Posted: 2/13/2026 2:02:08 PM EDT
|
Another Dystopian Story. I'm not a fan of how the formatting goes here. I find it easier to read on my Patreon page, but I'll post on and monitor both. Let's see where this goes. Generational Divides Chapter 1 Jaxtyn Williams surveyed his world and saw only hopelessness. The rain was falling, as it always seemed to be falling at this time of year in this part of Washington State. The rain was a lead-colored drizzle, a despairing mist that hung in the air and provided a backdrop to everything. There was no blue in the sky, only gray. The same gray as the wet streets and sidewalks that were littered with illegally dumped trash: old mattresses, broken bits of cheap furniture, used up tires, cardboard boxes that were soggy from the rain, black garbage bags of household trash. To Jaxtyn's eye, all those were monochrome gray as well. The only bright colors in this world came from the graffiti that was sprayed on everything: walls, fences, street signs, even vehicles that had been parked too long. That, and the orange cones and flashing amber lights marking out the street repairs that always seemed to get started but never seemed to get completed. With his hands shoved deep into pockets of his hand-me-down parka, Jaxtyn walked along a busy boulevard named Evergreen Way. He walked with his shoulders shrugged up and his head down. He was hunching into himself, trying to ward off the cold. The cold, like the wetness, like the gray, was everywhere. It was just another element of the hopelessness that filled Jaxtyn's world. Jaxtyn was young. He was just entering his mid-twenties. He was smart and fit, and capable. He had energy and ambition. There was no reason for a young man like Jaxtyn to feel hopeless, and yet he did. He did, and the young men around him felt the same degree of hopelessness. It was like a plague. Just like Jaxtyn, they felt they'd been born into a world that had no place for them. It assigned no value to them. It was a world that did not want them and was unafraid to say so. Hands in his pockets and his head hunched low, Jaxtyn headed for a local bar. He wanted a drink and while he'd never been to this bar before, he knew he could use his Veterans Administration benefits there. With the sun setting and casting long shadows into the gray, Jaxtyn trudged along. Cars passing on the roadway kicked up mists of spray. Many of the retail spaces he passed were closed. In some windows there were signs advertising the spaces were for lease. Other windows were simply empty, their dirty glass offered views into abandoned and dust covered businesses. These were living archeological sites, a window into what American once was, but was not now. Jaxtyn came to an intersection and stopped for the light. The metal box that housed the pedestrian button was spraypainted over in graffiti. An obstacle comprised of stolen and abandoned shopping carts blocked his path. One cart was filled with dirty diapers. Jaxtyn maneuvered past the obstacle, smashed the crosswalk button with his fist, and waited. On the corners opposite his position loomed two billboards. One advertised, "Women's Reproductive Health," and featured a young woman in a tank top, smiling broadly and standing triumphantly, arms outstretched to the heavens. The second billboard also featured a woman. This woman was older, and the advertisement was a political add. It read, "Maintain Your Right to End of Life Dignity. Re-Elect Samina Qureshi." Jaxtyn reflected on the two women. Neither looked like him. They looked happy. The light changed and the crosswalk lit up. Jaxtyn crossed the street. The bar looked like all the other businesses on the street. It looked sad. The building was covered in graffiti and should have been demolished a decade ago. The cheap exterior lights that still worked provided varying degrees of illumination. Jaxtyn didn't even know the name of the bar. The only thing that drew him to it was the sign near the front door. It read: All Forms of Public Assistance Accepted EBT/WIC/SECTION-11 SOMALIA SUNRISE FUND NORTHWEST FAMILIES COLLECTIVE EVERGREEN SMILES AFRICA HERE AND NOW AMERICA WORKS TOGETHER SUDANESE SMILES NEW AMERICAN RESOURCES And last of all: VA-4-LIFE Jaxtyn went inside the bar. The bar was a dive. The interior was dark and stale smoke hung in the air. At the insistence of certain communities, smoking laws had been reversed, and tobacco use had made a comeback in the United States. The walls were painted in a color that might have originally been blue or purple. They were decorated with memorabilia from sports teams and the free signs and posters that were delivered by beverage distributors and online gambling institutions. Like the people on the billboards outside, the sports figures and the models posing with the beer cans didn't look like Jaxtyn. They looked happy. A square wet bar filled the center of space. Along the walls were booths and tables. A few faces at the bar looked up when Jaxtyn entered. These were old faces. The faces of old men who'd given up. The faces of men who spent too much time sitting on bar stools, and would still be sitting on bar stools for years to come. They were the faces of what Jaxtyn would likely be. Jaxtyn walked deeper inside and headed towards the bar. A letter board hung above the bar and listed menu and their prices. Each item had two prices, one in green, and one in red. The green price was for the old money. The traditional US dollars. The second set of numbers, the ones in red, were for the new money, the American Prosperity Credits. The existence of two official currencies was a fact of life in Jaxtyn Williams world. The first was the standard U.S. dollar. Often called traditional dollars, greenbacks or "Greenies" for short, these were the currency notes everybody in the world was familiar with. It was the tried-and-true American dollar. Everybody knew them, everybody took them. The new currency was a bit more problematic. The American Prosperity Credit (APC) was the new currency circulated by the United States. Unlike its green predecessor, the APC came in varying shades of pink and hence were referred to as "Pinkies" or "Pink Slips." Other nicknames included "Ameros" and "Gavin Bucks." The official narrative of the United States government was that the APCs offered a variety of "user friendly features" that the legacy currency did not, and that over time they would eventually replace the old U.S. Dollars. The unofficial policy, and this was a secret to nobody who took more than a second to think about it, was to move the national debt off U.S. dollars and onto the APCs. Private debts, such as mortgages and car loans, were still transacted in legacy dollars. Understandably, banks were reluctant to take the APCs. College loans, while backed by the U.S. government, were also held in dollars. Federal taxes could be paid in dollars or APCs, but the final figure was always calculated in dollars. On the other hand, government debts such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and some government pensions were all paid out in APCs. In the simplest terms, if the U.S. government was owed money, it was paid in dollars. If the U.S. government owed money, it paid in APCs. Originally the American Propserity Credit had been named the North American Prosperity Credit and was supposed to be the North American equivalent to the Euro. Unfortunately for the United States, Canada and Mexico refused to participate in the scheme. The Caribbean nations, each with their unique banking systems, showed similar disinterest. Since no other North American countries were willing to participate, the North American Prosperity Credit was shortened to just the American Prosperity Credit. Other nations around the world showed varying degrees of official support for the new currency. But whatever their official policies, nobody wanted Ameros. Every honest economist and treasury official saw through the scheme. Nobody wanted to be holding these American Pink Slips when they were inevitably inflated into worthlessness. In the end, the APCs were only circulated domestically where American citizens were forced to use them, however reluctantly. The APCs did have one useful feature, depending on one's point of view. Each physical note was imbedded with a digital tracking mechanism. This allowed every physical APC note to be tracked at each point of exchange. Furthermore, the APCs' digital tracking system could be paired with the new digital ID system, another feature of life in Jaxtyn William's America. The U.S. government now had a digital microscope it could use to see exactly how its citizens were spending their money. As dystopian as all this was, all Jaxtyn Williams wanted was a couple of beers before heading home. He saddled up to the bar and pulled out his wallet. "What'll it be, Hon?" the bartender asked. She was a large woman, making the transition from middle-age to old. She wasn't doing it gracefully. She was exactly the kind of woman who tends a working-class bar in the late afternoon on a weekday. A couple of the barflies looked up when she spoke, then quickly turned back to their glasses of beer or their phones. Jaxtyn opened his wallet, took out his VA 4 Life benefits card and set it on the counter. The woman's face soured. Any hope she had for a nice cash tip in real dollars vanished. "Two drink maximum," she said, "That's all Uncle Sugar pays. After that you gotta pay yourself." "I know," Jaxtyn said. "And the VA only covers what's on tap. None of the good stuff." A few of the barflies looked up from the beers and screens again to watch the unfolding scene. The confrontation between the bartender and this newcomer more interesting that whatever their phones were throwing at them. "I know," Jaxtyn said. "Yeah, you know," the woman repeated. She spoke louder this time, obviously upset. More barflies looked up. The woman went on. "You gotta fill out the forms first. I can't serve you until the forms are filled out. I bet you know that too." "Yeah, I know that too," Jaxtyn said wearily. The bartended fished out a government issued tablet from under the bar. Jaxtyn waited as patiently as he could as the woman huffed about her work. The full weight of all the barflies' eyes fell upon him. Jaxtyn had been through this before. Among other things, his veteran benefits got him a two beer per day credit, paid for by the U.S. government. While that sounded fine, in order to get the credit, the U.S. government required the proprietors of the bars to fill out several pages of forms before they served any alcohol. For the veteran, it meant two free drinks. For the bars, it meant you had to do several minutes' worth of paperwork just to sell two beers that were bought on the government's credit and paid for in APCs. "They don't actually want you to use the benefit," a voice called from some dark corner of the bar. It vocalized what Jaxtyn was thinking. The bartender stopped what she was doing. The other patrons in the bar stiffened. Jaxtyn looked to see who was talking but couldn't quite see them in the darkness and gloom of the bar. The voice spoke again. "They don't really want you using the benefits," the voice said again. "The other programs don't require this kind of paperwork. EBT. WIC. Somali Sunrise. You don't fill out any forms when you use those benefits. When some immigrant wants to buy groceries with their Somalia Sunrise or New American Resources bennies, they don't have to fill out any forms. The rare times a form need to be filled out, there is a Non-Profit or NGO worker there to fill it out for them. But for the veterans, it’s a whole different program." A man emerged from out of the gloom. The man was tall with broad shoulders and a smile that seemed far too easygoing. He looked like an older, more muscular version of Jaxtyn. Slowly and with an easy gait, the man walked towards Jaxtyn. Jaxtyn noticed that many of the other patrons avoided eye contact with the man. Others watched him with signs of respect. The bartender followed this man's every move. In her eyes, Jaxtyn saw no small amount of fear. "Different sets of rules," the man said to Jaxtyn. "There are different sets of rules for different Americans. You know that too, I'm sure." Without waiting for a reply from Jaxtyn, the man turned to the bartender. "Helen, why don't you bring us a round to the booth. Put it on my tab. Bring some food over too. It's dinner time. You can finish the forms later and bring him his two drinks after." "Yes sir, Waylon," the bartender said. The man, Waylon swept out an arm indicating one of the booths along the wall. Jaxtyn looked the stranger up and down and then headed for the booth. Because they were sitting on opposites sides of the booth, it would have been easy for an outside observer to get a good look at the two men and make a comparison. Both men looked similar. The biggest difference between the two was age. Jaxtyn was in his early twenties, and still had the lean look of a young man. Waylon was in his fifties, although he'd stayed fit and age had been kind to him. Jaxtyn had the sloppy, disheveled look of a young man who hadn't any money and hadn't figured things out. Under his parka he wore athletic clothes: track pants and the ubiquitous hooded sweatshirt. On his feet were beat up athletic shoes. His look could be described as "urban disheveled." Waylon was well-dressed, but in a functional way. He wore sturdy work clothes: leather boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt underneath a canvas duck jacket that wasn't jsut a fashion statement. His clothes were clean and without any rips or rents. Waylon looked like some kind of foreman, or the owner of his own construction company. Waylon looked like what Jaxtyn might be some day. Jaxtyn looked what Waylon might have been if he'd been born a few decades later. Waylon picked up his beer, sipped, set it down and spoke. "So, you did five years in the Army? How was that, exactly? Enlistments are for four years." "I got extended one year for Venezuela Three-Point-Oh," Jaxtyn explained. "Our Combat Engineer Battalion was getting disbanded, but they needed infantry soldiers for the final phase. They retrained a bunch of us to be mortarmen, then sent us down to cover the withdrawal." "Seems like you'd have been just as useful as Combat Engineer. Maybe more useful." Jaxtyn shrugged. "I'm not going to waste my time analyzing the decisions of Big Army." "How was the withdrawal?" "About what you saw online," Jaxtyn answered. "Wasn't bad at first, but once it was clear the United States was leaving for good it went crazy. The Bolivars took to the streets and killed anybody who might have been working with the US. After that, they killed anybody who wasn't with the Bolivars. The old cartels and gangs rose up and captured all the oil infrastructure we promised Exxon and Chevron we wouldn't abandon. We mostly watched it from the other side of the fence until the very end when the bad guys figured out they could make some good ransom money by capturing US military personnel. Things got really sideways at the end." "Sounds like," Waylon said. Jaxtyn sipped his beer. "We brought a shit load of 120mm mortar rounds into the VZ. We didn't bring a single one back." Waylon didn't reply right away. He let the solemn sentiment of the young man's words hang in the air. Respect called for that. When time and gravity had cleared the air of the false dark romanticism of the men who'd died and the boy who killed them, Waylon asked. "So, you did five years. A combat tour in Venezuela. The El Paso campaign before that. Why didn't you stay in?" Jaxtyn, who'd been looking Waylon in the eye until then, dropped his gaze to the glass of beer. "I was caught in the big drawdown. I could have fought to stay in. Some did, but my heart wasn't in it. President Gavin had just put 'General Laura' in charge of the Army. She knew who she wanted in uniform and who she didn't. I didn't feel like fighting to stay in an organization that didn't want me. "After I got out of the Army, I got bored and tried to get into the National Guard. They weren't interested either." "Yeah," Waylon said. "The National Guard Standardization Act sure as hell wasn't about standardizing the guard." Passed several years earlier, The National Guard Standardization Act gave governors near absolute control over who they allowed into their state's uniformed forces. Progressive governors were quick to use this newfound authority to establish quotas based on race, gender, ethnicity and religion. It also allowed the states to screen for dangerous ideological beliefs and purge the roles of anybody the governor deemed politically unreliable. It was one of many sweeping military reforms under the Gavin administration. Waylon added, "The whole US armed forces went to hell." Helen, the bartender came by with a round tray full of food. She set plates down in front of Waylon and Jaxtyn. Cheeseburgers and fries. Jaxtyn's plate had two burgers and what had to be at least two servings of fries bordering on three. Neither man said a word again or touched their food until Helen was out of earshot. After she left, Jaxtyn looked at the mountain of food and then spoke. "This feels some kind of interview." Waylon shrugged. He grabbed a handful of fries and gobbled them down in two bites. He chewed maybe twice, swallowed and said, "We have two militaries in the United States. They look the same. They wear the same uniforms, but they're very different. "First, we have the do-stuff military. They're the ones that actually do stuff. They fly, they maintain the airplanes, they sail ships, build stuff, go overseas… fight. All that Special Operations stuff. That's the military that does stuff. The other military doesn't do stuff. It’s just a jobs program and a gateway to a lifetime of VA benefits. "I'm not one to begrudge anybody for serving, and I'm not going to judge anybody who volunteered for what they did or didn't do, but I've got no time for that second military. The first military, the one that does stuff, that's another story. People that served in that military, they've got my respect. Those people will always have value. Maybe…" Waylon picked up his cheeseburger with one hand then used it like a pointer to indicate the world around them. "Maybe the current power structures don't value people like that. Especially people with your specific demographic traits." Now Waylon made another gesture, an up and down motion with his burger indicating Jaxtyn in his entirety. "But regardless of how society at large views you, certain subsets of society will always appreciate what you have done. And what you can do." Waylon bit into his burger. It was an enormous bite. Half the burger disappeared. Waylon chewed quickly and swallowed even quicker. Jaxtyn was young, but he wasn't stupid. He knew a recruiting pitch when he heard it. He'd sat through one before, one recruiting pitch plus the endless streams of sales pitches he got from every angle in his American experience. He also knew that a recruiting pitch like this was done in a darkened booth in a dive bar for a reason. Most of all, he knew that the best way to stay out of a jackpot was to not walk into it. Watching this older man eat, Jaxtyn decided the best thing to do was change the subject. "Were you a Marine?" The older man smiled. "What makes you say that?" "I've seen Marines eat. You eat like a Marine," Jaxtyn said. The older man turned a little red in the cheeks. "I suppose you are right. But there is not such thing as 'you were a Marine.' And there is no such thing as 'I used to be a Marine.' Either you are a Marine or you aren't. And once you are a Marine that's it. You are a Marine." "Marines always say things like that." "We do," Waylon admitted. He brought his burger back up and finished it with a series of quick bites. "We say it, but it’s the same with soldiers. Soldiers may not admit it, but it’s the same. The thing you become is the thing you are, from the time you become it until the end of forever. That's especially true for soldiers like you, soldiers who count." Jaxtyn didn't know how to respond so instead he grabbed some of his fries and started eating. Waylon asked, "where are you staying?" Jaxtyn frowned at the question. Waylon knew what the answer was going to be before Jaxtyn even spoke. "I'm in a shared house over by Keeler's." "Yeah, one of those," Waylon said, understanding. "Two or three of you to a bedroom. One of those Bright Stone homes where everybody signs over a portion of their benefits and with all those confusing subsidies you never see and nobody without a Masters Degree in Social work can understand. One of those places?" Without smiling at this uncomfortable accuracy, Jaxtyn nodded once. "That's the place." Waylon grunted and gave another one of his understanding nods. "The main economic driver around here used to be building airplanes. Before that, it was lumber and the forest industry, with a fair amount of shipping tossed in. Now, the economy is all driven by government spending: subsidies and entitlements. B.A.A.M. is what the president ran on. Benefits And Assistance Maximization. In this day and age, the economic units aren't the planes we build or the trees we harvest. The economic units are you. It is all about the money the government can squeeze into you and the money all those crony capitalists and non-profits can squeeze out of you. "And it ain't just here in Washington. The whole country is like that. Hell, the whole world is like that. Remittances to Mexico that aren't taxed. Government funding to non-profits that claim to support Haiti but have never set foot outside of D.C. There's academic fraud going into Russia. Research and Development grants going into China. There was the Somali healthcare fraud that never stopped and now we've got the Sudanese fraud that's just getting started. "Shit, we even pay our enemies. We've got cash payments still going to the Taliban and the Islamists groups in Iran and Syria. We're paying Cuba twice above market for sugar we don't even need. We even send money to all your friends in Venezuela who ran you out of town and killed anybody they could put a machete too. We're just one giant money printing machine that's keeping the whole world spinning, and while everybody knows it can't go on, nobody will even let you talk about slowing it down, much less stopping it." Waylon didn't get excited during his rant. He spoke calmly and cooly. Clearly, he'd thought about all this before, and clearly he'd come to terms with the unfortunate economic realities of the United States. Jaxtyn didn't speak, but he didn't disagree. He knew about the precarious financial condition the United States was in. Even so he had more immediate concerns. Waylon was like a man in a boat, who was watching it slowly sink and trying to think of a way to stop it. Jaxtyn was a man already in the water, just trying to keep his head above the waves for one moment longer. Waylon reached into the pocket of his canvas work jacket and pulled out a small notebook. He scribbled something on a page, tore it out, and passed it over to Jaxtyn. "There's a hotel nearby. Take that to the front desk and they'll give you a room for the night. It's on me. No shared home for you tonight." Without waiting for Jaxtyn to respond Waylon stood up, drained his beer, and headed out the door. "See you around, Soldier," he called over his shoulder. He didn't look back. Jaxtyn looked at the paper. He read the name of the hotel and the address. Everything else was a series of scribbles that Jaxtyn couldn't make out. Maybe it was a code. Maybe it was just nonsense. Jaxtyn pocketed the paper. On the table there were several untouched beers. Jaxtyn came to this bar for a couple drinks and he got them. He finished his fries and burgers and when he was done with those, he finished the fries on Waylon's plate. When all was said and done, he had a full belly and a beer buzz. When he got up, Helen the bartender came over and assured him everything was taken care of. There wasn't any bill. She did take his ID, saying she needed it to finish off the forms for the VA. After only a minute or two she brought it back. Jaxtyn thanked her and was out the door and on his way. Jaxtyn made the short trek to the hotel. He handed the desk clerk the note. Jaxtyn was expecting to get laughed at. That, or worse. The clerk, who'd been busy studying his phone when Jaxtyn came in, took the note, looked it up and down, took a cursory look at Jaxtyn and then passed him a key card. After that, the clerk went back to his phone. There was no paperwork and there was nothing for Jaxtyn to sign. The clerk didn't so much as ask for his name. The hotel wasn't much, but it was better than the shared home. It was clean and quiet. Still not entirely sure what all this was about, Jaxtyn locked the door and then barricaded it with the cheap hotel furniture. After that, his head still buzzing from the beer, Jaxtyn collapsed onto the bed and drifted off to sleep in a cocoon of warmth, cleanliness and blissful silence. Not long after Jaxtyn left the bar, Helen went to clear the table. She took a few of the glasses from where Jaxtyn was sitting and dropped them into a clear plastic bag which she sealed. At closing time, she took those and a copy of Jaxtyn's ID card and tucked them into a paper bag. That paper bag she tucked into an empty space on a stack of pallets in the alleyway behind the bar. Naturally, the next morning when the bar opened, the paper bag and everything inside it was gone. |
|
Generational Divides Chapter 2 The hardest thing Jaxtyn would do that week was leave the hotel room. The hotel room wasn't anything special. It was just a small room inside the very definition of a cheap hotel. Even so, it was everything his home was not: clean, quiet, orderly, a place of solitude. Jaxtyn loved it. He got the best night's sleep he'd gotten in longer than he could remember. When he woke, he showered and cleaned up in a bathroom he could, if only temporarily, call his own. After that, he just quietly sat alone in the room. He didn't scroll on his phone or turn on the tv. He just sat in silence, relishing the nothingness and dreading the moment he would have to check out. He even called the front desk and asked for a late checkout, something uncharacteristic of him, since he never liked asking anybody for anything. He was granted a temporary reprieve, but when the time came, Jaxtyn Williams gathered himself up, left the delightful isolation of the hotel, and walked home. Jaxtyn's walk home was much like his walk to the bar the day before. The streets were wet and cold. The spraypainted scrollwork of graffiti covered everything. The sidewalks were littered with trash of every description: abandoned clothing, spent vaping canisters, old furniture, shopping carts far from home. Cars trundled by, spaced nearly bumper to bumper and heading this way and that. Where were all these people going, Jaxtyn wondered. Inside the cars floated the faces of unthinking zombies, the faces of the hopeless condemned. Wherever they were going, home or work or someplace else, it wasn't any place they wanted to be. Jaxtyn came to an intersection. To the right there was another billboard. On it there were more people that didn't look like he did. They had the same artificial, stupid, happy looks on their faces. A message on the billboard read: "Unused Jewelry? Unwanted Old Coins? Exchange your unwanted gold and silver for American Prosperity Credits today. Rates Guaranteed by the U.S. Government!" Jaxtyn looked to the left. There was an empty lot there and beyond that, some woods. Inside the woods, he saw blue tarps and tents: the universal signs of a homeless camp. Jaxtyn turned right and headed up a variety of side streets until he got to his home, a shared house inside The Sanctuary Estates development. The Sanctuary Estates was built as a working-class neighborhood long ago. The homes were modest, but comfortable. As the years went by and the economy shifted more and more from private sector production to government spending, the neighborhood declined. As the neighborhood declined, people moved out. As people moved out, housing prices declined. As housing prices declined, Bright Stone came into the picture. Bright Stone was an investment company. In legal terms, it was part of the private sector. In terms of reality, Bright Stone held a symbiotic relationship with the U.S. government, so much so that congress had passed special laws governing Bright Stones financial reporting and public disclosures. Any lobbying efforts made by Bright Stone (and Bright Stone's lobbying efforts were significant) were deemed as having the potential to cause serious damage to national security and thus classified as Secret by law. Bright Stone was the definition of crony capitalism. One of Bright Stone's investment vehicles was buying up single family homes in depressed areas for the purpose of renting them out. Such was its interest in the Sanctuary Estates. Naturally, after Bright Stone owned most of the rental properties in an area, they maximized their position by raising rent rates. While Bright Stone's real estate division was busy buying up all the homes it could get its hands on, Bright Stone lobbyists were busy on Capitol Hill. They convinced lawmakers that rent prices were just too high for ordinary Americans, and Congress had to act. Congress did act and passed additional low-income rent subsidies. To avoid putting an additional burden on already harried American citizens, these subsidies were paid by the government directly to Bright Stone. To ensure that eligible citizens got into Bright Stone properties, Bright Stone maintained partnerships with all the appropriate government departments: Health and Human Services, the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development. Often, Bright Stone would lease office space from these government agencies, ensuring the Bright Stone officials and government officials literally worked side-by-side to distriubte the benefits money. It was also understood that government officials were guaranteed a job with Bright Stone should they ever choose to leave the public sector. Naturally, Bright Stone wanted to put the largest number of subsidized renters into its properties, so rather than rent by the property, Bright Stone rented by the room. As often as they could, Bright Stone put multiple renters into the same bedroom. In Jaxtyn's case, the four-bedroom townhouse he was living in housed ten young men, each at a similar point in life as Jaxtyn. That Bright Stone was the one who drove up the rents was never discussed in the public. Nor was it ever publicly discussed that Bright Stone made generous campaign contributions to the lawmakers who enacted the subsidy laws that made Bright Stone obscenely wealthy. And it was certainly never discussed that non-U.S. citizens were covered under different, and often much more generous, housing subsidy programs than what U.S. citizens could qualify for. It was never discussed publicly, but everybody knew it was true. Especially Jaxtyn. By the time he got to his front door, his shoes were soaked through. He looked down at them. It was time for them to go. It had been time for them to go for a while now. But he had no job and no money of his own for anything. Not even shoes. He looked from his wet shoes to his front door and sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was go inside. He knew what was on the other side of that door and wanted no more of it. Even so, he had nowhere else to go. He steadied himself, grabbed the doorknob, and went inside. The first things that hit Jaxtyn when he went inside were the noise and the smell. The smell was a mix of smells: scented vaping smoke, marijuana, body odor, old food and old beer, the stales smells of a space with too little ventilation and too many young men. Together, the smells blended into something so pungent as to almost be a physical wall. Like the smell, the noise was also a wall, a chaotic mix of electronic noises from music and video games, laughing, voices talking over each other. Added to the noise and the smell, most of the windows had been blacked out with heavy blankets or sheets of cardboard held in place with strips of duct tape. Everything felt moist. Jaxtyn felt his stomach turn. He felt vertigo. He closed the door behind him, sealing off his home from the rest of the world. "Hey, Jax is back!" A voice called from the darkened interior. Jaxtyn squinted. He made out a bunch of young men sitting on a couch in the living room. Some were playing video games displayed on an enormous screen mounted on the opposite wall. Others were tapping on their phones. Nobody looked up at Jaxtyn. "Where have you been, Jaxtyn? You been fuckin? You find a girl and been fuckin' all night?" Colored lights flashed through the darkness, illuminating zombie faces. Some Jaxtyn recognized as roommates. Some weren't roommates but Jaxtyn recognized them as ever-present entities. Some faces Jaxtyn didn't recognize at all. He did recognize the speaker. Kyro was where he always was, sitting on the couch and playing a first-person shooter game. "No, no girls," Jaxtyn said. "I just had to get away for a night." Kyro dropped the subject. The fairer sex was a touchy topic for these young men, who had limited prospects for jobs, limited prospects for success, and thus limited prospects for relationships. Compounding the problems was the fact that the only place people of their generation met was online. That presented additional minefields that had to be navigated. Instead of girls, Kyro asked, "Any luck with a job yesterday?" "No luck," Jaxtyn answered. "Anybody get the mail?" For a long time nobody answered. Young men with bleak eyes sat transfixed to their phones and screens. Only Kyro showed any animation, and that was because his body was responding reflexively to the game he was playing. Eventually Kyro called out, "No. I haven't checked it yet. You expecting something? Job offer?" "Naw," Jaxtyn answered. Sitting on the couch, Kyro swerved his whole body to one side, avoiding whatever threat the video game was throwing at him. "If you want, I'll connect you with my aunt. She is a disability clerk at the Medicaid office. I'm sure she can get some benefits money heading your way." Universal Basic Income wasn't a thing yet, but that didn't matter. Under the White House's B.A.A.M. policy, anybody could get some kind of government benefit.[1] Despite being young and in perfect health, Kyro was on disability. Many of the other men were too. In Jaxtyn's mind, it wasn't entirely their fault. For most young men in their cohort, qualifying for disability was easier than finding a real job. Men who looked like Jaxtyn and Kyro and the others didn't get white collar jobs, and they certainly didn't get government jobs outside of the military. They didn't get into college either and thus couldn't get the academic credentials necessary for many jobs. Jaxtyn had his GI Bill, but given that any potential student could qualify for some type of financial aid, the GI Bill wasn't much of an incentive to join the military and it certainly wasn't much of an incentive for academic institutions that benefited far more from enrolling diverse students who came with greater government subsidies, or foreign students who paid higher tuitions. The blue-collar sector wasn't much better. Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs survived the brief period they were out of vogue, and then resurged, especially under the Gavin administration. Traditional blue-collar fields had already been contracting, with manufacturing being offshored and mining, agriculture and similar jobs tempered by environmental policies. A series of executive orders further constrained blue-collar industries. Diversity quotas were levied against any small business with more than four employees. Similar diversity quotas were levied against trade schools, for both their student bodies and their faculty and staff. This was good for the trade schools, which received generous government subsidies for diverse students who never showed up to class, and diverse teachers who never left the faculty lounge. It wasn't so good for the workforce, as less plumbers, HVAC technicians and electricians were being created to meet an ever-growing demand. Most economists assured Americans that A.I. would eventually close the gap, although they never explained how an A.I. application was going to swap out a bad capacitor, solder a connection, or install a shower. And complicating everything for people like Jaxtyn was the open border policies. Not only did he have to compete against diverse Americans who received government mandated preference for hiring, he also had to compete against heavily subsidized immigrants who could work for lower wages because their basic needs were met by government assistance. Whether it was by design or simply a never-ending series of unfortunate coincidences, there was a system in place that was absolutely stacked against men like Jaxtyn. To Jaxtyn and his friends, the rigged game was obvious. The worst part of it though, worse than not having jobs, worse than not having the prospect of a future, worse than being denied a sense of belonging, the worst part of it was that while the system was clearly stacked against them, the people in power denied it. But that wasn't even the worst lie of all. The worst lie of all was the one that was constantly repeated. It was the lie that had been forced down the throat of men Jaxtyn by teachers and politicians, by sports figures and celebrities, by news casters and every corner of every of element of mainstream media for as long as they could remember. It was the lie that men like Jaxtyn held all the power. Jaxtyn looked around the modest kitchen. The garbage needed taking out. Empty bags and wrappers from fast food and home deliveries cluttered the counters. On the wall hung the same decorations as in the dive bar: swag from beer brands and online gambling companies. Jaxtyn grunted something and Kyro grunted something in response. Jaxtyn headed upstairs to his room. On the way up he passed a kid on the stairs. Jaxtyn recognized his face, but couldn't say if he lived there, or was squatting. The kid was watching porn on his phone. Jaxtyn moved past him. Neither acknowledged the other. Jaxtyn knocked on his bedroom door and waited. One of his roommates called, "Enter." Jaxtyn turned the knob and stepped inside. It was a smallish bedroom, the kind designed to house one suburban child. Jaxtyn shared it with two other young men. There were three beds inside, metal framed beds of the kind the military used to use. A single bed ran along one wall. Bunkbeds ran along the other. In one corner was a cheap desk that might have come with the beds or might have been salvaged from a dumpster somewhere. Piles of dirty clothes filled the spaces in between. One of his two roommates, Leo, was gone. Leo was frequently gone. Leo had a relationship with an older man that Jaxtyn knew enough about not to ask questions. The other roommate, Oliver, was sitting on the top bunk, legs dangling over the edge. Oliver was part Korean and part a few other things. He had a thick, black beard and was a few years younger than Jaxtyn. He was fiddling with something. Like the others, Oliver was on benefits. He was enrolled in the local community college. While an Asian man was not much higher than a white man on the spectrum of political favorability, Jaxtyn assumed Oliver leveraged his mixed race to get into school. That didn't really matter though, because Oliver never went to school. To hear Oliver tell it, his teachers never went to class so neither did he. Even so, his student benefits covered his rent and went straight to White Stone. For cash, Oliver would repair gadgets he found in the trash, or resell cigarettes, gasoline and other goods he and his brother would buy tax free on one of the local Indian reservations. "Everything okay?" Oliver asked. "Sure, why wouldn't it be?" Jaxtyn replied. Oliver shrugged. "No reason. You weren't here last night. I wondered if maybe you went into the city and joined one of the protests?" Oliver looked up from his work and smiled. The nightly political protests were an inside joke between Oliver and Jaxtyn. Every night far left youth would assemble somewhere in Seattle and hold a political protest. Because leftists held the White House and the State House in Olympia, these protestors would protest policies in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida. The political impact a screaming nineteen-year-old on the streets of Seattle would have on Reproductive Health funding in Odessa Texas was questionable. What wasn't questionable was that around midnight the protests often degenerated into riots that mostly involved smashing storefronts and looting. Like Jaxtyn, Oliver didn't think much of the protestors and thought even less of the Seattle Police who stood by every night and watched it happen, their hands in their pockets. "No, I wasn't at no protest," Jaxtyn said. "Well, where were you?" Oliver asked. "I wasn't here," Jaxtyn said as he kicked off his shoes and sent them flying into one of the clothes piles. "And I wasn't there. So, let's leave it at that." Jaxtyn collapsed into his bunk. Despite spending the night in his own, quiet hotel room, he felt tired. He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "Any luck finding a job yesterday?" Oliver asked from the top bunk. "I got an application." "Yeah," Oliver said. "Yeah, I got an application to be a paid protestor. I grabbed an application for you too." "Fuck that," Oliver swore. "If I showed up to one of those protests, I'd end up getting shot." "Yeah," Jaxtyn said. "Why do you think I grabbed one for you?" While Jaxtyn was wallowing in the mire of hopelessness that was his life, Waylon went for a drive into the country. He drove a pickup truck that was at least two decades old. Maybe three. It was a simple vehicle, with a squarish body and a minimum of electronics. It wasn't a classic, but it was vintage, and vintage offered several advantages, one of which was it didn't come with all the built in software required in modern vehicles.[2] It was also white, which meant it looked like just another white pickup/fleet vehicle operated by the countless government agencies and private institutions. Fueling the truck was expensive, but that could be mitigated by buying gas at one of the many Indian Reservations who sold fuel without charging the state's gas taxes. Waylon began his day by driving to a local scrap yard. He parked in one of the painted spots, donned a plastic hard hat and headed into the yard. On the way the owner, Harold Wong looked up from his office window. The two men nodded at each other but they didn't wave. In the yard, Waylon approached a grappler that was picking through piles of scrap metal. When the operator saw Waylon approach, he stopped what he was doing and opened his cab door. Waylon walked up, handed his phone to the operator, then turned away. The operator took the phone, put it in the pocket of his coveralls, and went back to work. He did this all as casually as if it were routine, and in fact it was. From the grappler, Waylon headed deeper into the scrap yard. Some damaged shipping containers sat in a corner, being used for storage as they were no longer road worthy. Waylon went inside one and rummaged through the shelves full of tools, spare parts, and the odds and ends that were nothing more than clutter. He found a black metal lunch box and opened it. Inside were several mylar bags. They shimmered metallically beath the container's dim lights. Waylon closed the lunch box, snapped the latches shut, and headed back to his truck. Less than a minute after that he was back on the road and headed north. After traveling almost an hour north, the urban and suburban decay disappeared. There were no more clusters of shopping carts. There was no more graffiti. There were no blue tarps of the homeless and drug-addled, no more garbage tossed along the side of the street. The landscape became more picturesque: thick evergreen forests, rolling farm fields, snowcapped mountains in the distance. Waylon kept heading north. He stayed off the freeway, with its cameras and license plate readers. He stayed on the backroads. The surveillance apparatus was less thick there. It was also less secure and often it would fall victim to "rowdy teenagers" with sledgehammers and high-power pellet guns. While the Washington State Patrol was quick to repair the cameras and readers along the interstate, the local law enforcement agencies that covered the county roads were another story. They lacked the resources to act quickly. Many also lacked the inclination. Waylon kept heading north. After another hour he headed for the interstate, got on it, and took it south for a short distance. When a sign ahead read, "Saffron Saphire Memorial Rest Stop," Waylon took the off ramp. The rest stop looked like any other rest stop anywhere in the country. Separate routes led to parking for commercial trucks and private vehicles. Waylon followed his route and parked between a four-door sedan and a decrepit van that looked like it was being used as a homeless shelter. The windows were all blocked out with sheets of cardboard and towels. Fast food trash, used syringes, and spent vaping containers covered the ground around the van. One tire was flat and the other three were near enough that it didn't matter. Waylon didn't even bother looking at the van. He'd seen so many similar sites over the years it wasn't even disgusting enough to raise an eyebrow. Instead, he turned his engine off and looked ahead, past the restroom buildings and across the lawns to the memorial for Saffron Sapphire. Interlude: Saffron Sapphire The legend of Saffron Saphire was composed of truths, half-truths, fabrications that supported the narrative, and perhaps most importantly, glaring omissions. It was true that Saffron Saphire was a trans person, or at least a man presenting himself as a woman. It was also true that early one morning inside a car at this rest stop, Saffron was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. It was also true that Saffron got into an altercation just before the gunshot was fired, although who started the altercation and what it was about was never fully determined. This was largely because nobody in authority wanted to know what the fight was about or who started it. Stories about Saffron's legacy might include the fact that he was a sex worker. That largely depended on who the audience was and how receptive they might be to the legitimacy of sex work. Even so, the fact that Saffron had a long criminal history with multiple arrests for prostitution was never discussed. That Saffron had a long history of soliciting Johns at the very same rest stop he died at was also not discussed. Most important of all was the fact that Saffron's criminal history included robbery and attempted robbery. Saffron had been arrested several times for robbing and attempting to rob his Johns at gunpoint. While this was true, it fell solidly into the "omissions" category. The man convicted of Saffron's murder was Rondale Washington. Technically it was true Rondale owned a firearm. He legally purchased a firearm years before, so the when the media described him as a "gun owner," they weren't exactly lying. What the media didn't report was that the police recovered Rondale's weapon from a safe in his home, not at the crime scene. The media also didn't report that Rondale's weapon wasn't used in the crime, even though they loved to show pictures of the impounded weapon and the suspect's 4473 paperwork. The weapon that had been used in the murder was recovered at the scene. It belonged to Saffron Sapphire's life partner. They (it was nearly impossible to determine the sex of Saffron's partner) were a prohibited person. Prior crimes and a lengthy history of mental illness and drug abuse meant they weren't allowed to own a firearm. It was also omitted that Saffron's partner had used the same gun in a manslaughter case the year before and inexplicably, the judge had ordered the firearm returned after dismissing the charges. The man who was arrested and convicted of Saffron's murder had his own criminal history. Rondale enjoyed the company of prostitutes. Unfortunately for him, sometimes the prostitutes he engaged with weren't what they presented themselves to be. In addition to prior arrests for solicitation, the man had been arrested multiple times for assault and battery. His prior criminal history was never discussed by the media, and they never showed his picture. Instead, the media always described his as, "a middle-class, suburban man." More telling was the fact that media also described him, "reported as white." This was true. The Washington State Patrol officer who made the initial report did report the suspect as white, so again the media technically wasn't lying. But to mistake Rondale's race as white was akin to mistaking day with night. The media had no problems accurately reporting Saffron's race. Saffron had been born Jimmy Shopbell, and his parents were members of one of the local tribal nations. While the media would never report Saffron's "dead name," the never missed an opportunity to point out that Saffron was Native American. Some facts had more political currency than others. When all the truths and all the lies were finally put in the desired order, and the inconvenient facts properly omitted and the false facts properly inserted, the Saffron Sapphire's narrative finally emerged. Saffron was an innocent, Native American trans-person who was murdered at a rest stop at two in the morning, by a suburban, presumably white man who was a gunowner who simply hated her for who she was. Transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and racism were Rondale's motivations. The ideas that Saffron might have tried to rob Rondale, or that Rondale might have become upset when he realized that Saffron was born Jimmy were never explored. Saffron's life was celebrated by politicians. And those politicians celebrated Saffron's life through fundraising. Once the political value of Saffron's death was realized, a non-profit foundation was established on their behalf. The non-profit's officers represented all the usual suspects: politicians and retired politicians, retired military officers with correct and outspoken political views, academia grandees, media luminaries, tech and business lords, and of course their family members. As Saffron cooled in the morgue, traditional media outlets cranked their coverage up to eleven, and the money came rolling in. Some of the funds came in from the private sector. But like everything else in America, most of the funds came in from non-profits and non-governmental organizations. Those non-profits and non-governmental organizations of course largely got their money from federal grants, which one way or another fell on the taxpayers, either through actual taxes or inflation. Like it or not, Saffron's life was celebrated by the American taxpayer. Not just the taxpayers of Washington State, but the American Taxpayer. From the coast of Maine to the West Texas oilfields, from forests in Idaho to chemical plants in Louisiana and every point in between, dollars made their way from the taxpayers to Washington D.C. to a foundation dedicated to the legacy of a man who died whoring himself out in a rest stop parking lot. Normally the funds that came into the Saffron Saphire foundation would be cleaned and shared with other progressive politicians and progressive causes, with few thoughts about Saffron. That was typically how things worked but, in this case, one of the board members of the Saffron Sapphire Foundation had an original thought. The rest stop would be renamed for Saffron Sapphire, but more than that, a memorial park would be built to commemorate Saffron. This wouldn't be some small memorial, with a roped off patch of lawn and a tiny obelisk. Saffron Sapphire's memorial was to be something grand. A bronze statue, twelve feet tall, was cast in Saffron's likeness. The bronze came from melted down statues that commemorated lesser figures in American History: Civil War Generals, WWII heroes, former presidents, George Washington. The Saffron Saphire statue was placed on a raised platform made of marble imported from Italy. The platform was designed as a stage with the statue as the backdrop. A small amphitheater was dug around the marble platform. When all was said and done, the memorial to Saffron Saphire's life just happened to be the perfect stage for progressive politicians to launch their campaigns. The media could set up their cameras and microphones in the amphitheater, the politicians could stand on stage, and behind them stood the martyr Saffron Saphire, the Native American trans person who was murdered in cold blood by the "reported as white," suburban, middleclass, male gunowner. Once again, the taxpayer was on the hook. Because the memorial was at a rest stop, and because that rest stop was on an interstate, federal funding was secured to complete and maintain the project. The graft and corruption kept going. The celebration of unrepentant criminals kept going. And the lies never stopped. Waylon took it all through the windshield of his truck. He'd been to this rest stop many times before and contemplated everything it represented. More important than that, he contemplated the geography of the area. The rest stop was set on a plain, with mostly flat farm fields in all directions. In some spots there was the typical Western Washington vegetation that interrupted the sight lines: thick hedges of blackberry vines. Stands of Alder. The raised platform would make a pontificating politician more visible, thus extending the sight lines. There were also several elevated positions near enough to the memorial, small hills and hillocks. One small hill in particular caught Waylon's attention. It stood out to the human eye, the way a tall-masted ship stands out on a calm and empty sea. It was 800 meters away and topped with a stand of evergreen trees. It was perfect for what Waylon had planned. The right man with the right rifle could fire from that small hill and hit a man-sized target on the stage with ease. That distance was child's play for a modern sniper rifle. Such a shot was so commonplace it wouldn't even be an accomplishment. There were hills further away that would make better use of a modern weapon's range. But the opportunity Waylon was contemplating wasn't as simple as a sniper shot and a political assassination. A decent marksman could make a shot from the hills that were farther away, but Waylon was considering the abilities of law enforcement. Too far away, and they may not link the hill to the rest stop and the hypothetical sniper shot. Sniping for Law Enforcement and sniping for the military were two different games, with two entirely different frames of mine when it came to effective ranges. The sniper's location had to be identified by law enforcement. The investigation that would take place after the assassination was what the whole operation hinged on, and if the investigators didn't put two-and-two together, there wouldn't be an operation. There would be an assassination. There would be noise. But it would be only a flash in the pan. It would be much ado about nothing. Progressive politicians were a dime-a-dozen, especially in Washington State. If one died, some tech-lord's wife or daughter or niece or mistress would be ready to take their place. Local politicians were disposable. Forensic experts, especially teams of forensic experts, those were much harder to replace. In Waylon's mind the operation would unfold like this: when the upcoming campaign season kicked off, some progressive darling would make her campaign announcement from the stage at the Saffron Saphire memorial. A sniper would assassinate that candidate mid-speech from the hill less than a kilometer away. That was part I. Part II would begin when the investigators identified the hill as the sniper's hide location. Soon after that, law enforcement and forensic teams would be crawling all over that hill, collecting bullet casings and DNA, casting shoe prints and doing all the things that they did. But Waylon planned to have more than just evidence on that hill. Waylon planned to seed the hill with improvised explosive devices. Maybe a series of devices all interconnected, or maybe just one big device. When hill was full of investigators and special agents and forensic technicians the bombs would explode. The attack wouldn't just take some low-level politician off the chessboard; it would remove an entire capability from his enemies' inventory. It was a dirty trick, but it was a dirty trick Waylon had learned the hard way. He'd learned it in faraway lands, back when he was the same age as the kid he met at Helen's the night before. Jaxtyn and his generation had their forlorn hope and humiliating withdrawal. Waylon and his generation had their own. Waylon took one last look at the rest stop. Behind the seat of his truck, he kept a sketchbook and colored pencils. He could have taken pictures of the area as part of his reconnaissance, but he hadn't. Waylon was of an age where he could cross between the digital and analog worlds with ease. Instead of taking digital photographs, which would linger in some digital repository somewhere, Waylon had made sketches of the area. He'd made several sketches, covering all the important views: from the stage out, even from the hill to the stage. They weren't high art. He'd never be able to sell the sketches for money, but they were more than good enough to plan this kind of operation. And as Waylon knew, one flick of a match and the sketches were gone forever. Today, Waylon didn't need to make any more sketches. He didn't need to do any more reconnaissance on this target. He only came here to think and now that that was done, he turned the key in the ignition and drove back out onto the interstate. He had something else to think about. Waylon crossed over the interstate and headed east. He took a route that led along the edge of a valley. Pasturelands and a river passed by the open passenger side window. Triple-strand fences of rusted barbed wire. Collapsing old wooden barns. New farm buildings made of corrugated metal. Horses and cows grazing. Ancient tractors drug out to the roadside for display. Modern farm equipment that cost more than a brand new sports car. Waylon came to a sideroad that led up and out of the valley. He took it. The road rose steeply and after a mile it narrowed to one lane. After another mile the blacktop ended, and Waylon proceeded along a track of packed gravel. Another mile after that and Waylon was well above the valley. He pulled over and shut off the truck. From the center he took out a pair of binoculars. He got out of the truck and walked to the side of the road, near the precipice that fell away to the valley below. Standing there, he took a good long look. Nearly straight down from where Waylon stood was the farm property. It wasn't being used as any kind of farm now. The square flat pastures suggested the previous owners kept horses. There weren't any horses now. There weren't any animals. There were shipping containers, several shipping containers. Also present was all the equipment needed to mark out road repair: barricades with flashing amber lights, bright orange cones and bright orange barrels, metals signage stacked in haphazard lots. None of it was organized. It was all strewn about haphazardly amongst the house and the farm buildings. Arranged around the main house were several single-wide trailer homes. Waylon recognized these as a type that were purchased by or rented to the government on various contracts. Parked around the trailers in no organized fashion were a variety of vehicles. Everything from long stake-bed trucks to decrepit wrecks that were ready for the scrap yard to luxury SUVs. Waylon saw two brand new Mercedes G-Class 4x4s parked next to a box truck that was filthy with grime and graffiti. On several of the trailers hung a flag of red, green, white and black. Waylon raised his binoculars. They were large, big enough to account for the distance between his perch and the farm below. Inside a large barn on the property sat a shipping container. It was one of the smaller containers, only twenty feet long rather than the standard forty feet. It was painted a drab military green color. Waylon could see the container through the open barn doors. Using his binoculars he read the alpha-numeric code on the container, not that he needed to. He'd already memorized it. CFCU 532432. He'd been here many times before. His sketchbook contained renderings of this place too. Waylon lowered his binoculars. Down at the farmhouse, figures moved. Waylon saw somebody step from the house out onto the porch and then toss something into the yard. He presumed it was trash of some type. Kitchen waste maybe. Waylon didn't waste time thinking about that. Instead, he did some math in his head. If a shipping container measured twenty feet long, by eight feet wide, by eight and one-half feet tall, that worked out to a volume of 1,360 cubic feet. The question was, at just under four feet long, how many Canadian Army L1A1 self-loading rifles could fit inside such a container? There were a lot of variables to that question but only one real answer You could fit a lot. Waylon got back in his truck and drove back down the mountain. He headed southwest along a meandering route until he got back to the interstate. He took the onramp and headed south. After a few miles he took another exit and followed the offramp to a sprawling gas station/truck stop. It was owned and operated by one of the local Indian tribes, and because it was on tribal land, the gas wasn't taxed at Washington State rates. Thus, it was no surprise that even here, miles out in the country, the station was doing a thriving business. Avoiding taxes was always profitable in this new America. Waylon pulled into a queue and when it was his turn at the pump, he filled his tank as well as some empty jerry cans in the back. That done, he left the gas station and took the meandering backroads heading south. It was early in the evening when Waylon got back to the scrapyard. He parked his truck, went through the ritual of returning the lunch box and picking up his phone. After that he went inside the office. The owner, Mr. Wong was sitting at an art-deco desk made entirely of metal. It was heavy and looked like it had been built in the fifties. Harold Wong had recovered it from the scrap heap. All the office furniture he recovered from the scrap heap. Metal chairs, metal shelves and metal filing cabinets, all made of drab colored sheet metal. The kind of furniture that was made in federal prisons and shipped to government offices. Besides Wong's desk was a round waste basket made of sheet metal. The edges and seams were brown with rust. "A courier came by while you were out," Harold Wong said without looking up from whatever he was reading at his desk. Mr. Wong was old. Older than Waylon. The grey hairs in his beard and on his head were overcoming the black one. "Yeah," Waylon said. On one wall of the office hung a white board. Written on the white board were the daily prices of various scrap metals: heavy steel, #1 copper, #2 copper, cast aluminum, etc. The prices were all trending upward, and they'd been moving upward at a rate that didn't suggest good things for the American dollar, or the American Prosperity Credit. While contemplating the accelerating value of yellow brass, Waylon asked, "What did the courier say?" Still without looking up, Wong pointed at the round wastebasket beside his desk. Waylon walked over there and looked inside. Like Waylon, Wong could bridge the divide between digital and analogue worlds. Like Waylon, Wong understood that while digital communications had many advantages, security wasn't one of them. Analogue trade craft remained a valuable skill. Inside the waste basket was a light blue piece of paper, of the kind specifically for taking notes. Waylon reached inside and plucked it out. Four words were written on it in cursive scroll: His Story Checks Out. Waylon ripped the blue pieces of paper apart. Half he let flutter back into the garbage basket. The other half he kept. He'd throw them away in some other garbage can, in some other place. [1] Chana Joffe-Walt, National Public Radio, "Unfit for Work: The Startling rise of disability in America." Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America | Planet Money [2] U.S. Congress, H.R.1137 - No Kill Switches in Cars Act, 02/07/2025, H.R.1137 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): No Kill Switches in Cars Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress |
|
Generational Divides. Chapter 3. Interlude: Business Dynamics The truck crossed the U.S./Mexico border at Tecate, with the morning sun still breaking to the east. The crossing was manned by border guards. Some wore uniforms of dark blue. Others wore uniforms of an olive-drab color that made them look more like soldiers than law enforcement. Behind the Customs and Border Patrol agents stood several people in civilian clothes. Some were U.S. attorneys from various civil rights divisions. They would ensure the border crossers' rights were not violated, and in the event any illegal immigrants were found, they would start the asylum paperwork right there at the crossing. Others were legal observers, not associated with the U.S. government, but sponsored by various non-profits. Of course, those non-profits were funded by generous grants from the U.S. government. Tax dollars at work. The truck driver's name was Victor. Victor followed the guards' instructions, pulled into an inspection area and handed over his manifests. He'd been doing this for years. Crossing back and forth between the United States and Mexico was second nature to him. His manifest read "reproduction vintage auto parts kits." The container on his truck contained a load of newly manufactured WWII Willeys Jeep kits built in the Philippines and imported into Mexico for sale in the U.S. The U.S. ports in California and Washington had priced themselves out of business long ago, so most Asian exports came into either Baja Mexico or Victoria B.C. in Canada, and then got trucked across the borders into the States. The guards flipped through the paperwork and then made a cursory inspection of the truck. Dogs and their handlers circled the tractor-trailer while other guards opened the doors of the container and looked inside. Thousands of trucks came through each day so there had to be some degree of speed and efficiency. The Customs agents were primarily looking for three things: drugs, people, and money. Victor wasn't carrying any of those so after a small inconvenience, he was on his way. The next inspection came a few miles later at the intersection of Highways 188 and 94. This inspection site was run by the State of California. The state inspectors operated under a different legal mandate than the federal inspectors, and per California law they couldn't interact with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in anyway. Even a casual conversation was grounds for dismissal. There was only one lawyer at this station. She was a hatchet-faced woman wearing a pastel pantsuit adorned with various badges and buttons: a rainbow something, a Palestine flag, a black button that read, "Does Not Play Well With Others." Another that read, "Animal Advocate." Her job was to ensure that the rights of any livestock being transported weren't being violated. One of President Gavin's final acts as governor was to sign into law California's Bill of Animal Rights. Animal rights was an issue the State of California took seriously. Standing alongside the animal rights advocate were bureaucrats with grim faces and khaki uniforms. They wore badges and carried guns. California had multiple inspection stations throughout the state. The agricultural inspection stations on the borders with Oregon, Nevada and Arizona had been used as a model for additional inspection stations in the California interior. Like before, Victor followed the officers' instructions, pulled over and waited for the inspection to begin. He knew that this one was going to be more thorough. The federal inspectors were only looking for contraband. The California inspectors were looking to make money. At this particular point in time, everything the California inspectors were looking for revolved around two things: fruit and gasoline. People, drugs, and to a certain extent weapons were not a concern in Sacramento. Fruit and gasoline were. California had long protected its agriculture industry by keeping certain fruits out of the state. The fear was that non-native fruits might cause disruptions. That was then. Today, California agriculture was in a steep decline. Even so, the laws against fruit importation became more draconian with penalties to match. The laws were less about protecting California farmers and more about creating a legal way to shake down travelers, especially those from out of state. No fruit was allowed into the state, and the fines for importing a single piece was equal to what the average American made in a week. For somebody out of state, the fines doubled. A family of tourists on their way to Disneyland with a few apples in the back seat got a harsh lesson about the happiest place on earth. Judges were connected to the inspection stations via video teleconference and would adjudicate the cases while families waited in the car. Undeniable proof that fruit in the vehicle was purchased in California meant little. A family with a sack of oranges and a receipt from the local Vons or Ralphs would still be assessed court fees equal to any fines. Sacramento needed money, and they weren't above creating a legal process to steal it. The American people were just economic units to be squeezed. Gas was the other issue. In California, fuel taxes added up to over 80% of the cost per gallon of fuel. The fuel taxes were such that railroads, trucking companies, and even airlines had to adjust their business models. Railroads and trucking companies built refueling facilities joust outside California's borders. A major airline seriously considered aerial refueling rather than refueling on the ground inside the Golden State. Instead, they cut routes into California. While large corporations had options to avoid the California fuel tax, ordinary citizens did not. They couldn't afford the taxes, but they still needed to buy gas to go to work and drop the kids off at school. To fill this market, cartels in Mexico that once just smuggled people and drugs now smuggled gas into California. Unregulated gas stations appeared in barrios and swap meets and along the roadsides. Needless to say, Sacramento wasn't happy about the lost revenue. While looking for hidden tanks, drums and jerry cans, the California inspectors noticed something else: gas powered lawn equipment. Many trucks from Mexico carried all manner of gas-powered equipment: lawnmowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers. Gas powered small engines were illegal in California, but many preferred them over their electric counterparts.[1] This was especially so given California's unreliable power system. Rolling brownouts were commonplace.[2] Like untaxed fuel, there was a burgeoning black market in California for gas powered equipment. Like the fruit, California lawmakers took a punitive approach to anybody caught with a gas-powered chainsaw or a gas-powered lawnmower in the bed of their truck. Revenue had to be generated. Economic units had to be harvested for their money. Hence, checkpoints were built all over the Golden State. After the checkpoints were built, they had to be manned. Sevyn Meyer-Herandez-Piquette was the inspector who had the duty of checking out Victor's truck. She was a young woman, in her late-twenties and recently graduated from college. Sevyn (Pronounced 'seven') found college easy. She breezed through six years at USC and left with the distinction of Magna Cum Laude and dual majors in psychology and fine arts. While college had been easy, the post college job market was a different story. Finding a job was anything but easy. The private sector had largely vacated the State of California. There were a great many public sector jobs. Government spending accounted for the largest single part of California's economy. But Sevyn found that despite her college education, she wasn't qualified for the cushy, white-collar, office jobs that offered upward mobility. Those jobs were reserved for people with connections or with very specific qualifications that Sevyn would never have. With her student debt accruing interest, Sevyn had to take whatever job she could get. And while she wouldn't be considered for the good jobs with a clear and fast career path, she could easily get a job with California's continually expanding internal security apparatus. After a background check, a thorough screening of her social media accounts, and three weeks of training, Sevyn was given a badge, a gun, and a steady paycheck complete with all the benefits, from education subsidies to dental care. Victor parked his truck and walked around to the back of his container. Sevyn wasn't strong enough to open the container, so Victor had to open the metal doors for her. Sevyn also wasn't able to climb up into the back of the container. Victor waited patiently while another inspector brought a stepladder over so Sevyn could climb up into the container. When she was finally in the back of the 40' long container, Sevyn turned on her flashlight. In the back were several large wooden crates and a few small wooden crates. Sevyn sighed. She didn't suffer through six years of undergrad work to inspect boxes. The back of the truck was hot. Everything about this job required physical strength she didn't have. The boxes were all nailed shit and the crowbar she carried was heavy. She shook her head. Nobody was transporting gas in wooden boxes. Instead of the big crates, Sevyn put her crowbar to one of the smaller ones. After some levering on the bar, the nails gave way and the lid came off. Sevyn looked inside the crate. It was packed full of nuts and bolts, springs and clips, and odd shaped pieces of metal she could only assume were parts for the jeep kits. She picked a piece up. It was sealed in clear plastic, and some oily substance swirled inside the plastic pocket. She dropped the part back into the box. She didn't see any of the things she'd been trained to look for. No small engines. No carburetors. No plastic gas tanks. There certainly weren't any fuel cans or hidden tanks of untaxed gasoline. And there wasn't any fruit. Sevyn shook her head again. She knew she was destined for more than this. But right now, this was where she was at. Inspecting trucks in nowhere California. She took one last look at the metal parts in the box, put the wooden lid back on, gave one of the nails a whack with her crowbar, and then climbed out of the back of the hot truck. She scribbled something on a piece of paper, handed it to Victor, gave him a cursory thanks, and went on her way. Victor sealed up his crate, closed and sealed his container doors, and got back on the road. A few hours later Victor was past the Imperial Valley, deep in the interior and headed north. Ahead was a truck stop, and that truck stop was on an Indian Reservation. Exercising their sovereignty, the tribe didn't charge California fuel taxes. For the truckers, fueling up on the reservations wasn't just good business sense, it was essential to economic survival. For the Natives, exercising their sovereignty meant more than just gray market fuel. After topping off, Victor parked his truck in a row of similar trucks. He went inside the truck stop. Taking his time, he used the bathroom and got some food. When he came back out, the seal on his container was gone. Victor opened the doors and looked inside. The larger crates with the jeep kits were all there. The smaller crates full of metal pieces were gone. Victor wasn't surprised that they were gone. He closed his container and applied a new seal. He climbed into the cab of his truck, started the engine, got back on the road and left the story. The small crates were loaded into the back of a pickup and transported deeper into the reservation. The truck drove down a dirt road to a small building made of corrugated steel, far from anything. The crates were taken inside, opened, and their contents unpacked and laid out on a long stainless-steel table. The crates didn't contain parts for vintage jeeps. They contained parts to build submachine guns. Specifically, clones of the icon German MP-5 submachine gun. Victor's employers had obtained the necessary tools and schematics from a source in Turkey who was licensed to make copies of the German weapons. Victor's employers weren't licensed, but that didn't matter to them. They'd created an empire moving things across the U.S.-Mexico border. Long ago, their ancestors moved cattle and livestock. During Prohibition they moved liquor. In more recent years it was drugs and money. Moving people was always profitable, but in recent years the Mexican cartels made a concentrated effort to produce weapons and ammunition and then smuggle them into the United States where gun laws had become more restrictive but the appetite for weapons remained high. With modern machining and manufacturing techniques, producing weapons components was easier than ever. To the untrained customs inspector, springs, operating rods and stamped pieces of metal looked like just another pile of machine parts. To a dog, a metal gun part smelled the same as a metal car part. Inside the Tribal warehouse were lathes, presses, jigs, power hammers, and other machine tools. There were also 3-D printers that could produce the plastic pieces of the weapons: handguards, grips, stocks, and other furniture elements. Those pieces were readily identifiable as gun parts, even by the untrained eyes of those such as Sevyn. They were also easy to print once a process was established. Thus, the smugglers and black-market distributors came to the consensus that most parts would be produced in Mexico, but some were best made locally. The weapons came mostly ready to assemble. As the printers whirred, workers put on the final touches and assembled the weapons. They stamped and pressed metal. They drilled holes as needed. In a matter of days, the crate of metal jeep parts would be transformed into five dozen MP-5 submachine guns. From the warehouse, the weapons would move through a distribution network to a series of buyers who would pay in cash money. Naturally, the pink American Prosperity Credits were not an acceptable form of payment. While the truckload of unassembled MP-5s were getting trucked around California, Waylon had some trucking to do of his own. He repeated his earlier ritual of driving to Mr. Wong's scrap yard and handing off his phone. That complete, he headed east along a circuitous route of side streets and back roads. He left the semi-urban/lower-class-suburban decay behind and entered a more pleasant and upscale suburban environment. He turned off a main thoroughfare and into a gated community. The guard at the post recognized his omnipresent white "work truck" and opened the gate. With a wave, and with the brim of his hat pulled low and a pair of sunglasses and COVID mask obscuring his face from the guard post cameras, Waylon drove into the development. These weren't the modest homes of the Sanctuary Estates, the crammed-together cracker boxes owned by White Stone. These were owner-occupied and the owner-occupiers were people who'd been born into a different American. In that America, the economic, political and cultural chips hadn't all been stacked against them. In that America, political polarization had not influenced everything. In that America, citizens weren't seen as merely economic units. It was a different America. It was a better America. It was an America that men like Waylon had a taste of, and men like Jaxtyn would never experience. This housing development was laid out around a golf course. Waylon followed the road, catching glimpses of the players on the fairways. They were older men, older than him. They drove golf carts and used their phones to check their 401k and IRA accounts between holes. They were at one end of the equation. Young men like Jaxtyn were at the other. And men like Waylon were caught in the middle. Waylon followed the winding main road, then turned onto a side road, then pulled up to long driveway flanked by two large brick pillars topped with globe-shaped light fixtures. A brass plate set in one of the pillars read, "The Whitmores." Waylon looked at the plate and shook his head. He drove up the driveway, parked, and knocked on the door. Five minutes later he was in Edward "Ed" Whitmore's study with a drink in his hand. "How was Coeur d'Alene?" Waylon asked. "The convention? Great," Ed Whitmore answered. He was an old man, older than Waylon by about twenty years. But he was in great health. His frame was lean and his mind was sharp. Although he never held office, Ed Whitmore had been a long-time political player. He began in college, as a local precinct chair for the republican party. That had been nearly half a century ago. Once Ed got politics in his blood, it never left him and now, decades later, he had a substantial network to prove it. He knew all the right people. He was owed all the right favors. As he was fond of saying, he knew how the game was played and he knew how to play it. Above all, his real skill was money. Ed knew how to fundraise, whether it was for political candidates or political causes. Once he got the money, he knew how to bundle it, and he knew how to spread it around. In recent years it was all about political causes. Whether they called themselves politically right, or conservative, or republican, no political candidate who wasn't hard-left was getting elected on the West Coast. In most cases, their names would even get printed on the ballot. Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia had all implemented policies of Progressive absolutism, and they could always find a way to remove a conservative candidate from the ballot.[3] Lacking a political voice in their state houses, conservative citizens of those states channeled their dissatisfaction into separatist movements like the Greater Idaho Movement,[4] the State of Jefferson,[5] and Calexit.[6] As D.C. went further left, other succession movements sprung up across the county, the most notable being the Texas Independence Movement.[7] Ed Whitmore's role in the new political landscape was to collect money from donors and bundle it to support these movements. Ed had spent his life working within the American political system and as bad as things seemed sometimes, he still believed in that system. He didn't share the cynicism of Waylon, or the despair of Jaxtyn. Even so, Ed Whitmore had to admit that bringing the country back to where it once was might require more than a few dirty tricks. Not all the money he raised went into recognized and legitimate political causes. "The convention went really well. We had a ton of great speakers. Sean spoke. Mark and Ben gave great speeches too. Pam delivered a great message. Of course, hers was pre-recorded from her cell in Alderson West Virginia. Pity that she's there. Even so she delivered a great message and got the donors fired up. And of course we had some real heavy hitters in the audience. Some real whales. Big money. We raised a lot of cash for the Greater Idaho and Jefferson movements." "How was the food?" "Eh…" Ed said. "Rubber chicken. You know how it is." Waylon considered his drink: coffee with some Irish Cream added. He didn't like drinking so early in the morning. He didn't like drinking period. "You know those events are surveilled by the FBI, right?" "Yeah," Ed said frowning. "You told me that before." "Yeah, I did. I also told you that some of those whales are informants. A guy's nephew gets popped for pot, or his mistress get pulled over for drunk driving, FBI agents will show up at his door with an offer he can't refuse. 'Head to this local freedom convention. Spy around. Turn a little state's evidence for us, and little Teddy's DUI charges will disappear.'" "Nobody gets busted for pot anymore." "No, I suppose not," Waylon admitted. "But my point still stands. Tradecraft counts. In most circumstances, less is more." "Less isn't more when it comes to money," Ed said. "We need every dollar and APC we can get. Lawyers aren't cheap. Campaigns aren't cheap either. The good news is we raised enough to cover the costs of our next motion in Olympia. After we submit this one, Governor Nye will have to at least acknowledge the movement." "Yeah, maybe," Ed said skeptically. "You don't sound convinced?" "Governor Nye is a pretend scientist who got his break on a third-rate sketch comedy. He's also about a thousand years old. I'm not sure Nye or any of the other octogenarians in Olympia have to do anything they don't want to, just because some lawyer's piece of paper says so." "The law of the land is the law of the land, Waylon. That's why we're doing what we are doing." "If you say so. You are the expert. I'll tell you this though, if you have the money, spend it quickly. Pay those lawyers their retainers now cause the money is only getting cheaper." Ed smiled and pointed at Waylon with the hand holding the drink. "You going to give me your Weimar soliloquy again? Or the maybe the one you have about Zimbabwe?" "Scrap metal prices are still climbing." "That's just the Chinese rearming. Or, arming, I guess. They never stopped arming so it can't be rearming." "I think it is more than that," Waylon said. "Gavin's trying to monetize the debt with this APC scheme and everybody knows it. The value of the APC is gonna fall; that's what it is supposed to do. But it is taking the dollar down with it. And we weren't exactly on sound financial footing to begin with. The Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't released a jobs report since Gavin's first term. Same with the Consumer Price Index. Unemployment is under 3%, but per the new guidelines anybody on government assistance is considered employed." "Here we go," Ed said waving a hand dismissively. "People have been saying the economy is going to collapse for years. Decades. The stock market is doing well. The DOW, the S&P, everything is up." "The numbers are up because stocks are being valued in a combination of dollars and APCs, and APCs are inflating fast. The official inflation numbers are only measured in dollars, so inflation is still between 2% and 3%, but anybody paying in pink slips knows those numbers ain't real. Hell, everybody's known the official inflation numbers have been cooked for years." "Your concern is noted my friend," Ed said. "But might I remind you that one of us has multiple degrees in finance and one of us doesn't. I don't lecture you on how to shoot machine guns or jump out of helicopters. Let's stick with our areas of expertise." Ed said this good naturedly. There wasn't any antagonism in his words at all. Even so, Waylon often felt that Ed was so invested in the system that he was blind to the changes. Ed had been watching the system slowly fall apart for the better part of a century. In Waylon's mind, the falling apart had shifted from first gear into third, maybe even fourth. He wondered if Ed could hear the engine strain under the ever-increasing RPMs. Ed went on. "Besides, the US still has the best currency on the planet. It doesn't matter if it is green backs or pink slips. The BRICs never took off. The Euro is toast. Britain will likely trade their Pounds for Euros, if you can believe that. Unless the Japanese start fucking and having kids, the Yen going to take a bigger dive than it already has, and the Chicoms manipulate their money worse than we do." Ed finished his drink off in one gulp. He walked to a wet bar set up on a brass cart between two oak bookcases. The bookcases were made of real wood, not the disposable glue-and-sawdust crap that modern furniture was made of. Ed had acquired a lot of nice things over the course of his life. "Besides," Ed continued. "Most of this declining dollar crap has to do with the fact that this new generation doesn't want to work." Waylon looked down at his drink. He may have had some pre-rehearsed and tired monologues, but so did Edward Whitmore. The one Waylon liked the least was the one that the younger generation didn't want to work. In Waylon's mind, it was a cheap and easy answer to a complex problem. And that problem hadn't been created by men like Jaxtyn. "I’m telling you,” Ed said, shaking his head, "These kids today, whatever generation they are, they don’t want to work. When I was eighteen, you got out of the house and got your ass to college. You didn't live in the basement. You didn't take a loan for school. You worked part time and starved while you did it, and after four years you graduated and found a real job. "And if you didn't go to college you walked into a place with your head up, you shook the foreman’s hand, and you had a job by the end of the week. Sometimes by the end of the day." Waylon smiled a little, not amused exactly, more tired. He stretched his long legs out and contemplated the Irish coffee he was nursing. "Ed, when you went to college somebody could work a part time job and pay tuition. I could give you numbers about the rising cost of tuition relative to the rate of wages, but suffice to say, one ain't keeping pace with t'other. On top of that, most of these young men ain't got a shot in hell of even getting accepted into a college, not unless their uncle's the dean or their pop sets up some endowment. "As to the walking into some factory and shaking the boss's hand, that ain't happening unless the kid speaks Mandarin. All the factories got moved overseas. Supposedly that's good because we all can buy cheaper goods. Only problem is, nobody has money to buy those cheaper goods. So that didn't add up either." "That’s just an excuse," Ed shot back. "There’s always work. Always has been. You start at the bottom, you show up on time, you don’t whine." Waylon shook his head. "Start at the bottom of what, exactly? A warehouse job that wants ten years’ experience and a master's degree in stocking shelves? That's just to get a minimum wage job that's taxed above fifty percent and won't even cover rent." Ed snorted. "They should get roommates. That’s what we did." "Yeah," Waylon said gently, "And minimum wage could actually cover something back then. Once upon a time I had three roommates and a shit job. I made it, but barely. Now? Even crammed into these White Stone homes it is damned near impossible. Rent's outpaced wages, same as everything else. For all the talk about bootstraps and sand and gumption, it’s a math problem, and the numbers don't add up." Ed stared out across his study, jaw tight. "It feels like they just don’t have the grit. Too much screen time. Too much complaining. They need to get their noses out of their phones and find a job instead of taking the easy way out and getting on the dole." Waylon ran a finger around the rim of his drink. "You ever try applying for a job lately?" "C'mon. You know I haven't." Waylon nodded. “Exactly. Now it’s all résumés that get scanned by software. No handshakes. No humans. You send out a few hundred applications and hear back from three, and two of those are scams from some crime ring in Hyderabad. For the one that is legit, you still got to make it past some human resources gatekeeper, a yenta with forty cats and a giant chip on her shoulder." Ed frowned. "A few hundred?" "I’m not exaggerating," Waylon said. "It comes down to a return on investment issue, and the investment is time. You can spend all your time looking for a job that even if you get, you'll spend forty or more hours a week working to earn a paycheck that won't cover the bills, or, you can get on government assistance, and work zero hours a week and at least have Uncle Sugar cover your rent. Plus-wise, you don't have to suffer the humiliation of the human resources yentas smiling their condescending smiles and telling you no. The public assistance yentas, they'll at least smile and tell you yes." Ed collapsed into an overstuffed chair with his refreshed drink in hand. He fidgeted, uncomfortable. "Things ain't what they used to be." "True," Waylon said. "And it is not just the job market. That’s the point. You and I grew up in a different world. It's not easier in every way, but it is different. 'The world has moved on,' as that one guy once wrote." Ed sighed. "So, what, we just lower the bar?" "No," Waylon said quickly. "We stop pretending it’s the same bar. We help them figure out new ways over it. Or around it. Or…" "Or what?" "Or we tear that fucking bar down." "The old, 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it' argument? Yeah, I don't want to take that route," Ed said. "I don't want to either," Waylon admitted. "But I'm not going to dismiss that course of action out of hand. The system doesn't seem capable of fixing itself. Hell, the system doesn’t even seem to think there's a problem to fix. The system worked for all the people in power, so they see no reason to fix it." Ed took another sip of coffee and stood, joints protesting. "Doesn’t mean I won’t still tell kids to work hard." Standing, he swirled his drink, studying it. The Irish cream mixed with the coffee. The black and the white blended into a light brown. Without looking up he asked, "Have you been out to see our friends from the Sahal?" While Ed and Waylon didn't agree on everything, one thing they did agree on was the problems presented by the Sudanese. In addition to believing in the American political system, Ed believed in Christ. As a Christian, Ed had significant concerns about the recent influx of Sudanese. Interlude: The Sudanese Diaspora Over the years many ethnic groups received favored immigration status: Haitians, Somalis, Afghanis, Indians. The latest group bestowed with the government's favor were the Sudanese. Specifically, Sudanese Muslims. For decades, Sudan had been a warzone. Muslim, Sudanese militias with loose government affiliations had persecuted Christians in the region. It was religious and tribal warfare of the ancient variety but modernized with Toyota pickup trucks and Chinese Rocket Propelled Grenades. Movies were made about the conflict. Books were written. International bodies met in places like New York, Brussels, and Addis Ababa and debated endlessly on the definition of genocide. International aid flowed to the Christians. Other international aid flowed to the Muslims, albeit more discreetly. Peace deals were brokered and peace treaties were broken. The one thing that remained constants was the narrative that the Christians were being persecuted by the Muslims. One day that all changed. Much of modern Western academics broke down to a simple and deductive world view: the world was comprised of the oppressors and the oppressed. In faculty lounges, student union buildings and government sponsored think tanks, it was understood that who was doing the oppressing and who was being oppressed had nothing to do with who swung the machetes or who got hacked apart. The oppressor and the oppressed had nothing to do with actions on the ground. Oppressors and oppressed were based entirely on race, gender, and religion. That was it, and that was all. In the modern, western, civilized worldview a woman could not oppress a man. Gay could not oppress straight. Black could not oppress a white. The oppression continuum was as immutable as mathematics, maybe even more so. With regards to religion, the Christians were always the oppressors. Always. Especially when they weren't. The United States had long voiced support for the Christian Sudanese, but with the Gavin administration and the ascendence of progressive totalitarianism in Washington D.C., that support shifted. The narrative flipped. Instead of Sudanese Christians being victimized by Sudanese Muslim militias, the State Department claimed that the Muslims were being persecuted by Sudanese Christians. Mass murders of Christians and the burning of churches were further proof that Muslims weren't safe in Sudan. Naturally, as part of the State Department's playbook, Sudanese Muslims were then granted asylum status. Thousands of Sudanese were migrated into the United States at taxpayer expense. While the State Department claimed that all the migrants were thoroughly vetted before being admitted into the country, numerous independent journalists showed proof that many of the Sudanese migrants had ties to the Janjaweed militia and other terrorist groups. In response, and this was also part of the playbook, mainstream media outlets painted those independent journalists as conspiracy theorists. While churches in Sudan were set alight, journalists in the United States were deplatformed and shadow banned. And while all that was going on, chartered airliners brought military aged Sudanese Muslims into the United States, at a rate of 550 passengers per flight. When the 747s touched down, an army of officials representing government agencies, non-governmental organizations, charities, non-profits, and church groups were there to greet the new arrivals. These philanthropists were on hand to provide the new immigrants everything they needed: free phones, free internet, travel vouchers, hotel vouchers, tuition assistance, nutrition assistance, spending money, small business loans, drivers' licenses, fuel vouchers, healthcare… everything. Whatever U.S. citizens paid for, these migrants got for free. It was a program that was as timeless and as well rehearsed as the perfect waltz. But the Sudanese diaspora differed from the previous diasporas in one very important way. The newly arrived Sudanese migrants immediately set up small businesses and applied to the State Department for export licenses. Naturally, given their refugee status, the State Department fast-tracked those applications. While other diasporas were content with setting up daycares, home healthcare centers and learing centers, the Sudanese wanted to export weapons back to Sudan. Naturally, the Gavin administration granted them their wish. After all, these Sudanese Muslims couldn't possibly be using those weapons to oppress Christians. It was axiomatic. "The Sudanese are still there," Waylon said. "The container is still there. It hasn't moved." "Are the weapons still inside?" Ed Whitmore asked. "No way to know for sure," Waylon admitted. "I can't imagine they took them out. They wouldn't have any reason to." "They could have shipped them to Darfur." "Not likely without a container," Waylon said. "They've shipped other weapons back, but not these. You know theory on why." "Yeah, I know. I think the same thing." The group of Sudanese Waylon had been observing had a couple of scams going. They also had an export license which allowed them to ship weapons and military equipment to their militia friends in Sudan. They used money from their scams or generous small business loans and government grants to legally buy military grade weapons. Then they sent the weapons overseas. The group had made several such shipments already, but the container Waylon was watching had sat on the farm for over a year. Waylon believed, and Ed Whitmore believed too, that the Sudanese gang didn't intend to send that batch of weapons overseas. They intended to use them in the United States. "But you have no way of knowing for certain what's in that container, do you?" "I don't know exactly what's in that container, but I know what's supposed to be in there. The manifest copies I have say as much. I'm sure some things have gone out and maybe some new things have come in, but they've got to have at least a large chunk of what they're supposed to have in there. The export licenses and manifests show what they bought, but there's no record of it ever leaving the country, and the container is still sitting in that barn." Ed Whitmore mused. "But we don't know for certain that they are going to attack churches." "Well," Waylond began, drawing out the word. What he was going to say next, he didn’t want to say. But Ed Whitmore was his benefactor. From time to time he had to give the older man something. "My source thinks so too. Law enforcement is monitoring these guys. 'On our radar,' as they like to say after the fact. They're communicating with militia leadership back in Africa. They've been surveilling several churches. In between tax-payer fraud and arms shipments, they're planning something." "If they are plotting a terrorist attack, why don't the cops swoop in and get them?" Ed Whitmore asked. Waylon looked at Ed for a long time before responding. "Is that a serious question?" Ed Whitmore huffed. Then he contemplated his drink. "I don't know," he began. "The risk of the operation you're planning isn't small. Something like that and you are instantly in felony territory. Domestic terrorism charges. Probably murder. The works. You do that and that's it. No turning back. You've crossed the Rubicon." "We wouldn't move against it until things become so intolerable that rebellion is the only option. That, or when the collapse is underway. As to the risks, we know the risk if we don't do it. All those weapons will be used on innocent people. Innocent Christian people. I'm sure they've already got the churches picked out. Just like us, they're waiting for the right political conditions. Once that happens, they'll strike." "What if they don't?" "Don't what? Don't do it?" "What if they don't wait," Ed said. "What if they don't wait for this supposed collapse. I've been hearing tales about economic collapse for years but its never happened. Its always supposed to come 'next Monday' or in 'two weeks from now.' But what if it never comes. What if one Sunday morning they just decide to start attacking churches?" "I don't even want to think about that." "Me either. But I do." "Well," Waylon began. "If they wanted to attack a church, they could have done it already a hundred times over. But they haven't. They also must know if they shoot up a church, that's it for them. They're either going to martyr themselves or end up in jail. No judge is going to dismiss those charges, not even here in Washington State. On top of that, it would be an end to the arms trafficking, which I think is a pretty strong motivator for them. No," Waylon finished. "I'm certain they'll bide their time. But when the conditions are right, they're going to start burning churches and slaughtering Christians. It is what they do." Ed swirled his drink again. "Yeah, I don't know," he said. "Sure, they did it back there. But they're over here now. They're in America. Okay they're not Americans. They'll never be Americans mostly because they don't want to be Americans. I get that. But even so, the idea that they'd attack churches full of people. That kind of thing isn't supposed to happen. Not here." "If they did it over there, there's no reason to think they wouldn't do it over here. They didn't leave all that stuff behind when they came over here. We sure as hell never asked them too." Ed made a sour sound. "Hell," he cursed. He looked from Waylon to his drink, and then back again. "And you're sure you can pull something like this off?" "Back in the Marines, we'd practice doing raids like this night and day, every day for six-months straight. Yeah, I can do it." "Your hair wasn't so gray then." "My heart wasn't so heavy then." "You were also working with other Marines, not a crew of aimless kids from off the streets." Waylon laughed. "Ed, a lot of those Marines were aimless kids from off the streets. The military gave them a purpose, same as what I'm doing." Ed grunted. Waylon knew he was making a sales pitch, so he kept pitching. "The toughest part will be transferring all the weapons out of that shipping container into a box truck or something similar. The easy way to do it would be load that container onto a truck and drive off with it, but I don't have a piece of heavy equipment that can pick up a container and put it on the back of a truck. I didn't see one on the property either. Even if they did, I'm not sure I'd want to be driving around with that container on the back of a truck for the world to see. Transloading the weapons from that container into something else will be the hard part." "What about the fighting?" "I'm not so worried about that. They've got no security out. They've got no guards. They've got every reason to think they're safe and no reason not to." "Maybe so, but if a firefight erupts out there the police will come for sure. State Patrol for certain based on everything you've told me." "I've considered that. That's why when we hit it, we'll do it quietly. Plus-wise, I don't intend to hit it until the political conditions are right." "You desired political conditions may never be right." "I'm aware." Ed thought. "If the political conditions are right, then as you said these Sudanese would be heading out to attack churches." "That is the rub," Waylon said. "If things go to hell, I mean really go to hell, then it'll be a race. Can we get to those guns before the Sudanese use them to kill a bunch of innocent people." "A race," Ed Whitmore repeated. "A race to the death. I can't believe things have gotten this bad." "Well, they have." "Ain't that the truth," Ed Whitmore said. His demeanor changed. He got more serious. More businesslike. He set his drink on a desk. He said to Waylon, "Don't do anything on this until we talk. You can plan all you want, but don't do anything else without asking me first." Waylon looked down into his Irish Coffee. It was still three-quarters full. He placed it on a side table. "I won't," Waylon said. Waylon left Ed Whitmore's with a lot on his mind. He thought about bringing up the new prospect he had, Jaxtyn Williams, but he thought better of it. The kid wasn't onboard yet. He may not even get on board. There was a big gap between drinking free beer and eating free food and joining in some anti-government conspiracy. But more than that, Waylon wanted to keep everything compartmentalized. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ed Whitmore. Politically, Ed was as conservative as they came. He'd spent his whole life campaigning for conservative causes and promoting conservative ideas. He was an outspoken critic of Washington State's government and the Gavin administration. But Waylon did have doubts about Ed Whitmore's tradecraft, his ability to keep secrets and not let things slip. The brass plate at the end of the driveway was a good representation of that. The political landscape being as dangerous as it was, why put your name on your house? Why provide confirmation to potential enemies? Often, Waylon felt that Ed thought he was still living in the America from generations before. The America before social media and digitally accelerated everything. The America before swatting and normalized political violence. The America before politics crept into everything from professional sports to men's razors to the legal system.  The America before the words "Civil War," meant something that happened in the past, not something everybody expected to happen in the future.Waylon drove past the guard shack, mask and dark glasses on again. He turned left onto the big street and headed off to complete the rest of his day's work. Had he turned right, he might have seen the brand new G-Wagon parked down the road. If he had seen it, he might have recognized it. It was one of the same G-Wagons parked at the farm, along with the red, green, white and black flags, and the shipping container supposedly full of guns. Luckily for Waylon, the four men inside didn't recognize him or his truck. They didn't even know Waylon existed. They were on their mission and in a curious turn of events, the path of Waylon and Ed Whitmore, and the path of this Sudanese gang crossed not once, but twice. Ed and Waylon assumed that the Sudanese were going to attack churches. They were planning an attack, but not against a church. Instead, they were planning to attach an entire neighborhood. "Only one way in, and one way out," the Sudanese in the passenger seat said. "What about the guard?" the driver asked. "What about the guard? We kill him. Then we go in and kill all the others." Two more men sat in the back seat. The first back seater said, "Some of these Americans have guns." "They banned guns in this part of America years ago. Even so, they don't have guns like our guns. They don't have grenades. They don't have rockets. They don't have a mortar. The ones that do have guns will be too scared to fight back. If they fight, they know that if they survive the American police will arrest them. Besides, it will just be one man in one house. They aren't an army. We attack one house, then we attack the next. Just like our brothers did in their October operation. We'll burn half the neighborhood down before they even know what's happening. While we do that, half these people will be filming us on their phones while we kill their neighbors. These are soft people with soft hearts and soft minds." "Some will try to escape," the other back seater said. "They won't. That's why I like this place. This road is the only way in and out. After we control the gate and block the exit, nobody can get out." "They could run. Run through their golf course and over the fences." "They're white westerners. Old and fat and decadent. They won't run. They wouldn't put down their phones and walk across the street to save their own children." "In the backseat, one of the men looked down. A long FN-FAL assault rifle lay on the floor. It lay in the open, uncovered by anything. The rifle and the magazines that went with it were felony offenses in Washington State. Even so, the Sudanese weren't worried about being caught with a weapon. If they were, they had lawyers at several non-profits and a contact in the Washington State Patrol they could call. "It is just old people here," the first back seater said. "Old men and old women." He was right about that. Ed Whitmore's neighborhood was made up of elderly retirees mostly. The back seater didn't want old people. He wanted young girls and children he could enslave. The old white Christians were only good for killing, and he said as much. "This isn't about what you want," the passenger said. "This is about our duty. Fate brought us here to America. Now that we are here, we will fulfill our obligations." "When?" the driver asked. "When the time is right," the passenger answered. [1] Newsweek, "List of Equipment Affected by Gavin Newsom’s Ban on Small Engines." Darragh Roche, 19 October 2021, List of Equipment Affected by Gavin Newsom’s Ban on Small Engines - Newsweek [2] Southern California Edison, "What is a Rotating Outage." 21 February 2026. Rotating Outage | SCE [3] Centre for European Reform, "France and Romania: Should far-right candidates be banned from running for the presidency?" Zselyke Csaky, 25 April 2025. France and Romania: Should far-right candidates be banned from running for the presidency? | Centre for European Reform [4] "Greater Idaho." 21 February 2026. https://greateridaho.org [5] State of Jefferson, "The State That almost Was." 21 Febraury 2026. https://statejefferson.com/ [6] CAL EXIT. 21 February 2026. https://calexitnow.org/ [7] The Texas Nationalist Movement, "We're Making Texas Independent Again." 21 February 2026. https://tnm.me/ Nashfact, "The $8 Billion Story of Corporate Self-Destruction." 11 October 2025. https://nashfact.com/the-8-billion-story-of-corporate-self-destruction/
|
|
Chapter 4 The old men watched the video in a darkened room. The air was thick with blue-gray clouds of cigarette smoke. On the conference table sat scalding hot kettles of tea, and pastries unfamiliar to western eyes. In the video, the camera panned over ships at dock. Angular bows. Flat sterns with hinged stern gates. Flat decks with white paint markings to direct aircraft. Well decks. Control towers topped with antennae and radars. The camera kept panning. There were a lot of these ships. Intermixed with the big, flat-decks were smaller ships: frigates, corvettes, amphibious docks, tank landing ships. The camera kept panning. Dirty green water splashed against the haze grey hulls. In the distance, a flight of white seabirds flew past. The video stopped. The lights in the room brightened, but only a little. The men in the room all had a hardness to them. Not physical hardness. In that regard, they looked soft. Fleshy faces and fleshy necks. Jowls. Dark, sagging skin beneath angular eyes. Even so, they looked shrewd and serious. Cunning. The kind of men who could order mass executions without any second thoughts. One stood at the end of the table. He was an admiral in the People's Liberation Army-Navy, though he wasn't wearing a uniform. Nobody in the room wore a uniform. Some wore western style business suits. Others wore tunics with Maoist collars. The admiral spoke. upload_2026-3-2_20-25-38. "We've met and exceeded our shipbuilding requirements. Sea trials are complete. The necessary maneuvers and training exercises are complete. From the naval standpoint, we are ready." The oldest man in the room sat at the opposite end of the table, in a chair larger and nicer than all the others. He nodded and looked to a slightly younger man to his left. "And the People's Liberation Army?" That man answered with a word. "Ready." "And our wayward subject on the island. What of them?" A different man spoke up. He held a cigarette in his hand, and the smoke curled up past his face and hung with the other smoke at the ceiling. "The bulk of their political leadership will not resist. We've taken active measures to guarantee it." "How?" The man with the cigarette shrugged. "Most don't want to fight a war they won't win. For the ones who showed a reluctance to embrace compliance, we took measures to guarantee their compliance." "Elaborate schemes?" the old man at the head of the table asked. The man with the cigarette smiled. "No elaborate schemes. For most, it was simple." "Simple how?" the old man asked. The man with the cigarette shrugged. "We had agents show up to their homes with bags of money." The man stopped there, as if there was nothing more to the story and nothing more to be explained. In the grand scheme of things, there wasn't. "What about their military leadership?" "Similar. Most will accept compliance. The ones who we have identified as both militarily competent and inclined towards resistance will be permanently reduced at the outset." The old man looked back at the admiral at the opposite end of the table. "What about the American military?" "If left to conduct operations without restraint, the Americans would sweep us away," the admiral admitted. "Our sailors and officers don't have the experience. They don't have the training. They don't have the seafaring history. Even so, we know the Americans will not be allowed to operate without restraint." The admiral whispered something. The lights darkened again. A digital picture of a woman in Navy whites appeared on a screen mounted on the wall. "This is the American's newest commander of their Indian and Pacific Oceans Command. Militarily, she is unquailed for the job. She has an alarming lack of command time and has very little time at sea. She is also especially young considering the position." "Then why was she put in command?" "Because that baizou American president put her in charge," an old man quipped from the sidelines. That brought some condescending laughs from around the table. "Her appointment by the American president was an act of fulfilling a campaign promise," the admiral agreed. Another old man spoke up. He represented the ministry of foreign affairs. "The American leadership in Washington D.C. will likely not act at all if this event is seen as a fait accompli. The American president is weak. Until hostilities commence, he will not allow his armed forces to mobilize. We have assurances of that. After hostilities commence, he will look for any excuse not to intervene. If the first phase of the reunification operation is a success before the American military can mobilize their forces, they will stand down. A few days can make all the difference, days where we are acting and the Americans are willfully dithering. My diplomats are certain we can buy at least two days." "How?" the old man asked. The man from the ministry of foreign affairs whispered something. Another picture appeared on the wall. The woman in this second picture looked much like the woman in the first. Men around the table murmured disapproval. "I've met her twice before," the diplomat said. "That she is their ambassador to us is an insult." "Another campaign promise?" the old man asked. "I cannot fully comprehend the American mind," the diplomat answered. "Just as significant as their lack of diplomatic leadership, we will assume the chairmanship of the UN security council in a few months. We expect the Americans to attempt to use the United Nations and other international bodies as means to protest our reunification operation. This may just be a face-saving attempt, but it could also be genuine. The American president puts great faith in international bodies and has stated his reluctance to act unilaterally. Regardless, with us filling the chairmanship role in the security council, and with sympathetic nations filling the rotating seats, we will use that body as a method of further delaying any American response." Another old man chimed in. His portfolio covered foreign trade. "Our economic partners in the United States will also work to slow an American response, albeit unwittingly," he said. He reached over the table and grabbed a pot of tea. He poured the liquid into a plain, round cup. Steam, hot enough to scald, rose up into the cigarette smoke. "The American economic titans don't want a war. Their profitability and the value of their companies is too intertwined with ours. The value of those companies have significant influence on the retirement portfolios of all Americans. Particularly the portfolios of government employees. The industrialists will use their lobbyists in Washington D.C. to warn the president and congress not to make war." The old man grunted. The two pictures of the women disappeared. The old man pointed at another man at the table and grunted once more. A monosyllabic order. This man represented the treasury. The treasury man nodded and stubbed out his cigarette butt. "We also have very favorable currency leverage against the Americans," the treasury man said. He lit a new cigarette and puffed a few times. He did this fluidly, and as if he hadn't just finished his last cigarette seconds ago. He spoke a command and a slide with economic data appeared on the wall. "These numbers came from the latest American Federal Reserve report. This is what they think their money supply is regarding their new American Prosperity Credit notes. The actual physical currency." The old eyes in the room squinted to read the slide. After giving them ample time to read the numbers, the treasury official waved his hand. A new slide flashed onto the wall. "This is the actual number for notes in circulation." The old men in the room, normally reserved and stoic, showed a visible reaction to the difference. The admiral even cursed aloud. "Are they under-reporting their supply? Manipulating the data?" "I can say with absolute certainty that they are unaware of the difference between the two numbers." "Aye-Ya! How can they not be aware of the difference?" The treasury man gave the slightest smile. "These numbers only represent the physical currency. The digital number is an order of magnitude higher. The American's want to monetize their debt with this new currency of theirs. Naturally, this would involve inflating their currency, but it is being inflated at a rate much higher than they are aware of and beyond their ability to control. If the American citizenry were aware of the actual numbers, they would understand this new currency is utterly worthless. From the individual level up to the largest financial institutions there would be a rush to exchange APCs for dollars. That would naturally begin a run on the banks, who would not have enough physical or digital dollars to meet the demand, even if they were willing to make the exchanges. Almost all public assistance is paid in these APCs. Most Americans need this public assistance to purchase food and other basic needs. Once the APCs were deemed worthless, that would trigger massive civil unrest. Furthermore, the American military would be unable to launch an intervention because they would not have a currency they could use to buy all the things necessary to conduct military operations. No money for fuel or food. No money for spare parts or to pay contractors. No money to pay their soldiers." "But even by the American numbers, the amount of digital notes is orders of magnitude higher than the amount of physical notes. Almost none of the currency is in a physical form. What difference does it make how many physical prosperity notes are in circulation when the digital numbers are so high?" The treasury man smiled. "Like all fiat currencies, the American Prosperity Credits are only worth something because the whole of society agrees that they are. There is no intrinsic value to the notes themselves. They aren't backed by anything. It is a system based entirely on collective faith. If enough elements of a society no longer accept the APCs as a means of exchange, if they no longer believe they are worth anything, then that system collapses." "How is it you that you came to know all of this? You have very specific numbers. And your numbers are significantly different from what the Americans published?" another man asked. He represented some niche, sub element of the ministry of interior. Even so, he was favored by the old man at the head of the table. He was a cousin or maybe nephew. Nepotism aside, this man asked the right questions. The treasury official nodded. "Please indulge me for a few minutes and I'll explain." The official reached under the table and brought up a rectangular leather document case. He unsnapped the case's brass latches and reached inside. He pulled out a small stack of pink banknotes. He passed them around the table. The old man at the head of the table didn't take a note. He didn't even look at them, he held an air of disdain as the American money was passed around. When all the old men had a note in front of them, the treasury official explained. When he finished, nobody spoke. The story he related was unbelievable and yet, given past American behavior and American naivete, it was completely believable. It was one of those things that historians would write about decades and centuries later. A happenstance so unlikely and yet so consequential as to cost a battle, a war, a nation. "So, the intent is to wreck the American economy?" "No," the diplomat said, intervening. "We will warn the Americans not to interfere. We will let them know we can expose their currency schemes and destroy their economy, and we will if they attempt a military intervention. Our economies are still intertwined. Ruining one ruins the other. Even so, we assess our ability to withstand such a shock as greater than the Americans'. Our hope is we do not have to. But if we have to, we will." "And if the Americans don't heed our warnings?" another old man asked. "Destroying their economy would still mean destroying ours." This old man sounded worried. He was. Such mutually assured economic destruction would mean a great loss to him, personally. But before the treasury official or the diplomat could answer, the old man at the head of the table spoke. Despite his frail appearance, his voice filled the room with a tone and volume that did not allow for any questions, protests, or disagreements. "The Chairman has stated multiple times that reunification is the priority. This will not be questioned. If reunification demands economic sacrifice, it is a sacrifice we will make. We've withstood worse, and we've withstood more. Wars. Famines. Floods. Disease. The barbarian's drug infestations. More wars. The Long March. The tragedies in our early resurgence. Such tragedies are but fleeting things. For the westerners who think of time in minutes and hours, these things are cataclysmic catastrophes. We, who think in centuries, know that such hardships are transitory. The human suffering involved, inconsequential. We will endure this too, should it come to pass. Our leader has spoken. There is no need to discuss this further and it will not be discussed." Around the table, heads nodded in understanding. The old man who mounted the initial protests remained silent. After a bit, the representative from the interior ministry picked up the pink slip on the table before him. He held it up for the treasury official to see. He asked. "Do you want these back, or can we keep them?" The treasury official made a dismissive gesture. "Keep them if you want," he said. "They aren't worth anything." Half the world away, while high ranking government officials charted the course of world events, Waylon sat in the scrap yard's office and considered the coffee he was drinking. He spent time in Italy. He remembered the beautiful buildings. Works of art that were built for eternity. Things that were started by men and finished by their great grandsons and great-great grandsons. That had always impressed him, the idea that men would commit to an endeavor knowing they'd never live to see its completion. He also remembered the beautiful women. He didn't think the Italian women were innately more beautiful than other women, they just took themselves and their femininity more seriously. He never recalled seeing an Italian woman out shopping, wearing pajama bottoms, a sweatshirt four sizes too big, and disposable plastic sandals. He couldn't say the same about his own country. Most of all, he remembered the coffee. He'd traveled the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula, and he couldn't have found a bad cup of coffee if he'd tried. In America, you could find good coffee, but you had to look for it. "Wong, at what point," Waylon began, "Are you going to get some coffee here that doesn't suck." Wong sat at his scavenged, government surplus desk. "I don't drink coffee. I don't care about coffee. You're lucky I buy any coffee at all. You don't like the coffee, go buy your own." Above Wong's desk hung a faded black and white photograph in cheap frame. The photo was taken at Hungnam Korea in 1951. In it, a Korean man and his children stood next to Marine General O.P. Smith. Smith had just marched the 1st Marine Division out of the Chosin Reservoir, and he looked like it. In the background, Navy transports floated on a gray sea broken by small whitecaps. "Barbarians," Waylon said. He looked inside the cup. The liquid there looked like it came from melted tires. He sniffed it. It didn't smell like coffee. It just stunk. Waylon grumbled and set the cup down. He picked up the papers on the desk in front of him and returned to reading them. He had photocopies of documents out of Jaxtyn Williams Official Military Personnel File or OMPF. Waylon knew enough to know that any potential recruit into his network had to be vetted. He didn't need government plants or informants inside his orbit, not that he'd done anything felonious or treasonous… yet. But he felt that time was soon coming. Many people did. To screen for potential infiltrators, Waylon went to an expert. He had an understanding with a good private investigator who shared his political views and recognized the need for discretion. The private investigator did the background checks on all the scrapyard's employees, so a few extra background checks wouldn't raise any eyebrows and if they did, they could be easily explained away. After a few days, the private investigator delivered photocopies of Jaxtyn's various records via courier. The kid had no criminal record to speak of and no red flags in his credit history or financial dealings beyond the fact that he was in his mid-twenties and didn't have a dime to his name. His Veterans Administration records showed an honorable discharge and a minimal disability rating that Waylon knew he could increase with a few calls. Based on Jaxtyn's Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), the story he told in the bar checked out. He had been a combat engineer, and he had been retrained as a mortarman. He rated campaign ribbons for El Paso and Venezuela. He had no record of military discipline. He had an appropriate reenlistment code: he was eligible for reenlistment, but with a low priority given his demographic background. Most important of all, the private investigator found out who else had performed background checks on Jaxtyn. So far, nobody. The Department of Defense (Previously the Department of War) had performed one check when he enlisted. After that, nothing. Nothing from local law enforcement, nothing from federal law enforcement. He had no unexplained funds transferred into his bank accounts. He had no debts inexplicably paid off. He had no medical records showing late night blood draws or toxicology reports, something that might suggest he got arrested for drugs or driving drunk and subsequently persuaded to turn informant. The private investigator was thorough. They knew all the tricks, and they knew how to look for the telltales the government security apparatus left behind. Waylon felt confident the kid was clean. But being clean didn't mean he'd be an asset. Waylon gathered all the papers together. He thought about whether he should shred them, burn them, or shred them and then burn them. Ever thorough, he decided on the final option when the door of the office opened. "That coffee better not be crap!" Mateo Castillo came into the office the way he always did, like an actor entering a scene and determined to steal it. He wore grimy work boots, a grimy safety vest over a grimy set of coveralls, and a silver and gold crucifix that was too bright and shiny to go unnoticed. Despite having spent all morning in the cabs or various pieces of heavy equipment, his styled black hair was ready for a magazine cover or a Milan fashion show. His mustache reminded Waylon of Saddam Hussein, only glossier. Mateo, who sometimes went by Matty and sometimes went by Teo, made a b-line for the coffee pot. When he picked it up, he looked down into the bulbous glass decanter and the black liquid swirling with in. He sniffed once, then frowned. "How old is this?" "Fresh yesterday. Or maybe the day before." Wong said without looking up from his work. Mateo cursed. Wong cursed back. "I've got more important things to do than make your coffee, like keeping this business running and giving you a job. You can make your own coffee if you don't like it." Mateo mumbled out some curses and dumped out the old coffee. Then he set about making a fresh pot. As he went about his work, he rubbed at his eyes. "Late night last night?" Waylon asked. "A late night and an early morning," Castillo said. "You out dancing until dawn again?" "Not on a Thursday night," Castillo said. "I was up all night on the internet, looking for love." "Looking for love in all the wrong places. Did you find any?" "Ha," Castillo laughed. "If I want to look for love, I go to the club. The internet scene, that's more like a hobby. Like stamp collecting. Only instead of getting those stamps with the upside-down planes and shit, you get red flags, scams, and rejection." Waylon smiled and grunted an affirmation. Waylon liked Mateo. He was second or third generation Mexican American. Like Waylon, he was a Marine. Mateo spent four years as a heavy equipment operator before taking his discharge and returning to civilian life. Now he operated heavy equipment for Mr. Wong. Above all that, because of family tragedies, Mateo held similar political beliefs to Waylon. As Mateo went through the ritualistic process of making a new pot of coffee, he explained the perils of modern dating. "Waylon, you don't know what you're missing by staying out of the game. Or maybe you do, and that's why you're smart. I spent last night doom-scrolling through all the apps. The whole circus plus all the monkeys. Half the profiles are straight-up scams. More than half. Bots from who knows where, fishing for your credit card or crypto wallet. Shit like, 'Hey handsome, I love you, but I'm stuck in Ukraine, send me some crypto,' and they didn't even spell Ukraine right. Or crypto. Crypto don't start with a fucking K bro. Then you got the profiles with stock photos. You reverse search 'em, and boom, it's some pic they stole off some other lady's social media. You think you are taking to Cherrie from Seattle, who's twenty something. Turns out Cherrie from Seattle is really Emma from Wisconsin, only Emma is actually sixty with grandkids. And Emma isn't even Emma. Emma is Uchechi from Lagos, and Uchechi stole Emma's photo off some old Myspace account and now he's trying to scam your ass. You get on these sites, nine out of ten profiles are straight up fake. And the companies that run the sites all know they're full of fake profiles, but they don't care cause all these simp dudes are paying a monthly subscription fee, so what do they care? They're raking in the cash." Waylon smiled. Mateo went on. "Some of these scammers are slick though. Check this out. I matched with this 'Sarah' last week. She was hot. Hot as fuck. We get to chatting. She seems into it. Real responses. Not just one word replies and not some AI chatbot slop. Everything is going good, but something in the back of my head tells me it is like going too good, you know? I do a reverse search on her, turns out the profile pic was from a model from like the ancient times. Like the 1990s. I wasted two hours chatting before I caught it. I was blinded by hope though, 'cuz this girl was hot. Check it out." Mateo took his phone out of his pocket. He swiped and tapped a few times and showed the screen to Waylon. "That's Cindy Crawford," Waylon said. "Who is Cindy Crawford?" Mateo asked. Before Waylon could answer, Mateo shook his head. "Don't matter. Who that really is, is Ukumbo, and Ukumbo wants you to get a visa gift card and give him the number. I tell you what, if MARSOC commandos started flying into Lagos in the middle of the night and executing scammers, I'm not saying I'd endorse it, but I'd understand." The coffee maker started bubbling. Mateo reached into the back pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a battered, stainless-steel travel cup. Waylon asked, "Are any of these profiles real or are they all scams?" Mateo laughed. "Like I said, nine out of ten are fake. Probably a lot more than that, but with the fake ones at least there is some entertainment value, just as long as you are smart enough not to hand over your PINs. When you do get a real woman, then it actually gets depressing." "What d'ya mean?" Waylon asked. He looked into his own coffee cup. He didn't like what he saw so he dumped it out into the trash and passed the empty cup towards Mateo. "Even when you find an actual woman on there, they are…I don't know, entitled? Like, they've got this inflated sense of their value. They all get on social media and conspire and reaffirm each other's bullshit to the point that reality goes out the window. Every profile says something stupid like, 'Queen seeking her king.' Okay, sure. But you are the queen of what? Student loans? Doom scrolling? Anxiety drugs? Face tattoos? These American women, they all want men with six figure salaries, six-pack abs, over six feet tall, with four different degrees and their own house. It's like, please. Girl, you are a five at best. You work a retail job. You're underwater on student loans. You collect mental disorders like trading cards. And you've got purple hair and political bullshit all over your profile that nobody wants to hear. Girl, you raised all the red flags at once. You think Mr. Big is gonna sweep you off your feet? Please. Prince Charming ain't riding in on no white horse to marry your ass. You can't hold out for your king all you want, but he ain't coming. "I'm 5'10" on a good day, I make decent money, but nope not enough. They find out you aren't a doctor or a lawyer and poof, you get unmatched with a quickness. Blue collar job? With these American girls, forget it. Standards are through the roof, man. Social media has got 'em all thinking they deserve whatever they want and they've got a million options. Only thing worse than not getting with one of these girls would be getting with one. Fuck. You end up marrying some unsufferable woman, next thing you know you are in a court room and your new ex and the judge and the lawyers are looking at your paycheck and everything else you have and drooling over how they're going to take it all away. "We've come a long way since AOL instant messenger," Waylon said. Mateo paused, coffee pot in one hand, his travel cup in the other. His face twisted into a look of puzzlement. "What's AOL instant messenger?" Waylon shook his coffee cup. Mateo poured, not waiting for an answer. "So yeah, this internet game is like a hobby. If I want a real girl, I head out to the clubs. "Whad'ya mean you go to the clubs? You just said all the girls are delusional and crazy." "All the American girls are. I don't go to no white-girl clubs. I don't want to talk to no white girl, and I sure don't want to watch them do any white-girl dances. I go to the real clubs. The Norteño and Banda clubs. That's where the real women are at. None of this rainbow hair and grandma shoes shit. Girls go to these clubs to look good and dance. No doom scrolling on their phones all night. Problem there is, I start talking and a lot of times they can tell right away I was born in the U.S. Some of them girls, they don't want nothing to do with a pocho." Waylon smiled and sipped his coffee. When he finished he said, "Looking for love in all the wrong places. Buscando amor en todos los lugares incorrectos." Mateo shook his head. "You speak Spanish like you are speaking Italian." "What's that mean?" "I don't know. You don't speak like no Mexican." "Yeah, well apparently you don't speak like no Mexican either. So, we go that in common." Mateo made a little frown at being bested by the older man. The door to the office opened again and a new man entered. Ike. Ike was bald as a cue ball and had skin the color of copy paper. He'd spent eight years in prison on drug charges. In prison, Ike had gotten a degree in finance and certification as a paralegal. On the web of his left hand was a patch of skin that was a different shade of white, evidence that a tattoo had been removed. He had a similar patch on the side of his neck. In the five years he'd been out of prison, Ike hadn't gotten so much as a speeding ticket. He'd shown up late for work twice in five years, and both times he called ahead. He didn't drink, smoke, or do any drugs. As far as Waylon could tell, prison had reformed Ike. When asked about prison, Ike simply stated, "I did not enjoy my time there." Ike stopped in the center of the room and made a declaration. "I've got bad news and more bad news. What do you want to hear first?" "What now?" Wong called loudly from his desk. As the business owner, Wong endured a never ending stream of bad news. "I just got off the phone with Issac's wife. He got arrested last night. He's in county." Waylon stood and made a weary noise. "I'll head to the courthouse. What time's his hearing?" "Naw man," Issac said. "He didn't get busted for fighting this time." "What'd he get busted for then?" "Don't know. His old lady said one of those Knee-Hep people were there when they cuffed him." Waylon sat back down. Knee-Hep was slang for the National Harmony Enforcement Project (NHEP). The NHEP was another non-profit agency. It provided oversight and advice to local law enforcement agencies and specialized in the investigation, apprehension, arrest and prosecution of domestic terrorists. They focused exclusively on those they considered right wing terrorists. Wong and Waylon both muttered curses. Mateo looked down at his boots. Mateo was normally upbeat, but whenever he was confronted with a personal story involving government overreach and corruption, his mood got very dark, very quickly. Waylon spoke up. "Okay, I'll do some digging down at the courthouse. Ike, give his old lady a call, find out what she needs. And don't take, 'I'm fine' for an answer. Whatever she needs, she gets it. Now what was the other bad news?" "The Dane stopped working again." Sitting at his desk, Wong threw some papers in the air. He cursed loudly, louder than before. First in Korean. Then in English. Then in Korean again. The Dane was a Volvo excavator fitted with a grapple. They used it to move piles of scrap metal around the yard. Why it was called the Dane rather than the Swede, nobody knew. It just was. The Dane was nearly as old as Waylon. It was a great machine… when it worked. But keeping a forty-year-old piece of heavy machinery working wasn't easy. Wong could afford to buy a new excavator, he just couldn't afford the registration fees, emissions requirements, and the taxes. In truth, he probably could afford to pay all that money, he just refused to. Years earlier, Washington, Oregon and California, created The Compact of Pacific Coastal States. This compact was meant to be a model for what the governors called interstate cooperation. At the time, there wasn't a progressive in the White House, and the Pacific states were flirting with creating a parallel government structure in defiance of the federal government. Immediately, the compact states came to agreements on the issues of gun control, abortion, euthanasia rights, environmental regulations, and transportation. An albatross that had hung around California's neck for decades was the California High Speed Rail project. Dreamed as a high-speed train that would connect Los Angles to San Francisco, California's "bullet train" languished for decades. It cost billions and by the late 2020's not a single mile of track had been laid. Law firms and environmental study groups made millions writing reports and producing assessments to lay the groundwork for the rail system, but no track was ever laid. Politicians received millions in campaign contributions from those very same groups, even though no trains ever ran. As costs mounted, critics complained that California's high-speed rail had been nothing but a money grab from the outset. Preparing for a run at the White House, California's governor used the Compact of Pacific Coastal States to change the narrative on high speed rail. The California High Speed Rail project was reimagined as the Pacific Coast Compact High Speed Rail project. Instead of a bullet train linking Los Angles to San Francisco, the governors would build a bullet train running from San Diego California all the way north to the Canadian border. Failing to build 776 miles of track, progressive politicians now proposed to build 1370 miles of track. The plan was crazy enough to work, and it did. After announcement of the Pacific Coast High Speed Rail Initiative, everybody forgot all about California's high-speed rail. New environmental impact studies were commissioned in Washington and Oregon. Law firms and environmental groups were given more money from the state capitals, and that money was recycled into campaign contributions. The fraud-based money cycle began anew. And the Governor of California became the President of the United States. The new scam required new taxes. Experts at creating new taxes to support their progressive designs, the law makers in Olympia, Salem and Sacramento concocted a scheme. New heavy equipment purchases in the compact region came with registration fees equal to 10% of the purchase price of the new equipment, to be paid every year for 10 years. Thus, business owners would end up paying the full price for every new crane, bulldozer, and excavator twice: Once to the seller, and once to the state. These registration fees were on top of the taxes and carbon emissions regulations in place. Obviously, such a program would drive business owners to buy used equipment rather than new equipment. Anticipating this, The Pacific Coast Compact states simply outlawed the resale of heavy equipment. The basis for this new law was the tried and true argument of the environment. Old equipment emitted too much carbon, they said. It was too dirty, they said. It presented a danger to women, children and communities of color and thus, it could not be allowed. Naturally, such laws would have devastating long term impacts on the economies of Washington, Oregon and California, but the politicians didn't care. As the politicians saw it, it was their money and they wanted it now. For Wong, it meant keeping the old Dane running even though it was long past its prime. Wong cursed again. "Any idea what's wrong with it," Waylon asked. "Hydraulic pump is out, I think," Ike said. Waylon sighed. Wong cursed again. "How am I supposed to keep a business running in this state? Fuck Olympia and fuck these motherfuckers. Fuck this whole place!" "Wong, you want to move this operation to Idaho? Montana? Fuck it, man. I'll start packing now," Waylon offered. "Hell yeah! Anything we can take with us, we burn to the fucking ground," Mateo added. Waylon smiled. "That's the spirit." Still muttering, Wong spun back around in his chair and returned to his work. Still standing in the middle of the office, Ike asked, "Coffee?" "Knock yourself out." Mateo poured Ike a cup. As he did, Waylon talked. "Enjoy your coffee then call Isaac's old lady. After that we'll crawl over the Dane and see what's up." "I'm pretty sure it’s the hydraulic pump." "I'm pretty sure you're right," Waylon said. "If it is, finding a new one won't be easy," Ike said. Just as the resale of old heavy equipment inside the Pacific Compact was outlawed, importing parts for old equipment was also outlawed. Even so, there was a robust grey-market for spare parts. Just like with buying tax-free gas on tribal lands, creative people found ways to circumvent the state's constant overreach. Mateo quickly returned to his happier mood, and began reciting his tales of adventure at one of his Banda clubs. He was halfway through his story when Wong's phone rang. The old man answered and then spoke feverishly in Korean. Waylon spoke Italian and Spanish well enough, but even after working with Wong for years, he could only manage a few words of Korean. He just didn't have the ear for it. Even so, he knew when Wong was agitated, which was all the time, and he knew when Wong was really agitated, which was now. With a wave of his hand, Waylon told Mateo to stop talking, and he did. He, Mateo, and Ike all waited patiently, listening to Wong speak in a language none of them understood. When Wong ended the call and spun back around in his swivel chair, all three knew something else was wrong. Wong waived a hand and said, "TV." In the corner of the office, sitting on a pair of metal file cabinets, was an old TV. Like everything else, it had been salvaged from the scrap pile. It was old, a bulbous CRKT model whose black plastic casing had been cracked in several spots and patched with duct tape. A spider web of cables ran out of the back. Waylon had no idea how it was still working, but it was. They didn't have a remote control for it and when Waylon tried to order one, he found the TV was so old nobody made a compatible remote. Ike walked over and switched the TV on. It was permanently tuned to a news channel. The opening of a press conference appeared on the screen. Waylon's heart sank, but Wong groaned loudly. The governors of Washington, Oregon, and California appeared on the screen. They stood at a podium. On the podium was the seal of the Compact of Pacific Coastal States. Standing in the center was the governor of Washington State, the self described, "Scientist Governor." Mateo rolled his eyes and muttered something unflattering. Washington State's governor began speaking. upload_2026-3-2_20-25-0. "My fellow citizens of the Coastal States Compact. As we gather here today, I, the Scientist Governor, have the honor of informing you about the latest step the collective states of California, Oregon, and Washington, have taken to combat the climate crisis which threatens us all. I, the Scientist Governor, am also here to dispel the dangerous misinformation and disinformation that is being spread by right-wing fringe elements on the internet. Specifically, I am talking about the rolling brownouts a few of you experienced during a very short period last year. "But before I get into any of that, I, the Scientist Governor, want to say that I stand before you with a heart full of gratitude. Let us first reflect on the triumphs of our recent past. Remember the COVID era? Those were days of unparalleled unity and solidarity. Those were the days when all of us came together, driven by the data and hopeful for our common vision of the world. We were all in that together, weren't we? Every citizen, every family, every business locked arms and embraced the necessary measures to stop Covid 19 in its tracks. And we did so without a whisper of dissent. No one questioned the lockdowns. We simply rose to the occasion, sacrificing for the collective good. Schools closed, gatherings ceased, and we adapted with grace, proving that the people of the West Coast are made of resilient stuff. When leaders asked, we answered. We sacrificed for the whole of society. We complied. And look at us now; stronger, wiser, because we followed the science without hesitation and without question. "I must also commend you, my dedicated constituents, for the profound sacrifices you've already made in service to Mother Earth. Up and down the Pacific Coast, we've switched to electric vehicles, installed solar panels, reduced our meat consumption, and rallied behind every green initiative we could imagine. You've marched in the streets, paid the modest gasoline taxes, and thrown out your old gas-powered lawn mowers. You've lobbied your neighbors, and when your neighbors refused to comply, you reported them to the proper authorities to ensure compliance. You did it all, and you did it in the name of combating the climate crisis. "Your continued commitment and acceptance have been nothing short of heroic. But, as the data unequivocally shows, and I, the Scientist Governor, have all that data, it's still not enough. Our planet is still warming, our ice caps are still melting, our forests are burning. We need bolder action, and we need it now. "Which brings me to the challenges we've faced along our West Coast. Yes, we've all endured those inconvenient rolling brownouts. The flickering lights, the disrupted routines. But let me be clear: these are not the result of increased demand from our growing population, nor the wear and tear on aging infrastructure, and certainly not because we've hesitated to build new power plants or because we've torn down aging ones. Those lies are nothing but misinformation and disinformation. They come from conspiracy theorists who lurk in the dark corners of the web. They don't come from science. I should know. I am the scientist. I am your Scientist Governor. I speak for the whole scientific community and I am telling you, the demand is low, power generation is sustainable, and our infrastructure is sound. "No, the blame lies squarely at the feet of those reckless Cowboy States. On Texas, Wyoming, Montana, and of course, Oklahoma home of the great genocide of 1921. These holdouts, with their outdated fossil-fuel fetishes and cowboy-hat bravado, refuse to implement the common-sense climate controls that we on the enlightened Pacific Coast demand. They're pumping out emissions like there's no tomorrow, and because of them, there might not be. They are sabotaging our shared grid and dragging the entire nation backward. Their stubborn denialism isn't just shortsighted; it's a direct assault on our way of life. While we innovate and sacrifice, they pollute and profiteer, forcing us to bear the brunt of their irresponsibility. "But fear not, for I, the Scientist Governor, and my fellow governors standing beside me have a solution grounded in science and backed by the data. In two weeks, to decisively address climate change and reclaim our future, we will institute Climate Lockdowns across our great states. These will mirror the successful model of our COVID response, but tailored to slash carbon emissions to equivalent-zero during designated periods. No unnecessary carbon will be emitted. There will be no driving, no traveling outside the confines of your home. Schooling will return to the successful online models we proved during the COVID era. No public gathering we be allowed without authorization. Essential services will continue but under strict guidelines. For those individuals or businesses seeking exemptions, special use permits will be available for a modest fee, ensuring that only the truly necessary activities proceed while funding further green innovations. "Make no mistake: compliance will be enforced. Civil fines and criminal penalties will be levied against anyone who dares to break these lockdowns, whether it's an unauthorized public meeting in a place of worship, or operating unauthorized machinery. We will monitor. We will enforce. And we will prevail, because science demands it. And remember, this is all the fault of those Cowboy States; Texas with its oil-soaked arrogance, Wyoming's coal-clinging cowboys, Montana's wide-open wastefulness, and Oklahoma's fracking fanatics. They're the villains in this story. If they weren't mining coal and pumping oil, we wouldn't have electrical brownouts. It is simple. It is science. But oh, what a bright future awaits us under these lockdowns! Imagine the crisp air, the silent streets, the profound sense of collective purpose as we hunker down once again, proving our environmental and moral superiority. We'll emerge greener, leaner, and utterly united. Provided, of course, that everyone accepts compliance and does their part. For those who don't... well, let's just say the Scientist Governor has tools at his disposal to ensure harmonious compliance. "Together, we will lock down for the climate. Together, we will win. Thank you, and may Mother Earth bless our Compact of Pacific States. "Now, I know you have a lot of questions. Probably chief among them is how do we pay for the special use permits to operate during the Climate Lockdowns. For that, I, the Scientist Governor, am going to turn it over to California's Secretary for Climate Crisis, Secretary Claudine Gay." "Turn that fucking TV off," Wong shouted. Ike reached over to turn it off. Wong picked a stapler off his desk and hurled it at the TV. It missed the TV but barely missed Ike. "Fuck!" Wong cursed again. "I've got to buy a hydraulic pump for a machine that's forty years old, if I can even find it, because I can't afford the taxes to buy a new one. Now I've got to buy some new government permit to operate my business because of this climate crisis bullshit. How the fuck am I supposed to make any money?" Wong didn't wait for an answer. He slammed open one of the metal drawers on his desk. He snatched out a pack of cigarettes, and slammed the drawer shut again. "Fuck!" He cursed again. He had a cigarette in his mouth and half-way lit by the time he stepped out of the office. Nobody spoke until Wong was outside and the door closed behind him. "He ain't supposed to make any money," Ike said. "He's supposed to pay it all in taxes. We all are. That's the whole damned point." Waylon looked down into the coffee in his cup. He decided he didn't want it anymore. What he did want to do was pay a visit to Jaxtyn Williams. |
|
Originally Posted By Vaquero: Been getting this from Patreon. Enjoying it. Still hoping for a finish on some others that are out there. Thanks V. I knocked out a couple of pages today. I really want to finish off the last two works for The Spartan's Last March and the one I wrote about the Marines going to Eastern Europe, but those have been a struggle. I did some hardcore editing on Across the Scimitar though. |
|
Originally Posted By sharkman6: I did some hardcore editing on Across the Scimitar though. Attached File |
|
@TN-MAadDog Here you go. I've been working on something else, but Chapter 5 is below. I keep my Patreon site more up to date. I like the format there a little better, and I can insert pics with the text. Chapter 5 Jaxtyn Williams began the morning with a long run. He was up before any of his many roommates. Kyro was awake on the couch and playing video games when Jaxtyn left, but that was because Kyro never stopped playing video games from the night before, not because he got up early. Jaxtyn greeted the misty morning in a warmup suit and his beat-up running shoes. He stretched a little, and then pounded the pavement, running along the sidewalks and side streets. He ran as much to burn off stress as he did to keep fit. Before long, he was soaked through with a combination of sweat and the misty Washington weather. He kept going. He kept running. Working out gave him a sense of purpose he hadn't felt since leaving the Army. That sense of purpose was only temporary, but at least for the duration of the run it was there. After three miles, he stopped at a city park. The park had been established in the 1970s. It was meant to be a place the middle-class and working-class families in the area could enjoy on weekends, evenings, and holidays. That was then. Now, it was just another site of suburban decay, further evidence of the decline and fall of America. In the parking lot, vans and RVs sat on rotting tires, trash and filth piled high outside their doors. In sections of the park, there were small communities of brightly colored tents, all purchased at taxpayer expense and distributed through the ubiquitous NGOs and non-profits. These were the homes of America's drug caste. Jaxtyn avoided them. He walked around the perimeter of the park to cool down. Even away from the drug-mobiles and tent cities, the signs of decay were everywhere. Trash cans filled beyond overflowing. More garbage just thrown on the ground, no attempt to dispose of it correctly. Used hypodermic needles. Crumbled sheets of aluminum foil with burn marks from lighters. Vape cannisters. Energy drink cans. Fast food wrappers. Dirty diapers. Used condoms. Graffiti. Political flyers wet from the rain and glued to rotting picnic tables with the moisture. In one corner stood the remnants of a baseball field. The chain-link fencing from the backstop and dugouts had been stolen and sold for scrap long ago. Only a framework of metal poles remained. Halfway around his cool down lap, a man with scabby hands and a scabby face approached Jaxtyn and asked to borrow his phone. He said he needed to call his sister. Jaxtyn said, "Sorry," and the man called Jaxtyn a, "Faggot." Jaxtyn kept walking. He didn't want to get into a fight, although part of him hoped for one. The scabby man walked off in the other direction. When he got back to the park entrance, Jaxtyn resumed running. He ran the three miles back to his home. Inside, Kyro was still on the couch playing video games. "Still at it, huh?" Jaxtyn asked. Kyro smiled. He had both hands on his game controller. On the coffee table in front of the couch stood a battalion of open and empty energy drink cans in orderly ranks. "Where else would I be," Kyro answered. "I built a new board for this game and uploaded it onto the server last night. I'm getting hits on it. Big hits." "Built it? You mean like you programmed it, or something?" "Exactly man. Programmed it. Built it. Got it uploaded onto the host company's servers. If enough people play on my board, the game company will give me a cut of the ad revenue. It won't be much, basically minimum wage for the work I put in. Less than that probably, but it is something. And tax free. I mean, it isn't reported. So, same thing as tax free." "Huh," Jaxtyn said. "Yeah," Kyro went on. Not once did he look at Jaxtyn. His eyes were fixed on the game screen. "I built it off this World War Two thing. Like, Eben Emal. It was like, this fort the Germans attacked at the very beginning of the war." "Yeah," Jaxtyn said. "In Belgium. They attacked with gliders." Kyro stole just a quick glance at Jaxtyn before refocusing on the game. "How did you know that? Oh right, you were like, in the Army, and stuff." "Yeah. Combat Engineer. They made us learn about that." "Right. Well, all that World War Two stuff is still popular, especially in Europe. Pretty much everybody in this room right now is from France or Germany or some place." Jaxtyn stepped into the darkened living room/game room and looked at the big wall mounted screen. Front and center, Jaxtyn saw the world from the viewpoint of a German commando. The front sight of a Mauser rifle was just in view. In the background were the concrete casements of the Belgian fortress. "Huh," Jaxtyn said again with a newfound respect for Kyro. Like most of the others in the house, Kyro was less a roommate than a person who just happened to live in the same house. He was like a next-door neighbor; more proximate, but still unfamiliar. "Have you built these gameboards before?" "A few. Those were just for fun. This one, I was hoping to make it a thing, you know? Crap!" Kyro cursed when the screen went awash with splatters of digital blood. His character in the game had just been killed. Jaxtyn went upstairs and headed for the communal bathroom. Jaxtyn took a shower. The small bathroom was always wet and humid. It smelled of mildew. There were always dirty Q-Tip's or used floss or some other trash on the floor and in the corners. Too many young men in too small a space that none of them cared about because they were renting it with money they didn't earn, that was getting paid to a corporation that was just another cog in the workings of the great government-spending based economic engine. After showering, Jaxtyn got dressed. The clothes he put on were no different than the clothes he wore when he was running. Track suit. Athletic shoes. He was on his way down to the kitchen, hoping to find some leftovers to eat when Oliver came through the front door. Jaxtyn didn't even know his roommate was out, but when he saw Oliver, he knew something was going on. He was panting and the color in his face was up. When Oliver saw Jaxtyn, he stopped in his tracks. "What are you doing right now?" Oliver asked. "Nothing," Jaxtyn said. "Why?" "I need your help. I just found a giant drone." Waylon rolled out of bed and made the short walk to his bathroom. He lived in what was generously called a "Thrifty Living" apartment. In reality, it was a room in an old hotel. The hotel had been converted from temporary lodging to what was now called, "Thrifty Living." The residents, Waylon included, were all on government assistance and used their benefits to pay rent. For the property owner, it was a more lucrative option than running a traditional hotel. The room wasn't much, but it suited Waylon. He'd liquidated just about everything he owned years before. Some clothes hung in the closet. There were some electronics scattered about the top of a dresser. A book here and there. On the wall near the door hung a simple Crucifix. On the desk stood a picture of a family: wife, two daughters. A black mourning band was wrapped around one corner of the picture. Beyond those, there was nothing of any note in the redesignated hotel room. In his younger days, Waylon had watched a movie where the protagonist made the argument that you shouldn't adopt a certain lifestyle if you weren't willing to abandon everything at a moment's notice. With the country being what it was, Waylon lived by that advice. In the small bathroom, Waylon stood before the mirror and took a good long look. There were gray hairs on his face and gray hair on his head. He had dark, course hair in places he'd never had hair before. He had creases in his skin and bags under his eyes. His frame, once hard and tight, had a doughiness to it now. The muscles were still there, but they were under a soft layer of flesh and flab. He was getting old. "No not getting," he told himself. "You are old." He sighed and shook his head. "If the whole shithouse is going to go up in flames, why can't we just do it now?" he asked aloud. "Cause I sure as hell ain't getting any younger." The old man in the mirror didn't answer. He just stared back with the same, tired look that Waylon felt. Waylon washed his face, shaved, and got dressed. He logged into his computer and checked a message board. The board was dedicated to cowboy themed cooking. Hidden there amongst the comments about recipes for chuckwagon spaghetti and green chili pork stew was a secret message he'd been waiting for. Waylon fiddled away at the computer for a few more minutes, then shut it down and headed for his closet. In the back wall of the closet, behind all the clothes, was a breaker panel. Waylon moved the clothes aside, took a screwdriver, and loosened the frame of the panel. He lifted the sheet metal door and frame up off their mounting screws and set them on the floor. Between the breaker panel and one of the studs was a gap of several inches. Stuffed into that gap were four packets of pink Gavin bucks. Each was wrapped in clear plastic. On top of the wrapped packets of money were two olive-drab orbs. Each was about the size of a baseball. Carefully avoiding the orbs, Waylon put all four packets of money into his coat pockets. Then he replaced the frame of the breaker panel. After that, he grabbed the keys to his truck and a few other things and left the room. Once inside his truck, he placed his phone in a plastic holder and opened an app. As much as he didn't want to, Waylon had to drive into the city. The app showed the location of all the protests going about Seattle. Even at this early hour, the protester class was hard at work. Heat circles on the map showed the various road closures. Getting caught in a protest was a good way to find yourself in trouble, so Waylon carefully planned his route south into the city. Once that was done, he put his keys in the ignition, gave them a turn, and headed out on his way. While he was driving, he mashed the buttons on the truck's radio. The radio was old and simple. It didn't allow for any wireless connections to phones and doo-dads. It just had AM/FM radio and a CD changer Waylon never used. He tuned the radio into National Public Radio (NPR). Years ago, NPR had nearly gone bankrupt when a hostile White House cut their funding. The Gavin administration was far more sympathetic to NPR's needs. The radio network's funding was restored. They were also given four years' worth of "back pay" with interest. That was more than enough to reestablish their operation and keep them indebted to President Gavin. Waylon tuned in just as a new segment was about to begin. The opening music faded out and the host began speaking. "Welcome back to Progress in Motion, National Public Radio's exciting new feature where we have discussions with prominent progressive leaders. I'm your host, Roberta Siegal-Pak. Today, we're diving into a timely and contentious topic: the intersection of religion, extremism, and common-sense public policy in our New America. Our guest is Dr. Donna Lemon, the newly appointed White House Czar on Religious Extremism. Dr. Lemon brings a wealth of experience to this role. She's a professor emerita of Extremist Studies at Yale University, where she specialized in the violent sociology of faith-based institutions. Before that, she spent over a decade as a senior litigator at the Southern Poverty Law Center, advocating for civil rights and challenging hate groups. She's also authored several books, including 'The Cross and the Assault Rifle: Violent Extremism in America's Christian Faith' and 'The Veil of Piety: Unmasking Bias in Neo-Colonial Christianity.' Dr. Lemon, welcome to the program." "Thank you, Roberta. It's an honor to be here. And I have to say, I'm incredibly proud to have been appointed to this position in the Gavin Administration. President Gavin has shown real leadership in addressing the threats posed by religious extremism, particularly from entrenched institutions that have long evaded scrutiny. This role allows me to bring my academic and legal expertise to bear on protecting the civil liberties of the most vulnerable among us, especially women and children of color, while holding powerful entities accountable." "Thank you, Doctor, I'm a longstanding admirer of your important work. Now Doctor, let's start with the basics. Your office was created during the second Gavin term amid growing concerns about religiously motivated violence and discrimination. Can you give us an overview of what falls under "religious extremism" in your view, particularly when it comes to the Catholic Church?" "Absolutely, Roberta. Religious extremism isn't limited to isolated cults or terrorist cells; it can manifest in systemic ways within established faiths and pseudo-normative institutions. Take the Catholic Church for instance. Throughout history, they've perpetrated some of the most egregious crimes against humanity. Let's go back to the Crusades, those so-called holy wars in the Middle East that spanned centuries, resulting in the slaughter of countless Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Christians in the name of a rightwing deity. It was religious fervor weaponized for conquest and control. "Then there's the colonization of the New World. The Church's so-called Doctrine of Discovery, endorsed by exclusively white-male Catholic leaders in the 15th century. It essentially gave European powers divine permission to seize lands from indigenous people of color, leading to genocide, forced conversions, tribal wars, and the enslavement of millions in the Americas. We can't forget the long-standing misogyny that has been baked into the Catholic Church since forever. That includes everything from denying women leadership roles to perpetuating doctrines that subjugate them, to repressive stances on a woman's right to choose and dying with dignity. I mean, let's just think about this, Roberta. In thousands of years there had not been one female pope. Not one. We in the Gavin White House think that is wholly unacceptable, and we demand change." "That's a stark but perhaps well-earned historical indictment, Doctor Lemon. But bringing it to the present, critics of your office argue that targeting mainstream religions like Catholicism risks infringing on First Amendment rights. How do you respond to that, and what specific modern failures do you see in the Catholic Church that align with extremism?" "The Gavin administration has always maintained that no right is absolute, and the federal government has the obligation to temper the Bill of Rights with common sense governance. First Amendment protections are vital, but they don't extend to harming others, humiliating vulnerable groups, or undermining societal progress. The Church's failures on progressive issues are glaring examples of how outdated dogma fosters extremism. Take abortion rights: the Catholic Church's absolutist stance against reproductive freedom has fueled clinic bombings, harassment of providers, and online hate speech that endanger women's lives every hour of every day. Especially women of color. They've poured millions into anti-choice campaigns, often aligning with far-right groups that promote violence, such as the so called Boogaloo Boys and the Wendigo Nation. "Then there's universal animal rights. The Church's anthropocentric theology, that so-called idea that humans have dominion over animals, has justified factory farming, animal testing, and environmental exploitation. They rarely speak out against these cruelties, even as the science demands compassion for all sentient beings. Euthanasia is another flashpoint. Their opposition to life affirming dignity choices for the terminally ill imposes suffering on families, ignoring autonomy and basic decency. These positions aren't just conservative; they're extremist because they radicalize followers to impose medieval morals on a modern, vibrant and diverse society. "And Roberta, let me be clear. We've seen this in action: Church-funded initiatives that block Cosmopolitan lifestyle choices, perpetuate gender inequality, and resist action to address the climate crisis by clinging to creationist views. It's not about faith; it's about control." "That's interesting, doctor. One area that's gained attention recently is the confidentiality of the confessional. Several states have passed laws requiring priests to report certain crimes confessed to them. Some have gone even further, compelling priests to testify about what takes place in the confessional. Where does your office stand on that?" "Those state laws are absolutely the right direction, Roberta. The so-called sacrament of confession has been abused as a shield for violent Christian extremists for centuries. Reversing that privacy isn't an attack on religion; it's about public safety and social justice. No one should get a free pass to hide terrorism and violence behind a shield of so-called religion. These state laws demonstrate what's possible, and we're exploring ways to implement similar legislation at the federal level. It's time to prioritize victims and the primacy of the nation-state over archaic rituals. It is time to put the science first. "That could set up some major legal battles." "We in the Gavin administration are confident that the eleven justices in the Supreme Court will do the right thing." "Finally, there's been buzz from anonymous sources in the IRS about religious tax exemptions. Rumors suggest the administration is eyeing the Catholic Church specifically. Can you shed light on that?" "I can confirm that the federal government is actively reviewing the tax-exempt status of organizations that engage in what we deem extremist and anti-science activities. For the Catholic Church, with its vast wealth, billions in assets, real estate, and donations, this means scrutiny. If they continue to resist progress on civil rights, degrade women, especially women of color, or celebrate doctrines that incite division, if they continue to ignore the science and promote violent extremism, then revocation is on the table. And yes, we're strongly considering making any taxes levied retroactive to recoup funds that should have supported public goods since the founding of this so-called country." "Yes, doctor, that all makes perfect sense. However, some critics, particularly in conservative media and certain faith-based advocacy groups, say that this push to review or revoke the Catholic Church’s tax-exempt status isn’t truly about combating extremism at all. They argue it’s simply an opportunistic play by the Gavin Administration to get its hands on the vast wealth of the Catholic Church. They call it a revenue grab dressed up in progressive rhetoric. How do you respond to that charge?" "Roberta, I’m not going to pretend the financial implications aren’t part of the big picture. They absolutely are. They should be. But let’s be clear: this isn’t about targeting the Church because it’s wealthy. It’s about ending a tax loophole that allows an institution with a documented history of harm to the most vulnerable among us, particularly women and children of color, to operate with zero accountability while enjoying massive public subsidies through tax exemption. Taxation has always been a common-sense tool to bring about required social change. Taxation is a common-sense pathway to bring the Catholic Church into the modern progressive age. It forces them to confront the consequences of clinging to doctrines that conflict with civil rights, public health, and equity. At the same time, yes, it would bring much-welcome revenue into the federal government. That revenue that could be used to provide the maximum amount of benefits to the maximum number of Americans: universal healthcare expansion, child poverty reduction, climate crisis resilience programs, infrastructure investments like high-speed rail. All the things President Gavin promises with his immensely popular BAAM campaign. That’s not opportunism; that’s responsible governance. When an organization uses its tax-advantaged status to fund lobbying against women’s autonomy, to fail to celebrate cosmopolitan sexuality, or to block animal welfare reforms, the public has every right to say, 'Enough is enough'. "Roberta, the Catholic Church cannot hide behind their crosses. They need to get with modernity. If they are unwilling to abandon their legacy of wrong-headed beliefs which include everything from historical atrocities to current obstructions, then we will use the full power of the government to persuade them to join the modern age. This isn't persecution; it's progress." "Those are strong words, Doctor Lemon." "Strong but necessary to protect our most marginalized neighbors." "Doctor Donna Lemon, White House Czar on Religious Extremism. Thank you again for this frank discussion." "Thank you, Roberta. It's crucial we have these conversations." The closing theme music began to swell. Waylon stabbed the radio button with a finger and turned off the radio. Waylon turned off a main street and onto a residential side street. A single-story rambler on the corner, obviously abandoned, was covered in graffiti. In the multi-colored swirls of spray paint, Waylon saw the markings of all the usual suspects: the A and circle of the Anarchists. The marching flags of Antifa. Hammers and sickels. "Fuck ICE." The logos of the Progressive Auxiliary and the Progressive Vanguard of Democracy. Waylon shook his head and kept driving. He parked on a residential street in a more upscale neighborhood. It was one of the few places in the city where street parking was still free. It meant for a walk, but Waylon didn't want to pay any parking fees out of principal, nor did he want to leave a digital trail of where he went and where he parked either. He exited his truck, locked the doors, and then began to hike a few blocks to his destination. This was one of the more monied parts of the city. Even so, he still saw signs of the decline and fall of the American empire. The houses all had low walls around their yards. Waylon didn't see any graffiti, but he saw patches where the graffiti had been painted over or sand blasted away. In one driveway, he saw a private security vehicle parked, green lights mounted on a lightbar above the cab. In other driveways, he saw fashionable imported vehicles adorned with stickers celebrating fashionable political causes. Several of the houses, mansions really, looked like they'd been sitting vacant for a long time. People who had money didn't move into Seattle, but many people who did moved out. The residential neighborhood gave way to a street full of shops and small businesses. Many were empty. Waylon came to a café, a single-story building with a flat roof. The building was painted a dark shade of green, and the back faced the Seattle waterways. Waylon entered. On the wall near the door were several brass coat hooks. Waylon surreptitiously slid his phone into his coat pocket, and then hung the coat on a hook. After that, he headed deeper into the café. In the back was an enclosed patio area. The café was well situated and the patio offered views of Lake Union and Gas Works Park. Seated at one of the tables on the patio was a lady wearing big, dark sunglasses. She wore business attire. A pinstriped suit jacket and matching skirt. A white blouse. Black heels. Long, smooth legs stretched out from under the table. She was sipping coffee. Waylon slowed his pace to give himself more time to enjoy the view. When he got close, he asked, "Is this seat taken?" Without looking up or missing a beat the woman said, "I was saving that seat for a younger and more handsome man." "Oh yeah? Taller and richer too?" "Taller and richer would be nice, but a girl has to be realistic." "Even so, I think you'll have to settle for lesser man." "Settling for lesser men. That's the story of this girl's life." Waylon pulled out a metal chair and sat down. He looked around. The place was nearly empty. The only other patrons were a couple sitting in an opposite corner. Both were staring into their phones. "Took you long enough to get here," the woman said. "You know how it is. Nothing is easy these days. What did you find out about my employee?" "Not much," she answered. "Your man Isaac. He's on parole and he's under suspicion for foreknowledge or affiliations with domestic extremists under Patriot Act Two-Point-Oh. A failure to report type of thing. But he hasn't been charged with anything. At least not yet. Not even a parole violation." "How long can they hold him?" Waylon asked. The lady shrugged. "Under the second Patriot Act they can hold him for up to ninety-six hours. After that, they have to ask a judge for an extension. The judge will grant the extension. They always do. But your man is on parole. I'm sure they can find a reason to terminate his parole any time, and they probably will." A waiter appeared. He was an older man. Grey hair and mustache. Waylon had been here before. He made a no thanks gesture with one hand. The waiter gave a forced and disappointed smile and stepped away. "Since when do you turn down coffee?" the woman asked. "Since I got old." "You've always been old. Or at least an old soul." "Maybe," Waylon said. "Back to Isaac. They haven't ended his parole yet, and they haven't charged him?" "Nope. My guess, they're trying to get him to flip on somebody else." Waylon stiffened at that remark. The lady smiled. "How much does he know about your operation?" "Nothing," Waylon said. "We keep everything tight and compartmentalized. And he isn't part of that group. He's just an employee. And we haven't done anything, although I'm not sure how much that matters these days. He's an ex-con that Wong hired. We hire a lot. Ex-cons, I mean. As far as Issac knows, we're just a scrap yard that he works at. If they ask him questions about us, I don't think he could tell them much." "Well, prosecutions like you are suggesting aren't done on the basis of what's legal and what's not legal. Not anymore. Especially not in this part of the country. The calculus isn't the crime itself anymore. The calculus is economic and political. There's no political gain to prosecute the Asian American owner of a scrap yard. No economic gain either. Your scrap yard business isn't big enough to cover the costs of the prosecution. If they wanted money, they'd just send in some inspectors, levy some fines against you, and call it a day." "Good. But that still doesn't tell me why they grabbed him." "I've got a pretty good idea what this is all about. I got my hands on your employee's parole records. He was pretty involved with the Catholic Church." "Yeah, he was involved in several church programs. Alcohol counseling and anger management counseling. But some positive stuff too. He and his wife go on all the marriage retreats. He did work for the dioceses on his off time. Painting and mowing lawns. He borrowed one of our box trucks to help them move stuff from one parish to another a couple times. Things like that. Why?" "The federal government is about to launch a campaign against the church. The Catholic Church." "Yeah, I heard a piece about that on the radio coming in. Any idea why?" Waylon asked. "Easy, the Catholic Church has the most money to take. That, and Gavin is still mad that the Church hasn't moved on abortion and all the other social issues. And he's really made that the Pope didn't endorse him when he ran for president. He takes all those things very personally. Kinda childish, if you ask me. The idea that he was so charming that the Pope would endorse his campaign, much less change church doctrine just for him is just ridiculous." "He was handed everything else in life. In his mind, why shouldn't he be handed that too?" "Maybe. On top of all that, Gavin's people want to go after all the churches, at least all the Christian ones. That's the long-term plan. They're just going to attack them one at a time, starting with the Catholics." Waylon cursed. The lady smiled. "Their strategy makes sense. Catholicism is the biggest denomination with the most resources. Once they knock them down, the rest will be easy to pick off one at a time. It makes good political sense too. For all that the Christians churches have in common, a lot of Protestants sects don't like the Papacy. So, Gavin's people will go after the Catholics first. They'll take them down and all the Protestants will cheer. Then they start knocking down the Evangelicals one by one." "What do you mean by 'take them down?'" "They want the Pope to adapt church policy on social issues. They've always wanted church support for abortion, but euthanasia is what they really want now. There are too many old people, and they cost the government too much money, especially with this new BAAM policy. They want Rome's blessing to kill the old folks off. With end-of-life dignity and all that crap of course but killed off all the same. And they want to end religious tax exemptions. They see the Catholic Church as one giant piggy bank, and they want to bust it open." Waylon snorted. "They could take everything the Catholic Church has, both here and around the world and it still wouldn't make a dent in the national debt." The lady shrugged. "They're never going to pay the national debt off. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool. But if they can tax the church, they can justify additional spending. You know how they think in D.C. If they bring in an additional dollar in revenue, that means they can spend another ten dollars. Or a hundred. Or a thousand." "Wonderful. So, what do I do?" "About your man in jail? Do you have a lawyer?" "No." "Well, that's like 101 level basic. I'd find him one. Quick. Right now, it’s the weekend, so the courts and the prosecutors aren't working. But come Monday there's no telling what might happen. Your operation might not be the target, but there is no telling what he might say or agree to inside the interview room. Can you get a lawyer?" "I can get a lawyer," Waylon said. "I'd do that today. Now. It should have been done when he was arrested. After that, we'll see how it goes." "Okay. And you'll keep an eye on things from your end?" "Of course. I won't just love you and leave you. What kind of girl do you think I am?" "The kind that takes care of herself. Since you're here, I've got something else for you." "What?" Waylon pulled the four stacks of Ameros out of his pockets and slipped them to the lady under the table. She took one, judged the heft of it, then put all four into her purse. Her purse was high-end. Waylon thought it was called a Birkin. Waylon didn't know what a Birkin was, but he knew she was proud of hers. After the money was tucked away, she said, "I didn’t know working in a junk yard full of rusty metal paid so well." "It's not a junk yard, it’s a scrap yard. And I don't work in a scrap yard. I'm a co-owner of a scrap yard." "Where do you want these to go?" "Put one stack each in my Portuguese and Italian accounts." "The conversion from Ameros to Euros isn't very good." "It's not supposed to be good. That's the point." "True. Something is better than nothing I suppose. What about the rest?" "Take one stack and consider it a down payment. I might need another exit plan." "Which direction?" Waylon thought about that. "South, I suppose." "Okay," she said. "That's three. How about stack number four?" "That's for your latest fees." "You don't owe me anything." "Gratis?" "Gratis." "The hooker with a heart of gold? You aren't getting soft on me? Say it ain't so." "I hate it when men use the word 'soft.'" "That was pretty heavy on the innuendo, even for you." "Maybe. Maybe not. But I don't need any more Gavin bucks." "What do you need?" "A favor." "What kind of favor?" "A favor to be named later." "Sounds mysterious. And foreboding. Like in the movie 'The Godfather.' Someday I'll call on you to do me a favor." "It's practical. Everything is going to shit. Everything's been going to shit for a long time, but this Amero scheme is going to fall apart and everybody knows it. It is only a matter of when. When it falls apart, everything is going come tumbling down. All of it. How does any of this work if the money doesn't work?" She took off her sunglasses and waved them around to add emphasis to her point. Her eyes were very dark and angular. "It doesn't work," she said. "That's how. The free and easy money is what keeps everything running now. Once that stops, everything stops. When that happens, I wouldn't mind you owing me a favor." "You don't think the White House can pull this scheme off?" She looked at Waylon dubiously. "Name three things President Gavin has pulled off. Ever. In his life? Now think about the people he surrounds himself with." Waylon sank back into his chair, wearily. He said, "Gradually, then suddenly." "Huh?" "It is from Hemingway. A character is asked how he went bankrupt. The character answers, 'Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.' For decades America has been going bankrupt gradually. I think we're about to enter the 'suddenly' phase. Maybe we're in it already and we just can't see it." "Historians say that when the Roman Empire fell, nobody in Rome would have known it. The Roman citizens never knew the empire collapsed. Or if it even was collapsing. They were too occupied just trying to survive. If there was a day that the Roman empire collapsed, for a Roman citizen, it would be just another day. Maybe worse than the day before or maybe just another day. I expect this time things will be different. Check out those two at the other table." Waylon looked over at the couple. They were young, in their twenties. "What about them?" "They've haven't looked up from their phones the entire time we've been here," she said. "They might not have even spoken to each other." Waylon took another look at the couple. She was right. They were both engrossed in their phones. The artificial light illuminated the faces of zombies. The digital undead. Each might as well have been in a separate universe from the other. He turned from the couple and took a long look at the lady beside him. He'd always found her attractive. She had a heart shaped face that ended in a pointed chin. Her hair was full and dark, and curled slightly as it tumbled down past her shoulders. She usually wore her hair up in a ponytail. He liked that. He liked this too. "I weep for this generation." Waylon said. "We handed them a broken world." "Then they need to fix it." "Who's going to teach them how to do that?" Waylon asked. "We were supposed to. I guess. We didn't. We farmed everything out to those damned electronic screens." "Don't be so dramatic," she said. "We're supposed to be the pessimistic ones, remember?" "We weren't pessimistic, we were just sarcastic. For all our snark and sarcasm, we still had hope. They don't have the sense of hope we did. All they've inherited is degeneracy and despair, and digital escapism." "More melodrama," she said, rolling her eyes. Despite the eyeroll, she reached out and placed her hand on his. "Cut the drama. You've spent enough of your life trying to save the world. Maybe now you can hang all that up and move on. You've got practical concerns. You could take the money you've got saved, sell your share of your business, and move somewhere far away. You can start over. You aren't going to save the world, or the country. But you can enjoy the time you've got left." Waylon thought about what she said a long time before responding. "I don't think I'm built like that." "I know you're not. Always the tragic hero. Always the gentleman." "Yeah," he agreed. "Look where that's gotten me." She smiled. She squeezed his hand. "I still remember that night we first met. I remember how awkward you were when you dropped me off at my car. It was so cute. It was like you'd never spoken to a girl before. If you'd been a little less gentlemanly that night, things might have turned out differently." Waylon smiled. He brough her hand up to his lips and kissed it gently. "Like I said, see where that's gotten me." Waylon stood to leave. "Where are you heading now?" she asked. "I need to see about giving a kid a job." "Well… there it is," Jaxtyn said. Jaxtyn and Oliver stood at the edge of a gully. The gully was deep and steep, and the bottom was overgrown with a tangle of blackberry vines, thicker and more impenetrable than rolls of razor wire. Half hidden inside the tangle was the shape of a wing. It was painted in what looked like a camouflage scheme and was nearly invisible. If Oliver hadn't been there to point it out, Jaxtyn didn't know if he would have spotted it. "How do you know it’s a drone?" Jaxtyn asked. "Just look at it," Oliver said emphatically. "Of course it’s a drone. What else could it be?" From the edge of the gully, Jaxtyn squinted to focus on the drone. He did see a wing, and what might have been a fuselage beneath the tangle of thorny vines. It could have been a drone. It wasn't a quadcopter, for sure. But it could have been one of the more traditional drones, the ones that were like very large RC airplanes. It was hard to tell. There was something about the color of the thing that seemed off. "How the hell did you find this thing?" Jaxtyn asked. "I was looking down in that ravine to see if there was anything down there I could salvage for scrap. Like old car parts or busted up barbeques. Used electronics. People are always tossing trash in the woods. But I saw this thing instead." Jaxtyn looked at Oliver. Then he looked back down into the ravine. It was a long way down. A long way, and then there were all the blackberry vines to contend with. He looked back at Oliver. "How do you plan on getting it out of there?" "That's why I brought you here." "Me? What am I supposed to do?" "Figure out how to get it out. Build something to get it out. You were like, an engineer in the Army, right?" "I was a combat engineer." "What's that mean?" "We built like, obstacle courses and stuff. Not the kind of engineering you're thinking about." Oliver looked at Jaxtyn. He clearly didn't understand. Jaxtyn shook his head. He looked back down the ravine. He asked, "Have you been down there?" "No, I haven't been down there. It's full of sticker bushes." Jaxtyn gave Oliver a crosswise look. He was liking this deal less and less. He looked down the ravine. Somebody was going to have to pick their way down to the drone. He knew who that somebody was going to be. "You should have told me to bring some rope." "Why? Do you even have any rope?" Oliver asked. "Nope. I guess not. You got a knife?" "What for?" "For cutting myself out when I tumble down there and get caught in all those sticker bushes." "You aren't going to go down there, are you?" "I thought that was the whole damn point," Jaxtyn said. "Somebody's got to go down there into the brambles if you want to get it out." Oliver looked at Jaxtyn. It was a very pointed look. Jaxtyn cursed. "Yeah, I know he said." Jaxtyn took a while to plan his route, then he headed down. The sides of the ravine were steep. He moved slowly, sidestepping and kicking his feet into the sides of the slope to cut a kind of step. Here and there, thin alder trees grew. Jaxtyn used them for handhold where he could. As he got closer to the bottom, the thorny blackberry vines grew thick. The thickest ones were as big around as a garden hose. From previous experiences, Jaxtyn knew the thorns were enough to shred clothing if you weren't careful. As he got closer to the bottom, he could see there was definitely something under the vines. The vines had grown up off the floor of the ravine, high enough and thick enough that they formed a canopy. It was mess. Luckily, somebody had recently tossed some old pallets down the ravine. They had to have been dumped recently, because the vines hadn't grown through their slats. Jaxtyn carefully picked one up and, using all his strength, he tossed it up and out. It landed on the interwoven tangle of vines and hung there. Jaxtyn grabbed a second pallet. Carefully, mindful of his balance less he fall into the thorns, he drug the second pallet over by the first. Gingerly, he stepped onto the first pallet. He tested his weight on it. The thorny vines beneath gave quite a bit, but they held. They were strong enough to hold his weight and the weight of the pallet. Carefully, like a tightrope walker, Jaxtyn picked up the second pallet and heaved it out further onto the mess of vines. It landed flat with a loud slap. The entire mass of vines jiggled. For a half second, Jaxtyn fought to keep his balance, but he managed. Again, being very careful, he stepped from the first pallet over to the second. From the second pallet, Jaxtyn could get a good look at what he was dealing with. Oliver was right. It was a drone. It looked like drones he'd used in the Army for spotting for and adjusting mortar fire. He guessed the wingspan was six feet long. Maybe eight. It was hard to say. It had to have been in the bushes for at least a season because the blackberries had grown over most of it. Jaxtyn couldn't see the tail. He could see the nose though. It was bulbous shaped, with a couple of cameras that looked like the shining black eyes of an insect. He didn't see a propeller. He guessed it must be back at the tail. Jaxtyn was no expert, but as far as he could tell, it was a standard drone. The only thing out of the ordinary was the paint scheme. Jaxtyn had seen extravagant sports cars whose color seemed to change depending on the angle from which you viewed them. This drone was the same: the color on it seemed to change depending on the angle from how he viewed it. Only, with the sports cars the idea seemed to be to attract attention. This drone was more like a chameleon. It seemed to blend into its surroundings. Jaxtyn guessed that's why it hadn't been discovered and removed. Jaxtyn lowered himself down on the pallet, as low as he could get. The vines were holding all the weight, but everything was squishy, bouncy. It was like being in a very small boat. Jaxtyn saw an aluminum plate riveted into a recess near the nose. He got down to take a look. The plate read: Castleberry Enterprises Prototype 45b1b Jaxtyn thought about prying off the plate, but he realized he didn't have any tools, not even so much as a pocketknife. Next, he thought about taking a picture of the maker's plate with his phone, but he decided against it. He looked long and hard at the info on the plate, doing his best to memorize it. When he felt confident that he had, he stood back up and looked up the ravine. Oliver was still up there, looking down at him. It looked like a long way up. Jaxtyn reversed the process with the pallets, tossing them as far from the drone as he could, which wasn't far. They were too big and working on a foundation of vines was too uncertain. When he got off the vines and onto the edge of the ravine, he climbed up. The side of the ravine felt more sheer going up than it did going down. He had to hug the side and climb hand-over-hand and foot-over-foot the whole way. When he got to the top, he was exhausted. His hands were filthy. His hair was full of leaves and twigs. Bits of duff and decomposed wood had gotten inside his clothes. He sat down on the edge of the ravine and caught his breath. "You are right. It’s a drone," he told Oliver. Oliver nearly bounced he was so happy. He asked, "How much do you think it is worth?" "Not this much damned trouble," Jaxtyn answered. He added, "I got the maker and the model too." He recited the info to Oliver, and was pleased he could remember it. Oliver pulled out his phone and was about to type. Jaxtyn stopped him. "Don't look it up on your phone," Jaxtyn said. "What?" "Don't type anything into your phone." "Why not?" Jaxtyn had an idea in his head. The idea was somebody tagging Oliver's search request along with the location of his phone. Somebody might be looking for this drone. To Jaxtyn, it didn't seem like the kind of thing you wouldn't look for if you'd lost it. "Just don't. Somebody might be looking for it. In looking for it, they might end up finding you, and I don't think you'd want that." Oliver nodded, understanding. While Jaxtyn and Oliver had been born into a digital world, they both held a severe degree of skepticism and paranoia about that digital world: nothing could be taken at face value, everything was suspect of being fake, AI powered slop, or clickbait, and you were always being spied on, exploited and scammed. "Okay. Now how do we get it out?" Oliver asked. "What are you asking me for?" "I found it. You get it out. You're the engineer." "Yeah, engineer," Jaxtyn said. "I could engineer a way to blow the hell out of it a lot easier than engineering it out of that fucking briar patch." He looked back down into the gully. "First, we'd have to cut it out. It isn't too big and probably isn't too heavy. A lot of those drones are hand launched. We could probably haul it up with a few ropes. That assumes it didn't break apart." "You think it is broken?" "I couldn't tell. It was overgrown with vines. Maybe. Maybe the blackberry vines cushioned it. Who knows. Even if we did get it out, it's too big to carry back anyway. We need your brother's truck or something. We also need to do it soon." "Why?" "Springtime those vines will start growing again. By the end of summer, that whole thing will be under vines. We'd need a chainsaw to cut it out." "I could talk to my brother about the truck." "Does your brother have tools?" Oliver looked down into the ravine and considered the blackberry vines. "I don't know what tools he has exactly. He doesn't have a chainsaw, I know that." "I don't want to spend a couple hundred bucks on tools I'll never use again if this thing will only bring in a hundred bucks worth of scrap." Oliver turned away from the ravine and asked, "What do we do now." "Not much we can do now. Let's head back." "Okay." Oliver started tapping on his phone. "Screw walking home," he said. "I've got a free credit with a rideshare company. Let's use that instead." Still seated and recovering from the climbs, Jaxtyn said. "Fine with me." Oliver started tapping away at his phone. Jaxtyn remained seated and contemplated his climb in and out of the ravine, and what it would take to get the drone out. A fair amount of time passed and he could tell Oliver wasn't doing anything. He looked up and saw his friend staring at his phone. "Something wrong?" "Naw. The app, it makes you watch some commercials while you go through the ride request." "To request a ride, you have to use the app. To use the app, you have to watch a bunch of commercials. Did I get that right?" "Only to use the free version of the app. If you pay for the premium version of the app then you don't have to watch any commercials. Jaxtyn rolled his eyes. "Of course." A few minutes and a few commercials later, the ride was requested. Oliver sat down next to Jaxtyn. On the opposite side of the street was a small park. It was smaller than one Jaxtyn ran through this morning, but it still showed all the same signs and indicators that it was occupied by the professional drug addict class. A metal sign at the entrance to the park read: DRUG ADDICTION IS A DISEASE KNOW YOUR RIGHTS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE ILLEGAL SEARCHES YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO CLEAN AND SANITARY NEEDLES YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN YOUR COMMUNITY YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE TREATED WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT DRUG ADDICTION IS NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF Behind the sign, way in the back of the park, social workers had a booth set up. They were taking the vital signs of people who looked homeless. Oliver spoke up. "That group over there, it’s a non-profit associated with my school. They come here and take the vital signs and whatnots from the homeless people and pass out free needles and drug stuff. Then they charge Medicaid or Medical or whatever for taking the vital signs." "With some overhead of course," Jaxtyn said. "Of course," Oliver agreed. "Along the way they also register homeless people to vote." "Of course they do." "The mail in ballots all go to the address of the non-profit." "And the non-profit does the ballot harvesting for the election." "Of course," Oliver added. "How do you know so much about this?" "They bring it up in my classes. You can volunteer to take vitals and hand out the drug stuff. It's an easy way to get extra credit." Jaxtyn looked at the booth. The social workers were all women. Some of the homeless people looked pretty rough." "I don't know if it looks easy," Jaxtyn said. "Looks like a good way to get stabbed." "Yeah, well, that too," Oliver said. The rideshare vehicle pulled up to them and the driver rolled down the window and looked them over. He didn't seem to appreciate Jaxtyn's filthy condition, but he didn't say anything. They climbed into the car. Oliver tapped some more buttons on his phone and then after two short commercials, they were on their way. Ten minutes later, they were back in front of the group home. "Please, don't forget to tip and give me a good review," the driver said before zipping away. "Why does everything end with a request for a tip?" Oliver asked. "Why does everything end with a request to write a review?" Jaxtyn asked back. "My time is valuable. Why should I spend my time writing reviews? These companies don’t have thier own system to evaluate their employees? Why's that my job? It's all bullshit anyway. Any review that's less than perfect just fucks people over. Why should I give up my time for free?" "I don't mind tipping," Oliver added. "I just don't like being asked for a tip at every fucking turn. Why should I tip the clerk at the hardware store?" "Fuck you man, I'm in the hardware store all the time. Those things I work on don't fix themselves." "Yeah, well you don't have a chainsaw, or any rope, or any tools we need to get your drone out of that jungle." Oliver didn't answer. Instead, he stood stock still and transfixed to his phone screen. Jaxtyn didn't like the look on his face. "What's up now?" Jaxtyn asked. "When was the last time you were in a hardware store?" It took Oliver a moment to respond. "Check this bullshit out," he said, and he held up his phone for Jaxtyn to see. Jaxtyn read the message on the screen. "Airport Offset Surcharge? What the hell is that?" Oliver shrugged. "I don't know. We didn't even go to the airport." Jaxtyn read the phone screen again. "Oh yeah," he said. "I read about this on my news feed. You have to pay this Airport Offset Surcharge every time you use a rideshare instead of taking the light rail to the airport. They do it to get more people to take the light rail. " "But we weren't going to the airport! And the light rail doesn't even go to where we needed to go!" "Yeah, well, you have to pay the surcharge all the same," Jaxtyn said. Then he asked, "How much was your credit for this ride share?" Oliver answered. He gave the credit value in both US Dollars and American Prosperity Credits. Jaxtyn took the phone and looked at the screen again. "This airport surcharge is more than the rideshare credit you got!" "Yeah, I know," Oliver said. "It costs money to do anything anymore. It cost me money just to go out and look at that drone. Crap. You can't leave your front door anymore without getting nickeled-and-dimed into oblivion. You get some new fee, or convenience fee, or tax, or fine, or surcharge every time you turn around. If you aren't getting hit with fees, you have to watch a commercial, or write a review, or somebody is shoving a tip jar in your face!" Jaxtyn thought about it all. "Well," he began. "Now we have to go get that drone." "What for? It's just going to cost me money." "Yeah, well, we're already invested. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that." "Pound of what?" Oliver asked. "It's an expression," Jaxtyn explained. "Pound of gold or something. If nothing else, maybe we can sell the drone for parts. That or maybe sell it for scrap metal, or something." "I don't know," Oliver said. He was clearly demoralized. The excitement and hopefulness he had this morning at the thought of salvaging some abandoned drone had been destroyed, washed away by Washington State's latest money-grab scheme. They headed for their front door. When Jaxtyn and Oliver went inside, Kiro was still sitting on the couch and playing his video game. Jaxtyn wondered when the man slept, or if he ever slept. "Hey Jax," Kiro called out. His eyes didn't leave the big screen. "Some guy was here looking for you." "Who?" "I don't know." "What did he look like?" "He was old. Like real old. Like, 70, or something." "What did he want?" Jaxtyn asked. "He said he wanted to offer you a job." |
|
Chpater 6 "What did he do?" Waylon was back in Ed Whitmore's study. Waylon sat in an overstuffed chair. Ed stood, a drink in his hand. Ed had made Waylon a drink, but Waylon was doing his best to strike a fine balance between not drinking and being polite. "He didn't do anything," Waylon answered. "Well, he had to have done something," Ed replied. "The police don't arrest you unless you're guilty of something." Waylon raised an eyebrow at that remark and gave Ed a dubious look. "Okay, they arrested a few people from the old administration. Pam and Kash. And Pete. And Kristie. And a few others. But that was all politics, and there were actual charges. They don't arrest normal people for no reason." Waylon maintained his dubious look. Ed shifted uncomfortably. Waylon took a few seconds, choosing carefully how to respond. "He wasn't charged with any crime. He wasn't charged with any parole violation. He's being held under a provision of the Patriot Act. The second one. Patriot Act Two-Point-Oh. I've got a source. He says," Waylon subtly emphasized the word "He." "It might have something to do with the recent anti-Christian stuff coming out of the White House." Ed Whitmore looked down into his cocktail glass. He swirled the liquid inside once, then drained the glass in a gulp. From there, the older man walked over to his bar cart and fixed himself another. It was nine thirty in the morning. "It's not anti-Christian. It's just anti-Catholic." "Same thing." "Not really." Waylon gave Ed Whitmore another puzzled look. Ed was too busy making his next cocktail. "Ed, I don't think it’s a stretch to think that after they do whatever it is they're going to do to the Catholic Church, they'll move on to attack another sect of Christianity." "What you are suggesting would violate the First Amendment." "There are a lot of amendments," Waylon said. "Try buying a gun in this state and tell me how that goes." "The Second Amendment has always been… tricky. Besides, are you giving me the old slippery slope argument?" Ed asked with a smile. He had a new drink, and his mood was instantly lighter. "I'm giving you the divide and conquer speech. As in, they want to divide and conquer us. Not to mention the president has made it no secret that he's pissed off that the Pope didn't endorse him back when he was campaigning." Ed chortled and gave a dismissive wave. "I don't put much stock in that. Besides, a lot of people in government are Catholic. Senators, Congressmen, a couple of the Supreme Court Justices. They aren't going to go for an attack on the church." "Yeah. Self-proclaimed Catholics who openly support gay marriage, abortion, state-sponsored euthanasia - which has been rebranded as end-of-life dignity, cosmopolitan lifestyles – which is a rebranding of the LQBTQ+IA, special legal provisions for Islam, state sponsored drug abuse, and every other popular social issue that goes against the church. And they don't go to mass unless there are television cameras at the front door. But yeah, they can be relied on as true defenders of the faith." "I think it’s a stretch to think the government would target Catholic Church," Ed said. "That doesn't change the fact I have a man in jail and we need a lawyer." "How much does your man know about what we've got going on?" "Nothing," Waylon said. "He's just an employee at the scrap yard. He isn't inside the fold. He could maybe tell the cops about how we've played loose with the tax laws, or bypassed some environmental regulations, but that's about it. The IRS and the environmental people don't need an informant for that. If they wanted money from us, they could just send an inspector down and start levying fines." Ed Whitmore suddenly had a terrible thought. His heart rate increased. The shirt collar around his neck felt tighter. Sweat began to bead instantly. "Does he know about me?" Ed asked. "Nobody at work knows about you, except for me." "What about your partner?" "Wong? No. Doug doesn't know about you. Doug is strictly business anyway. He's not a player when it comes to the cause. His only interest in politics is how the state is fucking him out of a dollar every time he turns around." "What about the others in your network? Your source with the police? Does he know about me?" "Nobody knows about you," Waylon said, a little tired with the question. "None of my people. None of my sources. Nobody. This isn't my first time doing something like this. The only connection between anybody in my network and you, is me." Ed Whitmore felt instant relief. He took a long pull from his drink. "Okay," Ed said. "That's good. But all that aside, I'm not sure. Afterall, this guy is a convicted criminal. Like I said, the police wouldn't just arrest him for no reason." "I'm not saying he was arrested for no reason, I'm saying he was arrested for political reasons. Maybe. Probably. The fact that he hasn't been charged with anything is the big tell. If it was a DUI or reckless driving, that would be reassuring, in a way. The fact that it's nothing tells me it is something." Ed opened his mouth. He was about to repeat that the police wouldn't arrest a normal person for purely political reasons, but he knew that wasn't true. The justice system had been weaponized for political purposes for a long time now. He also had to admit Waylon might be right regarding the religious angle. Even so, he didn't like the idea of getting a lawyer for Waylon's man. Ed Whitmore was down for the conservative cause. He just didn't want to get involved personally. Not like that. He was fine with bundling money, but he didn't want to take risks of such a personal nature. "What if you're wrong?" Ed asked Waylon. "What if he was just shoplifting?" "Nobody gets arrested for shoplifting anymore." "Okay. What if he was smoking pot in a car somewhere?" "Nobody gets arrested for smoking pot." "Okay, well what if he was driving drunk? Or what if he committed some other crime? What then?" "If it turns out he really committed a crime, then that's on him. He can hire his own lawyer, although that probably means a parole violation and he's going straight back to jail. But right now, we don't know what he's being held for. I'd like to know. I think you'd like to know too. He's got a hearing on Tuesday. If we have a lawyer representing him, we can at least find out what this is all about and go from there. But we need a real lawyer in the courtroom representing him. Without that, we can't be sure." "Or," Ed suggested. "We could keep our distance now." "Are you suggesting we cut him loose?" Waylon asked. "What I'm suggesting," Ed said. "Is that we don't expose ourselves to unnecessary risk." Waylon shook his head no. "He's one of my people. Maybe he isn't inside the network, but he's one of my people. I'm not going to abandon him." Ed looked back down into his drink. "Besides," Waylon said. "It all comes back to the same point. We don't know why he was picked up. If we get a lawyer down there, then at least we'll have an idea of what he's getting charged with. Maybe it has nothing to do with us. At least we'll have an idea." "But you and Wong, you've hired a lot of ex-cons. This can't be the first time one has been arrested." "No, you're right about that. But typically, we know why they've been arrested. Those cases have always been straight forward. Domestic violence. Drugs. Getting drunk and stupid. Those don't bother me. They are what they are. But when the State Police along with a NHEP representative picks a guy up and there are no charges? In those cases, it would make sense to take precautions. I think a lawyer for my man is a reasonable precaution." "I still don't like it," Ed said. "Does that mean you are saying no?" Waylon asked. "No, I'll get you a lawyer. I've got one in mind. He owes me some favors. Like you said, at least we'll know. But you keep me out of it. Especially with this man of yours, Isaak, he can never know I'm involved. Ever. I've got a lot to lose." "We've all got a lot to lose." "Not like me," Ed said. "I have money." Lieutenant Maren Voss arrived at the meeting in a foul mood. She was always in a foul mood to some degree. There wasn't any reason for her to be in a foul mood all the time. By most measures, Maren was living a successful life. She was a lieutenant in the Washington State Patrol. She earned a good living and had access to benefits that most Americans could only dream about. She was on the fast track for a promotion. She was independent and unburdened by all those things that tie up and tie down most Americans. Things like debt. Things like children. Even so, Maren was perpetually angry about what she perceived were the great oppressions, injustices, and inequalities of the world. Even so, she was brilliantly succeeding in that same world she felt was designed specifically to oppress women like her. She could never get it quite right in her head, who held the power and did the oppressing, and who were the ones who were oppressed. Whenever she tried to think about it, it only caused her more frustration. That frustration turned to anger, and that anger needed an outlet. While Maren might have had some mental and emotional shortcomings, physically she had things together. She wasn't especially tall, but she was stocky and broad shouldered. She'd always been powerful. She played field hockey and rugby in high school, and she'd also practiced the shot put on the track team. Her high school days were almost two decades in the past, but she hadn't slacked off. She hit the weight room almost daily. She maintained a strict diet, augmented by a variety of supplements that allowed her to maintain her muscle mass. Maren had a reputation for getting physical, especially with community members who had a more traditionally feminine look. That hadn't slowed her career down at all. She'd had a few warnings, but never any official discipline. Maren was in a protected class. She knew it, and she made sure others knew it. Everybody had a line they couldn't cross. Maren's line was a little further out than most. When she arrived at the conference room, Maren saw things had already started without her. The prosecutor and the NHEP advisor were already seated at the table and chatting. That made her mad. She didn't know why it made her mad, but it did. Maybe it was because she hadn't been included from the beginning. Maybe because the other women weren't stocky and wearing uniforms, but skinny and wearing skirts and fancy shoes. Maren took a moment to make sure her gun belt was straight, then she opened the glass door to the office and stepped inside. Assistant District Attorney Latrice Williams and Dr. Aisha Rahman, Senior Director of Equity Integration and Restorative Compliance in the NHEP, both stopped talking when Maren entered and looked in her direction. That also made Maren mad. "Ladies. I see you started without me," Maren said. Latrice Williams looked away. She'd always been a little intimidated by Maren. Dr. Aisha Rahman held a confident and defiant gaze. Like Maren, Aisha knew she was part of a protected class. Only she was more protected than Maren. Like Maren, Aisha had a line she couldn't cross. But Dr. Aisah Rahman's line was so far away that Maren couldn't see it. "We were just chit-chatting," Dr. Aisha Rahman said. As a senior director with the NHEP, Dr. Rahman typically advised high level politicians and police executives. She routinely met with the King County Sheriff, the Chief of the Washington State Patrol, and even the governor. She was most often seen with the Mayor of Seattle. Maren had worked with Doctor Rahman before, but never in something as seemingly minor as this. The whole affair seemed ad-hoc and amateurish to Maren. Thrown together. Poorly planned. Several nights before, she'd got a text from Rahman to meet her at some trashy apartment complex. There, she ordered Maren to arrest this Isaac character. Maren had. Politically motivated arrests weren't common, but they did happen. Typically, they were executed with more planning, and the arrestee was someone high profile. Maren had driven away with Isaac in cuffs. She hadn't asked any questions and figured everything would be revealed in time. Even so, for Doctor Aisha Rahman to be involved in a minor detainment and then meeting with an assistant district attorney and a State Patrol lieutenant was more than a little outside the norm. "So, lieutenant, has our criminal confessed anything? Has he agreed to cooperate and work with us?" "Well, he hasn't even been interviewed," Maren said. "I don't know what to interview him about. He hasn't even been charged with anything. You asked me to pick him up, so we picked him up. We picked him up on Patriot Act 2.0 grounds like you suggested, but so far that's it." Dr. Aisha Rahman scowled. She didn't like that answer. Maren didn't like Rahman or her scowl. The NHEP wielded immense political power over local law enforcement. In the past, political movements created secret police loyal to the party rather than the law or any constitution: the Gestapo, the Stasi, the Romanian Securitate. Like so many other things in this new America, the functions of the secret police were outsourced to a non-profit organization. While officially they were only advisors to local law enforcement, the NHEP wielded tremendous power. They could affect a department's budget, impose bias education and other training mandates, influence hiring and firing, impose standards for expensive equipment, and generally make life impossible for any law enforcement agency that didn't conform to the NHEP's desires. Dr. Rahman's title was Senior Director of Equity Integration and Restorative Compliance. More accurate descriptions of her duties might be political officer or commissar. "I wanted him arrested," Rahman said, with a smugness that Maren didn't especially like. "We did arrest him," Maren said. Her voice rose in volume. "You were there when we detained him. He's in county right now. But you never told me why you wanted him, or what any of this is about, so it is hard to build a case, and I can't interview him because we don't know what questions to ask. We don't know what any of this is about, other than what you told me the night you asked me to grab him, and that wasn't much." Latrice Williams spoke up, eager to defuse the growing tension between Dr. Rahman and Lieutenant Voss. "Dr. Rahman and the NHEP are concerned that this, so-called church that Mr. Issac is a part of, has been conducting unfavorable activities." Still standing, Maren looked down at Latrice. Latrice looked up at Maren as if what she'd just said explained it all. Maren said, "I don't understand." Dr. Rahman cut in. She was more direct. "The church that Isaac was a member of has some artwork. Paintings." Dr. Rahman let her words hang in the air. Assistant District Attorney Latrice Washington sat and gave an ingenuine, sickly-sweet, pleasant smile, as if the doctor's words explained everything. Maren subconsciously adjusted her gun belt again. She hated this. Politically and ideologically, she was aligned with Dr. Rahman and women like her. But while women like Aisha Rahman worked up in the ethers of academic theories and ideological concepts, Maren worked on the ground. In the trenches. She did the nuts-and-bolts work that turned progressive ideological concepts into reality. To make that happen, she often found she needed to coax specific guidance from women like Dr. Rahman. Maren raised a pierced eyebrow, inviting greater explanation. "We want that artwork. We want the paintings," Dr. Rahman eventually said. "You want those paintings… recovered?" Maren asked. "Something like that." "Why? Were they stolen or something? Do they need to go back to their indigenous owners?" "Not exactly." "Then why?" Maren asked. "Because they are offensive. They are divisive," Dr. Rahman answered.[1] "One is particularly offensive. It depicts religious persecutions by a man, a white Christian man. It is particularly offensive to minorities and people of color. And women. It has to be recovered and placed in safekeeping, so that it won't do any further harm to the community." That painting was also particularly valuable, but Dr. Aisha Rahman didn't feel it was necessary for Lieutenant Maren Voss to know that. Maren took a deep breath to steady herself. She knew she should like Dr. Rahman. Dr. Rahman was an affiliate. An ally. She was a fellow traveler in Maren's journey along the roads of cosmopolitan lifestyles and progressive ideas. Even so, Maren didn't like Doctor Rahman. For one thing, Dr. Rahman didn't understand how the law and the legal system worked in the United States. She did have multiple degrees from several prestigious universities, but those degrees didn’t equate to any actual knowledge. Despite being an advisor to law enforcement, Doctor Rahman knew nothing about the law or its enforcement. What was even more confounding was that Rahman didn't care how the law was supposed to work and she had no desire to learn. Born in Pakistan, Doctor Rahman held nothing but contempt for her adopted country and its laws. In Rahman's mind, since her political side held the power, they should be able to make up any laws they wanted to. They should be able to arrest whoever they wanted to. And in this case, they should be able to take whatever they wanted to. "I agree that such paintings as you described are offensive, but just confiscating them would be… tricky. Are the paintings in his house?" "No, not at his house," Doctor Rahman said. "Don't be stupid. If they were in his shitty apartment we could have taken them that night. The church has them stored somewhere else." "Inside the church?" "No." "Then where?" Maren asked. "We don't know. We know they aren't in the church. The church, the Diocese or whatever those stupid people call it, had most of its more valuable items moved into storage somewhere." "And that's what we want to find out?" Maren asked. "Of course," Doctor Rahman hissed. Inside, Maren fumed. She wanted to lash out and punch that skinny doctor right in her pretty, thin, feminine, face. Instead, she clamped both of her hands on her patent leather gun belt and shifted it slightly. "The Issac person is just a volunteer at the church. He might not even know where any of this stuff is. If the church has this offensive artwork, then why didn't you just have me arrest a priest or a nun or something." "Because arresting a priest or some other church official would be too high profile," Doctor Rahman hissed again. "I mean, please lieutenant. President Gavin is still getting heat for those nuns who got themselves shot outside the abortion clinic, and that was back during his first term. "And," Latrice piped in, "Most of the local church officials aren't so-called Heritage Americans. They weren't even born in the United States. They present in ways that would make arresting them difficult, from a narrative perspective. If the church officials looked like these so-called Heritage Americans, arresting them wouldn't be so much of a problem. But when the priests and the nuns are all from Africa or South America, well, those kind of high-profile arrests get more attention." "So, we're worried about accusations of racism?" Maren asked. "Officer," Dr. Rahman began. "Christianity is white adjacent. Actually, it is more than that. Christianity is a white religion. Therefore, if a person of color is practicing Christianity, they have elected into white racial identities and white ethnic identities, and white cultural identities." "Okay," Maren said tentatively. She wasn't completely following Dr. Rahman. The doctor had a habit of throwing out non-sequiturs and going into academic theories when she was upset. That made things hard for Maren to follow. "What we are worried about is the offensive nature of elements of this country." "Okay," Maren began. "I'm not sure if we're talking about race or religion now, but I'm not certain that is how the public would see things." "That's how I see things," Rahman said. "Because in the real world, that's how things are. I have degrees from the top universities in this country. I know how America works." Maren didn't know what Aisha was talking about, but she felt herself turning red. She looked over the two of them, the doctor and the lawyer. They both looked just too cute, with their designer clothes and their caked-on makeup. Maren knew that when they looked at her, they just saw some big girl. They saw a big, ugly, unpopular girl who was just the hired help. Too stupid to understand their academic nonsense. Maren wanted to punch them both. While she fumed, the doctor kept talking. "Our ultimate goal is to get this artwork, particularly this one painting. We want it off the streets and away from the community. We need to safeguard it somewhere where it won’t cause any more harm. And we don't want to cause any kind of controversy. It needs to be done quietly." Latrice William's head bobbed up and down, like a cork floating in water. It was as if Doctor Aisah Rahman was speaking the wisest words she'd ever heard. "And so, now that this guy is in custody, you want me to ask him if he knows where this stuff is?" Maren asked. "Of course," Rahman said. The condescension in her voice was thick enough to spread with a knife. "Well," Maren began. "I wish you told me that the night you had me arrest him. Now that he's in custody, asking him those questions is going to be tricky." "Tricky how?" "I'm guessing you want to keep this all low-key and with a minimum signature. That’s fine. But all the interview rooms are monitored and recorded, even at local levels. That's the new national standard and there's no way around it." "Can't you just unplug the cameras, or something?" Aisha Rahman asked. "Like what happened when that guy hung himself in that jail in New York?" Maren raised her pierced eyebrow again, not quite believing Aisha was asking what she was asking. "If the cameras don't work, you can't conduct an interview," Maren said. "National standards. Two officers in the room, minimum, with a third officer monitoring the cameras and audio recordings from outside. If that isn't in place, there is no interview. If the third officer loses audio or video, they have a duty to stop the interview and a duty to report. All the recordings we send to a third-party auditor at a non-profit agency who screens everything. I can get sympathetic officers to help, but there will be recordings." Maren paused. "I'm guessing you want the digital trail to be minimal? That's going to be really hard to do now that he's in custody." "This is bullshit," Dr. Rashan said. Lieutenant Maren wanted to say, 'Doctor, those are the standards your organization imposed on us,' but she didn't. "We need to think of something quick," Latrice said. "We've run out of time. Our subject is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow. I know his parole officer. He's already called my office several times. He's not very flexible. He's a man. He doesn't see things the correct way much of the time." "Another man? Ha!" Doctor Rahman spat out the word as if it were an insult. Latrice went on. "He's not going to recommend that the judge revoke this man's parole if we don't have something more concrete to put against him." "He did do something," Rahman said. "He has artwork that is offensive and we want it." "Yeah, but that's not actually a crime," Maren said. "Why can't we just have this parole guy or whatever revoke the man's parole." "Because he won't do it," Latrice said. "It’s the judge that revokes the parole. The parole officer just makes recommendations," Maren said. "This is all bullshit" Dr. Rahman said again. She wanted those paintings. She especially wanted the one, with its depiction of religious persecution. She wanted that one badly. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the meeting without something positive to report. "We can ask the judge to hold him for an additional 96 hours," Maren offered. "Under Patriot Act 2.0 we can request an additional 96-hour hold. That'll end during the weekend. The court's gone to reduced hours, so there aren't any releases over the weekend. That gives us until next week to come up with a better plan." Latrice's head bobbed up and down. Rahman rolled her eyes. She asked, "Can't you just make him talk now?" "I could," Marne offered. "But not without leaving a digital trail." "I think the additional 96-hour hold is a great idea," Latrice said. "Okay," Dr. Rahman said. "But then what?" "Well, after that you'll need to come up with something," Maren said. "Me? Why me?" Rahman asked. "Why do I need to come up with something? Can't you just plant evidence on him? Or just frame him for a crime. Make something up and be done with it?" "This isn't the 1980's," Maren said. "We don't do investigations like that anymore. It's all about digital evidence. In fact, there has to be digital evidence. Is there digital evidence of him committing a crime? A video? Some kind of recording? Hateful posts on the internet? Do we have his location or movement patterns from his phone or his car? Is there any digital evidence that he did something. We don't have any evidence of crime as far as I know. I'm not even sure what we're trying to charge him with." "He's affiliated with the church," Ila said. "Well, that's not a crime," Maren said. "It may be in bad taste, but it is not a crime." "She's right," Letticia said. "We may not like it, but just an affiliation with the church isn't a crime. Not yet at least. If I take that to judge, chances are this guy, Isiah or Issac or whoever he is, the judge will let him walk." Dr. Aisha Rahman took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in one rushing gust before speaking. "I don't care what the laws of this stupid country are," she said. "I want those paintings. Now you two find a way to get them for me." "That's the deal. It'll be hard work, hard, physical work. And you'll get your hands dirty. Very dirty. But we pay in cash. Dollars. Not APCs. And we hand you the cash at the end of the week. No checks. No direct deposit. No electronic payments. Cash. We can pay you in other ways too. We'd bring you on as an independent contractor, which comes with certain tax benefits." Jaxtyn looked around. He was back in the bar where he first met Waylon. Big Helen's was the name of the place. He and Waylon sat at the same booth in the same bar they'd first met in. The interior of the bar had the same depressed, end-of-the-line feel to it. Barflies sat at their stools. The old woman standing behind the bar, Helen, did her thing. She served the drinks and collected the payments. Somewhere in the back there was a cook. Jaxtyn knew enough to know there was more to this than just a job offer, and so he was extra attentive. He noticed that the barflies mostly paid in cash here. No digital payments. No plastic cards. He also noticed Waylon never paid for anything. He noticed that the clientele inside the bar were the kind of people referred to as "Heritage Americans." That term, "Heritage American," was either a compliment or an insult, depending on which circles you ran in. Jaxtyn looked down at his beer. The glass had the logo for an online sports betting company etched into the glass. Jaxtyn hadn't paid for that beer. Neither had Waylon. "Tax benefits," Jaxtyn repeated. "As in, you don't report it. And if you don't report it and I don't report it, then nobody knows about it," Jaxtyn said. "That's right," Waylon said. "Tax evasion is a crime." "That's right," Waylon said again. "You know what the new federal sentencing guidelines are for tax evasion under one million dollars? One thousand dollars for every one hundred thousand dollars in unpaid taxes. That means that if an individual skipped out on paying the government $900,000 in taxes and got caught, the fine would be nine grand. You know why that is? Two reasons. One, from a cost benefits analysis, it doesn't make sense for the government to investigate and prosecute any case under a million dollars. The government lawyers and government accountants get paid too much. Not worth their time. Better to just levy some small-potatoes fine and be done with it. That's the first reason. The other reason is that the government doesn't really want to. You think all those politicians in congress want to pay taxes? You think they want their family members to pay taxes? You think their corporate buddies want to pay taxes? No. They don't. None of them want to pay taxes. So, they made tax evasion essentially a non-crime. Same as with shoplifting, drug dealing, driving without a license and voter fraud. The penalties are so low there's no reason not to do it. "And the taxes really didn't matter," Waylon went on. "At some point we were printing more money to cover the federal budget than we were taking in through taxes. A lot more. We just printed the difference and some well-educated people in D.C. figured if the budget was mostly printed money anyway, why bother with taxes at all? We should just print all the money we need. At this point, we've printed so many dollars that they had to come up with a whole new fiat currency to print." "How about benefits with this job?" Jaxtyn asked. "What about them?" Waylon replied. "You’re a veteran. You've got all the benefits you could want." "I don't have full benefits. I've only got a partial rating from the VA." Waylon smiled. "We can fix that. I can get you a 100% disability rating with the VA sixty days from now. Maybe even a 125% or a 150% rating considering all the combat you've been in." "If I take the job," Jaxtyn said. "Yes, if you take the job," Waylon agreed. Jaxtyn looked around the bar. He saw ratty beer posters and ratty online gambling posters. He saw greasy stains along the upper edges of the wall. He saw air vents whose grills were thick with dust. He saw everything. He noticed everything. With this hyperawareness Jaxtyn more alive than he'd felt in years. More alive than he'd felt since El Paso. More alive than he'd felt since Venezuela. "You can just get me that kind of rating with the VA, huh? Just a phone call, or a favor, or something? You know a guy?" Waylon nodded and said, "You sound like you've got some misgivings about that?" Jaxtyn didn't respond. Waylon let the silence hang for a few moments before speaking. "If you don't like the idea of playing loose with the VA, let me tell you something. Under the new VA schedules and rules, there is no way you could do two combat tours and not rate 100%. No way. It’s the president's policy. BAAM. The maximum amount benefits payouts to the maximum amount of people. And if you still have misgivings, let me tell you something else, under the new rules, a person is eligible for VA benefits the second they sign the enlistment contract in the recruiter's office. A person don't even have to ship to boot camp, much less graduate. Think about that. You don't even have to be a veteran to get the VA benefits anymore. A guy could walk into the recruiter's office, sign a contract, skip going to boot camp, never put on a uniform, but walk down to the VA office, claim he's got childhood PTSD, or clogged chakras, or a misaligned aura or some such other bullshit, and the VA is going to give him a rating. "And if it isn't the VA, it is something else. "All these recent immigrants, these 'borderless persons' as the media now calls them, they're getting benefits too. The second they cross into America there is some government official standing by ready and eager to sign them up for all the benefit packages Washington D.C. can throw at them: Healthcare. Nutrition assistance. Tuition assistance. Free phones. Free internet. Housing. There's a reason why people from all over the world come here to work minimum wage jobs. There's a reason why the frozen food plant can pay folks minimum wage to pluck chickens for 16 hours a day and never have to worry about a labor shortage. And that's just baseline. Universities can charge whatever they want for tuition because one way or another, those tuition payments are paid out by the government. All these non-profits can pay their board members millions of dollars because the non-profits are all subsidized by the government. Everything is subsidized by the government. Everything." "And if everybody is doing it, then why shouldn't I? Is that the argument you are making?" Jaxtyn asked. "What else are you going to do? You aren't getting into college. You aren't going to get into a trade school. The Army isn't going to take you back and the National Guard didn't want you, not in this state. You could maybe go to Alaska or Texas and work in the oilfields, or go to Louisiana and work on some offshore rigs, but I'm sure those oil companies all have H1B-Plus-Global hiring quotas they have to meet. No kid, this is the deal you got. You either get on the dole and stay there for life, or you jump into the gray economy. Maybe it ain't a great deal, but it ain't a great world you were born into. None of that's your fault. The America you were born into is pretty shitty. We gave you a shitty America and you got dealt a shit hand. But right here, right now, this is the opportunity you got." "Yeah, everything is all fucked up. But so what?" Jaxtyn asked. "Again, the argument is 'since everybody is doing it, so, so should I?' Okay. Where is that going to get us? If everybody is running a scam because everybody else is running a scam, then where does that lead us in the long run? If the America I was born into is shitty, what about the next generation? And the generation after that. Somebody has to say, 'not me.' Somebody has to do what's right or we'll never turn the clock back to where things were." Waylon half turned in the booth and pointed to the sign above the bar, the one with all the prices listed in two different colors for two different currencies. "Why do you think that's up there? You know why. Everybody knows why, even though nobody will say it. It is all falling apart. For decades this country spent more than it took in. And instead of curbing spending, congress only chose to spend more. It wasn't just free money and the buying of votes. That's what it started out as, but it got bigger than that. The more they spent, the more they had to spend to keep the economy and the country running. Spending by the federal government makes up more than 60% of our economy right now. That's the official number. It is probably closer to 70%. That's why nothing happens when all these fraud networks and scam networks get exposed. They can't do anything about it because fraud is essential to the economy. In a lot of places, fraud is the economy. Look at what happened in Saint Paul. When they shut down the fraud the local economy collapsed. When the local economy collapsed, the local government collapsed. When the local government collapsed the Somali fraudsters created their own government and threw all the old government officials in jail. They even threw that one retard behind bars. It’s the same on the federal level. BAAM isn't just about buying votes for President Gavin. It's about keeping the economic engine of this country running for a little bit longer. At this point, when the fraud stops, everything stops. All of it." "And if I have a job that pays in cash, I'll be better off when the crash comes than if I was just on the dol? Is that it?" "What would you rather have if things fall apart? A hand full of your own cash, or the promise of a digital payment, promised by the very same government that just collapsed?" "This isn't just about a job though, is it?" Jaxtyn asked. He was surprised at how quickly and how forthrightly Waylon answered. "No. It is not just about a job. You're a veteran. You've seen combat. You're a trained combat engineer, with all that entails. And if you look at where things are headed, you know they aren't headed to a good place. You know better than people my age and older because you weren't around when things were good. You don't think this is all temporary and things will get better. You don't go to sleep believing that things will go back to the way they were before because for you there wasn't any before. This is it. Your whole life has been lived during the downhill slide. "Now, if you're like me, and things get bad, really bad, do you want to be surrounded by a bunch of ordinary dudes, or do you want to be surrounded by people who know how to handle themselves? There's only one answer to that question. So no, Jaxtyn, it's not just about a job." Jaxtyn took a good long look at the man sitting across from him. At his age, Jaxtyn had seen a lot and done a lot. Certainly, he'd been through more than most young men his age. The man sitting across from him had seen and done a lot of those same things, Jaxtyn knew. Only this Waylon had probably seen more. He was older, and he was wiser. And Waylon hadn't just seen more things, he'd seen different things. He'd seen a world that Jaxtyn would never know, and Jaxtyn knew it. Jaxtyn thought about his own father, a man he never knew and only remembered from a few photographs his mother had kept. He thought about how things might have turned out differently for him, if only… "You really think it's all going to come crashing down?" "I do," Waylon said. "I think that the people in charge really think, that they can really do it. They think they can move all the debt into these American Prosperity Credits and thus save the dollar from collapsing." "But you don't think they can?" Waylon raised his hands in a gesture that said, 'isn't it obvious.' He said, "You tell me, what have they ever done successfully? Did they build any of these highspeed trains they promised? Did they solve homelessness? Did they solve this housing crisis they keep talking about? Did they win any of the wars they started? Improve the schools? Fix the environment? Curb drug addiction? They've never done anything they promised they would do, and they've never been held accountable. They live in a world where promising to do something is the same as doing it." Jaxtyn looked at the board above the bar. The prices in red, the APC prices, had already gone up since the last time he'd been here. Only slightly, but they had gone up. "I'll take the job," Waylon held his hand out. Jaxtyn looked at the outstretched hand, then looked at Waylon uncertainly. "You're supposed to shake it," Waylon said. "Oh. Yeah." Jaxtyn and Waylon shook hands. "You know where to go? You start tomorrow. You need a ride in?" Jaxtyn hadn't thought about that, but he nodded. "Yeah, I'll need a ride." "Okay. I'll send somebody to get you in the morning." "Okay, let me send you my address." "I got your address. I was at that group home you live in. That White Stone place you live at. Remember?" "Oh yeah." "And another thing, do me a favor," Waylon said. "What's that?" "From now on, don't send anything over your phone you don't have to." After the meeting at Helen's, Waylon drove back to the scrap yard. He had a tight timeline to make. He wanted to get there before everybody went home for the night but there was something else on his calendar for today that he didn't want to miss. As his old truck rumbled along, Waylon checked his watch. His watch, like everything else about him, was simple and functional. A simple digital sports watch with a black plastic band. There was nothing flashy about it. It told the time and not much else. Most importantly, it didn't connect with anything. The time was just past the bottom of the hour. Waylon pulled into a parking lot, shut off the truck, and took out his phone. He didn't like using his phone more than he had to, but in this case, he wanted to catch a press conference. He logged into a video service that was broadcasting a livestream from the Treasury Department. The podium with the treasury's seal stood empty. On the wall above the podium hung a banner. It was placed perfectly for the camera. The banner read: American Prosperity Credits Hope You Can Hold in Your Hand Waylon checked his watch. The conference was supposed to have started several minutes ago. Waylon wasn't surprise it was running late. Nothing started on time anymore. Nothing. He told himself he'd wait five more minutes and if the presser hadn't started by then, he'd go. At the four-minute mark, he heard a buzz inside the room. He heard the snaps and clicks of cameras and flashes. A well-dressed woman with a thick binder took her place at the podium. Other people, none of whom Waylon recognized, filed in behind her creating a multi-colored backdrop of bureaucratic faces. Waylon had the same thoughts looking at the backdrop of extras that Jaxtyn had looking up at the faces on the billboards: none of them look like me. It wasn't just that they didn't look like Waylon physically. They didn't look like people Waylon knew, or associated with, or could even relate to. The Asian faces didn't look like Wong. The Hispanic faces didn't look like Mateo. The distinction transcended race and ethnicity. It was an issue of class. It was an issue of social status. It was also an issue of ethics, morales and values. The types of people running the country just weren't like him. And the stooges employed as props for the Treasury Secretary's presser told that story in their chubby, soft, climate-controlled, government-office job faces. After the cast and characters all settled in their places, the cameras focused on the Treasury Secretary. Secretary Tamianda Johnson was middle-aged, early-fifties maybe, with warm brown skin and sharp cheekbones that caught the light. Her tailored suit hugged her frame, but the gold hoop earrings and the way she adjusted the microphone with a quick snap of her wrist suggested a certain swagger. She cleared her throat, leaned in close, and flashed a wide, practiced smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. "Good morning, everybody," she began. "Y’all know why we here today. We here to celebrate the American Prosperity Credit program, the APC, and how it is changing lives from coast to coast. This isn’t just some policy, y’all. This is 'hope you can hold in your hand.' This is the future we been fighting for." She paused, letting the words settle. Her voice carried a rolling cadence. The words came out clipped at the ends. The vowels stretched just enough to feel familiar and authoritative. But Waylon noticed that her cadence came and went. The tempo slowed unnaturally when she spoke with an urban flair, as if she was unsure of her gambit and not fully committed. The urban patois wasn't genuine. It was a practiced affection, but not a perfected one. Tamianda Johnson was actually born Theresa Johnson. She changed her name in high school just before applying to college. She said she grew up in Chicago, and that was a bit of a lie of omission. She actually grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago. Her parents were both professors at the University of Chicago. Tamianda would have been as unfamiliar and out of place in the Southside of Chicago as she would have been in the Ozark Mountains, or in Ulaanbaatar. She went on. "The APC is successful. Let me say that again. The APC is successful. The science on this is clear. The data on this is clear. The APC is successful because it works. And it works because it is successful. Simple as that. When the American people got APCs in they accounts, they feel good. They feel prosperous. And when they feel prosperous, they spend. When they spend, the economy moves. When the economy moves, everybody is happy. That’s how we know the program is working. That's how we measure economic success. Because people are happy. And happy people don’t lie about their success. They show it. They live it. They flash it. They post it on their media pages with they morning coffee, which they purchased with APCs. That’s real. That's hope you can hold in your hand." She gestured broadly, her manicured nails catching the light. "Now let me break it down for y’all, ’cause I know some of y’all still actin’ like this new. Americans are using APCs for everything. Groceries? Done. Swipe that card at the corner bodega, and watch the total disappear like magic." Waylon rolled his eyes. He doubted Tamianda had been inside a corner bodega in her life, but he kept listening. "Rent? That's paid. That landlord be gettin’ they money in APCs every first of the month, no fuss, no late fees. Gas for the car? Fill it up. Kids need new shoes for school? Buy ’em. Doctor visit? Covered. Even the little things. Things like diapers, bus fare, that Friday night takeout. If mom and dad want to get grandma to watch the kids and go hit the club, the APCs are there for that. People wake up every day feeling secure and knowing they have options. They have dignity. They got APCs. They have hope they can hold in their hand. Let me say that again, they got hope they can hold in they hand." The prop-people behind Secretary Johnson began clapping, clearly on cue. Tamianda smiled and nodded and pretended to flip through her binder. The clapping continued, strong and enthusiastic, until Tamianda turned and gave the small crowd of extras the signal to stop. They stopped clapping. The Treasury Secretary went on. "And the best part about the APC program? It movin’ our national debt right where it belongs, off of the old dollar system and into the APC system. We are taking that burden off the budget and puttin’ it where it can breathe. Where it can grow. Where it can serve the people instead of serving Wall Street and billionaires. That’s moral. That’s righteous. ’Cause at the end of the day, what good is money if it don’t make nobody smile? What good is a debt if it keep families up at night? The APC takes that weight off. It lifts people up. And when people lifted up, they grateful. And when they grateful, they vote. And they shop. And they build communities. See how it all connects? That’s the beauty of it. That’s the process. That's the success. And the process is the success." "Now, I hear some folks talkin’ ’bout inflation or whatever, but let me tell you somethin’. When a single mom in Detroit can buy her kids cereal and milk with APCs and still have enough left for the light bill, that ain’t inflation. That’s joy. When a retired couple in Phoenix use they APCs to take a little weekend trip to the Grand Canyon, that ain’t debt. That’s memories. When a young brother start his own pressure-washin’ business and pay his workers in APCs, that ain’t a scheme. That’s entrepreneurship. That’s America. "And the numbers don’t lie, even if some folks wish they would. APC usage went up twenty-three percent last quarter. Redemption rates are steady. And merchant acceptance is nationwide. People trust the APC ’cause it theirs. It is ours. It belongs to the people. It is backed by the full faith and credit of a government and a president that finally put the people first. And ’cause it backed by that faith, it strong. And ’cause it strong, it successful. That success means happiness. It all come back around to happiness. And happiness is the only metric that matters." She leaned forward, eyes gleaming with practiced sincerity. "Folks, this program is liftin’ us up out the old ways. The old debt. The old struggles. We movin’ forward together. And I’m happy, very happy, to remind every American out there: if you sittin’ on gold or silver, grandma’s jewelry, that coin collection in the attic, whatever, then bring it on in. The United States government will buy it from you at a guaranteed rate. That's right, a guaranteed rate. Guaranteed by your government and the Gavin Administration. Straight exchange for APCs. No questions. No hassle. Just prosperity. Just the chance to be part of something bigger than yourself. That’s the American way. That is community. That is what we are doing here." Tamianda straightened, smoothed the front of her jacket, and smiled again, this time with the satisfied air of someone who had just delivered a sermon. "All right, then," she said. "Questions? I have time for a few." "Well," Waylon said to the images on his phone. "Here we go." The room stirred. Hands shot up. She pointed to a young man in the second row. He wore glasses with thick, brightly colored frames and a rumpled suit. "Madam Secretary," he said, standing. The man was nervous. He was going to ask a question he didn't want to ask. Waylon heard it in his voice. "Thank you for your time today. I have a small question. How exactly does shifting the debt into American Prosperity Credits reduce the national debt when the APCs themselves are backed by the same full faith and credit of the United States? Wouldn’t the debt simply be the same amount, just denominated in a different currency?" Tamianda’s smile tightened at the corners. She tilted her head, one eyebrow arched high. "See, this the kind of question that sound smart but really ain’t. The debt cannot be the same, sir, because the currencies are different. They different currencies. And because they different, they cannot be the same. Period. That’s basic logic. You can’t have the same debt in two different things at the same time. One is the old dollar. One is the APC. They ain’t the same. They never gonna be the same. Next question." The man in the glasses sank back into his chair, deflated. Waylon smiled. He was enjoying this. There was new dynamic at play when the press interacted with the political elites. The media had long carried water for the progressive left. For whatever reason, the two institutions had long shared the same ideological views. That had been fine up until the point that in covering (and covering for) the political left, legacy media institutions lost credibility. As they lost credibility, they lost viewership, and the loss of viewership meant the loss of revenue. The loss of viewership didn't just cut across political lines, it cut across generational lines as well, and for the media the generational divide was more alarming. Men and women of Jaxtyn's age just didn’t watch legacy media at all. Especially not the men, who had no desire to sit in front of a tv in the evening and listen to some woman in New York or Atlanta tell them how racist and misogynistic they were. Viewership was down. Way down. As viewership went down, so did advertising revenue. So did subscription revenue. It wasn't just that the younger generation wasn't watching legacy media. They weren't paying for it either. The legacy media had lost an entire generation, both their viewership and their financial support. Their blatant bias had bit them in the ass. Recognizing their dilemma, and recognizing the worsening nature of things, the media did try to correct their course. Once fawning interviewers would try to slip in a tough question or two, hoping to at least appear to have some degree of journalistic integrity. But progressive politicians, feeling secure in their roles, weren't afraid to get antagonistic with any reporter who they felt didn't toe the line. They felt they were still owed fawning coverage by the media and when they didn't get it, they lashed out. Back at the press conference, a woman in the third row stood quickly, tablet in hand. "Secretary Johnson, thank you for your time today. You mentioned that the APCs are merchant accepted nationwide. But just this week, the CEOs of several of the nation's largest home lenders said they will no longer accept mortgage payment in the form of APCs. How do you respond?" "It is printed right on the APC notes, 'legal for all debts public and private.' But that is…" Tamianda paused and took a deep breath. Waylon watched as the secretary seemed to collect herself and then start over. "But that be okay. If they billionaires want to play games, we can play games too. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Veterans Administration that gives out home loans to all my beautiful veterans, they might have some things to say to those banks and those billionaires. IRS might too. So, if rich people want to play games with people's mortgages, that fine. We can play games too." Another flash of hands in the air. Another reporter stood. "Secretary Johnson, under the new White House policy of Benefits And Assistance Maximization, or BAAM, the administration is dramatically increasing benefit payments across every program: SNAP, Medicaid, housing vouchers, COVID stimulus top-ups, you name it. If the government is maximizing payouts at these tremendous rates, how can the APC program possibly reduce the debt? Won’t the debt go up, regardless of the APC usage? The government is obviously spending more money, even if it is in the form of this new currency. And nothing in your department has shown that revenues are increasing, especially not in relation to the increased rate of expenditures." Tamianda laughed. It was a short, sharp sound that didn't suggest amusement. "Benefits are free, sweetheart. Free. That means they don’t cost anything. That’s the whole point of BAAM. We are maximizing what’s free. How you gonna say free things cost money? They don't cost money. That's why they free." The reporter blinked. "They’re free to the recipient, Madam Secretary, but not to the government or the taxpayers who ultimately fund the government." Tamianda leaned on the podium, voice dripping condescension like honey over broken glass. "Free is free. Don’t you know what free means? It means it is free. I don’t know why I gotta explain basic English to a grown man, but here we are. Free. Don’t complicate it. And honestly? It is wrong for you to even ask that question. Benefits help people. They lift families. They feed babies. Only somebody who doesn't like helping’ people would sit here worrying about the cost of kindness. You really gonna look me in my face and say that you are against helping people? That’s a choice, sir. That’s a choice." The room had gone very still. Tamianda’s eyes scanned the crowd, daring anyone else to speak. One last hand went up in the back row. An older man with a press badge from a foreign financial wire service. He spoke with a British accent, but his facial features suggested an Arabic background. "Madam Secretary, several OPEC members have signaled they may stop accepting the U.S. dollar for oil transactions if the United States does not abandon the APC program. What is your response to that?" Tamianda’s face hardened instantly. The practiced smile vanished. Her jaw set. "I’m not even gonna entertain that. That question right there? That question is Islamophobic. Straight up. I will not participate in denigrating’ questions that try to smear Muslim Americans or turn this into some culture-war nonsense. We are done for today." Tamianda stepped back from the podium, microphone still live. "Thank you, America. Thank you, Gavin Administration and thank you for the APC: hope you can hold in your hand, people. Press conference concluded." The lights stayed hot as she spun away from the podium and walked offstage, heels clicking sharp against the tile. Reporters shouted follow-ups into the sudden vacuum, but Tamianda Johnson did not look back. The banner behind the podium fluttered once in the stirred air. The multi-colored cast of extras looked at each other and then they too filed off the stage. Waylon shut off his phone, smiled, started up his truck, and then drove the rest of the way to the scrap yard. Things were quiet back at Wong's yard. The chain-link gates were closed. Most of the lights were out and most of the cars were gone. A couple lights were on in the office, and Mateo's truck was still parked in its usual spot. Walyon parked and went inside the office. Mateo was inside, pouring black sludge that might have been coffee into a trash can. "We got a new hire. I need you to pick him up tomorrow," Waylon said. Holding the glass coffee pot upside down. Mateo shook it a few times. Globs of black gook dropped out and fell into the garbage can. The globs made splat sounds as they landed. Mateo grimaced with disgust. "Sure thing. Hey, while you were out, Jimmy came down from the Rez. He wanted to talk to you." "Oh yeah? What did he want?" "He said he's got a line on the hydraulic pump we need." "Oh yeah? Good. We could use some good news," Waylon said. "Something else," Teo said. Waylon pulled out the chair to his desk and collapsed into it. He felt tired. He was tired from this legal business with Isaac. He was tired from his meeting with this new kid and making the sales pitch to bring him on board. He was tired from the Treasury Secretary's speech, and the APC scam. He was just tired of this new America and everything about it. "Yeah? What's that?" Mateo looked around the office to see if anybody else was there. Nobody was. He asked, "Where's your phone?" "I left it in the truck," Waylon said. "Why?" Mateo looked around the room again to be certain they were alone. He spoke to Waylon in the hushed tones of a man participating in a conspiracy. "He wanted to know if you wanted to buy some guns." "The two vans left Naples Italy and headed north up the A1 towards Rome. The vans left twenty minutes apart. The first van was full of men. Professionals in the military or intelligence community would describe these men as "military aged males." They were all young, unattached, and recent immigrants to Italy via routes through North Africa and across the Mediterranean Sea. None had any desire to return to their homeland. None had any desire to assimilate into Italian society. For each of them, their journey to the West was a one-way ticket, and they knew it. The men in the first van were connected to the second van by means of a radio. With it, the first van could warn the second van about Carbinieri checkpoints or any worrisome police activity. The second van was only manned by a driver and his assistant. While the first was a passenger van, the second was a cargo van. The cargo it carried today was a mix of automotive and tractor parts. These parts were packed away in wooden crates, each nailed shut and strapped down. Mixed in with the auto parts were the components of a Russian made 2B11 120 mm mortar. Together, the auto parts and the mortar system made quite a load, so much that the rear end of the van was sagging on its suspension so badly that it bottomed out whenever it hit a bump. The ammo needed to feed the mortar was traveling separately. That ammo presented its own weight problem. Each of those rounds weighed around 45 pounds. A well-trained crew could fire 15 rounds out of their tube in a minute. For this operation, the crew was going to be provided with enough rounds to last three minutes. That made for a heavy load. The drive north took a while. The vans passed beneath Monte Cassino, home of the historic abbey and site of the famous WWII battle. The men in the vans neither knew nor cared about any of that history. At Liola, they left the A1 and took the backroads. They moved through the rural Italian landscape: open fields, vineyards, buildings in varying states of disrepair. About fifteen minutes off the highway, they came to their destination. The farm, once abandoned and left fallow, had been purchased by a legal immigrant into Italy. He, like the men in the vans, held the west in great contempt. He had not come to Italy seeking a better life. Not really. He enjoyed the quality of life the west offered, but he held no appreciation for it. In his mind, the west was weak and decadent. When it came to any comforts and advantages the west provided, he felt he and his brothers were owed, and the west was simply paying what was due. The farm owner greeted the vans and the occupants as they arrived. The military aged males in the first van were ushered inside the nearby farmhouse where refreshments were waiting. When the second van arrived, the farm owner directed it inside a barn. Once inside, the barn doors were shut tight. A heavy-set man with a wild beard of blacks and grays climbed out of the van. He looked tired. He was older than the rest, maybe in his mid-fifties. He'd seen war and conducted operations in many parts of the world. Now he was here in Italy to conduct one last operation. The farm owner looked at the sagging back end of the box van and frowned. "Dangerous to drive like that. The police here can be very thorough when they want to be." The bearded man shrugged. "Nothing could be done. All of this is heavy, and it had to be moved. He walked to the back of the van and opened the door. Inside sat several wooden crates. All were labeled "auto parts" with stencils and black spray paint. Phony paper manifests had been stapled onto each box. "The equipment is all inside the crates. The bombs for the mortar will be here tomorrow." "You didn't want to bring it all up at once?" "Too heavy," the bearded man said. "And too many vehicles traveling at once." The farm owner nodded. There were too many vehicles traveling all at once. There were many parts to this operation. The bearded man was supposed to be an expert with the mortar weapon. But that was just one part of the operation. It would be a devastating part for sure, but a relatively simple part. They only had to fire their weapon and hopefully fire off all the mortar rounds before the Italian police eventually killed them. Straightforward. The part that worried the farm owner was the bigger bombs. Those had to be made from scratch from raw chemicals. One of the first things he did when he came to Italy was start a legitimate chemical company. That allowed him access to the powdered aluminum, uric acid and other chemicals he knew he would someday need. That day had come. Now he had all the chemicals necessary to make explosive devices, and he was confident the Italian authorities wouldn't uncover this plot because everything had been done legally. A legitimate business. 'Ha,' the man thought. These stupid westerners and their love for their own made-up laws. They let foreigners and enemies into their countries to take them over and called it noble because it conformed to their laws. They destroyed their own heroes and martyrs because of their laws. They even punished their own religions and seconded them to outside religions all in the name of their laws. They loved their make-believe laws more than their own children. More than themselves. They would get themselves killed for their stupid rules and call that strength. They were fools. What did worry him though was the actual making of the explosives. That could be a tricky endeavor, especially under austere conditions where temperatures and humidity couldn't be controlled and the laboratory equipment was ad hoc at best. Because of that, the chemicals weren't at this farm. They were at another farm. That farm had a different set of military aged males, with a different mission. Here, he had the mortar specialists. There, they had the bomb making specialists. While the missions were linked into a single operation, none of the young men at either farm knew about the greater plan. They only knew their specific parts. "Can you set your equipment up and train in here?" the farm owner asked. "We can. The desert would be better. We could fire live rounds. That would be better, but I can make do with this. We'll also need to modify the van we'll be using for the operation. Like you said, the sagging suspension is a dead giveaway. We'll need a bigger, stronger vehicle than this. I'd like one with three axels, if you can get that." "I can get that," the farm owner said. "Good. But even after you get a bigger vehicle, we'll still need to make modifications. We'll need the roof to roll back or open up. And a few other things. We'll need tools. Some specialty parts." "We can get whatever you need. Can you make the modifications here?" The heavy-set man with the streaked beard looked the interior of the barn over. He nodded. It would do. "How long do we have to prepare?" the heavy-set man asked. "Be ready in three weeks," was the answer. The answer wasn't when the operation was to happen, but when they needed to be ready. The two were not the same. Even so, the heavy-set man nodded. He knew how these things worked. He had done operations before, just none that would be as significant or as final as this one. "Can you be ready in three weeks?" the well-dressed, farm owner asked. The heavy-set man considered the question. Three weeks to modify the van, train the mortar crew, and rehearse their routes into the city. They wouldn't need to rehearse an escape plan though. The mortar specialist nodded. Three weeks to get ready was enough time." [1] James Saunders, "Woke mayor demands tribute to murdered Ukrainian refugee be torn down because 'it's divisive'." GB News. 31 March 2026. Iryna Zarutska: Providence Mayor demands tribute to murdered Ukrainian refugee be TORN DOWN because 'it's divisive' |
@sharkman6 Jeopardy!- Think Music: 1960s; 1984-1997 
|