Three First Names

Iowa Hill: Episode Seven

A low-level stooge named Jonas arrives at ten each morning in a paddle boat to fetch Austin from his flat and take him over to the Tower where the new center of the world is. The pumps have kept the worst of the flooding at bay, but Austin figured they’d never get back to dry ground again. Of that he had become certain. The city dripped constantly with either a mist or a deluge; nothing but a solid sheath of gray skies, day or night. Nothing approximating seasons. And it was hot half the time, cold the rest. Austin felt like he woke up half the mornings in Seattle, the other half in Kauai. Except it was dingy and grim all the time, regardless of the temperature. The upside, he guessed, was that no matter where he lived now he had a waterfront view.

But the stench was still horrific.

Body detail had been dragging corpses from the city for months, but it seemed that there was no end to the rotting destruction of this town. Austin wanted nothing more than to take the closest floating object and paddle his way to anywhere else. But Mark had made that impossible.

Mark.

Austin had heard that he was some insignificant, Lower Haight street freak before the Flux. Ah but how the Dark Ages of humanity love to give ascendancy to the worst hiding among us. And since here they are at the bitter end, well, you couldn't have chosen a better candidate.

Mark the Glorious. Mark the Bold. Mark the Insane.

When the Flux ripped their city apart and the waters rushed in, Mark rose from his dens in the bowels of Haight Street to rally a cadre of future-core hacktivists. Austin knew about their existence before the Flux, but it wasn't like he hung out with them. Goddamn, antideluvian freaks, with their body tweaks and their hallucinogenic sex frenzies. There were rumors that they had figured out a "greener" way to power their grids. Hydrogen cells, solar and wind, wave derivatives – apparently these weren't advanced enough for them. Jay always swore they ran their CPUs on sex, drugs and rock and roll. Austin figured he was being hilarious, as usual. Turns out, Jay wasn't far off.

Like was said before, the waters rushed in. The sea walls failed. Something had to be done. Austin would have voted for getting on a barge and getting the hell out of Dodge, but he was the lone voice in the wilderness. Some escaped, Austin was certain of that. Before things got really weird there were those that procured what craft were available and braved the storms to get to whatever else there might be elsewhere. Austin was too busy hunkering down and waiting for things to get better he supposed. He guessed it served him right. By the time he realized how bad things were going to get it was much too late. Much, much too late.

Devon, another surviving code monkey, told this story to Austin about Mark around the table at a club one night, known as The Red Door. He’d been drinking smoked salmon flavored vodka all night, so Austin was guessing his judgment was a tad impaired, which maybe it had been before that because, dude, smoked salmon flavored vodka. But to be fair, none of them guessed how fucking dangerous Mark was before that. Here’s where they began to catch a clue.

“Yeah, I knew Mark before the Flux,” said Devon, slurring only slightly. “I was staying in a crappy little flat on Lower Haight, just off Divisadero. Sunday mornings we’d wander down to a coffee shop for a cup or two. Check out the hot baristas with their inked sleeves and their tight little dreads. At that point he was just this loud shit-head who took up the back corner with his posse of minions, talking shit and stinking up the place with his Don Lino Habanitos. He used to spout off about the greatness of Ché, how misunderstood fucking Kim Jong Un had been, and how the best way to save the planet was by a violent Green revolution.”

It started to get quiet around us in the club, but Devon didn’t seem to notice.

“Dude, ‘Blood for Trees’ was his favorite fucking slogan.” Devon’s laugh was a bit too shrill. People started leaving the club, the bartender tried turning up the music a bit.