The click-and-clatter. Jonah peeks out the shattered window while the shooter reloads. “Down. Down. Down.”
And again, the fashionista assassin cackles and riddles the room, above head level. To pin them, for the sheer catharsis and because the protagonists made them work for it–this showdown at the motel shithole. The second SUV revs , roars, and peels out to the back of the parking lot, rear of the building.
The four hear plaster chewed and old ceramic tile exploding as the goons out back riddle the bathroom window.
“You’re surrounded. We want the freak, now.”
Dee looks at her companions, every face, looking for an answer. “I’m going to need you to be specific.”
“Cute, you betch. Out here now.” Fuck you!
Whisper shouted: Jonah, dude. Not the time.
No, precisely the time. “Fuck you!” He peeks out. She’s standing there, cutting a shape with a gun propped on her hip. The man crouched next to her, posing like an action movie poster, brings his weapon to bear theatrically. Shit. Fuck. A little more of the window sill explodes as the big man ducks.
“We can just come in and take her!” I’d really hate to be the first one through the door though. “She’s worth something.” More pewing-more bullets. More plaster rain. “Dead or alive.”
Jack’s got her knife out. Jonah is breathing like he’s about to dead lift. The fashionista assassin’s boots, Dee can hear them on glass and gravel. “Dad?” What? Ooh look a light show! She’ll just fuckin shoot me.” Dee’s face pleads. “I’m not fuckin bullet proof and neither are you!”
“Last chance.” Fashion assassin gloats. Her back to the wall beside the motel room door. She hesitates, thinking she hears the sound of sirens.
*
Anne runs the daily gauntlet on the way to her desk. “Hey Janet.”
“Hey.” Fuck. You.
“How was your weekend, Becky?”
I will burn you to the ground. “Just. It was wonderful. Yeah.”
Drum blood. Her audible pulse, elevated and amplified by the daily rage at being that fucking forgettable, apparently. That and the “task.” Start the day as normal as you can, and instead of the bathroom, it’s off to her boss’s little office in the back corner of the lab.
She waits for him to get into it with Dr. Feelgood, “Please explain to me how putting subject 12 in a K-hole helps a fucking thing. Explain it like I’m a child. Really slow.” You’re a Philistine. A thug in a suit.
The office door slams, and Anne wanders from her station to the bathroom, in a serpentine route. Stops to tie her shoe, to drop the tiny marble that rolls under the office door under its own power to steal the boss’ data.
In the bathroom, she’s shaking staring in the mirror for a long time after the ‘littlest simplest thing.’
“Hey.” Fuck! “What’s with you?” I don’t expect my boss to lurk outside the rest room.
*
When Dee was very young, before the war, when things were “shaky” but forced-smile-“ok.” There was this stupid cartoon police “dog.” She had the stuffed toy as a baby-through-tweenager. She remembers pressing her face in it as she fell asleep.
Jonah sits her on the edge of the bed in the room adjoining their first. The blinds are pulled, and they got a lantern and whatever gear could be quietly dragged out of the room. Just in time, as a drone dog sniffed at and entered the shot up space and loudly shouted. MORE CRIMES. ACTIVE CRIME SCENE. PERIMETER AMMENDED.
Jonah speaks quietly. They all speak quietly, as they are trapped, surrounded. The drones will ‘patrol’ for, as long as they like.
“Dee, you’re in shock. You’re gonna be ok. You hear me?” She nods from far away.
They were getting shot at, then sirens and dog bots. Then at random intervals, they hear: THIS IS AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY, RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. Maybe: PERIMETER ESTABLISHED. AWAITING BACKUP.
“It just. It just took her.” I know, Dee. No one’s gonna take you. “Just. Took her.”
The drones said other things, initially: DROP THE WEAPON. They also said, STOP RESISTING, again and again again. They said that last phrase longer than any resistance was realistically possible, drumming on bodies that twitched and then didn’t.
“We’re trapped.” For now, Dee. Just for now.
*
It’s the ‘sweet spot’ in the morning routine. The little window where they let “the boss” get caffeinated. Before the schedule runs wild over her day, sometimes her. “I asked for this.” What’s that? From her body man. “Nothing.”
The article isn’t about her, directly or at least not at first. It’s about the photograph, the history of that moment, and the prize. The Pulitzer wasn’t for the photographs themselves, but the effort to get the pictures out of a detention center.
Sydney never found the arrangement of the images aesthetically pleasing. On a table like contraband because at that time they were. The seven “dangerous radicals”, some of which struggled to stand for the photo, one of which would die in detention (brain bleed), are laid out on a table. Mug shots of people that, if things had gone a bit differently, would have never seen the light of day–the people or their pictures. Disappeared can be a verb. It’s a meta photograph really. A photograph of photographs. Sydney Sanders, now President of the United States, is looking at the lower right photo–at a younger version of her own face, beaten out of shape, but familiar (almost).
The mega infrastructure project. The biggest dig. The “Main Vein.” The thing ‘sold’ to a public (that had no choice) in terms of the transcontinental railroad two centuries previous. It, like it’s sister-projects in Africa, Asia, and Europe, are marvels of modern mega-engineering–allowing safe transit of drone no-go zones. That’s what did it–started everything after the war.
Syd scrolls past the rest of the news article’s intro. “Fuck. It’s long form. Really long form.” Her chastised Chief of Staff creeps up. “Five more minutes, Syd.”
“Ten more minutes.” Really? Can’t we just. Like a swear jar? “You will have another attempt at addressing me correctly in ten minutes.” She reads. Jonathan, the body man, shrugs at the Chief.
*
Flashpoint: Pittsburgh to Chicago, Sacramento to Cheyenne. From those “anchors” onward to the planned city of Junction–a new beginning in a cubby hole beneath the rubble of Lincoln, Nebraska. If you’re old enough to read this, to be among our target demographic you likely remember the PR/ad campaign–the mix of “old west” frontier reclaiming and “cutting edge” mega-project engineering.
The reality was far uglier. Comparing the “Big Dig” to the transcontinental railroad “race” captured the sense of economic urgency. It also captured the utter ruthlessness of the capitalists playing the role of this century’s rail barons. It failed utterly to capture the imagination of the American public.
Perhaps the Panama Canal is a more apt historical comparison in terms of on the job risk. Silicosis. Rock fall. Shoddy safety equipment. Worker on worker violence (almost always fueled by alcohol and “leftover” guns). Abysmal pay. “Missing” union agitators.
*
Syd reads a while longer. She skims and scrolls past tables, charts, and past even more of the historical context. Good deep journalism.
“Madame President, it’s time” No it’s really not. “We have a busy schedule” Every. Goddamn. Day. It’s busy. I am looking for inspiration on the eve of battle. I will have my Secret Service detail rough you up. “They don’t do that sort of thing.” Jonathan might though. The body man nods his head “yes.”
Syd sips her coffee. The chief of staff sighs heavily, shuffles off.
*
A wave of strikes. A crackdown. Another wave of strikes. A heavier crack down. It’s still debated by “old timers” which dig site set down their tools and occupied the job site first, but there’s consensus on this point: a ration card system akin to “company script” was the last straw.
The collapse of the Dollar during what is widely reputed to be one of the coldest winters since 1942 and the completely tone deaf effort to brand the Big Dig a ‘jobs program’ unto itself helped cement the project as a symbol. It wasn’t the harbinger of better times or “morning in America”, not then. The Big Dig, the “hole to nowhere”, the “Meat Grinder” became a symbol of what was wrong with the nation.
The project, and every hole, every jobsite that was part of the Big Dig, became a site of struggle for that great cliché (for a reason): “the soul of a nation.”
What started as a refusal to work, to be worked to death, grew into a general strike. There’s a quote, leaned on by one of the heroes of this chapter, an organizer that would rise to political prominence quicker than (almost) any other in this country’s history: “Sometimes history walks, hesitates, shuffles. Sometimes 10 years happen in a week. Sometimes it happens all at once.”
The fight over whom it is she’s quoting/misquoting outside the federal courthouse in Chicago is not that important. Sorry biographers. Just recognize that Sydney Sanders is what she is precisely because she understands the political and historical moment in which she lives–or at least she once did.
“Jonathan, remind me later that I found my guy. Another one. A campaign guy.” Yes, Madame President. “Yes. You are going to write me words.”
*
A long night is coming for the four at the motel, and they know it. “We settle this. Quietly. But we settle it.” Jonah whisper-hisses. There’s a lantern on the floor between them. Abbott’s on one bed, Jack cross-legged next to him.
Facing them on the other bed: Dolores sits cross-legged with Jonah beside her.
All present can hear servos and pneumatic legs outside. Can hear the shouted declarations to each other and no one, AWAITING BACKUP that will never come.
“I can explain.” Dee makes a sarcastic gesture inviting just that. Abbott sticks out the palm of his hand closes his eyes. “Ow!” Shhh!
Dee slaps his hand, hard. “No. No light show. Nofuckinggoddamn hologram. Give me the last line of whatever bullshit-poem of an explanation you are composing in your squishy ass head. Give it to me rightthefuck now. What were you telling Able?” She’s breahtless.
Outside, a robot dog with blood on its hooves, cocks its head at the hissing sounds inside the private residence, continues on its patrol.
Abbott: “I was telling him we’re on our way, on schedule. That I was, am, bringing you to him. It.” Why? Fuck you. Also why? What does he want me for? “A body for a body. Yours Dolores, for mine.”
Dolores: “What the fuck dad?” Shhh! Seriouslyshutthefuckup! Shhh! Sh! Dolores sits back down, whispers: “What. The fuck, Abbott? You’re right here!” My metaphysical projection is here. “Whathefuck does that even mean?” Shhh!
Abbott: “I’m desperate. Ok?” She’s not buying it. “Look, I am, my actual body, is in a tun-state” What? “See, if you were ‘the one’ you would just know these things about being a tardigrade. You would be sufficiently bear. It’s what we do, real water bears, what we do.” Thanks for that. “It’s what we do when things are really fucked up. We hibernate. We become like a rock.” That’s adorable. “Fuck you, Jonah.” Jesus.
“I don’t know him. Just god.” From Jack.
Abbott continues .”Look, Frankenstein’s Monster gassed the humans in the lab. He couldn’t hurt me, but he could make it hurt. And every time I projected to one of my kids or uh.” Hookups? “Don’t cheapen it, dear.” You call me dear again, and I’m gonna borrow her knife.
Jack giggles. Shh! The old tardigrade whisper-rages: “Every time I appeared, could appear, this shithole you call a world had got worse. Way worse. I was wrong. Ok. I had a fun couple of slut-eras here, but you all? Humans are fuckinawful.” Shh! “The jackboot tardigrade was right. Fuck the primates. Have fun getting smoked by cephalopods, assholes.”
“Oh. Oh. Ok. Okay.” Dee nods emphatically. “And at any point did you consider, I dunno, taking me with you?”
I would if you were capable of the trip! Shhhh! Yourgonnagetuskilled Robot. Dogs. Shh!.
Abbott seems sincere, “I’m an asshole. Ok? I’m a selfish asshole. And yes, I hoped one of my kids was special” Twist the knife, dad. “I don’t know what word to use, half of you couldn’t even glow or tell light stories, toddler stuff. I was hoping one of you was capable of the trip. We’d double cross the robot and get the hell out. But I’m sorry. You’re the last one, the last hope, and I can’t take you with me.”
“Ok, dad but why should you get to live at the expense of me? Your daughter. Even if you don’t give a shit about me, why do you make that choice, how do you make that choice?” Dolores, I. He has nothing else to say.
Dee shrugs, “You’re an Enlightened being, right?” She turns the lantern down. Lays behind Jonah.
*
You are my object of study. All of you. Humanity. Not your nature. Those who describe humans in terms of their nature are writing themselves writ-large over the rest–wresting the pen from the scribe and writing over and under and off to the side. Marginalia manhandling the main narrative. Inmates running asylums.
You narrate your lives and your selves, and what you understand yourselves to be is a vector. “You are special.” My Dolores rejects that story. Totally and completely. But it’s in her. She is of it. The same story is inside of every brat raised in every bunker you managed to build or restore from the first Cold War.
Dolores was mine the moment she set out the door. Destiny, rebuke it or refute it, be it real or imagined. Not one of you can resist it.
*
“Wake up.” Dee shakes the old tardigrade awake.
“I’m up. I’m up.”
“We have a plan.” We do? Fuck yeah! The knife is back out of the sheath. Shhh! Servos whirr and a dog stomps over to sniff at the door.
“Puke up the phone.” Excuse you? “It still works, right? Puke it up.” I can’t just perform on command. Dolores points to Jack, to Jack’s knife.
“Ok. Ok.” Hands up Abbot retires to the bathroom to wretch up the cell phone. Dee wipes it down saying nothing. “You’re welcome. I’m fine by the way.” She tap-taps at the screen.
“Peek out the bathroom window. The truck. Are the lights on?” Yeah. Perfect. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ten minutes later, the four are huddled. They repeat and three-repeat the plan (Jack’s demand).
“Say it. What are we?” I’m not saying. Jack points the knife at Abbott. “We are a valuptuous deer.” You have an extensive vocabulary Jack.
“You will never see my vocabulary. Never. Nay.”
*
“When I move you move.” Good job, Jack. She winks at Jonah. 3. 2. 1. The “BOOP” as Dolores presses ‘play’ and almost immediately a 1970’s rock’n’roll singer wails “WOOMAAAN!” from the sound system of the blacked out SUV out back.
Servos snap to life, a few rusted ones sparking and bleeding hydraulic fluid, but they snap to something like attention. The pack of robot police dogs, half mad and machine rabid but still ‘functional’ sets about triangulating the source of the noise violation and sharing the data with each other. NOISE VIOLATION. NOISE VIOLATION. CIVIL DISTURBANCE. NOISE VIOLATION. UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY.
The whole pack sprints to the back of the building. Jack peeks her antlered head out the door. “I’m moving.” The four skitter. “You can move now.” We know. You’re doing great. “Deer don’t talk, shut the fuck up.”
She takes up the cart, and they race walk up the road, as a pack of robot dogs beats an SUV to death. Then there is the sound of automatic gunfire. Apparently one of the fashionista’s survived.
“Must move faster.” Deer. Do not talk. Faster go faster.
*
Behind the motel, the last fashion assassin lives his last moments. His dad’s music startles him awake. When the bots swarm the car, the man panics. Shoots the windshield out. Leaps from the hood. Rolls. His landing is perfect. He’s sprinting.
Perhaps the man is too young to remember, or to have ever seen how fast those dogs are.
DROP THE WEAPON. DROP IT. DROP IT. They are gaining quite quickly. He turns, fires and a lucky burst drops one bot, a second. He wings a third dog. Click.
The clatter of the empty thing on the asphalt. “I surrender. I surrender. Nonono” STOP RESISTING. STOP RESISTING. STOP STOP.
PERIMETER SECURE. WAITING AWAIT SECURE. AWAITING BACKUP.
*
“The deer can talk now.” Thanks Jack.
The four walk down Highway 40 somewhere north of Peoria, north of destiny. Jonah tries to talk Dolores out of continuing. “Chicago. We can make it there.” Gives up. Follows like a puppy. Abbott who wants his body must press on.
Jack, she wants to meet the god that lives in the hole in Peoria.
Jonah walks a little faster, catches up with Dee at the front of their pack. One last try: “Dee, you don’t have to die for him. He doesn’t deserve that. Don’t give yourself to Able.” She stops.
“I have no intention of dying for that asshole.” I’m right here. “Why I said it. I’m going to kill Able.” And how do you intend… “I have no fucking clue, yet.”
We’re gonna kill god?
END DOLORES (6)