Project Reunion (35 page)

“Kansas City to NYC, Love Dad,” he murmured huskily. “Cullen found it in the West Point chapel.” I hugged him, and he laid his head on mine gratefully.

“Emmett’s dad was special forces. KIA,” John Niedermeyer explained quietly to Pam.

Cam commented, “Follow a guy like that to hell and back.”

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett thoughtfully. “Cam. You and I should talk more. I’m sorry about that. This weekend is crazy – Camp Upstate and Jersey do their first big refugee releases Monday. Let’s start next Wednesday?”

“You’re on,” agreed Cam. “I’d enjoy that.”

“What did you and Emmett get for each other, Dee?” Pam asked. “If I may ask.”

I rubbed Emmett’s neck. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back between my legs, with me on the couch. “A quiet day yesterday. No presents. No family dinners. No New York. Lots of back-rubs and bath-tubs and quiet.”

“It was awesome,” Emmett said, leaning his head all the way back. “Just what I needed. Monday… The big debut for Camp Yankee was incredible. Haven’t cried so much in one day since my dad died when I was twelve.”

“How did you get time off now?” asked Cam. “Seems like a tricky time for it.”

“I called Link a…never mind,” Emmett replied. “Cullen called back. Told me to take my time coming back to New York.”

Cam laughed. “I’ve always wanted to call Link an expletive deleted. Did you enjoy it?”

“Uh-huh. I really did,” Emmett confirmed with a grin.

It was truly good to finally have couple friends, for Emmett and me as a couple. I loved Mangal and Shanti, and Shelley and Trey next door with Alex. But they weren’t peers like the Niedermeyers and Cam and Dwayne. Friends Emmett could depend on, and me.

I saw Emmett off at the train the next morning, and got back to business on PR for Project Reunion.

Chapter 27

Interesting fact: When people joined the meshnet on Long Island, they received a Help Wanted ad –
We Pay in Food, All Skills Needed.
Major Cameron’s team planned to use this to compile an inventory of people and skills. But one of the first ten respondents pointed out that the quarantine already collected this information. After that, it was a matter of days before experienced public works crews were located and back on the job.

Winter spun by quickly. For one thing, it was about the mildest winter I could remember in Connecticut. Climate change was a factor, of course, but our local winters ran the gamut as far back as I could remember. Some years we had bitter arctic winters, blowing straight down from the Canadian Shield, snow-clad from Thanksgiving to April, with temperatures plunging well below zero. And then there were other years like this one, where snow fell and melted within a day. More often than not, it fell as rain in the first place. The mild winter was a great mercy for the survivors in the Apple.

I saw Emmett again before New Year’s. General Cullen convened a mid-course review for Project Reunion, held at a hotel in Greenwich this time. Even I was impressed when I cobbled together everything the software and media teams had contributed. My presentation got the second longest standing ovation of the summit. The longest, of course, was reserved for Emmett.

By then, all four quarantine camps were graduating refugees at full capacity, nearly 200,000 people a week. They were no longer strictly quarantine camps, though. Once Clarke Whitfield’s falsified data was out of the way, CDC researchers found that the weaponized strain of Ebola had died out months before. Illnesses of starvation and bad sanitation they had in plenty. But there were no confirmed new cases of Ebola. The four-week program at the camps continued, though, for careful feeding and rehabilitation before release.

The only major mid-course correction was that Admiral O’Hara of the Virginia states, and General Schwabacher of the Ohio, urged a joint offensive against Pennsylvania to take back the Northeast’s strategic supplies. They were satisfied that Project Reunion was well run, and approved of expanding it. Homeland Security, working jointly with agents infiltrated into Pennsylvania by General Cullen, believed they’d located the caches. Obviously, I didn’t attend the meetings where they planned their strike. Neither did Emmett. But the more supplies they liberated from Penn, the longer Project Reunion could run, and the more New Yorkers would be released for resettlement.

January brought little news of the Penn war, largely because it was censored out. In the end, outnumbered and faced with ethical instead of territory demands, Penn’s other military leaders chose to execute Tolliver and sue for peace. They had to relinquish three quarters of their food stockpiles, most of which New England’s Link graciously ceded to New York’s Cullen. They didn’t release details of what happened to the rest of the war materiel. Emmett told me they had to fork over most of that, too.

They never added a Camp Penn. Instead, Camp Upstate and Camp Jersey scaled up and started sending refugees to Pennsylvania within weeks. Camp Yankee also ran an extra couple weeks, processing 150,000 more settlers for New England than originally planned.

We learned that Penn never lost power or Internet internally. They’d just interdicted the Internet at the borders. Most people inside were in good shape. One Penn Resco came in at level 9 on the 10-level Resco scale, breaking Cam’s previous record performance for the Northeast. Cam was miffed, but conceded that Penn had better raw agricultural talent to work with. None of Penn was below level 3, not even Philadelphia. The level 3’s were ark fiefdoms like those in New York and New England. There were some bizarre new religious enclaves in Penn, some home to people the Northeast thought long dead and gone.

Bygones gradually became bygones, once sensible people were talking to each other again.

The meshnet release was a huge success. I didn’t have much to do with it anymore. But it spread like wildfire throughout the Apple and Long Island.

I bowed out of the PR interviews, too, mostly. There was just too much work to supervise on the PR websites, between the refugee matchmaking and people lost-and-found and volunteer coordinator databases. The steering committee collared me and demanded that I manage more, and travel less. Kyla and Jennifer continued with the human interest stories for the broadcast series. Amiri Baz and his team kept up with the more dangerous reporting. They all did a much better job of it than I could, anyway. They didn’t get sidetracked trying to fix things the way I did.

I never aimed for upper level management at UNC, back in my corporate days. It felt downright odd to have a full-time job doing that now. Not at all what I’d envisioned when Mangal and I recruited the Amen1 hackers to help us publish weather reports a year before. At least I still telecommuted. But my inbox rapidly grew to rival Emmett’s. He wryly recommended some management texts he’d enjoyed, and encouraged me to hire assistants.

-o-

I tried to give some land back to the West Totoket agricultural committee. I showed them my tentative plans. I told them I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry through for the whole season. That I might still find a way to reunite with Emmett somewhere, somehow.

My farming neighbors studied my plans and declared themselves delighted. They assured me that whenever I needed to walk away, they’d be happy to take over. We’d just split the proceeds for the year.

In other words, they weren’t any more eager than I was, for the back-breaking years of effort to convert lawn and asphalt into productive farmland. Getting the land onto the right path in spring was a lot more than half the battle.

The ground never froze that winter, so I acquired a tiller and a day laborer. I had the worker slowly slice strips of sod from the lawns, and lay them out to grow on unused driveways. For this year, I was shooting for alternating stripes of grass and forage legumes on the livestock lawns. Prepping the crop yards, without the stripes of grass, would have to wait for spring. Otherwise the rains would just wash the bare soil down into the street.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being a farm manager, instead of a farmer. I made up the plans and acquired the tools and material. I spent a half hour or so teaching someone else step by step how to carry out the work. Then I went back to my office while they did the grueling labor for hours of follow-through. It was downright orgasmic. Especially the part where they were grateful for the chance to work for food – no guilt. My land grant came with an impressive food credit budget to pay these people. The Cocos made hiring a breeze.

I’d like to say I learned my lesson, and didn’t take on any more side-projects. ‘Uh-huh,’ as Emmett would say.

-o-

My next big distraction came from my day job. I was alone in my office at the end of January, reviewing feedback and plans on the PR broadcasts. Early signs of worthwhile competition were brewing. But at that point, we seemed to produce the most popular new ‘television’ programming in the U.S., so far as I could tell.

My phone rang. “Hold for the Speaker of the House,” my caller announced.

“The what?”

“I am speaking to Ms. Dee Baker? General manager of the Amenac and Project Reunion websites?”

“This is she,” I agreed, bemused. The most general of the managers, anyway.

“Then please hold for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

I idly clicked a
record
button on my computer, and put the call on speaker.

“Ms. Baker! Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” the next voice said. She sounded familiar from her speech announcing President O’Donnell’s impeachment. Not that I’d agreed to speak with her, exactly. “I’m hoping you can help me broadcast a series of statements regarding the Calm Act.”

“An honor, Madam Speaker,” I replied, lost. “But, you seem able to do that on your own?”

“My speech in December didn’t reach anyone,” Speaker Krause complained, “until Project Reunion re-broadcast it.”

“Ah. You want to speak to our viewership. Well, I’m sure we’d mention anything of interest in your broadcast.”
Probably edited,
I didn’t add. Though apparently we both heard it.

“I understand you will spin this for your audience, Ms. Baker. I’m not a fool,” she sniped. “I’ve dealt with the press far longer than you’ve been pretending to be a journalist.”

I contemplated the
hang up
button, but courteously gave her 10 seconds before applying it. I smiled for practice during the silence. You can always hear a smile over the phone.

The Speaker sighed, and apparently recalled that she was asking me for a favor. “What I’m hoping for, is to frame the announcements with interviews and a retrospective. Explain the Calm Act, its three phases, and its accomplishments. A Calm Act special report.”

This time I was honestly struck dumb.

“Ms. Baker?”

“I’m…listening,” I managed. The Calm Act’s primary
accomplishment
was to lose over a hundred million American lives. Apparently you can hear
flabbergasted
over a phone as well.

“The Calm Act was necessary,” Speaker Krause insisted. “We need to explain that. And set the stage for the final phase.”

“Final. Phase,” I echoed.
What, kill off the rest of us?

“Our announcement in March, of the final phase of the Calm Act,” Krause said.

“Which is?” I asked.

“We will announce that in March,” she said primly. “But it’s important that people be properly informed, to understand what the final phase means.”

“Is it?” I asked. “I’m sorry, Madam Speaker, but I…question the relevance.”

“You what?”

“If Project Reunion did as you asked, and filmed a special on the Calm Act, I don’t believe you would care for the results.” I let that hang for a few moments, then continued, “Here in New England, we no longer recognize the authority of the U.S. Congress.
Because
of the Calm Act. There is no President. I don’t know what the Supreme Court is up to, and I don’t really care. But to say what I would like to say about the Calm Act – what I know to be
true
about the Calm Act – is a violation of the Calm Act. Catch-22.”

She snorted haughtily. “Well, I don’t know what you
think
you know about the Calm Act –”

“More than you think,” I interrupted. “Madam Speaker, Project Reunion is open to doing the same sort of treatment for your…announcements…as we did for President O’Donnell’s. But if you open up the Calm Act for discussion, there will be truth spoken. Possibly more truth than you bargained for. Are you willing to inform HomeSec that Project Reunion is free to discuss the Calm Act? Candidly? Are you prepared to hand over the full text of the Calm Act, and let us publish it, with commentary? And do I, on Project Reunion, have any desire to publish that at this time? I suspect the answer is No. As my mother used to say, ‘all that is true is not necessarily helpful.’”

After a long silence, Krause asked, “You no longer recognize the U.S. Congress?”