3 — The Meeting

In the rose garden, Andrea I arrives before the others, as usual. She’s thirty-nine, young enough to still assume the world will make sense if she stares at it long enough.

She stands at the greenhouse window, watching the dim ash outside. Without looking, she reaches for a rose at her side.

The thorn catches her. Not deep, just enough.

Blood beads, small and immediate.

She sucks her finger, muttering something that isn’t quite a word.

I log it: a minor wound, self-inflicted, in a place designed for beauty.

The rest of the team arrives in a soft parade of function; footsteps, jackets, chair legs, and the quiet sound of pistols settling on belts like new habits.

John II takes the center table. He doesn’t waste time warming up to the role. He lets his gaze travel once around the circle and stop.

“We need to talk about letting people in,” he says. “If we do. How do we know they’re safe? And how do we know trouble isn’t coming with them?”

Andrea lifts her finger. The blood has found a path down her knuckle. “I’m the opening illustration,” she says. “Roses stay. Thorns exist. You don’t solve roses by banning them.”

There’s a small shuffle of laughter. Relief trying to pose as humor.

Marguerite I, sixty-eight now, gives Andrea the look she’s been giving her since Andrea was a girl. “You should know better than to grab without looking,” she says. “The roses aren’t the problem. Carelessness is.”

Andrea’s mouth twitches. She lowers her head as if ashamed, then glances up from under her brow. “Fine. But what if it isn’t a thorn next time?”

John II doesn’t smile. “Exactly. What if it isn’t a rose? What if it’s poison?” He taps the table once, a small sound that asks for silence. “Can we tell beforehand? Q.”

Q: I can identify people.
Q: I can’t read intent without a chip.
Q: I can score behavior. I retain history.

They wait anyway. They want the clean answer they can build protocol around.

There is none.

So I widen the frame.

Q: You’re imagining a threat from Whitefish. Whitefish is far.
Q: The immediate problem is local. Campgrounds. Small villages. Families. Children.

Marguerite II flings her hands outward, anxious energy looking for purchase. “There are people camping near here,” she says. “They can’t see more than ten feet. It’s dark all day. No electricity. No fuel. They’re sitting in tents and trailers thinking the world ended in their sleep.”

John I’s expression tightens. Anger at himself disguised as anger at the room. “We’ve done a terrible job thinking about anyone outside our fence,” he says. “Forty-five years building enclaves and acting like that was the whole moral universe.” His eyes cut toward the window. “And yes, predators exist. But the campers are the problem in front of us. Now.”

John II stands so fast his chair scratches the floor. He grips the table edge, not for emphasis, because his hands need something solid. “Then we stop talking in circles,” he says. “We plan intake. Today. Tomorrow morning.” He points without meaning to, like pointing can shape reality. “Saint Mary Village is seven miles. Campers can get in vehicles and drive. They’ll come here because we’re the nearest anything.”

Andrea nods once, already running the list in her head. “I’ll pull a small team,” she says. “We need a way to tell them where to go. An approach path. A place to park. We don’t even have an entry point that looks like an entry point. No signage. No gate routine.”

Marguerite II is still vibrating. “And what do we do with them once they arrive? Where do they sleep? How do we feed them? Water. Where do we put them so we don’t poison ourselves?”

John I answers like he’s done this in his head a thousand times and hated every version. “We triage,” he says. “And we build a holding zone.”

Q: Triage at perimeter: illness, weapons, headcount.
Q: Temporary holding zone for newcomers: water, heat, food, rest.
Q: Families stay together. Friends stay close.

Andrea’s voice shifts. Less logistics now, more dread. “They’ll arrive thinking it’s a night or two,” she says. “A storm. A blackout. Something that ends.” She looks at the toys outside as if they might explain the future. “But it isn’t. It’s the rest of their lives. They’re not going home.”

The room starts talking over itself; questions, worries, the new shape of fear. Not the first morning fear, when normal work felt like safety. This is the second-day fear: the realization that normal is gone and every decision will have consequences that don’t stop.

On the private chip channel, I address John II.

Q: (to John II) “Stay alive and collaborate” carried us for forty-five years. It will not carry us through this.

John II doesn’t respond out loud. His eyes are fixed on the ash-bright window.

He answers on the private channel, terse.

John II: (private) When I was five, the Generals told me: “Stay alive. Stay worthy of being alive.”

Q: (private) My creators told me something similar. “Help make a world worth living in.”

John II: (private) This is the first test, isn’t it? Not predators. People. The campers. The villages. For them, everything is gone. But everything isn’t gone for us. Is it, Q?

He wants comfort.

I answer with data.

Q: (private) Fallout is already present. Particulates.
Q: (private) Early planners estimated a decade of below-zero winters.

John II goes still. I log the change: hope retracting, resolve taking its place.

Then I give him what will matter more than weather models.

Q: (private) Movement update.
Q: (private) Two vehicles just left the Saint Mary campground access road. Heading west. Toward us.

John II’s eyes lift. He doesn’t look at the team right away because the leader learns, in the first real hour of leadership, that announcing the next thing changes it.

Then he speaks, and the meeting becomes something else.

“They’re coming,” he says.