Season 1, Episode 4 - The Microwave XXXIV - "The Cart Before the Horse"

Fifteen years ago. One year after the end of the First American War.

From atop a hill in the Russet district of Narragansett, Mr. Stockham could see the entire city stretched before him, all the way to the calm waters of Narragansett Bay. No tall buildings blocked his view, since no more tall buildings actually existed in the city; most of Narragansett had been flattened during New York’s final offensive, when Yorkist planes and zeppelins gained aerial superiority over all of New England and laid waste to its cities. New England laid waste to New York first, of course, but that was because New York fired the first shots of the war, but that was because New England struck first in the War of 2190...cycles and cycles, all of them ending in flattened cities and quiet graves on hilltops.

Still though, the end of one era was just the beginning of another; while Stockham stood on that hill, many of his construction workers assembled the backbones of Narragansett’s first postwar skyscrapers that would one day come to dominate the city skyline. Stockham had his fingers in many pies and, before and during the war, wore many hats; thanks to being just another faceless, junior member of the New England oligarchy, he avoided the Unified Pact's war crimes proceedings and the purges of the Quinetucket democracy that now ruled New England.

That’s why Stockham was free to stand on that hill, flowers in hand. The Quinetucket administration converted the top of the hill, formerly home to an artillery battery, into a cemetery for all those who died in the city during the war. Stockham knelt in front of two graves in particular; Lisa Stockham and Lily Stockham, the former his wife, the second his daughter. A well-placed gravity bomb struck them both in their Russet apartment during the war; Stockham found the remnants of his wife shielding his teenage daughter’s body from the incoming blast, but to little avail.

Stockham knew he deserved no more pity than anyone else. He probably deserved even less; he worked for the Experimental Technologies Division that escalated the war in the first place, after all.

That’s why, during New York and the Unified Pact’s audit and investigation of Division laboratories following the end of the war, one officially reported as destroyed in the bombings was not actually destroyed at all. This lab, built deep into the earth, found new reason and purpose at the war’s end. Rather than produce weapons of mass destruction, it would be the wellspring of a new, peaceful era. It would take years to complete its mission, decades even, but Stockham knew what lied below inside of that lab would enable him to one day punch his way into God’s Kingdom and create a Nirvana on Earth.

He could imagine it now, the picturesque Academy he would build atop that laboratory...

Back in the present, hours after the raid, Stockham sat at his desk at the top of the Academy’s Support Building, his fingers tented in front of him. A half-empty moon shone down through the window of his office, down onto his back.

“Today didn’t go so well,” he finally said.

Security Chief Iyeguda stood across him, holding a thick manila envelope containing all the information on the day’s raid by the State Police.

“No, it didn’t,” Iyeguda flatly admitted.

“I don’t blame you,” Stockham said. “But it’s clear the Firmament’s failure has set us back in many more ways than we expected. We were caught totally unaware today, and our response was far too slow.”

“Well, we did have to replace over half of the Technical Servicemen,” Iyeguda reminded him. “Essex has only been out of that coma for a month now. Riley’s dead, and so is my predecessor. We should be back at full strength by the end of the year…unfortunately, the State Police came today.”

“Chief Amien phoned me half an hour ago,” Stockham said with amusement in his voice. “Gracious in victory. He even raised the amount of energy supplies he’s offering now compared to the last round of negotiations. He knows he has me.”

“What did you say to him?”

Stockham raised a hand to indicate something along the lines of well, that’s life. “Unfortunately, I had to accept. Had the Firmament succeeded, we would have been invincible. But that’s been set back years now. And the Dunn Electric Factory won’t be finished until the spring. I had to accept Amien’s offer.”

He groaned at the thought of losing to the man who had been a wartime rival of his in the Experimental Technologies Division. Then he sighed and struck a match to light a cigar. Smoke trails drifted upwards.

“I spoke with Ian down at the Vocational school,” Stockham continued. “We’re going ahead with the Pond Free Corps. It’s clear we need a paramilitary of our own. While the local Military Police and Army units have been cooperative with us, we need a supply of soldiers loyal to us and us alone. We’ve been so focused on the Firmament and the Rddhi that we’ve forgotten the practical aspects of defense.”

Stockham watched the smoke waft away. “The fact that Professor Beskov and Esra were able to get away at all is what concerns me the most. I admit, I miscalculated. All the Rddhi users on my payroll, I sent them to protect my facilities elsewhere in the country or represent me in negotiations both here and abroad. I never thought my own district would need them. We found traces of Rddhi usage at their hotel where we kept Beskov. Not enough to get an idea of the user, but perhaps it was the electric user Shokahu fought. Either way, to not have any Rddhi users guarding a valuable asset is on me and me alone.”

He tapped his cigar on his ashtray, gray flakes falling from the end. “Who’d ever guess Dietrich would land on Amien’s side? That man saw the dollar signs Amien offered him and lost what little pride he had to begin with. As good as our relationship with the 14th Army Division and 802nd Military Police battalion is, it’s clear we can’t rely on them when their higher-ups intervene." He sighed. "Perhaps that was obvious from the start.”

Stockham opened up a ledger book on his desk. “Nevertheless, the past is in the past, and we keep moving forward. Life is all about learning from your mistakes. I’ll recall some of our users – we should have wowed the French enough by now to replace our man in Paris with one of my businessmen – and we’ll build these Free Corps. I should be able to negotiate getting the Army and Military Police out of our district.”

He gave a smile of ambition, thinking about the future. “And who knows? We still have good relations with them. I suspect they’ll be shipped somewhere far off to the fringes of the country due to their connection with us, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still be useful some day.”

Iyeguda spoke in a guarded tone, wondering about the practicalities of Stockham’s future plans. Chief among them was the ever-present million-dollar question. “Where are we going to get the money?”

Stockham smirked. “Between the price of raising an army and energy supplies for the winter, we’re going to have to do a little reshuffling of our assets. First, we’ll expand our ‘internship’ program with the Dunn Corporation. We’ll loan him our fire and lighting Elemental users and tell them that they can substitute sitting in a class all day for some real world experience of standing in front of electric power converters and coal furnaces all day. A steady supply of Rddhi users is why Dunn agreed to build a factory here in the first place.”

Iyeguda wrote down notes in his journal as Stockham went to the next step. “Then, we’ll have to sell some our stock in the Arnold Corporation.”

“The ship-builders?” Iyeguda questioned. “Ship-building is a big industry.”

That didn’t seem to concern Stockham. “Based on how cozy Amien has gotten with the Army, I’m guessing the carrier Moosilauke will be the last major contract the Navy can afford for some time. And speaking of the Navy, I’ve been making progress with Admiral Naguno. He’ll have to speak with the Secretary of the Navy, but it seems like that branch isn’t particularly happy about Amien and the Army either. Many of our alumni end up in the Navy as well, so we have a built-in have a base of supporters there. Maybe we can send them some new interns and sweeten the deal to get some R-and-D funds in return.”

Stockham stood and took a calm look through his window, seeing over and past the Academy’s courtyard, towards the tall skyscrapers of downtown on the horizon. “It won’t help us now with the winter lull, but by spring next year, our casino and horse track down in Palmer Beach should be making us money hand-over-fist. I’ll have to head down there myself to make sure the books are clean, though. The Institute never liked me owning property in their territory, and they have closer ties with the State Police than you’d expect. If things get tense again, I expect some auditors and regulators to start poking their heads around there.”

He rubbed his chin in thought. “Maybe we can even sell a factory or two in Singing Beach to the Chinese. With the Florida land boom over, I know the Zuànshí qiyejituan is looking to increase their investments here.”

Iyeguda nodded in agreement as he finished up his notes. “That should hold us steady until next year.”

Stockham let out a ring of smoke. “Perhaps we were putting the cart before the horse,” he admitted, looking back at Iyeguda. “We wanted to finish the Firmament first, as the Strategy calls for, but perhaps we should have done it the other way around. Maybe the experiment failed because we tried to rush things. We might have succeeded with more time, patience, and bodies.”

Iyeguda knew the Strategy to Overthrow the Plutocratic System and Establish a Global Peace by heart. “You think...the Strategy needs some revision? We’ve been basing the Academy’s progress on it since its founding.”

That didn’t seem to concern Stockham either. “It’s been fifteen years. Things change. We change.” He thought of Esther and smiled. Several other Rddhi users appeared in his mind as well – the Eightfold Fist that held so much promise in that naïve head of his, the girl with the Domino Sword who could one day hold the world in the palm of her hand, even Esther’s sister demonstrated a lot more potential that anyone had expected.

“There are many new, unexpected variables floating around our Academy now,” Stockham supposed. “I’ll hold a meeting with you and Essex early next week. We have nearly a hundred Rddhi users now. We can afford to rearrange our plans a little. Let’s improve our practical defenses now while we still have the chance. We’ve spent too much time on our theoretical endgame we forgot about the practicalities necessary to achieve it.”

Stockham looked out his window once more. “Next week, our counteroffensive starts. We’ll root out the traitors and create a paramilitary, loyal to the Pond and loyal to myself. All these people in this district – so many of them are lost. We’ll recruit everyone pushed to the corners and make them so loyal to our idea of peace that they’ll forget that we pushed them there ourselves. Then we work on the rest of the district. Our subsidies for consumer televisions and electronics has paid dividends, of course, but again, we’ve been sacrificed the realities of the present for the theocraticals of our endgame.”

Iyeguda could only see Stockham’s back as the chairman gazed out the window. Iyeguda had only been an out-of-work semi-literate soldier following the end of the First American War; by following Stockham, Iyeguda gained wealth, power, and the ability to change the world.

Nirvana on Earth. The theoretical endgame to create peace for all time.

Smoke drifted upwards, moonlight sifting through it as Stockham spoke. “We’ve grown soft. It’s time we make the people of this district believe in something again, move them beyond a nihilist-filled existence where their homes are full of luxury, but their minds are empty with nothing. They say it takes a soul to move a body, but it takes a high-souled man to move the masses. It’s time I moved the masses. It may be slow, but it will deliberately done.”

He took one last look out the window, blinking lights from distant skyscrapers calling for him. “And we won’t stop until we reach the Presidential Administration itself.”