Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America

by Damien Lincoln Ober

  There was a time when that text would have gotten a door busted down a few seconds later. Some war veterans and a mid‐level Federalist with a cigar. These days there’s not much of an SOC left. Heyward was praying for some young upstart dickhead with a bloodlust for red meat. But who should show up and all by himself? Light Horse Harry Fucking Lee. Took that virtuous dickhead one look around the place to get an exact idea of what Heyward was up to. No way was Light Horse Harry going to open that containment tube. No way was he going to let Synthetic The Death get out.

  Heyward had begged a little bit, for Lee to let him out or maybe even finish his plan for him. But Heyward knew that was all in vain. So he broke down and asked if Lee would just stay with him so he wouldn’t have to die alone. They fist‐bumped the opposite sides of the same piece of containment tube and so it was a promise. Now there they sit, on either side of the glass, swapping stories and finding some ground on the middle‐right where they can agree. Whenever Heyward gets too worked up, Lee stands and pretends he’s going to leave. That always brings things back down to Earth, and they can start to act civil again.

  “Thought it was going to be more painful.” Heyward lifts his eyes from his stomach, gestures toward the desk on Lee’s side of the glass. “If you ever want it, Lee, I backed up the formula on that old smartpad.”

  “The formula for Synthesized The Death?”

  “Synthetic. Synthetic The Death?”

  Lee shakes his head. “What was going to be your delivery system?”

  “I was planning on embedding it in the Dream feed of the swearing‐in.”

  Lee shakes his head. “Christ, June, you’ve lost it.”

  “Remember when those feeds of the Chesapeake went viral?” Heyward clicks. “British Sea captains hanging American citizens, their bodies right there on the Dream for everyone to see. Storm rains lashing them for days until their skin looked just awful. Never had the Dream frothed so hard for war.”

  “I thought for sure it was coming. We all did.”

  “War with England’s about the only thing could bring the Federalists back. But of course, fucking Jefferson. Just massages it right into his cute little narrative and what should have killed him becomes his temporal swan song. Saves the country from war and off to the presidential Dream.” Heyward laments. “Had a million feeds in the first hour. A million. And that was when the population had just hit a million. That means that every person in America had seen it in the first hour alone.”

  “Not sure about your math, June. Well, the math’s fine, but the equation is maybe off.” They both laugh, legs all out straight on the floor. If it weren’t for the curved glass, they’d be back‐to‐back, leaning one on the other to keep both from falling. Really, it’s the tube that holds them up.

  “Madison’ll fuck it up. You watch. Guy’s had a boner about fighting England the whole time he’s been at State. When that war comes, that’s your chance. You find Gouverneur Morris. Burr, if he’s still alive. You get some wedge issue in there real good, Lee, and you spread that fissure wide.”

  “No one in the SOC would ever clear that.”

  Junior Heyward scoffs. “The SOC has no leadership. No one gives orders. And no one takes them if they do. The SOC broke apart years ago. Just a collection of odd reactions ever since.”

  Lee thinks maybe Heyward is right. About the SOC, there can be no doubt. After Washington died, it kicked around for a while. Staggered about and limped and made a fool of itself. That shit Lachlan McIntosh pulled in Santo Domingo was pretty sweet. But now the SOC is just another piece of that old America Jefferson has pruned off. Lee wonders, though, if maybe Heyward is right about the country, too. A danger to itself the way it’s headed now. “Look,” he says. “If you think a war with England is going to revive the party, you’re nuts. If that happens, it won’t be safe to be a Federalist. Not in the Dream and certainly not in the real.”

  “Lee, you know the difference between us Federalists and the Jeffersonian‐Republicans? The real difference?”

  Lee has a feeling something crazy’s about to get articulated.

  But Heyward says instead, “We actually fought in the war. Actually saw it. How close it came. How important it was that we had an army, roads, guns and powder. Without the Federalist system behind it, the whole Revolution would have collapsed into a string of clever tweets. Republicans have been in charge for eight years now, and look at us. Look at the country. Ripe as a dangling dingleberry for any Old World power to come along, pluck us right off and have the biggest bite they want.” Heyward pauses. “Lee,” he says, “you at least have to take the crystal.”

  Lee looks over his shoulder, finds Heyward doing the same. Their eyes lock. “Dig it out of your stomach?”

  “Find a Federalist, anyone who’s left, Lee. You get them this crystal.”

  Lee cocks his head so it rests crooked on his side of the glass. His distaste with this idea is palpable. Heyward can feel it in the air, his grand plan unwinding into nothing in the end. He thinks through a spot of silence. Some dripping noise from inside a beaker, somewhere on Lee’s side of the glass. “You think Madison can handle the Patrick Henry Group Avatar?”

  Lee thinks. “He kicked Patrick Henry’s ass in the real. Back when he was on our side, when he was a Federalist. Kicked Patrick Henry right in the ass and got that Constitution through. Saved the country, June. He was with the Old Man on that one.”

  Junior Heyward rocks his head a little in the concave of the tube. “Maybe when you die of The Death,” he says, “you don’t die fully, but go into the Dream. Maybe the Dream was always there and we’ve just now discovered it.”

  “Then where are all the people who died in the outbreaks?”

  “Maybe the drones aren’t drones but human souls displaced by The Death. Floated around for a while until they found some platform they could crawl into. Maybe the real purpose of The Death was to decide who could live forever in the Dream and who would have to stay out here, out here in the real.”

  From the streets, a shriek. Then another. Shouting rising up from several sources below them. Lee gets struck with a pang of fear. Maybe Heyward’s Synthesized The Death has gotten out! He scrambles to his feet, rushes to the window. More shouts are flittering up. Images race through his head, sidewalks dotted with toppled‐over Americans clutching their stomachs. But the visage evaporates when Lee sees what people are really shouting about. “You should see this.” But when Lee glances back, Junior Heyward is slumped over against the inner curve of the tube.

  Lee turns back to look out the window, a huge flying saucer floating over Charleston. He doesn’t know it yet, but there are similar ships pulling into position above eleven other ports all over the world. Last day of the Thomas Jefferson presidency and the Off‐Worlders have returned.

  “Shit, June. Maybe I will take that crystal.”

  Samuel Chase :: June 11th 1811

  Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sam Chase keeps a three‐foot mirror in the chair opposite the chair he sits in most of the day. Really, there isn’t anybody left to talk to. Federalists are an endangered species, especially in Baltimore. The ones left wouldn’t dare be seen with Sam Chase the Bacon Face, certainly not going to return any of his tickles, texts or chats. They’re all worried that copies of their correspondence will show up in the Dream some day, drag their reputations right down with his. “I’m just like my country,” he says, “limping toward the sunset, half alive and shadows only.”

  He looks at his face in the mirror, cheeks like cooked beef, hair more like clouds around his head than something attached. Not hard to see why all the Jeffersonian‐Republicans got to calling him Bacon Face. Sam Chase the Bacon Face. Some of his friends too, and with him right there in the room. He does have to admit it, though—his face really does look like bacon, like greasy slices of bacon laid atop a skull.

  “The Royal Navy,” he says to himself. “The most powerful sea force man has ever created. Against what?” A beep
ing begins to eke from a device attached to Sam Chase’s wrist. But he doesn’t seem to notice, just leans in, talking to that face that looks exactly like his but flipped. “This America Mr. Jefferson has built is about to get its ass kicked. Both cheeks.” The beeping breaks from background noise to infest the consciousness of the room. “Oh, fuck you,” Chase says. But this just makes the beeping louder, faster. “Fuck you,” he says again, but softer. Softer still, “Piece a shit.” He starts in on deep and measured breaths, lifts his arms high above his head, holds a breath and counts to five. As he does, the beeping slows, subsides. Chase relishes the silence. He looks tauntingly into the device, licks his lips and whispers, “That’s right, motherfucker.”

  Chase settles back, props up his feet, looks past them at himself with feet propped. “War with England is inevitable now,” he says. “No way to stop it.” Not after what happened this morning. Baltimore dock worker practicing square knots looked over the pier edge, but instead of water, there was a human floating, an American sailor dead and drained of blood. By the time the dock worker came to grips with what he was seeing, he was seeing much more of it. The water between the two closest boats was filled with them, Dead Americans, bobbing there like driftwood.

  Right after watching the first Dream feed about it, Sam Chase left to go see the bloodless sailors firsthand. His house is within a mile of the Baltimore Harbor, making this one of those rare modern moments when something happening in the Dream is actually within a crossable physical distance. Constant access to feeds from all over the country is okay. But nothing beats the buzz of actually seeing news happening in the real. Chase didn’t get a block, though, before every Republican with a voice box was shouting him down and calling him Old Bacon Face.

  “You’re a rascal, Old Bacon Face.”

  “Hey, Old Bacon Face, why don’t you get out of here?”

  “Fuck you, Old Bacon Face! Go fuck yourself!”

  And so Chase turned around and went straight home to look at the images on the Dream instead, just like everyone else. Fucking Baltimore, Paris of the East Coast. Right now, Chase is massaging his touchscreen, zooming and honing until a sailor’s face fills the surface of the smartpad. Ghost‐white and water‐logged, eyes rolled back to focus on nothing, not on this plane. “The War Hawks aren’t going to rest until America sees this same thing, in our mind’s eye, everywhere we turn.”

  Chase knows it’s impossible for the British to have done this. How could they have? Taken an entire ship’s worth of American men, okay. But drained them all of blood? Ship set sail the day before and so they would have had to get it all done in twenty‐four hours. Chase tries to imagine a little face‐to‐bacon‐face with the War Hawks’ new Speaker, Henry Clay. “So tell me, Mr. Clay, how exactly did the British accomplish this?” But Chase knows that plausibility’s about to stop mattering at all, that explaining how the British are responsible for draining the blood of American merchants and sailors is exactly what Henry Clay is going to do, whether it makes sense or not. And Sam Chase knows another thing, too. The people are going to love it. So get out of the way. Hawks are finally going to get this war they’ve been champing at the bit about since they steamrolled the mid‐term and came marching into town.

  The beeping has begun again. Chase starts those relaxation techniques the hippie doctor taught him. Breathing, lifting his arms, holding a breath, letting it out slow. “Not sure I even trust this thing.” He eyes the device. “Anytime someone’s doing or thinking or saying something the program doesn’t like, sends them a message, calm down! Humans don’t run Newnet anymore. Newnet runs the humans.”

  On three separate occasions in his life, a severe heart attack has brought Justice Sam Chase to the very brink of death. Doctors say there’ll be no fighting off a fourth. And so the device on his wrist is there to tell him when his blood pressure is putting his heart at risk, when he needs to relax unless he wants another attack. The first happened during the impeachment trial. Jefferson’s foray into dismantling the Supreme Court. It was Samuel Chase who got up in front of the train. Survived impeachment, but the trial almost killed him. “Saved the Court,” he tells the mirror. “And here I am, still alive. More than can be said for Hamilton.”

  For a while, Chase thought he could hold on until a Federalist got back in the President’s mansion. Deprive Tom the First and his line of Jefferclones from filling his seat with some Jacobin democrat. But now Chase knows it’s a fight he’s not going to win. He could last another year, possibly. But the Federalists are running Dewitt Clinton. And Dewitt Clinton ain’t got a chance in hell of taking Pennsylvania. And if he can’t get Pennsylvania, he ain’t got a chance in hell of beating Madison. Chase knows another five years is out of the question, and even if he could last that long, who’s going to beat Monroe in ’16? Not Rufus King, and not either of the Pinckneys, and certainly not Dewitt Clinton. Dewitt Clinton?The Federalists ain’t got shit. The seat he fought so hard to save, some Republican is going to fill it with whatever slime they can scrape off some rock in the Deep South. A Jeffersonian, he thinks, sitting right there in Samuel Chase’s Supreme Court seat. Fuck me.

  Chase returns his attention to his smartpad, zooms out so he can see the whole image, all those dead sailors, hundreds of them. “Drained of blood,” he says. He takes his eyes from it to lean back in his chair, looks into the face inside that mirror opposite. He watches himself say, “The Off‐Worlders had something to do with this. Must have. Maybe they’ve made a pact with the British. But if so, why would they want to drain our sailors of blood?” Something doesn’t add up, he thinks. “But less complete equations have been used to come up with war. And so war is what we’re going to have. War with England.”

  Chase gets up. Leaving the mirror empty of himself and his face, however much or little real bacon there is to it. He goes to the window. From there, he can see the harbor in the distance. “All this time, Jefferson has been fighting a war with Britain inside the Cloud. And now it’s here, crossed over into the real, and we don’t have a real thing to fight it with.” Beeping fills the room again. “I am calm!” he tells the device. He looks at the tiny words scrolling the screen. “How the fuck do kids even read these things?” He puts on some old‐fashioned glasses and looks again in time to see: “DIE!!!… BLOOD PRESSURE ALERT!! IF YOU DO NOT CALM DOWN, YOU WILL DIE… BLOOD PRESS—”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  William Williams :: August 2nd 1811

  A daughter leans down over her paralyzed father and listens again for some form of communication. She’s long given up on words, would be happy with a tongue click, an intentional pattern of breaths. After a few moments of nothing, she straightens herself from his bedside to face the mostly empty room. A few maids, a single doctor, a lawyer, her mother in the shadows. “Father says thank you all for your attentions.” A look of disgusted suspicion from her mother, but the daughter seems to find strength in it, some reinforcement through defiance.

  An hour later, William Williams’s son‐in‐law comes bursting into the death chamber. “I hear he’s talking.”

  Coldly from the shadowed corner comes a voice, “Yes, Mr. McClellan, that is what your wife would have us believe.”

  “Faith?”

  Faith Williams McClellan nods to her husband. Loud enough for her mother not to miss, she says, “He did. He did talk to me.”

  Later in the evening, a pair of the town’s young Federalists come knocking. “Word in the dinner halls is that Mr. Williams is talking again.”

  Faith lights up at the introduction of outside evidence to back up her claim. But when they’re all hovering about the bed, William Williams just lays there as silent as a mummy. After a few awkward minutes, the daughter tells them, “His voice is very faint.” And again she lowers her ear close to his spittle‐crusted lips.

  Boot heels come lifting off the floor as the two young Federalists lean in. McClellan steps in to rescue his wife, “Maybe your father is too…”

  But she
shushes him, rises and says, “My father says he’s glad to see that the Federalist party of Lebanon, Connecticut, still cares about its Founders.”

  McClellan works back a sly grin, leans past his wife, toward those unmoving lips. Popping back erect, he tells the young men, “William Williams says you can help the party best by uniting behind Mr. Clinton for President.”

  “DeWitt Clinton?”

  Little do both of them know that William Williams can hear everything they’re saying that he’s saying. He might not be able to speak or move at all, but the ears still work fine. And did those ears just hear Dewitt Clinton? For President? As a Federalist?

  The next morning, Faith and John McClellan watch the maid hustle away from the breakfast room to answer the front door. “Ringing at this hour?”

  When the maid returns, she’s leading two lines of well‐dressed Federalist office‐holders. Just town‐sized government is all, not any big‐wigglers. By noon, the front rooms are bustling with them, these up‐and‐comers and just‐made‐it‐theres. From every corner of Lebanon, Connecticut, they’ve come. A chance to hear the final wisdoms of an actual Signer. And Faith Williams McClellan is not going to let them down. She waits for a moment of calm, then leans over her father. The room falls silent. Rising, she coughs back some nerves. “My father says if Mr. Madison declares war on England,” a glance at her nodding husband, “then the President declares war on New England, too.”