Corrupting Power
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Quaranteam: Book 2, Chapter 15
🕑 Added 2023-09-08 07:01:05 +0000 UTCChapter Fifteen
December 19th, 2020
Sleeping had been difficult, but before they’d crashed for the night, things had looked like they were stabilizing in New Zealand, even as disastrous as it was. Current estimations were that the New Zealand population would end up somewhere between 15-20% of what it had been two weeks ago, and that was an improvement upon how terrifying it had looked just twelve hours earlier.
Even while they’d been traveling, Team Rook had done everything they could to keep track of what was going on overseas, someone on their phone or laptop, hooked into the plane’s Wi-Fi, streaming CNN, MSNBC or the BBC, unable to look away from the latest news coming from halfway across the world. It wasn’t like the death tolls were massively higher than the rest of the world – especially now that the Air Force was pushing the serum into every female arm it could find – but because New Zealand had gone from zero to sixty within a couple of weeks, it was an easier visual display of what the whole world had been dealing with for months and months. And the sudden severity of it meant that they hadn’t time to adapt like most of the rest of the world had.
As individuals had died off across the globe in key logistics or support positions earlier during the pandemic, the deaths had been spread out enough that new people had been brought on, trained up and, as soon as it was available, vaccinated with the serum. And as long as the keystones in terms of utilities and services were being upheld, it was easier to overlook the massive number of casualties. In most cases, it had been men dying and women being trained up and/or promoted to fill in the slack.
There had been some shortages, naturally, as certain things dwindled in the supply, but by working to keep ahead of the problem, the Air Force had done a remarkable job in keeping all of the major industries needed to keep the country functional running, although many of them were operating only at a fraction of what they once were. That was okay, though, as the demand had also dropped, for obvious if depressing reasons.
Less people meant less demand for power, water, food, toiletries, etc.
The ridiculous thing to Andy was that it was all basically just a bunch of dials, and the decreased production for, say, meat, hadn’t resulted in anywhere near the sort of panicked shortages people would’ve expected was because the demand had dropped accordingly.
The bigger challenge had been distribution and transportation, but the Air Force had thought of that too, which was why the watchword of surviving the pandemic was consolidation.
As it turned out, the people who’d most noticed the pandemic happening in America were those who’d been in smaller to mid-size cities in the United States. It was something Andy had been doing a bunch of reading on. The top 300 largest cities in the US all had populations over 100k (or at least they had before the start of the epidemics), but there were loads and loads and loads of cities across the country with populations between 10k and 100k, and those were the ones that were getting hit the hardest. As such, much of the population of those smaller towns were being consolidated upwards into larger cities.
Consolidation was something people had been advocating for in the United States for literal decades, long before the virus. High density housing hadn’t been happening across the country because rich people had pushed for single-home land development to be the only kind of thing that was being allowed to be built, which led to the suburbs.
(There were lots of reasons, but the common denominator was, of course, racism.)
As the sprawl expanded, the problem worsened.
The suburbs made up only 25% of the population of the country, but they accounted for more than half of the greenhouse gases being released in the US. Too many people were just taking up too much space and using too much energy to do it. Single family houses were infinitely more expensive to heat and cool than centralized towers or even midsize complexes. The United States had needed to consolidate down into more efficiently designed and constructed cities, so with the dramatic reshaping they already needed to do because of the pandemic, the government agencies in charge of relocation and social pairing started pushing toward more efficient clustering.
All of the zoning laws had been completely gutted and thrown into the trash.
A completely new United States was rising from the ashes, and it was generally going to look a lot more European, a lot more centralized and a lot more focused. Mixed use structures were going to become way more prevalent, with stores and shops on the ground floor, and residences on the several floors above that. The sprawl was going to stop going outwards and start going upwards. That meant changes would be hitting every level across the board.
In an effort to keep supply lines from running too thin, many men and women in those smaller towns that were dying out had been offered free relocation to larger cities, chances to move into more centralized locations. Often these were existing metropolitan areas, but in some cases, it was taking key smaller sized cities and scaling them upward, essential crossroads points in the supply chain getting reinforced by being built out as quickly as possible. Anything which was determined to be a keystone in a logistics chain was immediately marked for reinforcement and development.
Andy’d been reading about some of the so-called ‘culture clashes’ that had been happening in some of the bigger cities. People who used to live in towns of ten or twenty thousand were now living in modified downtown highrise apartments and condo buildings, surrounded by a bunch of people who had been living in the city for decades. That had been by design, too, apparently. If people were going to be forced into new villages, the old tribal political lines had to be broken, and the tribes had to be intermingled, left wingers and right wingers sharing a building, sometimes even a floor.
Farming, agriculture and livestock were still incredibly important, but again, in newly adjusted proportions. There were plenty of farms that had simply been abandoned, because their owners had died and they weren’t needed to keep the supply line within scale. Those who hadn’t chosen to move into central city hubs had also been offered a chance to take some of these farms over. The existing farms had been redirected to drop off to new, more centralized redistribution centers. It seemed like a lot of farms had nominated one or two women from their Team to be designated ‘drivers,’ delivering their goods to the bigger centers before being sent upstream even further.
So while states like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma and the like had previously had several smaller towns that would feed up to bigger depots, now the middle man was being cut out and farm deliveries had further to travel to reach larger centralized hubs. It was a bit inconvenient, but a little inconvenient was better than everything suddenly shutting down, or farmers having to give up their land. In some cases, they’d actually expanded to take over the land from neighbors who had died, as much as they could manage.
That was how the United States was adapting.
But because everything in New Zealand had collapsed all in the span of two weeks, there hadn’t been time to employ any of those lessons to help manage the fallout. All the systems had basically shut down at the same time, and instead of being able to shift resources around to manage the problems until the demand for resources decreased accordingly, the dam had just given way, and everything was spiraling out of control.
One thing Andy did have to admit that gave him hope was that injected women were being allowed to leave New Zealand in search for partners abroad, if they wanted. Obviously, the New Zealand government was encouraging people to stay and find partners locally, but they also understood the need to get paired with people they trusted, which meant some women were leaving on boats or even planes, trying to get to Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan or even Honolulu, although none of those were guaranteed to make it, or even to be allowed to land if they did.
The media was reporting that only between ten and twenty percent of New Zealand women were attempting to leave in search for partners in other countries. When they were trying to depart the country, the women the reporters talked to said they simply couldn’t bear to be in New Zealand anymore, as everywhere they looked, they were reminded of exactly how many people had died in such a short period of time. They needed to start over, start fresh, start something totally new. Not that anyone could blame them.
One of the moments of levity Team Rook got, somewhere over Idaho, was when one of the reporters had been talking to a New Zealand man who’d chosen to just wait at the far end of the stadium, so that all the women who’d just been injected would walk past him. When the reporter had interviewed him, he had six women, all of whom seemed wildly out of his league, waiting for him to pick two more before taking them all back to his place. Men were being asked to pair up with as many women as possible, so they’d asked any man to wait until he had at least eight partners before leaving. The man being interviewed said he’d just been talking to any woman he thought looked attractive as they exited, and while loads had turned him down, many were thrilled to have found a partner so soon that they leaped on their first opportunity. He’d even been holding up a sign that read “available cock” and it had brought a smile to many of the women’s faces as they trundled out of the arena. And while the man admitted that they didn’t have access to the Oracle system, the standing and waiting allowed them all to get to know each other first. A couple of women had left after standing with him for a while, only to be replaced by others who seemed better fits, so he considered the whole thing a success, even if it wasn’t optimal. The women had all collectively agreed that while the man, whose name was Zed, wouldn’t have been their first choice, he was friendly and he was intelligent and he had a sense of humor, and they were hoping that would be enough to last.
It was hard to turn off or look away from the news for too long, as if they were looking at a window into what had happened worldwide over the last few months under the cover of darkness. So much of the catastrophe had happened while people weren’t looking.
Andy had wanted to cancel the signing in Seattle, expecting no one would want to show up, but had been informed by the store that there were people lined up outside, waiting for his arrival. Loads of people were either not watching the news or were looking for something to escape from it with. As such, Andy agreed to donate all the proceeds from his appearance to New Zealand support.
They’d chosen to have the signing at The Elliott Bay Book Company, which had been around since the 70s, and was always a welcome home to visiting authors, and the event itself felt like it went relatively well, although someone from Andy’s Team was always on their phone, keeping tabs on the news, trying to stay up to date with how things were going in New Zealand. The gathered crowd was a lot more subdued than the previous events had been, though, so Andy knew that many of them were also still keeping tabs on the situation abroad just as much as they were. But they wanted Andy to distract them from all of that, and so he did his best to keep them smiling and laughing.
One of the things Andy had decided what felt like lifetimes ago but really had only been earlier that year was that he was always going to be moving forward, thinking about how to improve things as he lived his life. That meant learning how to detach himself from tragedy and not letting himself be consumed by loss.
He’d done that by reminding himself of the sense of scale. Death, in such large numbers, had mostly become a statistic, and while he could put names and faces to dozens, if not hundreds of people he’d known who’d died between February and December of 2020, they had all basically blended together, and through consolidation, he’d found detachment.
Consolidation wasn’t always a good thing, but its use as a survival tool was undeniable.
So as long as he didn’t focus on any one person, face or memory, he could keep his mental sanity drifting a little bit above the sea of melancholy and depression that he was sure had infected every living survivor on the planet.
The problem was that the section of the upcoming book he’d chosen to read today was inspired by his late brother, and Andy had to work to hold it together so that he wasn’t thinking about Matty the entire time he was reading it. It took effort, but he got through it.
It was when things got to the Q&A portion when things got a little bit crazy. Andy was used to having to dodge questions about politics, his appearance on 60 Minutes, his partners and everything else that had sprung up, but several people wanted his opinion on the situation in New Zealand, something Andy hadn’t prepared for at all.
He found that after a few questions, though, the crowd was willing to back off, simply because Andy wasn’t sure what he could really add to the conversation, other than to hope for the best for the people of New Zealand. He didn’t know any more than what was on the television, even though he had a partner from nearby Australia. Someone asked if he would consider expanding his family further if it meant saving the life of a New Zealand woman fleeing the country, and he said while he’d happily do his part, he was certain there were closer eligible men who would hopefully take care of those women in need.
Sarah joked to the crowd that “no” was Andy’s least favorite word, which brokered a few more empathetic laughs.
After the questions about New Zealand, things had suddenly gotten politically sticky, but Andy had already used up most of his tricks in getting out of the New Zealand questions.
“Mr. Conrad, what do you think about the continued push for the Men’s Protection Act? Are you in favor of taking severe actions to limit the restrictions of men in order to provide for women’s safety, to ensure a Team’s increased survival odds?”
“It’s a complicated issue,” Andy sighed, feeling like he was cornered and was going to have to provide a real answer. “I fully understand women’s desires to want to feel safe and secure, but I also think we have to be very careful not to go around stomping on men’s civil rights in order to do so. It’s the classic ‘society’ versus ‘individual’ concerns, and yes, I think we as men are going to lose a little bit of the freedoms we’ve been accustomed to over the years, but that’s part of the price we’re going to have to pay for being so integral in the new society moving forwards. I’m not against some of the ideas behind it, but I also want to caution anyone from taking it too far. So, minor actions, maybe, but severe actions, probably not. Let’s just say if my government wants to tell me I can’t go skydiving or mountain climbing, I’m fine with that. But if someone tries to get in the way of me having my weekly cheesesteak, well, let’s just say I don’t envy that person. That’ll wrap it up, so let’s get to signing. Remember, if you want a selfie, you have to stay on the other side of the table, and I’m only signing stuff that I wrote. Since a couple of people have asked, yes, both Sarah and Emily have volunteered to sign copies of ‘Neon Stonehenge’ since they’ll be appearing in the film, but only if you’re making a donation to the New Zealand Survival Fund. There’ll be someone walking the line, taking donations and giving tickets to those who do. Anyone without a ticket can’t get a signature from the ladies. Okay? Let’s get signing!”
The signing portion went off without a hitch, and Em’s idea to take donations for New Zealand for and Sarah’s signature had raised nearly a thousand dollars. Also, several women had wanted to get selfies of themselves with Em or Sarah, and as long as they’d made a donation, they’d been cool about it, although Melody was keeping a watchful eye on both women for security purposes.
The staff of the bookstore was thankful he’d come out, everyone desperately in need of some distraction from the madness of the news, even if it sounded like New Zealand was starting to stabilize. Early reports were starting to come in, and it looked like most of the people who’d gotten the serum had gone on to build semi-stable teams, at least that was how it had looked on first glance. The initial impression had been the worst possible starting point, but the diligent work of the Air Force doctors had been getting jabs into arms as quickly as possible, and the hope was that, by the end of the second or third day, they might have gotten somewhere between half a million and a million people in New Zealand with the Quaranteam serum running through their veins, directly or indirectly, although those numbers were still targets, not confirmed finishing points. It would be weeks, if not months, before they had concrete information about the survivor count, as well as how many people had relocated to other countries.
They closed off the line around 9 p.m. and Andy was finishing up the last couple of signings for the staff, when one of the people running the event said there was a small group of people claiming to be friends of his waiting outside for him afterwards, if he could spare them some time.
“They’re cleared,” Lexi said to the store manager. “You can go ahead and let them in.”
“I wasn’t aware we were expecting guests,” Andy said to Lexi, a smile creeping on his face. “Hell, I don’t really know many people in Seattle.”
“Yeah, well, when you decided you wanted to spring this little surprise trip on us, we built a few surprises of our own into it, and this is one of them,” Sarah said, waving at the group of people coming in, heading towards them quickly, as Sarah moved to hug a short, round woman somewhere in the center of the pack of them. “You came!”
“You told me you were only going to be three hours by train away and you thought we wouldn’t make the trip up to see you fuckers?” a boisterous familiar voice said, cutting through the air, as Andy began to laugh. “Rook! Get your bony ass over here!”
“’Ris, what the fuck are you doing in Seattle?” Andy said, signing the last of the books before standing up from the table, heading over towards the group. As Sarah moved to the side, he could see the familiar face of his friend and fellow author Larissa Cotton, someone he’d extended an invitation to join his family a month or so ago, only to be rebuked because she already had a husband, the massive chunk of meat and muscle standing a few steps behind her, Will. ‘Ris and Will had gotten married in late 2018, some six months after he’d seen her last, but they’d sort of kept it quiet. Will had even taken her surname.
Larissa wasn’t even 5’ tall, portly, with the silver septum ring still staunchly in place. She was, as she’d told him, Mestizo, the daughter of a Mexican mother and a second-generation Cajun father. Her hair was dyed a shade of bright green that could only be described as ‘atomic lime.’ And despite how Andy had thought of her as “covered in tattoos” when he last saw her, they’d only proliferated, having grown to run up along her neck all the way to the underside of her chin and behind her ears, as well as all over the backs of her hands. Her goth Lolita look had been dialed up even further, with bright orange and green striped leggings that would’ve made Jhonen Vasquez proud. They were beneath an overly frilly black poofy dress that only complimented the black leather bustier that was holding on for dear life against Larissa’s more than ridiculous bosom, the material propping her boobs up into the kind of shelf an entire drinks platter could safely rest on.
Will, by contrast, looked like he was some sort of hipster chic lumberjack, with a truly magnificent beard that threatened to cover the top third of his chest. He was dressed in red and black flannel and the skinniest set of skinny jeans he’d ever seen spray painted onto muscular man legs before. Andy almost wanted to grab a knife, though, because Will’s brown hair was done up in a ridiculous man bun that Andy hated on sight, but it was Larissa’s husband, not some random guy off the street, so he exercised restraint. Maybe she found that sort of look attractive. Last time Andy had seen Will, he’d only been Larissa’s boyfriend, so Andy wasn’t surprised to see a heavy gauge titanium and gold wedding ring on the man’s left hand now.
When Sarah had suggested Andy invite Larissa into Team Rook, Andy had been relatively certain that Larissa had already gotten married, but he hadn’t been entirely certain, so the invitation had been extended. Larissa and Will were not only already married at that point, she’d gotten in on one of the first rounds of people to get the serum in Portland, since she and Will were already in a throuple with another woman. They’d actually gotten the vaccine around the same time Andy and Aisling had. He hadn’t been at all bothered by the rejection – if anything, he’d been relieved because it meant at least someone he knew was safe.
“It’s only like 3 hours by train, and nobody’s going fucking anywhere these days, so we decided if you can make it that far, we could meet you the rest of the fucking way,” ‘Ris said to them with a laugh, still hugging Sarah. “He half as good a fuck as I always thought he’d be?”
Sarah giggled and blushed but nodded immediately. “All that and so much fucking more,” she said, a note he hadn’t heard in months in Sarah’s voice, that of nervousness. “I’m still mad that you didn’t get me his fucking phone number though, ‘Ris. You knew how fucking hard I was crushing on him back then!”
“Well, I hadn’t fucking seen him to ask if it was okay, Sarah!” Larissa laughed. “I don’t just go around giving fucking personal information because somebody fucking asks me for it. And I didn’t just want to call him up out of the blue with no other reason than to ask if it it was okay to give out his phone number to a complete fucking stranger, no matter how fucking hot she was. Can you believe he’d never mentioned his fucking crush on you to me?”
“I don’t exactly go around telling coworkers who I’d like to sleep with, ‘Ris!” Andy cackled. “That seems like incredibly bad form.”
“One, we’re not fucking ‘coworkers,’ Andy, we’re colleagues, cohorts, friends at best, B, I always told you I’d be happy to wingwoman your scrawny ass if that was what it would take to get you laid, and Charlie, that story about Sarah and Emily asking you that question at OmegaCon was, like, pinnacle fucking meet-cute of all fucking time. I mean that was the GOAT’s GOAT right there. How could I ever have deprived the two of you of that?”
“One, B and Charlie?” Emily asked quietly.
“I’m terrible at organizational structure in arguments,” Larissa said, “so hush.”
“Speaking of OmegaCon,” Andy said, “how come you weren’t there last year? Something about your health? I got super worried, and you were ridiculously cryptic any time I asked about it. You wouldn’t even take my calls, just texted me.”
Larissa frowned and nodded. “Ovarian cancer. I had to have one of my ovaries removed, and I was on chemotherapy, making sure the cancer hadn’t spread anywhere else. I was advised not to travel for a while. The chemo fucked my voice up for a good while.”
“Jesus, Ris, I’m so sorry,” Andy said.
The heavyset woman smiled and shrugged. “It turned out not to be such a big deal, because apparently when I got imprinted onto Will, my missing ovary grew back. Like, they’d told us that any lingering health concerns we had might be affected by the serum, but when I went in for my sixty-day checkup after I’d gotten imprinted, they wanted to do a full body scan, and as it turns out, I had a whole new collection of eggs that just appeared.” She tossed her free hand up into the air. “Whole new ovary had grown in me overnight to replace the one they’d cut out of me. Shit’s fuckin’ wild, innit? How big your count end up?”
“Twenty-two women,” Andy chuckled, shaking his head. “Which is, what, twenty-six or twenty-seven more than I probably deserve?”
Fiona reached over and smacked Andy across the back of his head with her palm, loud enough to sound like a crack. “Sorry, we sometimes have to discourage him from disparaging himself,” Fiona said with a grin. “Andy likes to make sure nobody else can take potshots at him by insisting he fire first. I’m Fiona, Andy’s old college girlfriend and soon to be wife,” she said, extending a hand for Larissa to shake, but the plump woman pulled her in for a quick bear hug instead.
“The old romantic soul herself!” Larissa said, patting Fiona on the back. “I’d been wondering if you were going to take him up on it. It made sense he extended you an offer, considering he’d still been pining over you for decades.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Niko asked with a broad grin on her face.
“In the list of dedications for ‘Neon Stonehenge,’ there’s like, five or six people and then the last person was ‘the old romantic soul,’ which I’d thought Andy had just put in there to fuck with people, but when we were out drinking years back, he told me that was something he used to call his first true love Fiona back when they were dating, and that if she’d ever seen it in the book, she’d have known it was for her.”
It was Fiona’s turn to blush for a little bit now, as she nodded. “I did know it was about me. I was a little nervous about it, but I figured it was maybe because I’d encouraged him to start writing a book, long long ago, telling him there was a lot of potential in his writing. I didn’t take it as him still holding a flame for me.”
“You probably should’ve, luv,” Moira teased, poking her partner in the ribs. “I told you he wouldn’t have lost the faith.”
“Yes yes, dear,” Fiona said. “You’re right, I’m wrong and you’re much smarter than me for it. We’re all past it now, so no reason to beleaguer the point.”
Over the next few minutes, Andy introduced Larissa to everyone in his Team who was present, and Larissa did the same with her own, although Andy was fairly certain nobody was going to hold all the names in their head properly.
The group of them walked down the street to a place called Linda’s Tavern, that advertised itself as “the official tavern of the N.W.” The place was mostly quiet, as it seemed like nearly any restaurant that Andy and his Team set foot in. That was the thing Andy was most worried about in America, even still – how many restaurants, diners, eateries, bakeries, sandwich shops, ramen joints, sushi bars and other places to grab a bite to eat weren’t yet able to recover, because those people who’d already received the serum wouldn’t leave their houses?
And yet, when he looked at the news in New Zealand, it was insanely easy to see why they were still afraid of going out anywhere.
Between Andy’s ten and Larissa’s eight, they needed to have some tables pushed together, but the place was ecstatic to have a large crowd show up, the hostess looking upon them like they were a godsend, especially as Fiona made a point to take several photos, including one of the name of the place out front.
The food and the drinks started flowing, and once it did, so the stories, everyone having a great time, plenty of laughing and general merriment. And after Larissa had told a rather embarrassing story about how she had tripped and fallen walking up to accept her Nebula award, Niko had made a crack that nobody had embarrassing stories about Andy, which immediately made Fiona start giggling like a fiend as Andy glared at her.
“Don’t you dare,” he cautioned playfully.
“It’s a funny story,” she said in between fits of giggles.
“It makes me look like an idiot,” he sighed.
“No, it makes us look like idiots, which is why it’s funny, Andy!” Fiona said, leaning in to put her head on his shoulder. “C’mon. I haven’t heard you tell this story in years, and it always makes me laugh so hard I’m nearly peeing in my panties. It’s time.”
Aisling, who’d been sitting on the other side of him, leaned in against him with a wicked smile. “We’re going to get this story out of you one way or another, Mister Rook, so we can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.”
“What’s the hard way?” he asked.
“It involves me waking you up in the middle of the night with blowjob while my mouth’s full of ice cubes,” she grinned.
Andy shuddered in fear. “Alright. Alright! I’ll tell the fucking story already, okay?” A cheer erupted from the crowd. “But nobody better interrupt me until I’m finished otherwise I’m going to stop telling it, you hear me?”
Niko suddenly raised her hands and shot an intense look at the gathered group of people, an almost deranged grin on her face. “So you know, I’m gonna shoot anyone who interrupts this story, you lot here me? I’ve been trying to get this out of him for almost two months now! And I’ve got a gun on me, I promise you!”
The group tittered with a little bit of laughter, but fell quiet as Andy sighed and smiled wearily, realizing there was no getting out of it. “Fine. Fine, so most of my time in college, I was doing some opinion writing for the newspaper that Fi also worked at. In fact, she was dating my boss when I first met her, which is much better and less embarrassing story to tell than this one, but you put your quarter in the jukebox, so you’re gonna hear the whole song now. In the spring of my junior year, a column I wrote called ‘The Next Great Disaster’ went what I guess you’d now call viral. Pieces we wrote for our local paper could get picked up and printed in other college newspapers when somebody found something interesting or they had column inches they needed to fill. As it turned out, my op-ed column, which had been a mostly satirical piece about how we were always hopping from one ‘the world is ending’ narrative to another, and how we never stopped to really look at any of them, because deep down, we knew they were all bullshit.”
“Quit talking about the column and get on the with story,” Fi said. “Otherwise I’ll tell it and I don’t tell it as well as you do.”
Andy shot her a dirty look and then turned back to the enraptured crowd. “I’m only telling you this because it’s important to understand that it got a lot more notice than anything else I would do for years, in that it was reprinted in, like, thirty different college newspapers across the country. That was in the spring of my junior year. In the fall of my senior year, I was told that it had won a nationwide award, which came with a two-thousand-dollar cash prize, and that I would be officially given the award at the student newspaper’s fall party.”
Fiona was struggling not to giggle, but it was clearly taxing on her.
“Since the newspaper’s party was going to be on October 26th, it was going to be a Halloween party, and we were supposed to come in costume, and told there was going to be a prize for the most elaborate costume, the prize for which would be five hundred dollars. It’s at this point that I need to tell you that my fiancée Fiona Smith is one of the most ridiculously competitive people it’s ever been my privilege to meet. I tell her all of this, and she insists we’re going to win that costume contest. We’d been told the party started at 8 p.m. and given the address.”
“Oh no,” Ash said, trying not to start giggling.
“As it turned out, the party actually started at 7 p.m. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it was not, in fact, a Halloween party, but a formal dress attire party, and the governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, had come to give me the award personally, in recognition for my excellent in communication, and that the award was to be given to me at 8 p.m. So, Fiona and I showed up to the party at five minutes to eight and realize that the editor-in-chief, my dear friend Gabby Cunningham, has set me up for the punchline of a lifetime, because Fi and I are dressed… as clowns. And I don’t mean we made some sort of half-assed attempt at it. Oh, no no no, Fi was not to be outdone when it came to this sort of thing, so we had full production costumes with accompanying wigs and face paint and giant floppy shoes.”
The crowd of his partners, guardians and friends were all trying desperately not to break down laughing, but everyone had the image of Andy as a clown in their head, and it seemed like it was impossible for anyone to shake it loose, all of them wanting to burst into giggles.
“Knowing full well there was no time to change or even try and take some of that ridiculous get up off, I did the only possible thing I could do in those circumstances, and I leaned into it. We’d walked in through the door just two minutes or so before the presentation was supposed to start, so Fiona and I walked over to our reserved places at the table right in front and sat down and waited for the whole presentation to start. When the presenter got up on stage, they began extolling my virtues, how my writing had transcended beyond being just a short satirical piece and had crossed over into something of a statement upon the mindset of humanity, how easily we can be distracted by bad news and how we needed to focus on the lighter side of life, how to take comfort in the things that made us smile and laugh and sing and dance. And now, the presenter said, the governor was going to come, say a few words, and present me with my award.”
Andy had practiced telling this story, because it was one of those things he would occasionally break out when people would tell him he was being too serious, and he looked around, seeing everyone on pins and needles, waiting for him to continue, so he did.
“The Governor got up and gave a brief speech about how the youth were important, and how we were so often dismissed because of our age, accused of being unable to tackle serious subjects, and how my article had been a reminder that we should never judge a book by its cover, never judge a writer by their age, to always give anyone a fair chance. And so he wanted to present the award to Andrew Rook, and invited me to come up on stage and say a few words.”
Fiona was still quiet, but was in tears, she was laughing silently so hard it must’ve hurt, as the rest of the people started to laugh even more.
“I stood up and at that point, I realized the governor hadn’t seen me because of the bright lights being shone in his face, nor had he been told about the practical joke my EIC was playing on me, because I kid you not, I watched the whites of his eyes grow three sizes that day. I made my way up onto stage as if I was dressed perfectly normally, with the exception of when I made my way up the stairs, which I had to sidestep up, because of the length of my ridiculous shoes. I walked across the stage and shook the governor’s hand, seeing the utterly aghast look on his face as we both turned to face the front so the cameras gathered there could capture the image for posterity’s sake. As soon as he could, the governor made his way offstage, trying to get as far away from me as he could, out of embarrassment, perhaps? Or maybe he was just worried what kind of image a photo of him giving an award to a clown would send. But I turned to the microphone, I cleared my throat, and I began to speak. It was important and momentous occasion for me, so I wanted to have as much gravitas as I possibly could, which, I’m sure you can imagine, was quite difficult dressed as a clown in face paint, to say nothing of my bright orange wig.”
The group was nearing that bursting point that Andy knew how to cultivate oh so well, so he continued.
“I said to the gathered audience, ‘Thank you all for this award, and the recognition of my column about how farcical the doomsayers of the world often are. As you can imagine, for someone with my condition, gelotophobia, there’s always a moment when you put something creative into the world that you’re terrified it’s going to be the subject of ridicule and mockery. But I wanted to put this article out there, so you know that even those of us who are just crying on the inside types have the capacity to reach beyond our station, to elevate our work through dedication, hard work and perseverance, and that the work, our work, can move beyond us, live beyond us. I just want to thank my loving girlfriend Peaches, and my parents, who in addition to naming me Andrew, also bestowed upon me a culturally significant name, one relevant to my heritage. So on behalf of all those of you whom also bear the name ‘Chuckles’ in observance of our ancestors, thank you all.’ And then I picked up the award and the check, and walked off stage and back down to Fiona, who had been laughing then, much as she is now, so hard that her makeup was running, as she threw her arms around me, and the entire newspaper staff cheered. And when that died down, I said, ‘And fuck all of you for this, I’ll have you know.’”
Much as it had back then, it set the entire room to laughing so hard people were struggling to breathe.
A few minutes later, when people had finally regathered their composure, a process that had been interrupted by Fiona showing the picture of Andy, in full clown regalia, standing behind a lectern, accepting his award, followed by one of him shaking hands with the former governor of Ohio, the food arrived, and the rest of the evening felt informed by that story, everyone trying to find their little bit of light in a dark day.
A handful of people had wandered in sometime during Andy’s story, and it felt like maybe the fact that their presence had given the place some life for a Saturday night had drawn some other people out to have a good time.
The next day was a Sunday, one Andy’s Team was going to spend traveling down to Los Angeles, and Andy offered to transport Larissa and her team back down to Portland on his private jet, but Larissa insisted they’d enjoyed taking the train up too much, so they were just going to do that tomorrow morning. But that meant they could all stay drinking and telling stories until the tavern closed at 2 a.m.
Andy picked up the bill at the end of the night, and left a tip equal to 100% of the bill, refusing to let Larissa pay for even a tiny amount of the tab. He hugged Larissa hard. “Thanks for this,” he said. “After the news out of New Zealand, I was starting to feel a little numb, to everything and everyone.”
“Hey, I’m just giving you back your own lesson, amigo,” Larissa said to him. “You don’t remember?”
He cocked his head to one side. “No?”
“Back when we first met, you remember how I was up for a World Fantasy Award, and I didn’t get it? I was super fucking bummed that night, but you cheered me up. You remember what you said?”
“I honestly don’t, ‘Ris,” he laughed.
“You said ‘As long as you’re alive, you’ve got another chance, and a chance is all it takes.’” She blushed a little bit. “I’ve never told you this, but I have that tattooed on my thigh. I got it tattooed as soon as I got back to Portland, and while I’ve got loads of other stuff around it now, I refuse to let anyone cover up any of it, because it’s the best advice anyone’s ever given me. So take your own fucking advice, Rook. As long as you’re alive, you’ve got another chance, and a chance is all it takes.”
“We’ll see you again next month for the wedding, yeah, ‘Ris?”
“We RSVPd for just me and Will, as much as I think everyone else would love to come.”
Andy looked left, looked right, then shrugged. “Bring’em all.”
“Isn’t that going to wreak havoc on cakes, seating placements, dinners, chairs, all that?”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Thanks Andy,” she said, kissing his cheek. “See you then.”
Comments
Ian B
I thought Andy’s story in the tavern was brilliant. Much needed jovialness to what is a hard subject in a sometimes harsh world
James Wafer
I'd take out the reference to leaving by boats it's 2000km just to Australia so the timeline you established for how long people had to get paired doesn't work with leaving NZ by boat
JC
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Corrupting Power
I think our ballpark back-of-envelope estimates put it at something between 15mil-20mil. Keep in mind, this is in less than a year's time, and doesn't account for any other fatalities that may occur during the time that follows afterwards. You can also assume there were lots of suicides somewhere along the way, just as mass depression settled in. Suicide clustering is a thing, and certainly also contributes to the difference. But the US is one of the countries in the *best* shape. Most of the other nations are in far more dire straits. And whenever there's a giant shakeup of the power structure, things tend to get rattled around. The overprotectiveness could be seen as a power grab by women who now have a chance to control the narrative, a sense of panic and an overzealous kneejerk reaction to the sudden loss, a combination of the two, or something else entirely.
Miles Bishop
This might have been discussed before, but I haven't been able to find it in previous discussions but am not going to go through all old comments to see if it has been or not. So, the big concern is the loss of so many men and what, the human race dying out? I know that losing 80 percent of the men in the US is a big chunk, somewhere along the lines of 132 million men. Based on the 2020 census that still leaves 33 million men in the US. Take out teen males (13 to 19) who did not survive and the elderly (65+). They account for roughly 25% of the male population so that drops it to roughly 25 million men. So, 25 million men, 160 million women. Men aren't in any danger of going extinct. In the 1850 census the US population was just over 23 million people, so around 16.5 million men. That means after the pandemic there's a little less than half as many men alive in the US than there were 170 years ago. The big thing is it killed a lot of people, mostly men, but it's not an extinction event or anything that serious. It sounds much more like the population reduction scenarios that Eric was talking about in book one. Just had to get this down as I was assuming that the high fatality rate had reduced the population of men to a fraction. But the numbers make some of the storyline (male protection act in particular) a bit harder to accept because, barring a major mutation or other unknown factor, there's still a lot of men out there and the overprotective zealousness seems out of place. Unless I'm missing something obvious or not so obvious, in which case I'd like to hear what that is so I can figure out how I missed it. I've read the story several times and seem to notice something new each time, so it's entirely possible I missed something.
Corrupting Power
Funny you say that, because this is mostly a non-partisan take on how the country would require adaptation to scaling in a world where a large portion of the population is suddenly just gone/dead. I tried to keep it middle-of-the-road, with both sides having to make severe compromises in order to just get by day-by-day, and neither political party being "right" or "wrong," simply working together to get everyone to their next sunrise. So I'm not really sure how you read it as "jumped the shark politically," especially since, as lots of people have pointed out, this is just survival.
EG42
Woah, jumped the shark politically this chapter. Skeptical on how it goes from here
