Chapter Eight
Sunlight streamed through the open door when M walked in. Her hair glowed red in the morning light. The flash of red caught his eye and he waved. Closing the door behind her, she turned, walked down the isle, and sat down across the table from him, smiling she said,
Good morning.
It is always a good morning when I see you, he replied.
The egg knew how she liked her coffee.
It came to the table. No order was necessary.
Looking straight into his eyes, she said,
What are you going to do today?
I am going up to the airport and have a look around. See what needs to be done.
We don't have flights in or out anymore, and all the planes are in hangars. What is there to do?
I want to make sure we can respond to visitors. We could have guests. Somebody might get the idea of moving in. Our airport is a way onto the island, so we have equipment to run cable across runways, making them impossible to use.
This cable can cut semi-trucks trying to crash through military gates in half. We stretch our cables across our runways, in a dozen places. So runways can't be used in an invasion. It only takes a couple of minutes to wind cable in or out across runways. But cable equipment is not yet in place. Spools holding cable are in a warehouse at the airport ready to be put up along runways.
Spools mount along both runways. Twenty-four poles rise out of the ground. One for each cable. Twelve on each runway. The poles make fences with spools on the other side which wind out cable when receiving poles rise up. Cable hangs between pole and spool like the cables holding up nets on tennis courts. Poles for the spools are installed and working. They are in the ground and ready to rise up when a cable is attached.
I'm confused, why are poles working but not the spools? When were poles put in?
Each spool is seven feet tall and three feet wide. I did not want anybody to know how I was going to lock down the island before Helter Skelter happened, and spool housings will be noticed. I did not want to make a puzzle to figure out. Spool housings do not sink into the ground when cable is wound up like poles do. They are too big. Poles are invisible when they are sunk in the ground. They resemble landing lights.
Each spool has a doghouse next to it. Each doghouse has a pair of mechanical hounds inside. Each hound can pull a cable across the runway from a spool to a pole while it unwinds, to hook the cable onto the pole. The hound can also unhook a cable from a pole when the cable winds up. One hound is a spare. The poles were installed two years ago. Hydraulics are tested every month to make sure they lift.
Finishing coffee and breakfast, they talked about her house project. A new house was going to be built each year. It was a way to keep islanders skilled in building trades. The first house was being planned. M was planning the kitchen. He asked her what she was going to do next, and she asked him if he could come to her house and help her move a chair. Which she could have moved herself. And which did not need any moving. An hour later, he left her house for the Airport.
The drive from the town to the airport only takes a few minutes. Marvin Gaye played on the car stereo.
'Mercy, mercy
Things ain't what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east'
As he drove, new vaccinations began in Gujarat India. Members of a particular fringe Hindu sect stand first in line. They wait for vaccination centers to open. Religious tensions in India are stretched thin and tight. New dangerous fringe elements have emerged. Hindu and Muslim do not trust each other and are at war. Chronic hunger aggravates tensions. Hindu and Muslim take vaccinations separately. They only mix with their own kind. Each side fears being poisoned by the other. The separation in supply chains allowed one side to change the vaccine profile their own people get inoculated with. Annual bat virus boosters started after pandemics were unleashed when flora and fauna tried, and failed, to adjust to the methane bomb. Now the vaccine delivery system is perverted from a noble and humane goal, hijacked by madmen.
A system to vaccinate everyone on the planet was set up after the explosion in pandemics caused by climates marching relentlessly north. Controls make sure vaccines are not adulterated, but a way to switch the entire supply of Hindu vaccines to India at the source was found by homicidal fringe elements. Anti-tampering controls can not account for an entire supply being changed. The new Hindu supply is the same as the old Hindu supply, but with an addition to the recipe. The new supply protects from all seven known COVID viruses and their many variants. Plus the new vaccine protects from a new and previously unknown, novel, and very deadly virus. A virus which exists only in a lab managed by the same homicidal fringe Hindu sect whose members are first in line to get new bat virus boosters.
Chapter Nine
Marvin Gaye finished playing. Roger Waters started streaming. "The Bravery of Being Out of Range" played over the car speakers. Climbing a small hill, the road curved as the Tesla Model S slowed to take a sharp left onto Ten-Mile road. A few hundred yards south on Ten Mile road, then a right turn onto Airport way. A bamboo stand across a drainage ditch on the right side of the road shimmers in a breeze. The stand of bamboo is framed by eucalyptus trees. White flecks of gold sunlight flash sparks from the last morning dew left over from an early morning fog. A fog now all burned away.
Sparks of white fire flash a message back in the sparks of sunlight. But what is the message? The breeze bends the bamboo over. But no eyes can know the bent tops point in the wrong direction for things to be good. The sparks of light warn of danger.
Fifty years earlier, the bamboo stand had been thick with green Arctic grass. The grass pointed in a different direction when the wind blew. The new bamboo was too young for the direction of bend to show its preference. Seeds for the eucalyptus trees came from thousands of miles away. Nobody paused to think which way a bamboo stand along Ten Mile road should bend in the wind. The bend shows air is being sucked into Siberia. A huge high pressure cap of air is being fed there. A zone of stagnate air will hang over Siberia for days. It will be warmed by the late summer sun until it is hot. Then it will move south and west and get hotter.
Cement was being exposed when he arrived at the airport. Four foundations for holding cable spools and attached mechanical doghouses were already exposed. Work on digging up a fifth was well under way. Landscaping had buried concrete foundations under dirt mounds before Helter Skelter. The mounds of earth looked like raised flower beds. Cement foundations were poured with concrete for the runway. The foundations only needed to be dug up with dirt from the raised beds spread out over the surrounding ground. Plastic flowers in the raised beds had already been taken away. The flowers would be turned into diesel fuel later. When all the cable spools were working.
One of the men working a shovel paused as he drove up. Stepping out of the Model S he heard,
Hey, look it is Mr K. The video star. Should we get his autograph?
The others chuckled.
If you want it you have to have something to write with. I did not bring anything with me.
More chuckling.
How did you guys get so much done so fast?
Another of the four-man crew spoke.
We talked last night. We figured you might show up and want to dig, and we wanted to get all the digging done before it gets too hot. We did not want you getting in the way. The weather gods say it is supposed to be a hot afternoon.
The comment about getting in the way was said with a smile. The crew was in good spirits. The weather god was an island joke. An array of sensors across the island provided detailed weather data to Island Central computers. An AI monitored the sensors. As time went by, the AI learned how to make better and better predictions of island weather. The process was automatic, and a pair of virtual reality newscasters gave a continuous streaming forecast of island weather over a dedicated channel on the island broadband network. The smiling newscasters never slept or needed to eat, and they were perfect renditions of beautiful people. Consequently, their constant virtual cheer was quickly found to be irritating and within days the pair was nicknamed the weather gods. The nickname made the cheer bearable.
Besides, we want to get the work done. We think this is kind of important.
He replied,
Yes, but as long as the United States exists, not so much. We put up the fancy stuff now because if the country divides, borders will be unstable. That is when we could have trouble. He paused saying,
So what is next?
The team leader, who had been first to speak, replied.
After we dig up and wash this pad down, we are going to mount the first five spool cans. Then we test the mechanical dogs.
Good, I want to see a dog in action. I have only seen one in a demo when I visited the factory where they were made. I have not seen one pull on a cable. Now, if you don't have an extra shovel, you can give me yours.
The group chuckled.
There is an extra in the truck.
After twenty minutes of digging, the concrete pad was ready to be hosed down with discarded dirt spread out and raked into nearby grass. Washed down, the first five spool pads were ready to be used.
It was late in the afternoon before all five concrete pads had their spool cans and doghouses bolted down. Tomorrow, five more cans would be installed by a different crew. Five days would be needed to install all the spools. Exposing as much of the Island Defense Team as possible to the system was a good idea. That is why every day used different people. Everybody doing the work was on the Island Defense Team.
People began to show up for the demo about 15:00 in the afternoon, but it was almost 16:20 in the afternoon before power was wired to all the spools. About fifty people stood on the north end of the runway, looking south at the line of newly mounted spool cans on the right side. The first can was about twenty feet away and the last looked small and very far away. The three cans in between stepped in size from large to small as the perspective of distance shrank them down.
A line of five bright blue lights flashed along the other side of the runway. The lights rose on thick steel poles as thick as tree trunks from the ground. On the side of the poles facing the runway thick steel hooks are mounted open side up.
Doghouse doors opened in unison. Out of each door, a pair of mechanical dogs stepped. One dog stood motionless, while the dogs closest to spool cans walked over to stand by their cans. Ends of cable bent over to make loops popped out of the side of the spool cans. Each dog slipped their mechanical head through a loop. Then the dogs walked across the runway all at the same time. Each pair together with one dog pulling cable. Reaching the hooks, the dogs pulling cable rubbed their heads against the steel hooks and with a quick fluid motion of the front paws the cable was on the hook. Then the poles rose higher and the runway was blocked by thick cables ready to slice any airplane trying to land in half. The dogs returned to their doghouses and backed in. The doors closed.
A minute went by and the doors opened. This time one dog jumped out of each doghouse and, without pause, ran across the runway to the poles hooking cables on the other side. Jumping up on hind legs, the dogs unhooked cables and ran back to their doghouses. As the dogs backed into their doghouses, spools began to wind up cable. In a minute, the runway was cleared for landings until the next test of the system.
In a week, all the cables will be mounted. The Island will be able to prevent airplanes from landing and regular defensive drills will start. By then, the mass of stagnant air over Siberia will be slowly moving. The mass of high pressure will blow through and around the mountains of Afghanistan for a final push to bake over India.
By this time a Hindu detective in India, suspicious of the eagerness members an extremist group had for being vaccinated, acquired some vaccine the group is fond of taking. The detective's commitment to the principles of ahimsa is firm and his desire to stop extreme authoritarian and cruel expressions of karma, where he can, is strong. Before the day was over, the vaccine was in a diplomatic pouch on the way to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. If there is anything unusual about the vaccine, the detective knew the Wuhan virology lab is the place with the best talent to find out if anything strange is going on.
Chapter Ten
Leaving the airstrip, the Tesla cruises up Ten Mile road. Five kilometers up from where Airport Way turns onto Ten Mile Road, the Tesla turns left to reach the Doomstead Diner parking lot. The Diner lot is on the opposite side of the Diner from the Ten Mile Road side, reached by a driveway along the south wall. Coffee smells good when K walks through the door. Nods greet him. The Doomstead Diner is across the parking lot from the Church of Celestial Wonders. The Church of Wonder is not a real church. It is the name of the island recreational drug dispensary. K knew prohibition would not work. Social use of alcohol and other things is allowed. Island ration cards make excessive consumption difficult. The Diner, filled to capacity with people fresh from work in farm fields, is serving dinner. Talk fills the air.
The waitress looked at him.
'They were just saying you might bring a mechanical Fido in with you.'
'I would, but they don't have tongues to hang outside windows. I need a dog that hangs his head out the window when I go down the road.'
'Really, everybody wants to see one. Nobody here knew we had them.'
'Ahhhh, yeah. It was on the down-low because they can double as soldiers. Under the new rules, I can't bring a dog in anyway. I am only the island censor now. The dogs are managed by island defense. I'll ask them to arrange a demo since people are interested.'
'Coffee ?'
'Yes, And a facon sandwich.'
He sat down at the counter. She turned to get coffee. The Diner looked like something from the American 70s. In each of four corners, video monitors mount hanging from the ceiling. Screens are packaged to look like old style TVs. A slide show of island news plays in an endless loop. Booths have individual speakers. Audio from video plays in booths when a button is pressed down. Island temperature flashes onto screens in a weather report. Twenty-Eight degrees C shows. A balmy arctic day if you do not move too much. A hot day for those pulling farm shifts. The Diner is cooled. Finished with a day of work, those assigned farming are happy to be cooling off in the Diner. K is there for coffee, conversation, and a walk across the parking lot for some hash oil.
Unavoidable slowing of northern grain shipments to new southern desert nations start riots. China dissidents awake to find themselves nailed inside apartments. Their only consolation, knowing that failure to receive a fair share of food rations from those assigned to deliver rations to them is a death penalty to those in the delivery team. A consolation not worth much if their own death reveals a delivery problem. In India, riots rage. The curious Indian detective delivers the vaccine he obtained from the Hindu radical splinter group to the World Pandemic Authority. Analysis shows the mix is their own standard vaccine issue with an additional strand of RNA to protect against a virus membrane protein in the terrorist bio-weapon. Within hours, this strand is added to standard anti-Covid vaccine cocktails. The World Defense Authority, alerted by the Pandemic Authority, targets every city where members of the radical Hindu sect live. Nuclear weapons are armed.
On the Island, crops grow. The island council decided isolation will be suspended to take the anticipated food harvest surplus to Anchorage. There it will be sent to food banks in the city. Grain unloaded, the boat crew will return to the island immediately. There is no need to bring anything back, so contact will be kept to a minimum. The visit would be short. Helter-Skelter means keeping a low profile.
A world defense execution squad mingles in the village where the radical Hindus sect keep their bio-lab. All members of the sect in the village are killed at once as the bio-lab is seized. The stored virus is killed and the lab torched. In a nearby village, a vial of the virus kept as a backup is released by surviving members of the terrorist sect. The release is quickly detected. A test of the first victim's blood shows the released virus as soon as she is hospitalized. Local members of the Hindu sect are arrested or killed. A pandemic vaccination squad enters the village and sets up a wide perimeter stretching into the countryside. Across which nobody can cross without permission. By the time the virus release is fully extinguished, 700 people in the village district are dead. Release in a large city would have triggered a nuclear response. World defense cancels the nuclear alert.
In better parts of the world, low birth rates and natural attrition shrinks population. Slowly over the years. In these areas food is scarce but available. Population living in better parts experience a long misery. The relationship is coincidental. In other parts of the world, food availability and soil fertility fall faster than population in the area can naturally fall.
These are lands of failed states where warlords and gangs rule. Murder and starvation is the norm in these lands. Population declines catastrophically in sudden jumps from any increase in food stress and soil degrades. Creating ever more difficulty in growing food. A handful of cities high enough from the sea cling to civilization in uneasy stabilities.
A warehouse on the island has enough Formica to resurface all Doomstead Diner tables and counter-tops every five years for the next thousand years. Facon is not in short supply, and Coffee grows well on island mountains. Society is organized to maintain equity between island citizens, allowing all citizens to achieve fulfilled lives. Island citizens are able to express and cultivate talents. Education punctuates island work schedules throughout life. All citizens become skilled teachers as they practice on each other. The Island is organized to preserve the best humanity learned in the growth times. Before the world died, and before it could begin to recover.
Population has to reduce to a fraction of the mass the human tumor has been allowed to grow. A massive reduction in population numbers must happen before our biosphere can recover. The most powerful counties of the far north collaborate to keep nuclear war from happening. Pandemic response is coordinated. Most importantly, grain ships of the arctic are controlled by this cabal of nations. This is welfare on a global scale, with countries receiving grain ruled by surveillance and panoptic terror to keep populations from growing. Need for grain keeps an uneasy peace between nations. Population growth or war results in the sanction of a grain boycott.