TRACE was winning the propaganda war, too. They’d successfully portrayed Transport as heartless and tyrannical, while showing the rebels as compassionate, measured, and just.
But even success and victory carried their share of challenges. With their increased capabilities came the necessity of restraint. Amos knew that he could end Transport’s control of the capital city with the push of a button. Okcillium gave him that power. But then there would be no city left to claim. Scorched earth is a policy, it’s just not usually the best one.
The rise of the resistance was directly attributable to the fact that Amos had increased TRACE’s access to okcillium, an element that hadn’t yet been found in the new world. Maybe there wasn’t any okcillium on New Pennsylvania. The first decade here had seen an all-out search for the rare element.
And okcillium was thought to have been so completely depleted in the old world that for all intents and purposes it was considered an extinct element. However… okcillium did still exist in the old world; it had just taken the right man to know where to find it, and how to extract it. In fact, it was quite plentiful in one place on Earth: Oklahoma. But sometimes the hardest question isn’t where; sometimes there are also questions of when.
Having access to okcillium made all the difference to the resistance. The element was the most valuable and useful material in the war, and TRACE alone was able to use it for advanced propulsion applications and for game-changing weapons systems. The enemy did not yet know where—or when—TRACE was getting its supply. But if ever they figured it out, there would be a war over Oklahoma like nothing the world had ever seen.
Amos watched the screens as his forces mopped up after the attack on Transport. Another victory. Even without it, his people were calling for decisive action. They were calling for the Hiroshima Option, something he was unwilling to do. Just having okcillium was not reason, in his mind, to destroy a city with all of its population still in it.
The full brunt of TRACE’s newfound power could be unleashed on Transport’s forces in and near the City at any time, but still he waited. He knew that Transport was in the process of abandoning the City and hightailing it out west, beyond the Shelf, where it would be easier for the government to regroup and rebuild. Getting control of the City was a chief war aim, but when TRACE did finally take control, Amos wanted there to be a city left. And he didn’t want to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in order to occupy a city that, in the long run, he didn’t even want. So for now, it was a waiting game—and it seemed that Jed Troyer was the piece that was in play. What happened to him would determine the future of the City, and therefore the entire population of the east.
Amos knew that to the people, it might look like he was hesitating only because he wanted to spare Jed’s life. That wasn’t true, but the people didn’t always know his mind. Of course Jed’s life was critical to Amos as a man and as a brother, but TRACE—and eventual victory—was even more important. Amos knew that he didn’t have critics now, but with the tide of war turning… As soon as it looked like his people might win, he’d have plenty of them. He knew all about Churchill, MacArthur, Patton, and other war heroes who had been cast to the winds once the threat they had fought no longer occupied the forefront of the people’s minds, and ruling became all about the perks, with little risk. It was just the way of humanity, and he didn’t expect anything to change.
He opened his desk drawer and grabbed one of the little white pills that lay among the pens, tweezers, and paperclips. He held the pill up before his face and examined it. Such a tiny thing. The tool of the devil, no doubt, and the legal drug of choice among the English. Q was both bane and boon to Amos. He wanted to be free of it in his old age, but he needed it to help him assimilate and sift through so much information. He popped the pill in his mouth and chewed it deliberately. It was bitter: wormwood and gall. Consuming hell—he thought—one little white pill at a time.
He closed his eyes, and in a few moments the familiar feelings of peace and acceptance swept over him. He thought about home, and Jed, and milking Zoe in the mornings and evenings without a care in the world. He activated his BICE, and the unit booted up in a tenth of a second.
Now, in his mind, he stood confidently. His avatar was him—young, as he’d once been. His powerful muscles pressed against the uniform that stretched over him like armor. He was a vibrant youth of thirty, and unquestionably the man for the job at hand.
He was in a darkened room, and he saw a cube floating in the center of the space. This was the way he’d personalized his filing system. There were a million other ways to do it: one could have a long wall of drawers or lockers, an endless filing cabinet, buttons that floated, or numbered kittens that mewed as they relaxed on sofas. But Amos liked the spinning box. Each side of the cube was divided into different-sized squares—drawers, actually—and the size of each drawer was correlated with how much information was in it and how often it was accessed. The entire parent box was a perfect cube, four feet to a side, and it hung in the room without any visible means of support. No wires were needed, because Amos was in the Internet. This room was his control room. The parent cube could be rotated, spun, inverted, or reversed, all with the flick of his wrist. He turned the box slowly with one hand until he saw a drawer marked DB.
Dawn Beachy.
He opened the drawer with a flick of a wrist, and a flat card came out and floated in front of him. The big square faded until it was just a ghosted image, and the two-dimensional card became brighter once it was floating in the open. It then expanded into the third dimension until it became a cube as well, three feet to a side and also covered on all six faces with different-sized drawers. Amos spun this cube end over end until what had been the top faced him, and he found a drawer with the letters DM.
Direct Message.
He opened the drawer with another flick, and in a split second, Dawn Beachy appeared before him. She was opaque, and her eyes were closed.
After a few seconds, her eyes flittered open and she became solid and real. Recognizing the younger Amos, she nodded. “Yes, sir. Awaiting your orders, sir.”
Amos waved his hand and the two boxes faded until they were virtually invisible. “No orders. I just wanted to talk.”
“Yes, sir,” Dawn said. She cast her eyes downward, looking uncomfortable.
“Is something the matter?”
“Everything is fine, sir.”
“Speak freely, Dawn. We’re old friends. Is something wrong?”
“No, sir. It’s just… I find it distracting to see you like this.”
“Why’s that?” Amos asked.
“Because you look like a slightly older version of your brother.”
Amos nodded and laughed. He looked down, and in a blink he was his older self again. Still in uniform, but older and frailer.
Dawn nodded. “Thank you, sir. Better.”
“How is everything progressing?” Amos asked.
Dawn put her arms behind her and came to an “at ease” position in front of the SOMA. “Things are going well enough, sir. He’s made it to the AZ and he’s going through their immigrant orientation. I’m giving him nudges now and then, to make sure his mind doesn’t become completely submerged, but pretty soon we’ll need to activate him.”
“Let him go for a while,” Amos said. “He needs to reconnect with his people, and then we’ll let him see the world for what it is, and he’ll have the context he needs.”