Hello there!
Welcome to the new folks who have recently joined. Just fifteen days until the new year and we get to say goodbye to 2020. A few quick reminders:
All previous newsletters are archived. Lots of stuff to check out including a link to the original 2011 screenplay of THE BLACK SKY, hints and helps to get started on the real work easter egg hunt teased at the back of the book, and more!
If you read and enjoyed THE BLACK SKY, I would be grateful if you left a review or a rating at Amazon or GoodReads.
There’s a “music inspired by” soundtrack you can listen to at your favorite streaming sites like Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, etc. If you prefer physical media, you can also grab the album on compact disc at Bandcamp.
For those that have read THE BLACK SKY, you may remember a mention or two of a bar called “The Dank,” the place Tessa worked at in college where she and Bishop met. I created a virtual playlist for this “punk rock bar,” which you can check out on Spotify.
THE RED SKY Updates
I got zero writing done in the last fifteen days, but spent time working out plot and structure. It’s not the exciting part, but it’s the necessary part.
More updates to THE RED SKY playlist on Spotify. New additions include Library Tapes, Sunn O))), and Earth.
The First Draft
Like any book, THE BLACK SKY underwent rewrites after the first draft was completed. Originally, the book featured a long prologue to set-up the world, and then much different first chapter.
I’ve put the prologue and first chapter at the bottom of the newsletter, so if you haven’t read the book yet, and want to save it until after, you can avoid it and come back.
Stuff I’m Into
Books - I finished STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS by Ted Chiang. If you enjoy short story collections, I highly recommend. Chiang’s take on sci-fi is unique, and I can understand how it won’t connect with everyone. His writing style is very formal and dense. Next, I’m onto WOOL by Hugh Howey.
TV/Movies - Currently enjoying THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT on Netflix
Music - Crazy Hearts by Half Japanese, The Makarrata Project by Midnight Oil,
What are you watching, reading, listening to at the moment?
Stay Safe!
Tim
The Original Prologue/First Chapter
August, 2024 - 975 Perseverantia, a minor planet circling the sun, shatters. Resulting debris launches an asteroid approximately 250,000 square miles wide hurtling through space on a collision course with Earth. It takes three years for that Texas-sized chunk of Perseverantia to reach Earth’s atmosphere. During that time, three different plans are simultaneously conceived, designed, implemented and executed, with varying degrees of failure.
The first attempt to destroy Perseverantia is by firing the largest nuclear missile ever conceived from the newly militarized International Space Station. It fails. Although the missile strike breaks the asteroid into several large chunks, thanks to Isaac Newton’s Law of Universal Mutual Gravitation, the large pieces dense with nickel and iron stay on course, slowly swirling around each other. Now there are multiple targets.
The second attempt involves reviving the dormant space shuttle program and launching a one-way manned mission to mate with and redirect the asteroids, subtly pushing them off course using coordinated engine burns. Unable to match the 250 mile per second speed of the asteroids, the first wave of shuttles miss their rendezvous and are bounced off the gravity into space. Eleven months later, shuttles redesigned for greater control dexterity and maneuverability are able to approach the asteroid without being immediately wiped out. However, the gravitational push theory fails and no course change is achieved.
The third attempt takes two years to develop, six months to test, and is finally implemented as the asteroids push past Venus, three months from impact. A joint Russian, Chinese, U.S. and German scientific supergroup of sorts designs the Airborne Laser System, or ALS. It is launched into orbit as Earth’s last, best hope. The ALS works as intended, heating the iron ore to the point of melting and splintering the asteroid chunks off into smaller, less lethal smaller chunks. But the laser pinpoints only one small section at a time, working on it piece by time-consuming piece. Given another eighteen months, this plan may have worked.
The first small chunks, the size of softballs and watermelons, burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Slowly but surely, larger pieces, ranging in size from compact cars to two-story homes, rip through the sky. Most crash into the oceans, others into deserts, jungles, outback, forests and other unpopulated terrain. Deaths, for the moment, are few.
The biggest piece of what remains of Perseverantia, roughly three football fields wide, pulsing with radiation, ignites as it tears through the mesosphere, finally striking the forests of the Republic of Tuva in Eastern Siberia. The soil and shattered bedrock combines with the ash from the flaming forest, shrouding the hemisphere around the globe, triggering what scientist term an “impact winter.” Within a matter of hours, from Europe to Japan, the sky turns black. Within a day, the entire globe goes dark as fires scorch the Russian forests. Out of control, the fires burn through Mongolia and Kazakhstan into the northern Chinese provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu. To the East, the waters boil from the Gulf of Oman to the Caspian Sea.
In 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan, shortening the Earth’s day by 1.8 microseconds and shifting the planet’s figure axis seventeen centimeters. The Perseverantia strike is roughly one hundred times more powerful. Every fault line across the globe registers unprecedented seismic activity after impact. Hundreds of active volcanoes erupt, sending more ash and debris into the already blackened sky. As the tremors shake and the lava flows, the normality of everyday life comes to a quick and brutal end. The massive, world-wide loss of life is incalculable. No official number is ever tabulated, but within a year, the combined death toll from the initial catastrophe, the rippling natural disasters, starvation from non-existent crop yields, rampant looting and barbarism, and end of days mass suicides, is estimated to be nearly half of the world’s nine billion inhabitants.
The first governments to fall are those weakest in Africa and South America, mostly due to abandoned security forces succumbing to food riots and opportunistic anarchists months before the pieces of Perseverantia even makes impact. The expert assumption is this decline will not spread to developed, so-called “first world” nations. But nearly a year to the day after Perseverantia gouges a hole deep enough into the Earth to shift seasons by weeks, the last working government falls in Australia, tumbling as so many before had – a desperate population pushed to the edge of existence. Like all carcasses left to rot in the desert, it was not long before the vultures arrived to pick the bones. Luckily, the corporations had already swept in to save what remains of humanity.
Multi-national oil, financial, and defense corporations began purchasing government assets to help offset diminished incoming tax revenue as soon as Perseverantia was revealed to the public. Slowly but surely, basic public sector services were shifted to the control of private entities – police and fire departments, public transportation, surface street and highway construction and maintenance, etc. In the United States, Houston, Texas becomes the first wholly owned and privatized city in the country, purchased by British Petroleum for a mere two-hundred and ten billion dollars in March of 2025. Within six months, fourteen additional cities are purchased outright from what remains of state governments, desperate for infusion of capital and the relief of responsibility. By the end of 2028, with the total collapse of the United States federal government, and subsequent dissolution of state and local governments, the fifteen privatized cities are the only remaining forms of civilized society continuing to operate. They are, almost immediately, flooded with refugees from surrounding suburban and rural areas. That’s why the walls were built.
The transformation of the fifteen cities into fortified and armed, multi-story, castle-like enclaves of safety and security is completed quickly utilizing massive earth moving vehicles that simultaneously collect, smelt and build twenty storey high concrete and steel walls, which are later fortified with tunnel systems and defensive weaponry. Former military personnel are hired to maintain the walls, police officers to provide street level security. After stemming the tide of refugees, each corporation sets up a task force to determine optimal population numbers based on geographic restrictions and housing capabilities for each city. Occupation lists are distributed. Recognizing that a self-contained city of two million occupants will not last without a proportionally correct number of doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers, farmers, etc., each corporation begins the process of hiring specific positions in what can only be described as the world’s most bizarre and audacious job fair. Prospective applicants are housed in makeshift military camps surrounding each city until final evaluations are made and announced.
Once the new hires are processed and moved into the city, a decree is made at each camp, to be spread by whatever means to the abandoned towns and cities across the nation: Anyone who desires to live within the protected walls of the fifteen protected cities will have to pay in order to get you past the guards, away from the gangs, the cannibals, the rapists, and the threat of a horrific death, it will cost you one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold, silver, diamonds or other rare or valuable merchandise. Within the city walls safety and security awaits those who can afford this new citizenship. There is one exception. Those who possess desirable skills, skills not easily attained or only held by a small few, can become “pending citizens,” working off their citizenship debt day-by-day.
Within the city walls, cash becomes an obsolete concept. With no central bank backing its value, and no mint printing new currency, the cities enact a cash for credit swap, eradicating the old paper money, and moving the city populations to a purely digital monetary system. Eventually, the ability of non-citizens to collect enough precious metals or gemstones to buy entry into the city ends, and all new applicants are forced to take the pending citizenship tract, a modern day peonage.
Chapter 1 - Tanner Dawes
January, 2034. A dirty, dark haze lingers over calm, open water. Rhythmic slaps repeat over and over as an object appears in the distance. Unrecognizable as the slapping of the water grows louder, the object draws closer, finally revealing itself as a row boat.
Small and rickety, its passengers appear through the airborne muck. A figure to the front of the boat struggles to keep the oars quiet. A graying beard outlines the man’s gaunt face. In front of him, a boy barely ten and girl half his age huddle tightly with their mother. Exhausted, faces dirty, their clothes a mish-mash of hand-me-downs and dumpster diving leftovers.
The boy coughs, sending shivers of worry through his parents, who eye each other nervously. The oars lift out of the water as the boat drifts. They wait for something, anything, to happen. Nothing happens. They exchange a hopeful glance, both thinking; maybe the rumors are true. Maybe there is a gap in the security. Maybe they’ve found that gap. Maybe…
CLICK CLICK
A gas-masked guard engages the trigger, releasing the safety on his German made G36A2 gas-powered assault rifle. Through the sight, he watches their nervousness spin to dread. The man twists his torso, looks up through dark haze and finally spots the massive concrete and metal security wall of Manhattan Island. Through an octagonal porthole six feet in diameter six stories high, the guard aims the laser sight at the man’s forehead.
“Contact at number seventeen,” he announces in a muffled voice. His gray jump-suit uniform sports a patch on the shoulder with the gold letters M.I.S. surrounded by the words Manhattan Island Security in a circular pattern. In plain block letters, his name announces him as Dawes.
“Roger that. Onscreen. Cleared to engage,” responds the slightly distorted voice in his earpiece. Dawes depresses a button on his gas mask, turning it into a loudspeaker with a momentary high-pitched squeal.
“You are in violation of the Manhattan Island Security perimeter. You have ten seconds to turn your boat around and return,” Dawes announces with rehearsed authority.
“Please, the children! Just take the children!”
“Turn your boat around and return to the mainland. Failure to do so will be considered a hostile act.”
“We’re begging you, please,” the woman yells through growing sobs.
“The children are healthy, they can work, take them,” reasons the man. Dawes stares blankly. Another day, another incursion. Of the forty or so sectors, his sector - seventeen, formerly known as Battery Park, experiences twice as many attempted breaches as the rest combined. And his shift, the overnight, is the most targeted window of time. As a family begs for their lives, it occurs to him that in ten more minutes, his shift would be over and this would have been Harrison’s problem, not his.
“Dawes, wake up and start the countdown,” barks the slightly distorted voice in his ear, returning his focus to the situation below.
“Five seconds!” Dawes makes sure not to yell too loudly and enunciate clearly.
“Wait!”
“Four seconds!”
“Please!”
“Three!”
“Have mercy on them!”
“Two!”
“Mommy,” the girl whimpers.
“One!” The family stares blankly up at Dawes, his finger resting on the trigger. He waits. Watches. Some guards proudly keep a mental body count, but not him. He didn’t join the Marines after high school because he wanted to kill whatever bad guy some suit had decided was the enemy of the moment. Muslims, Commies, Terrorists, Drug Cartels, Hackers, there was always someone, somewhere, worthy of an American military ass beatdown. No, he joined up for the simple reason that he didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do with his life. Becoming a government sanctioned killing machine, back when there was a government, was just an alternative to four years of college and the subsequent mountain of debt, or to flipping burgers or working construction. He didn’t love it or hate it; it was just a part of a job that, luckily, turned out to look good on a resume.
“Dawes. DAWES.” The not so gentle reminder in his ear brings him back to reality, and he does what years of muscle memory and trained-ambivalence have programmed him to do: he pulls the trigger.
“Sector seventeen clear. Hostiles neutralized,” Dawes spits out with equal parts exhaustion and boredom. He grabs his mask, lifts it off his face and over his head, revealing a face best described as a “hot mess.” Four or five days of unshaven scruff, sweat-matted hair, and bloodshot eyes surrounded by purple-black circle. He also dons a long-healed scar that runs from the top of his left temple over his cheek, and ends its journey behind his ear lobe.
From his pant pocket, Dawes pulls out a small plastic bottle with a rounded rubber tip – a nasal inhaler. A quick shot up each nostril sprays air and not much else. He gives it a quick shake – tapped. He tosses it over the metal railing, and it tumbles through the air landing in a pool of shimmering blood amongst the obliterated row boat and bullet-riddled corpses.
Dawes checks his watch, 7:59. One minute to shift change. He stares into the distance, watching the hazy outline of the sun grow in the cloudy gray soup that passes for a skyline. If he squints, he can see her, The Statue of Liberty. She’s not that far away, but the dirt-thick atmosphere isn’t always cooperative. It’s then he gets his reprieve – the sound of the shift change horn. A second later, the large metal door behind him clangs as it swings open. Harrison’s right on time, as always. He taps Dawes on the shoulder.
“See ya tomorrow,” grumbles Harrison. Like most of the guards, he long ago stopped asking questions, discarding the idle chit-chat of normal existence. At this point, it’s just assumed there will be chum in the water, why dwell on it.
“Later,” responds Dawes as he steps through the threshold and shuts the door behind him. He quickly makes his way down the curved concrete hallway, taking notice of which fluorescent lights are out and which are flickering towards extinction. It’s these mundane, nonsensical distractions he taught himself in the service that help him forget he just terminated an entirely family with the routine ease of changing one of these light bulbs. He passes one, two, three doorways on his left, only one more to go to the locker room.
“Dawes,” barks a voice from the fourth doorway, “get yer ass in here.” Of course he wasn’t going to make it past, not today. Benton is a stickler for protocol. Dawes trudges into the office, past the door with the Supervisor placard and stands at limp attention in front of Benton’s immaculately organized desk. He waits as Benton scribbles with a stylus on an electronic tablet, his eyes wander left to the sixty inch wall mounted television screen, to the right to the less than inviting two seater metal armed and legged couch wrapped in some sort of faux-burlap material, and finally back to Benton. The room is sparse except for the shelf behind Benton that houses a variety of communication devices, including an old CB radio, a large satellite phone and docking station, a ham radio, a pair of UHF military walkie talkies, old school rotary and push button telephones and dozen or so different makes and models of cell phones.
“You know better than to hesitate like that,” the steely-eyed Benton barks without raising his gaze. Dawes responds with a robotic “yessir.” His supe, Robert Benton, has been a to-the-second ball-buster since day one. Dawes landed this gig eighteen months ago. He’s sure Benton was in the corps, but can’t place him, and as their daily conversations rarely last more than thirty seconds, it doesn’t leave room for small talk.
“Come on,” Benton grumbles, and Dawes steps forward toward the desk, on which rests a small, black triangular box no larger than a tissue box, computer touchscreens on either side. Benton looks up from the tablet long enough to type 1-0-0-0 into his side of the triangular box. Dawes immediately presses his left index finger to the opposite side. It lights up, ACCEPTED across the small screen. Normally, Dawes would complete this transaction via a wall mounted unit in the locker room on his way out the door, but he knew the moment of hesitation would cost him a visit to the principle’s office for a proper glaring.
“Dismissed,” sighs Benton, eyes once again on the tablet. Dawes gives a half-hearted salute and is out of the room before the final syllable hits his ears.
After a quick stop in the locker room to change into his street clothes: a pair of worn cargo pants, steel-toed boots and a solid Army-green sweatshirt, Dawes is through the door marked “Street Exit” and out onto the over crowded city sidewalk. He straps a white surgical mask over his face and slips into the crowd that he is convinced is doing nothing for him, trying not to make eye contact as he eyes with envy the expensive rubber masks with hoses attached to handheld oxygen tanks. A luxury item, the newest high-end model, with the built in air scrubbers, which filter the air for you, no tanks needed, goes for a year’s worth of his current salary.
In less than a block, Dawes reaches his destination – a public phone booth. He slides open the clear glass door and shuts it behind him. Inside, a simple, black rectangular screen is mounted opposite the door. He touches it, and a Bell Telephone logo appears. He touches his finger to a reader along the side of the screen. On the screen text appears - Available credit: 1000. Press to Dial. Dawes taps the screen with a finger and a telephone keypad appears. He enters a ten-digit sequence. Three options appear on the screen: thirty seconds for ten credits, one minute for eighteen, and pay-as-you-go for eight credits a minutes. He presses option one and “ringing” flashes on screen as he pulls the mask below his chin.
Though cell phones are available, they are only useful in-island via the closed local network. Outside the island, communication is much trickier. Thanks to buried and mostly operational landline networks, it is still possible to reach people off-island, referred to interchangeably as the free-zone, it’s residents as free-zoners. Only certain off-island buildings in the surrounding boroughs have service, which drives up the prices of rental units. Outages are irregular and unpredictable, though not refundable..
The glass of the phone booth frosts over, changing from clear to opaque, blocking the prying eyes of passers-by as the rectangular screen blinks “Connecting.” A recorded female voice makes a standardized request, “Please state your name to complete this connection.”
“Tanner Dawes,” he speaks clearly and smoothly.
“Hello,” says a tired female voice.
“Ang, it’s me,” Dawes says. On the screen appears Angela, alarmingly thin and just as wearied as Dawes, her pixie-short hair a necessity of convenience. Every time he sees her, he winces just a little bit. Next week is supposed to be their seventh wedding anniversary, but the woman in front of him looks almost nothing like the woman he met while stationed in Barstow, California almost twelve years ago. Back then, Angela Torrez was a starting sophomore point guard on the women’s basketball team at Barstow Community College, waitressing at The Hanging Tree to finance her dream of transferring to the University of Southern California to play point on a Division One squad. It was at that dive bar, known for an especially spicy jalapeno burger, world famous according to some, that the two met. Dawes dined alone, as he so often did, after spending days learning the ins and outs of every piece of ground and combat-support equipment in the fleet. She had waited on him enough times that the friendly customer waitress banter had slowly turned into hours long chats late into the night in back corner booths.
Before Dawes got up the nerve to ask her out, Angela invited him to an even scummier dive bar nicknamed, appropriately enough, The Dank, which featured punk rock karaoke and fifty cent happy hour pitchers. Almost two years to the day after their first date, they tied the knot in a fifteen-minute ceremony at the Barstow Courthouse in front of a dozen friends. The first stop during their bar-hopping wedding reception was back at The Dank, downing cheap beer and two for a dollar tacos. The same night every television station across the globe broke away from programming to carry an announcement by an unprecedented gathering of world leaders that something was on a collision course with Earth.
In the top right corner of the screen, a digital clock counts down from thirty seconds.
“How are you? How’s work,” she inquires with nervous urgency.
“Fine. Things are fine. Are you okay?” Dawes knows she’s not. But he asks reflexively.
“I don’t know how long I can stay here,” she answers. “It’s getting bad, like Rochester bad. There is going to be a gang war soon.” Dawes knows exactly what she’s inferring. The gangs are bad everywhere, but a group of Rochester hoods decided to turn everyday assault and rape into a spectator sport, forcing families to watch decapitations and dismemberments with the sort of glee reserved for the lowest levels of Dante’s inferno. Cannibalism was never far behind.
“There’s housing in the boroughs, it’s not much more expensive,” he tries to futilely reason.
“I don’t have the trade,” she responds despondently.
“We can get it, I’ll get some stuff together and hire a courier,” which he knows is a lie as it leaves his lips.
“I’ll be okay, you need to save,” Angela says. Dawes eyes the clock as the ten-second countdown begins.
“I know, I know. I just…,” he pauses. “I miss you. I gotta go. I’ll call soon. Love you.” Angela kisses her index finger and presses it to screen. Dawes does the same as the counter reads 3…2…1. The screen goes black, the Bell Telephone logo reappears and the glass booth returns to clear.
Slipping his mask back on, he steps out, back into the bustle and makes his way north past many of the shops and businesses that remain from before the corporation bought Manhattan. Those that didn’t survive have been replaced by previously illegal enterprises: casinos, brothels and illicit drug suppliers, free to operate in the post government marketplace. Even though he’s passed this block repeatedly over the last two years, he still find himself amused and slightly embarrassed by the display at Betty’s Be-Bop Boudoir, advertising the hottest and cleanest working girls in the city, yet always nastiest, most cracked-out slice of week-old pie in the window. Exhausted and hungry, sex is the last thing on his mind as he passes and opens the door to Manhattan Island’s last remaining McDonald’s.
Dawes spots and enters the ten-person deep queue in the remarkably well-preserved restaurant. He looks over the menu quickly; it’s been the same order every week for months. In his search for the cheapest, quickest meals in the city, this is the near the bottom thanks to the reliance on genetically modified and harvested bovine meat that comes from god-knows-where considering that hasn’t been a working cattle farm within a hundred miles in years.
The line moves efficiently as his attention quickly turns from the menu filled with twenty credit burgers and fifteen credit caffeinated drinks to the television mounted in the corner, broadcasting the island’s lone network feed. A pretty, conservatively dressed, blond woman talks to the camera.
“There’s only one day left in this month’s citizenship lottery,” she states in perfect accent-less English. “Make sure to get your ticket for Manhattan Island’s only legal citizenship lottery.” Like Dawes, most in the crowd watch just to pass the time. With over half of the twelve-million residents of Manhattan Island on pending-citizenship status, the odds only seem to favor the lottery commission, which is run, conveniently enough, by the corporation.
Finally, Dawes steps to the counter as the news switches to a brief interlude of weather forecasts (always miserable) and air quality reports (always bad). The tired, elderly man in the ridiculous McDonald’s uniform silently awaits an order behind the counter, hand poised to push a button on the register. Dawes sighs; he’ll be going with the regular order: one small, plain hamburger and one small water. No ketchup, no mustard, no lettuce, no onions. Even salt and pepper have an up-charge.
“Fifty credits,” says the old man. Dawes places a finger on small screen on the back of the register. By the time the old man accepts the payment on the register, one cellophane wrapped burger and a small cup of water appear on the counter. Dawes swipes them and snags the last remaining stool seat at a counter along the front window. As he unwraps the pitifully small burger, he glances back up at the blond anchor on the mounted television screen.
“A spokesman for Manhattan Island CEO Elton Vinick says rumors of a life-threatening illness are exaggerated, and that Vinick is simply spending more time with his family before the annual year-end shareholder meeting, at which the board is expected to present tough questions regarding his leadership during the last fiscal year.”
Dawes sinks his teeth into the odorless and, to be honest, tasteless burger. Faint hints of meat and bread taste stimulate his senses, but those may only be artificial flavoring for all he knows. On the television, a perfectly tanned middle-aged doctor sits behind a large wooden desk in an office. He smiles with impossibly white teeth, obviously reading off a teleprompter.
“We know the high prices of new synthetic organs can cause financial strain, but the Organ Clinic of Manhattan has teamed up with Manhattan’s leading creditor to provide you with this limited time offer…”
And just that fast, Dawes has consumed the burger and downed the water in one big swig. The crowd is standing room only, so he leaves his seat quickly and makes for the door, back out into the crowded sidewalk. One more stop before he heads home - the Duane Reade Drug Store across the street.
He waits for the light to turn, crosses with the masses in front of taxis, delivery trucks, service vehicles, motorcycle security and stretch limos – spotting a privately owned and operated vehicle in the city is all but unheard of these days.
Once inside the drug store, Dawes knowingly makes his way through the aisles to a shelf of boxed and bottled pharmaceuticals. He scans the tags with his index finger – marijuana, mescaline, heroin, opium – anything you can imagine for any kind of experience. His finger finally stops at “Synthetics,” and traces its way through the sizes, stopping at a nasal inhaler marked 6-Hour Diacetylmorphine Spray, a lab created heroin substitute, perfect for keeping his nerves in check.. Luckily, the sale tag reads twenty-percent off this week, down to the reasonable price of 160 credits. For a moment, Dawes considers stocking up. He runs the numbers in his head - two extra bottles now would save eighty credits over the next two weeks, but the next citizenship installment payment is due end of week, and… he’s tired, and it’s too much math. One bottle it is.
Out the door and back out on the street, the morning sun higher and brighter behind the veil of smog, Dawes starts the half hour long trudge to the Towers on East Thirtieth. Sometimes he wishes he had lived in Manhattan prior to the asteroid, curious about what parks like Sara Roosevelt or Stuyvesant Square looked like before they were razed to build more housing, more manufacturing, and more shopping to placate the tightly regulated population.
Just before nine a.m., Dawes finally reaches the large metallic gate that surrounds the Towers, previously some sort of medical services building. Outside, a large placard displays the rates: 200/night, 1300/week, 5000/month – Cheapest Rates In Town! He places his thumb on an inch-long black strip at the gate hinge – two beeps and gate unlocks, he enters and pulls the gate shut behind him. Plenty of opportunistic bottom-feeders looking to slip in and steal anything not nailed down.
Up a few flights of stairs and down a dim fluorescent hallway, he stops at Room 339 and places his thumb on another black strip next to the door, this time with a red LED at the top. Instead of beeps, the light changes from red to green and the door unlocks. To reduce theft, almost all island security was converted to biometrics years ago, utilizing eyes and fingerprints in various locales. Security forces are ever present and plentiful, but the zero tolerance policy for crime by the corporation is rarely tested thanks to the catch-all punishment - permanent banishment off island for the offender and any family.
He enters a small room, formerly a hospital recovery room, converted to an apartment furnished only with a cot and dresser, minus one of its three drawers. Dawes collapses onto the cot, exhausted. He pulls off his worn boots, then strips down piece by piece, aches and pains slow his disrobing until he’s naked, revealing shoulders and arms covered with military tattoos: USMC on his left, Semper Fi on his right, a snake encircled dagger on his left forearm, an eagle with talons clutching a rifle on his right.
He glances out the barred windows at nothing in particular as he slips into the tiny bathroom. At the sink a garden hose runs from the faucet over the shower curtain rail. He steps in and repositions the hose above his head, grabs a shrunken bar of soap and washes himself from head to toe. No fancy hair conditioners or facial scrubs, this is the extent of his beauty regiment.
He can’t help but notice the weight loss. Once his six foot two frame supported two hundred and thirty pounds of lean muscle. At twenty-two, he was pushing three percent body fat. The fat’s still gone, but the unrelenting hours and lack of a proper diet have cost him forty pounds easy. Not that he has much of an appetite these days.
Drying off he slides on a tattered pair of boxer briefs and returns to the bed. He focuses his attention on the sole appliance in the whole place – a cheap digital alarm clock. The display reads 9:32 a.m. He sets the alarm for 3:40 p.m., and then pulls the nasal inhaler from a pocket in the cargo pants lying on the dresser. A quick squirt up each nostril, and he’s already feeling the relaxing effects as he lies back in the bed. His eyes flutter as he drifts off into an opiate induced slumber...
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Dawes rolls towards the flashing alarm clock, struggling to focus his eyes on the digital display. Just as he feared: 3:40pm. He slaps down on the clock, silencing it in one swift blow. He rubs his eyes, smacks his cheeks and lazily rises. In just a few minutes, he’s dressed and out the door, navigating through the trash filled hallways back out to Second Ave.
A lumbering garbage truck motors from the north, stopping along the curb in front of Dawes. He yanks the door handle, opens it and lifts himself up and in, one fluid motion. The smell of burning vegetable oil based biodiesel, the only fuel in use on Manhattan island, permeates the interior cab of the truck, a smell he has never grown use to, never failing to twist his innards.
“Afternoon, sunshine,” chirps Pete from the driver’s seat, a portly man with an extra chin and bulbous nose. On cue, he holds out a thermos mug as Dawes shuts the door.
“Thanks,” says Dawes, grabbing the thermos and unscrewing the cap, “what’re you in the mood for?”
“How ‘bout surf ‘n turf,” jokes Pete as he shifts the transmission from park to drive. “A nice Maine lobster with a medium rare fillet.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” smirks Dawes as he pours the coffee into the overturned cap and takes a sip. It barely passes for coffee, more like caffeinated water with a slight piss-yellow tint. Pete’s been reusing the same grounds and filter for who knows how long, trying to milk every last drop. Real coffee beans can fetch four figures for a mere pound these days, a truly limited resource.
The garbage truck rumbles slowly down Second Avenue, struggling to shift from first to second gear. Dawes spies the masked masses traversing the sidewalks, hustling from place to place. Restaurants next to brothels next to multi-family housing, the discrete segregation of the old world long abandoned. Dawes fixates on a young couple walking with arms interlocked down the sidewalk as his mind drifting to Angela for a fleeting moment, long enough for Pete to downshift and jam the brakes, shifting into reverse, spinning the steering wheel counter-clockwise and backing the garbage truck down a long, dark alleyway, shaking Dawes out of his momentary reprieve.
Pushing down the narrow corridor, past dilapidated fire ladders swinging via rusted out bolts, Pete uses his multiple side mirrors to ease the garbage truck closer and closer to a large steel trash container. As they near, he spots the overflow of trash bags around the dumpster.
“Goddamn lazy bastards,” Pete mutters to himself, stopping the garbage truck just feet from the voluminous piles of refuse. Without a word, Pete and Dawes exit their respective sides of the truck, draw down their face masks, slip on tattered leather gloves. They grab and toss in the bags, easily over two dozen, before they both stop and stare at the final bag littering the ground. It’s long, narrow shape betrays its contents - a body.
“Your turn,” says Pete, half-heartedly.
“No way,” snaps Dawes, “I had the one last week, this one is all you.”
Pete grunts his disapproval, bends over and partially unzips the bag, revealing a head and shoulders. He pulls the zipper to the bottom, revealing what’s left of the corpse, both feet, hands, eyes and all the teeth have been removed to make identification all but impossible. A massive crater is all that remains where a chest should be, breast plate and ribs removed with jagged ends remaining.
“Goddamn amatuer organ dealers,” sighs Pete. “Gonna hafta call this in.”
They return to truck, Pete grabs the microphone of a CB radio affixed to the top of the dashboard, while Dawes settles in.
“Dispatch,” Pete announces into the mic with a semi-professional tone. “This is truck seven three, I’ve got a stiff in the alley north of fifty third.”
“Roger, we’ve got your beacon,” replies a slightly distorted voice through the CB’s speaker. “Notifying local security patrol, hold tight ‘til they arrive.”
“Roger, seven three out,” says Pete, as Dawes leans back, shuts his eyes and tries to steal some extra sleep.
***
Dawes opens his eyes. Benton stares at him.
“Dawes, are you hearing me?” Benton asks incredulously.
Dawes snaps back, sometimes he doesn’t remember entire days, going through the motions without thought or consideration, every movement rote muscle memory. He had managed to finish out his shift with Pete, arrive at the M.I.S. HQ on time and even get his uniform on, mostly, sans his socks which were around here somewhere. No memory of any of it. Maybe he should be concerned about that, but it’s never been more than a fluttering concern.
“My office, now,” Benton barks.
“Yessir,” replies Dawes, scanning the floor for his socks. Benton squint-eye stares, then marches off as Dawes finally locates the nondescript, ankle-length gray socks stuffed into the worn leather combat boots resting at the bottom of his locker. He slips them on each foot, stuffs his feet quickly into his boots, and sprints out of the locker room to the hallway leading to Benton’s office.
Upon reaching the doorway, Dawes slows, straightens his uniform and rubs his eyes. Benton rarely made an effort to speak to anyone outside his office. This was either going to be very bad, or… no, this was probably bad.
Entering Benton’s office he advances up to the white line exactly thirty six inches from Benton’s desk.
“Shut the door,” says Benton, without looking up. Dawes shuts the door, something in eighteen months he’s never been asked to do before. This must be bad. Benton waits for Dawes to return to the line.
“I have been put in charge of an off the books operation that is suited for someone with your background. I can’t go into specifics, other than to tell you that the compensation is generous. I need a yes or no right now, we can’t move forward without it.”
Generous compensation? That’s all Dawes needed to know.
“Yessir, I’m in.” he says without hesitation. Anything to break the doldrums of his current existence, plus generous compensation?
“Good,” says Benton, pointing a small remote control towards the wall mounted flat-screen monitor. A woman appears on screen, short graying hair, business attire, the background half window reflection and half nondescript ceiling. Dawes recognizes her immediately: Sandra Nolan, Deputy CEO and Senior Vice President of Manhattan Island Security, second in command to Elton Vinick and Benton’s immediate boss..
“I’m glad you’ve accepted the offer, Officer Dawes. I’m Sandra Nolan-”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dawes accidentally interrupts, immediately wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth. “I’ve seen you on the news.” Nolan’s brow gives off a hint of agitation at the breach of etiquette.
“Then you’ve seen the reports, that Vinick will be taking time off before the year end shareholders meeting.”
“Yes, ma’am. I have.”
“What I am about to share with you cannot be repeated or shared with anyone, not even your wife.”
“Elton Vinick is ill. Information regarding his health is closely guarded. Three days ago, a surgeon who was to operate on him passed away unexpectedly. Unfortunately, he was the only one on the island qualified to perform the procedure. We know of a capable doctor in Bangor, Maine, but our attempts to make contact have been unsuccessful. You are to travel to Bangor and retrieve Doctor Andrew Wolcott. When you return, the remainder of your citizenship debt owed to Manhattan Island will be eliminated, your wife will be made a full citizen and will be provided with a position appropriate to her skill set. You and your wife will be reunited. Questions?”
Without hesitation, Dawes inquires. “What’s the deadline, and what if he doesn’t want to come?”
“The deadline is forty eight hours. We do not anticipate Dr. Wolcott will want to come willingly. The intel provided tells us that Wolcott is a highly respected member of the community, and as his skill-set is a limited commodity, he’s protected as well. Commander Benton will provide you with the necessary tools to extract him,” Nolan replies.
Quickly assessing potential risks, Dawes asks, “What if I get back with time to spare, but he’s already dead?”
With a subtle smirk, a sign of confirmation that the right man for the job has been selected, Nolan says, “We will uphold our end of the deal. Get Dr. Wolcott back here.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Nolan’s image on the monitor flickers off. Gears turn in Dawes brain. How do they know about Wolcott? Why won’t he come willingly? What exactly is wrong with Vinick? What does my background have to do with this mission? Is this a set-up? Who is Nolan really loyal to? Dawes looks to Benton.
“Any questions?” Benton asks, for once not staring down at his tablet, but instead straight at and through Dawes.
“No, sir.”