“Yes, as I said.”
“And your cousin was working on your systems, and may have seen evidence of illegal practices.”
“That’s not possible, because we trade within the rules set by the SEC. And as I said, I haven’t been in contact with him myself for over ten years.”
“Can you recall the last time you were in touch with him?”
“No. It wouldn’t have been consequential. Maybe when his mother died.”
“That wasn’t consequential?”
“Not in terms of work. Come on. I’ve nothing more to say about this. Are you finished here?”
“No,” Gen said. “My team is here to search your records, and anything your people send to the cloud from this point on is subject to interdiction.”
“No. I think not. I think you’re finished here.”
“What do you mean?”
A big team of men in security uniforms entered the room, and Vinson gestured at them. “I’ve answered your questions out of politeness, but I won’t allow our confidentiality to be breached. I don’t believe that your warrant is valid. These security officers are here to escort you from the building, so please cooperate with them and leave now.”
“You’re kidding,” Gen said.
“Definitely not. Leave the building now, please. These security officers will see you out.”
Gen pondered. “All this is being recorded, of course.”
“Of course. If it comes to that, we’ll meet in court. For now, please cooperate with the security rules of our building.”
Gen looked at Lieutenant Claire, who shrugged; nothing to be done. Gen said, “We are leaving under protest, registered here and now. You’ll be hearing from us again about this.” Then she left the room, followed by her people, and then the building security team. The elevator was crowded.
When the elevator doors opened they crossed the vast windy plaza and stepped down the broad steps to the dock.
When they were on the police boat, Gen said, “Those fuckers.”
Claire said, “I planted mayflies all over the building. Maybe some of them will hide and hear something.”
Olmstead was still red with bulldog indignation; the bone had been snatched away from his jaws.
“Good work,” Gen said to Claire. “We’ll have to hope for the best. Keep surveilling everyone who was in the building, and their cloud connections, and we’ll see if we spooked something beyond just a questionable eviction. At the very least we might be able to hurt them for that.”
“I hope so.”
Both Claire and Olmstead were looking furious. Gen wondered if that would be the only good result she would get out of this move. They were young, and now they were mad. They would be on the hunt.
PART SIX
ASSISTED MIGRATION
New York’s sewer system starts with six-inch-diameter pipes coming out of the buildings. These connect to street sewers that are twelve inches in diameter, which run into collecting sewers that are five feet or more in diameter. There are fourteen drainage areas in the city, the sewers following the old watersheds of the harbor area down to treatment plants on the water’s edge.
The inlet that cuts into Seventy-fourth Street from East River was called Saw Mill Creek.
Things change when the air changes.
—David Wojnarowicz
a) the citizen
Closing the barn door after the horses have escaped: of course. That’s what people do. In this case the horses in question happened to be the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, traditionally named Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. So the closing of the barn door was particularly emphatic.
Although naturally even this instinctive and useless reaction was contested, as many pointed out that it was indeed too late. Having torched the world, many argued, why not just go with the flow, ride the wave, enjoy the last efflorescence of civilization and stop even trying to fix things? This was called adaptation, and it was a popular philosophical position among certain cloud citizens and libertarians and academics in various disciplines, all tending to be young and childless or otherwise feeling that they somehow didn’t have skin in the game. It made them cool, it often got them tenure from like-minded intellectuals, and it was a very expedient cynicism all round, as one could behave as if things were still fun and exciting and the new normal. When certain scientists pointed out that actually a runaway greenhouse effect could have quite remarkable consequences, like the kind that Venus had experienced a few billion years before, so that the Four Horses already unleashed could exponentially swell and devour much of the biosphere, meaning the mass extinction event already initiated could possibly include among its victim species even one certain Homo sapiens oblivious, this was generally scoffed at by the sophisticates in question, who were too hip to imagine that expert overconfidence might refer to they themselves, as knowledgeable and coldly realistic as they felt themselves to be. People love to be cool.
Then the food panic of 2074 occurred and the resulting price jumps, hoarding, hunger, famine, and death gave everyone, and this time everyone, the sudden awareness that even food, that necessity that so many had assumed had been a problem solved or even whipped by the wonders of modern agriculture, was something that was made uncertain by the circumstances thrust on them by climate change among other anthropogenic hammerings on the planet. Average weight loss for adults worldwide through the late 2070s amounted to several kilos, less in the prosperous countries where it was sometimes welcomed as a diet that worked (at last), more in developing countries where the kilos were not there to be lost, except to death.