Showdown in the Economy of Good and Evil Read online

  As the gunman ducked, behind him stood Natalia. Her work was quick and brutal. The flash of her knives was like a strobe light reflecting back into the dark theater. The kid grunted and cried as the blades slashed into his wrists, disarming him, buried into his shoulders, torturing him before sliding across his neck, killing him in half a heartbeat.

  Finally the police were charging, screaming. Holding their guns on Natalia. She was covered in blood. Panting. Her gaze catlike in its contentment. She showed them the knives, then dropped them to the floor.

  As they clattered on the other side of the seats, just a few inches from Justin’s head, he experienced a sensation of gratitude unlike any he had ever known. Nothing else mattered now, save for his gratitude. This woman, her knives, her employer—they had saved his life. And for as long as he lived, he would work to repay that kindness—would use this gift of life to make this world a better place, a place free from these unspeakable tragedies.

  Chapter 25 Western Omelet

  It’s not clear if the people in charge actually know the consequences of the system they maintain.

  —Justin Wolfe

  “I have to say, Elliot, that was not entirely what I’d been expecting.”

  “Yeah, and if people could see a mass shooting coming, then mass shootings would never happen.”

  “Tell me that kid wasn’t one of yours.”

  “Oh my God, of course not. I’m against the Farm and everything it stands for, but I don’t want anyone to die.”

  “News is saying seven dead, five injured.”

  “Three residents. Two cops. The Farm will be without its carpenter, its plumber, and one of its teachers. And the movie house owner took a bullet in the spine. Probably in a wheelchair for life.”

  “Fate worse than death.”

  “For some.”

  There was a long silence from the other end of the line.

  “I didn’t want it to end this way,” Blankfein said finally.

  “Neither of us did. But anyway, we shouldn’t hang our heads. The harvest, the stampede, the riots, the fire, the protests—these were strokes of genius. Nice, subtle jabs at a system without enough respect for the future of technology and Bankism. The shooter? That had nothing to do with us. That was just dumb luck.”

  “I guess like any good omelet, when you’re protecting the Western hegemony, you’ve got to break a few eggs.”

  “That kid was one hell of a rotten egg, I’ll tell you.”

  Blankfein sucked in a breath. “You’ve got to tell me everything about how it went down in there,” he said excitedly.

  Chapter 26 The Big Solution

  From the bowels of despair, hope can spring to life. All that’s needed is the light of a better future.

  —Justin Wolfe

  Evan had gotten so used to the sight of news vans, reporters, and protestors on the Farm that their lack seemed insulting. Back when the Farm was a supposed threat to the community and the natural order of things, these people couldn’t get enough. But now here, on the pale soft morning when the Farm and their residents had come to bury their dead, these people were nowhere to be found.

  “Why are they ignoring us?” Evan said sadly. “One of the biggest tragedies in Georgia history and no one cares enough to put it on the news?”

  “They’re burying the police officers today too,” Justin said. “Guess they thought that was the bigger story.”

  A tear fell over Evan’s cheek as he looked out over the residents who had gathered to bury their friends. There were so few of them compared to before. Many had fled after the riot and the fire. Many more left after the shooting, claiming it as proof that the established world wouldn’t rest until they destroyed the Farm. Carl had been one of them to go, his message about the Greenwood massacre ringing truer than ever. So many of these good people had left the greatest life they’d ever known, just as disenchanted and hopeless as the day they arrived.

  Evan had lost sleep every night worrying about what would happen to them. Where would they go? What would they do back in the world that had once rejected them?

  In the end, despite these questions, no one could blame them for leaving. Even those who had stayed could see the writing on the wall. Without these five people they had come to bury, and with the mass exodus of so many important residents, the Farm would never last. They might be able to keep a few businesses going for a time, but there wouldn’t be nearly enough people with the knowledge and skill to tend the next planting and harvest.

  “These are entrepreneurs,” Evan said, his voice quavering. “Contributors to society. Good people.”

  “They’re still just bums to the media,” Justin said bitterly.

  When Laz, serving as minister for the proceedings, began speaking, it was all Evan could do to hold himself together. They had come here to the wide, grassy yard behind the farmhouse to bury five of the best people any of them had ever known. David had been the first to die, gunned down in his heroic effort to charge the gunman before the shooting even started. Bob had died protecting Meryl, who had taken a bullet shortly after. These three had all been living at the pinnacle of their lives, a time of boundless hope and endlessly bright futures. In accordance with the residents’ wishes, their graves had been dug side by side in a row of three. Their caskets had been made here on the Farm.

  Beyond this row, at the head of them, rested two other caskets. One belonged to Dan Pastor, who had died sometime on the night of the massacre. No one could be sure whether he had gone before or after his daughter. Evan hoped desperately that it was the former, so that Dan could at least have been spared the pain of knowing.

  The final casket, Evan couldn’t bear to look upon. Seeing Muna standing beside it, sobbing and pouring his heart out, had been too much to bear. In this casket rested his Nora, the woman Evan would love until the day he died. He heard Laz’s words as he spoke of her generosity, her tenderness, her friendship, and her remarkable skill as a business owner, but he could not internalize them, for he was too deep into his crippling sorrow. His wounded shoulder would heal in time, the doctors had told him. But nothing would ever heal this deeper wound.

  Laz spoke for a long time, eulogizing each of the five in turn. He cried as freely as those around him. And when he was finished, Aria sang “Amazing Grace” as the caskets were lowered into the ground.

  Evan could not stay to watch any longer. He had to be away from here, away from this place that would forever remind him of her. He strode with purpose up the hill toward the machine shed, past the now barren cornfield where he and Nora had walked together so many nights. His heart pounded and his tears poured.

  It was then that he noticed he wasn’t alone. He heard the footsteps on the gravel drive and turned to discover that Justin had followed him. Behind him, a procession of dozens of Farm residents proceeded somberly toward the housing units, where Evan knew that many of them had set up for a series of wakes in honor of their departed friends. For some reason, the sight of the billionaire standing in the foreground of all these sorrowful people stirred bitterness in Evan’s heart.

  “So have you talked to Cruise about Larson yet?” Evan asked sourly.

  Justin sighed. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “What do you mean? The harvest. The riot. The fire. Jesus, Justin, he—”

  “He says he had nothing to do with it.”

  “How can you even consider believing that?”

  “He’s one of my oldest friends.”

  “But how can you—”

  “His bodyguard saved my life,” Justin snapped.

  Evan brooded. He was tired. Tired of arguing. Tired of mourning. Tired of breathing. He just wanted to go to sleep, but he’d tried and failed at that every night since the massacre. He knew that he would continue failing for a long time.

  “So I guess we do a postmortem for the Farm, then,” Evan said, seething. “What’s your big lesson?”

  Justin motioned for them to go inside. Together they
walked to the machine shed, the place where everything began. They sat next to each other on a pair of metal chairs, looking out at the sunny morning blooming over the lifeless farmland.

  “My lesson is that we didn’t apply our theories appropriately,” Justin said. “I kept insisting that the Farm would self-correct, but the truth is that, by the end, there wasn’t enough energy left to go around. The Farm didn’t have everything it needed to overcome that many obstacles.

  “It’s the law of conservation of energy. When so many different things came up and caused resistance, the system chose the path of least resistance, which in this case was failure. So I guess the lesson is that, next time, we have to provide the system with whatever energy it needs to sustain itself.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Evan could see Justin folding his hands and fidgeting.

  “I guess we should’ve been looking at what the Farm needs to perpetuate itself instead of just congratulating ourselves on creating this self-organizing system,” Justin continued. “It needed a supply of food. It needed a supply of willing and able people. When those two things went haywire, we should have worked to fix them.”

  By now, Evan was barely listening. He just kept picturing Nora’s hair, all soaked with blood. He’d used to run his hands through that hair, and she would smile and breathe that mint and basil breath of hers into his face. He thought about the vision he’d had just before her death. Walking in the fields. Getting married. The boy from that vision, the boy who would have been their son, had the same hair as Nora.

  “So your big lesson is that the system can’t fix everything if it doesn’t have the right inputs and the right people?” he asked when it seemed like Justin was done.

  “The big mistake was thinking the Farm was immune. Nothing can overcome everything. There’s always something that can go wrong.”

  Evan pondered this for a time. He could see the logic in it, but it lacked important context. Justin himself lacked important context. The emotional context. Maybe this was just his way. Maybe he could get himself so worked up about the next project and the next big thing simply because it allowed him to ignore the pain right in front of him. He hadn’t properly mourned David. Or Bob-O and Meryl, and certainly not Nora. Not for the first time, Evan wondered if Justin had yet gone to visit Valence in the hospital. There was a chance the Farm’s most colorful entrepreneur would walk again, but that chance seemed decidedly slim.

  Between the massacre and the funeral, Justin had done what a good leader was supposed to do. He’d called a meeting of all residents—at least all the residents who remained after the mass exodus of fear following the shooting. He’d comforted them. Explained that the Farm would go on as long as everyone banded together and kept believing. But there was a sense that these words rang hollow. He didn’t hurt in the same way the rest of them did. He couldn’t relate to their pain of having to bury Bob-O and Meryl, the Farm’s favorite sweethearts. He couldn’t relate to Laz’s pain at having lost his best friend. Couldn’t relate to Evan’s pain about watching the only woman he ever loved killed right before his eyes.

  The only thing Justin could relate to was the need to create something to ensure that none of this ever happened again. It was in that thought that Evan’s heart sparked. Where before, there had been only darkness, now he could sense the faintest sliver of light.

  These people had sacrificed so much. Had given so much. In a year, if anyone in the real world even remembered the Farm, they would remember it only for the protests, and ultimately, for the massacre. The people who lived and died in this struggle had stories that deserved better. Their stories were the hope the world needed. All at once, Evan was determined to do something other than mourn the people he loved.

  He owed it to Nora’s memory.

  “We have to write a book,” Evan said, wide-eyed, as he rose.

  “A book?” Justin said, surprised. “I don’t know. Do people even read anymore?”

  “They read what’s relevant. What’s exciting. What’s good. They read things that show them how the world is failing them and how the world could be.”

  Justin looked contemplative, though still doubtful. “So you want to write a book . . .”

  “Not just a book. A book that everyone will want to read. One of those books that people who love to read will recommend even to the people who don’t read.”

  “What would we call a book like that?” Justin asked with a sad little smile.

  In the first instant, Evan had no idea, but in the next, it hit him with a certainty unlike anything he had experienced since before the massacre. “The Big Solution,” he said.

  Justin’s expression changed. He was intrigued.

  Evan began to pace. “It’ll work. And it’ll work because this system we’ve been using here can fix everything. That kid . . . that mass fucking murderer . . . isn’t alone. He’s not even an aberration anymore. He’s a product of American society. He’s a product of living in the richest country in the world and yet feeling as if that country provided him with no future. You read his manifesto, same as I did. He came up thinking that everyone is created equal, and yet there’s so much imbalance of money and freedom and opportunity.

  “And who could blame him for feeling helpless? Unemployment is at a fifty-year low while homelessness is exploding on both coasts. We live in a world where you can’t get a job giving someone food in a homeless shelter. If you want to do that, you have to volunteer. But at the same time, you want to polish a wealthy man’s shoes? That’s a job. That’s a living. A terrible living, but it’s a living. This makes no sense. If you help someone get food and shelter, that’s real, meaningful work. But shining a man’s shoes is frivolous. It isn’t work. It’s completely wasteful. The Big Solution could show everyone how the system you’ve created turns all of that on its head.”

  Maybe it was the pain of losing Nora and so many of his friends. Maybe it was the visions from the riot and the fire and the massacre that he couldn’t get out of his head. Maybe it was the trauma he would carry for the rest of his life. Whatever it was, it now surged through Evan not as pain, but as determination.

  “There’s all this discontinuity caused by an economy that excludes more and more people who don’t meet the basic requirements for a decent job. And this pressure ensures that simple jobs offer dismal wages. That kid ran his father’s failing diner after his dad died of cancer because he couldn’t afford the treatment. Think about that, Justin.”

  Justin looked down at his folded hands and nodded.

  “He had no vision for his future—at least not one that looked like anything but failure. He chose to act out against the society that he believed was robbing him of opportunity. I mean, don’t get me wrong. That kid was mentally ill. He did things that no human being should ever even conceive of doing. But why was he mentally ill? What were the conditions around him that caused all that strife?”

  Now Justin was coming to his feet, a flash of inspiration lighting his gaze. “You think this kid decided to kill people because he couldn’t see a good future for himself.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “So if there are all these kids in America who can’t see a good future, then what America needs is more opportunity. A good future is opportunity.”

  When Evan didn’t answer, Justin began to pace as well. He was mumbling to himself, casting his hands to either side as if winning an argument in his own head. Then, suddenly, he stopped and turned to look down at Evan.

  “You’re right. We need to write a book.”

  Evan’s broken heart leapt. “We dedicate it to Nora. And to Laz, Bob, and Meryl and the police who died that day.”

  “And we write about the imbalances,” Justin said. “We write about how the only entities in the world that benefit from the current system are the banks. And we write about the many ways—some of them seen and some unseen—that Bankism causes suffering in this world by creating these imbalances. We prove to the world that you can trace
nearly every one of its problems back to Bankism.”

  Despite his weariness and despite his sorrow, Evan found himself churning with something resembling excitement. Say what you will about Justin Wolfe, but his passion could be contagious. “We show people the real reasons they’re living in fear. We show them the big solutions that could get them out from under that fear. We take all this evil we experienced and turn it into a force for good. We honor David, Bob-O, Meryl, and Nora’s memories by creating a movement.”

  Evan felt a surge of righteous energy tingle from his chest to his fingertips. The two men who had created a new way of life for hundreds of formerly homeless people looked to each other with hope in their eyes. The experiment had failed, but the movement was only just beginning.

  Together they left the machine shed and came out into the warm sunlight. The crowd around the graveyard behind the farmhouse had dispersed. The future that Evan had imagined for himself in this place no longer stood before him. All his life, he would carry the sorrow and regret that this understanding caused. But now when he looked ahead, just as it did for so many of the people who had lived, worked, strived, and suffered here, there stretched a very different future.

  The Planet: A Parable

  There once was a planet in the middle of a solar system, an ideal place inhabited by billions of intelligent humans. On this planet, everyone got up at the same time and sat in traffic called rush hour. They worked long hours, rarely saw their children, never took vacations, and then spent every evening worried about paying bills, mass murders, war, and the news.

  The humans had a system of working with each other. They used debt to produce work. They took turns borrowing money so that enough money would circulate to create growth and jobs. They had decided long ago that banks should control when, where, and for how much this debt was going to be issued, and so everyone on the planet went to work earning the money circulating because of loans. The people went about their business like there were no other options but to live in a debt-driven world.