Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America
Page 22
Huzzahs and light clapping spatter the master bedroom. More trickle in from the long hall beyond. An hour later, they have to get the maid and stable hands to move William Williams into the parlor for better general access. And so now Mrs. Williams haunts the shadows of this room as she haunted the bedroom since the stroke.
From where his head rests, Williams can see the ever‐growing crowd. Not a single one of them was alive for Yorktown, he thinks. Not one was ever a British subject. Young Federalists raised on Washington but come to manhood in the age of Jefferson. Only vague memories of the promise of a dying generation to go on. All they know about Off‐the‐Grid is what they’ve clicked on in The Life of George Washington.
William Williams notices, then, floating ineffectually about the room, his youngest and meekest offspring, William T., elbow‐led by his cousin/wife, Sarah Trumbull Williams. Solomon, he thinks. Where is Solomon? But then he remembers that his eldest son died almost a year ago this week, suddenly and without warning in New York City. The cause very much still a mystery.
Rising up from bent over his father‐in‐law, young McClellan tells the room, “Mr. Williams declares his support for the northern states in their battle against the tyranny of the Virginia dynasty.” He then launches into his own riff about the plunder of northern shipping, the Deep South, and western farmers and their land madness for Florida and Canada and Cuba and whatever else can be expanded into, the restrictions on Cloud commerce, the secret alliances with France and Russia both. “And now, gentlemen, I ask you to think about the potential aggregated power of a separate New England confederation. To the Fissure!”
For all their complaining about the dangers of the war, Williams gets the sense these young Federalists are rooting for it to start. Then they can root against the nation and then be there to say we told you so when the whole thing falls apart. War has become just another party issue, he thinks. Not a means for liberty or rights or property, but a means to prove the opposition wrong. Destroy the country so you can be in a position to save it. Quite a formula to follow as time goes by.
“Mr. Williams says the defenses of our very homeland have been razed internally by neglect.” Young McClellan has the attention of the room once again. “So diluted by the utopian fantasy of a rational and peaceful world, Jefferson’s party has turned us into defenseless prey for any hungry nation or alien species.”
From the shadows, Mrs. Williams just watches. She almost put a stop to this whole thing when it first started. But then people began showing up. In the age of the Dream, what more genuine tribute to her dying life partner could there be than the actual gathering of people in a physical place?
“Excuse me,” comes a voice, a young Federalist whom Williams doesn’t recognize. He’s standing there beside his bed, ready to address the room. “Mr. Williams says this war is just the next phase in a plot to create a global revolutionary government with Napoleon at its head.”
Faith Williams McClellan steps forward, anger flashing. But she catches herself and melts again into her somber mourning. Her husband takes her hand. One rule of politics is it never takes a fox long to sniff out a fox. And so it was only a matter of time before others would be in on the act, leaning their ears close and then talking imaginary words out of William Williams’ mouth.
“He’s quoting Mr. Jefferson,” another would‐be listener tells the room. “The tree of liberty must be fed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants… and all that stuff.”
Some clapping.
“I hold these truths to be self‐evident,” and then a long list of Connecticut grievances.
“If all men are created equal?” his daughter asks, retaking the room. “Then why is northern industry being forced to prop up southern agriculture?” And Williams has to admit, she does have a good point there. Might actually be something he did once say.
After a moment of pretending to listen, another young Federalist light steps to the center of the room and declares, “William Williams has told me that what we need is a bold act. To throw off the oppressions of this troll in the President’s mansion.”
“William Williams says that abandoning 3net has left our Cloud subject to the brute whims of Europe’s old powers.”
“William Williams says we should be making peace with the English, to defeat France and open up trade with the Off‐Worlders on our own terms.”
“William Williams says the rise of the common man will lead to either a tyrannical oligarchy or a tyrannical mob. Liberty itself will be extinguished by too much democracy.”
If these are the ideas of this generation’s Federalists, Williams thinks, I’d hate to hear what this generation’s Republicans are coming up with. Never mind who’s going to save the country from Jeffer‐sonianism. Who’s going to save the human race from Americanism?
Williams tries, then, to see some kind of American future. But all he can conjure is a constantly swinging pendulum where men without property vote for laws to destroy entrenched property and then men with property vote for laws to keep down those who seek to destroy their property and then those who can’t get property vote for laws to destroy the men who vote to keep them from destroying entrenched property.
“William Williams says that free market ideas will welcome back the fiscal insanity of the 1780s.”
Another tells how William Williams just warned him of the “fiscal irrationalities we thought could exist only under kings and popes.”
“He’s talking about currency irregularities that will make gold look stable.”
Young McClellan takes command of the room and relates something William Williams supposedly said to him the night before in a long bedside session of father/son‐in‐law bonding. “My father warned me not to think of Jefferson and Madison as futurist creatures of the Dream. They seek only to turn the clock backward, to lock in an antiquated agrarian mode of life, forcing on the nation clothes it has long outgrown.”
Jefferson, William Williams thinks, a conservative now. I’ve taken way too long to die. Then it’s off into some other tunnel of thought. Some of these digressions can run pretty deep. He decides this is what death will be like when it finally does come, drift off into thought and never return.
“Mr. Williams,” one young Federalist whispers to him, “can you tell me where your Jefferson letter is? Jefferson’s letters to the Signers?”
Signers. The Signers, Williams thinks. When the war starts, the English will stomp right down the coast of this defenseless countryside. They’ll hang all the Signers they can find. The ones still left anyway.
“To the Fissure!” he hears again.
That night, after all the Federalists have gone, his wife detaches from the room’s thick curtains of darkness and comes close enough for Williams to catch a last brush with her scent. “I know you cannot hear me,” she whispers.
But I can, he thinks.
“There are things, Will, things I must tell you. If not for you, Will, then for me.”
William Williams remains still.
“During the Revolution, while riding west to avoid the British invasion, I was forced upon by the nephew of a Continental officer. I never told anyone, worried that someone would think me responsible. I’m sorry I thought this of you.” She moves the slightest bit closer to him. “Years later, there was a man. I met him in a chatroom in the Dream. Not sure if it was love, but it was something close. We never met in the real. If that makes it any better, I don’t know.
“I also stole pennies from you,” she whispers. “Saved them away but never found anything worth spending them on. It was an exercise in independence, I suppose.”
William Williams isn’t aware of time having passed, but he’s conscious next of the room around him empty. Completely. The candles all blown out and not even the lingering scent of their wicks and wax remains. Morning comes as he lays there awake. Another procession of young men and their wives filling up the room of the dying Founder. Connecticut’s last Signer.
A young Federalist takes the opportunity to raise a toast. “To the men of the Revolution,” he says. He sweeps his glass in an arc toward the older beings in the room. “To the men of Washington. The gods of Federalism. The saviors of our great nation of liberty.”
“Gods,” William Williams says then. Actually says it out loud for everyone in the room to hear. Most surprised of all are his daughter and son‐in‐law. Williams thinks, maybe we have reached the day I always knew would come, when men are made into gods who can say and do no wrong, their words as sacred as the scriptures. And anyone who challenges these will be banished.
“Our illustrious Founding Father,” one shouts, “says that God is sending something to punish America for the way we have acted these last twelve years.”
“He has sent Jefferson,” someone remarks, breaking the room into polite laughter.
“To the Fissure!”
“To the Fissure!”
Williams now raises a hand. The look on his wife’s face—first a word, now this—she clearly considers the possibility that he could rise right off that bed and be back to his old self. She wonders if she could live with him knowing what she told him. But it is not meant to be. This isn’t a revival but an encore. “Bring me my son,” Williams says. “Bring my son, Solomon.”
“Solomon is dead.”
“Oh,” Williams says, remembering again the truth of it. “It was good, to spend a little time in this world, I guess.”
Part 4 :: The Attack of the Vampire Millipus
George Clymer :: January 23rd 1813
George Clymer always thought war rooms of the future would be big big big. Banks of paper‐thin touchscreens and whole semi‐transparent walls of holo‐maps you could walk right through, zoom in on a flanking maneuver with a flick of your finger. But the future is here and it’s not what this old man had expected. No maps at all and so how are you supposed to tell where the fighting’s going on? No row of computer terminals, no hordes of scuttling aides. Both his son and grandson are neck‐deep in western defense, but whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it all with smar‐tlenses. The room is the same exact living room as before the war, fire going and tea in the kettle. Kind of cozy, actually.
Clymer can’t help but wonder, if things didn’t move so fast, if there weren’t allchats and tickles, instant messages getting countered and redacted before they’ve even been read, reply‐alls coming so fast, from so many different directions, then maybe things wouldn’t get ratcheted up so quick. It’s like a fever, the speed of communication these days. No chance for cooler heads. And so here we are, at war.
In order to see what either of the younger generations of Cly‐mer men is up to, the old man can’t just look over a shoulder. He has to have one of them redfang into his old smartpad and slave his display. “Why don’t you just get a smartlens, Dad?”
“Yeah, Grandpa. They’re cheap as hell now. You can get a G1.”
“I don’t like how small the display is. I want it big.”
“Doesn’t get any bigger than your entire field of vision.”
George Clymer did try one of the smartlenses once but couldn’t figure out how to stop seeing it when he was done with Newnet. “You just ignore it,” they told him, “and it goes into ghost mode.” Ghost mode? Yeah, no thanks. But even with his smartpad redfanged right in, he still can’t get a handle on what they’re doing. They move so fast they smear the Dream; all George Clymer sees are boxes and colors and text all mixed together.
“You look pretty old, Granddad, with that old smartpad.”
Clymer looks up to see the teasing face of his grandson. “Well, you two look like a couple of haunts to me. Floating around the room like that, waving your hands at nothing, talking to no one.” He finger flicks to his grandson’s display. Curser’s jumping from Brainpages through Dream feeds and chatrooms and allchats, right into what look like screen captures of a war simulation. Maybe they’re right; maybe he does need a smartlens to understand all this. “What are you doing?” Clymer asks.
“Rebuilding the massacre.”
“The massacre?”
“The River Raisin.”
“Some Indians, Dad. Got drunk and chopped up a bunch of Kentucky militiamen after they’d surrendered.” His son makes a motion like scalping himself with the edge of his hand.
“What were they doing surrendering?”
“Guess they were surrounded.”
George Clymer watches the same cobbled video his grandson is watching.
“See, Grandpa. If this guy dies here, then this comes after this because in this he’s alive.”
George Clymer’s face must reveal perfectly how baffled he is.
“You just link their face pattern to their Dream avatar. Use a little probabilities coding, you know, to fill in the gaps. The Dream does most of the work.” Clymer watches the separated pieces of footage becoming more and more coherent. Gaps of time gone between captured instants, just like the kid says. “Once we’re done, anyone in the Dream can step right in and experience it for themselves.”
George Clymer whistles. “Sounds pretty intense.”
“It’s for the families, too. Now they can go in and see how their dad or brother or husband or whoever died. The surety is better.” The kid taps his head. “Imagination can come up with atrocities that make reality just plain comforting.”
“But who was capturing all this?”
“The footage came in on their smartlenses.”
“No wonder we’re losing the war. Messing with their smartlenses when they should be fighting.”
“You can fight just fine with a smartlens on.”
“And we are winning the war, Dad.”
George Clymer thinks a moment. “Do you say in or on?”
“In or on what?”
“Do you say a smartlens is in or a smartlens is on?”
His grandson doesn’t even stop to think about it. The kid’s concentrating on some clip set to loop. Must be working some of that coding magic on it, breaking down the actions to ifs and thens, how this Indian went from killing this Kentucky soldier to killing the one who’s running away a few clips before. Clymer watches a hatchet get slammed into a soldier’s skull and the soldier goes so still he looks like an avatar on pause, his user gone for the great bathroom break. “Are you sure experiencing this is something Americans are going to want to do?”
“Don’t worry, Grandpa, that soldier didn’t really die.”
“What?”
The kid laughs. “That soldier and that Indian. Looks like they’re just some drones, snuck into the Dream feed after it went up.”
“Snuck in? They weren’t there during the fighting?”
His grandson laughs. “No, Grandpa. They’re just drones playing around in the feed.”
“I’m going to sit down.” But George Clymer already is sitting down. No more down to go unless he wants to lie on the floor and really call it quits.
“Look at this one, Grandpa. This is a real one. No drones.”
George Clymer watches what his grandson tells him is a real scalping, but he can’t much tell the difference. He’s not sure if it should affect him more or less. He unmirrors his display and watches the curtain billow for a few minutes. “Why the hell are you guys working on defending Michigan territory, anyway? What you should be worried about is defense right
here in Pennsylvania.”
“Got this guy out there, Dad, called The Prophet. Says he’s going to summon the drones.”
“You mean like the drones inside the Dream feed of the massacre? Summon them?”
George Clymer’s son turns. He flicks his iris, shooting his smartlens display forward, to hover in the center of the room. A hologram of a clearing in the woods, a deep gorge of lava slicing lengthwise down the center of a long, sloping field. A strange red glow pulses from within.
“What the hell are you showing me?” Clymer demands.
“The Fissure.”
His grandson pipes in, “The Prophet says he’s going to summon the drones across the Fissure. Into the real. To join forces with the Indians and destroy America. Hand us right back to the British, or the French, or whichever old power will have us.”
“W. H. Harrison is on his way,” his grandson says. “And when his boys see what the Indians did to our soldiers… Remember the Raisin, it’s the new big tickle.”
Clymer sighs. “I got a feeling we’re not going to have any choice but to remember it.” The holographic fissure vanishes. “Remember the Raisin,” Clymer mumbles. “Ben Harrison’s boy, you say?” He turns things over in his brain, doesn’t need any Dream feed to picture what it all could mean. “Those drones come streaming into Michigan territory, Pennsylvania’s going to be next. Makes me wish M’Kean was still governor. He may be a back‐stabbing SOB, but he knew how to kick a little ass. Would be kicking some British ass right now if he were still in charge.”
“He tried last year, remember? Mustering that militia outside Philadelphia. The guy’s so old, Dad.”
“Just because he signed the DOI doesn’t mean he’s any good in a hyperwar.”
“The doy?”
“Declaration of Independence, Dad. You signed it, too.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Clymer lifts a finger. “You know, that SOB M’Kean one time, right in front of everybody, slapped me on the back and you know what he called me?”
Both son and grandson do know. They’ve heard this story at least once a year since the year it happened. And that was years ago.