Logan stayed on at the power plant because the desert valley was his home. Like Myles and Harmony, he was born and raised in the once thriving city. He’d worked at the plant for several years as a technician and when the economy collapsed, he decided to stay. No one gave him permission to remain, and officially, the plant was offline, but as long as there was still ground water beneath him and the magma conduits kept turning it into steam, Logan and his AI could keep producing electricity. There wasn’t much overhead in the operation, and it wasn’t a complicated set-up—super-heated steam turned turbines connected to generators, and Jody did most of the work.
His biggest fear was losing the AI. That something would go wrong with the plant’s computer system that he couldn’t fix. Jody was the problem solver, and without it he’d be unable to continue. It would mean the end of the road in the Big Abandonado.
He talked to the AI from the control room on a daily basis: “What’s the current condition of the aquifer, Jody?”
“Sensors indicate local ground water is reinvigorated and continuing to rise due to our ongoing injection strategy.”
“Is there any danger we could overdo it?”
“No. The basin at large has immense underground capacity. It would take years to completely saturate the huge expanse of permeable strata with the current flow.”
“What’s your status in the New Cali water supply network?”
“It’s a surprisingly primitive system. The software has never been updated since it was first installed, and I’ve taken complete control of the pipeline.”
“What’s the current probability of detection?”
“Unless something changes in how they administer the system, there’s currently zero probability. There’s almost no human interaction with the supply network or the Directorate’s Centralized Network Management System. It administers virtually everything in the city, and at this point, I have the NMS convinced I’m a legitimate entity. As far as I know, no humans interact with or check the water supply network whatsoever.”
“Does that mean we could safely increase the flow through the branch line?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the maximum amount of water we could take?”
“The only limit would be the capacity of the branch line itself, and I’m creating falsified data to make it appear to the NMS that nothing is missing. The master system has been successfully spoofed.”
Logan received a visitor alert. Someone was at the front gate. He clicked the icon and a live view came up on his display monitor. A crew of dust bikers were gathered around the entrance. One of them had his back turned, and Logan could see the Nowhere City Serpents emblem on his jacket. The gang rode noisy dirt bikes and were known for the the thick layer of tortilla-colored dust that coated their attire from head to toe. They wore heavy boots and goggles, and some wore long coats, even in the sweltering summer heat.
Dust bikers were violent criminals that could not to be trusted. Many suffered symptoms of psychosis from heavy drug use. Before responding to the call, Logan checked his security system. The swarm ejectors mounted on the fenceline were activate and set to auto, meaning anyone trying to breach the gate or the fenceline would be targeted with a swarm of submicroscopic nanobots, programmed to kill. He keyed his mic: “What do you need?”
“Hey there, power man.” The bald crew leader had insane eyes and a full beard. He could see Logan’s face on the intercom screen. “What’s a man need to do to get some electricity around here?!” he shouted in a gruff voice.
Logan remained calm. “Where do you need the juice?”
The dust biker’s angry frown became a condescending smile. “We’re opening up a casino on the Strip.”
Logan laughed. It was an absurd proposition, the hotel district had been deserted for years. An obvious ruse to get him to open the gate. “Sounds sketchy. What do you have to trade?”
“A kilo of pure syntho-bliss. Enough to keep you flying high forever and ever, power man. I’ll even throw in an auto-injecter, so you don’t need to mess with a needle.”
“Not interested.”
The crew leader scowled at the camera lens. He turned to address a female dust biker standing next to him. She had a badly scarred face from a meth lab explosion. “What do you think power man and his farmer boy buddy are doing with those water trucks, Suzy?”
“I don’t know, Bruno,” she responded with a demented grin. “Something smells fishy!”
“Something smells fishy, all right.” He leaned in close, so his face filled the screen. Close enough to see the drool at the corners of his mouth. “We’re watching you, power man.” He spread two fingers and pointed at his eyes. “We know what you’re up to!”
“Get lost,” said Logan.
He killed the video connection and launched an airborne drone to scare them off. It soared towards the front gate. Thinking the drone was about to hit them with a bot swarm, the miscreants hopped on their dirt bikes and took off down the access road in a state of frenzied panic.
□□□
Logan and Myles were on their way to the Eden Stacks with another delivery, crossing a divide in the coastal mountains. Few others used the highway, and they hadn’t seen another vehicle since leaving the central basin. The echo-pulse cruiser was in the lead with the twenty tankers following close behind.
“We should do something to try and help those poor people in the Stacks,” said Myles.
“You mean the grubs?”
“Well yeah, Logan…And I hate even using that word. It’s so demeaning. They’re human beings, not insects.”
“What do you think we should do to help them?”
“Jody said we can take more water now, right? We could sneak some of them out in the trucks and start a new farm. Give them something to do.”
“Dumb idea, Myles.”
“Why?”
“It’s not practical. First off, they’d find out about the water scheme, and besides that, how do you know it would work out? I mean, where would they live?”
“Plenty of abandoned houses all over town.”
“Yeah, but think about the amount of work it would take to make them livable…And how do you know they’d even go along with it? Plus, if the Party Vanguard found out what we were doing, it would blow the whole deal.”
“I suppose you’re right, Logan. It just hurts me to see those people living like that when the elite are so well off.”
They crested the top of the mountain on a straightaway, and as they began their descent on the other side, an obstruction appeared in the road. It was an improvised roadblock. An archaic gasoline powered sedan parked broadside, blocking both lanes. A lone man wearing tinted goggles and a long dust covered coat stood in front of it. As the cruiser appeared at the crest of the hill, he began vigorously waving his arms in an attempt to stop them.
“Hold on!” exclaimed Logan as they bore down on the roadblock. He clicked on the air rams. The cruiser instantly accelerated to 150 mph and became airborne, sailing over the barricade. Startled by the maneuver, the thug ducked down and watched the vehicle glide over him. Thinking fast, Myles took manual control of the tankers’ SDV program and simultaneously accelerated the lead truck. By the time the surprised man turned back towards the approaching convoy, it was too late, the lead tanker slammed into the sedan in a catastrophic crash. It bulldozed the car a considerable distance down the roadway before Myles applied the brakes.
Logan executed a swift U-turn when they were well past the wreck. Both men climbed out on either side. They slipped around the vehicle and ducked down behind the tail end.
“You think any of them survived?” said Myles. Before Logan could respond, they heard gunfire. Multiple rounds coming from a cluster of boulders next to the site of the collision. They heard a pinging sound when one of the lead slugs ricocheted off the cruiser’s armored grill.
“Powder burners,” said Logan.
“So, what do we do now?”
“Launch the drone.” Logan opened a program on his IntelliPhone and began typing in commands. The trunk on the cruiser popped open, and a pint-sized drone took off towards their unseen assailants. It was propelled by mini-air rams. When it reached the rocks, the surviving dust bikers tried to shoot it down with their antiquated firearms, but its erratic maneuvers made it impossible to hit. The miniature aircraft bombed the thugs with swarms of self-replicating nanobots, programmed to kill. The bandits ran for their lives, but the clouds of submicroscopic bots chased them down like angry hornets, invading their bodies through every available orifice—nostrils, ear canals, even the pores of their skin. The tiny robots reproduced instantly, increasing their numbers geometrically in the wink of an eye, devouring organic tissue and bone as the swarm exploded in size. Before long, nothing was left of the thugs beyond molecules of ash settling in the dust.
A mission success message appeared on Logan’s phone. The drone returned to the cruiser and landed in the trunk. The lid slammed shut.
“Those armored cowcatchers really paid off, Myles.”
“Yeah, I had a feeling we’d run into trouble sooner or later.”
Myles put the tanker in reverse. It made a loud metallic crunching noise as it extricated itself from the debris. Soon they were back on the road, putting the scene of the failed hijacking in the rear-view mirrors. When they arrived at the Eden Stacks, Myles called Harmony on his IntelliPhone. He didn’t tell her what had happened, he’d wait until they returned to fill her in. He just wanted to hear her voice and ask her to check the farm’s security system. Make sure it was operational before she went to bed.
□□□
Harmony was glad he called. They’d been together for a long time. They were high school sweethearts, back before the economy collapsed, when Myles and Logan played on the school’s football team. She loved his self-confidence and how he’d worked so hard to make it when most of the others had left. It wasn’t easy turning the golf course into a productive farm, but they’d done it. Real estate in the Big Abandonado was considered close to worthless now, but for them, the farm was golden.
Myles was only gone for a night at a time when they hauled water out to the coast, but she missed him when he left the farm. The dogs kept her company to a certain extent, but the city had become such a lonely place. She felt bad for Logan spending so much time by himself, even though he said he preferred it that way. That Juno and Magic were enough of a family for him because he was a loner at heart. She wished she could find him a woman, but she kept that idea to herself. She’d never said that much about it to him, but she checked his place out when they went over there, to make sure he was eating right, and his modest home in the power station wasn’t getting too dirty and cluttered. Logan was bright with the tech, but he wasn’t very good at housekeeping.
She walked down to the barn to check on the livestock they raised. Cows, a few goats and lots of chickens. They had a couple of miniature pigs, too. It was blazing hot in July, and she made sure the fans were on, and the agribot had put out plenty of fresh water. They could only keep the farm going for as long as the water held out, and she worried about what would happen if the New Cali Directorate found out about Logan’s diversion scheme. How much trouble Myles would be in too, if they found out they were selling it to the Eden Stacks. It was the fourth trip, and the gold bars were piling up.
Harmony fed the dogs and made dinner. After eating and cleaning up, she picked up the current novel she was reading. A real book with paper pages, not a program on a computer screen. An elderly survivalist named Darby Stone traded them books for food. The arrangement was typical of the local system—it wasn’t an equal trade. Darby brought them books, and Harmony made sure he had enough to eat. In the pre-collapse economy, the value of the food would have far exceeded the cost of the handful of books they received, but things were different now. Their friendship was more important than greed. Harmony loved their well-stocked bookshelves, too. It made her feel like they were still part of the civilized world.
She was fast asleep in the early morning hours when her IntelliPhone went off. The perimeter security system was broadcasting an audible alert. Intruders detected inside the fenceline. In the west cornfield. But how could that be? She’d double-checked the system after Myles had called. How did they get past the swarm ejectors? She climbed out of bed swiftly and ran up the spiral staircase to the cupola. The clubhouse sat atop a hillock, and the cupola was the highest point on the building. It had a 360° view of the entire farm. The security system had already activated the computer screen in the small, octagonal room, and she sat down in front of it and clicked on the threat detected icon. A night vision view of the west cornfield popped up on the screen. The intruder’s silhouettes were highlighted in neon green. Three of them. She zoomed in on one of them—a filthy dust biker disengaging himself from a paraglider’s harness. They’d flown in to evade the swarm ejectors.
With the malicious invaders identified, Harmony clicked the flashing neutralize all threats icon and activated the revolving particle beam cannon mounted on the roof of the cupola. The cannon emitted a low electromagnetic hum as it whirred into position. Locked in on the lead gangster, the accelerator fired an ionized beam, weaponized with nanobots. The beam seared a hole through the thug’s torso and delivered its payload—a swarm of self-replicating bots that rapidly devoured the unlucky biker’s body, clothing and weapons. It left nothing behind but a sprinkling of ash. One by one, the dust bikers were targeted by the automated system and taken out. In less than 30 seconds, the trio was vaporized.