“No, because if you do, it won’t be a cultural institution anymore, dummies!” I said aloud.
It really made me mad when things got screwed up in the same way all the time. Somebody was going to “save” something and ended up destroying it by making it into something it had never been intended to be. I threw some extra garlic into the pan in protest. I had bought thinly cut “chicken filets,” and I sliced them up and stir-fried them into the other veggies. It looked like real chicken but it wasn’t real chicken. I knew a lot of people didn’t eat them because they didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what was in half of the food I ate anymore. Nobody did.
I looked for a grater, couldn’t find one, and diced up a few pieces of ginger as the guy who ran some theater talked about putting on a musical version of Hamlet. Sounded boring, and I was about to switch to another news outlet when there was a knock on the door. I opened it and saw Michael with a newspaper and a bag in his hand.
“I just wondered if everything was okay,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m all good,” I answered. “How are you doing?”
“Good. I went down the street and picked up a paper and a sandwich. I should have asked everyone first to see if the needed anything.”
“What kind of sandwich you get?”
“Uh—it’s kind of an egg salad sandwich,” he said, holding it up so I could see it.
“It looks pathetic. You want something to eat?”
“You don’t mind?”
I moved away from the door, and I thought he hesitated a second before coming in.
“Smells good, whatever it is,” he said.
“It’s just some veggies and fake chicken—you eat fake chicken?”
“Yeah.”
“Sit down.” I found the wooden spoon I had been using and pushed the veggies toward the center of the skillet. It did smell good now that the ginger was getting into the act. “Have you been to England a lot?”
“Not a lot, but a few times,” Michael said. “We performed here at the Coliseum and in a few clubs in Brixton.”
“What’s leading a band about?” I asked.
“It’s seriously together,” Michael said. “If you’re doing it right, you’re bringing people together and they’re creating something. You get the right people and you can see it happening. And if you’re communicating, the audience sees it happening, too. Then all you have to do is keep it going. You know what I mean? A lot of good things could happen in the world—would happen in the world—if people just weren’t afraid of the momentum. The momentum builds and then somebody feels the need to stop it.”
“Why?”
“Everybody is afraid of letting life get away from them,” Michael said. “I think it’s like when people get old—not just years old but in the way they think—and they see young people flying on the momentum of just being young, they sometimes get all shook and crazy and want to bring things back to some kind of order. Life is getting away from them. They want to slow it down and box it up.”
“That sounds right,” I said. I poured some orange juice into the pan, turned up the heat, and waited as the flavors came together. “In the band, how do you know if you have the right people?”
Michael watched me take the pan off the stove and use the spoon to put half of the food onto a plate. Then I took the other half for myself, gave him a fork and the salt shaker, and sat down.
“If you have the right people, it just works out,” he said. He hesitated for a minute, looked at me and smiled, then dug his fork into some mushrooms. When he lifted his head again, his eyes moved around the room as if he was looking for something. “You don’t always know if you have the right people, because you can’t tell what people are like. Not really. I mean, you can guess, but …”
A shrug. His eyes were looking around the room but not really seeing anything, just moving and I knew he was thinking. But what?
“You do computer models of groups,” he said after a while. “But you don’t really know who the people are, right?”
“You don’t have to know who they are to know what they’ll do,” I said.
“Are you ever wrong?”
“A lot, but it doesn’t make a difference,” I answered. “Because if you do the model right, it means you’ve thought through everything carefully. That’s half the battle.”
“You’ve got carrot on your chin,” he said.
“Thank you.” I felt around, found the little piece of carrot, and took it off.
“Dahlia.” Michael leaned forward. “The fewer people you have in a model, the less effective it is, right?”
“It depends on their connection with group thinking,” I said. “If they’re stuck with thinking as a group, it doesn’t matter that much.”
“Awesome,” he said.
Silence. When he ate, he didn’t make noises on his plate with his fork, as a Dominican man would have done. He ate quietly, his head mostly down. What the hell was he thinking? We were sitting at opposite ends of the small table. It was only three feet long, so we were pretty close. I kept my eyes on my plate. When he looked up, he was checking out the rest of my little apartment.
“I think this is going to work,” he said after a while. “I’m eager to get to the first meeting tomorrow. What do you think?”
“I’ll tell you after I leave the meeting.”
At the door. That little smile again.
Me: “See you later.”
Michael: “You look good with carrot on your chin.”
I was embarrassed.
He left and I looked at myself in the mirror. Not bad. Even without the carrot.
It was a twenty-five-minute ride to Dulwich College in South London. A British girl, or she might have been Irish, with long red hair was driving the van. She drove like a freaking maniac, and I was hoping that somebody would suggest they put the thing on automatic. The grounds at Dulwich were large and spacious. We got out and walked into the building. There was a big boat in the lobby, and one of the Brits started explaining why it was there.
Then another door opened and a group of about fifty boys, sweaty, dressed in green sweatshirts and matching pants, came rushing through. They slowed when they saw us—I thought they were looking at Michael mostly—and just kind of milled about, filling the air with a kind of boy stink and noise that sounded like a bunch of puppies. They had long hair, which they busily pushed away from their faces. Then they were looking at the rest of us.
“Your fan club,” I said to Michael.
A priest-looking dude came along and shooed the boys away, and then we were shown into a huge gorgeous room with brown paneled walls, crazy high ceilings, and chandeliers.
“This must be where they breed them,” Anja whispered.
The room had rows of chairs facing the windows. A small platform was set up, and one of the Brits who had driven with us went to it. He introduced himself and said how sad he was to announce that five groups had canceled at the last minute.
“But those of us who are here will, I am sure, make up in spirit what we lack in numbers,” he said. “What I hope we do today is meet one another, exchange ideas and contact information, and begin the process that profitably leads to synergy and results. All this with the certainty that our activities are being monitored the presence of other groups in and around London suggest that there is also an attempt to minimize our activities. Yet we move on. And it is with this hope that I greet and welcome you to my alma mater, Dulwich College.
“The tablets you found on your seats will provide instantaneous translations of what is being said and also give you the opportunity to talk among yourselves. The motto of the Dulwich school in Singapore is ‘Building bridges to the world.’ What we hope we can do is build not only bridges, but roads, tunnels, and air paths to a better life for all this earth’s people. Thank you.”
There was a formal printed program. Anja opened it and found the brief description of the C-8 group.
“Nothing new here,”
she said.
I looked over the list.
An Ocean of Influence
The Eight Corporations that Threaten What Remains of the Free World
Compiled by the Eton Group
Jennings International
Started as a secret conservative think tank of billionaires after the reelection of U.S. President Barack Obama. Their policies quickly switched from an advisory role to wielding their influence in the world’s economic markets.
Natural Farming
This former farm-subsidy advocate group quietly bought up food distributorships around the world and began to buy arable land in Third World countries. The most aggressive of the Central Eight corporations. They also cornered the market on seed and grain patents and genetically engineered foods.
Cloud Cover
This Hong Kong–based company dominates satellite placement and distribution, and thus worldwide Internet access.
Crystal Lake
A Euro Zone leader in water purification. Seemingly harmless until the world’s water supply was drying up, then vying with local governments for control of water assets.
Sports Direct
The world’s biggest supplier of weaponry. Took full advantage of the 2017 NATO military cutbacks. Will supply cheap weapons until a war heats up.
CTI
The Cyto Technology Institute started off as a relatively small research foundation. It was seen as a good move when it expanded its operation to absorb other operations, but troubles soon developed when private investors looked to increase its profitability.
Jeremy Fund
This international monetary giant controls the flow of money throughout the world, ensuring that have-not countries are always on the brink of rebellion.
The Andover Group
The control of oil and fossil-fuel technology did not seem to be a threat in the growing age of nuclear and solar energy. The Andover Group was not only capable of using their quarter of the world’s energy resources to enhance their own profits, but they were also able to control both nuclear and solar developers who utilized the older technologies in ancillary operations.
Anja was right, nothing new.
The greetings were first, and then there would be six delegations making presentations. Michael was speaking next to last.
The first speaker was a thin kid with rimless glasses. I didn’t know many kids who wore glasses. He started his speech with his head back, saying something nobody could understand. I thought he was speaking a different language at first, and then I began to understand what he was saying.
“Theeeey aaaare eeeee-vil!” He kept saying it over and over again. Bullshit drama from his core.
Anja was two seats down from me and shaking her head. There was a space between us where Javier’s wheelchair had been for a second or two before he wheeled off and got into a hush-hush conversation with one of the Brits. Anja pointed to her tablet and I looked down at mine. She was texting me.
A: Everyone in C-8 believes in what they are doing. Sometimes they have to stop thinking for days at a time to keep their graspy hands reaching out, but they believe, girl, THEY BELIEVE!
Interesting. I had always thought of C-8 as evil people too. But if they did believe in what they were doing, thinking it was somehow right for them to be taking advantage of the weak or the ignorant or whoever they were standing on at the time, I knew it would be easier to build a model mapping out their behavior. True believers in money, like true believers in Heaven, or Hell, or anything, were wonderfully predictable.
Two Australians came up together and got into a long rap about how nobody could beat C-8 because they had all the weapons and all we had was our ideals. The Australians were true believers too.
When it got to be Michael’s turn, I found myself tensing up. I wanted him to do good. It was like he was representing the guys from America, which was good, but there was more.
Michael hunched his shoulders and tapped the mike twice before beginning.
“I’ve never been in a shooting war where people scream and fall down in pain. The thought of it scares the hell out of me. But the war we’re in, a war in which the enemy delivers shiny kitchen appliances to your front door, and in which they have rows and rows of frozen meals available in supermarkets, is a war nevertheless. We have simply skipped over the body counts. The term ‘body count’ started showing up seventy years ago in Vietnam. It sounded better than ‘dead people,’ so the papers and the after-action reports people used the phrase a lot.
“Then somebody, probably Americans, came up with the term ‘collateral damage.’ That meant people who were dead or wounded but not necessarily identified as the ‘enemy.’ That’s the world we live in today; that’s the war we are facing today. Huge companies bring marvelous gadgets to our lives and there is collateral damage. Perhaps a few thousand children dead in India, or an African village wiped out, or a few hundred miners in West Virginia quietly coughing their lungs out.
“What we need to do is to start calling dead bodies by their rightful name: ‘dead bodies.’ If they get killed fighting for scraps of food in Detroit, or die waiting for medicines in China or Russia, we have to start seeing them.
“We can’t continue to let the global corporate masters keep on pushing people to the edges of society and then condemn them as outsiders. We can’t give in to privilege as a virtue in its own right, or to comfort as our excuse to not resist. The enemy is already within the gates; they are among us, seducing us with whatever comforts we are allowed that also make them a profit.
“I hope we will fight together for a clear day in which everyone sees every truth. Thank you.”
There was a little applause, and then the Brits stood up and began to clap loudly, and some joy crept into the place.
Good, Michael. Damned good.
On the way back to central London. The Brits were chatty, talking about some messages they had received and reassuring us that the low turnout didn’t mean anything. I was pleased, but I felt myself zoning out and knew I needed some serious sleep time.
An exchange of information at the hotel while the doorman, a big, beefy dude, looked on. The van was pulling away, and we all seemed tired as we went into the lobby.
“It’s a promising start,” Michael said.
“Promising?” Drego. “If you believe that shit, you’re dumber than you look!”
We froze at the sudden tension of the out-of-the-blue put-down. I glanced over at Drego and saw his neck was puffed as if he was ready to leap at somebody. Behind him, just peering around his shoulder, was Mei-Mei, staring at Michael.
“Well, I think it was promising,” Michael said softly.
Drego snorted and turned away. Mei-Mei didn’t move; she just kept staring at Michael.
Drego got to the tiny elevators first and walked in. Mei-Mei backed in, still working that stare. The elevator held only four or five people, and Michael stepped in. He was face-to-face with Drego. I got in behind him, wondering what the hell was going on. Drego and Mei-Mei got off on the fourth floor, and when the door opened on the fifth, I asked Michael if he was okay.
“Yeah, I’m all good,” he said. “I’ve been here before.”
Where? I wondered.
Back in my room I fell across my bed, exhausted to the bone. There were parts of me completely wasted and aching and stiff that I wished I could just get up and discard. Get a new body. Put the lights out. Pull the covers up. Fart in the darkness.
Me in the talk show of my mind:
“Drego thinks we should start making alliances,” Mei-Mei was saying.
“Fuck Drego,” I answered.
“If it comes to a showdown, we have to know who’s got our backs,” Mei-Mei said. “Who we can rely on.”
“Apparently we can’t rely on Drego,” I said. I wanted to add “or you,” but I didn’t.
“I think Drego’s right.” Mei-Mei’s voice in the darkness sounded ominous. I fell asleep.
Sunday. Did we still have
Sundays? Was somebody, somewhere, still washing themselves and getting ready to go to Mass? Were there mothers still doing hair, twisting hair around curlers or ironing dresses so God wouldn’t be embarrassed when we showed up late?
Anja called. Michael and Drego were shouting at each other on the fifth floor. She thought we should be there.
I looked in the mirror and saw a complete mess. There was some dried saliva on my cheek, and I grabbed a towel and wiped at it. I got my jeans on and padded, barefoot, out to the staircase. I could hear Drego shouting at Michael the moment I opened the fire door. Something about “manning up.” They were in front of Michael’s room.
Drego was standing, feet apart, in the middle of the hallway. Three tourists, perhaps a man and wife and their child, stood back and watched, wondering what the hell was going on, or if they should try to pass this black man, veins prominent in his neck as he vented in the narrow corridor.
“If you’re going to be effective, you have to be ready for anything!” Drego looked fierce. Mei-Mei was a few steps behind him, flat against the wall. “You can walk into this with your eyes closed if you want, man, but anybody who can see knows you’re scared to make a move! You just don’t want to face the reality that’s staring you in the damned face!”
“I’m going my way, Drego,” Michael said calmly. “If you want to go a different way, then go. I certainly won’t try to stop you.”
“We’re either together or we’re not.” Mei-Mei’s voice sounded hoarse. “You said the biggest danger was self-destruction, that we would turn against each other. Now you’re telling Drego he can go his own way. To me, Drego is the only one with balls in this crew.”
“It doesn’t take balls to scream in a hallway,” Michael said.
“Bullshit!” This from Drego. “We could be dead by this time next year!”
“Or this time next week,” Michael said. “If your life is that important to you, then run with it.”
Drego put his shoulder against the wall and shook his head slowly. I looked at Mei-Mei, and she looked absolutely scary. The wide face seemed wider, rounder, the porcelain skin contrasting even more brilliantly against the dark-brown eyes. I saw that she had put mascara on her lashes, dark in front and green on the edges. One small hand, fingers spread, touched the gaudy paper on the wall. She looked like an animated doll. Beautiful. Fragile. Not really human.