The McCall Initiative Episode 1.1: Deception Published by Webfoot Publishing Copyright 2013 Lisa Nowak PDF Edition, License Notes All rights reserved This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away. No part of this ebook may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Cover design by Steven Novak What if the Pacific Northwest seceded from the United States? In 2063, it has. Episode Description: The climate change that’s devastated all but the Northwest corner of the U.S. has been around since before Piper Hall was born. She doesn’t spend much time thinking about it, the secession that created Cascadia, or the closed border, erected to keep out climate refugees. All she wants is to get through high school and earn a medical degree so she can pull her family out of poverty. Piper’s sure her little brother’s stories about poor people vanishing are just rumors—until she comes home to an empty house. Losing her future, her family, and her freedom and forced into hiding, Piper has to find a way to get to the bottom of the disappearances. But the only one who can help might be the very boy whose family has displaced her own. Dedication This series is dedicated to Oregon’s finest governor, Tom McCall, who harkened in a wave of environmental awareness in the late ’60s and early ’70s that transformed the state and influenced the entire nation. Among many other accomplishments, McCall was responsible for: • The first Bottle Bill in the nation. Nine other states have since adopted this legislation, and more are currently in the process of doing so. • The Beach Bill, which gives the public access to all beaches. • Land use planning, which protects the farm and forest land Oregon’s economy relies on and prevents urban sprawl. • The Bicycle Bill, which dedicates 1% of transportation funds to bike and pedestrian paths • Vortex 1, the first and only state-sponsored rock concert. Tom McCall was a creative problem solver who believed in making short-term sacrifices for the long-term greater good. To learn more about this amazing man, visit the Tom McCall Legacy Project’s website: http://www.tommccall.org/ “Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say; This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better.” - Governor Tom McCall Cascadia, 2063 Chapter 1 Piper Portland, Oregon, Friday, May 18, 2063 My little brother Nick’s stories are so far-fetched, there’s no way anyone could believe them, but there’s something so compelling about the way he tells them, you just can’t help wondering. “You know those rumors about how people are disappearing?” he asks, his black hair hanging in eyes that spark with excitement. “Well, I know what’s happening to them.” And I’m sure he’s going to tell me all about it. “The crimps—that’s what they call the guys who do the shanghaiing—they’re like dogcatchers,” Nick says, not disappointing. “They round up poor people and put them on big trucks, then they take them to this compound in eastern Oregon. It’s really spooky, with machine guns everywhere, and vicious dogs that’ll rip your arm right off your body. Everybody stays away because they think it’s a high-security prison. They say the U.S. government paid off President Cooper to put it in Cascadia so Americans wouldn’t have to deal with all those criminals. But really? It’s owned by a drug company. They use the people for drug testing. And sometimes they do other kinds of weird experiments, like seeing if they can transplant brains and stuff.” My nine-year-old brother sits on the closed toilet lid, his mouth going a mile a minute as I get ready for my shift at OHSU. “Don’t you think that’s a little over the top?” I touch up my eye shadow, keeping it discrete, the way it should be when you’re in the medical field. Some of the girls in the Junior Student Assistant Program plaster it on like they work in a strip club. Combined with the skintight jeans they wear, it’s enough to make the old guys in the cardiac unit go into v-fib. “The disappearances aren’t real,” I add. “It’s an urban legend.” “Grandpa thinks they’re real.” “Oh, there’s an endorsement.” Much as I love my grandpa, I don’t believe half of what comes out of his mouth. He thinks the climate crisis was engineered by big box stores in the early 21st century so they could sell more air conditioners. He’s got a stash of cash under the floorboards in his room, along with a collection of hand-written journals, because he’s sure an electromagnetic pulse is going to wipe out all the computers any day now. “If the disappearances aren’t real, how come there aren’t any homeless people anymore?” Nick asks, tossing his shaggy hair out of his face. I lean in toward the mirror, sweeping mascara over the lashes of my left eye. “Maybe because the mayor didn’t want the capital of Cascadia to look like a giant armpit?” “Right,” Nick says, giving me an eye roll full of pre-pubescent drama. “That’s what all you naysayers think.” Naysayers. Now there’s a word straight off Grandpa’s lips. I’m going to have to talk to Mom about how he’s corrupting her only son. Not that there’s much she can do about it. Grandpa’s been living with us since the accident, and with Mom wrangling two jobs, she counts on him to watch Nick when I’m at work or my volunteer position at the hospital. “If the disappearances were real, there would be documented accounts instead of just rumors, Nick. You should type up all that fiction and put it on Amazon. I hear there’s a high demand for conspiracy stories these days.” I drop my makeup into a drawer and push it shut. “Now get lost so I can use that toilet for its intended purpose.” * * * I walk several blocks through the cool May mist and catch the bus to Lloyd Center. Normally, I’d take the 66 straight across the Ross Island Bridge, but Grandpa needs a new journal, and the Nostalgia Store is the only place that still carries the kind of paper notebooks he likes. That inconvenience is fourth on his list of pet peeves, right after low-flow toilets and the high cost of meat. The number one spot goes to self-driving cars. I guess when Grandpa was a kid, most families had more than one vehicle, and getting your driver’s license when you turned sixteen was a rite of passage. Now anyone can drive, but lots of people can’t afford to. Cars got crazy expensive to register after the first wave of climate refugees swarmed here in the early ’30s, causing major gridlock. We’ve been lucky to afford a car at all since Dad died and Grandpa moved in with us. But I don’t care. Riding public transit gives me a chance to do my homework, and I like watching the colorful people who “keep Portland weird.” When I’m done at the mall, I catch the MAX—Portland’s light rail system. The train is crowded with commuters cutting out of work early on Friday, so I have to stand. “Hey, Piper,” a guy calls to me. “Uh . hey,” I say. Why’s he even talking to me? I recognized him from the Junior Student Assistant Program, but it’s not like that means we have to be buddies. The train swooshes toward the city center, with riders piling on and off at each stop. Just before it goes across the bridge, it pulls into the Rose Quarter. A herd of people spills out, freeing up some seats, and I nab one. I glance out the window at the Rose Garden Arena, where Jefferson Cooper grins back from his re-election billboard. Among all the electronic signs-in-motion that plaster the sides of buildings and vehicles, the stillness of this one stands out. Doesn’t hurt that it’s four stories tall. Dressed in jeans, an untucked button-down shirt, and a sport coat, Cooper leans against an early Stumptown brick wall. His dark hair is short on the sides and long on top, with that disheveled-on-purpose sort of styling that makes my friend Bailey swoon. His full beard is so closely cropped it almost looks scruffy, and his brown eyes stare out at his constituency with a let’s-go-have-a-beer kind of friendliness. He’s the picture of casual leadership, which is pretty much what you get when you elect a rock star for president. I turn away from the window. Even though it’ll only take ten minutes to get to Oregon Health and Science University up on Pill Hill, I’d like to pull out my laptop and finish the history chapter I’ll be quizzed on tomorrow. But I forgot to download it, and I know the craptastic city Net service isn’t going to let me access the cloud while I’m on the MAX.