Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America

by Damien Lincoln Ober

  Praise for Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America

  “In the tradition of the best science fiction writing, Ober’s work forces the reader to think.… It also begs the audience to dwell upon the future course of an experiment in democracy of which they are very much a part—if they choose.”

  —Jim Higgins, American Book Review

  “Damien Ober gives us a new kind of fictional history here, one that is as fanciful and exuberant as a Garcia-Marquez novel.”

  —T. C. Boyle, author of The Harder They Come and The Road to Wellville

  “Not sure if I read a book or had a manic episode while watching the History Channel, but either way, it was incredible and I feel absolutely amazing.”

  —Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

  “Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is as original as they come—an audacious, exuberantly imaginative novel about freedom and technology and the sacrifices each take from the other. Damien Ober is a writer to be reckoned with.”

  —Scott O’Connor, author of Half World and Untouchable

  “American writers working on such a grand canvas are as scarce as hen’s teeth. For sheer mischief, erudition and inventiveness Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America sits quite comfortably on the shelf alongside David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Thomas Pynchon, the Bar‐thelme brothers … all the terrible children of Swift and Stearne. It makes me laugh. It makes me sympathetic to people I despise, even though I still despise them. While many of the characters would cry sedition, I like to think Dr. Franklin is somewhere having a chuckle.”

  —Robert Olmstead, author of Coal Black Horse

  “Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is a new kind of literary SF. It takes aspects of two historical moments, centuries apart, and overlays them, energizing history and making us question our notions of what America is. Add to that aliens, sea monsters, and we have a quirky, funny, but ultimately sobering nightmare.”

  —Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses

  “Strangely moving and hugely compelling… Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America shattered my thinking as to what a novel can be and do. Nothing less than an alternate history of the birth of the United States that hints at our coming demise.”

  —Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune

  “A brilliant, wackadoo novel about our founding fathers and the Internet, with some aliens and witches and a vampiric sea monster thrown in for good measure. Ambitious, strange, death‐stamped and hilarious—this is the kind of book that makes you realize how rare it is to read something entirely new and unique.”

  —Stephanie Cha, author of Dead Soon Enough

  “Ober has mapped the modern superstitious US onto the nation’s beginnings complete with vituperative two‐party system controlled by plutocrats (now corporations), history replaced by acceptable mythos (sometimes dependent on choice of party) and with modern communications systems providing impossible forms of social networking in which people live without having to experience reality first hand.”

  —Jim Chaffee, The Drill Press

  “Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is no political tract or history lesson or moralist dystopia or media analysis; or, rather, it is all of these and more—it is fiction writing at its best. And what remains after the excitement of the storyline and the provocation of the thinking have subsided, is the simple poignancy of the fifty‐six death scenes, all the more moving for their simplicity and matter‐of‐factness.”

  —David Vichnar, Equus Press

  A NOVEL OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

  DAMIEN LINCOLN OBER

  Night Shade Books

  New York | New Jersey

  Copyright © 2014 by Damien Lincoln Ober

  First Night Shade Books edition published 2018

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing LLC, Night Shade Books, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Suite 3705, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Night Shade Books is an imprint of Start Publishing LLC.

  Visit our website at www.nightshadebooks.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

  Names: Ober, Damien Lincoln, author.

  Title: Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s dream America / by Damien Lincoln Ober.

  Description: New York : Night Shade Books, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017006720 I ISBN 9781597809191 (softcover : acid‐free paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States‐‐History‐‐Revolution, 1775‐1783‐‐Fiction. I

  GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction) I War stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3615.B43 D63 2018 I DDC 813/.6‐‐dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006720

  eISBN: 978-1-59780-622-0

  Cover design by Anthony Morais

  Cover illustration by Kevin Peterson

  Printed in the United States of America

  th@ all r cre8d =; th@ they r endowd by their cre8or

  with certn inalienable rights; th@ among these r life,

  librty and the purst of happines

  —Thomas Jefferson

  John Morton :: April 1st 1777

  Button Gwinnett :: May 19th 1777

  Philip Livingston :: June 12th 1778

  John Hart :: May 11th 1779

  George Ross :: July 14th 1779

  Joseph Hewes :: November 10th 1779

  George Taylor :: February 23rd 1781

  Richard Stockton :: February 28th 1781

  Caesar Rodney :: June 29th 1784

  Stephen Hopkins :: July 13th 1785

  William Whipple :: November 28th 1785

  Arthur Middleton :: January 1st 1787

  Thomas Stone :: October 1st 1787

  John Penn :: September 14th 1788

  Thomas Nelson Jr. :: January 4th 1789

  Benjamin Franklin :: April 17th 1790

  William Hooper :: October 14th 1790

  Lyman Hall :: October 19th 1790

  Benjamin Harrison :: April 24th 1791

  Francis Hopkinson :: April 9th 1791

  Roger Sherman :: July 23rd 1793

  John Hancock :: October 8th 1793

  Richard Henry Lee :: June 19th 1794

  Abraham Clark :: September 15th 1794

  John Witherspoon :: November 15th 1794

  Thomas Lynch :: February 13th 1795

  Josiah Bartlett :: May 19th 1795

  Samuel Huntington :: January 5th 1796

  Francis Lightfoot Lee :: January 11th 1797

  Carter Braxton :: October 10th 1779

  Oliver Walcott :: December 1st 1797

  Lewis Morris :: January 22nd 1798

  James Wilson :: August 28th 1798

  George Read :: September 21st 1798

  William Paca :: October 23rd 1799

  Edward Rutledge :: January 23rd 1800

  Matthew Thornton :: June 24th 1803

  Samuel Adams :: October 2nd 1803

  Francis Lewis :: December 21st 1803

  George Walton :: February 2nd 1804

  Robert Morris :: May 9th 1806

  George Wythe :: June 8th 1806

  James Smith :: July 11th 1806

  Thomas Heyward Jr. :: March 6th 1809

  Samuel Chase :: June 11th 1811

  William Williams :: August 2nd 1811

  George Clymer :: January 23rd 1813

  Benjamin Rush :: May 19th 1813

&nbs
p; Robert Treat Paine :: May 11th 1814

  Elbridge Gerry :: November 23rd 1814

  Thomas McKean :: June 24th 1817

  William Ellery :: February 15th 1820

  William Floyd :: August 4th 1821

  Thomas Jefferson :: July 4th 1826

  John Adams :: July 4th 1826

  Charles Carroll :: November 14th 1832

  Fifty‐six men signed the Declaration of Independence.

  This is the story of their deaths.

  Part 1 :: The Death

  John Morton :: APrIL 1st 1777

  Doc Josiah Bartlett, Roger Sherman, Thomas M’Kean and Doctor Benjamin Rush all got the same email. Orders from Congress to form another unofficial little committee. The assignment: Do whatever you have to do to keep John Morton alive and functioning until the Articles of Confederation have been uploaded.

  Right now, their patient is struggling through another fit of blood‐speckled coughing. Fresh droplets make new stellar patterns across the white pillowcases. A whole night sky’s worth of faded constellations. One hand on his laptop, the other up to ward the men from the bed, “To come too close is to invite death, to tempt it with fresh consumables.” He coughs a few light coughs until the coughs become chuckles. Then back into his laptop, the glowing crater bashed into the fabric of the bed quilts. His fingers trigger key patterns. Screen light drones the jagged caverns of his face. The room, hung thick with the candle stink of overcooked beef, hints a gray and forgettable day in lace curtains all pulled closed.

  No one knows exactly what it is that’s killing John Morton. Both Rush and Doc Bartlett are confident it can’t be contagious, but they stick to the walls all the same. Sherm and M’Kean follow their lead. These are men who know which chances are worth taking. Been taking some big ones lately. Not coming up very good either. New York rests in the King’s hands, General Washington and the Continental Army lapping wounds in winter quarters. It’s been almost a full year since the Declaration was uploaded, three or four or five or twenty‐three years of war, depending on which representative of which state you follow. This Revolution, after all that has transpired, threatens to become no more than collected, distilled and then suppressed ideals, as temporary as a single human generation.

  John Morton’s typing grinds to a halt. He just sits there. There’s a moment of distinct possibility that he has passed, dead and off for the next land beyond. But then Morton’s eyes shift. He finds the men in the room with him. “I am finished.” He forces a swallow, a long inhale. Eyes wearily scan browser windows unpacked and gaping all across his screen. “Have to update my status,” and he reads aloud the words he’s just then typing: “The Articles of Confederation are done.”

  Morton stares into the letters, the meaning their crooked shapes make in the string. Already this latest status update pulses down the scrolls of countless patriots, just like every thought that’s entered his mind these last five years. As soon as he’d committed to the revolt, John Morton sliced his brain open and laid it bare for the entire social network to peruse. Every thought, every inclination, reaction or bloviation, public in the time it takes to type 140 characters or less.

  Thomas M’Kean takes a step away from the wall in order to show everyone how one makes a fist from a regular old hand. Though still the good reluctant soldier, M’Kean’s lately been flashing glimpses of that general they all know is lurking in there. “The Articles,” he says. “Finally, we can pull the states together and start putting up a fight!”

  A gesture from Rush to indicate he’s not so sure, but that’s as far as he’ll take it. Sometimes in these settings he has a hard time speaking up. Despite the status afforded him by his deep involvement in the politics and administration of the Revolution, Ben Rush knows he’s not really a politician or an administrator—not truly an intellectual at all—but just a country sawbones glorified by the natural workings of republicanism. Still, though, he makes a good enough gesture toward enlightenment science.

  But Doc Bartlett? Doc is the true product. No gestures involved. Cured himself of a mysterious fever when he was a teen and there was no looking back. Always working on learning some dead language, always a few science experiments running in that lab under his New Hampshire homestead. His latest gig is cutting up dead bodies and looking inside. Right now he’s shaking his head, singing a little ditty about the Articles that goes, “Have to get them ratified first”

  “Been coughing three days straight.” John Morton types, reads aloud, “I’ve been coughing three days straight.” He types, scans his status, types, scans his status.

  Through this all, Roger Sherman has looked—as always—softly puritanical, like a throwback to some forgotten age without the Internet. He measures each man with a glance. “Have to get them ratified, yes. But as soon as we’ve uploaded the Articles, the idea of a federated government will be loose. For good or for ill, something will have begun that we will be powerless to stop.” If you didn’t know him, you’d think Roger Sherman was speaking from some other plane where the results of this reality have no sway whatsoever. But this is the same deliberate and indifferent way he’s plodded through all the grand events of his time. Old Sherm the Cobbler, just working on another shoe.

  A tongue appears, then, in the corner of John Morton’s mouth, crosshatched with swollen veins and dark, purple‐gray sores. “My work is done. The rest is up to the people.” He glances at the room’s entire. “We are sure about this? Taking something down is a lot different than putting something up.” He points up then, with a single bloated finger, as if the Internet really is only above them. “Sherm is right. Once it’s in the Cloud, there’s no stopping it. It’ll seep into every hard drive in the country.”

  M’Kean and Sherm share a look. They share it with Doc Bartlett, with Morton in the bed. Rush now nodding the nod of someone who knows it’s time for him to nod along. Doc Bartlett clears his throat. “The Articles. What do we gain and what are we giving up?” He lets it sit the length of one breath, then: “The Enlighten-ment’s most grand experiment enters its next critical stage.”

  Rush posits, gesturing toward John Morton, “Maybe it’s the Articles that made him sick?” They all look at Rush like, how? But the doctor doesn’t have a rational answer, and so he just says, “It is an astounding time we live in.”

  John Morton closes a few open files, opens some others, hovers the Articles over the ftp portal, and off they go. Signals pervade the air in the room, the text of the Articles of Confederation climbing Cloudward. Morton lets his gaze rise to the ceiling, as if watching this thing he’s reared venture off into the world’s mind. He types his new status, lets it sit a moment, hits enter. “Well, it’s official now. The whole social network knows. John Morton has uploaded the Articles of Confederation.”

  Some cautious smiles. The four healthy men all careful not to move bedward, shifting instead around each other in turns, shaking hands and clasping shoulders. “The United States,” one says.

  “The United States.”

  Bursts of typing again from the ruffled bed. “Portaling our new foundational document to the fan page.” John Morton reads aloud the name of the page, “Independent Colonies of America” He laughs. “Going to have to start a new page again.” This is because it was decided—from the very first one they launched—that each new phase of the Revolution would get a brand new fan page. And that new members would not be carried over automatically from the old. Each patriot must perform his own individual public click in order to affirm consent in every step toward a new nation. The very first “official fan page of the Revolution” got 1,256 likes in the first hour alone. The next day, John Witherspoon himself, a big public liking ceremony. But that was six years ago. Time goes by. Things become something else. New groups and pages are created, and no one much visits the ones left behind. The old pages just hover there in some forgotten sector of the Cloud, these outdated versions of Revolutionary America, just ghost houses now, full of ad drones and profile haunts, c
rawling with worms. Each of those old pages does have a few living people left—ancient patriots still active and posting, locked into their static hold on progress. Those guys probably think the drones that re‐post to the old pages all day are actually human. But they’re not. They’re just drones—empty, lifeless drones.

  John Morton looks into the future. “As soon as these are ratified, we’ll be officially organized under a different system. Confederated Articles. Name of the page might change again, but this is a country we’re talking about now. And not just online anymore.” He clicks the new page to life, opens the info tab and types the newest name, reading it aloud as he does, “The United States of America.” And he realizes it, that it just happened. And that it was him that did it. The first man to type the new nation’s name into the Internet.

  “Already commenting. Five likes already.” John Morton’s eyes tighten in around the screen. “Fans and likes. Friend requests coming in by the dozen. Samuel Adams has commented on your status. John Witherspoon has commented on your status. George Washington wants to be friends with The United States of America!” And there it goes, comments and likes cascading the wall faster than John Morton can scroll to keep up. “Wall‐ter‐fall,” he says. “The USA has gone viral!”

  “I don’t get it,” Rush says. “How did you make it so you can be a friend of the page and be a fan of the page? Is it a page, a person or a group?”

  Sherm’s thinking about the Articles, wants to know if it’s a “these,” a “this” or an “it.” He’s trying it in his head a few different ways. This is the Articles. These are them. Or is it they or those or only one? One set. The Articles?

  “The tasks of this committee are complete.” Doc Bartlett reveals palms empty of any smartdevice. “You’re going to have to accept my actual in‐person gratitude.”

  “A new nation has been launched,” M’Kean tells them. “There is nothing as contagious as freedom’s march.”

  “I still wonder, though…” Rush glancing bedward, then a vague gesture intended to indicate the Internet, “… exactly what kind of contagious we’re talking about.”