Chapter 1: What do we do now?
Delia Ruggles Higgins was five foot nine, whipcord thin, and a self-described packrat. As of the Ring of Fire, she was fifty-nine and had been a widow for seven years. She had graying hair and black eyes. She figured she had "gracefully surrendered the things of youth." Not without regret, but with what she hoped was grace.
These days she ran the storage lot that had been her living with her late husband Ray, and still was now that he was gone. For the last four years she had also managed her daughter Ramona, who had a true knack for picking Mr. Wrong. Ramona and her boys David and Donny had moved back in with her a few months after Donny’s dad had dumped her and gone back to his wife. David was small for his age, skinny with brown hair. Delia was expecting a growth spurt anytime now. Donny was thin too, but his growth spurt was still probably some years away.
Ramona did most of the routine work at the storage lot, and since the house was next door, Delia was available if something came up that Ramona couldn’t handle. Which happened all too often. She took after her father physically. She was plump and short with light brown hair and pale blue eyes.
Delia had a big doll collection. It was not, she would cheerfully acknowledge, a great doll collection. It was almost entirely cheap plastic dolls bought at the Goodwill in Fairmont, the local thrift shops, and Valuemart, whenever they had something cheap. She had, for example, five Michael Jordan dolls: three ten-inch ones, and two eighteen-inch ones she had found still in the box at a clearance sale. She had lots of fashion dolls, Barbies, Sandies and others. Some she had posed with members of the Enterprise crew. She liked Star Trek. There were also baby dolls, and Santas, which you could get really cheap right after Christmas.
It wasn’t, with the exception of a few gifts, an expensive collection, but it was a big one, collected over the last twenty years or so. Ray had not commented when she started collecting dolls. He just shook his head and from then on bought her dolls for Christmas, birthdays, and whenever the mood struck. She used her grandmother’s old Singer sewing machine to make doll clothing and to repair and fit people clothing she got at Goodwill and other thrift stores in the area.
She gardened quite a bit, growing both vegetables and flowers. She grew vegetables in the back yard, which was larger than the front by a considerable margin. Not enough for a truck garden, but enough to add fresh fruit and vegetables to the larder in spring and summer. The front yard was devoted to flowers. They were just for fun. She had roses and daffodils, and a variety of others. She had even planted flowerbeds outside the mobile home that served as an office for the storage lot.
Then came the Ring of Fire. Delia came home from the town meeting three days after the Ring of Fire in a state of shock, which was replacing her previous state of denial. She had not believed the rumors. In spite of everything, she had not wanted to believe the stories. Now they were confirmed.
She still had the storage lot, but it wasn’t the steady income it had been. The circumstances had changed. She had no idea how the change would affect the storage rental business. Hell, with Mike Stearns running things, we might get nationalized, she thought half seriously. Delia had never been fond of unions, or union bosses. There was some money in the bank—though what, if anything, it was worth now, she had no idea. Things had been tight before the disaster. Now?
She looked over at her daughter. Ramona was not taking things well. Then again, Ramona never had taken changes well, not even as a child. Right now she was going through the pantry, picking things up and putting them down, with little rhyme or reason. David, Ramona’s elder son, was doing better. He had taken his younger brother Donny to their room as soon as they got home, but David had been better than his mother in emergencies, even when he was ten. Delia sighed.
June 8, 1631: Delia Higgins’ House
The house had clearly needed cleaning, and it helped keep Ramona busy. Delia made an inventory of everything they found. About the only exceptional things in the house were her dolls and the sheer amount of unfinished sewing. She had obviously gotten behind in her sewing.
Then there was The Storage Lot. About three acres of their five acre lot were devoted to the collection of used metal shipping containers that made up the storage lot. Before the Ring of Fire it had provided the family with a living. Three quarters of the containers had been rented, about half of them to people outside the Ring of Fire. Since the Ring of Fire, though, she was left with only a third of the containers rented—and things were only getting worse as people emptied their containers for items to sell to the merchants in Rudolstadt, Saalfeld and Badenburg.
There were two ways of looking at the property in the storage containers rented by people outside the Ring of Fire. One theory was that it now belonged to her, since it was on her land and in her containers. The other was that it belonged to Grantville, like the land that was owned by people outside the Ring of Fire.
Delia was not sure which way the powers-that-be would come down on the issue. She understood that they might feel that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. She even agreed, in theory, but she had Ramona and the boys to consider. So, for now, she was keeping a fairly low profile, trying to figure out which way things were going to go. She had not opened any of the containers that were rented by people left behind because if she waited till their rent was overdue she would have up-time legal precedent on her side. Meanwhile, her income had gone down by over fifty percent, and any gain represented by the stuff in the containers was both iffy and short term.
They needed another source of income. There was all the old clothing, quite a bit in the sewing room, and still more in a storage container. One good thing about owning a storage lot: you generally had a place to put your stuff. It was the perfect job for a pack rat, Delia thought, grinning reminiscently. She would look into repairing and selling some of the old clothing.
June 12, 1631: The Wendell House
Dinner that night was venison steaks, well done, with salad, both bought at the grocery store for about what beef steaks and salad would have cost before the Ring of Fire. The venison was cheaper than the beef would have been, but the salad was more expensive. Bread for the moment was priced through the roof. The table was set with a silver plate candelabra and light for dinner was provided by candles rather than light bulbs, not to make dinner more romantic, but because the Wendells had figured out that light bulbs were going to be expensive and hard to replace. Still it lent an elegance to the family dinner. At the head of the table sat Fletcher Wendell, a tall gangly man with dark brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He was not a particularly handsome man but his face was rendered charming by animation. Across from him sat his wife Judy, statuesque rather than gangly, with mahogany hair and blue eyes. Recessive genes had played in making their daughters. Sarah was a carrot-top with rather too many freckles distracting from the evenness of her features. Which left Judy the Younger, twelve and so pretty as to border on the beautiful. Rich auburn hair and a pale complexion with only the lightest sprinkling of freckles.
Judy the Younger asked: "Mom, Hayley says that money is worth more now than it was before the Ring of Fire, but Vicky says it’s not worth anything cuz there ain’t no United States no more. So who’s right?"
Judy the Elder stalled while she thought about her daughter’s question. "Because, not ‘cuz,’ dear. And ‘isn’t,’ not ain’t."
Fletcher Wendell came to his wife’s rescue, sort of. "Back before the Ring of Fire, there was a bank in Washington that had a bunch of fairies with magic wands. They made new money when they were happy, and made it disappear when they were sad. Apparently, when the Ring of Fire happened, one of those fairies was in town, and it now resides in the Grantville bank.”
"Daaad!" Judy the Younger complained, while her older sister Sarah smirked.
"I take it," said Daaad, “that you don’t believe in Federal Reserve Fairies? That’s just the problem, don’t you see? Neither do the down-timers, at least not yet. Part of my new job with the finance subcommittee is to keep the Federal Reserve Fairies happy. Another part is to convince the Germans and all the other down-timers that they are real, because they perform a very important function and it only works really well if most people believe in them.”
Judy the Younger looked disgusted. Sarah didn’t even try to hide her smirk. Judy the Elder was moderately successful at disguising her laugh with a cough, then she gave Fletcher the “look.” At which point Fletcher held up his hands in mock surrender.
“All right, I surrender,” he said, which no one believed for a moment.
Judy the Elder gave her husband one more severe look then spoke again. “Your father’s subcommittee recommended to the cabinet that they declare that money on deposit in the bank and the credit union is still there, that debts owed to people or institutions inside the Ring of Fire are still valid, but debts or accounts in places left up-time are gone. Just common sense, but some people argued about it. Some wanted accounts in other banks honored. Sort of transferred to the local bank. Others wanted all debts to the bank erased.”
Fletcher grimaced. “Well . . . pretty much—except there’s still a big argument about mortgages. People who owe their mortgage to the local bank are raising a fuss because they think they’re being discriminated against. They think the out-of-area mortgages should be assumed by the new government. Truth to tell, they’ve got a point—and Lord knows the government could use the money.”
Judy the Elder plowed on. “Leave that aside, for the moment. Right now, wages paid by the city government or the emergency committee are being kept the same as they were before the Ring of Fire. Dan Frost is still paid the same. The coal miners are getting paid according to their pre-Ring of Fire contract, as are the people at the power plant. The difference is that now the emergency committee, which is receiving the income from coal sales and electric bills, is paying them. As will whatever government follows it. Unless it divests itself of the businesses. What that does is provide a stable point in the money supply which, hopefully, will help keep the money from increasing or decreasing in value too quickly, but no one wants wage and price freezes to last any longer or be any more widespread than absolutely necessary. So the owner of the grocery store sets the prices at the grocery store, with suggestions by the emergency committee. Now back to your question, how much is a dollar worth? If you’re talking about paying the electric bill, or the house payment, it’s worth exactly what it was worth before the Ring of Fire. If you’re talking about buying groceries, it’s fairly close to what it was before. For a Barbie doll, it’s worth a lot less, because no one is making Barbie dolls anymore, and the down-timers are buying them up. So take care of your Barbies, they are going to be worth a lot one day.”
“Ah, but the down-timers don’t have any money,” Fletcher put in with a grin. “At least, not American money. So right now, everyone is trying to figure out how much of our money their money is worth, and vici verci. Which is where the Federal Reserve Fair—” Fletcher paused, casting an overdone look of meek submission at his wife. “Ah, the bank comes in.”
“Oh, go ahead Fletcher,” Judy the Elder put in, with an equally overdone, long-suffering sigh. “You won’t be satisfied till you’ve run those poor fairies into the ground.”
“Not at all. I’m very fond of the Federal Reserve Fairies. They do the kind of magic we need done.” He smiled cheerfully at his daughters. “The thing about the Fed Fairies is they hate it when prices go up too fast. It makes them very sad, and they wave their magic wands, and make the bank have less money. Then the bank charges more interest when it loans out what money it does have. What makes the Fed Fairies really happy, is when prices stay the same, or go down. When that happens, they can’t help themselves, they just have to wave their magic wands to make more money. As a matter of fact, they look into their crystal balls to see what the prices will be like months or even years in the future, and wave their magic wands in response to what they see. At least they did before the Ring of Fire. I think the crystal ball must have gotten bumped or something cuz the predictions we’re hearing at the subcommittee meetings are bouncing all over the place. So one of the things we’re working on is trying to determine the ‘real’ value of all the goods and services within the Ring of Fire, measured in up-time money, so we can help the Fed Fairies figure out which way to wave their wands.”
His face grew comically lugubrious. “Now, when people don’t believe in the Fed Fairies, they have to come up with some other explanation for where the money comes from. Like, 'The Government.' The problem is, governments always need money, and if they can make it themselves, well, people are afraid they will. And that they will keep on making more of it until it takes thousands of dollars to buy a ham sandwich. So, an important part of my new job is to convince the down-timers that Mike Stearns can’t just make more money whenever he wants to. That, instead of the government making the decisions, the Fed Fairies will decide how much American money there is, so they can trust American money to hold its value.”
Sarah was always happy to play along with her father’s teasing of her little sister. “How are you going to make the fairies happy so they will make more money and we can all be rich?”
“The more stuff there is to buy, the more money you can have without the prices going up too much. We brought quite a bit of stuff with us through the Ring of Fire, but to make the Fed Fairies really happy, we need to find stuff that we can make here.”
The rest of the evening was spent in discussion of production and levels of usage. In spite of the dry subject matter, or perhaps because it isn’t quite so dry as most people think when presented right, it was an enjoyable conversation, and even Judy the Younger had fun.
* * *
"Susan, you need to hide your Barbie dolls," Judy whispered over the phone.
"What are you talking about?" Susan, at thirteen, had mostly given up on her Barbies though she hadn't sold them or given them to Goodwill. She was in the living room of her family's mobile home and talking quietly because she didn't want her mom to overhear.
"My mom said that our Barbies are worth a fortune and they are going to be worth even more because no one is going to be making new ones. The ones we have are going to get sold to kids all over the world."
"That makes sense, I guess."
"Good. You call Gaby and Vicky. I'll call Milly, Hayley and Heather."
"Not a good idea," Susan said. If they wanted to keep this secret, she didn't need to be saying anything about it with her mom in earshot.
"Is your mom there?" Judy asked.
"Uh huh."
"Okay. We'll talk at school tomorrow. See ya."
Susan hung up, thinking about her Barbies and about all the other things she might have that couldn't be replaced now that the Ring of Fire had happened.
June 13, 1631: A Creek Inside the Ring of Fire
David Bartley had a crush on Sarah Wendell; which he of course, would never admit to. This was bad enough. What made it worse was that Sarah had a crush on Brent Partow; which, of course, she would never admit to. Brent and his twin brother Trent were David’s best friends, and had been since his family moved to Grantville in ninety-six.
Brent didn’t have a crush on Sarah. He was the second largest boy in the ninth grade. He was interested in football, all things mechanical, and recently all things military. Girls, as Girls, had been creeping into his awareness, but only creeping, and the Ring of Fire had pushed them back several steps. He was good looking, and enthusiastic in his interests, willing to share them with others and listen to their views, so far without regard to their gender. Which might explain Sarah’s crush.
His brother Trent, the largest boy in the ninth grade by about a millimeter and maybe a half a pound, acted as a governor for his exuberant fascinations. Brent would come up with a plan to make or do something, and Trent would come up with all the reasons it wouldn’t work. Then they would argue it out, using David, and lately Sarah, to act as referee and deciding vote.
The upshot of all these social interconnections was that the four hung out together, and talked about football, all things mechanical, and recently, all things military. All things military focused on the Ring of Fire, and the changes it had and would bring about.
Where the kids sat, near a small creek, the buildings of Grantville were hidden by steep tree-topped hills, as well as quite a bit of the sky. “Flat,” around here, meant any angle less than thirty degrees. If there wasn’t a building right next to you, it seemed as though you were in virgin forest never touched by men.
Sarah was talking about her dad’s new job at the finance subcommittee, and its importance to all things military. “Dad says that we’re going to be in trouble if we don’t come up with stuff to trade with the Germans.”
Trent argued almost by reflex. “We have plenty to trade, TV and radio, cars and microwaves. All sorts of stuff.” It was, after all, obvious that people from the end of the twentieth century must be rich in comparison to people of the first half of the seventeenth.
Sarah was not impressed. “Can you build a TV? What about a TV station? My Dad says ‘We have to buy food, and we are gonna keep right on needing food.’ We’re not gonna keep having TVs and so on to sell. Once they’re sold, they’re gone.”
Sarah, an astute observer might note, was a bit pedantic on the subject of My Dad Said. She might have a crush on Brent, but she loved and respected her father. That last part, had he known it, would have come as quite a shock to Fletcher Wendell. He was convinced that his daughter’s youthful admiration had gone the way of the dodo a year and a half hence.
Before the Ring of Fire, that youthful admiration had indeed been on the decline. When his job disappeared with the Ring of Fire, Sarah was naturally concerned with how that would affect her. This entailed a certain amount of resentment; youthful admiration had gone almost comatose. What use after all, is an insurance salesman in the Dark Ages? Then, with his new job with the finance subcommittee, Fletcher Wendell suddenly had an important role in the survival of Grantville. His older daughter’s admiration for Dad had popped right out of its sickbed as if it had never even been asleep. Which fact she had gone to some length to hide—admiration for one’s dad being damaging to fourteen-year-old dignity.
“There’re things we can build,” David said, “We have the machine shops.” This comment had less to do with defending Trent, than the fact that David, for all intents and purposes, didn’t have a dad and sort of resented Sarah’s harping on hers.
“What?” Sarah asked.
Alas, David had no ready answer, so he had to make do with a disgruntled shrug and a vague “Lots of stuff.” Not nearly impressive enough. Shortly after that the gathering broke up and the kids went home.
David was bothered by that shrug, and the lack of knowledge it represented, much more than anyone else in the group. Partly that was because it’s always less pleasant to taste your foot than to see someone put theirs in their mouth. But mostly it was because the grim reality of Sarah’s comments hit a bit closer to home for him than for the others. He remembered some bad times from before they moved back to Grantville after “Uncle” Donovan left. David’s world had come apart before, and it showed all the signs of doing so again. There was a sort of directionless tension in the air. As if the grownups around him knew something had to be done, but didn’t really know what. And there were major money concerns, always a bad sign. Worse, unlike last time, it seemed to cover the whole town, not just his family.
David started actively looking for something to make. Something for people to spend their energy on. Something that would bring in money. Something, anything, to make the uncertainty go away.
Brent Partow spent the night thinking about what Sarah had said as well. He wasn’t worried, he was interested. Brent spent his life in search of the next interesting thing to do. To Brent, Sarah’s concerns about saleable products simply meant a fun game of what can we build?
By the next day he had a plan. He talked it over with Trent, who only had minor objections. Trent was afraid that if the grownups found out they might like the idea. Which, of course, meant they would take the thing over, put it in a class, suck all the fun out of it, and turn it into work. Trent was also afraid that if the grownups found out they might be displeased. Which, of course, meant they would forbid the kids the game, and just to make sure, assign them something boring to do. So his sole restriction was: no grownups.
Fluharty Middle School, Grantville
"So, why should we hold onto our dolls?" Vicky Emerson asked. "I want a new dress and makeup is going to be just as hard to come by as Barbie dolls. We should sell them now and buy other stuff before it gets scarce."
Judy wasn't pleased by this. Vicky Emerson was the second captain of the middle school cheerleaders and Judy's competition for leadership. Judy was only the leader because Vicky was, as Mom put it, "a bit abrasive." Judy just thought of her as pushy. In the meantime, Judy needed a good comeback. "Because we don't have a good investment yet." At this point in her life, Judy only had the vaguest idea what an investment was, but her dad had said something about Grantville needing opportunities to invest their capital last night at dinner, in between the Fed fairies and harvesting of crops in the surrounding villages.
"You don't know anything about investments," Vicky insisted.
Which was true, but not something that Judy could admit to, at least not exactly. "Well, I'll find out."
"Why you?"
"Because my dad is on the finance subcommittee!"
Vicky didn't have an answer for that. At the same time, Judy was now stuck with having to find out what they should do with the money from the Barbies when they sold them. And she didn't have a clue. "Look, it's going to take a while to figure this all out. But in the meantime, we need to keep anything that we can't replace hidden till we find a good market because anything they can't make in the . . ." Judy paused, unsure how to say it. "Anything we can't make in this now is going to just keep getting more pricy."
* * *
Susan got Judy aside a few minutes later. "Judy, can I store my Barbies at your house?"
Judy started to ask why but she remembered Susan lived with her mom and her older sister in a mobile home, so there wasn't all that much room. But that wasn't the problem. People talked about Susan's mom and they weren't nice about it. And Susan was always embarrassed to have anyone over to the mobile home. It wasn't in good repair and it wasn't clean. Judy understood that Susan was afraid that if her mom found out how much her Barbies were worth, she would take them. "Sure," Judy hesitated a moment then asked, "But what happens if your mom can't find them? She'll ask you where they are."
"I'll lie," Susan said coldly.
"Okay. But I want a list of your Barbies so they don't get mixed in with mine. Hey, that's an idea. We need an inventory of our dolls and stuff, a real official inventory. Hey, everyone. Go home and get your dolls and stuff and bring them to my house. We're gonna inventory them."
Two hours later at the Wendell house
"What are you girls up to?" asked the adult Judy Wendell.
"Last night you said I should take care of my dolls because they are going to be expensive, so we're going to inventory our dolls and stuff and see what we have."
"That's a good idea," Judy the Elder told the girls. "But don't limit yourselves to just Barbie dolls. There are a lot of things that we won't be able to replace. Just about anything synthetic is probably going to be hard to come by."
"What's synthetic, Mrs. Wendell?" asked Millicent Anne Barnes.
"Anything polyester or plastic," Judy the Elder explained, then stopped. "Actually, I'm not completely sure," she added after a moment's thought. "Nylon. Probably any plastic toy. We probably need to do an inventory too, and it's not just stuff they don't have at all. There are going to be things that they have, but are different. There is a six pack of Bud in the fridge that is not going to get drunk. The down-time beer is better, but the Bud is a very limited supply." Judy the Elder knew about the truck full of beer that had gotten stranded with the town. She was involved with the finance subcommittee, but even with the truckload up-time beer was soon going to be a rarity. "Bottles and cans of soda, wine, beer, liquors. They have all that but soda. And they may even be able to make soda, at least some kinds. Just the fact that it was made up-time will give it value. But we won't be able to hold onto it all. We'll have to use some and sell more just to get by."
She had seven tweenagers' full attention, but she wasn't at all sure how much of it was getting through. She spent several minutes trying to explain why the Ring of Fire had made up-time made stuff so valuable, and in so doing, helped to clarify it for herself.