ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES (9 page)

She shivered in electrified delight at the thought.  But she wouldn’t show her enthusiastic exhilaration to Gonzalo – not yet.  She had to act as though his touch had no effect, at least until she could no longer stand it.  Then she’d use all those muscles, all that energy, all her focus to sexually tear him to shreds.

“We need you inside,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.

It was Jake.

Ava opened her eyes and exhaled heavily.  “I’m coming,” she said without emotion and as though she’d simply been making a mental grocery list.  But those two words had far more meaning than Jake would ever know.

She followed him through the sliding glass patio door and inside to the penthouse suite’s vast living room where Jake had collected his generals.  It was cool there, almost cold.  Ava shivered at the contrasted chill from the balmy warmth outside.  The penthouse had central air, powered by generators and fuel that Jake’s men had confiscated during the takeover.  The three floors below them housed Jake and Ava’s security forces in similar luxury.  The palatial digs were just one of the many perks that came with being a top member in their organization.  It was also a benefit that served to ensure continued loyalty among higher-ranking crew members as well as to motivate ambitious lower-level subordinates to climb the ranks. 

Their generals sat upon several plush white sofas that comprised but a small portion of the crisply-clean décor of the 5,000 square-foot unit. Mad Dog, Rambo, Kill King, Johnny Switchblade, and the Fallback Man, slouched comfortably, taking a breather from the raging party taking place below them.  Several of the men smoked cigarettes or joints.  A few held partially-filled bottles of booze.  Some partook in combinations of the aforementioned vices. 

Ava found it slightly odd to see these hardened men lounging in such luxury.  It just didn’t fit with their demeanors and personal styles.  She stared at the men, taking them in.  If Ava was going to create a cologne based upon what she saw sitting before her, she’d start with a base of dirt, sprinkle in some heavy stubble, toss in some chains and a lot of denim, add an essence of leather and tobacco, and lace it with hints of booze, bad breath, and body odor. 

She found the sight of the men mixed with the pure whites and pale pastels of the penthouse’s décor an odd juxtaposition to absorb.  But the men weren’t gathered for a home-design photo shoot, they were here for business.

“I called you here today,” Jake began, taking complete credit for the meeting as usual, “first to congratulate you on your hard work and success in overrunning the Miami metro area.  But more importantly, I’ve called you here to explain how you will be rewarded for your efforts.”

If the men sitting before them weren’t listening up to this point, they certainly were now.  They shifted positions, sitting up straighter, setting liquor bottles on the floor, or extinguishing cigarettes in an attempt to better focus on what they would be receiving as their spoils of victory.

Ava watched the meeting from afar, having perched herself on the edge of a large mahogany table behind and slightly to the right of Jake.  From her position, she could watch everyone, her sleekly-smooth legs crossed enticingly, exposed from beneath a black one-piece mini-dress that she had picked not just for style but for comfort in the extreme Miami heat.

“I know there’s still work ahead of us.  We have a lot of mopping up to do in certain areas across town, but once things are finalized and start to settle down, which will be part of your first order of business, each of you will receive your own areas of Miami to control,” Jake went on.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be overseeing the control of Miami as a whole, but as long as you keep your shit together and make sure that business is dealt with, I won’t fuck with how you handle things.”

He looked smugly around at the men, reveling in his newfound power and enjoying the ability to dole out areas of the city for these men to control. 

“Ava, if you would,” he said, turning his head slightly to talk behind him.

Jake liked that he was still going to be in charge while other people would be doing all the work, and he hoped that his men saw this as an opportunity rather than a burden placed upon them.

Ava stood and walked among the men, handing each of them an envelope with their name printed upon it.

“Inside these envelopes are the areas that you’ll personally be in charge of,” Jake went on.  “We’ll work it just like we do with the vendors in these areas.  You’ll be taking your cut from them each week and then give me my cut of your end of the take to ensure your continued security.  You see, while you’ll be getting paid by the vendors to handle the security of your own areas of control, Ava and I will not just be ensuring that there are no issues from within the city…like the type of situation we have in Little Havana right now,” he glared at Ava as he said the words, since that was the one remaining neighborhood she’d failed to overrun during their takeover, “…but that the Miami area as a whole remains under our control and safe from threats like Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa.”

“You think we have any realistic challenges from those areas?” Kill King eyed him questioningly.

Jake didn’t like having his statements questioned.  It required thinking on his feet, and with the exception of fighting, it was difficult for Jake to handle little more than walking and chewing gum at the same time let alone trying to come up with answers to questions that Ava hadn’t prepped him for. 

Therefore, he let her field the question while he went and retrieved a bottle of tequila from the kitchen.

“You have to remember that
we
came here all the way from Atlanta, and we managed to take over in less than a month,” she reminded them.  “Other big cities around Florida are much closer than that, so we have to be prepared for anything.”

“Think of it this way,” said Jake, returning while opening his tequila bottle and taking a gulp.  “You get your places set up the way you want; then you sit back and reap the rewards while we take care of the big picture stuff.”

“It could prove harder than you think to keep these places under our thumb though,” said Fallback.  “Just look at Little Havana.  That place was like a war zone when we tried to hit it.  What happens if people take a page from their book?”

Ava again stepped in.  “We’re working with Little Havana.  They’ve agreed to most of our terms and shouldn’t be a problem from here on out.  As for controlling your own domains, we’ve thought about that already too.  And coming up with the following ideas is where Jake earns the cut that you’ll be paying him each month.” 

She didn’t say what everyone in the room was already thinking – that
she
was the one who had really come up with the ideas, not Jake. 

“Can anyone tell me the best way to control a population?” she asked the men sitting before her.

There was silence.

“Proving my point,” she said.  “This is why you need us.”

Finally Johnny Switchblade said, “With an iron fist?”

“No,” Ava said.  “Definitely
not
.  Violence is necessary at times, but it shouldn’t be used as the overarching influence in controlling a population.  Some violence will keep the populace in its place, but too much violence will turn them against you and have them searching for new leadership.”

“So how do you do it then?” he asked.

“Currency,” Jake said, not being able to resist the urge to respond as though he were indeed responsible for coming up with the answer.

“Right…currency,” Ava nodded.

“But what do we use?” asked Rambo.  “Dollar bills?  Gold coins?  Make our own?  What?”

“Dollar bills are worthless now,” Ava said.  “Everyone knows that…same with gold and silver.  Some people still use these types of coins as a form of exchange just because they used to be worth something, but there are too many of them out there, and more importantly, we can’t control them.  And even though a large part of the commerce we still have is conducted through barter, not every transaction can be handled that way.  It’s too hard for vendors when they’re inundated with stuff they don’t need by buyers who have too much worthless junk but are literally starving for the stuff they do need.  Therefore, we have to ensure that we can create our own currency and then
control
that currency.  Say we decided to go with silver and gold as our currency and someone finds a couple coin shops or a bank vault full of gold and silver.  Suddenly there will be an influx of money into the economy.  It will be just as worthless as sand on the beach, and we’ll be adrift in a sea of inflation.”

The men sat on the sofas, open mouthed, breathing heavily and only grasping about 30 percent of what Ava was telling them.

Finally Mad Dog said, “So we use something like…gasoline or alcohol?  We control most of that kind of stuff around here.”  He shook his head and frowned as he said it, not comprehending exactly where Ava was going with this. 

“You’re right,” Ava agreed.  “We do.  But think about that for a minute.  Are people going to lug gallons of gas or booze around with them everywhere they go to pay for stuff?  We can’t very well dole out large amounts of it for the general public to use.  We want something that almost everyone needs or uses, is valuable, yet is easy to carry but not easy to replace or counterfeit.  Plus,” she added after a second, nodding and smiling down at the bottle of whiskey that sat beside Mad Dog’s leg, “if we use alcohol, I think people would be too tempted to drink their currency rather than spend it.”

“True,” Mad Dog shrugged, giving her a sly grin and then picking up the whiskey bottle and taking a long drink.

“Batteries?” asked Rambo.

“Using batteries actually isn’t a bad idea,” said Ava.  “Problem is, they have a shelf-life.  In a year or two when they start to expire, they’d be worthless.”

“Why can’t we just make our own currency?” Kill King said.  “Then we could make as much or little as we want and have complete control over it.”

“For the same reason our old government used to spend billions of dollars regularly creating new versions of five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred dollar bills…because it’s too easy to counterfeit.  And we certainly don’t have the same resources available to us as the old government did in order to make bills that are extremely difficult to counterfeit.  And even if we did, our currency would probably still be counterfeited to some degree.  Plus, paper money on its own has no real value, and in today’s world, anything you carry needs to have some actual use to it.”

“So give us the answer, teach,” Fallback smiled at her.  “I’m stumped.”

“Bullets,” Jake interjected matter-of-factly. 

Ava shut her eyes, biting her tongue in frustration.  Jake just couldn’t resist prematurely ejaculating solutions to the problems that she’d worked so hard to develop.

“Bullets?” Rambo frowned. “I don’t get it.  There are tons of bullets out there.”

“Tons of bullets for
us,
but
not
tons of bullets for everyone else…largely because we’ve already taken most of them,” Ava reminded him.  “Bullets are something that are small, easy to carry, long-lasting, and that everyone wants.  It’s easy to carry 20 or 30 or even 100 or more bullets depending upon the caliber.  And most importantly, we control a lot of them and they’re hard to counterfeit.  Sure, there will be some people out there who can make their own, just like there were people who could counterfeit dollar bills in the old days, but not many.  Getting old shell casings will be easy, but finding lead and black powder…well, that’s not all that simple.  Plus, you have to know how to manufacture them, how to do it right, and you have to have the right tools.”

“Think about it,” interrupted Jake again.  “People don’t walk around with wallets anymore, they walk around with guns.  Guns are the new wallets.”

“Exactly,” said Ava.  “And I guarantee you that I can walk into a coin shop right now and find plenty of gold and silver coins, or a bank and find stacks of worthless dollar bills, but I won’t be able to walk into a gun shop and find any ammunition.

“That’s for fucking sure,” nodded Rambo.  “But some people will have a lot of bullets because they’ve hoarded them.  They’ll be rich,” he went on.  “Other people won’t have any,” he sounded confused.  “That’s not really fair.”

“Welcome to the real world,” Ava scoffed.  “What exactly
did
you do in your previous life,” asked Ava.

Rambo looked around the room uncomfortably, “Uh…did work for the unions,” he said.

“Figures,” mumbled the Fallback Man.  “Never drew an honest paycheck in his life.”

“What’d you say, asshole?” Rambo said angrily, starting to stand up.

“Boys, boys,” Ava soothed.  “We’re here to celebrate, not fight.  Let’s keep this civil.  We’re all going to be in good shape if we just play nice and get ourselves organized.  We all don’t have to understand the economic rules behind all this; we just have to abide by and enforce them.”

Rambo sat back down, pouting.

Ava continued.  “So far, we’ve largely modeled our economic development plan on that of Atlanta’s, but Atlanta was still pretty disorganized.  Now we’re going to take the Atlanta model a step further.”  The men all looked at her, waiting.  “We’re going to get into the banking business,” Ava looked around at them.