“DOES ANYONE KNOW WHY I called this meeting?” Ron asked, his neck veins bulging with anger. His eyes were unusually bloodshot, the result of a binge drinking and drugs orgy that began the previous night after he received the disturbing news.
No one at the table dared move. They knew what was coming next, and they had enough experience with Ron’s histrionics to know not to dive into the middle of his torrential whirlpool of vitriol.
“Seal your lips tightly,” Sara repeated to herself.
Sitting erect as if at attention, her dark bangs fell precariously across her eyes. They wiggled slightly as she blinked.
“Do I dare use my hand to brush the hair away?” she wondered. “Will that modest body movement divert his attention to me? You’ve learned hard lessons before, right here in this conference room from hell and perhaps in this very chair. Just do nothing. Don’t let it bother you. Don’t allow your discomfort to expose you. Try not to breathe fast. If you don’t think about it, he can’t sense it.”
She shifted her eyes momentarily to Edgar who sat directly across from her at the large, oval table.
“Imp is no doubt picking up our vitals directly, or worse yet, predicting them inaccurately,” she speculated. “I had to see if he was showing signs of stress. Anyone who knows the situation should be aware that he’s at fault. It’s his ass this time, not mine.”
Sara looked away, unclear what Edgar’s facial expression was telling her. For a careless moment, she let her mind slip. She started wondering where the wood from the table originated. How many trees were cut. What the forest looked like.
“Snap back,” she commanded herself. “Back to this misery. Edgar should have caught it. He has all the resources at his disposal. He’s the fucking CIO of this godforsaken beast Ron built, and all technologies report into him. Billions of devices, AI IOT, and server shit. He and his fucking AI can access countless millions of cameras, nanobots, satellites, monitors, and predictive tech. That asshole should have had a handle on every fucking inch of human and varint activity within our domain. In Vista.”
She felt her head-shaking imperceptibly and forced herself to stop before others took notice.
“I’m not responsible for this new indiscretion against Ron that just arose. But Edgar certainly is at fault, and everyone at this table understands that truth, including Ron and Imp.”
Edgar was stone-faced, confident Ron wouldn’t come after him directly. Even if he did, Edgar knew too much, given his limitless access to data. He may not control the most powerful AI in Vista; Ron had that. But he had something far more valuable: data that gave him unique, consequential leverage over his boss, his oligarch, his regent, his demigod. Ron.
Three vidscreens were hanging on the wall at the front of the room displaying data and charts about the recent event. In an eye blink, Ron swiped his mechanized arm across the wall, detaching the screens from their anchors in an instant.
They splattered into pieces against the boardroom windows that looked out over the river. These were only shows of force, the usual demonstrations, of Ron’s belligerence, domination, and physical power.
“I hear what you think, each of you frail and gutless worms. Do you perceive Imp as incompetent? Me as stupid?”
Ron pointed his finger indiscriminately at his ministers. “I know what sewage swills in your craniums and rotting gray matter. I’ve got the tech. I own the managing systems that run this place, the whole fucking domain and the maggots who inhabit it. You assholes would be captive rats in this little box without me and my generosity.”
He smiled wryly. “Perhaps your job is simply too hard for you to bear. Perhaps you should quit right now and go back to your shithouse hovels, your thumb-sucking safe places. Good luck with that, if you think you’ll do better without me. Every last one of you is uber-expendable. Replaceable at my whim. Look at the lot of you. Your bloated, exalted, and unjustified visions of power. You are nothing without me, yet you suck at my generosity like engorged ticks on an anemic dog.”
At the table sat his dozen counselors, his ministers. Each had executive power over their areas of expertise within the domain known as Vista, the large geographical segment of Westrich under Ron’s control.
He was pacing angrily around the room in his usual state, contemplating the next target. Sara sensed her head was imperceptibly nodding back and forth, an instinctual outburst of disgust at his demeaning missives. Imp caught the move and immediately informed Ron via his integrated data connection enabled by the Vistachit embedded in his forehead.
“Sara,” Ron hissed, “where the hell were you when this embarrassment in the desert occurred? You are, or maybe it’s ‘were’ at this juncture, my Minister of Social Infrastructure. How could you let this happen in my domain? It’s your job to have your hand firmly on the pulse of the people and whatever the fuck we call the menagerie of hybrid creatures today. Your function is to feed me with knowledge of their discontent or aberrant thinking, then to design comms to neutralize them.”
“Yes, sir,” she half-whispered.
“Did you suddenly forget your function? Look at the unfiltered access you have to the rich data that Edgar feeds you. Where were the fatuous minions in your department of useless hundreds, or is it thousands by now? With all at your command, how could you have overlooked this humiliating event? I’m surprised you had the cojones to show your face here today. You might want to shit your pants right now so you can politely exit your smelly corpse from our presence.”
Sara’s heart was beating furiously, and Imp knew it all. Imp sensed her physical reactions. Her pulse. Sweat. Pupil dilation. Chemicals emitted from her breath and skin. Imp analyzed her eye movements. Facial tics. The number of times she licked her lips and blinked. And she knew Imp constantly monitored her thoughts, to the degree that such tech had been perfected. Imp did not know every thought she had, but its predictive algorithms could easily fill-in the blanks.
Even though she was accustomed to this constant monitoring, she had rarely suffered such a direct assault in Ron’s wrathful line of sight. Not knowing whether to respond and hoping he would turn his rant elsewhere, she stuttered, “But it was on the reserv. . .”
“I don’t give a flying fuck where it was. You’re telling me you don’t have a handle on what our lovely citizens are thinking? Do you not also have insights to those living on our reservations?”
“They’re more dispersed out there, Ron.” She was winging an excuse, real-time. “They’re harder to monitor and understand. Speak their own languages with varied meanings,” she appealed.
In an awkward moment of silence, Ron stopped his rant to stare at her, managing a feeble smile.
She grinned back, showing no teeth but communicating the anguish she felt.
“Pool of water, girl. Pool of water,” she told herself. “Don’t let that fucking Imp through your mental door. You know what you’d like to think about this fraction of hell and its actors, but don’t let your mind go there. Not now. Pool of water, girl. Repeat. Pool of water.”
Ron resumed his table pacing. Sara knew this was a good sign. He was readying his quiver of arrows on another sucker at the table.
“Did you hear that, team? Do you know how much I’ve given to our native peoples and all who live in those semi-autonomous areas of Vista? The billions I’ve spent to build and maintain their homes and businesses? Sure, we have more than our share, relative to the other domains or even nation-states. Certainly more than our share of any domain in Westrich. Sara, they’re what, ten percent?”
“Sir? Do you mean population size? I believe it’s more like six percent of Westrich, including native and non.”
“Now, what the hell does ‘native’ mean anymore, and who gives a shit? Your pathetic excuse is that they’re a little more dispersed, a little harder to monitor and control, and we aren’t trying hard enough with them. You’re implying our social infrastructure and communications efforts are not having the same effect as elsewhere in our domain.”
She knew that among this writhing pit of vipers she should show no deference to Ron’s insults and innuendo. No weakness or soft spots.
“Our budgets have been successively cut, Ron, and we’ve been stretching them the best we can. We know this comes from being the smallest domain in Westrich and the least productive.”
At her comment, Ron vaulted his lanky body across the table, bumping into two other ministers as he slid toward her. He leaned hard into her face; his arms crouched like a lion ready to pounce on prey.
“Are you saying this fiasco is my fault, goddess shithead? Are you implying the budget I gave you is not enough to monitor the scum in this domain? Are you suggesting I should rip funds away from others here at this table, your best friends, so you can spend more on yourself and your worthless team and do even less for me?”
“Of course not!” Sara stammered, leaning back slightly but staring him directly in the eyes.
Ron was a demigod in a real sense. All nation-states across the globe were managed and controlled by counterparts like him. An unholy mix of machine, computing horsepower, and human, one never knew what was real in him or what was manufactured.
Imp’s overarching influence on Ron’s psyche was unknown. Many expected that, given the AI’s superior algorithms and data access, it might have become fully sentient and taken complete control of him.
Sara was convinced that Ron no longer managed himself. She assumed Imp was only playing an extended, surreal game of strategy, of win and loss against those who were not in control, those who had limited access to the same data and were purposely restricted from advancing their own AIs any further.
To Sara’s surprise, Ron slithered back from the tabletop and once again continued his clockwise pacing. The twelve sat in rigid silence, awaiting the next fusillade.
Sara felt relieved it ended there. She’d seen too many instances where Ron’s wrath resulted in unfortunate, even deadly, results.
Ron continued with his usual oratory, the never-ending, recycled, and tiresome theme of his incessant victimhood.
“They’re after me, you know. I have lots of friends, of course. Businesspeople across Vista, Westrich, and internationally. People who know me, they love me. My own citizens love me, and those who live in other domains wish they could live here to benefit from my warmth and generosity.”
He scanned the table for a second to be sure every minister was staying attentive to his plea. “But when it comes to the few brilliant and effective leaders like me, we always have our share of detractors. Pathetic Machiavellian monsters who work to disrupt all I’ve done and am doing for this pisspoor domain and Westrich as a whole. I mitigate these attacks by being the most capable and compassionate of the oligarchs. For the benefit of others in Westrich, especially our useless and vulgar congress, I work my ass off to put together the most capable team, the best people, the best ministers anywhere.”
Ron puckered his lips, as if he was ready to spit. “And you’re second rate. Imperfect. I’d go so far as calling you horribly incompetent and self-serving. This fucking indiscretion by some laser-shooting do-gooder in Arizona has confirmed your incompetencies, hasn’t it? Some crazy shithead on my reservation gets a wild hair up his fat ass to blast a laser in the sky for all to see. And now, due to your gross negligence, I’m the one getting heat from our Westrich congressional and judicial assholes, as well as my pig-faced oligarch counterparts in California and Hedron, the slime.”
He started pacing faster, knowing his team would become more agitated by the action. “Yes, my lovely comrades are implying my team is incompetent; that you’re inept for letting this happen. A great example of the inept calling the inept ‘inept.’ They are the least competent of all the pigs in the swampland we call Westrich. Some nerve calling my team that.”
Ron turned to sneer at Sara. “Not picking on you, sweet child, though it’s partially your fault. Maybe much your fault. You understand, little one? I can’t have events like this happen. If mine was the strongest or the richest of the domains, then I’d have the power. But people are jealous of me, so they come after me. They salivate for openings like this. And they’re after you because you are my proxies. You act in my stead. Don’t you see? They want my land, power infrastructure, nukes, biotech labs, and solar farms. They want all my natural resource riches. Only concerned with themselves, not with Westrich as a whole or the greater good of our lovely citizens.”
As she listened, Sara tried to avoid any negative thoughts, to let her mind wander to other things lest Imp sense her intentions.
It was her job to broadcast this relentless vomit of self-absorption and amplified victimization to Vista’s citizenry, and she was the expert at it. But she had both developed and heard the narrative so many times from his own mouth, she forcefully repressed her desire to puke at hearing it yet again from the vile tongue of her boss.
Ron continued the rant. “I deserve to oversee and rule everything. Me and Imp. But I’m given this pea-shooter domain, and I’m the only one who cares about Westrich and its people. Those other two are afraid of me. They’re experts at persecuting me and attempting to take me down, as if they have nothing better to do with their time. California and Hedron in a split-second would disassemble Vista altogether, eliminate Westrich and therefore my power, then divide our booty amongst themselves.”
Ron wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Sara hated that this creature salivated so profusely when on one of his tirades.
“Every interaction with them is another pathetic quest for power and wealth. Same goes for these fucking politicians in congress. I’d like to fry the lot in pig fat and serve it up to the ignorant vermin who actually believe they elected them to office.”
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Edgar was slouched in his chair. He was a gaunt, sniveling man who wore excessively tight clothes to display the extensive tech fused within his body. To mitigate any participation in such typical carnage, he’d let his locks of long, black hair fall across his forehead, obscuring his face and eye movements. Chair-slouching in the conference room chair also helped minimize his presence.
“Edgar!” Ron screeched. “What does your unparalleled brilliance and wizardry bring us?”
“Yes, sir!” he replied. “In what regard?”
“In the fucking regard of fucking latest news on the fucking topic, you imbecile!”
Spittle was pouring from Ron’s mouth. Some landed on Edgar’s cheek. He dared not touch it.
“Do you think my Imp knows everything and has access to all the data you collect? If I were to let that happen, then I wouldn’t need you, would I? Indeed, Imp and I may seriously consider that idea.”
Edgar was startled. This event in Northern Arizona was perhaps more important than he had perceived.
“We continue to receive active updates from the field.”
“Like what?”
Edgar had been through this type of rancorous discourse a thousand times with Ron, as had the others at the table. He understood any response must be positives, only positives. No hints of lack of knowledge, resources, or capabilities.
“Deflect,” he thought. “Always deflect from you personally and redirect blame. Never use ‘I’ unless it’s to praise yourself.”
“All our efforts are focused on sifting through the extensive piles of rubble, and we’re finding some early successes,” Edgar offered. “Unfortunately, the drone missiles substantially damaged the transmission site.”
He knew this tactic, an idea generated by Edgar’s AI and communicated to him instantly through his Vistachit, would draw heat away from him to someone else around the table. Edgar nearly exhaled an audible sigh of relief as Ron’s attention turned elsewhere.
“Who the fuck gave approval to bomb the hell out of the place? What are you guys, a gaggle of malicious kids playing video games? You know, I should replace all of you with a dozen drugged-up, CRISPR-damaged hybrid morons off the street. What the hell? Twelve old, whiskey-soaked Texans in mech brothels could do better than this team.”
Not wanting to move his head conspicuously, Edgar’s eyes scanned the periphery. Ron was behind him somewhere, out of his visual range.
Being within striking distance of another mech like Ron was always unnerving to him. Edgar’s tech was probably more advanced, but Ron’s mech’d arm could take him out in a wisp of air with no time to defensively counter.
“But he wouldn’t do that,” Edgar assumed. “He knows my death would detonate countless explosions of incriminating data to his enemies near and far. In fact, he has no friends beyond his AI master. That info would expose this fuckhead’s gross incompetence as Vista’s lone oligarch, and he knows it.”
Ron laughed aloud. “I can predict your excuses, team. Imp tells me so much about your failing personalities, moment by moment. I’m not sure why I keep you heathen around, except I’m required to for now. Edgar, my boy, you’re going to say ‘It’s not my fault. I didn’t send those missiles, those drones, to blast the Arizona site to smithereens.’ Right?”
“But I did not release them, sir,” Edgar quickly responded.
“General?”
Luis Vasquez, Ron’s Minister of Security, held responsibility for all security and military operations in Vista. This included Vista’s armed forces and secret service as well as dotted-line responsibility over local police units across thousands of towns.
Formally, Luis was a five-star general. His official title was Vista’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he had similar counterparts in the California and Hedron domains. The extensive resources at his command included human, hybrid, and mechanical modes of security, or anything not related to Edgar’s internal data systems. This placed him in constant conflict with Edgar who owned security for all of Vista’s governmental systems and databases.
“Sir?” Luis replied, sitting erect in his chair as always.
Luis had mech’d his body years before and had undergone many generations of physical hybridization. And like most others in the room, his chronological age far exceeded his physical age due to continuous treatments of anti-aging medicines, organ replacements, and genetic upgrades.
The man was as imposing as hell, even more so than Edgar or Ron. His stature had been increased from his birth-height by eighteen inches, making him over seven feet tall. His muscles, veins, and sinews burst out visibly from his clothing, a result of genetic augmentation with the latest strength and stamina tech. ‘You’re a fucking B-17, dude,’ Sara previously remarked at one of Ron’s raucous pool parties for the team.
Ron did not respond, intentionally creating a pregnant pause. Luis knew he’d better say something.
“We had our sights on them, sir, a while back. Didn’t know until the day it happened that the perpetrator was still alive. He had been hiding from detection for a decade with the help of his spouse. Their home was built into a metallic mountainside with old mines, allowing him to further avoid detection from our normal citizen sensor systems.”
“I could give a fuck where they lived or what their patio furniture looked like, you dolt. Why didn’t you discover their fucking tech?”
“They were apparently building the laser array during that decade. It was all constructed underground and out of sensor system range, whether terrestrial and airborne. Our teams used the best tech we have available in the region, although some of the local police with whom we contracted were supposed to patrol the area regularly but apparently failed to do so. They’ll be appropriately prosecuted. Sir, it’s very difficult in that remote territory to find good people to suit our special needs. That’s reservation land and not your typical snoop’s or mech’s first choice. Hot, dry, cold, harsh. Poor living conditions.”
“Oh, I see,” Ron chided, shaking his head as if he understood and agreed. His fist clenched visibly outward. “So, we have a weak point in our system. Something our enemies can exploit?”
“Sir, we don’t know if this event was initiated by enemies like the other nation-states or . . .”
“Cold?” Ron interjected angrily. “Our security bots care if it’s cold? What day is that? Aren’t we outfitting these robots with tiny blankets to keep their circuitry and little mechanical legs warm?”
“No, sir. But out in the hinterlands it’s harder to keep our robotic systems functioning properly. We tend to use humans and hybrids instead because they work more reliably in those environs. Dust from the wind gets in our mech bugs, birds, lizards, and all other manner of mobile security systems. It fouls them up. Even the drones have issues with the harsh elements.”
“And how, under your watchful eyes, could these brazen senior citizens build an infrastructure powerful enough to sustain such a high intensity laser signal? Yes, a beautiful, wondrous signal that God knows which of our enemies has deciphered while we haven’t a clue? What satellite of theirs might have been in line of sight and captured that beacon as it brilliantly shined to the stars? Do you understand how fucking embarrassing this is? The pinnacle of my disgrace. Don’t you see, you cretin? You also shamed your soldiers and your entire security apparatus. It makes me look weak, and I’m not weak. I’m decisive.”
Ron began pacing around the room again, faster than before. Given his long legs, he had already made at least twenty round trips, always clockwise, using his hips to knock purposely against the chairs and their occupants to magnify his anxiety and dominance.
“I don’t have to tell you what this means, do I? Can you imagine a couple old farts in no-man’s-land Arizona constructing a high-scale, petawatt laser facility? All to broadcast a message to nobody?” he screamed. “What the fuck were they sending out there? It’s bad enough to have it happen on my watch. When news leaks out as it always does, since I trust all of you to happily leak it, do you know what that makes me?”
He waited for a response, then continued. “A dupe. A dope. A dud. A dunce. It shows to all that I have a team of incompetents monitoring and controlling my territory. Vista. My domain. It says our tech is inferior, our security systems are shit, and our ability to protect our border is deficient. Worse yet, it announces we’re out of touch with our citizens, Sara.”
She didn’t budge. “God, please keep talking,” she prayed.
“It highlights our weaknesses as a team. Every single one of you is at fault, and it reflects on me. Not on you, but on me. You royal flush fucks. Yes, this time you defecated golden-brown turds of royal flush fucks!”
Tired of releasing his wrath, Ron collapsed onto his chair at the head of the table and sighed loudly.
“Hey, you maggots. I have enough pressures from outside this room. And now, in your combined laziness and unfitness, you give me this gift. A gift in return for my generosity to you. My magnanimity. I let you guys have all the power and riches to your pleasure. Then you fuck up, and I get blamed.”
“May I speak, sir?” the Minister of Foreign Relations began, leaning forward.
Jessup Quarles was the quietest of all ministers while at staff meetings. Outside the meetings, he politicked relentlessly to position himself favorably with Ron. His sequencing of blame would be very predictable.
Ron knew this. “Shut up, Jess. You’re about to tell me this was no fault of yours it has nothing to do with foreign relations when it has everything to do with it. If you did your job better than quarter-assed, I wouldn’t need to worry nonstop about the other nation-state oligarchs stabbing me in the back. If you and your incompetent teams possessed better negotiation skills, we’d be in a superior position with allies and enemies and benefit from all that comes with that.”
Jessup slowly sunk back in his chair, reluctant to continue his thought.
“I see through each of you and your excuses. Imp informs me that you are all scared. Button-lipped. But Imp also says we won’t get anywhere if I only scream at you in your ambivalent stupidity. Sorry, Imp, but I’ll try to do better. Now, let me give this sweet team a sense of where I stand because of you. The other Westrich oligarchs are already breathing down my neck with a vengeance, and these thugs have far more resources.”
“Finally,” Sara thought. “Imp is now doing the talking.”
“So nice that we border two other belligerent nation-states, and I have the longest border and the fewest resources to scout those vast reaches. Dr. Lewis’ team and I spend inordinate time and money fighting these pathogens that fly effortlessly across our borders every day or two. It’s a constant shit show of new hybridized variant of influenza or coronavirus or God knows what mutant genetic code dressed up in a natural or synthetic carrier. How many in Vista died last year?”
Dr. Lewis, the Minister of Health and Safety, checked the small vidscreen in front of him. “Slightly down, sir. Only thirty-two thousand.”
Ron continued. “Our enemies surround us. They’re after me. Resources, land, power, riches, minerals. You’ve heard this shit before, but none of you work to fix it. It’s always me doing the work and you getting my glory.”
Ron lifted his head high and peered down upon his team, each hunched over slightly like they’d been beaten with a thick reed.
“Life’s not been easy for me. I know most of you think I was born into this, that I came with money and power because of my family, and it was always fun to gain and win more. But I lost. I lost so much in the Debacle, and now I’m constantly harangued and attacked.”
“And he’s back,” she surmised.
“I manage this god-forsaken domain out of the generosity of my heart because I’m the only one qualified. I’m the most capable, and you know that for a fact. I’ve done my best to pull this piece-of-shit domain together, to deal with the horror show of post-Debacle politics, and nobody appreciates me or my efforts. Sara, are you capturing this? I want to be sure you get these messages out in your comms.”
Sara quickly grasped a vidscreen on the table and began typing as if she were transcribing his thoughts verbatim. She’d heard the same narrative and communicated it so many times before that grabbing the vidscreen was only an act of self-preservation to prove she was paying attention to his nonsense.
“Not my exact words, mind you,” he demanded, oblivious to his incessant repetition on the topic. “The concepts. My righteous, right, and perfect concepts. I’ve not been treated well by others. Not by you, not by my people, and certainly not beyond our domain. Many owe me who never pay back. Do you think I’ll get help from the other demigods, those fucking autocratic cowards? You know, I love calling them demigods because that’s what we are, those of us at the top of these shithouse domains. But I’m beyond human. Beyond demigod. Superior to both human and hybrid. A being imbued with the most perfect genetic, mech, and AI systems.”
Sara glanced up from her screen to assure him. “I’m getting this for the comms. We’ll smooth it out, as usual. Please continue.”
Ron grimaced. “Not sure I want you to smooth all of it. Our citizens should be slugged in the face with my directives and made to pay penance. Made to understand what I must go through to keep them alive and safe, to ensure their lands and assets are not seized by the barbarian hoards outside Vista. I keep them happy and productive, and I deserve recompense. Instead, I get little from them.”
She was starting to feel like this could spin into another long victimization tirade, though that might improve his mood. The incessant victim narrative was his teddy bear. His self-comforting ‘blankie.’
“Do I ever get a genuine thank you not generated by bots? Do I ever receive a handwritten letter from any Vista slugs playing out their cheap lives of futility? Do the ‘little people’ praise me? Not that I can see. Sara, this must be your failing since you own my comms.”
Every time Sara had to listen to this diatribe, she always used the same comeback. “Your ratings are no different than the other six demigods in Westrich, and the citizens in other nation-states think no differently of theirs.”
“But they should, of course, and you need to do much better. You’re failing me.”
“Indeed,” she obliged. “We’ll redouble our comms efforts to focus again on all that you provide to our citizens, and how they should show their gratitude.”
“I’m not sure that will help, however. In this instance, we were unfairly attacked by someone who was probably prompted or supported by another nation-state. Look, we’re here in Austin at the hairy edge of our borders with Bolivar and Southern. No doubt they funneled contraband equipment into Northern Arizona, then helped these oldsters set up the laser array and power facility. The goal? Embarrassing me. It’s a cowardly means to weaken our resolve psychologically instead of sending an invading army or volley of infective agents across the border.”
He placed his long arm to his chin and rubbed it, a sign that he was still pondering the situation and the monologue was anything but finished.
“Who can we blame for this? Those on the reservation? Our native peoples? They have no power otherwise beyond their own sub-regions. They’re unable to kick any shit back at us.”
Gloria Davis, the Minister of Physical Infrastructure, spoke up. “I don’t think anyone will listen to us if we point fingers at the Latinos in Bolivar, or Southerners, for that matter. We have a constant flow of those types of comms every day, and more of that messaging won’t rise above the noise. Probably a good thing if we can select a new target of diversion like the tribes.”
“Sara?” Ron demanded.
She frowned at Gloria and thought, “How dare she step into my expertise, talking about messaging. The little shit!”
“It’s a good thought,” Sara replied. “We could create a narrative that our native peoples are too autonomous. Yes, they seem to manage themselves well and are peaceful. But we can spin it around as a negative. Perhaps they were quietly helping these old farts do their dirty deed. After all, this event happened on their watch, under their noses, in their own semi-autonomous lands.”
“One of the perps, the one we found dead with her dogs. She was part native, no?” Edgar queried, knowing the response beforehand.
“Even so, that story bolsters our case,” Sara continued. “Assuming we don’t quickly discover the contents of the message in the laser blasts, we can infer it was something related to them. Very innocuous, like a message to their legacy gods or what have you.”
Ron turned to Luis. “General, remind me of what we know about the laser.”
“Certainly, sir.” Luis repositioned himself in his chair to expand his chest size and musculature. “Per initial intelligence, it appeared as twelve discrete emissions, each of ten-second duration. The last one was shorter, however. Likely truncated by the missile blast.”
“That’s a world of data, my friend,” Ron stated facetiously. “It’s not clear what you couldn’t possibly say to a god or gods with that much data. The information about all molecules on Earth could fit into a hundred twenty seconds from a multiphased laser. Fuck! It’s a first-class pisser this happened in my domain.”
He focused back on Sara. “Get that hair out of your eyes, schoolgirl,” he insisted. “It’s bugging me. Moves every time you blink.”
Sara quickly pulled back her bangs.
“Yeah, like that. I can’t think straight with an eyelid twitching your hair. Hey, worthless. We need to turn up the Vista victimization story. How we’re the scrappy little upstart, the smallest but meanest, most innovative of domains. We have so much potential, but others are stealthily attempting to pull us down in their jealousy and greed. Show how this was an attack on all citizens of Vista, and get them angry. We can use that native peoples narrative as a cover story, since that’s an easy demonization target. Then the subsequent messages should imply Southerner spies into the native tribes were the culprits. If we obscure with the usual inferences and implications without worrying about facts, then we’re golden, right?”
All at the table nodded in unison, hoping this painful monologue was close to its end.
He continued, talking mostly to Sara. “Avoid stirring up Bolivar, however. Too fucking volatile. Their citizens are rebelling against the new personal monitoring systems. It’s not pretty, either. And I have nothing to gain by raising the ‘hate flag’ with them. By placing the blame on our native peoples and accusing Southern of assisting, this caustic energy gets diverted, pushed a few thousand miles to our east. Besides, it puts the other Westrich oligarchs on notice that they need to pick up their monitoring and defensive efforts against the other nation-states. I’m tired of having full responsibility, and they need to pick up the slack. Indeed, my plan diffuses the energy from our failure here. Edgar!”
“Yes, Ron.”
“Work with Sara’s team to coordinate your data and stories. You develop the data for the counter-narrative, and Sara, you know how to spin that. I need this out pronto, so get your sluggish fat asses in gear for once.”
The team started to pull out their chairs to stand, but Ron held up his arm. “Wait! Not yet adjourned. We meet again at five tonight. Everyone. I don’t give a shit about your other little ministerial problems. Nothing’s as big or important as this."