5
2049 ? Washington, D.C.
Time was flying by for Donald Keene. Another day had come to an end, another week, and still he needed more time. It seemed the sun had just gone down when he looked up and it was past eleven.
Helen. There was an adrenaline rush of panic as he fumbled for his phone. He had promised his wife he would always call before ten. Tapping her picture on the home screen, he felt a guilty heat wedge around his collar. He imagined her sitting around, staring at her phone, waiting and waiting.
It didn’t even ring on his end before she picked up.
“There you are,” she said, her voice soft and drowsy, her tone hinting more at relief than anger.
“Sweetheart. God, I’m really sorry. I totally lost track of time.”
“That’s okay, baby.” She yawned, and Donald had to fight the infectious urge to do the same. His jaws cramped from the effort.
“You write any good laws today?” she asked.
He laughed and rubbed his face. “They don’t really let me do that. Not yet.” His jaw and neck felt constricted from the swallowed yawn. “I’m mostly been staying busy with this little project for the Senator—”
He stopped himself. Donald had dithered all week on the best way to tell her, what parts to keep secret, what was classified. He glanced at the extra monitor on his desk. Anna’s perfume was somehow frozen in the air, still lingering a week later.
Helen’s voice perked up: “Oh?”
He could picture her clearly, had a sudden satellite image of their neighborhood outside of Savannah, the roof of his house cut away like in a CAD rendering, Helen in her nightgown, his side of the bed still immaculately made, a glass of water within her reach. He missed her terribly. The guilt he felt in spite of his complete innocence made him miss her all the more.
“What does he have you doing? It’s legal, I hope.”
“What? Of course it’s legal. It’s...some architectural stuff, actually.” Donald leaned forward to grab the finger of gold scotch left in his tumbler. “To be honest, I’d forgotten how much I love the work. I would’ve been a decent architect if I’d stuck with it.” He took a burning sip and eyed his monitors, which had gone dark to save the screens. He was dying to get back to it. Everything fell away, disappeared, when he could lose himself in the drawing.
“Sweetheart, I don’t think designing a new bathroom for Mr. Thurman’s office is why the taxpayers sent you to Washington.”
Donald smiled and finished the drink. He could practically hear his wife grinning on the other end of the line. He set the glass back on his desk and propped up his feet. “It’s nothing like that,” he insisted, his mouth burning. “It’s plans for that facility they’re putting in outside of Atlanta. Just a minor portion of it, really. But if I don’t get it just right, the whole thing could fall apart.”
He eyed the open folder on his desk. His wife laughed sleepily and yawned.
“Why in the world would they have you doing something like that?” she asked. “If it’s so important, wouldn’t they pay someone who knows what they’re doing?”
Donald laughed. “Hey, that hurts. And besides, I’m really good at this—”
“I’m sure you’re wonderful at it.” His wife yawned again. “But you could’ve stayed home and been an architect. You could work late here.”
“Yeah, I know.” Donald remembered their discussions on whether or not he should run for office, if it would be worth them being apart. Now he was spending his time away doing the very thing they’d agreed he should give up. “I think this is just something they put us through our first year,” he said. “It’s like hazing us with busywork. It’ll get better. And besides, I think it’s a good sign he wants me in on this. He sees the Atlanta thing as a family project, something to keep in-house. And he actually took notice of my work at—”
“Family project.”
“Well, not literally family, more like—” This wasn’t how he wanted to tell her. It was a bad start. It was what he got for putting it off day after day, for waiting until he was exhausted and tipsy.
“Is this why you’re working late? Why you’re calling me after ten?”
“Baby, I lost track of the time. I was on my computer—” He looked to his glass, saw that it held the barest of sips, just the golden residue that had slid down the tumbler after his last pull. “This is good news for us. I’ll be coming home more often because of this. I’m sure they’ll need me to check out the job site, work with the foremen—”
“That would be good news. Your dog misses you.”
Donald smiled. “I hope you both do.”
“You know I do.”
“Good.” He tried to fish those last drops out of his glass, was too tired to get up and pour another. “And listen, I know how you’re gonna feel about this, and I swear it’s out of my control, but the Senator’s daughter is working on this project with me. Mick Webb, too. You remember him?”
Cold silence. Donald peered into his empty glass.
“I remember the Senator’s daughter,” Helen said.
Donald cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, Mick is doing some of the organizational work, securing land, dealing with contractors. It’s practically his district, after all. And you know neither of us would be where we are today without the Senator stumping for us—”
“What I remember is that you two used to date. And that she used to flirt with you even when I was around—”
Donald laughed. “Are you serious? Anna Thurman? C’mon, honey, that was a lifetime ago—”
“I thought you were going to come home more often, anyway. On the weekends.” He heard his wife let out her breath, the phone rub against her cheek. “Look, it’s late. Why don’t we both get some sleep? We can talk about this tomorrow.”
“Okay. Yeah, sure. And sweetheart?”
She waited.
“Nothing’s gonna come between us, okay? This is a huge opportunity for me. And it’s something I’m really good at. I’d forgotten how good at it I am.”
A pause.
“There’s a lot you’re good at,” his wife said. “You’re a good husband, and I know you’ll be a good congressman. I just don’t trust the people you’re surrounding yourself with.”
“I understand. But you know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“I know.”
“Okay. Look, I’ll be careful. I promise.”
“Hm. Now that’s one thing you aren’t all that great at. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Sleep tight. I love you.”
She hung up before he could ask what she’d meant. What wasn’t he good at? Being careful? Or keeping promises?
He looked down at his phone, saw that he had a dozen emails waiting for him, and decided to ignore them until morning. Rubbing his eyes, he tried to will himself to not feel sleepy, to think clearly. He shook the mouse to stir his monitors. They could afford to nap, to go dark a while, but not him.
When they blinked to life, a wireframe apartment sat in the middle of his new screen. Donald spun the wheel on his mouse and watched the apartment sink away and a hallway appear, then dozens of identical wedge-shaped living quarters squeeze in from the edges. The building specs called for a bunker that could house five to ten thousand people for at least a year. Donald approached the task as he would any design project. He imagined himself in their place, a toxic spill, a leak or some horrible fallout, a terrorist attack, something that might send all the facility workers underground where they would have to stay for weeks or months until the area was cleared.
The view pulled back until another floor appeared above and below, still zooming out, layers sandwiched like cake, empty floors he would eventually fill with storerooms, hallways. There were entire other floors and mechanical shafts left empty for Anna—
“Donny?”
His door opened—the soft knock came after. Donald’s arm jerked so hard his mouse went skidding off the pad and across his desk. He sat up straight, peered over his monitors, and saw Mick Webb grinning at him from the doorway. Mick had his jacket tucked under one arm, tie hanging loose, a peppery stubble on his dark skin. He laughed at the startled expression that must’ve been plastered across Donald’s face and sauntered across the room. Donald fumbled for the mouse and quickly minimized the AutoCAD window.
“Goodness, man, you haven’t taken up day-trading, have you?”
“Day-trading?” Donald leaned back in his chair.
“Yeah. What’s with the setup?” Mick walked around behind his desk and rested a hand on the back of his chair. An abandoned game of FreeCell sat embarrassingly on the smaller of the two screens.
“Oh, the extra monitor.” He minimized the card game and turned in his seat. “I like having a handful of programs up at the same time.”
“I can see that.” Mick gestured at the empty monitors, the wallpaper of cherry blossoms framing the Jefferson Memorial.
Donald laughed and rubbed his face. He could feel his own stubble, had forgotten to eat dinner. His stomach had moved right past the empty grumbles and into clenched-fist territory. Surprisingly, he could still hear Margaret in the next room talking on the phone. How much extra work was the distraction of this project costing his secretary? It had been only a week, and already he was a wreck.
“I’m heading out for a drink,” Mick told him. “You wanna come?”
“No, I’ve got a little more to do here.”
Mick clasped his shoulder and squeezed until it hurt. “I hate to break it to you, man, but you’re gonna have to start over. You bury an ace like that, there’s no coming back. C’mon, let’s get a drink.”
“I can’t.” Donald twisted out from his friend’s grasp and turned to face him. “I wasn’t sitting here playing solitaire, man, I was working on those plans for Atlanta. I’m not supposed to let anyone see them. It’s top secret.”
For emphasis, he reached out and closed the folder on his desk. The Senator had told him there would be a division of labor and that the walls of that divide would need to be a mile high.
“Ohhh. Top secret.” Mick waggled both hands in the air. “I’m working on the same project, asshole.” He waved at the monitor. “And you’re doing the plans? What gives? My GPA was higher than yours.” He leaned over the desk and stared at the taskbar. “AutoCAD? Cool. C’mon, let’s see it.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Oh, c’mon, Donny. You tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.”
Donald laughed. “No way. Look, even the people on my team aren’t going to see the entire plan. Neither will I.”
“That’s dumb.”
“No, it’s how shit like this gets done. You know how they built the ISS. Each country worked on its own module, and then they hooked them together afterward.”
Mick scoffed. “And then it came down in the Pacific.”
“Yeah, on purpose. And you don’t see me prying into your part in all this.”
Mick waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. What you’re doing is boring, anyway. Now grab your coat. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, okay.” Donald patted his cheeks with his palms, trying to wake up. “I’ll work better in the morning.”
“Working on a Saturday. Now that’s the college spirit!” The slap on his back jolted Donald to his senses.
“Yeah, actually, it’s not. Just let me save my work and shut this down.”
Mick laughed. “Go ahead. I’m not looking.” He made a loose web of fingers over his face, his eyes bugging through the gaps. Donald pointed across the room and waited until his friend had moved behind the monitors. He saved his work and shut his computer down.
When he stood, his desk phone rang with full blasts rather than the chirping bursts of having been patched through—someone with his direct line. Donald reached for it and held up a finger to Mick.
“Helen—?”
Someone cleared their throat on the other end. A deep and rough voice apologized. “Sorry, no.”
“Oh.” Donald glanced up at Mick, who was checking out the spines on his bookshelf. “Hello, sir.”
“You boys going out?” Senator Thurman asked.
Donald swallowed and turned toward the window. “Excuse me?”
“You and Mick. It’s a Friday night. Are you hitting the town?”
“Uh, just one drink, sir. Catch up with a college buddy, you know?”
What Donald wanted to know was how the hell the Senator knew Mick was there. He decided his receptionist must have taken the call and told Thurman to try him direct.
“Good. Tell Mick I need to see him first thing Monday morning. My office. You, too. We need to discuss your first trip down to the job site.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Donald waited, wondering if that was all.
“You boys will be working closely on this moving forward.”
“Good. Of course.”
Mick turned and jerked his head toward the door. Donald held up a finger again.
“As we discussed last week, there won’t be any need to share details about what you’re working on with other project members. The same goes for Mick.”
“Yessir. Absolutely. I remember our talk.”
“Excellent. You boys have a good time. Oh, and if Mick starts blabbing, you have my permission to kill him on the spot.”
There was a breath of silence, and then the hearty laugh of a man whose lungs were much younger than his years.
“Ah.” Donald watched Mick lift the plug from a decanter and take a sniff. “Okay, sir. Good one. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Great. See you Monday.”
There was a click. The Senator had hung up before Donald could force himself to laugh. As he returned the phone to its cradle and grabbed his coat, his new monitor remained quietly perched on his desk, watching him blankly.