Chương 35: Chapter 34: The Sandbox (08/16/1983)

DATE: Tuesday, August 16, 1983 LOCATION: Imperial Valley, California LOCAL TIME: 01: 00 PM PST The desert heat made the air above the alkaline dirt shimmer like water. I sat in the bed of a Ford F-250, pushing a Tonka bulldozer back and forth, pretending to play. Fifty yards away, under a canvas canopy, Buckminster Fuller stood studying a large topographical map. After a long silence, Bucky turned toward me, leaning on his cane.

"Why are you doing this, Chad?" he asked.

"Why are you so focused on buying all this border land?" I set the toy truck down and walked over to him.

"Because one day soon, it's going to be nearly impossible to build anything big in this country. Too many rules. Too many people who can stop you. So we have to own the land before that happens." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Bucky's eyes narrowed slightly.

"And the border wall?" I nodded.

"Reagan's going to want one. We'll build it for him—cheap. We'll even pay for it ourselves. In exchange, we keep the land the wall sits on." Bucky was quiet for a moment, then asked the real question.

"So why exactly do we want to build a border wall?" I looked him in the eye.

"It isn't about the wall," I said quietly.

"It's about what we put inside it." Bucky's eyebrows went up. I tapped the map where the border ran.

"Think about the Panama Canal. Massive revenue, but slow and inefficient. What if we built a high-speed freight system straight across the border instead? Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico in hours instead of days." I traced a straight line across the map with my finger.

"The wall becomes the spine. Inside it we run rail, aqueducts, power lines… and vacuum tubes for data. Whoever controls that speed controls the future." Bucky stared at the map, then back at me.

"You're talking about leveling mountains to make the grades work," he said slowly. I didn't blink.

"Yes. We don't go around the land. We reshape it. The mountains give us the material we need to build the corridor." Bucky went very still, his hand tightening on his cane. For a long moment he simply looked at me, the weight of what I was suggesting settling between us. Finally he exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh, almost a sigh.

"God help us," he muttered.