Season 1, Episode 6 - The Tree Plot X - "The Androscoggin"

Androscoggin was located at the foot of a large mountain range; under the crescent moon, Clayton could see the peaks rise towards the sky behind the city. As for the city itself, Clayton saw the dark figures of buildings ominously lit up by probing search lights.

As the train rumbled northward up the Saguenay-Acushnet Railroad and got closer to the city, Clayton also saw numerous lights outside next to the tracks. After rubbing his eyes to shake off the lingering sleepiness from the nap, he realized that the lights came from barrels fires, illuminating miles and miles of ragged tents and metal shacks. Men, women, and even children stood on dirt paths, warming their hands around the fires. If Clayton listened closely over the hum of the train, he could make out crying, dogs barking, and gunshots. Metal fences with barbed wire at the top separated the shantytowns from the tracks.

“What is this?” Clayton asked. The tent city never seemed to end as the train rolled by.

“Shantytowns,” Hanai explained, his voice neutral. “Private corporations own most of the land up here. Rents are high and jobs are few, so you see all these migrants coming to the cities, looking for work.”

Clayton whistled. “I don’t see them in Narragansett, though.”

They passed by an old man with a long beard looking up at the train through the fence, a whiskey bottle-shaped paper bag held tightly in one hand.

“You were asleep when we passed through Neponset,” Hanai explained. “The area from Pennacook to Neponset is just one big shantytown, too.”

Clayton nodded, watching more passing migrants outside the window. The barrel fires and worn-down faces soon gave way to the buildings at the outskirts of the city; cracked streets and overgrown buildings greeted them as they entered the city proper. As the train continued down the tracks, the buildings steadily grew more sturdy, lighting became consistent, and the main square of Androscoggin came into view.

Shrill police whistles could be heard, even over the roar of the train. Cement barricades joined the fencing and barbed wire in separating the tracks from the gray square, which had a large fountain in the center and a large neoclassical-style building with a golden dome on top - signifying it as the city hall - in the back. Clayton went to look closer, then a force slammed into the chain-linked fence.

Clayton raised an eyebrow; the train was now slowing down, giving him enough time to see Androscoggin Military Police officers beating the man they had thrown into the fence with their batons. The gaslamps dotting the square shone upon angry faces, screaming and chanting, staring down Military Police officers on the other side of a cement and a rusting chain-link fence barricade.

“What the hell's gone wrong here?” Clayton mumbled, scratching his head.

The distinctive pop of rifle fire could be heard - sharp, individual shots. Anger moved through the crowd, cascading from the source of the fire.

The train pulled into the interior of a large brick station, blocking their view of the (under control?) chaos from outside. The blast of the train whistle indicated their arrival; steam from the train engine poured past the window.

The two Academy users grabbed their bags and briefcases and donned their longcoats and fedoras; they wore plains-clothes for their truth-finding mission, since the idea was to arrive at the homes of the second year Academy students in the area unannounced. If word got out that two Academy students were in the city, then a student with connections to the New York spy ring might have enough time to cover their tracks. Better to get the jump on them unannounced.

Clayton and Hanai stepped onto the platform; several Androscoggin MPs stood at attention, their eyes following the two as they departed. Clayton noticed their distinctive shoulder patches - a mountain behind the scales of justice. He felt like he would be seeing that patch often.

And he would - his prediction immediately came true the moment the two stepped outside through the station doors. A blast of cold northern wind blew right through them, nearly taking off their caps. Then the force of screams and jeers overtook them; they looked around and saw that one path led out of the Androscoggin train station, with the increasingly-familiar chain-linked fences with barbed wire at the top preventing the mass of humanity surrounding the southern half of the square from reaching them. Along the path stood MPs, their breath condescending in the air in front of them, beating the fences with their batons whenever somebody reached through it for too long. A tall MP, presumably the captain, fired his rifle into the air every-so-often, temporarily stunning the crowd, before the energy picked back up again.

As they walked down the path, Clayton could pick up the cries coming from the other side of the fence.

“Spare some food, please!”

“Money, spare a dollar, I have children!”

Clayton took a deep breath, letting the cries of despair bounce off of him. He glanced over at Hanai and saw that he had buried the bottom half of his face into the collar of his longcoat. Clayton suddenly brought a fist to face and coughed sharply into it; he looked up and saw that, compared to Narragansett's twelve, zero stars could be seen above Androscoggin. He squinted into the horizon, toward the west side of the city, and could just barely make out dozens and dozens of factory chimneys belching more black smoke into the smog-filled sky.

At the end of the path, they saw a wooden watchtower. It looked like something out of medieval times except for the machine guns poking out of it and the radio antennas on top of it. Two large banners hung down from it; one of them depicted the stone-faced President Pulaski, and the other featured Chief Amien of the State Police with his vacant eyes. Below Pulaski was the creed A QUIET PEACE UNDER LIBERTY, while the area on the banner below Amien cried out BY THE SWORD WE SEEK PEACE.

Clayton let out another whistle when he passed by a MP holding the leashes of two German shepherds barking furiously at a family on the other side of the fence. “What do you make of all this?” he asked Hanai.

Hanai spoke into the collar of his longcoat, muffling his voice. “I hope we don’t see this in Narragansett one day.”

With that, they reached the end of the path; the MPs opened a large metal gate, allowing Clayton, Hanai, and the other train passengers into Androscoggin. They stepped into the square and Clayton realized that all the sounds of chaos were now behind him; he glanced back and saw that the fences and barricades of their path took a 90 degree turn at the end of the path, continuing onward in either direction until it disappeared into the flickering lights and darkness of the rest of the city.

“They must funnel all the migrants into the southern part of the city,” Hanai supposed. “They built a wall around them to keep the rest of the city free of them.”

“Ain’t that just the way,” Clayton supposed, taking one last look at the migrants on the other side of the fence. By now, he discovered that not everyone was screaming and crying; some migrants just looked quietly at them, searchlights occasionally flooding their faces with light.

But they were on one side of the fence, and Clayton was the other, and he had a job to do, so that was the end of any ruminations for the time-being.

A street separated the central square from the city hall, and dozens of horse-drawn carriages waited there to escort the train passengers. As Clayton and Hanai approached, they heard new sounds now; laughter and music. When Clayton peered past the city hall, he saw men in nice suits and women in nice dresses departing theaters and luxury restaurants. Only a square and fence separated two very different lifestyles.

Hanai motioned towards a carriage, taking Clayton out of his thoughts. Some of the drivers waiting near their carriages dressed in suits and gloves; the two wanted to take a more-lowkey one and found a driver sitting on his carriage wrapped heavily in winter layers. Considering he looked downright warm compared to the luxury drivers, Clayton supposed he might’ve had the right idea.

The driver noticed them approaching and pulled a scarf down from his face, revealing a toothy grin and bushy beard. “Where you off to, lads?”

“97 Porlock Way,” Hanai informed him. Clayton would have had to read the slip of paper he carried in his briefcase to recall it, but Hanai was good at that memorization business.

The driver smiled. “Ah, you’re off to visit Mr. Coleridge, is that right?”

Clayton and Hanai looked at each other, not sure how to answer.

I know Mr. Coleridge was a high-ranking MP in the city, but does somebody here already know we're coming to visit?

The driver must’ve seen the look on their faces. “I’ve never met him meself, but I cart a lot of his friends there. And Mr. Coleridge has a lot of friends. Hop in, I know the route there by heart. I know this whole city by heart. Name's Vic.”

The two nodded and opened the door to the carriage. They placed their bags inside, but before they could climb in, they heard the sound of engines roaring. Clayton glanced back and saw two Military Police trucks - an odd juxtaposition with all the horse-drawn carriages - barrel down a side street, heading towards the shantytown.

“I heard there’s been some rioting tonight,” Vic informed them, watching the trucks go. He gave them another toothy grin. “It’s a splendid little world we live in.”

The carriage took them northward, away from all the chaos. Eventually, the noise of the shantytown completely subsided, as if it had never been there. North Androscoggin was far nicer than its southern counterpart; the carriage rode over smooths streets and electric streetlights replaced gaslamps. As nice as it was though, Androscoggin still felt years behind Narragansett, with cars being a minority compared to carriages, cinemas a minority to theaters, and a wide variety of butcher shops, delicatessens, bakeries, and vegetable storefronts replacing the all-encompassing convenience and grocery stores of the capital. They even found the quaintest thing ever - a little cobbler shop.

They traveled even farther north, leaving behind the buildings to arrive in a residential area. Amid rolling hills, mansions dotted the landscape; the carriage arrived at one in particular. The large lawns and hedgerows of the mansion reminded Clayton of the one he robbed many years ago in Russet. A pang for Eos ran through him, but by now, it was a dull sort of pain that wasn’t quite there, but never quite went away, either.

Clayton departed the carriage after Hanai, who was currently handling payment. “We’d like a ride back to our hotel at 11 PM,” Hanai told Vic.

The driver nodded. “That gives me a few hours. I’ll be back here then.”

Clayton thanked the driver, who nodded in return. With the two of them all set, Vic flicked the reins and his carriage departed down the winding road through the hills; they were still close enough to the city for the building lights to illuminate the landscape.

“Some city,” Clayton supposed. “It’s the third-largest in the country, but it feels like we stepped backward in time.”

Hanai looked towards the stone path toward the mansion’s front door. “Maybe Narragansett just stepped forward in time.”

Clayton chuckled, then followed alongside Hanai as they two headed up the path. In contrast to the path out of the train station, marble statues replaced the Military Police officers, and an utter quiet replaced the shantytown crowd and chaos. Having lived in the city forever, Clayton forget things could be this quiet. It felt like something was missing.

They got to the front door of the large brick mansion, with two oak doors taller than either of them blocking their way. Hanai grasped the metal knocker and gave three sharp smacks against the door. When time passed and nobody answered, Clayton took over the knocker, grinned, and made that distinctive Shave and a Haircut knock (you know the one).

The door then opened, and a short figure answered. “Yeah, yeah, what’s up-”

Coleridge blinked at the sight of Clayton and Hanai. “Uhhh…”

“What’s going on?” Clayton asked with a carefree voice. However, Hanai maintained that firm look he always held, making Coleridge’s fingers tremble against the door.

“This…this isn’t about me forging my report card, is it?” Coleridge asked. “Wh-wh-what do you want a guy like me to do? My parents’ll kill me if they find my low grades, so of course I’m going to use whiteout and glue new letters over my old grades! N-nothing crazy, I just replace the D’s with B’s!”

Coleridge spread his arms wide. “I’m innocent! It’s this grade-emphasizing society that’s in the wrong! If you judge animals only by how they climb a tree, of course the monkey will look good and the fish will be a failure! Why do we only judge by climbing a tree? Why-”

“Alright, buddy,” Clayton interrupted, since Coleridge was hyperventilating by this point. “We’ll pretend we didn’t hear all that. We’re just here to meet your folks and all that.”

Coleridge stopped. He looked at the two of them, then immediately slicked his hair back, leaned against his door, and gave a cocksure grin. “Oh, my folks. Of course. Might be nice to give us the courtesy of informing us ahead of time.”

“We're going on a train trip across this part of the country for Thanksgiving break,” Hanai explained, the usual neutrality in his voice making it easy for him to lie. “And we thought it would be good to visit one of our juniors. You did just have your Combat Simulation, after all."

No mention of possible connections to the spy ring or Dorrites, of course.

“The damn Academy,” Coleridge mumbled. “Can’t even leave me alone for Thanksgiving break. I left yesterday. I only got twenty-four hours of peace.”

A sharp breeze blew across the lawn; Clayton shivered beneath his longcoat.

“Uh…can we come in now?” he asked.

“Sure, sure,” Coleridge said, stepping back inside the mansion to let them inside. “Place is a bit of a mess though, our butler’s ill - it’s why I had to answer the door myself.”

But before the two stepped inside, Coleridge gave them a smirk. “Oh, by the way, if you could keep it down a little, that would be great. I got a girl sleeping upstairs.”

He wiggled his eyebrows.

Clayton and Hanai looked at each other.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Hanai ordered.

Coleridge sighed and ducked his head. “I know.”