Beth - Tower Control Center, Underlake

The foundation of any modern city is underpinned by their waste-management solutions. Every single pound of consumable products moved into the city creates a pound of waste, and all of that waste must be extracted at a reasonable price. I’m talking about sewer, wastewater treatment, compost solutions, and even salvage recycling to recover rare minerals from discarded electronics.If you contract with us, we will provide those solutions at a competitive rate and with reliable performance.

We guarantee one-hundred-percent uptime for all major industrial and significant residential areas, with acceptable service to working class areas. But what’s more important, we have a proven track record of ensuring that all of the unsightly issues with waste control are kept out of the sight of the city’s important residents. We wouldn’t want a CEO’s building to suffer from backed up toilets or a full dumpster, now, would we?

Waste Management sales pitch to Major Stephen McNew of Victoria, former British Columbia

Sitting at her console in the control center for the Underlake Sanitation Complex, Beth reflected on how pointless her job was. The entire system above ground was automated. Self-driving sanitation trucks loaded NFC-tagged garbage bins and automatically delivered the trash into the complex,, which was sorted nominally under the control of the company. In reality, gangs the company pretended were independent contractors fought over who got salvage rights to which containers, and the company didn’t bother intruding into the Underlake. They did nothing and saved billions by offloading injury risk onto non-citizens living in the Underlake.

So, Beth sat at her command and control console. The only legitimate part of her job was to monitor atmospheric readouts coming from the venting tower in the center of the Underlake, which her control center sat at the base of. They were the same readings, all day, every day. Methane within a given range, minimal levels of soot indicating no widespread fires, no evidence of explosive residues or unknown volatile compounds.

As she did most days, she nodded off while watching old, pre-Incursion television shows. Right now, she was going through her third watch-through of the old Fallout TV series. Walter Goggins was sexy as hell in a cowboy hat and without a nose.

Beth was started awake by an atmospheric alarm. High levels of soot compounds were detected in the air, localized to the West of the Tower. Heat sensors indicated it was coming from one of the compost pits. Beth toggled a control for automated fire suppression maintenance robots, and went back to nodding off to old television. She was on a science-fiction kick, but post-apocalyptic content was getting a bit old. Perhaps something aspirational next? Star Trek? No, Babylon 5. She’d pick up Babylon 5 next.

Only two more years of this, and her internship would be complete. She’d be able to apply for the management training program with CWM, and then, she’d finally be able to afford her own place. It had been three years since Beth graduated from the University of Victoria’s business school.

Soon, it would all be worth it.

Peter Davies - Port Angeles, Olympic Peninsula

Port Angeles was a cute little town. Back in the day, it was a lumber processing center for logging operations on the Olympic Peninsula. There was even a paper mill and a full-service port for logging exports. After that, Port Angeles was turned into a tidy little tourist area, serving people coming down from Canada and coming out to tour the natural wonder which is the Hoh Rainforest.

After the Antithesis incursions, however, Port Angeles became a different kind of town. One of the last megaprojects of the ailing United States Government was to cooperate with the Canadian government to build two massive seawalls to protect Puget Sound from antithesis infiltration coming from the Pacific Ocean. The Neah Seawall ran from just East of the little town of Neah Bay in Washington to just West of the inlet for Port Renfrew’s harbor on Victoria Island, walling off the precious wildlife which lived within the Sound from consumption by the Antithesis which were always roaming around the Pacific seafloor.

Port Angeles was selected as the closest town of sufficient size to support a Family listening outpost, monitoring not only potential antithesis infiltration across the seawall, but the Hoh Rainforest. Peter was one of four people who worked at this location, with one person on site at all times and a direct line to the ranking local Samurai affiliated with the family, Urchin.

It was a nice gig. The last major incursion in the area had struck the suburbs near to the Cascade mountain range. But there was always something to do. Local wildlife loved messing with the thermal sensor drones which the Family had funded for surveillance of the rainforest, and one of the expensive drones had just gone offline. So, it was time for Pete to take his happy ass into the woods to find out what happened to it. Procedure.

The last reported location of the drone was near the old Glines Canyon Dam. Pete had taken a hovercar to the old Elwha Ranger Station nearby, and picked up some basic armor, arms, and all terrain transportation to see if he could find the drone. After all, it was Class 1 Samurai tech, and the Family couldn’t afford to just let it go to waste.

The last three times this had happened, it had been a mountain lion. They didn’t like the buzzing drones, and sometimes when the drones landed for their daily recharge cycles, the cougars damaged them.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Well, at least it got him out of the office. Pete strapped a handgun to his belt, a SMG to his back, and hopped onto his ATV. The GPS tag for the drone was still active. He’d go locate it, then perhaps have a nice lunch in the world’s only remaining rainforest. It was a shame, what had happened in the Congo and the Amazon, but Pete still had his little slice of heaven.

As he puttered away from the ranger station at a sedate pace, Pete couldn’t help but enjoy the scenery. Dense undergrowth layered the ground, with ancient-looking ferns and mosses coating every surface. Trees towered over him in all directions. You could simply feel the life around you, when you came out here. It was wonderful.

Urchin - Portland, Oregon Territory

Another day, another flare-up. This time, Antithesis were swimming down the river from the sparsely populated areas East of the Cascade mountain range, which runs up the center of the Oregon, Washington, and Columbia territories. This was a problem, because both sides of the river were densely populated.

Luckily, water isn’t compressible. Urchin’s boost jets activated, launching her into the air as she flew over the massive river. Even global warming hadn’t made a dent in this behemoth. She began to subvocalize to her AI.

“Lekhmay, set me up with concussion satchels. Nothing too complicated. I’m going to drop them on the bottom of the river. Can you calculate the optimal times for detonation to mulch Antithesis while not blasting the city away with a giant wave?”

Affirmative. I will remote control the detonations based on current conditions.

“Great. Let’s do this.”

She looked down on the twin neighborhoods of the megacity, separated by a river, with dozens of bridges arching above it. On those bridges, and on walls set up on the riverbank, were concentrated thousands of PMC soldiers. They fired a continuous stream from hundreds of crew-served weapons into swarms of Antithesis moving up from the river. Laser-based point defense weapons Urchin had placed on every rooftop years ago blazed towards the sky, lancing hundreds of Model Ones every second.

She got to work, dropping satchel after satchel in a random pattern, over the river. It was a good day.

Rick Baker, Director of Security Operations, Cascadia Waste Management, Downtown Seattle

Mr. Baker, a wiry yet muscular man in his 50’s, frowned at his computer. The expensive, purpose-built AI tasked with monitoring the security situation in the Underlake had flagged multiple potential trouble spots. A few fires had been started in the Pits by some vandal driving a beat-up, ground-based pickup truck without a roof. That wasn’t a big deal. Automated fire suppression systems should be able to handle those. Some old storage container had exploded, probably from the locals doing something stupid.

More concerning were the groups of people moving towards the main sewage treatment facility. Rick had tried pinging the facility staff, but the last response had been about an hour ago and was incoherent. Now, temperature levels had begun to increase slightly in the facility’s biomass processing center, and automated controls were not responding.

What’s worse, is that the people moving towards the sewage plant were simply moving oddly, as if they were all drunk. Half wore the bootleg breathing units common to null-citizens employed in the Underlake, but half had them hanging off their heads or absent entirely. Strange.

Rick picked up his desk phone - one of the rare landlines still in use, for security purposes - and dialed the quick-response security force contracted to backup facility operations. They usually responded to attempted carjackings of garbage haulers, but they’d be useful for this, as well.

“Vice President Baker. What do you have for us?” A gruff voice responded, after barely half a second.

“The sewage treatment plant has gone dark. Reason unknown. Hundreds of null-citizens are moving towards the facility. Please investigate for a possible Case Yellow. Secure the facility, diagnose the failure, and employ necessary measures against null-citizens attempting to infiltrate.”

“Yes, sir. Are you requesting a full deployment?” the voice responded, in a matter-of-fact tone.

“No. Nature of threat is not confirmed. I’m requesting a partial deployment, along existing contingency plans for riot control operations. Bring your masks.”

“Affirmative. I’ll assemble the teams. We will be in touch.” The line went dead. The Nintendo QRF were commonly contracted for backup corporate security. They were the best of the best, short of contracting a dangerous Samurai or an outright mercenary outfit, and had been extremely useful in enforcing CWM's property rights in the past.

Rick tabbed a button on his desk. “Tabitha, please move our security outlook in the Underlake complex to Case Yellow, Stage One. Inform any citizens with active augs, and tighten our firewall. Tell IT that by tighten, I mean that I don’t want a single byte of data coming out of the Underlake unless it goes through this office. And make sure the teams at the air intakes are prepared, just in case.”

His executive assistant responded with a polite and firm, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

Rick settled back in his desk, massaging his temples. Using null-citizens for cheap labor had definitely helped the bottom line of the company, but it led to a constant stream of problems for security. Someone had probably stolen critical equipment from the sewage plant again. It would be the second time in three years that the plant had been shut down by vandals looking for salvage.

No matter what, he knew that short of an Antithesis incursion appearing from nowhere, every living thing in the Underlake moved at his whim, and it would be kept that way. Even if it was a pain in the ass to remind these people of their place.

Something bothered him, though. Rick’s eyes returned to the viewscreen showing the group of people moving towards the sewage plant. It didn’t make sense. The best salvage was at the recycling facility - -which is why most of CWM’s security personnel were clustered there. Why were these people moving towards the sewage plant in the open? And why weren’t some of them wearing masks?