Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America

by Damien Lincoln Ober

  “Looks like Carter Braxton isn’t listening to the voice of the people either.”

  Rush counters; he can wiggle a little if he needs to. “I’m as good a Republican as anyone, but Adams did just get elected, the Federalists took control of the House. Picked up a Senate seat too, have a ten‐seat majority. In both houses. Randolph, what more voice of the people do you want?”

  For a brief moment, Rush thinks Randolph’s going to turn that riding crop loose on him. He sees the violence twinkle in his eyes. The dogs tense up, each emitting its own low growl. But there’s that Southern gentleman again. It’s like the moon went behind a cloud. “If you don’t understand that Franklin’s Dream is the real voice of the people,” Randolph says, “then you, sir, do not understand the people.”

  Rush tries a few things of his own over the couple days he’s there, chasing down theories that come to him as he enjoys the Southern city. But Carter Braxton just sits there like he’s been switched off. Rush thinks about how Wythe described it, his face in the Dream.

  Light Horse Harry Lee informs Rush one afternoon that there’s “One thing that’s for sure: This would never have flown if George Washington were still President.” Though the politics is different, Rush sure can see a lot of those Lee brothers in this next generation. “Do you know that sixty‐one percent of Jeffersonian Republicans feel that their Franklin’s Dream avatar is a more perfect representation of their self than their actual human body?” Light Horse Harry Lee pauses to shake his head at that one. “Off‐the‐Grid?” Lee says. “He would have smashed this Franklin’s Dream thing right out of the Cloud. And the people would have paused only long enough to cheer.”

  Rush nods. Mostly he’s astounded that a Lee ended up a Federalist, and a flaming one at that.

  “The Society of Cincinnati sends our deepest regards,” Light Horse Harry Lee says when leaving. It’s the same exact line John Marshall had used to depart. So either the SOC is disorganized enough to send two men to do the same thing, or they’re just hammering a message like everyone else. Rush wonders, “When did those guys become not a secret? Have they ever been a secret?” But Rush can’t remember.

  Creditors stop by to leave their opinions about how convenient it is that Mr. Braxton always seems so afflicted lately with abject stillness when the bills come due. Carter’s last effort to dig himself out of financial ruin was Braxton Shipping. But the ships that made it through the French blockades were seized by the English ones. Ouch!

  W. H. Harrison, just back from the frontier, stops by for his own photo op. He’s working for Jefferson now too. No doubt about it. But he’s got an eye on that Congressional seat in the Northwest Territory. Going to need a few Federalists friends for that one. Of course, being seen in the Dream at the bedside of a dying Signer sure isn’t going to hurt none either. “My dad, the Lees, Tom Jefferson, Carter Braxton, George Wythe, the Old Man. My dad always thought of that Virginia delegation as his brothers.” W. H. navigates the room as one does an open‐casket wake. “Spanish still choking the Mississippi, building forts in Florida. The King’s still out there, directory now too. Indians up one end, Barbary Pirates out the other. Still no idea what The Death was all about. All of Europe is at war. And how long before we get dragged in too? A world fucking war.” He changes directions. “What if our slaves decide to follow their brothers in Santo Domingo?” W. H. sighs long and loud as Carter Braxton and Rush stare off into space. “World seems too much for little Mr. Adams to bear.”

  Rush does have to admit it—Adams is little.

  “And what’s with this curse thing I keep hearing about?”

  Rush rolls his eyes. “Oh, you don’t believe in the curse, do you, William Henry? Witches? Really? Your dad was a Signer, man.”

  “Not worried about the curse, Rush. I’m worried about what happens when the people find out about the curse. This is a republic, after all.”

  Patrick Henry never makes an appearance, which Rush thinks a bit strange until he realizes just how old that old volcano is. George Mason’s been dead five years. The Lee brothers are all gone. Even George Washington has retired, forever this time, they’re saying. It’ll be these new Virginians who take their place.

  “Paralysis,” Rush finally proclaims. But he doesn’t know what caused it. He wishes Doc Bartlett were still alive. Face in the goddamned Dream, he thinks. Maybe he could hunt down Francis Hopkinson and get a hand with this. Maybe he’d come out and chat finally, even just a little, to help an old Signer on hard times. Maybe help get Carter’s face out of the Dream.

  Rush has Carter Braxton moved to his bed and then puts his hands up and tells the last slave left that there isn’t anything more he can do. As he’s leaving, Robert Morris shows up, and so Rush decides, well, what the heck. He’ll wait an extra day and then the two of them can return to Philadelphia together. Here they are, Rush thinks, Robert Morris and Carter Braxton, the financiers of the revolution. Both of them broke and one broken down. “Looks like old Carter’s just a haunt now,” Morris declares. “Except he’s over here in the real.”

  Rush nods, “Maybe not all of him, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Face in the Dream,” Rush says.

  The thing is, Carter can hear them fine. He can hear every word. He’s not sure what happened. The only thing that seems wrong is he can’t move, that and the fact that by now he should be dead from starvation. They’re going to give up on me, he thinks. They’re going to put me in the ground. And I’ll live forever down there, just like this.

  Oliver Walcott :: December 1st 1797

  Lachlan McIntosh and Oliver Walcott have dug themselves into the outermost crust of the Dream, found a chat lounge, paid a little extra to make it private. Well, their avatars have. Really, both are in their respective places of assignment: Walcott at home in Connecticut, monitoring Franklin’s Dream for anything that smells a little too French; McIntosh farther south—a lot farther—down in Santo Domingo helping the slave rebels kick Napoleon in the dick. Two old soldiers on the job for the Society of Cincinnati. Got some others down in Florida, undermining Spanish property values and riling up the Indians. All of it a long‐term, multi‐platform operation to rid the continent of European influence, once and for all. Someone’s got to keep the New World safe for small‐r republicanism.

  “Wally, Wally, Wally,” McIntosh wants to know, “what’s the latest from Junior?”

  “Shaky, Mac. Things are looking shaky.”

  Lachlan McIntosh is the only one who can get away with calling Oliver Wolcott “Wally.” Comes from their days together in the Continental Army. The reverse is true too; if anybody but Walcott called McIntosh “Mac,” it would be the last word they ever spoke. Well, the Old Man could get away with it, of course.

  “These Dream screamers,” Wally’s avatar is saying. “Really have Adams on the ropes. Worst thing is, we don’t even know who they are. President comes out and says something, you know it’s the President. But who’s this Dream screamer calling himself American Brutus? Who is Cloud Cato? Cin$innatus? Fedr@l‐F@rmer? Who do you hit back at when you don’t know who’s hitting you?”

  Though interesting, this is all stuff McIntosh already knows. All you need to do is take a peek at the Dream to see the kind of trouble Adams is in. What McIntosh really wants is a little NAON, those juiciest bits of information, Not Available On Newnet. Wally’s son, Junior, is Secretary of the Treasury, and so Wally has an ear on the inner sanctum of the Adams administration.

  “Kid says the President has some dirt on France and the people are going to go wild if they ever find out.”

  “What’s he got?”

  “Access fee. President tried to open up a chat with the French and the French demanded an access fee.” “An access fee? To open a chat?”

  “Frogs need capital to keep up their war for liberty, apparently willing to do just about anything to get it.”

  McIntosh thinks a moment. “Wait. Why haven’t I heard about this?
This is the kind of thing that should be all over the Dream.”

  “Kid says Adams won’t.”

  “Won’t what? Won’t release it?”

  “Kid says Adams thinks if he releases it, war fever will get out of hand.”

  “War fever out of hand is exactly what we need. This would kill the French, drag Jefferson and the Republicans right down with them. Has Adams talked to the Old Man? What does the Old Man say?”

  “Washington doesn’t want to get involved. Keeps deferring to Adams. So maybe he really is off the grid, off the grid for good.”

  “God help us,” McIntosh says. “Republicans are already acting like they run the place. Imagine what they’ll do if they actually win an election.”

  Wally’s avatar gestures toward the Dream all around them. Torrents of profiles scrape the surface of their lounge, impossible to tell anymore which ones are human. Above, multi‐conference and allchat hyper chambers dot the feet of high, hulking group avatars. New ones appear every few minutes, popping up one second and then scraping the real the next. Ad drones and banner drones and banner cycles and drones cycling banner ads. Tons of ads, ads everywhere you look. “Mac, this is just the surface of it. All this shit is just the apps and functions that regular users use. You should see what’s a little further in, the shit only people living in the Dream ever access. Coder tunnels and drone ghettoes. There’s all kinds of awful stuff in this place.”

  McIntosh shivers.

  “That’s not all,” Wally says. “The kid says Adams isn’t worried about it. Isn’t worried about the Dream. Not at all. Kid says Adams thinks it’s already climaxed itself. Now that the election is over, the Dream will kick a few last kicks and just fade away. That’s what the kid says Adams thinks.”

  McIntosh laughs. “When has Thomas Jefferson ever just faded away? Guy’s like a cat. Throw him down a well and he’s lapping his paws on the counter when you get home. Milk’s gone out of the icebox too. If Adams doesn’t do something, the Republicans will win in 1800. Jefferson will be President, and never mind worrying about the Dream. The real will be more than we can handle.”

  “That’s what they keep telling him.”

  Mac rolls his eyes. “But John Adams won’t listen because John Adams thinks John Adams is the only one who can see what’s really going on. Probably thinks Jefferson is still his buddy.”

  Wally nods. “That’s pretty much exactly what the kid says.” But Wally’s avatar cracks a grin. “That’s why the kid is working on a plan, a plan to force Adams’s hand.”

  Now McIntosh has found it, some real NAON. “Tell me more.”

  “Jefferson keeps talking about the people. Well, the plan is we give it to them.”

  “Give it to the people?”

  “We leak to the Republicans that the President is keeping secret messages he received from the French. They’ll smell blood and go for the kill. And you know those guys, they’re not going to be gentle about it.”

  McIntosh thinks it over. “Some Republican accuses Old John Yankee of dishonesty… Adams will explode. He’ll release the whole fucking chat! The chat, the access fee, the whole thing!”

  Walcott is nodding. His avatar is, anyway. “That’s the idea. Once the people find out about the access fee, they’ll come out for war. Full froth. Just like Adams knows they will.”

  Now McIntosh is smiling because he can see the whole of the plan. “Adams won’t be able to resist it, the cry of the masses. He’ll smell popularity for the first time in his life.” The old general mulls it over. “They’re going to get Adams to build an army!”

  “And who do you think they’re going to ask to lead it?”

  McIntosh smiles. “We might just get the Old Man back out for one more round.”

  “If we’re at war with France, then all the stuff the screamers are saying, it’s not just Dream screaming anymore, Mac, it’s sedition. Treason. Criticizing the President is one thing when we’re at peace.”

  McIntosh takes in the whole of it. “Not too bad,” he says.

  “There’s something else too.”

  “Something else good or something else bad?”

  Wally thinks a second. “A little of both. Been tracking something, Mac. Something on Newnet.”

  “Tracking what?”

  “Code‐wise, it’s just your average cloud siphon, only bigger. It’s how the Cloud works, an interlocking protocol of programs that utilizes the processing power of the inactive sectors of Newnet. This thing, it acts the same way, except it uses profiles. Kinda like it lives inside of them.”

  “Inside the profiles? Which ones?”

  “All of them.”

  McIntosh looks at the Dream waiting there on the other side of the private chat lounge. Doesn’t see anything but regular old Dream. He never could get much past the surface of a code.

  Wally says, “At first, I thought maybe it was some kind of virus, that it might destabilize the Dream. Maybe even destroy it.”

  “That would make our jobs a lot easier.”

  “But now sometimes I feel like it’s watching me. Like it’s out there… hunting.” Wally changes direction. “Then I started to think about it more, Mac. And it started to come together.”

  “What did?”

  “The access fees. This thing in the profiles. Jefferson and Adams. The election. War with France. Got me thinking. Maybe the best way to take on the Dream isn’t from the inside like we’ve been thinking. But from the outside.”

  McIntosh isn’t making the same connections Wally is. Not yet.

  “Mac,” Wally says. “We make the Dream illegal.”

  “Illegal?”

  “It worked during the Revolution. We say it’s because of the virus, that thing I’ve seen.”

  “Wally,” McIntosh smiling. “So have you? Really seen this thing?”

  “That’s the beauty of it. It is real, whatever it is. Any half‐decent Franklin’s Dream programmer will at least know it’s out there.”

  “The people find out that secret French screamers are using the Dream against us. They find out about this virus thing… . We all remember The Death.”

  Wally stops, listens. “Wait,” he says. “Here we go. I’m picking something up.”

  “That thing?”

  “I think so,” but it’s not the Lachlan McIntosh avatar he’s talking to anymore. Still looks like Mac’s avatar, but it’s clearly under some other control. Walcott wonders if Mac is back at his terminal in Santo Domingo, booted out, back into the real. He tries to pull out of the Dream but can’t. Wolcott goes calm, looks at McIntosh’s avatar. “You a drone or a worm?”

  The avatar is smiling, or whatever’s in control of it is.

  Walcott flashes anger. “Who are you?!”

  It’s Mac’s voice but with a deep, endless echo added. “Don’t worry about who we are,” it says. “What you should be worried about is this: If you die in the Dream, do you die in the real?”

  Lewis Morris :: January 22nd 1798

  Lewis Morris looks into the brown liquor in his glass. He has a sip, says, “The Dream? More like a nightmare.”

  And his daughter just nods and says, “Oh, Dad.”

  He has another sip, says, “When I rebuilt Morrisania, I didn’t rebuild it in the Dream. I rebuilt it in the real.” He stomps his foot, but it doesn’t sound like a stomp. More like rotten fruit being dropped. He’s grown weak, her old dad. “People don’t want to do the work anymore to make the real better, so they spend all their time in the Dream instead. Here’s to John Adams. Once in a while, you got to remind them about how good the real is.”

  “Any better idea than a war, Dad, to make the real more popular?”

  Lewis Morris is finishing a sip, shaking off the burn. But it’s not whiskey he’s drinking. Lewis Morris is too sick to be trusted with alcohol. His daughter swapped it all out with watered‐down tea weeks ago. But he still drinks it, and still, somehow, it seems to get him drunk. “Why don’t you read your book, Dad?”


  He’s waving, waving at things pestering him. “I don’t want to read any more books.”

  “But it’s going to make me so sad, that book sitting there half‐unfinished.”

  This idea he takes more seriously. It sobers him in the time of one long sigh. Perhaps he realizes just then that it’s not whiskey he’s been drinking. Or maybe he’s known this whole time and was playing drunk. “I thought I wanted to read it,” he says. “My last book. But then I decided I didn’t want to read anymore, not ever. And so I’m not going to. I’m just going to sit here and look at the world as I die. And as soon as the Dream is illegal, everybody else can go back to living and dying just like we all used to do.”

  His daughter’s laughing. “Dad, they can’t make the Dream illegal.”

  “Congress’s going to vote on it this session. Maybe in time to save this damn country too.”

  “Dad!”

  “How are we going to fight a war with the French when half the country’s claiming to be a different country and wants to go to war with England?” More of that soft stomping. “We need one country that can make one decision and stick to it.”

  “How do you make everyone think the same thing? And I mean besides making Newnet illegal,” which she can’t even say without smiling. “People are always going to be screaming weird in the Dream.”

  “Terminate their accounts is how.”

  “The government can’t terminate avatars. What, just erase them?”

  “Yes. That’s how democracy works. You vote for something you think should be illegal and if enough people vote that way, you make it illegal.”

  “I don’t care how many votes you get, you can’t make Newnet illegal. It’ll be like killing someone, the government starts terminating profiles.”

  “This house was burned down in the Revolution and I rebuilt it brick by brick and you’re telling me about an online profile in the Frank A. Lang’s Dream? Killing? Really?”

  “It’s ‘Franklin’s Dream,’ Dad. Like Ben Franklin.”