“Maybe this new President is the curse.”
M’Kean’s eyes bound around the room a little. “Why you want to be talking about the curse, Simon?”
“Off‐Worlders gone, Millipus dead, 3net is up and running, running smooth… what else is there?”
“Suspect there’s plenty left around to worry about if we just look a little.”
The current governor tilts his glass toward the north edge of town, where Monroe and his entourage rode out as the sun was rising. “Four years this guy has and then he’s out.”
“You really did want that Vice.”
Governor Snyder smirks. “Wasn’t Monroe that made the country whole at all. It was Jackson.”
M’Kean rolls his eyes. “Lachlan McIntosh all over again.”
“Well, better than another of these Virginians.”
“What’s wrong with Virginia that’s not wrong with Andrew Jackson?”
They laugh. “But this kid, Monroe,” Snyder has to admit. “Live 3netcast of the Fourth of July from Boston Harbor?” Snyder shakes his head, a touch of genuine admiration. “Could have done it from the White House, opened a 3net feed and patched it in. But he’s going there. To actually be there. Right there in the port. No need to worry about that sea monster anymore, or the British or Off‐Worlders either.” Snyder smiles. “I tell you, he’s got the Old Man act down pretty well.”
A handshake, a pat on the arm and they roll, then, away from one another. M’Kean strolls a bit, finds a chair for his old body. A few minutes of nodding to people as they pass, then it’s up again to mingle.
“Can’t figure it out,” one of his guests scratches. “Today’s date. June the twenty‐fourth?”
The guy’s wife bobs there in one of those huge dresses. “Well, it’s not your birthday.”
M’Kean sipping.
“Is it some holiday we don’t know about? A day you’re trying to make a holiday? You trying to let us know some event occurred today worth celebrating? You announcing something, Tom? Coming out of retirement? Tell me, why the party?”
“Hannibal,” M’Kean says. “Defeats the Romans at Trasimene.” M’Kean smiles, nods at the thin crowd, changing shape only slightly around him. “Thought it was about time for a party is all.”
M’Kean moves from room to room for a while, on whomever’s arm is available. Still just as tall but thin‐looking now in the doorways he passes through. Greeting and moving on, muscle memory of a time when the strictness of such procedures made them all but brainless. Now you have to work a crowd like you’re not working it. Some things are just tiring to democratize. M’Kean can stand a few minutes at any one time, then he’s looking around for the closest chair to sink into, down one layer under the festivities. Politicos of the B level and wigglers of industry bend as they pass. Their torsos all look the same. Their wives move the same way. Skin all the same shade of orange.
When M’Kean stands again, he recognizes the face of Caesar Rodney’s nephew, Caesar A. Rodney. “I remember when your uncle rode that horse through the storm…” but M’Kean lets it trail off. “Heard that one enough by now, I’m guessing.”
Rodney pats him on the back, sweeps the room with a tiny wave of his fingers. “So when does General Jackson make his tour?”
The two fall in line, walking slowly along the edge of the ballroom.
“Surely he’s next,” Rodney says. “This man of the people. Shut down the Dream and slayed the Vampire Millipus.” He swirls his martini a little. “Scared off the Off‐Worlders, too.”
M’Kean smirks. “That’s what they’re saying?”
“Tell me, M’Kean, a little too convenient? That there’s not one single second of feed?”
“Can’t get a feed of something, Rodney, if there’s no Cloud to upload it to. Jackson didn’t just shut down the Dream; he shut down the whole thing. Dream, Newnet, the old Internet.”
Rodney, as if seeing the nonexistent feed across his smartlens right then, Jackson’s horse rearing up under the tentacles of the Millipus, sword drawn. “Wonder who gave him the idea. Lure the Millipus into the Dream and then shut it down. You think that maniac came up with it on his own? Hanging deserters, chasing Indians and Redcoats through the swamp is more his speed. The occasional duel. Fistfights is what he’s good for. And where did he even get that crystal he supposedly used.”
“Lighthorse Harry Lee gave it to him, just before he got beat to death by that mob, the poor SOB.”
M’Kean watches Rodney sorting through it all. “Madison?” Rodney posits. “He’s never been in love with the Dream, not really. Patrick Henry Group Avatar, goes down with the ship? Jefferson maybe, from some terminal he’s got set up at Monticello?” Rodney sighs at the ridiculousness of it all.
“George Washington,” M’Kean offers. “Maybe he was in there, watching over us from inside the Dream. Got his hands on Hop‐kinson at the last second. Pow! No more drone invasion. Then reached out and grabbed that Millipus. Just fucking wrassled it. Killed the thing and saved the country again. Probably died in the fight, too, this time for real. Washington dead forever and gone.” M’Kean looks at Rodney’s face. “Underestimation is the best favor you can do a man like Andrew Jackson.”
They separate. M’Kean weaves his way through the edges of a few different circles which loosen and bulge as he approaches. It was nice to be around a shadow of the old Caesar Rodney, even with all its inexactness. Might be the closest thing to a Signer that shows up at this party. Unless Jefferson does decide to attend. Suddenly, some young buck is pumping M’Kean’s hand a little too forcefully. “Just want to let you know, General, that the Federalists might be gone, but the Society of Cincinnati is in good hands and as strong as ever.”
M’Kean looks at the kid and his little phalanx of young officers, all medaled up from the war just passed. Probably believe they won the thing. And there they go, off through the party like it’s not happening around them, right out the door, business done. “Don’t these guys stay for a drink anymore?”
“What’s that?”
M’Kean turns to look at… who is this? He pats the guy on the shoulder. “Need a break from all this bustle,” M’Kean says. “You mind helping me back to my office?”
Back down that same thin hall, M’Kean hanging on the guy’s arm, leaning on the cane on the other side. A loose summary of state‐wide issues trickling odorless in the air, the smallest kind of talk. They pass through three separate doorways and into the study. “If I’d known I was going to live this long,” M’Kean tells the guy, “I would have made the house smaller.” Which is funny because M’Kean did know he was going to live this long. Knew exactly when he was going to die.
Helping him down into a chair, the guy asks, “You alright, Governor?”
M’Kean chases him off with assurances. Loud sharp click of the door closing behind him. The party now barely reaches him. Could be a recording of a party, any one of the hundreds he’s heard muffled through these house walls as he sat back here. Back in the office with some big wigglers, taking care of the real business of the get‐together. Now it’s just M’Kean. All alone.
There’s a knock on the door, then, and in comes the last of the twins. Same age as always, but now with that mangled cheek of his, whole side of his face split open like hamburger let dry. He takes a chair, looks like it hasn’t been sat in for a while, lets that remaining hand curl around the arm. The one person Central Programming couldn’t give an end date on. And so M’Kean knows that at least one of three things must be true: Central Programming is wrong, this twin outlives Central Programming, or the twin and Central Programming both live forever.
“Mr. Jefferson’s not coming,” M’Kean says. The twin nods. “Too far for him to travel, but he thanks you for the invitation.”
“He knows what day it is.”
The twin lets a gleam break his eye. “So today is your day? Your last day?”
“Tomorrow, technically. A few minutes after midnight. A little scar
ed, I guess.” M’Kean brings himself back to the room. “I’ve always wondered if Jefferson told you guys about Central Programming.”
“He told us about it, what you two found, that time you were digging in there, way down deep in the Dream: a database of future dates, the day and time that every human dies.”
M’Kean smiles. “Jefferson never looked, did he?” M’Kean seems more amused than surprised.
“He looked at his own date, and that’s it.” The twin gets that smile that people get when they really know Thomas Jefferson. “He always says, ‘There are far too many interesting things in Central Programming to worry about the days that humans expire.’”
“But he couldn’t resist seeing his own?”
“No one’s perfect.”
Now M’Kean lets a full smile creep. “And so you know, too, that Thomas Jefferson is to die exactly fifty years after the birth of the country, the day the curse comes… the end of America. Central Programming hasn’t been wrong once. I’ve done a fair share of cross‐checking.”
“To believe that, you’d have to believe in the curse. What do you think, M’Kean? Can America survive Thomas Jefferson’s death?”
It’s a question not meant to be answered but only pondered further. M’Kean wonders how much of this back and forth was scripted ahead of time, instructions from Jefferson. Still don’t feel too bad, he thinks. “We were friends once, Tom Jefferson and I.” M’Kean settles his eyes on the twin. “But really it’s you I wanted to see. I want to apologize. About your brother.”
“Because you knew?”
“I knew he would die that day and that you and I would not.”
The twin forces a smile, head shaking in spite of Thomas M’Kean. “Of all the stuff we did, that’s what you regret most? Enough to get me all the way out here so you can get it off your chest?”
“I guess I’m not the kind of guy who has lots of friends.” M’Kean starts digging in his breast pocket. “I’m going to do you a favor.”
“Is that your letter from Jefferson? From when he was elected?”
“Watch what happens to it.” M’Kean barks a quick laugh. “Seen it once before. When Rush died. Damnedest thing if I know how Jefferson did it, that old kook.” M’Kean looks at the paper, flopped open on his desk. When the last Signer dies, he thinks, there won’t be anything left of the letters. They’ll be gone forever. No backups, no cache ghosts of them floating in the Cloud, whatever cloud there is then. M’Kean wonders for the last time if it is going to be true, after all these years of knowing, the exact time of his death. He chases off the wonder, smiles, really smiles. He works himself to his feet, takes the cane. “Well, if you’ll excuse me.”
“You’re headed back out?”
M’Kean pauses a moment before continuing. “I’m thinking one more swing through the people, however few are left out there.” They shake firmly. “Now, you watch that letter.” Then M’Kean ventures out, down that same long hall. As he crests the main room, he feels some tightening in his chest but presses on. Breaths are starting to come hard. M’Kean has to force them out and suck them in. He looks down at his smartpalm: ten of midnight. He wanders between some conversation circles until he gets to the big glass doors that let out onto the back veranda. Someone’s saying something to him. M’Kean nods, then limps his way into the cool evening air. Overcast still lingering. So there’ll be no more stars, not in his lifetime.
In the new quiet, M’Kean can hear his own wheezing, can hear the slow thumping of his heart. He crosses to a bench that was carved into the railing when the mansion was first built. Cool and damp from some condensation already forming. Not a soul out here with him. He can see their vague colors splashed on the glass. “So it’s alone,” he says to himself. “And this here, this here’s the spot.”
He turns his head to look out at his fields one last time. They shine a little with the dim diffusion of the sky laid over their dewy blades. In the distance, those awkward, crooked trees. The clock starts striking midnight. The official start of his last day. He’s not going to make it much into it. M’Kean looks up at the clouded‐over sky. “Would have liked one last clear night.”
William Ellery :: February 15th 1820
The doctor bursts in to find William Ellery by the window as always. “You’re dead!” the doctor says. He points to his eyeball. “Came into my smartlens a few minutes ago.” Ellery looks at himself, his body half in that crooked parallelogram of light, comes from the sun, way far away from the Earth, to make this same shape every day.
The doctor steps into the room with a few big steps, starts glancing around. “Says you have no pulse, that your heart isn’t beating, that you’re not breathing.”
Ellery stops all things for one moment. Perfectly still… listening. “I think I’m alive. But if the smartlife says I’m not, then I guess it must be true.”
“You should have had the thing implanted, Ellery, like I said. I could up your meds from the office and save all these trips. I mean, why get a smartlife if you’re not going to have it implanted? Lots of old folks are doing it.” The doctor takes a chair that’s sitting against the wall farthest from the window, lets his long jacket flop over either side. He sighs. “At this rate, Ellery, you might outlast the country.”
“The country? Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“You’ve seen what’s going on out there.” The doctor pulls out some kind of smartdevice. The thing is huge, the size of an old smartphone but sleek and devious‐looking. When he talks now, the doctor is half talking; he’s half in the room and half scraped off, into that thing he’s got. “Commerce is all but frozen on 3net. People are talking about bringing back precious metals.”
“Someone’s always talking about bringing back precious metals.”
“But now they’re really talking about it, Ellery. These electronic transfers ain’t worth the pulse they’re sent on if no one believes in them. Talking about actually requiring face‐to‐face business transactions. Actually handing money over for things, in person”
Ellery turns to look down at the town center, gridded out below. Newport, Rhode Island. Ellery was made its collector the day after the Constitution was signed—George Washington’s very first appointment—and has had one eye on this port ever since. “I’ve seen plenty of things in my years,” Ellery says, “and this panic of yours. It ain’t shit.”
Only enough of the doctor peeking out of 3net to scoff. “The complete collapse of the financial system? Ain’t shit?”
“The eighties, now that was a financial crisis.”
“I was only a boy then, Ellery.”
“The next time people talk about ‘the eighties,’ it’s going to be the 1880s they’re talking about.” Ellery looks over at the doctor, looking into that smartdevice. “What is that thing? Don’t think I’ve seen one of them before.”
“Yes, you have. It’s a smartlife.”
Ellery looks at his old wrist model with its numbers all zeroed out. “Sure doesn’t look like mine.”
The doctor tells him, “This is the G5. But they should call it the H. Links right in with your smartlens. I’m following the market, watching the President’s speech, reading some feed, trying to get this damned 3net app to accept the changes I made in its coding.” The doctor holds his device up proudly. “Pretty soon the smartlens will be the smartlife and you won’t have to have both.”
Ellery rolls his eyes. He settles deeper into his chair, puts his forehead into that grease spot on the window where he leans his head sometimes. Can watch the outside world without having to hold anything up. The golden age of Newport, he thinks, long gone. “Once we competed with New York,” Ellery says. “From all up and down the seaboard they came here, right here. From up and down seaboards the whole world over. Persecuted in Massachusetts, chased out of Russia and the Orient. Pilgrims from the land of pilgrims. Jews from Portugal, fleeing the Inquisition. Adventurers from countries it was the first I heard of when they told me where they were b
orn. All that energy bottled up in their family trees since the beginning of time. Just waiting for a little freedom to shake it out. Newport. A new port. An island on the edge of a new world.” He sighs. “Now the state capital’s been moved to Providence. We’re just an outpost for smugglers and pirates and damned slave traders. A hangout for old kooks and social rejects who somehow got their hands on way too much money.”
The doctor creeps back and forth through the tides of 3net, all wavy and mixed in like it is these days. “Why don’t you retire?” he says. “Enjoy your last few years of undead.”
“Retire? Retire from what? 3net has automated everything.” Ellery fixes his eyes on a far‐off ship, floating just on the edge of vision. Kind of ship waits until night’s dark to unload. “Don’t need collectors of the port anymore. Captains can just scan their cargo, and the tariffs are calculated and deducted from their account. No inspection needed. These shippers now, so long as they’re flying the Stars and Stripes, they’re free to do whatever they want. That’s why we fought the war, right? To free the Cloud for commerce.”
“Isn’t the Cloud anymore, Ellery.”
“I know. 3net. It’s the latest big tickle. Really, not much different, though, if you ask me. Same old things. Brainpage, Franklin’s Dream, but now with new names. Not long before drones start showing up. Then haunts. You wait.”
“A drone on 3net?” The doctor laughs into his smartlife. “What I’m worried about is this damned panic.”
Ellery wonders if there’s a strategy to this type of listening. If the doctor tunes in at certain times or just waits until there’s some quiet, recalls enough words to fashion a response that seems at least tangentially related. Or maybe these new humans have mastered it for real. Maybe living in two planes at once is just regular living to them. “Fifty years from the launch of 3net,” he says. “Maybe that’s when the curse strikes.”
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