Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America

by Damien Lincoln Ober

  “You sure were gone awhile, Dad.”

  “What about the President?”

  “What president? President of what?”

  “The President of the United States.”

  “States? There were some left in New England. The rest were all dissolved. Dissolved and fissured until there was nothing. Just drones guarding shacks with old muskets. Small bands of humans scavenging for clean water. The Capitol was burned to the ground and left there in ashes forever.”

  “And the Off‐Worlders, I suppose, turned the whole world into a farm to make more of those crystals.”

  “Probably would have,” he agrees. “But we found a way. Americans found it. New Englanders,” he says. “It was the last place where humans were still human. The last place with a connection to the real. Everyone sacrificing, everyone contributing. They reorganized the entire society around finding a way to reopen the Fissure. Some way across. A way to escape and save the human race. And then, there it was. They found it and in they went. Back into the old Internet to live on. And not just the humans but all the drones and the AIs, too. And the old haunts. And then it was the real world that was the wasteland. Carcasses of starving Millipi putrefying in the skeletons of destroyed port cities. For centuries that seemed like minutes in the old Internet.”

  “None of that’s going to happen, Dad. We’re going to win this war.”

  “I believe him,” one daughter says.

  “If you’ve really been forward in time, Dad, then when do you die?” The other daughters all look at their sister, eyes like the eye of the monster for even thinking such a thing, much less asking it. But then they all glance dadward to see what he’s going to say.

  “Funny you should ask…” but his words trail off. Dead again.

  “Get the doctor!” the eldest daughter commands. And when he’s rushed into the room, she tells him, “Turn it up, Doc.”

  “Okay, but that’s as high as it goes. Can’t go any higher.”

  Robert Treat Paine’s eyes flutter open. He points them in the general direction of all the faces looking down at him. “Don’t you people know how to let a Founder die?”

  The doctor laughs. “End of the line for me, ladies.” He makes for the door. “I’ll be in the liquor cabinet if you need me.”

  The room back to just Paines, daughters circling their father for a last look. “I’m sure Henry will make it home,” one says.

  Robert Treat Paine smiles. “Remember, girls, I’ve been to the future. So I already know.”

  “Well?” one asks. “What happens to him?”

  “Does Henry make it?”

  “Will we see him again, father?”

  “Has he been eaten by the Millipus?”

  Robert Treat Paine just pats the closest hand and goes still yet again.

  “Judge Paine!” someone yells. And the girls all realize it’s the doctor. “The Off‐Worlders!” he’s shouting.

  The daughters all rush to the window, throw open the shutters to look out at Boston harbor. The Off‐Worlder ship that’s been hovering since back before the war has left its position and is headed southward.

  “The Off‐Worlders,” one of the daughters says.

  “They’re moving.” And they look back at the bed where their father lies, too dead now for any smartlife to wiggle him out of this moment in time.

  Elbridge Gerry :: November 23rd 1814

  Mister Vice President!”

  Gerry opens his eyes to watch a young aide stumble into the room. The kid’s boots are covered in soot from a scramble through the burnt‐out Capitol. Gerry had, just a few minutes before, sunk back in a soft chair and was almost in nap. Now he’s perking himself up, shakes off what little sleep he’s gathered and asks the kid, “You find the Senate Pro Tem?”

  The aide is taking big breaths, hands gripping pants fabric into bunches on his knees. Swallowing, shaking his head, “John Coffee, sir, is on feed from outside New Orleans.”

  A smile from the Vice President. “The Cloud is still up, then. And Jackson is still out there.”

  “For now, sir. But…”

  “What is it?”

  “The Off‐Worlders, Mr. Vice President. That’s what Coffee’s calling about.”

  Gerry tries to patch into the feed on his smartlens, but there isn’t any signal. He moves to a few different spots, his lucky place by the window that sometimes gives him a bar or two. Head shaking, he turns to the kid.

  “I’ve got two horses out front, Mr. Vice President. We’ve got to get you to a terminal.”

  Gerry cracks a smile. “Cloud on the flicker, troops marching the coast, Redcoats lurking around every bend. Just like the Revolution.”

  In the saddle, the Vice President and his aide cross over from Georgetown, then pick their way down trash‐strewn Pennsylvania Avenue. Slaves and poor whites scurry from their path, arms loaded with whatever loot the British have left unlooted. Gerry takes it all in. “Looks like the war has finally reached America.”

  “It’s pretty bad, sir.” The kid nods to the wreckage of the President’s mansion, just a blackened shell.

  Gerry disengages from the conversation. He’s looking into the roasted skeleton of the President’s mansion but not really seeing it. “If this isn’t the curse, then I don’t want to be around for what is.”

  The kid’s thinking of something else. “The Millipus,” he says. “They say it’s not even fully in the real, sir. That it’s been seen in the Dream now, too. How do we kill it if it can slip back and forth at will?”

  Gerry shakes his head. “If we’re to survive long‐term, we’re going to have to get used to these kinds of multi‐platform threats.” He straightens himself in his saddle, forcefully clicks his horse into a trot, nods at where the Capitol building once stood. All that’s left is the foundation. The rest has been burned and sucked into the earth. It makes the destroyed President’s mansion look like a mansion. Gerry rolls up a sleeve. Old Sons of Liberty tattoo has faded some, but it’s still there. “Don’t worry,” the Vice President says. “We’ll rebuild it.”

  They descend into the guts of the archives, the only building left standing among the punched‐out teeth of the National Mall. In the screen of the one working terminal, Gerry can see the choppy form of Captain John Coffee, Andrew Jackson’s right‐hand man. The image cuts backward and forward, showing code through the pixels; it’s about the best you can get out of the Dream these days.

  “How’s the general?” Gerry wants to know. “Worried you guys were wiped out. You can hear me alright, Captain?”

  “Pretty okay, Mr. Vice President.” Coffee’s big head fills the screen, flickering, starting, stopping. His words come out disconnected from the image. Looks like a bunch of still photos talking.

  “Got some strange reports up here,” Gerry tells Captain Coffee. “That the general’s been executing our own soldiers. You know, there are some Indians down there, Spanish, too, if you just gotta kill somebody.”

  “We need a way of keeping the militia from going off to the races every time they see a line of Redcoats.”

  “Yes,” Gerry says. He nods and nods. “It’s a good thing you young men have a handle on this thing. Us older guys don’t seem to have a clue.” He glances upward, a gesture toward the burned‐down Capitol teetering all around them. “Now, what’s this I hear about Off‐Worlders?”

  “Their ships. They’ve converged over New Orleans.” “They’re attacking?”

  “No,” Coffee says. “Just watching, it looks like.”

  “How many?”

  “Twelve ships. No sort of formation, just a little cluster pocking the sky. General Jackson doesn’t like it one bit.” “Can’t imagine he would.” “Where’s the President?”

  Gerry shakes his head. “You should see this place, Captain. Government’s scattered. President’s in the hills somewhere. We hear he’s sick, maybe on his death bed, maybe shot. Secretary of War, well, there’s isn’t one. Not really. Monroe rode through
a couple of times, seems like he was starting to put things together. But now we’ve got word he’s captured or killed.” Gerry tries to brighten it with a little of his working‐class charm. “Some people say they can get on the Dream. We’re picking it up a little here. But for whole parts of the country, there’s no signal at all. Brits aren’t any better off, at least. Their cloud’s infected, too. Cross‐infected. Barely holding together.” Gerry stops himself from continuing, asks the Captain, “What’s General Jackson’s plan?”

  “We’re going to have our hands full with Wellington’s troops when they land. We’ll be here to meet them, but that’s all the plan we have.” Coffee cuts in and out. He’s there and gone and then frozen and then moving forward in halts. “If the Off‐Worlders jump in on us while we’re fighting the Brits… we’ll have to see what they’ve got and improvise.” Coffee tries to patch in a feed of the Port of New Orleans, but it’s frozen and filled with grain—not a single hard edge. “Hickory says the plan is to kill anything that gets in front of our guns—Redcoat, drone, Indian or Off‐Worlder.”

  Then Coffee’s voice is gone. On the screen, the vague outlines of the Off‐Worlder ships hovering over New Orleans dissolve into static only. “Talk to me, Coffee.” But that’s it. Communication with Jackson’s ragtag army is severed. It reminds Gerry of those days before the Constitution when the Internet was first reopened and there wasn’t a single rule or regulation. Everything was just piles of unchecked links, impossible to find or use.

  Some shouting and gunfire bring Gerry back to the real. He turns to see that aide of his laying face up at the foot of the stairwell. Some British soldiers have entered the room. They stand there on pause, their rifles pointed at him. Into the doorway behind them steps Admiral Cockburn himself, the terror of the Mid‐Atlantic. Uniform looks just pressed, pressed and polished under that huge cockade. This is the man who gave the orders to launch the invasion that destroyed D.C., sent the American government scurrying.

  “Admiral Cock Burn,” Gerry says. “You Brits have finally caught up with me. After all these years.”

  “It’s ‘Coh‐burn,’ Mister Gerry. Sir Coh‐burn. But what kind of King’s English can we expect from the son of a reverend from… Mhalbilled Mass?”

  “Nothing quite like a proper English dandy, fresh off the tit of the King, putting on a Boston accent. Gives me a boner every time.”

  Admiral Cockburn examines something under the tips of his fingernails. “They say the Cloud is coming to pieces because of this fissure out near Detroit.”

  “You imperialist pigs are the ones who diddled with the Cloud so long. Impressing other countries’ signals. Partitioning all of Europe and South Asia. What did you expect was going to happen?”

  Cockburn frowns. “One hundred million drones, they estimate. About to enter the great Northwest. And Francis Hopkinson is leading them. Funny, no? One of your Founding Fathers—a Signer no less—back from the grave to ring in the destruction of the country. Be here in a few weeks, I imagine.”

  “You believe everything you read in the Dream, Cock Burn?”

  Admiral Cockburn looks around the room, largely untouched by the royal troops who burned the city. He takes a few steps, clearly hoping Gerry will join him in a leisurely stroll, but the Vice President stays right where he is. “Shame about General Ross,” Gerry says. “Headed back to that King of yours in a keg of rum. That’s what you get, I guess, when you fuck with the American Capitol.”

  Cockburn’s face reddens. “Not only have you sunk to assassinating officers, but you’re proud of it, too?”

  “Officer is the same as any other soldier in my book. And any soldier can get shot. If you’re in the war in this country, then you’re in the war in this country, whether you’re a reverend’s son or the son of some duke or lord who gave up on England long ago.”

  Cockburn draws his saber and cuts a shape into the air. Just misses Gerry three different ways. And Gerry felt it, too, felt the tip of that blade flick his cheek. Cockburn rests the point of the sword on that faded Sons of Liberty tattoo, the segmented snake, JOIN OR DIE. “Terrorists,” Cockburn sneers. “You Americans are terrorists.” The Admiral stays still a moment, only his lip moving, a slight quiver that breaks into an evil grin. “The Royal Navy is in control of Maine, Mr. Gerry. Most of the eastern Great Lakes. This little armpit you colonists call the mid‐Atlantic doesn’t look much better than your burnt‐out Capitol. Seems I’ve pretty well gelded the men of this continent.”

  “Forgot your lunch, though, at Fort McHenry, when you got taken to school.”

  Cockburn presses a smile. “There’s something cute about a self‐diluted subject, cracking wise at the tip of a sword, in the pit of a burned‐down provincial city.” Cockburn steps away to circle again the edge of the room, the cockade changing the shape its shadow makes on the wall. “I wonder, though, Mr. Gerry, if His Majesty’s Empire is what you should be worried about at all. Captain,” and one of the royal soldiers steps forward, “show the Vice President what’s happening right now in Connecticut.”

  “Yes, sir,” and the captain flicks forward his smartlens display. A hologram in the center of the room shows a crackling feed of a parade ground, two armies marching in threatening review formations with the gap between them shrinking.

  “New London, Connecticut,” Cockburn says. “That’s your state militia squared off against your federal army.” Cockburn chuckles. “You colonists, always imagining you have some role in the unfolding of your destiny. Really, your revolts have been little skirmishes on the edges of a world war. Well, that war is over now. France is defeated. Your side has lost. The American Revolution will be a few links in the database, not much more.”

  Cockburn snaps and the captain flicks his iris. The projected display dissolves into an ocean. A few seconds of a looped feed shows the shadowy shape of the Millipus, its tentacles lashing through the waves at its sides. “Sent to us by one of the Spanish governors in Florida. Looks like our little friend is headed into the Gulf. Maybe New Orleans? Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Gerry. If the monster doesn’t want ships in the ocean, it makes sense to destroy the biggest port in the hemisphere.” On cue, the British captain switches the display to a map of the entire North American theater. “Your own armies are fighting themselves on one side, drones coming in on the other. When this squid thing reaches New Orleans, this little country of yours is going to be taking it three ways. Three ways hard.”

  “It’s a Millipus,” Gerry informs him.

  “Ah, yes, Vampire Millipus. And what of the Off‐Worlders, Mr. Gerry? What side are they on, I wonder…” Cockburn puts out a hand. An officer steps up and slaps a revolver into his palm.

  “What’s that for?” Gerry wants to know.

  “My daddy,” Cockburn says. “Always wanted to kill a Signer. ‘A Signer and a President,’ he always said. Said if I ever got the chance, I shouldn’t pass it up.”

  “Kill me? I’m eighty. Wait around a few weeks.”

  “Afraid that would be a little slow for my tastes. Plus—” The projection cuts out, stopping Cockburn mid‐sentence. The room feels suddenly empty.

  “No signal, Admiral.”

  Cockburn shrugs. “War could be over any minute now,” he says. “They’re just trying to figure out some fishing rights. But who’s going fishing with that… Millipus out there? Probably we’ll come out of this thing on the same side, Mr. Gerry. Humans versus the Off‐Worlders and their monster.” Cockburn lifts the pistol, points it at Gerry’s chest. “Guess a Signer and a Vice President will have to do.”

  Thomas M’Kean :: June 24th 1817

  Last day on Earth for Thomas M’Kean.” He struggles up from his chair to stand tall and all himself. He’s alone there in his office, tucked back in the corner of his mansion. “Was hoping for some sun,” he says. But it was cloudy, all day long, every time he checked the sky.

  M’Kean takes his cane from a groove that’s been rubbed in the mahogany siding. He pushes t
hrough the thin office door and into the hall. The tilting warble of his guests reaches him now. As he cuts his shape into the ballroom’s far doorway, M’Kean looks down at the skeleton of a crowd. Most of the city is home nursing the hangover of a presidential visit. A solid week of constant parades and open‐air festivities, dinner parties with toasts already fading the crest of a 3net viral. All throughout the city people poured to see the man who’ll make the country whole again. Really, Philadelphia was just a tune up. President has a week of parties planned in New York and then its time for the real test: Can James Monroe get the Federalists of New England back on board, make them forget about the dissolve and the Fissure forever?

  M’Kean made it to one of the ceremonies. Just a drop‐by, a drink and then on home. It was strange, all these heavies from both parties there in the same place. All doing their best to pretend the last two decades didn’t happen. Right from Washington to Monroe and we’re all one big happy family again. The Era of Feeling Good.

  M’Kean laughs at it. He had to fight that horse‐faced dolt like hell to get the Constitution ratified. He still remembers the kid over with Patrick Henry—the real Patrick Henry—predicting doom and the end of man if the Constitution became law. Luther Martin so drunk he was passing out on his feet. And now that anti‐Federalist jackass James Monroe is President.

  M’Kean takes a drink from the first tray that passes. Leans on his cane, sipping. Some kind of watered‐down white wine. A man approaches with his free hand held up high for M’Kean to see. Lowers the hand and M’Kean gives it a shake. “It’s me,” the guys says. “Your new Senator.”

  “I know who you are.” But really M’Kean has no idea.

  “Thank God you guys had 3net ready.”

  “Was the Federalists who had 3net ready.”

  “You were a Federalist, M’Kean.”

  “Not then I wasn’t.” M’Kean pats the guy on his suit shoulder, looks past him, sees the current Governor has just made his entrance. Simon Snyder. This is a man he recognizes. Took over when M’Kean stepped down, almost got the Vice under Monroe. But, of course, it went to a New York man instead. Just like that, the bubble burst on Snyder. M’Kean wonders if the guy even knows it yet. He starts to pick his way through, keeping one eye on Snyder opposite, doing the same. The two governors, past and present, circle each other like old crows. Short glances up from breezy conversations as they close in. Then they’re beside each other once again, each stirring a drink by wiggling it in his free hand.