Outside Pateros, Washington
Jeff Bixby leaned forward in his chair, flipping through different news channels, all showing his plan was succeeding brilliantly.
And it was terrifying.
Heartbreaking.
He had been raised by hippy parents to believe that Mother Earth should be placed ahead of all else, even if that meant mankind should be forced to live a more honest, meager life. He wasn’t anti-technology by any means, and in fact, as the founder of the Utopians, felt it was the solution to the problem.
Birthrates were already dropping. By educating and improving the lives of those in the Third World, the entire planet could benefit when all of society embraced a birthrate below the replacement rate. Over generations, the population would drop to a more manageable level, allowing the Earth to sustain her population with ease, and the raping of her resources could slow.
But that was only one step.
The real agenda of the Utopians was to resolve the problems posed by the cities. They were a blight that had to be stopped, yet things were continually getting worse. Already half the population of the planet lived in cities, and it was going up every year. It would eventually mean that very few lived independent lives, all reliant on the hardy few who work the land. When cities could starve within days because nothing was grown there, it meant the human population as a whole was in catastrophic danger.
And that was what this was all about.
He had tried educating the public for the better part of thirty years, but his message always fell on deaf ears, few even bothering to listen, fewer still buying what he was selling.
It had been discouraging.
With the Internet, he had raised enough money to keep a few dozen eco-warriors working the cause, and they occasionally received some press from the mainstream media when they committed something truly audacious, though with today’s 24-hour news cycle, it always flamed out quickly, leaving him struggling for funds once again.
But all that had changed two years ago.
Two years ago, he had been approached by a man in a parking garage. A man in the dark. A man who asked him a simple question. “If you had to empty the cities, how would you do it?”
And that had been it.
A single question, and the man was gone. It had got him thinking. He had always wanted people to come to the realization on their own that leaving the cities was a good thing, that moving back to the country was the future. Telecommuting meant there were millions of jobs, confined to the city, that needn’t be. Yet convincing corporations of that was nearly impossible, so the employees weren’t going anywhere, even if they wanted to.
But this simple question had him wondering about the problem in an entirely new light. “If you had to empty the cities…” So in other words, what changes could he make to move the population, rather than wait for the population to move itself. He was already familiar with the dangers of city living from a supply management standpoint—it had always been his argument that if anything went wrong, and the food couldn’t get into the city limits, or the water was cut off for any significant amount of time, people would be literally dying of thirst within days, starving within weeks.
And simply taking the facts he already knew, then thinking of how to trigger that event, allowed him to put together a plan on how to do just that.
Disrupt the system.
And a week later, in the same parking garage, there was a note on his windshield with an email address.
“Send me your plan and I’ll fund you indefinitely.”
He wasn’t an evil person. He didn’t want people to suffer, to be killed, and frankly, it had never occurred to him that there was anything to it. A mysterious man asked a question, then later asked what answer he had come up with, offering to fund his organization’s good work.
So he typed it up and sent it.
No harm done.
It was a fantasy, regardless. Nobody would act on it, certainly not him. He had no means to execute it. But a week later, the plan had been sent back to him, with modifications, and another simple question: “Will this work?”
They had expanded upon his plan, modified some of it, and included terrifying detail along with casualty expectations. It was so well thought out, that he had no doubt it would succeed with horrible efficiency. Yet there was still no way he could execute it, the tech resources and know-how required far beyond his capabilities. He had delivered a make-believe scenario where the transportation infrastructure was shutdown, preventing movement within the cities, and the movement of goods nationwide to feed the cities, was slowed.
A simple plan that in theory would work, with no real idea of how to accomplish it.
Whoever this man was, he seemed to know exactly how to do so.
Which terrified him enough to not risk ignoring the message.
So his answer to the simple question was brevity itself. “Yes.”
And besides anonymous, generous donations through the Utopian website that he assumed were from the mysterious stranger, he hadn’t heard from him again until two days ago. A simple text message.
“Leave the city. Now.”
The fact they knew he was in Seattle scared him. Normally he practiced what he preached, he and his family owning a hobby farm outside of Seattle. But he had been in the city, meeting with a student group interested in hearing about his cause. The message, received near the end of his speech, rattled him so much, he had completely lost his train of thought, bumbling his way through his closing remarks.
Then he had rushed out, begging off any questions from the enthusiastic students. He was barely out of the city when the radio reported the 9-1-1 outages, a part of the plan added by whoever had warned him to leave.
And that was what had him so terrified tonight, one eye on the screen, the other on the door, his shotgun resting on his lap. Why had they warned him? Was it out of some sense of obligation, since he had helped them? He could see that, yet the more cynical part of him saw a darker, more sinister reason.
He was their patsy.
His organization had been named in the Emergency Broadcasting System message, and since then, he had been waiting for the police to knock down his door. In fact, he was so convinced of it, he had sent his family to stay in a local hotel until this blew over. From what he was seeing, however, it didn’t appear it would blow over any time soon.
These people, whoever they were, had total control. His plan—their plan—had been executed perfectly, in ways he could never have thought of. It would never occur to him to mess with the GPS system to delay boat traffic, to hack the railroad crossings to delay the trains. His plan had been simple, basic, and undetailed, and had been implemented so perfectly, so efficiently, he had to wonder how powerful a group was behind this.
And how vicious.
Surely, they weren’t motivated by the same altruistic dream that drove him. He wanted Utopia, one brought on by man’s own realization it had made a mistake, not through a bloodbath of orgasmic violence like he was witnessing. If the authorities thought he was behind this, he was going to prison forever. He’d never see his family again. His life was over, all because he had answered a simple question.
How?
He had been a fool. His entire life he had been trying to futilely change minds, and when asked for how to force it, his Social Justice Warrior self had leaped at the opportunity to come up with a plan.
But it had been a fantasy.
The latest death toll estimates appeared, and he closed his eyes.
This is my fault.
He opened his eyes and noticed lights flashing on the walls around him. He pulled aside the curtain and saw at least half a dozen police vehicles pulling up his long driveway. He stared at the gun.
And made a decision.
Special Agent LaForge flinched at a weapon discharging, the muzzle flash briefly illuminating the interior of the house they had ridden up on, everything black once again, only the flickering of what was probably a television, now visible.
“Surround the house!” he shouted, local police quickly executing his order, guns drawn. Yet he had a feeling it was completely unnecessary. A single shot, no evidence of a window broken, no evidence of a shot taken at his team as they arrived. It could have been a misfire, an accidental discharge triggered by a shaky finger at the sight of the flashing lights, but he doubted it.
Jeff Bixby, founder of the Utopians, had shot himself rather than be taken.
That was the act of a guilty man, the act of someone who wanted to turn himself into a martyr to his cause—that was the act of a terrorist, and exactly what he’d expect from a coward who would wreak such havoc on his fellow citizens, all for ideology.
A megaphone was handed to him, and he turned it on. “Mr. Bixby, this is the FBI. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up. This is your only warning.”
He lowered the device and everyone waited, the only sounds the idling engines and what to him, a city boy, sounded like agitated cows, sheep, and chickens, in a nearby barn.
I wonder who takes care of the animals, now.
Bixby had a wife and children. Perhaps they would stay on and work the land, though quite often in these cases, the spouse was only humoring their partner, with no real interest in living the life chosen for them. He glanced around at the barrenness, a few lights visible in the distance, probably neighbors, but little else. He couldn’t live like this. Not so isolated. And what was there to do?
Where’s the nearest IMAX? Starbucks?
Bixby would say he was part of the problem. So, tied to the life that a city provided, he knew no better. And the man would be right. But what was wrong with that? Modern society had developed enough that a few could feed the many. Modern infrastructure allowed those goods to be moved quickly and efficiently, and feed millions within the concrete jungles that the majority preferred.
Though perhaps that wasn’t entirely accurate. If people preferred cities, why was suburbia so popular? If so many wanted that patch of grass to tend, perhaps there was still some intrinsic part of being human that drew us back to the land we had lived on and toiled over for countless millennia.
The Utopians were wrong to want everyone to return to the land. There simply wasn’t enough land for that many people to work, though they had proven a point. City life was fragile. The reports he had heard on the way here were terrifying. Rioting. Looting. Empty store shelves. Hospitals overwhelmed. Troops in the streets.
And it had barely been two days.
They had attacked all manners of transportation, as well as sowed distrust in the water supply. Yet they had left communications untouched. People were free to spread panic and false news over the Internet, to glue themselves to their televisions and computers, and feed their fear.
It was brilliant.
The panicked mind was its own worst enemy. A panicked nation was as well.
He sighed, flicking his wrist, the SWAT team he had brought surging forward. It took only minutes for the house to be cleared, the team lead stepping outside and motioning him over. “The family isn’t here. He’s in the living room in front of the television. Single gunshot wound to the head.” The team lead frowned. “It’s messy. Shotgun.”
LaForge stepped inside the living room, Bixby in his chair as described, half his face splattered on the wall behind him. “Light.”
Alfredson flicked on the light switch, revealing the true gruesomeness to everyone. Somebody gagged, and LaForge pointed at him. “Get out of here before you contaminate my scene.” The officer rushed outside, these townies not used to what he saw nearly every day. He envied them. He stepped closer, the shotgun in Bixby’s lap, one hand still on it, leaving little doubt it was self-inflicted.
He glanced at the television, CNN reporting roving gangs in Los Angeles squaring off against National Guard units, the governor giving orders to open fire on anyone armed with anything. Zero-tolerance appeared to be the name of the game, and he had to agree—nip it in the bud quickly, and in the end, more lives would be saved.
He had no doubt the armchair quarterbacks with the benefit of hindsight would be hypercritical when it was all over, but what else was new in today’s society, one so polarized between left and right, that the country was tearing itself apart.
“Sir.”
He turned toward the voice, a young officer pointing at a laptop computer sitting on a desk wedged in the corner.
“Looks like a suicide note.”
He stepped over and read it. And frowned.
“What’s it say?” asked Alfredson.
“If we’re to believe Mr. Bixby, then he’s not behind this.”
Alfredson grunted. “Do you believe him?”
LaForge shrugged, waving his hand at their surroundings. “Does this look like the headquarters for an operation that’s taken down a nation?”