Feb 26, 2057, 1922 Hours (UTC -5)
New York City NY, United States of America
The “Lake” Show With Kelly Lake Recording Studio
Nicky was sick of interviews, but every time he thought he was at his wit’s end, burnt out and unable to hear another fake laugh from a psychopathic entertainer who looked at him and his colleagues as ad copy money printers, he locked in and did it anyway. Then he had dinner and a drink somewhere fancy and went back to his hotel and watched mind-numbing bullshit to distract himself from the pointlessness. These things “had value,” Graham told him, because someone was paying for them, so they weren’t “pointless,” even if he couldn’t see the point.
The problem was the post-Silicon bubble economy was now mostly advertisers and arms dealers. Everything was made elsewhere, but because of the bizarre, incompatible forms of trade the Pan-Democracies in Europe and Africa conducted, the US dollar had somehow, some way, remained the world’s dominant reserve currency in economically dynamic Liberal and Centralized Democracies. This despite the collapse of liberal interdependency and the economic anarchy that ensued.
The Pan-Democracies operated off more esoteric, and less efficient, paradigms that had to do with who you knew and why. Though, when Nicky was confronted by their ability to set up a factory to make chairs if chairs were needed and then tear it down when you didn’t need more chairs, it admittedly seemed more sensible than his current job of making millions through commercials, interviews, and cameos in TV shows.
“We’re doing something a little different this time,” Graham said, sporting a fancy sail-boat pattern tie that he was finally senior enough at Baron Nucleonics to wear. “You two are going to talk about an internal problem at BN that we want to fix.”
Tiffany blinked. “Um, is there an internal problem that needs fixing?”
“Haha! Glad you asked. Yes, there is, and I can’t get it pushed through maintenance because they consider it ‘low priority’. But the facilities out in the Paris Wing aren’t up to fire code, specifically due to the proximity of the fueling silos to the Pilots’ apartments. However, if the topic comes up organically on TV, then maybe it forces BN to move on it.”
Tiffany Fontaine crossed her legs. Something stunk, but the problem was something always stunk around Graham Magnusson. It made it impossible to tell what exactly. She let her eyes wander the bright lights and red walls of the dressing studio dressing room and tried to figure out his angle, besides putting words in their mouths so it wasn’t him badgering the executive board. She decided to ask him outright.
“You want us to do that… why?”
Graham put on an innocent smile that locked into place a little too quickly to be believed. “Because you’re the public faces. Me? Pffbt, I’m just a boring bureaucrat, man. They don’t care what I have to say. But if you all mention something on air, they’ll have to fix it!”
“Why are we only hearing about it now? Do the other pilots know about the fire hazard?” Nicky asked.
“Elijah does,” Graham said, referring to the third pilot who was due for an interview tonight but who was currently in the bathroom.
New York City water, the elderly pilot claimed, gave him the runs. Though why he didn’t just drink bottled water whenever they had a taping session in NYC, Nicky never understood.
“How long have you known about this?” Tiffany asked.
The bright smile on Graham’s face slowly fell as the pilots pressured him. This was a side of the Head of Pilot Assets Nicky knew better than anyone after spending so much time glued to his side. Graham was everybody’s friend until they inconvenienced him, and then he became a ticking time bomb, pressuring you to get back on his good side and do what he wanted again before you were marked an enemy. Then he went out of his way to make your life worse.
“Would you prefer to leave it be? I can’t guarantee BN will do anything if you don’t push them,” Graham said.
He liked to talk about ‘BN’ as a thing separate from him. Rarely was it.
“Fine,” Tiffany said, throwing up her hands.
She was sure Graham had ulterior motives. Maybe it was some kind of power play against an executive in charge of facility safety or something. But she couldn’t imagine it was anything that mattered to her. Even if it pissed off BN board members, what could they do? She had the mutation. They couldn’t fire her.
Nicky hesitated a little longer but eventually agreed to ‘organically’ bring the topic up in the interview with Kelly Lake.
The smile returned to Graham’s face-like mask and he left them to go talk with the show producers about something. Once he was gone, both confessed that they’d had the exact same thoughts about Graham scheming something and not knowing what. As they debated this, Elijah Robicheaux toddled into the room.
“Mmm. That New York water just don’t like me. I’m tellin’ y’all,” the old millennial said with a grin of crooked teeth.
Elijah was in his mid-70s, walked with a cane, was bald as a baby’s butt, and had a proclivity for dark, muted clothes from his time as a Buddhist monk. For the interview he was wearing a black turtleneck and gray slacks with black shoes in sharp contrast to Tiffany in a green sequin dress and Nicky in an eye-catching purple dress shirt under his fitted blazer.
“There’s always bottled, Eli,” Nicky said, shaking his own studio-provided bottle.
Eli swatted the air. “No thank ya, I’m a man of the tap. Can tell ya how good a place is based on how they treat their water. They got the good water in Atlanta.”
Tiffany chuckled and eyed Nicky who mimed taking a swig of something at, “the good water in Atlanta.”
Elijah meandered over to a low seat in the corner and eased himself down on aching muscles. It baffled Nicky how the old man kept piloting at his age, or even if he could, why he bothered. It was certainly not for any want of money, as the old man had no kids and passed the majority of his money along to Buddhist organizations around the United States. But if you got Eli in a robot, he performed up to par, even if his reaction times were slowing.
“Did you know about the fire hazard thing, Eli?” Nicky asked.
Elijah’s forehead wrinkled to his scalp and his eyebrows pinched in. “Hmm? The fire— oh yes, I did! Mr. Magnusson told me. Fire hazard out there. In Paris.”
“What do you think?”
“I always thought there was a fire hazard out there. Back when there were just the five of us the apartments were separate. Katie’d sometimes sleep in the hangar, now, but she was the exception. And the silos were way out there. Out by where the armor-testing site is now. Used to be a big ol’ field with the tanks out there cuz the first couple a’ generations were jet fuel only. We didn’t go nuclear until…”
And Elijah went on like this. His gravely, lip-smacking voice reminded Nicky of a slightly higher-pitched Paul Robeson. His circuitous way of talking could be a little irritating if you were in a hurry, but if you were in the right mood, as both Nicky and Tiffany were after putting up with the plasticky fakeness of Graham all day, there was something therapeutic in listening to his rambling. Plus, he did always get to the point if you were patient.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“...so it was then they moved the silos cuz they didn’t wanna lay more pipes down to go around the new firing range. This was about a… a couple years ‘fore y’all’s time. Right after Ms. Jefferson and some a’ the other pilots started protesting about the way that war down in Mexico was being done, if I remember right.”
“Gotcha,” Nicky said.
“Mhm,” Elijah said, rotating his cane in his grip. “Now, did y’all see what’s happenin’ in Cairo?”
“Georgia?” Tiffany asked, since Elijah pronounced both Cairos the Georgian way.
“Egypt. The big djinn… it finally made it to Cairo. Things lookin’ real ugly. All the other refugees already there made it hard to move everyone out. They got live coverage on it, right down there with the pyramids in the background and Ol’ Cal doin’ what he can but God and the Buddhas bless him ain’t no way they’re turnin’ back that thing.”
“Ol’ Cal” was Eli’s friend Khalid Mohammad, one of Egypt’s two pilots who Elijah befriended during Operation Prester John. Neither Elijah nor Khalid was of a good age to still be piloting a TOCU, let alone in a live-fire scenario against an act of God.
At the thought of that “act of God” and the news from Cairo, the taste of battery acid filled Nicky’s mouth. He was reminded of the fact that the real purpose of this late night talk-show was to sell the American public on non-intervention in Egypt. Graham’s thing about the fire hazard was just a side-quest.
The Department of Defense and Baron Nucleonics had come to an agreement that there would be no sending American pilots to aid Egypt in their battle against what was becoming the biggest and strangest news story of the decade. However, it was from the mouths of Nicky, Tiffany, and Eli this pre-ordained policy had to come because the pilots had higher approval ratings than the DoD and BN. No one liked either the government or giant multinational corporations, but they did like attractive young women, handsome young men, and kindly old black men with soothing voices who didn’t tell them anything they didn’t want to hear.
An assistant poked their head into the room to tell them they were on in ten minutes. The pilots ignored them.
“It makes me feel helpless,” Tiffany said. “I don’t know why they have to make these decisions without the pilots’ input. I don’t wanna speak for you all, but I would go to Egypt in a heartbeat.”
Elijah’s throat rumbled and he turned his head to the fluorescent ceiling lights. “That’s the trouble of being a pilot in a country that isn’t ready for pilots. We skipped ahead, you know. The United States. We borrowed TOCUs from the future without knowin’ what they meant, and we don’t know what to do with ‘em yet. Maybe we will, some day. Just gotta find the cracks in things and put our flag down there.”
Elijah’s head came back down from the clouds and looked down at the two of them. “Well, that’s something for you all. I don’t have a lot of time left. I never had a good ticker, and listenin’ to my body the way I do, I know my time is comin’. I don’t like excuses, but I was just born at the wrong time to do anything but make merit and lay the groundwork for what’s comin’. Causes and conditions are comin’ together, though. Yeah, they’re comin’ together.”
Elijah Robicheaux shut his eyes for a moment and the only sound in the room were his wheezy breaths. It was hard to believe a man only in his mid-70s was on death’s door, especially when his eyes had more life in them than anyone else Tiffany and Nicky knew. But as Eli demonstrated numerous times in live-fire training and in navigating the political minefield of Baron Nucleonics, he had a mind that caught the subtle, fine things that ended up making all the difference. The things that turned on the want of a nail. If someone could feel their heart slowing down, it was Eli.
Elijah stood up on his cane, hobbled to the door, and peeked out. When he saw no one was out in the hallway he turned back to the two of them.
“I know what you’re thinkin’ of doin’,” Elijah said.
“Huh?” Tiffany replied, voicing Nicky’s confusion for him.
“Still workin’ it’s way through your minds? Well, you’ll know. All I’m gonna say is, go ahead and do it. It can’t be me. I’d go from kindly old man to delusional geezer in a heartbeat. It’s gotta be y’all. Oh, and while I’m thinkin’ of it, go look a little more into what else Baron was doin’ around the same time as they moved the siloes. Might find somethin’ interestin’. Oh lookie me, lookie my, here comes the suits.”
Elijah stepped out the door and said something inaudible to the television producers who were coming to retrieve their on-screen investments.
It genuinely astounded Nicky how tightly packed all the capital could get sometimes. Baron Nucleonics sold the pilots’ time to Disney-NBC who made money off advertising slots BN bought to run marketing campaigns for BN products while simultaneously using the pilots to market BN initiatives and corporate moves on Disney-NBC’s airtime which Disney-NBC themselves used to promote shows and movies which had BN pilots in them so that the DoD would offer Disney-NBC funding and subsidies for them to paint the military and its public-private partnerships with contractors like Baron Nucleonics in a good light.
For every 1-in-10 million brain mutation that turned a person into a social fabric weaver, Nicky supposed, there was also a 1-in-10 million brain mutation that turned a person into a money wizard, conjuring value and capital with the same ease as he piloted a giant robot. Except they piloted multinational corporations.
The producers guided them to the sound stage and give them their spots to sit and soon it was time to do interview stuff again.
“Hello! Hi! Hello! It’s so good to see you all again!” Kelly Lake said with a wide, enthusiastic smile.
Once the cameras were rolling Nicky’s thoughts dropped away and he was back in his element. Kelly’s smile was genuine which made it easy to play off her. Late night shows liked having pilots on because aside from the ratings boost, all the pilots—save black-listers like Xolani—fit right in. Unlike some actors and musicians and politicians whose personal brand involved being rebellious and anti-establishment and tearing into late night hosts for their hypocrisy and disingenuity (something which boosted ratings for both parties), pilots empathized with the need to match each other’s energy. For late night host Kelly Lake, an interview with Nicholas Johnson, Tiffany Fontaine, and Elijah Robicheaux, lined up on the couch and chair in just that order, was a breath of fresh air.
“It is so nice to see you too, Mrs. Lake,” Elijah said, leaning forward in his chair. “How long has it been? Four years since I was here last? I think I took all those years for myself and didn’t leave none for you.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the late night hosts,” Kelly replied.
The studio audience laughed. Nicky had done probably a hundred media appearances of one or another kind with Elijah and like some kind of superpower, the old man always had the right thing to say to thread the needle between corny and smooth without ever reusing material. The other pilots were good at interviews, but even they weren’t that good.
While things went along with easy, lay-up questions about Nicky and Tiffany’s social lives and movie appearances, Nicky’s thoughts turned on when he was going to insert the line about being concerned with Baron Nucleonics’ negligence regarding pilot fire safety. Eventually the opportunity came when Kelly Lake asked:
“I think people assume it’s just a lot of sitting on your asses, right?” Kelly said, backed by some mild laughter from the crowd. “You guys have more going on then just stuffing your faces though, of course. What’s going on in pilot-land?”
“Hah! I wish I got to sit on my ass,” Nicky said. “Actually, we—”
His eyes caught Tiffany’s and somehow he knew they were thinking the same thing: That if Graham could make them come on national television and say something to alter public opinion, it was because what they said matters. And if he was already putting words in their mouths that ran contrary to Baron Nucleonics’ top-level agenda…
“We… I mean, us pilots, we’re actually trying to petition Baron Nucleonics and the DoD to send us over to Egypt to fight the Sahara Monster,” Nicky said, using the nickname US news sources had given to the Djinn.
“We get that these aren’t really our own billion-dollar, tax-subsidized toys we’re playing around with,” Tiffany said, walking a tight-rope between demure and assertive. “We aren’t suggesting shipping the robots over to Egypt to mess around, but we just decided, you know, what’s the point of these billion-dollar toys if they’re sitting in a hangar while millions of people are in danger?”
Kelly Lake looked immediately uncomfortable as she realized the pilots were going off-script. Very off-script. Dangerously off-script. Clearly no one at either BN or Disney-NBC had prepared her for what to do when the pilots started flirting with corporate and political mutiny.
“O-Oh! That’s… surprising. You two must care a lot about the people of Cairo,” Kelly said, hastily improvising. Quarantining the sentiment to ‘you two’ was a nice touch, Nicky thought.
“We all do, Mrs. Lake,” Elijah said, jumping in to break the quarantine. “I don’t mean to diminish the Africans in both Sudan and Egypt that’ve suffered, no ma’am, but I think I speak for all us pilots when I say hearing about poor Ms. Fatimah Salim really rattled us into action. I think they said it was a— a spinal fracture,” Elijah shuddered then continued. “We believe the Egyptians can’t do this alone. They need our help. And that we—talkin’ America now—gotta answer.”
The three pilots watched with shared amusement as the giant machine comprised of film crew, producers, and BN suits lurched into motion to put words in Kelly’s mouth to counteract what they had just said. Theoretically, the entire episode could be scrapped, but Nicky suspected enough money had changed hands both ways that the episode had to be aired, even with the trojan horse message he, Tiffany, and Eli had stuffed in it. The thought made him grin.