Arthur Sinclair's 1st Interview

TAOS, NEW MEXICO

 [Arthur Sinclair, Junior, is the picture of an old-world patrician:
tall, lean, with close-cropped white hair and an affected Harvard
accent. He speaks into the ether, rarely making eye contact or pausing
for questions. During the war, Mister Sinclair was director of the U.S.
government’s newly formed DeStRes, or Department of Strategic
Resources.]

 I don’t know who first thought of the acronym “DeStRes” or if they
consciously knew how much it sounded like “distress,” but it certainly
could not have been more appropriate. Establishing a defensive line at
the Rocky Mountains might have created a theoretical “safe zone,” but in
 reality that zone consisted mainly of rubble and refugees. There was
starvation, disease, homelessness in the millions. Industry was in
shambles, transportation and trade had evaporated, and all of this was
compounded by the living dead both assaulting the Rocky Line and
festering within our safe zone. We had to get our people on their feet
again—clothed, fed, housed, and back to work—otherwise this supposed
safe zone was only forestalling the inevitable. That was why the DeStRes
 was created, and, as you can imagine, I had to do a lot of on-the-job
training.

 Those first months, I can’t tell you how much information I had to cram
 into this withered old cortex; the briefings, the inspection tours…when
 I did sleep, it was with a book under my pillow, each night a new one,
from Henry J. Kaiser to Vo Nguyen Giap. I needed every idea, every word,
 every ounce of knowledge and wisdom to help me fuse a fractured
landscape into the modern American war machine. If my father had been
alive, he probably would have laughed at my frustration. He’d been a
staunch New Dealer, working closely with FDR as comptroller of New York
State. He used methods that were almost Marxist in nature, the kind of
collectivization that would make Ayn Rand leap from her grave and join
the ranks of the living dead. I’d always rejected the lessons he’d tried
 to impart, running as far away as Wall Street to shut them out. Now I
was wracking my brains to remember them. One thing those New Dealers did
 better than any generation in American history was find and harvest the
 right tools and talent.

 Tools and talent?

 A term my son had heard once in a movie. I found it described our
reconstruction efforts rather well. “Talent” describes the potential
workforce, its level of skilled labor, and how that labor could be
utilized effectively. To be perfectly candid, our supply of talent was
at a critical low. Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy,
so complex and highly specialized that each individual could only
function within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized structure.
 You should have seen some of the “careers” listed on our first
employment census; everyone was some version of an “executive,” a
“representative,” an “analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited
to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis.
We needed carpenters, masons, machinists, gunsmiths. We had those
people, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary. The first
labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian
 workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation. We
required a massive job retraining program. In short, we needed to get a
lot of white collars dirty.

 It was slow going. Air traffic was nonexistent, roads and rail lines
were a shambles, and fuel, good Lord, you couldn’t find a tank of gas
between Blaine, Washington, and Imperial Beach, California. Add to this
the fact that prewar America not only had a commuter-based
infrastructure, but that such a method also allowed for severe levels of
 economic segregation. You would have entire suburban neighborhoods of
upper-middle-class professionals, none of whom had possessed even the
basic know-how to replace a cracked window. Those with that knowledge
lived in their own blue-collar “ghettos,” an hour away in prewar auto
traffic, which translated to at least a full day on foot. Make no
mistake, bipedal locomotion was how most people traveled in the
beginning.

 Solving this problem—no, challenge, there are no problems—was the
refugee camps. There were hundreds of them, some parking-lot small, some
 spreading for miles, scattered across the mountains and coast, all
requiring government assistance, all acute drains on rapidly diminishing
 resources. At the top of my list, before I tackled any other challenge,
 these camps had to be emptied. Anyone F-6 but physically able became
unskilled labor: clearing rubble, harvesting crops, digging graves. A
lot of graves needed to be dug. Anyone A-1, those with war-appropriate
skills, became part of our CSSP, or Community Self-Sufficiency Program. A
 mixed group of instructors would be tasked with infusing these
sedentary, overeducated, desk-bound, cubicle mice with the knowledge
necessary to make it on their own.

 It was an instant success. Within three months you saw a marked drop in
 requests for government aid. I can’t stress how vital this was to
victory. It allowed us to transition from a zero-sum, survival-based
economy, into full-blown war production. This was the National
Reeducation Act, the organic outgrowth of the CSSP. I’d say it was the
largest jobs training program since the Second World War, and easily the
 most radical in our history.

 You’ve mentioned, on occasion, the problems faced by the NRA…

 I was getting to that. The president gave me the kind of power I needed
 to meet any physical or logistical challenge. Unfortunately, what
neither he nor anyone on Earth could give me was the power to change the
 way people thought. As I explained, America was a segregated workforce,
 and in many cases, that segregation contained a cultural element. A
great many of our instructors were first-generation immigrants. These
were the people who knew how to take care of themselves, how to survive
on very little and work with what they had. These were the people who
tended small gardens in their backyards, who repaired their own homes,
who kept their appliances running for as long as mechanically possible.
It was crucial that these people teach the rest of us to break from our
comfortable, disposable consumer lifestyle even though their labor had
allowed us to maintain that lifestyle in the first place.

 Yes, there was racism, but there was also classism. You’re a
high-powered corporate attorney. You’ve spent most of your life
reviewing contracts, brokering deals, talking on the phone. That’s what
you’re good at, that’s what made you rich and what allowed you to hire a
 plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to keep talking on the
phone. The more work you do, the more money you make, the more peons you
 hire to free you up to make more money. That’s the way the world works.
 But one day it doesn’t. No one needs a contract reviewed or a deal
brokered. What it does need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is
your teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was scarier than the
living dead.

 Once, on a fact-finding tour through LA, I sat in the back of a
reeducation lecture. The trainees had all held lofty positions in the
entertainment industry, a mélange of agents, managers, “creative
executives,” whatever the hell that means. I can understand their
resistance, their arrogance. Before the war, entertainment had been the
most valued export of the United States. Now they were being trained as
custodians for a munitions plant in Bakersfield, California. One woman, a
 casting director, exploded. How dare they degrade her like this! She
had an MFA in Conceptual Theater, she had cast the top three grossing
sitcoms in the last five seasons and she made more in a week than her
instructor could dream of in several lifetimes! She kept addressing that
 instructor by her first name. “Magda,” she kept saying, “Magda, enough
already. Magda, please.” At first I thought this woman was just being
rude, degrading the instructor by refusing to use her title. I found out
 later that Mrs. Magda Antonova used to be this woman’s cleaning lady.
Yes, it was very hard for some, but a lot of them later admitted that
they got more emotional satisfaction from their new jobs than anything
closely resembling their old ones.

 I met one gentleman on a coastal ferry from Portland to Seattle. He had
 worked in the licensing department for an advertising agency,
specifically in charge of procuring the rights to classic rock songs for
 television commercials. Now he was a chimney sweep. Given that most
homes in Seattle had lost their central heat and the winters were now
longer and colder, he was seldom idle. “I help keep my neighbors warm,”
he said proudly. I know it sounds a little too Norman Rockwell, but I
hear stories like that all the time. “You see those shoes, I made them,”
 “That sweater, that’s my sheep’s wool,” “Like the corn? My garden.”
That was the upshot of a more localized system. It gave people the
opportunity to see the fruits of their labor, it gave them a sense of
individual pride to know they were making a clear, concrete contribution
 to victory, and it gave me a wonderful feeling that I was part of that.
 I needed that feeling. It kept me sane for the other part of my job.

 So much for “talent.” “Tools” are the weapons of war, and the
industrial and logistical means by which those weapons are constructed.

 [He swivels in his chair, motioning to a picture above his desk. I lean
 closer and see that it’s not a picture but a framed label.]

 Ingredients:

 molasses from the United States

 anise from Spain

 licorice from France

 vanilla (bourbon) from Madagascar

 cinnamon from Sri Lanka

 cloves from Indonesia

 wintergreen from China

 pimento berry oil from Jamaica

 balsam oil from Peru

 And that’s just for a bottle of peacetime root beer. We’re not even
talking about something like a desktop PC, or a nuclear-powered aircraft
 carrier.

 Ask anyone how the Allies won the Second World War. Those with very
little knowledge might answer that it was our numbers or generalship.
Those without any knowledge might point to techno-marvels like radar or
the atom bomb. [Scowls.] Anyone with the most rudimentary understanding
of that conflict will give you three real reasons: first, the ability to
 manufacture more materiel: more bullets, beans, and bandages than the
enemy; second, the natural resources available to manufacture that
materiel; and third, the logistical means to not only transport those
resources to the factories, but also to transport the finished products
out to the front lines. The Allies had the resources, industry, and
logistics of an entire planet. The Axis, on the other hand, had to
depend on what scant assets they could scrape up within their borders.
This time we were the Axis. The living dead controlled most of the
world’s landmass, while American war production depended on what could
be harvested within the limits of the western states specifically.
Forget raw materials from safe zones overseas; our merchant fleet was
crammed to the decks with refugees while fuel shortages had dry-docked
most of our navy.

 We had some advantages. California’s agricultural base could at least
erase the problem of starvation, if it could be restructured. The citrus
 growers didn’t go quietly, neither did the ranchers. The beef barons
who controlled so much prime potential farmland were the worst. Did you
ever hear of Don Hill? Ever see the movie Roy Elliot did on him? It was
when the infestation hit the San Joaquin Valley, the dead swarming over
his fences, attacking his cattle, tearing them apart like African driver
 ants. And there he was in the middle of it all, shooting and hollering
like Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun. I dealt with him openly and
honestly. As with everyone else, I gave him the choice. I reminded him
that winter was coming and there were still a lot of very hungry people
out there. I warned him that when the hordes of starving refugees showed
 up to finish what the living dead started, he’d have no government
protection whatsoever. Hill was a brave, stubborn bastard, but he wasn’t
 an idiot. He agreed to surrender his land and herd only on the
condition that his and everyone else’s breeding stock remained
untouched. We shook on that.

 Tender, juicy steaks—can you think of a better icon of our prewar
artificial standard of living? And yet it was that standard that ended
up being our second great advantage. The only way to supplement our
resource base was recycling. This was nothing new. The Israelis had
started when they sealed their borders and since then each nation had
adopted it to one degree or another. None of their stockpiles, however,
could even compare to what we had at our disposal. Think about what life
 was like in the prewar America. Even those considered middle class
enjoyed, or took for granted, a level of material comfort unheard of by
any other nation at any other time in human history. The clothing, the
kitchenware, the electronics, the automobiles, just in the Los Angeles
basin alone, outnumbered the prewar population by three to one. The cars
 poured in by the millions, every house, every neighborhood. We had an
entire industry of over a hundred thousand employees working three
shifts, seven days a week: collecting, cataloging, disassembling,
storing, and shipping parts and pieces to factories all over the coast.
There was a little trouble, like with the cattle ranchers, people not
wanting to turn over their Hummers or vintage Italian midlife crisis
mobiles. Funny, no gas to run them but they still hung on anyway. It
didn’t bother me too much. They were a pleasure to deal with compared to
 the military establishment.

 Of all my adversaries, easily the most tenacious were the ones in
uniform. I never had direct control over any of their R&D, they were
 free to green light whatever they wanted. But given that almost all
their programs were farmed out to civilian contractors and that those
contractors depended on resources controlled by DeStRes, I had de facto
control. “You cannot mothball our Stealth bombers,” they would yell.
“Who the Blank do you think you are to cancel our production of tanks?”
At first I tried to reason with them: “The M-1 Abrams has a jet engine.
Where are you going to find that kind of fuel? Why do you need Stealth
aircraft against an enemy that doesn’t have radar?” I tried to make them
 see that given what we had to work with, as opposed to what we were
facing, we simply had to get the largest return on our investment or, in
 their language, the most bang for our buck. They were insufferable,
with their all-hours phone calls, or just showing up at my office
unannounced. I guess I can’t really blame them, not after how we all
treated them after the last brushfire war, and certainly not after
almost having their asses handed to them at Yonkers. They were teetering
 on the edge of total collapse, and a lot of them just needed somewhere
to vent.

 [He grins confidently.]

 I started my career trading on the floor of the NYSE, so I can yell as
hard and long as any professional drill sergeant. After each “meeting,”
I’d expect the call, the one I’d been both dreading and hoping for:
“Mister Sinclair, this is the president, I just want to thank you for
your service and we’ll no longer be requiring…” [Chuckles.] It never
came. My guess is no one else wanted the job.

 [His smile fades.]

 I’m not saying that I didn’t make mistakes. I know I was too anal about
 the air force’s D-Corps. I didn’t understand their safety protocols or
what dirigibles could really accomplish in undead warfare. All I knew
was that with our negligible helium supply, the only cost-effective lift
 gas was hydrogen and no way was I going to waste lives and resources on
 a fleet of modern-day Hindenburgs. I also had to be persuaded, by the
president, no less, to reopen the experimental cold fusion project at
Livermore. He argued that even though a breakthrough was, at best, still
 decades away, “planning for the future lets our people know there will
be one.” I was too conservative with some projects, and with others I
was far too liberal.

 Project Yellow Jacket—I still kick myself when I think about that one.
These Silicon Valley eggheads, all of them geniuses in their own field,
convinced me that they had a “wonder weapon” that could win the war,
theoretically, within forty-eight hours of deployment. They could build
micro missiles, millions of them, about the size of a .22 rimfire
bullet, that could be scattered from transport aircraft, then guided by
satellites to the brain of every zombie in North America. Sounds
amazing, right? It did to me.

 [He grumbles to himself.]

 When I think of what we poured down that hole, what we could have produced instead…ahhh…no point in dwelling on it now.

 I could have gone head-to-head against the military for the duration of
 the war, but I’m grateful, in the end, that I didn’t have to. When
Travis D’Ambrosia became chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he not only
invented the resource-to-kill ratio, but developed a comprehensive
strategy to employ it. I always listened to him when he told me a
certain weapons system was vital. I trusted his opinion in matters like
the new Battle Dress Uniform or the Standard Infantry Rifle.

 What was so amazing to see was how the culture of RKR began to take
hold among the rank and file. You’d hear soldiers talking on the street,
 in bars, on the train; “Why have X, when for the same price you could
have ten Ys, which could kill a hundred times as many Zs.” Soldiers even
 began coming up with ideas on their own, inventing more cost-effective
tools than we could have envisioned. I think they enjoyed
it—improvising, adapting, outthinking us bureaucrats. The marines
surprised me the most. I’d always bought into the myth of the stupid
jarhead, the knuckle-dragging, locked-jaw, testosterone-driven
Neanderthal. I never knew that because the Corps always has to procure
its assets through the navy, and because admirals are never going to get
 too fired up about land warfare, that improvisation has had to be one
of their most treasured virtues.

 [Sinclair points above my head to the opposite wall. On it hangs a
heavy steel rod ending in what looks like a fusion of shovel and
double-bladed battle-axe. Its official designation is the Standard
Infantry Entrenchment Tool, although, to most, it is known as either the
 “Lobotomizer,” or simply, the “Lobo.”]

 The leathernecks came up with that one, using nothing but the steel of
recycled cars. We made twenty-three million during the war.

 [He smiles with pride.]

 And they’re still making them today.