They didn’t even show him the files on the animals that lived in the forest. They did show him a summary sheet laying out how two-thirds of the wildlife population of the world had been exterminated in his lifetime.

There was a document in there, an email from a senior executive to his colleagues, reporting from a trip to the field. In it he described what it smelled like there, after the Jelly fire and before the big machines came in and took the trees. Like woodsmoke and oil and charred flesh and a chemical stink that he could taste for weeks after.

Then there were the documents that traced the money that flowed from the trees.

Not just to the company. But from the company to its owners. The profits that were realized by those who provided the capital to develop Titan Jelly and everything else the company did.

“Is this the list?” asked Donny, looking at a sheet with names, addresses, and numbers.

Lupe nodded.

“The top thirty current holders of the profits generated by Promethean Resources,” said Petra. “We are working our way down.”

“So where do I find her?” said Donny, pointing at Heather’s name at the top of the sheet.

Petra looked at her colleagues.

“Joyce said it was okay,” said Lupe.

“Let me see if I can explain how to get there,” said Petra.

32

Donny liked to think he knew his way around New Orleans. The years he had a New Orleans office were when the city was occupied, first by the federal troops and then by UN peacekeepers, a period that altered the geography with barricades and checkpoints. The geography had changed again since then, in ways that confounded his ability to navigate. Entire blocks gone back to wild, like the swamp that was the Superdome. Bodies of water allowed to accumulate, breach the banks, submerge the old roads, with creeks that had been buried now uncovered, and creeks that had been paved slowly restored. Vegetation allowed to consume what remained of old buildings already damaged beyond recovery. Green voodoo practiced through a mix of negligence and intention.

And everywhere he went, people working, and seeming to enjoy it. Or just hanging out. Percy hadn’t been bullshitting: people seemed genuinely happy here.

Heather, it turned out, was serving a kind of house arrest that allowed her to live as a provisional member of the community. She had offered to be a donor, and a scientist, and a soldier, but for now was working as a member of one of the restoration crews.

Donny noted the irony of a society that claims to have mostly abandoned private property holding people hostage for funding.

We may not use money inside these borders, said Petra. But we need it to survive. Until more of the world becomes like us.