SDN In the Sea of Time

[Formless]

Fact that quarantine is not written in should not mean that this issue should not in come out in the story somehow. My point is that it is only easily justifiable tool for the Council to use in attempt to confine Packer even for limited time to permit the Council to figure out what they do to him and how.

And my point is that you haven't done a damn thing to prove this horseshit beyond "lololololol, politics." You never told me what Packer's "agenda" is, or told me what the Council thinks it is. You never told me why he should be held responsible for breaking quarantine, especially in light of the fact that it may not even be necessary according to what we know of history, beyond stating your opinions on the matter. When I told you why historically it probably isn't dangerous you only gave back a retarded appeal to ignorance which doesn't prove shit. You ignored the point that both sides may be dangerous to Packer based on what he does next, and handwaved away the point that yes, based on his recent behavior Packer may even go along with protective custody, and yes, you can do protective custody without making it obvious imprisonment (see Simon's point that they can let people visit him and see for themselves that there is no abuse going on while simultaneously preventing them from plotting). You ignored my other objections to why quarantine wouldn't work like the fact that the doctors who have been apparently neutral up till now might not like being forced to take a side. You seem to think people, especially people who have had major exposure to this forum's way of thinking would throw away their entire systems of ethics just because they are in a dire situation and happen to have power. Your debate skills leave so much to be desired I frankly feel insulted to have to even tell you all this. Just take a look at some of your final points:

In case you have not figured it out, idiot, read what Stuart had to say in his story about war with Heaven.

Yeah, and Stuart's points about how real life politicos behave apply to people from this forum, who are on average smarter than much of the rest of the population apply why? See also "appeal to authority."

Oh, I don't know... Common sense? The stuff you are seriously lacking!

Common sense isn't.

Seriously, those are two of the most basic fallacies in existence. Anyone who appeals to "common sense" to try to support a point ought to shut the fuck up right there because he obviously does not know what he is talking about.

[Formless]

Hooray! A page without a story post is a page wasted.

Awe, damnnation, look what I just did there.

[Scottish Ninja]

Don't blame yourself; I think I started this.

[Tiwaz]

I'll answer you this last time in faint hope of educating you.

And my point is that you haven't done a damn thing to prove this horseshit beyond "lololololol, politics." You never told me what Packer's "agenda" is, or told me what the Council thinks it is.

Have you read the story? Go and read why the fuck Packer was sent to mainland to die.

His agenda was to push democratic changes to system. Which in turn were turned to potential wish to become dictator in the Council. Read the story more carefully, considering how much breath you waste you would have done that.

You never told me why he should be held responsible for breaking quarantine, especially in light of the fact that it may not even be necessary according to what we know of history, beyond stating your opinions on the matter.

And this is not necessary because everyone in the story have perfect background knowledge to be 100% certain that this IS exactly as our history has been?
Huge assumption considering their lives can depend on it.

When I told you why historically it probably isn't dangerous you only gave back a retarded appeal to ignorance which doesn't prove shit.

And you are idiot if you presume that person who would be stuck in presumable past, without knowing why or how he ended up there, would share your point of view instead of wanting to be far more careful.

They assume that they are in exact equivalent of our bronze age world. But anyone with half a mind NEVER would blindly trust that it is exact equivalent. Specific point being... Diseases.

You ignored the point that both sides may be dangerous to Packer based on what he does next, and handwaved away the point that yes, based on his recent behavior Packer may even go along with protective custody, and yes, you can do protective custody without making it obvious imprisonment (see Simon's point that they can let people visit him and see for themselves that there is no abuse going on while simultaneously preventing them from plotting).

Your point is idiotic. You never stop thinking about anything beyond "protective custody".

WHO is one who keeps him in custody? The Watch is obvious answer for the Council. And out of them, those whom the Council can trust.

But those of the watchmen which the Council can trust are by nature ones Packer CANNOT trust. And vice versa.

Packer would be idiot to submit to "protective custody" of people who last time they met wanted to send him to die. And not only to submit himself, but his wife and unborn child. He wants protection, yes, but on HIS terms. He even spoke of it in the story, he trusts his friends to cover his back.

You ignored my other objections to why quarantine wouldn't work like the fact that the doctors who have been apparently neutral up till now might not like being forced to take a side.

Do you ever think before you write?

Councilman: "So Packer was in maternity war and has been on mainland?"
Doctor: "Yes."
C: "And we are not absolutely certain of what kind of pathogens might be present at mainland?"
D: "Erm, no, but risk should be small if we assume..."
C:"If we assume. What if we do not assume? And what can be done to reduce the risk to absolute minimum?"
D:"Well, we could quarantine them until we are certain and have done some tests but..."
C:"Sounds good to me. It is valid medical precaution is it not?"
D:"Um... Yes.."

Doctor never abandons his or her neutrality, quarantine for people coming from such conditions is valid medical precaution no matter how you look at it.

You seem to think people, especially people who have had major exposure to this forum's way of thinking would throw away their entire systems of ethics just because they are in a dire situation and happen to have power.

Yes, because they would NEVER do so in real world.

Oh wait, imbecile... THEY DO! Everyone considers thought of eating human flesh unethical. Want to figure out how many times that particular piece of ethics has been broken when things have been dire?
Rape, murder and stealing... Unethical things for people. Yet it is quite common to occur during war or other suitably dire situation. Even by people who else would not even dream of it. Hell, very starting of this story included murder and rape. Even stealing.

Perhaps you consider people of this forum to be some kind of superhumans, I do not. They are just as faulty as rest of humanity, just averagely bit more smart. Dire situations change people, absolute power changes people.

Everyone except SDN veterans of course. There only have been in this story elements of the Watch taking advantage of their position when chasing tail, then having one watch CO in act of petty grievance get guy selling cologne sent to some crap assignment.

Yeah, story shows how ethics are held very much up high in SDN community. Or perhaps you mean that all "named" characters are magically immune to such things?


Your debate skills leave so much to be desired I frankly feel insulted to have to even tell you all this. Just take a look at some of your final points:[/quote]

I feel insulted having to explain simple matters like people NOT acting same way in our little cozy world where they can walk to fridge and grab a beer, then head to nice warm shower at any moment and order pizza by phone as opposed to being torn into situation like Nantucket where they can't take mere survival as granted.

Yeah, and Stuart's points about how real life politicos behave apply to people from this forum, who are on average smarter than much of the rest of the population apply why? See also "appeal to authority."

Smarter does not equal infallible. Smarter does not equal incorruptable. Smarter does not equal whole lot of other things you pretend it equals. SPECIALLY when you are tossed into situation you have absolutely no preparation for.

Common sense isn't.

Seriously, those are two of the most basic fallacies in existence. Anyone who appeals to "common sense" to try to support a point ought to shut the fuck up right there because he obviously does not know what he is talking about.

Maybe you should shut up. You are the imbecile who would apparently hand over to Packer armed bodyguard of loyalists. Fucking great idea! As if he did not have enough power to stir up shit. The Council cannot assume they know what Packer is going to do. Last time he caused huge internal upheaval, and now situation is even more fragile. Not to mention that Packer now has huge chip called "they sent you away to die" on his shoulder as far as anyone knows.

He might say he does not, he will try to disarm the situation with the machinists. But that still does not mean that the Council can relax and start trusting him whole lot more. There is simply too much bad blood between the Council and Packer for situation to just easily disarm itself. Neither can trust other.

Only imbecile hands over guns and manpower to someone who might just as well demand their head on a platter. The Council will wish that it will not come to that, but only an imbecile does not take that possibility into account as well.

You really should shut up since you are clearly incapable of taking into account multiple possible outcomes for situations and see rationality in preparing for them.

[Simon_Jester]

I've been working this concept over in my head; this is... call it the first half of a substantial segment, with possible follow-ups. These events happen on Day 212-214, about five to six weeks after Packer gets sent to the mainland, but right before the generator windmill breaks down and before Miles gets word back to the machinists that Packer is alive.

Basically, I'm trying to explore what kind of character "I" have, and what I'd be doing as the political situation got messy, extrapolating from the sort of person I know I am. I can explain pretty much anything here in a bit more depth if you're curious.

Day 212

Councilman Simon Jester was musing over a late breakfast.

How had he gotten here? Why was he one of the lucky, powerful few? He wasn’t an obvious candidate for the Council, a half-trained physicist having no obvious use to a small population on an island.

A lot of it had been luck, in hindsight. After fighting down that first surge of panic, it seemed so obvious what had to be done: Organize. Find people to guard what we can't do without. Worry about everything else later.

The next few hours had been a blur of stress, a mad scramble across town to find the essentials of life and convince random people off the street to protect them.

As things settled down, he had taken to bouncing around the island about ten to twelve hours a day, taking notes, collecting inventory lists, and trying to get an overall tally of the most urgently needed goods. Above all else came finding people with useful skills and pointing them in the general direction of groups that could use them. On his first day, he’d carried a clipboard. The clipboard overflowed within two hours and was replaced by a binder, which ballooned into a backpack full of them. Things had really gotten out of hand from there.

The main job requirement, he'd found, was a pedantic delight in remembering petty details about a very wide range of things. By the end of the first week, he was enjoying himself far more than he had a right to.

As the Council formed, he’d found himself occupying a peculiar niche: the Reference Guy. It wasn’t that he was better at any one thing than the people who specialized in it. But the sheer number of hours he’d put in running around talking to people had turned him into a kind of walking reference guide. He rarely knew everything about a given project, but he usually knew who did, and could give you a rough estimate of what they were going to say, or how doing something different would affect their project. Often, that estimate was all you needed, and asking Simon saved half an hour spent trying to track down the person who knew the details.

He didn’t make many decisions directly, but he was a catalyst to decision-making in others...

Enough reminiscing; time for some creative intrigue. Simon sat up and clipped a little leather holster to his belt. Over the spring people had taken to carrying hammers, knives, trowels, that sort of thing, as badges of authority and trade. When he noticed the trend, more as a joke than anything else, he started wearing the six-inch slide rule that had been in his pocket on Arrival Day. By now, he'd feel undressed without it.

The idea had come to him in pieces over the past six weeks, starting the day after Packer was sent off in a boat to die. Access to alcohol wasn't a Council privilege he used often, but he'd drunk himself to sleep that night for the first time in his life. "Dammit, I tried!" wasn't enough to put the mind to rest, not at two in the morning.

Then that stinking mess with the pamphlet. That had scared him; he'd got his hands on a copy of Common Sense and noticed that one or two of the choicer passages looked hauntingly familiar. Somewhere out there, a revolutionary was quoting him, which would be humbling if it weren't such a good way to get mistaken for one himself.

But at a bare minimum, by last week that particular crisis had seemed to be... if not under control, then at least not actively exploding. Then the engineers had passed word to the Council that a file cabinet full of blueprints had vanished from the machine shop overnight.

That had hit the Council like a meteor, and no one was sure how to respond. Some called for open negotiations, then got growled down by a chorus of idiocy along the lines of "string up the lot of them!" Then that bunch had been debated into submission, mostly by the brute facts. Persuading them to stop howling for blood had only been about twice as hard as it ought to be, given that it was even money whether the riots a mass execution caused would make more trouble than losing the diagrams permanently would, or the other way around. Finally, the Council meeting had adjourned in confusion; no one could come up with a plan convincing enough to win majority support.

Things were starting to fall apart politically. If it kept up for another month or two, the Watch would have to start throwing people in jail for complaining about their friends being thrown in jail, and he could do the math on an exponential growth curve well enough to see where that would wind up. The escalation had to stop before things collapsed outright. That meant someone had to talk to the hotheads on one side or the other.

He'd already tried convincing the ones on the Council's side. It had been like talking to a wall; if they'd been thinking in terms of staying calm for stability's sake, they wouldn't be hotheads to begin with. That left the increasingly disloyal opposition, starting with most of the boys down at the machine shop. Of course, talking to dangerous radicals was itself dangerous.

It's not even as if I have anything against dangerous radicals; I just wish they weren't throwing danger at me, on my watch...

He needed an insurance policy, which was the part it had taken him time to think of. That was where he was going to start today.

Simon didn't visit the Point Breeze Hotel very often; less often than he'd have guessed before the Arrival if he'd known what would happen. Being able to talk to the women was another de facto Councilman's privilege, yes, but there was something very wrong about the place.

Over the island as a whole, the sex ratio was a well known statistic: fifteen to one. Inside Point Breeze, among the ones who ever actually saw the womens' quarters, it wasn't even one to one; more more like one to four. Maybe one to five. Still obscenely imbalanced, with the only difference being which way.

If the fraternization rules of the Watch were observed by the Council that wouldn't seem so off-kilter; it would just be the facts of a bad situation. But as things were… it felt altogether too much like walking into a harem that the Council kept for its own benefit, and never mind anything the girls themselves had to say about it.

It wasn't that simple, of course. But he couldn't shake the feeling that when all pretense was stripped away, it was. Not a comfortable feeling to have when he walked by the place. And so, against anything he'd have predicted eight months ago, he only went to the hotel on business. That was fairly often, since he had a lot to do with the sort of paperwork they handled here, but even so he rarely spoke to anyone but Den Mothers.

He'd scheduled a meeting here the day before. He passed the Watchmen by the door with a mutual nod. Gail met him in the main lobby and led him to a small conference room on the ground floor.

They were on fairly good terms, but she wasn't one to let that stop her from cutting straight to the point.

"Simon, this isn't ordinary Council business, is it?"

"Not really. More like politics. I think it's time for someone on the Council to have a talk with the machinists. One on one, not the whole "you have been Officially Summoned to Hear Our Wisdom" thing we usually do."

Gail said nothing; curious to hear more? More likely, she was waiting to see if he'd play out enough rope to hang himself. No telling what she'd do in that case. He resumed with a sigh, waving his hand to indicate the whole island.

"Things are starting to come apart at the seams out there. A lot of people resent us for one reason or another. A lot of the reasons make more sense than I'd like. The Watch keeps ratcheting up the pressure, the people who already didn't like the status quo get alienated, which makes for more trouble for the Watch to push against. It keeps going round and round.

"I keep thinking that if things would just… cool down for a few months, we could at least start to move to something more stable, improve things enough to make them think it's worth putting up with the things we can't change. And I worry that if we don't, it's going to go crazy. How do I put this…

"I mean, what happens when a thousand-odd angry men, who'd prefer almost anything to the life and prospects they have right now, lose the last bit of faith that somehow we're going to make it all better? I don't want to find out, and I'm betting that you here want to find out even less."

A tight, grim smile quirked the corner of Gail's mouth.

"We've given it a lot of thought. I'm guessing you want to do the talking?"

"Yes."

"So why not make a full vote of it? Why come here?"

Simon paused for a moment.

"Because I'd probably lose. You've heard me in the Council; I get all stuffy and I swear at least a third of my brains drip out my ears every time I try to talk to them. And you can imagine what our mutual friend Jimmy the Shark would have to say?"

This smile wasn't so grim. "I still remember the first time you called him that. It fits."

"Glad you think so."

The rest of what he had to say came out in a rush. He was pretty sure that whatever happened now, she wouldn't throw him to the wolves… or the sharks. "Seriously, though, I can hear it now: what kind of ulterior motives could make me want to get in touch with a bunch of wanna-be revolutionaries? I don't want to be the second person on the island to be accused of a case of political ambition; I remember what happened to the first one. I'm not all that enthusiastic about joining Alfred on the mainland."

"Presumed dead?"

"Exactly."

"You know me, hell, you read me like a book practically as a hobby." That got another smile from Gail, a good sign for what was coming next. "You know I'm not angling to overthrow anyone; probably wouldn't be able to bring it off if I wanted to. You know that, and I know that. But would you bet your life that another fourteen Council members know that?"

He looked her in the eye; held her gaze for several long moments.

"I wouldn't," he said. So... I wanted to talk it over with someone who knows me well enough not to panic. Preferably someone with better political instincts." He took a deep breath, eyes never leaving Gail's. "In short, you."

Gail visibly thought it over for a moment, then answered. "I see where you're coming from. I'm not sure it would do any good, but it makes some sense. There's just one question I have."

"What?"

"Why didn't you take this idea straight to the Watch? They've been racking their brains trying to come up with a way to defuse things for months. Really, Simon, it would be your best bet if you're worried about being accused of sneaking behind the Council's back, short of bringing it up for a vote."

He froze, mouth open. Then he slapped himself on the forehead.

"You're right, and I've been an idiot."

Gail looked… about half amused. "You didn't think of it?"

"No. I've been so caught up in imagining the Watch as the heavies of the piece that I dropped the idea out of hand. I ought to know better; I've listened to all the same briefings you have, give or take a few. As I said, you're right, and thank you for vindicating my decision to run my idea past someone with better political sense." At this, he gave her a small seated bow.

"I suppose I'd better go schedule a meeting with our stalwart Commander. Do you think it'll work?"

"Worth a try."

[Alferd Packer]

Day 360, Noon, Nantucket

Packer was sure that, of all the possible ways that their reunion could've gone down, Jason Terrance didn't have this in mind. Terrance's eyes went wide; his lower jaw worked helplessly. The other guys winced as if Packer had punched each one of them.

"Stealing the plans for the shit we built, Jason?" Packer sneered. "Are you out of your fucking mind? Did you not pay fucking attention to anything I goddamn said?! Did you not fucking read the letter I wrote you? I swear to fucking God, I would knock your goddamn dick in the dirt right now if I wasn't so happy to see you!"

It took Terrance a few seconds to register this. His look of wounded horror changed slowly to a grin. Packer grinned back.

The Horticulturists weren't the only ones who'd put on weight since last spring. Packer found himself crushed beneath a choking wave of muscle. He was so enveloped that he couldn't hear anything that they were saying to him, and he simply endured. Finally, they let him go, sniffling, laughing, talking excitedly.

"Guys, guys!" he began, taking a seat in one of the chairs. They they quieted down eagerly, clustering their chairs around him. They looked at him with rapt attention. "What's up?" he said amiably.

They laughed, and Terrance said, tears still on face, said, "I'm just...we're so fucking happy, boss! Nice duds, by the way!"

"I'm glad to see you guys too," Packer replied, taking a good look at Terrance. Apparently, leadership wasn't agreeing with him; he looked a good five years older than he had when Packer had last seen him in early April. Though his body was, by necessity, in good enough shape, his face looked sallow and haggard, like he'd been up a lot of nights. To some extent, they all had that look.

"You really think it was a bad idea, though...?" Terrance asked, uncertainty creeping back into his voice.

"Yes, it was stupid thing to do, Jason." Packer leaned forward. "But I'm not mad at you for doing it. After, all, I did a really stupid thing, and look at what that got me. But hey, last time pays for all, right? What's been doing?"

"I kept your seat warm," Terrance said earnestly. He ran his hands through his hair, which Packer noticed had thinned quite a bit. "Ever since I heard you were still alive, I knew...we knew...you'd be coming back." He sighed immensely. "Now you can take the reins again. Tell us what to do, boss."

"Alright," Packer replied. He leaned back in his chair. "I'm gonna need some information from you guys. And I'm gonna be asking you to do things that might seem strange, or even wrong. Please, don't balk at them."

"You're the boss," Andrew said. He'd grown a beard over the summer...or rather, he'd stopped shaving.

"That's the first thing I need you do. Stop calling me boss. I'm not in charge of you anymore. Jason is."

"Whoa, hey!" Terrance held his arms up immediately. "I don't want--"

"It doesn't matter, Jason," Packer said with a sad smile on his face. "We can't go back to the way things were, no more than we can go back to our original time. I'm not a Machinist anymore." Wow, that was easier to say than I thought it would be, he noted.

Terrance frowned, as did the other three. "Sorry, guys," Packer said, "but that's the way it is. I've got bigger fish to fry. But I am gonna help you. I'm gonna help all of us fix this. I'm gonna do my best to make it right."

Silence for a moment. Then Rustbucket, angrily: "Is this because you've brought a woman back with you?"

"Yes," Packer said matter-of-factly. "I'm on the hook for more than just my own ass, now. I've got another person to care for, and that will factor into any decisions I make." He shrugged. "If you can't deal with that, well, tough. That's just how it's gonna be."

Terrance looked at the others. "Well, I'm sorry to hear you say that, boss." He winced. "I mean, uh...fuck it, it's too weird to call you anything else. Anyway, if you don't want to be a Machinist anymore, I guess we can't stop you."

"Can't, Jason. I can't be a Machinist anymore. I'm only here for the winter; I'll be going back to Cape Cod next spring." He sighed. "Depending on how the next couple of days go down, I may never come back after that. But look, I promise you guys this: you haven't been fighting and struggling for nothing. I will try to make this right, however I can."

"Okay," Terrance said, nodding. "Okay. We're with you." The others agreed in their own way.

Tommy spoke up: "Do you have a plan, boss?"

"I have ideas," Packer said. "But I need more information. I've been in contact with Kevin and Miles Jameson, but I don't have the whole picture. You guys have been in the shit these last six months. Is it really that bad?"

"It's bad," Andrew said. "It's been various different forms of bad, but it's always been bad. When you were first sent away, we were just...defeated. They stationed some guys from the Watch in our shop, but it didn't matter. We just had no fight left in us. We just went on like zombies. They thought we were being deliberately slow about it, but we just couldn't muster any energy. We were...well, we were in mourning."

"But then I got an idea. Well, Kevin and I did," Terrance said. "I was helping with the planting, and we got to talking. So we stole on the plans. Hid 'em. Chased the Watch out of the shop."

"Yeah, how the hell did you..." Packer stopped himself. "You know what? Never mind. I don't want to know how. You stole the plans, and..."

"Well, after that," Andrew continued, "we actually got a visit from a Councilor. He let us know...well, he asked us not to do anything too rash, because there were people on the Council who were--conditionally, anyway--sympathetic to our plight. But we were being tailed by the Watch a lot. It was like a game. They saw how close they could get to us before we threatened to torch the plans, then they'd back off for a week."

Rustbucket said, "Then, we had our hands full with the Eagle. Making crossbows, armor, swords, axes. We even rehabbed one of those giant harpoon guns."

"And in the middle of all this, we hear that you're still alive!" Terrance chimed in. "You never saw a happier bunch of people. I closed the shop for a day and we had a fucking party down Surfside."

"Mmmm, a bunch of hairy, smelly men frolicking in the water," Packer said, making a face. "Bet that was a sight."

"Aw, you should've seen naked limbo, boss! Andrew couldn't help himself! He got a boner during his turn and knocked the pole over!" Rustbucket said. Andrew punched Rustbucket in the shoulder. Packer laughed, and for a brief flash, all was simple and right with the universe once again.

"Anyway, we got fired up. We thought it was time to start our demonstrations again. There'd been rumblings, of course, from various groups all over the island, but there was nothing coherent, you know. Except for the pamphlet, I guess." Terrance scratched his head distractedly. "They just wrote shit. Hid behind a wall of anonymity, but they never really got anything going. I think, since we were the first, they were looking to us, in a way. See what we did."

"And what you did got Kevin collared," Packer said.

"Yup," Terrance said. "One of the things we decided was that only one of us would be present at an event, in case something like this happened. Well, it was the fourth or fifth demonstration, over by the high school. There were about...oh, say a hundred people there. The Watch descended like a swarm of...what's a good swarming animal?"

"I was there," Andrew said. "They were playing for keeps. A lot of people ran, including myself. Anyone who got close to touching their weapon was taken down, and hard. Kevin just got manhandled; he went the nonviolent way, like you."

"The stalemate that the Councilor had negotiated with us and the Watch, so to say," Terrance went on, "did not apply to the Horticulturists. I don't know why the Council sent Kevin to Muskeget. Maybe he cut a deal somehow. He hasn't said."

"Or maybe the Council's lost their taste for sending people off to die," Packer mused.

"After all the bullshit that's been going on," Tommy said, "I wouldn't be surprised."

Terrance said, "Indeed. Let's see, the elections were kinda--"

"Wait, what?!" Packer's jaw dropped. "Elections?"

"Yeah, the Council finally gave in after the last crackdown. Shit was gonna go real bad if they didn't. They shitcanned any member of the Watch who was also on the Council, and they held elections to fill their spots. But, you know, they weren't real elections, right?" Andrew adjusted himself in his chair. "Like we wanted one of the Horticulturists to run, but they said no. Said he was needed to help deal with new irrigation schema. I'd guess that they hand-picked the candidates, but the whole process was closed to us, so I can't say for sure. Still, it worked. Things calmed down...for a while."

"Well, there ain't much more to tell," Terrance said. "We stopped the demonstrations, then we had the Irrigation Crisis to handle, and before I knew it, it was September. So I contacted Kevin out on Martha's Vineyard to see about getting you back."

"Gotcha. How did the harvest go?" Packer asked.

Terrance shrugged. "Pretty good, I guess. We have enough food to make it through the winter, and it won't be as bad as last year. Lots of people, myself included, planted vegetable gardens. I'm pretty good with canning and preserving stuff now."

"Yeah, you should see how many pickled cucumbers he can fit up his ass," Andrew said eagerly.

Terrance gave Andrew the finger. Packer, grinning, said, "What about my house? Did you guys...?"

"They tore it down," Terrance said. "Confiscated your gasifier. They did let us go through and pull some stuff out, though. I got your guitars and a few boxes of clothes and books and shit down at the shop."

"Hmph," Packer said. "Pricks. I get taking the gasifier, maybe stripping out some copper wiring or whatever, but the whole damn building?"

"Who knows?" Andrew shrugged. "Maybe they thought it was gonna become a memorial. Maybe it was just a final 'fuck you.' "

"Yeah, I guess it doesn't matter. I can't very well live way out there with my wife, now can I?" Packer cracked his back; the hard plastic chair was playing merry hell with his spine.

"Wife?" Terrance said. "I thought she was just...you know..."

"What, Vine Boy didn't tell you?" Packer held up his necklace. "I'm a married man. Got a baby on the way. Signed, sealed, delivered."

Terrance looked at the other three Machinists. "Well, congrats are in order, boss!"

"Thanks," Packer said. "Don't worry, you'll get to meet her at some point."

"So," Andrew said. "What do we do now? We're here. Give us some marching orders."

Packer said nothing. He would later be told that all other color drained from his face at that moment; it certainly felt that way. He was facing the doorway, so he saw them before the Machinists did.

"Mister Packer," a large, joyless Watchman said from the doorway. "You need to come with us."

Day 360, Afternoon, Nantucket

Zombielike, Packer rose. His legs were on autopilot. He took one step. Then another. The fuck are you doing?! he screamed at himself. Stop! Don't go near them! YOU HAVE TO PROTECT NARA!

He stopped.

Swallowing hard, Packer cleared his throat. "No."

By now, the Machinsts were on their feet, flanking Packer. There was one Watchman in the doorway and, perhaps half a dozen others behind him.

"This is not a request," the Watchman went on. "By emergency order, I am authorized to--"

"No, this isn't how it's going to go down," Packer snapped. "Here, let me lead you through what you should've said." He did his best impression of the Watchman's voice(which wasn't very good):

" 'Howdy, Mister Packer. Welcome back! We just stopped by to let you know that the Council sure would like to speak with you, when you've got the time!' "

" 'Why, thank you for letting me know,' " Packer continued in his own voice. " 'I'm a little busy at the moment, but if you'd be so kind, please tell the Council that I'll be happy to meet with them at, oh, say, three PM tomorrow.' "

" 'Why, that'd suit them just fine, I'd wager. I'll pass that along right now. See ya around, Mister Packer!' " Packer then stopped, eying the Watchman expectantly.

The Watchman was not impressed. "This is non-negotiable, Mister Packer. My orders--"

"Fuck your orders," Packer said. "And fuck you."

That actually made the Watchman stop. "What did you say?"

"I said: fuck you!" Packer was fighting to keep his voice down, but it felt good to shout. "As in, get fucked, go bugger yourself, fuck off. I don't give a good goddamn what your orders are or what the Council wants. I have things to do, and I'm not leaving here."

"Hell yeah, boss!" Andrew said. "We're with you! We'll--"

"Shut the fuck up, Andrew," Packer snapped. "I'll deal with this." He took a step towards the Watchman, whose hand fell to his side.

"Mister Packer, you will cooperate with me. There are more of us than there are of you, and we have guns. You remember those, don't you?" The Watchman sneered, "Or have you gone totally native?"

"Who the fuck are you?" Packer fired back. "And who are you to presume to talk to me in that tone? Besides, you'll never clear your holster."

The Watchman's nostrils flared. Behind him, his fellow squadmates or teammates or whatever were spread out, each framed by a window looking into the waiting room. "I will make you come with us if I have do. You just have to be able to answer questions. You can do that with a few broken bones." He puffed out his chest a bit, trying to emphasize the fact that he was taller and larger than Packer.

For a moment, Packer did nothing. Then, a snort. A titter. A few seconds later, he was howling with laughter. He laughed until his sides hurt and his lungs burned, and he had to lean on Rustbucket to keep from falling over. Tears streamed down his face as he roared with good cheer at the Watchman standing in front of him. Eventually, wiping the tears away, still wracked with the occasional laugh, he brought himself under control.

"Oh, you silly little man. You silly, stupid little man!" Packer pointed to the corner of the room, at his spear. The Watchman's eyes flicked over there for an instant. "Three weeks ago, a fucking bear twice your size was close as you are to me, and all I had to save my life was that. Do you think for an instant that I'm afraid of you?"

Packer went on: "You have any idea how fast a deer moves? The speed a rabbit has? How hard I had to push myself every fucking day I was out there? Answer me this: do I look like someone you want to fuck with?" A wriggle of his shoulders and his vest was on the ground, and, now naked from the waist up, he flexed every muscle in his upper body. "I guarantee you I'm harder than you, son. And I know I'm quicker than you. One of your friends may be able to pull me off of you, but there won't be much point by the time he gets the chance."

Packer's heart was thumping wildly, adrenaline surging through him. He found himself loving it almost as much as he loved seeing the fear creep into the Watchman's eyes. Fear that grew as the madman's grin on Packer grew wider.

"Then perhaps I should talk to your wife," the Watchman said, trying and mainly succeeding to bring a threatening edge of his own back into his voice. "I'm sure she'll comply with us." At this, one of the other Watchmen tried to reach out to the speaker, but he was rebuffed.

Packer's smile was gone in an instant. "Let me tell you a little story," Packer began quickly, "about the last two men that threatened my wife. The first was part of the group that captured me. They also captured her and her brother. One of them was going to try to rape her, so I dropped my steel-toed boot onto his nuts. Twice. Once would've done the job.

"The second and last man to threaten her was...well, her former brother-in-law, let's say. He actually hit her, and then he came at me with an axe, while I was unarmed. You know what I did to him?" His voice dropped. "First, I hit him so hard that he bit his tongue in half. Then I took his axe and beat him to a fucking pulp with the blunt end. It took him a week to die.

"So," Packer was nearly whispering now, "do you really want to threaten my wife? Do you think that I won't tear your fucking throat out with my teeth, if I that's what I need to do to protect her? If so, then by all means. Try it."

It was now the Watchman's turn to have the color drain from his face. Packer smiled a small, savage smile of triumph. "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, son. I won't be bullied by little shits like you. You can tell the Council that I will see them soon, and that I am ready to talk with them. But I have things to take care of, first."

Just then, one of the radios squawked. One of the other Watchmen had a brief conversation on it, then came over to his comrade in the doorway. "Bug out." He laid his hand on his arm, and the man fairly jumped--but he left the doorway. Within thirty seconds, all six were gone.

Terrance spoke first. "Wow. You're the fucking man. You showed those Council lackeys who's boss!"

"They weren't Council lackeys," Packer replied. "They never said they were."

"But boss, they said they were ordered--"

"But not by whom," Packer said. "He was careful about that. He deliberately omitted that, in fact. Probably because whoever sent him over here will be in a world of shit if I'm able to name a name to the Council at large."

"Wait," Andrew said. "Those guys were sent by someone other than the Council?"

"A subset of the Council, I'd wager." Packer sat back down in his chair. The Machinists followed suit. "A subset with enough pull and enough charm to convince those six guys to do what they say. Or maybe it's just one guy. One charming, witty, convincing guy."

"One guy? But the Watch..." Terrance didn't finish the thought.

"What?" Packer looked him. "They're loyal only to their CO, or the Commander of the Watch? Come on, man. They're people, too. They can be misled. Hell, they can be genuinely convinced that it's the right thing to do. I bet what we just saw was that particular squad getting a legitimate set of orders to come to the hospital, but not to enter."

Terrance considered this, as did the others. "So they're going to nab you anyway; they're just sending the whole Watch to do it."

Packer shrugged. "Beats me. But my guess is that you're not going to be allowed to leave the hospital. I bet they're setting up to receive patients in one of the other buildings, in fact."

"What, like a quarantine?" Tommy asked.

Packer shrugged again. "Maybe. Maybe they just want to protect Nantucket from me. Or me from Nantucket. I honestly don't care. I'm fine staying the night. Besides, I don't have a house anymore, anyway." After a moment, he added, "Pricks."

"So what do we do?" Andrew asked.

"In the short term?" Packer crossed his legs. "You stay here. We still have shit to hash out. They can't keep me here forever, and they can't keep you here forever. This is a working hospital, and a vital part of the island. If they declare a quarantine, they have to actually see if we're sick or not, right?"

Each man was silent for a moment as they considered this. "Alright," Packer said finally, "enough distractions. If this is gonna work, I'm going to need some things from you guys. Listen close, so you can move quickly once you get out..."

Day 360, Evening, Nantucket

Packer turned the knob of the door that led back to the exam room containing Nara and Kaley, and he caught his wife saying, "...and what is this word? Blow...job?"

He almost shut the door and left, but he'd already been spotted. "Took you long enough!" Kaley said in a cheerful tone. She was sitting in one of the chairs, with Nara in front of her, sitting cross-legged on one of their furs on the floor. Kaley was styling a braid in Nara's hair, while Nara was puzzling over a copy of Cosmopolitan that must have been lying around somewhere.

Nara held up the magazine for Packer. "There are many interesting things in here," she said with a grin. Packer couldn't help but grin back. He crouched down next to her and gave her a kiss. She immediately went back to reading, and Kaley resumed braiding her hair.

"Well, I see you ladies have been having fun," Packer said, standing. He went over to the sink, found a glass, and filled it with water.

"We sure have," Kaley said. "Let's see, Nara told me about her family. Well, your family, too. How you and...Doonik, was it?"

"Duniik," Nara corrected.

"Right, Duniik. How you and Duniik are great friends, and you spent a lot of time hunting together."

"Yep, even gave him my crossbow to use during the winter." Packer took a long drink of water.

"We also talked about how you two met, and how you protected her." Kaley looked at him pointedly. "Nara thinks you're very brave, and I'm inclined to agree."

He gave her a small, helpless smile. "I could do no less," he said simply.

"And then we talked about Nantucket, and what it's going to be like to have a baby--say, did you know that we're about the same age?--and food, and sex, and--"

"I get the idea," Packer said. "Sorry I was away so long. Trouble's brewing."

Nara looked up at him. "Are we safe here?"

"Yes, we will be fine. For now."

Suddenly, from outside, a woman's voice penetrated through the door. "Are they fucking kidding me? Are they telling me how to do my job? I don't go down to where they work and tell them who to arrest!"

Packer said, "Trouble's here. I'll be right back." Quickly, he slipped out the door.

There were three people arguing near the exam room; all were wearing lab coats, so Packer assumed they were all doctors. Doctor Reynolds was among them, and the other two were men in their mid- to late-thirties.

"Yasmine, listen," one of them said in a soft British accent. "They've ordered that we lock down this wing. That's all there is to it. We already--"

"It's bullshit, Tom!" Doctor Reynolds screeched. "It's bullshit, and you know it. I saw both of them. There is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that they're sick and infectious! This is part of that stupid fucking pissing contest of theirs, and you're playing along."

The male doctor--Tom--made to say something further, but Doctor Reynolds stormed off, leaving the two men to look at each other. Packer stepped up. "Gentlemen," he said. "I couldn't help but overhear."

"I think the whole island heard that," Doctor Tom said ruefully. He extended his hand. He was a tall guy, maybe six-three, with green eyes and platinum blonde hair that could've been white, for all Packer could tell. "Al Packer, yes? I'm Doctor Thomas Haverhill. I'm...well, I guess you could say I'm the Chief Administrator for the hospital, though seems more and more like I'm pissing in the wind when it comes to important matters."

"A pleasure, Doctor." Packer shook his hand.

"And this is Doctor Ronald Strauss," Haverhill said. "Surgeon extraordinaire, teacher, healer--though we all do a bit of everything around here." Doctor Strauss extended his hand, and Packer took it. Strauss was short and probably once overweight, with a shiny dome surrounded by wispy brown hair. He wore a precise mustache that had a tendency to flit about his face when he spoke.

"Mister Packer, welcome back."

"Thank you, Doctors," Packer said. "So, I'm to take it that we're spending the night here?"

"Indeed," Haverhill said. Packer thought his accent was soothing. "The Watch has laid siege to us, for lack of a more couth term. They claim that you and your wife are walking biohazards. Yasmine, as you saw, disagreed with this assessment, but they remain firm. No one in or out for the next sixteen hours, with a possible twenty-four hour extension after that."

"And your opinions?" Packer asked.

"Well," Haverhill began, "I actually read a book about this sort of thing once. Basically, when this exchange happened originally--that is, when settlers first came to the New World from Europe--the natives got sick. The Europeans didn't. Now, we're not all European, of course, but the situation is basically the same. We should have nothing to fear from either of you. The fact that you weren't sick when you arrived supports this. Yasmine is taking a look at your wife's blood right now. She hopes to have hard evidence to support the idea that you pose no risk."

Doctor Strauss, in a much less pleasing accent: "I think Yasmine has the right of it, in that it's primarily a political move. Just because we doctors are neutral doesn't mean we're blind to what's happening around us. Using the hospital like this...not that I blame you, Mister Packer. If I were in your shoes, you bet your ass I would've done the same thing."

"At any rate," Haverhill said, "we hope to have this matter resolved shortly. Once Nara's blood shows up clean, I will personally get on the radio and speak with the Chairman and get this ridiculous quarantine lifted, so you can be on your way."

"Doctor," Packer began, "what if I didn't want to be on my way?"

"Beg pardon, Mister Packer?"

"Think about it. I've got a pregnant wife whom I must protect. I'm a polarizing figure. It seems like everyone I meet outside of the medical field thinks I'm either some kind of demigod or the second coming of Stalin. If I appeal to those who laud me for protection from those who despise me, what must follow?

"No, I'm not plunging this island into violence of any sort, if I can help it. Doctor, with your permission, I'd like to stay at the hospital tonight. My wife and I."

Doctor Haverhill rubbed his chin. "Certainly, Mister Packer. We're staffed 'round the clock, and it is known that it is...unwise to piss off those who are responsible for your medical care." He allowed himself a small smile. "You'll be safe here."

"Thank you," Packer said. "One more thing. I want to conduct negotiations here tomorrow. Well, not here. A conference room somewhere in the building will be fine, as long as it's big enough to hold the entire Council."

"That shouldn't be a problem, Mister Packer," Haverhill said. "I know exactly where we can set you up. I'll make the necessary arrangements, though I cannot guarantee that the Council will agree to come."

"Of course," Packer said. "I do have to try, though. I think they'll want to hear what I have to say."

"Taking on the whole beast at once, are you?" Strauss said. "Sure you're not biting off more than you can chew?"

Packer shrugged. "The idea of taking sensible bites out of things ended the day I was shipped off. I just have to move forward and fix the mess I helped make. Or at least get things going in the right direction."

"That's quite commendable, Mister Packer." Haverhill looked at his watch. "Well, I've got rounds to finish in the rest of the hospital, plus a rather protracted radio conversation with the Chairman to look forward to. If you'll sit tight, Mister Packer, someone will be by to move you and your wife to a more comfortable room for the night."

"Thank you, Doctor. Would it be possible for me to get to you a list of people I would, in particular, like to attend? They may not, necessarily, be on the Council anymore, but they were present at my trial. They should be here for these negotiations."

"Certainly. Just get it to one of the nurses; they'll be able to track me down." He extended his hand once again, and Packer shook it, as did he Doctor Strauss'.

This time, when Packer entered the exam room, the first thing he heard was, "Kaley has writing on her!"

Packer shut the door, a smile creeping onto his face. "She does?" he said. "Where?"

Nara was standing. "It was here!" She turned around and pointed to her lower back.

Kaley, for her part, was redfaced. "I just happen to lean over the right way, and--" she caught Packer quaking with suppressed laughter. "Oh, no you don't. Don't you dare judge me, mister. I found out enough about your proclivities today to fill a phone book."

Packer grinned and threw his hands up. "All right, I surrender!" Packer turned to Nara. "We have a way to draw on the skin that will stay there."

"Yes, Kaley said it is a...tattoo?"

"That's right." His eyes darted back to Kaley, unable to help himself. "Was it a picture or words?"

"A picture," Nara said eagerly. Kaley shot daggers out of her eyes at Packer. "It was...wings? Like a bird?"

"Ah! Very nice!" Packer said.

Kaley smiled, despite herself. "Well, I'm going to be the mature one, here, and not rub in the fact that I'm privy to private knowledge about someone else...like, oh, say, the face you make when Nara does that thing you like." She immediately contorted her entire visage, eyes wide, mouth agape, tongue out a little bit.

"You wound me!" Packer said, laughing.

Nara, who was at the window and looking out onto a darkening Nantucket, said, "Can we go now? I want to see the other houses. And meet other people!"

"Sorry," Packer said. "We cannot. We have to stay. They think that we will make everyone sick."

Nara frowned, as did Kaley. The former said, "But Kaley is not sick!"

"I know that," Packer said. "You know that. The doctor knows that. But it is not enough. The people outside are afraid."

"The Watch?" Kaley asked, a concerned look on her face.

"I think so," Packer replied. "It doesn't matter, in the end. The doctors have said they're gonna sort things out, but everyone in the hospital is staying put, at least for a few hours."

[TimothyC]

Wow, No one thought their actions through here.
First: You don't threaten a man's Wife and Kid.
Second: Viruses that have long incubation periods could still be floating around in either population (either people on Nantucket, or the mainland) and could cause problems.
Third: You don't openly threaten the people with guns. Yes the Watch is not a monolithic block, but the moment that Packer attacks anyone who isn't hurting him, or his wife, he just lost the protection of the society he both wants to take from (Medical, food, shelter), but not provide in kind (Where was he during Harvest?).
Fourth: He's willingly and knowingly associating with Seditionists.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Wow, No one thought their actions through here.

Not quite. There are people thinking their actions through on Nantucket. They're just not necessarily the ones you want to think their actions through.

Second: Viruses that have long incubation periods could still be floating around in either population (either people on Nantucket, or the mainland) and could cause problems.

Third: You don't openly threaten the people with guns. Yes the Watch is not a monolithic block, but the moment that Packer attacks anyone who isn't hurting him, or his wife, he just lost the protection of the society he both wants to take from (Medical, food, shelter), but not provide in kind (Where was he during Harvest?).

Indeed. The Watch has already moved to seal off the hospital, and has started to track down whoever might have associated with Packer. It may be a bit late, but better than never. And, once the Council gets moving, I fully expect that interesting things will happen.

Fourth: He's willingly and knowingly associating with Seditionists.

The Machinists aren't very effective seditionists. They're malcontent and agitate for change within the government, but they (arguably) haven't yet done anything that would completely destroy Nantucket's nascent society. They also tend to come back to work after sufficient government persuasion. Though, as I think about it, the Machinists and Horticulturalists both may well find themselves to be not nearly as important to Nantucket's survival as they were during the first year on Nantucket. I will have more to write on this in one of my upcoming segments.

[Shermpotter]

Simon, very nice section you wrote. Look forward to more.

I love reading Alferd packer's POV on this and then contrast that with the Terwynn's. It really plays off well and gives a much more full view of the goings on.

One point I would like to make about this story and this board. I am speaking for myself first and then for/about some of the other lesser known members and lurkers here. There are all kinds of people on this board. Many are thinkers rather than doers, and there are those who work physically a lot. I fully believe that there are some peple on this board who could be really dangerous. I know I could be if I were pushed. My background is in HR and Safety, but I was also a reserve deputy sherrif and a correctional officer. I cannot see myself siding for long with the 'authorities' if they continued this sham government and power grab.

The council continues to play games we other peoples money, so to speak. I cannot see the faux elections really solving much. Another couple points is about the watch. 1) They cannot be everywhere and 2) most were not trained to be police officers. The council must live in fairly close proximity in order to be 'protected' but this is never mentioned. If they aren't they cannot be effectively protected and still have watch patrols because without cars you cannot effectively patrol that much area. Foot patrols are notoriously inefficient when covering larger areas.

My whole point is this. I could very easily see some of our smarter and more psychologically and morally challenged members deciding to make unilateral non-electoral removal of some of the less liked council members. Not saying me, necessarily, but you don't know what kind of strain to people's psyches this change and the living conditions will produce. I am sort of surprised there hasn't been some kind of serial killer or some such weirdness after this event.

Also, the council is trying to be self-protective but really is p'o-ing the two main bodies that insure your survival the best way to go? Antagonizing the Machinists and the Horticulturalists is really phenomonally stupid. If I had been in Packer's shoes the plans would have been kept and hidden from the momnet I felt things were going down this route. For Packer to think otherwise is foolish, and I think Jason was right. The guns they have now won't last forever. As the whole Eagle situation shows, the machinists know how to make effective and useful weapons without gunpowder. The Horticulturalists effectively are the font o f knowledge about plants and herbs that make good foodstuffs and even some medicines. And this is all knowledge that you don't just get by reading a book.

Well, I have gone on enough. I love the story and will eagerly await more! (And no, I am not crazy...not much anyway!)

[TimothyC]

Other people mention that he Machinists can make weapons without gunpowder (which with the current situation on the island isn't a bad idea). The issue that no one as touched on yet is "What happens in five years when the machine shop stops working from a lack of lubricants?"

Most people that have posted in this thread miss the fact that we are going to end up as an iron age level at best, simply because we don't have the population base to support any higher than that.

[Shermpotter]

Lubricants of the early steam era included not only petroleum based stuff, but also oils from agriculture as well as animals. Fish oil and whale oil, tallow, etc. They smell, don't work as well but are better than nothing.

If the let down goes to far down in tech, we won't survive...

[Simon_Jester]

Other people mention that he Machinists can make weapons without gunpowder (which with the current situation on the island isn't a bad idea). The issue that no one as touched on yet is "What happens in five years when the machine shop stops working from a lack of lubricants?"

Aargh. That actually occured to me specifically. That was another one of the things I'd been meaning to get to... in my third section, this one above being my first.

Most people that have posted in this thread miss the fact that we are going to end up as an iron age level at best, simply because we don't have the population base to support any higher than that.

I'm still holding out hope for early Steam Age myself, because:
1)It allows us to make much more effective use of our scientific knowledge. We don't have any real advantage over anyone else in the world trying to live as just another Iron Age farming village, but we have considerable advantages as the germ of an industrial civilization.
2)It allows us to set up the SD.Netters as the educated class of a society that incorporates native (probably European-native, not America-native) labor effectively. It isn't the nicest kind of society, but it's got much better prospects for long term survival than an Iron Age farm village on Nantucket.

In this era, anyone who even knows how to read is wasted behind a plow. Operating only out of our own labor pool, of course, there's no choice... but it's suicide for us to do that, because even if we manage to make a graceful transition to medieval technology, the population genetics would kill us.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Simon, very nice section you wrote. Look forward to more.

I love reading Alferd packer's POV on this and then contrast that with the Terwynn's. It really plays off well and gives a much more full view of the goings on.

One point I would like to make about this story and this board. I am speaking for myself first and then for/about some of the other lesser known members and lurkers here. There are all kinds of people on this board. Many are thinkers rather than doers, and there are those who work physically a lot. I fully believe that there are some peple on this board who could be really dangerous. I know I could be if I were pushed. My background is in HR and Safety, but I was also a reserve deputy sherrif and a correctional officer. I cannot see myself siding for long with the 'authorities' if they continued this sham government and power grab.

Look at it from the viewpoint of the government. They're ruling just over 3000 people, over 2800 of whom are men, most of whom are under the age of 25. These 3000 people come from a modern, high-tech society; and now find themselves in a world where our nearest technological competitors are in pharonic Egypt, and our nearest neighbors have just about mastered the art of not hitting each other over the head with rocks to determine who gets to be boss next. To us, in our comfy chairs and climate-controlled comfort, enjoying the fruits of our gross global industrialized agricultural surplus; it may seem like a self-serving power-grab. To the ruling powers on Nantucket, it's about community survival and keeping power out of the hands of those who are perceived as being untrustworthy with power.

To put it in simpler terms: "We've got very little in the way of resources, and our ultimate survival will lie in learning to do more with less and less. Who are we going to trust to do that? Us 'grown-ups,' or a bunch of pasty teenaged Internet nerds whose principle qualification is coming up with creative uses of the words 'fuck,' and 'your mom.'"

The council continues to play games we other peoples money, so to speak. I cannot see the faux elections really solving much.

I don't know. It might mollify a great many people, since Nantucket's government will be seen as divorcing our ad-hoc military/police forces from the ruling powers and placing them under civilian oversight, where they belong.

Another couple points is about the watch. 1) They cannot be everywhere and 2) most were not trained to be police officers. The council must live in fairly close proximity in order to be 'protected' but this is never mentioned. If they aren't they cannot be effectively protected and still have watch patrols because without cars you cannot effectively patrol that much area. Foot patrols are notoriously inefficient when covering larger areas.

These are all good points. There are fewer than 100 people who are either members of the Mess, or self-identified as having served in a law-enforcement capacity. Not all of whom will want to join the Watch, or would be suitable for Watch service. The foot patrol requirement is imposed by fuel being in extremely short supply. Sure, there will be bicycle patrols and golf cart patrols; but Nantucket used to house over 10,000 people before we turned up. There will be plenty of room for people to run black markets, speakeasies, counter-culture political movements, and the like.

My whole point is this. I could very easily see some of our smarter and more psychologically and morally challenged members deciding to make unilateral non-electoral removal of some of the less liked council members. Not saying me, necessarily, but you don't know what kind of strain to people's psyches this change and the living conditions will produce. I am sort of surprised there hasn't been some kind of serial killer or some such weirdness after this event.

The assumption is that many of those with strained psyches wouldn't have survived the first winter, as they would've suicided, or murder-suicided. Beyond that, there were the people who channeled their criminal creativity into the big black market ring, and one of them did commit murder when the ring was broken. We saw what happened to him. There were also people who let themselves get carried away in the heat of the moment. Many of them wound up being sent out to Muskeget, with only seals for company. There's good reason the government adopted such an extreme way of dealing with troublemakers.

On the flip-side, I can see some of those in power using some of the smarter and more morally-challenged board members to their own ends.

Also, the council is trying to be self-protective but really is p'o-ing the two main bodies that insure your survival the best way to go? Antagonizing the Machinists and the Horticulturalists is really phenomonally stupid.

Arguably, what's even more phenomenally stupid (more short-sighted, actually) is creating a situation where we have this major single point-of-failure in the chain. We have these two hugely powerful unions who could hold Nantucket's survival hostage for their own political ends.

Although . . . Decisions made early on in the immediate interest of survival don't necessarily make sense further down the line. At the beginning it made sense to let this small group of men handle the dirty business of machining things, and another small group of men gather together all the farming resources. The Council really has two ways to go. First is to find some way to compromise with Packer and his men and keep them happy. The other is to find those willing to "cross the picket line," start training up strike-busters, and simply shoot Packer and his men.

If I had been in Packer's shoes the plans would have been kept and hidden from the momnet I felt things were going down this route. For Packer to think otherwise is foolish, and I think Jason was right. The guns they have now won't last forever. As the whole Eagle situation shows, the machinists know how to make effective and useful weapons without gunpowder.

As far as I know, we also have a number of mechanical engineers on the board, and quite a few engineers in general. Not all of whom would be Machinists, and not all of whom would agree with Packer; even if they were.

[Tiwaz]

Since I do not want to get this thread again into flaming contest, let's make this short and simple.

Shermpotter, you say that you would not stand for authorities for long when they start acting like the Council does in the story.

I would suggest to anyone who is not already familiar with Stanford prison experiment and Milgram's experiment to get familiar with them.

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-l ... icle35.htm
http://www.experiment-resources.com/sta ... iment.html

Point being... I do not think SDN population would radically differ from the people in these experiments.
Most of SDN people WOULD go by the will of the authority when properly prodded.
Most of people who get power WOULD end up abusing it, when there is lack of something keeping them in check.

How much they would abuse their power? Depends on the situation.

Another website on Stanford experiment included this part in their faq.
http://www.prisonexp.org/faq.htm


Q: Did personality scores predict which guards were most abusive?
A: No. The most and least abusive guards did not differ significantly in authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, or other personality measures. Abusive guard behavior appears to have been triggered by features of the situation rather than by the personality of guards.

Who we are tends to be less relevant than what the situation we are in.

[Shermpotter]

My point in this as regards me is even more simple. I would not tell them all my abilities and experiences. Yes, I realize here I have let some of it out of the bag, but in that situation I think I might play my cards close to the vest. And i still haven't spilled all my beans...

I know about testing and what it may or may not suggest as to future behavior. I give them here at work. I will say that for the greater majority of people it will be fairly accurate. The exceptions were the ones I was referring to in my earlier post. You CANNOT tell what they will do.

Terwynn, I know that many on this board are kids. It would be up to us 'old folks' to try to edumacate them... Some will learn the ways of the Force and some will die from stupidity. I was a juvenile corrections officer, for crying out loud. I know how to use all kinds of pressure to get a kid to see the light. Had to use it once or twice on my kids.

When I started reading this story, I went and had my wife sign up for the board... Maybe her presence would moderate my behavior some! But, even if she didn't come, I am pretty laid back and tend not to get noticed. I like to think i would adjust to this pretty well. Sure would be a good weight loss tool!

[Tiwaz]

Hmm. Regarding guns...

They won't last long, yes, but I was more wondering how far would be closest sulphur deposits?

I am not even thinking of anythign as "elegant" as arquebus, but simple cannons which could be cast from bronze.
It would prevent weapons grade of Nantucket from slipping too far behind even as modern guns would start breaking up and despite possible crudeness would be centuries ahead of all competition.

[PeZook]

I wouldn't count on guns breaking down in the nearest future. The sheer amount of weapons means we could probably maintain the capability for decades - the biggest problem would be making ammunition of sufficient quality, but we wouldn't really need stupendous accuracy in order to have a tremendous advantage over...well, everybody, so lower tolerances are perfectly acceptable.

Hell, automatic firearms were historically made even without access to machine shops, literally by country blacksmiths. When we finally lose the capability to make brass casing ammunition, we can easily downgrade to blackpowder revolvers (still lightyears ahead of everybody else on the planet) using paper cartridges. It's only when we no longer can make even simple steel alloys that we finally stop being able to use personal firearms - and remember, at this time, in many cases you can literally pick up iron from the ground, without building mines at all, so we may never reach that point.

[Scottish Ninja]

I had a thought - if we scaled down to making muzzle-loading black powder weapons, how much trouble would it be to do the following:

1. Rifle the barrels.
2. Make Minie balls.

And as an addendum, is it worthwhile to use Minie ammunition in smoothbore firearms? Certainly the reduction in windage would help accuracy some, but I don't know what would happen to an unstabilized Minie ball.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I had a thought - if we scaled down to making muzzle-loading black powder weapons, how much trouble would it be to do the following:

1. Rifle the barrels.

As long as the machine shops worked, and the hardened tool-grade steel bits are still good it's no trouble at all, since you only need a turning lathe to machine the grooves into the interior of the barrel. Thousands of rifle barrels could be produced in this manner. We could extend the lifespan of the equipment by only hardening the steel to the point it can withstand relatively low black powder pressures.

When the machine shops finally break down (and/or if we fail to produce harder grades of steel in the meantime,) it gets much harder, as we'll eventually be reduced to wrapping strips of softer steel around a hard mandrel and hammer-forging them into a tube. Then (and this is the most primitive way to do it,) you carve a helical pattern into a wood blank. You'd then have another piece that would follow the spiral cut in the blank. At the end of that, you'd have a long dowel with a slot cut into the end of it. You'd set a small file into the slot, and then draw the dowel through the barrel, which would wear a spiral groove through the barrel. To cut the groove deeper, you add progressively thicker shims between the file and the bottom of the slot.

So, eventually, rifles become a status symbol, with others of lesser status being relegated to smoothbore muskets. Everyone else . . . well, it's knives and pointy sticks.

2. Make Minie balls.

Absurdly easy. Simply cast a steel mould with a correctly-shaped internal cavity. So long as the mould is regularly oiled and stored in a dry place, it will last centuries.

And as an addendum, is it worthwhile to use Minie ammunition in smoothbore firearms? Certainly the reduction in windage would help accuracy some, but I don't know what would happen to an unstabilized Minie ball.

The modern Foster shotgun slug for regular shotgun barrels is, essentially, a Minie ball. In a smoothbore, the slug gains its stabilization because it'd be like a badminton shuttlecock (i.e. heavy head and lightweight skirt which provides drag to keep the heavy end from tumbling.) As long as it's patched adequately and doesn't rattle its way out the barrel, accuracy will be greatly improved over the simple lead ball.

[Alferd Packer]

Day 360, Night, Nantucket

"Yasmine, it's really not necessary for you to stay," Packer said between spoonfuls of honey-flavored oatmeal. "We know where we'll be sleeping. If we need some food, we can come down here to the cafeteria. We'll be fine!"

Doctor Reynolds, sipping a steaming mug of some sort of tea, replied, "I know. But I am on call tonight, plus I need to catch up on some paperwork, and...well, the whole thing with the quarantine really...well, it wound me up. I'm sure you heard me yelling in the hallways; that wasn't even the half of it. I only really started to calm down when Tom confirmed to me that the Chairman would be issuing an order to rescind the quarantine and letting everyone out. But I'm still...jumpy, you know? Excited!"

"Are they letting people leave?" Packer asked.

"That they are...though the Watch is searching people before they're allowed to go." Doctor Reynolds swirled the tea in her cup. "They seem to the think you're having your buddies smuggle out secret orders."

"Ooh, I'm such a devious mastermind," Packer chuckled. "I'm practically in the dark as to what's going on outside this building, and yet they still fear that I'm hatching all sorts of plots."

Nara looked up from scraping her bowl clean. "So I am not sick? My blood is okay?"

"Yes, your blood is okay," Doctor Reynolds confirmed. "And so was yours, Packer."

"How do you know this from looking?" Nara asked.

Yasmine glanced at Packer, who shrugged. "Well," Doctor Reynolds began, "we have a device, and it has glass in it. Like the windows." Nara nodded, her eyes darting over to the windows at the far wall of the cafeteria, as if making some kind of internal reference. "Well, the glass has a special shape. When we look through the glass, we see things much larger than they really are. That way, I can see the small pieces of your blood. If there more of a certain piece than there should be, I know that you are sick, because only sick people have those pieces."

"But if they are not there, I am not sick?" Nara said mainly to herself.

"That's right," Doctor Reynolds said. "We can also mix your blood with other things. Special substances. If you are sick, the substances will change in a certain way."

Nara looked down at the band-aid on her arm. "Can I see my blood? With the device?"

"Perhaps later," Doctor Reynolds said. "The place where we look at blood is closed for the night." Nara's disappointment was evident on her face, because she followed up with, "But I can show you something better." She looked at Packer. "Why don't we do an ultrasound? That part of the hospital is powered twenty-four seven."

Packer's heartbeat suddenly sped up. I'm actually going to see my child? "Um," he began, "sure. I mean, yeah!" He looked at Nara. "We will get to see the baby."

"How?" She suddenly looked suspicious.

"Don't worry, Nara," Doctor Reynolds said. "It is perfectly safe. We use a device to see through your skin and into your uterus, where the baby is. It lets us know many things about your health and the baby's health."

That was all Nara needed to hear. Fifteen minutes later, they were in another room down in the empty ER.

"Quiet tonight," Packer remarked.

"Oh, it's usually like this," Doctor Reynolds said, as she fiddled with the ultrasound machine. It looked remarkably new; Packer guessed that the absurd real estate values and their associated property taxes allowed the hospital, back in the future, to procure all sorts of high-tech equipment. "Rare is it that we get someone after ten o'clock, but, we always keep a couple of people around for the graveyard shift, for the odd nighttime injury. Usually it's someone on the Watch twisting their ankle while out on patrol. But if something big happens, the other doctors can be fetched relatively quickly. We all live right nearby. OK, ready to do this?"

"I am ready," Nara said. She was lying on her back, her stomach exposed. She is showing, Packer thought suddenly. Just a little. Not enough for anyone but me or her to notice.

"Alright, let's take a look." She squirted some clear goo onto the ultrasound probe and placed it on Nara's stomach. Turning back to face the screen (which they were now all studying), she muttered, "Let's see...just a little to the left and...there!" She tapped a button and the image on the screen froze. "There's your baby!"

Without realizing it, Packer found he was holding Nara's hand. The image was remarkably clear; Packer was used seeing faint blobs that could be just about anything. "Good profile shot." Doctor Reynolds chuckled to herself. "I am getting better at this thing."

"Is that...the baby's face?" Nara asked, pointing a trembling finger towards the screen.

"Yes, that's right." Doctor Reynolds traced the outline with her finger. "There's the head, and the shape of the nose...the mouth, and this is a hand right here." Nara squeezed Packer's hand. Packer felt a sudden, puzzling pang of sadness.

I get to witness this miraculous sight, but the baby I'm looking at won't ever get to experience this when it has a kid, he thought. All it'll take is one tiny transistor to burn out, one minor power surge, and the whole machine's a useless hunk of plastic and metal.

The thought vanished like a cloud obscuring the sun for a few seconds, and Packer allowed himself, instead, to marvel at what he was seeing. Doctor Reynolds pressed a button, and the frozen image was replaced with a live one. "Alright, now...let's see if I can't get a clear shot at...there!" She turned to face them both. "Do you want to know the baby's sex?" At Nara's questioning look, she clarified, "If it's a boy or a girl?"

Nara's jaw dropped. "You can see that?!" she cried out.

"Yes. Crystal clear. Trust me, I use this machine almost every day. You can wait, of course, until the baby is born to find out. I don't need to tell you, if you don't want me to."

Packer looked at his wife. "I want to know," he said, "but I can wait. I will let you decide."

She smiled at him. "I want to know, too."

Doctor Reynolds waited a beat, and then said, "It's a girl."

Nara emitted a kind of joyful squeak, tears springing from her eyes. Packer found himself getting misty, too, his head spinning at the same time. A girl! His mind was suddenly filled with images, real and imagined, of his sister, his sister-in-law, of Jenny, of Nara, all as little girls, laughing with delight as their fathers played Hide and Go Seek with them, or gave them piggy-back rides, or told them bed-time stories. And I'll be doing all of that, too, he thought with amazement.

At that moment, everything else--the problems on Nantucket, his own fears, his sense of responsibility, of duty, of guilt--it all shrunk to a tiny dot, an insignificant buzz, compared to this. He wrapped his arms around Nara and she hugged him back fiercely.

"Okay, one more thing, and then I'll leave you guys alone," Doctor Reynolds said. She got another probe, placed it on Nara's stomach, and pushed another button. From the speaker on the machine, the faint, rapid lub-dub began to sound.

"That," Doctor Reynolds said with a smile, "is your daughter's heartbeat."

Day 360, Night, Nantucket

They were staying in what was once a room for long-term convalescence, the kind that could only be afforded by the rich and those with gold-plated insurance policies back in the future. It had a private bathroom, a flatscreen TV and entertainment center, and the various medical apparatus could be concealed in fancy wood cabinets. There was even a desk and chairs, in case you needed to conduct a high-level business meeting while recovering from your fifth heart attack. Of course, the bed was still only large enough for one person, but they could make do.

It was late, and though they'd been up all day, neither Packer nor Nara was really sleepy. Nara was euphoric; Packer nervous. He sat at the desk, a pen and notebook in front of him. Word had come back just after the ultrasound; the Council had agreed to meet him tomorrow, in the afternoon. Or was it later today? It could well be past midnight. He was trying to think, but his brain was having nothing of it. It was still gushing over the fact that they were having a girl!

Focus, asshole! he yelled at himself. The Council is not going to be in as good a mood as you are. They'd be over at two PM, leaving him probably around fourteen hours to figure--

Nara emerged from the bathroom; he looked up. She was still grinning. "The Way says it is better to have a boy first, but I think a girl is better." Now that they were alone, they were speaking a kind of creole, a strange fusion of the native speech and English that was the most direct way for them to communicate ideas. She came over to him and sat on his lap. "I hope I am a good mother," she added.

"I hope I am a good father," he replied distractedly. She put her hand under his chin, forcing him to look at her.

"What is wrong?" she asked. "Do you want a boy instead?"

"No, no, it's not that!" he said, his worry at upsetting Nara snapping him back to reality. "It is tomorrow. I am worried about tomorrow."

"When we meet the...Cown-sul?"

"The Council, yes." He shook his head. "The last time...a moment. When we meet the Council?"

She nodded. "Of course. You are my husband. There are Council people who are your enemies. I will protect you from them. I must."

He smiled. The way she said it, it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. "You are too good to me," he said.

"I am not good enough," she said earnestly. "You have brought me to your old tribe and shown me so many things..." tears suddenly welled up in her eyes, "I saw my daughter tonight! Our daughter! Do you..." She composed herself again. "You have come back to the place where they tried to kill you because you wanted to make sure our daughter is born healthy and that I am healthy. You may be hurt or punished for coming back, but you did it anyway. To help your friends here. And for me."

"You are my wife. You must be safe," he replied.

She smiled. "And you are my husband, and you are a good man. You must be safe."

Packer chuckled, and she snuggled into the crook of his arm, wrapping her hands around around his neck. After some time, Packer said, "Would you like to try some more math problems?"

She perked up and nodded. "Alright," she replied.

In addition to reading and writing, Packer had been teaching Nara basic arithmetic. In the tribe, simple addition and subtraction were a requisite part of life already. It seemed like numbers much higher than one hundred were discounted as "many," but Packer trusted Nara's innate intelligence to allow her to go beyond that. And he was right. The speed at which she grasped multiplication was frightening. Division was still problematic, but she understood that she would get better with practice, and she was indeed willing to practice.

She hopped up off his lap, and he scribbled down a few dozen mixed arithmetic problems. When he was done, he stood, "There," he said, gesturing down. "these should be easy enough."

He made to move past her, as she was between the bed and the opposite wall, and blocking the way to the bathroom. She skittered quickly into his path. He moved to the right, to try and get around her, but she blocked him again.

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking at her. Her grin was decadent, her eyes blazing.

"You said you were going to show me how to use the shower," she replied. Her hands were suddenly roving up his stomach and chest. Her touch was electric, and his body responded with a delightful heat.

He immediately leaned in, to try to kiss her, but she pulled away, a playful smile on her face. "You said you were going to show me how to use the shower," she repeated. "Show me." She turned around, pulled off her shirt, and started slinking towards the bathroom, her hips swaying alluringly as she walked.

Packer grinned, shook off his vest, and he showed her.

Day 361, Noon, Nantucket

There was nothing quite like steamy, soapy shower sex to help you unwind after a long, harrowing trip. A glass of warm milk might have put Packer to sleep with less exertion, but this ensured that he'd had a smile on his face when he'd finally gone under.

Packer awoke to find himself alone in the bed. Nara was at the desk across the room, humming quietly to herself and writing. The math problems he'd penned out for her were, apparently, keeping her quite pleasantly occupied.

Through the window outside, Packer saw that it was gray and cloudy. Looked like rain, but he wouldn't be able to tell for sure until he got a good whiff of the outside air...whenever that might happen. He hoped it'd hold off until later in the day.

He cast off the blanket and dangled his legs off the hospital bed. The two of them on the narrow bed hadn't been problematic at all; they were both slender enough not to crowd each other. He yawned hugely. Wonder what time it is? he thought distractedly.

Nara turned to see him. "Good morning," she said with a smile. He smiled back.

"Good morning," Packer replied. "Has anyone come to see us?"

"One person," Nara replied, setting the pen down. "He had food for us." She gestured over by the door, where a tray with two bowls sat on a small foyer table.

"Did you eat?" Packer asked, getting to his feet and moseying over to the tray.

"Yes, it was very tasty. There was some kind of soft meat." She was silent after this, and as Packer glanced back, he saw that she was writing again.

He picked up the full bowl. Looked like chicken soup. Felt ice cold, but Packer wasn't one to care; he'd certainly eaten worse in the last half year. He started spooning gobs of it into his mouth. Yup, chicken soup, Packer thought. It could do with some matzo balls, but at least there's a bit of salt in it.

Nara suddenly stood and went into the bathroom. Packer waited a moment for the sounds of her retching, but nothing of the sort occurred. It appeared that the worst of morning sickness was behind her, as she had had her last bout over a week ago. He guessed that their daughter was starting to press against Nara's bladder, making her have to pee all the time.

As he ate, he strolled over to the desk. He wanted to see how Nara was handling the division problems he'd laid out for her. Looking at it, though, he saw something entirely different:

...my husband has sayed that you can be cruel, but that you are also good. I am here only one day and I have met many kind peoples. I understand why my husband sayes it is important to help the people here. Pleas be good to us...

"I am not done yet!" Nara cried out, and Packer backed up. She stared imperiously at him from the threshold of the bathroom.

"Sorry," he replied, holding a hand up. She went back over to the desk and sat down.

"I must finish," she explained. "We will be leaving soon. To meet the Council."

"Soon?" Packer said, pausing a moment to drain his soup bowl. "How soon?

"The man with the food said..." she thought for a moment, "two hours?" She looked up at him. "That is only two, yes? Two is not much, so it will be soon, right?"

"No, not much," Packer replied hollowly. "I will let you finish." Ferociously, his stomach threatened to eject the cold sludge he'd just ingested. Two hours!

Much less than that, his brain pointed out. It was two hours when the soup was hot. It's at least half that now. Maybe less.

Ugh. That didn't leave much time to...time to what? He shook his head. Don't panic. One thing at a time. Get dressed first.

"Nara," he began as he pulled his pants back on, "what are you writing?"

"You said you must speak to the Council," she said as she bent over the desk, her brow furrowed in concentration. "I will speak as well, but I don't want to forget anything. I will...show them that you are right."

Packer grinned. "You're very kind, my wife," he said. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. As he dressed, he went on grinning.

He now had an idea about how to deal with the Council.

Some short time later, there was another knock on the door. "Come in!" Packer called. He ceased doing pushups and bounced up to his feet just as the door swung open. The balding ER nurse entered the room. "Mister and Missus Packer," he said with a slightly comical bow, "The Council is here and they're ready for you."

Packer slipped on his vest, seashell bracelets(he was already, of course, wearing his marriage necklace), a beaded headband to bring his hair under control, and an armband over his left bicep. Nara stood, already similarly ornamented, the notebook tucked under her arm. Packer took her hand, winked at the nurse, and said: "Let's go."

The Nantucket Cottage Hospital wasn't especially big, but the administrative rooms were apparently far removed from the fancy room that they'd spent the night in. The hospital staff they passed barely paid them any mind; they were already, apparently, old news. They went down two flights of stairs and traversed several long corridors. It was during one of these crossings that Packer happened to glance out the window, and what he saw made him stagger.

In the dim October day, with rain threatening at any moment, several hundred people were gathered outside the hospital, in one of the parking lots. They sat on curbs and benches. They stood under dead trees in little groups, chatting. Some were tossing a football back and forth. Others milled about aimlessly, looking restless.

As Packer stood and watched, he could see the recognition radiating from certain people in the crowd, faces who just happened to turn upwards and spot him. Then, like a field of flowers blossoming, their neighbors turned up to see, too. And the people next to them, and those next to them, and so on. It was fascinating to watch.

Less than thirty seconds passed, and there were four hundred people cheering and waving. Dumbly, he waved back, and he could hear the roar through the windows.

He walked over to the nearest one, undid the latch, and slid it open. He winced at the noise; it was remarkable just how loud a few hundred people could be. He held up his hands, signaling for quiet, not having the slightest idea what to say when they did.

Because of that, he simply bellowed, half hanging out the window, "Does anybody know if the Mets made the playoffs?!"

The crowd laughed heartily and began to applaud. Packer, smiling, said, "OK, you've seen me now! Go back home! Go back to work! It's gonna rain soon! I'm not worth getting all soaked!"

"Sure you are!" someone shouted. "Welcome back, Mister Packer!" The crowd started babbling, and Packer was unable to catch anything else distinct. What he was able to spot was Rustbucket, standing by himself in the middle of the crowd. He wasn't cheering like the others; instead, when he saw that Packer had spotted him, he gave a thumb's up.

Packer grinned and nodded back at him. "Thanks, everyone!" He called out over the happy chatter of the crowd. "I'll see you soon! Get back to work!" He pulled back inside the hospital and shut the window.

Nara stared at him with wide-eye amazement. "Those are all your friends?" she asked.

Packer nodded as they walked along, following the rather patient ER nurse. "Perhaps," Packer said. "I do not know them all, but they seem to like me."

At length, they came to something Packer knew quite well; a set of double doors flanked by Watchmen. Happily, neither of them were from the group that confronted him yesterday. If they were surprised by his outfit or Nara, they didn't show it.

"Mister Packer," one of them said. "If you'll raise your arms." Packer complied, and he was briefly searched. "Thanks. Now, your wife..."

He took a step towards her and she immediately shied away. "Uhm...Missus Packer?" the Watchman looked to Packer helplessly.

"I don't think she wants you touching her," Packer said, folding his arms. "And to be perfectly frank, I don't want you touching her, either. It's alright. I'll vouch for her. She's unarmed. Besides, I'm pretty sure you guys can handle a pregnant woman, if worse comes to worst."

The Watchman seemed to hang in space a for second, eyes going between Packer and Nara. "Alright then. Sorry about that. You can go on in."

[Shermpotter]

Good update, Mr. Packer!! Covered a lot of the bases in the earlier, um, discussion of the story.

Be very interested in seeing what the Council has to ssay, and what Packer and Company end up doing...

Looking forward with anticipation to the next bit on this story!

[Simon_Jester]

Day 212, early afternoon

The Commander of the Watch kept a reasonably clean desk, all things considered. Inbox, outbox, nothing overflowing too badly; most of the documents were stored in the room next door. Simon wasn't sure exactly how much of it there was yet; Watch paperwork was one of the few things he didn't go over very much.

He'd sent ahead, and the Commander had been kind enough to make an opening in his schedule for him; he didn't have to wait outside. As Simon approached the open door, the older man called from inside the office:

"Come in, Simon! Have a seat!" He did, walking through the doorway with a hand raised in greeting, then pulling up a chair in front of the desk.

"How can I help you?" The Commander was being cordial and about as open as he ever was these days. He and Simon had had their disagreements in Council, they'd worked together on enough problems to build a solid foundation of respect and understanding.

We're lucky to have him. He's not precisely the man I'd want for the job, in some ways, but the man I think we really need is Sam Vimes, and he doesn't exist. Toby is… closer than we had a right to expect, thinking back on it.

Trouble is, I'm still not sure how to put this to him…

"It's about the diagrams the Machinists stole."

The smile dropped from his face; he looked speculative for a moment. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, the Commander asked "I don't suppose you've found copies lying in a drawer in your office or some such, have you?"

"So far, no, except the ones I already told everyone about. And those should have been filed away with the others that got nabbed; that was just luck. So nothing quite that deus ex machina, I'm afraid."

"Better than nothing."

"Not by much. Those two, plus the ones Tim still had more than half-finished drafts of kicking around… adds up to what, nine or ten out of several dozen? Still, probably all we're going to get any time soon, at least until we manage to reverse-engineer the actual hardware."

"Like I said, better than nothing. But if that wasn't it, what's the idea you told me about?"

"…Let me build up to it, all right? There's some parts that haven't quite gelled yet."

"I've got some time. Go ahead."

"I've been watching the political situation on this island; I have to deal with the low-level frustrated types a lot in my line of work. They're not happy, and I've seen enough to know that things could get ugly if that unhappiness ever goes critical. I mean, remember when we first met? I was relieved, in more ways than one."

**********

Day 1

Surf and sea air. Muffled crashes in the distance. People dazed and wandering, people trotting back and forth with a gleam of madness in their eye. What sounded like someone yelling into a megaphone down by the harbor. Simon didn't know what the hell he was doing in… well, it probably was Nantucket, like the signs on the shops said. The look was right for New England and the sound of surf seemed to come from more than one direction.

Where is everybody? No one looks like they belong here. Did they all just wake up in the middle of the street? Like me?

At least he wasn't quite as poorly dressed for the cold as some of the others; jeans and a button-down beat shorts and a T-shirt hollow. Wish I had gloves… or a jacket. He clasped his hands. He'd been wandering aimlessly for… how long? He pulled out his cell phone to check… No reception in a town in New England?

Hold on a minute. Why was no signal a surprise compared to no people? If this was really Nantucket, home of thousands of professional tourist trappers with hundreds of cute little Mom'n'Pop stores to sell them candlesticks and assorted knick-knacks… why was no one coming out to complain about the ruckus?

This can't be normal. What happened to me wasn't. Everyone else I've seen is as out of place as me. As far as I can tell I must have teleported here… wish I had a radio right now. If no one's here, is anyone else alive… anywhere?

This… this is… the weirdest disaster I've ever heard of shaping up here. SHIT!

What to do? Go back in time two days and spend all weekend studying what to do in a disaster. OK, what else to do? Hmm. Find somewhere to hide. What looks secluded? In a building would be good… could also be cornered if someone started looting the place, and from the sounds someone might- it was all shops around here. Stop, calm down, get your bearings. No one's charging you and screaming… yet.

Simon was standing at the corner of a big north-south street and a little one that ran a few hundred feet east, then turned north out of sight. Across the way was a good-sized church. Right. Better follow the little street down to the corner and see if it's open at both ends- row of buildings between me and the main drag; good enough for now if there's a way out. That thought carried him to the bend. When he turned around from checking that the north end opened onto a cross street, he saw the sign, over what looked like a back door entrance:

Nantucket Pharmacy.

This looks… important, but lootable. Important and lootable is bad for hiding… wait. Think big picture.

If he'd been yanked out of a Barnes and Noble in Suburbia to an island, and the locals had been yanked off the island to God knows where, who was to say whether the island itself hadn't been yanked? For all Simon knew, they could be teetering on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge or somewhere in… well, not the North Pacific; it'd be dark there. Another planet? Nah, don't be stupid. It could be days before anyone figured out where the hell they'd gone, assuming anyone ever did. Medicine was going to matter; if nothing else, he'd heard enough broken windows that someone had probably managed to cut themselves up but good by now. Someone had better keep an eye on this place, and there didn't seem to be any police or National Guard running around just yet.

Better take my chances. Someone's got to. Have to get around to the front, see if anyone's hanging around yet.

There was: a guy in a jacket and a knit cap wandering along what was, by all evidence, Nantucket's Main Street… just like he'd been a minute ago. Hell, looks like a confused undergrad. OK, I'm about up to leading confused undergrads right now. Switch to "slightly manic and knows what to do" mode...

"Hi there! My name's Simon. If you don't mind, I'd like your help!"

That snapped the guy out of the daze. "Uh, Hi. Call me Ed. What do you want?"

"See the pharmacy across the street, a few doors down? Way I figure it, that place is important, and someone had better keep an eye on it. Doesn't look like the owner's going to, anyway. You feel up to playing daytime night watchman?"

"Wait, is that safe?"

"Well, if anyone too violent comes up, we'll take the Milhouse approach to watching: they take stuff, and you watch. At least that way we can tell someone who took it. No need to get physical, just… keep an eye on the place, you know? Just until the authorities show up."

"…Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess."

"Besides, there's probably food in there. If no one shows up before we start to get hungry, we'll still be OK for a while. I'm going to see if I can round up anyone else."

Simon managed to add two more recruits to guard the pharmacy's front door when the first really incongruous picture showed up: A man wearing a tank top and boxers staggered out of an alley, shivering like mad and chattering his teeth. He made a visible effort to master himself before asking "Where am I?"

Australian accent? Crap, it's spring down there! And the middle of the night, come to think of it. "Hi! I think we're somewhere in New England. Ah, the Atlantic coast of the US. North Atlantic. You look… cold."

"No shit, Sherlock! I'm freezing my fucking balls off here! What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, but I tell you what. On the other side of this row of buildings, and across the street on that side, I think I saw a shop advertising cashmere sweaters. Might be something there for you."

As he took off down the street at a dead run, Simon shouted at his back: "And while you're over there, would you mind keeping an eye on the back door of this pharmacy so no one gets in and steals anything?"

He'd gathered four people on the front entrance and two on the back, though several more had ignored him and the Australian had run off somewhere, when he hit what he thought was his first real challenge. One of the people at the front asked him "What if they have guns?"

"Ah… I'd go with 'surrender' or 'hide.' First law of gunfighting: find something big and sturdy to hide behind. It's widely believed that 'Bring a gun' is the first law, but that's actually second. First law is find something to hide behind, OK? Seriously, we can't fight a guy with a gun, so we shouldn't, so we don't."

"What if they have clubs or rocks or something?"

"Then… good point. Why don't you go look for something we can use as clubs, in case they don't have guns?"

As the sixteen-year-old wandered off in search of bludgeons, Simon breathed a sigh of relief. Handled that well, didn't I? Of course, he only thought that was his first challenge. His real first challenge was when the first guy with a gun showed up, meandering east on Main Street.

He was wearing a light jacket over dark blue clothes, and veritably bristling with firearms. Ed hissed "Shit, he's got a gun!" One of the crew took off and ran, two dashed into the shop; the kid he'd sent club-hunting was nowhere to be seen. Simon, a second slower to react, was left standing alone. Run? Hide? Wait… that does not look like a determined bandit. OK, except for the shotgun he's carrying, but that could mean anything. If he actually knows how to use all those things, he'd be pretty handy. I sure wouldn't make trouble if he was hanging around the place. Talk to him? Fuckfuckfuck… By now it was probably too late to run without drawing the guy's attention anyway. Yeah, better to talk to him. Dammit.

Simon spread his hands a little above shoulder height and well away from his body, and called out as softly and inoffensively as he could: "Ah, excuse me? Yes, you, sir, the heavily armed gentleman?" The man swiveled his head toward Simon like lightning- ohshit I'm going to die- but the shotgun barely twitched.

"Yeah? What do you want?"

Simon watched the man carefully. He was a bit overweight, probably in his thirties or later… still better shape than I am, and there's THE GUN the gun the gun… stay cool! Look calm and non-threatening… maybe he was ex-military? "Well, sir, I was wondering if you'd like to help keep an eye on this pharmacy in case anyone tries to make trouble. I figure it's going to be important; people might start getting nervous if help doesn't come soon, and this place is important enough to need protecting."

"Nah." Why is he smiling?

"Oh. Sorry to trouble you, then, sir, and I won't stand in your way. Would you… would you like to come in here?"

"Nah. I'm going to the police station."

El Bandito seemed to be settling down a bit. Something about his voice and stance seemed off; he looked almost too assured, even for a guy carrying enough firepower to stage three bank robberies and an assassination. And his voice sounded… wrong, like it wasn't normally so deep and gravelly. Almost as if he was trying to channel a movie action hero or something. Far be it from me to criticize another man's coping mechanism, especially when he's carrying way more explosives and pointy bits of metal than I am...

"Police station? Ah, if you don't… mind… my asking, sir, where's that?" Simon lowered his hands a little.

"Round the corner. Up the street a few blocks."

"Oh, thank you. So… you're from around here, then?"

The man shook his head, a bit convulsively. "Nah. Got a map."

"Hmm. Sir, may I make a suggestion?"

He twitched a grin. "Fire away."

That was not a reassuring choice of words. "Well, sir, there are a lot of people up that way, last I saw. I've heard shouts coming from up there too. Things might be… pretty tense over there. So, well, I was thinking it might be a better idea to just find some place worth holding on to and keep it secure? I mean, it may be a while before the cavalry gets here, and if trouble spreads… I don't know about you, but this is the only place I've seen that has any medicine in stock."

"So… what, then?" It felt like the initiative in the conversation was pointing his way now; better roll with it.

"Well, it seems to me that guarding this place might be more important than walking straight into the middle of a riot. I mean, even armed… there's a lot of cobblestones lying around for people to pry up, you know what I mean?" Simon twitched his head at the pavement on the street. "If trouble's going to happen up there, it already has." Is that an angry mob I hear over the surf? "And if anyone's going to be in control up there, one man won't make much difference either way. But one man could make a big difference down here, if, say, half a dozen punks with rocks come by looking to stock up on vitamin supplements or antibiotics or something. Does that make sense?"

The big guy looked befuddled for a minute; maybe he wasn't tracking as well as Simon had thought. Long as he doesn't open fire… please I don't want to die… Then he took his right hand off the butt of the shotgun and extended it.

"Deal."

"Great to have you aboard. You think you could see clear to taking charge on the back side of the pharmacy, closer to the harbor? That's the side I've been worried about- people sneaking in the back."

"Sure."

"Let me just tell everyone you're not hostile, OK?" Simon stuck his head in the door and shouted "It's all right, guys, he's on our side!" Getting this guy on the other side of a building from me is going to do wonders for my nerves!

Simon managed to coax the four younger guys who'd been watching the front before from their hiding places before the shakes set in.

Things had actually gotten easier from there, after he'd gotten over his run-in with the fidgety gunman. He'd recruited nearly a dozen more people by late afternoon, and detailed some of them to watch a couple of grocery stores and the cashmere goods shop. On Main Street they'd had to chase off a few crews of teenagers and a couple of older people from the pharmacy; on the other side the gunman had most people too scared to come within a hundred yards.

As the sun approached the horizon, the heavily armed fellow came back around the corner onto Main Street. With him were several more armed men, including the Australian from earlier, who looked a lot more confident now that he was dressed for the occasion and had a pistol at his side. The Rambo impersonator in blue called out to him: "Hey, Simon! I was watching the back and I ran into a few old buddies!"

Good, he knows those people. That is good, right?

The Australian was the first to speak after that. "We're spreading out from the police station and the Marina, to restore order. There've been a few… incidents."

"Well, we won't make any trouble, sir. You might want to post a guard or two here, though; this place is probably important. Or we'll stay on, if you like."

Then an older man spoke up; the future Commander of the Watch, though he didn't know it at the time:

"You seem to have things in hand." He nodded to the heavily armed man Simon had talked down earlier. "Why don't you stay here and coordinate with these people? We'll give you a radio."

**********

Day 212, early afternoon

The Commander was first to speak. "Heh. Yeah. You weren't doing too bad, starting from no experience and no backup. But I still remember the look on your face when I told you everybody on the island was from SDN."

"I think I almost passed out. Given the implications- "Help, I'm trapped on a desert island with thousands of science fiction fans united only by their love of bickering!"- can you blame me?"

He smiled. "No, not really. Funny to watch, though."

"Fair enough. Anyway, like I was saying, I do know how easily everything could come apart on us… but that's the problem. It's such a big threat that we can't afford to court it, and I'm worried that we are."

"How do you mean?"

"Like I was saying earlier: the Machinists."

Toby glowered at that. "Them."

"Yeah, them. What I'd like you to do, just for the sake of strategy, is to stop for a sec and look at it from their point of view.

"I know we disagree over how much of a threat Packer was; I don't want to bring that back up. For the sake of argument, say that he had to go. Even so, we've got to remember that most of what he did was popular, and that most of the people who knew him thought he was a stand-up guy. Had lots of charisma." Is he going to connect "people who knew him" to me? Pretty likely. Never mind, carry on.

"So look at it like a Machinist. Your boss was a stand-up guy, always looking out for you, good at his job, lots of popular ideas. Like, say, the talent show. Then he stands up to, well, The Man. And The Man doesn't take it well. Next thing you know, your boss has been grabbed in the night by the brute squad, hustled off somewhere, and is now under house arrest. Two weeks later he disappears entirely- supposedly to the mainland, but for all you know he's been taken out and shot behind the chemical shed.

"At this point, they've got to be wondering: "Am I next?" Figuring that you've made a little list- that you actually have one is just icing on the cake-"

Toby cut Simon off. "That doesn't excuse stealing the blueprints."

"No, it doesn't. But, again, I'm trying to think strategy here, not indignation. They had good reason to think we were going to squash them any day now. I'm not asking "can you blame them for wanting an insurance policy?" because yes, you can blame them, it wasn't right. I'm asking if, in hindsight, you see why they wanted an insurance policy so badly?

"Of course. It's obvious. Still doesn't excuse doing it."

"No, but I know we've been giving a lot of thought on how to respond, and we still haven't come up with any good options. The obvious one, of course, is to crack down. They act out of line, we crack down. The problem is, I think that if your people crack down much harder, things are going to crack up. I spend a lot of time out on the streets, and public opinion is… messy. If you start a crackdown, pretty soon you're going to be sending people to Muskeget for complaining that their friends have been sent to Muskeget. And unless we're very lucky, that's a recipe for an exploding prison population, a public somewhere between angry and actively rioting. Not good; I don't think we can handle that."

The older man gave a tight-lipped grin. He looked… displeased but not unfriendly. "Yes. You'll notice I didn't call all that hard for an aggressive response at the last meeting. That's why. So far, you've about caught up with where I was nine days ago. I assume you have something more on your mind?"

"Uh, yes. Sorry. I got carried away. You know how I…"

He waved a hand. "No need to apologize; just… cut to the chase."

Simon took a deep breath. "I think it's time to negotiate something with them. Call it a cease-fire. If we could just back off for a month or two, let the pressure cool down, I think maybe we could start to straighten things back out."

"I suppose I see what you mean, but the phrase 'negotiating with terrorists' comes irresistibly to my mind, Simon. I'm not sure that's a good plan."

"That's the thing, though. I don't think they are terrorists, not in that sense. I've talked to these people before- before any of this stuff with Packer flared up at all, even. They're not wild-eyed political bomb-throwers; they're just… scared idiots who don't want to die. Tense, on edge, expecting the other shoe to drop on their heads any minute. Accidental guerillas, if you know what I mean.

"It's tempting to treat this like a hostage situation, with the Machinists as the kidnapper who deserves whatever he gets, but I don't think that's either the right way or the smart way to handle it. I honestly think that the problem would… if not go away, at least clear up some, if we could just talk to them without making them feel cornered."

The Commander looked bemused. "Cornered, scared idiots who don't want to die… Simon, have you ever heard the phrase 'rattlesnake cornered?'"

"Can't say I have, why?"

"Snakes react to a predator in one of two ways. Usually, they just slither away into the underbrush; they don't want to fight something bigger than they are any more than you'd think. But if they're cornered, if there's no place to sneak off and hide in, they start hissing and posturing, making a threat display and getting ready to bite."

"So… what's so special about rattlesnakes?"

"Well, rattlesnakes have a better threat display than most snakes- the rattle. But they're not very bright. Sometimes, if you approach a rattlesnake in the open, it's too stupid to know that it has an out. So it coils up and starts rattling at you, like it was cornered. The rattlesnake is most dangerous when it's like that, because it will bite you, even though it could run away whenever it wanted."

"I think I see how that applies to this, but what do you mean?"

"I mean that the Machinists are that kind of cornered. They're hissing and rattling at everyone who gets close. Get too close, and they're likely to bite. That's what happened when I tried to send someone to talk to them- they burned one of the diagrams. The only way I can imagine your idea working is if…

Simon interrupted. "…if someone they know well enough to not register them as a threat right away goes to them. That's why I came here. To bring up this idea, then suggest that I do it. They know me."

A hint of respect flickered in the Commander's eyes. "There's just one problem, though. What happens if you go in and they do decide you're a threat? Do you want a couple of guards with you, just in case?"

Simon stopped and thought about that for a moment. It was tempting to ask for a squad outside the door that could bust in and bail him out if he managed to flub the negotiations, but… no. "Sir, I think that would be, ah, counterproductive. It would make things a little safer if talking broke down, but it would send the chance of a breakdown through the roof. They're already afraid of your people, and they know they can't match the Watch for firepower. If I go in there with Watch escort, they'll think I'm trying to Lay Down the Law, and they'll take it badly. Again, I know these guys, probably better than almost any of your people. I think I'll be all right going in alone. In fact, I think I'd better insist on going in alone, because I don't think this will work any other way. But I'm pretty sure I can pull it off this way, or at least convince them not to start pounding on me."

He looked closely at the older man's face. There was more than a hint of respect there now… uncertainty, too, though. He sat there, stock still and thinking it over, for over a minute.

"…Yeah. Yeah, I think it'll work. Were you going to try it today, or wait for tomorrow?"

"The sooner the better, I figure."

"All right then. Go for it. And good luck."

The young Councilman breathed a sigh of relief. He felt like he'd passed a test. Wait. Have I passed a test? Scratch that, I'll have passed when I get out of the machine shop in one piece. This was just the multiple-choice section. He was still confident, though. This will work. I just need to talk to them.

[Simon_Jester]

Day 212, late afternoon

He was a reasonably familiar face down at the machine shop; he'd stopped in to juggle papers and check progress almost every week since Arrival, and sometimes more than that during crises, though he hadn't visited since the diagrams went missing. He'd been on good terms with Packer, and thinking that stopped him cold for a moment: Couldn't you have done more for a friend?… but there was no time for that now. Beyond that, he'd gotten along fairly well with Packer's second, Jason Terrance, who was now running the shop.

The shop was warm, getting too warm for comfort between the heat generated inside and the June weather outside. It was late in the day's work, so the metal shavings and dust were scattered denser on the floor than they normally were.

To mutilate a phrase, I love the smell of metalworking in the morning. It smells like… competence.

The shop was reasonably well staffed, and everyone was obviously working at something. Some were manning the machine tools, folding, spindling, and mutilating metal for several purposes Simon could recognize at once and more that he couldn't; others were using hand tools for finishing work, taking notes, or hunting through drawers and racks for supplies.

But the rhythm was… off. Back in the future and here in the past, Simon had been around enough machinists at work to know when they were truly busy, when they were ambling along, and when they were stalling. At the moment, the Machinists were operating somewhere between options two and three. He spent a moment taking his bearings. No one seemed to notice him immediately, so he scanned for Terrance, spotted him sorting through a toolbox, and headed over to him.


"Hi, Mr. Terrance, if you've got a minute, I've got three bits of business to take care of here. Item number one: could I borrow a small screwdriver?" The Machinist pointed him to a drawer; a moment's fishing yielded something suitable. Simon pulled out his slide rule and started fiddling at it with the screwdriver. "The one problem with this thing is, the screws come loose at the drop of a hat. Anyway, item number two, the joys of paperwork. Do you have your consumption figures for last week together yet?"

He looked up. Terrance had a grin on that was half sheepish and half obvious fake. His answer was not a surprise, not after weeks of work slowdowns and those damn diagrams: "Ah, no, actually. No, we haven't. Just haven't had time to get caught up on it. Sorry. Maybe next week?"

Simon kept his face in neutral while he put the slipstick in his shirt pocket. Then he cocked an eyebrow, and sighed. "I was afraid of that. I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. A slow pattern. Which brings me to item number three, talking politics." At the word 'politics,' Terrance started looking cagey: understandable, given who was talking. Keeping him calm was definitely top priority here.

"Look, when I say 'talk,' I mean talk. No Watchmen, no posturing, no threats, just talk, OK? Maybe in the office, with a few of your other guys to keep it above-board? If you want to send someone outside to check and make sure no one's lurking outside the doors waiting to barge in, that's cool too. I'd do it if I were in your shoes." Terrence took a while to think that over, then nodded. He called out orders to a few of his fellows, then led Simon into the machine shop office.

You know, I almost said "I'm not threatening you, I'm unarmed…" good thing I thought better of that; probably wouldn't have gone over well, even though it's true. Bad associations. Especially bad since I'm not wearing full body armor…


The office was less cramped than Simon remembered it. That was partly the missing filing cabinet, and partly the missing Packer: no one was scribbling out sketches on a day to day basis. There were still piles of less essential paper stuffed everywhere, a bookcase full of references, the usual clutter; there was even a coffee pot on a side table, testifying to the triumph of hope over reason. Terrance came in, followed by two other Machinists.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure I know your names. Ah… Andrew?"

"Mm-hmm." Andrew seemed pretty hostile: his arms were folded across his chest and there was a nasty glint in his eye. People who knew Simon usually didn't see him as the Generic Overbearing Councilman; Andrew didn't know him and obviously didn't like what he didn't know.

"And… OK, sorry, this time I really am drawing a blank…?"

"Darryl."

"Thank you. Shall we wait for your friends to finish checking outside?" I'm alone here, they could murder me very easily… shut up, brain, not going to happen…

Terrance responded to that with a wry grin. "Yeah, I think we'd better."


That took another minute or two before another Machinist- Rob? Rick? Russ? Something like that- stuck his head in the office door and said "All clear!" Simon took the opportunity to start immediately.

"All right, now that we're on a nice, level 'trust but verify' playing field, I can get down to my real reason for coming over here. I'd like to start by laying out my credentials. Remember the Charter vote? Seventeen to fourteen? I was one of the fourteen. You won't remember the vote over Packer month before last- "volunteered to reconnoiter the mainland," and I think we both know what to think about that equally well- but I voted against that too."

That seemed to fire them all up. Andrew said what all three of them were clearly thinking: "Voted against what exactly? I've been wondering what you guys really did to him..."

Shit. I screwed up, bad memories here. No better defense than the truth, I guess. "I voted against shipping him off to the mainland. That was the official line, and believe it or not, it actually happened. We even shipped off the stuff we said we were sending with him. I won't lie to you, we're not sure he's still alive. But nobody shot him, if that's what you're thinking. Me, I'd bet he's still alive. Resourceful guy… but I haven't got any proof of that; the evidence they found at his shore camp was… ambiguous. Some stuff of his was left there."

They were all glaring at him, trying to make up their minds whether or not to believe him, and probably whether or not to try and beat the truth out of him if they didn't believe him. Belief seemed to be winning. Thank God for an honest face. Wait, my voice was starting to speed up a bit much there, try to get that back under control…


"Look, let's try to focus on essentials here. I think Packer's still alive; I hope so, because I owe him an apology for not managing to stop that… that damned exile plan. But that's all I can tell you about him, and there's something a bit closer to home I need to talk about before you drop-kick me out the door, all right?"

This time Terrance spoke up: "Let me guess. You want to get the diagrams back?"

"Well… actually, yes, but I'm not asking you for that. I'm really here because I'm trying to convince the Watch to stop playing Mexican standoff with you, and vice versa.

"Why would you expect us to believe they're willing to? They're the ones who charge in busting heads."

"Oh, I don't know. Because they're not completely insane? Look, you guys are holding one hell of an anvil over everyone's heads- not just The Man's head, everyone's. Do you really think the Council and the Watch are too thick to realize what happens when the plans for several dozen pieces of vital machinery go up in smoke? I doubt it, or you wouldn't have made the threat in the first place. Nobody actually wants that to happen, but the Watch can't openly admit that they're backing off in response to a threat. Stupid, yes, I know. But seriously, would you do it in their shoes?"

It looked like Andrew was going to fire something off in response to that, but Darryl cut him off. "Jason, I think… I think we'd better take this guy seriously. He may be on the level, he may not, but at least he didn't come in with a goon squad like that guy from the Watch."

Terrance started to nod, and Simon took that as a signal to go on. "Exactly. I could have; hell, they offered. It would have been safer, for me at least… but dumb. Because you'd have felt no reason to talk to me, and you'd trust me even less than you have so far. So no goon squads. There have been too many of those already.

"Look, I've been trying to get people off your backs since about an hour after Packer ambushed us with the Charter proposal. And I have had effectively no luck. I'd like to explain why, but to do it, I'd need to give a little lecture. Call it "Council Politics 101." Interested?"

Maybe he was starting to build some rapport with them, because for a wonder they all nodded, even Andrew.


"OK. As far as the big political issues go- civil rights, the Charter, that sort of thing- there are four major factions in the Council. They tend to blur a bit at the edges, but they're all there if you know what to look for. Being a biased person, I have my own little names for the factions." Simon raised his index finger. "First, we have what I call the Reasonable People, and obviously," this he said with a big grin, "I think I'm one of those. By and large, we want something as much like a First World government as we can get, as soon as we can get it. No bullshit, no busting up demonstrations, no sending people into exile for wanting a constitution like all the civilized countries back home had, none of that."

Andrew was skeptical. "Why? You guys have all the advantages as it is. What's in it for you?"

"Well, I could try to convince you that we're doing it for the public good. Let's say for the sake of argument that some of us are. For the rest, it's a matter of enlightened self-interest. Democracy works, and dictatorships don't, not when everyone around them has already learned to hate having a dictator. In an emergency like this, running everything top down can work for a while, but governments without a popular mandate die. I don't want to die. So even if I didn't care about public interest, I'd still be pushing for a constitution and some kind of legitimacy. Otherwise, well, as a friend said," and he almost said "Packer," but none of them would have heard Packer say it, not at the secret meeting, "sooner or later it'll all come down to who has the biggest club. And this makes a very bad club," Simon said, tapping the slide rule in his pocket.

"Sadly, for a lot of reasons, one of them the one you just pointed out," he said, nodding to Andrew, "we don't have a majority in the Council. Sometimes we convince people who aren't on our side to vote with us, sometimes not. Out here, people usually notice the times we lose more often than the times we win." He shrugged.

"Then," Simon ticked off his middle finger, "we have the Hardasses. These people are all business; most of them are from the Den Mothers and the Watch. Most of them are very smart, most of them are older than average, and most of them are ruthless. For them, pretty much every question boils down to "How do we avoid disasters? How do we keep as many of us as possible alive?" And no mistake, we need them. Without them, things might have fallen apart over the winter, because a lot of the murder-suicide crazies would have done a lot more damage.

"The trouble with the Hardasses is that if they see a threat, they jump on it, even if that means ignoring a bigger problem. They're like… like guided missiles; see a target, chase the target, boom. They are, above all, ruthless: they will do anything they expect to help. Their saving grace is that they're smart-ruthless: they really are interested in what's best for everyone, or they think they are. Most of them will vote Reasonable as long as you don't pop up on their radar as a threat. If you do, they're your worst enemy.

"The big guns behind the Hardasses are the Den Mothers, who have one hell of a lot to lose if things fall apart, and, yes, the Watch. And please, bear with me, I'm half finished already.


"The next bunch," he said, raising his ring finger, "is sort of a catch-all, and they probably wouldn't agree with me if I called them this: the Idiots." That got a snort of laughter from the Machinists. "And I don't call them that because I think they're incompetent at everything; most of them are damn good at… well, something. Usually whatever it is that got them a Council seat. The problem is that there's no pattern to how they act outside that one thing. Some of them are so easy to convince that they might as well not have an opinion. Some of them are insanely hard to convince, and they seem to pick their opinions by flipping a damn coin. There's no agenda, no sense that they're seeing a bigger picture- a good one or a bad one."

Darryl came up with a good reply to that: "How many of them would call you one of the Idiots?"

Simon twisted his face into a mask of contemplation; a funny question deserved a funny answer. "Hmm. I'd say… three. Better make that five. OK, Seven, tops. Out of… yeah, seven, come to think of it."

Simon unfolded his little finger. "Anyway, that leaves the last group, the ones that none of us are going to like very much. I call them, well, for choice I'd call them the Minnow Sharks, but that's an in-joke. Call them the Monsters, and I use the term advisedly. These are the ones who really do want to set themselves up as nobility, with everyone else somewhere between minions and serfs.

To make matters worse, I think they're too busy power tripping to see the big picture: people here aren't going to settle for that kind of arrangement, with an unelected government that lasts forever. Too many of us come from civilized countries. But even so, I get the feeling that some of them honestly think they can get away with reintroducing serfdom at gunpoint. And the idea of them taking over scares the hell out of me. I've seen enough of how they think… let me tell you a quick story.


"I try to keep a few guys juggling plans for me, trying to come up with better ways to use what we've got. About two months ago, one of them came up to me with an idea. He says "I've noticed that we have an awfully big chunk of our work force tied up cutting trees. Couldn't we free some of that up if we put the rest on twelve hour shifts, now that the days are getting longer?" Terrance winced. The woodcutters only really worked at it for seven or eight hours, even now that they were getting used to it; the rest of the time was taken up with classes and meals. Upping that to half the day would be back-breaking.

"I see you don't think any more of that idea than I do. I told him, right there: "Are you out of your mind? You can't expect people to push like that! We'd need a man with a crossbow watching each team to keep them from rioting!"

"He blinks, then he says "So... we get 50% more man-hours per worker, and lose 10% of the work force on guard detail. We still win, right?"

"Now, that floored me. Of course, as you may have noticed from the lack of angry men with axes running around, we didn't do it; since Mr. Slave Driver liked the idea so much, I decided that he'd be the perfect candidate for woodcutting detail himself. I hope he likes it." Simon grinned.

"But the thing to remember is that there are people in our little government who are ruthless and stupid, to go with the ruthless-smarts and the just plain stupid ones. Guys with too much self-interest and not enough enlightened self-interest. They don't have anything like a majority, but they do have an agenda, whether they admit it or not: "Me über alles!."

Darryl was starting to slump a little on his stool. Good thing lecture time is over.


"So: we've got the Reasonable People, the Idiots, the ruthless-smart Hardasses, and the ruthless-stupid Monsters. Now that I've nailed down the terms for you, I'd like to explain what the hell happened after you guys proposed the Charter.

"To the Reasonable People, the reaction was anywhere from "Good idea, I'm for it" to "Shit, why hadn't I gotten around to proposing that?" The Monsters, of course, were against it. That left the Hardasses and the Idiots. The Idiots were about 50/50 split between us and the Monsters; maybe they all got together and rolled dice to figure out whether they were for or against the Charter. Like I said, Idiots."

"So the swing vote came down to the Hardass faction. And that's where you guys, including Packer, have been messing up, starting with the Charter vote, and carrying right on up to today. You scared the Hardasses."

Andrew clearly had a problem with that. He surged up off his stool and started gesturing with his hands. "Bullshit! Everything we did, every fucking thing, was peaceful! We didn't make any threats, we did NOT START THIS!" The other two guys nodded; Darryl sat up and said "Yeah, no shit!"

Time to smooth ruffled feathers, or this could come apart in a hurry.

"No, you didn't." That seemed to take them aback. "For any reasonable definition of "start this," you didn't start this. What you did was create the illusion you were starting something, from the point of view of paranoid people who had no idea what you were thinking.

"This was right after the smuggling ring blew up, we were having 'suicide by cop' cases at a rate of… what, two, three a week? Look at it from the angle of someone whose biggest worry is keeping the psycho killing sprees from blowing away anyone irreplaceable, someone's who just got done ferreting out a genuine conspiracy.

"A bunch of guys start meeting after hours. A bunch of guys with one hell of a charismatic leader." Simon paused for half a breath- that hadn't been faked. Then he went on. "They come up with a proposal that, in practice, knocks everyone now in power on the Island out of the loop. The leader gets up on stage and demands that they back this proposal.

"If you don't know these people- and the Hardasses didn't- that's going to ring some alarm bells. These are not people who trust the majority very far, because they're worrying on a day to day basis about lunatics shooting people in the street and people sneaking vital medicine away on the side. Most of the Hardasses saw it that way, so they voted against. I talked to some of them after the meeting, the general vibe was "It's a good idea, but it's too soon." You know, what ended up being the official line? The Hardasses are the ones who actually believed it. The others who voted against it, well, you pencil in their motives." The corner of Simon's mouth pulled taut, and he spread out his hands. "You probably already have."

Jason grunted agreement. "OK, I see what you mean. So they start pushing. What the hell were we supposed to do, bend over and take it?"


"Well, I… I don't know. Would I? Maybe. Anyhow, I can't blame you for deciding you needed an edge. You're playing with one hell of a fire, but I can see why you'd have thought you'd get burned anyway. But sneaking out that filing cabinet…" Simon pointed at the bare spot on the wall where it used to be, "that made a lot of people think their suspicions were confirmed, that you guys aren't just trying to watch out for yourselves, that you actually want to knock the whole system down."

I need to get this out before they interrupt me. Simon stood up straight, started gesturing, and drew on every scrap of command presence he could muster, praying it would be enough: "And yes, the obvious question is "why shouldn't we?" I've wondered about that myself, lately, but I think I have an answer. Which is that for now, the alternative is even worse. Believe it or not, the Council is not committed to being a pack of tyrants, and the Watch is not committed to being a tyrant's brute squad. They're all from the same kind of places everyone else here comes from, and most of them would honestly rather not live in a banana republic, even if they get to run it.

"But if someone tries to tear it all apart and start over, one of two things can happen: they can win, or they can lose. If they lose, the Council will react the same way anyone would right after someone tries to kill them: violently. They will start thinking "everyone else is a lunatic." They will start looking at anyone and everyone who questions the way they run things and say "I'm right, you're wrong; I'm smart, you're stupid; I'm in charge, so shut the fuck up and let me do my job!" And at that point we really will turn into a banana republic, and maybe I'll be able to find a cliff to jump off somewhere or something.

"Then again, the revolutionary types might win. Think that through, though. What are the odds that they'll be able to keep the lid on? We are in a really messy position here in a lot of ways, and there are some things we really do need to enforce if we're all going to stay alive. So say that someone knocks over the Council. A clean sweep; all of us are dragged from our hiding places and shot, me included. Any survivors of the Watch march out of their quarters, disarmed, hands on their heads. After that, how long do you think it's going to take before people start saying "fuck this, I'm not going to bust my ass tearing stuff out of walls!" and you guys run out of pipe stock? Before all the antibiotics on the island vanish into three thousand individual medicine cabinets, and never mind who really needs them? Before a mob storms Point Breeze? What happens then? That is NOT a story with a happy ending, people."

By now, Simon had really expected someone to butt in; he was getting carried away and he knew it. And yet, they weren't. Wow. I think it worked. I'm appealing to someone's better judgement, straight logos, and it's working.

"This is a very fragile situation we're in. And I don't want to see it come apart in my hands. Which is why I came down here; I'm trying to get you guys to agree to… a cease fire."


The spell wore off; Darryl was the first to speak, with a set expression. "So… Jason was right, and you want the diagrams back?"

"Heh. Again, I'm not asking for that. What I'm asking is that you keep them somewhere safe, that you not set any more of them on fire, and that you not start shouting and waving signs in public. I don't like that last bit, but I'm not sure I can get the Watch to cool their jets if you don't. In exchange, I promise that the Watch will stop hassling you and won't get pushy about the diagrams. No more goon squads, no more threats, just the business of building ourselves up and letting tempers cool down.

"And speaking for myself you guys start picking back up to more like normal pace. We need you, and if anything goes wrong we're going to need you 100%. And… not in exchange, because I'd probably be doing it anyway, I'll keep trying to watch your backs, OK? Like I said, we need you guys, and you deserve better than to get stomped on because your boss proposed something damn near half of us wanted to do anyway.

"Deal?" Simon extended his hand.

Terrance was the first to stand up and take it. "Deal."

"Thank you, Mr. Terrance."

"Call me Jason."

"Fair enough; call me Simon. I think I'd better take word that you've agreed to this to the Watch. Thank you again, and Viva la Constitución!"[/quote]

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My first-person POV will return in another chapter. Just setting up some things. Credit for the Councilor Simon speaking bits goes to Simon_Jester.

~~~

Editor's Note: This takes place on day 360, post-arrival . . .

Nf3 d5
"First thing I'd like to say is . . . what the fuck?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Don't fucking play innocent with me. You assholes knew. You knew for hours. Why the hell is he still free?"

"He's at the hospital, sir. With his wife."

"Wife . . . . wife?" A deep breath. "You mean to tell me there's a fucking native running loose on the island?"

"They're married, sir. She's carrying his child."

"Oh, that's just rich." The voice calmed. "Clearly, Packer has been living it up on the mainland. Telling the people there . . . God knows what sort of lies. Taking advantage of their women. And now he returns." A deep breath. "At a time when we can ill-afford distractions." He looked thoughtful. "I wonder . . . there's a song that's been going around, about a man going to the mainland to meet Packer. Now I wonder if there's some truth to it?"

He looked up at the Watchman.

"Tell me, what action does the Watch plan to take?"

"I'm not at liberty to say, sir."

"Hmph. There was a time, not that long ago, when Watch and Council worked hand-in-hand. It's regrettable that you've chosen to respond to the shift in power as you have." A curt nod. "You're dismissed."

"Yes sir." A few moments later, a door creaked open, and softly clicked shut again. There was a rustling and another click, as he released the 'Transmit' button on a radio.

"You heard all that?"

"Yeah, I got the gist of it."

"Come in, then."

A minute later, the door creaked open once more.

"You rang," the newcomer said.

"Get Packer under watch."

"I'll get a couple of guys on it. You want something to happen to him?"

"No. Packer, his pet native, the Machinists, and the Horticulturalists are all off-limits. But find out who else was in on it. Whatever happens to them . . . well, Packer's back to take the blame now."

There was a chuckle, and it sounded none too pleasant.

"I got it, man. They'll get what's comin' to them."

. . . . .

Nantucket had its share of bars. Post-Arrival, a few of them even got to reopen as the island's new inhabitants cobbled together stills, kegs, and other ways of turning perfectly good sugars into moonshine, and the Council began to slowly ease its grip on the island's alcohol supply.

"Haven't seen you in a while, Miles. Get lost sailing again?"

A grin. "Oh hell no, Chuck, I didn't get lost. If there were more than just you here, I'd be buying a round for everybody in the house!"

"You kidding? Whoa, man, what's got you so excited?."

"I ain't joking," Miles said, with a vigorous shake of his head. "I've got the best news. Packer's back!"

Clink. The glass slipped from Chuck's grasp.

"You're kidding me?"

"No joke. I brought him back myself! He's got the sweetest girl with him too."

"Now that's something else," the glass was picked up again. Chuck put the glass on the shelf behind him. "Definitely worth a drink. I'll tell the guys when they start coming by after the day's work is done."

"Thanks a lot, Chuck," Miles said. "Gotta get the word out before the Man can put it down."

"You bet," Chuck replied. "Come back later, and we can properly celebrate."

"Will do," Miles said, with a sloppy salute. "Definitely will do," he added, wheeling about. As he dashed out of the room, he bumped into another man stepping inside. The other man stared after him for a moment, and then walked up to the bar.

"Yo barkeep."

"That's only my night job, haven't seen you around in a while either."

"Heh, well, what can I say? There's been a lot of work to go around with the harvest coming in and all. Was that Miles Jameson who just ran out the door?"

"Sure was. He stopped by long enough to drop a bomb."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, according to him, Al Packer came back to the island this morning."

"No shit? I just heard the same thing from someone else on the way down! How did he find out?"

"Well . . . hell, I think the cat'll be out of the bag in a few hours anyway. He said he piloted the boat that brought Packer to Nantucket. Said Packer married a native woman too."

"Lucky bastard. I'd come here more often if I didn't have to save work credits to borrow the same fucking twenty-five year old porn over and over again. But, you're kidding me. Miles piloted that boat?"

"Yeah. Guess that'd explain the other times he got lost coming back to Nantucket."

"You don't say?"

"I do, now that I think about it. Hell, I'm sure you've heard The Legend of Al Packer. Always thought it was wishful thinking, until word got out that it was for real."

A chuckle. "Well, shit, I'd like to stay and have a drink . . . but I just remembered I forgot something back at work."

"Terrible thing to have happen," Chuck shook his head.

"I'll be back later," the man replied, stepping out of the building. He ducked around a corner, took a quick look around, and pulled out a little hand-held radio. He spoke a few terse words, and then hurried off.

. . . . .

"This meeting of the Council will come to order." There was a banging of the gavel, but it wasn't really needed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in case you've been living under a rock for the last . . . hour, or so, you should know that Alferd Packer has returned to Nantucket. That is the reason this meeting has been called into session at such an . . . unusual hour of the day."

There was a tense buzz in the air. Whispered words were exchanged, and chairs shuffled.

"We are, unfortunately, the last ones to know. I have spoken to the Watch, and they claim they learned the news second-hand."

The buzz turned angry.

"And what the hell does the Watch intend to do about it?"

"Where is Packer now?"

"Yeah, where is he now? I heard he's down at the Machinists shop."

"And I heard he was at the hospital."

"That's not what I heard. I heard he's planning to seize the Coast Guard station."

More banging of the gavel. It went on until the voices were silenced.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen! Let's not panic and let ourselves by overwhelmed by gossip and innuendo. The facts are this: Packer snuck back sometime this morning. He does have a native woman with him, and he went straight to the hospital. That is where he's at now, and that's where he is going to stay. When I spoke to the Watch, they told me they're going to lock down the hospital and the immediate area. Nobody in, nobody out."

More murmuring. Thoughtful murmuring.

"Who's with him?"

"Many of his Machinists aren't at their shop, so we assume they're also at the hospital. News is spreading fast, so it's almost certain he has agents spreading the word. The Watch, and our own people, are tracking them down as we speak. I believe James has more to say on that."

A shuffling. "Thank you, Mister Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen . . . first, I'd like to add to the Chairman's assurances. Packer is being watched. Furthermore, his arrival has confirmed certain long-held suspicions about certain associates of his. They are being . . . acted on, even as I speak to you. Packer will be swiftly contained, I can assure you of that!"

There was applause. Some polite, more relieved. Glances were exchanged by many.

"Hold your applause, please," James said, raising his arms. The Chairman banged his gavel in emphasis, and silence descended on the room once more.

"We have several grave questions before us. It seems Nantucket's very own prodigal son has returned. First, we must ask ourselves why? After all, it seems clear that Packer had us all fooled with his . . . apparent death last April. And it seems he's done . . . very well for himself. I won't lie to you, I'm green with envy."

A few in the room chuckled. More glances were exchanged. The name "Kaley" was whispered several times.

"Setting my personal feelings aside . . . clearly, he's done well, yet now he's back. And he didn't come back to stride in here triumphantly and share with us how he's done so well. Instead he snuck back onto the island, escorted by his own men. Why is that?"

"If I may," the Chairman said. "It may just as easily be that he needs our help. The reports I've gotten say his wife is pregnant. You've all been keeping up-to-date with the recon expeditions we've sent to the mainland. The people there . . . words don't describe how primitive their living conditions are."

An angry shout: "Where was he during the harvest, or the irrigation crisis?"

"Maybe he just didn't know!"

"Bullshit! You heard that song going around? You heard how people have been talking to him, he knew!"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen! The Chairman brings up a very good point," James said. "Winter is coming. But does he really need our help? Packer is obviously resourceful enough to ingratiate himself among the natives. But we shouldn't let his . . . Pocahontas blind us to how dangerous he is, or how he's decided to make his . . . clandestine return."

"On the other hand, we shouldn't use his past to decide what to do about him and his family all by itself," Simon said. "It makes sense to talk to him, hear him out, find out what he was thinking. Remember what happened to him the last time he ran into us; he may have thought he had to come back in secret or get shot full of holes the minute he stepped off the boat. Think about it: how many of you would be considering just that if you'd gotten word of his arrival ahead of time?"

"I grant you that," James replied, tugging his collar. "To that, I'll say he could've asked. Instead, he chose to come secretly . . . doubtlessly aware of how that would color our thinking of him. That leads me to the most important question of all . . . what are we to do with Packer, his family, and most importantly, his friends?"

Heated whispers filled the room, along with shuffling feet and chairs.

"I'll be the first to say that I'm not inclined to be especially merciful," Mike said, standing up. The shocked silence was immediate. "We're guilty of shitty engineering here. We've built in a single point-of-failure into the whole goddamn system, and that was concentrating our industrial capacity into the hands of a single group. Our Machinists have become like the goddamned UAW, except with a bullshit personality cult." A glance to his right. "I've brought a couple of engineers with me, and they've got something they want to say."

"Well," the Chairman replied. "If there are no objections from the rest of the Council, then I; for one, would be very interested in hearing what they have to say."

Silence.

"The Council shares my interest. Mike, your people have the floor."

A gesture. "Timothy, that's your cue."

Timothy approached the table with two large rolls of paper tucked under his arm.

"You seem well-prepared. What are those papers you are carrying?"

Timothy looked to Mike, who nodded. He unfurled one of them on the table, to a collective gasp.

"These are engineering drawings. Almost identical to the ones the sed . . . Machinists stole some months back. A lot the credit goes to Mike, my wife, and some guys really busting their balls for this. We've recreated a number of the drawings that were stolen, and we've secreted copies around the island."

A thrill went through the room. Necks craned, chairs turned, and eyes boggled.

"Mike," the Chairman sounded reproachful. "You didn't tell me about this."

"Respectfully, sir, like hell I wanted our survival to be jeopardized like that again," Timothy said. "My wife and I took the idea to Mike and the others. The idea of secrecy too. I didn't want the Machinists getting wind of it and trying to stop us."

"And I agreed," Mike said. "Completely. There's no room on Nantucket for bullshit grandstanding, not when lives are at stake. Timothy's team made improvements to some of Packer's original designs, and I'm working on distilling an easily-followed manufacturing process from them."

The murmurs, and looks, were suddenly very thoughtful.

. . . .

"Of all the days he could've picked to come back to Nantucket, he had to pick today," the man said, his Australian accent only adding an edge to his growl.

"Maybe it's just a coincidence, sir."

"You will find that I do not believe in coincidences," he turned to another man. "I want every Watchman to report in. Yesterday would be preferred, but within the half-hour if they want to be Watchmen tomorrow morning."

"Yes sir," a young man turned, fairly sprinting from the room.

"You think one of the boys was in on it?"

"I'll eat my hat if that wasn't the case. More than one, most likely; and we'd better find them all. A lot of people are going to do some very stupid things in the next few hours."

There was a sharp knock on a doorframe.

"Sir! I've got men getting their weapons prepped and ready."

"Good. I want your teams on the Machinists' shop, and sweeping their homes."

"What about the hospital, sir?"

"What about it," his voice was desert-dry. "I've got everyone else setting up blockades, but Packer's most fervent supporters will likely be at the hospital already. I want his less-fervent supporters and their base out of the picture."

"Uh, yes sir." The man at the doorway disappeared.

"I think we should have them at the hospital," the other man started.

"To keep order in the ranks? That's why you and I will be going down there."

"And what about the Old Man?"

A shake of the head. "Toby can decide where he wants to go when he gets back from Martha's Vineyard. It's up to us to be sure to present him with . . . palatable options."

. . . . .

"Whaddya mean he's back?"

"That's what I'm telling you," Miles replied, "Packer's back on the island, right now. He's at the hospital, and Nara's with him."

"Nara," someone else said.

"Oh yeah, he's married now."

"You don't say? To a woman?"

"Oh yeah! They're a great bunch of people, on the mainland. Packer's been teaching them Star Wars."

"No shit?"

"Well, that's all well and good," a man said, as he pushed the door open, "but what's Al Packer done for us lately?"

"He pushed for the charter," someone in the back of the room yelled.

"I'll ask again. What's Packer done for us lately? He ain't done shit for us lately. And I seem to recall that he went back on that whole charter idea when he went to the mainland . . . to score some native pussy."

"Hey," Miles growled, standing up, "fuck you, pal. They were threatening to hang the Machinists if he didn't recant."

The door opened again, and three other men stepped inside.

"No kidding?" The man in the back yelled again. "Like they were saying in those pamphlets?"

"Yeah," Miles said. "But he's back now, and he's going to set things right."

"Oh that's rich," the man just inside the doorway said. "Set things right? Hey Danny, where was Packer when your boyfriend busted his leg at harvest?" The man in the back immediately looked pained, and then found something compelling about his drink.

"Where was he when the wind turbine took a big shit," one of the newcomers said. "The 'Gasifier Man,' sure was nowhere to be found when the going got really tough."

"Now you just wait a goddamn minute," Miles snapped. "We were all there when they announced what was wrong with the turbine. It wasn't anything we had the capability to fix!"

"Hey, what if Packer's boys sabotaged the turbine?" The other newcomer said from the bar. "Maybe they were afraid their scam would get washed up, and they fucked up the turbine."

"Go to hell, asshole," someone else said. "That's tinfoil nutter shit right there. The Machinists busted their asses for the Eagle. They wouldn't do something that fucked up."

"That's right," Miles said. "I'm going to say it right now, I've been talking to Packer and his boys. They aren't the bad guys here. The Council is!"

"And just how have you been talking to him?" The first newcomer asked.

"Hell, I went out to the mainland to pick him up. I've seen him," he said. "You know the Legend of Al Packer? All true. All me!"

"Oh, is that so?"

Miles turned to face the man. "Yeah, that's so. And I've been spreading the news since Packer got ba . . . aaaah!"

Crash, was the sound of a body abruptly being slammed into a table. The newcomer at the bar had come up behind Miles, picking him up bodily, and throwing him down onto the table.

Chairs crashed and shoes shuffled as everyone in the room stood at once. A low, angry growl started in those gathered in the room, only to die as a strangled squeak.

"That's right, boys," the man at the doorway said with a smirk. The dim light glinted on the stainless steel of his suddenly-exposed revolver. The other newcomers stood, their jackets thrown open, exposing a motley collection of guns and knives tucked into waistbands. "Everybody sit down nice and easy. We've been trying to track down Miles here for much of the afternoon. Doctor's orders, y'know? Packer really is at the hospital, with a girl from the mainland. Made a beeline there, as I understand it." He coughed once. "I wonder why? We're just going to take Miles here down to quarantine. Routine business, y'know?"

Miles was hauled up, and frog-marched out the door. The two other gunmen followed close behind. The man at the doorway watched, leaning against the frame.

"Just want to leave you with this. Packer knows what's up. And if you feel anything is off . . . suggest you get to the doctor right away," he winked, closing his jacket and slipping out the door.

. . . . .

There was polite applause as the woman stepped away from the podium. The Councilors whispered amongst themselves as she busied herself taking down her charts. A map of the Cape Cod area was drawn on the chart, and colored lines were strewn upon it. The Chairman took a moment to shake the woman's hand, before stepping back up to the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, as he adjusted his collar. "That was what we know of the tribes on the mainland. I will reiterate the point that none of them are a threat to Nantucket. And that Packer can't make them a threat . . . So when we decide how to deal with him; remember that it's just him, his native wife . . . Nara, and his supporters on the island." He glanced down the table. "Simon, I understand you've prepared some remarks."

"Yes, I have," Simon replied, standing up.

"You've got the floor, then."

Simon cleared his throat, looking around the room. He took a deep breath, looking down at one of his ubiquitous notebooks.

"Ladies and gentlemen, before we go out there and try to make a decision that's going to have major consequences for months- years- to come, I think we need to remind ourselves exactly what's at stake. On the one hand, there's the risk that Packer is planning some kind of coup. I can't prove that that should be ruled out, so I can't expect any of you to rule it out. But there's something at least as dangerous to worry about on the other side of that coin."

The looks remained thoughtful, polite. The Councilors seemed to be collectively holding their breaths.

"We've had to make a lot of difficult decisions in the past year, and I doubt that any of us are happy with how all those decisions turned out. But we must remember that we have been running this island for a year now, and that our only claim to do so is that we're better than the alternative. We don't have divine right. To be blunt, most of us don't even have a popular mandate; all we have is the appeal to consequences. If we stop making good decisions, we destroy our own justification for remaining in power.

"So the other danger we face in dealing with Packer is that, out of fear of what he'll try to do to us, we start making bad decisions. Or that we try to cover up the consequences of our own bad decisions by making worse decisions. Because if we're going to run this island the way we have done, we'd damn well better be doing it right. Handwaving about how we need our authority today in order to protect our authority tomorrow won't cut it; the only excuse we have is competence. Even if the right decision is the one that makes us worry, the one that dilutes our power, the one that puts us at risk."

Several Councilors turned to each other, exchanging whispered words. Others wrote things down on their notepads. James leaned back, fixing Simon in a basilisk stare. Simon looked down at his notes, and then back up.

"Now, before we decide what that decision is, let's remember the history we have with Packer. We- and yes, I mean we; voting against something doesn't give me the right to deny responsibility- decided he was a threat. For public consumption, we gave him a mission, a mission that was, and is, vital if we ever want to succeed beyond the limits of this island. A mission that I think most of us would have actually liked to see done, even if we didn't want to see him doing it. A mission that, again for public consumption, we thought would take a whole team to do.

"Of course," Simon said, looking directly at James, for the first time, "the whole thing was a farce, and we expected Packer to fail and die in the attempt, accomplishing nothing, because we thought he was a threat but were afraid to kill him for being a threat. No, we decided to . . . 'disappear' him, so that we could shift the blame off our own shoulders. We weren't the ones who killed him, no, that was some wild Indian! We weren't the ones who threatened to kill half a dozen of his friends to make him play along, no, that was the Commander of the Watch... who I notice is absent from our ranks today.

The whispered words took on a buzz, a hostile edge. Nearly all eyes were on Simon now.

"So, in summary, in our attempt to evade responsibility, to shift the blame off on someone, anyone, we could disown, we sent him off on an important mission without proper support, to die.

"Now, I know the Bible probably isn't on anyone's favorite reading list here, but there's a particular bit of Hebrew mythology, that seems a useful analogy for our situation. One that I suppose qualifies as speculative fiction right now, because it technically hasn't happened yet: the story of David and Uriah. Short form: David was king of the Jews. He took a liking to the wife of Uriah, one of his most talented warriors. Out of his desire for this woman," he turned towards James, fixing him in his glare, "and yes, James, I am looking at you," he said, leaning forward just a little, "he ordered Uriah to attack a fortified city, and secretly ordered the soldiers around him to abandon him to the enemy. Naturally, Uriah got cut to ribbons, and David and Bathsheba lived unhappily ever after. The end."

James stood up. "Chairman, forgive my intrusion. I'm certain Simon here has a lot more to say. But I can't sit here and allow him to insult me . . . insult all of us."

"Would you let me finish," Simon said.

"Yes, please, wait your turn," Gail said. "I'm sure you'll get your chance soon enough. I, for one, am interested in what Simon has to say."

"I'm not," someone else said.

"And I am. And I'm the Chairman. So Simon, please, continue?"

"Thank you," Simon replied, clearing his throat. He glanced down at his notes again, and then looked up. He slowly looked around the room, meeting the gaze of every person present.

"Maybe it's just me, but I think there are some parallels to be drawn here. Except for one thing. Packer didn't die. He came back, and by all evidence he accomplished the mission we expected to kill him. At the very least, he seems to have wound up on good enough terms with the locals to marry one of them. And he did this alone, when we never would have expected anyone to believe that it could be done without a whole crew of survival experts. I don't know about you, but I'm impressed."

The other Councilors started to murmur. Simon ignored them.

"So in our case, Uriah didn't get cut to ribbons. He won. What would David have done if Uriah had come back in triumph, with everyone perfectly aware that he had fought against impossible odds to do a job that should have taken a whole army... and wondering why, exactly, he didn't get the support he had every reason to expect on such an important mission? And what would have happened if, instead of hailing him as a hero, or at least giving him neutral treatment, David had, say, had Uriah thrown into a dungeon? Or taken out and killed? What would happen then?

"So to bring matters back to the present... can we really expect people not to take notice of how we treat Packer? All accusations that he was behind this protest or behind that act of rebellion aside, the universally known fact remains: we sent him to do something that should have killed him, and rather than lying down and dying, he did it. To most people who haven't already decided he's a power-hungry bastard, which includes just about everyone outside this room... that makes him a hero. Which, in turn, makes anything we do to hurt him or his a profound act of betrayal and tyranny.

"So before we propose to punish or threaten Packer for... whatever he's done, we have to ask ourselves: Can we survive giving the majority of people on this island such a convincing reason to call us a bunch of treacherous power-hungry tyrants? Would that be a good decision, a decision that makes life on this island safer and more stable? The kind of decision that justifies our remaining in power? I don't want to find out. Especially not since I think we just might deserve it."

The room plunged into silence. Simon stood there, looking almost defiant.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

It was James who was the first to stand. Clapping slowly, his gaze transfixing Simon.

"Bravo! Bravo," he said. "Quite the compelling argument. I'm certain it would carry more weight if you weren't going out of your way to insult most of the people here. 'Treacherous, power-hungry tyrants'? And to suggest that treating Packer with anything but kid gloves would be an act of 'betrayal,' of 'tyranny'? I am sorry that you don't agree with the decisions this body has made. But such is your right, and I respect that. However, I must beg to differ. Ladies and gentlemen, would you consider yourselves to be tyrants? I, for one, do not consider myself to be a tyrant. For to be a tyrant would mean being afraid.

"We have nothing to fear from Packer. Which is why we should give him what he so richly deserves. Yes, Simon, we sent him out to die. I won't insult your intelligence by trying to deny that. What I will say is that it was the right call. We've had a difficult summer, ladies and gentlemen. Imagine how much more difficult it would've been had Packer stayed. To continually bite the hand that fed him. To continue to stir trouble until the order we've worked so hard for dissolved into anarchy."

He shook his head slowly. "No, Packer was . . . is . . . better off gone," his voice softened. "For Nantucket to survive, Al Packer has to go. And, perhaps, it's time we dealt with the Machinists too. They've been a thorn in our side for far too long. If they idolize Packer so much, then I say to them . . . go join him!"

Crack! His fist slammed into the table. There was a collective, surprised, gasp.

"It's time we let Packer's friends know that we've had enough! And we must remind Packer, in no uncertain terms, that his brand of malcontent isn't welcome here. That he can't have it both ways. That he can't go native for the summer, and then come waltzing back when it's convenient for him."

He sat down, the Councilors looked at each other, whispered amongst themselves. Some looked to James. Others to Simon. Others still glanced at Mike and the other engineers. Few noticed that the door opened, admitting a young man. That man went up to the Chairman and whispered hurriedly in his ear.

As this happened, Simon stood up, wheeling towards James. James sprung to his feet, and a number of other men and women stood up.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Order, order!" The Chairman said. "The Council will come to order! I have very interesting news!" He said. "But we will have order first! James. Simon. Sit down!"

Simon and James glared at each other, each man slowly lowering himself into his chair.

"Thank you," the Chairman said. "I have just been informed that Packer has requested a meeting with the Council. And that the hospital has formally agreed to mediate," he said, staring at Simon, then James, and then at the others who'd stood. "Perhaps . . . to avoid further rancor . . . it's best that we table the present discussion until we've all had a chance to hear what Packer has to say for himself."

[Formless]

Exciting! I would not have thought to use a bible story to make everyone look like assholes like that.