by Nick Mamatas
Adam Indore: We tracked him for a while. SatMaps.com is really handy. You know, I’m sure. One time, I used it to find a key-chain that fell out of my pocket at Burning Man. I had spares of all the keys, of course, but the keychain was a limited edition that came as some swag if you bought a The Stars My Destination DVD boxed set on the first day, and I was on the line for three days to get it, so it had a lot of sentimental value. It was really lonely looking out there on the playa by itself. Anyway, I put out a call on all the listservs, and the next year someone snagged it for me and delivered it to Camp The But I Love Hims and Other Fake Band Names, which I was associated with that year. So it’s a great tool, I highly recommend it.
Anyway, yeah, we were tracking him, and I was using this Tibetan technique I’d picked up at my dojo to blank out my mind so he wouldn’t sense my endeavor, but I guess my roommate Todd—and he won’t be my roommate anymore after the lease is up, that’s for sure—gave it away because after that he’d constantly duck under doorways or walk under the canopy of trees on highway dividers.
Laurel Richards: The numanist community will never be the same.
Kelly Donnor: God, I wish I was famous for just fifteen minutes. The books, the PhD dissertations, the cultists, they just don’t stop. Half of them have me set up as the Virgin Mary to Herb’s Jesus, the rest want me to be Mary Magdalene. I used to argue with them, but there’s no dissuading true believers. What Herb’s message was, I mean, to the extent that he even had a message, is just this: “Grow up!” You’re not supposed to be looking for a new mama and a new papa, especially when that new mama is me. Of course, true believers, like I said. How many murders has “Thou Shalt Not Kill” prevented? How many murders have true believers in “Thou Shalt Not Kill” precipitated? Yeah, that’s my point.
No, I haven’t kicked anyone in the face since that night. After the adrenaline wore off, I found out I tore a tendon. Thank God Weinbergia had a doctor. She was just out of her residency, and she really wanted to help the unfortunate. It was either us or India, and she wanted to be close to a mall. Isn’t that a riot?
Herb hasn’t talked directly and only to me since that night either, no. I miss him. I haven’t talked to Adrienne either. I think she emigrated to Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Was she sleeping with Daniel? Ugh, I hope not.
Thomas Case: I don’t give two craps. I didn’t give two craps before, and I don’t give two craps now. You know what “growing up” is? Growing up is getting a job; making sure your kids are fed, healthy, go to school; and minding your own business. I just want to live my life. Anything that helps is good. Anything that hurts is bad. I had a lot of civil rights, and they didn’t help. I gave some up, it didn’t help. My neighbor built a nuke, and that didn’t help either, and neither did all those soldiers peeing on my driveway and leaving their cigarette butts everywhere.
The whole thing was just disgusting, I tell you. I don’t bust my ass every day to come home to that. People should have some respect. That’s growing up!
I want to see what these cooler-than-thou types are gonna do when the Mexicans come swarming over the border, or when there’s a hurricane and nobody to fix up their little “country” homes after the flooding.
from topplethegnome.com: The “official account” of the events—to the extent that anything emerging from the Georgetown Rump can be considered “official”—of 10/19 is full of inconsistencies and even impossibilities, but the media is not interested in seeking out the truth. Take the following into account:
How does a nuclear bomb, even a small, home-brew bomb, manage to detonate after falling onto its side? This has never happened before in the history of the existence of nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t the vibrations from the travel from New York to our nation’s former capital have set it off? What about the fissionable material that traversed our nation’s highways during the Cold War, and the third Gulf War, and the Sino-Sacramento incident?
Why wasn’t the gnome secured? Why wasn’t the gnome disarmed?
Why, for the first time in recent memory, was there a “parade of spoils” that left the president and so much of the cabinet vulnerable and out in the open?
What about video footage of the “first flash,” which was also widely reported by witnesses?
What about “Weinberg Sympathy Syndrome?”, the so-called mental disorder widely reported on in the days immediately before the detonation?
THE ANSWERS WILL SHOCK YOU!!
There is only one force on Earth capable of eliminating the federal government of the United States, and that is . . . the federal government of the United States. Remember that the government is huge, being both the single largest employer and the single largest spender of money in the world. Many layers of government exist “below” the figurehead president and his cabinet-level appointees; these civil servants have frequently been called “the permanent government” by social scientists and other legitimate scholars.
Also note:
Not one of the one hundred and nine Republican representatives or the forty-one senators were on the platform or dais at the time of the explosion. Why would they not be in attendance on that fateful day?
Not one member of the Supreme Court was in even Washington, DC, on 10/19.
The IRS, Federal Reserve, VA, Homeland Security, and FEMA—all elements of the “permanent government”—had “off-capital” offices up and running within hours of the detonation . . . as if such an attack had been planned for in advance.
FACTS:
Approval ratings for the president were at a historic low of 21 percent on 10/17.
The government had “shut down” earlier that year due to contentious budget battles in Congress. Without news reports . . . would you have noticed?
Since the detonation and the subsequent secession trend, the Georgetown Rump government was able to withdraw billions from infrastructure, entitlement, law enforcement, and other federal projects. Much of this money has been poured into deficit and debt recovery, enriching foreign creditors with close connections to the various remaining federal departments.
Most of the “new countries” that have emerged in the wake of the Weinbergia secession and then post-10/19 retain American customs, language, tastes, and sometimes even our money. They have simply excluded themselves from both taxation and services, allowing a networked underground economy to emerge. A network that actually allows for a number of previously illegal activities to emerge unchecked . . . but for the profit of the Rump, which can now get away with those activities as well!
Think about it. Who has the motive, the means, and the opportunity to seemingly strike a “killing blow” against the American government? The answer is clear: the American government destroyed itself in a public and inexplicable way, in order to consolidate its power. The president and his “bully pulpit” are gone, and now only the pure bureaucratic force of apparatchiks—a bureaucracy much larger and more powerful than is needed to provide “services” to their so-called “citizens”—remains. The Gnomes of Zurich are AMERICAN and they have ALREADY WON!!
Ty Towns, Bargeland: We didn’t pick him up, he just showed up, really. I’m not sure how he got onto the barge. Jedi Mind Trick or something? We have lots of dinghies, supplies coming on and off all the time. He could have snuck onto any of them. Smart kid. Little creepy, though. Funny how he stayed so clean; lots of people must have taken him in for a night or two, let him use the shower, get a good night’s sleep on a guest dignitary bed.
Geraldine “Geri” Weinberg was unavailable for comment, on the advice of her lawyers and her spiritual adviser, TV personality Dr. Hamilton Crabb.
King Daniel I, Weinbergia: He came to the door, right after sunset one night. A few of the people in the living room were pretty spooked. We’d been following the news as best we could, of course, and lots of people were very helpful in reporting their encounters to us. I just wasn’t sure what was going on—obviously, a lot of the information we’d received was false. People claimed he was
dead, that he appeared before them in “ectoplasmic form” (whatever that is), that he was claiming to be the “Holy Grail” and a descendent of Jesus, or a Muslim. We had a big cork bulletin board in the rumpus room with all the sightings, to try and separate the wheat from the chaff.
I wanted to hug him, but my arms just felt heavy, like lead, and I couldn’t move them from my sides. I wasn’t afraid or anything; after all I’d been through in trying to get this country off the ground, I think the fear centers of my brain had burnt themselves out. But I couldn’t move, and I knew he had something to do with it.
“Dad,” he said, “just listen.” And he talked for a while, about being a grown-up and what he thought it meant. It was kid stuff mostly, Catcher In The Rye–style preciousness, but he really thought he was on to something. Heh, I dunno. Maybe he was at that. Basically, I guess he just sees that when people are patriotic, when they care about a society that’s greater than themselves, when people find what they have in common with others and form nations, that they’re somehow pathological or neurotic to do so. He said that the solution to imaginary lines wasn’t more imaginary lines. That “vertical formations” don’t work, whether they’re families or countries.
I wanted to tell him, “Hey, how far do you think you would have gotten if it wasn’t for me making sure your little butt was wiped and there was food on the table?” but I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t like that, but then it occurred to me that I’d, and plenty of times, made him stand in a corner and be quiet while I lectured him about proper behavior. Is that how it feels? I guess I remember that queasy stomach feeling from when I was a kid too, but I got over it.
I was proud of him, though, because he thanked me. Lots of kids his age would fire back with “I never asked to be born!” or something as juvenile. He said he was very grateful to be raised by a man like me, by someone who “almost got it.” I guess I’ve said I’ve never asked to be born American, eh? Yeah, he pointed that out to me, as if he could read my mind. But the final trick is to ask what you were born to be, and to be that thing.
Then he disappeared. No, he didn’t run off, he disappeared. I realized then that after he was kidnapped, I’d really stopped thinking about him. Affairs of state got in the way. I missed him, but he was with his mother, and really, the border wasn’t the best place for a child. My great-great grandmother sent her son to America long ago, so he’d be safe from the pogroms, so it was sort of the same thing . . . wasn’t it?
12
Qool Marts are different now. There are a lot more weird things on the shelves, like homemade taffy from some old lady’s country down the block. In another store, a few miles and two border stations away, it’s all misshapen cookies with vanilla and chocolate frosting. One of the ones Rich and I stopped at on our whirlwind tour even had real stew, and benches to sit at, and corn bread. They took out the hot dog machines and microwaves and turned the front of the store into a picnic area. It’s pretty nice, but uneven. Sometimes I miss being able to walk into any Qool Mart or McDonald’s or whatever and being sure that every bite and every glance would be exactly the same. Sort of like bathrooms in the suburbs I’ve walked through.
Also, sometimes the new Qool Marts just throw rocks at the car when they see us coming.
We got some plastic sunglasses and ice cream sandwiches—a local brand where the sandwich part actually tastes like chocolate, maybe even too much like chocolate. But it beats the old industrial confection: an inert substance designed to have the peculiar texture and flavor of not-quite-right-but-inoffensive. Richard had the camera. We paid with exposure on our feed, except for the gas. A pile of various local monies did that trick.
In the car, Richard put the cam on the dash and said, as he said after every stop, “Well Herbie—where to?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Canada?”
CIA World Factbook
Weinbergia
Background
The first of the modern “armed micronation” trend, Daniel Weinberg built a nuclear device in ’19—and seceded from the United States. Open “borders” into the fledgling state and a custody case led to a tense standoff between Weinberg and the United States, which was resolved when the nuclear device was captured without incident. The device later accidentally detonated in Washington, DC.
Geography
Location: Divided lot on North Shore of Long Island.
Geographical Coordinates: 40 N 56 , 73 W 03 Area: 40’ x 200’
Note: Includes home of 20’ x 50’
Area Comparative: One third of one city block. (Washington, DC)
Land boundaries: total: 480' border countries: United States 480'
Coastline: —
Environment current issues: Lice infestation from “refugees.”
People
Population: No indigenous inhabitants
Note: Approximately thirty-seven individuals, thirty-two of them American citizens, have taken up residence in Weinbergia and have renounced their citizenship. A UN observer (Palau) is also a long-term resident as of 1 December 20—.
Languages: English, “Weinbergian” pidgin
Government
Country name:
Conventional long form: The Kingdom of Weinbergia
Conventional short form: Weinbergia
Dependency status: A sovereign nation, in practice Weinbergia closely adheres to US laws and social mores.
Capital: Living room
Legal system: King is standing sovereign, with moral suasion and pseudo-consensus driven voice votes among population working as a de facto veto.
Executive branch:
Chief of state: King Daniel I, Weinbergia
Head of government: King Daniel I, Weinbergia
Elections: Issue ballots with voice votes, as needed.
Diplomatic representation in the US: None
Diplomatic representation from the US: None
Flag description: Several models of the flag, some parodic, have been offered. Most common is a dark blue field with an image of Daniel Weinberg at age twenty-three, with sideburns and sunglasses, in the center.
Economy
Economy overview: Economic activity is limited to funding extraordinary rendition, remittances from ideological cothinkers, “off the back” infusions from new immigrants, and intellectual property (book, reality programming, video game) based on Weinbergian “concept.”
Communications
Radio broadcast stations: None. Uses podcast technology.
Television broadcast stations: None. Uses Internet connections to stream media.
Military
Military note: Weinbergia is no longer a nuclear power.
____________________
I started getting political in college, when I got to meet people with a wide variety of opinions ranging from the anarchocapitalist to the Maoist, and when George H. W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq. The months’ long build-up to war was nerve-wracking, and the horror unleashed was made even worse for the fact that despite mass media on the ground, the war was all but universally depicted as a walk in the park. The US-led coalition easily pushed the occupying force out of Kuwait, met almost no resistance from Iraqi forces, thumped Saddam Hussein on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, and then everything was fine. The mainstream anti-war movement had been shamed into prefacing every criticism of war with a ritual claim of “supporting our troops,” and the main political discussion after the war had to do with whether or not Bush should have pushed Hussein out of power.
Even universities, supposedly a bastion of the radical left, were the home of “pro-troop” (read: pro-war) rallies. I protested where I could, argued to the extent I was able, and retreated into literature. I read Aristophanes—he was Greek, funny, and critical of war, just like someone I knew well—and became enamored with his play Acharnians. In it, a man sues Sparta for a personal peace and gets it, while the Athenians around him continue to wage war and suffer. Sounded good to me, especially since the people
in my community had no taste for peace. I decided to work on a modern-dress version of the play, in which a normal family would build a nuclear device out of everyday items and declare their independence from the United States.
Under My Roof started out as a screenplay, though I got no further than one scene in which a man walking down a Long Island beach with a metal detector becomes the first unlucky casualty of a surface-to-surface missile launched by the submarine. The punchline was that in the moments before impact, the metal detector went crazy. It was still the 1990s, and I got heavily involved in anti-war and anti-occupation activism around the Balkans, Somalia, and Haiti, but again, the people around me were sick of peace and autonomy for all. “Humanitarian intervention” was the new pro-war-as-anti-war watchword.
After I published my first novel, Move Under Ground, to some success, I needed a follow-up. The first few thousand words of Under My Roof came easily, but then I stalled out and decided to instead upend my life and leave New York for the first time and move to California. That put me in an economic pit of debt that took me years to escape from, but it did inspire me to finish the book. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, New York publishing had no taste for antiwar sentiment. One editor, ultimately in the employ of professional war propagandist Rupert Murdoch, told my agent that she loved the book; she thought it would make a great YA or even middle-grade novel for boys, an underserved market. “But,” she said, “instead of a nuclear bomb, can’t the kid have a girlfriend or something?”
I ended up selling the book myself to my erstwhile employer, Soft Skull Press. While not as radical as it once was when it was run semi-legally out of a basement on the Lower East Side, Soft Skull was enthusiastic about the project, and even paid me a few bucks to finish it. Everything was going well. The cover design concepts were beautiful. Bookstore events were were announced.
