Rayguns Over Texas

  Green text, red arrows, and yellow highlights overlaid the scene, revealing the matching algorithms at work.

  “Fucking data miners. You’re why I have to clean my chips every night before I go to bed.”

  “We’re ambient advertisers, Tony,” said Annie. “We match people with the things they want in life. We don’t need ethics lectures from investment bankers.”

  “Look closely,” said Vijay. “This new algorithm Clarice wrote, and Chaz tuned, is amazing.”

  “Right, but I came to watch it dissect the referendum,” I said. “And to have some of Clarice’s chicken masala estilo Jalisco.”

  “I forgot,” said Vijay. “It’s Kush-Mex night.”

  Chaz went for the mezcal.

  “I just think it’s nice to see we still have something on our Teutonic overlords,” he said.

  “The Frankfurters are the ones with our bonds,” I said. “Not the Bavarians. And the pendulum always swings back through equilibrium.”

  Annie spit out her drink. “Last time I checked, the pendulum came loose from its mooring and knocked over half the remaining banks,” she said.

  “But we’re still swinging,” laughed Vijay.

  Vijay changed the channel, and the wallscreen quadrupled in size. Vote tallies by precinct and network, detailed issue briefings in video and text on each of the matters up for ballot, four channels of color commentary from different orientations, if you wanted it. The votes were monthly, the democracy was direct (more or less), and the exercise of the franchise was still optional.

  “Jeez, this is so much work,” said Chaz. “I liked it better when you just showed up every few years and checked the box for Coke or Pepsi.”

  “And had your life run by four hundred and thirty-five self-aggrandizing geezers, wearing identical suits?” said Annie. “Tony’s right. We should be doing political work. Help make it easier for people.”

  “I guess the idea of a new Constitutional Convention is kind of cool,” said Chaz. “I just find it kind of creepy, the way it’s like a combination of a City Council livestream and America’s Hot Talent.”

  It was three years now, since the Aftershock. The Aftershock was the economic event that followed, by about eighteen months, the event we had considered the greatest crash in American economic history, when the big bubble, on which the city on a hill had been built, collapsed like an Oklahoma fracking sinkhole. The Crash was bad, but the Aftershock was what broke the political system, exposing the varicose veins and clotted embolisms hiding under the pancake makeup of the animatronic boneheads left as stewards of the republic 250-plus years after we buried the Founding Fathers. Once we pulled the thread on Uncle Sam’s sweater, he got naked in a hurry. Under the new regime that assembled, in the following two years of elections, three-fourths of the states petitioned for our social contract to be rewritten in a convention that would be conducted as an experiment in network-based participatory democracy.

  Yes, we were kind of figuring it out as we went along.

  “Tonight’s the part about new legislative procedures, right?” asked Clarice, taste-testing salsa from her fingertip.

  “Right,” I said. “Rules for minority ratification of votes that would change their existing rights.”

  “There’s like eleven different proposals,” said Clarice, holding up her hands.

  “And ten times that many guides,” I said. “Self-education is the price of autonomy.”

  “Some days, I just want a dictator,” said Clarice. “A matriarch.”

  “Move to Hawaii after next week’s re-vote on the rules for territorial confederation,” said Annie. “That lady’s running for queen.”

  “Tony’s probably providing the leverage,” said Vijay.

  “I wish,” I said. “But I’m landlocked in the desert this week.”

  “Oh, right,” said Annie. “Yodaland!”

  “Yodaville,” I corrected. “Yuma County, Arizona.”

  “How’s that going?” asked Chaz.

  “Not good,” I said. “Keep thinking I found the oasis and it turns out it’s just a mirage. Which reminds me...” I pointed at my ear.

  “I told you he looked more stressed than usual,” said Annie. “Grey as a ghost.”

  “Help yourself, Fantomas,” said Chaz, opening the door for me to use the home office they shared in productive polyamorous bliss.

  There was a small bathroom connected to the office. I linked my earbud to the mirror display over the sink and checked my messages.

  I assured Chaz I was fine when he popped his head in to check on me, having heard me yelling and pounding on his counter. Then I called my lawyer.

  “What do you want me to do?” said Scanlan, working in his office after dinner. The reflection of my face lay over the stream of his, which was in profile, looking at the terminal on his desk.

  “Put a fucking plug in it, that’s what,” I said.

  “The filings are public, Tony,” said Scanlan. “UN-SOV rules. You know that.”

  “Yes, but our dispute was supposed to turn public opinion against the Texans. Not to ignite a general freakout about the Mexicans.”

  “You picked the client, not me,” said Scanlan. “MundoRed is controversial. A pure push network. Funded with all those prohibition-era narco funds. But their programming is still super popular, and the information just got out there. Let it digest.”

  A half dozen lines measuring livepolls and keywords unfurled across the screen over Scanlan’s prematurely bald head.

  “I can read, Dwight,” I said. “We’re talking about northern Arizonans we’re trying to influence here. All the fucking, sesquicentenarian, old, white people who refuse to die. They bankrupted the state government building that monster border wall and running little militia wars, and when they ran out of people to staff the clinics, they imported them from South Asia rather than Sonora. The idea of Mexican advertisers taking over the next county is death to our deal.”

  “I guess,” said Scanlan, staring at his anachronistic pencil.

  When Chaz came in the second time, I was smashing my earbud on the steel sink with the butt end of his shaving brush.

  “When did you turn into such a complete asshole?” said Chaz. “You really need to take a sabbatical.”

  I looked at the smashed polymers and silicas. Carlos would find out another way to reach me.

  “It’s complicated, Chaz,” I said. “Where’s the mezcal?”

  4.

  Working at home the next day, I flew an imaginary drone through the real-world landscape of Yodaville.

  Yodaville was the nickname for the GWOT-era bombing range, twenty miles east of Yuma and five miles north of the Mexican border. It was a fake city, built by the Army, to simulate the Near East well enough to learn how to do a better job of blowing it up. Yodaville was also the name I used to describe the whole county. That was probably a bad thing, but it wasn’t because I’m a bad person.

  Investment bankers are not all bad people, contrary to the mob opinion of the network. Especially not geopolitical investment bankers. We fund freedom. We leverage self-determination.

  People sometimes get sentimental about place and identity. That’s okay. I just wish they could understand that our political subdivisions are constructs, little different than corporate charters. They are all contracts, which need to be rewritten from time to time. And breaking up the existing states into smaller ones, while confederating it all in a new global order, is a good thing. It’s certainly the future.

  “Abajo el sistema,” reads the graffiti on a crumbling wall at the edge of Yodaville. I’m working on it.

  Sometimes when I am doing diligence on a new deal, I wonder about the guys who are in charge of the swarms of microdrones that make all the VR maps we take for granted.

 
I flew around the dome of a fictional mosque, banking into the beautiful profile of the Fortuna Foothills to the north.

  I banked back left, over a big bomb crater, and headed toward Yuma city, where most of the county’s hundred thousand inhabitants live. I flew under an old bridge across the Colorado. You could see the river bottom easily, glistening in the sun on the day they recorded these feeds. This town was a natural low-water crossing. A place that gave the finger to the idea of borders.

  I got an idea.

  5.

  Gareth was laughing harder than me when we traded notes, after it all went down.

  “What in God’s name did you have to promise Carlos to fund that?” he asked. “Some kind of spa treatment involving crystals and the divination of prehistoric geolocation?”

  “I told him we’d get him and the other senior execs in on your Honduran city state IPO, among other things,” I said.

  “Right, so long as you give me a piece of your bonus on this one. The Sedona spinoff was brilliant, Tony. Divide and conquer! They’ll be talking about it for a year.”

  “It makes total sense, right?”

  “You’re making a veritable Arizonaslavia, partner,” said Gareth. “Well done.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “If you want to park some money in New Yuma, I can hook you up after the closing. It’s going to be a nice haven.”

  “That’s the real reason MundoRed put up the capital, I presume?” said Gareth. “To relocate their corporate domicile.”

  “Right, and all they really have to do is back the bonds,” I said. “The locals are the real ones behind the deal. And the way we hooked them up they get to pay as they go, and it should be paid in a full in a decade. Win-win-win.”

  “So the tribes merge in to the new state?” said Gareth.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Most of the population are Indians, or Mexican-Americans, or the descendants of 19th century pioneers. Still federated with the US, but on a totally autonomous basis.”

  “That’s a lot of money for a desert,” said Gareth.

  “Freedom isn’t free,” I said.

  “Oh fuck off, Yankwank,” said Gareth.

  “Seriously, it’s not how much water you have,” I said. “At least, not so much. It’s about how much autonomy you have.”

  “I guess that’s right,” he said, flashing live bits from the celebratory locals. “Money is the true sovereign.”

  “Or maybe we just make it that way,” I said. “We’ll see what it looks like after we do a hundred more deals.”

  The appointment reminder for Dr. Kalki flashed on my screen, and I thought bout new permutations in the great game of creative destruction.

  Jump the Black

  Marshall Ryan Maresca

  Even on alien planets, the downtrodden must take

  life-altering risks to find gainful employment.

  Miller’s desperation carries him dangerously close to both hope and loss.

  “The Emigration Offices will be closing in 23 minutes.”

  The tinny speakers hissed out four alien languages before giving the message in English. Miller only recognized two of them and only understood a few words in either.

  “If you have not had your number called by closing, you will have to return tomorrow. If you are not present when called, you will forfeit your meeting and rescheduling will be required.”

  Miller had already spent three days, from open to close, waiting for his number to be called. If he had to, he’d wait another three. Whatever it took.

  The Xoninet that he had spent the better part of the day sitting next to nudged him, making a few gurgling noises. The dwarven, shark-skinned alien had tried to start up conversation earlier, but the mutual language barrier had proven far too inconvenient. Despite that, Miller responded, “You and me both, brother.”

  “Chre-ya-pou!” a human caseworker called out. Miller still had a chance. His number was chre-ya-qeay. Even if his alien language skills were poor, he could count in Coalition Standard. Only two to go.

  The Xoninet pointed to Miller’s ticket and gurgled some more.

  “Yeah, I’m almost up,” Miller said.

  “Chre-ya-pou!” The caseworker looked around the room, coughing as she called out the numbers.

  The Xoninet knocked Miller on the arm, which hurt like hell. Those little guys were strong. “Chre-ya-pou, keth fa!” he called out, pointing to Miller.

  The caseworker came over. “You’re chre-ya-pou?”

  Miller held up his ticket. “Chre-ya-qeay.”

  She shook her head, tapping her bony finger on the ticket. “That’s pou. Come on.”

  Miller grabbed his application pad and followed after her, cursing himself for looking at a pou for three days and thinking it was a qeay. At least it wasn’t a fatal mistake. She led him to a cubicle in the back of the emigration offices complex, past several other people having translator-aided sessions with alien caseworkers. It was a minor blessing that he had managed to get a fellow human. Miller took this as a good sign.

  “Let’s see what we have,” she said, taking his application pad and laying it on her desk. A display of his various documents appeared, which she cycled through with weary rapidity.

  “Hmm, yes,” she said. “You’re looking for an X-Theta student visa to Carawkai?”

  “That’s correct,” Miller said. “I’ve got a scholarship--”

  “I see that,” she cut him off. “Yes, that all seems to be in order, good.” Of course everything was in order. After four failed visa applications, Miller made sure he’d jumped every hoop perfectly this time.

  She scanned through more pages, her eyes never once making contact with him. “You grew up in San Antonio?”

  “We spent a few years there when I was a kid,” Miller said. Most of his childhood had been a blur of moving around, wherever his father had found work.

  “Specifically, you were there in ‘54.”

  “I suppose,” Miller said. “The year sounds right.”

  “In ‘54, San Antonio was reclassified an Orange zone.”

  That didn’t sound right. He knew the jobs his father had gotten usually put them on the edge--there simply were more jobs near the hot zones--but even then, he knew they had never lived in an Orange. “No, it was Yellow. We never lived deeper than Yellow.”

  She nodded, face still buried in her pages. “I’m sure it was Yellow at the time. Unfortunately, everything south of the 30th parallel has been retroactively designated Orange from ‘54 on.”

  “Wait--”

  She finally looked at him, putting on a practiced expression of false sympathy. “I’m terribly sorry, but spending any time in an Orange Zone flags you as an unsuitable candidate for an exit visa.”

  “What?” Miller asked. He had never heard that before. “No, that can’t be right. I have my medical records there, you can see, my rad levels are nominal, my viral counts are in tolerance...”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” she said. “But that is the policy. Many species in the Coalition are far too sensitive to risk potential exposure.”

  “Exposure to what, exactly?” Miller asked. “I already went through nine rounds of immunization, not to mention--”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” she repeated, pointedly. “There’s nothing I can do about policy. Emigration is denied.”

  #

  Power was in brown mode when Miller returned to his tenement. That meant waiting until the elevator was at capacity--seventy humans--before it would ascend to his block. It was midafternoon, and very few people were returning home. Those with jobs wouldn’t be back until nightfall, and the rest either stayed in or were out in the thoroughfare shaking their hats.

  Fifteen people sat in the elevator. Miller’s blockmate, Emile, sat clo
sest to the doors.

  “You have a day?” Emile asked when he saw Miller.

  Miller joined him on the elevator floor. “The day had me.”

  “I told you, brother, I told you. They don’t let you off the rock for nothing.”

  “It’s not right,” Miller said. “I’ve got the scholarship. I did everything right this time.”

  “What was the hustle they gave you?”

  “Time in an Orange Zone.”

  “You lived in an Orange Zone?”

  “No!” Miller said. “That’s the guff of it!”

  “That’s what I told you. They’ll always spin some hustle at you. What did you have? Bug? Crab?”

  “Not even. She was human!” The whole business wouldn’t have stung as bad if it had come from an alien.

  “Traitor,” Emile said, his voice weary with contempt. “The whole business with that office is a joke, I told you. You see that now?”

  “Yeah,” Miller said. He had tried the right way. He had done everything like he should have, and it did him no damn good. He glanced about at the rest of the folks in the elevator: the usual crowd of shiftless blanks, just like him and Emile. No one to be worried about. He leaned in close to Emile. “So, let’s do it your way.”

  Emile nodded. “You wanna Jump the Black?”

  “No work, no schools, and staying here will kill us, one way or another.” Dad died at thirty-eight. Mom only a couple years older. Every blank in the elevator had the same story. “Gotta get off the damned Earth. A better life isn’t gonna start here, you know?”

  “I know,” Emile said.

  “And there’s no other way, is there?”

  “Nope. But that ain’t much of a way, either.” Emile had gone to Jump the Black three times--so he said. Miller always wondered how far he had really gotten.

  “It’s a way.” A few more people wandered into the elevator and slumped to the floor. They were all used to brown mode. “Worst case, get caught end up back here again, right? Like you?”