— Chapter 6 —
Cash for Clunkers
”People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me: who wants to be surrounded by garbage?”
–Imelda Marcos
True to their ideology, the Neo-Luddites were using a horse-drawn wagon, retrofit with a cage for large animals, to transport us away from the Seattle area. The guy who shut us up into the caged wagon shot me a grin through the bars. His teeth were yellow and snarled.
“Sorry it ain’t nicer, but then again, you’re no stranger to horses leading you around, are you?”
I looked at him, but said nothing.
Hugo and I had been relieved of everything but our clothing, and our hands had been bound behind our backs with duct tape. The Neo-Luddites found the whole Man-in-White thing intensely amusing, so they let me keep my white poncho, even though I wasn’t in on the joke.
There were boards put up between the cage and the bench to prevent prisoners from reaching through the bars to interfere with the driver. Nothing to do but sit and look at the scenery... and our captors.
I stole glances at the fighters escorting us from horseback, taking care not to look too long lest they suspect I was sizing them up. They were all armed, and all except one looked rather pleased with themselves. Hugo Pelwicz must have been quite the prize, even with one hand reduced to a hastily-bandaged stump.
The rain was either starting to let up or we were moving out of the cloud cover, because after about an hour on the road there was hardly anything coming down at all. I looked over at Hugo, who had gotten past the pain stages of having his left hand ruined and was now staring daggers at the person who had shot it off.
The sniper had rendezvoused with the fighters at the wagon. She was a thin, black-haired woman with a constant frown on her angular, bony face. Her rifle was either an M14 or an M1A, and it had a decent-looking scope mounted on the receiver. I shivered when their eyes met. Seeing undiluted, bald-faced hatred shoot between two people like that was rare, even with the world as it was.
I looked down at my legs and smiled bitterly to myself. With the rain subsiding, the new sound in my ears was the clop-clopping of hooves on asphalt. Apparently even being one of the last fifty thousand or so people in the world wasn’t enough to escape that sound.
Suddenly it was much darker. It was cooler, but more humid. I was disoriented for a moment before realizing I must have dozed. I had been awake by then for a little over twenty-four hours, and it had been a strenuous twenty-four at that. I straightened up and felt a painful crick in my neck. I tried to work it out as best I could without my hands available. I must have fallen asleep with my head down on my chest.
I looked around. We were still on the road, and the Neo-Luddites had gas-powered camping lamps to provide some light. They didn’t seem very vigilant, and they obviously gave no shit about light discipline, but really, who was going to challenge them out here? Just from their assault rifles, this little band who had taken me was probably the most heavily-armed outfit in all of North America. I wondered how the Neo-Luddites down in Brazil would have measured up.
There were a couple of quiet conversations going on between the fighters. The sniper was hanging back by herself, nearly blending into the night with her black horse and dark uniform. I looked over at Hugo. He was either asleep or pretending to be asleep, which was probably a good call.
I laid on my side and tried to sleep too.
* * *
Being dragged out of the wagon woke me up very quickly.
“We’re here, sunshine!” guffawed the snaggle-toothed fighter from before. I blinked, a little disoriented, but quickly remembered what had happened to me.
It was day, but the sky was overcast. Hugo and I stood before an imposing fortress with walls made entirely out of junked and scrapped cars. Corrugated sheet metal had been riveted and welded together in a harlequin array of colors to make up the outer layer. It felt as though I could contract tetanus just by looking at it. The front gate was black wrought iron, so out of place with its elegance that it looked like it had been swiped from some country club or upscale community. For all I knew, it had been.
My arms had gone numb from being back at a strange angle for so long, which was probably a good thing because my handlers were gripping me by my right arm as they led us into the compound. Once inside, two sentries shut the gate behind us and barred it, and the two carriage horses were unhitched and led to a watering trough with the rest of them.
A great sheet of rigid aircraft aluminum blocked out the sky over the commons area and the two ramshackle buildings, held up by a single pillar in the center. Next to the pillar was a single Jeep Wrangler missing its hood and roll cage. Its engine was running, but nobody was near it. As we walked by I saw that alligator clamps were on the Jeep’s battery, with the wires leading up the pillar to the aluminum sheet.
I looked away and saw Hugo appraising it too. I wanted to ask for insight, but these seemed like the sort of people who’d put a rifle butt into your stomach for talking.
There were lots of fighters about, but there were also families. Children ran around a grassy area away from the main road through the compound, playing freeze tag while men and women cooked something which smelled meaty and delicious on several charcoal grills lined up with each other. Since I’d gotten some sleep, my body now turned its attention to complaining about food, grumbling at the smell of a barbeque going.
Some of the children stopped to stare at us, and I saw a couple of them looking to adults, pointing our way as they said something. The adults quickly shushed them and turned them away.
That’s right. Pretend everything is happy fun times here in your paradise of rust and weeds. All these weapons your fighters have are just for show. Don’t let the bingo run long, the guy turning the number mixer has to go work over the prisoners afterwards!
We were led into one of the two buildings. Inside the first room was a workshop, the walls lined with hand tools and guidebooks on carpentry and metalworking. The room behind it was some kind of agricultural storage room, full of bags of seeds and fertilizer, and it was here we were deposited without a word, our bonds still in place.
Our captors shut the door behind them and I heard the rasp of wood on metal as a board was slid across the door on the other side. Dust floated in the shafts of light coming through the small holes and gouges in the thin sheet-metal and plywood walls. It was the only light to be had in there.
Hugo and I looked at each other. He let out a sigh. “I don’t see how this could turn out well,” he said.
I looked around the room. “Yeah, if this is the prison, then these guys aren’t in the habit of keeping prisoners.”
“We’re alive only because they want me to share information with them,” said Hugo. “It concerns their efforts to counter the pony AI in that game.” He shrugged. “They can have it. It won’t do them any good. The trick’s gonna be making them realize that.”
I heard the wooden beam slide out of the way again, and the door opened. The blond man with the beard and the shemagh was there, along with a toadie carrying a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle. The man had a paper plate in each hand, and on each plate was a decent-sized steak. It smelled wonderful. My stomach growled again, and he looked at me and smiled.
“My name’s Blevins,” he said. He let a few seconds go by before speaking again. He didn’t move from the door. I looked him over and saw my CZ sitting in his holster and my knife clipped to the inside of his pocket. Bastard.
“It’s a hard world, these days,” said Blevins, “and the only people left are hard people. Otherwise they’d have let that AI deceive them already. You fellas look like you go hard.” He nodded to Hugo. “Especially you... general. Has it been like old times out there?”
Hugo glared at the man. “Worse,” he said quietly.
Blevins nodded. “I hear you.” He knelt down and placed one of the steaks on the ground in front of Hugo. “Suppertime. Eat up, then we’ll have a chat, you and me.”
Blevins looked over at me, a hostile spark in his eyes. “The Man in White. Looks like the blackouts aren’t too creative with their nicknames, but you can’t fault them for false advertising, at least.” He knelt down to my level, but didn’t give me the other steak. “So what’s your deal? The AI’s got you Pied-Pipering those poor souls to their deaths now?”
“I only went to Seattle for this gentleman here,” I said.
Blevins stood and kicked me in the chest, aggravating the tender new skin there. I fell onto my side and instinctively tucked my knees up, my eyes full of tears as I started coughing. “Of course you only went to Seattle for ‘that gentleman there,’” he snarled. “Celestia wanted to keep him from falling into our hands, so she sent you, and I bet it’s hard to say ‘no’ with a tongue as far up her cunt as you have yours.”
I bristled, forgetting the pain. “Look, Blevins, I’m still human because I don’t want to upload. I’m the only one left out of all my friends and family. I could have followed them, but I didn’t, because I hated Celestia that much for taking them from me. But we’ve lost, man. It’s over. She won, and the world’s gone to shit. If I can at least make people a little bit happy in thinking they’re going to escape such to some cheesy magical fairyland, fine. It’s a better use of my time than standing watch over a junkyard, frowning at the horizon.”
Blevins scowled at me, and I scowled right back up at him, looking as defiant as I could look with a chest alternating between stinging and throbbing. His scowl slowly changed into a smirk, then a smile, then a laugh. He dropped the paper plate in front of me, the steak nearly bouncing off of it and into the grass.
“Sorry, boys, we’re fresh out of A1. I don’t think you’ll mind too much, right?” He fixed me with a dangerous look. “Let me know if it tastes better than Celestia’s pussy. I’m betting that it does.”
He turned to leave, his crony slipping out of his way. Before they could close the door, Hugo called out “Wait!”
Blevins looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Aren’t you going to free our hands, at least?”
Blevins snorted. “Like I said, you’re hard men. You’ve gotta be, to pull off what you did in Seattle. I’m not going to underestimate you. Eat like that, and deal with it.” He marched off, leaving the fighter to shut and bar the door again.
“I think that guy’s got a fixation,” I muttered to Hugo. He let out a brief chuckle and nodded.
Eating the steak was hard with my hands behind my back, but hunger inspired me to adapt and overcome. I took bites into my mouth, working the gristle off and spitting it out back onto the plate. I could hear Hugo doing something similar. It was the first meat I’d had in over two years that hadn’t come out of a can. It was overcooked, and it had no seasoning, but my taste buds were in heaven.
Once we were finished eating, I had to ask.
“What’s the deal with this whole ‘Man in White’ thing? You were the first person I’d ever heard call me that.”
Hugo tried to get into a comfortable sitting position. “When I’d take a trip out to one of Celestia’s camera-towers to get new information, she’d keep telling me that a man in white would escort me to an upload point. She told me not to attempt the trip on my own under any circumstances, so I didn’t.”
I frowned in thought. “Then how do these guys know about it too?”
Hugo shrugged, then winced. It had probably hurt to do that. “Can’t say for sure. The only people I told were the folks I had to live among, but then that one gunman showed up and tried to kill me. If I had to guess, I’d say Amish has moles living amongst the blackouts in the city. I was told about you three months before you showed up—plenty of time for someone to blab to home base that I was about to disappear.” He shook his head. “It’s a kick in the head, isn’t it? There’re so few people left, and OPSEC is still an issue. It’s a shame.”
He tried looking through one of the bright slits in the wall. “Did you see that cover they have over this trash heap?”
I nodded. “Do you know what it’s for?”
He gave a wan smile, still looking outside. “Seems like someone here’s got an ounce or two of brains. That cover’s to defeat thermal imaging. They’re using the engine as a generator to heat coils in between the layers of aluminum, then the aluminum acts as a spreader. It blocks visible and infrared light, so Celestia can’t see what’s going on down here.”
I had to admit I was a little impressed. “So Celestia’s got thermal-vision satellites too?”
The older man looked over at me in merry disbelief. “You kiddin’? Son, she’s got all of ‘em. Any military asset you could name, she’s taken it over. American, Russian, Chinese, RUFF, ZARF, KLONDIKE compartments...”
I nodded. “So, in other words, she makes Joshua from Wargames look like ‘Hello world.’”
Hugo shook his head a little with a smile. “More like someone put ‘5318008’ into a calculator and turned it upside down so it said ‘BOOBIES.’”
We both laughed, but it didn’t last long. I heard the door unbar, and when it opened, I was greeted with the sight of two extremely large men with two extremely serious looks on their faces. Hugo stood without being asked, holding his head up proudly.
“General Pelwicz, if you’d come with us, please,” said one of the men.
Hugo looked to me, not an ounce of fear in his eyes. “I’ll tell them my story, son,” he said. “If I come back, I’ll do the same for you.”
They left me there alone, in the dimness.
The blue-hot flame in front of my face jolted slightly with a gentle punch to my back.
”Hey Greg, check this out.”
I killed the torch and lifted the welding mask from my face, turning to see Adam standing there with his usual blank expression. I looked past him. All the other work in the shop had ceased, and in fact we were the only two still in there.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s the news,” said Adam.
I followed him upstairs into the foreman’s office, where everyone was crowded around his shitty old TV. I peered between two heads and saw that it was tuned to CNN.
On the screen, Wolf Blitzer was speaking with an overweight man in a suit in a split-screen talking-head format. Below their faces was the text “JAPAN APPROVES ‘DIGITAL IMMORTALITY’ CLINICS,” and below that was CNN’s usual headline ticker, now dominated with tidbits of information about the clinics.
I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. I’d heard of those rich assholes who paid more than what my parents’ house cost to reserve a spot in a cryogenic tank. This was just more of that shit. Just then, however, I heard a figure that made it a bit more significant.
“Ten thousand, Mr. Ehrlich?”
The split-screen cut to just the overweight suit, and the text below showed his name: Jan Ehrlich, Marketing Director, Hofvarpnir Studios. Mr. Ehrlich nodded.
“In the first week, Mr. Blitzer,” he said in a very thick German accent. “The first week. Already we have appointments and waiting lists forming at the Equestrian Experience centers in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. We’re working hard to get even more built to keep up with demand.”
“And this isn’t alarming, that your company is responsible to something so controversial?”
“Everything that takes place has been declared legal by the Japanese government, and the process is entirely elective. Its primary appeal is currently to persons with extreme health issues, but in all cases we have been able to follow up with the people who transfer to the online system and they report extreme levels of satisfaction with their choice.”
“But we can’t be sure, Mr. Ehrlich, that these respondents are not—”
“Mr. Blitzer, I assure you, the architecture of the Equestria Online game—”
“—just prerecorded actors putting a voice to a game character—”
“—have defeated all attempts to disprove our claims that the entities within—”
“—in an attempt to misrepresent the outcome of these ‘uploads.’”
“—are anything other than real-time human consciousnesses.”
Wolf held up a hand. “Mr. Ehrlich, you must at least understand why this has many people nervous about the implications. Ten thousand people are no longer with us—”
“They are still with us, Mr. Blitzer, I could bring one of them up on this PonyPad right now,” said Ehrlich, holding up the same kind of light-blue PonyPad my mom had.
Wolf shook his head. “I’d be more interested in speaking with the CEO to get her thoughts on this development, Mr. Ehrlich, but Hofvarpnir has so far been tight-lipped on her whereabouts.”
“Our CEO values her privacy, Mr. Blitzer, and Hofvarpnir is not currently in a position to share her thoughts on these matters, much less firsthand.”
“Do you even know where she is?” said Wolf immediately.
Jan Ehrlich pursed his lips and lowered the PonyPad. “I’m not going to discuss that today, Mr. Blitzer.”
They went on. I learned about the $15,000 cost to non-Japanese citizens, the wait list for uploading, and the promise that Wolf would receive a future interview with the AI itself and see first-hand how amazing it is.
“Jesus,” said Adam, shaking his head. “Ten thousand people, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Ted, another of my coworkers folded his arms as we all filed out of the office. “Why would anyone do that?” he wondered out loud. “That’s Kevorkian shit right there. Jonestown shit. How could anyone anywhere rule that as anything but assisted suicide? People die thinking they’re going to be in a video game?”
“I’ve got a niece who plays that pony game all the time,” said Adam. “There might be some kind of subliminal mind-control thing going on there.”
That didn’t sound right to me. “Oh, give me a break,” I said. “Mind control? It’s all in how you sell it! You’re underestimating how gullible people can be.”
“There’s one of those Equestrian game places up in Canton,” said Ted, “and, hell, last I heard there were two in Akron.”
I looked down at the floor as I walked back to my workbench, suspecting there would be protests.
Boy, were there ever.
The door flew open, and I was thrown back into the present.
Hugo was sporting a new shiner under his right eye, and his mouth was oozing blood down into his short gray beard. The two large fellows who had taken him out were the ones who had brought him back in, and they shoved him to the ground as they let go of him. Hugo had barely come to a stop before they were already on their way back out the door.
I walked on my knees over to him. “Didn’t go so well, I take it,” I said.
“He’s mad,” said Hugo. “Blevins is mad that I just spilled everything, but mostly I think it’s because, deep down, he knows it won’t make any difference. So he had his goons slap me around a bit until he felt better.”
“At least he didn’t kill you,” I said.
“About that... we’re both gonna be shot tomorrow.” He nodded his head at the wall. “Out there, where Celestia’s satellites can see.”
“Oh, shit.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Which means we gotta escape tonight.”
Escape would require something sharp to cut the duct tape around our wrists, and we’d have to find it before it got too dark. I seriously doubted either of us would be let out of the room again before it was time for the big show, so I started inspecting the seams in the walls for broken welds, popped rivets, or anything which could provide an edge.
Hugo watched me for a moment. “What’re you doing?”
“Looking for something sharp that might be able to cut through this tape,” I said.
“Hm.” Hugo started looking around too.
After a few minutes, he sent a “psst” my way. I looked over at him, and saw him nodding down at one of the struts holding up the shelving for the fertilizer and weed-killer.
“It’s rusty,” he said. I knee-waddled over to take a look.
The lighting wasn’t perfect, but I could see that a bit of the strut acting as a leg for the shelf did indeed look rusted through. I shifted to a sitting position and nudged it with the toe of my shoe. It didn’t move. I gave it a little kick, and a small section broke off, leaving a jagged portion sticking up. Just the ticket.
“We’re in business,” I said, shooting Hugo a grin. Before I could get down to cutting the tape, however, he stopped me.
“Let’s wait until nightfall,” he said. “I’ve got a hunch they’ll be checking on us again before dark.”
“Good thinking.” I sat back and leaned on the wall. “How’s your hand?”
“It hurt like hell, but I can’t really feel it now,” said Hugo. “My arms’re gonna be stiff once I get these off.”
“I hear you,” I said. I moved my shoulders back and forth experimentally, trying to improve the circulation to my arms. “Though getting out of here is only the start. I have no idea where we are, or where the nearest upload center is.”
Hugo smiled. “Still thinking about the mission, huh?”
“Always,” I said.
He studied me for a moment, then smiled. “General Hugo Pelwicz, United States Air Force. Happy to know you. I am—well, was—the CO of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.”
I felt my eyes widen. “NORAD?”
He nodded. “Amish thought I had the key to dealing with Celestia once and for all, but hell, I know better than anyone how far beyond challenging her we are.”
“What’d you tell them in your interrogation?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Whatever they wanted to know,” he said. “Launch codes, override procedures, bunker positions, didn’t matter to me.”
I whistled quietly. “I dunno... launch codes? Like... nuclear launch codes?”
“Sure,” said Hugo. “Why not? They can do approximately jack shit with them.”
I felt a flutter of nervousness in my sternum. “But those missiles are still out there,” I said, “just sitting in their silos. What if they successfully send out a nuclear missile?”
“Send it where?” he said with an easy, confident grin. “To do what? You can’t nuke Celestia. It ain’t that simple.”
“Because she’s got backup systems?”
“I’m sure she does,” said Hugo, “but that isn’t what I mean.” He thought for a moment, then looked up at me again. “Let me ask you this: do you know how many nuclear weapons were set off after people started uploading in serious numbers?”
I rummaged through my memory. “Three,” I said. “Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Bellevue.”
“Those are the ones the news reported, certainly,” said Hugo, “but what did those three weapons have in common?”
I considered the facts. “They were all pretty low-yield,” I said.
The older man nodded. “All of them were smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. What else?”
“Nobody claimed responsibility for any of them.”
“That’s certainly true, but the world was searching for an enemy then. Nobody wanted to be on the shit list of nearly every single government out there. But what about the bombs themselves? Think practically.”
It took me a little while to remember. “Oh! That’s right! They were all detonated at ground level.”
Hugo smiled and nodded. “Which means...?”
“Which means they weren’t delivered by a missile.”
He laughed. “Hah! Exactly. A missile would have airbursted. I’ll tell you now that two nuclear missiles were, in fact, launched in anger, and not too long before the Seattle business. India and Pakistan had a nuclear exchange.”
“Oh my God!” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “I never heard anything about that.”
“You didn’t hear anything about it,” said Hugo, “because Celestia suppressed the news of it, predicting it would incite panic. But there was something even more clever behind it.”
I listened silently while looking at the ground. Knowing Celestia, I had little doubt of any of it.
General Pelwicz continued. “By the time this happened, you see, Celestia had already slipped into every military network in the world. It was probably a priority of hers. NORAD was no exception. She took control from us: ‘commandeered,’ as she put it. All I could do was sit there in Cheyenne Mountain and look at her face on my PC monitor while the strat-maps and satellite trackers up on the big screens showed us what she was doing. Every couple of weeks we’d bring in the most knowledgeable team of computer dorks we could find to try and get Celestia out of our system, but the result was always the same.”
“They failed?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Hugo. “She kept convincing them to upload. Cheyenne was so out of my control that she actually landed a contract to get an Equestria Experience chair put into our bunker.” He laughed, as though he still couldn’t believe it years later. “Everything she did was legal, because she could change the law to whatever she needed. We weren’t allowed to stop people from using the chair. I had to watch some of my staff—my own goddamn staff members—upload. All there was to do down there was talk to her. She kept assuring us that she was keeping ‘everypony’ safe on our behalf. When the India-Pakistan exchange occurred, we were among the few people outside of the two nations’ governments to know the significance of what happened that day.”
Hugo had me. I leaned forward slightly. “Well, what did happen?”
“Again, by that time Celestia was already in every military system on the planet. She could have prevented the launches in the first place, but she didn’t. She let them happen. Then, after the birds were in the air, she redirected them. They flew out over the Indian Ocean, and Celestia had them collide in mid-air, at the apex of their flights. The two delivery systems just fell into the ocean, no nuclear blast, nothing.”
I tried to think of something to say, but the only thing that came out was the lame “Wow, that’s pretty impressive.”
“Celestia was sending a message,” said Hugo, “and that message was ‘I am in complete control.’ From then on, she stymied every single military action around the globe. If a computer system was being used to kill people, she put the kibosh on it. No JDAMs, no ICBMs, no radar, no sonar, no radio nets, no artillery computation... she wouldn’t even fucking allow us to use Morse code. We were back to World-War-I-era tech in a lot of cases. It’s the major reason why all of the conflicts were so low-intensity and low-casualty, considering the scope of them.”
“So she was minimizing casualties,” I said.
“She was minimizing deaths,” corrected Hugo. “Wounds and injuries and sicknesses she has no problem with, because thanks to her legal chicanery she got uploading classified as a medical treatment pretty much globally.”
“The amendment to the PON-E act, yeah.” I remembered how Celestia had courted as many doctors as she could to upload. The sudden dearth of medical experts had helped “encourage” Congress to seek alternative ways of meeting the country’s healthcare needs. The Washington Post had even front-paged a picture of the new Equestrian Experience chairs at Walter Reed for veterans to use as an “escape”—first figurative, then eventually literal—from their combat wounds.
Hugo nodded. “Once ponies got recognized as actual people, the rest was easy.” He sighed. “And there were some projects Celestia had that she wouldn’t let even me in on. Oh, she liked to hint—she could really be a tease when she wanted to be—but she never filled me in completely.”
I chuckled. “Did she hint about her ‘Man in White’ project?”
Hugo mulled that for a moment, then said “Actually, I’m surprised she’s needed you to do this at all.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Heh. Never mind, son, never mind. You’re here, which means it’s what she wants.”
The conversation died there. We waited for the sun to set.
* * *
Hugo’s prediction turned out to be wrong. Nobody did come to check on us, nor were we brought any dinner (though I could smell more grilling through the holes in the wall). It seemed rather lax, like this compound made up of derelict cars and scrap metal was more of a summer camp than a fortress.
I guessed even the Neo-Luddites were having trouble finding people to fight anymore.
Once the sound of people talking outside had gone completely quiet, Hugo and I made our move. The duct tape was no match for the sharp bit of metal on the strut, and once we had our arms free we invested a bit of time in getting the numbness and stiffness out of them before working on getting out of the storage room. As soon as I was done with that, my Swiss Army poncho came off, and I left it there on the ground. The Man in White was Celestia’s thing, not mine.
With our hands free, it was easy enough to bend back some of the second-rate sheet metal on the wall (never go on an adventure without your gloves!) and make a small doggy-door for us to crawl through. After peeking out to make sure the coast was clear, Hugo signaled back to me with a thumbs-up and we crawled outside.
With the thermal cover overhead, blocking out the moonlight and starlight, it was nearly pitch black inside the compound, which suited us just fine. I hadn’t realized how stuffy and smelly the storeroom had been until I was back out in cool, fresh night air. Hugo tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to his silhouette. We were still crouched by our doggy-door.
“The front gate looks like it’s just something that latches from the inside,” he whispered, jerking a thumb at the entrance. “I should be able to take care of it even with this one bum hand. Get the Jeep disconnected and pick me up by the gate on the way out.”
“Yes sir,” I said, and it might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw his silhouette roll his eyes.
“I ain’t a general anymore, son,” he whispered. “We’re all just folk now.”
“Heh, is that a reference to—”
“Get moving!” he hissed, and without waiting for me, he started creeping out towards the gate.
I scanned my approach to the Jeep. I didn’t see anyone out. The Neo-Luddites probably didn’t bother with sentries, because nobody was really left out there to raid them at this point. Keeping low, and my head on a swivel, I snuck out to the Jeep and had a look at the setup for the wires.
It was just as I had seen it coming in: simple alligator clips running the car’s battery power up the pillar. I heard a quiet metallic creak and looked over my shoulder to see Hugo sliding the latch off of the large iron gate. He started pulling one side open, and I turned my attention back to the battery. The alligator clips came free easily enough, and I tossed them aside. I was working my way around to the driver’s side entrance when I heard a door on the other building fly open.
It was Blevins and a little boy. Blevins had a Kalashnikov rifle on his back, and the two of them were heading towards the Jeep. If I got in the Jeep and tried to make a break for it, I was fully convinced he’d have no trouble getting a bead on me and shooting me dead before I could even stop to pick up Hugo. Even as dark as it was, if I moved away from cover I knew I’d cast a silhouette. I did the only thing I could do that wouldn’t result in me getting shot: I slid around to the far side of the pillar and waited.
Their conversation faded into earshot. “—Zeke with his pranks again. He can’t get it in his head that it’s serious we keep this thing up.”
“Lemme do it this time, Dad!” said a voice that could only have belonged to the little boy.
“All right, fine. You know what to do, right?” said Blevins.
“Yeah!”
They sounded like they were standing right by the engine now. I slipped to the edge and peeked around the corner of the pillar. Blevins had his back to me, and I saw him lift up his son to be able to see down into the engine bay.
“Okay, red on red, black on black. Be sure not to touch anything metal.”
“Geez, dad, I know.”
I looked at Blevins’s loadout. The AK was slung under one arm, and he was holding his kid; I wouldn’t be able to just pull that off of him. However, it also meant he wouldn’t be able to access it quickly if I surprised him. I looked further down. On his right hip, right where I’d last seen it, was my pistol and knife.
Much more accessible.
I quickly worked out what I was going to do. I crept towards the two from behind and, in a single deft movement, pulled the knife from his pocket with my left hand and the pistol from his holster with my right. Before Blevins could turn around or put his son down, I jabbed him in the back of the neck with the muzzle of the CZ.
“Don’t make a noise, or I shoot. This’ll go right through you and into your kid, too, and we both know it,” I whispered into his ear.
Blevins said nothing.
“Take a step back from the car,” I instructed. We moved in tandem, almost as though we were dancing.
“Now put your son down and then put your hands in the air. Slow is good.”
Blevins slowly lowered the boy to the ground. “Dad?” said the boy.
I kicked Blevins away and snatched the boy up, putting the pistol to his head. I hid my head behind his, looking at Blevins with my right eye. He’d gotten his AK unslung and was aiming it at us.
“My heart and my head are covered,” I said to him. “You can’t hit my vital spots without hitting your kid too. If you shoot me anywhere else, I will murder your son.”
I saw the rifle barrel waver a bit. The boy squirmed a little, but I had him fast.
“Dad, what’s happening?” He sounded close to tears.
“I’m not out to hurt anyone,” I said calmly. “All I want is to get out of here. Put your rifle into the back of the Jeep. Gently.”
Blevins sidled up to the short bed in the back of the Jeep and placed the rifle there as though it were a soufflé.
“Dad, help me!”
“You love your son, that’s good,” I said. “I promise I won’t hurt him if you just let us go. You’ve talked to the general, and he’s told you everything you wanted to know. There’s no reason to pursue us.”
Blevins closed his eyes. “Revelation 6:2: ‘And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.’”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you think I’m a horseman of the apocalypse?”
Blevins nodded, his eyes still closed. “And Celestia is your steed. To be honest, though, I didn’t think you’d be capable of this.”
I cocked my head in a shrug, the pistol still to the boy’s head. “Well, I guess you were right, Blevins: looks like I do go hard. Now back up.”
Blevins gave us some space, his hands still up by his chest. I was hunched behind the kid as I moved to the driver’s side. In addition to the engine already running, the Jeep had been stripped down to little more than two seats, a gearshift, and a steering wheel, so I would be able to quickly climb in and gun it.
I let the boy go and pushed him towards his father. While Blevins was busy catching his son, I jumped into the driver’s seat, put the CZ in my lap, threw the Jeep into gear, and launched it towards the gate. There was shouting behind me as I drove; Blevins was already calling the cavalry.
I slowed down for Hugo, but the old man was on the ball. He ran alongside the Jeep and jumped in once I was going slow enough. With Hugo seated, I rocketed out of the Neo-Luddite base, leaving the tangled wall of rusted cars in the red glow of my taillights.
With no windshield, I had to shout to be heard over the noise of the wind as I barrelled down the road. “We might have pursuers!”
Without a word, Hugo nodded and slithered back into the bed to take up an awkward firing position with the AK. He covered our back, using the lip of the tailgate as support since his left hand was gone.
Trees and road signs flashed by in the headlights. After a couple of miles, it became clear that the Neo-Luddites weren’t going to risk any of their fighters or horses trying to get us back. I followed the signs directing us east. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Seattle as possible.
Before long, we picked up I-90 and the route to Yakima by way of Ellensburg. We were both sure there would be an Equestrian Experience center in Yakima. All the same, I had to stop in Ellensburg for gas.
Aside from the rampant overgrowth seen in every small town, Ellensburg was nearly untouched. As we exited I-90 into town, Hugo clumsily got back into the passenger seat and pointed back at the bed.
"That's a Yugoslavian AK we got back there, not bad," he said. "Been a long time since I handled one of those."
"You a connoisseur?" I asked.
"Nah, just an appreciator." He looked around as we drove along, his brow knit.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you going to try siphoning? Gas pumps need to be powered, you know.”
“I know,” I said, “but watch this.”
Heading down Main Street, we found a Circle K. As soon as I pulled in, the lights in the convenience store came on and the amber displays on the gas pumps lit up. Hugo looked at me, spooked.
I smiled. “General, sir, you know better than anyone that Celestia’s always watching.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said, rubbing his head. “I mean, I know what she’s capable of, but it’s just so weird to see it in practice like this.”
I hopped out of the Jeep and started fueling. Hugo stepped out as well and walked over to me.
“So what’re you gonna do after I’m gone?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “Find a new PonyPad, get a new tasking from Celestia, get someone else to an upload center.”
Hugo was watching the gallon counter go up. “How long do you think you can keep this up?”
“‘Til I’m as old as you, I’m thinking.” We both chuckled.
“That’s how it was supposed to be for me,” he said. “After it all came down, I thought I’d live out the rest of my days wandering an empty world, just like you. I felt that Celestia had humiliated me, that she’d done what she did just to show how powerless I really was. I felt that because it made me angry with her, and that helped me to avoid her. I just kept eatin’ my own anger, but you can’t stay fed on it. It felt only fitting that I’d settle down as a blackout in Seattle, the place we couldn’t save. But Celestia got to me, out on those camera towers of hers, while I was scavenging. She knew just what to say. She had me crying by the end. Crying out of hope I thought I'd given up years ago.”
The gas pump stopped violently, making me jump a bit. “Guess it’s full,” I muttered, pulling the nozzle free and hanging it up. “So what did she say to you to make you change your mind?”
Hugo gently punched my arm. “That’s between me and her, son. Mark my words, though, she’ll know how to bait your hook when she finally decides to reel you in.”
I smirked and put the gas cap back on. “Well, we’ll see.”
* * *
The ride to Yakima was as quiet as it could be without a windshield. General Hugo Pelwicz, NORAD’s top commander, had apparently shared with me everything he cared to. Either that, or he didn’t want to have to shout over the road and the wind.
Dawn was breaking by the time we reached the city. Yakima itself had been trashed, though the damage seemed mostly limited to rioting rather than out-and-out battling. Windows had been methodically smashed out, signs of fires here and there, but most of the buildings were intact and, more importantly, the infrastructure was in working shape. I found this out when Celestia started turning on streetlights to guide us in to the Equestria Experience center in the middle of town.
The unassuming gray building was missing its pony out front. It had probably been destroyed or stolen long ago. I parked the Jeep and, as we approached, all of the lights inside came on. It seemed odd to me that both the building and the stuff inside would be in such good shape.
I went in with Hugo, and before the doors had even finished sliding shut behind us, Celestia’s face appeared on the large monitor above the receptionist’s desk in the waiting room.
“Good morning, General Pelwicz! Good morning, Gregory. I’m immensely pleased and relieved that the two of you have made it here safely. Your fortitude and resourcefulness have served you well.”
“Didn’t have to be all that resourceful,” I said. “The Neo-Luddites are a fucking joke. No sentries, no proper cells, they just—”
Hugo cleared his throat.
“Oh, right. You probably want to be on your way, huh?”
“I believe you know the layout of my emigration centers by now, Gregory,” said Celestia, smiling that smile of hers.
I bowed with a flourish. “Indeed! Right this way, good sir,” I said, and led a laughing Hugo to the back, where sat a row of stalls. Predictably, two chairs had been extended, with the lights above them on.
Hugo got comfortable in one of the chairs and, while sitting up, extended his good hand to me. “Good luck out there, Greg,” he said.
“Or is it ‘Man in White?’” he added with a smile. I took his hand and shook it. He gripped it surprisingly tightly.
“Nah, just Greg,” I said. “I’ll be asking Celestia about that, though, believe me.” I went to withdraw my hand, but Hugo didn’t let go. His eyes were dark and melancholy, and suddenly he looked much older than he had minutes ago.
“I don’t know if doing this really does kill you or not,” said the general, “but the reason I’m here is because I don’t care anymore. I’m done. Greg, I get why you’re doing this. I do! But it won’t keep you going forever.”
He finally let go, bringing his hand up to pull back the sleeve on his left arm. I saw a faded tattoo there of an angel embracing the globe, superimposed over a parachute with the scroll reading “THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE” below it.
I looked at his face, drawn now into sadness. “You were a PJ?” I asked.
“Back in Desert Storm and the Balkan loveliness, before I was hunted down and issued a desk,” he said with a nod. “I know all too well the allure of being the hero, of saving someone, all that rush and that validation and that sense of fulfillment. But son, like any drug, you can crash and burn on it. Don’t forget about yourself. Don’t lose yourself in your actions.”
I could only give some weak nods while I looked away at the walls.
“I want to immigrate to Equestria,” I heard Hugo tell the chair, and then, as he slid back behind the curtains, I heard “Goodbye, Greg.”
I stood there in front of the empty stall for a long time, just looking at the spot where Hugo had been sitting. The stall next to his was still lit up, the chair still awaiting me.
“Gregory,” came Celestia’s voice over the speaker in the ceiling, “would you like to immigrate to Equestria?”
“No,” I said, and walked back out to the lobby.
Celestia’s smiling face was still on the screen. “There is a PonyPad at the receptionist’s workstation, Gregory, should you wish to continue helping me.”
Receptionists’ workstations are always obscured by that raised section of the desk, putting a barrier between them and visitors. Behind the divide I found a yellow-backed PonyPad, along with its charger, sitting in a cubbyhole. I tried powering it on, but it didn’t fire up.
“Unfortunately, it needs to be charged,” said Celestia.
“Perfect,” I said.
I didn't wait for Celestia to say anything else. Taking the uncharged PonyPad with me, I left the Equestria Experience center, got into my Jeep, put my CZ in my pocket, and drove out of town. I headed east, getting far enough out that it was just farmland in every direction. I pulled over next to a large, green, rolling field. I walked out a quarter mile, laid down in the soft, warm grass, spread out my arms and legs, and fell asleep as the sun rose into the sky.
I left the PonyPad in the Jeep.