W: The Planner, The Chosen (14 page)

Her ringing mobile phone awakened her. The time on the phone read 2:00 A.M.  She squinted to read the numbers on the caller ID—it was Keith’s satellite phone. “This had better be important,” she muttered to herself as she answered it.

“Hi, Kris,” his speech was slurred. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going fine, Keith. It’s the middle of the night.  What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. Did you see about those people on the news who are dying? The government killed them. The government is killing everybody….”

“Are you talking about the people dying along the Gulf Coast? The government didn’t kill those people. They’re dying because of that huge oil spill—it left poisons in the water.” Kris was exhausted; the room was so hot she could barely breathe. Keith could stay awake all night thinking up this garbage since he did not have to go work, but she had a meeting with seventy-five seniors in five hours.

“No, the government killed them. Remember a couple of years ago when every New Years Eve a whole bunch of birds would fall out of the sky in Alabama? The government said they were killed by fireworks, and all the dopes in this country actually believed it. But they weren’t. The Feds were testing an airborne toxin, and when they got it perfected, they used it on the human population. A buddy of mine writes for this website; he’s done lots of research….”

“GulagUniverse.com is not a reliable source of news,” she interrupted him, “I saw the EPA field agent interviewed.  Those people are dying from toxins that have broken down in the salt water.”

“GulagUniverse is great, but he doesn’t write for that one. Jessie writes for TruthTrakker—everything on his website is really true. Oil doesn’t have toxins like that. That oil spill happened four years ago—how is it that people are just now dying? The government is poisoning them. The EPA is in on it. They are going to wipe out the population of the entire southern United States.”

“Why, Keith? Why would the EPA conspire to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans?”

“U.N. Agenda 21. The goal of Agenda 21 is to get rid of all private property and redistribute the world’s wealth and resources into the hands of just a few elites. But two years ago the state of Alabama passed a law that no part of Agenda 21 could be implemented in their state, either directly or indirectly. And then all the states around them started passing the same kinds of laws. The Administration needed a way to get rid of those laws and put in martial law. And since people in the South tend to be a bunch of rightwing religious nuts who hate the government, the Feds were happy for an excuse to wipe out all of them. Once the Feds finish killing them, they can start in on the rest of us.”

“Keith,” Kris would have been a little more annoyed if she had not actually been concerned for Keith’s sanity. Ever since he left his job he had gotten more and more paranoid, until he had convinced himself that every single event that took place was the direct result of an evil government conspiracy. “Keith, there is no conspiracy. The EPA has set up emergency medical facilities. Doctors are coming from other parts of the country to help.  They are distributing anti-toxins….”

“They’re only there to make sure nobody escapes.  They don’t want survivors. And they don’t want people getting out of there and getting to a hospital that might be able to diagnose what they were really poisoned with. You wait and see—in a couple of years all those doctors who went down to help with this will mysteriously die too. They don’t leave any witnesses—anybody who can talk. 

“They’re going to use this to cut off access to oil and gas and fossil fuels to everybody but their rich friends. So the Feds can kill these people and get rid of the gas too. The whole government is in on it. Maybe you’re in on it, too.  Promise me that you won’t tell them where I am, Kris. I’m your brother; you have to promise me.”

“I am not ‘in’ on anything. And I couldn’t tell anybody where you are if I wanted to, because I don’t know where you are. ‘Somewhere close to the Lincoln National Forest’ is not much of an address.”

“It’s enough. Don’t tell them anything. Maybe you don’t know yet; maybe they haven’t told you yet, but they will. Soon you’ll be killing people, too.”

“Okay, this is ridiculous.  I am a Level I Planner for a glorified retirement community. I don’t work for the CIA.  I’ve never killed anybody. As far as I know, I don’t know anyone who has ever killed anybody. And now that I am in my forties, I am not planning to start killing people.”

“That’s because they haven’t let you in yet. They will.  Sooner or later, they’ll tell you what’s really going on. Then you’ll have to start killing people too. You won’t have any choice; it’ll be them or you. And you’ll do it, because you have to….”

“Don’t call me again when you’re drunk,” Kris hung up the phone. She lay back down in the complete darkness thinking of the people in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. She thought of the toddlers and babies and families she had seen on the news. So much death—there were so many corpses that the authorities were having trouble finding burial places for them. Then she thought of her brother in his cabin someplace in the New Mexico woods—alone, drunk, terrified that any minute some unnamed army of federal agents was going to rush the place and assassinate him. As she lay there alone in the silence she started praying for all the residents of the Southern states, but she drifted off to sleep praying for Keith.

I
n mid-June Pat Kilmer called Kris into her office.  “Peter Watson is taking a week’s vacation. He is the Level I Planner for Section W Division 2. We need for you to cover for him while he is gone, starting tomorrow.”

“Is someone going to help cover for me?” Kris returned. “I have four introductory town hall meetings, and I am trying to inventory the contents of ten houses this week. I don’t know how I can do my job and take on somebody else’s too.”

“All you have to do is take the calls from the Division 2 residents,” Pat responded in her usual uninterested manner. “You don’t have to do any inventories or open houses there. There is no reason that you can’t take on the extra work for a few days until Peter gets back. Have Cindy help you get the inventory log sheets filled out if you get behind. You can email her the lists of items and she can input them into the log. I will tell her to route Peter’s calls to you for the next week.”

Kris left the office knowing that there was nothing to negotiate—she had to take on Peter’s work too. And, as usual, Pat’s timing could not have been worse.

Father’s Day and Janine’s birthday always fell within days of each other, and only a week separated those two occasions from their forty-sixth wedding anniversary. Kris tried each year to do something special for them to commemorate all three occasions, and she had been trying to plan an enjoyable celebration. The planning was a little more challenging this year since they all lived in Smart Communities and no one had a car, but Kris had just about worked it all out. On Saturday night, she could take the commuter train down to W, where she could meet them and ride the train with them to the stop closest to Jim and Janine’s favorite steakhouse. When she was hired at FMPD, Kris had decided to close all of her credit cards except one; since she could only make changes to her payment schedule during the qualified election period this made sense so that she could fill out her initial paperwork indicating for each of the closed accounts “account closed by employee—deduct scheduled payments until notified that the account has reached a zero balance.” She now had some room on her one remaining credit card again—the result of having regular good-sized payments deducted from her pay each month and remitted to Credit Services of America on time.  She wanted to find each of her parents a nice gift, and that meant taking the train into Phoenix after work to do some shopping.  She had been working so many hours that she had not been concerned about leaving at 5:30 to go into the city and shop.  Now, with Pat announcing that she was dumping a whole new set of responsibilities on her, Kris could see her hopes of taking an evening off to go shopping quickly dying.

She went back to her desk and sat down completely depressed. “No,” she told herself, “this is ridiculous. There will never be another Father’s Day 2014, or another birthday 2014, or another forty-sixth wedding anniversary, but there will always be lots of complaints from everyone living at W. This job may have taken over my life, but it’s not going to spoil this weekend.”

The next morning the calls started coming in at 8:00.  They were the usual complaints that Kris had gotten used to hearing—the plumbing was clogged and maintenance was not responding; the light bulbs had burned out and had not been replaced; the units were too hot and uncomfortable without central air conditioning…and on, and on, and on.  If Kris were at a town hall meeting, the complaints went into voice mail; if she were in her office, she put the complainer on speaker while she did other work. She could not solve most of these problems, but it was her job to listen to everybody who was unhappy.

Kris had scheduled a town hall meeting that morning to explain the workings and benefits of W to fifty seniors.  She was at the community center by 7:00 to power up her laptop and make sure that her Power Point was working so that she could start her presentation at 7:30. As usual, there were many questions about the workings of W, the housing, the available activities for the residents, the healthcare available, etc. Then, at the end of the session, she heard the question she had come to expect, “What does the W stand for?”

Kris had never thought about the W standing for anything until Jim had asked her the same question the month before. Now when anyone asked her, she wanted to answer, “The W stands for ‘whining’ because we now know statistically that this is the primary activity of most of our residents from the day they move in, presumably until the end of their lives, although we have not actually been able to track anyone that far.” Instead of saying that, she had learned to smile optimistically and answer, “The W stands for ‘Wow!’ because that’s how you are going to feel when you start enjoying your new life without any of the stresses of how to get places or pay for housing or buy groceries or cook or care for yards.” That line, and the way she delivered it, usually brought some smiles from her audience and appeared to convince at least a few of them that W really was the answer to their problems.

She was back in her office by 10:00 A.M. when the phone rang. “Kris Mitchell, Planner I. How may I help you?”

“This is Eileen Bergman,” a raspy voice on the other end of the phone introduced herself. “I was told that you might be able to help me.”

“I’ll certainly try, Ms. Bergman. What can I do for you?”

“I am calling you to find out why the water to our unit keeps being turned off. The water to our unit went off at 10:00 yesterday morning, and it did not come back on until 4:00. I thought that maybe somebody was just doing some work on the lines, but today the same thing happened.  I want to know what is going on.”

“Are you a resident of W, Ms. Bergman?” Kris was scrolling through her list of names in Division 1. No Bergmans—Kris had no memory of this woman at all.

“Of course, do you think I would be calling you if I didn’t live here?” answered the caller testily.

“My apologies, but I don’t have you on my list for Division 1.  When did you move in?” Kris was now scrolling through the names of residents who had signed their leases within the last week.

“I am in Division 2. I asked for Peter, but I was transferred to you instead.”

“Of course, Peter is on vacation, and I am covering his calls.  Okay, so just to make sure that I understand, the water went off about ten minutes ago.  Can you check to see if it has come back on while I am on the phone with you?”

Eileen agreed to do that, but she returned and informed Kris that there was still no water to her unit. Kris took down her unit number and promised to get some information and call her back.

Upon hanging up from Eileen, Kris called maintenance at Division 2 and waited on the phone for Rick to pick up. “Rick, I just got a phone call from Eileen Bergman in unit 1023 saying that her water was off yesterday from 10:00 till 4:00 and that it is off again today. What’s going on over there?”

“Yeah, the water’s turned off.” Silence followed as if no further explanation were necessary.

“Well, when will it be back on, Rick?  This lady is not happy. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her it will be back on at 4:00. It’s not just her; it’s everybody. We have orders to shut the water off at 10:00 and turn it back on at 4:00.”

“Why? Who gave you an order like that? You can’t leave a whole block of senior citizens with no water for six hours every day.”

“We have written orders to shut the water off starting June 10 from 10:00 till 4:00. We got calls down here all day yesterday, and we are already getting them today. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I’ll bet there’s something I can do. I’ll call you back.” Kris hung up the phone. While she had been talking to Rick, she had noticed that her lines were filling up with calls, and now every line was lit up with people waiting to talk to her.  Rather than picking up the calls, she used the intercom to call Cindy.  “Why are all of these people holding Cindy?  Are they all from Division 2 about the water being shut off?”

“No, not all. Some of them are from Division 1. But they are all calling about the water, except for one woman who is calling because she needs an extra laundry pickup because her husband is really sick. Everybody else is calling to complain about the water.”

“Okay, Cindy. I can’t take all of these calls and get anything else done today. Here’s what I need for you to do.  Tell them that I am checking on this situation, and I will get back to them. Take down their unit numbers and tell them that we will message them through W.net as soon as we find out the status on the water.  If anybody else calls in about the water situation, just get their information and their unit number and then email it to me. I need to find out what’s going on.” 

Cindy agreed to this and in a few minutes the lines began to clear, and Kris began to get emails of residents’ names and unit numbers for her to answer. While Cindy cleared out the calls, Kris phoned Pat.

“Pat, I am getting phone calls that the water was turned off yesterday from 10:00 to 4:00 in Division 2 and that it is off again today. And now I am getting calls that it is also off in Division 1. I talked to the maintenance supervisor, and he said that he has orders to turn it off every day for six hours. What’s going on?”

“We have started the summer water conservation schedule,” Pat answered. “FMPD headquarters in D.C. sent out the memo last week.”

“Summer water conservation—so we are going to conserve water by cutting off the water to a bunch of senior citizens’ apartments for six hours a day? That’s nuts.”

“Careful, Kris. This memo is from the National Division Director. It’s not nuts—people waste more water when the weather is hot, so to conserve water FMPD wants it turned off.”

“Pat, how can you expect people to get by for six hours with no water?  They can’t get a drink or flush a toilet or take a shower—for six hours.”

“They can take their showers before 10:00 or after 4:00. Look, Kris, the residents of W are not supposed to be sitting in their units all day long. The water to the common areas is not disconnected—just the water to the individual units. If they are using any of the community facilities or volunteering at the dining hall or the garden they won’t even notice that the water in their units is off. These people need to get out of the house more.”

“And nobody thought that the Planners needed to know this? We’ve probably had thirty calls this morning from people who are mad about the water. A heads up would have been nice.”

“Actually, we have a memo that is supposed to go out to all of the Planners this week. It just hasn’t been sent yet.”

“Well, that’s great. So I am supposed to tell all of these people to deal with not having any water for most of the day, every day?”

“You are the community liaison. You need to make them understand that by conserving water they are helping the planet. If they will get up off their couches and outside of their apartments like they’re supposed to, they won’t even notice.  And, yes, it is your job to explain that to everybody.”

Kris hung up and called Cindy back on the intercom.  “How many calls have we had?”

“One hundred-fifty, so far,” answered Cindy matter-of-factly. “And they are maaad.  Did you find out anything?”

“Unfortunately.  The water shut off is part of the water conservation program mandated by the Feds in D.C., so we’re skunked. There’s no way to get it back on.”

“All I can say is I wouldn’t want to be you when you have to call these people back. I’ve never heard old people using such nasty words.”

“Lovely.  At least I have something to look forward to for the rest of the summer.” Kris sat staring at her desk trying to think of what to do. Nineteen years as a top producing real estate agent had taught her that bad news is best served honestly and straight up. No matter how bad the initial reaction, the recipient can face it and deal with it better in one massive dose.

“Cindy,” she called back on the intercom.

“Yes,” answered the assistant in her usual perky voice.

“Send out a notice over W.net that I will be at Division 2 this afternoon at 2:00 P.M. in the community meeting building. I want everybody there. Tell them that I am coming to see them about the water, and I can answer all of their questions at that time. Then do the same thing for Division 1 for tomorrow afternoon. If there are any more phone calls, just tell them what time the meetings are scheduled for and that they need to attend to have their questions answered. Then block off both of those dates and times on my calendar so that nobody can schedule me for anything else.”

“Got it,” responded Cindy.

Two o’clock found Kris and her laptop at the community center of Division 2. The room was nearly at capacity with angry-looking residents who bore the expressions of a lynch mob in the making.  In her old days in real estate sales, having this much anger directed at her would have been disconcerting, but now Kris reminded herself that these people had signed a life-lease to live at W.  She was genuinely sorry that the water conservation program was so inconvenient for them, but there was nothing she could do to change the situation, and there was nothing they could do either. Her job was not to apologize or to “make things right;” it was merely to explain the rules and possibly offer some suggestions.

None of the buildings in the Smart Communities was equipped with air conditioning.  Instead, they were designed to maximize natural air flow and cross ventilation.  During the spring months, the residents were not so aware of the heat, but now that the summertime heat had descended on everyone, the living conditions were almost intolerable. In the middle of June in Arizona the community building would have been hot under optimum conditions—completely empty in the middle of the night. But in the afternoon, packed to near capacity, the room was so hot that it was hard to breathe. A room full of seniors who were packed into a building where the temperature was soaring to over 100 degrees was surely a disaster in the making. Closing the laptop, Kris decided to forego the Power Point presentation and get straight to the point.