Freedom Club (28 page)

“I hope I’m not stopping a good brawl,” Shinzou gibed.

Margaret looked on aghast. Surprised to see Shinzou and Sumeet warmly greeting one another, she took a few confused steps back, rethinking how to proceed.

“What the...what are you doing here?” she stammered. “You know this Strainer?”

“Know him?” Shinzou exclaimed. “I invited him, so I expect you to make a good impression, Margaret.”

“Too late!” she barked back.

“What are you drinking, Sumeet?” Shinzou asked.

Margaret intervened. “You’ll all have what I’m drinking!” She looked over at the bartender. “Another round of drinks for my friends. Include the Strainer too.”

Mild cheers went up as several Martini glasses were quickly prepared. Shinzou followed Margaret to her table and indicated for Sumeet to join. They all sat down and got comfortable. But odd looks emanated from Margaret and Sumeet was unsure if he was truly welcome.

“So how long have you known each other?” Margaret demanded.

Sumeet shrugged not entirely sure. “Well, we met recently by filter. He invited me down here to meet in person, but I put it off until my flights got accidentally canceled. And now, here I am.”

Shinzou piped in. “I wanted to help poor Sumeet here. The poor kid is trying to buy a com-plex in Bengaluru and get married all at the same time. Told him to come out to get his head straight.”

“Damn right! Good advice,” Margaret said.

“And you?” Sumeet asked shyly. “Where are you from?”

“Me?” Margaret stammered angrily. “This is my home, young Strainer!”

Shinzou accepted a Martini glass handed out by the bartender. Giving another one to Sumeet, the bartender went on to the other tables.

“Margaret is one of our sacred ones,” Shinzou said taking a sip. “Has lived in Bisbee more than anyone. Came here in the days before the US joined the Pan American Union.”

“God bless America!” Margaret yelled, holding up her drink.

Cheers went up all around as people tipped their drinks in respect. Sumeet looked around quite amused.

“Joining the PAU was the worst thing we could’ve ever done,” Margaret said angrily. “Nothing but a bunch of mealy-mouthed politicians, using Sentient muscle to push us around.”

Sumeet took a sip of his drink and winced. “So, let me get this straight. Bisbee is a safe haven against technology and the Union?”

“First technology was banned, then the Union,” Shinzou explained. “One begot the other. The technology prohibition made it easy to spurn Union interference. Without it, their ability to monitor and enforce is severely limited.”

“Screw the Union!” Margaret yelled again with glass on high.

“SCREW THE UNION!” boomed cheers all around.

“Screw technology!”

“SCREW TECHNOLOGY!”

Sumeet smiled. The camaraderie of the locals was intoxicating.

“But with all due respect, why is everyone so anti-Union?” Sumeet asked carefully. “Wasn’t it the Union that saved the United States from going bankrupt? And without the PAU, the American Sector population and tax base would have been unsustainable.”

“What planet are you from?” Margaret gurgled out. “America wasn’t saved by the PAU, it was hijacked! And the only reason we was so weak was our own fault. What’cha think happens when four hundred million people sit around on their ass? Creating nothing of value half the day and porn-sporting the other half.”

Sumeet remained silent as Margaret stewed. Any answer would probably make things worse. She was a volcano, old and ready to erupt. Best, he thought, to keep one’s mouth shut.

Margaret spat, “I’ll tell ya what happens! You get taken over, that’s what! But the sloth and general stupidity of America didn’t really do us in. You know what did?”

“Let’s see, technology?” Sumeet said, half guessing.

“I’m impressed, young Strainer,” Margaret said, elbowing Shinzou hard in the ribs. “Hey, this one’s salvageable. Showing some potential.”

“My thinking exactly,” Shinzou agreed, rubbing his side.

She looked around for attention. “At first, technology appears like big magic juju. Wondrous things start happening in the world!” Margaret twiddled her fingers around, like some crazy shaman priestess. “But when you got too much, things turn south real fast. Turns out, the human condition gets weakened. We lose our wild side!”

“Wild side?” Sumeet asked innocently.

Margaret shoved her martini glass into Sumeet’s chest. “Haven’t you been to the zoo?”

“Uhm, yes, I suppose I have,” Sumeet said, dabbing off gin from his designer silk shirt.

“Those animals would die if you opened up their cages and set them back in the wild. Lost their natural survival skills.”

“Yes, I see where you’re going.”

“Humans ain’t much different. Except we rarely get thrown back to nature. We go from one cage to the next. Oh, it might have nicer padding as the years go by. But it’s gotten so convoluted, we don’t know which way is up anymore!”

Sumeet looked around the bar area and nodded. “So, Bisbee is nature. Or something close to it. Letting everyone get in touch with their...wild side.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way to cut away all technology. We’re Neo-Primitives here. We minimize technology required to live comfortably. Our idea of comfortable, mind you. No one’s living like Henry David Thoreau to prove the point.”

“I get it,” Sumeet said agreeably. “You minimize technology in order to maximize your humanity!”

“You’re catching on, Strainer,” she said, pointing her drink.

“Am I?” Sumeet replied with a faint grin.

Happily, Sumeet avoided getting spilled on again. He winked discreetly at Shinzou to celebrate this small victory.

Shinzou tapped Margaret on the arm affectionately. “You know, Margaret, I was going to give Sumeet here a quick tour, but maybe you’d like to chaperone us. I can’t think of anyone better qualified to show us around.”

Margaret eyed Sumeet with one raised eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know. Not completely convinced about this one yet.”

Sumeet picked up on Shinzou’s hint. “Oh... But I really would be so grateful if you could. Being that it’s my first time here and all.”

Margaret coyly rejected Shinzou’s persistence and flattery before relenting. Then they were off. Margaret seemed on fire. To their surprise, her drunken state even enhanced her natural tour-guiding skills. With hawk-like attention she didn’t miss a thing, briskly pointing out landmarks in every direction and revealing fascinating details about the enigmatic town and its people.

Starting with their founding as an old gold-mining town, she explained with rich enthusiasm Bisbee’s colorful origins. The birthplace of cowboy shoot-em-ups and gold miner legend in the nineteenth century. But that all changed when gold mining was replaced by copper. The town transformed in tune with technology, and Margaret pointed out evidence of growth brought on by the Industrial Age. The Copper Queen mine was the primary source of transformation, and the Queen proved one of the richest sources of copper throughout the entire southwest, if not the world.

Stopping before a contemporary art gallery facade, Margaret further explained Bisbee’s painful transition into an artist enclave. After copper prices fell in the 1960s, many low income artists moved in and saved the town from near collapse by resurrecting abandoned red-brick structures. And though considered an oddity at the time, Bisbee soon established an economy based on tourism. Drawing upon their rustic heritage, coupled with culture and natural beauty, the town of Bisbee came back to life and earned a solid reputation.

But change wracked the town once more. Negative effects of the information age inflamed an unrelenting war against terrorism. Cities along the pre-ASPAU Mexican border became dangerous hot spots, as anti-terrorism enforcement became a euphemism for illegal immigration and drug reform. Pacifistic artists and innkeepers soon radicalized against government might and the technology it called for. This change culminated in riots. Especially after a public suicide to protest the flexi-screen lamination of city streets around 2035.

Margaret explained with horrific detail how a local artist named Sage Jespergard lit herself afire using ethanol solvent while chanting Buddhist sutras. With arms flaying in the air, she made whooshing sounds and screamed out a crude dramatization. Oh, yeah! That babe cooked up real good! Sumeet and Shinzou simply looked on aghast.

After the riots, the town banned all open-air advertising and other technologies, which most agreed were undesirable. A final and steady influx of Neo-Primitives sealed the town’s fate as a non-tech enclave throughout the latter half of the twenty-first century.

Margaret ended her tour at the reception desk of the Copper Queen mine tour office. It was a self service tour carefully crafted for visitors who wanted to see inside the mine at the far end of town. Gazing with solemn displeasure, she waited while Shinzou and Sumeet registered for the one-hour tour. They received maps and paper guides from a pretty receptionist dressed in a touristy cowgirl uniform.

“I’ll leave you boys on your own,” Margaret said dryly. “Won’t be needing me anymore.”

Sumeet puzzled over her remark. “I’ve enjoyed your company so far, won’t you...?”

Shinzou cut in. “We’ll catch up with you at the bar for drinks. Take care, Margaret, and thanks a lot.”

Still drunk and crotchety, Margaret sneered and walked back toward the spa. Sumeet watched her saunter off before following Shinzou toward some mining carts quietly waiting on the side.

“Sorry. Did I say something to offend her?” Sumeet asked innocently. “We were having such a good time. I don’t understand why she left.”

“Oh, no, don’t take it the wrong way,” Shinzou said, while indicating a mining cart for them to sit in. “It has nothing to do with you. Margaret gets moody coming near the mine, and won’t go inside. It’s rather sad, really.”

“She’s claustrophobic?”

“No, more tragic than that.”

“Oh.”

Sighing reluctantly, Shinzou said, “You see, Margaret’s life is tightly coupled with the mine. She and her late husband were young geologists working with Phelps Dodge. They mined copper on Earth back then.”

“I see,” Sumeet said, while looking at the cart inquisitively.

Like an amusement park ride, the chain of carts slowly moved toward the mine’s primary entrance, pulled by an automated diesel-powered engine. It chugged away pumping out fairly clean hot air.

Shinzou explained more as they entered the dark tunnel. “I said earlier that Margaret was sacred. It’s more than an honorary title. You see, she and her husband were running geological experiments in deep parts of the old mine. It had been unused for over a century, but it was convenient. So they went down there and set up a temp lab. But for some unknown reason, the earth destabilized. The whole tunnel came down on them.”

“That’s awful,” Sumeet exclaimed.

“Margaret survived but a few of the team members, including her husband, were crushed by falling rock. Margaret stayed down there for two days straight until all the bodies were dug out. People say she went back down a few times to commune with her dead husband. But that’s just local mythology. In truth, she was just broken. Gave up her career, and used her husband’s insurance money to set up a jewelry shop in town. Been here ever since.”

“I see,” Sumeet said solemnly. “Kind of puts her whole personality into context.”

The mining carts rattled their way further down the tunnel while a scratchy pre-recorded announcement explained historic details of the mine. However, Sumeet concentrated on the temperature. It abruptly dropped, and he rubbed his arms to stay warm.

Shinzou apologized for not preparing them better, but Sumeet didn’t mind the discomfort. The mine was dark and a bit wet. Pools of water formed in uneven areas near a platform that awaited them. With only a short walk, they were soon guided to the center of a huge malformed cavern – the heart of the old mine, with walls heavily scarred by the cuts of uncountable pickaxes.

“Wow, look at this place,” Sumeet said while gazing all around.

“Dug out by hand with simple metal tools,” Shinzou commented.

“Hard to understand why they’d do this.” Sumeet said scratching his head. “Was copper worth the effort?”

Shinzou chuckled. “I think you might draw inspiration from this old mine. Maybe it’s hard to believe nowadays, but electricity was the new technology back then. And using it required copper. Men were killing themselves to dig up enough to meet demand.”

Sumeet nodded. “Strange to imagine how it was back then.”

Shinzou mused on. “But that’s what technology does. It promises to transform the world around us. Whether that’s good or bad depends on the person. But when men perceive what is possible, what could be created as a potential, then they set their goals and follow them to whatever end.”

“Interesting.”

“It may be hard for you to understand, but the heart of what technology actually is derives from its conception, man’s desire to create something that previously wasn’t there. Something useful, whether it be a simple stone hammer, copper wire, or the most sophisticated computer. It’s all an expression of our core capacity to create things from nothing. It’s actually a philosophical precept. What Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as the Nothingness.”