Was it possible that he’d been drugged just so that, while he took some strange loop along the thread of time, he wouldn’t know what was happening? Could it be that he’d never really left Columbia, Pennsylvania at all? That somehow he’d been kept in suspended animation for some requisite time while he and the ship he was in merely passed forward into another era?
Dawn. She said she’d been back and forth several times.
She knew Billy and Pook and Ducky like they’d been friends forever. Yet she also knew Amos from when they were both back on Earth, and Amos had contacted her and asked her to travel with Jed to New Pennsylvania.
Then there was the window with the coffee-can pane. That was easy enough to explain if the window had come through the same portal. Maybe not at the same time, but who knew? Pook had stored his forged papers in the back of the window frame. No way was that a coincidence. Jed knew that his brother had intended for him to see the window. When he’d mentioned as much to Amos, his brother had smiled.
Jed’s thoughts raced now.
Here’s what he knew. He was either completely insane, or… well, he felt like he could safely assume four things: 1. The Columbia Transport Station was (or contained) some kind of okcillium time-bending device. 2. Transport, at some point, had figured out how to perform this time bending, and was using it to colonize… what? Some future Earth? Was he in the future? Was he still on Earth? 3. The limited amount of okcillium available on Earth at the time meant that TRACE was forced to use Transport’s travel portal. 4. The City was gone.
Also this: Transport now had access to a large supply of okcillium back on Earth. Conclusion? Everything has changed.
(30
THE COUNCIL
This Council meeting was unlike any the SOMA had experienced in all his years of leading TRACE. For the first time, his leadership and decisions were being questioned—openly. His natural fighting instinct inclined him to threaten to retire again. In the past, that ploy had usually worked to get the council to back off—but with so many pieces of the endgame finally in place, he was just a little afraid they might actually accept his resignation this time, and move on without him. That was a fear he’d never really experienced before in all his time as the supreme commander of TRACE forces. And now, at long last, he had his brother in play, and things were going so well in that regard.
Councilman Bennings stood and placed both hands on the table. Bennings was a traditionally contrarian voice on the council. Slow to move and difficult to convince. Amos was also convinced that the man wanted power, and the sooner the better.
“Now that Transport has retreated beyond the Shelf, why have they not moved against the Amish? Either to take the Amish with them, or to destroy their community so that it cannot exist to support and feed the resistance?” Bennings asked. “We’re all sure that the government didn’t bring the Amish here in order to abandon them to us. So why not destroy them?”
Bennings didn’t direct his questions to anyone in particular, but all eyes turned to Amos anyway. He was always expected to have all the answers.
“The only reason the Amish haven’t been destroyed in the new world,” Amos replied, “is because they produce raw materials from nothing—from the ground—and most of the new world would starve without them.” He put his hands behind his back and began to pace slowly back and forth before the giant screen that showed a map of the Amish Zone.
“Colonization of the Great Shelf has largely failed,” he continued. “Despite all of Transport’s schemes and machinations, the big cities are still only lightly populated, and the immigrants who have chosen to live there work for slave wages, earning unbacked and inflated unis in the factories and service industries, to support Transport’s imperial plans. The cities are not cities in any real sense of the word. They are basically large factory prisons. Just because the prisoners choose to remain there as some quirk of their makeup doesn’t make the prison any less real.”
Bennings nodded. “These are all things we know, Commander. But they don’t explain why Transport hasn’t yet attacked the AZ.”
“It is the foundation of my answer, Councilman,” Amos said. “If you’ll allow me to continue?”
Bennings nodded and waved his hand, almost dismissively.
Amos resumed his speech. “Transport’s hope has been that the population of the cities would explode—through immigration and through natural population growth. The government’s erroneous belief has been that where there’s a growing population, eventually productivity will follow suit. The theory, as backward as we know it to be, is that the more consumers there are, the more consumables can be produced in the factories, and the better everyone will do. Of course, we know that population growth does not just magically spawn productivity. Building factories and stocking them full of people does not mystically produce either raw materials or good ideas. But understanding Transport’s thinking helps us to predict how they might act. For example, since they believe that population equals production, and that city folk are more compliant and more easily governed, we can expect that they are incentivizing births in the cities. We were able to predict this even before we learned from our spies that the city folk up on the shelf are encouraged to reproduce offspring wildly, while country folk—if they are caught—are punished for having children, unless they commit to having their children schooled by the government and trained for city work.
“Understanding Transport helps us know what we need to do to defeat them,” Amos said.
“And what if they’re successful?” It was Councilwoman Reynosa. She sat back and fixed her eyes on Amos. She spoke respectfully, but with firm intent. “What if they’re able to begin making these factories more productive than they are currently?”
Amos nodded at the Councilwoman. “Those who are creative or who can produce have mostly escaped the cities and are now living in the countryside—off-grid—much like the Amish in the east. The brain drain is almost absolute.”
“If you are correct,” Reynosa said, “then we should be able to sit back and wait. Eventually the cities will collapse, and Transport will have failed to rebuild.”
“Unfortunately, that is not true,” Amos said. “They have access to a portal. And with it, they can bring through raw materials, even okcillium, all taken from the old world. History shows us that many tyrannical governments have been able to build up large and powerful armies using coercive industrialism. Nazi Germany is one example.” Amos paused for a moment to let the visual sink in. “If Transport hadn’t found a way to access okcillium from the old world, I would completely agree with you, Councilwoman. We could contain them, and just wait for their system to collapse. But as we have seen… okcillium changes everything.”
Bennings scowled. He was growing frustrated. “That still doesn’t explain why the Amish have not been destroyed.” The Councilman stood and walked closer to where Amos stood. The approach wasn’t threatening, but it carried with it a message; and that message was understood by everyone in the room. “If the Amish aren’t in a position to supply goods and services to Transport up on the Shelf, why does the government allow them to survive—when they know all the Amish will be doing is producing for us?”