New York 2140

The day after the hurricane, Gen gets orders to go to Central Park. The trees have all been knocked down and a massive crowd is beginning a cleanup operation. Gen takes reports from victims of petty crimes and wonders how they can most efficiently improve conditions in the park with limited toilets and facilities. She is worried that as soon as the initial panic passes, the situation will create tensions as people begin “shifting out of emergency mode into the phase of stupendous hassle, at which point people would get irritable, more prone to argument complaint and fighting” (483).

On the fifth day after the storm, Gen is on a cruise patrol tasked with stopping looters. Her crew comes upon an armed private security force, RNA, or Rapid Noncompliance Abatement. Their leader claims to be working for the Chelsea Town House Association. Olmstead calls Gen and tells her that RNA is actually owned by Escher Security, which works for Morningside Realty.

Olmstead also tells Gen that three people who work for Vlade at the Met also used to work for Escher: Su Chen, Manuel Perez, and Emily Evans.

Franklin is out looking for the boys, surveying the devastation in the city. Charlotte calls to tell him that the boys have turned back up at the Met. He meets them at the Met dining hall. The boys are calm, hungry, and not traumatized. Franklin thinks that their toughness and cleverness would make them great traders. 

The Citizen describes how America’s relationship to global finance changed in the aftermath of the floods. 

Charlotte has a great deal of new refugee work to do now. The destruction in the park shocks her. Charlotte demands that the Mayor open the uptown towers to accommodate the thousands of stranded people. Galina answers that she can’t do it. One her way home, Charlotte decides to run against Galina for Congress, and calls a woman named Ramona, who initially asked her if she would consider running for office.

At the Met, Charlotte meets with Franklin—she wants to start the crash they discussed. Franklin has invested the boys’ gold, leveraged it, and now they can “make a killing” (504). He is willing to start the crash but isn’t positive that it will work the way they want it to. He is worried that it might entirely crash the system. They get a glass of wine and toast to Charlotte’s political campaign.

On the night of July 7, 2142, there is a riot in the park. When Gen arrives, there are several fires and thousands of people are fighting. The crowd heads north. Gen breaks up fights when she can, and then joins a group of six police officers who try to get ahead of the crowd. They make it to the uptown towers, where there are more police in riot gear. Gunshots ring out. Gen realizes that the shots are coming from the towers, where the private security forces are shooting into the crowd.

Gen and her officers confront the security men, threaten them with arrest, and take them inside the building. The leader of the security force is the man from RNA she previously spoke with in Chelsea. The man now claims they work for Morningside Realty. He says their boss is Larry Jackman, Charlotte’s ex-husband, who has been instructing Escher security.

The National Guard arrives and begins subduing the crowd.

During the storm, Amelia landed at the Marina Abramovic Institute, sending Frans away to handle the ship in the storm so that if the wind threw it, the ship wouldn’t damage the building. The next day, she heads back to New York and calls the Met Tower to tell Vlade, Charlotte, and the boys that she is safe.

Amelia flies over Central Park and sees the crowd. Then she sees the empty uptown towers and is enraged. She broadcasts to her audience that she is sick of the rich who are running the world, and calls for everyone to join the Householders’ Union, and then to go on strike. Franklin coaches her through the rest of her broadcast through a message that her audience can’t hear. Amelia urges everyone to stop paying rent, student loans, and insurance bills. She calls the strike the “Jubilee” (527). The absence of payments will crash the banks. Then the banks will be at the mercy of the people, and the system will once again resemble something like democracy.

An unnamed narrator describes the success of the Householders’ Strike. Franklin’s predictions of the crash come true, although the strike takes a while to gain momentum as more and more people stop making their payments. 

Mutt and Jeff are working on the farm floor on a sunny day. Vlade brings them their hotello and they set it up. They talk about the strike and are both hopeful that it will work. 

Mr. Hexter tries to teach the boys to read. Franklin tells them that he has used their gold to make them fifty times richer. After the reading lesson, the boys go out on their boat with Mr. Hexter, who compares the power the rich have over the poor to that of a clever vampire over a mindless zombie. But over time, given enough zombies, vampires can be crushed.

The boys try to come up with a new project for themselves. While they were in the Bronx during the storm, they saw muskrats trying to survive in the water. Mr. Hexter suggests that they start, “Helping animals or helping people. That’s the usual solution” (550). Roberto wants to do “something big” (550). 

Charlotte runs for Congress but does not put much effort into it apart from making speeches. Her Householder Union work and immigration work is more important to her. As her poll numbers trend upwards, however, she enjoys speaking out against her most reviled injustices. She frequently compares the banking system to a bloodthirsty leech.

Charlotte’s work now focuses more on refugees than on immigrants. She enjoys working with Franklin on his housing development the most. One night at dinner, he tells her the crash is officially beginning, and urges her to again encourage Larry to nationalize the banks.

Gen calls Charlotte to say that the firm that kidnapped Mutt and Jeff worked for Henry Vinson, adding that the head of RNA has been working for Larry Jackman. At Charlotte’s dinner with Larry, they discuss nationalizing the banks, but Larry is noncommittal. Then Charlotte tells him a hypothetical story about two quants working for a hedge fund. They found out that their employer was acting illegally and tried to below the whistle, but first they were fired. Then the boss of their employer pretended that the men’s lives were in danger and hired a security firm to put them in witness protection. It is obvious that she is talking about Larry’s involvement in Mutt and Jeff’s kidnapping. Larry nervously agrees to talk more about the banks.

The Met is overcrowded with refugees, but the sabotage on the building has stopped. At night, Idelba stays on Vlade’s office couch, and he enjoys having her around. He knows they feel the same pain and are both thinking of “when their child had drowned” (569). One night she hugs him. A few nights later, she shares his bed, but they do not touch each other. They agree that after Idelba leaves to return to her own building, they will visit each other frequently.

Charlotte wins the election and has a huge party at the Met. She will have to spend most of her time in D.C. now, but promises to come back whenever she can. Late that night, she asks Franklin if he to take her to her inauguration on his boat when it’s time. He agrees. 

Charlotte tells Franklin that Gen found out that Hector Ramirez made the anonymous offer on the Met Tower. Franklin confronts Hector, who admits making the offer, but denies sabotaging the building. Hector hopes he and Franklin will continue to work on the water housing project together, but Franklin doesn’t want to be in business with him anymore.

Franklin picks up Charlotte at Pier 57. He sees Jojo there and reveals to the reader that Charlotte has arranged for him and Jojo to collaborate on their water housing projects in the future. He is surprised to be attracted to Charlotte considering she is 16 years older. On his boat, Franklin and Charlotte laugh and talk as they drive. Larry calls Charlotte—he may be ready to try to nationalize the banks, as long as he has her congressional support.

Half an hour later, after drinking champagne, Charlotte gets another call, this time from the President, who asks for Charlotte’s support. Charlotte agrees. After the call, Franklin and Charlotte go below deck and have sex.

Amelia is over New York Harbor in the spring of 2143. The boys and Mr. Hexter are with her in the Assisted Migration. Amelia tells them that she has never felt normal or comfortable around other people. She spent seven years alone in the airship once, which surprises them all. They see a pod of whales and the boys wonder if they are Melville’s whales, coming to find him.

The boys show Amelia a marsh they have purchased to be the “Institute for Manhattan Animal Studies” (596). Amelia will soon go on a world tour. When Mr. Hexter tells her, “You’re always stuck with the people you save. You might as well learn that one now” (599), Amelia invites the boys on her world tour, and they accept. Mr. Hexter will go wherever the boys go.

The Citizen describes the more democratically determined makeup of the 2143 Congress, which will be more proactive in legislating to prevent future climate change and reform the financial system. 

That winter, Mutt and Jeff go to a party welcoming Charlotte back from D.C. She arrives with Franklin. Jeff is suspicious of Franklin, but Mutt points out Franklin managed to arrange the crash that they couldn’t. They ask Gen if she ever learned who kept them in the container, but she doesn’t know enough to be sure.

Amelia takes Mutt and Jeff to a dance club. They dance for hours and admire a bass clarinetist who is a gifted improviser. There are probably 50 parties like this happening that night, which could only be true in New York.