Chasing the Light—Excerpt

Prologue: Exodus

June 13, 2015

The very first thing Tom saw, on the worst day of his life, was the face of the girl he loved.

Seeing Doña at his bedroom door prompted Tom awake much faster than anything else could wake him… of that, his parents would have forsworn. Tom, being a fairly typical fifteen-year-old, had been known to sleep through the passing of low-flying jumbo jets—a fairly common thing to see when your property was bordered on one side by the Potomac River, which was along the glide-path to Reagan National Airport—as well as running vacuum cleaners, cranked stereos and televisions, and yelling adults. But at the sight of Doña, he became awake and alert almost at once.

His very first thoughts, upon seeing her, were of the previous afternoon, when he had gotten back from school a few hours early, his mother had been out shopping, and his father was still four hours from coming home from the office. This had given Tom and Doña hours alone in the house, with which they had taken full advantage. The mere thought of the lovemaking they’d made all over the mansion, the sex he’d had with her in his bedroom, in hers, in the Jacuzzi, in the guestroom, and in the gardener’s shed beyond the pool, made Tom hard instantly. He wanted nothing more than to have her body again, to kiss her sweet lips, and to profess his love for her, again and again.

This is why, as awake as Tom was, it took him a few moments before he recognized that the look on Doña’s face was not a happy one. He blinked, a dawning concern bringing him even more awake, and he looked more closely at her. Doña stood, half-in and half-out of his room, her hand clutching the doorknob tightly, as if she was afraid to release it. That sensuous full mouth was slightly open, her lips down-turned at the corners, and those angelic Latina eyes were wide and searching. She was not just sneaking into his room in the middle of the night, as he had hoped she would for weeks now, since they had first fallen in love. Something was wrong.

That was when he heard the bumping down the hall. And the voices. His parents’ voices. With the doors open, Tom could easily hear his parents when they were having a conversation in their bedroom, though he usually could not make out individual words. Very occasionally, when they were arguing and their voices were raised, he could hear snatches and shouts. Now, he heard tones from his father that were sharp, urgent, though not shouted. Then, angry tones from his mother, followed by short angry bursts from his father.

“—at two A.M.—”

“—Forget it! It’s replaceable—”

“—cost me eighty thousand—”

“—leaving it! Dammit—”

Tom pushed himself up in bed, and said, his voice sounding sleepy even if he no longer was, “Doña? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Doña replied in distinctly Latino-accented English. “Your father got me up and told me to wake you—”

A sudden rush of footsteps down the hall interrupted her, and she turned to look behind her into the hallway. She was almost immediately propelled into Tom’s bedroom by a large hand on her shoulder, so suddenly that she bleated in surprise. An instant later, another hand gripped the edge of the door and pushed it all the way open.

“I told you to get him up!..”

Tom’s gaze shifted from his girlfriend to his father, now standing fully in the threshold. Thomas Everson, Sr, was a large and well-built man, only beginning to show the signs of a paunch that come from years of luxury finally overwhelming a no-longer-healthy lifestyle. With his handsome features and confident stance, he had the ability to dominate any room he entered… as he did now. Tom quickly noticed that, despite the late hour, his father was fully dressed in slacks and a casual shirt, but had not put on socks or shoes yet.

This drew his attention back to Doña, standing meekly next to his father, and who he could now see was fully dressed in the light blue maid’s uniform that she always wore when on duty in the house. Even in her work uniform, Doña was beautiful: The plainly-cut blouse, knee-length skirt and work sneakers could not even slightly take away from her oval face and long dark hair, generous bosom, trim waist, curvy hips and shapely legs; a figure that always reminded Tom of the phrase “the body of life.”

But it was the middle of the night… she was never on duty at this hour…

Thomas Everson looked down at his son, with a strange mixture of anger and concern in his eyes. That, too, was unusual: Tom could not recall too many times seeing his father looking outright worried about something; in fact, the last time had been—

“Get dressed, Tom,” his father barked urgently. “Pack what essentials you need. We have to leave.”

Before Tom could question him, his father exited the room and headed back down the hall for the master bedroom.

Doña continued to stand where Tom’s father had shoved her, and she stared at Tom helplessly, her dark eyes wide. This finally prompted Tom to whip his covers aside and bound out of bed, bellowing, “What’s going on?” He’d asked, but he already had an idea… after all, he wasn’t stupid, he’d heard the news of the past few days. He’d seen his father’s eyes—the same look they had now—just two days ago, watching CNN as they discussed the mounting hostilities between India and Iraq, and between Argentina and China, then reported on President Albert’s speech. The speech to convince America to go on the aggressive against China and India, to remove their hold on Iraq and Argentina… to secure foreign oil for the country.

The Oil War speech… that’s what they were calling it.

He remembered what his father had said on that day. “They’ll never buy it… not after all this time. They’ll march on the White House. They’ll crucify him.” And he’d said “him,” although Tom knew he really meant “us,” meaning “the oil companies”… and by extension, his father, who was a high-level oil company executive. “It won’t be safe,” he’d added darkly. And he’d discussed leaving town, before things got that bad.

His father had been right, but his time estimate had been too conservative. They were already rioting in Washington… it had started the day before. And judging by his father’s urgency, it was now no longer limited to Washington. Tom knew what was going on.

He just couldn’t believe it.

Tom started for the door and stopped at Doña’s side. Tom was in good shape for a fifteen-year-old, thanks to regularly working out, and already showing signs of being a very handsome adult. Yet, despite his being dressed only in the snug-fitting and flattering shorts he usually slept in, Doña did not dwell on his body, she only stared up into his brown eyes. “Did you hear anything?” he demanded. “Is something going on outside?”

“I don’t know,” Doña repeated. “I was asleep. Then he was getting me out of bed… I haven’t heard anything…”

Tom turned and left the bedroom, throwing another glance at Doña before he thumped barefoot down the hall and stopped at his parent’s door. The door was wide open, and the room was frankly a shambles. There were four suitcases on the bed, and clothes everywhere, in the suitcases, on the bed, on the floor, and on the loose furniture. The sight of such chaos drew Tom up short, for he had never seen such disarray in his parents’ room.

Tom looked to the right of the bedroom. His mother was doubled over in front of her dresser, just an ass and legs from his point of view (thank goodness she was in a nightgown and robe, sparing her son from that particular image), rifling the drawers with quick, angry movements. When she stood up, she had an armful of material, presumably underwear, though in her tightly-clutched arms it just looked like wads of silk scraps. Tom’s mother was beautiful, her face and figure defying her age as only a lifestyle full of at-home physical trainers and plastic surgeons could manage. But right now, the anger on her face made her frightening. She glared at Thomas, Sr, as she threw the silken scraps into a suitcase and began tamping it down. “Dammit, Tom, we can’t just leave like this! We already scheduled the movers for July, and the contractors—”

“Too late, Kay” Thomas, Everson cut her off angrily. “We don’t have time to wait for movers and packing trainers and feng shui consultants …”

“Jesus, Tom,” Kay Everson snapped back, “they can’t even see the house from the street!”

“You can’t see Greg’s house from River Road, either,” Thomas muttered as he continued to rifle through his own drawers on the left side of the room. Greg was Gregory Moore, another executive in Thomas’ company, who lived just up the road from them. Thomas, Sr, and Greg played golf together. Tom had met him numerous times. Neither of his parents had yet noticed their son at the door, or their maid joining him at his side.

“It was a freak accident!” Kay cried, and on the word “freak,” her voice cracked. Tom, still at the door, croaked, “What accident?” but his mother was already continuing over him. “The riots are going on downtown! They’re not up here!”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Thomas Sr. barked. “I saw the cars from the gate cameras! I talked to Frankie, he can see Greg’s house! They’re hordes of them, right out there, and they know where they’re going—”

“—over-reacting, Tom, there’s no crazy mobs! Greg—”

Thomas, Sr, moved then, so fast that it seemed the clothing that had been in his hands a second ago actually hovered in the air a moment, before remembering to fall on the floor. He crossed the room in the blink of an eye, grabbed his wife by the shoulders and yanked her towards him so violently that her auburn hair flew crazily about her face.

“Dammit, Kay! Greg’s already dead!”

Thomas, Sr’s voice echoed through the house, and the house answered with silence. He held his wife in a death-grip, glaring down menacingly at her while she cowered silently in his hands. Tom and Doña stood staring at him, too, also unable to move.

Finally, after a few seconds that seemed like a full minute, Thomas, Sr. eased his grip on his wife’s arms, lowering her back to the floor and inching her away from him. Kay remained still, staring at her husband, her hair looking like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket, her arms and shoulders bunched up as if they were still held tightly in his hands. Thomas, Sr’s eyes softened as well, taking in the fright that he had put in his wife’s eyes. Then his head turned towards the doorway, and he saw his son and the maid.

“They killed him. They’re burningdown his house. It’s too late,” Thomas said quietly but firmly, to all of them. “They’ll be here soon. We have to leave, now.” He looked directly at his son. “Go pack. No more than two suitcases. We’re out of here in ten minutes.” Tom did not stir immediately, so his father barked, “Now!”

Tom finally moved, thumping back down the hall to his bedroom. Doña started to follow him, but a shout from Thomas, Sr, made her stop. “Doña! Come help Kay!” Reluctantly, she turned and rushed back into the master bedroom.

Tom reached his room, stopped, and looked around stupidly. Like any youngster, his room was filled floor to ceiling with his most prized possessions: Framed pictures of friends and family, and unframed posters of rock stars and actresses and models; the Yamaha keyboard he’d never adequately learned how to play; bookshelves of books, magazines and comics that had never been converted to digital files, either by himself or by the publishers; the third place trophy in martial arts from the academy; a loose collection of sports paraphernalia, including balls, golf clubs, baseball bat and mitts, football pads, a jai-lai stick, and soccer cleats; and all the loose objects and toys that covered his desk and threatened to bury his laptop and computer accessories. And, of course, a ten-foot-long closet filled with clothing.

Two suitcases? He thought.

“Two suitcases?” he said aloud. “For how long?” he shouted, starting back down the hall. When he reached the door of the master bedroom, he asked, “When are we coming back?”

Thomas, Sr, barely looked up from his own packing. “We’re not coming back.” Kay and Doña, on the other side of the room, stopped their packing to stare at him for a moment. “There won’t be anything to come back to,” Thomas, Sr. added.

After another moment, Kay resumed packing. Doña turned to look at Tom.

“Shit,” Tom muttered. And he bolted back to his room. He yanked his two suitcases out of his closet and threw them on the bed. He only paused another moment, before he made a beeline to his desk. He quickly broke down his laptop and hardware—fortunately for him, he’d always liked the idea of portability, and had actually taken most of his gear with him on numerous vacations… this part was almost easy—and began carefully packing them into one suitcase. Once they were in, he quickly surveyed the desk for any other gadgets he absolutely wanted to hold onto, and tossed them into the suitcase.

Then he roamed the room randomly, throwing his head back and forth. He’d thought about this, about this moment, when his father had watched CNN, got that haunted look in his eyes, and told them they would have to think about what they would have to take, and what they would have to leave behind, if they found themselves forced to leave their home. What was personally valuable. What was replaceable. Remember, his father had said, we can replace everything in this house, including the house, ten times over. And he hadn’t been exaggerating… they had that much money, and then some, Tom knew. He only needed that which was invaluable and irreplaceable. Everything else was trash.

So he packed, quickly and carefully, pausing as he worked only to kick off the shorts he’d slept in, and to get dressed in fresh shorts, jeans, his favorite light pullover, and sneakers. He salvaged a folder of every picture he had that had not been scanned into his laptop. He grabbed a few choice magazines and books, those that he knew were no longer available commercially, and would never be replaced. He folded up his poster of Victoria’s Secret model Josie Dare, and tucked it in along with the handful of women’s underwear catalogs he’d kept at the bottom of his sock drawer. He grabbed the baseball mitt that was autographed by Cal Ripken. Once he had all of the objects he wanted to hold on to, he filled the rest of the bags with clothing.

“Let’s go.”

Tom looked around. His father was at the door with a suitcase in each hand, and one under an arm. His face had lost its ferocity, but was still stern, and his eyes reflected the need for haste. “Get them in the car,” he said simply, before vanishing down the hall.

Tom secured his bags, threw on a windbreaker, and started after his father. Thomas, Sr. was already at the bottom of the long main stairway to the foyer, by the time Tom reached the top landing. The entire mansion was lit, just as it usually was on any average evening (though usually only until midnight, when the lights automatically shut off and switched to proximity activation). From the top of the stairs, it was easy to see the opulence throughout the living room and foyer, and by extension everywhere else in the house: Valuable paintings in ornate frames, classical sculptures, fine carpets and oriental rugs, and fine window drapery, bought and arranged by Tom’s mother. The windows themselves were dark… among his father’s contributions to the house were the latest in privacy glass, which included an LCD layer capable of obscuring the view to the outside with the flick of a switch, and a tinted outer layer that always made it seem to someone outside of the house as if the lights inside the house were dimmed or off.

Nothing had been removed from the walls or tables. Nothing was out of place. Clearly his father considered all this to be replaceable, too.

Tom started down the stairs, moving so quickly he almost tripped on the way down, and he wryly considered that his flight was almost over then and there. He reached the bottom, turned right, and struggled down the hallway to the entrance to the garage. The door to the garage was open, as was the garage door to the outside, and Tom could feel the chill of the early June air seeping in. Tom could see his father at the back of the Escalade, muscling the suitcases in through the open rear hatch. Tom joined him as he finished, and his father took Tom’s closest bag from him and crammed it in.

Thumping and irregular footsteps behind them alerted father and son to Kay and Doña struggling down the hall. Kay had a large suitcase, and used her free hand to try to smooth down her hair as she walked, and Doña had two, one she was carrying in a hand, the other she was rolling behind her. Tom recognized all three suitcases as those of her mother, and as he was closest, he grabbed the bags from his mother, then Doña, passing each one in turn to his father to cram into the back of the SUV.

Then Tom took Doña’s hand and started to lead her back into the house, saying, “I’ll help Doña pack—”

“We’re leaving now, Tom!” Thomas barked.

“Dad,” Tom cried, “Doña hasn’t packed anything! Give us two minutes—”

“She’s not coming,” Thomas, Sr. snapped back. “Get in the car.”

Tom stood there, dumbfounded. He became aware of a squeezing sensation in his hand—Doña—and he looked at her seemingly for the first time since he’d been awakened in the middle of the night. She returned his stare with a wide-eyed look of fright and desperation, and Tom began to realize what was really the most irreplaceable thing he had.

“What?” Tom croaked. Then he turned to his father and shouted, “No!” He marched at his father, his hand still tightly around Doña’s, almost knocking aside his mother. “Are you crazy? She has to come! You can’t leave her here!”

“She’s not coming!” Thomas, Sr. insisted.

“She has to!” Tom fairly screamed, leaning into his father while at the same time pulling Doña close. “We can’t leave her!”

“She’s not a member of this family!” Thomas, Sr. snapped. “She’s not my daughter! She’s better off here.”

“No!” Tom cried, his eyes beginning to sting. “She’s—she’s my—w-we—”

“You can’t even say it, can you?” Thomas snarled at his son, and punctuated his words by reaching down and effortlessly pulling Doña’s hand out of Tom’s grasp. “Get in the car!”

“No!” Tom shouted. “I—won’t go! I—”

“I said get in the car!” Thomas, Sr, was a much larger and more powerful man than his fifteen year old son, and he used that power to swing Tom about, wrench the car door open, and pitch him bodily inside. He slammed the car door closed with such force that Kay and Doña visibly flinched. “Kay, get in! We’re leaving!”

“Tom,” Kay said, “don’t do this to the boy. Can’t you see they—”

“Forget it,” Thomas shook his head, and his eyes locked with Doña’s. “She stays.” For a moment, Thomas and Doña regarded each other wordlessly, and something passed between them which attracted Kay’s notice. Suddenly, Doña’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open, and Thomas swung around to get into the driver’s seat.

Kay’s eyes went wide, too, and she suddenly snarled at her husband, “Why, you son of a bitch…”

But Thomas, Sr. was already in the driver’s seat and closing the door, just ahead of Doña, who was now rushing at him. “No! Mr. Everson, please! Let me—”

“God damn you!” Kay was saying as she jumped into the other side of the SUV, slamming the door. “She’s young enough to be your daughter, you filthy—”

“Shut up!” Thomas, Sr. barked. “We never—” He was interrupted by Doña’s desperate pounding on his driver’s side window. After a glance at her, he started the SUV.

“Mr. Everson! Please… don’t leave me here!” Doña shouted, pounding on the glass with her open palms.

“Dad! Let her in!” Tom cried, fighting with the door. It was locked… the driver could override the door and window locks from his console, and try as he might, Tom could not get his door open. “Mom, help me!”

“So,” Kay snarled at her husband, “you’re going to leave her behind because she wouldn’t let you screw her? You bastard!...”

“Shut up!” He put the SUV in gear, and took one last look at the petite Latina maid pounding helplessly at his window. “If I were you,” he said, loud enough for Doña to hear through the glass, “I’d be a mile from here when the mobs show up.”

“No!” Doña pleaded, and she helplessly followed the locked SUV, slapping her hands against its sides as Thomas, Sr. pulled out and onto the driveway.

The sight of Doña being left behind finally brought out the words that Tom had not been able to say before. With tears in his eyes, Tom cried, “Dad, I love Doña! I love her! Let her in!”

“No!”

“Then let me out!”

“No!”

Tom’s next words were interrupted by a jolt that forced the SUV to bounce and stop short. Tom was thrown forward, bounced off the back of the front seat, and tumbled back into the cushions of the back seat. Doña, running too close beside the SUV, ran into its side, stumbled, and just caught herself from falling. She stopped and stared at the SUV, at Thomas, Sr, but his full attention was directed down the driveway. Doña turned to follow his gaze down the drive, at the distant point on the front lawn where the driveway entered the woods beyond.

Spears of light began to poke out from beyond the woods that separated the house from the street.

“Damn!” Thomas, Sr, glared angrily down the driveway. “They’re here!”

Even Kay’s anger was momentarily forgotten, and she turned and looked down the driveway. “Oh, my God,” she muttered, with a distinct sound of dread in her voice.

As they watched, the multiple spears of light stabbed out of the woods crazily, like concert show floods out of control, dancing about as if searching for something. Slowly they resolved into multiple pairs of parallel lights, all pointing in a single direction… directly up the driveway from the woods, brightening and focusing by the second. Moments later, the first car appeared, bursting into view from beyond the treeline and roaring up the long driveway. Mere yards behind, almost obscured by the dust kicked up from that car, came another… then another, and another, and another… seven cars and trucks altogether. As they cleared the trees, a car and a truck veered off the driveway and proceeded towards the house across the well-manicured lawn to either side. As they approached a gentle curve in the driveway, the car in the grass on the far side spun out of control, doing a complete three-sixty and churning up dirt and grass in long roostertails, before it regained control. They all bore up at the house, right up the drive where the Escalade stood.

“Damn,” Thomas, Sr, muttered again, as he tromped on the gas pedal and yanked the steering wheel to the right. The SUV jumped sideways and left the driveway, itself kicking up roostertails of grass and dirt, and started across the front lawn. At once, three of the vehicles coming up the driveway swerved uphill, in the SUV’s direction. But the SUV was heading downhill, and Thomas had more than enough time and momentum to get past the pursuing vehicles as he angled across the lawn.

Without warning, there was a crack, and Tom felt something sting his cheek. Kay coughed out a scream, and Tom looked in her direction before bringing his head back around to the direction of the crack. In the glass behind the passenger seat, he saw a neat round hole.

“Shit!” Father and son shouted together, as Thomas began to alter the truck’s course. Tom heard a second shot ring out, then a third, though nothing hit the SUV this time. Did they miss, or—? Tom wildly craned his head around in time to see Doña, her light blue uniform and white shoes catching the light from the vehicles like glowing targets in the night, as she ran frantically in the opposite direction, heading for the thick woods around the far side of the house.

“They’re shooting at Doña!” Tom wailed.

“They’re shooting at us!” Thomas, Sr, rapped out, and yanked the wheel hard to the left. The Escalade regained footing on a gravel path, and Tom realized what his father was doing: He was making for the service entrance at the edge of the property. They plunged into woods on either side of the gravel drive, their pursuers were lost from view… and in another moment, so were Doña and the house. Thomas, Sr, gunned the Escalade up the drive, then started stabbing at the ceiling of the SUV. He stabbed upward numerous times, all while fighting the wheel and the insanely-bouncing truck, until he shouted out, “Kay, the gate!”

Kay and Tom realized then that he had been trying to trigger the automatic gate, but that he hadn’t managed to hit the remote control button in the dark, in the bucking SUV. Kay cried out in alarm, and pitched sideways to find the remote on the visor. Tom could do nothing to help her from the back seat, and he could no longer see behind him, so he finally plopped down into the seat and hastily pulled his seatbelt on.

“Got it!” Kay yelled, and flopped back into her seat. But they were already upon the gate, moving at a breakneck pace, and the chain link gate did not open quickly. Kay screamed in terror, Tom braced his arms against the front seat and cringed, and Thomas, Sr. bellowed almost as if he hoped to scare the gate into opening faster.

The Escalade hit the gate with a bang, knocking the gate off its motorized rollers and peeling it aside like a stiff metal curtain. The SUV jumped violently when it hit… then it jumped again, as it reached the edge of the gravel road and hit the edge of the street’s pavement. Thomas jerked the wheel to the right, but it was too soon, and the truck lurched over sickeningly, threatening to overturn. It seemed to balance precariously on its two left wheels for a few seconds… then it came down, hard, on the other two wheels.

As it turned out, if Thomas, Sr, had not turned the wheel when he did, he would have struck an oncoming truck that was even bigger than his SUV. The truck swerved, locked up its brakes, and skidded sideways, itself almost overturning in the middle of the street. Tom distinctly heard someone from the truck shout, “That’s Everson!” At once, a chorus of voices were heard on the truck, from the driver and all of his passengers. A beer bottle sailed out of the truck’s window and shattered against the back window of the SUV, doors opened on the driver’s side of the truck, and shouting men poured out. Thomas paid them no mind, and instead gunned the Escalade and pointed it down River Road. Within moments, they were racing down the dark road at well above the posted speed limits.

Tom helplessly looked over his shoulder, out the beer-stained rear window, at the driveways to his home, where he could already see other vehicles swerving and disappearing down the driveway and into the woods.

“Lucky,” Thomas, Sr, muttered as he raced the SUV down the street. “Damn that moron Albert, all his fault. Gonna get us killed… just like Greg. If Frankie hadn’t called…”

“Tom, they’re going to destroy the house,” Kay moaned. “Can’t we… can’t we call the police, or—”

“Too busy dealing with rioters,” Thomas, Sr, growled. “Hell, they might even be helping ‘em, considering Albert’s big mouth. It’s too late.” He pulled his eyes from the road long enough to give his wife a meaningful look. “Just be glad we got out of there alive.”

In the back, Tom’s eyes went wide. “Doña…” he moaned himself, and continued to look helplessly up the road behind them. It had happened so fast… he barely remembered taking a breath, from start to finish. But he did realize—and would never, ever forget—that the very last thing he had seen, as he was being carried away from his home for the last time, was the girl he loved… running for her life.

1: Union Station

Excerpt from the speech by Congressman Henry Caribou, Monday Aug 1 2020

“…We, as a nation, have willfully wasted power, wasted resources, and wasted time. We have acted as if we were incapable of living cleanly or sensibly. But we are better than that! We forged a nation out of the wilderness, by working together, sharing resources, and living efficiently… and we are capable of doing it again!

“We, as a nation, have given no thought to other nations… we didn’t care how much we wasted their resources or polluted their shores. But we are better than that! We reversed the pollution levels of industry in the 1970s, because we recognized that it had to be done! We can demonstrate that not only do we still care, but we are still willing and able to do something about it!

“We, as a nation, have been myopic and selfish, and have refused to work together towards a common goal. But we are better than that! We built this country… that was a common goal! We created the greatest economic force on the planet… that was a common goal! We sacrificed to recover from a revolutionary war, a civil war, a Great Depression, a World War, an agricultural war, a race war, a Cold War, a terrorist war, and an economic war!

“And now, we face a new threat—an environmental war—and we stand accused of ignoring the problem, making things worse, and dooming this planet to ruin. And in fact, we cannot argue with our accusers, because we are guilty of doing exactly what they’ve accused us of doing.

“But we are better than that! We will prove that we have heard their accusations, and will meet them head-on! We will prove that we can create clean power, and stop using cheap and dirty power! We will prove that we are capable of making the extra effort, on our own behalves, and on the behalf of our planet. We will prove that we can again set the example for the world, and re-take our position as the world’s social, economic, technological and moral compass.

“We can do it, and we will do it, despite the nay-sayers, despite the hardships, and despite the opposition… because we, Americans, are better than that!”

September, 2023

“If you want to know a country, travel by its trains.”

Somewhere, years ago, he remembered hearing or reading that saying. He suspected someone British had said it… who better to know about trains that connected foreign lands and strange cultures? But as he rode southward down the Amtrak line, from Baltimore to Washington, he could as easily believe that an American might have said it. After all, there might not have been multitudes of foreign lands passing outside of his train, but there was certainly evidence of many strange cultures, spanning what looked like three centuries and a lot of changes, some good, but mostly bad.

Well, actually, he reflected, he wasn’t seeing bad changes, so much as neglect. It was the neglect of a country that had not wanted to live near its public transportation systems if it could have avoided it. That had been America’s credo for so long, its secret shame: Sure, we want a public transportation system; sure, we’re proud of our public transportation system; we just don’t want to ever, ever have to use it. So the wealthy who had their own private transportation had built homes far away from the public transportation systems, leaving that land to the disadvantaged, the poor bastards who actually had to use the system, whether they liked it or not. Homes within sight of the railroads became decrepit houses and outright shacks… streets were not kept up… low-rent warehouses created a backdrop of dirt and boredom, places not to be caught at night.

But every so often, these scenes were punctuated by neighborhoods of honest beauty, decorative townhouses, garden apartments, well-kept roads lined with plots of green and small trees. They were products of the urban renaissance, the return to living close to the city. These neighborhoods were clearly young and fresh, and they backed right up to the tracks. Almost. At least, as close as they could manage without withering from close contact, for even here, they held the public transportation system at arm’s length. Tall fences and decorative walls separated the two, and sometimes, it was impossible to see the pretty neighborhoods from the train… you just saw walls, an endless mass of concrete slipping past at a hundred miles an hour.

Then, the walls would be gone, and the shacks came back.

Eventually, all of this disappeared, and the train he rode aboard was surrounded by other trains, freights, commuters, light rail, and tracks that were clearly waiting for the trains that were coming. The railyards were full of trains here, all converging on or dispersing from one place, just a few minutes ahead now. A crackle preceded the announcement from the overhead speakers.

“Attention, Attention: Now arriving, Union Station in Washington City, Maryland. Please take a moment to gather your luggage and check your belongings, and take care not to leave anything behind on the train. Please take note of any baggage or belongings that your fellow passengers might be leaving behind. If you see a fellow passenger leaving something behind, please alert them to recover their property. If you see any unclaimed bags or belongings, please notify the conductor immediately, or dial 911 if the conductor cannot be found. Passengers can be held liable for damages, delays or costs associated with safe property disposal. Amtrak cannot be held responsible for injuries incurred while standing on the train, before it has come to a complete stop. For your own safety, please remain seated with your seat belts secured until the train has come to a complete stop. On behalf of Amtrak, we hope you have a pleasant stay in Washington. Have a nice day.”

All of this had been spoken so quickly and without inflection that it had sounded like, at most, three sentences. Around him, passengers calmly decided to risk their lives by standing up, collecting their bags, and moving towards the front or rear doors of the car to disembark as rapidly as possible. They may have been in that much of a rush… he was not. So he waited, and watched, as the train pulled slowly into Union Station, easing through the forest of concrete columns and under the solar collectors that roofed the boarding areas, and entered a world of mid-day half-light. Across the platform opposite him, another passenger train had apparently just arrived, and riders were flowing rapidly out of every open doorway, in a hurry to get somewhere… or maybe, just to get off the train. On his train, the passengers waiting by the doors began shifting from foot to foot, like horses eager to be released by the starting gate. Finally, the train stopped. There was a ping from somewhere, then a quiet rumbling, and the doors were open. The passengers filed out in orderly fashion, not jostling or arguing… but once they hit the platform, many of them doubled or tripled their pace and speed-walked for the terminals.

When most of the people were gone, he reached for an Orioles baseball cap that he’d purchased in Baltimore, and pulled it onto his head, visor low over his eyes. Then he finally got up out of his seat and pulled his two suitcases from the rack above his head. Holding one in front of him and one behind, he crab-walked down the aisle and out the front doors, whereupon he let the bags dangle at either side of him as he walked down the platform. As leisurely as he was, there were other people who were as leisurely, or simply as slow, as he was, and he had no trouble following the crowds to the arrival stations. He took note of the many police and K-9 units that patrolled the platform area, but he was unconcerned with them, knowing that no K-9 unit could yet smell deception, and he carried nothing more illicit than that on his person. Even in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, the lines to the arrival stations were fairly long, and it was a good ten minutes before he found himself standing at one of the arrival desks in line.

A bored female security guard offered a tired but pleasant smile, and said, “Welcome to Washington City.” She was a young black woman, attractive, and clearly not interested in wasting any energy on him, judging by her vague appraisal of him and his bags. She also didn’t look like she’d put up much of a resistance if he’d decided to push her over and walk right past the desk… but he gave her the benefit of the doubt, and of course, she had plenty of backup around. She held out her hand. “Passport?” In response, he put down his bags and reached for the small metal dongle that hung on a thin chain around his neck. The electronic device stored his identification data, as well as various medical and financial data, and a few private documents. He gave the dongle a half-twist that exposed its USB plug, and handed it over to the guard. She took the dongle, aligned it with the outlet on her board, and before she pushed it home, she said, “Name?”

“Tom Kline,” he replied.

The guard pushed, waited a moment for her system to check the ID details on the passport, then examined the screen embedded in the desktop before her. She glanced up at his face once, then looked back down at the screen. Then she started typing on a keyboard next to the screen, paused until she heard a friendly-sounding double-beep, and pulled the dongle from her board. She handed it back to him, droning, “Thank you, have a nice day.”

“Thanks,” Tom replied, returning the dongle to his neck and picking up his bags. The guard barely returned his smile before she was focusing on the next person in line. Tom moved away from the arrival stations and into the terminal halls of Union Station.

Once he was in the main hall, he wanted to break into a grin, or blow out a breath of air in relief of making it past one more security system… but he managed to keep his relief to himself. After all that he had already been through, and all that he hoped to do, he knew that his little trip could be brought to an abrupt halt at any time if his forged papers were found out. So far, the passport had gotten him through three federal security checkpoints and two credit checks, ably demonstrating that it was worth what he’d paid for it. But he didn’t want to push his luck, and there was no sense in drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

He continued on through the hall, taking in the sights and sounds of the building. Union Station had been a major downtown shopping mall, much more than just a train terminal, for years. Tom remembered that from before he’d left the country, and he was sure he’d visited the place at least once back then. But a lot of years had gone by since, and he didn’t recognize anything about it now. The boarding hall had become two levels, both devoted to waiting areas, and stores selling everything from comfort-food and drinks, to e-books and e-magazines, candy, the inevitable cheesy local souvenirs, liquor, and local information kiosks. He stopped at one of these kiosks, putting his bags down between his legs, and did a quick search for a hotel nearby. The kiosk identified a hotel just two blocks away, apparently small but comfortable, designed for business travelers without first-class expense accounts. Actually, Tom could have afforded a first-class place, but he didn’t feel he needed it, and he was trying to keep a low profile at any rate, so he used the terminal to confirm a reservation at the business hotel, and to get directions.

Once he was done at the kiosk, he gathered up his bags and continued on. He walked through a short tunnel into another two-level hall, this one filled with franchise outlets that Tom largely recognized, selling clothing, perfumes, jewelry, costume underwear, toys, luggage, and electronics. A few full restaurants were in evidence on the upper levels, accessible by a wide curved stairway. Another stairway led down to a third level, where a fast food court and arcade evidently resided. And off to one side were the ticket counters and information desks, surprisingly full of people who, for whatever reason, hadn’t made their travel arrangements online, but insisted on doing it the old-fashioned way, dickering with a guy in uniform behind a counter.

Then, through an arch, and Tom found himself at the grand entrance to Union Station, a huge airy space fronted by a two-story expanse of glass and columns, and above the columns, a row of white stone statues of naked soldiers (you knew they were soldiers by the helmets and capes they wore), with shields strategically covering their crotches, and expressions that suggested that they didn’t know what they were doing guarding the grand foyer of a train station, either. More restaurants and gift shops either filled the space or occupied its outer edges, and plenty of people milled about, or sat about eating, or just seemed to be waiting for something. No one here seemed to be looking over their shoulders, or discussing things in furtive whispers, or griping loudly about this or that. Like the rest of the people in Union Station, they seemed occupied with their own affairs, getting to here or there, and not particularly concerned about anything else.

Tom crossed the expansive entry foyer, passed through an air curtain doorway and stepped out into the hot, humid air of Washington. He blinked hard as the combination of downward-streaming sunlight and reflected light from the concrete sidewalks assaulted him from above and below, and rendered the area in a severe glow of inescapable heat and light.

He immediately noticed that Washington had a smell to it, similar to the one that he had detected in Baltimore… but just as in Baltimore, he hadn’t been able to identify it. He’d thought it was somehow connected to the docks where he had been delivered, and where he’d remained long enough to secure his cargo, before taking a trolley to the train station and heading for Washington. He’d thought it might have had something to do with the areas of the docks that had been permanently inundated by the rising global water levels, and the former stockyard areas that were now a newly-annexed part of the Chesapeake Bay. But he knew there were no docks near the Capitol, the dome of which he could see peeking beyond the trees almost immediately ahead of him. So it was a city smell. He hadn’t been away that long… and he’d just come from Singapore, a major city if there ever was one. What was that smell?

At least, the air was clean, even with the unidentifiable smell. That foggy, gritty, choking atmosphere that used to be common with Washington, and in truth, the entire northeastern seaboard, was gone. It now resided in China, India and Russia… punishment (or was it reward?) for using military force to co-opt the oil supplies of the Middle East and South America, the military force that U.S. citizens had finally said “No” to during the Oil Riots in 2015. Something good had come of it: With no oil, America finally got serious about its battery and capacitor research programs, and electric power had finally become the country’s power standard for almost everything, eventually leading to the cleaner air; not that it helped the cause of stemming global warming, though… it just shifted the worst offenders to the other side of the planet, and the negative effects continued on. Ask anyone who had lost property on the now-submerged barrier islands of the eastern seaboard, or roughly half of the states of Delaware and Florida, what they thought of the cleaner air, and probably they would not be too impressed.

Tom took his bearings, waving off a nearby cab driver standing next to a garishly-painted SUV with a back-end filled with strange mechanical equipment, and weaving between him and a bike-cabbie, and started off to the south and west. The street signs were a bit confusing, considering the grid-like north-south and east-west pattern typical of Washington’s streets was interrupted at Union Station by the half-circle of Massachusetts Avenue bordering the front of the station and straightening out into a diagonal avenue on either side, Louisiana Avenue splitting off from Massachusetts in another diagonal direction, and an E Street that exited Union Station in yet another angle, then veered due west and out of sight. Fortunately, he could actually see the hotel from the station, and simply made a beeline for it.

He tried not to be too distracted by the people he passed on the street. It was just on the hot side of comfortable for early March, the mid-30s (Tom still remembered the Fahrenheit scale, which put the temperature in the low 90s, but he’d been away long enough that he generally thought in centigrade now), and most of the people he saw about were dressed appropriately light in anticipation of higher temperatures expected later in the day. He’d known that American casual fashions had recently returned to skin-tight pants, for both sexes. And as close-fitting as the pants were on the boys, the girls were often wearing little more than opaque stockings that left little to the imagination. He’d also heard that these new fashions were now worn with the front zippers open, exposing the skin and underwear beneath. But hearing about it, and seeing it in the flesh (so to speak) were very different things. And depending on the brevity of the briefs or panties—and in a few cases, he wasn’t sure there were any—that meant being able to see almost down to the pubes! He’d discovered this when his ship pulled into Baltimore, and it had been a constant source of distraction all morning long. Fortunately, his appearance in Washington City, not far from the Capitol itself, meant that casual was being heavily outnumbered by American business fashion, which had lately evolved into conservative and incredibly-straight-lined suits for men, revealing little shape, and pants-suits for women (skirted business suits had been fashionably out for most of a decade, now), wherever possible accentuating their natural hourglass shape but otherwise showing no skin below generally conservative necklines. Still, though Tom had expected to see mostly business outfits downtown, in the middle of the workday, the number of people casually-dressed in sub-ab-baring tights was still pretty significant. Tom pointedly looked straight ahead, especially when he thought someone might notice his stares, and struggled to avoid looking like a lecherous rube tourist as he made his way down the street.

When he did look down, he sometimes let his eyes drop all the way to the sidewalk, where he’d noticed that a lot of people’s shoes had a symbol on the heel or the ankle, a small yellow lightning bolt in a black circle. He saw many of them, on both casual and work shoes. He recognized them as volt shoes, so named because of the tiny power-generating layers built into the soles of the shoes, taking advantage of the wearer’s steps to generate wireless power for small devices like cellphones and e-screens. That was another American fashion that hadn’t taken hold in Singapore yet, though he had heard of it beginning to appear in Hong Kong and Japan, where it was not nearly as risqué as the open-fly look.

One thing he did not see too many of, which frankly surprised him, were automobiles. At least, few vehicles he would call a car. There were large trucks, all of them delivery vehicles… and he saw a few old SUVs here and there that had been pressed into service as cabs or small cargo delivery vehicles. But mostly, he saw bicycles and scooters, and the scooters were almost as quiet as the bikes… probably electrics or hybrids, like the ones back in Singapore, Tom guessed. He’d half expected to see more old-fashioned gas-powered motorcycles, considering how popular the Harley Davidson had been in America when he’d left… but apparently even the aural allure of a V-twin engine just couldn’t compete with the high cost of gas any more, and the motorcycle had gone electric here, too. But he was duly impressed to see that the old-fashioned automobile was no longer the dominant vehicle on American city streets.

He also saw PTVs, lots of them. Personal Transportation Vehicles were occasionally seen in Singapore, but not in the numbers he saw here. Typical to the vehicle style, they were about the length of a very small automobile, but only about half as wide or less, and planted low to the ground. These vehicles had either one seat, or two seats set one behind the other. Most of them had three wheels, two either in the back, or in the front, though a few had only two wheels; and the three-wheelers were usually engineered around linkages that allowed them to lean into turns, like motorcycles. But unlike motorcycles, they had fully-covering shells, very aerodynamic and sporty, like tiny racing cars. PTVs outnumbered everything else on the road, and came and went with a speed and agility that suggested herds of some kind of small animal. PTVs were practically synonymous with LEVs, Light Electric Vehicles, in that they were mostly electric, some with gas-powered recharge plants, and even a few with hybrid overdrive plants. PTV was mainly an American label, used to distinguish the vehicles with their foreign counterparts. Their silence was uncanny, especially considering how many of them were about… the only time he’d know one was nearby would be a split-second before he saw it, when he’d hear the hum from their tires and the light whish of air that would precede them. More than anything else, these low, silent vehicles began to unnerve him as they whisked past him in large numbers, and he found himself keeping a weather-eye on the street to avoid being surprised by them.

And finally, the inevitable street people that floated around every U.S. city. But here, too, was a twist: Many of the people he saw were dressed in biking tights, once-brightly-colored spandex outfits, now faded and occasionally sporting holes, sometimes in embarrassing places. Many of these people carried signs that said, “Will bike for money.” Tom was immediately confused about the fact that they had no bikes, and assumed that this was just another way to get money from the locals and tourists.

Tom was almost glad when he reached the hotel and got off the street. The hotel had apparently been converted from an office building, judging from the interior treatments. The front desk, to one side of the lobby, seemed to have been expanded from a security station. A few small alcoves along the opposite wall had been converted to tiny shops, mostly selling souvenirs and knick-knacks. The rest was just wallspace, which had had animated wallpaper ads or flat-panel info kiosks added to almost every surface, until the entire space had a kinetic, chaotic look to it. Tom made his way past the shops and distracting wallpaper to the front desk and put down his bags as he reached it. He was immediately greeted by a pretty young woman in hotel uniform who seemed noticeably less bored than the guard he’d passed at the Union Station security desk.

“Welcome to Louisiana House,” the woman greeted him. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes, I just made it. Tom Kline.”

“Yes,” she said as she glanced at a desk display, “I see it here. Passport?” Tom handed over his ID dongle, and she expertly flicked the plug out and plugged it into her board. After a now-familiar-sounding double-beep, she nodded. “We have you in room 305, Mr. Kline. Do you want me to code your room to your passport, or would you rather have a separate key?”

“You can code it there,” Tom replied.

“No problem,” the woman smiled sweetly, and her fingers worked quickly over the keyboard in front of her. A series of coded tones followed, after which she nodded to herself, removed the dongle, and handed it back to Tom. “Here you go, Mr. Kline. 305 is on the north side… you’ll exit the elevators, then take a right, then a second right. Do you need a hand with your bags?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Tom reached down and hefted the bags in either hand, and headed for the elevator bay. Along the way, however, he noticed a wide flight of open stairs that clearly went to the top of the building (only ten floors), and he decided to take the stairs instead. As he reached the first landing, halfway to the second floor, he turned to start up the second half of the stairway. It was then that he noticed a few people in the lobby, including the girl at the desk, watching him as he headed upward. He actually faltered in his rhythm for one step, then resumed his upward pace, as he considered what it was about him that seemed so unusual to them. (Surely, it wasn’t his closed fly…) He did see a few others in the lobby, holding their luggage by extended handles and pulling them around on tiny wheels, or simply walking along while the bags followed them under their own power. He supposed the sight of him carrying his own bags could be that unusual to them. And if people didn’t habitually carry their bags, he supposed the stairway he was on might not see a lot of traffic, either.

He gained the third floor and followed the desk clerk’s directions, until he reached 305. He did not have to physically unlock the door: The door wirelessly detected the code programmed into his passport, and automatically clicked back the latch for him. Tom pushed the door open and stepped inside, turning sideways to clear his bags. The room was pretty basic, essentially one main room and a bathroom, but comfortable-looking for what it was. The main room had one king-sized bed on one wall, a counter with dresser drawers along the opposite wall, an LCD TV above the counter, and a desk and two chairs over by the picture window. A dorm-sized fridge sat in the corner, nearby the obligatory power and net plugs, and a wireless antenna panel resided in the corner of the ceiling immediately above the fridge. Tom glanced to the wall beside the door, and saw that the light and room controls were up-to-date touchscreen squares, including an intercom to the front desk, and small displays that could be used to show the occupant a visitor in the hall, or to access other hotel information. Identical squares resided on the wall by the bed, the opposite wall near the desk, and inside the bathroom.

It seemed to Tom to be rather on the opulent side for basic business class, until he noticed the sign on the inside of the room’s door, which read: “Occupants will be charged for any energy use above 5 KWH per day. For more information, or to set limits on electrical use, please contact the front desk.” Tom nodded, taking another look at the electrical outlets and appliances in the room, and guessed that they probably consumed about half of that under normal use. But that was okay: He didn’t expect to be using that much power, so he probably wouldn’t be running up much of a bill.

In fact, for now he wouldn’t be running up a bill at all, since he planned to drop off his bags and go right back out. He deposited his bags on the bed, checked that they were still locked, and exited the room. Returning to the lobby, he walked past the check-in desk and over to the Concierge. A man probably three times Tom’s age stood at the smallish desk, and he smiled gently as Tom approached. A name tag above his breast pocket said, simply, “Bo.”

“I need to go to Potomac,” Tom told the Concierge. “Up River Road. What’s the best way for me to get there from here?”

The older man considered a moment before he replied. “You have a few choices: First, a cab directly to your address. From here, though, that’ll be very expensive. Your second choice would be taking the Metro—you know our subway?”

“Sure,” Tom replied, “I used to live here.”

“Ah,” Bo nodded. “Then you’d take the Metro from Union Station to Bethesda, then take a bus to Potomac. Let’s see…” He consulted a touchscreen in his desktop. “…that would be P20 to Potomac, runs all the way up River Road. Your third option is to take the Metro to Bethesda, and either drive a Davey the rest of the way…”

“Davey?”

“Day vehicle. Spelled D-A-Y-dash-V, but everyone just calls it Davey. It’s a local service that lets you rent a vehicle for the day,” the Concierge explained. “You pick it up at the station, then drop it off there when you’re done… if you have a valid driver’s license, that is?”

“For the U.S.? Nope.”

Bo shrugged oh, well. Tom was sure Bo had detected his mild accent, which had taken on a Singlish tinge after most of a decade out of the country, which had probably prompted the question. “Then you can take a cab from Bethesda,” Bo concluded. “Fourth is a Pubcycle from Bethesda… those are free, parked at the station.”

“Either way,” Tom summed up, “I’m going to Bethesda first.”

“Pretty much,” Bo smiled.

~

Washington’s Metro was much as Tom remembered it, though the narrow-aisled cars he’d occasionally ridden as a youngster had largely been replaced by cars that featured a row of seats placed side-by-side against each wall, leaving more room in the car for larger crowds to stand in the aisle. The car was packed, too, though Tom was also very familiar with that, having ridden Singapore’s trains regularly. After about twenty-five minutes, the train pulled into the Bethesda station, and Tom worked his way out past the other riders. He located the escalator out of the platform largely by following the crowd as they shuffled off in the same direction. He moved through the turnstile, waiting between the body blockers until his passport was detected, and the Metro system could deduct the fare through the account he’d created at Union Station. Once passing through the turnstiles, he again continued to follow the crowd, up one of the longest escalators he’d ever seen, and out of the station.

The space at the top of the escalator, once he saw it, was also familiar. Tom remembered that this station was underneath one of Bethesda’s office buildings. The building literally floated above the space, supported by a gridwork of columns that, if one thought about it, probably would not have seemed adequate to hold up twenty stories of tower. The space was walled off on three sides, and segmented into parking rows, with buses coming and going, disgorging passengers, taking more passengers aboard, then pulling out. The buses came and went through the one open side of the space, which connected to a street beyond.

The space had that smell, too… the same as in Baltimore, and outside Union Station, but much stronger here. Tom wrinkled his nose as he tried to identify it again, and shook his head when it continued to stymie him. Shaking off the distraction, he concentrated on finding the parking slot where the P20 bus would be pulling in. Once he located it, he found a seat on a bench in front of the slot, and waited. The bus was scheduled to arrive in little under ten minutes… and within five, Tom watched the area around the slot fill up with people. About thirty seconds before the bus actually pulled up, the crowd began agitating about, seeming to Tom as if they could somehow detect the bus via a sixth sense. He guessed that there was some sort of early warning message that he’d missed, but as the bus pulled up just then, he didn’t bother worrying about it. He boarded the bus and found a seat, noting that the bus was pretty much filled to capacity at its very first stop. Between the Amtrak, the Metro, and now the bus, he had seen nothing but capacity crowds all day long. At least not everybody drove themselves around here, he mused. With so many people around, even if they all had the small PTVs, there’d never be room on the roads for all of them.

The bus pulled out of the station and into the main roads. The immediate area at the Metro station looked a lot like the downtown areas of Washington, but within minutes, the bus was cruising down streets thickly-lined with ancient trees, huge oaks and maples, dogwoods, evergreens… the widely-varied horticulture that was typical of the area. Bethesda seemed to be doing well, its old brick rowhouses and newer apartments looking clean and neat and well-kept. Tom saw a lot of bicycles, scooters, PTVs, and delivery trucks here, too, as in the downtown Washington area. But here, he also saw full-sized personal cars and trucks… old-fashioned automobiles… and plenty of them. Many of the vehicles looked like they might have been a decade or two old, but meticulously maintained by their owners… it was like driving through a classic car show. But those old cars were gas-guzzlers, weren’t they? How could Americans be driving those old cars, and not lose their shirts buying gas for them?

“Are you all right?”

It took a moment for Tom to realize that the question was addressed to him. He swiveled his head away from the window, and found himself looking at an attractive girl seated next to him. She was staring intently at Tom, and he realized at that point that his face had been screwed up in a deep frown. “Oh,” Tom responded, making a visible effort to relax his expression. He nodded at the window. “Just noticing all the old cars. I mean, Americans all still have to pay for gas, right?”

The girl grinned and sniffed out a small chuckle. She looked to be probably close to Tom’s age, with a warm smile, bright brown eyes, and a hint of burgundy streaks in her bobbed brunette hair. “Sure,” she replied, “but most of those aren’t driving on gas… at least, not much.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh. Too expensive. Most of those old cars are converted to electrics or hybrids. They don’t have the original engines in ‘em. Pre-2014 gas engines will get you a huge fine, now.”

“Ah,” Tom nodded, understanding.

“Just visiting?” the girl ventured.

“In town for awhile,” Tom replied. “I’m not sure how long yet.”

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here. Not that accents are unusual around here. But I can’t place yours.”

“Actually,” Tom explained, “I was born in Tulsa, and raised in Maryland.” He paused, considering how much he should say on this point without risking getting himself in trouble. Of course, he had no reason to suspect this girl was going to just jump off the bus and call someone about him, even if she had an inkling that he might not be telling her the truth about something. But he’d been away for awhile, and the Washington area had had its paranoid spells before. Finally, he decided to be honest, but to avoid any details. “But I’ve spent the last few years in Singapore.”

“Singapore?” the girl nodded and pursed her lips, suggesting there was something impressive about Tom’s having been to Singapore and back. “Why are you back?”

“Looking up an old friend,” Tom replied.

“Male or female?”

Tom recognized the tone of the question, and was almost sorry he’d heard it. After all, this was a very pretty girl, one that Tom wouldn’t have had a problem getting to know better. “Female,” he responded with a mild smile and a shrug. His lack of detail beyond that said volumes.

“Oh,” the girl replied, nodding her understanding. Her smile faded, and her eyes started to drift away, and Tom knew that he had once again passed up an opportunity… as he had been consistently doing for the past eight years. Not for the first time, he hoped it was going to be worth it.

When the girl didn’t seem about to comment further, Tom said, “Can I ask you something? Are you from around here?”

The girl seemed to perk up at the question, though clearly she had switched to a less convivial mode after his admission. “I’ve lived in the area all my life.”

“Okay, well—heh, how do I say this?—there’s this smell…”

The girl smiled knowingly. “Ethanol.”

“Huh? Ethanol?”

“Yeah, that’s the ethanol. What everybody’s driving on, when they’re not driving on volts, including this bus. Everybody notices it when they come here. America uses ethanol based on these grasses… don’t ask me what they’re called, I just know it’s genetically modified grass. Oh, and I know it’s a grass that’s got more power than most other vegetable sources—y’know, more bang for the buck—but it’s also got this smell. But that’s what they make our gas and diesel with, so, there you go.”

“Oh. Okay,” Tom nodded, glancing back out at the vehicles around him. He grinned. “Thought I was going crazy…”

“Trust me,” the girl said, “after a few days here, you won’t even notice it. Much.” She looked at Tom fleetingly, then seemed to come to a decision. “I’m Gail.”

When Tom looked at her, she flashed an inviting smile. He smiled back. “Hi. I’m Tom.”

“Hi.” After a pause, Gail lifted her arm and displayed a small diamond-shaped crystal, dangling by a chain from her wrist. “Listen,” she said shyly, “if you don’t manage to connect with your female friend, and you’re gonna be around for awhile… maybe you could E me.” Her other hand came up and fingered the side of the diamond, and Tom saw a tiny blue light appear deep inside the crystal. He realized only then that the diamond was her passport.

“Sure,” he replied, pulling his passport off of his neck and similarly fingering its external controls, until the tiny blue light appeared within its display. He moved his passport close to hers, almost touching, and as they watched, the blue lights on both passports simultaneously turned green. Then Gail pushed on one facet of the diamond, and the two passports’ green lights began flashing in sequence for the space of a half-second. When they stopped flashing, Gail and Tom put their passports away. “Thanks,” Tom said.

Gail flashed her smile again, then started gathering up her things. “This is my stop,” she mumbled, and Tom quickly found the stop request strip by the window and pushed it for her. “Thanks,” Gail said, and when the bus came to a stop, she got up. Tom could not help but notice that she also wore her fly open, and he caught a fleeting glance of a tiny heart on the top of her panties, fire-engine red and embroidered with a shiny thread that gave it a noticeable sheen, before he forced his eyes back up and into hers. She stole a last look at Tom and said, “Good hunting.” Then she turned away and exited the bus. As the bus pulled off, she paused and stole a glance at Tom through the window, and gave him one last smile to take with him.

Tom watched out the window, as she eventually turned and walked off. He thought to himself that, as much as he was committed to his present plan of action, it might not be too late to formulate an alternate plan or two… just in case.

2: Potomac

Tom waited until he saw a street name that he had flagged as a landmark from the Concierge’s directions, pushed the stop request strip, and waited until the bus stopped moving to get up. He got off the bus, and waited until it pulled away to look around and get his bearings. For a moment, he was almost sorry he did, because he did not immediately recognize the area around him: The street was wider than he remembered, with two lanes in each direction; there were no other visible landmarks for him to get a fix on; and the surrounding trees had grown so much in eight years, that the area seemed darker than he’d expected it to be. Altogether there seemed to be nothing familiar about his location, and for a second, he even doubted he was in Potomac, or even on the right River Road.

His directions had indicated that Tom’s destination was about two hundred yards back the way he’d come… so he’d passed it, and hadn’t recognized it at all. Still, for lack of anything else to do, he started walking back down the road, waiting for a break in the traffic to cross to the opposite side. There were plenty of PTVs on this road too, and he didn’t enjoy the sensation of these silent vehicles whooshing up behind him, but he tried to ignore it as he concentrated on the wooded lots on his right side. Fortunately, the heavily-wooded lots afforded him enough shade to beat back the heat of the day, making the walk at least more bearable.

After a walk of less than two hundred yards, he saw a break in the side of the pavement, reaching out to a gravel driveway that disappeared into the woods beyond. Tom stopped and stared at the driveway for a long time, trying to decide if it was the one he was looking for. He wasn’t sure, and he nervously looked up and down the road, as if afraid someone would see him loitering there. Finally, he came to a decision, and started down the driveway.

About twenty yards into the woods, he came across two stone columns on either side of the driveway, each with half of an iron gate designed to block the drive. But the gates were wide open, and upon close inspection, Tom decided that they hadn’t actually been closed in some time… they looked plainly too rusted to even move. But more importantly, he recognized the gate, and now he was sure of where he was. He examined the gateway again, considering the implications of its obvious disuse. Then he continued up the driveway. As he walked, his mind processed the turns and bumps in the roadway, and slowly, memories came forth to match what Tom was seeing. Things were looking more and more familiar by the step, and his pace increased as he neared the edge of the woods. He was now sure of what he would find ahead of him. But when he cleared the woods, his pace faltered, and he stopped alongside the driveway to take it all in.

After eight years, it was easy to recognize the mansion in which he’d grown up. But it was also subtly different, causing Tom to stare closely at it, to identify the differences before he got any closer. The most notable difference to the house itself was in the front, where the original entry had been turned into a long porch that ran the length of the front of the house. A shallow roof had been added over the porch, enough to protect it from the rain, and the entire thing was screened, with a single door in the center, directly in front of the now-almost-invisible original entry. Awnings had also been added to most of the front windows, white fabric that jutted outward diagonally, making the house look cheap and tacky. There were a number of bikes and PTVs in the driveway, which was widened just before the garage to accommodate parking for numerous vehicles. The garage itself now had two large windows where the garage door had been… did someone live in there now?

Yet, as striking as the apparent uglifying of his former home, were the monstrosities in the front yard. Filling the grounds running from the edge of the driveway to about fifty yards out were eight huge flat panels on thin metal scaffolds, four of them shading man-sized metal boxes, and multi-colored conduit running between each scaffold. They looked like crudely-homemade solar panels, clearly placed to get as much sun as was available on the expansive grounds, with no concern about what that did to the aesthetics of the grounds, or the view of the house from the driveway. And between them and the house, resided two large windmills, surely visible for miles, as tall as they were… not that they were actually that unsightly, they were of a fairly modern design, but planted as they were in the middle of the front lawn… Tom could not suppress a grimace as he took it all in.

Tom’s attention was suddenly drawn back to the house, when he heard a voice, and saw the porch’s screen door open. He saw a woman step down from the porch and approach him, her hands buried in the pockets of an apron around her waist. Her casual gait suggested that she did not seem to be perturbed about Tom’s being there, so he just waited as she walked down the hill. After a moment, it occurred to him how long a walk that was, and decided he could at least meet her partway, so he started forward, all the same making sure his hands were in plain sight.

When the two of them had closed to conversational distance, the woman said, “Hi. I’m Ann Haley. Were you looking for someone? Or a place to stay?”

“Uh, not really,” Tom replied, sticking out his right hand. “I’m Tom.”

“Hi,” Ann smiled, and shook his hand. Ann could have been old enough to be Tom’s mother, though not by much, he guessed. “I’m the lady of the house, here. What can I do for you, Tom?”

Tom shook his head uncertainly. “Um… actually, I only came by to see… um…” He gestured at the house, though in its present condition he had trouble calling it his home. “I used to live here,” he finally managed to say.

In response, Ann cocked her head and examined him closely. “You did? I don’t remember you staying here.”

“Before 2014,” Tom stated.

Ann’s mouth formed an “O,” and she nodded. “That was before I bought the place, then,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d rented to you.”

“Is that what you have here now? Rentals?”

“Yes, the house has been converted to forty apartments,” Ann replied.

“Forty?” Tom goggled, and he stared anew at the house, trying to imagine his three-person-plus-maid home, subdivided into… “You have forty people in there?”

“Well,” Ann replied, “right now, um, thirty six apartments are occupied by singles and families. That’s why I asked if you wanted a place to stay.”

Tom was still staring at the house, plainly amazed at the idea of so many people living inside… his old single-family home. Slowly, he shook his head, then found his voice again. “Um, really, I just wanted… I’m visiting the area, and just wanted to see my… old house.”

“Of course,” Ann smiled and nodded. “Would you like to come in and look around? I keep a very nice place. Every apartment has a kitchenette, and there are communal bathrooms, showers and full kitchens for every five apartments. Each unit pays for its own power above five kilowatt-hours per day, but we maintain very efficient appliances, so power bills are usually quite small.”

“Thanks, but… I’ve got a place to stay in Washington,” Tom politely stopped her. “But maybe you can tell me: Is there anyone named Navarra here?”

“Navarra?” Ann’s eyes drifted upward as she considered for a moment. “No, no one’s renting here by that name.”

“Um… no one… working here by that name, either?”

“No,” Ann grinned, “my husband and I, and our sons, run the place. Sorry.”

“That’s all right… just curious. Um, well, I don’t want to take up any more of your time, so—”

“Oh, that’s quite all right, Tom,” Ann assured him. “Sure you don’t want to take a look around?”

“No, thanks,” Tom replied. Obviously he wasn’t going to find what he wanted here. “I’ll just be going. Have a nice day, ma’am.”

“You too, Tom,” Ann replied, as Tom turned and slowly started back down the driveway towards the street. Ann continued to watch him go, until he was lost in the trees and out of sight. Then she reached into her apron pocket and clicked her taser to the “safe” setting, turned, and headed back up towards the house.

~

Tom made his way back to the bus stop, catching the next bus back towards Bethesda. But he got off in the Potomac Shops district at Falls Road.

The intersection at Falls and River Roads looked very much as he remembered it, with stores and shops filling the lots on all four corners of the intersection. Upon closer inspection, however, he noticed that he recognized none of the names of the stores he saw at any intersection. He’d remembered quite a few major and mid-level franchises as dominating this area when he spent time here as a teen. The stores were much the same—yes, there was the hardware store, there was the ice cream parlor, there was that women’s boutique his mother liked, the grocery store over there, and many others he remembered—but if any of these were franchises, he didn’t recognize their names.

A frown crossed his face. Tom had been thinking of going into some of the shops he’d frequented as a teen, and asking around. But being faced with nothing but unfamiliar store names drove home to him the fact that he would be lucky to find anyone here who had worked here eight years ago, and who would actually remember him. Still, he was here, and he didn’t have any other ideas. Picking a corner at random, he picked out a store he’d frequented, which turned out to be a sports clothing store, and headed boldly for the door.

It did not take Tom long to verify with a few direct questions that most of the people whom he encountered were new to the stores, and did not remember him. He’d gone through three stores that he’d visited as a teen, then tried one that his mother had been known to frequent. Then two more, with similarly empty results. That was an entire corner’s worth of shops, with no luck. He crossed the street, and at the sight of the grocery store at the bottom of the hill, considered trying that… after all, they had been weekly regulars at the grocery store. But how likely was it that someone would remember them from eight years back? As he considered that, he glanced to the right, and noted a coffee shop that he remembered used to be a Starbucks. At a loss as to which store he should try next, he decided that he could at least get something cold to drink while he considered it. So he headed to the store, passing apologetically past a thin man with swelling thighs and a sign that read, “Do laps for cash,” and walked in.

Like about half of the stores he’d already visited, many of the original aspects of the store had apparently not changed since the franchise had taken its name down. Most of the colors were different than those he generally associated with a Starbucks, but the drink-making equipment was largely still there. So was the glass pastry case, though the pastries themselves had been replaced with breads and sandwiches. The rest of the layout was about the same, with a few tables and chairs scattered around, occupied by about half a dozen patrons strewn about the store, and two people working behind the counter.

The girl who was standing by the cashier had looked up as he’d entered, and she smiled his way. When he was close to the counter, she said, “Hi! What would you like today, sir?”

Tom smiled wryly: The girl looked barely old enough to be behind a counter, and it seemed funny to him when anyone called him sir, anyway. “Um, I want an iced coffee…” he stared at the menu above him, trying to determine what there was that most approximated what he wanted.

While he looked, the other person behind the counter, who had been working over one of the espresso machines, turned casually and took a look at his customer. After a moment, he started to turn back to his espresso machine. But then he did a double-take, and turned back around. Another second, and he said, “Tom, right?”

Tom, who had failed to notice the man’s interest, looked down at the sound of his name, and at the man who smiled back at him. A surprised expression spread across his face. “Dave… Dave Cortez?”

“Hey, I thought that was you! Long time no see!” Dave Cortez stepped to the counter and extended his hand over it, and Tom shook it eagerly. “Whatever happened to you… is it true you moved out of town?”

“Yeah, sure did… oh.” Tom noticed that the other clerk was still waiting at the counter for him to order. “Yeah… uh…”

“Medium mocha ice, extra syrup,” Dave said without pause. “That’s the closest to what you used to order, anyway. Unless you’re too old for the extra syrup, that is.”

“No, that sounds great,” Tom grinned. “I can’t believe you remember that!”

“It’s become a job-related hobby of mine,” Dave replied. “Ever since we took the place over, and had to change the names of the drinks, I’ve become quite good at helping customers identify the new version of what they used to drink. I’ll get it.”

The girl rang up the charge, and as Tom paid, Dave started working over the blenders. “So, you visiting in town? Or moving back?”

“Well, I’m mostly visiting around here,” Tom replied, strolling over to the opposite end of the counter. “Checking out the old neighborhood.”

“Yeah? What do you think?”

“I can’t believe my old house is a forty-unit apartment building, for one.”

Dave switched on the blender, glanced over his shoulder at Tom, and his eyebrows arched up. “That’s right, you were in one of the big houses up the road. Most of the big houses in Potomac are that way, now… if they weren’t knocked down and rebuilt.”

“Really?” Tom mused. The blender stopped, and Dave poured its contents into a thick paper cup. He clicked a top down on it, and brought it over to Tom. “A lot has changed around here in eight years, hasn’t it?”

“Sure has,” Dave nodded, leaning on the inside of the counter. “Most of it started about the same time President Russell took office. A lot of rich families left the area… and a lot of ‘em left in a hurry. Times were tough around here for quite awhile, after the riots. Potomac developed a serious bad name, even after the money was gone. Things didn’t get much better after we swapped Russell for Caribou, either.” Dave eyed Tom sympathetically. “Good thing you managed to get out from under, before the shit hit the fan.”

“Dave,” Tom ventured, “how well do you remember the people who used to be around then? I’m trying to find someone.”

“I don’t know,” Dave replied honestly. “Who you looking for?”

“Doña Navarra,” Tom replied. “She was the maid at my house. She and I were going together… when I had to leave town.”

At the first sound of Doña’s name, a smile crept over Dave’s face. When Tom finished, the smile faded. “Oh, man… yeah, I remember Doña. I remember you two coming in here back then… you were a cute couple.”

“Have you seen her lately?” Tom asked. “Does she still come in here?”

After a moment, Dave shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve seen her in here in… five years. Sorry.”

“Do you know if she might still live or work around here?”

Dave started to reply… then, he cocked his head, and his eyes searched the ceiling for a moment. “Okay… I remember… yeah, seeing her once, passing by the store. Like I said, this was years ago. Anyway, one of the kids that knew you—I think it was Keene—was still working here, and when I saw her, I realized that I hadn’t seen you two together lately. So I asked Keene about her, and he said that she was working for some other family, who were also up River Road there.”

“Right,” Tom nodded, “the Mauers. I’d heard that…”

“Mauer… yeah, that sounds like it could be it,” Dave agreed. “But a year or so later I heard that the Mauers were moving out of Potomac. I never saw Doña after that.”

“Any idea where these Mauers moved to?”

“No, sorry,” Dave replied, shaking his head sadly. “So, you came to find Doña, huh? That’s nice. Hope you can find her.” He smiled wistfully, and rubbed his chin as if hoping to think of anything that would help. “Don’t you have anything else to go on?”

“No, not really,” Tom replied. “I tried doing a web search for her, but without a good legal reason, I can’t get access to an address or an E for her.”

“Everybody goes unlisted now,” Dave nodded knowingly. “It’s hard to find your own mother, these days. But I can ask around. There are still a few people from those days who come in every so often. You staying around?”

“I’ve got a room in Washington,” Tom replied. “Louisiana House. I need to get my own cell phone, now that I’m here, but—”

“I’ve heard of the place,” Dave told him, grabbing a nearby notepad and a pen and writing the name down. “What’s your room?”

“305.”

“Okay, got it,” Dave said, scribbling on the pad. “Oh… what’s your last name again, in case they can’t get the right room?”

“Kline,” Tom replied. “Tom Kline.”

Dave seemed to pause for a moment before he wrote the name down, as if his fingers wanted to write something else. Then they resumed their scribbling. “Okay, okay, got it. Kline. I’ll ask around,” he repeated. “If I hear anything, I’ll E you there.”

~

Tom’s subsequent visits to the other stores in the district netted him no more leads as to the whereabouts of Doña Navarra, nor of the Mauers. With no other ideas that could be pursued here, Tom made his way back to the bus stop, caught the next bus to Bethesda, and the Metro back to Union Station.

He tried to be enthusiastic about meeting Dave, someone who obviously remembered Doña, and who apparently had some contacts he could ask about her. On the other hand, he didn’t know how soon Dave might see one of those contacts, and he didn’t know if they would be at all helpful. Bottom line, he wasn’t any closer to finding his girlfriend than he had been that morning.

He also had a sour taste in his mouth over leaving a false last name with Dave Cortez. Dave may not have remembered his last name, but Tom could tell from his reaction that he knew “Kline” wasn’t it. On the other hand, he’d accepted it anyway, without comment… he probably knew enough about why Tom and his family had left town in the first place. It hadn’t been a secret that his father was an oil company executive, and they hadn’t been the only ones to disappear overnight, or to be attacked, during the night of the Oil Riots. Dave could certainly understand if Tom chose not to use his father’s name, if for no other reason than to avoid trouble. Tom’s problem, of course, wasn’t just with using a false name to cover his tracks; it was with the fact that he needed to cover anything at all… after all, he hadn’t been the oil executive. He felt increasingly put-upon, taking these actions to distance himself from other people’s mistakes, to prevent accusations of guilt-by-association.

Not to mention the fact that attempting to distance himself from other people’s guilt had only resulted in his being forced to adopt some guilt of his own.

By the time he left Union Station for the walk to the hotel, dusk was overtaking the city, though leaving most of the stickiness of the Washington day behind. Somehow, his own energy seemed to be dropping as fast as the sun, and he was dragging when he reached the hotel. He reflected that he’d been moving all day, from his early morning arrival in Baltimore, to the docks, down to Washington, to Potomac, and back to Washington. No wonder he was tired! He passed the front desk, barely noticing the girl from that morning smiling at him as he went by. He glanced at the stairs… and kept going, shuffling to the elevator bay and pressing the “up” button wearily.

Once upstairs, he headed straight for his room, and went in. He walked over to the bed and flopped onto it, landing between his two untouched bags. After a moment, he let his head drift to one side, and stared out the picture window at a rapidly-darkening Washington. From his vantage point, he mostly saw other buildings, all about the same height as or shorter than his hotel (Washington still mostly maintained the building height restrictions established by Congress before the beginning of the last century), with an occasional tree struggling out of the open squares along the sidewalk. The other buildings, being offices, were mostly dark inside, with fairly random rectangles of light dotting their gridwork facades. With the high cost of fuel these days, few people worked late, so the lack of lit windows was no surprise. Tom imagined, though he’d have to go outside and look to be sure, that his window was mirrored, and that he was probably not visible from outside, but he made a mental note to close the curtains before stripping down for bed, regardless.

Tom could have eaten, but he was more tired than hungry, so he had no intention of going back out to find a restaurant (he knew there were plenty of them in Union Station, of course, so he really didn’t have to go far or search about just to eat). He supposed he could order room service, but he didn’t want to start spending too extravagantly, so soon upon arriving in America. At this point, he had no way of knowing how long his funds, considerable as they were, would last. So he continued to lay there, and drifted in and out of sleep until, a few hours later, he finally sat up on the bed and stretched. He took a moment to move each suitcase to the counter across from the bed, unzipped them both, and began transferring the clothing to the drawers under the counter, and his toiletries to the bathroom. Once he’d emptied the main space, he unzipped an outer pocket, and removed his LibrE, a small electronic tablet, and a small pouch that contained loose storage cards. He placed the LibrE on the bed, and left the pouch on the counter. When he was done, he moved the suitcases to an unoccupied corner of the room.

Then he returned to the bed and sat up against the headboard, propping himself up with the pillow. Tom moved his LibrE to his lap and switched it on, its screen instantly coming to life and opening various clipboard windows that he’d recently used. One clipboard immediately began scrolling through a list of items under the title, “Recent Federal Legislation: Solar Manufacturing.” Another clipboard listed discussions in various forums, mostly related to one aspect or another of solar power usage in the United States. A third clipboard, pushed up into the far left corner, was an index of the documents in his LibrE, searchable by category, subject, title, and/or keywords.

The fourth clipboard was represented by a single image: That of Doña Navarra.

As always, Tom paused to gaze at Doña’s photo before he did anything else. Not for the first time, he wondered what she looked like, now that eight years had passed. Actually, he recalled, it was more like six… the photo he was looking at had been attached to one of the last Es that Doña had gotten to him, before he lost touch with her altogether. That had been about six years ago… he had been seventeen then, and she would have been nineteen. That was when she had been working for Robert Mauer, so she had told him in her last few Es. Tom knew that his father had known Robert Mauer, and he considered that might have had something to do with Doña’s hooking up with the Mauers. She’d said at first that she was glad she’d gotten the job, but not long afterward, she’d expressed dismay at Mr. Mauer’s obvious attentions towards her, the fact that he started to insist she stay at the house, and soon afterward that her E access was being severely limited. She’d sent a few recent image files to Tom, and he’d done the same.

Then her Es had stopped coming. His Es to her bounced back. Subsequent Es to the Mauers were also unanswered. And that was the last Tom had heard from Doña Navarra.

Knowing his father knew the Mauers, and even suspecting his father may have had something to do with the sudden lack of communication, Tom pleaded with him to help him re-establish contact. But his father had feigned bewilderment, innocence and unconcern, never so much as making a conciliatory call or E to the Mauers inquiring about their situation. Whatever their situation was, Tom was sure his father knew all about it… and by extension, what had happened to Doña. But he wouldn’t let slip a thing.

Tom had wanted to come back to America then, to find her. But he was almost as stringently controlled by his own father, and he could not get out of Singapore. Multiple attempts to simply go unannounced to the airport and buy a ticket to America—which he could certainly afford, on his allowance—had always resulted in his being detained by the authorities, until a car was dispatched to take him straight home. It had taken him years to figure out how to get himself out of the country, in such a way that he could make it all the way to America without being caught and sent back. Almost as long to figure out what he’d do, once he got here. But coming to America, staying in America, anything else he did… all of it meant nothing to him… if he couldn’t find Doña. She was the reason he’d done it all, risked it all, and dared it all. If he couldn’t have her…

He’d done it all for nothing.

Tom spent some time searching through news reports, mostly from the Asian and Indian regions, to make sure he was not yet being searched for or declared missing. He also went to the online “Most Wanted” list, though truth to tell he would have been surprised if he’d turned up there. He was concerned that any notices about him would be the start of manhunts and “Have you seen this man?” features, and he didn’t want to have to start hiding from people and surveillance cameras everywhere he went. The baseball cap helped to keep his face off of most high-placed cameras without attracting undue attention, but it wouldn’t protect him everywhere… and it wouldn’t help him if someone recognized him up-close. Fortunately, he saw no sign that his whereabouts were being sought, nor that anyone had detected the fact that someone had gained access to the United States using an expensive falsified ID, and now roamed the nation freely.

Next, Tom checked various online sites used for discussion and connections, where he had been leaving messages asking about Doña for years. Tom had seeded the web with these messages, using only his and her first name for identification, in as many places as he could think of. Problem was, there were far too many such places to hit them all, and Tom did not know which sites, if any, Doña had ever frequented (even today, there were any number of places in the world, including within the U.S., where the web was still not a ubiquitous part of life… and elsewhere, too many social sites to be counted).

For that matter, he didn’t know if she was still anywhere near the Potomac area, in the greater Washington metropolitan area, or even on the East Coast. She could be living in Yuma, Arizona, for all he knew. But he believed he could find her, especially now that he was actually in America. If she was still in the country, he firmly believed that he could find some way to track her down. Today it was nigh-impossible to maintain a life in the United States without leaving enough of a digital trail to track you. The trick was getting around the privacy blocks, but he didn’t think that was impossible. Somehow, he would find her.

Finally, he browsed through the Federal legislation list. He was looking for one thing in particular: News of a bill that was circulating through Congress, with private and public expectations of being passed. The bill might literally be his ticket to a life in America. Sponsored by President Henry Caribou the year previous, and finally introduced to the House and Senate, the Power Deregulation Bill, or PDB, was designed to circumvent various other pieces of legislation that had largely stymied efforts to build solar cells in America over the past twenty years.

Though the facts seemed paradoxical, over the past decade individual pieces of legislation had been passed largely unopposed through a Congress that had served to tightly control certain chemical elements and manufacturing processes. These elements and processes seemed fairly innocuous taken on their own, but as it so happened, in combination they served to prevent all but certain corporations from manufacturing and distributing solar cells. The corporations that were allowed to produce the cells had also undergone major changes over the years, being bought up by larger corporations, often by forceful merger. Today, the alternative energy companies were shadows of their former selves, turning out minimum quantities of mostly low-efficiency solar cells that were nowhere near adequate for the national energy demand, while required elements like silicon were “allowed” to flow to the other needy entity, the electronics industry, which appropriately enough created more products that required power to run.

The windmill and hydroelectric companies had likewise been bought up, atomic energy continued to be stymied by unpopularity, security concerns and waste storage problems, and other areas, like tidal development firms, had never managed to survive. And in the meantime, oil continued to flow, bolstered by oils derived from coal and vegetable products, as Middle East and South American oil was increasingly being sold to India and China, respectively. Oil of one kind or another remained the dominant energy source of the United States, whether its people liked it or not.

It had taken years for the American public to realize the significance of the fact that the companies buying up the alternative energy manufacturers were in fact the old oil companies, vast mega-corporations that had made a big public deal about diversifying a decade previous, but that had somehow managed to clandestinely develop a strangle-hold on American energy production and importing before anyone knew what happened. Big Oil, publicly repositioning themselves as All Power companies and adopting benign-sounding names like GoPower, Environ, and Beyondco, had effectively stifled progress to new energy systems, and continued to hold America hostage to the same products—oil and coal—that it had been hooked on, like a desperate junkie, for far too long.

President Caribou’s Power Deregulation Bill was designed to break the hold of the all-controlling power companies and allow certain processes to be developed by any individuals or businesses that had the desire to do so… hopefully to encourage the production of devices like solar cells, and provide more power to the nation. And that was where Tom came in. He’d seized on an opportunity to capitalize on that promising bill, set the wheels in motion, and had come to America to be ready the moment the bill passed.

But as he searched through the legislative records, he found he was already concerned. The news sources he’d followed over the past few weeks had been so sure of the bill’s passing in short order, that Tom had expected it to be law by the time he reached American soil. But that had turned out not to be the case: Apparently, Congress was putting up an unprecedented internal fight against the bill, the House trying to pick it to pieces and render it dead in the water, and the Senate threatening to filibuster it away. Although there was no proof, fresh news reports were suggesting that the All Power companies were using their lobbying and financial influence to turn Congress against the bill, and at the very least, its future was not nearly as certain as it had been just a week ago. If the bill was defeated, Tom would lose the chance to make the living in America that he’d planned for. Even worse, he could be stuck and helpless until the authorities found him and the container that he’d had delivered to the Baltimore docks, at his great risk and someone else’s expense, and either threw him in jail or sent him back to Singapore.

And he hadn’t even found Doña yet.

He deliberately took a deep breath, and tried not to panic. He’d only been in the country for a day. Give it time. He’d find Doña. The bill would pass. He would succeed.

He had to.

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