The shrill beeping of the alarm coming from his phone jolted John awake. He tapped the off button and stared up at the white popcorn ceiling of his one-bedroom apartment, the same ceiling he’d been waking up to for the past two years.
With a sigh, he hauled himself out of bed and walked across the contractor-grade beige carpeting to the bathroom. As he brushed his teeth, he watched himself in the medicine cabinet mirror. Heavy bags under his eyes, a weekend’s worth of stubble. He looked as weary as he felt. It wasn’t just that he didn’t get enough sleep. It was something else, a tiredness that came from deep inside him. Another man, a more religious man, might say that it came from his spirit.
John shook his head and spat out the toothpaste into the sink. Enough philosophy.
After a quick shower and a shave, John pulled on a pair of khakis and a blue button-down shirt, the standard business casual uniform every other man in his office wore every day. He grabbed a protein bar from the kitchen and filled up his water bottle before heading out.
As he locked his apartment door behind him, John braced himself for the morning commute ahead. The subway ride was the worst part, but the walk to the subway station was a close second. He had a special route he liked to take to avoid the worst of the street encampments, but some mornings, the addicts would be in a new spot, sleeping off their high slumped over on their feet, like living statues.
The sidewalks were full of people like him, office workers pretending not to notice the tents, the addicts, the needles, and the occasional pile of human excrement. John moved through the crowds with his gaze set out a hundred feet, avoiding eye contact, and ducked down the stairs to the subway station.
Pay attention, he reminded himself. Things got weird once you went underground. Maybe there was something unnatural about it, to the human mind, something particularly troubling about being packed in a tube zooming through a tunnel with a couple hundred strangers. Or maybe it was just that the addicts liked to sleep it off on the platforms and the trains. Either way, it paid to be extra cautious down here.
The screech of the subway train arriving jolted him from his thoughts. As the mass of bodies pressed forward on the platform, John steeled himself and stepped onto the crowded car. A metallic voice reminded the commuters that the doors were closing, and then they were moving.
Packed in tight, swaying with the motion of the train, his mind wandered to his job: he’d been working as a data analyst for an insurance company since he’d gotten out of the army. Mostly just sifting through spreadsheets looking for patterns. After serving in military intelligence, it was mind-numbingly dull work. But it paid the bills. John wasn’t sure if it was reasonable to hope for something else. He was lucky, wasn’t he? His bland apartment and boring job were more than a lot of people had.
He longed for something more engaging, something that made him feel like he was making a real difference. Something to make him feel alive.
But sometimes he wondered if he was just a man out of time, wishing for the kind of meaning and adventure that hadn’t existed for a century or more. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the dark subway car window, tunnel walls racing by outside: a thirty-something white man, a little over average height, of strong but not hugely muscular build. In the reflection, his expression was cold, dark, unhappy. John thought of a photo tacked to his refrigerator door with a magnet, him and Tom and the rest of his team, sitting in the shade cast by a guard tower in the desert, bright white grins in dirty, tanned faces. He’d never been more uncomfortable than he had been while deployed. But dammit if he didn’t feel happier back then, somehow.
The subway car swayed as it emerged above ground, providing a brief flash of the city skyline before plunging back into another dark tunnel.
John's phone buzzed in his pocket as it connected to the above ground cell towers. He fished it out, glancing at the screen. A text from Tom.
Hey brother, how’s the grind treating you this fine Monday?
John typed a reply.
About to go do battle with spreadsheets, man. How about you?
He didn’t expect a reply until the phone connected to the next cell tower, which wouldn’t be for half a mile. He slid the phone back into his pocket.
He and Tom had been through the shit together, forging a bond few could understand. John hadn’t realized that until well after he’d gotten out. Other people just didn’t get it, and John hadn’t been able to connect with anyone since then. There was a way you got along with a man after you’d watched his back and he’d watched yours that was beyond mere “liking”, beyond friendship. Something closer to brotherhood, where it didn’t matter if you even liked each other or agreed about which TV show was good or which celebrity was hotter.
John wished he and Tom lived closer together, but John was in NYC and Tom had gone back home to Los Angeles. Sometimes John thought that Tom’s occasional texts were the last thread keeping him sane, as civilian city life drove him deeper and deeper into alienation.
The car screeched to a halt at the next stop. On the platform a disheveled man stumbled past commuters, unzipped, and pissed on the ground. Commuters nearby moved away, averted their eyes nervously, pretending not to notice. Nobody did anything, nobody said anything, nobody called for help. The disheveled man tucked his dick back in his pants and zipped up, then walked off. The subway car started moving again.
Sometimes John felt like he was going crazy. Was this life now? You were just supposed to accept that your city was full of drunks pissing on the platform, addicts passed out on the subway cars, tent camps lining the sidewalks?
Stolen novel; please report.
He didn’t get it. But the pressure to do nothing, to pretend you didn’t notice, was intense. Just the other month, a man had gotten arrested for intervening when a drunk hassled some female commuters, and charged with assault. It was like the system was sending a message, and the message was that you should just look away.
At last, the car pulled into John’s stop. Trudging up the station steps, he braced himself for another day. As he reached the street level, his phone buzzed again.
Tom had responded:
Last night I was leaving work and I watched a dude drop trou and take a dump on the sidewalk. Thinking of getting out, if only I knew where to go. Hah, right, like there’s somewhere to go…
John frowned at his phone, and tried to chuckle. That was funny, right?
***
After work.
John pushed through the heavy metal doors of his gym, the clanging of weights and smell of sweat immediately enveloping him. He nodded at the dude in the first squat rack, who nodded back. They’d never even spoken, but they saw each other here most every night after work. John imagined that many of the men — and the handful of women — who regularly worked out here were like him: trapped in office jobs that were slowly killing them, coming here to push themselves and sweat to remember what sincere effort felt like.
He headed straight for the bench press, loading the plates on the bar by muscle memory. Lying back on the bench, he gripped the cold metal bar overhead, inhaling deeply, and pushing up. The strain in his muscles felt good, a reminder of his physical strength; strength, the opposite of aimlessness.
Fifteen reps, three sets, re-rack the weights, wipe down the bench, move to the next station.
John moved through his regular Monday workout. The exertion focused his consciousness, providing a temporary sense of purpose. For these brief moments in the gym, he had a mission: defined, difficult, but achievable.
45 minutes later, John toweled off, muscles burning pleasantly. He felt good, the way he always felt after a workout. But as he walked out into the city air, the feeling faded. He was still the same man, wandering without direction. The gym offered only fleeting fulfillment, a facsimile of the meaning he truly craved.
***
Back in his apartment, John sat down on the couch with a to-go bowl he’d picked up on the way home, steak and garlic green beans over rice. He flipped on the TV, letting the nightly newsfeed of outrage and dysfunction pour over him. There was a new scandal this week, something to do with the tens of thousands of illegal migrants governors of border states had shipped up to the city over the past months. The news camera scrolled past thousands of men sitting on sidewalks, waiting for city services, before cutting to local politicians spreading the blame around as far as they could.
As John watched, he felt a familiar frustration rising inside him.
"What are we doing?" He muttered aloud. He barely recognized the city he had grown up in, the America he had enlisted to serve — and he had enlisted to serve, as corny as that was these days. The America he fought for seemed to be slipping away, leaving nothing but loud and proud mediocrity and corruption in its wake. It was as though few cared enough to take action, and even if you did care, the system did its best to numb you out on entertainment and junk food instead.
Bread and circuses, John thought. Tom was a history buff, and liked to bring that old canard up, except he did it in Latin.
Panem et circenses. That’s how you keep the people pacified while you loot a great empire’s corpse.
There had to be another way. John knew he couldn't keep living like this, numb and half asleep while the world crumbled. There had to be more. A renewed purpose. A way to make a difference again.
He would find it. He had to believe that. The alternative was too bleak to contemplate.
On the TV screen, the talking head changed the subject, switching from the city being overrun by migrants, to an upbeat soft news story about the promise of free real estate. John was barely paying attention, mind still preoccupied with thoughts of his country falling apart.
But something the talking head said caught enough of his attention that he sat up and looked closely at the screen.
“…nearly free real estate in rust belt cities! If you have the cash, and the DIY knowledge, that is.”
The short report went on, explaining that various rust belt cities had taken over abandoned houses in distressed neighborhoods, and would sell them to people for next to nothing, as long as the buyer agreed to renovate the property.
Expecting nothing, John flipped off the TV and grabbed his laptop, looking up the website the news had mentioned.
He scrolled through the database of cheap properties in distressed neighborhoods. One listing caught his eye — a vacant home in a city upstate, near the finger lakes.
John clicked through the photos of the decaying house. Shattered windows, peeling paint, a sagging porch, half the treads missing from the front steps. The house was in a very bad shape, much worse than the optimistic news item had made it seem. This house was a total gut job waiting to happen, needing tens of thousands of dollars of work, not a free house.
But for some reason, studying the images, John felt a kind of optimism in his chest.
Yes, a total gut job. But that might be the same as a new beginning, if you looked at it right. A chance to build something. To do something new. To make a stand. His imagination ran way out of in front of him, envisioning a group of like-minded men, veterans, patriots, tough-minded men who just needed a mission again. They could transform a house like that. They could transform a whole community.
John leaned back on the couch, hope struggling against cynicism.
This was dumb, he thought. Yeah, he had money in the bank, probably enough to take time off and bankroll restoring an abandoned house in a shitty neighborhood in a shitty city, if that’s what he really wanted to do.
But then what?
He closed the laptop and went to throw away his dinner detritus, trying to shake off the image of the abandoned house.
***
Later, as he lay in bed, he couldn’t sleep. He felt energized in a bizarre way, and the image of the abandoned house kept flashing in his mind’s eye.
John gave up and flipped on the bedside lamp, taking in the bland surroundings of his apartment. The beige carpet, flatpack furniture, and empty walls suddenly felt confining. This place was like his life, he realized: steady, tidy, but devoid of real humanity, of community, of meaning.
He hesitated, then pulled out his laptop and opened it up. The website listing abandoned buildings was still up, and John clicked on the listing of the derelict house again.
The listing claimed that the roof was “structurally sound” and it needed only “minor electrical repairs” to be habitable while you restored it. John shook his head. From his own minimal DIY experience he suspected that this was an optimistic assessment. But there was something about the house that spoke to him. It was structure that was beaten up, but not defeated.
He clicked through the images again, and realization dawned. This could be a mission, a righteous struggle. Not another year of cubicle living, but a fight on the front lines, part of the battle for America’s future.
A spark of excitement flickered to life in his chest.
This was crazy, he thought. The listing said you had to have proof of 60k in cash before they’d sell you the house for a thousand bucks. And John had that. But… that was crazy, right?
Yes, he decided. It was crazy.
The kind of crazy he had once been, back when he was an idealistic 20-year-old joining the Army because he wanted to do what was right. And he’d been happier than, hadn’t he? Struggling alongside other men?
Conflicting emotions fought inside him. Part of him clung to the comfort of routine. But another, deeper part of him yearned to break free of his life’s dull constraints, to once again find a mission.
With a choked laugh of disbelief, John closed the laptop again, and picked up his phone.
He texted Tom.
Buddy, I think I’m gonna do something crazy. Have you ever heard of these programs where you can buy a shithole house in a shithole city, for cheap?
He knew he wouldn’t get an answer. The time zone difference meant that this was the time when Tom was at his own gym, doing his own workout.
John lay back in bed and clicked off the bedside lamp. As he drifted off to sleep, images of a renewed rust belt community played through his mind — tidy working-class houses, women smiling from their front porches, kids playing in the streets.
It was an impossible dream, yes.
But it was also just the fight he had been waiting for.