Freedom (30 page)

“This is just a big green desert. You’d starve to death out here. This corn is inedible—it’s just starch; it needs to be processed in an industrial stomach, with acids and chemicals, to break it down into processed food additives. We’re up to our eyeballs in corn here in Iowa and we can’t even feed ourselves.”

“I gather that’s the plan.”

Fossen nodded. “Damned right. Big business was screwing over farmers in the 1890s, too, and my grandfather’s father didn’t put up with it back then, either. There was an uprising. You might not think it, but it was always the farmers who raised hell in this country. They worked for themselves, were self-reliant, and weren’t about to take shit from anybody. But then some clever bastard figured out how to make crops inedible. My family’s been doing industrial farming for forty years and all it produces is debt, pollution, and water shortages. It ruins the land and the people on it.”

Ross nodded to the uniform fields out the window. “You think these other farmers will change?”

“They’ll have no choice. Gas is, what—eighteen bucks a gallon now? Industrial farming and the global supply chain gobble up fossil fuel.” He peeled off each item with his fingers. “Natural gas in the fertilizers, petroleum-based pesticides, fuel for the tractors, more fuel for transport to food processors, fuel to process the raw crops into food additives, then to manufacture them into products, and then to transport the products across the country or world to be consumed—thirteen hundred miles on average.”

“What made you finally change?”

Fossen stopped for a moment then laughed. “When I started educating myself on why farming no longer made sense. We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It’s a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We’re basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live.”

They continued down the gravel road, sending up a cloud of white dust behind them. The road curved up toward a slight rise on the horizon. They came over it, and a dramatic shift in the scenery occurred.

Now, in the fields on either side was a patchwork of crops and fences, along with rows of saplings, the occasional chicken coop, and a few cows grazing in a meadow. It was, in fact, the first sizeable area of prairie grass Ross had seen in many miles.

Before long Hank slowed the truck and came to a halt at the intersection with a paved road. He pointed to their right. “Greeley’s down that way about a quarter mile.”

Ross could see a wooden sign alongside the road. It read WELCOME TO GREELEY with Rotary Club and Kiwanis Club badges bolted just below. Above that, floating in D-Space, glowed a virtual sign that read:
Iowa’s first darknet community.
Ross knew it meant that all of the town’s civic functions and officials were darknet-based. Judging from the widespread construction going on in the countryside, they might have been the most advanced, too.

“Our place is up ahead a few miles. You interested in a tour, or should I take you straight into Greeley?”

Ross nodded across the road. “I’d love to get a tour.”

Hank nodded and brought them across the road and down the gravel lane beyond. After a few minutes Ross saw barns, outbuildings, a traditional farmhouse, and a new-looking prefab house among some trees up ahead. There were also a couple of shipping containers and a few modern turbines turning in the breeze a ways off.

Fossen nodded to the view. “This is ours.”

Fossen turned into the farm’s long gravel driveway. There was an ornate D-Space 3-D object in the shape of a cornucopia bursting with vegetables and fruits hanging above the entrance. It was labeled
Fossen Farm
.

Dogs with D-Space call-outs above them ran out, barking to greet the truck. Two of them were black Labs named
Blackjack
and
Licorice,
and the third was a Golden Retriever named
Hurley.

Ross smiled. “That’s clever.”

“Well, they’re always getting into trouble. This way we know where they are.” He stopped the truck near the barn, and the Fighters in back quickly hopped out.

Ross looked around just as a woman called from the porch of the white clapboard farmhouse. She was a stout-looking woman in her forties or fifties in work clothes and a garden hat. She had no call-out or HUD glasses. “Everything go okay at the clinic?”

Hank nodded. “The crowd’s getting bigger.” He took off his own hat and gestured to Ross. “Lynn, this is Jon. Jon, this is my wife, Lynn.”

“Oh.” She extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jon.”

“Likewise.”

“I’m giving Jon a ride into Greeley, but I thought I’d give him the tour.”

“Well, don’t bore him to death. You know how you get. Let us know if you need anything, Jon.”

“Thanks, ma’am. I . . . are you a member of the darknet, too?”

“Not my thing. I’m not into all that social network mumbo jumbo.”

Fossen pointed toward a group of half a dozen people not far off—men and women of various ages and ethnicities at the edge of a large vegetable garden. They all had D-Space call-outs above them and were focused on a young woman talking.

Fossen waved. “There’s my daughter, Jenna.” The young woman waved back.

“Lovely girl. Who are the others?”

“She’s teaching hybridization and genetics to some newbs. Part of her civic reqs.”

Mrs. Fossen frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t call them that, Hank. They’re students.”

“My wife teaches in the middle school in Greeley.” He jabbed his thumb. “Here, let me show you the big project we’ve been working on.”

They walked over to a fence line with the dogs following them, tails wagging. Ross petted Hurley on the head as he gazed around.

There were a few more people out in the fields doing chores, and they all had D-Space call-outs. “You’ve got a really nice place here.”

“Yeah, thanks to Jenna and the other students it’s really coming along. We’re one of the most sustainable farms in the county. Which isn’t saying much.” Fossen led them up to the fence and looked out to several acres of grain and other plants, waving in the breeze. “We use a mix of crops and animals to recharge fertility. Here, we’ve planted beans with wheat and a little mustard to fix nitrogen without resorting to chemicals.” Fossen kneeled down and pulled up a handful of soil, letting it drain through his fingers. “We’ve been farming this land for five generations. I need to fix the damage I did to it. We’ve been relying on artificial fertilizers for a long time. It’ll take a few years to get where it should be, but it’ll come around.”

He stood and pointed to the distant cows. “We’re raising the animals on grass—not corn. We put in a good blend of natural prairie grasses. Big bluestem, foxtail, needlegrass, switchgrass. It grows naturally here on the prairie, so it’s turning solar power into beef—no fossil fuels necessary. And we rotate animals through the fields. Chickens follow the cows out to pasture, picking bug larvae out of the manure and eating bugs and worms from the broken turf left behind by the cattle. The chicken dung, in turn, makes the field fertile for crops. It’s all an integrated, sustainable system.”

Ross leaned on a fence and nodded. “It
does
look more like a farm than the other ones did.”

Fossen nodded to the edge of the property. “Got two ten-kilowatt wind turbines and some flywheel batteries to store the power. Every other darknet farm in this holon is working for the same thing. Regional energy and food independence. We rely on Greeley for our critical manufactured goods—printed electronics, micro-manufactured precision equipment, tools, software. They, in turn, rely on us, along with other farms, to provide their food and raw materials. It’s a symbiotic relationship. We need each other.”

Ross felt the breeze and looked out over the sunny, bustling farm. “I’ve been so caught up in this fight, I sometimes forget what the end goal is.”

Fossen nodded. “I know what that’s like.” They started to walk back toward the house. “You’re staying in Greeley?”

“Yeah, I have a room at a motel in town.”

Fossen slapped Ross on the back. “Well, hell, when was the last time you had a home-cooked meal?”

Ross grimaced. “Probably fifteen years.”

H
ank Fossen lay in bed in the darkness, listening to the gentle breathing of his wife, Lynn, next to him and the ticking of the clock in the hall. He wondered where his son, Dennis, was at that exact moment. Was he on some mountaintop observation post? Convoy escort? They hadn’t heard from him in nearly a month, which usually meant he’d been posted to a remote observation post.

What would his son make of all the changes on their farm? And in town? Dennis had never shown any interest in staying close to home. Although, who could blame him? Fossen had drilled into his kids at an early age that they were going to college and getting white-collar jobs. The day his son sat him down and explained that he was joining the military so they wouldn’t have to borrow money for school . . . well, Fossen felt both shame and pride at the same time. Shame that his son had to make such a choice, and pride that he had.

Fossen prayed for his son’s safety—even though he wasn’t very religious, he tended to become so on certain occasions.

The dogs started barking outside. Fossen knew the pattern. If it was a raccoon, a skunk, or an opossum, they’d be run off pretty quick. Stray dogs were another matter, but his dogs were in a fenced enclosure. They’d be safe.

The barking didn’t subside, though.

Fossen sat up in bed. All the exterior lights were off. And the motion detector lights near the barn hadn’t come on either.
Strange.
But the dogs were going crazy. Certainly the hired hands and students in the prefab unit must have heard this racket. He threw off the covers and listened more intently. There was movement downstairs. Creaking of boards on the staircase.

Was it Jenna?
The dogs wouldn’t be going crazy.

Adrenaline spread through his bloodstream like warm water, and he slipped off the bed. He reached underneath it for the pump Remington shotgun.

The barking of the dogs suddenly stopped. Silence.

Then he heard a terrified scream in the hallway. “
Daddy!
”

He just started to get to his feet with the shotgun when the bedroom door kicked in and a blinding white light pierced his eyes. He felt something hard and blunt slam him in the stomach and he doubled over. He couldn’t get any breath in his lungs.

He heard his wife screaming as the shotgun was yanked out of his hands. People thundered around his bedroom shouting in some foreign language.

Still sucking for breath and blinded by the lights, Fossen heard struggling and breaking glass. He was then thrown to the ground by powerful hands.

Paramilitaries.
The word kept going through his mind.

He’d been told Greeley had developed an early warning system. But then—he hadn’t been linked to the darknet while he was sleeping. He didn’t know anyone who did that.

He heard more screaming in the house. And he finally found breath to speak. “Jenna! Lynn!”

The powerful hands pulled his arms behind his back and he felt a zip tie cinched tightly around his wrists. He’d just begun to get his vision back as someone strapped duct tape across his mouth and pulled a hood over his head.

He heard muffled screaming and shouting now. He was hauled up painfully by his arms and dragged, he assumed, out of the room. He felt his feet thudding down the stairs and across the living room, and suddenly he felt the night air on his legs and arms. He was dressed only in boxers and an undershirt. It was a warm summer night.

He could hear crying and whimpering, and suddenly the hood was pulled from his head. He was shocked by what he saw.

Dozens of heavily armed men in black ski masks, jeans, and casual shirts surrounded them in the moonlight. They had AK-47 assault rifles slung across their chests and wore body armor over their clothing, along with vests of spare clips. Night vision goggles covered their eyes.

They had gathered their captives in the yard behind the farmhouse, and Fossen could see his wife and daughter, as well as three hired hands and the four visiting students in their underwear or pajamas, kneeling, bound and gagged on the grass nearby. Only Fossen was still standing among all the men. Behind them, he could see the still forms of his dogs, Blackjack, Licorice, and Hurley, lying on the dirt of their pen. Dead.

A tall, thickly built masked man stood in front of Fossen and rested his weapon in the crook of his arm. He spoke with a thick accent.

“Mr. Fossen. You have lovely farm.” He reached down and, laughing, grabbed Jenna by her hair. “And lovely daughter.”

The other men laughed.

Fossen struggled to speak—to beg them to leave his family be. To take only him. But the duct tape over his mouth prevented it. He struggled with all he had against his bonds.

The big man grabbed Fossen’s face in a viselike hand. He pointed to one of his compatriots, who tossed one end of a rope up over a thick branch of the old oak in their backyard. At the other end of the rope was a noose.

Another man held a digital video camera in the moonlight, taping the action.

Fossen’s wife let out a muted scream from behind her duct tape gag, and Fossen continued to struggle against his restraints and the arms holding him fast. They put the noose around his neck, and again he heard the others trying to shout from behind their gags. Fossen could see his wife in anguish as men behind her held her face up, smacking her and pointing in Fossen’s direction—shouting,
“Uite! Uite!”