Dominion
Daniel Ruppert left the steel-reinforced black dome of the GlobeNet, Los Angeles studio and drove into the war-torn concrete hell of south L.A. The roads deteriorated beneath him as he traveled deeper into the Economic Reclamation Zone, where the Western Resources and Energy Committee now permitted up to four hours of electricity a day and as much as two gallons of water per household, a bid to stave off riots as the National Guard effected its latest withdrawal. Another intervention would likely follow within the month. Ruppert would report on it ominously, while framed by footage captured by the triangular GlobeNet spycams that glided like tight swarms of black vultures over newsworthy sites.
On this evening's newscast, Ruppert had described the new measures as a "bold initiative to increase prosperity and opportunity for the citizens of Southern Los Angeles." Privately, he'd wondered whether "increase" was the proper word, since it implied that those things existed in the first place. The word, like the overall positive tone of the story, had been chosen by network, and a mere reporter had no place suggesting revisions. Ruppert was just a face-man, someone who could look trustworthy and reassuring regardless of what he said, or how much he lied.
His new 2035 Ford Bluehawk stuck out like a golden thumb as it raced low and sleek along the shattered 405, picking up speed each time he darted under a wrecked overpass bridge. Scavengers sometimes lurked in the shadows beneath bridges, waiting to snare a promising target using a homemade explosive tucked into a roadway fissure, or maybe an old-fashioned burst of machine gun fire. At least, this was the kind of thing Ruppert reported for the local news. The boundary between the true world and the one manufactured for the audience was slippery and porous, even for him, especially since he didn't know when he told the truth and when he didn't. It was all just script.
Garbage and earthquake rubble buried most of the ramps on this stretch of interstate. Up the ramps, behind the rusty barbs and chain link running alongside the highway, most of the old concrete buildings stood lightless except for the occasional red glare of an open fire in a window hole. The four hours of electricity was probably an exaggeration. More likely, the Western Resource and Energy Committee provided one hour, or no hours at all -- most likely, they had simply issued the announcement to assure security-enclave residents in Beverly Hills and Orange County that something was being done for the benighted masses of the south.
In three or four weeks, he would be reading a new statement for the cameras -- that the residents of South L.A. had sabotaged the transformers and power lines, or had used the new electricity to fuel insurgent activity, and the power needed to be cut once again. Over iced drinks on manicured golf courses, where groves of trees concealed the electrified razor-wired fences, Ruppert's colleagues would shake their heads and comment on how you just couldn't help those people.
To support the story, the National Guard would be sent in for another round of occupation. A few hundred adolescents and young men would be swept up and shoved into the overcrowded Emergency Penitentiaries, and the well-heeled portion of the public would go on with their lives, satisfied that what could be done, had been done.
Ruppert should never have pointed his car south. His home was north, in Bel Aire, a three-story house in a high-walled, high-security suburban cell, where the houses all faced a "village green" in the center, complete with a swing set none of the obese neighborhood children bothered to touch. He did not belong down here. Traveling into the southern zone was not illegal, of course, but highly suspicious.
Suspicion mattered more than the law. Suspicion was enough to send you to an Emergency Penitentiary, though it was more likely that Ruppert, with his job and his background, would be submerged into the nightmare realm of the state's psychiatric prisons. Or just killed -- one could always hope.
He reached his exit, passed through a lightless warren of dilapidated office parks, and trundled up to the gate at the STORE-SAFE. He waved his access card and the gate squealed as it rolled aside.
The blue-braided, multi-pierced girl who accepted his cash at the front booth didn't seem to recognize him, either -- obviously, not a big consumer of local news. Her appearance was a remnant of older, more freewheeling California. Had she been anyone of importance, the way she looked would be sufficient to convict her of dissidence. The truly poor and powerless were unofficially indulged a certain, limited freedom in minor consumer matters, either because they influenced no one or, as Ruppert suspected, because it helped keep the upper classes properly frightened in their enclaves. Talk-show hosts and pundits needed somebody to attack and hold up as examples of immorality.
People with much darker skin than Ruppert was accustomed to seeing crowded the cafe, the sort of people men at his church would refer to as having "suspicious blood." They clustered together around shared screens, drinking and smoking, pausing to glare at Ruppert as he passed. He'd tried to dress down for the occasion, but the designer jeans and the blue Oxford shirt, however rumpled and untucked, might as well have been a royal silk robe in a place where many dressed in scraps of mismatched cloth crudely stitched together.
He sat down in his rented video booth, which had flimsy blinder walls on either side of the screen but nothing behind him -- any of the customers wandering by could see what he was doing.
Ruppert used a coffee napkin to wipe some of the unidentifiable crust off his screen, which was only twelve inches high and jammed with corporate logos jockeying for his attention, seeking to lure him onto their retail sites.
"Manual dialer," he said. A classic QWERTY keyboard appeared as a two-dimensional projection on the narrow shelf in front of the screen, while a blank window opened on the screen itself. Ruppert removed the plastic card from his wallet and typed out the long string of numbers and letters. He took a breath. All of this -- the shoddy cafe, the manual dialing -- was a sham, intended to prevent Terror from monitoring a call that he was fairly certain they were waiting to monitor. The sham was aimed at Sully's "close friend" who would answer the call. Ruppert was already lying to that person before ever speaking to him.
He touched the ENTER button.
The word "CONNECTING..." appeared inside the blank window. A second, smaller window opened inside it, displaying the same text, and then a third window opened, nested inside the other two. After a painfully long wait, text appeared in the smallest window:
WHO IS THIS?
Ruppert thought it over. How would he identify himself if he were trying to be discreet?
D RUPP, he typed.
After a few seconds, the reply came: SUNDAY NITE. NIXON STADIUM, 472. This had to refer to the early preseason game of the Los Angeles Archangels. The number referred to seats in the southeast nosebleed section.
OK, Ruppert answered.
The windows closed in reverse order, leaving him to face the page of ads. The conversation he'd been putting off for two months had lasted less than a minute, but left him with a new set of problems. How would he explain his night out to Madeline? He could hardly invite her to come with him. What if he was arrested by authorities while meeting with a dissident? Would Terror step in and protect him? He didn't even know the name of the Captain who'd given him this assignment. At least he had George Baldwin from work.
He should report his plans to meet Sully's friend to Baldwin, keep the Terror man updated on what he was doing, but part of him resisted the idea. Part of him wanted to operate as secretly as he could manage, maybe hold open the door to betraying the Department of Terror if he found an opportunity.
He thought of Hollis Westerly -- the man was clearly dangerous, probably insane. As much as Ruppert had learned to loathe Terror, even he couldn't argue with taking a man like Westerly off the streets. He would feel little guilt about turning Westerly over to Terror, and maybe that would settle things, and he could try to resume a normal life afterward.
They did not return Ruppert to the room where he'd awoken, but to a narrow, private room that looked as if it might have been converted from a janitor's storeroom. It was no cleaner than the rest of the hospital, and smelled just as sour, and Ruppert decided it was less a gesture of generosity than an attempt to prevent him from talking to other patients and spreading any of the classified information he knew. He'd been placed in information quarantine.
Dr. Crane did not send for Ruppert the next day, or the next. He had no reading material and no screen to watch, so he resorted to the pad of paper Crane had given him. Instead of a confession, he tried to draw a cartoon picture of Vice President Hartwell, and eventually he wrote letters to both Lucia and to Madeline, wishing them both the best. He knew they would never be delivered, but it felt good. After four days, he also wrote a note to Dr. Crane:
Dr. Crane:
You make a strong argument, but I don't believe you.
Ruppert paused, not sure what else to add. Then he wrote:
You may be right. Historically, you are right. But there must be another way to live. And shouldn't we be trying to figure out what that might be?
He stared at what he'd written, and he sighed and put away the notepad. Reading and writing made him dizzy. He wondered what drugs he was on.
On the seventh night in the private room, he dreamed of earthquakes and woke to silence. He lay in complete darkness -- even the annoying little lights on the monitoring machines had vanished.
Voices shouted from the floors below him. Then there was a long quiet, maybe a few hours, he thought he drifted in and out of sleep during this, but he couldn't be sure. He was startled by a sudden eruption of gunfire below, which quieted, then resumed, then trickled down to a random shot fired here and there around the detention facility.
It was just before dawn when the door to his room opened, but it wasn't the large orderly or any of the nurses who occasionally dropped by to silently refill his meds. It was the two young soldiers who'd escorted him to meet Dr. Crane, one of them with blond stubble on his scalp, one with red. The hallway behind them lay dark, but both of them held flashlights.
"Told you they put him in here," the red-haired soldier said to the other.
"What's happening?" Ruppert asked.
"Fucking game over, man," the blond soldier said. "Can you walk?"
Ruppert heaved himself up to a sitting position. He tried to put weight on his feet, then shook his head.
The soldiers left, then returned with a folded wheelchair. They muttered and grumbled to each other as they figured out how to open it and lock it into position. Then they hefted Ruppert into the chair. He was able to turn the wheels with his own hands.
"We have to take the stairs," the red-haired soldier told him. "No power, no elevators. Nothing works."
Ruppert followed them into the stairwell. The soldiers turned him around and rolled him backwards down the stairs, one step at a time, down five landings.
They followed a wide corridor into the detention center's staff cafeteria, where hundreds of people had gathered, prisoners and Army guards alike. The young and the wounded were wrapped in blankets gathered from the hospital rooms and guard barracks. The crowd was silent, listening intently to a scratchy radio set into a wooden case the size of a coffee table.