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In the year 2005 humanity reached a dubious milestone.
That was the year that the number of human beings on the planet with access
to electricity as their primary source of energy finally reached 50%. Three billion were plugged in, drawing energy, light and heat from coal and gas fired power plants. For the other half, the dark half of
humanity, life was much the same as it might have been ten thousand years ago.
1
Kuba
There is a desert
at the edge of Tillia, and it’s been there for a very long time. The brown earth was scorched there, and the winds scraped at it with mournful wails, etching the land that led down to the dry watercourse of the Azar Valley, and the vast sea of shifting yellow dunes beyond. Kuba watched it every day, his dark eyes squinting against the sun. Sometimes he walked there, hoping to find a thing long buried, and now uncovered by the wind. Once he had found an old rubber tire from a bicycle, a relic of the time when people had tramped out a thin roadway through the desert. Mostly he found the bones of fallen animals, hollowed and white and cracked by the heat. He had wandered far in days past, as far north as Tassara where the merciless sun stole away the last of the spring rains long ago, and east he went to Tabaraden to look for food that was all too hard to find now in the hot Nigerian summer.
He squinted, the wrinkles getting deeper and etching his face to the texture
of tawny leather, dark with the oil of the juba berries he would smear on his sallow cheeks each day as a youth. Now he was grown, and the berries could not be found. But their dry stain still colored his face, like
streaks of blood and tears.
Today was like any other day for Kuba. He had rolled off the matted straw of
his bedding, rubbing the sores on his willowy frame that never seemed to heal. The bugs were very bad last night, and his skin itched where they found him in his troubled sleep, sucking at his thin blood in the
night.
He saw the falling reeds of his roof, drying up with the hot African winds.
Where would he find fresh palms for his roof, he wondered? How far must he walk today? The stench of the village was blowing on the wind now, a smell of death and decay where the black swarms of flies swirled around
the body of old Jetsepso in a maelstrom of delight. He was the last of his family here, and there was no one else in the village who was willing to bury his corpse. They would not go near him where he fell on the
way back from the dry riverbed the night before. Only the dogs would bother the corpses now, their thin snouts poking in at the bloated flesh, and licking at the open sores before they dried.
Kuba turned away, trying to forget the old man, as everyone else had. In
spite of his pain, and the fever that wet his body in the night, Kuba forced his lips and cheeks to smile when he saw Shama, his wife, stoking the charcoal in the center of his sitting room. The thin smoke rose in
gray white wisps while she poked and prodded at the char, her flat, withered breasts dangling with the motion of her arm, empty of milk and life. Kuba knew it was time for him to go and look for food. The little
ones were already stirring awake, ready to face another day with the emptiness in their puffy bellies and the swarming flies alighting at the corners of their eyes. They would cry with the pain and frustration, but
shed no tears—there was not water enough in their bodies for tears any longer.
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So Kuba woke, and scratched his itching back, and stood up to think what he might find today at the edge of the desert. Before he left the palm frond hut, he would squat by his woman for a brief moment,
watching her prod the coals to life. The wood was running out, and it was harder and harder to find good trees for cutting. They would watch the last of the wood burn away to nothing by the next moon, and so
now there would only be one hour for the fire each day, and nothing for the night.
Shama was quiet this morning, her eyes shiftless and distracted as she worked by the shallow earthen pit. She paused in her stoking from time to time, reaching a long thin arm to tug at one of the rocks at the
edge of the circle of her fire. Kuba caught the look in her eye again that he feared to see. It was a distant, vacant look, her tallow gaze harried by inner fears. She did not want to look at him this morning, and
Kuba knew why.
For five days now he had gone out to the edge of the desert to search for food and wood, but there was nothing in his arms when he returned. Now the dry branches they had stored were burning away to ash,
the grain in the clay pot was run out, and the water was fetid and dark with the larvae of flies. She did not look at him this morning, because she did not want him to see the last of her hope fluttering away on the
curls of that gray smoke from the fire pit. She did not want him to see how her cheeks had darkened, her lips cracked and bleeding in the night. She did not want him to know of the misery in her heart when she
saw the stomachs of her last two children swell up, when she heard them coughing and wheezing in the warm night, and calling out in hunger and pain.
But Kuba saw, and Kuba knew.
So this morning, like every morning, he placed his hand on the bony round edge of her knee, and let it
linger there briefly, a silent promise. I will go now, it said, and I will come home again tonight with wood
for the fire. If not wood, then water for the urn by the door; if not water, then food for the bellies of the children, and perhaps even for you and I, dear Shama, dear woman I took for my wife so many years ago.
She paused a moment when he touched her leg, stilling the restless stirring of the ash, and leaning, ever
so slightly to greet him, her head inclined to his. Kuba lingered for a moment, reciting his promise in his mind, and letting the silent pledge flow out into his hand and into his wife; wishing her the strength she
would need to carry on for yet another day.
Then he stood up on feet that were hardened by a thousand days of wandering on the hard earth and hot sand. He started away from his hut at the edge of the village to begin his search. Yesterday he went east,
down past the wadi where the hard winds were blowing sand into the hollowed shells of the termite hills. Today he would go west, following the twisted scar of the old dry river, and searching in the stony
bottom for things that might still be growing there under the rocks. If he was strong enough to walk very far, and if he was lucky, he might turn a rock and find it wet underneath, stubbornly holding the last of the
river that once washed the gorge with its muddied brown stream when the rains came.
It had been a very long time, he thought, since the sky gave up its rain. As he stumbled along that morning, he looked first at the sky, hoping to see streaks of pink white clouds blowing in from the west
with the promise of rain. Today, however, there was nothing in the sky but the dry moan of the wind.
Kuba walked, and listened to the wind, hearing something lost there, something hurt, a vagrant wheezing, like the last breath of old Jetsepso before he fell. Perhaps the wind was out looking for something it
needed today, just as he was. It was blowing hot from the east this morning, brushing past Kuba's shoulder as he walked. They would look for things together, and the wind would be always at his back as
he walked, whispering its harsh, empty complaint in his ear.
After three hours hard trek in the bed of the dry river Kuba turned north again to the edge of the desert. Why, he wondered, were the sands so greedy? As he looked out through the yellow haze he saw how
the desert crept along the dry crevasses in the earth, driven on by the harrying wind. If they come to the
wadi, he thought, there will be no place for the rain. They will fill the hollows where the rains might gather
and send it running fast away over the thirsty ground. It will not linger, and the water will vanish before the last of the villagers could rush out to fill their gourds.
When the water failed, then Tillia would surely die. Tassara was already dead and gone, and the whole of the Azar Valley was a parched and lifeless place. No men came from Tabaraden in the east any longer
. They were all going south now, away from the hot greedy sand and the creeping death of the desert’s edge. They were all going south, to Tahoua and Sokoto beyond.
Kuba did not want to flee with the last of his tribe to the south. There were too many men there with guns and hard cold steel, chopping at the arms and legs of any who would not heed them. The men
fought with one another, cruel and lustful; wanton in their killing, with hearts as dark and dry as the desert they came from. They wandered into villages in the night, and dragged away whatever they could find.
They butchered the goats and even the dogs in their hunger, and carried the older children off to join their ranks. The younger ones they killed, breaking their tiny bald heads open with the butts of their rifles.
How was it, Kuba wondered, that there was no food in the valley, and hardly any water, but there were so many rifles? Where did they all come from? How did the men find them; and why, when there was
barely enough wood for the fires, was there such an abundance of these weapons and the cold metal shells to fire them?
He cursed the soldiers who brought such misery to his land now. They were no better than the wild carrion come to prey upon the fallen. He prayed that, one day, the slim would fall on them and squeeze
the life from their bodies until their limbs withered and their eyes set deep in their sockets. The slim would
take them until they could do nothing more than sit idly in the shade and fan the heat from their fevered bodies. But then the boys would come and steal away their guns and the next gang of rebels would be a
year younger than the last. Boys of twelve and fourteen years now held sway in the outer villages, for the men were all gone, killed in the fighting, or laid low by the slim.
No, Kuba did not want to be swept south by the wind and sand, driven into Tahoua where the camps festered at the edge of the settlement. He did not want to set off on that long road to Sokoto, where the
dead lined the gutters and dry bones marked the way. South was death and war, and though life was failing everywhere around him, at least here, at the edge of the desert with Shama, he would pass quietly.
Then the hot sands would roll in like a yellow tide and hide their broken bodies from the birds. Too soon, he thought. The sands would come too soon if he did not find something to keep his promise this day.
He vowed, then and there, that he would not stop looking until he could no longer move. He had only been out four hours now, and the day was very young.
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The oddest thing in the great developed West was the daily notion that nothing there was safe,
nothing secure. To be sure, it was a land of great wealth and plenty, yet beneath it all was a deeply cultivated edge of fear—that someday, it all might end.
2
Quantum Sleepers
The alarm
woke Robert promptly at 7:30 AM, the digital numbers seeming to flick on the radio, merging the last fleeting strands of a dream with the voice of the announcer. He lolled for a moment in the
plush warmth of his Tempur-Pedic memory foam mattress, hearing that dollar days were almost over at his local Ford dealer. He had to hurry so he would not miss out on the biggest savings event of the year, a
blockbuster 1.9% APR and $2000 factory cash back after signing!
He opened his eyes, seeing the familiar pale blue glow of the interior light above him. He was still nestled
in the enclosed space of his bedtime cocoon—the Quantum Sleeper he had installed last fall when the terror alert level reached Orange. It was a special bed, with an outer shell that closed overhead like the
roof of a convertible car and created an environment that was completely safe and secure from the outside world. The titanium frame and polycarbonate siding of the outer shell was finished off with finely
lacquered wood. Once sealed, however, it created an impregnable refuge, air-tight, water-tight, and with every comfort a person could desire to sustain them through the night, or a long, lazy morning should they
care to linger in the protective shell before rising for the day.
 The Quantum Sleeper had a console that activated a
flat screen plasma television on the upper roof, so he could watch HDTV or DVD movies while he rested in bed. The interior lighting and temperature could be completely controlled, and the air was filtered and
conditioned so well that the unit was entirely safe from bio-threats, noxious gas, smoke or any other airborne threat—and that included dust, pollen, animal dander,
mold, bacteria, and even airborne viruses! H1N1 would find no refuge here. He had been astonished to learn that the air inside his home could be up to
fifty times more polluted than the air outside. It just made good sense to know that he could rest all night in a safe and filtered environment like his Quantum Sleeper.
Beyond this, the twin storage tanks hidden behind the headboard held up to three days of cool, pristine
water, with hot and cold taps accessible on the panel behind his pillow where a little splash sink could be pulled out from the headboard. A small microwave oven was also installed there, along with an all band
radio, CD/MP3 player with stereo speakers, and cabinet space for snack food and reading materials. There were even emergency side compartments in the unit that could hold additional food, water, medical
supplies and anything else deemed an urgent necessity. And the whole unit was backed up with a reserve battery that would last a full eight hours if the power ever failed.
Robert rolled over, unwilling to move from the satiny warmth of his pillows and blankets, noticing that his
wife, Liz, has already opened her side of the unit and slipped out to start her morning. The mechanism of the outer shell was so whisper quiet that he had not even stirred when the other side of Sleeper had
opened and closed. He considered having breakfast alone in the Sleeper that morning. There were still three breakfast entrees in the unit’s refrigerator. He could pop one in to the microwave, activate the
automated coffee maker, and have scrambled eggs, French toast, hash browns, milk, juice, or anything else he desired. He thought the better of it, wanting a nice hot shower now more than food.
He stretched, reaching up reluctantly to press a small silver button on the top of the enclosure, and waiting while the Quantum Sleeper opened, the top arching up and back, folding itself as it did to fit
snugly at the baseboard of the bed when fully opened. He stumbled out of bed, scratching listlessly as he made his way over the thick wool carpeting to the marble tiled bathroom. The air was fresh and sweet
with the scent of Fresh Burst, jasmine and lemon. It was a medley of odors meant to evoke the pristine fragrance of a summer morning, or at least that is what the label on the scent dispenser unit promised.
Robert stripped off his silk boxer shorts, pausing to admire his hard, lean body in the mirror. His smooth, nearly hairless chest was strong and well contoured, tapering down to a six-pack abdomen that he
worked hard on to keep well cut. He turned, admiring the round firmness of his buttocks and the tanned flanks of his thighs. The workout in the gym yesterday seemed to have done him some good. He was
following the patented Slim in Six program, where he gained the entire benefit of a full six month workout program in only six weeks. He had seen the ad on TV a few months back, and had been following the
easy, programmed weight loss system, complete with aerobic exercise, power yoga, Pilates toning moves
and, best of all, he had not paid three thousand dollars for guided training and diet counseling, or even
three hundred dollars—even though he would have expected to pay much more anywhere else. No, not Robert. He was too smart for that. By calling right away when he saw the TV ad, he was able to totally
reshape his body, complete with a free six day maintenance plan and step by step guidebook, for only three easy payments of $19.95. And he had obtained three special bonuses at no extra charge in the
deal—all sent to him by rush delivery.
He began with the Start It Up tape, then progressed to the Ramp It Up sessions and finally the Burn It
Up tape at the end. In fact, he didn’t really have much of a weight problem to correct, having the benefit
of good genes and reasonably good habits all his life. Still, one could not be too slack in these matters. Fitness was an obligation that had been broadcast at him for decades and, by now, it had become a
reflexive habit. His entire self image, his manhood, his sexuality itself, rested on the notion that he could still draw those envious stares from the receptionist at the office. What a difference the Slim in Six
program had made!
He flexed a bicep, admiring the peak as he tightened the muscle of his upper arm. He needed to do just
a little more work on his back, he thought. He wasn’t into heavy muscle building, but he wanted his body firm and hard, two words that most men aspired to when it came to things physical. He watched his diet
with the Slim in Six program, headed off the threat of saddle bagging in his mid section, got regular exercise, and made sure that he gave his body a good maintenance workout at least once a week.
Robert imagined that all his hard work would be well appreciated by everyone at the office. Yes, he was happily married, but it never hurt to know that you could turn the heads of the office girls, or even the
other men there, and he often thought of how they were probably stealing glances at his firm tush when he strolled by the stock trading workstations to let them all know he was doing a first rate job as their
supervisor. He enjoyed the thought that his infrared suntan, another feature he had built in to his Quantum Sleeper, would draw compliments from the pale white co-workers who shared his unit. He relished the
idea that his pearly white smile, bought from a thousand dollar visit to the dentist last December, would never fail to please.
He stretched again, and stepped into the shower. A moment later his body was awash in refreshing jets of steamy water, and he was lavishing a thick palm full of Lever 2000 body wash over his well muscled
frame, frothing it up to a rich, luxuriant lather so he would be sure to get the best possible day-long deodorant control for all of his 2000 parts.
Drying off with the fresh cotton towel, he heard his wife Liz switch on the plasma digital television downstairs in the living room. The cavalcade of announcements floated up the steps with the distant
sound and smell of Maxwell House gurgling though the filter of the coffee machine in the kitchen. He passed a moment of brief longing for old Juan Valdez, the mythical coffee grower from South America
who had ensured that the beans picked for grinding were the richest crop in a decade. Juan was fired when the competition from new coffee blends coming out of Southeast Asia had deflated prices and
Maxwell House had been forced to pull its TV ad campaign. Such a loss, he mused.
Now the TV announcer was extolling the virtues of the Magic-Kan, an amazing new plastic container for
your household trash. He focused on the words, mindlessly, reflexively, hearing that it was a must have for the kitchen, with a sophisticated design that was guaranteed to match any décor while keeping your
trash neat, odorless, and out of sight.
His attention was soon pulled to the marble sink basin where he splashed a bit of lukewarm water on his face to prepare for shaving. What would it be today, he thought as he reached for the Edge protective
shaving foam? The gel oozed out into his palm and soon bloomed up into a cool fragrant lather. Would it be the Schick Quattro or the M3 Power Razor? The Quattro sported four blades, so just one swipe of
his razor would do twice the work of any normal double bladed razor. But the M3 had all the awesome power than any man could possibly crave. It’s mini-vibe mechanism, operated by a AA battery in the
handle, pulsed and vibrated as he stroked the blade, raising even the most stubborn stubble for the three bladed razor to whisk away. With the M3, five-o-clock shadow was a thing of the past.
He chose the awesome power, selecting the M3 and making short work of the whiskers on his neck and chin. He finished up, slapping on a bracing aftershave at the end of his routine. A bit of super-gloss hair
gel would be all he would need today, and he quickly ran his glistening fingers through his hair, letting the shape and style have just that touch of the tousled look that was so popular today. Soon he was ready to
dress and take on the day.
Liz was channel surfing again. As Robert slipped on his robe and shuffled down the stairs, he saw that
the ubiquitous ads had been suddenly interrupted by a hair-raising scene from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer
!” Poor Buffy, the fresh, young, pony-tailed blond girl who was the bane of all demons and vampires, lay
paralyzed on a cold steel operating table. An axe wielding co-ed dressed in a cheerleader’s outfit was rushing across the room to cleave her in two. At the very last second Buffy awoke and thrust her shapely
leg into the onrushing teen, sending the hapless girl flying across the room to land on her back with a thud.
Then the real villain emerged, the girl’s mother, who was apparently a witch of considerable power and malice.
“How dare you interfere,” she rasped, her eyes darkening to uttermost black.
“Oh, grow up!” Buffy’s repartee was scathing as she positioned herself to deal with this new foe.
The Witch-Mother, not to be put off by a school-girl’s scolding, began to chant incantations to summon up the powers of some ancient demon. Then, just as the dark magic energy swept across the room in a
scintillation of computer animation, Buffy’s leg swept up again in a perfectly timed karate kick that sent a
burnished overhead manifold tumbling into place as a shield. Its mirrored finish reflected all the malevolent energy of the Witch-Mother’s spell back upon her, and she was quickly consumed. The world was safe
for the next episode, and Liz clicked her remote, scrolling on to CNN to take in the morning news bytes.
…. A mass murder suspect in Bakersfield, the crazed Olympic Bomber trial, new cases of SARS at a US Air Force base, and lastly, archival footage of President George Bush touring a Ford Motor
Company plant in South Africa. The president’s tour was extolling the virtues of capitalism and development there, marveling at the robotic arms as they welded pristine aluminum car frames with
precise operations, the spats of fiery sparks looking, for all the world, like fireworks on the fourth of July.
The news clip continued, showing the President touring the African coast at Dakar, Senegal, the infamous embarkation point for much of the slave traffic that left that content in centuries past. Robert
saw how he thrust out his chest, smiling in his freshly pressed business suit and said: "It's very interesting
when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast belief – their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America.”
Something about that struck him as insanely odd. The President of the United States was equating the slave traffic as some kind of enlightened emigration, and he seemed to see the Black Rock of Dakar as a
kind of Plymouth Rock in his mind, with chained pilgrims arriving at our shores and smiling as they breathed in the fresh air of the new continent. It would only be a mere four hundred years or so before
their chains would be thrown off and they could become a vital part of the "American Way of Life," but the President seemed to miss that somehow.
Robert sighed as the news cast rolled on. The stock report crowded on the heels of that headline, and
the ‘tale of the tape’ seemed bright this morning, as advances outpaced decliners by a hefty margin. The NASDAQ was on the rise, and the dark, profitless days after the 9/11 attack were supposedly on the
mend. Below this, in the slow, steady crawl of the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, Robert saw that the Maine Potato Blossom Fest was in full swing and featuring a ladies bikini mashed potatoes
wrestling contest! Food to wrestle in, he thought. What a country.
The news segment wound up, but the cordial host threw out a teaser to keep everyone waiting for more. "Another threat from Al Qaeda," she said glibly, "We'll tell you which city needs to be on the alert
when we come back."
The hook was in, with just a little barb of fear at the end. So now they would just have to wait. Robert
thought how easy it would have been for her to simply reveal the city's name, but then the lure of the tease would be lost. Now the whole nation would have to wait breathlessly through the next commercial
segment to find out if they were the threatened city. But, whatever it was, the danger could not be all that
great, because the commercials started rolling, with one fifteen second spot crowding after another—like people squeezing into a bus at a quick stop. The TV volume increased by 30% and the announcer stared
out at the unseen audience with more dire warnings. “You could be missing out! It’s a fact: Mortgage
rates are at an all time low, but they could go up at any moment.” It was time, therefore, to refinance the $750,000 home he lived in, thought Robert. With all the distress in the market he was probably well
underwater by now. The announcer confirmed that fact with a clear directive: “Do it Now!”
He resisted the urge to go to the phone and begin dialing, even though he knew that operators were standing by, waiting for his call. They would just have to wait a little longer, he thought. Then the next
commercial elbowed its way onto the screen, and this offer made the last pale. He learned that he could enter the new Capital One giveaway contest just by using his credit card for regular every day expenses
and purchases. He could instantly win his own island—yes, a complete island that he could wander at his leisure any time he choose, a place to create his own paradise away from the hustle of city life, a lush
tropical getaway. He passed a moment’s reflection on the disastrous investments made in Dubai, but nonetheless made a mental note to make sure to charge as much as he could on that card this weekend.
This was even better than the monthly promise of endless riches at the Lotto. Yes, the 29.9% interest rate
might pinch a bit, But he’s sell a few shares of the AIG he bottom fished for the other day when it took off again, and make all well.
An ad for Glad Plug-Ins soon followed, with a great new feature! The new sleek design would not
block your electrical outlets. Now he could have a summer fresh home all day and never have to worry about getting something plugged in again!
Gerber was next, with fat, happy babies getting their doughy cheeks stuffed fatter yet with the processed
puree of plenitude in a convenient new package that you could take with you anywhere you went.
Herbal Essence quickly demonstrated how easy it would be to apply sun-golden streaks to any hair style. Oil of Olay wanted everyone to know how complicated and confusing skin care was, and that loss of
firmness was as bad as wrinkles for spoiling that smooth, youthful complexion we all strive for. Thankfully, they now had an automated computer program standing ready to make recommendations on which Olay products he needed to buy. Then, a white garbed chef was taking the perfect boccacia bread from
the oven—just what you needed for a scrumptious chicken sandwich. As if taking a cue, the next ad showed mounds of steaming crab legs on special for the Lobster House Cajun Week. A happy black
couple, undoubtedly descendants from those bright eyed and hopeful slaves the President had been talking about, was beaming as they stuffed the succulent crab meat into their smiling mouths, wiping a
dribble of thick, rich butter away with a wink and a nod.
The images of endless food on colorfully prepared serving platters made him very hungry, but Robert didn’t need to worry. Whenever he wanted to come up with a quick snack, or cook an easy satisfying
breakfast, all he had to do was turn on his Express Cooker, a Teflon coated appliance that streamlined
his meal preparation by providing even heating from both above and below. Instead of frying or baking, he could fully enclose his fresh cracked eggs in the Express Cooker, with two convenient cooking bays
that whipped up breakfast for two in no time at all.
He wandered in to the kitchen, and did exactly that. His Easy Chopper quickly consumed a few slices
of onion and green pepper, and he threw the whole lot into the Express Cooker for a perfect omelet in just three minutes. Other people might be out rushing to breakfast, waiting in line, struggling with
confusing menus, and paying exorbitant prices, but not Robert. He had 101 convenient recipes in a little
booklet that came with his cooker, and he had picked the whole thing up at the “As Seen on TV store” at
the mall. A few moments later he had his delicious breakfast in hand and was off to the den to check his e-mail before heading to work in his SUV Explorer.
The computer was waiting patiently in the nook by the kitchen: a new Pentium V running at 3 Gigahertz with 2Gb RAM, a massive hard drive for storage, combo DVD/CD burner, and a nifty built in port for
transferring all his MP3 music files to a portable player. He settled into the chair and double clicked the icon to activate his blazing fast cable modem Internet account. A moment later his only concern was the
rush of unwanted SPAM messages littering his inbox.
As if timed by fate itself, the TV ad in the next room was showing a spot where another young man was settling in to read his e-mail, just as Robert was. An errant fly alighted impudently on the computer screen
. Just as it was flicked away, three more arrived, then a dozen more, until the screen was darkened by flies as if it were a reenactment of some black evil from the exorcist.
“Bugged by junk e-mail and pop-up ads?” The TV announcer asked. Robert swiveled to pay attention,
in full agreement. Thankfully, the solution was close at hand. “Why not try our fast new Internet service, with free pop-up blocker, SPAM filter and virus checker, so you never have to wait to read your e-mail
again.”
Those damn flies were now all over the house in the TV ad, chased frantically by the lovely couple on the screen, their arms flailing about with frustration and annoyance. Robert pivoted back to his own
screen, inwardly flicking at the litany of junk messages there… Advertisements claiming he could increase the size of his penis and keep it constantly erect with Viagra. He could unleash the power of his digital
cable, fulfill all his pharmacy needs, visit with college co-eds as they stripped for the cameras, and so much more. Flies, he thought, damn little annoying flies buzzing about his screen.
But on second thought, he decided to click on the link to those teenage strippers. His wife would never have to know.
3
Gober Men
The Gober Men were moving again, up out of the dry Kaba where their camps had burned away the
last of the kindling from the parched earth, and out in search of new villages to prey upon under the hot Nigerian sun. Some went south, returning to Maradi where they had come and taken up arms from the
clan lords to work their will upon the land; others went west, along the arid, stony course of the Rima
River to Sokoto. Still others went north, finding their way to the next cloven rift in the land, the Tarka Valley, fed by meager streams that ran down from the high brown massif beyond.
The Gober Men were hard and brown, like the hills about them, their skin taut and scored by the harsh winds, and bronzed by the unremitting sun—though many were but boys. Some said they had come up
from the fat, watered lands of Kabo province to the south, a roving, rootless band of nomadic brigands, scouring the lands like a plague of locusts. But others said that they came up from beneath the crusty
brown earth of the Gober plain itself, creatures of stone and sand, animated by a rapacious lust for blood and the flesh of men. They scavenged north, following the waterless trails that scored the plain and
wrinkled the knees of the hills, then turned east, diverted by the highlands, until they found their way to the city of Tahoua, the largest settlement in Kuba’s province.
Tahoua had never been rich, or fat, or even well watered. It, too, lived at the mercy of the monsoonal rains that would flood the dry wadis for a season and provide enough water to sustain a scanty crop.
Now that the rains were gone, the city huddled under the sun, brown thatched roofs baking in the heat, waiting out the long months of summer until the autumn gave promise of rain again. A grey smoke rose
from the town, fleeing west on the wind like a bleak scar upon the morning sky. The Gober Men had finished with Tahoua.
They had come in the thick of night, streaming in by the hundreds, some on horseback, but mostly on foot, their rifles slung over their lean shoulders, their faces streaked with blood.
They fell upon the outskirts of the city, crossing the empty, untilled fields and breaking into homes where
the farmers slept with their wives and children. The men they killed at once, their rifles spitting flame in the dark as they murdered with reckless abandon. The women they took for their lust, tugging at the thin
brown arms of the younger girls, like dogs would quarrel over a bone. Those that came willingly might live another day or week, or even be taken as concubines to service the Gober Men when they moved
again. Those who resisted would be thrown to the ground and raped, then beaten to death, the quick blow from a rifle butt a seeming mercy compared to the torment of others who died more slowly.
When news of the horror spread through the town, wakening the terrified villagers from their sleep, some fled to the mission church near the center of the settlement, hoping to find safe refuge behind the thick
adobe walls, a sanctuary guarded by the brown robed priests and the Christian god they served. The steeple bell sounded its cry of alarm, calling the faithful home as it roused the westernmost warrens of the
city with its frantic peals, but all in vain.
The Gober Men were down upon the town in force, riding fast on the wings of the settlement until they
held it in their dark embrace, their bright machetes flashing to cut down any who tried to flee. The marauding tide surrounded the city and then turned inward toward the center, infiltrating through the
narrow streets, breaking into homes, killing and raping as they came. A thousand cries of fear and anguish were drowned by the sharp staccato of the automatic rifles when they fired, and it was not long before
they reached the church, their eyes glazed with hatred when they saw the cross thrusting up through the smoke of the burning homes.
The sight of the mission fanned the flames of their anger. Their harsh cries resounded from the walls as they pointed at the steeple, shouting hard curses in a strange tongue. For them there was nothing sacred
here; nothing holy. Instead they saw only abomination and heresy, the work of misguided heathens who would not submit themselves to the will of the true faith. The Gober Men were of another creed. They
served the Prophet Mohammad, and they carried now his just wrath to any who would not speak his name with reverence and awe, or supplicate themselves in prayer when the muezzin’s call would finally
bring and end to the plunder of another long day. And yes, this was holy work they brought now to the farmers and daughters of Tahoua; this was jihad, the righteous punishment, the hard whiplash of Islam on
the soiled faces of unbelievers. This was righteous war, and none would be spared the justice they imposed upon the desolation of Niger. They moved like the wind, heedless, wanton, unopposed. And all
of Africa would soon be burning in their wake.
But for now, it was the villages and towns of Azar Province that burned, and no place was safe, no
matter how remote and isolated in the vast barren lands of Central Africa. While Kuba woke each morning, staring at the desert and wondering where he could go that day to look for food and water, the
Gober Men plundered the countryside burning as they went. There was one thin road from Tahoua to Tillia, one thin road that was long ago blotted away by the seething wind and drifting sands of the desert.
The Gober Men did not find it that day. Instead they turned south along the well worn track that would eventually take them down into better land around Birnin Konni, and from there down to the well
watered town of Sokoto. And with them came the fever, and the death, and the cold steel of the machete, the hard rounds of the AK-47s. It was a long way from Sokoto to the southern coast, but the road they
were on, if they kept to it, would take them all the way to Lagos and the oil rich regions of the Niger Delta.
~ ~ ~
On that day,
Kuba had been fortunate enough in his dogged search to happen across a brace of thistles at the edge of a streambed. There was no water there, but the thorns held on, their roots deep enough to
draw the last sustenance they could pull from the ground. Kuba knew that other animals would come to the bony scrub to look for remnants of foliage, or to find broken bits of twig and branch for the building
of nests. On this day, Kuba was fortunate indeed. He had come to the lost stream at just the right time,
for a pair of egrets had hidden away there, hiding in the covered protection of the thistles to build a nest.
Kuba spied them from afar, his dark eyes pressed to thin slits as he squinted against the hot sun. He knew the telltale signs to look for, not in the land around him, but above, in the cloudless sky. He sat,
watching the sky for signs of life until he saw birds in the distance, tiny grey specks wheeling and lighting
on one particular spot, out on a low hillock in the center of the streambed where the thistles grew thick. They came and went, perhaps bearing tiny twigs in their yellow beaks, and Kuba knew why. As he
watched the egrets fly off, he smiled, and prayed that he would find eggs in the nest this day. He had been out three days now with nothing to reward his long efforts, but today his luck would change. It was time
to move.
He struggled up, his legs weary from the long day’s trek, his feet hot and sore. He had twisted his ankle
when he slipped on a sharp stone a while back, and it throbbed with swelling pain every time he took a step. But he forced himself forward, feeling the emptiness of these last three days without food. His
hunger drove him on with great need, though he tried not to think of the dull ache in his belly just then. Instead he turned his thoughts on Shama, remembering how she sat by the dying embers of the morning
fire, trying to prod a little life and warmth from the charred remains of the wood. He thought of Shama, and the last of his children, and knew that whatever he found must be for them, first and foremost. If he
was lucky enough to find one egg, then he would carry it all the long way home and proudly reach for her wasted hand to present his gift. Then she would decide how to best use it that day, for herself, for the
children—Shama would know.
But he was not home yet; he was a long way from the hope of that moment. He chided himself, focusing
now on the task ahead. He had to creep down to the low thistles and find the place where the nest was hidden near the roots. He only hoped the birds had not been too clever, and built their nest deep inside
the brace of thorns. He knew they had chosen a bare spot at the crest of the hillock, accessible from above. He would have to go and see.
He reached the stream bed, his legs quivering with fatigue and anticipation. His tongue seemed to swell in his mouth now, and he wished he had a bowl of cool, fresh water, but he had nothing to drink. Perhaps, if
he was successful, he would wait here for an hour and rest in the shade of the thorns, such as it was. Perhaps he might find a sharp, flat stone and dig a while and, if his luck held true, he might find cool wet
sand that promised water beneath the bed of the stream. But he was not there yet. It was not time to dig. Now was the finding, and his eyes were dry as he searched the edge of the thorns for signs of the nest.
He knew it was there, hidden somewhere in the shadows, and then he saw it.
Kuba’s heart leapt with joy and anticipation. It was a large nest! He could see the gray twigs that had
been woven between the thicker stalks of the leafless thorn bush. It was not far, but the way was barred by bristly scrub, and he had no choice, except to lower himself onto his flat bare belly and crawl like a
snake. The branches of the thistles were too thick for him to break, though he tried nonetheless, striving to clear a path to the nest. All he got for his trouble was the sharp bite of a thorn on his thumb, and he
cried out with pain, his voice barely audible, so dry was his throat. A thin stream of blood welled from his injured thumb, and he instinctively licked it away. How odd, he thought, that the only sustenance he had
taken that day, aside from a few sips of muddy brown water three hours ago, was his own thin blood.
The sharp lesson was not lost on him. He resolved to calm himself, and move more slowly. The nest was
there, almost within his grasp now. He had only to edge beneath the thorny branches and hope his reach was long enough to grasp his prize. So he pressed himself flat against the hard stony ground, feeling the
hot rocks burning his naked chest and stomach. He flinched against the pain, but slid forward, determined.
Inch by inch he moved closer, but with each gain he found that the thistles drew closer, until the sharp thorns were pricking at his shoulders and back as he tried to slither beneath their clawing guard.
He was very close now, almost there. He tried stretching his thin arm out, working it through a gap in the
thistles and enduring more scratches and sharp pricks for his trouble, yet he was still six inches shy of the nest. He had to get closer, but his shoulders were obstructed by the thickening base of the thorn bushes.
Then he felt a tickling sensation on his bare legs, and a sharp prick, though it was not the bite of a thorn.
Kuba had felt that bite before. He knew that he had disturbed a hidden warren of red ants as he crawled along beneath the thorns. He could feel the first trickle of soldiers answering his intruding challenge as
they crawled over his leg, wandering along the exposed skin and stopping to bite if he moved to inch his way forward. He hoped there was not a great nest here, and that he would quickly reach his prize and
slip away before the alarm could be raised and the colony came out to wage wholesale war on his weary body.
Now fear joined the need that drove him on. With each random bite of the angry red ants on his leg he was driven forward, pushing himself closer, until his bare shoulder was right against the base of the thorny
bush that blocked his way. He reached, straining to feel the nest, for his eyes were closed with the pain of his exertion. The hot earth beneath his chest continued to burn his skin, and the urgency of his movements
put fire into the bite of the ants on his leg. Thorns jabbed at his bony shoulder, but his fingers groped and clawed until he felt the edge of the nest. He had only to grasp it now, and drag it toward him.
Kuba pinched the dry woven twigs between his still bleeding thumb and finger. He took hold of the nest and pulled, ever so slowly, hoping he would not pull away the loosened twigs and have to reach again.
His shoulder ached with bite of the thorns where it was wedged against the base of the thistle bush. The red ants bit at his leg with a vengeance now, and he could feel that some were working their way up his
bare thigh to the curve of his rump and the small of his back. He knew that if he did not escape their attack soon, they would find their way up his side and back to his neck and face. They would reach his
nose and mouth and bite at the tender flesh there. They would seek out the moisture of his eyes, if any were left, and he could not fight them off, trapped as he was under the cruel embrace of the thistles. He
had to grasp his prize and make his escape. He had to move!
With an anguished cry, Kuba pulled at the egret’s nest and managed to move it six inches. He toppled it
onto its side, his bony hand clawing at the twigs and, to his great relief and joy, he felt there the smooth
round surface of an egg! Not just one egg, but two, then three! The thistles had been a safe to protect the nest from other marauding animals, and even the snakes had not managed to find the great prize that
Kuba now had within his grasp. Gleefully, enduring the pain from the hot stones beneath him, and the jab of the thorns, he carefully extracted his arm. Drawing it back to remove the first egg.
The ants were growing in numbers now. He could feel them as they crawled over his upper leg and rump, and one had already reached a spot high up on his back, where it bit hard, its sharp mandibles punishing
this great intruding thing that had dared to disturb its den.
He reached again, extending his arm through the gap in the thistles to recover the second egg, then the
third. All the while the ants bit at his legs, and buttocks, and the thinner skin above his ribs, working their
way inexorably upward over his body. He could feel the irritating tickling of their intrusion at his neck, and one had already found the hollow of his ear. But he had three eggs now. Three eggs!
The thought filled him with joy and he shrugged off the pain as he slowly edged his body backward, out from under the thick, low reaching branches of the thistles.
Three eggs! One for Shama, and one for the children, and even one for him, if he could only walk the long four hours or more it would take him now to reach the village again. But first things first. He had to
get out from under these thorn bushes, and fight off the torment of the raging red ants on his body before he could walk again. And he had to find a way to carry the eggs so they would remain safe throughout
the long journey home.
In spite of his pain, and his thirst, and the torture of the ants, Kuba smiled. His prayers had not gone
unanswered. Fortune had smiled on him, and he was a very lucky man today. He imagined the look he would see in Shama’s eyes when he showed her his prize, when he handed her his promise, a promise
kept through long pain and suffering, and with all the love and care the world could fit into his thin, bony frame.
Kuba was a very lucky man.
4
Bad Weather
The news whirred on,
24 hours every day, moving from story to story in staccato tempo: two explosions outside the British Consulate in New York while England went to the polls to select a new
Prime Minister, another Runaway Bride who got cold feet and caused a near panic in her small Midwestern town.
It was followed by allegations of inappropriate behavior from yet another celebrity, (the antics of Tiger Woods infidelity,) and of course, the Beer Barrel Belly Buster Burger clip that would highlight the soft
news landing at the bottom of every hour. This was a massive 10 pound hamburger on a colossal toasted bun with 25 slices of American cheese, eight ounces each of mustard and mayo, half a cup of relish, and
a full head of lettuce. It hit the menu at a popular Pennsylvania restaurant, growing from the 2-pounder through four pounds, ten pounds and finally the 19,000 calorie, record breaking monster with 460 grams
of saturated fat, and cholesterol to last the average person a full 16 days. It was surely newsworthy, and received three precious minutes of the 20 minutes that comprised the typical half-hour news cycle on all
the major cable channels.
As the news rolled to the top of the hour, the commercial break announced a special report concerning
the scandals surrounding “American Idol,” the show that promised instant celebrity to the chosen few,
with all the marketing revenues attendant to that status. America had been floundering about in search of idols for some time now, and so Hollywood had taken to manufacturing them, trotting would be singing
sensations before the public in a contest to select the very best.
Millions tuned in to hear them croon, watch them dance, and vote for their favorites. 80 million voted for
the American Idol of the day, four times the number who turned out for the presidential election primaries being held that same year.
Robert switched the channel to find Reverend Jones preaching the virtues of “National Prayer Day.” He offered the indelicate reminder that only Christians were praying to the one true God, and that only
prayers made in Jesus’ name would therefore be heard and answered. The world’s billion plus Muslims,
the billion Hindus, the billion Buddhists, and the hundreds of million Taoists or followers of Confucius need not apply…let alone the Jews, who also believed in the one true God, but apparently failed to
recognize his glorified kin in spite of nearly being burned off the face of the earth during WWII.
The Blogosphere would be buzzing with the controversy today, and Robert new he would probably get
three or four e-mails from his friend Aaron, laden with links to the hottest alternative web sites offering opinions, gossip, scandal, satire, and sometimes even news.
It had been a long and tiring day at the office. The company auditors were coming at the end of the week to look over the books, and Robert was tasked with making sure everything was in order. He worked
for Colson and Johnson, a small brokerage firm managing securities and bonds, and the portfolio had been flagging in recent months—too highly leveraged in housing securities that were still losing value.
The market had taken a decided turn for the worse in recent years. Bear Stearns was the first red flag to shake up the Boyz on Wall Street. The pressure had been building like a simmering kettle, on both the
US and global markets as the staggering realization that investors were holding billions in bad, and now unmarketable debt, finally sunk in. It was always bad and unmarketable business, from the very first, but
the Wall Street Boyz and financial gurus found clever ways to mask the odor, batching out their bogus sub-prime paper in one of the greatest games of cut and run the financial markets have seen in decades.
As one institution after another began to buckle under the weight of all that red ink, reality slowly cooled
the securities markets. He ruminated over recent history, amazed that it had taken this long for the system to fail. It was not just the way Bear Stearns collapsed with the announcement that they were carrying
billions in CDOs that they could simply not value by any of the normal tricks of the trade. Other companies like Countrywide Financial, big in the sub-prime mortgage lending business, allowed their
whispers to become public cries of pain. Shares of Countrywide Financial fell more than 17% when the largest U.S. home lender revealed the extent of the damage to their business. Earnings, to say the least,
were going to be “severely impacted.” Other major hedge funds had been hit hard as well, including North American Equity Opportunities and Global Alpha, (which fell 26%), both under the roof of
Goldman Sachs. The funds were being kept open in spite of mounting losses.
As Jim Cramer, host of MSNBC’s Mad Money, went into vitriolics, slamming his fist on the counter and
raging that Fed chairman Bernanke had no idea how bad things were in the rank and file financial corporate trenches, the US stock market went into a predictable tailspin, losing 396 points on August 9,
when the crash had started, and opening down nearly another 200 points the following day. Asian markets sold off as well, prompting the world’s great central banks to begin pumping cash into the
wheezing system, like Saudi oil men pumping seawater into Ghawar. Nearly $330 billion was infused into the financial wells over a two day period to try and stem fears that money and credit were drying up. The
ECB poured on another $60 billion the following Monday.
It was not long before the market lost a cool 1200 points, and fell another 350 points the following
morning! Art Hogan, Jefferies & Co nabbed the quote of the day: “This market is going down like free
beer. ... I would say if there had been a day when we're trying to price in a worst-case scenario, this might be it.”
That was only the beginning. It would all be made right with a spectacular rally manufactured by the Fed,
and the near zero interest loans to banks without a pulse so a “dollar carry trade” could develop. It was
but one measure of expedience to keep the wheels slowly turning for a time. But the days were clearly numbered now.
The notion that all these shady real estate deals, trick mortgages, phony securities and clever investment packaging could pass through the gullet of the world economy without choking the goose was ludicrous
from the start. Yet the game was to push out the paper, book the commissions and then dump the whole thing in the financial landfills of the world, the largely unregulated hedge funds and leveraged securities that
don’t really get reviewed by the SEC at all. The coup de gras was to simply suspend or revise normal
accounting rules so you could continue to value the toxic sludge at levels no one would be able to sell it for in a real market…but real markets were now a thing of the past. How clever crime can get when the
perpetrators wear suits and ties, thought Robert. The trashy deals have been piling up for the last several years, and now the stench is finally reaching the trading pits on Wall Street.
Tens of thousands of little investors had already seen their nest eggs evaporate. The financial stocks entered a period of profound depression, some losing over 80% of their value in a matter of months.
Large companies like Accredited Home averted a disastrous margin call by managing to sell $1 billion in loans to an “unnamed investor.”
Some fat cat out there had the means to write that check, thought Robert, and he thinks he’ll profit by it.
The headlines rolled on mercilessly, “Foreclosures up... Builder stocks downgraded... Capital One Shuts Down Mortgage Business... Sentinel Charged With Fraud... And then the great blow so many had been
dreading, the demise of the two biggest pigs of the mortgage industry, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They had swallowed over half of all the Option ARMs and Interest only loans pushed out by the banks
in the last ten years, a sum exceeding $5 trillion US dollars. That was half the gross domestic product of the entire nation on an annual basis.
Sickened by the plummeting value of these dubious “securities” the two pigs got a belly ache. They were
leveraged at nearly 80 to 1, a ratio that could see their asset base wiped out with an even modest decline in the trading spreads. The decline was severe. Then treasury Secretary Paulson announced the
Government was seizing control of the pigs, and herding them into a conservatorship. In effect, Fannie and Freddie were entering a kind of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, with the US government as the Trustee,
and the US taxpayer on the hook for that $5 trillion in bogus securities that was now virtually worthless.
In a single stroke, half the US housing Market had been nationalized. Isn’t capitalism wonderful, thought
Robert? He smiled to think that all the government seemed to be worried about the last eight years under Bush and Cheney, was terrorism.
Five years ago, when Robert saw all this easy money being loaned out to anyone with a pulse, it occurred to him that all these friendly bankers were doing far more harm to America, to the heart and soul of
middle class families, than Osama Bin Ladin ever could. It was all bout points, fees and interest. They knew they were lending money to people with few, if any, real assets, and dubious income. But they
didn’t worry about that. They could just sell off the loans in securitized ‘tranches’ and shovel them into
Fannie and Freddie, who in turn passed the whole mess on to Chinese investors. It was the greatest financial shell game ever devised.
Soon the trick loans were exploding all over the nation like well placed IEDs. The hedge fund implosions crashed into venerable financial institutions like truck bombs, doing far more damage than Osama bin
Ladin could ever imagine. All the nefarious terrorist could manage in the last seven years were a few badly edited videos, and two fumbled attempts to light shoes and underwear on fire, while the banks
cranked out so much bad paper, saddling millions of Americans with burdensome debt, that they literally plunged a knife into the heart of middle class America.
So now we are finally seeing the measure of their handiwork, thought Robert, all these respectable men and women in gray tweed suits and starched white shirts. Was he one of them? His position in Goldman
Sachs, clearly the dark center of most derivatives trading these days, was extreme. Yet that was the drill
in the years preceding the really big crash. Stick the bad paper on the backs of the blue collar guy, wrap
the deal up in tinsel, and foist it off on the Chinese. Then file bankruptcy in the Cayman Islands and run for cover. When the Bank of China revealed that they were now holding billions in US sub-prime
exposure the Hong Kong Stock market plummeted a whopping 6%, following the steady decline on Wall Street.
If it wasn’t apparent already, the dire state of the US economy was soon made obvious on Main Street
as well. Shows like “Flip That House” vanished from the Home and Garden network, replaced by “Curb
Appeal” as the media tried to put lipstick on the failing housing market. Foreclosures reached Depression era heights. With their homes rapidly depreciating in value, their Option ARM payments adjusting ever
upward, people simply started walking away from the American Dream in droves.
Home ownership, the heart of that dream, was finally seen to be nothing more than the cleverly
engineered debt trap that it always was. The banks owned all the houses, as Robert knew only too well. They rigged their mortgage game to collect nearly 90% of the interest on a typical 30 year loan in the first
15 years. The borrower would have to hold on at least that long to really begin attacking the principal in
earnest. Meanwhile, if anything happened—death in the family, lost job, health problem or accident, there was always foreclosure and the bank owned the property again free and clear.
But now the game was backfiring. The market was flat out dead, glutted with unsold homes. There was no flipping, no investing, no points, fees and interest happening any more. The TV commercials where
hordes of bankers crowded into the family foyer to bid on an equity loan were long gone. It was crunch time.
The banks realized they did own the empty homes now, and they sat there depreciating, week after week, the swimming pools becoming fetid, algae ponds infested with mosquito larvae, gutted shells of the
dream, the copper pipes stripped out by scavengers, tagged by graffiti and occupied by crack users and vagrant squatters. The game was over. One by one, the banks began to teeter and fall. Smaller
institutions, struggling to recapitalize, went first. America was seeing its first bank runs since the1930s. The Fed was in near panic, the FDIC all but swamped. There had been so much consolidation in the
financial industry that many individual banks now held assets exceeding the total FDIC war chest many times over.
The banks were in trouble. The collapse of the old funding bridge for new mortgages was a death blow. The whole process of creating risky mortgage-backed securities and passing them onto someone else
had evaporated. There would be no new phony tranches composed of SIVs, CDOs, and no more AAA-rated toxic debt. They stopped lending, realizing they were technically insolvent. Deflation went arm in
arm with inflation. Those that didn’t own a home, or trade stocks on Wall Street felt it in a myriad of other ways.
People felt it at the gas pump, at the super market, in the cost of everything from their phone calls to their DVDs. Milk was selling at over $4.50 per half gallon. At that rate even gasoline still seemed cheap.
The traffic thinned out a bit on the clotted freeways as people began to trade in their land yacht SUVs and Hummers for more fuel efficient vehicles. Hit Americans in their pocket books and you will eventually
get their attention, thought Robert. It was not long before both Chrysler and GM felt the pain, falling into bankruptcy and desperately trying to reorganize. Henry Ford’s old company hung on as the last major U
.S, auto maker.
Robert could hardly believe what had happened. Gee, he mused, the average grocery bill for little ol’ me,
a guy who really doesn’t buy all that much, is a well over $120 bucks per week. That works out to $450, even $500 or more a month. For those with more mouths to feed it can be much higher. Add in the rent
or mortgage inflated by all those equity loans, the rising utilities, the interest on those credit cards and guess what… Over 80% of Americans were just managing to squeak by these days on their average
annual salary of $38,000. Then there are kids to buy clothing for at the one day sales, tuition for school, and books and supplies.
Now start cranking up that gasoline price and see what happens. If there was any money left over, and he knew the record debt and all time low savings of most households meant there wasn’t, then that
money would soon vanish as people tried to keep the car on the road. When Americans don’t have lots of disposable cash and credit, when they suddenly owe more on their house than the day they bought it,
when they can barely manage to put fuel and groceries into the budget, how much do you think they will have left over to spend at Robinson’s-May? The long time retail chain was now defunct and folded into
Macy’s.
That was the little secret that Boyz on Wall Street, and the Bankers so often overlooked: it’s what people
had left over for Macy’s and Wal Mart, K-Mart and all the rest that made the wheels of our economy turn. It all ran on the assumption that there would always be a well off middle class in America that had
plenty of disposable cash left after meeting necessities—cash to spend on a dinner on the town, a weekend trip, a shopping spree at J.C. Penney—a typical Big Box retail outlet where the entirety of the
American Dream was said to be “all inside,” according to their ad slogan. That’s what the housing bubble
was created for—to prime the economy with easy, unearned cash, and to try and convert some of that massive unsecured credit card debt out there to secured debt backed by a real asset. Now the homes
were becoming worthless too, and the wheels were coming off the economy in a way few could predict or even imagine.
Robert’s firm, Colson and Johnson, had weathered the storm thus far. But things were getting a bit uncomfortable now. Company suits had an inkling that the securities and exchange commission would be
making the rounds soon, to audit a flurry of transactions that had been made in the last few weeks to shore up the numbers, so they were getting out in front of the problem and sending in their own
watchdogs first. That meant a big headache for Robert today, as he was asked to pull this chart and that ledger for the scrutiny of the auditors. He was dogged by their questions and nosey requests all day.
Now he just wanted to relax and veg out in front of the widescreen plasma, channel surfing to get his mind off the busy work day. He checked the news first, hoping that calamity elsewhere would lessen the
feeling of his own predicament, as it often did. Miami had just been brushed by a relatively mild hurricane, level one on the scale, and the storm was churning its way out into the Gulf of Mexico now, reorganizing
after its collision with land and building strength. Another would soon follow in its wake, and another after that.
There wasn’t much else of interest on the news, just the usual drone of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, and more bad news from Haiti. The place had been devastated by an earthquake months ago. Now it
was a cauldron of festering disease and lawless misery in spite of all international efforts to rebuild there. He switched away from the news and settled on the movie channel.
He was lucky enough to catch the very beginning of tonight’s feature rerun of Independence Day. A massive shadow had just passed over the site of the Apollo Moon landing, and an ominous vibration
shook the landmark footprints of Neil Armstrong in a typical opening that seemed to promise “you ain’t
seen nothing yet.” The next scene showed a cyberpunk scientist scooting about on his lab chair in the SETI listening post, somewhere in the Arizona desert. He had hold of an odd signal that had interrupted
the rock song blaring in the background: “It’s the end of the world as you know it…”
Cool, thought Robert. Nothing like a little widescreen mayhem and total destruction to make you forget
your troubles. After this he thought he’d pick up a copy of 2012, the mother of all disaster movies by this
same director. He resolved to watch the first half of the movie, as the massive alien ships entered the atmosphere and made their way to designated rendezvous points over major world cities. Jeff Goldblum
was soon fussing over misplaced aluminum cans in his role as the genius cable repair guy. He would soon figure the whole thing out, and then rush off to the White House with his Apple PowerBook to warn the
president of the impending attack.
The first half was a fabulous mix of awesome special effects as the alien ships appeared and then fired
their death rays to begin the extermination of the human race. Scenes of chaos and destruction would abound, then the Air Force would launch a feeble counterattack. The alien force fields were impervious
to all our weapons, even nuclear bombs. But the creatures in the ships had not reckoned on Jeff Goldblum and his Macintosh. The hero would write a computer virus and use a Roswell UFO to deliver
it to the alien mother ship. Meanwhile, the President himself would lead the next attack, aided by a drunken ex-crop duster as his wingman. The computer virus would foil the alien force fields, allowing the
crop duster to get through to deliver the attack on one of the alien ships—payback for all the molestation
he endured as an abductee earlier in life. That second half of the movie was a bit over the top, but the first part was fabulous. Robert resolved to cook up a bowl of popcorn at the first commercial break.
The telltale song of his cell phone interrupted him. He looked about, spying the phone on the lamp table by the couch. It was his friend Aaron, asking him if he had seen the news.
“What news? You mean the American Idol scandal?”
“American Idol? No, dummy, the hurricane. That sucker has wound itself up to a category three, and
this time it’s heading for Houston.”
“So maybe they’ll get it right this time,” said Robert. “Remember, that’s a Republican stomping ground
over there. I’ll bet FEMA is moving mountains to make sure everything comes out right after that fiasco in New Orleans.”
“Sure, but Houston has five times the population of New Orleans. They dodged a bullet last time with Rita, but this baby looks mean.” Aaron was moving into lecture mode now, emphasizing his point about
the emergency with a ready phalanx of facts and figures. “Think of all that property that could be lost if
this storm comes in like Katrina. The Houston area is home to 26% of our refining capacity. Hell, Katrina knocked out over 36 rigs and platforms on that side of the Gulf, but the whole coastline from Corpus
Christi to Houston is even more developed. This could be it, Robert. This could be the storm that really takes us down.”
“You worry too much,” said Robert. “Been watching that new TV show about the invaders who slip in
through hurricanes?” Now that he though of it, the show made good sense. Even as he spoke he could see the broiling clouds marking the entry of the city destroyers as they maneuvered into the atmosphere.
It seems Hollywood had a firm grip on the idea that alien invaders like bad weather. The tripod aliens from War of the Worlds also arrived in a roiling thunderstorm when they made their debut on the wide
screen earlier that summer. He made a mental note to preorder that DVD on Amazon as he listened to Aaron’s last protesting remark.
“Gas will hit five bucks a gallon after this, amigo. Mark my words.”
“I’ll be sure to fill up the SUV,” said Robert, and the conversation moved to other things. By the time he
was able to extricate himself, the news of the alien invasion was already spreading as massive ships settled over New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Jeff Goldblum was already in high gear, urging his
father to go just a little faster on the way to the White House. He sighed, wondering why Aaron was always carping about the next disaster, the teetering economy, and this business about the decline of
American culture. Hell, we survived Independence Day, he thought. We can take anything this world, or any other, can throw at us.
He shifted his attention back to the screen again, 50 inch plasma on the wall above his fireplace. It was just his good luck that he had hit a commercial break. In rapid succession he learned more than he ever
wanted to know about fashion, facial cream, Cialis, and the impending baseball playoffs. With all he knew about the financial shenanigans going on, it was amazing how little real information ever came over
the mass media. Besides, The aliens were blowing New York and Washington DC all to hell just after the commercial break. So the thought of $5 gas for his SUV and a little more on the heating bill this winter
didn’t really matter much to Robert as he watched the president of the United States ask the alien in the Roswell facility what they wanted us to do. He mouthed the reply, spoken through the hapless Brent
Spiner, aka “Data” from the popular Star Trek series: “Die…”
Hell of a way to open negotiations, he thought. Lucky we had Jeff Goldblum on the job this time. And
just in case things didn’t work out, Robert could take comfort knowing that he would be resting peacefully tonight in his Quantum Sleeper.
5
Stormfront
Thousands of miles to the south
, other men were drilling just a little harder as the hurricane moved into the Gulf of Mexico and began to build in strength. Houston was shutting down operations, turning off the
spigots on pipelines, platforms and refineries all along the Gulf coast. Over 80% of America’s fuel system
was shutting down in advance of the storm. That was going to put a whole lot of pressure on all overseas operations. Things were really heating up in the Nigerian delta, and the work had seen several
interruptions in the last few weeks—situations that always got Bennie Flack’s blood boiling, because Ben was a schedule man.
Chevron’s Robertkiri platform in the Nigerian Delta region was on emergency watch again tonight, as militants were threatening more attacks on rigs and pipelines to protest the ongoing incursion of corporate
interests in the region. It was getting very messy and, as Ben ticked off his production numbers at the terminal, the shortfall was becoming harder and harder to cover.
They were already 20,000 barrels off the pace because of the goddamned bunkering—a term the locals used to describe their illegal sampling of oil from the ubiquitous pipelines crisscrossing the Nigerian river
delta. Smugglers and river gangs would slip up to a line with a lighter full of empty barrels. Then they’d
drill a hole and feed in some plastic tubing to milk the line. Just last week the Nigerian police had a shootout with oil bandits, killing several militants, but that was old news in the delta. As much as 10% of
all the oil Chevron and other trans-nationals pulled out of the region ended up getting siphoned off by smugglers, the local mosquitoes sucking at the veins of the oil industry with their damned bunkering.
So Ben’s numbers were off this month, and he had crews working all the rigs associated with Robertkiri
very hard tonight, in the hopes of making up for some of the enormous losses expected in the Gulf. Pumping light was just not an option for him now. He had mid-level managers on the phone from
headquarters in San Ramon, the Bollinger Canyon Boys as he called them, and the pressure was ratcheting up.
The damage from hurricane Katrina had put a real crimp in the numbers a few years back, and profits
with them. With all the other multi-nationals were reporting record returns, but Chevron was lagging behind with a quarterly profit of only $3.6 billion. Exxon had turned in three times that amount in spite of
all the damage they sustained on the Gulf Coast this season—a record return for the highest quarterly profit ever achieved by a U.S, company. With that kind of well pressure from the competition, the
Bollinger boys wanted to know why the numbers were down again from the delta, and Ben Flack hated the thought of another long conversation about the lack of security for ongoing operations, the slow
response time of the Mobile Police in the region, the trouble in the local villages.
MOPOL, the Mobile Police that patrolled the delta in shallow drafted boats, was never there when you
needed them, and never really reliable when they did manage to arrive on the scene in a timely manner. A few months back things got really bad when the militants forced their way into Chevron’s Escravos
production facility. MOPOL was nowhere to be found, so Chevron managers had to scream and yell and finally send out one of the company helos to get some security on site. Then the police started shooting
indiscriminately, and four people ended up dead.
Things weren’t so good on Ben’s flow chart that week either, but at least the story never developed legs
to become a PR problem for the Bollinger Boys. It got passing mention on the cable news channels, being quickly buried by other stories. Greta Van Susteren's show, On the Record, was leading the way
on the pop-trial news front, testing one story or another until she found something that would really start rolling. After the fabulous boost the OJ Simpson trial had given the cable news shows, the media moguls
had long ago determined that there was a vast audience out there that they could pull into the news cycle if they anchored their headline queue with at least one celebrity trial story. People who would normally be
watching things like Jerry Springer and Oprah, or reading things like the National Enquirer, would tune in with staggering numbers, and numbers were a thing that the advertisers loved more than anything else.
Numbers were something Ben Flack understood all too well, so he was thankful for Greta, and the pyrotechnics of Hannity and Colmes, or the acerbic arrogance of Bill O’Reilly, all leading shows as FOX
continued its domination of second place CNN and runner up MSNBC. Once Greta got dialed in on a story like that little lost girl on Aruba years ago, you could pretty much write off any possibility that news
worrisome to Bennie would end up bothering the Bollinger Boys back in San Ramon. Greta was giving FOX the same facelift she herself had just undergone, though her nose job did little to change that
annoying habit she had of talking out of one side of her mouth. She was bitch slapping CNN’s Nancy Grace in the ratings night after night with her no nonsense legal analysis, for Greta was all head, and the
soupy emotion of Grace just didn’t seem to resonate with America’s prime time viewers when it came to courtroom drama.
He was thankful for people like Greta, for they kept the real world off the radar screen for most Americans. While they were all busy watching Greta, and Donald Trump, and wondering how they’d fare
if they were washed up on some deserted island with a chance for a big payoff if they played the game right, Ben Flack dealt with the real world, the very real and compelling problem that he stared at every
night and every morning in his production tables. How to keep those numbers up, nudge them yet higher, and keep the folks all nice and warm back home this winter? That was reality as he knew it, and it made
for some particularly uncomfortable nights on his rig, worrying over feeds and flows and well pressure and tanker traffic to the two big terminals on the coast.
Numbers were numbers, a cold hard reality that could not be remedied by going to a commercial break. He was on his own little island out here in the delta, on a hulking metal platform in the middle of a
mangrove swamp. While the folks back home watched Survivor, he was the one with his butt in the chair
so they could keep their thumbs busy on the remote. But things weren’t so good on his little island. Ben’s
numbers were down again, and if things got any worse in the next few days, with militants threatening to launch another major protest or two, he just might have to take the precaution of shutting Robertkiri
down, and that would take another 20,000 barrels off his production list for each day he was down—bad news for him, if not FOX or CNN. Bad news for the boys back in Bollinger Canyon, and
bad news for the folks back home, though they would probably never hear much about it.
The worst of it all was the big shipment scheduled for this very weekend. A damaged Gulf platform for
the new production facility was being shipped in from the states, and Crowley & Company, a highly specialized transport outfit, was already on the scene, moving in equipment they would need for the job.
The real shipment would arrive in 48 hours, towed all the way from the storm ravaged Gulf of Mexico. Rather than replace damaged platforms after the ever more frequent storms, a decision had been taken in
San Ramon to simply move some of the equipment across the Atlantic to the Nigerian Delta, and then build out the Gulf rigs new.
Crowley was able to get the platform all loaded and carefully prepared for the long sea journey, on submersible barges, and moved to the delta in record time. Once on site, they would have no more than
48 hours to remove the sea fastenings and get the equipment shifted up-river to the production site. Most of the work was scheduled for tomorrow night, at the dark of the moon. There was no sense inflaming
the passions of the locals with a daylight move. Government officials had been paid off, MOPOL security was in place, but with protests breaking out in a number of delta villages this week, Ben was still worried.
Tempers were running at a fever pitch due to a new round of government evictions in the larger cities. The Nigerian army was staging pre-dawn raids, and turning people out of their homes by the thousands.
The resulting dislocation had the pansy-assed boys at Amnesty International all in a thither, but worse
than that, it had the locals all stirred up about the sudden influx of indigents looking to find new housing. If
people learned about the Chevron operation, with tensions already at the breaking point, things could get very bad. Poverty, hunger and exploitation makes for a lot of angry people who break stuff.
Flack set his lukewarm coffee down on the desk and leaned back in his swivel chair. He was squinting out the Plexi window, watching a few wildcatters making adjustments to one of the platform well feeds.
The platform itself was like the head of an octopus, for new directional drilling technology allowed umbilicals to snake off in all directions and exploit sites three to five miles away. Robertkiri served as a
collection point and flow station, located well up river in the Nigerian Delta, and surrounded by low islets of mangrove, about 30 kilometers southwest of Port Harcourt. It was one of about 45 facilities Chevron
had in the region, and a good number of them were under Ben Flack’s watch tonight.
Ben was a burly man, with thinning grey hair offset by an equally close cropped grey beard. His forties
had fattened him out a bit in the gut, but the extra weight only seemed to add more presence to his stocky frame. He removed his wire frame glasses, rubbing a sore spot on the bridge of his wide nose, and
reached for a cheesecloth he kept in the desk drawer. With a careful motion, he cleaned the lenses as he craned his neck to look for Mudman.
“Hey Eddie,” he said matter of factly. “Any word from Baylor on Idama?” Inda and Idama were two other Chevron platforms in the region.
Ed Murdoch was making an adjustment on his flow monitors, a computer controlled system running Honeywell-PlantScape and Allen Bradley's Monitoring system on Wonderware MMI. He had come up
through the ranks, working landside operations as a Mud Systems Specialist years ago. Now he was the Control Systems Engineer for Robertkiri, though everyone still called him “Mudman” for an easy handle.
“Not a peep,” said Murdoch.
“Well, he was supposed to call in over an hour ago.”
“Probably still sleeping,” said Mudman as he bit off the end of a granola bar and tossed the wrapping
paper into his round file. The early morning light off the sea reflected through the Plexiglas storm windows and glinted on his hair gel. Eddie was the polar opposite of Ben Flack, a wiry, round shouldered man
who kept his thin, dark hair slick and tight on his knobby head. Earplugs from his new Apple iPod dangled from his lean face, and gave the impression that he was permanently plugged in to his systems
monitors—an engineer goth, complete with a vampire tattoo on his exposed left shoulder
“I don’t like this,” said Flak. He was rocking in his chair now, moving his bulk this way and that, and for
all the oil in the Nigerian Delta, there was just not enough to prevent an annoying squeak each time he moved, which only added to the strain in his head right now.
“You worried about the locals again?” Mudman still seemed more interested in his granola bar than anything bothering Flack.
“It’s that damn, militia again,” said Flack, venting his frustration. “Didn’t they round up the ringleaders back in August when we had to shut down?”
“Yup. Asshole called for the destruction of Nigeria, or something. But that’s what got the locals all shit
mouthed—they picked up Asari and accused him of treason. Then the locals go ape shit and start taking it out on the oil companies.”
“Well, why the hell do they have to pick on my platforms?” Ben complained. “I got numbers to meet,
here, and we’ve got an installation this weekend. What is it this time? What’s eatin’ those lard ass locals now? They still pissed off about Asari?”
“Who knows,” said Mudman. “I doubt the guy had a fair trial. He’s probably rotting away in some army jailhouse.”
“Yeah, right. Look at this shit on the wire.”
Flack was holding a Reuters news feed, where a statement from the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, or NDPVF for short, was looking very threatening again. He put his eyeglasses back on and read.
“We will unleash upon the government and its cohorts, violence and mayhem never before
reported in the history of the Nigerian state. We will kill every iota of oil operations in the Niger Delta. We will destroy anything and everything. We will challenge our enemies in our territory and
feed them to the vultures. In line with this, we herein order that all staff, property and operations in the Niger Delta be totally evacuated in the next 48 hours. Shell, Chevron, Mobil, Total and
others should take note. Their installations will not be spared. We will come after everything, living and not living. Failure to comply will result in death, grave sabotage and every other thinkable vice.”
“They’re coming after everything—living or not living?” Mudman had a sarcastic grin on his face. “Failure
to comply will result in every other thinkable vice? Such eloquence. This guy sounds like he went to college!”
“Can you believe that shit?” Ben could think of a few vices he would like to revisit, but the threat implicit
in this latest press release was rather pointed, and he reached for a bottle of chewable aspirin instead.
“Forty-eight hours, they say, and I’ve got an installation to worry about while they figure out how they’re
gonna feed pipeline to the vultures. Better get on the phone to Baylor,” he concluded. “I want to make sure he knows about this.”
“Think we ought to call MOPOL first? I mean, it took them hours to get here last August.”
Flack’s anger and frustration ticked up another notch. “Christ, this is the last fucking thing I need this
weekend, Mudman. I got Crowley off shore in six hours, and then we’ve got to move some heavy duty
facilities up river and get them anchored so the engineers can start setup on Monday. This is really the last fucking thing I need!”
“Right,” said Mudman, adjusting his iPod headset. “I’ll call Baylor.”
About 20 kilometers downriver, a small flotilla of three Invader Class high-powered tugs had already
arrived offshore. Capable of only a 150,000 pound pull, the Invaders were on the scene for steerage and positioning more than anything else. The real work was being done by a much bigger vessel, an
American Salvor class boat, capable of handling a 600,000 pound pull. The lighter boats would keep the cargo stabilized until it could be properly positioned at the production site. Then they would wait out the
tides until the platform feet settled nicely on the silted river bottom. The submersible barge would be floated out from underneath the platform, and Crowley would whisk its tugs out to sea again, hopefully
before daylight. The locals would awaken to see another massive, hulking metal shape deftly positioned by the tugs, another de facto occupation of delta turf, and secure control of the oil and gas beneath it.
They would be another six weeks getting the platform up and running, retrofitting, repairing and positioning pipeline feeds. But, with any luck, the beachhead of this next invasion would be secured within
48 hours. That was the news the Bollinger Boys were really waiting on. The bothersome calls from middle-managers haggling with Bennie Flack over his pump numbers were only reflex. Ben knew the drill,
and the drilling that went with it.
He would do what he could to tamp down this latest round of unrest with the local militants, he would
keep Robertkiri running as long as possible, and get on the phone to MOPOL in a few hours, when the American Salvor was slated to reach his far horizon. No use waking them up just now. He’d never get
anyone on the phone who could make something happen at this hour. Let them roll off their Nigerian whores and have a bit to eat first. Then it was just a matter of money in the right hands, and perhaps a
few bullets in the right bellies, but the platform would install on schedule this weekend. Of that he was dead sure.
Please visit this story again soon. The noel continues with Day II here.
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