Showdown in the Economy of Good and Evil Read online

  Conservation of energy is a universal law. It even applies to people. Why drive an hour for a haircut when the barber next door is just as good?

  —Justin Wolfe

  “I’m wondering if you can help me make some sense of what just happened in there,” Pete Smiley said as their ragtag little quartet made their way toward the far edge of the Farm, where the administration building awaited.

  Building was what Evan usually called it, though more appropriate words likely applied. Really the place was more of a double-wide trailer. Whatever its proper descriptor, the space suited Evan and the other nerds well enough. The air conditioning helped.

  “What didn’t make sense?” Evan asked, sounding more annoyed than he had intended. He was relieved to see that Stephen wasn’t rolling, at least. For all the weirdness that had already been committed to film that morning, Evan didn’t want to top it all off by looking combative on camera.

  “You just encouraged people to save their money,” Smiley said. “But Cup had a point. You want it in circulation. If everyone just piles it into a bank account, how does your supposedly perfect system of sun and rain get it back?”

  Evan stopped so he could face the interviewer. Fred paused beside him as Stephen readied the camera on his shoulder. Though the oppressive sun had passed behind what looked like a heavy rain cloud, Fred squinted so hard his eyes could barely be seen. Smiley, meanwhile, looked unperturbed by it. Evan supposed that he had developed this ability to ignore sunshine thanks to two decades alternating between white-hot studio lights and war zones. Which of those two locations would have been more oppressively brighter—or, for that matter, intimidating—Evan wasn’t sure.

  “You’ll find as we keep chatting that everything has to do with loans versus real money,” Evan said. Even when Stephen stepped toward him and he felt the gaze of the camera square on his face, he didn’t flinch. Something had happened in Meryl’s classroom. Or perhaps he owed it to the fact that Nora had for some reason accepted his offer to join him at Jekyll Island. Whatever the case, Evan’s stage fright had evaporated. He didn’t even care how he looked without makeup. Dude had his credentials, after all—he knew his shit—and that would play no matter how drippy he appeared.

  “In the US economy,” he continued confidently, “money is based on credit. The value of a dollar is whatever it costs to secure it in the form of a loan. But here on the Farm, money is based on demand. We adjust the amount of Farm Bucks we put into circulation each day in response to the demand we’re seeing.

  “If people save, they do two things: they create demand for Bucks from service providers and consumers, and they earn more money through interest. In other words, they simultaneously reduce the amount of money available for purchases while making the money in their accounts more valuable.”

  “You’re saying that making money scarce makes it more valuable?” Smiley asked for the benefit of his viewers.

  “Exactly. When fewer people want to spend money, it creates higher demand for that money, which raises the value. Meanwhile, when people recognize that sacrificing that high savings interest is a greater loss for spending their money, that also raises the value.”

  “Yes, but what about the sun?” Fred said. The face he made after he asked the question made it look like he couldn’t believe he had just spoken while a camera was rolling. As if adjusting to his discomfort, he performed a shoulder wiggle and tugged at his collar. “If everyone’s content to just save and consume, then how do you circulate all your rain back into the economy?”

  “We’re going to need to get you to sign a release,” Smiley said to Fred, his tone making it seem like he was only just now, after all this time, noticing Fred’s existence.

  “Can’t you just, um, blur my face or something?” Fred asked awkwardly.

  Smiley sighed. After a long glare, he nodded.

  Meanwhile, Evan was waiting for his opportunity to answer the question, because really, it struck him as the first apt one the IRS agent had asked all day. “You’re right. We do want to get those Farm Bucks back. That’s part of why we’re trying to stoke demand. But you’re missing the mark because you’re still thinking like the Fed. We’re not looking to get a zero balance between loans and money in circulation. We’re just trying to keep demand high so the value of our money is maintained.”

  “But what good is valuable money if no one ever spends it?” Smiley asked.

  Evan smiled. “Oh, they spend it. There’s rent, and you saw Nora’s kitchen and the food she provides.” Speaking Nora’s name caused Evan’s heart to flutter. He still couldn’t believe she’d said yes to his Jekyll Island invitation. “We offer different levels of housing and food. The more you spend, the better you get. This compels people to spend in a way that improves their quality of life. Yes, Jesus saves, but the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

  “But doesn’t food and rent only go so far? At some point, won’t everyone be completely satisfied and your economy grinds to a halt?”

  It seemed to Evan that the time for debating economics had come to an end, and the time to prove the concept had begun. He’d meant to drop Fred off at the administration building as soon as possible, but suddenly, he wanted more than anything to show off the bazaar.

  “Come with me,” he told his newfound friends.

  He wheeled around and made his way up the hill to the west. At the top of this hill stood a giant tent propped up by dozens of poles in big-top circus fashion. Some of the residents had taken to calling this place the Circus, in fact—not just because of its shelter, but also because of the tremendous amount of economic activity that happened inside.

  At the Farm’s genesis, the plan had been for this tent to serve as something of an incubator. Yes, Justin intended for the residents to compel each other toward entrepreneurial activity, but that meant providing them space to actually sell their goods and services. They needed an incubator, of sorts. But with no physical structures remaining on the Farm to dedicate to the cause, there came the idea of the tent.

  Anticipating that only a few residents would set up tables to sell goods and services to their fellow residents, Evan had made the initially dumb call of placing only a handful of tables in the space. The residents had overrun them inside of two weeks. They would bicker often about whose turn it was to set up and sell, and the arguments would get so heated—and sometimes violent—that Evan had to ask Berl, the resident carpenter, to build new tables as quickly as his hammer could bang them out.

  Berl banged out two dozen of them in a week. That had proven enough supply to keep the resident entrepreneurs happy, but Berl had himself caught the entrepreneurial bug in the process, and so he banged out four dozen more before Evan could ask him to hang it up for a while. In the time since, the residents had come to occupy approximately half of the hundred or so tables under the tent, but the businesses were growing by the day.

  By now, as Evan stood at the edge of the tent with an interview crew and a slack-jawed Fred Rogers beside him, there was no question that the Circus, even at only about half capacity, had earned its name. Few locations in the world—first world or third, capitalist or socialist or oligarchy—boasted quite this level of feverish trade.

  “Shall we head in?” Evan asked.

  The reaction he received from the three men ran a spectrum. Stephen, a man perpetually attached to his camera, viewed this invitation exclusively through his camera. He had tuned out the world and all its offers for the sake of constant, almost amorous study of his equipment. Smiley looked casually intrigued—a man who had seen it all and had suffered through situations both life affirming and life-endingly dangerous. Meanwhile, the hundred-pound IRS lackey who called himself Fred Rogers stood tongue-tied and starry-eyed, a deer-in-the-headlights expression that said he was afraid of bodily harm.

  It had been awhile since Evan had thought about the potential for bodily harm in this place. Sure, in the early days—as it was for anyone who wandered onto this Farm—the
immediate worry was that these people coming in from off the street would bring with them the ways of the street. Some did. But for the most part, those survival instincts soon faded. This market, despite being purveyed by people who had once been violent as a matter of course, was no more dangerous than a stroll through Whole Foods. To Evan, it actually might have been safer. He had seen haughty disagreements at Whole Foods before. By comparison, the Circus was a walk in the park.

  But Fred didn’t know that. So Evan decided to let him keep thinking that danger lurked around every corner. His shifty, head-on-a-swivel demeanor lightened the mood.

  “This is our market,” Evan explained as he led the others down the first aisle. “Everything you see here is spontaneous. We haven’t assigned any jobs in this environment. Every table is run as a small business by one of our residents who simply felt compelled to provide specific goods or services.”

  In response to the fact that only about half the tables in the tent were occupied, the sellers had arranged their little shops into tightly packed aisles that followed a decidedly wandering route. There was plenty of empty real estate outside, but once you stepped into the retail space, you could find something to buy everywhere you looked. The IKEA principle. Keep people turning and inspecting and fretting on how they’ll never find the exit, and those people will buy more stuff. And the stuff itself, though nothing like the IKEA schlock, would have been right at home in just about any market in the world, most of it crafted almost entirely from goods sourced straight from this Farm.

  Evan pointed them out for Stephen’s benefit as they passed.

  There were the wooden baubles, the painted canvases, the hand-knitted clothing, the leather belts, the bead jewelry, the handmade candles, the cheeses, the kebabs, the jellies and jams. And then there was the weirder stuff, like the massage chair, the pillows and toys made from chicken feathers, the organic beet juicer, the Skee Ball operator, the bounce house, and the street performers—the Farm played home to a quite exceptional break dancer and a slightly less exceptional human statue named Sunny, who might’ve been better at his job had he not been a chronic sufferer of delirium tremens. Evan could see him out there on the fringes of the tent and probably the edge of Stephen’s frame, quaking just slightly enough to throw off his otherwise statuesque vibe.

  “Hey, there’s the boss man,” came the voice.

  Evan and his entourage had only gotten about three table lengths into the tent—just far enough to reach the hand-painted sign reading, “Aria Foles’s Open Air Hair”—when Evan winced about being called “boss man” on camera. He knew already who’d spoken, so he didn’t even have to turn around to confirm.

  “Valence, I’ve asked you not to call me that,” Evan said.

  “Yeah, but it just, like, fuckin’ rolls off the tongue, you feel me?”

  “If you could watch your language please,” Smiley said delicately. “We’re rolling here, and our editorial team wouldn’t—”

  “Wait,” Valence Newton cut in. “You’re fuckin’ rolling? Like. A camera? Like. For TV or something?”

  “Yes,” Smiley said through a sigh. “And again, if you could please refrain from profan—”

  “Wait, wait,” Valence interrupted. He pawed at his face. “How do I look?”

  Evan had to stifle a laugh. Nurse Jenny, in her efforts to repair the damage from Valence’s punch to the nose, had crammed her patient’s otherwise handsome mug chock full of bloodied tissue paper. Into both nostrils, she’d stuffed at least one full tissue, and it looked like maybe she’d packed his cheeks with cotton balls. Valence’s eyes had gone purple around the edges. Small flecks of blood crusted here or there around his mouth and chin. He looked like hell, but at the same time, the simple fact that he stood here before the cameras could only mean that the broken nose claim had indeed skewed a bit drama queen. Valence, after all, never missed an opportunity to draw attention to himself. A broken nose would’ve been a gold mine of fawning attention from all sides, one that would’ve kept Valence laid up in the infirmary until long after he’d worn out his welcome.

  “So I guess Nurse Jenny cleared you for regular activities,” Evan said.

  “Mmm, Nurse Jenny,” Valence said wistfully. The cotton balls slugged around behind his lips as he spoke. He shook his swollen head and smiled. “Yep. No break. Hurts like a real bastard, though.” He glanced at Fred. “No offense.”

  Fred’s confusion about why he should have been offended by the comment spread plainly across his face.

  “You wanna touch it?” Valence asked Smiley, shoving his bloodied nose uncomfortably close.

  “No thanks,” Smiley said, stepping back.

  Valence chuckled, then hawked out a wad of blood-browned cotton balls.

  Evan fired an apologetic glance at Stephen and Smiley. From their expressions, he could already see that this whole exchange would wind up on the editing team’s cutting room floor.

  “What can I do for you, Valence?” Evan asked.

  “Listen, I just wanna know if you’ve made any progress on finding me an indoor space.” As he spoke, he looked directly into the camera, as if it was fulfilling all the desires for attention he had been penning up all morning.

  Frustrated with himself, Evan hung his head. Every conversation Valence had engaged with him for the past three weeks had raised the same topic: when would Valence be able to move into an indoor space where he could set up his projector and screen and show his movies? Really, it should have been top of mind for Evan after every conversation—not just because Valence always pursued what he wanted relentlessly, but also because his business concept was one of the more innovative on the Farm. Where most entrepreneurs looked to their skill sets to create a product or service that they could sell to make a quick buck, Valence had spent a whole year saving his daily deposit so he could one day afford to buy a projector and set up his own movie theater.

  “Look,” he said, elbowing Evan, “I don’t wanna seem, you know, like, fu—” He paused, shook his head, and continued into the camera. “Freakin’ ungrateful. I appreciate that exchange rate you’re givin’ me for the Netflix account, but I gotta get some more payin’ customers or ain’t no way this shit’s—sorry, stuff’s—sustainable. I gotta start showin’ movies durin’ the day.” He cocked his head to one side. “You ever try watchin’ a movie on a projector screen in the broad sunshine? Boss man, I’m tellin’ you, it’s just straight untenable.”

  Evan held up his hands. “I get it. We’ve been over this. The only space we have available right now is Meryl’s coop.” He clenched his teeth, chiding himself. “Meryl’s classroom. And her classes have been in huge demand. She just doesn’t have any open slots during the daylight hours.”

  “Well, what about if she teaches like a, like a, uh—” Valence broke into a toothy grin. “Like a cinema appreciation class?”

  Though his annoyance levels threatened to rise, Evan couldn’t help but smile. “There’s no way.”

  “Nah, seriously. We could show, like, Wall Street or The Big Short or somethin’. Shit that’s financial.” He frowned at Smiley. “Sorry again. About sayin’ ‘shit,’ I mean.”

  “It’s fine,” Smiley said in a way that suggested it was not fine.

  “I’m tryin’,” Valence offered.

  Evan cut in. “I’m telling you, Valence, it’s a nonstarter.”

  The aspiring theater owner clucked his tongue and gazed off into the distance for an uncomfortably long time. Just when Evan thought this meant he’d decided to end the conversation, Valence spoke again.

  “How ’bout the cafeteria then?” he asked.

  Evan frowned, not loving where this was going.

  “I could ask Nora to, like, partner up,” Valence explained. “We could do like a, like a, uh, dinner and a movie thing. Folks’d eat that sh—stuff—up.”

  “Doesn’t dinner and a movie usually happen at night? Don’t see how that solves your problem.”

  “Fuckin’ lunch and a movie
then.” Another apologetic look at Smiley, who had completely quit paying attention. “Cinema and sandwiches. Brunch and a blockbuster. Whatever the hell you wanna call it.”

  “Now hold on a minute,” a woman said.

  Evan’s calf muscles tightened, as they often did at the sound of Aria’s high, carrying voice. Aria Foles had held more than her share of less than glamorous street-based careers prior to turning up in the proverbial gutter, and subsequently, the Farm, and she’d brought with her all the crass, world-weary charm she’d earned along the way. Out of all the residents, she was the one most willing to put Evan in his place, whether he deserved it or not. He always tried to hide it, but Aria intimidated him.

  Lady could cut hair, though. On any given day, her table was the most profitable. Everyone on the Farm—at least those who could afford it—looked fashion-mag-ready, hair-wise anyway.

  “If Val’s goin’ inside, then I’m goin’ inside,” she said. “You hear me, Evan?”

  Now that Aria had stepped into the frame, Smiley appeared intrigued again. Meanwhile, Aria was completely oblivious to the camera.

  It had been awhile since Evan attempted charm with Aria, so he put on a smile and spoke gently. “But if you move inside, you’d lose all the appeal of that spectacular business name. It wouldn’t be Open Air Hair without the open air.”

  Aria bore a hole through him with her big, brown, heavy-lashed eyes. “Fuck that name. I’m tired of Prickly hollerin’ at me ’bout my customers’ hair gettin’ all up in his honey.” She fired a thumb toward the booth just downwind.

  Fred flinched. He still looked scared, Evan realized.

  “Is he wearing a beekeeper’s veil?” Fred asked incredulously as he eyed up the purveyor of Prickly’s Down Home Honey.

  “Yeah, that’s Sanjeev. He started an apiary on the Farm. We tell him he can’t keep any actual live bees in the tent, but he’s got a flare for the dramatic. Or maybe it’s a luck thing. Anyway, he thinks when he wears the veil, he sells more honey.”

  Evan decided against telling Fred—or America, for that matter—that nobody really believed Sanjeev had any prior beekeeping experience. The guy had been an unlicensed shoe shiner in Chicago prior to hitching a ride on the bus to the Farm, so it seemed unlikely. Given all the stings he sustained in the first few weeks, the theory that he’d taught himself the art through trial and error did seem to hold water. In fact, that was why Aria and everyone else called him Prickly.