13 The trip out to Arthur Chin is uneventful. Bullet trains continuously run express between the airport and individual stops in the city. You step into a pod and wait for the train to approach. The train unlatches its pod filled with riders looking to exit, even as it latches onto your waiting pod, which is lowered onto the train as it reverses direction and leaves the station. Boarding is smooth, lightning fast, and in just minutes you are at the airport— no wait, no fuss. The main entrance to the terminal is sparse, clean and well lit. There is no room for shadows, no room for error or quick moves—nothing clandestine can happen here. The police are a constant presence—talking into their radios , their heads swerving at all times, looking for anything off, wrong or inconsistent with how they expect things to run: orderly, smooth and stress-free. I stop for a moment, distracted by several police officers running toward a lone bag sitting off near the end of the walkway outside the main entrance. As I stare I feel a shove from behind, look back and find myself staring into the gridded mask of another officer. “Move along,” he says calmly, “now.” I head into Arthur Chin. Arthur Chin is no longer an airport of the early part of the century, a place where families gathered with their bags and children and dogs and noise as they headed off on vacations to beaches and amusement parks and relatives ’ homes, and business men and women weaved in between them, suits sharp, bags small and packed tight, all efficiency, no fat, no noise, no fuss. O R P H A N S 44 Now you go to the airport for three reasons. If you are a member of a connected family—the 1-Percenters as they are now known, families with money and power, families who recognized that the country’s debts would come due eventually and that it was better to shift allegiances east—then you still vacation. 1-Percenters charter private flights through China Southern Airlines to vacation spots primarily domestic , occasionally abroad, and always owned, secured and run by the Corporation. They are safe havens filled with sprawling hotels, entertainment and exotic foods—all things you know once existed in some sense for everyone. But not anymore because they are now only available, and only accessible, to those who work behind the scenes. These are the people pulling levers, moving money, making decisions, yet hidden away—there, but not; unseen, yet still affecting every moment of every day and every decision you make. A small pack of armored soldiers run by me: a group of ten men and women perfectly synchronized in lock step, with arms pumping and machine guns bouncing on their backs with each step. Soldiers are endlessly deployed from Arthur Chin to tamp down insurrections and uprisings by militia groups and nativists in places like Wyoming or Maine. Areas left for dead—abandoned to the remaining inhabitants, nature and time. This is the second reason why someone might come to Arthur Chin. Arthur Chin is the central deployment hub for all things military—the Midwest now the dominant region of the country due to its isolation and location far away from oceans and the myriad things that cannot be wholly controlled by the Corporation. [107.23.85.179] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 10:47 GMT) B E N TA N Z E R 45 After the soldiers pass, I see two or three other travelers like myself getting ready for travel to the stars: alone, no family, light bags, no guns or uniforms. And this is the third reason someone comes to Arthur Chin—Arthur Chin is home to the remaining fleet of retired space shuttles. The space shuttles are no longer used for any practical scientific purpose, but instead are now used for the occasional space tourist, though more likely for salesmen like me, doing the work of the Corporation and trying to move property in far away worlds. As I step into the terminal, the police watching the entrance put their hands in the air to remind me and the guy arriving at the same moment as me that we need to stop before entering any further. All the police wear black from head to toe, steel-toed boots and helmets with masks of intersecting carbon fiber grids that cover their faces like a sieve, filtering everything that comes...