by R E Kearney
Hälso remains unconvinced. ”I still don’t like it. I feel like I’ve already lost the war without a battle. No! I refuse to surrender to people like them.”
“Don’t you understand? You already did lose the battle…the first one, anyway.” Robert sweeps his hand across the hundreds of dying vegetables. “Your plants are dead or dying and you don’t know why, yet. Do you? No, you don’t. So, you’ve already lost this first battle. But, if we follow the wise warrior Sun Tzu who taught that sometimes we need to lose the small battles in order to win the war. We will win this war.”
Hälso is still skeptical. ”So was your wise Sun Tzu an agronomist, too? Did he tell you how to save our endangered fruits, like our citrus and our bananas? These vegetables you see here are vital...essential...critical to Parisian life. But, once we determine what is killing them we can replant. They may have ruined the seeds we need to replant here. But, I know SPEA stores the seeds we require to regrow in the Fort Collens seed vault. I understand you worked on the vault’s security system. So, can you provide the seeds we need?”
”Yeah, I designed the cyber security system for it. That seed vault is mankind’s lifesaver. It has to be fail safe and secure.” Robert attempts to reassure her. ”So, give me a list of the seeds you need and I’ll order them to be shipped to you immediately, then you can replant.”
Hälso continues concerned. ”But, simply replanting...that’s not true for our citrus and bananas. Saving them now is crucial. They are too rare to lose. You must rescue our bananas...and I certainly don’t think paying them one NUMUS of their blackmail is going to do that.”
Robert motions with his hands to calm her. “Ok. I’m a cyber investigator, not a horticulturist, but first thing tomorrow morning, I will investigate your bananas. I’ll do my cyber detective thing. But, for me to stop this Limos Lives threat, you must help me. Will you assist me?”
Hälso nods her head in agreement, but he realizes she is not convinced.
Robert again attempts to persuade her to follow his plan. ”Today...immediately... Omedelbart! We must start searching for these rats’ nest. We cannot wait for them to strike again. AAU...no, Ile-de-France won’t survive another attack. So, I need for you to send them a small scrap of ransom now...right now. I hide my own algorithm inside your NUMUS ransom transfer like the Greeks hid inside their Trojan horse. Thinking they have won, they relax, enabling me to conduct my search. Ignorance lost the first battle for us. Millions of Parisian lives depend upon us learning not to lose this war.”
SUDDENLY SUICIDAL
Poough! Fett’s wide, sweat-wet, weighty arm flops across Rube’s chest shattering his sleep. He jerks, gasping for breath. She is crushing him. With a snore snort, her mouth flops open-wide spewing a fetid fog tearing Rube’s eyes. Squirming and twisting, he wriggles his escape from beneath Fett’s trapping corpulence.
Standing beside their bed watching Fett wheeze and gurgle, Rube wonders why he is still here. His ankle is healed and strong. Thanks to the ICC, he is overfed, growing a little fat, and consistently medicated. He is also bored – mind melting bored.
“What’s wrong honey? You look upset.” Fett asks with a yawn and her weird wink, she considers seductive.
Rube groans. Fett’s hospitality comes with obligations. She demands pleasing and pleasuring. And, she never tires of talking. She talks while she eats. She talks when she sleeps. Sex is a continuous conversation and critique. Even when she plunges into her virtual-reality, reality diaries, she talks. Talking to herself. Talking to the VR characters. Talking to him. Fatigued and frustrated, Rube is beginning to consider her appetites insatiable.
“I don’t want to continue living like this.” Brooding, Rube rubs his head of sprouting hair bristles. “I need something to do...some work…something.”
Grunting and stretching, Fett lifts herself into a sitting position. “Each one of my three husbands told me the same thing before they died.”
“Really?” Rube is instantly interested. “How did your three husbands die?”
“Suicide.” She responds, displaying little emotion.
“All three killed themselves?” Watching Fett groan, moan and roll her barrel shaped body out of bed, Rube begins to understand possible motivations for her husbands’ suicides.
“No, all of them dared to defy Sheriff. Around here, that’s suicide…guaranteed suicide.” Using her right thumb, she thoughtfully digs at some fat-string lodged between two of her eight teeth. She frees the food, inspects it on the end of her thumb and licks it back into her mouth. “Then again, since they knowed it was stupid to go against Sheriff, I suppose you could say that all three of them killed themselves.”
“What did they do against the Sheriff?” Rube looks down to avoid witnessing Fett gorging herself.
“Got in her business. Not smart to get in Sheriff’s business.” Fett shakes her head. “No, not smart. Not safe either. Like I said…suicide. At least, that’s what I call it.”
“Ok then, just so I don’t make their same mistakes, what is Sheriff’s business?”
“Smarter you ask, what ain’t Sheriff’s business?” Fett reaches into a candy bowl beside the bed, tosses two PMDs into her mouth and swallows. “Want a PMD? You should eat more PMDs. You know…docility drugs. Let you ride time. Make your worries go away. You know why I got so many PMDs? My husbands. I inherited theirs. They die, so I get their supply. More pills for me. Good deal, eh?”
“Uh yeah, that’s great. You’re lucky.” Rube watches her eat two more PMDs and wash them down with a warm, flat, breakfast beer. “But, tell me about Sheriff’s business.”
Fett burps. “Everything’s her business. Sheriff and her knights run everything from Squalor, here on ICC Throughway-Hyperloop 70, north to ICC Throughway-Hyperloop 80. Then from the Denver Metrostate border east three hundred miles to the Hays-Kearney-183 borderline. She calls it her shire.”
Rube chuckles. “Her what?”
“Her shire.” Fett nods to affirm her statement. “See, before she became Sheriff, she was a professor of Medieval History. So when she gained control of her territory, she decided to rule it like it was a Medieval English shire with vassals and knights instead of deputies. At least that’s what she told me she was planning to do. And she’s done it too.”
“She told you? Are her and you buddies?” Rube asks surprised.
A wicked grin slices across Fett’s face. “We shared some moments and men, yeah. Some good times…some nasty.”
“Uh yeah, well that’s none of my business.” Rube wonders if Fett is telling him tales, attempting to impress him. “Anyway, I ain’t no scholar. So, I don’t know nothing about medieval shires and shire sheriffs. How’s she different from any other Sheriff?”
A wide smile crosses her face. She is enjoying her role as Rube’s confidant. “Well, one of the first rules she added was something she calls the rights of purveyance. She told me that with her purveyance rights she can force people – everybody actually - in her shire to give her food and supplies. Since the federal territories government don’t pay her, she considers the food and supplies are owed her. Like a tax, I think.”
“Sounds like stealing to me.”
“Yeah well, that’s what my first husband Bobby said too. He refused to give her anything. Week later, we found him hanging in an abandoned barn.” Fett clutches her throat. “Suicide.”
“Ok, if you think so.” Rube studies her face. As usual, she is eager to chat, so he seeks more information. “What else has she done?”
“Well, several times she’s held something she calls her tourn. Through informers and her tourns she discovers the criminals in her shire. Then, her knights round them up and she tries them in her shire court. She calls her shire court her moot. I spoke for John when she tried him in her moot for selling drugs. Since he was competing with her, she found him guilty. He stabbed himself six times in her jail.” Appearing sad, Fett pauses before continuing. “Suicide.”
“I guess John was another one of your husbands?”
“Oh yes, John was my second…my favorite.” Staring into the air, Fett falls silent, obviously mulling memories of John.
Not wanting to appear callous, Rube waits silently, allowing her to continue her reminiscing. But, he still desires to know more. Eventually, he recalls her to reality. “Sorry. That’s too bad about John. So, tell me about your third husband. What happened to him?”
Fett shakes her head. “Well, my poor, soft-hearted, lazy Tom concluded after several business failures that the easiest method for making money was to work for Sheriff. He wasn’t smart enough to be one of her knights, so she took pity on him. Made him a member of her Posse Comitatus.”
“Her what?”
“Her Posse Comitatus.” Fett forms invisible quote marks. “It’s another one of her medieval things. When she recruited Tom, she told me that medieval sheriffs had the authority to summon the able-bodied men of their shire to form a Posse Comitatus to help them maintain public order.”
“Maintain public order? Like in stories about the old, wild west? A posse chasing bad guys?” Rube points his index finger into the air as if he is holding a pistol. “Pow. Pow.”
Fett smirks. “Yeah…but no…not exactly. Actually, they’re her muscle…bunch of bullies. All her Posse Comitatus does is security for her Trading-Exchange Company…”
“What’s her Trading-Exchange Company?” Rube interrupts.
“Since there ain’t no traditional banks anymore or even digital financial institutions out here, there ain’t no money. So, everything is handled by trading.” Fett extends two fingers on her right hand. “Say you trade her two goats, if you got em, for a new shirt and shoes or a month’s groceries. Delivery drones don’t come way out here or there. So, her workers buy what you deal for in Denver and haul it out here.”
“Oh, it’s a type of barter bank, then?”
Snickering, Fett shakes her head. “No, ain’t no bartering with Sheriff. She tells you what you’ll need to provide in trade. You don’t question. You don’t quibble. You give her what she wants or you don’t get what you want. People out here ain’t got no choice. They’re not allowed in Denver and there ain’t no stores here.”
Rube frowns. “So, why does she need her Posse Comitatus?”
“She needs them to repossess things for her from people fool enough to fall behind on their bills with her…which is everybody. Land, houses and animals, she takes them all. Now, she has them all.” Fett spreads her arms wide. “She owns all the land and all the scraggy sheep and starving steers in a one hundred and fifty mile by three hundred mile rectangle. Forty-five thousand square miles of used up land and worn out people. All them folks that ranched or farmed that land are now working for her. She calls them her Serfs.”
Rube guides her back to her original story. “So, what happened to Tom? Did he steal something from her?”
“Oh no, Tom’d never steal. He was too honest…too honest and too decent.”
“And that’s why he’s dead…too honest?”
“The way he died makes me sad.” With the tip of her fingers, Fett lightly wipes her eye. “See, Tom was assigned to one of her posses. She sent this posse out to evict some family and take over their busted ranch. Only, when the posse gets there, Tom realizes that it’s his own parents that he’s expected to help this posse evict. This is his family’s ranch…where he growed up. Tom went crazy. He joined his family inside his childhood home and together they started fighting the posse. Like you, they still had some antique weapons. For two days, they fought off the posse. Wounded two Posse Comitatus members. A standoff.”
“Two days!” Rube exclaims surprised.
“Yes, two long, hot days. According to the knight in charge, to finally force them out, the posse firebombed the house. Tom and his parents was trapped inside. The knight reported he kept yelling for them to come out, but they wouldn’t. Suddenly, they heard five shots. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! When the fire burned out and they went in, they discovered Tom, gripping his pistol, lying dead next to his dead mom and pop, their dead dog and their dead cat. Using his last five bullets, he had shot them and himself.” Fett chokes on her words. “Suicide.”
Rube steps backward away from Fett. “You are really scaring me. You’re bad luck…cursed. With a record like yours, why would any sane man marry you?”
Insulted and indignant, Fett slaps Rube’s face. “Tell me. How many women you seen outside of Lymon?”
“None, but you.” Rube rubs his slap-sore face. “Sorry.”
“That’s right, mister. Women are hard to come by out here, but men ain’t…husbands ain’t. More useless men crawling around this dry, dust hole than rattlesnakes. And if they want to marry me…take care of me…use their birthright allowances to buy me things. Why should I say no?”
Rube waves his hand back and forth in front of his face. “Well, don’t get any ideas about me marrying you.”
With a chuckle, Fett kisses the tips of her fingers before tapping them against Rube’s cheek. “Honey, don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my marrying kind. You’re too old. I enjoy young men…younger than you…men young enough to get the birthright allowances you’re too old to get. I need their birthright allowances…to live. I inherit all their PMDs when they die, too, but only a portion of their birthright allowances. It ain’t much, but it’s something.”
“Birthright allowances and PMDs?” Rube grumbles. “Is that all they meant to you?”
“A girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do to get by in this world, honey.” Fett nods with a smirk. “You’re just my current boy toy. Somebody to keep me happy until my next husband comes around. And, don’t you worry, honey, he’ll come around.”
“So what are you saying? Should I pack up and leave?”
“Only if you want to leave, honey. I still enjoy your company. You’re clean, you don’t smell too bad and you’re not mean.” Starting at Rube’s head, Fett visually measures him from his nose to his crotch where her eyes linger. “You ain’t the best, I’ve had, but you’re a passable lover. You’re a welcome distraction. So, why don’t you stay?”
“At least until you find your next husband?” Rube half jokes and half probes.
“Yeah, either that or the Sheriff decides she has a use for you”
“Pardon?” Rube is surprised. “I didn’t know she knew…”
“Honey, nothing happens in Sheriff’s shire without her knowing or her direction. She knowed you was here before you knowed you was here. Now, like one of them medieval peasants she’s always talking about, she owns you. You’re just a piece of her property now…what she calls chattel…awaiting her orders. Be ready, for she will come. Sheriff always comes.”
HEAD GAMES
Affamé! Nourrir les enfants! Enflaming banners scream. Paris is hungry, frightened and on a rampage. Food riots are ripping Ile-de-France apart.
Robert is trapped in the Place de la Republique - surrounded by warriors. He has stumbled into the heart of a raging battle. A phalanx of Parisian anti-riot, police-cyborgs stomps forward from Robert’s left, a tidal wave crushing all ahead.
Waving crude signs and throwing whatever they pry loose, a menagerie of protestors boils and seethes at Robert’s right. They rush and retreat – rush and retreat. They are foolishly courageous, armed with taunts and insults, as their only weapons. They are in a fight they entered knowing they are destined to lose. They are mere humans.
Never losing sight of the police-cyborgs or the protestors, Robert withdraws from the center of their conflict, sliding backward. Bang, his back smashes against a sharp edge. Peering over his shoulder, he discovers an overturned and pillaged AAU Robomart. A small, whimpering girl huddles in a corner. He dives inside next to her. Sheltered by the looted Robomart, they watch the combat continue.
Clomp! Clomp! Clomp! The police-cyborg wall floods forward. From its pounding heart sounds a roaring command, �
�Disperse or die!”
A barrage of canisters launches into the protestors. In seconds, a blue fog envelopes the demonstrators. Their crude, home-made masks do not protect them. One after another they crash against the street. A few demonstrators escape, blindly stumbling and staggering out of the fog. A few steps and they collapse into heaving human heaps. Are they still alive? Robert is not certain.
“Duck. Get down.” Robert covers the little girl with his body, as the unrelenting wall of cyborgs marches past their refuge.
She squirms and whimpers. “Monsieur, vous me matraquez et la nourriture de mon petit frère.”
Robert’s translator implant sounds an alarm alerting him that in his efforts to protect her, he is squashing her and her baby brother’s hidden food. Ashamed, he lifts himself. Struggling, the girl jerks a small bag free from beneath her. Liquid oozes from her bag onto her leg. She howls in anguish. Her baby brother’s food is ruined.
Concentrating on reaching the human bodies piling up in front of them, the police-cyborgs ignore Robert and the girl. When Robert is certain they are safe, he lifts the sobbing girl out of the Robomart. Tears flooding her face, she races away, disappearing into the landscaping of Rue du Temple.
Cautiously, Robert climbs free of the Robomart. He hastily surveys the abandoned and trashed Place de la Republique. He is safe. The police-cyborgs are busy pursuing the remaining, retreating protestors.
“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness, according to Werner Herzog.” AGI echoes inside Robert’s conscious.
“Thanks, but that is not really helpful.” Silently, Robert mentally mutters.
“If that is an incorrect answer to your question, please rephrase and clarify your question to activate my deep, machine learning algorithm.” AGI queries through Robert’s biochip implant.
Confused, Robert rubs his brow. “Uh…but, I do not recall asking any questions.”
“You did not state your question. You mentally contemplated it for consideration and response. Do you require repetition of your question?”