I originally thought it was a bit dramatic, but the results were undeniably successful. Despite the population decrease, traffic had somehow gotten dramatically worse. My dad’s theory is that people were finally getting back to doing what they did before, but he’s as new around here as I am, so it’s hard for me to take him too seriously.
My mom’s been around here forever, and she still hasn’t adjusted. She still gets squeamish at the thought of leaving the house even though the rules are more than clear that she never actually did anything punishably wrong. Still, the few years she spent working as a receptionist at Intuit leave her mind uneasy. She said that the traffic comes from people no longer paying tolls and just taking laps around the bridges. This was one of the first things Dad and I did together, so it adds up to me.
It was amazing what finally did them in, the step too far that caused the new rules. Restaurants had been too expensive to go out to for a while, the water toxic and slightly green for as long as I could remember, sports and events could only be afforded by guys dressed business casual, but it was the Net Zero Cities that made people draw the line.
The governor recently declared, in order to continue economic growth at the rate we had become accustomed, Net Zero Cities were being built to house the smartest and most forward thinking minds of a generation. The people who ran the technology companies, their funders, their tech-based employees, all had access to the Cities. They lived, worked, shopped, and did basically everything in their carbon-neutral containments.
‘We have reached a turning point,’ Thomas Dundee, president of the Net Zero Cities Council explained to us all, ‘Where progress cannot continue within society. Where the creators and the builders of a new world cannot achieve desired results while being disaffected by the downtrodden. The poor, the drug addicted, the laziest, dirtiest, non-producers will never create value as they currently exist.’ Sweat was billowing down his face, he was visibly emotional. ‘But, as human beings, we cannot allow the lowest among us to be without value. Progress! To create a world where even the slimy– least gifted among us can be a valuable member of a highly functional and equit…’
The explanation was about five minutes long and aired on TV nightly during commercial breaks. The governor sat next to Mr. Dundee and a collection of the more important Silicon Valley CEOs littered the room behind them. Net Zero Cities were a first of their kind economic sanctuary for the most productive people of our time. It was meant to give them a relief from the drudge of day-to-day life and allow them to maximize their potential without having to focus on problems of people who did not ‘in any meaningful way add substantial value to their own lives, let alone those of others.’
Despite some public unease about the Cities, there was virtually no debate. Global warming pressed on, each summer hotter and winter more confusing than the one proceeding it. My dad bought — hook, line, and sinker — the pitch from the Net Zero Cities Council. He read the science, and he trusted it. He didn’t like the exclusivity of the project, but they were only annexing the souther part of the panhandle, where no one really went anyways. Sure some people would be displaced, but climate change was going to displace those people anyways, the Council reminded him nightly. This was the only way. Mom was more hesitant. She worked with these people, she said, and they couldn’t always be trusted to work as they say they will. She she too had read the science too and knew this was our best bet, even if there were unavoidable problems with the plan.
I remember most people at school thinking the Cities were a good idea. That’s what their parents had told them. That’s what my parents had told me. Nowadays, I can’t think of anyone who, publicly at least, acknowledges how they first felt—it’s like everyone collectively agreed to forget.
The tide of public opinion turned quickly against the Cities. This coincided directly with the violence, somehow the only thing the Council was completely unprepared for. The annexed area was incredibly vulnerable with water to two sides of it and a densely populated area directly to the north. People came in droves and they didn’t stop for days. I don’t remember any of the organizing taking place, and my parents never mentioned it to me, but I stopped going to school for a while and only returned after the Cities were destroyed.
Sometimes I hear rumblings that it went too far, but it’s been nice since. There’s still poverty, it’s still dirty, but it feels more open. After a while it was formalized, and only the people invited to live in the Net Zeroes lost their lives. On the one year anniversary of the event I someone plastered my school with
don’t just think that they know best,
kill a motherfucker in a patagonia vest.
their progress and greed has turned you sour?
don’t let it kid, blow up the salesforce tower!
