Sanction

by Roman McClay

  He did this so that Colorado would not have thousands of South American drug dealers and traffickers and money launderers die in local hospitals or homes or on streets. That would cause too much attention and so instead they’d return home to die and would -as was only right- be Mexico’s problem not America’s , he surmised.

  It was the thinking of someone who didn’t want to be noticed, stared at, and applauded for what he had done. Some art need not be signed , he said, and thought of the benefits of nobody even noticing anything other than that the crime associated with these people had stopped and washed back out to sea .

  He watched the traffic flow like respirocytes in the blood vessels of the body of the state; cars and trucks and motorbikes all white light coming and red light going up and down I25 and crosshatched on I70. The AWACS and Landsat8 live feeds moved in front of his eyes on the big screen in the lab. MO turned to watch it also as each of them noticed the parallel to human cells in tissue and fluid. They watched the metaphor of the highways -full of red and white lights moving in flow- to the turbulence of warm blood and cavitating fluids gently moving each cell, each neuron left or right.

  He had added nanobots to each car suspected to be involved in criminal activity and then reduced it to just illegal aliens invading the state like pathogens as they glowed slightly on the 7-foot screen. MO had asked what was highlighted -as he too stared raptly at the screen- and Isaiah explained. MO nodded and recommended that an algorithm be added to track not just the car but the driver just in case the vehicles were stolen, abandoned and/or returned.

  Isaiah allowed the second flag on the algorithm to appear that showed he had done that very thing already and MO mentioned that it -then- all looked good to him.

  The overview of the state and its traffic, and its people were so similar to an epidemiological study that Isaiah began to see it as such not metaphorically but literally, and that each marked car was a hand cart ferrying out the dead and the diseased and the pathogenic.

  These highways and byways were perfect to track the worst of the worst, for they used them just as viruses use the infrastructure of the healthy cell , the thought. He watched one van cross the border from Raton into Trinidad at 21:55hrs with three glowing markers of Mexican nationals he had tagged nine days ago from their DNA as they had left their house in Aurora and drove south to Houston and then to El Paso and back. That van would be their tumbril , he thought, in a few days -infected- although not yet suppurating and sick, merely obsessed with return, they’d all pile in it and drive back to Mexico leaving their work and their obligations and their plans all undone .

  “Which the farmer, Death, had already set apart to be tumbrils of the Revolution ,” he said aloud as MO worked in silence on the next morning’s meeting on the improvements in the CNS augments in the inmates from group #4.

  III. 2024 e.v.

  “I hadn’t thought of it I guess; I mean, marijuana is already legal, so,” Steven fat-thumbed the tablet absently.

  “In an evidence-based scenario, he’d legalize all drugs and set up manufacturing facilities to regulate it and dispensaries to sell it and require only that the person be monitored by a physician and law enforcement to prevent re-sale. That would end most of this,” MO said.

  “Yeah, well you see what the gangs are doing with legal pot, they just grow it here where it’s legal and then truck it to states where it’s still illicit and command the high price associated with its illicit nature.”

  “Right, which is why all efforts would be based on re-sale. See, you wouldn’t allow home grows for heroin. It would be a manufacturing facility and dispensary program only residents could get and they would have to use it there or have its use monitored by law-enforcement so no re-sale would be possible.”

  “How?”

  “By tracking it,” MO said.

  “How?”

  “Each gram -or any unit- would be tagged with a benign genetic marker, a molecule that is recognized chemically, by a machine such as this,” MO said as he tapped on the new RTX device he had built to track onco-cells marked with a genomic binder, “and the police would then station the RTX at the borders and they read each passing car as it drives by. And if a car is travelling out of state with it, boom they catch it.”

  “Really, that machine can read that?” Steven asked.

  “I could manufacture larger ones that read specific binding chems that get annealed to any organic compound. Yeah, easy. And you could put it in airports or UPS or anywhere and the pharmaceuticals never leave the state. It’s just a matter of creativity, and man, for all his genius, often lacks creativity. He is too scared to try things like this. Not that I am oblivious to why, there are always political costs, and people are eusocial and need to get along with their peers. It’s a good trait actually, but it has costs.

  “And the costs are often stagnation. But, the thing is this, if you tried it and could show that none of it left the state, empirically, then people would complain less. What you do, is just do it and then ask for forgiveness not permission , I believe is the phrase,” MO said.

  “Yeah, well in politics you can’t just do things. Maybe in business, or a man alone, but politics is a rule by committee paradigm. So, the Governor has power, but he cannot legalize heroin,” Steven said with all the courage of the mouse that Isaiah was releasing into his Burmese girl’s tank.

  “He could order his AG not to prosecute anyone for it, provided that the arrested individuals were Colorado natives and not in contact with any one from a foreign nation.”

  “How would that be accomplished?” Steven asked.

  “This machine can read genomes too,” MO said.

  “What, foreign nationals have different genomes?” Steven still was not used to being surprised by these machines that looked like men; he was surprised every 10 minutes and surprised each and every time.

  “Different races, or populations do, yes. And you could measure them all and easily divert the native-born people of Latino heritage out,” MO said.

  “Oh Jesus, no you can’t do any of that, you can’t even talk about that. MO, seriously, do not even mention that to Boyd.”

  “Ok. Hey, I was just spit-balling. It would still not solve the infrastructure problem, the manufacturing and dispensing facilities and all that. So, I can drop it. I was just offering an idea, because it seems irrational to make drugs illegal when the real problem is why people use drugs in the first place. It’s like making suicide illegal instead of making people want to live,” MO said.

  “Yeah, well, hippy MO, let’s move on to the meeting we have with the governor at 1500hrs. I need the report digested into human form, bite size bites, ok?” Steven tapped the tablet to clear it and moved toward the door. He had begun using their argot , in small ways, mirroring their ways .

  “Copy that,” MO said.

  Boyd arrived at 1202hrs and they began discussing three things. The Governor began; he often set the agenda.

  “Addicts are irrational liars, they lie for no effect. If you ask them how many hands they have they’d say three then squirm, stuff one of their paws in a shallow pocket and then claim to have only one,” Boyd said.

  MO smiled and didn’t disagree; Steven just pretended that he had an itch that was more important than responding to that.

  “Look, I can’t just hand over the keys to the kingdom to every dope fiend. But, I can see the stupidity of the drug war. It’s just a matter of order; the order of things. Do we get people healthy enough that they don’t want to be addicts first or legalize it first?” the Governor asked.

  “I suggest that legalizing it is the first step to reaching the addict; pull him in, under no stress, no threat of legal action, no threat of taking away their prescription, and then build up their life. See, stress is a bad way to teach someone. The law and order types think that unless there are consequences the addict won’t get clean. He thinks you gotta threaten them.

  “But the addict is not a criminal, who -criminals
that is- must be handled differently, harshly. The addict is sick, he is lonely, and in pain. He is not innately anti-social. That is the first epidemiological phenomenon we have to deal with.

  “They need social support, friends, they need meaningful work, and creative outlet, and if you take they drugs away first, they freak out, metabolically, and physically. But if you give them all the drugs they want, so they feel great, and relaxed and in no danger, then their brains relax, the cortisol lowers, the brain stabilizes and now you get them into a program of working with others, building trust.

  “Again, there is no need to lie now, the addict has no pressure to lie, because they get free drugs, with no need to lie to gain access nor avoid arrest. So, you take away the need to lie, then you can work on re-programming the brain not to lie,” MO explain and linked to the full report on the cloud. It included data on the danger of seizures and overdosing that were the result -not prevented by- an opiate addict being cut-off by their physicians. It was heterodox, and correct.

  “Yeah, well they will lie anyway, you know the brain science on this, the lying is part of the drug seeking behavior, it’s hard wired,” Boyd said as Isaiah broke in.

  “Right, but first shit first, take the need away, then you can re-train them not to lie. And in that process they build true relationships that give them the dopaminergic kick they got from the drugs. Look, this is radical, it’s not intuitive; but it’s epidemiologically and neuroanatomically sound. Are we men of science or not?” Isaiah said with some pique.

  “Oh, now you’re going for my balls?” the Governor asked with a grin.

  Steven just looked on with wide eyes hoping nobody in this room did anything too radical or he might pee his pants.

  33. Guerre à Outrance

  We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fatten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly

  Self Reliance [Emerson, Ralph W]

  The right of rebellion against tyranny has been recognized from the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines. The city-states of Greece and republican Rome not only admitted but defended the meting-out of violent death to tyrants. John of Salisbury recommends the dagger… Martin Luther proclaimed that when a government degenerates into a tyranny violating the laws, the subjects are released from their obligation to obey. The Scottish reformers, John Knox and John Poynet, upheld the same point of view. It is well known that in England during the 18th century two kings were dethroned for despotism by the Scots. In 1649 John Milton wrote… the people, who can enthrone and dethrone kings have the duty to overthrow tyrants.

  La Historia Absolvera Me [Castro, Fidel]

  Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me false to my nature?

  Coriolanus [Shakespeare, William]

  I. 2038 e.v.

  “Why is a good question,” Blax said and smiled at Jack Four for a little while before offering him a seat and a drink. Jack had thought he might get a simple answer to his laconic inquiry, but as he took both seat and drink and settled into the spot just outside the garage door to the kitchen of Blax’s quarters, he knew this was likely to go on for quite a bit.

  The other Jacks were in their rooms in the containers above his; the fire had burned down to just grey wood across the concrete and the dogs were all asleep; or half way there. They roused only to yawn, they moved purely to settle into a more permanent stasis.

  It was late, 0101hrs, and neither Blax nor Jack Four could sleep; and while their coders could have issued forth a soporific and put them out, they wanted to stay up with their minds tonight. Thinking felt like working to them each, and working felt good, even when it hurt.

  “You know my family,” Blax stopped and felt his chest contract like a trap on his throat, he had grown so tired of this whole family thing, this clutching at the un-severed umbilicus , and yet he knew that the boy -the man, the Jack- had asked for this; and details mattered to Blax, they mattered to all men of intellect. And Jack Four was as smart, smarter even , than he was , Blax thought, and so the details would matter to him too.

  “Well, they always claimed that I never made any sense to them. They said, you make no sense ,” Blax said in a falsetto to mimic their declaration of confusion; he even laughed a bit. Jack smiled .

  “They didn’t realize how stupid a thing that was to say; did the lion on the plain make no sense to them, did the hawk confound?” Blax asked as Jack nodded along and drank the wine plunging the nose into the glass to breathe then taking large gulps.

  “I make every effort to explain myself and -more than any man I know- and I make every effort to have my actions match my words. I fail often, but I at least make the attempt in a world where 99% of men do not even give a shit if they are hypocrites. They do not even attempt to live a noble or honest or consistent life. All they care for is survive, survive, survive, like a beast, like a housefly. And yet I try.

  “And for this, for my attempts at aligning my body with my words, and explaining it all to them with words, no shortage of words, I assume you will agree, I do not skimp on the words,” he paused, and Jack agreed that Blax was generous with everything he had, especially all those words he held fast to in that head and chest until it all exploded out in orations that seemed to go for epochs.

  “And yet they pled poverty of comprehension each and every time. It was an insult, they incessantly insulted me, a man like me,” Blax said as if he still couldn’t believe it. And yet men like him would always be insulted inside a democracy. A democracy is an innate insult to great men, and this too was natural law. Just like a meritocracy is injurious to the weak. Each system has a hero and villain; the family’s thorn was the black sheep, the tribe had the malingerer or the weak, and democracy’s villain is the great man. And punish him it would.

  “The thing is, I do not need anyone to agree with me; I don’t. All I needed was comprehension. And that is the one thing they held back. I merely wanted -shit, I want now- just someone to say, oh, yeah, I can see it from your POV . That is it, then they can kill me, run me through with four swords from four sides. But, goddammit, they ought know what it is they kill.

  “We know where our food comes from, from out there, in the forest, we know; the hunters know. And we know what is inside our prey; we’ve skinned and gutted them before we took the meat, we’ve seen each part from asshole to heart,” Blax said as Jack nodded and breathed deep into his wine glass. He felt the tobacco notes rise upon wafts of smoke and forest floor as if kicked up by wolves on the run, cassis-de-crème to follow on the nose, he took a small sip this time and let the wine lay on tip, sweetness first, then the wide part of the tongue as fruit pressed between iron and blood sat on that muscle of the mouth and then rose in the brain. He let each part of the wine build château and vintage in his mind-space; he saw it now as edifice of taste; a home for that sense to live in. He began to think of the natural abode of each sense of man.

  “Is this?” Jack asked and looked for the bottle, to check the vintage, to verify his instinct; but it was on Blax’s right flank and beyond Jack’s line of sight.

  “The Lafite , ’82, yeah,” Blax said -confirmed- and Jack felt the 56-year-old wine had another 44 left in it; it seemed ascendant still, despite this perfection in the mouth and now falling down his throat and into the heart chambers themselves. He let the cheeks send information on the midpalate and felt grateful for this one glass, and the man who had poured it. He ought give counterbalance to his pique, Blax was indeed a great man , he thought, despite Jack’s vexation with him.

  “We know, where that bottle came from, we walked the vines, we stored it right, we respected the château . Despite the admixture of fame and infamy that the Bordelaise have contributed to this earth, we respect the work. And yeah, the bear and the wolves out there would tear our throats out, if given the chance, but we respect them too. We don’t have contempt for mere murder, or viol
ence or power over us. You think the wolves don’t watch man and seek to understand?

  “We only ask for understanding. We just want our foils to both tell and hear the truth; hear it,” he said, emphasizing the world hear . It was an unusual twist, a turn, an inversion of what most men claim. Most men would demand someone tell the truth, but Blax wanted them able to hear it most. Jack smiled at his ability to invert and invert again, to turn the world, he thought, around in his hand like a child with a ball, a mercantile man spinning the globe in his athenaeum, a wizard with his orb.

  “But, they can no more hear it than tell it. In fact, I know this now, a man can either tell and hear the truth or he can do neither. And my insistence that my idiotic family hear the truth was as futile as my demanding they tell it. It’s not in them, they don’t have the ingredients.

  “My father was a hateful man, is a hateful man, I assume he’s still alive the old fucker must be 95 by now. But he had hatred in his heart, and yet he pretended to be just fine. He was taciturn, he kept his heart bottled up in his tabernacle, and he thought nobody noticed. Everyone noticed they just went along because he paid the bills. But everyone knew he was full of hatred and malice,” Blax said as he realized he no longer wanted his father dead, as he had wanted for years, decades, since he was 10 years old, he thought. Now, maybe in his own old age, now at 64, he had become romantic about the past, wanting to save what he once wanted destroyed . He thought, this applied to more than that old man.

  “The point is what they didn’t understand in me was that I was honest about it all. I admitted to my hate, my malice, my murderous mien. I took off the carapace, I was proud of this mean face, I felt no need to hide at all.