Gorge, a novel in progress by Michael Gullo (2026)
“What the heck, dude?”
“What?”
“I thought you were smarter than this.”
“Did I buy the wrong lock or something?”
“It’s the whole thing.”
“Like the bunker, the stores?”
“All of it. It’s a waste.”
“It’s not a government bunker, James. It’s a solar mechanical room with freeze dried food.”
“It could be so much more. Like, look…”
“Don’t touch that.”
“This thing? Michael, I see what you think, but this ain’t no end of the world information superhighway.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Me? That thing might better say, Fisher Price than Baofang.”
“The reviews said it was the best portable ham radio...”
“Ham radio! God help this guy. And, yes you bought the wrong lock.”
“Fine. What’s wrong with the lock?”
“A fingerprint reader. They built the whole website on people like you.”
“What kind of people is that?”
“Gullible. This is a commercial security door. Back in Gary I broke in a dozen of these a week when things got sideways and the rot spread. Sure it has twelve big, bad locking pins all the way around the door, but that Fisher Price radio is a better deterrent than this piece of junk.”
“It’s not a government outpost.”
“It’s not even a daycare center.”
“It’s not meant to be impervious.”
“That’s a good thing because they’ll cut all around the frame with a sawsall, completely bypassing those safety pins and kick the door in, they’ll see that radio and say, this guy ain’t got shit. Let’s get outa here.”
“The door will be hidden.”
“What, you gonna build a bookshelf out there on hinges?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m so confused. What ever will I do? I’ll never find the door behind the bookshelf.”
“Are you stressed or something?”
“No. It’s just that ham radio thing’s got a better chance getting a signal through that steel ceiling up there than you do hiding that door from a dad needs food for his starving kid.”
“It’s anchored to the wall.”
“Anchored? You kidding? It’s screwed to the wall by a guy gets paid three hundred bucks a door to level, plumb, square and seal it against rats. And he buys the materials.”
“I didn’t hire a guy to install this. Those are five-eighths Tapcons.”
“Okay – in the concrete?”
“Like six inches.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“Finally.”
“Finally what?”
“You said something good.”
“Well you did ask me to evaluate your safe room.”
“Actually, I said, check it out.”
“You said, check this out.”
“I didn’t say shit all over it.”
“Build a better product then.”
“Okay, so you live in Gary Indiana and you haunt around these collapsed places, but you don’t haunt populated places.”
“So? I still see what I see.”
“You have to think about what that’s like – when you can get caught.”
“Fight your way in.”
“I don’t think that’s as easy as you say it.”
“Fine. Have you been watching the news?”
“I mean, it’s hard to miss.”
“Hard to miss was a few days ago. This is hard to deny.”
“What’s being denied?”
“The system is shutting down.”
“Which system?”
“You know.”
“I want to hear my opinion from your mouth.”
“It looks like it started with the monetary system, but now it’s in the power systems and the supply chain.”
“What’s it?”
“So you’ve seen it, right?”
“I mean, it’s hard to miss.”
“It started last week with the small banks. Mine’s a scrappy little credit union, so I didn’t notice right away, but four rent checks came back the same day as, Institution Not Found. I called. No answer. I went into the branch. Long line. I walked into my banker’s office, and she was a mess.”
“Like drunk?”
“No, like overwhelmed. She closed the door, and I thought I was about to hear some secret Big Mac Sauce recipe or something, and she says, I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know? And you left?”
“No. She explained what was happening. Depositors withdrawing large sums, half the deposits bouncing back unpaid – my own case – all small banks, but that morning, fifty checks in my bank came back unpaid and this time it was a small regional bank.”
“Like regional, the category?”
“Yeah. Like the Midwest.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I came because the collapse is coming.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“You said, it is in. What do you mean?”
“Yesterday it got a 500kV transformer in the MRO.”
“What the hell is an MRO? And you keep saying, it.”
“MRO is Midwest Reliability Organization – one of six national power grid zones.”
“What’s it?”
“I just said.”
“Abbott or Costello?”
“Costello. But that’s not its name. It’s not like one of those public girlfriend bots, probably pretty big AI though, and someone got ahold of it.”
“Let me say this – just out loud. You’re saying, and I’m not disagreeing, that Ai is in the midst of an attack against the monetary system?”
“It is.”
“In the United States only?”
“There is no United States monetary system so to speak.”
“Okay, so we agree. Something’s going on, and it’s different from the normal something going on.”
“The first sign for me came in the feeds, the blogs. The end is neigh-er sounds. But then the checks bounced, and I knew. It was three different banks – all small, but good tenants, one corporate. Corporate checks don’t bounce. And the reason-tag – Institution Not Found. I deposited twenty-one checks, six have come back, none have deposited as of this morning.”
“It’s the power outages for me. Two on the news yesterday, Northeast, South Florida. Nothing huge, but big enough to make the news for a minute, interview the angry people, and then back to Trump.”
“That guy needs his own channel, The Donald channel, just follow him around and watch him riff.”
“Last thing we need is another reruns channel.”
“Okay, so we agree. This is it.”
“I think we agree.”
“For me it’s the banks, and for you it’s the power outages.”
“Are we nuts?”