2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [34]
Masters didn’t quite know what to do. He was receiving fifty contacts a day. Fifty. He felt sorry for all of these people, but he explained that even if he was willing, he couldn’t get to Los Angeles, as there was no way to travel there. No roads were open.
People begged. One man asked if he could do it over the phone. Walter, who had to have a dark sense of humor to do what he did, actually thought about telling the man to sit in the bath and make toast. But all he really could do was take their information and tell them that when it was okay to travel to Los Angeles he would check in and see how they were doing. Most of them would not be alive by then.
* * *
Brad Miller still could not really comprehend the damage to his condominium complex. He actually was lucky. Being on the first floor, his ceiling came down, but the condo above did not fall on him. A closet, the one where he kept Lola, collapsed, and Brad was sad when he saw her head lying next to her body. Sure, she was a robot, but it was amazing how you became attached to these things. He actually laughed for a moment, thinking what it would look like to a potential burglar to see a headless woman sitting in the kitchen. Now, that would scare them even more.
As he walked around the grounds, Brad saw several units, especially those on the second and third floors, that were leveled. Large solar panels and air-conditioning equipment on the roof that weighed thousands of pounds had fallen through the ceilings into the top-floor apartments.
At night Brad would sit outside on the artificial lawn with some of the other residents who remained, and they compared stories of who they knew was all right and who was not. Brad had not been able to contact Herb or Jack and had no idea if they were even alive. A neighbor he had a small crush on was nowhere to be found. Another man who lived next door had been killed in his sleep.
The scary thing was that all over Southern California, as people were assessing the extraordinary damage, they understood that no one was coming to help them anytime soon. There was just too much devastation. So people helped one another the best they could. If someone still had a room, they would take in an injured person and try to keep him alive. If people had extra food, they would share it. And everyone was on the lookout for looters, who, until the National Guard was fully in position, simply ran wild. The residents who had weapons were now considered the smart ones.
Brad had never bought a rifle, although he had been tempted to when the new laser guns were available for home sale. These fired a beam of light that would burn a hole in someone’s skin from fifty yards. Brad’s friend Herb had bought one but Brad said, “I’ve got a security guard right next to my place. Let him handle the bad guys.”
When the security shack was leveled, the guard just ran away. Brad hoped he at least shot someone on the way out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Brian and Kathy left the Charge N’ Eat and went to the meeting, which neither of them knew anything about.
A new infrastructure had been built up around the electric car. One of the things that really caught on was the modern-day drive-in, known as the Charge N’ Eat. Gasoline could only be sold by the oil companies, but electricity could be sold by anyone, and it was. Gasoline stations had done everything they could over the years to give people something else besides gas—the market, the fast food, the arcade, lottery tickets, anything that could fit—but no one ever wanted to eat in their car sitting in a gas station. Electricity was a different animal.
The first Charge N’ Eat opened in 2016 in Phoenix and was an instant hit. As their cars were charging, customers could order food, and cute roller-skating girls delivered