Tropic of Kansas

by Christopher Brown

  Channel 13, which ran most nights on Channel 23, was mostly videos from amateur contributors. They ran the ads every few minutes soliciting people to send stuff in. Payment by cash or snowflake, whatever that was, for the good stuff. Footage from soldiers of combat and its aftermath. Money shots from wild game hunts. Corporate raiders showing off their treasure. Trophy videos from drug turf battles. Scenes from inside the Superdome, Detroit, sometimes one of the smaller detention camps. Matches in underground fighting rings. And all the amateur pornography.

  They would mix in some politics with all this stuff, like they went together. Sometimes they ran recruiting ads for the underground network, usually localized, sometimes not.

  After dark Channel Zero ran the straight-up propaganda. Chalk talks and shaky video of people speaking at underground rallies. Jerky footage from the other end of government raids. A family watching TV when Motherland boots come through the living room wall. Injured children being tended to in improvised hospitals, allegedly after an RPV strike. It was hard to watch, but Tania couldn’t stop. It was hard to call it propaganda, when the footage was real, sent in by citizen journalists.

  It was like a reality network where people watch each other destroy their own country.

  The third night, Tania got the special feature. The one that made her start to see a whole different movie.

  She heard it before she saw it, and the words reminded her of words she had heard before.

  “The rising race is all rhizomatic,” crackled the voice inside the machine. “Grown strong from underground roots that connect us with each other, across socially constructed divisions, in ways our oppressors cannot see.”

  Tania adjusted the antenna and fiddled with the tuning. The image resolved, crazy colors, like a transmission from out of the past.

  The words came from a living wax bust of Thomas Jefferson, wearing a black T-shirt. His hair was made of fire. The strands of flame burned a network map into the background.

  “The more you look around, the more you realize that we are all indentured servants, even those lucky remaining few with middle-class privileges. A home mortgage is the ultimate payday loan. Every owner is someone else’s debtor. And debt makes us its slaves.”

  Thomas Jefferson morphed into a black woman. Maxine Price, bad cartoon likeness notwithstanding. The writer turned politician who almost pulled it off. The woman who took the literary utopias of her early years and turned them into the basis of a new politics, a seemingly workable vision for a better world, in that brief window when she was supposed to be in charge, and before they disappeared her. The woman whom Moco said he had transported to New Orleans, after she was supposed to be dead.

  “The warlords are the real masters,” said the voice. It sounded computer-generated, androgynous, untraceable. “And the real owners. And the ultimate owner-master is the warlord in chief.”

  Maxine Price turned and pointed to a city on a hill. Zoom on the President sitting atop a mountain of skulls and treasure. People in the opposition claimed the President had personal profit interests in many of his policies, but they could never find hard proof. Mack had been a businessman before he got elected, heavily invested in MMCs, oil and gas, and global real estate, riding the General’s wake. It’s not like he needed the money.

  “Maybe you gave up on voting when you decided your choices were illusory, or after you got so fed up with your misery that you intentionally voted for the worst candidate. Maybe you can’t remember back when you actually had choices.”

  The President said that, and winked.

  The first candidate Tania wanted to vote for got impeached and removed from office before she got her chance. His Vice President, Maxine Price, resigned rather than take the job. She proposed delegating the powers of the office back to the people. Then blew the whistle on the whole thing. Tried to, at least.

  “Before you give up on trying to change the world you live in,” said Maxine Price, sitting up out of her unmarked grave, “remember this: the ground you are standing on is liberated territory.”

  Tania was not persuaded that applied to this run-down motel, but she got the idea.

  “Rhizomatic space is all about creating a new world in the interstices of the old one.”

  Tania thought about all the people who literally lived in the empty spaces of the cities, outside, under the overpasses and in the little pockets of woods behind the factories and warehouses.

  On the screen, a child in a cardboard box on a sidewalk was talking.

  “We can only change others by example. Especially people infected by the unquenchable appetites of greed, consumerism, and narcissism.”

  Suddenly the concrete was liquid, and the kid started paddling upstream.

  “Better to recognize there are others who want to live differently, and carve out your own autonomous space where and when you can.”

  The cardboard raft landed on an island in the middle of the city, where a group of people were building a tree house inside the ruins of a high-rise.

  “Build networks of authentic community invisible to the state, and to capital. It’s not that hard. You don’t need leaders. You need what comes after leaders.”

  An antenna, radiating waves.

  “The old pyramids will collapse, sooner than you think, under their own weight. It’s already happening. The planet is past its carrying capacity.”

  Zoom back, to see the city swallowed by the sea.

  Tania thought about all her friends who had lost their jobs as their companies failed. She remembered when the currency crashed, and the banks tumbled. Her mom feeding people whose pensions disappeared, putting up people who got evicted. She thought about Vice President Price, and the collapse of the government she was part of, the hope that disappeared with it. Remembered her voice, and heard its cadences in the voice coming from the television.

  “The ground you are standing on is liberated territory. And when everything else collapses, what we build will be there standing ready to welcome a better future.”

  It had to be true. The official stories were lies. It was her, communicating through this weird outlaw medium. Old technology to seed new politics. It wasn’t a coherent argument, the way her speeches used to be. More like a series of aphorisms, like someone was writing down her musings and putting them together in this mashed-up animated gospel. But they were her words.

  The screen went black, and then a test pattern came on, a rainbow flag this time. The numbers ran in a bar across the bottom.

  Watching the codes, and thinking about the words she had heard, Tania wondered if this thing might work the way the mesh network did, back in the Blocks.

  How to win the Rat Race.

  She opened the back of the set and looked for I/O jacks.

  Maybe this would prove a faster way to find Sig.

  Or maybe, even better, it would lead her to Maxine Price, alive.

  If she found her, Tania could negotiate an even better deal with her handlers. If she could pull that off, it would be a much safer move than Bert’s advice to run and hide. And what she had already might be enough to entice Gerson and her colleagues.

  But as she thought about Mom, Tania remembered her parting words, and wondered whether the real prize in finding Maxine would be negotiating a better deal for the whole damn country.

  49

  Sig kept watch from atop the railcars while Moco waited for his contacts. Up on the empty freight cars at the far edge of the yard, this side of the secured area.

  From up there he could see all the way across the layout. He’d never seen so many tracks laid out in one place. Most were lined up with cars ready to load or ready to roll. Land drones stacked up three-high like new cars, flybots folded up into their prefab containers, tanker cars that oozed the poison molasses of fresh biofuels. One train looked like it was designed for people, which gave Sig the creeps.

  He could hear the racket of workmen and moving trains, but it was at the far side of the yard, over by the
Burroughs fab where they built the motherboards for the bot assemblies down the road. Farther on he could see the fuel depot, and the control tower of the commercial field.

  Off to the left was the red Mercury, parked where the road dissolved into the gravel of the railyard. And that’s where they came from, a man and a woman on bicycles, looking for the car tagged with the coyote in sneakers. That was the car Moco was in, next to the car on which Sig was perched.

  Bikes were not what Sig expected, but it made sense. Bikes and old cars were the only wheels you could move around in that were off network. These bikes looked hard, minimal, black and bare metal. Their riders were close to the same, black dude with a big vest and a felt brimmed hat, white chick in overalls and a ball cap. They gave Moco the sign as they walked up.

  No trace of the guy from the bar, or anyone else.

  Sig moved over to Moco’s car as the pair stepped up into it. He had a partial view through the latticed hatch in the roof and could hear everything they said.

  “Where’s your partner?” said the guy.

  “Keeping watch,” said Moco.

  “Didn’t see anyone,” said the guy.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You trust him?” said the woman.

  “Totally,” said Moco. “Dude’s been running from them for a long time.”

  “You heard about Tracer?” said the woman.

  “What?” said Moco.

  “They got him,” said the woman.

  “Raid,” said the guy. “Minneapolis.”

  “Fuck,” said Moco.

  “Somebody blabbed their safe place,” said the woman.

  “Maybe it was you,” said the guy. “Heard they got you, too.”

  “Bullshit, dude, I’m standing right here. Where is Tracer now?”

  “Shipped for reprogramming,” said the woman.

  “Fuck!” said Moco.

  “What did you tell them?” said the guy.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Moco. “And what do you care, anyway? I don’t work for you.”

  “You know a lot about our network,” said the guy.

  “It’s true,” said the woman. “Like you know how to bait us out with a lethal sales pitch. Wondering when they’re gonna show up.”

  “Let’s get our business done and you can split,” said Moco. “I don’t like working with this kind of material anyway.”

  “Where is it?” said the guy.

  “In the car over there,” said Moco. “Ready for you to drive it off without having to unload.”

  “We need to see it,” said the woman.

  “I sent you pictures. You can check it out before you leave. We’ll wait. Money. Five K like we talked.”

  “That’s what you proposed. We’re paying two K. That’s market. For all we know the grenades are duds.”

  Movement in Sig’s periphery. He turned. Listened. Looked for shadow.

  “Forget it,” said Moco.

  Blue ball cap, then the full torso, moving between cars. The guy from the bar.

  “Come on, Moco,” said the woman. “Help us in our fight. Do it for Tracer.”

  “I need serious travel money,” said Moco. “Going back to where the real fight is. You guys have the craziest faction around. Should have known you’d pull this shit.”

  Sig crawled along the top of the cars.

  “Maybe we just need to take it,” said the woman. “You’re probably alone.”

  Sig jumped to the roof of the next car, and out of hearing range. His landing echoed as the metal roof vibrated under his feet.

  He ran for the other end of the car. The dude in the blue cap was there, pistol drawn, looking up, but in the wrong direction.

  Sig dropped on him. Took him down. The guy yelled.

  Sig started pounding. Kidneys, back of the guy’s neck, side of his head.

  “Hey!” yelled the woman.

  Sig looked. The woman, her partner, and Moco, running toward him. The guy’s gun was there, in the dirt.

  WHAM. Rock to Sig’s head. Then a fistful of ice and ballast in his face.

  “He’s with us!” yelled the woman.

  Sig blinked stars. Saw the truth in the guy’s eyes. Took the next punch, grabbed the arm that delivered it, tried to pin the guy.

  Moco and the other guy pulled him off.

  “Motherfucker,” said the guy.

  Sound of radio crackle, nearby. Security dispatch.

  “Come on,” said Moco. “Crazy ass. Let’s go. We’re done.”

  “Money?” said Sig.

  “Yes,” said Moco. “We’re taking the bikes.”

  Sig shook his head. He couldn’t ride. Never learned.

  “You can catch up.” He grabbed the black bike. “Nice doing business as always, guys, good luck.”

  Moco rode back toward the bar. Sig jogged behind, looked for a better route, realized he didn’t know where they were going next.

  They didn’t hear it. Not really. Maybe a faint whistle, maybe a sound a dog could hear. But they knew that’s what it was. Or at least Moco insisted he did, the signature sound of that particular explosion.

  “Hellfire.” A missile, air-to-ground, launched by a robot.

  Sig couldn’t really hear Moco when he said that. The blast was all he could hear, even though the sound had passed.

  They looked back. One of the dudes was crawling from the wreckage. Orange flames crowned by black smoke framed the silhouette of the scorched car. Second explosion, something detonated by the flames.

  “Come on!” said Moco.

  Sig looked up at the clear winter sky. He couldn’t see the drone.

  50

  “The Visitors came to our world all in drag, double-X soldiers and preachers, cops and chauffeurs, linemen and lawyers. They came on a Sunday, when no one was paying attention, in a place, New Orleans, where you could be whoever you wanted to be as long as you stayed in your place. They came through a portal, the Earth end of which was an abandoned concrete bunker at the back of an empty lot overgrown with weeds. They never left.”

  Tania found the old paperback in the lobby, on a small bookshelf with other seditious tracts. Someone had left it with the cover facing out, its figures watching her walk by. Those seven mysterious androgynes painted in vintage pulp fiction brushstrokes, standing under the wrought iron curlicue decay of some French Quarter side street.

  Her mom had given her that book. For a birthday, she couldn’t remember which one. She read it with a flashlight. Like four times. Then she read the others in the series. All seven of them. And the short stories, which were even weirder.

  The Visitors were people from another dimension. A mirror Earth. One where the dominant culture was rooted in matriarchy. Their politics was based on the idea of governance by “the Everyone,” the whole multitude of the population acting as some kind of cooperative hive mind.

  The author was a black woman. They first published it under the name Max Price. They must have thought it sounded like a white man. This copy was a later printing, under Maxine Price. But still no picture of her on the back.

  The books were not written for kids, but that was how they were marketed, and the strategy worked. Maybe because the books did best with people who had open minds. For a while, even as the country was going crazy, it seemed like half the kids in America were reading those books. When they grew up, the deep-planted seeds had germinated. And the author had morphed from bookish recluse to public figure, royalties funding her run for office, the zeitgeist taking her to the next level.

  Maybe it was because the books were suppressed by the current regime that they had turned into their own ideology. The multivolume bible of a disenfranchised political movement that had developed the character of a utopian religious sect. A well-armed one, with a dead prophet who was now sending fresh messages from beyond.

  The night she found that book, Tania saw another face she recognized, this one on Channel 13.

  The guy on the screen
even had an old-fashioned nameplate on his desk.

  Ward Walker

  Chairman

  Chairman of what, the plaque didn’t say.

  He had that mustache, and those old-school glasses.

  Walker was the guy the President had singled out for slander in the installment of Hello America Tania had seen the night before she and Odile went to the White House.

  Tania turned up the volume.

  It was like when you turn on the news and the anchors don’t know you’re watching them yet. Walker sat at the metal desk, staring, shuffling paper. He wore a red tie and a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up. He sipped from a tumbler of brown liquor over ice. He tapped the microphone. He cleared his throat and stared at some point behind you.

  Behind him was a green wall. And then the green wall turned into blue photons. Then a weather map. An old whiteboard-and-magnets weather map.

  It was snowing.

  You could hear people laughing and talking intermittently in the background.

  Walker held up some shiny sheets of paper, stapled and folded. He waved it at the camera.

  “Yes, you all, this is a fax,” he said. “My team makes fun of me for still using a fax machine.”

  He looked shifty and stressed out. He was sweaty under the lights. The video yellowed his skin and reddened his eyes.

  “The people who tell me this seriously want me to believe their BellMail accounts are secure from prying eyes. I trust my fax. Especially this fax, which is still warm from the machine that was nice enough to bring it to me.”

  He looked at the paper as if to read from it, then caught himself.

  “Yes. This is live. We are transmitting from a secure undisclosed location. There is beer here.”

  He unfolded the paper again.

  “This is the decision of Judge Parker of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of, and I am reading this now, ‘the United States of America versus One-Hundred Shares of Zapata Communications Limited, Real Property located on Farm-to-Market Road 669, Presidio County, Texas, One Autographed 1991 John Lennon Black Album Master, One Smith & Wesson Model 10 Snub Nose Revolver, One Silver 1966 Cadillac Calais, et al.’”