Spark: A Novel

  The tall young man turned to Eugenia and smiled. “Me alegro de verte! You still talking to that mother with the two children?”

  “Yeah. They’re living in their car.”

  “This house tonight sounds like a good possibility. It’s bank owned, unoccupied for almost three years …”

  By now, the teenager had scraped the last grain of rice out of the pot. He grabbed some plastic spoons and his share of cookies. “Fueled up,” he said.

  “Anyone else want to help us crack a house? Billy Bones is sick with the flu, so it’s just me, Thrasher, and Ice.”

  The women touched their hair and glanced at each other. Bennett held up a hand as if he was trying to hail a speeding taxicab. “Does this really have to happen tonight? You should stay for the meeting.”

  “Next time. I promise.” The young man winked at Eugenia. “If the house checks out, I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

  “Good luck, Sean. Don’t get hurt.…”

  A few seconds later they were out the door. My Shell didn’t move, but my Spark was moving rapidly. Sean. The leader of the group had the same name as Emily Buchanan’s boyfriend. Maybe my target was waiting for him in the car.

  I hurried out to the sidewalk and caught up with Sean and his friends. “Can I come along?”

  Each person in the group was holding a bowl of beans and rice. They turned around and stared at me. “And who the hell are you?” asked the blond woman.

  “Jacob Underwood.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Sean put his hand on my shoulder. “We don’t know you, Jacob. So of course we’re going to be suspicious. Do you mind if Thrasher searches you?”

  “No problem.”

  I was in trouble if they discovered the gun in my ankle holster or the handcuffs carried beneath my waistband, but Thrasher just focused on the contents of my pockets.

  “Look at this … he’s carrying a full-frequency detector.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “I just want to know if someone’s using a G-MID to photograph me.”

  Sean laughed and pulled a frequency detector out of his front pocket. “Relax, Jake. We all carry them.”

  Thrasher found my Freedom ID and held it up so his two friends could see. “Underwood is his real name and his card is in a blocker shield.”

  “And that’s where everyone should keep their ID,” Sean said. “So where do you live, Jake? Do you have a job?”

  “Right now, I live in Manhattan. I used to work for a software company called InterFace. Then I got replaced by a nubot.”

  “Join the club,” Ice said. “Last year I got fired from PetTopia, the pet supply company. They told everyone that our jobs weren’t covered by the Freedom to Work Act. Then a couple of months later we found out—”

  Sean rolled his eyes as if he’d heard this story before. “Forget about the nubots. Let’s get going. We can talk in the car.”

  Sean touched my Shell a second time and I made an effort not to pull away as he guided me across the street to a beat-up Toyota sedan. The dashboard was held together with duct tape and someone had ripped the plastic cover off the steering column. Sean slid behind the steering wheel and Thrasher sat beside him. Ice and I were in the back.

  “Ever been to a cracking party, Jake?”

  “Are we going to break into a house?”

  “That’s right. We target buildings that have been abandoned by the banks.” Sean started the car and sat listening to the tapping sounds coming from the engine. “Ice is the head of our construction crew in Brooklyn. She’ll see if the building can be renovated.”

  “I look for good bones,” Ice said. “The house has to be structurally sound.”

  “The rest of us search for zombies,” Thrasher said.

  Sean laughed. He shifted into first and the gears complained. “We got to find out if bonks or drug dealers are using the building.”

  “So what if nobody’s living there?”

  “It usually takes us two or three weeks to do a full cleanup. During that period, we turn on the water and splice the home onto the power grid.”

  “We move in a homeless family when the house is safe for children,” Ice said. “And then we make sure they get mail.”

  “Why is that so important?”

  “Mail delivery is mentioned in a section of New York City’s landlord-tenant law,” Sean said. “If a person can prove that they’ve been receiving mail at their residence for at least thirty days, then they can’t be arrested for trespassing. Eventually, the bank discovers that we’ve taken over the building and files eviction papers, but then our pro bono lawyers call up the loan officer and try to negotiate a deal. We’ve been able to work out a rent-purchase agreement on eighteen abandoned homes.”

  “What about Bennett’s petition?” I asked.

  “Petitions are a waste of time,” Sean said. “We take over buildings and give them to families. I believe in the politics of doing something.”

  Sean turned the car onto Delancey Street and now we followed the traffic across the Williamsburg Bridge. Light from sodium lamps fastened to the bridge lit up the interior of the car for a few seconds and then we were absorbed by the shadows. It felt as if I was watching a series of still photographs:

  Thrasher listening to the music from his earphones.

  Sean glancing over his shoulder as he changed lanes.

  Ice raising a spoon to her lips.

  My hand reaching down to touch the ankle holster.

  Finally, we passed over a speed bump and now we were in Brooklyn, traveling beneath the rusty girders of the elevated subway.

  “So how did you hear about the meeting at the Christian Worker?” Sean asked.

  “There was a flyer taped on the wall near the restrooms at Crawley’s bar. I went there for Dice Night.”

  Sean smiled at his friends. “See? What did I tell you? If we put up more flyers we’re going to get more supporters.”

  “Are you a Luddite?” I asked.

  “Not really. The Children of Ned want to destroy the nubots, but the real danger comes from a change of consciousness within our own minds. Once we think like machines, then we are machines.”

  The energy that flowed outward from Manhattan—the crowds, skyscrapers, and neon lights—crashed like a wave on the shore and left its litter on the streets of East New York. Graffiti was scrawled on walls and sidewalks. We passed liquor stores and bodegas with bulletproof shields that separated the clerks from their customers. Storefront churches were everywhere with crudely painted signs that promised deliverance. A scrawny cat sat on the hood of a parked car and watched an old woman filling up a pail from a fire hydrant dribbling water.

  Ice pulled a phone out of her pocket. “Turn right on Linden Avenue. Good. Now we’re looking for Warwick Street.”

  We peered out the windshield at rows of two-story detached houses with clapboard siding and security bars on the lower windows. Pale light flickered through the gaps between curtains. It was a cold night and people were inside, watching television.

  “Slow down,” Ice said. “See the sign? That’s Warwick Street.… Turn left and look for number eighteen.… There it is … on the left.”

  The brick house was surrounded with a low chain-link fence. Brown sheets of plywood covered all the windows and there was a blackened pile of burned trash on what had once been the front lawn.

  “Boarded up,” Sean said. “Let’s find some place to park.”

  He drove up the block, found a parking spot, and switched off the engine. Everyone got out of the car and Sean opened up the trunk. Several canvas bags were there, filled with construction tools and flashlights. Sean unzipped a duffel and began pulling out blue hard hats and safety vests. “Put this gear on, Jake. Dressing like this keeps the neighbors from calling the police.”

  Thrasher laughed. “We usually tell people that we’re from the Environmental Protection Agency and we’re looking for a broken sewer pipe. Nobody e
ver asks a follow-up question.”

  “And take this.…” Ice handed me a filter mask that covered my mouth and nose. “Sometimes we find asbestos or toxic chemicals. You don’t want that poison in your lungs.”

  All of us followed Sean down the sidewalk and through the little gate. When we stepped onto the porch, Ice and Thrasher switched on their flashlights and pointed them at the steel security door. Someone had drilled a hole into the door and installed a heavy chain and padlock.

  Ice handed her flashlight to Sean and pulled some bolt cutters out of her tool bag. “This just makes our job easier.”

  Ice cut the chain and Sean yanked open the security door. The wooden front door was a flimsy barrier and Thrasher detached the brass knob with an electric screwdriver. Everyone pulled on their air filters as Sean led us inside.

  Beams from the three flashlights glided across the small living room. A couch, two chairs, and a pair of end tables were covered with torn bedsheets. They looked like squat little ghosts that had been waiting for visitors.

  Sean took a step forward and dust rose up into the air. “Zombies,” he said, pointing to drug vials and fast-food wrappers dumped in the corner. The air filter made his voice sound as if he had fallen in a hole.

  Thrasher disappeared through a doorway while Ice pointed her flashlight at a stain on the ceiling. “Leaky water pipe, but it doesn’t look too serious.”

  “I don’t see any mold,” Sean said. “Let’s go upstairs and check the—”

  Light flashed in the doorway and Thrasher hurried back into the living room. “We got a problem in the kitchen.”

  “Did the floor collapse?”

  “This house is occupied.”

  Sean led us down a short hallway with half-open doors revealing two bedrooms. Then he stopped and pushed open a swinging door. I entered the kitchen and stopped near the doorway. Sink. Refrigerator. Stove. A kitchen table with three chairs. A first I thought that little bits of trash were scattered around the room, and then the trash began to move. Flashlight beams revealed a colony of rats scurrying across the tile floor and popping in and out of the wooden cabinet. I watched a gray rat sniff the tip of my shoe and then hurry away; his tail drew a thin line in the dust.

  “There’s too many of them,” Sean whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  If Emily Buchanan was still connected to Sean, then I needed to do something that would keep me with him. Unlike machines, Human Units favored reciprocal actions. “I can solve this problem,” I said. “Hand me the crowbar.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Kill them all.”

  Sean shook his head. “No. That’s dangerous. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “They’ll swarm you,” Thrasher said. “Sometimes they bite and they don’t let go.”

  “Hand me the crowbar. You stay here in the doorway with the flashlights.”

  A light beam jiggled around when Ice reached into her tool bag. The crowbar was heavy and solid; it felt more real than any other object in the room. My Spark had jagged edges and my thoughts were not under control. I wanted to hear Laura’s calm voice before I began to kill everything.

  I switched on my headset. “Laura?”

  “Yes, Mr. Underwood.”

  “Say something beautiful.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir. You have not made this request previously.”

  “Do a search on the Internet. Find words written about a beautiful object or a beautiful location.”

  “In English, sir?”

  “English.”

  A pause, then—“I have found the first newspaper description of Yosemite Valley, written in 1855. Data indicates that Yosemite is considered a beautiful location.”

  “Sounds good. Read it.”

  “Just opposite to this, on the south side of the valley, our attention was first attracted by a magnificent waterfall, about seven hundred feet in height.…”

  I walked over to the kitchen table, clutching my weapon with two hands, then crouched slightly and swung hard. Two rats died. And then the room was exploded with energy. Rats chirped and squeaked and hissed to each other. The flashlight beams turned their eyes into sharp red points.

  “It looked like a broad long feather of silver, that hung depending over a precipice, and as this feathery tail of leaping spray thus hung, a slight breeze moved it from side to side.…”

  A rat clung to my pants’ leg, but I brushed it off and kept swinging the crowbar. Squeaks and squeals. The harsh scent of blood and urine.

  “As the last rays of the setting sun were gilding it with rainbow hues, the red spray from the falling water would mix with the purple and the purple with the yellow and the yellow with the green and the green with the silvery sheen of its whitened foam, as it danced in space.…”

  Twenty minutes later we were back out on the porch, pulling off the filters and breathing the cold, clean air. Ice took a new chain and padlock out of her bag and Sean used it to fasten the security door.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow morning with rat poison and a few spring traps baited with peanut butter,” Sean said. “We’ll do our first cleanup on Sunday and see about hacking into the power grid. I’m going to tell Eugenia that we’ll have a livable home in two or three weeks.”

  We returned to the Toyota and used some old towels to wipe the dust off our faces. Then everyone got back in the car and Sean dropped Ice and Thrasher off at a subway station.

  “Where do you live, Jake?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “You really helped us tonight, and I appreciate that. If you’re not doing anything, I’d like you to meet some friends of mine.”

  “Where are these people?”

  “They’re here in Brooklyn. It’s not far away.” Sean drove slowly down the streets while he made a call with a headset phone. “How you doing?” he asked. “Yeah, I’m in the car.… The cracking party went okay.… Lots of rats, but no zombies. Right now, I’m driving over to the Vickerson workshop with someone who helped us out tonight. Okay … no problem.”

  He switched off the phone and glanced at me. “Were you involved with the No Bots demonstration in Times Square last year? The Luddites tried to shut down the mechanical subway clerks.”

  “I’m not a growler. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this.”

  “It might take some time for you to figure out where you stand on certain issues. I got into all this when I was a teenager. I started online, downloading free content, and then I became involved with a crypto-anarchist group. Our slogan was ‘The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of man.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We created cryptographic software that would protect the Darknet system. We were trying to protect online privacy and freedom of speech.”

  “So when did you start breaking into houses?”

  “The Day of Rage changed everything. Danny Marchand was insane, but all the growlers got tossed into the same basket. Three of my friends were arrested and sent to a Good Citizen Camp in Utah. It’s supposed to be for a maximum of sixty days without arraignment, but after you serve the sixty, they arrest you again outside the camp gate. I went off the grid for a few months, then came down to New York and got involved with Housing for You. It’s a good feeling when you give a home to a family that’s been living on the street.”

  We drove through Williamsburg and parked in front of a Quonset hut made of galvanized steel that occupied a triangular patch of land near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Light glowed through a row of frosted-glass windows protected by wire mesh. There was a sign on the corner that said that the building was the headquarters of the VICKERSON FURNITURE AND HERITAGE WOOD SUPPLY COMPANY.

  We got out of the car and I followed Sean up a gravel pathway to a red steel door. “Anyone home?” he shouted and thumped on the door with his fist.

  A few seconds later, a young man wearing a tool belt opened the door. My Spark remembered s
eeing some historical photographs of the Earp brothers—Western lawmen who were involved in a famous gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona. The man in front of us had the same bushy mustache and parted hair as Wyatt Earp. It felt like someone from the nineteenth century had magically been transported to Brooklyn.

  The young man smiled. “What’s going on, Sean?”

  “Boz, this is Jake. We just finished another cracking party in East New York. I thought we’d drop by and I’d show him what you’re doing.”

  Boz Vickerson grinned and motioned us to come inside. “Good timing. You can help me stack some lumber.”

  The Quonset hut was like a huge tin can cut in half with the edges resting on the ground. The large room was split into three distinct areas. Thousands of boards were stacked on one end of the building. At the other end was an office space with desks, file cabinets, and a sink. The middle section was where another man with a bushy Wyatt Earp mustache was fitting together parts of a wooden chair. A few yards away, a young woman with a pirate bandana partially covering her red hair was brushing a clear liquid on a rosewood table.

  The air was cold near the door and I realized that the building lacked central heating. The only warmth came from a cast-iron stove fed with wood scraps. A ventilation grate was open and the coals glowed bright red like a Spark.

  “This is my brother, Ernie. As you can see … he’s older, and shorter.”

  “But a lot better-looking,” Ernie said.

  “Hi, Sean!” The young woman smiled and waved her paintbrush.

  “And the woman brushing on teak oil is my sister, Millicent.”

  “All you need to know is that I’m the smartest one in the family. Isn’t that right, Sean?”

  “The smartest and the best dancer.”

  “And a modest soul as well,” Boz said. “There’s plenty of time to dance, but let’s do a little work first. A contractor up in Boston ordered a thousand feet of heritage wood and I need to find one more mahogany board and two Spanish cypress.”