MANHATTAN — from “The Last Drop” a novella
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The cyber-city is a cluster of cyber-communities. cyber-community is an intentional gathering pf persons who want to have all elements of a city within walking distance. Cyber-cities are communities chosen by folk who elect to embrace democracy, tolerance and helpfulness.
From The Notebook.
¶
They crossed the bridge into Manhattan and came down the empty West Side highway to 34th. There they turned left and drove the empty street to the junction of Broadway and The Avenue of the Americas. They parked behind yet another seemingly-working vehicle in front of Herald Towers.
The predicted rise of the seas had begun, accompanied by enough devastating weather to stimulate a decades-long migration to the center of the country. Strangely, the ultimate collapse of the energy sector stopped warming in its tracks. The last two years had seen measurable reductions of carbon in the air. Noxious methane incursions receded.
The Man still had no name. Dusty complied when he insisted that she place the palm of her right hand on a tablet-like screen.
“Abigail indeed,” he said softly.
She had no idea what to expect. She knew it was futile to ask questions.
¶
The building was the old McAlpin Hotel. It had become the command center of the beleaguered establishment when it was thought that Manhattan would end up a tiny island due to rising waters. That had not occurred but the ancient structure had been restored to its former glory and its 25 stories were served by eight old elevators would have been the talk of the town if anyone could have gotten inside.
It was not possible for anyone to get within a mile of the building. Its once auspicious neighbor, the Empire State Building, had long since been empty.
Dusty was whisked to the 25th floor, led into a small office and told to wait.
¶
Within a day Dusty, was getting used to Abigail. She was bathed and dressed as befits a woman at the peak of established power. She had absorbed the fact that her brother Jack was incarcerated in Des Moines following revelations regarding his efforts to quash the effort to make that growing city the capitol of the entity that was emerging from the culmination of the century’s crises. She had agreed not to pardon him.
She now declared to her instant staff of aides that she wanted an hour to herself without interruption. She only needed a half that time, but she was flexing her capacities a bit.
She was reconstructing what she and Frederick had carried forward during the crisis years until the ascending knockout blows of history seemed to rob Frederick of motivation and eventually of life. It never occurred to Dusty that she would end up the lone apostle of the simple but powerful constellation of truths that had sought to frame and influence the course of things over the century.
Her decision in the woods to go with the Man was the first conscious act of Dusty’s reincarnation as a Triadic Philosopher. A free yielding. What had taken place on the trip convinced her she had not entirely lost the treasure. But the image of Dale hanging in the old fraternity house and her feelings around their brief encounter were now the very sign and substance of the extended meditation she had just completed.
There it was. An experience of the seraphic unity of the divine and the physical creating in her calm acceptance.
But for Dale? What?
Too much? Too perfect? Too unsustainable?
Abigail smiled, listening to herself.
She knew why her feelings were so removed, callous even.
Perhaps.
Maybe it was a core human problem, something she and Frederick had allowed to surface at times. A large barrier to be breached.
The attainment of neither male nor female.
Or maybe it was a new feeling that Abigail recognized as a very old feeling indeed. With her antipathy to her early life, there had been just a hint of a peremptory posture, a feeling of entitlement inherent within her, something she could not share, close to reality itself. For now she was literally where she had always believed she should be.
She put her forefinger to her lips.
“Shhh,” she said.
She hit a button on the table before her and an aide appeared.
¶
Later in Williamstown, the inert body of Dale was removed from the fraternity house and taken to Bennington where it was received without comment at The Commons.
¶
Abigail took stock. Here, at the summit of a world that was no more, there was a remnant of the wealth people railed at as the house of cards tumbled. The only thing that worked in this shrunken world was gold and other valuables like diamonds. These could pay for security and keep things afloat for the miniscule percentage of those who had steeled themselves against this worst case.
Many who fit this profile were gathered in Saddle River, New Jersey. There, old homes functioned with some capacity to reproduce the elements of what had passed for life back in the day.
The action, if there was any at all, was in Des Moines and other central locations where local democracy was bearing fruit. Even Bennington and Pawling had, she now saw, evidences of the same rebirth.
The democracies were built on councils elected by communities made up of persons of all ages who subscribed to a basic code of values — tolerance, helpfulness and democracy. There would be fairness to all. No establishment of religion. No central bank. No nation. No thinking everyone had to embrace anything.
It was not a perfect code. Nor was it able to eliminate bad actors. But among us, what could you expect? It was producing communities that could look outside themselves a bit and try to work for the good of all.
Government was down to the elementary level. Things like construction and food and getting from place to place.
¶
Abigail knew what had happened. Her brother Jack had clawed his way to the top of the remnant of the highly privileged. Once there, he could see no farther than to seek to restore things to what had been. When the movement in the heartland made serious waves, he applied every old saw in the book to tar them as Communists, idealists, thugs and tools of vague, ominously-named conspiracies. Jack eventually became too much for the small group that actually controlled the enclave. It was not hard to turn him over to his sworn enemies with a signed confession, detailing all the threats he could no longer realize.
It was a strange reversion to the history of familial leadership in the United States that the cabal then turned to Abigail. But the Harkness name still had staying power. And Frederick was not forgotten, even by those he said should be forced to give up all their power and wealth. If Abigail could be persuaded to rejoin the remnant of the very class where she had been a scion, so much the better. At least for the appearance of stability.
¶
There was elementary connectivity. Abigail was the first to use it to send a message to Trace Perkins, leader of the month of the Federated Democracies.
Trace was 18 years old and had come to a central office headquartered at Hawthorne Hill in Des Moines.
This was the first resumption of wireless service in two years. The message went through. The reply was crisp. Abigail was pleased.
The only thing Abigail and the remnant had was something that still passed for financial capacity. Gold. Diamonds. Not quite the stuff of democracies. But the democracies needed the them to begin to build the new communities of the future.
¶
Abigail was not sure if it was a power rush or a more natural urge springing from the same well that had resulted in her experience with Dale on the eve of his exit from existence. Whatever it was she was aware it could be relieved without difficulty if she simply relied on her own dexterity. This in fact is what she did. It made no sense to flaunt such power as she had by commandeering an aide to do her bidding. She realized that Frederick was the probable reason she had no capacity to extend her closeness to Dale to something like romance or even good friendship. The problem was huge, she saw. Without attention the result could be catastrophic.
She had had a friend in the South who was convinced that sex was something to be given freely to those who needed release. That would be everyone. At almost any age. She shook her head. There must be a way.
¶
When Frederick imagined the world to come he made little allowance for the pains involved in transiting beyond the car. He was no slouch at painting a picture of what he had in mind. He produced beautiful drawings of communities of 10,000 persons living in car free areas with schooling, recreation, residence and work all beautifully coordinated in a walkable space. He linked such communities with pods that he surmised would be pneumatic, shooting people from one walkable paradise to another. That was Frederick, always there with some facile notion or other. Bread on the waters.
But as Abigail tried to figure out how to communicate with a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, with no long distance travel of any sort available and connectivity at less than a tenth of that needed for a restoration of even an imperfect wireless capacity, she shook her head again. It was becoming a common gesture.
Finally, she allowed her imagination to fill in the blanks of what she surmised from what she knew of the woman and her work. Life spans were shorter now, due to lapses in health care that reached alarming proportions in places like Pittsfield.
She sketched out a notion of sexuality that emphasized the healthy effects of orgasm and the need for people to be more alert to their own cycles of need.
She wrote down five premises she believed might take root in the new democracies.
1. Sex on demand
2. Free sex
3. Culture of respect
4. Privacy as a requirement
5. Words — new words?
She would wage war against reviving the culture of pornography which she extended to anything regarded as forbidden or harmful or nasty. There was every reason to have a sexually healthy country. There was every reason to end trafficking, sadism, rampant resentment and guilt.
¶
There was limited wireless possible between Manhattan and Des Moines. Abigail arranged for a feed to the prison where her brother Jack was serving an indefinite term. There had been no trial. Justice had perhaps been done. But then again…
“Jack?” Abigail spoke into a simple mike standing in front of her monitor.
“Abby, get me out of here.”
“One thing at a time, Jack. You are apparently well-placed in the eyes of all concerned. This is a delicate time.”
“Are you suggesting that Saddle River wanted me out?”
“They wanted someone compatible with what is going to happen.”
“And that someone is dear, long lost sister Abigail? What was the name you took?”
“Dusty.”
“And what happened to the kook? King Frederick!”
“He died, Jack.”
“Oh he did. I’m sorry.”
“Jack, look. Whatever you may think about Frederick, we are living in the world he knew was coming. And we are going to make that world the way he — we — had in mind.”
“Oh? Now just how long have you been back in the real world, my dear?”
“Jack, I am here because the people you tried to manage understand that they cannot have the world they made. It’s gone.”
“It won’t be when I get back.”
“That’s why you are there, Jack. Frederick was right. I was right. We were right together.”
“You mean you did not call to express brotherly love? You didn’t come to New York to repent in sackcloth and ashes?”
“Frederick knew I would end up here.”
“Did he know I would end up here?”
“Jack, he knew that we would either accept the change or be shunted to the side. Run over. We ended up training thousands of people to take power after the collapse. Our job now is to help change happen with the limited powers we still possess.”
¶
The road between the city and Vermont was little different than the road Dusty followed on the way to becoming Abigail once again. The main difference was an occasional look of amazement on the faces of bystanders who saw the little prototype vehicle whiz by, with a well-dressed woman at the wheel.
It took a flat four hours to get from 34th Street to the driveway north of Bennington.
The woman in the car drove on a whim. She wanted to test the prototype vehicle herself. It was fueled by a substance that required no oil save a synthetic version of it they called Foil. The world would not recover the car. But this prototype would be serviceable. It could be a basis for linking population centers, using old interstates. They could form “trains” of such vehicles to carry persons to different destinations.
The emerging world would make capital available to local democracies in community banks. Democracies would take root here and beyond. They would become the new world.
¶
She got out of the vehicle and walked slowly up toward the house, looking in the direction of the rusted Volvo and the little mound of earth that covered Frederick.
Suddenly, she heard a rustling in the underbrush to the side of the house. She jumped and wondered if she had been wise to make the trip without security. The rustling was punctuated by a lusty bark.
“Morris?”
Ω
Stephen C. Rose has written a number of books (Fiction/Non-fiction). You can tweet him here.
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