by Jim Wurst
CHAPTER 62
Presidential candidates didn’t campaign in person very much anymore. There were practical issues that transcended partisanship the danger of air travel, people avoiding being parts of large crowds for fear of infection or violence, candidates’ fear of infection or violence. Holographic appearances became the default. And since they didn’t involve the messy problems of actual human beings, the appearances became spectacles. Holographic fireworks and roaring crowds, cost nothing. A typical Ailes rally involved a patriotic background, usually the White House since he could use it for free, a small crowd enhanced by holographic multiplication and fireworks at the end. Ailes loved fireworks. So, Ailes had made virtual campaigning the norm. He hated having to spend time near the people he led. He led, they followed. Public appearances were a waste of time. His previous Federalist opponent knew he was a sacrificial sheep. He acted like it. And they treated him like one on Election Day. Hayden followed the same pattern. He couldn’t appear more dynamic or braver than his boss.
But Cranston played it a bit differently. First, and he would never admit it, his father would taunt him for being a coward. But secondly, it was not in his nature to step back. He had to look into the eyes of the people he was talking to or confronting. Finally, he had to distinguish himself from Ailes and Hayden. He was the underdog. He had to dig just to prevent getting buried.
Since the public appearances had to be limited, each time he went out into the country, the appearance had to count. The idea was to be provocative. Go to Ailes country. Draw a crowd that had a heartbeat. Plant himself in the middle of the damned country, open his arms, clear his voice, and shout, “Here I am.”
Lilly would have been perfectly comfortable with holographic seminars. That’s how she taught most of her classes. Cranston practically pushed her out the door as he rushed out. The Chicago rally right after Labor Day was exactly what he wanted. Real people. The “real-est” Americans. The “stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders” of Sandberg, Mailer, Turkel, and Mamet. The people you denigrated at your peril. Cranston stood on a stage with the Arts Institute of Chicago at his back and the putrid wind of Lake Michigan at his face. Chicago and its lake were dying, the lake fighting the heat, pollution, and parasitic species and the American prairie at the front door was gasping as the dust ate at its vitals. Everyone backstage pretended not to see the nurse with an oxygen tank and basket of wet towels sitting with nothing to do.
He shouted out to Emilio, to Hanna, to Mario, to Maureen, to Hans, to Kim. He embraced the overwhelming America of the broke-back city; the stench of stockyards and bosses; the black, white, and brown pug face of the American that never bowed. “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” He didn’t have to call them to fight, but he called on Hayden to fight. Hayden wasn’t a fighter Chicago would recognize. Cranston told him he was. The crowd believed him. They needed no holograms. Individual recordings zapped around the internet. Even America’s Network was compelled to report on him.
Cranston was a political animal that could not let Chicago be the end. He had to up it. He had to go to some place spectacular. He had to do something that no one else not Hayden would ever do. He had to slap everyone in the face. When he announced his decision, his father smiled, Lilly blanched, Sean maintained his professional composure, Mei almost hugged him, Maggie did. No ceremony, no explanation. None needed. He walked into the room and said the name. Still, nearly a century later, the name sent chills throughout the political body: Dallas.
No national candidate had campaigned in Dallas since Ailes did when he was running for vice president. The party wanted him to go, and he wasn’t yet in a position to say no. Texas was so fractured, so unruly, so unpredictable that no one wanted to chance it. Trying to engage Texas was like playing chess with a mountain lion. All the large states fractured, but most like New York and California kept some center of gravity. Texas was a free-for-all. Now 18 years later, the state settled into something that looked like government, but not enough to make a non-Texan politician want to walk into the middle of it. There was no advantage to Hayden to go to Texas since whatever he could get out of the state, he would get. But Texas fit Cranston’s campaign strategy of forcing eyes to turn towards him. Dallas was the perfect “what the hell is he thinking” venue.
He flew into the city around noon for the early evening rally. An outside event was out of the question even in October, an outdoor rally was a health risk for the audience. So they booked a sports stadium. The campaign booked the site through a shell company. By the time the owners found out who was really going to use it, it was too late to back out. People began arriving a few hours in advance. That was newsworthy. Once they passed through body and retinal scans, everyone got a filter mask even if they had brought their own gloves, a bottle of water, and a couple of protein bars. In the old days, if you knew you won’t fill a place, you would pack the audience in tightly upfront and hope the cameras didn’t pan out over all the empty seats. Getting people to attend was a triumph, so if it wasn’t a massive crowd, it wasn’t a death knell. Tightly packed humans were a death knell. People had an absolute terror of being around too many diseases carrying potential unhinged murderers otherwise known as fellow human beings. It was a great excuse for politicians not to hold rallies “the people do not want them,” the solemn servants of the people sadly explained.
And now Cranston had arrived and kicked them in the shins. Holographic images sprung to life from the classic American tableaus with some Texas specifics thrown in. And then the music. Rather than the hyper electronic sounds designed to tingle nerve endings, Cranston always used the same old, old song with a lush synthetic orchestral arrangement. First the solitary drums, then the solitary horns, and then the crescendo of “Fanfare for the Common Man.” When he started using it, nobody knew what the hell was going on. Where was the soaring electronic swing? Where was the white noise blast? But when people found out the name, everyone wanted to claim it. Which was Copland’s point. Which was Cranston’s point.
Cranston appeared before the holographic scene. At first, he looked like a hologram; it looked like the audience had been double-crossed; it looked like an ordinary campaign event. Then the screen went dark and Cranston stepped into the light. “It is the real man,” the audience thought as the “Fanfare” cymbals crashed.
“Good evening, DALLAS!” It was as much a dare as a greeting. “God bless you and God bless the great state of Texas!” Sociologists would undoubtedly ponder for years why the audience started taking off their masks. Ailes, watching from the White House, didn’t need a sociologist. He knew what Cranston had done. He had done what the audience didn’t even know it wanted. It was a classic political move. He did what the people could not stand but deeply, truly wanted. George Cranston touched them. They wanted to be touch. So, they dropped their physical and metaphorical masks.
“We are not living the American Dream. It is a founding principle of this country, a belief, a conviction, that we will always be better than we are today. It was a trust handed down since the very start of this country. John Adams said, ‘I am a soldier so my son can be a politician so his son can be a farmer so his son can be a poet.’ We always looked to the next generation, and the generations beyond, committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves, committing ourselves to an ever-strengthening commonwealth.”
“Think about that word: commonwealth. Common. Wealth. ‘Common’ is not ordinary, ‘common’ is community. ‘Wealth’ is not money. ‘Wealth’ is the bounty of our efforts to improve heart, mind, body, and soul. The commonwealth is the united strength of our nation. I found this little piece of wisdom floating out in cyberspace. They probably wrote it sometime early this century.
“’We owe each other a debt. We owe each other an obligation. That is the thing to which we truly commit ourselves if we follow our Constitution. It is a cha
rter that enumerates individual liberties, but it is not a license for unbridled greed or reckless political solipsism. We owe each other a debt and we owe each other an obligation, and because of these fundamental American imperatives, there are things that we own in common with each other, and that we are obliged to protect for our posterity.’
“Keep that in mind while I read you something else. This is an old quote from a politician. The name isn’t important, but just to give you a flavor of the time, they considered this guy to be a serious contender for the presidency. ‘As far as a law that we can pass in Washington to change the weather, there’s no such thing. If we pass if you took the gift list of these groups that are asking us to pass these laws and did every single one of them, there would be no change in our environment. Sea level would still rise.’ Let that sink in. The cynicism, the aggressive I don’t know which ignorance or denial of reality. The cosmic shrug of ‘oh well, it’s going to happen anyway.’ Is that any way for an American to talk? Is that any way for a human being to talk? Since when is fatalism a virtue in a president?
“And this isn’t just old schoolbook stuff. How different is it from our current president? President Ailes has made the deep sigh national policy. He often says, ‘Some things are beyond human control.’ That’s policy? True, some things are beyond human control like the tides, sunspots and phases of the moon, but are we supposed to be passive victims of our own fatalism? Are we supposed to just sit back and count how many methane bubbles popped yesterday? Take bets when the next chunk of Greenland calves? Just sigh when another species goes extinct and we comfort ourselves knowing DNA is preserved in some lab?
By now the audience was cheering and shouting “no” at each question. It took a certain skill to make DNA an applause line. Cranston and the audience were marching together. Each question was really a challenge, each “no” really a promise.
“So, what has happened to the American Dream? The same thing that has happened to every dream. It fell under the Tipping Point. The generation that could have done something didn’t. Now gone, but we’re still here. Each succeeding generation violated that trust and left the world worse off for their children. Our children, my child. No more. No longer.”
“No longer. No more fake solutions, no more fraudulent data, no more deep sighs of inevitable regret. ‘Some things are beyond human control.’ No, no. Not these things. We are not stones helplessly rolling down the side of a mountain. We can still be agents of our destiny. We will be agents of our own destiny!”
Cranston had turned “no” and “not” into affirmations of life. He had convinced people that there was still hope. And he had done it in Dallas.
Ailes was watching on a private feed. Long after the commercial stations and most bloggers had cut off, the President watched the stadium until the last person left and the lights went out.
CHAPTER 63
There were advantages to squatting in these buildings. The walls were thick, the foundations as solid as possible under the circumstances, and the roofs since they were two or three stories up were more or less intact. The last legal owners had taken everything of value when they evacuated: art, precious metals, furniture, even gold leaf. The next wave striped out the cooper, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, eventually even the wiring. They were empty hulks. But they were large and strong, empty hulks.
Juanita and Jose laid claim to an upstairs room facing away from the ocean. Most windows got blown out by various storms, but the few that remained faced inland. Besides, facing west gave them a bit of protection from the evening heat. Luckily, they had found a roll of window screen, so they managed to screen in a few windows thus letting in some air but not too many mosquitos and flies no small feat. Other squatters had installed solar panels. The police ignored their conspicuous arrival, so they bartered for access. Once settled, Jose would apply for free solar panels. They qualified, but without a stable place to install them, they would be useless. And the government offered those panels as a one-time grant. Once they felt secure, Jose would go to the county welfare office.
The barter was food. The owner of the panels was a drug dealer. Such people are almost by definition not, cooks. Tony wanted more from Juanita than arepas, but Jose had a lot of practice squatting, so Tony never pushed too hard. Even if he had, Juanita the cook was handy with many types of knives.
Up and down the Florida coast, billions of dollars of real estate were water-logged. The rich had moved inland. But “inland” was a relative term since the Gulf was attacking from its side, making “inland” more of a fantasy than a refuge. All the cooks, gardeners, pool boys, and nannies got cut loose like so much flotsam from a sinking luxury liner. A couple generations of these folks wandered the state, picking up loose work. Somehow there was never enough money for simple housing. A little here and there, to ease pressure or in response to a recent outbreak. There was an army of climate refugees, blocked from entering Georgia, shot if they entered Alabama, they picked camps where they could and found shelter in the mansions that had yet slipped into the Atlantic.
Palm Beach was no different from the rest of the communities. Juanita and Jose’s “home” was on the North Ocean Boulevard, on the north end of what was left of Palm Beach’s island. It was only a matter of time before the sea completely covered the island. The increasing frequency and violence of hurricanes combined with the absence of any natural or man-made barriers meant the end of garish mansions. Soon Atlantis would not be a fable. There really would be a lost city under the sea.
For months, they built up the room. Cleaning, installing the solar panels and running “found” wires into the room. There was a city water line nearby where they could draw clean water the fear of cholera was an excellent motivator for civil projects which they supplemented with cisterns. What little real money they can make went into buying basic foodstuffs for their own use and their barter products. Sanitation was always a problem: urine went into the ground and fecal matter got deposited in an outhouse that hopefully flushed out into the ocean. It was almost a home.
Finally, Tony had enough. He had moved in first. He was the boss. He was on a nasty high when he kicked in the door. Juanita was always cooking, always ready. By the time Jose got home, Juanita had cleaned the knife and packed the bags.
Jose climbed up to the roof and took the solar panels.
CHAPTER 64
Wendy Villar had the second most miserable job at Marbury Point. The title of the first most miserable job went to the guy who washed away the vomit the morning after. A cynic would say that at least he could see results. Wendy also never saw results. Her mission was to rescue the kids from killing themselves here and try to convince them they had a reason to live. Most people would have bet on the vomit.
“Haven” was the name of Wendy’s storefront. The bulk of the building was an open space filled with chairs and cushions. Sometimes just taking a nap without having to worry about what was going to crawl on you was haven enough. Water, juices, synthetic fruit of course, the real stuff was out of reach, coffee, high-calorie protein bars were available for the asking. The bars tasted like fruit or candy. They had come a long way from the bars handed out to refugees to ward off starvation. The origins of the bars could be tracked back to old military k-rations, and the food early astronauts took into space.
By the turn of the century, relief agencies had developed high-energy biscuits that they used in the early stages of disaster to provide victims with a basic level of nutrition. The original biscuits didn’t have much of a taste, focusing instead on a quick shot of calories and vitamins. When food scarcities became a global phenomenon, someone realized that they could have a use in less catastrophic settings. Bars got produced for a variety of needs and tastes. There was a range between bland and sweet. Although they rarely contained the real thing, they could taste like meat or fish.
Regional preferences were taken into account, for instance, curry in India and
chilies in Mexico. They added the non-essential but very enticing caffeine. In the US, they were first manufactured for internal refugees; handing them out to the poor and self-destructive came later. They altered the bars to make them tastier with more fructose and more visually appealing with some coloring. They favored vitamins over calories. Refugees’ stomachs were literally eating themselves from lack of food calories were the first line of defense. As bad as things could get in the States, starvation was rarely the first consideration, so the goal was to prevent the body from getting so weak that disease could take root. Minimal health as opposed to not dying was the modest goal.
The Haven had back rooms for private consultations about mental and physical health. Wendy’s staff were qualified for this work, but a nurse or doctor from a nearby hospital would stop by some evenings. Not all of their advice and services were legal, but the government didn’t look too closely. Places like the Haven did what the government wanted while pretending they weren’t involved. Their purity heartened them.
There were still remnants from past lives scattered about. Wendy thought these incongruous bits would engage addled imaginations and get her clients to think about innocent nonsense. Nothing too sharp. A sign saying “Video Rentals” whatever that meant, bits of bicycles and machines the major chunks sold off for scrap years ago mounted on the walls or arranged in abstract designs, a few torn paper posters for movies. One drew attention. It was the eyes that did it. They were women’s eyes floating free of a face, lovely but weary, wary. What looked like hair was actually a circling ring of cigarette smoke, Wendy assumed from the age that it must have been tobacco. Following the wisp of smoke downward showed the cigarette in the hand of a shadowy man wearing a very old hat. One girl became so obsessed with it that Wendy considered taking it away. “There’s nothing to see here, there’s nothing to see here,” the girl would chant. When Wendy asked the girl what she meant, she turned to her with a sick grin and said, “Forget, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” Wendy did not understand what that meant, but it truly unnerved her.
