He took the jars and left El there to exit the building a few minutes later. When she shut the door behind her, the lock clicked. With the newspaper bundled under her arm, she hurried back to the convent.
No one was sure exactly the day or time when reporters realized their way of life was about to crumble or that a new order would take its place. Miriam, like other journalists, certainly saw disturbing signs, but whatever they reported was like a cork trying to stop a bursting dam. By the time she met Niko that first night, they had all lived through late-night raids and house-to-house searches. The Protectors never said what they were looking for, and if they found something of value, they often conscripted it under some vague rule of threat to the state.
Miriam hoped enough clues would remain to accurately reconstruct what had happened. She knew that history is always being rewritten, and eventually, although it can take many generations, truth emerges grudgingly from behind curtains shut by those who seek to hide it. So she kept on, even after salvaging scattered folders from the wreckage of her office desk after the Protectors had it ransacked by thugs who could not discern waste paper from important records. So they made a great show of scattering everything while never examining anything.
Notes she had smuggled out of her office the night she met Niko showed what had happened before her investigative pieces had ended with a thud when the Regime began to use reporters either as weaponized dirt collectors or propaganda spreaders who were expected to shovel and spread the Regime’s shit.
It began when a small group managed to take control of the great wealth beyond the city by exploiting abundant oil and other mineral reserves. They took advantage of starvation wages, and over time, a small faction led by a vicious but seemingly affable man named Villinkash, who had given himself first the title of General and later, Premier, came to dominate the country’s largest and wealthiest city, which was also its financial center.
Back when he first had been circulating his credentials for office, she and her colleagues referred to him with a smirk as “General Villin.” He made speeches about his service to the country and wore a military jacket studded with medals, although he had never served in any capacity. In the newsroom they used to joke that he got one medal every month when he opened a new cereal box for breakfast.
By pitting group against group, he and his followers drew out the most aggressive and easily controlled factions of the city. These were the ones who felt as if they had been particularly wronged, although they never really articulated who had wronged them or how. Still, Villinkash used a standard playbook on how to divide a country against itself.
His faction took over the banks, co-opting the country’s wealth to hold within a tightly controlled circle. They came to be known as the Overseers. They rallied around Villinkash, who held a strange sway over his followers, so that no terrible act could dispel their worship of him. In addition, he tapped into the belief among enough ordinary people that he could—and would—improve their lives. By the time they realized that they had been duped, it was too late. Whatever self-governing power they’d had was gone like a puff of smoke.
With these two groups behind him, he took control of all the levers of government. He turned the city’s police into a paramilitary force and expanded their numbers by the thousands. With the Overseers’ backing, he took over all businesses, schools, trades, and everything else that had once operated privately and peacefully. Of course he took over all media and reinvented it as a propaganda tool. As this happened, his reputation began to change from affable and charismatic to ruthless and determined. His speeches became more fiery. They ended with salutes and cheers. And always he pointed to the “others” who would take away the rights of his followers.
With the help of the Overseers and the Protectors who ran the practical, day-to-day operations of the new order, he’d seized all government functions and placed them under his control. He had renamed the city “Infinius.” And then the electronic “cleansing” began.
At the same time a glittering high-rise, designed as the height of luxury to house and glorify the people of wealth and influence, rose above all the others at the center of what was called The Ring.
But something went wrong before the dazzling tower was completed.
An ambitious young developer who had visions of a grand future for an influential city looking outward beyond the sea named the skyscraper after himself. The Tower of David, at forty-five stories, had been designed as the tallest of all the high-rises and could be seen from anywhere in the city. Built in stages, the top floors had never been finished, and on the twenty-third floor, a huge flat, cantilevered roof jutted far out, like a bird’s wing over the wide avenue below. The narrower unfinished skeleton led to a second, smaller roof twenty more floors above.
Even its name, emblazoned in two-story golden letters above the entrance, was designed to show the world the importance of its builder. But the handsome, well-toned former athlete, David, became too wealthy and popular. It was rumored that his tower was deeply in debt to the Overseers, who controlled the banks. His bravado and brash public persona made enemies of the wrong people, and one summer solstice before his tower was to have been completed, a tragic fall from its roof ended his life in a heap on the concrete below. The tower was never finished, and with electricity, plumbing, and other necessities never installed, it began to deteriorate.
Almost immediately rumors swirled like a bouillabaisse through the city. One story said David had been eliminated by the relentless Villinkash. It was just the sort of could-be- or might-be-real story Villinkash relished. So he embraced and fostered it. And why not? It enhanced his reputation and encouraged people to fear him.
Was it true? No one ever knew, and by that time, reporters were having a hard time getting anyone to talk. Miriam knew because she’d tried. She’d even had a brief interview with one of the Overseers, a man named Huston, a smooth operator whose own rise was something of a mystery. She’d never found out if he actually knew anything, but by the end of the interview, he had taken her hand in his and looked searchingly into her eyes and asked:
“What do you lack, my dear? I can help you if you need something.”
Too stunned to answer, she stammered some nonsense, and he withdrew his hand. It was amazingly soft, she’d reflect later, and his nails were carefully manicured. He simply smiled benignly at her.
“Here is my card,” he’d said. “Feel free to call on me.”
By then they were living through what later came to be known as The Collapse. It was orchestrated by the Overseers, the Protectors (its generals), the Watchers (its informants), and the Detainers (its armed enforcement). Above them all was Villinkash, well on his way to consolidating his power with one more scheme.
By co-opting the name of his victim, he declared a holiday in David’s honor and established a great and terrifying motorcycle race to honor the city’s favorite son and commemorate his passing. The Race would be held every year on the summer solstice. It would celebrate the glorious rise to power of Villinkash and his Overseers and turn David into a martyr for his cause. His building was left unfinished, and the people took that as both a warning and an invitation. Slowly at first, people with few resources and nowhere to live began to inhabit it. They came first as squatters and then became tenants with no landlord. The Overseers looked the other way, and the Tower of David became a sub-community of its own at the center of The Ring.