take us in...¡± she trailed off as he stopped working for a moment, his head resting against the pile.

    ¡°Yeah, honey. I''m sure. Mom and dad... they''re not much better off. Not really. One or two new medical issues and they''ll be out of their home too. If they try and help us they''ll go that much sooner. I won''t, can''t, do that to them. Maybe if I thought I could get hired again, but no one wants welders now.¡±

    He went back to tightening down the straps, ¡°Besides, we have a place to go. He cares about people and is actually doing something about it. Which is better than all those crooked CEOs and their senators are doing. It''s their damn fault my company went under, anyways.¡±

    A few loud bangs rang out, from a couple of streets over. Mom and dad both looked that way, and then looked both ways down their street. ¡°Just a backfire, it''s ok,¡± said dad.

    ¡°Ok, ''Sus. You know I love you, right?¡± Mack''s mom risked a smile, despite the tears in her eyes. Mack''s dad smiled back at her, then shooed all of them into the back seat of the cab. Mack and Mary-Ann were even laughing as they made themselves comfortable in the back. They knew it was going to be a long drive, but seeing mom and dad happy was welcome.

    The drive actually went quickly. Mack didn''t have anything to do in the car except watch as overgrown lawns and homes with gaping windows slowly gave way to farmland. The farmland was busier than the suburbs had been, it seemed like every field had a man or two walking through, or driving a tractor, or otherwise bustling with unknowable tasks. Soon enough the farmland gave way to rocky hills and dense woods.

    They only pulled over when someone needed to use a bathroom, or when Joey needed changing. Dad would put gas into the tank from one of the cans strapped on top when they did stop. Once the cans were tied back down they would continue on.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    When night came, they pulled off the side of the road and drove to a little clearing out of sight of the highway. Dad didn''t bother with an exit, he just pulled off the side of the highway, cut a bit of fence with bolt cutters, and drove through the grass.

    Even in the mountains, the night was warm enough and dry, so they all slept in sleeping bags under the stars. Dad lit a fire, and they cooked hot dogs and drank herbal tea that mom made from mint and other stuff she found. With a bit of effort, Mack was able to pretend that they were just camping, the way they used to when he was little. Before dad''s work started taking more and more time. He fell asleep quickly, listening to the crickets and the snap of green wood on the fire.

    In the morning they loaded up, washed with a bit of water, and were off again. This time they only followed the highway for a short time, then pulled off and followed a road that wound through the mountains. The old concrete gave way to gravel after a while, forcing dad to slow down.

    Despite himself, Mack fell asleep. He woke up when dad brought the truck to a stop. They were in front of a gate, sort of. It was just a few big pieces of chain link fence on a frame that could be dragged over the muddy road. A couple of men with big guns were standing on the other side, watching as dad got out to talk to them. After a minute, he got back in as they dragged the fencing out of the way, and then he drove in.

    There were a bunch of buildings here, mostly with big plastic or corrugated panels for walls. There were a couple of big cabins that looked more like the houses Mack was used to, but most of the stuff here looked pretty ramshackle. There were even some tents set up that he could see that were visible as they drove around big lines of dirt piled up here and there. Dad pulled the truck around one of the berms and Mack saw a long line of trucks and cars, it almost made the place look like a parking lot if things were paved.

    The air smelled different than Mack was used to. There was a clean pine scent that overlayed everything, but he could smell smoke and grease, too. The quiet was nice, too ¨C with a bit of concentration you could hear birds calling, and the rustle of wind in the trees.

    As the family got out of the truck, a small crowd emerged from the closest cabin, heading right for them. It would have been scary, maybe, because about half of them were dressed like soldiers and were carrying guns slung on their shoulders, but there were a few women carrying babies too. And the group was led by a big guy in jeans and a denim jacket. The big guy, the only one in the group that was clean-shaven, was smiling a big smile ¨C bigger than Mack had seen anyone smile in a long time. With crinkling eyes, he boomed out, ¡°Jesus! I''m so glad you''ve made it! Our little brotherhood is so grateful you''ve brought your family and your talents! This must be Jackie? And your kids?¡±

    Mack couldn''t help but cringe a little bit, hunching his shoulders and looking down. Partly because the man was loud, but mostly because he knew his dad hated being called Jesus. Dad could just about tolerate it when it was pronounced the right way, where the first bit rhymed with ''hay,'' but when someone made it sound like the bible guy dad would blow up at them, calling them all sorts of names that ranged from stupid to racist to ignorant to blasphemous. And dad had been angry a lot lately, Mack just hoped that dad wouldn''t stay angry the whole day.

    Instead of getting all read and yelling, dad just ducked his head at the man, saying, ¡°Thank you, sir. I''m very grateful you have a place for us. I''m looking forward to working again.¡±

    ¡°Of course, anyone who can work works.¡± The bug guy said. ¡°That''s what life is about, after all. Humans need purpose, and when you steal that purpose, you steal their humanity. It''s never been about the reward, the pay, the prestige, it''s about meaning. Things you can be proud of, right? I''m glad I can give you something to be proud of. And we can take care of you and your family too. After all, it''s the least the brotherhood can do.¡±

    Dad and the guy went off, followed by most of the soldiers with their guns, leaving mom and the kids by their car. The other women mostly stayed too. ¡°Let''s show you where your barracks will be. It''s not far, and we''ll help you unload, too.¡±

    ¡°Barracks?¡± Asked mom.

    ¡°Yeah, it can get a little crowded, but every couple gets their own room, the kids sleep together in the main bunk-room. Right now there''s a shower and bathroom for every six people, but we''re working on the plumbing to get everyone a private space.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± was all mom said.

    Mack''s basket was taken to a big room, filled with bunk beds. Mack got the top bunk while Mary-Ann was given the bottom. There were a pair of trunks at the foot of the bed to keep their stuff in, too. Mack helped his little sister make her bed ¨C stretching the old sheets over the thin mattress and getting her blanket laid out the way she liked it. While he did that, Mom and the other women unloaded everything. It happened pretty fast, even though they opened and emptied each box as they went. Tools went to a shed separate from the barracks, the food Mack had loaded up went to the group pantries, and so on. Everything got shared out except their clothes and a few personal items, like mom''s picture binders and the paintings that grandpa had done and given dad.

    Now Mack''s whole life fit in his trunk.

 11: Extinction Burst

    The explosion took me by surprise, even though it shouldn''t have. I don''t know if frogs really sit around in a pot that gets heated up slowly, but people sure do. Well, I sure do. I''ve been reading about mass shootings, bombings, and other elaborate forms of suicide my whole life. Frankly, even though I had all the right attitudes about gun control, mental health, and so on, I''ve never paid much attention to the news.

    We¡¯d gotten an honest-to-God corporate headquarters a couple of years earlier. Nothing too flashy, we just occupied an empty office building a couple blocks away from Austin¡¯s grocery store. We¡¯d also occupied several other old warehouses and factories in the area. In addition to just, well, space, we¡¯d been buying up other companies too. Sometimes just a license, but I¡¯d found that when we were looking for synergistic opportunities it was usually easier to just find an applicable startup or someone who already had machines and processes in place, and buy them out entirely.

    For example, the first company we nabbed was a little startup that had been building a new ¡°disruptive¡± autocad system. Intuitive, user-friendly, powerful, etc. and blah blah blah. But Akins, Austin, the Beards, and the stable of engineers on staff drooled over it, and pretty soon we were using it for all our design work. I don¡¯t really see how it helped, but I was told it cuts costs, sped design time, and reduced the likelihood of failed prototypes.

    We¡¯d also started building cars. Well, not cars really, but trailers, tractors, mine trucks, forklifts, and other industrial and commercial-type vehicles. And we owned a few thousand acres of farmland ¨C mostly in Minnesota but there were chunks throughout the country too. What else? Shipping, we were incorporating our own freight company. We built enough large and oddly shaped goods that running our own shipping line looked necessary. Construction, of course. And, obviously, our manufacturing lines had only grown.

    Meanwhile, police forces worldwide were using less and less-lethal force. But people were assaulting cops far, far more often. Mass shootings were skyrocketing. Where it had been a monthly or maybe weekly thing when I was a kid, it wasn''t terribly uncommon to hear about multiple active shooters on a daily basis. Same for suicide bombers ¨C numbers were sharply on the rise there, too, despite gutting the actual terrorist organizations.

    At the time, I¡¯d been overlooking these trends entirely. Some bits I¡¯d noticed, like a rise in domestic violence and addiction, but the more dangerous items were easily disguised by more favorable trends. While the number of incidents was on the rise, bombings and shooters were killing fewer and fewer and doing less damage ¨C when they targeted a military target or other hardened installation bombs and shooters often did no damage at all. There was infrastructure being built in even full civilian zones that reduced bomb impacts too. Short Plasma Steel walls channeled explosions upward without making open spaces feel enclosed, Plasma Steel posts along sidewalks prevented cars from getting too close to buildings, Plasma Steel doors that couldn''t be shot through; it all reduced body counts even as more and more people destabilized. And of course, cops could wade in and deal with offenders with all the confidence they could strap on. But no one really talked about most of that when we designed or sold it. The walls were handy because they were far easier to keep clean ¨C you could take graffiti off a Plasma Steel sheet about as easily as you could remove dry erase marker. The posts would look pristine no matter how often an inattentive driver scraped past. Doors didn¡¯t get dented or scuffed by feet and boxes.

    The other reason I didn''t notice how much had changed was plain old desensitization. Shootings and bombings had been dominating the news since before I was born. Sure, lots of people liked to talk about how much worse things were now, but they''ve always talked like that. People still read, people still shopped, people still wasted time on entertainment and people still found ways to be proud of their lives. People also found ways to ruin their lives, to hurt the people around them, to get themselves lost in nihilism and despair. Movies and video games weren''t any more shocking than they were a few decades ago, so clearly violence wasn''t different either.

    When the bomb threw my car up into the air, the only emotion I remember feeling was embarrassment. There was some pain, sure, but not much. The whole car basically jumped a few feet up and then crashed back down. I was wearing my belt, and the force of both the bomb and landing basically just shoved me into the bucket seat. I wasn''t even shocked, or I didn''t feel like I was shocked. I knew it was a bomb ¨C as soon as I¡¯d started to pull out of my parking spot it went off.

    The embarrassment was because I really didn¡¯t think there was a good reason to target me. Wasn''t I the largest employer in the country? Wasn''t I going out of my way to take care of the people I put out of work? I was constantly listening to my accountants, led by boring little Ashley, whine about how much money we were wasting on non-productive employees. Never mind that we were still a privately held corporation (meaning no shareholders beyond the five owners, who all didn''t care about profit for various reasons), and never mind that we literally had more cash than we could invest meaningfully. Sarah seemed to take it personally that I didn''t want bigger bonuses. I was happy to pay for a few thousand engineers who just brainstormed expansion ideas all day long, or mechanics who babysat machinery that never broke down, or even office drones who spent an hour or two a month updating forms. I wasn¡¯t even the face of the company. Dr. Hansen was still the largest shareholder, and it was almost always him or Alan who went to the various press events.

    The talking heads had been using the term ''extinction burst'' a lot, lately. When a person doesn''t get the response he expects from a behavior, humans tend to just repeat the behavior more aggressively and frequently. Think about the way you hammer your keyboard and click your mouse when your computer freezes. Now imagine that same sort of reaction when violent protest movements are failing.

    Add in the intense economic dislocation, and that Plasma Steel Manufacturing was basically the face of all the changes, and there had been plenty of entirely credible threats on my life. The only surprise should have been that this was the first attempt to actually get through. Even though a dozen different people and groups had been arrested planning my assassination, it never really registered on me, emotionally.

    I had been warned, sure; I had even been trained, sort of. We had security staff, and they had lectured me to death about what to do if an attack happened. If a shooter was in the building. If a shooter was outside the building. If there was a bomb threat. Or an actual bomb. Or a bomb inside, or outside, or multiple shooters, or if I was taken hostage, or if another shareholder was taken hostage. You''ll have to forgive me if I started tuning out the contingency planning started as much as I tuned out the news reports.

    Which is probably why I did exactly what I wasn''t supposed to when my car hit the ground again. I shook my head, looked around ¨C the cars on either side of me had been flipped onto their sides ¨C and got out of my car. The car was one of ours. It looked kinda like a flying saucer ¨C the inside had four bucket seats that could swivel to face each other and very few controls. It drove itself and ran on an electric Plasma Steel motor. The rounded saucer bits were the necessary crumple zones, though they could be used for storage too, although the cab itself was fully armored. They hadn''t tested nukes on Plasma Steel yet, but cars just like mine had survived strikes from Tomahawk missiles. So in the event of an attack, I was supposed to stay inside.

    Maybe I was more stunned than I remember because the building''s security had begun responding by the time I got out. I had barely straightened up before I was tackled by a big white form. Getting tackled hurt way more than the bomb did. I broke my tailbone and wrenched my back hitting the pavement. I had to fire the guard after that. It was a very professional protective tackle, keeping me from cracking my head and covering me from lines of fire. Which is why I rehired him as a personal bodyguard when the board demanded additional protection for me and the other executives in the company.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    I probably swore a bit and might have expressed more anger at the guard, if someone hadn''t started shooting. I never saw the shooter until months later in court, but the cracks of the gun and the pings of ricochet were unmistakable. Action movies totally fail to prepare you. Gunfire is somehow both far louder and less impressive than movie gunfire. Maybe it was just the parking garage, but it seemed way louder than it ever did on a shooting range. The sound is still simpler, somehow. Just a sharp bark, not an explosion.

    While I was thinking hard about the nature of the sound of gunfire and the pain in my back, building security got things taken care of. There were two shooters. One was disabled with a taser, the other attacker was wearing a cuirass that made it difficult to place the darts. Security was prepared for that though, they played gladiator and got him tangled in a weighted net.

    In the end, it turned out that they were just two kids. They had gotten themselves riled up on various extremist forums online and fixated on me. I should remember what group it was, but there¡¯s no way I could tell you what flavor of extremist they were without looking up the old news reports. I¡¯m pretty sure it wasn¡¯t Islamic. Doesn''t matter though. Things were getting chaotic ¨C I had threats coming in from people who had lost their jobs, who missed the way the old world was, from white supremacists who hated my politics, from Islamicists who felt like I had enabled a new crusade, from conservatives who didn''t like that I broke old industries, from liberals worried about the increased police power inherent in the armor. And on and on.

    I wasn''t the only one in the crosshairs. Every public figure and institution was getting targeted the same way. It was like a switch got flipped, and people had to find something to try and tear down. Ironic, then, that we could now build monuments that were proof against destruction.

    It was weird. So much of my planning and behavior was driven by fear, except I wasn¡¯t ever afraid. It felt like common sense. I stopped going anywhere outside of my armored vehicles and ensured that any staff close to me was fully vetted. We started delving into our employees'' personal lives to an embarrassing degree. And there wasn''t any push-back, either. Investigating everyone''s internet history for extremist connections only started because there was a literal petition from my employees demanding that we do so. Over four-fifths of my workers literally asked me to investigate them. Awkward as it was, I didn¡¯t feel like I could have said no; it was only a relief that I didn''t find any problems. Other companies were doing the same thing, though investigations were usually top-down, and found and fired more people than I did.

    I was surprised that no one else was bothered by bodyguards. El and Alan hardly seemed to notice their team. Austin immediately began working to socialize his ¨C they had to watch hockey with him, and were required to have informed opinions on games, players, etc. And Hansen delighted in a couple of troopers who cheerfully chewed him out for social missteps, while he frequently demanded their hands and labor in this project or that.

    John Akins, our armorer, didn''t get a bodyguard, but he wasn''t a public figure, either. He was suggested building a new HQ building, something unique to us. He wanted us to combine our manufacturing, offices, and even living quarters into a single building. I think he was actually getting bored with armor and wanted to test out some of the architectural possibilities that went beyond what were admittedly just pre-fab buildings. We could actually build large enough now to make an arcology a reasonable proposition. It would centralize our operations, it could be built modular to allow for expansion and redesign, it could showcase various techniques, it would allow for more collaboration between departments, and it would be far easier to defend. I wasn''t entirely sure I liked the idea, but arcologies are cool. So we got started on planning it.

    Another thing I found ironic, I got death threats because I lobbied against criminalizing extremist connections or further decriminalization of terrorist behavior. Things like Inciting violence, funding terrorism, and making threats, and building bombs were already against the law. I didn''t see any good reason to punish people for their google searches. I felt like people would calm down as soon as social norms worked themselves out again, eventually people stop hammering on the keyboard. Besides, it was pretty easy to mitigate any damage that terrorists could cause. I mean, as bad as the violence appeared, domestic violence and suicide still took more people than random mass shootings and bombings.

    Just look at what happened in Korea. Seoul went nuts over our new buildings, and they loved the drones too. There''s actually a popular anime right now in Japan, starring anthropomorphized building drones. I''m not sure why, the drones are just a crane on tank treads, with some armature that allows it to climb the building its working on, and a mechanical arm that places the fittings.

    Most developers built our buildings where new buildings were needed. Korea and Japan embarked on an incredible building program instead ¨C they actually tore down their entire skylines and rebuilt them. Japan was a bit slower, taking the time to design their buildings and maintain their cities'' unique skylines. Korea just went for speed. I honestly hated it ¨C Seoul turned into an incredibly ugly city, reminiscent of soviet concrete blocks. Big, rectangular buildings with large windows. The same facings, the same shapes, the only variation was a building''s footprint size and height.

    But then they took advantage of their northern neighbor''s isolation and skepticism. China was preoccupied with massive unrest and what may have been turning into a civil war, which meant that the North Korean regime was more on its own than normal. South Korea gave their citizens notice and began an airstrike campaign.

    Predictably, DPRK artillery opened up, targeting Southern cities and installations. I don''t know how much attention you pay to history, but North Korea''s artillery installations were some of the most extensive in the world. I''ve seen video of the counterattack. It''s pretty incredible, and I suspect it looked pretty similar to what some old WWI battlefields must have looked like. Booms and smoke filled the streets of Seoul. Some of the streets were filled with several feet of debris. What was more remarkable was that none of the debris was from fallen buildings, or pavement, or normal rubble. They lost a lot of greenery, but the debris itself was pretty much entirely made of shrapnel and dud shells. Imagine firing so many weapons that you fill streets with half a meter or more of just the bullets. No glass, no building rubble, no bodies. Just scraps of steel and brass covered with dust drifting down between pristine white buildings.

    It was the greatest sales pitch Plasma Steel ever had.

    The world got lucky, too. North Korea only fired four nuclear missiles. One of those missiles hit and blasted a military base just south of the demilitarized zone. I think some of the Plasma Steel doodads on the surface may have been damaged, but it was hard to tell, as most of those doodads got blasted into orbit when a conventional attachment failed. But the bunkers held out just fine, and only about a hundred soldiers caught on the surface were killed. As long as it was properly anchored, Plasma Steel in the middle of the two hundred fifty kiloton blast came out looking like new. The stuff didn''t even hold the residual radiation, just rinse it with water and a piece of plasma steel would read perfectly clean to a Geiger counter.

    A second missile malfunctioned and fell into the ocean. A third was shot down over Japan without any damage. The fourth was intercepted and exploded over the Pacific on its way to Hawaii, killing two fighter pilots. It looked like North Korea may have had more missiles, but the airstrikes took care of them before any more launches could happen.

    In the end, South Korean troopers forcefully reunified the country with remarkable ease. A few Northern resistance movements added to the violence of the times, but I don''t think anyone minded much. In the end, the only real political fallout that the Korean government faced was complaints about the evacuation order given before the bombing began. After seeing how it all turned out, people wanted to have watched from the windows on the top floor of their buildings instead of in dark interior bunkers.

 12: Unlimited Power

    Not long after Korea reunified, Jhonas Angat officially and inarguably cemented his name into the history books. He was already responsible for the theory and math that allowed astrophysicists to illuminate dark matter and deepen their understanding of the universe; he created the first drives and generators to proved his own work; now he gave us a key that truly changed history. Specifically, he figured out how to make the generators work. Actually, really, reliably, work.

    Thousands, if not millions, of scientists and engineers, had spent over a decade tinkering with the drives and generators. Tweaking materials, dimensions, measurements, anything they could conceive to lengthen the operating time. The drives would inevitably consume themselves within moments of coming online. Angat made a design that would burn indefinitely, instead of cutting off after a watt or two. I think his first generator is still running, powering the equipment in his old lab as part of a museum exhibit. One of my life¡¯s biggest regrets was that I never got to actually meet the little Filipino, he was rather elderly by then, and all sorts of demands were keeping me stateside when he announced the generator.

    I found out about it after he sent me an email. Not just to me, mind, it was sent to thousands of people, so far as I know. It not only explained the concepts and provided schematics, but it also announced that the designs were totally open source.

    My accountants and other official business types went crazy. Ashley Rice, our head accountant, actually cornered me in the garage after the email went out. It was a testament to how colorless she usually was that my now-rabid security let her get in the back of the car with me without a word. I did jump, I had been on my way to meet with some of our farm overseers when she had gotten in. I usually rode out there alone.

    Scowling a bit at her, I just waited for Ashley to explain herself. Se didn''t speak right away. She just tucked some strands of her dirty blond hair behind an ear and picked at the pills of wool on her cardigan until I made a little hand gesture. You know the kind, straight fingers, a bit of rolling motion, the one you use to give up right-of-way at a stop sign.

    ¡°What are we going to do?¡± Is all she said. Which wasn''t helpful. I suppose I should have realized he was concerned about Angat''s generator email, but I had a lot on my plate. I was going out to check on the farmers and see if they were happy with the new automated equipment, and whether they felt like livestock automation was reasonable. I had already made some deals to adjust salaries in our non-work force ¨C basically, they agreed to drastically lower their salaries in exchange for room and board. We provided living space, utilities, and access to the products that the farms were producing, and they were happy for a much smaller stipend instead of full salaries. A few kept managing their own living arrangements and kept a normal salary, but most were fine. And Ms. Rice knew all this, so I was still at a loss.

    But she was deferential to a fault, and I had to supply my side of the dialogue. ¡°About what, exactly?¡±

    ¡°About the generator Angat invented.¡±

    I was still out to sea. One of these days people are going to figure out that I am not nearly as smart they think I am. ¡°I suppose we''ll build a few. Hansen is looking into viability to power our own operations. Why aren''t you talking to him?¡±

    Ashley sighed at me. Me! Like I was a particularly dim child! Her brown eyes squeezed shut and she clearly did some sort of counting exercise. All because I didn¡¯t understand why our accountant would care in the slightest about a generator that we didn¡¯t own. That no one owned. ¡°I did talk to him. He sent me to you. The question isn''t about using them, it''s about building and selling them. This is a huge opportunity.¡±

    I leaned forward. Closed my eyes. Rested my head in both my hands. Elbows on knees. Without looking at her and doing my best to be as bland as her sensible flats, I said, ¡°Ok. Pretend I know nothing. I''m a brand-new intern who can barely manage fourth-grade addition. What. Opportunity.¡±

    ¡°Angat gave us plans. He gave everyone plans. But, according to him, several parts require plasteel ¨C¡°

    ¡°Plasma Steel,¡± I interrupted from under my hands. I hate that contraction.

    ¡°Plasma Steel, as well as Plasma Copper and the insulative variety of plast ¨C Plasma Steel. Without using our materials, you can''t build a functional generator. He gave the world the generator, but we''re still the only ones who can build it.¡± I ventured to look up at her. She was literally rubbing her hands together while she talked to me.

    ¡°You know that our cash flow is getting restricted. Our building division is really the only part of the company still showing a profit. It''s still more than enough to run everything, even your more eccentric organizational plans,¡± Ms. Tedious really didn''t like all my non-productive workers. I still liked sleeping at night. ¡°But even that''s going to dry up soon. Our best projections only give us ten more years of high profits, followed by another ten years of gradually falling revenue. And that''s all assuming no one steals the method to manufacture Plasma Steel or your other metals.¡±

    ¡°This is a totally different sort of product. It''ll have the, well, some of the same problems as our other products, but powering the world could be incredibly profitable. It gives us the opportunity to sell a service, not just a product.¡±

    I sat back up and looked out the window as I thought about this. ¡°Let me get this straight. Angat ¨C who has never filed a patent, so far as I know, is revolutionizing science. Again. These are the generators we''ve been hearing about for twenty years, that could provide essentially free energy. No fuel costs, no pollution, minimal maintenance work. He released his designs to the world, making it clear he wanted to benefit mankind.¡±

    I turned to look directly at her, ¡°And you want me to use our patents to grab a monopoly on it. Ashley, we haven''t talked much about mission statements, or things like that, have we?¡±

    ¡°No sir, you''re mostly content to know that bills are paid and taxes handled. But you''ve never failed to keep the company growing. It''s been pretty amazing, watching you work. I mean, you barely have a marketing department but the internet is full of viral videos about plasteel stuff. I mean Plasma Steel. You don''t have a lot of lobbyists either, but you''ve strong-armed the state governments a bunch. You...¡±

    I cut her off again. I didn''t mean for her to try and stick her nose up my backside. ¡°No, not like that. What are we trying to get out of this company? Right now, Austin Beck is the least wealthy of us five owners. You know exactly what he''s worth. He can get his scarred pinky finger on anything that money can buy in an hour, and he can usually get it heavily discounted because we make the damn thing. And other than land there isn''t much he can buy that will even put a dent in his net worth.¡±

    ¡°You know that I''ve had people from the Fed meet with me. We accumulated so much cash so quickly, coupled with falling consumer demand, that they were worried about inflation.¡± Or was it deflation? Stagflation? Some sort of flation. I continued, ¡°They literally asked us to find ways to re-invest the cash to keep things moving. That''s half the reason I keep all the staff that you''re always whining about.¡±

    ¡°So let''s say I do corner the electric market with this generator. Use our patents and our secrets to maintain a monopoly on damn near everything. We get more money. More money that we can''t spend on anything worthwhile anyway because we already make everything worthwhile. We get a market share that will evaporate in a few years when the market evaporates.¡±

    ¡°I''ll be honest. I don''t know what we''re going to do when we stop being able to sell and build stuff. The day is coming, and I don''t pretend it won''t be hard. But frankly, I don''t think that postponing it a few more years is going to be all that big a deal. At least it won¡¯t be worse if it happens in ten years than if it happens in twenty.¡±A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°But, even if those few years are disastrous to us, it won¡¯t be worth the ill will. People will hate us if we profit off this. They''ll hate us more than they hated the bandits who used to hold up cancer meds for everything a patient owned. I get shot at and blown up enough already. Let''s please not make that worse.¡±

    I tapped the tablet in her hands, ¡°So, what are we going to do? Here''s what we''re going to do. Get back to Hansen and Alan. Get a design of each of the parts the generator needs and get started on molds. Have them make several, I imagine that people will want generators in all sorts of sizes. We''re going to take advantage of the market, but we''re only going to sell the bits and pieces, we''re not going to sell the whole thing. And we''re only going to sell at cost.¡±

    ¡°Yes sir.¡± She was back to her normal reserved self.

    ¡°Good. As long as your here, let¡¯s go over the quarterlies.¡± She nodded and turned her little tablet back on. Which made the drive productive enough. Boring, dull, and tedious, but productive. And I¡¯d been looking forward to music and a nap.

    The generators turned out awesome. We built about four different varieties. A big one that could power a city. It was really big, it stood as big as a house all by itself. Another big one, which wasn''t quite as big, could power most large buildings, like a hospital or office building. That generator could just about fit onto a semi-trailer. A third was small enough for a man to carry, maybe thirty or forty pounds, if I remember right. It was mostly used as a portable generator, and it just had a couple banks of plugs to attach whatever to. The last was very small, and could easily be built under the hood of a car, or inside a drone. Those were used to power all sorts of things. You could replace the battery in a car with a generator and it would run forever. No charging, no refueling.

    All of that was huge, but I''ll be honest. The application I loved most was in the Arcology. Akins had been tooling around with designs for a year now, ever since my first assassination attempt. He really went crazy when he realized that the generators meant we could build it independent of logistical connections. Unlimited power meant that that his designs didn''t have to rely on external supplies. Unlimited power meant that he could include water reclamation techniques, extensive internal transportation, all sorts of repair drones. He included massive interior spaces meant to be filled with manufacturing or storage or whatever. There were other large spaces open to the outside, with little nooks and crannies that we could fill with little shops and social spaces. Several arenas built-in. Multiple towers filled with living space ¨C the smallest apartment was a three-bedroom space with about twenty-five hundred square feet.

    We assumed no more than 3 adults in one of those apartments, or two adults and four children, at most. We had larger spaces, too, theoretically meant for larger families. A few had built-in workspace, offices and hobby rooms and the like. We went to great lengths to build the towers so that they all had exterior access. Big balconies, mostly, all fitted with boxes and irrigation. We were pretty sure that allowing balconies to fill with greenery would make for a much more comfortable living space. We inverted some standard designs, too. The highest apartments were usually the smallest. By tapering towers, it was easier to make sure sunlight and exterior space were available on every floor.

    The place was big enough that most of the spaces would be entirely interior, no matter what we did. One of the guys came up with some clever fiber optics and other tricks to bring some natural light into the deeper spaces. We mostly used that for areas set aside for offices, classrooms, and hospital rooms. We also used UV and full spectrum lamps in every single room. Full environmental controls ¨C a tenant could control temperature, lighting (brightness and spectrum), and even humidity in their rooms.

    It was pretty cool. I staked out my space in the building early. It was one of the little three-bedroom units, I planned on turning one room into a personal entertainment center, the other into an office space for private meetings, and of course, I slept in the third. Pretty much the only thing special was that it was close to one of the social promenades and to one of the entry garages.

    The best part? Assembly required no human input beyond design and some paranoid oversight. Akins and our other engineers still didn''t entirely trust the automated systems to follow plans. But the whole system was rapidly becoming fully automated. We owned a handful of iron mines now ¨C drones excavated, concentrated the ore, and moved it to refineries. The refineries produced a range of standard bar sizes that we used to make Plasma Steel. More drones trucked the iron from the refineries to our manufactories. At each stage there''d be maybe one or two people not doing anything but waiting for something to screw up that required them to push a big red button, cease operations, and contact maintenance.

    The refinery was the only place that ever had any real automation failures. But even those failures were predictable enough that before long other repair drones would fix any stoppages without input. AI was getting interesting.

    I remember meeting the salesman for tech, about when our consumer product lines were starting to slow down. His company was called Technocore, which I found vaguely ominous, but their designs were almost as important to our growth as Plasma Steel and the other materials were. The salesman, a rumpled little guy who looked more like one of my blue-collar non-workers than the shiny types that usually tried to sell us stuff, came into my office with one of those unfinished-looking robot things.

    This one walked remarkably smoothly on its two legs. Above the legs was a screen and some boxy-looking gear. No arms, no head.

    I looked at him, saw the bot, and checked my calendar. He had twenty minutes, and I was going to go complain to my assistants. After we had started mass producing the robotic production arms and our construction drones, I had been inundated by robotic types wanting to sell their designs. We hired a few of the designers, but frankly we didn''t need new walkers. But my assistants knew what they were doing. The bot was only there to provide a multimedia display that he could control. The walker bit was just a bit of melodrama to pitch the software.

    I''ll spare you the speech. Thechnocore specialized in heuristic AI. For the first ten minutes, the little guy spent his time running his hands through his hair, straightening his tie, and apologizing to me that their AI wasn''t actually very smart. No singularity. They couldn''t do anything new.

    But they could do just about anything they were told to do, and do it perfectly after a very short learning period. His example actually made a lot of sense to me, although in my experience that means he was simplifying things to the point that they were meaningless.

    Take a bipedal robot. Balancing on two pins is difficult. People do it automatically, though they forget that it generally takes two years of practice to figure it out, and often another decade or so to really work out the kinks. If you provide the proper servos, sensors, and gyros, it wasn''t terribly difficult to design a program that could learn to operate the bot and keep it upright. Technocore¡¯s heuristic programming could even learn to accommodate irregular footing, slipping, getting pushed, bumping into things, and so on. The programming even did better than people do ¨C at a certain point a person''s body generally just lets itself fall down so it can stand back up again, the bot will go to crazy and uncomfortable lengths to stay upright if that''s what its programming demanded.

    Now, give that same standing bot arms. It needs arms, right? A bot that can''t pick things up, carry things, or manipulate things isn''t super useful. That same programming can easily learn to use the arms while maintaining balance ¨C pick up boxes, pull levers, whatever.

    Now, here''s the key. As amazing as Technocore¡¯s AI is at maintaining its balance using the gyros and body position, it will never, ever, use an arm to hold onto a railing to help its balance. At least, it won''t unless a programmer includes that as a tool for its task. It can use any tools in its programming to perfection, but will never think to pick up a different tool. The AI was simply incapable of looking outside the box. Even if a programmer tried to give it ways out of the box, all that actually happened was a program with a bigger box.

    Obviously, most of what we wanted to do with AI was way more complex than just standing upright. It also took comprehensive and open-minded thinkers to avoid garbage-data problems, but that was what Technocore specialized in. We licensed their tech and hired consultants to try out the AI in our mines and asked them to maximize production. It worked great, and so we began to use it in more and more stuff. Eventually, we bought them out entirely, folding some of them into our research divisions and letting the rest work on synergy with our various departments.

    Akins cheerfully incorporated the Ais in our arcology ¨C automated restaurants, bartenders, materials distribution, even elevators that monitored and predicted load to minimize wait times. Meanwhile, Technocore¡¯s competitors were doing the same thing everywhere. That''s probably why the salesman wasn''t the normal greasy type ¨C his programs really sold themselves.

    But before long, drones were farming, building, manufacturing, selling, stocking shelves, flying planes, cleaning homes, cooking, and even helping people get dressed.

 13: Guard at the Gates - Kens Interlude (1)

    ¡°What the crap is this?¡± Ken was holding a small white case. Ken was a grey-eyed, medium-sized man, with a round forehead that seemed to have pushed past his hairline. Brown hair had been buzzed but had grown out just this side of shaggy. Round shoulders were emphasized by the sport coat he wore. He had a thick mustache but was otherwise cleanshaven.

    There was a similar case on each desk in the bullpen. Ken¡¯s quick hands were opening the case as he sat down, his partner already pecking away at the computer in front of him.

    ¡°You¡¯d know if you read your emails,¡± Johnston didn¡¯t bother to look up.

    ¡°They always cover what matters in roll call.¡± Inside the case was an oddly shaped pistol. It almost looked like an old German WWII pistol ¨C a long skinny barrel balanced by a heavy handle and boxy mechanisms in the back. The handle was angled, and the whole thing was apparently lacquered white. Ken didn¡¯t know a gunmaker who did that ¨C usually, you got black or grey, maybe a camo pattern or something.

    ¡°Don¡¯t forget to turn in your Sig,¡± Johnston smirked at his computer screen. Johnston¡¯s white teeth never seemed to match his yellowed eyes.

    "What?¡± Ken hefted the gun. It was a 9mm, but the mechanism was funky.

    ¡°Read your email. They told us about this months ago. New service weapons, made from that plasteel stuff. Department got them cheap, some new company wants a trial run.¡±

    ¡°So I¡¯ve got to learn a new weapon just because the city got a deal?¡± The angled grip in particular would be a bitch. Shooting it would mean adjusting stance and aim.

    ¡°Yup. Look on the bright side, if you break anything in it other than the spring in the magazine, the warranty will pay you over a million. I think there¡¯s already a crowd downstairs playing with it.¡±

    ¡°Shit.¡±

    "Read your emails, McParland.¡± Ken turned back to his computer. ¡°Oh, and just wait till you try and sign out a vest.¡±

    The Sergeant ran roll call like normal. Ken sat in the back. ¡°Reminder, you¡¯ve got until the end of the week to turn in your old guns. So get comfortable with the PS9mms quickly.¡±

    Reporting went on like normal. ¡°McParland, Johnson, I know you¡¯ve got those robberies on your plate, but I¡¯m sending you two down to Deephaven. There have been some incidents in Greenwood and Deephaven both, and they want more help there for quick responses. Go plainclothes, take an unmarked car.¡±

    The area in question was an old suburb. Huge trees loomed over the road, with sunlight drenching areas marked by old rotted stumps. The old ranch-style homes were almost invisible from the road, with bushes and trees hiding them from view. The houses you could see were large and well built. But every third or so had siding peeling away, or boarded up windows, or was slowly getting buried in green ivy.

    Ken¡¯s watery grey eyes watched the side of the road as his partner slowly cruised the neighborhoods, careful not to take the same street as they slowly patrolled. He was especially watching the people sitting here and there on the side of the road. Most of the homes he could see had someone sitting on the porch, a glass of water in their hand. A few had larger groups, what looked like neighbors standing around talking.

    The radio buzzed. ¡°We have a ten fifty-seven on Springhaven.¡±

    Johnston glanced at Ken, ¡°That¡¯s the next street over.¡±

    Nodding, Ken grabbed the microphone, ¡°Ten-four. This is McParland and Johnston, we¡¯re two minutes out.¡±

    Following dispatch¡¯s directions, the two pulled up to a little convenience store. A tall man, probably six three, gangly with shaggy grey hair, was pulling at the front door. White tank top, blue shorts. Flip flop sandals. Gold wedding ring, no other jewelry. Ken spotted the clerk inside, clutching a shotgun.

    Thank God I haven¡¯t turned in my old gun, Ken thought to himself. I can¡¯t believe they¡¯re making us carry guns made by the same people who made my kitchenware. The stuff works fine, but it''s cheap as hell. A good fry pan needs more heft than that plasma shit. Even if it works as advertised, that new gun is so lightweight it''s going to break some wrists with recoil. With his hand on his holster, Ken approached the guy at the door. The man¡¯s skin was flushed, he almost looked sunburnt. Red-eyed too, the wino was squinting at the handle as he pulled back on it.

    The door was marked push.

    ¡°Sir? Can we help you?¡± Johnston was approaching while Ken hung back. The man didn¡¯t respond.

    ¡°Sir?¡± The man was wearing a tank top and running shorts. No underwear. That was a relief, an outfit like that makes it hard to carry a weapon and nearly impossible to hide one. Ken got ready to pull his taser instead.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    Johnston finally got close enough and tapped the man on the shoulder. The tall guy stopped tugging on the door, furrowing his forehead. He straightened up, overcorrecting a bit and balancing by tugging on the door one more time, and turned his whole body to face Johnston.

    Johnston was in khakis and a blue polo shirt, but he was wearing his badge around his neck. Between that, the shoulder holster, and the aviators it was obvious who Johnston was. The man dropped his head, noticing the badge right away, although he squinted as he focused on it.

    ¡°I just need toothpaste,¡± the tall man said.

    ¡°Toothpaste?¡± Johnston asked?

    ¡°Yeah. Toothpaste.¡± The man turned, suddenly, back towards the store. Ken drew his taser, kept it pointing down.

    ¡°He wouldn¡¯t sell it! My card didn¡¯t work, but I was only a bit short.¡± The man pointed into the store, and the clerk inside gripped his gun tighter. Ken used his free hand to try and wave the clerk down. No need for a civilian to get involved. Besides, who knows what the shotgun was loaded with, or how trained the worker was. If he fired out of panic he could hit anyone with a slug. If it was loaded with shot it could be worse ¨C pellets rebounding every which way after hitting the heavy glass.

    ¡°I was only short a bit! Short, just short!¡± The tall man was relishing the word, nodding his head for emphasis with each repetition. ¡°I came out here ¨C a bit of change and I could get the toothpaste, but now I can¡¯t get in!¡±

    ¡°Ok, I got you,¡± Johnston said, taking hold of the man by his arm. ¡°Why don¡¯t you come sit down for a minute. You live near here?¡±

    There was only one car at the store, parked around back. Ken was willing to bet the car belonged to the nervous clerk inside.

    ¡°Ken, why don¡¯t you go in and talk to the clerk, I¡¯ve got this guy just fine.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Ken nodded. He holstered his taser back under his jacket and pushed the door open. The blast of cold air was welcome, drying the sheen of sweat on his scalp right away.

    ¡°That was fast, you guys never get here that fast. I¡¯m sick of these nutters messing with my store!¡± The clerk didn¡¯t give Ken a chance to introduce himself. The clerk was a middle-aged guy, five nine. Bit of a gut, wide shoulders, curly dark hair tight against his head. A bit of grey showing at the temples. Brown eyes. Black t-shirt, black jeans, black shoes. No jewelry.

    ¡°Please put the gun down, sir.¡± Ken¡¯s had was back on his holster. The clerk started, realized he was holding his shotgun still, and set it down on the counter with a small thud.

    ¡°What happened?¡±

    The clerk answered, ¡°This guy comes in, staggering around. He dumped a bunch of stuff on the counter for me to ring up.¡± There was still a tube of toothpaste on the counter, along with some ibuprofen, breath mints, nail clippers, and a leather wallet.

    ¡°He tried to pay with a card, it declined. He tried a few more cards, they declined too.¡± The clerk pointed at the wallet still laying on the counter. ¡°Then the guy dumped like a buck fifty and tried to tell me it was enough.¡±

    ¡°I told him no way and started to take the stuff to put away. He grabbed me, told me it was enough, and then staggered outside. I left the stuff there and called 911. You guys got back in here before he came back in. He''s been hanging on the door for a bit.¡±

    Ken picked up the wallet, pulling an expired driver¡¯s license out. ¡°Thank you, sir. I¡¯ll be back in a moment, get your statement. You can go ahead and put this stuff away now.¡±

    StBack outside, the guy was sitting on a curb, with Johnston standing over him. Ken handed his partner the driver¡¯s license. Johnston jerked his head towards the clerk inside, but Ken just shook his head. Nothing had happened that was worth the paperwork, and the clerk didn¡¯t seem like he¡¯d push things now that he wasn¡¯t feeling threatened.

    ¡°So, Mr. Bowles, why don¡¯t we get you home, sleep this off?¡± They got him into the back of their car and took him home. The address on the license was only a few hundred yards away, but driving him was easier than carrying him, even with the risk of vomit added in. Bowle¡¯s house was a big brick colonial thing. The lawn was impeccable, with no weeds and recently cut. The cracked driveway was weed-free and swept clean. Only one of the front windows was boarded up. They got him inside and onto a couch, and then left.

    The next incident was a burning car. Not much to do. The fire responders just let it burn out, watching to make sure nothing spread. Ken filled out the report and watched the neighbors watch the firemen watch the fire. The license plate didn¡¯t come up as stolen, the phone number on file for the owner came up disconnected. The address on the registration was from the other side of the state. The car was a fifteen-year-old Honda. One of the people living in the neighborhood called in the fire but said they didn¡¯t see it start, and they didn''t see anyone hanging around who didn''t live nearby. No signs of an accident and the car''s windows weren¡¯t broken either. After half an hour a local patrolman came by to sit on the scene until the car cooled enough to get towed.

    And so the day went. A few more drunk and disorderlies, a couple of domestics, a vandalism report. One of the domestics turned into an arrest when the guy threw a punch at Johnston. If this had been their permanent assignment they would have probably stopped to chat with some of the little groups clustered here and there through the suburb, but they were only there for a week. Not much point in getting to know people if you¡¯re not going to be there long. It was a little bit active, but to Ken, it didn''t feel abnormal for the suburbs.

    Ken wished they could keep working on tracking down the thefts. It¡¯s not like they were likely to recover anything. Just some crap stolen from the university. It was probably just staff who didn''t notify admin they were moving stuff around. If he was lucky it was a dumb student who took an opportunity and would be easy to identify. But odds were the stuff was simply gone without leaving behind any leads to follow up on. But he didn''t want to work the robbery case just because he was itching to solve it or anything.

    It¡¯s just that he was a detective. The whole point towards the work and study he went through to make detective was so he wouldn¡¯t have to pull patrol shifts like this. It¡¯s not like it made a difference ¨C drunks were drunks, wife-beaters were wife beaters. Neighborhoods like this were just full of crap. You could skim a pool all day long but there¡¯d always be more scum on top in the morning.

 14: A New Castle

    The arcology was awesome, in the old literal definition of the word. The footprint was huge ¨C a rough circle five miles across. Twenty square miles, right down in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. We built out there mostly because it was close to our main iron mines and refinery.

    The best part about it? We got a deal with the state to be completely tax-free for ninety-nine years. We had to commit to sponsoring charter schools sufficient for the full population of the county where we built it, and we took over all their power generation too. The schools cost us a fair amount, but we could manage power essentially for free. Other than a bit of design time to make sure we could connect to the grid and to shut down the old plants without interruptions, getting the power sorted was almost as simple as hitting a big button.

    For the arcology, we laid down the foundation first ¨C Plasma Steel beams right down into the bedrock. We started out with infrastructure, building a major automated Plasma Steel production facility with its own glass printing facility. The factory was specifically designed to handle different sizes of projects. It produced everything from the massive beams and sheets in the mind-boggling volumes that we used for construction right down to one-off prototypes ordered by a researcher.

    We overbuilt the warehousing and docking to handle a few thousand percent of the expected capacity. Next, we built in stacked greenhouses and hydroponics. Right off the bat, we could grow enough to feed almost two hundred people an acre in our grow spaces, and I kept getting reports on how we could improve that. With plenty of space, we stacked up the grow areas and left almost five square miles of space available for greenhouses, hydroponics, and other space-age agriculture.

    All of that filled up the main circle and stood about five stories high above the ground. The wall encircling it was built as smooth as possible. We tried to avoid any protrusions or structures that broke up the flow of the wide gentle circle. Just gateways, doors, and windows to give it texture. There was a train station built inside the wall, and an airfield just to the west of the structure with plenty of space to expand. The trucking docks were between the trains and the airport, and entrances to underground garages all around. We¡¯d also left open a few hundred doors higher up to handle growing air-drone traffic. A fair chunk of that interior space was still vacant, and we¡¯d done our best to design the layout to be modular if and when needs changed.

    The top of the circle was still mostly empty. It was here that we planned on putting people. We¡¯d built a few dozen apartment buildings ¨C skyscrapers really. Almost fifty stories tall, but the way they were connected to each other made them look funky. They were all clustered at the southern edge, with the bottom ten or so stories completely covered over. There was an eye-bending lattice of bridges connecting them to each other up higher. From the outside, the network of bridges looked insane, but on the inside it made sense, especially considering how we were laying out our grid system ¨C it wasn¡¯t built on squares, instead, we designed around arcs and floors. I did my best to make sure there was lots of open space inside, and that the buildings weren¡¯t just unending doors into apartments.

    We had plazas, concert halls, theaters, shopping areas, food areas. Each residential space was built like a donut, with individual apartments having balconies and windows to the outside, and their doors opening into large open spaces inside. No narrow hallways in public areas.

    It was filling up slowly too. We allowed all our employees, including those who were basically paid to do nothing, to move in rent-free, along with their families. As we hired new employees, we discounted their salaries a lot but gave them space inside. By the time we had become the single largest manufacturer worldwide, we had a bit under ten thousand workers who could work from headquarters. A few thousand more were in research or other non-manufacturing divisions who moved in too. I got my idea when Ashley pointed out that most of the ¡®extra¡¯ staff we kept on salary gravitated to various tasks inside to make themselves helpful. A lot of the time those employees were just gophers or note-takers for someone else, but almost none of them just sat around and watched TV.

    Not too long after most of the company''s staff moved in, we all got together at Austin''s place in the new Arcology. We meaning the owners. Austin had opted for the largest living space of any of us. The Beards and I both took one of the smallest apartments offered in the Arcology. Hansen had one a bit larger, but his extra space was filled with lab equipment, and he usually was sharing it during the day with an assistant or two. But Austin had a family. Sure, all three of his kids were grown and he only shared his rooms with his wife, but he still wanted space for a couple of guest rooms, a large family room, a dining room, and an entertainment room for the sake of kids and grandkids and family events. Two of his kids lived in the Arcology, the third managed a few thousand acres of our farmland an hour south of headquarters.

    We had some comfortable chairs set up in his greenhouse balcony. It was covered over with thick panes and filled with thick vines and ornamental flowers. The warm fragrant air contrasted with the gray snow blowing outside. It was easy to forget what Minnesota winters were like when you lived full time inside. He had a twelve-foot telescope set up on rails so that you could easily push it all the way outside when you wanted. Alan was walking me through the fine points of the design when Hansen finally arrived.

    I hadn''t seen him much over the last few years. We were both busy with the company, but we spent our time on entirely different things. He was still plugging away at research, nailing down every variation and measurement he could. There had been only a few minor breakthroughs (like a method to recycle Plasma materials ¨C by altering the fields a bit you could re-form a piece. Time-consuming but better than filling up landfills with junk that will literally never go away), but he remained up to his figurative elbows in data and tests. I was dealing with the daily minutiae of running the company ¨C evolving compensation packages, design priorities, tax negotiation, and so on.

    He had aged shockingly. I shouldn''t have been surprised: the man was in his sixties. When I had first met him, he was just middle-aged, and I was a kid who probably couldn''t tell the difference between someone in their thirties or seventies at the time. But he had lost most of his hair, grayed out, cheeks and neck withered. He was an old man now, and he reveled in his ability to be cranky, eccentric, and detached. He had shown up in carpet slippers, flannel pants, and a tweed jacket over a t-shirt. I expected him to pull out a pipe to smoke.

    He thumped into one of the padded wicker chairs, and asked me, ¡°So why did you call this meeting? I hadn''t heard about anything new, aren''t you supposed to handle the day-to-day?¡±

    ¡°Not an emergency, more of a slowly-growing concern.¡± I sat down as well, while Alan sat on a lounge chair next to El. Austin was already in another wicker armchair. ¡°There are a number of issues we''re facing, and while we could maintain the status quo for some time yet, I''d like to get ahead of them. And anything we do decide will be... major. And problematic. I''d like to have a united front. At a minimum, I''d at least like some consensus before moving on.¡±

    ¡°To sum up... living here kinda sucks.¡±

    Austin snorted at me, ¡°What do you mean? Living here is the entire reason anyone wants to work for us. Not that we''re hiring tons of people, but living in the Castle is our biggest draw. Especially after the Pittsburgh riots.¡±

    Why do people insist on nicknames for stuff? We were living in an arcology, not a castle. We made Plasma Steel, not plasteel. But now wasn''t time for that discussion. ¡°Sure, sure. Living somewhere safe is a big deal, and not getting blown up or set on fire is a major plus. But it still sucks. We''ve got twelve thousand employees here, and another thirty thousand dependents, but that''s just a small town. And an isolated small town, at that.¡±Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    El got it, right away, ¡°I know what you mean. There''s no music, no parties except for work stuff, only one club.¡±

    ¡°And that club sucks,¡± said Alan. ¡°You''re right, but I don''t see what we can do about it.¡±

    ¡°That''s what I mean,¡± I said. ¡°There are things we can do, but they''ll be radical. And you can expect people to have issues. Basically, I think we should stop being a small town, and become a big town. A city, even. A big city.¡±

    ¡°We can do it. We have less than fifty thousand people living here, even counting the part-timers who only come in seasonally. We have current living capacity for another hundred and fifty thousand. The designs John''s team came up with will let us expand capacity up to nearly a million people in a year and a half. And that includes public space, schools, and room for entertainment and commercial venues. We can grow past that, too, if we want to.¡±

    ¡°A million people?¡± Austin was clearly mulling things over... ¡°That seems, um, well actually, we have a bigger footprint than Manhattan, and they''ve got two million people living there, right?

    ¡°One and a half, actually. Give or take a hundred thousand. Their population has been pretty steady for almost a hundred years, too. And not only do they have a few square miles less space than we do, we¡¯ve got gobs more vertical space. The Arcology isn¡¯t just more carefully planned, we build much higher, too. The logistics are entirely doable. And if we do get a million people to move here, I think we can improve a lot of social problems. More kids, more musicians, more creative types, more social options. You aren''t limited to other PPI workers for everything.¡±

    ¡°But people aren''t going to want to just move here. We can manage it, and we can do it with barely a hiccup, but incentives are a problem. Which is why I think we should basically just open the doors and let people move in for free. All the privileges employees already get. No rent, and we provide the same food, services, and so on as we do employees.¡±

    Alan and Austin started talking at once, but Alan came through loudest, ¡°Free? We''d just take over the room and board for a million people? That would bankrupt us!¡±

    Austin''s complaints were similar, ¡°How would we feed that many? The farms only have so much output.¡±

    ¡°I''ve actually spent some time with Ms. Rice already, looking at costs and feasibility. We¡¯ve been thinking about this ever since Canada expanded their UBI. Given our tax and capacity situations, we would pretty much break even. There¡¯re a few assumptions in our estimates, for example, I''m assuming that we can find enough teachers willing to work for room and board that we don''t have to pay extra for them, but I''m guessing that the benefits of living here, access to everything we produce, and our other services and tech support; all of that will mean that we can get all the professionals we''re looking for. If we can¡¯t, well, we¡¯ll have to just go recruit people. It¡¯s not like we¡¯re short on penthouses.¡±

    I tapped my tablet, sending some documents to the other four with varying buzzes and chimes. ¡°Building and furnishing their spaces won''t cost anything, really. Our fabricators are currently at just fourteen percent of capacity, and that''s been falling for the past few years. Our extraction divisions maintain a stockpile capable of supporting maximum output for three years, and the AI wranglers say that they can increase production to maintain maximum output even if we double our capacity every year for the next decade.¡±

    ¡°Food is the only real cost ¨C anything we provide for free here is stuff that we can''t sell. But given the tax situations, any profits we make selling food are immediately lost to federal taxes anyways. So that works out fine. PPM is already producing food sufficient to feed fifty million people, so this is a drop in the bucket, anyways. Protein is the biggest issue; we just don''t raise much livestock. But we can increase fish farming, soy, and nuts; I¡¯ve got some reports that we can shift food waste from production and start pig farming, too.¡±

    "I suspect the bigger issue will be food diversity, but we''re on that. Right now, our farms outside have about six hundred people managing them, on top of the drones. But they don¡¯t grow much beyond corn, wheat, and beans. But we¡¯ve got those grow rooms downstairs. They¡¯re not done yet, but they are slated to employ another thousand people once we finish. And then we''ll be able to supply most of the fruit and veg and processed food that you can get in supermarkets. At least, what you used to be able to get."

    Alan spoke again, ¡°So people are just going to come here, and have everything handed to them. Are we going to make them work, or pay anything?¡±

    I shrugged, ¡°Again, we''ll need a handful of professionals ¨C teachers, doctors, and police, mostly. But other than that, yeah. People can come for free.¡±

    Alan frowned at me, ¡°I''m not sure I like that. I mean, having more people here would be great, it can be boring when you don''t have a project on hand. But just letting people do nothing... I mean, that doesn''t feel right. And isn''t that why there''s all the riots, suicides, murders, and so on? Unemployment and purposelessness?¡± Unemployment in the States was approaching eighty percent, between the bottom following out of manufacturing and automation, there just wasn''t that much work left that needed to get done. Welfare had expanded, somewhat, food stamps and medical aid were helping, and no one was starving or freezing to death. But most people were just spinning their wheels and angry about it.

    I explained, ¡°This is why we needed a meeting. Memos that no one reads doesn''t cut it for stuff like this. And yeah, it doesn''t quite feel right, does it? But we can provide for people without cost, I''m not sure if I like the idea of forcing them to work any better. And we do need more people here.¡±

    ¡°As to the violence and stuff. I''m not sure. We can keep guns out, and screen people for domestic violence or addiction issues. But I''m not sure if I can buy that it''s just boredom. It''s hopelessness. If we can put them somewhere safe, where education and other services are provided, where poverty isn''t really an issue, won''t it be better?¡±

    ¡°I guess.¡± Alan didn''t appear to be willing to argue much, so El chimed in.

    ¡°There still needs to be something to work towards. I mean, we''ve got our twelve thousand, but let¡¯s be honest, that''s four times what we actually need. So, we need ways to reward people willing to actually get out of their houses and do stuff. Otherwise, I don''t think people will be happy, whether or not their needs are met.¡± She paused for a moment, clearly trying to put thoughts into words.

    ¡°I mean, Alan and I don''t make molds anymore, but we still sculpt and play, we have our glassworks to work in even if the molds get printed out now. Could that be enough? You said we needed to fill all the promenades, and I know most of the space in the central blocks are still empty. Everyone gets their apartments, sure, but we can allocate shop space and workspace to people who intend to actually use it? Some people like to cook, and host, right? The auto-chefs are nice, but what if we encourage people to start restaurants by giving them the resources to do so?¡±

    Alan said, ¡°So we solve the problem of letting people live for free by giving them more free stuff?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I get what you mean, El. We''re estimating about a thousand square feet per person. Oddly enough, the ratio mostly goes down for families and couples. And this might be a good thing, too. We want a more active community, so let¡¯s go ahead and tailor what incentives we do have towards that. If you want to do something beyond sitting in your rooms, watching TV, and eating, then you can. And all you have to prove is that you''ll actually put the time in.¡±

    Hansen finally chimed in, ¡°I like it. I think. It won''t hurt us, and it''s at least an attempt to fix the problems we''ve been causing. Worst case, people whose lives are falling apart will still have lives falling apart, with more reliable heat and water.¡±

    ¡°And you know what? All the rest of you have to vote against me to get your way. And since it looks like Ward¡¯s voting for it too, I think the discussion is over.¡± He stood up and stretched.

    ¡°Besides, it¡¯ll be nice to get new assistants more easily,¡± he said as he shuffled out. As though he didn¡¯t already have a waiting list of applicants.

    And that was it. The rest of us kept talking it over after Dr. Hansen headed back to his own spaces. There were plenty of bugs to work out ¨C we had to decide what would or wouldn''t be contraband. Guns were out, although they could be kept in a locker and checked out for hunting or whatever when leaving the city. The types of activity that merited a public space had to be defined, though we were pretty generous about it; my favorite ''shop'' was a large room occupied by a constantly evolving model train track and scenery. Almost everyone spent their time on some hobby or another. Sure, a lot of them settled into a steady life of online gaming and lotus-eating, but a lot of them invested thousands of hours into music, art, writing, crafts, and more.

    We were able to get enough teachers, and doctors, although we struggled to get enough nurses. Some AI help alleviated the healthcare problem, but sick people almost universally responded better to flesh & blood caretakers. A few cosmetic perks and health care workers'' social status rose enough to get more people into training programs. After a few years of growth, the population steadied down at about one point two million citizens. It mostly stopped growing because other arcologies were coming online to compete with us for residents.

    I still consider the Arcology to be my greatest idea. The rest of my life was pretty much accidental, but this was my idea and my contribution to evolving modern civilization.

    The only problem was that I started getting called King of the Great Lakes. So I had that going for me. Which is nice.

 15: A Pause

    One of my first, non-employee, immigrants was a cheerful man named Albert. I forget his last name, we weren¡¯t ever particularly close, but he and his wife, Mary, operated a place they called ''Main Line Mocha.'' It was a coffee shop, ran on our new arcology business model. A few auto-chefs that did most of the brew and cleanup work, but Mary ''ran'' the place by experimenting around with menu selections and providing a human eye to keep things moving smoothly. Albert spent all his time expanding and modifying the train tracks and scenery that gradually filled their space.

    I liked it for a few reasons. People didn¡¯t talk much beyond polite greetings, the chairs were comfortable and usually placed in a nook where you could read quietly. They didn''t play music, instead, the shop was filled with the quiet rattle of the model trains endlessly circling. The smell of coffee and spices was accented by the aroma of fresh paint and glue, which brought all sorts of childhood memories to mind.

    It should also go without saying that Albert''s obsessive scenery building did a lot to alleviate the whiteness that filled your vision throughout the arcology. When every structural support was made of a slightly pearlescent white material that didn''t really hold paint, the view gets monotonous quickly. We''d tried different colored lighting in places, but somehow that usually just made things worse. Full-spectrum white with a bit of UV kept people happiest, but damn the view gets boring quickly. A lot of the people here tended to spend their time in the plazas and promenades with the most color. That usually meant garden spaces, but I usually liked the artsy and crafty spaces better.

    All that being said, I just liked the temperature most. Each promenade maintained a slightly different climate, lighting scheme, and general atmosphere, which in turn tended to attract different types of activities. Main Line Mocha was in the top promenade on the outermost SSW arc. In the large open central area, a handful of large ice rinks were set up. Pride of place was a great irregular field of ice surrounded by winter greenery. That one was open to the public and was constantly filled with children, couples, and other people enjoying themselves. Ringed around were several other large rinks that could be reserved for lessons, hockey teams, and figure skaters. Three levels of irregularly shaped shop spaces and stalls surrounded the ice. Most of the cubbies were filled with people who appreciated the cold or did something that benefited from the cold. There was a little garage that housed a few Zambonis. They could be automatic, but there was a waiting list of people who wanted to drive one.

    Main Line Mocha hadn''t gotten their space looking for the cold, but Albert and Mary didn¡¯t mind it at all. Albert just wanted a space to play in, and to let people see his work. Mary started serving coffee for the sake of something to do, and before long they were serving a great deal of hot cocoa and other warm drinks to skaters. As far as I was concerned, it was as comfortable a place to sit as any, and watching the skaters was always nice.

    Unusually, Albert bustled up to me as soon as I came in. He waited while I punched in an order for an espresso, then asked me what I thought about the new tax.

    I was confused, hardly anyone here had an income anymore, so taxes weren''t usually a concern. With a raised eyebrow, I asked him, ¡°What tax?¡±

    Ashley Rice giggled. She had traded in her sensible flats for some sort of shapeless boot that looked like it was lined with sheepskin. I could only see the top of the boots because her denim skirt crept up a bit when she sat down. Her grey cardigan was buttoned up too. I watched her for a second, waiting for her to answer me or Albert. Instead, her lips tightened a bit as she refused to make eye contact with either of us. I have no idea what could be so fascinating about a cup of brown liquid.

    Albert jumped in instead, ¡°The charity tax. I''ve been hearing about it on the news. Washington wants people to keep working, and so they''re trying to ban charity to idle types. You get fined if you give stuff or money away, that''s what they''re saying.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± I understood now, I hadn''t realized that my people had been paying that much attention. ¡°We''re not worried about that, at all.¡±

    ¡°But are you going to keep giving everything away here? I haven''t done any work since moving here, and you''re providing all this for us.¡± Albert gestured widely, then froze a bit awkwardly. He glanced at Ashley. He knew she was our CFO, I usually had our weekly sitdowns in his little space. He''d also seen me run away rather quickly when I''d been confronted with demonstrations of gratefulness before. ¡°Um, won''t that mean you have to pay the government for everything you give away?¡±

    ¡°Do I look worried?¡± I smiled. The stupid charity tax baffled me. I got that people are supposed to work. Idle people get into all sorts of trouble. It¡¯s in the bible, I think. Right? Devil''s hands, blah blah blah, that sounds like it¡¯s from a scripture somewhere. The problem is that it''s hard to force people to do anything. Nothing new about that, just ask the Puritans. Or the Southern Baptists. Preventing people from doing things you don''t like can be hard enough but getting them to go out and do what you do want is damn near impossible. I mean, even in a world where you have to work just to stay alive there would still be people who looked for any chance at a free ride.

    And lately, people absolutely do not have to work to survive. They didn''t have to work even for luxuries. Most measures of productivity had just stopped meaning anything. If you don''t include entertainment and the arts, the United State¡¯s GDP could be maintained with four or five minutes of work a week per person. In other words, one person working full time could easily get done a job that used to require five hundred. On average, of course. Some areas were almost as labor-intensive as they used to be ¨C medicine, education, and programming were all about the same as they''d always been. Others really required no human input at all ¨C mining, production, travel, and even most service work was either automated or unnecessary.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    Personally, I think things would work themselves out. I mean, PPM was figuring out how to deal. Soup or Counting or whatever Google was calling themselves this year didn¡¯t seem to be having any problems adapting. Disney was managing was too, as was HP, and so were dozens of other companies. Even manufacturing companies could hang on if they were the least bit smart ¨C Boeing and Volkswagon had almost grown enough to compete with us. Frankly, our only real problem, speaking as an executive, was keeping a hold of our designers. No one really wanted cash anymore ¨C it was too hard to spend, or to know whether you were getting paid enough. Some things were basically free ¨C rent, cars, durable goods in general, but the price of entertainment and similar was soaring. Food probably would be incredibly expensive if not for various welfare programs and distribution automation.

    So, we paid in kind, and technically in production credits. Free rent, utilities, food, and similar for everyone who lived in my Arcology, as well as a stipend for production. We figured out roughly what our total capacity was, and divided half of that among the citizens. Every time you wanted to make clothing, or a new toy, or a car, or a bed, or whatever, that took time for the drones, harvesters, and drives; we based the stipend on that. Direct PPI employees ¨C programmers and engineers, mostly, got the largest portion. Professionals and necessary workers in the Arcology got about half that. Everyone else got about a much smaller portion.

    Of course, when pretty much no one managed to use all of the minimum production portion, let alone the larger allotments, the concept was a joke. Even after we hit a million citizens, combined with all our other production, we never maintained more than twenty-five percent of total capacity for more than a week or two.

    But there were people worried about giving away just about anything a person could dream of without some sort of merit system. Which meant that all sorts of stupid ideas were in play ¨C attempts to ensure that people worked and that hard-working types rose to the top. This charity tax thing was just the first idea to get support from enough congressmen to actually look like it might get implemented. Too bad their first attempt was pointless.

    ¡°Nah, remember that contract you signed, Albert?¡± I needed to settle him down. I didn''t see Albert leading any bloody revolts, but there wasn''t any reason for people to worry over nothing.

    ¡°The contract... you mean when we moved in? Yeah, I agreed to a bunch of rules, and what we''d get. That one?¡±

    Mary bustled in with a cup for me, and a cup for her husband. She never minded joining into any conversation in her place. ¡°Albert had to give up his guns, which frankly makes me happier.¡±

    ¡°I didn''t give them up, Mary. They''re in a locker below.¡± Albert sipped his own drink gratefully, ¡°Besides, it''s not like I''m worried about anyone breaking in anymore.¡±

    Time to get back on the subject, I didn''t really want to get into a guns rights conversation with the guy. Again. ¡°Yeah, that contract. But it also means that the materials we give you aren''t charity. They''re payment for services rendered. Everyone who lives here is an employee. Even if all you provide is some flavor to the city, it''s enough. So we won''t be paying any taxes for this bill. And if they try to make us, we''ll sue, right up to the Supreme Court. And if we lose, we pay them the value of what we give you. Which is effectively nothing, at least in terms of dollars. So we still win.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, we''re not worried about the new tax. Frankly, I''d forgotten it was a thing.¡± I sipped my own drink. Mary had overridden my order and brought me a hot chocolate instead, with a shot of espresso. It was further warmed by a combination of chili pepper and nutmeg. She did that sometimes, but she usually knew better than me what I wanted.

    The conversation drifted. Albert showing off a cliff face he had sculpted of plaster and was beginning to paint. Mary pushing samples of different seasonings on me. Ashley had gotten out a little tablet while we chatted and was reading while she sipped her drink. We all got distracted when a couple skated out onto a reserved rink below us and started going through some simple routines. The Main Line Mocha had a good spot to view all the rinks, but the couple was one of the closest. The couple came out with an older woman who shouted out critiques and instructions as they skated.

    One of the unforeseen effects of our arcology program was that it attracted a certain class of athlete and performer. Learning to ice dance competitively used to be expensive. The equipment cost, and I guess people used to go through skates relatively quickly. Also, you needed to secure time on ice, which also cost. You needed a coach and a partner, and they usually liked money for living expenses too. And you needed the free time available to pour thousands of hours into practicing. Oh, and you would have to travel to ever actually compete.

    So far as I can tell, any competitive form of athletics was expensive. Even the ones that didn''t require any dedicated equipment or space still required huge amounts of time. Which had meant, historically, if a sport wasn''t popular enough to sell tickets and advertisements, then the only people to really compete were independently wealthy and incredibly motivated. But here, the only thing of value was time, and so time could be invested where it was valued.

    And thus the Arcology attracted figure skaters, gymnasts, wrestlers, skateboarders, tennis players, musicians, artists, and more and more. Sure, lots of them were terrible. Most of them were probably terrible, not that I''m a judge. But even people with terrible talent got pretty good when they didn''t have to worry about feeding themselves or their families and can just throw themselves into an interest. And the people who were already pretty good got incredible.

    Which meant that even though the couple below were rank amateurs, they were an absolute pleasure to watch while I avoided talking business with Ashley.

 16: Distressed Damsels: Maras Interlude

    ¡°Don''t worry!¡± shouted Naomi, her voice hoarse in the smoke. ¡°It''ll be OK!¡±

    She was shouting over the roar of wind and flame, but she didn''t need to bother, not really. Even now, perched twenty-one stories up, with everything that had happened today, Mara knew what Naomi was thinking. After all, ''Don''t worry'' and ''It''ll be OK'' had always been Naomi''s mottos ¨C the statements she lived her life by.

    Of course, Naomi was usually right about both statements.

    A long time ago, they were in high school, Mara had picked up some history book. Not really a history book, it was one of those ones that sprinkled history and politics with opinion, kneaded everything into something that looked coherent at a glance, and then half-baked into philosophy. It was a light and easy read, even if the book was to real history texts what Harlequin Romance was to Shakespearean tragedy. Mara finished it anyways. There was one concept threaded through the book that stuck with her.

    The world was made up of blondes and brunettes. Blonds were probably what Kipling called a son of Mary. People with a sunny and optimistic outlook, an outlook reinforced by chance as good thing after good thing happened to them. In the book, the United States was a blonde nation. Founded as a city on the hill, following manifest destiny, and then gifted with a continent already (mostly) depopulated, filled with natural resources; and right when the new continent was filling up a world conflict broke out that ended up transferring all of Europe''s wealth to New York City. Blondes.

    Like Naomi. The popular girl, gifted with natural athletics and a bright smile. The girl who could trip and fall and always get helped up by the cutest boy in the hallway. The girl who could show up on the first day and get assigned to be lab partners with the shy genius. That girl, the blonde.

    Brunettes, on the other hand, were the sons of Martha. Pessimistic, and rightfully so, since they had to work for everything they got. Sweat and blood pouring into every accomplishment. But no matter how hard they work, they still have to watch the damn blondes swanning their way to the top with a smile and a wave.

    Mara was a brunette. She always had to stand back up on her own. She studied for hours for her grades. And if she showed up late she¡¯d just have to do the project on her own. Because she was a brunette.

    Mara believed this theory all the way down into her soul. After all, she had a perfect example right in front of her, even if Naomi wasn''t blonde. Naomi''s thick and perfectly straight hair was raven black ¨C the kind of black that looks blue in the sunlight. Mara herself was actually blonde, which just made her feel even more bitter about how they had to go through life. Mara wasn''t even the sort of blonde that you can be proud of, just the dirty light brown with paler highlights from the sun that people call blonde to humor an insecure girl. Mara made sure her driver''s license said she was brunette.

    What made Mara even more unhappy was that she had never been able to dislike Naomi. Naomi never did anything that Mara could actually be angry about, and so whenever Mara did feel jealous she got to feel guilty too.

    Mara and Naomi were twins.

    Fraternal twins, of course. They both had the same opportunities through childhood ¨C the same home, the same parents, the same toys, and the same outings. But somehow, it was always Naomi''s bright smile in the lead, with Mara quietly following. It was Naomi who became a cheerleader, and a star player in their school''s lacrosse team. Mara just read a lot. Naomi was student body president their senior year, while Mara helped with posters and prom decorations.

    Once in a while, Mara wished that Naomi could at least be a ditz. Why couldn¡¯t Naomi be a socialite who didn''t bother with anything serious? But Naomi took all the same advanced classes that Mara did and got the same high scores. It never seemed fair, Mara studied constantly, but Naomi split her efforts between all sorts of activities and still did well.

    If they had stayed on the same track through college, Mara may have learned to despise her sister. But they went to different schools. Naomi went to Kent State and took mechanical engineering classes. Mara stayed near home, but only because Carnegie Mellon was close. She studied physics. She was good at it too; math and science held an elegance and symmetry that other disciplines lacked. She had taken enough advanced classes that she was even able to graduate in three years.

    That was why they were both back at home, to celebrate Mara''s graduation, and to celebrate that she had gotten a great job offer as a research assistant along with a scholarship to work on her graduate degree. It was just Mara and Naomi for the weekend. They had planned on maybe eating out, going dancing, or maybe just hanging out together at home and watching old movies. Instead, here they were, standing outside the last staircase down from their parents¡¯ apartment.

    ¡°It''ll be OK, they design these things for fires and stuff. The doors shut automatically,¡± Naomi was saying.

    ¡°Then why were the other four stairwells just big chimneys?¡± demanded Mara. She was a little out of breath, she regretted cutting most of her cardio out of her routine the last couple of years. But Naomi was out of breath too, so who knows.

    Mara held the back of her hand to the big steel doors. Amazingly, they were cold. Well, they weren''t blistering hot like the others. Naomi had scorched her eyebrows to a blast of flame after throwing open the first set of stair doors. And, damnit, somehow the soot on her face still framed everything in a way that made the girl''s big eyes look sharp and confident. Mara was sure that if she lost her eyebrows she''d just look unfinished or doughy or something.

    They carefully opened the fire doors, and while not getting blasted by gouts of flame was nice, there was still smoke that trickled out.

    ¡°Now what?¡± said Mara. She had tried, really she did. But even at twenty-two she didn''t manage to keep the whine of her fear out of her voice. ¡°We can''t get down. Even if the fire isn''t there, there''s no way we can get down nineteen stories in the smoke.¡±

    Naomi paused for a moment, then smiled, ¡°No problem, we weren''t going down anyway. Not to that.¡± Her eyes darted to a window for a moment then back at her sister. ¡°Remember? Daddy was already sending a helicopter to get us and everyone. It should be here soon, so we''re going up, not down. It''s only two floors, we can hold our breath and climb that.¡±

    Mara couldn''t bring herself to speak. She just looked back down the hallway, wishing they could just hide in the apartment. She nodded, and the two of them took deep breaths and plunged into the smoky stairwell. Naomi was right, she was able to get to the roof access without taking a breath. Except the door was locked.

    Mara pounded on the door a few times, then broke down and took a deep breath. Predictably, she just started coughing and fell to the ground. Naomi, instead of just hitting the door, threw her shoulder into it. She must have remembered a few things from her lacrosse days because the door banged open on the first hit. Mara scrambled outside and took a few breaths of the cleaner air, then noticed that Naomi had fallen to the ground by the door.

    Naomi''s eyes were closed and her mouth was screwed up tight. Mara¡¯s whole body flinched when she realized that Naomi''s shoulder was deformed, the arm held tight to her body but still just wrong. Mara helped Naomi up as best she could, and they moved farther from the doors onto the roof. There was a bunch of people there, Mara hadn''t realized that there were so many people still in their building. Most of them had left the night before when the riots had started.

    The girls had chosen a three-day weekend for their celebration, but labor day was a popular day for protests. Elijah and his Righteous Knights were the big one in Pittsburgh that weekend. Mara had heard of his group before. She didn''t think they were terribly unusual or radical ¨C not like the supremacists or anti-distributionists she had learned about from her parent''s generation. The Knights mostly wanted jobs, reasons to get dressed during the day. It seemed reasonable to Mara ¨C she was going to be a researcher, and she didn''t think she''d be happy without something like that in her life to drive her. Just hanging out at home and getting handouts seemed like Hell to her.

    Naomi and Mara had turned on the news when they started hearing cheers and shouts through the window. The crowds had been big enough that they didn''t want to go out.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°They''re angry today,¡± Naomi had said. ¡°They''re right, but wow. I wouldn''t want to be a CEO or politician in front of that crowd.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± answered Mara. ¡°I''m glad daddy is in Harrisburg.¡±

    They watched as Elijah gave his speech, as the crowd shouted themselves horse, chanting slogans and just venting anger into the air. The noise redoubled when the police showed up. Mara recognized the old-fashioned crest of the state police on the big vans. She hadn''t seen what they were wearing before though.

    ¡°Is that the new stuff, the plastic metal I''ve been hearing about?¡± asked Naomi.

    ¡°Yeah, you''re right, it''s Plasma Steel,¡± she said. She should have recognized it; the white and shiny armor had been in the news for a couple of years since the army had begun issuing it. Her lab at Carnegie even had a bunch of plasteel tools and equipment. She hadn''t realized that Pennsylvania had bought some for their police.

    The police demanded that Elijah surrender himself, and they named a few others. They ordered the crowd to disperse. Then someone threw something at the police. Mara wasn''t sure, but on the TV it had looked like a plastic water bottle. The cops opened fire, and the news cut out. Even without the TV, the girls could hear the gunfire go on through their windows. It stopped after just a few minutes, but by sundown, they were hearing shots coming from all over and could see smoke rising from over the skyline.

    Things were still crazy the next day. Worse, if anything. The fire alarms started in their building that afternoon, prompting the girls to leave their apartment. They hadn¡¯t been able to get through to 911, but their father had answered and promised to send help.

    A couple of the men in the group on the roof spotted Mara pulling Naomi out of the smoke and ran over to help the sisters. Mara waved them off, ¡°Careful, she broke her arm I think.¡±

    The older of the two men looked at it, and said, ¡°Nah, it just looks dislocated. It''ll hurt like hell, but as soon as you get it popped back in it should feel better.¡±

    ¡°Can you do it?¡± asked Naomi through gritted teeth.

    ¡°I''d probably just make it worse,¡± he said. ¡°I''ve seen it happen a few times, but I''m not a doctor.¡±

    ¡°Is there a doctor here?¡± said Mara. When the man shook his head, she asked, ¡°Now what?¡±

    ¡°I don''t know, we wait and hope the fire doesn''t climb, I guess,¡± said an older man. ¡°I thought those stairwells were supposed to be able to stay clear in a fire.¡±

    ¡°Who knows,¡± said another sooty face. ¡°It''s an old building, maybe the stairs aren''t really fire escapes. Maybe the rioters blocked them on purpose. Maybe the cops thought that anyone left were sympathizers. Doesn''t matter, does it?¡±

    Mara recognized Mrs. Shipley. Mrs. Shipley lived upstairs and chaired the co-op board. The girls'' dad always referred to the woman as ''that old battleship.'' Mara could never tell if he was joking or not when he said it. She wasn''t in her normal pantsuit though, she was dressed in sweatpants and a button-up men''s shirt. And she was talking quietly into an old-fashioned cell phone.

    She snapped it shut with a flourish, and said, ¡°Enough. We''ll be fine. Apparently Senator Brown already arranged a copter to pick up his girls. I gave them a count and SAR is sending a second one. They should be here within an hour. Sit quiet, and stay away from the edge.¡±

    It sounded like good advice, and everyone was tired, so everyone just found a place to sit. Mara watched her sister, and couldn''t help but think of the time she had broken her own arm. They had been eighteen, seniors, and had managed to get their prom dates to take them dirt biking the day before the dance.

    Naomi had already been zooming around the patch of woods while Mara''s date was showing her how to handle her bike. Of course, the moment Mara had started it, the bike had roared and took off. When the front wheel lifted off, she lost control and tipped the bike over an embankment. She was lucky not to get trapped under it but had obviously broken her arm.

    Naomi had seen it happen and zipped the bike over. Taking charge, she had yelled at Mara''s date ¨C the boy had been just standing there and laughing at Mara ¨C and gotten her own date to call 911. She had ridden with her sister in the ambulance and stayed by her bed while the doctors checked her out. No concussion, even though none of the kids had bothered with helmets. Just scrapes and bruises and a complete transverse fracture through both her radius and ulna.

    ¡°Just go,¡± Mara had said the next day from her bed.

    ¡°Nope, I''m going to watch Gone with the Wind with you, couldn''t miss it,¡± said Naomi.

    ¡°You''ve been excited about tonight for months, go,¡± repeated Mara.

    ¡°Nothing to be excited about, really,¡± explained Naomi. ¡°I thought it would be fun to do the double-twin-double-date thing. But Taylor''s boring and Nick is a dick.¡±

    ¡°He didn''t realize I''d been hurt so bad,¡± said Mara. She wasn''t quite so strident now. Either she was giving in or the painkillers were taking effect.

    ¡°Doesn''t matter,¡± said Naomi. ¡°Boys who laugh at girls who fall down are dicks. So Nick is a dick. And more importantly, I''m going to stay home and watch a movie with you.¡±

    Mara changed tack, ¡°But your dress, you don''t get to wear stuff like that so often...¡±

    ¡°Because I''m a kid,¡± said Naomi. ¡°I''ll have lots more chances. Just watch, the weddings will start soon! And the dress isn¡¯t that poofy, I can wear it then. Or maybe I''ll wear it to the Mud Run this July. That could be fun too. Imagine! I''ll be splashing my way over five kilometers wearing a silver-sequinned dress with an open back and thigh-high slit. I''ll bet I can even find a sports bra to match it.¡±

    Mara couldn''t help herself, she had laughed at the image. And she had laughed harder when Naomi had worn the fancy ball gown for the race. The thought made her laugh again, despite still hearing shouts, screams, shots, and explosions from the city below.

    ¡°What?¡± asked her sister.

    ¡°Oh, I was just thinking about your race, remember? The one where you wore the dress?¡± said Mara.

    ¡°Ha. Yeah. We should have grabbed something fancy from our closet before coming up. Would have made a way better picture,¡± said Naomi. ¡°Or better, I should have Mess dress uniform, I packed it with me, just in case.¡±

    Mara was going to be a researcher, and help unlock and apply all the new discoveries that had been upending things. Naomi was going to be a pilot. While Mara had been on her accelerated graduation course, Naomi had signed up with the Air Force. They were putting her through school, and she was going to start a flight program the next year.

    They sat, quietly, on the roof. Mara was pretty sure that everyone was listening carefully to the roar and crackle of the flames. She didn''t think the fire was climbing much, it''s hard to burn down a steel and brick building, but Mara couldn''t put it out of her mind. She was sure no one else could either But after a little while, they could hear rotor blades through the noise of the fire and fighting. One chopper landed on the roof, its rotors still pushing air hard. A man in a red jumpsuit and white helmet hopped out, and shouted at them, ¡°Come one, we can take fifteen people ¨C quickly please!¡±

    Naomi tried to get Mara to board with her. Mara looked around, Naomi was really the only one hurt, beyond a few that were coughing and one middle-aged guy who had burnt his hand on something. Mara didn''t recognize everyone, but there was Mr. and Mrs. Rohani ¨C they had two kids away at summer camp. And Charlie Eldritch, he was the building''s super and had always been nice to Mara and Naomi, even when they had forgotten their keys for the thousandth time. Ron Goldenberg used to help her with math back in junior high, while his wife made her cookies. The cookies had always been dry, hard, and kind of tasteless, but Mara had loved it anyways.

    She just couldn''t fly away with everyone else behind. So she got Naomi buckled in, wincing at the tears on her sister''s face as she tightened the harness over her shoulder. Then she hopped out and grabbed Mr. Kline. Mr. Kline was a widower and had been living alone in the building for as long as Mara could remember. Whenever she had gotten cookies from Mrs. Goldenberg, she had taken them to Mr. Kline and talked with him for a little while. He would tell her stories about his kids and grandkids, but his best stories were the ones about the people he had worked with when he had been an architect. She grabbed Mr. Kline and pushed him onto the helicopter.

    Naomi had called out, wanting Mara on board with her, but Mara just smiled and said, "Don''t worry, it''ll be ok!"

    The jumpsuited man glanced over everyone, making sure they were strapped in, and they took off. The second helicopter landed moments later, and Mara waited until it was just her and Mrs. Shipley. They smiled at each other, grimly, and got on board.

    The helicopter lifted off and began to follow the first east out of the city. But there was a sudden jerk followed by silence, and the whole craft began to spin, slowly. She could see the two pilots up front frantically managing levers and buttons as the whole copter drifted down out of the sky. Somehow, they managed to land on the bank of the Monongahela. The crash jarred Mara, but other than shocking her a bit, she wasn''t really hurt.

    As Mara¡¯s hearing came back, she heard one of the pilots into his headset, ¡°Don''t, keep going, we''re fine!¡± Mara looked up and saw the first helicopter circling back around to check on them.

    ¡°I don''t know where it came from, just keep...¡± the pilot was interrupted by a thump from a few blocks over.

    Mara watched, horrified, as a sudden trail of smoke impacted her sister''s helicopter in a burst of flame. This time she could recognize the explosion the helicopter crashed into the side of a building.

    <hr>

    Decades later, Mara smiled, placing her hand on the little craft they had built. It was basically a big aerodynamic box set between two drives. Mr. Holden still insisted on calling them Plasma Drives, but her assistant Joey had started calling them ''nacelles,'' ever since they had realized the drives needed to be paired to be stable. Joey called the craft a shuttle, too. Mr. Holden was going to hate that, but that just made her more inclined to use the same terms.

    It never did end up mattering how hard she worked, she still failed a lot. She couldn''t protect people, she screwed up, and she always felt jealous about how easy it came to all the blondes around her. But she couldn''t stop working, either. This time, though, the shuttle was going to fly. It had passed its tests, and all that was really left was to show it off. If anyone got to name it, she would.

    Dr. Hansen didn¡¯t really care about the terms, but he¡¯d wanted something a bit more noteworthy for the craft¡¯s actual name. Mara had put her foot down on that too. The shuttle was her project.

    ¡°Naomi¡± was stenciled clearly on the sides.

 17: A New Tourney

    There are two problems with delegation. Now, to toot my own horn, I like to think that delegating is one of my actual skills. Something I¡¯m good at, and not something I¡¯ve had to learn to do and just barely manage to not suck at. For the most part, I cheerfully admit that I hold my position by sheer, unmitigated luck. If I could go back in time and live parts of my life different, the only change I¡¯d make would be to go back and kiss Steve¡¯s little cat-but mouth when she assigned me to clean the physics building. One of these days I need to see if I can¡¯t figure out where she ended up.

    Any actual proactive decisions I¡¯ve made were, at best, an intuitive thing that I still don''t understand. I strongly suspect that any chimp could have done as well as I, for the most part.

    All that being said, I have been successful at getting the right people to fill the needs we have. We never would have been able to market Plasma Steel in a timely manner without El and Alan Beard. We never would have created our first armor prototypes without John Akins. We probably would have lost everything to venture capitalists without Ashley and her team of certified public accountants. And more, of course, who I am deeply thankful for despite not really mentioning them in my account. Like our lawyers. We have lawyers, have I mentioned that? But I can¡¯t imagine anyone wanting to talk about lawyers. Not even lawyers want to talk about lawyers. Damn lawyers.

    The point is that I have been able to shore up my many, many failings with talented people who fit in with our unusual corporate culture.

    Hell, I even had free time more often than not. It wasn''t unusual for me to only spend forty or fifty hours a week on the job during those first years. That''s unheard of, for most fast-growing startups. I don''t think I''m lazy, but there just wasn''t ever that much that truly demanded my hands-on attention.

    Anyway, the first problem with delegation is that people never do what you tell them to do. Or, rather, what you want them to do. Even when they''re doing their job competently, even expertly, they insist on making their own decisions and having their own thoughts. It''s infuriating, really. I may be the only person left in the world who still calls our primary product ''Plasma Steel.'' Everyone else just calls it plasteel. Sure, they say that it''s just a contraction, but I know full well they stole the term from some old science fiction series. Even the people who care about my opinion and put effort into buttering me up only avoid the term when I''m around.

    It''s the same problem with the Arcology. Arcologies are beginning to dot the globe, but ours will always be the Arcology. Big ¡®A¡¯ Arcology. The rest are just arcologies. Ours is the original. But people insist on calling it the Castle. I get it, I really do ¨C it¡¯s a big round elevated platform, five miles across, with a ridge around the outside and covered with aesthetically pleasing skyscrapers. The biggest stands a hundred and twenty stories tall. Yes, if you squint the structures on the rim look like battlements on a great wall and the towers look like, well, towers. But still, the thing is a marvel of modern engineering, calling it something as medieval as a castle just itches the back of my eyes.

    Worse than just calling our home the Castle is the connotations it brings to peoples¡¯ minds. It leads them into outright provocation. I think Alan was the first person to call me ''your highness'' in person. I''m embarrassed to say I didn''t squash it then, I just sputtered speechlessly for a moment while he laughed at me. And now I can''t walk down a hallway without people nodding their heads to me and saying ''milord.'' And I can''t possibly correct or complain at all without appearing petty and snobbish. Seriously ¨C they call me lord of the castle, highness, majesty, and so on, but I can''t yell at them without seeming stuck up. And the rest of it is just as bad. Our security force refers to themselves as knights, any sort of competition we set up gets referred to as a tourney, and wimples, tunics, and corsets are getting pretty firmly lodged in local fashion.

    They keep telling me I¡¯m in charge. Aren¡¯t the people in charge the ones who set trends? They call me a king, and here I thought that what kings did was lead the way in how people dress. Isn¡¯t that why the French wore wigs and high heels for centuries? Because they had a short bald king once? Well, this king likes leather jackets and sweatpants. Why can¡¯t everyone wear that?

    The other problem with delegation is when crap gets delegated right back at you. You hire marketing types, but they make you decide what to name things anyways. You hire accountants, but still sign off on investments. You hire PR types and influencers, but who gets roped into judging high school art shows? Yeah, you guessed it.

    Oh right, it wasn¡¯t an art show. It was an art tourney.

    So here I am, judging the first annual Junior Art Tourney. Yeah, Art Tourney, I said it again. I have every right to complain. Frankly, we''re all lucky that it didn''t get called Ye Olde Arte Tourney, but I''ll bet they talked about it. On the bright side, I am slightly better at art appreciation than I am at physics. So I guess it could have been worse. Everything had been pre-judged by actual experts, too. So at least I could be confident that the bad stuff had been filtered out. I made it clear that I wasn''t going to explain any decisions and began to browse. I was supposed to pick three winners. The winners would get permanently titled ''Artist in Residence,'' which is kind of ridiculous seeing as more than fifteen percent of our total population considered themselves artists. Nothing like the concentration of artists in the Starbucks arcology off the coast in Seattle, but still crazy.

    As more and more arcologies had been getting built, they specialized in surprising ways. Everyone had more amateur athletes and aspiring artist types than we had expected before the dollar went wild, but Starbuck''s managed to collect some of the best artists. Disney and Warner both built large complexes in LA, and continued to dominate video entertainment ¨C they had disproportionate numbers of actors and writers showing up. Google and HP were continuing to delve into AI and automation in their respective headquarters and attracted the relevant eggheads. The strip in Vegas had turned itself into an utterly ridiculous and stunning place ¨C a fairyland of debauchery and games undreamt by the worst of the Rat Pack''s acid-fueled nightmares. And so on. I liked to think that our Arcology was fairly generic, but we were still on the cutting edge of scientific research, especially in physics and plasma energy applications. Just having Dr. Hansen on staff attracted the cream of the crop. And, if forced, I''ll also admit we probably had more renaissance fair enthusiasts than most.

    The three winners of the art contest wouldn''t actually get anything but recognition, but that was apparently all right. I guess recognition becomes a major currency when nothing else is getting used. We could have offered them a bigger production allotment, but no one really cared about that. Instead, the prize was simply having their work displayed prominently somewhere. I had to pick one sculpture that would be put on permanent display in the plaza dedicated to ornamental gardens, one painting that would be hung in PPI''s executive offices for a year before going on permanent display in our growing art museum, and something that looked sciencey to show in the big entry foyer ¨C the chamber between the train station and airport where new arrivals entered the Arcology.

    I strolled along through the exhibits. I¡¯d gotten crammed into a suit for the event. I hate suits ¨C my staff said it makes me look dignified and handsome and so forth, but I¡¯d way rather be more casual. Suits are what people wear to die in. There were other people idling around, although having a kid standing by each work gave the place a more crowded feel than was usual for an art show. Most of the people were clustered back by the buffet, watching me wander around.

    The science art for the entryway was easy to pick out. There was this gigantic mural sort of painting that reminded me of the old painting with the lizard turning into a caveman turning into a person. Except this work did the same with technology and architecture ¨C huts into stonework into aqueducts into cathedrals into glass skyscrapers into a slightly stylized Arcology; the buildings were accompanied by swirls of things like fire, wheat, chariots, dogs, railroads, rockets, and similar. It was all done in oil by a kid who¡¯d clearly missed that class in fifth grade where they tell you to shower and use deodorant. Seriously, if he¡¯d been older, he could have passed for a hobo. Just because everything''s free doesn''t mean people always bother to dress nice. But the painting was cool and it was big enough and thematic enough to be perfect in the great foyer. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    The sculpture was easy too ¨C it wasn''t hard to find a piece that I wouldn''t mind looking at in the gardens all the time. I ended up picking something in one of the styles where you can''t tell what it''s supposed to be. It was a big granite thing, reminiscent of a pile of rubble, and parts of it would make for a nice bench, and the girl who had done it was thrilled and squealed a bunch while hugging friends who had come along.

    The painting for our offices was a bit harder ¨C I actually tried to find a painting that spoke to me personally.

    But at the same time, I couldn''t pick anything too morbid, or obvious. I ended up spotting a small painting done in watercolors. It was basically an impressionistic rendition of that famous picture of the man and tanks at Tienanmen square. The view of the shot was from right behind the man, white shirt, black pants, holding a bag in each hand, tank looming over him. I''ve always been struck by the balance of power in that shot, and the painting only enhanced the tension. That had been done by the sone of one of my non-workers. I later learned that his grades were terrible, probably because he¡¯d been spending his time honing his watercolor skills. Well, I can¡¯t say he made the wrong decision, he¡¯s a great painter.

    I gave a very, very brief speech. Basically, I just announced their names, repeated what would happen with their art, and gave them a certificate and a little medallion pin.

    And that should have been the end of it, really. An awkward day at the art gallery for me, punctuated by smiling handshakes and camera flashes. A bit of excitement, an opportunity for people to air their work before moving on. What I didn''t know was that there was a woman in the crowd simply seething. She was the sculptress¡¯s grandmother, and thanks to some unspecified family drama the old woman¡¯s son and his wife had refused to let the woman see her grandchildren. I suppose it goes without saying that the father also did his best to prevent his mother from seeing him.

    In hindsight, I''ve decided that the grandmother is simply as crazy as a very crazy person. I''d call her a nut or a loon, but there''s a failure of logic and hostility in her mind that was undermined by any common term for crazy. She had been one of our longest-term non-worker types. She had been HR for some tool manufacturer that went underway back when. Her company had been the first where we tried hiring the workforce without having any actual work for them to do. Since we had pitched it to our own investors as a way to keep a reserve of workers handy in case of sudden shifts in demand or the market, we had to at least look like we were keeping them organized. This lady got the task of just checking on a couple of hundred people periodically. She just maintained a little spreadsheet that told us right away what someone¡¯s old job had been, what their education was, whether they¡¯d gotten another job and whether they wanted another job if an opening popped up.

    I have no idea how much effort she spent on that, I know I never looked at any of those spreadsheets, and I doubt anyone else did either. But she was still on the list when we began inviting employees to move in.

    Her son was one of our designers. Not really an engineer, but the guy who works with an engineer to make stuff look nice. Think of a graphic designer, but instead of signs he worked with consumer goods. Basically, his job was to ensure we didn¡¯t build a teapot that looked like Hitler. He got recruited to work directly for us fairly early too.

    The estrangement was enough that he had no idea she lived in the Arcology until after she ambushed him in a plaza one day. She spent her free time (which everyone had a great deal of) stalking her family. He knew that but had also cut off communications enough that he had no idea she was on our payroll or that she¡¯d been invited along with all the other employees. Security had been notified, and they would intervene when she actually showed up and bothered her grandchildren or caused some other sort of scene with her son and daughter-in-law, but they didn''t pay her much attention either.

    It put us in an odd spot, really. I¡¯m not sure what we¡¯d have done if we¡¯d known about the conflict ahead of time. We didn¡¯t allow people with domestic violence histories inside, but this didn¡¯t really qualify. It was just family drama ¨C no criminal history was involved. Gun to my head, I¡¯d probably have banned her and invited her son, but to be honest with myself I¡¯d just make that decision because a designer was way more valuable than someone who maintained a pointless spreadsheet. He said he never would have come, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I don¡¯t think he¡¯d have stayed away, even if he¡¯d know his mother lived here too. We were keeping track of incidents ¨C it was clear that she was the inciting party, but she¡¯d never quite reached the level we felt comfortable evicting her, either.

    The Arcology and PPM had found ourselves in a grey zone that made it hard to act in cases like this. Legally, the whole city was a grey zone. Technically the whole arcology was private property but was also just another incorporated city in Minnesota. All of our schools were private schools and unattached to the state''s public system. Same for all of our utilities. We had an arbitration system that handled civil claims within the town, although citizens were freely able to sue us directly in state court if they felt a need. But it also meant that our security wasn''t really police. They investigated criminal reports, arrested people, and sometimes sent people to our arbitration courts to handle minor criminal issues. So if we wanted to evict someone, we had to carefully navigate a tangle of employee protection laws, renter protection laws, and good old-fashioned civil rights to due process.

    It hadn¡¯t really been a big deal. A lot of crime just didn''t really happen or didn''t really matter. Property crime, for example. Most of the city just can''t be damaged by a bored teenager or angry lover. And what can be damaged can be replaced about as quickly as a particular song can be pulled off the internet. So vandalism and theft only mattered if it involved something particularly sentimental, which mostly just involved teen bully types. We didn¡¯t enforce moral crimes ¨C basically, we ignored anything that didn''t cause a public disturbance, and even if it did cause a fuss, we just broke up the crowd and had a chat with the perpetrator. For the most part, just good zoning kept those types of issues under control. There were two promenades with a tropical climate, for example. One where all the nudists and day drinkers hung out, and one with family and children''s attractions.

    Most minor stuff could be solved by restricting people''s access to specific areas ¨C if a couple had a nasty divorce and didn''t want to see each other anymore, they could be restricted to their own portions of the arcology. The most serious punishment we offered was exile, and sometimes referred the perpetrator, and evidence, to actual state authorities.

    Assault and murder still happened, even if robbery wasn''t a motivator. I¡¯m sure our screening weeded out most of the big problems, but people still got drunk, still got angry, still acted out. Lovers got jealous, children misbehaved, and addictions drove violent behavior. We did our best to treat psychological issues, but sometimes I suspect that good psych facilities will always be a scarcity, no matter how cheap things get. We tried to be fair ¨C treated whenever we could, looked at underlying issues, and so on. But people are still people.

    This was another one of those things that got delegated back to me. The arbitration was all contractual, and technically between PPI employees. Which meant that I was the appellate judge, and anyone that disagreed with the decisions of our court system appealed to me. The fact that I regularly had to hold court didn¡¯t help with the milord thing, by the way. It was in one of those courts that I learned all this about that crazy nutjob old lady, by the way. I never actually spoke to her in person.

    But she was still the person who committed the Arcology¡¯s first-ever truly sensational crime. A lot of true-crime enthusiasts compared it to the Lindburgh baby, or the JFK assassination, or Columbine. And since the people who care about that sort of thing point to the Green kidnapping as a major influence in worldwide arcology culture, I guess I¡¯ve got to tell the story.

    I hate it though.

 18: A New Fear

    The day after the art ¡°tourney,¡± I got woken up at a truly ungodly hour. My room was dark, and I was pleasantly engulfed in a pile of pillows and thick blankets, hibernating in my cold rooms. I didn''t have to keep the rooms cold, but I like to sleep with lots of blankets, and the cold kept everything more comfortable. It did make getting out of bed a little more painful, though. But what''s the point of being the boss if I couldn''t sleep in?

    The door chime was insistent though. I shouted, ¡°Voice! Silence alert!¡± And then I pulled a quilt over my head and snuggled down again.

    The door chimed again. ¡°Voice! Silent!¡±

    The door continued chiming. ¡°Voice! Why won''t you turn that off!¡±

    The door continued chiming, adding a tuneful accompaniment to the monotone answer, ¡°Oscar Hanson is on the list of overriding officers.¡±

    Oscar Hanson¡¯s title was Marketing VP. Basically he was our PR guy, as I''m not sure we had done any marketing ever since we pushed our first armor programs. I was a little surprised and confused about having him at my door that morning, he literally had never once come to me with an unscheduled problem. Generally, he just dealt with manuals and branding for various products. Once in a while, we had some sort of press event. Lately, he had been spending his time doing daily admin work for various community events. Like the art thing yesterday.

    ¡°Voice! Set temp to 70. Lights on. Where is my robe...¡± Vents began pushing warmer air into the room while I dug about for some clothes. The lights helped, but otherwise, I found clothes on my own. Finally, I gave up and just pulled a blanket around my waist so I could open my door.

    Voice was the Arcology¡¯s AI assistant. It was a bit better than the set of last-gen AIs, mostly just because it was able to piggyback off all the other automation advancements. It just integrated with smart tech much better than it used to. Voice wasn¡¯t true AI ¨C no singularity even today, so far as I know ¨C but rather it was a very complicated set of algorithms and voice recognition and so forth. Lots of customization is involved, but I just left it at the default settings.

    Hanson (no relation) was a tall, square-jaw, perfect-hair sort of guy. Despite the early hour, he was in an old-fashioned gray suit. As soon I let the door open, he walked right in. He spoke right away, before I could say good morning, ¡°You need to get dressed, whatever happens, it will need your attention. Or at least it needs the appearance of your attention.¡±

    ¡°Slow down, Oscar. You''ve heard me tell the geeks and I know you know better. Assume I know nothing. And do you know what time it is?¡±

    ¡°It''s a quarter to eight. You turned off your alarms again, didn''t you? I thought you checked the feeds every day when you woke up, but I guess you haven''t gotten to it yet?" He was gesturing with both hands as he spoke, holding up his phone, pointing to the sensors on my walls. "The kidnapping, Lena Green? You gave her sister an award for sculpture yesterday? The castle is blowing up, and people are freaking out.¡± He went into my bedroom and began rooting through the closet, pulling out clean clothes.

    ¡°Kidnapping?¡± I probably needed some coffee, although Oscar''s agitation was a little contagious. I think I was also distracted by the slacks and shirt he pressed into my hands. He didn¡¯t pull underwear out, so I took care of that on my own.

    ¡°There''s a press conference in fifteen minutes, you really need to be there. Barker is good, but he''s still just a fancy rent-a-cop. There''ll be questions he shouldn¡¯t and can''t answer.¡± Oscar finally stopped for a moment, then all but fluttered at me, shaking his head and performing credible jazz hands. ¡°Get dressed!¡±

    So I got dressed. While I started to comply, he finally began filling me in with some details.

    The Green family had celebrated after the contest. They ended up in one of the children and family promenades. Trees, grassy hills, rounded rock ledges and boulders perfect for climbing, little tunnels and caves that let you hide without being far away or hard to find. It was a lot like that Tom Sawyer island at Disneyland, if you remember the place. While there, the family''s littlest child, a two-year-old named Lena, disappeared. Almost a classic situation ¨C mother and father focus on an older child for a moment, and the little one disappears.

    When I had gone to bed, the search was just getting started. The immediate assumption was that she had just wandered off. There were plenty of nooks in the area for a kid to hide in, and the surrounding booths and shops were mostly things that delight small children. Candy makers, toy makers of all varieties, arcades, singing, puppet shows, and so on. But it was pretty clearly established that the little girl wasn''t there.

    While telling me all those details, Oscar was fussing over me like a lady''s maid. Before long he had me in dark slacks, a white polo shirt, and a blue sport coat. He even pulled a comb and spray bottle from out of nowhere and changed my hair from actual bedhead into something just tousled. I guess appearances matter for marketing and PR, either that or he''d worked through college at Men¡¯s Warehouse or something.

    As soon as we set foot out in the hallway Oscar turned into a new man. The rapidly moving hands stilled and fell to his sides in a comfortable pose as he walked, his shaky head movements slowed into calm glances at me and passers-by. He took the lead with a brisk walk ¨C clearly, we were going somewhere and not idling, but there was none of the huffing or swinging elbows that come with hurrying ¨C letting me fall into step beside him as we made our way. My apartment was on the out ridge instead of a tower, so we only needed to take one elevator to reach our destination. It helped that a lot of the main administrative areas had grown up near where I had put my apartment in the first place.

    I''m not sure what I expected, but there was a full-blown impromptu press conference going on. Juan Barker was currently fielding questions, letting the press know what he knew, which wasn''t much. Juan looked like a cop ¨C not terribly large, but with the clear build of a previously muscular man giving in to middle age, dome of his head balding and shiny in the glare, but eyes firmly watching the crowd in front of him. Tan pants, a dark blue polo, a badge pinned to his chest. Somehow he looked more intimidating than he did back when he¡¯d been wearing full armor and tackling me in the parking garage.

    He faced each questioner directly, saying as I walked in, ¡°The family wasn''t covered by our cameras when the disappearance happened. However, at this time we have to assume that she was taken, and not merely lost.¡±

    Bedlam.

    Juan picked out a question from the crowd, ¡°Our camera coverage is minimal. There are a few placed for large coverage in each of the promenades, and all the elevators and transports have a camera as well. But the fact is, it isn''t terribly hard to avoid them. The only areas we¡¯ve made any attempt at full coverage is in the various entry ports.¡±

    Bedlam again.

    Juan was savvier than I would have assumed. I was here, and he was going to make sure I took over this mess. My chief of security knew exactly where the buck stopped, ¡°Yes, cameras are minimal. There has never been a real problem here with vandalism or random violence. The decision to not go for greater coverage was made at the highest levels.¡±

    Instead of bedlam, the reporters followed his gesture and saw me. And then bedlam again, as I blinked at the camera flashes.

    I probably couldn''t tell you any of the specific questions shouted at me from the mass of the sixth estate. Or is it fifth? The press, I mean. But despite the chaos and the inability to make out anything beyond a roar of sound and the blur of faces behind lights, it was possible to pick out general themes. I waited a moment, while I shook Juan''s hand and thanked him.

    Then I turned and addressed them, my body language mimicking the cop''s. I leaned forward without actually putting weight on the podium and spoke, ¡°Like Mr. Barker said, we''ve never had a real need for cameras. Add in our intention to maintain the civil rights that we were all accustomed to, despite this environment, we purposefully kept surveillance to a minimum.¡±

    Bedlam again, so I opted to continue instead of changing the subject, ¡°Why are you asking this? We covered all this years ago when the Arcology first expanded. None of the rational has changed...¡±You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    I trailed off, lost in my own thoughts for a moment. No bedlam yet, but one reporter jumped into my pause, ¡°But hasn''t the situation changed? We have families here, communities. Just because we don''t have the chaos that happens outside doesn''t mean there aren''t threats. That''s what''s happening now ¨C a little girl has been taken. You could have prevented it!¡±

    And then bedlam again.

    I had wanted to make this place into a utopia. I thought we were in a place where I could realize some of Ford and Disney''s old dreams, but maybe people are people. And people suck, even when they don''t. The press conference wrapped up quickly enough, there just wasn''t that much to share yet. All we could do was listen to the panic that people were working themselves into.

    We left to the central security office, where Barker had a little conference room set up. Oscar peeled off to speak to a man and woman sitting on the side. I¡¯d seen them yesterday, it was Lena¡¯s parents, Marcus and Tiffany Green. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve seen their pictures, so I won¡¯t belabor them any. I doubt they¡¯d slept any since yesterday and looked it. Both had deep lines on their faces, whitened knuckles, and drooping heads. Oscar spoke softly, doing his best to comfort them while we all watched reports coming in.

    Sitting down, I joined them as Barker and a couple of his men worked at a big whiteboard. The board had a few maps of the arcology, with areas circled, crossed out, and otherwise noted as searches went on.

    I was surprised to see a few photos up next to the maps, with a circle around one old lady. ¡°Juan, I thought there weren''t any suspects? Who''s she?¡±

    Juan didn''t bother to look at the board, ¡°The girl''s grandmother. Mary Overstreet. The Greens were certain she was involved, even though there wasn''t any evidence at all that she was in the promenade with them when Lena disappeared. They did have a ton of documentation about her though ¨C the old lady has been harassing them for years and threatening to take their children away. I guess she tipped off the deep end when her only daughter got married.¡±

    ¡°We haven¡¯t gotten too involved. We found her shouting outside their apartment a couple of weeks ago, so we barred her from the Green''s quarter of the arcology, including the playground promenade.¡±

    ¡°Last night we sent someone to talk to her, but her apartment was empty, and her cell was left behind.¡±

    Barker continued, ¡°I thought it seemed suspicious. We know she¡¯s in the Arcology, but that doesn¡¯t help much. We''d know if she had left.¡± He was studying the board. Despite the pictures, it was pretty bare.

    ¡°The entrances are pretty much the only place we have full surveillance. Any entrance or exit requires a face recognition scan and a voiceprint. The AI is pretty good at making sure no one hides, too, even when a guard is feeling lazy.¡±

    ¡°She''s still inside. Somewhere. We''re pretty sure she took the kid, too. Someone had to, and there isn¡¯t anyone else likely who¡¯s come up missing. We think she''s been planning it for a while. Mrs. Overstreet used a bunch of her manufacturing credits on things like a crib, stroller, and kids'' clothes. Enough to set up a kid''s room and everything. It''s kinda creepy, really. But none of it is in her apartment.¡±

    I grimaced. ¡°That''s... so we know it was her. Why haven''t we announced it? That we¡¯re looking for her?¡± I waved my hand before he could answer, ¡°No, no, I get it. She''s already hiding, we don''t want her to go and hide deeper, right?¡±

    At his nod, I sighed. ¡°I''m sure you''ve already cracked all her records, let me know if you get more. Also, be sure to keep the sheriff in the loop. See if he can get you an arrest warrant, and search warrants too. I know we don''t need them, strictly...¡±

    ¡°But this is big enough to be extra thorough. I get it.¡±

    At this, Oscar cut in, ¡°One moment, Mr. Green? Mrs. Green? Why don¡¯t you come with me and let these gentlemen get to work.¡±

    He led them out. I don¡¯t know where they went, I was still focused on the board. Technically, all the security officers in the arcology were deputies to the county sheriff. That gave them a fig leaf of legality to deal with the more serious crimes that got committed. There was some weirdness, where civil rights and the contractual rights of our citizens overlapped oddly, but it mostly got the job done. I tried hard not to abuse it, but sometimes it was tempting.

    The search went on for three days. I joined in, as did as large a percentage of our population as we allowed to be involved. Someone physically checked each vacant living space. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn¡¯t help but focus on how unrelieved the rooms were. Identical white walls, over and over and over. Hallways where no one lived were just as white. Even in occupied spaces, the only variation was little things like doormats. Sometimes someone placed a chair or bench outside their door.

    It made the whole thing surreal. Just looking at the empty spaces, day in and day out. The search was complicated because we couldn¡¯t use drones. Back in the day when they were first being rolled out, someone had programmed into them an inability to record people. For privacy reasons, the drones were capable of seeing a person so they could be avoided as the gadget flew around but were utterly incapable of recording anyone or even indicating that a person was present. Worse the privacy detail was programmed in so deeply that it would have taken weeks to re-write it. A person could manage a single drone and override the camera feed to watch the live take, but at that point, the person might as well have been on foot doing the search on his own anyways.

    During the search, we placed cameras to cover all the promenades, hallways, and non-living areas in the arcology. I got the programmers to work on including facial recognition to keep track of movement through our little city. Movement and location records were kept for one year, full video only a week, and of course motion detection was utilized to keep us from recording empty spaces. One entrepreneur even came up with a badge for people to wear. It was just this little bit of circuitry that basically worked as a cell phone and included location and biometric tracking. It allowed the wearer to interact with their own Voice throughout the Arcology. Parents could be notified immediately if something happened to a child, or even if the child just took it off. The badge was initially spread as a way to protect children, but very quickly everyone was wearing it on their chest, or wrist, or collar. I hated the badges, and never wore one.

    We had moved on from residential spaces. Security was still interviewing people ¨C there was some suspicion that the crazy lady had some help somewhere, someone else¡¯s apartment where she could hide out. We didn¡¯t want to just crack open every occupied apartment in the Arcology, so instead Security was mapping out her social contacts and following leads. Legal was trying to decide what sort of warrants we might need to get an entry. Being landlords, employers, and the governmental authority all rolled into one kept things iffy as per usual. In the end legal decided we ought to follow the same standards that police elsewhere had to follow.

    I was walking through our refinery when the call came in. The refinery was a massive space along the northern arc of the Arcology. Drone trucks rumbled in, carrying loads of ore. The trucks were basically just big dump trucks, just without anyone sitting at the wheel. It was the road that was different. Each truck would roar in, driving along an unsupported catwalk of Plasma Steel. Under the curving catwalk was a truly stupendous hopper ¨C an inverted pyramid. The trucks would simply dump their ore over the side of the catwalk and continue back around and outside. From where I stood, I could see four different catwalks, each with a constant stream of trucks dumping rock.

    There really wasn¡¯t anywhere to hide up here. There were a few observation spots where a person could stand and watch like I was. They were empty, and with the dust and noise, I couldn¡¯t imagine anyone staying long. I certainly didn¡¯t stay long.

    I stepped back into a passageway and entered another little door. Here was a set of stairs following the outside of the hopper down below ground. The hopper itself was inset with hundreds of different grates, each designed and spaced to allow different-sized rocks to be separated out. Those grates had ramps that dumped the ore into varying conveyor belts carrying rock along. Each belt had an array of robot arms picking and prodding the rocks. There were even little lasers here and there that vaporized a little chunk. If I remember right, Austin had said the lasers were there to test the makeup of the ore. The arms would remove some chunks, moving them to other belts. Most of the belts would vanish into other various chambers.

    Someone else was manually moving drones through those chambers. The refining process involved crushing the ore, washing it in acid, washing the acid off, subjecting it to heat, sorting the output, heating and washing it again, and all sorts of other arcane processes to turn the rocks into useable iron. The one thing most of those processes had in common was that it tended to be immediately unhealthy for a person to be in the same space. I doubt that Mrs. Overstreed had taken Lena into the refinery, but we were being thorough.

    I was kinda getting angry. We had spent a ridiculous volume of resources on this arcology, and hundreds of thousands of man-hours had gone into designing it. And there was still an insane amount of wasted space. Passageways left between different production spaces, places where rooms didn¡¯t quite fit and a gap was left instead of allowing a room to be a bit off the square. There was a crawlspace at the top of the farming area that literally stretched for miles ¨C four feet high, two miles long, and almost a mile wide. That spot made me dizzy when I saw it ¨C no pillars, no piping, no texture to the space at all.

    It made sense to me that no one knew everything about the Arcology. How could you? The thing housed a million people and provided all their necessities with capacity to spare. We had schools and entertainment venues as well. We exported hundreds of tons of food. We had an industrial capacity that exceeded the whole of the Great Lakes region back in its heyday.

    But somehow there were places that we¡¯d built that nobody knew about. We could have been infested by a tribe of hyper-intelligent grasshoppers and never known until trash cans started disappearing. Well, maybe not, we used trash chutes instead that led to a recycling and incinerator station. Searching all those spaces was turning into an impossible task.

    And all the while I had to sit down with Marcus and Tiffany a couple times a day to update them. It had been three days, and I don¡¯t think either of them slept at all. Or ate. Or did much beyond sit and watch us work.

    I don¡¯t know if it was a relief or not to know that their daughter hadn¡¯t been taken out of the Arcology. As impossible as the search looked, at least they knew she was close. I don¡¯t know if that was better.

    A maintenance worker finally found them. He hadn¡¯t even been part of the search. Instead, he had been dispatched to the bowels of the arcology to find out why an air duct had quit pushing air. It happened all the time, usually because something obstructed a fan. This time he found a little nursery built right over the top of an intake vent. Blankets lined the walls and floor, making a cozy little space. Warm textures and bright colors instead of the white Plasma Steel. A crib was set up, along with another bed, a rocking chair, and other furniture. There was a refrigerator with enough stocked up food to last several weeks. The blankets and rugs also stopped nearly all the airflow, and the carbon monoxide buildup from a nearby processing plant filled the room.

    Both of them looked very peaceful.

 19: A Night In

    ¡°It''s not really going to help anything, you know. Any of this. People are still animals.¡± Barker was drunk. His shirt was untucked and his gunbelt had gotten put aside somewhere. Not that he had an actual gun in it, but there¡¯s something wrong with the phrase ¡°taser belt.¡± The day had been rather hard, and the days before it had been hard too.

    ¡°If it makes them feel better, you know, the people will feel better, then that helps. At least they feel better,¡± I was repeating myself. I was drunk too. Oscar Hansen (no relation) didn''t need to tell me that I needed to be involved with everything happening. He was still out with reporters right now while I hid in here with Barker, Alan, and a bottle. People were scared, and scared people get angry. We had seen it in Pittsburgh and seen it more in cities all over the world. The only way out was to get led through.

    I took a drink. ¡°They need to feel better. Better in here, in the arcology...¡±

    ¡°Castle!¡± Barker and Alan chorused at me.

    ¡°Arcology. Here, in the Arcology. This Arcology. The Arcology is a place where people can feel safe and do their thing. That¡¯s the point. Even if their thing is just, you know, feeling better. Or, dunno, movies, tv, whatever. Model trains.¡± I emptied my glass.

    To me, the worst part of the whole mess was the way the Greens had acted. I met the two of them again when they came to identify the bodies. Both were crying silently, with tears pouring down their faces. They asked when they could bury their little girl, and then thanked security for their work. They thanked them. Sincerely, if quietly. Honestly, it would have been easier on me if they were angry with us. If they had raged that security had been too slow. If they had cursed me for failing to provide protection for their family. If they had attacked the old witch¡¯s body. I would have been prepared for that. I could have dealt with that. I wasn''t prepared for the silent acid of their grief.

    ¡°They feel better, people get the life they want, you know?¡±

    ¡°I know. It is better. I''ll tell you what, the Castle is great. We''re the first, you know?¡± Barker took a drink and leaned forward against his desk, resting his elbows on the painted metal surface. The posture really emphasized his shoulders ¨C almost made it look like he was flexing them. The strength of the pose was undermined a bit when a paper under his elbow shifted and he slipped sideways. Catching himself on the edge of the desk, he said, ¡°The suburbs sucked. I mean, I was in Morrisville, outside Raleigh. My first real job, I was a cop. It made all those old stories about Detroit sound pleasant. Fires, bombs, shootings. And the food shipments just made things worse, gave people something to fight over.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s why I left. Started working in corporate security. Away from the animals. Here, it''s nice again. Even if you aren''t one of the designers or researchers... we''re all part of it, you know? We''re the first. First with plasteel, first with the generators, first arcology, it''s special. Best day of my life, breaking your rear end on the pavement.¡± It sounded like the alcohol was burning off as he spoke. He definitely got more coherent as he spoke. Or maybe he just sounded more coherent as I drank.

    I don''t know if he was trying to butter me up or if he was sincere. It didn''t matter, I had still spent a day dealing with a dead toddler and her family. I could have prevented her death. Easily, I could have stopped it. I just didn''t think I should. I still don''t know if I should. I did anyway, I had let all sorts of new protections start spinning forward before Barker and I got into his scotch.

    ¡°Ok, fine, we''re special. Fine.¡± I took the bottle and poured a couple fingers into each of our glasses. I didn¡¯t pour for Alan. I continued, ¡°But we gotta stay special. We gotta keep people feeling better. I don''t know if that can happen now. Or happen for long, again.¡±

    It was nice to talk this out. Nearly a third of our residents were wearing the com badges already, and more were picking them up as quickly as they could be paired to an individual. People were even getting cameras inside their apartments, tied into the AI net. I didn¡¯t ask them to, it was beyond me, but I was still responsible.

    ¡°All this surveillance, it means control. I mean, it''s not like I need more control, or you, or whatever, right? I mean, it might stop a kidnapping, or solve it fast, but it''s not like it''ll stop any murders. Or wife beaters. Or any of that stuff. People are still crap.¡±

    ¡°You''re calling me a choir.¡± Barker nodded along. ¡°People are still people, so why not keep them happy? It''s not like you''re going to abuse the power, how would you, anyway? What are you going to do, build a supervillain lair that''s impossible to break into? Fill it with little minions to enact your nefarious will? Tell the police and the government to piss off when they ask you to stop it? I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯ve done that already.¡±If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°But, but, it''s not me, you know?¡± I replied. I finished my glass. Then I set it back down, taking care to place it slowly and just so, lined up on a napkin. ¡°Why the hell do people feel like we have to watch them all the time? Why are they demanding I put myself in their lives? They don''t need it, and even if I am a nice guy, it''s just gonna hurt them. I don''t want the arcology to turn out like, like, your Morrisville.¡±

    Alan¡¯s voice came up from the floor, "Give us a king to lead us! And the LORD said, the king who will reign over you will take your sons and make them serve, he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks, he will take the best of your fields, he will take your grain and your wine, and you yourselves will become his slaves."

    "But the people refused to listen to the LORD. ''No!'' they said. ''We want a king over us, to go out before us and fight our battles.''" Alan¡¯s tenor was unaffected by the booze even if it had knocked him out of his chair. I didn''t look at him, but I''ll bet the bastard''s hair was still perfect.

    On the bright side, I think he had finally distracted me. I turned to look down at him, wobbled, and sat up straight again. The wobble passed, and I instead turned my whole body to face him. I asked, ¡°So what, now I''ve got to go get a few hundred wives, get Barker dead so I can cheat with his wife, and then get killed by one of my sons?¡±

    ¡°Wrong king, milord.¡± Alan¡¯s hair wasn''t perfect, his fingers were locked together on top of his head, with tufts of hair poking out. His shirt was still unwrinkled somehow and tucked in straight too. He said, ¡°My point is that this isn''t new. People asking for chains is older than print.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, like Washington and the glasses, right?¡± Barker chimed in.

    ¡°Right! They wanted him to be a king! Except he couldn¡¯t see. Older than steam, too,¡± said Oscar. ¡°But the point is that people like to give up control. It makes life easier. And the less control they have, the more they give it up. You''re riding that wave, boss.¡±

    ¡°If you compare me to George Washington I¡¯m going to get stuck up. At least people did what George told them to. For a king I can''t do much, can I.¡± I giggled at the thought. ¡°They already call me a king, and now I get to know everything about them. But I''m not allowed to say no, am I? I''m the boss, but I''ve got to do what I''m told. To make them feel better.¡±

    I turned my whole body and spoke to Barker again, ¡°But you said it, Juan. We''re first, aren''t we? Some of the other arcologies already suck, and that''s with them trying to be like us. Better than outside, I guess, but I don''t think anyone really wants to live in the Dallas Arcology, or that libertarian paradise place in New Hampshire. What if they start with the cameras and monitoring and badges, too? Damn badges, have you seen them?¡±

    Barker smiled, clinking his glass on the desk, ¡°Yeah! Starfleet, all the way, right? Kinda wish mine was that swoop logo, instead of the castle. Security is all getting them ¨C they''re super handy to keep track of my guys. But I''m not changing the uniforms. We''ll keep the blue shirts and tan pants, thanks. No red for us.¡±

    ¡°Stupid old TV shows. Of course, people would see that. Com badges, plasteel, subspace, castle, king.¡± I snorted. ¡°I''m the boss! I owned the patents before we licensed everything out. I sold them, built them, marketed them...¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± The voice from the ground was sharp and quick to cut into my rant.

    ¡°I had help, never said I didn''t have help. You helped, Alan. I know. But I can''t even get people to call it the crap it should be called. It¡¯s Plasma Steel. Instead, we get all this mess. Why the hell do people insist on being told what to do, and then they won''t actually do what they''re told. They don''t want guidance, they just want a prick to kick against. Even if it''s as pissy a prick as a name.¡±

    I reached out to fill my glass again. The bottle was empty, but perhaps that was ok. After all, we were just trying to forget our day. And here we were, talking about something different. Nothing like an old irritation along with inebriation, right?

    ¡°I guess I''d better head back to my room. I need to sleep.¡± I tapped the empty bottle on the table, ¡°And all we''ve got here is a dead soldier, and I...¡±

    All three of us grimaced at the metaphor.

    Shit.

 20: Guard at the Gates - Kens Interlude (2)

    It was two in the morning. Ken McParland¡¯s round shoulders were totally obscured by the riot gear he was wearing. Along with the rest of the team he was clad in thin white sheets of plasteel. Narrow strips slid back and forth as he moved, just begging to pinch any bit of skin they caught. He had on a heavy-duty jumpsuit under the armor to protect his bits from the segmented white metal. A glass visor on the helmet was opened up as he passed last-minute instructions to the rest of the team.

    ¡°There should just be the two of them in there. There¡¯s a bedroom immediately to the left past the front door. Living room and kitchen are straight ahead. Two more bedrooms in the back,¡± Ken said. He pointed at his partner, ¡°Johnston, after I breach, you go in first, straight through to the back right bedroom. I¡¯ll follow to the left.¡± Johnston could only be distinguished by the vest he had on over the armor, with his name stenciled on the front. The mirrored visor hid his features.

    Ken continued, ¡°Kline, I want you to clear the first bedroom. You come in after Johnston and I. The rest of you follow close.¡± The other three officers nodded.

    ¡°Remember, the university said this stuff was priceless, so be careful on entry. If you don¡¯t know what something is, don¡¯t damage it.¡±

    The five of them were clustered on a street corner outside an apartment complex. The apartment building itself was an old red brick four-plex. The brick was cracked, with filth filling the gaps. The lawn was more dirt than grass, and the cement steps down to the bottom apartments were slick with mud and moss. In addition to the five officers in riot gear, there were another dozen patrolmen waiting silently.

    The university theft turned out to be insultingly simple. Cameras in the parking garage spotted a couple of students wheeling out machinery into a van. The van¡¯s plates were run, and the vehicle was owned by a student attending university. His ID matched the kid on camera, and his information quickly led to the other thief. They were both roommates, and they also both worked as assistants in the same lab.

    It took Ken about fifteen minutes at the courthouse to get a warrant, and now here they were. It was exciting, really. In property crimes, the usual arrests Ken got to make were just counterfeiters selling on the street. Once in a while, he''d bust a fence. But the job was mostly just about filing reports for the sake of insurance adjusters. Which wasn''t to say he never had any arrests, he probably spent two days doing some sort of patrolling or crowd control for every day he worked as an actual detective. And patrolling and crowd control always involved arrests.

    Ken checked his gun ¨C he hadn¡¯t had a choice and was carrying the new plasteel piece of crap. His old Sig had been reliable and comfortable, this lightweight thing felt like a toy. Whoever heard of a gun that needed a battery to fire? The armor was worse - it felt like plastic with barely any weight to it. But here he was, dressed like it was Halloween and on his way into a firefight. But the gun sat in the holster fine. At least he could wear the harness like normal. He¡¯d seen pictures of armor where the holster was built directly into the armor. That seemed like it was just asking for problems. With his harness, he could hang his gun where he was comfortable with it. He could draw it the way he trained and didn¡¯t have to worry about some idiot engineer¡¯s idea of efficiency. He checked his taser too, opposite the gun. He wasn¡¯t carrying any pepper spray; they weren¡¯t supposed to use it indoors.

    The other officers were going over their gear too. None of them were particularly comfortable with the new equipment, but Ken double-checked everything obsessively. Finally, he hefted the big ram and headed towards the front door of the thieves¡¯ apartment. The other four officers followed, not talking at all.

    Ken stopped when he reached the stairs down to the apartment in question. He pulled down his visor and threw a little bolt to lock it in place. Immediately he felt a breeze across his face while a small fan blew air down from his forehead. The breeze made his nose itch as it ruffled his mustache. Ken had tried turning the air off in the past, but the glass of the visor would fog up almost immediately. Keeping everything dry was probably more important than keeping his nose from itching. Ken opened up his visor to rub his nose, then closed it back down.

    Ken carefully moved down the dirty steps, until he was standing to the side of the door. Johnston squeezed past, pressing up against the cement wall on the other side of the entryway. The whole setup made it difficult to maneuver. The lower apartments were about four feet below ground level, so the officers had to walk down the stairs into a little walkway area framed by a cement retaining wall. The thieves¡¯ apartment was the farthest from the stairs, so there wasn¡¯t room to line up on either side. They did the best they could.

    Ken lifted the ram with a grunt. The thing weighed a good thirty pounds and was almost two feet long, all solid steel with a square cap on the end. Two angled handles were designed in a way that made it simple to slam straight against a door. Even in the narrow space of the sunken entryway, Ken was easily able to swing it back and slam the big weight against the door. With a crunch, the ram punched a hole right through the door. It didn''t bust the door open, but it did splinter the wood around the latch and deadbolt, so Johnston gave the door a kick and knocked the whole thing open. Getting his balance back, Johnston charged through, followed closely by Ken.

    His gun out and leveled ahead, Ken didn¡¯t look too closely at the living room. A glance really ¨C the place was cluttered with all sorts of junk. TV in the corner, old couch against the wall. No people. And then Ken was past, turning into the left bedroom. The room was bare. Boxes and luggage were piled up on the wall. There was a desk under the window. Behind him, he could hear Johnston and Kline both shouting.

    ¡°Police! Freeze, hands up!¡± Both officers were operating from the same script, with their words creating a weird stereo effect as they yelled slightly out of sync with each other.

    Ken was moving back to help with Johnston with his partner¡¯s arrest when shots rang out from the front room. Four or five shots, he wasn''t quite sure. Ken had never been good at that sort of detail when his adrenaline was up. From the short hallway, Ken could see the other two officers moving into the room where Kline had just fired, so Ken checked out the room Johnston had charged into.

    Johnston had a skinny white kid on the ground. He was already cuffing the guy when he saw Ken come in. ¡°I got this,¡± Johnston said.

    Ken turned back around and went to see what had happened with Kline. There was a splatter of blood on the far wall, probably ruining a pair of concert posters taped up. Another guy was on his stomach on the bed, this one chubby like he¡¯d never outgrown his baby fat. Kline was kneeling on top of him, bringing the guy¡¯s arms back for cuffs.

    The big guy was crying into his mattress, but Kline was talking over him. ¡°Hold still, if you know what¡¯s good for you.¡±

    With the guy in cuffs, Kline looked up at the three armored officers crowded into the little room. ¡°He jumped at me when I came in. Got him in the arm.¡±

    Ken nodded, ¡°Get him out of here. The ambulance will be pulled up by now.¡± Ken moved back into the cluttered living room and watched Kline and another officer frog march the injured thug out of the bedroom. The skinny guy with Johnston was walking out on his own and didn¡¯t look like he was going to put up any sort of resistance.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    The whole living room was just nasty. There was black soot over everything. You couldn¡¯t touch the couch without clouds of black crust filling the air. Even the TV was covered. It was strange, really. Ken spent a few minutes searching for evidence of a fire. There wasn''t any ash anywhere, no scorch marks either. No smell of smoke, not even on the curtains. Later Ken looked in the dumpster outside too but couldn''t ever find out what had burnt.

    There was a big machine of some sort up on an old wood table ¨C it stood out because it had been dusted clean. The only other things in the room that looked used were a couple of cardboard boxes. One of the boxes was filled with sheets of metal. Ken was bemused to see the other box was filled with plasteel bowls. Oddly enough they looked irregular. When Ken had seen the same sort of bowls at the store, their assembly line origin was usually obvious. These bowls looked messy. They were all different sizes, their edges rough.

    The big machine was just, well, a machine. Or maybe a computer thing? To Ken, it looked more like a computer than anything he¡¯d put into a car. It didn¡¯t look like there were any moving pieces, just wiring, electronics, and some plastic casing that almost definitely held microchips. The only distinguishing aspect of the whole thing was an open space on the side that held a big block of painted ceramic. Or maybe glass. Ken couldn¡¯t really tell what it was, just that it didn¡¯t seem connected to the electronics even though it had been placed just so.

    But it matched the description that the university admin had given him. Clearly, the tip was good enough, and whatever this thing did, they¡¯d recovered it. With a smile, Ken was looking forward to writing this report. It was a rare thing in Ken¡¯s experience to close a property crimes case like this. They¡¯d recovered the stolen goods, the goods looked undamaged, the people in possession of the stolen goods were on video stealing it in the first place. It was tough to imagine solving a crime as smoothly as this.

    While the patrol guys combed the apartment for evidence, Ken looked it over again. Under the soot, the furniture wasn¡¯t terrible, not by college student standards. Worn but not broken. The wooden kitchen table was scratched up pretty bad, but Ken would be willing to bet that most of the scratches came from the big thing set on it. The carpet was new enough, there was a basket near the door with several pairs of shoes in it. The bedding all looked clean, as was clothing in closets and drawers. There was a single cup in the sink, and the rest of the dishes were clean and in the cabinets on the kitchen wall.

    The empty room was probably the dirtiest, but even there the boxes mostly held books and papers. Really, other than the soot and the landscaping outside, this wasn¡¯t a bad place. Too bad about the mold smell, really.

    <hr>

    It had been a long, long day. The arrests went smooth, sure. The forms were easy to write too. But internal affairs were always obnoxious, and the DA was wanting to talk to Ken too. Ken rubbed his hands across his forehead in a habit leftover from the days when he had more hair. He spoke for the microphone in front of him, "While I was assisting detective Johnston to restrain the suspect, we heard shots from the front bedroom. Officer Kline had been instructed to clear that room. I did not see officer Kline go in, he followed me into the residence. I heard six shots. After confirming that detective Johnston had his suspect restrained and under control, I moved to assist officer Kline."

    Ken wrapped his long fingers around the glass of water in front of him and took a sip. The pitcher next to his glass was glistening with condensation. His throat wet again, he continued, "I came in, and saw that the suspect had been shot once. The bullet entered the suspect''s left arm. The suspect had been restrained by officer Kline with the assistance of officers Brown and Leary. I ordered them to take the injured suspect out to the ambulance. Detective Johnston put the other suspect into a patrol car. I stayed in the residence to direct the search for evidence."

    "The stolen goods were in plain sight. In addition to the stolen machinery, we took a number of notebooks that looked related to the machine as evidence. There was also some sort of powder throughout the residence. I ordered as much of it as possible to be collected for testing. Other than a gravity assist knife, we didn''t find any other contraband."

    "The search was completed by ten AM. At that point, we returned to the station." It was now after four in the afternoon, and Ken was beginning to struggle to focus. At least this was just a matter of repetition.

    The little man in a suit across from Ken asked, "if no weapons were found, why did officer Kline need to shoot the suspect?"

    "It was a midnight breach," answered Ken. "We were going in fast, to preserve evidence. We chose to go in at night to ensure both suspects would be present. It was dark, and when the suspect jumped at officer Kline, he had no choice but to respond to the threat. In the darkness, per policy, we used our firearms as primary."

    "And why are firearms primary?" the little man prompted.

    "Tasers are less effective at close range - they require at least seven feet for full effectiveness. Additionally, darkness during a midnight breach reduces accuracy and further reduces the effectiveness of Tasers. Policy states that firearms should be used to ensure proper threat reduction during midnight breaches," quoted Ken.

    "Were you concerned with friendly fire?" asked the man.

    "Friendly fire is always a concern. However, policy states that properly equipped entry teams can ignore the threat of small caliber firearms."

    "Thank you, officer McParland," said the little man. He reached out and turned the microphone off. Standing up, he also turned off the camera behind him and began gathering up the tripod. "I''m done with you, for now, I''ve already talked to the other officers on the team. I don''t expect any problems, but I do appreciate you making yourself so available. I had to hunt down Leary in the canteen."

    "Don''t worry about it, Mark. I know you''re just doing your job," said Ken. Ken didn''t stand up, just rubbed his aching eyes.

    "Want a coffee or something? I know Nishimura wants to talk to you, but I don''t think he''d mind waiting a minute," offered Mark.

    "It''s fine. I''d rather just keep it moving. I''m going to crash as soon as the DA''s done with me," answered Ken.

    In fact, DA Nishimura strode in as soon as the IA officer opened the door to the briefing room. Nishimura was one of those short guys who felt tall. Always standing straight, perfectly tailored suits, and hair cropped in a military cut. When Nishimura ran his hands over his scalp Ken could practically feel the way the short black hair would prickle against skin. Nishimura held the door open for Mark, murmuring something polite and meaningless as the other cop left the room.

    "So how am I supposed to handle this, officer?" Asked Nishimura right away.

    Ken just blinked.

    "You arrested a pair of kids, shot one, and nearly caused a riot on campus this morning when news got out," clarified Nishimura.

    "Wait, what happened on campus?"

    "Someone filmed you bringing the two out. Tweeted it, protests were blowing up on campus by lunchtime. Come on, McParland, you know better. Frog marching a bleeding kid out between a couple of riot guys?"

    "What was I supposed to do? We did it by the book," shot back Ken. "We got a warrant, double-checked the address. Staked it out to make sure both suspects were home, minimized risk to the officers. How should I have taken the perp to the ambulance? A stretcher would have been worse, don''t you think?"

    ¡°Why not just wait for them at class or something?¡±

    ¡°And give them a chance to destroy evidence? You know better too.¡±

    Nishimura sighed. ¡°Fine. I¡¯m not happy, but fine. At least the protests aren¡¯t turning into riots yet. Are we going to release bodycam footage?¡±

    Ken shrugged his round shoulders, ¡°we probably should. It was a good shoot, in my opinion. But you¡¯re the elected official, it¡¯s really up to you.¡±

    Nishimura finally sat down in the seat opposite Ken¡¯s seat. The DA slumped a bit as he relaxed, reaching out and pouring himself a glass of water. ¡°So, how¡¯s your mother, Ken?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s fine, last I talked to her. Still puttering in her garden most days. She¡¯s talking about moving though,¡± said Ken.

    ¡°I thought she wasn¡¯t in the suburbs?¡±

    ¡°No, she¡¯s way out of town. But that almost makes it worse, she calls me in a panic anytime she sees a car drive by she doesn¡¯t recognize.¡±

    Nishimura laughed at that. ¡°I get that. Nothing quite as scary as a neighbor buying something new, right?¡±

    Ken smiled without showing his teeth. ¡°So, about today¡¯s arrest. I¡¯m sorry about the protests, but the bust really was standard. Is the university admin making any noise? Is there any particular way you want me to handle things going forward?¡±

    ¡°Sorry Ken,¡± said the DA. He straightened his suit coat and went on, ¡°It¡¯s been a day, and I guess I need to vent a bit. Let me review your statements and the videos, and I¡¯ll get back to you.¡±

    ¡°Good job, by the way. You did hand me a really tight case, it makes that part of the job easy at least.¡±

    Ken would have taken the invitation to vent a bit too ¨C politics always messed up the simple cases. But Ken really just wanted to sign off and go home.

    So, he did just that.

 21: Down Shift

    Things were still raw for a while, but it didn''t change my responsibilities any. If anything, it brought a few things into focus that I had been putting off. Which is why I was now sitting at a table with two generals, a secretary with a ramrod posture and suspiciously short haircut, and a congressman. They surprised me ¨C I asked them to come in for a meeting and they turned up before the end of the week. Before that moment I hadn¡¯t realized, but we''d come a long way since I had to beg to get the attention of a couple of captains or majors. Of course, even though I still never met with those captains and majors, my logistics people had weekly conference calls with them.

    We went through some basic pleasantries ¨C easy enough since only the congressman had a family to talk about, it then was time to dive into business. We were in an actual conference room instead of the coffee shop where I liked to do business. I had Ashley and Austin sitting on my side of the table, each with a few tablets open in front of them. ¡°Basically, I called you here because our priorities have been changing, and I think we¡¯d all be better off if PPM started to sever ties with the Pentagon.¡±

    The two generals went pale, but I¡¯d given the congressman a hint of what I wanted ahead of time. I suspect the secretary also knew my agenda ahead of time.

    ¡°Don¡¯t panic, we''re rethinking our relationships with everyone, at this point. I mean, we don''t even get paid for most of them. The Pentagon contracts are the only deals involving significant cash flow. I mean, our deal with Disney is probably our most valuable, and all we get from them is full access to their media.¡± I think the Arcology¡¯s people would flee in droves if we lost the Disney streaming services. ¡°And frankly, as fair as the contracts are, we don''t do anything with the money you pay use except to pay taxes.

    The alpha general jumped in there, shooting a glare at the smug congressman, ¡°I¡¯m sure we can renegotiate any tax concerns you have. PPM is still very...¡±

    I waved him down with a smile. ¡°Don''t worry, don''t worry, really. I should be more clear. It''s been a rough few weeks, and I''m wandering from the point. Always too many distractions, right?¡± I smiled and slid Ashley¡¯s tablet in front of me, flicking a file open as I talked, ¡°Taxes really aren''t an issue. My point is that getting income, just to pay taxes, just to get paid by the government, just to pay taxes again... it''s silly. Don''t you think? Circular, anyways.¡±

    ¡°I might be odd, but then I''ve never been a business major type, either. Money used to be awesome, you could buy what you needed to live, with money. Nowadays, not so much. I don''t need to pay for manpower ¨C I''ve literally got people who want to help out then I can use. All we really need is design work, and there''s more than enough people who do it for fun to fill our needs. We do consume a lot of entertainment, but it¡¯s amazing what people will produce just for the sake of an audience. We don''t need to buy raw materials, stuff doesn''t wear out enough to keep stripping everything, and the land and properties we own already cover everything. For that matter, since electricity is free, we¡¯ve gotten recycling efficiency up to ridiculous amounts. Did you know that you can turn powdered rust back into pig iron with enough energy? It¡¯s crazy ¨C digging up and processing old garbage dumps is turning out to be more efficient than mining or harvesting.¡±

    ¡°I don''t need to buy finished materials either, robots make what I want after I push a few buttons or order my Voice. None of that needs cash, nor do I ask for cash from the Arcology residents to make their own stuff.¡±

    ¡°And, frankly, trying to manage old-fashioned business deals is just making it harder to run the bits that matter. Harder to focus on what the people living here need, harder to focus on the research that we''re still pushing. Harder to let ourselves do what we want, you know?¡±

    I slid over the tablet, putting it in front of the beta general. He picked it up, flicking through the pages of the open file. The first few pages in the folders included maps, annotated with lists of various assets. I grabbed a few more, opening an identical file on each before sliding them over to the rest of the delegation. The rest of the pages detailed the old ongoing contract, listing the terms to be modified at the end of the period. ¡°These papers are our offer. I hope you find it generous. To sum it up: we''re giving you full license to use and manufacture Plasma Steel, as well as our automated production techniques.¡±

    I took Austin¡¯s tablet and slid that over too - his had more detailed files listing assets and personnel. ¡°Our facilities in Virginia, Georgia, and California should be more than sufficient for your needs and will get signed over as consideration for modifying the contracts. Additionally, we''d turn over our mining and extraction operations in California, West Virginia, and the Gulf seabed. This includes all the physical assets on site, and we will provide access to the same managers, developers, and designers you''ve been working with for a period of up to three years. They¡¯ll see to training your own people to take over. Just so you know, none of them are under any non-disclosure agreements that apply, so feel free to poach anyone who¡¯s willing.¡±

    ¡°In exchange, we would like to walk away from our defense contracts.¡±

    The four men were silent, engrossed in the files. While they waited, I stood and took a pot of coffee from the sidebar in the room, pouring myself a cup and offering it to everyone. That bit of hospitality done, I sat and waited. The Alpha generals spoke up first after the secretary nodded at him. ¡°It certainly looks like this meets our needs. At least in the short term. We''ve got about fifteen more years and we''ll have finished rebuilding the navy...¡±

    It was my turn to interrupt with a laugh, ¡°If you''d been willing, you could have been done already. Fifteen more years? How long could a boat possibly take?

    ¡°I''d rather not argue about that, sir.¡± The general got back on point, ¡°I''ve got only got one concern, from a military standpoint, and that is continued access. You''ve got the best R&D program in the world, and you¡¯re years ahead of your competitor. And ever since Anghat passed, we doubt there¡¯ll be many more breakthroughs coming from overseas. I''d want assurances of continued access to their work. We can''t afford to let someone else steal a march on us.¡±

    That made sense, although I don''t think we were as far ahead as he thought we were. I knew for a fact that Plasma Steel production, and most of its variations, had been cracked by other people. A lab in Switzerland did it first, followed quickly by Israel and a private company in Germany. From there it had spread out ¨C I think the German company didn¡¯t have security quite up to par. But it didn''t really matter whether Plasma Steel production was cracked by independent researchers, by people following the unavoidable clues we left by our operations, or by outright theft of our secrets. Several other countries and companies were producing their own Plasma Steel products, and it would only spread at this point. There really hadn''t been a major breakthrough since Anghat released his generator. That was, of course, a large part of why I was changing our plans. Trying to rely on a monopoly you can¡¯t control is just stupid.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    I was nodding along with the general, anyways, none of his concerns seemed like an issue. The congressman was smiling. Prepared for the meeting or not, his district held both a production facility and a major mining operation. He spoke up, ¡°I''ll take this back to committee, but I don''t see any real objections. I''m assuming the rest of your board is on board? I mean, the other owners?¡±

    Austin was the only owner who spent any time running the company, which was part of why I¡¯d brought him along. He still found ways to get his hands dirty, somehow, working with the designers who fine-tuned the drones and AI production facilities. If any of the men in front of us had specific questions about assets, production, or staff, then Austin would be the best person to answer. In contrast, El and Alan were totally consumed with our art community and Hansen lived for his research. None of them were happy putting any attention into PPM¡¯s operations, and they had been simply rubber-stamping my decisions for a while.

    I stood up at this point. ¡°Gentlemen, I know you''re busy, and I just tossed a major issue into your laps. I''ll let you do any announcements, releases. Let us know about any details you need figured. I¡¯m not in any real rush, but I¡¯d rather not drag things out either.¡±

    Everyone stood with me, and we exchanged the expected pleasantries. I offered to show them around more ¨C the beta general and congressmen had been to the Arcology before, but it was the other two¡¯s first visit. They demurred, saying they had plenty to do today, and they filed out. Some PR flack guided them back out to the foyer they had entered through.

    I needed some sunshine, these conference rooms always felt grim. They had the same white walls and ceiling as everything else. Someone had done their best with the space, with a tasteful wood conference table and matching sidebars, rugs covered the floor, and plenty of artwork was spaced around the wall. Tasteful or not, it made the place feel like a hotel room in a prison.

    I also wanted to talk to Austin a bit more, so down we went. He wanted to do some inspections down in our grow rooms. Our ''greenhouses'' were all sub-sub-basement levels. I''m don''t remember exactly how deep, but when the lift door opened my nose was immediately assaulted by warm, humid air, scented with damp wood, dirt, flowers, and maybe a hint of manure.

    We both put on sunglasses ¨C there was a cabinet full of them just outside the lift ¨C and strolled out into the greenhouses. The greenhouses were all different sizes, depending on what was getting grown, but they were all brightly lit with full-spectrum lamps, and mostly warmer and more humid than I usually found comfortable. But that conference room made the sweat beading on my forehead and dampening my collar feel liberating.

    Austin strode off along a trough of sorts with banana trees growing out of them. He stripped his shirt off as he went, dark skin already shining with sweat. He turned a grinned at me, ¡°I know the castle is pretty libertine, but somehow it only feels right to take my shirt off down here.¡±

    He blinked in the light, showed his shockingly white teeth as he reached out and pushed against one of the banana trees. ¡°You know banana trees aren''t really trees, right? They''re more a bush or a stalk of grass. The biologists tell me that bananas are some sort of berry, but I''ve always thought they were more like grain. Of course, either way, you can''t exactly climb one.¡±

    ¡°So, what is it you like about being down here? You can''t be tanning.¡±

    ¡°Do I need to tell you that''s racist?¡±

    ¡°Racist? Nah, just pointing out reality. Gotta keep tabs, make sure my partners aren''t planning a takeover.¡±

    ¡°You think I want your job? You put this lash-up together, you get to run it. I''ll keep playing down here in the dirt. Besides, I think you''d cry yourself tears of joy if one of us tried to take over. Back to your video games,¡± he laughed at me as he turned away and started walking slowly between the plants.

    I''ll admit, I did miss games, sometimes. Those long sessions in the dorms are some of my fondest memories. But life had changed. I still usually get nights off and could play if I wanted to, but games had lost something. A joy was gone from it, a carelessness. I miss it, but at the same time, I think that the joy is gone because I don''t miss it. I still laughed at Steven''s suggestion.

    With a shrug, I followed him along the fragrant path. ¡°Nah, I''m actually down here because I''m a little worried. Things are changing. Some of it¡¯s me, some of it¡¯s getting pushed on me. But whether I want it or not, the way PPM interacts with the world is changing. You know? I''ve tried to talk about it...¡± Not only were we ending our contracts with the Pentagon, but we were also ending our contracts with most of the other big corporations. Our basic production techniques were getting posted on the internet, and we were manufacturing and giving away seed facilities that would let anyone with access to the raw materials make anything they wanted. And iron, glass, plant oils, and wood dust weren¡¯t exactly difficult to procure. We couldn¡¯t just squat on our licenses anymore, and we couldn¡¯t rely on what other groups provided either.

    Austin smiled, ¡°Yeah, my kids like to talk my ear off about it ¨C a true socialist society, no money, needs met, blah blah blah. But we still gotta eat, that''s part of why I''m down here. I do like the warm air though, and the fake sunlight. But I tell myself I¡¯m making sure the bots are keeping the silos full.¡±

    "Good,¡± I nodded. ¡°We''re thinking the same. Here''s a question for you to think about: how much can we increase and diversify production? And how much can we increase storage?¡±

    ¡°Whoo. You¡¯re talking food?¡± We¡¯d moved past the bananas and reached a more open area with plants growing in actual soil. He continued after I confirmed I meant food.

    ¡°We''re about at max for the land we manage, but we still give away most of what we grow. Some of that is part of deals we¡¯ve made, but a lot of that goes straight to the state. We keep maybe fifteen percent of our outside crops. We keep closer to three-quarters of the greenhouse crops. That¡¯s mostly because we only grow non-local crops here ¨C things that need controlled environments.¡±

    ¡°What would it take to feed the arcology entirely from internal sources?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well, we could open more greenhouses easily enough. I wouldn''t want to go too much deeper under the arcology, but there''s no reason we can''t open new caves under our hinterlands. Digging will take the most time, but we could probably double output in a year or so.¡±

    ¡°Why dig? It made sense when we were keeping our footprint under control, but if we''re gonna expand, why not just build normal greenhouses on top somewhere?¡±

    ¡°We could, but that¡¯ll make the designers squawk. We¡¯d end up messing with the skyline or the footprint, and those guys are pretty attached to the way the castle looks. And it¡¯s not that hard to dig, really. The land under the airport outside is totally unused, and we have space under the train depot too. Only reason not to dig is if you want more capacity right away. Are Mongols on their way?¡±

    ¡°No, I''m just thinking long-term. No need to rush. What about storage?¡±

    Austin scratched his head, ¡°I''ll admit I''m less certain about the numbers there. Officially, we''ve got about a month of food on hand, but that can''t be right. We don''t harvest grain monthly, but we still have bread year round. I''ll have to do some research there. I know we mostly try to do just in-time production, but there¡¯s padding there too. I¡¯ll find out the details.¡±

    ¡°Good, good. Figure out what''s reasonable, I think I''d like to make sure we have some significant storage ready. Especially for materials and food that we can¡¯t produce locally.¡±

    ¡°No problem. I''ll get my geeks running AI sims this afternoon.¡±

    ¡°Great, thank you, Austin.¡± I smiled. ¡°And maybe doublecheck industrial production first. Same sorts of considerations ¨C let''s see if we can¡¯t make sure that we can do everything the Arcology needs from purely internal resources. And let me know if there are any likely bottlenecks or shortfalls. Maybe I can kick some of that over to Hansen¡¯s people.¡±

    Austin laughed, ¡°Yeah, do that. Never know, they might be making helium outa vacuum by now.¡±

 22: Villain in the Fields - Macks Interlude (2)

    Today was Mack''s day off. That meant he had to go spend an hour or two practicing at the range. Truth be told, he honestly liked his workdays better than his days off. He was the oldest kid who didn''t go with the men to work. That meant that most of the work involved in keeping the compound working fell on him. He had gotten trained to use a bulldozer and a big scraper, and he was supposed to do as much work as he could building berms and keeping the paths of the compound smooth.

    Most of the old buildings had gotten rebuilt in the years since Mack and his family had arrived. A year ago, one of the men¡¯s work trips brought back a few hundred plasteel sheets. The camp had mixed feelings about that. That same plasteel had literally destroyed the jobs that most of the men had done their whole lives. The grumbling only stopped after Roland put his foot down and made his feelings clear.

    Mack like plasteel, the stuff was just so cool. It was white and looked a little oily in the sun with a rainbow sort of sheen, but it felt dry and cool when you touched it. It didn''t rust, it didn''t bend, you couldn''t even scratch it, even when you really messed up with the bulldozer. It was easy to handle too ¨C Mack could pick up one of the ten-foot by twenty-foot sheets by himself. He couldn¡¯t move it well by himself, something that big was still hard to balance, but he could pick it up.

    But it was tricky to use well. Dad had been a welder back before they moved, but welds wouldn''t stick to plasteel, and you couldn''t melt the stuff or cut it either. After buildings started getting plasteel frames, and cars and pretty much everything that had been metal started getting made from plasteel, no one needed welders anymore. Dad had been able to find a job in a factory for a bit, operating some machine, but that went under when people stopped buying appliances that weren''t plasteel.

    The sheets they had in the compound would have probably been useless if they hadn''t clearly been meant for assembling buildings and stuff. Each ten by twenty sheet had rings and hooks built onto every edge. The hooks fit into the rings just so, with enough space that you could wiggle sheets together. With each sheet being so thin and light, two or three men working together could build a building in minutes by fitting each sheet together like Legos. It wasn''t perfect, the joining left gaps where they fit together like the bathrooms at Mack¡¯s old school. They used plaster cloth to fill in the gaps, painted to keep it waterproof. But even with the gaps filled in the building wouldn''t hold heat at all. That was why Mack''s job was to push big walls of dirt against each of the new barracks they built. His mom and the other women would lay in the plaster cloth and spray on sealant over the gaps, and then the inside would be warm, quiet, and comfortable. The plasteel walls were even easy to clean. Pretty much anything a little kid slapped up could be wiped off with a towel.

    Operating the bulldozer was still exciting for Mack, even after he got good enough that most of the tasks had gotten routine. The rest of his life in the compound wasn¡¯t so much fun. There was still school, taught by a couple of the women. There was also lots of training. They ran, they learned karate, they learned how to survive in the mountains, they learned to shoot. Mack never did learn to love shooting. There wasn''t much else to do in the compound when you weren''t doing chores, especially when the men were away working.

    But Mack was a good kid. So when he finished his chores he went and checked out a rifle from the armory and went and sent a hundred rounds downrange. That was the rule ¨C everyone who lived in Roland¡¯s compound was supposed to practice shooting each week. He took his target sheets and filed them for review, one of Roland¡¯s Made Men would check everyone''s records and ensure that their marksmanship was up to par, otherwise, you''d get assigned more practice. Mack was a good shot, mostly because he really didn''t like shooting and was motivated to not have to practice more. It was the noise that bothered him the most, he thought. Even when he was the one pulling the trigger the loud explosion next to his face was hard to put up with.

    He had checked his gun back in and was considering asking mom for permission to leave the compound and explore the creek when he heard the roar of engines coming back towards the compound.

    He jogged back to see half a dozen pickup trucks and a couple of flatbeds crunch up to the gate. The two women who had stood as sentries while the men were gone opened the gate to let the trucks in. One of dad''s first jobs had been to build an actual gate for the entrance. It rolled open and shut and was sturdy enough that even the bulldozer couldn''t easily break it down. Mack knew that because he had crashed into the gate when he was first learning to drive the big machine. Roland, the big guy who called everyone ''brother'' and ''son,'' just laughed, and complimented dad on his work. Roland always called Mack ¡®son.¡¯ Dad had grumbled at Mack a bit, fixing the gate had taken time away from other things, but Mack never had gotten in trouble for that or any of his other mishaps. Maybe that was why Roland had been so insistent about getting plasteel to build with.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    In fact, Mack had only gotten into real trouble once. He had found a muskrat nest on the side of the creek and lost a day watching it quietly from a nearby tree. He had watched them start getting active as they foraged around in the cool evening. The way they pulled big plants into their den through the water had absolutely fascinated Mack. He hadn''t realized how late it had gotten until it was fully dark. On his way back he walked right into one of the search parties that had gone looking for him.

    Dad had been about to beat him, but Roland intervened. Instead of getting spanked, Mack spent a month with reduced rations and had to stand guard duty for eight hours every night. It was the last time Mack had lost track of time.

    Mack wished Roland hadn¡¯t ever noticed him. The tall man went out of his way to keep track of Mack. He talked to Mack¡¯s karate Moreh each week and got updates on Mack¡¯s progress. He checked on Mack¡¯s shooting, which was part of why Mack went out of his way to make sure his targets were properly filed. Roland even watched during dinner to see if Mack finished his meal and would give the boy extra meat most nights too. Not that Mack was ever hungry, if anything Mack usually felt like he ate too much.

    Roland would even drag Mack into his meetings with the Made Men a few times a week. Roland had to sit quietly while they talked about ammunition, food, building plans. They talked about people they knew and talked to from outside, and discussed where they would go to work this week. Sometimes Roland even asked Mack for the boy''s opinion, when Roland had to make a decision about rewards or punishments.

    All of that meant that none of the other boys in the compound would play with him during their free time, in fact, they usually went out of their way to make his life harder. They couldn''t be too aggressive with him - one boy had knocked Mack''s bowl of stew onto the ground and got a beating and had to sleep outside for a week. Mack had learned to shake his sheets out every night, dirt and sand were the mildest of what he¡¯d found in his bed.

    After passing through the gate, the pickups all pulled into the same garage where all the cars went. The garage used to just be a berm that kept the wind off a bit, now there was a big wall of dirt and cinderblock that made a big U shape, and it was roofed over with the corrugated steel that the old barracks had been made from. There were three flatbeds, not two. The big trucks pulled up to the main cabin. One of them must be new, when the men went out to work, they had only taken two of the flatbed semis. Roland slept in one cabin, the other was used as a mess hall, meeting room, and warehouse.

    Mack joined the line that had formed up at the parked trailers ¨C everyone had done this before. Each flatbed was loaded with boxes, crates, and bags, so a chain of people began passing anything that could be carried while others used a couple of dolly carts to move the bigger crates. Roland, dad, and a few of the other Made Men were picking over the boxes piled on the new truck. Most of the bags and boxes Mack was helping unload looked like food and household stuff ¨C one box broke and spilled plastic forks all over the ground. Most weeks when the men went out to work, they came back with loads that looked just like this.

    The new flatbed was loaded with something different though ¨C wooden crates, each stamped with a big ¡°USA ARMY¡± on the side, with red lettering that said ¡°SENSITIVE ITEMS¡± splashed over the top. He heard Roland say, ¡°Not here, we''ll bring them inside and see if this is what we expected.¡±

    Roland had been about to say something else when a high-pitched shout went up from the garage. A few of the women had gone in to greet their husbands, and one had started screaming wordlessly. With a few gestures, Roland dismissed most of the people who had been unloading, so Mack wordlessly joined his dad to follow Roland into the garage. The woman had stopped screaming, out of breath, but she was collapsed on her knees and shaking while a few other women clustered around with their arms over her.

    Roland knelt in the dirt in front of her and reached one hand out for a moment. He held it out and then dropped it limply while he looked at her. ¡°I''m sorry, Ruth. Isaac was a good man, and I''m proud to have had him as a brother here. The day he was made part of our brotherhood was a happy one. He died for us all, and we will honor him.¡±

    She sobbed again at this, but her eyes locked with Rolands as he kept speaking. ¡°Blood is not new, and we have all been fighting since before we came together. But I''ll not cheapen his murder by pretending it was common or expected, or anything less than a tragedy. We can still remember him, by working every day, by bringing back a place we can be proud of.¡±

    ¡°Ruth, you and your children will always have a place here, don''t be afraid. We all grieve with you.¡±

    Mack¡¯s dad pulled him away, back to the trucks. Back to work.

 23: A New Economy

    ¡°What the hell, Ashley? Why would you quit?¡±

    Ashley Rice had left an honest-to-goodness piece of paper on my desk overnight. The typed print was a brief and concise letter of resignation. I''ll admit I never really thought a lot of the hardworking and bland girl, but this kind of hurt.

    Ashley Rice was the first person I¡¯d hired after we¡¯d moved away from the University. Sure, I could wish that she wore something other than a cardigan and denim skirt once in a while, but she was still a fixture in my life. To lose her... I found I didn''t want her to go.

    ¡°I assumed you knew why I was severing our professional relationship, Mr. Holden.¡± Ashley just sat still, no gestures, no twitches. She never played poker, either. ¡°You don''t need even one full-time money person anymore, let alone my whole team. We appreciate what you do but having an office and desk and title when I don''t actually do anything... it''s hard. We''re depressed. I''m depressed. I mean... I can''t keep calling myself an accountant when I''m not.¡±

    ¡°Dude... Ashley... I''m sorry. You know I''d happily let you do something else,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ve always been more than welcome to write your own job description and title.¡± I was having a hard time processing it. Coming out of the blue like this I couldn¡¯t help but be bothered ¨C there just wasn¡¯t any reason for her to quit. Plenty of people struggled to find a meaning when they didn''t have to do anything, but Ashley had a job and a title and a position. Hell, you can find her name in history books and newspaper articles. And Ashley in particular, I never would have expected it from someone who never seemed to get emotional about anything.

    ¡°Don''t be sorry, Mr. Holden. I''ll still be available for consultation if you need it.¡± Miracle of miracles, a narrow smile graced Ashley¡¯s thin lips before vanishing back into the still pond of her face. ¡°And it¡¯s not like I won''t be keeping busy.¡±

    ¡°Busy, Ashley? Ten years, and I''m not sure if I''ve ever heard you talk about something other than spreadsheets and accounts receivable.¡±

    I may have had a heart attack, Ashley actually showed me her teeth in a wide grin. ¡°Oh, yes. You should come to the plaza by my suites some time. I''ve got the largest collection of typewriters in the Castle, I repair them, tear them down, I''ve even been working on designing a new model with all plasteel parts. That¡¯s tricky, though. See, with plasteel the arms don''t have any give to them.¡±

    ¡°Plasma Steel,¡± I corrected automatically. I was in a daze, really. I just couldn¡¯t get past the fact that she was abandoning us.

    She went on oblivious to me, ¡°A good mechanical keyboard needs some flex to it, it keeps things moving when the typist is too fast and helps prevent jams. And of course, you need to accommodate the fact that the ribbon has give in it too...¡±

    I cut her off, ¡°I''ll have to. Come by I mean. I assume you used one of those typewriters on this?¡± I fluttered her letter. ¡°I was actually thinking about how long it had been since I had held a memo in hand. I can¡¯t imagine anyone else but you giving me one.¡±

    We made some small talk, and she let himself out. I did my best to hide it, but I was angry she left us. We had been having versions of this same discussion for years now. Inflation was beyond out of control ¨C huge amounts of money was floating around, but there just wasn''t anything worth buying with it. Food was free, durable goods were free if you were happy with an established design, manufactured goods were insanely cheap ¨C several outfits of mass-produced clothing ran at about five dollars. A day of labor for most unskilled jobs (or jobs that only require on-the-job training) ran for a few dollars a day.

    Even professional jobs that required a high degree of training just didn''t cost much ¨C it turns out that a lot of doctors just like being doctors. PhD types really are just big geeks. If anything, we were getting more professionals now that economic bars to entry were gone. Even if tuition and costs are totally covered, med school is a sacrifice, as is law school or really any grad school. If you don''t have to worry about supporting your family, or feeding yourself, or big loans, then going to school is easy, and popular. Frankly, getting educated was probably our number one ''hobby.''Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

    For us, we could meet our needs even if only a fraction of graduates wanted to use their degrees. Figure in that all the support infrastructure needed for a given job was pretty much always available, it got easy. Turns out that you get more (and better) teachers not by paying them better, but by making sure that they have all the supplies they could want, comfortable classrooms, and eventually smaller class sizes. When the only stress to teaching is children, then the people who love working with children prosper.

    There were a few goods that still cost real money. For a while, imports ate up most people''s cash. Pocky, fancy liquor, and various foreign brands continued to cost money. That lasted right up until automated production got good enough to mimic the foreign brands. Of course, some old-timers claimed that modern Pocky wasn''t as good as the old stuff, but as soon as Glico started using the same production methods as the rest of the world, imitating it got easy. I probably couldn''t tell you if the current snack was as good or worse than the old stuff.

    When you get down to it, time was the only real commodity. Technically, the Arcology was expensive. Plasma Manufacturing had taken hundreds of thousands of man-hours to design, years to build, and was still expanding. Sure, the walls and fixtures themselves were practically free, and production capacity used on that was still capacity that could have been turned to build other products, but I don¡¯t think we ever approached our max capacity. That¡¯s why we used production allotments as perks for the designers and works that were still technically on the books that Ashley was refusing to be in charge of.

    Nasa and other agencies were still building space missions, too. Re-usable rocketry was easy now ¨C you could just smash your rocket into a field somewhere, dust it off, and launch it again now. The energy demands for satellites and shuttles were even easier, pretty much every satellite had a little Anghat generator built in to provide as much energy as you could need without any fuel demands. But even so, the rockets and capsules were still huge and ridiculously complicated. So... expensive. Each one took time and effort from designers to match it to the mission.

    The only items that were still ''expensive'' were those items that just could not be produced quickly. Liquor comes to mind ¨C there just isn¡¯t a good automation substitute to sitting around for decades in a barrel. The demand for artisanal goods was insane too, which was lucky because everyone had started handmaking all sorts of stuff. Entertainment was still pricey. Sure, computers could replace a lot of what actors did, but that required as many man-hours of animators and programmers as you saved by not having actors, so that didn¡¯t change. But good movies, good books, good games, all that creative output still required almost as many hours as before, from people just as talented as before.

    Freed up labor was producing a renaissance in muscle-powered techniques ¨C woodworking, sculpting, and so on. Exotic hardwoods especially became scarce, So, now a mahogany desk was a major mark of prestige and power. There were problems with ecological conservation, and different places dealt with it in different ways. I''ll admit I never really paid attention ¨C no one in my Arcology ever really bothered with the really rare stuff. Personally, I was happy with Plasma Steel furnishings, with maybe some bamboo or pine to soften my surroundings. Most people around me seemed to feel the same.

    Some regions banned particular goods entirely, some had sharp limits on anything they didn¡¯t produce themselves, and some didn¡¯t bother with any regulation at all. There were a couple of arcologies in the old deep south that would only allow imports equal to their exports. If you wanted a pound of hardwood from South America, you needed to export a pound of something out of the arcology. Other arcologies, notably the big one in New Hampshire, didn¡¯t bother doing any regulation within their walls at all. They chose to leave it to the old state and federal governments.

    My Arcology did create a system for allotting out wood and other limited goods that were separate from the production time credits we gave out. Some people traded those allotments ¨C if you bought a wood desk, or had wood paneling installed by a carpenter, the artist would usually get paid in wood credits, or maybe old booze, or a rare food stock. For the most part though, no one used all of their allotments.

    Typewriters though. Now I was curious. I knew we had musicians by the thousand, as well as actors, writers, chefs, painters. Athletes worked out and pushed their bodies further every day, coaches helping them over every sort of obstacle. And there were surely plenty of little things too ¨C Albert spent his days on model scenery in his little coffee shop, Ashley had her typewriters, I wonder what other things were people spending their days on? What else was there that no one could have made a living at in the old days, but was still worth hours of effort?

 24: Villain in the Fields - Macks Interlude (3)

    Mack was finally going to work with the rest of the men. He had been made a brother on his fifteenth birthday. Roland had made a speech about how proud he was of Mack, how Mack had made the whole compound better and stronger through his sweat and labor. Roland told Mack that the boy would always be a son to him, and he would continue to give him and his family purpose.

    Now Mack was riding on the front seat, up high as a passenger in one of their semi-trucks. It was the first time he''d left the compound in a vehicle in all the years since they''d come here. This time Mack paid much closer attention to the landscape. Their home was tucked into a narrow valley up high in the mountains. The dirt road itself was well-graded after all, Mack and the others spent enough time keeping it that way. It wound nearly twenty miles through the mountains before they reached a paved road. The last few hundred yards were rough though. Roland''s people never improved the road past the last curving bit of canyon that concealed the whole place. The pickups managed the ruts and dips just fine, but the two big rigs had to be shepherded carefully so that their trailers wouldn''t bottom out.

    Once on the highway, the convoy put the mountain range behind them quickly. It took less than half an hour to reach a little town at a crossroads.

    They stopped the trucks there while Roland got out and spoke with an old man at a dirty gas station. Then they continued west. As they drove Mack started seeing more and more signs of civilization - things he remembered even if he didn''t miss them. The young man couldn''t help but gawk at the big plasteel buildings that began to dot the landscape. Most places were still brick, wood, steel, no different than the homes he could remember as a child, but the plasteel buildings were incredible. They shone against the backdrop, the white almost glowing in the sun. They tended to be very straight and plain, but somehow they always seemed to fit into the landscape ¨C the rigid angles and corners feeling natural to Mack. The contrast between the bunkers he''d help build and these gleaming structures kept him distracted.

    While they drove, about half of the men in the little caravan were putting on armor. It had taken them a long time to figure out how to piece together the armor that had come in on a previous hunting trip, and almost as long to fit individual pieces to the different Made Men on the trip. Every joint was carefully fitted so that no matter how he stretched nothing opened up between the white plates. Glossy and white, Mack felt a bit like a stormtrooper in his, except the helmet was totally different. The helmet was shaped like a bucket, with straps that let it move a bit with his head, even though it mostly rode on a round seal at his shoulders. The front half was made out of a fine mesh of plasteel ¨C it let him breathe easily and he could see out well too, especially during the day.

    After earlier work trips had begun bringing back armor, Roland had the rest had argued about whether to use it. They had experimented with the armor, and after some of the men talked about the cops they had seen wearing the gear they all decided that it would let them be a bit more aggressive than usual while working.

    Eventually, Roland pulled his truck off at an old rest stop. The bathrooms and shelter had been burnt out, leaving only a crumbling brick shell, but the open lot was an easy place to pull the vehicles into a loose circle. The men were divided by vehicle ¨C each pickup carried eight men, the two semis only had three. There were two big panel vans along this time, too. But those only had a driver each. Roland went from truck to truck, giving quiet instructions.

    When Roland got to Mack''s truck, he spoke quietly, though you could hear a grin in his voice. ¡°You''re last in the line. Follow me, and don''t pull through the gate until after we''ve waved you in. There''ll be a big turnaround in front, pull along that and park as soon as you''ve got the back end of the trailer is pointed at the doors. Don''t worry about backing up, this should be fast. As soon as you stop, John, you throw the back doors open and wait. Mack, you Jesus stay in the cab, keep the truck running and be ready to pull out. The other truck will be picking up the load, so just keep the back open and empty until we all get back. I''m expecting that we''ll have to leave most of the pickups behind, so you''ll be responsible for our getaway.

    ¡°Understand?¡±

    ¡°Yessir,¡± said Mack''s dad, the driver. Mack and John nodded too, although you couldn''t see Mack''s head move through the helmet. John''s visor was up, so Mack could see him nod. Mack never heard anyone else''s instructions, but despite his curiosity about the plan he kept silent. He was determined to be as hard-working and strong as all the other men. He stood quietly until the order came to get back in and move on.

    This time, instead of the leisurely and careful pace of the trip so far, the trucks all seemed to fly down the road, engines roaring in the midday heat. The group left the highway, the pickups racing ahead while Roland''s truck and the two semis slowed down and fell back. The destination was a large boxy building, surrounded by an old and rusty chainlink fence. A single tall flagpole stood in front, the flag limp in the afternoon sun. The building was mostly built of plasteel, but the pearly whiteness of the structure was marred by several big steel doors placed all around it. Even though the doors had been painted, Mack knew they weren''t plasteel ¨C several of them were broken open already, apparently after being rammed by speeding pickups. As the big tractors carefully rocked their way over a broken-down fence, a massive explosion raised a small mushroom cloud on the other side of the building. It was followed a moment later by a second explosion on Mack''s left.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.As they pulled up, Mack could see bright lights flashing inside the windows, and the shapes of people running back and forth. He couldn''t hear anything except a ringing in his ears. The truck pulled around as instructed, and Mack watched as John jumped out to run and open the back doors of the truck. Mack jumped out too, as backup and to help watch the cab of the big semi. As he jumped down though, he was surprised when one of his feet jerked out from under him, spilling him flat on the ground.

    He started to get up but fell again when one of his elbows suddenly folded under his weight. And it was raining, too. He could see puffs all around him where raindrops were kicking dust into the air. Bemused, Mack tried again to get up, despite the way his body tried to jerk now and then outside his control. It wasn''t until he felt the sting of grit in his face that he realized that someone was shooting at him. He saw a bullet ricochet off his shoulder and bite into the ground, the ping and whine of its passing just audible as the buzzing noise in Mack''s head started to fade.

    Looking over, he saw that John was on the ground too, the doors of the trailer still latched shut. That meant Mack had a job to do and couldn''t just stand around.

    Staggering forward, he only fell once more as he made his way to the back, throwing the doors open. That done, he got into the trailer to wait. He was starting to hear again ¨C there was lots of shooting going on, mostly from inside the building. He could hear shouting too, and the shrill pulse of an alarm going off.

    He stayed ducked in the trailer, watching the entrance and visible windows as he did. He thought maybe he should figure out where the guy who had been shooting at him had been, so he could shoot back. But no, he was supposed to follow orders. It felt like he had been in the trailer for days already. He knew it hadn''t been all that long, but he was thirsty. His mouth was so dry it took some thought and effort to keep his tongue from sticking to his teeth. And he needed to use the bathroom.

    Another eternity. More shouting, more shooting, and still the alarm blared over everything.

    Yet another eternity. More explosions started shaking the building, not as big as the two big explosions that head deafened him before, but a lot louder than the gunshots had been. After each boom was a brief lull in the shooting, punctuating the fight like a monstrously irregular metronome.

    And then Mack felt the truck start to move. No one else was in the back except Mack, weren''t they supposed to be more getting on with him? That''s what he thought he had been told. As they pulled away, he saw John on the ground on the side of the truck, still where he''d fallen the first time. John had put the mesh visor of his helmet up. When they''d practiced, John had always hated the armor, said it was hard to breathe, hard to see. Mack didn''t get it, maybe your head got kinda hot but it wasn''t any different than a bike helmet. But now John was laying on his back with a red pool glistening on the pavement around him.

    Mack could only watch as the building fell away in the distance behind them.

    They kept driving west ¨C farther both from the fight and from the compound. Mack could only sit in the back and hold on, he didn''t have a way to talk to his dad or anyone else. They pulled up on the side of the road, and after a moment Mack''s dad stuck his head around. The man slumped as soon as he saw Mack sitting inside, he crossed himself and muttered something that his son couldn''t hear.

    Then he climbed into the trailer and spoke louder, ¡°Quick, we have to get you out of that armor. I don''t think anyone''s chasing us, but if they spot that getup we''ll be in trouble.¡±

    ¡°Dad, what happened? Where is everyone?¡± Mack''s hands were starting to shake, which made it hard to get at the straps and latches to get the armor off. The whole system had to go on and off in order and was set in a way that made it very difficult to manage without the cooperation of the occupant. He had to pull a tab inside his helmet with his teeth, first, then they could start working on down. Neck, shoulders, back, and so on.

    ¡°I''m not sure. It was supposed to be fast, easy. We were going to steal some generators. There''s supposed to be some there that don''t need fuel, it would have meant a lot fewer raids. Roland said it would be easy, just a few rent-a-cops who''d give up as soon as we were in. The vans exploded at the main entrances to keep people out and give the cops something to focus on while we worked.

    ¡°There had to have been more guards there than just a few security guys. You heard the shooting. Those weren''t normal security types. I don''t know what happened to everyone ¨C some of the pickups got out, that''s when I pulled out. I saw John got killed, but who knows about everyone else. We''re all on radio silence now, until we get back to base.¡± Dad helped him finish taking off everything and they dumped it into a duffel bag. Then they got back out of the trailer and ducked into a parking garage nearby. It was a big crumbling cement structure between a bunch of old office buildings. The whole place was overgrown with brown weeds, and the office windows on the first couple of floors were mostly boarded up.

    Mack was surprised to see it, he hadn''t realized they were next to anything at all. He figured they had stopped in a field or something on the side of the road. As soon as he realized he was surprised Mack laughed at himself a bit. He had been inside a big windowless trailer, he couldn''t have noticed anything outside. So how could he have had any idea what to expect?

    And then he remembered John laying in his own blood, and the humor left.

    Dad had a key to a big van parked in the garage. They got in and made their way home to the mountains.

 25: Guard at the Gates - Kens Interlude (3)

    Ken crumpled the coffee cup he¡¯d been holding in his long fingers. He inhaled, then exhaled, then inhaled again. Without looking up he said to the air, ¡°Really? I thought we were done?¡±

    It was late, and Ken was mostly alone in the bullpen. He¡¯d spent the day at court and was trying to get some paperwork done before going home. The two suspects they¡¯d raided last month had gotten off light ¨C they pled not-guilty but got acquitted of everything except misdemeanor theft charges. When the rubber hit the road, apparently ¡®priceless¡¯ really did just mean ¡®cheap.¡¯ The DA had charged them with felony robbery, misuse of government property, trespassing, you name it. But the jury let them off, and the judge gave them community service and probation. The university probably wasn¡¯t even going to suspend the two.

    At least the bodycam footage meant that no one got fired, no matter how heated the protests had gotten.

    Still though, between getting assigned to basic patrol duty and riot response, Ken hadn¡¯t had a chance to do any of his real work. Johnston had even been permanently transferred to Bay View. The chief said they just didn¡¯t need all the manpower for property crimes, but Ken knew that the protests were putting pressure on the department ¨C Kline was still stuck working the evidence room. Now that the trial was over things ought to be quieting down.

    So why the hell had Nishimura just messaged him to come to the chief¡¯s office now?

    With a groan, Ken stood up and stretched. He dropped the Styrofoam cup into his wastebasket and shrugged into the grey jacket that had been hanging on his desk chair. Then he ran his hands over his scalp, making sure what was left of his hair was at least flat on his head, and headed towards the chief¡¯s office.

    The chief¡¯s office was at the far end of the station, clustered with a bunch of other admin spaces. It had been placed as far from intake and the bullpen as was realistically possible. Despite the distance, the area still smelled of sweat, cleaning chemicals, and other less identifiable fluids. But during the noisier parts of the day, this side of the station was at least quieter.

    Instead of heading straight there, Ken took a moment to swing past the break room. The coffee had gotten better lately, with new machines that didn''t need to be cleaned as often. There was something special about them, but Ken hadn''t paid attention. Ken never cleaned the coffee machines. Sometimes he''d put a new pot on after he''d emptied it out.

    He didn''t add any creamer, all that was left was the nasty hazelnut kind, but he compensated with extra sugar. Then, the steaming styrofoam cup warming his hand, Ken finally made his way to the chief''s office.

    The door was open, but the chief wasn''t there. Instead, Nishimura was sitting at the desk. The DA was focused on a sleek little laptop, with all the papers that usually covered the desk piled neatly to the side. Another man in a boxy brown suit was sitting at the desk.

    Ken knocked politely on the door frame, and Nishimura and the other man glanced up. "Hey McParland, I''m glad you''re still here," said Nishimura.

    "No problem, I was just trying to catch up on paperwork."

    "Aren''t we all," muttered the man in the brown suit.

    "We''ve got an issue cropping up, and I think you''d be the right man for it," said Nishimura, speaking over the other. "Remind me, you joined the force when you were, what, in your thirties?"

    "Yeah," said Ken. "I was thirty-six."

    "And what did you do before?"

    "Lots of stuff. You''ve got my file, so you know I''m from Pennsylvania. My dad was a longshoreman, back when that was still a thing. Um, I guess I did warehouse-type work the most. I probably worked for East Penn Manufacturing the longest. Drove a forklift for most of it." Ken frowned, taking a sip of coffee, "Before this, I was a supervisor at Air Products in Allentown. Technically I was in charge of a bunch of stuff, but really I was just driving a forklift."

    The other two in the office were just sitting quietly, so Ken continued, "Nothing very relevant to anything I do now. Other than some crap with the teamsters, or maybe some light wage theft, they weren''t up to anything. Batteries and air tanks aren''t really attractive to criminal types."The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Nishimura smiled, "No, you''re right, we don''t really care about where you worked. We care more about what you worked."

    Nishimura frowned, running a hand through his bristly hair, "No, sorry, we care about who you are. You''re background, not the background. It''s late, and I''m more than a bit muddled. This has been a busy week for me too."

    The other man cut in, "Let me, Will. It''s my gig anyways."

    The guy turned and reached his hand out to Ken, "I''m Major Brown, from Madison." His other hand flashed a state troopers badge.

    Taking his hand, Ken replied, "Nice to meet you, sir."

    "Likewise," answered the trooper. "We''ve got an undercover job coming up, and we''ve been looking for a couple of guys with the right background. Not a lot of guys in the force can fake a factory background. You''ve heard of the Order of Owls?"

    "Sure, like the Elks, right? Bunch of guys get together on the weekends to drink and throw darts in a fancy clubhouse?"

    "Close enough. They also put a lot of effort into helping their members find work. They''ve lobbied about unemployment, factory closures, that sort of thing."

    Nishimura cut in, "The protests, vandalism, and other issues we''ve been seeing rise here in Milwaukee, it''s worse in Madison."

    Brown continued, "And you know what? Most of the arrests we''ve managed to make involve a member of the good ole Fraternal Order of Owls. It''s bad enough the FBI is getting involved - a lot of these crimes are spiking the most in cities with an Owl chapterhouse, so they''ve got an open investigation. But they aren''t sharing anything with us at all."

    Ken nodded, "So you want me to go in because I drove a forklift?"

    "Pretty much, yes. You''re also older than a lot of our other options, you''ve kept your face out of the news, you''ve got a clean record. And, frankly, you''re smarter than most of the other guys. You might not have gone to college, but I saw your detective test scores."

    "And I''m not married and don''t have kids at home," Ken finished for the other man.

    "Right. Obviously, I can''t force you. But I need an answer soon."

    Ken looked at Nishimura, "Will, what happens if I stay?"

    "Come on, McParland. You''ve seen the writing on the wall. Only reason we haven''t closed property crimes entirely is in case you needed to testify. That''s done, so you''re getting transferred. I don''t know where or to what, but there''s no way you can keep the same job now."

    The attorney reached out and closed his laptop, "You''ll still be a detective, you''re not getting punished, so at least you won''t be on parking or traffic duty."

    "Unless they need a body, and then I''ll be first in line, right?" Ken rolled his head, popping the vertebrae in his neck with a loud cracking noise.

    "I guess I''m doing this. Wonderful. So what now? I don''t know any Owls in Milwaukee, so what, is there some new chapter I''m supposed to mosy up to?"

    Brown pulled an envelope out of his pocket, "Fill these out. And be happy you finished your paperwork here. These are new employment papers, you''re working for the state troopers now. We''ll transfer you to the Green Bay office. There''s an address in there and an entry code to your new apartment in Madison too."

    "Tricky," said Ken.

    "That''s us, full of tricks," agreed the Major. "I''ll be your handler, we''ve got a bank account and other details set up. Once you get to Madison things should be straightforward."

    "Backstory?"

    "Make it up on your own," said Nishimura.

    "Keep it simple," said Brown. "The only real worry is that you''ll run into someone you know. There''s way too many people moving back and forth around the country to be sure you won''t meet up with someone from Allentown. Most traffic goes to Milwaukee from Madison, though, so it''s unlikely you''ll meet anyone who knows you''re a cop."

    "Wonderful. We done here?" asked Ken.

    "Yeah, go home. This shouldn''t be a long assignment. And it isn''t urgent either. Take your time, find a storage locker, that sort of thing," said Nishimura. "The chief knows about this, unofficially. You won''t be expected at roll call tomorrow. Officially you''re using some time off after closing a major case before taking a promotion to state."

    "Well, goodnight," said Ken, standing up.

    Ken left, stopping at his desk for a moment. He wasn''t going to bother taking his little plant. Some sort of ivy, the yellow-green leaves drooped outside the pot. The last chief had given one to all the detectives when the old guy retired. There wasn''t much else to take. A pair of earphones was really it. A bag of exercise clothes from his locker. And with that, Ken''s presence in the station was gone.

    His apartment wasn''t much better. The place was furnished entirely through Goodwill and Ikea, with only his mattress was something he''d call nice. But he''d buy a new one in Madison easily enough.

    He slept through most of the next day, then started packing the day after that. No need for a storage locker, he could replace all the furniture with a week''s pay easily enough, and for less effort than arranging a truck. His clothes fit in a few bags. All in all, even though he had a month to get there, he was in his new place in Madison before the end of the week.

 26: New Momentum

    Elizabeth and I were walking on a balcony that stretched above one of the promenades. This promenade was filled with formal gardens, and the heavy scent of flowers filled the air. Elizabeth was a pretty girl ¨C long blond hair and blue eyes. El had set us up; she did that a lot. Frankly, I''d been on this date a few times, and it wasn''t the last time I''d been on this date either.

    As per usual, the walk was a bit awkward. ¡°So, Elizabeth, where are you taking us?¡±

    She tossed her brown hair over her far shoulder before answering, ¡°There''s a stall out here that I love. Fondue. I commed ahead, we''ve got a pot waiting for us, and a selection of meats and vegetables.¡±

    ¡°A pot? Of cheese?¡±

    ¡°No, silly,¡± answered Cora. This date was a brunette. ¡°It''s broth. I think he starts with a vegetable broth, adds some citrus, seasonings, it''s almost tart when he''s done. No onion or garlic though,¡± she finished as she winked a green eye.

    ¡°I''m not sure I''ve ever had fondue, I thought it was just a Velveeta thing.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I love it,¡± she said breathily. ¡°Since you''re cooking it right there, you can do everything exactly how you want it.¡± I suppose it was a good way to eat on a date. Some variety, finger foods but solid healthy stuff, nothing greasy or insubstantial. Now, if only we had something to talk about while boiling meat in broth.

    Brylee went on as we walked through a petting zoo on one of the lower promenades, her brown eyes flashing. She said, ¡°I''m so excited. Mark, the guy who runs the stall, used to be a big wine snob. He still imports as much as he can get ahold of, but I don''t think anyone else around has the collection of old wines that he does. And with you in tow, I think he''ll actually share.¡±

    ¡°Ah, I understand now.¡± I smirked, ¡°I''m getting used.¡±

    She almost didn''t seem to hear me, ¡°He''ll pull out all the stops, I''m sure. I wonder if you can talk him into giving us a tasting? That would be so much fun.¡±

    It sounded good, but to be honest I don''t think I''ve ever been interested in food or drink enough to talk about it at length. And yet all these girls never seemed to think of anything else. I guess that was one downside to the arcology, no weather to talk about. ¡°So, Emily, what do you do to keep yourself busy?¡±

    ¡°It''s not like I''m stuck up or obsessed or anything, but it can be hard to get anything really good without connections. Just another reason I''m glad to be out with you.¡± She smiled at me again, pulling at a strand of red hair that had escaped her bun. Then she looked at me and seemed to realize I''d said something. She stumbled, and said, "Wait, I''m sorry, what was that?"

    ¡°How do you spend your time? I know that''s kinda a loaded question, but what interests you, you know?¡± I tried to keep my voice casual, but I was hoping she wouldn''t start talking about wine and fondue some more.

    ¡°Oh, nothing much, really. Nothing that compares to what you do, after all.¡± Against the rich brown of her skin, her teeth were very white. I remember that clearly. ¡°I mean, you can do anything, right?¡±

    ¡°Well, sure, But so can you, or anyone, really,¡± I answered.

    ¡°Not like you, Ward,¡± she said. Her tightly braided black hair swung as she looked up into the air. ¡°I mean, you''re you! This whole place is yours, right? Your idea, your plan, your city. People do what you say, it''s incredible, I can''t believe I''m here with you.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± I decided that maybe I''d be engrossed with the shrubbery below. But then she''d inform me that the gardens were oh so beautiful. Or maybe romantic - the girls'' vocabularies did vary. The dinners were usually nice, and I took their word on how nice the wine, food, or entertainment was. Once in a while, we''d go see a show, a concert, maybe, or a play. There was always something worth spending an evening on. After that, I''d take her back, deal with varying levels of pushiness, and go home.

    Now, this was a much more enjoyable evening, even if Oscar wasn''t nearly as cute as Naomi, Christina, Clare, or Kyleigh. He also wasn''t nearly as good a chef as most of the stalls that El''s string of girls had been taking me to. But grilled chicken and old friends could be far more satisfying than fancy dishes and a blind date.

    ¡°So how''d it go last night, Lisa is sweet, isn''t she?¡± El was very pregnant. I don''t know why she and Alan had waited as long as they did, but they were pretty excited by their impending twins. Frankly, it made her go from simply statuesque to complete intimidation.

    ¡°Sweet, yeah, I guess. But that was kinda all she was, you know,¡± I said. ¡°She only wanted to make small talk or to talk about what I could do. Where do you find these girls, anyways?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I meet them here and there. Lisa is a nurse in my neonatal clinic.¡± El patted her belly, ¡°Didn''t she tell you?¡±

    ¡°No! She wouldn''t admit anything beyond not really liking horseradish,¡± I said. ¡°My office AI has more personality than she showed me.¡±

    ¡°Ward, she was probably just intimidated. You should give her another chance," Alan came in, handing me a plate of chicken, along with corn and potatoes.

    ¡°If she was his type, it wouldn''t matter,¡± said Oscar.

    Alan asked, ¡°What is your type, Ward?¡±

    I took a bite of chicken and chewed carefully. I honestly didn''t really have an answer to that question, ¡°Why are you all ganging up on me?¡±

    ¡°Because you''re lonely, Ward. Or you should be. And I''m worried you''re going to find yourself getting bored.¡± El had taken her plate with a grateful look to her husband.  ¡°Your big complaint about these girls is that they''re only interested in your position and power, and not you. Right? And your second big complaint is that they''re shallow ¨C don''t have any interests beyond the moment. Don''t talk about anything but dinner, the music you''re both listening to, stuff like that.

    ¡°Do you realize that that''s all you''re bringing to the date? When''s the last time you did something on your own? An activity that wasn''t directly related to running the castle?¡±

    ¡°The arcology,¡± I muttered.

    ¡°The castle. The First Castle. The one that you''ve made yourself king of, milord," said Alan sarcastically. "Don''t get me wrong, this place is incredible, and frankly, I think pretty much all two million of us are grateful to you. But we also don''t want to see you go all Howard Hughes on us, either. Jars of piss and piles of tissues just aren''t a good look for anyone. I know that El centers me, Ward. I think a girlfriend ¨C or wife ¨C could center you, too,¡± said Alan. Clearly, the two of them had had this conversation before.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Or a boyfriend,¡± chimed in Oscar.

    ¡°Do you have a boyfriend?¡± I took another bite while I tried to redirect the conversation.

    ¡°I would if these two were willing to try something less conventional,¡± said Oscar with waggled eyebrows.

    Alan threw a roll at him, ¡°Even if I was queer as a duck, El would still do it for me, Oscar.¡±

    ¡°You wound me, if only in your misunderstanding,¡± said Oscar as he clasped his hands to his chest. ¡°It was never you who caught my eye ¨C it is your lovely gravid wife who pulls my heart.¡±

    El threw a roll at him too, before rounding on me again. ¡°Well, I''m going to keep looking for you, since you won''t do it yourself. If you are gay, just let me know. There aren''t quite as many nice young men to choose from, but they''re out there. And maybe they won''t be quite so intimidated.¡±

    ¡°Nope, sorry. There won''t be any beard-baiting in my kingdom.¡± They all threw rolls at me for that.

    I was on another boring date that El had set up when the professor commed me. Sort of, I still wasn''t wearing a badge, but Hansen had figured out who I was with and commed her instead. We had just finished eating somewhere nice but unmemorable and had talked mostly about the tricks and intricacies of designing furniture. On the bright side, furniture was still more interesting than cooking. Apparently, the design program was rather clunky, and while it was easy enough to make minor adjustments to the measurements or textures of someone else''s design, it was rather tedious to create something new from scratch. I did make a mental note to follow up on that ¨C design work was one of the very few productive jobs left, and if we could improve the design software so that beginners could focus on design rather than the program, that could be beneficial.

    Mara was as cagey as all the rest had been about telling me what she did. I suppose she might have spent all her time designing couches and chairs, but I kinda doubted it. Of course, the fact that Hansen knew her comm code was kind of a giveaway. Her badge beeped, and she tapped it, allowing Hansen''s voice to interrupt our date.

    ¡°Mara, are you still with him?¡±

    I pitched my voice a bit louder, to carry across the table, ¡°I''m here, professor. How''re tricks?¡±

    ¡°Mara? Is that you? If you''re still on that date, bring Ward down to lab eight. I want to show him something.¡±

    I rested my forehead on the table while Mara answered, ¡°Sure thing, boss. It''ll take a bit, even this time of night.¡±

    ¡°See you in five then,¡± responded Hansen. Her badge beeped again as the connection cut.

    Her lips didn''t open as she smiled briefly at me, and the smile didn''t reach her eyes either. ¡°Marching orders, do you mind?¡±

    ¡°Not at all. I have never once regretted giving Marshall Hansen some of my time,¡± I gave her a real smile. Frankly, I wish I could have spent more time with the old man. ¡°So... when I asked how you spent your time, you didn''t tell me you worked with the professor.¡±

    ¡°Well, I do, my PhD work had kinda stalled out before I moved here. Half the reason I came was that I could use what I knew and keep on learning without dealing with degrees and publishing and so on. I research for him, now, sure. But...¡± she trailed off.

    ¡°But what?¡±

    ¡°But, it doesn''t get me out of bed in the morning, either, you know? It''s a job, that''s all. So I spend eight hours a day fiddling with equations, I don''t know about the rest. Not really. I make weird chairs, fill up my apartment before getting rid of everything so I can start over, I go out, dance, drink, meet with friends. It''s a life, and I guess I''m happy enough. At this point though... I don''t know if I''d keep bothering with the research if I had something else to do.¡±

    ¡°I get that, I think,¡± I said. ¡°Tedium is better than boredom?¡±

    ¡°Exactly,¡± she said. ¡°And duty helps. I don''t want to let Dr. Hansen down. Or anyone else in my lab. And maybe, I''d feel guilty if I didn''t do something I can really feel is important.¡±

    ¡°Make sense,¡± I nodded. I''d decided years ago to not follow up when people dropped hints in conversations like that. We were walking towards the lifts. Every third level had a series of transports on axis lines that would carry people towards the acrology''s hub and another set of transports that circled the hub. At the hub, and at intersections between the axis lines and circle lines, were vertical lifts that carried people up and down. All of them moved continuously on a schedule, and you generally only had to wait a few minutes for a lift to arrive. Each tower had its own elevator too, but those were on call like normal elevators.

    The research and development labs were near the core of the Arcology, only a few levels below us. Along with the administrative offices, they formed a buffer of sorts between the residential areas and the industrial and agricultural areas. We would take a lift along the nearest axis towards the hub of the arcology, transfer to an elevator down, and then to a third lift out towards lab eight.

    ¡°So, Mara, what exactly does lab eight do? Any ideas what Hansen wants me to look at?¡±

    She grinned at me ¨C a real one this time, her eyes lighting up as they crinkled around the edges. ¡°I''ve got a few ideas. But I''m certainly not going to ruin the surprise.¡±

    We rode in silence for a few minutes. If she wasn''t going to ruin the surprise, I certainly wasn''t going to rise to the bait and beg, either. We made it to the lab, and I was unsurprised to find it to be a near mirror image to the labs I''d been seeing Hansen in since the beginning. One wall was covered by a row of cabinets filled with miscellany, the opposite wall had tables and a few diagrams taped to the wall, and Hansen himself was hunched over a workstation in the corner.

    A large machine thing in the center dominated the room, although this one was a bit sleeker than the erector set we used to play with. It was pretty clearly the same sort of gizmo as the old thing we''d started with though. Other than the cosmetic differences that came with more standardized parts, the only major change was a folding chair hanging from a chain on the ceiling. It dangled on the field end of the drive and it hung at an angle and swung back and forth, looking as though a strong fan was pushing it.

    Dr. Hansen turned and waved us over as soon as the door clicked open, his face creased into a broad smile, ¡°Come here! This is big! I don''t know how big, you''ll have to tell me, but big!¡±

    I''m not totally stupid, I had a good guess. As I walked over to his station I asked him, ¡°did you finally crack the drive?¡±

    His face fell and he turned on Mara, ¡°Did you tell him? I told you not to tell him where you worked.¡±

    ¡°You gave that away when you commed me, Dr. If you wanted it a secret you should have been more discrete. So quit blaming everyone else and pay attention for once,¡± said Mara.

    While she wasn''t willing to let him walk over her, I didn''t really want it to escalate. ¡°So you cracked it then, we have a working plasma drive?¡± I was also interested in the drive.

    ¡°Yeah, watch that chair.¡± Hansen flipped a few switches, to no apparent effect. I started to ask another question and got shushed. He said, ¡°Listen, do you hear that? That''s the field.¡±

    Sure enough, there was a slight hissing sound, like wind through a vent. The dangling chair began to swing around more violently, jerking back and forth and even slamming into the ceiling at the end of its arc.

    I smiled, this was just too cool. ¡°The chair is falling on the edge of it, yeah, and it''s stable?¡±

    ¡°It is stable,¡± answered the professor. "Ish."

    ¡°It''s controllable, too. We can extend the field farther or closer, increase and decrease the intensity, and even adjust the direction that the force applies. We''ve had some trouble with balancing the fields though, it pushes but it rarely seems to push straight. Mara here thinks it does something to its own inertia on top of the kinetic field, but I''m pretty sure it''s just an engineering problem.¡±

    I probably shouldn''t have, but I reached out into the field. I could tell right where the edge was ¨C it slapped my hand away hard. Stung, too. ¡°That''s the shear, right there. It can be a bit rough, try this instead,¡± said Hansen as he handed me a mop.

    So I pushed the mop head into the field. I watched as the threads fluttered downstream and I had to use my strength to keep the mop straight. I mostly just felt a steady push that as I pressed my weight against it. Too cool.

    ¡°Ok, this time, we keep it quiet,¡± said. ¡°I want fully-realized applications before we spread it. It''s not like the armor and consumer goods where we needed cash right away, and it''s not like the generator where everyone benefited immediately. This is big, and for once I want to consider it before moving on.¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± said Hansen. ¡°I get it. Right now, only you and Mara know about this. We''ll need to bring in some more engineers if you want applications, but I''m sure we can find some who can keep their teeth together.¡±

    "Besides, I''m sure we''re going to need a crazy amount of work to get the kinks worked out. Just because you know how to make rocket fuel and a nozzle doesn''t mean you can actually build a rocket that flies straight. It''s a good thing we''ve got a lot of people who like to design rockets around."

    I was still playing with the field when Mara touched my shoulder and asked, "What should we work on first?"

 Announcement

    Good morning everyone!

    I need to let everyone know what''s going on. Obviously, King in the Castle is on Hiatus. Basically, I got hit with one of those ugly confluences of multiple obstacles that derailed me entirely. I realized I needed to do a major re-write on my advance material to avoid a GoT season 8 situation, then my laptop died taking 20k words worth of draft as well as my royalroad password. By the time I had that handled there were a few crises at my day job that had me doing 70+ hour weeks, which further delayed things.

    All that being said, the real reason is that after 2 weeks of radio silence before I got the password back, combined with another couple of weeks to deal with the legitimate issues, embarrassment and such kept me away. Combined with the irritation of basically writing the same chunk of story a third time and I''ve done a bad thing and avoided you all. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    So I''d like to let you know that while I am on hiatus, the story is not forgotten, and it is getting work. I''m trying to decide between a very abbreviated posting schedule or maintaining the hiatus until I''ve got a solid backlog, it''ll depend on a few things.

    I''m also toying with an isekai idea that has struck me - it''s meant to be relatively lightweight, something I can jot down and not worry about themes and plotting as much. Dunno if I want to split my attention though. If I do do it, it''ll be titled: I am the Very Model of a Modern Major <Error>

 Chapter 28: A New Audit

    Unfortunately, our new drive meant the date was over, as Hansen and Mara dug in. All in all, it went as well as any date, nut the drive itself made the night with Mara memorable. I fell asleep thinking about the possibilities. What kid didn''t dream of the stars, after all? There was already plenty of people thinking hard about a space elevator ¨C Plasma Steel made it possible, after all.

    Personally, I''ve never liked the idea of an elevator. An elevator would only be meaningful if we were able to exploit the moon and asteroids and other planets. None of that is particularly close to where an elevator would drop stuff off in orbit. If we had drive tech fast and efficient enough to make the distances involved in space workable, then we had drive tech powerful enough that escaping Earth shouldn''t be a big deal. I mean, with Mars being six months away at best, I couldn''t imagine having enough trade and commerce to justify an elevator. And most of the asteroid belt was even farther. I suppose if the drive in question was some kind of nuclear thing, maybe you didn''t want that on the surface. But no one was really thinking about those anymore.

    But still, the International Space Station was a going concern; it had been expanded and enhanced a great deal since my childhood. They kept a couple dozen people onboard all year now. There had even been a couple of manned missions to Mars that managed to get their people back, too. So far, Plasma Steel was difficult to work with on spaceships ¨C the engineers may have been delighted that it didn''t change size with temperature changes, but its inflexibility made it very difficult to get an atmospheric seal. You needed near-perfect tolerances right out of the mold to make it work. But the techs who worked on the ISS and Mars missions had made great strides, even if their hulls were made of old materials.

    More telling, Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi franchises remained popular. Even as critics and doomsayers cried about lotus-eaters, the stars still drew our thoughts. And with Hansen''s new drive (I was determined to see it named after him)(despite my efforts, it ended up getting called an impulse drive), space could finally be a reality. And it was with that sense of excitement that I attended my surprise meeting the next morning.

    I had made my usual morning pilgrimage to the Main Line Mocha, but instead of being greeted by Mary and a pot of experimental coffee, I was met by a tall man in a suit that didn''t quite fit. Actually, no, the suit fit fine ¨C nothing too large, too small, it was more like he didn''t fit himself. In hindsight, I suspect that he was just overly prepared to get yelled at. Braced shoulders combined with a permanent cringe made for an oddly shaped man that didn''t mesh well with an old-fashioned business suit.

    He stood as soon as I came in, squared himself towards me, and extended a hand. With a placid face, he boomed at me, ¡°Ward Ackley? I was told I could find you here. I wish I had been able to make an appointment.¡±

    I had missed a lot of sleep that night, and the cheerful voice made me wince. I said, ¡°Morning. Normally my administrators handle most people''s concerns around here. Who were you talking to?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I''m from Grand Rapids, not around here. And it really is you, personally, that I should talk to. Maybe your accountant?¡±

    That was confusing. I answered, ¡°Boring actually resigned a while ago, but I could call him in, I suppose. Um, I''m sorry, but who are you?¡±

    ¡°I''m Agent Robertsen, sir. From the IRS. We''ve sent a great deal of mail, and emails, but haven''t gotten a response, so I''ve come out. Barker cleared me, although I didn''t tell him I was here to talk to you. I thought you''d probably want to keep this somewhat private.¡±

    That was a surprise. I had honestly forgotten that the IRS was even a thing. ¡°That''s probably best. Do you have a comm ident yet? I can call my accountant and set up an appointment with you. This afternoon, or maybe tomorrow morning, should be fine.¡±

    ¡°Oh, don''t worry. I wasn''t expecting you to be able to meet right away. I''m heading back to Grand Rapids for another investigation. I was just here to serve you with notice. We can set up meetings later.¡±

    And with that, he handed me an envelope and left without another word.

    I opened up the envelope. I was being audited, investigated with suspicion of tax evasion.

    I called, ¡°Mary? Can I borrow your com? I need to call someone.¡± Maybe I should give in and get a com badge like everyone else. Or maybe an assistant to follow me around.

    Through most of my life, I''d heard about rich and wealthy types who believed themselves above it all, that they had the power and capability to ignore the law and consequences. They can do anything they want and never suffer for it. They reach a point of power where they become untouchable, able to put off criminal investigations, silence civil complaints, and squash news reports. They might not actually be above the law, but their belief is so strong that it completely informs all their actions.

    I guess I wasn''t there yet. News of the audit didn''t make me angry, nor did I just dismiss it as irrelevant. Instead, it settled like a rock in my stomach. It didn''t matter how the environmental controls were set, I felt cold and shaky. My thoughts were a little bit wild, panicky, but I couldn''t get them to settle on anything but the slip of paper the agent had handed me. I''m not sure I had ever felt this much fear for the future before, not even when I was struggling at college. Being given probation and threatened with suspension felt similar, but nowhere near this degree. And my ''accountant'' wasn''t making me feel much better.

    Boring had read over the slip, and then simply asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea, which is why I had gone to him in the first place. I said, ¡°What do you mean? How can I owe taxes? I haven''t earned a penny in years and years. Hell, unless there''s a bank account somewhere I''ve forgotten about, the only money I still have is that dollar on a plaque the chamber of commerce gave me way back when we first incorporated. And it''s not PPI getting investigated, it''s me!¡±

    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    ¡°Calm down, Mr. Ackley,¡± Boring said. Of course, he wasn''t upset, he wasn''t the one being threatened with foreclosure, homelessness, shame, embarrassment, jail, and more. ¡°This is pretty routine. I''m honestly surprised that this is the first time you''ve been audited. I''ll bet your connections in the army and congress have shielded you some.¡±

    ¡°So why aren''t they shielding me now?¡±

    ¡°I couldn''t say. It probably doesn''t matter yet,¡± answered Boring. ¡°This is just an investigation, after all. They''re probably just worried that you haven''t reported any income in years.¡±

    ¡°Because I haven''t gotten any income,¡± I said. ¡°All my needs are met, and I get all the luxuries I could want.¡±

    ¡°Yup. And those needs have value. Payment in kind is still payment, arguably.¡± Boring went on, ¡°We figured that since you were just receiving what everyone else here was getting, then you wouldn''t need to file, just like them. PPI''s payments effectively covered what they owed. The IRS may be ensuring that you really aren''t receiving more than your citizens. I''d hate to be one of the economists assigned to measure the value of room, board, and production credits, but there is still value there.

    ¡°There''s been a handful of people here getting audited, and they haven''t gotten in trouble, with a few exceptions. We can certainly use that precedent to cover you.¡±

    That didn''t make me feel better at all. ¡°Exceptions! Exceptions! So I''m not safe, I really don''t want to go to jail, Will.¡±

    He waved his hand at me, brushing away my objection. ¡°I doubt it applies to you. So far as I know, there''s been a few hundred audits on citizens here, and only two got into anything resembling trouble. In both cases, they had sold personal property for a large amount of money, and failed to report ¨C or pay taxes on ¨C the sale. An old painting from one of them, and some WWII memorabilia in the other.¡±

    ¡°If I recall correctly, a different CEO type bought both of them. There''s a pretty hopping market going on for antiques and artwork. It''s basically the only thing left that''s desirable that''s still hard to get. Most luxuries are all too easy to get ¨C I''ve got a solid oak desk in my rooms that I paid maybe fifty dollars for. But the old masters? Rare memorabilia, original Tiffany lamps, stuff like that, they still shuffle around and require more cash every year.

    ¡°Have you been buying or selling anything like that?¡±

    ¡°No, I haven''t. I don''t even own anything like that unless you count some of the stuff from the company that I''ve saved. The first armor prototype, the first piece of Plasma Steel that me and Hansen accidentally made. But nothing I''ve bought or sold,¡± I said. The government was even going to take those away.

    ¡°Then you''re fine, I''m sure,¡± said Boring. ¡°Don''t worry about it, these investigations take years. Get one of your lawyers involved, they''ll determine how best to cooperate with the IRS, and where it''s best to fight or whatever. I don''t usually say this, but forget about this for a while. Go distract yourself, find something that needs doing, or something otherwise fun.¡±

    Like that was going to be possible.

    In the end, Boring was right. The audit didn''t go anywhere. I think we may have turned over a few extra tons of food each year to account for my ''income,'' but I don''t recall the details. There were really only a few actual consequences. First, my attorneys earned their room and board for a few more years. They spend a ridiculous amount of time on me. I suspect that the Arcology''s lawyers were getting bored with nothing to do but handle domestic disputes and trying criminal cases. The chance to handle a high-profile case dealing with money and income must have been irresistible.

    I lost a lot of sleep, too. Frankly, even after everything that''s happened, I still wake up with cold sweats after dreaming about getting handed an envelope. Speaking as someone who has faced all sorts of problems, getting investigated by the IRS is way more stressful than anything else I know. I''ve been car-bombed, besieged, and chewed out by dried-up old counselors, and that slip of paper still makes my heart race when I think about it.

    What surprised me most was how angry everyone got. I do mean everyone. I didn''t talk about the audit at all, except with Boring, the other owners, and my attorneys, but word got around. I guess that''s what happens when you get served in a public place. But, instead of gossiping about my scandal, people got upset. And not just in my arcology, either. There was even a major protest in DC about the investigation.

    I guess I had a reputation of humility or something. People knew that I didn''t abuse my station, that I had been generous and so forth with my employees since the beginning, and hadn''t ever cheated anyone. Since I didn''t cheat the people I was legally allowed to cheat, most people felt like I deserved the benefit of the doubt about cheating the government.

    I think a lot of people were concerned about the implications of charging me. The percentage of people who still earned and used money as such was down to the single digits. Nearly everyone either lived off handouts or worked for payment-in-kind. It was pretty much expected that getting taxed for things that also got distributed for free was a bad idea. Of course, just because most people thought it was a bad idea doesn''t always affect public policy.

    I was lucky that they backed off. Maybe it was just because I really didn''t have anything the government could take that they didn''t already have.

 29: Villain in the Fields: Macs interlude (4)

    Altogether, only fifteen ''hunters'' came home. Now that he had been on a trip, Mack found that he really hated the euphemism. He had always known what they did, but they weren''t hunters, weren''t out bringing in meat or food. They were bandits, raiders, thieves. Sure, the hunters were supporting their families and the rest of the compound, but calling it "hunting" just felt wrong. Mack still remembered what life in the suburbs was like - this wasn''t worse than the way the gangs ruled the neighborhoods. At least everyone in the compound trusted each other.

    Maybe it wasn''t safer. Out of nearly fifty hunters who left that morning, only fifteen made it back. Fortunately, Roland was one of them. He kept everyone working, kept them from breaking apart. And the raid was a success, too, even if most of them had gotten trapped inside. The fifteen men who got out consisted of the handful who had quickly loaded a second semi, getting the shipment of food it had just unloaded right back on the truck. Roland and his bodyguards had stayed outside as well, both to guard the loaders and to coordinate the rest. The other had streamed into the building, looking for tools, food, or equipment that could be useful. They''d been supposed to split into pairs, but instead had gotten ambushed by state police. Most of the men who''d gone deeper into the depot had gotten trapped and left behind. According to Roland, only a few had gotten killed. In addition to Mack''s partner, one of Roland''s bodyguards had apparently bought a grenade at his feet. That had been what prompted Roland to pull out.

    In addition to the food, they''d gotten a couple of big generators. Mack helped unload them, driving the big forklift to carry them inside a bunker. Each generator was supposed to be powerful enough to run the entire compound, and now they had a backup too. Personally, Mack wasn''t sure the generators were worth it, but Roland was gloating about it. Watching Roland, and helping the man, it was clear why the big man was their leader. He kept everyone together. He helped the widows feel more than just grief and kept everyone else from falling apart. Mack didn''t think that Roland believed the generators were worth the loss of most of the fathers and sons in their little tribe, but fixating on a silver lining was better than tears.

    For three days Roland kept everyone busy. Mack spent his time in the bulldozer, building more berms, burying the bunkers, and moving dirt around as Roland directed. The two generators got installed and hooked up. Mack buried those too - one right in the center of everything and the other out near the outer wall. The food they''d stolen was distributed and stored underground, and people were digging inside too, judging by the amount of dirt they''d been bringing outside for Mack to move around.

    As one of the few left who had armor, Mack got called away from his dozer when their lookout down the road called in an alarm. A car was driving along the road towards them. Mack, along with the other Made Men, came out with Roland to meet it. Each of the men, including his dad, had a place along the walls. Mack was at Roland''s right hand at the gate itself.

    The approaching car didn''t look like any car Mack had seen before. Most cars he had seen were old hulks ¨C rusted junkers that required constant attention to keep running. There were a few plasteel cars, boxy square things, clearly assembled out of sheets like the barracks buildings had been. This car though looked sleek, curvy, fast. It looked like it had come out of one of the cartoons that Mack could barely remember ¨C something that flew through space. It ran silently too ¨C the only sound it made as it pulled to a stop was the crunch of gravel under its tires.

    It stopped about fifty yards short of the gate. A door on the side opened, and a single man got out. He was wearing armor, too. This armor was absolutely a different make than what Roland''s men were wearing. His seemed to be made up of fewer pieces, with a few tall ridges along his joints. The biggest difference was the helmet. Mack''s helmet was just a bucket, with the visor made up of a fine mesh that covered everything. This man''s helmet had a glass visor that left his face visible, revealing a middle-aged face, carefully trimmed brown hair, and a hint of stubble.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    He looked at us for a moment, and then a voice boomed from the plasteel car. ¡°I have a warrant for the arrest of Tyson Brown, aka Big TB, aka Roland Child.¡±

    Mack could hear muttering from the men on the wall, but it was covered up as Roland shouted back, ¡°There''s nothing for you here, go home!¡±

    The voice returned, ¡°Tyson, we only want you. There''s no reason to make this harder, no reason for more blood and violence. Come out and we can leave quietly.¡±

    ¡°How dare you!¡± Roland shouted, ¡°We are working for our own future! We''ve been ignored, but since we found purpose in our lives you have to come to take it away! No! I''ll keep on taking care of my own, and you can just go!¡± The armored man outside shook his head at that, said something that didn''t blast out over the loudspeaker, and then he just got in his car and drove away.

    The siege started that night, and if anything they were surprised how long it took to begin.

    For the first time ever, Mack''s dad had argued with Roland. Roland wanted as many people as possible to defend the wall. They had already built all sorts of traps over the years, tiger pits, landmines, deadfalls, decoy buildings, and more, but most of the traps needed someone to help trigger them. Roland wanted every man, woman, and child out defending the compound. Mack''s dad argued instead that the children and their mothers should hunker down in one of the bunkers, and be prepared to run away if they needed to. Most of the other Made Men agreed, and in the end, the compound was only defended by a few dozen fighters. Instead of manning the walls, most of them set up near the entrance to the bunker - a winding tunnel with its own traps and obstacles.

    The men who survived the last raid, and a handful of women without children took positions in the first big room, nervously handling their guns. Mack had taken off his armor, which was now getting worn by one of the widows. Maybe she wasn''t a widow, but her husband hadn''t come back from that last trip. Mack didn''t have a gun anymore, either, just a short-handled sledgehammer. His dad had ordered him into the bunker with the children. Mack was a Made Man now and should have been up front with the rest. But the kids needed someone down there to protect and manage them during the fighting.

    ¡°Mack, when this starts listen hard. I don''t know how long this will be, but you might need to send them down the tunnel,¡± his dad was saying. ¡°Merrimack Xalvador, listen carefully. When they come, they''ll be shouting. Almost certainly. If you hear people inside shouting ''Police,'' or just shouts to surrender and be arrested, then take everyone into the tunnel. Once you''re out, split up and get as far as you can. You understand?¡±

    Mack could only nod. His sister, Mary-Ann, was almost as old now as he had been when they first came to the Brotherhood''s camp. She had grown up a lot, almost being ten, but her face was streaked with tears and she was clutching her old doll tight under her chin. Just last week she had been complaining that dolls were for little girls, but now she was hugging the plastic baby tightly. Joey was asleep, sprawled on the ground in a corner. He was four and still didn''t get much about what was going on. Mary-Ann knew, though. She''d been with all the other kids in the last few days and had helped take care of the other little kids like Joey while their mothers had been scrambling.

    ¡°I''ll keep Mom and Mary-Ann and Joey with me,¡± said Mack. ¡°I can do it.¡±

    ¡°I know you can,¡± said Mack''s dad. ¡°But that''s not what you''ll need to do. This is hard ¨C when they run, you need to stay here. Close the hatch, cover it up, give them as much time to get away as possible. Pull one of the mattresses over it. They''ll need that more than they''ll need you in the woods.¡±

    Mack gulped, but his dad went on. ¡°Now, listen. If you hear them shouting ''FBI, or ''ATF,'' keep everyone here. Don''t run if they''re not shouting ''police.'' Stay put. Don''t fight when anyone comes in, just do exactly what they ask. If it''s Feds... God, I hope it''s Feds... you''ll be ok. Ok?¡±

    Mack nodded. At that, his dad and mom stepped aside and hugged, murmuring to each other quietly. They were interrupted by a crackle of gunfire, and the boom of an explosion. Without another word his dad grimaced and raced back up the stairs, out of the buried barracks room, and into the darkness.

 30: Guard at the Gates - Kens Interlude (4)

    Ken¡¯s new apartment was one of those plasteel monstrosities. Just a big, white, rectangular box. It looked like an old motel, only without color or texture. Sometimes Ken got hit with an odd sense of disorientation when he looked at these new structures. They reminded him of the video games he played sometimes as a kid, where you¡¯d run into a new area and things looked like some bizarrely simplified version of themselves until the graphics finished loading. Unfortunately, the graphics on his new home never did load.

    His place was on the third floor, right in the middle. So he grabbed his bag and trudged up the stairs. The stairwell was clean, other than a buildup of crud in a couple of corners, and had been made as a textured grate to keep people from slipping. Once up on his walkway, the place didn''t look quite as unfinished. Welcome mats sat in front of most of the apartments, and bright curtains hung in the windows. A few doors used the hook built in front of them to hang a planter box or some other bit of kitsch. The railing itself may have been that plain white plastic-looking stuff, but the view almost made up for it. The building was on just enough of a hill to see over most of its surroundings. Sure, there were plenty of other stupid plasteel buildings filling up the view, but Madison still had plenty of trees, and Ken could easily see the state capitol in the old downtown across the lake.

    Opening his new door with an eight-digit code, he chucked his bag inside and turned back out to inspect the view more thoroughly. Instead of looking at the scenic vista across the water, he inspected the area immediately around his new home. A small parking lot below him was quiet. A variety of cars mostly filled it up. A few cars were spotted from recent rainfall, but otherwise, they all looked clean and used. At least there weren''t any clunkers on blocks filling up spaces. There weren''t any people standing around that he could see, either.

    On his left was a stretch of more ugly white apartment buildings. On the right was a wide road. The side of the road had several loading docks spaced out along a big turnaround. The ledges stood two or three feet high and were covered with wide shelters keeping sun and rain off anyone working the back of a truck.

    Across the lot was an ancient red-brick building. It stood about two stories and sprawled over its lot, almost looking like it was just another plant growing out of the old bushes and trees that filled the space around it. The side facing him had a few big windows dotting the wall and was otherwise adorned with a big logo or something formed by the bricks. Three circles, spaced over a crescent. It almost looked like a mutant smiley face. As Ken watched, a car pulled into the lot below him. Two men got out and walked around the side of the brick building below.

    He wasn''t going to argue with Major Brown, but he really hated where they decided to have him live. That old red brick building below was the local "Nest" of the Order of Owls. There was a dossier he''d left in the shredder at his old station that told him that the building was occupied around the clock, but that no one actually lived there full time. It was just a couple of big open rooms, a handful of offices, and a big indoor basketball court and gym. Another page of that shredded dossier showed the layout of the place.

    His musings were interrupted by a loud bell from the loading docks. Half a dozen trucks had pulled up and were now backing into the docks. Meanwhile, a steady stream of people were coming down the streets, forming into a big crowd. Ken counted fifteen police officers in full riot gear were standing on the ramps, keeping people back while the trucks lined up. Or maybe they were private security - looking closer Ken realized he didn''t recognize the armor they were wearing. The helmets looked a lot more streamlined than what Ken used to wear, and the boots looked like they had a rubber tread instead of the cleated types he''d had. But he wasn''t an expert either, and who else outside the government would have that sort of gear? Maybe a local department had sprung for their own models, instead of relying on what the state handed down.

    The trailer door on the first truck opened up, revealing racks filled with large canvass bags. Three isles, with five shelves, each packed with sacks that looked they were made out of cardboard cloth. If he''d been closer he could have seen the rough texture of the disposable things. He couldn''t remember what they were made of, it was some plant that grew quickly that could be harvested for its tough fibers. No one wore clothes out of it, but the stuff had replaced most canvas and nylon use. It was tough and strong, but wore out quickly and usually felt rough and scratchy. It was also supposed to be biodegradable and all that jazz.

    Without any prompting, the people below were lining up at the ramps. Using a thumb trick he''d learned in crowd control training, Ken estimated around three thousand people waiting for the trucks. Slightly more than half were men, with maybe a couple hundred children. They''d split into five lines, each in front of an officer holding a scanner. Ken watched one of them as the armored man pointed it at an ID and then at the face of the woman holding the card. That done he waved her through to the truck behind him and went to scan the next person.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Ken pulled out his wallet and double-checked the ID that major Brown had arranged for him. He already knew, but he felt like checking; Ken would be in that crowd tomorrow. Each of those bags was full of food. It was mostly flour and vegetables, along with a semi-random assortment of other luxuries. You''d probably find some fruit, some spices, maybe some canned meat or a condiment. Each bag was meant to be a week''s worth of food for two people. You could use the same ID card to pick up perishables and non-standard dietary foods from distribution centers set up around the state.

    About three years ago the state had quit paying unemployment, food stamps, and all the other cash-based unemployment systems. Instead, they dramatically expanded the old WIC program that used to get specific fresh foods to babies and expecting mothers. There were a few other programs that handled things like rent and debt relief, those were mostly handled through the same systems that used to handle medicare and such. When the big box stores started to shut down, even the dimmest state senator realized that they needed a distribution system to replace it.

    And thus the allotments and the trucks. Everyone who qualified got an ID, the ID gave times and locations to pick up food as it was distributed. They''d also indicate various special dietary needs or other disabilities, but for the most part, those issues were sorted by the ID holder.

    The lines moved pretty easily. For the most part, a person stepped up, got scanned, grabbed a bag, and left. A few people grabbed more than one bag, those would stagger off the ramp and be met with family members who took their own loads. It looked like the officers only let one person up at a time, no matter how large the household was. Ken snorted to himself, it wasn''t as though the guards weren''t already letting people through as fast as they could scan them through. Not only were dozens of people moving between the guards and the trucks, but it also looked like no one was paying attention to what people took either.

    But, no, people were. A shout drew Ken''s attention and he saw two men. One was sprawled on the ground with three of the sacks next to him - smaller containers had tumbled out in a messy arc around him. Another man was standing above him and shouting at him. From his vantage point, Ken couldn''t hear what the words were, but he could tell that everyone seemed to be on the side of the shouter. A trio of guards bulled through the crowd and trained their rifles on both men. From there Ken couldn''t make out many details, but it looked like two of the bags carried back up to the truck, and one man was on his hands and knees gathering up stuff that had scattered from a torn sack.

    Now that he was looking for it, Ken spotted a bunch of men standing in the crowd of people. They stood out, not moving with the lines. Instead, they were waiting in their own open spaces, or at the edges of the crowds. Once or twice it looked like they got involved in an argument as people moved back and forth in the lines. But mostly they just stood and watched as the people got their food and went back home.

    As fast as it looked like the process was moving, it took almost two hours for the last sack to get lifted out of the truck. All in all, it seemed orderly enough. No fighting beyond some shouting, and even there the shouts were good-natured more than confrontational. It seemed like most of the people liked each other, though they quieted down when they approached the guards at the trucks. The guys who were watching the crowd didn''t seem to participate much in the shouted banter. They just watched.

    In the end, everyone had their IDs scanned, took their calorie allotments for the week, and were trudging back home. The police closed up the trucks, riding in the cabs back to wherever the distribution center was. It had gotten dark, but there were lots of big lights around the docks. It wasn''t difficult at all to see what was going on down there.

    Ken kept watching - as the crowd got smaller he counted almost fifty men who''d been standing around. Halfway through a handful of them had peeled off and left. Ken didn''t see all of them leave, but he''d noticed two go to the Owl''s building. After the cops left they held a quiet little meeting in the lot, one man clearly taking the lead and talking to the rest. Then they scattered, clumping up as they went in different directions. Four of them were chatting as they went into an apartment directly below Ken''s new place, but Ken was focused on the one who''d been guiding the little meeting. Along with two others, he waited for everyone else to leave. He answered a few questions from the others, but mostly he just slouched there, relaxing for a minute while his subordinates got moving. Then he and the other two who''d been waiting went down into the Owl''s local chapter building.

    With a yawn, Ken turned and finally went inside. A few boxes were already waiting for him, neatly labeled and stacked against a wall in the kitchen. There was a plastic folding table set up in the kitchen, but it didn''t look like there were any chairs yet. Ken found the bathroom, used it, and explored his new rooms. It didn''t take long - the front door opened into a little kitchen space that he was probably supposed to use as a living room too. The bathroom door was across from the front door, and a side door took him to a little bedroom. Whoever had brought the table and boxes had dumped a mattress on the floor. Or maybe someone else had left it there.

    Ken paused for a second, looking at the boxes. He could see the one marked "bedding and towels." It was at the bottom of the stack, right under a box marked "papers."

    Ken went to his bedroom, shut the door, and laid down on the bare mattress.

    He had just considered grabbing his jacket to use as a pillow when he fell asleep.