Theory Into Practice

The art of diplomacy used to be a thing you could outsource. Call up a lawyer, or a real estate agent, or a librarian, and get them to mediate your disputes for you. Not after The Fires. Now everyone is responsible for their own international relations, and some handle it better than others.

The dispute we’re interested in happened on a Thursday afternoon, between one Travis Griston and one other Bruce Mallard. Travis entered the corner shop first, breaking in through the rear door. He stepped over the skeleton in the back room and began browsing the shelves. Bruce entered through the broken storefront window a couple minutes later, old glass shard crunching under his ratty boots. The two men exchanged cautious nods, but said nothing. They scanned opposite sides of the store, carefully avoiding each other, trying to discretely lift pallets or peek under detritus without calling the other man’s attention. Unfortunately, they both glanced down the center aisle at the same time, and both noticed the canned chicken lying on the floor. Travis was closer, and he smoothly picked up the can before Bruce could move. Bruce called out an annoyed “oi!” which is where the conflict began.

“Oi!” Bruce said, as previously mentioned. “I saw that first, give it here.”

Travis bristled. “You did not. And it’s on my side of the store.”

“I was on that side before you when I came in,” Bruce rejoined.

“Why didn’t you grab it then?” Travis asked petulantly.

Bruce had no good answer for this, so he tried a different tack. “Look, buddy, what’s your name? Mine’s Bruce.”

Travis eyed him warily. “Name’s Travis. Not rightly pleased to meet you, I’m afraid. Keep to yourself and we’ll have no trouble.”

Bruce considered himself a hard man made harder by months of post-Fires survival. He didn’t think much of Travis’s attempt to tough him out. “Listen, Travis, no offense mate, but I can see your rucksack is pretty full. You’re doing alright for yourself, aren’t you? And there’s no sense making enemies out here in the city. Just roll the can over this way, there’s a good lad. We don’t want to risk things escalating.”

“Why should things escalate unless you try to steal my can?” Travis shot back. “There’s plenty of scraps for everyone,” he said. That would have been enough, but some spiteful spirit possessed him to add “at least, everyone who has eyes.”

Bruce chewed his lip. He hadn’t eaten in two days. His plastic bag of scavenged goods hung pitifully limp from his arm. While he was wrestling with his anger, Travis took the opportunity to dart down an aisle and grab another box — at least, Bruce thought it was a box, it disappeared into the other man’s pack so fast — of foodstuff. Immediately, Bruce began measuring the lengths of the room. “Here, now, that’s too far. That box was closer to me than it was to you, Travis. Are you trying to rob me?”

“Should have picked it up, then, instead of standing around,” said Travis. “You can’t leave it there forever and expect no one to take it.”

“Everyone knows,” Bruce began, “that when two people go into a building at the same time they each lay claim to whatever’s closest to them-”

“No,” Travis interrupted, “‘everyone’ does not know that. If it matters so much to you, I was closer to it than you at the time I picked it up.”

“But you started toward it from further away!” Bruce protested. “It was mine by right of scavenge.”

“Call the bloody police, then,” said Travis, flashing Bruce a cheeky smile.

Bruce huffed. “You know there are no police anymore. Do you seriously not know the right of scavenge? Are you new to the city?”

“Where I go and what I know is my own business. If you had wanted to rob me you would have done so when you came in. If you want food you should go out looking for it. Whatever’s in my bag is mine, and I put whatever looks good in my bag. I don’t intend to steal from your bag, just like you shouldn’t want to steal from mine. Not because it’s wrong, but because we’re each likely to try to kill the other for stealing our food, and we both know that in this city even a minor stab wound can quickly become fatal. It’s too risky for us to fight physically, so just drop it. Accept that you didn’t find everything first, and move on to the next store.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. It’s at this point in the story where his mindset shifted, and he began considering alternative modes of diplomatic relations. “You seem to have an awful lot of confidence that you know exactly what I consider risky or not, Mr. Travis. I might think I could easily overpower you and whatever shiv you’ve got tucked into your socks there, and I might just walk down this aisle and wring your smarmy little neck.”

Travis was slightly shaken by Bruce noticing his secret knife, which he did indeed keep tucked in his left sock. He didn’t let it show, however. “Like I said, if you were a lunatic you would have attacked me already. I know you’re not, so don’t bother trying to intimidate me now.”

Bruce, to his credit, had done a lot of anger management exercises since The Fires. One of his few remaining possessions was the workbook his therapist had given him. For a while he’d traveled with part of the therapist as well, until the therapist’s flesh began to rot, and Bruce got nervous about the possibility of food poisoning. Now, remembering page 17 (“Always give people a second chance!”), Bruce forced himself to smile. “Look, buddy, just roll that can of chicken down this way and I’ll let the box slide, alright? You’re new to town, you didn’t understand the rules — that’s okay, call it a mulligan. Compromise with me here.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” said Travis, who was growing more and more irritated. He also felt he had picked the store pretty much clean, and wanted to extricate himself from the confrontation, loot and all. “It’s mine.”

“What does it mean for the chicken to be ‘yours’, though?” asked Bruce. “You don’t have a receipt for it. You just picked it up.”

“Finders keepers,” said Travis, not certain where this was going.

“Well, say you were to pass away, and I found it on your corpse. Wouldn’t that make it just as much mine, at that point? Wouldn’t be stealing, by your own admission.”

“Could be murder,” said Travis. He was suddenly much less cocky than he’d felt a few seconds ago.

Bruce shook his head. “No such thing as murder anymore, Travis. You really aren’t from the city if you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“You’re really putting me off, Bruce,” said Travis. “I’m going to leave now, and I expect we’ll never see each other again. You should leave, too. There’s nothing edible left here, even the guy in back doesn’t have any meat on him anymore.”

Bruce smiled again, this time completely unforced. “Hold on, Travis. We were just getting to the interesting part of our conversation. What about murder?” He took a step down the aisle. “What about theft?” Another step. “You implied as much yourself, you can’t call the police. There’s no law anymore, and no one to enforce it. All we can do is talk it out, so let’s talk.”

Travis tried to inch towards the front door, but somehow Bruce slipped around him to be closer. Travis tried to angle for the back, but again Bruce wound up between him and the exit. Travis began to feel he had burned his goodwill rather injudiciously with this admittedly large and rough looking man. “You think you can intimidate me? You big bully! Let me go, or I’ll- you’ll-”

“See, Travis, I was chewing on Dr. Armstrong’s — he’s my therapist, state assigned — anyway, I was chewing the gristle out of his knuckles recently and it got me to thinking. He always said that the only thing we can do to solve our problems with people is use our words. That it doesn’t fix anything to throw punches whenever you’re confused or hurt, but you need to tell the other party how you feel. It’s actually on pages 3 and 4 of a workbook he gave me.” Bruce paused. “Doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? What with recent events. Casts a bit of an ironic tone on things.”

Travis gulped. “Violence is never the answer, it’s true.”

Bruce appeared to mull over this. “I was sweet on a girl once who — ah, never mind what she did for a living. But anyway, she was one of those political types, and I took a liking to something she said, about the police are in charge of violence, something like that. It sounded better when she said it. She meant it’s always the cops who bust heads at the end of the day. No matter how big of a buster you are, they can always bust you.”

Travis nodded furiously. “State monopoly on violence, of course, basic anarchist theory.” He paused. “I’m sorry, did you say she was a hooker, or am I just filling in blanks?”

Bruce grimaced, but otherwise didn’t reply. “Well there’s no more cops. No more daddy to go tell on each other to. Now anybody can get punked, and that’s the end of things. Only takes somebody stronger to come along and finish you for good. Means all of a sudden, I can solve all my problems with violence, as long as the problem is weaker than me.”

“You’re forgetting,” Travis said, “mutual risk. Armed people are always dangerous to attack head on. If you were to attack me now, there’s a good chance I’d be able to stick you in the guts and it’d go septic. You’ll be dead inside a week.”

Bruce nodded. “True, true. And that’s why I still try to solve problems with words. I tried to negotiate with you, you’ll remember. I asked politely several times.” Page 17, again.

Travis cleared his throat. “Well, ah, the thing. That is. It comes down to. Hmm.” His face burned. “I just mean, you don’t really have a leg to stand on in negotiations, do you?”

Bruce raised his hands, palms upturned. “I’m hungry.”

“Not really my problem, is it?” Travis forced a chuckle. “Can’t take responsibility for every hungry person on Earth.”

“I’m pretty strong,” Bruce pointed out, feeling that Travis was somehow still not really processing this important fact.

“We’ve already covered that,” Travis said. “Not a factor. Physical violence won’t happen.”

“The food was mine by right of scavenge,” Bruce said. His trump card.

“No such thing, I’m afraid,” Travis said. “Perhaps you and your friends around here in the city follow such rules, but there’s nothing forcing me to obey them. It’s your loss.”

Bruce sighed. “That’s the issue. Everyone around here in the city agrees to rules of scavenge, unless we’re trying to kill each other. Nobody forces us to, we just all spontaneously did it. It’s because the alternative is every time two people see each other they have to murder each other. That’s dangerous for victor and loser alike. There’s still lots of bloody disagreements even with the right of scavenge, but agreeing to that custom gives us all a common starting point for conversations like this one. We need that common starting point in order to have a conversation at all. Without a shared custom, without something we can both agree on, and argue over, there’s nothing for us to say to each other. The only option left for such people is violence. You and I don’t share a custom. Do you see the problem here?”

Travis gulped. “I would say we share the custom of basic human dignity, I hope? Respect for your fellow man?”

Bruce shook his head helplessly. “No idea what you’re referring to, mate.”

“You shouldn’t fight me! It’s not a good idea!”

“I tried to give you other choices, mate,” said Bruce. Page 24 — never back someone into a corner they can’t escape from.

“Not fair ones,” sputtered Travis, “not by my reckoning.”

“Well, you may not reckon so, but you’ll reckon it even less fair to wind up dead,” Bruce pointed out.

Travis was out of ideas. “You shouldn’t want to fight me,” he said, hand unconsciously reaching toward his ankle. “It’s not rational.”

“I don’t want to fight you!” snarled Bruce. “I tried really hard not to, but you seemed intent on forcing the issue, so now here we go.” He put his hand on his belt, where his own makeshift shiv lay close to his skin.

“Well I don’t want to fight either, but you’re being very aggressive right now,” yelped Travis. “Whatever happens, you brought this on yourself.”

Bruce couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Who do you expect me to complain to if things go poorly? Shall I hold a grudge against your dead body? Against God?”

Travis grit his teeth. “Just saying.”

A few minutes later, a man stepped out of the broken storefront window. His coat had dark, wet smears of blood down one side, and he was carrying two bags — one large plastic sack, mostly empty, and one smaller canvas rucksack, mostly full. He paused outside the store to reach inside the rucksack and pull out a canned chicken. Inspecting the can for the first time, he realized there was a corroded hole near the bottom, stained with rust and rot. He tossed it away in disgust, and hobbled off into the ruined city.