“That smell you smell is the latest phase of King Tom’s plot to take over the hemisphere: the Act for the Organization of Orleans and Louisiana District. Right now this monstrosity of unconstitu‐tionalism is being rammed through Congress by the Jefferclones in the House.”
Wave forms make the shape of the voice in dark, mirrored humps. Humping and falling and spiking, they form their way across the screen. Later, a filter will lace his raspy words with bass and echo, add a youthful resonance, rendering the unmistakable voice that’s filling up the smartpalms of teenage Federalists everywhere.
“The money for this Louisiana purchase? Thieved from the pockets of Northeast working men so lazy tobacco farmers can keep alive their failed agrarian economic system, their voluptuous, aristocratic lifestyles. Oh, King Tom will point to the hordes of toothless Mexican Spanish, to the French and Germans and Irish rabble pouring into the valley for the promise free Newnet, and King Tom will claim he has solved the population problem. But if anyone can just declare themselves an American, then what does being an American even mean?”
A few sniffs, but dry now like something inside his face is breaking. “To solve the national debt, he cuts revenues. To defend the country, he disbands the army. To vindicate national rights, he calls for Dream chats with the aristocracy of the Old World. But oh, King Tom, if only he knew that distorting the electoral college by counting slaves as three‐fifths does not a mandate make. The South should choose: Is a man a man or not a man?”
A long pause. The wave form goes still, flat and trembling like all the rest of the world. “All the while, from high atop Castle Monticello, attended by his village of human slaves, Emperor Jefferson sings his lullaby to freedom. When King Tom has captured every inch of the continent, when he’s co‐opted every datum in the Cloud, where to then? The sea perhaps? Space? How long before Americans are the Off‐Worlders, trolling the galaxy for the next littlest piece of room to expand into? And then where to next, back in time? Forward in time? Sideways through the very fabric of the Dream? Herald in King Tom, master of all realms.”
He hits the same button he used to start the recording, but now that button stops it. A compile the length of an eye blink and it’s ready for the Cloud. Fifteen minutes of pure, venomous illumination. But now a new voice comes, breaks into the clear silence of the room. “The latest Dream scream from American Brutus.”
The desk chair swivels at the noise, spine up straight, eyes peering into the dark shadows of the corner. There sits a form, long, lean, legs crossed, but face held back into the impossible darks of no light. “Who are you?”
But no answer comes.
“How did you get in here? Have you been there, sitting there the whole time?”
“Maybe the young screamers in the Dream wouldn’t be such avid fans if they knew American Brutus was really a ninety‐year‐old hermit. A washed‐up patriot of the real. A relic of a few times gone by.”
“I’ll have you know, sir, that I am a Founding Father. My name is on the Declaration.”
“So is mine.” A match lights, hovers over a pipe rim, a face in the thin pool of light. A few puffs of smoke swim punchingly into the room.
“Ah, Thomas M’Kean. Jefferson’s hammer. How goes the suppression of the press in Pennsylvania? I trust Mr. Dennie is enjoying his constitutional right to a jail cell?”
M’Kean smiles at the challenge. Or is it a rebuke? “Kind of thought American Brutus was John Randolph of Roanoke,” he says. “Guess I should have known it was you, Frank. Screamed against the Constitution, screamed against the Old Man, screamed against Adams. And now it’s Jefferson you’re Brutus‐ing on about.” M’Kean laughs, at what, Frank Lewis isn’t really sure. “The Dreamers probably think the podcast format is part of the political statement, some post‐Federalist homage to the Founding Fathers. They probably think American Brutus is a reference to the old American Brutus. The one from the Revolution.” M’Kean clicks. “But no, it’s just old Frank Lewis again. Same old Brutus.”
“You used to have a streak of Brutus in you, M’Kean. Why are the dangers of concentrated powers dangerous only if they’re concentrated in a king?”
M’Kean appreciates it, for old times’ sake. It would be wrong to call old Frank Lewis a kind of mentor to M’Kean. But in the close quarters of the Second Continental, they shared a few ideas. Even back then, M’Kean was wise enough to know there was always something that could be gleaned from a man with more years that you.
“I’m not really a fan of the scream.” M’Kean puffs, draws nothing, and so he lights a second match and puffs again. Now that red ember glows to blistering cherry. “Some people, though, they take this stuff pretty seriously.”
“Good.”
“Some of them are talking now about splitting up the country. Talking about a new dissolve
“Good.”
“A separate New England. Then a separate West, too.”
“Good. Good. Good.”
M’Kean shakes his head. “No, Frank, that would be very bad.”
Frank Lewis stands, puffs his chest. M’Kean thinks, oh boy, here he comes, American Brutus. “Is it bad to stand up to tyranny? Is it bad to question authority, to defend the Constitution? To attempt, against all odds, to save the country from a would‐be emperor?”
M’Kean shows his palms. He’s employing a strategy of moving as little as possible. Even seated, though, he looks stark and powerful in contrast to the frail form of Frank Lewis, teetering there from foot to foot. “The President is for preserving the country,” M’Kean says. “Just like Washington before. If our republic were to fly apart, it would be proof to the world that a government by the people cannot exist.”
Frank Lewis smiles, revealing hidden depths of age past the surface, spiraling in over teeth set askew, gaps where teeth have rotted out. “He’s got you singing his songs now too, M’Kean. You’re all full of those worms of his. Should have expected you’d be here earlier. Jefferson has been pretty efficient about silencing journalists. I knew it was only a matter of time for my name to come up.”
M’Kean clicks at it, a coy smile. “Journalist? Not so sure about that. But either way, Frank, I’m not here to silence you.”
“To kill me, then? Like the rest of the Signers? How many have you and those twins of Mr. Jefferson’s killed in the name of his Empire for Liberty?”
M’Kean puffs the pipe some more. Sends smoke out in patterns that seem meaningful. “I thought most of this was an act, Frank. Level with me. You don’t really think the President is killing the Signers?”
“With the Signers gone, Jefferson could sit back and dictate the exact meaning of our Revolution. Create it for history any way he wishes. Erect himself into eternity. Become immortal. And there will be no one left to stop him.”
Another puff. Frank Lewis looks down at the younger, more angled man. He takes something from M’Kean’s purposeful silence. It seems to deflate him, slightly but suddenly. “Why, then, are you here?”
M’Kean puffs slow. “I’m looking for McIntosh.”
“Lachlan McIntosh?”
“You seen the old general skulking around at all? Any of your buddies in the Dream been mentioning him? Got any whiffs of his stench mixed in with this thing you’re smelling from Jefferson?”
Frank Lewis thinks. “Last I heard, he was all hush‐hush in Santo Domingo. Clandestine aide to the slave revolt.” Now he steps out of his upright pose, back down to a crouched and crooked old man. With gentleness, Frank Lewis sinks back into his chair. “Stopped the French dead in their tracks. Sent Napoleon reeling back into the old continent. No help from Jefferson, I might add. All that talk of liberty. Not when it’s slaves who are fighting for it.”
“Santo Domingo is over now,” M’Kean says. “McIntosh is back stateside. Was here in New York this week. Rumor has it he’s contacting Signers who might be out of favor with the Administration.”
“Well, you’ve got me there. I’m in no favor with them. Not wit
h Jefferson, Madison, that damned Swede, Gallatin. Not with the whole lot of them.”
M’Kean pushes up from his chair, lets the brighter but still dim light fall fully over him. Stretches his tall lankiness, swaggers around the room a bit with legs sweeping wide out front.
“The Patrick Henry Group Avatar is president of the Dream now, M’Kean. Mr. Jefferson’s days grow short. Another well‐timed down‐tick in population, another outbreak of The Death and this President of yours will be finished.”
“The Death? Are you rooting for that to happen?”
“Only if he fails can the country survive. So, yes, I’m rooting for him to fail, praying for him to fail, by any means necessary. For something to happen which will save us from him, whatever that something may be.”
M’Kean takes it all in stride. “They’re saying we’ll pass a million by the end of the term. For the first time since The Death!”
“Who’s saying it?”
“An independent commission.”
Frank Lewis bursts out laughing, hard and short. His teeth shoot out and then suck back loosely into place.
“Won’t be long, Frank, ’til The Death, the war, the standing army, nothing but far‐away memories of worse times.”
Defiantly, Lewis asks M’Kean, “What if I told you that Mr. Jefferson has engaged in secret, black market trade with the Off‐Worlders?”
“I’d ask if you had any proof.”
“Why would he go to the trouble of keeping it secret and then leave evidence behind?”
M’Kean rolls his eyes. A big roll.
“Started when he was governor of Virginia. Has kept a direct line to them since.”
“Well, if it’s trade, Frank, what’s he giving them? What’s he getting?”
“He’s giving them what they want: more crystals.”
“Doc Bartlett jumped into the lava pit with the only one we had.”
Frank Lewis points to his stomach. “Out West, caves full of cloned human stomachs, in vats, exposed to The Death pathogens.”
“Caves?”
“The twins,” Frank Lewis posits. “They don’t seem to be getting older, do they?”
M’Kean tilts his head, has to give him that one.
“Have you been on Newnet lately? All full of drones and AIs. Ten for every user. Worse than the old Internet ever was.”
M’Kean sniffs. The air in the real, haunted by the scent of the Cloud. “Not sure I follow where you’re going with this one, American Brutus.”
“I’m talking about drones here, M’Kean. Here in the real. Filling up the entire Mississippi Valley.”
M’Kean blinks, trying to picture what it could possibly look like. A drone here in the real, floating in the air like some half‐formed, pixilated ghost.
“If Jefferson can make two clones, he can make two hundred. Two thousand. Why not millions? Tens of millions? Not just stomachs, but the whole body. Each drone that swears allegiance to Jefferson gets a body and ten acres of farmland. Millions of new Jeffersonian voters.”
“So let me get this straight,” and M’Kean does have to pause a moment to put it all into speakables. “The President… of the United States has been growing crystals inside cloned human stomachs and engaging in black market trade with alien invaders in order to secure technology to implant ten million computer programs into human bodies. All so he can win reelection and then hand over the country to Napoleon? I’m up to speed?”
Lewis might, for the briefest of seconds, be considering the ridiculousness of this logic.
M’Kean knocks his pipe ash into a waste basket. “You haven’t seen General McIntosh, have you?” Lewis shakes his head. M’Kean looks sadly at the old man. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Frank. Some other reason why I’ve come.”
“Dispatch the pauses, M’Kean. I’m a big boy.”
“The other thing I want to tell you is that you’re about to die.”
Frank Lewis’s eyes come back from where they’d drifted. “I thought you weren’t here to silence me.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“Let me guess… you’re just following orders from King Tom?”
M’Kean shakes his head, checks the time on his smartpalm. “It will happen in just a few seconds.” M’Kean gets only confusion back. “The Dream,” he says. “It knows. Or some program inside it does. Something we came across during the election, a function set deep in the code.”
“The Dream told you when I was going to die?”
“It seems to know the exact time of death for every human on Earth. Thought I’d let you know, for old time’s sake. It says your is coming… just… about… now.”
George Walton :: February 2nd 1804
George Walton waits for over an hour in the dark and rain before giving up and going back inside. And, of course, as soon as he’s in, he hears it, horse hooves on the drive out front. When he trudges back out, there he is, General Lachlan McIntosh, rode straight, all the way from the port in Charleston.
The two old Georgia patriots shake hands, then trade small talk as they head into Walton’s barn. Walton is telling McIntosh, “Everything is set to the specifications they sent over.” He digs in the hay until he’s found the end of a hidden rope. When he pulls it, a trap door opens, revealing wooden stairs spiraling downward. Holding a lantern out in front, Walton and McIntosh corkscrew into a large oval room 20 feet below the barn floor. Walton flips a huge hinge switch like it’s a chore he’s suddenly remembered. Dim gold lights set high in the walls flicker to life. “There she is.”
The men move to either side of what looks like an open‐top distilling vat. Pipes and tubes angle out of a waist‐high tub to vanish into the metallic sides of a computer terminal the size of a small desk. The liquid inside is the color of rust water, but thicker—the consistency of once‐used cooking oil. The design and the chemistry are equal parts Ben Franklin and Francis Hopkinson, sent over from the Dream in encoded messages to George Walton. Over the last month, bit by bit, he’s brought their schematic to life. “You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”
McIntosh looks into the reddish water. “I’m going in, into the Dream.”
“Okay.”
“No,” McIntosh tells him. “I’m not logging on, I’m going in.”
Walton eyes the machine he’s built. “Franklin and Hopkinson have designed a portal into the Dream?”
McIntosh is pulling something out of his satchel. “I hope so.” A crystal emerges, the size of a human fist. McIntosh holds it out to look at the color of the room through its layered formations.
“Thought there were none left,” Walton muddles.
McIntosh places the crystal in a tray under the main computer console.
“Hopkinson and Franklin,” Walton shivers. “Guys give me the creeps, dead but alive again in there. And now you’re going in, too?” He shakes his head, rests a hand on the vat’s edge, like it’s a pet of his. He’s spent months building it, so some affinity is understandable. “You ever wonder, Lachlan, maybe we shouldn’t be mixing things up like this? Maybe the real should stay real and the Dream stay the Dream.”
McIntosh is focused elsewhere as he examines their side of the portal. “Tell me George, do you trust Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America to sit back and stay just a dream?”
“Not Franklin’s Dream anymore,” Walton reminds him. “Jefferson’s boys lost the election in there. The Patrick Henry Group Avatar is in charge now. Maybe things will come around on their own.”
McIntosh bites it off, “Patrick Henry’s Dream America. I know. It’s the new big tickle. Well, I voted for the Patrick Henry Group Avatar. Thought if we could change the Dream America, the real might come around. But it’s just the opposite. Unless a mulatto bastard is produced—or George Washington rises from the grave— Jefferson’s got that second term all locked up.” McIntosh shoots a conspiratorial glance Walton’s way. “Funny, don’t you think? How similar the Patrick He
nry Group Avatar has become to the Administration? I thought it was supposed to be the opposition.” McIn‐tosh adjusts a few knobs. He looks deeper into the portal device, deep in past its gauges and dials. “Jeffersonianism is possible only when society forgets its core ideals. With a few key Federalists alive forever in the Dream, America will never be allowed to forget.”
Walton can see the distortions of Patrick Henry’s Dream America hinting from beyond the orange surface of the vat liquid. “What if it’s not Ben Franklin we’ve been talking to?” Walton posits. “Maybe he did die of a heart attack, just like the Off‐Worlders said. Died and never came back, not in the Dream or anywhere. What if it’s the Dream, the actual program itself, pretending to be Franklin, and Hopkinson, too? The same program that makes all the drones and the AIs and this is its plan. You don’t go into the Dream, Lachlan. The Dream goes into you. Into your body. And then it’s out here, here to take over the real.”
“Maybe you should listen to him, McIntosh.”
“Crossing over the real and the Dream, not a good idea.”
Walton and McIntosh jerk their heads around to the source of the voices, the twins each taking their last step through the doorway; two men like a mirror set beside one. Thomas M’Kean is right behind them, taking up a spot with the brothers at his wings. Each with a small‐caliber pistol pointed in the general direction of Lachlan McIntosh. None of the three seem much concerned about Walton.
“Thomas M’Kean,” McIntosh says. “I heard you were doing some work for Mr. Jefferson in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know your jurisdiction in his little police force stretched so far south.”
“General McIntosh,” one twin says.
“Good to finally meet you in person.”
McIntosh eyes one, then the other. “Jefferson has you boys polished pretty polite.” McIntosh edges backward, toward the vat. “Been shadowing me for a decade now. Finally caught up.” He looks at M’Kean. “You betrayed the Society of Cincinnati, Tom.”
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