Fossen nodded to the view. “This is ours.”
Fossen turned into the farm’s long gravel driveway. There was an ornate D-Space 3-D object in the shape of a cornucopia bursting with vegetables and fruits hanging above the entrance. It was labeled Fossen Farm.
Dogs with D-Space call-outs above them ran out, barking to greet the truck. Two of them were black Labs named Blackjack and Licorice, and the third was a Golden Retriever named Hurley.
Ross smiled. “That’s clever.”
“Well, they’re always getting into trouble. This way we know where they are.” He stopped the truck near the barn, and the Fighters in back quickly hopped out.
Ross looked around just as a woman called from the porch of the white clapboard farmhouse. She was a stout-looking woman in her forties or fifties in work clothes and a garden hat. She had no call-out or HUD glasses. “Everything go okay at the clinic?”
Hank nodded. “The crowd’s getting bigger.” He took off his own hat and gestured to Ross. “Lynn, this is Jon. Jon, this is my wife, Lynn.”
“Oh.” She extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jon.”
“Likewise.”
“I’m giving Jon a ride into Greeley, but I thought I’d give him the tour.”
“Well, don’t bore him to death. You know how you get. Let us know if you need anything, Jon.”
“Thanks, ma’am. I . . . are you a member of the darknet, too?”
“Not my thing. I’m not into all that social network mumbo jumbo.”
Fossen pointed toward a group of half a dozen people not far off—men and women of various ages and ethnicities at the edge of a large vegetable garden. They all had D-Space call-outs above them and were focused on a young woman talking.
Fossen waved. “There’s my daughter, Jenna.” The young woman waved back.
“Lovely girl. Who are the others?”
“She’s teaching hybridization and genetics to some newbs. Part of her civic reqs.”
Mrs. Fossen frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t call them that, Hank. They’re students.”
“My wife teaches in the middle school in Greeley.” He jabbed his thumb. “Here, let me show you the big project we’ve been working on.”
They walked over to a fence line with the dogs following them, tails wagging. Ross petted Hurley on the head as he gazed around.
There were a few more people out in the fields doing chores, and they all had D-Space call-outs. “You’ve got a really nice place here.”
“Yeah, thanks to Jenna and the other students it’s really coming along. We’re one of the most sustainable farms in the county. Which isn’t saying much.” Fossen led them up to the fence and looked out to several acres of grain and other plants, waving in the breeze. “We use a mix of crops and animals to recharge fertility. Here, we’ve planted beans with wheat and a little mustard to fix nitrogen without resorting to chemicals.” Fossen kneeled down and pulled up a handful of soil, letting it drain through his fingers. “We’ve been farming this land for five generations. I need to fix the damage I did to it. We’ve been relying on artificial fertilizers for a long time. It’ll take a few years to get where it should be, but it’ll come around.”
He stood and pointed to the distant cows. “We’re raising the animals on grass—not corn. We put in a good blend of natural prairie grasses. Big bluestem, foxtail, needlegrass, switchgrass. It grows naturally here on the prairie, so it’s turning solar power into beef—no fossil fuels necessary. And we rotate animals through the fields. Chickens follow the cows out to pasture, picking bug larvae out of the manure and eating bugs and worms from the broken turf left behind by the cattle. The chicken dung, in turn, makes the field fertile for crops. It’s all an integrated, sustainable system.”
Ross leaned on a fence and nodded. “It does look more like a farm than the other ones did.”
Fossen nodded to the edge of the property. “Got two ten-kilowatt wind turbines and some flywheel batteries to store the power. Every other darknet farm in this holon is working for the same thing. Regional energy and food independence. We rely on Greeley for our critical manufactured goods—printed electronics, micro-manufactured precision equipment, tools, software. They, in turn, rely on us, along with other farms, to provide their food and raw materials. It’s a symbiotic relationship. We need each other.”
Ross felt the breeze and looked out over the sunny, bustling farm. “I’ve been so caught up in this fight, I sometimes forget what the end goal is.”
Fossen nodded. “I know what that’s like.” They started to walk back toward the house. “You’re staying in Greeley?”
“Yeah, I have a room at a motel in town.”
Fossen slapped Ross on the back. “Well, hell, when was the last time you had a home-cooked meal?”
Ross grimaced. “Probably fifteen years.”
Chapter 25: // Black Ops
Hank Fossen lay in bed in the darkness, listening to the gentle breathing of his wife, Lynn, next to him and the ticking of the clock in the hall. He wondered where his son, Dennis, was at that exact moment. Was he on some mountaintop observation post? Convoy escort? They hadn’t heard from him in nearly a month, which usually meant he’d been posted to a remote observation post.
What would his son make of all the changes on their farm? And in town? Dennis had never shown any interest in staying close to home. Although, who could blame him? Fossen had drilled into his kids at an early age that they were going to college and getting white-collar jobs. The day his son sat him down and explained that he was joining the military so they wouldn’t have to borrow money for school . . . well, Fossen felt both shame and pride at the same time. Shame that his son had to make such a choice, and pride that he had.
Fossen prayed for his son’s safety—even though he wasn’t very religious, he tended to become so on certain occasions.
The dogs started barking outside. Fossen knew the pattern. If it was a raccoon, a skunk, or an opossum, they’d be run off pretty quick. Stray dogs were another matter, but his dogs were in a fenced enclosure. They’d be safe.
The barking didn’t subside, though.
Fossen sat up in bed. All the exterior lights were off. And the motion detector lights near the barn hadn’t come on either. Strange. But the dogs were going crazy. Certainly the hired hands and students in the prefab unit must have heard this racket. He threw off the covers and listened more intently. There was movement downstairs. Creaking of boards on the staircase.
Was it Jenna? The dogs wouldn’t be going crazy.
Adrenaline spread through his bloodstream like warm water, and he slipped off the bed. He reached underneath it for the pump Remington shotgun.
The barking of the dogs suddenly stopped. Silence.
Then he heard a terrified scream in the hallway. “Daddy!”
He just started to get to his feet with the shotgun when the bedroom door kicked in and a blinding white light pierced his eyes. He felt something hard and blunt slam him in the stomach and he doubled over. He couldn’t get any breath in his lungs.
He heard his wife screaming as the shotgun was yanked out of his hands. People thundered around his bedroom shouting in some foreign language.
“La pamant! La pamant!”
“Acum! Fa-o, acum!”
Still sucking for breath and blinded by the lights, Fossen heard struggling and breaking glass. He was then thrown to the ground by powerful hands.