The Fire
The fire moves from flames to embers. As John I moves his chair closer I see dust get kicked up from the grass. John II follows. I log the scrape, the ash, the way the heat is already thinning.
“We were fire for forty-five years, building the enclaves from kindling to roaring flames. Look what we’ve built,” says John I watching the ember bed breathe. “What do you think?”
John II, “We’re not embers. The rest of the world is.” He leans forward, palms open to the heat. “We have all the power, and I don’t mean electricity.”
John I nods once. The nod is small. But decades fly by for he and I. I have decades of him indexed: Wild Village, Glacier Village, Washington DC, his father General John, his grandparents, my creators John and Marguerite in Geneva. For him, those decades are weight. For me, they are retrieval.
“We’ll be OK,” John II says. “But others will be out there. And that’s the question.” He looks into the black beyond the firelight. What do we do about the others? We could save a few, but all? No!”
“Not all,” his father says, “but some.” Then quieter: “And honestly, it’s on you because you’re the leader. I’m leading now, but I’m older. The trail ahead is your trail.
John II doesn’t answer right away. The embers settle. An ember pops. He’s alerted by it.
“We bring some in,” he says. “They have to be inside or they’ll die.”
“They have to be wanted,” John I says. “We have to want them here, or they’ll never become part of us.”
He hesitates, then says the next part anyway: “But some won’t want to be here. Some will come to take what we have.”
John II’s jaw tightens. “Then we need to tell the difference.”
“Q,” John I says. “Can you?”
Q: Focus on behavior. I can see behavior. No chip means no interior. I can’t know intent. I can hear speech. I can track patterns.
Q: I can compare against records I retained.
“Some bad guys get in anyway,” John II says.
Q: Correct. But I know some of the bad guys.
“How? What do you mean you know them?” asks John I.
Q: Forty years ago, I started and mirrored/replicated local digital data sources (police/court/jail records, maybe county databases, news feeds, etc.) into enclave/Q storage, in the Lattice.
Q: Arrests. Charges. Incarcerations. Dispositions. Some were not guilty and released. I retain that, too.
Q: More than that. The internet info from everyone in Whitefish. Personal, business, family, medical, travel.
“I’m surprised.” says John II.
Q: The bar for me is high.
John I’s hand settles on the pistol at his hip, not theatrical. Just a fact. “Then we wear them.”
John II stands. “Q, call the leadership team. Rose garden. Tomorrow morning.” He glances at the ash in the air. “Tell them to wear their pistols.”
John I looks up at him, a flicker of pride cutting through the exhaustion. “You’re on fire. Stay that way.”
“I’m ready to go inside,” John II says. Then, like he can’t help it: “Q, when do we get fallout?”
Q: It’s already started.
Q: Particulates first.
Q: Anyone outside a sealed space overnight will carry it in tomorrow.
