by Sean Wallace
And what was the Jayhawk’s special power? The Sunflower Burst, a theta-radiation blast—which had never worked right, not even in the earlier clones.
In this, Jayhawk’s first tangle with the Tiger, he’d triggered his Burst too early. He glowed green for a second, but nothing happened. The Tiger had laughed and walked away. Laughed! Well, it looked like laughing anyway.
I sighed, and leaned back into the seat. Toni was right; Jayhawk was the worst of underdogs. We might as well have been rooting for the Delaware Credit Beast.
Much like the New Republican Party, the Otaku Party (formerly known as the Geek-Nerd Party) began as a joke in a Northwestern dorm room between party founders F. Darin Fitzgerald and Lewie Brown. Spreading rapidly across the net through chat rooms and pop-blogs in the year leading up to the primary season in February of 2016, the party quickly become an in-joke among the nation’s youth. It would have remained a joke if not for Generation Z, who had been raised on the magic ingredients of Japanese video-games, comic books, science fiction, and political activism. Generation Z’s ideas of a better future were distinctly different . . . and more fun, to say the least.
AHHH, Godzilla! How the Otaku Movement Crushed US Politics, Second Edition, 2030.
This close to the monster rampage the only traffic we saw was cops. We were speeding but had no worries—the club decals on the Battle Wagon kept them from pulling us over. One swarthy-looking cop even pulled up parallel to the van and gave us the peace sign. It was good to see fellow Otaku serving the public like that.
“There’s a lot of visual clutter up here,” Scooter said. The area homes were built nearly touching in Tokyo-chic, and they blocked out the view to the east.
Toni pulled over next to a two-story ultra-modern and turned off the car. “That one looks as good as any, yeah?”
I nodded. “Sure. Come on, Scooter. Help me with the ladder.”
Toni waited by the van in case the cops came by while we were setting up and mistook us for looters. We’d taken to the rooftops during the Wichita Wreck last year, and the cops were real old-school over there. They’d arrested us and impounded the van for a week while they “checked out” our credentials. Unfortunately, finals had been that week. Scooter’s parents almost didn’t let him come back in the fall, and Toni had lost her scholarship. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be in the country, but nobody was about to turn a body like that into Immigration.
Up on the roof, we could see the seven or eight other chapters who had set up watch posts in the neighborhood. There were even a few teams set up down below—the only lights that didn’t run in neat little lines along the highways.
“Look at those wankers,” Toni said, staring through a pair of infospecs. I brought mine up and registered the others’ data tags. The Independence chapter was set up less than a mile from ground zero on the roof of a grade school. “Why aren’t we down there with them, eh?”
“They’re monster chow,” Scooter said. “I hope their clone policies are up to date.”
I shuddered. I was a little bit old-fashioned when it came to full-body cloning. I’d never died. Scooter neither. Sure, I kept my policy up to date and my backups fresh, but I still believed in a soul. My parents did too, and, well, it’s hard to shake those kinds of beliefs. I’m not too sure about Scooter—I think maybe he was just averse to any sort of pain. Toni had died five or six times, chasing Euro-monsters.
“Heh.” Toni tilted her head, staring off into space. “Slashdot2 is calling the opposition the ‘Midwestern Monster Squad.’ ”
“That’s going to piss off folks back East who think we’re part of the ‘Plain States,’ ” I said. “Hey, Scooter. What’s the latest tracking info?”
“Jayhawk is seventeen hours out. The Tiger is . . . ” Scooter flipped his specs down and scanned. “There! I’ve highlighted him on your fields.” A tiny red speck appeared on the horizon to the north.
“She’s in Missouri?”
Toni was mumbling into her subvocal microphone, using it to order info from her specs. “She’s coming back from a cattle yard. Impressive little minx! She did fifty grand in damages for a snack.”
“Too bad ’Hawk’s a vegetarian,” Scooter lamented. “Seventy percent of the state grows corn, wheat, or soybeans,” I said. “He wouldn’t do any refundable damage if he was a meat-eater.”
“I guess that’s true,” Scooter said. “I think I’m going to get some sleep. You guys want the van? I can sleep up here with the instruments if you want.”
“You’re a saint,” Toni said, leering again in my general direction. BFMs always made her hot, for which I thanked Miyazaki, Iwata, and Kurasawa every night.
As Levinson predicted, there was a surplus of human labor during the transition to a post-scarcity economy. Otaku Party founders developed the daikaiju economic stimulus plan to produce demand for labor and raw materials. The gengineered giant beasts, harkening back to the radiation scare films of the 1950s, struck a chord with voters. Two years after President Poindexter’s inauguration, New York and New Jersey passed bills authorizing the construction of the first state-funded daikaiju, and other states soon followed. Before the end of Poindexter’s first term, the first generation daikaiju were stomping their way to millions in federal funds.
Monster Economics, G.D. Levinson, Richard Tenn, et al.
Sunlight streamed through the van’s rear window and burned through my eyelids until I finally gave up pretending to sleep and slipped out to check on Scooter and the gear. I about fell over when I saw the pretty twenty-something with blond pigtails chatting him up at the foot of the ladder. Oh, no, I thought. Her.
“That’s so clever,” she said, giggling.
Scooter noticed me and waved me over. “Hey Kilroy. I was just telling Lohusa about our theories.”
“Oh, ‘Lohusa’ is it?” I squinted at her. “Hi there. Boy, you’re pretty brave to still be around here.”
She smiled. “You think?”
“Which chapter are you with now?” I said, not smiling.
“Independence,” said Lohusa, whose real name was Allison. “I thought I should come up and deliver the news personally. We’re going for a quad-state record today.”
I laughed so hard I must have woken up Toni. She groaned something obscene in the van. “What a waste of clone stock,” I said. “Shame you have to go and spend your parents’ money like that.”
“Kilroy—” Scooter stammered and turned red.
Her smile faded and was replaced with a cold glare. “At least we’ve got the tanukis to try. Your chapter’s just a bunch of boushounen. Well.” She looked over to Scooter. “Some of you.”
The ground rumbled. All three of us froze. Toni even stumbled out of the van, looking every which way, about to give herself whiplash.
“Tiger,” Allison said with a sneer.
“No,” I said. “Jayhawk. Tiger’s sig is a four-part patter. Jayhawk makes short air hops. Single boom.”
Allison blushed. “I hope you kids enjoy the show from the nosebleed section!” She turned and fled downhill.
“Good sig ident, Kilroy,” Scooter said. He avoided looking me in the eye.
“Thanks.” I should have scolded Scooter for talking to the enemy, but they’d exploited his weakness for somewhat cute women. “What’s the status of our friends?”
“Did I hear that right?” Toni asked, pulling up the zipper on her pants. “They’re going for a simultaneous distance record on all four?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Scooter said. “Jayhawk is ahead of schedule. You were right about that. He’s closing in quicker than we figured. Tiger is holding. And get this: The Noog and the Cornfed Carnage are traveling together. They’re headed straight south from Omaha. ETA of six hours.”
“What are we going to do while we wait?” Toni asked, sidling up to me with one of her grins.
“You might want to update your backups. We’re moving camp in twenty minutes.”
“I think I’m rubbin
g off on him,” Toni said to Scooter, laughing.
Toni took the wheel again as Scooter and I conferred on our plan of action. The sat-radio was abuzz with talk of the smackdown. Las Vegas had odds on the Jayhawk sixteen-to-one. “Love, you want me to place a bet for you?”
“Nah,” I said. “I can’t take sucker money like that.” It was a lame attempt at false bravado. The Jayhawk was going to get creamed. Even so, he was our BFM, and that meant something.
“Do you think this is such a good idea, moving in closer?” Scooter asked.
“Do you want to lose our record?” I countered. “You weren’t scared the last time.”
“But . . . well . . . Scooter hedged. “He’s all riled up now,” he finished lamely.
“We have a chance for a four-monster record here,” I said.
“This is about that girl, isn’t it?” Toni called from the front. “You know her.”
“You do?” Scooter looked at Toni, then back at me, curious.
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Oh no. I don’t think so. An ex-girlfriend?” Toni said.
I nodded reluctantly.
“I guess the break-up didn’t happen on good terms?”
“The only reason she’s a chaser is to get back at me,” I said. I wasn’t interested in talking about my past, what there was of it anyway.
“She was kind of cute,” Toni said. “She could do better than you though.”
“Ha ha.”
“What did you do to her?” Scooter asked.
“What?” I pretended to be confused.
“Why does she want to get back at you?” he pressed.
“She talked to you for ten minutes and you’re taking her side?” I massaged my temples and closed my eyes. “Forget about it. We need to find a safe place to set up, closer than the Independence team.”
Scooter grumbled and turned away to look at the maps. It was just like my ex to get her talons into my best friend like that. What was supposed to be a simple four-BFM smackdown had suddenly gotten complicated. Times like this, I wished I had taken up pocket monster breeding instead.
My fellow Americans: I believe it is time to stop living in the twentieth century. There is no reason for the senseless loss of life that occurs in our country every day. Medical technology has come a long way. We can rebuild you; bigger, faster, stronger! Under my administration, medicine will be free of the shackles of superstition and fear. Regenerative cloning is just the first step. Our goal will be nothing less than the abolishment of death.
America, I will give you save points.
Also—bionics are really cool. Cyborgs will get more girls. And ladies, I have two words for you: “It vibrates.”
Presidential hopeful Alfred Poindexter, Presidential Debates, 2028
We parked on Overland Park High’s football field and took to the bleachers. It was too soon to guess where the monsters would clash, but we needed some perspective on the situation. Once we’d climbed up high, we spotted him. The colossal blue and red bird was gliding down gracefully from one of his hops. It was a minute before we felt the aftershocks of his landing.
Toni shook her head. “I’ve been meaning to ask you guys something.”
Scooter rigged up the mini-Doppler and flicked at the monitors until they lit up. “What?”
“Don’t you think . . . ” Toni giggled.
“Think what?” I had nearly shouted that. Scooter flinched away.
“Nevermind,” she said. Oh great. Now she was going to pout.
“Okay, fine.” I didn’t have time for this. “He looks like a chicken. It was the best base stock to match the mascot.”
Toni cocked her head and squinted. “Yeah, hey. You’re right. I would have never noticed that if you hadn’t pointed it out.”
Scooter coughed hard. It sounded a little like “dumbass.”
I sighed. “Will the gear be safe here?”
He nodded. “They’re going to clash a mile north and three miles east, I think. But we’re going to need a tarp. Looks like a storm is coming in.” Black thunderheads were gathering to the west. Jayhawk was passing by a couple of miles east. He was hopping and gliding faster than I’d ever seen him move. I wasn’t sure about Scooter’s estimate, but he’d never been wrong before.
“Let’s set up and get moving on foot.”
Scooter groaned, and Toni did runner stretches. I scanned the horizon with my specs, tracking the Independence team’s tags. Already, there was the smell of ash on the wind.
I took a walk down the bleachers to clear my head, but I didn’t have much luck.
“You’re getting a bit snippy, love.” Toni could be quiet when she wasn’t running her mouth, and she startled me. I smiled sheepishly.
“Sorry.”
“That girl. Allison? What’s the story?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“If you don’t, I’m withholding sex for a month. It’s your call.”
I flopped onto a bench and rubbed my temples. “I told you we dated?”
She nodded. “Stop stalling.”
“Okay, okay. Well. I dumped her. Er, stood her up.”
“And now you’re arch-enemies? How American.”
“No, there’s more. There was this dance.”
“Ooh, I’ve seen this movie.”
“I’m trying to be serious here. I was supposed to take her to the harvest dance. We never talked about it, but it was assumed. Only, the night of the dance, the Texas Twister was rampaging through Amarillo, and it was only a seven-hour drive.”
“Pff. Typical. And you didn’t even call her to cancel.” Toni bit her lip and shook her head, mocking me.
“Yeah, well. She was cheating on me anyway, not that it matters. When I didn’t show up, she marched over to my house. I used to have this collection of action figures. She torched them. Even Boba Fett.”
“Torched?”
I grimaced. “You could see the bonfire four blocks away. She was arrested for arson, and then resisting arrest. But you know how small towns are. She got off with community service.”
“Don’t tell me any of this came as a surprise. A woman scorned, and all that,” Toni said.
“It was just a dance. Those action figures were the most important thing I’d ever owned. I still miss them.” I hastened to add, “Once in a while, anyway.”
Toni rolled her eyes. She was a champion at rolling her eyes; a silver medalist at least. “You are so clueless.”
“What! I was going to make it up to her. She didn’t have to get all drastic.” I was annoyed that not even Toni understood the seriousness of Allison’s betrayal.
“I’m going to say this once, love. If you ever leave me waiting in a prom dress while you go off to chase BFMs, the nicest bloody thing I will do is set fire to your prized possessions.”
I blinked. “You’d wear a prom dress?”
Then she slugged me on the shoulder, and it really hurt. I had a bruise for days, honest.
Finally, DARPA had been given the license to do in reality what we had been doing on paper since the beginning; create our dreams. Under Poindexter, our budgets quadrupled. The halls of our research facilities rang with laughter that would not have been out of place in a 1950s sci-fi movie. It was disturbing at first, but you eventually became accustomed to it. You were too busy trying to perfect a mobile weapons platform or gray-goo nanobot swarm of your own.”
Portrait of a Fevered Mind, Emmit Haines, PhD
We waited atop the bleachers and watched the Noog and the Cornfed Carnage come in from the north. The Noog looked lame, kind of like a giant purple booger (actually modeled on the Blob, only they couldn’t get the rights to the name) and Carnage was essentially a giant ear of corn atop a writhing mass of tentacles. Silly looking, but both were formidable foes. Noog engulfed anything in its path and Carnage’s Rocket Kernel attack could take out a small town.
The National Guard was keeping pace with them in their gleaming gun-metal mech
s, trying to limit the innocent casualties and helping with evacuations. Some hotshot was pulling in close, drawing fire from Carnage, and peppering him back with anti-BFM rounds. The network feed drones were zipping all around, eating up the footage. Toni was fuming; BFMs were supposed to be left in peace to battle with other BFMs.
“It’s the bloody law,” she said, and strung together twenty obscenities for good measure. Just then, Carnage nailed the hotshot with a volley of missiles and the mech went up in a puff of titanium vapor. That had to hurt so bad the guy’s clone would feel it. The other Guardsmen drew back quickly.
“That was cool,” Scooter whispered, forgetting for a moment that we would be within range of that same attack soon.
“Hey . . . ” Toni said. She turned away from the battle towards the east. “Where did Jayhawk go?”
“What?” I searched the horizon myself. He had been less than a mile away a few minutes before. “How did we lose a two hundred-foot-tall red ’n’ blue chicken?”
Scooter scrambled over to the equipment. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Can he teleport now?” Toni asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said. The storm front from the west was moving in fast. Some of the rumbling rolling across the plains was actually thunder. It looked as if things would be turbulent in all kinds of ways.
“Okay, let’s get moving. I taught Allison everything she knows about BFMs, and if I know her like I think I do, she’s going to make her attempt while the BFMs size each other up. That’s our chance too.”
“Love, do you know the records for the others?”
I shrugged. “Scooter?”
Scooter pulled down his specs and accessed his records. “Carnage: twelve hundred meters. Noog: eight hundred meters. Tiger . . . oh, held by Allison and friends at seven hundred meters. They’ll ignore her until after we make a pass.” Scooter grinned. “And Jayhawk,” he said, beaming, “four hundred meters.”
“Right then,” Toni said, cracking her knuckles just because the sound irritated me. “I say we go for Carnage first. Then Noog, then Tiger, and then we’ll get even closer to the ’Hawk.” It annoyed me that she was trying to call the shots, but I’d started thinking about Allison, and that was the kind of thing that had gotten me into trouble with her.