T

HE

P

HASE

T

RANSITIONS OF

M

ETHANE

H

YDRATES

2013

One of the grad assistants had left the mail in a pile by the lab�s primary computer. The first envelope Tony Pietrus opened was a confirmation letter from the American Geophysical Union for an appearance at the annual AGU conference to present initial research findings. The second envelope would change the way Tony felt about the world. He never got around to the rest of the day�s mail.

He opened this letter with his eyes diverted, still on the screen, lunch settling in his stomach and his dad�s advice��Grants can�t read denser than the actual science��still irritating him. He�d often do his best thinking when he let his mind go, perhaps while playing with his daughters or after making love to Gail, so he tried to grasp the gist of this latest round of data without diving too deeply into the morass. Reading over the cluttered integers cross-stitched onto the screen, he found himself compelled by the data set the way his kids might anticipate a lesser holiday, like Easter, and he couldn�t resist a peak at the chocolate eggs. The issue of his dwindling NSF funds and failure, thus far, to secure another grant also nagged at him. As if competing for money, lab space, and computational resources at Scripps wasn�t already pain enough in the ass, he and Niko had no �charismatic megafauna� involved. Only the maddening mystery of methane hydrate phase transitions.

To him, the obviousness of studying deep-sea methane molecules felt like a bright red elephant walking down La Jolla Shores Drive, but explaining it to the layperson required a convoluted story, especially as to why hydrates deserved to take money from vanishing schools of tuna or adorable chirping dolphins. It began with the model his eyes crept over now: He and his fellow researcher, Niko, had concocted a Monte Carlo simulation to predict the behavior of clathrates under changing conditions of temperature and pressure. He and Niko spent so much time in the lab playing with the input parameters that they sometimes forgot this could all sound unbearably tedious and impossible to grasp. Gail lent her more poetic mind to the task of making the clathrates� story cogent.

�So you�re trying to figure out when some ice will melt,� Gail said at dinner the night before.

�I�m bored,� groused their youngest daughter, Catherine, while smushing her face in her hands. �Stop talking about this.�

�Ah. �Ice.� Yes, very funny.� He stabbed at Gail�s chicken. �You�re more of an a-hole than the porpoise folks dropping a few hundred grand on new sonar equipment to measure dolphin clicks.�

�I know what that word means, Daddy,� Holly scolded.

In between his daughters� complaints, Gail helped talk him through a more �user-friendly� description of molecular interactions, specifically the ones that governed phase transitions. Warmer temperatures were one variable that could trigger the abrupt transition from ordered to disordered states: solid to liquid, liquid to gas. The Monte Carlo method�so named for its resemblance to random dice rolls�allowed scientists, economists, and mathematicians to perform all kinds of experiments to model natural phenomena that have irregular and unpredictable inputs.

The clathrates littering the floors of the world�s oceans were just such a phenomenon. He, Niko, and their team of grad assistants spent their days running these computational algorithms, constantly adjusting variables like temperature and pressure. The idea was to mimic the random real-world fluctuations of molecular behavior.

A scattershot career that began in theoretical physics had taken Tony to Yale, where he ended up in the Department of Geology and Geophysics before finally developing a more permanent interest in oceanography. In the crisp salt air of Scripps�s beachside campus, he�d found a way to apply his theoretical imagination to hard earth sciences. He spent a fair amount of time sunburning on the beaches of La Jolla with his girls, pondering the pore width and cage structures of clathrates while showing his four-year-old how to build a better sand castle.

Now he picked up the tan nine-by-eleven envelope, but his eyes left the screen only momentarily to catch a glimpse of the handwritten address, his name in the center in neat block letters, SCRIPPS INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY beneath. It felt light, maybe only a slice or two of paper inside.

Bacterial degradation of organic matter in the oceans produced methane, he�d once told his dad, a math professor without much interest in physical nature. Basically, plants and animals that rotted in a low-oxygen environment became trapped in crystals of frozen water. It took thousands of years for methanogenic bacteria and sediment to do their work and trap the methane molecules where the conditions of temperature and pressure were right, either in the Arctic permafrost, beneath the seafloor, or on its surface clutching the rock in frozen chunks. Every gas hydrate had a similar structure, but methane was the most prolific prisoner, and in some places it was a prominent feature of deep-sea ecosystems, which first drove the interest at Scripps.

When he applied as a postdoctoral researcher, several faculty members had pointed him to Nikolaos Stubos, the Greek wunderkind from Berkeley, who had similar areas of interest. They�d gone from colleagues to friends when that NSF grant had come through. Together, they began plotting how to best understand the strange combination of circumstances that permitted the formation and enduring stability of this particular hydrate. In 2010, the BP oil spill gave their research subject the equivalent of a Hollywood close-up. One of the first schemes BP scientists employed to stop the well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico from five thousand feet below the surface was a containment dome. The idea was to lower this massive dome to collect the oil and eventually cap the well, but as the dome descended through the depths it began to clog with hydrates, formed as methane gas spewed from the breach. He and Niko had to listen to endless media mischaracterizations of their research subject, from the obnoxious �methane ice� to the downright vacuous �ice crystals.� The methane wasn�t frozen; it was just trapped inside a lattice-like matrix of ice. Niko was mystified that journalists could toss off such inaccurate information, while Tony scoffed that given the general state of science education, it was surprising they�d showed up at the right ocean. Lately, methane hydrates had been resurfacing in the news because the oil and gas industry had grown bullish on the prospect of developing hydrates into a fuel source. Estimates always varied, but in the sediments considered part of US ocean territory, there was thought to be roughly a thousand-year supply of natural gas.

�Doesn�t that mean you guys could get some of that sweet, sweet petroleum money?� Gail wondered when he was bitching about grants. �Isn�t that how most geologists get funded?�

Most days they met for lunch at a Panera near campus. He�d show up late and find her curled up in a booth, eyes poring over whatever lit crit text she was abusing for her doctorate.

�Turns out our work puts us at odds with the predilections of the extraction interests.�

Her eyes widened. �Tony, no! Get the girls out of ExxonMobil Little Tots Academy right now.�

He snorted a bit of Diet Pepsi. Her jokes were so dorky.

The envelope�s return address did not pierce his concentration other than the �Louisville, KY� because he recalled that Scripps sometimes bought lab equipment from a manufacturer in Kentucky.

Tony always found himself detouring into the work of his pen pals in Melbourne�a team of researchers attempting to create a more precise estimate of the ocean�s total reserves. The largest reservoirs of hydrates could be found on continental shelves, mostly in coastal zones with high biological production and the right conditions of pressure and temperature. Given this, a map of deposits looked like his youngest, Catherine, had outlined the world�s continents in crayon. Off the East Siberian continental shelf alone lay an estimated 1,400 billion tons. In other words, the stuff was everywhere.

There was also a great deal of historical evidence that hydrates were more prevalent now than at any other time in Earth�s history. Because Earth had experienced a rather cool, temperate climate over the last few tens of millions of years, biological matter continued to form methane, freeze, and accumulate, uninterrupted by the planet�s periodic bursts of heat. Niko, in that assertive, unflappable (�a smidge chauvinist,� according to Gail) Greek way of his, never got tired of pointing out that the study of �how much� was the business of those petroleum geologists, not real scientists. Their only concern was �how warm.� He and Niko spent years mining clues from the Paleocene�Eocene Thermal Maximum, which Tony now referred to as the �Pet�em� because of his older daughter, whom he usually called �Older One� as a solemn title of nobility.

In her heroic efforts to teach herself to read ahead of schedule, Holly had seen Tony perusing a book on the subject, which had used the common acronym PETM. She�d asked, �What�s a Pet�em?� He explained the Pet�em was the far less famous extinction event, a redheaded stepchild to the die-off that inspired Jurassic Park and the entire dino-subsection of pop culture for little boys.

�To understand the Pet�em,� he told her, �it�s instructive to first look at the end-Permian extinction.�

�What�s a redhead stop-child?� she asked.

The idiom proved more difficult to explain to a six-year-old than the mystery of the end-Permian, the event that wiped nearly all life off the face of the planet. Scientists thought that a million years� worth of volcanic eruptions in Siberia was the likely culprit, but the math didn�t add up. The volcanoes simply couldn�t have produced enough carbon dioxide in a quick enough time span to raise the earth�s temperature six degrees Celsius. One had to account for all the light carbon found in rocks from the end-Permian. It was like the entire goddamn planet�s supply of coal had suddenly oxidized right into the atmosphere, but there weren�t a lot of coal miners running around back then, mostly just fish and bugs. Yet that light carbon was the reason 96 percent of life in the water and 70 percent of the land-based variety were wiped out almost overnight in geologic terms, clearing the plate for the dinosaurs. There remained only one desperado that could plausibly hold enough light carbon to explain the end-Permian extinction: methane hydrates. This explanation allowed the math to add up.

Cut to approximately 55 million years ago and the PETM, a more minor extinction event than either the end-Permian or the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Yet the Pet�em certainly mattered to quite a few marine species that didn�t make it. The earth experienced a rapid heating of five to six degrees Celsius in only twenty thousand years. When you looked at sediments deposited during the Pet�em, you saw a massive spike in light carbon, which meant that something injected over three thousand gigatons in two quick bursts that each only took a few tens of thousands of years.

Again, the only explanation for this appeared to be a rapid melting of undersea methane hydrates.

Tony pinched open the metal clasp of the envelope and slid a finger beneath the fold to give it a quick, ineffectual tear that simply created a flap of paper. Nevertheless, there was a hole for his finger to work as he continued to study the data.

�Twice the hydrates melted,� he�d told Holly. �And twice there were catastrophic extinction events.�

So the question became: What caused the hydrates to melt in the first place? By looking at other PETM-like events in the Paleocene and Jurassic eras�and coupled with the end-Permian hypothesis�scientists had established that the hydrates did not melt due to some outside trigger, like a meteor strike, but rather an unambiguous feedback loop.

When the Earth warmed during climate oscillations caused by solar activity, widespread volcanic eruptions, or perturbations in Earth�s orbit, at a certain point the methane release occurred, spiking CH4 and CO2 levels in the atmosphere and raising the temperature even more. The best theory for how that worked involved ocean circulation: During the Pet�em, warmer, saltier water began flowing to the deep oceans, which in all likelihood began melting the top surface of hydrates. This exposed deeper reservoirs of hydrates, which in turn melted, exposing more. Why ocean circulation changed during these periods was still a mystery, but you didn�t need a doctorate from Yale to guess that the two-to-three-degree Celsius rise in global average temperature prior to the Pet�em probably had something to do with it. Luckily, it only took a little over one hundred thousand years for the carbon cycle to return that excess carbon to the earth, so the mammals of the day could get on with their humping and eventually produce humans.

Last summer he�d found himself on a Gulf Coast beach going mad trying to explain why this mattered to Gail�s obnoxious talk-radio-obsessed younger brother, Corey, who frequently directed his snide country-club snark toward Tony�s �mind-and-dick-numbing� job. On their first date when Gail explained she was adopted, Tony had pictured her younger brother as an enlightened liberal, proudly championing his biracial family. Corey, it turned out, was the type of adult who found it amusing to joke about Tony�s bald spot and old acne scars. Though the sun was setting, he felt his face grow hotter as he explained that given humanity�s little science experiment of pumping all the carbon it could find into the atmosphere ten times faster than during the PETM, it was probably worth figuring out how soon the goddamn hydrates might melt and turn Corey�s Sarasota beachfront condo into a pretty shitty fucking investment.

Gail shot him a look over the top of her sunglasses that said Play nice, and he again wondered if it was too late for his wife to un-adopt herself from her dynastic, self-consumed Floridian family.

He was somewhere here�among the numbers from the latest simulation and memories of their last trip to Florida and his brother-in-law and Catherine, whom he always called �Khaleesi� because it suited her magnetism and temper, either of which might be on display at her birthday party this weekend�when two things happened at once.

First, he aggregated what he�d read on the screen in the simulated clathrate analysis. Second, he turned his full attention to the envelope, which he succeeded in opening by using his finger as an impromptu letter opener. There was only one sheet of paper inside, and he pulled it out. The big block letters were similar to those of the address.

AFTER THIS YOU AND YOUR PEERS COLLUSION WILL BE EXPOSED AND YOULL BE CHARGED WITH THE GREATEST FRAUD EVER PERPETRATED IN THIS CENTURY. YOU WILL BE DISCOVERED BUT I FEAR EVEN THIS ISN�T ENOUGH PUNISHMENT FOR WHAT YOU DESERVE.

He snorted a laugh at the missing apostrophe in �youll.�

This was a first for him. He�d certainly heard of other scientists receiving crass and intimidating notes from the right-wing or conspiratorially minded agitators who seemed to take up all the oxygen on the internet. Tony stayed out of all that, though. He hated politics. As far as he was concerned, all this fury directed at people taking passionless, unbiased measurements of phenomena was nothing more than the sad hobby of frustrated losers ranting into the ether. He imagined Gail�s response, some nerdy joke like �At least this balances out all the bras and panties you usually get!� Imagining her voice gave him comfort. Milling outside a Yale lecture hall years ago Tony found himself unexpectedly talking to a young woman, Black and wide-hipped with round breasts stretching a T-shirt with a picture of Lando Calrissian lying seductively on a bearskin rug. He thought she was gorgeous then and would continue to think that past a decade and two children whose faces grew into hers year by year.

This was the kind of woman you needed when the world was teeming with morons, and you got hate mail for studying the phase transitions of methane hydrates.

His eyes crept back to the beginning of the letter. �After this,� it began. After what? Tony wondered if he should call campus security. This seemed silly, though. He wasn�t worried about a guy being camped out in the bushes. Some idiot had scanned the Scripps faculty page on the website and picked his name out of a lineup.

He set the letter down on his desk, ready to forget about it for the rest of the day when he noticed something white with a pale yellowish tint on his right hand. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together and the substance sifted off. Still holding the envelope with his left, he now felt a remaining weight to it. There was something else inside.

Without thinking, he tilted the envelope over the desk to empty the rest of the contents. A powder of the same color, maybe a couple spoonfuls, spilled out onto the marred wooden surface.

It was impossible for Tony to remember how long he sat there staring at it, but it was a very long time. His mind, chaotic and symphonic only moments before, halted entirely.

This obviously wasn�t real. It was likely chalk or some other anodyne substance. This was an easy laugh for a sick crank.

He tried to think of everything he knew about Bacillus anthracis, but it wasn�t much. Cutaneous, pulmonary, or gastrointestinal methods of infection were all possible�but here he was just breathing, just sitting there, staring at his hands, some of it still on his fingers. But what were the odds that a clueless loser who couldn�t spell �youll� somehow had access or the wherewithal to cultivate Bacillus spores? Then again, the historical mortality rate had to be incredibly high. He became aware of a piece of food stuck in his teeth, leftover from lunch, and realized he was still just staring at the powder on his fingers.

As if born back into his surroundings, he looked up and around. He shared the lab in Nierenberg Hall on the east side of the Scripps campus with Niko, but since they only dealt in computer models they treated it as an overflow office. The cabinets that had once held equipment now stored files. The countertops that might have held aquariums of marine specimens now provided a home to mountains of paper flotsam. But there was still a working sink.

Tony stood, wondering if he could inadvertently wash the spores into someone�s drinking water. Because he had no answer to this question, he dismissed it and knocked the faucet on with his elbow. The powder disappeared under the scalding water. He emptied a handful of the pearled gel from the soap dispenser onto his palms and scrubbed until his skin was pink and painful.

When he finished, he dried his hands and dialed 911 from his cell phone. He�d barely explained the situation before the operator was putting him in touch with the FBI.

By the time he hung up, he was confused. The FBI was coming, but what about an ambulance? He remembered from the scares of 2001 that bacillus wasn�t contagious from person to person, so could he just drive to the hospital himself? He didn�t want to go anywhere near the substance, so he took Niko�s desk chair and sat by the opposite wall, as far away from his desk as he could, and wondered if he should lay a piece of plastic over the powder. Then again, he didn�t want to go near it. He perched forward with his arms crossed over his chest, hugging himself. Even though it was surely a hoax, almost definitely a hoax, maybe it wasn�t a hoax. The less he tried to think about this, the more he could only think about it. He felt a tickle in his throat. He wondered if in a few minutes he�d start coughing. Wishing for the antianxiety meds he�d dabbled with as an undergrad, he tried to focus on something else, and he wanted that to be his family.

But that wasn�t where his mind went. Instead, he was overcome by an image of tiny bubbles rising inexorably through dark water. It was what he�d seen just before he pulled the letter from the envelope. With this data set, the trend was becoming unmistakable. And powerful. He and Niko kept fiddling with the simulation, making the stresses milder, but in the end, the hypothetical hydrates kept coming apart. He tried to focus on other things: Gail working on her dissertation in the kitchen of their first rental home in La Jolla while he kept Holly�not Older One yet�distracted in the living room by handing her baby toys to suck on while he read research papers a paragraph at a time. Gail had Holly by day, so he took her by night. They both pursued their careers while they fed and burped this chubby babbling machine, and when she finally began going down at a reasonable hour, they�d watch DVRed episodes of Lost, which Gail claimed offended her as a reader of literature, even though she never let him watch without her.

When Catherine arrived they talked about how their girls would be the most dissimilar siblings, as fundamentally different as Gail and Corey. Older One got the hang of reading by age six, and she seemed in a competition with herself to comprehend the most challenging novel her young mind could follow. Only a first-grader, they had to take books away from her at bedtime. She objected to so little, she threw no tantrums, and yet she almost seemed to carry around a latent fear or stress that she would never manage to finish every great book in the world. He�d swing the door open to her bedroom, and her surprised face and big head of curls would go dark as she snapped off the flashlight she�d sneaked. The ways she put that unrelenting curiosity to work never failed to astonish Tony, like when Gail taught her what it meant to call something �gender essentialist,� and she began identifying everything in the modern world as �gendered essentialist,� including TV commercials, children�s shows, movies, all sports, and everything her uncle Corey ever said.

And her younger sister�Jesus Christ. Even as an infant she had a knack for the bold entrance and destructive tantrum. She was lighter-skinned than Holly, had a splash of spunky red-brown freckles on her cheeks and nose, and a beautiful red tint to her hair. She could charm an entire room or, if she didn�t like the vibe, as Gail put it, �She�d spit at us if she could get her lips to work.� Then she learned to talk, and in complete contrast to Older One, the words never stopped. They just came in an indomitable stream of thoughts, ideas, stories, questions, and wonders. And her crazy streak: When Niko, his wife, and some other friends had come over for dinner once, he and Gail had returned from the kitchen to find their youngest daughter bare-ass naked demonstrating her toddler gymnastics for the assembled guests, causing the rarest of lost tempers from her parents. But then, that was why she was a conqueror, a wild one, fearless and fierce, the Mother of Dragons.

He shut his eyes and tried to grip these memories, but each one became subsumed by the image and weight of a dark ocean boiling. Eventually, there was a knock on the lab door.

S

HANE AND

M

URDOCK

G

ET

B

REAKFAST

2014

Shane watched Murdock shred three sugar packets open and dump them in his coffee. Bob Evans made her think of a barn as conceived by a dying old woman doped out of her mind on laudanum. Woven baskets tacked to the wall over a three-dollar painting of a rustic countryside. The other patrons were geriatric with flesh the texture of the snow slurry outside. They ate tediously, automatically, knives struggling through country fried steak, forks impaling scrambled eggs or scooping home fries. She counted four oxygen tanks in the main dining room, one of them hooked to a man so obese that the sides of his butt drooped over the edge of the chair. She watched him eat a small potpie in methodical, dignified bites.

The waitress had come by twice, once for the coffee order and again to deliver the brew. Shane told her they�d wait to get breakfast. Now they were sipping the not-terrible roast and talking about movies.

�That was some garbage. Military hates that movie. Specially EODs,� said Murdock.

�I don�t know, man. I felt like I needed a defibrillator by the time I walked out of the theater.� She blew at the steam rising from the mug.

�Total fairy tale. So ridiculous, I couldn�t watch it again.�

Shane had gained weight in the past seven years, but Murdock had put on more, maybe thirty, forty pounds, mostly in the gut. He wore a white Affliction Chuck Liddell tee with the roaring winged skull across the front and had the same cut as when they met, shaved on the sides and a cap of blond on top, now with a bit of gray frost. His ears, always big, looked bigger, the slack of his lips slacker, which made his drawl deeper. Tormented blue punching bags hung under his eyes. Maybe every soldier came home older, but that older was nothing compared to the older of seven years on.

�There�s this one EOD guy running around by himself,� he said. �Running off the FOB alone to question an Iraqi, getting into a sniper fight, grabbing a Humvee to drive out to nowhere to detonate ordnance in a one-man convoy. Fucking absurd. When we rolled out the wire, we never went anywhere without at least twenty-five guys.�

BECAUSE HE DIDN�T WANT TO EXPLAIN Even twenty-five would be rolling light. By his second deployment they were escorted by a whole platoon with Humvees, Strykers, MRAPs, and sometimes tanks for the neighborhoods where even the toddlers shot at them. During the dark days when no-shit-fuck-you civil war broke out, they�d have escorts of one-hundred-plus soldiers with an Iraqi army unit to match.

She�d been organizing a rally with Iraq Veterans Against the War in D.C. This was �07, Bush II still president. Prior to the march, at a lunch of turkey wraps delivered by the garbage bag, she�d been introduced to this bomb-tech peace activist, part autodidact, part swinging-dick male trope. Though she�d mostly been dating women at the time, she told him, �I doubt you could have activated my fourth-wave feminist impulses more completely.� They did the thing where after they slept together they became Facebook friends, and over the years he�d drop her a line now and then. The messages were tinged with puppy dog yearning (Heya gal, hope you�re well. Was thinking of you the other day. Wondering where the wind blew you. �Murdock). Years later, when she reached out to him via postcard with a new number, he�d called the same day.

�The whole lot of movies about OIF are such a pile of dog shit. It�s like they�re making a movie about waitressing, and waitresses go and watch it and see all these sexy characters meeting dashing, dangerous men, and every encounter is some bullshit verbal joust�Fuck no. You serve old fucking fat people shit food for ten hours, some tip you, some stiff you, you wake up and do it again. Iraq was mundane. Boring as beans until you got a call and all of a sudden it wasn�t. No one�s seeing a movie like that, though.�

�You know why there will never be a great movie or great art about the Iraq War?� she asked.

�Why�s that?�

�Because it hewed too didactically to its own absurdity.� She looked off at the cold parking lot. �Like, most war is stupid in the existential sense, but this one was bad-joke stupid. You can�t get a piece of art to grapple with what�s already brain-dead, you know? I mean, the fucking child-boy president landed on an aircraft carrier with a sock stuffed in the crotch of his flight suit and stood in front of a banner that said� Well, you know what it said. How can you make subtle, contemplative art about that? The whole thing was an unknowing satire of itself from word one.�

�Well, Eastwood�s got a sniper flick coming out. I�m sure that�ll be the subtle contemplation you�re looking for, Ebert.�

FOR HIS PART Murdock felt embarrassment and small-hold bitterness for how he must look to her. She was still Good Curvy, as Troy Ta�amu used to say. Her hair was longer now, a shaggy black mess with a mullet shape to it. She�d taken the stud out of her nostril, and he could see the small hole it had left. Her hooded eyes should have made her look naturally bored, but they drilled into him. Like what he said mattered. He remembered gripping the white of her love handles, and the tributaries of purple stretch marks crawling beneath pale brown skin. She still radiated fearlessness and a self-aware acid Zen. He ate up the way she spoke, the way she thought. Every honed, spear-sharp sentence came tumbling out of her mouth like it had just occurred to her. She�d never treated him with faux reverence. She was the first woman who slept with him after he got back, and at first it made him so achingly distraught, thinking this was what he�d missed: When he went to play with the bang, all the kids like her went to college and just fucked and fucked until they were bored with it. While he jerked off in KBR porta-pots and played endless video games with Slade, Hermoza, and Beech, his peers stateside lived in another dimension. He�d thought this was what his life could be like now that he was back. He�d been so sure she was a kind of mystic signal or road sign that life still remained, glorious and unexpected, on the other side of the war.

She laughed and remembered standing with him outside a bar, shadows splayed on the pavement of a dead D.C. street. He�d pulled two cigarettes from the pack with his teeth, handed her one, and said, �Wanna ditch these losers and go throw rocks at the moon?� He was wounded in that perfect, unfixable way that compelled her as a young woman, at least for a night.

�Not sure I ever asked�� She ratcheted the conversation closer to her mark, as carefully as if she were handling one of Kellan Murdock�s IEDs. �How did you end up doing bomb disposal?�

He flipped a hand in the air and farted with his lips. �Us guys from the Alabama part of Pennsylvania either go military or go to jail. Once I got deployed and started really meeting people�I mean, meeting guys from every fucking corner of the world where the American experiment got its hooks in�Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands�places I�d never heard of, it was funny how many of the stories were the same. Guy got in trouble with the law or was on the verge of getting shot over some bullshit or just owing too much money to turn down the signing bonus. Regular army�s mostly ex�drug dealers from what I could tell.�

�But why did you join?�

�I was rah-rah America. Wanted to go hunt al-Qaeda, put my boot in the ass, all that. Thought I�d be infantry, but I was always kind of a cerebral hick. An enlisted guy suggested I try for EOD school, and shit�guess you could just say I had an aptitude. Politics didn�t even occur to me.�

EOD SCHOOL Some recruits were already engineers. Murdock was more like a savant, who�d gotten a lot of mechanical training by accident working in his mom�s boyfriend�s auto shop since he was ten. Some guys can just tell how the lock balls and gears of a setback-armed, mechanically timed, graze-impact-fired mortar fuze are gonna work.

Her eyebrows made a skeptical bounce. �But what you�re describing, Kel�that�s a political attitude.�

�Yeah, but I didn�t know that. Plus, it all went away quick for me. By the time I started my third tour I couldn�t have given a fuck less what hajji wanted to do with their sand. So even after I stopped caring personally, I still didn�t really question the mission.� He sipped his coffee. �Why, after all, would so many brilliant, hardworking, talented motherfuckers be pouring this much passion and energy and courage into a thing if it wasn�t absolutely the correct undertaking? Get me?�

TA�AMU He�d spent an entire deployment grilling his captain, Ta�amu, about American Samoa, because what the fuck was that, right? Like a place Frodo�s gotta go in Lord of the Rings? Ta�amu was a hulking engineer turned EOD commander with a body like a fatty stone pillar and a smashed-pan face topped off by a dark and handsome unibrow. Ta�amu was the guy who put him in the Suit, who sent specialists, technical eggheads like Murdock, on the lonesome walk. He was a bizarre dude. Hysterically funny on occasion. Everyone in the army was funny to some degree�maybe not in a laugh-out-loud kinda way; sometimes in a strange, grim, you-know-this-constant-talk-of-sodomy-and-incest-has-a-home-base-in-his-gray-matter kinda way, but Ta�amu could be both. �Dog tags and blood type go in the laces of the boot,� he told Murdock early on. When he inquired why this was, Ta�amu replied, �Get with the program, Murder! What�s left when the bang goes off? Hands and feet! What do you think they�ll find of you after you go from a complex consciousness to a rapidly unwinding miscellany of gore and Pentagon-issued gear?� Then he started laughing like a lunatic.

NICKNAMES Cropped up faster than IEDs: He was all at once �Kel,� �Kelter,� �Skelter,� �Docker,� �Dick,� �D,� �Murder,� and �Manfuck.�

The waitress came by again, and Shane sent her away with a polite scuttle of her hand and a �Not quite ready.� The cute little Bambi waitress pursed her lips like this made her anxious but didn�t argue. Shane�s sleeve slid down her arm, and she instinctively tugged it back down over the tattoo.

When she left, Shane turned back to Murdock. �Do you keep up with anybody from IVAW?�

�Nah. Didn�t see the point. War�s over. Might as well be the Spanish-American imbroglio as far as anybody remembers or gives a fuck.� He pronounced the word with a hard g.

�Sometimes I think it was better when American kids were dying and getting maimed. It put invisible infrastructures in front of people. On their television screens. Now that you�ve got a liberal�whatever that dubious word means�a liberal building a surveillance state and assassinating extrajudicially via robot, no one seems all that bothered.�

TATTOOS Murdock clocked Shane�s lone tattoo (BUILD THE PATH�some drippy lib meaning he could no longer recall), and it set his mind off like daisy-chained 130-millimeter artillery rounds. First to the EOD Crab with its blue-bomb heart, now looking a little droopy as its home on his pec sagged. Then to Captain Ta�amu, who had an enormous design coating an arm as meaty as a chuck eye roast. �This here, Manfuck, is the Marquesan Cross. That�s Polynesian warrior shit�not suitable for southern-fried baby-men like yourself.� This fit because Ta�amu had the energy of a guy who�d prefer to charge the enemy with a stone axe. Once when they came under fire on a bridge, their security started pounding a riverbank, and some kid�s SAW jammed, so he was pinned down behind a railing, frustrated and terrified as he tried to fix his weapon. This infantry escort was new, and it might�ve been the kid�s first firefight. He looked about fourteen years old. From EOD�s position behind an armored Humvee, you could see the kid�s resolve cracking. Panic swelling. Tears beginning to well in his blue farm-boy eyes. When Ta�amu finally saw this, he tightened his boot laces, leaped up, and went jogging over through the bullets to plop down beside the boy. He took the SAW from him, unjammed the jam in about thirty seconds, and handed the mighty weapon off, yelling, �Remember, son. The tears of strangers are only water.� Then he jogged back through the bullets pinging off the Humvee, took one hit in the Kevlar, which barely threw him off his stride, and when he got back to safety remarked, �What suspense! Didn�t need to pay for the whole seat �cause all I needed was the edge.�

�Yeah, well, time marches on. Getting caught up in causes don�t interest me. Not anymore. Especially when you see the scope of what this is.� He took the Heinz ketchup bottle from the condiment holder. �That�s the thing: Most people don�t understand this. The ingredients, what it goes on, where the energy comes from to create it, the ways the world�s gotta be directed and coaxed and violated and controlled to get this one little fucked bottle. And once you see how ketchup relates to imperial maintenance it�s tough to not get an overwhelmed quality to your thinking. Like one of them Magic Eye thingamajobs�hard the first time, but once you get it, you�ll never unsee it.�

�Did you have to kill anyone for the ketchup?�

Once she let loose the question, she wondered if she�d blown it. It felt rehearsed coming out of her mouth, like she�d used the whole conversation to get there. Which she more or less had.

WHITEHALL While at Penn State working on his degree, he took a class on military history. Turned out the professor was a real fucking communist named Whitehall, who went on in class about American imperialism and militarism, which so enraged him that Murdock went to Whitehall�s office hours and basically said, �Fuck you, I put my life on the line for this fucking country, so keep your faggoty fucking liberal mouth shut about it� (or something to that effect). And Whitehall, without flinching, immediately asked, �How many people dja kill?� When he responded none, he�d killed none, Whitehall went on. �You�re lucky. What you�ve got here is nothing. It�s not good, I�ll grant you that, but what you guys are losing every two months, we lost in a day. That made us jumpy. I shot a woman through the head because I thought she had a rifle, but it was just an axe. She�d been chopping some wood. But when all your best friends are getting killed, one young woman in a sea of gore doesn�t really weigh on you at the time. Then I got back and couldn�t figure out why I was so messed up in the head, so angry all the time, and�oh, wouldn�t you know?� He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. �I�d spent two years killing people. Do yourself a favor and get over the posturing, get over your masculine bullshit, and go find some psychotherapist and have a good cry.� He�d asked what war Whitehall was talking about. � �Nam, my son! Jesus Christ, I know we haven�t gotten there in class yet, but I�d have thought some of you kids�d heard of it.�

ON THAT TOPIC He�d fired his weapon a handful of times, but only when shit got real sticky and even EOD was expected to return fire. He�d never hit anyone as far as he knew. Yet to say he�d killed no one? Not exactly nail-meets-head. For instance, there�d been the Iraqi woman approaching their infantry escort, and he�d been asked to assess if she was wearing a suicide vest. Who the fuck could tell? The burkas made them all look strapped to boom. So when she ignored the terp�s instructions and kept walking, American brass spilled. No bomb, though, it turned out. She�d just been pregnant.

�Zero. I was purely a technician. I saved lives. Best way to see the war. Blow shit up all the time, but you ain�t gotta kill no one. Thought that�d be perfect.�

�We don�t have to talk about this.� It wasn�t so much an offer to change the subject as it was a request to go on.

�I�ll tell you, Shane: I got a pretty good idea of when I�m being probed. After every tour we had to take a psych stop to make sure we wouldn�t go murdering our families when we got home. Part of me wondered if you were getting in touch to get in touch, but this is all about whatever you�re working on, I gather.�

Her smile flared before she tucked her lips back over her teeth, just enough to leave the flirtation hanging, but with a reminder that she wasn�t interested. Touching his hand would be too much, so she went ahead and could feel in his palm how much he ached for it.

�Right. This is about a project I�ve started. As long as you�re okay with that.� Murdock waited, and she took the hand away. She weighed her options and decided to stay with EOD. She�d done her research, but again, there was the thrill of hearing about it from a man who carried the wreckage. �So you saw a lot of bombs?�

He snorted. �You could say that. If you count two or three a day, then yeah. A lot. Now, mind you, some of them had already gone off. We�d get the call or we�d see smoke rising from the FOB, and twenty minutes later we�re in the thick of it. Half the job was investigations. Trying to collect all the evidence so we could find these guys. Some intense shit.�

�More intense than defusing an IED?�

EXPLOSIVE THEORY Understand how a pinch of extremely unstable or reactive compound can produce an expansion of material, heat, light, and pressure through a supersonic chemical reaction. Understand how the wave speed flowing through a brick of C4 will get a velocity of frag they called Mach Fuck Me. Know your frag: nails, bolts, ball bearings, steel shavings, human shit, pieces of dead dog. Know the ordnance better than the people who built the ordnance. Understand how to shear a firing pin, melt a land mine pressure pad, shoot buckshot, water, or steel bits into the mechanisms of a device to safe it. The US came to fight one war but got another, and EOD had to learn on the fly in this brave new hyper-creative world. They saw spray-foam-encased EFPs, sandbags filled with radio-triggered mortar shells, pressure-plate-activated devices, dual-tone multifrequency decoder board setups, 122-millimeter projectiles lashed like Christmas lights to pressure-switch contacts, improvised Claymores with two scoops of nuts and bolts for frag, VBIEDs with a suicide switch coiled around the transmission lever, the wiring running to a car battery in the back seat, sitting on a pile of propane tanks and plastic explosive all strapped tight with evil black electrical tape. Fill a pressure cooker with some diesel fuel and fertilizer, bury it in the road, touch two wires to a dinky double-A battery. Boomtown.

AND THEY FOUGHT BACK With the Suit, bang sticks, det cord, blast caps, time fuzes, shock tubes, EXIT charges, the British BootBanger, Bottlers, Maxi candles, Semtex, PE4, C4, and TNT. They safed IEDs with robots, from the four-hundred-pound monster the F6A, to the light, maneuverable PackBots, to his buddy SPC Kieran Slade�s preference, the TALON. They handed the robots Gatorade bottles filled with water and explosives and sent them to get blown to shit and end their miserable robot lives. And the key: the Warlocks�the electronic jammers that saved so many lives, they should�ve won the Medal of Fucking Honor. He still saw the random digits of the glowing green LED displays cycling through threat frequencies in his dreams.

�In a lotta ways. Say you�re out there, and a bomb�s gone off, right? You got ten minutes to collect all the evidence you can �cause after that, the snipers and other insurgents descend. So you�re telling the Iraqi police to stand down, you�re telling a Marine or army captain about ten pay grades above you to back the fuck off, you�re telling family members of the victims, �Sorry, ma�am, you ain�t getting your son�s disemboweled corpse,� or �No, sir, your daughter�s hands and feet belong to the US Army.� Because you need that shit. That�s evidence. That�s going to help you find these motherfuckers and ventilate them. Then you start getting shot at, mortars are falling on your head, you�re trying to swab everyone at the scene for DNA samples.� His left eye spasmed, and he blinked furiously to clear it. �All that�ll get your butthole puckered every time.�

KELLY WILEY Bitched to her manager that she kept getting stiffed on tips, and Marcia snapped, � �Cause you don�t pay attention to your tables, you let everyone see the bottom of the mug, and the cooks redo your orders twice a day when you bunk �em.� Now Kelly watched Table #19 like the pot about to boil. Table #19 was not the normal Tuesday-morning pairing. She�d guessed a quick first date for coffee, but they�d been talking for nearly an hour like they had nowhere to be. Old friends maybe. But the chat looked too intense. The woman with the darkish skin and messy black hair studied the fat guy, really peering into him. She tried to beam her wish into the lady�s brain: Order the skillet so I can stop worrying about you! Quit sitting there stewing on one freaking cup of coffee! Maybe she should give trade school another try. She was not cut out for waitressing.

THE ONLY OTHER PERSON TO NOTICE Was Richard Lee Haas, whom everyone called Ricky Lee. He�d finished his Bob�s potpie and was waiting for his waitress to notice he was done. She was just standing there staring off into space, and he hated being one of those unpleasant people who stuck his hand in the air and made a little check-signing gesture. Something very rushed, rude, and modern about that. His eyes passed over the young couple. The pretty woman focused on this young buck like she was practically interviewing him. Poor choice of time and place for a date, but they looked like they could be happy enough. �Everyone deserves a little.� That was what Ricky Lee�s late wife had always said.

�But you made it out without a scratch,� she said, not without admiration. �Three tours and you�re sitting here like, like��

�Like Jesus walked through gunfire.�

Shane smiled.

�I got scars. Shrapnel still under the skin. And I�m TBIed as fuck. I never sleep more�n four or five hours at a time since I been back.�

�TBI is Something-Brain-Something?�

�Traumatic brain injury. Standing next to bomb blasts for a few years turns out to not be so hot for your think box.�

�So like football players with concussions.�

�Sorta. Concussion is when you come to a sudden stop and your brain kinda�� he thumped a fist into his open palm� �smushes up against the inside of the skull. What happened to us was a little different. Had to do with the blasts that got your brain all tore the fuck up.�

READ UP ON SCIENCE Explosive waves that come off the bang either speed up or slow down depending on the density of the medium they travel through. So the time they rolled up on a car bomb only to have another one go off a few dozen yards away, those compression waves traveled slowly through the air, but then sped up as soon as they reached their skulls. Density was key. Density creates shredding, ripping-type forces. The misconception was that explosions killed people with their fire and whatnot�no, no, no. It was always blast lung. The blast cut these little air pockets in the lungs, and motherfuckers drowned on their own blood. Those same compression waves worked a number on your brain. Occupational blast exposure was what the MDs called it. Before they�d stopped speaking, his buddies from EOD all talked about lost memories, lost sleep, and losing the ability to make a decision at random moments. Murdock hadn�t thought much of any of the memories he�d tagged before leaving for basic. Now that his whole life more or less began when he got to EOD school, he had to tell himself that.

MEMORIES MOST AVAILABLE Aluminum bunk trailers and the plywood offices, the phone on the ops desk that rang with their missions, garbage piles on the streets, dead dogs left to rot, endless situation reports, popping open the dust cover on the optical sight of his M4, cigarettes smoked at a lung-cancering pace, bomb scene investigation that earned him a familiarity with the human anatomy, sorting through intestines, burned chunks of automobile, fingers, ball bearings, feces, brake fluid, bloody fragments of bone, black coffee that tasted of desert grit, camel spiders, and endless, routinized interactions with gear: body armor, M4 rifle with three-point sling (pistol grip high, right hand ready), pistol in cross-draw holster on the front left side, ammo, night-vision, GPS, flashlight, crimpers, helmet, gloves, earplugs, sunglasses, Leatherman, knife, heart.

�I�m sorry, Kel. That sounds awful.�

�It gives me the sleep problems like I said, but there�s some damage memory-wise too.�

�Yeah?� She was circling him, but Shane also did love hearing about war. Though she�d begun her adulthood organizing against the country�s major military misadventures, a part of her ached for combat. She envied the sense of purpose, the action, the definitive stamp of reality, finality, and meaning war seemed to imprint on its participants.

�My memory�especially before Iraq�is so fucking shot, it�s almost like I was never that person. Can barely remember my hometown, my mom. Can�t remember anything about high school�almost at all. Like, at some point, I know I learned algebra, but I couldn�t tell you who was in my class or what teacher I had or what girl I liked. Some guys I know can�t remember anything about their kids being born. Some don�t remember meeting their wives. But even that�s not the whole thing.�

�What�s the whole thing?�

�Hard to describe. Ain�t quite anxiety, ain�t quite depression. Not quite wanting to punch people out. It�s just this clawing feeling like something�s about to happen. Gets worse in crowds. Like I hate being at a football game or the airport. Anywhere there�s too many people. Also, whenever I don�t got my M9 nearby.�

�That sounds pretty fucked.�

He offered her a tepid bob of his head side to side. �You learn to get by. Iraq taught me you can get used to just about anything. I mean, shit, don�t ask me to take a memory quiz or nothing, but I can still work. Been a product development engineer for a few years. Braking and transmission systems. But compared to EOD the stakes are so low�you know, if you fuck up no one�s getting killed. Basically feels like I can sleepwalk through it. Don�t tell my boss.�

�Ever go home? Do you have family around?�

�Mom got smoked by cancer of the thyroid a few years ago�I swear it�s that shit they�re putting in the ground to get at the gas. No Pops to speak of. Gone before I was even abortion material.�

�Any love life?� she pushed on.

�Between exes right now. Was hooking up with a girl I met online for a while, but she didn�t work out.� His hard stare told her to get to the point.

�Who do you spend your time with?�

�A few buddies at work, a few from Iraq who I still see now and then.�

�No best friend?�

�Nah, I keep to myself. So are you like writing a screenplay about me, Alvarez? Christ.�

Alvarez. She hadn�t gone by that surname in five years. She did not correct him as to what was on her driver�s license now, though. She pushed forward, sensing his itching curiosity. Allen Ford Jr., her mentor and comrade, had once clued her in that people mostly just wanted to be listened to. They wanted to tell their story, and if you could get to their story, you could get to their conscience.

�That first time we met, back in D.C., you told me you missed it. The war. Do you still?�

Murdock considered the advertisement for the Wildfire Chicken Salad on the laminated card propped up out of the condiment basket.

�Not as much no more. Sometimes. There�s the brotherhood, the camaraderie of it, combat love, that�s one thing. And there�s the adrenaline�best high you�ll ever get. No such thing as blood pressure meds for a heart attack, right? But there�s also a calm to it that you can�t really get back here.�

UNTRUE He never saw the EOD guys anymore. Once he got involved with IVAW, Murdock�s views left him with the loneliness of both the prophet and the traitor. They didn�t get how he could shit on the cause that some of them had given it all for, and he didn�t want to argue with the people he cared for most in the world. Loving your brother in arms was a more profound experience than loving God. Better if they speak of it all in another life. Kieran Slade had called him up when he found out the guy they�d nicknamed Murder was going to IVAW protests. �So you�re with these fucking brain-damaged Marines telling everyone we�re war criminals? All so a bunch of fat, happy, self-righteous pussies who�ve never been afraid of shit in their lives can sit back and judge us? Fuck that, man, and fuck you. T would fucking lay you out, man. He�d fucking cripple you if he saw this. You�re a coward, Docker.�

�How was the war calm?�

�When I got back, I was dating this girl at Penn State�she�d sort of latched on to me even though I kept telling her I wasn�t much in the mood to get married, and that�s clearly what she was after. I remember this one time we were driving through a McDonald�s, okay? And we�re picking up food to take to her family�s house for dinner, and she�s got this huge list of everyone�s orders. But the speaker box or whatever that is don�t work so well. It keeps cutting out, so the lady on the other end keeps missing stuff and she needs to keep repeating herself, and then they�re confused about what she�s already ordered and what she hasn�t, and I�ll tell you�right in that moment, I would have given anything to be back in Baghdad. Any fucking thing in the world if it meant I could go back and get shot at.�

His water glass was nothing but ice at the bottom, so he tossed back a few cubes and crunched them loudly with his molars. He began nodding as his story morphed.

�There was this guy over there. This bomb maker we called Toy because his devices always used the radio frequency from kids� toys. Remote-control cars and Buzz Lightyear dolls and such. He came up with some real ingenious shit. Like he�d find a way around our Warlocks�our electronic jammers. He�d plant decoys. He�d wire a bomb with a different trigger three times out of five and then the other two would be callbacks. He was a meticulous cat. And we never caught him. Thought we did a few times. Once, near a bomb site, we took DNA swabs from everyone at the scene, and this shopkeeper matched. So a unit rolls up on the shopkeeper. Bingo-bango-bongo. No more shopkeeper. But a month later, there�s a new bomb, and you could just tell it was his. The Warlock Red jammed it�we were in that protective bubble. But the style was his, the way the wire braided from the battery to the blasting cap. Had a little receiver from a remote-control helicopter for the detonator. He�d put his signature on the IED, you know? Cuz he wanted us to know he was still out there. Now, don�t get me wrong, we all wanted to find that motherfucker and put a few through him, but at the same time I had this respect for him because I had to be better, smarter, quicker.�

HE RETURNED To Whitehall�s office hours because he liked having someone who could talk honestly about the thing. Whitehall didn�t give two fucks what you were supposed to say to fellow vets. �Don�t dwell on what�s been done,� he said. �When I got back I threw every medal and patch and memento and symbol of the American empire into a lake.� He handed Murdock books, a lot of Chomsky, Hobsbawm, Bacevich, and Chalmers Johnson. He read them at the dining room table of his one-bedroom apartment while loading and unloading his M9. It was dismaying how quickly his illusions eroded, a bad paint job that once attacked with mere sandpaper just flakes to the floor on its way to dust. He hadn�t understood how ready he was, and the puzzle pieces of his reading and his experience began to snap together. He carried it around in the back of his throat. However fury, sorrow, and undefended humiliation tastes. It made him want to go back to Iraq, finally hunt down Toy, and say, �I�ve had some time to think about it, and I sorta see your point, dawg.�

The waitress tried to come over again, thinking they might be ready, but Shane gave her a too-impatient Halt gesture. �We�re still going to need another minute.� Bambi smiled impatiently and turned heel. �What about IVAW? Do you have a foot in activism anymore?�

�Nah. I did a year more after we met, but the surge started to settle things down, and troops were on their way out. Got tired of lefty activist types explaining the war to me.� He ticked one cheek in a partial grin.

�Turns out you might�ve been premature given the whole situation over there now.�

�Not too hard to predict, I guess.� Murdock took the fork from the silverware and began twirling a tine against his thumb. �And I�ll tell you something else�the beheadings, the torture, this shit ain�t going nowhere. Barbarity is a powerful thing. Almost a faith in and of itself. We opened a can of worms there that�s gonna writhe for twenty, thirty, fifty years.�

Shane watched as his eye twitched, and he looked down at his cold coffee.

�So,� Murdock grumbled. �Maybe it�s about time you got around to telling me what this is all about. Why I drove halfway to Pittsburgh to not eat breakfast.�

THE LOVE OF THE SUIT Like bundling up for a Pennsylvania winter. First, armor: leggings, collar, breastplate of Kevlar. Then pants with suspenders and spine guard, the diaper that encases the groin. Slip on the overcoat. All of it weighing �half a good woman,� as Ta�amu liked to say. Your buddies helping you in, checking all the zippers, ties, and quick-release tabs in case you caught fire. Finally, pop on the helmet, check the microphone, the air snorkel, and above all, make sure that power fan works and the batteries are fresh because it�s probably 120 fucked-up degrees out. Then it�s just you peering through a visor two inches thick that gets dustier every minute you�re out. Like wearing the chitinous molt of a prehistoric colossus. Ta�amu would babble reassuringly in his ear on the lonesome walk. Just the captain�s way of creating the calm: �I�ve been meaning to give you your performance review: You�re a funny little monkey, Manfuck. Think about the millennium of your progenitors who�ve lived and died, son, so that when the cum spilled out of your mommy�s asshole at the wrong angle a mastermind hick like yourself could be born into the light of consciousness. You are Blown Away, kid. Bombs don�t survive you. You make IEDs IEDon�ts. Just remember, my man, if you offer to carry the weight then you can�t complain about the load.� Then it was just the safe. When all the focus and training came zipping down to a zero-point, a moment of creation. Peeling apart foam chunks to get at the plastic-encased detonating cord of an EFP. The bomb makers versus the EOD. It was a battle of intellect and observation and obsessive skill. He crouched in his own airtight astronaut-suit world, a piercing attention for the detail that tells no story or tells the whole one. You matched wits. There was no syllabus, there were no rules. Only adaptation and improvisation or mutilation and incineration. Blast lungization.

�What do you think it�s about, Kel?�

He threw up a hand. �Hell if I know. Maybe you are writing a movie. People love war stories.�

�It�s good to see you,� she said. �When my partners and I started this thing, this venture, I thought of you. But I�d been thinking of you for a few years anyway.�

Murdock watched through a window as a woman struggled to her car on a walker, helped along by a husband with thinning gray carefully moussed back.

�So this ain�t about Hurt Locker 2: Hurt Harder?�

�Do you remember,� she said carefully, �when we met that weekend in D.C., we had a conversation about what it would take�what would have to happen�to actually change this country?�

He lowered his voice.

�I�d consider myself still a kid at that point. Feeling angry and alone and saying stupid kid shit.� He scanned the Bob Evans to see what the other diners were doing. �My point wasn�t that I wanted to do shit like that. It�s that there ain�t no point in doing shit like that.�

�I�m not trying to sell you on anything here.� She said this with great care, each word handled, examined, and chosen. �I�ve been where you�ve been, Kel. You didn�t have to go to Iraq to feel despair about what�s happened and what�s happening now. All I�m asking is for you to hear me out on this.� She could feel the agitation wafting off him. �And if you don�t like our idea, no problem. You walk away, we walk away. No hard feelings.�

HOME Ta�amu saw that Murdock rarely made calls home, mostly because his mom didn�t have a computer or phone and had to go to the neighbors� to take the call. He started inviting Murdock to join him on the video phone when he called his family back in LA. This consisted of his wife, the dogs, and like seven little brown kids running around screaming the whole time (though he understood only three of these were Ta�amu spawn and the others belonged to a sister in rehab). His wife was a phat collection of gorgeous curves and beautiful Samoan-next-door features. The first time he made Murdock sit in on the herky-jerky, screen-frozen call, Ta�amu told them this was Uncle Murder, and after the children bombarded him with questions about war and how cool was their dad and did he know how to play Call of Duty and was he coming to Los Angeles with their dad after it was all over, Ta�amu replied that he�d have no white Shit-Demon from the Sticks in his house and the kids screamed with laughter and the wife reprimanded him for cursing, and Murdock had to get up and leave, at which point he began to cry, violently, until Ta�amu found him at the entrance to the HAS and told him to stop being a pussy�of course Manfuck could come visit him in LA. They�d grill steaks.

�Christ, you got a hell of a way of piquing a guy�s interest.� He relaxed back into the booth. �Not just a cerebral hick here. Also an open-minded hick.�

Shane was not satisfied yet.

�Here�s what I mean by that: This is going to be a conversation you can�t ever repeat. To anyone. We don�t know what this thing will be, but I need your word this is only between us.�

�And you got it.�

�I�m not being clear.� She put her hand over his again and squeezed. �This is not about hurting anyone, but we could get into trouble just talking about it.�

�I�m telling you, gal, you got my ear. Start her up.�

�I think you understand, Kel, that you have an important set of skills. First, I tell you the bones of what we�re doing. Then if you dig that, we move on to the next step, and you meet my partners.�

�Who are your partners?�

�You don�t need to know who they are until you need to.�

�Inscrutable doesn�t really do it for me, Alvarez. If you hadn�t noticed, I�m a detail-oriented fella.�

�It�s actually Acosta now,� she said. �You�d call me Shane Acosta.�

THE RON KOVIC FANTASY Whitehall�s self-flagellating term. That once you got home you could take up the righteous cause because you�d been there and you knew. He could only read so much about the fat margins of the contractors making fortunes not just off Iraq and Afghanistan but the empire of bases, exporting their equipment and training to a world hungry for a taste of American military supremacy; or about the symbiotic tether between the Pentagon and petroleum�the work of the oil companies guarded and protected by taxpayer dollars; or how rapid and unchecked free-market globalization incubated inequality, which incubated instability, which would eventually incubate more excuses for militarism. He�d seen the way the American empire operates. He understood its vascular system and the grainy detail of its red cells. He could wage peaceful war against its patriotic heart. �That�s the only impulse to follow,� Whitehall told him. �Find yourself purpose in dissent and dig in. Maybe it feels pointless, but it will give you direction, and really, who knows�it might even bring a couple kids home who would�ve got packed into boxes otherwise. Don�t think about your life before, don�t dwell on the people you lost, over there or at home, and whatever you do don�t start drinking. Once you open the bottle, you�ll never put the cap back on.�

RAGE Shane could sense this restless anger in him, he was sure. His left eye still went through spasms of uncontrollable twitching, and he still thrashed in bed half of every night, and he still got that uncategorizable panic bubbling in his chest in crowds, and he would still hear the distinctive sound of bullets snapping by his head, that noise they made as they broke the sound barrier when they zipped by your ear, and he could still never remember his mom�s face or where she�d first showed him how to tie a turle knot. Because all that rage reading�fuck. How inadequate those explanations ultimately felt for all that he�d seen and lived through. There was still no account, no explanation, and no going back. Just him and his ghosts gazing in shared awe over the edge of darkness.

His lip curled and relaxed. �Do I even know who you are? Seems like maybe we start there.�

�You know me, Kel. Even if you don�t know who I am.� She held his gaze to make sure he understood. �There�s four of us. This started back when I worked on the wetlands.�

�What�s up with the wetlands?�

�Just another harbinger on a long list. The point is, the four of us are kind of, I don�t know what you�d call it�the hub of the spokes. The core of the thing.�

�Yeah, Shane, well, what�s the fucking thing?�

�We would want you to be our fifth.�

�You know�� He chewed on his tongue and spent so long thinking, she wondered if he�d say anything. Finally, he went on. �I spent a lot of time in IVAW dealing with folks who wanted to tell me about my life and what I�d done. They tended to sound a lot like you, no offense. So while you�re dancing around whatever you�re dancing around, let me ask you something first: What did you do during the war?�

He said this with great hostility. Ferocity. She had never heard either of those things in him before.

�I went to college,� she said calmly. �Bounced around a bit after that.�

�You ever feel guilty?�

�About what?�

�That guys like me and more�n a few gals like you went and wasted the best years of our lives in that sorry misadventure while y�all blew each other in dorm rooms and your parents got a supply-side tax cut?�

�I don�t know. How guilty do you feel that you came home, and there�s some Iraqi kid who got incinerated by American-brand white phosphorous?�

She couldn�t read his face, but something dark passed across it. He carried a great misery inside, and he couldn�t do a remotely satisfactory job of hiding it.

Shane picked up the saltshaker, cupped it in her palm. �What?� she asked.

�Nothing.� He rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek. �Small world that you and I ever met.�

�So small, it makes you understand the difference that can be made if you go about it the right way.�

�Color me skeptical. Alls I ever think is how the guys who died in Baghdad or Kandahar had all the sweet-berry luck. Didn�t have to come home and sit with a stinking pile of shit in themselves. They got the hero�s parade.�

She sighed. �Don�t talk like that.�

He waited for a second, like he was trying to decide. �Like what? That dying can be lucky?�

�No, man. You can wish you were dead all you want. But don�t pretend there�s anything heroic about it. All the bumper stickers and parades and �thank a veteran for your freedom� bullshit�all the pedestalizing. All the movies. All that isn�t for you guys who went. It�s for the next time. How else do you get children in Oklahoma City or Fallujah to kill people they�ve never met? Convince them they�ll be heroes.�

Murdock ran his finger around the wet rim of the coffee mug and stared glumly at the snow. He looked far away, like he was no longer listening.

�Look, Kel.� She slid the saltshaker from one hand to the other. It scraped across the table. She kept right on staring at Murdock. �We can go through this shit to the moon and back. In fact, at some point I�m sure we will. But for now, I just want to know��she slid the saltshaker back to the original hand��if you�ve got one more war in you?�

ANAMNESIS He liked to think it�d been Toy�s triumph that finally got them good, but that was specious and relied on a certain Hollywood symmetry. Anbar had dozens of skilled bomb builders and trained more every day. Toy himself may have been a composite of every operator that ever outsmarted them, a concrete antagonist to hunt. Still, his gut would always tell him Toy left the suspicious package in the intersection where the choke points were obvious and the convoy had to set up fifty yards back. After they�d rolled the TALON down to the package and discovered that it was only some men�s shirts�false alarm, not unusual�Ta�amu cracked, �Man, I just got a baller idea for a GAP ad,� as the EFP hidden under a garbage pile went off and pretty much liquefied the captain in front of his eyes. SSG Jim Matthews was killed as well, and SPC Cort Kronlan lost an arm. Someone had triggered it through a wire hidden in the ground, so the Warlock couldn�t save them, and it was some five hundred pounds of armor, tactical vest, ammo, rifle, and man vanishing except the feet still in the boots. Ears droning, concrete chunks raining, molten steel popping holes in the armored Humvee, Murdock didn�t stop to think of all the bits of Ta�amu he had in his eyes and mouth. The gunfire began.

INSTINCT One thing you could say about the US military is that when they trained you to do something, you fucking well remembered it. Even with pieces of Ta�amu coating him and a hail of bullets thwapping from a nearby building and the Muslim call to prayer suddenly ringing out from a nearby Statue of Liberty�colored minaret and someone screaming, �Tell �em we got a TIC! Put the fifty on those niggers!� and SSG Mason Saunders going cyclic with the SAW right by his ear, spitting through nine hundred rounds in about a minute�melting the barrel in the process�Murdock still did what his trauma training told him to. He leaped on top of Kronlan, this shrieking nineteen-year-old child of Texas, ripped the med pack from his vest, ground his knee into the bicep above Kronlan�s severed arm to stop the blood flow (between the heart and the wound, America told you), got the tourniquet ready, spitting out pieces of his brother that tasted more like diesel than blood, not thinking Captain�s dead, Captain�s juice, letting the pressure go long enough to slip the tourniquet around the Limb Formerly Known as Cort Kronlan�s Arm, spitting, spitting, spitting, but Kronlan wouldn�t stop thrashing and screaming long enough to get his life saved (Kronlan, for the sweet cunt of fuck), so he cracked him in the face with his elbow, broke his nose, but stunned the Texan long enough to get the tourniquet tightened�until the limb stopped the spurts that timed eerily with the pulse Murdock could feel humming through Kronlan�s whole body�and then packed the wound cavity with this handy little Kerlix super sponge stuff they gave you. With sticky fingers, packing it into a stump the color of grilled brook trout he and his mother once caught, long ago, in Wiconisco Creek.

AND LATER When Kronlan was saved and people were already telling Murdock about the Bronze Star Medal coming his way, Slade found him picking at a bit of bloody material still stuck in his teeth, and SPC Slade looked at him and, channeling Ta�amu himself, Murder said, �Tastes like chicken,� and laughed. Slade thought this was inappropriate, but Murdock was drenched in so much of Ta�amu�s and Kronlan�s blood he didn�t much give a fuck. You put that shit somewhere deep and beat a stray cat to death with a hammer five years on to try to work those feelings out.

NOW THAT WE�RE DOWN THIS ROAD Two springs ago he�d driven down to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, for the annual May ceremony to induct the recently juiced on the EOD Memorial Wall. He sat among the family and friends of that year�s fallen EOD in the sweltering, swampy heat and marveled at how many people in the audience were missing limbs. All manner of hooks, tennis-shoed prosthetics, grippers, and angled titanium protruded in place of bone and flesh. One woman had half her face burned away and wore a large hat tilted to cast a shadow over the ruined portion. The wall, a pale gray slab of concrete resembling a highway divider, had four cenotaphs, one for each branch of the military, with EOD dead dating back to World War II. A bedsheet of an American flag riding above. The keynote speaker was the air force chief of staff. �This is EOD,� he�d said, and Murdock felt his throat close, his eyes well. �The brains of an engineer, the hands of a surgeon, the heart of a martyr.� They played �Amazing Grace,� and he went to the wall and ran his fingers across the slim bronze tablet affixed to the army�s cenotaph, the one that said CPT TROY J. TA�AMU 2/07. Then he tossed his Bronze Star Medal at the ground because that was the clich� most appropriate to the moment. In war, clich� was as inescapable as the dread of your own death. They�d gone over there having already learned all the clich�s from the movies, and they took them up with ease: the brotherhood and adrenaline that made you cuss and laugh and feel as if this was the only place you belonged, and then you saw fucked-up shit and did fucked-up shit and it changed you, the way the movies told you it would. How frustrating to watch your life, your misery, your madness depicted absolutely accurately by clich�. Because it felt so real and original when it was you with these wives, husbands, parents, brothers, sisters, and children milling in the heat. And what was he left with? What could he do when his head was a mess of forgotten voices and errant whispers of memories with no value and no sustained narrative, just purposeless minutiae and fragments he�d take with him to the void?

AND YET There was a memory that never happened: of eating steak and drinking beer and watching all these children with his friend�s eyes play in a sunny yard, and it made him so fucking furious, so fucking crazy and desperate and sorrowful that he pressed his face against the surface of that bronze tablet and through gritted teeth and layered time sobbed into the metal, hot with the warmth of the Florida sun. An older Black lady, probably the mother of some other poor dead motherfucker, knelt beside him and took him in her arms. She whispered, �I know, baby. I know. We�ll all be with God soon,� while she stroked his back with one hand and held his heart with the other.

There was the tinkering clitter-clatter of silverware on plates, murmured conversations ebbing and flowing, hash browns and eggs being lapped up. Outside on the highway, the pickups and SUVs sluiced by, spraying mocha slush from their wheels. By now the pristine white had all but disappeared. The waitress returned, and Shane and Murdock ordered breakfast.

T

HE

A

CTOR

2014

I saw him in the bookstore without recognizing him at first. I was stewing from the last meeting of the week. Darren would get the promotion, and my eyes were still threatening tears. This news had enveloped me so thoroughly since leaving the office that my gaze passed over this man I�d watched so many times in other contexts. He was poorly incognito. He wore a crisp blue Cubs baseball cap and thick sunglasses that were a rectangular mask across his eyes. Yet I could see those distinct lips, naturally pursed like a blooming flower. The straight nose with its squarish point. The five-o�clock shadow, pinpricks of black on a flawless tan.

I�d wound my way from the office to the downtown Barnes & Noble because I did not feel like getting on the train at rush hour, not with the pulse of indignation still beating in my head, and decided to calm myself by browsing books. That meeting evaporated as I took in the rest of him. Dark blue jeans with the requisite fade, a tan jacket over a light blue shirt, brown leather shoes. He was shorter than I would have imagined, but you always hear that about actors. What surprised me more was his build�clearly in shape, but so slender. Those muscles that graced the posters were more compact in real life.

I thought of that peculiar phrase then, my eyes darting away from him as I sensed his glance: in real life. A clich� so far removed from what it ever meant, if anything. I could even remember watching one of his thrillers a few years back on one of those early dates with Jefferey; he was not exactly an A-lister, but his films were unavoidable if one saw enough American movies. I picked a book off the shelf just to have something to do with my hands.

Then he spoke to me. I missed what he said because I was trying to see the eyes behind the sunglasses. His lips curled expectantly, and my words came out with a defensive tinge that sounded crass to my own ears.

�Excuse me?�

�McCarthy,� he said, pointing to the book I held. �Do you like McCarthy?�

Blood Meridian lay in my hand, a limp accessory. I had never read anything by McCarthy. I�m one of those people constantly trying to read short stories by Flannery O�Connor yet reverting to Jodi Picoult and Gillian Flynn at the first pang of boredom.

�I haven�t read much of him.�

�He�s one of my favorite authors. The Road is incredible and an easier read. Blood Meridian has the Judge, who�s one of the best characters in modern literature, but it takes a lot of concentration. At least that�s my expert recommendation.�

He smiled and that institutional bookstore light almost created a glare on his whitened teeth. I set Blood Meridian down and picked up The Road.

�The problem is this is a movie, so I know I�ll quit halfway through and finish it on Netflix.�

It was a feeble joke, and I immediately hated the dynamic, as if he was the authority because he�d read this one book. At the office I had learned never to give the guys ammunition or I�d watch their entitlement bloat. This is exactly how Darren Grinspoon muscled in and took credit for my work on his way to leap-frogging me to executive creative director: I let men explain novels to me in bookstores.

He laughed. �Eh, movies are cheap facsimiles of what novels accomplish.�

�Strange coming from someone in your line of work.�

His sandy eyebrows perked upward. �Ah, so you saw around the disguise.�

�Oh, I�m calling my mother about this as soon as I walk out of here.�

He smiled and leaned into the shelf in the manner of a high school boy at your locker.

�In that case, can I tell you why you should read that book rather than see the movie?�

�They passed you over for the starring role?�

I put a foot forward, moving closer, challenging him. There in the pit of my belly was the kind of squirming excitement you feel so rarely as an adult, the joyous ache of a crush whose face you want to push into the mud. While my celebrity infatuations tended toward the older, more distinguished type (Harrison Ford from the eighties, please and thank you), I still had a pulse, and this attention from a man I�d learned about mostly through issues of People was undeniably thrilling.

�No, they wouldn�t even take my agent�s call,� he said. �But McCarthy has this way with his prose, so you�re always chasing sentences down these caverns of meaning. You just can�t translate that to film. No actor, no screenwriter, no director, no team of studio wizards can do in a lifetime what Cormac McCarthy can do in an afternoon.�

He said this with a wry smile that let me know he was as serious as he was aware of his own bullshit.

�That�s good,� I told him. �Do you have to wait for women to pick up a McCarthy novel to plagiarize a New Yorker review or�?�

His head bobbed back when he laughed.

�C�mon, I�m serious. Let me be corny!� His finger brushed against mine as he took the book from my hand. He lobbed his head toward the front of the store. �This is on me.�

�Don�t,� I said, reaching for it.

He brushed my arm back, a little too forcefully. �Seriously, it�s my pleasure�just in case you don�t like it.�

In my head, my friend Linda�s voice rose in pitch: Let the famous actor flirt, dummy!

�I wasn�t planning on buying anything,� I said when we reached the register. �I was just killing time before I met a friend.�

�What kind of friend?�

�What kinds are there?�

�Boyfriend?�

�No, a girlfriend. We were going to get a drink, maybe see a movie. Do you have anything out? I need at least a sixty percent on Rotten Tomatoes before I commit.�

I stood awkwardly beside him as he produced an AmEx. My face flushed as I felt other people in line watching us, and I still wanted to snatch the book before he could buy it for me. He thanked the clerk, her bored eyebrow ring never rising in recognition, and glanced back at me. I was supposed to follow him now, and I did, slipping The Road into my bag.

Outside, early-evening pale had settled in. He took off his sunglasses, a full reveal. The high cheekbones and irresolute brown eyes. I remembered them as blue in his films and now took that as the work of contacts. It made me wonder how much of that fresh, taut look was surgery or Botox.

�I�ll tell my mom you said hi.�

�What if�� He looked off into the headlights and taillights of traffic. �You canceled on your friend and we grab a drink instead?�

The truth was I wasn�t meeting a friend. It had been a spur-of-the-moment lie, the kind you tell when you want someone to think you have plans. A single twenty-seven-year-old wandering the shelves of a bookstore on a Friday evening with nothing better to do? Though I hated that it made me feel anxious, it did. The drink offer wasn�t shocking�his flirting was hardly subtle�but now my mind jammed with thoughts of how I looked. What did he see? Chestnut hair, I�d recently had drastically shortened and highlighted for the coming summer. The small bulb of my father�s nose mixing with my mother�s darker Mediterranean eyes. I attempted to not let my insecurities wash over me and thought of all the yoga and treadmill miles I�d logged during the city�s hibernating months.

�Aren�t you dating Scarlett Johansson or someone?�

Again, the laugh was surprised and genuine. �I�m between destructive relationships with coworkers at the moment. Here�s my perspective: I�ll either go drink at the hotel bar by myself until someone recognizes me and I get annoyed� or I can buy you dinner.�

�Now it�s dinner?�

�If you�re hungry.�

Of course I was going to say yes. But I told myself I was saying yes only because the initial shock at his fame had worn away. He was just another guy trying his hand at a pickup line.

We took a cab, sitting a comfortable distance apart in the back. The butterflies that flapped and spun kamikaze in my stomach when he first spoke to me now lay dormant, reverse-aging back into their chrysalises. The cab rounded the corner of Wacker, passing the river on our left and the gleaming silver phallus of Trump Tower. The setting sun reflected off its miles of mirrored glass and cast light over the city, lighting from a painting or a dream. After a bit of awkward silence, he said:

�You got into this cab and still haven�t told me your name.�

�Jackie.� I shook his palm, and the grip lingered. That smile, how he flashed it like a knife, knowing it was dangerous. No wonder his dumb movies made so much money.

T

HE

L

ION AND THE

F

IELD

2015

You decide to leave home for good after you win the lottery, a Shell station scratch-off that abruptly puts three hundred dollars in your pocket. You�re fresh off one last blowout fight with your mom. You�ll have to go back eventually, if for no other reason than to get your stuff, the box of minor valuables beneath your bed.

You�re sick of Trotwood, sick of Dayton. It�s time for a change anyway. You collect your winnings, the cashier laying twenty after twenty in your palm, and go pick up Claire Ann from the Jiffy Lube where she works. It�s a sauna-hot evening, and you drive with the windows down because your AC�s wrecked. You don�t bother to call in to your job, and you don�t answer when your boss puts in call after call, the buzzing phone annoying your thigh.

You deliver for Domino�s, $4.50 an hour plus tips, and spend most of your time with Claire Ann, driving to the park so you can fuck without your mom interrupting. You have dreams�not as in hopes and aspirations, which you figure at age twenty are not yet your concern, but bad dreams. One in particular that won�t stop.

You text McHenry, a dealer your childhood buddy Casey Wheeler put you in touch with before he fled to Coshocton on account of a dispute with his girlfriend�s father. McHenry meets you on West Third with a baggie of coke. He�s a mean-looking fucker with the eyes of a hound dog and three teeth missing from his upper row, but his shit is solid.

�Also got some of them X,� he says, eyes wandering over Claire Ann in the passenger seat.

You ask how much.

�Give y�all two for ten. Less you wanna buy in bulk.�

�Not tonight,� you say and hand over another ten bucks.

You drive to a part of town more suited for two people of the white race, stopping in a gas station bathroom where you and Claire Ann cut and snort two lines each using a compact mirror and a credit card. You pop the X. You ask what she wants to do.

�My friend Dee�s at a party down at UC. She texted me earlier.�

Cincinnati�s an hour�s drive, but with all the coke and X and the bottle of Maker�s you�re about to buy, it�ll feel like ten minutes.

You drive, and the headlights on I-75 glide over the ornate black cross tattooed on your forearm. You haven�t been to church since you were twelve, yet you know God has plans for you. You first started having this dream two or three years ago. It never comes on consecutive nights. Sometimes weeks will go by. It always comes back, though. Sooner or later, you will always return.

AL

H

ASAN

_M

AY2016.DOCX

2016

Abstract: Today my mother and I had a conversation that excavated certain emotional reactions I�ve lately experienced due to my family, my work, my father�s funeral, and, for reasons I have difficulty articulating, the National Basketball Association. Consider this an effort to understand the ways in which they refract and reflect one another. I�ll begin with the context: a recent trip to Las Vegas with my financier, Peter, and the success of our proprietary black box, the Sports Almanac.

T

HE

Y

EARS OF

R

AIN AND

T

HUNDER

: P

ART

I

2017

The first time I saw Kate, she was walking down the dock on Jackson Lake, a backpack slung over her shoulder, sturdy hiking boots clomping on wood. Her legs and shoulders held the bronze of the summer sun, and she had a mass of dark blond curls piled in a makeshift bun. She was smiling like someone was telling her a joke in one of her earbuds.

I�d come to work in Wyoming after graduation, driven by directionless aspirations to become a writer. My cap and gown barely hit the floor of my room before I was striking off from Chapel Hill to the wild blue yonder of the American West. My senior year I happened to read a book of short stories about Wyoming by Annie Proulx, and it lingered as inspiration. Why not light out for the territories? I found ads for seasonal positions at Grand Teton National Park and landed on the docks of Colter Bay about fifty minutes north of Jackson. Most of my belongings went back to my parents� house in Raleigh where my dad made nervous rumblings about this half-baked plan. Law school would always be there, I told him.

I�d been working for about a month the day I met Kate. We marina employees wore white polo shirts with a green GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK logo on the breast and spent most of our time renting canoes and motorboats to tourists who�d putter around the lake for a few hours. Captain Ray was our manager, a white mustachioed, beer-bellied man of few, though creative, words. He had a nose of burst capillaries like a misshapen beet and chuckled a lot�a raspy cigarette-smoker�s laugh that came chuffing out whenever one of us did something stupid. On my second day, this foreign kid, Ghezi, was trying to take a broken Yamaha 9.9 off one of the motorboats, which was at least a two-person job. Captain Ray saw him struggling to lift the engine and came ambling over with a cigarette dangling from under his mustache, green Teton ballcap perched in defense of his sunspotted dome.

�If that winds up in the lake, you�re going down there with a snorkel mask to dredge it up.�

Sheepishly, Ghezi stopped his struggle.

�Hey, you. Tar Heel,� Ray called across the dock. �Give us a hand.� I set my book down and made my way to them. �Snorkel, you lift, we pull.�

Together, the three of us lifted the engine, and I carted it back to the boathouse where Captain Ray tinkered all afternoon while I handed him tools as he chain-smoked. Ghezi forever became �Snorkel.� I became �Tar Heel.� Ray was one of those unintentional linguistic wizards I thought I�d someday figure into a novel.

We were a small crew. Ghezi, from Macedonia, spoke in halting English, had big bug eyes, a face like a crustacean, and was extremely good-natured about all the xenophobic shit Ray gave him. �We got plumbing and TP in America, Snorkel. No more shitting in a hole and wiping with your hand.� Maybe Ghezi didn�t find this hilarious, but he laughed like he did. Damien became my best friend, a pothead who�d just graduated from the University of Arizona. He had buried a jar of weed in the woods because the company had a one-strike rule on drugs. Sometimes after work, we�d trek out to this quiet spot, dig for a minute, and split a bowl in the still summer evening.

A month in, I�d begun to worry about the mundane flow of my days, fearing this job might not give me as much writerly inspiration as I�d imagined, when Kate came down the dock with a pink canoe slip in her hand.

Ghezi elbowed me in the side and said in that goofball Macedonian way of his, �Ah. Babe o�clock.�

I�d quickly realized Colter Bay wasn�t exactly awash in attractive women, and our clientele was mostly Asian tourists and the minivan set. Even if we�d been renting canoes strictly to beauties, Kate would have caught anyone�s attention. Tall and athletic, her stride registered in the world. First, I took in her dark skin and huge head of curls. Then, as she got closer, her pretty snub nose, full lips, and a wide, hungry smile.

She held out the slip and looked at the three of us like she�d caught us comparing scrotums.

�Tourists need this much help getting into canoes?�

Ghezi took the paper and pinned it to the clipboard. �We aim to please,� he said, tipping an imaginary hat. Damien snorted in disbelief. He brought a canoe around by its rope, and I took it from him before Ghezi could.

�Got it.� I sat on the dock with my feet inside to steady it. �Just you?� I asked her.

She unslung the backpack and tossed it in the center of the canoe. Damien handed her a life vest and a seat cushion.

�No, my friend�s in the bathroom.�

�So we have a spiel we have to give you, and you can give your friend the CliffsNotes.�

�Lay it on me.�

�You�re going to go out with two seat cushions, two paddles, two life vests, and we expect you to bring them all back. If you don�t, we prosecute you, and in Wyoming that means you have to fight a bear in a pit.�

�Yeah, that�s just called justice.�

�You may canoe anywhere you wish but be careful about going out too far on the lake, and whatever you do, do not try to cross to the other side. It�s really far, and I don�t want to have to come out at dusk to rescue you.�

�But you�d be my hero.� She finally popped out the earbuds and buckled the vest over a sky-blue tank top. She sat down beside me on the dock, resting her boots beside mine. I saw her eyes now, brown and icy, but with chips of green, a color impossible to pin down.

�Also, we have a gift shop where you can buy overpriced, Chinese-manufactured Grand Teton swag. Do you enjoy key chains?�

�Get out of my head, kid. They�re only my favorite ever.�

I could have sat there all day doing this. It was something I�d come to see about her: that she could play to the personality of whoever she was talking to, match wits. Only later would I learn she always had you at match point. I stole a glance at her legs, brown and smooth but peppered with scratches and mosquito bites.

As I prepared to ask her name, she looked behind me and said, �Get your tinkle out, Luce?�

The friend was short, wide-hipped, her face hidden behind a big pair of sunglasses. She had her black hair buzzed. She wore a cutoff shirt over a sports bra and didn�t bother to buckle the life vest after shrugging into it. She looked strong, sturdy, and like she wanted to shove me into the lake as she slid beside Kate on the dock. Without saying anything, she leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. I heard Ghezi behind me let out a quick, sharp breath while I saw one of Damien�s bored eyebrows ratchet up in intrigue. He nodded his head once approvingly. Of course, I felt caught. This butch woman had seen me bantering with her girlfriend and wanted to demonstrate what the situation was to everyone. When their mouths parted, Kate looked amused, dazzled, invigorated. �Let�s do this, lady,� she said. They each slipped into the canoe quickly and expertly, thanked us, and with a thrust of their arms, shoved the canoe away from the dock.

�That was, uh, amazing,� said Ghezi mournfully.

�She was a cutie,� Damien admitted. �Matt, you about knocked Ghezi into the lake to get to her.�

We laughed and ragged on each other the way we would all summer, while I stole glances until she disappeared onto the sun-rippled folds of the lake.

T

HE

W

ATCH AND THE

B

LOOD

B

ANK

2025

You find the note in the handle of the screen door of your trailer. It�s all caps and exclamation points, telling you you�re now two months overdue on rent and the next letter will be an eviction notice. A hangover soaks your brain from the night before at the bowling alley. You regret the blow Casey found; it was expensive and cut like shit. Matters worsen when you find the mail, fed through the slot and scattered over the carpet. There�s a letter from Claire Ann. You bite the inside of your cheek until you taste blood.

Bottom line is you need money. Three hundred fifty at least to get Claire Ann off your back, another $300 to hold off your landlord. How they got away with charging $300 a week for a heap of shit in the dubiously named Fairview Manor Trailer Courts is beyond you, but the whole town has been a landlords� market for years. Add to that the fierce cramps in your legs, warning of the comedown on the way, and you�re settling in for a pretty bad week.

When you got fired from Tuscarawas, there was the typical spiral. It had taken all you had to land that job. Your old pal Casey Wheeler had an uncle who worked at the Tuscarawas Power Station, and you had been looking for any kind of steady work since moving out on your own. Casey hooked you up, and you put in your most earnest effort. Uncle Wheeler liked you well enough, and got you in for the test that Casey, his own nephew, had failed badly. You had to memorize the answers to questions like: If you�re a drop of water how will you flow from the feedwater pump, become steam, blow through the turbine, and end up back as water again? Five months it took you to get in as a utility operator, a hot, dirty job reaching into the furnace with the spud bar to tamp down the ash bed all day. Less than seven months later you were done. The first time you showed up drunk, Uncle Wheeler reamed you. The second time he warned you, cold as shit. The third, you were only a little hungover, but he fired your ass. Not that you don�t see your own culpability. No matter. Everyone in the plant was always talking about how it would be shut down any day now with the war on coal and all, so maybe you just fast-tracked the process for yourself. In some ways, it�s better when you don�t have money. Having money in your pocket has always gotten you into trouble.

Now the question becomes how to put together a few hundred dollars in a hurry. Your first thought is the blood bank, which of course deals in plasma but �banking� is a more apt description for what goes on there. Coshocton�s has an okay price. Thirty-five for an hour with a needle in your arm. It won�t solve your troubles, but it�ll let you score a couple pills to get the immediate physical demon off your back. You�re no addict�all you fuck with is the new Oxy�no heroin, no fent. But in a day, the withdrawal kicks are going to be psychotic, and you don�t want to deal with the valley of bones on top of the current predicament. You walk to save the gas.

M

AGIC

M

OUNTAIN

2027

On his way to the World Economic Forum, Tony got lost in the muck.

A meter of snow had fallen on Davos the week before, followed by a warm snap. The temperature rose to nearly thirteen degrees Celsius while the city�s street cleaners worked round the clock to truck snow from the streets and dump it in Lake Davos, but the whole alpine city was still soaked with slush and meltwater. His panel wasn�t until the next day, but he wanted to sit in on some of the others, particularly his friend Marty Rathbone�s. Marty was discussing macroeconomic trends with the CEO of Google and the EU�s chief economist. Limo tires sluiced and pedestrians flattened themselves against quaint Swiss brick to avoid the spray. Nestled among four snow-coated mountains in postcard perfection, the picturesque town looked rotten. Like it was moldering.

He found his way when he spotted the protestors: five hundred people held behind a fence, signs declaring every manner of grievance, justified or conspiratorial. One young woman held a sign that read GANGSTERS PARTY IN DAVOS. Another, OFF WITH THEIR FUCKING HEADS. Following near-riots after the last NATO summit and the G-20, most of Europe had imposed severe restrictions on protestors, herding them into little pop-up concentration camps for the afternoon where they could be tear-gassed if someone shook their fist too hard at a cop. As he shuffled through redundant checkpoints, barbed-wired barricades, FaceRec scanners, and a quick Covid swab lest anyone smuggle in a new variant of the troublesome virus, he eyed the Polizei. Riot gear masked every feature except cold eyes. The Davos church spire shared the skyline with all the SWAT-looking characters perched on rooftops, idling their tripod-mounted sniper rifles.

When Marty Rathbone told Tony he�d nominated him for a much-coveted invite to Davos, Tony had given him grief over �capitalism�s biggest cocktail party.� But Marty, Harvard�s star, had become a fixture, and he wanted Tony to take his show on the road. Ever since the publication of his book, Tony hadn�t had a problem hopping back on the lecture circuit. He had that odd type of celebrity: unrecognizable to the vast majority of the hoi polloi, but instantly controversial in certain circles, iconoclast or heretic depending on one�s prism.

Holly called him �our idolater father,� but he scoffed at this. He�d simply laid out some ideas based on the science, and the world could take it or leave it. His old partner in crime from Scripps, Niko, had introduced him to Marty. �You two will annoy and argue and despise each other,� he�d written. Later, Tony and Marty decided to partner on a paper. Marty was a slick academic, well aware of his brilliance, which he leveraged into book contracts, Treasury Department roles in Dem administrations, well-paying consulting gigs, and grad students� panties. He was a financial economist and devout free marketeer, who�d read Tony�s book and come around to his own climate Cassandra conclusion. Their paper, examining the potential economic impacts of a real estate collapse on the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard, had created a stir�though mostly of denial, data nitpickery, and debunkification.

As he passed through the final security barrier of the Congress Centre, flashing his low-level white badge branding him as a member of civil society who didn�t pay upward of $100,000 to attend, Tony saw Marty�s text.

Just heard Clinton speak. That guy is looking like the Crypt Keeper!

They met in the main hall and picked at finger food from one of the many catered spreads. Tony overheard all kinds of nonsense from nearby conversations:

�India? What�s left to export? Mud and suicidal farmers?�

�I underestimated Argentina.�

�That�s Adjaye. He�s a starchitect and a real cocksucker.�

�Asteroid mining is hot, and Luxembourg is making a big play.�

Bono, looking Botoxed and pallid, went striding through the center of the room, collecting gazes, smartphone videos, and whispers.

�Shit, where�s the Edge?� said Marty, watching the short Irishman flanked by what looked like two ex-football players. Bono wasn�t the half of it. Tony had read a bit about the attendees on the flight to Zurich: Facebook�s new CEO, the director of the IMF, a performance by Coldplay, a South African novelist, a Turkish artist, and the usual interchangeable billionaire axis of Bezos, Branson, Musk. Natalie Portman was on a panel that overlapped with a speech from the Iranian president�so who knew which would be the bigger draw. The CEO of Goldman Sachs. Top executives of Lufthansa and Deutsche Bank. Rao Ling-Mosgrave, one of Slapdish�s founding wunderkinds, and the first person with a $500 billion net worth. According to the folks who kept score, the three richest people in the world now had the same wealth as the bottom half of the global population.

�You�re a real starfucker, aren�t you, Rathbone?� said Tony. �Also, is it just me or do they still barely invite any women?�

�Tell me about it,� said Marty, scanning the ass of one of the caterers. �Later, though. The after-parties are called nightcaps. The Steigenberger Grandhotel Belv�d�re is the big one, but last year Apple had an augmented reality party that was pretty neat. You looked around and there were all these celebs hanging out as holograms. You could walk right up to Leo and talk to him in LA.� Marty brushed a hand through his carefully parted gray and tugged at his suit. His panel was that afternoon, and he was wearing makeup. Tony had brought only the blue Brooks Brothers he wore for all weddings and funerals. �At the Tonic Piano Bar in the Hotel Europe, Norman Nate flew in this Michelin-starred chef from London and was just giving away Ch�teau Cheval Blanc and Ch�teau d�Yquem.�

Tony stared at him blankly.

�Those are wines, Tone.�

�Whatever. Who the hell is Norman Nate?�

�Tech guy. Had a big stake in Slapdish, and now he�s onto human intelligence enhancement, radical life extension, nanotech, and the like. They call him �the homeless billionaire� because he doesn�t own a house, he just stays in luxury hotels around the world and lives out of his jet.�

�Jesus Christ. Don�t expect me to join you for any of that horseshit.�

�Tony, I�d never try to tear you away from your single-minded devotion to your own misery.�

They argued about which panels to attend. The jet lag was making Tony crankier than normal. They settled on �Capitalism: To Infinity and Beyond,� about the ongoing privatization of space, during which Tony fell asleep and later �The End Game for the Middle East,� in which the Saudi head of security painted a grim picture of the now two-and-a-half-decades-long state of war that stretched from Syria to Pakistan and had recently spilled into the kingdom. Though this year�s conference was supposed to have a focus on climate and water security, the capture of several Saudi oil fields in the northeast by radical Islamist groups was the only thing in the news. Bomb them, don�t bomb them�the usual debate, but oil was at stake again, so those nutty Muslims were going to get bombed. Marty�s panel featured him jawing with five other economists about development issues, and the usual conclusions were bandied about. Grow that pie bigger, get that rising tide to lift all those boats in the Global South. Tony fell asleep again.

T

HE

Y

EARS OF

R

AIN AND

T

HUNDER

: P

ART

II

2028

Eleven years earlier, I got into her truck.

After four days on the road and a night camping in the Smoky Mountains, we crossed the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge in the morning dawn. A tired wind pushed river mist over the Potomac, and this city that would become my home for over a decade had a stillness to it, a gray-born mystery. At first, we lived two blocks from the Capitol in a dingy brick-block apartment building called Hill House. It was home mostly to congressional staffers, bouncing out of their overpriced shoebox hovels by 6 a.m. with a thermos of coffee and a bagel. The Republican National Committee was close by, and during the grim days of the Trump presidency, this felt like enemy territory, a dangerous movement�s dark core. Kate rode her bike to her offices over on the H Street Corridor, making $37,000 a year, which in D.C. is close to a poverty wage. I struggled to find any kind of work, and for the first seven months did a lot of paid line-standing for lobbyists outside congressional hearings. Eventually I found an internship with a social services organization that worked with sexual assault survivors, though I�d be let go when Covid came. I plowed through the last of my savings to help make rent while Kate tended bar on the weekends. Even though we were broke, everything was new and came with the thrill of early, hungry adulthood. That era now has the blur one�s twenties take on over time, especially after the chaos descended in 2020. My parents visited that March, and we were all sitting in Hawk �n� Dove, Kate bickering good-naturedly with my dad about Trump�s first impeachment, when we heard news of the lockdowns.

Twenty-twenty was our first blush with that sensation of true global emergency, and because we spent that year initially secluded, then in the streets as Kate and her coworkers took part in the Black Lives Matter protests, then working furiously on the 2020 election, and then back to a curfew after the attack on the Capitol and another Covid surge, and then� well, you know.

To say there was ever any return to normality isn�t quite right, but there was an acquiescence, a decision that a certain amount of chaos would be tolerated in order to let the world grind on, and within the context of the climate crisis, this was very bad news indeed.

By then, Kate was deeply unhappy with the job she�d come to D.C. for, and she and Liza set off on their own. They started a 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(3), opened offices in thirty states with field directors, and a slew of hubs with neighborhood organizers, but, as she pointed out every night at dinner, this was not much different from anything else folks had been trying for thirty years. As Kate put it to me over wine and a very potent weed gummy, �We need to shock the system.�

�How do you expect to do that?� I asked.

�First and foremost,� said Kate, �fuck off with the messaging apparatus that can only preach to the converted. It�s dour, man. We live on this incredible, joyful, one-in-a-trillion blue marble in the depths of cold black infinite space! We can either be another feeble assemblage of do-gooders patting themselves on the back or we can get rowdy. We set off a riot in the American political system and give all sides of the spectrum unshirted hell.�

In less than three years, they raised astonishing money and built an incredible, daring organization. Even before they began gaining attention, fame, notoriety, I knew Kate and A Fierce Blue Fire were heading for something big. Even when it was just her and Liza working on laptops in our apartment, and the idea that she would be splashed across the front page of a glossy magazine seemed ludicrous, I already knew. It was my first encounter with the sensation of destiny. How that word feels like living inside a bright, wet fog. If you close your eyes you know it�s still there, a premonition made tactile.

I was thinking about this long journey, from hopping into Kate�s truck in Wyoming to her explosion into the public realm, as we sat in the hideaway of one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate. I thought of how my life�s path had careened, and remembered that ride with her out of the Wind River Range and across the blunt plains east of the Rockies.

�I was an actual working-class hero,� Senator Cy Fitzpatrick whittered on to Kate, his cotton-ball eyebrows bouncing. �I worked in a meatpacking plant with a bunch of Mexicans to put myself through college.� Hideaways are small, secluded offices, and the most senior senators got the ones even the staffers didn�t know about. Supposedly only two keys exist, one for the senator and one for his or her chief of staff. Like most things about Washington, it was not as impressive as it sounds, but now here we were in Cy�s. He made no secret how happy he was to have a pretty audience, and Kate flirted enough to delight the wheelchair-bound Pennsylvania senator. Whatever this cloak-and-dagger meeting was about, it had been brokered by Fitzpatrick, one of the first senators to take FBF�s radical approach seriously.

The door popped and scraped open loudly, and finally Russ Mackowski, West Virginia�s Far Right firebrand, arrived, trailed by his chief of staff, Dave Montreff. Mackowski made the rounds, shaking hands with curt hellos. He was big and barrel-chested with steel-gray hair and a red, weathered face. When he shook my hand, his palm felt like tree bark. He pumped my hand once and said �Goodtoseeya� before moving on.

Tom Levine, our Capitol Hill vet, now whispered in the ear of Coral Sloane, our policy director, while Kate herself took Mackowski�s hand, smiled huge, and gave him a joyful �Senator!� The old Republican did not return the enthusiasm despite the fact that Kate practically got him elected over Elmer Nolan.

In addition to the four of us from FBF, Fitzpatrick had invited only one advisor, a man of South Asian descent, thin, intense, and severe looking. He stood with his arms crossed and shoulders hunched, staring through rectangular glasses directly at the floor. He had not bothered to introduce himself but appeared to be listening so intently, the effect was somewhat creepy.

The eight of us�four civilians, two politicians, and their aides�crammed together in that little office with a window overlooking the darkling Capitol�felt uncomfortably intimate. As the introductory chatter wound down, Tom Levine leaned into my ear to mutter, �You�re in the big leagues now, Stanton. But don�t worry. Once you watch these esteemed members finger every turkey wrap on the tray before picking one, you quit going gooey. Generally, all these fuckers live solely to get on TV.�

�Enough with the throat clearing, Cy.� Mackowski�s voice boomed inside the small room as he cut off Fitzpatrick�s efforts at glad-handing. Mackowski popped his index finger at Kate. �This meeting that doesn�t exist has one objective: me and this gal.�

�We�re just as curious why we�re here,� said Coral. Their words stuck on their lip ring. They wore a black short-sleeve button-up and tan slacks, dressed like they were going bowling rather than meeting with senators. �We�ve got an election in less than two weeks, and it�s hard to see how our interests might align.�

�Cy didn�t mention that we may have found a piece of common ground?� Mackowski�s disdain with them was plain to see. He projected a military bearing (though he�d never served) and stood stock-straight with his ample arms crossed over his chest like a drill sergeant.

� �Common ground� is a phrase usually reserved for people who don�t quote white supremacists in speeches,� said Tom.

�Oh, fuck off, Tom,� groused his chief of staff. Dave Montreff was a slick cardboard College Republican, who made sure to lounge with his hands in the pockets of his Dockers. �That story was bullshit��

�Okay, children!� said Fitzpatrick, calmly pushing the air down. �How �bout we get some facts on the table? First, Mary Randall is going to win. If the numbers hold, she�ll be governing with a Republican Senate and a Democratic House. Maybe a recipe for four more years of fuckery, but maybe an opportunity to actually pass something big. Second, this Climate X nonsense you��he nodded at Kate��have been plugging on the talk-show circuit, that�s not going to happen without a hell of a lot of ball-busting and backdoor dealing.�

Kate twisted a pen in her large, rough hands; she never wrote notes but liked to fiddle with the tool while she listened, the notepad on her lap so pristine it could be resold.

�All Climate X means is we treat the most important issue in the world like it�s actually the most fucking important issue in the world. And we�re not settling for anything less than the whole package. Shock collar, tough new regs, Just Transition, and a big helping of investment and redistribution. You�re going to love it, Senator,� she said, teeth shining in Mackowski�s direction.

�Sure, and the rainbows will break through the clouds and the nymphets will start feeding me grapes. Ha!� Fitzpatrick barked at his own joke. Behind him, his aide took a pen and pad from his breast pocket and began furiously scribbling notes. His concentration was so intense, I couldn�t help but be distracted by it. �Point is, legislation is coming down the pike. These kids made sure of that.�

�And there�ll be resistance,� said Montreff.

�And we�re ready,� I added, and felt sweat on my brow as all eyes briefly found me. Kate threw me a smile, and I could tell she was happy with that line. Nevertheless, I settled into holding my tongue.

Mackowski expelled a condescending snort. �What did you call me?� He smiled big at Kate. �The oil industry�s meat puppet?�

�Sounds like me,� said Kate.

He scratched his eyebrows and bits of dandruff flaked off. I could smell his aftershave from five feet. �That a good idea? Making enemies of those who might be holding an awful lot of power someday?�

�You got, what? Thirty-seven delegates in your lame bid for the Republican nomination?� said Tom.

�He entered the race late,� said Montreff.

�Yeah, as an alternative nobody wanted. The Trump years are history, Senator.� Tom adjusted thick black glasses. From where I was sitting, I could see little spouts of AR information�his meeting notes most likely�glowing dimly within the lens. I didn�t understand how people focused with those things on their faces. �Look at Tracy Aamanzaihou in Houston. Oil and gas districts are flipping to renewable-energy labor leaders. My professional political opinion is that you and your whole coalition are about to be deeply fucked.�

Tom crossed muscular arms over his chest and sat back, very satisfied. He was a good enough guy, but also enthralled with himself. Montreff looked like he wanted to kill Tom, which meant they�d likely been in some kind of political knife fight previously. He looked at us the way many staffers did these days, with disdain, fear, and often envy. We were the upstarts. Every room we entered, eyes darted, and I felt like I had some bold new haircut. All through the mid-2020s one could feel the momentum shifting. Randall�s win in the Republican primary cemented it. Still, what happened next took us all by surprise.

�Aren�t you even curious about what I want?� said Mackowski.

Coral, Kate, and Fitzpatrick simultaneously replied: �We are, Senator,� �So let�s hear it,� �Batten down the hatches!�

Mackowski cracked his knuckles. He motioned to Fitzpatrick. �We want A Fierce Blue Fire to endorse Randall for president. Right now. In the eleventh hour.�

We all sat there for a minute, stunned. Coral said it first: �What?�

Mackowski shrugged, big boulder shoulders lifting his suit. �We all have our reasons.�

I looked to Fitzpatrick. �You want us to endorse the Republican running to unseat your party�s president?�

Fitzpatrick tilted his big head back and forth in a gesture of indifference, his wheelchair creaking as he did so. �Let�s just say, I�m a team player, but sometimes you get a quarterback who keeps tossing passes into the bleachers. Jo is not a bad person, but she is a bad president. For reasons I�m sure you�re familiar with and a few you probably aren�t.�

�Oooh! Palace intrigue! I�ve got the shivers,� cried Kate.

�Look, my sweet darlings,� said Fitzpatrick, swiveling in his wheelchair and then rolling to his desk. �You turned this into a one-issue election. Climate, climate, climate. Biospheric crisis this, ocean acid bath that. Set your hair on fire, start screaming, grab the first gal you see, and ask her to dance�and I�ll tell you something: I�m not far from the finish line here. And I don�t work for the Democratic Party, I work for the American goddamn people, fucking lunatics though they may be. A Republican president, a Black woman no less, can get the glory for finally turning the dime on the climate issue. She�s captured the folks� imagination, and we need to ride that wave to a better world. Meanwhile, Jo Hogan�� He let out a slow whistle. �All she really cares about is slaughtering uppity A-rabs half a world away because she knows it gets the Blob, the press, everyone in this town, hard as a rock.�

I looked to the quiet man behind Fitzpatrick who�d not lifted his eyes from his notepad even once. He was making a strange shadow puppet gesture with his pen. At the mention of �A-rabs� he quickly scribbled another line or two, and like me, Mackowski watched him.

�This meeting is off the record,� Mackowski told him. I thought of how he�d won his Senate seat promising the mass surveillance of mosques and an end to all Muslim immigration.

�Don�t mind him,� said Fitzpatrick. �He�s just a thinker.�

When I later came to know Ashir al-Hasan, I�d learn this was quite the understatement.

�What�s your angle, Senator Mackowski?� Coral asked, always about the bottom line.

Mackowski blew a long breath and seemed to contemplate how much he should share. �I like to gamble. Mostly craps, some slots, and I can�t get enough Texas hold �em. I�ll sit in a casino for a day without blinking, swear to Christ. My thinking is gambler�s thinking. You endorse Randall, she probably still wins, but the base hates her even more than they already do. Then in four years, eight years, whatever it might be, a lane opens up for me again. Simple as that.�

�You want us to torpedo Randall with the right wing for you?� asked Tom. �Even by D.C.�s rat-fuck standards, that seems weird.�

�Look, I can�t promise you I�ll vote for your socialist superbill when it comes down the pike, because I won�t. Ryan Doup and the rest of the RINOs will do what their president says, and I�ll resist. But I can promise that I�ll make strategic choices about who I�m pressuring. I can offer you breathing room. Hell, if a Green New Deal passes, it�ll give me something to run against in �32 or �36.�

We all sat there for a minute, stunned. In all the years I�d been in D.C. I�d never been surprised by the cold calculations people made, but they rarely phrased them so overtly.

Finally, Kate oozed forward in her chair and looked Mackowski dead in the eye, almost seductively.

�Senator, you�re never going to be president.�

�Oh no?�

�I�d never let it happen,� she said, nonchalant, like she was the actual puppeteer of the universe and really did hold that power. �If it came to it, I�d drive every swing-state voter to the polls myself. And please. You�re a total phony anyway. Little prep school kid with a fake drawl playing at right-wing populist.� She was smiling so happily, her eyes locked on his.

�That a fact, huh?� said Mackowski.

�Oh, I�d rock that ass, boy,� said Kate. �I promise you that.�

Fitzpatrick�s aide abruptly snorted a laugh and then quickly touched a hand to his mouth to stifle it. Other than that, the hideaway was silent, all eyes on Kate and the senator.

S

HANE

R

IDES THE

P

ANOPTICON

2028

She left for Kansas in a driving rain. The downpour had lasted two days, and even the dash from the back door of the safe house to her car left her half-soaked. Driving out of Berlin, New Hampshire, she cruised along the raging Androscoggin River. The muddy water crawled up the trees along the banks, threatening a blue-yellow NAPA Auto Parts store built too close to the floodplain. In the White Mountain Forest, a gray-black mist shrouded Mount Washington. She imagined illogical, long-lost beasts huddled from the storm: eastern elk lowering wet snouts and six-foot antlers or mountain gorillas sheltered beneath the sweet green depths of the red pine and balsam fir canopy.

She passed between the lakes dashed across the midsection of the state like spilled paint and stopped for lunch at a Subway outside Concord. She used the mirror to pin her hair back and affix the wig of dirty blond over her scalp, followed by a logo-less gray ballcap. When she held the switch hidden beneath the cloth, a low buzz briefly enveloped her skull. She paid cash for the sandwich. On returning to the car, tuna melt in hand, a bird fell out of the sky.

JANSI Had watched her drive away. When Jansi asked who she would be working with Shane With No Last Name gave her an impatient look but answered anyway: Jansi would be connected via a post office box to an engineering dropout in Georgia, an organic farmer in Maine, and a lawyer in Boston. Five years of proving herself useful, careful, and smart, three years of fortifying her cover, and now she was all the way in. It was going to be hard as hell to return to teaching seventh-graders geography after Thanksgiving break ended. �Will we see each other again?� Jansi asked. �No,� said Shane. �Definitely not.� Then, as an afterthought: �We�re calling you the Second Cell.�

She jumped as it cracked wetly off the pavement. Like a bolt from the storm had hit both her and the bird. It was still alive, twitching on the wet macadam, hammered by the downpour. Kneeling, she saw one of its wings mangled. Gray and white feathers torn. She couldn�t recognize the species, but Allen would know. She found a shoebox in the trunk and lifted the bird�s shivering body inside. It lay by her on the passenger seat for seventy miles. By the time she stopped again, it was dead.

E

XECUTIVE

S

UMMARY ON

L

EGISLATIVE

N

EGOTIATIONS FOR THE

P

OLLUTION

R

EDUCTION

, I

NFRASTRUCTURE, AND

R

EFUND

A

CT OF

2029

EYES ONLY:

Sen. Cyrus Fitzpatrick, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

Rep. Joy Barry LaFray, Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

Ashir al-Hasan

January 29, 2029

Abstract: As chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and leader of the informal White Paper Group assembled by the new administration to draft legislation aimed at the rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, I initially feared my expertise would fall outside the parameters of this tortured task, yet I now realize my years spent modeling the googolplex�s worth of interactions within various Earth System Models for NOAA was small bore. A joke, apologies. I�ll try to keep my comments focused on the model�s analysis of differing iterations of the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Refund Act (PRIRA), but will have to occasionally comment on the inanity and profiteering that surrounds the legislative process. I will conclude with the summary of my clandestine meeting with Dr. Anthony Pietrus, formerly of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

The new administration has deemed the chances of success for climate legislation as high due to a Republican president and Senate majority vowing to work with a Democratic House of Representatives. In order to provide an understanding of the institutional obstacles, allow me to use my notes from the third assembly of the White Paper Group, as we attempt to create an outline for so-called grand bargain legislation that advances deep decarbonization schemes, to explain the dynamic. These meetings have primarily consisted of legislative staffers, experts, and low-level aides. I was surprised to learn that representatives and senators rarely draft legislation or even attend the meetings during which provisions are debated. In this early backdoor meeting, the argument centered on whether the bill would include a carbon-pricing scheme. Kaye Martine, the Democratic staff director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was concerned with the public relations optics of the final legislation. At under five feet, she is always the smallest person in the room and yet the high pitch of her voice allows her to override the conversation whenever she pleases:

�Your party�s leader�the fucking president�wants a carbon price. That�s her idea.�

�The president has her priorities, and so do Senate Republicans.� This was from Joe Otero. President-elect Randall has deputized Senate leader Ryan Doup with the burden of persuading obstinate conservatives to vote for climate legislation. However, it would be Doup�s top energy and climate advisor, Otero, who would be doing the bargaining. Otero and Martine are garrulous, profane characters, often at odds in a near-flirtatious way. Martine tends to wear more mascara and blush at these meetings, while Otero will roll up his sleeves to expose tattoos that begin at the wrist, a legacy of his aborted punk-rock career. He has the physique of a former bodybuilder gone soft and an oily black ponytail that gives him a certain air of rebellion in the staid circles of the GOP.

Though this meeting included seven of us, this exchange was approaching ten minutes. As Martine drew a breath to respond, Dr. Jane Tufariello gratefully interrupted: �Would you mind if we returned to the pricing mechanism? That�s all we�re debating right now.�

As you know, when she is reconfirmed, Tufariello will be the longest-serving undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and administrator of NOAA. In addition to being a key mentor during my time at MIT and encouraging me to join the committee staff so that I might work on this legislation, we sometimes watch WNBA basketball together. Dr. Tufariello is one of the most competent and dedicated scientists working in the government, and I wish she�d interrupt more.

�Christ, Jane, how do you not get that the pricing mechanism is a bait and switch?� Martine pointed to Martin Rathbone, the Harvard economist, expected to head the president�s National Economic Council. �The scientists and economists keep telling us we don�t understand the science or the economics. But eat shit, because you don�t understand the politics. None of this matters if the bill can�t pass.�

�And the way we do that is we broaden the appeal body,� said Otero.

�I love that term,� Dr. Rathbone mused, slouching so far back he appeared to be close to napping. �An �appealing body� has nothing to do with this. This bill is a paper hangover. But I do love an appealing body.�

Rathbone scanned Kaye Martine when he said this, and Martine gave a perfunctory roll of her eyes, though this appeared to be a routine long worked out between them. That the highest levels of government seem to spend so much time behaving like it�s seventh grade never fails to astonish me. I wrote all this down because I found it as fascinating as I did obnoxious.

Dr. Tufariello, who loathes Rathbone, once remarked to me that it never pays to lose your temper at a white man in Washington, as they would find a way to weaponize it against you. Instead of acknowledging his comment, she focused on Otero: �Yes, but the legislation has to actually work.� The last word snapped out of her mouth, and I pictured it crackling above her head like a dissipating spark.

No offense, Senator Fitzpatrick and Congresswoman LaFray, but of the 535 members of the US Congress, those who have a sophisticated understanding of climate and energy policy would not fill an NBA roster. People luxuriate in the comforts bestowed by science without any interest in the empirical mechanisms that make those comforts possible. This leaves much of the lobbying to the likes of Tom Levine, representing the gadfly climate organization A Fierce Blue Fire, who felt entitled to interrupt next:

�Question is, who are you negotiating for here, Joe? If this is just about pleasing the literal pig-fuckers from rural Missouri who think the earth is six thousand years old, then why waste the time?�

Laughter ensued, and Alice McCowen slapped the table to cut it off:

�Enough. The Republican Study Committee can wag its limp QAnon dick all it wants; it doesn�t mean they have the votes to block anything.�

A new entrant to these meetings from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, McCowen became a household name during the 2028 campaign as Mary Randall�s Svengali in the mode of other political pseudo-celebrities (with each administration comes a new one: Carville, Rove, Axelrod, Bannon). She seems to me a master of self-styling. On the campaign trail, she received criticism for referring to herself as a �hard-charging Texas bull dyke� and seems to be performing that character at all times. The media called it a gaffe, but it seemed much more a calculated move to demonstrate her candidate�s moderate social views. McCowen is taller and larger than most of the men in the room and swings the White House bat with ferocity.

�Now, my boss sent me here because, frankly, she heard the first meetings were coming up with fuck-all. From now on, the administration will have its hands deep in this cow, delivering this thing, so hear me: Speed is of the essence. We want a bill ready for Leg Counsel by the time Congress convenes.�

An argument erupted, with enough cross-talk that I lost the ability to record it all. Levine demanded the FBF�s �shock collar� while Martine argued the Democrats wanted Republican buy-in for any kind of pricing mechanism, and Otero interrupted to push the Republicans� preferred policy of an extremely weak cap-and-trade scheme. This led to Dr. Tufariello saying what was obvious but politically intolerable:

�The primary thing the bill has to do immediately is shut down coal forever.�

Leading Ms. McCowen to bark at her: �Jesus Christ, Jane, don�t say that outside of this room ever. The Sinclair Broadcast�Jennifer Braden�Renaissance Media kook machine will come for Madam President before she even puts her hand on the Bible.�

Perhaps it was the volatile cul-de-sac in which the discussion had bottomed out or just the brittle sound of all those voices fighting to be heard that created a sensation on my skin like someone pelting me with rocks. My frustration neared a tipping point, so I chose this moment to speak up:

�It seems rather idiotic to begin this discussion by trying to form a consensus about what has the most political viability.� This quieted everyone, so I continued. �Any policy designed to achieve the goal of lowering emissions will necessarily inflict some economic pain, and therefore the policy must also alleviate that pain. We can simply run those numbers and decide what�s best, empirically speaking. To spend our time dawdling about political constituencies seems to me rather fruitless.�

I left my pen poised over my notepad in case anyone had an interesting response.

Ms. McCowen stared at me as silence took hold: �Who in the sweet brandy fuck is this guy?�

Dr. Tufariello volunteered that information: �This is Dr. Ashir al-Hasan.�

I added: �Chief of Staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and advisor to Senator Cyrus Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania,� while also favoring Ms. McCowen with what my brother-in-law, Peter, calls a fuck you gaze. Mostly I was just happy they all stopped speaking over one another.

Dr. Tufariello said: �Ash was also one of NOAA�s top Earth System modelers. We listen when he talks.�

Ms. McCowen glared at me. �Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, Doctor Dicksucker: On my daddy�s farm we used to do rectal palpitations on cows, and if you call me an idiot again, I�ll come for you with two fists.�

Hopefully this example gives you some idea of the tenor of these meetings. They are also too often catered with the same bland turkey and portobello wraps.

H

OW TO

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TOP A

R

EVOLUTION

2029

I was visiting my mother when I got the call that we lost Procter & Gamble. It wasn�t that this was worse than my father�s passing, but when I got the news from Linda Holiday in Chicago, I felt a resurgence of that grief. P&G had been unhappy for some time. They were a generations-old institution suddenly caught up in an inexplicable fad that sneered at home bathroom products. You know those cosmetics we�ve been smearing on ourselves for more than a century? Turns out they�re vile markers of hyper-consumption, poisoning our water, and one can get by just fine with a simple bar of soap. Profits go down for a few consecutive quarters, and the easiest, oddly ritualistic, sacrifice is the ad agency.

�Mom?� I came out of the bathroom. �Hey, I need to make a call for work. It�ll just be a minute.�

Mom sat at the kitchen table folding my dad�s clothes before delicately packing each item in a garbage bag. It was all going to a secondhand shop in Anamosa. Though I�d forced her to get to his clothes during this trip, she�d failed to put a dent in the stacks of agricultural almanacs, magazines, and bulletins he�d compulsively hoarded in the den. Today�s Farmer, The Corn Producer, and the Iowa Farm Bureau�s Spokesman. Why he�d kept issues from the nineties was anyone�s guess.

�Jack, do you think Erik will want Daddy�s sweaters?� she asked. I couldn�t see my brother wearing any sweater Dad had ever worn. He also lived in Florida, but pointing this out would only lead my mother to accuse me of being flip.

�You�ll have to ask him.�

On my way outside I passed through the modern quadrant of kitchen that Dad had built onto the side of the house, which had been in the family since 1902. Survivor of two tornadoes, according to family lore. Hanging on the peg by the door was his hunting vest, Mossy Oak camo, the pockets still bulging with shotgun shells. On another peg hung a wooden turkey call and duck-cloth bibs. His work boots neatly twinned on the shoe rack, covered in creamy streaks of last fall�s dried mud.

On the porch, I dialed Gruber and walked farther into the backyard twilight so my voice wouldn�t carry. I stared out over the eight hundred acres of corn and soy my father had been forced to sell as the profits in small plots dwindled. He would have had to grow the farm to an enormous size to compete with Cargill. �You farm small, you might as well take a vow of poverty,� he�d muttered to Mom just before the sale that changed his life.

A foreign haze hung in the winter air. I thought of �walking the beans� with Erik and Allie. Dad would hand us machetes to hack away at weeds in the soybean rows, one of the only chores he ever made us do. Erik hated it. He hated everything about the farm.

�How you doing, Jackie?� asked Gruber, my art director. It was eerie. The voice tech on the new generation of phones made it sound like the person was standing next to you.

�We saw this coming. P&G thinks it can rebrand something that�s more structural than they realize. Fine. Let them try.�

�McClann is pretty pissed off,� he said. �She thought we could hold on to them.�

No matter how successful you got in this business, you were only measured by your most recent victory or defeat, and this implosion lay heaped at my feet. Maybe the �Live Simply� campaign had been defeatist and uninspired, as Beth had warned, but my specialty was steering into the skid, and that�s what I�d done.

�All Beth needs to worry about is Thursday�s pitch.�

�Are you two even on speaking terms?�

The people with whom I wasn�t on speaking terms were my brother and the man whose miscarriage I�d had the year before. Beth McClann and I were just competitive.

�We�re fine. How�s the art coming along?�

�We�re ready. Beth doesn�t like that you took two days off before this pitch.�

�My mother�s bereaved and my selfish siblings won�t handle anything. Tell her I�ll be good to go. I�m driving back first thing tomorrow.�

�He�ll be there, by the way.�

�Who?�

�Who else? Wimpel. Dark Arts himself.�

I hung up but stayed outside a moment, hugging myself in the chill. To the south, the three large grain bins that once stored the corn and soy no longer looked like skyscrapers as they had in my childhood. To the north were the two Morton sheds that held my dad�s tools, equipment, his tractor and wagon. There�d been a barn that my great-grandfather built, but when I was in junior high it blew apart in a storm. An acrid smell hung in the air now. The remnants of a dust storm coming up from the plains, carrying a fog across Amber, Iowa. I thought of what Allie had told me: that Dad had been seeing the woman from church even at the end. She�d come to the hospital when my mother wasn�t there.

When I returned to the house, my mom had CNN on, and I couldn�t help but stop and watch, as the anchor reported on a once-famous actor who�d just legally changed his name.

The next day, on the plane from O�Hare to LaGuardia, I overheard two middle-aged women talking about the actor. I ordered a screwdriver and instead of scanning through content on the VR set, I listened to the two women. He�s gone full cuckoo clock, they said.

I tried to think if I�d ever told anyone the story. Maybe Trish, before she moved to Naperville and our friendship dried up. I could picture us drinking wine in her last apartment in the city, her jaw on the floor when I divulged, but then it also had the tinge of an invented memory. Maybe I�d never told anyone.

Eventually, I put on headphones and opened the file on my AR glasses. I looked over the artwork and my notes. Stirring in my gut, the anticipation of the pitch at least distracted me from all the raucous hurt banging the walls for my attention. I messaged Gruber: There�s still too much green in here. Green�s a dead brand.

He wrote back, The earth is not without shades of green to it.

Darken it. A forest green. Not a limp �recycle more� green. Make that blue of the water pop.

When measuring grief, I�m always surprised by what lingers and what dissipates. That night I thought often of the actor�how his eyes had grown sad and wet in that violet bar�and occasionally about Procter & Gamble, and almost not at all about my father.

T

HE

D

ERECHO AND THE

L

IGHT

2030

It was the third such storm of the summer, and the pattern was becoming familiar. The thermometer soared toward triple digits, the sky darkened, the air turned that jaundiced green, and then, as though a vacuum cleaner sucked up the heat, the temperature plummeted. The wind and rain started up, and as Casey Wheeler explained, �Brother, you better be off the road and taking cover, �cause who goddamn knows what�s coming out the sky.�

The first time you were coming home from work, and it was like a whiteout with rain. A five-minute drive turned into a twenty-minute white-knuckle-grip ordeal. You inched along in the battering-ram wind, tires sluicing through deepening water, until reaching the safety of your driveway. You�ve heard them called derechos, but a �land hurricane� is more apt. And tonight, when you get home to find Toby mashing a fistful of peas into pulp and Raquel anxiously watching the Weather Channel, you know another superstorm is on its way.

�They ain�t even cleaned nothing up from the last one,� Raquel bitches.

After putting Toby down, you climb into bed, exhausted, and drift off for what feels like a blink.

Then you wake to the wind. It�s the sound of driving through a tunnel under a mountain. It surrounds your two-bedroom rental, the one you and Raquel worked so hard for so you could get out of the trailer court. As during the last two storms, you worry if the heap will hold together. The house has no basement, let alone a storm shelter. The rain begins, pummeling the siding. Raquel stirs. You lie in the dark and wait. The storm grows louder.

Finally, light flashes outside and the rattle of distant thunder wakes Toby, whose wails match the intensity of the storm.

�Baby,� says Raquel, as a way of asking you to get him. And that�s fine. You can�t sleep through this shit anyway.

Pulling the howling Toby from his crib, his frightened hands grope for you. As you hoist him into your arms, the power goes out, and he screams louder.

You take him to the living room where the window looks out over the road, train tracks, and a small field. The streetlamp is out, along with electricity for the rest of the block, and you and Toby can only stare into a wall of darkness. Toby hates the thunder, and you can�t really blame him. With each crack, you can hear the plates in the cupboards, the silverware in the drawers, jittering.

Lightning strikes and it blesses the whole neighborhood with a moment of purple daylight. In that instant you catch a glimpse of a figure across the tracks, struggling down the side of the road. You hope the guy is smart enough to get indoors fast. The last two storms, they were talking eighty-, ninety-mile-per-hour winds. When the lightning comes again, he�s gone.

Toby moans at each boom, but he also appears fascinated by the lightning. He sucks on his fingers and watches wide-eyed for each round of illumination. His black hair has turned kinkier, but he has a smattering of your freckles. He reminds you of the picture on your mom�s refrigerator, the one from Soak City Water Park.

�That�s lightning, Toby. See, nothing to be scared of. Just lightning. Just rain.�

But you know this isn�t true because you can feel your blood racing with the fear of the storm. And when a bolt of lightning splits the sky and strikes a tree across the road, Toby screams, and you can�t help but grip him against your chest in a full-body recoil. The tree explodes in sparks and splinters, half of it crashing onto the telephone wires. Your heart is as loud in your ears as the thunder.

You�ve never seen lightning that close before. It was more weapon than weather.

After an hour the storm passes, and Toby drifts off on your shoulder. You put him back in his crib. You think of going to bed, but you�re too awake. Your skin too itchy.

Instead, you get a paper bag from the kitchen. Then you get a can of Raquel�s hairspray. In the bathroom, you sit on the toilet and spray, gathering fumes. You hold it to your face and breathe. You do it again. It�s a cheap high, but it helps. You sit back against the toilet, and in the blackness, you see that blue-purple bolt of lightning shredding that tree over and over.

T

HE

W

EATHERMEN

2030

The drive was eight hours of bitter winter scenery, up through Iowa and Minnesota, under low clouds hovering above glass office boxes and half-abandoned strip malls with empty acres of parking lot, past endless billboards advertising everything from Jesus Christ to laser sculpting to assault rifles with smart bullets. The day had begun at 5:30 a.m. when they caught the Greyhound from Lawrence to Des Moines. Halfway into the five-hour ride, Lali pulled the children�s VR set from her face and demanded her fiddle, which Shane had of course forgot. Lali started to cry, proclaiming loudly and tearily that she didn�t want to take a �robe trip� without her fiddle. Though she could play only basic notes, she carried the thing around like other kids carried dolls.

Once upon a time Shane had packed carefree. Now journeying more than a mile from home was like prepping for a military deployment, and the worry that she might forget some crucial childcare item made it a certainty that she would. She just never counted on the fiddle.

By the time they got to Des Moines, as she led her daughter by the hand away from the bus station to the big-box parking lot a quarter mile down the road, Lali started complaining she had to go to the bathroom. Shane quickly found the car the op had left her, a forest-green Subaru Outback with the GPS and LoJack disabled. But she couldn�t find the magnetic box with the key fob beneath the passenger door.

�Mama, I gotta go,� Lali wheedled.

�No, no, no, c�mon.� She scraped her hand in the muck beneath the door. She tried under the driver�s side, but it wasn�t there either. Could the op have forgotten to leave the fucking key? Just walked away with it still in his pocket?

�Mama, where are we?�

�Lali, just give me a second, okay?� She tried to keep her voice calm. Don�t make demands of children, the mothering hive mind said. Be firm, but not harsh. Lali whined away, and she had to ignore her while she searched beneath the other doors. People walked from their cars to stores in this clot of cheap Midwestern retail, and she kept waiting, checking, scanning to make sure no one had narrowed their eyes at this woman looking like she was trying to boost a car. It was freezing out too. Her fingers were numb, and her nose wouldn�t stop running.

�Mama,� Lali�s tone flipped to stern.

How had the fucking op forgotten to leave the key? She had no phone. No way of contacting Kai or the others. No emergency number to call. As she scraped her hand along the entire frame of the Subaru, she felt tears choking her throat. She hated crying in front of her daughter because she�d spent so much time doing it lately. Lali wouldn�t be able to help herself, and her color would go from pale beige to bright pink as she flooded with shame. Her own weeping would soon follow.

�Mama,� Lali moaned.

�Just one second, honey,� Shane pleaded, and she had to bite down on the sob that trailed it. She jammed her finger on something and hissed. But the pain was momentary, and the magnetic box was there. The op had inexplicably left it under the back left wheel well. �Thank fuck,� she whispered, pulling the key fob from inside. �C�mon, Lals, let�s blow this popsicle stand. Outlaws forever, right?�

But when she turned, she saw the stain running down her daughter�s little pink sweatpants and her mortified sourpuss face. �Okay, doll. First we change.�

She had at least remembered another pair of pants.

FRESH AIR Had Terry Gross interviewing Zeden, and Shane stopped the dial there. Gross asked the pop star about the controversy she�d stirred when she wore a tank top to the Grammys that said I�M WITH THE WEATHERMEN. Zeden�s response wasn�t the least defensive. �Because they�re doing what no one else has the guts to do.� Gross: �So you endorse their use of violence?� Zeden: �What they�re doing is not violence. What the people who owned those coal plants were doing�that�s violence.� A pop star who�d gotten her start with a #1 single about her boyfriend�s hair certainly had a better grasp on the situation than most journalists.

T

HE

Y

EARS OF

R

AIN AND

T

HUNDER

: P

ART

III

2031

We were still in the office at midnight when Kate got a text and everything changed. We couldn�t have known it then, but it was the moment when the bill began to fall apart, when the internal schisms of A Fierce Blue Fire widened into chasms, and nearly ten years of work began to evaporate in the span of a few weeks.

It was July 29, 2030, a grueling Monday because we�d already been in the office all weekend. Everyone had left for the night except myself, Kate, Liza, Tom, Coral, and Rekia. After being stalled for the past five months, our legislation had found life in the Senate. The addition of massive pork projects had a waffling Ohio senator coming aboard and another from Iowa said she was close. This would be enough to carry it at least into reconciliation with the House version. We were deep in an argument, Tom and Rekia butting heads, Coral trying to referee, when Kate interrupted.

�Liza,� she said, staring at her phone. �Turn on CNN.�

At first, there was still confusion as to what had happened, but by 3 a.m. of July 30 we had the basics: three bombs, three power plants, and a communiqu� from 6Degrees, also known as the Weathermen, claiming responsibility. We all sat there, reading and watching until dawn. I remember Kate�s face tight, her eyes haggard, and the one thing she uttered before she went home to collapse from exhaustion: �Motherfuckers just cost us our Ohio senator.�

But it would be worse than that. A Fierce Blue Fire had made a huge bet: that we and our followers could fundamentally realign the American political system, and when Mary Randall won with a bipartisan coalition of voters, vowing to take aggressive action on climate change, it all felt within reach. Kate and the rest of us had done the slow, careful work of movement building. We�d constructed Outposts in communities long abandoned by the Left, and as renewable industries spread, it began to create politically contestable areas that had been rock-solid red for generations, all of it paving the way for Randall and a coalition of climate hawks to take control, a once-unthinkable development.

That night I recalled the euphoria following the �28 election, when our gamble on Randall held the promise of a religious awakening, and the dust storm that followed just weeks later. A decade of drought followed by insatiable winds that picked up what looked like most of the soil of Arizona, North Texas, and Oklahoma, and blew it eastward. We all watched it advance in real time on the internet, first as it rocked vehicles on their struts and choked livestock across the cattle states, packing their stomachs full of dirt. A handful of people who couldn�t get out of the storm�s path actually suffocated in the open air. Crossing over the Appalachians, the vast nebula finally reached the East Coast. Kate and I woke the morning of its arrival because Dizzy was going ballistic, pacing back and forth, running to the window and then running away. For two days most of the Mid-Atlantic watched through the dustlight of shifting red, orange, yellow, and blue as those fine grains of silt reflected sunlight fifty miles above in mesospheric clouds. It looked like the dawn of hell itself.

THE DUST BOWL RETURNS, trumpeted the Post. Masks and goggles sold out, people duct-taped their windows and still the grit penetrated everything. In our apartment, it came in through crevices we could never entirely seal. We opened the cupboards and the plates were all coated. You couldn�t leave a glass of water out for a minute without it tasting like sand. Kate�s hair turned stiff and gray, and I�d close my mouth and feel my molars crunch on the grit. We could look out the office windows, over the Potomac, and see nothing but the headlights and taillights of traffic, fuzzy in the beige gloom beneath an iridescent alien sky. As Randall took office and hearings began, one could tell there were a lot of Republican lawmakers who wanted to get climate legislation done, survive their future primaries, and never look out the window at anything like that ever again.

After the legislative process got off to a rocky start, our most important congressional ally, Joy LaFray, moved the shock collar through the House Energy Committee while Judith Kastor led a small but brave contingent of Green Tea Republicans to yea votes. While much of the political-entertainment complex focused for a month on what it meant that President Randall had begun to wear her hair in natural curls, LaFray-Kastor, a 2,500-page piece of legislation that would remake American life, was muscled through by seven votes in the second month of Randall�s presidency. Of course, the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Refund Act was not perfect. Fresh enemies were made. Everyone accused everyone of various betrayals. The compromise was good enough, though: a rising tax on fossil fuels at the point of origin, with the money to be redistributed to every taxpayer and some set aside to buy off industry and invest in adaptation efforts; an additional host of regulations would be phased in, and the government would spend $2.8 trillion over ten years to accelerate decarbonization, help move displaced workers into the clean tech economy, and begin work on drawdown efforts and other environmental remediation projects with half the money to be targeted at a variety of impoverished and vulnerable communities. It wasn�t everything we�d been angling for, but as one of the bill�s principal authors, Ash al-Hasan, explained to me, �It puts in place the mechanisms. Future legislation can build from these efforts.�

When I first met Ash through Joy LaFray, I recognized him as the pensive climate modeler who�d also advised Senator Cy Fitzpatrick. Strikingly handsome with a lean build, chiseled jaw, and menacing eyes, Ash was a strange and brilliant man. He wore the same suit and tie every day, wrote notes to himself mid-conversation, and made odd gestures without appearing to realize it. He was viewed as one of the most serious thinkers in climate policy circles, and many people loathed that he preferred math to ambitious vision. Senator Fitzpatrick said of him, �Guy�s heart probably beats once an hour.�

I was dispatched to a particularly tense meeting after a group of vacillating reps made clear the price of their support would be a subsidy for utilities that had coal plants still online. LaFray was apoplectic.

�Why should we buy any of them off?� she demanded. �We�re going to end up with the European cap-and-trade system�just an ineffectual hodge-podge of goodies for the industries we�re trying to snuff out.�

�Trust no one but firemen,� Ash said. Everyone in the meeting looked at him.

LaFray demanded, �What�s that have to do with the price of tea in China, Hasan?�

�Just to say, the fireman has only one job, and that�s to stop the fire any way he can. We are forcing a number of vested interests to walk the plank, so to speak, and these interests are demanding that instead of using a sword to walk them to the precipice, we use a shovel. Or a hammer. The only thing that matters is maintaining an incentive system that will degrade the political constituency currently invested in burning hydrocarbons.�

He paused to look around the room. A bunch of blank faces gazed back at him. �Apologies. I�ve long been enamored with similes and metaphors. Mostly because I�m so bad at them.�

�Man, I thought those were great,� I chimed in. �I�ll use the fireman thing on my dad.�

After the meeting let out, he approached me to ask, �Would you like to eat a slushie with me?�

We began meeting outside the Russell Building to go for slushies near the Mall. Ash always ordered blue raspberry, his lips and tongue turning indigo as we spoke.

�We need the Senate to include a low-carbon tariff in its version,� he explained, slurping syrupy ice. �So at least there�s a chance we can force it through during reconciliation. I fear, though, industry is only beginning to organize. The alligator�s jaw muscles are built to snap shut; they take a long while to wind open.�

�Man, you�re great at metaphors. I don�t know who�s telling you otherwise.�

Ash was right, though. The carbon lobby was caught flat-footed by the speed with which Mary Randall captured the nomination, won election, and passed a bipartisan bill in the House. Even longtime Washington insiders were staggered by the lobbying campaign that followed. Over three thousand lobbyists were deployed, half of whom were former government officials. Aboveboard advertisements filled every niche of public life, from the NFL to the Oscars to Slapdish feeds. The chum slick of glossy greenwashing felt omnipresent, as oil and utilities declared themselves reformed and �working around the clock to bring a just version of the Green New Deal to our great country.� Scuttling beneath the surface of this corporate sheen was a vicious subaudible smear campaign and conspiracy blitz. From Fox News to Renaissance, conservative media ran amok with rage. Russ Mackowski would get on the Sunday shows and fan all this nonsense, and the rest of the Right tended to follow his panpipe. Renaissance Media�s star, Jen Braden, began calling our coalition the �new Gestapo,� and that stuck while she dog-whistled at every scientist, politician, or activist who had any hint of a Jewish background. Tony Pietrus came in for particular vitriol when it was disseminated that he was a quarter on his mother�s side, and his book became a virtual Protocols of the Elders of Zion of conspiracy baiting. White power groups began to harass every congressperson who�d voted for the House bill, filling up their social media, tailing them at public events, showing up with assault rifles outside town halls, and eventually circulating documents with addresses, as well as information on their aides, who then began quitting or demanding security or having nervous breakdowns as the intimidation ratcheted. One of our key congressional allies, Tracy Aamanzaihou, had to close her Houston offices after most of her staff quit following coordinated death threats against their families. As she told an interviewer, �You don�t spill this much acid in public without consequences.�

I didn�t want to know about the threats we were getting. Liza�s team handled that issue. But then she gave us a presentation on what was going on behind the scenes. It was easy enough to conjure a make-believe army to harass people online. There were stories about the troll farms set up in India, the Philippines, and Russia where wealthy interests could contract out an avalanche of hate and bile as easily as ordering food through an app. By simply dripping the nectar, one could draw real hornets. Then there was the sophisticated nudge tactics and AI targeting an individual�s psychology, based on their perception of the issue using predictive analytics.

�Whether you�re getting an ad telling you the bill is �betraying Climate X philosophy� or a more standard Madison Avenue plug�� Behind Liza on the PowerPoint, a cartoon carbon capture plant hoovered black powder from a healthy blue sky with the SFC�s tag, WE ARE THE GREEN NEW DEAL. It was the kind of crap you couldn�t believe anyone fell for. �People are being fed news, opinion, and content tailored to specific fears and insecurities. On my feed, I might get a bit of body-shaming, warnings that my eggs might be dry, inter-Asian identity politics�it�s a highly specific psychological package. It�s not just the right wing getting goosed�our members and allies are being nudged like this. They�re getting opinion filtered to them that the legislation is a betrayal.�

�Some dystopian psyops shit,� said Rekia.

Liza huffed. She wore a white kerchief around her neck, a black top, tan leather pants, and high-top Nikes, because she dressed hip even for the midnight meetings. �Think about how many times you two have exploded at each other,� Liza said, bugging her eyes at Rekia and Tom. The two of them had just had a blowout the day before, during which Rekia accused him of having a problem with Black women and Tom snapped, �I don�t have a problem with Black women, I have a problem with stupid Black women.� Rekia demanded he be fired, and Tom said he couldn�t be fired because he quit, and we all spent the rest of the day trying to calm them down.

Liza went on. �I wouldn�t be surprised if analytical models understand you two have tension and exploit that.�

Rekia and Tom exchanged a begrudgingly kind look and then went back to icing each other. I tentatively raised my hand to ask how many threats we were getting day to day.

�Unfathomable volumes,� Liza warned. �Trust me, Matty, you don�t want to look at any of it.�

After she said that, I couldn�t help myself. I stayed in the office all night, sifting through just one week�s worth of the messages Liza�s team had flagged and forwarded to the FBI. Certain phrases come back to me all the time:

Morris is going to die slow with dicks in her ass and mouth and eye sockets

Stuff a bottle in her pussy and smash it 2a thousand pieces cunt

You�re going to regret your life, you evil slut. God is coming back

Lynch the nigger bitch

Cut her titttties off

Me n my crew will fuck her to death slow and painful

I closed my eyes at night, unable to sleep, and those images would linger for hours.

The town halls didn�t even make the news anymore, all of them so full of cranks and crazies screaming into the microphone, occasionally unable to stop themselves from issuing death threats right then and there. Gun sales went through the roof. People burned President Randall in effigy. The major corporations of the day, of course, disavowed stirring the pot on this rhetoric, but the money flowed from these interests through intermediaries, all the way down to front organizations and unheard-of vitamin companies that advertised exclusively on Renaissance.

But in the end, the tipping point might not have been the right-wing fury or the astroturf group calling themselves the BIPOC-GND, which marshalled hundreds of thousands of social media posts claiming that the legislation ignored voices of color while appearing not to have one operational human being involved in the organization. It might not have been the venom and confusion. It might just have been a savvy Montana senator, a Democrat, who saw the perfect opening.

When Victor Love arrived on the political scene, he seemed an unremarkable politician even if the media had a bit of a love affair. A gay veteran who�d fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before starting his own military contracting business, which he built into a private security empire, he was a �reformed Republican,� extremely handsome, and quick on his feet. He had, as Kate put it, �Hot dad energy. Like you�re fourteen and meet your friend�s father, and you�re like, �I totally would.� �

Love had a scar on his cheek from battle. He wore a turquoise bolo tie. He had a dashing husband with a blinding smile. Love exuded centrist reasonableness, which only meant that he was a foot-dragger, one of the senators who drove us crazy with their hemming and hawing. Still, he blindsided us after the Ohio River Massacre, when he held a press conference to say:

�If we do not address this country�s security concerns, whether that�s radical eco-terrorists, Islamists, or white supremacists, if we do not address the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, if we do not address the concerns raised by the coalitions of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, then I walk away from the bill, and I feel as though many of my fellow Democrats will follow.�

It was a deft tap dance, attacking a Republican president from the right while hippie-punching his own party and walking the line on intersectional platitudes. His resistance would only stiffen from there.

As Cy Fitzpatrick told me in the days following his colleague�s revolt, �Vic Love is exactly the reason I can�t wait to die and get out of this place. Guy�s been on the scene for all of a sneeze, and he�s already throwing elbows.� Cy beckoned me closer. His breath reeked of onion. �You tell that booty of yours, Kate, to watch this guy. He�s a snake in the grass.�

I relayed Cy�s warning to Kate, but by then it was already too late. Defections in the Republican ranks had begun, and nervous Democrats from carbon-intensive states looked over their shoulder at Vic Love�s early poll numbers against Randall and found their feet cold as well. When the Senate adjourned for the August recess without taking a vote, a sense of doom descended. Where Mary Randall had been steadfast in her 2030 State of the Union, jutting her finger at the sky and boldly challenging Congress, �This is our moment. This is how history changes. Those who step forward will be remembered for their courage and those who miss this opportunity will know the scorn of their descendants,� now her tune was changing. In press conferences and interviews, she slowly began backing away from the bill. In a Fox News interview, she promised, �This bill will never raise energy prices, it will not threaten jobs, and it will not threaten small businesses.�

�But what about a company in Ohio that manufactures equipment for natural gas producers?� asked Peter Doocy. �How can you say that to the workers in this company?�

�It will not threaten them,� she said. Her eyes were cold stones. �Their livelihoods will be safe.�

I never understood how she and her inner circle didn�t see how craven she looked in these moments. Then in late September, the midterms little more than a month away, we got word from Ash al-Hasan that there would be a vote on PRIRA in the Senate.

�Wait, what?� Kate demanded. As we were increasingly shunned, abandoned, and finally vilified by those who�d championed our cause, Ash had remained our ally and our last conduit to what was happening behind closed doors. By the time Kate hung up with him, the whole office had gathered around her. �These fucking rumors are true. They�re taking the Syracuse-Love version of the bill straight to a vote.�

E

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EMONIO

2031

If he believed in omens, Tony might have paid more attention to his dreams. In the most disturbing one, he was pinned to a desert floor while screaming winds of silt and sand scoured him away. Paralyzed, as the sand removed his flesh grain by grain, he could feel the bones of his knuckles and cheeks exposed to the blasting air. Then there was a form in the wind-borne sand, a banshee smothering his bleeding limbs, smuggling her shriek into his mouth. He awoke in his hotel overlooking the Atlantic soaked in sweat. Through the window, the moon reflected orange off the ocean�s horizon.

The next day the protestors were a cloud of flies on a carcass. He�d come to Miami at the invitation of the mayor to discuss the city�s battle with the ocean, but wherever he traveled now, protests followed. They carried the typical signs proclaiming him a liar, a traitor, a cancer, part of the Jewish-media climate conspiracy. �Where do you get your money!� they shouted. Counterprotesting climate activists held Fierce Blue Fire placards and cardboard painted like tombstones with the markings of a domino, in reference to his theory; a few young women held signs that read PIETRUS CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE, and they began chanting, greatly confusing their neo-Nazi bedfellows as to whose side they were on. After calling out the future president on her shell game at Davos, his publisher dropped him and Yale guided him into retirement. Now he mostly collected �consultant� fees by bringing city governments news they abjectly did not want to hear (nor do anything about). As was the case with the mayor�s team, some of whom even nodded off during his presentation on saltwater upwelling.

�How�d the meeting go?� his brother-in-law, Corey, asked him when they met for a late lunch before his flight home.

�Oh, dandy,� said Tony. He insisted they sit inside the restaurant so he could avoid sweating like a hog in the Florida heat. Their table overlooked Biscayne Bay, boats puttering around the water, traffic flowing idly over the bridge to Miami Beach. Clear blue sky.

�This place is great,� said Corey. �How are my nieces doing?�

�Holly�s great. She�s taking over the New York office of FBF. Dean�s teaching at the New School.�

�A rabble-rouser like her dad. And Cat? Still holding out hope for her big break?�

�Guess so.� Although he really had no idea. Even after Tony acquiesced to her dream of acting, Catherine forbade him from inquiring about her progress, claiming it put too much pressure on her. The waiter brought Tony�s iced tea and Corey�s wine spritzer.

�That�s terrific.� He quaffed the spritzer. �How �bout you? Seeing anyone?�

�Absolutely not.�

�Tony, come on, man! You can�t just wank it in the VR set the rest of your days.�

�God. Corey.�

�Just saying. Check out this one I�m dating now.� He held his phone aloft. A picture of him in a glossy blue suit with his arm around an uninspiring bleach blonde with a spray tan and enormous fake breasts.

�Wonderful,� said Tony. He gazed dispiritedly around the restaurant. Mostly wealthy retirees adorned in every manner of sparkling mineral washed of the toxic slurry its extraction had left behind in some far-flung sacrifice zone. All of them albatrossed by credit cards, boat upkeep, and the perturbations of the stock market.

�I know, right?� Missing the irony in Tony�s comment, Corey flipped through several more pictures of his latest conquest. Corey had married his college girlfriend, a woman both Tony and Gail had quite liked, only to divorce her when he started really making money in their father�s business. The Briggs Group of Florida, a boutique firm specializing in unremarkable Stepford Wife luxury condos, wasn�t even a top twenty player in the real estate market, but for half a century it had been impossible to not do well. You built a tower near the ocean and every unit was sold before you even broke ground. When Tony first began dating Gail, Corey had been a twerp prep school kid already eyeing fraternity rows at Florida�s most debauched campuses, and Tony had never stopped looking at him that way. Even in his midforties, dressed dapper in a jet-black blazer over a gray polo and what looked like a thousand-dollar Seiko watch on his wrist, Tony still saw him as Gail�s stupid little white brother who�d farted on Tony�s arm when he met her family for the first time. Nine years after Gail�s adoption, Corey had been the surprise pregnancy, and though it always seemed like her parents were prouder of their ultra-bright adopted Black daughter, boy, did they let this little biological shit get away with anything. Corey still had the same buzzed head, eyes that shrank mischievously when he smiled, and devil-may-care, brash individualism signaled to exhaustion in every detail of his person.

Corey pocketed his phone. �Don�t you get groupies from all the fame, man? Like enviro-sluts?�

When Gail was dying, Tony had morbidly assumed the only silver lining to the whole situation was that he�d never have to see this arrogant little prick ever again. Oddly, Corey had not allowed that to happen. He�d stayed in close touch, invited Tony and the girls out to Florida once a year, and bought Holly and Cat an extravagant, over-the-top gift every birthday and Christmas. Corey still annoyed the hell out of Tony, but he would combat this by thinking of how he�d seen Corey once, unarmored, in Scripps Memorial, when Gail was really near the end. It had just been the three of them in the room, Gail wasted and failing, Corey holding her hand. He didn�t just look young in that moment, he looked preadolescent, back to the obnoxious but vulnerable little boy Gail had helped raise. �You were a perfect big sister,� he told her, gasping back tears. �You always kept me straight.�

�And you were a total pain in the ass,� Gail had said, her voice gone, her eyes too hollow to land the humor. Corey had buried his head in her fragile shoulder and cried so hard Tony thought he might choke.

�So.� Corey now picked up a butter knife and began twirling it baton-style, gazing out at the sun-dappled waves. �This guy introduced a bill in the state senate, right? It would require real estate brokers to disclose any risk of sea level rise for the properties they sell. Friendly legislators killed it but�� He trailed off. It dawned on Tony that Corey hadn�t driven over from Sarasota so they could simply grab lunch and catch up. He pointed off into the bay. �For sure, they have to elevate those highways connecting Miami Beach, but they can�t raise taxes to do it. That�ll just spook the market. The big thing�now that we�ve killed that monstrosity Randall was trying to pass�there�s a vote coming on the National Flood Insurance Program. They always want to raise the rates without understanding the effect it has on housing prices, you know? Then the banks want a bigger percentage of the property�s value insured, but the insurance companies don�t want to write those bigger policies, and so the banks don�t want to lend a thirty-year mortgage. You know?�

�Nope. Are you trying to ask me something?�

Lounging maximally, his arm draped over the back of the chair, Corey laughed. �You should retire down here man. I could set you up with a fabulous place. Nothing like wasting the day away in paradise.�

�You know what the deal with Florida is, Corey? Florida�s been underwater for most of the billions of years the planet�s been around. It�s only recently, geologically speaking, that Florida stuck its neck out. That�s because all these organisms swimming around the shallow water shat and died. And all their shit and dead bodies piled up and cemented into limestone. Florida is literally a pile of shit and death.�

Corey laughed some more, and Tony indulged his fantasy of Corey�s properties all washing away.

�And I bet that shit-and-corpse limestone isn�t looking as sturdy as it used to.� Corey�s laughter tapered off. The knife stopped in his hand as well. �We get the news up north. The spring rains? And the last couple of king tides? Septic tanks bursting out of the ground and riding down flooded streets. Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery, all those remains boiling out of the boxes like a zombie movie. Bet it�s getting just a little harder to sell people on paradise.�

Corey made a small, unamused sound. He set the knife down and sat up. �Okay, Tony. Level with me then. We�ve got sunny day flooding at high tide that�s swamping our projects. Obviously, the cemetery incident was a bit of a black eye. But is this sea level rise�is this thing going to be real?�

Tony just stared at him, blinking.

�Are you fucking mad? Corey, I�ve been telling you this for twenty-five goddamn years. I wrote an entire fucking book about it.�

�Yeah, but what are we talking here? Like a foot, maybe a couple feet�that�s manageable. But then you�ve got doomsayers going around telling people it�s going to be six feet. Six feet? How�s that even possible?�

Tony slapped his forehead without even thinking of how theatrical it might look.

�Corey, you�ll be lucky as hell if it�s only six. Do you know what the Thwaites Glacier is? Or the Pine Island Glacier? That�s the whole reason I�m down here. That was my whole presentation to the city.�

Corey pouted his lower lip and shook his head. �What�s their deal?�

�Those are marine-terminating glaciers in West Antarctica that are disintegrating. Fast. And once they�re gone? They�re holding back a mountain of ice, enough to raise sea levels by a significant amount in the next fifty years. This�� He tossed his left hand at the bay and his right at the interior of the restaurant. �All this is fucked. All this is gone. I�ve been saying this to you since the girls were babies, and all you did was quote Fox News at me.�

Corey gulped his spritzer. �What do we do about it? I read this thing�they can put sulfur up in the sky and we can cool down the planet that way?�

�Corey, even if we prematurely liquidated all the investments sunk into fossil-fuel infrastructure, even if we took those trillions of dollars and applied it to a crash course to save the world, Florida is still going under. Florida was probably doomed by 1995. Randall�s bill? That was this generation�s last-ditch effort to save the planet from mass extinction. You know what extinction is? That means you starve to death. That means your family drowns. That means everyone you know and love watches the world waste away until they�re dead too.�

Corey finished off his wine spritzer and signaled to the waiter for another.

�Jesus, Tony. No wonder you can�t get any snatch.�

N

EW

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ORIZONS

2032

Fred was in a bad mood because security at the Tribeca Rush took nearly twenty minutes. Huddled under awnings while the rain blew sideways, we had to produce picture IDs and submit to a full body scan. Once upstairs, the event space was too crowded. Few people were willing to go out on the rooftop because an early tropical depression was still in the middle of dumping two days of rain on New York City. Event staff had erected a tent outside, but the force of the water kicked up a spray that made walking in heels a slick disaster. I watched Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Affleck come back inside, arm in arm, Affleck�s pant legs soaked, Lawrence clutching her emerald gown so it wouldn�t get the same treatment, the two of them tipsy and laughing.

I still loved these fleeting encounters with celebrity, even though we�d paid the same $300,000 for dinner, a few stand-up routines, musical performances, and cocktails on a flooding rooftop.

�Like have your act together,� Fred went on. �You�re throwing one of the most important charity events of the season, and you�ve got the Pink fucking Panther doing security.�

He was still peeved about our table at dinner, which included a couple of bobbleheads from Fox News, their spouses, and a California marijuana magnate. Fred claimed he was fine sitting at a Nobody Table, as long as the people were good conversation, but well before the tenderloin arrived we understood the chatter was to be a root canal without anesthesia. My sister called twice, and I was almost bored enough to answer. Thankfully, the food came and the conversation dwindled. Now that I attended dinners like this, I always tried to think of the farms this food came from before I put it in my mouth, certain no one else in the room ever did.

Images of the Golden State were projected on walls and in holograms above our heads. Bouquets of California poppies adorned every surface. The charity event was expected to raise close to $100 million for the rebuilding of Los Angeles, with some of that money going to goad developers to build low-income housing and the rest earmarked for the restoration of famed institutions and landmarks: the Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, and the vanquished Getty Museum, now a pile of ash and rubble with more than half its collection incinerated. For all its precautions, including a million-dollar sprinkler system, the heat, flames, and smoke of the El Demonio-Los Angeles Complex Fire had overwhelmed the Getty�s defenses.

On entering the event space, each attendee was met by a series of enormous photographs: twin fire tornadoes drilling through the Hollywood Hills, a truck vacuumed up into the vortex. A bobcat and other wildlife fleeing down a mountainside. A Tesla melted into a freeway, the shape of the vehicle barely recognizable except the badge. All the images had been taken by a heat-resistant drone piloted by an artist in Berlin.

Tragedy transmogrified into an A-list gala. Hollywood royalty, from washed legends to impish teen stars, decorated the party, while senators and CEOs clinked martini glasses and traded encrypted messages on their phones, watches, and glasses. Fred needed to be there for the sheer volume of business being done by the slightly boozed wealth circulating. Talk of who�d lost homes in the blaze (Lachlan Murdoch, LeBron James, and Shonda Rhimes, but with Bel-Air incinerated, who hadn�t?). Waiters delivered tray after tray of cocktails, and I caught a tall Black woman in a matte-black tuxedo, her hair done in a swooping bouffant with her skull shaved on the sides. Her smooth brown eyes were embedded in deep blue eyeshadow, and for a moment I was so struck by her beauty I thought I�d made a mortifying mistake, and she was a guest instead of a waiter.

�Hi,� I said neutrally.

�Can I get you something?� she asked, and I breathed heavy relief.

�Just a plain old Negroni.�

She smiled and walked off.

�I�m too tense,� I told Fred.

�Pshaw,� he said, somehow already with a drink, sliding a maraschino cherry off the plastic toothpick with his teeth. His eyes cased the room. �You�re stunning. What�s to worry about?�

�Who are you looking for?� I asked, slipping my arm around his waist and rubbing the tip of my nose into his soft beard, tasting those thin whiskers briefly. Since leaving Palacio-Wimpel, the PR firm he�d founded that made him his first �mid-minor� fortune, most of his time was spent on the lookout for investors. He turned to kiss my lips carefully because he knew of the lipstick�s pairing with my earrings. Pink lipstick and rose gold achieved a delicate, detailed look that I didn�t want smeared by his inability to keep his mouth off mine.

�Not sure yet. Norm Nate is here model hunting, but he�ll be in Venice. Are you actually anxious?�

�No, I�m fine. I�d just like to get you home.�

He smiled and kissed me again, softly on the side of my mouth.

�Nothing would make me happier. Let�s give it one hour, huh?�

The waitress found me to deliver my drink, and we circulated.

California congressman and supreme dud Warren Hamby asked Fred what he thought about the plight of the Washington Nationals, while his blinking wife complimented my gown and earrings. Goldman�s top trader, Noah Hosch, caught Fred�s elbow, hastily filling his ear with news of the crisis in China (apparently the government was in dire straits as strikes crippled the mines where his firm had made sizable investments in rare earth minerals). Gombo Bolorchuluun, the golfing sensation, held forth for a gaggle of mostly blond women, including our Fox News tablemates from earlier. I recognized top talent from the law firm DLA Piper speaking with Renaissance CEO Rory Baumgart (the �alt-right Ted Turner� as he was known). I could see the rest of the room bending to avoid him, but you couldn�t kick a billionaire out of a charity event. A Fierce Blue Fire�s director, Rekia Reynolds, looked like a starlet in traditional African dress, while her partner, Tom Levine, wore a simple white tuxedo. In a sign of the times, they were speaking to none other than the president of the Sustainable Future Coalition, Emii Li Song, and I felt a small swell of pride. Three years earlier, the SFC had been sure FBF was going to replay the French Revolution in the role of the sans-culottes, and now they were rubbing elbows at the same party. With this less antagonistic posture toward industry, I was sure they�d start seeing better results. Emii�s eyes met mine from across the room, and we exchanged smiles. I�d been an ally in goading the SFC to replace Tom Duncan-Michaels with a woman of color, and as the legislation inched closer, they finally submitted. �Sister Power,� I�d told her at the time, and I mouthed these words to her now. Her mouth spread in an uncharacteristic grin, and she winked at me before returning to her conversation. I thought of Kate Morris then, which I didn�t do much anymore now that she was gone from the limelight. It turned out she didn�t need as much help as we�d thought, mostly kneecapping herself. However, I held a complicated portfolio of emotions from that effort. I almost missed her. Though she didn�t know it, we�d been playing a chess game, and it almost made me wistful that I�d won so easily.

I heard his voice before I saw him, and I was stunned by a surge of d�j� vu. I saw the past and future at once. It was only then I remembered that his voice sounded different in person. Lighter, cleaner. The Pastor wore a tuxedo so perfectly tailored it had the lines of a sports car. Slicked-back hair, skin flawless, surely from an expensive chemical peel, hand tucked casually in a pocket while the other moved fluidly for a crowd of spectators listening to him talk. I moved closer to do the same.

�President Randall is failing to beat back this challenge, but if you look at what the RNC did�they�re shielding her. She�s going to come away with more delegates even though she lost Iowa, and New Hampshire was basically a coin flip.� Half the crowd appeared as rapt as the people who bought his �Bibles� while the other half stood on their toes as if ready to interject. He wouldn�t allow it. �Now you can say that Braden�s an inappropriate candidate, that you can�t let her get the nomination, but there are consequences to bottling up the popular will like this. Especially with the illegal refugee situation.�

It was almost more eerie to hear him sounding off about politics, to hear what a calm, reasonable presence he was in person. Since the LA fire he�d been all over his new TV network and Slapdish worlde, replaying his prediction that Hollywood would burn. I knew because my mom was one of those people who believed he was a prophet.

�You endorse the religious registry,� a man accused him. �You said everyone in the country should have to enter their religion in a government database. You know what that reminds me of��

The Pastor cut him off. �So what? The BIPOC-GND endorses a racial registry to allocate reparations payments. This is not an idea outside the mainstream, and we will have it soon in one form or another.�

The man got fed up and walked away, leaving The Pastor to quip, �Can�t get away from politics anywhere, can you?� His crowd laughed politely. The practiced self-deprecation was gone. He oozed wealth and confidence, fully grown into his role as the de facto leader of the Christian Right, surrounded by every Republican politician trying to chisel him for an endorsement in a primary race. He�d come a long way since finding his name trending beside a #Cancel for decrying �the ideology of wokeness infecting film like a plague.� No longer chasing Hollywood tinsel, no longer a happy warrior for his version of Jesus, now he generated prophecies. From what I understood, his �Bible� was a strange alchemy of the book of Revelation and climatic apocalypse. Watching him from afar all these years, I�d thought it impossible that he actually believed his own bullshit, that he was anything but a grifter, but now, watching him, I had to wonder. I never told Fred about my night with him.

I was standing behind two people, clutching my drink with an arm crossed over my breast, and as if he heard that thought, his head turned, and his eyes found mine. His gaze was an unnerving horizon. He stared at me for so long with those crystal-blue contacts, I felt I had to say something. Uncertain words formed in the back of my throat, and now I was the one who felt infected.

�Jackie, come meet my friend.� I flinched as Fred touched my elbow. He didn�t notice, and when I looked back, The Pastor had resumed inveighing about the election. Maybe I would have dwelled longer on this surreal encounter were it not for whom Fred was dragging me to on the other side of the room.

�How you doing?� said Barack Obama, as Fred guided me into the former president�s circle. �Good to see you.�

I made a dumb sound with my lips, laughed at myself, held up a finger, and said, �Hold on. Let me swallow my spit.�

The people gathered around us laughed, though their faces might as well have been blurred out. In a room of people who prided themselves on influencing the workings of the world, it was transparent how much each individual felt the need to effect a gravitational pull. Yet Obama displayed none of this need, and the way he simply tucked himself into a conversation with myself, Fred, and the small crowd around us, it was almost a more powerful display. As he shook my hand and I introduced myself, I studied the deepening wrinkles of his face. He looked old, his hair entirely white, and yet he still bounced within himself, as much energy and vigor as when I watched him, at seventeen, take to the podium of the Democratic National Convention to become a historic fixture in American life.

�You were the first vote I ever cast,� I told him. �When I was living in Chicago, my boyfriend at the time, we had tickets to election night and waited nearly two hours to get in.�

�To Grant Park?�

�No, it was 2012, so that convention center�um.�

�McCormick Place.�

�Yes!�

There was a small gap in the conversation as everyone stood around smiling, and I realized I�d begun a story without a conclusion.

�So how was it?� Obama teased.

�Not bad,� I said, my face as bright as the red of his tie. I pretended to look over his shoulder. �So is Michelle coming? I only voted for you to get more Michelle.�

Our little crowd roared at this, and Obama�s laugh seemed genuine. �We all know she�s the entire reason I became president twice. Actually, Michelle is in Texas working with a new voter turnout project, and I�m stuck wining and dining all the barnacles on the side of our democracy.�

Obama gave a playful slap to Fred�s shoulder, and even though I wasn�t sure the quip was entirely playful, Fred was beaming almost as hard as I was.

�No, no,� said Obama. �You�ve got a good one here. Fred�s an amazing businessman, and one of the few people left who can talk to both sides of the aisle. Although, having only just met you, Jackie, I can already tell you�re the brains behind the whole operation.�

Hearing my name come out of his mouth was undeniably sexual, and I knew I�d be shamelessly thinking about this moment for days. The way Obama�s tongue struck the consonants, that timbre in his voice, the unfathomably deep eye contact he made. If he asked me to go home with him, I would have entirely forgotten about how much I still loved Michelle.

I felt my phone buzzing relentlessly in my clutch, and one of the two people flanking Obama�his body man, perhaps�touched his shoulder and pointed him to another man standing in the group. As Obama reached for a new handshake, I saw the text. WHERE ARE YOU?! CALL ME BACK! EMERGENCY

Only my sister could summon so much dread and annoyance simultaneously. To my dismay, by the time I looked up, Obama had already been cocooned by the group. That I�d so quickly gained and lost this proximity pushed a flush into my face. I told Fred I needed to make a call. Furious, I slipped outside to escape the din, not that the rain was much quieter. Hugging myself in the cold air beneath the center of the tent and away from the splash of the rain, I dialed Allie.

�Where the hell are you?� My sister�s voice in middle age had the sonic quality of an aggrieved stork.

�I�m at an event. What happened?�

�You�re supposed to visit Mom.�

�What?�

�When are you visiting Mom? You were supposed to go see her?�

�Huh? I am. In three weeks. After I�m back from Venice.�

�Three weeks? Are you kidding me, Jackie? I�ve been driving up from Saint Louis every other weekend for a year. I�m exhausted. The kids have so much going on, and I don�t have time to be Mom�s only support��

�What�s the emergency?�

�When we moved down here, I told you I was going to need you to help! Hell, even Erik�s been up to see her more than you, Jackie. And he�s a deadbeat!�

�Allie, what�s the emergency?� I repeated.

�That you haven�t seen Mom in nearly six months. That she�s a mess and you can�t be bothered��

�So there�s no emergency? Mom�s still Mom, and this is not, in fact, an emergency?�

�After Venice?� she screeched, circling back to the point I knew had upset her the most.

�It�s for work. Stop stressing out.�

�I�m stressed out? I have three kids! What do you have to look after? Who do you have to take care of? Our mother, Jackie. Our goddamn mother!�

�Okay, Allie! Christ!� I said it too loudly, so that a man smoking a cigarette paused from contemplating the rain and glanced at me. �Jesus. Okay. I�ll get a plane and go see her next weekend.� I immediately regretted the phrase even as it was leaving my mouth.

�You�ll get a plane.� Allie snorted.

We hung up. Of course, what really bothered my sister was the fact that she�d married a doctor, and they still found themselves struggling to pay for all their kids� cars as they came of driving age. That I lived in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and they lived in a chintzy McMansion in a St. Louis suburb. Through the glass I saw that Obama and Fred had been swallowed by the crowd. Rubbing my arms in the cold, I turned back to the falling rain, the sound it made against the city like the breath of a massive beast at slumber.

E

XECUTIVE

S

UMMARY ON

E

LECTION

2032

PRESENTATION CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

EYES ONLY: REPRESENTATIVE TRACY AAMANZAIHOU

Ashir al-Hasan

October 15, 2032

Destroy Document After Reading

Abstract: With two and a half months and an election still to go, 2032 has been a challenging year, personally and for our country. In many respects, it reminds me of 2020 when a rancorous presidential contest collided with exogenous emergencies that had the trappings of a waking nightmare. When I agreed to establish a back channel with you from my position at the Global Change Research Program, it was because I believed you to be one of the only elected officials still speaking with urgency on the climate issue and who understood that the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Research Act was a deeply flawed and counterproductive piece of legislation, even as I harbor concern for how often you request input on topics far outside my purview. However, I�ve become radicalized in the sense that politics have now infested the government�s scientific agencies so thoroughly that we must essentially advocate for the continued existence of sound science and the policy it demands as this global emergency barrels forward. What follows here, I fear, will be less than helpful, and will cover the major domestic events of 2032 and their impact on an increasingly chaotic and unhinged political race that is fracturing as never before an already anomic American polity. In some sense, this will read as a treatise of my greatest fears about this moment, and concludes with a clandestine conference this September, which, I beg you, must remain ensconced in secrecy.

I spent the first part of this year back home in Michigan as my sister, Haniya, and I took turns staying with our mother, who�d recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer�s. I was with her for Ramadan in January. It was Eid al-Fitr just before the Iowa caucuses, and at sundown my mother turned on the television during dinner. Her obsession with cable news was such that she could not be away from it for long, particularly when all the talk was of the verdict in Minneapolis. As you recall, a year earlier, in February 2031, Shariz al-Bawadi and his daughter Eman al-Bawadi killed thirty-three people at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the father flushing terrified shoppers down one hall with an AR-15 while his sixteen-year-old daughter perched in a rafter above a roller coaster firing guided EXACTO bullets from a high-powered rifle. Predictably, what followed was an outpouring of anti-Muslim vitriol. Muslims, Sikhs, and others of Middle Eastern or South Asian ancestry were attacked in cities around the country. The entire Somali population of Minneapolis has endured raids, arrests, and indefinite detention as the courts grow ever more comfortable with elasticizing the habeas writ. A year later, both al-Bawadis would receive life sentences.

I chose this moment to unburden myself. Haniya had admonished me that I tell our mother before she was too far gone. We�d finished our meal of stewed lamb, rice, and raisins when I told her I would be moving in with my partner, Seth. This was the first time she�d even heard of Seth, and it took me several attempts to explain who he was. She thrust her hand at me:

�Stop speaking. Stop speaking right now.�

She left the room, and I gave her some time, clearing and washing the dishes before attempting to approach her again that night. When I did, I found her downstairs in my father�s den, watching more TV in the dark.

From his opulent stage, translated to 2D from his Slapdish worlde, The Pastor excoriated: �When a prophecy comes true, when fire destroys a city, and the liberal media, who�ve been lying to you for decades, they say, �Don�t pay attention to that prophesy. Don�t listen to that man, he�s a charlatan��who would you believe? And now he foresees great floods coming. Yet they are hellbent on turning you away from him. �The scientists tell us it�s this reason or that reason.� They think you can�t see with your own two eyes. My friends, do you really believe these events do not directly reveal the hand of God?�

He stalked the stage, and his movements were leonine, his suit and hair impeccable, the enormous cross on his lapel gleaming in the stage lights. What drew my mother to this man�s incoherent gospel, I assumed, had to do with fear. Gently, I asked her if I could turn the channel, and she flipped a hand in acquiescence.

�He is so dangerous. If he wins then what happens to Muslims in India will happen here. To you, me, Haniya, Noor, Gregory. All of us. You don�t care about our people, and this man is what happens.�

Of course, she has already lost a good deal of her ability to understand current events. I explained to her that The Pastor was not a presidential candidate, that soon the Democrats and Republicans would begin their primary season in Iowa, but she would not hear this and kept insisting The Pastor was going to hurt Muslims.

While her fears might have been confused, they were not exactly incorrect. In my position as executive director at the US Global Change Research Program, Asia has become a vector of grave concern. Home to the vast majority of the world�s population, the continent is in the midst of a violent paroxysm of conflict and biophysical upheaval. It is greatly susceptible to extreme weather events, as Mumbai discovered during Cyclone Malwan, but also drought, flooding, food insecurity, sea level rise, and saltwater intrusion. There are few models left predicting benign climatological outcomes in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nepal, Pakistan, or China. The catastrophic shortages of water are creating refugee flows, eruptions of conflict, and ethnoreligious carnage. Climatological calamity is driving widespread social and political unrest, which then manifests itself as conflict over ethnicity, caste, religion, race, gender, language, and other imagined communities. When my mother scolds me on my indifference toward �our people� she does so with the knowledge of the persecution Muslims in India are experiencing, all of it sanctioned by the right-wing Hindu government. Following the tens of thousands killed and displaced by Cyclone Malwan, spasms of extreme violence erupted, as disinformation spread that Muslims were hoarding food, water, and fuel.

As for The Pastor, I find him no more than a con man. After losing a string of roles to nonwhite actors, embroiled in scandal for decrying film and television�s politically correct culture, his movies increasingly ridiculed, his profligate lifestyle constrained, this former actor simply recalibrated his ambitions to a different style of performance. He saw that the captive audience of American Evangelicals was ripe for a hostile takeover and that he could generate income by preying upon a group already eschewing critical thinking. Internet sleuths love to point to a villain�s soliloquy in one of this man�s underperforming films, the plot of which includes a Silicon Valley corporation attempting to introduce mind control technology to the internet. By the time of the film�s streaming debut in 2024, this was hardly an original thought. More telling is the former actor�s investment history. He spent years as the primary financier behind a venture capital firm, pouring money into virtual reality and technologies of targeted persuasion. His ambitions were thwarted when he bet on one of Slapdish�s competitors, and his firm failed.

However, the villain�s speech from the subpar action movie remains trenchant, if appallingly scripted: �We live in a contemporary Tower Babel, and inside that tower is a sorcerer�s stone. But only a lucky few understand how to wield it. Those who do can feel its power, and that power is seductive.�

Dreck, to be sure, and perhaps too simplistic an explanation for the media empire he has built. He is tapping into real emotions of frustration and disillusionment, but a con it remains. None of this would comfort my mother, however. She now gestured to the TV, where The Pastor had been replaced by a commercial for collectible coins. She began to weep:

�It will be like in India. The women endure the worst of it. My friend�she and I grow up together�her daughter was raped in front of her children. The men cut off her breasts, stole every possession the family had, and left her to die. She survived, but this is not just some scary story. This is what is happening to Muslims every single day in my home.� She looked at me miserably. �Ashir, tell the people where you work, do not let this man hurt anyone.�

She reached out and took my hand, this small woman who�d gestated me. I assured her I would pass this message along.

As you know, in the first contest in Iowa, Senator L. Victor Love and Governor Pat Formisano tied in the Democratic primary while on the Republican side, the white separatist talk-show host Jennifer Braden defeated the president of the United States by four points, setting off a political earthquake.

6D

EGREES

I

S

C

OMING

2033

Shane had felt this combination of exhaustion and fear only once before, during Islali�s birth. Echoes of that ten-hour ordeal, and the postpartum darkness that followed, seemed to vibrate within her as her plane touched down in Charlotte. She exited to Gate B15, feeling like she wanted to collapse onto the grimy carpet. Every nerve ending humming with the dread. She wondered when she would ever get sleep again.

Quinn met her in short-term parking and handed her glasses and a face mask for all the cameras they�d pass on the way. Shane pushed her greasy hair back and slipped on the FaceRec-disrupting lenses.

�We�ll be picking up one more,� said Quinn after they pulled out of range of the airport.

�Who?�

�Jansi.�

Shane stared at blondie for a moment. Quinn wore a light purple cashmere sweater and had her hair carefully parted in the center. She wore a diamond engagement ring because, as she�d explained via the code, she�d decided to further her cover and their aims by marrying the CTO of her company. Quinn, of course, anticipated Shane�s reaction to the news they�d be picking up Jansi.

�You�re good, Shane. I didn�t find her. She found me. We�ve been in contact for a year now.�

GET ON A FLIGHTAs soon as you can. Don�t contact anyone else. Quinn found Shane�s message in a multiplayer VR game where she and Shane had set up a dead drop after the last meeting in Wisconsin. They�d decided to open their own line of communication. So here they were. Smashing protocol in an emergency. Taking back control. Quinn had told her fianc� a friend back home had been in a car accident.

Shane ignored that her back channel with Quinn was not the only one, ignored the danger of their organization developing clandestine pockets within itself. �And Jansi knows the situation?�

�I had to bring her in.�

�Okay,� said Shane, nodding. �I�m not angry. That�s good.�

As they waded through traffic, she noticed that Quinn was wearing a boot on her left foot. She asked what happened. �I broke it a week ago getting out of the goddamn shower. Just another indignity of being a woman and getting old.� She thunked the boot against the side of the door.

As she and Quinn cobbled their plans together, she�d scrambled to find Lali a sitter at the last second. Obviously, she couldn�t go to Kai, so Teddy it was. His moon-face looked perfectly credulous as she explained that she had a cousin who�d been in a head-on collision and she needed to go home to Austin for a few days. Teddy was eager for any morsel of her trust after she�d put a stop to their infrequent sex. She�d dropped Lali off that afternoon, her girl crying and begging to go with her even as Teddy promised she could play VR with his boys. Then Shane rushed to the airport on no sleep, barely making the flight, too keyed up on adrenaline to nap.

�This could be the end of it,� said Quinn. Then she smacked the steering wheel and shrieked, the sound piercing in the close confines of the car. It made the hairs on Shane�s arms stand on end.

�We don�t know that,� said Shane.

Quinn only shook her head, furious. �Don�t kid yourself, Shane. Of course we do.�

L

EVIATHAN

2033

He met Ash Hasan in the dining car of a 1930s train whizzing through the passes of snowcapped mountains, little Euro-gingerbread towns in the distance. No avatars, just two rumpled colleagues shooting the shit, ostensibly about the �sea level listening tour� Hasan was on with his latest congresswoman of choice. Ash, resolute in his devotion to data, insisted that Tony�s time would be better spent joining the government rather than attending the concert less than nine months away.

�Seth is forging ahead on the executive committee of the climate concert,� said Hasan, studying the glistening arugula salad in front of him. CGI food in a world gone hungry. �But seeing as how��

�Just a bunch of old rock and pop fogies jamming in the capital,� said Tony. �No need for anyone to get excited.�

��But seeing as how Seth and I are soon to become parents, I�m concerned. You understand why.�

�Not really. We�re going to prop the corpses of Eddie Vedder and Tom Morello up there, and some folks will say a few words to rally support for democratic solutions to global warming. What�s to worry about?�

Ash gazed at him, chewing his jaw so that his temple twitched. He looked out the dining car window toward the rays of a sunset spiking over pristine snowpacks. The tinkling of silverware on china and the low whispers of the conversation drifted over the rumble of the train. A man across from them rustled his paper as he flipped a page. The headline read MARS MISSION LIFTS OFF; JOURNEY TO TAKE 9 MONTHS TO RED PLANET. The joke going around was, Take us with you!

�Fatherhood will rearrange our priorities,� said Hasan. �Now Seth plans to actually attend the climate concert. He�s not being rational about the exigencies involved.�

�That�s a bloodless way to put it.� When Gail had gotten pregnant with Holly, their main concern had been the cost of raising a kid on grad student stipends. Hasan was loaded from building models for his brother-in-law�s hedge fund, so he and Seth would be A-OK. �Anyway, you�re going to be fathers!� said Tony, fake-lifting the glass of wine from the cream tablecloth. The vessel did not go with his hand, of course. �Congratulations! Welcome to the inescapable hell and joy that is parenthood.�

�It�s difficult to parse fact from rumor in Washington, but I�m urging you to take this new administration into consideration. It�s given me great pause.�

�You and everyone else who still reads a newspaper.� He nodded to the man across from them. Impossible to tell if he was an AI or just a guy looking for a quiet place to read in a coffee shop somewhere in Buffalo or Dubai. �They caught that kid with the Weathermen, and he�s sans lawyer from what I�m hearing.�

�This is even more disconcerting than the new enemy combatant statutes.�

�Don�t blame me. I voted for that snake Randall. Love put a capital D by his name and fooled a third of this stupid fucking country. Everyone wants to suck their thumb and jack off in a VR set, this is what you get.�

�There�s a rumor going around, Tony, about a list.�

He shut his mouth and looked at Hasan.

�What kind of list?�

Hasan took a moment to respond. His left hand was quacking, and he stared in consternation at his plate. The salad had ruby-red tomatoes, which glowed against the china.

�Political opponents of the president.� He hesitated. �With a special interest in those who happen to have Islamic backgrounds.�

�You�re Muslim? Since when?�

�Not practicing, no. But in people�s minds religious identifications follow you regardless of faithfulness to the liturgy. This list is being compiled, in secret, by the DOJ and Attorney General Greenstreet, but I have contacts within the FBI who are very seriously considering taking this information to the media.�

Tony sighed through his teeth. �Fuck,� he said.

�Indeed.�

�Well,� he tried to wrap his mind around this. Love gave him a sense of dread he�d not felt even in the Trump years. Anybody could see that plainly in the way Love had sliced apart the electorate to clear a path to the presidency. He�d sat the Democratic base in the corner while he fed Jen Braden money under the table through a PAC to siphon votes from Mary Randall (or so it was rumored). She ended up losing thirty-nine states, as the Republican base deserted her for a write-in campaign for the wingnut. Now the Senate Democrats were behaving not unlike their Republican colleagues had in their pathetic deference to Trump: playacting concern without doing much of anything to stop a clear and present danger. Dance with the one who brought you, and all. �Look, Ash, if you need anything from me, obviously, I�d do whatever�� He trailed off. �I�m not even sure what I�m offering. Help of any kind, I guess.�

�I appreciate it, Tony. You�re an honorable man.�

�I don�t know about that.�

�A bit rough on every edge, corner, and surface, as they say, but honorable nevertheless.�

Tony snorted a laugh. �That a joke?�

�An attempt.�

After their palaver, Tony removed his VR goggles, and he was back in a dank motel room. The headsets were getting small, and this new one he�d just bought reminded him of the Geordi La Forge glasses from The Next Generation. It was uncanny how for a tingling twenty seconds or so, his motel room felt less real than the train crossing the Pyrenees.

T

HE

Y

EARS OF

R

AIN AND

T

HUNDER:

P

ART

IV

2034

The train lurched to a stop at Fiftieth Street, and I was dragged from the unsettling headlines of the day back to the immediate moment. Having lied to Kate, I�d been on edge since arriving in New York and on the subway made the mistake of turning to the news for distraction. Two children shot dead in Dallas, and the city had exploded. Jason Mollier and Lamarr Daniels were stuffing candy in their pants at a convenience store and the security guard pulled a gun. This wasn�t 2020 or 2024. People weren�t asking for justice anymore, they would go get it themselves, and within days, Dallas was on fire. The police and Texas National Guard cleared the city block by block, guarded by low-hovering drones with obsidian-black panels for faces, firing tear gas and rubber bullets while shielding police from bricks, rocks, and bottles hurled by the city�s enraged residents. Torched supermarkets and police barricades had left whole neighborhoods without anything to eat. I�d seen protests throughout New York City that morning, but the NYPD was taking no chances, kettling protestors. Everything had remained peaceful so far, but cities around the country were in the same tense standoff. Just another spasm in a never-ending American saga. I spotted a lone Black man on the street corner holding a cardboard sign: MY FUCKS BUDGET ALL FULL UP. I CAN GIVE NO MORE. KILL NYPD.

I emerged from New York�s intestines into the seventy-degree February day, the air sweating. People carried jackets under their arms while mopping their brows, still expecting the humidity to turn to rain. In the back of the Midtown restaurant, there was a room away from the other diners, walls scattered with images of Big Apple history�Boss Tweed political cartoons and workers dancing on beams of the soon-to-be Empire State Building. And there were my old friends.

Rekia Reynolds, Coral Sloane, and Tom Levine stood to greet me, and I could feel the wave of nervous energy in my gut surge into my face. Holly Pietrus stood behind them, waiting for whatever drama to play out. We all had this moment of tension, combat veterans reuniting in a bar with the anticipation of war stories. It was the first time I�d seen any of them since Kate�s firing. That was almost three years ago.

We all laughed, and the room deflated. Rekia was the closest and came to me first.

�Matty, oh God.� She took me in her arms and held me, twisting my body back and forth. I�d spent so many nights staring at the ceiling, hating her for what had happened, swearing I would avenge Kate. But the years went by, and my anger melted, and as soon as I saw her, there was nothing but bottomless love for this powerful and brilliant woman. �It�s so good to see you, babe. I love this.� She put her hand on my beard, which was old to me but new to her. No one would mistake me for a lumberjack, but it mitigated some of the boyishness I�d never been able to shake. Rek wiped a tear from her eye. She wore a bright red dress and her hair in long braids, twisted into a spiral atop her skull with the sides shaved. Enormous earrings like rectilinear city grids hung from each ear. She had an engagement ring on her finger. �Sorry, sorry! I missed you.�

�You too. Don�t�� I laughed as my eyes misted. �Rek, don�t. You�re going to make me cry.� We both laughed. �You know I�m so sorry for how we left every��

�Matty�� She held up her hand. �Stop. I�m sorry too. Everyone�s sorry. I love you, and I always will, okay?� Then I did have tears coming out and quickly wiped them away, nodding furiously and pulling her into an embrace again.

Coral was of course dressed like a surly teenager in baggy khakis and a plain blue button-up. They�d removed the lip ring, but their hair was still a messy bowl, bangs curling on their forehead, a FREE THE CLIMATE HEROES electronic bracelet glittered on one wrist as the small, curved screen cycled through this proclamation along with JUSTICE FOR JASON AND LAMARR. Coral held my shoulder first, and in their froggy voice said, �I almost brought my VR in case you wanted to get in a quick game of Avenging Angel?�

�You and me just skip lunch and sit in a corner?�

�Missed you, buddy,� they said.

Tom was next, and we faked our greeting. �It�s been too long,� was all he said, slapping me on the back before sitting down. He adjusted the new Apple ARs, with their bold, thick-rimmed frames and took a seat, resting a hand on the back of Rekia�s chair.

I�d never met Holly Pietrus, so we shook hands. Dressed in a sheer rose-colored blouse and a black pencil skirt, she looked young and bony. She�d been director of the New York office for a couple years but had the anxious bearing of an undergrad trying to pull an all-nighter before a final. Of course, her father was one of those climate heroes Coral�s bracelet was advocating for, and I knew this was likely causing her sleepless nights. In addition to being biracial, she didn�t look much like him, which was undoubtedly a good thing, but I could see his humorless scowl in her face now, like his DNA shimmered through her in moments of upset.

Coral held up their phone and a signal-blocking bag. �Can we all agree?�

We slid our phones across the table, Tom adding his glasses and Coral their bracelet.

�So when�s the wedding?� I asked.

�Next year,� said Tom. �Black women plan weddings like NASA and SpaceX plan contingencies for going to Mars.�

�It�s. My. Sisters,� said Rekia, clapping her hands with each word. �I�m the baby, so they�ll be up our asses the rest of our lives�just deal with it.�

�Sorry for the paranoia,� Coral said, setting the Faraday bag aside.

�What�s paranoia when you got robots shooting people in the streets of Dallas,� said Rekia. �I swear every day and want to start fucking screaming.�

�Weird how you wake up and you�re living in a bad movie about the future,� said Tom.

�The original RoboCop was a classic for a reason,� Coral said grimly. Even under the circumstances, it was hard not to smile at Coral and recall our Verhoeven film fests. I�d been planning a trip home to Carolina when Coral asked if I�d come to New York to meet with the old crew�and not tell Kate. One of Rekia�s first decisions as ED was to move the core operations to New York City, mostly to be closer to the financial capital. It was the markets, after all, that were now doing much of the heavy lifting on renewables deployment and adaptation. In a few weeks, they would sponsor the Conference on Climate Mitigation, a multiday event with over three hundred speakers on dozens of panels meant to �bring together all stakeholders, from activists to government to business, to discuss and facilitate solutions, transformations, and ameliorations for climate change.� It would even include members of the Sustainable Future Coalition. A gala was to follow.

�There�s a hedge fund dropping a million dollars on the cocktails with this vodka made from carbon-sequestering potatoes,� said Tom.

�And Love is not speaking, correct?�

�No. There�s no way,� said Coral. �There would be boycotts.�

�We said we�d walk out.� These were the first words Holly had spoken since we sat down.

�So what do we know?� I asked. �Your dad�s case is working its way through the courts, right?�

�Not fast enough,� she said. The detention of left-wing organizers, Islamic leaders, and climate activists held at undisclosed locations had yet to let up. Headlines trumpeted the outrage, but the arrests continued a drip at a time anyway.

�Banana republic oppression,� said Tom. �They�re testing the legal limits of PRIRA.�

I asked, �And how many people are we talking?�

�They don�t have to show the evidence for national security concerns�quote, unquote,� said Coral. �So all our lawyers are in the dark in a box built by Kafka. And as for how many?� They looked to Rekia, who returned their troubled expression. �We think somewhere between thirty to forty people have been detained under the statute, but it could be many more. Maybe more have disappeared. Journalists are looking. We�re looking.�

�What happened with you and Kate?� Rekia asked.

The waiter chose that moment to come take our orders, which gave me time to think. I had to be careful.

�We sat for an interview,� I said when he left. �Our lawyers were there. That�s it. Nothing came of it.�

We�d driven up to the Portland field office the month before and spent most of the time sitting in colorless rooms like we were in a doctor�s office. When they interviewed us together, Kate did her best to bore them with drivel.

� �The whole point of Climate X is to build an antidote to the alienation and desperation people sometimes don�t even know they�re feeling,� she told the agents. �That you guys are probably feeling. Politics has become entirely about individual self-expression instead of collective revolution, and I�ve been trying to push back against self-referentialism and sanctimony and dead-end radicalism. We want to reorient people around a shared vision.� �

� �Right,� � said a supremely uninterested special agent named Chen.

� �But that�s why it�s so utterly unreasonable that I or anyone in FBF ever worked with 6Degrees. Our missions are entirely dissimilar. They want insurrection against the state. Like the stupid children they are.� �

� �They�re awfully crafty for children,� � said Agent Chen. To which Kate just shrugged.

� �It�s your surveillance state, dude.� �

In the end, it was less Kate�s mesmerizingly abstruse blather that got us out of there after only six hours than the fact that none of the captured operatives linked to the Weathermen had any connection to A Fierce Blue Fire. According to a New Yorker expos� by my old friend Moniza, the guy caught trying to get back into the States from Canada, Clay Ro, had never so much as visited the FBF website.

Rekia slid her arms over her breasts now, watching me. �The FBI�s interviewed everyone on staff. They�ve subpoenaed emails, audited our financials. They�re tracing every last dollar we�ve ever spent.�

�What do your lawyers say?�

�They say cooperate.�

I breathed slowly through my nostrils and nodded.

�According to my contacts, Love is trying to merge his own security empire with the normative functions of the DOJ, FBI, Homeland, CIA,� said Tom. �Moving quick but not too quick.�

�It seems like, for the most part, they�re sticking to low-profile activists,� said Rekia. �No one who�ll command too much outrage�with the exception of Holly�s dad. We think he�s a test case. They put out that picture of him with the Weathermen op Ro to sell it.�

�Is there any other evidence against him?� I asked.

�Of course there�s not,� Holly snapped, and I didn�t blame her. �This guy Ro had a picture taken with him at a speech back when my dad was touring campuses with his book.�

�Right. Obviously.� It had fallen out of my mouth, and I regretted it. In Moniza�s article, she�d described how Clay Alvin Ro had tried to erase the young activist version of himself before getting his plumbing license and slipping into a life of anonymity. This gave ample clue as to how the Weathermen operated, while also clarifying just how blindly and illegally the government was pursuing them. From my brief interaction with Pietrus in VR, he seemed about as likely a terrorist operative as my mother. I asked Holly, �How are you doing? You and your family?�

�We�re freaking out is what we�re doing. I�ve never� None of us have any experience with this, and it�s been a total hall of mirrors. My uncle hired serious criminal lawyers, and even they seem unnerved.�

�And you still don�t know where he�s being held?�

�No.� Her brow furrowed in anguish. I was afraid she would burst into tears. �I got this call from him, and he said he was in Bridgeport, and that�s the last I�ve heard about him or from him.�

�Matt, that�s why we wanted to talk to you,� said Coral. �We�re cooperating, and you guys should too. Our aim is to fight this in the daylight. We don�t want to give them an excuse right now.�

I forced myself not to look at Tom. He�d promised he wouldn�t say a word, and I still believed he hadn�t. �What other choice do we have?�

Coral exchanged another look with Rekia.

�Matt, what are you, Kate, and Liza up to with the concert?� they asked.

I laughed as if it was as silly as it sounded. �Who even knows? This thing has been a logistical nightmare. Pop-star egos�Jesus.�

�Oh right,� said Holly, coming back to the conversation. Her lips were tight with anger. �Your concert. We�re out here getting death threats, getting harassed by every Jen Braden fanatic, harassed by the FBI, my dad�s in some black-site prison.� Her voice rose. �And you and Kate are hanging out with Zeden, planning a singalong on the National Mall like it�s 2007. Concert for the Climate? Gosh, why didn�t anyone think of that before?�

Our food came, and we all sat awkwardly while the waiter set the plates in front of us. No one touched their meals after he left.

�Kate is trying to keep the pressure on for actual binding emissions reductions,� I said as evenly as I could manage.

�Good luck,� said Holly. �Aamanzaihou is on her own island now. All our other allies have lost elections or are lining up behind the new so-called climate security czar, Dahms.�

�What�s your read on him?� I asked, trying to calm the conversation because she was so upset.

Coral answered instead. �He�s an albedo modification advocate. Geoengineer our way out of this.�

�Ready the monster, Igor.�

�Exactly.�

Coral nodded to Holly. �I am interested in your answer, Matt. The concert. Why is Kate doing this?�

Carefully, I said, �I�m not sure what you guys mean.�

Coral shook their head. �It�s out of character. It�s the kind of thing she would�ve mocked when I first met her. Pointless performative politics.�

I hated lying. I�d never been good at it. I tried to make my dread sound like exasperation. �She�s just working with what she�s got at hand.�

Coral nodded, but clearly this did not satisfy. Holly had picked up her fork but had not taken a bite. Now she set it back down.

�I�m sorry, I know we just met, but� Kate spends ten years building this groundbreaking political movement, then embarrasses herself beyond all reason, and her major idea is to get a few pop stars and rock-and-roll skeletons to play a concert? I can�t even tell you� I idolized Kate Morris. Kate Morris was the reason I came to work here. And now this is all so, so� I don�t know, so mortifying! Everything everyone said about her�that she�s toxic, a starfucker, a phony�it�s like she�s admitting it was all true.�

Her voice cracked, and she sounded more upset about Kate than her own father�s imprisonment. No one spoke for a moment. Finally, Holly stood.

�I apologize, guys. I�m just trying to swallow a lot of terror right now.� She slung her bag over her shoulder. �And I don�t feel much like eating. It was nice meeting you, Matt.� Before leaving our private room, Holly stopped and turned back to me. �Kate needs to know how badly she�s wasting this moment. It won�t be long before we�re all disappearing into black sites.�

My nerves were already so shot, and I almost exploded: Oh, and what are you doing? Meeting with the SFC? Taking money from every greenwashed corporation this side of Exxon? Fuck you, you child.

Instead, I waited until she left.

�Hey.� I looked at my three old comrades. �I want you guys to know�and Kate would want you to know too�neither of us bears any ill will toward you. About how things went down. You all were our friends, and you�re still our friends. She would want you to know how highly she thinks of you, and even if our paths have diverged, that doesn�t mean we�re not still in this fight together.�

Rekia reached across the table to take my hand. �I told you, Matt. No more apologies. We love you both, and that didn�t change when you left.�

When the bill came, none of us could believe how expensive our meals were. Awkwardly, we asked the waiter if he�d made a mistake. �No, sorry,� he said gently. �Our suppliers are the ones jacking up the prices.�

T

HE

S

IEGE

2034

APRIL 1

Alight rain fell, and they came by the thousands up through the tunnels of the Metro and crossing the Potomac, surging along the sidewalks on their way to the National Mall. They wore yellow rain jackets and blue ponchos, costumes and Indigenous dress, carrying signs and placards. Artists at a face-painting station inked American flags or green and blue Earths on the cheeks of children. Quinton Marcus-McCall, a thirty-four-year-old volunteer with A Fierce Blue Fire�s mutual aid network, shuffled behind fellow concertgoers, past the security checkpoints of metal detectors, flak-jacketed police officers, ATF, and bomb-sniffing dogs. He�d driven from Detroit the week before, staying in a hotel in Maryland, and now found himself stuck behind a family with a stroller, stopped by police who were all but taking it apart searching for something. The parents looked annoyed and frantic to get in. A woman behind Quinton griped to a friend that she couldn�t believe Zeden had dropped out. When it was Quinton�s turn at the metal detectors, the crowd jostled him into Second Lieutenant Walter Pasquina, a US Marine on leave. �My bad,� said Quinton. Pasquina accepted Quinton�s apology without a second thought and went back to his phone, specifically the concert�s dedicated app, which was telling him where they might like to stand for the best view.

Walt was there with his kid sister, Kelly, a twenty-one-year-old organizer on the American University campus, about as lefty as her brother Walt was indifferent to politics. She�d rebuilt her Slapdish worlde as a shrine to Free Clay Ro, the Ohio plumber arrested and accused of domestic terrorism. Six years Kelly�s senior, Walt had basically raised her while their dad was in the Marines and their mom worked tireless hours as a suicide crisis counselor. It bemused Walt how every time he came home, Kelly was passionate and encyclopedic about another entirely new subject. He wasn�t teaching her how to cook s�mores anymore, but she frequently schooled him on issues, like why it was vital to have a habeas writ. His leave happened to coincide with the concert, and she�d talked him into joining her. �Fine, Kel, feed me your radical program, but the day after we�re going to watch the Nationals opener, no arguments.� This was pure teasing because they�d both grown up huge Nats fans.

When it had come to the attention of the Love administration that a small band of rootless climate activists had applied for a permit from the National Park Service during the waning days of the Randall presidency, the impulse was to shut it down, but then a dissenting opinion gathered strength among his closest advisors: This was exactly what they wanted. A concert on the National Mall was a perfectly acceptable outlet: A feckless pop culture trifle that allowed folks the self-expression and social media content they coveted but which blossomed and wilted within the same eight-hour period. Forcing a couple of high-profile acts to drop out would be a final embarrassment for Morris and her crew.

The concert kicked off with Beyonc�, Jack White, and Gary Clark Jr. performing a blues rewrite of the national anthem. Instead of the familiar beats of that song, White and Clark performed it almost as a hymnal, closer to �Amazing Grace� than �The Star-Spangled Banner.� Pop�s last great megastar was recovering from knee surgery, not so much as a twitch of a dance in her, and sang from a stool to the left of her costars. A bare black stage framed the Capitol Building behind them, looking drab and weathered in the gray morning. It had been cordoned off and surrounded by police vans and concrete barriers, SOP whenever any large crowd set up near the Capitol ever since �21. People waved small American flags and cheered as the woman�s impossible voice sent the familiar words arching across the city. As the last syllable whispered away on the edge of her breath, she launched into an acoustic version of her own �Freedom,� and finally White and Clark joined her at the mic, for the obvious �Rockin� in the Free World,� reorchestrated to sound more like a mournful last-chance eulogy than a call to action. There was feedback on the microphone. The light drizzle continued. The sea of plastic ponchos garnered real-time ridicule on social media due to the petroleum used to manufacture them.

Organizers had erected the stage just west of Fourth Street, between the National Gallery of Art to the north and the National Air and Space Museum to the south. People pressed the barricades, but the crunch of the crowd only lasted until Seventh Street, which was blocked off for the day. To the west of Seventh, people had brought blankets and lawn chairs, a smattering of tents, and mostly watched the drone feed on their screens. Aerial photography estimates put the crowd size at about 105,000 people. Not bad, but keep in mind Donald Trump�s much-disputed inauguration drew at least 150,000. Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert managed 215,000 for a joke rally in 2010. Barack Obama�s first inauguration still held the record at 1.8 million.

Concert for the Climate: No Time Left organizers had hoped for five hundred thousand and planned for as many as a million, but they were up against strong headwinds. As it was wont to do, the issue had yet again faded from the minds of the American polity. Without a major storm or, say, a city burning to the ground in the last several months, attention had moved on. The anxieties of the moment included the dead boys in Dallas and the riots put down in their wake; the refugees coming from the southern border and increasingly on ramshackle boats from the Caribbean; the right-wing militias asserting themselves in public, patrolling the Arizona borderlands and marching in Philadelphia suburbs; and the staggering price of food busting the budgets of many households.

Still, there was a general sense of comity, uplift, and hopefulness. Here we are, still plugging away, this gathering said. We�re not giving up. They danced, swigged from flasks, smoked joints and vape pens, clapped, sang, stamped their feet along to the roots-rock band Gunner Main. They filmed on their phones or through their ARs. They projected holograms of their spinning planet or wind-beaten American flags or billowing blue fire. INSTRUMENT OF PEACE read one of the largest holograms, roughly the size of a semitruck, sizzling over the heads of hundreds as raindrops cut through it. Some held aloft the boilerplates scrawled onto old-fashioned cardboard: ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE; SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE; YOU CANNOT ARREST AN IDEA; WE NEED LOVE NOT� and then a picture of the president. Three men of God dressed in their traditional religious garb were very proud of their banner held at waist height: A RABBI, A PRIEST, AND AN IMAM WALK INTO A BAR� TO SAVE THE EARTH! A woman wore a hot dog costume, a meme having to do with the fact that President Love supposedly ate a hot dog after killing an unarmed boy in Afghanistan. One man wearing big butterfly wings with dual images of blue fire was asked to sit because he was blocking the view. The Clean Energy Labor Coalition�s signage was everywhere as they had supplied much of the funding and workforce; the union�s slogan, NEW WORLD SOLIDARITY, was everywhere. A group of Palestinian women in wool challis headscarves held a series of signs that taken together read MUSLIMS FOR PEACE, HARMONY, THE CLIMATE, A DEMOCRATIC ISRAEL, A FREE PALESTINE, EACH OTHER, EVERYONE, EVERYTHING! Anarchists rubbed shoulders with military veterans, Quakers with Mormons, Chippewa with Wiccans. The rapper Haydukai came on for his set, wearing a keffiyeh and sunglasses with red, white, and blue LED lights, vicious, syncopated rhymes following the flow of his free hand and a beat that throbbed like a pumping vein. That cosmic dust quality of live music descended on the audience, conjuring belonging and camaraderie from absolute scratch.

VR drone cameras hovered overhead, allowing those at home to watch up close when Haydukai growled, �No time left, so it�s time to go. Time to rise up.� He knifed the air with his free hand. �We still got a weapon. That weapon is collective power. All the rage and grief you feel at our broken, disappearing world�we got only two choices. We despair or we grow a revolution. Now listen to what she got to say.�

Then he stalked off the stage with the crowd still cheering.

The other performers were confused because he was only the third act of the day. There were still nine more to go, and many of these musicians and their busybody handlers wondered why Kate Morris was taking the stage so early in the day. According to the schedule, pop star Kiki Wan was next, and this was all building to Eddie Vedder, Selena Gomez, and Elvis Costello, sharing the stage to sing �Hey Jude� in memory of Paul McCartney. Sure, the concert was free, but folks still wanted their money�s worth.

But there she was, the endlessly controversial thorn of the climate movement, who had long ago worn out her welcome in the public sphere, who many�even those who agreed with her mission�wanted to just go away, get a reality show if you must, but make sure it�s in the deep recesses of all content, on one of those worldes/feeds/channels no one knows the name of. She bounded onstage to a smattering of applause. Her hair was pulled back with a simple tie but still frizzy from the rain. She wore jeans and a weathered olive-green Carhartt she�d purchased at a Goodwill in Missoula after dropping her coat into a crevasse while rock climbing. She carried a spiral-bound notebook in one hand, clutched so that her white, chapped knuckles betrayed her nerves. There were those who would love her no matter how much dirt came out, and it was these young men and women who screamed and cheered the loudest when she took the stage. A few folks stood stonily with their arms crossed. Haydukai had taken the microphone with him, and when she reached the empty mic stand, she laughed nervously and called back behind her. A young stagehand sprinted to pop a new mic into place, and then ran off hunched over, as if this would somehow render the gaffe less visible.

�Hey there,� she said, laughing nervously into whining feedback. She tapped the mic and it went away. �How we doing today?�

�You�re not Zeden!� someone shouted.

She laughed but her fingers picked restlessly at the metal coil of the notebook.

�I just have a quick something to say, and then we�ll get back to the show.� She glanced at her notebook, and those watching at home on VR could see it shaking along with her hand. �I�ve been trying to write this speech for a year. Then I threw it all away and rewrote it last night.�

This wasn�t entirely accurate. She�d had the basic beats memorized ever since she�d dreamed of this moment while driving through the Mojave Desert beneath a herd of stars. Though she�d never told her former partner this, she admired his meticulous attention to prose. Her mind was too scattered, and because she�d fought through the embarrassment of dyslexia as a kid, she tended not to write much down. The night before the concert, she�d stayed up until four in the morning with one of her favorite books, Solnit�s Hope in the Dark, and tried not to plagiarize too much. She wished she�d had her original copy with those precious margin notes, but like that good jacket, she�d lost it years ago.

�I�ve been working on this situation for over twenty years now. Ever since I was in high school. Twenty years�man, I can�t believe how quickly time just� happens to you. I know that�s not an original thought, but it is totally shocking anyway. When I first started on this�our crisis of the biosphere and inequality and democracy�I thought, Great! Look at this huge problem someone�s left for me! I�ll just�� She whipped her free hand like she was spinning a globe. �I�ll knock this out in a couple years, no problem. I�ll give a few speeches, rile folks up, elect the right people, get the right laws passed, and we�ll all be knocking back beers at the bar in no time. I had so much energy and eagerness and just�hope! I had so much hope.�

Another scan of her notebook, searching for her train of thought.

�I can�t remember being afraid of anything in my life, and maybe it�s a product of getting older, but suddenly I am afraid. To be honest, I�m afraid all the time.�

A burst of oscine birds took to the sky. This impromptu storm of wings breached the day like a crash of thunder, alerting the assembled to how quiet they�d grown. Only the patter of rain filled the silence that followed.

�We are met with this unthinkable nightmare befalling our planet, and the hour has grown so late. We are only in the early stages of the devastation to come. I could name all the events that have destroyed families and lives and homes over the past ten or twenty years, but what�s the point? All of this is only the beginning. That�s what breaks my heart so much. We�re not here to prevent that future anymore�because we can�t. All we have left to fight is our own oblivion. Our civilization devouring itself as we run from storms and fires, as we die starving and thirsty and fearful and alone.

�We can tell ourselves that it�s all of our faults, that we all share blame, but that�s bullshit. Let�s call it like it is: There are a handful of corporations and governments happily burning as much carbon as they can so that a handful of people can get obscenely rich. And mostly, the problem lies right here.�

And she pointed behind her to the bulging Capitol Dome.

�That building is ours. The whole idea is that whatever happens in there is our will. Our decision. But instead, it�s a defensive fortress for a tiny elite, who are profiting from the genocide of our planet. It�s not even a secret. They�re not hiding their plan. They are openly telling us they are going to exploit and plunder our country, our earth, our home, and then profit from its unraveling.� Kate Morris slapped the notebook against her thigh. �They expect us to stand by and do nothing. The only question is, will we do nothing? The solutions to this crisis, it turns out, will also require an even greater ambition, a more just global order. We need to build a new energy infrastructure. We need to reinvent agriculture. We need to put everyone in this country to work in high-paying, meaningful jobs. We need to make housing, health care, and education universal rights, so we�re not all hungry, addicted, angry, and alone. We need to destroy the power of the surveillance capitalist economy, the people who profit from fomenting hate. We need an immediate release of the political prisoners, people like Dr. Anthony Pietrus, who have done nothing wrong except try to warn us of what�s coming. We need an end to the harassment, imprisonment, and torture of activists, protestors, religious and racial minorities, whether that�s at the local mosque or the local chapter of A Fierce Blue Fire. We need justice for the mothers who�ve lost children to heroin addiction in Kentucky, just like we need justice for the fathers who�ve lost their sons to bullets in Dallas. We need our freedom and our hope returned to us. We need to find our way back to each other.�

Kelly Pasquina had loved Kate Morris since she first learned of her as a middle schooler, and the moment her idol stepped onstage, she�d begun to tingle. She did not care a whit about any of the scandals, the gossip, or the attacks from the left, right, or center. There were some people you would ride for come what may. Now, listening to her, she clutched her hands in front of her mouth as if in prayer and let the tears pour shamelessly from her eyes.

�The problem is, in order to fulfill this vision, we need to take their money, and we need to take their power.� She jabbed her finger behind her again at the Capitol Dome. �It�s as simple as that. Because that money is blood money, and the power fucking belongs to us anyway.�

�Fuck yes!� Kelly screamed, and her voice rippled back through the crowd, past Seventh and then Fourteenth Street, nearly all the way to the Washington Monument.

�So what are we going to do?� Morris demanded. She held three fingers on her right hand high. �We are going to save our biosphere, we are going to remake our unjust and unequal economic system, and we are going to re-democratize our country and our world. History shows us that people can be monsters. That they can kill and maim and enslave and exploit, and they can do it while telling themselves how enlightened they are. But history also tells us that when people band together, they can do mighty things. Whole systems can fall overnight. We don�t need armies, guns, or bombs. Great change is made by a tired, pissed-off woman who doesn�t want to give up her seat on a bus, or by a scrawny Indian lawyer who decides to stop eating. What is extraordinary about the people we revere in history is just how unbearably ordinary they were. All that separates us from them�literally the only difference�is that they had the courage to act. When the wealthy and powerful told them what they were doing was meaningless, they didn�t listen.�

Quinton Marcus-McCall watched the crowd feast on this woman�s voice. He�d first heard her at a speech at Wayne State in 2025 when he was failing at his nursing degree, and though he hadn�t known it then, it set his life on a new course. This speech didn�t sound all that different to him from the rest of her catalogue, but it was good to know she still had some juice left. He set his backpack on the ground and went rooting through it for the strip of blue cloth and began tying it around his left bicep. Kate Morris continued:

�Remember, you have courage in you. All these disasters the past thirty years, from 9/11 and Covid-19 to the Great Eastern Flood, and what do people always do? In the LA fire, you know what they did? Fishermen sailed their boats up the coast from Mexico to rescue Americans they�d never met. Because when disaster comes, we don�t run, we don�t eat each other, we don�t say �That�s the other gal�s problem, why bother?� Even if the powerful want us to forget it, we are innately brave and always carry within ourselves hope in the face of the impossible. We don�t run from the fire, we run into the fire.�

She leaned hard into the mic, the flesh stretched tight across her collarbones as she surged into her own skin, her fist beating the air for emphasis.

�So here�s what we do: As I speak, we have organizers, here, today, setting up encampments and building barricades in the streets, and we�re asking you to stay, right here, for as long as you can. We will lay siege to this city. We�re not leaving until our leaders hear us, meet our demands, and address, immediately, these emergencies of democracy, inequality, and climate.�

At this point, what Kate Morris was actually saying didn�t quite connect with the crowd, which let out a half-confused round of applause. She pushed on, trying to make them understand.

�Find the people wearing the blue armbands, and they will set you up with the supplies you need: tents, sleeping bags, water, food. For those watching, anywhere in the world: Get here. As quickly as you can. We are not here to spark violence or damage even a single brick. This is not a MAGA rally. The buildings that surround us, this is our heritage. It�s our home, and we will treat it as such. We must be uncompromising in our nonviolence, but the business of the heartless and violent corporate plutocracy that now passes for governance in this city? That�s finished. Not one deal will happen, not one law will pass, not one piece of corporate welfare will be enacted until we, the citizens of this country, are heard.�

Walt Pasquina watched as three guys with blue armbands carried a piece of fencing from Seventh Street down to Madison Drive, where a few others appeared to be reassembling the portable metal barriers to form a barricade. In the streets just beyond the Mall, police had erected two-meter-high smart fences, which suddenly, like a mini Maginot Line, were being hacked, disconnected, and carried away in pieces by teams of four or five. He could see them being reappropriated at certain points along Madison Drive. Kelly was pestering him, thrusting her phone under his nose: Kelly, it read. We need your help. Here�s what you can do next.

�Never forget,� cried Morris from the stage, �at any moment we can choose to be agents of change. I promise you, there is nothing more meaningful than when your life is on the line and you choose to fight back.�

Master Patrol Officer Andrea Sanchez, an undercover with the D.C. Metropolitan Police, could not decide what to do. Standing just north of the Smithsonian Castle, she watched as groups of blue-armbanded folks were basically running off with every last piece of physical infrastructure intended for crowd control. Her instinct was to start making arrests before things got out of hand, but the instructions in her earpiece were contradictory. There was something else going on in the city, and officers were being pulled from the concert to deal with it. Meanwhile, there were more portable toilets being delivered mid-event, and big trucks with pallets of food and water being off-loaded onto the Mall, and strangest of all, there were construction crews jackhammering into the pavement of Jefferson Drive. Everything was happening extremely fast.

�In this moment, in this city, in this dark hour, we will prove that all the divisions heaped on us by the powerful and wealthy are false. They don�t fear us yet�but they will. Because we are what they didn�t see coming and what they never thought possible. We are the deluge. Join us. Get to D.C. It is not too late. The future is not yet written, and all anyone will ever ask you twenty, thirty, forty years from now is where were you? What did you do when you were called?�

And instead of walking off, Kate Morris took two steps and jumped from the stage to the grass below, where she was greeted like one of the rock stars. She grabbed the first random guy from the audience, as security looked on in confusion, and together they picked up the crowd-control fencing that enclosed the VIP area and began carrying it south to the roadway. People were cheering, screaming, looking at one another like, Wait, really? When Beyonc� and Eddie Vedder peaked out from backstage, their general bewilderment mirrored that of the audience.

The remainder of the event proceeded strangely. The bands and musicians went on, played the hits, and for the most part people behaved as though they were at a concert. Yet in the midst of this, the crowd leaked, siphoning off to join roving gangs of impromptu construction workers, directed by field marshals IDed by their blue armbands. Messages arrived on phones, watches, and glasses. A wider blast reached over five million sympathizers, asking for their help in both bodies and donations. On key streets, people began to build a series of blockades out of smart fencing, portable toilets, and tire-puncturing police wire, unspooled on all roads between Constitution and Independence Avenues. The area had already been cordoned off by police with standard protocol concrete barricades and metal detectors, and the street blockades would deny the authorities access to remove the concrete. Groups of severe-looking Blue Bands stationed themselves outside the entrances to each of the buildings within their perimeter. The National Gallery of Art and the National Air and Space Museum, for instance, would be closed for the foreseeable future. Finally, groups began erecting tents in neat rows between the stage and Fourteenth Street, creating bisecting pathways around which their makeshift city could grow. Two medical tents and two cafeterias sprouted up on either end of the Mall, with twenty-five solar and ninety bicycle generators deployed as connective tissue between those hubs.

Officer Andrea Sanchez�s insistence that there was something going on at this concert�not a terrorist attack, not an active shooter, not a riot, but something far weirder�went ignored, as did the calls from other officers on the scene. For thirteen years, the Metro and Capitol Police had gone on high alert whenever a large group of people descended for any reason whatsoever. The Capitol Building and White House became veritable fortresses for so much as an AARP knitting convention, and crowd-control mechanisms were deployed throughout the district in case things got out of hand. But now their drones were flying away, vanishing across the Potomac, and many of her fellow officers complained that their radios weren�t working or that they were getting conflicting orders. It was giving her a sickness in her gut, as she wondered what a mob turned loose might feel like. When she confronted one of the men coordinating the larceny, though, he was so calm and reasonable.

�You can�t do that,� she said, flipping her badge open and stuffing it in his face. �You can�t move that there.�

�No, no it�s fine,� Quinton Marcus-McCall told her, and he showed her a forged permit. Officer Sanchez studied it while Quinton�s team continued to carry fencing from the access aisles to the points of entrance and egress along the Mall. �This is part of the performance. Call it in.�

�I did call it in, man! Y�all got to stop! Now!�

�There really must be some confusion,� said Marcus-McCall, scratching his head. �Let me call my boss quick. This all must be a misunderstanding.�

And moments later, Sanchez�s dispatcher, which was not a person these days but a soothing electronic voice hooked into the Metropolitan Police�s central computer, told her that indeed this was part of the concert, including all the mature trees being planted right into the jackhammered concrete on the north-south roads.

Once the organizers controlled those north and south borders of Independence and Constitution, they went to work on Third Street in the shadow of the Capitol and Fourteenth Street just east of the Washington Monument. Groups of twenty sat down in the street in circles and fed their hands into tubes. Inside were handcuffs that secured their wrists. This tactic of deploying multiple wheels of human beings chained together, impossible to move without ripping off someone�s arm, was sometimes called a lockbox, sometimes a sleeping dragon, and had been cribbed from long-ago WTO protests in Seattle. The police converged on Fourteenth and Third Streets, but all they could do was stand there until the proper tools arrived. On a cue delivered by the app, two hundred people in interlocking human chains broke into song: �Wild World� by Cat Stevens followed by �The Way You Smile� by Zeden, followed by a more obscure number by veteran troubadour Joe Pug. They had a list fifty tunes deep, and they�d repeat it until they went hoarse. As long as they held the road.

And yet instead of reinforcements showing up to cut open the tubes and remove the protestors, the D.C. Metro and Capitol Police were being diverted elsewhere. Intelligence agencies had asserted, through their monitoring of social media traffic, that several Black extremist groups were trying to spark riots in the city�s ghettos. The chaos in Dallas was still on everyone�s mind, so the bulk of the city�s police force was dispatched to sections of Deanwood, Anacostia, and LeDroit Park, where supposed riots were breaking out. Indeed, that morning small groups of protestors, holding signs demanding an end to police violence, had hustled from one neighborhood to the other, barricading streets at random. Numbering only in the hundreds, they nevertheless managed to sow enormous chaos. Police intelligence insisted that this was a real threat, that thousands of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and 6Degrees extremists were stoking riots on par with Dallas, but wherever the city�s generous helping of riot police showed up, the threat had already melted to another block, another section of the city. Meanwhile, twenty-seven buses pulled into major intersections in the heart of D.C., blocking traffic on every street that led to the Mall. Teams of thirty to forty people exited, faces covered (by bandanas, balaclavas, Guy Fawkes and Joker masks), and with military coordination, they rocked the buses onto their sides. Bystanders filmed as the huge vehicles toppled and crashed onto the street and then ran, thinking the buses would explode. This strategy proved most useful at the four corners of the captured territory, essentially cutting off Jefferson and Madison Drives at Fourteenth Street and Third Street from the rest of the city, allowing organizers the rest of the day and night to establish a fortified perimeter and sow confusion for any authority trying to hinder their tactics. By the time the concert wrapped up, for all intents and purposes, Kate Morris�s foot soldiers controlled the National Mall, and no one in Washington, D.C.�s chain of command, from the chief of police to the mayor to the Feds, quite knew what to do about a bunch of folks with their arms handcuffed together by the Washington Monument singing Pharrell�s �Happy.�

In the organizers� command center, a trailer discreetly situated behind the stage, Tom Levine hovered behind Liza Yudong, watching her manipulate an AR screen. Only the night before, Levine had told his fianc�e where he was going and what was happening, knowing that it could mean the end of their engagement. He was in D.C. by dawn the next day with nothing but a toothbrush and a change of clothes in a backpack.

�How are you doing all this?� Tom now asked Liza. She removed a pair of harlequin-style ARs, rubbed her eyes after a long day of watching the chaos organize in three-dimensional graphics around her face, and looked at her old coworker like he was boring her.

�You know in the movie when the screenplay says �Computer stuff, computer stuff, computer stuff�? The AI does all that, and I just sit here.�

�And here I was afraid you�d lose your sense of humor without me, Liz.�

Liza went on to explain, in the most dumbed-down, patronizing way she could manage, how not only was her algorithm pushing tactical intelligence to individuals as open-source resistance but also how it created a unity of command. Identity prediction analysis gave her algorithm a solid notion of who could be called upon to do what, and each instruction arrived on the device of a person deemed likely to carry it out.

�So you�ve spied on people to determine if they�d be willing participants,� said Tom.

� �Spied� is a big word. We use the same data as Pepsi or the Democratic Party. I call it my Occupy AI. We determined we needed a base of five thousand good little unthinking, unquestioning revolutionaries, so that if the AI asked them to act like chickens, there�ll be five thousand smelly hippies on the Mall clucking in unison.�

It was a bit more complex than that. The predictive tech, along with the gigabytes of data gathered, bought, and sold by advertisers on behavioral futures markets, was coveted by all kinds of actors. The New York Times had reported on how Vic Love had utilized a powerful new tool from CLK Metrics to devastate his electoral opponents going as far back as his Senate bid in Montana, with his campaign uniquely targeting voters� psychology in groundbreaking ways. Liza used the same tools to recruit their true believers, an eighteen-month process in which their group made contact with nearly twenty-five thousand potential occupiers, sifting through the best and brightest of the past twenty years of social movements, veterans of BLM, Idle No More, Sunrise, Extinction Rebellion, Occupy, and Standing Rock, as well as young people just stepping into the activist space. These microtargeted individuals were not let in on the details of the plan until they�d undergone a background check and training in nonviolent direct action and the hard skills of organization and encampment, everything from first aid to latrine construction. No one on the executive committee ever had personal contact with any of their cadre leaders. It was all done through anonymizing software and aliases. The climate concert itself went unmentioned. All these folks knew was that they were going to be called to do something bold and radical. From the perspective of law enforcement, Kate Morris, Liza Yudong, Seth Young, Anthony Pietrus, and Matt Stanton had only been planning a concert. Yudong delivered insight into the protocols that governed D.C.�s sprawling security apparatus in a post�9/11, post�1/6 environment, and she used this to develop machine learning to rapidly deploy participants in a mass-protest event. Her program could recruit, train, and direct new members without anyone so much as tapping a key, generating seemingly leaderless action, while organizing its tactics around Homeland Security, D.C. Metro Police, and Capitol Police preparations for civil unrest. When all those people ran to Fourteenth Street to lock their arms in a sleeping dragon, no person told them to do that. It was the AI processing multiple data streams at once to decide how to create the most effective disruption to gain control of Fourteenth from Madison to Jefferson.

The recruits now did their jobs with dedication and efficiency. For nine hours following Morris�s speech, under a pale ghost sky, they worked tirelessly to build a garrison in the heart of the US capital. The concertgoers made their decisions after the last acts departed, some electing to stay, picking up tents and gear, but most filtering back out to the streets and the Metro, spooked by the overturned buses, still not sure if this was for real. On that first night their makeshift city glowed with digital screens, headlamps, and campfires, and the chatter of voices and song carried across the city. Volunteers came by to feed those still chained in sleeping dragons and give them sips of water. Oblate disc of moon peeking through clouds. Errant drops of rain hissing in the campfires. She wouldn�t sleep that night, but Kate Morris did pause from her work to look out over the sea of flapping plastic pulled over tents to fight the dampness, the smattered-star glitter of people checking their phones in the hastily built commune, the buzz and energy of last call at the bar now indefinitely suspended.

And yet by morning, it seemed like the whole thing was over. If seven thousand people remained on the damp lawn of the National Mall, they would�ve been lucky. Liza climbed out of her tent and saw their disappointing numbers. Given that almost all five thousand of their Blue Bands had stayed, their larger retention rate was under 2 percent. The scene looked like a poorly attended convention for suburban camping enthusiasts. The stage remained. The backstage trailers remained, all rock and pop occupants having made themselves scarce. The north and south streets were piled with debris. Semi-amused, semi-exasperated cops were still trying to get arc welders to the sleeping dragons, a few progressive press outlets hovered around the Media Relations tent, and the kitchens fed veggie burritos to anyone who showed up, but all told, it looked like it was about to be a lot of egg on someone�s face. A revolution that�s about as much of a fart in a bag as climate change itself, tweeted one commentator.

Kate Morris made the rounds, thanking people for staying, urging them to reach out to their networks to bring in more bodies. Most people listened to her from inside their tents because the rain had picked up.

The status quo, for its part, was laughing at her. The president was in Japan for a meeting of the G20, so Vice President McGuirk and the head of Homeland Security got on a holo-chat with the mayor of D.C. With the threat of Dallas-level riots appearing to be a mirage, all agreed it was best to encircle the Mall for now, keep a phalanx of menacing crowd-control cops between these granola-eaters and the Capitol, and let the whole thing fizzle in a few days from crummy weather. Once it was down to the hundreds, they�d start making arrests.

Morris, Levine, Young, Yudong, and their fifteen most veteran organizers huddled behind the stage that second night debating if this whole thing was already over. Two years of planning a complex and dangerous nonviolent ambush, on top of the difficulty of simply planning a major concert, and the only thing they hadn�t counted on was that �We�d barely be able to summon a crowd the size of a poetry reading,� said Seth.

�The Fyre Festival of the climate crisis,� Liza added.

�It�s still early. It�s raining. People are waiting to see what will happen,� Kate assured them, but she was fending off an alarming sensation. She could take the death threats, the hate mail, the deepfake porn, the actual leaked sex video, all the vicious internet bile, but what truly got at her was this ego blow, this rebuttal of her entire thesis that she was a unique conduit for activating people�s faith in themselves. She felt stupid. The National Park Service had sent her an email explaining that she was in violation of her permit and laid out the consequences. She could go to jail for two years for the most embarrassing protest action in modern memory.

By morning, black clouds had moved in. At the sight of the dread-filled sky, hundreds more packed up and left. What was left of the patchwork crowd circulated around the National Mall pointlessly. The folks in the lockboxes had unshackled themselves when the cops appeared to lose interest. The city was busy cutting the knot of chains and dragging the overturned buses away. Everyone waited for the conclusion of this sad effort.

APRIL 4

It�s hard to say why the fourth day.

Maybe it took that long for people to pick up gear at the nearest REI. Maybe the rain letting up was key. Or maybe Morris�s speech took a few days to make its impact. Whatever the reason, twelve hundred people descended on the Mall, setting up tents and registering with organizers, who assigned them jobs in sanitation or the kitchen or construction. The next day, as the sun dried the grass and people didn�t have to hop puddles, an additional twenty-one hundred bodies arrived, an influx so large it took until midnight to process them all, get them shelter, and go over the encampment�s rules demanding nonviolence, respect, and nothing even remotely resembling a weapon. Within a week, nearly fifteen thousand people had taken up residence in the heart of D.C., with more arriving every day. The Mall transformed into a city grid. Several Indigenous action groups�including members of the Oceti Sakowin, Navajo, Choctaw Nation, Hopi, Potawatomi, and the Cree and M�tis from as far away as the Northwest Territories�erected enormous tipis, bringing with them years of experience occupying and blockading. They arranged their shelters around a firepit in the shape of a buffalo horn and planted rows of the national flags of all the represented tribes. The library lent books. Folks waited in line for their turn to generate power on the bikes. Huge industrial pots cooked rice, soups, and stews around the clock to keep everyone fed. Medics provided whatever care they could, and teachers set up classes on climate science and the history of nonviolent resistance for the kids. Each night an emcee announced new activities and what had showed up in the lost and found. Donations of tents, sleeping bags, food, clothing, medical supplies, books, and solar generators were dispersed from a central distribution point on Seventh Street, and demonstrators swapped out of the frontline blockades every five hours, pushing nervous police farther back as a dense wall of people wearing masks, goggles, shields, and other improvised armor inched across Fifteenth Street and up the hill toward the Washington Monument. Crews were jackhammering apart the streets, planting even more trees in the soil below. Finally, police caught on and stopped any flatbed truck with a mature tree on it, but at this point the concert�s landscape artist, a Lakota Blue Band from North Dakota, had transformed key intersections into miniature forests. For example, Fourth Street, between the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian, had been commandeered by a dense copse of maples, dogwoods, and tulip trees, like a sprite-land set for A Midsummer Night�s Dream had grown straight out of the tenderized asphalt. The crowd, for days drifting like steam, began to coalesce and, having gained power, drive an unseen engine. Police with sniper rifles watched from the rooftops.

The mayor and DHS debated what to do. They had the protestors hemmed in and there hadn�t been a single report of violence. There were also a lot of children in the crowd, as Media Relations had made sure to circulate images of kids playing in the grass, the rain, in and around the legs of police. As many as ten million people were watching on their VR sets, taking tours through the camp, communicating with occupiers, and watching the daycare, preschool, and elementary classes learn about the carbon cycle. This was a calculated risk deemed vital by Morris, Young, and Yudong: to encourage people to bring and keep their children there. It gave authorities, especially the mayor, pause. This situation had to be resolved peacefully. These were not alt-right lunatics in Viking gear storming the Capitol Rotunda. There were kids in reading circles by day and folk singers crooning onstage at night. �It would be better if they were rioting,� the mayor grumbled to an aide.

In a holo-conference, President Love remained utterly unconcerned. He had bigger fish to fry (like China�s increasingly unhinged president; like the AWOL Mars mission), and cute actions like this tended to burn themselves out. Forging his political career through the Democratic Party, he had particular disdain for lefty agitators who couldn�t organize a barbecue. Let their trash pile up and the porta-pots overflow. He would finish his Asia tour, and if they were still there by the time he got back, he�d start choking them out with vomit gas.

Logan Dougall came from North Carolina, where he�d lived for two years on an anarchist commune scavenging his own food and stitching old clothing back together, no plumbing or electricity. When he hitchhiked into town for provisions, the driver told him what was happening in D.C. He decided he was sick of the commune anyway and kept on hitching north. Bridget Zeckhauser bought a ticket out of Juneau, Alaska, where she�d spent a decade studying the fate of the northern sea otter. She�d been drowning in a lot of despair lately, and when she saw Morris take the stage for that speech, she had a real �Fuck it� moment, packed her sleeping bag and tent and was in D.C. eighteen hours later. Walt Pasquina�s younger sister refused to leave. They argued about it for a day and a night, but she was not only smarter than him, he realized, but way more stubborn. He called their parents and told them what the deal was, Kelly was being a pain. �She was born a pain,� their mom said, totally unsurprised that her daughter wanted to get herself fully wrapped up in all this. Walt told his mom he�d stay and at least make sure Kelly was safe and things remained orderly and peaceful.

The Clean Energy Labor Coalition, much of its leadership under investigation, racketeering charges in the works, had to cling to the right side of the law, even as many of its members, educated in the strike and agitation, saw the D.C. action and began to deliver cash, supplies, and bodies. CELC members formed the bulk of the construction crews and got to work dealing with what organizers knew would be the key issue: waste disposal. Bathrooms in nearby buildings were quickly seized and treated as the occupation�s most vital treasure; the sanitation team cleaned the portable toilets and showers every hour, the refuse pumped into either nearby sewers or sanitation trucks, trash minimized, collected, recycled, and repurposed whenever possible.

Morris opened a line of communication with the mayor�s office to assure the city that the occupation would do everything it could to keep the crowd nonviolent and nondestructive. They would police their own. Would-be looters, provocateurs, and other troublemakers would be expelled by the Blue Bands. Though everyone is welcome, it is a privilege to be a part of this, the AI warned any incoming insurrectionists. The rule of law will prevail within these new borders of freedom. In other words, don�t smash a Starbucks window, jackass, or you will be forced to leave. Like Gandhi�s satyagrahas, the Blue Bands formed the point of the spear for an army of warriors whose strength was not to fight. They brought a militarized discipline to the operation. Though she often talked the talk, Kate Morris had no patience for horizontal structures or autonomous self-organization. Leaderlessness was for the birds. She only intended to offer people the fiction that they were in the arms of an organic movement. But she needed more enforcers, so her people found a kid named Dougall from North Carolina, a sea otter scientist all the way from Alaska, and a Marine from Maryland. After brief interviews and background checks, she offered them blue armbands with tracking chips sewn into the fabric.

The crowd bloomed out into the core of the city, one day unfurling another petal into Fourteenth Street, engulfing the Department of Commerce, the next plunging down the throat of Twelfth Street and Independence until the Department of Agriculture was swamped by tents and tarps. The next day an estimated four thousand people arrived, colonizing most of the hill around the Washington Monument. The police had no capacity to push back. Their drones kept flying in the wrong directions, swamped by some sophisticated computer virus. Their cyber units understood they�d been hacked, their networks still disrupted by a relentless machine learning algorithm. FaceRec tech was getting its lunch eaten by masks, hats, and T-shirts designed to scramble the software and turn all face ID data to bunk.

DHS was furious at D.C. Metro�s incompetence and various turf battles ensued in the back rooms of city services. Meanwhile, the National Guard was called in, but they quickly found themselves busy elsewhere. Two weeks into the siege, as more and more resisters quit their semesters or left their jobs, micro-occupations were springing up in L�Enfant Plaza and Benjamin Banneker Park; in Dupont and Logan Circles; at Howard University and the Zoological Park; on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, as protestors tried to shut down traffic to Reagan National Airport with a snake march. Seven hundred people walking against traffic required the full attention of the Guard, who fired tear gas into the crowd, kettled the mass of people into manageable chunks, twisted arms, slammed bodies into hoods, arrested freely. Liza Yudong�s AI had nothing to do with this, but people took its lessons and ventured out into the city to snarl traffic, get themselves arrested, and keep the Guard busy and away from the main encampment. Early in their planning, Kate had explained to her old friend Liza what she wanted: �We clog the jails, overwhelm their capacity to arrest their way out of this. We don�t want chaos or destruction, we want befuddlement. Head-scratching.�

Now Yudong�s AI continued its dance with law enforcement, allocating bodies, swarming a given area of the city. Mass arrests were like swatting at a cloud of gnats: maybe you dizzied a few, but they recovered as quickly as they dispersed. Meanwhile, the executive committee threw up a digital map of the city on the wall of their command center and, after consulting the AI, ordered all new arrivals to find space on Upper Senate Park, just north of the Capitol. It was a risky annexation, but that afternoon they poured nearly fifteen hundred bodies across the streets, jamming all movement outside the Russell Senate Office Building. Most members of Congress had already left the city. The next day, the Secret Service erected a razor-wire fence around the White House and Capitol. President Love, back from Asia, was rerouted to Camp David.

�How the fuck did it get this out of hand?� he demanded. When his advisors began whimpering excuses, he knew they were not sufficiently fearful of him. He had experienced this kind of disrespect in the military. What he�d done about it was, the first time someone coughed �queer� at him, he put that guy on the ground and beat his ear until it was cauliflower with 70 percent hearing loss.

Huddled with his cabinet via a secure VR link, Love wondered why they couldn�t send a six-pack of horror drones down there firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Dallas was too fresh in everyone�s mind, his cabinet warned. There were children. �We should be forceful but careful,� Secretary of Defense Caperno warned. �Right now this is peaceful and contained. There is no predicting what would happen if we act rashly.�

�Is it contained?� Love scoffed. �Because when I first checked in, a few snowflakes were roasting marshmallows and now these animals have surrounded half the city.�

�We need a place to put the arrested following any action,� the secretary of defense went on, and she suggested RFK Stadium, a ghostly and dilapidated urban sore that Nixon had used to respond to the May Day Tribe protestors who�d attempted to shut down the district over the Vietnam War.

�That was less than eight thousand people,� Love�s chief of staff noted. �There are nearly ten times that many right now on the Mall alone. Maybe a quarter of a million in the city at large.�

Caperno suggested building a series of floating internment facilities off the shore of Annapolis, similar to what the Europeans had done to house refugees in the Mediterranean: Extrajudicial spaces where they could let the movement�s leadership rot for a year or so in legal limbo under PRIRA. DHS was already preparing floating prisons in the Caribbean as Haiti faced famine and its people tried to make a run for Florida. It wouldn�t be too difficult to redirect some of that budget and infrastructure toward the waters off Annapolis. Love, grinding a pen cap between his molars, eager to get a few vodka tonics in him, told them to go ahead. They added a short provision to the executive order allowing Xuritas units to join the peacekeeping forces.

And still they came.

From every state in the Union, from overseas, from disappearing islands in the Pacific most Americans hadn�t even heard of. A grocery store clerk from New Mexico, an electrician from Vermont, a prep school student from D.C. whose mother happened to be a Supreme Court justice.

�Why are you here?� a CNN reporter asked him.

�I don�t understand why everyone isn�t here,� he told her. A gas mask dangled from his hip and his shirt read FIGHT BACK. �I�m here because we have nothing left to lose. Win now or die.�

Letitia Hamilton was eleven years old and homeless. She�d been in foster care most of her life until she decided what was going on in the home where she was staying was �hazardous to my health,� as she told a white lady with butterfly tattoos on her arms. Living on the streets for two years with a subterranean class of children who inhabited the shadows in the capital of the richest, most powerful country in the world, Letitia learned many ways of getting by. Not just how to sleep and eat but how to be fleet of foot, to trust no one, and how to con people into doing things for her. For a few months, she�d been living in an empty condo, having figured out the code to the Realtor�s lockbox. She went in at night and came out in the morning before any potential showings. When she saw what was happening on the Mall, though, she packed up. It didn�t all make sense to her. The intricacies of climate, inequality, and geopolitics had not been in any of the TV shows, video games, or VR worldes she�d experienced in her brief interactions with those formats. What she did know was that people were pissed off, the world was mean and shitty, and now a bunch of them were getting together to do something about it. She told the woman at the intake that she and her mom wanted a tent. The white lady gave her the tent, but Bridget from Alaska with the butterfly tattoos knew what was up, because she kept coming by to check on her. Not that Letitia needed it. Unlike the adults, she could move anywhere she wanted, flow between worlds with ease. She slipped outside the borders of the occupation, overheard what the police were telling each other, and ran back to whisper it to somebody with a blue armband. She helped make the coffee every morning. (She loved coffee, had been drinking it since she was eight.) People got to know her in the camp. They thought they were looking out for her, but they had it wrong: She was looking out for them. It was funny, she�d always thought of the place she laid her head as somewhere she had to stay. Never permanent. Never to become attached to. And yet her little one-person tent in the dead center of the National Mall, boxed in at this point by seventy-five thousand other people, damn if this didn�t feel very much like home.

At first there was a show every night. A musician singing a few acoustic tunes, a stand-up comedian performing, an actor, author, or activist giving a quick speech. Haydukai rolled back through for a set. A former vice president, an ex-senator, and a few other former lawmakers arrived to show their encouragement. Tracy Aamanzaihou planned to speak, but then the White House called. After careful consideration, ashamed of her cowardice, she decided against it. There were dances in which people conscripted large parts of the lawn to shake out their tension and wring out some joy. Someone had erected a pink and purple bouncy castle for the kids. This was right beside the fencing and razor wire D.C. Police used to garrison the Capitol Building, and the images zipped across the planet: All these children slamming into pillowed walls with militarized police watching behind barbed wire. They tried to keep booze and hard drugs out, but obviously people did what people do. There was a lot of hooking up in tents and tipis. In the middle of each and every night, somewhere in the huge swath of territory they�d annexed, there would be the grunts of fresh sex, stifled (or not so stifled) cries of orgasms. Human beings and all.

Sitting beside his former boss on foldout chairs, a homemade stew cooking over a little campfire she�d built, Tom Levine admitted that he�d never believed any of this could work.

Kate Morris licked tomato paste from her fingers. �So what changed your mind?�

�When I heard Matt wasn�t going.� Tom didn�t look at her to see how this landed. His intention wasn�t to hurt her, it was just a fact. �Because if he split, it meant he really thought you�d figured it out. When I told Rekia what you were planning�it�s like both of them knew you and Liza were for real with this. That�s what scared them.�

Kate nodded and tried to think of something to say. �Sorry if this caused problems at home.�

Tom laughed. �That almost sounded human, Kate.�

She batted her eyes. �I try.�

Tom let out a slow sigh. �Why did you want me and not Rek? Or Coral, for that matter?�

Kate gave a funny little shrug and fart of her lips. �I trust you, Tom. Hell, I trust you more than I did Matt. And in the end, he did what I thought he would do ten years ago.�

�Yeah, but why not Coral?�

Kate smiled weakly and tossed another log onto her fire. A local tree farm had donated them by the pallet. Though burning trees wasn�t exactly on message, she�d never denied herself the pleasure of a good campfire.

�Fierce Blue Fire, my friend�it was infested from the start. Corporate spies and FBI informants. From the rank and file to leadership. And this whole bazingo��she gestured to their wild festival��would never have worked without the old-fashioned element of surprise.�

Tom scratched his messy black locks, his expression pained. He�d put on a lot of weight since she�d seen him last, all his muscle turning into pudding around his torso and under his chin. She waited for him to figure it out.

�Stanton told me you were paranoid, but�you don�t know that, Kate.�

�I do know it.�

�Who?�

�Who do you think?� When he continued to wait, perplexed, she told him. Through a careful and partially illegal investigation, she�d learned that her second-in-command, their friend Coral Sloane, was an undercover FBI agent. The Harvard Kennedy background had been true, but they�d never gone into activism. They�d been recruited. Once that piece fell into place, there were so many moments, arguments, fuckups, and missed opportunities that never directly pointed back to Coral but suddenly in hindsight made absolute sense. After the events of 2030, in which not only did their legislation get gutted and reanimated but her personal life became the subject of a coordinated campaign of character assassination, Kate hired a firm to investigate their organization. They quietly looked into everyone in the D.C. and New York offices, even Matthew Stanton. That was how she�d discovered he was sleeping with the reporter who�d written an article about her years ago. For some reason, that knowledge was more irritating than she would have anticipated. Then her investigators told her about Coral. There were also bugs: in her office, in her and Matt�s apartment, even on her bike. She left them all in place.

�You can�t tell Rekia.�

Tom sat in stunned silence staring at the side of the trailer that had once been designated for Jack White. �I feel like I�m going to fucking throw up,� he said finally.

Morris stared at her fire for a long time because she knew what he was feeling. She�d gone through it herself. �At least it wasn�t Matt,� she said.

The next day the executive committee delivered a document to every major media organization. They declared the siege of the United States capital would come to an end when lawmakers agreed to enact a Climate X agenda, amnesty for everyone involved in the occupation, a repeal of PRIRA, the release of all political prisoners, and an investigation of all companies involved in obfuscating the science of, and delaying action on, climate change. Otherwise, they would slowly but surely bring the American government and economy to a halt. A few weeks earlier, this may have sounded fantastical, but now there were an estimated 123,000 people clogging the center of the city, with more flooding in every day.

However, it was not just supporters who were coming. Militiamen, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and the American Patriot League began to hike over the Potomac as well, assault rifles shouldered, body armor strapped tight, camo fatigues and their own symbols, slogans, and armbands: swastikas, the T�r rune, HATE, the South African apartheid flag, the APL�s menacing Cerberus, or the �Baby Breivik� meme, which featured Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as a toddler mischievously urinating. They stood watch on the perimeter of the city, shadowed by police, waiting for an excuse. The previous fall, a powerful new recruitment tool had exploded onto the internet, an AI of unknown origins. It camped out in chat rooms and VR worldes, found young white men, and went to work on them. Like Yudong�s app, it sifted through their behavioral surplus to understand why they were sad or upset or furious, and in the guise of a gorgeous young woman or older mentor, inked a portrait of a world in which they were in danger. They had to act before it was too late. The member rolls of white nationalist groups abruptly skyrocketed. The League alone was adding nearly two thousand members a month. Fox News, bludgeoned in the ratings by Rory Baumgart�s radical network, Renaissance, had no choice but to try to scream louder for the preservation of white heritage. Many local law enforcement agencies had long-lasting relationships with citizen militias, funneling them arms and money through �community grant� programs. Military contractors, including the president�s former company, Xuritas, used shell companies to enhance training and recruitment in the American Patriot League. Attorney General Greenstreet had suggested this marriage of convenience, convinced that the DOJ could appropriate these folks to root out 6Degrees. Private contractors would embed undercovers to keep the League in check while using them to gather intelligence. The D.C. mayor, who knew nothing of this program, directed a contingent of his force to shadow the right-wing paramilitaries everywhere they went. �If they so much as jay-walk, arrest them and confiscate their weapons,� he ordered. He would not let the new civil war everyone had been predicting for so long break out in his city. Andrea Sanchez, glad to train her sights on someone she recognized as an enemy, began showing up to her post at the Jefferson Memorial where many of these elements had gathered. She couldn�t help but despair at how much more firepower these faux soldiers had while the executive branch remained eerily silent on the matter.

Holly Pietrus arrived in D.C. just before the order was given to lock down the city. Her husband had agreed to stay in New York and keep up the battle to free her father, while she took the train to Maryland. She reached a maze of abandoned cars on I-395 and had to hike the rest of the way. She couldn�t believe her eyes. The district looked positively reinvented, a humming dayglow carnival awash in graffiti. In just over a month artists had transformed the buildings: a twenty-foot banner of deceased congressman John Lewis on the Potomac-facing side of the Mandarin Oriental with GOOD TROUBLE stamped beneath his scowl; the other side of that building hosted a three-story image of a little girl as a circus fire-blower, incinerating a group of briefcased, besuited businessmen; a mural painted around Stanton Square and visible from the sky with THIS IS OUR CRADLE, OUR SCHOOL, OUR HOME, OUR GARDEN. Surveillance drones buzzed overhead.

Met by the mephitic stench of trash, portable toilets, and trench latrines, the smell watering her eyes, it took Holly an hour to check in at the entrance, where she was searched for weapons by a stinky woman in a blue armband. Then she waded into the encampment, clopping over plywood bisecting neighborhoods of tents, yurts, tipis, and crude wooden shacks. Grass long eradicated now that the summer heat had moved in (eighty-seven degrees that day, May 7), the pulverized ground had dried to a fetid dust. Flags flew: Blue Fire, BLM, Veterans for Peace, upside-down Stars and Stripes, and the row of First Nations tribes along the buffalo horn formation, restaking a claim to their homeland. She was directed toward the stage, where the executive committee typically huddled. She spotted Kate, and for a moment was filled with the same anxiety as their previous three encounters: When you so idolize someone, you�re quick to think they find you a silly and tedious distraction.

�I had to walk from outside the city, and these shoes�� she began to stammer, and Kate stalked to her like she was going to throw a punch. Holly even flinched as the taller woman wrapped her arms around her neck. Kate didn�t know her own strength, and it hurt.

�You are fucking awesome,� she hissed in Holly�s ear. She pulled back, and there were tears in her bright banshee eyes.

�What you said about my dad� I had to come, and just say I�m with you. Whatever you need.�

�You fucking awesome nuclear bitch,� Morris went on, gripping her by the back of the neck and shaking her. Then she embraced her again, roughly.

While she was still wrapped up, Holly said, �It really stinks here.�

Kate laughed right in her ear. �Yeah, I know, we�re working on it.�

As she took Holly Pietrus on a tour of their exploding festival, Kate of course understood this girl would make the perfect informant, and she quietly sent a message to Liza to make sure eyes were on the FBF New York director�not that she approved of snitch-jacketing. Just in case.

That night there was a bonfire near the National Gallery. Reporters gathered for this impromptu press conference. People crowded around and strained their ears to hear what Kate Morris had to say.

�The city�s given you forty-eight hours to pack up,� said a reporter from CBS. �Will there be violence?�

�Not by us,� said Kate. �No one here even knows how to punch.�

�What do you hope to accomplish? You don�t expect Congress to actually enact your platform, do you?�

�Why wouldn�t we? We�re not bargaining anymore. We want unconditional surrender from the corporate state. Why don�t people believe me when I say that?�

Laughter at this, but her face remained untroubled, as if it had all come to pass already, and the laughter ceased. Light from the fire glimmered across the orb of a VR camera, and Quinton Marcus-McCall edged past it, blocking the viewers at home. A busybody camerawoman shooed him, and he sidestepped to the left.

�Moral suasion hasn�t worked. Electoral politics hasn�t worked.� Kate poked the fire with a long, slim log, and the embers hissed. �So all we have left is revolt. We have to make this country ungovernable, this economy unprofitable, this system unworkable.�

Quinton had joined the mutual aid arm of A Fierce Blue Fire and helped work the wreckage of the Great Eastern Flood and then Hurricane Rose the past fall. Shortly after that, he�d received an email asking if he was interested in becoming a leader of a nonviolent army. The reporter, bored with Morris droning on, looking for another angle, abruptly turned to him.

�What about you, sir? Why are you here?�

Quinton felt like a bank robber with the spotlight suddenly trained on him and laughed nervously. �Maybe I think about it a little different.� He shifted his eyes to Kate and back to the fire. He could remember seeing her speak for the first time in Detroit, what felt like three or four lifetimes ago, after what happened to his parents, but before he lost his sister. Before he ended things with his fianc�e. Before he dropped out of school. All these years of trying to do something worthy, and no one had ever asked him what he thought. �Sure, this is an act of physical rebellion.� He shifted on his feet and decided to let his freak flag fly for these folks. �But that can�t be all it is. It�s gotta be spiritual. It�s gotta be about an immaterial force within us. To save one life is to save all of humanity, right? Ever heard that? That�s the Holy Qur�an. But it applies across all faiths and nonfaiths. So to save a species from extinction, a people from annihilation�if that�s not summoning the Divine, I don�t know what is.�

Everyone paused, trying to grasp this somewhat inscrutable take.

�Yeah, I�m a little less froufrou than that,� Morris finally said, to much laughter.

Quinton felt his face flush in a good way. The beat of the drum circle drifted back to them from the east along with, gratefully, the scent of woodsmoke. Somewhere near the Washington Monument people were dancing, and the Capitol�s bright dome still shone in the wine-tinted twilight.

MAY 20

The next week the D.C. Police shut down every road leading into the city. Shelter in place. A state of exception. The only people allowed past the checkpoints had to have written permission from DHS. People continued to try to sneak over the Potomac on motorboats or wind their way up side streets through southern Maryland, a veritable underground railroad of activist passage on the way to the occupation. Meanwhile, police stood guard, studying the nightly glow of this invented city, waiting on something to snap.

Was Loren Victor Love the figure Kate had been waiting for all along? Had Mary Randall served a second term, would she have been able to use her�a woman she�d endorsed for president in �28�as a suitable foil? In order to spark rebellion against an enemy as faceless as anonymous capital, it helped that capital chose a hired gun like Love, a true hypermasculine paranoiac if ever she�d seen one. She�d expected covert rock and bottle throwing by agent provocateurs like she�d seen at Sacred Stone nearly twenty years ago. Infiltrators played the long game now, living out of tents but reporting to the task force organizing on the perimeter of the city. The occupation was surveilling its own, looking for undercovers, but this was needle-in-haystack work as the numbers grew.

While twelve thousand police, National Guard, and private security forces amassed in high school gymnasiums in Bethesda and Silver Spring, these undercover agents chose the ingress points: Independence Ave on the southeast corner of the Mall and Fourteenth and Constitution on the northwest corner. On May 20, well past the authorities� deadline to disperse, with everyone nerve-racked from the wait, teams of infiltrators set fire to several tents and the tipis in the buffalo horn. Then they radioed for authorities to descend. The day was hot and the fires burned quickly, catching nearby tents and leaping to others. Occupiers tried to fight the flames with bottles of water and the few extinguishers on hand, but the fire ate quickly into the center of the Mall. Meanwhile, the Guard was firing tear gas, scrambling between trees to tear out tents and arrest whoever didn�t run for it. The screams echoed over the day. Children wept in terror as police banged batons against riot shields and advanced, broken glass crunching underfoot.

The Occupy AI messaged every device: First and foremost, Don�t Panic. Like the Terminator said, �Come with me if you want to live.�

It told parents to move their children to the center of large circles of adults, and though these adults were suddenly very afraid, they did as told. Still, panic crept in, spread, and a few gathered their kids in their arms and tried to make a run through the barriers, only to be met by the wafting tear gas.

Kate Morris sat cross-legged on the floor of the command center, toggling through their cameras, trying to see it all at once. She bit her lip and watched the AI direct people as the police and Guard swarmed their fortifications. �Okay,� she said to herself. �Okay.�

Liza Yudong had anticipated the media blackout. She sent camera crews to the sites of police ingress with the only instruction to keep filming no matter what. They would livestream it all in 2D and VR. Holly Pietrus found Kate and Liza watching the monitors. She�d run from the other side of the Mall when the fires started and saw a Blue Band catch a rubber bullet in the stomach. She could hear people screaming now.

�Does your magic robot have a plan for this?� she demanded, inserting herself in Liza�s vision. �No, no one saw this coming at all.� Yudong bugged out her eyes, like Bitch, get out of the way.

The wailing of a sound cannon started up to the south, ear-splitting even inside the trailer. Holly flinched as the first flash grenade boomed nearby.

Morris slapped her laptop shut and stood. �Get these kits moving. Let�s go.� She had a small backpack, which she now rummaged through. Similar packs were traveling down through their ranks. She popped in earplugs, draped a piece of body armor over her torso, complete with a fortified breast plate, and finally pulled out a gas mask. Her eyes blazed with goofball fury, and she gripped Holly by her shoulders and shouted, �Tell them if they had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon them!�

Then she banged out of the trailer, braying laughter.

Over the last three and a half decades, given Seattle, given the Occupy movement, given Tahrir Square, given Hong Kong, given Black Lives Matter, given every G8 summit or NATO powwow, authority had become expert at clearing cities of large protests, and the climate concert�s organizing committee had studied these tactics. As police launched tear gas and strafed the wall of protestors with rubber bullets and water hoses, people fell. Zip-tied and dragged away to a fleet of waiting school buses, choking on gas when police ripped their masks free. But more came in their place, linking arms, pushing forward. Supply lines kicked in, bringing body armor, helmets, gas masks, and plexiglass shields to the front lines. The Blue Bands strapped everything from flak vests to foam pillows across their torsos and stormed to the front, and when they were hit, their friends, old and new, pulled them back up. Smoke curled skyward from the fires. People ran with buckets of water, and Letitia Hamilton, who knew she was the fastest mortal on two legs in this whole damn city, went hurtling back and forth hauling jugs of water from the caches to try to douse the tents. Sirens and sound cannons wailed, a head-splitting, fillings-rattling orchestra of state power. A scruffy teenager in a mask ran down Madison with a hockey stick, slapping gas canisters back at police, and the wind, a fervent revolutionary that day, kept carrying the plumes south, away from the Mall. City crews hooked chains to the trees planted in the roads and began tearing them out by the roots, while massive BearCats drove into the walls of flotsam, clearing roadways for police and National Guard to spill in.

Kate Morris shoved her way to the front of the crowd, and in doing so, could see her idea working. Amassed at the intersection of Fourth Street SW and Independence Avenue was a wall of human beings so thick and tight, she could barely squeeze through. As she oozed between the bodies, the sound cannon shut off, and she got her first whiff of gas, brief acid in the eyes. She slipped her mask on. People were shoulder to shoulder, groin to ass, but also without claustrophobia. Unafraid. Knit together as one organism. A few recognized her and helped get her through. As she reached the front lines, she stopped passing any men. An all-female brigade, two hundred women deep, pushed at the edges of the street. Some had gas masks, but many were frantically washing each other�s eyes out with bottled water while others wore every variety of goggles�chemist, swimming, and construction. Students and retail workers, professors and waitresses, grade-school teachers and nurses, housewives and graphic designers. And it was working, this idea she�d had to use only women on the front. The cops were hesitating at the edge of Independence, now a mess of toppled trees, broken fencing, and all the other debris used to barricade the road in April. A phalanx in full military gear, zip ties dangling, was restraining a shrieking girl who couldn�t have been more than four and a half feet, maybe all of thirteen years old.

Kate stepped through streaks and drizzles of blood on the pavement. Because Fourth Street was sandwiched tightly between two museums and packed with refuse, the police couldn�t move in more than four or five abreast, a bad idea tactically, as the women were hurling rocks and other scraps of rubble. Hauling the girl away, the cops fell back at the order of some higher command. They all moved behind a Xuritas Armored Vehicle, also known as a Rolling Fortress.

Matte black with a D.C. Metro Police logo on the side, the XAV had begun its life on the outskirts of Saudi Arabia during the first years of the civil war two presidential administrations ago, only to be refurbished and repurposed for civilian use in the nation�s capital. It crept forward, and the police received simple instructions: Let the Fortress do the work. They�ll move.

The wind carried off much of the tear gas and Kate couldn�t see well in the mask anyway. She ripped it off as she reached the front of the roiling crowd. The women hurled taunts and jeers, lifted their armor and shirts to expose pale breasts and slapped their hearts and dared the police to fire their weapons. A stun grenade exploded and five or six women fell, only to be hauled back to their feet by their comrades, while others, deafened, clutched their ears. Less than thirty feet separated their horde and the XAV. It surged closer. Kelly Pasquina, who�d come sprinting to join the wall when the AI asked her to, knew her brother was probably terrified trying to find her right now, but she couldn�t care less. She recognized Morris, and for a moment she forgot about tear gas and sound cannons. There was only awe as her hero brushed past her.

�Be careful!� Kelly called to her, and the woman turned to her and winked.

And then Kate Morris began striding out into no-man�s-land, toward the XAV. Hair blown wild by the same wind carrying off the gas, trail shoes thudding over bloody pavement, sleeves of her Montana thrift store jacket pushed up her elbows, she was sweating grease in the heat. She dragged a forearm across her eyes to clear the sweat, the acid sting�she could barely even see�and then started screaming as loudly as her parched, gassed throat would allow.

�C�mon, man! Let�s do it!� Twenty feet, fifteen, ten, she kept walking at the XAV as it rolled forward. �You want to do it? So fucking do it! Fucking do it, motherfucker, c�mon!� And then she reached the hood and slapped a palm on the black nose of the vehicle. The driver let off the gas, slowing but still moving. Kate stumbled back a step. �Fucking do it, asshole! Don�t tease me!� She balled her hands into fists and beat the hood again and again and again. �Do it! Hit the gas, you fucking coward!�

How selfishly alive she felt, shot through with adrenaline and endorphins and fury like she�d free-soloed an undiscovered mountain. All thoughts of her family, her friends, her lovers vanquished and forgotten by this glory, and she screamed until her voice cracked and tears ran down her cheeks, until she could hear generations of her ancestors screaming with her.

�Do it, you fucking coward! Do it! Do it! Do it!!!�

Dwight Shweiger, twenty-five, originally of Warwick, Rhode Island, had joined the District of Columbia National Guard to pay for college. It was hot inside the XAV, inside his gear, and the voice of his commander was in his earpiece calmly telling him, �If she won�t get out of the way, mow her the fuck down. We got a whole day of this shit left.�

Shweiger had mostly slept through history class. He�d never heard of Tiananmen Square. Nor how during that protest, pork and grain prices were also incredibly high. He had no frame of reference at all for what he was a part of. He knew only two things: This lady in front of him had clearly lost her mind. She was screaming and weeping, and spit was flying from her mouth, and she was beating her fists into the vehicle like she could actually destroy it with her bare hands. The other thing he knew was that he could never press the accelerator. His superior barked at him to floor it, to flatten the first twenty people if he had to, and he thought of his childhood bedroom and the sound of the ships going up and down Providence River, and how when a blizzard came and school was called off, his mom would let him and his two sisters sleep in and then bring them minestrone soup and let them cook marshmallows over the gas stove, thereby compounding the wonderous nature of a snow day. Because he could not bear the thought of his mom learning of this if he did it, if he murdered this unarmed human being, he took his foot off the accelerator, and the woman nearly fell over when he threw the vehicle in reverse.

When the XAV began to back up, the police and Guard behind it had to quickly backpedal as well. Most of them figured an order had come down to abort. The women behind Kate Morris couldn�t believe it at first. Then Kelly Pasquina let out a sound somewhere between a gasp of surprise and a war whoop. She ran for Morris, practically tackling her in an embrace, and behind her the crowd surged forward, and it was like they�d all experienced the blood in their veins for the very first time. They shrieked at the retreating vehicle, eyes swollen with lachrymator and the most glorious tears they�d ever cried. The incident had hardly passed, the video had barely been captured, before it was erupting all around the world. All these women, gassed and bloodied, many of them shirtless, beating their breasts, and then this one lunatic bitch steps in front of an armored vehicle, loses her damn mind, and the XAV, an emblem of the most powerful military force on the planet, slinks away in wounded disbelief. On screens and VR sets in every corner of the planet, civilization watched, and this moment slipped into its shared pool of myth and dream.

In the hours that followed, even after law enforcement had arrested ten thousand people, the siege exploded, coming to life the way we imagine fire to be alive. Consuming, incinerating, surrendering, only to then steal across roads, structures, and trees to find new life. Following the showdown at Independence, occupiers and authorities clashed near the Ellipse on the Mall�s opposite corner, and the northwest front wasn�t as much the feel-good story. They punched and kicked and hurled tear gas canisters back and tore the masks from the cops� faces; they were beaten, zip-tied, and hauled to makeshift prison islands; they caught rubber bullets in the throat and lay gasping for air; they tore truncheons from the hands of the National Guard and hit back; they surged up Twelfth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to get behind the invading army, to attack their vehicles with rocks and bats, to flip them, burn them, drive them through boarded-up windows. They got control of a vehicle with a water cannon and turned it on the reinforcements trying to come down Twelfth. Every person hauled off bucked and thrashed and fought, so that it could take seven officers to get one scrawny woman into a zip tie. Without the help of the AI, Bridget Zeckhauser figured out that if they backed one of the septic trucks to Independence, they could open the vacuum hoses on the enemy. A jet of hot human waste sprayed across their plexiglass shields, splattering helmets, getting into their mouths and eyes. Liza Yudong watched from the trailer as the cops dropped everything and ran, and she fed this to her program so that the tactic could be copied at other intersections where authorities had broken through the tree and debris fields. More so than by hoses of human feces, police were simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. Up and down the ranks, their comms had stopped working and they experienced the chaos of disconnection from a command structure. One panicked Guardsman hit the accelerator instead of the brake, crashing into the fence protecting the Capitol, toppling twenty yards of the barrier, until the tires tangled and blew on the razor wire. A gang of women pulled him from the vehicle and tore at his equipment until they�d stripped him naked. The AI disseminated these tactics, made complex decisions, and reacted more quickly than the police could, so they staggered away, covered in piss and shit, only to hear their incursion had activated chaos in other sections of the city.

Certain solar systems within the wider galaxy of the siege had been agitating for destruction. These folks were not the nonviolent, organized monks of the first five thousand: they had their own ideas, and seized with the holy spirit of revolution, they launched into K Street, the metonym of the lobby shops that chopped, divided, and stapled together the legislation that undergirded American life. They found the lobbyist offices, law firms, and think tanks and smashed their way through plate-glass windows, past frightened security guards radioing for police backup that wasn�t coming, hopped over security barricades, and then they were into the guts of the system, throwing computers at walls, pushing desks out windows, smashing servers and setting fires until the sprinkler systems came on and alarms blared. They poured gasoline and lit cubicles on fire. They wreaked havoc for hours until police and the Guard, having been beaten back at the Mall, rerouted to chase and corner these anarchists, who seemed only to fructify with each and every arrest. The city burned and firefighters and paramedics descended, and there would be five dead civilians, one dead cop, and hundreds more wounded.

Finally, as authorities retreated, protestors found their way over the toppled fence separating their territory from the Capitol. A few sheets of plywood on the fallen razor wire and they had an unobstructed path. The shadow of the 2021 insurrection had loomed over the city for years. Even when authorities thought Morris and her ilk really were only planning a dopey little concert, the Capitol was surrounded and fortified like it was 1814 and this time they�d be prepared for the British. Those fortifications may well have stood had that Guardsman not driven through the fence. Metro Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Invaders were hit and fell, but the leak quickly turned into a spigot as the occupiers tore a wider hole in the fencing. Seeing the writing on the wall, the last line of defense crumbled, and the police began to retreat. It took Logan Dougall only three minutes to skirt around the reflecting pool, past the Grant Memorial and Peace Monument, make it up the Capitol steps, and smash his way through the first door he came to. He�d been just seven the last time the Capitol was breached, and nothing about those hairy Trump monkeys had impressed him. That was not revolution. Dougall had an axe, purchased at a Lowe�s in Virginia on his way to D.C., smuggled in his gear past the Blue Bands when he arrived. He burst into the Rotunda along with hundreds more and ran for the first painting he saw: Embarkation of the Pilgrims. In four fells of the axe, he shredded this piece of colonial propaganda and moved to the next while the shouts and cries of other looters chased each other through the halls like unruly apparitions of destructions past.

Holly Pietrus had been told by the AI to deliver more water to the core, where the fires were still blazing, but she�d looked off into the anarchy of smoke, gas, fire, and stun grenades and found herself paralyzed. Finally, when the fence behind the trailers was toppled and people began sprinting toward the Capitol, she followed. To her shock, the National Guard who�d been defending the Capitol were fleeing east, north, and south, scaling the fence trying to escape. When she made it inside, the first thing she found was a guy spray-painting a dick on a white marble wall.

�Stop!� she shouted at him and slapped the can from his hand. �What are you doing? Get the hell out!� He looked baffled by this but did as he was told. She moved deeper into the building. It was in the Rotunda that she found Dougall with his axe. Amid the fractured marble of two toppled statues and three or four paintings with huge gashes in the canvas, Dougall worked methodically to shred another. �No!� Holly cried. �Cut it out!� Like this guy was her little sister scribbling in her books with crayon when they were children. The kid ignored her, and without another thought Holly ran at him, grabbing his arms from behind to wrest the axe away, pulling herself onto his back, her legs clenched around his waist. He smashed his elbow into her face, which would purple her eye, and she fell. He tried to recover the axe, but Holly was back on her feet, tackling him to the ground so the blade shrieked across the marble floor. �Stop it! Just stop it! Stop!� And she pushed Dougall�s face and scrambled after the weapon. They both got to their feet and stood there, heaving breath. Clutching the weapon, Holly gave a little checked-swing thrust of the blade.

�Get out of here before I chop you up, kid!� How ridiculous that sounded, but Dougall had an abdominal muscle strain. He�d felt the pop when she landed on him. Holly watched him limp out of the Rotunda clutching his side. Then she ran around the building for the rest of the afternoon with the axe, threatening to murder anyone who was destroying, damaging, or defecating, which she found several guys doing in the Senate Chamber and ran at them like Lizzie Borden.

By the time the president and his advisors learned that not only had their show of force failed to clear the Mall but that the protestors had erupted out into the city in an orgy of destruction, he was on his third pill of the day. Sometimes he took Klonopin, sometimes he just lay awake calming himself with memories of how satisfying Afghanistan had been. For the first time, the stochastic processes of war frightened him. He went out to the grounds of Camp David to take in some air and beat his feet in the dust. Then Caperno called to tell him that somehow, the fucking SJWs had taken the Capitol Building.

Kate Morris and her team arrived inside the Capitol a few hours later. This was not what she�d wanted. Looking over the vandalism, the shattered sculptures, spray paint, and shredded paintings, she knew what happened next would define their movement in the eyes of those watching. Many of the hearts and minds she hoped to win would be reliving memories of men carrying Confederate flags through the halls of Congress. �We get this under control,� she told Levine, Pietrus, Young, and Yudong, �or we lose everything.� They secured the dozens of entrances throughout the building, including all the tunnels that led elsewhere in the city, posting their most trusted Blue Bands throughout the perimeter and blocking entrances wherever possible. They barricaded the tourist tunnel that connected the Library of Congress and overturned the trolleys that shuttled senators and representatives between their offices and the Capitol to block those routes. They established a command center, erected sleeping spaces, and commandeered all available food and supplies in the byzantine structure. They set up a hospital in Statuary Hall, where states provided looming statues of their most historic citizens, archetypal of their role in the American experience. The space had undergone a similar transformation during the Civil War, when wounded Union soldiers had pulverized limbs amputated among the marble and bronze figures. Now any volunteer with medical training treated the gassed, beaten, and rubber-shot.

As for the destruction, Kate put Holly in charge and impressed upon her how crucial it was to fix this as best they could. Damaged paintings and sculptures were carefully removed and set aside. When Kate was young and first learning from her dad about the genocide of Native peoples, she would have thrilled at seeing these paintings wrecked. Now, it filled her with a sadness she couldn�t quite explain to herself. Even more dismaying was what had happened in the House Chamber. Behind the Speaker�s podium, drawn to enormous scale with spray paint was a blue flame and the words 6DEGREES IS COMING.

�Clean this off,� Kate told a group of Blue Bands. Yet in the days and weeks that followed, that symbol would be found everywhere: in the destroyed D.C. lobby shops, graffitied onto the sides of buildings, chalked and stenciled onto every street and sidewalk, frequently found beside her own words. No matter what she tried or how much she decried violence, even against property, she would never again be able to separate her movement from theirs.

CHAOS THEORY, read the New York Post�s headline the next day with her picture. Subhead: MORRIS MELTS DOWN, TAKES COUNTRY WITH HER. Said Renaissance, THE LEFT�S HATRED KNOWS NO BOUNDS: POLICE BRUTALIZED, ASSAULTED BY INVADING ARMY. THE CAPITAL HAS FALLEN, said Fox; D.C. ON LOCKDOWN read the grim CNN chyron; CLIMATE ZEALOTS TEAR D.C. APART trumpeted the Wall Street Journal. Stories of police and patriotic Guardsmen beaten, gassed, stripped, humiliated. One iconic front-page photo showed a big chubby boy in tighty-whities, bleeding from the head, weeping and pointing in the direction of an overturned XAV. The outrage reigned alongside a very specific historical amnesia.

�The Weathermen have multiplied into an army of terrorists,� said Senator Russ Mackowski. �This lawlessness cannot stand, and our president must act with overwhelming force or God help us.� Renaissance begged patriots to arm themselves and patrol the streets of their towns and cities lest other provocateurs emerge. �The left-wing war on our country has reached a crisis,� said Jennifer Braden in her white-hot VR worlde. �President Love owns this disaster. He�s proven an utter coward. Arm yourselves while there�s still time.�

In the days following the aborted effort to clear the Mall, emboldened by the video of Kate beating the hood of an urban assault vehicle playing on every screen in the world, would-be revolutionaries and right-wing counterrevolutionaries attempted to break into Lockdown D.C. in droves. They were met by a massive influx of the US Army, police, and increasing numbers of Xuritas security personnel. Fencing and checkpoints were erected on all roads within fifty miles, from the highways to the county two-lanes. Homes and businesses were cleared in a five-mile radius around the city. The Coast Guard patrolled the Potomac and the Anacostia in a thick web of boats, tracking searchlights over the shores. And still people managed to find ways in.

In capitals around the world, from London to Pretoria, Accra to Ottawa, Tokyo to Wellington, Bras�lia to Seoul, activists pitched tents and blocked traffic. They hung banners and sprayed the walls of their public buildings with graffiti; they came in numbers so dense that even the most prepared governments were caught flat-footed. Moscow deployed security forces to major public spaces. In Hong Kong, fifty thousand troops marched through the streets, the city militarily occupied before anyone could even leave their door with a sign. Liza Yudong�s app, however, was downloaded by nearly ten million Chinese devices in just forty-eight hours. They arrived faster than the tear gas and rubber bullets could uproot them, hungry people, desperate people, passionate people, and everyone in between, linking arms in the digital world, and demanding an immediate halt to the incineration of the planet, a blooming fascism, and the gangster capitalism that had led them all to this point.

Within the halls of the captured Capitol, lit by candles and a few generator-powered bulbs, cots, tents, and sleeping bags crowded all available floor space, from the Old Supreme Court Chamber to the Crypt where the sandstone columns had been handcrafted by slaves rented from antebellum plantations. They set up shop in staff and security offices, slept on couches, helped themselves to mini fridges stocked with every variety of snack and booze. In the city beneath the building, they found enough food and water to sustain the movement for at least another two months. They worked to assign and distribute provisions both within the Capitol and to those still holding the Mall. They moved their war room from the trailer behind the battered concert stage to the office of the Speaker of the House.

�They want to take down the rest of the paintings in the Rotunda,� said Holly Pietrus. They had a solar lamp set on the desk, and it cast an eerie, irradiated glow over their faces. The top organizers still wore their soiled, sweaty Blue Bands even after nearly three months. �The Baptism of Pocahontas, the Landing of Columbus, all of them.�

�Who does?� asked Seth Young.

�The tribes supporting us.� The leaders of these nations had set up several tipis in the Rotunda, where dead political leaders of the empire that had wiped away their ancestors typically lay in state.

�And another faction is demanding we take out all the pictures and statues of men,� said Levine. �Including the bust of MLK for his sexual misconduct.�

Kate rubbed her face and tried to blink away her exhaustion. She hadn�t slept more than a couple hours a night since the day of the attempted clearing. Everyone was looking at her, and she couldn�t help it. Maybe it was a whole childhood of her father telling her she was too white to understand this or that Native thing. Maybe she was remembering her first sting of pepper spray with the Oceti Sakowin at Standing Rock a lifetime ago, but some kind of deep, pent-up anger, directed at the wrong people, came bursting out of her then.

�Do we not have bigger fucking fish to fry here?� She saw the people around the desk recoil in the lamplight, so that the shadows jumped on their faces. She picked at a blood blister on her thumb. Even for someone who was fine with not showering for weeks at a time, she felt grimy, itchy.

Tom Levine, whose lungs still ached from inhaling smoke as he fought the flames during the incursion, whose fianc�e had stopped answering his messages, was not about to let this moment be lost to squabbling. He had never in his wildest dreams imagined it would go this far, that he�d be back in these halls under such circumstances. He put his palms together in prayer and pointed them at his friend.

�Kate, we can�t be the mob putting their feet up on the Speaker�s desk in �21. We can�t let the images of our people ransacking the halls stand. And we can�t start redecorating.�

�Maybe it�s time to ask,� said Seth Young, �what exactly we are doing here.�

Kate snatched up a tablet, streaming the news. The chyron read GLOBAL PROTESTS RESULT IN CRACKDOWNS; PRESIDENT LOVE SILENT ON SIEGE OF WASHINGTON.

�What do you think we�re doing here? It�s working, Seth.�

�Working how?� he asked slowly. Calm but very skeptical.

She threw up her hands, gesturing to august walls all around them, bugging her eyes at the obvious. �Look where we�re holding our meeting.�

He licked his lips and tried not to sound scared. He�d entered into this one reluctant step at a time, and now he was riddled with dread. He�d lived less than five blocks away during the Trump insurrection, which had demonstrated something frighteningly ephemeral about what constituted power. Now that he was part of such a thing, it scared him so much more. �I�m really worried this has gone too far.�

�Of fucking course it�s gone too far!� Kate exploded. �That�s the whole fucking point, Seth!� The veins in her neck straining, Kate stepped into his space, pointing at the carpet. �We need to keep people here. We need to keep up the disruption, the momentum, the panic of the people who pull the levers. The stock market is starting to freak out. People are rising up. Opportunities like this do not come often.�

�So we just sit here?� Seth asked, unable to meet her gaze, wondering if Ash had been right, wondering whose wagon he�d hitched himself to. �While we wait for them to try again?�

�Of course not.� The heads of leadership turned all at once to Liza. She was painting her nails purple, blowing on them, and then reapplying the little brush. �We have the law-making building. So we explain what laws we want to pass, the ones that the people who normally sit in these stupid chairs refuse to.� Liza rolled her eyes. �And to answer your question�yes, it does get tiring being the brains of the operation.�

For five weeks following the attempted clearing, the Capitol transformed into a twenty-four-hour stump speech, beamed out to the world. They recruited occupiers from every walk of life, gave them the Speaker�s dais, and together they painted a rolling, epic vision of a more just, equitable, healthy world. The feed never stopped. The speakers never let up this rolling sermon. A woman whose sons were both dead of heroin overdoses inveighing for an end to the drug war. A farmer advocating for regenerative agriculture. A doctor explaining the health benefits of electrifying the transportation sector. More viewers watched a student named Kelly Pasquina speak about the need for a global wealth tax than watched that year�s Super Bowl. Her brother, Walt, now wearing a Blue Band, appeared briefly in an interview. The reporter asked the Marine why he went AWOL. Pasquina replied, �I don�t care for politics. But the country�s a lot like me, in that we should listen to my kid sister.�

Who knows where it all may have led? Then, as the siege of D.C. stretched into its fourth month, the heat swept in.

JUNE 30

With authorities scrambling to cut water, power, internet, and supply routes, the temperature spiked to 109 degrees. A dome of high pressure descended on two-thirds of the nation, sending temperatures soaring into the triple digits, smashing records in every city it touched. In the last decade, dangerous heat waves had grown more fearsome but also normalized. Cities learned and instituted best practices, providing cooling centers, managing power grids, and sending social workers to the elderly and disabled, but the summer of �34 was unprecedented not just in heat but duration.

The poor and elderly were in the most danger. Baby boomers, divorced, widowed, aging, constituted the largest generation of elderly people living alone in the country�s history, and the heat storm, as it came to be known, quickly became a quiet mass murderer. Hyperthermia is a nasty way to go. It begins slowly, with a bit of dizziness, and then ramps up quickly. For instance, Kyenna Blake, a seventy-seven-year-old woman living in Eastland Gardens, found the power out in the apartment where she�d lived the last forty years, where her children had grown up and then moved away, where her husband had died. She began by feeling puky, having trouble breathing. She went for the phone to call 911, but there was a wait. She was on hold. Like many victims of heat, she began to pull off her clothes because the feel of them against her skin was agony on her nerve endings. Then she vomited. Her muscles were shedding dead cells into her bloodstream, clogging her body�s plumbing, while pieces of her organs cooked. Her kidneys and bladder were the first to shut down. Her heart, mercifully, went next.

Andrea Sanchez had never seen anything like this. On June 10, the thermometer hit 115 degrees, and she and her partner were called away from the Mall because folks all over the city were smelling the bodies. Bagging these corpses was dreadful work. It wasn�t like a gunshot wound, an overdose, or a suicide. People cooked and then they melted. She had to cut the chain to get into one boiling apartment. The smell was so foul she fought to keep her gorge down. She found Kyenna Blake�s body covered in dark flies and bleach-white maggots. The morgue was overflowing, and the county medical examiner had to call in refrigerated trucks to store the dead. The line of ambulances wrapped around the block. �Just consider yourself blessed,� she told her fellow officers working back at the Mall, �that you�re part of that embarrassment instead of this nightmare.�

From her apartment in New York, Rekia Reynolds worked A Fierce Blue Fire�s mutual aid network, trying to dispatch as many members as she could to check on the elderly and disabled in the neighborhoods where FBF operated Outposts. She worked sixteen hours a day coordinating this complex operation, but FBF�s ranks had been pilfered and degraded. In the past few years, folks had left because of PRIRA, because the organization was no longer viewed as pure. Then many of its members had joined the occupation of D.C., where they themselves now risked succumbing to heatstroke. Rekia�s anger at her fianc� was only eclipsed by her blinding fury at Kate Morris. When they first met, Rekia had been the revolutionary, the one who wanted to storm the capital. Now she was left with the broken carapace of their organization, watching society�s marginalized, mostly the Black and brown, die in real time because Kate had gutted their resources for her own vainglory. She read about Kyenna Blake in the Post and knew that if this had happened in 2032, they would have had volunteers knocking on her door to get her to a cooling center. Rekia�s engagement ring was gone, and she�d smashed Tom�s VR system against the hardwood and left its electronic guts lying on the floor of his office.

In cities across the country, power grids and substations began to buckle. In Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Knoxville, Louisville, Memphis, Atlanta, the blackouts and brownouts crippled infrastructure. Cooling stations lost power, AC units were worthless, mobile phone networks stopped working, and people were stranded in their homes. No VR, TV, lights, or refrigerators. Crack open the elevator doors of a high-rise and find two parents and three children cooked to death inside after only a few hours. Sky-high ozone and humidity. A heat index across the South of 133 degrees. A human body can only take two days of uninterrupted exposure to such temperatures. Electrolytes go haywire, exhaustion, respiratory issues, and renal failure follow. Hospital beds were overrun like nothing since Covid-19. Ambulances were booked solid, emergency response times up to four hours. Many hospitals had to close their doors to new admissions, all the beds taken. It�s called bypass status, and a father can show up with a child who has a body temperature of 105 and they tell that man, �Sorry, sir, try across town.�

The headlines flipped. DEATH TOLL SKYROCKETS; SHOCKING HEAT KILLS HUNDREDS; HOMICIDES SPIKE WITH THERMOMETER; HEAT STORM HAS NO END IN SIGHT. Folks illegally opening fire hydrants on city streets to cool down, and suddenly water pressure vanishes for the whole neighborhood. Add this to water pump failures during the blackouts, and suddenly taps are dry. Multiple airports shut down as the runways melted, grinding the July travel season to a halt, and gouging a new hole in a stalling economy. The temperatures cracked roads, and highways were lined with broken-down cars. Potter�s fields were overwhelmed, and city governments worked quickly on the PR side of their mass-graves situation. Prisons and detention centers could get away with anything, but one leaked memo, delivered to the Arpaio Illegal Immigrant Detention Facility in Arizona, urged wardens to use the heat to �clear capacity� and �reduce inmate numbers.�

Victor Love�s response to these dual emergencies of open revolt in the nation�s capital and a murderous heat wave was a rare press conference where he took only five questions. He praised first responders and chided people for not checking on their relatives. This was not met with a lot of satisfaction. Then there was The Pastor taking to his VR worlde to claim he had predicted this too.

�I prophesied fire, I prophesied flood, I told you God would send heat to punish this country. The Bible also predicts there will be a breakdown of the family unit, and here we are with a faggot sodomizing another man in the White House. It predicts more crime, and here we are with a takeover of our great nation�s capital. It predicts apathy toward Christians, and here we are with scientists and liberals moaning about your hamburger or your car instead of acknowledging the staggering signs that Christ already walks the earth at the End of Days.�

President Love was addicted to right-wing media, which spewed nonstop invective about his failed presidency, his incompetence, his cowardice for failing to put down an insurrection that had sacked the Capitol while he hid at Camp David and did nothing. News stories emerged claiming a police officer was dead at the hands of protestors, beaten to death during the attempt to restore order, they said. The organizing committee worked tirelessly to combat the narrative, but facts were dismissed. There were other stories, of course, the usual onslaught of misinformation blasted across the media landscape: Women raped in their tents, captured police officers and soldiers being tortured and executed, precious documents at the Library of Congress soiled and shredded, the sex-crazed whore arranging orgies in the Senate Chamber to �initiate� children. Look at what Kate Morris�s loose values had caused. Meanwhile, the death toll ticked up day by day, the counting of dead Americans still a highly popular national pastime, and eventually twenty-two thousand deaths would be attributed to these weeks of record temperatures and humidity.

Authorities offered a deal to the occupiers: cooling centers, bottled water, and amnesty waited for those who walked away. Many had no choice but to take them up on this offer. Individuals were carried to the checkpoints to be taken to nearby hospitals where they were given intravenous fluids or dumped in tubs of ice.

Beyond the thousands of army, police, and security personnel, beyond the drones and helicopters practically parked in the clouds, the rotors forming a permanent background hum, the city was arid and eerie. Trash blew like tumbleweeds along abandoned streets. Drought tightened the dirt, and a veil of orange dust, stamped alive by the feet of thousands, hung over the Mall. When the sun fled, no electricity for miles, the city fell into bottomless night. With all light extinguished, a storm of sailing stars became visible, the glow of the Milky Way. The occupiers huddled in a cinched, fearless nexus radiating out from the Mall. Everyone with children had left, taking advantage of the amnesty while they could. The bouncy castle lay in tattered ribbons, tangled with the razor wire of the toppled fence. The smell grew worse than ever. Day by day, the occupation dwindled as more people took the government�s deal. They were exhausted, dirty, hungry, ill, and yes, afraid. The interminable heat was like wearing a suit of death. So they walked to the checkpoints, put their hands on their heads as instructed, and were allowed to leave�just as soon as they�d been fingerprinted, photographed, cheek-swabbed, and catalogued in a growing database.

In the kitchen serving the Senate cafeteria, Seth Young and Tom Levine were splitting a can of tomatoes and the last of the beers they�d rescued from the walk-in refrigerators. It was July 20.

�So you and I did the same thing,� noted Seth. �Our partners told us not to go, and we did anyway. What�s that about?�

Levine speared a tomato and slurped it off the tines of the fork. �I don�t know. You said you weren�t going to stay more than a few days, I said I wasn�t going to be a part of this, but��

�It took over. Like if you weren�t here, you wouldn�t go a day the rest of your life without thinking about it.�

Tom favored Seth with a grim expression. �Yup.�

�What I tried to explain to Ash��Seth put his hands a foot apart��is that �my god, honey, I�m doing this for Forrest. I�m not abandoning him or you or anyone else. This is our way of fighting for his future.� � He shifted his eyes to his new friend. During the attempted clearing, the explosion of a stun grenade had sent Seth sprawling onto his back. He couldn�t hear a thing and his eyes were stinging with gas. That was when Tom scooped him up by the shoulders, hauled him to his feet, and hustled him to safety behind a trailer. �I�m thinking of taking the amnesty,� Seth admitted. �I need to get back to my family.�

�No one would judge you,� said Tom without hesitation. He held their can up. �We�re almost out of tomatoes anyway.�

Seth was thinking about how anxious Ash had been when he met Seth�s family for the first time. Ash had no way of copping to his nerves, so instead, he got hyper-analytical and prattled on about obscure mathematical concepts no one understood�except that Seth�s dad was an engineer and a math freak himself. Seth watched with great pleasure as his dad engaged Ash on some arcane point, and Ash looked like he�d had sand blown in his face. He told Ash after dinner, �I�ve never seen you harder than when you talked to my dad about the singsong conjecture.�

�It�s Singmaster�s conjecture, Seth, and don�t be crude.� And Seth did what he always did to prove Ashir was not always so analytical: He put his hand on his crotch in the back of the driverless.

Tom was thinking of Rekia. Not long after they started sleeping together, when he asked her why they hadn�t just done that right away instead of fighting for five years, she said, � �Cause you�re an egotistical, white-privileged asshole.� She squeezed one of his triceps. �And you always wore these tight shirts that made your arms look good, and I know you knew your arms looked good, and that made me hate you even more.�

He wasn�t sure that she�d ever forgive him, and this scared him. After an entire adulthood spent swearing to himself that he�d never fall for the marriage trap, he was in love with this woman and already dreaming of their children.

On that same night, blessed with cool wind, Holly Pietrus, Liza Yudong, and Kate Morris sat on the steps of the west side of the Capitol and shared a joint. With the power out in the city, the only light beamed down from a quarter moon, but they could make out the inky outlines of shantytown tents and black scars from the fires. The trampled dirt and filthy plywood paths. The toppled fence and the busted National Guard vehicle still tangled in it liked a beached whale. Like Tom and Seth, they were talking about their old friend.

�Rekia told me if I came here, I shouldn�t bother coming back,� said Holly. Her eye was still a midnight blue with shades of yellow from the elbow she�d taken to save a painting.

�Rek is doing what she thinks is right. So are we.� Kate took the joint from Holly�s fingers and took a drag. The tip glowed bright enough to cast light on her face.

Liza said, �At least in prison they�ll have water, so I can exfoliate.� Kate and Holly laughed. �You think I�m joking. This is exactly as bad as I thought it would be. I�ve always hated camping.�

�Prison will be good,� said Kate. �A nice challenge for me.�

�The worst part is, I know she�s serious,� said Liza.

�Yep,� Kate nodded affirmatively. �It�ll be something I�ll have to conquer and make useful.�

�So you are insane,� said Holly.

�If you think about it, a general strike in prisons, a massive civil disobedience campaign in the heart of the prison-industrial complex? Then if you add a hunger strike on top of it all, not only are the garment operations not running, but they have to bring in all this medical equipment to force-feed you in the ass. We can bankrupt these private prison companies before they even knew what hit �em.�

�Who is this �we�?� asked Liza. �I get low blood sugar.�

�You know you�ll follow me over the waterfall, bitch.� Kate shoulder-checked the smaller woman. �Don�t front. Don�t even make airs like you might front.�

Liza rebounded. �This weed sucks.�

Holly, who hadn�t been stoned since college, found herself belly-laughing at these two, a new audience for a shtick they�d clearly honed over the years.

�That�s been the fascists� best move yet,� said Kate. �Cutting off our pot supply.�

Their laughter trickled off, and the joint ran out, and they fell quiet. Stoned ruminations took the three of them all kinds of places. Liza found herself drifting back to when she�d first met Kate at the other organization they�d been involved with. Everyone was so self-serious, no one got her sense of humor, and she caught sideways looks for not performing her �climate grief.� She found all the activisty screamingness of the thing tedious. All except this one girl. Kate Morris, she found, could take all the flak, arrows, and spitty people while Liza did her thing mostly behind the scenes. Not long after Liza turned in her resignation at FBF following Rekia�s little coup, she�d called Kate and told her they should try something weird.

�What�s weird, Liz?� Kate asked despondently. �What hasn�t been tried?�

�Don�t be such a stick in the mud. We could occupy the entire frickin� capital if we felt like it.�

And from that one off-the-cuff response, the entire notion of their con emerged. Since Liza first began having anxiety about the end of the world and became determined to do something about it, she�d also resigned herself to the fact that nothing they did would likely work. However, if one had a great deal of fun in the process, it seemed to conjure belief in and of itself. Belief, in this case, was vital.

�Maybe my favorite thing about you,� Kate said to her once, not long after they�d acquired the domain name for A Fierce Blue Fire and were still working out of her and Matt�s apartment, �is that you�re not who you say you are.�

Liza had bugged her eyes and said, �I�ll be whoever you ask me to be, Kate, if you just let me shave your legs and armpits.� Kate thought this was so funny and laughed and laughed. Liza put on her most revolted face. �Why are you laughing? I�m absolutely not joking.�

Holly, who�d spent so many months sick with fear about her father, was mulling a random childhood memory: She�d been maybe eight years old, at the beach in La Jolla. She�d been playing with her friends, these two boys, Mark and Joey, and all three had taken off their shirts in the surf, and her dad had come over and yelled at her�like really yelled at her�to put her shirt back on. When she returned to her towel, sobbing, she argued her case to her mom. It made no sense that the boys could take their shirts off and she couldn�t, and there was no reason she should get yelled at for it. And the more her mom tried to explain the difference between boys and girls, the more certain Holly was that this explanation was nuts�she and Joey and Mark all looked exactly the same with their shirts off, so why would she get yelled at?

�It�s just one of those dumb things, Holly-bear,� her mom finally admitted. �Trust me, this will not be the last time you�ll feel like it�s bullshit being a woman.�

�Mommy,� she pleaded, because she hated it when her parents cussed.

�I�m sorry.� She kept rubbing Holly�s back for a while. Holly felt herself calming down. The world was not always fair, and people had very dumb ideas about things. That was the lesson, right?

Her mom laughed, and Holly remembered how beautiful her dark skin looked in the bright white sun. �That�s exactly right, doll. And most of the dumb ideas come from men like your dad who think they�re right about everything. Don�t tell him I said that, but it�s definitely the truth.�

Holly hadn�t missed her mom in a long, long time, but she did now. Missed her like hell. She went to sleep that night wishing it wasn�t the case that every wonderful thing about her mom felt like it originated in another life or a dissipating dream.

Kate Morris, on the other hand, was not thinking about her family, childhood, friends, or lovers. There were errant memories and traumas that might preoccupy anyone�s mind in such circumstances: listening to her mother cry as she tried to sleep in the passenger seat of their Honda Civic in a Fred Meyer parking lot after Sonja left Earl; this kid, Arturo, who used to tease her in grade school and called her an ogre one too many times, so she slammed the heel of her hand into his nose, and she had to see a child therapist for two years; or why not turn to thoughts of the partner she�d just left behind? She�d learned from every example in her life that men were scared, selfish, and weak. In the end, you could only rely on yourself. And Matt had gone and proved it to her once and for all. She�d listened to his car beat a crackling retreat down the gravel drive and took the moment to imagine herself as an old woman, when all these years of rain and thunder would be but a dim and painless remembering. Then she�d stood and returned to her office to keep working, and it was thrilling how very alone she was, how riddled with wounds.

But she had no use for memory at all that night.

Instead, she couldn�t stop thinking of how the blood had roared in her ears as that armored vehicle rolled toward her, how the adrenaline felt like it might lift her off her feet and send her hurtling like a mortar round into its hull. Shock them, fuck them, grind them to the bone. Be fearless. Be Achilles, be Roland, be Joan of Arc. Have a mental disease. Follow your clit. Drive across the Dakotas and watch a storm sear the horizon, recognize herself in its peels of wind and each crack of lightning, her true fellow travelers. Don�t change, don�t learn, don�t fall, don�t flinch. All she�d ever feel was sorry for people who didn�t know what it was to want something more than their own life. Conjure a tempest, spew rage from the heart, and make them stare into this city of Cassiterite dark she�d made with nothing but her ravaged voice.

Those in charge did not look at it quite as romantically. Urban heat and expensive bread had led to a summer of occupations and confrontations in capital cities around the world. In Pretoria, authorities opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas, killing six. In Paris, protestors overturned a police vehicle, crushing two of their own. In Taipei, rioters battled with the army for six days until a typhoon blew through, soaked the city in two feet of rain, and buildings along the coast crumbled into the water. In Israel, a carefully calibrated plan to let only so much food and water into the Gaza Strip suddenly seemed overgenerous. They tightened the rations, and rocks and bottles flew and IDF vehicles burned. In China, the Ministry of State Security began detaining children they declared dissidents and returning their lifeless bodies to parents some weeks later. Protests against these brutal practices were becoming larger and more unruly, while the Communist Party blamed the CIA for sparking insurrection. There was a patient zero for all of this. The world�s leaders glared at what had gone on for more than three months in Washington.

President Love�s closest advisors huddled around him in Camp David, and he made sure to go berserk on them. He hurled a glass at the wall and told them they could resign if they didn�t like his plan. Of course, they were all on their knees after that, begging for forgiveness, and it made him sick to watch. Vic Love knew combat, and he knew from combat that the joy of violence is inborn, that people secretly love to supplicate themselves to men powerful enough to unleash it decisively. The only answer to this clusterfuck was to sow unparalleled fear. In fact, he should have been looking at it this whole time as an opportunity. This rebellion in the nation�s capital that had flummoxed and vexed him�he could use it as a proving ground. His nighttime disturbances echoed within the halls of Camp David, and his husband asked to be flown back to their estate. �You�re not well,� he told Vic before leaving. Vic told him to stay in Montana until he needed him for a magazine cover. It wasn�t that Vic never thought he would make a mistake, but he�d never imagined anyone outflanking him the way Morris had. In many ways, Kate Morris and Loren Victor Love were meant for each other in this moment, as the malformed soul of the old world seized and screamed in the death throes of whatever would be birthed next.

This time, there would be no warning.

JULY 31

�I�m taking the amnesty,� Holly Pietrus told the others. The siege had winnowed down to a core 21,582 hardy souls, still camped on the Mall and crowding the rooms of the Capitol. Morris, Yudong, Pietrus, Young, and Levine were gathered in the Speaker�s office. Kate had tacked a George Carlin poster to the wall behind her, the comedian�s eyebrows popping: When you�re born into this world, you�re given a ticket to the freak show. When you�re born in America, you get a front-row seat. It reminded Kate of her long years in this amazing swamp city, where despite the evil that went on, the guts were hip-hop and the skin was pure metal.

�We�re almost out of food and water,� said Holly. �Whatever happens next�� She trailed off.

Kate nodded. She clutched her hands in her lap and gazed at her big, rough thumbs. �What you�ve all done here is beyond brave. I don�t say this lightly, but the world will never forget this. And it will never forget you.�

�I�m here till the end,� said Tom. He lounged in the Speaker�s chair, cracking and shelling walnuts. He�d found both the walnuts and the little metal gripper tool in a private cabinet of a random office.

Kate nodded but said otherwise. �No, you need to take the deal, Tom. The rest of you too. I�ll stay.�

�That makes no sense,� he said.

Kate blew a breath up her face, lifting a strand of greasy hair from her eyes. �It makes perfect sense. I�ll make an announcement tomorrow laying it out for everyone: They can stay with me and suffer the consequences, or they can go with you all.�

�To do what?� Tom demanded.

�To start a boy band�what do you think, Tom? To keep fighting.� Kate looked to the woman she trusted most. �Liza and I already discussed it. You�ll keep pushing, keep agitating. And you�ll hire the lawyers to stay up the government�s ass until we�re all out.�

�There�s no guarantee when that will be,� said Holly.

�Yeah, well, there�s not too much guarantee to anything, is there? I have to stay here,� she said plainly. �I have to make them come and get me.�

Their final meeting came to an end. They hugged and said their goodbyes. When Holly embraced Kate, she couldn�t help herself, and she broke down crying.

Seth Young and Tom Levine planned to leave the next morning. They tasked themselves with moving through the ranks of the remaining Blue Bands, explaining the choice everyone had ahead of them. Liza Yudong and Holly Pietrus left at dusk. They walked to a checkpoint on Fourteenth and Independence, where they were told to drop their backpacks and put their hands on her heads. They were zip-tied, processed for three hours, interviewed, and then released as promised.

The authorities went in that night.

The operation began at 3:31 a.m. on August 1. One moment there was darkness and only the stark splash of stars reigning over the Mall and the Capitol, and the next floodlights and helicopters. The 1,250-watt fluorescent light towers switched on with a cacophonous chorus of thunks, turning four hundred acres of D.C. into interrogation-room glare. The choppers swooped in, hovering low above the Mall, uncovering dark corners with searchlights. The occupation�s drones were shot out of the air, replaced by law enforcement�s and armed with fifty rubber bullets apiece. Twenty-five thousand Guard, police, and private security forces surrounded the Mall, but it was a core contingent of Xuritas Special Ops that breached the barricades first, firing live ammunition, the crackle of gunfire foreign to these civilians, nearly all of them mistaking the sound for leftover firecrackers.

Kelly Pasquina was sleeping near the barricade at Third and Pennsylvania when the commotion began and crawled out of her miserably sweaty tent to see black-clad soldiers and the bright smatter of muzzle flashes. Fear took her by the throat, so that all she could really hear was her heart throbbing in her ears. Then her older brother, Walt, grabbed her by the shoulders and barked in her face, �Get down!�

The first round of Xuritas bullets punctured the lungs and heads and rib cages of people who�d just emerged from their tents to see what the deal was with the lights. It changed the very nature of the crowd. These bodies, once friends and comrades, became terrifying obstacles. Logan Dougall, penned in, saw the men in black, eyes hidden by visors, saw bursts of gunfire slicing apart people beside him, and now it wasn�t just the bullets that were dangerous, but anyone blocking his escape. He threw elbows and stepped on groins and swiped away hands reaching for him. People ran with the panic of spotting a predator in open savanna. They all spilled east in the direction of the Capitol, looking for safety within its walls, but another Xuritas unit had driven through the barricades from that direction, cornering them. Dougall tried to spin and retreat before three bullets tore out the center of his chest.

Bullets, Kelly Pasquina realized, watching from the ground, had an almost unthinkable impact on the human body. Even though she came from a military family, even though she�d grown up watching as many Hollywood gunfights as the next gal, even though mass-shooting drills had been a part of her childhood, she�d never really considered what it is bullets do, the way they move bodies in ways they�re not supposed to move, and what comes out of the holes is so ghastly, and how the wounds make noises bodies are never supposed to make. How they carve and pulverize and fragment tissue, bone, muscle. Her brother, lying prone beside her, knew this all too well. That was the whole point of a bullet. A cold reminder of the simplicity and suddenness of death. Not that he was trying to explain this to his kid sister, weeping with panic.

Those involved with the decision to open fire on the encampment ran the gamut from principled dissenters to avid enthusiasts to those already leaking to major newspapers that they had tried to stop it without actually having done anything of the sort. The architects of the plan simply wanted to send a message. They weren�t there to massacre all twenty thousand people, but there would be no inspirational stand going viral this time. This time, there would be absolute compliance and a decisive end to the situation. A display of loyalty by the dead. With conservative bursts of gunfire, they herded the terrorists into the center of the Mall, at which point loudspeakers began demanding that they drop to the ground.

�Lie down with your palms on the earth. Do not move. If you lie down, you will not be harmed.�

The running, screaming people began to comply, not because they were necessarily listening to the loudspeakers over the thunder of the helicopters and the moans of the wounded and dying but because they could hear the snap of bullets all around them, and they could see others falling, leaving mists of blood, which looked pink and orange in the harsh fluorescent light. Bridget Zeckhauser felt a bullet clip her arm, and then another punch through her back, and when she fell onto part of a collapsed tent, she buried her face in the dirt and prayed to be transported away from this. Walt Pasquina saw her spill across the ground, could hear her screaming as she whipped one panicked arm covered in butterfly tattoos. Kelly lay on her stomach whimpering, trembling with shock. Walt grabbed his sister by the arm and shook her so she would look at him. �Stay put, stay down,� he said. �We�ll get through this, Kel. I love you.� And he sprang to his feet and ran toward the gunfire to help the woman with the butterflies on her arm. Of course he did, Kelly thought. That was who he was. It was the last time she saw him alive.

As police and official military moved in behind Xuritas, bulldozing through the blockades on Third and Fourteenth Streets, they found the carnage. Dead bodies were indistinguishable from the terrified living until you got right up close and heard the sounds of their weeping or saw the death mask of the face. The D.C. Guard shot tear gas anyway. Metro Police coming in behind the first wave of Xuritas were told to zip-tie every pair of hands they found. They began dragging people away or serving up beatings with truncheons, but this felt almost ridiculous when you were standing in puddles of gore from people cut to ribbons by automatic weapons fire. Master Patrol Officer Andrea Sanchez, who�d worked every overtime shift she could that summer, who from the first day of all this had felt stirrings of dread, who told herself no matter what she would not do anything she could not explain to her seven-year-old son, took off her helmet and threw up. She would never forget what she saw there: The first body she came across was unrecognizable, just a sizzling pile of meat and blood. She stepped on something and had to stare at it for a second before she realized it was a piece of someone�s bit-off tongue, lying like a pink sponge on the sidewalk. The Xuritas forces stood around looking very self-satisfied, like, There you go, ladies, that�s how it�s done. Glad we could clean up your mess. Everything was so loud. So many terrified people screaming and crying and begging for help all at once. She stopped for a middle-aged woman who�d been shot in the arm and torso. She was shivering and crying. A dark pixie haircut and small butterflies tattooed on her forearms. A dead man with a crew cut was draped over her, like he�d tried to shield her with his body, but of course he�d probably just fallen there. Her eyes pleaded with Andrea Sanchez for help. Andrea got a tourniquet around the woman�s arm and told her everything was going to be okay. The woman�s skin turned a ghostly white, her lips purple, and she was dead long before any paramedics were allowed onto the Mall. Andrea stayed with her awhile, and then got up because there was a controversy brewing as their forces continued to the Capitol.

Loren Victor Love and his team had returned to the White House three days earlier after the heat storm had thinned their problem. He was getting his hair cut while he watched the live feed from the Situation Room. Everyone in there was very quiet. Secretary Caperno chewed on her forefinger. The national security advisor held a hand to his mouth and tried to breathe evenly. Vice President McGuirk excused himself after the bloodshed began. Meanwhile, President Love�s barber cropped his hair. He�d be going on TV in the evening to explain the severity of this crackdown, the necessity of it, and this was the only opportunity, he claimed, to fit in the trim. The barber wore white latex as he sheered the sides of Love�s skull and scissored the top. An assistant, also wearing latex gloves, carefully collected the hair in a plastic bag, using a forensic light to locate every last strand. He did the same with each of the president�s nail clippings. It was also why Love defecated in a special toilet with a disposable box. All of this organic material was taken to a kiln and incinerated. It was not exactly paranoia, given what could be done these days with access to a person�s genetic material, but to have the man there with the HandScope LED collecting stray hairs while the security forces of the president�s former company shot unarmed protestors �is fucking Bond villain behavior,� one unnamed source would later tell the Washington Post. And yet there were those who experienced a version of unadulterated ecstasy. The way some found joy in Kate Morris�s rousing speech, these men and women found such deep pleasure when news arrived of this decisive action.

Outside the Capitol Building, between the amassed police, military, and security contractors, no one knew who was in charge. All chain of command had been lost, and many of them could only stand around gazing at the nightmare in the floodlights. Others itched to add a few more bodies to the pile. EMTs and medics were finally allowed onto the Mall, and they worked past their shock and disbelief. As dawn broke and the first dim light peered over the horizon, a heavy fog rolled in. The infrared cooling of a humid air mass created a dense, smoky cloud that cloaked the combatants, the blood, the living and the dying alike. Soldiers wandered in and out of the smoke. Ghosts disappearing and reappearing. The last person to die in the assault would be killed when a police horse accidentally trampled her to death. She lay on the ground crying for someone to help her. The horse got confused.

Kate Morris never saw any of it. While sleeping in the Speaker�s office, one of the new Blue Bands rushed in to tell her there was shooting, and they needed to get to a windowless room. When she heard the pops of gunfire, Kate had a moment to wonder if this was what she�d wanted: to goad them into the unthinkable. Now she was trying to push past this girl, who was blocking her way like she was her bodyguard, begging her not to walk outside.

�Listen to me,� said Kate, trying to slip past her.

�No please no please, stop, stop,� the girl pleaded. Her name was Krystal Robison. She was nineteen and had left her second semester at the University of Maryland to join the occupation and earn her blue band.

�I need to surrender. I need to tell them we�ll come out.�

�They�re killing people, Kate, they�re killing people,� Robison begged, her eyes enormous moons of terror. �Please don�t, please don�t, please don�t.�

�I think they�re coming in,� someone cried.

Then there was an explosion.

The mayor had usurped the chain of command and demanded that Metro Police be in charge of retaking the Capitol. He was gulping and sweating and feeling dizzy from the images beaming back to him from the Mall. The media blackout, enforced by helicopter, drone, and a five-mile perimeter, would never work, he realized. People in his office were weeping. His public affairs specialist had simply walked out. Quit in the middle of a crisis. He felt like he was giving orders in a dream where nothing obeyed the laws of physics, like a stapler might just float past his vision in this realm of selective gravity. But he barked the order into the phone. City SWAT would take the Capitol. They were not to use any more lethal force unless absolutely necessary.

After the flash-bangs sent everyone to the floor, these officers stormed into the Rotunda. Occupiers dove down and clutched the marble with their faces and begged not to be killed. Many were sobbing, certain these men were going to murder them while they lay there. Overcome with terror, a few ran. They were tased or shot with beanbag rounds. Not a single live bullet was fired in the Capitol. But when Tom Levine saw the cops grab a small woman and practically rip her arm out of its socket as they threw her against the wall, he reacted by instinct, leaping to his feet and screaming at them to stop. The first blow fell across the side of his head, ringing his ear, sending his vision spiraling to dark. Then the clubs and boots descended, and he felt something in his body crack irreparably, and he never recalled anything else.

The occupiers were zip-tied and hauled to buses on the east side of the Capitol grounds where there were fewer corpses and a niveous fog obscured most of the blood. Kate had fallen when the flash-bang erupted, and her daze was such that she�d stumbled away, losing consciousness briefly. She came to at the gift shop. She saw the flashlights cutting through the smoke, so she put herself down on her stomach with her hands on the back of her head and waited. No one realized who she was when they brought her to her feet. They were putting sacks over the heads of the arrested. The last thing she saw was the sweaty upper lip of the cop, then the darkness of the cloth, the world reduced to chaotic white noise, sirens, screaming, weeping, and pounding helicopter blades. She smelled the overpowering sewage scent of their takeover and something coppery and wet overlaying it. She�d never smelled that much blood before, so she couldn�t place it in context. To keep herself calm, she thought about the top of the last mountain she�d climbed, when Matt had fallen well behind her, and she stood on the peak, and how gorgeous and eerily silent it was when the wind died away. She was trembling inside her black hood all the way to the bus�right up until she was thrown bodily into a seat beside a weeping man. She apologized for banging off him. The man said nothing. Kept crying. She had to say something. She was, after all, the reason he was there.

�It�s going to be okay,� Kate said. �Really, it is.� She just wanted to be helpful.

�I couldn�t find my wife,� he sobbed, and he thrashed in shame and fury beside her. His voice cracked: �They were shooting and I fucking ran. I fucking ran, and I don�t know what happened to her! I don�t know where she is!�

Finally, within the halls of the Capitol, Quinton Marcus-McCall made his way to the House Chamber. He went to a spot just in front of the Speaker�s dais. The Blue Bands had kept it immaculately clean, preserving this image of a sacred space of democracy while their members took to the global stage to demand revolution. He waited, smelling the fumes on his clothes and reading the Daniel Webster inscription etched on the wall behind the dais. He held a lighter. He had three cameras discreetly set up in various positions in the chamber, including the gallery level. He�d talked to Liza Yudong about how to beat the government�s signal blocking, so the footage could be downloaded to an encrypted drop box. He flicked the lighter open and closed with a shink-snap. He heard the authorities coming down the hall. He got to his knees.

The men entered the House Chamber, channeling down the aisles like quick water. Demanding all the usual things. Ordering him to get down on the ground. Hands in this place or that place. Not entirely unfamiliar to a Black man who�d once been a teenager in Detroit. He held up a palm. �Fellas, stay back. For your own safety.� And though they were confused, the police did indeed stop. �Just know I�m doing this outta love,� he said. He had such a calm disposition, his face downcast but also still as water. �And for anyone watching, forgive them. Forgive everything they�ve done today. Love this fallen world as hard as you can.�

And he flicked open the lighter and touched it to his blue sweatshirt.

He�d jellied the gasoline himself not long after the first aborted effort to clear the Mall, siphoning from the Guard vehicle captured in the first intrusion. He knew they�d come again, and maybe this idea had been in his head a long time. Maybe as far back as his childhood when he was just an odd, bookish kid who spent too much time alone. That morning, when he heard the first shots ring out, he retrieved the can from its hiding place and soaked his clothes. During his six months of training in nonviolent resistance, as he prepared for this action, he�d also studied this process. Burn hot and burn fast. Go up quick, and the pain will only be a forgotten moment.

The SWAT team fell back as the man in front of the dais exploded in an incendiary burst of orange, pink, and yellow flame. The fire was so breakneck and demonic it roared to the top of the chamber, scorching the ceiling black. The man lurched from his knees to his feet, stumbled forward three steps, silent, his face already cloaked in flame, his eyes two hot coals. He spun halfway left, then right, and finally fell forward. He hit the ground with a dense boom-whoosh, flames lapping up all around his ruined body, hot smoke billowing from his impermanent shell. Someone screamed for a fire extinguisher, but the sprinkler system kicked on, and a hard rain fell across the chamber. Quinton Marcus-McCall only heard the agonizing scream of the fire catching his skin, the bright-hot full-body torment, the discovery of total, eclipsing pain. But then he heard hushed voices thundering in his ears. Eons rushed over him, with each second taking on the duration of whole millennia�the reign of the sun, Earth�s corpus blooming to life, humankind�s dallying�all visible for those interminable nanoseconds as the souls of the dead whispered in his ears. The terror he�d felt his whole life, a siege that begins at birth, slipped away, and the more the dread of oblivion receded the more overwhelming the wave of love. His mom and dad and sister were there, and even his life�s sorrows now felt precious. The curse of this life, from the yawp to the ashes, finally blew apart, vanishing to wind and stars.

E

XECUTIVE

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UMMARY ON THE

E

LEVATED

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RICE OF

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RAIN

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TAPLES

, 2034

PRESENTATION CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

EYES ONLY: CONGRESSWOMAN TRACY AAMANZAIHOU

Ashir al-Hasan

December 5, 2034

Abstract: When we returned from our recent fact-finding mission, a public relations junket for which I now feel a measure of disdain, you asked me to complete this assessment of the domestic and global food situation as it stands after two years of skyrocketing prices. My apologies for this document�s tardiness. When you asked after my mental state in an armored SUV trundling over the dirt roads of rural Nigeria, I answered in such a way as to bring an end to the conversation. Here following is an effort to answer that query honestly, and perhaps use it to explicate the crisis of caloric deficit that is driving violence, insurgency, and faminogenic policy across the globe. Allow me to begin where I should have last month in the vehicle: with my friend, partner, and husband, Seth Andrew Young.

From the beginning of his participation in the Concert for the Climate, Seth and I argued. As I once alluded, I knew that Seth�s involvement was part of a larger plot to occupy the National Mall, although I doubt any of the participants could have predicted the action�s grisly endgame. Several hundred people lie dead, with thousands more injured or imprisoned in the effort to retake the core of the capital. Seth claimed he had no plans to actually participate in the occupation, that he was merely drawing from his years in government and knowledge of logistics and security protocol to facilitate a mass act of civil disobedience. Yet from our first date in Charlie Palmer Steak, Seth made no secret he cared deeply for climate and environmental legislation. He�d always wanted a way back in, and Kate Morris gave it to him. For the first week of the occupation, he left me and our au pair to deal with an infant, so that he might help Morris and her acolytes maintain their feeble grip on a few city streets and public monuments. We communicated frequently and tensely as he came to the decision to stay for as long as the occupation continued. Suffice it to say, my fury is hard to overstate. As city services shut down, and even Georgetown descended into a state of exception, I was forced to leave our condo and relocate to New York with my sister and her husband, Peter. When the Love administration offered amnesty to participants following the record-setting heat wave, Seth finally complied with my wishes to leave the encampment. That was July 30. Then came the assault. Two days later, he still had not sent word. We tried to engage the authorities, but even with my many connections, the hierarchies of government were in such a state of disarray that no progress was made. Though the government had attempted a media blackout, video leaked via a member of the occupation, who decided a novel idea would be to self-immolate on a live feed. It was arresting footage to say the least and the first indication that what had occurred on the National Mall was more than tear gas and arrests, that the carnage would dwarf what occurred in 2021. That night, with the children in bed, Haniya, Peter, and I huddled around the television as reports began to emerge of what had happened on August 1. Even Peter, never at a lack for a quip, was preternaturally quiet. In a way, that unnerved me more.

�This can�t be true,� Hani said at one point.

Then there was a doctor from a D.C. hospital telling reporters he had numerous patients riddled with gunshot wounds. He said: �There was a massacre.�

Hani turned to me: �Seth said they were about to give up.� Her tone was accusatory. �Ash, you said he and the others were going to leave.�

�That is what he said.� On television, there was footage of the ER. I�d never seen so much blood.

My sister can vacillate between boundless good humor and stony melancholy. She rarely weeps. It was disconcerting then, as she began to cry very hard and say to herself, �Astaghfirullah. Astaghfirullah.�

I had not heard my sister use Islam�s liturgical language since our father was alive. Why she was asking for forgiveness was beyond me, and I never inquired.

G

UNS

, W

ALLS, AND

S

ULFUR

D

IOXIDE

2035

Itried to just say the truth, as plainly as I could.

�I don�t know if I�d call them nightmares, but it�s in my dreams, certainly. Coming into the house and finding her. It was� truly awful. Shocking and, this is a pedestrian word but, disgusting�� I tried to find a way to admit what I wanted to admit. �I find I have more guilt not that she did it, but that I��

I paused too long, my eye wandering over a slab of obsidian hanging on the wall. Expensive art was a staple of these high-priced therapists. As if office decor could signal one�s competence as a mechanic of souls. Maria�s knuckles left her chin so she could urge me on.

�I feel guilty because I�m glad she�s gone.� I wanted her to say something then, but she only waited. �I miss her, of course, but I miss the woman who raised me. Not the one at the end. She was so bitter and unhappy and cruel�especially to me. I couldn�t bear to be around her anymore.� I plucked a piece of lint from my pants. �Anyway, I know we talk about this all the time��

�We talk about whatever you want to talk about,� said Maria, her eyes always eager behind her ARs. She never took a note, but she seemed to remember everything, and furthermore, care. Not in the sense that she empathized, but like she was an alien who just found humans fascinating. �Finding a loved one after a suicide is an incredible life event, Jacquelyn. The emotions that come with it are complicated. Do you talk to your partner about it?�

�I have. I don�t anymore really.�

�Why not?�

�He has his own things going on. Sometimes I talk to Allie.�

�But not your brother?�

I rolled my eyes. �Erik wouldn�t talk about it if Xuritas cuffed him to a chair and hooked him up to a car battery.�

�He�s closed off.�

�That�s one way of putting it. He�s divorced, estranged from his kids, drinks heavily.�

�What does he do for work again?�

�Mostly I give him money.�

�How much?�

�A lot. Same with Allie.�

�I thought she had the doctor husband?�

�She does, but they�re overleveraged. You�ve never met two more irresponsible people, and he�s retired now. Almost in his seventies and he�s asking his wife to hit up her sister for �loans� every six months.�

Now that most of my social circle consisted of people who�d gone from elite prep schools to Princeton to making small fortunes, I had an imposter�s anxiety and avoided talk that could lead to my family�s pinched, unhappy lives. I had unnerving fears of my siblings coming to visit me in New York and having to introduce them at a dinner party: Erik with his dead front tooth or Allie and her Real Housewives of St. Louis life. Fred hypothesized that our extravagantly successful peers were in fact jealous of my background. The rich couldn�t wait to tell you about whatever humble beginnings they could dredge up. �Growing up, our summer house was such a dump, it didn�t even have a dock!� he joked.

�Do you resent giving your siblings money?� Maria asked.

�No. I just feel like it�s a sign� I don�t know� that our family failed. That we all blew apart somehow, but I can never figure out why.�

�Your father�s affair.�

I shook my head at this. �How long can you be pissed at the dead? That�s what I tell Allie, at least. Dad had to live with our mother, so how am I supposed to blame him when I couldn�t stand to be around her.�

�That�s still an upsetting thing to learn, Jackie.�

I didn�t want to talk about my family anymore. We always circled the same things: Dad�s affair, Allie�s bitchiness, Erik�s shittiness, and my mother hanging by a black electrical cord from the banister. The first time I told Maria, she didn�t even blink. �You�re not the first person to find a loved one dead of suicide, and you won�t be the last,� she had said. I�d considered being offended by her dismissive approach toward what I, at the time, felt was a shocking and unconquerable trauma, but by our third session I�d decided I liked this attitude, and I liked her. To Maria, nothing was surprising, nothing too traumatic to be processed and overcome. However, I had lied to Maria about the dreams. They were nightmares, and I did wake up sweating.

�How�s Fred?�

�He�s good. Stressed from work, but good.�

�You�re spending enough time together.�

�Yes. After I talked to him, we sort of worked out an agreement. At least two evenings and one day a week when he has to put all the screens away. No data, no reports, no investor calls.�

�How do you feel about his divorce or lack thereof?�

�I understand where Fred�s coming from. His wife is going to massacre him if he asks for it. He stands to lose sooo much money, and trust me, she�s vindictive. She will not let this go easily. She hates me.�

�How do you know that?�

�Way back at the hearing for Fred Jr. when he got out, just the way she shook my hand. Fred�s only eight years older than me, but maybe it�s the younger woman thing.�

�This bothers you?�

�No, but�this is dumb, but I want the wedding. I want to invite all my old friends from college or Chicago and say �I do.� Get my stupid sister to be the matron of honor. Maybe that�s retrograde, but it means something to me.�

�That�s not retrograde at all, Jacquelyn. You�re asking for something utterly reasonable. And you know what? If it costs Fred half his money, he�ll still be more than fine. He can ask you for an allowance.�

T

HE

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HOST AND THE

M

ASK

2036

You�re bone-tired, but you focus on the work. You try not to think of prison, of search and rescue, or of the girl in the hole. Every Tuesday, Reverend Andrade and his wife, Ginna, drive their minivan around Coshocton handing out sack dinners to anyone who needs one. This winter, that includes most everyone in the county, from the single moms in the apartments on Walnut Street to the folks in tents out by the ruins of the old power plant. The Rev and Ginna print up little cards at the local copy shop and tape one to the top of each ham and cheese sandwich. It gives the recipient directions to the church or addiction treatment at the Fierce Blue Fire center where you and Raquel got clean a decade ago. You riding with them is part of the make-work the reverend has thrown your way since you got paroled, and you understand it�s money he can�t afford to pay you. Even with the parishioners who�ve stuck with him, no one can afford much tithing. He gives you tasks like stapling forms or fixing a clogged sink, and you�re figuring out how to use a pipe snake on the fly with his AR glasses. Then on Tuesdays he takes you along as �muscle� while he and Ginna make the rounds.

�Hon, y�all wanna sack dinner?� Ginna shouts through the window in her syrupy West Virginian drawl.

�What�s the catch?� the tired old Black guy asks, stopping all the same. He carries a backpack and wears a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl LXI Champs toboggan cap.

�Ain�t no catch, sweetheart. Just some food from Church of Christ down Route 16.�

�No God stuff,� he says.

�Sorry, darling, Jesus comes in every bag. Now come take this.�

Hesitantly, he comes forward. You hand Ginna the bag from the back seat, and she hands it to the man, who pops it open and peers inside like he can�t believe there�s not a bomb or a human ear.

Says Andrade from the driver�s seat, �Ever need a helping hand or a place to sleep we got contacts at the shelter.�

�Just hungry,� the man mutters, poking past the church�s card to the sandwich and fruit beneath. Then he looks up at Andrade and Ginna. �Much obliged. For real.�

�God bless you, brother,� says the Rev.

Andrade pulls away, leaving the man to tear the sandwich out of the cellophane right there on the street and take down a quarter of it in one bite. Ginna spots a woman she knows, working the corner near Raquel�s McDonald�s. It�s a good place to trick because the crosswalks are busy, and there�s a cheap motel right across the street.

�Starling!� she calls. Ginna has chestnut hair with blond highlights and would be pretty but for several missing teeth. You�re now missing three teeth, so you�re no one to judge, but the asymmetry of her smile is distracting. �Starling, honey, you wanna sack dinner?�

Andrade pulls the van to the side, and Starling looks annoyed but takes the brown paper bag anyway. She�s wearing a T-shirt cut off at the midriff, exposing the pale flab of her belly. The shirt has a picture of an eagle filing its talons, backdropped by an American flag. Despite the flesh hanging loose over her knobby bones now, you recognize her from the blood bank way back in the day.

�How you doing out here?� Ginna asks her. �Staying warm? Got a place to sleep?�

�I�m aight. Just need a customer.� She jitters and twitches, a dance taking place in the same square foot of space. You�ve been dope-sick enough in your life to know that she needs to score. �Used to be I sucked cock for heroin and didn�t gotta worry about eating. Now it�s easier to get heroin than a sandwich.� This explanation, Ginna says as you pull away, �is as close to a thank-you as Starling is ever going to fork over.�

The reverend and Ginna hold hands while he pilots the minivan around town. A cross dangles from the rearview mirror. Beyond the windows you watch the sunset reflect off the clouds, turning the sky pink and blue. A cotton-candy light. A sky of cold winter branches and telephone wires. Billowing above a front door, there is a banner with the silhouette of The Pastor carrying the cross up a hill against a gold, yellow, and brown sky while dark outlines of his followers watch silently. You can�t turn a corner in town without seeing his name.

You drive the twilight until all but two sack dinners are gone. The reverend and his wife always give you the last two to take home.

Back at the double-wide, you set one of the brown sacks in front of Toby, who�s drawing and telling you about the ghost in the salad words you can never quite make out. He�s wearing both his hearing aids, but his language is still mush-mouthed:

�En dah it stans in feel an watches us.�

Five months home, and you�re starting to pick up the sounds: And Dad, it stands in the field and watches us.

Toby�s seven years old but looks smaller and younger. You�re not sure what he thinks of you. His hearing aids jut from the canals, clipped together around his neck so he doesn�t lose them.

�Where�s Mommy?� you ask. He points to the wall, which means out back of the double-wide in your small lot. You do not have to ask if he�s hungry because when he peers inside the sack his eyes light up, the ghost momentarily forgotten.

Out back, in the glare of the flashlight, you find Raquel covered in blood.

�He�s talking about that ghost again.�

She doesn�t look up from her work. �I know, he spooks me out. Like one of them possessed kids in the old movies.� From a low branch on the maple tree, she�s got an animal hanging by a bungee cord, its feet cut off, and she�s using a fleshing knife to take off the fur, pulling it down the body like a sock. �How was it?�

� �Bout what you�d expect. Rev gave me twenty bucks and two sack dinners for my time.�

Raquel pauses and scratches her nose with her forearm, the part that doesn�t have blood on it.

She examines the animal and resumes skinning. �Your mama still coming up Sunday?�

�Far as I know. Think she�ll hit church with us, but I don�t expect her to stay.�

�That�s good.�

Raquel does not indicate which part of this she thinks is good, the staying or the going. While you were away, your mom inserted herself into Raquel�s and Toby�s lives, driving up on her days off to serve as free childcare, throwing in money when she could after they made SNAP impossible. Raquel had needed the help, but you don�t blame her if she�s had enough of your mom at this point. She�s moved up to assistant general manager at Mickey D�s, but the pay bump was insignificant. Once you got out, you promised her you�d be bringing in some money, but now it�s more like you�re just another mouth for her to feed.

�What is that anyway? Coyote?� you ask.

�Stray.�

�A dog?�

�It�s protein, ain�t it? Some scientist wrote this thing that said we should all stop feeding the pets and start eating �em.� Raquel bops her eyes. �Everyone on the news threw a fit, but I�m like, Not a bad idea. And we can take care of this stray problem to boot.� She finishes pulling the skin and fur free of the animal. It looks like a demon freshly crawled out of hell. �All Toby�s eating anymore is oatmeal and chocolate cake.�

The winds from the east carry the smell of the new petrochemical plant. If a headache had a scent, it would be this.

�I ain�t eating dog.�

�Then eat the oatmeal,� she snaps back.

�Toby�s in there with a sandwich right now.�

Raquel unhooks the dog to lay it on the ground. The butcher knife lies on a sheet of newspaper nearby.

�And what about tomorrow? And the next day?�

�Casey Wheeler and I are going hunting this weekend. There�ll be venison after that.�

�Oh sure, Casey. That country goat.�

She picks up the butcher knife and wags it in the air as she talks.

�You been to the store. We can�t afford to be paying that much for canned soups and beans and SpaghettiOs. The food bank is tapped out every time I go. People stealing all day at work, and the franchisees is expected to pay for armed security now. God forbid I lift a box of nuggets home! Well, I found a solution, so I�ll be putting that solution to work. You got a problem with it, Keeper, you can fuck off back to jail.�

Rather than argue, you stalk around to the front steps. You take a seat on the stoop and wish you had a beer. You can hear Toby has turned on the TV, and for whatever reason he�s watching the news. Across the river, the petrochemical plant glows green and purple and orange from the variety of lights within its guts, a fortress of steel and piping with a winking smokestack rising skyward. It�s uncommonly beautiful even though the smell probably has something to do with Toby�s asthma. You went looking for a job there, of course. �Keeper, they ain�t gonna hire the guy who took the fall for a terrorist attack,� Raquel said, rolling her eyes in that way you hate. You also hate that word. In the end, all you got charged with was trespassing, possession, and trafficking narcotics.

From inside, you hear the heat and timbre of The Pastor�s unmistakable voice rise over the babble.

�� The socialist media calls Love a tyrant, but I call him a coward. Lists are not enough. Walls are not enough. Drones are not enough. Land mines in the desert are a start, but we have to be willing to exert the ultimate punishment for lawbreakers. I�m talking about biblical law. We are witnessing God�s judgment on a sinful world. He has given us the tools, the means, now we must seize these tools and bring about His glory��

�Toby, turn that shit off!� you yell but then remember he can�t hear you unless you�re beside him. You go inside the trailer, find Toby playing with a toy superhero, not really watching. You take the remote from his hand. He cries out, groping his small fingers for it and babbling in his private language. On the screen, The Pastor rocks on, and the crowd is going bonkers.

�They tell you this is their country, but I�m telling you right now my friends, they are wrong.�

A young woman weeps as she tries to reach out and touch The Pastor�s pant cuff on the stage. He holds his hand high and allows the fury of the rally to swell.

�This is OUR country. And I am your president already.�

You change the channel, and this sends Toby into a tantrum you cannot understand.

S

HANE

D

RIVES INTO THE

S

UNSET

2036

Shane woke two days after the presidential election in a humid motel room, the sheets soaked, thinking Lali had peed herself. The bedside lamp clicked and clicked like it was out of bullets, and then she realized the AC unit was silent. A power outage. Lali remained asleep, but it wasn�t another bedwetting episode�Shane had left behind a pool of sweat from dreams and heat. A dusky light split the blinds. She knew she wouldn�t fall back asleep anytime soon and eased out from under the damp sheets, careful not to wake her daughter. Quietly unlocking the door, she stepped outside into the muggy, fetid air.

The wind at least cooled her skin. From the second-floor balcony, she could see over the tops of a few seaside units, all of them dark, two of them collapsed, the roofs pancaking down. According to the motel clerk, Parmesh, about a third of the homes had already been in foreclosure before Tropical Storm Solomon shoved five feet of water up the shore. The quaint Gulf tourist town she�d known as a girl, when her parents rented from this same motel one week a year, lost the fight to condo development and regurgitated seaside housing. Now homebuyers had all but vanished.

�Being �underwater� on your mortgage ain�t exactly figurative around here,� Parmesh had told her. Parmesh had a lot of rehearsed lines he deployed with self-satisfaction, but Shane found him friendly and wry, so they�d chatted while Lali clicked quarters together at the vending machine and agonized over her soda choice.

Propping her arms on the railing, Shane breathed in the slate-heather dawn. The air smelled of the sea. Seagulls squealing, soaring, and diving. She remembered the family photo taken from the balcony of this same motel. Her father had shoved his digital camera into the hands of some poor lady passing by. In that picture, there�d been shoreline behind their heads. Almost all of the beach had since vanished, the sea scraping back and reclaiming raw earth.

Behind her, the AC rattled to life. The TV chirped. They must have fallen asleep with it on last night before the power went out. She stood there a while longer watching the sea.

Back in the room, Lali was awake, running a brush through her hair, watching the news. �Anything?� Shane asked.

ON THE MYSTERY OF VICTOR LOVE�Love did not appear on election night but instead sent his campaign manager to declare victory. He has not actually made a public appearance since two weeks before the election. The White House press secretary says he�s secluded at Camp David trying to deal with the situations in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and California. As we know, Aaron McGuirk resigned in protest after the events in D.C. and was never replaced. Now many are questioning Love�s mental health, not to mention the chain of command.�

THE PASTOR In Berkeley, fifteen people were killed after a man opened fire on a voting line. Voters faced intimidation at polling sites around the country as armed militias arrived to �protect the vote.� The Pastor had denied coordination with these forces, promising �biblical justice� would befall those denying his victory. Never had a presidential candidate promised executions of his political enemies. Now pundits debated if he was serious about executing members of their profession. �Why are we speculating about voices of moderation in his cabinet? He�s telling us what he will do.�

�Nope,� Lali said curtly. Only twelve and Lali already needed a preemptive exorcism for her surly teen posture. Shane knew better than to try a conversation this early, so she merely sat down on the bed. Two days after the election, and still no one knew who won, a debacle that was making 2000 and 2020 look relatively ordered and sane. The Pastor seemed to be close to the electoral college with 264 votes, but President Love had won the popular vote, and seven states were going to need recounts. Tracy Aamanzaihou received enough votes in those seven that she�d played the role of spoiler for Vic Love. Both Democratic and Republican camps were assuring their voters and the media that they had won.

She sat on her moist side of the bed, reading even grimmer news on the chyron below: pogroms in India, violence in the IDP camps in Arizona, FEMA overwhelmed as it tried to deal with the California refugee crisis, and President Love AWOL. She looked at Lali, who appeared to be taking it all in with her strange, inscrutable calm. The brush ripped at her hair. They�d driven down to Gulfport the day before, Shane concocting an obscure and unsatisfying excuse, which Lali was surely used to by now. The older she got, the worse Shane was at lying to her. She thought of leaving Lali back in Lawrence, but with the ligature of the world fraying, this scared her.

�You�ll be okay on your own today, Lals? I should only be a few hours.�

�I told you, yes.� Her eyes never left the TV. They had a fight a few weeks earlier about the amount of time Lali spent in VR. Shane had taken the set, and Lali hadn�t forgiven her.

The news pivoted, and abruptly there she was, dressed in a simple blue sweater with holes in the cuffs, speaking from the offices of her new operation.

�We only have our numbers,� she told an interviewer. She had an edginess in her voice and a craze to her eyes. Hair still like a wild river. �We are the majority, locked out by a political process that can no longer respond to the will of the people. So we need to shut that process down. Forget about Climate X. I�m talking about mass disruption to our economic system. And it starts with putting our bodies between the corporate state and its ends. Deny them any ability to continue with business as usual��

�But won�t that�� The interviewer cut her off, and there was cross talk before he won out. �Don�t you fear that could exacerbate the civil unrest we�re seeing right now? Won�t that lead to more violence?�

�Yeah, not if our fucking government stops murdering its own people!� Her face was taut, the vein in her neck pulsing. �Trust me, Vic Love, The Pastor, Koch Industries, Exxon�these motherfuckers don�t have enough prisons or bullets in the world. So on November 7, we�re going to stop working again, we�re going to blockade again, we�re going to shut down the economy again. And I promise you, we will keep fucking coming.�

And after the third f-word they cut away from her, the anchor apologizing to the audience at home.

�Please don�t watch too much TV, Lali. Read a book today or something.�

Lali muted the TV, flipped over on her side, and pulled the covers over her face. Her hair fanned out over the pillow. She claimed she wasn�t really a girl in America in 2036 but a �post-biological, auto-teleological superintelligence� from the deep future inhabiting an avatar in a role-playing game living a complete, mundane human life from cradle to grave. She was serious about this, as she was serious about most everything. Shane told herself this lonesomeness and anger was just a phase.

She passed Parmesh in the office, and he gave her a cheery wave before turning his attention back to local radio, the host musing on the fate of the Gulf Coast. She grabbed a bagel from the grimy continental breakfast buffet and was on her way.

She drove with an arm out the window to catch the wind in her open palm. Most of the homes along Route 90 were battered, destroyed, empty, foreclosed, or for sale, and it gave the land a hallucinogenic quality, like it was previewing itself in the fog of a dream. Across the Mississippi shore, she got a look at the damage Solomon had wrought. The streets were mostly clear now, but lined with snowdrifts of splintered wood, plaster shards, particle board, trash, and shattered glass. She passed trucks stamped with NRA and APL decals, the snarling Cerberus, Stars and Bars, and homes with enormous flags flapping for The Pastor. On the ocean side, empty pilings stretched skyward after pitching the homes they held into the water. They looked like supplicating arms. Beyond the shore, she could see ink-dot islands and sandspits washed by garbage. The sea was calm, the waves sighing in and out, foam bubbling on sand. A snowy egret drifted on the wind so that it remained stationary in the sky. She drove west and thought about what she would say to Quinn, Kai, and Murdock when they met for lunch.

THE WATER WILL COME The radio didn�t need to tell Parmesh Singh that. Pretty fucking obvious. The low-relief, sandy barrier islands were more or less already swallowed up, and there was so little protection from king tides that the water simply invaded whole neighborhoods. His parents had refused to sell in the �20s when the writing was on the wall, and now all the motel could do was house the charity cases FEMA dropped on them and hope to dodge bankruptcy for a few more years. His dad blamed illegal immigrants and drug dealers.

23.6 MM PER YEAR Or .93 inches, said NPR. Scientists disagreed on how much faster the water might rise. According to the Tulane scientist being interviewed, the problem was that no human had ever seen an ice cap collapse before, let alone studied the dynamics that determined how quickly it raised sea levels. Insurers seemed to believe one thing while the real estate industry believed the diametric opposite and still scrambled to sell seaside properties, from Cape Cod to Houston, before entire continents of ice could melt into the oceans.

T

HE

S

EVENTH

D

AY

2036�2037

When I left the office midday, I lied to Carmen, the receptionist, and said I had a gynecologist appointment. �Tell the boss I�m sorry for missing the meeting.� I acted like I was in a hurry, perhaps stressed about a test result. Sitting on the foam-green plastic seats of the Staten Island Ferry, I kept trying to read my book while my mind wandered. When I met the man now scrambling toward the presidency years ago in that Chicago bookstore, I�d been a reader. I�d always had a book on my commute on the L, but when I moved to New York, I stopped taking the train. A car picked me up every day, and I�d spend that time thumbing through investor reports or my phone�s cornucopia of distraction. Now I was trying to become a reader again, but I�d chosen a tome both dense and horrific. A Savage and Unforgivable Empire described the race to profit from the ecological crisis. Not to mention, the man I�d known for a night all those years ago dominated the ferry�s TVs.

With the election thrown to the House of Representatives and going to a vote on January 6, The Pastor had consolidated support and was promising bloodshed if he wasn�t certified and sworn in on January 20. Maria had asked if I wanted to try an antianxiety medication, probably Ativan, but what was the point? Ativan�s calming effects were not up to the task of The Pastor actually sitting in the White House. The memories of this man itched under my skin, so I went outside to breathe fresh air as the ferry churned toward the tip of Manhattan.

I was meeting Moniza Farooki at the Trade Center Memorial, one of the most heavily surveilled places in the world. When I asked her if this was safe, she sent me an encrypted text: We will never meet all your top secret 007 prerogatives.

Her bombshell investigative feature, �The Fund That Would Rule the World,� had detonated on Wall Street that summer only to be quickly buried beneath the crisis in Bangladesh, the debacle in Pakistan, and an unhinged election. The documents I�d delivered to her described Tara Fund�s investment strategy, its long positions in the Arctic, Norman Nate�s solar management endeavor, Xuritas and the private security industry, and most damningly, CLK and its efforts to subvert elections with tactics that amounted to psychological warfare. If you thought about it, Moniza had pointed out, manipulating stock prices had become de rigueur for banks and hedge funds. One needed an edge, and this was the natural evolution in a decriminalized and deregulated financial world: pay a psychometrics firm to manipulate companies, elections, CEOs, politicians, shareholders, and anyone else who got in the way of a winning bet.

�No one innovates financial crime like hedge funds,� Moniza told me. �In another age, this would�ve been the biggest scandal in the history of finance. Now it�s just another Tuesday.�

Fred seemed less upset that Tara�s dirt had spilled in the New Yorker than the article�s insinuation that Tara was mostly a bit player in this drama, �and not a particularly profitable one,� as Moniza wrote. Despite being on the cutting edge of these tactics, Tara had actually lost money for two consecutive years. While most of the Street lawyered up, Fred fell into a funk about what kind of damage this would do to the fund�s reputation, if clients would ask for redemptions after their lock-in ended.

The other issue the story highlighted had to do with the Sustainable Future Coalition and its ties to Tara�s head of investor relations, Fred Wimpel. The SFC, having won stunning victories with the defeat of climate legislation during Randall�s term and the election of its ally Loren Victor Love, wanted more. It wanted �carbon maximalism�; it wanted an administration that would not just stave off the challenge to fossil fuels but make a hard push toward new energy horizons. The sudden upswing in the fortunes of The Pastor, the article implied, were no accident, as it poured dark money into his campaign and set land mines for his competition. I�d never told Moniza about the night in Chicago. Whistleblowing was one thing, frightening intersections with vast historical forces another.

Walking up Greenwich Street, I stepped onto the vast tundra of the 9/11 Memorial and made my way to the northwest corner of Tower One�s footprint, my eyes grazing the names of the dead as I passed. I�d been in the ninth grade when these people lost their lives. I remembered getting out of gym and my friend Mandy taking me by the hand and leading me to science class where the TV was on and the towers were burning.

I turned as Moniza approached, pulling a hand from the pocket of her peacoat. She was a small but attractive woman with sleek black hair and immaculate Queen�s English. She wagged a device that looked like any old tablet. Supposedly, it used ambient noise and data streams to junk up surveillance devices without the surveilling party knowing. We�d met in public this way before. We walked past each other, stepping to the corner of Tower One, pretending to read the names. The water inside the fountain rushed into the center, a steady, soporific roar.

�And you tease me about James Bond shit. What was it that couldn�t wait?�

�Relax, darling, those are our offices.� She nodded to the fortress of glass and steel. �I�m flying down to Charlotte tonight. I didn�t have time to set up anything too clandestine.� I waited, and she chewed her tongue. The chances that Tara had private investigators following me were real, and I desperately wanted her to make this quick. �I thought I owed it to you to know: A source told me the SEC has opened an investigation into Tara. If the FBI gets involved, it could mean a Title III on your boyfriend�s phone.�

�A wiretap?�

She nodded. �Be careful what you say to him. And I�d talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later.�

�Do you think Fred did anything illegal?�

She ticked her head in ambivalence. �It�s become quite difficult to say what�s illegal anymore. On Wall Street or in Washington. Either way, I felt you deserved to know. It was never my intention to stitch you up.� Her voice was cool but sincere.

�I did it of my own free will.� I was thinking of Fred. The summer of �35, after I�d delivered the file to Moniza, he and I spent some time apart. He went to London while I stayed in New York. When he returned, he was bearing an early edition of Sense and Sensibility, which he�d hunted down at a rare book dealer because, he said, he�d once heard me say it had been my favorite book in college. It was then I realized, to my dismay, that I still loved him.

�It may be that this will turn out a mere footnote in high finance anyhow.�

�What do you mean?�

I ran my hand over a name on the lip of the fountain: Jane Marie Orth. Just another woman who had no idea her life would come to an end at the hands of violent and insecure men.

�There�s something going on in the markets. My contacts who were around in 2007�they�re unnerved. There have been two years of falling housing prices all over the coasts and the insurance companies are canceling every homeowner policy they can wriggle out of.�

�ARkSTORM put them in a tough spot.�

�Yes, but insurance losses coming due can�t explain the whole situation. Maybe your partner and his fund did something illegal and maybe not. But it�s all the legal activities that appear to be the problem at the moment.� Before I could inquire further, she said, �Okay, that�s probably more gabbing than is safe. Good luck, Jackie.� And she peeled off into the wind, making haste toward One World Trade.

Riding back across the Upper Bay, passing the Statue of Liberty, I watched the cranes of the shipping yards and the field of wind turbines behind the calm green lady. I thought about the first time I�d visited the city to attend a friend�s wedding with Jefferey. How impossible and epic this place had seemed. How small it made my life in Chicago feel. Back on Staten Island, I rode the train past the abandoned graffitied buildings of the shore and the seawalls of sandbags now protecting inland structures from king tides and storm surges.

Carmen asked me how the appointment went, and I gave her a relieved look like the test results had been fine. I returned to the open-office section I shared with a snarky woman named Liza and a bitchy queen named Garrett, but I could hear one voice booming from the room catty-corner to us, stuffed in the back of this otherwise open space. Liza and Garrett wore noise-canceling buds as a defense. Talking into a pair of ARs for a remote interview, Kate Morris sat with her feet on her desk, hands folded over her stomach.

�I don�t have a comment�that�s a question for the scientists,� she said. �But it�s definitely something to freak out about. You know, if you need something to freak out about�� She paused, listening. Then, �All these whining, bitching corporations saying I�m trying to ruin them, that I�m saying they need to be buried alive�that is all true. I am. And they do.�

A C

ONTEMPORANEOUS

A

CCOUNT OF THE

E

CO

-E

CONOMIC

C

RISIS OF

2037

Ashir Al-Hasan

AUGUST 15, 2037

Abstract: I�ve never recorded anything for the sake of posterity, but that is the position in which I now find myself. There is a very real possibility the nation will see widespread breakdown of a functioning, governable society in the coming months, and it may be that the only contribution I have left to make is this unvarnished account. Even in the grip of this unfolding chaos, history demands primary source documentation, and I believe I carry as much responsibility as anyone for our failure to arrest this crisis.