The used car salesman, when referring to the “ficktum surcharge,” was telling Manny that this extra payment would allow both parties to steer clear of the fCTM. The salesman didn’t make much money off the transaction, however, because most of the surcharge went to “cleaning” the cash. This was done through the services of a “fElectrifier,” an awkward term that was defined by urbandictopedia.com as “a person who surreptitiously turns cash into fEPs.” In the olden days, this was called money laundering.
But the salesman’s fElectrifier was in Mexico for the week when Manny bought his car. “Steve” (his street name) was picking up a new shipment of black market Holospace devices. fElectrifying was declining in popularity as most people transitioned to solely fEPs-based shopping. As such, fElectrifiers typically held multiple jobs. The used car salesman didn’t really feel like holding onto Manny’s cash for too long, and he was not known in the used car/monster truck community for sticking to his word. So ultimately he decided to save himself the trouble of fElectrifying the cash and deposited the large sum of money in his safe deposit box and logged the sale in his electronic ledger, also connected to the fCTM, subjecting himself to a fine about the size of Manny’s surcharge, a visit from the DCS, and a little more scrutiny of his sales for the next few months, but not much more than that.
But Manny’s car purchase was just one of a number of activities that alerted the DCS to his return to the United States. After the DCS questioned the salesman, the fCTM triggered the GPS tracker in Manny’s Ford Badger, which sent daily updates of his whereabouts to DCS headquarters. It did not identify him specifically, but video surveillance footage from MOSTLY MONSTER TRUCKS! was also transmitted to the DCS, where Manny’s face was matched against their facebase. Manny’s image was soon thereafter captured on a surveillance camera at a FASTMART, where facial recognition software positively identified Manny from the facebase as well, helping to construct an ongoing log of his activities.
5.2
Susie Mays had been with the DCS for almost three years, but she was no stranger to the furtl corporate compound after taking her new job, typically returning to visit once a week for “coordination updates.” While she had been tracking Manny’s movements for a few weeks, this was the day she planned to finally flag his return to Kurt. Susie was concerned about Kurt’s response, however, for their relationship had soured somewhat in recent months and even bringing up the subject of Manny Kahn’s return to the US made Kurt anxious. So much so that he had Susie update him on his whereabouts every three months even though Manny’s location had not changed in six years. This time around, the update would be arriving a few weeks earlier than scheduled.
Kurt supported Susie’s transition from furtl to the DCS so he could streamline communication between the private sector (i.e. furtl) and the administration. After Manny left the company, the furtl mega PAC, officially named the “For A Better Future Today,” became the largest PAC in American politics, its financial and media resources far outstripping its closest rivals.
Mega PACs were a recent phenomenon. It had taken lobbyists and politicians almost three years to devise an end-around the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling that super PACs were unconstitutional. Against the loud cries of many corporations, including furtl, and wealthy individuals, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld – in a 5-4 decision – the constitutionality of House of Representatives bill # 24440 (aka Buckwald/Birnbaum, or Citizens Against PACs Act, or the “antiPACt”).
The court took the position that super PACs gave too much political leverage to wealthy individuals and corporations. Their ability to impact elections, the court noted, through “expensive but unaffiliated media campaigns that were frequently negative and inaccurate” had “effectively shut the average person off from the levers of democracy.”
The antiPACt capped single donations of all corporations and persons to less than one million dollars. The mega PACs, in response to this limitation, were designed to pool multiple $999,999.99 donations into one entity without running afoul of the antiPACt. They did this by giving gifts of $1,050,000 to a select number of the poorest 1% of the country, with $999,999.99 of this money to be donated to a “mini” PAC. These mini PACs could then be “supervised” by a single administrative entity. This administrative entity could then pool together hundreds or thousands of $999,999.99 donations for “cross-purposing” activities in support of a single cause or candidate for office. The cross-purposing language was snuck into the antiPACt at the last minute as part of a series of closed-door deals that assured the bill majority support in the House. Thus, mega PACs were born.
The recipients of the $1,050,000 gifts got to keep $50,000.01 for themselves. This typically put them right about at the poverty line.
Kurt had his back to the door, sharpening his dolphin spears for his weekend Bermuda trip. He turned and motioned for Susie to sit down. “Hey, Susie bear.”
“Hello Kurt.”
“How are those election result proposals we sent over looking?” Kurt asked, focusing on his spears.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. The President has flagged a few of your Democrats, but overall he’s on board with your House and Senate race preferences. We don’t envision too much massaging.”
“Good to see him coming around. Too many rightwing nuts not good for business. And the KRRAMMO repeal? Where are we with that?”
“You’re gonna have to wait on this one ’til after November.”
“Five months?” Kurt paused his sharpening and looked at Susie. “Okay, but tell Corcoran that he needs to get his people in line on this issue. I’m not letting this one go like I did with TUFC.”
Vertical integration between furtl and the Corcoran administration was strong early on in their relationship, but the administration was becoming, in Kurt Sturdoch’s opinion, too opportunistic. Kurt was an atheist whose mother was a quarter Jewish, and so he was uncomfortable with some of the administration’s more conservative Christian elements.
After the Keep R-Rated and Mature Movies Out (KRRAMMO) Act, furtl’s movie sales division lost 35% of its business overnight. Just as painful for Kurt was the loss of a furtl-sponsored site that was near and dear to his heart: The Ultimate Faceoff Challenge (www.ultimatefaceoffchallenge.com), or TUFC. TUFC allowed people to create profiles that contained a personal photo along with some basic physical information such as height and weight. These pictures would then be randomly matched against other user profiles and visitors to the site could vote for who would win in a fist fight. That was the whole site.
TUFC was Kurt’s brainchild, and it was a huge success from the moment it launched. Many celebrities joined, allowing average non-celebrity Americans an incredible opportunity to find out if the public thought they were tougher than famous people. Kurt’s creation filled him with extraordinary pride and tapped into America’s appreciation for the age-old “who would win in a fist fight” debate.
Kurt thought the site was safe from CRADs since it trafficked in violence, not sex. Sexually mature material was all but guaranteed to be hit with CRADs. But most violent web sites and movies got a pass from the DCS, who were loath to upset Second Amendment proponents. But TUFC had two things working against it: there was no gun violence depicted or implied on this site (only implied hand to hand combat) and President Corcoran’s fight statistics were terrible. When Corcoran got wind of his stats he alerted the DCS, who then put pressure on furtl to shut the site down. This was in the early days of the DCS and Kurt was not yet concerned with DCS overreach, so he relented. Furtl lost an estimated $5 million a year in ad revenue and Kurt pouted for a week.
After these losses, Kurt decided that there needed to be some semblance of a two-party system in America to keep these overreach issues to a minimum. He told President Corcoran that without the Democrats’ unrealistic spending proposals and God complexes, it would become too difficult to deflect blame for the country’s woes. He also knew that if he let Congress become stacked with social conservat
ives, there would likely be a proliferation of KRRAMMO-style legislation that would no doubt wreak further havoc on furtl’s bottom line and anger the shareholders.
Consequently, Kurt did whatever was necessary to keep the coasts full of Democratic congressmen, gatekeepers tasked with staunching the expanding red state core of the United States political map. Or, as Kurt liked to describe it, “sandwich those religious nuts in.”
With furtl’s mega PAC resources, the company bankrolled candidates to victory while burying opponents in bad press and low search engine results. In return, all furtl asked for was tariff protection from all Chinese and Mexican goods entering the United States and a complete ban on Holospace machines.
Susie was doing her best to keep Kurt calm. “I told you I was sorry about TUFC. Do you have any idea how highly ranked I was on that site?”
“Well, like I said, you need to rein in your DCS henchmen.” Kurt had no problem voicing his growing distaste for the DCS to Susie, particularly after KRRAMMO. He warned her that too much interference with American’s private lives would engender anger and resistance. Just the right amount of interference, he argued, would keep them flaccid and servile, like a freshly speared but not yet dead Atlantic Humpbacked Dolphin, his most prized prey.
“There’s something else I think you might be interested to hear,” Susie said as she pulled out a furtl foldable tablet, unfolded it, and started to tap on it, producing a map with a number of red circles on it. “The ficktum picked up a car sale done in all cash. Video satellite surveillance then identified a man in the car who fit Manny Kahn’s description.”
Susie showed Kurt the video. “We have fingerprints from a broken disposable tablet at a convenience store that match Manny’s fingerprints on file, and his retinal scan was picked up at the Vault. Smart move on that one, setting up a retinal alert at the Vault and leaving it active.” Susie hoped that complimenting Kurt for his foresight would dampen his concern.
“Should I be worried?” Kurt asked with renewed interest in the conversation.
“Probably not. He seems to be spending all his time somewhere in middle Virginia,” Susie said. The DCS had yet to pick up on the location of the Virginia Leftea compound, so Manny’s presence in that area did not raise any red flags for Susie. “But we’ll keep an eye on him nevertheless. Have your tracking bots prioritize the relevant search algorithms for Manny and any of his potential cohorts.”
“Put that in an email so I can forward it to someone who understands it.”
Susie bristled at the secretarial work Kurt was asking her to do. She tapped on her tablet a few times, then spoke into the microphone: “Subject: Have furtl tracking bots prioritize the relevant search algorithms for Manny Kahn and any of his potential cohorts. Send to Kurt Sturdoch.” Susie folded up her tablet. “There. In your inbox now. You get that HoloPhone I sent over?”
“I did. Haven’t used it yet.”
“Well, I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes here, but it would be good if you learned how to use it.”
“I know.”
“Keeping all of our most sensitive information off the furtl network and in the last place anybody would think to look for it is going to save us all a lot of headaches.”
“Yes.” Kurt didn’t like people reminding him of his technological shortfalls. “Anything else?”
“President Corcoran wants to know if he will be seeing you at church this weekend.”
“Oy gevalt. Again?” Kurt was unable to hide his disinterest. “This is breeding season, and I nearly have enough dolphin skin for a bathrobe. Tell Corco I will try but no promises.”
5.3
Manny’s return to the United States reunited him with the extra pounds he had shed in Bhutan. His most convenient food option was the local FASTMART. They still accepted cash, and while the meals lacked the simple elegance of his rice meals fresh off his Bhutanese stove, they would have to do. For lunch, Manny found the turkey, Swiss, gorgonzola, onions, and baconnaise (bacon-flavored mayonnaise) on a cheddar-infused foot-long sub the least bad option.
A smooth transaction for Manny at the FASTMART included walking in, grabbing a sandwich and soda, walking to the counter, placing exact change on the counter, and exiting. But that opportunity rarely presented itself as Manny often found himself behind a long line of customers slowed down by the inefficiency of the fEPs payment system.
When they first caught on, fEPs transactions could be executed in under a second. But after fEPs cornered the market on electronic payments, a number of administrative fees crept into the process. Customers were bombarded with a plethora of “do-you-agree-with-these-terms-and-conditions boxes” they had to check on their phone in order to authorize payments. Although they were technically given the option to disagree with those fees – the fees added upwards of 25% to one’s bill – alternative electronic payment options didn’t exist in the United States. And because of the DCS’s looming presence, the extra cost of these transactions still didn’t compel many consumers to use cash – they just bought less.
And the fees weren’t going anywhere. Banks were dependent on this revenue for their survival because they had exhausted all other profit centers. The transaction fee lobby, as a result, grew to be the second most formidable in the country, spending more money than the pharmaceutical (#4) and firearm (#3) lobbies combined. So people agreed to the fees. And Manny waited on line at the FASTMART for them to agree.
The most powerful lobby in DC remained the technology lobby. While he was still at furtl, Manny rejected Kurt’s attempts to compel Congress to pass import tariffs on Chinese technology, making it difficult for Kurt to openly support such efforts. At the time, Manny was still convinced he could crack the Holospace code and that tariff protection hurt innovation. But with Manny gone, Kurt was able to advocate for legislation that resulted in substantial import tariffs for Chinese companies trying to export computer hardware and software to the United States. This included adding language to AFACT to support this goal. Kurt argued on the Hill and to the media that this part of the legislation would protect America’s national security interests by keeping the Chinese from spying on the United States. “After all,” he said in testimony to Congress, “just because the Chinese didn’t attack our nuclear reactors this time doesn’t mean they won’t next time.” With or without the national security argument, this kind of protectionism was a winning issue for Republicans and Democrats alike. All furtl had to do in return was provide the government unfettered access to all of its users’ information.
As goods made in China and smuggled in from Mexico began popping up everywhere, the US government scrambled to respond. An electrified wall and a public campaign against buying “Chexican” goods helped stem some of this black market activity. But as was the case with fair-trade coffee, the government had to turn a blind eye to some of this activity because, after a number of American manufacturing plants went out of business, Americans had no other access to these goods. One of the more reliable professions for those not living or working in a gated community became “Chexican facilitator,” or someone that could organize and deliver any number of DCS banned goods to fill the demand of the gated community elites.
Shopping had in fact been made much easier by Holospace machines. People shopping for clothes, for example, could size them out exactly to their measurements using “actual size” holograms. And if customers wanted these clothes made to their measurements, there was a “Holotailor” application for that. Entrepreneurial software engineers in Brazil had come up with a hologram that could measure and create garments to a person’s exact specifications down to the centimeter and then send those measurements to a 3-D clothes printer. Wardrobes could now be transformed without leaving the house.
5.4
Manny hadn’t had a drink since his evening with Susie Mays, which was why he found it strange that he was now in a sports and entertainment bar in the middle of Virginia — “HR McChugNstuff” — with a strong urge to drink.<
br />
The bar was empty save for a few desperate-looking folks scattered about. Manny approached a tall metal stool, and it automatically slid out for him. He sat, and a screen built into the bar came on. The deep-voiced simulation of a bartender’s voice, the ones that used to work at these types of establishments, came from the screen. “The name’s Mack. What’s your pleasure?”
Manny told Mack he would like a “Dead Man’s Choco Tequilarita,” the first thing that he saw on the screen. A minute later, 46 ounces and 4,000 calories of frozen brown margarita appeared in a chalice on the conveyor belt and stopped in front of him. Manny sipped the drink and began perusing the channels on his screen. He asked the screen to turn to the music channel.
Mack the bartender was now replaced by Derrrkk! the DJ. “And here’s another one from veteran South African rap group Die Antwoord, the Internet sensation that exploded onto the scene way back in 2009,” he announced exuberantly. “Their reign atop the charts continues, closing in on the global media penetration records set by the best band of all time, Nickelback. Checkout their newest jam, ‘Zef Booty Junglecrunch.’”
An array of green laser beams bounced off a crew of gyrating booty dancers in African face paint and miniskirts on Manny’s screen. In the foreground the aging faces of Die Antwoord sang and rapped lyrical passages such as:
I crunch the jungle Zef Booty
Like a steamin’ piece of doodie,
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