Walkaway

by Cory Doctorow

Akron kicked off as she was leaving for the WU campus. Walkaways did a coordinated mass squat on the whole downtown, 85 percent of which was boarded up and underwater, the bonds based on their mortgages in escrow with the Federal Financial Markets Service in Moscow while the Gazprom meltdown played out. They’d flown under the radar, smooth and coordinated. One day, Akron was haphazardly squatted by homeless people, the next, a walkaway army reopened every shuttered building, including fire stations, libraries, and shelters. Factories turned into fabs, loaded with feedstock, powered by eggbeater fields that sprung up overnight, electrolyzing hydrogen from sludge flowing in the Little Cuyahoga River, feeding hydrogen cells that walkaways wrestled around in wheelbarrows. Default was caught off guard. Connecticut flooding had FEMA and the National Guard tied up. The contractors who backstopped FEMA couldn’t use their normal practice of hiring local talent as shock troops. By the time they mobilized, their entire recruiting pool was walkaway. It gave the Akron walkaways – they called themselves an “ad hoc,” said they were practicing “ad-hocracy” – a precious week to consolidate. By the time default besieged Akron, they were a global media sensation, source of endless hangouts demonstrating a happy world of plenty salvaged from a burned husk with absentee owners. Iceweasel said, “It’s exciting.” “More than exciting. It’s a city. Not a village or a camp. The first, but not the la...