

### Animal Theater

### Stories of the Second Civil War

### Benjamin Broke

Published by Benjamin Broke at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Benjamin Broke
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

# Contents:

THE HAUNTED HEAD

When a soldier records a mysterious signal and then dies suddenly, Nelly Reills has to figure out what happened before the enemy strikes.

DEATH SPIRAL

A woman tries to keep her daughter from being forcibly enrolled in a Christian Nationalist Party school.

LEDA AND THE SWAN

Tully would do anything to rescue a priceless work of modern art from Civil War America, including smuggling in large quantities of a new designer drug.

EXCHANGE RATE

An alternative media figure feels the walls closing in and must fight for the ideals she stands for on her show.

SHOPKEEPER'S DAUGHTER

Sir Karl is up for a promotion, all he has to do is kill an innocent person.

THEORETICAL SUBSTANCES

An official CNP report on some very strange experiments going on in a research lab in Pittsburgh.

NUTRIENT SLOP

A militiaman is chosen for a special mission, but when things go wrong can he trust his superior officers to do the right thing?

FULL EMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA

A radical proposal to end unemployment and repair our economy.

FREE SOUP

When a homeless man and a young girl go to a soup kitchen run by a UFO cult, they find out that there's really no such thing as free soup.

THE MANY ITERATIONS OF KENDRA DIXON

A brain surgery reveals the true nature of time to Kendra Dixon and allows her to freely roam all possible versions of her life.

FOUNDING FATHERS

An increasingly desperate school teacher tries to locate a missing student.

THE ACCOMPANIST

In a nightclub in what's left of Las Vegas, he plays piano for a singer named Carrie Masters, but the piano isn't the only thing getting played.

ANNIHILATING THE PAST

An interview with the man who permanently erased the line between entertainment and brainwashing.

GLITCH X 7

When a nanotech attack destroys the town of Conifer, Washington, Gabriel Marte is the only man left alive.

THE FLOATING ORPHAN OF RAINBOW RIDGE

A new bio-weapon has the town of Rainbow Ridge under military quarantine, but some members of the community have no intention of waiting around to die.

FOR THE FUTURE

A wounded veteran finds a group of likeminded people with plans to change the world.

THE ABUELITAS

The future of Pacifica hinges on an election, the election hinges on an endorsement, and the endorsement hinges on a favor -what could be more simple than a favor?

CAT FANCY

A young man investigates the theory that a major corporation is putting people-meat in its cat food.

INOCULATION STORY

The Conglominatrix Financial Group is investing heavily in a young filmmaker, but before he takes their money he wants to know what they're getting out of the deal.

THE MARIONETTES

After two friends are liberated from prison, their plans to get to California are complicated by suspicion and fear.

About Benjamin Broke

Also By Benjamin Broke

Contact Benjamin Broke

# The Haunted Head

Sir Karl came into the mess waving his small-screen in Nelly's face. "I got proof." He said. "This morning before dawn I found the signal again and this time I recorded it. I got ninety six seconds of it before it jumped frequencies."

"Is the source local?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Send it to me." She said. "I'll look at it today."

"You think the buttons are tracking the unit somehow?" He asked.

"I don't know. That's why we set up the scanners, it wasn't just to pick up the Mexican porn channels. Get some sleep soldier, you look like you could use it. I'll let you know what I find out." Nelly went back to her breakfast, wondering why they assigned non-tech personnel to the scanners. Her tech-crew probably needed their beauty-rest. She'd have to have give them the discipline talk again. Sir Karl was a Subcomandante so he outranked most of the dipshits whose job he was doing.

After drills Nelly made her way to the tech tent and transported Sir Karl's Pick Axe to her big-screen and ran a standard analysis. She assumed it would be some kind of garbage signal produced by space junk or a solar flare, but no, the signal he'd recorded contained a lot of information. Deciphering that information was another thing. She worked through lunch and into evening and had only gotten as far as identifying it as a Well-Armed Militia code.

She took a break for dinner and found Sir Karl sitting with his crew, eating heaping forkfuls of rehydrated chicken and rice. Nelly sat down with the boys and told Sir Karl that he'd done well. "It's an enemy transmission alright, and it's coming from this camp. Stumbling on that signal might've saved all our asses. I thought you'd like to know. If we can figure out where it's coming from I'll put your name in for commendation." His friends clapped for him and slapped him on the back. "My crew would just love to see a Subcomandante get a tech commendation."

Sir Karl laughed, but then winced as if the laughter had caused him pain. One of his crew asked if he was okay. "Yeah," he said, "I just got a splitting headache. It came on all of a sudden." He rubbed his head. "Jesus, it's bad."

"Maybe you should go to the medic." Nelly said.

He squinted at her. "Yeah," he said. He got to his feet and staggered partway across the mess before falling. He was in spasms, shaking violently on the ground as Nelly and the others at the table rushed to him. He was hacking up blood and phlegm from his nose and mouth, and Nelly saw blood coming from his ears. She looked around and didn't see anyone who outranked her, so she told everyone to clear the mess tent. If he was bleeding out from some kind of Ebola he could've already infected everyone there.

The medics put on protective gear and went into the mess. They weren't in there very long. The medical crew took the twelve people who had been there to the med tent and told them to sit and not talk to each other or touch anything in case they were infected with whatever Sir Karl had.

Outside the tent Nelly could see them carrying a special body bag designed to contain pathogens, not the typical body bag Nelly was used to seeing. After a couple of hours of wondering if they might be about to meet the same fate as Sir Karl, the head medic came in and told them that no virus, bacteria, or known bio-weapon was detected in Sir Karl and that they were all free to go. Nelly asked what had killed him. "Some kind of brain aneurysm, we're not sure." She said.

Nelly went back to the tech tent feeling drained and weak. With all the violent death she'd witnessed, death from a brain aneurysm seemed especially cruel and pointless. She'd talked to Sir Karl a little when she was training him on the scanners. He was from Arizona, but had moved to San Diego as a child. He'd been liberated from one of the corporate prisons after independence, and had come to the 512 from a propaganda unit that had been obliterated. He'd shown Nelly pictures of his adopted daughter, but she couldn't remember what the kid had looked like. She was in a Practical Ed unit down south, part of a growing number of kids who were getting an education and fighting for Pacifica at the same time. Nelly wondered how hard the kid would take the news.

She went back to work trying to decipher the signal he'd recorded. If she could figure out where it was coming from and what it was, the Subcomandante might still get a medal posthumously. Sometimes there was a monetary payout for the family with a posthumous medal, so Nelly thought she was working not just for her unit but for Sir Karl's daughter. She worked into the night, sharing the tent with the kid on scanning duty.

She finally wormed her way into the signal's content, and found that it contained streams of video and sound along with coordinates updated every five seconds. When she finished converting the signal she put the image up on the big-screen.

It was a low resolution video of a small-screen having been set to record and then the screen of the scanner and the data being recorded. The sound was just breathing. Nelly was confused and at first she thought the scanner had been bugged somehow, but on second viewing she realized something else must be going on. The image started with a finger moving away from the record button of a small-screen hooked up to the scanner. The perspective was from outside the scanner, and the sound of breathing was a mystery.

Nelly watched the ninety six second video two more times and then went to wake Subcomandante Alphonso, the head of tech-ops. It was two in the morning and he wasn't happy about being woken up by his div-leader. "Are we under attack?" He asked. "Because I don't see any other reason why you should be waking me up right now."

"It's about Sir Karl, he picked up a signal last night on the scanner and I just decoded it. I think you need to see it."

"Does it explain why the guy aint breathing?"

"Maybe," Nelly said, "I'm not sure. You need to see it."

He got dressed quickly and went with Nelly. "What the hell am I looking at?" He asked while the video was playing.

"New technology that's being used against us. Somehow Sir Karl transmitted this image along with location data. I think what he was seeing and hearing were being transmitted somehow."

"You mean he was a spy?"

"No, I don't think he knew. He's the one who found the signal and recorded it, he brought it to me. He wouldn't have done that if he were a spy."

"Some sort of bio implant maybe?"

"That's what I'm thinking." Nelly said.

"Alright, fuck." He said. "You get the medic and I'll get the Comandante and we'll figure out what to do next."

The Comandante pulled Sir Karl's file on his small-screen and found that he'd been liberated from a prison run by a Chinese corporation that had a bio-tech division. He ordered the medic to saw open Sir Karl's skull to see what he could figure out. Nelly was told to find a way to scan for that signal or a signal like it. The Comandante ordered them to tell no one what they were doing. "Whoever was monitoring Sir Karl's signal found out that we were close to discovering it, so they probably flipped a switch and killed him." The Comandante said. "We should operate under the assumption that there are more in the 512 like him, hell, half the soldiers here came from one corporate prison or another."

Nelly had to hook the scanner up to her big-screen to get the computing power she needed. Since the signal jumped frequencies, probably at irregular intervals, she set the system up to scan every frequency on the spectrum in twenty six seconds. She figured if every soldier was near the scanner for five minutes, the signal would be picked up. She finished setting up the system just before dawn.

She found the Comandante in the med tent with Subcomandante Alphonso watching the medic perform brain surgery on Sir Karl's corpse. She told them she had a system ready to scan people for the implant, but they had to be in the tech tent. Subcomandante Alphonso held up what looked like a tangle of meat gristle. "There's the culprit." He said. "It's a bio product so it's indistinguishable from the rest of the contents of the victim's cerebral cortex. Our best guess is that it uses the spinal column as an antennae somehow."

"Fuck." Nelly said.

At dawn the Comandante called the whole unit to assembly. The cover story was that the buttons had cooked up a weaponized variation of lyme disease that Sir Karl had gotten from a tick. Every soldier in the unit would have to be scanned for ticks, and it would have to be done in the tech tent because it would be faster than using a small-screen bio scanner. They set up a division rotation and Nelly began scanning soldiers one by one.

She was thirty one soldiers into the scanning when she got a hit on a soldier named Dawn Racino. Nelly signaled the medic and Racino was told that she was going to quarantine. After lunch she hit on two more soldiers, Dennis Roy, and Micky Brevett. Nelly was dragging and the medic took mercy on her and gave her a shot of Vigilance to keep her awake.

The first soldier she scanned after dinner also had the implant. His name was Ron Williams, and when the medic told him he had to go to quarantine he started crying. Nelly kept scanning late into the night and found one more implant, in the second to last soldier. Her name was Bella DiMarco. Nelly finished the scanning, still feeling alert from the shot, and the Comandante and Subcomandante Alphonso came into the scanner tent. The Comandante sat in the chair. "My turn." He said.

"Really?" Nelly asked.

"If my brain is broadcasting images to the enemy, I want to know about it. Do it."

Nelly scanned him and then Alphonso, the medic and finally herself. None of them had implants. "We're the only four people in the unit who know what's going on," the Comandante said, "and for now I'd like to keep it that way. There were six implants in our unit, SIX! There's probably thousands of these spies in the guard. We need to get the word out about this threat. I'll put it up on the tight network for command to scope -Nelly, send me the specs for your scanning system. In the meantime we've got to lose these five remaining implants. Any suggestions?"

"Sir Karl's implant killed him when he was on the verge of discovering it." The medic said. "So if these soldiers find out that we know about the implants, they'll die."

"Whoever's monitoring these soldiers should've figured it out by now." Alphonso said. "All the implants in our unit have been quarantined. I'm surprised they're not all dead right now."

"I've got them isolated so they don't know how many others are quarantined. For all they know half the 512 has ticks." The medic said.

They all looked at the Comandante. "My first thought," he said, "is to put them all together and tell them the truth. If I were in their shoes I'd want to know."

"You'd be killing them." The medic said.

"What would you do?" He asked.

"Give them all emergency medical leave." The medic said. "I'll tell them they've got the weaponized Lyme disease and give them a placebo shot. I'll tell them if they live six months they should be okay, but that they aren't fit for military service anymore."

"Fuck that." The Subcomandante said. "If you lie to them they could get back into the guard someday. If the war keeps going the way it has been, it's not hard to imagine that the guard would start taking anyone they could get, regardless of their medical history. I say we tell them and if they die, so be it."

"You'd be killing them." The medic said again.

"No, the party killed them when they put that shit in their cerebral cortexes."

"Nelly, what do you think?" The Comandante asked.

"It's above my pay-grade but I would want to know." She said. "And they'll know something is fishy with an emergency medical leave anyway. They'll see other doctors and if word get's out about the implants they'll eventually figure it out anyway. It's better to tell them the truth."

"I'd rather be lied to than bleed out through my ears." The medic said.

"Yeah," The Comandante said, "but Alphonso is right, if we discharge them they could very well end up back in the guard someday. There's no way to remove these devices?"

"I can't do brain surgery in a tent." The medic said. "Besides, the way the device is implanted it would leave them brain damaged and probably paralyzed if I removed it."

Nelly noticed some pings on the scanner while the Comandante answered. "I've made my decision." He said as Nelly picked up the headphones. "We'll tell them the truth. This is a situation where there are no good options. God only knows how many of our soldiers were killed because of those things..."

"Incoming nanotech cloud." Nelly said. "It'll be in range within five minutes."

"Alphonso, put the unit on alert, Nelly come with me, we're going to get these bug head soldiers as far away from here as possible. No wonder the damned buttons always know our position." The Comandante cursed as he got up. "Come on!" He shouted at Nelly. Nelly put down the headphones and followed him to the fleet tent. He took her to an old van that had been converted from gasoline to battery power many years before. "Take this to the med tent and put the bug heads in the back," he said, "drive south as fast as you can and when you make it twenty miles pull off the road and tell them what's going on. When they're all dead just leave the bodies and send me a Pick Axe before you come back, understand?"

"Yes sir."

"If they don't die for some reason, let me know and I'll give you further instructions. PACIFICA!"

"STAND STRONG!" She shouted. The keys were in the ignition and Nelly navigated through the suddenly busy encampment to the med tent. Alphonso had the whole unit running the scatter drill, only this time it wasn't a drill, there was a death cloud coming. Nelly got the five soldiers out of their isolation bunks and into the van. They all looked scared except for Dawn Racino, who was angry. "This is bullshit, I don't have any ticks on me! I'm not getting in a van, the unit's under attack and I can help decamp."

"Get in the van." Nelly said. "The Comandante ordered me to get all of you in the van."

"Where the fuck are we going?" She asked.

"The hospital in Indio." Nelly pushed Racino into the back of the van and slammed the door. She got behind the wheel and once they were out of camp she stepped on the gas. There were no seats in the back and the soldiers were being thrown around by all the bumps in the road. Nelly wasn't used to driving, but the van was old and didn't have a small-screen drive hookup.

Racino climbed up to the front passenger seat and put the seatbelt on. She looked back at the four soldiers in the back of the van. "They're scared." She said quietly to Nelly. "What do you know about this? What did the Comandante tell you?"

"Just to get you to the hospital in Indio as fast as possible." Nelly said.

"So whatever it was that killed Sir Karl, we've got it too?"

"I don't know." Nelly said.

"Yeah you do." Racino said. "I can tell. Don't give me that bullshit about weaponized Lyme disease either..." She stopped talking and was nodding rapidly. Nelly looked at her and saw her eyes rolling back in their sockets.

"You okay?" She asked, knowing that she wasn't okay. She expected Racino to start throwing a fit like Sir Karl had, but she didn't. She just sat there with her eyes rolled back in her head, completely still. Nelly looked back and saw the four other soldiers in the same state. She reached over and shook Racino. "Hey," she said, "snap out of it." She got no response.

She drove on about another minute or so before she saw the glint of reflected sunlight in the sky in her rearview mirror. She knew it was the nanotech cloud over the encampment. Her rearview erupted with light and Nelly saw a shockwave rippling the desert dust, coming up on her fast. She lost control of the van and the road twisted to a wrong angle. The last thing she felt was a hot breeze on her forehead, and everything inside and outside and everywhere was all wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Elenor Reills has regained consciousness. She woke up early this morning." Doctor Stewart said to the resident assigned to him that morning. He was a young guy with a tattoo of an eagle on his neck. Doctor Stewart thought his name was Deitz, but couldn't remember for sure. The residents changed so often it was hard to keep track. "Apparently she's been asking a lot of questions." He said. "Of course confusion is only natural. The woman has been in a coma for almost two months, she's lucky to be alive."

He opened the door for Deitz and found the patient sucking on a pack of nutrient-rich sugar water. "Div-leader Reills? Welcome back to the world of the conscious. I'm doctor Stewart, this is my resident today." The doctor thought maybe the tattooed youth would introduce himself, and he paused for a moment, but no luck. He turned back to the patient. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Weird." Nelly said. "Have I really been in this bed for eight weeks?"

"55 days to be exact." He said. "Do you have any pain?"

"Yeah, my leg." She said.

"It was badly broken. You have three bone implants in your left shin now, but your body is well into the healing process at this point, and eventually your leg will be even stronger than it was before."

"Oh goody." She said. "If I've been sleeping for 55 days why the hell am I so tired?"

"It's normal." The doctor said. "You weren't asleep, you were in a coma. There's a difference. Your body has been through a severe trauma and you need to recognize that."

"What happened to my unit?"

"It was a new kind of nanotech courtesy of the Well-Armed Militia. The 512 was the first ever to be hit with it."

"A new kind of cloud?"

"Well it's the same principle as a traditional nanotech cloud, but these clusters created a high pitched resonance, designed to essentially liquefy your brain. Luckily you were far away from the source and there was a good amount of Vigilance in your system, which we think allowed your brain to process some of the sound instead of being damaged by it."

"How many casualties doctor?"

"Everyone in the unit was killed except for you and the five other soldiers in the van."

"They lived?"

"All five were actually unharmed by the cloud. One had a slight concussion from the accident, but he's since recovered."

"Where are they now?"

"One's still on medical leave, another was taken into the 125 and the other three were assigned to the 216." The doctor said.

"No, we've got to get them out of there!" Nelly sat up in bed and immediately felt dizzy.

"Ms. Reills, please don't exert yourself." The doctor said. "We know all about the Lyme disease scare and quarantine. I'm not sure what your medic was seeing, but we cleared them before we let them go. We gave them a complete scan, and none of them had any sign of illness."

"They're bug heads..." Nelly said, feeling suddenly out of breath. "The enemy sees through their eyes!"

"Please Ms. Reills, calm down. You're under incredible strain."

"I need to talk to central command. It's a major threat." She winced at the sound of her own voice.

Doctor Stewart shot a look to Deitz, who nodded and began preparing a dose of Sonambule. "You need rest." The doctor said. "When you're feeling better you can tell me all about your concerns. Your main job at the moment is to get better, you're no good to Pacifica in your current state."

Deitz injected the serum into Nelly's IV tube. "They're unconscious spies." Nelly said. The doctor smiled at her and his smile looked fuzzy. "Look in their brains, you'll see..." She drifted for a moment and tried to focus, but it was no use.

"I'd like you to stay close to this patient." The doctor said to Deitz. Yes, Deitz, that was his name, he was certain now. "She's liable to stay delirious for a time. There might be brain damage there, or maybe it's the emotional impact of losing her whole unit. Just make sure she gets everything she needs."

"Yes Doctor." He said. "I'll stay with her." He had tried to get the go-ahead from intel to terminate the subject while she was still in the coma, but they were so sure their new weapon would eventually kill her they told him not to risk it. Now she was awake and had attempted to disclose the program. He would have to do it as soon as possible and get back across the border for reassignment. Whatever his new orders would be, he knew they would be a lot harder than killing a woman while she slept.

-back to table of contents-

# Death Spiral

Melissa put the STS on Elizabeth Rasper's coffee table, set it recording and then cleared her throat as an indication that the official interview had begun. "MT72, Ohio District 45, Educational Services Division," she was talking a touch louder than her normal speaking voice, "interviewing Elizabeth Rasper, OH-B07F-62138, Mother of Cameron Rasper, IL-B30F-563213."

Melissa looked at the older woman across from her and thought of her aunt. There was a similarity around the eyes, and it made Melissa feel a little sorry for Elizabeth Rasper. The woman was clearly nervous about the interview. "Mrs. Rasper you lived for many years in Chicago is that true?"

"Most of my adult life, yes." She said.

"A little over two years ago you moved back to Akron, is that right?"

"Yes."

"What led you to make that decision?"

"You're joking right? There were bodies piling up in the streets. Between the hunger and the violence we felt we had no choice but to leave."

"In Chicago your daughter Cameron attended a Catholic school?"

"St. Anne's, yes."

"But after the move you decided to homeschool her, correct?"

"Yes." Elizabeth said.

"Why did you make that decision Mrs. Rasper?"

Elizabeth thought for a second. "St. Anne's was a good situation for us, it was like the kind of school I went to when I was Cami's age. It was a day school, so she stayed at home and we could see her every night. That's important to me. When we moved out here we couldn't find a school like that so I started homeschooling her."

"Which schools did you consider Mrs. Rasper?"

"Most of the private schools were beyond our means, but I did look at some work schools in the area. They were farm schools which I thought might appeal to Cami, but the contracts had some clauses that I didn't like, so that left homeschooling. It seemed like the best option."

"You didn't consider sending her to one of the Christian Nationalist schools?" Melissa asked. "They're free."

"Oh I know, and I would absolutely consider it, I would, but I like having Cami at home. Back in Chicago she saw some pretty horrible things, things a girl her age shouldn't have had to see, and it left her traumatized. She's been through a lot and I thought it was important to keep her close and create as normal an environment as possible. I couldn't send her away to school, let alone sign away all rights to see her."

"Many parents sign those contracts Mrs. Rasper. Many good people who love their children."

"I know, I really do. I don't blame somebody for sending their kids to a CNP school or a work school. If it's between signing away your rights as a parent or seeing your child starve to death, of course it's better that they live. I have a lot of friends that did that and I don't blame them one bit, but my situation is different. I'm employed, I can take care of my daughter."

"Please state for the record where you are employed."

"Karsh Materials Incorporated, glass and plastics division." Elizabeth said.

"And this is a full time job?"

"Sixty hours a week."

"And your pay?" Melissa asked.

"I am paid in limited transferable credits which can be redeemed at certain food stores and with the housing authority. Our company, I'm sure you know, has only two clients, the Federal Procurement Agency and the Christian Nationalist Party."

Melissa took a moment to think before she spoke again. "Mrs. Rasper, I am the Educational Services Officer for Ohio District 45. That means it's my duty to see that every child in the district under the age of sixteen is receiving the best education possible for them. I am here as an advocate for Cameron. I want to help get the best for your daughter. My concern in your situation is that you work sixty hours a week. I don't see how you can work that kind of job and give your daughter the education she deserves. I just don't see that it's possible."

"I get up at four AM every morning and grade my daughter's assignments from the day before. My daughter is up by five and we go over her work and I assign her reading and worksheets for the day. I can track everything she does on our network, so I know if she's been unproductive. If you were to test my daughter I'm sure that you would find her in the top ten percent of kids her age. I take her education very seriously."

"What time do you leave for work Mrs. Rasper?"

"I'm out of the house by six."

"You're up at four and out by six, so by your own admission you're only dedicating two hours a day to your daughter's education..."

"Yes but..."

Melissa held up her hand to keep from being interrupted. "It's simply not enough time for Cami. It would be different if she were living in a two parent household. I watched the STS from the interview you did with my predecessor last year. She raised many of the same concerns that I did and you assured her that your husband would be joining you shortly and would be helping with Cameron's education." Melissa looked around the room as if expecting to see Mike Rasper somewhere. "That hasn't happened has it?"

"No, we're very worried about him. He knows where we are and he would've gotten word to us by now if he could've."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"In Chicago before we left. He'd lost his job you see, and he faced arrest under the employment laws, so he joined a work crew headed to Atlanta. My sister arranged for my job here, and he was going to join us as soon as he could organize work papers for travel."

"You never heard from him?"

"No." Elizabeth said.

"Michael Rasper was arrested in Atlanta on May 16, 2039. He is currently in detention, did you know that?"

Elizabeth Rasper shook her head slowly. "No." She said. "But he was promised work in Atlanta. If there wasn't any work he could've gotten trapped through no fault of his own. Was he charged with unemployment?"

"There were no charges," Melissa said, "he's being held as a terrorist. He threw a rock at a policeman."

"That's terrorism?"

"What would you call it Mrs. Rasper? It was an act of political violence directed at an innocent civilian who was just trying to do his job."

"I'm not defending throwing rocks at policemen, I'm just surprised it's considered a terrorist attack." Elizabeth rubbed her hands together, betraying a nervousness that Melissa was trained to look for.

"When you were living in Chicago with your husband and daughter, were you a part of any group or collective?"

Elizabeth assumed that she already knew the answer to the question, so lying wasn't an option. "Yes, we were part of a non-political food collective, organized through our church. If we hadn't participated we would have starved to death sometime in '38 like so many others."

"You pooled your resources to obtain canned food and the like?"

"Yes," Elizabeth said, "and we started small-gardening initiatives and traded labor for food with other farmers."

"I assume the food was gathered and stored somewhere safe?"

"There were a number of storage areas." Elizabeth said.

"They were well-guarded?"

"There were roaming gangs of starving people in the streets." Elizabeth said. "Of course they were well-guarded."

"By people with guns?"

"Of course." Elizabeth said.

Melissa picked up her small-screen and placed her thumb on it, unlocking the virtual curve-screen display. She moved a couple of files around and then typed an entry into a log, checked her work and shut the whole thing off. "I've come to a decision Mrs. Rasper. I think Cameron should go to the Christian Nationalist school. I think that's the best option for everyone involved."

"No, please," Elizebeth was trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, "I'll enroll her in one of the farm schools instead, I'll do it tomorrow. Please, not the Christian Nationalist school."

"Why do you object to that particular school?"

"It's nothing against the party, I'm a member myself, a community coordinator too, it's just that I'm afraid I'll never see her again. They give the kids new names and new identities. I couldn't bear to lose Cami. Please, no, I'll take her to the farm school right now if you want."

"I understand that it can be difficult for a parent to accept that their child would be better off without them Mrs. Rasper, but try to see the bigger picture. Look at it from Cameron's point of view. She deserves a clean slate doesn't she? At the Northern Ohio CNP school we have kids whose parents are senior officials in the party and kids whose parents are in jail for rape and murder, and you know what? They're treated exactly the same. A person can be arrested for associating with a terrorist right? That's a crime. Well Cameron's father is a terrorist, and associations don't come any closer than that. Why should she suffer for her father's crime?"

"She hasn't seen her father in years." Elizabeth said.

"But what about you Mrs. Rasper? You've admitted that you were part of an armed collective..."

"It was non-political!"

"Any group of people is political Mrs. Rasper. Would you want your daughter to be punished and stigmatized for your crimes? Is that fair?"

"But..."

"She's eleven years old, she's not going to forget her birth name or you. You need to let her become a part of this country's future instead of being imprisoned by its past. Like it or not, she's part of generation zero."

Elizabeth Rasper was crying silently. "Please." She said.

"Where is Cameron now Mrs. Rasper?"

Elizabeth wiped the tears from her cheeks and sat up straighter. "She's at my sister's house across town." She said.

"She's not at your neighbor's house next door?"

Elizabeth was silent.

"Lying to a state official is a crime Mrs. Rasper, but I understand how hard this must be for you so I'm willing to overlook it. Some parents are selfish enough to turn their kids into fugitives rather than give up control of their education. There is an agent with Cameron now, if you cooperate I'd be willing to take you to the train station so you could say goodbye to her."

Elizabeth shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'll go get ready." She said. She went into her room and changed her shoes, thinking of all the ways she could've escaped with her daughter. She'd had a good chance a few months earlier, when a friend from work had told her about a guy she knew who made good fake passports that could get them into Canada. She declined, thinking Mike would never be able to find them again if they left the country. Now escape would mean doing something desperate and far more dangerous, if she could manage at all.

The idea that she could actually lose Cami was something she had to face. There was a party official with her daughter, and they certainly wouldn't leave before she was on the train. Once she left, Elizabeth would never see her daughter again, she knew that. She went to her daughter's room and looked around, knowing that Cami wouldn't be allowed to take any clothes or a bag. She wanted to give her daughter something, anything, to remind her of her family and identity.

Her eyes fixed on a spiral-bound notebook that her daughter had been filling with drawings for the past year. When they were living in Chicago Mike had come home with a box of spiral notebooks he'd found in a dumpster. They'd explained to Cami that this was what people used to write and do schoolwork on. Since then Cami had always kept one, mostly for drawings, but some writing too. Elizabeth thought she'd grown more attached to the notebooks after her father had left.

She tucked the notebook under her arm and went out to the living room where Melissa, the young CNP official waited by the door. There was an Education Division van out front and Elizabeth could see her daughter sitting in the back and a man sitting in front, entering coordinates on a small-screen.

Melissa opened the front door and waved to the man and the van pulled away. Her daughter was looking back toward her as it drove off. Melissa looked at Elizabeth, serious and reserved, like someone who had done the right thing even though it was difficult. "Come on." Melissa said. "I'll take you to the train station so you can say goodbye."

Elizabeth almost said 'thank you,' but caught herself. The CNP Educational Services Officer drove a Korean electric mini-car. Melissa clicked her small-screen, opening the doors and starting the engine, and the two women got in. She put her small-screen in the dock and the doors shut and the car began to move. Elizabeth had her daughter's notebook on her lap and Melissa glanced at it as they started up the road.

"I see it as part of my job to try to make these difficult situations a little easier." Melissa said. "My predecessor in this position, the one who interviewed you last year, she wouldn't have taken you to the train station to say goodbye. I think it's important to show that the party isn't heartless in these things. We simply must do what's best for the child, regardless of how the parent feels. It's not easy sometimes."

"I don't know what I'll do without my daughter." Elizabeth said, barely above a whisper. "She's my only reason for living."

"She's not dying!" Melissa said. "She's going away to school. You can continue to live for her, she has a bright future, like her whole generation. The country is stabilizing, and the terrorists out west wont fight forever. Eventually things will get back to normal and your daughter will find you. I don't think you realize just how lucky you are Mrs. Rasper. Your husband is an enemy of the state and you were part of an armed collective. You could be in prison for either of those things, but luckily for you, you seem to have fallen through the cracks. It's a good thing you're employed."

Elizabeth felt a cold presence in the car and wanted to dispel it somehow, but was at a loss. "Yes," she said, "I'm lucky."

Melissa had been trying to elicit a thank you from the woman, who reminded her so much of her aunt, but she settled for the agreement that she was lucky. They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the station, Melissa turned to face Elizabeth Rasper. "You're going to wait here while I go and arrange for Cameron's travel. I'll explain to her what's happening and come back and get you before the train leaves. You can say goodbye on the platform." Melissa looked down at the notebook. "You wont be able to give her that. She can't take anything with her to the school -you'll have to leave it in the car."

When Melissa left, Elizabeth looked at the notebook on her lap and felt like ripping it into a thousand pieces. She looked at the wire spiral, twisting its way down the notebook's spine. She picked at the top and pried part of the wire free. She patiently pulled and loosened the wire, until she had gotten it completely free of the notebook. She stretched it long and then coiled it loosely and put it in her pocket. She put the unbound notebook papers on the seat next to her and wondered if she would ever feel anything again.

Melissa came down the stairs and waved for Elizabeth to join her. The child was standing next to the agent on the platform, crying panicked tears. The agent seemed to disapprove of Melissa's choice to let Elizabeth Rasper say goodbye to her daughter. Melissa was new to her job and felt the disapproving look of the agent more acutely than she knew she should've. Melissa outranked him and could do as she saw fit. After all, she was brought into the ESD to make some changes. People had to see that the party wasn't full of ice-cold bureaucrats who went around tearing up families.

Elizabeth Rasper went to her daughter and fell to her knees and embraced her. They were both crying and clutching each other tight. An older couple on the platform took in the scene and shot Melissa a look, but she ignored it. Elizabeth stood, lifting her daughter, and scanned the edges of the platform with desperate, animal eyes. Melissa tensed, knowing the woman wanted to run, but the agent took Cameron Rasper out of her mother's arms before she could make a move. The chimes sounded, signaling that the train's doors were about to close.

The agent nodded to Melissa and stepped onto the train. The doors shut and Elizabeth Rasper stood there, staring at her daughter for a moment before the train finally left. Elizabeth slumped and swayed on her feet. Melissa went toward her to help, but the woman staggered past her and lurched toward the stairs by the ticket booth. She grasped the rail and climbed down to the parking lot.

Melissa followed and found Elizabeth Rasper beside a bus, doubled over and vomiting onto the concrete. Melissa went to her and gently put a hand on the woman's back. She didn't acknowledge Melissa's presence. She was dry-heaving and sobbing at the same time, and Melissa couldn't help but cry herself at the sight of a mother's grief.

Elizabeth's sobs subsided a little, and she became aware of Melissa, standing beside her in the empty parking lot. Melissa saw a hint of understanding in the woman's expression, a hint of acceptance, and she was glad. There was something in the woman's hand and it caught the light with a flash. Melissa realized it was some kind of wire as it went around her throat. She started to scream, but nothing came out. She tried to grasp the wire but it was digging into her neck and she couldn't get her fingers under it. She pushed at Elizabeth, but she needed oxygen and the effort put her on her knees. She looked into Elizabeth Rasper's eyes and saw no anger, no hate, not even determination, just nothingness.

-back to table of contents-

# Leda and the Swan

When Tully McKiernan got to the front of the line he was covered in a thin layer of sweat. It wasn't particularly hot in the airport, and he was worried that the customs agent would think he was nervous and he'd have to wait while they searched his bags and brought in experts to look at his passport. He had the kind of face that made customs agents think he was hiding something, and the sweat could only make it worse.

"What brings you to Boise?" The man asked, looking over his paperwork.

"Business." He said. "I have a flight back to Paris tomorrow evening."

"Mm-hm." The customs agent read his employment docs. "It says here you work for Pharma DAN, are you carrying any drugs with you now?"

"No," he said, "I don't actually transport the products myself, we use shipping companies for that."

"Prison or military?" The man asked. Tully was confused for a second. "Your shipment, is it for the prison or the base?"

"Prison." Tully said. Apparently it was the right answer because the man scanned his passport and told him to enjoy his stay.

He took the elevated train to the Hyatt Regency and checked into a small room with two full beds and an old fashioned television. He popped a sativa lozenge into his mouth and undressed while it dissolved on his tongue. He was in the shower when it took effect and he laughed, suddenly feeling like a giant in the small shower-stall. He was going to rest for awhile before he called Smitts, but he noticed his small-screen was lit blue when he was drying off. He picked it up. "Where are you Tully? I'll come get you."

"I just got in a second ago, I'm still recovering from the flight."

"You at the Hyatt by the airport? I'm halfway there as we speak. I want to show you some new stuff, but we gotta be out of the warehouse by six."

"Whaddya got?"

"Just wait in the lobby for me, I'm almost there."

Smitts had his Brasileiro electric modified to run faster than the speed limit and Tully was uncomfortable with how fast they were going. The sativa lozenge was still in his system and it seemed to him that the little transport was on the verge of flipping. Smitts laughed at Tully's flinching when they changed lanes. "Are you high or something?" He asked.

"I'm not used to these little-assed cars." Tully said. "In France people still drive full-size."

"Don't worry, I've never had an accident and my small-screen is German. It's the best driver on the market. How do you feel about memorabilia?"

"Like what?"

"We just got a bunch of old rock posters from the nineteen nineties and some from the sixties." Tully shrugged. "We got a claw-foot bathtub from the nineteenth century. It'd be hard to transport, but it's got to be worth a fortune."

"You're making me nervous Smitts, I'm here to buy the Twombly. That's it. I'd be very interested to see what else you have, but I want to get the Twombly safely out of the country first."

"You're the one who told me you had to wait until tomorrow to do the Twombly deal." The car had made it to the parking lot of the warehouse. "In the mean time I want to show you some beautiful things."

"Bathtubs?" Tully asked.

"How do you feel about Warhols?" Smitts got out of the car grinning at Tully. He knew he would want to see Warhols. Smitts led him past the guard desk and down some metal stairs into a dry, cavernous space, filled with giant metal shipping containers that could be loaded onto a boat, train or big-rig truck with equal ease and efficiency. They went into an office at the back of the warehouse and Smitts unlocked a metal cabinet. The Warhols were in a drawer, unframed. It was a collection of six of the flower prints that looked like neon popcorn.

"They're not fake." Tully said.

"I knew you'd be interested."

"I didn't say I was interested." Tully bent down to get a closer look at the signature. "You know how I know they're not fake? Because no one would bother to fake something so common. There must be thousands of these floating around."

"I have a local buyer but I'd rather sell them to you. I need as much PAC as I can get."

Tully stood up, knowing the moment he'd been dreading had arrived. "Yeah, about that," he said. "I know I promised you PAC, but it's impossible. You just can't get them through customs."

"What are you saying, you don't have any treason? What the mother-fuck Tully? We had a deal."

"Yeah, in France it's easy, but I did some research after we talked, and I found a list of people who disappeared trying to bring PAC bills into the U.S..."

"That's not my fucking problem man." He slammed the drawer with the Warhols shut and threw his hands up. "No fucking treason, no Twombly. The deal's off."

"You haven't heard my proposal yet."

"If you think I'm taking limited transferable credits you're crazy."

"Have you ever heard of emps?" Tully asked.

Smitts shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

"Have you ever tried one?"

"What do I look like, an international renegade? Nobody has emps, I'm not even convinced they're real."

Tully pulled a datcom from his front pocket and unscrewed the two pieces, revealing a container that held six orange capsules. "A sample." Tully said. "My employer is a pharmaceutical company, and I'm supposed to be overseeing a delivery of antivirals going to the prison. There will also be a hundred thousand of these coming in with the delivery. That many emps far exceeds the value of the PAC we talked about."

Smitts rubbed his forehead with his hand. "I thought I'd be getting cash, instead you give me a fuck-ton of work to do. I'm not a drug dealer Tully. That's the kind of shit that will bring the buttons around with their hands out. You don't know how things work in Boise. This place is full of vicious, murderous animals masquerading as human beings. Drug dealers don't last long here."

Tully held one of the pills up. "I understand it's not ideal, and of course you're free to say no, in which case I'll try to unload the emps myself and get you the PAC you want. But before you make your decision, I think you should try it." He handed the pill to Smitts, who looked at it carefully. "Go ahead, that's just from one friend to another, no commitment implied. It's a gift."

"Does it really do all the stuff they say?" He asked.

"Only one way to find out." Tully said.

"You go first."

Tully took one of the pills from the container and popped it into his mouth. Smitts watched him carefully and then did the same with his. "How long does it last? I have to be at work in a few hours."

"These last about twenty hours or so, but you can function on the shit. In fact work is one of the best things to do while you're on it. It'll help you work." Tully knew that Smitts would agree to give up the painting for the emps after he'd experienced the drug. The first time was always the best, and he would be elated from the sheer newness of the effect, so unlike any other substance.

'Emp' always seemed like a misnomer to Tully. Under the drug's influence you did feel a sort of empathy and understanding of people that was deeper than usual, but you could also apply the same understanding to yourself, and how you saw yourself while on the drug was the most interesting part. Tully was way past the honeymoon phase, and he wouldn't have taken the drug if he didn't have to. The first time he took it was five years before, when the drug had just made it's first forays out of the lab into the wider world. He'd taken it regularly for two years before he realized that the returns had greatly diminished.

The drug allowed you to see behind every action and every word made by another person. If you were on an emp-run and sneezed and the person beside you said 'bless you,' you would instantly see the social construct and tradition that motivated his words. You would be able to tell to what degree the person cared about you or was just going through the motions, and whether they connected any religious meaning to the blessing or not. If someone paid you a compliment you could tell to what degree they were sincere, and if there was a motivation behind the compliment and if the motivation was benign or malignant.

It garnered the name 'empathy' because what most people found out was that the people around them just wanted to be loved and appreciated, and even when they were concealing something, it was usually out of fear and not ill-will.

When you considered your own life, you could see motivations for your choices and actions that were previously hidden from yourself. At first you saw only the best most positive motivations, but over time this became balanced and eventually, if you continued to take the drug, you would see only the most negative reasons for everything you had ever said or done.

The initial explosion of emp use in France had created a two-year love trip that was already legendary. The culture exploded with art, books, music, and film that all had the same message: People are good, love each other. Tully had been there and he knew from experience that it wasn't just an artistic movement, it was everywhere. The grocery store near his apartment had instituted an honor policy for payment, and the owner encouraged people to pay whatever they thought their groceries were worth. The same thing was happening all over the country with the spread of the drug.

Then the suicides started.

Tully had almost succumbed himself one night after taking four times the usual dose. He had mapped out his life with the words fear, greed and hatred written above it. He drew lines from all the decisions in his life to the motivations behind them, and he saw that it was all shit. His whole life from beginning to end was driven by the worst impulses and would ultimately amount to nothing. He would've hung himself off the balcony of his apartment if he hadn't had an old book of black and white photos of Michelangelo's sculptures. His first love, his love of art, had brought him back from the brink, and he had rededicated his life to art. Now the thing that had saved him would lead him to bring the thing that almost killed him to a wider audience.

But Tully still believed that his experience with the substance had been ultimately positive, and if any country could use a couple of years of love and goodwill it was civil war America. If he could save some masterpieces in the meantime then it would be worth it.

Smitts was nodding to himself as they rode in his Brasileiro to a coffee shop. He began muttering under his breath, getting louder as they went until Tully could hear that he was saying 'yes' to all the buildings and billboards they past. "Are you enjoying the ride?" Tully asked him.

"Everything that human beings create is the expression of just one desire," Smitts said, "the desire to be loved."

"That's the first lesson." Tully said. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to love everybody." He said, widening his eyes as if coming to a profound realization. "It's the easiest thing in the world. It's the natural state of existence. Hatred and fear are just distortions of the desire to love and be loved. I get it now."

"I agree wholeheartedly." Tully said.

Smitts looked at him with a warm smile as if they had known each other their whole lives, as if they were brothers. "You're trying to manipulate me to get the painting, I know, I can see it clearly. I don't care though because I can see past the manipulation. You have a deep conviction that high culture makes life worth living and you want to be some small part of it."

"I'm well-paid for my efforts." Tully said. He was always a little uncomfortable around someone in the full force of an emp-run.

"Your greed is a put-on. You think I'm an unintelligent person who wouldn't understand your true motives, so you pretend to be sleazier than you are to put me at ease." He laughed. "It's okay," he said, "your secret is safe with me."

At the coffee shop the deal was made, a hundred thousand emps for Twombly's masterpiece: Leda and the Sawn. Tully sipped his cannabinoid soy latte. "Can I see it?" He asked.

Smitts glanced at his watch. "Sure," he said, "but it's at my partner's house in Garden City. We'd better hurry 'cause I gotta get to work on time."

Tully felt the effects of the cannabinoid latte more than the emp, but on the way to look at the masterpiece he had one emp-inspired insight about the city of Boise. As he gazed out the windows of the fast little car (he was getting used to the speed now) he understood perfectly how money and politics could change a place. He could see how the wild, booming border town he now saw had once been a peaceful, conservative community, nestled in the middle of a rich country. Christian Nationalist politics and civil war had transformed it into a phantasmagoria of money and violence and competing interests.

Smitt's partner's place wasn't much to look at from the street. A square brick building that used to be a factory of some sort, but had been reimagined as a raw living and work space. The German small-screen drove them into an underground garage and parked. "He's not answering his datcom for some reason, but it's okay, I have a code-key."

"Where's he keep the painting?" Tully asked as they walked to the elevators.

"His wife's an art lover, like you," he said, "they keep it on their wall." They entered the big metal elevator and Smitts waved his small-screen in front of the panel and the elevator sprang to life, lifting them fast enough to turn Tully's stomach for a moment.

"Nice place," Tully said, "your partner must have money."

"War pays well." Smitts said as the elevator slowed suddenly and stopped. The doors opened and four large men in militia uniforms suddenly had their hands on Smitts and Tully, shoving them both to the floor, just inside the apartment.

"Jeremiah P. Smitts, you're under arrest for knowingly giving aid to a terrorist organization." Said a man in a suit who was standing a ways back from the commotion. Tully twisted his head to see the man talking. Behind him, on a brick wall, he could see Leda and the Swan.

"What about this other guy?" One of the militiamen asked.

"Bring him in too," the man in the suit said. "He's associating with enemies of the state."

Tully could see Smitts, face down on the polymer tile floor with two big men on top of him, digging their knees into his back. Smitts was smiling, still riding high on his emp-run. "You inflict pain on me to alleviate the pain you feel inside yourselves." He said. "All actions, even negative actions, are ultimately motivated by love."

One of the men shoved his head down hard. "Sorry pal, it must be all the love I got in me." He said. The other guy laughed.

"Your inner confusion makes you grasp onto highly structured social orders like the militias. That's what represents love to you."

"Black him out." The man in the suit said. "I don't need to hear any more preposterous hippie drivel."

"What about his boyfriend?"

"I don't even know the guy!" Tully shouted. "I'm just here to look at a painting!"

"Leave him conscious." The man said. "We'll take him in and see if he's on any lists."

After getting only a glimpse of the painting he'd risked so much for, Tully was taken to a cell and left overnight. The cell was the size of a closet and there was no way to lay down, and no toilet, just a grate in the corner. Tully sat in the corner opposite the grate and cursed himself. The worst thing that could've happened had happened, he was in a black hole and would never be heard from again. He had completely lost track of time when the cell door slammed open. "Come on," the man said, yanking Tully to his feet.

He led him to a small room with two chairs and a table where all of Tully's things were arranged, his datcom, small-screen, antique watch and small suitcase that held some paperwork and a change of clothes. "Sit." The man said.

When Tully sat the man in the suit he'd seen the day before at the apartment came in. He sat opposite Tully. "Mr. McKiernan what were you doing with Mr. Smitts yesterday? What brought you to that apartment?"

"I was there to look at a painting. The guy, Smitts, he told me he had access to an original Cy Twombly. I wanted to have a look."

"Were you going to buy it?" He asked.

"I don't know. I was going to look at it and determine whether it was genuine before I proceeded." Tully said. "I suspect that the painting they were going to show me was fake."

"Was it that scribbly mess on the wall?"

"Yeah."

"That would be pretty easy to fake," the man said, "my kid could do it and she's five." Tully forced a chuckle. "Mr. McKiernan, your English is pretty good but your passport says you're French..."

"I was born in France, but I grew up mostly in Canada. I have dual citizenship, but I live Paris these days."

"Says you work for Pharma DAN..." Tully nodded. "It says you're an executive. Why do they send an executive to oversee a simple shipment of antivirals? Why not send a sales rep?"

"Well sir, to be completely honest I came to look at that painting. We send shipments to the prison complex three times a year, and we always send someone to make sure it gets here. My boss got word through an associate that there was a masterpiece that might be for sale in Boise they decided to send me this time, to check it out. The partners at the company all know about my ulterior motives for coming and they don't mind. We're all art lovers."

"That's very French." The man said. "What were you going to buy the painting with -assuming it was real?"

"If the painting was genuine we were going to try to figure out a way to legally purchase it and get it out of the country."

"You should've done some homework. Nothing that's deemed culturally significant is allowed to leave the country anymore. The exchange rates make it impossible anyway." He held out the container with the four remaining emp capsules. "What are these?"

Tully chuckled. "Oh they must've stumped your chemical analyzers." He said. "They're brand new. Working for a pharma company I have access to new products, and that one should be a hit. It's for um... Male virility shall we say? I always bring some with me on business trips."

"I see, well, the policy is to confiscate any unknown substances, so you wont be getting them back." The man in the suit took a deep breath and looked at Tully. "You're lucky Mr. McKiernan, had you given Mr. Smitts anything for the painting you would've been guilty of providing material aid to a terrorist organization too. As it is, and considering the fact that you work for a company that helps the party, I'm willing to let you off with a warning."

Tully didn't hear anything after that. He showed copious amounts of gratitude to the man, and left the giant police station in a kind of exhausted daze. He had to be on a plane that evening, but he knew he had to get to the prison first and do something about the shipment of emps. It was two in the afternoon and the shipment should've gotten there that morning.

As he rode the train to the prison complex he thought about his options. He felt he was being closely monitored by the authorities now, although he didn't have any evidence of it. There was no way he could leave with the painting, but he thought it might still be possible to rescue the emps. He couldn't go back to France without the painting or the drugs, that would be total failure.

He got off the train and found the receiving room of the prison complex, explaining, with difficulty, who he was and why he was there. Finally the woman behind the glass got the picture and datcommed for transportation to the medical supply facility. A young kid came and led Tully to an open-air transport out back. "When the shipment came in this morning I wondered where John was." The youth said as the transport drove them down a kind of covered ally between two huge buildings. "He's usually here to make sure we sign off on the delivery. You must be new."

"Yeah," Tully said, "I'm new."

"Well you're a little late, it came in this morning and we could've used you too because we got double the shipment we ordered."

"That happens sometimes." Tully said. "It's one of the reasons the company likes to have someone here when the order comes through. I'll take the extras back with me and make sure you aren't charged for them."

"Sorry." The kid said. "If I'd known that's how you handled it I would've signed for both boxes. I only signed for the one box and the delivery company took the other box back with them. It's probably on an airplane headed back to France right now."

When he looked back on what had happened to him (and he often did) he thought that this was the moment when he could've changed his fate. The lie would've went something like 'I'm sorry, but my boss notified me that a batch of defective pills went out by mistake. I've got to make sure they're not the ones we gave you.' At which point he would inspect the box that the prison had and determine if they'd gotten the antivirals or the emps. But unfortunately for him this lie didn't spring to mind. He just rode along with the youth to the medical supply facility trying not to show the sense of impending doom that was turning his mind to mush.

He got the paperwork in order and before he left he had a reassuring thought: his chances were better than 50/50, because if they had the emps they would give them to a couple of sick patients thinking they were antivirals and then realize what they had when the convicts went on epic emp-runs instead of getting better. Some enterprising prison doctor would realize he was sitting on a goldmine and get the pills out of there. And that was only if the prison had gotten the emps.

Tully went straight from the prison complex to the airport, eager to get out of the country as fast as possible. He was waiting in line at security when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was a big militiaman with a scar on his face. "You McKiernan?" The man asked.

Tully looked around and thought about running. There were people in uniforms everywhere. "Y-yeah." Tully said.

"Come with me." He said, pulling Tully out of the line. Tully's legs felt weak and he was surprised he was still walking, but the big man's hand was still on his shoulder, guiding him. He shoved Tully into a bathroom that had an Out of Order sign on the door. The man in the suit from the police station was there. He pushed a piece of paper into Tully's hands.

"That's my Pick Axe ID." He said. "I have the painting. Tell your bosses that I'll take one million PAC for it. This ain't a negotiation, that's my only offer."

Tully looked at the paper and then slipped it into his pocket. He tried to think of something to say. "They'll be pleased," he said.

"Good." The man said. "I hope we can do this as soon as possible." He turned and left and Tully exhaled and had to laugh at how scared he'd been. The incident made him feel better. Yes, he could rely on the basic American crookedness. If the prison had gotten the emps some doctor would hijack them.

What Tully didn't know was that his comforting thought was based on a misconception about how the prison used the antivirals. When a shipment came in, everyone in the prison, staff and population, would take the pills at the same time after breakfast the next day. By the time the fifty six thousand people in the mega-prison started to feel the effects of the drug, Tully was somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. Six hours later he was getting off the plane at Charles de Gaulle Airport and he was already a folk hero.

-back to table of contents-

# Exchange Rate

"How fast does it work?" Jen asked the woman behind the counter.

"Depends on the dosage, the person's weight, and how it's taken. Couple of drops on food and it could take a day or so. A couple of drops in a drink and you're looking at two hours tops. If someone drank it straight, the whole bottle, they'd be dead within a minute." The woman eyed Jen, thinking. "If the body is autopsied, the poison will show up in toxicology. It's not a good murder weapon if you're going for stealth."

"If I ever have to use it I'll be long gone by the time an autopsy is done." Jen said. "I'll take it."

"You got treason or credits?"

"Either." Jen said.

"It's fifty PAC or a half mil credits. We prefer PAC."

"I guess so, that's a pretty steep exchange." Jen said. She paid the woman in Pacific Alternative Currency bills and took the vial. Her bugout bag was now complete, she could take the identity of Marcia Peterson, born in Canada to Brazilian parents. Jennifer Tracer was trapped like everyone else in the Prison States of America, but Marcia Peterson could cross borders with ease. No one would question why she had four different types of currency, and they certainly wouldn't suspect that the bottle of eye drops in her bag was filled with poison.

She made her way through the Market Street bazaar and down the alley to the new mobile com center. She descended the stairs and put her thumb on the screen lock. When the door unlocked she opened it and found Tad working the security desk. "What are you doing working the desk?" She asked him.

"Carlos didn't show up." Tad said. "Neither did Bobby or Jerry. They're all freaked out because of the election. The policy paper from the new Attorney General has everyone paranoid."

"With good reason."

"I guess so." He said. "There's a Pick-screen in doc 6 that's ready for you."

She thanked him and headed down the hall. She went down two flights of stairs and entered the com center. She could hear Barry Stees doing his comedy show to be posted the next morning, but otherwise the center was quiet. At a time like this no one wanted to be caught doing a political show -even from a secure bunker, hidden behind voice changers and animated avatars.

Doc six had a new curve-screen display and Jen pulled up her notes as her avatar booted up. Her avatar was derived from image data of the old film actor Denzel Washington. The voice was a program from the writer William Burroughs. It was a sophisticated program that not only changed how she sounded, but changed her inflection patterns to avoid even the best voice detection software. The Burroughs program had a strangely soothing nasal twang that somehow went perfectly with her avatar's face. It had taken several combinations of famous faces and voices throughout history until she had stumbled on this combo, which had struck a chord with the public for some reason.

Her show was called 'We are Already Dead' and she did it five days a week, with special episodes now and then, like two days ago, election day, when California had struck down a ballot measure to outlaw the state currency. It was also the day that George O'Donnell had been elected president.

Jen started the broadcast with her opening theme, and waited for her cue to come in. The credit sequence ended with raw footage of a little girl throwing rocks at police in riot gear. The person filming her asks her if she's afraid of the police. "I aint 'fraid a nuthin' cause I'm already dead." She says.

The screen faded to Jen's Denzel avatar. "Today we're starting the show with a question. What kind of exchange rate are you getting out there in the real world? I was at a store today, and maybe I frequent stores with a certain political bent, but I was offered a product for fifty Pacific, or a half-mil credit. Has anyone else had this experience? I want to hear what kind of exchange rate you're getting, and I already have a reply from Bitchface 297 -go."

A cheap avatar of a giraffe from a popular kid's show popped up in a little square screen to the left of Jen's avatar. It was a man, speaking through a cheap voice changer. "Yo Whips, what are you doing a show for? Don't you know that your party is considered a terrorist organization now? You gotta get your ass underground."

"Going underground would be a valid response to the recent policy paper, but as of this moment I'm still willing to risk doing my show. I do it for you Bitchface 297. What kind of exchange rate are you getting these days?"

"I'd tell you if I could find any treason anywhere. I'm up in Canada, the PAC hasn't made it up here."

"An awful lot of Canadians calling the show lately. There seems to be a lot of concern up there about American politics." Jen said. "And in case William Burroughs isn't conveying it properly, that was sarcasm. Next up Sexhurt 001. He's always got a unique take on things. Sexhurt go."

The giraffe was replaced by a realistic man with jet black hair and a creepy mustache. It seemed like a caricature of a pervert, which made Jen think Sexhurt was probably a woman. "I'm no Canadian," the voice of the pervert said, "I'm an American and a member of the Revolution Party. What do you think of that?"

"I think that in the eyes of the O'Donnell administration you are a terrorist." Jen said. "What's your point?"

"My point Doctor Whipshit, is that unless there is a major break or some sort of mass movement, I'm going to jail."

"Now, now Sexhurt, you can, as Bitchface pointed out, go underground. There are always alternatives to succumbing to the power structure. You sound like you're afraid, and fear is exactly what the CNP wants you to feel."

"Well it's working right now Whips."

"I can tell." Jen said. "The Bay Area free speech encampment has gotten a lot bigger since the election, did you know that? And there's a rally tonight against the new policy paper. People are waking up. Locking up the unemployed in corporate prisons is one thing, but putting people in jail for belonging to a political party is another. Those people out in the streets are true heroes. What about you Sexhurt, will you be there?"

"Hey, I've been working for the Revolution Party for over a year now." The mustachioed avatar said. "I think I've done my part okay? The buttons will come for me, I don't need to go to them."

"If what you say is true and you work for the Revolution Party you should be able to get an alternate ID and disappear."

"Is that what you're gonna do Whips?"

"No comment."

"I hate to break it to you but the network for paper trips has been compromised. I know of five people who've been arrested trying to get on planes or trains. One I saw with my own eyes. We'd heard some rumors so I went to the train station when I knew one of my colleagues was leaving. She bumped her small-screen at the ticket counter and the buttons came down on her in a second. No talking, no questions, they just cuffed and bagged her and dragged her off."

Jen was momentarily silent. "Well, I'd like to point out that Sexhurt 001 is an anonymous avatar and we don't know if what he says is true or not. The danger with my format is that I let the show open to party propaganda being disseminated here. Revolutionaries with fake identities should take this information with a very large grain of salt."

"Hey, you've been putting me on your show since the beginning." Sexhurt said. "You think I've been spreading party propaganda that whole time?"

"I don't know." Jen said. "Let's open it up for others to comment. Any other Revolution Party members heard of ID busts? We'll hear from you after this." Jen threw to a sewerpunk video. She took her small-screen off the dock and sent Sexhurt 001 a Pick message: I don't think you're CNP, but my show is anti-fear. Is your info solid?

-Yes, solid. Five confirmed, rumors of many more. Be careful Whips, the new IDs will put you in a hole-

Jen could almost see Marcia Peterson dissolve from her future. She got confirmation from three other commenters who said they were Revolution Party members whose friends had been nabbed trying to disappear.

She was about halfway into her show when her LA connection came in with more bad news. NightRipper had a demonic lizard avatar and the voice of a well-known child actor. "Your viewers need to know what's going on here. The feds are shooting people down in the street. I barely got out Whips, we were at the free speech camp in front of the federal building and the security forces just opened fire on us. They weren't trying to arrest anyone, they just wanted us all dead. I'm talking about a fucking massacre Whips. When the drones came we ran, and we got pretty far away but we could still feel the heat from the white phosphorous. They musta killed hundreds of people. It was the worst thing I ever saw and I'm from Chicago. Right now I'm talking to you from under a bridge..." Static chewed up the image for a moment. "...knew the Pick system was compromised..." He said before the transmission went out.

"We lost NightRipper," Jen said. She took a moment to try to grasp the new information. "So it's come to this." She said. "I guess supporters of free speech can expect zero help form Governor Gyllenhaal. The CNP can hire thugs to mow us down in the streets and those empty suits down in Sacramento wont do a thing to stop it. I guess there's no point trying to hide anything anymore. This is the last episode of We are Already Dead. My plan was to go underground -to run. It appears that that is not possible now, my new ID was from the Revolution Party, so it's nothing but a ticket to oblivion. Our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered in the streets of Los Angeles, even if running was still an option, I wouldn't do it. When I started this show I named it We are Already Dead as a way to combat the fear we were all feeling at the time. It's like saying 'Hey, all they can do is kill you. You're gonna end up dead one way or another anyway, you might as well fight.' Fear is the enemy, not the Well-Regulated Militia, not the Well-Armed Militia, not the Christian Nationalist Party, not the O'Donnell administration. Fear. Once you've conquered fear, you've won. I guess it's no secret that I do this show from the Bay Area, so I'll tell you all that I'm going to the free speech rally right after the show. I'm going to fight the thugs. Will we win? Probably not. Will I die? Maybe. Who cares? I'm already dead." Jen shut down the avatar and flipped the curve-screen's camera on. "This is the real me," she said, "Doctor Whipshitup, also known as Jennifer Tracer. I am ready to die. If you care about freedom, you'll stand up too. If you're in the Bay Area, maybe I'll see you in the street."

She cut the transmission and pulled her small-screen off the dock. She was met by Tad on the stairs. "Nice work asshole, we gotta pull up stakes now. Just cause you wanna die a fuckin' hero doesn't give you the right to take out the whole com-center..."

"Tad, relax, my small-screen is under a different name. there's no way to trace me to this building, and even if they could, they couldn't do it before the scheduled move day after tomorrow anyway."

"You think they can't figure out where you've been without the small-screen? They have facial and gait recognition software in every camera in the city. They'll know what block you're on within the hour."

"That shit doesn't work as well as they say."

"You're a selfish asshole. It's more important to you to make some grand dramatic exit from your show. I hope it was worth it."

"Me too." Jen said. She went past him and continued up the stairs.

"Keep your head down on the way out." He called up after her. "And walk funny!"

Jen left the building feeling empty and weary. She put her hand in her front pocket and held the bottle of poison. It was the only bugout left. She walked the deserted streets, and wondered where everyone was. All the shops were closed, even though it was only 8:30 PM. She turned the corner and was greeted by a mass of humanity, many blocks from the federal building. They were so far from the center of the demonstration she thought the crowd might be for something else until she saw the pro-democracy, pro free-speech, anti CNP signs. A surveillance drone came down close to the protestors and someone threw a bottle at it, barely missing. A chant was going up and Jen joined it and the crowd started moving. There was a hand on Jen's shoulder and she turned to see a large black man. "You're Doctor Whips!" He said. "We were just watching your show." He nudged the guy next to him. "Hey man look, it's Doctor Whipshitup, right here!"

Jen smiled at them. She'd often heard people talking about her show in public places and had almost felt famous, but this was different. These people knew her, not just her show. She thanked them for watching as some pushing and jostling separated her from her new friends. Jen pushed forward and found a lamppost, which she climbed partway up to get a better view.

She could see five large prison trucks, all open, and soldiers in black riot gear throwing people in them. Everyone going into the trucks had their hands bound behind their backs and black sacks over their heads. Jen heard a loud pop somewhere above her and all the lights went out. The sound cannons started strafing the crowd and Jen jumped down from the lamppost so that her hands would be free to cover her ears. There was a huge surge of people running into the crowd from the cross street and a cloud of tear gas was following them. Jen was pushed down and her hands came away from her ears and the sound entered her head like a drill, reverberating in her sinus cavity and making thought impossible.

Someone pulled her to her feet and she saw two people fall screaming and she ran. The cloud of tear gas was moving in and she stumbled over the legs of a kid bleeding out through a hole in his neck. He was holding a lit Molotov cocktail, so Jen took it from him and hurled it at the soldiers marching through the smoke. She saw flames jump onto one of the men's feet, and she ran headlong into the crowd, feeling a bullet fly by her ear.

She was in a mass of people all trying to go different directions and her body was being pressed from three sides, making it impossible to breathe. She managed to get low to the ground, thinking she could get some air, but she inhaled tear gas and started coughing. Her peripheral vision was going dark and she knew she was about to pass out. Between some legs she saw an open space and lunged toward it.

She woke to the feeling of her feet dragging against concrete. She looked up to see a hulking mass of Kevlar, plastic, and hatred, and he shoved her onto one of the prison trucks. Another protestor was thrown in on top of her and they both fell. "Get up!" Yelled the soldier guarding the open part of the truck. He pointed an automatic handgun at them, shining an array of red dots where the projectiles would penetrate both their bodies if he pulled the trigger. "Get in the back of the truck, NOW!" They weren't bothering to bind and bag people anymore.

Jen went to the back of the truck where about twenty people huddled together, bloody and coughing. Between the sound cannon, screaming, and gunfire, Jen could hear a helicopter flying low. Another few protestors were shoved in the truck. Jen pulled the poison from her front pocket and held it. The tear gas was still in her lungs and she didn't want to take it until she was sure she wouldn't cough it up.

The helicopter came back, and this time Jen heard loud machinegun fire from above too. "Jesus," someone said, "they're mowing people down from a chopper."

"No," someone else said, "the chopper is shooting at the buttons. It's the California National Guard."

As if in answer to what the man had said, the machinegun fire flared up again, and the sound cannon stopped it's wail. The shouting got more urgent and insistent and the thug with the automatic handgun jumped from the back of the truck. They all moved to the opening and a couple jumped down. There were soldiers in pale camo marching by. Jen jumped from the back of the transport. "Hey," she got the attention of one of the soldiers, "are you guys California National Guard?"

"Yup."

"What are you doing here?" She asked.

"Governor Gyllenhaal sent us to protect the rights of you protestors." He said. "You'd better get out of here, these guys want a fight. We might have to call in airstrikes." He kept moving and Jen realized she was still holding the bottle of poison. She slipped it back into her pocket.

"What does it mean?" A teenage girl who was climbing down from the back of the truck asked her.

"Don't you see?" Jen said. "California just went to war with the federal government. This is a miracle."

"Hey," the girl said, "you look familiar. Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"Come on." Jen said. "Let's get out of here."

-back to table of contents-

# Shopkeeper's Daughter

Sir Karl and Rob made it back to camp just before dawn and found everyone madly running around preparing for a rapid decampment. Sir Karl's bike was running hot and he wanted to find Bossman to take a look at it, but he knew there wouldn't be time now.

Rob stopped his bike in front of the mess and asked Connie what was up. "The buttons got Marcos." She said. "We're compromised so we're heading north."

"How the fuck'd they get Marcos? What happened?"

"He was in town for employment registration and he didn't come back. Turns out he'd flipped the bitch-switch and Deely didn't even notice until the Comandante asked where he was. We should've left camp hours ago. You guys had better go pack your gear."

Rob cursed and headed toward his tent. His rank as Subcomandante meant that he had his own private tent, but Sir Karl stayed in the bunk with four other guys. He found his stuff folded in a neat pile where the bunk-tent used to be. Sir Karl thought it would've taken just as much effort to throw it in a road case than to leave it in a pile.

He stuffed his clothes and gear into his pack, thinking he was lucky to be on the bike, his bunkmates would be in the back of a twenty year old pickup truck.

Comandante led the caravan south first, around the foothills of Bean Mountain, to a dry riverbed which they followed north into a shallow gulch. Deely raised the alarm in the early afternoon, after hours of travel in the dry desert heat. There was a nanotech cloud to the northwest and they all hunkered down under the thermal camo-tarps, hastily pulled over the three trucks and van and spiked to the sand. The six bikes came under the Comandante's tarp and their leader took the time for an informal debriefing.

"Mobile propaganda unit South 26 has been compromised by the capture of Marcos Stephens, one of our finest community assets. His operational knowledge is limited so there's no need for a major shift there, but as far as personnel and tactics this is a serious blow. Our Pick Axe network should be okay, the only transmitter he had was his bitch-switch. Once we've relocated and replaced the switches we should be in the clear. Sir Karl you're with me, everyone else dismissed. PACIFICA!"

"STAND STRONG!" They all yelled.

The Comandante motioned for him to follow and they ran over to another tarp. He told Sir Karl to get in the passenger seat of an empty truck. "Was the mission with Rob successful?" Comandante asked.

"Yes sir." He said. "We placed five decoy antennas, mostly around the south Yuma wasteland, but we got one up near the Ikea prison factory near the border. They should all be detected and destroyed within a month, and then we can expect a strike. By then we should have a third setup, so if they find the system we're on now, we can jump to the other uninterrupted."

"Good, we've got a shipment of South American hand-crank radios coming in so we've gotta keep the broadcasts going. Scotch got his hands on gigs of new music, mostly anarcho-sewerpunk, liquidbass, and some vintage stuff."

"No more annihilation sorties?"

"No, that format has been co-opted by the CNP Sound System, so we discontinued it. In fact Scotch is putting together a really funny parody of the party's sorties -he's going to play it Saturday night."

"The system should be running fine." Sir Karl said.

"Good," he said, "you've been doing important work for this unit for a long time now and I think you've earned a promotion. Everyone in the unit has a job to do, but I don't let anyone move to the rank of Subcomandante unless they've done more than is expected of them. They have to prove that they're not just functional to the unit's propaganda mission, but that they're useful to the ultimate mission, winning the war. I'm talking about soldiers. Our function is non violent, but we do occasionally need to employ violence to proceed, and we can't call in the Guerrillas every time we have to do something ancillary to our explicit mission. Do you understand?"

"Yes Comandante."

"A mobile propaganda unit is only as strong as the soldiers who defend it." He said. "You're ready to be a Subcomandante. I'm putting you out on a solo mission, and when it's done I'll make the official announcement. If you can't get it done or you refuse, you won't get it, understand?"

"Yes sir, I'll do whatever it takes."

"Wait'll you hear the details son. It's a mop-up operation on the Marcos capture. We were trying to get him a place in town through the housing authority, so he needed employment verification. He approached a business owner named Willie Pat Matron who runs a shop near the prison. It's a grey market place and we thought he'd go for it, it wouldn't have cost him anything, but he refused. Marcos told him that if he didn't get the employment verification he'd kill the man's daughter. When Marcos went back for the verification the buttons were waiting. Now we have to make good on Marcos' threat. We can't have the word go out that the Mobile Propaganda Unit makes idle threats. We'd never get any more deals made."

Sir Karl looked up at the underside of the thermal camo-tarp, rippling in the hot breeze above the truck. Maybe there was a nanotech cloud above it, straining to see what it could kill in the unforgiving desert below. Sir Karl pretended he didn't understand. "You want me to liquidate the shopkeeper?"

"No, we might need him." Comandante said. "I want you to liquidate his daughter. We need to send a message."

Sir Karl looked in the rearview mirror at Del Rey, one of his bunkmates, talking to the mess-tent girl. She looked like she was 16 or 17. "The daughter," Sir Karl said, "what's her name?"

"I don't know." The Comandante said. "It really doesn't matter. It's not fair to make her pay for her father's stupidity, but life isn't anywhere in the neighborhood of fair and this has to happen. Look at it this way son, you aren't killing the girl, her father is. Marcos told him it was employment verification or his daughter's life. This guy called the authorities. Even if he thought Marcos couldn't make good on his threat, he sure took an awful chance with his daughter's life -and for what? It wouldn't have cost him anything to put Marcos on his employment rolls. No, he's going to pay. I'm sorry for the girl, but she has to die. Someone has to do it, and I think it should be you." He looked hard at Sir Karl. "Will you do the job?"

"Yes Comandante." Sir Karl said.

"I'll send you two coordinates." He said. "The first will be the store that Willie Pat runs, and the second will be our new outpost. PACIFICA!"

"STAND STRONG!" Sir Karl said. The Comandante got out of the truck and headed toward Deely to get an update on the position of the nanotech cloud. Sir Karl held his head in his hands. He'd joined the Mobile Propaganda Unit to avoid killing. He was willing to fight and die for the cause, his whole family was dead or in prison because of the party, and he was no pacifist, but killing just wasn't in him. Even right after he was liberated from prison, when most of the people he knew were all for a bloodletting, he'd hoped to avoid partaking in any of the slaughter. His best friend Jay, who'd helped him survive the mass starvation when they were kids, and who had been arrested and jailed with him, he'd been all for killing anyone wearing a cruciflag, but not Sir Karl. He used to tell him that half the people wearing it were just afraid not to. As soon as he was old enough Jay had joined the Guerrillas.

Sir Karl went to his bike and by the time he got there the coordinates had come in to his small-screen. He sat on the bike and waited for the all-clear from Deely. When it came everyone started pulling down the tarps and SirKarl headed back down the dry riverbed toward Yuma.

The bike hadn't been charged after two days of straight use, so he made the long detour to the chili farm, a friendly power dump that didn't scan VIN chips. Sir Karl pulled his bike up to the side of the garage, next to the vast solar panel array, and got the chug out from under some plywood and plugged it into the battery. He honked the horn to let Morris and Patty know he was there, but they didn't come out the back door of the big house like they usually did.

Sir Karl had a few minutes while his bike charged so he went up the back steps and looked through the window into the kitchen, but there was no sign of either Patty or Morris. Sir Karl went back down the steps and around the side of the house. He had to let them know he was there or they would think someone had ripped them off for a charge. He heard some noise and stopped and listened. It was the deep section of an annihilation sortie, which wasn't the sort of thing Morris and Patty would be listening to at all. They probably listened to music to relax, not to have their brains scrambled and put back together with hypnotic suggestions added.

Sir Karl found the music coming from the back bedroom and he had to stand on tiptoes to see in the window. It took him a second to figure out what was going on with all the naked flesh he was seeing. Eventually he determined that it was two men, fucking like wild animals with the music turned up to eleven. Neither of the guys was Morris, they were both young, and Sir Karl knew that something must've gone wrong at the chili farm.

He ran quietly to his bike and saw that he still had a minute until it was fully charged. He looked into the window of the garage and saw an armored transport in there with the seal of the Well-Regulated Militia on the side. Sir Karl got his small-screen and sent a Pick Axe to the whole unit: Chili farm possibly compromised -approach with caution. He pulled the chug off his bike and got out of there quick.

Willie Pat Matron's store was on a deserted strip of industrial buildings. Sir Karl could tell by the look of the place that they traded in liquor, pills, ganja, and women. The cover business was low-cost auto parts, energy production products, and guns. It was most likely profitable too. There were many stores like this all over southern Arizona, and Sir Karl knew that the poor look of the place meant that it was probably prosperous. All the clean-looking shops without back rooms had all gone out of business long ago.

Sir Karl had a half mil credit on his small-screen which was about enough to purchase the least-expensive release option from one of the whores. He pulled his bike up to the front and went into the dark store. It smelled of old leather and oil. there were racks of water purifiers on one side and solar power generator kits on the other. Sir Karl noticed the loft that looked down over the store and the guy up there with an old Uzi, looking down at him. The lady behind the front counter looked like a retired working girl of maybe a rough 50-some years. She had a scar across her forehead that intersected with her left eyebrow at the edge. "We ID verify customers on all sales," she said to Sir Karl, "so if you don't got employment verification, we can't help you."

"I'm employed," he said, "but I'm not here to buy a product. I was going to inquire about purchasing services."

"That's different," she said. "Since you aint a regular client and it's the middle of the day you're going to have to take what you get. You can't be picky."

"Fine by me." Sir Karl said.

"What're ya looking for?"

"Something inexpensive." He said.

"What kind of credits you got, Arizona or limited?" She asked.

"Arizona."

"Three hundred will get you a roughie from Marlene." She said.

Sir Karl agreed and authorized a three hundred thousand credit bump on his small-screen and passed it over the lady's till. She verified the payment and told Sir Karl to wait. She went in the back and was gone a few minutes, leaving him alone with the guy with the Uzi. She came out and told him that Marlene was in room four and to head on back. Sir Karl went down the hall past rooms 1-3 and gently knocked on the door of room number four.

A big brunette with long hair pulled into tight ponytail opened the door. Her face was bare except for some sticky-looking bright red lipstick. She wore a long t-shirt with Minnie Mouse on it, and no pants, just some dingy cotton panties. The look of sad weariness was completed by dirty flip-flops. "You Marlene?" Sir Karl asked.

"Yeah, come on in." She said. "What's your name?"

"Derrick." Sir Karl said. The room was small and carpeted with a box spring and mattress taking up most of the space. There was a wooden crate, overturned, with a mirror and the prostitute's makeup and a small bag on it. The mattress had a blanket over it, but no sheets. The lighting was a single jittery fluorescent tube, doing no favors to Marlene's skin tone.

"Have a seat." She said. Sir Karl smiled at her and sat down. There was a whiff of cheap perfume in the air. "You gonna whip it out, or do I have to do that too?"

"Geez, can't we talk for a minute? I just met you."

Marlene shut her eyes and took a deep breath as if saying a silent little prayer for patience. "Sure." She said. "What's on your mind Derrick?"

"What's on my mind is the exact thing I don't want to talk about." Sir Karl said. "How long have you worked here Marlene?"

"Going on three years." She said.

"That lady out front the proprietress?"

"Meg? No. Why do you want to know?"

"Just curious." Sir Karl said.

"Nah, everyone knows this place is Willie Pat's. You must not be from around here."

"I just come into town from Phoenix. Whenever a big division is coming through they send some scouts ahead to check out the local talent."

"You aint a button." She said with a laugh.

"Never said I was." Sir Karl said. "I'm just a scout. The Well-Regulated Militia doesn't like to lose soldiers to the super-g or hep, or bad pills either. They send scouts out to establish connections to the underground. We come out and find the clean whores and pure pills, so the soldiers don't succumb to disease or delirium. Seems to me this place might be a good candidate for a partnership, of course it's a pretty small outfit here."

"It aint small," Marlene said, "they make it look like that on purpose. there's a lot of people working for Willie Pat."

"Enough to supply a whole division of the Well-Fed?"

"Yeah probably. You should talk to Meg about it." Marlene said.

"I'd rather talk directly to Willie Pat." Sir Karl said. "You understand I'm not supposed to be talking to anyone about it. They don't like people knowing about troop movements, although it'll be obvious in a day or two anyway. I shouldn't have said anything, but I'm trying to feel out the situation. The fewer people who know at this point the better."

"Willie Pat don't take phone calls." She said. "If you want to talk to him you've got to wait for him here or get out to his place in Fortuna."

"I guess I'd better head out there." Sir Karl said. "The movement's happening pretty soon."

"Don't you want to test the merchandise first?" She asked. Sir Karl figured it would look suspicious if he didn't take what he'd paid for, so he did his duty for a free Pacifica, and then got directions to Willie Pat's compound in Fortuna.

It was at the end of a long dirt road. There was a high wall with razor wire spiraled across the top of it, and you couldn't see the house that the wall was protecting. The high iron gate at the end of the driveway looked medieval and Sir Karl saw the security scanners arrayed along the front. He kept his distance.

There was some high brush on the side of a drainage ditch beside the road and Sir Karl drove past the driveway, up the road beyond the compound and pulled off. He laid his bike down on its side, behind a rock, and crept back behind the brush until he could see the gate at the end of the driveway.

He was in an awkward position and he had to stay that way for three hours until finally something happened. The iron gate creaked to life and started to open. It was just after sunset and a security light illuminated a large black car coming down the driveway. There was an overweight, middle aged man driving, and Sir Karl assumed that it was Willie Pat. Before the gate closed Sir Karl saw that there was a chain link fence behind the wall. He knew getting in that way would be impossible. He thought it made sense that Willie Pat would turn Marcos in rather than give him employment verification. He felt safe behind his wall, and he feared only the party, not the opposition. Sir Karl decided he hated Willie Pat and all that he stood for. He hated people who believed they were safe. He just hoped that when the time came he could extend that hatred to the man's daughter.

Sir Karl waited. He knew that if he waited long enough he would see Willie Pat's daughter. She couldn't stay behind the wall forever. Sir Karl felt that he could stay in his hiding place for days if necessary, but during the very cold night his confidence in his endurance wavered. It was just after dawn when the gate creaked open again, waking him from a shallow sleep. He looked down the road but saw no sign of Willie Pat's car approaching. A grey vintage sedan came down the driveway with a young man driving and a girl in the back seat. The car turned onto the road as Sir Karl ran back to his bike and started after it.

Sir Karl's bike was much faster than the car and soon he was speeding up to it. They were in the empty desert and he decided to make his move immediately. He pulled his auto-pistola from the seat compartment behind him and the heat from his hand activated the laser guide. He pointed in the general direction of the sedan's tires and five shots cracked the early morning cold and sent the car into a dull skid. It stopped on a sharp angle to the road as the driver popped up with a short burst of Uzi fire. Sir Karl kept his bike moving, making a big arc off the road onto the desert and over some bushes. He came around behind the car and accelerated toward the driver, shooting seven times as he went. He connected with the driver on the third through fifth shot and then he'd passed when he realized there were two hot pokers in his upper thigh. He took the same path around the car and shot three more bullets into the corpse of the driver, slumped between the road and the open door.

Sir Karl stopped a good distance behind the car and looked at the holes in his pants where the driver's shots had connected. He told himself that he deserved the pain for what he was about to do. "Get out of the car!" He yelled to the girl.

The girl flung the back door open with a shaky hand. She looked around the back end of the car to where Sir Karl waited. "Please don't kill me." She said.

"Just get out." He yelled. She slowly got herself out of the car, holding onto the door for support. She looked anywhere from 15-22 and she wore a dark blue minidress with argyle leggings. She had some kind of fancy necklace on, and Sir Karl thought that the necklace would make it easier to kill her for some reason. "Get face down on the dirt." He said. "On your stomach now. Don't look at me."

The woman got down on her stomach, crying. "Your father is a greedy pig and he gave a good man to the buttons." Sir Karl said. "That's why you're gonna die."

"My father?" She shook her head. "My father's dead. He died years ago."

"Are you Willie Pat's daughter?"

"No, I'm his wife." She said. Sir Karl rode up next to her and she shielded her eyes form the dust.

"Are you lying to me?" He asked.

"No, no!" She said.

Sir Karl noticed something in the back seat of the car and looked in. It was a baby seat holding a pink-faced little baby, dressed in pink and strapped in tight. "Is that his daughter?" Sir Karl asked.

"No." She said. "I-I'm just babysitting for my sister."

"Liar." He said. He got off his bike and tried putting some weight on his gimp leg. He felt blood running down his calf. He reached in and unlocked the car seat, and as he started to pull it out the woman was on her feet holding something. He dropped the car seat and heard the shot as he turned and fired three shots into the woman's head. She flopped to the ground and Sir Karl saw the small gun she'd had stashed. He had been shot in the side, but it hurt a lot less than his leg. He picked up the car seat and went back to his bike.

The baby was crying when he propped the car seat on the front of his bike, resting it against the handlebars. He threw his messed up leg over the bike and looked at the woman on the ground. "Your husband was warned." He said to the corpse. He shoved the gun in the back seat box and took off. The sound of the baby crying was soon drowned out by the wind. He had to get back to camp before he passed out from blood loss. He was flying.

Sir Karl had done many things in his life that he was not proud of, but he wasn't going to kill a baby. No. He would get medical attention and leave the unit. He'd take the kid with him. He had always dreamed of making a wild run for California. Stories of people getting lucky and just walking unmolested into the UPSA had given him hope and overwhelmed all the stories of people getting caught up and thrown in jail. Maybe the Comandante would understand when he saw that Willie Pat's daughter was just a baby. Maybe he'd let him stay in the unit. Lots of the guys in the unit had small kids, they could put her in one of the field schools.

The motorcycle gave out miles before he'd reached the new coordinates on his small-screen. It was overheated and he hadn't noticed because the baby's car seat was covering the gage. When Sir Karl pulled the whining, smoking bike over to the side of the road the baby stopped crying. Sir Karl rolled the useless bike behind a boulder and sat in the little shade it provided with the baby beside him. He sent a Pick Axe to the unit medic that said 'hurt bad -losing blood' along with his position.

It was a bright day but Sir Karl felt like he could see a shadow along the edge of everything in his vision. He thought he had a spider web stuck to his eyelashes and he tried to pull it off but it wouldn't move. The sky blinked a few times and he stopped caring about anything.

When Sir Karl looked up there was a thermal camo-tarp over him, rippling in the wind. He looked out and was surprised that it looked like morning still. There was a kid sitting next to the bunk he was in. He was playing a game on a flat screen display. "Hey." Sir Karl said. "Hey kid, what day is it?"

The kid looked at Sir Karl and then out toward the edge of the tent. "Dad," he yelled, "he's awake."

A guerrilla commander entered the tent. He was in his thirties and a bit scruffy from running around dry mountains for too long. He pulled a chair over to Sir Karl's bed. "You lost a lot of blood soldier, but you're going to be okay." He said.

"Who are you?"

"Garcia, Lieutenant, 523rd AZ" He said. "I'm sorry soldier but your unit is gone. MPU South 26 was hit yesterday. By the time we got there it was all over, only a few survivors. We got your Pick Axe and came and found you."

"The baby?"

"She's fine." He said. "She yours?"

"Um yeah, she's my little girl." Sir Karl said.

"You must've had quite a fight getting her out of there, we took three bullets out of you, but the baby's fine. You've gotta be father of the year."

"The whole unit's gone?"

"I'm afraid so." He said. "Your on-air guy, Scotch, he survived along with a couple of the writers and the mess crew. Everyone else is gone. You're just an enlisted man?"

"Yeah." He said.

"Well you're due for a promotion in my book, you weren't running away from the fight were you?"

"Hell no, I was acting under orders."

"That's what I thought." He said. "I hereby appoint you to the rank of Subcomandante, effective immediately. I'm assigning you to the 512, that sound alright?"

"Sure, as long as I can keep the kid."

"The 512 has a nursery. In a few years she can go to a field school. There's lots of families in that unit. I'm assigning an enlisted man to you, he'll help you get to the 512 when you're recovered." He turned toward the tent's opening. "ERIC!" He shouted "Get in here." A youngish thin man came in and stood at the foot of the bed. "You're assigned to help Subcomandante Karl here. Get him whatever he needs."

"Yes sir lieutenant." The kid said.

Lieutenant Garcia stood up and saluted. "PACIFICA!" He said.

"STAND STRONG!" The kid and Sir Karl said. When he left the kid turned to Sir Karl. "Is there anything I can do for you Subcomandante?"

"Yeah, get my daughter in here I want to see her." Sir Karl said.

"Anything else Subcomandante?"

"Ughh, Subcomandante, that sounds weird."

"What should I call you then?" He asked.

"Just call me Sir."

-back to table of contents-

# Theoretical Substances

Field Report No. 187101045

CNP Field Agent for Culture and Education No. 562, Fredrick Dermont, Northeast Division.

Reporting To:

CNP Senior Officer of Community Stability and Improvement Initiatives, No. 072, Betty Lamont Cress, Northeast Division.

Any persons other than the above reading this report is committing a federal crime punishable by life in prison or death.

May God bless these United States of America!

As per our discussion I will keep the tone of this report informal, this should in no way be taken as a sign of disrespect to you, your office, or the party. Also I would like to apologize for my writing skills, they have atrophied since my school years. I fully understand the need to keep this report off of the Pick system though, so I guess written reports are the safest alternative.

I arrived in Pittsburgh three days after a fire had destroyed much of the city's south side. The fire was preceded by a severe cholera outbreak leading to widespread speculation that party health officials had set the blaze. For this reason the university sent an armored car and two militiamen to meet me at the airport. If word got out that I was a party official, security could be an issue.

The city itself is a god-forsaken hole of filth, but when you cross into the university district, you enter a bubble of stability. The biotech money flooding the coffers of UPMC have overflown into the surrounding community, and there seems to be a militiaman on every corner. You have to pass through two checkpoints to enter the university district, and my escorts informed me that there are attempted attacks on a weekly basis.

Carnegie Mellon University is at the forefront of biotech, nanotech, and quantum computing technology. The military application wing of the university is doing the research and development necessary to keep us one step ahead of the shit-eating traitors of the western states. CMU developed the first generation of nanotech cloud and was instrumental in weaponizing the technology.

Doctor Rajash O'Mara, the professor whose work I was there to assess, does not work in the military applications wing of the university. In fact the board of the university think so highly of his research that they let him create his own department, the Department of Theoretical Substances. Despite its name, this department deals mainly in CRITs which are a good deal more than theoretical.

CRITs, or critters as the department personnel refer to them, are very real, and in my opinion very dangerous. The acronym stands for Consciousness Reflective Inter-dimensional Tendrils. They were first discovered as a mathematical anomaly by Dr. O'Mara, who published his findings in 2037. Most of the academic world dismissed the paper, but no one was able to disprove it. The consensus was that it was too vague to be disproven, but it turned out to be correct. The original paper published by Dr. O'Mara is attached, god bless you if you can make head or tail of it, you're smarter than I am.

The testing of his theories has progressed unimpeded for the past four years. Dr. O'Mara himself is a very difficult person to talk to, especially on the subject of his work, but his senior research assistant, Dr. Richard Denarsick, is quite good at explaining things in layman's terms. My discussions with Dr. Denarsick are the chief reference for the information I intend to lay out in this report.

The debriefing I got at the Maryland office indicated that the department had _created_ CRITs in a lab experiment of some kind, but Dr. Denarsick described the process in quite different terms. According to him the critters exist in a hidden plane of time and all they had to do was create the circumstances necessary for the critters to enter our present. They didn't create the CRITs, they opened the door and waited for the CRITs to come through.

The primary reason these things are so dangerous is that they self-replicate. For this reason the critters are contained within a strong magnetic field. To be more precise they are contained within three magnetic fields, a point made abundantly clear to me. It was continuously stressed to me how seriously they take safety concerns at the facility. I think they assumed I was there to determine if the project was a threat to public health, a view I did nothing to dissuade them of.

Sometime in the fall of 2042 the central magnetic field reached the saturation point. The central magnetic field is a magnetized metal box about the size of a large room. It is outfitted with sensors of many kinds, including a number of spatial time scanners. In order to test the consciousness reflective properties of the tendrils it was necessary to put a living creature within the CRIT saturated field. They used a research monkey, getting him into the box through a lock system built into the room. The research team was surprised when the tendrils transformed into oxygen immediately. This was a huge vindication for Dr. O'Mara. The monkey expected oxygen and there it was. The creature wandered around the box for a number of hours and finally fell asleep. When it woke up, all of Dr. O'Mara's other predictions turned out to be correct as well.

The monkey woke up in the cage it lived in at the university's research facility, or more accurately, it woke up in an exact replication of it. A facility worker came and fed the monkey, and later, another came and cleaned out his cage. The tendrils recreated the monkey's entire existence, including all the people and other animals it encountered.

The important thing to understand in this is that those people were real, the food the monkey ate was nutritious and the facility worker took the monkey's feces out of his cage and left the room and it was gone. Actually gone. We are not talking about the monkey's perception here, when dealing with the tendrils we are talking about actual reality, real reality.

The implications of the work done at the Department of Theoretical Substances are disturbing in the extreme. The more experimentation the team did, the more disturbing it became.

The monkey in the original experiment was destroyed and the tendril saturated chamber reverted over time to a neutral state. the next experiment the team conducted involved putting two monkeys in the chamber together to see how the CRITs would respond. The two monkeys were from the same facility so they both expected to see the same things and eventually they recreated life as they knew it in their facility, including workers who interacted with them both and other monkeys in the other cages.

I think I have to reiterate here that this was not an hallucination. The environment and people the critters created were real, and continued to exist as long as they were in the presence of one of the two original monkeys. The team then introduced a third monkey, one recently captured in the wild, to see what would happen when the critters encountered a radically different set of expectations. The tendrils, Dr. Denarsick explained, form a kind of consensus world, and since the world the two monkeys had created previously already existed, and due to their outnumbering the new arrival, the new monkey was forced to live in their world. He was put in another cage, like the others.

The team decided to try to undermine the three research monkey's consensus reality by introducing equal numbers with radically different expectations. They did this by using long acting sedatives on wild monkeys and transporting them into the tendril-saturated chamber while they were unconscious. The results were something quite unique to behold. I have included the spatial time scan of the resultant conflict on a small-screen expansion datcom for you to view (again, I understand the need to keep this stuff off the Pick network).

The wild monkies woke up very confused and agitated within the lab environment. The three lab-conditioned monkeys and all the CRIT-created monkeys in the other cages began screaming wildly at the new arrivals. The CRIT created lab techs came in and tried to subdue the wild new arrivals, but the wild monkeys killed the two lab techs, and managed to escape the room. They ran through miles of hallways, of course never leaving the magnetically sealed chamber, until they finally got back to the jungle they'd been taken from. Everything in the chamber is created by the tendrils, including the floor, so they could run for miles on a sort of three-dimensional treadmill. Eventually they put themselves back in the jungle where they came from. From the perspective of the researchers the two sets of monkeys lived ten feet away from each other, but they were never aware of the other group's proximity. Everything from the air they breathed to the food they ate was all actually critters.

This is how it stands now, there are six actual monkeys within the chamber, three of them in one consensus reality and the other three in another. In recent months Dr. O'Mara has begun trying to get the groups to interact again, so far his efforts have been unsuccessful. His feeling is that if they were forced together for a long enough period of time, they would be forced to create a consensus reality incorporating both group's expectations, or that they would fight and kill each other until one group was eliminated.

Conclusions:

If the CRITs were to escape their chamber they would saturate the entire magnetic field of the earth within fifty years. We wouldn't know the difference, and the only way to prove that it had happened is through an elaborate chemical process the doctor's team has developed. We would create a vast consensus reality and would have about as much control over it as we have over our current reality. Dr. Denarsick told me that we are probably living among creatures very like the CRITs already.

The value I see in the critters lies in their being separate and distinct from our reality. As long as the CRITs are held apart from our world we could create things that do not exist in our reality. The problem is that if it were some valuable material, platinum say, we couldn't take it out of the field without releasing the CRITs. Anything made from them contains enough of them to begin the saturation process.

But what could be conceivably transferred safely from the chamber to the outside world is energy. Suppose we built fusion power plant with a CRIT saturated chamber where the reactor should be. In this example, no actual nuclear material would be necessary, just workers who expected to see it. The turbines could be real and they would turn and power a generator. The workers would never leave the chamber after entering, although they would believe they were going home after work every day as usual, it would be a CRIT-created existence. In this scenario there would be no actual nuclear waste. On the other hand the workers themselves would be a kind of waste product. After many years of work they would reach the point of retirement and would just be taking up space in the chamber. At this point they would have to be disposed of, but a human can be disposed of much more easily than nuclear waste, so it's still a benefit.

Of course this is all just an example, there could be much better uses of the technology than I can think up. I'm sure there are some brilliant minds in the department that could come up with something better or more useful.

Recommendation:

I believe the party should take over the Department of Theoretical Substances as soon as possible. the potential benefit to the party and these United States could be huge. This could be the technology that lets us finally defeat the dog fucking cowards out west. For all we know their scientists are working on the same technology.

May god bless these United States of America!

-back to table of contents-

# Nutrient Slop

When McKendrick got to the briefing room he saw four other guys from his unit sitting there. They clapped for him sarcastically. He apologized for being late and sat down. "You five men are going to prison." One of the intel officers at the front of the room said. "You'll be transferred into isolation cells in a Nestle prison in Nevada. This particular prison will be the subject of an attack shortly after your arrival. All prisoners, including you, will be liberated and taken into California and made citizens of the UPSA. From there you are to join enemy forces and await further instructions, is that clear?"

"No," Harris said, "it's not clear. There's other ways to get us into California that don't involve sending us to prison."

"We need your background to look impeccable. Ex-cons who want to join-up get the benefit of the doubt."

"But the other prisoners will know that we got there just before the attack. That'll put a lot of suspicion on us."

"That's why you're going into isolation." The intel man said. "The prison's files will show that you've been isolated from the general population for over a year. You'll be shown to have been arrested for unemployment originally, and your isolation will be shown to be for either escape attempts or inciting violence. This should appeal to the military recruiters, it'll tell them you're fighters."

Ryan looked around. "Why us?" He asked. "Why were we chosen?"

"You five have the right combination of factors." The other intel man said. "No one in this room is a dumbshit, first of all, and you all tested high on emotional and physical endurance. Also, none of you are essential to any upcoming operations."

"We're expendable." Ryan said.

"That would be one way of looking at it." He said.

The other one continued, "From here you will all go into surgery where you will be outfitted with a tracking device so we won't lose you. This device is for your protection, it's a bio product, so it wont be detectable by any scanner. You will fight for the enemy to the best of your ability, and you'll try to achieve promotions. The higher up the food-chain you get, the more useful to us you will be."

"Getting promoted would mean killing our own, wouldn't it?" Peters said. "I didn't become a militiaman to shoot other patriots."

"I don't care why you became a militiaman, and how you feel about your mission really doesn't matter." He looked at each man in the room for a moment. "Listen, war is fucked up, okay? I don't have to tell you that. Yeah, you might have to shoot another militiaman, so what? The mission is more important than your fuckin' feelings. The fate of the free world is at stake, so you'd better make it look good. When the time is right, and no one would ever question your loyalty, you will be activated. We'll ask you to do something, sabotage maybe, assassination, who knows? You boys are a pack of wild-cards, and the USA will ask you to prove yourselves someday, and just remember, it's an honor to die for this country. If you die you'll be joining the ranks of the revolutionary war soldiers and the marines who stormed the beaches of Normandy."

"Are there any other questions?" The other man asked. There were no questions. "After surgery you will be given a sheet with the name and all relevant information about your new identity. Memorize all of it. Sargent Gill will take you to surgery now. Dismissed."

"SIR!" All the men shouted.

The five men followed Sargent Gill toward the medical building. Ryan was walking next to McKendrick and they shared a weary look. "They promised us adventure." He said.

McKendrick woke up from his surgery feeling like his sinuses might explode. He could feel the backs of his eyeballs scraping something that felt like sandpaper at the back of his eye sockets. He also found a small incision in the back of his head and another at the top of his throat. He thought they would put a tag under his skin on his leg or something. Leave it to the Well-Armed Militia to opt for overkill. He pushed a button releasing pain medicine into his system and went back to sleep.

Christopher O'Dell, age 25, born April 2, 2018, St. Louis MO, Moved to Utah age 5, Mother died of cancer in '29, father died in the Mormon food riots of '37, arrested '40, attempted escape '41. McKendrick read the words over and over. It wasn't much to remember. On his last night on base there was a new annihilation sortie, a patriotic one, so he spent the night looking out the window and trying to read. There was never anyone around to talk to when one of those things was on.

McKendrick, now Christopher, was loaded onto a black helicopter along with Harris just before dawn. The two of them were dressed in bright yellow jumpsuits and slippers. One of the intel men from the briefing was there and the other was sitting in front, monitoring the program that would fly the chopper. "The executive in charge of population at the Nestle prison will be the only one who will know that you aren't the people it says you are on your files. He is under the impression that the party is taking an interest in the political organizations of the prisoners. In any case, as soon as you're in place he'll be transferred to another facility so you have nothing to worry about." The chopper banked hard to the left, sending McKendrick's stomach into somersaults. He'd been in a lot of choppers, but never one this fast, and never one that was almost silent. "The moment you step off this transport no one will know that you are Militiamen. Enjoy your last moments as patriots boys." He smiled at them but neither of the men smiled back.

The intel man in the front told the other that it was time. "Hold out your hands." He said. He took out wire cuffs and bound the men's wrists. He then took out two black sacks and put one over Harris' head and cinched it closed around the neck, and then he did the same to McKendrick.

Eventually the chopper set down and McKendrick felt hands undoing his safety harness and pulling him to his feet. He stumbled getting out of the chopper and was yanked to his feet roughly and told by an unfamiliar voice to stand still or be hurt. There was some discussion about paperwork and signatures on transfer orders. McKendrick thought something else was going on too, something silent, a transfer of credits probably. He was pulled forward and led across the helipad, and then sensed that he'd gone through a door and entered a building. "Stairs." Whoever was leading him said. The warning came late and McKendrick stumbled again. They were headed down and down and down, turning at the landings over and over again. McKendrick started to feel like it was some sort of cruel joke and that they were going down an elaborate escalator rising in the opposite direction.

Finally they were headed down a long hall and the foul smell of rotting death and shit singed his nostrils. Whoever was leading him stopped and he heard a metal door open. He was shoved in and the floor felt strange under his slippers. The wire cuffs were clipped from his wrists. "Welcome home." The man said and he heard the door shut.

McKendrick pulled the sack from his head and found himself in a dark closet. The smell of death and shit was worse there, and he realized that the floor of his cell was a grate not too high above an open sewer. There was no light anywhere and he felt along the walls for awhile, exploring the space. There was nothing to the room. No toilet, no bed, nothing. The only feature he could find were two plastic tubes coming down from the low ceiling. The room was about 3x3x7, which meant he would have to sleep curled up on the grate over the sewer. He didn't know what the tubes were for until one of them sprayed water down on him. It was fresh water and he managed to drink a little of it. Moments later a kind of bland slop came out of the other tube. McKendrick let that go. He wasn't hungry.

McKendrick jumped at the sound of the door being unlocked. He'd been in darkness for six months but for all he knew it had been six years. His only connection with the outside world were the plastic tubes that kept him alive with water and nutrient slop. He felt he had come to know the person on the other end of the tubes. If the slop came out with less force than usual he thought they were depressed or having relationship problems, if the water and slop came more frequently he thought maybe it was Christmas time or the person was up for a promotion. When he'd first gotten to isolation he had become violently ill with fever and diarrhea and had heard voices. He thought he was talking to prisoners in adjacent cells, but over time he realized it was all in his head.

A brilliant blast of light erupted in front of him and he cried out and cowered down away from it. He held his hands up to protect his eyes, thinking he would be blinded, and gasping at the pain. "Stand up and put out your hands." A voice commanded. He struggled to his feet, still trying to cover his eyes. A hand in a rubber glove grabbed his wrist and pulled it forward. The wire cuffs tightened around one, and then the other wrist. McKendrick tried opening his eyes again and saw a man wearing a surgical mask over his mouth and nose before the hood went over his head.

He was led down a hall and onto an elevator and then down a series of turns before finally being stopped and pushed into a metal chair. The sack came off and McKendrick blinked at the man. They were in a small room with a mirror on the wall facing him and a speaker above it. He couldn't believe the thing he was seeing in the mirror was himself. He thought it was some kind of trick. "There's people on the other side of the mirror." The man in the gloves and mask said. "They're going to ask you a few questions. If you answer right you'll be sleeping on a bed tonight, answer wrong and it's back to the pit."

"Oh Jesus." McKendrick said.

"Don't worry, just answer truthfully." He turned his head away from the mirror and added, in a whisper, "whatever you do, don't try to get sympathy from them." McKendrick nodded slightly.

They waited for a while and then a woman's voice broke in from the speaker. "Can you tell me your name?" It asked.

"Christopher O'Dell, age 25, born April 2, 2018, St. Louis Missouri."

"You're 26 now Christopher, you had a birthday last month. Can you tell me who the president of the United States is?"

"George O'Donnell."

"Good, that's right," the voice said, "what's six times seven?"

"Forty one."

"Pretty close. Mr. O'Dell you have spent a long time in isolation. Do you think you're ready to rejoin the general population in this facility?"

"Yes."

"Your file says you broke the back window of a transport van and tried to make a run for it, is that correct?" She asked.

"Yes."

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"To escape." He said. He waited for a moment but the voice didn't come back. "I didn't want to go to prison." He said.

"You were arrested for unemployment?" A male voice asked.

"Yes."

"So you wanted to stay out of this facility to starve to death? Or did you think you could scrape together a living off of the work of others?"

"No, I just panicked." McKendrick said.

"Perhaps you wanted to make your way west to join the traitors?" The woman said.

"No, no," McKendrick said, "I wanted to join one of the militias to fight for my country."

When the woman's voice came back he could hear someone laughing in the background. "I don't think any of the militias are that hard-up Mr. O'Dell." He could see why they were laughing when he looked in the mirror. He looked like he might drop dead any second. "If you want to serve your country you can do that right here at this facility. We supply the militias Mr. O'Dell. Maybe you didn't know that when you jumped out of a moving van trying to escape."

"No, I didn't know that."

"I don't see any reason to keep you in isolation." She said. "We're going to transfer you to general."

"Thank you." He said. He was led by the man in the mask to a room where he was shaved with clippers, sprayed with disinfectant, soap and hot water, and given a new yellow jumpsuit. A disinterested doctor came in and looked at his eyes and teeth and then gave him a series of shots.

His cell was cement and cinderblock with a metal door. It was painted a cream color and had a little slat window, which made it seem like heaven to McKendrick. There was a bed that had a pillow and blanket and even a thin mattress. There was a steel toilet and a small sink and room to stand or even pace back and forth. McKendrick felt that it was more freedom than any man could possibly deserve.

Over the next two months he fell into a rhythm in his work. He was measuring the output of a giant chemical mixer. It squirted the product into plastic containers on a conveyor belt and he noted on an input screen each time the machine filled a container past the line. It was mindless work that he enjoyed after all that time in the pit. He made a friend in the cafeteria who told him that the food in the place was laced with drugs to keep everyone on an even emotional level and kill the libido. He also told him that there had been an attack on the prison some months before, but that it had been put down and the place had been quiet since.

McKendrick kept reminding himself that he was not really a prisoner, but an undercover agent of the Well-Armed Militia whose mission had gotten derailed. It was his duty to get it back on track somehow. He had to escape and get to California. He would lie in his bed at night and go over everything in his daily life at the prison, prodding it in his mind to see if he could find an escape route. He couldn't think of anything that didn't rely on unrealistic amounts luck.

He was coming up on a full year in the Nestle prison when he got transferred to the kitchen dishwashing crew. He knew it was a huge opportunity because it would mean he would be in contact with a lot of other convicts, and he was sure to meet someone who could help him escape.

The other kitchen workers were suspicious of him until he told them the details of his attempted escape out the back of a moving transport van and his time in isolation. They made him a provisional member of a quasi-military unit they had formed. When he asked about the possibility of escape he was told that since he was only a provisional member he couldn't know about any planned operations. In order to lose his provisional status and become a full member he had to do something useful for the cadre or detrimental to the prison.

McKendrick decided to attain a small-screen for the unit. As a kid, before he'd wound up in the CNP school, he had learned how to disable the tracking capability of a certain brand of small-screen. His parents were Mormon so if he wanted to go somewhere without their knowledge, which was often, he had to disable the GPS on his own small-screen. He got the idea when he noticed that the hack who watched the kitchen crew on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays had a model similar to his old one.

He wanted to show the cadre his skill at completing complex tasks on his own, so he told no one about his plan. He recognized something in the hack's eyes, so he didn't think it would be too difficult to get his small-screen. The hacks never told the convicts their names, but this guy was friendly and knew all the kitchen workers names. McKendrick started flirting with the guy, subtly when people might notice, but more flagrantly when the other workers in the kitchen were busy. He would look him directly in the eye and hold the contact longer than necessary, and he found as many things to do near the man as possible. McKendrick figured the hack would respond positively, and he was right. The guy was not used to being treated as an object of desire, he was stoop-shouldered and paunchy with a pock-marked face and bags under his eyes. The attention surprised him.

McKendrick started talking to him too, which wasn't allowed but wasn't a major infraction either. Most of the convicts never spoke to the hacks anyway because they didn't want people to think they were snitches or ass-kissers. McKedrick wasn't afraid to be obvious when no one was around. He would always be sure to mention something about not having any women around and how the drugs in the food weren't killing his libido at all. He told the guard that he was going to get carpal tunnel syndrome from all the jacking off. He would laugh, but he never made a move so McKendrick took an even more direct approach.

The crew knew all the spots in the kitchen that weren't covered by the cameras, and one was down at the far end of the storage space in the pantry. The guys on the kitchen crew would sometimes drink hooch back there. McKendrick gave the hack a slight head nod to follow him back there. He stood at the door and McKendrick stood facing him, all the way at the back. "Hey man, c'mere for a minute."

"What's the matter?" He asked walking in.

"I need a hand." McKendrick was holding his cock through his jumpsuit. "Or a mouth."

"You're crazy." The guard said.

McKendrick smiled at him. "Come on," he said, "don't be like that. I might be crazy, but I know how to keep a secret. I want it, you want it, no one will ever find out." The man looked scared. McKendrick smiled bigger. "It's okay." He put a hand on the guard's shoulder and pushed gently and the guard fell to his knees. McKendrick unzipped the front of his jumpsuit.

As the hack went into the throes of passion brought on by a sexual experience he'd wanted but had been too afraid to pursue, McKendrick was trying to survey his pockets, looking for his small-screen. The device was clearly in the man's front right pocket. In their current configuration it would be impossible to get to it. McKendrick shut his eyes and tried to picture Becca. He thought about her large round tits with their puffy areolas and thick nipples and soon enough he was shooting his semen. The guard swallowed a bunch and wiped up the rest with a handkerchief. "Alright," McKendrick said. "Your turn."

He looked surprised. "Really?"

"You didn't think I'd do that to you did you? Fair is fair, I know you're not a fag and no one likes giving head, but receiving makes it a worthwhile endeavor. Now shut your eyes and pretend that I'm a sweet lil thing." McKendrick got on his knees and unbuckled the hack's belt. As a cadet in the Well-Armed Militia he'd done it many times, so giving head didn't really bother him. As he went to work on the engorged cock he put his hand on the guard's right pocket for stability. It didn't take long for the man to start quivering. As he came McKendrick slipped his hand into the pocket and pulled out the small-screen, sliding it quickly under the shelves the hack was leaning against. He did all this while trying not to gag on particularly rancid-tasting cum.

He stood and wiped his mouth off. The guard closed his pants and buckled his belt, still looking nervous. "I guess we'd better get back to work." McKendrick said. "Anytime I can help you out just let me know."

"You're crazy." The guard said. He walked away and McKendrick spit out as much of his cum as he could into the sink, and rinsed his mouth out, hoping the guy didn't have chlamydia or the super g.

Torski, another convict on the crew, was standing beside him when he looked up. "What the fuck is wrong with you O'Dell?" He asked. "You trying to get in good with the hacks? You can't be that hard up."

McKendrick took another mouthful of water and spit it out. "I think I'm ready to be a full member of the unit now." He said. "I want a promotion."

"What are you talking about?"

McKendrick got the small-screen from under the shelf. "Once I disable the tracker we can use this to contact the outside, maybe get in touch with a guerrilla unit. If we can coordinate an internal and external attack we could liberate every sorry sack of shit in this place, and kill all the hacks, starting with the one whose cum tastes like shit."

For the next few days McKendrick was the hero of the cadre. The guard must've figured out what happened because he didn't talk to McKendrick after that, and even went out of his way to avoid him. McKendrick took that as a sign that he hadn't reported the theft.

The leader of the cadre was a guy named Millet who was tall and a little older than the others. He made contact via Pick Axe with a small UPSA guard unit based in the western Nevada desert, near the prison. After some back and forth the guard unit said that the best they could do was to shell the outer wall at a given time and date, so that if the cadre could take over that part of the prison at the appointed time, escape would be possible. Millet heard suggestions from all the men and decided on the best course of action. They settled on a diversionary tactic. Whenever there was any trouble anywhere in the prison all the convicts would go to their cells for lock-down. This would mean that the kitchen crew would have to go up the stairs to their cells, and they would pass a door on the ground floor that went out to the yard. Beeman swore he could get past the electronic lock on the door and if the wall on the other side had been breached they would be free. There would be two armed guards, but the kitchen crew ran in twelve man shifts, so they would be able to take them easily.

Reese, a funny little crook from Detroit, had an impeccable pedigree as an anarchist on the outside. He had specialized in turning peaceful protests into riots with a well-placed bomb or three. He'd been constructing a bomb for months, using small amounts of flammable materials from the kitchen. This work of art that he'd prepared so lovingly would be the perfect diversion.

McKendrick woke up that morning feeling good. He felt like he was finally going to start his true mission. All the horrible shit he'd been through wouldn't seem so bad when he was given medals and promotions and maybe a spot in intel. His schooling wasn't up to snuff for that kind of assignment, but as a decorated veteran the powers that be would overlook that.

Mid-shift, Reese lit the fuse on the bomb and sent it down the chute in a linen basket. It would hit a conveyor belt and be far away when it went off. The twelve men pretended to work, but they were all on edge. After about five minutes the alarm went off. "LOCK DOWN!" The guard in the kitchen shouted.

The men lined up to go up the stairs. Millet and Reese were behind McKendrick "Something's wrong," Reese whispered to Millet, "I didn't hear anything."

"Maybe it was too far away." Millet said.

"That thing woulda shook the building if it had gone off." He said. The line of men started up the stairs. The hack who was supposed to be watching them was nowhere in sight when they reached the ground floor. They all stood back as Beeman ran a program on the stolen small-screen and held it up to the electronic door lock. A green light flashed and the door opened.

The hacks waiting on the other side opened fire on the men in the stairwell. The three men in front of McKendrick all fell, and McKendrick and Reese ran up the stairs but they didn't get far before the hacks chased them down. The wire cuffs and black sacks went on and McKendrick was pushed into a sitting position on the steps. He could hear a kid named Aaron whimpering and begging for a doctor as he bled out on the floor. Eventually his cries stopped.

When the cuffs came off McKendrick was back in the pit.

McKendrick had been there four months and he was sick and dehydrated when the door to his cell flew open and he was dragged to his feet. Once again he was sprayed down, shaved, checked by a doctor and given a new jump suit, orange this time. One of the guards bound and bagged him again and they travelled up a elevator, went down a long hall and through a door and McKendrick felt cold night air on his skin. He was put in a car seat, not a prison transport, but a civilian car seat, and the car began moving.

The sack was pulled from his head by the intel man who had briefed him and brought him to the Nestle prison almost two years before. They were alone in a car together, traveling down a small, two-lane road in the desert. The sky and all the stars looked huge to McKendrick, who could see every detail in the darkness with his mole-rat eyes. The intel man threw a candy bar on his lap and McKendrick began eating it. "I've disrupted your feed because I need to debrief you." He said. "I could get in a lot of trouble for this, the leader on this project seems to think we should cut our losses, but I think the original mission could still succeed."

McKendrick wasn't sure any of this was real. "I thought the traitors were gonna liberate the prison." He said. "What happened?"

"The Nestle complex was better suited to withstand an attack than we anticipated." He said.

"Why didn't you get us out of there? Do you know what it's like in the pit? It's living death. Are the other militiamen still inside?"

"You're the only one left. Harris died in solitary, Lendt and Peters were killed attempting to escape and Ryan had to be terminated when he tried to disclose what he knew about the mission to other convicts. That leaves just one man, Christopher O'Dell."

"Call me McKendrick." He said with a mouth full of chocolate. "We're not in prison anymore."

"There is no Kyle McKendrick, he's officially dead. According to the records he was killed in action. You don't exist anymore except as Christopher O'Dell."

There was a moment of silence between them. "When the prison withstood the attack, why didn't you get me out of there? You could've gotten me into California some other way. You don't just give up on a mission when you hit a snag, you keep going."

"That's exactly what I wanted to do, but unfortunately I'm not the one in charge. Some people up the chain saw a money-making opportunity and they took it. They started leasing access to your feed to the prison's security."

"My feed?" He asked.

"You haven't figured it out? Remember the surgery before you were deployed?"

"They put a tracking device in me..."

"It's much more than that." He said. "Everything you see and hear is broadcast in a highly encrypted stream of data. There's biotech in your cerebral cortex."

McKendrick was shaking as what the man said sunk in. "How the fuck is that legal?" He asked. "I'm a goddamned patriot, a Militiaman, I'm on your side you piece of shit. I have rights. You're broadcasting my perceptions?"

"Whose perceptions?" He asked. "Kyle McKendrick was killed in action, you're a prisoner named Christopher O'Dell. You don't have any fucking rights, and I shouldn't be telling you any of this. I happen to be the only one on your side, so I suggest you listen to what I have to say instead of crying about the injustice of it all. We don't have much time."

"There's someone seeing what I see? Hearing what I hear?"

"Not at the moment." He said. "I've disrupted your feed, which I shouldn't have fucking done. I could get in serious trouble. You're not supposed to know what's going on in your brain. People are making good money off of it, but I think it's a waste of a valuable asset. I still believe in the mission. If you could get to California and join the enemy, you could be a treasure trove of intel, instead they've got you busting queer guards and breaking up petty escape attempts."

"That's how they knew about our plan?"

"Your little prison cadre was never really talking to a guard unit, security knew you'd gotten that small-screen. It never had a chance thanks to you."

"So you leased access to my brain?"

"Your perceptions are a commodity that have been bought and paid for. The Nestle Corporation is very happy with the purchase. In fact they're so impressed they decided to send you to another facility to see if they could replicate your success. I told them I'd take care of the transfer."

"You're taking me to another prison?"

"That's right, they want a repeat performance out of you."

"I could just tell everyone all about it." McKendrick said. "If everyone knows about it then it's useless right? At least that way I might wind up in a cell instead of the pit."

"They would terminate you." The intel man said. "They could hit a switch and kill you in a second." He shook his head at McKendrick's stupidity. "They could also put you into a kind of catatonic state and leave you there as long as they want."

"So why tell me all this?"

"Because it's a goddamned waste," he said, "this mission was my baby and I still think it can work. You have to escape, but you have to do it a certain way. There can't be any visible planning or participation. I'm giving you a device that looks like a datcom, and you have to keep it hidden. It's actually a new type of nano-weapon. I've given it your DNA from your file, when you activate it the tech will spray out, and any living biological matter that isn't you will be destroyed within seven seconds. It has a range of about forty square feet. You can't ever look at the datcom once you're in there, looking at it would be the same as showing it to the guards. Do you think you can keep it hidden?"

"If it's the size of a datcom I can just keep it up my ass and hold it behind my back when I shit."

"That's what I figured." The intel man said. "You wont be processed with the other convicts, you'll be going straight to solitary, so they wont scan you."

"I'll have to figure out the right time to use it."

"That's right, timing is key. I think your best bet is to bring the situation to a head at this new prison as quickly as possible. After you've ceased to be useful there, they'll transfer you somewhere else. Activate the weapon in transit and you've got a getaway vehicle too. It's just a suggestion though, if you see an opportunity before then, you should take it."

"Let me see this thing." McKendrick said.

The intel man pulled a small case out of the center console and unzipped it. He pulled out a metal datcom and held it up. "To release the nano-weapon you turn the top half clockwise all the way and then push it down." He handed it to McKendrick. "It's as simple as that." McKendrick turned the top half clockwise all the way and then pushed it down. "Hey wait, what the fuck?" The intel man yelled as his face started to disintegrate.

As promised there was nothing left of the man after seven seconds. Just a pile of clothes that would be too big on McKendrick's starved frame, but still better than the orange jump suit he was wearing. He punched new coordinates into the small-screen in the driver dock, and the car slowed and then turned around and began heading the other way. The new coordinates were deep in enemy territory. He was Kyle McKendrick, and he was a militiaman again. He began looking for something he could use to cut the binds on his wrists.

-back to table of contents-

# Full Employment in America

Fighting the Correct Enemy

A hardworking, honest person can find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. I state this upfront because it is absolutely true. My concern here is not with the character and qualities of the unemployed person, but with the state called unemployment itself.

This paper proposes a radical solution to the problem of unemployment. To use a medical analogy, my proposal fights the disease itself, not the carrier, and not the cause.

Why not fight the cause of unemployment? The answer is obvious: That fight has already been lost. In the absence of thousands of new industries popping up overnight to employ the millions of Americans without work, something else has to be done. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

If unemployment is the problem then we must fight unemployment, not business, not government or global trade. Our fight must be directed against unemployment itself, which is why I propose that it be made illegal.

I'm proposing that we, as a society, incarcerate the unemployed.

Freedom Aint Free (and neither is anything else)

'But an honest, hardworking person can find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own,' the argument goes, 'and your proposal would take away that person's freedom, which is something we're all entitled to.' This argument works perfectly if you view the unemployed person as living in a vacuum, and not in the society that you and I share.

My response would be: What about the honest, hardworking person with a job? Shouldn't they have the freedom not to live in a world full of hunger, violence, extreme poverty, and criminality?

The vast majority of unemployed people are not homeless or starving, so who is paying for their food and shelter? An employed person is. Even if they're not supporting an unemployed family member, they pay through taxes that go to welfare programs, or rising costs at stores to offset petty thefts. In some cases they pay by becoming the victim of crime. Those who have jobs are paying for the survival of those who don't.

And not all of the costs of unemployment are obvious. There are security costs, and all the lost revenue that used to come out of paychecks and go into city budgets. That money covered things like sewage treatment centers, water pumps, road maintenance, trash collection, and public schools. The cost of these things hasn't gone down, but the number of people who are paying for them has. That means the people who are paying have to pay more, one way or another.

Prison Without Punishment

A person with a job is a person with something at stake. A person without a job is only interested in seeing upheaval and change. As Bob Dylan once sang, 'When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.'

This is not an attack on the unemployed person, it is an attack on unemployment. We lock up drug dealers to fight drugs, rapists to fight rape, and thieves to fight theft. Incarceration serves two distinct purposes: To punish the perpetrator, and to benefit society by removing the perpetrator from it. Every jail sentence contains both a negative and positive aspect, negative to the convict and positive to society.

My proposal would see the creation of a new type of non-punitive detention. This would be a class of the prison population who aren't being punished for anything, but whose continued liberty causes harm to society. I'm suggesting a new way of thinking about detention and incarceration. If we remove the negative, punitive side of the sentence, we're left only with the positive benefit to society.

And who could argue that society wouldn't be better off without the unemployed?

Political Distortion

There are not nearly enough jobs to go around, and we can't turn a blind eye to that simple fact. We don't have that luxury. But turning a blind eye is exactly what our so-called leaders in Washington are doing. They pretend not to see the fact that our children are growing up in a dangerous world, a world that has been distorted beyond all recognition by the sheer magnitude of the jobless population. Out in DC they suffer from a willful blindness, brought on by their own self-interest, because you can be sure that if an unemployed person does nothing else, they will vote.

And how does the unemployed person vote? They vote for the candidate who promises the biggest handout. This voter will always vote against the interests of big business. Whether out of spite or out of the honest belief that capitalism is evil, they want to see industry brought to its knees. The ideal liberal candidate has always been one that would shrink the private sector and grow the welfare state.

As the number of unemployed increase, so too do the number of senators and congressmen who do their bidding, which begs the question: What will counteract this trend? What will keep the United States from becoming another casualty of the failed socialist ideology?

The only answer is to solve the problem of unemployment.

Freedom is a Relative Term

Imprisoning the unemployed isn't fair, but is it fair to make the employed person live in a world dragged down and distorted by the unemployed? Is the social ill of a non-punitive prison term worse than the social ills of having a population of desperate, hungry takers, unable to contribute anything, out in the streets demanding resources they can't pay for?

Unless extreme action is taken, we will never see a full recovery. Economists often describe the economy as a web of interdependence. A business owner pays their employees, who then buy goods and services from another business whose employees continue the process. But when someone doesn't earn an income they are not taken out of this web. Their needs remain and must be provided by someone with an income, who then has less to contribute back to the web. Take the millions of unemployed people out of the equation and you would see the economy roar back with a vengeance.

And let's think for a moment about the problems that plague our once-great cities. Riots, violence, terror, crime, the rise of radical political movements, none of these are activities that people with jobs participate in.

If there were a street gang who were responsible for 99.9 percent of all crime, they would be rounded up and brought to justice. Any member of that gang, whether or not they themselves had committed a crime, would be subject to prosecution and imprisonment, just for belonging to that group. The unemployed are that group.

Incarcerating the unemployed would effectively eliminate crime in this country. It might not be fair, but ask the mother whose child is killed by a stray bullet how fair the current system is.

And how unfair is it really? The moment an honest, hardworking person loses their job, they become a taker in one form or another. They become part of a group that is responsible for virtually all the negative aspects of our society. They inevitably turn to underground economies, radical political movements, or crime.

Cost/Benefit Analysis

When a person loses their income, their value to their community becomes negative. As strange as it might seem, incarcerating that person brings their value back onto the positive side.

One of the fastest growing industries in America is the prison industry. Many private prisons are set up as factories that produce goods for the global market. Building and maintaining prisons is an important source of jobs in many areas of the country. Prisons need guards and they buy food and medical supplies, and they consume energy. They are important engines of the economy, and the more prisoners they have, the better they do at creating jobs and products and profits.

And no one is proposing that we lock people up forever. I suggest a two-year term, followed by a trial release to see if gainful employment can be secured. If, after a reasonable period, work is not found, another two-year term would be served. This would give the economy a chance to grow without the constant drag of the unemployed. Imagine the rate of growth the economy would have without any unemployed people holding it back. The economy would be creating jobs at such a rapid rate that I would be very surprised if anyone had to serve more than one two-year sentence.

The last shred of resistance to this proposal comes in the form of personal fear. It's not an argument so much as a nagging worry. 'What if _I_ lose my job?' A person might be thinking. Of course nobody wants to go to jail, but consider the alternatives. Would you rather starve, turn to a life of crime, or subsist on government handouts? Isn't a non-punitive, short-term detention the least objectionable option?

The Prisoner Patriot

In the past, when our nation was in crisis, many people sacrificed years of their lives, and a great many made the ultimate sacrifice, for the good of the country. We are now in a crisis unlike any we've ever seen before, and a call to sacrifice is exactly what is needed to get out of it. I would gladly give two years of my freedom to help my country, and I'm sure many millions of other Americans would too. We wouldn't be asking anything of the unemployed that we ourselves wouldn't be willing to give. I suspect that a large percentage of the jobless would jump at the chance to give their lives meaning and purpose again.

The left has always embraced the fantasy of a world that provides free food, shelter, and healthcare. Prison provides these. Many Americans today live in fear of violence, terrorism and crime. Prison is free of these. Prisoners don't have to commute to work, pay bills, buy groceries or clothes, or even decide what to wear in the morning. Imagine taking two years away from all the headaches of modern life. Now imagine doing that as a sacrifice for the good of your family, friends, community and country.

Past generations have sacrificed their sons and daughters, all we're asking of this generation is two years, and two years that would certainly have been miserable anyway. The unemployed do not live well.

Full Employment for the Future

We are living in dark times that will only get darker if we don't change course. We should thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that we live in a democracy. We can choose any course that we want, and the choice is clear. We must let go of visions of our glorious past if we are to have any chance at a glorious future. The laws and regulations that worked in the last century are simply not adequate to deal with our current situation. We are trying to solve twenty-first century problems with eighteenth century ideas, and it's time for a change.

And what are the other options? Should we continue to muddle along, trying to raise the economy out of the muck little by little? Is there another policy proposal that could actually better our situation?

There is not. Incarcerating the unemployed is admittedly extreme, but so is the situation we find ourselves in. The question is: Are we willing to do what needs to be done to secure our future, or will we remain bogged down in the morality and divisions of the past?

We should all be thankful that we have this opportunity to save the greatest nation the world has ever known.

It's time to enact comprehensive employment laws for America's future.

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!

-back to table of contents-

# Free Soup

"They'll shoot you if you go down there." Bet said. The dirty man was staring at a Dyson cold-storage facility. "It looks unprotected but it aint. There's buttons hidden down there with scatter guns."

He turned a squint, bloodshot eye to where Bet stood in the tall grass. "What do you know about it little girl?"

"I seen a guy shot." She said. "He got past the fence and down around the second building two buttons popped up and ripped him up with them scatter guns. Whyn'cha go down there an see if I know what I'm talkin' about?"

He turned his attention back to the buildings on the other side of the fence. "You know how much food is in there? Enough to feed an army."

"You hungry?"

He looked at her again. "Yeah, so?"

"I know where we could get some food."

"You tryn'a lure me somewhere?" He took a step toward her, looking her over. "I got nothin' worth taking," he said, "whoever sent you wont be too happy if you come back with me. Get outta here, leave me alone."

Bet laughed in his face. "You think I'm trying to rob you? Have ya been anywhere near a fuckin' mirror lately? Ya look like scabbed-over cuntmeat."

"Don't talk like that." He said. "It's not right for a girl your age."

"You don't know how old I am."

"Ok, how old are you?"

"Fifteen." She said.

Now he laughed. "Twelve at the most." He said. "Where's this food?"

"It's a soup room out near the beach, but a girl can't go there alone."

"Why, they afraid it'll turn into a pickup spot for whores?"

"It's not that." She said. "The guy who runs it has a buncha wives all covered up in sheets. Any single girl who goes in there winds up in sheets, so you gotta come with me an pretend you're my husband."

"What the fuck? Nah honey, I'll pretend to be your father."

"If you were my pa I'd run down there and let the buttons shoot the shit outta me."

"You wanna eat or not?"

"Alright then, come on." She said. "What's your name?"

"Miller." He said. "Yours?"

"Betina Majorca-Christophe Marino." She said. "Or just Bet."

They walked five miles to Pacific Beach, taking a long detour to avoid the Grand Avenue checkpoint. On a tarp someone had spray painted the words 'Free Soup' with an arrow pointing down to an open garage door. Bet and Miller climbed the wooden stairs and entered a small dark warehouse space. There were folding chairs set up in rows on either side like a church, and a stage area in front, made of cinderblocks. There were some sunburnt drunks sleeping near the back, and a couple of scrawny punks with skateboards near the front, sharing a smoke. Miller and Bet sat in the middle near the aisle.

They sat for a long time, not talking much. Miller was distracted by his hunger, he clutched his stomach and watched the door, looking for the soup. A mother with two small children came in, her eyes darting around, assessing the danger of the people in the seats. She sat as far as she could from everybody.

Finally five women in light blue burqas came in, the one leading the way carrying a suitcase. Bet stared at each one in turn. The lead woman set the down the suitcase at the front of the stage and opened it. She took out a long candle and lit it with a red plastic lighter. Each of the other women took a candle from the case and lit them from the first one's flame, and then they walked to the four corners of the warehouse, and put the lit candles in holders on the walls.

They were humming quietly as they came back and repeated the process, taking these candles to different holders that Bet hadn't noticed were lining all four walls of the place. The melody they were humming was indistinct at first, but they got louder as they worked, and soon they were punctuating the humming with vocalizations here and there. Miller recognized the song as Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley, but Bet had never heard it before. They repeated the candle-lighting process two more times, and there were candles lining all the walls, not brightening the gloomy warehouse much, but creating a religious atmosphere.

The singing women arranged themselves along the back of the stage, while the one holding the first candle climbed onto a chair and placed it in a special holder on the back wall, above the others. The singers were going full-out now, singing the song as if it were a traditional religious hymn. The woman climbed down from the chair and went back to the case and brought out a gnarled chunk of wood and a stick. She climbed the chair again and lit the end of the stick and then came down to the front of the audience and held the chunk of wood out to the skinny punks. It wasn't until the kid sucked on the end while the woman held the flame to the other side that Bet realized it was a pipe. The smell of powerful marijuana reached them as the second punk took a hit. The woman approached them holding out the gnarly pipe.

Miller waved her away. "We don't smoke that," he said, "we're here for soup."

The shape of the cloth covering her face changed, indicating that she was smiling. "There'll be soup after words from Papa Ras." She said. She moved on to the mother who also waved her off, and then she went back to the drunks, who happily took big hits off the pipe.

She walked back up the aisle and extinguished the flame at the end of the stick and put it and the pipe back in the case, and then joined the singers at the back of the stage. As the song ended two little girls in white dresses came walking down the aisle, swinging homemade censors and trailing smoke. They walked casually, almost bored, up to the front where they set the censors down and sat on either side of the stage. Then Papa Ras Terilian made his entrance.

He was a tall man, 6'3 or 6'4, with a long half-grey beard, and short-cropped hair. He could've been a youthful 65 or a grizzled 45 years old. His bright-white robe was belted at the waist and it touched the ground as he walked. He carried a chubby little baby, naked except for a diaper, and held the hand of a boy, no more than five years old. He walked down the aisle in silence and handed the baby to one of the little girls and the little boy went and sat next to the other girl. He stepped up onto the cinderblock stage and turned and faced his sparse congregation.

"Imagine a film or a book." He said. He seemed to be speaking quietly, but everyone in the place could hear him clearly. "The invented world of that film or book is filled with many characters but we, the audience, identify with just one of them. The main character, the protagonist, the hero. Why? How do we know which character to identify with? It's signaled to us in ways that we are barely conscious of. First of all it's usually the character that we know the most about, the storyteller tells us his history and his journey. The story might be told through the main character's point of view, so we know, through the course of the story, which character is the one to watch. We understand why he does what he does. This identification with the main character is what gives the story its power.

"As human beings, who do we know the best? Who are we always with? Whose motivations do we understand the most? Ourselves of course. It's the same mental mechanism as in a story, we observe ourselves so closely that we identify with ourselves. We even come to think that we _are_ ourselves, but I'm here to tell you that it's not true. You, all of you, everyone in the world is only a close observer of themself.

"But wait a minute, you say, I have free will, I can change my mind, I'm in charge of myself. Well let's imagine that movie again. Haven't you ever wanted to shout out to a character on screen 'Don't go down those stairs!' or 'Don't tell him that, he's working for the enemy!' Why do you have the urge to shout at the screen? Because you know something that the character doesn't. Now let's imagine a movie where the audience doesn't know anything more than the main character knows. Then you would yell 'Don't go down those stairs!' and the character up on the screen would stop and decide not to go down the stairs. How would you know you hadn't controlled him? How would you know he wasn't obeying your commands?" Ras Terilian smiled at the punks in the first row. "Before this conflict began, before the crash, I used to minister to convicts at the super-max prison. These were men who had committed violent crimes. They all said something similar, 'I don't know why I did it,' or 'It was as if someone else was doing it.' Some even thought they'd been possessed by demons.

"I'm sure many of the people gathered here have something shameful in their past, some action they've taken that they can't explain, even to themselves. Those events should give you a hint that you aren't in control. Jah has a plan for everyone. It isn't just the bad things either, many heroes have the same experience. They were acting on instinct. Something took over and let them do what they did. Artists and visionaries all say they don't know where their art comes from, it's just there. You can feel the separation between the observer and the observed, the you and the real you. It's always there if you look for it. That's why we smoke the chalice, to feel that separation.

"When I was first brought into the Restilian world, the beings who brought me there made this fact clear to me. They showed me myself, ministering at a homeless shelter. The thing that I thought was me, my body, my voice, myself -was functioning perfectly without me. That was the first lesson the Restilians taught me..."

"'Fucks he talkin' about?" Bet whispered to Miller.

"He thinks he seen some aliens." Miller said. "This soup better be hearty."

The aliens had told Papa Ras that Haile Selassie I was one of their own but had been kept from his rightful place as liberator of humanity by a powerful cabal of Satanists and on and on for a good half hour. Finally one of the burqa'd wives came down passing out sheets of paper with lyrics written on them. They'd written new lyrics to Beethoven's Ode to Joy, and Ras Terilian encouraged everyone to sing along:

We wake up from history's slumber

Looking at the world we've made

People starve and people suffer

Work and toil and sweat and slave

Games are played with people's lives

And those with power have no shame

They will fall in fire and thunder

And the world will curse their name

Joy is present if you seek it

Love is here for everyone

Restilians have brought the message

That we all must live as one

The drunks and the skate punks sang loudly with Ras Terilian and his wives. The mother and Bet and Miller just sat there waiting for soup. Finally one of the wives opened a side door and Ras invited the congregation to partake in the bounty. In an adjacent room they'd set up a hotplate with a pot that was much too big for it. There were cardboard bowls and plastic spoons and behind the table were more wives in burqas. The punks went first, one of them arguing that the woman hadn't put the ladle down far enough, and that he hadn't gotten any potatoes. After the mother and her two children it was Bet's turn.

There were two women standing against the wall behind the one ladling soup, and as Bet held her bowl up she stared intently at one of them. Miller saw the covered wife Bet was looking at shake her head no, and her eyes, the only part visible, maybe pleading. There was a table with chairs and Bet went and sat next to one of the punks, never looking away from the woman standing against the wall. One of the other Terilian wives seemed to have noticed the looks being exchanged. Miller got his soup, thanked the woman with the ladle and sat next to Bet. He got a couple of good spoonfuls of soup in him. "Friend of yours?" He asked Bet quietly.

"My sister." She said.

"Well don't stare, you're drawing attention to yourself." Miller took another couple of mouthfuls of soup.

"I gotta get her outta here." Bet whispered.

"Just be calm," Miller said, "we don't wanna piss off the Restilian horde."

They ate their soup in silence, Miller finishing his well before Bet. Bet kept an eye on her sister. A woman came over with a trash bag, collecting empty bowls, and Miller noticed Bet's hands were shaking as she put hers in the bag. She stood up from the table with clenched fists. "Why you wearin' them bed sheets Liz?" Bet shouted. "Whyn'cha tell these dumbshits to fuck off?"

Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to stare. The woman who'd been ladling signaled another wife standing against the wall and she took the hand of Bet's sister and headed for the door. Bet's sister stopped and turned around. "Bet, run!" She shouted before she was yanked out of the room.

The lady who'd been ladling came around the table and kneeled in front of Bet. "Little girl, how do you know sister Elizabeth?"

Miller stood and put a hand on Bet's shoulder. "Liz is one of my daughter's friends." He said. "You'll have to forgive the outburst, she was upset when Liz joined your... Um... Order."

"Why'd you rush her outta here?" Bet asked. "I wanna talk to her."

"She's not ready to talk to outsiders yet, her education isn't complete."

"Are you holding her against her will?" Miller asked. "Didn't we just sing a song about justice?"

"Achieving freedom isn't easy." The woman said. "She's chosen to be isolated from the outside world while she learns the truth. She can't afford any distractions right now."

"So that big alien stickin' his dick in her aint a distraction?" Bet shouted.

"Language sweetheart." Miller said, squeezing Bet's shoulder. "Excuse her," he said to the lady, "she's upset. If we could just talk to her a minute."

"It's possible." Ras Terilian said, entering the room. It seemed too small for him, and the drunks stopped slurping their soup to watch the show. The lady who'd been speaking to Bet and Miller took a step back. "But I'd like to know a bit about you first. I'm a curious person and I always wonder how people are surviving this profane war. Occupation, annihilation, liberation, then occupation again, it's a cycle that has made normal life all but impossible. I understand why you're not fighting, you have to take care of your daughter, what I'm curious about is how you're living. Tell me about it."

Ras Terilian pulled a chair from the table and sat, smiling at them. Miller looked at Bet and thought for a moment, and then turned to Ras. "We lost her mother last year and I got furloughed from the guard so I could take care of her. When the well-fed moved in our place was destroyed and we've been living rough for the last couple of months. We're headed south to try to get into Baja until the war cools down, and that's about it."

"Remarkable." Ras Terilian said. "You're very talented, that just rolled off your tongue as if it were the truth."

Miller shrugged.

"You haven't been hungry for months." Ras said. "I know all about hunger. You might be able to lie but your body can't. You haven't been hungry for months, weeks maybe, but not months. I happen to know that you aren't this girl's father, her sister is my wife and she says she's never seen you before. You're a deserter from the Well-Regulated Militia. I think you'd better get going, and you'd better get going by yourself."

Miller calmly pulled his array gun from his waist band and put laser points all over Papa Ras Terilian. "Bet's coming with me, and we'll be taking sister Elizabeth too." He glanced at the lady who'd been talking to them and nodded toward the door. "Go get her."

Ras Terilian smiled at her. "Go ahead." He told her. The woman left and he turned to Miller. "Are you going to kill me?"

"I wouldn't lose any sleep over it." Miller said. He noticed the mother was standing in the corner, with her two kids behind her, and the other soup-eaters standing against the back wall. "Get out." He said. The drunks were the first out the door, followed by the mother and her kids and then the punks. The woman came back in with Liz and told the last remaining wife to leave. She stood with Liz behind Terilian, directly in the line of fire. "Elizabeth, come stand next to your sister."

She unhooked the face cover. "I told you to run." She said, walking over to her sister. "They called the buttons."

"They what?" Miller asked.

"When they pulled me outta here Papa Ras asked if I knew you and when I said no he called the buttons. I heard him tell them he had a deserter for them."

Miller fired his weapon, killing Papa Ras Terilian and the woman behind him instantly. Elizabeth screamed.

Miller looked at Bet and her sister, who had gone white and was shaking. "Come help me get the sheets off this bitch." He said, kicking Terilian's bloody, shredded body out of the way. Bet came over and they started trying to pull the burqa off the corpse of Terilian's wife.

Miller got the blood stained burqa over his head. "Help me put the fuckin' face part on." He said to Elizabeth. She was staring at the two bodies on the ground. "Hey!" Miller shouted. "You deaf? Come on." Elizabeth came over and helped him with the clasp. "How do I look?" He asked.

"It's too small." Bet said pointing to his feet. His busted up boots were visible below the bottom edge of the garment. They could hear the engine of a large military vehicle outside the warehouse.

"I won't have to fool them for long." Miller said. "Come on, when we get out of the warehouse, we'll walk right around the building and just keep going. We stick together and we move fast but we don't run, got it? Elizabeth cover up."

The three of them were coming down the aisle between the folding chairs when the voice came over a loudspeaker outside. "In thirty seconds we will disintegrate this building." It said. "Everyone evacuate immediately. Richard J. Miller come out with your hands on your head."

Miller and the young sisters emerged from the garage door and looked down at a gray armored vehicle with two buttons in protective body suits standing next to it. Seven wives and a handful of children stood behind the behemoth. The trio descended the wooden stairs and passed the buttons, going toward the assembled wives. Before they got there Miller turned away from them and the two girls followed, and they walked faster up the block. "Sister Roberta you're bleeding!" One of the wives called out. "Where are you going?"

Miller half waved over his shoulder and kept moving. "Hey!" Another wife shouted to the buttons. "That's him! He's getting away!"

"Run!" Miller shouted. The two girls took off up the street, Elizabeth holding up her sheet as she went. The buttons came around the armored vehicle holding scatter guns. Miller shot through his burqa, connecting with one, but he felt his head hit the ground and he knew he'd gotten it too. As he watched his blood leak out onto the sandy concrete he realized he was still hungry. He was as hungry as he'd ever been in his life.

-back to table of contents-

# The Many Iterations of Kendra Dixon

Her life, every human life, was a labyrinth, a branching out of many possible paths through existence. Before the surgery she saw time like anyone else, experiencing only the present moving ever forward, but then the headaches came and the doctors ordered tests and scans. Abnormal growth, they said, a brain tumor, deep inside, near the center of her brain. Surgery would be risky, but the doctors assured her that it was completely necessary. The moment she regained consciousness she knew something was different. She was in immense pain, but she found that she could turn the pain off and on at will. She could stop the pain, but while it was stopped she couldn't move her body. She thought something was terribly wrong and even considered the possibility that she was dead, but when she did it in the presence of another person, she figured out what was happening.

She was stopping time, or more precisely, stopping her forward movement through time. The nurse came in to see how she was doing and froze mid-sentence. It reminded her of childhood fantasies of freezing time and robbing a bank or checking to see what type of underwear her teachers wore. Unfortunately stopping time meant stopping herself too, and the only thing still moving was her mind. She felt like she was sitting on a wheel, and all she had to do to start up time was to lean forward ever so slightly. It wasn't long before she found she could lean the other direction too.

Kendra was convinced that her brain had been damaged in surgery, and she didn't know what to do. Moving forward in time she could almost feel normal, although she wasn't used to being in control of the speed of her forward progress. But moving backwards was disorienting and unpleasant at first. She rushed back past the surgery and spoke to her mother and father backwards, words jumping into her mouth. She went through the awful experience of shitting backwards, and went past a big meal she'd had for breakfast the day before, with the omelette coming up her throat, being assembled by her teeth and spit onto her fork.

She was glad she could rush these unpleasant things, zip by them in a blur if she wanted. She rushed back and back to the last time she'd had sex with her boyfriend. Orgasms felt amazing backwards, so good that she became convinced that it was how they were meant to be experienced. She could stop all sensations instantly, and play them forward or backward, feeling the same intensity every time. Soon she stopped seeing her new abilities as a scary problem, and began to feel that she'd been released from the constraints of time. The only thing she missed was being able to change anything. Forward or backward she thought she had to live it the same way. Then came the first mysterious pulse.

It started as a kind of chatter in Kendra's head, a bunch of thoughts that were both foreign and familiar at the same time. They got louder and louder and then the spatial reality of what Kendra was seeing snapped into focus, and there was a moment of two Kendras occupying the same body. They both reacted in fear. 'Who are you?' 'What are you doing in my head?' Kendra stopped her forward progress in time and listened to the internal chatter recede. She moved forward along the timeline again, but found that things were now a little different than they had been before. In this timeline Kendra tried to describe what had happened to her sister.

That was how she discovered that she could still change things if she wanted to, and it was how she discovered the branching points of her life. Right at the moment where the two instances of Kendra's life diverged, things got blurry. She could feel the different directions she could go, almost spatially. She discovered, to her absolute amazement, that she had lived many thousands of lives as Kendra Dixon. Some of the lives followed almost exactly the path of a previous life, and some were radically different. The only thing all of them had in common was the moment and circumstances of her birth.

She discovered that if she felt a pulse coming she could stop all movement and clear her mind, and the instant of another Kendra passing by trapped in linear time wouldn't cause such confusion. If she did it right it also wouldn't create a serious branching point like it had the first time. Her theory was that there was something in the brain, some little node in there, that kept human consciousness glued to the present, of which there were many. Her node had obviously been removed during the surgery. The pulse was the present, a wave of time, another roll of the dice, and it moved across everything that existed.

As a soldier, Kendra had seen the civil war as inevitable, but she found out that it was actually not a very well-developed region of history. Each new pulse filled it out a bit more, but relatively speaking it was a new branch. In most iterations, the United States went through a repressive period, followed by a mass uprising, without ever actually going into a civil war.

She discovered that in most instances of her life she had married and had kids. This was what taught her about the physical nature of emotions. She felt it impossible to keep herself detached from her kids. The emotions of whatever instance of Kendra had lived that branch of her life had felt, she felt the same reliving it. She became a connoisseur of the physical sensations of emotion, reliving moments when she felt pride, or passionately in love, or joyous. These moments, the really great ones, were rare, and she came to know the overall shape of her many lives by remembering how to find them.

Sometimes she would think back to before the surgery with nostalgia, because the kind of freedom she had was so limited. She was free to travel the paths of the thousands of lives she'd lived before, but influencing their paths relied on the pulse, which came irregularly when she was out on one of the branches. The closer she got to the day of her birth, the more regularly they came. When a present-bound Kendra came by, riding a pulse, she could momentarily take control, but it was violent and disturbing. If she wondered what a particular life would've been like if she hadn't had that car accident, she could wait just before it happened and listen for the chatter. When the pulse came she would stay with it and forcefully take over her faculties for a second and slam on the brakes a moment sooner. Then she would hang back and follow the new path that developed from the branching point she'd created.

Major historical events changed much less frequently than personal events. Over the many thousands of Kendra Dixon lives, there were only a few hundred different versions of recent history. In most of them the crash happened, either when she was seven, eleven, or fourteen. In most of these instances the Christian Nationalist Party came to power, but in the instances where jailing the unemployed did not occur, the country eventually turned to a more socialist order. There were a few paths Kendra could take to a kind of apocalyptic nightmare world where the rule of law was totally absent, and the country was carved up by warlords and corporations. Kendra wandered down many paths that led to an early death. Most of the time she could see it coming and backtrack and find a branching point out of it. Every once in a while death came out of nowhere, and it was experienced by her as a place where everything just stopped and she couldn't go any farther. She knew instinctively that if she were at one of these moments when a pulse came she would be propelled off the edge of life to god-knows-where. She never lingered too long around a dead end.

She started to wonder after awhile how long she'd been traveling through the Kendra Dixon labyrinth. She'd gone down at least seven hundred main paths, but she only moved forward at the same rate as time for relatively brief periods. A few minutes, a few hours, a day, a month at the most. She figured she'd been at it about a hundred years, judging from the pulse perspective of time. It wasn't that she was bored exactly, just that she thought maybe she should try something else, to test the boundaries of her new existence.

Kendra thought about the way she influenced events, and how uncomfortable it was to have two Kendras in in one body. She thought that a Kendra could get used to it if introduced to the feeling at a young age. She decided to go way back, almost to the convergence point of all the branches, back to the crib in her parent's bedroom in their little apartment on Wilcox Street. She'd always enjoyed reliving babyhood anyway, the breastfeeding, being held, the emotions associated with learning and discovery.

She would ride a pulse in real time through life, not using force to take her body over, but collaborating with an instance of herself on a life. With her knowledge and perspective there was no telling what she could accomplish. One of the things she learned living many different versions of her life was that success was mostly arbitrary, and very rare. The vast majority of Kendras lived middling lives, and she'd found a few where things had gone horribly wrong. There were three or four versions of her life where she got rich or attained highly respected positions.

One of these lives intrigued her, it was another instance of her being a soldier, not fighting in the civil war but in an African proxy war with China. After her military service she'd gotten into politics and had wound up a congresswoman. This was the path she wanted to follow for her experiment. She knew she couldn't follow that path exactly, the historical circumstances would most likely be different, but in general terms she knew she wanted to get into politics. She enjoyed operating the mechanisms of power.

The pulse came and she fell in sync with it, sending the baby version of herself into crying fits. She sang herself a song in her head, and let the baby control its own body. Her dad, smelling of deodorant, his face covered with stubble, lifted her out of her crib and cuddled her. Kendra couldn't resist and took over for a moment to say "dada."

"Beth, Beth!" He shouted. "You missed it! She looked right at me and said dada!" He tried to get her to say it again, but Kendra held back. She stayed with the pulse and found herself taking on the role of teacher to the baby version of herself. When no one was paying attention she would line up the blocks so they spelled 'cat' and she would sound out the letters. Soon baby Kendra could put them back in order. Her mother noticed a change in her daughter's personality and behavior, and she brought the child to specialists, thinking she might be autistic. Kendra would keep quiet and let the baby take over during the tests. Baby Kendra, they told her mom, was special, a child prodigy. Why not with a teacher who had learned the lessons of hundreds of lifetimes inside her head?

As the child learned to speak they would have long internal conversations. Kendra explained that she must never tell anyone that there were two people in her, because they wouldn't understand. She didn't want to confuse the child by explaining that they were the same person, she just told her that she was her special helper, there to make sure she had an extraordinary life. The child was put into accelerated classes at a young age.

Kendra helped her young protégé with schoolwork, being careful to make sure she learned everything she was supposed to, but stepping in when she had something wrong. They wound up having fights as the child grew, and sometimes Kendra would take time to just let the girl live normally for awhile. Kendra had lived many adolescences with more or less the same group of kids, so she knew Jordan Brayer was bad news, but she couldn't convince thirteen-year-old Kendra of it. After the rape she made her feel better with tales of Jordan's future, which was success followed by downfall and jail in most instances.

Young Kendra had never known that the woman she shared a body with could tell the future, and even after Kendra explained that it was just one of many possible futures, the kid still pressed her for information. During the aftermath of the crash when violence and death were rampant, she soothed Kendra, telling her it would pass. When the CNP came to power and started locking up the unemployed, Kendra knew the historical branch she was in. It was the one she'd lived originally, the one that led to civil war.

Kendra thought that rising to political power would be easier in a newly formed country. She was only fifteen, but she struck out on her own, headed west. She made it, half-starved, into Oregon, riding out with a work crew and fending off the sexual advances of a bunch of desperate, would-be code writers. The man in charge of the bus had all their ID cards, but Kendra had given him a fake, and once she was in Oregon she walked away. She got a free sandwich from a preacher and hitched a ride to Eugene with a nice Mormon couple. She lived on the streets for a few months and she joined the Revolution Party. She went to rallies and protests.

When the civil war broke out and the United Pacific States of America was formed she joined the Pacifica National Guard. After training, which she went through performing at the highest level, she was made captain of a small unit that managed and protected supply lines. She was working under a lieutenant named Mya Brecker, who valued her and treated her with respect. One night she and two guys from the unit were in a civilian transport, bringing datcoms with new software to a crew working up in the mountains, when their vehicle was hit with an incendiary sludge that poured from some unseen source in the sky above them. The car crashed and young Kendra was knocked out, but the other Kendra remained conscious and took control of her faculties. She dragged one of the guys out of the car with hands that looked like raw hamburger.

Kendra was discharged from military service to recover, and when what she'd done was reported, she received a medal for valor. She'd saved the guy she'd dragged from the car, even though she was wounded worse than he was. The other soldier didn't make it. Kendra had to have a bunch of surgeries, replacing her burnt flesh with new flesh grown in a lab. Eventually she was back to normal, and eighteen months after the attack she was even back in uniform, only now they had her at a desk. She'd become well-known as a war hero and the Guard didn't want her put back in harms way.

When her service was over she started doing advocacy work for wounded veterans and had testified before the first congress in Seattle. She got a job as an advisor to the governor of Oregon, on veteran's issues, and then wound up running the state's healthcare system. She instituted popular overhauls and publicized all her major reforms. She was laying the foundation for a run for governor, and both Kendras enjoyed the climb up the ladder of success. It was her role in healthcare that first led Kendra to the discovery that she wasn't the only consciousness that was free from the constraints of linear time.

She was going through some pediatric mental health studies when she came across a paper about what was thought to be a new form of psychosis. The kids were high functioning, almost to an alarming degree, and displayed two distinct personalities, one age-appropriate, the other far too mature. The kids would reference things they shouldn't know about and scare their parents, and they often displayed an emotional detachment that was concerning. Some parents even thought their kids were clairvoyant. What really got Kendra's attention were the ones who claimed to be able to travel backward in time.

Kendra went deep into the research, reading many interviews with these kids. She noted that all of them were born within the last eight years. She decided she had to talk to one, she was convinced that these were people like her, and she wanted to find out what was going on. She chose seven year old Michael McKinnon because he was at a group home and had no parents to get past. As the governor's head of health and welfare she had no problem setting up the meeting.

She took the train to Portland and walked a half of a mile to an old four-story house. When the door opened she was met by a tough old lady who let her know how disappointed she'd been in the governor's education policies. She took Kendra to a room off the main hall and told her to have a seat while she went and got Michael.

He was a thin, black-haired boy with intense eyes. Kendra said hello and introduced herself. "I've read a lot about you." She said.

The boy stuck his hand out and Kendra shook it. "They took me out of class, I'm missing my spelling test." He said.

"Michael," the tough old lady said, "she's from the Governor's office, you can take the test later."

"I'm really sorry about your test." Kendra said to the boy. She turned to the lady. "Do you mind giving us some time alone? I was hoping to speak with Michael one on one."

She said it was okay and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Kendra asked Michael to sit, and then she pulled her chair partway out so she could face him. "I think you and I have something in common." She said. "There are two people inside of me too. I chose to keep that hidden, but you didn't, can you tell me why?"

"Because I see no reason to hide what I am." He said looking directly into her eyes. "I have nothing to be ashamed of, the biggest problem is people being too dumb to understand what I'm telling them. Mostly it's well-meaning adults who think I'm psychotic, or that I'm putting on a show because of some emotional trauma. They keep trying to put me on medication." He shook his head at Kendra. "You're not like me miss, I'm sorry, You look like you're what? Thirty? It's highly unlikely."

"So you think you're the only one?"

"Oh no, just that the others are around my age or younger."

"You had a procedure? Maybe you were old when you had it, maybe you were one of the first?" Kendra had his attention now.

"That's right." He said. "A procedure in a very under developed region of the future. A tiny fold at the center of my basal ganglia was eradicated, freeing me from the constraints of the present."

"I had a tumor." Kendra said.

He nodded and smiled. "It was theorized that there might be people like you. In all possible human histories there had to be people who had achieved freedom accidentally. Tell me something, is this the first time we've had this conversation?"

"Yes, from my perspective it is." Kendra said.

"Mine too." Michael said. "Us free travellers have an organization. We're trying to work together to shape the past in an attempt to create better future possibilities for humanity. What are you trying to do?"

"An experiment." She said. "I'm working toward becoming president of Pacifica. I just wanted to see how far I could take my life if I put my mind to it."

"Is this your first attempt at agency?" Michael asked.

"I've created branching points before, but this is my first time staying with the present for a whole life. You've done it before?"

"Thousands of times." He said. "You can do anything you want, anything, and if you mess up, just start over. Your timeline goes the farthest back of any free traveller I've ever heard of. There's a sort of debate going on about bringing this technology into the past. We could illuminate all of human history with the knowledge, but then we would be living in a world that is very different from anything we're familiar with. You could help to show what that world might be like. As of this moment most free travellers haven't been born yet, you can radically alter the worlds that they're born into."

"So you think it's worth it? Trying to achieve power?"

"Absolutely." He said. "History is hard to shift, but it can be done. I've done it myself. Mrs. Erin will be concerned if we stay in here too long, she might even be listening in."

"I have so many questions." Kendra said.

"It'll have to wait for another time." He said.

-back to table of contents-

# Founding Fathers

"We are the true heirs to the vision of Thomas Jefferson. Democracy and freedom live on in Pacifica." He looked at the dirty teenagers, sitting on prefabricated plastic chairs in a circle. Some of them looked half-feral. They were just there for the meal, most of them didn't give a shit about getting an education, let alone about Pacifica or the war. "Did any of you read last week's pamphlet about the continental congress?"

A hand shot up. It was a girl whose name Tracy couldn't remember. "Mr. Ott, did you know that congress is another word for fucking?" She asked. The boys all snickered.

Donald, a small fifteen year old with a scar on his forehead, seemed interested all of a sudden. He leaned forward in his chair. "Is that pamphlet really about fucking?" He asked.

"Yes Donald." Tracy said. "It's all about fucking, you should read it."

"No," the girl whose name Tracy couldn't remember said, "it's about these old guys who started the country back in olden times..."

"I'm glad you read it Ms..." Tracy tilted his head toward the girl. She'd only been to two classes, so he didn't feel too bad about not remembering her name.

"Monet." She said.

"I'm glad you read it Monet. Tell us what you learned."

"All these old guys would get together and bitch about how the king of England was being all cunty about taxes and whatnot. It was all guys and no girls, so I'm thinking it was some kind of secret fag-club where they could indulge their fuck-preferences 'cause back then being a fag would get you burned at the stake."

The other students were fascinated by Monet's take on history, and Tracy had been teaching long enough to know not to fight for control of the room. "I'm sure some of them were homosexual." Tracy said. "And they would've kept it hidden back then, although they wouldn't have been burned at the stake. If queer history is a topic that interests you Monet, there's some good literature on the subject in the school library."

There was laughter and a few woos, as if Tracy had implied she was a lesbian. She smiled. "I just think it's hot when people are fucking like horny little bunnies but they have to keep it secret because it's supposed to be wrong." The room was silent as everyone watched Tracy for his reaction. "Where is Missy today?" She added as if she hadn't already made herself clear.

Tracy felt himself turn red. "I don't know." He said. "Let's try to stay on topic. Can anyone tell me why American history is important to learn right now? Does anyone see any parallels between the founding father's time and our own?" Nobody in the group had any idea why American history might be important to learn right then, and no one saw any parallels either. They just wanted to eat, and if the conversation wasn't about fucking they weren't going to participate.

Tracy was just going through the motions as a teacher, he knew he was just another old face to his students. He didn't care enough to try to break through anymore, and he felt guilty about it. The last student he had cared about, he'd cared too much, and now she was gone. Missy. Missing.

"She'll come back, just like last time." He said to Cameron. She was worried about him and had invited him for an after-work beer. She was the only person he knew who wasn't judgmental about his love for the girl. Cameron had a husband and kids at home, so she'd seen some of the confusion that life could breed. She'd told Tracy that he was going to lose his job over the relationship, but he told her he didn't care. He was in love with Missy, and that was all that mattered.

"It's been a week." Cameron said. "Did you check the unit?"

"Yeah, I checked the one she was in last time and two others."

"There are three different juvenile mental health facilities in Seattle? We must have a lot of fucked up kids."

"I checked the adult ones too. All her records show that she's eighteen now."

"She just turned sixteen." Cameron said.

"I know," Tracy said, "but we wanted to get married. When she came out of the unit last winter she was so fragile and worried about the future. I asked her to marry me."

"Oh Jesus..."

"What? Cameron, we love each other..."

"She's a child, you're twenty nine years old." She said. "You probably scared her off. Why does it have to be a love story? She's a teenager suffering from mental health problems and you're an overgrown man-child. Can't you see how pathetic it all is?"

"No," Tracy said, "you sound like Beth or one of those bitches from the union. Missy is not a child, certain experiences end childhood, like seeing your whole family disintegrated. Like spending months on the street, dumpster diving for food. Like being raped."

"And look at you, coming in to save the day." Cameron laughed and sipped her beer. "You can protect her from the war, protect her from the streets, you're her savior right? It must be nice to be Jesus for a while. That's a much better role than history teacher."

"Don't make fun of me." Tracy said.

"No, I'm serious. I understand you. I look at the kids in my classes and I wish I could save them. I wish I could be their mother -every single one of them! I want to save them from the world, and love them unconditionally, and tell them it's going to be alright, but I don't. I can't. It's not my job. My job is to teach them music. But if there was a kid who wanted that from me, if they opened themselves up to me in that way, I'm not sure I could resist."

"Right, if they needed you to, you would love them..."

"I wouldn't fuck them!" Cameron said. "See, that's the problem with you men, you get all the different types of love mixed up. All I'm saying is that emotionally, I would give whatever was needed to one of my students. I would be glad to."

"That's what makes you such a good teacher Cameron."

"Maybe, but there's a selfish side to that desire, and I really think you're in denial about that. Your wake-up call should've been when she tried to kill herself. You don't think she would do that again do you?"

"No," Tracy said, "she's over that."

"So where is she?"

"There was a guy." Tracy said. "She tried to hide it from me, but it was a guy she met in the unit. Not another patient, an older guy. I think she met him a bunch of times, all in different places..."

"Did you follow her?"

"Only once. I was worried about her. I thought she was getting into drugs or something. She had a bunch of money all of a sudden and she was sneaking around. She disappeared right after we had her age changed, which would've freed her up to travel with this guy."

"You think he's a pimp?"

"Some kind of flesh trafficker, but I got a good picture of him and put it through wikiface. His name's Arthur, he lives across the bay in Bremerton. I was over there watching his place this morning, but he didn't leave the house. I'm going over there again tonight." Tracy took a big gulp of beer.

"Are you crazy? This guy could be dangerous!"

"Yeah, I'm crazy." He said. "She makes me crazy. I'm about to lose my job right? I don't care. I'll be ostracized socially? I don't care. People will talk shit and I might even be arrested? I don't care about any of it. I'm a man in love."

Cameron shook her head no. "You got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and now you're pretending you wanted cookies for dinner. You're kidding yourself Tracy."

"I feel sorry for you. I tell you a beautiful love story, and you see it in the most negative possible light." He finished his beer.

"Listen, Tracy, you're a good teacher and a basically decent guy, please don't do anything stupid."

Tracy walked the outer deck of the ferry to Bremerton and looked across the water. The sun was hiding behind dark clouds that were raining on some green hills in the distance. It looked like a haze, stretching upward from the trees to the clouds. It was cold, but Tracy didn't zip up his coat. He let the wind whip it open, thinking the discomfort would pull his consciousness back into the present.

She was smart and curious, and she liked to read. She asked him if he had a library account. "Yes, of course." He'd said. "I can even take hard-copies if I want."

"They wont let me start my own account because I can't prove where I live." She said.

"Didn't you show them your group-home ID?"

"It has to be issued by the housing authority or it doesn't count." She said. "Do you think you could check out some books for me?"

The wind ripped his jacket from his shoulder and he pulled it back. Any good teacher would've helped. The gulls squawked overhead. She liked to read paper books, she said she liked the way they felt in her hands. It became a regular thing, him taking her to the library, to satisfy her appetite for fiction. He gently tried to guide her selections. _If you like fantasy novels you might want to read some books on mythology, or the middle ages._ She was so thin he wanted to feed her, she told him the food at the group-home was terrible, so he started taking her out for dinner sometimes.

They connected on a deeper level over the saddest book of all time, The Shape of Nothing, with its infinite longing for the old America and for lost innocence. They connected over the music in the book, the music of the nineties and aughts, and then the private jokes between them, and meaningful looks in class. There were movie nights together, and her telling him about her family, and breaking his heart with every twist in her story. Then the realization that they'd formed a safe place between them, an understanding, an acceptance.

And then the sexual connection.

Of course it was wrong, she was fifteen years old, but it wasn't her youth that turned him on. It was her need, her position of being alone in the world, of having nothing and no one. Missy needed him in a way that no one else ever had before.

The ferry was almost to the dock, so Tracy got back into his car on the lower level. After she moved in with him a councilor from the group home showed up to make trouble. People at the school started treating him differently, everyone was talking behind his back, but he didn't care as long as he got to have her. The months before her first disappearance were the happiest of his life.

The first time she'd left he got the flip side of all happiness he'd had. It was a week of sheer panic, and he'd finally gone to the group home and found the councilor, and she'd told him about the call she'd gotten from Missy. She'd swallowed a bottle of pills and she was scared. She couldn't feel her fingers, and she decided she wanted to live. He went to the unit but they wouldn't let him see her. They looked at him like he was the one who had put her there.

The ferry's auto-driver took over his small-screen and got him off the boat as the rain arrived and beat down on his windshield. It was a twenty minute drive to Arthur's apartment building, an old house converted into three or four apartments. Tracy knew from the nameplates on the post boxes that Arthur lived on the ground floor in front. There was a Brazilian mini-transport parked on the street, and Tracy thought it might belong to Arthur. He parked across from the building and waited.

She had been in a manic state when she came out of the unit. She had to go back to the group home, and she said she couldn't see him anymore. He had managed not to panic outwardly. He just said that he loved her more than anything in the world and that he wanted to take care of her. He said he would be waiting for her when she was ready. She had a pass to his apartment on her small-screen and it was the middle of the night when she came. She didn't say anything, she just crawled into bed with him.

The war had flared up again that spring and the city was under siege. Every other night getting in and out of shelters and the constant high-pitched hum of drones overhead. The dead would sometimes be left in the street for days before the sanitation department would pick them up. Missy and Tracy were closer than ever through it all. He saw the ring in the window of the pawn shop up the street from his place. It was perfect, an oblong diamond in a platinum band with a dragon engraved along the side. It was a mix of pristine beauty and fantasy, like her.

He'd been sitting there for almost two hours when the lights in the apartment went off and Arthur emerged. He was a short, heavy man with a large nose. Something about his body language and style told Tracy that he was ex-military. He got in the Brazilian and Tracy directed his small-screen driver to follow at a safe distance. Arthur was headed south on a two-lane road and Tracy figured it would be pretty obvious that he was following the guy, but he didn't care. Missy had been acting strange around the end of summer, dismissing long absences and otherwise not acting like a young fiancée in love. She was more concerned with getting her date of birth changed to make her look eighteen. Tracy paid the right people and bought her false ID files on a new small-screen. That night they made love, and it seemed like things were going to get better.

But she was still disappearing for long stretches of time. He decided to use the tracker on her new small-screen to see where she'd been. He found that she'd been back to the unit twice, had spent the whole day at a women's health clinic, and had been to Bremerton once.

Arthur's mini-transport parked at a ferry dock down the peninsula from the one Tracy had come in on. Arthur got out and waited by the railing. The rain had stopped for the moment and Arthur was looking out at the bay, waiting on a ferry. When Missy was sleeping one night he went snooping though her small-screen and saw that she'd opened a bank account with her new ID and that there was a significant amount of money in there. It was all PAC, about half as much as Tracy earned in a whole year teaching. It was a relief, because he'd thought that all the sneaking around meant that she had met someone else. But what was she doing to earn that kind of money?

The next time she said she was 'going out' he'd followed her. She didn't go far, a few blocks to a coffee shop where she met Arthur and they sat at a table by the window. Tracy had been on the opposite corner, behind Missy and facing the man, and he'd gotten a few good pics of Arthur's face.

When the ferry arrived a young girl greeted Arthur and they left together in the Brazilian. Tracy followed them to a bank not far from the dock. The girl was an unlikely prostitute. She seemed like she was in her late teens, a bit older than Missy, and she looked athletic. Maybe basketball or softball. Arthur came out holding a couple of envelopes and got back into the car. After a ten minute ride they came to a dive seafood place and he took the girl inside, still holding the envelopes.

Tracy went in and sat at the bar where he could see Arthur and the girl in their booth. He ordered a Yonium Lager and drank it absently. Arthur was showing the girl paperwork and getting her signature on documents. They stopped only for a moment to order from a waitress. The girl counted all the money in one of the envelopes and put it in her bag. They seemed friendly and nonchalant about the whole thing. Tracy imagined him talking that way to Missy, laughing with her like he was now. The waitress brought their food.

The bartender asked Tracy if he wanted another, but Tracy ordered a double shot of Jamesons. He drank it in three quick gulps. Time was passing and their popcorn shrimp was almost gone, so Tracy made his move. He surprised the girl by sliding in next to her on the bench seat. "You evil putrid little pimp." He said to the surprised man across from him. "You've gotta be one of the worst human beings I've ever seen in person. This is how you make your living? Luring desperate girls with a little quick cash? You don't give a damn what happens to them do you? As long as you get your cut."

"Do I know you?" He asked. A little flicker of anger came through the confusion. "'Cause if you knew me you wouldn't sit down at my table uninvited and start calling me names."

"Missy." Tracy said. "Where is she?"

He nodded, understanding the situation. "I couldn't tell you." He said.

"Whatever you got for her, I should get a cut." Tracy said. "I'm the one who got her the new ID files. You don't care how old they are, do you Arthur? How old's this one?"

"How old I am's none of your fuckin' business." The girl said.

"Some people are aged by years and some people are aged by experience." Arthur said. "Missy was no child and you should know that better than anyone. Wasn't it you that got her pregnant?"

The girl sitting next to Tracy took a second look at him while he tried not to show his surprise. "She... She was pregnant?" Arthur just looked at him and said nothing. "We were going to get married." He said. "We coulda been happy together."

"She wasn't too happy when I met her." Arthur said. "A suicidal girl with no family who just turned sixteen and was pregnant with her history teacher's baby. She was scared to death. Scared of being trapped into a life with you. I showed her the way out. If I hadn't, she'd have ended up right back in the unit."

"You go recruiting girls in mental wards? You're the worst type of predator."

"That's priceless coming from a teacher who knocked up one of his students." He turned to the girl. "Let's get out of here, I don't want to lose my temper."

"Wait." Tracy said, pulling out his wallet. "How much? I just want to know where she is. How much will that information cost? I have to find her."

"You're never going to find her." He said. "It's time to get on with your sad excuse for a life." Arthur stood and looked down at him. "Let the young lady out of the booth."

Tracy looked at her. "You don't have to do this. Have some fucking self esteem. You're worth so much more than whatever money is in that envelope. What would your mother say?"

Arthur grabbed Tracy by the arm with both hands and yanked him up from the table. "If I wasn't with her I'd kick your ass up and down this restaurant you ugly piece of shit." He said.

The girl came out of the booth. "My mom's proud of me, she supports my decision." She said. "There's a long history of military service in my family. Believe it or not I'm joining up to protect assholes like you who don't appreciate it. You can't understand it because you don't know what sacrifice is. Someone's gotta fight the war, and you oughta thank Christ that there's people like me and Missy who're willing to do it. What Arthur does is vital to the war effort, and you aren't fit to lick his boots."

Arthur and the girl left the restaurant and everyone in the place was staring at Tracy. He felt drunk all of a sudden. All the faces staring at him were clearly military and he wondered how he hadn't noticed before. Tracy got money out of his wallet and put it on the bar. "What?" He asked the bartender. "She was young. She didn't understand how rare what we had was. That kind of love doesn't happen every day. You have to fight for it."

The bartender shook his head at Tracy. "No one wants to hear it buddy."

-back to table of contents-

# The Accompanist

The whole town was contaminated with uranium, dangerous levels the medic said, but just barely, we'd be okay if we washed regularly. We marched down the strip at dawn, a couple of hours behind the tank brigade, and by the time we got there those motherfuckers had taken all the good rooms at the Luxor and MGM Grand.

Most of the strip was in our control, but up past the Wynn was still un-cleared and considered hostile territory. My unit was assigned to the Tropicana, but they had units at New York-New York, Caesars Palace, and what was left of the Flamingo. We were the third military occupation of Las Vegas in as many years. It started with the Mormon Militia, affectionately known as the Youngsters, then it was the Well-Armed, who moved in when the party decided to crush the Mormon state in its infancy. Finally it was our turn. I marched into Vegas with the Pacifica National Guard.

The idea was to clear and hold the city so they could use it as a staging ground against Phoenix. If we held Las Vegas and Phoenix, then with LA we would have San Diego surrounded. All supply lines to the militias holding San Diego would be cut off, except from the south. It would force Mexico to either openly side with the party, or stop the supply-lines that everyone knew had to be coming through Tijuana. Liberating San Diego was seen as winning the war in those days, and liberating Las Vegas was the first step to make that happen.

It's axiomatic in the military that any action will either be a lot easier or a lot more difficult than you think it will be. We expected Vegas to be hard to clear and easy to hold, but it was the other way around. We had almost no resistance coming into the city, but that preceded nine months of skirmishes, mostly in North Vegas against small groups of guerillas. They were old Youngsters who had joined the buttons and were just fighting to justify receiving the supplies they needed to survive. They'd been fighting in Vegas for years by then, so they had home field advantage.

Anyone who was a part of that mess, anyone who was honest, would tell you that neither side was truly committed to the fight anymore. The enemy was attacking just enough for us to know they were there, and we were doing just enough to keep the sirs happy. It was like we had an understanding, we were all sleeping in beds and had access to food and booze- winning or losing would put an end to it. The sooner we had Vegas under control, the sooner we'd all be back in the desert, cowering under camo-tarps and hoping not to be annihilated by wandering clouds of nanobots.

I think some of our commanding officers felt the same way. It was technically a warzone, but after six weeks or so we all treated it as a break from the war. The locals who we came into contact with were solicitous and friendly, as no doubt they had been for the previous armies. Any civilian with any sense had already headed to points east, or had gotten to California somehow, so what was left were a bunch of sleazy entrepreneurs trying to get rich in what was left of paradise.

One such denizen of the wasteland was Carrie Masters. She must've been in her late forties when I first met her, but surgeries and injections kept her ageless if not young-looking. She was like a work of art that would've been a masterpiece if the artist had known when to stop. I guess you could say she used me, but I liked it, and I got something out of the deal too.

Spitz introduced me to her in the hall outside my room. I was heading out to scavenge some abandoned houses with my little crew. She was dressed like a celebrity who didn't want to be recognized, she was wearing sweats and sunglasses. "Matt tells me you play the piano." She said.

"Yeah I play." I said. "Or I used to. I haven't been able to practice much."

"We don't need a concert pianist or anything. Can you play cocktail-style?"

I laughed. "Are you a singer?"

She nodded and smiled at me. "I do mostly standards and ballads and things."

"You have sheet music?" I asked.

She shook her head no.

"That's okay, I can probably fake it. Where's the gig?"

"Some guys from the 51 are starting a club at the Bellagio." Spitz said. "They're looking for entertainers."

"Like what the 112 did at Circus-Circus?" I asked.

"Oh no." Carrie said. "That was just a whorehouse. We're trying to do something with some class."

"Carrie's their entertainment director." Spitz said.

"When do we start?"

"Tonight." She said.

"Then we'd better find this piano and practice." And just like that I became the house player for the 51 club. Truth be told Carrie wasn't much of a singer, but she was passable and dressed elegantly, and she represented the dead world all the soldiers longed for. The Bellagio was in pretty good shape, it had been rebuilt in the twenties and it still had a working septic system. The entrepreneurial soldiers had scavenged a solar array from an abandoned base up north, so the place had electricity to power the slots and virtual blackjack machines, and to keep the ice cold. The exchange rate made most of the games obsolete, hitting a major jackpot might win you two hundred thousand dollars, which was worth about seven PAC blue stripes back then. But the games still had their mind-numbing, time-consuming power, and people still spent hours playing.

The real profit for the 51 was in the table games and at the bar where it was PAC only, and the few soldiers who had it were happy to spend it there. Playing in the joint meant I ate a lot better, and it kept me out of harm's way. When duties with my unit interfered with my duties at the club, the leader of the 51 paid a visit to my commanding officer, Rebecca DeMay, and got my assignment changed. I always liked her, and I was worried for awhile that they had threatened her, but then I saw her at the tables playing on house credit.

The 51 quickly became one of the most popular places for soldiers to go. I was lucky to have gotten in on the ground floor, and after a week of performing together Carrie and I had become a real team. I knew when to help her out and when to lay back a bit, and we were a team offstage too. As entertainment director she would talk to me about what we could bring in to the club to keep the soldiers from killing themselves. We showed movies when we could find them, and started an open-mic comedy night. We discovered two or three really funny performers, and we put them in regular rotation. Essentially what it turned into was a kind of variety show, like something out of vaudeville. We were packing the house regularly.

One of the things the 51 was responsible for, in an official capacity, was housing and corralling all the non-combatant citizens who were running around Vegas and generally getting in the way. Mostly they were held in the smaller hotels off the strip, like the Embassy Suites, or the Raddisen, and those who couldn't be put to work had their comings and goings monitored.

Carrie and I were having a smoke between shows when a drunk old non-combatant came out the side door of the Bellagio. He walked past where we were sitting on the loading dock and did a double take when he saw Carrie. "Mya!" He shouted at her. "What the hell are you doing here? I figured you for long gone or dead by now."

"Hiya Larry," she said, smiling at him, "I go by Carrie now. Carrie Masters. I'm singing for the soldiers."

"Oh yeah?" He sidled up to the steps and leaned an arm on the rail. "You a real survivor huh? S'admirable, really. I mean it."

"That's nice of you to say Larry." She said.

"S'true." He said. "It's good to see an old friend." He looked down at his hands and back up at me and Carrie. "Listen, I hate to ask, but do you think you could spare a little treason? Honest work's hard to come by in this town, and I'm in a spot here. I'm tryna get to LA."

"Sorry Larry, I'm not doing too well either, financially speaking. If you come by the show I can get you some drink tickets."

"Aw come on," he said, "you can't spare a few blues for a discrete friend?"

"I don't remember discretion being one of your strong suits." She said.

"It can be." He said. "Depends on how well I'm eating."

Carrie looked at me. "Honey I'm short on cash, could you lend me a fiver to give to my friend? I'll pay you back." I paid the guy and gave him some nicotine too. I asked Carrie what it was all about after he left. She said he knew her in another life and left it at that. By then I'd been in love with her about a month, although I hadn't done anything about it. I showed my love in my work, playing everything much better than necessary. I put everything I was feeling into our corny torch songs, and I like to think I brought subtle shadings of emotion into the schlock we played, even though sometimes it was just for just a few stoned soldiers at three in the morning.

I felt very protective of Carrie, so when this old drunk started turning up with his hand out on a daily basis I didn't like it. It seemed like he was always there, at the back of the audience drinking booze he'd gotten with her drink tickets, or at the tables, trying his luck with her money. Every time he came around I noticed a change in Carrie's personality. It was obvious that she was feeling the turn of the screw, and I decided to put a stop to it.

Our ritual was to have a smoke between shows. I loved our time alone together, we sat on the loading dock behind the stage. "Carrie you know this is a warzone right?"

She smiled at me with no idea what I was getting at. "Yeah, I've heard that." She said.

"People dying left and right," I said, "I don't think anyone would miss Larry."

Her demeanor changed as soon as I said his name. "He's just a pest."

"He's a bloodsucker Carrie, I'm going to follow him back to his room tonight and put a bullet in his head. Problem solved. How's that sound?"

"Gee it's the first time anyone's offered to commit murder for me." She said, batting her eyelashes. "I don't know what to say."

"Carrie I'm serious here. I've killed lots of people, most everyone here has. This guy's blackmailing you, fuck him. He's a dead man. I just wanted you to know."

"He's just an old drunk. As soon as he's gone to LA he'll forget about me."

"I don't think he's going anywhere." I said. "He seems to have a pretty good thing going right here."

"But still, I couldn't live with myself if I caused his death, even indirectly. Please don't do it. Promise me."

I shook my head, wishing I hadn't said anything about my plans. "Okay Carrie, but no more blackmail. I'm going to talk to the guy. This has to stop."

"No, don't." She said. "It's my problem to deal with. You're sweet, really, but you don't have to worry about me."

I would've argued some more, but it was time to get back to the stage. I figured she just didn't want me to find out what Larry had on her. I knew that whatever it was, it wouldn't change how I felt about her. So she'd been a prostitute, or she'd been in jail for something ugly, I didn't give a damn.

One of my friends in the 51 was Arnold Egon. Everyone called him Ego. He worked as a kind of fixer for the club, greasing the sirs and acquiring the goods. I thought if anyone could help it was him. I went to see him the next afternoon. He wasn't at all happy. "This piece of shit is blackmailing Carrie?"

I nodded. "His name is Larry, he stays over at the Embassy Suites."

"What's he got on her?"

"I don't know and I don't really care, do you?"

"No, you're right, it doesn't matter. It's Carrie!" He stood up. "Let's go talk to this fucker."

The hotel smelled of bleach and piss and half the lights in the place didn't work. Ego got Larry's room number from the guard out front, and we went down the dark corridor to his room. Ego pounded his fist against the door four times and a moment later the door opened slightly, revealing a shrunken colorless face. Ego pushed the door the rest of the way open, making Larry jump back out of the way. There were clothes all over the floor and trash too, and there was only one light on in the place. Ego and I entered and I shut the door behind us. "Larry Materson, listen the fuck up." Ego said. "Carrie Masters works for the 51, so when you fuck with her, you're fucking with a bunch of people who kill other people for a living. That's our job. The club is just a diversion until we can get back to our primary function: Murder. If for some unknowable goddamned reason you want to continue your sorry excuse for an existence, you will leave her alone. Understand?"

He straightened up his back and grimaced a little. "You think she works for you?" He said. "You have no idea who that woman is or what she's up to."

Ego looked at me. "This guy's a fuckin' moron." He turned to Larry. "What you say now is 'Got it, I'm sorry, I'll leave her alone.' Say those words and live."

"Got it," Larry said, "I'm sorry. I'll leave Mya Petrova alone."

"Shut up." I said. "A lot of people change their names."

"Yes, for a lot of different reasons." Larry said.

"Okay Materson, you're fucking dying to do it," Ego said, "so just go ahead and tell us what you know."

Larry looked around the mess near his bed and found a bottle. He poured some in a paper cup. "You want some?" He asked. We declined. "Sit, please, you two are making me nervous standing there. Do either of you have a smoke? No? Sit, please. I'll tell you what I know about Mya." Ego picked up a chair from the floor and I pulled one out from the table and turned it around. "I hate to get her in trouble, she's an old friend, but really it's better that you know. I was considering finding someone in the 51 to warn about her anyway."

"Get to the fuckin' point." Ego said.

"The woman you know as Carrie Masters is really Mya Petrova, widow of the late Vlad Petrov, and I can see by your faces that you don't know who that is. Vlad Petrov owned a majority share in the Bellagio hotel and casino. I worked for the man before the crash, I was his bodyguard and driver. I knew him even longer than Mya did. He bought controlling interest in the Bellagio in '21 or '22, and married Mya around that same time. She was a backup singer in Lady Gaga's show over at the MGM Grand. You should've seen her back then. She was radiant with energy, she was like a fountain of light, it just came out of her..."

"So she used to be married to some rich Russian fucker," Ego said, "who cares?"

"Because Petrov was way up the food chain in the party out here. When the Youngsters took over Vegas he went along with the other casino owners and cut a deal, but he was working intel for the Well-Regs the whole time. He was financing the local opposition and getting money and supplies to the advance-units. Rumor has it that he's the one who planted the dirty bomb at the Disney Experience. There was a big meeting between the casino owners and Mormon militia leaders, and Vlad pretended he had to take an emergency call and left the meeting. A couple of minutes later? Boom. Everyone knew he did it, and a month later he was killed by a Youngster sniper and his compound was incinerated. Everyone assumed Mya was incinerated with it, but here she is, working with the Pacifica National Guard all of a sudden. I guess she's given up on the Christian Nationalists."

"You think she's still working for them?" Ego asked.

"She would do just about anything I asked to keep from being identified, what does that tell you?" He took a sip from his cup. "She's just lucky I'm a gentleman. She's gotta be working for the Well-Regs, otherwise what's she doing here? She has the resources to get herself far away from the war if she wanted to."

"You can't make an assumption like that." I said. "You have no real evidence."

"Maybe not," he said, "but if she ever leaves an important meeting to take an emergency call, I wouldn't hang around."

On the way back to the Bellagio I begged Ego not to turn her in. "You can't assume she's working for the buttons just because her husband was."

"She's a possible enemy agent," Ego said, "gotta report it. I have no choice."

And so Mya Petrova, AKA Carrie Masters, was taken into custody. The 77th tactical had a prison camp at the old airport, and she was classified as 'suspected due to past affiliations.' It was a classification that warranted decent treatment. She wasn't in a cage, but she wasn't free either, and it was my fault. She would be investigated and all the evidence against her would be sent with her to LA for trial. It was possible that they wouldn't find anything, in which case she would be freed. I clung to that hope.

I kept playing the Bellagio but it wasn't any fun anymore. When they said they wanted to try out new singers I quit. I went back to regular duty with the 112 and started going on patrols and risking my ass again. I thought about Carrie. I thought about her a lot.

Eventually it couldn't be denied that we'd secured Vegas. Word went around that most units would be moving south to try to liberate Phoenix. I decided that if I was ever going to talk to Carrie again, I'd better do it. I'd been imagining rows of cots in a hanger or something, but she was in a hotel room. It was the Marriot connected to the airport. A guard signed me in and I just went and knocked on her door. I thought she'd be mad at me, but she greeted me warmly and invited me inside. "I'm so sorry." I said. "I was trying to help you." We were sitting on the edge of her bed.

"You should've listened to me when I told you not to talk to Larry." She said.

"I just couldn't stand the idea of that creep blackmailing you." I said. "I shouldn't have brought Ego with me when I went to talk to him. If I'd have gone alone..."

"You'd have kept my identity secret?"

"Yes."

"That's sweet." She said. "It's too late now, my identity is well established. Now they've got my DNA on file and everything."

"Why did you stay in Vegas?" I asked her. "It's the only thing that bothered me."

"Because the Bellagio is my hotel." She said. "My husband's estate is mine, and that's his most valuable asset. I needed to stay close to it if I was going to claim it. Timing would've been crucial. Ownership is in a state of limbo because of the occupation. I would have had to come forward at just the right moment."

"And now you'll lose it?"

"Maybe not," she said, "I've been in contact with a lawyer in LA, and she says if they don't find any evidence against me, and they wont, I should be able to retain most, if not all, of my husband's estate"

"That's good." I said.

"I'm sorry I lied to you, I was just scared."

"It's okay," I said, "performing with you was the most fun I've had since the war started..."

"You play beautifully."

"Carrie," I said, "Mya I mean, did you know I was in love with you?"

"I did suspect it when you offered to kill Larry for me." She said. "But honey, it wouldn't have worked out."

"Maybe not." I said. "I'm headed to Phoenix soon."

She looked around the room and smiled at me. "You want something to remember me by?"

I nodded slowly.

When it finally was time to board the transport south, I still felt blessed by Carrie Masters. All I had to do was think of her and warmth went all through me.

A couple of years later, after I'd lost my arm and had been discharged from the Guard, I was in a dingy bar in south LA when who should I see but Larry, holding court with a couple other old drunks in a back booth. I was feeling gregarious and forgiving at the time. "Hiya Larry, ya old blackmailer, remember me?"

His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw me. "Of course, of course!" He stood up and shook my hand and then turned to his companions. "This guy, this guy right here! He can back me up. He was there in Vegas, he used to play piano for Carrie at the Bellagio. Tell them, tell them."

"I used to play piano for Carrie at the Bellagio." I said.

"No, no, sit down, please sit, and tell them the rest of it."

"Really?" I asked. "You really want me to?"

"Yes, tell them."

"Okay." I said. I sat down next to Larry in the booth. "This motherfucker right here, he tried to blackmail Carrie because he knew who she really was. He got her arrested."

"And who was she really?" Asked a thin man sitting across from me.

"Mya Petrova." I said.

"And there you have it." Larry said.

"You seem awfully proud of the fact that you tried to blackmail someone." I said. "She got locked up. I know she's rich or whatever, but still..."

"She's free as a bird, and her lawyer was able to get her quite a payout for Petrov's share of the casino. Last I heard they were tracking down his foreign accounts." He looked at his companions. "And what do I get? The man who made the whole scam possible? Nada, nothing, jack shit. Biggest score I was ever involved in and I didn't see a dime!"

"'The fuck you talking about?" I asked him.

He looked at me. "She's a remarkable woman. I don't blame you for loving her, even if she was old enough to be your mother. I forgot, what name did you know her by?"

"Carrie Masters." I said.

"That's pretty close. Her real name is Carrie-Anne Moore. She was friends with Mya and Vlad back in the old days, she was probably jealous of Mya, marrying into that kind of money. She knew Mya had been obliterated during the second Mormon war. No corpse would've been found. So in the chaos of the occupation she saw an opportunity and took it. I agreed to be her shill for a fifty-fifty split. I should've known there would be no way to collect. People with that kind of money can insulate themselves."

"So she wanted to get arrested?"

"She did. It established her identity, and she knew they wouldn't turn up any evidence against Mya. Vlad never involved her in anything. Ever."

"You weren't really blackmailing her?"

"No, of course not," he said, "that was my part to play. She suspected you would want to protect her, and also that you would want to know what I had on her. Nothing is as predictable as a young man in love. She used you to get the money, just like she used me. I would consider you a sucker, but I got played too."

"You got played worse." His friend told him.

I laughed and called out to the bartender. "I'll take another vodka." I shouted. "Another vodka for the second biggest sucker in the room."

-back to table of contents-

# Annihilating the Past

My intention was to write a short intro and then just insert a transcript of my interview with Trevor Brushton. What I have done instead is to insert myself into the story. I didn't do this as an homage to outmoded forms of journalism, I did it because I may have become a part of the story of Trevor Brushton's subsequent death.

I'm not sure.

When word came down that I had gotten the interview, but that it would have to be in person, at his villa in Baja, people around the office reacted the same way they would've if I were being sent into a warzone. They said 'be careful down there,' or 'I hope you have a solid escape plan,' or simply, 'are you sure you want to do this?'

The name Trevor Brushton held such menace that spending a week with him and his family in a converted resort in Baja was comparable to risking life and limb on the front lines. Even my editors were a little weary. 'Don't question any inconsistencies in his story,' one of them told me, 'just get his side of it and get out. We'll fact check it later.' This was the same editor who, when I interviewed an anarchist accused of murdering 26 people, told me, 'don't let the bastard off the hook.' He gave me photographs of the dead to show the guy.

But I knew that whatever the dangers might be, and I already suspected that they were overblown, I had to do the interview. This man created the first annihilation sorties. What other living human being could say they had a hand in creating a form of art that instantly made everything that came before it look old-fashioned?

(I know there were others involved, and that there are many conflicting stories of how the first sorties came about, but every story features Brushton as a main character, if not the driving force. His testimony must, therefore, be essential. The participants in that early scene, the ones who lived, all have axes to grind and legends to burnish. The stories they tell are suspiciously self-serving, and Brushton's is no exception. You can choose whichever story you like and believe it completely, but you can't believe all of them, so the origins of annihilation have to remain a mystery.)

I said goodbye to my cat, gave my cacti a little extra water, made sure my life insurance policy was up to date, and got on a plane to Mexico. All I brought with me was my small-screen and a bag. I wanted to travel light in case I had to get away quickly.

Trevor Brushton will not give his address to anyone, including a reporter coming to interview him, but his publicist assured us that someone would meet me at the airport. I can't say I was surprised when I arrived at Los Cabos International and no one was there. I tried the pick address I had, but no one answered. I left a message.

Luckily, if Cabo has nothing else, it has hotel rooms, and since SoundWords was paying for it, I got myself a nice one. I ordered a large meal from room service and fell asleep watching American cartoons dubbed into Spanish on the big-screen.

I woke up six hours later at 4:30 in the morning and there was still no response to my message. I went for a walk on the beach, got some breakfast and then called again at nine. I left another message and ordered a bloody Mary. I felt certain that the whole trip would be a bust.

I was well into my second bloody Mary when a beautiful American with black hair and severe bangs came over. She asked if I was alone. "Yeah." I said. "How about you?"

"No, my friends are still sleeping upstairs." She looked like she was maybe 25. She had a prominent nose, and intelligent eyes. "Have you ever been to a dog race?" She asked me.

"Sure, all the time." I said.

"There's a great dog track here in Cabo. My friends and me are heading out there today. Maybe you'd like to join us?"

"How would we get there?"

"I have a car." She said. "Rented. I come here for work two or three times a year, it's a great town. I always try to show other Americans around."

"I'm Canadian." I said.

"Good, I hate Americans." With the vodka warming my bloodstream she seemed charming and attractive. "I'm Lillian." She said.

"Efrain." I said. "I'd love to go to the track with you and your friends."

"I don't really have any friends upstairs." She said. "I don't know why I lied."

I laughed.

If you've never been to the dog track I highly recommend it, and I hope your ability to pick winners is better than mine. Lillian told me she managed the property holdings for a Chinese company and I told her I was in advertising. I don't think either one of us believed the other. We smoked a joint on our way from the track, and we decided to stop off at a roadside taco place. While we waited for our order to come up I decided to try my luck. "Do you listen to annihilation sorties?" I asked her.

"Not anymore." She said. "I used to get annihilated every weekend, but these days the sorties are too commercial. Why, do you?"

"Sometimes." I said. "I heard a rumor that Trevor Brushton lives down here. Is that true?"

"Yeah, he's got a ranch up the coast. It used to be a resort, now he's got his pigpen in the old tennis courts. He's just as crazy as everyone says."

"Could we go up there and check it out?" I asked.

Her eyes were heavy and red but I could still see the curiosity there. "I guess." She said. "It's not much to look at from the outside."

"I think I could get us in." I said. She said okay, but I could tell she didn't believe me. After we ate our tacos we started the long drive to Rattler Ranch. She was fun and beautiful but I wasn't there to meet fun and beautiful people, I was there to get an interview. I knew I'd have to ditch her if I had a chance to get into the compound. I felt bad about it, but I couldn't bring some random trick with me on an interview. Unprofessional.

When we got to the turn off that led to the ranch Lillian's small-screen went dead and the car rolled to a stop. She said Trevor had jammers and blockers set up all around the perimeter. Apparently it had caused a local kerfuffle when people's small-screens stopped working every time they drove by Rattler Ranch, but Trevor had enough money to do pretty much whatever he wanted in Mexico. Now everyone just knew that on that stretch of road you wouldn't get a signal.

Lillian switched to manual and took us up the dusty road, past signs that said: Private Property, No Trespassing, and You Are Now Being Monitored by Sequential Time Scanners. In the middle of the vast expanse of nothingness, among the brush and rocks, a high chain link fence appeared in the distance. When we arrived at the locked gate we got out of the car and looked at an enormous sign that read: ELECTRIC! INSTANT DEATH! The fence was at least twelve feet high with a spiral of razor wire along the top. Lillian laughed. "I guess we're not getting in." She said.

"You think they know we're here?" I asked.

"The signs said we were being monitored." She said. "I have no reason to disbelieve them."

"Maybe they'll send someone to see what we want."

She shrugged. "Maybe." She said. She pulled out another joint and lit it and handed it to me. "What makes you think you can get us in there?"

"Don't worry about it." I took a hit and handed it back.

She took a long hit and leaned back against the hood of her car. "I got you all figured out already." She said. "I can see it in your face. Your mama told you that Trevor Brushton is your daddy, huh? You came all the way down here to try to meet him, thinking he'll welcome you with open arms. Shit, this is breaking my heart."

I took the joint and hit it a couple of times. I'll say this for Lillian, she smoked some good weed. "You don't think he'll be happy to see me?" I asked.

"I don't know one way or the other." Lillian said. "But I'll tell you this, you're not the first person who's come scratchin' around Rattler Ranch looking for a family reunion..."

"You calling my mom a liar?"

"I wouldn't know," she said, "but it's been known to happen. A little boy asking who his daddy is over and over and eventually mom just says 'see that man on the big-screen? He's your daddy.' She picked the right person, it's almost impossible to contact the guy. Also it's got the added benefit of making you feel special, 'cause you're running around thinking your dad's a genius and you've got genius blood running through your veins."

"Look at my face." I said. "Are you honestly telling me you don't see a resemblance?"

"Hmm," she said, "maybe the nose."

I laughed, but I couldn't laugh long because there was a truck coming up the road on our side of the fence. The driver slowed down and stopped about 20 feet away from us. A woman stuck her head out the window. "Private property." She said. "I could shoot both of you dead and it would be legal."

I told Lillian to wait and approached the truck. The woman was frowning at me. She looked like she was in her late forties, of Italian decent, with short black hair and intense dark eyes. "My name is Efrain Zimmer, I'm from SoundWords up in Vancouver. I'm here for an interview." I said.

"You were supposed to be here yesterday."

"Um, yeah, sorry about that." I said. "I'm here now."

"Who's your friend?"

"Just someone I met in town." I said. "She gave me a ride."

"Well, get in." The woman said. I waved to Lillian and shouted out my thanks and got in the truck as the gate opened automatically. Lillian had a curious half-smile on her face as we went by. "I'm Tiny." The woman said.

"Tiny Tresaro?"

She nodded.

"I'm a big fan." I said. "Your sorties meant a lot to me as a kid."

"Uh-huh." She said. "You can't see Trevor today. He just got back from a long trip and he's been in the studio working."

"He's working on music?"

"Nah, he's doing sculpture." She said. I wasn't sure if she was kidding and she looked at me shook her head. "Yeah, he's working on some music. Anyway, he'll be too tired for an interrogation today."

"I'm not going to interrogate him." I said. "I just want to ask him some questions."

"About the past."

"Of course." I said.

"You think talking about the past will help you learn something about it?" She shook her head.

"I don't know," I said, "but I can't go back in time and live it, so I have to hear about it second hand."

"I don't think it's worth much."

"What's the harm in trying?" I asked.

"I don't expect someone just out of diapers to understand, but the past aint a happy-place for everyone sweetheart."

"He practically invented annihilation sorties." I said. "That's an amazing achievement, you'd think he'd be happy to talk about it."

"Even a so-called amazing achievement can be a painful memory." She said. The big house was coming up in the distance, with the ocean sparkling behind it. "I was against the interview, but our lawyer said it might help. We're supposed to be getting him up on a pedestal as a cultural icon. For the first ten years what he was doing wasn't even considered music, now they're trying to turn him into an elder-statesman of the arts."

"It's not a bad idea." I said, checking out the columned terrace overlooking the cliffs that spilled down to the sandy beach below. "He'd need a pretty comprehensive image rehab if he wanted to move back to the states or to Pacifica."

"It'd be nice to have the option." She said as the truck pulled next to a parked car and stopped. "The war can't last forever."

A couple of half-naked children ran up to the truck screaming and Tiny gave them some candy out of one of the grocery bags in the back. She told me to take some bags and we went into the industrial sized kitchen through a side door. She said to leave the bags, and that Rosella would take care of them. She led me into a sunken living room space, where two guys in their early thirties were screaming at a football match on the big-screen. "That's Carlos and Tes." She said to me, "those were Carlos's kids out back. Tes's wife Becca and their girls are around here somewhere."

"You have a daughter don't you?"

"Pia's away at school." She said. "And Shara, Carlos's wife, is still in the hospital. Usually there are more people here. Let's go see Candice, she'll be glad you made it."

She led me up a wide staircase to an open sitting room with a big window that overlooked an expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Candice Perra was deep into something on a curve-screen, but she shut it down when Tiny and I entered the room. She stood to shake my hand. She was in her mid sixties, with maybe some subtle surgical tucking or injections. She was wearing a retro neon camo-print skirt and a simple black top that showed off a colorful tattoo that snaked from the back of her hand all the way up to her face. She looked at me warmly and asked why I hadn't come the day before.

I explained to them that I hadn't been given the address and that the publicist had assured me that someone would pick me up at the airport. The apologies started flowing, and we sat on the large couch together as they tried to figure out who had dropped the ball. "It's fine really," I said, "I stayed at a nice hotel at SoundWords' expense."

"It's just as well," Candice said, "Trevor couldn't have done the interview today. He's been in the studio since he got back and he'll have to sleep eventually. You can probably talk to him tomorrow."

"I'll get Carlos to take you into town to get your bags after dinner." Tiny said. "You can stay in one of the guest bungalows."

"Thanks," I said, "you said Trevor just got back from a trip? Where did he go?"

They shared a look. "He takes long boat trips." Candice said. "He likes to be out on the open ocean. It's elemental."

"Part of his creative process." Tiny said. "He comes back and goes right into the studio."

"That's funny," I said, "he hasn't put out a sortie in years. I'm glad to hear he's working again."

"He never stopped working." Tiny said.

I asked if I could interview the two of them, and they seemed surprised, but agreed. I got my small-screen out, and as I set it recording and transcribing Candice was explaining why she hates talking about herself.

-BEGIN AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-

Candice (cont.)

...and then I keep talking and when I'm hearing my own voice I get more interested in making it a good story than saying what I was trying to say. When I read it later I think I've been misquoted, but no, I wind up misquoting myself. (laughs)

Me

Let me know if you think you've done that and we can get it straight before I leave.

Candice

That's why it's good that Tiny's here. She knows me better than anyone, she can rein me in if she has to.

Me

When you all moved down here to Mexico there was a lot of speculation that you were running from legal troubles. Is that true?

Tiny

No, not at all. If we were running from legal troubles we would've left a lot earlier. We'd been fighting all sorts of court cases for years, there was no end to it. Besides, if we were running from the law we wouldn't have come to Mexico. Mexico has an extradition treaty with the U.S. We could've easily gone somewhere that didn't.

Me

Most people think that you left when they were going to charge Trevor with bigamy.

Tiny

That's bullshit, they never had a case against us...

Candice

They were searching for anything they could use against us at that point. The party hadn't co-opted the sorties yet, so they were acting out of fear.

Me

But the three of you are married?

Tiny

Yes but it was always a spiritual marriage. We weren't trying to make it legal.

Me

It's an unusual union, and the fundamentalists were ascendant at that time in the states. Can you give me a brief history of how the three of you came together?

Tiny

We never planned it...

Candice

Trevor and I had already been living together for ten years when I fell in love with Tiny. They had been collaborating on sorties so I met her socially and the chemistry was just (inaudible) We knew it had to happen. We had to be together. It was an amazing time and within a year Tiny and I were married.

Tiny

Candice and I _are_ legally married.

Me

If it's not too personal, how did Trevor respond to your relationship?

Candice

He was happy for me. He's not the type of person to feel threatened or anything, and Tiny was a close friend. If anything he was just worried that I was going to move out. He made it clear that he wanted us to stay, and I certainly didn't want to leave him, so we all lived together very happily.

Me

This was all before the end of the world?

Tiny

Yeah, we'd been living together for a few years before money turned to shit. Trevor was one of the few people who was actually prepared for it. We used to think he was paranoid, buying guns and platinum bars and putting those huge water tanks on the compound.

Candice

People thought he was nuts.

Tiny

Here was this guy with two wives and a bunch of guns, living behind big walls. They thought he was one of those fundamentalist Mormons!

Candice

(laughing) It never occurred to anyone that it wasn't a story about a man with two wives, it was a story about a woman with a wife and a husband.

Me

I understand someone in a relationship falling in love with someone else, but I don't see how that turned into a trio. What happened?

Tiny

We were kind of a family right off the bat. Trevor and Candice had Tesla and Shara, they were five and seven at the time, and they both took to me right away.

Candice

They call her mama T and I'm mama C...

Tiny

Eventually Candice and I wanted to have a baby and it was unlikely that she would've been able to get pregnant again so it was up to me.

Candice

We wanted the baby to be Tesla and Shara's biological sibling.

Tiny

We weren't going with a donor, and we weren't doing the turkey baster, that's for sure. So all three of us started sleeping together and it was the most natural thing in the world.

Candice

Well not at first!

Tiny

I'm a lesbian okay? I'm not interested in men sexually but I wanted a kid, and it wound up bringing all three of us much closer together. At first Trevor and I were both focusing our attention on Candice, but things loosened up pretty quickly, and it was a lot of fun. Even after I got pregnant we all kept sleeping in the same bed.

Me

So you two are married and you both consider yourselves also married to Trevor?

Candice

We are married. We had a ceremony...

Tiny

We never sought legal recognition. It was more a declaration that we were a family.

Candice

It's a spiritual union.

Me

Well it seems to work, you all have a beautiful home. How many people live here at the ranch?

Candice

Let's see, it's ten when Pia and Shara are here, plus Rosella's kids and her husband, so that makes us 16 with room to spare.

Me

(inaudible)... great timing. I heard you have pigs?

Candice

Oh yeah, pigs and horses and some goats and chickens.

Tiny

No cows.

Me

Tiny I wanted to ask you how you got started making sorties.

Tiny

That's well-covered territory. Did you read my book, Mind Control for Beginners?

Me

Yes I did, I thought it was...

Tiny

It covers most all of the early years.

Me (cont.)

... all soulful myths and dreams and powerful poetic impressions. Your book is a work of art...

Tiny

Life is a work of art.

Me (cont.)

... Yes but it's short on the sort of prosaic facts that journalists like. People want to know specifics on the subject of annihilation sorties and how the whole scene got started.

Tiny (cont.)

(inaudible)... covered already in my book. What you want me to do is to name and categorize everything as if life could be expressed by a list of dates and events...

Me (overlapping)

No I...

Tiny (cont.)

... uncatagorizable, which is the point of my book, I'm surprised a sharp guy like you didn't understand that. I could express the events of the past in words and what would I be doing? Killing everything in the timeframe I was describing except what was in the description. I won't do it. I'm a poet see? So I know the power of words. When I described the past in my book, each line of it was very carefully considered. A certain path of words illuminates everything around it, everything that isn't on the page. There's a precise recipe for giving life to the past through words, but if I go traipsing willy-nilly around the past, I'm sowing a path of destruction...

Candice (overlapping)

Really? Thank you Rosella, we'll be right down.

Tiny (cont.)

... and anything you need to know is hidden in the corners of my book. All you have to do is read it in the right spirit and you'll find the answers you're looking for.

Me

I'm sorry if I offended you.

Tiny.

You didn't -you couldn't! It's okay. Just promise me that you'll beware of nostalgia. I think it's one of the most destructive and false emotions. It's almost always a lie. Are you hungry?

Me

Famished.

Candice

Let's eat, I'll introduce you to everybody.

-END AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-

Dinner that first night was beautiful. All I can say is that the Brushton-Perra-Tresaro family was completely warm and welcoming, although three of it's members were absent. Pia in a Swedish boarding school, Shara at the hospital (code for rehab?) and of course Trevor, who had dinner in his studio before I got there and was presumed to be asleep while we ate.

Tiny told Carlos to take me into town so I could get my stuff and check out of the hotel, and when they were talking about which car to take I said I wouldn't mind going by myself. They gave me Carlos's small-screen to drive the truck, as it was immune to the jammers and would open the gate. Those were the kind of people they were, the kind that would lend you a vehicle an hour and a half after they met you.

I packed my small bag and checked out of the hotel, and decided to stop by the bar for a drink. It had been a productive day and I figured I'd earned a reward. I found a spot near the corner and ordered a cheeba-vodka. I was doing a little snooping on Carlos' small-screen when Lillian walked up to my table. She smiled at me. "How'd the family reunion go?"

"It was great." I said. "He already wrote me into the will. He told me to call him papa."

"No shit? You mind if I sit here?" I nodded and she sat down. "I was shocked when you got into that truck. I figured you were just fucking around out there."

"I wasn't."

"I know, I knew it as soon as Tiny Tresaro let you into her truck." My drink came and I took a big sip. "You think you could get me in there?" She asked.

"How would I do that?"

"Just say I'm an old friend you met in town."

"Why would I do that?"

"Come on Efrain," she really was beautiful. "I want to spend some more time with you. You're going back there aren't you?"

"Maybe." I said.

"You have your bag with you, so I know you checked out. You must be staying out there. What's really going on? How do you know them?"

"It's not really your business is it Lillian? You want me to bring you out there so you can meet some famous celebrities? That's dumb."

"No, it's not that." She said. "I don't care about famous people. I just thought you and I hit it off and maybe we could get to know each other better."

"Oh? How much better?"

"A lot," she said, grinning at me.

I took another hit off my cheeba-vodka and laughed. "I'm a guest at the ranch," I said, "I can't be bringing other guests back with me. It's rude. If you want to get to know me, you'll have to do it now."

"We are in a hotel," she said, "and I have a suite."

I drank down the rest of the cannabinoid infused alcohol in a gulp. "Sure, what the hell?" I said.

The suite was nice and the encounter was about what you'd expect from two high, drunk, near-strangers. It was two parts awkward, one part hot. I took a shower after, and when I came out of the bathroom she was sitting on the bed, typing into Carlos's small-screen. "What are you doing?"

She looked up quick and smiled. "Oh, I was putting my pick address in your small-screen." She said. "I was trying to be slick about it."

I got my small-screen from my bag and tossed it next to her on the bed. "Put it in that one." I said.

I got dressed and got out of there, promising to call her before I left Cabo. When I got in the truck and put Carlos' small-screen into the driver dock the truck didn't move. I hit a couple of buttons and a notice came up about a data transfer in progress, but before I could do anything the transfer was complete and the truck started moving.

Of course she was a scam artist, I'm not the kind of guy women throw themselves at. She thought she was downloading my personal information, but had gotten Carlos's instead. I checked my small-screen to see if there had been a recent data transfer on it, but there hadn't. I wondered what the right thing to do was, should I tell him? I'd be long gone by the time he realized anything was amiss. I took the coward's path, and said nothing.

They set me up in a beautiful bungalow, and I slept on a soft, king sized bed with the sound of the ocean in my ears.

Tesla's wife Becca was assigned to stay with me the next day and we drove around the ranch in a jeep with her two charming daughters. It was very peaceful and interesting and utterly useless from my point of view. If I were writing a piece about all the interesting features of Rattler Ranch I would've been very happy.

I didn't get my interview that day, but I got my first glimpse of Trevor Brushton. When Becca and the girls and I came into the big house, using the side door, the kitchen reeked of strong cannabis smoke. He was sitting on a high stool, talking to an old man, who I took to be Rosella's husband. They were laughing and sharing a pipe while Rosella bustled around the kitchen, preparing dinner with a little smile on her lips.

Trevor was shockingly alive-looking, thin and wiry, his mop of white hair curling around his head like the rising smoke. He was wearing work-boots and beat up pants with a wrinkled, old fashioned, button-up shirt. He looked at me with mild curiosity. "Want some?" He asked, holding out the pipe.

Becca groaned and and hustled the little girls out of the kitchen while I took the pipe. "I'm Efrain," I said, "I'm here to interview you."

"Oh right. Can we do it tomorrow? I don't feel like getting into a whole thing right now."

"That's fine." I said. I took a deep hit and almost embarrassed myself by choking, but managed to hold onto the smoke.

"I'm a better talker in the morning." He said.

I released the smoke in my lungs. "It's fine, really, we'll do it whenever you want."

"You like that herb?" He asked me.

"It's nice." I said, handing the pipe back.

"We grow it right here on the ranch." He said. "Totally organic. Xavier says it needs to cure longer, but I think it's fine."

"Another month and it'll go down smooth as goat shit." Xavier said.

The dinner that night was not as well prepared as the first one, but everyone was just as sweet and nice to me. Trevor wasn't there and when I remarked on his absence Candice said he was probably out looking at the meteor shower. They had what they called a 'natural observatory,' I'd seen it earlier with Becca and the girls. It was a high mound that was flat on top. The kids started asking about the meteor shower and it was decided that after dinner we'd all go check it out.

When we got there, there was no sign of Trevor, but there was quite a show in the sky that night. Eventually I walked back to my bungalow and climbed into my big bed, wishing I was a member of the clan. Tiny had warned me against nostalgia, but it seemed like everything I'd encountered there, every person, place, and moment at the ranch, was designed to elicit that response. When those kids grew up and had families of their own, there was no way they could live up to this. It was a loving, caring family unit on a resort/compound on the beach, eating big meals together and watching meteor showers.

I woke the next morning before dawn to the sound of scratching at my window. At first I thought I'd imagined it, but I kept hearing it so I finally got up to investigate. It was Trevor Brushton. His white hair was wet and slicked back and his eyes were shining and smiling among the multitude of lines on his face. I opened the window. "I can talk now." He said. "Do you want to talk now?"

I got the impression he'd been up all night doing something very exciting and he wanted to talk before the feeling wore off. He was like a performer who had just gotten off the stage. "Sure," I said, "come on in." I got my small-screen out and set it to transcribe and record.

-BEGIN AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-

Me

Let's go back before the sorties. You grew up in Baltimore Maryland, is that right?

Trevor

That's right.

Me

And what was your family situation like?

Trevor

It was a pretty typical middle class upbringing, you know? My mom was a teacher and my dad worked for an information technology company.

Me

What did your mom teach?

Trevor

She taught English as a second language to immigrants -a job that doesn't exist anymore. (inaudible) My dad left us when I was twelve, a sort of typical mid-life crisis thing, you know? He ran off with a much younger woman who then left him a couple of years later. It was all heavy drama and heartbreak at the time, but looking back it seems like a lot of foolishness. My brother got the worst of it because he was really close to my dad, where I was closer to my mom. It's much easier identifying with a victim than with a villain, which was the role my father took on. I can see both sides of it now, and I think the whole situation could've been saved by some honesty and truth-telling.

Me

Is your brother still alive?

Trevor

No, the super G got him in '29.

Me

Was there music in your house growing up?

Trevor

Oh sure, my mom was an old hippie, so I heard a lot of music from that era, and she was very indulgent of my tastes. I used to play hip-hop with really obscene lyrics sometimes, and she would just laugh. She saw the humor in it.

Me

Was it always music for you?

Trevor

Oh yeah, from a young age I knew I would do something with music.

Me

Did you go to college?

Trevor

I did a couple of years at University of Maryland, but I figured I didn't need a degree to make the kind of music I wanted to make.

Me

You were making club music at the time?

Trevor

I guess you could call it that, but it was just house music. When I was in college I was already having some success playing gigs and putting out material.

Me

You were DJing?

Trevor

No, we brought gear with us. We called them live PAs (laughs). We were playing underground parties, raves I guess, and we did some high-tone shit in galleries too.

Me

You were working with a partner?

Trevor

Yeah, Sean Miller, we were called Monoluminous Uvula, or just 'mu.' In '14 or '15 an ad agency bought one of our songs and played it on TV every five seconds for two years, and I used my share of the royalties to start Revolving Records. I made some good bets early on, and the label started making money.

Me

These were actual physical records?

Trevor

Yeah, and CDs and cassettes and MP3s too.

Me

Were you part of the whole vinyl resurgence I've read about?

Trevor

Yeah, but you know records aren't really made with vinyl. They...

Me

But black discs, phonograph records...

Trevor

Right. We sold a lot of records, and then, after the great corruption, when the internet was all fucked up, we had about three years there where you couldn't listen to music on any kind of computer. Luckily audio enthusiasts had kept the record-making process alive, and we were in a perfect position to capitalize on the moment. Those three years, after the internet died but before the pick system went up, those were amazing times for me, and for the country.

Me

There was panic though, right? People thought it was the end of the world?

Trevor

It was! The internet was this thing that everyone assumed would be there forever. People had everything invested in it, not just money, but their whole identities, their hope for the future. Then poof! It was gone. The scales fell off everyone's eyelids. We were actually lucky it happened when it did, the old infrastructure was still more or less intact. The old phone lines still worked, even if the satellites didn't, and most cars still had manual drive as an option. If the old internet had continued to develop for another ten years before the great corruption hit, it would've been way worse. As it was the world just reverted to 1990 or some pre-computer age. It was a terrible shock though, and a precursor of things to come.

People forget that the big end-of-the-world was preceded by a lot of little end-of-the-worlds.

Me

It's not usually put in those terms.

Trevor

I know, it's either portrayed as coming out of nowhere, or arising from greed and avarice like some kind of morality play. I teach my kids and grandkids that the house fell down after careless people kicked out each brick of the foundation. It was done little by little, for short term gain.

Me

Let's get to the sorties, how did that whole thing get started?

Trevor

It was during those three years of the tech-blackout that we started throwing parties. People needed diversion and stress-relief, so the scene got really fun. People had money too, remaking the physical economy took a lot of work, and there was cash flowing like it hadn't in a long time. People really loved our parties so we kept doing more...

Me

What 'we?'

Trevor

Revolving Records. We set up a division to put the parties together thinking it would be a money loser, but our very first party made money. Beyond that it was a great way to test new releases and see how the floor reacted to new stuff. And it was fun. Now this whole time I'd been putting out my own records, either as white-labels or under one of my aliases, and one fine day my phone rings and it's this guy in San Francisco who says he's been using some of my records in his research. He tells me he's researching electrical and chemical responses in the brain, and that a recurring pattern in some of my tunes triggers a specific chemical response in the brain. This guy wanted to know if I was working with a neurologist on my music!

Me

This was Dr. Allen?

Trevor

Yeah, but he wasn't a doctor yet. I thought the guy was nuts and told him so, but he did a good job convincing me he was serious. A week later I got a package in the mail that had his research data and an early draft of his findings. I understood none of it, so I got Eric Morehouse, the smartest guy I knew, to look at it. He had a degree in chemical engineering, so he knew how to read that stuff, and he saw the potential right away.

Me

How did he describe the paper to you?

Trevor

He said it proved that external stimulus could effect the brain just like a drug. This wasn't anything new necessarily, the brain is changing constantly based on its surroundings, but what was new was the specificity. This pattern, pattern X, produces this result, result Y. Apparently a pattern I'd put on some of my records triggered a long-acting hypnotic response in something like 42 percent of listeners.

Me

This was just a pattern you put in because you liked it?

Trevor

Yeah, and when you're working on a piece of music you're hearing it in the studio over and over. When I really got going in the studio I would always lose big chunks of time. I'd look up, like, 'have I been working on this hi-hat pattern for seven hours?' (laughs) I was practicing self-hypnosis without even knowing it. I was just unconsciously trying to make tunes that would put me in that state. It was all accidental. When Dr. Allen put what was happening into scientific terms it made sense and of course I wanted to get deeper into it.

Me

That was when you started running experiments at parties?

Trevor

No, that was later. Dr. Allen wanted me to come out and help with his research. He thought we could amplify the effect if we worked together, so I cleared my schedule and flew my ass out to the west coast. I set up all my gear in a research laboratory. I'd be working on patterns and changing them on the fly while he was watching a wall of screens that had these computer models of actual brains. They were really beautiful, and I would tweak a sound and watch a screen full of brains erupt with pink and purple. Working that way we came up with our first algorithm. The first time we tried it on live people we increased the response to something like 62 percent.

Me

So these were real sorties at this point?

Trevor

Yes definitely. The very first ones. We kept refining it and got the response close to 80 percent before I left.

Me

What was the message of these first sorties?

Trevor

There weren't any messages. Dr. Allen could see if the people had gone into the hypnotic state from his sensors. We'd just let it wear off.

Me

What was your role then? Couldn't he have just applied the algorithm to random noises and gotten the same result?

Trevor

No, you need a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. People who don't respect the art form just think it's a pattern of rhythms and repetitions that are introduced and interrupted in specific ways, but the brain has to be in a certain state initially. Listening to music can put it in that state. He tried to use our findings with visual patterns, but he found that the way the brain interprets visual stimulus is too literal. Music opens up an abstract kind of thinking that leaves a person open to hypnosis. The right kind of music opens up the mind in the right way, the music that the patterns are embedded in makes all the difference.

Me

So you came back to Baltimore with a bunch of annihilation sorties that didn't have any message, they just put people in the initial state?

Trevor

Yeah, after that first trip I had three complete sorties and a few mini experimental ones.

Me

How long?

Trevor

The four mini ones were 8-30 minutes, but we figured out that the optimal length was 74 minutes.

Me

So did you play the sorties out right away when you came back?

Trevor

Pretty soon yeah. I talked to Dr. Allen about using the technology to influence behavior and emotions, and he told me where the message should go, so I modified one of the sorties and played it out right away. The results were pretty staggering.

Me

But the first annihilation sortie was played by Telephere.

Trevor

Right, but it was my sortie.

Me

Why didn't you play it yourself?

Trevor

First of all 'play' is the wrong word. The sounds and patterns have to be too precise to actually play it live. A fraction of a microsecond timing change can ruin the effect, so it was all prerecorded. We didn't want anyone to know that though, so we needed someone on stage. It was new, so we decided to put a new face up there, plus I wanted to be out on the floor to see how people reacted.

I was getting a lot of help back then from our promoter, Jaime Mum, and she knew this kid Hector who had played some of our after-parties under the name Telephere. He wasn't a very good DJ but he looked great, he was a sewerpunk with a kind of wild-hyena look, so we threw him up there and told him to hit buttons and turn knobs, but he wasn't doing a thing.

Me

So he didn't have any input into the content of the sortie?

Trevor

None. That's not to take anything away from what he did later, after he left us. He actually turned out to be an amazing artist, and I have a lot of respect for him. Some of the stuff he put out on his own was really groundbreaking, but at the time we just threw him up there because he looked cool.

Me

He tells a different story in his film.

Trevor

I never saw it, but I promise you all the parties that he played with us, he was just faking it. I did all those sorties.

Me

Tell me about the first one, what was the message?

Trevor

We wanted to get people to dance. That was the message, it was simple. Get on the floor and dance sucka! (laughs) It worked, every single person at that party was dancing, not one person was hanging back.

Me

Was this one of the parties you recorded?

Trevor

No, the third party was the first time we set up spatial time scanners. We did that because the second time we played a sortie, things got a little out of hand and we got nervous. We were so happy with the dance sortie that we figured we'd push it a little further and bring people's inhibitions down. We figured the enemy of dancing is self-consciousness, so we put this sort of 'let yourself be free' message in with the call to dance.

People let themselves be a little freer than we thought they would. People were taking their clothes off and having all kinds of sex right on the dance floor, I mean we were shocked. We just wanted people to have a good time, not risk pregnancy or VD. If someone found out what we were doing we coulda got sued or thrown in jail maybe. I called Dr. Allen and told him what we'd done, and I convinced him to come out and lend his analytical mind to our efforts.

Me

You were scared of the power the sorties had over people?

Trevor

I was in awe. I saw the algorithm as the culmination of thousands of years of musical practice. It seemed to me to be the most important discovery since the harmonic scale. Music had always had a profound effect on people, but now we had the key to controlling its effect. You could make a person feel exactly how you wanted. People say that Dr. Allen and I invented annihilation sorties, but we didn't, we discovered an algorithm that had been there all along.

Me

So Dr. Allen came to Baltimore to help you throw parties?

Trevor

(laughs) No, he came to help turn the parties into controlled experiments. I think he'd been secretly longing to take this stuff out of the lab and see how it worked in a more dynamic environment. He brought a couple of research assistants with him, one of whom was Emma Silverstein, who became my collaborator on a lot of the post-crash sorties. We set up spatial time scanners and chemical screeners, so we could determine what drugs people were on, and then we threw those five parties that became so famous. Or infamous...

Me

These were with Telephere on stage?

Trevor

Yeah, and he was blowing up, people were mobbing him when he came offstage. I have to say, he handled the situation really well. He wanted to get involved in the creative side of things and I think I was pretty dismissive, so it wasn't a huge surprise later, when he struck out on his own. Anyway, with each of those parties our skills got refined. I found that I could create incredibly subtle and emotionally resonant responses along with whatever the main message of the sortie was. I felt like the palette I was working with was the range of human feelings, and that sound was just the brush. Those were really heady times.

Me

Were you releasing the sorties on your label?

Trevor

Not then because if we did someone would figure out what was going on. We were paranoid (inaudible)... with good reason.

Me

How did the truth of what you were doing finally come out?

Trevor

The parties were attracting a lot of attention. The authorities, we later learned, thought we were drugging people somehow. They thought we'd come up with a way to aerosolize ecstasy. (laughs) When they executed their search warrant they got all of Dr. Allen's research and they seized all the STS recordings, and of course they saw everything in the most negative possible light. They arrested us for possession of child-pornography based on the STS data from the parties. We had images of some crazy shit going down on the dance floor, and not all of the participants were over eighteen. But at the same time they put out a press release saying we were trying to brainwash the youth, so it was pretty obvious what their real beef was about.

Me

How long were you in jail?

Trevor

One night! The label hired some good lawyers and we all got bonded. It was the beginning of ten years of legal hassles though, and we were thoroughly demonized in the media.

Me

Was that the end of the parties for a while?

Trevor

Oh no, Dr. Allen was spooked and ran back to California, but I had three new sorties in the can so I decided to capitalize on all the publicity. The news outlets described what we were doing as drugging people with sound. The criticism that actually kind of stung was when they said it was immoral to do this to people without their knowledge or consent. It made me think maybe we'd gone about it the wrong way, so we threw a party and said 'come and be drugged with sound.' Apparently that idea appealed to a lot of people so we had to book a huge venue. We were charging a fortune and selling out immediately. Once word got out, our parties started making millions of dollars, pre-crash dollars, and the more the cops and politicians tried to demonize us, the more popular we got.

Me

Was this when you started broadcasting them?

Trevor

Yeah, I think so. I had a sortie I thought was really important, a goodwill message, and I wanted as many people as possible to hear it, so I struck up a deal with a radio broadcaster.

Me

Old fashioned terrestrial radio?

Trevor

Yeah, the pick system was new, so we thought it was best to do it that way. We'd put out a bunch of CDs and cassettes of the sorties, but we found it was diminishing their popularity because if a person listens to the same sortie over and over the effect diminishes every time. We had a bunch of people saying the sorties weren't as strong as they used to be, or that mass-duplication dampened their power which was all bullshit. At the time there were only ten or eleven sorties in existence, and we weren't producing any new ones, so it was just that people had heard them before and they weren't nearly as powerful the second time.

Me

So you needed to make some more.

Trevor

Right, but Dr. Allen was freaked out. Eventually I lured him back to Baltimore with the promise of riches.

Me

Were you calling them annihilation sorties back then? Where did the name come from?

Trevor

It came from a particularly rabid news article someone wrote about our parties. The guy described what we were doing as launching sorties of sound designed to annihilate all independent thought. The first CD we released was called 'Annihilating Sorties of Sound.' The music on that first CD was credited to Telephere, and I know he tells a different story about how he came up with the name, but it just isn't true. In any case it isn't worth fighting over, I think it's a terrible name. If he wants the credit let him have it. By the time I realized that's what everyone was calling them it was too late to change it.

Me

At what point did you start helping other artists make sorties?

Trevor

Around then. See Hector, Telephere, had hooked up with a Swedish mathematician who had backwards engineered our algorithm based on recordings and broadcasts and stuff. I didn't have him under contract or anything so the first I heard of it was an ad for a new Telephere annihilation sortie. I was angry at first, but eventually I figured there was no way I could contain a musical development that profound, and I figured I should ease back my control of it. I was feeling burned out at that point anyway, and I thought I was repeating myself, so I went looking for people with something to say. I signed philosophers, rappers, singers, and poets. They all saw the sorties as a way to positively impact people's lives.

Me

That's when you met Tiny?

Trevor

Yeah, she was this really inspirational poet, and she wanted to use the sorties to empower women. Of course men responded just as well to her stuff as women did, which bothered her at first. (inaudible)... she did empowerment and self-respect sorties that were really popular and freaked out the powers that be. It gave them a hint of how effective the sorties could be as a political tool.

Me

Were they still trying to throw you in jail?

Trevor

They would've if they could've, but this was before the CNP. Charging me with child-porn was brilliant because every news report that mentioned me called me 'accused child-pornographer Trevor Brushton.' Even after the state knew they were going to lose the case, they prolonged it just so they could keep calling me that. Then it was tax evasion, then I had to testify before congress when they were talking about restricting or banning annihilation sorties.

Me

(laughing) How can they ban a pattern of sounds?

Trevor

I don't know but they banned a plant for seventy years, so I wouldn't put it past 'em. I just went and was completely truthful about everything. I told them how I thought it was the culmination of all music and one of the congressmen asked me why I didn't release the algorithm for anyone to use then, and that question kind of stuck in my head. I kinda thought maybe he was right.

Me

But you did release it.

Trevor

Yeah, after year zero. The CNP was putting out militaristic and control sorties, so I figured the worst thing that could've happened was already happening, and it would be better if everyone had access to it. I didn't want anyone using the methods I'd developed for war or hate, but I couldn't stop it. Releasing the algorithm would at least blunt the effect a bit.

Me

Let's talk about the end of the world and what has happened since then in the states. You took an early stand against the party?

Trevor

I'd say they took an early stand against me. (laughs) When people couldn't buy tickets to the parties, or buy records anymore we had to fold up the label. I just couldn't keep paying the staff with no money coming in. I still wanted to continue making sorties though, and I started working with Emma Silverstein who had some innovative ideas. I was paying her out-of-pocket.

Me

Where was Dr. Allen at that time?

Trevor

He was financially destitute so he wound up taking a job at the University of Arizona. I was lucky because I always wanted tangible investments, like property and metals, so I wound up okay. I owned this property and had a place in Brazil, along with the Baltimore compound.

Me

Did you see it coming?

Trevor

No, of course not. The overseas places were really just in case the government tried to seize my assets, I wanted to have some holdings that they couldn't touch.

Me

After the crash, you were still putting out sorties on the radio, why did you do that? There was no financial benefit.

Trevor

I did it to help people, to give them hope. The message of most of those post-crash sorties was 'we can overcome this adversity.' I felt like doing those sorties was a moral obligation.

Me

There's a general belief that you were working with the CNP back then, and that they paid you to help manipulate and control the population.

Trevor

That's bullshit, I would love to see one shred of evidence that supports that claim.

Me

People were rising up, and you made sorties about not succumbing to mob mentality.

Trevor

Right, which is exactly what the CNP represented to me, a mob mentality. You say people were rising up, and maybe that's what it looked like from Canada, but at ground level? It looked like a bunch of terrified, starving people, trampling each other to death. I wanted everyone to cool out and come together to do something positive.

Me

There are people who think that you and Dr. Allen were working on a black-op the whole time, and that annihilation sorties are a tool of control.

Trevor

They can be used that way -just look at the CNP sorties. Having the recipe fall into the hands of the fascists was always my biggest fear from the beginning, but come on, it was inevitable. Ultimately there was nothing I could do to prevent it, so I open-sourced it and even published a step-by-step guide on how to make them. If I was working with the CNP why am I living in Mexico? Why do I live behind an electric fence?

Me

You're saying you're a target?

Trevor

Look at the documents Pacifica liberated in the purge. I'm on the list of people the party deemed enemies of the future. Read the list, out of a hundred and twelve people only four are known to still be alive.

Me

Most people assumed that Pacifica faked those documents.

Trevor

I think they're real.

Me

There are other questions about your history that are unpleasant to bring up. You're often described as a violent, unstable person. For example you were in a car wreck and a young girl was killed. The other person in the car said you crashed on purpose to prove a point.

Trevor

That was one of the saddest events of my life, I think about it every day. I died in that crash too.

Me

What do you mean?

Trevor

Death and life are binary, so in any life-and-death situation multiple worlds are created. The many-worlds hypothesis has been proven.

Me

But you're here, she's not.

Trevor

From my perspective, yes. You can't observe yourself dead, so from your own perspective you always live through such an event.

Me

Did you crash on purpose?

Trevor

Does a human being have free will?

Me

Yes.

Trevor

Then I guess I did. Next question.

Me

What about some of the artists you worked with at your label who say they were taken advantage of financially?

Trevor

Like who?

Me

Telephere for one, and a bunch of others have said that you bought the rights to their entire back-catalogues after the crash. A lot of them have said they were desperate, and they sold their work to you for much less than it was worth.

Trevor

That's bullshit, any artist who feels that way can contact me and I'll gladly give them back the rights to their music. I was just trying to help those people out. I was trying to put money in their pockets, and as for Hector, we paid him for the use of his name and image, that's all. Considering the amount of work he did on those sorties, which was zero, he should be happy he gets any piece of it at all.

Me

Why did you stop making sorties?

Trevor

Who says I stopped?

Me

You stopped putting them out...

Trevor

I stopped putting them out under my name with big publicity and hype, but I've still got sorties going out. I'm doing the best work I've ever done, even if I'm not getting paid for it anymore. The fucking marketplace is flooded right now, and most of these sorties are bad, boring, or just plain evil. My work now is countering that, I empower people, I tell them that there's hope, I try to minimize their fears.

Me

So are you fighting for Pacifica with your sorties?

Trevor

I don't see it that way, but if the content I create happens to line up more with one side or the other, so be it. I'm not a political artist, but one side in the conflict has never tried to kill me, so I am a little biased in their favor. I think that's enough Efrain, I need a shower and a bed.

Me

I hope you didn't mind me asking some of those questions.

Trevor

It's fine. I'm not a hero and I'm not a villain. I'm a dad, a husband, and an artist. (coughing) My perspective is limited and yours is too. If you remember that it will be a good article.

-END AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-

When the interview was over the sun was up and he looked exhausted. I had five or six new revelations about the man and his work, so I knew my editor would be happy. The most surprising thing to me was that he was still putting out annihilation sorties. I wondered what distribution method he was using, and before I left Cabo I got an answer.

I wasn't scheduled to leave until the following day and the family seemed to have forgotten about me already, so I was free to wonder around the ranch. There were six bungalows like the one I stayed in, and I found that two of them were filled with boxes. Being a curious person, I went to see what was in them. They were filled with small, hand-crank FM radio receivers. There were about two hundred in each box, and there were maybe forty boxes in each bungalow.

I was back home, working on the article, when I got word of Trevor's death. It was on the Pacifica News Portal, and I had to read through the notice twice before I understood what it was saying. He was with Carlos, sleeping onboard a boat docked in San Felipe. At four in the morning the boat was hit with a white phosphorous incendiary device. They were both killed. The notice said that they were doing work for a charity that donated radios to children in economically depressed border towns in northern Mexico. The perpetrators of the attack were unknown, but investigators said that the boat had been tracked via Carlos's small-screen.

I called Tiny up right away. After I expressed my sympathy for her and the family I told her about Lillian, and about how I'd caught her transferring something from Carlos' small-screen. I cried telling her, and then found myself in the strange situation of being comforted by a grieving widow. "Maybe it was her, maybe not." She said. "They've been trying to get him for years, maybe they used you, but we have no way of knowing. It's not your fault..."

"But if I'd told you..."

"They would've gotten him some other way some other time. Trevor didn't believe in death anyway. Your guilt is absolutely useless, and you need to stop it."

"I can't believe I let myself fall for that."

"Trevor didn't want to push his luck by antagonizing the party openly, but I think it's important for people to know that he was fighting the CNP with his music when he was killed. Trevor and Carlos died on the front lines of the real war, the war against fear. Publish that if you want to assuage your guilt."

-back to table of contents-

# Glitch X 7

The blood drive had been going on for about a half-hour when Gaby Marte noticed a sound like rain hitting the roof of the building. Almost immediately he saw Mr. Mullen slump in a strange way. Half his face was gone -then all of it. Gaby was on his way over to the man when he slipped on some blood. He looked down and saw that the blood was quickly disappearing. Within thirty seconds he was all alone in the gymnasium of Gyllenhaal Elementary, with lumps of clothing and empty shoes all around him. The other volunteer parents, and all the people who had been lined up to give blood for the war effort, were all gone.

He ran from the building and down the path past the cafeteria to the playground where his daughter Sara had been. He found her shoes with the leggings she'd been wearing still inside them at the feet. They were next to the swing and he saw the impression her body had made in the sand before she'd disintegrated. Her top must've blown away. He noticed a strand of black hair, Sara's hair, caught in the chain of the swing. He pulled it out gently and held it up. It was evaporating towards his fingers and he let it go.

Gaby tried to wake up but he wasn't dreaming. Everything was real, the day was real, the ground was real, the school was real, everything. The only thing that wasn't real was him. Gaby's car still worked and he left the school's parking lot, wondering where he was going. There were wrecks all over the place and he passed a paint store that was on fire. There were no other people anywhere. He told himself that there was a war on, and that this was an attack. It wasn't strange that the whole town had been obliterated, what was strange was that he was still alive.

He pulled into the driveway of his house and walked inside automatically, without intent. There was no dog barking next door. There were no kids playing ball in the field across the street. Mrs. McGill wasn't sitting on her front porch reading. The first thing he did when he got in his house was to look in the mirror above the mantle in his living room. He looked real, a little weird and desperate, but not a ghost. He took a framed picture of him and Sara and sat on the floor, staring at it, not crying, not moving at all.

What right did Gaby have to be alive? The city was on fire, he could see the smoke rising out his front window, gray and evil. All the animals were gone so the fire could only eat plants and property. It would be unable to find anything to kill until it reached his house. He decided he wouldn't run. He would let himself be burned. They said that the nanotech ate the top of your head and worked its way down, destroying the brain in a fraction of a second, which meant no pain. The thing that felt the pain would be gone by the time there was pain to be felt. Gaby decided that it was up to him to feel all the pain for the murdered citizens of Conifer, Washington. He would feel the pain for Sara.

He stood and looked out his front window until it got dark. The fire made the horizon glow a soft orange, but the wind was blowing toward it, and Gaby knew the weather would have to change for him to be burned alive. He watched clouds roll in and in the middle of the night it started to rain. Gaby's legs were sore from standing, and he went and crashed on the sofa. As he drifted off he had a moment of certainty that he was in fact dead. His spirit had been moving around a purgatory that resembled his town only without people.

He woke up just after dawn and wished he could be certain he was dead again. He coughed and got up. He had to piss, and ghosts didn't have to piss. He opened the fridge and set about making himself an omelette. He would've had bacon with it, but the package was empty. The nanotech got it. Bacon was too similar to human flesh to still exist. He sautéed some onions and bell pepper slices and whisked together three eggs in a bowl and dumped them in the pan. All he had was some organic cheddar cheese and he wished he had some processed American cheese slices like he used to eat when he was a kid. He would've given anything to peel open those plastic envelopes of salty orange goodness.

He got the coffee pot going and put two pieces of bread in the toaster. He told himself this was his last meal, so he'd better do it right. He plated his omelette and buttered his toast, poured his coffee into his favorite mug and sat down.

Next to him was the chair Sara sat in every morning. He looked at it and with one smooth gesture, wiped the entire breakfast onto the floor. There was a ceiling fan that he'd put in himself when he and Sara had moved to Conifer. The ceiling was high in the kitchen, and he'd spent a long time up on a ladder, bolting the thing to a heavy crossbeam. He got the long extension cord from the hall closet, and put a chair on the table and stood on it, looping the cord around the base of the fan. He had to go up on tip toes to reach. Once it was secure he made a rough slipknot with the other end. He tugged the cord to make sure it would hold, and then he stuck his head through.

"Ten-one, we've located the survivor," a voice called out, surprising him. He looked back and almost fell, but hands went onto the chair, steadying it, and a Well-Armed militiaman hopped up onto the table and took Gaby's head out of the noose. There were two militiamen in his kitchen, both wearing black protective body suits, goggles and facemasks. They got him off the table, bound his wrists, checked his pockets and led him outside. They shoved him in the back of a transport parked on his lawn.

Gaby figured they must've been looking just for him because they made no other stops. The skeletal husk of a mini chopper stood on the corner of Fifth and Martin Street and the transport rolled into it and stopped. One of the militiamen got out and turned the vacuum locks, securing the transport to the chopper. He got back in, checked a couple of nav-screens and reported that they were leaving the debris field with the objective in tow. Gaby burst out laughing when he heard himself referred to as 'the objective,' and both militiamen looked back at him like he was crazy.

It was a four hour flight, southeast in direction. They finally landed on a concrete slab in the woods, and two men in white work suits were waiting. They opened the chopper door and looked at Gaby and then at each other. They pulled him out and led him to a small shed. A code was entered on a screen beside the door, and somewhere inside a latch clicked. They opened the door and took him down four flights of stairs, through another door, and then down a hall that stretched a half mile at least. Another door and they were at an elevator. They went down a long, long way.

The men in white work suits weren't alone, there were a lot of people dressed the same way in a big open space like an airplane hanger or factory floor, only cleaner. It was well-lit and Gaby drew curious looks from the workers as he was led through the space and into an interior office. "Sit." One of the men told him, pushing him onto a chair at the back of the beige room. The other man left and came back with a kid, a teenager, wearing a black version of the work suit.

The kid stood there and looked at Gaby and Gaby looked back, thinking he knew the kid from somewhere. He thought for a second that it must be one of Sara's friends, but no. It was the reverse image of the face Gaby saw in the mirror when he was that age. It was him. "I guess we know why he survived," the kid said. The voice was Gaby's only coming from the wrong direction.

"This a joke?" Gaby asked. "Is it some kind of brainwashing technique?"

The kid laughed but the two men in white didn't react at all. "Certainly not," the kid said, "but your confusion is completely justified. Don't worry, you haven't lost your mind. It's a remarkable piece of luck that we found you. When reports came back that someone had survived the Conifer strike, we could only think of one reasonable explanation. You're it. I'm very glad we were right."

"Why did I survive?"

"Our genetic originator was the first person to weaponize nanotech in the laboratory. It was necessary for him to work in close contact with the material, so he built in an immunity to our genetic makeup."

"Our?" Gaby looked at the kid.

"Yes, mine too." He said. "I knew you when you were a baby Gabriel, I used to change your diapers. Your mother never told you that you were a clone?"

"How old are you?" Gaby asked.

"Biologically speaking I am 16 years old, but I have memories that stretch back before I was born." He tilted his head. "Are you feeling alright?"

"No, not really," Gaby said. "Am I a prisoner of war?"

"There's a war on," the young Gaby said, "and this is a military facility. You aren't free."

Gaby couldn't help it, he began to cry. "I thought I was in purgatory," he said, "but now I know I'm in hell."

"You're in a Well-Armed research lab in Idaho. You're still alive Gabriel."

"Why? Why not just kill me?"

"I couldn't make that decision on my own. I'd have to get a consensus." The kid said. "I think you'll be kept alive as a source of study. The others will be curious about you." He turned to the man in white who was standing next to his chair. "Take him to R-level and put him in one of the rooms with a code lock."

The man pulled Gaby to his feet and took him from the office. They went up an elevator and through a series of hallways, and then he put Gaby in a small room with a bed, desk, and bathroom. "Welcome home." He said. "I'll send someone up with some sterile clothes." He took a pair of clippers and snipped the restraints off Gaby's wrists, and then left, locking the door behind him.

Gaby spent an hour sitting on the bed staring at the bright yellow wall in front of him. The room smelled like cinderblocks and glue. He heard the lock mechanism clank and the door opened. A woman in a white work suit came in and handed him a neon pink jumpsuit folded inside a plastic bag. "You're causing a big commotion." She said. "Work stopped and all the bosses are trying to figure out what to do with you."

"They'll probably kill me."

"Doubtful," she said. "Is it true that you didn't know you're a clone?"

"I still don't know that." Gaby said. "The kid looks like me, it's true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm a clone. Maybe he's a clone of me. I'm more than twice that kid's age."

"You're the oldest boss I've seen." She said.

Gaby noticed that she had kind brown eyes. "My daughter was playing on the swings when the nanotech came. I could still see the impression her body made on the ground."

"And traitors from California killed my little brother." She said.

"I'm not a fighter," Gaby said. "These guys, the bosses, they're going to kill me. What would you do if you were me?"

"I don't know."

He looked at her brown eyes. "Wouldn't you hope some decent person would help you escape?"

She shook her head. "You should get changed," she said. "They'll probably call for you soon."

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Sara." She said.

Gaby said nothing, he just stared at her.

"Are you hungry?" She asked.

"Yes."

"I'll send someone up with food."

The bosses were all the same person, they were all Gaby. There were six of them, obviously made in pairs, seven to ten years apart. The one he'd met earlier was part of the youngest, teenage duo, then there was a pair that looked like they were in their mid-twenties, and a pair in their early thirties. Gaby thought that if he'd had a twin it would complete the set, he was forty years old. They were seated on either side of a long table, and Gaby sat at the head. They all wore black jumpsuits, Gaby wore pink.

One of the middle duo spoke first. "You are Gabriel Dieghton?"

"Marte." Gaby said. "My mom married a man named Ernest Marte when I was six. He adopted me. My name is Gaby Marte."

"Your mother was Elizabeth Rachel McMillen?"

"Yeah."

One of the youngest set of clones spoke, "What do you do for a living Mr. Marte?"

"Chemist." He said. "I work at a brewery. I don't suppose any of you drink Barello out here, but it's pretty popular in my country."

All six faces smiled at once, the exact same smile. "You don't work for the military?" One of the oldest duo asked.

"No," Gaby said. "I did my bit when I got out of college, three years in uniform, mostly doing clerical work."

"You didn't work at the research labs in Palo Alto?"

"No, I'm not that type of chemist." Gaby said. "I couldn't sleep at night if I'd invented some new way to kill people."

One of the youngest clones spoke. "The last time I saw you, you were four years old. Do you have any memory of that?"

"Buddy, when I was four years old you weren't even born yet."

"I was born in 1966." He said. "This version of my body is much more recent. Not long after you were born I completed the electrical sequence mapping of my brain. You were supposed to be the first to receive it, but Rachel had other plans. I had to wait until you were fifteen anyway, so I let her run off and get married. I thought I had plenty of time, but then the crash came and I couldn't find you. By then I had a good start on the next generation, so I let you go."

"So what, when your clones hit fifteen you rewrite their brains? You really think that makes them you? Just because someone shares your exact DNA and brain function doesn't make them you."

One of the oldest clones spoke. "In any sense imaginable, it does." He said. The five other clones all nodded in unison. "One human lifetime was not nearly long enough for me to complete my work. I needed to extend it, and in doing so I realized I could expand it as well. I run this entire lab by myself, all six of me. The work that I'm doing here will ultimately benefit the entire human race."

"When a clone hits fifteen it has a whole set of memories of its own, it has its own identity. Do you just write over all that?"

"It's unfortunate," one of the teenage clones said, "but it's a chance to do something great, to be a part of something bigger. The trade-off is worth it."

"Look at you," one of the twenty-something clones said, "you kept your identity and look what you've done with it. You make beer for a living."

"So none of you have any individuality? No part of you from before you were fifteen survived?"

"Our brains were reconstructed on a cellular level over a six month period. We are one man, with one identity, one set of memories, one set of feelings and thoughts. The only thing that makes me different from any other person is the fact that I have six bodies. It's a much more efficient arrangement."

"If you think you're rewriting my brain your fuckin' crazy. I'd smash my brains out right here on the floor before I'd become part of your little circle jerk."

All six clones laughed the same laugh. "We wouldn't want you," the two oldest clones said in unison. One continued, "your brain has certainly deteriorated with age. The process works on young, spongy brains, not the calcified, beer-addled mess you've probably got. Your identity as a solid mediocrity is safe Mr. Marte."

"Since little can be gained here," one of the middle clones said, "I propose that we alert the enemy alien division and have him transferred to a secure facility." All six clones nodded solemnly.

"Can't you ugly bastards feed me first?"

"The transfer will happen tomorrow morning, we'll send some food up."

Gaby sat on the bed in his room/cell and wished his mom were still alive so he could entertain the possibility of being angry at her. Yelling would've been the only option, he couldn't ask her why she'd lied. He knew why. She did it so he could have a normal life.

The door opened and Sara came in carrying a tray of cafeteria food. She set it on the desk. "I got you an extra cookie," she said. "The kitchen crew is gone for the night so there wont be any seconds."

Gaby just stared at her, saying nothing. Her kind brown eyes looked away, and she left the room. Gaby wasn't hungry, but eventually he went to the desk and looked at the tray. Ham slices, mashed potatoes and peas. There was a small carton of milk and a bottle of water. Gaby noticed the corner of a piece of paper sticking out from under the milk. It was a note, written in his own handwriting:

I will help you escape. The cellular reconstruction did not completely erase who I was prior to the procedure. I am not like the five other clones but I have to go to great lengths to hide this fact from them. I see you as a brother because we are both victims of our genetic originator's egotism. I will come and retrieve you just before dawn and do my best to see that you make it to the neutral zone.

Gaby tucked the note in his pocket and ate his dinner. He would need his strength to get back into Pacifica from the neutral zone. He was finishing his first cookie when he heard a noise at the door. Someone had slid a note through the crack. He picked it up and saw that it was also written in his own handwriting. Gaby started reading it and realized it was the same message, word for word, as the first note. Gaby thought that whichever clone it was had been worried that the first note hadn't gotten to him.

He began eating the second cookie, but before he'd finished eating it the door opened. It was one of the oldest clones, looking nervous. "I'm going to get you out of here, don't worry," he said, barely above a whisper.

"Thanks, I knew you all couldn't be equally heartless." Gaby said. "When you come for me I'll be ready."

"The cellular reconstruction of my brain wasn't complete." He said. "Part of me is like you, a biological clone, but with my own identity."

"Right." Gaby said, wondering why he was repeating information he'd already relayed in two notes.

"I have to wait until I'm on my lab inventory shift." He said. "I should be able to get you out in a couple of hours."

"We're not going to wait until just before..." Gaby stopped talking when he realized what was going on. "We're not going to wait until the transfer tomorrow?"

"No, that would be too late. I want to get you out of here as soon as possible."

"Okay." Gaby said.

The clone looked both ways down the hall and then left. Gaby only had to wait a half hour before his door opened again. One of the twenty-something clones stuck his head in. "Hey!" He whispered. "I'm going to help you escape. Come on, come with me."

"Now?" Gaby asked.

"Yes, come on." He said. Gaby followed the clone out into the hall, and they ran and turned a corner and went through a door to a stairwell. They took a few steps up but the clone stopped and held Gaby still and they listened. Someone was coming down the stairs, so they went back out into the hall and waited with their backs against the wall. The door to the stairwell opened and one of the youngest clones walked out. He didn't notice them standing there, he was moving fast and he turned the corner toward Gaby's room. He was carrying a note.

"That was close," the clone said. They went up five flights of stairs to a landing where the clone had left a white work suit and hat. He told Gaby to put it on, and once he was in the disguise they went out the door and around a corner to the elevator. They went up and up and up. They came out to a patch of concrete in a forest, almost exactly like the one Gaby had landed on that afternoon. There was a chopper/transport sitting there.

"The flyer is programmed to land in a field a half mile into the neutral zone." He said. "Disengage the transport and head west. The first checkpoint you come to should be in Pacifica territory, but be careful."

"If you're doing this, that must mean that you're not like the others." Gaby said. "Some part of you must remain from before the cellular reconstruction of your brain."

"That's right," he said.

"It must be hard to keep that hidden from the other five clones."

"I hate those puppets," he said. "One day I'm going to pull the plug on this whole foul operation."

"What a day that will be." Gaby said.

-back to table of contents-

# The Floating Orphan of Rainbow Ridge

The Borando kids had no parents, or rather, the parents they had weren't much use to them because they were dead. This would be bad enough but they lived in a town in northwest Oregon called Rainbow Ridge, a town that was under quarantine. Lizzy Borando had just learned from her older brother Mike what the word quarantine meant, and although she had misunderstood somewhat, that didn't keep her from explaining what it meant to her stuffed monkey Squiggles.

"The object of war is for people to kill each other," she said. Her sister Fiona made an annoyed sound. She didn't like listening to her little sister's nonsense. "They're always trying to find new ways to kill each other. Sometimes they use fire or bullets, or little tiny robots, so small you can't even see them. That's what got mommy and..."

"Shut up!" Fiona shouted.

Lizzy picked up Squiggles by his long furry arm and went behind the couch, where she continued her explanation in a whisper. "So the war-fighters are always looking for new ways to kill each other..."

"I can still hear you." Fiona said.

Lizzy stuck her tongue out at her sister even though her sister couldn't see her. "And the people who are fighting against us, the bad guys, they invented a new way of killing. It's so new nobody even knows what it is, or how it works. They can't let anybody leave until they figure it out." Lizzy looked closely at Squiggles's glass eye to be sure he understood, but she dropped him when her sister screamed.

"Spider!" Fiona shouted. "Mike, kill it, kill it quick!" Mike slammed his foot down on the bold arachnid, squashing it dead. "Oh I hate spiders," Fiona said, "they're just awful."

"That's the fifth spider I've killed since Monday," Mike said. "There never used to be so many spiders in our house. Maybe we have a nest somewhere."

"Oh don't say that!" Fiona shouted. "Just that word, 'nest.' It makes my skin crawl."

Lizzy couldn't resist. "Nest!" She shouted from behind the couch.

"Shut it Lizzy!" Her sister yelled. "I'll slap the freckles off your ugly face!"

"Squiggles wants to know when the quarantine will be over and we can go live with Gran."

"Soon." Mike said.

"Don't tell her soon, you don't know that." Fiona said.

"The man at the checkpoint said it would be soon." Mike said.

"Yeah but you said he was dressed like a spaceman, you said they all were. They don't dress like that for the fun of it. They don't even want to breathe the same air as us."

"It's probably just a precaution." Mike said.

"Where does Gran live again?"

"Lizzy I told you already." Mike said. "Santa Monica. It's in Southern California, right by the beach."

"And we'll go soon?" Lizzy asked.

"As soon as it's safe." Mike said.

"They're probably just waiting for us all to die." Fiona said.

Mike gave Lizzy the look that said not to listen to Fiona, and Lizzy smiled. When she was little she'd wished Mike had been closer to her age so she'd have a brother she could play with, but now that mommy and dad were gone she was glad he was older.

There was a knock at the door and Mike held his finger up to his lips and got their dad's scatter gun off the table. He pointed the gun at the ceiling and leaned over to take a peek out the front window. "It's just Barfo." Mike said. He put the gun back and opened the door. "Get in here before someone sees you." He said.

Franklin Barto entered the room and looked around. "How come there's a Guard truck in your driveway?" He asked. "I thought maybe something happened."

"You're not supposed to go visiting house to house Barfo!" Fiona said. "That's how you spread the disease. The notice said to stay in your house."

"Don't call me Barfo." He stomped his foot down suddenly. "Spider." He said.

"Another one!" Mike said. "I just got one a minute ago."

"Whatever we're infected with killed off all the birds." Franklin said. "So the spider population is booming. We got 'em at our house too."

"Birds don't eat spiders they eat worms." Lizzy said.

Mike was looking out the front window. "They parked a big tuck in our driveway," he said, "Why would they do that?"

Fiona looked out the window over Mike's shoulder. "There's no one in it." She said. "I wonder where the driver went."

"He's in the back yard." Lizzy said. "I can see him." They all rushed to the back window and looked out at a man in a hazmat suit, holding a plastic cylinder up to a tree branch. He had a pencil in his other hand and he was using it to try to push something into the small cylinder. "Why's he drawing on our tree?" Lizzy asked.

"He's not drawing on our tree," Mike said. "He's trying to catch one of those spiders." He went through the kitchen and out the back door, and he stood on the back porch. "Hey," he shouted to the man. The kids in the living room could hear him clearly. "Hey, what are you doing?"

The man screwed the lid on the cylinder and looked at Mike. "Get back in your house." The man said. His voice sounded strange from behind the mask.

"How come you're out here catching spiders?" Mike asked.

"This town is under 24 hour curfew, now get back in your house, you're violating the law."

"Are those spiders dangerous? Is that how they're spreading the disease?"

"I am authorized to use deadly force against uncooperative civilians, now I'm telling you for the last time, get in your house."

Mike came back inside and shut the door. "He's on our property, I should shoot him for trespassing." Mike said.

"Don't be stupid." Fiona said. "We've gotta figure out what to do. We can't just wait around to die. We need to get out of here."

"Yes and go to Gran's in Santa Monica." Lizzy said.

"How?" Mike asked. "They've got all the roads blocked, we can't just drive out."

"I know how we could get out." Lizzy said.

"We have camping gear and a magnetic compass, we could just head out through the forest." Fiona said.

"If you do that I want to come with you guys," Franklin said. "I don't want to stay around here either, my mom's driving me crazy."

"No one invited you, Barfo." Fiona said.

"I haven't seen anyone get sick." Mike said. "This whole thing might be precautionary. They could be about to lift the quarantine."

"I have fishing poles and tackle," Franklin said, "we'll need that stuff."

"Remember last Valentines day, what mommy and dad did?"

"Shut up about mom and dad!" Fiona yelled. "It's all you ever talk about!"

"She's right," Mike said, "they're gone, we have to look out for ourselves. Hiking through the woods is going to be really hard with izzy-lay, but it's our only option..."

"Hey!" Lizzy said.

"We don't want to hike to Mill Creek, it's too close, we'd get caught, so that means we have to go to Jasper." Mike said. "If we average ten miles a day it should take seven or eight days. We can't carry that much fresh water so we'll need iodine tablets."

The three teenagers talked for the rest of the evening, making plans and looking at maps. They decided to head out after sunset the next day.

Lizzy liked to leave the closet light on at night, even though it annoyed Fiona, who shared her room. Lizzy wasn't afraid of the dark, she just didn't like it. She always slept with Squiggles and a flashlight. That night she was lying in bed wide awake, thinking about her Gran, and what life might be like in Santa Monica. She wondered if she could see the ocean from her Gran's apartment. She thought every morning before breakfast she could look out and watch the dolphins play in the surf.

It was very late and she could tell Fiona was asleep by the way she was breathing. Lizzy shifted around and in the dim light and noticed something moving on her pillow. She sat up quickly and fumbled with her flashlight. When she got it on and shined it down on the pillow there was nothing there.

She pulled the covers back and shined the light down, but didn't see anything under there either. She took the covers back up over her legs and was turning around to lay back down when her flashlight reflected off of something on her sister's side of the room. It was a thin filament of reflected light, and Lizzy followed it down to a spider. It was descending quickly from the ceiling, and it landed right in Fiona's open mouth and crawled inside.

Lizzy's scream woke her sister, and she heard her brother come running down the hall. "What?" Fiona shouted. "What are you screaming about?"

Mike slammed the door open and snapped the light on. "What's wrong?" He asked.

"Sp... Spider." Lizzy said.

"Ugh!" Fiona slammed her head back down on her pillow. "You woke everyone up over a stupid spider?" She asked.

"It... It came down from the ceiling," Lizzy said, "it... It went in your mouth!"

Fiona sat up again. "Shut up Lizzy! I think I would know if a spider went in my mouth!"

Mike was looking all along the floor and walls for any sign of a spider. Lizzy clutched Squiggles tight. "I don't see any spiders." Mike said.

"She's making it up, she just had a bad dream." Fiona said.

"Can Squiggles and me sleep with you tonight Mike?" Lizzy asked.

"Don't let her Mike, she'll wet the bed."

"Shut up spider-eater, I don't wet the bed."

"Okay," Mike said. "You and Squiggles can bunk with me tonight, but you have to lay still, no thrashing around."

Lizzy hopped out of bed with her monkey. "I'll be right back," She said. She left the bedroom and ran downstairs.

She came into Mike's room holding a pack of disposable face-masks from when her dad had painted the rec-room. She took one out and handed it to Mike. "What's this for?" He asked.

"To keep the spiders out." Lizzy said. She put one on herself and then went about putting one on Squiggles.

"Lizzy are you positive you didn't imagine it?"

Lizzy hopped onto Mike's bed. "I saw what I saw and I said what I saw." Lizzy said. "No one ever believes me. No one ever listens. Mommy would've listened." She got under the covers and put her head down.

Mike gave his sister a little hug and put the mask on. "There, happy?" He asked. "I don't know how the heck I'm going to sleep in this thing." He shut his lamp off and pulled the covers up over them. "What were you trying to say about mom and dad earlier?" He asked.

"Last Valentines day," Lizzy said, "they went on a hot air balloon ride."

Mike sat up and turned the light on. "Mr. Miller down on Ridge Road! He used to take people for hot air balloon rides every Sunday!"

"Yeah, Mr. Miller with the moustache." Lizzy said.

"Lizzy that's genius! Why didn't you say something before?"

"I tried."

"I'll do some research on it tomorrow. I like your idea a hell of a lot better than hiking all the way to Jasper." Mike hugged his little sister again. "We could just drift away with the breeze." He flipped his light off and put his head down. "Tomorrow night after sunset," he said.

Sometime early the next morning Mike took his mask off. He was dreaming a woman-doctor was trying to suffocate him. He stuck it on the windowsill above his bed and went back to sleep.

Fiona came downstairs the next morning looking like Dracula had sucked all the blood out of her. Mike was making scrambled eggs in a big skillet. "Boy you sure slept in." He said. He turned and looked at her. "Are you feeling alright?"

"No, I'm really sick." She said.

"Get back upstairs, I'll bring your breakfast up." Mike said. "You've gotta get better, we're busting out of quarantine tonight."

"Ugh, okay." She said. "I don't think I could hike anywhere right now, I'm not even sure I can make it upstairs."

"We aren't hiking." Mike said. "I'll tell you when I bring up your eggs."

Fiona nodded and left the kitchen slowly. "Mike," Lizzy whispered, "Mike, she's sick. That spider she ate had the disease on it. She's gonna make us sick too."

"Maybe," Mike said, "but we can't throw her into the street, she's our sister. She's probably just got a stomach flu."

Mike took a plate of eggs, some toast and a glass of orange juice up to his sister. He spent rest of the day on the pick system looking up information and videos about hot air balloons. Lizzy went hunting spiders with Squiggles. She killed eight. Fiona didn't come down for lunch and Lizzy asked her brother if he was going to go check on her. He said he'd just let her sleep. Lizzy thought he was afraid of catching whatever she had, but he didn't want to tell her.

The hot air balloon research continued until supper time. Mike put a pot of water on the stove and got out the spaghetti and sauce while explaining the plan to his little sister. "Mr. Miller's house is on Ridge Road and 22, that's two and a half miles from here. If he still keeps his balloon gear in the barn we should be okay, but still, we have to be completely quiet when we get there. As soon as it gets dark, we'll head out on our bikes..."

"I'll get packed after dinner." Lizzy said.

"No," Mike said. "We bring nothing. We can't risk taking one of those disease infected spiders."

"Not even Squiggles?" Lizzy asked, hugging her monkey tight.

Mike put down the wooden spoon and took Squiggles from his sister. He looked closely at the monkey and squeezed it all over. "I guess you can take Squiggles." He said.

Mike put some pasta on a plate and told Lizzy to take it up to Fiona. "Tell her we're leaving in an hour." He said. Lizzy sat there, staring at the plate. "Listen," Mike said, "we all live in the same house, understand? If whatever it is got one of us, it's probably got all of us, okay? Fiona is our sister, and most likely she caught a flu. If it was some new type of bio weapon it would've killed her already. Take this spaghetti up to your sister."

Lizzy took the plate, a can of iced tea and silverware wrapped in a napkin, and went up the stairs. She pushed the door open on a dark room. "Fiona, you hungry?" She asked. Her sister didn't answer. "Mike says we're leaving in an hour." Lizzy set the plate down on her sister's nightstand, next to the uneaten eggs from breakfast. She turned the lamp on, which put a soft orange glow on her sister's face. Lizzy could tell that she wasn't really sleeping, she just had her eyes closed. "Come on you big faker!" She said. She took the edge of the blanket and ripped it off her sister, expecting a scream.

Her sister didn't move. Fiona's bare legs were splayed and between them was blood, all over the sheets and her sister's thighs. Lizzy froze, unsure what she was really seeing, and then noticed some movement in the blood. She looked a little closer and saw hundreds of baby spiders, all crawling toward the edge of the bed leaving little bloody trails.

Lizzy screamed and jumped back, swatting frantically at her bare feet and ankles for a second before she ran from the room. She flew down the stairs and jumped up on a chair in the kitchen, looking all around. "What?" Mike said. "What is it?"

Lizzy opened up her mouth but didn't have any words. Mike left the kitchen and went up the stairs. Lizzy heard his footsteps above her, entering the room she shared with her sister. She heard him stop, then take a couple of steps toward the bed then stop again, then run out of the room and down the stairs. "Get your shoes on, we're leaving now!" He barked at Lizzy.

Lizzy checked her sneakers for spiders before she put them on. She grabbed Squiggles and went out the back door behind Mike. all he was taking with him was a flashlight. They headed for Ridge Road, pedaling hard. "What's that smell?" Lizzy asked.

"Fire," Mike said, "look." He pointed to three wide columns of black smoke rising in the evening sky. They made it to Ridge Road and the usually busy street was completely empty. Lizzy was out ahead of Mike. "How come you're going so slow?" She asked him.

"I'm sick." He said.

They rode the rest of the way to Mr. Miller's place in silence. It was dark by the time they got there, and the lights were on in his living room. Mike told Lizzy to wait and snuck up onto the porch. Lizzy watched her brother look through the front window carefully. He came back down to the driveway and waved Lizzy over. "Dead," he said when she got to him. "He's right there on the floor."

"Mike your voice sounds awful." Lizzy said.

He ignored her comment and pedaled to the barn. He opened the big door and found a light switch. "Mr. Miller must've had the same idea," Mike said. "This thing looks ready to go." There was a brand new truck with a wicker basket, on its side in the back. Mike handed the flashlight to Lizzy and climbed up into the truck. He started the engine and called down to Lizzy to open the other big door.

Mike stopped long enough for Lizzy to jump up and get in the passenger seat, and then he drove right over Mr. Miller's garden and out into the middle of the field. When he opened the door Lizzy could see in the interior light of the cab that Mike was as white as chalk. He opened the gate of the truck and yanked the wicker basket out onto the dirt. The balloon was folded in the basket, and Lizzy helped him pull the top of the balloon far out onto the field as far as it would go. They spread the balloon out like unfolding a huge bed-sheet. There was a giant fan with a motor like a lawnmower, and Mike had a tough time getting it to start. Lizzy stood behind him holding the flashlight, and she could see his fingers shaking. Finally he got the thing going and went and lifted the edge of the balloon to let the air in. He directed his sister where to point the fan.

Once the balloon was taking shape he went to the burner and looked at the small-screen controller and flipped through a bunch of screens and then pointed the flame-throwing end at the inside top of the balloon. "Cross your fingers." He told his sister. She crossed fingers, arms, and legs too. The burner screamed and flames shot into the balloon, and started lifting it almost immediately. Lizzy was relieved.

"Mike, there were spiders crawling out of Fiona."

"I know," Mike said.

"Why?" Lizzy asked. "What happened?"

"The spiders aren't spreading the bio-weapon like we thought. The spiders _are_ the bio-weapon. You should take the flashlight and search every centimeter of the basket for spiders." He said.

The basket started to lift upright and Mike shut the burner off as Lizzy began her inspection. As she looked he was programming something on the small-screen and checking gauges as best he could in the dark. He coughed violently and spit and then stomped on his spit in the dirt. "Why'd you do that?" Lizzy asked.

"Did you find any spiders?" He asked.

"No." She said.

"You might have baby spiders hiding in your pockets or between the layers of fabric or something." Mike said. "You should take off all your clothes, down to your underwear."

"Why'd you step on your spit like that?" Lizzy asked.

"I coughed up some little spiders." He said. "I got 'em. I should've listened to you and kept that mask on last night. How do you feel?"

"I'm okay I guess." Lizzy said.

"Good. Clothes." Mike said. She took off all her clothes except her underwear and Mike lifted her into the basket and handed her Squiggles.

"What about you?" Lizzy asked. "What about your clothes?"

"I'm not coming." He said. He hit a button on the small-screen and flames shot out of the burner, loud and bright. Lizzy cringed. "I can feel them ripping up my guts." He shouted over the noise.

"Mike, I can't go up in this thing by myself!" Lizzy started crying. "I don't know how to fly it. You have to come with me."

"The wind should take you west," he yelled. The balloon started to lift off the ground and Mike stood on the edge of the basket to keep it grounded a little longer. "When the sun comes up look for a good place to land."

"I don't know how!" Lizzy shouted.

Mike pointed. "The small-screen," he yelled. "There's only one button on that screen, and when you push it you should be on the ground within fifteen seconds. You've got enough fuel to keep you up there until midday tomorrow, so you can afford to be choosy about where you come down. Time to go." He stepped off the basket and Lizzy's stomach turned as she lifted into the air.

She wanted to look over the edge at her brother but she was too scared, she huddled down and pressed her face against Squiggles. She was carried up and up, and she could feel a breeze moving the balloon. She stayed that way for a long time, and almost panicked when the burner snapped off, but then realized she wasn't falling, she was staying up in the air. It was peaceful without the burner going and she got the courage to stand up. She could see the lights in the distance and the smoke smell was getting stronger. She saw flames on a hill she was heading toward. The burner started again and she went higher as she approached the burning hillside. When she could see over it she saw flames stretching out in both directions, burning up all the forests around Rainbow Ridge. She was moving toward a wall of black smoke and Lizzy ducked down into the basket again.

She coughed and tried to hold her breath, but got a lungful of smoke. She squeezed her monkey tight and felt something move under her fingers. She squeezed him again, and again felt movement in the stuffing. She stood up, the smoke sending tears down her cheeks, and looked over the edge as best she could. There were flames everywhere beneath her. She pitched Squiggles down into the inferno. She was really alone now, all alone in the sky above her town, which was soon to be destroyed in the fire. She was moving slowly, quietly away, out of the smoke, away from the infested territory.

-back to table of contents-

# For the Future

The first time I met Tommy I was pig drunk and looking for a place to lie down. I was homeless in those days and I wasn't allowed to sleep on my sister's couch if I'd been drinking. She had a little boy, Marc, eight years old, and she didn't want him growing up around drunks like we did. Tommy was sitting on a park bench in his usual getup, a candy-apple red suit and a yellow bowtie. This suit and his blue bowler hat made him look like a cartoon character on a poorly animated kid's show. He was an exceptionally pale man, short, and his age was hard to place. He could've been 45 or 70.

Even in Prospect Park he stood out, not that I took great interest or anything. I sat next to him and groaned loudly, hoping he would get nervous about me and leave and I could stretch out on the bench. Tommy didn't go anywhere, he just looked at me and smiled. "What happened to your face?" He asked.

I looked around to see if there was another bench I could sit on, but they were all occupied. I frowned at Tommy. "Ever heard of white phosphorous? It burns on contact. The dog-fuck traitors dropped it on my unit while we were sleeping, so yeah."

"Is that why you drink?"

"Nah," I said, "I drink 'cause people are nosy and I have to do something to keep myself from killing them with my bare hands." I coughed in his direction without covering my mouth. He just kept smiling.

"If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?" Tommy asked.

"I'd lie down on this bench and sleep for a coupla hours." I said.

"Oh, then I'm in your way aren't I?" He stood up. "What's your name, if you don't mind the question."

"Matthew," I said.

"I'm Tommy." He stuck his hand out and I shook it.

I was going to leave it at that, but he looked so strange I had to indulge my curiosity. "Well Tommy, if _you_ could do anything in the world, what would _you_ do?"

"I'm doing it." He said. He fumbled around in his pocket and produced a square card. On one side was an image of a seated man on fire, and on the other were the words: death is the only real change in the world.

I had to laugh. "I'm working on it pal."

"I can tell, that's why I gave you the card," he said. "The image is a pick link to some information about our society. I hope you'll be sympathetic to our mission."

"Hmm, I dunno but I like your hat." I said. He tipped his blue bowler to me and ambled on down the path. I put my head down.

The whole encounter was so strange that I might've thought I'd imagined it if it weren't for the card. I didn't think about Tommy again until I was getting my disability credits at the VA office on Bryant. I got my small-screen out to get the bump, and the square card was stuck to the back. I laughed again at the phrase 'death is the only real change in the world,' and thought about the pale man in his colorful suit.

After I got the bump I sat on the low wall in front of the office and scanned the image. It opened a pick screen full of white text on a black background. It read:

Every year many thousands of men and women commit suicide. For whatever their individual reasons, they decide that they cannot continue to exist. This decision comes both from a self-hatred and a hatred of the world. The desire to snuff out the self is just another form of the desire to snuff out the world. The destructive impulse is directed inward and outward at once.

What if the world was different? What if we were different? Change is possible in the world and in ourselves, the only question is, how far are we willing to go to achieve it?

The world changes through death. The only reason that human beings are the dominant species on the planet is because all the dinosaurs were killed off in a cataclysm. One species must die for another to flourish, one civilization must die for another to flourish, and one worldview or ideology must be destroyed for another to take its place.

The last five hundred years of human history can be viewed as an attempt to transfer the cycles of death and rebirth into the symbolic realm of capital. Industries rose and fell and were usurped, and brand loyalty and sports fanaticism replaced tribal affiliation. The attempt to contain the vicious nature of existence to the realm of symbols and money was a noble human effort, but we all know how it turned out. When all the money died, a big chunk of the population did too.

There is no escaping the fact that actual physical death is the only real way to change anything.

When someone commits suicide people are often heard to remark that the death was 'such a waste,' but it's not true. What they have done is actually positive from the point of view of society. They are making room, and in doing so they are also making a statement. They are saying 'something is wrong here.' The 'here' can be within themselves or within the world, which is ultimately the same thing. We create the world and the world creates us.

Death is treated with such a fake reverence in our society. A person can be mocked, despised, spat on, and degraded, but as soon as they die they are respected. Death is the last everyday occurrence that is still treated as if it were magical, even by otherwise rational people.

Therefore a person who is willing to die has power. Armies aren't scary because they are willing to kill, they're scary because they're willing to die. A person who is willing to die is imbued with an almost mystical power, but there is another type of person with even more power. The person who _wants_ to die.

The turn of the last century was stalked by the fear of the suicide bomber. In Vietnam Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest. Every year multiple people snap and kill their families or co-workers and themselves. Nothing can be done to stop it because it's near impossible to defend against someone who wants to die. They have the will to go further than all the frightened animals who cling to life. They have the kind of power that can actually have an impact on society. They can change the world.

Unfortunately, most people kill themselves in a way that is easy to ignore. They drink themselves to death or OD on drugs in some dingy room. All those suicides are a vast untapped resource. Imagine if those deaths were directed at some positive outcome.

My name is Thomas Ignacio Butts III and I want to die, but I don't want my death to be meaningless. I want to do something good on my way out. That's why I've founded the Suicide for the Future Society. We are a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, and our mission is to make the world a better place for all people.

I work with the suicidal and try to help them use their death to bring about positive change in the world. To date, we have helped over fifty people on their journey to the other side, and we have over two hundred more waiting for their opportunity.

You are most likely reading this because you have met me and I gave you a card. If you'd like to speak with me about the society, look for me at the same spot you met me the last time, as I lead a very structured life. I'm the man in the red suit with the yellow bowtie and blue hat, I'm hard to miss. I look forward to talking with you.

I wondered why the guy had assumed I was suicidal. My face isn't too pretty, thanks to the burns, and I was drunk and looking for a place to sleep in the middle of the day, but still. It's a leap from that to suicidal. When I got out of the hospital I did try to hang myself, but the only private place at the halfway house was the bathroom, and the rig I'd come up with, around the shower head and up through the vent, had broken. I'd also taken a few walks up to the high bridge on Milbourne, and looked down at the concrete far below. I'd heard stories about people surviving those kind of falls though, and I couldn't risk that.

So the guy knew his business, I _was_ suicidal, I just hadn't thought of myself that way. I took my credits to the dive on Thornbush and got myself a vodka lime and an indica vape. When I was feeling partially human again I re-read the pick page and laughed, thinking about Thomas Ignacio Butts III and his red suit. I decided to go back to the park and see if I could find the guy. I didn't have a lot going on in those days and the prospect of having a conversation with a weirdo working on a grand scheme seemed like a good way to spend the afternoon.

He was sitting on the same bench as last time and he seemed happy to see me. "White phosphorous," he said. "I've forgotten your name but I did some research on your chemical."

"I'm Matthew." I said.

He asked me to have a seat. "It's a nasty, malevolent substance." He said.

"Oh I don't know," I said touching my face, "I think it might have its good points. I read about your group. Is all that legit?"

"Yes," he said. "We're very serious."

"I can just see an army of depressed people shuffling around in bathrobes trying to make the world a better place before they off themselves. They gonna read some bedtime stories to sick kids and then go jump in front of a train?"

He smiled. "Your idea of what we do is amusing. I see death itself as being a positive thing to do for the community, and I try to help other people see it that way. There is a great shame in suicide, and I try to lessen it as much as possible, both for the person doing it, and those left behind. It doesn't have to be self-immolation in the town square to have an impact. Every death is one less person with needs to fulfill, one less person eating food and producing excrement, one less set of fingers desperately grasping for the newest shiny thing. If you don't stir the pot it spoils the stew."

"So in that analogy people are stew and suicide is what? The spoon?"

"If it isn't it should be." He said. "I'm headed to a member's house this afternoon. Perhaps you'd like to join me."

"Is the guy going to kill himself?"

"It's a lady, and yes, she intends to end her life today."

"Sure, I'll come," I said. "Should we get her some flowers or a bottle of wine or something?"

He smiled. "That wont be necessary."

I went with him to the train stop and we got on the east-end train. We got off and walked to a shady street with nice, suburban-style houses, although we were still in the city. I'd never been in that neighborhood before.

I followed Tommy up the walk and onto the porch of a two story house with a stained glass panel on the front door. Tommy didn't knock, he just opened the door and entered, and I followed him into the hallway. "Karen?" He called out. "You home?" None of the lights were on in the house, and despite the front door being unlocked, I didn't think anyone would answer.

There was a groan from somewhere up the stairs.

I followed Tommy up. The room was dark, the shades were drawn down over the windows, but I could see a naked woman lying on the bed. "Where the hell have you been Tommy?"

"Karen I was here just yesterday." He said.

She looked to be in her late forties, plump but not fat, with curly brown hair that hadn't been washed in a long time. There were dark circles under her eyes. "I almost did it this morning without you." She said.

"That would've been a waste." Tommy said. He began setting up a spatial time scanner on her dresser.

"Who's the retard?" She asked.

"This is Matthew." Tommy said.

"He's staring at my tits."

"Sorry," I said, "I like big tits."

"Oh yeah? Wanna fuck?"

"Karen," Tommy said, "that's a distraction from the task at hand."

"Is your cock all mangled like your face?" She asked.

"Nah, it's pristine." I said. "Here take a look." I began undoing my belt.

"I'd prefer not to see it." Tommy said. "Karen and I have some business to attend to, why don't you wait downstairs Matthew?"

"Beer in the fridge," she said. I shrugged and left the room. downstairs I found the beer and the living room and I flipped on the telewall. Karen had a brand new voice-activated system and a library of sappy pre-crash movies. I was getting mildly interested in one of them and I got up for a fresh beer when I noticed a small-screen on her counter in the kitchen. It was lit up with a message and I tapped it. It was from someone labeled Lambie. 'Mommy where are you?'

I scrolled through message after message from Lambie, most asking where she was, some saying things like 'I miss you,' or 'I love you.' I wished I hadn't picked up the small-screen. I went back to the movie and the couch and tried not to think about the little lamb searching for her mommy.

I was starting a new movie when Tommy came down the stairs. "It's all over." He said.

"You mean she's dead?"

"Yep, dead."

"So she's lying up there dead, bare ass naked?"

"Yes," he said, "does that bother you?"

I thought about it for a second. "No, not really," I said. "But couldn't we get in trouble for not stopping it?"

"No one will ever know we were here." Tommy said.

"We haven't gone to any trouble to hide it." I downed the last of my third beer. "I mean, her neighbors could've seen us."

Tommy laughed. "Should we wipe the place for fingerprints? It's okay she took the pills while the STS was recording. Everyone knew she was suicidal." He fanned himself with his blue bowler and sat down on a leather wingback chair next to the couch.

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"I helped her determine the best method, I pointed her in the right direction as far as procuring the right pills for the job, and most importantly, I helped her craft her final statement."

"What was that?"

"She feels very strongly that people shouldn't be expected to behave in any particular way. She thinks people should be free to embrace their authentic responses to life events, even if those responses are unusual or distasteful to some. I tried to boil it down to a message of compassion and empathy, but she insisted that her message was that people not feel shame for doing whatever comes naturally."

"And where were you while she was making this final statement?"

"I went into the other room until the STS drive was full. She'd been dead fifteen minutes by then."

"She didn't put on any clothes for the occasion?"

He laughed again. "No she did not," he said. "A remarkable woman. We should get going, feel free to take whatever beer is in the fridge, she wont miss it."

I went into the kitchen, ignoring another message from Lambie, and put the eight remaining beers in a grocery bag. On our way out Tommy left the front door of Karen's house wide open. I drank another beer as we walked to the train station. I knew without asking that Tommy didn't drink. Once we were on the train headed toward town, Tommy called the cops and said he was worried about his friend Karen, and could they send someone to check on her.

I shook my head and snuck sips off my beer so the conductor couldn't see. "So that's what you do, go around helping people write suicide notes?"

"No," he said. "That's just an occasional thing. I'm organizing something really huge, but my people are all suicidal, and some of them don't want to wait. I don't think the ones we lose in the mean time should die meaningless deaths, that's all. If they're going to do it anyway, I help out."

"They aren't willing to wait for what?"

"We call it the first wave." He said.

"Your pick page said you had five hundred people who all wanted to die?"

"Is that what it says? I wrote that two years ago when we were just starting out. We've had exponential growth. We're two thousand strong now -two thousand and one if you want to join us."

I shrugged, "okay, sure." I said.

"This is my stop," he said. "You will be contacted." He walked down the aisle of the train, drawing some looks from the passengers. It wasn't often you saw someone dressed like Tommy, but as I watched him walk across the platform I thought that he would've stuck out more in regular clothes. The getup was a sort of disguise. No one gets ignored like the man who is screaming for attention.

I was contacted a few days later by a guy I didn't like named Braden. I guess they chose him because he knew me already from a veteran mental health group I'd been a part of for a few days. He told me to go to an apartment on the south side and gave me the address on a little slip of paper. Becoming a member of the Suicide for the Future Society turned out to be somewhere between joining the freemasons and joining a paramilitary group. There were oaths sworn and tactics discussed. Apparently the society was organized in cells all over the northeast. They told me there were cells from Charleston, South Carolina to Buffalo, New York.

The leader of our cell was Barbara Hecht, a forty-something ex-military with tattoos on her neck. The whole group was impressed because I'd been recruited by Thomas Ignacio Butts III himself. Most of them, including Barbara, had never met the man. I could tell she viewed my presence as a threat to her leadership, or would have if it hadn't been so close to 'zero hour.'

Our collective suicide was to be a protest against the economic system that enslaved the vast majority of the population. They told me that I would have to get a job, the lower paying the better. One of the members of our cell had had a high paying clerical job with the party, but had quit to work as a fry cook in wage-slavery conditions.

I took the secrecy oaths and joined the group, but I thought the whole thing was a bit silly. I was cynical about the world changing for anything but the worse. I found a job picking up litter outside O'Donnell park which paid only slightly more than not picking up litter outside O'Donnell park. With that I was officially a member of the Society.

I was about a month into my job when I happened to see Tommy again. He was leaving the park, talking to a couple of teenage boys. I stood next to my wheeled solid waste receptacle and watched him. As soon as he noticed me he came over, with the two boys following. "Ah, white phosphorous," he said, "a terrible injustice."

"I've seen worse." I said.

"I see you're working a low-paying, menial job." He said, drawing snickers from the teens.

"The trash goes in this hole here," I said, pointing.

He shook his head. "It wont be much longer, I can promise you that."

I gave him the Well-Reg salute and he smiled. The boys laughed at me again, and the odd trio went off together.

The next Society meeting was the big one we'd all been waiting for. There were seventeen people in our cell and seventeen plastic Argentinian 9mm firearms in the box that had been delivered to Barbara Hecht the night before. We were to go into work the next day and kill ourselves at 9:15. We were supposed to do it in front of as many people as possible. Barbara handed me my gun and I slipped in into my coat pocket.

It was April, but it was still cold and rainy. It was my last night on earth and I had no credits and a gun. This was one of those situations where being a logical person was more of a hindrance than a help. I wasn't going to spend my last night sober, but I had no credits to buy liquor with. Of course I used the gun to get some. They can't lock up a dead man after all. I didn't even think of it as a crime really, the world owed me one good night before I left it, I was just taking what was rightfully mine.

A couple of blocks away there was a bodega, and I walked in and stuck the gun in the cashier's face. "Indica Vodka, the big bottle." I said. "And gimme a pack of ephedrine vapes too. Don't gimme that look, I'll fuckin' kill you. Put my shit in a bag. I'm gonna take a six-pack too. You can suck my cock." I mean-mugged the guy and left. I got lucky at the train station, a train was pulling in right as I got there.

I ran into Sick Ricky downtown and we partied under the overpass. He had no idea why I was so generous all of a sudden. The night turned into a kind of a blur. We were trying to do some sordid shit with a prostitute, but all we had to offer was vodka and she left. I think we got into a verbal altercation with some Well-Armed cadets and it all goes blank after that.

My headache eventually woke me up. I was on some steps in an alley, behind a dumpster where I couldn't be seen. I checked my pockets and was relieved that I still had the gun. I pulled out my small-screen and checked the time. 8:49 AM. I didn't have much time. I ran to the train station and missed the 8:55 that would've gotten me to work at five after. The 9:00 would get me there at ten after, which would only give me five minutes to get my uniform on and get in place.

As I waited for the train I found an ephedrine vape left in the pack, and I sucked the juice out of it in three big hits. As my heart started racing I noticed two security guards eyeing me. I thought I was just being paranoid, but as I tossed the vape into a trashcan they pounced on me. Before I had a chance to fight they had the wire restraints around my wrists and had pulled the gun from my coat pocket. They got me to my feet and put a black sack over my head.

They sat me on a bench until the municipal police arrived, I could tell it was them by the sound of the siren. They put me in the back of the transport and took me on the five minute drive to what I assumed was a criminal processing center of some kind. They led me into a building and sat me on a chair. The sack came off and I looked around at a large room filled with desks and people working on curve-screens and lots of coming and going. My eyes found a big clock on the wall. 9:13.

"Alright handsome, where'd you get the gun?" A lady cop asked me.

"Found it." I said.

"Why would you rob a store when there's facial and gait surveillance everywhere? You didn't even disable your small-screen." She said. "Do you want to go to jail?" It was 9:14 and I watched the second hand go past the four. The cop turned her head, followed my gaze to the clock. "What? You have somewhere to be?"

There was a woman with a mop at the edge of the room, and someone was yelling at her. The lady cop stood to see what was going on as the shot sounded. There was a big commotion in the room and nobody was paying any attention to me when I smashed my head against the edge of the desk. I busted my head open pretty good, and hit it three more times before somebody noticed. It took two cops to stop me. By then the calls were coming in and people were running. There was blood in my eyes and I was being held down when someone shot me up with sleepy-time drugs.

1,347 suicides all at once. Tommy made the collective statement on the newspicks and broadcast stations. He looked like he was in a comfortable living room somewhere, still in his candy-apple red suit, yellow bowtie and blue bowler hat. Still as frail and washed-out looking as ever. He looked directly into the camera. "Consider our mass suicide a slave rebellion." He said. "We die because the world has given us nothing to live for. Those of us who can't find a way to serve the interests of capital are treated as sub-human, and this can't go on. Our deaths should serve as a wake-up call to the world. It's time for a change. We can't go on ruthlessly exploiting people and pretending everything is fine. Everything is not fine."

Tommy then put the barrel of one of the plastic 9mms in his mouth and blew a clutch of blood and brains out the back of his head.

I got seven years for armed robbery. I would've gotten more but the judge sited extraordinary circumstances. For a month or so people were wringing their hands about it, and some of the families started groups to try to help the poor, but then the war started heating up again. The traitors took over Baja and that sort of ended the Society's moment in the sun. In jail they make everyone work, and my job was in the slaughterhouse, scraping out chicken guts.

-back to table of contents-

# The Abuelitas

Non-Violent Territorial Expansion

Phase 6: The 'Statehood for Baja' movement.

Pacifica should not dictate anything to Baja's new autonomous authority. We should remain hands-off for a substantial period as the conflict with the Mexican government and US forces settles. During this time locals who fought alongside Pacifica Guard soldiers, protecting their homeland, should slowly come to advocating statehood for Baja. The business community will see the potential benefits and lend their support, as will some key leaders of the anti-imperialist movement.

A political party with statehood as a main platform should also offer things the locals desperately want/need. Better sewage/infrastructure, new schools, and more effective water filtration. This party should be reaching the height of its popularity by the next election. In that election it is crucial that the party that favors statehood comes to power.

And that's where we hit a snag.

Because polling showed that we were going to lose. Apparently many locals took a lot of pride in being Mexicans, and they weren't in a hurry to become the newest state in the newest country in the world. Unfortunately we couldn't just rig the election like we did in '46 because the French, the always helpful French, had agreed to monitor, and they were taking the job very seriously.

This is why I was on the phone to Rebecca Delany. "What you need is real polling," she said, "the numbers you sent me suck. They tell me nothing except that you're going to lose. If you want me to come down there and salvage the campaign you're going to have to bring in Reliant or CalPol. It's going to be pricey."

"Money's no problem." I said.

"I'll remember that when we talk about my fee," she said. "Who's bankrolling the shindig?"

"People who want to win at any cost, let's just leave it at that. This is a project we've been working on for seven years, it all goes to shit if we lose."

"May I ask the obvious question?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

"What does Pacifica need with Baja anyway? It's mostly just a big desert, right?"

"Yeah, mostly." I said. "It's seen as strategic I guess, in security circles. We can control a new border along the Colorado river basin more easily, and the navy wants the gulf of California. Also it nearly triples our coastline which is good. And that desert? That's a solar farm that could power Los Angeles. Anyway, just look at a map, it's a much more visually pleasing shape if Baja is part of Pacifica."

"Okay," she said. "If it'll make Pacifica a more visually pleasing shape, I'll do it."

And so the campaign nerds marched south, led by Rebecca, who had single handedly turned around the Dixon campaign. CalPol set up shop in Tijuana and got to work figuring out how people were likely to vote and why. I was in Cabo, trying to locate some new polling screens that had gone missing when Rebecca called. "It's the abuelitas," she said. "Women age 62-80. The fastest growing voting demographic in Baja. The male vote is split three ways, the Mexicans, the independent staters, and our voters. It's not moving. This election will be decided by the abuelitas."

"So our man has to start courting the aubuelitas?"

"Yeah and it's not going to be easy," she said, "he doesn't poll well in that demo. Our thinking is that he needs a high-profile endorsement from someone who does very well in that demographic. We're thinking of someone who owns the abuelitas."

"Don't keep me in suspense."

"Have you ever heard of Michelle Marcos?"

"Talk show host?"

"That's the one." She said. "An endorsement from her would lock it up. She's talked a lot about the election, but she hasn't made an official endorsement yet. I've got Jayme flying to Cabo to meet with her as we speak."

"I happen to be in Cabo." I said. "I'll meet Jayme at the airport."

"Great, Jayme should be getting there in an hour or so. The Marcos meeting is set for this afternoon."

I gave up on my missing polling screens and got to the airport. Jayme was a small brunette with lively brown eyes. She was maybe 27 years old and still fresh-looking. She carried only one small overnight bag on wheels. We'd met once before and she was glad to see me. "I thought I'd have to rent a car." She said.

On the ride we talked a little about the work she'd done on the campaign. She said she was one of the few people who had worked on the Dixon campaign who spoke Spanish, so she'd been promoted to a leadership role for this job. Eventually we found the private road that led to Michelle Marcos's llama ranch. There were a pack of brown and white llamas blocking our way about a mile up the road. I honked and a couple of llamas blinked at me and wandered off. Eventually the rest had meandered away and Jayme and I made it up to the house.

Marcos's assistant, a young thin man in a neckerchief came out to meet us and take us inside. We came down into a sunken sitting room and the assistant brought out some tea and biscotti. He told us Michelle would be down soon and poured the tea for us. Apparently she was on a business call upstairs. I sat back on the leather sofa and looked out at the view that eight million daytime viewers could buy you.

She finally made her grand entrance, sweeping down the stairs in a flowing, cream-colored dressing gown. She looked casual, her hair was pulled back and she wore no makeup. She was a bit overweight, but beautiful in a down-to-earth kind of way. Her skin looked sensitive, as if she'd just had some sort of chemical peel. Her assistant introduced us and asked her if she wanted her special tea. She said yes and I thought about requesting one myself, thinking it might have some rum in it or something, but I thought better of it. Michelle Marcos didn't seem like the kind of woman you joked around with.

"I respect what Pacifica has done for my country." She said while her assistant fetched her elixir. "But I am a proud Mexican. I'm not interested in becoming a gringo. I think Baja would be better off as an independent region of Mexico, with our own government and laws, but a shared currency and culture. In short, my views line up more with the Baja Freedom Party. I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"If that's how you feel how come you haven't endorsed them on your show?" Jayme asked, though she knew the answer.

"That's not something I do lightly," Michelle said, "make political endorsements. I consider all sides carefully."

"How do your sponsors feel?" I asked.

"Most of them are on your side, but I certainly wouldn't lose any money endorsing the Freedom Party." Her assistant brought in her special tea and she sipped it gingerly and set it down.

"Is it just patriotism keeping you from seeing our side, or is there something else?" Jayme asked.

"No, there's also a family matter." Michelle said. "My uncle Hector is stuck in jail in Pacifica. He's in a prison in southern California somewhere. My family would be very upset with me if I endorsed Baja becoming part of a country that has Hector locked in a cell."

And there it was. I was grateful to the woman that we didn't have to hint around and do the whole kabuki dance most people go through when asking for a payout. "What's he in for?"

"I believe he was picked up as an illegal immigrant before the war started." She said. "Or it might've been a petty theft of some kind."

"How long has he been locked up?"

"More than seven years." She said.

"Then whatever he did, everyone's forgotten about it by now." I said. "He's just another number on a hard drive somewhere at this point. Having him released wouldn't cause any trouble and could be easily arranged."

Jayme seemed shocked by what I was saying, but Michelle Marcos didn't bat an eyelash. "If you bring Hector home I will endorse statehood as a concept and have your candidate on for a puff interview. I know my audience and I can get you the votes you need to win." She took a sip of her special tea without breaking eye contact with me.

"We have a deal." I said.

"I'm so glad," she said, smiling at Jayme.

The campaign had a little four-seater airplane that they flew down to pick us up. We were flying all the way to Reagan International in Burbank, and once we were in the air Jayme let me know what she thought of the deal I'd struck. "People look up to her and see her as a champion of working women, and her endorsement is just for sale, blatantly. It's disgusting."

"What did you think you were going down there to do, have a political debate with the woman?"

"I don't know," Jayme said, "I mean I assumed she'd want something, but I was thinking about political concessions. A commitment to fund a girl's school, new laws protecting abused wives, I don't know..."

"You watch her talk show?" I asked.

"I've seen it." She said.

"Because it sounds to me like you're getting the character she plays on TV mixed up with the actress who plays her. Just because they have the same name..."

"Are you going to chide me for my youthful idealism?" She asked. "Because you can save it. I'm surprised she took the risk of asking for something so personal. If a transaction like that came out it would look bad."

"She must be confident that it won't come out," I said, "either that or she just loves her uncle enough to risk it."

While we were in the air my LA fixer was pulling strings and calling in favors to get Hector Manuel Diaz III released into our custody. It just came down to making it look like an extradition to Mexico to face racketeering charges. Since Pacifica had officially recognized the independent state of Baja, there had been a series of law enforcement pacts allowing prisoners to be exchanged. This had come in handy in the past, one side of the extradition agreement being easily bought off. If the Mexicans didn't want someone buying their way out of prison they would have Pacifica come up with charges and ship them north. If we wanted someone to get out of prison before their sentence was over we would extradite them southward where the wheels of justice turned on grease alone.

A prison transport showed up outside the terminal just after our plane was finished refueling. The guard looked at Jayme and me and shook his head. "Where's security?" He asked. "Are you two doing the transfer yourself?"

"That's right." I said.

He shook is head again and opened the back of the transport. Hector was a big guy who looked like he was in his sixties. He had a beard that partially covered a tattoo on his neck that said 'Madre'. There were wire cuffs around his wrists and ankles, both connected to a metal belt, and he wore a bright pink jumpsuit. His hair was shaved close, leaving black stubble behind a receding hair line. He stood up and hopped out of the transport, and the guard led him in little baby steps toward me and Jayme.

The guard shoved his small-screen at me. "Gimme your print." He said. I pressed my thumb on the screen and it flashed green. The guard looked at it and hit a sequence of numbers and then looked at me. "I'm transferring his files and restraint release codes to you." He said.

I looked at my small-screen. "Got 'em." I said.

"Good, he's all yours." He shook his head again and got back into the transport. I looked at Hector and smiled, although he wasn't ready to return or receive any pleasantries. We walked silently through the terminal, surprising all the civilians we passed, and we went out the door to the hot tarmac. We climbed the steps to the plane, Jayme going first and me coming up slowly behind Hector who was having a hard time with the restraints around his ankles. He baby-stepped down the aisle and Jayme told him to have a seat. We sat opposite him, with a table between us.

He looked at us with a cold understanding of his dominance that came from years in the pen. He had a slight smile on his lips, as if he thought he might be dreaming. Jayme looked nervous and I'm not sure how I looked, but I didn't quite know what to make of the guy.

Our pilot came back from the cockpit and looked startled at the sight of Hector, sitting there, huge, in bright pink, with manacles on. "Yeah," he said. "We're good to take off." He pulled the door to the stairs closed and gave someone the thumbs-up out the little window. He glanced at Hector again and went back to the cockpit and shut the door.

"Well," I said, "I'm not sure what to say Hector. Today's your lucky day. You're a free man."

He looked at me hard, searching for a sign that I was joking. Finally he laughed. "C'mon," he said, "you gotta be fuckin' with me."

"But I'm not." I said. "It's all arranged. This airplane is headed to Mexico. You get off a free man."

He made a little noise of disbelief, and then took in Jayme's fear. "If I'm free whyn'chu take the restraints off?" He asked.

"Your release is not necessarily legal, and if we took off the restraints in the LA area, the hacks at Chino would be notified. We have to wait till we're in the air awhile so we don't piss anyone off."

The plane had taxied to the runway and the engines began to make a racket, silencing our conversation. We took off into the late afternoon sky and turbulence kept us quiet until the plane banked left and smoothed out. "Will there be a beverage service?" Hector asked.

"It's just us and the pilot on the plane." I said. "No one's coming down the aisle with a cart, but I could see if there's something to drink."

"As long as it wasn't made in a toilet I'll be happy." He said. I got up and went to the rear of the cabin where the refrigerator was. I heard Hector asking Jayme who we were and why we'd gotten him out.

"It's a bit complicated," she said, "but you have an influential family member."

"Emanuel." He said. "I thought that bastard forgot about me."

"We got beer, wine or whiskey." I said.

"Whiskey." Hector said.

"I'll take a coke if they have it." Jayme said. I got the whiskey and coke and a beer for myself, and put a stack of three plastic cups on a pile of ice in a small ice-bucket. I set it all down on the table between Jayme and Hector. He was talking to Jayme the whole time.

"I saved Emanuel's life once, when we were little kids." Hector said. "I thought he must've forgotten, but I guess not."

"You saved his life?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "it was a long time ago. There was this kid who lived near us who was a fuckin' psycho. We knew it, but we used to hang out with him anyway because he was older than us. He used to torment all the kids in the neighborhood, he did things that would curl your toenails just to hear about, but he was always cool to Emanuel and me." He took a cup and scooped some ice into it and then poured himself an unreasonable amount of whiskey. He took a long sip. "There was an abandoned village near where we lived. An industrial quinoa farm had polluted the groundwater and it was giving everyone the cancer, so they all left. We used to play there, breaking windows, looking for treasure. The psycho kid acted like he was the mayor of this ghost town and he was always hanging around there, I think he might've lived there. Hey what about the restraints man? the wire's cutting into my wrists."

I glanced at Jayme. "Uh, yeah, okay." I said. I got my small-screen out and found the release code and hit it.

Hector ripped all the wires off and threw them over his shoulder. "Fuck those things!" He shouted. "I feel good!" He gave me a toothy smile and sat back, holding his drink. "Sometimes Emanuel and me used to go there to play this game where one would tie the other up and pretend he was holding him hostage or trying to make him talk. Well when this psycho kid saw the game he said one day he'd get one of us tied up for real and never let us go. We didn't worry about it because threats with this guy were an everyday thing." He took another gulp of whiskey. "Shit, that's good. I didn't think too much of it until Emanuel came up missing. His parents were panicking, he'd been gone five days. They asked me if I knew where he was, they asked all his friends, I thought of the psycho, but I didn't say nothing. I was scared. I waited until late that night and took a flashlight and snuck into the village. I went to the basement of this old apartment building where we used to play and he was tied up to some pipes down there. I cut the ropes and told him how everyone was looking for him. The psycho kid had done terrible things to Emanuel, it had him all fucked up and confused." He took a long drink. "He thought I was the one who'd tied him up. He got me in bad trouble. I was afraid to tell my dad about the psycho -I was really afraid of him. Emanuel and me weren't very close after that, but I knew that he hadn't forgotten what I did for him. The guy's a lieutenant in the cartel now, but I guess you two know that. I didn't think the cartel had that kind of pull in Pacifica, to get me released."

I didn't feel like explaining who had really sprung him and I guess Jayme didn't either. "I'm going to see how long till we touch down in Cabo." I said.

"Cabo?" Hector asked. "We going to Cabo?"

"Yup," I went to the cockpit and pulled the door shut behind me.

"Some cargo we got back there," the pilot said.

"You think he looks scary, you should hear some stories about his childhood."

"What was he in jail for?"

"I don't know," I said, "I got his rap sheet right here, let's see." I pulled out my small-screen and clicked on the file labeled Hector Manuel Diaz III. I expected theft and drugs, but what I got was rape. Charge after charge. I scrolled down past child abuse and sexual-assault-of-a-minor charges and finally got to murder. Actually _murders_ , plural. I counted five until I came to the last charge: Sexual Abuse of a Corpse. "How long till we touch down in Cabo?" I asked.

"Half-hour." He said. "What'd the guy do?"

I stood. "He fucks dead people." I said.

I left the cockpit and saw an empty seat where Hector should've been. Jayme was gone too, and there was a commotion coming from the restroom at the back of the aisle. I ran and yanked the door open. Hector had his right hand around Jayme's neck and he was struggling with his left to get her jeans down. He turned and glared at me and I felt his fist crash into my head. Jayme shouted and I saw her kick Hector in the gut but then her voice was cut off again. I got up and saw the medical emergency kit mounted on the wall next to the toilet.

I had the case open and defibrillator out in a second. I pushed the pads on the handheld device up to the back of Hector's neck and hit the bright red button. There was a loud cracking sound and Hector stiffened and then slumped, twitching. Jayme was twitching too, and her eyes were closed.

I started looking under the seats for the wire restraints, when the cockpit door slammed open. The pilot came out holding a scatter gun. "Wait, don't kill him." I said. "We have to get him to Cabo safe. Just help me get the restraints back on him."

Hector groaned loudly. I found the cables and wires under the seat and dragged them out. The pilot and I went to where Hector was lying on his side. I dropped the defibrillator and rolled him over. He looked at me with glassy, bloodshot eyes. He groaned again and pushed himself up, the pilot was directing red laser dots all over his chest and head. He saw that I had the restraints halfway around his wrists and he flung himself away from me. I noticed the defibrillator wasn't there anymore, and I was trying to regroup, but it was too late, he lunged toward the pilot.

The loud crack of electricity sent the pilot into convulsions, and I heard a pop and a hissing. He'd fired the scatter gun on his way to the floor. Hector and I both fell over him trying to get to the gun, but I got there first. I pointed it a Hector and hit the trigger. A woman's voice issued from the weapon. "You are not currently authorized to operate this weapon..." She said. I brought the butt down on Hector's temple as she continued. "If you would like to add a second authorized user for this firearm, you must register their prints at the Pacifica firearms registry in Sacramento..." I hit him again and scrambled to my feet, moving towards the cockpit. "If the authorized user does not hold this weapon within the next fifteen seconds it will be reported stolen and police will be dispatched to receive it."

When I got to the cockpit I found it full of smoke and fire. Apparently the pilot's shot had sent a mass of mini-projectiles through the control panel of the airplane. I could hear Hector coming and I looked around for something to defend myself with. I saw a pen and I picked it up. Acting without thought I jammed the pen into Hector's neck just bellow the E in Madre.

He jerked back with the pen stuck in deep. He reached toward me with the defibrillator, but I ducked past him. When I was on the other side of him I reached around and yanked the pen out. He dropped the defibrillator and clutched at the geyser of blood. I scrambled back, away from him, and he turned and chased me, spraying blood across the wall of the plane.

The lights in the little four-seater went out and we started losing altitude quickly. Jayme and the pilot were staring as I stumbled and ran toward them with Hector close behind. "Gun!" The pilot shouted as I approached. I'd forgotten it was in my hand.

I noticed a light in the handle turned green as he took it from me. He fired at Hector, slamming him to the floor backwards. Jayme and I were behind him staring when turbulence snapped us out of it.

The pilot vaulted Hector's corpse and ran into the black smoke. A half minute later the plane noticeably began slowing down and he came running back, coughing. "We're going down in the ocean," he said, "get in those seats and get your seatbelts on."

We didn't have to be told twice. Jayme sat next to me and the pilot sat across from us. We were all coughing from the smoke. "This thing have a life raft?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "gimme your small-screen." I passed it to him and he tapped in a few digits. "This is pilot Mike Herndon, we are in a Cesna headed due south about ten miles off shore. We are going down, repeat, we are going down. Last population center we passed was Ensenada. Please alert the coast guard and get a lock on this..." The impact was sudden. It felt like we hit a brick wall. My small-screen flew out of the pilot's hand and the whiskey bottle hit me in the face. I learned later that it broke my nose.

Almost immediately the pilot was up. He opened a cabinet and pulled a bright yellow duffle bag out of it. "Help me get the goddamned door open!" He shouted. I stepped on Hector on my way into the thick smoke at the front of the plane where the pilot was going. I pulled, turned and pushed the lever and the door opened. I noticed that blood was pouring from my nose and was dousing my shirt. Cold water came rushing in at my feet.

The pilot got a mass of yellow plastic out of the duffle and handed me a bright orange rope. "Don't let go of that." He said, and threw the plastic out the door. He checked to make sure I had the rope tight, and then he pulled a cord and the raft inflated in about five seconds. Jayme was there in the smoke, coughing, and the pilot shoved her onto the raft, and then climbed in himself. The water was up to my calves by then. "Come on!" He shouted at me.

I threw myself onto the raft, and what happened after that is a little hard to remember. I remember the tail end of the airplane lifting slowly and sinking like a fluke. "Oh no," I said. "My small-screen was in there. How's the coast guard going to find us?"

"I have mine." Jayme said.

The coast guard found us in two hours.

When we got to shore I used Jayme's small-screen to call Michelle Marcos. I told her assistant that it was an emergency and to wake her up. Finally she came on the line. "We were in a plane crash," I said, "we went down in the ocean and the coast guard just brought us in. I'm sorry Miss Marcos, your uncle Hector didn't make it."

"He's dead?"

"Yes," I said, "I'm so sorry."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive, yes." I said. "He's dead."

"I see. Do you have the body?"

"No, it went down with the plane." There was silence on her end. "If there's anything I can do..."

"No." She said. "It was an accident and now he's dead."

"I'm so sorry." I said again, but she'd already disconnected.

I was trying to get my head together at a resort hotel in Ensenada a couple of days later when I got a call on my brand new small-screen from Rebecca Delany. "Our man's been invited to go on Michelle Marcos's show next week." She said.

"That's weird."

"Did you watch her show yesterday?"

"No."

"But you heard about it right? I mean you don't live under a rock."

"I've been taking a break from the news and the election and stuff," I said, "why?"

"Apparently she was brutally raped as a young girl, and she said the person who did it was a close family member. She'd been living with this secret for years and she said now she's finally ready to deal with it because the man who did it is dead."

"Hector."

"I guess so." She said. "She didn't say his name. She's trying to start a national dialogue about rape and incest."

"I wonder why she wanted him out of jail."

"Don't you see? She was going to kill him herself, but when he died in the plane crash, she didn't have to. We did her a way bigger favor than she asked us for!"

"She'll endorse us?"

"She'll deliver the election to us on a silver platter."

-back to table of contents-

# Cat Fancy

"On this corner, Tuesday, September 5, 2023, the police shot down the activist Marty Kline." My father said into his old-fashioned CB handset. "What do you think about that?"

"IT'S A GODDAMNED OUTRAGE!" The eight people on the minibus all screamed together.

"It sure is." He said. "They had the effrontery to say it was suicide, despite the fact that there were a hundred witnesses and he had two gunshot wounds to the head. Must've been quite a guy that Marty Kline, he shoots himself in the head, and then does it again just to be sure. No one questioned the ruling of suicide. You know what I think?"

"IT'S A GODDAMNED OUTRAGE!" The passengers shouted. I always hated this part of the tour. My dad didn't want me home by myself after school, so I had to ride with him on his last tour of the day. I sat up front next to him, and I could read while it was just him talking, but when he got to the call-and-response I had a hard time tuning it out.

The tour ended where it began, in the French quarter. My father always ended the tour with his embarrassing pitch. "If you've enjoyed this tour of outrages against humanity, be sure to tell your friends, and remember, the book version of the tour is available for purchase at my pick address, 577humansuffering64." The tourists left the minibus laughing and talking amongst themselves. My father came around to say goodbye to each of them personally. I noticed a lingerer, waiting until everyone was gone. I hated the lingerers, they were usually history buffs who wanted to point out flaws in my father's patter, or suggest outrages my father's tour had missed.

The lingerer was an older, thin black man, and he was of the second variety. They were standing right next to my window, so I heard their conversation whether I wanted to or not. "You missed the biggest outrage in New Orleans since slavery, and the worst part is it's still going on." The man said. "You drove right by it."

"I did?" My father asked in his fake voice, "What is it?" He was just trying to humor a paying customer.

"The Purina plant." The man said. "I used to work there so I know what goes into their cat food."

"Lemme guess," my father said, "horsemeat, right? That's gross, truly, but I'd hardly call it an outrage against humanity."

"No, not horses." The man paused a moment. "Shut-ins."

My father smiled as if the man had made a strange joke. "What do you mean shut-ins?" He asked.

"Did you know that Louisiana is the shut-in capital of the country? More shut-ins, per capita in this state than any other, by a lot." He said. "And no one thinks twice about it when a shut-in goes missing. Everyone just assumes the poor bastard just killed himself."

"Hmm," my father said, "you used to work there?"

"That's right." He said.

"Did you round up the shut-ins? Kill them? Or were you in charge of grinding them into cat food?"

"Please don't joke about it." The man said. "I understand that it's difficult to work up much sympathy for people who've closed themselves off from the rest of the world, but they are human beings."

"Yes, you're right, I'm sorry." My father said. "I'll look into it, Mr?"

"Ryan."

"I'll look into it Mr. Ryan. If what you say is true, I'll definitely add it to the tour." He shook the man's hand.

Mr. Ryan could tell that my father was just shining him on, but he thanked him anyway and wandered off. My dad climbed back into the minibus and directed the drive program to take us home. He asked if I'd overheard the conversation. "That was a high quality, southern fried fruitcake right there. He knew I didn't believe him, but he didn't get mad, he just felt sorry for me. See your average New Jersey nutjob will get angry and curse you if you don't believe that aliens are communicating through his third nipple or whatever, but down here they just smile at you as if you're the delusional one."

"Even the crazies are better down here?" I asked.

"You're being sarcastic, but yes." He said. Ever since the move, Newark vs. New Orleans had been a running theme of conversation. One of the reasons we'd moved was because the variety and severity of moral outrages in New Orleans would greatly improve his tour over the one he'd been doing back home. It was his way of trying to convince me that despite being uprooted and dumped into a sub-standard school, things were somehow better in a worse city.

Leaving aside the question of which state produced the highest quality nutjobs, what the man had said got me thinking. Was Louisiana really the shut-in capital of the world? If so, why? And what makes a person a shut-in? It wasn't just an idle train of thought, I'd been searching for a suitable subject for a social studies paper, and I thought I'd found it.

-Describe an ongoing cultural phenomenon and explain what impact, positive or negative, it is having on the people of these United States of America.-

As the minibus made its way to our house I tried a few titles in my notebook:

Shut-Ins: How the fearful few are failing our forefathers

The True Cost of Hollywood's Paranoia Factory; The story of shut-ins

Black Out the Windows- Solitary confinement vs. embattled freedom

Why do Shut-Ins Shut in, and what are they Shutting Out?

I decided I liked the idea, and I began doing research as soon as I got home. I started at a pick site called Statistical Analysis of Behavioral Disorders. Agoraphobia was the proper name for the fear of being outdoors, and I searched for it on the site. The results came up divided by age, gender, ethnic background, socioeconomic level, and by geographic location. To my surprise, Mr. Ryan was correct, Louisiana had the most agoraphobics of any state, and beyond that, we had the highest concentration of agoraphobia in the entire world. The obvious next step was to find out why, but not only could I not find a satisfactory answer to the question, I couldn't even find anyone asking it.

In my initial inquiries into the subject I kept coming across references to something called the Indela Fund. It was a Louisiana based organization that did outreach to people with severe psychological disorders, including agoraphobia. I went to their pick site, thinking they might have some good information for my report, and I laughed when I saw the Purina logo at the bottom of the page. Apparently the Indela Fund was financed almost entirely by the Purina corporation. "Dad!" I shouted. "Come check this out!"

He was busy making dinner with Hal, this month's boyfriend, but he came up to see what I was screaming about. "Penne Putanesca in ten minutes." He said. I told him that Mr. Ryan was right about the number of shut-ins in Louisiana, and I told him about the Indela fund and its connection to Purina. "Maybe they _are_ putting shut-ins in the cat food." He said. "If I had a little more to go on I could ad it to the tour."

"The tour? Come on dad, I was just surprised that the guy's delusions were rooted in any sort of reality at all. You can't actually think Purina is putting people in cat food."

"No," he said, "but the tour is about stories. I could always frame it as, 'rumor has it,' or 'some have even suggested.' I think people would like that."

"It's a goddamn outrage." I said.

He punched me in the arm. "Come on, let's eat." He said.

As far as my dad's boyfriends went, Hal was pretty ok. The guy could cook, and he was friendly to me. He seemed to like playing house with my dad, but he had enough sense not to turn me into a prop in the game. When the topic of agoraphobics came up at dinner, Hal mentioned that he had a cousin that was like that. "Do you think it would be possible for me to interview him?" I asked. "It would get me an A for sure."

"Ooh, I don't know." Hal said. "Markie can be a little..."

"I'll be polite and respectful." I said. "I'm not going to ask him if he was molested as a kid or anything."

"It's not that." Hal said. "It's just depressing over there. We take turns checking up on him once a week, and I dread it when it's my turn. It's gross, he doesn't do the dishes, the cats piss everywhere."

"That's okay." I said.

"C'mon Hal, he can handle it." My father said.

"Okay, this week is my brother's turn to see Markie, I'll call him and tell him I'll do it instead. He'll be happy. We usually do it on Sunday afternoon, okay?"

I had a bag of groceries on my lap when Hal and I pulled up in front of his cousin's house. We were in his Korean 2-seater, it was around 1:15, Sunday. Cousin Markie lived in an old gothic-style mansion that had been divided into apartments. There was an annoyed-looking plump woman sitting on the front porch. "You need to tell that cousin of yours to clean up after his animals." She said. "The whole hallway smells and his downstairs neighbors are complaining."

"I'll clean up Mrs. Martin." Hal said.

"Once a week isn't enough. Those cats aren't litter trained you know."

"I'll talk to Markie." Hal said.

We entered the building and went up two flights of stairs to the top floor. The end of the hall, where cousin Markie's door was, smelled of mold and ammonia. Hal knocked and called out, then waited almost a whole minute, then knocked again and passed his small-screen over the lock. We entered a dim room. The only light came from behind a half-closed door to the right of where we stood. It was the flickering light of a big-screen that was playing in what I assumed was a bedroom. "Markie, why do you keep it so dark in here?" Hal called out as he began pulling open the shutters, flooding the cluttered mess with unwelcome sunlight. He took two steps to the small kitchen and snapped on the light. "You can put the groceries on the counter." He said to me.

I went into the kitchen and put the bag down. A striped cat walked up to me and batted my shoelaces a few times and then walked away. "Markie," Hal yelled, "come meet my friend, he wants to talk to you."

"I thought Mason was coming today." Markie said in a surprisingly deep voice. He'd ambled out of his bedroom and he stood leaned up against the doorframe that separated the kitchen from the living room. He was wearing shorts and had a tight beige t-shirt stretched over his big round belly. He was darker than Hal, with black curly hair that was neither long nor short, just unattended to.

"I traded days with him," Hal said. "My friend wanted to meet you, he's doing a report for school about people like you." Hal opened up the fridge.

I began handing Hal the items that needed to be refrigerated, and he began making room for the stuff on the crowded shelves. "Marsella brought a tray of enchiladas last week." Markie said.

"That was nice of her," Hal said. "We brought groceries."

"He wants to talk to me about Regenisis?"

"No, he wants to talk to you about how you don't go out no more." Hal said.

"Oh," Markie made a face and finally looked at me. "I go out sometimes." He said.

"When?" Hal asked.

"Mason took me to the dentist the other day."

"That was over a year ago!" Hal said. "They had to sedate you. He said you scared some little girl in the waiting room, screaming at her and crying."

"Don't remind me." Markie said, smiling at me and shaking his head.

"Why don't you take my friend to your room to talk. He's going to interview you okay? I'll clean up this mess."

"Okay okay okay." Markie said.

"Leave the door open."

"Okay okay okay." Markie said again. I followed him into his hamster cage of a room. The big-screen was playing a telenovela about gangsters, and there were two cats lounging on the bed. I asked if I could turn on the light, and he said yes. He sat on the edge of the unmade bed, and I was about to sit in an easy chair in the corner but he stopped me. "Jinxy's been peeing on there." He said. "Use the chair." He pointed to a folding chair on the other side of the bed. I walked across a field of dirty clothes to retrieve the chair. I set it up and got my small-screen transcribing our conversation and I began.

"How many cats do you have?"

"Four after Hex died." He said. "I'd have more but the building manager hates innocent creatures. She'd drown all my cats if she could."

"Do the cats fulfill your need for social interaction? Do they sort of... Keep you company?"

"Oh no, they're totally indifferent to me most of the time." He said. "You can't interact socially with a cat, all you can do is feed them and pet them a little. I promise you these cats don't care one bit about me, they're just waiting until I die so they can eat me."

I laughed, thinking he was kidding. He didn't laugh with me. "You think they'd eat you?"

"I know they would." He said. "Years ago I tried to start a cat sanctuary and I studied everything I could find about cats. They hardly ever kill their owners, but if their owners die, they'll start eating them immediately. When a cat scratches you they infect you with hormones and pathogens..."

"Toxoplasmosis?" I asked.

"Yes, sometimes." He said. "If an animal, a human for example, has been scratched and bitten by cats during their lifetime, their flesh becomes irresistible to all felines. Cats are hunters, and the meat gives them a special energy and emotional reward if it has been infected with feline hormones and pathogens. It's nature's way of rewarding them for being good hunters. Humans have been trying to turn them into scavengers for a millennium, leaving bowls of food for them to find. It's not right."

I considered asking him about the Indela Fund and Purina, but I decided to save it. "What happens when you go out?" I asked instead.

"I'm not sure, it just seems like everything is evil or something. Like trees and the sidewalks, the houses and especially the cars, they all seem so aggressive, like they want to smother me for fun. What you have to understand is that I was bred for empathy, I'm a genetic dead-end basically. I'm fourth generation Regenisis. Have you heard of the Regenisis Project?"

"No," I said, "What is it?"

"Genetic engineering, the old-fashioned kind. After world war two the U.S. brought over a bunch of Nazi scientists to continue their work. It's well-documented in the field of rockets and the space program, but the U.S. poached scientists from all fields. One thing the Nazi's were particularly interested in was genetics and they brought over a doctor named Heinrich Spoer. He was interested in breeding humans for certain traits, like humans have been doing to dogs for centuries. To accomplish this he started the Regenisis corporation in 1947. It was a secret government program made to look like a private company. It posed as a fertility clinic and operated as one -I think it was the first fertility clinic in the country."

"What were the traits they were breeding humans for?"

"Oh, strength, longevity, different types of intelligence, sexually pleasing characteristics, or in my case, empathy. See when a couple went to Regenisis they were put through exhaustive mental and physical testing. If they were found to be exceptional in one regard or another they would be brought into one of the programs and their genetic material would be comingled with someone else who was exceptional in the same way. Of course all that was hidden from the participants. They thought the company was just helping them conceive. There's some evidence that when a Regenisis office opened up in a particular city, the birth rate there would go way down, suggesting they might've been deploying some kind of mass birth control to ensure that they had a lot of potential parents to choose from."

"I've never heard of this company." I said.

"No, they scrubbed themselves from the public record in the seventies and eighties, just before the rise of the pre-pick computer network. Basically they went underground. They had to find any reference to Regenisis and destroy it. That was the last moment in history that you could do something like that. Then all they had to do was wait for people to forget. It was such a well-known company that the job couldn't have been easy. It was a household name all through the fifties and sixties. But I guess anything is possible if you have unlimited time and money."

"How did you find out about it?" I asked him.

"My father found out that he was a product of Regenisis from his great grandmother's diary. He found some information about the company on the old network before the great corruption took it out. He was trying to make a documentary about it, but he died under what I consider to be mysterious circumstances before it was complete. He interviewed someone who used to work for the company, and this person administered one of the tests and determined that my father was in the empathy line. Before my father died he told me that if I were to procreate, my offspring would also most certainly be part of the empathy line. See if I got married, or was in a sexual relationship with a woman, she would become ill and need some kind of surgery. At that time the Regenisis corporation would implant her with a zygote fertilized with my sperm and the eggs of a woman who was also fourth generation in the empathy line."

"How in the world would they get your sperm?" I asked.

Hal was walking past the door to the room at that moment and he stopped and stuck his head in. "You guys talking about sperm? Is everything okay?" He looked at me.

"It's fine." I said.

He shrugged and continued down the hall. "They have ways of getting sperm and eggs and anything else they need. It's a massive program, but my father shouldn't have worried. The empathy line actually terminates with the fourth generation. The man my father interviewed described the empathy line as an attempt to create an army of Jesuses, whose unconditional love for all humanity would teach and inspire the masses. Instead they got an army of people too sensitive to leave the house. The empathy program is centered in Lake Charles, so there's a ton of us fourth gens around here."

"Louisiana has the highest rate of agoraphobia of any state." I said.

"One of your cats is dead." Hal called out from the kitchen.

"What?" Markie jumped up and ran to the kitchen. The cat was curled up in a corner, under the bottom edge of the cupboard doors. "Oh no!" He said. "Jinxy, what happened?"

"I thought he was sleeping," Hal said, "but when I opened the cupboard he didn't move so I checked him."

Markie sat on the kitchen floor. He started to lift the cat, but it was stiff and came up in one piece so Markie put it back down and started to cry. Hal kneeled next to him and put his hand on his cousin's back. "I'm sorry Markie, he was a good cat."

"Jinxy was a girl!" Markie said.

Hal shot me a weary look. "Come on Markie, come sit in the front room, we'll take care of the cat." Markie reluctantly got up and went into the front room. Hal took a plastic trash bag and wrapped the cat corpse in it, and handed me another and told me to hold it open. He shoved Jinxy in and took the bag from me. He twisted it shut and tied a knot close to the body and then set it down on the floor near the front door. He came back into the kitchen and got the hot water running and we both washed our hands.

I watched him make cousin Markie a sandwich and pour him a glass of soda. He brought it out to the front room. "I'm sorry about your cat Markie, but don't worry, we'll take care of the body."

"Thanks." He said. "I'm glad you were here. I don't know what I would've done otherwise." We watched him take a few bites, and then Hal said it was about time we left. "We were in the middle of an interview," he said, "was there anything else you wanted to know?"

"Um, I think I have enough for my report," I said, "but I was wondering if you've ever heard of the Indela Fund?"

"Oh yeah, they sent someone over to talk to me." He said.

"They did?" Hal asked. "What did they want?"

"They said they wanted to offer me free counseling." Markie said. "But they really just wanted to grind me up into cat food. I told them to go to hell."

-back to table of contents-

# Inoculation Story

"The thing that makes me great as an artist, the thing that sets me apart from every other chump who foists their shit up under some limelight somewhere, is that I have the ability to switch narrative styles convincingly," he puffed his sativa vape and looked at me with shining dark eyes. "My STS journals got on two million screens, more probably by now, because they were funny and acerbic, but my documentary on neo-slavery got millions of downloads because it was deadly serious. Don't forget for a second that I'm the voice that drives both of those projects. Me, as myself, not hiding behind some pretense of objectivity. I come masquerading only as myself, and the people believe the disguise. Eduard Jason Acquitan is an utterly convincing character, and how many of those does the world get?"

"And here I thought it was your humility that made you great." I said.

"That too!" He said, laughing and blowing mind altering vapor particles from his nose. "You seem like a very busy woman, so let's get to it, do you come through with the financing or not?"

"I have all the time in the world and as you know it's not me," I said. "I'm just an advisor. I represent the Conglominatrix Financial Group in this deal, but what we want from you is not a stake in your next project, we want a stake in you. We want you to partner with Lamont Alvano, to start a new media corporation."

"Lamont Alvano the music producer?"

"That's right, he also produces television."

"I just want to talk about financing my film. Your people have read the script right? And the marketing strategy? It's a sure winner."

"Once the company is up and running you can finance that and any number of other films."

"What would I do in this company?" He asked.

"Anything you like. We envisioned you handling features, written word, and marketing, and Lamont helming music, television, and commercials, but that was really just the initial idea. What we really want is your name."

"I'm an artist," he said, straightening the fork on his napkin. "I don't know anything about running a company."

"You don't have to." I said. "Our guy will handle everything you and Lamont don't want to be bothered with."

"Who's your guy?"

"That's an open question at the moment." I said.

"Ahh, see? Now your motivations are clear." He took another hit off his sativa stick and set it down with a finality that said he was done with it. "All the work that I've done has its roots in the written word. I started out writing autobiographical sketches and silly erotic novels, and the first thing you learn writing that stuff is to make your character's motivations clear. You want a position in this new company, but what remains unclear is what _they_ want. It's no secret that I was fleeing the party when I came to Chile. The company you work for is practically a division of the party. What could they possibly get from associating with the likes of me?"

"You are a voice, a unique voice, you said so yourself. You create content that people want to consume. That makes you a valuable engine in the economy of ideas."

"The economy of ideas," he said, enjoying the sound of it. "So they want control of the ideas I'm generating?"

"Certainly not." I said.

"Because I'm against the war."

"They know that." I said. "They don't need you to make pro-war movies, in fact they expect your company to be the dominant voice in the anti-war movement."

"So the financing of this company will be less than open?"

"That's right." I said. "There are many different facets of the Conglominatrix Group. Their involvement will be strictly need-to-know."

"And who needs-to-know?"

"You, me, Lamont Alvano, and some high level people in the communications department," I said, "that's it."

"It would seem that you're already in then, aren't you?" He sipped his water. "If you know about the secret financing, that should put you in the perfect position to jump in at partner level."

"You mean blackmail my way in?" I laughed. "I wouldn't do that the same way I wouldn't shoot myself in the head or jump in front of a moving train."

"So you want me to work with a company that you think would kill you?"

"They wouldn't kill me because I would never try to use what I know against them." I said. "I know where the bodies are buried, and I have no intention of becoming one of them."

"Well I know they're looking to start a media company with Lamont Alvano. What if I said no? Would they kill me?"

"Don't be silly." I said. "Even if you hollered to holy-hell it wouldn't rate above a minor inconvenience. Anyway, you wouldn't holler and if you did people wouldn't care. It's not that big a deal. Even if you knew something that was a big deal they wouldn't have to kill you. You artistic types are easily discredited."

"Suppose I won't do it unless you tell me something they _would_ kill me for. I'm really curious now, it's so rare to meet someone whose paranoia is well-earned. Tell me some deep dark secret of the Conglominatrix Group. Think of it as a show of trust between potential partners."

I shook my head. "You think you want to know, but you don't. Most of the things I know aren't exciting, they're depressing, and anyway why would you want to put your life at risk?"

"Would it be at risk though? You'd be the only one who knew I knew, and like you said, us artistic types are flighty and prone to wild invention. Give me something good. If I'm going to make a deal with the devil, I want to taste some sin." He waved the waiter over. "Oscar, last month I was in here for my birthday and we were drinking that truly stellar mescal, do you remember? Do you have any more of that?"

He smiled and nodded. "Iluminación, yes, we have it. Very expensive. Only for celebration."

"Right, well Oscar, this woman here? She has promised to tell me a very scary and depressing secret. It's not every day that you hear one of those, is it?"

"Scary and depressing?" He looked at me and frowned. "No not every day."

"A secret is a story, always, and here I am, a storyteller, about to hear a secret that would scare the flies off a Peruvian. I think that's worth celebrating."

"Iluminación, coming up." He said. "On one condition."

"Anything Oscar."

"Don't tell me the secret."

Eduard Jason Acquitan held up his right hand to swear the oath. "You will never hear a word." Oscar nodded and went away. "There, now you have to tell me, we're officially celebrating."

"Okay," I said. I took a deep breath. "You got your shots as a kid, right? Everyone in America did. Well between the years 1997 and 2023 there were three companies that provided these shots, and they were all blind subsidiaries of the Conglominatrix Group. These shots protected against all manner of illness and infirmary, and they worked in that regard, but they also contained a package of a lab-engineered bacteria that attached to the recipient at the genetic level. For the first generation that got these shots the effects were negligible, they did nothing, but their offspring, the second generation, they were born with the alteration embedded in their DNA. It specifically targets the part of the sequence that affects procreation, understand?" Oscar came back with two small glasses and a blue, unmarked bottle.

"Iluminación." He said. He made a curt bow and walked away.

Acquitan poured two shots and lifted his glass. "To genetically engineered bacteria." He said. I lifted my glass and we drank it down. It was as tasteless as air, but brought a sudden warmth up into my sinuses and down to my stomach. "So what? They want to produce a generation that copulate incorrectly?"

"No," I said as he poured another shot for me, "they don't care how people copulate. This second generation is the product of all the work that the Group has done. They've invested billions of dollars and at least sixty years of work and research into them. Something along the lines of ninety eight percent of the population of North America has been genetically modified, and it will be a hundred percent by the time they get to the third generation. Right now the gene is doing nothing, but if you know your biology you know that a gene can be triggered by environmental factors. The Group owns water filtration, fast food, and supermarket suppliers, they control the environmental factors. There isn't a person in the western hemisphere whose environment isn't touched by the Conglominatrix Group." I drank my shot and found this one even more pleasant than the first.

Eduard Jason Acquitan drank his shot too. "So what happens when they pull the trigger? Will all the kids be born with gills?" He poured a third shot for both of us.

"You know what really drives the economy?" I asked him.

"Pussy?"

"Yes, in a way you're right. It's the population numbers. Growth in the population means growth in the economy, but only up to a certain point. Beyond that point things get a little crowded and shaky and the economy suffers which means the population needs to drop again. What the Group has done is to create a point of potential restriction in the reproductive abilities of humans. The environmental trigger is something that would never appear accidentally or naturally, it's a bioengineered molecule that they have patented. They own it, so they control the birthrate. They can turn it up or down like a faucet. They could bring the birthrate down to a trickle or they could stop it completely if they wanted to. They plan to reduce the population by half over the next fifty years, and then ride the wave of growth when they reopen the floodgates."

Acquitan shook his head. "I just pictured massive amounts of cum." He said. "Thanks for that mental image." He lifted his glass and drank, and I did the same. "So the growth starts in fifty years, wont all the people who worked on the project all be dead by then?"

I dabbed the corner of my mouth with a square napkin. "The Group is young." I said. "They laid foundations for it to live for a thousand years or more."

"So our media company? It's just a tiny piece of a grand invisible structure spanning centuries?"

"That's right."

"You said that you wanted our company to be the dominant voice in the anti-war movement," he said, "but the Conglominatrix Group is heavily invested in the war isn't it? Why would you want me to espouse politics that go against the Group? Do you want me to spy on the peaceniks or something?"

"Certainly not." I said.

"So why promote anti-war ideas if they are pro-war?"

I was feeling a pleasant sort of detachment from the scene and my words came easily. "They know that there will be anti-war messages being disseminated, they just want to exert a subtle influence over which anti-war message is loudest and which is heard first. Values and attitudes and ideas are all passed around just like a germ or disease. Even colloquial expressions, slang, little jokes or sayings, you can track their spread just like a disease. And almost all of that stuff comes from celebrities like you. If you wore a fur hat to a movie premiere, the sale of fur hats would spike. It's the same thing with political ideas..."

"Still doesn't explain why you want me to make anti-war movies, you guys want the war to keep going right?"

"Let me finish. I'm not saying political ideas are _like_ diseases, I'm saying that for all practical purposes they _are_ diseases. So how do you fight a disease? Some bug being passed around the body politic?" I smiled at him. "Inoculation. As I'm sure you know, inoculation exposes the patient to the disease, but in a weakened, crippled form, and then when the immune system encounters it again, it knows how to fight it off."

He nodded slowly.

"These ideas were all developed toward the end of the twentieth century. The powers that be didn't want to have to deal with another Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior, so they started getting out ahead of mass movements with their own people. So it could be anything, dismantling the war machine, or getting corporations out of politics. A leader emerges, but not one chosen by the movement, it's a leader chosen by the media. There's a whole science behind it, but basically you either find someone who makes a lame version of the argument, or is the wrong person to make the argument.

"Mostly these people didn't even know they were being used, but the ones who did were very skilled at subtly undermining the positions they appeared to be advocating. One tactic was using negative and positive polarities, a basic sort of mental jujitsu. If it was an anti-war movement for example and an interviewer framed a question in a positive way: 'Do you really think that humans can live in peace?' The answer would be on the negative side, something like: 'The alternative is keep on murdering children.' If the question was negative, like: 'What do you say to the families of those killed by the enemy?' The answer would be positive: 'We must learn to live in peace and brotherhood.' They are always either contemptible or foolish. If someone like that isn't handy they just get the wrong person to make the argument. Celebrities that people secretly hate, hippies, anarchists, devout communists, any message can be easily ruined by the having the wrong messenger."

"So which am I?" He asked. "A bad message or a bad messenger?"

"A bad messenger." I said. "You're an artist who is completely out of touch with the struggle of everyday people. You said your documentary was about the new slavery? No it wasn't. It was about you, about your reaction to injustice. You looked down on it from above and invited the viewer up to your high perch. You probably think it was popular because people were outraged by the issue, but we did research. People enjoyed it because for three hours they were with you, savoring the luxury of being outraged from a distance. We couldn't find one example of someone who watched your documentary and actually did something to help the slaves. Pour me another glass of that luminous mescal would you?"

He poured and we drank. "You should be careful, it goes down easy but it'll really kick you in the head." He smiled at me. It was the smile that made him a star, it was almost as warm as the liquor. "So I don't have to do anything I don't want to, and I get unlimited financing for this and any future projects? They aren't going to try to exert any control over the content of my films?"

"None." I said. "I suppose if you wanted to make a pro-war movie they would be annoyed, but even that wouldn't be a deal-breaker."

"You're really confident that I couldn't make a film that would kick-start a mass movement?"

"If that's your goal you will always fail." I said. "I am very confident of that."

"That sounds like a challenge." He said. "I think I can make an anti-war film that your bosses will object to distributing. You people haven't seen agitprop the way I can do it."

"Impossible." I said. "If it's coming from you it will serve their purpose. The stronger you make your arguments, the better from their perspective."

"I can create a cinematic experience that your bosses will have no choice but to censor." He said.

"I would love to see that film." I said. "What if we draw up the contracts so that if you're unhappy in any way you can walk with everything. You would own any film that the Group refused to put out. You could have an unlimited budget for your agitprop film and own it outright if you wanted. I'll take your word that you wouldn't do that unless the Group in some way tried to censor you."

He looked at me for a moment. "I don't see how I could pass that up." He said. "I make a deal with the devil and get to keep my soul. At least in theory."

"Are you with us?" I asked him.

"I am." He said. "This all but assures you a partnership in the new company doesn't it?"

I nodded.

"Then we both have reason to celebrate." He said. He poured us each another shot.

-back to table of contents-

# The Marionettes

"You fascist piece of shit," Michael said to me. "You assume you're so above us, like you have all the power, but lemme tell you, if we're down in the mud? You're even further down, you're down in the shit. You think no one's ever gonna find out what you're doing? Bullshit. It'll all come out and when it does all you motherfuckers who thought everything you were doing was so secret, you're going to be exposed for what you are, perverted little paranoid weirdos. You think the war shields you? Well the war can't last forever, but what you did to my friend's brain is gonna last him the rest of his life. You represent everything that's wrong and evil in the human race. You're cruel and uncaring and you're a coward." He sat back and smiled. "Now you do me." He said.

I leaned in close to his face. "How the hell do you sleep at night? Someday you'll have to pay for your crimes, in this world or the next. Who gave you the right to do what you do to a person? The Party? The government? Who gave them the right? I'm a person just like you. Michael's a person, just like you. We have dreams and feelings, just like you, and yet you sit in a room somewhere, giving yourself the authority to steal all our privacy. To take our perceptions and filter through them in search of anything that would further your cause. Have you even thought about what it is that you do all day? Have you examined it? Because it's fucked. Don't you have a mother?" I shook my head. "Listen, I'm not like Michael, he's given up on you. Me? I think there's still hope. Repent! Make what you've done right before it's too late!"

"That was a good one." Michael said. "Thanks."

"You guys been in solitary too long?" She was a big lady, sitting down on the other side of the table from us in the mess tent.

"You liberated?" I asked her.

"Nah, I'm training to join a guerrilla unit, I'm a communications specialist." She said. "I write code for axes. I'm Rebecca."

"I'm Sam and this is Michael." I said. "We were liberated two days ago from a prison camp down near the border. This is our last meal with you guys. They don't take former prisoners into the Asym units anymore, so we're on our own."

"Subcomandante Miller got you guys out?"

I nodded.

"I met some guys from your camp." She said. "From what I heard you had it pretty rough down there."

"Plenty had it worse." Michael said.

"What's with you two cursing each other out like that?"

Michael looked at me.

"We do it just in case." I said. "We were in a Xianco prison in west Texas together and they did all kinds of surgical experiments on the population there. They bugged people's brains somehow."

"Nah, they can't do that." She said. "And even if they could, how would you know about it?"

"Well back at Xianco word got around that one surgery was a ticket out. Anyone that wound up in recovery with a one inch scar on their neck and bandaged up eyes would get transferred, some said released. When Xianco prison shut down me and Michael were transferred to a Sony prison in New Mexico and some of those guys were in there. If those guys were involved in any shit that was going on it would get busted. Thing was, they weren't snitches. One day one of these guys stood up in the dining hall and told everyone that his brain was being monitored and that anything anyone said to him went straight to the hacks."

"That sounds like a paranoid delusion, my older brother was schizophrenic and he said stuff like that." Rebecca said.

"Yeah, but right after this guy said all that he dropped dead." I said. "Guy was bleeding from his eyeballs. Next day they announced that he died of some new type of super G. That's when everyone knew he'd been telling the truth."

"People used to die all the time," Michael said, "they never told us what had killed them before."

"After that anyone who'd been in Xianco was suspect." I said. "We were there, so it's possible we have the implants too. At least once a day we take turns, I curse his monitor and he curses mine."

"I don't get it." She said. "Wouldn't you guys know if you'd had that surgery?"

"Right before Xianco was shut down there was supposedly a typhus outbreak. We were all put in isolation where you lose big chunks of time. You never knew if it was day or night and the hacks would come in and give you shots and you'd go under. It could've been two hours or two months you were out, there was no way to tell."

"So there could be buttons listening to this conversation right now?"

"It's possible." I said.

She held up two middle fingers in front of both of our faces. "You told all this to the Comandante?" She asked.

"Yeah but they couldn't detect any biotech implants in us and there was no signal coming off us, so they told us it was just jailhouse rumors." I said.

"So what are you two gonna do now?" She asked. "Did you get a good payout when they liquidated the prison?"

"Nah, it was a work camp." Michael said. "Buncha shovels and a coupla backhoes. We got twenty PAC each."

"That sucks." She said. "When they liquidated the Microsoft prison each prisoner wound up with 150."

"Yeah I heard about that." Michael said.

"It's our own fault for being locked up in the wrong place." I said.

"So what are you two gonna do with your big twenty PAC?"

"We're gonna buy a cheap small-screen and try to get to Cali." I said.

"You're going to pay forty bucks for a new small-screen? That's dumb, listen don't do it. I refurbish small-screens, I can get you each one that is good as new for twenty each. These are screens that usually go for 70-75 PAC new, and maybe something goes wrong, water gets in it or the case cracks. I buy up these broken screens and take the good parts out of 'em and put them back together. I'll give you guys a good deal."

We went with our new friend to her bunk and she pulled out a bag of small-screens she had repaired. she pulled two out and showed us our pick axe IDs and assured us that the screens were totally untraceable. We left smiling at our luck. "Are we free?" I asked Michael.

"Yes we are." He said. "Now how are we going to get ourselves into Pacifica?"

"We walk to Mexico, do some menial labor for a few days until we have enough money to take the train west to Baja and we steal a boat." I said. "Doesn't have to be a nice boat, shit a catamaran will do."

He laughed. "A catamaran, really?"

"Yeah, or jet skis. We could come into Cali hot as hell, doing little jumps off the waves and wearing reflective sunglasses."

"But with respect to the imagery of your idea, I don't believe jet skis are made to travel long distances."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"Motorcycles." He said. "Specifically dirt bikes. We just run straight west and take our chances. What are you looking at?"

"I got a pick axe." I said.

"But nobody has your number except me."

"It must be meant for the small-screen's previous owner." I said.

"But Rebecca said we had brand new IDs." He shook his head. "What's it say?"

I read. "Breaking regulation I-27 by sending this -breaking rules is fun."

"Well that's enigmatic." Michael said.

"Enigmatic as hell." I said. We started walking to the supply tent where the truck was scheduled to take us into town in an hour. "Now how are we supposed to get our hands on some motorcycles? Do we look for some crummy jobs?"

"Let's go back in history, way back to when a human was little more than an upright ape..."

"Is this a historical tangent?" I raised my eyebrows.

He nodded. "A brief historical tangent. Not even a tangent, a flash of insight, so simple a child could understand it."

"Go on." I said.

"If the economy we now live in could be traced all the way back to that murky pre-historical period, it might find a beginning. A start. Back then nobody owned anything, it was all just there. But at some point a caveman came along who had something, a necklace, a religious tchotchke, a wife. Now I ask you, did he pay for it?"

"He might've traded his labor for it." I said.

"Trading your labor for goods is an economy. I'm further back than that, at the very beginning."

"If it's a necklace or something he might've made it himself." I said.

"Right, but that's not an economy. The economy starts when he looks at something someone else made and says 'I want that.'"

"So he stole it."

"He must've." Michael said. "There was nothing to buy it with. The entire economy was built up off that first theft, it's a branching out, an elaboration of it."

"All property is theft." I said. "A French guy said that."

"God bless the French. Now I ask you my friend, is it right that we should deny ourselves the means by which the entire system began?"

"Well when you put it like that..."

"It's like going to an orgy and only fucking your sister." He said. "Are we free?"

"We are."

"Are we in a tight spot?"

"We are."

"Were years of our lives stolen from us?"

"They were."

"If we had some motorcycles and those fuckers needed them, would they hesitate?"

"They wouldn't."

"So you're in?"

"Yeah," I said. "But not until we get into town, I'd hate to steal from the people who liberated us."

The bikes shut down and stopped after we'd gone less than a mile. We were trying to figure out how to override the security system when a truck pulled up. Two teenage boys got out of the back and approached us. "You guys must be fresh outta prison." One of them said.

"What gave us away?" I asked.

"You can't steal a vehicle anymore dipshit. The pick system is in everything. What'd you guys do, rip the nav-strips? Boy you guys are dumb."

"These are your bikes?"

"What do you think?"

I was running at top speed with Michael behind me. I jumped a low brick wall and went down an embankment to a drainage ditch and scurried up into a park. We crossed a bike path and ducked behind a big rock formation. "Are they following?" I asked.

"I don't think so." Michael said.

"You think they called the buttons?"

"If they had it would've been buttons who came, not those hicks."

"Yeah you're right." I said. I looked around the rock, but no one was there. I pulled out my small-screen, "I got another pick axe while we were running."

"What the hell?"

"Listen," I said. "Two HSR International passes in your names. Travel to El Paso. Cross border on foot. Juarez train to Ensenada. Await instructions." I pulled up two high speed rail passes with our names and bioscans. I sent Michael his. "This would certainly seem to validate the theory that one or both of us is a bug head." I said.

"Right," Michael said, "and if we got rail passes that means that whoever is monitoring us wants us to make it to California."

"Makes sense." I said. "Once we're there they probably assume we'll join the guard and then they'll have a couple of valuable spies."

Michael leaned in and looked directly at me. "It won't work you fascist puke. We'll take those rail passes, but when we get to Cali? We'll be sitting on a beach, drinking Yoniums and watching the asses go by."

"Why do you assume it's my monitor?"

"Cause the passes were sent to your small-screen." Michael said.

"You think your monitor doesn't know my pick axe ID?"

He frowned. "Mine would've probably sent it to _my_ small-screen." He said.

"Well it doesn't make a difference, the question is do we use the rail passes or what?"

"Of course." He said.

The passes were general seating and neither of us had ever ridden on anything but restricted passes before. We sat in cushioned, high backed seats and drank Coca-colas all the way to El Paso. Michael and I were both distracted, thinking about being monitored, and about the fact that we were doing what our monitor wanted us to do. "But think about that first message," I said. "It was about breaking regulations. Obviously whoever sent that wasn't supposed to. They're not supposed to cross that line, but they did it twice. Whoever it was wouldn't have done that if we were both bugged, because then whoever was monitoring the other would know about it."

"That's what they want you to think." Michael said. "No way is there just one person monitoring each implanted brain. Even if only one of us was bugged, it would be more than one person watching, and they would say 'hey, how the fuck did they get rail passes?' No, I don't believe in the rogue monitor hypothesis, sorry."

"Is that what it's called, the rogue monitor hypothesis?"

"A thoroughly discredited hypothesis." He said. "I wish it weren't."

"It seems I have another pick axe." I said. I read it and handed the small-screen to Michael. It read: RMH correct -only one agent per implant these days, personnel issues. I want to help you both, what we did to you wasn't fair.

Michael looked me in the eyes again. "You're damned right it wasn't fair. When the war's over you'll all be put to death for war crimes. If you're a rogue monitor I suppose that means that only one of us is bugged right?" He raised his eyebrows and looked at me and then back at the person he was sure was watching him through my eyes. "Care to tell us which one?"

He was holding my small-screen and after almost a minute had passed he looked at it and handed it back to me. A pick axe had come in that just said: You.

"At least they've got a sense of humor." I said.

"What do you mean?" Michael asked.

"We're no closer to knowing which one of us is the spy." I said.

"She sent it to your small-screen." He said. "It was obviously meant for you."

"You were the one who asked the question," I pointed out. "If her answer had been 'him' you would've thought it was me too, and since when did we decide that it was a woman?"

"Have you ever met a guy in intel?"

"I don't like it," I said. "If someone's going to be looking through my eyes I prefer it be another man. Good lord the woman has seen me masturbate."

He laughed, but neither one of us was in a good mood. We got off the train in El Paso and walked through the waves of thick heat toward the border crossing. It was a foot bridge loaded with spatial time scanners and people. We were jammed ass to gut with a thousand reeking human beings, all trying to get over the border at the same time. I looked at Michael. "Are we free?" I asked.

"We are." He answered.

We got into Juarez and began inquiring about the local rail station. A nice crossing guard pointed us in the right direction. The Mexican rail was an old-fashioned high-speed, so we knew we wouldn't get to Ensenada until the next day. General seating is a little more rugged in Mexico, and we were jammed into a tight row of seats. There wasn't any room for a private conversation, so we mostly kept quiet. After a couple of hours of bumpy, sweaty travel, Michael got up to go to the bathroom. He'd only been gone a moment when I got another pick axe. It read: Michael is implanted -you are not. Act accordingly.

In prison everyone is an adversary, even people who are supposed to be in your crew. Michael got to Xianco with an influx of prisoners, mostly employment violators from the northeast. We were political in those days, our crew wanted to blow up the jail, then the party, then the country. Other prisoners started calling us the Californians.

I didn't like Michael back then. He seemed too proud of his own intelligence, and he would frame mundane observations as deep insights. He was useful to us because he had a job in the infirmary, which meant he could get messages to R-block, which would otherwise be impossible. Any coordinated action would have to include R-block. He needed some protection from the Lord's Army, who were pushing him to steal dope from the infirmary's supply. We helped, and after a year or two Michael and I were friends. After Xianco closed we were lucky to wind up in the same work camp. We'd helped each other through tough, hopeless times, so after we were liberated we stuck together. Neither one of us had anyone else.

We acted like we were both implanted, but we didn't really believe it. We were relieved when the guerrillas who liberated us couldn't find the signal or an implant signature, but there was still the nagging thought that maybe the implants were too sophisticated to be detected in a field camp. I guess if you pretend to believe something long enough, it becomes as good as true.

Michael came down the aisle, looking a little sick. "I'm going to the observation deck, I need some fresh air." He said. "You want to come with me?"

"Sure," I said. I got up and pushed my way to the aisle and followed Michael to the end of the car. We went through two sets of doors and through another car, and another. We came to the last set of doors and it opened to a view of the dark Mexican desert. There was a small ledge with a railing, and the track speeding by underneath and stretching back to an invisible point on the horizon. "It's nice out here," I said, "that car is hot."

Michael put his hands on the railing and leaned out. "Would you want to live?" He asked.

"If I was an implant?"

"Yeah." He said.

"I don't know," I said. I looked off the back of the train at the rail and desert speeding by. We might've been going 100, 110 miles per hour. "But I do know this wouldn't be a good place to commit suicide. A person might live another day or two with every bone in their body broken, laid out in some ditch with their spilled blood baking all around them. Bad way to go."

"But there's two of us." He said. "As far as dying goes being choked to death isn't bad. After death the body could be thrown over so at least one of us could continue the fight."

"Is that what you want?" I asked.

He swallowed hard. "I don't see any other way." He said. We looked at the stars for a while.

"I guess this is goodbye then." I said.

"Yeah," he said, "I'll never forget you."

It seemed like a strange thing to say to someone who was about to choke you to death, but the whole situation was strange so I let it pass. I was trying to figure out when I should start when he put his hands around my throat and started to squeeze. I tried to jerk away but he had a strong grip. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. I kneed him hard in the balls and slapped his face, stinging my hand. He let go. I coughed an spat and looked at him. He was confused.

I stuck my hand out. "Lemme see it." I said. "Your small-screen, give it over."

He wiped his tears away and handed his small-screen to me. There was a pick axe identical to the one I'd gotten, except it said that I was the implant. I took out mine and handed it to him. "They're just fucking with us." He said.

"Yeah, quite successfully." I said.

"They wanted one of us to kill the other."

"Then whoever was left would be certain they weren't bugged, and they'd go to Cali and join up."

"Evil motherfuckers." Michael said. "Do me."

I leaned in. "I know you're listening you piece of shit. Your whole lame vision of America is a fantasy, a bullshit Disneyland built on blood and lies. You think we're stupid? Your tricks prove how powerless you really are. I'm not afraid of you and neither is Michael. When we get to Cali we're marching straight into the first intel office we can find and telling them everything, and this time we've got proof." A sharp pain hit my temple and throbbed through my skull. "Aw, I've got a headache." I said.

"I got one too." Michael said. "It's been a stressful couple of days."

"I didn't finish." I said.

"It's okay, here let me have a turn." He looked right at me. "You dumb fascist..." He stopped and put his hand up to his head. There was blood coming from his eyes.

-back to table of contents-

# About the Author

Benjamin Broke is the pseudonym of an author who wishes to remain anonymous. He currently lives in Pittsburgh and works a regular job. Please download and read more of his books, it would make him happy. He can be reached by email at:

bennybroke@gmail.com

Twitter: @Benny_Broke

You can call or text Benny at: (412) 512-7732

-back to table of contents-

# Also by Benjamin Broke

Please go to Benjamin Broke's author page at your preferred ebook retailer and check out some of his other work.

SPACECRAFT

This is not a book -it's a scam.

It's the story of Nick, a seventeen year old weed-smoking, acid-eating, suburban nihilist dropout who accidentally stumbles across an idea that is truly revolutionary. In this text you will find arguments against art, money, sobriety, religion, education, and the rule of law.

This is Benjamin Broke's first novel and it is deeply flawed and wrong on many levels. You should begin downloading it immediately.

INSURGENTS

How far would you go to help a friend in trouble?

Ben Perkins might go so far as to risk his job, but with a friend like David Telano, in the kind of trouble he's in, he'll wind up risking his life. With the encouragement of his girlfriend Jessie, a 24 hour a day weed smoker, Ben is soon mixed up in a war that's going on just beneath the surface of his quiet Ohio town. On one side is a lesbian newspaper editor, radicalized by the murder of her girlfriend, and on the other is a wealthy businessman running a drug-smuggling operation from a private airfield. In between them is Ben, who starts out trying to help a friend but ends up just trying to stay out of jail and continue breathing.

-back to table of contents-
